The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of
Galsworthy, by John Galsworthy
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Title: The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy
Author: John Galsworthy
Release Date: September 27, 2004 [EBook #3254]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPLETE PG GALSWORTHY ***
Produced by David Widger, Don Lainson, and Several Project Gutenberg
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THE ENTIRE PROJECT GUTENBERG GALSWORTHY FILES
The Forsyte Saga:
Volume 1. The Man of Property
Volume 2. Indian Summer of a Forsyte
In Chancery
Volume 3. Awakening
To Let
Other Novels:
The Dark Flower
The Freelands
Beyond
Villa Rubein and Other Stories
Villa Rubein
A Man of Devon
A Knight
Salvation of a Forsyte
The Silence
Saint's Progress
The Island Pharisees
The Country House
Fraternity
The Patrician
The Burning Spear
Five Short Tales
The First and Last
A Stoic
The Apple Tree
The Juryman
Indian Summer of a Forsyte
Essays and Studies:
Concerning Life
Inn of Tranquility
Magpie over the Hill
Sheep-shearing
Evolution
Riding in the Mist
The Procession
A Christian
Wind in the Rocks
My Distant Relative
The Black Godmother
Quality
The Grand Jury
Gone
Threshing
That Old-time Place
Romance--three Gleams
Memories
Felicity
Concerning Letters
A Novelist's Allegory
Some Platitudes Concerning Drama
Meditation on Finality
Wanted--Schooling
On Our Dislike of Things as They Are
The Windlestraw
About Censorship
Vague Thoughts on Art
Plays:
First Series:
The Silver Box
Joy
Strife
Second Series:
The Eldest Son
The Little Dream
Justice
Third Series:
The Fugitive
The Pigeon
The Mob
Fourth Series:
A Bit O' Love
The Foundations
The Skin Game
Six Short Plays:
The First and The Last
The Little Man
Hall-marked
Defeat
The Sun
Punch and Go
Fifth Series:
A Family Man
Loyalties
Windows
[NOTE: The spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our
"z's"; and "c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour
and flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]
FORSYTE SAGA
Complete
By John Galsworthy
Contents:
Part 1. The Man of Property
Part 2. Indian Summer of a Forsyte
In Chancery
Part 3. Awakening
To Let
THE MAN OF PROPERTY
TO MY WIFE:
I DEDICATE THE FORSYTE SAGA IN ITS ENTIRETY,
BELIEVING IT TO BE OF ALL MY WORKS THE LEAST
UNWORTHY OF ONE WITHOUT WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT,
SYMPATHY AND CRITICISM I COULD NEVER HAVE
BECOME EVEN SUCH A WRITER AS I AM.
PREFACE:
"The Forsyte Saga" was the title originally destined for that part of it
which is called "The Man of Property"; and to adopt it for the collected
chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged the Forsytean tenacity that
is in all of us. The word Saga might be objected to on the ground that
it connotes the heroic and that there is little heroism in these pages.
But it is used with a suitable irony; and, after all, this long tale,
though it may deal with folk in frock coats, furbelows, and a gilt-edged
period, is not devoid of the essential heat of conflict. Discounting for
the gigantic stature and blood-thirstiness of old days, as they have come
down to us in fairy-tale and legend, the folk of the old Sagas were
Forsytes, assuredly, in their possessive instincts, and as little proof
against the inroads of beauty and passion as Swithin, Soames, or even
Young Jolyon. And if heroic figures, in days that never were, seem to
startle out from their surroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of
the Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then the
prime force, and that "family" and the sense of home and property counted
as they do to this day, for all the recent efforts to "talk them out."
So many people have written and claimed that their families were the
originals of the Forsytes that one has been almost encouraged to believe
in the typicality of an imagined species. Manners change and modes
evolve, and "Timothy's on the Bayswater Road" becomes a nest of the
unbelievable in all except essentials; we shall not look upon its like
again, nor perhaps on such a one as James or Old Jolyon. And yet the
figures of Insurance Societies and the utterances of Judges reassure us
daily that our earthly paradise is still a rich preserve, where the wild
raiders, Beauty and Passion, come stealing in, filching security from
beneath our noses. As surely as a dog will bark at a brass band, so will
the essential Soames in human nature ever rise up uneasily against the
dissolution which hovers round the folds of ownership.
"Let the dead Past bury its dead" would be a better saying if the Past
ever died. The persistence of the Past is one of those tragi-comic
blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure on to the stage to
mouth its claim to a perfect novelty.
But no Age is so new as that! Human Nature, under its changing
pretensions and clothes, is and ever will be very much of a Forsyte, and
might, after all, be a much worse animal.
Looking back on the Victorian era, whose ripeness, decline, and 'fall-of'
is in some sort pictured in "The Forsyte Saga," we see now that we have
but jumped out of a frying-pan into a fire. It would be difficult to
substantiate a claim that the case of England was better in 1913 than it
was in 1886, when the Forsytes assembled at Old Jolyon's to celebrate the
engagement of June to Philip Bosinney. And in 1920, when again the clan
gathered to bless the marriage of Fleur with Michael Mont, the state of
England is as surely too molten and bankrupt as in the eighties it was
too congealed and low-percented. If these chronicles had been a really
scientific study of transition one would have dwelt probably on such
factors as the invention of bicycle, motor-car, and flying-machine; the
arrival of a cheap Press; the decline of country life and increase of the
towns; the birth of the Cinema. Men are, in fact, quite unable to control
their own inventions; they at best develop adaptability to the new
conditions those inventions create.
But this long tale is no scientific study of a period; it is rather an
intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty effects in the lives
of men.
The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have observed,
present, except through the senses of other characters, is a concretion
of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive world.
One has noticed that readers, as they wade on through the salt waters of
the Saga, are inclined more and more to pity Soames, and to think that in
doing so they are in revolt against the mood of his creator. Far from
it! He, too, pities Soames, the tragedy of whose life is the very
simple, uncontrollable tragedy of being unlovable, without quite a thick
enough skin to be thoroughly unconscious of the fact. Not even Fleur
loves Soames as he feels he ought to be loved. But in pitying Soames,
readers incline, perhaps, to animus against Irene: After all, they think,
he wasn't a bad fellow, it wasn't his fault; she ought to have forgiven
him, and so on!
And, taking sides, they lose perception of the simple truth, which
underlies the whole story, that where sex attraction is utterly and
definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no amount of pity, or
reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a repulsion implicit in
Nature. Whether it ought to, or no, is beside the point; because in fact
it never does. And where Irene seems hard and cruel, as in the Bois de
Boulogne, or the Goupenor Gallery, she is but wisely realistic--knowing
that the least concession is the inch which precedes the impossible, the
repulsive ell.
A criticism one might pass on the last phase of the Saga is the complaint
that Irene and Jolyon those rebels against property--claim spiritual
property in their son Jon. But it would be hypercriticism, as the tale
is told. No father and mother could have let the boy marry Fleur without
knowledge of the facts; and the facts determine Jon, not the persuasion
of his parents. Moreover, Jolyon's persuasion is not on his own account,
but on Irene's, and Irene's persuasion becomes a reiterated: "Don't think
of me, think of yourself!" That Jon, knowing the facts, can realise his
mother's feelings, will hardly with justice be held proof that she is,
after all, a Forsyte.
But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims of Freedom on a
possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte Saga, it
cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming the upper-middle class.
As the old Egyptians placed around their mummies the necessaries of a
future existence, so I have endeavoured to lay beside the, figures of
Aunts Ann and Juley and Hester, of Timothy and Swithin, of Old Jolyon and
James, and of their sons, that which shall guarantee them a little life
here-after, a little balm in the hurried Gilead of a dissolving
"Progress."
If the upper-middle class, with other classes, is destined to "move on"
into amorphism, here, pickled in these pages, it lies under glass for
strollers in the wide and ill-arranged museum of Letters. Here it rests,
preserved in its own juice: The Sense of Property.
1922.
THE MAN OF PROPERTY
by JOHN GALSWORTHY
"........ You will answer
The slaves are ours ....."
--Merchant of Venice.
TO EDWARD GARNETT
PART I
CHAPTER I
'AT HOME' AT OLD JOLYON'S
Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have
seen that charming and instructive sight--an upper middle-class family in
full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons has possessed the
gift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and
properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only
delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem. In
plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family--no branch
of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of whom
existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy--evidence of that
mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidable a unit
of society, so clear a reproduction of society in miniature. He has been
admitted to a vision of the dim roads of social progress, has understood
something of patriarchal life, of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the
rise and fall of nations. He is like one who, having watched a tree grow
from its planting--a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst
the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and
persistent--one day will see it flourishing with bland, full foliage, in
an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of its efflorescence.
On June 15, eighteen eighty-six, about four of the afternoon, the
observer who chanced to be present at the house of old Jolyon Forsyte in
Stanhope Gate, might have seen the highest efflorescence of the Forsytes.
This was the occasion of an 'at home' to celebrate the engagement of Miss
June Forsyte, old Jolyon's granddaughter, to Mr. Philip Bosinney. In the
bravery of light gloves, buff waistcoats, feathers and frocks, the family
were present, even Aunt Ann, who now but seldom left the corner of her
brother Timothy's green drawing-room, where, under the aegis of a plume
of dyed pampas grass in a light blue vase, she sat all day reading and
knitting, surrounded by the effigies of three generations of Forsytes.
Even Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back, and the dignity of her calm
old face personifying the rigid possessiveness of the family idea.
When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present;
when a Forsyte died--but no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die;
death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against
it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalized persons who resent
encroachments on their property.
About the Forsytes mingling that day with the crowd of other guests,
there was a more than ordinarily groomed look, an alert, inquisitive
assurance, a brilliant respectability, as though they were attired in
defiance of something. The habitual sniff on the face of Soames Forsyte
had spread through their ranks; they were on their guard.
The subconscious offensiveness of their attitude has constituted old
Jolyon's 'home' the psychological moment of the family history, made it
the prelude of their drama.
The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a
family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of
raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family
importance, and--the sniff. Danger--so indispensable in bringing out the
fundamental quality of any society, group, or individual--was what the
Forsytes scented; the premonition of danger put a burnish on their
armour. For the first time, as a family, they appeared to have an
instinct of being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.
Over against the piano a man of bulk and stature was wearing two
waistcoats on his wide chest, two waistcoats and a ruby pin, instead of
the single satin waistcoat and diamond pin of more usual occasions, and
his shaven, square, old face, the colour of pale leather, with pale eyes,
had its most dignified look, above his satin stock. This was Swithin
Forsyte. Close to the window, where he could get more than his fair
share of fresh air, the other twin, James--the fat and the lean of it,
old Jolyon called these brothers--like the bulky Swithin, over six feet
in height, but very lean, as though destined from his birth to strike a
balance and maintain an average, brooded over the scene with his
permanent stoop; his grey eyes had an air of fixed absorption in some
secret worry, broken at intervals by a rapid, shifting scrutiny of
surrounding facts; his cheeks, thinned by two parallel folds, and a long,
clean-shaven upper lip, were framed within Dundreary whiskers. In his
hands he turned and turned a piece of china. Not far off, listening to a
lady in brown, his only son Soames, pale and well-shaved, dark-haired,
rather bald, had poked his chin up sideways, carrying his nose with that
aforesaid appearance of 'sniff,' as though despising an egg which he knew
he could not digest. Behind him his cousin, the tall George, son of the
fifth Forsyte, Roger, had a Quilpish look on his fleshy face, pondering
one of his sardonic jests. Something inherent to the occasion had
affected them all.
Seated in a row close to one another were three ladies--Aunts Ann,
Hester (the two Forsyte maids), and Juley (short for Julia), who not in
first youth had so far forgotten herself as to marry Septimus Small, a
man of poor constitution. She had survived him for many years. With her
elder and younger sister she lived now in the house of Timothy, her sixth
and youngest brother, on the Bayswater Road. Each of these ladies held
fans in their hands, and each with some touch of colour, some emphatic
feather or brooch, testified to the solemnity of the opportunity.
In the centre of the room, under the chandelier, as became a host, stood
the head of the family, old Jolyon himself. Eighty years of age, with
his fine, white hair, his dome-like forehead, his little, dark grey eyes,
and an immense white moustache, which drooped and spread below the level
of his strong jaw, he had a patriarchal look, and in spite of lean cheeks
and hollows at his temples, seemed master of perennial youth. He held
himself extremely upright, and his shrewd, steady eyes had lost none of
their clear shining. Thus he gave an impression of superiority to the
doubts and dislikes of smaller men. Having had his own way for
innumerable years, he had earned a prescriptive right to it. It would
never have occurred to old Jolyon that it was necessary to wear a look of
doubt or of defiance.
Between him and the four other brothers who were present, James, Swithin,
Nicholas, and Roger, there was much difference, much similarity. In
turn, each of these four brothers was very different from the other, yet
they, too, were alike.
Through the varying features and expression of those five faces could be
marked a certain steadfastness of chin, underlying surface distinctions,
marking a racial stamp, too prehistoric to trace, too remote and
permanent to discuss--the very hall-mark and guarantee of the family
fortunes.
Among the younger generation, in the tall, bull-like George, in pallid
strenuous Archibald, in young Nicholas with his sweet and tentative
obstinacy, in the grave and foppishly determined Eustace, there was this
same stamp--less meaningful perhaps, but unmistakable--a sign of
something ineradicable in the family soul. At one time or another during
the afternoon, all these faces, so dissimilar and so alike, had worn an
expression of distrust, the object of which was undoubtedly the man whose
acquaintance they were thus assembled to make. Philip Bosinney was known
to be a young man without fortune, but Forsyte girls had become engaged
to such before, and had actually married them. It was not altogether for
this reason, therefore, that the minds of the Forsytes misgave them.
They could not have explained the origin of a misgiving obscured by the
mist of family gossip. A story was undoubtedly told that he had paid his
duty call to Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester, in a soft grey hat--a soft
grey hat, not even a new one--a dusty thing with a shapeless crown. "So,
extraordinary, my dear--so odd," Aunt Hester, passing through the little,
dark hall (she was rather short-sighted), had tried to 'shoo' it off a
chair, taking it for a strange, disreputable cat--Tommy had such
disgraceful friends! She was disturbed when it did not move.
Like an artist for ever seeking to discover the significant trifle which
embodies the whole character of a scene, or place, or person, so those
unconscious artists--the Forsytes had fastened by intuition on this hat;
it was their significant trifle, the detail in which was embedded the
meaning of the whole matter; for each had asked himself: "Come, now,
should I have paid that visit in that hat?" and each had answered "No!"
and some, with more imagination than others, had added: "It would never
have come into my head!"
George, on hearing the story, grinned. The hat had obviously been worn
as a practical joke! He himself was a connoisseur of such. "Very
haughty!" he said, "the wild Buccaneer."
And this mot, the 'Buccaneer,' was bandied from mouth to mouth, till it
became the favourite mode of alluding to Bosinney.
Her aunts reproached June afterwards about the hat.
"We don't think you ought to let him, dear!" they had said.
June had answered in her imperious brisk way, like the little embodiment
of will she was: "Oh! what does it matter? Phil never knows what he's
got on!"
No one had credited an answer so outrageous. A man not to know what he
had on? No, no! What indeed was this young man, who, in becoming
engaged to June, old Jolyon's acknowledged heiress, had done so well for
himself? He was an architect, not in itself a sufficient reason for
wearing such a hat. None of the Forsytes happened to be architects, but
one of them knew two architects who would never have worn such a hat upon
a call of ceremony in the London season.
Dangerous--ah, dangerous! June, of course, had not seen this, but,
though not yet nineteen, she was notorious. Had she not said to Mrs.
Soames--who was always so beautifully dressed--that feathers were vulgar?
Mrs. Soames had actually given up wearing feathers, so dreadfully
downright was dear June!
These misgivings, this disapproval, and perfectly genuine distrust, did
not prevent the Forsytes from gathering to old Jolyon's invitation. An
'At Home' at Stanhope Gate was a great rarity; none had been held for
twelve years, not indeed, since old Mrs. Jolyon had died.
Never had there been so full an assembly, for, mysteriously united in
spite of all their differences, they had taken arms against a common
peril. Like cattle when a dog comes into the field, they stood head to
head and shoulder to shoulder, prepared to run upon and trample the
invader to death. They had come, too, no doubt, to get some notion of
what sort of presents they would ultimately be expected to give; for
though the question of wedding gifts was usually graduated in this way:
'What are you givin'? Nicholas is givin' spoons!'--so very much depended
on the bridegroom. If he were sleek, well-brushed, prosperous-looking,
it was more necessary to give him nice things; he would expect them. In
the end each gave exactly what was right and proper, by a species of
family adjustment arrived at as prices are arrived at on the Stock
Exchange--the exact niceties being regulated at Timothy's commodious,
red-brick residence in Bayswater, overlooking the Park, where dwelt Aunts
Ann, Juley, and Hester.
The uneasiness of the Forsyte family has been justified by the simple
mention of the hat. How impossible and wrong would it have been for any
family, with the regard for appearances which should ever characterize
the great upper middle-class, to feel otherwise than uneasy!
The author of the uneasiness stood talking to June by the further door;
his curly hair had a rumpled appearance, as though he found what was
going on around him unusual. He had an air, too, of having a joke all to
himself. George, speaking aside to his brother, Eustace, said:
"Looks as if he might make a bolt of it--the dashing Buccaneer!"
This 'very singular-looking man,' as Mrs. Small afterwards called him,
was of medium height and strong build, with a pale, brown face, a
dust-coloured moustache, very prominent cheek-bones, and hollow checks.
His forehead sloped back towards the crown of his head, and bulged out in
bumps over the eyes, like foreheads seen in the Lion-house at the Zoo.
He had sherry-coloured eyes, disconcertingly inattentive at times. Old
Jolyon's coachman, after driving June and Bosinney to the theatre, had
remarked to the butler:
"I dunno what to make of 'im. Looks to me for all the world like an
'alf-tame leopard." And every now and then a Forsyte would come up, sidle
round, and take a look at him.
June stood in front, fending off this idle curiosity--a little bit of a
thing, as somebody once said, 'all hair and spirit,' with fearless blue
eyes, a firm jaw, and a bright colour, whose face and body seemed too
slender for her crown of red-gold hair.
A tall woman, with a beautiful figure, which some member of the family
had once compared to a heathen goddess, stood looking at these two with a
shadowy smile.
Her hands, gloved in French grey, were crossed one over the other, her
grave, charming face held to one side, and the eyes of all men near were
fastened on it. Her figure swayed, so balanced that the very air seemed
to set it moving. There was warmth, but little colour, in her cheeks;
her large, dark eyes were soft.
But it was at her lips--asking a question, giving an answer, with that
shadowy smile--that men looked; they were sensitive lips, sensuous and
sweet, and through them seemed to come warmth and perfume like the warmth
and perfume of a flower.
The engaged couple thus scrutinized were unconscious of this passive
goddess. It was Bosinney who first noticed her, and asked her name.
June took her lover up to the woman with the beautiful figure.
"Irene is my greatest chum," she said: "Please be good friends, you two!"
At the little lady's command they all three smiled; and while they were
smiling, Soames Forsyte, silently appearing from behind the woman with
the beautiful figure, who was his wife, said:
"Ah! introduce me too!"
He was seldom, indeed, far from Irene's side at public functions, and
even when separated by the exigencies of social intercourse, could be
seen following her about with his eyes, in which were strange expressions
of watchfulness and longing.
At the window his father, James, was still scrutinizing the marks on the
piece of china.
"I wonder at Jolyon's allowing this engagement," he said to Aunt Ann.
"They tell me there's no chance of their getting married for years. This
young Bosinney" (he made the word a dactyl in opposition to general usage
of a short o) "has got nothing. When Winifred married Dartie, I made him
bring every penny into settlement--lucky thing, too--they'd ha' had
nothing by this time!"
Aunt Ann looked up from her velvet chair. Grey curls banded her
forehead, curls that, unchanged for decades, had extinguished in the
family all sense of time. She made no reply, for she rarely spoke,
husbanding her aged voice; but to James, uneasy of conscience, her look
was as good as an answer.
"Well," he said, "I couldn't help Irene's having no money. Soames was in
such a hurry; he got quite thin dancing attendance on her."
Putting the bowl pettishly down on the piano, he let his eyes wander to
the group by the door.
"It's my opinion," he said unexpectedly, "that it's just as well as it
is."
Aunt Ann did not ask him to explain this strange utterance. She knew
what he was thinking. If Irene had no money she would not be so foolish
as to do anything wrong; for they said--they said--she had been asking
for a separate room; but, of course, Soames had not....
James interrupted her reverie:
"But where," he asked, "was Timothy? Hadn't he come with them?"
Through Aunt Ann's compressed lips a tender smile forced its way:
"No, he didn't think it wise, with so much of this diphtheria about; and
he so liable to take things."
James answered:
"Well, HE takes good care of himself. I can't afford to take the care of
myself that he does."
Nor was it easy to say which, of admiration, envy, or contempt, was
dominant in that remark.
Timothy, indeed, was seldom seen. The baby of the family, a publisher by
profession, he had some years before, when business was at full tide,
scented out the stagnation which, indeed, had not yet come, but which
ultimately, as all agreed, was bound to set in, and, selling his share in
a firm engaged mainly in the production of religious books, had invested
the quite conspicuous proceeds in three per cent. consols. By this act
he had at once assumed an isolated position, no other Forsyte being
content with less than four per cent. for his money; and this isolation
had slowly and surely undermined a spirit perhaps better than commonly
endowed with caution. He had become almost a myth--a kind of incarnation
of security haunting the background of the Forsyte universe. He had
never committed the imprudence of marrying, or encumbering himself in any
way with children.
James resumed, tapping the piece of china:
"This isn't real old Worcester. I s'pose Jolyon's told you something
about the young man. From all I can learn, he's got no business, no
income, and no connection worth speaking of; but then, I know
nothing--nobody tells me anything."
Aunt Ann shook her head. Over her square-chinned, aquiline old face a
trembling passed; the spidery fingers of her hands pressed against each
other and interlaced, as though she were subtly recharging her will.
The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar
position amongst them. Opportunists and egotists one and all--though
not, indeed, more so than their neighbours--they quailed before her
incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too strong, what could
they do but avoid her!
Twisting his long, thin legs, James went on:
"Jolyon, he will have his own way. He's got no children"--and stopped,
recollecting the continued existence of old Jolyon's son, young Jolyon,
June's father, who had made such a mess of it, and done for himself by
deserting his wife and child and running away with that foreign
governess. "Well," he resumed hastily, "if he likes to do these things,
I s'pose he can afford to. Now, what's he going to give her? I s'pose
he'll give her a thousand a year; he's got nobody else to leave his money
to."
He stretched out his hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven man,
with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full lips, and cold
grey eyes under rectangular brows.
"Well, Nick," he muttered, "how are you?"
Nicholas Forsyte, with his bird-like rapidity and the look of a
preternaturally sage schoolboy (he had made a large fortune, quite
legitimately, out of the companies of which he was a director), placed
within that cold palm the tips of his still colder fingers and hastily
withdrew them.
"I'm bad," he said, pouting--"been bad all the week; don't sleep at
night. The doctor can't tell why. He's a clever fellow, or I shouldn't
have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills."
"Doctors!" said James, coming down sharp on his words: "I've had all the
doctors in London for one or another of us. There's no satisfaction to
be got out of them; they'll tell you anything. There's Swithin, now.
What good have they done him? There he is; he's bigger than ever; he's
enormous; they can't get his weight down. Look at him!"
Swithin Forsyte, tall, square, and broad, with a chest like a pouter
pigeon's in its plumage of bright waistcoats, came strutting towards
them.
"Er--how are you?" he said in his dandified way, aspirating the 'h'
strongly (this difficult letter was almost absolutely safe in his
keeping)--"how are you?"
Each brother wore an air of aggravation as he looked at the other two,
knowing by experience that they would try to eclipse his ailments.
"We were just saying," said James, "that you don't get any thinner."
Swithin protruded his pale round eyes with the effort of hearing.
"Thinner? I'm in good case," he said, leaning a little forward, "not one
of your thread-papers like you!"
But, afraid of losing the expansion of his chest, he leaned back again
into a state of immobility, for he prized nothing so highly as a
distinguished appearance.
Aunt Ann turned her old eyes from one to the other. Indulgent and severe
was her look. In turn the three brothers looked at Ann. She was getting
shaky. Wonderful woman! Eighty-six if a day; might live another ten
years, and had never been strong. Swithin and James, the twins, were only
seventy-five, Nicholas a mere baby of seventy or so. All were strong,
and the inference was comforting. Of all forms of property their
respective healths naturally concerned them most.
"I'm very well in myself," proceeded James, "but my nerves are out of
order. The least thing worries me to death. I shall have to go to
Bath."
"Bath!" said Nicholas. "I've tried Harrogate. That's no good. What I
want is sea air. There's nothing like Yarmouth. Now, when I go there I
sleep...."
"My liver's very bad," interrupted Swithin slowly. "Dreadful pain here;"
and he placed his hand on his right side.
"Want of exercise," muttered James, his eyes on the china. He quickly
added: "I get a pain there, too."
Swithin reddened, a resemblance to a turkey-cock coming upon his old
face.
"Exercise!" he said. "I take plenty: I never use the lift at the Club."
"I didn't know," James hurried out. "I know nothing about anybody;
nobody tells me anything...."
Swithin fixed him with a stare:
"What do you do for a pain there?"
James brightened.
"I take a compound...."
"How are you, uncle?"
June stood before him, her resolute small face raised from her little
height to his great height, and her hand outheld.
The brightness faded from James's visage.
"How are you?" he said, brooding over her. "So you're going to Wales
to-morrow to visit your young man's aunts? You'll have a lot of rain
there. This isn't real old Worcester." He tapped the bowl. "Now, that
set I gave your mother when she married was the genuine thing."
June shook hands one by one with her three great-uncles, and turned to
Aunt Ann. A very sweet look had come into the old lady's face, she
kissed the girl's check with trembling fervour.
"Well, my dear," she said, "and so you're going for a whole month!"
The girl passed on, and Aunt Ann looked after her slim little figure.
The old lady's round, steel grey eyes, over which a film like a bird's
was beginning to come, followed her wistfully amongst the bustling crowd,
for people were beginning to say good-bye; and her finger-tips, pressing
and pressing against each other, were busy again with the recharging of
her will against that inevitable ultimate departure of her own.
'Yes,' she thought, 'everybody's been most kind; quite a lot of people
come to congratulate her. She ought to be very happy.' Amongst the
throng of people by the door, the well-dressed throng drawn from the
families of lawyers and doctors, from the Stock Exchange, and all the
innumerable avocations of the upper-middle class--there were only some
twenty percent of Forsytes; but to Aunt Ann they seemed all Forsytes--and
certainly there was not much difference--she saw only her own flesh and
blood. It was her world, this family, and she knew no other, had never
perhaps known any other. All their little secrets, illnesses,
engagements, and marriages, how they were getting on, and whether they
were making money--all this was her property, her delight, her life;
beyond this only a vague, shadowy mist of facts and persons of no real
significance. This it was that she would have to lay down when it came
to her turn to die; this which gave to her that importance, that secret
self-importance, without which none of us can bear to live; and to this
she clung wistfully, with a greed that grew each day! If life were
slipping away from her, this she would retain to the end.
She thought of June's father, young Jolyon, who had run away with that
foreign girl. And what a sad blow to his father and to them all. Such a
promising young fellow! A sad blow, though there had been no public
scandal, most fortunately, Jo's wife seeking for no divorce! A long time
ago! And when June's mother died, six years ago, Jo had married that
woman, and they had two children now, so she had heard. Still, he had
forfeited his right to be there, had cheated her of the complete
fulfilment of her family pride, deprived her of the rightful pleasure of
seeing and kissing him of whom she had been so proud, such a promising
young fellow! The thought rankled with the bitterness of a
long-inflicted injury in her tenacious old heart. A little water stood
in her eyes. With a handkerchief of the finest lawn she wiped them
stealthily.
"Well, Aunt Ann?" said a voice behind.
Soames Forsyte, flat-shouldered, clean-shaven, flat-cheeked,
flat-waisted, yet with something round and secret about his whole
appearance, looked downwards and aslant at Aunt Ann, as though trying to
see through the side of his own nose.
"And what do you think of the engagement?" he asked.
Aunt Ann's eyes rested on him proudly; of all the nephews since young
Jolyon's departure from the family nest, he was now her favourite, for
she recognised in him a sure trustee of the family soul that must so soon
slip beyond her keeping.
"Very nice for the young man," she said; "and he's a good-looking young
fellow; but I doubt if he's quite the right lover for dear June."
Soames touched the edge of a gold-lacquered lustre.
"She'll tame him," he said, stealthily wetting his finger and rubbing it
on the knobby bulbs. "That's genuine old lacquer; you can't get it
nowadays. It'd do well in a sale at Jobson's." He spoke with relish, as
though he felt that he was cheering up his old aunt. It was seldom he
was so confidential. "I wouldn't mind having it myself," he added; "you
can always get your price for old lacquer."
"You're so clever with all those things," said Aunt Ann. "And how is
dear Irene?"
Soames's smile died.
"Pretty well," he said. "Complains she can't sleep; she sleeps a great
deal better than I do," and he looked at his wife, who was talking to
Bosinney by the door.
Aunt Ann sighed.
"Perhaps," she said, "it will be just as well for her not to see so much
of June. She's such a decided character, dear June!"
Soames flushed; his flushes passed rapidly over his flat cheeks and
centered between his eyes, where they remained, the stamp of disturbing
thoughts.
"I don't know what she sees in that little flibbertigibbet," he burst
out, but noticing that they were no longer alone, he turned and again
began examining the lustre.
"They tell me Jolyon's bought another house," said his father's voice
close by; "he must have a lot of money--he must have more money than he
knows what to do with! Montpellier Square, they say; close to Soames!
They never told me, Irene never tells me anything!"
"Capital position, not two minutes from me," said the voice of Swithin,
"and from my rooms I can drive to the Club in eight."
The position of their houses was of vital importance to the Forsytes, nor
was this remarkable, since the whole spirit of their success was embodied
therein.
Their father, of farming stock, had come from Dorsetshire near the
beginning of the century.
'Superior Dosset Forsyte, as he was called by his intimates, had been a
stonemason by trade, and risen to the position of a master-builder.
Towards the end of his life he moved to London, where, building on until
he died, he was buried at Highgate. He left over thirty thousand pounds
between his ten children. Old Jolyon alluded to him, if at all, as 'A
hard, thick sort of man; not much refinement about him.' The second
generation of Forsytes felt indeed that he was not greatly to their
credit. The only aristocratic trait they could find in his character was
a habit of drinking Madeira.
Aunt Hester, an authority on family history, described him thus: "I don't
recollect that he ever did anything; at least, not in my time. He was
er--an owner of houses, my dear. His hair about your Uncle Swithin's
colour; rather a square build. Tall? No--not very tall" (he had been
five feet five, with a mottled face); "a fresh-coloured man. I remember
he used to drink Madeira; but ask your Aunt Ann. What was his father?
He--er--had to do with the land down in Dorsetshire, by the sea."
James once went down to see for himself what sort of place this was that
they had come from. He found two old farms, with a cart track rutted
into the pink earth, leading down to a mill by the beach; a little grey
church with a buttressed outer wall, and a smaller and greyer chapel.
The stream which worked the mill came bubbling down in a dozen rivulets,
and pigs were hunting round that estuary. A haze hovered over the
prospect. Down this hollow, with their feet deep in the mud and their
faces towards the sea, it appeared that the primeval Forsytes had been
content to walk Sunday after Sunday for hundreds of years.
Whether or no James had cherished hopes of an inheritance, or of
something rather distinguished to be found down there, he came back to
town in a poor way, and went about with a pathetic attempt at making the
best of a bad job.
"There's very little to be had out of that," he said; "regular country
little place, old as the hills...."
Its age was felt to be a comfort. Old Jolyon, in whom a desperate
honesty welled up at times, would allude to his ancestors as: "Yeomen--I
suppose very small beer." Yet he would repeat the word 'yeomen' as if it
afforded him consolation.
They had all done so well for themselves, these Forsytes, that they were
all what is called 'of a certain position.' They had shares in all sorts
of things, not as yet--with the exception of Timothy--in consols, for
they had no dread in life like that of 3 per cent. for their money. They
collected pictures, too, and were supporters of such charitable
institutions as might be beneficial to their sick domestics. From their
father, the builder, they inherited a talent for bricks and mortar.
Originally, perhaps, members of some primitive sect, they were now in the
natural course of things members of the Church of England, and caused
their wives and children to attend with some regularity the more
fashionable churches of the Metropolis. To have doubted their
Christianity would have caused them both pain and surprise. Some of them
paid for pews, thus expressing in the most practical form their sympathy
with the teachings of Christ.
Their residences, placed at stated intervals round the park, watched like
sentinels, lest the fair heart of this London, where their desires were
fixed, should slip from their clutches, and leave them lower in their own
estimations.
There was old Jolyon in Stanhope Place; the Jameses in Park Lane; Swithin
in the lonely glory of orange and blue chambers in Hyde Park Mansions--he
had never married, not he--the Soamses in their nest off Knightsbridge;
the Rogers in Prince's Gardens (Roger was that remarkable Forsyte who had
conceived and carried out the notion of bringing up his four sons to a
new profession. "Collect house property, nothing like it," he would say;
"I never did anything else").
The Haymans again--Mrs. Hayman was the one married Forsyte sister--in a
house high up on Campden Hill, shaped like a giraffe, and so tall that it
gave the observer a crick in the neck; the Nicholases in Ladbroke Grove,
a spacious abode and a great bargain; and last, but not least, Timothy's
on the Bayswater Road, where Ann, and Juley, and Hester, lived under his
protection.
But all this time James was musing, and now he inquired of his host and
brother what he had given for that house in Montpellier Square. He
himself had had his eye on a house there for the last two years, but they
wanted such a price.
Old Jolyon recounted the details of his purchase.
"Twenty-two years to run?" repeated James; "The very house I was
after--you've given too much for it!"
Old Jolyon frowned.
"It's not that I want it," said James hastily; it wouldn't suit my
purpose at that price. Soames knows the house, well--he'll tell you it's
too dear--his opinion's worth having."
"I don't," said old Jolyon, "care a fig for his opinion."
"Well," murmured James, "you will have your own way--it's a good opinion.
Good-bye! We're going to drive down to Hurlingham. They tell me June's
going to Wales. You'll be lonely tomorrow. What'll you do with yourself?
You'd better come and dine with us!"
Old Jolyon refused. He went down to the front door and saw them into
their barouche, and twinkled at them, having already forgotten his
spleen--Mrs. James facing the horses, tall and majestic with auburn hair;
on her left, Irene--the two husbands, father and son, sitting forward, as
though they expected something, opposite their wives. Bobbing and
bounding upon the spring cushions, silent, swaying to each motion of
their chariot, old Jolyon watched them drive away under the sunlight.
During the drive the silence was broken by Mrs. James.
"Did you ever see such a collection of rumty-too people?"
Soames, glancing at her beneath his eyelids, nodded, and he saw Irene
steal at him one of her unfathomable looks. It is likely enough that
each branch of the Forsyte family made that remark as they drove away
from old Jolyon's 'At Home!'
Amongst the last of the departing guests the fourth and fifth brothers,
Nicholas and Roger, walked away together, directing their steps alongside
Hyde Park towards the Praed Street Station of the Underground. Like all
other Forsytes of a certain age they kept carriages of their own, and
never took cabs if by any means they could avoid it.
The day was bright, the trees of the Park in the full beauty of mid-June
foliage; the brothers did not seem to notice phenomena, which
contributed, nevertheless, to the jauntiness of promenade and
conversation.
"Yes," said Roger, "she's a good-lookin' woman, that wife of Soames's.
I'm told they don't get on."
This brother had a high forehead, and the freshest colour of any of the
Forsytes; his light grey eyes measured the street frontage of the houses
by the way, and now and then he would level his, umbrella and take a
'lunar,' as he expressed it, of the varying heights.
"She'd no money," replied Nicholas.
He himself had married a good deal of money, of which, it being then the
golden age before the Married Women's Property Act, he had mercifully
been enabled to make a successful use.
"What was her father?"
"Heron was his name, a Professor, so they tell me."
Roger shook his head.
"There's no money in that," he said.
"They say her mother's father was cement."
Roger's face brightened.
"But he went bankrupt," went on Nicholas.
"Ah!" exclaimed Roger, "Soames will have trouble with her; you mark my
words, he'll have trouble--she's got a foreign look."
Nicholas licked his lips.
"She's a pretty woman," and he waved aside a crossing-sweeper.
"How did he get hold of her?" asked Roger presently. "She must cost him
a pretty penny in dress!"
"Ann tells me," replied Nicholas, "he was half-cracked about her. She
refused him five times. James, he's nervous about it, I can see."
"Ah!" said Roger again; "I'm sorry for James; he had trouble with
Dartie." His pleasant colour was heightened by exercise, he swung his
umbrella to the level of his eye more frequently than ever. Nicholas's
face also wore a pleasant look.
"Too pale for me," he said, "but her figures capital!"
Roger made no reply.
"I call her distinguished-looking," he said at last--it was the highest
praise in the Forsyte vocabulary. "That young Bosinney will never do any
good for himself. They say at Burkitt's he's one of these artistic
chaps--got an idea of improving English architecture; there's no money in
that! I should like to hear what Timothy would say to it."
They entered the station.
"What class are you going? I go second."
"No second for me," said Nicholas;--"you never know what you may catch."
He took a first-class ticket to Notting Hill Gate; Roger a second to
South Kensington. The train coming in a minute later, the two brothers
parted and entered their respective compartments. Each felt aggrieved
that the other had not modified his habits to secure his society a little
longer; but as Roger voiced it in his thoughts:
'Always a stubborn beggar, Nick!'
And as Nicholas expressed it to himself:
'Cantankerous chap Roger--always was!'
There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes. In that great
London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what time had they
to be sentimental?
CHAPTER II
OLD JOLYON GOES TO THE OPERA
At five o'clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar between
his lips, and on a table by his side a cup of tea. He was tired, and
before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep. A fly settled on his
hair, his breathing sounded heavy in the drowsy silence, his upper lip
under the white moustache puffed in and out. From between the fingers of
his veined and wrinkled hand the cigar, dropping on the empty hearth,
burned itself out.
The gloomy little study, with windows of stained glass to exclude the
view, was full of dark green velvet and heavily-carved mahogany--a suite
of which old Jolyon was wont to say: 'Shouldn't wonder if it made a big
price some day!'
It was pleasant to think that in the after life he could get more for
things than he had given.
In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a
Forsyte, the Rembrandtesque effect of his great head, with its white
hair, against the cushion of his high-backed seat, was spoiled by the
moustache, which imparted a somewhat military look to his face. An old
clock that had been with him since before his marriage forty years ago
kept with its ticking a jealous record of the seconds slipping away
forever from its old master.
He had never cared for this room, hardly going into it from one year's
end to another, except to take cigars from the Japanese cabinet in the
corner, and the room now had its revenge.
His temples, curving like thatches over the hollows beneath, his
cheek-bones and chin, all were sharpened in his sleep, and there had come
upon his face the confession that he was an old man.
He woke. June had gone! James had said he would be lonely. James had
always been a poor thing. He recollected with satisfaction that he had
bought that house over James's head.
Serve him right for sticking at the price; the only thing the fellow
thought of was money. Had he given too much, though? It wanted a lot of
doing to--He dared say he would want all his money before he had done
with this affair of June's. He ought never to have allowed the
engagement. She had met this Bosinney at the house of Baynes, Baynes and
Bildeboy, the architects. He believed that Baynes, whom he knew--a bit
of an old woman--was the young man's uncle by marriage. After that she'd
been always running after him; and when she took a thing into her head
there was no stopping her. She was continually taking up with 'lame
ducks' of one sort or another. This fellow had no money, but she must
needs become engaged to him--a harumscarum, unpractical chap, who would
get himself into no end of difficulties.
She had come to him one day in her slap-dash way and told him; and, as if
it were any consolation, she had added:
"He's so splendid; he's often lived on cocoa for a week!"
"And he wants you to live on cocoa too?"
"Oh no; he is getting into the swim now."
Old Jolyon had taken his cigar from under his white moustaches, stained
by coffee at the edge, and looked at her, that little slip of a thing who
had got such a grip of his heart. He knew more about 'swims' than his
granddaughter. But she, having clasped her hands on his knees, rubbed
her chin against him, making a sound like a purring cat. And, knocking
the ash off his cigar, he had exploded in nervous desperation:
"You're all alike: you won't be satisfied till you've got what you want.
If you must come to grief, you must; I wash my hands of it."
So, he had washed his hands of it, making the condition that they should
not marry until Bosinney had at least four hundred a year.
"I shan't be able to give you very much," he had said, a formula to which
June was not unaccustomed. "Perhaps this What's-his-name will provide
the cocoa."
He had hardly seen anything of her since it began. A bad business! He
had no notion of giving her a lot of money to enable a fellow he knew
nothing about to live on in idleness. He had seen that sort of thing
before; no good ever came of it. Worst of all, he had no hope of shaking
her resolution; she was as obstinate as a mule, always had been from a
child. He didn't see where it was to end. They must cut their coat
according to their cloth. He would not give way till he saw young
Bosinney with an income of his own. That June would have trouble with
the fellow was as plain as a pikestaff; he had no more idea of money than
a cow. As to this rushing down to Wales to visit the young man's aunts,
he fully expected they were old cats.
And, motionless, old Jolyon stared at the wall; but for his open eyes, he
might have been asleep.... The idea of supposing that young cub Soames
could give him advice! He had always been a cub, with his nose in the
air! He would be setting up as a man of property next, with a place in
the country! A man of property! H'mph! Like his father, he was always
nosing out bargains, a cold-blooded young beggar!
He rose, and, going to the cabinet, began methodically stocking his
cigar-case from a bundle fresh in. They were not bad at the price, but
you couldn't get a good cigar, nowadays, nothing to hold a candle to
those old Superfinos of Hanson and Bridger's. That was a cigar!
The thought, like some stealing perfume, carried him back to those
wonderful nights at Richmond when after dinner he sat smoking on the
terrace of the Crown and Sceptre with Nicholas Treffry and Traquair and
Jack Herring and Anthony Thornworthy. How good his cigars were then!
Poor old Nick!--dead, and Jack Herring--dead, and Traquair--dead of that
wife of his, and Thornworthy--awfully shaky (no wonder, with his
appetite).
Of all the company of those days he himself alone seemed left, except
Swithin, of course, and he so outrageously big there was no doing
anything with him.
Difficult to believe it was so long ago; he felt young still! Of all his
thoughts, as he stood there counting his cigars, this was the most
poignant, the most bitter. With his white head and his loneliness he had
remained young and green at heart. And those Sunday afternoons on
Hampstead Heath, when young Jolyon and he went for a stretch along the
Spaniard's Road to Highgate, to Child's Hill, and back over the Heath
again to dine at Jack Straw's Castle--how delicious his cigars were then!
And such weather! There was no weather now.
When June was a toddler of five, and every other Sunday he took her to
the Zoo, away from the society of those two good women, her mother and
her grandmother, and at the top of the bear den baited his umbrella with
buns for her favourite bears, how sweet his cigars were then!
Cigars! He had not even succeeded in out-living his palate--the famous
palate that in the fifties men swore by, and speaking of him, said:
"Forsyte's the best palate in London!" The palate that in a sense had
made his fortune--the fortune of the celebrated tea men, Forsyte and
Treffry, whose tea, like no other man's tea, had a romantic aroma, the
charm of a quite singular genuineness. About the house of Forsyte and
Treffry in the City had clung an air of enterprise and mystery, of
special dealings in special ships, at special ports, with special
Orientals.
He had worked at that business! Men did work in those days! these young
pups hardly knew the meaning of the word. He had gone into every detail,
known everything that went on, sometimes sat up all night over it. And
he had always chosen his agents himself, prided himself on it. His eye
for men, he used to say, had been the secret of his success, and the
exercise of this masterful power of selection had been the only part of
it all that he had really liked. Not a career for a man of his ability.
Even now, when the business had been turned into a Limited Liability
Company, and was declining (he had got out of his shares long ago), he
felt a sharp chagrin in thinking of that time. How much better he might
have done! He would have succeeded splendidly at the Bar! He had even
thought of standing for Parliament. How often had not Nicholas Treffry
said to him:
"You could do anything, Jo, if you weren't so d-damned careful of
yourself!" Dear old Nick! Such a good fellow, but a racketty chap! The
notorious Treffry! He had never taken any care of himself. So he was
dead. Old Jolyon counted his cigars with a steady hand, and it came into
his mind to wonder if perhaps he had been too careful of himself.
He put the cigar-case in the breast of his coat, buttoned it in, and
walked up the long flights to his bedroom, leaning on one foot and the
other, and helping himself by the bannister. The house was too big.
After June was married, if she ever did marry this fellow, as he supposed
she would, he would let it and go into rooms. What was the use of
keeping half a dozen servants eating their heads off?
The butler came to the ring of his bell--a large man with a beard, a soft
tread, and a peculiar capacity for silence. Old Jolyon told him to put
his dress clothes out; he was going to dine at the Club.
How long had the carriage been back from taking Miss June to the station?
Since two? Then let him come round at half-past six!
The Club which old Jolyon entered on the stroke of seven was one of those
political institutions of the upper middle class which have seen better
days. In spite of being talked about, perhaps in consequence of being
talked about, it betrayed a disappointing vitality. People had grown
tired of saying that the 'Disunion' was on its last legs. Old Jolyon
would say it, too, yet disregarded the fact in a manner truly irritating
to well-constituted Clubmen.
"Why do you keep your name on?" Swithin often asked him with profound
vexation. "Why don't you join the 'Polyglot'? You can't get a wine like
our Heidsieck under twenty shillin' a bottle anywhere in London;" and,
dropping his voice, he added: "There's only five hundred dozen left. I
drink it every night of my life."
"I'll think of it," old Jolyon would answer; but when he did think of it
there was always the question of fifty guineas entrance fee, and it would
take him four or five years to get in. He continued to think of it.
He was too old to be a Liberal, had long ceased to believe in the
political doctrines of his Club, had even been known to allude to them as
'wretched stuff,' and it afforded him pleasure to continue a member in
the teeth of principles so opposed to his own. He had always had a
contempt for the place, having joined it many years ago when they refused
to have him at the 'Hotch Potch' owing to his being 'in trade.' As if he
were not as good as any of them! He naturally despised the Club that did
take him. The members were a poor lot, many of them in the City
--stockbrokers, solicitors, auctioneers--what not! Like most men of
strong character but not too much originality, old Jolyon set small store
by the class to which he belonged. Faithfully he followed their customs,
social and otherwise, and secretly he thought them 'a common lot.'
Years and philosophy, of which he had his share, had dimmed the
recollection of his defeat at the 'Hotch Potch'; and now in his thoughts
it was enshrined as the Queen of Clubs. He would have been a member all
these years himself, but, owing to the slipshod way his proposer, Jack
Herring, had gone to work, they had not known what they were doing in
keeping him out. Why! they had taken his son Jo at once, and he believed
the boy was still a member; he had received a letter dated from there
eight years ago.
He had not been near the 'Disunion' for months, and the house had
undergone the piebald decoration which people bestow on old houses and
old ships when anxious to sell them.
'Beastly colour, the smoking-room!' he thought. 'The dining-room is
good!'
Its gloomy chocolate, picked out with light green, took his fancy.
He ordered dinner, and sat down in the very corner, at the very table
perhaps! (things did not progress much at the 'Disunion,' a Club of
almost Radical principles) at which he and young Jolyon used to sit
twenty-five years ago, when he was taking the latter to Drury Lane,
during his holidays.
The boy had loved the theatre, and old Jolyon recalled how he used to sit
opposite, concealing his excitement under a careful but transparent
nonchalance.
He ordered himself, too, the very dinner the boy had always chosen-soup,
whitebait, cutlets, and a tart. Ah! if he were only opposite now!
The two had not met for fourteen years. And not for the first time
during those fourteen years old Jolyon wondered whether he had been a
little to blame in the matter of his son. An unfortunate love-affair
with that precious flirt Danae Thornworthy (now Danae Pellew), Anthony
Thornworthy's daughter, had thrown him on the rebound into the arms of
June's mother. He ought perhaps to have put a spoke in the wheel of
their marriage; they were too young; but after that experience of Jo's
susceptibility he had been only too anxious to see him married. And in
four years the crash had come! To have approved his son's conduct in
that crash was, of course, impossible; reason and training--that
combination of potent factors which stood for his principles--told him of
this impossibility, and his heart cried out. The grim remorselessness of
that business had no pity for hearts. There was June, the atom with
flaming hair, who had climbed all over him, twined and twisted herself
about him--about his heart that was made to be the plaything and beloved
resort of tiny, helpless things. With characteristic insight he saw he
must part with one or with the other; no half-measures could serve in
such a situation. In that lay its tragedy. And the tiny, helpless thing
prevailed. He would not run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and
so to his son he said good-bye.
That good-bye had lasted until now.
He had proposed to continue a reduced allowance to young Jolyon, but this
had been refused, and perhaps that refusal had hurt him more than
anything, for with it had gone the last outlet of his penned-in
affection; and there had come such tangible and solid proof of rupture as
only a transaction in property, a bestowal or refusal of such, could
supply.
His dinner tasted flat. His pint of champagne was dry and bitter stuff,
not like the Veuve Clicquots of old days.
Over his cup of coffee, he bethought him that he would go to the opera.
In the Times, therefore--he had a distrust of other papers--he read the
announcement for the evening. It was 'Fidelio.'
Mercifully not one of those new-fangled German pantomimes by that fellow
Wagner.
Putting on his ancient opera hat, which, with its brim flattened by use,
and huge capacity, looked like an emblem of greater days, and, pulling
out an old pair of very thin lavender kid gloves smelling strongly of
Russia leather, from habitual proximity to the cigar-case in the pocket
of his overcoat, he stepped into a hansom.
The cab rattled gaily along the streets, and old Jolyon was struck by
their unwonted animation.
'The hotels must be doing a tremendous business,' he thought. A few
years ago there had been none of these big hotels. He made a
satisfactory reflection on some property he had in the neighbourhood. It
must be going up in value by leaps and bounds! What traffic!
But from that he began indulging in one of those strange impersonal
speculations, so uncharacteristic of a Forsyte, wherein lay, in part, the
secret of his supremacy amongst them. What atoms men were, and what a lot
of them! And what would become of them all?
He stumbled as he got out of the cab, gave the man his exact fare, walked
up to the ticket office to take his stall, and stood there with his purse
in his hand--he always carried his money in a purse, never having
approved of that habit of carrying it loosely in the pockets, as so many
young men did nowadays. The official leaned out, like an old dog from a
kennel.
"Why," he said in a surprised voice, "it's Mr. Jolyon Forsyte! So it is!
Haven't seen you, sir, for years. Dear me! Times aren't what they were.
Why! you and your brother, and that auctioneer--Mr. Traquair, and Mr.
Nicholas Treffry--you used to have six or seven stalls here regular every
season. And how are you, sir? We don't get younger!"
The colour in old Jolyon's eyes deepened; he paid his guinea. They had
not forgotten him. He marched in, to the sounds of the overture, like an
old war-horse to battle.
Folding his opera hat, he sat down, drew out his lavender gloves in the
old way, and took up his glasses for a long look round the house.
Dropping them at last on his folded hat, he fixed his eyes on the
curtain. More poignantly than ever he felt that it was all over and done
with him. Where were all the women, the pretty women, the house used to
be so full of? Where was that old feeling in the heart as he waited for
one of those great singers? Where that sensation of the intoxication of
life and of his own power to enjoy it all?
The greatest opera-goer of his day! There was no opera now! That fellow
Wagner had ruined everything; no melody left, nor any voices to sing it.
Ah! the wonderful singers! Gone! He sat watching the old scenes acted,
a numb feeling at his heart.
From the curl of silver over his ear to the pose of his foot in its
elastic-sided patent boot, there was nothing clumsy or weak about old
Jolyon. He was as upright--very nearly--as in those old times when he
came every night; his sight was as good--almost as good. But what a
feeling of weariness and disillusion!
He had been in the habit all his life of enjoying things, even imperfect
things--and there had been many imperfect things--he had enjoyed them all
with moderation, so as to keep himself young. But now he was deserted by
his power of enjoyment, by his philosophy, and left with this dreadful
feeling that it was all done with. Not even the Prisoners' Chorus, nor
Florian's Song, had the power to dispel the gloom of his loneliness.
If Jo were only with him! The boy must be forty by now. He had wasted
fourteen years out of the life of his only son. And Jo was no longer a
social pariah. He was married. Old Jolyon had been unable to refrain
from marking his appreciation of the action by enclosing his son a cheque
for L500. The cheque had been returned in a letter from the 'Hotch
Potch,' couched in these words.
'MY DEAREST FATHER,
'Your generous gift was welcome as a sign that you might think worse of
me. I return it, but should you think fit to invest it for the benefit
of the little chap (we call him Jolly), who bears our Christian and, by
courtesy, our surname, I shall be very glad.
'I hope with all my heart that your health is as good as ever.
'Your loving son,
'Jo.'
The letter was like the boy. He had always been an amiable chap. Old
Jolyon had sent this reply:
'MY DEAR JO,
'The sum (L500) stands in my books for the benefit of your boy, under the
name of Jolyon Forsyte, and will be duly-credited with interest at 5 per
cent. I hope that you are doing well. My health remains good at
present.
'With love, I am, 'Your affectionate Father,
'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
And every year on the 1st of January he had added a hundred and the
interest. The sum was mounting up--next New Year's Day it would be
fifteen hundred and odd pounds! And it is difficult to say how much
satisfaction he had got out of that yearly transaction. But the
correspondence had ended.
In spite of his love for his son, in spite of an instinct, partly
constitutional, partly the result, as in thousands of his class, of the
continual handling and watching of affairs, prompting him to judge
conduct by results rather than by principle, there was at the bottom of
his heart a sort of uneasiness. His son ought, under the circumstances,
to have gone to the dogs; that law was laid down in all the novels,
sermons, and plays he had ever read, heard, or witnessed.
After receiving the cheque back there seemed to him to be something wrong
somewhere. Why had his son not gone to the dogs? But, then, who could
tell?
He had heard, of course--in fact, he had made it his business to find
out--that Jo lived in St. John's Wood, that he had a little house in
Wistaria Avenue with a garden, and took his wife about with him into
society--a queer sort of society, no doubt--and that they had two
children--the little chap they called Jolly (considering the
circumstances the name struck him as cynical, and old Jolyon both feared
and disliked cynicism), and a girl called Holly, born since the marriage.
Who could tell what his son's circumstances really were? He had
capitalized the income he had inherited from his mother's father
and joined Lloyd's as an underwriter; he painted pictures,
too--water-colours. Old Jolyon knew this, for he had surreptitiously
bought them from time to time, after chancing to see his son's name
signed at the bottom of a representation of the river Thames in a
dealer's window. He thought them bad, and did not hang them because of
the signature; he kept them locked up in a drawer.
In the great opera-house a terrible yearning came on him to see his son.
He remembered the days when he had been wont to slide him, in a brown
holland suit, to and fro under the arch of his legs; the times when he
ran beside the boy's pony, teaching him to ride; the day he first took
him to school. He had been a loving, lovable little chap! After he went
to Eton he had acquired, perhaps, a little too much of that desirable
manner which old Jolyon knew was only to be obtained at such places and
at great expense; but he had always been companionable. Always a
companion, even after Cambridge--a little far off, perhaps, owing to the
advantages he had received. Old Jolyon's feeling towards our public
schools and 'Varsities never wavered, and he retained touchingly his
attitude of admiration and mistrust towards a system appropriate to the
highest in the land, of which he had not himself been privileged to
partake.... Now that June had gone and left, or as good as left him, it
would have been a comfort to see his son again. Guilty of this treason
to his family, his principles, his class, old Jolyon fixed his eyes on
the singer. A poor thing--a wretched poor thing! And the Florian a
perfect stick!
It was over. They were easily pleased nowadays!
In the crowded street he snapped up a cab under the very nose of a stout
and much younger gentleman, who had already assumed it to be his own.
His route lay through Pall Mall, and at the corner, instead of going
through the Green Park, the cabman turned to drive up St. James's
Street. Old Jolyon put his hand through the trap (he could not bear
being taken out of his way); in turning, however, he found himself
opposite the 'Hotch Potch,' and the yearning that had been secretly with
him the whole evening prevailed. He called to the driver to stop. He
would go in and ask if Jo still belonged there.
He went in. The hall looked exactly as it did when he used to dine there
with Jack Herring, and they had the best cook in London; and he looked
round with the shrewd, straight glance that had caused him all his life
to be better served than most men.
"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte still a member here?"
"Yes, sir; in the Club now, sir. What name?"
Old Jolyon was taken aback.
"His father," he said.
And having spoken, he took his stand, back to the fireplace.
Young Jolyon, on the point of leaving the Club, had put on his hat, and
was in the act of crossing the hall, as the porter met him. He was no
longer young, with hair going grey, and face--a narrower replica of his
father's, with the same large drooping moustache--decidedly worn. He
turned pale. This meeting was terrible after all those years, for
nothing in the world was so terrible as a scene. They met and crossed
hands without a word. Then, with a quaver in his voice, the father said:
"How are you, my boy?"
The son answered:
"How are you, Dad?"
Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove.
"If you're going my way," he said, "I can give you a lift."
And as though in the habit of taking each other home every night they
went out and stepped into the cab.
To old Jolyon it seemed that his son had grown. 'More of a man
altogether,' was his comment. Over the natural amiability of that son's
face had come a rather sardonic mask, as though he had found in the
circumstances of his life the necessity for armour. The features were
certainly those of a Forsyte, but the expression was more the
introspective look of a student or philosopher. He had no doubt been
obliged to look into himself a good deal in the course of those fifteen
years.
To young Jolyon the first sight of his father was undoubtedly a shock--he
looked so worn and old. But in the cab he seemed hardly to have changed,
still having the calm look so well remembered, still being upright and
keen-eyed.
"You look well, Dad."
"Middling," old Jolyon answered.
He was the prey of an anxiety that he found he must put into words.
Having got his son back like this, he felt he must know what was his
financial position.
"Jo," he said, "I should like to hear what sort of water you're in. I
suppose you're in debt?"
He put it this way that his son might find it easier to confess.
Young Jolyon answered in his ironical voice:
"No! I'm not in debt!"
Old Jolyon saw that he was angry, and touched his hand. He had run a
risk. It was worth it, however, and Jo had never been sulky with him.
They drove on, without speaking again, to Stanhope Gate. Old Jolyon
invited him in, but young Jolyon shook his head.
"June's not here," said his father hastily: "went of to-day on a visit.
I suppose you know that she's engaged to be married?"
"Already?" murmured young Jolyon'.
Old Jolyon stepped out, and, in paying the cab fare, for the first time
in his life gave the driver a sovereign in mistake for a shilling.
Placing the coin in his mouth, the cabman whipped his horse secretly on
the underneath and hurried away.
Old Jolyon turned the key softly in the lock, pushed open the door, and
beckoned. His son saw him gravely hanging up his coat, with an
expression on his face like that of a boy who intends to steal cherries.
The door of the dining-room was open, the gas turned low; a spirit-urn
hissed on a tea-tray, and close to it a cynical looking cat had fallen
asleep on the dining-table. Old Jolyon 'shoo'd' her off at once. The
incident was a relief to his feelings; he rattled his opera hat behind
the animal.
"She's got fleas," he said, following her out of the room. Through the
door in the hall leading to the basement he called "Hssst!" several
times, as though assisting the cat's departure, till by some strange
coincidence the butler appeared below.
"You can go to bed, Parfitt," said old Jolyon. "I will lock up and put
out."
When he again entered the dining-room the cat unfortunately preceded him,
with her tail in the air, proclaiming that she had seen through this
manouevre for suppressing the butler from the first....
A fatality had dogged old Jolyon's domestic stratagems all his life.
Young Jolyon could not help smiling. He was very well versed in irony,
and everything that evening seemed to him ironical. The episode of the
cat; the announcement of his own daughter's engagement. So he had no
more part or parcel in her than he had in the Puss! And the poetical
justice of this appealed to him.
"What is June like now?" he asked.
"She's a little thing," returned old Jolyon; they say she's like me, but
that's their folly. She's more like your mother--the same eyes and
hair."
"Ah! and she is pretty?"
Old Jolyon was too much of a Forsyte to praise anything freely;
especially anything for which he had a genuine admiration.
"Not bad looking--a regular Forsyte chin. It'll be lonely here when
she's gone, Jo."
The look on his face again gave young Jolyon the shock he had felt on
first seeing his father.
"What will you do with yourself, Dad? I suppose she's wrapped up in
him?"
"Do with myself?" repeated old Jolyon with an angry break in his voice.
"It'll be miserable work living here alone. I don't know how it's to
end. I wish to goodness...." He checked himself, and added: "The
question is, what had I better do with this house?"
Young Jolyon looked round the room. It was peculiarly vast and dreary,
decorated with the enormous pictures of still life that he remembered as
a boy--sleeping dogs with their noses resting on bunches of carrots,
together with onions and grapes lying side by side in mild surprise. The
house was a white elephant, but he could not conceive of his father
living in a smaller place; and all the more did it all seem ironical.
In his great chair with the book-rest sat old Jolyon, the figurehead of
his family and class and creed, with his white head and dome-like
forehead, the representative of moderation, and order, and love of
property. As lonely an old man as there was in London.
There he sat in the gloomy comfort of the room, a puppet in the power of
great forces that cared nothing for family or class or creed, but moved,
machine-like, with dread processes to inscrutable ends. This was how it
struck young Jolyon, who had the impersonal eye.
The poor old Dad! So this was the end, the purpose to which he had lived
with such magnificent moderation! To be lonely, and grow older and
older, yearning for a soul to speak to!
In his turn old Jolyon looked back at his son. He wanted to talk about
many things that he had been unable to talk about all these years. It
had been impossible to seriously confide in June his conviction that
property in the Soho quarter would go up in value; his uneasiness about
that tremendous silence of Pippin, the superintendent of the New Colliery
Company, of which he had so long been chairman; his disgust at the steady
fall in American Golgothas, or even to discuss how, by some sort of
settlement, he could best avoid the payment of those death duties which
would follow his decease. Under the influence, however, of a cup of tea,
which he seemed to stir indefinitely, he began to speak at last. A new
vista of life was thus opened up, a promised land of talk, where he could
find a harbour against the waves of anticipation and regret; where he
could soothe his soul with the opium of devising how to round off his
property and make eternal the only part of him that was to remain alive.
Young Jolyon was a good listener; it was his great quality. He kept his
eyes fixed on his father's face, putting a question now and then.
The clock struck one before old Jolyon had finished, and at the sound of
its striking his principles came back. He took out his watch with a look
of surprise:
"I must go to bed, Jo," he said.
Young Jolyon rose and held out his hand to help his father up. The old
face looked worn and hollow again; the eyes were steadily averted.
"Good-bye, my boy; take care of yourself."
A moment passed, and young Jolyon, turning on his, heel, marched out at
the door. He could hardly see; his smile quavered. Never in all the
fifteen years since he had first found out that life was no simple
business, had he found it so singularly complicated.
CHAPTER III
DINNER AT SWITHIN'S
In Swithin's orange and light-blue dining-room, facing the Park, the
round table was laid for twelve.
A cut-glass chandelier filled with lighted candles hung like a giant
stalactite above its centre, radiating over large gilt-framed mirrors,
slabs of marble on the tops of side-tables, and heavy gold chairs with
crewel worked seats. Everything betokened that love of beauty so deeply
implanted in each family which has had its own way to make into Society,
out of the more vulgar heart of Nature. Swithin had indeed an impatience
of simplicity, a love of ormolu, which had always stamped him amongst his
associates as a man of great, if somewhat luxurious taste; and out of the
knowledge that no one could possibly enter his rooms without perceiving
him to be a man of wealth, he had derived a solid and prolonged happiness
such as perhaps no other circumstance in life had afforded him.
Since his retirement from land agency, a profession deplorable in his
estimation, especially as to its auctioneering department, he had
abandoned himself to naturally aristocratic tastes.
The perfect luxury of his latter days had embedded him like a fly in
sugar; and his mind, where very little took place from morning till
night, was the junction of two curiously opposite emotions, a lingering
and sturdy satisfaction that he had made his own way and his own fortune,
and a sense that a man of his distinction should never have been allowed
to soil his mind with work.
He stood at the sideboard in a white waistcoat with large gold and onyx
buttons, watching his valet screw the necks of three champagne bottles
deeper into ice-pails. Between the points of his stand-up collar,
which--though it hurt him to move--he would on no account have had
altered, the pale flesh of his under chin remained immovable. His eyes
roved from bottle to bottle. He was debating, and he argued like this:
Jolyon drinks a glass, perhaps two, he's so careful of himself. James,
he can't take his wine nowadays. Nicholas--Fanny and he would swill
water he shouldn't wonder! Soames didn't count; these young nephews
--Soames was thirty-one--couldn't drink! But Bosinney?
Encountering in the name of this stranger something outside the range of
his philosophy, Swithin paused. A misgiving arose within him! It was
impossible to tell! June was only a girl, in love too! Emily (Mrs.
James) liked a good glass of champagne. It was too dry for Juley, poor
old soul, she had no palate. As to Hatty Chessman! The thought of this
old friend caused a cloud of thought to obscure the perfect glassiness of
his eyes: He shouldn't wonder if she drank half a bottle!
But in thinking of his remaining guest, an expression like that of a cat
who is just going to purr stole over his old face: Mrs. Soames! She
mightn't take much, but she would appreciate what she drank; it was a
pleasure to give her good wine! A pretty woman--and sympathetic to him!
The thought of her was like champagne itself! A pleasure to give a good
wine to a young woman who looked so well, who knew how to dress, with
charming manners, quite distinguished--a pleasure to entertain her.
Between the points of his collar he gave his head the first small,
painful oscillation of the evening.
"Adolf!" he said. "Put in another bottle."
He himself might drink a good deal, for, thanks to that prescription of
Blight's, he found himself extremely well, and he had been careful to
take no lunch. He had not felt so well for weeks. Puffing out his lower
lip, he gave his last instructions:
"Adolf, the least touch of the West India when you come to the ham."
Passing into the anteroom, he sat down on the edge of a chair, with his
knees apart; and his tall, bulky form was wrapped at once in an
expectant, strange, primeval immobility. He was ready to rise at a
moment's notice. He had not given a dinner-party for months. This
dinner in honour of June's engagement had seemed a bore at first (among
Forsytes the custom of solemnizing engagements by feasts was religiously
observed), but the labours of sending invitations and ordering the repast
over, he felt pleasantly stimulated.
And thus sitting, a watch in his hand, fat, and smooth, and golden, like
a flattened globe of butter, he thought of nothing.
A long man, with side whiskers, who had once been in Swithin's service,
but was now a greengrocer, entered and proclaimed:
"Mrs. Chessman, Mrs. Septimus Small!"
Two ladies advanced. The one in front, habited entirely in red, had
large, settled patches of the same colour in her cheeks, and a hard,
dashing eye. She walked at Swithin, holding out a hand cased in a long,
primrose-coloured glove:
"Well! Swithin," she said, "I haven't seen you for ages. How are you?
Why, my dear boy, how stout you're getting!"
The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betrayed emotion. A dumb and grumbling
anger swelled his bosom. It was vulgar to be stout, to talk of being
stout; he had a chest, nothing more. Turning to his sister, he grasped
her hand, and said in a tone of command:
"Well, Juley."
Mrs. Septimus Small was the tallest of the four sisters; her good, round
old face had gone a little sour; an innumerable pout clung all over it,
as if it had been encased in an iron wire mask up to that evening, which,
being suddenly removed, left little rolls of mutinous flesh all over her
countenance. Even her eyes were pouting. It was thus that she recorded
her permanent resentment at the loss of Septimus Small.
She had quite a reputation for saying the wrong thing, and, tenacious
like all her breed, she would hold to it when she had said it, and add to
it another wrong thing, and so on. With the decease of her husband the
family tenacity, the family matter-of-factness, had gone sterile within
her. A great talker, when allowed, she would converse without the
faintest animation for hours together, relating, with epic monotony, the
innumerable occasions on which Fortune had misused her; nor did she ever
perceive that her hearers sympathized with Fortune, for her heart was
kind.
Having sat, poor soul, long by the bedside of Small (a man of poor
constitution), she had acquired, the habit, and there were countless
subsequent occasions when she had sat immense periods of time to amuse
sick people, children, and other helpless persons, and she could never
divest herself of the feeling that the world was the most ungrateful
place anybody could live in. Sunday after Sunday she sat at the feet of
that extremely witty preacher, the Rev. Thomas Scoles, who exercised a
great influence over her; but she succeeded in convincing everybody that
even this was a misfortune. She had passed into a proverb in the family,
and when anybody was observed to be peculiarly distressing, he was known
as a regular 'Juley.' The habit of her mind would have killed anybody but
a Forsyte at forty; but she was seventy-two, and had never looked better.
And one felt that there were capacities for enjoyment about her which
might yet come out. She owned three canaries, the cat Tommy, and half a
parrot--in common with her sister Hester;--and these poor creatures (kept
carefully out of Timothy's way--he was nervous about animals), unlike
human beings, recognising that she could not help being blighted,
attached themselves to her passionately.
She was sombrely magnificent this evening in black bombazine, with a
mauve front cut in a shy triangle, and crowned with a black velvet ribbon
round the base of her thin throat; black and mauve for evening wear was
esteemed very chaste by nearly every Forsyte.
Pouting at Swithin, she said:
"Ann has been asking for you. You haven't been near us for an age!"
Swithin put his thumbs within the armholes of his waistcoat, and replied:
"Ann's getting very shaky; she ought to have a doctor!"
"Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Forsyte!"
Nicholas Forsyte, cocking his rectangular eyebrows, wore a smile. He had
succeeded during the day in bringing to fruition a scheme for the
employment of a tribe from Upper India in the gold-mines of Ceylon. A
pet plan, carried at last in the teeth of great difficulties--he was
justly pleased. It would double the output of his mines, and, as he had
often forcibly argued, all experience tended to show that a man must die;
and whether he died of a miserable old age in his own country, or
prematurely of damp in the bottom of a foreign mine, was surely of little
consequence, provided that by a change in his mode of life he benefited
the British Empire.
His ability was undoubted. Raising his broken nose towards his listener,
he would add:
"For want of a few hundred of these fellows we haven't paid a dividend
for years, and look at the price of the shares. I can't get ten
shillings for them."
He had been at Yarmouth, too, and had come back feeling that he had added
at least ten years to his own life. He grasped Swithin's hand,
exclaiming in a jocular voice:
"Well, so here we are again!"
Mrs. Nicholas, an effete woman, smiled a smile of frightened jollity
behind his back.
"Mr. and Mrs. James Forsyte! Mr. and Mrs. Soames Forsyte!"
Swithin drew his heels together, his deportment ever admirable.
"Well, James, well Emily! How are you, Soames? How do you do?"
His hand enclosed Irene's, and his eyes swelled. She was a pretty
woman--a little too pale, but her figure, her eyes, her teeth! Too good
for that chap Soames!
The gods had given Irene dark brown eyes and golden hair, that strange
combination, provocative of men's glances, which is said to be the mark
of a weak character. And the full, soft pallor of her neck and
shoulders, above a gold-coloured frock, gave to her personality an
alluring strangeness.
Soames stood behind, his eyes fastened on his wife's neck. The hands of
Swithin's watch, which he still held open in his hand, had left eight
behind; it was half an hour beyond his dinner-time--he had had no
lunch--and a strange primeval impatience surged up within him.
"It's not like Jolyon to be late!" he said to Irene, with uncontrollable
vexation. "I suppose it'll be June keeping him!"
"People in love are always late," she answered.
Swithin stared at her; a dusky orange dyed his cheeks.
"They've no business to be. Some fashionable nonsense!"
And behind this outburst the inarticulate violence of primitive
generations seemed to mutter and grumble.
"Tell me what you think of my new star, Uncle Swithin," said Irene
softly.
Among the lace in the bosom of her dress was shining a five-pointed star,
made of eleven diamonds. Swithin looked at the star. He had a pretty
taste in stones; no question could have been more sympathetically devised
to distract his attention.
"Who gave you that?" he asked.
"Soames."
There was no change in her face, but Swithin's pale eyes bulged as though
he might suddenly have been afflicted with insight.
"I dare say you're dull at home," he said. "Any day you like to come and
dine with me, I'll give you as good a bottle of wine as you'll get in
London."
"Miss June Forsyte--Mr. Jolyon Forsyte!... Mr. Boswainey!..."
Swithin moved his arm, and said in a rumbling voice:
"Dinner, now--dinner!"
He took in Irene, on the ground that he had not entertained her since she
was a bride. June was the portion of Bosinney, who was placed between
Irene and his fiancee. On the other side of June was James with Mrs.
Nicholas, then old Jolyon with Mrs. James, Nicholas with Hatty Chessman,
Soames with Mrs. Small, completing, the circle to Swithin again.
Family dinners of the Forsytes observe certain traditions. There are,
for instance, no hors d'oeuvre. The reason for this is unknown. Theory
among the younger members traces it to the disgraceful price of oysters;
it is more probably due to a desire to come to the point, to a good
practical sense deciding at once that hors d'oeuvre are but poor things.
The Jameses alone, unable to withstand a custom almost universal in Park
Lane, are now and then unfaithful.
A silent, almost morose, inattention to each other succeeds to the
subsidence into their seats, lasting till well into the first entree, but
interspersed with remarks such as, "Tom's bad again; I can't tell what's
the matter with him!" "I suppose Ann doesn't come down in the
mornings?"--"What's the name of your doctor, Fanny?" "Stubbs?" "He's a
quack!"--"Winifred? She's got too many children. Four, isn't it? She's
as thin as a lath!"--"What d'you give for this sherry, Swithin? Too dry
for me!"
With the second glass of champagne, a kind of hum makes itself heard,
which, when divested of casual accessories and resolved into its primal
element, is found to be James telling a story, and this goes on for a
long time, encroaching sometimes even upon what must universally be
recognised as the crowning point of a Forsyte feast--'the saddle of
mutton.'
No Forsyte has given a dinner without providing a saddle of mutton.
There is something in its succulent solidity which makes it suitable to
people 'of a certain position.' It is nourishing and tasty; the sort of
thing a man remembers eating. It has a past and a future, like a deposit
paid into a bank; and it is something that can be argued about.
Each branch of the family tenaciously held to a particular locality--old
Jolyon swearing by Dartmoor, James by Welsh, Swithin by Southdown,
Nicholas maintaining that people might sneer, but there was nothing like
New Zealand! As for Roger, the 'original' of the brothers, he had been
obliged to invent a locality of his own, and with an ingenuity worthy of
a man who had devised a new profession for his sons, he had discovered a
shop where they sold German; on being remonstrated with, he had proved
his point by producing a butcher's bill, which showed that he paid more
than any of the others. It was on this occasion that old Jolyon, turning
to June, had said in one of his bursts of philosophy:
"You may depend upon it, they're a cranky lot, the Forsytes--and you'll
find it out, as you grow older!"
Timothy alone held apart, for though he ate saddle of mutton heartily, he
was, he said, afraid of it.
To anyone interested psychologically in Forsytes, this great
saddle-of-mutton trait is of prime importance; not only does it
illustrate their tenacity, both collectively and as individuals, but it
marks them as belonging in fibre and instincts to that great class which
believes in nourishment and flavour, and yields to no sentimental craving
for beauty.
Younger members of the family indeed would have done without a joint
altogether, preferring guinea-fowl, or lobster salad--something which
appealed to the imagination, and had less nourishment--but these were
females; or, if not, had been corrupted by their wives, or by mothers,
who having been forced to eat saddle of mutton throughout their married
lives, had passed a secret hostility towards it into the fibre of their
sons.
The great saddle-of-mutton controversy at an end, a Tewkesbury ham
commenced, together with the least touch of West Indian--Swithin was so
long over this course that he caused a block in the progress of the
dinner. To devote himself to it with better heart, he paused in his
conversation.
From his seat by Mrs. Septimus Small Soames was watching. He had a
reason of his own connected with a pet building scheme, for observing
Bosinney. The architect might do for his purpose; he looked clever, as
he sat leaning back in his chair, moodily making little ramparts with
bread-crumbs. Soames noted his dress clothes to be well cut, but too
small, as though made many years ago.
He saw him turn to Irene and say something and her face sparkle as he
often saw it sparkle at other people--never at himself. He tried to
catch what they were saying, but Aunt Juley was speaking.
Hadn't that always seemed very extraordinary to Soames? Only last Sunday
dear Mr. Scole, had been so witty in his sermon, so sarcastic, "For
what," he had said, "shall it profit a man if he gain his own soul, but
lose all his property?" That, he had said, was the motto of the
middle-class; now, what had he meant by that? Of course, it might be
what middle-class people believed--she didn't know; what did Soames
think?
He answered abstractedly: "How should I know? Scoles is a humbug,
though, isn't he?" For Bosinney was looking round the table, as if
pointing out the peculiarities of the guests, and Soames wondered what he
was saying. By her smile Irene was evidently agreeing with his remarks.
She seemed always to agree with other people.
Her eyes were turned on himself; Soames dropped his glance at once. The
smile had died off her lips.
A humbug? But what did Soames mean? If Mr. Scoles was a humbug, a
clergyman--then anybody might be--it was frightful!
"Well, and so they are!" said Soames.
During Aunt Juley's momentary and horrified silence he caught some words
of Irene's that sounded like: 'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!'
But Swithin had finished his ham.
"Where do you go for your mushrooms?" he was saying to Irene in a voice
like a courtier's; "you ought to go to Smileybob's--he'll give 'em you
fresh. These little men, they won't take the trouble!"
Irene turned to answer him, and Soames saw Bosinney watching her and
smiling to himself. A curious smile the fellow had. A half-simple
arrangement, like a child who smiles when he is pleased. As for George's
nickname--'The Buccaneer'--he did not think much of that. And, seeing
Bosinney turn to June, Soames smiled too, but sardonically--he did not
like June, who was not looking too pleased.
This was not surprising, for she had just held the following conversation
with James:
"I stayed on the river on my way home, Uncle James, and saw a beautiful
site for a house."
James, a slow and thorough eater, stopped the process of mastication.
"Eh?" he said. "Now, where was that?"
"Close to Pangbourne."
James placed a piece of ham in his mouth, and June waited.
"I suppose you wouldn't know whether the land about there was freehold?"
he asked at last. "You wouldn't know anything about the price of land
about there?"
"Yes," said June; "I made inquiries." Her little resolute face under its
copper crown was suspiciously eager and aglow.
James regarded her with the air of an inquisitor.
"What? You're not thinking of buying land!" he ejaculated, dropping his
fork.
June was greatly encouraged by his interest. It had long been her pet
plan that her uncles should benefit themselves and Bosinney by building
country-houses.
"Of course not," she said. "I thought it would be such a splendid place
for--you or--someone to build a country-house!"
James looked at her sideways, and placed a second piece of ham in his
mouth....
"Land ought to be very dear about there," he said.
What June had taken for personal interest was only the impersonal
excitement of every Forsyte who hears of something eligible in danger of
passing into other hands. But she refused to see the disappearance of
her chance, and continued to press her point.
"You ought to go into the country, Uncle James. I wish I had a lot of
money, I wouldn't live another day in London."
James was stirred to the depths of his long thin figure; he had no idea
his niece held such downright views.
"Why don't you go into the country?" repeated June; "it would do you a
lot of good."
"Why?" began James in a fluster. "Buying land--what good d'you suppose I
can do buying land, building houses?--I couldn't get four per cent. for
my money!"
"What does that matter? You'd get fresh air."
"Fresh air!" exclaimed James; "what should I do with fresh air,"
"I should have thought anybody liked to have fresh air," said June
scornfully.
James wiped his napkin all over his mouth.
"You don't know the value of money," he said, avoiding her eye.
"No! and I hope I never shall!" and, biting her lip with inexpressible
mortification, poor June was silent.
Why were her own relations so rich, and Phil never knew where the money
was coming from for to-morrow's tobacco. Why couldn't they do something
for him? But they were so selfish. Why couldn't they build
country-houses? She had all that naive dogmatism which is so pathetic,
and sometimes achieves such great results. Bosinney, to whom she turned
in her discomfiture, was talking to Irene, and a chill fell on June's
spirit. Her eyes grew steady with anger, like old Jolyon's when his
will was crossed.
James, too, was much disturbed. He felt as though someone had threatened
his right to invest his money at five per cent. Jolyon had spoiled her.
None of his girls would have said such a thing. James had always been
exceedingly liberal to his children, and the consciousness of this made
him feel it all the more deeply. He trifled moodily with his
strawberries, then, deluging them with cream, he ate them quickly; they,
at all events, should not escape him.
No wonder he was upset. Engaged for fifty-four years (he had been
admitted a solicitor on the earliest day sanctioned by the law) in
arranging mortgages, preserving investments at a dead level of high and
safe interest, conducting negotiations on the principle of securing the
utmost possible out of other people compatible with safety to his clients
and himself, in calculations as to the exact pecuniary possibilities of
all the relations of life, he had come at last to think purely in terms
of money. Money was now his light, his medium for seeing, that without
which he was really unable to see, really not cognisant of phenomena; and
to have this thing, "I hope I shall never know the value of money!" said
to his face, saddened and exasperated him. He knew it to be nonsense, or
it would have frightened him. What was the world coming to! Suddenly
recollecting the story of young Jolyon, however, he felt a little
comforted, for what could you expect with a father like that! This
turned his thoughts into a channel still less pleasant. What was all
this talk about Soames and Irene?
As in all self-respecting families, an emporium had been established
where family secrets were bartered, and family stock priced. It was
known on Forsyte 'Change that Irene regretted her marriage. Her regret
was disapproved of. She ought to have known her own mind; no dependable
woman made these mistakes.
James reflected sourly that they had a nice house (rather small) in an
excellent position, no children, and no money troubles. Soames was
reserved about his affairs, but he must be getting a very warm man. He
had a capital income from the business--for Soames, like his father, was
a member of that well-known firm of solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard and
Forsyte--and had always been very careful. He had done quite unusually
well with some mortgages he had taken up, too--a little timely
foreclosure--most lucky hits!
There was no reason why Irene should not be happy, yet they said she'd
been asking for a separate room. He knew where that ended. It wasn't as
if Soames drank.
James looked at his daughter-in-law. That unseen glance of his was cold
and dubious. Appeal and fear were in it, and a sense of personal
grievance. Why should he be worried like this? It was very likely all
nonsense; women were funny things! They exaggerated so, you didn't know
what to believe; and then, nobody told him anything, he had to find out
everything for himself. Again he looked furtively at Irene, and across
from her to Soames. The latter, listening to Aunt Juley, was looking up,
under his brows in the direction of Bosinney.
'He's fond of her, I know,' thought James. 'Look at the way he's always
giving her things.'
And the extraordinary unreasonableness of her disaffection struck him
with increased force.
It was a pity, too, she was a taking little thing, and he, James, would
be really quite fond of her if she'd only let him. She had taken up
lately with June; that was doing her no good, that was certainly doing
her no good. She was getting to have opinions of her own. He didn't
know what she wanted with anything of the sort. She'd a good home, and
everything she could wish for. He felt that her friends ought to be
chosen for her. To go on like this was dangerous.
June, indeed, with her habit of championing the unfortunate, had dragged
from Irene a confession, and, in return, had preached the necessity of
facing the evil, by separation, if need be. But in the face of these
exhortations, Irene had kept a brooding silence, as though she found
terrible the thought of this struggle carried through in cold blood. He
would never give her up, she had said to June.
"Who cares?" June cried; "let him do what he likes--you've only to stick
to it!" And she had not scrupled to say something of this sort at
Timothy's; James, when he heard of it, had felt a natural indignation and
horror.
What if Irene were to take it into her head to--he could hardly frame the
thought--to leave Soames? But he felt this thought so unbearable that he
at once put it away; the shady visions it conjured up, the sound of
family tongues buzzing in his ears, the horror of the conspicuous
happening so close to him, to one of his own children! Luckily, she had
no money--a beggarly fifty pound a year! And he thought of the deceased
Heron, who had had nothing to leave her, with contempt. Brooding over
his glass, his long legs twisted under the table, he quite omitted to
rise when the ladies left the room. He would have to speak to Soames
--would have to put him on his guard; they could not go on like this, now
that such a contingency had occurred to him. And he noticed with sour
disfavour that June had left her wine-glasses full of wine.
'That little, thing's at the bottom of it all,' he mused; 'Irene'd never
have thought of it herself.' James was a man of imagination.
The voice of Swithin roused him from his reverie.
"I gave four hundred pounds for it," he was saying. "Of course it's a
regular work of art."
"Four hundred! H'm! that's a lot of money!" chimed in Nicholas.
The object alluded to was an elaborate group of statuary in Italian
marble, which, placed upon a lofty stand (also of marble), diffused an
atmosphere of culture throughout the room. The subsidiary figures, of
which there were six, female, nude, and of highly ornate workmanship,
were all pointing towards the central figure, also nude, and female, who
was pointing at herself; and all this gave the observer a very pleasant
sense of her extreme value. Aunt Juley, nearly opposite, had had the
greatest difficulty in not looking at it all the evening.
Old Jolyon spoke; it was he who had started the discussion.
"Four hundred fiddlesticks! Don't tell me you gave four hundred for
that?"
Between the points of his collar Swithin's chin made the second painful
oscillatory movement of the evening.
"Four-hundred-pounds, of English money; not a farthing less. I don't
regret it. It's not common English--it's genuine modern Italian!"
Soames raised the corner of his lip in a smile, and looked across at
Bosinney. The architect was grinning behind the fumes of his cigarette.
Now, indeed, he looked more like a buccaneer.
"There's a lot of work about it," remarked James hastily, who was really
moved by the size of the group. "It'd sell well at Jobson's."
"The poor foreign dey-vil that made it," went on Swithin, "asked me five
hundred--I gave him four. It's worth eight. Looked half-starved, poor
dey-vil!"
"Ah!" chimed in Nicholas suddenly, "poor, seedy-lookin' chaps, these
artists; it's a wonder to me how they live. Now, there's young
Flageoletti, that Fanny and the girls are always hav'in' in, to play the
fiddle; if he makes a hundred a year it's as much as ever he does!"
James shook his head. "Ah!" he said, "I don't know how they live!"
Old Jolyon had risen, and, cigar in mouth, went to inspect the group at
close quarters.
"Wouldn't have given two for it!" he pronounced at last.
Soames saw his father and Nicholas glance at each other anxiously; and,
on the other side of Swithin, Bosinney, still shrouded in smoke.
'I wonder what he thinks of it?' thought Soames, who knew well enough
that this group was hopelessly vieux jeu; hopelessly of the last
generation. There was no longer any sale at Jobson's for such works of
art.
Swithin's answer came at last. "You never knew anything about a statue.
You've got your pictures, and that's all!"
Old Jolyon walked back to his seat, puffing his cigar. It was not likely
that he was going to be drawn into an argument with an obstinate beggar
like Swithin, pig-headed as a mule, who had never known a statue from
a---straw hat.
"Stucco!" was all he said.
It had long been physically impossible for Swithin to start; his fist
came down on the table.
"Stucco! I should like to see anything you've got in your house half as
good!"
And behind his speech seemed to sound again that rumbling violence of
primitive generations.
It was James who saved the situation.
"Now, what do you say, Mr. Bosinney? You're an architect; you ought to
know all about statues and things!"
Every eye was turned upon Bosinney; all waited with a strange, suspicious
look for his answer.
And Soames, speaking for the first time, asked:
"Yes, Bosinney, what do you say?"
Bosinney replied coolly:
"The work is a remarkable one."
His words were addressed to Swithin, his eyes smiled slyly at old Jolyon;
only Soames remained unsatisfied.
"Remarkable for what?"
"For its naivete"
The answer was followed by an impressive silence; Swithin alone was not
sure whether a compliment was intended.
CHAPTER IV
PROJECTION OF THE HOUSE
Soames Forsyte walked out of his green-painted front door three days
after the dinner at Swithin's, and looking back from across the Square,
confirmed his impression that the house wanted painting.
He had left his wife sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, her hands
crossed in her lap, manifestly waiting for him to go out. This was not
unusual. It happened, in fact, every day.
He could not understand what she found wrong with him. It was not as if
he drank! Did he run into debt, or gamble, or swear; was he violent;
were his friends rackety; did he stay out at night? On the contrary.
The profound, subdued aversion which he felt in his wife was a mystery to
him, and a source of the most terrible irritation. That she had made a
mistake, and did not love him, had tried to love him and could not love
him, was obviously no reason.
He that could imagine so outlandish a cause for his wife's not getting on
with him was certainly no Forsyte.
Soames was forced, therefore, to set the blame entirely down to his wife.
He had never met a woman so capable of inspiring affection. They could
not go anywhere without his seeing how all the men were attracted by her;
their looks, manners, voices, betrayed it; her behaviour under this
attention had been beyond reproach. That she was one of those women--not
too common in the Anglo-Saxon race--born to be loved and to love, who
when not loving are not living, had certainly never even occurred to him.
Her power of attraction, he regarded as part of her value as his
property; but it made him, indeed, suspect that she could give as well as
receive; and she gave him nothing! 'Then why did she marry me?' was his
continual thought. He had, forgotten his courtship; that year and a half
when he had besieged and lain in wait for her, devising schemes for her
entertainment, giving her presents, proposing to her periodically, and
keeping her other admirers away with his perpetual presence. He had
forgotten the day when, adroitly taking advantage of an acute phase of
her dislike to her home surroundings, he crowned his labours with
success. If he remembered anything, it was the dainty capriciousness
with which the gold-haired, dark-eyed girl had treated him. He certainly
did not remember the look on her face--strange, passive, appealing--when
suddenly one day she had yielded, and said that she would marry him.
It had been one of those real devoted wooings which books and people
praise, when the lover is at length rewarded for hammering the iron till
it is malleable, and all must be happy ever after as the wedding bells.
Soames walked eastwards, mousing doggedly along on the shady side.
The house wanted doing, up, unless he decided to move into the country,
and build.
For the hundredth time that month he turned over this problem. There was
no use in rushing into things! He was very comfortably off, with an
increasing income getting on for three thousand a year; but his invested
capital was not perhaps so large as his father believed--James had a
tendency to expect that his children should be better off than they were.
'I can manage eight thousand easily enough,' he thought, 'without calling
in either Robertson's or Nicholl's.'
He had stopped to look in at a picture shop, for Soames was an 'amateur'
of pictures, and had a little-room in No. 62, Montpellier Square, full
of canvases, stacked against the wall, which he had no room to hang. He
brought them home with him on his way back from the City, generally after
dark, and would enter this room on Sunday afternoons, to spend hours
turning the pictures to the light, examining the marks on their backs,
and occasionally making notes.
They were nearly all landscapes with figures in the foreground, a sign of
some mysterious revolt against London, its tall houses, its interminable
streets, where his life and the lives of his breed and class were passed.
Every now and then he would take one or two pictures away with him in a
cab, and stop at Jobson's on his way into the City.
He rarely showed them to anyone; Irene, whose opinion he secretly
respected and perhaps for that reason never solicited, had only been into
the room on rare occasions, in discharge of some wifely duty. She was
not asked to look at the pictures, and she never did. To Soames this was
another grievance. He hated that pride of hers, and secretly dreaded it.
In the plate-glass window of the picture shop his image stood and looked
at him.
His sleek hair under the brim of the tall hat had a sheen like the hat
itself; his cheeks, pale and flat, the line of his clean-shaven lips, his
firm chin with its greyish shaven tinge, and the buttoned strictness of
his black cut-away coat, conveyed an appearance of reserve and secrecy,
of imperturbable, enforced composure; but his eyes, cold,--grey,
strained--looking, with a line in the brow between them, examined him
wistfully, as if they knew of a secret weakness.
He noted the subjects of the pictures, the names of the painters, made a
calculation of their values, but without the satisfaction he usually
derived from this inward appraisement, and walked on.
No. 62 would do well enough for another year, if he decided to build!
The times were good for building, money had not been so dear for years;
and the site he had seen at Robin Hill, when he had gone down there in
the spring to inspect the Nicholl mortgage--what could be better! Within
twelve miles of Hyde Park Corner, the value of the land certain to go up,
would always fetch more than he gave for it; so that a house, if built in
really good style, was a first-class investment.
The notion of being the one member of his family with a country house
weighed but little with him; for to a true Forsyte, sentiment, even the
sentiment of social position, was a luxury only to be indulged in after
his appetite for more material pleasure had been satisfied.
To get Irene out of London, away from opportunities of going about and
seeing people, away from her friends and those who put ideas into her
head! That was the thing! She was too thick with June! June disliked
him. He returned the sentiment. They were of the same blood.
It would be everything to get Irene out of town. The house would please
her she would enjoy messing about with the decoration, she was very
artistic!
The house must be in good style, something that would always be certain
to command a price, something unique, like that last house of Parkes,
which had a tower; but Parkes had himself said that his architect was
ruinous. You never knew where you were with those fellows; if they had a
name they ran you into no end of expense and were conceited into the
bargain.
And a common architect was no good--the memory of Parkes' tower precluded
the employment of a common architect:
This was why he had thought of Bosinney. Since the dinner at Swithin's
he had made enquiries, the result of which had been meagre, but
encouraging: "One of the new school."
"Clever?"
"As clever as you like--a bit--a bit up in the air!"
He had not been able to discover what houses Bosinney had built, nor what
his charges were. The impression he gathered was that he would be able
to make his own terms. The more he reflected on the idea, the more he
liked it. It would be keeping the thing in the family, with Forsytes
almost an instinct; and he would be able to get 'favoured-nation,' if not
nominal terms--only fair, considering the chance to Bosinney of
displaying his talents, for this house must be no common edifice.
Soames reflected complacently on the work it would be sure to bring the
young man; for, like every Forsyte, he could be a thorough optimist when
there was anything to be had out of it.
Bosinney's office was in Sloane Street, close at, hand, so that he would
be able to keep his eye continually on the plans.
Again, Irene would not be to likely to object to leave London if her
greatest friend's lover were given the job. June's marriage might depend
on it. Irene could not decently stand in the way of June's marriage; she
would never do that, he knew her too well. And June would be pleased; of
this he saw the advantage.
Bosinney looked clever, but he had also--and--it was one of his great
attractions--an air as if he did not quite know on which side his bread
were buttered; he should be easy to deal with in money matters. Soames
made this reflection in no defrauding spirit; it was the natural attitude
of his mind--of the mind of any good business man--of all those thousands
of good business men through whom he was threading his way up Ludgate
Hill.
Thus he fulfilled the inscrutable laws of his great class--of human
nature itself--when he reflected, with a sense of comfort, that Bosinney
would be easy to deal with in money matters.
While he elbowed his way on, his eyes, which he usually kept fixed on the
ground before his feet, were attracted upwards by the dome of St.
Paul's. It had a peculiar fascination for him, that old dome, and not
once, but twice or three times a week, would he halt in his daily
pilgrimage to enter beneath and stop in the side aisles for five or ten
minutes, scrutinizing the names and epitaphs on the monuments. The
attraction for him of this great church was inexplicable, unless it
enabled him to concentrate his thoughts on the business of the day. If
any affair of particular moment, or demanding peculiar acuteness, was
weighing on his mind, he invariably went in, to wander with mouse-like
attention from epitaph to epitaph. Then retiring in the same noiseless
way, he would hold steadily on up Cheapside, a thought more of dogged
purpose in his gait, as though he had seen something which he had made up
his mind to buy.
He went in this morning, but, instead of stealing from monument to
monument, turned his eyes upwards to the columns and spacings of the
walls, and remained motionless.
His uplifted face, with the awed and wistful look which faces take on
themselves in church, was whitened to a chalky hue in the vast building.
His gloved hands were clasped in front over the handle of his umbrella.
He lifted them. Some sacred inspiration perhaps had come to him.
'Yes,' he thought, 'I must have room to hang my pictures.
That evening, on his return from the City, he called at Bosinney's
office. He found the architect in his shirt-sleeves, smoking a pipe, and
ruling off lines on a plan. Soames refused a drink, and came at once to
the point.
"If you've nothing better to do on Sunday, come down with me to Robin
Hill, and give me your opinion on a building site."
"Are you going to build?"
"Perhaps," said Soames; "but don't speak of it. I just want your
opinion."
"Quite so," said the architect.
Soames peered about the room.
"You're rather high up here," he remarked.
Any information he could gather about the nature and scope of Bosinney's
business would be all to the good.
"It does well enough for me so far," answered the architect. "You're
accustomed to the swells."
He knocked out his pipe, but replaced it empty between his teeth; it
assisted him perhaps to carry on the conversation. Soames noted a hollow
in each cheek, made as it were by suction.
"What do you pay for an office like this?" said he.
"Fifty too much," replied Bosinney.
This answer impressed Soames favourably.
"I suppose it is dear," he said. "I'll call for you--on Sunday about
eleven."
The following Sunday therefore he called for Bosinney in a hansom, and
drove him to the station. On arriving at Robin Hill, they found no cab,
and started to walk the mile and a half to the site.
It was the 1st of August--a perfect day, with a burning sun and cloudless
sky--and in the straight, narrow road leading up the hill their feet
kicked up a yellow dust.
"Gravel soil," remarked Soames, and sideways he glanced at the coat
Bosinney wore. Into the side-pockets of this coat were thrust bundles of
papers, and under one arm was carried a queer-looking stick. Soames
noted these and other peculiarities.
No one but a clever man, or, indeed, a buccaneer, would have taken such
liberties with his appearance; and though these eccentricities were
revolting to Soames, he derived a certain satisfaction from them, as
evidence of qualities by which he must inevitably profit. If the fellow
could build houses, what did his clothes matter?
"I told you," he said, "that I want this house to be a surprise, so don't
say anything about it. I never talk of my affairs until they're carried
through."
Bosinney nodded.
"Let women into your plans," pursued Soames, "and you never know where
it'll end."
"Ah!" Said Bosinney, "women are the devil!"
This feeling had long been at the--bottom of Soames's heart; he had
never, however, put it into words.
"Oh!" he Muttered, "so you're beginning to...." He stopped, but added,
with an uncontrollable burst of spite: "June's got a temper of her
own--always had."
"A temper's not a bad thing in an angel."
Soames had never called Irene an angel. He could not so have violated
his best instincts, letting other people into the secret of her value,
and giving himself away. He made no reply.
They had struck into a half-made road across a warren. A cart-track led
at right-angles to a gravel pit, beyond which the chimneys of a cottage
rose amongst a clump of trees at the border of a thick wood. Tussocks of
feathery grass covered the rough surface of the ground, and out of these
the larks soared into the hate of sunshine. On the far horizon, over a
countless succession of fields and hedges, rose a line of downs.
Soames led till they had crossed to the far side, and there he stopped.
It was the chosen site; but now that he was about to divulge the spot to
another he had become uneasy.
"The agent lives in that cottage," he said; "he'll give us some
lunch--we'd better have lunch before we go into this matter."
He again took the lead to the cottage, where the agent, a tall man named
Oliver, with a heavy face and grizzled beard, welcomed them. During
lunch, which Soames hardly touched, he kept looking at Bosinney, and once
or twice passed his silk handkerchief stealthily over his forehead. The
meal came to an end at last, and Bosinney rose.
"I dare say you've got business to talk over," he said; "I'll just go and
nose about a bit." Without waiting for a reply he strolled out.
Soames was solicitor to this estate, and he spent nearly an hour in the
agent's company, looking at ground-plans and discussing the Nicholl and
other mortgages; it was as it were by an afterthought that he brought up
the question of the building site.
"Your people," he said, "ought to come down in their price to me,
considering that I shall be the first to build."
Oliver shook his head.
The site you've fixed on, Sir, he said, "is the cheapest we've got.
Sites at the top of the slope are dearer by a good bit."
"Mind," said Soames, "I've not decided; it's quite possible I shan't
build at all. The ground rent's very high."
"Well, Mr. Forsyte, I shall be sorry if you go off, and I think you'll
make a mistake, Sir. There's not a bit of land near London with such a
view as this, nor one that's cheaper, all things considered; we've only
to advertise, to get a mob of people after it."
They looked at each other. Their faces said very plainly: 'I respect you
as a man of business; and you can't expect me to believe a word you
say.'
Well, repeated Soames, "I haven't made up my mind; the thing will very
likely go off!" With these words, taking up his umbrella, he put his
chilly hand into the agent's, withdrew it without the faintest pressure,
and went out into the sun.
He walked slowly back towards the site in deep thought. His instinct
told him that what the agent had said was true. A cheap site. And the
beauty of it was, that he knew the agent did not really think it cheap;
so that his own intuitive knowledge was a victory over the agent's.
'Cheap or not, I mean to have it,' he thought.
The larks sprang up in front of his feet, the air was full of
butterflies, a sweet fragrance rose from the wild grasses. The sappy
scent of the bracken stole forth from the wood, where, hidden in the
depths, pigeons were cooing, and from afar on the warm breeze, came the
rhythmic chiming of church bells.
Soames walked with his eyes on the ground, his lips opening and closing
as though in anticipation of a delicious morsel. But when he arrived at
the site, Bosinney was nowhere to be seen. After waiting some little
time, he crossed the warren in the direction of the slope. He would have
shouted, but dreaded the sound of his voice.
The warren was as lonely as a prairie, its silence only broken by the
rustle of rabbits bolting to their holes, and the song of the larks.
Soames, the pioneer-leader of the great Forsyte army advancing to the
civilization of this wilderness, felt his spirit daunted by the
loneliness, by the invisible singing, and the hot, sweet air. He had
begun to retrace his steps when he at last caught sight of Bosinney.
The architect was sprawling under a large oak tree, whose trunk, with a
huge spread of bough and foliage, ragged with age, stood on the verge of
the rise.
Soames had to touch him on the shoulder before he looked up.
"Hallo! Forsyte," he said, "I've found the very place for your house!
Look here!"
Soames stood and looked, then he said, coldly:
"You may be very clever, but this site will cost me half as much again."
"Hang the cost, man. Look at the view!"
Almost from their feet stretched ripe corn, dipping to a small dark copse
beyond. A plain of fields and hedges spread to the distant
grey-bluedowns. In a silver streak to the right could be seen the line
of the river.
The sky was so blue, and the sun so bright, that an eternal summer seemed
to reign over this prospect. Thistledown floated round them, enraptured
by the serenity, of the ether. The heat danced over the corn, and,
pervading all, was a soft, insensible hum, like the murmur of bright
minutes holding revel between earth and heaven.
Soames looked. In spite of himself, something swelled in his breast. To
live here in sight of all this, to be able to point it out to his
friends, to talk of it, to possess it! His cheeks flushed. The warmth,
the radiance, the glow, were sinking into his senses as, four years
before, Irene's beauty had sunk into his senses and made him long for
her. He stole a glance at Bosinney, whose eyes, the eyes of the
coachman's 'half-tame leopard,' seemed running wild over the landscape.
The sunlight had caught the promontories of the fellow's face, the bumpy
cheekbones, the point of his chin, the vertical ridges above his brow;
and Soames watched this rugged, enthusiastic, careless face with an
unpleasant feeling.
A long, soft ripple of wind flowed over the corn, and brought a puff of
warm air into their faces.
"I could build you a teaser here," said Bosinney, breaking the silence at
last.
"I dare say," replied Soames, drily. "You haven't got to pay for it."
"For about eight thousand I could build you a palace."
Soames had become very pale--a struggle was going on within him. He
dropped his eyes, and said stubbornly:
"I can't afford it."
And slowly, with his mousing walk, he led the way back to the first site.
They spent some time there going into particulars of the projected house,
and then Soames returned to the agent's cottage.
He came out in about half an hour, and, joining Bosinney, started for the
station.
"Well," he said, hardly opening his lips, "I've taken that site of yours,
after all."
And again he was silent, confusedly debating how it was that this fellow,
whom by habit he despised, should have overborne his own decision.
CHAPTER V
A FORSYTE MENAGE
Like the enlightened thousands of his class and generation in this great
city of London, who no longer believe in red velvet chairs, and know that
groups of modern Italian marble are 'vieux jeu,' Soames Forsyte inhabited
a house which did what it could. It owned a copper door knocker of
individual design, windows which had been altered to open outwards,
hanging flower boxes filled with fuchsias, and at the back (a great
feature) a little court tiled with jade-green tiles, and surrounded by
pink hydrangeas in peacock-blue tubs. Here, under a parchment-coloured
Japanese sunshade covering the whole end, inhabitants or visitors could
be screened from the eyes of the curious while they drank tea and
examined at their leisure the latest of Soames's little silver boxes.
The inner decoration favoured the First Empire and William Morris. For
its size, the house was commodious; there were countless nooks resembling
birds' nests, and little things made of silver were deposited like eggs.
In this general perfection two kinds of fastidiousness were at war.
There lived here a mistress who would have dwelt daintily on a desert
island; a master whose daintiness was, as it were, an investment,
cultivated by the owner for his advancement, in accordance with the laws
of competition. This competitive daintiness had caused Soames in his
Marlborough days to be the first boy into white waistcoats in summer, and
corduroy waistcoats in winter, had prevented him from ever appearing in
public with his tie climbing up his collar, and induced him to dust his
patent leather boots before a great multitude assembled on Speech Day to
hear him recite Moliere.
Skin-like immaculateness had grown over Soames, as over many Londoners;
impossible to conceive of him with a hair out of place, a tie deviating
one-eighth of an inch from the perpendicular, a collar unglossed! He
would not have gone without a bath for worlds--it was the fashion to take
baths; and how bitter was his scorn of people who omitted them!
But Irene could be imagined, like some nymph, bathing in wayside streams,
for the joy of the freshness and of seeing her own fair body.
In this conflict throughout the house the woman had gone to the wall. As
in the struggle between Saxon and Celt still going on within the nation,
the more impressionable and receptive temperament had had forced on it a
conventional superstructure.
Thus the house had acquired a close resemblance to hundreds of other
houses with the same high aspirations, having become: 'That very charming
little house of the Soames Forsytes, quite individual, my dear--really
elegant.'
For Soames Forsyte--read James Peabody, Thomas Atkins, or Emmanuel
Spagnoletti, the name in fact of any upper-middle class Englishman in
London with any pretensions to taste; and though the decoration be
different, the phrase is just.
On the evening of August 8, a week after the expedition to Robin Hill, in
the dining-room of this house--'quite individual, my dear--really
elegant'--Soames and Irene were seated at dinner. A hot dinner on
Sundays was a little distinguishing elegance common to this house and
many others. Early in married life Soames had laid down the rule: 'The
servants must give us hot dinner on Sundays--they've nothing to do but
play the concertina.'
The custom had produced no revolution. For--to Soames a rather
deplorable sign--servants were devoted to Irene, who, in defiance of all
safe tradition, appeared to recognise their right to a share in the
weaknesses of human nature.
The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but rectangularly,
at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without a cloth--a
distinguishing elegance--and so far had not spoken a word.
Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had been
buying, and so long as he talked Irene's silence did not distress him.
This evening he had found it impossible to talk. The decision to build
had been weighing on his mind all the week, and he had made up his mind
to tell her.
His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly; she had
no business to make him feel like that--a wife and a husband being one
person. She had not looked at him once since they sat down; and he
wondered what on earth she had been thinking about all the time. It was
hard, when a man worked as he did, making money for her--yes, and with an
ache in his heart--that she should sit there, looking--looking as if she
saw the walls of the room closing in. It was enough to make a man get up
and leave the table.
The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms--Soames
liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an inexpressible feeling of
superiority to the majority of his acquaintance, whose wives were
contented with their best high frocks or with tea-gowns, when they dined
at home. Under that rosy light her amber-coloured hair and fair skin
made strange contrast with her dark brown eyes.
Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table with its deep
tints, the starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby-coloured glass, and
quaint silver furnishing; could a man own anything prettier than the
woman who sat at it? Gratitude was no virtue among Forsytes, who,
competitive, and full of common-sense, had no occasion for it; and Soames
only experienced a sense of exasperation amounting to pain, that he did
not own her as it was his right to own her, that he could not, as by
stretching out his hand to that rose, pluck her and sniff the very
secrets of her heart.
Out of his other property, out of all the things he had collected, his
silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments, he got a secret and
intimate feeling; out of her he got none.
In this house of his there was writing on every wall. His business-like
temperament protested against a mysterious warning that she was not made
for him. He had married this woman, conquered her, made her his own, and
it seemed to him contrary to the most fundamental of all laws, the law of
possession, that he could do no more than own her body--if indeed he
could do that, which he was beginning to doubt. If any one had asked him
if he wanted to own her soul, the question would have seemed to him both
ridiculous and sentimental. But he did so want, and the writing said he
never would.
She was ever silent, passive, gracefully averse; as though terrified lest
by word, motion, or sign she might lead him to believe that she was fond
of him; and he asked himself: Must I always go on like this?
Like most novel readers of his generation (and Soames was a great novel
reader), literature coloured his view of life; and he had imbibed the
belief that it was only a question of time.
In the end the husband always gained the affection of his wife. Even in
those cases--a class of book he was not very fond of--which ended in
tragedy, the wife always died with poignant regrets on her lips, or if it
were the husband who died--unpleasant thought--threw herself on his body
in an agony of remorse.
He often took Irene to the theatre, instinctively choosing the modern
Society Plays with the modern Society conjugal problem, so fortunately
different from any conjugal problem in real life. He found that they too
always ended in the same way, even when there was a lover in the case.
While he was watching the play Soames often sympathized with the lover;
but before he reached home again, driving with Irene in a hansom, he saw
that this would not do, and he was glad the play had ended as it had.
There was one class of husband that had just then come into fashion, the
strong, rather rough, but extremely sound man, who was peculiarly
successful at the end of the play; with this person Soames was really not
in sympathy, and had it not been for his own position, would have
expressed his disgust with the fellow. But he was so conscious of how
vital to himself was the necessity for being a successful, even a
'strong,' husband, that he never spoke of a distaste born perhaps by the
perverse processes of Nature out of a secret fund of brutality in
himself.
But Irene's silence this evening was exceptional. He had never before
seen such an expression on her face. And since it is always the unusual
which alarms, Soames was alarmed. He ate his savoury, and hurried the
maid as she swept off the crumbs with the silver sweeper. When she had
left the room, he filled his glass with wine and said:
"Anybody been here this afternoon?"
"June."
"What did she want?" It was an axiom with the Forsytes that people did
not go anywhere unless they wanted something. "Came to talk about her
lover, I suppose?"
Irene made no reply.
"It looks to me," continued Soames, "as if she were sweeter on him than
he is on her. She's always following him about."
Irene's eyes made him feel uncomfortable.
"You've no business to say such a thing!" she exclaimed.
"Why not? Anybody can see it."
"They cannot. And if they could, it's disgraceful to say so."
Soames's composure gave way.
"You're a pretty wife!" he said. But secretly he wondered at the heat of
her reply; it was unlike her. "You're cracked about June! I can tell
you one thing: now that she has the Buccaneer in tow, she doesn't care
twopence about you, and, you'll find it out. But you won't see so much
of her in future; we're going to live in the country."
He had been glad to get his news out under cover of this burst of
irritation. He had expected a cry of dismay; the silence with which his
pronouncement was received alarmed him.
"You don't seem interested," he was obliged to add.
"I knew it already."
He looked at her sharply.
"Who told you?"
"June."
"How did she know?"
Irene did not answer. Baffled and uncomfortable, he said:
"It's a fine thing for Bosinney, it'll be the making of him. I suppose
she's told you all about it?"
"Yes."
There was another pause, and then Soames said:
"I suppose you don't want to, go?"
Irene made no reply.
"Well, I can't tell what you want. You never seem contented here."
"Have my wishes anything to do with it?"
She took the vase of roses and left the room. Soames remained seated.
Was it for this that he had signed that contract? Was it for this that
he was going to spend some ten thousand pounds? Bosinney's phrase came
back to him: "Women are the devil!"
But presently he grew calmer. It might have, been worse. She might have
flared up. He had expected something more than this. It was lucky, after
all, that June had broken the ice for him. She must have wormed it out of
Bosinney; he might have known she would.
He lighted his cigarette. After all, Irene had not made a scene! She
would come round--that was the best of her; she was cold, but not sulky.
And, puffing the cigarette smoke at a lady-bird on the shining table, he
plunged into a reverie about the house. It was no good worrying; he
would go and make it up presently. She would be sitting out there in the
dark, under the Japanese sunshade, knitting. A beautiful, warm night....
In truth, June had come in that afternoon with shining eyes, and the
words: "Soames is a brick! It's splendid for Phil--the very thing for
him!"
Irene's face remaining dark and puzzled, she went on:
"Your new house at Robin Hill, of course. What? Don't you know?"
Irene did not know.
"Oh! then, I suppose I oughtn't to have told you!" Looking impatiently
at her friend, she cried: "You look as if you didn't care. Don't you
see, it's what I've' been praying for--the very chance he's been wanting
all this time. Now you'll see what he can do;" and thereupon she poured
out the whole story.
Since her own engagement she had not seemed much interested in her
friend's position; the hours she spent with Irene were given to
confidences of her own; and at times, for all her affectionate pity, it
was impossible to keep out of her smile a trace of compassionate contempt
for the woman who had made such a mistake in her life--such a vast,
ridiculous mistake.
"He's to have all the decorations as well--a free hand. It's perfect--"
June broke into laughter, her little figure quivered gleefully; she
raised her hand, and struck a blow at a muslin curtain. "Do you, know I
even asked Uncle James...." But, with a sudden dislike to mentioning that
incident, she stopped; and presently, finding her friend so unresponsive,
went away. She looked back from the pavement, and Irene was still
standing in the doorway. In response to her farewell wave, Irene put her
hand to her brow, and, turning slowly, shut the door....
Soames went to the drawing-room presently, and peered at her through the
window.
Out in the shadow of the Japanese sunshade she was sitting very still,
the lace on her white shoulders stirring with the soft rise and fall of
her bosom.
But about this silent creature sitting there so motionless, in the dark,
there seemed a warmth, a hidden fervour of feeling, as if the whole of
her being had been stirred, and some change were taking place in its very
depths.
He stole back to the dining-room unnoticed.
CHAPTER VI
JAMES AT LARGE
It was not long before Soames's determination to build went the round of
the family, and created the flutter that any decision connected with
property should make among Forsytes.
It was not his fault, for he had been determined that no one should know.
June, in the fulness of her heart, had told Mrs. Small, giving her leave
only to tell Aunt Ann--she thought it would cheer her, the poor old
sweet! for Aunt Ann had kept her room now for many days.
Mrs. Small told Aunt Ann at once, who, smiling as she lay back on her
pillows, said in her distinct, trembling old voice:
"It's very nice for dear June; but I hope they will be careful--it's
rather dangerous!"
When she was left alone again, a frown, like a cloud presaging a rainy
morrow, crossed her face.
While she was lying there so many days the process of recharging her will
went on all the time; it spread to her face, too, and tightening
movements were always in action at the corners of her lips.
The maid Smither, who had been in her service since girlhood, and was
spoken of as "Smither--a good girl--but so slow!"--the maid Smither
performed every morning with extreme punctiliousness the crowning
ceremony of that ancient toilet. Taking from the recesses of their pure
white band-box those flat, grey curls, the insignia of personal dignity,
she placed them securely in her mistress's hands, and turned her back.
And every day Aunts Juley and Hester were required to come and report on
Timothy; what news there was of Nicholas; whether dear June had succeeded
in getting Jolyon to shorten the engagement, now that Mr. Bosinney was
building Soames a house; whether young Roger's wife was
really--expecting; how the operation on Archie had succeeded; and what
Swithin had done about that empty house in Wigmore Street, where the
tenant had lost all his money and treated him so badly; above all, about
Soames; was Irene still--still asking for a separate room? And every
morning Smither was told: "I shall be coming down this afternoon,
Smither, about two o'clock. I shall want your arm, after all these days
in bed!"
After telling Aunt Ann, Mrs. Small had spoken of the house in the
strictest confidence to Mrs. Nicholas, who in her turn had asked Winifred
Dartie for confirmation, supposing, of course, that, being Soames's
sister, she would know all about it. Through her it had in due course
come round to the ears of James. He had been a good deal agitated.
"Nobody," he said, "told him anything." And, rather than go direct to
Soames himself, of whose taciturnity he was afraid, he took his umbrella
and went round to Timothy's.
He found Mrs. Septimus and Hester (who had been told--she was so safe,
she found it tiring to talk) ready, and indeed eager, to discuss the
news. It was very good of dear Soames, they thought, to employ Mr.
Bosinney, but rather risky. What had George named him? 'The Buccaneer'
How droll! But George was always droll! However, it would be all in the
family they supposed they must really look upon Mr. Bosinney as belonging
to the family, though it seemed strange.
James here broke in:
"Nobody knows anything about him. I don't see what Soames wants with a
young man like that. I shouldn't be surprised if Irene had put her oar
in. I shall speak to...."
"Soames," interposed Aunt Juley, "told Mr. Bosinney that he didn't wish
it mentioned. He wouldn't like it to be talked about, I'm sure, and if
Timothy knew he would be very vexed, I...."
James put his hand behind his ear:
"What?" he said. "I'm getting very deaf. I suppose I don't hear people.
Emily's got a bad toe. We shan't be able to start for Wales till the end
of the month. There' s always something!" And, having got what he
wanted, he took his hat and went away.
It was a fine afternoon, and he walked across the Park towards Soames's,
where he intended to dine, for Emily's toe kept her in bed, and Rachel
and Cicely were on a visit to the country. He took the slanting path
from the Bayswater side of the Row to the Knightsbridge Gate, across a
pasture of short, burnt grass, dotted with blackened sheep, strewn with
seated couples and strange waifs; lying prone on their faces, like
corpses on a field over which the wave of battle has rolled.
He walked rapidly, his head bent, looking neither to right nor, left.
The appearance of this park, the centre of his own battle-field, where he
had all his life been fighting, excited no thought or speculation in his
mind. These corpses flung down, there, from out the press and turmoil of
the struggle, these pairs of lovers sitting cheek by jowl for an hour of
idle Elysium snatched from the monotony of their treadmill, awakened no
fancies in his mind; he had outlived that kind of imagination; his nose,
like the nose of a sheep, was fastened to the pastures on which he
browsed.
One of his tenants had lately shown a disposition to be behind-hand in
his rent, and it had become a grave question whether he had not better
turn him out at once, and so run the risk of not re-letting before
Christmas. Swithin had just been let in very badly, but it had served
him right--he had held on too long.
He pondered this as he walked steadily, holding his umbrella carefully by
the wood, just below the crook of the handle, so as to keep the ferule
off the ground, and not fray the silk in the middle. And, with his thin,
high shoulders stooped, his long legs moving with swift mechanical
precision, this passage through the Park, where the sun shone with a
clear flame on so much idleness--on so many human evidences of the
remorseless battle of Property, raging beyond its ring--was like the
flight of some land bird across the sea.
He felt a--touch on the arm as he came out at Albert Gate.
It was Soames, who, crossing from the shady side of Piccadilly, where he
had been walking home from the office, had suddenly appeared alongside.
"Your mother's in bed," said James; "I was, just coming to you, but I
suppose I shall be in the way."
The outward relations between James and his son were marked by a lack of
sentiment peculiarly Forsytean, but for all that the two were by no means
unattached. Perhaps they regarded one another as an investment;
certainly they were solicitous of each other's welfare, glad of each
other's company. They had never exchanged two words upon the more
intimate problems of life, or revealed in each other's presence the
existence of any deep feeling.
Something beyond the power of word-analysis bound them together,
something hidden deep in the fibre of nations and families--for blood,
they say, is thicker than water--and neither of them was a cold-blooded
man. Indeed, in James love of his children was now the prime motive of
his existence. To have creatures who were parts of himself, to whom he
might transmit the money he saved, was at the root of his saving; and, at
seventy-five, what was left that could give him pleasure, but--saving?
The kernel of life was in this saving for his children.
Than James Forsyte, notwithstanding all his 'Jonah-isms,' there was no
saner man (if the leading symptom of sanity, as we are told, is
self-preservation, though without doubt Timothy went too far) in all this
London, of which he owned so much, and loved with such a dumb love, as
the centre of his opportunities. He had the marvellous instinctive
sanity of the middle class. In him--more than in Jolyon, with his
masterful will and his moments of tenderness and philosophy--more than in
Swithin, the martyr to crankiness--Nicholas, the sufferer from
ability--and Roger, the victim of enterprise--beat the true pulse of
compromise; of all the brothers he was least remarkable in mind and
person, and for that reason more likely to live for ever.
To James, more than to any of the others, was "the family" significant
and dear. There had always been something primitive and cosy in his
attitude towards life; he loved the family hearth, he loved gossip, and
he loved grumbling. All his decisions were formed of a cream which he
skimmed off the family mind; and, through that family, off the minds of
thousands of other families of similar fibre. Year after year, week
after week, he went to Timothy's, and in his brother's front
drawing-room--his legs twisted, his long white whiskers framing his
clean-shaven mouth--would sit watching the family pot simmer, the cream
rising to the top; and he would go away sheltered, refreshed, comforted,
with an indefinable sense of comfort.
Beneath the adamant of his self-preserving instinct there was much real
softness in James; a visit to Timothy's was like an hour spent in the lap
of a mother; and the deep craving he himself had for the protection of
the family wing reacted in turn on his feelings towards his own children;
it was a nightmare to him to think of them exposed to the treatment of
the world, in money, health, or reputation. When his old friend John
Street's son volunteered for special service, he shook his head
querulously, and wondered what John Street was about to allow it; and
when young Street was assagaied, he took it so much to heart that he made
a point of calling everywhere with the special object of saying: He knew
how it would be--he'd no patience with them!
When his son-in-law Dartie had that financial crisis, due to speculation
in Oil Shares, James made himself ill worrying over it; the knell of all
prosperity seemed to have sounded. It took him three months and a visit
to Baden-Baden to get better; there was something terrible in the idea
that but for his, James's, money, Dartie's name might have appeared in
the Bankruptcy List.
Composed of a physiological mixture so sound that if he had an earache he
thought he was dying, he regarded the occasional ailments of his wife and
children as in the nature of personal grievances, special interventions
of Providence for the purpose of destroying his peace of mind; but he did
not believe at all in the ailments of people outside his own immediate
family, affirming them in every case to be due to neglected liver.
His universal comment was: "What can they expect? I have it myself, if
I'm not careful!"
When he went to Soames's that evening he felt that life was hard on him:
There was Emily with a bad toe, and Rachel gadding about in the country;
he got no sympathy from anybody; and Ann, she was ill--he did not believe
she would last through the summer; he had called there three times now
without her being able to see him! And this idea of Soames's, building a
house, that would have to be looked into. As to the trouble with Irene,
he didn't know what was to come of that--anything might come of it!
He entered 62, Montpellier Square with the fullest intentions of being
miserable. It was already half-past seven, and Irene, dressed for
dinner, was seated in the drawing-room. She was wearing her
gold-coloured frock--for, having been displayed at a dinner-party, a
soiree, and a dance, it was now to be worn at home--and she had adorned
the bosom with a cascade of lace, on which James's eyes riveted
themselves at once.
"Where do you get your things?" he said in an aggravated voice. "I never
see Rachel and Cicely looking half so well. That rose-point, now--that's
not real!"
Irene came close, to prove to him that he was in error.
And, in spite of himself, James felt the influence of her deference, of
the faint seductive perfume exhaling from her. No self-respecting
Forsyte surrendered at a blow; so he merely said: He didn't know--he
expected she was spending a pretty penny on dress.
The gong sounded, and, putting her white arm within his, Irene took him
into the dining-room. She seated him in Soames's usual place, round the
corner on her left. The light fell softly there, so that he would not be
worried by the gradual dying of the day; and she began to talk to him
about himself.
Presently, over James came a change, like the mellowing that steals upon
a fruit in the, sun; a sense of being caressed, and praised, and petted,
and all without the bestowal of a single caress or word of praise. He
felt that what he was eating was agreeing with him; he could not get that
feeling at home; he did not know when he had enjoyed a glass of champagne
so much, and, on inquiring the brand and price, was surprised to find
that it was one of which he had a large stock himself, but could never
drink; he instantly formed the resolution to let his wine merchant know
that he had been swindled.
Looking up from his food, he remarked:
"You've a lot of nice things about the place. Now, what did you give for
that sugar-sifter? Shouldn't wonder if it was worth money!"
He was particularly pleased with the appearance of a picture, on the wall
opposite, which he himself had given them:
"I'd no idea it was so good!" he said.
They rose to go into the drawing-room, and James followed Irene closely.
"That's what I call a capital little dinner," he murmured, breathing
pleasantly down on her shoulder; "nothing heavy--and not too Frenchified.
But I can't get it at home. I pay my cook sixty pounds a year, but she
can't give me a dinner like that!"
He had as yet made no allusion to the building of the house, nor did he
when Soames, pleading the excuse of business, betook himself to the room
at the top, where he kept his pictures.
James was left alone with his daughter-in-law. The glow of the wine, and
of an excellent liqueur, was still within him. He felt quite warm
towards her. She was really a taking little thing; she listened to you,
and seemed to understand what you were saying; and, while talking, he
kept examining her figure, from her bronze-coloured shoes to the waved
gold of her hair. She was leaning back in an Empire chair, her shoulders
poised against the top--her body, flexibly straight and unsupported from
the hips, swaying when she moved, as though giving to the arms of a
lover. Her lips were smiling, her eyes half-closed.
It may have been a recognition of danger in the very charm of her
attitude, or a twang of digestion, that caused a sudden dumbness to fall
on James. He did not remember ever having been quite alone with Irene
before. And, as he looked at her, an odd feeling crept over him, as
though he had come across something strange and foreign.
Now what was she thinking about--sitting back like that?
Thus when he spoke it was in a sharper voice, as if he had been awakened
from a pleasant dream.
"What d'you do with yourself all day?" he said. "You never come round to
Park Lane!"
She seemed to be making very lame excuses, and James did not look at her.
He did not want to believe that she was really avoiding them--it would
mean too much.
"I expect the fact is, you haven't time," he said; "You're always about
with June. I expect you're useful to her with her young man,
chaperoning, and one thing and another. They tell me she's never at home
now; your Uncle Jolyon he doesn't like it, I fancy, being left so much
alone as he is. They tell me she's always hanging about for this young
Bosinney; I suppose he comes here every day. Now, what do you think of
him? D'you think he knows his own mind? He seems to me a poor thing. I
should say the grey mare was the better horse!"
The colour deepened in Irene's face; and James watched her suspiciously.
"Perhaps you don't quite understand Mr. Bosinney," she said.
"Don't understand him!" James hummed out: "Why not?--you can see he's one
of these artistic chaps. They say he's clever--they all think they're
clever. You know more about him than I do," he added; and again his
suspicious glance rested on her.
"He is designing a house for Soames," she said softly, evidently trying
to smooth things over.
"That brings me to what I was going to say," continued James; "I don't
know what Soames wants with a young man like that; why doesn't he go to a
first-rate man?"
"Perhaps Mr. Bosinney is first-rate!"
James rose, and took a turn with bent head.
"That's it'," he said, "you young people, you all stick together; you all
think you know best!"
Halting his tall, lank figure before her, he raised a finger, and
levelled it at her bosom, as though bringing an indictment against her
beauty:
"All I can say is, these artistic people, or whatever they call
themselves, they're as unreliable as they can be; and my advice to you
is, don't you have too much to do with him!"
Irene smiled; and in the curve of her lips was a strange provocation.
She seemed to have lost her deference. Her breast rose and fell as
though with secret anger; she drew her hands inwards from their rest on
the arms of her chair until the tips of her fingers met, and her dark
eyes looked unfathomably at James.
The latter gloomily scrutinized the floor.
"I tell you my opinion," he said, "it's a pity you haven't got a child to
think about, and occupy you!"
A brooding look came instantly on Irene's face, and even James became
conscious of the rigidity that took possession of her whole figure
beneath the softness of its silk and lace clothing.
He was frightened by the effect he had produced, and like most men with
but little courage, he sought at once to justify himself by bullying.
"You don't seem to care about going about. Why don't you drive down to
Hurlingham with us? And go to the theatre now and then. At your time of
life you ought to take an interest in things. You're a young woman!"
The brooding look darkened on her face; he grew nervous.
"Well, I know nothing about it," he said; "nobody tells me anything.
Soames ought to be able to take care of himself. If he can't take care
of himself he mustn't look to me--that's all."
Biting the corner of his forefinger he stole a cold, sharp look at his
daughter-in-law.
He encountered her eyes fixed on his own, so dark and deep, that he
stopped, and broke into a gentle perspiration.
"Well, I must be going," he said after a short pause, and a minute later
rose, with a slight appearance of surprise, as though he had expected to
be asked to stop. Giving his hand to Irene, he allowed himself to be
conducted to the door, and let out into the street. He would not have a
cab, he would walk, Irene was to say good-night to Soames for him, and if
she wanted a little gaiety, well, he would drive her down to Richmond any
day.
He walked home, and going upstairs, woke Emily out of the first sleep she
had had for four and twenty hours, to tell her that it was his impression
things were in a bad way at Soames's; on this theme he descanted for half
an hour, until at last, saying that he would not sleep a wink, he turned
on his side and instantly began to snore.
In Montpellier Square Soames, who had come from the picture room, stood
invisible at the top of the stairs, watching Irene sort the letters
brought by the last post. She turned back into the drawing-room; but in
a minute came out, and stood as if listening. Then she came stealing up
the stairs, with a kitten in her arms. He could see her face bent over
the little beast, which was purring against her neck. Why couldn't she
look at him like that?
Suddenly she saw him, and her face changed.
"Any letters for me?" he said.
"Three."
He stood aside, and without another word she passed on into the bedroom.
CHAPTER VII
OLD JOLYON'S PECCADILLO
Old Jolyon came out of Lord's cricket ground that same afternoon with the
intention of going home. He had not reached Hamilton Terrace before he
changed his mind, and hailing a cab, gave the driver an address in
Wistaria Avenue. He had taken a resolution.
June had hardly been at home at all that week; she had given him nothing
of her company for a long time past, not, in fact, since she had become
engaged to Bosinney. He never asked her for her company. It was not his
habit to ask people for things! She had just that one idea now--Bosinney
and his affairs--and she left him stranded in his great house, with a
parcel of servants, and not a soul to speak to from morning to night.
His Club was closed for cleaning; his Boards in recess; there was
nothing, therefore, to take him into the City. June had wanted him to go
away; she would not go herself, because Bosinney was in London.
But where was he to go by himself? He could not go abroad alone; the sea
upset his liver; he hated hotels. Roger went to a hydropathic--he was
not going to begin that at his time of life, those new-fangled places
we're all humbug!
With such formulas he clothed to himself the desolation of his spirit;
the lines down his face deepening, his eyes day by day looking forth with
the melancholy which sat so strangely on a face wont to be strong and
serene.
And so that afternoon he took this journey through St. John's Wood, in
the golden-light that sprinkled the rounded green bushes of the acacia's
before the little houses, in the summer sunshine that seemed holding a
revel over the little gardens; and he looked about him with interest; for
this was a district which no Forsyte entered without open disapproval and
secret curiosity.
His cab stopped in front of a small house of that peculiar buff colour
which implies a long immunity from paint. It had an outer gate, and a
rustic approach.
He stepped out, his bearing extremely composed; his massive head, with
its drooping moustache and wings of white hair, very upright, under an
excessively large top hat; his glance firm, a little angry. He had been
driven into this!
"Mrs. Jolyon Forsyte at home?"
"Oh, yes sir!--what name shall I say, if you please, sir?"
Old Jolyon could not help twinkling at the little maid as he gave his
name. She seemed to him such a funny little toad!
And he followed her through the dark hall, into a small double,
drawing-room, where the furniture was covered in chintz, and the little
maid placed him in a chair.
"They're all in the garden, sir; if you'll kindly take a seat, I'll tell
them."
Old Jolyon sat down in the chintz-covered chair, and looked around him.
The whole place seemed to him, as he would have expressed it, pokey;
there was a certain--he could not tell exactly what--air of shabbiness,
or rather of making two ends meet, about everything. As far as he could
see, not a single piece of furniture was worth a five-pound note. The
walls, distempered rather a long time ago, were decorated with
water-colour sketches; across the ceiling meandered a long crack.
These little houses were all old, second-rate concerns; he should hope
the rent was under a hundred a year; it hurt him more than he could have
said, to think of a Forsyte--his own son living in such a place.
The little maid came back. Would he please to go down into the garden?
Old Jolyon marched out through the French windows. In descending the
steps he noticed that they wanted painting.
Young Jolyon, his wife, his two children, and his dog Balthasar, were all
out there under a pear-tree.
This walk towards them was the most courageous act of old Jolyon's life;
but no muscle of his face moved, no nervous gesture betrayed him. He
kept his deep-set eyes steadily on the enemy.
In those two minutes he demonstrated to perfection all that unconscious
soundness, balance, and vitality of fibre that made, of him and so many
others of his class the core of the nation. In the unostentatious conduct
of their own affairs, to the neglect of everything else, they typified
the essential individualism, born in the Briton from the natural
isolation of his country's life.
The dog Balthasar sniffed round the edges of his trousers; this friendly
and cynical mongrel--offspring of a liaison between a Russian poodle and
a fox-terrier--had a nose for the unusual.
The strange greetings over, old Jolyon seated himself in a wicker chair,
and his two grandchildren, one on each side of his knees, looked at him
silently, never having seen so old a man.
They were unlike, as though recognising the difference set between them
by the circumstances of their births. Jolly, the child of sin,
pudgy-faced, with his tow-coloured hair brushed off his forehead, and a
dimple in his chin, had an air of stubborn amiability, and the eyes of a
Forsyte; little Holly, the child of wedlock, was a dark-skinned, solemn
soul, with her mother's, grey and wistful eyes.
The dog Balthasar, having walked round the three small flower-beds, to
show his extreme contempt for things at large, had also taken a seat in
front of old Jolyon, and, oscillating a tail curled by Nature tightly
over his back, was staring up with eyes that did not blink.
Even in the garden, that sense of things being pokey haunted old Jolyon;
the wicker chair creaked under his weight; the garden-beds looked
'daverdy'; on the far side, under the smut-stained wall, cats had made a
path.
While he and his grandchildren thus regarded each other with the peculiar
scrutiny, curious yet trustful, that passes between the very young and
the very old, young Jolyon watched his wife.
The colour had deepened in her thin, oval face, with its straight brows,
and large, grey eyes. Her hair, brushed in fine, high curves back from
her forehead, was going grey, like his own, and this greyness made the
sudden vivid colour in her cheeks painfully pathetic.
The look on her face, such as he had never seen there before, such as she
had always hidden from him, was full of secret resentments, and longings,
and fears. Her eyes, under their twitching brows, stared painfully. And
she was silent.
Jolly alone sustained the conversation; he had many possessions, and was
anxious that his unknown friend with extremely large moustaches, and
hands all covered with blue veins, who sat with legs crossed like his own
father (a habit he was himself trying to acquire), should know it; but
being a Forsyte, though not yet quite eight years old, he made no mention
of the thing at the moment dearest to his heart--a camp of soldiers in a
shop-window, which his father had promised to buy. No doubt it seemed to
him too precious; a tempting of Providence to mention it yet.
And the sunlight played through the leaves on that little party of the
three generations grouped tranquilly under the pear-tree, which had long
borne no fruit.
Old Jolyon's furrowed face was reddening patchily, as old men's faces
redden in the sun. He took one of Jolly's hands in his own; the boy
climbed on to his knee; and little Holly, mesmerized by this sight, crept
up to them; the sound of the dog Balthasar's scratching arose
rhythmically.
Suddenly young Mrs. Jolyon got up and hurried indoors. A minute later
her husband muttered an excuse, and followed. Old Jolyon was left alone
with his grandchildren.
And Nature with her quaint irony began working in him one of her strange
revolutions, following her cyclic laws into the depths of his heart. And
that tenderness for little children, that passion for the beginnings of
life which had once made him forsake his son and follow June, now worked
in him to forsake June and follow these littler things. Youth, like a
flame, burned ever in his breast, and to youth he turned, to the round
little limbs, so reckless, that wanted care, to the small round faces so
unreasonably solemn or bright, to the treble tongues, and the shrill,
chuckling laughter, to the insistent tugging hands, and the feel of small
bodies against his legs, to all that was young and young, and once more
young. And his eyes grew soft, his voice, and thin-veined hands soft,
and soft his heart within him. And to those small creatures he became at
once a place of pleasure, a place where they were secure, and could talk
and laugh and play; till, like sunshine, there radiated from old Jolyon's
wicker chair the perfect gaiety of three hearts.
But with young Jolyon following to his wife's room it was different.
He found her seated on a chair before her dressing-glass, with her hands
before her face.
Her shoulders were shaking with sobs. This passion of hers for suffering
was mysterious to him. He had been through a hundred of these moods; how
he had survived them he never knew, for he could never believe they were
moods, and that the last hour of his partnership had not struck.
In the night she would be sure to throw her arms round his neck and say:
"Oh! Jo, how I make you suffer!" as she had done a hundred times before.
He reached out his hand, and, unseen, slipped his razor-case into his
pocket. 'I cannot stay here,' he thought, 'I must go down!' Without a
word he left the room, and went back to the lawn.
Old Jolyon had little Holly on his knee; she had taken possession of his
watch; Jolly, very red in the face, was trying to show that he could
stand on his head. The dog Balthasar, as close as he might be to the
tea-table, had fixed his eyes on the cake.
Young Jolyon felt a malicious desire to cut their enjoyment short.
What business had his father to come and upset his wife like this? It
was a shock, after all these years! He ought to have known; he ought to
have given them warning; but when did a Forsyte ever imagine that his
conduct could upset anybody! And in his thoughts he did old Jolyon
wrong.
He spoke sharply to the children, and told them to go in to their tea.
Greatly surprised, for they had never heard their father speak sharply
before, they went off, hand in hand, little Holly looking back over her
shoulder.
Young Jolyon poured out the tea.
"My wife's not the thing today," he said, but he knew well enough that
his father had penetrated the cause of that sudden withdrawal, and almost
hated the old man for sitting there so calmly.
"You've got a nice little house here," said old Jolyon with a shrewd
look; "I suppose you've taken a lease of it!"
Young Jolyon nodded.
"I don't like the neighbourhood," said old Jolyon; "a ramshackle lot."
Young Jolyon replied: "Yes, we're a ramshackle lot."'
The silence was now only broken by the sound of the dog Balthasar's
scratching.
Old Jolyon said simply: "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here, Jo; but
I get so lonely!"
At these words young Jolyon got up and put his hand on his father's
shoulder.
In the next house someone was playing over and over again: 'La Donna
mobile' on an untuned piano; and the little garden had fallen into shade,
the sun now only reached the wall at the end, whereon basked a crouching
cat, her yellow eyes turned sleepily down on the dog Balthasar. There
was a drowsy hum of very distant traffic; the creepered trellis round the
garden shut out everything but sky, and house, and pear-tree, with its
top branches still gilded by the sun.
For some time they sat there, talking but little. Then old Jolyon rose
to go, and not a word was said about his coming again.
He walked away very sadly. What a poor miserable place; and he thought
of the great, empty house in Stanhope Gate, fit residence for a Forsyte,
with its huge billiard-room and drawing-room that no one entered from one
week's end to another.
That woman, whose face he had rather liked, was too thin-skinned by half;
she gave Jo a bad time he knew! And those sweet children! Ah! what a
piece of awful folly!
He walked towards the Edgware Road, between rows of little houses, all
suggesting to him (erroneously no doubt, but the prejudices of a Forsyte
are sacred) shady histories of some sort or kind.
Society, forsooth, the chattering hags and jackanapes--had set themselves
up to pass judgment on his flesh and blood! A parcel of old women! He
stumped his umbrella on the ground, as though to drive it into the heart
of that unfortunate body, which had dared to ostracize his son and his
son's son, in whom he could have lived again!
He stumped his umbrella fiercely; yet he himself had followed Society's
behaviour for fifteen years--had only today been false to it!
He thought of June, and her dead mother, and the whole story, with all
his old bitterness. A wretched business!
He was a long time reaching Stanhope Gate, for, with native perversity,
being extremely tired, he walked the whole way.
After washing his hands in the lavatory downstairs, he went to the
dining-room to wait for dinner, the only room he used when June was
out--it was less lonely so. The evening paper had not yet come; he had
finished the Times, there was therefore nothing to do.
The room faced the backwater of traffic, and was very silent. He
disliked dogs, but a dog even would have been company. His gaze,
travelling round the walls, rested on a picture entitled: 'Group of Dutch
fishing boats at sunset'; the chef d'oeuvre of his collection. It gave
him no pleasure. He closed his eyes. He was lonely! He oughtn't to
complain, he knew, but he couldn't help it: He was a poor thing--had
always been a poor thing--no pluck! Such was his thought.
The butler came to lay the table for dinner, and seeing his master
apparently asleep, exercised extreme caution in his movements. This
bearded man also wore a moustache, which had given rise to grave doubts
in the minds of many members--of the family--, especially those who, like
Soames, had been to public schools, and were accustomed to niceness in
such matters. Could he really be considered a butler? Playful spirits
alluded to him as: 'Uncle Jolyon's Nonconformist'; George, the
acknowledged wag, had named him: 'Sankey.'
He moved to and fro between the great polished sideboard and the great
polished table inimitably sleek and soft.
Old Jolyon watched him, feigning sleep. The fellow was a sneak--he had
always thought so--who cared about nothing but rattling through his work,
and getting out to his betting or his woman or goodness knew what! A
slug! Fat too! And didn't care a pin about his master!
But then against his will, came one of those moments of philosophy which
made old Jolyon different from other Forsytes:
After all why should the man care? He wasn't paid to care, and why
expect it? In this world people couldn't look for affection unless they
paid for it. It might be different in the next--he didn't know--couldn't
tell! And again he shut his eyes.
Relentless and stealthy, the butler pursued his labours, taking things
from the various compartments of the sideboard. His back seemed always
turned to old Jolyon; thus, he robbed his operations of the unseemliness
of being carried on in his master's presence; now and then he furtively
breathed on the silver, and wiped it with a piece of chamois leather. He
appeared to pore over the quantities of wine in the decanters, which he
carried carefully and rather high, letting his heard droop over them
protectingly. When he had finished, he stood for over a minute watching
his master, and in his greenish eyes there was a look of contempt:
After all, this master of his was an old buffer, who hadn't much left in
him!
Soft as a tom-cat, he crossed the room to press the bell. His orders
were 'dinner at seven.' What if his master were asleep; he would soon
have him out of that; there was the night to sleep in! He had himself to
think of, for he was due at his Club at half-past eight!
In answer to the ring, appeared a page boy with a silver soup tureen.
The butler took it from his hands and placed it on the table, then,
standing by the open door, as though about to usher company into the
room, he said in a solemn voice:
"Dinner is on the table, sir!"
Slowly old Jolyon got up out of his chair, and sat down at the table to
eat his dinner.
CHAPTER VIII
PLANS OF THE HOUSE
Forsytes, as is generally admitted, have shells, like that extremely
useful little animal which is made into Turkish delight, in other words,
they are never seen, or if seen would not be recognised, without
habitats, composed of circumstance, property, acquaintances, and wives,
which seem to move along with them in their passage through a world
composed of thousands of other Forsytes with their habitats. Without a
habitat a Forsyte is inconceivable--he would be like a novel without a
plot, which is well-known to be an anomaly.
To Forsyte eyes Bosinney appeared to have no habitat, he seemed one of
those rare and unfortunate men who go through life surrounded by
circumstance, property, acquaintances, and wives that do not belong to
them.
His rooms in Sloane Street, on the top floor, outside which, on a plate,
was his name, 'Philip Baynes Bosinney, Architect,' were not those of a
Forsyte.--He had no sitting-room apart from his office, but a large
recess had been screened off to conceal the necessaries of life--a couch,
an easy chair, his pipes, spirit case, novels and slippers. The business
part of the room had the usual furniture; an open cupboard with
pigeon-holes, a round oak table, a folding wash-stand, some hard chairs,
a standing desk of large dimensions covered with drawings and designs.
June had twice been to tea there under the chaperonage of his aunt.
He was believed to have a bedroom at the back.
As far as the family had been able to ascertain his income, it consisted
of two consulting appointments at twenty pounds a year, together with an
odd fee once in a way, and--more worthy item--a private annuity under his
father's will of one hundred and fifty pounds a year.
What had transpired concerning that father was not so reassuring. It
appeared that he had been a Lincolnshire country doctor of Cornish
extraction, striking appearance, and Byronic tendencies--a well-known
figure, in fact, in his county. Bosinney's uncle by marriage, Baynes, of
Baynes and Bildeboy, a Forsyte in instincts if not in name, had but
little that was worthy to relate of his brother-in-law.
"An odd fellow!' he would say: 'always spoke of his three eldest boys as
'good creatures, but so dull'; they're all doing capitally in the Indian
Civil! Philip was the only one he liked. I've heard him talk in the
queerest way; he once said to me: 'My dear fellow, never let your poor
wife know what you're thinking of! But I didn't follow his advice; not
I! An eccentric man! He would say to Phil: 'Whether you live like a
gentleman or not, my boy, be sure you die like one! and he had himself
embalmed in a frock coat suit, with a satin cravat and a diamond pin.
Oh, quite an original, I can assure you!"
Of Bosinney himself Baynes would speak warmly, with a certain compassion:
"He's got a streak of his father's Byronism. Why, look at the way he
threw up his chances when he left my office; going off like that for six
months with a knapsack, and all for what?--to study foreign
architecture--foreign! What could he expect? And there he is--a clever
young fellow--doesn't make his hundred a year! Now this engagement is
the best thing that could have happened--keep him steady; he's one of
those that go to bed all day and stay up all night, simply because
they've no method; but no vice about him--not an ounce of vice. Old
Forsyte's a rich man!"
Mr. Baynes made himself extremely pleasant to June, who frequently
visited his house in Lowndes Square at this period.
"This house of your cousin's--what a capital man of business--is the very
thing for Philip," he would say to her; "you mustn't expect to see too
much of him just now, my dear young lady. The good cause--the good
cause! The young man must make his way. When I was his age I was at work
day and night. My dear wife used to say to me, 'Bobby, don't work too
hard, think of your health'; but I never spared myself!"
June had complained that her lover found no time to come to Stanhope
Gate.
The first time he came again they had not been together a quarter of an
hour before, by one of those coincidences of which she was a mistress,
Mrs. Septimus Small arrived. Thereon Bosinney rose and hid himself,
according to previous arrangement, in the little study, to wait for her
departure.
"My dear," said Aunt Juley, "how thin he is! I've often noticed it with
engaged people; but you mustn't let it get worse. There's Barlow's
extract of veal; it did your Uncle Swithin a lot of good."
June, her little figure erect before the hearth, her small face quivering
grimly, for she regarded her aunt's untimely visit in the light of a
personal injury, replied with scorn:
"It's because he's busy; people who can do anything worth doing are never
fat!"
Aunt Juley pouted; she herself had always been thin, but the only
pleasure she derived from the fact was the opportunity of longing to be
stouter.
"I don't think," she said mournfully, "that you ought to let them call
him 'The Buccaneer'; people might think it odd, now that he's going to
build a house for Soames. I do hope he will be careful; it's so
important for him. Soames has such good taste!"
"Taste!" cried June, flaring up at once; "wouldn't give that for his
taste, or any of the family's!"
Mrs. Small was taken aback.
"Your Uncle Swithin," she said, "always had beautiful taste! And
Soames's little house is lovely; you don't mean to say you don't think
so!"
"H'mph!" said June, "that's only because Irene's there!"
Aunt Juley tried to say something pleasant:
"And how will dear Irene like living in the country?"
June gazed at her intently, with a look in her eyes as if her conscience
had suddenly leaped up into them; it passed; and an even more intent look
took its place, as if she had stared that conscience out of countenance.
She replied imperiously:
"Of course she'll like it; why shouldn't she?"
Mrs. Small grew nervous.
"I didn't know," she said; "I thought she mightn't like to leave her
friends. Your Uncle James says she doesn't take enough interest in life.
We think--I mean Timothy thinks--she ought to go out more. I expect
you'll miss her very much!"
June clasped her hands behind her neck.
"I do wish," she cried, "Uncle Timothy wouldn't talk about what doesn't
concern him!"
Aunt Juley rose to the full height of her tall figure.
"He never talks about what doesn't concern him," she said.
June was instantly compunctious; she ran to her aunt and kissed her.
"I'm very sorry, auntie; but I wish they'd let Irene alone."
Aunt Juley, unable to think of anything further on the subject that would
be suitable, was silent; she prepared for departure, hooking her black
silk cape across her chest, and, taking up her green reticule:
"And how is your dear grandfather?" she asked in the hall, "I expect he's
very lonely now that all your time is taken up with Mr. Bosinney."
She bent and kissed her niece hungrily, and with little, mincing steps
passed away.
The tears sprang up in June's eyes; running into the little study, where
Bosinney was sitting at the table drawing birds on the back of an
envelope, she sank down by his side and cried:
"Oh, Phil! it's all so horrid!" Her heart was as warm as the colour of
her hair.
On the following Sunday morning, while Soames was shaving, a message was
brought him to the effect that Mr. Bosinney was below, and would be glad
to see him. Opening the door into his wife's room, he said:
"Bosinney's downstairs. Just go and entertain him while I finish
shaving. I'll be down in a minute. It's about the plans, I expect."
Irene looked at him, without reply, put the finishing touch to her dress
and went downstairs. He could not make her out about this house. She
had said nothing against it, and, as far as Bosinney was concerned,
seemed friendly enough.
From the window of his dressing-room he could see them talking together
in the little court below. He hurried on with his shaving, cutting his
chin twice. He heard them laugh, and thought to himself: "Well, they get
on all right, anyway!"
As he expected, Bosinney had come round to fetch him to look at the
plans.
He took his hat and went over.
The plans were spread on the oak table in the architect's room; and pale,
imperturbable, inquiring, Soames bent over them for a long time without
speaking.
He said at last in a puzzled voice:
"It's an odd sort of house!"
A rectangular house of two stories was designed in a quadrangle round a
covered-in court. This court, encircled by a gallery on the upper floor,
was roofed with a glass roof, supported by eight columns running up from
the ground.
It was indeed, to Forsyte eyes, an odd house.
"There's a lot of room cut to waste," pursued Soames.
Bosinney began to walk about, and Soames did not like the expression on
his face.
"The principle of this house," said the architect, "was that you should
have room to breathe--like a gentleman!"
Soames extended his finger and thumb, as if measuring the extent of the
distinction he should acquire; and replied:
"Oh! yes; I see."
The peculiar look came into Bosinney's face which marked all his
enthusiasms.
"I've tried to plan you a house here with some self-respect of its own.
If you don't like it, you'd better say so. It's certainly the last
thing to be considered--who wants self-respect in a house, when you can
squeeze in an extra lavatory?" He put his finger suddenly down on the
left division of the centre oblong: "You can swing a cat here. This is
for your pictures, divided from this court by curtains; draw them back
and you'll have a space of fifty-one by twenty-three six. This
double-faced stove in the centre, here, looks one way towards the court,
one way towards the picture room; this end wall is all window; You've a
southeast light from that, a north light from the court. The rest of
your pictures you can hang round the gallery upstairs, or in the other
rooms." "In architecture," he went on--and though looking at Soames he
did not seem to see him, which gave Soames an unpleasant feeling--"as in
life, you'll get no self-respect without regularity. Fellows tell you
that's old fashioned. It appears to be peculiar any way; it never occurs
to us to embody the main principle of life in our buildings; we load our
houses with decoration, gimcracks, corners, anything to distract the eye.
On the contrary the eye should rest; get your effects with a few strong
lines. The whole thing is regularity there's no self-respect without
it."
Soames, the unconscious ironist, fixed his gaze on Bosinney's tie, which
was far from being in the perpendicular; he was unshaven too, and his
dress not remarkable for order. Architecture appeared to have exhausted
his regularity.
"Won't it look like a barrack?" he inquired.
He did not at once receive a reply.
"I can see what it is," said Bosinney, "you want one of Littlemaster's
houses--one of the pretty and commodious sort, where the servants will
live in garrets, and the front door be sunk so that you may come up
again. By all means try Littlemaster, you'll find him a capital fellow,
I've known him all my life!"
Soames was alarmed. He had really been struck by the plans, and the
concealment of his satisfaction had been merely instinctive. It was
difficult for him to pay a compliment. He despised people who were
lavish with their praises.
He found himself now in the embarrassing position of one who must pay a
compliment or run the risk of losing a good thing. Bosinney was just the
fellow who might tear up the plans and refuse to act for him; a kind of
grown-up child!
This grown-up childishness, to which he felt so superior, exercised a
peculiar and almost mesmeric effect on Soames, for he had never felt
anything like it in himself.
"Well," he stammered at last, "it's--it's, certainly original."
He had such a private distrust and even dislike of the word 'original'
that he felt he had not really given himself away by this remark.
Bosinney seemed pleased. It was the sort of thing that would please a
fellow like that! And his success encouraged Soames.
"It's--a big place," he said.
"Space, air, light," he heard Bosinney murmur, "you can't live like a
gentleman in one of Littlemaster's--he builds for manufacturers."
Soames made a deprecating movement; he had been identified with a
gentleman; not for a good deal of money now would he be classed with
manufacturers. But his innate distrust of general principles revived.
What the deuce was the good of talking about regularity and self-respect?
It looked to him as if the house would be cold.
"Irene can't stand the cold!" he said.
"Ah!" said Bosinney sarcastically. "Your wife? She doesn't like the
cold? I'll see to that; she shan't be cold. Look here!" he pointed, to
four marks at regular intervals on the walls of the court. "I've given
you hot-water pipes in aluminium casings; you can get them with very good
designs."
Soames looked suspiciously at these marks.
"It's all very well, all this," he said, "but what's it going to cost?"
The architect took a sheet of paper from his pocket:
"The house, of course, should be built entirely of stone, but, as I
thought you wouldn't stand that, I've compromised for a facing. It ought
to have a copper roof, but I've made it green slate. As it is, including
metal work, it'll cost you eight thousand five hundred."
"Eight thousand five hundred?" said Soames. "Why, I gave you an outside
limit of eight!"
"Can't be done for a penny less," replied Bosinney coolly.
"You must take it or leave it!"
It was the only way, probably, that such a proposition could have been
made to Soames. He was nonplussed. Conscience told him to throw the
whole thing up. But the design was good, and he knew it--there was
completeness about it, and dignity; the servants' apartments were
excellent too. He would gain credit by living in a house like that--with
such individual features, yet perfectly well-arranged.
He continued poring over the plans, while Bosinney went into his bedroom
to shave and dress.
The two walked back to Montpellier Square in silence, Soames watching him
out of the corner of his eye.
The Buccaneer was rather a good-looking fellow--so he thought--when he
was properly got up.
Irene was bending over her flowers when the two men came in.
She spoke of sending across the Park to fetch June.
"No, no," said Soames, "we've still got business to talk over!"
At lunch he was almost cordial, and kept pressing Bosinney to eat. He
was pleased to see the architect in such high spirits, and left him to
spend the afternoon with Irene, while he stole off to his pictures, after
his Sunday habit. At tea-time he came down to the drawing-room, and
found them talking, as he expressed it, nineteen to the dozen.
Unobserved in the doorway, he congratulated himself that things were
taking the right turn. It was lucky she and Bosinney got on; she seemed
to be falling into line with the idea of the new house.
Quiet meditation among his pictures had decided him to spring the five
hundred if necessary; but he hoped that the afternoon might have softened
Bosinney's estimates. It was so purely a matter which Bosinney could
remedy if he liked; there must be a dozen ways in which he could cheapen
the production of a house without spoiling the effect.
He awaited, therefore, his opportunity till Irene was handing the
architect his first cup of tea. A chink of sunshine through the lace of
the blinds warmed her cheek, shone in the gold of her hair, and in her
soft eyes. Possibly the same gleam deepened Bosinney's colour, gave the
rather startled look to his face.
Soames hated sunshine, and he at once got up, to draw the blind. Then he
took his own cup of tea from his wife, and said, more coldly than he had
intended:
"Can't you see your way to do it for eight thousand after all? There must
be a lot of little things you could alter."
Bosinney drank off his tea at a gulp, put down his cup, and answered:
"Not one!"
Soames saw that his suggestion had touched some unintelligible point of
personal vanity.
"Well," he agreed, with sulky resignation; "you must have it your own
way, I suppose."
A few minutes later Bosinney rose to go, and Soames rose too, to see him
off the premises. The architect seemed in absurdly high spirits. After
watching him walk away at a swinging pace, Soames returned moodily to the
drawing-room, where Irene was putting away the music, and, moved by an
uncontrollable spasm of curiosity, he asked:
"Well, what do you think of 'The Buccaneer'?"
He looked at the carpet while waiting for her answer, and he had to wait
some time.
"I don't know," she said at last.
"Do you think he's good-looking?"
Irene smiled. And it seemed to Soames that she was mocking him.
"Yes," she answered; "very."
CHAPTER IX
DEATH OF AUNT ANN
There came a morning at the end of September when Aunt Ann was unable to
take from Smither's hands the insignia of personal dignity. After one
look at the old face, the doctor, hurriedly sent for, announced that Miss
Forsyte had passed away in her sleep.
Aunts Juley and Hester were overwhelmed by the shock. They had never
imagined such an ending. Indeed, it is doubtful whether they had ever
realized that an ending was bound to come. Secretly they felt it
unreasonable of Ann to have left them like this without a word, without
even a struggle. It was unlike her.
Perhaps what really affected them so profoundly was the thought that a
Forsyte should have let go her grasp on life. If one, then why not all!
It was a full hour before they could make up their minds to tell Timothy.
If only it could be kept from him! If only it could be broken to him by
degrees!
And long they stood outside his door whispering together. And when it
was over they whispered together again.
He would feel it more, they were afraid, as time went on. Still, he had
taken it better than could have been expected. He would keep his bed, of
course!
They separated, crying quietly.
Aunt Juley stayed in her room, prostrated by the blow. Her face,
discoloured by tears, was divided into compartments by the little ridges
of pouting flesh which had swollen with emotion. It was impossible to
conceive of life without Ann, who had lived with her for seventy-three
years, broken only by the short interregnum of her married life, which
seemed now so unreal. At fixed intervals she went to her drawer, and
took from beneath the lavender bags a fresh pocket-handkerchief. Her
warm heart could not bear the thought that Ann was lying there so cold.
Aunt Hester, the silent, the patient, that backwater of the family
energy, sat in the drawing-room, where the blinds were drawn; and she,
too, had wept at first, but quietly, without visible effect. Her guiding
principle, the conservation of energy, did not abandon her in sorrow.
She sat, slim, motionless, studying the grate, her hands idle in the lap
of her black silk dress. They would want to rouse her into doing
something, no doubt. As if there were any good in that! Doing something
would not bring back Ann! Why worry her?
Five o'clock brought three of the brothers, Jolyon and James and Swithin;
Nicholas was at Yarmouth, and Roger had a bad attack of gout. Mrs.
Hayman had been by herself earlier in the day, and, after seeing Ann, had
gone away, leaving a message for Timothy--which was kept from him--that
she ought to have been told sooner. In fact, there was a feeling amongst
them all that they ought to have been told sooner, as though they had
missed something; and James said:
"I knew how it'd be; I told you she wouldn't last through the summer."
Aunt Hester made no reply; it was nearly October, but what was the good
of arguing; some people were never satisfied.
She sent up to tell her sister that the brothers were there. Mrs. Small
came down at once. She had bathed her face, which was still swollen, and
though she looked severely at Swithin's trousers, for they were of light
blue--he had come straight from the club, where the news had reached
him--she wore a more cheerful expression than usual, the instinct for
doing the wrong thing being even now too strong for her.
Presently all five went up to look at the body. Under the pure white
sheet a quilted counter-pane had been placed, for now, more than ever,
Aunt Ann had need of warmth; and, the pillows removed, her spine and head
rested flat, with the semblance of their life-long inflexibility; the
coif banding the top of her brow was drawn on either side to the level of
the ears, and between it and the sheet her face, almost as white, was
turned with closed eyes to the faces of her brothers and sisters. In its
extraordinary peace the face was stronger than ever, nearly all bone now
under the scarce-wrinkled parchment of skin--square jaw and chin,
cheekbones, forehead with hollow temples, chiselled nose--the fortress of
an unconquerable spirit that had yielded to death, and in its upward
sightlessness seemed trying to regain that spirit, to regain the
guardianship it had just laid down.
Swithin took but one look at the face, and left the room; the sight, he
said afterwards, made him very queer. He went downstairs shaking the
whole house, and, seizing his hat, clambered into his brougham, without
giving any directions to the coachman. He was driven home, and all the
evening sat in his chair without moving.
He could take nothing for dinner but a partridge, with an imperial pint
of champagne....
Old Jolyon stood at the bottom of the bed, his hands folded in front of
him. He alone of those in the room remembered the death of his mother,
and though he looked at Ann, it was of that he was thinking. Ann was an
old woman, but death had come to her at last--death came to all! His
face did not move, his gaze seemed travelling from very far.
Aunt Hester stood beside him. She did not cry now, tears were
exhausted--her nature refused to permit a further escape of force; she
twisted her hands, looking not at Ann, but from side to side, seeking
some way of escaping the effort of realization.
Of all the brothers and sisters James manifested the most emotion. Tears
rolled down the parallel furrows of his thin face; where he should go now
to tell his troubles he did not know; Juley was no good, Hester worse
than useless! He felt Ann's death more than he had ever thought he
should; this would upset him for weeks!
Presently Aunt Hester stole out, and Aunt Juley began moving about, doing
'what was necessary,' so that twice she knocked against something. Old
Jolyon, roused from his reverie, that reverie of the long, long past,
looked sternly at her, and went away. James alone was left by the
bedside; glancing stealthily round, to see that he was not observed, he
twisted his long body down, placed a kiss on the dead forehead, then he,
too, hastily left the room. Encountering Smither in the hall, he began
to ask her about the funeral, and, finding that she knew nothing,
complained bitterly that, if they didn't take care, everything would go
wrong. She had better send for Mr. Soames--he knew all about that sort
of thing; her master was very much upset, he supposed--he would want
looking after; as for her mistresses, they were no good--they had no
gumption! They would be ill too, he shouldn't wonder. She had better
send for the doctor; it was best to take things in time. He didn't think
his sister Ann had had the best opinion; if she'd had Blank she would
have been alive now. Smither might send to Park Lane any time she wanted
advice. Of course, his carriage was at their service for the funeral.
He supposed she hadn't such a thing as a glass of claret and a
biscuit--he had had no lunch!
The days before the funeral passed quietly. It had long been known, of
course, that Aunt Ann had left her little property to Timothy. There
was, therefore, no reason for the slightest agitation. Soames, who was
sole executor, took charge of all arrangements, and in due course sent
out the following invitation to every male member of the family:
To...........
Your presence is requested at the funeral of Miss Ann Forsyte, in
Highgate Cemetery, at noon of Oct. 1st. Carriages will meet at "The
Bower," Bayswater Road, at 10.45. No flowers by request.
'R.S.V.P.'
The morning came, cold, with a high, grey, London sky, and at half-past
ten the first carriage, that of James, drove up. It contained James and
his son-in-law Dartie, a fine man, with a square chest, buttoned very
tightly into a frock coat, and a sallow, fattish face adorned with dark,
well-curled moustaches, and that incorrigible commencement of whisker
which, eluding the strictest attempts at shaving, seems the mark of
something deeply ingrained in the personality of the shaver, being
especially noticeable in men who speculate.
Soames, in his capacity of executor, received the guests, for Timothy
still kept his bed; he would get up after the funeral; and Aunts Juley
and Hester would not be coming down till all was over, when it was
understood there would be lunch for anyone who cared to come back. The
next to arrive was Roger, still limping from the gout, and encircled by
three of his sons--young Roger, Eustace, and Thomas. George, the
remaining son, arrived almost immediately afterwards in a hansom, and
paused in the hall to ask Soames how he found undertaking pay.
They disliked each other.
Then came two Haymans--Giles and Jesse perfectly silent, and very well
dressed, with special creases down their evening trousers. Then old
Jolyon alone. Next, Nicholas, with a healthy colour in his face, and a
carefully veiled sprightliness in every movement of his head and body.
One of his sons followed him, meek and subdued. Swithin Forsyte, and
Bosinney arrived at the same moment,--and stood--bowing precedence to
each other,--but on the door opening they tried to enter together; they
renewed their apologies in the hall, and, Swithin, settling his stock,
which had become disarranged in the struggle, very slowly mounted the
stairs. The other Hayman; two married sons of Nicholas, together with
Tweetyman, Spender, and Warry, the husbands of married Forsyte and Hayman
daughters. The company was then complete, twenty-one in all, not a male
member of the family being absent but Timothy and young Jolyon.
Entering the scarlet and green drawing-room, whose apparel made so vivid
a setting for their unaccustomed costumes, each tried nervously to find a
seat, desirous of hiding the emphatic blackness of his trousers. There
seemed a sort of indecency in that blackness and in the colour of their
gloves--a sort of exaggeration of the feelings; and many cast shocked
looks of secret envy at 'the Buccaneer,' who had no gloves, and was
wearing grey trousers. A subdued hum of conversation rose, no one
speaking of the departed, but each asking after the other, as though
thereby casting an indirect libation to this event, which they had come
to honour.
And presently James said:
"Well, I think we ought to be starting."
They went downstairs, and, two and two, as they had been told off in
strict precedence, mounted the carriages.
The hearse started at a foot's pace; the carriages moved slowly after.
In the first went old Jolyon with Nicholas; in the second, the twins,
Swithin and James; in the third, Roger and young Roger; Soames, young
Nicholas, George, and Bosinney followed in the fourth. Each of the other
carriages, eight in all, held three or four of the family; behind them
came the doctor's brougham; then, at a decent interval, cabs containing
family clerks and servants; and at the very end, one containing nobody at
all, but bringing the total cortege up to the number of thirteen.
So long as the procession kept to the highway of the Bayswater Road, it
retained the foot's-pace, but, turning into less important
thorough-fares, it soon broke into a trot, and so proceeded, with
intervals of walking in the more fashionable streets, until it arrived.
In the first carriage old Jolyon and Nicholas were talking of their
wills. In the second the twins, after a single attempt, had lapsed into
complete silence; both were rather deaf, and the exertion of making
themselves heard was too great. Only once James broke this silence:
"I shall have to be looking about for some ground somewhere. What
arrangements have you made, Swithin?"
And Swithin, fixing him with a dreadful stare, answered:
"Don't talk to me about such things!"
In the third carriage a disjointed conversation was carried on in the
intervals of looking out to see how far they had got, George remarking,
"Well, it was really time that the poor old lady went." He didn't
believe in people living beyond seventy, Young Nicholas replied mildly
that the rule didn't seem to apply to the Forsytes. George said he
himself intended to commit suicide at sixty. Young Nicholas, smiling and
stroking a long chin, didn't think his father would like that theory; he
had made a lot of money since he was sixty. Well, seventy was the
outside limit; it was then time, George said, for them to go and leave
their money to their children. Soames, hitherto silent, here joined in;
he had not forgotten the remark about the 'undertaking,' and, lifting his
eyelids almost imperceptibly, said it was all very well for people who
never made money to talk. He himself intended to live as long as he
could. This was a hit at George, who was notoriously hard up. Bosinney
muttered abstractedly "Hear, hear!" and, George yawning, the conversation
dropped.
Upon arriving, the coffin was borne into the chapel, and, two by two, the
mourners filed in behind it. This guard of men, all attached to the dead
by the bond of kinship, was an impressive and singular sight in the great
city of London, with its overwhelming diversity of life, its innumerable
vocations, pleasures, duties, its terrible hardness, its terrible call to
individualism.
The family had gathered to triumph over all this, to give a show of
tenacious unity, to illustrate gloriously that law of property underlying
the growth of their tree, by which it had thriven and spread, trunk and
branches, the sap flowing through all, the full growth reached at the
appointed time. The spirit of the old woman lying in her last sleep had
called them to this demonstration. It was her final appeal to that unity
which had been their strength--it was her final triumph that she had died
while the tree was yet whole.
She was spared the watching of the branches jut out beyond the point of
balance. She could not look into the hearts of her followers. The same
law that had worked in her, bringing her up from a tall, straight-backed
slip of a girl to a woman strong and grown, from a woman grown to a woman
old, angular, feeble, almost witchlike, with individuality all sharpened
and sharpened, as all rounding from the world's contact fell off from
her--that same law would work, was working, in the family she had watched
like a mother.
She had seen it young, and growing, she had seen it strong and grown, and
before her old eyes had time or strength to see any more, she died. She
would have tried, and who knows but she might have kept it young and
strong, with her old fingers, her trembling kisses--a little longer;
alas! not even Aunt Ann could fight with Nature.
'Pride comes before a fall!' In accordance with this, the greatest of
Nature's ironies, the Forsyte family had gathered for a last proud
pageant before they fell. Their faces to right and left, in single
lines, were turned for the most part impassively toward the ground,
guardians of their thoughts; but here and there, one looking upward, with
a line between his brows, searched to see some sight on the chapel walls
too much for him, to be listening to something that appalled. And the
responses, low-muttered, in voices through which rose the same tone, the
same unseizable family ring, sounded weird, as though murmured in hurried
duplication by a single person.
The service in the chapel over, the mourners filed up again to guard the
body to the tomb. The vault stood open, and, round it, men in black were
waiting.
From that high and sacred field, where thousands of the upper middle
class lay in their last sleep, the eyes of the Forsytes travelled down
across the flocks of graves. There--spreading to the distance, lay
London, with no sun over it, mourning the loss of its daughter, mourning
with this family, so dear, the loss of her who was mother and guardian.
A hundred thousand spires and houses, blurred in the great grey web of
property, lay there like prostrate worshippers before the grave of this,
the oldest Forsyte of them all.
A few words, a sprinkle of earth, the thrusting of the coffin home, and
Aunt Ann had passed to her last rest.
Round the vault, trustees of that passing, the five brothers stood, with
white heads bowed; they would see that Ann was comfortable where she was
going. Her little property must stay behind, but otherwise, all that
could be should be done....
Then severally, each stood aside, and putting on his hat, turned back to
inspect the new inscription on the marble of the family vault:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ANN FORSYTE, THE DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE JOLYON AND
ANN FORSYTE, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE THE 27TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER, 1886, AGED
EIGHTY-SEVEN YEARS AND FOUR DAYS
Soon perhaps, someone else would be wanting an inscription. It was
strange and intolerable, for they had not thought somehow, that Forsytes
could die. And one and all they had a longing to get away from this
painfulness, this ceremony which had reminded them of things they could
not bear to think about--to get away quickly and go about their business
and forget.
It was cold, too; the wind, like some slow, disintegrating force, blowing
up the hill over the graves, struck them with its chilly breath; they
began to split into groups, and as quickly as possible to fill the
waiting carriages.
Swithin said he should go back to lunch at Timothy's, and he offered to
take anybody with him in his brougham. It was considered a doubtful
privilege to drive with Swithin in his brougham, which was not a large
one; nobody accepted, and he went off alone. James and Roger followed
immediately after; they also would drop in to lunch. The others
gradually melted away, Old Jolyon taking three nephews to fill up his
carriage; he had a want of those young faces.
Soames, who had to arrange some details in the cemetery office, walked
away with Bosinney. He had much to talk over with him, and, having
finished his business, they strolled to Hampstead, lunched together at
the Spaniard's Inn, and spent a long time in going into practical details
connected with the building of the house; they then proceeded to the
tram-line, and came as far as the Marble Arch, where Bosinney went off to
Stanhope Gate to see June.
Soames felt in excellent spirits when he arrived home, and confided to
Irene at dinner that he had had a good talk with Bosinney, who really
seemed a sensible fellow; they had had a capital walk too, which had done
his liver good--he had been short of exercise for a long time--and
altogether a very satisfactory day. If only it hadn't been for poor Aunt
Ann, he would have taken her to the theatre; as it was, they must make
the best of an evening at home.
"The Buccaneer asked after you more than once," he said suddenly. And
moved by some inexplicable desire to assert his proprietorship, he rose
from his chair and planted a kiss on his wife's shoulder.
PART II
CHAPTER I
PROGRESS OF THE HOUSE
The winter had been an open one. Things in the trade were slack; and as
Soames had reflected before making up his mind, it had been a good time
for building. The shell of the house at Robin Hill was thus completed by
the end of April.
Now that there was something to be seen for his money, he had been coming
down once, twice, even three times a week, and would mouse about among
the debris for hours, careful never to soil his clothes, moving silently
through the unfinished brickwork of doorways, or circling round the
columns in the central court.
And he would stand before them for minutes' together, as though peering
into the real quality of their substance.
On April 30 he had an appointment with Bosinney to go over the accounts,
and five minutes before the proper time he entered the tent which the
architect had pitched for himself close to the old oak tree.
The accounts were already prepared on a folding table, and with a nod
Soames sat down to study them. It was some time before he raised his
head.
"I can't make them out," he said at last; "they come to nearly seven
hundred more than they ought"
After a glance at Bosinney's face he went on quickly:
"If you only make a firm stand against these builder chaps you'll get
them down. They stick you with everything if you don't look sharp....
Take ten per cent. off all round. I shan't mind it's coming out a
hundred or so over the mark!"
Bosinney shook his head:
"I've taken off every farthing I can!"
Soames pushed back the table with a movement of anger, which sent the
account sheets fluttering to the ground.
"Then all I can say is," he flustered out, "you've made a pretty mess of
it!"
"I've told you a dozen times," Bosinney answered sharply, "that there'd
be extras. I've pointed them out to you over and over again!"
"I know that," growled Soames: "I shouldn't have objected to a ten pound
note here and there. How was I to know that by 'extras' you meant seven
hundred pounds?"
The qualities of both men had contributed to this not-inconsiderable
discrepancy. On the one hand, the architect's devotion to his idea, to
the image of a house which he had created and believed in--had made him
nervous of being stopped, or forced to the use of makeshifts; on the
other, Soames' not less true and wholehearted devotion to the very best
article that could be obtained for the money, had rendered him averse to
believing that things worth thirteen shillings could not be bought with
twelve.
"I wish I'd never undertaken your house," said Bosinney suddenly. "You
come down here worrying me out of my life. You want double the value for
your money anybody else would, and now that you've got a house that for
its size is not to be beaten in the county, you don't want to pay for it.
If you're anxious to be off your bargain, I daresay I can find the
balance above the estimates myself, but I'm d----d if I do another stroke
of work for you!"
Soames regained his composure. Knowing that Bosinney had no capital, he
regarded this as a wild suggestion. He saw, too, that he would be kept
indefinitely out of this house on which he had set his heart, and just at
the crucial point when the architect's personal care made all the
difference. In the meantime there was Irene to be thought of! She had
been very queer lately. He really believed it was only because she had
taken to Bosinney that she tolerated the idea of the house at all. It
would not do to make an open breach with her.
"You needn't get into a rage," he said. "If I'm willing to put up with
it, I suppose you needn't cry out. All I meant was that when you tell me
a thing is going to cost so much, I like to--well, in fact, I--like to
know where I am."
"Look here!" said Bosinney, and Soames was both annoyed and surprised by
the shrewdness of his glance. "You've got my services dirt cheap. For
the kind of work I've put into this house, and the amount of time I've
given to it, you'd have had to pay Littlemaster or some other fool four
times as much. What you want, in fact, is a first-rate man for a
fourth-rate fee, and that's exactly what you've got!"
Soames saw that he really meant what he said, and, angry though he was,
the consequences of a row rose before him too vividly. He saw his house
unfinished, his wife rebellious, himself a laughingstock.
"Let's go over it," he said sulkily, "and see how the money's gone."
"Very well," assented Bosinney. "But we'll hurry up, if you don't mind.
I have to get back in time to take June to the theatre."
Soames cast a stealthy look at him, and said: "Coming to our place, I
suppose to meet her?" He was always coming to their place!
There had been rain the night before-a spring rain, and the earth smelt
of sap and wild grasses. The warm, soft breeze swung the leaves and the
golden buds of the old oak tree, and in the sunshine the blackbirds were
whistling their hearts out.
It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a
painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at
the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.
The earth gave forth a fainting warmth, stealing up through the chilly
garment in which winter had wrapped her. It was her long caress of
invitation, to draw men down to lie within her arms, to roll their bodies
on her, and put their lips to her breast.
On just such a day as this Soames had got from Irene the promise he had
asked her for so often. Seated on the fallen trunk of a tree, he had
promised for the twentieth time that if their marriage were not a
success, she should be as free as if she had never married him!
"Do you swear it?" she had said. A few days back she had reminded him of
that oath. He had answered: "Nonsense! I couldn't have sworn any such
thing!" By some awkward fatality he remembered it now. What queer
things men would swear for the sake of women! He would have sworn it at
any time to gain her! He would swear it now, if thereby he could touch
her--but nobody could touch her, she was cold-hearted!
And memories crowded on him with the fresh, sweet savour of the spring
wind-memories of his courtship.
In the spring of the year 1881 he was visiting his old school-fellow and
client, George Liversedge, of Branksome, who, with the view of developing
his pine-woods in the neighbourhood of Bournemouth, had placed the
formation of the company necessary to the scheme in Soames's hands. Mrs.
Liversedge, with a sense of the fitness of things, had given a musical
tea in his honour. Later in the course of this function, which Soames, no
musician, had regarded as an unmitigated bore, his eye had been caught by
the face of a girl dressed in mourning, standing by herself. The lines
of her tall, as yet rather thin figure, showed through the wispy,
clinging stuff of her black dress, her black-gloved hands were crossed in
front of her, her lips slightly parted, and her large, dark eyes wandered
from face to face. Her hair, done low on her neck, seemed to gleam above
her black collar like coils of shining metal. And as Soames stood
looking at her, the sensation that most men have felt at one time or
another went stealing through him--a peculiar satisfaction of the senses,
a peculiar certainty, which novelists and old ladies call love at first
sight. Still stealthily watching her, he at once made his way to his
hostess, and stood doggedly waiting for the music to cease.
"Who is that girl with yellow hair and dark eyes?" he asked.
"That--oh! Irene Heron. Her father, Professor Heron, died this year.
She lives with her stepmother. She's a nice girl, a pretty girl, but no
money!"
"Introduce me, please," said Soames.
It was very little that he found to say, nor did he find her responsive
to that little. But he went away with the resolution to see her again.
He effected his object by chance, meeting her on the pier with her
stepmother, who had the habit of walking there from twelve to one of a
forenoon. Soames made this lady's acquaintance with alacrity, nor was it
long before he perceived in her the ally he was looking for. His keen
scent for the commercial side of family life soon told him that Irene
cost her stepmother more than the fifty pounds a year she brought her; it
also told him that Mrs. Heron, a woman yet in the prime of life, desired
to be married again. The strange ripening beauty of her stepdaughter
stood in the way of this desirable consummation. And Soames, in his
stealthy tenacity, laid his plans.
He left Bournemouth without having given himself away, but in a month's
time came back, and this time he spoke, not to the girl, but to her
stepmother. He had made up his mind, he said; he would wait any time.
And he had long to wait, watching Irene bloom, the lines of her young
figure softening, the stronger blood deepening the gleam of her eyes, and
warming her face to a creamy glow; and at each visit he proposed to her,
and when that visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him, back
to London, sore at heart, but steadfast and silent as the grave. He
tried to come at the secret springs of her resistance; only once had he a
gleam of light. It was at one of those assembly dances, which afford the
only outlet to the passions of the population of seaside watering-places.
He was sitting with her in an embrasure, his senses tingling with the
contact of the waltz. She had looked at him over her, slowly waving fan;
and he had lost his head. Seizing that moving wrist, he pressed his lips
to the flesh of her arm. And she had shuddered--to this day he had not
forgotten that shudder--nor the look so passionately averse she had given
him.
A year after that she had yielded. What had made her yield he could
never make out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some diplomatic talent,
he learnt nothing. Once after they were married he asked her, "What made
you refuse me so often?" She had answered by a strange silence. An
enigma to him from the day that he first saw her, she was an enigma to
him still....
Bosinney was waiting for him at the door; and on his rugged,
good-looking, face was a queer, yearning, yet happy look, as though he
too saw a promise of bliss in the spring sky, sniffed a coming happiness
in the spring air. Soames looked at him waiting there. What was the
matter with the fellow that he looked so happy? What was he waiting for
with that smile on his lips and in his eyes? Soames could not see that
for which Bosinney was waiting as he stood there drinking in the
flower-scented wind. And once more he felt baffled in the presence of
this man whom by habit he despised. He hastened on to the house.
"The only colour for those tiles," he heard Bosinney say,--"is ruby with
a grey tint in the stuff, to give a transparent effect. I should like
Irene's opinion. I'm ordering the purple leather curtains for the
doorway of this court; and if you distemper the drawing-room ivory cream
over paper, you'll get an illusive look. You want to aim all through the
decorations at what I call charm."
Soames said: "You mean that my wife has charm!"
Bosinney evaded the question.
"You should have a clump of iris plants in the centre of that court."
Soames smiled superciliously.
"I'll look into Beech's some time," he said, "and see what's
appropriate!"
They found little else to say to each other, but on the way to the
Station Soames asked:
"I suppose you find Irene very artistic."
"Yes." The abrupt answer was as distinct a snub as saying: "If you want
to discuss her you can do it with someone else!"
And the slow, sulky anger Soames had felt all the afternoon burned the
brighter within him.
Neither spoke again till they were close to the Station, then Soames
asked:
"When do you expect to have finished?"
"By the end of June, if you really wish me to decorate as well."
Soames nodded. "But you quite understand," he said, "that the house is
costing me a lot beyond what I contemplated. I may as well tell you that
I should have thrown it up, only I'm not in the habit of giving up what
I've set my mind on."
Bosinney made no reply. And Soames gave him askance a look of dogged
dislike--for in spite of his fastidious air and that supercilious,
dandified taciturnity, Soames, with his set lips and squared chin, was
not unlike a bulldog....
When, at seven o'clock that evening, June arrived at 62, Montpellier
Square, the maid Bilson told her that Mr. Bosinney was in the
drawing-room; the mistress--she said--was dressing, and would be down in
a minute. She would tell her that Miss June was here.
June stopped her at once.
"All right, Bilson," she said, "I'll just go in. You, needn't hurry Mrs.
Soames."
She took off her cloak, and Bilson, with an understanding look, did not
even open the drawing-room door for her, but ran downstairs.
June paused for a moment to look at herself in the little old-fashioned
silver mirror above the oaken rug chest--a slim, imperious young figure,
with a small resolute face, in a white frock, cut moon-shaped at the base
of a neck too slender for her crown of twisted red-gold hair.
She opened the drawing-room door softly, meaning to take him by surprise.
The room was filled with a sweet hot scent of flowering azaleas.
She took a long breath of the perfume, and heard Bosinney's voice, not in
the room, but quite close, saying.
"Ah! there were such heaps of things I wanted to talk about, and now we
shan't have time!"
Irene's voice answered: "Why not at dinner?"
"How can one talk...."
June's first thought was to go away, but instead she crossed to the long
window opening on the little court. It was from there that the scent of
the azaleas came, and, standing with their backs to her, their faces
buried in the golden-pink blossoms, stood her lover and Irene.
Silent but unashamed, with flaming cheeks and angry eyes, the girl
watched.
"Come on Sunday by yourself--We can go over the house together."
June saw Irene look up at him through her screen of blossoms. It was not
the look of a coquette, but--far worse to the watching girl--of a woman
fearful lest that look should say too much.
"I've promised to go for a drive with Uncle...."
"The big one! Make him bring you; it's only ten miles--the very thing
for his horses."
"Poor old Uncle Swithin!"
A wave of the azalea scent drifted into June's face; she felt sick and
dizzy.
"Do! ah! do!"
"But why?"
"I must see you there--I thought you'd like to help me...."
The answer seemed to the girl to come softly with a tremble from amongst
the blossoms: "So I do!"
And she stepped into the open space of the window.
"How stuffy it is here!" she said; "I can't bear this scent!"
Her eyes, so angry and direct, swept both their faces.
"Were you talking about the house? I haven't seen it yet, you
know--shall we all go on Sunday?"'
From Irene's face the colour had flown.
"I am going for a drive that day with Uncle Swithin," she answered.
"Uncle Swithin! What does he matter? You can throw him over!"
"I am not in the habit of throwing people over!"
There was a sound of footsteps and June saw Soames standing just behind
her.
"Well! if you are all ready," said Irene, looking from one to the other
with a strange smile, "dinner is too!"
CHAPTER II
JUNE'S TREAT
Dinner began in silence; the women facing one another, and the men.
In silence the soup was finished--excellent, if a little thick; and fish
was brought. In silence it was handed.
Bosinney ventured: "It's the first spring day."
Irene echoed softly: "Yes--the first spring day."
"Spring!" said June: "there isn't a breath of air!" No one replied.
The fish was taken away, a fine fresh sole from Dover. And Bilson
brought champagne, a bottle swathed around the neck with white....
Soames said: "You'll find it dry."
Cutlets were handed, each pink-frilled about the legs. They were refused
by June, and silence fell.
Soames said: "You'd better take a cutlet, June; there's nothing coming."
But June again refused, so they were borne away. And then Irene asked:
"Phil, have you heard my blackbird?"
Bosinney answered: "Rather--he's got a hunting-song. As I came round I
heard him in the Square."
"He's such a darling!"
"Salad, sir?" Spring chicken was removed.
But Soames was speaking: "The asparagus is very poor. Bosinney, glass of
sherry with your sweet? June, you're drinking nothing!"
June said: "You know I never do. Wine's such horrid stuff!"
An apple charlotte came upon a silver dish, and smilingly Irene said:
"The azaleas are so wonderful this year!"
To this Bosinney murmured: "Wonderful! The scent's extraordinary!"
June said: "How can you like the scent? Sugar, please, Bilson."
Sugar was handed her, and Soames remarked: "This charlottes good!"
The charlotte was removed. Long silence followed. Irene, beckoning,
said: "Take out the azalea, Bilson. Miss June can't bear the scent."
"No; let it stay," said June.
Olives from France, with Russian caviare, were placed on little plates.
And Soames remarked: "Why can't we have the Spanish?" But no one
answered.
The olives were removed. Lifting her tumbler June demanded: "Give me
some water, please." Water was given her. A silver tray was brought,
with German plums. There was a lengthy pause. In perfect harmony all
were eating them.
Bosinney counted up the stones: "This year--next year--some time."
Irene finished softly: "Never! There was such a glorious sunset. The
sky's all ruby still--so beautiful!"
He answered: "Underneath the dark."
Their eyes had met, and June cried scornfully: "A London sunset!"
Egyptian cigarettes were handed in a silver box. Soames, taking one,
remarked: "What time's your play begin?"
No one replied, and Turkish coffee followed in enamelled cups.
Irene, smiling quietly, said: "If only...."
"Only what?" said June.
"If only it could always be the spring!"
Brandy was handed; it was pale and old.
Soames said: "Bosinney, better take some brandy."
Bosinney took a glass; they all arose.
"You want a cab?" asked Soames.
June answered: "No! My cloaks please, Bilson." Her cloak was brought.
Irene, from the window, murmured: "Such a lovely night! The stars are
coming out!"
Soames added: "Well, I hope you'll both enjoy yourselves."
From the door June answered: "Thanks. Come, Phil."
Bosinney cried: "I'm coming."
Soames smiled a sneering smile, and said: "I wish you luck!"
And at the door Irene watched them go.
Bosinney called: "Good night!"
"Good night!" she answered softly....
June made her lover take her on the top of a 'bus, saying she wanted air,
and there sat silent, with her face to the breeze.
The driver turned once or twice, with the intention of venturing a
remark, but thought better of it. They were a lively couple! The spring
had got into his blood, too; he felt the need for letting steam escape,
and clucked his tongue, flourishing his whip, wheeling his horses, and
even they, poor things, had smelled the spring, and for a brief half-hour
spurned the pavement with happy hoofs.
The whole town was alive; the boughs, curled upward with their decking of
young leaves, awaited some gift the breeze could bring. New-lighted
lamps were gaining mastery, and the faces of the crowd showed pale under
that glare, while on high the great white clouds slid swiftly, softly,
over the purple sky.
Men in, evening dress had thrown back overcoats, stepping jauntily up the
steps of Clubs; working folk loitered; and women--those women who at
that time of night are solitary--solitary and moving eastward in a
stream--swung slowly along, with expectation in their gait, dreaming of
good wine and a good supper, or--for an unwonted minute, of kisses given
for love.
Those countless figures, going their ways under the lamps and the
moving-sky, had one and all received some restless blessing from the stir
of spring. And one and all, like those clubmen with their opened coats,
had shed something of caste, and creed, and custom, and by the cock of
their hats, the pace of their walk, their laughter, or their silence,
revealed their common kinship under the passionate heavens.
Bosinney and June entered the theatre in silence, and mounted to their
seats in the upper boxes. The piece had just begun, and the
half-darkened house, with its rows of creatures peering all one way,
resembled a great garden of flowers turning their faces to the sun.
June had never before been in the upper boxes. From the age of fifteen
she had habitually accompanied her grandfather to the stalls, and not
common stalls, but the best seats in the house, towards the centre of the
third row, booked by old Jolyon, at Grogan and Boyne's, on his way home
from the City, long before the day; carried in his overcoat pocket,
together with his cigar-case and his old kid gloves, and handed to June
to keep till the appointed night. And in those stalls--an erect old
figure with a serene white head, a little figure, strenuous and eager,
with a red-gold head--they would sit through every kind of play, and on
the way home old Jolyon would say of the principal actor: "Oh, he's a
poor stick! You should have seen little Bobson!"
She had looked forward to this evening with keen delight; it was stolen,
chaperone-less, undreamed of at Stanhope Gate, where she was supposed to
be at Soames'. She had expected reward for her subterfuge, planned for
her lover's sake; she had expected it to break up the thick, chilly
cloud, and make the relations between them which of late had been so
puzzling, so tormenting--sunny and simple again as they had been before
the winter. She had come with the intention of saying something
definite; and she looked at the stage with a furrow between her brows,
seeing nothing, her hands squeezed together in her lap. A swarm of
jealous suspicions stung and stung her.
If Bosinney was conscious of her trouble he made no sign.
The curtain dropped. The first act had come to an end.
"It's awfully hot here!" said the girl; "I should like to go out."
She was very white, and she knew--for with her nerves thus sharpened she
saw everything--that he was both uneasy and compunctious.
At the back of the theatre an open balcony hung over the street; she took
possession of this, and stood leaning there without a word, waiting for
him to begin.
At last she could bear it no longer.
"I want to say something to you, Phil," she said.
"Yes?"
The defensive tone of his voice brought the colour flying to her cheek,
the words flying to her lips: "You don't give me a chance to be nice to
you; you haven't for ages now!"
Bosinney stared down at the street. He made no answer....
June cried passionately: "You know I want to do everything for you--that
I want to be everything to you...."
A hum rose from the street, and, piercing it with a sharp 'ping,' the
bell sounded for the raising of the curtain. June did not stir. A
desperate struggle was going on within her. Should she put everything to
the proof? Should she challenge directly that influence, that attraction
which was driving him away from her? It was her nature to challenge, and
she said: "Phil, take me to see the house on Sunday!"
With a smile quivering and breaking on her lips, and trying, how hard,
not to show that she was watching, she searched his face, saw it waver
and hesitate, saw a troubled line come between his brows, the blood rush
into his face. He answered: "Not Sunday, dear; some other day!"
"Why not Sunday? I shouldn't be in the way on Sunday."
He made an evident effort, and said: "I have an engagement."
"You are going to take...."
His eyes grew angry; he shrugged his shoulders, and answered: "An
engagement that will prevent my taking you to see the house!"
June bit her lip till the blood came, and walked back to her seat without
another word, but she could not help the tears of rage rolling down her
face. The house had been mercifully darkened for a crisis, and no one
could see her trouble.
Yet in this world of Forsytes let no man think himself immune from
observation.
In the third row behind, Euphemia, Nicholas's youngest daughter, with her
married-sister, Mrs. Tweetyman, were watching.
They reported at Timothy's, how they had seen June and her fiance at the
theatre.
"In the stalls?" "No, not in the...." "Oh! in the dress circle, of
course. That seemed to be quite fashionable nowadays with young people!"
Well--not exactly. In the.... Anyway, that engagement wouldn't last
long. They had never seen anyone look so thunder and lightningy as that
little June! With tears of enjoyment in their eyes, they related how she
had kicked a man's hat as she returned to her seat in the middle of an
act, and how the man had looked. Euphemia had a noted, silent laugh,
terminating most disappointingly in squeaks; and when Mrs. Small, holding
up her hands, said: "My dear! Kicked a ha-at?" she let out such a number
of these that she had to be recovered with smelling-salts. As she went
away she said to Mrs. Tweetyman:
"Kicked a--ha-at! Oh! I shall die."
For 'that little June' this evening, that was to have been 'her treat,'
was the most miserable she had ever spent. God knows she tried to stifle
her pride, her suspicion, her jealousy!
She parted from Bosinney at old Jolyon's door without breaking down; the
feeling that her lover must be conquered was strong enough to sustain her
till his retiring footsteps brought home the true extent of her
wretchedness.
The noiseless 'Sankey' let her in. She would have slipped up to her own
room, but old Jolyon, who had heard her entrance, was in the dining-room
doorway.
"Come in and have your milk," he said. "It's been kept hot for you.
You're very late. Where have you been?"
June stood at the fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm on the
mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in that night of
the opera. She was too near a breakdown to care what she told him.
"We dined at Soames's."
"H'm! the man of property! His wife there and Bosinney?"
"Yes."
Old Jolyon's glance was fixed on her with the penetrating gaze from which
it was difficult to hide; but she was not looking at him, and when she
turned her face, he dropped his scrutiny at once. He had seen enough,
and too much. He bent down to lift the cup of milk for her from the
hearth, and, turning away, grumbled: "You oughtn't to stay out so late;
it makes you fit for nothing."
He was invisible now behind his paper, which he turned with a vicious
crackle; but when June came up to kiss him, he said: "Good-night, my
darling," in a tone so tremulous and unexpected, that it was all the girl
could do to get out of the room without breaking into the fit of sobbing
which lasted her well on into the night.
When the door was closed, old Jolyon dropped his paper, and stared long
and anxiously in front of him.
'The beggar!' he thought. 'I always knew she'd have trouble with him!'
Uneasy doubts and suspicions, the more poignant that he felt himself
powerless to check or control the march of events, came crowding upon
him.
Was the fellow going to jilt her? He longed to go and say to him: "Look
here, you sir! Are you going to jilt my grand-daughter?" But how could
he? Knowing little or nothing, he was yet certain, with his unerring
astuteness, that there was something going on. He suspected Bosinney of
being too much at Montpellier Square.
'This fellow,' he thought, 'may not be a scamp; his face is not a bad
one, but he's a queer fish. I don't know what to make of him. I shall
never know what to make of him! They tell me he works like a nigger, but
I see no good coming of it. He's unpractical, he has no method. When he
comes here, he sits as glum as a monkey. If I ask him what wine he'll
have, he says: "Thanks, any wine." If I offer him a cigar, he smokes it
as if it were a twopenny German thing. I never see him looking at June
as he ought to look at her; and yet, he's not after her money. If she
were to make a sign, he'd be off his bargain to-morrow. But she
won't--not she! She'll stick to him! She's as obstinate as fate--She'll
never let go!'
Sighing deeply, he turned the paper; in its columns, perchance he might
find consolation.
And upstairs in her room June sat at her open window, where the spring
wind came, after its revel across the Park, to cool her hot cheeks and
burn her heart.
CHAPTER III
DRIVE WITH SWITHIN
Two lines of a certain song in a certain famous old school's songbook run
as follows:
'How the buttons on his blue frock shone, tra-la-la! How he carolled and
he sang, like a bird!....'
Swithin did not exactly carol and sing like a bird, but he felt almost
like endeavouring to hum a tune, as he stepped out of Hyde Park
Mansions, and contemplated his horses drawn up before the door.
The afternoon was as balmy as a day in June, and to complete the simile
of the old song, he had put on a blue frock-coat, dispensing with an
overcoat, after sending Adolf down three times to make sure that there
was not the least suspicion of east in the wind; and the frock-coat was
buttoned so tightly around his personable form, that, if the buttons did
not shine, they might pardonably have done so. Majestic on the pavement
he fitted on a pair of dog-skin gloves; with his large bell-shaped top
hat, and his great stature and bulk he looked too primeval for a Forsyte.
His thick white hair, on which Adolf had bestowed a touch of pomatum,
exhaled the fragrance of opoponax and cigars--the celebrated Swithin
brand, for which he paid one hundred and forty shillings the hundred, and
of which old Jolyon had unkindly said, he wouldn't smoke them as a gift;
they wanted the stomach of a horse!
"Adolf!"
"Sare!"
"The new plaid rug!"
He would never teach that fellow to look smart; and Mrs. Soames he felt
sure, had an eye!
"The phaeton hood down; I am going--to--drive--a--lady!"
A pretty woman would want to show off her frock; and well--he was going
to drive a lady! It was like a new beginning to the good old days.
Ages since he had driven a woman! The last time, if he remembered, it
had been Juley; the poor old soul had been as nervous as a cat the whole
time, and so put him out of patience that, as he dropped her in the
Bayswater Road, he had said: "Well I'm d---d if I ever drive you again!"
And he never had, not he!
Going up to his horses' heads, he examined their bits; not that he knew
anything about bits--he didn't pay his coachman sixty pounds a year to
do his work for him, that had never been his principle. Indeed, his
reputation as a horsey man rested mainly on the fact that once, on Derby
Day, he had been welshed by some thimble-riggers. But someone at the
Club, after seeing him drive his greys up to the door--he always drove
grey horses, you got more style for the money, some thought--had called
him 'Four-in-hand Forsyte.' The name having reached his ears through that
fellow Nicholas Treffry, old Jolyon's dead partner, the great driving man
notorious for more carriage accidents than any man in the
kingdom--Swithin had ever after conceived it right to act up to it. The
name had taken his fancy, not because he had ever driven four-in-hand, or
was ever likely to, but because of something distinguished in the sound.
Four-in-hand Forsyte! Not bad! Born too soon, Swithin had missed his
vocation. Coming upon London twenty years later, he could not have
failed to have become a stockbroker, but at the time when he was obliged
to select, this great profession had not as yet became the chief glory of
the upper-middle class. He had literally been forced into land agency.
Once in the driving seat, with the reins handed to him, and blinking over
his pale old cheeks in the full sunlight, he took a slow look
round--Adolf was already up behind; the cockaded groom at the horses'
heads stood ready to let go; everything was prepared for the signal, and
Swithin gave it. The equipage dashed forward, and before you could say
Jack Robinson, with a rattle and flourish drew up at Soames' door.
Irene came out at once, and stepped in--he afterward described it at
Timothy's--"as light as--er--Taglioni, no fuss about it, no wanting this
or wanting that;" and above all, Swithin dwelt on this, staring at Mrs.
Septimus in a way that disconcerted her a good deal, "no silly
nervousness!" To Aunt Hester he portrayed Irene's hat. "Not one of your
great flopping things, sprawling about, and catching the dust, that women
are so fond of nowadays, but a neat little--" he made a circular motion
of his hand, "white veil--capital taste."
"What was it made of?" inquired Aunt Hester, who manifested a languid but
permanent excitement at any mention of dress.
"Made of?" returned Swithin; "now how should I know?"
He sank into silence so profound that Aunt Hester began to be afraid he
had fallen into a trance. She did not try to rouse him herself, it not
being her custom.
'I wish somebody would come,' she thought; 'I don't like the look of
him!'
But suddenly Swithin returned to life. "Made of" he wheezed out slowly,
"what should it be made of?"
They had not gone four miles before Swithin received the impression that
Irene liked driving with him. Her face was so soft behind that white
veil, and her dark eyes shone so in the spring light, and whenever he
spoke she raised them to him and smiled.
On Saturday morning Soames had found her at her writing-table with a note
written to Swithin, putting him off. Why did she want to put him off? he
asked. She might put her own people off when she liked, he would not
have her putting off his people!
She had looked at him intently, had torn up the note, and said: "Very
well!"
And then she began writing another. He took a casual glance presently,
and saw that it was addressed to Bosinney.
"What are you writing to him about?" he asked.
Irene, looking at him again with that intent look, said quietly:
"Something he wanted me to do for him!"
"Humph!" said Soames,--"Commissions!"
"You'll have your work cut out if you begin that sort of thing!" He said
no more.
Swithin opened his eyes at the mention of Robin Hill; it was a long way
for his horses, and he always dined at half-past seven, before the rush
at the Club began; the new chef took more trouble with an early dinner--a
lazy rascal!
He would like to have a look at the house, however. A house appealed to
any Forsyte, and especially to one who had been an auctioneer. After all
he said the distance was nothing. When he was a younger man he had had
rooms at Richmond for many years, kept his carriage and pair there, and
drove them up and down to business every day of his life.
Four-in-hand Forsyte they called him! His T-cart, his horses had been
known from Hyde Park Corner to the Star and Garter. The Duke of Z....
wanted to get hold of them, would have given him double the money, but he
had kept them; know a good thing when you have it, eh? A look of solemn
pride came portentously on his shaven square old face, he rolled his head
in his stand-up collar, like a turkey-cock preening himself.
She was really--a charming woman! He enlarged upon her frock afterwards
to Aunt Juley, who held up her hands at his way of putting it.
Fitted her like a skin--tight as a drum; that was how he liked 'em, all
of a piece, none of your daverdy, scarecrow women! He gazed at Mrs.
Septimus Small, who took after James--long and thin.
"There's style about her," he went on, "fit for a king! And she's so
quiet with it too!"
"She seems to have made quite a conquest of you, any way," drawled Aunt
Hester from her corner.
Swithin heard extremely well when anybody attacked him.
"What's that?" he said. "I know a--pretty--woman when I see one, and all
I can say is, I don't see the young man about that's fit for her; but
perhaps--you--do, come, perhaps--you-do!"
"Oh?" murmured Aunt Hester, "ask Juley!"
Long before they reached Robin Hill, however, the unaccustomed airing had
made him terribly sleepy; he drove with his eyes closed, a life-time of
deportment alone keeping his tall and bulky form from falling askew.
Bosinney, who was watching, came out to meet them, and all three entered
the house together; Swithin in front making play with a stout
gold-mounted Malacca cane, put into his hand by Adolf, for his knees were
feeling the effects of their long stay in the same position. He had
assumed his fur coat, to guard against the draughts of the unfinished
house.
The staircase--he said--was handsome! the baronial style! They would
want some statuary about! He came to a standstill between the columns of
the doorway into the inner court, and held out his cane inquiringly.
What was this to be--this vestibule, or whatever they called it? But
gazing at the skylight, inspiration came to him.
"Ah! the billiard-room!"
When told it was to be a tiled court with plants in the centre, he turned
to Irene:
"Waste this on plants? You take my advice and have a billiard table
here!"
Irene smiled. She had lifted her veil, banding it like a nun's coif
across her forehead, and the smile of her dark eyes below this seemed to
Swithin more charming than ever. He nodded. She would take his advice
he saw.
He had little to say of the drawing or dining-rooms, which he described
as "spacious"; but fell into such raptures as he permitted to a man of
his dignity, in the wine-cellar, to which he descended by stone steps,
Bosinney going first with a light.
"You'll have room here," he said, "for six or seven hundred dozen--a very
pooty little cellar!"
Bosinney having expressed the wish to show them the house from the copse
below, Swithin came to a stop.
"There's a fine view from here," he remarked; "you haven't such a thing
as a chair?"
A chair was brought him from Bosinney's tent.
"You go down," he said blandly; "you two! I'll sit here and look at the
view."
He sat down by the oak tree, in the sun; square and upright, with one
hand stretched out, resting on the nob of his cane, the other planted on
his knee; his fur coat thrown open, his hat, roofing with its flat top
the pale square of his face; his stare, very blank, fixed on the
landscape.
He nodded to them as they went off down through the fields. He was,
indeed, not sorry to be left thus for a quiet moment of reflection. The
air was balmy, not too much heat in the sun; the prospect a fine one, a
remarka.... His head fell a little to one side; he jerked it up and
thought: Odd! He--ah! They were waving to him from the bottom! He put
up his hand, and moved it more than once. They were active--the prospect
was remar.... His head fell to the left, he jerked it up at once; it fell
to the right. It remained there; he was asleep.
And asleep, a sentinel on the--top of the rise, he appeared to rule over
this prospect--remarkable--like some image blocked out by the special
artist, of primeval Forsytes in pagan days, to record the domination of
mind over matter!
And all the unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestors, wont of a
Sunday to stand akimbo surveying their little plots of land, their grey
unmoving eyes hiding their instinct with its hidden roots of violence,
their instinct for possession to the exclusion of all the world--all
these unnumbered generations seemed to sit there with him on the top of
the rise.
But from him, thus slumbering, his jealous Forsyte spirit travelled far,
into God-knows-what jungle of fancies; with those two young people, to
see what they were doing down there in the copse--in the copse where the
spring was running riot with the scent of sap and bursting buds, the song
of birds innumerable, a carpet of bluebells and sweet growing things, and
the sun caught like gold in the tops of the trees; to see what they were
doing, walking along there so close together on the path that was too
narrow; walking along there so close that they were always touching; to
watch Irene's eyes, like dark thieves, stealing the heart out of the
spring. And a great unseen chaperon, his spirit was there, stopping with
them to look at the little furry corpse of a mole, not dead an hour, with
his mushroom-and-silver coat untouched by the rain or dew; watching over
Irene's bent head, and the soft look of her pitying eyes; and over that
young man's head, gazing at her so hard, so strangely. Walking on with
them, too, across the open space where a wood-cutter had been at work,
where the bluebells were trampled down, and a trunk had swayed and
staggered down from its gashed stump. Climbing it with them, over, and
on to the very edge of the copse, whence there stretched an undiscovered
country, from far away in which came the sounds, 'Cuckoo-cuckoo!'
Silent, standing with them there, and uneasy at their silence! Very
queer, very strange!
Then back again, as though guilty, through the wood--back to the cutting,
still silent, amongst the songs of birds that never ceased, and the wild
scent--hum! what was it--like that herb they put in--back to the log
across the path....
And then unseen, uneasy, flapping above them, trying to make noises, his
Forsyte spirit watched her balanced on the log, her pretty figure
swaying, smiling down at that young man gazing up with such strange,
shining eyes, slipping now--a--ah! falling, o--oh! sliding--down his
breast; her soft, warm body clutched, her head bent back from his lips;
his kiss; her recoil; his cry: "You must know--I love you!" Must
know--indeed, a pretty...? Love! Hah!
Swithin awoke; virtue had gone out of him. He had a taste in his mouth.
Where was he?
Damme! He had been asleep!
He had dreamed something about a new soup, with a taste of mint in it.
Those young people--where had they got to? His left leg had pins and
needles.
"Adolf!" The rascal was not there; the rascal was asleep somewhere.
He stood up, tall, square, bulky in his fur, looking anxiously down over
the fields, and presently he saw them coming.
Irene was in front; that young fellow--what had they nicknamed him--'The
Buccaneer?' looked precious hangdog there behind her; had got a flea in
his ear, he shouldn't wonder. Serve him right, taking her down all that
way to look at the house! The proper place to look at a house from was
the lawn.
They saw him. He extended his arm, and moved it spasmodically to
encourage them. But they had stopped. What were they standing there
for, talking--talking? They came on again. She had been, giving him a
rub, he had not the least doubt of it, and no wonder, over a house like
that--a great ugly thing, not the sort of house he was accustomed to.
He looked intently at their faces, with his pale, immovable stare. That
young man looked very queer!
"You'll never make anything of this!" he said tartly, pointing at the
mansion;--"too newfangled!"
Bosinney gazed at him as though he had not heard; and Swithin afterwards
described him to Aunt Hester as "an extravagant sort of fellow very odd
way of looking at you--a bumpy beggar!"
What gave rise to this sudden piece of psychology he did not state;
possibly Bosinney's, prominent forehead and cheekbones and chin, or
something hungry in his face, which quarrelled with Swithin's conception
of the calm satiety that should characterize the perfect gentleman.
He brightened up at the mention of tea. He had a contempt for tea--his
brother Jolyon had been in tea; made a lot of money by it--but he was so
thirsty, and had such a taste in his mouth, that he was prepared to drink
anything. He longed to inform Irene of the taste in his mouth--she was
so sympathetic--but it would not be a distinguished thing to do; he
rolled his tongue round, and faintly smacked it against his palate.
In a far corner of the tent Adolf was bending his cat-like moustaches
over a kettle. He left it at once to draw the cork of a pint-bottle of
champagne. Swithin smiled, and, nodding at Bosinney, said: "Why, you're
quite a Monte Cristo!" This celebrated novel--one of the half-dozen he
had read--had produced an extraordinary impression on his mind.
Taking his glass from the table, he held it away from him to scrutinize
the colour; thirsty as he was, it was not likely that he was going to
drink trash! Then, placing it to his lips, he took a sip.
"A very nice wine," he said at last, passing it before his nose; "not the
equal of my Heidsieck!"
It was at this moment that the idea came to him which he afterwards
imparted at Timothy's in this nutshell: "I shouldn't wonder a bit if that
architect chap were sweet upon Mrs. Soames!"
And from this moment his pale, round eyes never ceased to bulge with the
interest of his discovery.
"The fellow," he said to Mrs. Septimus, "follows her about with his eyes
like a dog--the bumpy beggar! I don't wonder at it--she's a very
charming woman, and, I should say, the pink of discretion!" A vague
consciousness of perfume caging about Irene, like that from a flower with
half-closed petals and a passionate heart, moved him to the creation of
this image. "But I wasn't sure of it," he said, "till I saw him pick up
her handkerchief."
Mrs. Small's eyes boiled with excitement.
"And did he give it her back?" she asked.
"Give it back?" said Swithin: "I saw him slobber on it when he thought I
wasn't looking!"
Mrs. Small gasped--too interested to speak.
"But she gave him no encouragement," went on Swithin; he stopped, and
stared for a minute or two in the way that alarmed Aunt Hester so--he had
suddenly recollected that, as they were starting back in the phaeton, she
had given Bosinney her hand a second time, and let it stay there too....
He had touched his horses smartly with the whip, anxious to get her all
to himself. But she had looked back, and she had not answered his first
question; neither had he been able to see her face--she had kept it
hanging down.
There is somewhere a picture, which Swithin has not seen, of a man
sitting on a rock, and by him, immersed in the still, green water, a
sea-nymph lying on her back, with her hand on her naked breast. She has
a half-smile on her face--a smile of hopeless surrender and of secret
joy.
Seated by Swithin's side, Irene may have been smiling like that.
When, warmed by champagne, he had her all to himself, he unbosomed
himself of his wrongs; of his smothered resentment against the new chef
at the club; his worry over the house in Wigmore Street, where the
rascally tenant had gone bankrupt through helping his brother-in-law as
if charity did not begin at home; of his deafness, too, and that pain he
sometimes got in his right side. She listened, her eyes swimming under
their lids. He thought she was thinking deeply of his troubles, and
pitied himself terribly. Yet in his fur coat, with frogs across the
breast, his top hat aslant, driving this beautiful woman, he had never
felt more distinguished.
A coster, however, taking his girl for a Sunday airing, seemed to have
the same impression about himself. This person had flogged his donkey
into a gallop alongside, and sat, upright as a waxwork, in his shallopy
chariot, his chin settled pompously on a red handkerchief, like Swithin's
on his full cravat; while his girl, with the ends of a fly-blown boa
floating out behind, aped a woman of fashion. Her swain moved a stick
with a ragged bit of string dangling from the end, reproducing with
strange fidelity the circular flourish of Swithin's whip, and rolled his
head at his lady with a leer that had a weird likeness to Swithin's
primeval stare.
Though for a time unconscious of the lowly ruffian's presence, Swithin
presently took it into his head that he was being guyed. He laid his
whip-lash across the mares flank. The two chariots, however, by some
unfortunate fatality continued abreast. Swithin's yellow, puffy face grew
red; he raised his whip to lash the costermonger, but was saved from so
far forgetting his dignity by a special intervention of Providence. A
carriage driving out through a gate forced phaeton and donkey-cart into
proximity; the wheels grated, the lighter vehicle skidded, and was
overturned.
Swithin did not look round. On no account would he have pulled up to
help the ruffian. Serve him right if he had broken his neck!
But he could not if he would. The greys had taken alarm. The phaeton
swung from side to side, and people raised frightened faces as they went
dashing past. Swithin's great arms, stretched at full length, tugged at
the reins. His cheeks were puffed, his lips compressed, his swollen face
was of a dull, angry red.
Irene had her hand on the rail, and at every lurch she gripped it
tightly. Swithin heard her ask:
"Are we going to have an accident, Uncle Swithin?"
He gasped out between his pants: "It's nothing; a--little fresh!"
"I've never been in an accident."
"Don't you move!" He took a look at her. She was smiling, perfectly
calm. "Sit still," he repeated. "Never fear, I'll get you home!"
And in the midst of all his terrible efforts, he was surprised to hear
her answer in a voice not like her own:
"I don't care if I never get home!"
The carriage giving a terrific lurch, Swithin's exclamation was jerked
back into his throat. The horses, winded by the rise of a hill, now
steadied to a trot, and finally stopped of their own accord.
"When"--Swithin described it at Timothy's--"I pulled 'em up, there she
was as cool as myself. God bless my soul! she behaved as if she didn't
care whether she broke her neck or not! What was it she said: 'I don't
care if I never get home?" Leaning over the handle of his cane, he
wheezed out, to Mrs. Small's terror: "And I'm not altogether surprised,
with a finickin' feller like young Soames for a husband!"
It did not occur to him to wonder what Bosinney had done after they had
left him there alone; whether he had gone wandering about like the dog to
which Swithin had compared him; wandering down to that copse where the
spring was still in riot, the cuckoo still calling from afar; gone down
there with her handkerchief pressed to lips, its fragrance mingling with
the scent of mint and thyme. Gone down there with such a wild, exquisite
pain in his heart that he could have cried out among the trees. Or what,
indeed, the fellow had done. In fact, till he came to Timothy's, Swithin
had forgotten all about him.
CHAPTER IV
JAMES GOES TO SEE FOR HIMSELF
Those ignorant of Forsyte 'Change would not, perhaps, foresee all the
stir made by Irene's visit to the house.
After Swithin had related at Timothy's the full story of his memorable
drive, the same, with the least suspicion of curiosity, the merest touch
of malice, and a real desire to do good, was passed on to June.
"And what a dreadful thing to say, my dear!" ended Aunt Juley; "that
about not going home. What did she mean?"
It was a strange recital for the girl. She heard it flushing painfully,
and, suddenly, with a curt handshake, took her departure.
"Almost rude!" Mrs. Small said to Aunt Hester, when June was gone.
The proper construction was put on her reception of the news. She was
upset. Something was therefore very wrong. Odd! She and Irene had been
such friends!
It all tallied too well with whispers and hints that had been going about
for some time past. Recollections of Euphemia's account of the visit to
the theatre--Mr. Bosinney always at Soames's? Oh, indeed! Yes, of
course, he would be about the house! Nothing open. Only upon the
greatest, the most important provocation was it necessary to say anything
open on Forsyte 'Change. This machine was too nicely adjusted; a hint,
the merest trifling expression of regret or doubt, sufficed to set the
family soul so sympathetic--vibrating. No one desired that harm should
come of these vibrations--far from it; they were set in motion with the
best intentions, with the feeling, that each member of the family had a
stake in the family soul.
And much kindness lay at the bottom of the gossip; it would frequently
result in visits of condolence being made, in accordance with the customs
of Society, thereby conferring a real benefit upon the sufferers, and
affording consolation to the sound, who felt pleasantly that someone at
all events was suffering from that from which they themselves were not
suffering. In fact, it was simply a desire to keep things well-aired,
the desire which animates the Public Press, that brought James, for
instance, into communication with Mrs. Septimus, Mrs. Septimus, with the
little Nicholases, the little Nicholases with who-knows-whom, and so on.
That great class to which they had risen, and now belonged, demanded a
certain candour, a still more certain reticence. This combination
guaranteed their membership.
Many of the younger Forsytes felt, very naturally, and would openly
declare, that they did not want their affairs pried into; but so powerful
was the invisible, magnetic current of family gossip, that for the life
of them they could not help knowing all about everything. It was felt to
be hopeless.
One of them (young Roger) had made an heroic attempt to free the rising
generation, by speaking of Timothy as an 'old cat.' The effort had justly
recoiled upon himself; the words, coming round in the most delicate way
to Aunt Juley's ears, were repeated by her in a shocked voice to Mrs.
Roger, whence they returned again to young Roger.
And, after all, it was only the wrong-doers who suffered; as, for
instance, George, when he lost all that money playing billiards; or young
Roger himself, when he was so dreadfully near to marrying the girl to
whom, it was whispered, he was already married by the laws of Nature; or
again Irene, who was thought, rather than said, to be in danger.
All this was not only pleasant but salutary. And it made so many hours
go lightly at Timothy's in the Bayswater Road; so many hours that must
otherwise have been sterile and heavy to those three who lived there; and
Timothy's was but one of hundreds of such homes in this City of
London--the homes of neutral persons of the secure classes, who are out
of the battle themselves, and must find their reason for existing, in the
battles of others.
But for the sweetness of family gossip, it must indeed have been lonely
there. Rumours and tales, reports, surmises--were they not the children
of the house, as dear and precious as the prattling babes the brother and
sisters had missed in their own journey? To talk about them was as near
as they could get to the possession of all those children and
grandchildren, after whom their soft hearts yearned. For though it is
doubtful whether Timothy's heart yearned, it is indubitable that at the
arrival of each fresh Forsyte child he was quite upset.
Useless for young Roger to say, "Old cat!" for Euphemia to hold up her
hands and cry: "Oh! those three!" and break into her silent laugh with
the squeak at the end. Useless, and not too kind.
The situation which at this stage might seem, and especially to Forsyte
eyes, strange--not to say 'impossible'--was, in view of certain facts,
not so strange after all. Some things had been lost sight of. And
first, in the security bred of many harmless marriages, it had been
forgotten that Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a
wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown
along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by
chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it
blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and
colour are always, wild! And further--the facts and figures of their
own lives being against the perception of this truth--it was not
generally recognised by Forsytes that, where, this wild plant springs,
men and women are but moths around the pale, flame-like blossom.
It was long since young Jolyon's escapade--there was danger of a
tradition again arising that people in their position never cross the
hedge to pluck that flower; that one could reckon on having love, like
measles, once in due season, and getting over it comfortably for all
time--as with measles, on a soothing mixture of butter and honey--in the
arms of wedlock.
Of all those whom this strange rumour about Bosinney and Mrs. Soames
reached, James was the most affected. He had long forgotten how he had
hovered, lanky and pale, in side whiskers of chestnut hue, round Emily,
in the days of his own courtship. He had long forgotten the small house
in the purlieus of Mayfair, where he had spent the early days of his
married life, or rather, he had long forgotten the early days, not the
small house,--a Forsyte never forgot a house--he had afterwards sold it
at a clear profit of four hundred pounds.
He had long forgotten those days, with their hopes and fears and doubts
about the prudence of the match (for Emily, though pretty, had nothing,
and he himself at that time was making a bare thousand a year), and that
strange, irresistible attraction which had drawn him on, till he felt he
must die if he could not marry the girl with the fair hair, looped so
neatly back, the fair arms emerging from a skin-tight bodice, the fair
form decorously shielded by a cage of really stupendous circumference.
James had passed through the fire, but he had passed also through the
river of years which washes out the fire; he had experienced the saddest
experience of all--forgetfulness of what it was like to be in love.
Forgotten! Forgotten so long, that he had forgotten even that he had
forgotten.
And now this rumour had come upon him, this rumour about his son's wife;
very vague, a shadow dodging among the palpable, straightforward
appearances of things, unreal, unintelligible as a ghost, but carrying
with it, like a ghost, inexplicable terror.
He tried to bring it home to his mind, but it was no more use than trying
to apply to himself one of those tragedies he read of daily in his
evening paper. He simply could not. There could be nothing in it. It
was all their nonsense. She didn't get on with Soames as well as she
might, but she was a good little thing--a good little thing!
Like the not inconsiderable majority of men, James relished a nice little
bit of scandal, and would say, in a matter-of-fact tone, licking his
lips, "Yes, yes--she and young Dyson; they tell me they're living at
Monte Carlo!"
But the significance of an affair of this sort--of its past, its present,
or its future--had never struck him. What it meant, what torture and
raptures had gone to its construction, what slow, overmastering fate had
lurked within the facts, very naked, sometimes sordid, but generally
spicy, presented to his gaze. He was not in the habit of blaming,
praising, drawing deductions, or generalizing at all about such things;
he simply listened rather greedily, and repeated what he was told,
finding considerable benefit from the practice, as from the consumption
of a sherry and bitters before a meal.
Now, however, that such a thing--or rather the rumour, the breath of
it--had come near him personally, he felt as in a fog, which filled his
mouth full of a bad, thick flavour, and made it difficult to draw breath.
A scandal! A possible scandal!
To repeat this word to himself thus was the only way in which he could
focus or make it thinkable. He had forgotten the sensations necessary
for understanding the progress, fate, or meaning of any such business; he
simply could no longer grasp the possibilities of people running any risk
for the sake of passion.
Amongst all those persons of his acquaintance, who went into the City day
after day and did their business there, whatever it was, and in their
leisure moments bought shares, and houses, and ate dinners, and played
games, as he was told, it would have seemed to him ridiculous to suppose
that there were any who would run risks for the sake of anything so
recondite, so figurative, as passion.
Passion! He seemed, indeed, to have heard of it, and rules such as 'A
young man and a young woman ought never to be trusted together' were
fixed in his mind as the parallels of latitude are fixed on a map (for
all Forsytes, when it comes to 'bed-rock' matters of fact, have quite a
fine taste in realism); but as to anything else--well, he could only
appreciate it at all through the catch-word 'scandal.'
Ah! but there was no truth in it--could not be. He was not afraid; she
was really a good little thing. But there it was when you got a thing
like that into your mind. And James was of a nervous temperament--one of
those men whom things will not leave alone, who suffer tortures from
anticipation and indecision. For fear of letting something slip that he
might otherwise secure, he was physically unable to make up his mind
until absolutely certain that, by not making it up, he would suffer loss.
In life, however, there were many occasions when the business of making
up his mind did not even rest with himself, and this was one of them.
What could he do? Talk it over with Soames? That would only make
matters worse. And, after all, there was nothing in it, he felt sure.
It was all that house. He had mistrusted the idea from the first. What
did Soames want to go into the country for? And, if he must go spending
a lot of money building himself a house, why not have a first-rate man,
instead of this young Bosinney, whom nobody knew anything about? He had
told them how it would be. And he had heard that the house was costing
Soames a pretty penny beyond what he had reckoned on spending.
This fact, more than any other, brought home to James the real danger of
the situation. It was always like this with these 'artistic' chaps; a
sensible man should have nothing to say to them. He had warned Irene,
too. And see what had come of it!
And it suddenly sprang into James's mind that he ought to go and see for
himself. In the midst of that fog of uneasiness in which his mind was
enveloped the notion that he could go and look at the house afforded him
inexplicable satisfaction. It may have been simply the decision to do
something--more possibly the fact that he was going to look at a
house--that gave him relief. He felt that in staring at an edifice of
bricks and mortar, of wood and stone, built by the suspected man himself,
he would be looking into the heart of that rumour about Irene.
Without saying a word, therefore, to anyone, he took a hansom to the
station and proceeded by train to Robin Hill; thence--there being no
'flies,' in accordance with the custom of the neighbourhood--he found
himself obliged to walk.
He started slowly up the hill, his angular knees and high shoulders bent
complainingly, his eyes fixed on his feet, yet, neat for all that, in his
high hat and his frock-coat, on which was the speckless gloss imparted by
perfect superintendence. Emily saw to that; that is, she did not, of
course, see to it--people of good position not seeing to each other's
buttons, and Emily was of good position--but she saw that the butler saw
to it.
He had to ask his way three times; on each occasion he repeated the
directions given him, got the man to repeat them, then repeated them a
second time, for he was naturally of a talkative disposition, and one
could not be too careful in a new neighbourhood.
He kept assuring them that it was a new house he was looking for; it was
only, however, when he was shown the roof through the trees that he could
feel really satisfied that he had not been directed entirely wrong.
A heavy sky seemed to cover the world with the grey whiteness of a
whitewashed ceiling. There was no freshness or fragrance in the air. On
such a day even British workmen scarcely cared to do more then they were
obliged, and moved about their business without the drone of talk which
whiles away the pangs of labour.
Through spaces of the unfinished house, shirt-sleeved figures worked
slowly, and sounds arose--spasmodic knockings, the scraping of metal, the
sawing of wood, with the rumble of wheelbarrows along boards; now and
again the foreman's dog, tethered by a string to an oaken beam, whimpered
feebly, with a sound like the singing of a kettle.
The fresh-fitted window-panes, daubed each with a white patch in the
centre, stared out at James like the eyes of a blind dog.
And the building chorus went on, strident and mirthless under the
grey-white sky. But the thrushes, hunting amongst the fresh-turned earth
for worms, were silent quite.
James picked his way among the heaps of gravel--the drive was being
laid--till he came opposite the porch. Here he stopped and raised his
eyes. There was but little to see from this point of view, and that
little he took in at once; but he stayed in this position many minutes,
and who shall know of what he thought.
His china-blue eyes under white eyebrows that jutted out in little horns,
never stirred; the long upper lip of his wide mouth, between the fine
white whiskers, twitched once or twice; it was easy to see from that
anxious rapt expression, whence Soames derived the handicapped look which
sometimes came upon his face. James might have been saying to himself:
'I don't know--life's a tough job.'
In this position Bosinney surprised him.
James brought his eyes down from whatever bird's-nest they had been
looking for in the sky to Bosinney's face, on which was a kind of
humorous scorn.
"How do you do, Mr. Forsyte? Come down to see for yourself?"
It was exactly what James, as we know, had come for, and he was made
correspondingly uneasy. He held out his hand, however, saying:
"How are you?" without looking at Bosinney.
The latter made way for him with an ironical smile.
James scented something suspicious in this courtesy. "I should like to
walk round the outside first," he said, "and see what you've been doing!"
A flagged terrace of rounded stones with a list of two or three inches to
port had been laid round the south-east and south-west sides of the
house, and ran with a bevelled edge into mould, which was in preparation
for being turfed; along this terrace James led the way.
"Now what did this cost?" he asked, when he saw the terrace extending
round the corner.
"What should you think?" inquired Bosinney.
"How should I know?" replied James somewhat nonplussed; "two or three
hundred, I dare say!"
"The exact sum!"
James gave him a sharp look, but the architect appeared unconscious, and
he put the answer down to mishearing.
On arriving at the garden entrance, he stopped to look at the view.
"That ought to come down," he said, pointing to the oak-tree.
"You think so? You think that with the tree there you don't get enough
view for your money."
Again James eyed him suspiciously--this young man had a peculiar way of
putting things: "Well!" he said, with a perplexed, nervous, emphasis, "I
don't see what you want with a tree."
"It shall come down to-morrow," said Bosinney.
James was alarmed. "Oh," he said, "don't go saying I said it was to come
down! I know nothing about it!"
"No?"
James went on in a fluster: "Why, what should I know about it? It's
nothing to do with me! You do it on your own responsibility."
"You'll allow me to mention your name?"
James grew more and more alarmed: "I don't know what you want mentioning
my name for," he muttered; "you'd better leave the tree alone. It's not
your tree!"
He took out a silk handkerchief and wiped his brow. They entered the
house. Like Swithin, James was impressed by the inner court-yard.
"You must have spent a douce of a lot of money here," he said, after
staring at the columns and gallery for some time. "Now, what did it cost
to put up those columns?"
"I can't tell you off-hand," thoughtfully answered Bosinney, "but I know
it was a deuce of a lot!"
"I should think so," said James. "I should...." He caught the
architect's eye, and broke off. And now, whenever he came to anything of
which he desired to know the cost, he stifled that curiosity.
Bosinney appeared determined that he should see everything, and had not
James been of too 'noticing' a nature, he would certainly have found
himself going round the house a second time. He seemed so anxious to be
asked questions, too, that James felt he must be on his guard. He began
to suffer from his exertions, for, though wiry enough for a man of his
long build, he was seventy-five years old.
He grew discouraged; he seemed no nearer to anything, had not obtained
from his inspection any of the knowledge he had vaguely hoped for. He
had merely increased his dislike and mistrust of this young man, who had
tired him out with his politeness, and in whose manner he now certainly
detected mockery.
The fellow was sharper than he had thought, and better-looking than he
had hoped. He had a--a 'don't care' appearance that James, to whom risk
was the most intolerable thing in life, did not appreciate; a peculiar
smile, too, coming when least expected; and very queer eyes. He reminded
James, as he said afterwards, of a hungry cat. This was as near as he
could get, in conversation with Emily, to a description of the peculiar
exasperation, velvetiness, and mockery, of which Bosinney's manner had
been composed.
At last, having seen all that was to be seen, he came out again at the
door where he had gone in; and now, feeling that he was wasting time and
strength and money, all for nothing, he took the courage of a Forsyte in
both hands, and, looking sharply at Bosinney, said:
"I dare say you see a good deal of my daughter-in-law; now, what does she
think of the house? But she hasn't seen it, I suppose?"
This he said, knowing all about Irene's visit not, of course, that there
was anything in the visit, except that extraordinary remark she had made
about 'not caring to get home'--and the story of how June had taken the
news!
He had determined, by this way of putting the question, to give Bosinney
a chance, as he said to himself.
The latter was long in answering, but kept his eyes with uncomfortable
steadiness on James.
"She has seen the house, but I can't tell you what she thinks of it."
Nervous and baffled, James was constitutionally prevented from letting
the matter drop.
"Oh!" he said, "she has seen it? Soames brought her down, I suppose?"
Bosinney smilingly replied: "Oh, no!"
"What, did she come down alone?"
"Oh, no!"
"Then--who brought her?"
"I really don't know whether I ought to tell you who brought her."
To James, who knew that it was Swithin, this answer appeared
incomprehensible.
"Why!" he stammered, "you know that...." but he stopped, suddenly
perceiving his danger.
"Well," he said, "if you don't want to tell me I suppose you won't!
Nobody tells me anything."
Somewhat to his surprise Bosinney asked him a question.
"By the by," he said, "could you tell me if there are likely to be any
more of you coming down? I should like to be on the spot!"
"Any more?" said James bewildered, "who should there be more? I don't
know of any more. Good-bye?"
Looking at the ground he held out his hand, crossed the palm of it with
Bosinney's, and taking his umbrella just above the silk, walked away
along the terrace.
Before he turned the corner he glanced back, and saw Bosinney following
him slowly--'slinking along the wall' as he put it to himself, 'like a
great cat.' He paid no attention when the young fellow raised his hat.
Outside the drive, and out of sight, he slackened his pace still more.
Very slowly, more bent than when he came, lean, hungry, and disheartened,
he made his way back to the station.
The Buccaneer, watching him go so sadly home, felt sorry perhaps for his
behaviour to the old man.
CHAPTER V
SOAMES AND BOSINNEY CORRESPOND
James said nothing to his son of this visit to the house; but, having
occasion to go to Timothy's on morning on a matter connected with a
drainage scheme which was being forced by the sanitary authorities on his
brother, he mentioned it there.
It was not, he said, a bad house. He could see that a good deal could be
made of it. The fellow was clever in his way, though what it was going
to cost Soames before it was done with he didn't know.
Euphemia Forsyte, who happened to be in the room--she had come round to
borrow the Rev. Mr. Scoles' last novel, 'Passion and Paregoric', which
was having such a vogue--chimed in.
"I saw Irene yesterday at the Stores; she and Mr. Bosinney were having a
nice little chat in the Groceries."
It was thus, simply, that she recorded a scene which had really made a
deep and complicated impression on her. She had been hurrying to the
silk department of the Church and Commercial Stores--that Institution
than which, with its admirable system, admitting only guaranteed persons
on a basis of payment before delivery, no emporium can be more highly
recommended to Forsytes--to match a piece of prunella silk for her
mother, who was waiting in the carriage outside.
Passing through the Groceries her eye was unpleasantly attracted by the
back view of a very beautiful figure. It was so charmingly proportioned,
so balanced, and so well clothed, that Euphemia's instinctive propriety
was at once alarmed; such figures, she knew, by intuition rather than
experience, were rarely connected with virtue--certainly never in her
mind, for her own back was somewhat difficult to fit.
Her suspicions were fortunately confirmed. A young man coming from the
Drugs had snatched off his hat, and was accosting the lady with the
unknown back.
It was then that she saw with whom she had to deal; the lady was
undoubtedly Mrs. Soames, the young man Mr. Bosinney. Concealing herself
rapidly over the purchase of a box of Tunisian dates, for she was
impatient of awkwardly meeting people with parcels in her hands, and at
the busy time of the morning, she was quite unintentionally an interested
observer of their little interview.
Mrs. Soames, usually somewhat pale, had a delightful colour in her
cheeks; and Mr. Bosinney's manner was strange, though attractive (she
thought him rather a distinguished-looking man, and George's name for
him, 'The Buccaneer'--about which there was something romantic--quite
charming). He seemed to be pleading. Indeed, they talked so
earnestly--or, rather, he talked so earnestly, for Mrs. Soames did not
say much--that they caused, inconsiderately, an eddy in the traffic. One
nice old General, going towards Cigars, was obliged to step quite out of
the way, and chancing to look up and see Mrs. Soames' face, he actually
took off his hat, the old fool! So like a man!
But it was Mrs. Soames' eyes that worried Euphemia. She never once
looked at Mr. Bosinney until he moved on, and then she looked after him.
And, oh, that look!
On that look Euphemia had spent much anxious thought. It is not too much
to say that it had hurt her with its dark, lingering softness, for all
the world as though the woman wanted to drag him back, and unsay
something she had been saying.
Ah, well, she had had no time to go deeply into the matter just then,
with that prunella silk on her hands; but she was 'very intriguee'--very!
She had just nodded to Mrs. Soames, to show her that she had seen; and,
as she confided, in talking it over afterwards, to her chum Francie
(Roger's daughter), "Didn't she look caught out just? ...."
James, most averse at the first blush to accepting any news confirmatory
of his own poignant suspicions, took her up at once.
"Oh" he said, "they'd be after wall-papers no doubt."
Euphemia smiled. "In the Groceries?" she said softly; and, taking
'Passion and Paregoric' from the table, added: "And so you'll lend me
this, dear Auntie? Good-bye!" and went away.
James left almost immediately after; he was late as it was.
When he reached the office of Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte, he found
Soames, sitting in his revolving, chair, drawing up a defence. The
latter greeted his father with a curt good-morning, and, taking an
envelope from his pocket, said:
"It may interest you to look through this."
James read as follows:
309D, SLOANE STREET, May 15.
'DEAR FORSYTE,
'The construction of your house being now completed, my duties as
architect have come to an end. If I am to go on with the business of
decoration, which at your request I undertook, I should like you to
clearly understand that I must have a free hand.
'You never come down without suggesting something that goes counter to my
scheme. I have here three letters from you, each of which recommends an
article I should never dream of putting in. I had your father here
yesterday afternoon, who made further valuable suggestions.
'Please make up your mind, therefore, whether you want me to decorate for
you, or to retire which on the whole I should prefer to do.
'But understand that, if I decorate, I decorate alone, without
interference of any sort.
If I do the thing, I will do it thoroughly, but I must have a free hand.
'Yours truly,
'PHILIP BOSINNEY.'
The exact and immediate cause of this letter cannot, of course, be told,
though it is not improbable that Bosinney may have been moved by some
sudden revolt against his position towards Soames--that eternal position
of Art towards Property--which is so admirably summed up, on the back of
the most indispensable of modern appliances, in a sentence comparable to
the very finest in Tacitus:
THOS. T. SORROW, Inventor. BERT M. PADLAND, Proprietor.
"What are you going to say to him?" James asked.
Soames did not even turn his head. "I haven't made up my mind," he said,
and went on with his defence.
A client of his, having put some buildings on a piece of ground that did
not belong to him, had been suddenly and most irritatingly warned to take
them off again. After carefully going into the facts, however, Soames
had seen his way to advise that his client had what was known as a title
by possession, and that, though undoubtedly the ground did not belong to
him, he was entitled to keep it, and had better do so; and he was now
following up this advice by taking steps to--as the sailors say--'make
it so.'
He had a distinct reputation for sound advice; people saying of him: "Go
to young Forsyte--a long-headed fellow!" and he prized this reputation
highly.
His natural taciturnity was in his favour; nothing could be more
calculated to give people, especially people with property (Soames had no
other clients), the impression that he was a safe man. And he was safe.
Tradition, habit, education, inherited aptitude, native caution, all
joined to form a solid professional honesty, superior to temptation--from
the very fact that it was built on an innate avoidance of risk. How
could he fall, when his soul abhorred circumstances which render a fall
possible--a man cannot fall off the floor!
And those countless Forsytes, who, in the course of innumerable
transactions concerned with property of all sorts (from wives to water
rights), had occasion for the services of a safe man, found it both
reposeful and profitable to confide in Soames. That slight
superciliousness of his, combined with an air of mousing amongst
precedents, was in his favour too--a man would not be supercilious unless
he knew!
He was really at the head of the business, for though James still came
nearly every day to, see for himself, he did little now but sit in his
chair, twist his legs, slightly confuse things already decided, and
presently go away again, and the other partner, Bustard, was a poor
thing, who did a great deal of work, but whose opinion was never taken.
So Soames went steadily on with his defence. Yet it would be idle to say
that his mind was at ease. He was suffering from a sense of impending
trouble, that had haunted him for some time past. He tried to think it
physical--a condition of his liver--but knew that it was not.
He looked at his watch. In a quarter of an hour he was due at the
General Meeting of the New Colliery Company--one of Uncle Jolyon's
concerns; he should see Uncle Jolyon there, and say something to him
about Bosinney--he had not made up his mind what, but something--in any
case he should not answer this letter until he had seen Uncle Jolyon. He
got up and methodically put away the draft of his defence. Going into a
dark little cupboard, he turned up the light, washed his hands with a
piece of brown Windsor soap, and dried them on a roller towel. Then he
brushed his hair, paying strict attention to the parting, turned down the
light, took his hat, and saying he would be back at half-past two,
stepped into the Poultry.
It was not far to the Offices of the New Colliery Company in Ironmonger
Lane, where, and not at the Cannon Street Hotel, in accordance with the
more ambitious practice of other companies, the General Meeting was
always held. Old Jolyon had from the first set his face against the
Press. What business--he said--had the Public with his concerns!
Soames arrived on the stroke of time, and took his seat alongside the
Board, who, in a row, each Director behind his own ink-pot, faced their
Shareholders.
In the centre of this row old Jolyon, conspicuous in his black,
tightly-buttoned frock-coat and his white moustaches, was leaning back
with finger tips crossed on a copy of the Directors' report and accounts.
On his right hand, always a little larger than life, sat the Secretary,
'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings; an all-too-sad sadness beaming in his fine
eyes; his iron-grey beard, in mourning like the rest of him, giving the
feeling of an all-too-black tie behind it.
The occasion indeed was a melancholy one, only six weeks having elapsed
since that telegram had come from Scorrier, the mining expert, on a
private mission to the Mines, informing them that Pippin, their
Superintendent, had committed suicide in endeavouring, after his
extraordinary two years' silence, to write a letter to his Board. That
letter was on the table now; it would be read to the Shareholders, who
would of course be put into possession of all the facts.
Hemmings had often said to Soames, standing with his coat-tails divided
before the fireplace:
"What our Shareholders don't know about our affairs isn't worth knowing.
You may take that from me, Mr. Soames."
On one occasion, old Jolyon being present, Soames recollected a little
unpleasantness. His uncle had looked up sharply and said: "Don't talk
nonsense, Hemmings! You mean that what they do know isn't worth
knowing!" Old Jolyon detested humbug.
Hemmings, angry-eyed, and wearing a smile like that of a trained poodle,
had replied in an outburst of artificial applause: "Come, now, that's
good, sir--that's very good. Your uncle will have his joke!"
The next time he had seen Soames he had taken the opportunity of saying
to him: "The chairman's getting very old!--I can't get him to understand
things; and he's so wilful--but what can you expect, with a chin like
his?"
Soames had nodded.
Everyone knew that Uncle Jolyon's chin was a caution. He was looking
worried to-day, in spite of his General Meeting look; he (Soames) should
certainly speak to him about Bosinney.
Beyond old Jolyon on the left was little Mr. Booker, and he, too, wore
his General Meeting look, as though searching for some particularly
tender shareholder. And next him was the deaf director, with a frown;
and beyond the deaf director, again, was old Mr. Bleedham, very bland,
and having an air of conscious virtue--as well he might, knowing that the
brown-paper parcel he always brought to the Board-room was concealed
behind his hat (one of that old-fashioned class, of flat-brimmed top-hats
which go with very large bow ties, clean-shaven lips, fresh cheeks, and
neat little, white whiskers).
Soames always attended the General Meeting; it was considered better that
he should do so, in case 'anything should arise!' He glanced round with
his close, supercilious air at the walls of the room, where hung plans of
the mine and harbour, together with a large photograph of a shaft leading
to a working which had proved quite remarkably unprofitable. This
photograph--a witness to the eternal irony underlying commercial
enterprise till retained its position on the--wall, an effigy of the
directors' pet, but dead, lamb.
And now old Jolyon rose, to present the report and accounts.
Veiling under a Jove-like serenity that perpetual antagonism deep-seated
in the bosom of a director towards his shareholders, he faced them
calmly. Soames faced them too. He knew most of them by sight. There
was old Scrubsole, a tar man, who always came, as Hemmings would say, 'to
make himself nasty,' a cantankerous-looking old fellow with a red face, a
jowl, and an enormous low-crowned hat reposing on his knee. And the Rev.
Mr. Boms, who always proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman, in which
he invariably expressed the hope that the Board would not forget to
elevate their employees, using the word with a double e, as being more
vigorous and Anglo-Saxon (he had the strong Imperialistic tendencies of
his cloth). It was his salutary custom to buttonhole a director
afterwards, and ask him whether he thought the coming year would be good
or bad; and, according to the trend of the answer, to buy or sell three
shares within the ensuing fortnight.
And there was that military man, Major O'Bally, who could not help
speaking, if only to second the re-election of the auditor, and who
sometimes caused serious consternation by taking toasts--proposals
rather--out of the hands of persons who had been flattered with little
slips of paper, entrusting the said proposals to their care.
These made up the lot, together with four or five strong, silent
shareholders, with whom Soames could sympathize--men of business, who
liked to keep an eye on their affairs for themselves, without being
fussy--good, solid men, who came to the City every day and went back in
the evening to good, solid wives.
Good, solid wives! There was something in that thought which roused the
nameless uneasiness in Soames again.
What should he say to his uncle? What answer should he make to this
letter?
. . . . "If any shareholder has any question to put, I shall be glad
to answer it." A soft thump. Old Jolyon had let the report and accounts
fall, and stood twisting his tortoise-shell glasses between thumb and
forefinger.
The ghost of a smile appeared on Soames' face. They had better hurry up
with their questions! He well knew his uncle's method (the ideal one) of
at once saying: "I propose, then, that the report and accounts be
adopted!" Never let them get their wind--shareholders were notoriously
wasteful of time!
A tall, white-bearded man, with a gaunt, dissatisfied face, arose:
"I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman, in raising a question on this
figure of L5000 in the accounts. 'To the widow and family"' (he looked
sourly round), "'of our late superintendent,' who so--er--ill-advisedly
(I say--ill-advisedly) committed suicide, at a time when his services
were of the utmost value to this Company. You have stated that the
agreement which he has so unfortunately cut short with his own hand was
for a period of five years, of which one only had expired--I--"
Old Jolyon made a gesture of impatience.
"I believe I am in order, Mr. Chairman--I ask whether this amount paid,
or proposed to be paid, by the Board to the er--deceased--is for
services which might have been rendered to the Company--had he not
committed suicide?"
"It is in recognition of past services, which we all know--you as well as
any of us--to have been of vital value."
"Then, sir, all I have to say is that the services being past, the amount
is too much."
The shareholder sat down.
Old Jolyon waited a second and said: "I now propose that the report
and--"
The shareholder rose again: "May I ask if the Board realizes that it is
not their money which--I don't hesitate to say that if it were their
money...."
A second shareholder, with a round, dogged face, whom Soames recognised
as the late superintendent's brother-in-law, got up and said warmly: "In
my opinion, sir, the sum is not enough!"
The Rev. Mr. Boms now rose to his feet. "If I may venture to express
myself," he said, "I should say that the fact of the--er--deceased
having committed suicide should weigh very heavily--very heavily with
our worthy chairman. I have no doubt it has weighed with him, for--I say
this for myself and I think for everyone present (hear, hear)--he enjoys
our confidence in a high degree. We all desire, I should hope, to be
charitable. But I feel sure" (he-looked severely at the late
superintendent's brother-in-law) "that he will in some way, by some
written expression, or better perhaps by reducing the amount, record our
grave disapproval that so promising and valuable a life should have been
thus impiously removed from a sphere where both its own interests and--if
I may say so--our interests so imperatively demanded its continuance. We
should not--nay, we may not--countenance so grave a dereliction of all
duty, both human and divine."
The reverend gentleman resumed his seat. The late superintendent's
brother-in-law again rose: "What I have said I stick to," he said; "the
amount is not enough!"
The first shareholder struck in: "I challenge the legality of the
payment. In my opinion this payment is not legal. The Company's
solicitor is present; I believe I am in order in asking him the
question."
All eyes were now turned upon Soames. Something had arisen!
He stood up, close-lipped and cold; his nerves inwardly fluttered, his
attention tweaked away at last from contemplation of that cloud looming
on the horizon of his mind.
"The point," he said in a low, thin voice, "is by no means clear. As
there is no possibility of future consideration being received, it is
doubtful whether the payment is strictly legal. If it is desired, the
opinion of the court could be taken."
The superintendent's brother-in-law frowned, and said in a meaning tone:
"We have no doubt the opinion of the court could be taken. May I ask the
name of the gentleman who has given us that striking piece of
information? Mr. Soames Forsyte? Indeed!" He looked from Soames to old
Jolyon in a pointed manner.
A flush coloured Soames' pale cheeks, but his superciliousness did not
waver. Old Jolyon fixed his eyes on the speaker.
"If," he said, "the late superintendents brother-in-law has nothing more
to say, I propose that the report and accounts...."
At this moment, however, there rose one of those five silent, stolid
shareholders, who had excited Soames' sympathy. He said:
"I deprecate the proposal altogether. We are expected to give charity to
this man's wife and children, who, you tell us, were dependent on him.
They may have been; I do not care whether they were or not. I object to
the whole thing on principle. It is high time a stand was made against
this sentimental humanitarianism. The country is eaten up with it. I
object to my money being paid to these people of whom I know nothing, who
have done nothing to earn it. I object in toto; it is not business. I
now move that the report and accounts be put back, and amended by
striking out the grant altogether."
Old Jolyon had remained standing while the strong, silent man was
speaking. The speech awoke an echo in all hearts, voicing, as it did,
the worship of strong men, the movement against generosity, which had at
that time already commenced among the saner members of the community.
The words 'it is not business' had moved even the Board; privately
everyone felt that indeed it was not. But they knew also the chairman's
domineering temper and tenacity. He, too, at heart must feel that it was
not business; but he was committed to his own proposition. Would he go
back upon it? It was thought to be unlikely.
All waited with interest. Old Jolyon held up his hand; dark-rimmed
glasses depending between his finger and thumb quivered slightly with a
suggestion of menace.
He addressed the strong, silent shareholder.
"Knowing, as you do, the efforts of our late superintendent upon the
occasion of the explosion at the mines, do you seriously wish me to put
that amendment, sir?"
"I do."
Old Jolyon put the amendment.
"Does anyone second this?" he asked, looking calmly round.
And it was then that Soames, looking at his uncle, felt the power of will
that was in that old man. No one stirred. Looking straight into the
eyes of the strong, silent shareholder, old Jolyon said:
"I now move, 'That the report and accounts for the year 1886 be received
and adopted.' You second that? Those in favour signify the same in the
usual way. Contrary--no. Carried. The next business, gentlemen...."
Soames smiled. Certainly Uncle Jolyon had a way with him!
But now his attention relapsed upon Bosinney.
Odd how that fellow haunted his thoughts, even in business hours.
Irene's visit to the house--but there was nothing in that, except that
she might have told him; but then, again, she never did tell him
anything. She was more silent, more touchy, every day. He wished to God
the house were finished, and they were in it, away from London. Town did
not suit her; her nerves were not strong enough. That nonsense of the
separate room had cropped up again!
The meeting was breaking up now. Underneath the photograph of the lost
shaft Hemmings was buttonholed by the Rev. Mr. Boms. Little Mr. Booker,
his bristling eyebrows wreathed in angry smiles, was having a parting
turn-up with old Scrubsole. The two hated each other like poison. There
was some matter of a tar-contract between them, little Mr. Booker having
secured it from the Board for a nephew of his, over old Scrubsole's head.
Soames had heard that from Hemmings, who liked a gossip, more especially
about his directors, except, indeed, old Jolyon, of whom he was afraid.
Soames awaited his opportunity. The last shareholder was vanishing
through the door, when he approached his uncle, who was putting on his
hat.
"Can I speak to you for a minute, Uncle Jolyon?"
It is uncertain what Soames expected to get out of this interview.
Apart from that somewhat mysterious awe in which Forsytes in general held
old Jolyon, due to his philosophic twist, or perhaps--as Hemmings would
doubtless have said--to his chin, there was, and always had been, a
subtle antagonism between the younger man and the old. It had lurked
under their dry manner of greeting, under their non-committal allusions
to each other, and arose perhaps from old Jolyon's perception of the
quiet tenacity ('obstinacy,' he rather naturally called it) of the young
man, of a secret doubt whether he could get his own way with him.
Both these Forsytes, wide asunder as the poles in many respects,
possessed in their different ways--to a greater degree than the rest of
the family--that essential quality of tenacious and prudent insight into
'affairs,' which is the highwater mark of their great class. Either of
them, with a little luck and opportunity, was equal to a lofty career;
either of them would have made a good financier, a great contractor, a
statesman, though old Jolyon, in certain of his moods when under the
influence of a cigar or of Nature--would have been capable of, not
perhaps despising, but certainly of questioning, his own high position,
while Soames, who never smoked cigars, would not.
Then, too, in old Jolyon's mind there was always the secret ache, that
the son of James--of James, whom he had always thought such a poor thing,
should be pursuing the paths of success, while his own son...!
And last, not least--for he was no more outside the radiation of family
gossip than any other Forsyte--he had now heard the sinister, indefinite,
but none the less disturbing rumour about Bosinney, and his pride was
wounded to the quick.
Characteristically, his irritation turned not against Irene but against
Soames. The idea that his nephew's wife (why couldn't the fellow take
better care of her--Oh! quaint injustice! as though Soames could
possibly take more care!)--should be drawing to herself June's lover, was
intolerably humiliating. And seeing the danger, he did not, like James,
hide it away in sheer nervousness, but owned with the dispassion of his
broader outlook, that it was not unlikely; there was something very
attractive about Irene!
He had a presentiment on the subject of Soames' communication as they
left the Board Room together, and went out into the noise and hurry of
Cheapside. They walked together a good minute without speaking, Soames
with his mousing, mincing step, and old Jolyon upright and using his
umbrella languidly as a walking-stick.
They turned presently into comparative quiet, for old Jolyon's way to a
second Board led him in the direction of Moorage Street.
Then Soames, without lifting his eyes, began: "I've had this letter from
Bosinney. You see what he says; I thought I'd let you know. I've spent
a lot more than I intended on this house, and I want the position to be
clear."
Old Jolyon ran his eyes unwillingly over the letter: "What he says is
clear enough," he said.
"He talks about 'a free hand,'" replied Soames.
Old Jolyon looked at him. The long-suppressed irritation and antagonism
towards this young fellow, whose affairs were beginning to intrude upon
his own, burst from him.
"Well, if you don't trust him, why do you employ him?"
Soames stole a sideway look: "It's much too late to go into that," he
said, "I only want it to be quite understood that if I give him a free
hand, he doesn't let me in. I thought if you were to speak to him, it
would carry more weight!"
"No," said old Jolyon abruptly; "I'll have nothing to do with it!"
The words of both uncle and nephew gave the impression of unspoken
meanings, far more important, behind. And the look they interchanged was
like a revelation of this consciousness.
"Well," said Soames; "I thought, for June's sake, I'd tell you, that's
all; I thought you'd better know I shan't stand any nonsense!"
"What is that to me?" old Jolyon took him up.
"Oh! I don't know," said Soames, and flurried by that sharp look he was
unable to say more. "Don't say I didn't tell you," he added sulkily,
recovering his composure.
"Tell me!" said old Jolyon; "I don't know what you mean. You come
worrying me about a thing like this. I don't want to hear about your
affairs; you must manage them yourself!"
"Very well," said Soames immovably, "I will!"
"Good-morning, then," said old Jolyon, and they parted.
Soames retraced his steps, and going into a celebrated eating-house,
asked for a plate of smoked salmon and a glass of Chablis; he seldom ate
much in the middle of the day, and generally ate standing, finding the
position beneficial to his liver, which was very sound, but to which he
desired to put down all his troubles.
When he had finished he went slowly back to his office, with bent head,
taking no notice of the swarming thousands on the pavements, who in their
turn took no notice of him.
The evening post carried the following reply to Bosinney:
'FORSYTE, BUSTARD AND FORSYTE, 'Commissioners for Oaths, '92001, BRANCH
LANE, POULTRY, E.C.,
'May 17, 1887.
'DEAR BOSINNEY,
'I have, received your letter, the terms of which not a little surprise
me. I was under the impression that you had, and have had all along, a
"free hand"; for I do not recollect that any suggestions I have been so
unfortunate as to make have met with your approval. In giving you, in
accordance with your request, this "free hand," I wish you to clearly
understand that the total cost of the house as handed over to me
completely decorated, inclusive of your fee (as arranged between us),
must not exceed twelve thousand pounds--L12,000. This gives you an ample
margin, and, as you know, is far more than I originally contemplated.
'I am, 'Yours truly,
'SOAMES FORSYTE.'
On the following day he received a note from Bosinney:
'PHILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY, 'Architect, '309D, SLOANE STREET, S.W., 'May 18.
'DEAR FORSYTE,
'If you think that in such a delicate matter as decoration I can bind
myself to the exact pound, I am afraid you are mistaken. I can see that
you are tired of the arrangement, and of me, and I had better, therefore,
resign.
'Yours faithfully,
'PHILIP BAYNES BOSINNEY.'
Soames pondered long and painfully over his answer, and late at night in
the dining-room, when Irene had gone to bed, he composed the following:
'62, MONTPELLIER SQUARE, S.W., 'May 19, 1887.
'DEAR BOSINNEY,
'I think that in both our interests it would be extremely undesirable
that matters should be so left at this stage. I did not mean to say that
if you should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty
or even fifty pounds, there would be any difficulty between us. This
being so, I should like you to reconsider your answer. You have a "free
hand" in the terms of this correspondence, and I hope you will see your
way to completing the decorations, in the matter of which I know it is
difficult to be absolutely exact.
'Yours truly,
'SOAMES FORSYTE.'
Bosinney's answer, which came in the course of the next day, was:
'May 20.
'DEAR FORSYTE,
'Very well.
'PH. BOSINNEY.'
CHAPTER VI
OLD JOLYON AT THE ZOO
Old Jolyon disposed of his second Meeting--an ordinary Board--summarily.
He was so dictatorial that his fellow directors were left in cabal over
the increasing domineeringness of old Forsyte, which they were far from
intending to stand much longer, they said.
He went out by Underground to Portland Road Station, whence he took a cab
and drove to the Zoo.
He had an assignation there, one of those assignations that had lately
been growing more frequent, to which his increasing uneasiness about June
and the 'change in her,' as he expressed it, was driving him.
She buried herself away, and was growing thin; if he spoke to her he got
no answer, or had his head snapped off, or she looked as if she would
burst into tears. She was as changed as she could be, all through this
Bosinney. As for telling him about anything, not a bit of it!
And he would sit for long spells brooding, his paper unread before him, a
cigar extinct between his lips. She had been such a companion to him
ever since she was three years old! And he loved her so!
Forces regardless of family or class or custom were beating down his
guard; impending events over which he had no control threw their shadows
on his head. The irritation of one accustomed to have his way was roused
against he knew not what.
Chafing at the slowness of his cab, he reached the Zoo door; but, with
his sunny instinct for seizing the good of each moment, he forgot his
vexation as he walked towards the tryst.
From the stone terrace above the bear-pit his son and his two
grandchildren came hastening down when they saw old Jolyon coming, and
led him away towards the lion-house. They supported him on either side,
holding one to each of his hands,--whilst Jolly, perverse like his
father, carried his grandfather's umbrella in such a way as to catch
people's legs with the crutch of the handle.
Young Jolyon followed.
It was as good as a play to see his father with the children, but such a
play as brings smiles with tears behind. An old man and two small
children walking together can be seen at any hour of the day; but the
sight of old Jolyon, with Jolly and Holly seemed to young Jolyon a
special peep-show of the things that lie at the bottom of our hearts.
The complete surrender of that erect old figure to those little figures
on either hand was too poignantly tender, and, being a man of an habitual
reflex action, young Jolyon swore softly under his breath. The show
affected him in a way unbecoming to a Forsyte, who is nothing if not
undemonstrative.
Thus they reached the lion-house.
There had been a morning fete at the Botanical Gardens, and a large
number of Forsy...'--that is, of well-dressed people who kept carriages
had brought them on to the Zoo, so as to have more, if possible, for
their money, before going back to Rutland Gate or Bryanston Square.
"Let's go on to the Zoo," they had said to each other; "it'll be great
fun!" It was a shilling day; and there would not be all those horrid
common people.
In front of the long line of cages they were collected in rows, watching
the tawny, ravenous beasts behind the bars await their only pleasure of
the four-and-twenty hours. The hungrier the beast, the greater the
fascination. But whether because the spectators envied his appetite, or,
more humanely, because it was so soon to be satisfied, young Jolyon could
not tell. Remarks kept falling on his ears: "That's a nasty-looking
brute, that tiger!" "Oh, what a love! Look at his little mouth!" "Yes,
he's rather nice! Don't go too near, mother."
And frequently, with little pats, one or another would clap their hands
to their pockets behind and look round, as though expecting young Jolyon
or some disinterested-looking person to relieve them of the contents.
A well-fed man in a white waistcoat said slowly through his teeth: "It's
all greed; they can't be hungry. Why, they take no exercise." At these
words a tiger snatched a piece of bleeding liver, and the fat man
laughed. His wife, in a Paris model frock and gold nose-nippers,
reproved him: "How can you laugh, Harry? Such a horrid sight!"
Young Jolyon frowned.
The circumstances of his life, though he had ceased to take a too
personal view of them, had left him subject to an intermittent contempt;
and the class to which he had belonged--the carriage class--especially
excited his sarcasm.
To shut up a lion or tiger in confinement was surely a horrible
barbarity. But no cultivated person would admit this.
The idea of its being barbarous to confine wild animals had probably
never even occurred to his father for instance; he belonged to the old
school, who considered it at once humanizing and educational to confine
baboons and panthers, holding the view, no doubt, that in course of time
they might induce these creatures not so unreasonably to die of misery
and heart-sickness against the bars of their cages, and put the society
to the expense of getting others! In his eyes, as in the eyes of all
Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful creatures in a state of
captivity far outweighed the inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom
God had so improvidently placed in a state of freedom! It was for the
animals good, removing them at once from the countless dangers of open
air and exercise, and enabling them to exercise their functions in the
guaranteed seclusion of a private compartment! Indeed, it was doubtful
what wild animals were made for but to be shut up in cages!
But as young Jolyon had in his constitution the elements of impartiality,
he reflected that to stigmatize as barbarity that which was merely lack
of imagination must be wrong; for none who held these views had been
placed in a similar position to the animals they caged, and could not,
therefore, be expected to enter into their sensations. It was not until
they were leaving the gardens--Jolly and Holly in a state of blissful
delirium--that old Jolyon found an opportunity of speaking to his son on
the matter next his heart. "I don't know what to make of it," he said;
"if she's to go on as she's going on now, I can't tell what's to come.
I wanted her to see the doctor, but she won't. She's not a bit like me.
She's your mother all over. Obstinate as a mule! If she doesn't want
to do a thing, she won't, and there's an end of it!"
Young Jolyon smiled; his eyes had wandered to his father's chin. 'A pair
of you,' he thought, but he said nothing.
"And then," went on old Jolyon, "there's this Bosinney. I should like
to punch the fellow's head, but I can't, I suppose, though--I don't see
why you shouldn't," he added doubtfully.
"What has he done? Far better that it should come to an end, if they
don't hit it off!"
Old Jolyon looked at his son. Now they had actually come to discuss a
subject connected with the relations between the sexes he felt
distrustful. Jo would be sure to hold some loose view or other.
"Well, I don't know what you think," he said; "I dare say your sympathy's
with him--shouldn't be surprised; but I think he's behaving precious
badly, and if he comes my way I shall tell him so." He dropped the
subject.
It was impossible to discuss with his son the true nature and meaning of
Bosinney's defection. Had not his son done the very same thing (worse,
if possible) fifteen years ago? There seemed no end to the consequences
of that piece of folly.
Young Jolyon also was silent; he had quickly penetrated his father's
thought, for, dethroned from the high seat of an obvious and
uncomplicated view of things, he had become both perceptive and subtle.
The attitude he had adopted towards sexual matters fifteen years before,
however, was too different from his father's. There was no bridging the
gulf.
He said coolly: "I suppose he's fallen in love with some other woman?"
Old Jolyon gave him a dubious look: "I can't tell," he said; "they say
so!"
"Then, it's probably true," remarked young Jolyon unexpectedly; "and I
suppose they've told you who she is?"
"Yes," said old Jolyon, "Soames's wife!"
Young Jolyon did not whistle: The circumstances of his own life had
rendered him incapable of whistling on such a subject, but he looked at
his father, while the ghost of a smile hovered over his face.
If old Jolyon saw, he took no notice.
"She and June were bosom friends!" he muttered.
"Poor little June!" said young Jolyon softly. He thought of his daughter
still as a babe of three.
Old Jolyon came to a sudden halt.
"I don't believe a word of it," he said, "it's some old woman's tale.
Get me a cab, Jo, I'm tired to death!"
They stood at a corner to see if an empty cab would come along, while
carriage after carriage drove past, bearing Forsytes of all descriptions
from the Zoo. The harness, the liveries, the gloss on the horses' coats,
shone and glittered in the May sunlight, and each equipage, landau,
sociable, barouche, Victoria, or brougham, seemed to roll out proudly
from its wheels:
'I and my horses and my men you know,' Indeed the whole turn-out have
cost a pot. But we were worth it every penny. Look At Master and at
Missis now, the dawgs! Ease with security--ah! that's the ticket!
And such, as everyone knows, is fit accompaniment for a perambulating
Forsyte.
Amongst these carriages was a barouche coming at a greater pace than the
others, drawn by a pair of bright bay horses. It swung on its high
springs, and the four people who filled it seemed rocked as in a cradle.
This chariot attracted young Jolyon's attention; and suddenly, on the
back seat, he recognised his Uncle James, unmistakable in spite of the
increased whiteness of his whiskers; opposite, their backs defended by
sunshades, Rachel Forsyte and her elder but married sister, Winifred
Dartie, in irreproachable toilettes, had posed their heads haughtily,
like two of the birds they had been seeing at the Zoo; while by James'
side reclined Dartie, in a brand-new frock-coat buttoned tight and
square, with a large expanse of carefully shot linen protruding below
each wristband.
An extra, if subdued, sparkle, an added touch of the best gloss or
varnish characterized this vehicle, and seemed to distinguish it from all
the others, as though by some happy extravagance--like that which marks
out the real 'work of art' from the ordinary 'picture'--it were
designated as the typical car, the very throne of Forsytedom.
Old Jolyon did not see them pass; he was petting poor Holly who was
tired, but those in the carriage had taken in the little group; the
ladies' heads tilted suddenly, there was a spasmodic screening movement
of parasols; James' face protruded naively, like the head of a long bird,
his mouth slowly opening. The shield-like rounds of the parasols grew
smaller and smaller, and vanished.
Young Jolyon saw that he had been recognised, even by Winifred, who could
not have been more than fifteen when he had forfeited the right to be
considered a Forsyte.
There was not much change in them! He remembered the exact look of their
turn-out all that time ago: Horses, men, carriage--all different now, no
doubt--but of the precise stamp of fifteen years before; the same neat
display, the same nicely calculated arrogance ease with security! The
swing exact, the pose of the sunshades exact, exact the spirit of the
whole thing.
And in the sunlight, defended by the haughty shields of parasols,
carriage after carriage went by.
"Uncle James has just passed, with his female folk," said young Jolyon.
His father looked black. "Did your uncle see us? Yes? Hmph! What's he
want, coming down into these parts?"
An empty cab drove up at this moment, and old Jolyon stopped it.
"I shall see you again before long, my boy!" he said. "Don't you go
paying any attention to what I've been saying about young Bosinney--I
don't believe a word of it!"
Kissing the children, who tried to detain him, he stepped in and was
borne away.
Young Jolyon, who had taken Holly up in his arms, stood motionless at the
corner, looking after the cab.
CHAPTER VII
AFTERNOON AT TIMOTHY'S
If old Jolyon, as he got into his cab, had said: 'I won't believe a word
of it!' he would more truthfully have expressed his sentiments.
The notion that James and his womankind had seen him in the company of
his son had awakened in him not only the impatience he always felt when
crossed, but that secret hostility natural between brothers, the roots of
which--little nursery rivalries--sometimes toughen and deepen as life
goes on, and, all hidden, support a plant capable of producing in season
the bitterest fruits.
Hitherto there had been between these six brothers no more unfriendly
feeling than that caused by the secret and natural doubt that the others
might be richer than themselves; a feeling increased to the pitch of
curiosity by the approach of death--that end of all handicaps--and the
great 'closeness' of their man of business, who, with some sagacity,
would profess to Nicholas ignorance of James' income, to James ignorance
of old Jolyon's, to Jolyon ignorance of Roger's, to Roger ignorance of
Swithin's, while to Swithin he would say most irritatingly that Nicholas
must be a rich man. Timothy alone was exempt, being in gilt-edged
securities.
But now, between two of them at least, had arisen a very different sense
of injury. From the moment when James had the impertinence to pry into
his affairs--as he put it--old Jolyon no longer chose to credit this
story about Bosinney. His grand-daughter slighted through a member of
'that fellow's' family! He made up his mind that Bosinney was maligned.
There must be some other reason for his defection.
June had flown out at him, or something; she was as touchy as she could
be!
He would, however, let Timothy have a bit of his mind, and see if he
would go on dropping hints! And he would not let the grass grow under
his feet either, he would go there at once, and take very good care that
he didn't have to go again on the same errand.
He saw James' carriage blocking the pavement in front of 'The Bower.' So
they had got there before him--cackling about having seen him, he dared
say! And further on, Swithin's greys were turning their noses towards
the noses of James' bays, as though in conclave over the family, while
their coachmen were in conclave above.
Old Jolyon, depositing his hat on the chair in the narrow hall, where
that hat of Bosinney's had so long ago been mistaken for a cat, passed
his thin hand grimly over his face with its great drooping white
moustaches, as though to remove all traces of expression, and made his
way upstairs.
He found the front drawing-room full. It was full enough at the best of
times--without visitors--without any one in it--for Timothy and his
sisters, following the tradition of their generation, considered that a
room was not quite 'nice' unless it was 'properly' furnished. It held,
therefore, eleven chairs, a sofa, three tables, two cabinets, innumerable
knicknacks, and part of a large grand piano. And now, occupied by Mrs.
Small, Aunt Hester, by Swithin, James, Rachel, Winifred, Euphemia, who
had come in again to return 'Passion and Paregoric' which she had read at
lunch, and her chum Frances, Roger's daughter (the musical Forsyte, the
one who composed songs), there was only one chair left unoccupied,
except, of course, the two that nobody ever sat on--and the only standing
room was occupied by the cat, on whom old Jolyon promptly stepped.
In these days it was by no means unusual for Timothy to have so many
visitors. The family had always, one and all, had a real respect for
Aunt Ann, and now that she was gone, they were coming far more frequently
to The Bower, and staying longer.
Swithin had been the first to arrive, and seated torpid in a red satin
chair with a gilt back, he gave every appearance of lasting the others
out. And symbolizing Bosinney's name 'the big one,' with his great
stature and bulk, his thick white hair, his puffy immovable shaven face,
he looked more primeval than ever in the highly upholstered room.
His conversation, as usual of late, had turned at once upon Irene, and he
had lost no time in giving Aunts Juley and Hester his opinion with regard
to this rumour he heard was going about. No--as he said--she might want a
bit of flirtation--a pretty woman must have her fling; but more than that
he did not believe. Nothing open; she had too much good sense, too much
proper appreciation of what was due to her position, and to the family!
No sc..., he was going to say 'scandal' but the very idea was so
preposterous that he waved his hand as though to say--'but let that
pass!'
Granted that Swithin took a bachelor's view of the situation--still what
indeed was not due to that family in which so many had done so well for
themselves, had attained a certain position? If he had heard in dark,
pessimistic moments the words 'yeomen' and 'very small beer' used in
connection with his origin, did he believe them?
No! he cherished, hugging it pathetically to his bosom the secret theory
that there was something distinguished somewhere in his ancestry.
"Must be," he once said to young Jolyon, before the latter went to the
bad. "Look at us, we've got on! There must be good blood in us
somewhere."
He had been fond of young Jolyon: the boy had been in a good set at
College, had known that old ruffian Sir Charles Fiste's sons--a pretty
rascal one of them had turned out, too; and there was style about him--it
was a thousand pities he had run off with that half-foreign governess!
If he must go off like that why couldn't he have chosen someone who would
have done them credit! And what was he now?--an underwriter at Lloyd's;
they said he even painted pictures--pictures! Damme! he might have ended
as Sir Jolyon Forsyte, Bart., with a seat in Parliament, and a place in
the country!
It was Swithin who, following the impulse which sooner or later urges
thereto some member of every great family, went to the Heralds' Office,
where they assured him that he was undoubtedly of the same family as the
well-known Forsites with an 'i,' whose arms were 'three dexter buckles on
a sable ground gules,' hoping no doubt to get him to take them up.
Swithin, however, did not do this, but having ascertained that the crest
was a 'pheasant proper,' and the motto 'For Forsite,' he had the pheasant
proper placed upon his carriage and the buttons of his coachman, and both
crest and motto on his writing-paper. The arms he hugged to himself,
partly because, not having paid for them, he thought it would look
ostentatious to put them on his carriage, and he hated ostentation, and
partly because he, like any practical man all over the country, had a
secret dislike and contempt for things he could not understand he found
it hard, as anyone might, to swallow 'three dexter buckles on a sable
ground gules.'
He never forgot, however, their having told him that if he paid for them
he would be entitled to use them, and it strengthened his conviction that
he was a gentleman. Imperceptibly the rest of the family absorbed the
'pheasant proper,' and some, more serious than others, adopted the motto;
old Jolyon, however, refused to use the latter, saying that it was humbug
meaning nothing, so far as he could see.
Among the older generation it was perhaps known at bottom from what great
historical event they derived their crest; and if pressed on the subject,
sooner than tell a lie--they did not like telling lies, having an
impression that only Frenchmen and Russians told them--they would confess
hurriedly that Swithin had got hold of it somehow.
Among the younger generation the matter was wrapped in a discretion
proper. They did not want to hurt the feelings of their elders, nor to
feel ridiculous themselves; they simply used the crest....
"No," said Swithin, "he had had an opportunity of seeing for himself, and
what he should say was, that there was nothing in her manner to that
young Buccaneer or Bosinney or whatever his name was, different from her
manner to himself; in fact, he should rather say...." But here the
entrance of Frances and Euphemia put an unfortunate stop to the
conversation, for this was not a subject which could be discussed before
young people.
And though Swithin was somewhat upset at being stopped like this on the
point of saying something important, he soon recovered his affability.
He was rather fond of Frances--Francie, as she was called in the family.
She was so smart, and they told him she made a pretty little pot of
pin-money by her songs; he called it very clever of her.
He rather prided himself indeed on a liberal attitude towards women, not
seeing any reason why they shouldn't paint pictures, or write tunes, or
books even, for the matter of that, especially if they could turn a
useful penny by it; not at all--kept them out of mischief. It was not as
if they were men!
'Little Francie,' as she was usually called with good-natured contempt,
was an important personage, if only as a standing illustration of the
attitude of Forsytes towards the Arts. She was not really 'little,' but
rather tall, with dark hair for a Forsyte, which, together with a grey
eye, gave her what was called 'a Celtic appearance.' She wrote songs with
titles like 'Breathing Sighs,' or 'Kiss me, Mother, ere I die,' with a
refrain like an anthem:
'Kiss me, Mother, ere I die;
Kiss me-kiss me, Mother, ah!
Kiss, ah! kiss me e-ere I--
Kiss me, Mother, ere I d-d-die!'
She wrote the words to them herself, and other poems. In lighter moments
she wrote waltzes, one of which, the 'Kensington Coil,' was almost
national to Kensington, having a sweet dip in it.
It was very original. Then there were her 'Songs for Little People,' at
once educational and witty, especially 'Gran'ma's Porgie,' and that
ditty, almost prophetically imbued with the coming Imperial spirit,
entitled 'Black Him In His Little Eye.'
Any publisher would take these, and reviews like 'High Living,' and the
'Ladies' Genteel Guide' went into raptures over: 'Another of Miss Francie
Forsyte's spirited ditties, sparkling and pathetic. We ourselves were
moved to tears and laughter. Miss Forsyte should go far.'
With the true instinct of her breed, Francie had made a point of knowing
the right people--people who would write about her, and talk about her,
and people in Society, too--keeping a mental register of just where to
exert her fascinations, and an eye on that steady scale of rising prices,
which in her mind's eye represented the future. In this way she caused
herself to be universally respected.
Once, at a time when her emotions were whipped by an attachment--for the
tenor of Roger's life, with its whole-hearted collection of house
property, had induced in his only daughter a tendency towards
passion--she turned to great and sincere work, choosing the sonata form,
for the violin. This was the only one of her productions that troubled
the Forsytes. They felt at once that it would not sell.
Roger, who liked having a clever daughter well enough, and often alluded
to the amount of pocket-money she made for herself, was upset by this
violin sonata.
"Rubbish like that!" he called it. Francie had borrowed young
Flageoletti from Euphemia, to play it in the drawing-room at Prince's
Gardens.
As a matter of fact Roger was right. It was rubbish, but--annoying! the
sort of rubbish that wouldn't sell. As every Forsyte knows, rubbish that
sells is not rubbish at all--far from it.
And yet, in spite of the sound common sense which fixed the worth of art
at what it would fetch, some of the Forsytes--Aunt Hester, for instance,
who had always been musical--could not help regretting that Francie's
music was not 'classical'; the same with her poems. But then, as Aunt
Hester said, they didn't see any poetry nowadays, all the poems were
'little light things.'
There was nobody who could write a poem like 'Paradise Lost,' or 'Childe
Harold'; either of which made you feel that you really had read
something. Still, it was nice for Francie to have something to occupy
her; while other girls were spending money shopping she was making it!
And both Aunt Hester and Aunt Juley were always ready to listen to the
latest story of how Francie had got her price increased.
They listened now, together with Swithin, who sat pretending not to, for
these young people talked so fast and mumbled so, he never could catch
what they said.
"And I can't think," said Mrs. Septimus, "how you do it. I should never
have the audacity!"
Francie smiled lightly. "I'd much rather deal with a man than a woman.
Women are so sharp!"
"My dear," cried Mrs. Small, "I'm sure we're not."
Euphemia went off into her silent laugh, and, ending with the squeak,
said, as though being strangled: "Oh, you'll kill me some day, auntie."
Swithin saw no necessity to laugh; he detested people laughing when he
himself perceived no joke. Indeed, he detested Euphemia altogether, to
whom he always alluded as 'Nick's daughter, what's she called--the pale
one?' He had just missed being her god-father--indeed, would have been,
had he not taken a firm stand against her outlandish name. He hated
becoming a godfather. Swithin then said to Francie with dignity: "It's a
fine day--er--for the time of year." But Euphemia, who knew perfectly
well that he had refused to be her godfather, turned to Aunt Hester, and
began telling her how she had seen Irene--Mrs. Soames--at the Church and
Commercial Stores.
"And Soames was with her?" said Aunt Hester, to whom Mrs. Small had as
yet had no opportunity of relating the incident.
"Soames with her? Of course not!"
"But was she all alone in London?"
"Oh, no; there was Mr. Bosinney with her. She was perfectly dressed."
But Swithin, hearing the name Irene, looked severely at Euphemia, who, it
is true, never did look well in a dress, whatever she may have done on
other occasions, and said:
"Dressed like a lady, I've no doubt. It's a pleasure to see her."
At this moment James and his daughters were announced. Dartie, feeling
badly in want of a drink, had pleaded an appointment with his dentist,
and, being put down at the Marble Arch, had got into a hansom, and was
already seated in the window of his club in Piccadilly.
His wife, he told his cronies, had wanted to take him to pay some calls.
It was not in his line--not exactly. Haw!
Hailing the waiter, he sent him out to the hall to see what had won the
4.30 race. He was dog-tired, he said, and that was a fact; had been
drivin' about with his wife to 'shows' all the afternoon. Had put his
foot down at last. A fellow must live his own life.
At this moment, glancing out of the bay window--for he loved this seat
whence he could see everybody pass--his eye unfortunately, or perhaps
fortunately, chanced to light on the figure of Soames, who was mousing
across the road from the Green Park-side, with the evident intention of
coming in, for he, too, belonged to 'The Iseeum.'
Dartie sprang to his feet; grasping his glass, he muttered something
about 'that 4.30 race,' and swiftly withdrew to the card-room, where
Soames never came. Here, in complete isolation and a dim light, he lived
his own life till half past seven, by which hour he knew Soames must
certainly have left the club.
It would not do, as he kept repeating to himself whenever he felt the
impulse to join the gossips in the bay-window getting too strong for
him--it absolutely would not do, with finances as low as his, and the
'old man' (James) rusty ever since that business over the oil shares,
which was no fault of his, to risk a row with Winifred.
If Soames were to see him in the club it would be sure to come round to
her that he wasn't at the dentist's at all. He never knew a family where
things 'came round' so. Uneasily, amongst the green baize card-tables, a
frown on his olive coloured face, his check trousers crossed, and
patent-leather boots shining through the gloom, he sat biting his
forefinger, and wondering where the deuce he was to get the money if
Erotic failed to win the Lancashire Cup.
His thoughts turned gloomily to the Forsytes. What a set they were!
There was no getting anything out of them--at least, it was a matter of
extreme difficulty. They were so d---d particular about money matters;
not a sportsman amongst the lot, unless it were George. That fellow
Soames, for instance, would have a ft if you tried to borrow a tenner
from him, or, if he didn't have a fit, he looked at you with his cursed
supercilious smile, as if you were a lost soul because you were in want
of money.
And that wife of his (Dartie's mouth watered involuntarily), he had tried
to be on good terms with her, as one naturally would with any pretty
sister-in-law, but he would be cursed if the (he mentally used a coarse
word)--would have anything to say to him--she looked at him, indeed, as
if he were dirt--and yet she could go far enough, he wouldn't mind
betting. He knew women; they weren't made with soft eyes and figures
like that for nothing, as that fellow Soames would jolly soon find out,
if there were anything in what he had heard about this Buccaneer Johnny.
Rising from his chair, Dartie took a turn across the room, ending in
front of the looking-glass over the marble chimney-piece; and there he
stood for a long time contemplating in the glass the reflection of his
face. It had that look, peculiar to some men, of having been steeped in
linseed oil, with its waxed dark moustaches and the little distinguished
commencements of side whiskers; and concernedly he felt the promise of a
pimple on the side of his slightly curved and fattish nose.
In the meantime old Jolyon had found the remaining chair in Timothy's
commodious drawing-room. His advent had obviously put a stop to the
conversation, decided awkwardness having set in. Aunt Juley, with her
well-known kindheartedness, hastened to set people at their ease again.
"Yes, Jolyon," she said, "we were just saying that you haven't been here
for a long time; but we mustn't be surprised. You're busy, of course?
James was just saying what a busy time of year...."
"Was he?" said old Jolyon, looking hard at James. "It wouldn't be half
so busy if everybody minded their own business."
James, brooding in a small chair from which his knees ran uphill, shifted
his feet uneasily, and put one of them down on the cat, which had
unwisely taken refuge from old Jolyon beside him.
"Here, you've got a cat here," he said in an injured voice, withdrawing
his foot nervously as he felt it squeezing into the soft, furry body.
"Several," said old Jolyon, looking at one face and another; "I trod on
one just now."
A silence followed.
Then Mrs. Small, twisting her fingers and gazing round with 'pathetic
calm', asked: "And how is dear June?"
A twinkle of humour shot through the sternness of old Jolyon's eyes.
Extraordinary old woman, Juley! No one quite like her for saying the
wrong thing!
"Bad!" he said; "London don't agree with her--too many people about, too
much clatter and chatter by half." He laid emphasis on the words, and
again looked James in the face.
Nobody spoke.
A feeling of its being too dangerous to take a step in any direction, or
hazard any remark, had fallen on them all. Something of the sense of the
impending, that comes over the spectator of a Greek tragedy, had entered
that upholstered room, filled with those white-haired, frock-coated old
men, and fashionably attired women, who were all of the same blood,
between all of whom existed an unseizable resemblance.
Not that they were conscious of it--the visits of such fateful, bitter
spirits are only felt.
Then Swithin rose. He would not sit there, feeling like that--he was not
to be put down by anyone! And, manoeuvring round the room with added
pomp, he shook hands with each separately.
"You tell Timothy from me," he said, "that he coddles himself too much!"
Then, turning to Francie, whom he considered 'smart,' he added: "You come
with me for a drive one of these days." But this conjured up the vision
of that other eventful drive which had been so much talked about, and he
stood quite still for a second, with glassy eyes, as though waiting to
catch up with the significance of what he himself had said; then,
suddenly recollecting that he didn't care a damn, he turned to old
Jolyon: "Well, good-bye, Jolyon! You shouldn't go about without an
overcoat; you'll be getting sciatica or something!" And, kicking the cat
slightly with the pointed tip of his patent leather boot, he took his
huge form away.
When he had gone everyone looked secretly at the others, to see how they
had taken the mention of the word 'drive'--the word which had become
famous, and acquired an overwhelming importance, as the only official--so
to speak--news in connection with the vague and sinister rumour clinging
to the family tongue.
Euphemia, yielding to an impulse, said with a short laugh: "I'm glad
Uncle Swithin doesn't ask me to go for drives."
Mrs. Small, to reassure her and smooth over any little awkwardness the
subject might have, replied: "My dear, he likes to take somebody well
dressed, who will do him a little credit. I shall never forget the drive
he took me. It was an experience!" And her chubby round old face was
spread for a moment with a strange contentment; then broke into pouts,
and tears came into her eyes. She was thinking of that long ago driving
tour she had once taken with Septimus Small.
James, who had relapsed into his nervous brooding in the little chair,
suddenly roused himself: "He's a funny fellow, Swithin," he said, but in
a half-hearted way.
Old Jolyon's silence, his stern eyes, held them all in a kind of
paralysis. He was disconcerted himself by the effect of his own
words--an effect which seemed to deepen the importance of the very rumour
he had come to scotch; but he was still angry.
He had not done with them yet--No, no--he would give them another rub or
two.
He did not wish to rub his nieces, he had no quarrel with them--a young
and presentable female always appealed to old Jolyon's clemency--but that
fellow James, and, in a less degree perhaps, those others, deserved all
they would get. And he, too, asked for Timothy.
As though feeling that some danger threatened her younger brother, Aunt
Juley suddenly offered him tea: "There it is," she said, "all cold and
nasty, waiting for you in the back drawing room, but Smither shall make
you some fresh."
Old Jolyon rose: "Thank you," he said, looking straight at James, "but
I've no time for tea, and--scandal, and the rest of it! It's time I was
at home. Good-bye, Julia; good-bye, Hester; good-bye, Winifred."
Without more ceremonious adieux, he marched out.
Once again in his cab, his anger evaporated, for so it ever was with his
wrath--when he had rapped out, it was gone. Sadness came over his
spirit. He had stopped their mouths, maybe, but at what a cost! At the
cost of certain knowledge that the rumour he had been resolved not to
believe was true. June was abandoned, and for the wife of that fellow's
son! He felt it was true, and hardened himself to treat it as if it were
not; but the pain he hid beneath this resolution began slowly, surely, to
vent itself in a blind resentment against James and his son.
The six women and one man left behind in the little drawing-room began
talking as easily as might be after such an occurrence, for though each
one of them knew for a fact that he or she never talked scandal, each one
of them also knew that the other six did; all were therefore angry and at
a loss. James only was silent, disturbed, to the bottom of his soul.
Presently Francie said: "Do you know, I think Uncle Jolyon is terribly
changed this last year. What do you think, Aunt Hester?"
Aunt Hester made a little movement of recoil: "Oh, ask your Aunt Julia!"
she said; "I know nothing about it."
No one else was afraid of assenting, and James muttered gloomily at the
floor: "He's not half the man he was."
"I've noticed it a long time," went on Francie; "he's aged tremendously."
Aunt Juley shook her head; her face seemed suddenly to have become one
immense pout.
"Poor dear Jolyon," she said, "somebody ought to see to it for him!"
There was again silence; then, as though in terror of being left
solitarily behind, all five visitors rose simultaneously, and took their
departure.
Mrs. Small, Aunt Hester, and their cat were left once more alone, the
sound of a door closing in the distance announced the approach of
Timothy.
That evening, when Aunt Hester had just got off to sleep in the back
bedroom that used to be Aunt Juley's before Aunt Juley took Aunt Ann's,
her door was opened, and Mrs. Small, in a pink night-cap, a candle in her
hand, entered: "Hester!" she said. "Hester!"
Aunt Hester faintly rustled the sheet.
"Hester," repeated Aunt Juley, to make quite sure that she had awakened
her, "I am quite troubled about poor dear Jolyon. What," Aunt Juley dwelt
on the word, "do you think ought to be done?"
Aunt Hester again rustled the sheet, her voice was heard faintly
pleading: "Done? How should I know?"
Aunt Juley turned away satisfied, and closing the door with extra
gentleness so as not to disturb dear Hester, let it slip through her
fingers and fall to with a 'crack.'
Back in her own room, she stood at the window gazing at the moon over the
trees in the Park, through a chink in the muslin curtains, close drawn
lest anyone should see. And there, with her face all round and pouting
in its pink cap, and her eyes wet, she thought of 'dear Jolyon,' so old
and so lonely, and how she could be of some use to him; and how he would
come to love her, as she had never been loved since--since poor Septimus
went away.
CHAPTER VIII
DANCE AT ROGER'S
Roger's house in Prince's Gardens was brilliantly alight. Large numbers
of wax candles had been collected and placed in cut-glass chandeliers,
and the parquet floor of the long, double drawing-room reflected these
constellations. An appearance of real spaciousness had been secured by
moving out all the furniture on to the upper landings, and enclosing the
room with those strange appendages of civilization known as 'rout' seats.
In a remote corner, embowered in palms, was a cottage piano, with a copy
of the 'Kensington Coil' open on the music-stand.
Roger had objected to a band. He didn't see in the least what they
wanted with a band; he wouldn't go to the expense, and there was an end
of it. Francie (her mother, whom Roger had long since reduced to chronic
dyspepsia, went to bed on such occasions), had been obliged to content
herself with supplementing the piano by a young man who played the
cornet, and she so arranged with palms that anyone who did not look into
the heart of things might imagine there were several musicians secreted
there. She made up her mind to tell them to play loud--there was a lot
of music in a cornet, if the man would only put his soul into it.
In the more cultivated American tongue, she was 'through' at
last--through that tortuous labyrinth of make-shifts, which must be
traversed before fashionable display can be combined with the sound
economy of a Forsyte. Thin but brilliant, in her maize-coloured frock
with much tulle about the shoulders, she went from place to place,
fitting on her gloves, and casting her eye over it all.
To the hired butler (for Roger only kept maids) she spoke about the wine.
Did he quite understand that Mr. Forsyte wished a dozen bottles of the
champagne from Whiteley's to be put out? But if that were finished (she
did not suppose it would be, most of the ladies would drink water, no
doubt), but if it were, there was the champagne cup, and he must do the
best he could with that.
She hated having to say this sort of thing to a butler, it was so infra
dig.; but what could you do with father? Roger, indeed, after making
himself consistently disagreeable about the dance, would come down
presently, with his fresh colour and bumpy forehead, as though he had
been its promoter; and he would smile, and probably take the prettiest
woman in to supper; and at two o'clock, just as they were getting into
the swing, he would go up secretly to the musicians and tell them to play
'God Save the Queen,' and go away.
Francie devoutly hoped he might soon get tired, and slip off to bed.
The three or four devoted girl friends who were staying in the house for
this dance had partaken with her, in a small, abandoned room upstairs, of
tea and cold chicken-legs, hurriedly served; the men had been sent out to
dine at Eustace's Club, it being felt that they must be fed up.
Punctually on the stroke of nine arrived Mrs. Small alone. She made
elaborate apologies for the absence of Timothy, omitting all mention of
Aunt Hester, who, at the last minute, had said she could not be bothered.
Francie received her effusively, and placed her on a rout seat, where she
left her, pouting and solitary in lavender-coloured satin--the first time
she had worn colour since Aunt Ann's death.
The devoted maiden friends came now from their rooms, each by magic
arrangement in a differently coloured frock, but all with the same
liberal allowance of tulle on the shoulders and at the bosom--for they
were, by some fatality, lean to a girl. They were all taken up to Mrs.
Small. None stayed with her more than a few seconds, but clustering
together talked and twisted their programmes, looking secretly at the
door for the first appearance of a man.
Then arrived in a group a number of Nicholases, always punctual--the
fashion up Ladbroke Grove way; and close behind them Eustace and his men,
gloomy and smelling rather of smoke.
Three or four of Francie's lovers now appeared, one after the other; she
had made each promise to come early. They were all clean-shaven and
sprightly, with that peculiar kind of young-man sprightliness which had
recently invaded Kensington; they did not seem to mind each other's
presence in the least, and wore their ties bunching out at the ends,
white waistcoats, and socks with clocks. All had handkerchiefs concealed
in their cuffs. They moved buoyantly, each armoured in professional
gaiety, as though he had come to do great deeds. Their faces when they
danced, far from wearing the traditional solemn look of the dancing
Englishman, were irresponsible, charming, suave; they bounded, twirling
their partners at great pace, without pedantic attention to the rhythm of
the music.
At other dancers they looked with a kind of airy scorn--they, the light
brigade, the heroes of a hundred Kensington 'hops'--from whom alone could
the right manner and smile and step be hoped.
After this the stream came fast; chaperones silting up along the wall
facing the entrance, the volatile element swelling the eddy in the larger
room.
Men were scarce, and wallflowers wore their peculiar, pathetic
expression, a patient, sourish smile which seemed to say: "Oh, no! don't
mistake me, I know you are not coming up to me. I can hardly expect
that!" And Francie would plead with one of her lovers, or with some
callow youth: "Now, to please me, do let me introduce you to Miss Pink;
such a nice girl, really!" and she would bring him up, and say: "Miss
Pink--Mr. Gathercole. Can you spare him a dance?" Then Miss Pink,
smiling her forced smile, colouring a little, answered: "Oh! I think so!"
and screening her empty card, wrote on it the name of Gathercole,
spelling it passionately in the district that he proposed, about the
second extra.
But when the youth had murmured that it was hot, and passed, she relapsed
into her attitude of hopeless expectation, into her patient, sourish
smile.
Mothers, slowly fanning their faces, watched their daughters, and in
their eyes could be read all the story of those daughters' fortunes. As
for themselves, to sit hour after hour, dead tired, silent, or talking
spasmodically--what did it matter, so long as the girls were having a
good time! But to see them neglected and passed by! Ah! they smiled,
but their eyes stabbed like the eyes of an offended swan; they longed to
pluck young Gathercole by the slack of his dandified breeches, and drag
him to their daughters--the jackanapes!
And all the cruelties and hardness of life, its pathos and unequal
chances, its conceit, self-forgetfulness, and patience, were presented on
the battle-field of this Kensington ball-room.
Here and there, too, lovers--not lovers like Francie's, a peculiar breed,
but simply lovers--trembling, blushing, silent, sought each other by
flying glances, sought to meet and touch in the mazes of the dance, and
now and again dancing together, struck some beholder by the light in
their eyes.
Not a second before ten o'clock came the Jameses--Emily, Rachel, Winifred
(Dartie had been left behind, having on a former occasion drunk too much
of Roger's champagne), and Cicely, the youngest, making her debut; behind
them, following in a hansom from the paternal mansion where they had
dined, Soames and Irene.
All these ladies had shoulder-straps and no tulle--thus showing at once,
by a bolder exposure of flesh, that they came from the more fashionable
side of the Park.
Soames, sidling back from the contact of the dancers, took up a position
against the wall. Guarding himself with his pale smile, he stood
watching. Waltz after waltz began and ended, couple after couple brushed
by with smiling lips, laughter, and snatches of talk; or with set lips,
and eyes searching the throng; or again, with silent, parted lips, and
eyes on each other. And the scent of festivity, the odour of flowers,
and hair, of essences that women love, rose suffocatingly in the heat of
the summer night.
Silent, with something of scorn in his smile, Soames seemed to notice
nothing; but now and again his eyes, finding that which they sought,
would fix themselves on a point in the shifting throng, and the smile die
off his lips.
He danced with no one. Some fellows danced with their wives; his sense
of 'form' had never permitted him to dance with Irene since their
marriage, and the God of the Forsytes alone can tell whether this was a
relief to him or not.
She passed, dancing with other men, her dress, iris-coloured, floating
away from her feet. She danced well; he was tired of hearing women say
with an acid smile: "How beautifully your wife dances, Mr. Forsyte--it's
quite a pleasure to watch her!" Tired of answering them with his
sidelong glance: "You think so?"
A young couple close by flirted a fan by turns, making an unpleasant
draught. Francie and one of her lovers stood near. They were talking of
love.
He heard Roger's voice behind, giving an order about supper to a servant.
Everything was very second-class! He wished that he had not come! He
had asked Irene whether she wanted him; she had answered with that
maddening smile of hers "Oh, no!"
Why had he come? For the last quarter of an hour he had not even seen
her. Here was George advancing with his Quilpish face; it was too late
to get out of his way.
"Have you seen 'The Buccaneer'?" said this licensed wag; "he's on the
warpath--hair cut and everything!"
Soames said he had not, and crossing the room, half-empty in an interval
of the dance, he went out on the balcony, and looked down into the
street.
A carriage had driven up with late arrivals, and round the door hung some
of those patient watchers of the London streets who spring up to the call
of light or music; their faces, pale and upturned above their black and
rusty figures, had an air of stolid watching that annoyed Soames. Why
were they allowed to hang about; why didn't the bobby move them on?
But the policeman took no notice of them; his feet were planted apart on
the strip of crimson carpet stretched across the pavement; his face,
under the helmet, wore the same stolid, watching look as theirs.
Across the road, through the railings, Soames could see the branches of
trees shining, faintly stirring in the breeze, by the gleam of the street
lamps; beyond, again, the upper lights of the houses on the other side,
so many eyes looking down on the quiet blackness of the garden; and over
all, the sky, that wonderful London sky, dusted with the innumerable
reflection of countless lamps; a dome woven over between its stars with
the refraction of human needs and human fancies--immense mirror of pomp
and misery that night after night stretches its kindly mocking over miles
of houses and gardens, mansions and squalor, over Forsytes, policemen,
and patient watchers in the streets.
Soames turned away, and, hidden in the recess, gazed into the lighted
room. It was cooler out there. He saw the new arrivals, June and her
grandfather, enter. What had made them so late? They stood by the
doorway. They looked fagged. Fancy Uncle Jolyon turning out at this
time of night! Why hadn't June come to Irene, as she usually did, and it
occurred to him suddenly that he had seen nothing of June for a long time
now.
Watching her face with idle malice, he saw it change, grow so pale that
he thought she would drop, then flame out crimson. Turning to see at what
she was looking, he saw his wife on Bosinney's arm, coming from the
conservatory at the end of the room. Her eyes were raised to his, as
though answering some question he had asked, and he was gazing at her
intently.
Soames looked again at June. Her hand rested on old Jolyon's arm; she
seemed to be making a request. He saw a surprised look on his uncle's
face; they turned and passed through the door out of his sight.
The music began again--a waltz--and, still as a statue in the recess of
the window, his face unmoved, but no smile on his lips, Soames waited.
Presently, within a yard of the dark balcony, his wife and Bosinney
passed. He caught the perfume of the gardenias that she wore, saw the
rise and fall of her bosom, the languor in her eyes, her parted lips, and
a look on her face that he did not know. To the slow, swinging measure
they danced by, and it seemed to him that they clung to each other; he
saw her raise her eyes, soft and dark, to Bosinney's, and drop them
again.
Very white, he turned back to the balcony, and leaning on it, gazed down
on the Square; the figures were still there looking up at the light with
dull persistency, the policeman's face, too, upturned, and staring, but
he saw nothing of them. Below, a carriage drew up, two figures got in,
and drove away....
That evening June and old Jolyon sat down to dinner at the usual hour.
The girl was in her customary high-necked frock, old Jolyon had not
dressed.
At breakfast she had spoken of the dance at Uncle Roger's, she wanted to
go; she had been stupid enough, she said, not to think of asking anyone
to take her. It was too late now.
Old Jolyon lifted his keen eyes. June was used to go to dances with
Irene as a matter of course! and deliberately fixing his gaze on her, he
asked: "Why don't you get Irene?"
No! June did not want to ask Irene; she would only go if--if her
grandfather wouldn't mind just for once for a little time!
At her look, so eager and so worn, old Jolyon had grumblingly consented.
He did not know what she wanted, he said, with going to a dance like
this, a poor affair, he would wager; and she no more fit for it than a
cat! What she wanted was sea air, and after his general meeting of the
Globular Gold Concessions he was ready to take her. She didn't want to
go away? Ah! she would knock herself up! Stealing a mournful look at
her, he went on with his breakfast.
June went out early, and wandered restlessly about in the heat. Her
little light figure that lately had moved so languidly about its
business, was all on fire. She bought herself some flowers. She
wanted--she meant to look her best. He would be there! She knew well
enough that he had a card. She would show him that she did not care.
But deep down in her heart she resolved that evening to win him back.
She came in flushed, and talked brightly all lunch; old Jolyon was there,
and he was deceived.
In the afternoon she was overtaken by a desperate fit of sobbing. She
strangled the noise against the pillows of her bed, but when at last it
ceased she saw in the glass a swollen face with reddened eyes, and violet
circles round them. She stayed in the darkened room till dinner time.
All through that silent meal the struggle went on within her.
She looked so shadowy and exhausted that old Jolyon told 'Sankey' to
countermand the carriage, he would not have her going out.... She was to
go to bed! She made no resistance. She went up to her room, and sat in
the dark. At ten o'clock she rang for her maid.
"Bring some hot water, and go down and tell Mr. Forsyte that I feel
perfectly rested. Say that if he's too tired I can go to the dance by
myself."
The maid looked askance, and June turned on her imperiously. "Go," she
said, "bring the hot water at once!"
Her ball-dress still lay on the sofa, and with a sort of fierce care she
arrayed herself, took the flowers in her hand, and went down, her small
face carried high under its burden of hair. She could hear old Jolyon in
his room as she passed.
Bewildered and vexed, he was dressing. It was past ten, they would not
get there till eleven; the girl was mad. But he dared not cross her--the
expression of her face at dinner haunted him.
With great ebony brushes he smoothed his hair till it shone like silver
under the light; then he, too, came out on the gloomy staircase.
June met him below, and, without a word, they went to the carriage.
When, after that drive which seemed to last for ever, she entered Roger's
drawing-room, she disguised under a mask of resolution a very torment of
nervousness and emotion. The feeling of shame at what might be called
'running after him' was smothered by the dread that he might not be
there, that she might not see him after all, and by that dogged
resolve--somehow, she did not know how--to win him back.
The sight of the ballroom, with its gleaming floor, gave her a feeling of
joy, of triumph, for she loved dancing, and when dancing she floated, so
light was she, like a strenuous, eager little spirit. He would surely
ask her to dance, and if he danced with her it would all be as it was
before. She looked about her eagerly.
The sight of Bosinney coming with Irene from the conservatory, with that
strange look of utter absorption on his face, struck her too suddenly.
They had not seen--no one should see--her distress, not even her
grandfather.
She put her hand on Jolyon's arm, and said very low:
"I must go home, Gran; I feel ill."
He hurried her away, grumbling to himself that he had known how it would
be.
To her he said nothing; only when they were once more in the carriage,
which by some fortunate chance had lingered near the door, he asked her:
"What is it, my darling?"
Feeling her whole slender body shaken by sobs, he was terribly alarmed.
She must have Blank to-morrow. He would insist upon it. He could not
have her like this.... There, there!
June mastered her sobs, and squeezing his hand feverishly, she lay back
in her corner, her face muffled in a shawl.
He could only see her eyes, fixed and staring in the dark, but he did not
cease to stroke her hand with his thin fingers.
CHAPTER IX
EVENING AT RICHMOND
Other eyes besides the eyes of June and of Soames had seen 'those two'
(as Euphemia had already begun to call them) coming from the
conservatory; other eyes had noticed the look on Bosinney's face.
There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the
careless calm of her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing white on
almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with its
single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the flames of
sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery secret.
There are moments, too, when in a picture-gallery, a work, noted by the
casual spectator as '......Titian--remarkably fine,' breaks through the
defences of some Forsyte better lunched perhaps than his fellows, and
holds him spellbound in a kind of ecstasy. There are things, he
feels--there are things here which--well, which are things. Something
unreasoning, unreasonable, is upon him; when he tries to define it with
the precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the glow
of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him cross, and
conscious of his liver. He feels that he has been extravagant, prodigal
of something; virtue has gone out of him. He did not desire this glimpse
of what lay under the three stars of his catalogue. God forbid that he
should know anything about the forces of Nature! God forbid that he
should admit for a moment that there are such things! Once admit that,
and where was he? One paid a shilling for entrance, and another for the
programme.
The look which June had seen, which other Forsytes had seen, was like the
sudden flashing of a candle through a hole in some imaginary canvas,
behind which it was being moved--the sudden flaming-out of a vague,
erratic glow, shadowy and enticing. It brought home to onlookers the
consciousness that dangerous forces were at work. For a moment they
noticed it with pleasure, with interest, then felt they must not notice
it at all.
It supplied, however, the reason of June's coming so late and
disappearing again without dancing, without even shaking hands with her
lover. She was ill, it was said, and no wonder.
But here they looked at each other guiltily. They had no desire to
spread scandal, no desire to be ill-natured. Who would have? And to
outsiders no word was breathed, unwritten law keeping them silent.
Then came the news that June had gone to the seaside with old Jolyon.
He had carried her off to Broadstairs, for which place there was just
then a feeling, Yarmouth having lost caste, in spite of Nicholas, and no
Forsyte going to the sea without intending to have an air for his money
such as would render him bilious in a week. That fatally aristocratic
tendency of the first Forsyte to drink Madeira had left his descendants
undoubtedly accessible.
So June went to the sea. The family awaited developments; there was
nothing else to do.
But how far--how far had 'those two' gone? How far were they going to
go? Could they really be going at all? Nothing could surely come of it,
for neither of them had any money. At the most a flirtation, ending, as
all such attachments should, at the proper time.
Soames' sister, Winifred Dartie, who had imbibed with the breezes of
Mayfair--she lived in Green Street--more fashionable principles in regard
to matrimonial behaviour than were current, for instance, in Ladbroke
Grove, laughed at the idea of there being anything in it. The 'little
thing'--Irene was taller than herself, and it was real testimony to the
solid worth of a Forsyte that she should always thus be a 'little
thing'--the little thing was bored. Why shouldn't she amuse herself?
Soames was rather tiring; and as to Mr. Bosinney--only that buffoon
George would have called him the Buccaneer--she maintained that he was
very chic.
This dictum--that Bosinney was chic--caused quit a sensation. It failed
to convince. That he was 'good-looking in a way' they were prepared to
admit, but that anyone could call a man with his pronounced cheekbones,
curious eyes, and soft felt hats chic was only another instance of
Winifred's extravagant way of running after something new.
It was that famous summer when extravagance was fashionable, when the
very earth was extravagant, chestnut-trees spread with blossom, and
flowers drenched in perfume, as they had never been before; when roses
blew in every garden; and for the swarming stars the nights had hardly
space; when every day and all day long the sun, in full armour, swung his
brazen shield above the Park, and people did strange things, lunching and
dining in the open air. Unprecedented was the tale of cabs and carriages
that streamed across the bridges of the shining river, bearing the
upper-middle class in thousands to the green glories of Bushey, Richmond,
Kew, and Hampton Court. Almost every family with any pretensions to be
of the carriage-class paid one visit that year to the horse-chestnuts at
Bushey, or took one drive amongst the Spanish chestnuts of Richmond Park.
Bowling smoothly, if dustily, along, in a cloud of their own creation,
they would stare fashionably at the antlered heads which the great slow
deer raised out of a forest of bracken that promised to autumn lovers
such cover as was never seen before. And now and again, as the amorous
perfume of chestnut flowers and of fern was drifted too near, one would
say to the other: "My dear! What a peculiar scent!"
And the lime-flowers that year were of rare prime, near honey-coloured.
At the corners of London squares they gave out, as the sun went down, a
perfume sweeter than the honey bees had taken--a perfume that stirred a
yearning unnamable in the hearts of Forsytes and their peers, taking the
cool after dinner in the precincts of those gardens to which they alone
had keys.
And that yearning made them linger amidst the dim shapes of flower-beds
in the failing daylight, made them turn, and turn, and turn again, as
though lovers were waiting for them--waiting for the last light to die
away under the shadow of the branches.
Some vague sympathy evoked by the scent of the limes, some sisterly
desire to see for herself, some idea of demonstrating the soundness of
her dictum that there was 'nothing in it'; or merely the craving to drive
down to Richmond, irresistible that summer, moved the mother of the
little Darties (of little Publius, of Imogen, Maud, and Benedict) to
write the following note to her sister-in-law:
'DEAR IRENE, 'June 30.
'I hear that Soames is going to Henley tomorrow for the night. I thought
it would be great fun if we made up a little party and drove down to,
Richmond. Will you ask Mr. Bosinney, and I will get young Flippard.
'Emily (they called their mother Emily--it was so chic) will lend us the
carriage. I will call for you and your young man at seven o'clock.
'Your affectionate sister,
'WINIFRED DARTIE.
'Montague believes the dinner at the Crown and Sceptre to be quite
eatable.'
Montague was Dartie's second and better known name--his first being
Moses; for he was nothing if not a man of the world.
Her plan met with more opposition from Providence than so benevolent a
scheme deserved. In the first place young Flippard wrote:
'DEAR Mrs. DARTIE,
'Awfully sorry. Engaged two deep.
'Yours,
'AUGUSTUS FLIPPARD.'
It was late to send into the by-ways and hedges to remedy this
misfortune. With the promptitude and conduct of a mother, Winifred fell
back on her husband. She had, indeed, the decided but tolerant
temperament that goes with a good deal of profile, fair hair, and
greenish eyes. She was seldom or never at a loss; or if at a loss, was
always able to convert it into a gain.
Dartie, too, was in good feather. Erotic had failed to win the
Lancashire Cup. Indeed, that celebrated animal, owned as he was by a
pillar of the turf, who had secretly laid many thousands against him, had
not even started. The forty-eight hours that followed his scratching
were among the darkest in Dartie's life.
Visions of James haunted him day and night. Black thoughts about Soames
mingled with the faintest hopes. On the Friday night he got drunk, so
greatly was he affected. But on Saturday morning the true Stock Exchange
instinct triumphed within him. Owing some hundreds, which by no
possibility could he pay, he went into town and put them all on
Concertina for the Saltown Borough Handicap.
As he said to Major Scrotton, with whom he lunched at the Iseeum: "That
little Jew boy, Nathans, had given him the tip. He didn't care a cursh.
He wash in--a mucker. If it didn't come up--well then, damme, the old
man would have to pay!"
A bottle of Pol Roger to his own cheek had given him a new contempt for
James.
It came up. Concertina was squeezed home by her neck--a terrible squeak!
But, as Dartie said: There was nothing like pluck!
He was by no means averse to the expedition to Richmond. He would
'stand' it himself! He cherished an admiration for Irene, and wished to
be on more playful terms with her.
At half-past five the Park Lane footman came round to say: Mrs. Forsyte
was very sorry, but one of the horses was coughing!
Undaunted by this further blow, Winifred at once despatched little
Publius (now aged seven) with the nursery governess to Montpellier
Square.
They would go down in hansoms and meet at the Crown and Sceptre at 7.45.
Dartie, on being told, was pleased enough. It was better than going down
with your back to the horses! He had no objection to driving down with
Irene. He supposed they would pick up the others at Montpellier Square,
and swop hansoms there?
Informed that the meet was at the Crown and Sceptre, and that he would
have to drive with his wife, he turned sulky, and said it was d---d slow!
At seven o'clock they started, Dartie offering to bet the driver
half-a-crown he didn't do it in the three-quarters of an hour.
Twice only did husband and wife exchange remarks on the way.
Dartie said: "It'll put Master Soames's nose out of joint to hear his
wife's been drivin' in a hansom with Master Bosinney!"
Winifred replied: "Don't talk such nonsense, Monty!"
"Nonsense!" repeated Dartie. "You don't know women, my fine lady!"
On the other occasion he merely asked: "How am I looking? A bit puffy
about the gills? That fizz old George is so fond of is a windy wine!"
He had been lunching with George Forsyte at the Haversnake.
Bosinney and Irene had arrived before them. They were standing in one of
the long French windows overlooking the river.
Windows that summer were open all day long, and all night too, and day
and night the scents of flowers and trees came in, the hot scent of
parching grass, and the cool scent of the heavy dews.
To the eye of the observant Dartie his two guests did not appear to be
making much running, standing there close together, without a word.
Bosinney was a hungry-looking creature--not much go about him.
He left them to Winifred, however, and busied himself to order the
dinner.
A Forsyte will require good, if not delicate feeding, but a Dartie will
tax the resources of a Crown and Sceptre. Living as he does, from hand
to mouth, nothing is too good for him to eat; and he will eat it. His
drink, too, will need to be carefully provided; there is much drink in
this country 'not good enough' for a Dartie; he will have the best.
Paying for things vicariously, there is no reason why he should stint
himself. To stint yourself is the mark of a fool, not of a Dartie.
The best of everything! No sounder principle on which a man can base his
life, whose father-in-law has a very considerable income, and a
partiality for his grandchildren.
With his not unable eye Dartie had spotted this weakness in James the
very first year after little Publius's arrival (an error); he had
profited by his perspicacity. Four little Darties were now a sort of
perpetual insurance.
The feature of the feast was unquestionably the red mullet. This
delectable fish, brought from a considerable distance in a state of
almost perfect preservation, was first fried, then boned, then served in
ice, with Madeira punch in place of sauce, according to a recipe known to
a few men of the world.
Nothing else calls for remark except the payment of the bill by Dartie.
He had made himself extremely agreeable throughout the meal; his bold,
admiring stare seldom abandoning Irene's face and figure. As he was
obliged to confess to himself, he got no change out of her--she was cool
enough, as cool as her shoulders looked under their veil of creamy lace.
He expected to have caught her out in some little game with Bosinney; but
not a bit of it, she kept up her end remarkably well. As for that
architect chap, he was as glum as a bear with a sore head--Winifred could
barely get a word out of him; he ate nothing, but he certainly took his
liquor, and his face kept getting whiter, and his eyes looked queer.
It was all very amusing.
For Dartie himself was in capital form, and talked freely, with a certain
poignancy, being no fool. He told two or three stories verging on the
improper, a concession to the company, for his stories were not used to
verging. He proposed Irene's health in a mock speech. Nobody drank it,
and Winifred said: "Don't be such a clown, Monty!"
At her suggestion they went after dinner to the public terrace
overlooking the river.
"I should like to see the common people making love," she said, "it's
such fun!"
There were numbers of them walking in the cool, after the day's heat, and
the air was alive with the sound of voices, coarse and loud, or soft as
though murmuring secrets.
It was not long before Winifred's better sense--she was the only Forsyte
present--secured them an empty bench. They sat down in a row. A heavy
tree spread a thick canopy above their heads, and the haze darkened
slowly over the river.
Dartie sat at the end, next to him Irene, then Bosinney, then Winifred.
There was hardly room for four, and the man of the world could feel
Irene's arm crushed against his own; he knew that she could not withdraw
it without seeming rude, and this amused him; he devised every now and
again a movement that would bring her closer still. He thought: 'That
Buccaneer Johnny shan't have it all to himself! It's a pretty tight fit,
certainly!'
From far down below on the dark river came drifting the tinkle of a
mandoline, and voices singing the old round:
'A boat, a boat, unto the ferry, For we'll go over and be merry; And
laugh, and quaff, and drink brown sherry!'
And suddenly the moon appeared, young and tender, floating up on her back
from behind a tree; and as though she had breathed, the air was cooler,
but down that cooler air came always the warm odour of the limes.
Over his cigar Dartie peered round at Bosinney, who was sitting with his
arms crossed, staring straight in front of him, and on his face the look
of a man being tortured.
And Dartie shot a glance at the face between, so veiled by the
overhanging shadow that it was but like a darker piece of the darkness
shaped and breathed on; soft, mysterious, enticing.
A hush had fallen on the noisy terrace, as if all the strollers were
thinking secrets too precious to be spoken.
And Dartie thought: 'Women!'
The glow died above the river, the singing ceased; the young moon hid
behind a tree, and all was dark. He pressed himself against Irene.
He was not alarmed at the shuddering that ran through the limbs he
touched, or at the troubled, scornful look of her eyes. He felt her
trying to draw herself away, and smiled.
It must be confessed that the man of the world had drunk quite as much as
was good for him.
With thick lips parted under his well-curled moustaches, and his bold
eyes aslant upon her, he had the malicious look of a satyr.
Along the pathway of sky between the hedges of the tree tops the stars
clustered forth; like mortals beneath, they seemed to shift and swarm and
whisper. Then on the terrace the buzz broke out once more, and Dartie
thought: 'Ah! he's a poor, hungry-looking devil, that Bosinney!' and
again he pressed himself against Irene.
The movement deserved a better success. She rose, and they all followed
her.
The man of the world was more than ever determined to see what she was
made of. Along the terrace he kept close at her elbow. He had within him
much good wine. There was the long drive home, the long drive and the
warm dark and the pleasant closeness of the hansom cab--with its
insulation from the world devised by some great and good man. That
hungry architect chap might drive with his wife--he wished him joy of
her! And, conscious that his voice was not too steady, he was careful
not to speak; but a smile had become fixed on his thick lips.
They strolled along toward the cabs awaiting them at the farther end.
His plan had the merit of all great plans, an almost brutal simplicity he
would merely keep at her elbow till she got in, and get in quickly after
her.
But when Irene reached the cab she did not get in; she slipped, instead,
to the horse's head. Dartie was not at the moment sufficiently master of
his legs to follow. She stood stroking the horse's nose, and, to his
annoyance, Bosinney was at her side first. She turned and spoke to him
rapidly, in a low voice; the words 'That man' reached Dartie. He stood
stubbornly by the cab step, waiting for her to come back. He knew a
trick worth two of that!
Here, in the lamp-light, his figure (no more than medium height), well
squared in its white evening waistcoat, his light overcoat flung over his
arm, a pink flower in his button-hole, and on his dark face that look of
confident, good-humoured insolence, he was at his best--a thorough man of
the world.
Winifred was already in her cab. Dartie reflected that Bosinney would
have a poorish time in that cab if he didn't look sharp! Suddenly he
received a push which nearly overturned him in the road. Bosinney's
voice hissed in his ear: "I am taking Irene back; do you understand?" He
saw a face white with passion, and eyes that glared at him like a wild
cat's.
"Eh?" he stammered. "What? Not a bit. You take my wife!"
"Get away!" hissed Bosinney--"or I'll throw you into the road!"
Dartie recoiled; he saw as plainly as possible that the fellow meant it.
In the space he made Irene had slipped by, her dress brushed his legs.
Bosinney stepped in after her.
"Go on!" he heard the Buccaneer cry. The cabman flicked his horse. It
sprang forward.
Dartie stood for a moment dumbfounded; then, dashing at the cab where his
wife sat, he scrambled in.
"Drive on!" he shouted to the driver, "and don't you lose sight of that
fellow in front!"
Seated by his wife's side, he burst into imprecations. Calming himself
at last with a supreme effort, he added: "A pretty mess you've made of
it, to let the Buccaneer drive home with her; why on earth couldn't you
keep hold of him? He's mad with love; any fool can see that!"
He drowned Winifred's rejoinder with fresh calls to the Almighty; nor was
it until they reached Barnes that he ceased a Jeremiad, in the course of
which he had abused her, her father, her brother, Irene, Bosinney, the
name of Forsyte, his own children, and cursed the day when he had ever
married.
Winifred, a woman of strong character, let him have his say, at the end
of which he lapsed into sulky silence. His angry eyes never deserted the
back of that cab, which, like a lost chance, haunted the darkness in
front of him.
Fortunately he could not hear Bosinney's passionate pleading--that
pleading which the man of the world's conduct had let loose like a flood;
he could not see Irene shivering, as though some garment had been torn
from her, nor her eyes, black and mournful, like the eyes of a beaten
child. He could not hear Bosinney entreating, entreating, always
entreating; could not hear her sudden, soft weeping, nor see that poor,
hungry-looking devil, awed and trembling, humbly touching her hand.
In Montpellier Square their cabman, following his instructions to the
letter, faithfully drew up behind the cab in front. The Darties saw
Bosinney spring out, and Irene follow, and hasten up the steps with bent
head. She evidently had her key in her hand, for she disappeared at
once. It was impossible to tell whether she had turned to speak to
Bosinney.
The latter came walking past their cab; both husband and wife had an
admirable view of his face in the light of a street lamp. It was working
with violent emotion.
"Good-night, Mr. Bosinney!" called Winifred.
Bosinney started, clawed off his hat, and hurried on. He had obviously
forgotten their existence.
"There!" said Dartie, "did you see the beast's face? What did I say?
Fine games!" He improved the occasion.
There had so clearly been a crisis in the cab that Winifred was unable to
defend her theory.
She said: "I shall say nothing about it. I don't see any use in making a
fuss!"
With that view Dartie at once concurred; looking upon James as a private
preserve, he disapproved of his being disturbed by the troubles of
others.
"Quite right," he said; "let Soames look after himself. He's jolly well
able to!"
Thus speaking, the Darties entered their habitat in Green Street, the
rent of which was paid by James, and sought a well-earned rest. The hour
was midnight, and no Forsytes remained abroad in the streets to spy out
Bosinney's wanderings; to see him return and stand against the rails of
the Square garden, back from the glow of the street lamp; to see him
stand there in the shadow of trees, watching the house where in the dark
was hidden she whom he would have given the world to see for a single
minute--she who was now to him the breath of the lime-trees, the meaning
of the light and the darkness, the very beating of his own heart.
CHAPTER X
DIAGNOSIS OF A FORSYTE
It is in the nature of a Forsyte to be ignorant that he is a Forsyte; but
young Jolyon was well aware of being one. He had not known it till after
the decisive step which had made him an outcast; since then the knowledge
had been with him continually. He felt it throughout his alliance,
throughout all his dealings with his second wife, who was emphatically
not a Forsyte.
He knew that if he had not possessed in great measure the eye for what he
wanted, the tenacity to hold on to it, the sense of the folly of wasting
that for which he had given so big a price--in other words, the 'sense of
property' he could never have retained her (perhaps never would have
desired to retain her) with him through all the financial troubles,
slights, and misconstructions of those fifteen years; never have induced
her to marry him on the death of his first wife; never have lived it all
through, and come up, as it were, thin, but smiling.
He was one of those men who, seated cross-legged like miniature Chinese
idols in the cages of their own hearts, are ever smiling at themselves a
doubting smile. Not that this smile, so intimate and eternal, interfered
with his actions, which, like his chin and his temperament, were quite a
peculiar blend of softness and determination.
He was conscious, too, of being a Forsyte in his work, that painting of
water-colours to which he devoted so much energy, always with an eye on
himself, as though he could not take so unpractical a pursuit quite
seriously, and always with a certain queer uneasiness that he did not
make more money at it.
It was, then, this consciousness of what it meant to be a Forsyte, that
made him receive the following letter from old Jolyon, with a mixture of
sympathy and disgust:
'SHELDRAKE HOUSE,
'BROADSTAIRS,
'July 1. 'MY DEAR JO,'
(The Dad's handwriting had altered very little in the thirty odd years
that he remembered it.)
'We have been here now a fortnight, and have had good weather on the
whole. The air is bracing, but my liver is out of order, and I shall be
glad enough to get back to town. I cannot say much for June, her health
and spirits are very indifferent, and I don't see what is to come of it.
She says nothing, but it is clear that she is harping on this engagement,
which is an engagement and no engagement, and--goodness knows what. I
have grave doubts whether she ought to be allowed to return to London in
the present state of affairs, but she is so self-willed that she might
take it into her head to come up at any moment. The fact is someone
ought to speak to Bosinney and ascertain what he means. I'm afraid of
this myself, for I should certainly rap him over the knuckles, but I
thought that you, knowing him at the Club, might put in a word, and get
to ascertain what the fellow is about. You will of course in no way
commit June. I shall be glad to hear from you in the course of a few
days whether you have succeeded in gaining any information. The
situation is very distressing to me, I worry about it at night.
With my love to Jolly and Holly.
'I am,
'Your affect. father,
'JOLYON FORSYTE.'
Young Jolyon pondered this letter so long and seriously that his wife
noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the matter. He
replied: "Nothing."
It was a fixed principle with him never to allude to June. She might
take alarm, he did not know what she might think; he hastened, therefore,
to banish from his manner all traces of absorption, but in this he was
about as successful as his father would have been, for he had inherited
all old Jolyon's transparency in matters of domestic finesse; and young
Mrs. Jolyon, busying herself over the affairs of the house, went about
with tightened lips, stealing at him unfathomable looks.
He started for the Club in the afternoon with the letter in his pocket,
and without having made up his mind.
To sound a man as to 'his intentions' was peculiarly unpleasant to him;
nor did his own anomalous position diminish this unpleasantness. It was
so like his family, so like all the people they knew and mixed with, to
enforce what they called their rights over a man, to bring him up to the
mark; so like them to carry their business principles into their private
relations.
And how that phrase in the letter--'You will, of course, in no way commit
June'--gave the whole thing away.
Yet the letter, with the personal grievance, the concern for June, the
'rap over the knuckles,' was all so natural. No wonder his father wanted
to know what Bosinney meant, no wonder he was angry.
It was difficult to refuse! But why give the thing to him to do? That
was surely quite unbecoming; but so long as a Forsyte got what he was
after, he was not too particular about the means, provided appearances
were saved.
How should he set about it, or how refuse? Both seemed impossible. So,
young Jolyon!
He arrived at the Club at three o'clock, and the first person he saw was
Bosinney himself, seated in a corner, staring out of the window.
Young Jolyon sat down not far off, and began nervously to reconsider his
position. He looked covertly at Bosinney sitting there unconscious. He
did not know him very well, and studied him attentively for perhaps the
first time; an unusual looking man, unlike in dress, face, and manner to
most of the other members of the Club--young Jolyon himself, however
different he had become in mood and temper, had always retained the neat
reticence of Forsyte appearance. He alone among Forsytes was ignorant of
Bosinney's nickname. The man was unusual, not eccentric, but unusual; he
looked worn, too, haggard, hollow in the cheeks beneath those broad, high
cheekbones, though without any appearance of ill-health, for he was
strongly built, with curly hair that seemed to show all the vitality of a
fine constitution.
Something in his face and attitude touched young Jolyon. He knew what
suffering was like, and this man looked as if he were suffering.
He got up and touched his arm.
Bosinney started, but exhibited no sign of embarrassment on seeing who it
was.
Young Jolyon sat down.
"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said. "How are you getting on
with my cousin's house?"
"It'll be finished in about a week."
"I congratulate you!"
"Thanks--I don't know that it's much of a subject for congratulation."
"No?" queried young Jolyon; "I should have thought you'd be glad to get a
long job like that off your hands; but I suppose you feel it much as I do
when I part with a picture--a sort of child?"
He looked kindly at Bosinney.
"Yes," said the latter more cordially, "it goes out from you and there's
an end of it. I didn't know you painted."
"Only water-colours; I can't say I believe in my work."
"Don't believe in it? There--how can you do it? Work's no use unless
you believe in it!"
"Good," said young Jolyon; "it's exactly what I've always said.
By-the-bye, have you noticed that whenever one says 'Good,' one always
adds 'it's exactly what I've always said'! But if you ask me how I do
it, I answer, because I'm a Forsyte."
"A Forsyte! I never thought of you as one!"
"A Forsyte," replied young Jolyon, "is not an uncommon animal. There are
hundreds among the members of this Club. Hundreds out there in the
streets; you meet them wherever you go!"
"And how do you tell them, may I ask?" said Bosinney.
"By their sense of property. A Forsyte takes a practical--one might say
a commonsense--view of things, and a practical view of things is based
fundamentally on a sense of property. A Forsyte, you will notice, never
gives himself away."
"Joking?"
Young Jolyon's eye twinkled.
"Not much. As a Forsyte myself, I have no business to talk. But I'm a
kind of thoroughbred mongrel; now, there's no mistaking you: You're as
different from me as I am from my Uncle James, who is the perfect
specimen of a Forsyte. His sense of property is extreme, while you have
practically none. Without me in between, you would seem like a different
species. I'm the missing link. We are, of course, all of us the slaves
of property, and I admit that it's a question of degree, but what I call
a 'Forsyte' is a man who is decidedly more than less a slave of property.
He knows a good thing, he knows a safe thing, and his grip on
property--it doesn't matter whether it be wives, houses, money, or
reputation--is his hall-mark."
"Ah!" murmured Bosinney. "You should patent the word."
"I should like," said young Jolyon, "to lecture on it:
"Properties and quality of a Forsyte: This little animal, disturbed by
the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his motions by the
laughter of strange creatures (you or I). Hereditarily disposed to
myopia, he recognises only the persons of his own species, amongst which
he passes an existence of competitive tranquillity."
"You talk of them," said Bosinney, "as if they were half England."
"They are," repeated young Jolyon, "half England, and the better half,
too, the safe half, the three per cent. half, the half that counts. It's
their wealth and security that makes everything possible; makes your art
possible, makes literature, science, even religion, possible. Without
Forsytes, who believe in none of these things, and habitats but turn them
all to use, where should we be? My dear sir, the Forsytes are the
middlemen, the commercials, the pillars of society, the cornerstones of
convention; everything that is admirable!"
"I don't know whether I catch your drift," said Bosinney, "but I fancy
there are plenty of Forsytes, as you call them, in my profession."
"Certainly," replied young Jolyon. "The great majority of architects,
painters, or writers have no principles, like any other Forsytes. Art,
literature, religion, survive by virtue of the few cranks who really
believe in such things, and the many Forsytes who make a commercial use
of them. At a low estimate, three-fourths of our Royal Academicians are
Forsytes, seven-eighths of our novelists, a large proportion of the
press. Of science I can't speak; they are magnificently represented in
religion; in the House of Commons perhaps more numerous than anywhere;
the aristocracy speaks for itself. But I'm not laughing. It is
dangerous to go against the majority and what a majority!" He fixed his
eyes on Bosinney: "It's dangerous to let anything carry you away--a
house, a picture, a--woman!"
They looked at each other.--And, as though he had done that which no
Forsyte did--given himself away, young Jolyon drew into his shell.
Bosinney broke the silence.
"Why do you take your own people as the type?" said he.
"My people," replied young Jolyon, "are not very extreme, and they have
their own private peculiarities, like every other family, but they
possess in a remarkable degree those two qualities which are the real
tests of a Forsyte--the power of never being able to give yourself up to
anything soul and body, and the 'sense of property'."
Bosinney smiled: "How about the big one, for instance?"
"Do you mean Swithin?" asked young Jolyon. "Ah! in Swithin there's
something primeval still. The town and middle-class life haven't
digested him yet. All the old centuries of farm work and brute force
have settled in him, and there they've stuck, for all he's so
distinguished."
Bosinney seemed to ponder. "Well, you've hit your cousin Soames off to
the life," he said suddenly. "He'll never blow his brains out."
Young Jolyon shot at him a penetrating glance.
"No," he said; "he won't. That's why he's to be reckoned with. Look out
for their grip! It's easy to laugh, but don't mistake me. It doesn't do
to despise a Forsyte; it doesn't do to disregard them!"
"Yet you've done it yourself!"
Young Jolyon acknowledged the hit by losing his smile.
"You forget," he said with a queer pride, "I can hold on, too--I'm a
Forsyte myself. We're all in the path of great forces. The man who
leaves the shelter of the wall--well--you know what I mean. I don't," he
ended very low, as though uttering a threat, "recommend every man
to-go-my-way. It depends."
The colour rushed into Bosinney's face, but soon receded, leaving it
sallow-brown as before. He gave a short laugh, that left his lips fixed
in a queer, fierce smile; his eyes mocked young Jolyon.
"Thanks," he said. "It's deuced kind of you. But you're not the only
chaps that can hold on." He rose.
Young Jolyon looked after him as he walked away, and, resting his head on
his hand, sighed.
In the drowsy, almost empty room the only sounds were the rustle of
newspapers, the scraping of matches being struck. He stayed a long time
without moving, living over again those days when he, too, had sat long
hours watching the clock, waiting for the minutes to pass--long hours
full of the torments of uncertainty, and of a fierce, sweet aching; and
the slow, delicious agony of that season came back to him with its old
poignancy. The sight of Bosinney, with his haggard face, and his
restless eyes always wandering to the clock, had roused in him a pity,
with which was mingled strange, irresistible envy.
He knew the signs so well. Whither was he going--to what sort of fate?
What kind of woman was it who was drawing him to her by that magnetic
force which no consideration of honour, no principle, no interest could
withstand; from which the only escape was flight.
Flight! But why should Bosinney fly? A man fled when he was in danger
of destroying hearth and home, when there were children, when he felt
himself trampling down ideals, breaking something. But here, so he had
heard, it was all broken to his hand.
He himself had not fled, nor would he fly if it were all to come over
again. Yet he had gone further than Bosinney, had broken up his own
unhappy home, not someone else's: And the old saying came back to him: 'A
man's fate lies in his own heart.'
In his own heart! The proof of the pudding was in the eating--Bosinney
had still to eat his pudding.
His thoughts passed to the woman, the woman whom he did not know, but the
outline of whose story he had heard.
An unhappy marriage! No ill-treatment--only that indefinable malaise,
that terrible blight which killed all sweetness under Heaven; and so from
day to day, from night to night, from week to week, from year to year,
till death should end it.
But young Jolyon, the bitterness of whose own feelings time had assuaged,
saw Soames' side of the question too. Whence should a man like his
cousin, saturated with all the prejudices and beliefs of his class, draw
the insight or inspiration necessary to break up this life? It was a
question of imagination, of projecting himself into the future beyond the
unpleasant gossip, sneers, and tattle that followed on such separations,
beyond the passing pangs that the lack of the sight of her would cause,
beyond the grave disapproval of the worthy. But few men, and especially
few men of Soames' class, had imagination enough for that. A deal of
mortals in this world, and not enough imagination to go round! And sweet
Heaven, what a difference between theory and practice; many a man,
perhaps even Soames, held chivalrous views on such matters, who when the
shoe pinched found a distinguishing factor that made of himself an
exception.
Then, too, he distrusted his judgment. He had been through the
experience himself, had tasted too the dregs the bitterness of an unhappy
marriage, and how could he take the wide and dispassionate view of those
who had never been within sound of the battle? His evidence was too
first-hand--like the evidence on military matters of a soldier who has
been through much active service, against that of civilians who have not
suffered the disadvantage of seeing things too close. Most people would
consider such a marriage as that of Soames and Irene quite fairly
successful; he had money, she had beauty; it was a case for compromise.
There was no reason why they should not jog along, even if they hated
each other. It would not matter if they went their own ways a little so
long as the decencies were observed--the sanctity of the marriage tie, of
the common home, respected. Half the marriages of the upper classes were
conducted on these lines: Do not offend the susceptibilities of Society;
do not offend the susceptibilities of the Church. To avoid offending
these is worth the sacrifice of any private feelings. The advantages of
the stable home are visible, tangible, so many pieces of property; there
is no risk in the statu quo. To break up a home is at the best a
dangerous experiment, and selfish into the bargain.
This was the case for the defence, and young Jolyon sighed.
'The core of it all,' he thought, 'is property, but there are many people
who would not like it put that way. To them it is "the sanctity of the
marriage tie"; but the sanctity of the marriage tie is dependent on the
sanctity of the family, and the sanctity of the family is dependent on
the sanctity of property. And yet I imagine all these people are
followers of One who never owned anything. It is curious!
And again young Jolyon sighed.
'Am I going on my way home to ask any poor devils I meet to share my
dinner, which will then be too little for myself, or, at all events, for
my wife, who is necessary to my health and happiness? It may be that
after all Soames does well to exercise his rights and support by his
practice the sacred principle of property which benefits us all, with the
exception of those who suffer by the process.'
And so he left his chair, threaded his way through the maze of seats,
took his hat, and languidly up the hot streets crowded with carriages,
reeking with dusty odours, wended his way home.
Before reaching Wistaria Avenue he removed old Jolyon's letter from his
pocket, and tearing it carefully into tiny pieces, scattered them in the
dust of the road.
He let himself in with his key, and called his wife's name. But she had
gone out, taking Jolly and Holly, and the house was empty; alone in the
garden the dog Balthasar lay in the shade snapping at flies.
Young Jolyon took his seat there, too, under the pear-tree that bore no
fruit.
CHAPTER XI
BOSINNEY ON PAROLE
The day after the evening at Richmond Soames returned from Henley by a
morning train. Not constitutionally interested in amphibious sports, his
visit had been one of business rather than pleasure, a client of some
importance having asked him down.
He went straight to the City, but finding things slack, he left at three
o'clock, glad of this chance to get home quietly. Irene did not expect
him. Not that he had any desire to spy on her actions, but there was no
harm in thus unexpectedly surveying the scene.
After changing to Park clothes he went into the drawing-room. She was
sitting idly in the corner of the sofa, her favourite seat; and there
were circles under her eyes, as though she had not slept.
He asked: "How is it you're in? Are you expecting somebody?"
"Yes that is, not particularly."
"Who?"
"Mr. Bosinney said he might come."
"Bosinney. He ought to be at work."
To this she made no answer.
"Well," said Soames, "I want you to come out to the Stores with me, and
after that we'll go to the Park."
"I don't want to go out; I have a headache."
Soames replied: "If ever I want you to do anything, you've always got a
headache. It'll do you good to come and sit under the trees."
She did not answer.
Soames was silent for some minutes; at last he said: "I don't know what
your idea of a wife's duty is. I never have known!"
He had not expected her to reply, but she did.
"I have tried to do what you want; it's not my fault that I haven't been
able to put my heart into it."
"Whose fault is it, then?" He watched her askance.
"Before we were married you promised to let me go if our marriage was not
a success. Is it a success?"
Soames frowned.
"Success," he stammered--"it would be a success if you behaved yourself
properly!"
"I have tried," said Irene. "Will you let me go?"
Soames turned away. Secretly alarmed, he took refuge in bluster.
"Let you go? You don't know what you're talking about. Let you go? How
can I let you go? We're married, aren't we? Then, what are you talking
about? For God's sake, don't let's have any of this sort of nonsense!
Get your hat on, and come and sit in the Park."
"Then, you won't let me go?"
He felt her eyes resting on him with a strange, touching look.
"Let you go!" he said; "and what on earth would you do with yourself if I
did? You've got no money!"
"I could manage somehow."
He took a swift turn up and down the room; then came and stood before
her.
"Understand," he said, "once and for all, I won't have you say this sort
of thing. Go and get your hat on!"
She did not move.
"I suppose," said Soames, "you don't want to miss Bosinney if he comes!"
Irene got up slowly and left the room. She came down with her hat on.
They went out.
In the Park, the motley hour of mid-afternoon, when foreigners and other
pathetic folk drive, thinking themselves to be in fashion, had passed;
the right, the proper, hour had come, was nearly gone, before Soames and
Irene seated themselves under the Achilles statue.
It was some time since he had enjoyed her company in the Park. That was
one of the past delights of the first two seasons of his married life,
when to feel himself the possessor of this gracious creature before all
London had been his greatest, though secret, pride. How many afternoons
had he not sat beside her, extremely neat, with light grey gloves and
faint, supercilious smile, nodding to acquaintances, and now and again
removing his hat.
His light grey gloves were still on his hands, and on his lips his smile
sardonic, but where the feeling in his heart?
The seats were emptying fast, but still he kept her there, silent and
pale, as though to work out a secret punishment. Once or twice he made
some comment, and she bent her head, or answered "Yes" with a tired
smile.
Along the rails a man was walking so fast that people stared after him
when he passed.
"Look at that ass!" said Soames; "he must be mad to walk like that in
this heat!"
He turned; Irene had made a rapid movement.
"Hallo!" he said: "it's our friend the Buccaneer!"
And he sat still, with his sneering smile, conscious that Irene was
sitting still, and smiling too.
"Will she bow to him?" he thought.
But she made no sign.
Bosinney reached the end of the rails, and came walking back amongst the
chairs, quartering his ground like a pointer. When he saw them he
stopped dead, and raised his hat.
The smile never left Soames' face; he also took off his hat.
Bosinney came up, looking exhausted, like a man after hard physical
exercise; the sweat stood in drops on his brow, and Soames' smile seemed
to say: "You've had a trying time, my friend ......What are you doing in
the Park?" he asked. "We thought you despised such frivolity!"
Bosinney did not seem to hear; he made his answer to Irene: "I've been
round to your place; I hoped I should find you in."
Somebody tapped Soames on the back, and spoke to him; and in the exchange
of those platitudes over his shoulder, he missed her answer, and took a
resolution.
"We're just going in," he said to Bosinney; "you'd better come back to
dinner with us." Into that invitation he put a strange bravado, a
stranger pathos: "You, can't deceive me," his look and voice seemed
saying, "but see--I trust you--I'm not afraid of you!"
They started back to Montpellier Square together, Irene between them. In
the crowded streets Soames went on in front. He did not listen to their
conversation; the strange resolution of trustfulness he had taken seemed
to animate even his secret conduct. Like a gambler, he said to himself:
'It's a card I dare not throw away--I must play it for what it's worth.
I have not too many chances.'
He dressed slowly, heard her leave her room and go downstairs, and, for
full five minutes after, dawdled about in his dressing-room. Then he
went down, purposely shutting the door loudly to show that he was coming.
He found them standing by the hearth, perhaps talking, perhaps not; he
could not say.
He played his part out in the farce, the long evening through--his
manner to his guest more friendly than it had ever been before; and when
at last Bosinney went, he said: "You must come again soon; Irene likes to
have you to talk about the house!" Again his voice had the strange
bravado and the stranger pathos; but his hand was cold as ice.
Loyal to his resolution, he turned away from their parting, turned away
from his wife as she stood under the hanging lamp to say good-night--away
from the sight of her golden head shining so under the light, of her
smiling mournful lips; away from the sight of Bosinney's eyes looking at
her, so like a dog's looking at its master.
And he went to bed with the certainty that Bosinney was in love with his
wife.
The summer night was hot, so hot and still that through every opened
window came in but hotter air. For long hours he lay listening to her
breathing.
She could sleep, but he must lie awake. And, lying awake, he hardened
himself to play the part of the serene and trusting husband.
In the small hours he slipped out of bed, and passing into his
dressing-room, leaned by the open window.
He could hardly breathe.
A night four years ago came back to him--the night but one before his
marriage; as hot and stifling as this.
He remembered how he had lain in a long cane chair in the window of his
sitting-room off Victoria Street. Down below in a side street a man had
banged at a door, a woman had cried out; he remembered, as though it were
now, the sound of the scuffle, the slam of the door, the dead silence
that followed. And then the early water-cart, cleansing the reek of the
streets, had approached through the strange-seeming, useless lamp-light;
he seemed to hear again its rumble, nearer and nearer, till it passed and
slowly died away.
He leaned far out of the dressing-room window over the little court
below, and saw the first light spread. The outlines of dark walls and
roofs were blurred for a moment, then came out sharper than before.
He remembered how that other night he had watched the lamps paling all
the length of Victoria Street; how he had hurried on his clothes and gone
down into the street, down past houses and squares, to the street where
she was staying, and there had stood and looked at the front of the
little house, as still and grey as the face of a dead man.
And suddenly it shot through his mind; like a sick man's fancy: What's he
doing?--that fellow who haunts me, who was here this evening, who's in
love with my wife--prowling out there, perhaps, looking for her as I know
he was looking for her this afternoon; watching my house now, for all I
can tell!
He stole across the landing to the front of the house, stealthily drew
aside a blind, and raised a window.
The grey light clung about the trees of the square, as though Night, like
a great downy moth, had brushed them with her wings. The lamps were still
alight, all pale, but not a soul stirred--no living thing in sight.
Yet suddenly, very faint, far off in the deathly stillness, he heard a
cry writhing, like the voice of some wandering soul barred out of heaven,
and crying for its happiness. There it was again--again! Soames shut
the window, shuddering.
Then he thought: 'Ah! it's only the peacocks, across the water.'
CHAPTER XII
JUNE PAYS SOME CALLS
Jolyon stood in the narrow hall at Broadstairs, inhaling that odour of
oilcloth and herrings which permeates all respectable seaside
lodging-houses. On a chair--a shiny leather chair, displaying its
horsehair through a hole in the top left-hand corner--stood a black
despatch case. This he was filling with papers, with the Times, and a
bottle of Eau-de Cologne. He had meetings that day of the 'Globular Gold
Concessions' and the 'New Colliery Company, Limited,' to which he was
going up, for he never missed a Board; to 'miss a Board' would be one
more piece of evidence that he was growing old, and this his jealous
Forsyte spirit could not bear.
His eyes, as he filled that black despatch case, looked as if at any
moment they might blaze up with anger. So gleams the eye of a schoolboy,
baited by a ring of his companions; but he controls himself, deterred by
the fearful odds against him. And old Jolyon controlled himself, keeping
down, with his masterful restraint now slowly wearing out, the irritation
fostered in him by the conditions of his life.
He had received from his son an unpractical letter, in which by rambling
generalities the boy seemed trying to get out of answering a plain
question. 'I've seen Bosinney,' he said; 'he is not a criminal. The
more I see of people the more I am convinced that they are never good or
bad--merely comic, or pathetic. You probably don't agree with me!'
Old Jolyon did not; he considered it cynical to so express oneself; he
had not yet reached that point of old age when even Forsytes, bereft of
those illusions and principles which they have cherished carefully for
practical purposes but never believed in, bereft of all corporeal
enjoyment, stricken to the very heart by having nothing left to hope
for--break through the barriers of reserve and say things they would
never have believed themselves capable of saying.
Perhaps he did not believe in 'goodness' and 'badness' any more than his
son; but as he would have said: He didn't know--couldn't tell; there
might be something in it; and why, by an unnecessary expression of
disbelief, deprive yourself of possible advantage?
Accustomed to spend his holidays among the mountains, though (like a true
Forsyte) he had never attempted anything too adventurous or too
foolhardy, he had been passionately fond of them. And when the wonderful
view (mentioned in Baedeker--'fatiguing but repaying')--was disclosed to
him after the effort of the climb, he had doubtless felt the existence of
some great, dignified principle crowning the chaotic strivings, the petty
precipices, and ironic little dark chasms of life. This was as near to
religion, perhaps, as his practical spirit had ever gone.
But it was many years since he had been to the mountains. He had taken
June there two seasons running, after his wife died, and had realized
bitterly that his walking days were over.
To that old mountain--given confidence in a supreme order of things he
had long been a stranger.
He knew himself to be old, yet he felt young; and this troubled him. It
troubled and puzzled him, too, to think that he, who had always been so
careful, should be father and grandfather to such as seemed born to
disaster. He had nothing to say against Jo--who could say anything
against the boy, an amiable chap?--but his position was deplorable, and
this business of June's nearly as bad. It seemed like a fatality, and a
fatality was one of those things no man of his character could either
understand or put up with.
In writing to his son he did not really hope that anything would come of
it. Since the ball at Roger's he had seen too clearly how the land
lay--he could put two and two together quicker than most men--and, with
the example of his own son before his eyes, knew better than any Forsyte
of them all that the pale flame singes men's wings whether they will or
no.
In the days before June's engagement, when she and Mrs. Soames were
always together, he had seen enough of Irene to feel the spell she cast
over men. She was not a flirt, not even a coquette--words dear to the
heart of his generation, which loved to define things by a good, broad,
inadequate word--but she was dangerous. He could not say why. Tell him
of a quality innate in some women--a seductive power beyond their own
control! He would but answer: 'Humbug!' She was dangerous, and there
was an end of it. He wanted to close his eyes to that affair. If it
was, it was; he did not want to hear any more about it--he only wanted to
save June's position and her peace of mind. He still hoped she might
once more become a comfort to himself.
And so he had written. He got little enough out of the answer. As to
what young Jolyon had made of the interview, there was practically only
the queer sentence: 'I gather that he's in the stream.' The stream! What
stream? What was this new-fangled way of talking?
He sighed, and folded the last of the papers under the flap of the bag;
he knew well enough what was meant.
June came out of the dining-room, and helped him on with his summer coat.
From her costume, and the expression of her little resolute face, he saw
at once what was coming.
"I'm going with you," she said.
"Nonsense, my dear; I go straight into the City. I can't have you
racketting about!"
"I must see old Mrs. Smeech."
"Oh, your precious 'lame ducks!" grumbled out old Jolyon. He did not
believe her excuse, but ceased his opposition. There was no doing
anything with that pertinacity of hers.
At Victoria he put her into the carriage which had been ordered for
himself--a characteristic action, for he had no petty selfishnesses.
"Now, don't you go tiring yourself, my darling," he said, and took a cab
on into the city.
June went first to a back-street in Paddington, where Mrs. Smeech, her
'lame duck,' lived--an aged person, connected with the charring interest;
but after half an hour spent in hearing her habitually lamentable
recital, and dragooning her into temporary comfort, she went on to
Stanhope Gate. The great house was closed and dark.
She had decided to learn something at all costs. It was better to face
the worst, and have it over. And this was her plan: To go first to
Phil's aunt, Mrs. Baynes, and, failing information there, to Irene
herself. She had no clear notion of what she would gain by these visits.
At three o'clock she was in Lowndes Square. With a woman's instinct when
trouble is to be faced, she had put on her best frock, and went to the
battle with a glance as courageous as old Jolyon's itself. Her tremors
had passed into eagerness.
Mrs. Baynes, Bosinney's aunt (Louisa was her name), was in her kitchen
when June was announced, organizing the cook, for she was an excellent
housewife, and, as Baynes always said, there was 'a lot in a good
dinner.' He did his best work after dinner. It was Baynes who built
that remarkably fine row of tall crimson houses in Kensington which
compete with so many others for the title of 'the ugliest in London.'
On hearing June's name, she went hurriedly to her bedroom, and, taking
two large bracelets from a red morocco case in a locked drawer, put them
on her white wrists--for she possessed in a remarkable degree that 'sense
of property,' which, as we know, is the touchstone of Forsyteism, and the
foundation of good morality.
Her figure, of medium height and broad build, with a tendency to
embonpoint, was reflected by the mirror of her whitewood wardrobe, in a
gown made under her own organization, of one of those half-tints,
reminiscent of the distempered walls of corridors in large hotels. She
raised her hands to her hair, which she wore a la Princesse de Galles,
and touched it here and there, settling it more firmly on her head, and
her eyes were full of an unconscious realism, as though she were looking
in the face one of life's sordid facts, and making the best of it. In
youth her cheeks had been of cream and roses, but they were mottled now
by middle-age, and again that hard, ugly directness came into her eyes as
she dabbed a powder-puff across her forehead. Putting the puff down, she
stood quite still before the glass, arranging a smile over her high,
important nose, her, chin, (never large, and now growing smaller with the
increase of her neck), her thin-lipped, down-drooping mouth. Quickly,
not to lose the effect, she grasped her skirts strongly in both hands,
and went downstairs.
She had been hoping for this visit for some time past. Whispers had
reached her that things were not all right between her nephew and his
fiancee. Neither of them had been near her for weeks. She had asked Phil
to dinner many times; his invariable answer had been 'Too busy.'
Her instinct was alarmed, and the instinct in such matters of this
excellent woman was keen. She ought to have been a Forsyte; in young
Jolyon's sense of the word, she certainly had that privilege, and merits
description as such.
She had married off her three daughters in a way that people said was
beyond their deserts, for they had the professional plainness only to be
found, as a rule, among the female kind of the more legal callings. Her
name was upon the committees of numberless charities connected with the
Church-dances, theatricals, or bazaars--and she never lent her name
unless sure beforehand that everything had been thoroughly organized.
She believed, as she often said, in putting things on a commercial basis;
the proper function of the Church, of charity, indeed, of everything, was
to strengthen the fabric of 'Society.' Individual action, therefore, she
considered immoral. Organization was the only thing, for by organization
alone could you feel sure that you were getting a return for your money.
Organization--and again, organization! And there is no doubt that she
was what old Jolyon called her--"a 'dab' at that"--he went further, he
called her "a humbug."
The enterprises to which she lent her name were organized so admirably
that by the time the takings were handed over, they were indeed skim milk
divested of all cream of human kindness. But as she often justly
remarked, sentiment was to be deprecated. She was, in fact, a little
academic.
This great and good woman, so highly thought of in ecclesiastical
circles, was one of the principal priestesses in the temple of
Forsyteism, keeping alive day and night a sacred flame to the God of
Property, whose altar is inscribed with those inspiring words: 'Nothing
for nothing, and really remarkably little for sixpence.'
When she entered a room it was felt that something substantial had come
in, which was probably the reason of her popularity as a patroness.
People liked something substantial when they had paid money for it; and
they would look at her--surrounded by her staff in charity ballrooms,
with her high nose and her broad, square figure, attired in an uniform
covered with sequins--as though she were a general.
The only thing against her was that she had not a double name. She was a
power in upper middle-class society, with its hundred sets and circles,
all intersecting on the common battlefield of charity functions, and on
that battlefield brushing skirts so pleasantly with the skirts of Society
with the capital 'S.' She was a power in society with the smaller 's,'
that larger, more significant, and more powerful body, where the
commercially Christian institutions, maxims, and 'principle,' which Mrs.
Baynes embodied, were real life-blood, circulating freely, real business
currency, not merely the sterilized imitation that flowed in the veins of
smaller Society with the larger 'S.' People who knew her felt her to be
sound--a sound woman, who never gave herself away, nor anything else, if
she could possibly help it.
She had been on the worst sort of terms with Bosinney's father, who had
not infrequently made her the object of an unpardonable ridicule. She
alluded to him now that he was gone as her 'poor, dear, irreverend
brother.'
She greeted June with the careful effusion of which she was a mistress, a
little afraid of her as far as a woman of her eminence in the commercial
and Christian world could be afraid--for so slight a girl June had a
great dignity, the fearlessness of her eyes gave her that. And Mrs.
Baynes, too, shrewdly recognized that behind the uncompromising frankness
of June's manner there was much of the Forsyte. If the girl had been
merely frank and courageous, Mrs. Baynes would have thought her 'cranky,'
and despised her; if she had been merely a Forsyte, like Francie--let us
say--she would have patronized her from sheer weight of metal; but June,
small though she was--Mrs. Baynes habitually admired quantity--gave her
an uneasy feeling; and she placed her in a chair opposite the light.
There was another reason for her respect which Mrs. Baynes, too good a
churchwoman to be worldly, would have been the last to admit--she often
heard her husband describe old Jolyon as extremely well off, and was
biassed towards his granddaughter for the soundest of all reasons.
To-day she felt the emotion with which we read a novel describing a hero
and an inheritance, nervously anxious lest, by some frightful lapse of
the novelist, the young man should be left without it at the end.
Her manner was warm; she had never seen so clearly before how
distinguished and desirable a girl this was. She asked after old
Jolyon's health. A wonderful man for his age; so upright, and young
looking, and how old was he? Eighty-one! She would never have thought
it! They were at the sea! Very nice for them; she supposed June heard
from Phil every day? Her light grey eyes became more prominent as she
asked this question; but the girl met the glance without flinching.
"No," she said, "he never writes!"
Mrs. Baynes's eyes dropped; they had no intention of doing so, but they
did. They recovered immediately.
"Of course not. That's Phil all over--he was always like that!"
"Was he?" said June.
The brevity of the answer caused Mrs. Baynes's bright smile a moment's
hesitation; she disguised it by a quick movement, and spreading her
skirts afresh, said: "Why, my dear--he's quite the most harum-scarum
person; one never pays the slightest attention to what he does!"
The conviction came suddenly to June that she was wasting her time; even
were she to put a question point-blank, she would never get anything out
of this woman.
'Do you see him?' she asked, her face crimsoning.
The perspiration broke out on Mrs. Baynes' forehead beneath the powder.
"Oh, yes! I don't remember when he was here last--indeed, we haven't
seen much of him lately. He's so busy with your cousin's house; I'm told
it'll be finished directly. We must organize a little dinner to
celebrate the event; do come and stay the night with us!"
"Thank you," said June. Again she thought: 'I'm only wasting my time.
This woman will tell me nothing.'
She got up to go. A change came over Mrs. Baynes. She rose too; her
lips twitched, she fidgeted her hands. Something was evidently very
wrong, and she did not dare to ask this girl, who stood there, a slim,
straight little figure, with her decided face, her set jaw, and resentful
eyes. She was not accustomed to be afraid of asking question's--all
organization was based on the asking of questions!
But the issue was so grave that her nerve, normally strong, was fairly
shaken; only that morning her husband had said: "Old Mr. Forsyte must be
worth well over a hundred thousand pounds!"
And this girl stood there, holding out her hand--holding out her hand!
The chance might be slipping away--she couldn't tell--the chance of
keeping her in the family, and yet she dared not speak.
Her eyes followed June to the door.
It closed.
Then with an exclamation Mrs. Baynes ran forward, wobbling her bulky
frame from side to side, and opened it again.
Too late! She heard the front door click, and stood still, an expression
of real anger and mortification on her face.
June went along the Square with her bird-like quickness. She detested
that woman now whom in happier days she had been accustomed to think so
kind. Was she always to be put off thus, and forced to undergo this
torturing suspense?
She would go to Phil himself, and ask him what he meant. She had the
right to know. She hurried on down Sloane Street till she came to
Bosinney's number. Passing the swing-door at the bottom, she ran up the
stairs, her heart thumping painfully.
At the top of the third flight she paused for breath, and holding on to
the bannisters, stood listening. No sound came from above.
With a very white face she mounted the last flight. She saw the door,
with his name on the plate. And the resolution that had brought her so
far evaporated.
The full meaning of her conduct came to her. She felt hot all over; the
palms of her hands were moist beneath the thin silk covering of her
gloves.
She drew back to the stairs, but did not descend. Leaning against the
rail she tried to get rid of a feeling of being choked; and she gazed at
the door with a sort of dreadful courage. No! she refused to go down.
Did it matter what people thought of her? They would never know! No one
would help her if she did not help herself! She would go through with
it.
Forcing herself, therefore, to leave the support of the wall, she rang
the bell. The door did not open, and all her shame and fear suddenly
abandoned her; she rang again and again, as though in spite of its
emptiness she could drag some response out of that closed room, some
recompense for the shame and fear that visit had cost her. It did not
open; she left off ringing, and, sitting down at the top of the stairs,
buried her face in her hands.
Presently she stole down, out into the air. She felt as though she had
passed through a bad illness, and had no desire now but to get home as
quickly as she could. The people she met seemed to know where she had
been, what she had been doing; and suddenly--over on the opposite side,
going towards his rooms from the direction of Montpellier Square--she saw
Bosinney himself.
She made a movement to cross into the traffic. Their eyes met, and he
raised his hat. An omnibus passed, obscuring her view; then, from the
edge of the pavement, through a gap in the traffic, she saw him walking
on.
And June stood motionless, looking after him.
CHAPTER XIII
PERFECTION OF THE HOUSE
'One mockturtle, clear; one oxtail; two glasses of port.'
In the upper room at French's, where a Forsyte could still get heavy
English food, James and his son were sitting down to lunch.
Of all eating-places James liked best to come here; there was something
unpretentious, well-flavoured, and filling about it, and though he had
been to a certain extent corrupted by the necessity for being
fashionable, and the trend of habits keeping pace with an income that
would increase, he still hankered in quiet City moments after the tasty
fleshpots of his earlier days. Here you were served by hairy English
waiters in aprons; there was sawdust on the floor, and three round gilt
looking-glasses hung just above the line of sight. They had only
recently done away with the cubicles, too, in which you could have your
chop, prime chump, with a floury-potato, without seeing your neighbours,
like a gentleman.
He tucked the top corner of his napkin behind the third button of his
waistcoat, a practice he had been obliged to abandon years ago in the
West End. He felt that he should relish his soup--the entire morning had
been given to winding up the estate of an old friend.
After filling his mouth with household bread, stale, he at once began:
"How are you going down to Robin Hill? You going to take Irene? You'd
better take her. I should think there'll be a lot that'll want seeing
to."
Without looking up, Soames answered: "She won't go."
"Won't go? What's the meaning of that? She's going to live in the
house, isn't she?"
Soames made no reply.
"I don't know what's coming to women nowadays," mumbled James; "I never
used to have any trouble with them. She's had too much liberty. She's
spoiled...."
Soames lifted his eyes: "I won't have anything said against her," he said
unexpectedly.
The silence was only broken now by the supping of James's soup.
The waiter brought the two glasses of port, but Soames stopped him.
"That's not the way to serve port," he said; "take them away, and bring
the bottle."
Rousing himself from his reverie over the soup, James took one of his
rapid shifting surveys of surrounding facts.
"Your mother's in bed," he said; "you can have the carriage to take you
down. I should think Irene'd like the drive. This young Bosinney'll be
there, I suppose, to show you over"
Soames nodded.
"I should like to go and see for myself what sort of a job he's made
finishing off," pursued James. "I'll just drive round and pick you both
up."
"I am going down by train," replied Soames. "If you like to drive round
and see, Irene might go with you, I can't tell."
He signed to the waiter to bring the bill, which James paid.
They parted at St. Paul's, Soames branching off to the station, James
taking his omnibus westwards.
He had secured the corner seat next the conductor, where his long legs
made it difficult for anyone to get in, and at all who passed him he
looked resentfully, as if they had no business to be using up his air.
He intended to take an opportunity this afternoon of speaking to Irene.
A word in time saved nine; and now that she was going to live in the
country there was a chance for her to turn over a new leaf! He could see
that Soames wouldn't stand very much more of her goings on!
It did not occur to him to define what he meant by her 'goings on'; the
expression was wide, vague, and suited to a Forsyte. And James had more
than his common share of courage after lunch.
On reaching home, he ordered out the barouche, with special instructions
that the groom was to go too. He wished to be kind to her, and to give
her every chance.
When the door of No.62 was opened he could distinctly hear her singing,
and said so at once, to prevent any chance of being denied entrance.
Yes, Mrs. Soames was in, but the maid did not know if she was seeing
people.
James, moving with the rapidity that ever astonished the observers of his
long figure and absorbed expression, went forthwith into the drawing-room
without permitting this to be ascertained. He found Irene seated at the
piano with her hands arrested on the keys, evidently listening to the
voices in the hall. She greeted him without smiling.
"Your mother-in-law's in bed," he began, hoping at once to enlist her
sympathy. "I've got the carriage here. Now, be a good girl, and put on
your hat and come with me for a drive. It'll do you good!"
Irene looked at him as though about to refuse, but, seeming to change her
mind, went upstairs, and came down again with her hat on.
"Where are you going to take me?" she asked.
"We'll just go down to Robin Hill," said James, spluttering out his words
very quick; "the horses want exercise, and I should like to see what
they've been doing down there."
Irene hung back, but again changed her mind, and went out to the
carriage, James brooding over her closely, to make quite sure.
It was not before he had got her more than half way that he began:
"Soames is very fond of you--he won't have anything said against you; why
don't you show him more affection?"
Irene flushed, and said in a low voice: "I can't show what I haven't
got."
James looked at her sharply; he felt that now he had her in his own
carriage, with his own horses and servants, he was really in command of
the situation. She could not put him off; nor would she make a scene in
public.
"I can't think what you're about," he said. "He's a very good husband!"
Irene's answer was so low as to be almost inaudible among the sounds of
traffic. He caught the words: "You are not married to him!"
"What's that got to do with it? He's given you everything you want.
He's always ready to take you anywhere, and now he's built you this house
in the country. It's not as if you had anything of your own."
"No."
Again James looked at her; he could not make out the expression on her
face. She looked almost as if she were going to cry, and yet....
"I'm sure," he muttered hastily, "we've all tried to be kind to you."
Irene's lips quivered; to his dismay James saw a tear steal down her
cheek. He felt a choke rise in his own throat.
"We're all fond of you," he said, "if you'd only"--he was going to say,
"behave yourself," but changed it to--"if you'd only be more of a wife to
him."
Irene did not answer, and James, too, ceased speaking. There was
something in her silence which disconcerted him; it was not the silence
of obstinacy, rather that of acquiescence in all that he could find to
say. And yet he felt as if he had not had the last word. He could not
understand this.
He was unable, however, to long keep silence.
"I suppose that young Bosinney," he said, "will be getting married to
June now?"
Irene's face changed. "I don't know," she said; "you should ask her."
"Does she write to you?" No.
"How's that?" said James. "I thought you and she were such great
friends."
Irene turned on him. "Again," she said, "you should ask her!"
"Well," flustered James, frightened by her look, "it's very odd that I
can't get a plain answer to a plain question, but there it is."
He sat ruminating over his rebuff, and burst out at last:
"Well, I've warned you. You won't look ahead. Soames he doesn't say
much, but I can see he won't stand a great deal more of this sort of
thing. You'll have nobody but yourself to blame, and, what's more,
you'll get no sympathy from anybody."
Irene bent her head with a little smiling bow. "I am very much obliged
to you."
James did not know what on earth to answer.
The bright hot morning had changed slowly to a grey, oppressive
afternoon; a heavy bank of clouds, with the yellow tinge of coming
thunder, had risen in the south, and was creeping up.
The branches of the trees dropped motionless across the road without the
smallest stir of foliage. A faint odour of glue from the heated horses
clung in the thick air; the coachman and groom, rigid and unbending,
exchanged stealthy murmurs on the box, without ever turning their heads.
To James' great relief they reached the house at last; the silence and
impenetrability of this woman by his side, whom he had always thought so
soft and mild, alarmed him.
The carriage put them down at the door, and they entered.
The hall was cool, and so still that it was like passing into a tomb; a
shudder ran down James's spine. He quickly lifted the heavy leather
curtains between the columns into the inner court.
He could not restrain an exclamation of approval.
The decoration was really in excellent taste. The dull ruby tiles that
extended from the foot of the walls to the verge of a circular clump of
tall iris plants, surrounding in turn a sunken basin of white marble
filled with water, were obviously of the best quality. He admired
extremely the purple leather curtains drawn along one entire side,
framing a huge white-tiled stove. The central partitions of the skylight
had been slid back, and the warm air from outside penetrated into the
very heart of the house.
He stood, his hands behind him, his head bent back on his high, narrow
shoulders, spying the tracery on the columns and the pattern of the
frieze which ran round the ivory-coloured walls under the gallery.
Evidently, no pains had been spared. It was quite the house of a
gentleman. He went up to the curtains, and, having discovered how they
were worked, drew them asunder and disclosed the picture-gallery, ending
in a great window taking up the whole end of the room. It had a black
oak floor, and its walls, again, were of ivory white. He went on
throwing open doors, and peeping in. Everything was in apple-pie order,
ready for immediate occupation.
He turned round at last to speak to Irene, and saw her standing over in
the garden entrance, with her husband and Bosinney.
Though not remarkable for sensibility, James felt at once that something
was wrong. He went up to them, and, vaguely alarmed, ignorant of the
nature of the trouble, made an attempt to smooth things over.
"How are you, Mr. Bosinney?" he said, holding out his hand. "You've been
spending money pretty freely down here, I should say!"
Soames turned his back, and walked away.
James looked from Bosinney's frowning face to Irene, and, in his
agitation, spoke his thoughts aloud: "Well, I can't tell what's the
matter. Nobody tells me anything!" And, making off after his son, he
heard Bosinney's short laugh, and his "Well, thank God! You look so...."
Most unfortunately he lost the rest.
What had happened? He glanced back. Irene was very close to the
architect, and her face not like the face he knew of her. He hastened up
to his son.
Soames was pacing the picture-gallery.
"What's the matter?" said James. "What's all this?"
Soames looked at him with his supercilious calm unbroken, but James knew
well enough that he was violently angry.
"Our friend," he said, "has exceeded his instructions again, that's all.
So much the worse for him this time."
He turned round and walked back towards the door. James followed
hurriedly, edging himself in front. He saw Irene take her finger from
before her lips, heard her say something in her ordinary voice, and began
to speak before he reached them.
"There's a storm coming on. We'd better get home. We can't take you, I
suppose, Mr. Bosinney? No, I suppose not. Then, good-bye!" He held out
his hand. Bosinney did not take it, but, turning with a laugh, said:
"Good-bye, Mr. Forsyte. Don't get caught in the storm!" and walked away.
"Well," began James, "I don't know...."
But the 'sight of Irene's face stopped him. Taking hold of his
daughter-in-law by the elbow, he escorted her towards the carriage. He
felt certain, quite certain, they had been making some appointment or
other....
Nothing in this world is more sure to upset a Forsyte than the discovery
that something on which he has stipulated to spend a certain sum has cost
more. And this is reasonable, for upon the accuracy of his estimates the
whole policy of his life is ordered. If he cannot rely on definite
values of property, his compass is amiss; he is adrift upon bitter waters
without a helm.
After writing to Bosinney in the terms that have already been chronicled,
Soames had dismissed the cost of the house from his mind. He believed
that he had made the matter of the final cost so very plain that the
possibility of its being again exceeded had really never entered his
head. On hearing from Bosinney that his limit of twelve thousand pounds
would be exceeded by something like four hundred, he had grown white with
anger. His original estimate of the cost of the house completed had been
ten thousand pounds, and he had often blamed himself severely for
allowing himself to be led into repeated excesses. Over this last
expenditure, however, Bosinney had put himself completely in the wrong.
How on earth a fellow could make such an ass of himself Soames could not
conceive; but he had done so, and all the rancour and hidden jealousy
that had been burning against him for so long was now focussed in rage at
this crowning piece of extravagance. The attitude of the confident and
friendly husband was gone. To preserve property--his wife--he had
assumed it, to preserve property of another kind he lost it now.
"Ah!" he had said to Bosinney when he could speak, "and I suppose you're
perfectly contented with yourself. But I may as well tell you that
you've altogether mistaken your man!"
What he meant by those words he did not quite know at the time, but after
dinner he looked up the correspondence between himself and Bosinney to
make quite sure. There could be no two opinions about it--the fellow had
made himself liable for that extra four hundred, or, at all events, for
three hundred and fifty of it, and he would have to make it good.
He was looking at his wife's face when he came to this conclusion. Seated
in her usual seat on the sofa, she was altering the lace on a collar.
She had not once spoken to him all the evening.
He went up to the mantelpiece, and contemplating his face in the mirror
said: "Your friend the Buccaneer has made a fool of himself; he will have
to pay for it!"
She looked at him scornfully, and answered: "I don't know what you are
talking about!"
"You soon will. A mere trifle, quite beneath your contempt--four hundred
pounds."
"Do you mean that you are going to make him pay that towards this
hateful, house?"
"I do."
"And you know he's got nothing?"
"Yes."
"Then you are meaner than I thought you."
Soames turned from the mirror, and unconsciously taking a china cup from
the mantelpiece, clasped his hands around it as though praying. He saw
her bosom rise and fall, her eyes darkening with anger, and taking no
notice of the taunt, he asked quietly:
"Are you carrying on a flirtation with Bosinney?"
"No, I am not!"
Her eyes met his, and he looked away. He neither believed nor
disbelieved her, but he knew that he had made a mistake in asking; he
never had known, never would know, what she was thinking. The sight of
her inscrutable face, the thought of all the hundreds of evenings he had
seen her sitting there like that soft and passive, but unreadable,
unknown, enraged him beyond measure.
"I believe you are made of stone," he said, clenching his fingers so hard
that he broke the fragile cup. The pieces fell into the grate. And
Irene smiled.
"You seem to forget," she said, "that cup is not!"
Soames gripped her arm. "A good beating," he said, "is the only thing
that would bring you to your senses," but turning on his heel, he left
the room.
CHAPTER XIV
SOAMES SITS ON THE STAIRS
Soames went upstairs that night that he had gone too far. He was
prepared to offer excuses for his words.
He turned out the gas still burning in the passage outside their room.
Pausing, with his hand on the knob of the door, he tried to shape his
apology, for he had no intention of letting her see that he was nervous.
But the door did not open, nor when he pulled it and turned the handle
firmly. She must have locked it for some reason, and forgotten.
Entering his dressing-room where the gas was also light and burning low,
he went quickly to the other door. That too was locked. Then he noticed
that the camp bed which he occasionally used was prepared, and his
sleeping-suit laid out upon it. He put his hand up to his forehead, and
brought it away wet. It dawned on him that he was barred out.
He went back to the door, and rattling the handle stealthily, called:
"Unlock the door, do you hear? Unlock the door!"
There was a faint rustling, but no answer.
"Do you hear? Let me in at once--I insist on being let in!"
He could catch the sound of her breathing close to the door, like the
breathing of a creature threatened by danger.
There was something terrifying in this inexorable silence, in the
impossibility of getting at her. He went back to the other door, and
putting his whole weight against it, tried to burst it open. The door was
a new one--he had had them renewed himself, in readiness for their coming
in after the honeymoon. In a rage he lifted his foot to kick in the
panel; the thought of the servants restrained him, and he felt suddenly
that he was beaten.
Flinging himself down in the dressing-room, he took up a book.
But instead of the print he seemed to see his wife--with her yellow hair
flowing over her bare shoulders, and her great dark eyes--standing like
an animal at bay. And the whole meaning of her act of revolt came to
him. She meant it to be for good.
He could not sit still, and went to the door again. He could still hear
her, and he called: "Irene! Irene!"
He did not mean to make his voice pathetic.
In ominous answer, the faint sounds ceased. He stood with clenched
hands, thinking.
Presently he stole round on tiptoe, and running suddenly at the other
door, made a supreme effort to break it open. It creaked, but did not
yield. He sat down on the stairs and buried his face in his hands.
For a long time he sat there in the dark, the moon through the skylight
above laying a pale smear which lengthened slowly towards him down the
stairway. He tried to be philosophical.
Since she had locked her doors she had no further claim as a wife, and he
would console himself with other women.
It was but a spectral journey he made among such delights--he had no
appetite for these exploits. He had never had much, and he had lost the
habit. He felt that he could never recover it. His hunger could only be
appeased by his wife, inexorable and frightened, behind these shut doors.
No other woman could help him.
This conviction came to him with terrible force out there in the dark.
His philosophy left him; and surly anger took its place. Her conduct was
immoral, inexcusable, worthy of any punishment within his power. He
desired no one but her, and she refused him!
She must really hate him, then! He had never believed it yet. He did not
believe it now. It seemed to him incredible. He felt as though he had
lost for ever his power of judgment. If she, so soft and yielding as he
had always judged her, could take this decided step--what could not
happen?
Then he asked himself again if she were carrying on an intrigue with
Bosinney. He did not believe that she was; he could not afford to
believe such a reason for her conduct--the thought was not to be faced.
It would be unbearable to contemplate the necessity of making his marital
relations public property. Short of the most convincing proofs he must
still refuse to believe, for he did not wish to punish himself. And all
the time at heart--he did believe.
The moonlight cast a greyish tinge over his figure, hunched against the
staircase wall.
Bosinney was in love with her! He hated the fellow, and would not spare
him now. He could and would refuse to pay a penny piece over twelve
thousand and fifty pounds--the extreme limit fixed in the correspondence;
or rather he would pay, he would pay and sue him for damages. He would
go to Jobling and Boulter and put the matter in their hands. He would
ruin the impecunious beggar! And suddenly--though what connection
between the thoughts?--he reflected that Irene had no money either. They
were both beggars. This gave him a strange satisfaction.
The silence was broken by a faint creaking through the wall. She was
going to bed at last. Ah! Joy and pleasant dreams! If she threw the
door open wide he would not go in now!
But his lips, that were twisted in a bitter smile, twitched; he covered
his eyes with his hands....
It was late the following afternoon when Soames stood in the dining-room
window gazing gloomily into the Square.
The sunlight still showered on the plane-trees, and in the breeze their
gay broad leaves shone and swung in rhyme to a barrel organ at the
corner. It was playing a waltz, an old waltz that was out of fashion,
with a fateful rhythm in the notes; and it went on and on, though nothing
indeed but leaves danced to the tune.
The woman did not look too gay, for she was tired; and from the tall
houses no one threw her down coppers. She moved the organ on, and three
doors off began again.
It was the waltz they had played at Roger's when Irene had danced with
Bosinney; and the perfume of the gardenias she had worn came back to
Soames, drifted by the malicious music, as it had been drifted to him
then, when she passed, her hair glistening, her eyes so soft, drawing
Bosinney on and on down an endless ballroom.
The organ woman plied her handle slowly; she had been grinding her tune
all day-grinding it in Sloane Street hard by, grinding it perhaps to
Bosinney himself.
Soames turned, took a cigarette from the carven box, and walked back to
the window. The tune had mesmerized him, and there came into his view
Irene, her sunshade furled, hastening homewards down the Square, in a
soft, rose-coloured blouse with drooping sleeves, that he did not know.
She stopped before the organ, took out her purse, and gave the woman
money.
Soames shrank back and stood where he could see into the hall.
She came in with her latch-key, put down her sunshade, and stood looking
at herself in the glass. Her cheeks were flushed as if the sun had
burned them; her lips were parted in a smile. She stretched her arms out
as though to embrace herself, with a laugh that for all the world was
like a sob.
Soames stepped forward.
"Very-pretty!" he said.
But as though shot she spun round, and would have passed him up the
stairs. He barred the way.
"Why such a hurry?" he said, and his eyes fastened on a curl of hair
fallen loose across her ear....
He hardly recognised her. She seemed on fire, so deep and rich the
colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual blouse she
wore.
She put up her hand and smoothed back the curl. She was breathing fast
and deep, as though she had been running, and with every breath perfume
seemed to come from her hair, and from her body, like perfume from an
opening flower.
"I don't like that blouse," he said slowly, "it's a soft, shapeless
thing!"
He lifted his finger towards her breast, but she dashed his hand aside.
"Don't touch me!" she cried.
He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.
"And where may you have been?" he asked.
"In heaven--out of this house!" With those words she fled upstairs.
Outside--in thanksgiving--at the very door, the organ-grinder was playing
the waltz.
And Soames stood motionless. What prevented him from following her?
Was it that, with the eyes of faith, he saw Bosinney looking down from
that high window in Sloane Street, straining his eyes for yet another
glimpse of Irene's vanished figure, cooling his flushed face, dreaming of
the moment when she flung herself on his breast--the scent of her still
in the air around, and the sound of her laugh that was like a sob?
PART III
CHAPTER I
Mrs. MACANDER'S EVIDENCE
Many people, no doubt, including the editor of the 'Ultra
Vivisectionist,' then in the bloom of its first youth, would say that
Soames was less than a man not to have removed the locks from his wife's
doors, and, after beating her soundly, resumed wedded happiness.
Brutality is not so deplorably diluted by humaneness as it used to be,
yet a sentimental segment of the population may still be relieved to
learn that he did none of these things. For active brutality is not
popular with Forsytes; they are too circumspect, and, on the whole, too
softhearted. And in Soames there was some common pride, not sufficient
to make him do a really generous action, but enough to prevent his
indulging in an extremely mean one, except, perhaps, in very hot blood.
Above all this a true Forsyte refused to feel himself ridiculous. Short
of actually beating his wife, he perceived nothing to be done; he
therefore accepted the situation without another word.
Throughout the summer and autumn he continued to go to the office, to
sort his pictures, and ask his friends to dinner.
He did not leave town; Irene refused to go away. The house at Robin
Hill, finished though it was, remained empty and ownerless. Soames had
brought a suit against the Buccaneer, in which he claimed from him the
sum of three hundred and fifty pounds.
A firm of solicitors, Messrs. Freak and Able, had put in a defence on
Bosinney's behalf. Admitting the facts, they raised a point on the
correspondence which, divested of legal phraseology, amounted to this: To
speak of 'a free hand in the terms of this correspondence' is an Irish
bull.
By a chance, fortuitous but not improbable in the close borough of legal
circles, a good deal of information came to Soames' ear anent this line
of policy, the working partner in his firm, Bustard, happening to sit
next at dinner at Walmisley's, the Taxing Master, to young Chankery, of
the Common Law Bar.
The necessity for talking what is known as 'shop,' which comes on all
lawyers with the removal of the ladies, caused Chankery, a young and
promising advocate, to propound an impersonal conundrum to his neighbour,
whose name he did not know, for, seated as he permanently was in the
background, Bustard had practically no name.
He had, said Chankery, a case coming on with a 'very nice point.' He then
explained, preserving every professional discretion, the riddle in
Soames' case. Everyone, he said, to whom he had spoken, thought it a
nice point. The issue was small unfortunately, 'though d----d serious
for his client he believed'--Walmisley's champagne was bad but plentiful.
A Judge would make short work of it, he was afraid. He intended to make
a big effort--the point was a nice one. What did his neighbour say?
Bustard, a model of secrecy, said nothing. He related the incident to
Soames however with some malice, for this quiet man was capable of human
feeling, ending with his own opinion that the point was 'a very nice
one.'
In accordance with his resolve, our Forsyte had put his interests into
the hands of Jobling and Boulter. From the moment of doing so he
regretted that he had not acted for himself. On receiving a copy of
Bosinney's defence he went over to their offices.
Boulter, who had the matter in hand, Jobling having died some years
before, told him that in his opinion it was rather a nice point; he would
like counsel's opinion on it.
Soames told him to go to a good man, and they went to Waterbuck, Q.C.,
marking him ten and one, who kept the papers six weeks and then wrote as
follows:
'In my opinion the true interpretation of this correspondence depends
very much on the intention of the parties, and will turn upon the
evidence given at the trial. I am of opinion that an attempt should be
made to secure from the architect an admission that he understood he was
not to spend at the outside more than twelve thousand and fifty pounds.
With regard to the expression, "a free hand in the terms of this
correspondence," to which my attention is directed, the point is a nice
one; but I am of opinion that upon the whole the ruling in "Boileau v.
The Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.," will apply.'
Upon this opinion they acted, administering interrogatories, but to their
annoyance Messrs. Freak and Able answered these in so masterly a fashion
that nothing whatever was admitted and that without prejudice.
It was on October 1 that Soames read Waterbuck's opinion, in the
dining-room before dinner.
It made him nervous; not so much because of the case of 'Boileau v. The
Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.,' as that the point had lately begun to seem to
him, too, a nice one; there was about it just that pleasant flavour of
subtlety so attractive to the best legal appetites. To have his own
impression confirmed by Waterbuck, Q.C., would have disturbed any man.
He sat thinking it over, and staring at the empty grate, for though
autumn had come, the weather kept as gloriously fine that jubilee year as
if it were still high August. It was not pleasant to be disturbed; he
desired too passionately to set his foot on Bosinney's neck.
Though he had not seen the architect since the last afternoon at Robin
Hill, he was never free from the sense of his presence--never free from
the memory of his worn face with its high cheek bones and enthusiastic
eyes. It would not be too much to say that he had never got rid of the
feeling of that night when he heard the peacock's cry at dawn--the
feeling that Bosinney haunted the house. And every man's shape that he
saw in the dark evenings walking past, seemed that of him whom George had
so appropriately named the Buccaneer.
Irene still met him, he was certain; where, or how, he neither knew, nor
asked; deterred by a vague and secret dread of too much knowledge. It
all seemed subterranean nowadays.
Sometimes when he questioned his wife as to where she had been, which he
still made a point of doing, as every Forsyte should, she looked very
strange. Her self-possession was wonderful, but there were moments when,
behind the mask of her face, inscrutable as it had always been to him,
lurked an expression he had never been used to see there.
She had taken to lunching out too; when he asked Bilson if her mistress
had been in to lunch, as often as not she would answer: "No, sir."
He strongly disapproved of her gadding about by herself, and told her so.
But she took no notice. There was something that angered, amazed, yet
almost amused him about the calm way in which she disregarded his wishes.
It was really as if she were hugging to herself the thought of a triumph
over him.
He rose from the perusal of Waterbuck, Q.C.'s opinion, and, going
upstairs, entered her room, for she did not lock her doors till
bed-time--she had the decency, he found, to save the feelings of the
servants. She was brushing her hair, and turned to him with strange
fierceness.
"What do you want?" she said. "Please leave my room!"
He answered: "I want to know how long this state of things between us is
to last? I have put up with it long enough."
"Will you please leave my room?"
"Will you treat me as your husband?"
"No."
"Then, I shall take steps to make you."
"Do!"
He stared, amazed at the calmness of her answer. Her lips were
compressed in a thin line; her hair lay in fluffy masses on her bare
shoulders, in all its strange golden contrast to her dark eyes--those
eyes alive with the emotions of fear, hate, contempt, and odd, haunting
triumph.
"Now, please, will you leave my room?" He turned round, and went sulkily
out.
He knew very well that he had no intention of taking steps, and he saw
that she knew too--knew that he was afraid to.
It was a habit with him to tell her the doings of his day: how such and
such clients had called; how he had arranged a mortgage for Parkes; how
that long-standing suit of Fryer v. Forsyte was getting on, which,
arising in the preternaturally careful disposition of his property by his
great uncle Nicholas, who had tied it up so that no one could get at it
at all, seemed likely to remain a source of income for several solicitors
till the Day of Judgment.
And how he had called in at Jobson's, and seen a Boucher sold, which he
had just missed buying of Talleyrand and Sons in Pall Mall.
He had an admiration for Boucher, Watteau, and all that school. It was a
habit with him to tell her all these matters, and he continued to do it
even now, talking for long spells at dinner, as though by the volubility
of words he could conceal from himself the ache in his heart.
Often, if they were alone, he made an attempt to kiss her when she said
good-night. He may have had some vague notion that some night she would
let him; or perhaps only the feeling that a husband ought to kiss his
wife. Even if she hated him, he at all events ought not to put himself
in the wrong by neglecting this ancient rite.
And why did she hate him? Even now he could not altogether believe it.
It was strange to be hated!--the emotion was too extreme; yet he hated
Bosinney, that Buccaneer, that prowling vagabond, that night-wanderer.
For in his thoughts Soames always saw him lying in wait--wandering. Ah,
but he must be in very low water! Young Burkitt, the architect, had seen
him coming out of a third-rate restaurant, looking terribly down in the
mouth!
During all the hours he lay awake, thinking over the situation, which
seemed to have no end--unless she should suddenly come to her
senses--never once did the thought of separating from his wife seriously
enter his head....
And the Forsytes! What part did they play in this stage of Soames'
subterranean tragedy?
Truth to say, little or none, for they were at the sea.
From hotels, hydropathics, or lodging-houses, they were bathing daily;
laying in a stock of ozone to last them through the winter.
Each section, in the vineyard of its own choosing, grew and culled and
pressed and bottled the grapes of a pet sea-air.
The end of September began to witness their several returns.
In rude health and small omnibuses, with considerable colour in their
cheeks, they arrived daily from the various termini. The following
morning saw them back at their vocations.
On the next Sunday Timothy's was thronged from lunch till dinner.
Amongst other gossip, too numerous and interesting to relate, Mrs.
Septimus Small mentioned that Soames and Irene had not been away.
It remained for a comparative outsider to supply the next evidence of
interest.
It chanced that one afternoon late in September, Mrs. MacAnder, Winifred
Dartie's greatest friend, taking a constitutional, with young Augustus
Flippard, on her bicycle in Richmond Park, passed Irene and Bosinney
walking from the bracken towards the Sheen Gate.
Perhaps the poor little woman was thirsty, for she had ridden long on a
hard, dry road, and, as all London knows, to ride a bicycle and talk to
young Flippard will try the toughest constitution; or perhaps the sight
of the cool bracken grove, whence 'those two' were coming down, excited
her envy. The cool bracken grove on the top of the hill, with the oak
boughs for roof, where the pigeons were raising an endless wedding hymn,
and the autumn, humming, whispered to the ears of lovers in the fern,
while the deer stole by. The bracken grove of irretrievable delights, of
golden minutes in the long marriage of heaven and earth! The bracken
grove, sacred to stags, to strange tree-stump fauns leaping around the
silver whiteness of a birch-tree nymph at summer dusk.
This lady knew all the Forsytes, and having been at June's 'at home,' was
not at a loss to see with whom she had to deal. Her own marriage, poor
thing, had not been successful, but having had the good sense and ability
to force her husband into pronounced error, she herself had passed
through the necessary divorce proceedings without incurring censure.
She was therefore a judge of all that sort of thing, and lived in one of
those large buildings, where in small sets of apartments, are gathered
incredible quantities of Forsytes, whose chief recreation out of business
hours is the discussion of each other's affairs.
Poor little woman, perhaps she was thirsty, certainly she was bored, for
Flippard was a wit. To see 'those two' in so unlikely a spot was quite a
merciful 'pick-me-up.'
At the MacAnder, like all London, Time pauses.
This small but remarkable woman merits attention; her all-seeing eye and
shrewd tongue were inscrutably the means of furthering the ends of
Providence.
With an air of being in at the death, she had an almost distressing power
of taking care of herself. She had done more, perhaps, in her way than
any woman about town to destroy the sense of chivalry which still clogs
the wheel of civilization. So smart she was, and spoken of endearingly as
'the little MacAnder!'
Dressing tightly and well, she belonged to a Woman's Club, but was by no
means the neurotic and dismal type of member who was always thinking of
her rights. She took her rights unconsciously, they came natural to her,
and she knew exactly how to make the most of them without exciting
anything but admiration amongst that great class to whom she was
affiliated, not precisely perhaps by manner, but by birth, breeding, and
the true, the secret gauge, a sense of property.
The daughter of a Bedfordshire solicitor, by the daughter of a clergyman,
she had never, through all the painful experience of being married to a
very mild painter with a cranky love of Nature, who had deserted her for
an actress, lost touch with the requirements, beliefs, and inner feeling
of Society; and, on attaining her liberty, she placed herself without
effort in the very van of Forsyteism.
Always in good spirits, and 'full of information,' she was universally
welcomed. She excited neither surprise nor disapprobation when
encountered on the Rhine or at Zermatt, either alone, or travelling with
a lady and two gentlemen; it was felt that she was perfectly capable of
taking care of herself; and the hearts of all Forsytes warmed to that
wonderful instinct, which enabled her to enjoy everything without giving
anything away. It was generally felt that to such women as Mrs. MacAnder
should we look for the perpetuation and increase of our best type of
woman. She had never had any children.
If there was one thing more than another that she could not stand it was
one of those soft women with what men called 'charm' about them, and for
Mrs. Soames she always had an especial dislike.
Obscurely, no doubt, she felt that if charm were once admitted as the
criterion, smartness and capability must go to the wall; and she
hated--with a hatred the deeper that at times this so-called charm seemed
to disturb all calculations--the subtle seductiveness which she could not
altogether overlook in Irene.
She said, however, that she could see nothing in the woman--there was no
'go' about her--she would never be able to stand up for herself--anyone
could take advantage of her, that was plain--she could not see in fact
what men found to admire!
She was not really ill-natured, but, in maintaining her position after
the trying circumstances of her married life, she had found it so
necessary to be 'full of information,' that the idea of holding her
tongue about 'those two' in the Park never occurred to her.
And it so happened that she was dining that very evening at Timothy's,
where she went sometimes to 'cheer the old things up,' as she was wont to
put it. The same people were always asked to meet her: Winifred Dartie
and her husband; Francie, because she belonged to the artistic circles,
for Mrs. MacAnder was known to contribute articles on dress to 'The
Ladies Kingdom Come'; and for her to flirt with, provided they could be
obtained, two of the Hayman boys, who, though they never said anything,
were believed to be fast and thoroughly intimate with all that was latest
in smart Society.
At twenty-five minutes past seven she turned out the electric light in
her little hall, and wrapped in her opera cloak with the chinchilla
collar, came out into the corridor, pausing a moment to make sure she had
her latch-key. These little self-contained flats were convenient; to be
sure, she had no light and no air, but she could shut it up whenever she
liked and go away. There was no bother with servants, and she never felt
tied as she used to when poor, dear Fred was always about, in his mooney
way. She retained no rancour against poor, dear Fred, he was such a
fool; but the thought of that actress drew from her, even now, a little,
bitter, derisive smile.
Firmly snapping the door to, she crossed the corridor, with its gloomy,
yellow-ochre walls, and its infinite vista of brown, numbered doors. The
lift was going down; and wrapped to the ears in the high cloak, with
every one of her auburn hairs in its place, she waited motionless for it
to stop at her floor. The iron gates clanked open; she entered. There
were already three occupants, a man in a great white waistcoat, with a
large, smooth face like a baby's, and two old ladies in black, with
mittened hands.
Mrs. MacAnder smiled at them; she knew everybody; and all these three,
who had been admirably silent before, began to talk at once. This was
Mrs. MacAnder's successful secret. She provoked conversation.
Throughout a descent of five stories the conversation continued, the lift
boy standing with his back turned, his cynical face protruding through
the bars.
At the bottom they separated, the man in the white waistcoat
sentimentally to the billiard room, the old ladies to dine and say to
each other: "A dear little woman!" "Such a rattle!" and Mrs. MacAnder to
her cab.
When Mrs. MacAnder dined at Timothy's, the conversation (although Timothy
himself could never be induced to be present) took that wider,
man-of-the-world tone current among Forsytes at large, and this, no
doubt, was what put her at a premium there.
Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester found it an exhilarating change. "If only,"
they said, "Timothy would meet her!" It was felt that she would do him
good. She could tell you, for instance, the latest story of Sir Charles
Fiste's son at Monte Carlo; who was the real heroine of Tynemouth Eddy's
fashionable novel that everyone was holding up their hands over, and what
they were doing in Paris about wearing bloomers. She was so sensible,
too, knowing all about that vexed question, whether to send young
Nicholas' eldest into the navy as his mother wished, or make him an
accountant as his father thought would be safer. She strongly deprecated
the navy. If you were not exceptionally brilliant or exceptionally well
connected, they passed you over so disgracefully, and what was it after
all to look forward to, even if you became an admiral--a pittance! An
accountant had many more chances, but let him be put with a good firm,
where there was no risk at starting!
Sometimes she would give them a tip on the Stock Exchange; not that Mrs.
Small or Aunt Hester ever took it. They had indeed no money to invest;
but it seemed to bring them into such exciting touch with the realities
of life. It was an event. They would ask Timothy, they said. But they
never did, knowing in advance that it would upset him. Surreptitiously,
however, for weeks after they would look in that paper, which they took
with respect on account of its really fashionable proclivities, to see
whether 'Bright's Rubies' or 'The Woollen Mackintosh Company' were up or
down. Sometimes they could not find the name of the company at all; and
they would wait until James or Roger or even Swithin came in, and ask
them in voices trembling with curiosity how that 'Bolivia Lime and
Speltrate' was doing--they could not find it in the paper.
And Roger would answer: "What do you want to know for? Some trash!
You'll go burning your fingers--investing your money in lime, and things
you know nothing about! Who told you?" and ascertaining what they had
been told, he would go away, and, making inquiries in the City, would
perhaps invest some of his own money in the concern.
It was about the middle of dinner, just in fact as the saddle of mutton
had been brought in by Smither, that Mrs. MacAnder, looking airily round,
said: "Oh! and whom do you think I passed to-day in Richmond Park?
You'll never guess--Mrs. Soames and--Mr. Bosinney. They must have been
down to look at the house!"
Winifred Dartie coughed, and no one said a word. It was the piece of
evidence they had all unconsciously been waiting for.
To do Mrs. MacAnder justice, she had been to Switzerland and the Italian
lakes with a party of three, and had not heard of Soames' rupture with
his architect. She could not tell, therefore, the profound impression
her words would make.
Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small, shrewd eyes from face
to face, trying to gauge the effect of her words. On either side of her
a Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face turned towards his plate,
ate his mutton steadily.
These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable that they
were known as the Dromios. They never talked, and seemed always
completely occupied in doing nothing. It was popularly supposed that
they were cramming for an important examination. They walked without hats
for long hours in the Gardens attached to their house, books in their
hands, a fox-terrier at their heels, never saying a word, and smoking all
the time. Every morning, about fifty yards apart, they trotted down
Campden Hill on two lean hacks, with legs as long as their own, and every
morning about an hour later, still fifty yards apart, they cantered up
again. Every evening, wherever they had dined, they might be observed
about half-past ten, leaning over the balustrade of the Alhambra
promenade.
They were never seen otherwise than together; in this way passing their
lives, apparently perfectly content.
Inspired by some dumb stirring within them of the feelings of gentlemen,
they turned at this painful moment to Mrs. MacAnder, and said in
precisely the same voice: "Have you seen the...?"
Such was her surprise at being thus addressed that she put down her fork;
and Smither, who was passing, promptly removed her plate. Mrs. MacAnder,
however, with presence of mind, said instantly: "I must have a little
more of that nice mutton."
But afterwards in the drawing--room she sat down by Mrs. Small,
determined to get to the bottom of the matter. And she began:
"What a charming woman, Mrs. Soames; such a sympathetic temperament!
Soames is a really lucky man!"
Her anxiety for information had not made sufficient allowance for that
inner Forsyte skin which refuses to share its troubles with outsiders.
Mrs. Septimus Small, drawing herself up with a creak and rustle of her
whole person, said, shivering in her dignity:
"My dear, it is a subject we do not talk about!"
CHAPTER II
NIGHT IN THE PARK
Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had said the very thing
to make her guest 'more intriguee than ever,' it is difficult to see how
else she could truthfully have spoken.
It was not a subject which the Forsytes could talk about even among
themselves--to use the word Soames had invented to characterize to
himself the situation, it was 'subterranean.'
Yet, within a week of Mrs. MacAnder's encounter in Richmond Park, to all
of them--save Timothy, from whom it was carefully kept--to James on his
domestic beat from the Poultry to Park Lane, to George the wild one, on
his daily adventure from the bow window at the Haversnake to the billiard
room at the 'Red Pottle,' was it known that 'those two' had gone to
extremes.
George (it was he who invented many of those striking expressions still
current in fashionable circles) voiced the sentiment more accurately than
any one when he said to his brother Eustace that 'the Buccaneer' was
'going it'; he expected Soames was about 'fed up.'
It was felt that he must be, and yet, what could be done? He ought
perhaps to take steps; but to take steps would be deplorable.
Without an open scandal which they could not see their way to
recommending, it was difficult to see what steps could be taken. In this
impasse, the only thing was to say nothing to Soames, and nothing to each
other; in fact, to pass it over.
By displaying towards Irene a dignified coldness, some impression might
be made upon her; but she was seldom now to be seen, and there seemed a
slight difficulty in seeking her out on purpose to show her coldness.
Sometimes in the privacy of his bedroom James would reveal to Emily the
real suffering that his son's misfortune caused him.
"I can't tell," he would say; "it worries me out of my life. There'll be
a scandal, and that'll do him no good. I shan't say anything to him.
There might be nothing in it. What do you think? She's very artistic,
they tell me. What? Oh, you're a 'regular Juley! Well, I don't know; I
expect the worst. This is what comes of having no children. I knew how
it would be from the first. They never told me they didn't mean to have
any children--nobody tells me anything!"
On his knees by the side of the bed, his eyes open and fixed with worry,
he would breathe into the counterpane. Clad in his nightshirt, his neck
poked forward, his back rounded, he resembled some long white bird.
"Our Father-," he repeated, turning over and over again the thought of
this possible scandal.
Like old Jolyon, he, too, at the bottom of his heart set the blame of the
tragedy down to family interference. What business had that lot--he
began to think of the Stanhope Gate branch, including young Jolyon and
his daughter, as 'that lot'--to introduce a person like this Bosinney
into the family? (He had heard George's soubriquet, 'The Buccaneer,' but
he could make nothing of that--the young man was an architect.)
He began to feel that his brother Jolyon, to whom he had always looked up
and on whose opinion he had relied, was not quite what he had expected.
Not having his eldest brother's force of character, he was more sad than
angry. His great comfort was to go to Winifred's, and take the little
Darties in his carriage over to Kensington Gardens, and there, by the
Round Pond, he could often be seen walking with his eyes fixed anxiously
on little Publius Dartie's sailing-boat, which he had himself freighted
with a penny, as though convinced that it would never again come to
shore; while little Publius--who, James delighted to say, was not a bit
like his father skipping along under his lee, would try to get him to bet
another that it never would, having found that it always did. And James
would make the bet; he always paid--sometimes as many as three or four
pennies in the afternoon, for the game seemed never to pall on little
Publius--and always in paying he said: "Now, that's for your money-box.
Why, you're getting quite a rich man!" The thought of his little
grandson's growing wealth was a real pleasure to him. But little Publius
knew a sweet-shop, and a trick worth two of that.
And they would walk home across the Park, James' figure, with high
shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its tall, lean
protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the robust child-figures of
Imogen and little Publius.
But those Gardens and that Park were not sacred to James. Forsytes and
tramps, children and lovers, rested and wandered day after day, night
after night, seeking one and all some freedom from labour, from the reek
and turmoil of the streets.
The leaves browned slowly, lingering with the sun and summer-like warmth
of the nights.
On Saturday, October 5, the sky that had been blue all day deepened after
sunset to the bloom of purple grapes. There was no moon, and a clear
dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped around the trees, whose
thinned branches, resembling plumes, stirred not in the still, warm air.
All London had poured into the Park, draining the cup of summer to its
dregs.
Couple after couple, from every gate, they streamed along the paths and
over the burnt grass, and one after another, silently out of the lighted
spaces, stole into the shelter of the feathery trees, where, blotted
against some trunk, or under the shadow of shrubs, they were lost to all
but themselves in the heart of the soft darkness.
To fresh-comers along the paths, these forerunners formed but part of
that passionate dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like the confused
beating of hearts, came forth. But when that murmur reached each couple
in the lamp-light their voices wavered, and ceased; their arms enlaced,
their eyes began seeking, searching, probing the blackness. Suddenly, as
though drawn by invisible hands, they, too, stepped over the railing,
and, silent as shadows, were gone from the light.
The stillness, enclosed in the far, inexorable roar of the town, was
alive with the myriad passions, hopes, and loves of multitudes of
struggling human atoms; for in spite of the disapproval of that great
body of Forsytes, the Municipal Council--to whom Love had long been
considered, next to the Sewage Question, the gravest danger to the
community--a process was going on that night in the Park, and in a
hundred other parks, without which the thousand factories, churches,
shops, taxes, and drains, of which they were custodians, were as arteries
without blood, a man without a heart.
The instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion, and of love, hiding
under the trees, away from the trustees of their remorseless enemy, the
'sense of property,' were holding a stealthy revel, and Soames, returning
from Bayswater for he had been alone to dine at Timothy's walking home
along the water, with his mind upon that coming lawsuit, had the blood
driven from his heart by a low laugh and the sound of kisses. He thought
of writing to the Times the next morning, to draw the attention of the
Editor to the condition of our parks. He did not, however, for he had a
horror of seeing his name in print.
But starved as he was, the whispered sounds in the stillness, the
half-seen forms in the dark, acted on him like some morbid stimulant. He
left the path along the water and stole under the trees, along the deep
shadow of little plantations, where the boughs of chestnut trees hung
their great leaves low, and there was blacker refuge, shaping his course
in circles which had for their object a stealthy inspection of chairs
side by side, against tree-trunks, of enlaced lovers, who stirred at his
approach.
Now he stood still on the rise overlooking the Serpentine, where, in full
lamp-light, black against the silver water, sat a couple who never moved,
the woman's face buried on the man's neck--a single form, like a carved
emblem of passion, silent and unashamed.
And, stung by the sight, Soames hurried on deeper into the shadow of the
trees.
In this search, who knows what he thought and what he sought? Bread for
hunger--light in darkness? Who knows what he expected to
find--impersonal knowledge of the human heart--the end of his private
subterranean tragedy--for, again, who knew, but that each dark couple,
unnamed, unnameable, might not be he and she?
But it could not be such knowledge as this that he was seeking--the wife
of Soames Forsyte sitting in the Park like a common wench! Such thoughts
were inconceivable; and from tree to tree, with his noiseless step, he
passed.
Once he was sworn at; once the whisper, "If only it could always be like
this!" sent the blood flying again from his heart, and he waited there,
patient and dogged, for the two to move. But it was only a poor thin
slip of a shop-girl in her draggled blouse who passed him, clinging to
her lover's arm.
A hundred other lovers too whispered that hope in the stillness of the
trees, a hundred other lovers clung to each other.
But shaking himself with sudden disgust, Soames returned to the path, and
left that seeking for he knew not what.
CHAPTER III
MEETING AT THE BOTANICAL
Young Jolyon, whose circumstances were not those of a Forsyte, found at
times a difficulty in sparing the money needful for those country jaunts
and researches into Nature, without having prosecuted which no
watercolour artist ever puts brush to paper.
He was frequently, in fact, obliged to take his colour-box into the
Botanical Gardens, and there, on his stool, in the shade of a
monkey-puzzler or in the lee of some India-rubber plant, he would spend
long hours sketching.
An Art critic who had recently been looking at his work had delivered
himself as follows:
"In a way your drawings are very good; tone and colour, in some of them
certainly quite a feeling for Nature. But, you see, they're so
scattered; you'll never get the public to look at them. Now, if you'd
taken a definite subject, such as 'London by Night,' or 'The Crystal
Palace in the Spring,' and made a regular series, the public would have
known at once what they were looking at. I can't lay too much stress
upon that. All the men who are making great names in Art, like Crum
Stone or Bleeder, are making them by avoiding the unexpected; by
specializing and putting their works all in the same pigeon-hole, so that
the public know pat once where to go. And this stands to reason, for if
a man's a collector he doesn't want people to smell at the canvas to find
out whom his pictures are by; he wants them to be able to say at once, 'A
capital Forsyte!' It is all the more important for you to be careful to
choose a subject that they can lay hold of on the spot, since there's no
very marked originality in your style."
Young Jolyon, standing by the little piano, where a bowl of dried rose
leaves, the only produce of the garden, was deposited on a bit of faded
damask, listened with his dim smile.
Turning to his wife, who was looking at the speaker with an angry
expression on her thin face, he said:
"You see, dear?"
"I do not," she answered in her staccato voice, that still had a little
foreign accent; "your style has originality."
The critic looked at her, smiled' deferentially, and said no more. Like
everyone else, he knew their history.
The words bore good fruit with young Jolyon; they were contrary to all
that he believed in, to all that he theoretically held good in his Art,
but some strange, deep instinct moved him against his will to turn them
to profit.
He discovered therefore one morning that an idea had come to him for
making a series of watercolour drawings of London. How the idea had
arisen he could not tell; and it was not till the following year, when he
had completed and sold them at a very fair price, that in one of his
impersonal moods, he found himself able to recollect the Art critic, and
to discover in his own achievement another proof that he was a Forsyte.
He decided to commence with the Botanical Gardens, where he had already
made so many studies, and chose the little artificial pond, sprinkled now
with an autumn shower of red and yellow leaves, for though the gardeners
longed to sweep them off, they could not reach them with their brooms.
The rest of the gardens they swept bare enough, removing every morning
Nature's rain of leaves; piling them in heaps, whence from slow fires
rose the sweet, acrid smoke that, like the cuckoo's note for spring, the
scent of lime trees for the summer, is the true emblem of the fall. The
gardeners' tidy souls could not abide the gold and green and russet
pattern on the grass. The gravel paths must lie unstained, ordered,
methodical, without knowledge of the realities of life, nor of that slow
and beautiful decay which flings crowns underfoot to star the earth with
fallen glories, whence, as the cycle rolls, will leap again wild spring.
Thus each leaf that fell was marked from the moment when it fluttered a
good-bye and dropped, slow turning, from its twig.
But on that little pond the leaves floated in peace, and praised Heaven
with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them.
And so young Jolyon found them.
Coming there one morning in the middle of October, he was disconcerted to
find a bench about twenty paces from his stand occupied, for he had a
proper horror of anyone seeing him at work.
A lady in a velvet jacket was sitting there, with her eyes fixed on the
ground. A flowering laurel, however, stood between, and, taking shelter
behind this, young Jolyon prepared his easel.
His preparations were leisurely; he caught, as every true artist should,
at anything that might delay for a moment the effort of his work, and he
found himself looking furtively at this unknown dame.
Like his father before him, he had an eye for a face. This face was
charming!
He saw a rounded chin nestling in a cream ruffle, a delicate face with
large dark eyes and soft lips. A black 'picture' hat concealed the hair;
her figure was lightly poised against the back of the bench, her knees
were crossed; the tip of a patent-leather shoe emerged beneath her skirt.
There was something, indeed, inexpressibly dainty about the person of
this lady, but young Jolyon's attention was chiefly riveted by the look
on her face, which reminded him of his wife. It was as though its owner
had come into contact with forces too strong for her. It troubled him,
arousing vague feelings of attraction and chivalry. Who was she? And
what doing there, alone?
Two young gentlemen of that peculiar breed, at once forward and shy,
found in the Regent's Park, came by on their way to lawn tennis, and he
noted with disapproval their furtive stares of admiration. A loitering
gardener halted to do something unnecessary to a clump of pampas grass;
he, too, wanted an excuse for peeping. A gentleman, old, and, by his
hat, a professor of horticulture, passed three times to scrutinize her
long and stealthily, a queer expression about his lips.
With all these men young Jolyon felt the same vague irritation. She
looked at none of them, yet was he certain that every man who passed
would look at her like that.
Her face was not the face of a sorceress, who in every look holds out to
men the offer of pleasure; it had none of the 'devil's beauty' so highly
prized among the first Forsytes of the land; neither was it of that type,
no less adorable, associated with the box of chocolate; it was not of the
spiritually passionate, or passionately spiritual order, peculiar to
house-decoration and modern poetry; nor did it seem to promise to the
playwright material for the production of the interesting and
neurasthenic figure, who commits suicide in the last act.
In shape and colouring, in its soft persuasive passivity, its sensuous
purity, this woman's face reminded him of Titian's 'Heavenly Love,' a
reproduction of which hung over the sideboard in his dining-room. And
her attraction seemed to be in this soft passivity, in the feeling she
gave that to pressure she must yield.
For what or whom was she waiting, in the silence, with the trees dropping
here and there a leaf, and the thrushes strutting close on grass, touched
with the sparkle of the autumn rime? Then her charming face grew eager,
and, glancing round, with almost a lover's jealousy, young Jolyon saw
Bosinney striding across the grass.
Curiously he watched the meeting, the look in their eyes, the long clasp
of their hands. They sat down close together, linked for all their
outward discretion. He heard the rapid murmur of their talk; but what
they said he could not catch.
He had rowed in the galley himself! He knew the long hours of waiting
and the lean minutes of a half-public meeting; the tortures of suspense
that haunt the unhallowed lover.
It required, however, but a glance at their two faces to see that this
was none of those affairs of a season that distract men and women about
town; none of those sudden appetites that wake up ravening, and are
surfeited and asleep again in six weeks. This was the real thing! This
was what had happened to himself! Out of this anything might come!
Bosinney was pleading, and she so quiet, so soft, yet immovable in her
passivity, sat looking over the grass.
Was he the man to carry her off, that tender, passive being, who would
never stir a step for herself? Who had given him all herself, and would
die for him, but perhaps would never run away with him!
It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying: "But, darling,
it would ruin you!" For he himself had experienced to the full the
gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman's heart that she is a drag on
the man she loves.
And he peeped at them no more; but their soft, rapid talk came to his
ears, with the stuttering song of some bird who seemed trying to remember
the notes of spring: Joy--tragedy? Which--which?
And gradually their talk ceased; long silence followed.
'And where does Soames come in?' young Jolyon thought. 'People think she
is concerned about the sin of deceiving her husband! Little they know of
women! She's eating, after starvation--taking her revenge! And Heaven
help her--for he'll take his.'
He heard the swish of silk, and, spying round the laurel, saw them
walking away, their hands stealthily joined....
At the end of July old Jolyon had taken his grand-daughter to the
mountains; and on that visit (the last they ever paid) June recovered to
a great extent her health and spirits. In the hotels, filled with
British Forsytes--for old Jolyon could not bear a 'set of Germans,' as he
called all foreigners--she was looked upon with respect--the only
grand-daughter of that fine-looking, and evidently wealthy, old Mr.
Forsyte. She did not mix freely with people--to mix freely with people
was not June's habit--but she formed some friendships, and notably one in
the Rhone Valley, with a French girl who was dying of consumption.
Determining at once that her friend should not die, she forgot, in the
institution of a campaign against Death, much of her own trouble.
Old Jolyon watched the new intimacy with relief and disapproval; for this
additional proof that her life was to be passed amongst 'lame ducks'
worried him. Would she never make a friendship or take an interest in
something that would be of real benefit to her?
'Taking up with a parcel of foreigners,' he called it. He often,
however, brought home grapes or roses, and presented them to 'Mam'zelle'
with an ingratiating twinkle.
Towards the end of September, in spite of June's disapproval,
Mademoiselle Vigor breathed her last in the little hotel at St. Luc, to
which they had moved her; and June took her defeat so deeply to heart
that old Jolyon carried her away to Paris. Here, in contemplation of the
'Venus de Milo' and the 'Madeleine,' she shook off her depression, and
when, towards the middle of October, they returned to town, her
grandfather believed that he had effected a cure.
No sooner, however, had they established themselves in Stanhope Gate than
he perceived to his dismay a return of her old absorbed and brooding
manner. She would sit, staring in front of her, her chin on her hand,
like a little Norse spirit, grim and intent, while all around in the
electric light, then just installed, shone the great, drawing-room
brocaded up to the frieze, full of furniture from Baple and Pullbred's.
And in the huge gilt mirror were reflected those Dresden china groups of
young men in tight knee breeches, at the feet of full-bosomed ladies
nursing on their laps pet lambs, which old Jolyon had bought when he was
a bachelor and thought so highly of in these days of degenerate taste.
He was a man of most open mind, who, more than any Forsyte of them all,
had moved with the times, but he could never forget that he had bought
these groups at Jobson's, and given a lot of money for them. He often
said to June, with a sort of disillusioned contempt:
"You don't care about them! They're not the gimcrack things you and your
friends like, but they cost me seventy pounds!" He was not a man who
allowed his taste to be warped when he knew for solid reasons that it was
sound.
One of the first things that June did on getting home was to go round to
Timothy's. She persuaded herself that it was her duty to call there, and
cheer him with an account of all her travels; but in reality she went
because she knew of no other place where, by some random speech, or
roundabout question, she could glean news of Bosinney.
They received her most cordially: And how was her dear grandfather? He
had not been to see them since May. Her Uncle Timothy was very poorly,
he had had a lot of trouble with the chimney-sweep in his bedroom; the
stupid man had let the soot down the chimney! It had quite upset her
uncle.
June sat there a long time, dreading, yet passionately hoping, that they
would speak of Bosinney.
But paralyzed by unaccountable discretion, Mrs. Septimus Small let fall
no word, neither did she question June about him. In desperation the
girl asked at last whether Soames and Irene were in town--she had not yet
been to see anyone.
It was Aunt Hester who replied: Oh, yes, they were in town, they had not
been away at all. There was some little difficulty about the house, she
believed. June had heard, no doubt! She had better ask her Aunt Juley!
June turned to Mrs. Small, who sat upright in her chair, her hands
clasped, her face covered with innumerable pouts. In answer to the
girl's look she maintained a strange silence, and when she spoke it was
to ask June whether she had worn night-socks up in those high hotels
where it must be so cold of a night.
June answered that she had not, she hated the stuffy things; and rose to
leave.
Mrs. Small's infallibly chosen silence was far more ominous to her than
anything that could have been said.
Before half an hour was over she had dragged the truth from Mrs. Baynes
in Lowndes Square, that Soames was bringing an action against Bosinney
over the decoration of the house.
Instead of disturbing her, the news had a strangely calming effect; as
though she saw in the prospect of this struggle new hope for herself.
She learnt that the case was expected to come on in about a month, and
there seemed little or no prospect of Bosinney's success.
"And whatever he'll do I can't think," said Mrs. Baynes; "it's very
dreadful for him, you know--he's got no money--he's very hard up. And we
can't help him, I'm sure. I'm told the money-lenders won't lend if you
have no security, and he has none--none at all."
Her embonpoint had increased of late; she was in the full swing of autumn
organization, her writing-table literally strewn with the menus of
charity functions. She looked meaningly at June, with her round eyes of
parrot-grey.
The sudden flush that rose on the girl's intent young face--she must have
seen spring up before her a great hope--the sudden sweetness of her
smile, often came back to Lady Baynes in after years (Baynes was knighted
when he built that public Museum of Art which has given so much
employment to officials, and so little pleasure to those working classes
for whom it was designed).
The memory of that change, vivid and touching, like the breaking open of
a flower, or the first sun after long winter, the memory, too, of all
that came after, often intruded itself, unaccountably, inopportunely on
Lady Baynes, when her mind was set upon the most important things.
This was the very afternoon of the day that young Jolyon witnessed the
meeting in the Botanical Gardens, and on this day, too, old Jolyon paid a
visit to his solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard, and Forsyte, in the Poultry.
Soames was not in, he had gone down to Somerset House; Bustard was buried
up to the hilt in papers and that inaccessible apartment, where he was
judiciously placed, in order that he might do as much work as possible;
but James was in the front office, biting a finger, and lugubriously
turning over the pleadings in Forsyte v. Bosinney.
This sound lawyer had only a sort of luxurious dread of the 'nice point,'
enough to set up a pleasurable feeling of fuss; for his good practical
sense told him that if he himself were on the Bench he would not pay much
attention to it. But he was afraid that this Bosinney would go bankrupt
and Soames would have to find the money after all, and costs into the
bargain. And behind this tangible dread there was always that intangible
trouble, lurking in the background, intricate, dim, scandalous, like a
bad dream, and of which this action was but an outward and visible sign.
He raised his head as old Jolyon came in, and muttered: "How are you,
Jolyon? Haven't seen you for an age. You've been to Switzerland, they
tell me. This young Bosinney, he's got himself into a mess. I knew how
it would be!" He held out the papers, regarding his elder brother with
nervous gloom.
Old Jolyon read them in silence, and while he read them James looked at
the floor, biting his fingers the while.
Old Jolyon pitched them down at last, and they fell with a thump amongst
a mass of affidavits in 're Buncombe, deceased,' one of the many branches
of that parent and profitable tree, 'Fryer v. Forsyte.'
"I don't know what Soames is about," he said, "to make a fuss over a few
hundred pounds. I thought he was a man of property."
James' long upper lip twitched angrily; he could not bear his son to be
attacked in such a spot.
"It's not the money," he began, but meeting his brother's glance, direct,
shrewd, judicial, he stopped.
There was a silence.
"I've come in for my Will," said old Jolyon at last, tugging at his
moustache.
James' curiosity was roused at once. Perhaps nothing in this life was
more stimulating to him than a Will; it was the supreme deal with
property, the final inventory of a man's belongings, the last word on
what he was worth. He sounded the bell.
"Bring in Mr. Jolyon's Will," he said to an anxious, dark-haired clerk.
"You going to make some alterations?" And through his mind there flashed
the thought: 'Now, am I worth as much as he?'
Old Jolyon put the Will in his breast pocket, and James twisted his long
legs regretfully.
"You've made some nice purchases lately, they tell me," he said.
"I don't know where you get your information from," answered old Jolyon
sharply. "When's this action coming on? Next month? I can't tell what
you've got in your minds. You must manage your own affairs; but if you
take my advice, you'll settle it out of Court. Good-bye!" With a cold
handshake he was gone.
James, his fixed grey-blue eye corkscrewing round some secret anxious
image, began again to bite his finger.
Old Jolyon took his Will to the offices of the New Colliery Company, and
sat down in the empty Board Room to read it through. He answered
'Down-by-the-starn' Hemmings so tartly when the latter, seeing his
Chairman seated there, entered with the new Superintendent's first
report, that the Secretary withdrew with regretful dignity; and sending
for the transfer clerk, blew him up till the poor youth knew not where to
look.
It was not--by George--as he (Down-by-the-starn) would have him know, for
a whippersnapper of a young fellow like him, to come down to that office,
and think that he was God Almighty. He (Down-by-the-starn) had been head
of that office for more years than a boy like him could count, and if he
thought that when he had finished all his work, he could sit there doing
nothing, he did not know him, Hemmings (Down-by-the-starn), and so forth.
On the other side of the green baize door old Jolyon sat at the long,
mahogany-and-leather board table, his thick, loose-jointed, tortoiseshell
eye-glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his gold pencil moving
down the clauses of his Will.
It was a simple affair, for there were none of those vexatious little
legacies and donations to charities, which fritter away a man's
possessions, and damage the majestic effect of that little paragraph in
the morning papers accorded to Forsytes who die with a hundred thousand
pounds.
A simple affair. Just a bequest to his son of twenty thousand, and 'as
to the residue of my property of whatsoever kind whether realty or
personalty, or partaking of the nature of either--upon trust to pay the
proceeds rents annual produce dividends or interest thereof and thereon
to my said grand-daughter June Forsyte or her assigns during her life to
be for her sole use and benefit and without, etc... and from and after
her death or decease upon trust to convey assign transfer or make over
the said last-mentioned lands hereditaments premises trust moneys stocks
funds investments and securities or such as shall then stand for and
represent the same unto such person or persons whether one or more for
such intents purposes and uses and generally in such manner way and form
in all respects as the said June Forsyte notwithstanding coverture shall
by her last Will and Testament or any writing or writings in the nature
of a Will testament or testamentary disposition to be by her duly made
signed and published direct appoint or make over give and dispose of the
same And in default etc.... Provided always...' and so on, in seven
folios of brief and simple phraseology.
The Will had been drawn by James in his palmy days. He had foreseen
almost every contingency.
Old Jolyon sat a long time reading this Will; at last he took half a
sheet of paper from the rack, and made a prolonged pencil note; then
buttoning up the Will, he caused a cab to be called and drove to the
offices of Paramor and Herring, in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Jack Herring
was dead, but his nephew was still in the firm, and old Jolyon was
closeted with him for half an hour.
He had kept the hansom, and on coming out, gave the driver the
address--3, Wistaria Avenue.
He felt a strange, slow satisfaction, as though he had scored a victory
over James and the man of property. They should not poke their noses
into his affairs any more; he had just cancelled their trusteeships of
his Will; he would take the whole of his business out of their hands, and
put it into the hands of young Herring, and he would move the business of
his Companies too. If that young Soames were such a man of property, he
would never miss a thousand a year or so; and under his great white
moustache old Jolyon grimly smiled. He felt that what he was doing was
in the nature of retributive justice, richly deserved.
Slowly, surely, with the secret inner process that works the destruction
of an old tree, the poison of the wounds to his happiness, his will, his
pride, had corroded the comely edifice of his philosophy. Life had worn
him down on one side, till, like that family of which he was the head, he
had lost balance.
To him, borne northwards towards his son's house, the thought of the new
disposition of property, which he had just set in motion, appeared
vaguely in the light of a stroke of punishment, levelled at that family
and that Society, of which James and his son seemed to him the
representatives. He had made a restitution to young Jolyon, and
restitution to young Jolyon satisfied his secret craving for
revenge-revenge against Time, sorrow, and interference, against all that
incalculable sum of disapproval that had been bestowed by the world for
fifteen years on his only son. It presented itself as the one possible
way of asserting once more the domination of his will; of forcing James,
and Soames, and the family, and all those hidden masses of Forsytes--a
great stream rolling against the single dam of his obstinacy--to
recognise once and for all that he would be master. It was sweet to
think that at last he was going to make the boy a richer man by far than
that son of James, that 'man of property.' And it was sweet to give to
Jo, for he loved his son.
Neither young Jolyon nor his wife were in (young Jolyon indeed was not
back from the Botanical), but the little maid told him that she expected
the master at any moment:
"He's always at 'ome to tea, sir, to play with the children."
Old Jolyon said he would wait; and sat down patiently enough in the
faded, shabby drawing room, where, now that the summer chintzes were
removed, the old chairs and sofas revealed all their threadbare
deficiencies. He longed to send for the children; to have them there
beside him, their supple bodies against his knees; to hear Jolly's:
"Hallo, Gran!" and see his rush; and feel Holly's soft little hand
stealing up against his cheek. But he would not. There was solemnity in
what he had come to do, and until it was over he would not play. He
amused himself by thinking how with two strokes of his pen he was going
to restore the look of caste so conspicuously absent from everything in
that little house; how he could fill these rooms, or others in some
larger mansion, with triumphs of art from Baple and Pullbred's; how he
could send little Jolly to Harrow and Oxford (he no longer had faith in
Eton and Cambridge, for his son had been there); how he could procure
little Holly the best musical instruction, the child had a remarkable
aptitude.
As these visions crowded before him, causing emotion to swell his heart,
he rose, and stood at the window, looking down into the little walled
strip of garden, where the pear-tree, bare of leaves before its time,
stood with gaunt branches in the slow-gathering mist of the autumn
afternoon. The dog Balthasar, his tail curled tightly over a piebald,
furry back, was walking at the farther end, sniffing at the plants, and
at intervals placing his leg for support against the wall.
And old Jolyon mused.
What pleasure was there left but to give? It was pleasant to give, when
you could find one who would be thankful for what you gave--one of your
own flesh and blood! There was no such satisfaction to be had out of
giving to those who did not belong to you, to those who had no claim on
you! Such giving as that was a betrayal of the individualistic
convictions and actions of his life, of all his enterprise, his labour,
and his moderation, of the great and proud fact that, like tens of
thousands of Forsytes before him, tens of thousands in the present, tens
of thousands in the future, he had always made his own, and held his own,
in the world.
And, while he stood there looking down on the smut-covered foliage of the
laurels, the black-stained grass-plot, the progress of the dog Balthasar,
all the suffering of the fifteen years during which he had been baulked
of legitimate enjoyment mingled its gall with the sweetness of the
approaching moment.
Young Jolyon came at last, pleased with his work, and fresh from long
hours in the open air. On hearing that his father was in the drawing
room, he inquired hurriedly whether Mrs. Forsyte was at home, and being
informed that she was not, heaved a sigh of relief. Then putting his
painting materials carefully in the little coat-closet out of sight, he
went in.
With characteristic decision old Jolyon came at once to the point. "I've
been altering my arrangements, Jo," he said. "You can cut your coat a
bit longer in the future--I'm settling a thousand a year on you at once.
June will have fifty thousand at my death; and you the rest. That dog of
yours is spoiling the garden. I shouldn't keep a dog, if I were you!"
The dog Balthasar, seated in the centre of the lawn, was examining his
tail.
Young Jolyon looked at the animal, but saw him dimly, for his eyes were
misty.
"Yours won't come short of a hundred thousand, my boy," said old Jolyon;
"I thought you'd better know. I haven't much longer to live at my age.
I shan't allude to it again. How's your wife? And--give her my love."
Young Jolyon put his hand on his father's shoulder, and, as neither
spoke, the episode closed.
Having seen his father into a hansom, young Jolyon came back to the
drawing-room and stood, where old Jolyon had stood, looking down on the
little garden. He tried to realize all that this meant to him, and,
Forsyte that he was, vistas of property were opened out in his brain; the
years of half rations through which he had passed had not sapped his
natural instincts. In extremely practical form, he thought of travel, of
his wife's costume, the children's education, a pony for Jolly, a
thousand things; but in the midst of all he thought, too, of Bosinney and
his mistress, and the broken song of the thrush. Joy--tragedy! Which?
Which?
The old past--the poignant, suffering, passionate, wonderful past, that
no money could buy, that nothing could restore in all its burning
sweetness--had come back before him.
When his wife came in he went straight up to her and took her in his
arms; and for a long time he stood without speaking, his eyes closed,
pressing her to him, while she looked at him with a wondering, adoring,
doubting look in her eyes.
CHAPTER IV
VOYAGE INTO THE INFERNO
The morning after a certain night on which Soames at last asserted his
rights and acted like a man, he breakfasted alone.
He breakfasted by gaslight, the fog of late November wrapping the town as
in some monstrous blanket till the trees of the Square even were barely
visible from the dining-room window.
He ate steadily, but at times a sensation as though he could not swallow
attacked him. Had he been right to yield to his overmastering hunger of
the night before, and break down the resistance which he had suffered now
too long from this woman who was his lawful and solemnly constituted
helpmate?
He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from before
which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands--of her terrible
smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never heard, and still seemed
to hear; and he was still haunted by the odd, intolerable feeling of
remorse and shame he had felt, as he stood looking at her by the flame of
the single candle, before silently slinking away.
And somehow, now that he had acted like this, he was surprised at
himself.
Two nights before, at Winifred Dartie's, he had taken Mrs. MacAnder into
dinner. She had said to him, looking in his face with her sharp,
greenish eyes: "And so your wife is a great friend of that Mr.
Bosinney's?"
Not deigning to ask what she meant, he had brooded over her words.
They had roused in him a fierce jealousy, which, with the peculiar
perversion of this instinct, had turned to fiercer desire.
Without the incentive of Mrs. MacAnder's words he might never have done
what he had done. Without their incentive and the accident of finding
his wife's door for once unlocked, which had enabled him to steal upon
her asleep.
Slumber had removed his doubts, but the morning brought them again. One
thought comforted him: No one would know--it was not the sort of thing
that she would speak about.
And, indeed, when the vehicle of his daily business life, which needed so
imperatively the grease of clear and practical thought, started rolling
once more with the reading of his letters, those nightmare-like doubts
began to assume less extravagant importance at the back of his mind. The
incident was really not of great moment; women made a fuss about it in
books; but in the cool judgment of right-thinking men, of men of the
world, of such as he recollected often received praise in the Divorce
Court, he had but done his best to sustain the sanctity of marriage, to
prevent her from abandoning her duty, possibly, if she were still seeing
Bosinney, from....
No, he did not regret it.
Now that the first step towards reconciliation had been taken, the rest
would be comparatively--comparatively....
He, rose and walked to the window. His nerve had been shaken. The sound
of smothered sobbing was in his ears again. He could not get rid of it.
He put on his fur coat, and went out into the fog; having to go into the
City, he took the underground railway from Sloane Square station.
In his corner of the first-class compartment filled with City men the
smothered sobbing still haunted him, so he opened the Times with the rich
crackle that drowns all lesser sounds, and, barricaded behind it, set
himself steadily to con the news.
He read that a Recorder had charged a grand jury on the previous day with
a more than usually long list of offences. He read of three murders,
five manslaughters, seven arsons, and as many as eleven rapes--a
surprisingly high number--in addition to many less conspicuous crimes, to
be tried during a coming Sessions; and from one piece of news he went on
to another, keeping the paper well before his face.
And still, inseparable from his reading, was the memory of Irene's
tear-stained face, and the sounds from her broken heart.
The day was a busy one, including, in addition to the ordinary affairs of
his practice, a visit to his brokers, Messrs. Grin and Grinning, to give
them instructions to sell his shares in the New Colliery Co., Ltd., whose
business he suspected, rather than knew, was stagnating (this enterprise
afterwards slowly declined, and was ultimately sold for a song to an
American syndicate); and a long conference at Waterbuck, Q.C.'s chambers,
attended by Boulter, by Fiske, the junior counsel, and Waterbuck, Q.C.,
himself.
The case of Forsyte v. Bosinney was expected to be reached on the morrow,
before Mr. Justice Bentham.
Mr. Justice Bentham, a man of common-sense rather than too great legal
knowledge, was considered to be about the best man they could have to try
the action. He was a 'strong' Judge.
Waterbuck, Q.C., in pleasing conjunction with an almost rude neglect of
Boulter and Fiske paid to Soames a good deal of attention, by instinct or
the sounder evidence of rumour, feeling him to be a man of property.
He held with remarkable consistency to the opinion he had already
expressed in writing, that the issue would depend to a great extent on
the evidence given at the trial, and in a few well directed remarks he
advised Soames not to be too careful in giving that evidence. "A little
bluffness, Mr. Forsyte," he said, "a little bluffness," and after he had
spoken he laughed firmly, closed his lips tight, and scratched his head
just below where he had pushed his wig back, for all the world like the
gentleman-farmer for whom he loved to be taken. He was considered
perhaps the leading man in breach of promise cases.
Soames used the underground again in going home.
The fog was worse than ever at Sloane Square station. Through the still,
thick blur, men groped in and out; women, very few, grasped their
reticules to their bosoms and handkerchiefs to their mouths; crowned with
the weird excrescence of the driver, haloed by a vague glow of lamp-light
that seemed to drown in vapour before it reached the pavement, cabs
loomed dim-shaped ever and again, and discharged citizens, bolting like
rabbits to their burrows.
And these shadowy figures, wrapped each in his own little shroud of fog,
took no notice of each other. In the great warren, each rabbit for
himself, especially those clothed in the more expensive fur, who, afraid
of carriages on foggy days, are driven underground.
One figure, however, not far from Soames, waited at the station door.
Some buccaneer or lover, of whom each Forsyte thought: 'Poor devil! looks
as if he were having a bad time!' Their kind hearts beat a stroke faster
for that poor, waiting, anxious lover in the fog; but they hurried by,
well knowing that they had neither time nor money to spare for any
suffering but their own.
Only a policeman, patrolling slowly and at intervals, took an interest in
that waiting figure, the brim of whose slouch hat half hid a face
reddened by the cold, all thin, and haggard, over which a hand stole now
and again to smooth away anxiety, or renew the resolution that kept him
waiting there. But the waiting lover (if lover he were) was used to
policemen's scrutiny, or too absorbed in his anxiety, for he never
flinched. A hardened case, accustomed to long trysts, to anxiety, and
fog, and cold, if only his mistress came at last. Foolish lover! Fogs
last until the spring; there is also snow and rain, no comfort anywhere;
gnawing fear if you bring her out, gnawing fear if you bid her stay at
home!
"Serve him right; he should arrange his affairs better!"
So any respectable Forsyte. Yet, if that sounder citizen could have
listened at the waiting lover's heart, out there in the fog and the cold,
he would have said again: "Yes, poor devil he's having a bad time!"
Soames got into his cab, and, with the glass down, crept along Sloane
Street, and so along the Brompton Road, and home. He reached his house
at five.
His wife was not in. She had gone out a quarter of an hour before. Out
at such a time of night, into this terrible fog! What was the meaning of
that?
He sat by the dining-room fire, with the door open, disturbed to the
soul, trying to read the evening paper. A book was no good--in daily
papers alone was any narcotic to such worry as his. From the customary
events recorded in the journal he drew some comfort. 'Suicide of an
actress'--'Grave indisposition of a Statesman' (that chronic
sufferer)--'Divorce of an army officer'--'Fire in a colliery'--he read
them all. They helped him a little--prescribed by the greatest of all
doctors, our natural taste.
It was nearly seven when he heard her come in.
The incident of the night before had long lost its importance under
stress of anxiety at her strange sortie into the fog. But now that Irene
was home, the memory of her broken-hearted sobbing came back to him, and
he felt nervous at the thought of facing her.
She was already on the stairs; her grey fur coat hung to her knees, its
high collar almost hid her face, she wore a thick veil.
She neither turned to look at him nor spoke. No ghost or stranger could
have passed more silently.
Bilson came to lay dinner, and told him that Mrs. Forsyte was not coming
down; she was having the soup in her room.
For once Soames did not 'change'; it was, perhaps, the first time in his
life that he had sat down to dinner with soiled cuffs, and, not even
noticing them, he brooded long over his wine. He sent Bilson to light a
fire in his picture-room, and presently went up there himself.
Turning on the gas, he heaved a deep sigh, as though amongst these
treasures, the backs of which confronted him in stacks, around the little
room, he had found at length his peace of mind. He went straight up to
the greatest treasure of them all, an undoubted Turner, and, carrying it
to the easel, turned its face to the light. There had been a movement in
Turners, but he had not been able to make up his mind to part with it.
He stood for a long time, his pale, clean-shaven face poked forward above
his stand-up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding it
up; a wistful expression came into his eyes; he found, perhaps, that it
came to too little. He took it down from the easel to put it back
against the wall; but, in crossing the room, stopped, for he seemed to
hear sobbing.
It was nothing--only the sort of thing that had been bothering him in the
morning. And soon after, putting the high guard before the blazing fire,
he stole downstairs.
Fresh for the morrow! was his thought. It was long before he went to
sleep....
It is now to George Forsyte that the mind must turn for light on the
events of that fog-engulfed afternoon.
The wittiest and most sportsmanlike of the Forsytes had passed the day
reading a novel in the paternal mansion at Princes' Gardens. Since a
recent crisis in his financial affairs he had been kept on parole by
Roger, and compelled to reside 'at home.'
Towards five o'clock he went out, and took train at South Kensington
Station (for everyone to-day went Underground). His intention was to
dine, and pass the evening playing billiards at the Red Pottle--that
unique hostel, neither club, hotel, nor good gilt restaurant.
He got out at Charing Cross, choosing it in preference to his more usual
St. James's Park, that he might reach Jermyn Street by better lighted
ways.
On the platform his eyes--for in combination with a composed and
fashionable appearance, George had sharp eyes, and was always on the
look-out for fillips to his sardonic humour--his eyes were attracted by a
man, who, leaping from a first-class compartment, staggered rather than
walked towards the exit.
'So ho, my bird!' said George to himself; 'why, it's "the Buccaneer!"'
and he put his big figure on the trail. Nothing afforded him greater
amusement than a drunken man.
Bosinney, who wore a slouch hat, stopped in front of him, spun around,
and rushed back towards the carriage he had just left. He was too late.
A porter caught him by the coat; the train was already moving on.
George's practised glance caught sight of the face of a lady clad in a
grey fur coat at the carriage window. It was Mrs. Soames--and George
felt that this was interesting!
And now he followed Bosinney more closely than ever--up the stairs, past
the ticket collector into the street. In that progress, however, his
feelings underwent a change; no longer merely curious and amused, he felt
sorry for the poor fellow he was shadowing. 'The Buccaneer' was not
drunk, but seemed to be acting under the stress of violent emotion; he
was talking to himself, and all that George could catch were the words
"Oh, God!" Nor did he appear to know what he was doing, or where going;
but stared, hesitated, moved like a man out of his mind; and from being
merely a joker in search of amusement, George felt that he must see the
poor chap through.
He had 'taken the knock'--'taken the knock!' And he wondered what on
earth Mrs. Soames had been saying, what on earth she had been telling him
in the railway carriage. She had looked bad enough herself! It made
George sorry to think of her travelling on with her trouble all alone.
He followed close behind Bosinney's elbow--tall, burly figure, saying
nothing, dodging warily--and shadowed him out into the fog.
There was something here beyond a jest! He kept his head admirably, in
spite of some excitement, for in addition to compassion, the instincts of
the chase were roused within him.
Bosinney walked right out into the thoroughfare--a vast muffled
blackness, where a man could not see six paces before him; where, all
around, voices or whistles mocked the sense of direction; and sudden
shapes came rolling slow upon them; and now and then a light showed like
a dim island in an infinite dark sea.
And fast into this perilous gulf of night walked Bosinney, and fast after
him walked George. If the fellow meant to put his 'twopenny' under a
'bus, he would stop it if he could! Across the street and back the
hunted creature strode, not groping as other men were groping in that
gloom, but driven forward as though the faithful George behind wielded a
knout; and this chase after a haunted man began to have for George the
strangest fascination.
But it was now that the affair developed in a way which ever afterwards
caused it to remain green in his mind. Brought to a stand-still in the
fog, he heard words which threw a sudden light on these proceedings.
What Mrs. Soames had said to Bosinney in the train was now no longer
dark. George understood from those mutterings that Soames had exercised
his rights over an estranged and unwilling wife in the greatest--the
supreme act of property.
His fancy wandered in the fields of this situation; it impressed him; he
guessed something of the anguish, the sexual confusion and horror in
Bosinney's heart. And he thought: 'Yes, it's a bit thick! I don't
wonder the poor fellow is half-cracked!'
He had run his quarry to earth on a bench under one of the lions in
Trafalgar Square, a monster sphynx astray like themselves in that gulf of
darkness. Here, rigid and silent, sat Bosinney, and George, in whose
patience was a touch of strange brotherliness, took his stand behind. He
was not lacking in a certain delicacy--a sense of form--that did not
permit him to intrude upon this tragedy, and he waited, quiet as the lion
above, his fur collar hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy
redness of his cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic,
compassionate stare. And men kept passing back from business on the way
to their clubs--men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of fog came into
view like spectres, and like spectres vanished. Then even in his
compassion George's Quilpish humour broke forth in a sudden longing to
pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and say:
"Hi, you Johnnies! You don't often see a show like this! Here's a poor
devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty little story of
her husband; walk up, walk up! He's taken the knock, you see."
In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned as he
thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled by the state
of his own affections to catch an inkling of what was going on within
Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth getting wider and wider, and
the fog going down and down. For in George was all that contempt of the
of the married middle-class--peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike
spirits in its ranks.
But he began to be bored. Waiting was not what he had bargained for.
'After all,' he thought, 'the poor chap will get over it; not the first
time such a thing has happened in this little city!' But now his quarry
again began muttering words of violent hate and anger. And following a
sudden impulse George touched him on the shoulder.
Bosinney spun round.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
George could have stood it well enough in the light of the gas lamps, in
the light of that everyday world of which he was so hardy a connoisseur;
but in this fog, where all was gloomy and unreal, where nothing had that
matter-of-fact value associated by Forsytes with earth, he was a victim
to strange qualms, and as he tried to stare back into the eyes of this
maniac, he thought:
'If I see a bobby, I'll hand him over; he's not fit to be at large.'
But waiting for no answer, Bosinney strode off into the fog, and George
followed, keeping perhaps a little further off, yet more than ever set on
tracking him down.
'He can't go on long like this,' he thought. 'It's God's own miracle
he's not been run over already.' He brooded no more on policemen, a
sportsman's sacred fire alive again within him.
Into a denser gloom than ever Bosinney held on at a furious pace; but his
pursuer perceived more method in his madness--he was clearly making his
way westwards.
'He's really going for Soames!' thought George. The idea was attractive.
It would be a sporting end to such a chase. He had always disliked his
cousin.
The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder and made him leap
aside. He did not intend to be killed for the Buccaneer, or anyone.
Yet, with hereditary tenacity, he stuck to the trail through vapour that
blotted out everything but the shadow of the hunted man and the dim moon
of the nearest lamp.
Then suddenly, with the instinct of a town-stroller, George knew himself
to be in Piccadilly. Here he could find his way blindfold; and freed
from the strain of geographical uncertainty, his mind returned to
Bosinney's trouble.
Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting, as it
were, through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to him a memory
of his youth. A memory, poignant still, that brought the scent of hay,
the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into the reek and blackness of
this London fog--the memory of a night when in the darkest shadow of a
lawn he had overheard from a woman's lips that he was not her sole
possessor. And for a moment George walked no longer in black Piccadilly,
but lay again, with hell in his heart, and his face to the
sweet-smelling, dewy grass, in the long shadow of poplars that hid the
moon.
A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and say,
"Come, old boy. Time cures all. Let's go and drink it off!"
But a voice yelled at him, and he started back. A cab rolled out of
blackness, and into blackness disappeared. And suddenly George perceived
that he had lost Bosinney. He ran forward and back, felt his heart
clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear which lives in the wings of
the fog. Perspiration started out on his brow. He stood quite still,
listening with all his might.
"And then," as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the course of a
game of billiards at the Red Pottle, "I lost him."
Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache. He had just put
together a neat break of twenty-three,--failing at a 'Jenny.' "And who
was she?" he asked.
George looked slowly at the 'man of the world's' fattish, sallow face,
and a little grim smile lurked about the curves of his cheeks and his
heavy-lidded eyes.
'No, no, my fine fellow,' he thought, 'I'm not going to tell you.' For
though he mixed with Dartie a good deal, he thought him a bit of a cad.
"Oh, some little love-lady or other," he said, and chalked his cue.
"A love-lady!" exclaimed Dartie--he used a more figurative expression.
"I made sure it was our friend Soa...."
"Did you?" said George curtly. "Then damme you've made an error."
He missed his shot. He was careful not to allude to the subject again
till, towards eleven o'clock, having, in his poetic phraseology, 'looked
upon the drink when it was yellow,' he drew aside the blind, and gazed
out into the street. The murky blackness of the fog was but faintly
broken by the lamps of the 'Red Pottle,' and no shape of mortal man or
thing was in sight.
"I can't help thinking of that poor Buccaneer," he said. "He may be
wandering out there now in that fog. If he's not a corpse," he added
with strange dejection.
"Corpse!" said Dartie, in whom the recollection of his defeat at Richmond
flared up. "He's all right. Ten to one if he wasn't tight!"
George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of savage
gloom on his big face.
"Dry up!" he said. "Don't I tell you he's 'taken the knock!"'
CHAPTER V
THE TRIAL
In the morning of his case, which was second in the list, Soames was
again obliged to start without seeing Irene, and it was just as well, for
he had not as yet made up his mind what attitude to adopt towards her.
He had been requested to be in court by half-past ten, to provide against
the event of the first action (a breach of promise) collapsing, which
however it did not, both sides showing a courage that afforded Waterbuck,
Q.C., an opportunity for improving his already great reputation in this
class of case. He was opposed by Ram, the other celebrated breach of
promise man. It was a battle of giants.
The court delivered judgment just before the luncheon interval. The jury
left the box for good, and Soames went out to get something to eat. He
met James standing at the little luncheon-bar, like a pelican in the
wilderness of the galleries, bent over a sandwich with a glass of sherry
before him. The spacious emptiness of the great central hall, over which
father and son brooded as they stood together, was marred now and then
for a fleeting moment by barristers in wig and gown hurriedly bolting
across, by an occasional old lady or rusty-coated man, looking up in a
frightened way, and by two persons, bolder than their generation, seated
in an embrasure arguing. The sound of their voices arose, together with
a scent as of neglected wells, which, mingling with the odour of the
galleries, combined to form the savour, like nothing but the emanation of
a refined cheese, so indissolubly connected with the administration of
British Justice.
It was not long before James addressed his son.
"When's your case coming on? I suppose it'll be on directly. I
shouldn't wonder if this Bosinney'd say anything; I should think he'd
have to. He'll go bankrupt if it goes against him." He took a large bite
at his sandwich and a mouthful of sherry. "Your mother," he said, "wants
you and Irene to come and dine to-night."
A chill smile played round Soames' lips; he looked back at his father.
Anyone who had seen the look, cold and furtive, thus interchanged, might
have been pardoned for not appreciating the real understanding between
them. James finished his sherry at a draught.
"How much?" he asked.
On returning to the court Soames took at once his rightful seat on the
front bench beside his solicitor. He ascertained where his father was
seated with a glance so sidelong as to commit nobody.
James, sitting back with his hands clasped over the handle of his
umbrella, was brooding on the end of the bench immediately behind
counsel, whence he could get away at once when the case was over. He
considered Bosinney's conduct in every way outrageous, but he did not
wish to run up against him, feeling that the meeting would be awkward.
Next to the Divorce Court, this court was, perhaps, the favourite
emporium of justice, libel, breach of promise, and other commercial
actions being frequently decided there. Quite a sprinkling of persons
unconnected with the law occupied the back benches, and the hat of a
woman or two could be seen in the gallery.
The two rows of seats immediately in front of James were gradually filled
by barristers in wigs, who sat down to make pencil notes, chat, and
attend to their teeth; but his interest was soon diverted from these
lesser lights of justice by the entrance of Waterbuck, Q.C., with the
wings of his silk gown rustling, and his red, capable face supported by
two short, brown whiskers. The famous Q.C. looked, as James freely
admitted, the very picture of a man who could heckle a witness.
For all his experience, it so happened that he had never seen Waterbuck,
Q.C., before, and, like many Forsytes in the lower branch of the
profession, he had an extreme admiration for a good cross-examiner. The
long, lugubrious folds in his cheeks relaxed somewhat after seeing him,
especially as he now perceived that Soames alone was represented by silk.
Waterbuck, Q.C., had barely screwed round on his elbow to chat with his
Junior before Mr. Justice Bentham himself appeared--a thin, rather
hen-like man, with a little stoop, clean-shaven under his snowy wig.
Like all the rest of the court, Waterbuck rose, and remained on his feet
until the judge was seated. James rose but slightly; he was already
comfortable, and had no opinion of Bentham, having sat next but one to
him at dinner twice at the Bumley Tomms'. Bumley Tomm was rather a poor
thing, though he had been so successful. James himself had given him his
first brief. He was excited, too, for he had just found out that
Bosinney was not in court.
'Now, what's he mean by that?' he kept on thinking.
The case having been called on, Waterbuck, Q.C., pushing back his papers,
hitched his gown on his shoulder, and, with a semi-circular look around
him, like a man who is going to bat, arose and addressed the Court.
The facts, he said, were not in dispute, and all that his Lordship would
be asked was to interpret the correspondence which had taken place
between his client and the defendant, an architect, with reference to the
decoration of a house. He would, however, submit that this
correspondence could only mean one very plain thing. After briefly
reciting the history of the house at Robin Hill, which he described as a
mansion, and the actual facts of expenditure, he went on as follows:
"My client, Mr. Soames Forsyte, is a gentleman, a man of property, who
would be the last to dispute any legitimate claim that might be made
against him, but he has met with such treatment from his architect in the
matter of this house, over which he has, as your lordship has heard,
already spent some twelve--some twelve thousand pounds, a sum
considerably in advance of the amount he had originally contemplated,
that as a matter of principle--and this I cannot too strongly
emphasize--as a matter of principle, and in the interests of others, he
has felt himself compelled to bring this action. The point put forward
in defence by the architect I will suggest to your lordship is not worthy
of a moment's serious consideration." He then read the correspondence.
His client, "a man of recognised position," was prepared to go into the
box, and to swear that he never did authorize, that it was never in his
mind to authorize, the expenditure of any money beyond the extreme limit
of twelve thousand and fifty pounds, which he had clearly fixed; and not
further to waste the time of the court, he would at once call Mr.
Forsyte.
Soames then went into the box. His whole appearance was striking in its
composure. His face, just supercilious enough, pale and clean-shaven,
with a little line between the eyes, and compressed lips; his dress in
unostentatious order, one hand neatly gloved, the other bare. He
answered the questions put to him in a somewhat low, but distinct voice.
His evidence under cross-examination savoured of taciturnity.
Had he not used the expression, "a free hand"? No.
"Come, come!"
The expression he had used was 'a free hand in the terms of this
correspondence.'
"Would you tell the Court that that was English?"
"Yes!"
"What do you say it means?"
"What it says!"
"Are you prepared to deny that it is a contradiction in terms?"
"Yes."
"You are not an Irishman?"
"No."
"Are you a well-educated man?"
"Yes."
"And yet you persist in that statement?"
"Yes."
Throughout this and much more cross-examination, which turned again and
again around the 'nice point,' James sat with his hand behind his ear,
his eyes fixed upon his son.
He was proud of him! He could not but feel that in similar circumstances
he himself would have been tempted to enlarge his replies, but his
instinct told him that this taciturnity was the very thing. He sighed
with relief, however, when Soames, slowly turning, and without any change
of expression, descended from the box.
When it came to the turn of Bosinney's Counsel to address the Judge,
James redoubled his attention, and he searched the Court again and again
to see if Bosinney were not somewhere concealed.
Young Chankery began nervously; he was placed by Bosinney's absence in an
awkward position. He therefore did his best to turn that absence to
account.
He could not but fear--he said--that his client had met with an accident.
He had fully expected him there to give evidence; they had sent round
that morning both to Mr. Bosinney's office and to his rooms (though he
knew they were one and the same, he thought it was as well not to say
so), but it was not known where he was, and this he considered to be
ominous, knowing how anxious Mr. Bosinney had been to give his evidence.
He had not, however, been instructed to apply for an adjournment, and in
default of such instruction he conceived it his duty to go on. The plea
on which he somewhat confidently relied, and which his client, had he not
unfortunately been prevented in some way from attending, would have
supported by his evidence, was that such an expression as a 'free hand'
could not be limited, fettered, and rendered unmeaning, by any verbiage
which might follow it. He would go further and say that the
correspondence showed that whatever he might have said in his evidence,
Mr. Forsyte had in fact never contemplated repudiating liability on any
of the work ordered or executed by his architect. The defendant had
certainly never contemplated such a contingency, or, as was demonstrated
by his letters, he would never have proceeded with the work--a work of
extreme delicacy, carried out with great care and efficiency, to meet and
satisfy the fastidious taste of a connoisseur, a rich man, a man of
property. He felt strongly on this point, and feeling strongly he used,
perhaps, rather strong words when he said that this action was of a most
unjustifiable, unexpected, indeed--unprecedented character. If his
Lordship had had the opportunity that he himself had made it his duty to
take, to go over this very fine house and see the great delicacy and
beauty of the decorations executed by his client--an artist in his most
honourable profession--he felt convinced that not for one moment would
his Lordship tolerate this, he would use no stronger word than daring
attempt to evade legitimate responsibility.
Taking the text of Soames' letters, he lightly touched on 'Boileau v. The
Blasted Cement Company, Limited.' "It is doubtful," he said, "what that
authority has decided; in any case I would submit that it is just as much
in my favour as in my friend's." He then argued the 'nice point'
closely. With all due deference he submitted that Mr. Forsyte's
expression nullified itself. His client not being a rich man, the matter
was a serious one for him; he was a very talented architect, whose
professional reputation was undoubtedly somewhat at stake. He concluded
with a perhaps too personal appeal to the Judge, as a lover of the arts,
to show himself the protector of artists, from what was occasionally--he
said occasionally--the too iron hand of capital. "What," he said, "will
be the position of the artistic professions, if men of property like this
Mr. Forsyte refuse, and are allowed to refuse, to carry out the
obligations of the commissions which they have given." He would now call
his client, in case he should at the last moment have found himself able
to be present.
The name Philip Baynes Bosinney was called three times by the Ushers, and
the sound of the calling echoed with strange melancholy throughout the
Court and Galleries.
The crying of this name, to which no answer was returned, had upon James
a curious effect: it was like calling for your lost dog about the
streets. And the creepy feeling that it gave him, of a man missing,
grated on his sense of comfort and security-on his cosiness. Though he
could not have said why, it made him feel uneasy.
He looked now at the clock--a quarter to three! It would be all over in
a quarter of an hour. Where could the young fellow be?
It was only when Mr. Justice Bentham delivered judgment that he got over
the turn he had received.
Behind the wooden erection, by which he was fenced from more ordinary
mortals, the learned Judge leaned forward. The electric light, just
turned on above his head, fell on his face, and mellowed it to an orange
hue beneath the snowy crown of his wig; the amplitude of his robes grew
before the eye; his whole figure, facing the comparative dusk of the
Court, radiated like some majestic and sacred body. He cleared his
throat, took a sip of water, broke the nib of a quill against the desk,
and, folding his bony hands before him, began.
To James he suddenly loomed much larger than he had ever thought Bentham
would loom. It was the majesty of the law; and a person endowed with a
nature far less matter-of-fact than that of James might have been excused
for failing to pierce this halo, and disinter therefrom the somewhat
ordinary Forsyte, who walked and talked in every-day life under the name
of Sir Walter Bentham.
He delivered judgment in the following words:
"The facts in this case are not in dispute. On May 15 last the defendant
wrote to the plaintiff, requesting to be allowed to withdraw from his
professional position in regard to the decoration of the plaintiff's
house, unless he were given 'a free hand.' The plaintiff, on May 17,
wrote back as follows: 'In giving you, in accordance with your request,
this free hand, I wish you to clearly understand that the total cost of
the house as handed over to me completely decorated, inclusive of your
fee (as arranged between us) must not exceed twelve thousand pounds.' To
this letter the defendant replied on May 18: 'If you think that in such a
delicate matter as decoration I can bind myself to the exact pound, I am
afraid you are mistaken.' On May 19 the plaintiff wrote as follows: 'I
did not mean to say that if you should exceed the sum named in my letter
to you by ten or twenty or even fifty pounds there would be any
difficulty between us. You have a free hand in the terms of this
correspondence, and I hope you will see your way to completing the
decorations.' On May 20 the defendant replied thus shortly: 'Very well.'
"In completing these decorations, the defendant incurred liabilities and
expenses which brought the total cost of this house up to the sum of
twelve thousand four hundred pounds, all of which expenditure has been
defrayed by the plaintiff. This action has been brought by the plaintiff
to recover from the defendant the sum of three hundred and fifty pounds
expended by him in excess of a sum of twelve thousand and fifty pounds,
alleged by the plaintiff to have been fixed by this correspondence as the
maximum sum that the defendant had authority to expend.
"The question for me to decide is whether or no the defendant is liable
to refund to the plaintiff this sum. In my judgment he is so liable.
"What in effect the plaintiff has said is this 'I give you a free hand to
complete these decorations, provided that you keep within a total cost to
me of twelve thousand pounds. If you exceed that sum by as much as fifty
pounds, I will not hold you responsible; beyond that point you are no
agent of mine, and I shall repudiate liability.' It is not quite clear to
me whether, had the plaintiff in fact repudiated liability under his
agent's contracts, he would, under all the circumstances, have been
successful in so doing; but he has not adopted this course. He has
accepted liability, and fallen back upon his rights against the defendant
under the terms of the latter's engagement.
"In my judgment the plaintiff is entitled to recover this sum from the
defendant.
"It has been sought, on behalf of the defendant, to show that no limit of
expenditure was fixed or intended to be fixed by this correspondence. If
this were so, I can find no reason for the plaintiff's importation into
the correspondence of the figures of twelve thousand pounds and
subsequently of fifty pounds. The defendant's contention would render
these figures meaningless. It is manifest to me that by his letter of May
20 he assented to a very clear proposition, by the terms of which he must
be held to be bound.
"For these reasons there will be judgment for the plaintiff for the
amount claimed with costs."
James sighed, and stooping, picked up his umbrella which had fallen with
a rattle at the words 'importation into this correspondence.'
Untangling his legs, he rapidly left the Court; without waiting for his
son, he snapped up a hansom cab (it was a clear, grey afternoon) and
drove straight to Timothy's where he found Swithin; and to him, Mrs.
Septimus Small, and Aunt Hester, he recounted the whole proceedings,
eating two muffins not altogether in the intervals of speech.
"Soames did very well," he ended; "he's got his head screwed on the right
way. This won't please Jolyon. It's a bad business for that young
Bosinney; he'll go bankrupt, I shouldn't wonder," and then after a long
pause, during which he had stared disquietly into the fire, he added:
"He wasn't there--now why?"
There was a sound of footsteps. The figure of a thick-set man, with the
ruddy brown face of robust health, was seen in the back drawing-room.
The forefinger of his upraised hand was outlined against the black of his
frock coat. He spoke in a grudging voice.
"Well, James," he said, "I can't--I can't stop," and turning round, he
walked out.
It was Timothy.
James rose from his chair. "There!" he said, "there! I knew there was
something wro...." He checked himself, and was silent, staring before
him, as though he had seen a portent.
CHAPTER VI
SOAMES BREAKS THE NEWS
In leaving the Court Soames did not go straight home. He felt
disinclined for the City, and drawn by need for sympathy in his triumph,
he, too, made his way, but slowly and on foot, to Timothy's in the
Bayswater Road.
His father had just left; Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester, in possession of
the whole story, greeted him warmly. They were sure he was hungry after
all that evidence. Smither should toast him some more muffins, his dear
father had eaten them all. He must put his legs up on the sofa; and he
must have a glass of prune brandy too. It was so strengthening.
Swithin was still present, having lingered later than his wont, for he
felt in want of exercise. On hearing this suggestion, he 'pished.' A
pretty pass young men were coming to! His own liver was out of order,
and he could not bear the thought of anyone else drinking prune brandy.
He went away almost immediately, saying to Soames: "And how's your wife?
You tell her from me that if she's dull, and likes to come and dine with
me quietly, I'll give her such a bottle of champagne as she doesn't get
every day." Staring down from his height on Soames he contracted his
thick, puffy, yellow hand as though squeezing within it all this small
fry, and throwing out his chest he waddled slowly away.
Mrs. Small and Aunt Hester were left horrified. Swithin was so droll!
They themselves were longing to ask Soames how Irene would take the
result, yet knew that they must not; he would perhaps say something of
his own accord, to throw some light on this, the present burning question
in their lives, the question that from necessity of silence tortured them
almost beyond bearing; for even Timothy had now been told, and the effect
on his health was little short of alarming. And what, too, would June
do? This, also, was a most exciting, if dangerous speculation!
They had never forgotten old Jolyon's visit, since when he had not once
been to see them; they had never forgotten the feeling it gave all who
were present, that the family was no longer what it had been--that the
family was breaking up.
But Soames gave them no help, sitting with his knees crossed, talking of
the Barbizon school of painters, whom he had just discovered. These were
the coming men, he said; he should not wonder if a lot of money were made
over them; he had his eye on two pictures by a man called Corot, charming
things; if he could get them at a reasonable price he was going to buy
them--they would, he thought, fetch a big price some day.
Interested as they could not but be, neither Mrs. Septimus Small nor Aunt
Hester could entirely acquiesce in being thus put off.
It was interesting--most interesting--and then Soames was so clever that
they were sure he would do something with those pictures if anybody
could; but what was his plan now that he had won his case; was he going
to leave London at once, and live in the country, or what was he going to
do?
Soames answered that he did not know, he thought they should be moving
soon. He rose and kissed his aunts.
No sooner had Aunt Juley received this emblem of departure than a change
came over her, as though she were being visited by dreadful courage;
every little roll of flesh on her face seemed trying to escape from an
invisible, confining mask.
She rose to the full extent of her more than medium height, and said: "It
has been on my mind a long time, dear, and if nobody else will tell you,
I have made up my mind that...."
Aunt Hester interrupted her: "Mind, Julia, you do it...." she gasped--"on
your own responsibility!"
Mrs. Small went on as though she had not heard: "I think you ought to
know, dear, that Mrs. MacAnder saw Irene walking in Richmond Park with
Mr. Bosinney."
Aunt Hester, who had also risen, sank back in her chair, and turned her
face away. Really Juley was too--she should not do such things when
she--Aunt Hester, was in the room; and, breathless with anticipation, she
waited for what Soames would answer.
He had flushed the peculiar flush which always centred between his eyes;
lifting his hand, and, as it were, selecting a finger, he bit a nail
delicately; then, drawling it out between set lips, he said: "Mrs.
MacAnder is a cat!"
Without waiting for any reply, he left the room.
When he went into Timothy's he had made up his mind what course to pursue
on getting home. He would go up to Irene and say:
"Well, I've won my case, and there's an end of it! I don't want to be
hard on Bosinney; I'll see if we can't come to some arrangement; he
shan't be pressed. And now let's turn over a new leaf! We'll let the
house, and get out of these fogs. We'll go down to Robin Hill at once.
I--I never meant to be rough with you! Let's shake hands--and--"
Perhaps she would let him kiss her, and forget!
When he came out of Timothy's his intentions were no longer so simple.
The smouldering jealousy and suspicion of months blazed up within him.
He would put an end to that sort of thing once and for all; he would not
have her drag his name in the dirt! If she could not or would not love
him, as was her duty and his right--she should not play him tricks with
anyone else! He would tax her with it; threaten to divorce her! That
would make her behave; she would never face that. But--but--what if she
did? He was staggered; this had not occurred to him.
What if she did? What if she made him a confession? How would he stand
then? He would have to bring a divorce!
A divorce! Thus close, the word was paralyzing, so utterly at variance
with all the principles that had hitherto guided his life. Its lack of
compromise appalled him; he felt--like the captain of a ship, going to
the side of his vessel, and, with his own hands throwing over the most
precious of his bales. This jettisoning of his property with his own
hand seemed uncanny to Soames. It would injure him in his profession: He
would have to get rid of the house at Robin Hill, on which he had spent
so much money, so much anticipation--and at a sacrifice. And she! She
would no longer belong to him, not even in name! She would pass out of
his life, and he--he should never see her again!
He traversed in the cab the length of a street without getting beyond the
thought that he should never see her again!
But perhaps there was nothing to confess, even now very likely there was
nothing to confess. Was it wise to push things so far? Was it wise to
put himself into a position where he might have to eat his words? The
result of this case would ruin Bosinney; a ruined man was desperate,
but--what could he do? He might go abroad, ruined men always went
abroad. What could they do--if indeed it was 'they'--without money? It
would be better to wait and see how things turned out. If necessary, he
could have her watched. The agony of his jealousy (for all the world
like the crisis of an aching tooth) came on again; and he almost cried
out. But he must decide, fix on some course of action before he got
home. When the cab drew up at the door, he had decided nothing.
He entered, pale, his hands moist with perspiration, dreading to meet
her, burning to meet her, ignorant of what he was to say or do.
The maid Bilson was in the hall, and in answer to his question: "Where is
your mistress?" told him that Mrs. Forsyte had left the house about noon,
taking with her a trunk and bag.
Snatching the sleeve of his fur coat away from her grasp, he confronted
her:
"What?" he exclaimed; "what's that you said?" Suddenly recollecting that
he must not betray emotion, he added: "What message did she leave?" and
noticed with secret terror the startled look of the maid's eyes.
"Mrs. Forsyte left no message, sir."
"No message; very well, thank you, that will do. I shall be dining out."
The maid went downstairs, leaving him still in his fur coat, idly turning
over the visiting cards in the porcelain bowl that stood on the carved
oak rug chest in the hall.
Mr. and Mrs. Bareham Culcher. Mrs. Septimus Small. Mrs. Baynes. Mr.
Solomon Thornworthy. Lady Bellis. Miss Hermione Bellis. Miss Winifred
Bellis. Miss Ella Bellis.
Who the devil were all these people? He seemed to have forgotten all
familiar things. The words 'no message--a trunk, and a bag,' played a
hide-and-seek in his brain. It was incredible that she had left no
message, and, still in his fur coat, he ran upstairs two steps at a time,
as a young married man when he comes home will run up to his wife's room.
Everything was dainty, fresh, sweet-smelling; everything in perfect
order. On the great bed with its lilac silk quilt, was the bag she had
made and embroidered with her own hands to hold her sleeping things; her
slippers ready at the foot; the sheets even turned over at the head as
though expecting her.
On the table stood the silver-mounted brushes and bottles from her
dressing bag, his own present. There must, then, be some mistake. What
bag had she taken? He went to the bell to summon Bilson, but remembered
in time that he must assume knowledge of where Irene had gone, take it
all as a matter of course, and grope out the meaning for himself.
He locked the doors, and tried to think, but felt his brain going round;
and suddenly tears forced themselves into his eyes.
Hurriedly pulling off his coat, he looked at himself in the mirror.
He was too pale, a greyish tinge all over his face; he poured out water,
and began feverishly washing.
Her silver-mounted brushes smelt faintly of the perfumed lotion she used
for her hair; and at this scent the burning sickness of his jealousy
seized him again.
Struggling into his fur, he ran downstairs and out into the street.
He had not lost all command of himself, however, and as he went down
Sloane Street he framed a story for use, in case he should not find her
at Bosinney's. But if he should? His power of decision again failed; he
reached the house without knowing what he should do if he did find her
there.
It was after office hours, and the street door was closed; the woman who
opened it could not say whether Mr. Bosinney were in or no; she had not
seen him that day, not for two or three days; she did not attend to him
now, nobody attended to him, he....
Soames interrupted her, he would go up and see for himself. He went up
with a dogged, white face.
The top floor was unlighted, the door closed, no one answered his
ringing, he could hear no sound. He was obliged to descend, shivering
under his fur, a chill at his heart. Hailing a cab, he told the man to
drive to Park Lane.
On the way he tried to recollect when he had last given her a cheque; she
could not have more than three or four pounds, but there were her jewels;
and with exquisite torture he remembered how much money she could raise
on these; enough to take them abroad; enough for them to live on for
months! He tried to calculate; the cab stopped, and he got out with the
calculation unmade.
The butler asked whether Mrs. Soames was in the cab, the master had told
him they were both expected to dinner.
Soames answered: "No. Mrs. Forsyte has a cold."
The butler was sorry.
Soames thought he was looking at him inquisitively, and remembering that
he was not in dress clothes, asked: "Anybody here to dinner, Warmson?"
"Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Dartie, sir."
Again it seemed to Soames that the butler was looking curiously at him.
His composure gave way.
"What are you looking at?" he said. "What's the matter with me, eh?"
The butler blushed, hung up the fur coat, murmured something that sounded
like: "Nothing, sir, I'm sure, sir," and stealthily withdrew.
Soames walked upstairs. Passing the drawing-room without a look, he went
straight up to his mother's and father's bedroom.
James, standing sideways, the concave lines of his tall, lean figure
displayed to advantage in shirt-sleeves and evening waistcoat, his head
bent, the end of his white tie peeping askew from underneath one white
Dundreary whisker, his eyes peering with intense concentration, his lips
pouting, was hooking the top hooks of his wife's bodice. Soames stopped;
he felt half-choked, whether because he had come upstairs too fast, or
for some other reason. He--he himself had never--never been asked to....
He heard his father's voice, as though there were a pin in his mouth,
saying: "Who's that? Who's there? What d'you want?" His mother's:
"Here, Felice, come and hook this; your master'll never get done."
He put his hand up to his throat, and said hoarsely:
"It's I--Soames!"
He noticed gratefully the affectionate surprise in Emily's: "Well, my
dear boy?" and James', as he dropped the hook: "What, Soames! What's
brought you up? Aren't you well?"
He answered mechanically: "I'm all right," and looked at them, and it
seemed impossible to bring out his news.
James, quick to take alarm, began: "You don't look well. I expect you've
taken a chill--it's liver, I shouldn't wonder. Your mother'll give
you...."
But Emily broke in quietly: "Have you brought Irene?"
Soames shook his head.
"No," he stammered, "she--she's left me!"
Emily deserted the mirror before which she was standing. Her tall, full
figure lost its majesty and became very human as she came running over to
Soames.
"My dear boy! My dear boy!"
She put her lips to his forehead, and stroked his hand.
James, too, had turned full towards his son; his face looked older.
"Left you?" he said. "What d'you mean--left you? You never told me she
was going to leave you."
Soames answered surlily: "How could I tell? What's to be done?"
James began walking up and down; he looked strange and stork-like without
a coat. "What's to be done!" he muttered. "How should I know what's to
be done? What's the good of asking me? Nobody tells me anything, and
then they come and ask me what's to be done; and I should like to know
how I'm to tell them! Here's your mother, there she stands; she doesn't
say anything. What I should say you've got to do is to follow her.."
Soames smiled; his peculiar, supercilious smile had never before looked
pitiable.
"I don't know where she's gone," he said.
"Don't know where she's gone!" said James. "How d'you mean, don't know
where she's gone? Where d'you suppose she's gone? She's gone after that
young Bosinney, that's where she's gone. I knew how it would be."
Soames, in the long silence that followed, felt his mother pressing his
hand. And all that passed seemed to pass as though his own power of
thinking or doing had gone to sleep.
His father's face, dusky red, twitching as if he were going to cry, and
words breaking out that seemed rent from him by some spasm in his soul.
"There'll be a scandal; I always said so." Then, no one saying anything:
"And there you stand, you and your mother!"
And Emily's voice, calm, rather contemptuous: "Come, now, James! Soames
will do all that he can."
And James, staring at the floor, a little brokenly: "Well, I can't help
you; I'm getting old. Don't you be in too great a hurry, my boy."
And his mother's voice again: "Soames will do all he can to get her back.
We won't talk of it. It'll all come right, I dare say."
And James: "Well, I can't see how it can come right. And if she hasn't
gone off with that young Bosinney, my advice to you is not to listen to
her, but to follow her and get her back."
Once more Soames felt his mother stroking his hand, in token of her
approval, and as though repeating some form of sacred oath, he muttered
between his teeth: "I will!"
All three went down to the drawing-room together. There, were gathered
the three girls and Dartie; had Irene been present, the family circle
would have been complete.
James sank into his armchair, and except for a word of cold greeting to
Dartie, whom he both despised and dreaded, as a man likely to be always
in want of money, he said nothing till dinner was announced. Soames,
too, was silent; Emily alone, a woman of cool courage, maintained a
conversation with Winifred on trivial subjects. She was never more
composed in her manner and conversation than that evening.
A decision having been come to not to speak of Irene's flight, no view
was expressed by any other member of the family as to the right course to
be pursued; there can be little doubt, from the general tone adopted in
relation to events as they afterwards turned out, that James's advice:
"Don't you listen to her, follow-her and get her back!" would, with here
and there an exception, have been regarded as sound, not only in Park
Lane, but amongst the Nicholases, the Rogers, and at Timothy's. Just as
it would surely have been endorsed by that wider body of Forsytes all
over London, who were merely excluded from judgment by ignorance of the
story.
In spite then of Emily's efforts, the dinner was served by Warmson and
the footman almost in silence. Dartie was sulky, and drank all he could
get; the girls seldom talked to each other at any time. James asked once
where June was, and what she was doing with herself in these days. No
one could tell him. He sank back into gloom. Only when Winifred
recounted how little Publius had given his bad penny to a beggar, did he
brighten up.
"Ah!" he said, "that's a clever little chap. I don't know what'll become
of him, if he goes on like this. An intelligent little chap, I call
him!" But it was only a flash.
The courses succeeded one another solemnly, under the electric light,
which glared down onto the table, but barely reached the principal
ornament of the walls, a so-called 'Sea Piece by Turner,' almost entirely
composed of cordage and drowning men.
Champagne was handed, and then a bottle of James' prehistoric port, but
as by the chill hand of some skeleton.
At ten o'clock Soames left; twice in reply to questions, he had said that
Irene was not well; he felt he could no longer trust himself. His mother
kissed him with her large soft kiss, and he pressed her hand, a flush of
warmth in his cheeks. He walked away in the cold wind, which whistled
desolately round the corners of the streets, under a sky of clear
steel-blue, alive with stars; he noticed neither their frosty greeting,
nor the crackle of the curled-up plane-leaves, nor the night-women
hurrying in their shabby furs, nor the pinched faces of vagabonds at
street corners. Winter was come! But Soames hastened home, oblivious;
his hands trembled as he took the late letters from the gilt wire cage
into which they had been thrust through the slit in the door.'
None from Irene!
He went into the dining-room; the fire was bright there, his chair drawn
up to it, slippers ready, spirit case, and carven cigarette box on the
table; but after staring at it all for a minute or two, he turned out the
light and went upstairs. There was a fire too in his dressing-room, but
her room was dark and cold. It was into this room that Soames went.
He made a great illumination with candles, and for a long time continued
pacing up and down between the bed and the door. He could not get used
to the thought that she had really left him, and as though still
searching for some message, some reason, some reading of all the mystery
of his married life, he began opening every recess and drawer.
There were her dresses; he had always liked, indeed insisted, that she
should be well-dressed--she had taken very few; two or three at most, and
drawer after drawer; full of linen and silk things, was untouched.
Perhaps after all it was only a freak, and she had gone to the seaside
for a few days' change. If only that were so, and she were really coming
back, he would never again do as he had done that fatal night before
last, never again run that risk--though it was her duty, her duty as a
wife; though she did belong to him--he would never again run that risk;
she was evidently not quite right in her head!
He stooped over the drawer where she kept her jewels; it was not locked,
and came open as he pulled; the jewel box had the key in it. This
surprised him until he remembered that it was sure to be empty. He
opened it.
It was far from empty. Divided, in little green velvet compartments,
were all the things he had given her, even her watch, and stuck into the
recess that contained--the watch was a three-cornered note addressed
'Soames Forsyte,' in Irene's handwriting:
'I think I have taken nothing that you or your people have given me.'
And that was all.
He looked at the clasps and bracelets of diamonds and pearls, at the
little flat gold watch with a great diamond set in sapphires, at the
chains and rings, each in its nest, and the tears rushed up in his eyes
and dropped upon them.
Nothing that she could have done, nothing that she had done, brought home
to him like this the inner significance of her act. For the moment,
perhaps, he understood nearly all there was to understand--understood
that she loathed him, that she had loathed him for years, that for all
intents and purposes they were like people living in different worlds,
that there was no hope for him, never had been; even, that she had
suffered--that she was to be pitied.
In that moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte in him--forgot himself,
his interests, his property--was capable of almost anything; was lifted
into the pure ether of the selfless and unpractical.
Such moments pass quickly.
And as though with the tears he had purged himself of weakness, he got
up, locked the box, and slowly, almost trembling, carried it with him
into the other room.
CHAPTER VII
JUNE'S VICTORY
June had waited for her chance, scanning the duller columns of the
journals, morning and evening with an assiduity which at first puzzled
old Jolyon; and when her chance came, she took it with all the
promptitude and resolute tenacity of her character.
She will always remember best in her life that morning when at last she
saw amongst the reliable Cause List of the Times newspaper, under the
heading of Court XIII, Mr. Justice Bentham, the case of Forsyte v.
Bosinney.
Like a gambler who stakes his last piece of money, she had prepared to
hazard her all upon this throw; it was not her nature to contemplate
defeat. How, unless with the instinct of a woman in love, she knew that
Bosinney's discomfiture in this action was assured, cannot be told--on
this assumption, however, she laid her plans, as upon a certainty.
Half past eleven found her at watch in the gallery of Court XIII., and
there she remained till the case of Forsyte v. Bosinney was over.
Bosinney's absence did not disquiet her; she had felt instinctively that
he would not defend himself. At the end of the judgment she hastened
down, and took a cab to his rooms.
She passed the open street-door and the offices on the three lower floors
without attracting notice; not till she reached the top did her
difficulties begin.
Her ring was not answered; she had now to make up her mind whether she
would go down and ask the caretaker in the basement to let her in to
await Mr. Bosinney's return, or remain patiently outside the door,
trusting that no one would, come up. She decided on the latter course.
A quarter of an hour had passed in freezing vigil on the landing, before
it occurred to her that Bosinney had been used to leave the key of his
rooms under the door-mat. She looked and found it there. For some
minutes she could not decide to make use of it; at last she let herself
in and left the door open that anyone who came might see she was there on
business.
This was not the same June who had paid the trembling visit five months
ago; those months of suffering and restraint had made her less sensitive;
she had dwelt on this visit so long, with such minuteness, that its
terrors were discounted beforehand. She was not there to fail this time,
for if she failed no one could help her.
Like some mother beast on the watch over her young, her little quick
figure never stood still in that room, but wandered from wall to wall,
from window to door, fingering now one thing, now another. There was
dust everywhere, the room could not have been cleaned for weeks, and
June, quick to catch at anything that should buoy up her hope, saw in it
a sign that he had been obliged, for economy's sake, to give up his
servant.
She looked into the bedroom; the bed was roughly made, as though by the
hand of man. Listening intently, she darted in, and peered into his
cupboards. A few shirts and collars, a pair of muddy boots--the room was
bare even of garments.
She stole back to the sitting-room, and now she noticed the absence of
all the little things he had set store by. The clock that had been his
mother's, the field-glasses that had hung over the sofa; two really
valuable old prints of Harrow, where his father had been at school, and
last, not least, the piece of Japanese pottery she herself had given him.
All were gone; and in spite of the rage roused within her championing
soul at the thought that the world should treat him thus, their
disappearance augured happily for the success of her plan.
It was while looking at the spot where the piece of Japanese pottery had
stood that she felt a strange certainty of being watched, and, turning,
saw Irene in the open doorway.
The two stood gazing at each other for a minute in silence; then June
walked forward and held out her hand. Irene did not take it.
When her hand was refused, June put it behind her. Her eyes grew steady
with anger; she waited for Irene to speak; and thus waiting, took in,
with who-knows-what rage of jealousy, suspicion, and curiosity, every
detail of her friend's face and dress and figure.
Irene was clothed in her long grey fur; the travelling cap on her head
left a wave of gold hair visible above her forehead. The soft fullness
of the coat made her face as small as a child's.
Unlike June's cheeks, her cheeks had no colour in them, but were ivory
white and pinched as if with cold. Dark circles lay round her eyes. In
one hand she held a bunch of violets.
She looked back at June, no smile on her lips; and with those great dark
eyes fastened on her, the girl, for all her startled anger, felt
something of the old spell.
She spoke first, after all.
"What have you come for?" But the feeling that she herself was being
asked the same question, made her add: "This horrible case. I came to
tell him--he has lost it."
Irene did not speak, her eyes never moved from June's face, and the girl
cried:
"Don't stand there as if you were made of stone!"
Irene laughed: "I wish to God I were!"
But June turned away: "Stop!" she cried, "don't tell me! I don't want to
hear! I don't want to hear what you've come for. I don't want to hear!"
And like some uneasy spirit, she began swiftly walking to and fro.
Suddenly she broke out:
"I was here first. We can't both stay here together!"
On Irene's face a smile wandered up, and died out like a flicker of
firelight. She did not move. And then it was that June perceived under
the softness and immobility of this figure something desperate and
resolved; something not to be turned away, something dangerous. She tore
off her hat, and, putting both hands to her brow, pressed back the bronze
mass of her hair.
"You have no right here!" she cried defiantly.
Irene answered: "I have no right anywhere!
"What do you mean?"
"I have left Soames. You always wanted me to!"
June put her hands over her ears.
"Don't! I don't want to hear anything--I don't want to know anything.
It's impossible to fight with you! What makes you stand like that? Why
don't you go?"
Irene's lips moved; she seemed to be saying: "Where should I go?"
June turned to the window. She could see the face of a clock down in the
street. It was nearly four. At any moment he might come! She looked
back across her shoulder, and her face was distorted with anger.
But Irene had not moved; in her gloved hands she ceaselessly turned and
twisted the little bunch of violets.
The tears of rage and disappointment rolled down June's cheeks.
"How could you come?" she said. "You have been a false friend to me!"
Again Irene laughed. June saw that she had played a wrong card, and
broke down.
"Why have you come?" she sobbed. "You've ruined my life, and now you
want to ruin his!"
Irene's mouth quivered; her eyes met June's with a look so mournful that
the girl cried out in the midst of her sobbing, "No, no!"
But Irene's head bent till it touched her breast. She turned, and went
quickly out, hiding her lips with the little bunch of violets.
June ran to the door. She heard the footsteps going down and down. She
called out: "Come back, Irene! Come back!"
The footsteps died away....
Bewildered and torn, the girl stood at the top of the stairs. Why had
Irene gone, leaving her mistress of the field? What did it mean? Had
she really given him up to her? Or had she...? And she was the prey of
a gnawing uncertainty.... Bosinney did not come....
About six o'clock that afternoon old Jolyon returned from Wistaria
Avenue, where now almost every day he spent some hours, and asked if his
grand-daughter were upstairs. On being told that she had just come in,
he sent up to her room to request her to come down and speak to him.
He had made up his mind to tell her that he was reconciled with her
father. In future bygones must be bygones. He would no longer live
alone, or practically alone, in this great house; he was going to give it
up, and take one in the country for his son, where they could all go and
live together. If June did not like this, she could have an allowance
and live by herself. It wouldn't make much difference to her, for it was
a long time since she had shown him any affection.
But when June came down, her face was pinched and piteous; there was a
strained, pathetic look in her eyes. She snuggled up in her old attitude
on the arm of his chair, and what he said compared but poorly with the
clear, authoritative, injured statement he had thought out with much
care. His heart felt sore, as the great heart of a mother-bird feels
sore when its youngling flies and bruises its wing. His words halted, as
though he were apologizing for having at last deviated from the path of
virtue, and succumbed, in defiance of sounder principles, to his more
natural instincts.
He seemed nervous lest, in thus announcing his intentions, he should be
setting his granddaughter a bad example; and now that he came to the
point, his way of putting the suggestion that, if she didn't like it, she
could live by herself and lump it, was delicate in the extreme.'
"And if, by any chance, my darling," he said, "you found you didn't get
on--with them, why, I could make that all right. You could have what you
liked. We could find a little flat in London where you could set up, and
I could be running to continually. But the children," he added, "are dear
little things!"
Then, in the midst of this grave, rather transparent, explanation of
changed policy, his eyes twinkled. "This'll astonish Timothy's weak
nerves. That precious young thing will have something to say about this,
or I'm a Dutchman!"
June had not yet spoken. Perched thus on the arm of his chair, with her
head above him, her face was invisible. But presently he felt her warm
cheek against his own, and knew that, at all events, there was nothing
very alarming in her attitude towards his news. He began to take
courage.
"You'll like your father," he said--"an amiable chap. Never was much
push about him, but easy to get on with. You'll find him artistic and
all that."
And old Jolyon bethought him of the dozen or so water-colour drawings all
carefully locked up in his bedroom; for now that his son was going to
become a man of property he did not think them quite such poor things as
heretofore.
"As to your--your stepmother," he said, using the word with some little
difficulty, "I call her a refined woman--a bit of a Mrs. Gummidge, I
shouldn't wonder--but very fond of Jo. And the children," he
repeated--indeed, this sentence ran like music through all his solemn
self-justification--"are sweet little things!"
If June had known, those words but reincarnated that tender love for
little children, for the young and weak, which in the past had made him
desert his son for her tiny self, and now, as the cycle rolled, was
taking him from her.
But he began to get alarmed at her silence, and asked impatiently: "Well,
what do you say?"
June slid down to his knee, and she in her turn began her tale. She
thought it would all go splendidly; she did not see any difficulty, and
she did not care a bit what people thought.
Old Jolyon wriggled. H'm! then people would think! He had thought that
after all these years perhaps they wouldn't! Well, he couldn't help it!
Nevertheless, he could not approve of his granddaughter's way of putting
it--she ought to mind what people thought!
Yet he said nothing. His feelings were too mixed, too inconsistent for
expression.
No--went on June he did not care; what business was it of theirs? There
was only one thing--and with her cheek pressing against his knee, old
Jolyon knew at once that this something was no trifle: As he was going to
buy a house in the country, would he not--to please her--buy that
splendid house of Soames' at Robin Hill? It was finished, it was
perfectly beautiful, and no one would live in it now. They would all be
so happy there.
Old Jolyon was on the alert at once. Wasn't the 'man of property' going
to live in his new house, then? He never alluded to Soames now but under
this title.
"No"--June said--"he was not; she knew that he was not!"
How did she know?
She could not tell him, but she knew. She knew nearly for certain! It
was most unlikely; circumstances had changed! Irene's words still rang in
her head: "I have left Soames. Where should I go?"
But she kept silence about that.
If her grandfather would only buy it and settle that wretched claim that
ought never to have been made on Phil! It would be the very best thing
for everybody, and everything--everything might come straight.
And June put her lips to his forehead, and pressed them close.
But old Jolyon freed himself from her caress, his face wore the judicial
look which came upon it when he dealt with affairs. He asked: What did
she mean? There was something behind all this--had she been seeing
Bosinney?
June answered: "No; but I have been to his rooms."
"Been to his rooms? Who took you there?"
June faced him steadily. "I went alone. He has lost that case. I don't
care whether it was right or wrong. I want to help him; and I will!"
Old Jolyon asked again: "Have you seen him?" His glance seemed to pierce
right through the girl's eyes into her soul.
Again June answered: "No; he was not there. I waited, but he did not
come."
Old Jolyon made a movement of relief. She had risen and looked down at
him; so slight, and light, and young, but so fixed, and so determined;
and disturbed, vexed, as he was, he could not frown away that fixed look.
The feeling of being beaten, of the reins having slipped, of being old
and tired, mastered him.
"Ah!" he said at last, "you'll get yourself into a mess one of these
days, I can see. You want your own way in everything."
Visited by one of his strange bursts of philosophy, he added: "Like that
you were born; and like that you'll stay until you die!"
And he, who in his dealings with men of business, with Boards, with
Forsytes of all descriptions, with such as were not Forsytes, had always
had his own way, looked at his indomitable grandchild sadly--for he felt
in her that quality which above all others he unconsciously admired.
"Do you know what they say is going on?" he said slowly.
June crimsoned.
"Yes--no! I know--and I don't know--I don't care!" and she stamped her
foot.
"I believe," said old Jolyon, dropping his eyes, "that you'd have him if
he were dead!"
There was a long silence before he spoke again.
"But as to buying this house--you don't know what you're talking about!"
June said that she did. She knew that he could get it if he wanted. He
would only have to give what it cost.
"What it cost! You know nothing about it. I won't go to Soames--I'll
have nothing more to do with that young man."
"But you needn't; you can go to Uncle James. If you can't buy the house,
will you pay his lawsuit claim? I know he is terribly hard up--I've seen
it. You can stop it out of my money!"
A twinkle came into old Jolyon's eyes.
"Stop it out of your money! A pretty way. And what will you do, pray,
without your money?"
But secretly, the idea of wresting the house from James and his son had
begun to take hold of him. He had heard on Forsyte 'Change much comment,
much rather doubtful praise of this house. It was 'too artistic,' but a
fine place. To take from the 'man of property' that on which he had set
his heart, would be a crowning triumph over James, practical proof that
he was going to make a man of property of Jo, to put him back in his
proper position, and there to keep him secure. Justice once for all on
those who had chosen to regard his son as a poor, penniless outcast.
He would see, he would see! It might be out of the question; he was not
going to pay a fancy price, but if it could be done, why, perhaps he
would do it!
And still more secretly he knew that he could not refuse her.
But he did not commit himself. He would think it over--he said to June.
CHAPTER VIII
BOSINNEY'S DEPARTURE
Old Jolyon was not given to hasty decisions; it is probable that he
would have continued to think over the purchase of the house at Robin
Hill, had not June's face told him that he would have no peace until he
acted.
At breakfast next morning she asked him what time she should order the
carriage.
"Carriage!" he said, with some appearance of innocence; "what for? I'm
not going out!"
She answered: "If you don't go early, you won't catch Uncle James before
he goes into the City."
"James! what about your Uncle James?"
"The house," she replied, in such a voice that he no longer pretended
ignorance.
"I've not made up my mind," he said.
"You must! You must! Oh! Gran--think of me!"
Old Jolyon grumbled out: "Think of you--I'm always thinking of you, but
you don't think of yourself; you don't think what you're letting yourself
in for. Well, order the carriage at ten!"
At a quarter past he was placing his umbrella in the stand at Park
Lane--he did not choose to relinquish his hat and coat; telling Warmson
that he wanted to see his master, he went, without being announced, into
the study, and sat down.
James was still in the dining-room talking to Soames, who had come round
again before breakfast. On hearing who his visitor was, he muttered
nervously: "Now, what's he want, I wonder?"
He then got up.
"Well," he said to Soames, "don't you go doing anything in a hurry. The
first thing is to find out where she is--I should go to Stainer's about
it; they're the best men, if they can't find her, nobody can." And
suddenly moved to strange softness, he muttered to himself, "Poor little
thing, I can't tell what she was thinking about!" and went out blowing
his nose.
Old Jolyon did not rise on seeing his brother, but held out his hand, and
exchanged with him the clasp of a Forsyte.
James took another chair by the table, and leaned his head on his hand.
"Well," he said, "how are you? We don't see much of you nowadays!"
Old Jolyon paid no attention to the remark.
"How's Emily?" he asked; and waiting for no reply, went on "I've come to
see you about this affair of young Bosinney's. I'm told that new house
of his is a white elephant."
"I don't know anything about a white elephant," said James, "I know he's
lost his case, and I should say he'll go bankrupt."
Old Jolyon was not slow to seize the opportunity this gave him.
"I shouldn't wonder a bit!" he agreed; "and if he goes bankrupt, the 'man
of property'--that is, Soames'll be out of pocket. Now, what I was
thinking was this: If he's not going to live there...."
Seeing both surprise and suspicion in James' eye, he quickly went on: "I
don't want to know anything; I suppose Irene's put her foot down--it's
not material to me. But I'm thinking of a house in the country myself,
not too far from London, and if it suited me I don't say that I mightn't
look at it, at a price."
James listened to this statement with a strange mixture of doubt,
suspicion, and relief, merging into a dread of something behind, and
tinged with the remains of his old undoubted reliance upon his elder
brother's good faith and judgment. There was anxiety, too, as to what
old Jolyon could have heard and how he had heard it; and a sort of
hopefulness arising from the thought that if June's connection with
Bosinney were completely at an end, her grandfather would hardly seem
anxious to help the young fellow. Altogether he was puzzled; as he did
not like either to show this, or to commit himself in any way, he said:
"They tell me you're altering your Will in favour of your son."
He had not been told this; he had merely added the fact of having seen
old Jolyon with his son and grandchildren to the fact that he had taken
his Will away from Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte. The shot went home.
"Who told you that?" asked old Jolyon.
"I'm sure I don't know," said James; "I can't remember names--I know
somebody told me Soames spent a lot of money on this house; he's not
likely to part with it except at a good price."
"Well," said old Jolyon, "if, he thinks I'm going to pay a fancy price,
he's mistaken. I've not got the money to throw away that he seems to
have. Let him try and sell it at a forced sale, and see what he'll get.
It's not every man's house, I hear!"
James, who was secretly also of this opinion, answered: "It's a
gentleman's house. Soames is here now if you'd like to see him."
"No," said old Jolyon, "I haven't got as far as that; and I'm not likely
to, I can see that very well if I'm met in this manner!"
James was a little cowed; when it came to the actual figures of a
commercial transaction he was sure of himself, for then he was dealing
with facts, not with men; but preliminary negotiations such as these made
him nervous--he never knew quite how far he could go.
"Well," he said, "I know nothing about it. Soames, he tells me nothing;
I should think he'd entertain it--it's a question of price."
"Oh!" said old Jolyon, "don't let him make a favour of it!" He placed his
hat on his head in dudgeon.
The door was opened and Soames came in.
"There's a policeman out here," he said with his half smile, "for Uncle
Jolyon."
Old Jolyon looked at him angrily, and James said: "A policeman? I don't
know anything about a policeman. But I suppose you know something about
him," he added to old Jolyon with a look of suspicion: "I suppose you'd
better see him!"
In the hall an Inspector of Police stood stolidly regarding with
heavy-lidded pale-blue eyes the fine old English furniture picked up by
James at the famous Mavrojano sale in Portman Square. "You'll find my
brother in there," said James.
The Inspector raised his fingers respectfully to his peaked cap, and
entered the study.
James saw him go in with a strange sensation.
"Well," he said to Soames, "I suppose we must wait and see what he wants.
Your uncle's been here about the house!"
He returned with Soames into the dining-room, but could not rest.
"Now what does he want?" he murmured again.
"Who?" replied Soames: "the Inspector? They sent him round from Stanhope
Gate, that's all I know. That 'nonconformist' of Uncle Jolyon's has been
pilfering, I shouldn't wonder!"
But in spite of his calmness, he too was ill at ease.
At the end of ten minutes old Jolyon came in. He walked up to the table,
and stood there perfectly silent pulling at his long white moustaches.
James gazed up at him with opening mouth; he had never seen his brother
look like this.
Old Jolyon raised his hand, and said slowly:
"Young Bosinney has been run over in the fog and killed."
Then standing above his brother and his nephew, and looking down at him
with his deep eyes:
"There's--some--talk--of--suicide," he said.
James' jaw dropped. "Suicide! What should he do that for?"
Old Jolyon answered sternly: "God knows, if you and your son don't!"
But James did not reply.
For all men of great age, even for all Forsytes, life has had bitter
experiences. The passer-by, who sees them wrapped in cloaks of custom,
wealth, and comfort, would never suspect that such black shadows had
fallen on their roads. To every man of great age--to Sir Walter Bentham
himself--the idea of suicide has once at least been present in the
ante-room of his soul; on the threshold, waiting to enter, held out from
the inmost chamber by some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful
hope. To Forsytes that final renunciation of property is hard. Oh! it
is hard! Seldom--perhaps never--can they achieve, it; and yet, how near
have they not sometimes been!
So even with James! Then in the medley of his thoughts, he broke out:
"Why I saw it in the paper yesterday: 'Run over in the fog!' They didn't
know his name!" He turned from one face to the other in his confusion of
soul; but instinctively all the time he was rejecting that rumour of
suicide. He dared not entertain this thought, so against his interest,
against the interest of his son, of every Forsyte. He strove against it;
and as his nature ever unconsciously rejected that which it could not
with safety accept, so gradually he overcame this fear. It was an
accident! It must have been!
Old Jolyon broke in on his reverie.
"Death was instantaneous. He lay all day yesterday at the hospital.
There was nothing to tell them who he was. I am going there now; you and
your son had better come too."
No one opposing this command he led the way from the room.
The day was still and clear and bright, and driving over to Park Lane
from Stanhope Gate, old Jolyon had had the carriage open. Sitting back on
the padded cushions, finishing his cigar, he had noticed with pleasure
the keen crispness of the air, the bustle of the cabs and people; the
strange, almost Parisian, alacrity that the first fine day will bring
into London streets after a spell of fog or rain. And he had felt so
happy; he had not felt like it for months. His confession to June was
off his mind; he had the prospect of his son's, above all, of his
grandchildren's company in the future--(he had appointed to meet young
Jolyon at the Hotch Potch that very manning to--discuss it again); and
there was the pleasurable excitement of a coming encounter, a coming
victory, over James and the 'man of property' in the matter of the house.
He had the carriage closed now; he had no heart to look on gaiety; nor
was it right that Forsytes should be seen driving with an Inspector of
Police.
In that carriage the Inspector spoke again of the death:
"It was not so very thick--Just there. The driver says the gentleman
must have had time to see what he was about, he seemed to walk right into
it. It appears that he was very hard up, we found several pawn tickets
at his rooms, his account at the bank is overdrawn, and there's this case
in to-day's papers;" his cold blue eyes travelled from one to another of
the three Forsytes in the carriage.
Old Jolyon watching from his corner saw his brother's face change, and
the brooding, worried, look deepen on it. At the Inspector's words,
indeed, all James' doubts and fears revived. Hard-up--pawn-tickets--an
overdrawn account! These words that had all his life been a far-off
nightmare to him, seemed to make uncannily real that suspicion of suicide
which must on no account be entertained. He sought his son's eye; but
lynx-eyed, taciturn, immovable, Soames gave no answering look. And to
old Jolyon watching, divining the league of mutual defence between them,
there came an overmastering desire to have his own son at his side, as
though this visit to the dead man's body was a battle in which otherwise
he must single-handed meet those two. And the thought of how to keep
June's name out of the business kept whirring in his brain. James had
his son to support him! Why should he not send for Jo?
Taking out his card-case, he pencilled the following message:
'Come round at once. I've sent the carriage for you.'
On getting out he gave this card to his coachman, telling him to
drive--as fast as possible to the Hotch Potch Club, and if Mr. Jolyon
Forsyte were there to give him the card and bring him at once. If not
there yet, he was to wait till he came.
He followed the others slowly up the steps, leaning on his umbrella, and
stood a moment to get his breath. The Inspector said: "This is the
mortuary, sir. But take your time."
In the bare, white-walled room, empty of all but a streak of sunshine
smeared along the dustless floor, lay a form covered by a sheet. With a
huge steady hand the Inspector took the hem and turned it back. A
sightless face gazed up at them, and on either side of that sightless
defiant face the three Forsytes gazed down; in each one of them the
secret emotions, fears, and pity of his own nature rose and fell like the
rising, falling waves of life, whose wish those white walls barred out
now for ever from Bosinney. And in each one of them the trend of his
nature, the odd essential spring, which moved him in fashions minutely,
unalterably different from those of every other human being, forced him
to a different attitude of thought. Far from the others, yet inscrutably
close, each stood thus, alone with death, silent, his eyes lowered.
The Inspector asked softly:
"You identify the gentleman, sir?"
Old Jolyon raised his head and nodded. He looked at his brother
opposite, at that long lean figure brooding over the dead man, with face
dusky red, and strained grey eyes; and at the figure of Soames white and
still by his father's side. And all that he had felt against those two
was gone like smoke in the long white presence of Death. Whence comes
it, how comes it--Death? Sudden reverse of all that goes before; blind
setting forth on a path that leads to where? Dark quenching of the fire!
The heavy, brutal crushing--out that all men must go through, keeping
their eyes clear and brave unto the end! Small and of no import, insects
though they are! And across old Jolyon's face there flitted a gleam, for
Soames, murmuring to the Inspector, crept noiselessly away.
Then suddenly James raised his eyes. There was a queer appeal in that
suspicious troubled look: "I know I'm no match for you," it seemed to
say. And, hunting for handkerchief he wiped his brow; then, bending
sorrowful and lank over the dead man, he too turned and hurried out.
Old Jolyon stood, still as death, his eyes fixed on the body. Who shall
tell of what he was thinking? Of himself, when his hair was brown like
the hair of that young fellow dead before him? Of himself, with his
battle just beginning, the long, long battle he had loved; the battle
that was over for this young man almost before it had begun? Of his
grand-daughter, with her broken hopes? Of that other woman? Of the
strangeness, and the pity of it? And the irony, inscrutable, and bitter
of that end? Justice! There was no justice for men, for they were ever
in the dark!
Or perhaps in his philosophy he thought: Better to be out of, it all!
Better to have done with it, like this poor youth....
Some one touched him on the arm.
A tear started up and wetted his eyelash. "Well," he said, "I'm no good
here. I'd better be going. You'll come to me as soon as you can, Jo,"
and with his head bowed he went away.
It was young Jolyon's turn to take his stand beside the dead man, round
whose fallen body he seemed to see all the Forsytes breathless, and
prostrated. The stroke had fallen too swiftly.
The forces underlying every tragedy--forces that take no denial, working
through cross currents to their ironical end, had met and fused with a
thunder-clap, flung out the victim, and flattened to the ground all those
that stood around.
Or so at all events young Jolyon seemed to see them, lying around
Bosinney's body.
He asked the Inspector to tell him what had happened, and the latter,
like a man who does not every day get such a chance, again detailed such
facts as were known.
"There's more here, sir, however," he said, "than meets the eye. I don't
believe in suicide, nor in pure accident, myself. It's more likely I
think that he was suffering under great stress of mind, and took no
notice of things about him. Perhaps you can throw some light on these."
He took from his pocket a little packet and laid it on the table.
Carefully undoing it, he revealed a lady's handkerchief, pinned through
the folds with a pin of discoloured Venetian gold, the stone of which had
fallen from the socket. A scent of dried violets rose to young Jolyon's
nostrils.
"Found in his breast pocket," said the Inspector; "the name has been cut
away!"
Young Jolyon with difficulty answered: "I'm afraid I cannot help you!"
But vividly there rose before him the face he had seen light up, so
tremulous and glad, at Bosinney's coming! Of her he thought more than of
his own daughter, more than of them all--of her with the dark, soft
glance, the delicate passive face, waiting for the dead man, waiting even
at that moment, perhaps, still and patient in the sunlight.
He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father's house,
reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte family. The stroke
had indeed slipped past their defences into the very wood of their tree.
They might flourish to all appearance as before, preserving a brave show
before the eyes of London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same
flash that had stricken down Bosinney. And now the saplings would take
its place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property.
Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon--soundest timber of our
land!
Concerning the cause of this death--his family would doubtless reject
with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so compromising! They
would take it as an accident, a stroke of fate. In their hearts they
would even feel it an intervention of Providence, a retribution--had not
Bosinney endangered their two most priceless possessions, the pocket and
the hearth? And they would talk of 'that unfortunate accident of young
Bosinney's,' but perhaps they would not talk--silence might be better!
As for himself, he regarded the bus-driver's account of the accident as
of very little value. For no one so madly in love committed suicide for
want of money; nor was Bosinney the sort of fellow to set much store by a
financial crisis. And so he too rejected this theory of suicide, the
dead man's face rose too clearly before him. Gone in the heyday of his
summer--and to believe thus that an accident had cut Bosinney off in the
full sweep of his passion was more than ever pitiful to young Jolyon.
Then came a vision of Soames' home as it now was, and must be hereafter.
The streak of lightning had flashed its clear uncanny gleam on bare bones
with grinning spaces between, the disguising flesh was gone....
In the dining-room at Stanhope Gate old Jolyon was sitting alone when his
son came in. He looked very wan in his great armchair. And his eyes
travelling round the walls with their pictures of still life, and the
masterpiece 'Dutch fishing-boats at Sunset' seemed as though passing
their gaze over his life with its hopes, its gains, its achievements.
"Ah! Jo!" he said, "is that you? I've told poor little June. But that's
not all of it. Are you going to Soames'? She's brought it on herself, I
suppose; but somehow I can't bear to think of her, shut up there--and all
alone." And holding up his thin, veined hand, he clenched it.
CHAPTER IX
IRENE'S RETURN
After leaving James and old Jolyon in the mortuary of the hospital,
Soames hurried aimlessly along the streets.
The tragic event of Bosinney's death altered the complexion of
everything. There was no longer the same feeling that to lose a minute
would be fatal, nor would he now risk communicating the fact of his
wife's flight to anyone till the inquest was over.
That morning he had risen early, before the postman came, had taken the
first-post letters from the box himself, and, though there had been none
from Irene, he had made an opportunity of telling Bilson that her
mistress was at the sea; he would probably, he said, be going down
himself from Saturday to Monday. This had given him time to breathe, time
to leave no stone unturned to find her.
But now, cut off from taking steps by Bosinney's death--that strange
death, to think of which was like putting a hot iron to his heart, like
lifting a great weight from it--he did not know how to pass his day; and
he wandered here and there through the streets, looking at every face he
met, devoured by a hundred anxieties.
And as he wandered, he thought of him who had finished his wandering, his
prowling, and would never haunt his house again.
Already in the afternoon he passed posters announcing the identity of the
dead man, and bought the papers to see what they said. He would stop
their mouths if he could, and he went into the City, and was closeted
with Boulter for a long time.
On his way home, passing the steps of Jobson's about half past four, he
met George Forsyte, who held out an evening paper to Soames, saying:
"Here! Have you seen this about the poor Buccaneer?"
Soames answered stonily: "Yes."
George stared at him. He had never liked Soames; he now held him
responsible for Bosinney's death. Soames had done for him--done for him
by that act of property that had sent the Buccaneer to run amok that
fatal afternoon.
'The poor fellow,' he was thinking, 'was so cracked with jealousy, so
cracked for his vengeance, that he heard nothing of the omnibus in that
infernal fog.'
Soames had done for him! And this judgment was in George's eyes.
"They talk of suicide here," he said at last. "That cat won't jump."
Soames shook his head. "An accident," he muttered.
Clenching his fist on the paper, George crammed it into his pocket. He
could not resist a parting shot.
"H'mm! All flourishing at home? Any little Soameses yet?"
With a face as white as the steps of Jobson's, and a lip raised as if
snarling, Soames brushed past him and was gone....
On reaching home, and entering the little lighted hall with his latchkey,
the first thing that caught his eye was his wife's gold-mounted umbrella
lying on the rug chest. Flinging off his fur coat, he hurried to the
drawing-room.
The curtains were drawn for the night, a bright fire of cedar-logs burned
in the grate, and by its light he saw Irene sitting in her usual corner
on the sofa. He shut the door softly, and went towards her. She did not
move, and did not seem to see him.
"So you've come back?" he said. "Why are you sitting here in the dark?"
Then he caught sight of her face, so white and motionless that it seemed
as though the blood must have stopped flowing in her veins; and her eyes,
that looked enormous, like the great, wide, startled brown eyes of an
owl.
Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions, she had a strange
resemblance to a captive owl, bunched fir its soft feathers against the
wires of a cage. The supple erectness of her figure was gone, as though
she had been broken by cruel exercise; as though there were no longer any
reason for being beautiful, and supple, and erect.
"So you've come back," he repeated.
She never looked up, and never spoke, the firelight playing over her
motionless figure.
Suddenly she tried to rise, but he prevented her; it was then that he
understood.
She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing where to
turn, not knowing what she was doing. The sight of her figure, huddled
in the fur, was enough.
He knew then for certain that Bosinney had been her lover; knew that she
had seen the report of his death--perhaps, like himself, had bought a
paper at the draughty corner of a street, and read it.
She had come back then of her own accord, to the cage she had pined to be
free of--and taking in all the tremendous significance of this, he longed
to cry: "Take your hated body, that I love, out of my house! Take away
that pitiful white face, so cruel and soft--before I crush it. Get out
of my sight; never let me see you again!"
And, at those unspoken words, he seemed to see her rise and move away,
like a woman in a terrible dream, from which she was fighting to
awake--rise and go out into the dark and cold, without a thought of him,
without so much as the knowledge of his presence.
Then he cried, contradicting what he had not yet spoken, "No; stay
there!" And turning away from her, he sat down in his accustomed chair on
the other side of the hearth.
They sat in silence.
And Soames thought: 'Why is all this? Why should I suffer so? What have
I done? It is not my fault!'
Again he looked at her, huddled like a bird that is shot and dying, whose
poor breast you see panting as the air is taken from it, whose poor eyes
look at you who have shot it, with a slow, soft, unseeing look, taking
farewell of all that is good--of the sun, and the air, and its mate.
So they sat, by the firelight, in the silence, one on each side of the
hearth.
And the fume of the burning cedar logs, that he loved so well, seemed to
grip Soames by the throat till he could bear it no longer. And going out
into the hall he flung the door wide, to gulp down the cold air that came
in; then without hat or overcoat went out into the Square.
Along the garden rails a half-starved cat came rubbing her way towards
him, and Soames thought: 'Suffering! when will it cease, my suffering?'
At a front door across the way was a man of his acquaintance named
Rutter, scraping his boots, with an air of 'I am master here.' And Soames
walked on.
From far in the clear air the bells of the church where he and Irene had
been married were pealing in 'practice' for the advent of Christ, the
chimes ringing out above the sound of traffic. He felt a craving for
strong drink, to lull him to indifference, or rouse him to fury. If only
he could burst out of himself, out of this web that for the first time in
his life he felt around him. If only he could surrender to the thought:
'Divorce her--turn her out! She has forgotten you. Forget her!'
If only he could surrender to the thought: 'Let her go--she has suffered
enough!'
If only he could surrender to the desire: 'Make a slave of her--she is
in your power!'
If only even he could surrender to the sudden vision: 'What does it all
matter?' Forget himself for a minute, forget that it mattered what he
did, forget that whatever he did he must sacrifice something.
If only he could act on an impulse!
He could forget nothing; surrender to no thought, vision, or desire; it
was all too serious; too close around him, an unbreakable cage.
On the far side of the Square newspaper boys were calling their evening
wares, and the ghoulish cries mingled and jangled with the sound of those
church bells.
Soames covered his ears. The thought flashed across him that but for a
chance, he himself, and not Bosinney, might be lying dead, and she,
instead of crouching there like a shot bird with those dying eyes....
Something soft touched his legs, the cat was rubbing herself against
them. And a sob that shook him from head to foot burst from Soames'
chest. Then all was still again in the dark, where the houses seemed to
stare at him, each with a master and mistress of its own, and a secret
story of happiness or sorrow.
And suddenly he saw that his own door was open, and black against the
light from the hall a man standing with his back turned. Something slid
too in his breast, and he stole up close behind.
He could see his own fur coat flung across the carved oak chair; the
Persian rugs; the silver bowls, the rows of porcelain plates arranged
along the walls, and this unknown man who was standing there.
And sharply he asked: "What is it you want, sir?"
The visitor turned. It was young Jolyon.
"The door was open," he said. "Might I see your wife for a minute, I
have a message for her?"
Soames gave him a strange, sidelong stare.
"My wife can see no one," he muttered doggedly.
Young Jolyon answered gently: "I shouldn't keep her a minute."
Soames brushed by him and barred the way.
"She can see no one," he said again.
Young Jolyon's glance shot past him into the hall, and Soames turned.
There in the drawing-room doorway stood Irene, her eyes were wild and
eager, her lips were parted, her hands outstretched. In the sight of
both men that light vanished from her face; her hands dropped to her
sides; she stood like stone.
Soames spun round, and met his visitor's eyes, and at the look he saw in
them, a sound like a snarl escaped him. He drew his lips back in the
ghost of a smile.
"This is my house," he said; "I manage my own affairs. I've told you
once--I tell you again; we are not at home."
And in young Jolyon's face he slammed the door.
THE FORSYTE SAGA
By John Galsworthy
Part 2
Contents:
Indian Summer of a Forsyte
In Chancery
TO ANDRE CHEVRILLON
INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE
"And Summer's lease hath all
too short a date."
--Shakespeare
I
In the last day of May in the early 'nineties, about six o'clock of the
evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the terrace of
his house at Robin Hill. He was waiting for the midges to bite him,
before abandoning the glory of the afternoon. His thin brown hand, where
blue veins stood out, held the end of a cigar in its tapering,
long-nailed fingers--a pointed polished nail had survived with him from
those earlier Victorian days when to touch nothing, even with the tips of
the fingers, had been so distinguished. His domed forehead, great white
moustache, lean cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering
sunshine by an old brown Panama hat. His legs were crossed; in all his
attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who every
morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief. At his feet lay a
woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a Pomeranian--the dog Balthasar
between whom and old Jolyon primal aversion had changed into attachment
with the years. Close to his chair was a swing, and on the swing was
seated one of Holly's dolls--called 'Duffer Alice'--with her body fallen
over her legs and her doleful nose buried in a black petticoat. She was
never out of disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat. Below
the oak tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and,
beyond that refinement, became fields, dropping to the pond, the coppice,
and the prospect--'Fine, remarkable'--at which Swithin Forsyte, from
under this very tree, had stared five years ago when he drove down with
Irene to look at the house. Old Jolyon had heard of his brother's
exploit--that drive which had become quite celebrated on Forsyte 'Change.
Swithin! And the fellow had gone and died, last November, at the age of
only seventy-nine, renewing the doubt whether Forsytes could live for
ever, which had first arisen when Aunt Ann passed away. Died! and left
only Jolyon and James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia, Hester,
Susan! And old Jolyon thought: 'Eighty-five! I don't feel it--except
when I get that pain.'
His memory went searching. He had not felt his age since he had bought
his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it here at Robin
Hill over three years ago. It was as if he had been getting younger
every spring, living in the country with his son and his
grandchildren--June, and the little ones of the second marriage, Jolly
and Holly; living down here out of the racket of London and the cackle of
Forsyte 'Change,' free of his boards, in a delicious atmosphere of no
work and all play, with plenty of occupation in the perfecting and
mellowing of the house and its twenty acres, and in ministering to the
whims of Holly and Jolly. All the knots and crankiness, which had
gathered in his heart during that long and tragic business of June,
Soames, Irene his wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out.
Even June had thrown off her melancholy at last--witness this travel in
Spain she was taking now with her father and her stepmother. Curiously
perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful, yet blank, because
his son was not there. Jo was never anything but a comfort and a
pleasure to him nowadays--an amiable chap; but women, somehow--even the
best--got a little on one's nerves, unless of course one admired them.
Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first elm-tree
in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had sprung up after the
last mowing! The wind had got into the sou' west, too--a delicious air,
sappy! He pushed his hat back and let the sun fall on his chin and cheek.
Somehow, to-day, he wanted company--wanted a pretty face to look at.
People treated the old as if they wanted nothing. And with the
un-Forsytean philosophy which ever intruded on his soul, he thought:
'One's never had enough. With a foot in the grave one'll want something,
I shouldn't be surprised!' Down here--away from the exigencies of
affairs--his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little
domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, 'Open,
sesame,' to him day and night. And sesame had opened--how much, perhaps,
he did not know. He had always been responsive to what they had begun to
call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously responsive, though he had
never lost his habit of calling a sunset a sunset and a view a view,
however deeply they might move him. But nowadays Nature actually made him
ache, he appreciated it so. Every one of these calm, bright, lengthening
days, with Holly's hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in front looking
studiously for what he never found, he would stroll, watching the roses
open, fruit budding on the walls, sunlight brightening the oak leaves and
saplings in the coppice, watching the water-lily leaves unfold and
glisten, and the silvery young corn of the one wheat field; listening to
the starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows chewing the cud,
flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of these fine days he
ached a little from sheer love of it all, feeling perhaps, deep down,
that he had not very much longer to enjoy it. The thought that some
day--perhaps not ten years hence, perhaps not five--all this world would
be taken away from him, before he had exhausted his powers of loving it,
seemed to him in the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon.
If anything came after this life, it wouldn't be what he wanted; not
Robin Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces--too few, even now, of
those about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had increased; the
orthodoxy he had worn in the 'sixties, as he had worn side-whiskers out
of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off, leaving him reverent before
three things alone--beauty, upright conduct, and the sense of property;
and the greatest of these now was beauty. He had always had wide
interests, and, indeed could still read The Times, but he was liable at
any moment to put it down if he heard a blackbird sing. Upright conduct,
property--somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets
never tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he could not get
enough of them. Staring into the stilly radiance of the early evening
and at the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a thought came to
him: This weather was like the music of 'Orfeo,' which he had recently
heard at Covent Garden. A beautiful opera, not like Meyerbeer, nor even
quite Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps even more lovely; something
classical and of the Golden Age about it, chaste and mellow, and the
Ravogli 'almost worthy of the old days'--highest praise he could bestow.
The yearning of Orpheus for the beauty he was losing, for his love going
down to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go--the yearning which sang
and throbbed through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering
beauty of the world that evening. And with the tip of his cork-soled,
elastic-sided boot he involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog
Balthasar, causing the animal to wake and attack his fleas; for though he
was supposed to have none, nothing could persuade him of the fact. When
he had finished he rubbed the place he had been scratching against his
master's calf, and settled down again with his chin over the instep of
the disturbing boot. And into old Jolyon's mind came a sudden
recollection--a face he had seen at that opera three weeks ago--Irene,
the wife of his precious nephew Soames, that man of property! Though he
had not met her since the day of the 'At Home' in his old house at
Stanhope Gate, which celebrated his granddaughter June's ill-starred
engagement to young Bosinney, he had remembered her at once, for he had
always admired her--a very pretty creature. After the death of young
Bosinney, whose mistress she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard
that she had left Soames at once. Goodness only knew what she had been
doing since. That sight of her face--a side view--in the row in front,
had been literally the only reminder these three years that she was still
alive. No one ever spoke of her. And yet Jo had told him something
once--something which had upset him completely. The boy had got it from
George Forsyte, he believed, who had seen Bosinney in the fog the day he
was run over--something which explained the young fellow's distress--an
act of Soames towards his wife--a shocking act. Jo had seen her, too,
that afternoon, after the news was out, seen her for a moment, and his
description had always lingered in old Jolyon's mind--'wild and lost' he
had called her. And next day June had gone there--bottled up her
feelings and gone there, and the maid had cried and told her how her
mistress had slipped out in the night and vanished. A tragic business
altogether! One thing was certain--Soames had never been able to lay
hands on her again. And he was living at Brighton, and journeying up and
down--a fitting fate, the man of property! For when he once took a
dislike to anyone--as he had to his nephew--old Jolyon never got over it.
He remembered still the sense of relief with which he had heard the news
of Irene's disappearance. It had been shocking to think of her a
prisoner in that house to which she must have wandered back, when Jo saw
her, wandered back for a moment--like a wounded animal to its hole after
seeing that news, 'Tragic death of an Architect,' in the street. Her
face had struck him very much the other night--more beautiful than he had
remembered, but like a mask, with something going on beneath it. A young
woman still--twenty-eight perhaps. Ah, well! Very likely she had another
lover by now. But at this subversive thought--for married women should
never love: once, even, had been too much--his instep rose, and with it
the dog Balthasar's head. The sagacious animal stood up and looked into
old Jolyon's face. 'Walk?' he seemed to say; and old Jolyon answered:
"Come on, old chap!"
Slowly, as was their wont, they crossed among the constellations of
buttercups and daisies, and entered the fernery. This feature, where
very little grew as yet, had been judiciously dropped below the level of
the lawn so that it might come up again on the level of the other lawn
and give the impression of irregularity, so important in horticulture.
Its rocks and earth were beloved of the dog Balthasar, who sometimes
found a mole there. Old Jolyon made a point of passing through it
because, though it was not beautiful, he intended that it should be, some
day, and he would think: 'I must get Varr to come down and look at it;
he's better than Beech.' For plants, like houses and human complaints,
required the best expert consideration. It was inhabited by snails, and
if accompanied by his grandchildren, he would point to one and tell them
the story of the little boy who said: 'Have plummers got leggers, Mother?
'No, sonny.' 'Then darned if I haven't been and swallowed a snileybob.'
And when they skipped and clutched his hand, thinking of the snileybob
going down the little boy's 'red lane,' his eyes would twinkle. Emerging
from the fernery, he opened the wicket gate, which just there led into
the first field, a large and park-like area, out of which, within brick
walls, the vegetable garden had been carved. Old Jolyon avoided this,
which did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond.
Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the gait
which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day. Arrived at
the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily opened since
yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when 'his little sweet'
had got over the upset which had followed on her eating a tomato at
lunch--her little arrangements were very delicate. Now that Jolly had
gone to school--his first term--Holly was with him nearly all day long,
and he missed her badly. He felt that pain too, which often bothered him
now, a little dragging at his left side. He looked back up the hill.
Really, poor young Bosinney had made an uncommonly good job of the house;
he would have done very well for himself if he had lived! And where was
he now? Perhaps, still haunting this, the site of his last work, of his
tragic love affair. Or was Philip Bosinney's spirit diffused in the
general? Who could say? That dog was getting his legs muddy! And he
moved towards the coppice. There had been the most delightful lot of
bluebells, and he knew where some still lingered like little patches of
sky fallen in between the trees, away out of the sun. He passed the
cow-houses and the hen-houses there installed, and pursued a path into
the thick of the saplings, making for one of the bluebell plots.
Balthasar, preceding him once more, uttered a low growl. Old Jolyon
stirred him with his foot, but the dog remained motionless, just where
there was no room to pass, and the hair rose slowly along the centre of
his woolly back. Whether from the growl and the look of the dog's
stivered hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old
Jolyon also felt something move along his spine. And then the path
turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting. Her
face was turned away, and he had just time to think: 'She's
trespassing--I must have a board put up!' before she turned. Powers
above! The face he had seen at the opera--the very woman he had just
been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things blurred, as if a
spirit--queer effect--the slant of sunlight perhaps on her violet-grey
frock! And then she rose and stood smiling, her head a little to one
side. Old Jolyon thought: 'How pretty she is!' She did not speak,
neither did he; and he realized why with a certain admiration. She was
here no doubt because of some memory, and did not mean to try and get out
of it by vulgar explanation.
"Don't let that dog touch your frock," he said; "he's got wet feet. Come
here, you!"
But the dog Balthasar went on towards the visitor, who put her hand down
and stroked his head. Old Jolyon said quickly:
"I saw you at the opera the other night; you didn't notice me."
"Oh, yes! I did."
He felt a subtle flattery in that, as though she had added: 'Do you think
one could miss seeing you?'
"They're all in Spain," he remarked abruptly. "I'm alone; I drove up for
the opera. The Ravogli's good. Have you seen the cow-houses?"
In a situation so charged with mystery and something very like emotion he
moved instinctively towards that bit of property, and she moved beside
him. Her figure swayed faintly, like the best kind of French figures;
her dress, too, was a sort of French grey. He noticed two or three silver
threads in her amber-coloured hair, strange hair with those dark eyes of
hers, and that creamy-pale face. A sudden sidelong look from the velvety
brown eyes disturbed him. It seemed to come from deep and far, from
another world almost, or at all events from some one not living very much
in this. And he said mechanically:
"Where are you living now?"
"I have a little flat in Chelsea."
He did not want to hear what she was doing, did not want to hear
anything; but the perverse word came out:
"Alone?"
She nodded. It was a relief to know that. And it came into his mind
that, but for a twist of fate, she would have been mistress of this
coppice, showing these cow-houses to him, a visitor.
"All Alderneys," he muttered; "they give the best milk. This one's a
pretty creature. Woa, Myrtle!"
The fawn-coloured cow, with eyes as soft and brown as Irene's own, was
standing absolutely still, not having long been milked. She looked round
at them out of the corner of those lustrous, mild, cynical eyes, and from
her grey lips a little dribble of saliva threaded its way towards the
straw. The scent of hay and vanilla and ammonia rose in the dim light of
the cool cow-house; and old Jolyon said:
"You must come up and have some dinner with me. I'll send you home in
the carriage."
He perceived a struggle going on within her; natural, no doubt, with her
memories. But he wanted her company; a pretty face, a charming figure,
beauty! He had been alone all the afternoon. Perhaps his eyes were
wistful, for she answered: "Thank you, Uncle Jolyon. I should like to."
He rubbed his hands, and said:
"Capital! Let's go up, then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar, they
ascended through the field. The sun was almost level in their faces now,
and he could see, not only those silver threads, but little lines, just
deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like fineness--the special
look of life unshared with others. "I'll take her in by the terrace," he
thought: "I won't make a common visitor of her."
"What do you do all day?" he said.
"Teach music; I have another interest, too."
"Work!" said old Jolyon, picking up the doll from off the swing, and
smoothing its black petticoat. "Nothing like it, is there? I don't do
any now. I'm getting on. What interest is that?"
"Trying to help women who've come to grief." Old Jolyon did not quite
understand. "To grief?" he repeated; then realised with a shock that she
meant exactly what he would have meant himself if he had used that
expression. Assisting the Magdalenes of London! What a weird and
terrifying interest! And, curiosity overcoming his natural shrinking, he
asked:
"Why? What do you do for them?"
"Not much. I've no money to spare. I can only give sympathy and food
sometimes."
Involuntarily old Jolyon's hand sought his purse. He said hastily: "How
d'you get hold of them?"
"I go to a hospital."
"A hospital! Phew!"
"What hurts me most is that once they nearly all had some sort of
beauty."
Old Jolyon straightened the doll. "Beauty!" he ejaculated: "Ha! Yes! A
sad business!" and he moved towards the house. Through a French window,
under sun-blinds not yet drawn up, he preceded her into the room where he
was wont to study The Times and the sheets of an agricultural magazine,
with huge illustrations of mangold wurzels, and the like, which provided
Holly with material for her paint brush.
"Dinner's in half an hour. You'd like to wash your hands! I'll take you
to June's room."
He saw her looking round eagerly; what changes since she had last visited
this house with her husband, or her lover, or both perhaps--he did not
know, could not say! All that was dark, and he wished to leave it so.
But what changes! And in the hall he said:
"My boy Jo's a painter, you know. He's got a lot of taste. It isn't
mine, of course, but I've let him have his way."
She was standing very still, her eyes roaming through the hall and music
room, as it now was--all thrown into one, under the great skylight. Old
Jolyon had an odd impression of her. Was she trying to conjure somebody
from the shades of that space where the colouring was all pearl-grey and
silver? He would have had gold himself; more lively and solid. But Jo
had French tastes, and it had come out shadowy like that, with an effect
as of the fume of cigarettes the chap was always smoking, broken here and
there by a little blaze of blue or crimson colour. It was not his dream!
Mentally he had hung this space with those gold-framed masterpieces of
still and stiller life which he had bought in days when quantity was
precious. And now where were they? Sold for a song! That something
which made him, alone among Forsytes, move with the times had warned him
against the struggle to retain them. But in his study he still had
'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'
He began to mount the stairs with her, slowly, for he felt his side.
"These are the bathrooms," he said, "and other arrangements. I've had
them tiled. The nurseries are along there. And this is Jo's and his
wife's. They all communicate. But you remember, I expect."
Irene nodded. They passed on, up the gallery and entered a large room
with a small bed, and several windows.
"This is mine," he said. The walls were covered with the photographs of
children and watercolour sketches, and he added doubtfully:
"These are Jo's. The view's first-rate. You can see the Grand Stand at
Epsom in clear weather."
The sun was down now, behind the house, and over the 'prospect' a
luminous haze had settled, emanation of the long and prosperous day. Few
houses showed, but fields and trees faintly glistened, away to a loom of
downs.
"The country's changing," he said abruptly, "but there it'll be when
we're all gone. Look at those thrushes--the birds are sweet here in the
mornings. I'm glad to have washed my hands of London."
Her face was close to the window pane, and he was struck by its mournful
look. 'Wish I could make her look happy!' he thought. 'A pretty face,
but sad!' And taking up his can of hot water he went out into the
gallery.
"This is June's room," he said, opening the next door and putting the can
down; "I think you'll find everything." And closing the door behind her
he went back to his own room. Brushing his hair with his great ebony
brushes, and dabbing his forehead with eau de Cologne, he mused. She had
come so strangely--a sort of visitation; mysterious, even romantic, as if
his desire for company, for beauty, had been fulfilled by whatever it was
which fulfilled that sort of thing. And before the mirror he
straightened his still upright figure, passed the brushes over his great
white moustache, touched up his eyebrows with eau de Cologne, and rang
the bell.
"I forgot to let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me. Let cook
do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau and pair at
half-past ten to drive her back to Town to-night. Is Miss Holly asleep?"
The maid thought not. And old Jolyon, passing down the gallery, stole on
tiptoe towards the nursery, and opened the door whose hinges he kept
specially oiled that he might slip in and out in the evenings without
being heard.
But Holly was asleep, and lay like a miniature Madonna, of that type
which the old painters could not tell from Venus, when they had completed
her. Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on her face was perfect
peace--her little arrangements were evidently all right again. And old
Jolyon, in the twilight of the room, stood adoring her! It was so
charming, solemn, and loving--that little face. He had more than his
share of the blessed capacity of living again in the young. They were to
him his future life--all of a future life that his fundamental pagan
sanity perhaps admitted. There she was with everything before her, and
his blood--some of it--in her tiny veins. There she was, his little
companion, to be made as happy as ever he could make her, so that she
knew nothing but love. His heart swelled, and he went out, stilling the
sound of his patent-leather boots. In the corridor an eccentric notion
attacked him: To think that children should come to that which Irene had
told him she was helping! Women who were all, once, little things like
this one sleeping there! 'I must give her a cheque!' he mused; 'Can't
bear to think of them!' They had never borne reflecting on, those poor
outcasts; wounding too deeply the core of true refinement hidden under
layers of conformity to the sense of property--wounding too grievously
the deepest thing in him--a love of beauty which could give him, even
now, a flutter of the heart, thinking of his evening in the society of a
pretty woman. And he went downstairs, through the swinging doors, to the
back regions. There, in the wine-cellar, was a hock worth at least two
pounds a bottle, a Steinberg Cabinet, better than any Johannisberg that
ever went down throat; a wine of perfect bouquet, sweet as a
nectarine--nectar indeed! He got a bottle out, handling it like a baby,
and holding it level to the light, to look. Enshrined in its coat of
dust, that mellow coloured, slender-necked bottle gave him deep pleasure.
Three years to settle down again since the move from Town--ought to be in
prime condition! Thirty-five years ago he had bought it--thank God he had
kept his palate, and earned the right to drink it. She would appreciate
this; not a spice of acidity in a dozen. He wiped the bottle, drew the
cork with his own hands, put his nose down, inhaled its perfume, and went
back to the music room.
Irene was standing by the piano; she had taken off her hat and a lace
scarf she had been wearing, so that her gold-coloured hair was visible,
and the pallor of her neck. In her grey frock she made a pretty picture
for old Jolyon, against the rosewood of the piano.
He gave her his arm, and solemnly they went. The room, which had been
designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort, held now but a
little round table. In his present solitude the big dining-table
oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be removed till his son came
back. Here in the company of two really good copies of Raphael Madonnas
he was wont to dine alone. It was the only disconsolate hour of his day,
this summer weather. He had never been a large eater, like that great
chap Swithin, or Sylvanus Heythorp, or Anthony Thornworthy, those cronies
of past times; and to dine alone, overlooked by the Madonnas, was to him
but a sorrowful occupation, which he got through quickly, that he might
come to the more spiritual enjoyment of his coffee and cigar. But this
evening was a different matter! His eyes twinkled at her across the
little table and he spoke of Italy and Switzerland, telling her stories
of his travels there, and other experiences which he could no longer
recount to his son and grand-daughter because they knew them. This fresh
audience was precious to him; he had never become one of those old men
who ramble round and round the fields of reminiscence. Himself quickly
fatigued by the insensitive, he instinctively avoided fatiguing others,
and his natural flirtatiousness towards beauty guarded him specially in
his relations with a woman. He would have liked to draw her out, but
though she murmured and smiled and seemed to be enjoying what he told
her, he remained conscious of that mysterious remoteness which
constituted half her fascination. He could not bear women who threw
their shoulders and eyes at you, and chattered away; or hard-mouthed
women who laid down the law and knew more than you did. There was only
one quality in a woman that appealed to him--charm; and the quieter it
was, the more he liked it. And this one had charm, shadowy as afternoon
sunlight on those Italian hills and valleys he had loved. The feeling,
too, that she was, as it were, apart, cloistered, made her seem nearer to
himself, a strangely desirable companion. When a man is very old and
quite out of the running, he loves to feel secure from the rivalries of
youth, for he would still be first in the heart of beauty. And he drank
his hock, and watched her lips, and felt nearly young. But the dog
Balthasar lay watching her lips too, and despising in his heart the
interruptions of their talk, and the tilting of those greenish glasses
full of a golden fluid which was distasteful to him.
The light was just failing when they went back into the music-room. And,
cigar in mouth, old Jolyon said:
"Play me some Chopin."
By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the
texture of men's souls. Old Jolyon could not bear a strong cigar or
Wagner's music. He loved Beethoven and Mozart, Handel and Gluck, and
Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the operas of Meyerbeer; but of
late years he had been seduced by Chopin, just as in painting he had
succumbed to Botticelli. In yielding to these tastes he had been
conscious of divergence from the standard of the Golden Age. Their
poetry was not that of Milton and Byron and Tennyson; of Raphael and
Titian; Mozart and Beethoven. It was, as it were, behind a veil; their
poetry hit no one in the face, but slipped its fingers under the ribs and
turned and twisted, and melted up the heart. And, never certain that
this was healthy, he did not care a rap so long as he could see the
pictures of the one or hear the music of the other.
Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp festooned with
pearl-grey, and old Jolyon, in an armchair, whence he could see her,
crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar. She sat a few moments
with her hands on the keys, evidently searching her mind for what to give
him. Then she began and within old Jolyon there arose a sorrowful
pleasure, not quite like anything else in the world. He fell slowly into
a trance, interrupted only by the movements of taking the cigar out of
his mouth at long intervals, and replacing it. She was there, and the
hock within him, and the scent of tobacco; but there, too, was a world of
sunshine lingering into moonlight, and pools with storks upon them, and
bluish trees above, glowing with blurs of wine-red roses, and fields of
lavender where milk-white cows were grazing, and a woman all shadowy,
with dark eyes and a white neck, smiled, holding out her arms; and
through air which was like music a star dropped and was caught on a cow's
horn. He opened his eyes. Beautiful piece; she played well--the touch
of an angel! And he closed them again. He felt miraculously sad and
happy, as one does, standing under a lime-tree in full honey flower. Not
live one's own life again, but just stand there and bask in the smile of
a woman's eyes, and enjoy the bouquet! And he jerked his hand; the dog
Balthasar had reached up and licked it.
"Beautiful!" He said: "Go on--more Chopin!"
She began to play again. This time the resemblance between her and
'Chopin' struck him. The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in her
playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the soft darkness of her
eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a golden moon.
Seductive, yes; but nothing of Delilah in her or in that music. A long
blue spiral from his cigar ascended and dispersed. 'So we go out!' he
thought. 'No more beauty! Nothing?'
Again Irene stopped.
"Would you like some Gluck? He used to write his music in a sunlit
garden, with a bottle of Rhine wine beside him."
"Ah! yes. Let's have 'Orfeo.'" Round about him now were fields of gold
and silver flowers, white forms swaying in the sunlight, bright birds
flying to and fro. All was summer. Lingering waves of sweetness and
regret flooded his soul. Some cigar ash dropped, and taking out a silk
handkerchief to brush it off, he inhaled a mingled scent as of snuff and
eau de Cologne. 'Ah!' he thought, 'Indian summer--that's all!' and he
said: "You haven't played me 'Che faro.'"
She did not answer; did not move. He was conscious of something--some
strange upset. Suddenly he saw her rise and turn away, and a pang of
remorse shot through him. What a clumsy chap! Like Orpheus, she of
course--she too was looking for her lost one in the hall of memory! And
disturbed to the heart, he got up from his chair. She had gone to the
great window at the far end. Gingerly he followed. Her hands were
folded over her breast; he could just see her cheek, very white. And,
quite emotionalized, he said:
"There, there, my love!" The words had escaped him mechanically, for
they were those he used to Holly when she had a pain, but their effect
was instantaneously distressing. She raised her arms, covered her face
with them, and wept.
Old Jolyon stood gazing at her with eyes very deep from age. The
passionate shame she seemed feeling at her abandonment, so unlike the
control and quietude of her whole presence was as if she had never before
broken down in the presence of another being.
"There, there--there, there!" he murmured, and putting his hand out
reverently, touched her. She turned, and leaned the arms which covered
her face against him. Old Jolyon stood very still, keeping one thin hand
on her shoulder. Let her cry her heart out--it would do her good.
And the dog Balthasar, puzzled, sat down on his stern to examine them.
The window was still open, the curtains had not been drawn, the last of
daylight from without mingled with faint intrusion from the lamp within;
there was a scent of new-mown grass. With the wisdom of a long life old
Jolyon did not speak. Even grief sobbed itself out in time; only Time
was good for sorrow--Time who saw the passing of each mood, each emotion
in turn; Time the layer-to-rest. There came into his mind the words: 'As
panteth the hart after cooling streams'--but they were of no use to him.
Then, conscious of a scent of violets, he knew she was drying her eyes.
He put his chin forward, pressed his moustache against her forehead, and
felt her shake with a quivering of her whole body, as of a tree which
shakes itself free of raindrops. She put his hand to her lips, as if
saying: "All over now! Forgive me!"
The kiss filled him with a strange comfort; he led her back to where she
had been so upset. And the dog Balthasar, following, laid the bone of
one of the cutlets they had eaten at their feet.
Anxious to obliterate the memory of that emotion, he could think of
nothing better than china; and moving with her slowly from cabinet to
cabinet, he kept taking up bits of Dresden and Lowestoft and Chelsea,
turning them round and round with his thin, veined hands, whose skin,
faintly freckled, had such an aged look.
"I bought this at Jobson's," he would say; "cost me thirty pounds. It's
very old. That dog leaves his bones all over the place. This old
'ship-bowl' I picked up at the sale when that precious rip, the Marquis,
came to grief. But you don't remember. Here's a nice piece of Chelsea.
Now, what would you say this was?" And he was comforted, feeling that,
with her taste, she was taking a real interest in these things; for,
after all, nothing better composes the nerves than a doubtful piece of
china.
When the crunch of the carriage wheels was heard at last, he said:
"You must come again; you must come to lunch, then I can show you these
by daylight, and my little sweet--she's a dear little thing. This dog
seems to have taken a fancy to you."
For Balthasar, feeling that she was about to leave, was rubbing his side
against her leg. Going out under the porch with her, he said:
"He'll get you up in an hour and a quarter. Take this for your
protegees," and he slipped a cheque for fifty pounds into her hand. He
saw her brightened eyes, and heard her murmur: "Oh! Uncle Jolyon!" and a
real throb of pleasure went through him. That meant one or two poor
creatures helped a little, and it meant that she would come again. He
put his hand in at the window and grasped hers once more. The carriage
rolled away. He stood looking at the moon and the shadows of the trees,
and thought: 'A sweet night! She......!'
Generated TOC, Edit, Use, or Remove.
Contents
II
III
IV
IN CHANCERY
PART 1
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
PART II
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
PART III
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
II
Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny. Old Jolyon walked
and talked with Holly. At first he felt taller and full of a new vigour;
then he felt restless. Almost every afternoon they would enter the
coppice, and walk as far as the log. 'Well, she's not there!' he would
think, 'of course not!' And he would feel a little shorter, and drag his
feet walking up the hill home, with his hand clapped to his left side.
Now and then the thought would move in him: 'Did she come--or did I dream
it?' and he would stare at space, while the dog Balthasar stared at him.
Of course she would not come again! He opened the letters from Spain
with less excitement. They were not returning till July; he felt, oddly,
that he could bear it. Every day at dinner he screwed up his eyes and
looked at where she had sat. She was not there, so he unscrewed his eyes
again.
On the seventh afternoon he thought: 'I must go up and get some boots.'
He ordered Beacon, and set out. Passing from Putney towards Hyde Park he
reflected: 'I might as well go to Chelsea and see her.' And he called
out: "Just drive me to where you took that lady the other night." The
coachman turned his broad red face, and his juicy lips answered: "The
lady in grey, sir?"
"Yes, the lady in grey." What other ladies were there! Stodgy chap!
The carriage stopped before a small three-storied block of flats,
standing a little back from the river. With a practised eye old Jolyon
saw that they were cheap. 'I should think about sixty pound a year,' he
mused; and entering, he looked at the name-board. The name 'Forsyte' was
not on it, but against 'First Floor, Flat C' were the words: 'Mrs. Irene
Heron.' Ah! She had taken her maiden name again! And somehow this
pleased him. He went upstairs slowly, feeling his side a little. He
stood a moment, before ringing, to lose the feeling of drag and
fluttering there. She would not be in! And then--Boots! The thought
was black. What did he want with boots at his age? He could not wear out
all those he had.
"Your mistress at home?"
"Yes, sir."
"Say Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."
"Yes, sir, will you come this way?"
Old Jolyon followed a very little maid--not more than sixteen one would
say--into a very small drawing-room where the sun-blinds were drawn. It
held a cottage piano and little else save a vague fragrance and good
taste. He stood in the middle, with his top hat in his hand, and
thought: 'I expect she's very badly off!' There was a mirror above the
fireplace, and he saw himself reflected. An old-looking chap! He heard
a rustle, and turned round. She was so close that his moustache almost
brushed her forehead, just under her hair.
"I was driving up," he said. "Thought I'd look in on you, and ask you
how you got up the other night."
And, seeing her smile, he felt suddenly relieved. She was really glad to
see him, perhaps.
"Would you like to put on your hat and come for a drive in the Park?"
But while she was gone to put her hat on, he frowned. The Park! James
and Emily! Mrs. Nicholas, or some other member of his precious family
would be there very likely, prancing up and down. And they would go and
wag their tongues about having seen him with her, afterwards. Better
not! He did not wish to revive the echoes of the past on Forsyte
'Change. He removed a white hair from the lapel of his
closely-buttoned-up frock coat, and passed his hand over his cheeks,
moustache, and square chin. It felt very hollow there under the
cheekbones. He had not been eating much lately--he had better get that
little whippersnapper who attended Holly to give him a tonic. But she
had come back and when they were in the carriage, he said:
"Suppose we go and sit in Kensington Gardens instead?" and added with a
twinkle: "No prancing up and down there," as if she had been in the
secret of his thoughts.
Leaving the carriage, they entered those select precincts, and strolled
towards the water.
"You've gone back to your maiden name, I see," he said: "I'm not sorry."
She slipped her hand under his arm: "Has June forgiven me, Uncle Jolyon?"
He answered gently: "Yes--yes; of course, why not?"
"And have you?"
"I? I forgave you as soon as I saw how the land really lay." And
perhaps he had; his instinct had always been to forgive the beautiful.
She drew a deep breath. "I never regretted--I couldn't. Did you ever
love very deeply, Uncle Jolyon?"
At that strange question old Jolyon stared before him. Had he? He did
not seem to remember that he ever had. But he did not like to say this
to the young woman whose hand was touching his arm, whose life was
suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love. And he thought: 'If I
had met you when I was young I--I might have made a fool of myself,
perhaps.' And a longing to escape in generalities beset him.
"Love's a queer thing," he said, "fatal thing often. It was the
Greeks--wasn't it?--made love into a goddess; they were right, I dare
say, but then they lived in the Golden Age."
"Phil adored them."
Phil! The word jarred him, for suddenly--with his power to see all round
a thing, he perceived why she was putting up with him like this. She
wanted to talk about her lover! Well! If it was any pleasure to her!
And he said: "Ah! There was a bit of the sculptor in him, I fancy."
"Yes. He loved balance and symmetry; he loved the whole-hearted way the
Greeks gave themselves to art."
Balance! The chap had no balance at all, if he remembered; as for
symmetry--clean-built enough he was, no doubt; but those queer eyes of
his, and high cheek-bones--Symmetry?
"You're of the Golden Age, too, Uncle Jolyon."
Old Jolyon looked round at her. Was she chaffing him? No, her eyes were
soft as velvet. Was she flattering him? But if so, why? There was
nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.
"Phil thought so. He used to say: 'But I can never tell him that I
admire him.'"
Ah! There it was again. Her dead lover; her desire to talk of him! And
he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories, half grateful, as
if he recognised what a link they were between herself and him.
"He was a very talented young fellow," he murmured. "It's hot; I feel
the heat nowadays. Let's sit down."
They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves covered
them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon. A pleasure to sit there
and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with him. And the wish to
increase that liking, if he could, made him go on:
"I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw. He'd be at his best
with you. His ideas of art were a little new--to me "--he had stiffed
the word 'fangled.'
"Yes: but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty." Old Jolyon
thought: 'The devil he did!' but answered with a twinkle: "Well, I have,
or I shouldn't be sitting here with you." She was fascinating when she
smiled with her eyes, like that!
"He thought you had one of those hearts that never grow old. Phil had
real insight."
He was not taken in by this flattery spoken out of the past, out of a
longing to talk of her dead lover--not a bit; and yet it was precious to
hear, because she pleased his eyes and heart which--quite true!--had
never grown old. Was that because--unlike her and her dead lover, he had
never loved to desperation, had always kept his balance, his sense of
symmetry. Well! It had left him power, at eighty-four, to admire beauty.
And he thought, 'If I were a painter or a sculptor! But I'm an old chap.
Make hay while the sun shines.'
A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at the edge
of the shadow from their tree. The sunlight fell cruelly on their pale,
squashed, unkempt young faces. "We're an ugly lot!" said old Jolyon
suddenly. "It amazes me to see how--love triumphs over that."
"Love triumphs over everything!"
"The young think so," he muttered.
"Love has no age, no limit, and no death."
With that glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so large
and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life! But this
extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he said: "Well, if
it had limits, we shouldn't be born; for by George! it's got a lot to put
up with."
Then, removing his top hat, he brushed it round with a cuff. The great
clumsy thing heated his forehead; in these days he often got a rush of
blood to the head--his circulation was not what it had been.
She still sat gazing straight before her, and suddenly she murmured:
"It's strange enough that I'm alive."
Those words of Jo's 'Wild and lost' came back to him.
"Ah!" he said: "my son saw you for a moment--that day."
"Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a second it
was--Phil."
Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble. She put her hand over them, took it
away again, and went on calmly: "That night I went to the Embankment; a
woman caught me by the dress. She told me about herself. When one knows
that others suffer, one's ashamed."
"One of those?"
She nodded, and horror stirred within old Jolyon, the horror of one who
has never known a struggle with desperation. Almost against his will he
muttered: "Tell me, won't you?"
"I didn't care whether I lived or died. When you're like that, Fate
ceases to want to kill you. She took care of me three days--she never
left me. I had no money. That's why I do what I can for them, now."
But old Jolyon was thinking: 'No money!' What fate could compare with
that? Every other was involved in it.
"I wish you had come to me," he said. "Why didn't you?" But Irene did
not answer.
"Because my name was Forsyte, I suppose? Or was it June who kept you
away? How are you getting on now?" His eyes involuntarily swept her
body. Perhaps even now she was--! And yet she wasn't thin--not really!
"Oh! with my fifty pounds a year, I make just enough." The answer did
not reassure him; he had lost confidence. And that fellow Soames! But
his sense of justice stifled condemnation. No, she would certainly have
died rather than take another penny from him. Soft as she looked, there
must be strength in her somewhere--strength and fidelity. But what
business had young Bosinney to have got run over and left her stranded
like this!
"Well, you must come to me now," he said, "for anything you want, or I
shall be quite cut up." And putting on his hat, he rose. "Let's go and
get some tea. I told that lazy chap to put the horses up for an hour,
and come for me at your place. We'll take a cab presently; I can't walk
as I used to."
He enjoyed that stroll to the Kensington end of the gardens--the sound of
her voice, the glancing of her eyes, the subtle beauty of a charming form
moving beside him. He enjoyed their tea at Ruffel's in the High Street,
and came out thence with a great box of chocolates swung on his little
finger. He enjoyed the drive back to Chelsea in a hansom, smoking his
cigar. She had promised to come down next Sunday and play to him again,
and already in thought he was plucking carnations and early roses for her
to carry back to town. It was a pleasure to give her a little pleasure,
if it WERE pleasure from an old chap like him! The carriage was already
there when they arrived. Just like that fellow, who was always late when
he was wanted! Old Jolyon went in for a minute to say good-bye. The
little dark hall of the flat was impregnated with a disagreeable odour of
patchouli, and on a bench against the wall--its only furniture--he saw a
figure sitting. He heard Irene say softly: "Just one minute." In the
little drawing-room when the door was shut, he asked gravely: "One of
your protegees?"
"Yes. Now thanks to you, I can do something for her."
He stood, staring, and stroking that chin whose strength had frightened
so many in its time. The idea of her thus actually in contact with this
outcast grieved and frightened him. What could she do for them?
Nothing. Only soil and make trouble for herself, perhaps. And he said:
"Take care, my dear! The world puts the worst construction on
everything."
"I know that."
He was abashed by her quiet smile. "Well then--Sunday," he murmured:
"Good-bye."
She put her cheek forward for him to kiss.
"Good-bye," he said again; "take care of yourself." And he went out, not
looking towards the figure on the bench. He drove home by way of
Hammersmith; that he might stop at a place he knew of and tell them to
send her in two dozen of their best Burgundy. She must want picking-up
sometimes! Only in Richmond Park did he remember that he had gone up to
order himself some boots, and was surprised that he could have had so
paltry an idea.
III
The little spirits of the past which throng an old man's days had never
pushed their faces up to his so seldom as in the seventy hours elapsing
before Sunday came. The spirit of the future, with the charm of the
unknown, put up her lips instead. Old Jolyon was not restless now, and
paid no visits to the log, because she was coming to lunch. There is
wonderful finality about a meal; it removes a world of doubts, for no one
misses meals except for reasons beyond control. He played many games
with Holly on the lawn, pitching them up to her who was batting so as to
be ready to bowl to Jolly in the holidays. For she was not a Forsyte,
but Jolly was--and Forsytes always bat, until they have resigned and
reached the age of eighty-five. The dog Balthasar, in attendance, lay on
the ball as often as he could, and the page-boy fielded, till his face
was like the harvest moon. And because the time was getting shorter,
each day was longer and more golden than the last. On Friday night he
took a liver pill, his side hurt him rather, and though it was not the
liver side, there is no remedy like that. Anyone telling him that he had
found a new excitement in life and that excitement was not good for him,
would have been met by one of those steady and rather defiant looks of
his deep-set iron-grey eyes, which seemed to say: 'I know my own business
best.' He always had and always would.
On Sunday morning, when Holly had gone with her governess to church, he
visited the strawberry beds. There, accompanied by the dog Balthasar, he
examined the plants narrowly and succeeded in finding at least two dozen
berries which were really ripe. Stooping was not good for him, and he
became very dizzy and red in the forehead. Having placed the
strawberries in a dish on the dining-table, he washed his hands and
bathed his forehead with eau de Cologne. There, before the mirror, it
occurred to him that he was thinner. What a 'threadpaper' he had been
when he was young! It was nice to be slim--he could not bear a fat chap;
and yet perhaps his cheeks were too thin! She was to arrive by train at
half-past twelve and walk up, entering from the road past Drage's farm at
the far end of the coppice. And, having looked into June's room to see
that there was hot water ready, he set forth to meet her, leisurely, for
his heart was beating. The air smelled sweet, larks sang, and the Grand
Stand at Epsom was visible. A perfect day! On just such a one, no
doubt, six years ago, Soames had brought young Bosinney down with him to
look at the site before they began to build. It was Bosinney who had
pitched on the exact spot for the house--as June had often told him. In
these days he was thinking much about that young fellow, as if his spirit
were really haunting the field of his last work, on the chance of
seeing--her. Bosinney--the one man who had possessed her heart, to whom
she had given her whole self with rapture! At his age one could not, of
course, imagine such things, but there stirred in him a queer vague
aching--as it were the ghost of an impersonal jealousy; and a feeling,
too, more generous, of pity for that love so early lost. All over in a
few poor months! Well, well! He looked at his watch before entering the
coppice--only a quarter past, twenty-five minutes to wait! And then,
turning the corner of the path, he saw her exactly where he had seen her
the first time, on the log; and realised that she must have come by the
earlier train to sit there alone for a couple of hours at least. Two
hours of her society missed! What memory could make that log so dear to
her? His face showed what he was thinking, for she said at once:
"Forgive me, Uncle Jolyon; it was here that I first knew."
"Yes, yes; there it is for you whenever you like. You're looking a
little Londony; you're giving too many lessons."
That she should have to give lessons worried him. Lessons to a parcel of
young girls thumping out scales with their thick fingers.
"Where do you go to give them?" he asked.
"They're mostly Jewish families, luckily."
Old Jolyon stared; to all Forsytes Jews seem strange and doubtful.
"They love music, and they're very kind."
"They had better be, by George!" He took her arm--his side always hurt
him a little going uphill--and said:
"Did you ever see anything like those buttercups? They came like that in
a night."
Her eyes seemed really to fly over the field, like bees after the flowers
and the honey. "I wanted you to see them--wouldn't let them turn the
cows in yet." Then, remembering that she had come to talk about
Bosinney, he pointed to the clock-tower over the stables:
"I expect he wouldn't have let me put that there--had no notion of time,
if I remember."
But, pressing his arm to her, she talked of flowers instead, and he knew
it was done that he might not feel she came because of her dead lover.
"The best flower I can show you," he said, with a sort of triumph, "is my
little sweet. She'll be back from Church directly. There's something
about her which reminds me a little of you," and it did not seem to him
peculiar that he had put it thus, instead of saying: "There's something
about you which reminds me a little of her." Ah! And here she was!
Holly, followed closely by her elderly French governess, whose digestion
had been ruined twenty-two years ago in the siege of Strasbourg, came
rushing towards them from under the oak tree. She stopped about a dozen
yards away, to pat Balthasar and pretend that this was all she had in her
mind. Old Jolyon, who knew better, said:
"Well, my darling, here's the lady in grey I promised you."
Holly raised herself and looked up. He watched the two of them with a
twinkle, Irene smiling, Holly beginning with grave inquiry, passing into
a shy smile too, and then to something deeper. She had a sense of
beauty, that child--knew what was what! He enjoyed the sight of the kiss
between them.
"Mrs. Heron, Mam'zelle Beauce. Well, Mam'zelle--good sermon?"
For, now that he had not much more time before him, the only part of the
service connected with this world absorbed what interest in church
remained to him. Mam'zelle Beauce stretched out a spidery hand clad in a
black kid glove--she had been in the best families--and the rather sad
eyes of her lean yellowish face seemed to ask: "Are you well-brrred?"
Whenever Holly or Jolly did anything unpleasing to her--a not uncommon
occurrence--she would say to them: "The little Tayleurs never did
that--they were such well-brrred little children." Jolly hated the
little Tayleurs; Holly wondered dreadfully how it was she fell so short
of them. 'A thin rum little soul,' old Jolyon thought her--Mam'zelle
Beauce.
Luncheon was a successful meal, the mushrooms which he himself had picked
in the mushroom house, his chosen strawberries, and another bottle of the
Steinberg cabinet filled him with a certain aromatic spirituality, and a
conviction that he would have a touch of eczema to-morrow.
After lunch they sat under the oak tree drinking Turkish coffee. It was
no matter of grief to him when Mademoiselle Beauce withdrew to write her
Sunday letter to her sister, whose future had been endangered in the past
by swallowing a pin--an event held up daily in warning to the children to
eat slowly and digest what they had eaten. At the foot of the bank, on a
carriage rug, Holly and the dog Balthasar teased and loved each other,
and in the shade old Jolyon with his legs crossed and his cigar
luxuriously savoured, gazed at Irene sitting in the swing. A light,
vaguely swaying, grey figure with a fleck of sunlight here and there upon
it, lips just opened, eyes dark and soft under lids a little drooped.
She looked content; surely it did her good to come and see him! The
selfishness of age had not set its proper grip on him, for he could still
feel pleasure in the pleasure of others, realising that what he wanted,
though much, was not quite all that mattered.
"It's quiet here," he said; "you mustn't come down if you find it dull.
But it's a pleasure to see you. My little sweet is the only face which
gives me any pleasure, except yours."
From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be appreciated,
and this reassured him. "That's not humbug," he said. "I never told a
woman I admired her when I didn't. In fact I don't know when I've told a
woman I admired her, except my wife in the old days; and wives are
funny." He was silent, but resumed abruptly:
"She used to expect me to say it more often than I felt it, and there we
were." Her face looked mysteriously troubled, and, afraid that he had
said something painful, he hurried on: "When my little sweet marries, I
hope she'll find someone who knows what women feel. I shan't be here to
see it, but there's too much topsy-turvydom in marriage; I don't want her
to pitch up against that." And, aware that he had made bad worse, he
added: "That dog will scratch."
A silence followed. Of what was she thinking, this pretty creature whose
life was spoiled; who had done with love, and yet was made for love?
Some day when he was gone, perhaps, she would find another mate--not so
disorderly as that young fellow who had got himself run over. Ah! but
her husband?
"Does Soames never trouble you?" he asked.
She shook her head. Her face had closed up suddenly. For all her
softness there was something irreconcilable about her. And a glimpse of
light on the inexorable nature of sex antipathies strayed into a brain
which, belonging to early Victorian civilisation--so much older than this
of his old age--had never thought about such primitive things.
"That's a comfort," he said. "You can see the Grand Stand to-day. Shall
we take a turn round?"
Through the flower and fruit garden, against whose high outer walls peach
trees and nectarines were trained to the sun, through the stables, the
vinery, the mushroom house, the asparagus beds, the rosery, the
summer-house, he conducted her--even into the kitchen garden to see the
tiny green peas which Holly loved to scoop out of their pods with her
finger, and lick up from the palm of her little brown hand. Many
delightful things he showed her, while Holly and the dog Balthasar danced
ahead, or came to them at intervals for attention. It was one of the
happiest afternoons he had ever spent, but it tired him and he was glad
to sit down in the music room and let her give him tea. A special little
friend of Holly's had come in--a fair child with short hair like a boy's.
And the two sported in the distance, under the stairs, on the stairs, and
up in the gallery. Old Jolyon begged for Chopin. She played studies,
mazurkas, waltzes, till the two children, creeping near, stood at the
foot of the piano their dark and golden heads bent forward, listening.
Old Jolyon watched.
"Let's see you dance, you two!"
Shyly, with a false start, they began. Bobbing and circling, earnest,
not very adroit, they went past and past his chair to the strains of that
waltz. He watched them and the face of her who was playing turned
smiling towards those little dancers thinking:
'Sweetest picture I've seen for ages.'
A voice said:
"Hollee! Mais enfin--qu'est-ce que tu fais la--danser, le dimanche!
Viens, donc!"
But the children came close to old Jolyon, knowing that he would save
them, and gazed into a face which was decidedly 'caught out.'
"Better the day, better the deed, Mam'zelle. It's all my doing. Trot
along, chicks, and have your tea."
And, when they were gone, followed by the dog Balthasar, who took every
meal, he looked at Irene with a twinkle and said:
"Well, there we are! Aren't they sweet? Have you any little ones among
your pupils?"
"Yes, three--two of them darlings."
"Pretty?"
"Lovely!"
Old Jolyon sighed; he had an insatiable appetite for the very young. "My
little sweet," he said, "is devoted to music; she'll be a musician some
day. You wouldn't give me your opinion of her playing, I suppose?"
"Of course I will."
"You wouldn't like--" but he stifled the words "to give her lessons."
The idea that she gave lessons was unpleasant to him; yet it would mean
that he would see her regularly. She left the piano and came over to his
chair.
"I would like, very much; but there is--June. When are they coming
back?"
Old Jolyon frowned. "Not till the middle of next month. What does that
matter?"
"You said June had forgiven me; but she could never forget, Uncle
Jolyon."
Forget! She must forget, if he wanted her to.
But as if answering, Irene shook her head. "You know she couldn't; one
doesn't forget."
Always that wretched past! And he said with a sort of vexed finality:
"Well, we shall see."
He talked to her an hour or more, of the children, and a hundred little
things, till the carriage came round to take her home. And when she had
gone he went back to his chair, and sat there smoothing his face and
chin, dreaming over the day.
That evening after dinner he went to his study and took a sheet of paper.
He stayed for some minutes without writing, then rose and stood under the
masterpiece 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.' He was not thinking of that
picture, but of his life. He was going to leave her something in his
Will; nothing could so have stirred the stilly deeps of thought and
memory. He was going to leave her a portion of his wealth, of his
aspirations, deeds, qualities, work--all that had made that wealth;
going to leave her, too, a part of all he had missed in life, by his sane
and steady pursuit of wealth. All! What had he missed? 'Dutch Fishing
Boats' responded blankly; he crossed to the French window, and drawing
the curtain aside, opened it. A wind had got up, and one of last year's
oak leaves which had somehow survived the gardener's brooms, was dragging
itself with a tiny clicking rustle along the stone terrace in the
twilight. Except for that it was very quiet out there, and he could
smell the heliotrope watered not long since. A bat went by. A bird
uttered its last 'cheep.' And right above the oak tree the first star
shone. Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for some fresh years of
youth. Morbid notion! No such bargain was possible, that was real
tragedy! No making oneself new again for love or life or anything.
Nothing left to do but enjoy beauty from afar off while you could, and
leave it something in your Will. But how much? And, as if he could not
make that calculation looking out into the mild freedom of the country
night, he turned back and went up to the chimney-piece. There were his
pet bronzes--a Cleopatra with the asp at her breast; a Socrates; a
greyhound playing with her puppy; a strong man reining in some horses.
'They last!' he thought, and a pang went through his heart. They had a
thousand years of life before them!
'How much?' Well! enough at all events to save her getting old before her
time, to keep the lines out of her face as long as possible, and grey
from soiling that bright hair. He might live another five years. She
would be well over thirty by then. 'How much?' She had none of his
blood in her! In loyalty to the tenor of his life for forty years and
more, ever since he married and founded that mysterious thing, a family,
came this warning thought--None of his blood, no right to anything! It
was a luxury then, this notion. An extravagance, a petting of an old
man's whim, one of those things done in dotage. His real future was
vested in those who had his blood, in whom he would live on when he was
gone. He turned away from the bronzes and stood looking at the old
leather chair in which he had sat and smoked so many hundreds of cigars.
And suddenly he seemed to see her sitting there in her grey dress,
fragrant, soft, dark-eyed, graceful, looking up at him. Why! She cared
nothing for him, really; all she cared for was that lost lover of hers.
But she was there, whether she would or no, giving him pleasure with her
beauty and grace. One had no right to inflict an old man's company, no
right to ask her down to play to him and let him look at her--for no
reward! Pleasure must be paid for in this world. 'How much?' After
all, there was plenty; his son and his three grandchildren would never
miss that little lump. He had made it himself, nearly every penny; he
could leave it where he liked, allow himself this little pleasure. He
went back to the bureau. 'Well, I'm going to,' he thought, 'let them
think what they like. I'm going to!' And he sat down.
'How much?' Ten thousand, twenty thousand--how much? If only with his
money he could buy one year, one month of youth. And startled by that
thought, he wrote quickly:
'DEAR HERRING,--Draw me a codicil to this effect: "I leave to my niece
Irene Forsyte, born Irene Heron, by which name she now goes, fifteen
thousand pounds free of legacy duty." 'Yours faithfully, 'JOLYON
FORSYTE.'
When he had sealed and stamped the envelope, he went back to the window
and drew in a long breath. It was dark, but many stars shone now.
IV
He woke at half-past two, an hour which long experience had taught him
brings panic intensity to all awkward thoughts. Experience had also
taught him that a further waking at the proper hour of eight showed the
folly of such panic. On this particular morning the thought which
gathered rapid momentum was that if he became ill, at his age not
improbable, he would not see her. From this it was but a step to
realisation that he would be cut off, too, when his son and June returned
from Spain. How could he justify desire for the company of one who had
stolen--early morning does not mince words--June's lover? That lover
was dead; but June was a stubborn little thing; warm-hearted, but
stubborn as wood, and--quite true--not one who forgot! By the middle of
next month they would be back. He had barely five weeks left to enjoy
the new interest which had come into what remained of his life. Darkness
showed up to him absurdly clear the nature of his feeling. Admiration
for beauty--a craving to see that which delighted his eyes.
Preposterous, at his age! And yet--what other reason was there for asking
June to undergo such painful reminder, and how prevent his son and his
son's wife from thinking him very queer? He would be reduced to sneaking
up to London, which tired him; and the least indisposition would cut him
off even from that. He lay with eyes open, setting his jaw against the
prospect, and calling himself an old fool, while his heart beat loudly,
and then seemed to stop beating altogether. He had seen the dawn
lighting the window chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the
cocks crow, before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane. Five
weeks before he need bother, at his age an eternity! But that early
morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of one who
had always had his own way. He would see her as often as he wished! Why
not go up to town and make that codicil at his solicitor's instead of
writing about it; she might like to go to the opera! But, by train, for
he would not have that fat chap Beacon grinning behind his back.
Servants were such fools; and, as likely as not, they had known all the
past history of Irene and young Bosinney--servants knew everything, and
suspected the rest. He wrote to her that morning:
"MY DEAR IRENE,--I have to be up in town to-morrow. If you would like to
have a look in at the opera, come and dine with me quietly ...."
But where? It was decades since he had dined anywhere in London save at
his Club or at a private house. Ah! that new-fangled place close to
Covent Garden....
"Let me have a line to-morrow morning to the Piedmont Hotel whether to
expect you there at 7 o'clock."
"Yours affectionately,
"JOLYON FORSYTE."
She would understand that he just wanted to give her a little pleasure;
for the idea that she should guess he had this itch to see her was
instinctively unpleasant to him; it was not seemly that one so old should
go out of his way to see beauty, especially in a woman.
The journey next day, short though it was, and the visit to his lawyer's,
tired him. It was hot too, and after dressing for dinner he lay down on
the sofa in his bedroom to rest a little. He must have had a sort of
fainting fit, for he came to himself feeling very queer; and with some
difficulty rose and rang the bell. Why! it was past seven! And there he
was and she would be waiting. But suddenly the dizziness came on again,
and he was obliged to relapse on the sofa. He heard the maid's voice
say:
"Did you ring, sir?"
"Yes, come here"; he could not see her clearly, for the cloud in front of
his eyes. "I'm not well, I want some sal volatile."
"Yes, sir." Her voice sounded frightened.
Old Jolyon made an effort.
"Don't go. Take this message to my niece--a lady waiting in the hall--a
lady in grey. Say Mr. Forsyte is not well--the heat. He is very sorry;
if he is not down directly, she is not to wait dinner."
When she was gone, he thought feebly: 'Why did I say a lady in grey--she
may be in anything. Sal volatile!' He did not go off again, yet was not
conscious of how Irene came to be standing beside him, holding smelling
salts to his nose, and pushing a pillow up behind his head. He heard her
say anxiously: "Dear Uncle Jolyon, what is it?" was dimly conscious of
the soft pressure of her lips on his hand; then drew a long breath of
smelling salts, suddenly discovered strength in them, and sneezed.
"Ha!" he said, "it's nothing. How did you get here? Go down and
dine--the tickets are on the dressing-table. I shall be all right in a
minute."
He felt her cool hand on his forehead, smelled violets, and sat divided
between a sort of pleasure and a determination to be all right.
"Why! You are in grey!" he said. "Help me up." Once on his feet he gave
himself a shake.
"What business had I to go off like that!" And he moved very slowly to
the glass. What a cadaverous chap! Her voice, behind him, murmured:
"You mustn't come down, Uncle; you must rest."
"Fiddlesticks! A glass of champagne'll soon set me to rights. I can't
have you missing the opera."
But the journey down the corridor was troublesome. What carpets they had
in these newfangled places, so thick that you tripped up in them at every
step! In the lift he noticed how concerned she looked, and said with the
ghost of a twinkle:
"I'm a pretty host."
When the lift stopped he had to hold firmly to the seat to prevent its
slipping under him; but after soup and a glass of champagne he felt much
better, and began to enjoy an infirmity which had brought such solicitude
into her manner towards him.
"I should have liked you for a daughter," he said suddenly; and watching
the smile in her eyes, went on:
"You mustn't get wrapped up in the past at your time of life; plenty of
that when you get to my age. That's a nice dress--I like the style."
"I made it myself."
Ah! A woman who could make herself a pretty frock had not lost her
interest in life.
"Make hay while the sun shines," he said; "and drink that up. I want to
see some colour in your cheeks. We mustn't waste life; it doesn't do.
There's a new Marguerite to-night; let's hope she won't be fat. And
Mephisto--anything more dreadful than a fat chap playing the Devil I
can't imagine."
But they did not go to the opera after all, for in getting up from dinner
the dizziness came over him again, and she insisted on his staying quiet
and going to bed early. When he parted from her at the door of the
hotel, having paid the cabman to drive her to Chelsea, he sat down again
for a moment to enjoy the memory of her words: "You are such a darling to
me, Uncle Jolyon!" Why! Who wouldn't be! He would have liked to stay up
another day and take her to the Zoo, but two days running of him would
bore her to death. No, he must wait till next Sunday; she had promised
to come then. They would settle those lessons for Holly, if only for a
month. It would be something. That little Mam'zelle Beauce wouldn't
like it, but she would have to lump it. And crushing his old opera hat
against his chest he sought the lift.
He drove to Waterloo next morning, struggling with a desire to say:
'Drive me to Chelsea.' But his sense of proportion was too strong.
Besides, he still felt shaky, and did not want to risk another aberration
like that of last night, away from home. Holly, too, was expecting him,
and what he had in his bag for her. Not that there was any cupboard love
in his little sweet--she was a bundle of affection. Then, with the
rather bitter cynicism of the old, he wondered for a second whether it
was not cupboard love which made Irene put up with him. No, she was not
that sort either. She had, if anything, too little notion of how to
butter her bread, no sense of property, poor thing! Besides, he had not
breathed a word about that codicil, nor should he--sufficient unto the
day was the good thereof.
In the victoria which met him at the station Holly was restraining the
dog Balthasar, and their caresses made 'jubey' his drive home. All the
rest of that fine hot day and most of the next he was content and
peaceful, reposing in the shade, while the long lingering sunshine
showered gold on the lawns and the flowers. But on Thursday evening at
his lonely dinner he began to count the hours; sixty-five till he would
go down to meet her again in the little coppice, and walk up through the
fields at her side. He had intended to consult the doctor about his
fainting fit, but the fellow would be sure to insist on quiet, no
excitement and all that; and he did not mean to be tied by the leg, did
not want to be told of an infirmity--if there were one, could not afford
to hear of it at his time of life, now that this new interest had come.
And he carefully avoided making any mention of it in a letter to his son.
It would only bring them back with a run! How far this silence was due
to consideration for their pleasure, how far to regard for his own, he
did not pause to consider.
That night in his study he had just finished his cigar and was dozing
off, when he heard the rustle of a gown, and was conscious of a scent of
violets. Opening his eyes he saw her, dressed in grey, standing by the
fireplace, holding out her arms. The odd thing was that, though those
arms seemed to hold nothing, they were curved as if round someone's neck,
and her own neck was bent back, her lips open, her eyes closed. She
vanished at once, and there were the mantelpiece and his bronzes. But
those bronzes and the mantelpiece had not been there when she was, only
the fireplace and the wall! Shaken and troubled, he got up. 'I must
take medicine,' he thought; 'I can't be well.' His heart beat too fast,
he had an asthmatic feeling in the chest; and going to the window, he
opened it to get some air. A dog was barking far away, one of the dogs
at Gage's farm no doubt, beyond the coppice. A beautiful still night,
but dark. 'I dropped off,' he mused, 'that's it! And yet I'll swear my
eyes were open!' A sound like a sigh seemed to answer.
"What's that?" he said sharply, "who's there?"
Putting his hand to his side to still the beating of his heart, he
stepped out on the terrace. Something soft scurried by in the dark.
"Shoo!" It was that great grey cat. 'Young Bosinney was like a great
cat!' he thought. 'It was him in there, that she--that she was--He's
got her still!' He walked to the edge of the terrace, and looked down
into the darkness; he could just see the powdering of the daisies on the
unmown lawn. Here to-day and gone to-morrow! And there came the moon,
who saw all, young and old, alive and dead, and didn't care a dump! His
own turn soon. For a single day of youth he would give what was left!
And he turned again towards the house. He could see the windows of the
night nursery up there. His little sweet would be asleep. 'Hope that
dog won't wake her!' he thought. 'What is it makes us love, and makes us
die! I must go to bed.'
And across the terrace stones, growing grey in the moonlight, he passed
back within.
How should an old man live his days if not in dreaming of his well-spent
past? In that, at all events, there is no agitating warmth, only pale
winter sunshine. The shell can withstand the gentle beating of the
dynamos of memory. The present he should distrust; the future shun.
From beneath thick shade he should watch the sunlight creeping at his
toes. If there be sun of summer, let him not go out into it, mistaking
it for the Indian-summer sun! Thus peradventure he shall decline softly,
slowly, imperceptibly, until impatient Nature clutches his wind-pipe and
he gasps away to death some early morning before the world is aired, and
they put on his tombstone: 'In the fulness of years!' yea! If he
preserve his principles in perfect order, a Forsyte may live on long
after he is dead.
Old Jolyon was conscious of all this, and yet there was in him that which
transcended Forsyteism. For it is written that a Forsyte shall not love
beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than his own health. And
something beat within him in these days that with each throb fretted at
the thinning shell. His sagacity knew this, but it knew too that he
could not stop that beating, nor would if he could. And yet, if you had
told him he was living on his capital, he would have stared you down.
No, no; a man did not live on his capital; it was not done! The
shibboleths of the past are ever more real than the actualities of the
present. And he, to whom living on one's capital had always been
anathema, could not have borne to have applied so gross a phrase to his
own case. Pleasure is healthful; beauty good to see; to live again in the
youth of the young--and what else on earth was he doing!
Methodically, as had been the way of his whole life, he now arranged his
time. On Tuesdays he journeyed up to town by train; Irene came and dined
with him. And they went to the opera. On Thursdays he drove to town,
and, putting that fat chap and his horses up, met her in Kensington
Gardens, picking up the carriage after he had left her, and driving home
again in time for dinner. He threw out the casual formula that he had
business in London on those two days. On Wednesdays and Saturdays she
came down to give Holly music lessons. The greater the pleasure he took
in her society, the more scrupulously fastidious he became, just a
matter-of-fact and friendly uncle. Not even in feeling, really, was he
more--for, after all, there was his age. And yet, if she were late he
fidgeted himself to death. If she missed coming, which happened twice,
his eyes grew sad as an old dog's, and he failed to sleep.
And so a month went by--a month of summer in the fields, and in his
heart, with summer's heat and the fatigue thereof. Who could have
believed a few weeks back that he would have looked forward to his son's
and his grand-daughter's return with something like dread! There was such
a delicious freedom, such recovery of that independence a man enjoys
before he founds a family, about these weeks of lovely weather, and this
new companionship with one who demanded nothing, and remained always a
little unknown, retaining the fascination of mystery. It was like a
draught of wine to him who has been drinking water for so long that he
has almost forgotten the stir wine brings to his blood, the narcotic to
his brain. The flowers were coloured brighter, scents and music and the
sunlight had a living value--were no longer mere reminders of past
enjoyment. There was something now to live for which stirred him
continually to anticipation. He lived in that, not in retrospection; the
difference is considerable to any so old as he. The pleasures of the
table, never of much consequence to one naturally abstemious, had lost
all value. He ate little, without knowing what he ate; and every day
grew thinner and more worn to look at. He was again a 'threadpaper'; and
to this thinned form his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples,
gave more dignity than ever. He was very well aware that he ought to see
the doctor, but liberty was too sweet. He could not afford to pet his
frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his side at the expense of
liberty. Return to the vegetable existence he had led among the
agricultural journals with the life-size mangold wurzels, before this new
attraction came into his life--no! He exceeded his allowance of cigars.
Two a day had always been his rule. Now he smoked three and sometimes
four--a man will when he is filled with the creative spirit. But very
often he thought: 'I must give up smoking, and coffee; I must give up
rattling up to town.' But he did not; there was no one in any sort of
authority to notice him, and this was a priceless boon.
The servants perhaps wondered, but they were, naturally, dumb. Mam'zelle
Beauce was too concerned with her own digestion, and too 'wellbrrred' to
make personal allusions. Holly had not as yet an eye for the relative
appearance of him who was her plaything and her god. It was left for
Irene herself to beg him to eat more, to rest in the hot part of the day,
to take a tonic, and so forth. But she did not tell him that she was the
a cause of his thinness--for one cannot see the havoc oneself is
working. A man of eighty-five has no passions, but the Beauty which
produces passion works on in the old way, till death closes the eyes
which crave the sight of Her.
On the first day of the second week in July he received a letter from his
son in Paris to say that they would all be back on Friday. This had
always been more sure than Fate; but, with the pathetic improvidence
given to the old, that they may endure to the end, he had never quite
admitted it. Now he did, and something would have to be done. He had
ceased to be able to imagine life without this new interest, but that
which is not imagined sometimes exists, as Forsytes are perpetually
finding to their cost. He sat in his old leather chair, doubling up the
letter, and mumbling with his lips the end of an unlighted cigar. After
to-morrow his Tuesday expeditions to town would have to be abandoned. He
could still drive up, perhaps, once a week, on the pretext of seeing his
man of business. But even that would be dependent on his health, for now
they would begin to fuss about him. The lessons! The lessons must go
on! She must swallow down her scruples, and June must put her feelings
in her pocket. She had done so once, on the day after the news of
Bosinney's death; what she had done then, she could surely do again now.
Four years since that injury was inflicted on her--not Christian to keep
the memory of old sores alive. June's will was strong, but his was
stronger, for his sands were running out. Irene was soft, surely she
would do this for him, subdue her natural shrinking, sooner than give him
pain! The lessons must continue; for if they did, he was secure. And
lighting his cigar at last, he began trying to shape out how to put it to
them all, and explain this strange intimacy; how to veil and wrap it away
from the naked truth--that he could not bear to be deprived of the sight
of beauty. Ah! Holly! Holly was fond of her, Holly liked her lessons.
She would save him--his little sweet! And with that happy thought he
became serene, and wondered what he had been worrying about so fearfully.
He must not worry, it left him always curiously weak, and as if but half
present in his own body.
That evening after dinner he had a return of the dizziness, though he did
not faint. He would not ring the bell, because he knew it would mean a
fuss, and make his going up on the morrow more conspicuous. When one
grew old, the whole world was in conspiracy to limit freedom, and for
what reason?--just to keep the breath in him a little longer. He did not
want it at such cost. Only the dog Balthasar saw his lonely recovery
from that weakness; anxiously watched his master go to the sideboard and
drink some brandy, instead of giving him a biscuit. When at last old
Jolyon felt able to tackle the stairs he went up to bed. And, though
still shaky next morning, the thought of the evening sustained and
strengthened him. It was always such a pleasure to give her a good
dinner--he suspected her of undereating when she was alone; and, at the
opera to watch her eyes glow and brighten, the unconscious smiling of her
lips. She hadn't much pleasure, and this was the last time he would be
able to give her that treat. But when he was packing his bag he caught
himself wishing that he had not the fatigue of dressing for dinner before
him, and the exertion, too, of telling her about June's return.
The opera that evening was 'Carmen,' and he chose the last entr'acte to
break the news, instinctively putting it off till the latest moment.
She took it quietly, queerly; in fact, he did not know how she had taken
it before the wayward music lifted up again and silence became necessary.
The mask was down over her face, that mask behind which so much went on
that he could not see. She wanted time to think it over, no doubt! He
would not press her, for she would be coming to give her lesson to-morrow
afternoon, and he should see her then when she had got used to the idea.
In the cab he talked only of the Carmen; he had seen better in the old
days, but this one was not bad at all. When he took her hand to say
good-night, she bent quickly forward and kissed his forehead.
"Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon, you have been so sweet to me."
"To-morrow then," he said. "Good-night. Sleep well." She echoed
softly: "Sleep well" and from the cab window, already moving away, he saw
her face screwed round towards him, and her hand put out in a gesture
which seemed to linger.
He sought his room slowly. They never gave him the same, and he could
not get used to these 'spick-and-spandy' bedrooms with new furniture and
grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink roses. He was wakeful
and that wretched Habanera kept throbbing in his head.
His French had never been equal to its words, but its sense he knew, if
it had any sense, a gipsy thing--wild and unaccountable. Well, there was
in life something which upset all your care and plans--something which
made men and women dance to its pipes. And he lay staring from deep-sunk
eyes into the darkness where the unaccountable held sway. You thought
you had hold of life, but it slipped away behind you, took you by the
scruff of the neck, forced you here and forced you there, and then,
likely as not, squeezed life out of you! It took the very stars like
that, he shouldn't wonder, rubbed their noses together and flung them
apart; it had never done playing its pranks. Five million people in this
great blunderbuss of a town, and all of them at the mercy of that
Life-Force, like a lot of little dried peas hopping about on a board when
you struck your fist on it. Ah, well! Himself would not hop much
longer--a good long sleep would do him good!
How hot it was up here!--how noisy! His forehead burned; she had kissed
it just where he always worried; just there--as if she had known the very
place and wanted to kiss it all away for him. But, instead, her lips
left a patch of grievous uneasiness. She had never spoken in quite that
voice, had never before made that lingering gesture or looked back at him
as she drove away.
He got out of bed and pulled the curtains aside; his room faced down over
the river. There was little air, but the sight of that breadth of water
flowing by, calm, eternal, soothed him. 'The great thing,' he thought
'is not to make myself a nuisance. I'll think of my little sweet, and go
to sleep.' But it was long before the heat and throbbing of the London
night died out into the short slumber of the summer morning. And old
Jolyon had but forty winks.
When he reached home next day he went out to the flower garden, and with
the help of Holly, who was very delicate with flowers, gathered a great
bunch of carnations. They were, he told her, for 'the lady in grey'--a
name still bandied between them; and he put them in a bowl in his study
where he meant to tackle Irene the moment she came, on the subject of
June and future lessons. Their fragrance and colour would help. After
lunch he lay down, for he felt very tired, and the carriage would not
bring her from the station till four o'clock. But as the hour approached
he grew restless, and sought the schoolroom, which overlooked the drive.
The sun-blinds were down, and Holly was there with Mademoiselle Beauce,
sheltered from the heat of a stifling July day, attending to their
silkworms. Old Jolyon had a natural antipathy to these methodical
creatures, whose heads and colour reminded him of elephants; who nibbled
such quantities of holes in nice green leaves; and smelled, as he
thought, horrid. He sat down on a chintz-covered windowseat whence he
could see the drive, and get what air there was; and the dog Balthasar
who appreciated chintz on hot days, jumped up beside him. Over the
cottage piano a violet dust-sheet, faded almost to grey, was spread, and
on it the first lavender, whose scent filled the room. In spite of the
coolness here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of life
vehemently impressed his ebbed-down senses. Each sunbeam which came
through the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled very strong;
the lavender perfume was overpowering; those silkworms heaving up their
grey-green backs seemed horribly alive; and Holly's dark head bent over
them had a wonderfully silky sheen. A marvellous cruelly strong thing
was life when you were old and weak; it seemed to mock you with its
multitude of forms and its beating vitality. He had never, till those
last few weeks, had this curious feeling of being with one half of him
eagerly borne along in the stream of life, and with the other half left
on the bank, watching that helpless progress. Only when Irene was with
him did he lose this double consciousness.
Holly turned her head, pointed with her little brown fist to the
piano--for to point with a finger was not 'well-brrred'--and said slyly:
"Look at the 'lady in grey,' Gran; isn't she pretty to-day?"
Old Jolyon's heart gave a flutter, and for a second the room was clouded;
then it cleared, and he said with a twinkle:
"Who's been dressing her up?"
"Mam'zelle."
"Hollee! Don't be foolish!"
That prim little Frenchwoman! She hadn't yet got over the music lessons
being taken away from her. That wouldn't help. His little sweet was the
only friend they had. Well, they were her lessons. And he shouldn't
budge shouldn't budge for anything. He stroked the warm wool on
Balthasar's head, and heard Holly say: "When mother's home, there won't
be any changes, will there? She doesn't like strangers, you know."
The child's words seemed to bring the chilly atmosphere of opposition
about old Jolyon, and disclose all the menace to his new-found freedom.
Ah! He would have to resign himself to being an old man at the mercy of
care and love, or fight to keep this new and prized companionship; and to
fight tired him to death. But his thin, worn face hardened into
resolution till it appeared all Jaw. This was his house, and his affair;
he should not budge! He looked at his watch, old and thin like himself;
he had owned it fifty years. Past four already! And kissing the top of
Holly's head in passing, he went down to the hall. He wanted to get hold
of her before she went up to give her lesson. At the first sound of
wheels he stepped out into the porch, and saw at once that the victoria
was empty.
"The train's in, sir; but the lady 'asn't come."
Old Jolyon gave him a sharp upward look, his eyes seemed to push away
that fat chap's curiosity, and defy him to see the bitter disappointment
he was feeling.
"Very well," he said, and turned back into the house. He went to his
study and sat down, quivering like a leaf. What did this mean? She might
have lost her train, but he knew well enough she hadn't. 'Good-bye, dear
Uncle Jolyon.' Why 'Good-bye' and not 'Good-night'? And that hand of
hers lingering in the air. And her kiss. What did it mean? Vehement
alarm and irritation took possession of him. He got up and began to pace
the Turkey carpet, between window and wall. She was going to give him
up! He felt it for certain--and he defenceless. An old man wanting to
look on beauty! It was ridiculous! Age closed his mouth, paralysed his
power to fight. He had no right to what was warm and living, no right to
anything but memories and sorrow. He could not plead with her; even an
old man has his dignity. Defenceless! For an hour, lost to bodily
fatigue, he paced up and down, past the bowl of carnations he had
plucked, which mocked him with its scent. Of all things hard to bear,
the prostration of will-power is hardest, for one who has always had his
way. Nature had got him in its net, and like an unhappy fish he turned
and swam at the meshes, here and there, found no hole, no breaking point.
They brought him tea at five o'clock, and a letter. For a moment hope
beat up in him. He cut the envelope with the butter knife, and read:
"DEAREST UNCLE JOLYON,--I can't bear to write anything that may
disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night. I feel I
can't come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that June is coming
back. Some things go too deep to be forgotten. It has been such a joy
to see you and Holly. Perhaps I shall still see you sometimes when you
come up, though I'm sure it's not good for you; I can see you are tiring
yourself too much. I believe you ought to rest quite quietly all this
hot weather, and now you have your son and June coming back you will be
so happy. Thank you a million times for all your sweetness to me.
"Lovingly your IRENE."
So, there it was! Not good for him to have pleasure and what he chiefly
cared about; to try and put off feeling the inevitable end of all things,
the approach of death with its stealthy, rustling footsteps. Not good
for him! Not even she could see how she was his new lease of interest in
life, the incarnation of all the beauty he felt slipping from him.
His tea grew cold, his cigar remained unlit; and up and down he paced,
torn between his dignity and his hold on life. Intolerable to be
squeezed out slowly, without a say of your own, to live on when your will
was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to the ground with care
and love. Intolerable! He would see what telling her the truth would
do--the truth that he wanted the sight of her more than just a lingering
on. He sat down at his old bureau and took a pen. But he could not
write. There was something revolting in having to plead like this; plead
that she should warm his eyes with her beauty. It was tantamount to
confessing dotage. He simply could not. And instead, he wrote:
"I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to stand
in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my little
grand-daughter. But old men learn to forego their whims; they are
obliged to, even the whim to live must be foregone sooner or later; and
perhaps the sooner the better.
"My love to you,
"JOLYON FORSYTE."
'Bitter,' he thought, 'but I can't help it. I'm tired.' He sealed and
dropped it into the box for the evening post, and hearing it fall to the
bottom, thought: 'There goes all I've looked forward to!'
That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched, after his cigar
which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint, he went very slowly
upstairs and stole into the night-nursery. He sat down on the
window-seat. A night-light was burning, and he could just see Holly's
face, with one hand underneath the cheek. An early cockchafer buzzed in
the Japanese paper with which they had filled the grate, and one of the
horses in the stable stamped restlessly. To sleep like that child! He
pressed apart two rungs of the venetian blind and looked out. The moon
was rising, blood-red. He had never seen so red a moon. The woods and
fields out there were dropping to sleep too, in the last glimmer of the
summer light. And beauty, like a spirit, walked. 'I've had a long life,'
he thought, 'the best of nearly everything. I'm an ungrateful chap; I've
seen a lot of beauty in my time. Poor young Bosinney said I had a sense
of beauty. There's a man in the moon to-night!' A moth went by,
another, another. 'Ladies in grey!' He closed his eyes. A feeling that
he would never open them again beset him; he let it grow, let himself
sink; then, with a shiver, dragged the lids up. There was something
wrong with him, no doubt, deeply wrong; he would have to have the doctor
after all. It didn't much matter now! Into that coppice the moon-light
would have crept; there would be shadows, and those shadows would be the
only things awake. No birds, beasts, flowers, insects; Just the shadows
--moving; 'Ladies in grey!' Over that log they would climb; would
whisper together. She and Bosinney! Funny thought! And the frogs and
little things would whisper too! How the clock ticked, in here! It was
all eerie--out there in the light of that red moon; in here with the
little steady night-light and, the ticking clock and the nurse's
dressing-gown hanging from the edge of the screen, tall, like a woman's
figure. 'Lady in grey!' And a very odd thought beset him: Did she
exist? Had she ever come at all? Or was she but the emanation of all
the beauty he had loved and must leave so soon? The violet-grey spirit
with the dark eyes and the crown of amber hair, who walks the dawn and
the moonlight, and at blue-bell time? What was she, who was she, did she
exist? He rose and stood a moment clutching the window-sill, to give him
a sense of reality again; then began tiptoeing towards the door. He
stopped at the foot of the bed; and Holly, as if conscious of his eyes
fixed on her, stirred, sighed, and curled up closer in defence. He
tiptoed on and passed out into the dark passage; reached his room,
undressed at once, and stood before a mirror in his night-shirt. What a
scarecrow--with temples fallen in, and thin legs! His eyes resisted his
own image, and a look of pride came on his face. All was in league to
pull him down, even his reflection in the glass, but he was not
down--yet! He got into bed, and lay a long time without sleeping, trying
to reach resignation, only too well aware that fretting and
disappointment were very bad for him.
He woke in the morning so unrefreshed and strengthless that he sent for
the doctor. After sounding him, the fellow pulled a face as long as your
arm, and ordered him to stay in bed and give up smoking. That was no
hardship; there was nothing to get up for, and when he felt ill, tobacco
always lost its savour. He spent the morning languidly with the
sun-blinds down, turning and re-turning The Times, not reading much, the
dog Balthasar lying beside his bed. With his lunch they brought him a
telegram, running thus:
'Your letter received coming down this afternoon will be with you at
four-thirty. Irene.'
Coming down! After all! Then she did exist--and he was not deserted.
Coming down! A glow ran through his limbs; his cheeks and forehead felt
hot. He drank his soup, and pushed the tray-table away, lying very quiet
until they had removed lunch and left him alone; but every now and then
his eyes twinkled. Coming down! His heart beat fast, and then did not
seem to beat at all. At three o'clock he got up and dressed
deliberately, noiselessly. Holly and Mam'zelle would be in the
schoolroom, and the servants asleep after their dinner, he shouldn't
wonder. He opened his door cautiously, and went downstairs. In the hall
the dog Balthasar lay solitary, and, followed by him, old Jolyon passed
into his study and out into the burning afternoon. He meant to go down
and meet her in the coppice, but felt at once he could not manage that in
this heat. He sat down instead under the oak tree by the swing, and the
dog Balthasar, who also felt the heat, lay down beside him. He sat there
smiling. What a revel of bright minutes! What a hum of insects, and
cooing of pigeons! It was the quintessence of a summer day. Lovely!
And he was happy--happy as a sand-boy, whatever that might be. She was
coming; she had not given him up! He had everything in life he
wanted--except a little more breath, and less weight--just here! He
would see her when she emerged from the fernery, come swaying just a
little, a violet-grey figure passing over the daisies and dandelions and
'soldiers' on the lawn--the soldiers with their flowery crowns. He would
not move, but she would come up to him and say: 'Dear Uncle Jolyon, I am
sorry!' and sit in the swing and let him look at her and tell her that he
had not been very well but was all right now; and that dog would lick her
hand. That dog knew his master was fond of her; that dog was a good dog.
It was quite shady under the tree; the sun could not get at him, only
make the rest of the world bright so that he could see the Grand Stand at
Epsom away out there, very far, and the cows cropping the clover in the
field and swishing at the flies with their tails. He smelled the scent
of limes, and lavender. Ah! that was why there was such a racket of
bees. They were excited--busy, as his heart was busy and excited.
Drowsy, too, drowsy and drugged on honey and happiness; as his heart was
drugged and drowsy. Summer--summer--they seemed saying; great bees and
little bees, and the flies too!
The stable clock struck four; in half an hour she would be here. He would
have just one tiny nap, because he had had so little sleep of late; and
then he would be fresh for her, fresh for youth and beauty, coming
towards him across the sunlit lawn--lady in grey! And settling back in
his chair he closed his eyes. Some thistle-down came on what little air
there was, and pitched on his moustache more white than itself. He did
not know; but his breathing stirred it, caught there. A ray of sunlight
struck through and lodged on his boot. A bumble-bee alighted and
strolled on the crown of his Panama hat. And the delicious surge of
slumber reached the brain beneath that hat, and the head swayed forward
and rested on his breast. Summer--summer! So went the hum.
The stable clock struck the quarter past. The dog Balthasar stretched
and looked up at his master. The thistledown no longer moved. The dog
placed his chin over the sunlit foot. It did not stir. The dog withdrew
his chin quickly, rose, and leaped on old Jolyon's lap, looked in his
face, whined; then, leaping down, sat on his haunches, gazing up. And
suddenly he uttered a long, long howl.
But the thistledown was still as death, and the face of his old master.
Summer--summer--summer! The soundless footsteps on the grass!
1917
IN CHANCERY
Two households both alike in dignity, From ancient grudge, break into new
mutiny.
--Romeo and Juliet
TO JESSIE AND JOSEPH CONRAD
PART 1
CHAPTER I
AT TIMOTHY'S
The possessive instinct never stands still. Through florescence and
feud, frosts and fires, it followed the laws of progression even in the
Forsyte family which had believed it fixed for ever. Nor can it be
dissociated from environment any more than the quality of potato from the
soil.
The historian of the English eighties and nineties will, in his good
time, depict the somewhat rapid progression from self-contented and
contained provincialism to still more self-contented if less contained
imperialism--in other words, the 'possessive' instinct of the nation on
the move. And so, as if in conformity, was it with the Forsyte family.
They were spreading not merely on the surface, but within.
When, in 1895, Susan Hayman, the married Forsyte sister, followed her
husband at the ludicrously low age of seventy-four, and was cremated, it
made strangely little stir among the six old Forsytes left. For this
apathy there were three causes. First: the almost surreptitious burial
of old Jolyon in 1892 down at Robin Hill--first of the Forsytes to
desert the family grave at Highgate. That burial, coming a year after
Swithin's entirely proper funeral, had occasioned a great deal of talk on
Forsyte 'Change, the abode of Timothy Forsyte on the Bayswater Road,
London, which still collected and radiated family gossip. Opinions
ranged from the lamentation of Aunt Juley to the outspoken assertion of
Francie that it was 'a jolly good thing to stop all that stuffy Highgate
business.' Uncle Jolyon in his later years--indeed, ever since the
strange and lamentable affair between his granddaughter June's lover,
young Bosinney, and Irene, his nephew Soames Forsyte's wife--had
noticeably rapped the family's knuckles; and that way of his own which he
had always taken had begun to seem to them a little wayward. The
philosophic vein in him, of course, had always been too liable to crop
out of the strata of pure Forsyteism, so they were in a way prepared for
his interment in a strange spot. But the whole thing was an odd
business, and when the contents of his Will became current coin on
Forsyte 'Change, a shiver had gone round the clan. Out of his estate
(L145,304 gross, with liabilities L35 7s. 4d.) he had actually left
L15,000 to "whomever do you think, my dear? To Irene!" that runaway wife
of his nephew Soames; Irene, a woman who had almost disgraced the family,
and--still more amazing was to him no blood relation. Not out and out,
of course; only a life interest--only the income from it! Still, there
it was; and old Jolyon's claim to be the perfect Forsyte was ended once
for all. That, then, was the first reason why the burial of Susan
Hayman--at Woking--made little stir.
The second reason was altogether more expansive and imperial. Besides the
house on Campden Hill, Susan had a place (left her by Hayman when he
died) just over the border in Hants, where the Hayman boys had learned to
be such good shots and riders, as it was believed, which was of course
nice for them, and creditable to everybody; and the fact of owning
something really countrified seemed somehow to excuse the dispersion of
her remains--though what could have put cremation into her head they
could not think! The usual invitations, however, had been issued, and
Soames had gone down and young Nicholas, and the Will had been quite
satisfactory so far as it went, for she had only had a life interest; and
everything had gone quite smoothly to the children in equal shares.
The third reason why Susan's burial made little stir was the most
expansive of all. It was summed up daringly by Euphemia, the pale, the
thin: "Well, I think people have a right to their own bodies, even when
they're dead." Coming from a daughter of Nicholas, a Liberal of the old
school and most tyrannical, it was a startling remark--showing in a flash
what a lot of water had run under bridges since the death of Aunt Ann in
'86, just when the proprietorship of Soames over his wife's body was
acquiring the uncertainty which had led to such disaster. Euphemia, of
course, spoke like a child, and had no experience; for though well over
thirty by now, her name was still Forsyte. But, making all allowances,
her remark did undoubtedly show expansion of the principle of liberty,
decentralisation and shift in the central point of possession from others
to oneself. When Nicholas heard his daughter's remark from Aunt Hester
he had rapped out: "Wives and daughters! There's no end to their liberty
in these days. I knew that 'Jackson' case would lead to things--lugging
in Habeas Corpus like that!" He had, of course, never really forgiven
the Married Woman's Property Act, which would so have interfered with him
if he had not mercifully married before it was passed. But, in truth,
there was no denying the revolt among the younger Forsytes against being
owned by others; that, as it were, Colonial disposition to own oneself,
which is the paradoxical forerunner of Imperialism, was making progress
all the time. They were all now married, except George, confirmed to the
Turf and the Iseeum Club; Francie, pursuing her musical career in a
studio off the King's Road, Chelsea, and still taking 'lovers' to dances;
Euphemia, living at home and complaining of Nicholas; and those two
Dromios, Giles and Jesse Hayman. Of the third generation there were not
very many--young Jolyon had three, Winifred Dartie four, young Nicholas
six already, young Roger had one, Marian Tweetyman one; St. John Hayman
two. But the rest of the sixteen married--Soames, Rachel and Cicely of
James' family; Eustace and Thomas of Roger's; Ernest, Archibald and
Florence of Nicholas'; Augustus and Annabel Spender of the Hayman's--were
going down the years unreproduced.
Thus, of the ten old Forsytes twenty-one young Forsytes had been born;
but of the twenty-one young Forsytes there were as yet only seventeen
descendants; and it already seemed unlikely that there would be more than
a further unconsidered trifle or so. A student of statistics must have
noticed that the birth rate had varied in accordance with the rate of
interest for your money. Grandfather 'Superior Dosset' Forsyte in the
early nineteenth century had been getting ten per cent. for his, hence
ten children. Those ten, leaving out the four who had not married, and
Juley, whose husband Septimus Small had, of course, died almost at once,
had averaged from four to five per cent. for theirs, and produced
accordingly. The twenty-one whom they produced were now getting barely
three per cent. in the Consols to which their father had mostly tied the
Settlements they made to avoid death duties, and the six of them who had
been reproduced had seventeen children, or just the proper two and
five-sixths per stem.
There were other reasons, too, for this mild reproduction. A distrust of
their earning powers, natural where a sufficiency is guaranteed, together
with the knowledge that their fathers did not die, kept them cautious.
If one had children and not much income, the standard of taste and
comfort must of necessity go down; what was enough for two was not enough
for four, and so on--it would be better to wait and see what Father did.
Besides, it was nice to be able to take holidays unhampered. Sooner in
fact than own children, they preferred to concentrate on the ownership of
themselves, conforming to the growing tendency fin de siecle, as it was
called. In this way, little risk was run, and one would be able to have
a motor-car. Indeed, Eustace already had one, but it had shaken him
horribly, and broken one of his eye teeth; so that it would be better to
wait till they were a little safer. In the meantime, no more children!
Even young Nicholas was drawing in his horns, and had made no addition to
his six for quite three years.
The corporate decay, however, of the Forsytes, their dispersion rather,
of which all this was symptomatic, had not advanced so far as to prevent
a rally when Roger Forsyte died in 1899. It had been a glorious summer,
and after holidays abroad and at the sea they were practically all back
in London, when Roger with a touch of his old originality had suddenly
breathed his last at his own house in Princes Gardens. At Timothy's it
was whispered sadly that poor Roger had always been eccentric about his
digestion--had he not, for instance, preferred German mutton to all the
other brands?
Be that as it may, his funeral at Highgate had been perfect, and coming
away from it Soames Forsyte made almost mechanically for his Uncle
Timothy's in the Bayswater Road. The 'Old Things'--Aunt Juley and Aunt
Hester--would like to hear about it. His father--James--at eighty-eight
had not felt up to the fatigue of the funeral; and Timothy himself, of
course, had not gone; so that Nicholas had been the only brother present.
Still, there had been a fair gathering; and it would cheer Aunts Juley
and Hester up to know. The kindly thought was not unmixed with the
inevitable longing to get something out of everything you do, which is
the chief characteristic of Forsytes, and indeed of the saner elements in
every nation. In this practice of taking family matters to Timothy's in
the Bayswater Road, Soames was but following in the footsteps of his
father, who had been in the habit of going at least once a week to see
his sisters at Timothy's, and had only given it up when he lost his nerve
at eighty-six, and could not go out without Emily. To go with Emily was
of no use, for who could really talk to anyone in the presence of his own
wife? Like James in the old days, Soames found time to go there nearly
every Sunday, and sit in the little drawing-room into which, with his
undoubted taste, he had introduced a good deal of change and china not
quite up to his own fastidious mark, and at least two rather doubtful
Barbizon pictures, at Christmastides. He himself, who had done extremely
well with the Barbizons, had for some years past moved towards the
Marises, Israels, and Mauve, and was hoping to do better. In the
riverside house which he now inhabited near Mapledurham he had a gallery,
beautifully hung and lighted, to which few London dealers were strangers.
It served, too, as a Sunday afternoon attraction in those week-end
parties which his sisters, Winifred or Rachel, occasionally organised for
him. For though he was but a taciturn showman, his quiet collected
determinism seldom failed to influence his guests, who knew that his
reputation was grounded not on mere aesthetic fancy, but on his power of
gauging the future of market values. When he went to Timothy's he almost
always had some little tale of triumph over a dealer to unfold, and
dearly he loved that coo of pride with which his aunts would greet it.
This afternoon, however, he was differently animated, coming from Roger's
funeral in his neat dark clothes--not quite black, for after all an uncle
was but an uncle, and his soul abhorred excessive display of feeling.
Leaning back in a marqueterie chair and gazing down his uplifted nose at
the sky-blue walls plastered with gold frames, he was noticeably silent.
Whether because he had been to a funeral or not, the peculiar Forsyte
build of his face was seen to the best advantage this afternoon--a face
concave and long, with a jaw which divested of flesh would have seemed
extravagant: altogether a chinny face though not at all ill-looking. He
was feeling more strongly than ever that Timothy's was hopelessly
'rum-ti-too' and the souls of his aunts dismally mid-Victorian. The
subject on which alone he wanted to talk--his own undivorced
position--was unspeakable. And yet it occupied his mind to the exclusion
of all else. It was only since the Spring that this had been so and a
new feeling grown up which was egging him on towards what he knew might
well be folly in a Forsyte of forty-five. More and more of late he had
been conscious that he was 'getting on.' The fortune already
considerable when he conceived the house at Robin Hill which had finally
wrecked his marriage with Irene, had mounted with surprising vigour in
the twelve lonely years during which he had devoted himself to little
else. He was worth to-day well over a hundred thousand pounds, and had
no one to leave it to--no real object for going on with what was his
religion. Even if he were to relax his efforts, money made money, and he
felt that he would have a hundred and fifty thousand before he knew where
he was. There had always been a strongly domestic, philoprogenitive side
to Soames; baulked and frustrated, it had hidden itself away, but now had
crept out again in this his 'prime of life.' Concreted and focussed of
late by the attraction of a girl's undoubted beauty, it had become a
veritable prepossession.
And this girl was French, not likely to lose her head, or accept any
unlegalised position. Moreover, Soames himself disliked the thought of
that. He had tasted of the sordid side of sex during those long years of
forced celibacy, secretively, and always with disgust, for he was
fastidious, and his sense of law and order innate. He wanted no hole and
corner liaison. A marriage at the Embassy in Paris, a few months'
travel, and he could bring Annette back quite separated from a past which
in truth was not too distinguished, for she only kept the accounts in her
mother's Soho Restaurant; he could bring her back as something very new
and chic with her French taste and self-possession, to reign at 'The
Shelter' near Mapledurham. On Forsyte 'Change and among his riverside
friends it would be current that he had met a charming French girl on his
travels and married her. There would be the flavour of romance, and a
certain cachet about a French wife. No! He was not at all afraid of
that. It was only this cursed undivorced condition of his, and--and the
question whether Annette would take him, which he dared not put to the
touch until he had a clear and even dazzling future to offer her.
In his aunts' drawing-room he heard with but muffled ears those usual
questions: How was his dear father? Not going out, of course, now that
the weather was turning chilly? Would Soames be sure to tell him that
Hester had found boiled holly leaves most comforting for that pain in her
side; a poultice every three hours, with red flannel afterwards. And
could he relish just a little pot of their very best prune preserve--it
was so delicious this year, and had such a wonderful effect. Oh! and
about the Darties--had Soames heard that dear Winifred was having a most
distressing time with Montague? Timothy thought she really ought to have
protection It was said--but Soames mustn't take this for certain--that he
had given some of Winifred's jewellery to a dreadful dancer. It was such
a bad example for dear Val just as he was going to college. Soames had
not heard? Oh, but he must go and see his sister and look into it at
once! And did he think these Boers were really going to resist? Timothy
was in quite a stew about it. The price of Consols was so high, and he
had such a lot of money in them. Did Soames think they must go down if
there was a war? Soames nodded. But it would be over very quickly. It
would be so bad for Timothy if it wasn't. And of course Soames' dear
father would feel it very much at his age. Luckily poor dear Roger had
been spared this dreadful anxiety. And Aunt Juley with a little
handkerchief wiped away the large tear trying to climb the permanent pout
on her now quite withered left cheek; she was remembering dear Roger, and
all his originality, and how he used to stick pins into her when they
were little together. Aunt Hester, with her instinct for avoiding the
unpleasant, here chimed in: Did Soames think they would make Mr.
Chamberlain Prime Minister at once? He would settle it all so quickly.
She would like to see that old Kruger sent to St. Helena. She could
remember so well the news of Napoleon's death, and what a, relief it had
been to his grandfather. Of course she and Juley--"We were in
pantalettes then, my dear"--had not felt it much at the time.
Soames took a cup of tea from her, drank it quickly, and ate three of
those macaroons for which Timothy's was famous. His faint, pale,
supercilious smile had deepened just a little. Really, his family
remained hopelessly provincial, however much of London they might possess
between them. In these go-ahead days their provincialism stared out even
more than it used to. Why, old Nicholas was still a Free Trader, and a
member of that antediluvian home of Liberalism, the Remove Club--though,
to be sure, the members were pretty well all Conservatives now, or he
himself could not have joined; and Timothy, they said, still wore a
nightcap. Aunt Juley spoke again. Dear Soames was looking so well,
hardly a day older than he did when dear Ann died, and they were all
there together, dear Jolyon, and dear Swithin, and dear Roger. She
paused and caught the tear which had climbed the pout on her right cheek.
Did he--did he ever hear anything of Irene nowadays? Aunt Hester visibly
interposed her shoulder. Really, Juley was always saying something! The
smile left Soames' face, and he put his cup down. Here was his subject
broached for him, and for all his desire to expand, he could not take
advantage.
Aunt Juley went on rather hastily:
"They say dear Jolyon first left her that fifteen thousand out and out;
then of course he saw it would not be right, and made it for her life
only."
Had Soames heard that?
Soames nodded.
"Your cousin Jolyon is a widower now. He is her trustee; you knew that,
of course?"
Soames shook his head. He did know, but wished to show no interest.
Young Jolyon and he had not met since the day of Bosinney's death.
"He must be quite middle-aged by now," went on Aunt Juley dreamily. "Let
me see, he was born when your dear uncle lived in Mount Street; long
before they went to Stanhope Gate in December. Just before that dreadful
Commune. Over fifty! Fancy that! Such a pretty baby, and we were all
so proud of him; the very first of you all." Aunt Juley sighed, and a
lock of not quite her own hair came loose and straggled, so that Aunt
Hester gave a little shiver. Soames rose, he was experiencing a curious
piece of self-discovery. That old wound to his pride and self-esteem was
not yet closed. He had come thinking he could talk of it, even wanting
to talk of his fettered condition, and--behold! he was shrinking away
from this reminder by Aunt Juley, renowned for her Malapropisms.
Oh, Soames was not going already!
Soames smiled a little vindictively, and said:
"Yes. Good-bye. Remember me to Uncle Timothy!" And, leaving a cold
kiss on each forehead, whose wrinkles seemed to try and cling to his lips
as if longing to be kissed away, he left them looking brightly after
him--dear Soames, it had been so good of him to come to-day, when they
were not feeling very....!
With compunction tweaking at his chest Soames descended the stairs, where
was always that rather pleasant smell of camphor and port wine, and house
where draughts are not permitted. The poor old things--he had not meant
to be unkind! And in the street he instantly forgot them, repossessed by
the image of Annette and the thought of the cursed coil around him. Why
had he not pushed the thing through and obtained divorce when that
wretched Bosinney was run over, and there was evidence galore for the
asking! And he turned towards his sister Winifred Dartie's residence in
Green Street, Mayfair.
CHAPTER II
EXIT A MAN OF THE WORLD
That a man of the world so subject to the vicissitudes of fortunes as
Montague Dartie should still be living in a house he had inhabited twenty
years at least would have been more noticeable if the rent, rates, taxes,
and repairs of that house had not been defrayed by his father-in-law. By
that simple if wholesale device James Forsyte had secured a certain
stability in the lives of his daughter and his grandchildren. After all,
there is something invaluable about a safe roof over the head of a
sportsman so dashing as Dartie. Until the events of the last few days he
had been almost-supernaturally steady all this year. The fact was he had
acquired a half share in a filly of George Forsyte's, who had gone
irreparably on the turf, to the horror of Roger, now stilled by the
grave. Sleeve-links, by Martyr, out of Shirt-on-fire, by Suspender, was
a bay filly, three years old, who for a variety of reasons had never
shown her true form. With half ownership of this hopeful animal, all the
idealism latent somewhere in Dartie, as in every other man, had put up
its head, and kept him quietly ardent for months past. When a man has
some thing good to live for it is astonishing how sober he becomes; and
what Dartie had was really good--a three to one chance for an autumn
handicap, publicly assessed at twenty-five to one. The old-fashioned
heaven was a poor thing beside it, and his shirt was on the daughter of
Shirt-on-fire. But how much more than his shirt depended on this
granddaughter of Suspender! At that roving age of forty-five, trying to
Forsytes--and, though perhaps less distinguishable from any other age,
trying even to Darties--Montague had fixed his current fancy on a dancer.
It was no mean passion, but without money, and a good deal of it, likely
to remain a love as airy as her skirts; and Dartie never had any money,
subsisting miserably on what he could beg or borrow from Winifred--a
woman of character, who kept him because he was the father of her
children, and from a lingering admiration for those now-dying Wardour
Street good looks which in their youth had fascinated her. She, together
with anyone else who would lend him anything, and his losses at cards and
on the turf (extraordinary how some men make a good thing out of losses!)
were his whole means of subsistence; for James was now too old and
nervous to approach, and Soames too formidably adamant. It is not too
much to say that Dartie had been living on hope for months. He had never
been fond of money for itself, had always despised the Forsytes with
their investing habits, though careful to make such use of them as he
could. What he liked about money was what it bought--personal sensation.
"No real sportsman cares for money," he would say, borrowing a 'pony' if
it was no use trying for a 'monkey.' There was something delicious about
Montague Dartie. He was, as George Forsyte said, a 'daisy.'
The morning of the Handicap dawned clear and bright, the last day of
September, and Dartie who had travelled to Newmarket the night before,
arrayed himself in spotless checks and walked to an eminence to see his
half of the filly take her final canter: If she won he would be a cool
three thou. in pocket--a poor enough recompense for the sobriety and
patience of these weeks of hope, while they had been nursing her for this
race. But he had not been able to afford more. Should he 'lay it off'
at the eight to one to which she had advanced? This was his single
thought while the larks sang above him, and the grassy downs smelled
sweet, and the pretty filly passed, tossing her head and glowing like
satin.
After all, if he lost it would not be he who paid, and to 'lay it off'
would reduce his winnings to some fifteen hundred--hardly enough to
purchase a dancer out and out. Even more potent was the itch in the
blood of all the Darties for a real flutter. And turning to George he
said: "She's a clipper. She'll win hands down; I shall go the whole
hog." George, who had laid off every penny, and a few besides, and stood
to win, however it came out, grinned down on him from his bulky height,
with the words: "So ho, my wild one!" for after a chequered
apprenticeship weathered with the money of a deeply complaining Roger,
his Forsyte blood was beginning to stand him in good stead in the
profession of owner.
There are moments of disillusionment in the lives of men from which the
sensitive recorder shrinks. Suffice it to say that the good thing fell
down. Sleeve-links finished in the ruck. Dartie's shirt was lost.
Between the passing of these things and the day when Soames turned his
face towards Green Street, what had not happened!
When a man with the constitution of Montague Dartie has exercised
self-control for months from religious motives, and remains unrewarded,
he does not curse God and die, he curses God and lives, to the distress
of his family.
Winifred--a plucky woman, if a little too fashionable--who had borne the
brunt of him for exactly twenty-one years, had never really believed that
he would do what he now did. Like so many wives, she thought she knew
the worst, but she had not yet known him in his forty-fifth year, when
he, like other men, felt that it was now or never. Paying on the 2nd of
October a visit of inspection to her jewel case, she was horrified to
observe that her woman's crown and glory was gone--the pearls which
Montague had given her in '86, when Benedict was born, and which James
had been compelled to pay for in the spring of '87, to save scandal. She
consulted her husband at once. He 'pooh-poohed' the matter. They would
turn up! Nor till she said sharply: "Very well, then, Monty, I shall go
down to Scotland Yard myself," did he consent to take the matter in hand.
Alas! that the steady and resolved continuity of design necessary to the
accomplishment of sweeping operations should be liable to interruption by
drink. That night Dartie returned home without a care in the world or a
particle of reticence. Under normal conditions Winifred would merely
have locked her door and let him sleep it off, but torturing suspense
about her pearls had caused her to wait up for him. Taking a small
revolver from his pocket and holding on to the dining table, he told her
at once that he did not care a cursh whether she lived s'long as she was
quiet; but he himself wash tired o' life. Winifred, holding onto the
other side of the dining table, answered:
"Don't be a clown, Monty. Have you been to Scotland Yard?"
Placing the revolver against his chest, Dartie had pulled the trigger
several times. It was not loaded. Dropping it with an imprecation, he
had muttered: "For shake o' the children," and sank into a chair.
Winifred, having picked up the revolver, gave him some soda water. The
liquor had a magical effect. Life had illused him; Winifred had never
'unshtood'm.' If he hadn't the right to take the pearls he had given her
himself, who had? That Spanish filly had got'm. If Winifred had any
'jection he w'd cut--her--throat. What was the matter with that?
(Probably the first use of that celebrated phrase--so obscure are the
origins of even the most classical language!)
Winifred, who had learned self-containment in a hard school, looked up at
him, and said: "Spanish filly! Do you mean that girl we saw dancing in
the Pandemonium Ballet? Well, you are a thief and a blackguard." It had
been the last straw on a sorely loaded consciousness; reaching up from
his chair Dartie seized his wife's arm, and recalling the achievements of
his boyhood, twisted it. Winifred endured the agony with tears in her
eyes, but no murmur. Watching for a moment of weakness, she wrenched it
free; then placing the dining table between them, said between her teeth:
"You are the limit, Monty." (Undoubtedly the inception of that phrase
--so is English formed under the stress of circumstances.) Leaving Dartie
with foam on his dark moustache she went upstairs, and, after locking her
door and bathing her arm in hot water, lay awake all night, thinking of
her pearls adorning the neck of another, and of the consideration her
husband had presumably received therefor.
The man of the world awoke with a sense of being lost to that world, and
a dim recollection of having been called a 'limit.' He sat for half an
hour in the dawn and the armchair where he had slept--perhaps the
unhappiest half-hour he had ever spent, for even to a Dartie there is
something tragic about an end. And he knew that he had reached it.
Never again would he sleep in his dining-room and wake with the light
filtering through those curtains bought by Winifred at Nickens and
Jarveys with the money of James. Never again eat a devilled kidney at
that rose-wood table, after a roll in the sheets and a hot bath. He took
his note case from his dress coat pocket. Four hundred pounds, in fives
and tens--the remainder of the proceeds of his half of Sleeve-links, sold
last night, cash down, to George Forsyte, who, having won over the race,
had not conceived the sudden dislike to the animal which he himself now
felt. The ballet was going to Buenos Aires the day after to-morrow, and
he was going too. Full value for the pearls had not yet been received;
he was only at the soup.
He stole upstairs. Not daring to have a bath, or shave (besides, the
water would be cold), he changed his clothes and packed stealthily all he
could. It was hard to leave so many shining boots, but one must
sacrifice something. Then, carrying a valise in either hand, he stepped
out onto the landing. The house was very quiet--that house where he had
begotten his four children. It was a curious moment, this, outside the
room of his wife, once admired, if not perhaps loved, who had called him
'the limit.' He steeled himself with that phrase, and tiptoed on; but
the next door was harder to pass. It was the room his daughters slept
in. Maud was at school, but Imogen would be lying there; and moisture
came into Dartie's early morning eyes. She was the most like him of the
four, with her dark hair, and her luscious brown glance. Just coming
out, a pretty thing! He set down the two valises. This almost formal
abdication of fatherhood hurt him. The morning light fell on a face
which worked with real emotion. Nothing so false as penitence moved him;
but genuine paternal feeling, and that melancholy of 'never again.' He
moistened his lips; and complete irresolution for a moment paralysed his
legs in their check trousers. It was hard--hard to be thus compelled to
leave his home! "D---nit!" he muttered, "I never thought it would come
to this." Noises above warned him that the maids were beginning to get
up. And grasping the two valises, he tiptoed on downstairs. His cheeks
were wet, and the knowledge of that was comforting, as though it
guaranteed the genuineness of his sacrifice. He lingered a little in the
rooms below, to pack all the cigars he had, some papers, a crush hat, a
silver cigarette box, a Ruff's Guide. Then, mixing himself a stiff
whisky and soda, and lighting a cigarette, he stood hesitating before a
photograph of his two girls, in a silver frame. It belonged to Winifred.
'Never mind,' he thought; 'she can get another taken, and I can't!' He
slipped it into the valise. Then, putting on his hat and overcoat, he
took two others, his best malacca cane, an umbrella, and opened the front
door. Closing it softly behind him, he walked out, burdened as he had
never been in all his life, and made his way round the corner to wait
there for an early cab to come by.
Thus had passed Montague Dartie in the forty-fifth year of his age from
the house which he had called his own.
When Winifred came down, and realised that he was not in the house, her
first feeling was one of dull anger that he should thus elude the
reproaches she had carefully prepared in those long wakeful hours. He
had gone off to Newmarket or Brighton, with that woman as likely as not.
Disgusting! Forced to a complete reticence before Imogen and the
servants, and aware that her father's nerves would never stand the
disclosure, she had been unable to refrain from going to Timothy's that
afternoon, and pouring out the story of the pearls to Aunts Juley and
Hester in utter confidence. It was only on the following morning that
she noticed the disappearance of that photograph. What did it mean?
Careful examination of her husband's relics prompted the thought that he
had gone for good. As that conclusion hardened she stood quite still in
the middle of his dressing-room, with all the drawers pulled out, to try
and realise what she was feeling. By no means easy! Though he was 'the
limit' he was yet her property, and for the life of her she could not but
feel the poorer. To be widowed yet not widowed at forty-two; with four
children; made conspicuous, an object of commiseration! Gone to the arms
of a Spanish Jade! Memories, feelings, which she had thought quite dead,
revived within her, painful, sullen, tenacious. Mechanically she closed
drawer after drawer, went to her bed, lay on it, and buried her face in
the pillows. She did not cry. What was the use of that? When she got
off her bed to go down to lunch she felt as if only one thing could do
her good, and that was to have Val home. He--her eldest boy--who was to
go to Oxford next month at James' expense, was at Littlehampton taking
his final gallops with his trainer for Smalls, as he would have phrased
it following his father's diction. She caused a telegram to be sent to
him.
"I must see about his clothes," she said to Imogen; "I can't have him
going up to Oxford all anyhow. Those boys are so particular."
"Val's got heaps of things," Imogen answered.
"I know; but they want overhauling. I hope he'll come."
"He'll come like a shot, Mother. But he'll probably skew his Exam."
"I can't help that," said Winifred. "I want him."
With an innocent shrewd look at her mother's face, Imogen kept silence.
It was father, of course! Val did come 'like a shot' at six o'clock.
Imagine a cross between a pickle and a Forsyte and you have young Publius
Valerius Dartie. A youth so named could hardly turn out otherwise. When
he was born, Winifred, in the heyday of spirits, and the craving for
distinction, had determined that her children should have names such as
no others had ever had. (It was a mercy--she felt now--that she had
just not named Imogen Thisbe.) But it was to George Forsyte, always a
wag, that Val's christening was due. It so happened that Dartie, dining
with him a week after the birth of his son and heir, had mentioned this
aspiration of Winifred's.
"Call him Cato," said George, "it'll be damned piquant!" He had just won
a tenner on a horse of that name.
"Cato!" Dartie had replied--they were a little 'on' as the phrase was
even in those days--"it's not a Christian name."
"Halo you!" George called to a waiter in knee breeches. "Bring me the
Encyc'pedia Brit. from the Library, letter C."
The waiter brought it.
"Here you are!" said George, pointing with his cigar: "Cato Publius
Valerius by Virgil out of Lydia. That's what you want. Publius Valerius
is Christian enough."
Dartie, on arriving home, had informed Winifred. She had been charmed.
It was so 'chic.' And Publius Valerius became the baby's name, though it
afterwards transpired that they had got hold of the inferior Cato. In
1890, however, when little Publius was nearly ten, the word 'chic' went
out of fashion, and sobriety came in; Winifred began to have doubts.
They were confirmed by little Publius himself who returned from his first
term at school complaining that life was a burden to him--they called him
Pubby. Winifred--a woman of real decision--promptly changed his school
and his name to Val, the Publius being dropped even as an initial.
At nineteen he was a limber, freckled youth with a wide mouth, light
eyes, long dark lashes; a rather charming smile, considerable knowledge
of what he should not know, and no experience of what he ought to do.
Few boys had more narrowly escaped being expelled--the engaging rascal.
After kissing his mother and pinching Imogen, he ran upstairs three at a
time, and came down four, dressed for dinner. He was awfully sorry, but
his 'trainer,' who had come up too, had asked him to dine at the Oxford
and Cambridge; it wouldn't do to miss--the old chap would be hurt.
Winifred let him go with an unhappy pride. She had wanted him at home,
but it was very nice to know that his tutor was so fond of him. He went
out with a wink at Imogen, saying: "I say, Mother, could I have two
plover's eggs when I come in?--cook's got some. They top up so jolly
well. Oh! and look here--have you any money?--I had to borrow a fiver
from old Snobby."
Winifred, looking at him with fond shrewdness, answered:
"My dear, you are naughty about money. But you shouldn't pay him
to-night, anyway; you're his guest. How nice and slim he looked in his
white waistcoat, and his dark thick lashes!"
"Oh, but we may go to the theatre, you see, Mother; and I think I ought
to stand the tickets; he's always hard up, you know."
Winifred produced a five-pound note, saying:
"Well, perhaps you'd better pay him, but you mustn't stand the tickets
too."
Val pocketed the fiver.
"If I do, I can't," he said. "Good-night, Mum!"
He went out with his head up and his hat cocked joyously, sniffing the
air of Piccadilly like a young hound loosed into covert. Jolly good biz!
After that mouldy old slow hole down there!
He found his 'tutor,' not indeed at the Oxford and Cambridge, but at the
Goat's Club. This 'tutor' was a year older than himself, a good-looking
youth, with fine brown eyes, and smooth dark hair, a small mouth, an oval
face, languid, immaculate, cool to a degree, one of those young men who
without effort establish moral ascendancy over their companions. He had
missed being expelled from school a year before Val, had spent that year
at Oxford, and Val could almost see a halo round his head. His name was
Crum, and no one could get through money quicker. It seemed to be his
only aim in life--dazzling to young Val, in whom, however, the Forsyte
would stand apart, now and then, wondering where the value for that money
was.
They dined quietly, in style and taste; left the Club smoking cigars,
with just two bottles inside them, and dropped into stalls at the
Liberty. For Val the sound of comic songs, the sight of lovely legs were
fogged and interrupted by haunting fears that he would never equal Crum's
quiet dandyism. His idealism was roused; and when that is so, one is
never quite at ease. Surely he had too wide a mouth, not the best cut of
waistcoat, no braid on his trousers, and his lavender gloves had no thin
black stitchings down the back. Besides, he laughed too much--Crum never
laughed, he only smiled, with his regular dark brows raised a little so
that they formed a gable over his just drooped lids. No! he would never
be Crum's equal. All the same it was a jolly good show, and Cynthia Dark
simply ripping. Between the acts Crum regaled him with particulars of
Cynthia's private life, and the awful knowledge became Val's that, if he
liked, Crum could go behind. He simply longed to say: "I say, take me!"
but dared not, because of his deficiencies; and this made the last act or
two almost miserable. On coming out Crum said: "It's half an hour before
they close; let's go on to the Pandemonium." They took a hansom to
travel the hundred yards, and seats costing seven-and-six apiece because
they were going to stand, and walked into the Promenade. It was in these
little things, this utter negligence of money that Crum had such engaging
polish. The ballet was on its last legs and night, and the traffic of
the Promenade was suffering for the moment. Men and women were crowded
in three rows against the barrier. The whirl and dazzle on the stage,
the half dark, the mingled tobacco fumes and women's scent, all that
curious lure to promiscuity which belongs to Promenades, began to free
young Val from his idealism. He looked admiringly in a young woman's
face, saw she was not young, and quickly looked away. Shades of Cynthia
Dark! The young woman's arm touched his unconsciously; there was a scent
of musk and mignonette. Val looked round the corner of his lashes.
Perhaps she was young, after all. Her foot trod on his; she begged his
pardon. He said:
"Not at all; jolly good ballet, isn't it?"
"Oh, I'm tired of it; aren't you?"
Young Val smiled--his wide, rather charming smile. Beyond that he did
not go--not yet convinced. The Forsyte in him stood out for greater
certainty. And on the stage the ballet whirled its kaleidoscope of
snow-white, salmon-pink, and emerald-green and violet and seemed suddenly
to freeze into a stilly spangled pyramid. Applause broke out, and it was
over! Maroon curtains had cut it off. The semi-circle of men and women
round the barrier broke up, the young woman's arm pressed his. A little
way off disturbance seemed centring round a man with a pink carnation;
Val stole another glance at the young woman, who was looking towards it.
Three men, unsteady, emerged, walking arm in arm. The one in the centre
wore the pink carnation, a white waistcoat, a dark moustache; he reeled a
little as he walked. Crum's voice said slow and level: "Look at that
bounder, he's screwed!" Val turned to look. The 'bounder' had
disengaged his arm, and was pointing straight at them. Crum's voice,
level as ever, said:
"He seems to know you!" The 'bounder' spoke:
"H'llo!" he said. "You f'llows, look! There's my young rascal of a
son!"
Val saw. It was his father! He could have sunk into the crimson carpet.
It was not the meeting in this place, not even that his father was
'screwed'; it was Crum's word 'bounder,' which, as by heavenly
revelation, he perceived at that moment to be true. Yes, his father
looked a bounder with his dark good looks, and his pink carnation, and
his square, self-assertive walk. And without a word he ducked behind the
young woman and slipped out of the Promenade. He heard the word, "Val!"
behind him, and ran down deep-carpeted steps past the 'chuckersout,' into
the Square.
To be ashamed of his own father is perhaps the bitterest experience a
young man can go through. It seemed to Val, hurrying away, that his
career had ended before it had begun. How could he go up to Oxford now
amongst all those chaps, those splendid friends of Crum's, who would know
that his father was a 'bounder'! And suddenly he hated Crum. Who the
devil was Crum, to say that? If Crum had been beside him at that moment,
he would certainly have been jostled off the pavement. His own
father--his own! A choke came up in his throat, and he dashed his hands
down deep into his overcoat pockets. Damn Crum! He conceived the wild
idea of running back and fending his father, taking him by the arm and
walking about with him in front of Crum; but gave it up at once and
pursued his way down Piccadilly. A young woman planted herself before
him. "Not so angry, darling!" He shied, dodged her, and suddenly became
quite cool. If Crum ever said a word, he would jolly well punch his
head, and there would be an end of it. He walked a hundred yards or
more, contented with that thought, then lost its comfort utterly. It
wasn't simple like that! He remembered how, at school, when some parent
came down who did not pass the standard, it just clung to the fellow
afterwards. It was one of those things nothing could remove. Why had
his mother married his father, if he was a 'bounder'? It was bitterly
unfair--jolly low-down on a fellow to give him a 'bounder' for father.
The worst of it was that now Crum had spoken the word, he realised that
he had long known subconsciously that his father was not 'the clean
potato.' It was the beastliest thing that had ever happened to
him--beastliest thing that had ever happened to any fellow! And,
down-hearted as he had never yet been, he came to Green Street, and let
himself in with a smuggled latch-key. In the dining-room his plover's
eggs were set invitingly, with some cut bread and butter, and a little
whisky at the bottom of a decanter--just enough, as Winifred had
thought, for him to feel himself a man. It made him sick to look at
them, and he went upstairs.
Winifred heard him pass, and thought: 'The dear boy's in. Thank
goodness! If he takes after his father I don't know what I shall do!
But he won't he's like me. Dear Val!'
CHAPTER III
SOAMES PREPARES TO TAKE STEPS
When Soames entered his sister's little Louis Quinze drawing-room, with
its small balcony, always flowered with hanging geraniums in the summer,
and now with pots of Lilium Auratum, he was struck by the immutability of
human affairs. It looked just the same as on his first visit to the
newly married Darties twenty-one years ago. He had chosen the furniture
himself, and so completely that no subsequent purchase had ever been able
to change the room's atmosphere. Yes, he had founded his sister well,
and she had wanted it. Indeed, it said a great deal for Winifred that
after all this time with Dartie she remained well-founded. From the
first Soames had nosed out Dartie's nature from underneath the
plausibility, savoir faire, and good looks which had dazzled Winifred,
her mother, and even James, to the extent of permitting the fellow to
marry his daughter without bringing anything but shares of no value into
settlement.
Winifred, whom he noticed next to the furniture, was sitting at her Buhl
bureau with a letter in her hand. She rose and came towards him. Tall
as himself, strong in the cheekbones, well tailored, something in her
face disturbed Soames. She crumpled the letter in her hand, but seemed
to change her mind and held it out to him. He was her lawyer as well as
her brother.
Soames read, on Iseeum Club paper, these words:
'You will not get chance to insult in my own again. I am leaving country
to-morrow. It's played out. I'm tired of being insulted by you. You've
brought on yourself. No self-respecting man can stand it. I shall not
ask you for anything again. Good-bye. I took the photograph of the two
girls. Give them my love. I don't care what your family say. It's all
their doing. I'm going to live new life.
'M.D.'
This after-dinner note had a splotch on it not yet quite dry. He looked
at Winifred--the splotch had clearly come from her; and he checked the
words: 'Good riddance!' Then it occurred to him that with this letter
she was entering that very state which he himself so earnestly desired to
quit--the state of a Forsyte who was not divorced.
Winifred had turned away, and was taking a long sniff from a little
gold-topped bottle. A dull commiseration, together with a vague sense of
injury, crept about Soames' heart. He had come to her to talk of his own
position, and get sympathy, and here was she in the same position,
wanting of course to talk of it, and get sympathy from him. It was
always like that! Nobody ever seemed to think that he had troubles and
interests of his own. He folded up the letter with the splotch inside,
and said:
"What's it all about, now?"
Winifred recited the story of the pearls calmly.
"Do you think he's really gone, Soames? You see the state he was in when
he wrote that."
Soames who, when he desired a thing, placated Providence by pretending
that he did not think it likely to happen, answered:
"I shouldn't think so. I might find out at his Club."
"If George is there," said Winifred, "he would know."
"George?" said Soames; "I saw him at his father's funeral."
"Then he's sure to be there."
Soames, whose good sense applauded his sister's acumen, said grudgingly:
"Well, I'll go round. Have you said anything in Park Lane?"
"I've told Emily," returned Winifred, who retained that 'chic' way of
describing her mother. "Father would have a fit."
Indeed, anything untoward was now sedulously kept from James. With
another look round at the furniture, as if to gauge his sister's exact
position, Soames went out towards Piccadilly. The evening was drawing
in--a touch of chill in the October haze. He walked quickly, with his
close and concentrated air. He must get through, for he wished to dine
in Soho. On hearing from the hall porter at the Iseeum that Mr. Dartie
had not been in to-day, he looked at the trusty fellow and decided only
to ask if Mr. George Forsyte was in the Club. He was. Soames, who
always looked askance at his cousin George, as one inclined to jest at
his expense, followed the pageboy, slightly reassured by the thought that
George had just lost his father. He must have come in for about thirty
thousand, besides what he had under that settlement of Roger's, which had
avoided death duty. He found George in a bow-window, staring out across
a half-eaten plate of muffins. His tall, bulky, black-clothed figure
loomed almost threatening, though preserving still the supernatural
neatness of the racing man. With a faint grin on his fleshy face, he
said:
"Hallo, Soames! Have a muffin?"
"No, thanks," murmured Soames; and, nursing his hat, with the desire to
say something suitable and sympathetic, added:
"How's your mother?"
"Thanks," said George; "so-so. Haven't seen you for ages. You never go
racing. How's the City?"
Soames, scenting the approach of a jest, closed up, and answered:
"I wanted to ask you about Dartie. I hear he's...."
"Flitted, made a bolt to Buenos Aires with the fair Lola. Good for
Winifred and the little Darties. He's a treat."
Soames nodded. Naturally inimical as these cousins were, Dartie made
them kin.
"Uncle James'll sleep in his bed now," resumed George; "I suppose he's
had a lot off you, too."
Soames smiled.
"Ah! You saw him further," said George amicably. "He's a real rouser.
Young Val will want a bit of looking after. I was always sorry for
Winifred. She's a plucky woman."
Again Soames nodded. "I must be getting back to her," he said; "she just
wanted to know for certain. We may have to take steps. I suppose there's
no mistake?"
"It's quite O.K.," said George--it was he who invented so many of those
quaint sayings which have been assigned to other sources. "He was drunk
as a lord last night; but he went off all right this morning. His ship's
the Tuscarora;" and, fishing out a card, he read mockingly:
"'Mr. Montague Dartie, Poste Restante, Buenos Aires.' I should hurry up
with the steps, if I were you. He fairly fed me up last night."
"Yes," said Soames; "but it's not always easy." Then, conscious from
George's eyes that he had roused reminiscence of his own affair, he got
up, and held out his hand. George rose too.
"Remember me to Winifred.... You'll enter her for the Divorce Stakes
straight off if you ask me."
Soames took a sidelong look back at him from the doorway. George had
seated himself again and was staring before him; he looked big and lonely
in those black clothes. Soames had never known him so subdued. 'I
suppose he feels it in a way,' he thought. 'They must have about fifty
thousand each, all told. They ought to keep the estate together. If
there's a war, house property will go down. Uncle Roger was a good judge,
though.' And the face of Annette rose before him in the darkening
street; her brown hair and her blue eyes with their dark lashes, her
fresh lips and cheeks, dewy and blooming in spite of London, her perfect
French figure. 'Take steps!' he thought. Re-entering Winifred's house
he encountered Val, and they went in together. An idea had occurred to
Soames. His cousin Jolyon was Irene's trustee, the first step would be to
go down and see him at Robin Hill. Robin Hill! The odd--the very odd
feeling those words brought back! Robin Hill--the house Bosinney had
built for him and Irene--the house they had never lived in--the fatal
house! And Jolyon lived there now! H'm! And suddenly he thought: 'They
say he's got a boy at Oxford! Why not take young Val down and introduce
them! It's an excuse! Less bald--very much less bald!' So, as they went
upstairs, he said to Val:
"You've got a cousin at Oxford; you've never met him. I should like to
take you down with me to-morrow to where he lives and introduce you.
You'll find it useful."
Val, receiving the idea with but moderate transports, Soames clinched it.
"I'll call for you after lunch. It's in the country--not far; you'll
enjoy it."
On the threshold of the drawing-room he recalled with an effort that the
steps he contemplated concerned Winifred at the moment, not himself.
Winifred was still sitting at her Buhl bureau.
"It's quite true," he said; "he's gone to Buenos Aires, started this
morning--we'd better have him shadowed when he lands. I'll cable at
once. Otherwise we may have a lot of expense. The sooner these things
are done the better. I'm always regretting that I didn't..." he stopped,
and looked sidelong at the silent Winifred. "By the way," he went on,
"can you prove cruelty?"
Winifred said in a dull voice:
"I don't know. What is cruelty?"
"Well, has he struck you, or anything?"
Winifred shook herself, and her jaw grew square.
"He twisted my arm. Or would pointing a pistol count? Or being too
drunk to undress himself, or--No--I can't bring in the children."
"No," said Soames; "no! I wonder! Of course, there's legal
separation--we can get that. But separation! Um!"
"What does it mean?" asked Winifred desolately.
"That he can't touch you, or you him; you're both of you married and
unmarried." And again he grunted. What was it, in fact, but his own
accursed position, legalised! No, he would not put her into that!
"It must be divorce," he said decisively; "failing cruelty, there's
desertion. There's a way of shortening the two years, now. We get the
Court to give us restitution of conjugal rights. Then if he doesn't
obey, we can bring a suit for divorce in six months' time. Of course you
don't want him back. But they won't know that. Still, there's the risk
that he might come. I'd rather try cruelty."
Winifred shook her head. "It's so beastly."
"Well," Soames murmured, "perhaps there isn't much risk so long as he's
infatuated and got money. Don't say anything to anybody, and don't pay
any of his debts."
Winifred sighed. In spite of all she had been through, the sense of loss
was heavy on her. And this idea of not paying his debts any more brought
it home to her as nothing else yet had. Some richness seemed to have
gone out of life. Without her husband, without her pearls, without that
intimate sense that she made a brave show above the domestic whirlpool,
she would now have to face the world. She felt bereaved indeed.
And into the chilly kiss he placed on her forehead, Soames put more than
his usual warmth.
"I have to go down to Robin Hill to-morrow," he said, "to see young
Jolyon on business. He's got a boy at Oxford. I'd like to take Val with
me and introduce him. Come down to 'The Shelter' for the week-end and
bring the children. Oh! by the way, no, that won't do; I've got some
other people coming." So saying, he left her and turned towards Soho.
CHAPTER IV
SOHO
Of all quarters in the queer adventurous amalgam called London, Soho is
perhaps least suited to the Forsyte spirit. 'So-ho, my wild one!'
George would have said if he had seen his cousin going there. Untidy,
full of Greeks, Ishmaelites, cats, Italians, tomatoes, restaurants,
organs, coloured stuffs, queer names, people looking out of upper
windows, it dwells remote from the British Body Politic. Yet has it
haphazard proprietary instincts of its own, and a certain possessive
prosperity which keeps its rents up when those of other quarters go down.
For long years Soames' acquaintanceship with Soho had been confined to
its Western bastion, Wardour Street. Many bargains had he picked up
there. Even during those seven years at Brighton after Bosinney's death
and Irene's flight, he had bought treasures there sometimes, though he
had no place to put them; for when the conviction that his wife had gone
for good at last became firm within him, he had caused a board to be put
up in Montpellier Square:
FOR SALE
THE LEASE OF THIS DESIRABLE RESIDENCE
Enquire of Messrs. Lesson and Tukes,
Court Street, Belgravia.
It had sold within a week--that desirable residence, in the shadow of
whose perfection a man and a woman had eaten their hearts out.
Of a misty January evening, just before the board was taken down, Soames
had gone there once more, and stood against the Square railings, looking
at its unlighted windows, chewing the cud of possessive memories which
had turned so bitter in the mouth. Why had she never loved him? Why?
She had been given all she had wanted, and in return had given him, for
three long years, all he had wanted--except, indeed, her heart. He had
uttered a little involuntary groan, and a passing policeman had glanced
suspiciously at him who no longer possessed the right to enter that green
door with the carved brass knocker beneath the board 'For Sale!' A
choking sensation had attacked his throat, and he had hurried away into
the mist. That evening he had gone to Brighton to live....
Approaching Malta Street, Soho, and the Restaurant Bretagne, where
Annette would be drooping her pretty shoulders over her accounts, Soames
thought with wonder of those seven years at Brighton. How had he managed
to go on so long in that town devoid of the scent of sweetpeas, where he
had not even space to put his treasures? True, those had been years with
no time at all for looking at them--years of almost passionate
money-making, during which Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte had become
solicitors to more limited Companies than they could properly attend to.
Up to the City of a morning in a Pullman car, down from the City of an
evening in a Pullman car. Law papers again after dinner, then the sleep
of the tired, and up again next morning. Saturday to Monday was spent at
his Club in town--curious reversal of customary procedure, based on the
deep and careful instinct that while working so hard he needed sea air to
and from the station twice a day, and while resting must indulge his
domestic affections. The Sunday visit to his family in Park Lane, to
Timothy's, and to Green Street; the occasional visits elsewhere had
seemed to him as necessary to health as sea air on weekdays. Even since
his migration to Mapledurham he had maintained those habits until--he had
known Annette.
Whether Annette had produced the revolution in his outlook, or that
outlook had produced Annette, he knew no more than we know where a circle
begins. It was intricate and deeply involved with the growing
consciousness that property without anyone to leave it to is the negation
of true Forsyteism. To have an heir, some continuance of self, who would
begin where he left off--ensure, in fact, that he would not leave
off--had quite obsessed him for the last year and more. After buying a
bit of Wedgwood one evening in April, he had dropped into Malta Street to
look at a house of his father's which had been turned into a
restaurant--a risky proceeding, and one not quite in accordance with the
terms of the lease. He had stared for a little at the outside painted a
good cream colour, with two peacock-blue tubs containing little bay-trees
in a recessed doorway--and at the words 'Restaurant Bretagne' above them
in gold letters, rather favourably impressed. Entering, he had noticed
that several people were already seated at little round green tables with
little pots of fresh flowers on them and Brittany-ware plates, and had
asked of a trim waitress to see the proprietor. They had shown him into
a back room, where a girl was sitting at a simple bureau covered with
papers, and a small round, table was laid for two. The impression of
cleanliness, order, and good taste was confirmed when the girl got up,
saying, "You wish to see Maman, Monsieur?" in a broken accent.
"Yes," Soames had answered, "I represent your landlord; in fact, I'm his
son."
"Won't you sit down, sir, please? Tell Maman to come to this gentleman."
He was pleased that the girl seemed impressed, because it showed business
instinct; and suddenly he noticed that she was remarkably pretty--so
remarkably pretty that his eyes found a difficulty in leaving her face.
When she moved to put a chair for him, she swayed in a curious subtle
way, as if she had been put together by someone with a special secret
skill; and her face and neck, which was a little bared, looked as fresh
as if they had been sprayed with dew. Probably at this moment Soames
decided that the lease had not been violated; though to himself and his
father he based the decision on the efficiency of those illicit
adaptations in the building, on the signs of prosperity, and the obvious
business capacity of Madame Lamotte. He did not, however, neglect to
leave certain matters to future consideration, which had necessitated
further visits, so that the little back room had become quite accustomed
to his spare, not unsolid, but unobtrusive figure, and his pale, chinny
face with clipped moustache and dark hair not yet grizzling at the sides.
"Un Monsieur tres distingue," Madame Lamotte found him; and presently,
"Tres amical, tres gentil," watching his eyes upon her daughter.
She was one of those generously built, fine-faced, dark-haired
Frenchwomen, whose every action and tone of voice inspire perfect
confidence in the thoroughness of their domestic tastes, their knowledge
of cooking, and the careful increase of their bank balances.
After those visits to the Restaurant Bretagne began, other visits
ceased--without, indeed, any definite decision, for Soames, like all
Forsytes, and the great majority of their countrymen, was a born
empiricist. But it was this change in his mode of life which had
gradually made him so definitely conscious that he desired to alter his
condition from that of the unmarried married man to that of the married
man remarried.
Turning into Malta Street on this evening of early October, 1899, he
bought a paper to see if there were any after-development of the Dreyfus
case--a question which he had always found useful in making closer
acquaintanceship with Madame Lamotte and her daughter, who were Catholic
and anti-Dreyfusard.
Scanning those columns, Soames found nothing French, but noticed a
general fall on the Stock Exchange and an ominous leader about the
Transvaal. He entered, thinking: 'War's a certainty. I shall sell my
consols.' Not that he had many, personally, the rate of interest was too
wretched; but he should advise his Companies--consols would assuredly go
down. A look, as he passed the doorways of the restaurant, assured him
that business was good as ever, and this, which in April would have
pleased him, now gave him a certain uneasiness. If the steps which he
had to take ended in his marrying Annette, he would rather see her mother
safely back in France, a move to which the prosperity of the Restaurant
Bretagne might become an obstacle. He would have to buy them out, of
course, for French people only came to England to make money; and it
would mean a higher price. And then that peculiar sweet sensation at the
back of his throat, and a slight thumping about the heart, which he
always experienced at the door of the little room, prevented his thinking
how much it would cost.
Going in, he was conscious of an abundant black skirt vanishing through
the door into the restaurant, and of Annette with her hands up to her
hair. It was the attitude in which of all others he admired her--so
beautifully straight and rounded and supple. And he said:
"I just came in to talk to your mother about pulling down that partition.
No, don't call her."
"Monsieur will have supper with us? It will be ready in ten minutes."
Soames, who still held her hand, was overcome by an impulse which
surprised him.
"You look so pretty to-night," he said, "so very pretty. Do you know how
pretty you look, Annette?"
Annette withdrew her hand, and blushed. "Monsieur is very good."
"Not a bit good," said Soames, and sat down gloomily.
Annette made a little expressive gesture with her hands; a smile was
crinkling her red lips untouched by salve.
And, looking at those lips, Soames said:
"Are you happy over here, or do you want to go back to France?"
"Oh, I like London. Paris, of course. But London is better than
Orleans, and the English country is so beautiful. I have been to
Richmond last Sunday."
Soames went through a moment of calculating struggle. Mapledurham! Dared
he? After all, dared he go so far as that, and show her what there was
to look forward to! Still! Down there one could say things. In this
room it was impossible.
"I want you and your mother," he said suddenly, "to come for the
afternoon next Sunday. My house is on the river, it's not too late in
this weather; and I can show you some good pictures. What do you say?"
Annette clasped her hands.
"It will be lovelee. The river is so beautiful"
"That's understood, then. I'll ask Madame."
He need say no more to her this evening, and risk giving himself away.
But had he not already said too much? Did one ask restaurant proprietors
with pretty daughters down to one's country house without design? Madame
Lamotte would see, if Annette didn't. Well! there was not much that
Madame did not see. Besides, this was the second time he had stayed to
supper with them; he owed them hospitality.
Walking home towards Park Lane--for he was staying at his father's--with
the impression of Annette's soft clever hand within his own, his thoughts
were pleasant, slightly sensual, rather puzzled. Take steps! What
steps? How? Dirty linen washed in public? Pah! With his reputation for
sagacity, for far-sightedness and the clever extrication of others, he,
who stood for proprietary interests, to become the plaything of that Law
of which he was a pillar! There was something revolting in the thought!
Winifred's affair was bad enough! To have a double dose of publicity in
the family! Would not a liaison be better than that--a liaison, and a
son he could adopt? But dark, solid, watchful, Madame Lamotte blocked
the avenue of that vision. No! that would not work. It was not as if
Annette could have a real passion for him; one could not expect that at
his age. If her mother wished, if the worldly advantage were manifestly
great--perhaps! If not, refusal would be certain. Besides, he thought:
'I'm not a villain. I don't want to hurt her; and I don't want anything
underhand. But I do want her, and I want a son! There's nothing for it
but divorce--somehow--anyhow--divorce!' Under the shadow of the
plane-trees, in the lamplight, he passed slowly along the railings of the
Green Park. Mist clung there among the bluish tree shapes, beyond range
of the lamps. How many hundred times he had walked past those trees from
his father's house in Park Lane, when he was quite a young man; or from
his own house in Montpellier Square in those four years of married life!
And, to-night, making up his mind to free himself if he could of that
long useless marriage tie, he took a fancy to walk on, in at Hyde Park
Corner, out at Knightsbridge Gate, just as he used to when going home to
Irene in the old days. What could she be like now?--how had she passed
the years since he last saw her, twelve years in all, seven already since
Uncle Jolyon left her that money? Was she still beautiful? Would he
know her if he saw her? 'I've not changed much,' he thought; 'I expect
she has. She made me suffer.' He remembered suddenly one night, the
first on which he went out to dinner alone--an old Malburian dinner--the
first year of their marriage. With what eagerness he had hurried back;
and, entering softly as a cat, had heard her playing. Opening the
drawing-room door noiselessly, he had stood watching the expression on
her face, different from any he knew, so much more open, so confiding, as
though to her music she was giving a heart he had never seen. And he
remembered how she stopped and looked round, how her face changed back to
that which he did know, and what an icy shiver had gone through him, for
all that the next moment he was fondling her shoulders. Yes, she had
made him suffer! Divorce! It seemed ridiculous, after all these years of
utter separation! But it would have to be. No other way! 'The
question,' he thought with sudden realism, 'is--which of us? She or me?
She deserted me. She ought to pay for it. There'll be someone, I
suppose.' Involuntarily he uttered a little snarling sound, and,
turning, made his way back to Park Lane.
CHAPTER V
JAMES SEES VISIONS
The butler himself opened the door, and closing it softly, detained
Soames on the inner mat.
"The master's poorly, sir," he murmured. "He wouldn't go to bed till you
came in. He's still in the diningroom."
Soames responded in the hushed tone to which the house was now
accustomed.
"What's the matter with him, Warmson?"
"Nervous, sir, I think. Might be the funeral; might be Mrs. Dartie's
comin' round this afternoon. I think he overheard something. I've took
him in a negus. The mistress has just gone up."
Soames hung his hat on a mahogany stag's-horn.
"All right, Warmson, you can go to bed; I'll take him up myself." And he
passed into the dining-room.
James was sitting before the fire, in a big armchair, with a camel-hair
shawl, very light and warm, over his frock-coated shoulders, on to which
his long white whiskers drooped. His white hair, still fairly thick,
glistened in the lamplight; a little moisture from his fixed, light-grey
eyes stained the cheeks, still quite well coloured, and the long deep
furrows running to the corners of the clean-shaven lips, which moved as
if mumbling thoughts. His long legs, thin as a crow's, in shepherd's
plaid trousers, were bent at less than a right angle, and on one knee a
spindly hand moved continually, with fingers wide apart and glistening
tapered nails. Beside him, on a low stool, stood a half-finished glass
of negus, bedewed with beads of heat. There he had been sitting, with
intervals for meals, all day. At eighty-eight he was still organically
sound, but suffering terribly from the thought that no one ever told him
anything. It is, indeed, doubtful how he had become aware that Roger was
being buried that day, for Emily had kept it from him. She was always
keeping things from him. Emily was only seventy! James had a grudge
against his wife's youth. He felt sometimes that he would never have
married her if he had known that she would have so many years before her,
when he had so few. It was not natural. She would live fifteen or
twenty years after he was gone, and might spend a lot of money; she had
always had extravagant tastes. For all he knew she might want to buy one
of these motor-cars. Cicely and Rachel and Imogen and all the young
people--they all rode those bicycles now and went off Goodness knew
where. And now Roger was gone. He didn't know--couldn't tell! The
family was breaking up. Soames would know how much his uncle had left.
Curiously he thought of Roger as Soames' uncle not as his own brother.
Soames! It was more and more the one solid spot in a vanishing world.
Soames was careful; he was a warm man; but he had no one to leave his
money to. There it was! He didn't know! And there was that fellow
Chamberlain! For James' political principles had been fixed between '70
and '85 when 'that rascally Radical' had been the chief thorn in the side
of property and he distrusted him to this day in spite of his conversion;
he would get the country into a mess and make money go down before he had
done with it. A stormy petrel of a chap! Where was Soames? He had gone
to the funeral of course which they had tried to keep from him. He knew
that perfectly well; he had seen his son's trousers. Roger! Roger in his
coffin! He remembered how, when they came up from school together from
the West, on the box seat of the old Slowflyer in 1824, Roger had got
into the 'boot' and gone to sleep. James uttered a thin cackle. A funny
fellow--Roger--an original! He didn't know! Younger than himself, and
in his coffin! The family was breaking up. There was Val going to the
university; he never came to see him now. He would cost a pretty penny
up there. It was an extravagant age. And all the pretty pennies that
his four grandchildren would cost him danced before James' eyes. He did
not grudge them the money, but he grudged terribly the risk which the
spending of that money might bring on them; he grudged the diminution of
security. And now that Cicely had married, she might be having children
too. He didn't know--couldn't tell! Nobody thought of anything but
spending money in these days, and racing about, and having what they
called 'a good time.' A motor-car went past the window. Ugly great
lumbering thing, making all that racket! But there it was, the country
rattling to the dogs! People in such a hurry that they couldn't even
care for style--a neat turnout like his barouche and bays was worth all
those new-fangled things. And consols at 116! There must be a lot of
money in the country. And now there was this old Kruger! They had tried
to keep old Kruger from him. But he knew better; there would be a pretty
kettle of fish out there! He had known how it would be when that fellow
Gladstone--dead now, thank God! made such a mess of it after that
dreadful business at Majuba. He shouldn't wonder if the Empire split up
and went to pot. And this vision of the Empire going to pot filled a
full quarter of an hour with qualms of the most serious character. He
had eaten a poor lunch because of them. But it was after lunch that the
real disaster to his nerves occurred. He had been dozing when he became
aware of voices--low voices. Ah! they never told him anything!
Winifred's and her mother's. "Monty!" That fellow Dartie--always that
fellow Dartie! The voices had receded; and James had been left alone,
with his ears standing up like a hare's, and fear creeping about his
inwards. Why did they leave him alone? Why didn't they come and tell
him? And an awful thought, which through long years had haunted
him, concreted again swiftly in his brain. Dartie had gone
bankrupt--fraudulently bankrupt, and to save Winifred and the children,
he--James--would have to pay! Could he--could Soames turn him into a
limited company? No, he couldn't! There it was! With every minute
before Emily came back the spectre fiercened. Why, it might be forgery!
With eyes fixed on the doubted Turner in the centre of the wall, James
suffered tortures. He saw Dartie in the dock, his grandchildren in the
gutter, and himself in bed. He saw the doubted Turner being sold at
Jobson's, and all the majestic edifice of property in rags. He saw in
fancy Winifred unfashionably dressed, and heard in fancy Emily's voice
saying: "Now, don't fuss, James!" She was always saying: "Don't fuss!"
She had no nerves; he ought never to have married a woman eighteen years
younger than himself. Then Emily's real voice said:
"Have you had a nice nap, James?"
Nap! He was in torment, and she asked him that!
"What's this about Dartie?" he said, and his eyes glared at her.
Emily's self-possession never deserted her.
"What have you been hearing?" she asked blandly.
"What's this about Dartie?" repeated James. "He's gone bankrupt."
"Fiddle!"
James made a great effort, and rose to the full height of his stork-like
figure.
"You never tell me anything," he said; "he's gone bankrupt."
The destruction of that fixed idea seemed to Emily all that mattered at
the moment.
"He has not," she answered firmly. "He's gone to Buenos Aires."
If she had said "He's gone to Mars" she could not have dealt James a more
stunning blow; his imagination, invested entirely in British securities,
could as little grasp one place as the other.
"What's he gone there for?" he said. "He's got no money. What did he
take?"
Agitated within by Winifred's news, and goaded by the constant
reiteration of this jeremiad, Emily said calmly:
"He took Winifred's pearls and a dancer."
"What!" said James, and sat down.
His sudden collapse alarmed her, and smoothing his forehead, she said:
"Now, don't fuss, James!"
A dusky red had spread over James' cheeks and forehead.
"I paid for them," he said tremblingly; "he's a thief! I--I knew how it
would be. He'll be the death of me; he ...." Words failed him and he
sat quite still. Emily, who thought she knew him so well, was alarmed,
and went towards the sideboard where she kept some sal volatile. She
could not see the tenacious Forsyte spirit working in that thin,
tremulous shape against the extravagance of the emotion called up by this
outrage on Forsyte principles--the Forsyte spirit deep in there, saying:
'You mustn't get into a fantod, it'll never do. You won't digest your
lunch. You'll have a fit!' All unseen by her, it was doing better work
in James than sal volatile.
"Drink this," she said.
James waved it aside.
"What was Winifred about," he said, "to let him take her pearls?" Emily
perceived the crisis past.
"She can have mine," she said comfortably. "I never wear them. She'd
better get a divorce."
"There you go!" said James. "Divorce! We've never had a divorce in the
family. Where's Soames?"
"He'll be in directly."
"No, he won't," said James, almost fiercely; "he's at the funeral. You
think I know nothing."
"Well," said Emily with calm, "you shouldn't get into such fusses when we
tell you things." And plumping up his cushions, and putting the sal
volatile beside him, she left the room.
But James sat there seeing visions--of Winifred in the Divorce Court, and
the family name in the papers; of the earth falling on Roger's coffin; of
Val taking after his father; of the pearls he had paid for and would
never see again; of money back at four per cent., and the country going
to the dogs; and, as the afternoon wore into evening, and tea-time
passed, and dinnertime, those visions became more and more mixed and
menacing--of being told nothing, till he had nothing left of all his
wealth, and they told him nothing of it. Where was Soames? Why didn't
he come in?... His hand grasped the glass of negus, he raised it to
drink, and saw his son standing there looking at him. A little sigh of
relief escaped his lips, and putting the glass down, he said:
"There you are! Dartie's gone to Buenos Aires."
Soames nodded. "That's all right," he said; "good riddance."
A wave of assuagement passed over James' brain. Soames knew. Soames was
the only one of them all who had sense. Why couldn't he come and live at
home? He had no son of his own. And he said plaintively:
"At my age I get nervous. I wish you were more at home, my boy."
Again Soames nodded; the mask of his countenance betrayed no
understanding, but he went closer, and as if by accident touched his
father's shoulder.
"They sent their love to you at Timothy's," he said. "It went off all
right. I've been to see Winifred. I'm going to take steps." And he
thought: 'Yes, and you mustn't hear of them.'
James looked up; his long white whiskers quivered, his thin throat
between the points of his collar looked very gristly and naked.
"I've been very poorly all day," he said; "they never tell me anything."
Soames' heart twitched.
"Well, it's all right. There's nothing to worry about. Will you come up
now?" and he put his hand under his father's arm.
James obediently and tremulously raised himself, and together they went
slowly across the room, which had a rich look in the firelight, and out
to the stairs. Very slowly they ascended.
"Good-night, my boy," said James at his bedroom door.
"Good-night, father," answered Soames. His hand stroked down the sleeve
beneath the shawl; it seemed to have almost nothing in it, so thin was
the arm. And, turning away from the light in the opening doorway, he
went up the extra flight to his own bedroom.
'I want a son,' he thought, sitting on the edge of his bed; 'I want a
son.'
CHAPTER VI
NO-LONGER-YOUNG JOLYON AT HOME
Trees take little account of time, and the old oak on the upper lawn at
Robin Hill looked no day older than when Bosinney sprawled under it and
said to Soames: "Forsyte, I've found the very place for your house."
Since then Swithin had dreamed, and old Jolyon died, beneath its
branches. And now, close to the swing, no-longer-young Jolyon often
painted there. Of all spots in the world it was perhaps the most sacred
to him, for he had loved his father.
Contemplating its great girth--crinkled and a little mossed, but not yet
hollow--he would speculate on the passage of time. That tree had seen,
perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he shouldn't wonder, from
the days of Elizabeth at least. His own fifty years were as nothing to
its wood. When the house behind it, which he now owned, was three
hundred years of age instead of twelve, that tree might still be standing
there, vast and hollow--for who would commit such sacrilege as to cut it
down? A Forsyte might perhaps still be living in that house, to guard it
jealously. And Jolyon would wonder what the house would look like coated
with such age. Wistaria was already about its walls--the new look had
gone. Would it hold its own and keep the dignity Bosinney had bestowed
on it, or would the giant London have lapped it round and made it into an
asylum in the midst of a jerry-built wilderness? Often, within and
without of it, he was persuaded that Bosinney had been moved by the
spirit when he built. He had put his heart into that house, indeed! It
might even become one of the 'homes of England'--a rare achievement for a
house in these degenerate days of building. And the aesthetic spirit,
moving hand in hand with his Forsyte sense of possessive continuity,
dwelt with pride and pleasure on his ownership thereof. There was the
smack of reverence and ancestor-worship (if only for one ancestor) in his
desire to hand this house down to his son and his son's son. His father
had loved the house, had loved the view, the grounds, that tree; his last
years had been happy there, and no one had lived there before him. These
last eleven years at Robin Hill had formed in Jolyon's life as a painter,
the important period of success. He was now in the very van of
water-colour art, hanging on the line everywhere. His drawings fetched
high prices. Specialising in that one medium with the tenacity of his
breed, he had 'arrived'--rather late, but not too late for a member of
the family which made a point of living for ever. His art had really
deepened and improved. In conformity with his position he had grown a
short fair beard, which was just beginning to grizzle, and hid his
Forsyte chin; his brown face had lost the warped expression of his
ostracised period--he looked, if anything, younger. The loss of his wife
in 1894 had been one of those domestic tragedies which turn out in the
end for the good of all. He had, indeed, loved her to the last, for his
was an affectionate spirit, but she had become increasingly difficult:
jealous of her step-daughter June, jealous even of her own little
daughter Holly, and making ceaseless plaint that he could not love her,
ill as she was, and 'useless to everyone, and better dead.' He had
mourned her sincerely, but his face had looked younger since she died.
If she could only have believed that she made him happy, how much happier
would the twenty years of their companionship have been!
June had never really got on well with her who had reprehensibly taken
her own mother's place; and ever since old Jolyon died she had been
established in a sort of studio in London. But she had come back to
Robin Hill on her stepmother's death, and gathered the reins there into
her small decided hands. Jolly was then at Harrow; Holly still learning
from Mademoiselle Beauce. There had been nothing to keep Jolyon at home,
and he had removed his grief and his paint-box abroad. There he had
wandered, for the most part in Brittany, and at last had fetched up in
Paris. He had stayed there several months, and come back with the
younger face and the short fair beard. Essentially a man who merely
lodged in any house, it had suited him perfectly that June should reign
at Robin Hill, so that he was free to go off with his easel where and
when he liked. She was inclined, it is true, to regard the house rather
as an asylum for her proteges! but his own outcast days had filled Jolyon
for ever with sympathy towards an outcast, and June's 'lame ducks' about
the place did not annoy him. By all means let her have them down--and
feed them up; and though his slightly cynical humour perceived that they
ministered to his daughter's love of domination as well as moved her warm
heart, he never ceased to admire her for having so many ducks. He fell,
indeed, year by year into a more and more detached and brotherly attitude
towards his own son and daughters, treating them with a sort of whimsical
equality. When he went down to Harrow to see Jolly, he never quite knew
which of them was the elder, and would sit eating cherries with him out
of one paper bag, with an affectionate and ironical smile twisting up an
eyebrow and curling his lips a little. And he was always careful to have
money in his pocket, and to be modish in his dress, so that his son need
not blush for him. They were perfect friends, but never seemed to have
occasion for verbal confidences, both having the competitive
self-consciousness of Forsytes. They knew they would stand by each other
in scrapes, but there was no need to talk about it. Jolyon had a
striking horror--partly original sin, but partly the result of his early
immorality--of the moral attitude. The most he could ever have said to
his son would have been:
"Look here, old man; don't forget you're a gentleman," and then have
wondered whimsically whether that was not a snobbish sentiment. The
great cricket match was perhaps the most searching and awkward time they
annually went through together, for Jolyon had been at Eton. They would
be particularly careful during that match, continually saying: "Hooray!
Oh! hard luck, old man!" or "Hooray! Oh! bad luck, Dad!" to each other,
when some disaster at which their hearts bounded happened to the opposing
school. And Jolyon would wear a grey top hat, instead of his usual soft
one, to save his son's feelings, for a black top hat he could not
stomach. When Jolly went up to Oxford, Jolyon went up with him, amused,
humble, and a little anxious not to discredit his boy amongst all these
youths who seemed so much more assured and old than himself. He often
thought, 'Glad I'm a painter' for he had long dropped under-writing at
Lloyds--'it's so innocuous. You can't look down on a painter--you can't
take him seriously enough.' For Jolly, who had a sort of natural
lordliness, had passed at once into a very small set, who secretly amused
his father. The boy had fair hair which curled a little, and his
grandfather's deepset iron-grey eyes. He was well-built and very
upright, and always pleased Jolyon's aesthetic sense, so that he was a
tiny bit afraid of him, as artists ever are of those of their own sex
whom they admire physically. On that occasion, however, he actually did
screw up his courage to give his son advice, and this was it:
"Look here, old man, you're bound to get into debt; mind you come to me
at once. Of course, I'll always pay them. But you might remember that
one respects oneself more afterwards if one pays one's own way. And
don't ever borrow, except from me, will you?"
And Jolly had said:
"All right, Dad, I won't," and he never had.
"And there's just one other thing. I don't know much about morality and
that, but there is this: It's always worth while before you do anything
to consider whether it's going to hurt another person more than is
absolutely necessary."
Jolly had looked thoughtful, and nodded, and presently had squeezed his
father's hand. And Jolyon had thought: 'I wonder if I had the right to
say that?' He always had a sort of dread of losing the dumb confidence
they had in each other; remembering how for long years he had lost his
own father's, so that there had been nothing between them but love at a
great distance. He under-estimated, no doubt, the change in the spirit
of the age since he himself went up to Cambridge in '65; and perhaps he
underestimated, too, his boy's power of understanding that he was
tolerant to the very bone. It was that tolerance of his, and possibly
his scepticism, which ever made his relations towards June so queerly
defensive. She was such a decided mortal; knew her own mind so terribly
well; wanted things so inexorably until she got them--and then, indeed,
often dropped them like a hot potato. Her mother had been like that,
whence had come all those tears. Not that his incompatibility with his
daughter was anything like what it had been with the first Mrs. Young
Jolyon. One could be amused where a daughter was concerned; in a wife's
case one could not be amused. To see June set her heart and jaw on a
thing until she got it was all right, because it was never anything which
interfered fundamentally with Jolyon's liberty--the one thing on which
his jaw was also absolutely rigid, a considerable jaw, under that short
grizzling beard. Nor was there ever any necessity for real
heart-to-heart encounters. One could break away into irony--as indeed he
often had to. But the real trouble with June was that she had never
appealed to his aesthetic sense, though she might well have, with her
red-gold hair and her viking-coloured eyes, and that touch of the
Berserker in her spirit. It was very different with Holly, soft and
quiet, shy and affectionate, with a playful imp in her somewhere. He
watched this younger daughter of his through the duckling stage with
extraordinary interest. Would she come out a swan? With her sallow oval
face and her grey wistful eyes and those long dark lashes, she might, or
she might not. Only this last year had he been able to guess. Yes, she
would be a swan--rather a dark one, always a shy one, but an authentic
swan. She was eighteen now, and Mademoiselle Beauce was gone--the
excellent lady had removed, after eleven years haunted by her continuous
reminiscences of the 'well-brrred little Tayleurs,' to another family
whose bosom would now be agitated by her reminiscences of the
'well-brrred little Forsytes.' She had taught Holly to speak French like
herself.
Portraiture was not Jolyon's forte, but he had already drawn his younger
daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on the afternoon of
October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to him which caused his
eyebrows to go up:
Mr. SOAMES FORSYTE
THE SHELTER, CONNOISSEURS CLUB, MAPLEDURHAM. ST.
JAMES'S.
But here the Forsyte Saga must digress again....
To return from a long travel in Spain to a darkened house, to a little
daughter bewildered with tears, to the sight of a loved father lying
peaceful in his last sleep, had never been, was never likely to be,
forgotten by so impressionable and warm-hearted a man as Jolyon. A sense
as of mystery, too, clung to that sad day, and about the end of one whose
life had been so well-ordered, balanced, and above-board. It seemed
incredible that his father could thus have vanished without, as it were,
announcing his intention, without last words to his son, and due
farewells. And those incoherent allusions of little Holly to 'the lady
in grey,' of Mademoiselle Beauce to a Madame Errant (as it sounded)
involved all things in a mist, lifted a little when he read his father's
will and the codicil thereto. It had been his duty as executor of that
will and codicil to inform Irene, wife of his cousin Soames, of her life
interest in fifteen thousand pounds. He had called on her to explain
that the existing investment in India Stock, ear-marked to meet the
charge, would produce for her the interesting net sum of L430 odd a year,
clear of income tax. This was but the third time he had seen his cousin
Soames' wife--if indeed she was still his wife, of which he was not quite
sure. He remembered having seen her sitting in the Botanical Gardens
waiting for Bosinney--a passive, fascinating figure, reminding him of
Titian's 'Heavenly Love,' and again, when, charged by his father, he had
gone to Montpellier Square on the afternoon when Bosinney's death was
known. He still recalled vividly her sudden appearance in the
drawing-room doorway on that occasion--her beautiful face, passing from
wild eagerness of hope to stony despair; remembered the compassion he had
felt, Soames' snarling smile, his words, "We are not at home!" and the
slam of the front door.
This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful--freed from that
warp of wild hope and despair. Looking at her, he thought: 'Yes, you are
just what the Dad would have admired!' And the strange story of his
father's Indian summer became slowly clear to him. She spoke of old
Jolyon with reverence and tears in her eyes. "He was so wonderfully kind
to me; I don't know why. He looked so beautiful and peaceful sitting in
that chair under the tree; it was I who first came on him sitting there,
you know. Such a lovely day. I don't think an end could have been
happier. We should all like to go out like that."
'Quite right!' he had thought. 'We should all a like to go out in full
summer with beauty stepping towards us across a lawn.' And looking round
the little, almost empty drawing-room, he had asked her what she was
going to do now. "I am going to live again a little, Cousin Jolyon. It's
wonderful to have money of one's own. I've never had any. I shall keep
this flat, I think; I'm used to it; but I shall be able to go to Italy."
"Exactly!" Jolyon had murmured, looking at her faintly smiling lips; and
he had gone away thinking: 'A fascinating woman! What a waste! I'm glad
the Dad left her that money.' He had not seen her again, but every
quarter he had signed her cheque, forwarding it to her bank, with a note
to the Chelsea flat to say that he had done so; and always he had
received a note in acknowledgment, generally from the flat, but sometimes
from Italy; so that her personality had become embodied in slightly
scented grey paper, an upright fine handwriting, and the words, 'Dear
Cousin Jolyon.' Man of property that he now was, the slender cheque he
signed often gave rise to the thought: 'Well, I suppose she just
manages'; sliding into a vague wonder how she was faring otherwise in a
world of men not wont to let beauty go unpossessed. At first Holly had
spoken of her sometimes, but 'ladies in grey' soon fade from children's
memories; and the tightening of June's lips in those first weeks after
her grandfather's death whenever her former friend's name was mentioned,
had discouraged allusion. Only once, indeed, had June spoken definitely:
"I've forgiven her. I'm frightfully glad she's independent now...."
On receiving Soames' card, Jolyon said to the maid--for he could not
abide butlers--"Show him into the study, please, and say I'll be there in
a minute"; and then he looked at Holly and asked:
"Do you remember 'the lady in grey,' who used to give you music-lessons?"
"Oh yes, why? Has she come?"
Jolyon shook his head, and, changing his holland blouse for a coat, was
silent, perceiving suddenly that such history was not for those young
ears. His face, in fact, became whimsical perplexity incarnate while he
journeyed towards the study.
Standing by the french-window, looking out across the terrace at the oak
tree, were two figures, middle-aged and young, and he thought: 'Who's
that boy? Surely they never had a child.'
The elder figure turned. The meeting of those two Forsytes of the second
generation, so much more sophisticated than the first, in the house built
for the one and owned and occupied by the other, was marked by subtle
defensiveness beneath distinct attempt at cordiality. 'Has he come about
his wife?' Jolyon was thinking; and Soames, 'How shall I begin?' while
Val, brought to break the ice, stood negligently scrutinising this
'bearded pard' from under his dark, thick eyelashes.
"This is Val Dartie," said Soames, "my sister's son. He's just going up
to Oxford. I thought I'd like him to know your boy."
"Ah! I'm sorry Jolly's away. What college?"
"B.N.C.," replied Val.
"Jolly's at the 'House,' but he'll be delighted to look you up."
"Thanks awfully."
"Holly's in--if you could put up with a female relation, she'd show you
round. You'll find her in the hall if you go through the curtains. I
was just painting her."
With another "Thanks, awfully!" Val vanished, leaving the two cousins
with the ice unbroken.
"I see you've some drawings at the 'Water Colours,'" said Soames.
Jolyon winced. He had been out of touch with the Forsyte family at large
for twenty-six years, but they were connected in his mind with Frith's
'Derby Day' and Landseer prints. He had heard from June that Soames was
a connoisseur, which made it worse. He had become aware, too, of a
curious sensation of repugnance.
"I haven't seen you for a long time," he said.
"No," answered Soames between close lips, "not since--as a matter of
fact, it's about that I've come. You're her trustee, I'm told."
Jolyon nodded.
"Twelve years is a long time," said Soames rapidly: "I--I'm tired of it."
Jolyon found no more appropriate answer than:
"Won't you smoke?"
"No, thanks."
Jolyon himself lit a cigarette.
"I wish to be free," said Soames abruptly.
"I don't see her," murmured Jolyon through the fume of his cigarette.
"But you know where she lives, I suppose?"
Jolyon nodded. He did not mean to give her address without permission.
Soames seemed to divine his thought.
"I don't want her address," he said; "I know it."
"What exactly do you want?"
"She deserted me. I want a divorce."
"Rather late in the day, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Soames. And there was a silence.
"I don't know much about these things--at least, I've forgotten," said
Jolyon with a wry smile. He himself had had to wait for death to grant
him a divorce from the first Mrs. Jolyon. "Do you wish me to see her
about it?"
Soames raised his eyes to his cousin's face. "I suppose there's
someone," he said.
A shrug moved Jolyon's shoulders.
"I don't know at all. I imagine you may have both lived as if the other
were dead. It's usual in these cases."
Soames turned to the window. A few early fallen oak-leaves strewed the
terrace already, and were rolling round in the wind. Jolyon saw the
figures of Holly and Val Dartie moving across the lawn towards the
stables. 'I'm not going to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds,'
he thought. 'I must act for her. The Dad would have wished that.' And
for a swift moment he seemed to see his father's figure in the old
armchair, just beyond Soames, sitting with knees crossed, The Times in
his hand. It vanished.
"My father was fond of her," he said quietly.
"Why he should have been I don't know," Soames answered without looking
round. "She brought trouble to your daughter June; she brought trouble
to everyone. I gave her all she wanted. I would have given her
even--forgiveness--but she chose to leave me."
In Jolyon compassion was checked by the tone of that close voice. What
was there in the fellow that made it so difficult to be sorry for him?
"I can go and see her, if you like," he said. "I suppose she might be
glad of a divorce, but I know nothing."
Soames nodded.
"Yes, please go. As I say, I know her address; but I've no wish to see
her." His tongue was busy with his lips, as if they were very dry.
"You'll have some tea?" said Jolyon, stifling the words: 'And see the
house.' And he led the way into the hall. When he had rung the bell and
ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his drawing to the wall. He
could not bear, somehow, that his work should be seen by Soames, who was
standing there in the middle of the great room which had been designed
expressly to afford wall space for his own pictures. In his cousin's
face, with its unseizable family likeness to himself, and its chinny,
narrow, concentrated look, Jolyon saw that which moved him to the
thought: 'That chap could never forget anything--nor ever give himself
away. He's pathetic!'
CHAPTER VII
THE COLT AND THE FILLY
When young Val left the presence of the last generation he was thinking:
'This is jolly dull! Uncle Soames does take the bun. I wonder what this
filly's like?' He anticipated no pleasure from her society; and suddenly
he saw her standing there looking at him. Why, she was pretty! What
luck!
"I'm afraid you don't know me," he said. "My name's Val Dartie--I'm
once removed, second cousin, something like that, you know. My mother's
name was Forsyte."
Holly, whose slim brown hand remained in his because she was too shy to
withdraw it, said:
"I don't know any of my relations. Are there many?"
"Tons. They're awful--most of them. At least, I don't know--some of
them. One's relations always are, aren't they?"
"I expect they think one awful too," said Holly.
"I don't know why they should. No one could think you awful, of course."
Holly looked at him--the wistful candour in those grey eyes gave young
Val a sudden feeling that he must protect her.
"I mean there are people and people," he added astutely. "Your dad looks
awfully decent, for instance."
"Oh yes!" said Holly fervently; "he is."
A flush mounted in Val's cheeks--that scene in the Pandemonium
promenade--the dark man with the pink carnation developing into his own
father! "But you know what the Forsytes are," he said almost viciously.
"Oh! I forgot; you don't."
"What are they?"
"Oh! fearfully careful; not sportsmen a bit. Look at Uncle Soames!"
"I'd like to," said Holly.
Val resisted a desire to run his arm through hers. "Oh! no," he said,
"let's go out. You'll see him quite soon enough. What's your brother
like?"
Holly led the way on to the terrace and down to the lawn without
answering. How describe Jolly, who, ever since she remembered anything,
had been her lord, master, and ideal?
"Does he sit on you?" said Val shrewdly. "I shall be knowing him at
Oxford. Have you got any horses?"
Holly nodded. "Would you like to see the stables?"
"Rather!"
They passed under the oak tree, through a thin shrubbery, into the
stable-yard. There under a clock-tower lay a fluffy brown-and-white dog,
so old that he did not get up, but faintly waved the tail curled over his
back.
"That's Balthasar," said Holly; "he's so old--awfully old, nearly as old
as I am. Poor old boy! He's devoted to Dad."
"Balthasar! That's a rum name. He isn't purebred you know."
"No! but he's a darling," and she bent down to stroke the dog. Gentle and
supple, with dark covered head and slim browned neck and hands, she
seemed to Val strange and sweet, like a thing slipped between him and all
previous knowledge.
"When grandfather died," she said, "he wouldn't eat for two days. He saw
him die, you know."
"Was that old Uncle Jolyon? Mother always says he was a topper."
"He was," said Holly simply, and opened the stable door.
In a loose-box stood a silver roan of about fifteen hands, with a long
black tail and mane. "This is mine--Fairy."
"Ah!" said Val, "she's a jolly palfrey. But you ought to bang her tail.
She'd look much smarter." Then catching her wondering look, he thought
suddenly: 'I don't know--anything she likes!' And he took a long sniff
of the stable air. "Horses are ripping, aren't they? My Dad..." he
stopped.
"Yes?" said Holly.
An impulse to unbosom himself almost overcame him--but not quite. "Oh! I
don't know he's often gone a mucker over them. I'm jolly keen on them
too--riding and hunting. I like racing awfully, as well; I should like
to be a gentleman rider." And oblivious of the fact that he had but one
more day in town, with two engagements, he plumped out:
"I say, if I hire a gee to-morrow, will you come a ride in Richmond
Park?"
Holly clasped her hands.
"Oh yes! I simply love riding. But there's Jolly's horse; why don't you
ride him? Here he is. We could go after tea."
Val looked doubtfully at his trousered legs.
He had imagined them immaculate before her eyes in high brown boots and
Bedford cords.
"I don't much like riding his horse," he said. "He mightn't like it.
Besides, Uncle Soames wants to get back, I expect. Not that I believe in
buckling under to him, you know. You haven't got an uncle, have you?
This is rather a good beast," he added, scrutinising Jolly's horse, a
dark brown, which was showing the whites of its eyes. "You haven't got
any hunting here, I suppose?"
"No; I don't know that I want to hunt. It must be awfully exciting, of
course; but it's cruel, isn't it? June says so."
"Cruel?" ejaculated Val. "Oh! that's all rot. Who's June?"
"My sister--my half-sister, you know--much older than me." She had put
her hands up to both cheeks of Jolly's horse, and was rubbing her nose
against its nose with a gentle snuffling noise which seemed to have an
hypnotic effect on the animal. Val contemplated her cheek resting
against the horse's nose, and her eyes gleaming round at him. 'She's
really a duck,' he thought.
They returned to the house less talkative, followed this time by the dog
Balthasar, walking more slowly than anything on earth, and clearly
expecting them not to exceed his speed limit.
"This is a ripping place," said Val from under the oak tree, where they
had paused to allow the dog Balthasar to come up.
"Yes," said Holly, and sighed. "Of course I want to go everywhere. I
wish I were a gipsy."
"Yes, gipsies are jolly," replied Val, with a conviction which had just
come to him; "you're rather like one, you know."
Holly's face shone suddenly and deeply, like dark leaves gilded by the
sun.
"To go mad-rabbiting everywhere and see everything, and live in the
open--oh! wouldn't it be fun?"
"Let's do it!" said Val.
"Oh yes, let's!"
"It'd be grand sport, just you and I."
Then Holly perceived the quaintness and gushed.
"Well, we've got to do it," said Val obstinately, but reddening too.
"I believe in doing things you want to do. What's down there?"
"The kitchen-garden, and the pond and the coppice, and the farm."
"Let's go down!"
Holly glanced back at the house.
"It's tea-time, I expect; there's Dad beckoning."
Val, uttering a growly sound, followed her towards the house.
When they re-entered the hall gallery the sight of two middle-aged
Forsytes drinking tea together had its magical effect, and they became
quite silent. It was, indeed, an impressive spectacle. The two were
seated side by side on an arrangement in marqueterie which looked like
three silvery pink chairs made one, with a low tea-table in front of
them. They seemed to have taken up that position, as far apart as the
seat would permit, so that they need not look at each other too much; and
they were eating and drinking rather than talking--Soames with his air of
despising the tea-cake as it disappeared, Jolyon of finding himself
slightly amusing. To the casual eye neither would have seemed greedy,
but both were getting through a good deal of sustenance. The two young
ones having been supplied with food, the process went on silent and
absorbative, till, with the advent of cigarettes, Jolyon said to Soames:
"And how's Uncle James?"
"Thanks, very shaky."
"We're a wonderful family, aren't we? The other day I was calculating
the average age of the ten old Forsytes from my father's family Bible. I
make it eighty-four already, and five still living. They ought to beat
the record;" and looking whimsically at Soames, he added:
"We aren't the men they were, you know."
Soames smiled. 'Do you really think I shall admit that I'm not their
equal'; he seemed to be saying, 'or that I've got to give up anything,
especially life?'
"We may live to their age, perhaps," pursued Jolyon, "but
self-consciousness is a handicap, you know, and that's the difference
between us. We've lost conviction. How and when self-consciousness was
born I never can make out. My father had a little, but I don't believe
any other of the old Forsytes ever had a scrap. Never to see yourself as
others see you, it's a wonderful preservative. The whole history of the
last century is in the difference between us. And between us and you," he
added, gazing through a ring of smoke at Val and Holly, uncomfortable
under his quizzical regard, "there'll be--another difference. I wonder
what."
Soames took out his watch.
"We must go," he said, "if we're to catch our train."
"Uncle Soames never misses a train," muttered Val, with his mouth full.
"Why should I?" Soames answered simply.
"Oh! I don't know," grumbled Val, "other people do."
At the front door he gave Holly's slim brown hand a long and
surreptitious squeeze.
"Look out for me to-morrow," he whispered; "three o'clock. I'll wait for
you in the road; it'll save time. We'll have a ripping ride." He gazed
back at her from the lodge gate, and, but for the principles of a man
about town, would have waved his hand. He felt in no mood to tolerate
his uncle's conversation. But he was not in danger. Soames preserved a
perfect muteness, busy with far-away thoughts.
The yellow leaves came down about those two walking the mile and a half
which Soames had traversed so often in those long-ago days when he came
down to watch with secret pride the building of the house--that house
which was to have been the home of him and her from whom he was now going
to seek release. He looked back once, up that endless vista of autumn
lane between the yellowing hedges. What an age ago! "I don't want to see
her," he had said to Jolyon. Was that true? 'I may have to,' he thought;
and he shivered, seized by one of those queer shudderings that they say
mean footsteps on one's grave. A chilly world! A queer world! And
glancing sidelong at his nephew, he thought: 'Wish I were his age! I
wonder what she's like now!'
CHAPTER VIII
JOLYON PROSECUTES TRUSTEESHIP
When those two were gone Jolyon did not return to his painting, for
daylight was failing, but went to the study, craving unconsciously a
revival of that momentary vision of his father sitting in the old leather
chair with his knees crossed and his straight eyes gazing up from under
the dome of his massive brow. Often in this little room, cosiest in the
house, Jolyon would catch a moment of communion with his father. Not,
indeed, that he had definitely any faith in the persistence of the human
spirit--the feeling was not so logical--it was, rather, an atmospheric
impact, like a scent, or one of those strong animistic impressions from
forms, or effects of light, to which those with the artist's eye are
especially prone. Here only--in this little unchanged room where his
father had spent the most of his waking hours--could be retrieved the
feeling that he was not quite gone, that the steady counsel of that old
spirit and the warmth of his masterful lovability endured.
What would his father be advising now, in this sudden recrudescence of an
old tragedy--what would he say to this menace against her to whom he had
taken such a fancy in the last weeks of his life? 'I must do my best for
her,' thought Jolyon; 'he left her to me in his will. But what is the
best?'
And as if seeking to regain the sapience, the balance and shrewd common
sense of that old Forsyte, he sat down in the ancient chair and crossed
his knees. But he felt a mere shadow sitting there; nor did any
inspiration come, while the fingers of the wind tapped on the darkening
panes of the french-window.
'Go and see her?' he thought, 'or ask her to come down here? What's her
life been? What is it now, I wonder? Beastly to rake up things at this
time of day.' Again the figure of his cousin standing with a hand on a
front door of a fine olive-green leaped out, vivid, like one of those
figures from old-fashioned clocks when the hour strikes; and his words
sounded in Jolyon's ears clearer than any chime: "I manage my own
affairs. I've told you once, I tell you again: We are not at home." The
repugnance he had then felt for Soames--for his flat-cheeked, shaven face
full of spiritual bull-doggedness; for his spare, square, sleek figure
slightly crouched as it were over the bone he could not digest--came now
again, fresh as ever, nay, with an odd increase. 'I dislike him,' he
thought, 'I dislike him to the very roots of me. And that's lucky; it'll
make it easier for me to back his wife.' Half-artist, and half-Forsyte,
Jolyon was constitutionally averse from what he termed 'ructions'; unless
angered, he conformed deeply to that classic description of the she-dog,
'Er'd ruther run than fight.' A little smile became settled in his
beard. Ironical that Soames should come down here--to this house, built
for himself! How he had gazed and gaped at this ruin of his past
intention; furtively nosing at the walls and stairway, appraising
everything! And intuitively Jolyon thought: 'I believe the fellow even
now would like to be living here. He could never leave off longing for
what he once owned! Well, I must act, somehow or other; but it's a
bore--a great bore.'
Late that evening he wrote to the Chelsea flat, asking if Irene would see
him.
The old century which had seen the plant of individualism flower so
wonderfully was setting in a sky orange with coming storms. Rumours of
war added to the briskness of a London turbulent at the close of the
summer holidays. And the streets to Jolyon, who was not often up in
town, had a feverish look, due to these new motorcars and cabs, of which
he disapproved aesthetically. He counted these vehicles from his hansom,
and made the proportion of them one in twenty. 'They were one in thirty
about a year ago,' he thought; 'they've come to stay. Just so much more
rattling round of wheels and general stink'--for he was one of those
rather rare Liberals who object to anything new when it takes a material
form; and he instructed his driver to get down to the river quickly, out
of the traffic, desiring to look at the water through the mellowing
screen of plane-trees. At the little block of flats which stood back
some fifty yards from the Embankment, he told the cabman to wait, and
went up to the first floor.
Yes, Mrs. Heron was at home!
The effect of a settled if very modest income was at once apparent to him
remembering the threadbare refinement in that tiny flat eight years ago
when he announced her good fortune. Everything was now fresh, dainty,
and smelled of flowers. The general effect was silvery with touches of
black, hydrangea colour, and gold. 'A woman of great taste,' he thought.
Time had dealt gently with Jolyon, for he was a Forsyte. But with Irene
Time hardly seemed to deal at all, or such was his impression. She
appeared to him not a day older, standing there in mole-coloured velvet
corduroy, with soft dark eyes and dark gold hair, with outstretched hand
and a little smile.
"Won't you sit down?"
He had probably never occupied a chair with a fuller sense of
embarrassment.
"You look absolutely unchanged," he said.
"And you look younger, Cousin Jolyon."
Jolyon ran his hands through his hair, whose thickness was still a
comfort to him.
"I'm ancient, but I don't feel it. That's one thing about painting, it
keeps you young. Titian lived to ninety-nine, and had to have plague to
kill him off. Do you know, the first time I ever saw you I thought of a
picture by him?"
"When did you see me for the first time?"
"In the Botanical Gardens."
"How did you know me, if you'd never seen me before?"
"By someone who came up to you." He was looking at her hardily, but her
face did not change; and she said quietly:
"Yes; many lives ago."
"What is your recipe for youth, Irene?"
"People who don't live are wonderfully preserved."
H'm! a bitter little saying! People who don't live! But an opening, and
he took it. "You remember my Cousin Soames?"
He saw her smile faintly at that whimsicality, and at once went on:
"He came to see me the day before yesterday! He wants a divorce. Do
you?"
"I?" The word seemed startled out of her. "After twelve years? It's
rather late. Won't it be difficult?"
Jolyon looked hard into her face. "Unless...." he said.
"Unless I have a lover now. But I have never had one since."
What did he feel at the simplicity and candour of those words? Relief,
surprise, pity! Venus for twelve years without a lover!
"And yet," he said, "I suppose you would give a good deal to be free,
too?"
"I don't know. What does it matter, now?"
"But if you were to love again?"
"I should love." In that simple answer she seemed to sum up the whole
philosophy of one on whom the world had turned its back.
"Well! Is there anything you would like me to say to him?"
"Only that I'm sorry he's not free. He had his chance once. I don't
know why he didn't take it."
"Because he was a Forsyte; we never part with things, you know, unless we
want something in their place; and not always then."
Irene smiled. "Don't you, Cousin Jolyon?--I think you do."
"Of course, I'm a bit of a mongrel--not quite a pure Forsyte. I never
take the halfpennies off my cheques, I put them on," said Jolyon
uneasily.
"Well, what does Soames want in place of me now?"
"I don't know; perhaps children."
She was silent for a little, looking down.
"Yes," she murmured; "it's hard. I would help him to be free if I
could."
Jolyon gazed into his hat, his embarrassment was increasing fast; so was
his admiration, his wonder, and his pity. She was so lovely, and so
lonely; and altogether it was such a coil!
"Well," he said, "I shall have to see Soames. If there's anything I can
do for you I'm always at your service. You must think of me as a
wretched substitute for my father. At all events I'll let you know what
happens when I speak to Soames. He may supply the material himself."
She shook her head.
"You see, he has a lot to lose; and I have nothing. I should like him to
be free; but I don't see what I can do."
"Nor I at the moment," said Jolyon, and soon after took his leave. He
went down to his hansom. Half-past three! Soames would be at his office
still.
"To the Poultry," he called through the trap. In front of the Houses of
Parliament and in Whitehall, newsvendors were calling, "Grave situation
in the Transvaal!" but the cries hardly roused him, absorbed in
recollection of that very beautiful figure, of her soft dark glance, and
the words: "I have never had one since." What on earth did such a woman
do with her life, back-watered like this? Solitary, unprotected, with
every man's hand against her or rather--reaching out to grasp her at the
least sign. And year after year she went on like that!
The word 'Poultry' above the passing citizens brought him back to
reality.
'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte,' in black letters on a ground the colour
of peasoup, spurred him to a sort of vigour, and he went up the stone
stairs muttering: "Fusty musty ownerships! Well, we couldn't do without
them!"
"I want Mr. Soames Forsyte," he said to the boy who opened the door.
"What name?"
"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."
The youth looked at him curiously, never having seen a Forsyte with a
beard, and vanished.
The offices of 'Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte' had slowly absorbed the
offices of 'Tooting and Bowles,' and occupied the whole of the first
floor.
The firm consisted now of nothing but Soames and a number of managing and
articled clerks. The complete retirement of James some six years ago had
accelerated business, to which the final touch of speed had been imparted
when Bustard dropped off, worn out, as many believed, by the suit of
'Fryer versus Forsyte,' more in Chancery than ever and less likely to
benefit its beneficiaries. Soames, with his saner grasp of actualities,
had never permitted it to worry him; on the contrary, he had long
perceived that Providence had presented him therein with L200 a year net
in perpetuity, and--why not?
When Jolyon entered, his cousin was drawing out a list of holdings in
Consols, which in view of the rumours of war he was going to advise his
companies to put on the market at once, before other companies did the
same. He looked round, sidelong, and said:
"How are you? Just one minute. Sit down, won't you?" And having entered
three amounts, and set a ruler to keep his place, he turned towards
Jolyon, biting the side of his flat forefinger....
"Yes?" he said.
"I have seen her."
Soames frowned.
"Well?"
"She has remained faithful to memory."
Having said that, Jolyon was ashamed. His cousin had flushed a dusky
yellowish red. What had made him tease the poor brute!
"I was to tell you she is sorry you are not free. Twelve years is a long
time. You know your law, and what chance it gives you." Soames uttered a
curious little grunt, and the two remained a full minute without
speaking. 'Like wax!' thought Jolyon, watching that close face, where
the flush was fast subsiding. 'He'll never give me a sign of what he's
thinking, or going to do. Like wax!' And he transferred his gaze to a
plan of that flourishing town, 'By-Street on Sea,' the future existence
of which lay exposed on the wall to the possessive instincts of the
firm's clients. The whimsical thought flashed through him: 'I wonder if
I shall get a bill of costs for this--"To attending Mr. Jolyon Forsyte in
the matter of my divorce, to receiving his account of his visit to my
wife, and to advising him to go and see her again, sixteen and
eightpence."'
Suddenly Soames said: "I can't go on like this. I tell you, I can't go
on like this." His eyes were shifting from side to side, like an
animal's when it looks for way of escape. 'He really suffers,' thought
Jolyon; 'I've no business to forget that, just because I don't like him.'
"Surely," he said gently, "it lies with yourself. A man can always put
these things through if he'll take it on himself."
Soames turned square to him, with a sound which seemed to come from
somewhere very deep.
"Why should I suffer more than I've suffered already? Why should I?"
Jolyon could only shrug his shoulders. His reason agreed, his instinct
rebelled; he could not have said why.
"Your father," went on Soames, "took an interest in her--why, goodness
knows! And I suppose you do too?" he gave Jolyon a sharp look. "It
seems to me that one only has to do another person a wrong to get all the
sympathy. I don't know in what way I was to blame--I've never known. I
always treated her well. I gave her everything she could wish for. I
wanted her."
Again Jolyon's reason nodded; again his instinct shook its head. 'What is
it?' he thought; 'there must be something wrong in me. Yet if there is,
I'd rather be wrong than right.'
"After all," said Soames with a sort of glum fierceness, "she was my
wife."
In a flash the thought went through his listener: 'There it is!
Ownerships! Well, we all own things. But--human beings! Pah!'
"You have to look at facts," he said drily, "or rather the want of them."
Soames gave him another quick suspicious look.
"The want of them?" he said. "Yes, but I am not so sure."
"I beg your pardon," replied Jolyon; "I've told you what she said. It was
explicit."
"My experience has not been one to promote blind confidence in her word.
We shall see."
Jolyon got up.
"Good-bye," he said curtly.
"Good-bye," returned Soames; and Jolyon went out trying to understand the
look, half-startled, half-menacing, on his cousin's face. He sought
Waterloo Station in a disturbed frame of mind, as though the skin of his
moral being had been scraped; and all the way down in the train he
thought of Irene in her lonely flat, and of Soames in his lonely office,
and of the strange paralysis of life that lay on them both. 'In
chancery!' he thought. 'Both their necks in chancery--and her's so
pretty!'
CHAPTER IX
VAL HEARS THE NEWS
The keeping of engagements had not as yet been a conspicuous feature in
the life of young Val Dartie, so that when he broke two and kept one, it
was the latter event which caused him, if anything, the greater surprise,
while jogging back to town from Robin Hill after his ride with Holly.
She had been even prettier than he had thought her yesterday, on her
silver-roan, long-tailed 'palfrey'; and it seemed to him, self-critical
in the brumous October gloaming and the outskirts of London, that only
his boots had shone throughout their two-hour companionship. He took out
his new gold 'hunter'--present from James--and looked not at the time,
but at sections of his face in the glittering back of its opened case.
He had a temporary spot over one eyebrow, and it displeased him, for it
must have displeased her. Crum never had any spots. Together with Crum
rose the scene in the promenade of the Pandemonium. To-day he had not
had the faintest desire to unbosom himself to Holly about his father.
His father lacked poetry, the stirrings of which he was feeling for the
first time in his nineteen years. The Liberty, with Cynthia Dark, that
almost mythical embodiment of rapture; the Pandemonium, with the woman of
uncertain age--both seemed to Val completely 'off,' fresh from communion
with this new, shy, dark-haired young cousin of his. She rode 'Jolly
well,' too, so that it had been all the more flattering that she had let
him lead her where he would in the long gallops of Richmond Park, though
she knew them so much better than he did. Looking back on it all, he was
mystified by the barrenness of his speech; he felt that he could say 'an
awful lot of fetching things' if he had but the chance again, and the
thought that he must go back to Littlehampton on the morrow, and to
Oxford on the twelfth--'to that beastly exam,' too--without the faintest
chance of first seeing her again, caused darkness to settle on his spirit
even more quickly than on the evening. He should write to her, however,
and she had promised to answer. Perhaps, too, she would come up to
Oxford to see her brother. That thought was like the first star, which
came out as he rode into Padwick's livery stables in the purlieus of
Sloane Square. He got off and stretched himself luxuriously, for he had
ridden some twenty-five good miles. The Dartie within him made him
chaffer for five minutes with young Padwick concerning the favourite for
the Cambridgeshire; then with the words, "Put the gee down to my
account," he walked away, a little wide at the knees, and flipping his
boots with his knotty little cane. 'I don't feel a bit inclined to go
out,' he thought. 'I wonder if mother will stand fizz for my last night!'
With 'fizz' and recollection, he could well pass a domestic evening.
When he came down, speckless after his bath, he found his mother
scrupulous in a low evening dress, and, to his annoyance, his Uncle
Soames. They stopped talking when he came in; then his uncle said:
"He'd better be told."
At those words, which meant something about his father, of course, Val's
first thought was of Holly. Was it anything beastly? His mother began
speaking.
"Your father," she said in her fashionably appointed voice, while her
fingers plucked rather pitifully at sea-green brocade, "your father, my
dear boy, has--is not at Newmarket; he's on his way to South America.
He--he's left us."
Val looked from her to Soames. Left them! Was he sorry? Was he fond of
his father? It seemed to him that he did not know. Then, suddenly--as
at a whiff of gardenias and cigars--his heart twitched within him, and he
was sorry. One's father belonged to one, could not go off in this
fashion--it was not done! Nor had he always been the 'bounder' of the
Pandemonium promenade. There were precious memories of tailors' shops
and horses, tips at school, and general lavish kindness, when in luck.
"But why?" he said. Then, as a sportsman himself, was sorry he had
asked. The mask of his mother's face was all disturbed; and he burst
out:
"All right, Mother, don't tell me! Only, what does it mean?"
"A divorce, Val, I'm afraid."
Val uttered a queer little grunt, and looked quickly at his uncle--that
uncle whom he had been taught to look on as a guarantee against the
consequences of having a father, even against the Dartie blood in his own
veins. The flat-checked visage seemed to wince, and this upset him.
"It won't be public, will it?"
So vividly before him had come recollection of his own eyes glued to the
unsavoury details of many a divorce suit in the Public Press.
"Can't it be done quietly somehow? It's so disgusting for--for mother,
and--and everybody."
"Everything will be done as quietly as it can, you may be sure."
"Yes--but, why is it necessary at all? Mother doesn't want to marry
again."
Himself, the girls, their name tarnished in the sight of his
schoolfellows and of Crum, of the men at Oxford, of--Holly! Unbearable!
What was to be gained by it?
"Do you, Mother?" he said sharply.
Thus brought face to face with so much of her own feeling by the one she
loved best in the world, Winifred rose from the Empire chair in which she
had been sitting. She saw that her son would be against her unless he
was told everything; and, yet, how could she tell him? Thus, still
plucking at the green brocade, she stared at Soames. Val, too, stared at
Soames. Surely this embodiment of respectability and the sense of
property could not wish to bring such a slur on his own sister!
Soames slowly passed a little inlaid paperknife over the smooth surface
of a marqueterie table; then, without looking at his nephew, he began:
"You don't understand what your mother has had to put up with these
twenty years. This is only the last straw, Val." And glancing up
sideways at Winifred, he added:
"Shall I tell him?"
Winifred was silent. If he were not told, he would be against her! Yet,
how dreadful to be told such things of his own father! Clenching her
lips, she nodded.
Soames spoke in a rapid, even voice:
"He has always been a burden round your mother's neck. She has paid his
debts over and over again; he has often been drunk, abused and threatened
her; and now he is gone to Buenos Aires with a dancer." And, as if
distrusting the efficacy of those words on the boy, he went on quickly:
"He took your mother's pearls to give to her."
Val jerked up his hand, then. At that signal of distress Winifred cried
out:
"That'll do, Soames--stop!"
In the boy, the Dartie and the Forsyte were struggling. For debts,
drink, dancers, he had a certain sympathy; but the pearls--no! That was
too much! And suddenly he found his mother's hand squeezing his.
"You see," he heard Soames say, "we can't have it all begin over again.
There's a limit; we must strike while the iron's hot."
Val freed his hand.
"But--you're--never going to bring out that about the pearls! I couldn't
stand that--I simply couldn't!"
Winifred cried out:
"No, no, Val--oh no! That's only to show you how impossible your father
is!" And his uncle nodded. Somewhat assuaged, Val took out a cigarette.
His father had bought him that thin curved case. Oh! it was
unbearable--just as he was going up to Oxford!
"Can't mother be protected without?" he said. "I could look after her.
It could always be done later if it was really necessary."
A smile played for a moment round Soames' lips, and became bitter.
"You don't know what you're talking of; nothing's so fatal as delay in
such matters."
"Why?"
"I tell you, boy, nothing's so fatal. I know from experience."
His voice had the ring of exasperation. Val regarded him round-eyed,
never having known his uncle express any sort of feeling. Oh! Yes--he
remembered now--there had been an Aunt Irene, and something had
happened--something which people kept dark; he had heard his father once
use an unmentionable word of her.
"I don't want to speak ill of your father," Soames went on doggedly, "but
I know him well enough to be sure that he'll be back on your mother's
hands before a year's over. You can imagine what that will mean to her
and to all of you after this. The only thing is to cut the knot for
good."
In spite of himself, Val was impressed; and, happening to look at his
mother's face, he got what was perhaps his first real insight into the
fact that his own feelings were not always what mattered most.
"All right, mother," he said; "we'll back you up. Only I'd like to know
when it'll be. It's my first term, you know. I don't want to be up
there when it comes off."
"Oh! my dear boy," murmured Winifred, "it is a bore for you." So, by
habit, she phrased what, from the expression of her face, was the most
poignant regret. "When will it be, Soames?"
"Can't tell--not for months. We must get restitution first."
'What the deuce is that?' thought Val. 'What silly brutes lawyers are!
Not for months! I know one thing: I'm not going to dine in!' And he
said:
"Awfully sorry, mother, I've got to go out to dinner now."
Though it was his last night, Winifred nodded almost gratefully; they
both felt that they had gone quite far enough in the expression of
feeling.
Val sought the misty freedom of Green Street, reckless and depressed.
And not till he reached Piccadilly did he discover that he had only
eighteen-pence. One couldn't dine off eighteen-pence, and he was very
hungry. He looked longingly at the windows of the Iseeum Club, where he
had often eaten of the best with his father! Those pearls! There was no
getting over them! But the more he brooded and the further he walked the
hungrier he naturally became. Short of trailing home, there were only two
places where he could go--his grandfather's in Park Lane, and Timothy's
in the Bayswater Road. Which was the less deplorable? At his
grandfather's he would probably get a better dinner on the spur of the
moment. At Timothy's they gave you a jolly good feed when they expected
you, not otherwise. He decided on Park Lane, not unmoved by the thought
that to go up to Oxford without affording his grandfather a chance to tip
him was hardly fair to either of them. His mother would hear he had been
there, of course, and might think it funny; but he couldn't help that.
He rang the bell.
"Hullo, Warmson, any dinner for me, d'you think?"
"They're just going in, Master Val. Mr. Forsyte will be very glad to see
you. He was saying at lunch that he never saw you nowadays."
Val grinned.
"Well, here I am. Kill the fatted calf, Warmson, let's have fizz."
Warmson smiled faintly--in his opinion Val was a young limb.
"I will ask Mrs. Forsyte, Master Val."
"I say," Val grumbled, taking off his overcoat, "I'm not at school any
more, you know."
Warmson, not without a sense of humour, opened the door beyond the
stag's-horn coat stand, with the words:
"Mr. Valerus, ma'am."
"Confound him!" thought Val, entering.
A warm embrace, a "Well, Val!" from Emily, and a rather quavery "So there
you are at last!" from James, restored his sense of dignity.
"Why didn't you let us know? There's only saddle of mutton. Champagne,
Warmson," said Emily. And they went in.
At the great dining-table, shortened to its utmost, under which so many
fashionable legs had rested, James sat at one end, Emily at the other,
Val half-way between them; and something of the loneliness of his
grandparents, now that all their four children were flown, reached the
boy's spirit. 'I hope I shall kick the bucket long before I'm as old as
grandfather,' he thought. 'Poor old chap, he's as thin as a rail!' And
lowering his voice while his grandfather and Warmson were in discussion
about sugar in the soup, he said to Emily:
"It's pretty brutal at home, Granny. I suppose you know."
"Yes, dear boy."
"Uncle Soames was there when I left. I say, isn't there anything to be
done to prevent a divorce? Why is he so beastly keen on it?"
"Hush, my dear!" murmured Emily; "we're keeping it from your
grandfather."
James' voice sounded from the other end.
"What's that? What are you talking about?"
"About Val's college," returned Emily. "Young Pariser was there, James;
you remember--he nearly broke the Bank at Monte Carlo afterwards."
James muttered that he did not know--Val must look after himself up
there, or he'd get into bad ways. And he looked at his grandson with
gloom, out of which affection distrustfully glimmered.
"What I'm afraid of," said Val to his plate, "is of being hard up, you
know."
By instinct he knew that the weak spot in that old man was fear of
insecurity for his grandchildren.
"Well," said James, and the soup in his spoon dribbled over, "you'll have
a good allowance; but you must keep within it."
"Of course," murmured Val; "if it is good. How much will it be,
Grandfather?"
"Three hundred and fifty; it's too much. I had next to nothing at your
age."
Val sighed. He had hoped for four, and been afraid of three. "I don't
know what your young cousin has," said James; "he's up there. His
father's a rich man."
"Aren't you?" asked Val hardily.
"I?" replied James, flustered. "I've got so many expenses. Your
father...." and he was silent.
"Cousin Jolyon's got an awfully jolly place. I went down there with
Uncle Soames--ripping stables."
"Ah!" murmured James profoundly. "That house--I knew how it would be!"
And he lapsed into gloomy meditation over his fish-bones. His son's
tragedy, and the deep cleavage it had caused in the Forsyte family, had
still the power to draw him down into a whirlpool of doubts and
misgivings. Val, who hankered to talk of Robin Hill, because Robin Hill
meant Holly, turned to Emily and said:
"Was that the house built for Uncle Soames?" And, receiving her nod,
went on: "I wish you'd tell me about him, Granny. What became of Aunt
Irene? Is she still going? He seems awfully worked-up about something
to-night."
Emily laid her finger on her lips, but the word Irene had caught James'
ear.
"What's that?" he said, staying a piece of mutton close to his lips.
"Who's been seeing her? I knew we hadn't heard the last of that."
"Now, James," said Emily, "eat your dinner. Nobody's been seeing
anybody."
James put down his fork.
"There you go," he said. "I might die before you'd tell me of it. Is
Soames getting a divorce?"
"Nonsense," said Emily with incomparable aplomb; "Soames is much too
sensible."
James had sought his own throat, gathering the long white whiskers
together on the skin and bone of it.
"She--she was always...." he said, and with that enigmatic remark the
conversation lapsed, for Warmson had returned. But later, when the
saddle of mutton had been succeeded by sweet, savoury, and dessert, and
Val had received a cheque for twenty pounds and his grandfather's
kiss--like no other kiss in the world, from lips pushed out with a sort
of fearful suddenness, as if yielding to weakness--he returned to the
charge in the hall.
"Tell us about Uncle Soames, Granny. Why is he so keen on mother's
getting a divorce?"
"Your Uncle Soames," said Emily, and her voice had in it an exaggerated
assurance, "is a lawyer, my dear boy. He's sure to know best."
"Is he?" muttered Val. "But what did become of Aunt Irene? I remember
she was jolly good-looking."
"She--er...." said Emily, "behaved very badly. We don't talk about it."
"Well, I don't want everybody at Oxford to know about our affairs,"
ejaculated Val; "it's a brutal idea. Why couldn't father be prevented
without its being made public?"
Emily sighed. She had always lived rather in an atmosphere of divorce,
owing to her fashionable proclivities--so many of those whose legs had
been under her table having gained a certain notoriety. When, however,
it touched her own family, she liked it no better than other people. But
she was eminently practical, and a woman of courage, who never pursued a
shadow in preference to its substance.
"Your mother," she said, "will be happier if she's quite free, Val.
Good-night, my dear boy; and don't wear loud waistcoats up at Oxford,
they're not the thing just now. Here's a little present."
With another five pounds in his hand, and a little warmth in his heart,
for he was fond of his grandmother, he went out into Park Lane. A wind
had cleared the mist, the autumn leaves were rustling, and the stars were
shining. With all that money in his pocket an impulse to 'see life'
beset him; but he had not gone forty yards in the direction of Piccadilly
when Holly's shy face, and her eyes with an imp dancing in their gravity,
came up before him, and his hand seemed to be tingling again from the
pressure of her warm gloved hand. 'No, dash it!' he thought, 'I'm going
home!'
CHAPTER X
SOAMES ENTERTAINS THE FUTURE
It was full late for the river, but the weather was lovely, and summer
lingered below the yellowing leaves. Soames took many looks at the day
from his riverside garden near Mapledurham that Sunday morning.
With his own hands he put flowers about his little house-boat, and
equipped the punt, in which, after lunch, he proposed to take them on the
river. Placing those Chinese-looking cushions, he could not tell whether
or no he wished to take Annette alone. She was so very pretty--could he
trust himself not to say irrevocable words, passing beyond the limits of
discretion? Roses on the veranda were still in bloom, and the hedges
ever-green, so that there was almost nothing of middle-aged autumn to
chill the mood; yet was he nervous, fidgety, strangely distrustful of his
powers to steer just the right course. This visit had been planned to
produce in Annette and her mother a due sense of his possessions, so that
they should be ready to receive with respect any overture he might later
be disposed to make. He dressed with great care, making himself neither
too young nor too old, very thankful that his hair was still thick and
smooth and had no grey in it. Three times he went up to his
picture-gallery. If they had any knowledge at all, they must see at once
that his collection alone was worth at least thirty thousand pounds. He
minutely inspected, too, the pretty bedroom overlooking the river where
they would take off their hats. It would be her bedroom if--if the matter
went through, and she became his wife. Going up to the dressing-table he
passed his hand over the lilac-coloured pincushion, into which were stuck
all kinds of pins; a bowl of pot-pourri exhaled a scent that made his
head turn just a little. His wife! If only the whole thing could be
settled out of hand, and there was not the nightmare of this divorce to
be gone through first; and with gloom puckered on his forehead, he looked
out at the river shining beyond the roses and the lawn. Madame Lamotte
would never resist this prospect for her child; Annette would never
resist her mother. If only he were free! He drove to the station to
meet them. What taste Frenchwomen had! Madame Lamotte was in black with
touches of lilac colour, Annette in greyish lilac linen, with cream
coloured gloves and hat. Rather pale she looked and Londony; and her
blue eyes were demure. Waiting for them to come down to lunch, Soames
stood in the open french-window of the diningroom moved by that sensuous
delight in sunshine and flowers and trees which only came to the full
when youth and beauty were there to share it with one. He had ordered
the lunch with intense consideration; the wine was a very special
Sauterne, the whole appointments of the meal perfect, the coffee served
on the veranda super-excellent. Madame Lamotte accepted creme de menthe;
Annette refused. Her manners were charming, with just a suspicion of
'the conscious beauty' creeping into them. 'Yes,' thought Soames,
'another year of London and that sort of life, and she'll be spoiled.'
Madame was in sedate French raptures. "Adorable! Le soleil est si bon!
How everything is chic, is it not, Annette? Monsieur is a real Monte
Cristo." Annette murmured assent, with a look up at Soames which he
could not read. He proposed a turn on the river. But to punt two persons
when one of them looked so ravishing on those Chinese cushions was merely
to suffer from a sense of lost opportunity; so they went but a short way
towards Pangbourne, drifting slowly back, with every now and then an
autumn leaf dropping on Annette or on her mother's black amplitude. And
Soames was not happy, worried by the thought: 'How--when--where--can I
say--what?' They did not yet even know that he was married. To tell them
he was married might jeopardise his every chance; yet, if he did not
definitely make them understand that he wished for Annette's hand, it
would be dropping into some other clutch before he was free to claim it.
At tea, which they both took with lemon, Soames spoke of the Transvaal.
"There'll be war," he said.
Madame Lamotte lamented.
"Ces pauvres gens bergers!" Could they not be left to themselves?
Soames smiled--the question seemed to him absurd.
Surely as a woman of business she understood that the British could not
abandon their legitimate commercial interests.
"Ah! that!" But Madame Lamotte found that the English were a little
hypocrite. They were talking of justice and the Uitlanders, not of
business. Monsieur was the first who had spoken to her of that.
"The Boers are only half-civilised," remarked Soames; "they stand in the
way of progress. It will never do to let our suzerainty go."
"What does that mean to say? Suzerainty!"
"What a strange word!" Soames became eloquent, roused by these threats
to the principle of possession, and stimulated by Annette's eyes fixed on
him. He was delighted when presently she said:
"I think Monsieur is right. They should be taught a lesson." She was
sensible!
"Of course," he said, "we must act with moderation. I'm no jingo. We
must be firm without bullying. Will you come up and see my pictures?"
Moving from one to another of these treasures, he soon perceived that
they knew nothing. They passed his last Mauve, that remarkable study of
a 'Hay-cart going Home,' as if it were a lithograph. He waited almost
with awe to see how they would view the jewel of his collection--an
Israels whose price he had watched ascending till he was now almost
certain it had reached top value, and would be better on the market
again. They did not view it at all. This was a shock; and yet to have
in Annette a virgin taste to form would be better than to have the silly,
half-baked predilections of the English middle-class to deal with. At
the end of the gallery was a Meissonier of which he was rather ashamed
--Meissonier was so steadily going down. Madame Lamotte stopped before
it.
"Meissonier! Ah! What a jewel!" Soames took advantage of that moment.
Very gently touching Annette's arm, he said:
"How do you like my place, Annette?"
She did not shrink, did not respond; she looked at him full, looked down,
and murmured:
"Who would not like it? It is so beautiful!"
"Perhaps some day--" Soames said, and stopped.
So pretty she was, so self-possessed--she frightened him. Those
cornflower-blue eyes, the turn of that creamy neck, her delicate
curves--she was a standing temptation to indiscretion! No! No! One must
be sure of one's ground--much surer! 'If I hold off,' he thought, 'it
will tantalise her.' And he crossed over to Madame Lamotte, who was
still in front of the Meissonier.
"Yes, that's quite a good example of his later work. You must come
again, Madame, and see them lighted up. You must both come and spend a
night."
Enchanted, would it not be beautiful to see them lighted? By moonlight
too, the river must be ravishing!
Annette murmured:
"Thou art sentimental, Maman!"
Sentimental! That black-robed, comely, substantial Frenchwoman of the
world! And suddenly he was certain as he could be that there was no
sentiment in either of them. All the better. Of what use sentiment?
And yet....!
He drove to the station with them, and saw them into the train. To the
tightened pressure of his hand it seemed that Annette's fingers responded
just a little; her face smiled at him through the dark.
He went back to the carriage, brooding. "Go on home, Jordan," he said to
the coachman; "I'll walk." And he strode out into the darkening lanes,
caution and the desire of possession playing see-saw within him. 'Bon
soir, monsieur!' How softly she had said it. To know what was in her
mind! The French--they were like cats--one could tell nothing! But--how
pretty! What a perfect young thing to hold in one's arms! What a mother
for his heir! And he thought, with a smile, of his family and their
surprise at a French wife, and their curiosity, and of the way he would
play with it and buffet it confound them!
The, poplars sighed in the darkness; an owl hooted. Shadows deepened in
the water. 'I will and must be free,' he thought. 'I won't hang about
any longer. I'll go and see Irene. If you want things done, do them
yourself. I must live again--live and move and have my being.' And in
echo to that queer biblicality church-bells chimed the call to evening
prayer.
CHAPTER XI
AND VISITS THE PAST
On a Tuesday evening after dining at his club Soames set out to do what
required more courage and perhaps less delicacy than anything he had yet
undertaken in his life--save perhaps his birth, and one other action. He
chose the evening, indeed, partly because Irene was more likely to be in,
but mainly because he had failed to find sufficient resolution by
daylight, had needed wine to give him extra daring.
He left his hansom on the Embankment, and walked up to the Old Church,
uncertain of the block of flats where he knew she lived. He found it
hiding behind a much larger mansion; and having read the name, 'Mrs.
Irene Heron'--Heron, forsooth! Her maiden name: so she used that again,
did she?--he stepped back into the road to look up at the windows of the
first floor. Light was coming through in the corner fiat, and he could
hear a piano being played. He had never had a love of music, had secretly
borne it a grudge in the old days when so often she had turned to her
piano, making of it a refuge place into which she knew he could not
enter. Repulse! The long repulse, at first restrained and secret, at
last open! Bitter memory came with that sound. It must be she playing,
and thus almost assured of seeing her, he stood more undecided than ever.
Shivers of anticipation ran through him; his tongue felt dry, his heart
beat fast. 'I have no cause to be afraid,' he thought. And then the
lawyer stirred within him. Was he doing a foolish thing? Ought he not
to have arranged a formal meeting in the presence of her trustee? No!
Not before that fellow Jolyon, who sympathised with her! Never! He
crossed back into the doorway, and, slowly, to keep down the beating of
his heart, mounted the single flight of stairs and rang the bell. When
the door was opened to him his sensations were regulated by the scent
which came--that perfume--from away back in the past, bringing muffled
remembrance: fragrance of a drawing-room he used to enter, of a house he
used to own--perfume of dried rose-leaves and honey!
"Say, Mr. Forsyte," he said, "your mistress will see me, I know." He had
thought this out; she would think it was Jolyon!
When the maid was gone and he was alone in the tiny hall, where the light
was dim from one pearly-shaded sconce, and walls, carpet, everything was
silvery, making the walled-in space all ghostly, he could only think
ridiculously: 'Shall I go in with my overcoat on, or take it off?' The
music ceased; the maid said from the doorway:
"Will you walk in, sir?"
Soames walked in. He noted mechanically that all was still silvery, and
that the upright piano was of satinwood. She had risen and stood
recoiled against it; her hand, placed on the keys as if groping for
support, had struck a sudden discord, held for a moment, and released.
The light from the shaded piano-candle fell on her neck, leaving her face
rather in shadow. She was in a black evening dress, with a sort of
mantilla over her shoulders--he did not remember ever having seen her in
black, and the thought passed through him: 'She dresses even when she's
alone.'
"You!" he heard her whisper.
Many times Soames had rehearsed this scene in fancy. Rehearsal served
him not at all. He simply could not speak. He had never thought that
the sight of this woman whom he had once so passionately desired, so
completely owned, and whom he had not seen for twelve years, could affect
him in this way. He had imagined himself speaking and acting, half as
man of business, half as judge. And now it was as if he were in the
presence not of a mere woman and erring wife, but of some force, subtle
and elusive as atmosphere itself within him and outside. A kind of
defensive irony welled up in him.
"Yes, it's a queer visit! I hope you're well."
"Thank you. Will you sit down?"
She had moved away from the piano, and gone over to a window-seat,
sinking on to it, with her hands clasped in her lap. Light fell on her
there, so that Soames could see her face, eyes, hair, strangely as he
remembered them, strangely beautiful.
He sat down on the edge of a satinwood chair, upholstered with
silver-coloured stuff, close to where he was standing.
"You have not changed," he said.
"No? What have you come for?"
"To discuss things."
"I have heard what you want from your cousin."
"Well?"
"I am willing. I have always been."
The sound of her voice, reserved and close, the sight of her figure
watchfully poised, defensive, was helping him now. A thousand memories
of her, ever on the watch against him, stirred, and....
"Perhaps you will be good enough, then, to give me information on which I
can act. The law must be complied with."
"I have none to give you that you don't know of."
"Twelve years! Do you suppose I can believe that?"
"I don't suppose you will believe anything I say; but it's the truth."
Soames looked at her hard. He had said that she had not changed; now he
perceived that she had. Not in face, except that it was more beautiful;
not in form, except that it was a little fuller--no! She had changed
spiritually. There was more of her, as it were, something of activity
and daring, where there had been sheer passive resistance. 'Ah!' he
thought, 'that's her independent income! Confound Uncle Jolyon!'
"I suppose you're comfortably off now?" he said.
"Thank you, yes."
"Why didn't you let me provide for you? I would have, in spite of
everything."
A faint smile came on her lips; but she did not answer.
"You are still my wife," said Soames. Why he said that, what he meant by
it, he knew neither when he spoke nor after. It was a truism almost
preposterous, but its effect was startling. She rose from the
window-seat, and stood for a moment perfectly still, looking at him. He
could see her bosom heaving. Then she turned to the window and threw it
open.
"Why do that?" he said sharply. "You'll catch cold in that dress. I'm
not dangerous." And he uttered a little sad laugh.
She echoed it--faintly, bitterly.
"It was--habit."
"Rather odd habit," said Soames as bitterly. "Shut the window!"
She shut it and sat down again. She had developed power, this
woman--this--wife of his! He felt it issuing from her as she sat there,
in a sort of armour. And almost unconsciously he rose and moved nearer;
he wanted to see the expression on her face. Her eyes met his
unflinching. Heavens! how clear they were, and what a dark brown against
that white skin, and that burnt-amber hair! And how white her shoulders.
Funny sensation this! He ought to hate her.
"You had better tell me," he said; "it's to your advantage to be free as
well as to mine. That old matter is too old."
"I have told you."
"Do you mean to tell me there has been nothing--nobody?"
"Nobody. You must go to your own life."
Stung by that retort, Soames moved towards the piano and back to the
hearth, to and fro, as he had been wont in the old days in their
drawing-room when his feelings were too much for him.
"That won't do," he said. "You deserted me. In common justice it's for
you...."
He saw her shrug those white shoulders, heard her murmur:
"Yes. Why didn't you divorce me then? Should I have cared?"
He stopped, and looked at her intently with a sort of curiosity. What on
earth did she do with herself, if she really lived quite alone? And why
had he not divorced her? The old feeling that she had never understood
him, never done him justice, bit him while he stared at her.
"Why couldn't you have made me a good wife?" he said.
"Yes; it was a crime to marry you. I have paid for it. You will find
some way perhaps. You needn't mind my name, I have none to lose. Now I
think you had better go."
A sense of defeat--of being defrauded of his self-justification, and of
something else beyond power of explanation to himself, beset Soames like
the breath of a cold fog. Mechanically he reached up, took from the
mantel-shelf a little china bowl, reversed it, and said:
"Lowestoft. Where did you get this? I bought its fellow at Jobson's."
And, visited by the sudden memory of how, those many years ago, he and
she had bought china together, he remained staring at the little bowl, as
if it contained all the past. Her voice roused him.
"Take it. I don't want it."
Soames put it back on the shelf.
"Will you shake hands?" he said.
A faint smile curved her lips. She held out her hand. It was cold to
his rather feverish touch. 'She's made of ice,' he thought--'she was
always made of ice!' But even as that thought darted through him, his
senses were assailed by the perfume of her dress and body, as though the
warmth within her, which had never been for him, were struggling to show
its presence. And he turned on his heel. He walked out and away, as if
someone with a whip were after him, not even looking for a cab, glad of
the empty Embankment and the cold river, and the thick-strewn shadows of
the plane-tree leaves--confused, flurried, sore at heart, and vaguely
disturbed, as though he had made some deep mistake whose consequences he
could not foresee. And the fantastic thought suddenly assailed him if
instead of, 'I think you had better go,' she had said, 'I think you had
better stay!' What should he have felt, what would he have done? That
cursed attraction of her was there for him even now, after all these
years of estrangement and bitter thoughts. It was there, ready to mount
to his head at a sign, a touch. 'I was a fool to go!' he muttered.
'I've advanced nothing. Who could imagine? I never thought!' Memory,
flown back to the first years of his marriage, played him torturing
tricks. She had not deserved to keep her beauty--the beauty he had owned
and known so well. And a kind of bitterness at the tenacity of his own
admiration welled up in him. Most men would have hated the sight of her,
as she had deserved. She had spoiled his life, wounded his pride to
death, defrauded him of a son. And yet the mere sight of her, cold and
resisting as ever, had this power to upset him utterly! It was some
damned magnetism she had! And no wonder if, as she asserted; she had
lived untouched these last twelve years. So Bosinney--cursed be his
memory!--had lived on all this time with her! Soames could not tell
whether he was glad of that knowledge or no.
Nearing his Club at last he stopped to buy a paper. A headline ran:
'Boers reported to repudiate suzerainty!' Suzerainty! 'Just like her!'
he thought: 'she always did. Suzerainty! I still have it by rights.
She must be awfully lonely in that wretched little flat!'
CHAPTER XII
ON FORSYTE 'CHANGE
Soames belonged to two clubs, 'The Connoisseurs,' which he put on his
cards and seldom visited, and 'The Remove,' which he did not put on his
cards and frequented. He had joined this Liberal institution five years
ago, having made sure that its members were now nearly all sound
Conservatives in heart and pocket, if not in principle. Uncle Nicholas
had put him up. The fine reading-room was decorated in the Adam style.
On entering that evening he glanced at the tape for any news about the
Transvaal, and noted that Consols were down seven-sixteenths since the
morning. He was turning away to seek the reading-room when a voice
behind him said:
"Well, Soames, that went off all right."
It was Uncle Nicholas, in a frock-coat and his special cut-away collar,
with a black tie passed through a ring. Heavens! How young and dapper
he looked at eighty-two!
"I think Roger'd have been pleased," his uncle went on. "The thing was
very well done. Blackley's? I'll make a note of them. Buxton's done me
no good. These Boers are upsetting me--that fellow Chamberlain's driving
the country into war. What do you think?"
"Bound to come," murmured Soames.
Nicholas passed his hand over his thin, clean-shaven cheeks, very rosy
after his summer cure; a slight pout had gathered on his lips. This
business had revived all his Liberal principles.
"I mistrust that chap; he's a stormy petrel. House-property will go down
if there's war. You'll have trouble with Roger's estate. I often told
him he ought to get out of some of his houses. He was an opinionated
beggar."
'There was a pair of you!' thought Soames. But he never argued with an
uncle, in that way preserving their opinion of him as 'a long-headed
chap,' and the legal care of their property.
"They tell me at Timothy's," said Nicholas, lowering his voice, "that
Dartie has gone off at last. That'll be a relief to your father. He was
a rotten egg."
Again Soames nodded. If there was a subject on which the Forsytes really
agreed, it was the character of Montague Dartie.
"You take care," said Nicholas, "or he'll turn up again. Winifred had
better have the tooth out, I should say. No use preserving what's gone
bad."
Soames looked at him sideways. His nerves, exacerbated by the interview
he had just come through, disposed him to see a personal allusion in
those words.
"I'm advising her," he said shortly.
"Well," said Nicholas, "the brougham's waiting; I must get home. I'm very
poorly. Remember me to your father."
And having thus reconsecrated the ties of blood, he passed down the steps
at his youthful gait and was wrapped into his fur coat by the junior
porter.
'I've never known Uncle Nicholas other than "very poorly,"' mused Soames,
'or seen him look other than everlasting. What a family! Judging by him,
I've got thirty-eight years of health before me. Well, I'm not going to
waste them.' And going over to a mirror he stood looking at his face.
Except for a line or two, and three or four grey hairs in his little dark
moustache, had he aged any more than Irene? The prime of life--he and
she in the very prime of life! And a fantastic thought shot into his
mind. Absurd! Idiotic! But again it came. And genuinely alarmed by the
recurrence, as one is by the second fit of shivering which presages a
feverish cold, he sat down on the weighing machine. Eleven stone! He had
not varied two pounds in twenty years. What age was she? Nearly
thirty-seven--not too old to have a child--not at all! Thirty-seven on
the ninth of next month. He remembered her birthday well--he had always
observed it religiously, even that last birthday so soon before she left
him, when he was almost certain she was faithless. Four birthdays in his
house. He had looked forward to them, because his gifts had meant a
semblance of gratitude, a certain attempt at warmth. Except, indeed,
that last birthday--which had tempted him to be too religious! And he
shied away in thought. Memory heaps dead leaves on corpse-like deeds,
from under which they do but vaguely offend the sense. And then he
thought suddenly: 'I could send her a present for her birthday. After
all, we're Christians! Couldn't!--couldn't we join up again!' And he
uttered a deep sigh sitting there. Annette! Ah! but between him and
Annette was the need for that wretched divorce suit! And how?
"A man can always work these things, if he'll take it on himself," Jolyon
had said.
But why should he take the scandal on himself with his whole career as a
pillar of the law at stake? It was not fair! It was quixotic! Twelve
years' separation in which he had taken no steps to free himself put out
of court the possibility of using her conduct with Bosinney as a ground
for divorcing her. By doing nothing to secure relief he had acquiesced,
even if the evidence could now be gathered, which was more than doubtful.
Besides, his own pride would never let him use that old incident, he had
suffered from it too much. No! Nothing but fresh misconduct on her
part--but she had denied it; and--almost--he had believed her. Hung up!
Utterly hung up!
He rose from the scooped-out red velvet seat with a feeling of
constriction about his vitals. He would never sleep with this going on
in him! And, taking coat and hat again, he went out, moving eastward.
In Trafalgar Square he became aware of some special commotion travelling
towards him out of the mouth of the Strand. It materialised in newspaper
men calling out so loudly that no words whatever could be heard. He
stopped to listen, and one came by.
"Payper! Special! Ultimatium by Krooger! Declaration of war!" Soames
bought the paper. There it was in the stop press....! His first thought
was: 'The Boers are committing suicide.' His second: 'Is there anything
still I ought to sell?' If so he had missed the chance--there would
certainly be a slump in the city to-morrow. He swallowed this thought
with a nod of defiance. That ultimatum was insolent--sooner than let it
pass he was prepared to lose money. They wanted a lesson, and they would
get it; but it would take three months at least to bring them to heel.
There weren't the troops out there; always behind time, the Government!
Confound those newspaper rats! What was the use of waking everybody up?
Breakfast to-morrow was quite soon enough. And he thought with alarm of
his father. They would cry it down Park Lane. Hailing a hansom, he got
in and told the man to drive there.
James and Emily had just gone up to bed, and after communicating the news
to Warmson, Soames prepared to follow. He paused by after-thought to
say:
"What do you think of it, Warmson?"
The butler ceased passing a hat brush over the silk hat Soames had taken
off, and, inclining his face a little forward, said in a low voice:
"Well, sir, they 'aven't a chance, of course; but I'm told they're very
good shots. I've got a son in the Inniskillings."
"You, Warmson? Why, I didn't know you were married."
"No, sir. I don't talk of it. I expect he'll be going out."
The slighter shock Soames had felt on discovering that he knew so little
of one whom he thought he knew so well was lost in the slight shock of
discovering that the war might touch one personally. Born in the year of
the Crimean War, he had only come to consciousness by the time the Indian
Mutiny was over; since then the many little wars of the British Empire
had been entirely professional, quite unconnected with the Forsytes and
all they stood for in the body politic. This war would surely be no
exception. But his mind ran hastily over his family. Two of the
Haymans, he had heard, were in some Yeomanry or other--it had always been
a pleasant thought, there was a certain distinction about the Yeomanry;
they wore, or used to wear, a blue uniform with silver about it, and rode
horses. And Archibald, he remembered, had once on a time joined the
Militia, but had given it up because his father, Nicholas, had made such
a fuss about his 'wasting his time peacocking about in a uniform.'
Recently he had heard somewhere that young Nicholas' eldest, very young
Nicholas, had become a Volunteer. 'No,' thought Soames, mounting the
stairs slowly, 'there's nothing in that!'
He stood on the landing outside his parents' bed and dressing rooms,
debating whether or not to put his nose in and say a reassuring word.
Opening the landing window, he listened. The rumble from Piccadilly was
all the sound he heard, and with the thought, 'If these motor-cars
increase, it'll affect house property,' he was about to pass on up to the
room always kept ready for him when he heard, distant as yet, the hoarse
rushing call of a newsvendor. There it was, and coming past the house!
He knocked on his mother's door and went in.
His father was sitting up in bed, with his ears pricked under the white
hair which Emily kept so beautifully cut. He looked pink, and
extraordinarily clean, in his setting of white sheet and pillow, out of
which the points of his high, thin, nightgowned shoulders emerged in
small peaks. His eyes alone, grey and distrustful under their withered
lids, were moving from the window to Emily, who in a wrapper was walking
up and down, squeezing a rubber ball attached to a scent bottle. The
room reeked faintly of the eau-de-Cologne she was spraying.
"All right!" said Soames, "it's not a fire. The Boers have declared
war--that's all."
Emily stopped her spraying.
"Oh!" was all she said, and looked at James.
Soames, too, looked at his father. He was taking it differently from
their expectation, as if some thought, strange to them, were working in
him.
"H'm!" he muttered suddenly, "I shan't live to see the end of this."
"Nonsense, James! It'll be over by Christmas."
"What do you know about it?" James answered her with asperity. "It's a
pretty mess at this time of night, too!" He lapsed into silence, and his
wife and son, as if hypnotised, waited for him to say: 'I can't tell--I
don't know; I knew how it would be!' But he did not. The grey eyes
shifted, evidently seeing nothing in the room; then movement occurred
under the bedclothes, and the knees were drawn up suddenly to a great
height.
"They ought to send out Roberts. It all comes from that fellow Gladstone
and his Majuba."
The two listeners noted something beyond the usual in his voice,
something of real anxiety. It was as if he had said: 'I shall never see
the old country peaceful and safe again. I shall have to die before I
know she's won.' And in spite of the feeling that James must not be
encouraged to be fussy, they were touched. Soames went up to the bedside
and stroked his father's hand which had emerged from under the
bedclothes, long and wrinkled with veins.
"Mark my words!" said James, "consols will go to par. For all I know,
Val may go and enlist."
"Oh, come, James!" cried Emily, "you talk as if there were danger."
Her comfortable voice seemed to soothe James for once.
"Well," he muttered, "I told you how it would be. I don't know, I'm
sure--nobody tells me anything. Are you sleeping here, my boy?"
The crisis was past, he would now compose himself to his normal degree of
anxiety; and, assuring his father that he was sleeping in the house,
Soames pressed his hand, and went up to his room.
The following afternoon witnessed the greatest crowd Timothy's had known
for many a year. On national occasions, such as this, it was, indeed,
almost impossible to avoid going there. Not that there was any danger or
rather only just enough to make it necessary to assure each other that
there was none.
Nicholas was there early. He had seen Soames the night before--Soames
had said it was bound to come. This old Kruger was in his dotage--why,
he must be seventy-five if he was a day!
(Nicholas was eighty-two.) What had Timothy said? He had had a fit after
Majuba. These Boers were a grasping lot! The dark-haired Francie, who
had arrived on his heels, with the contradictious touch which became the
free spirit of a daughter of Roger, chimed in:
"Kettle and pot, Uncle Nicholas. What price the Uitlanders?" What price,
indeed! A new expression, and believed to be due to her brother George.
Aunt Juley thought Francie ought not to say such a thing. Dear Mrs.
MacAnder's boy, Charlie MacAnder, was one, and no one could call him
grasping. At this Francie uttered one of her mots, scandalising, and so
frequently repeated:
"Well, his father's a Scotchman, and his mother's a cat."
Aunt Juley covered her ears, too late, but Aunt Hester smiled; as for
Nicholas, he pouted--witticism of which he was not the author was hardly
to his taste. Just then Marian Tweetyman arrived, followed almost
immediately by young Nicholas. On seeing his son, Nicholas rose.
"Well, I must be going," he said, "Nick here will tell you what'll win
the race." And with this hit at his eldest, who, as a pillar of
accountancy, and director of an insurance company, was no more addicted
to sport than his father had ever been, he departed. Dear Nicholas!
What race was that? Or was it only one of his jokes? He was a wonderful
man for his age! How many lumps would dear Marian take? And how were
Giles and Jesse? Aunt Juley supposed their Yeomanry would be very busy
now, guarding the coast, though of course the Boers had no ships. But
one never knew what the French might do if they had the chance,
especially since that dreadful Fashoda scare, which had upset Timothy so
terribly that he had made no investments for months afterwards. It was
the ingratitude of the Boers that was so dreadful, after everything had
been done for them--Dr. Jameson imprisoned, and he was so nice, Mrs.
MacAnder had always said. And Sir Alfred Milner sent out to talk to
them--such a clever man! She didn't know what they wanted.
But at this moment occurred one of those sensations--so precious at
Timothy's--which great occasions sometimes bring forth:
"Miss June Forsyte."
Aunts Juley and Hester were on their feet at once, trembling from
smothered resentment, and old affection bubbling up, and pride at the
return of a prodigal June! Well, this was a surprise! Dear June--after
all these years! And how well she was looking! Not changed at all! It
was almost on their lips to add, 'And how is your dear grandfather?'
forgetting in that giddy moment that poor dear Jolyon had been in his
grave for seven years now.
Ever the most courageous and downright of all the Forsytes, June, with
her decided chin and her spirited eyes and her hair like flame, sat down,
slight and short, on a gilt chair with a bead-worked seat, for all the
world as if ten years had not elapsed since she had been to see them--ten
years of travel and independence and devotion to lame ducks. Those ducks
of late had been all definitely painters, etchers, or sculptors, so that
her impatience with the Forsytes and their hopelessly inartistic outlook
had become intense. Indeed, she had almost ceased to believe that her
family existed, and looked round her now with a sort of challenging
directness which brought exquisite discomfort to the roomful. She had
not expected to meet any of them but 'the poor old things'; and why she
had come to see them she hardly knew, except that, while on her way from
Oxford Street to a studio in Latimer Road, she had suddenly remembered
them with compunction as two long-neglected old lame ducks.
Aunt Juley broke the hush again. "We've just been saying, dear, how
dreadful it is about these Boers! And what an impudent thing of that old
Kruger!"
"Impudent!" said June. "I think he's quite right. What business have we
to meddle with them? If he turned out all those wretched Uitlanders it
would serve them right. They're only after money."
The silence of sensation was broken by Francie saying:
"What? Are you a pro-Boer?" (undoubtedly the first use of that
expression).
"Well! Why can't we leave them alone?" said June, just as, in the open
doorway, the maid said "Mr. Soames Forsyte." Sensation on sensation!
Greeting was almost held up by curiosity to see how June and he would
take this encounter, for it was shrewdly suspected, if not quite known,
that they had not met since that old and lamentable affair of her fiance
Bosinney with Soames' wife. They were seen to just touch each other's
hands, and look each at the other's left eye only. Aunt Juley came at
once to the rescue:
"Dear June is so original. Fancy, Soames, she thinks the Boers are not
to blame."
"They only want their independence," said June; "and why shouldn't they
have it?"
"Because," answered Soames, with his smile a little on one side, "they
happen to have agreed to our suzerainty."
"Suzerainty!" repeated June scornfully; "we shouldn't like anyone's
suzerainty over us."
"They got advantages in payment," replied Soames; "a contract is a
contract."
"Contracts are not always just," fumed out June, "and when they're not,
they ought to be broken. The Boers are much the weaker. We could afford
to be generous."
Soames sniffed. "That's mere sentiment," he said.
Aunt Hester, to whom nothing was more awful than any kind of
disagreement, here leaned forward and remarked decisively:
"What lovely weather it has been for the time of year?"
But June was not to be diverted.
"I don't know why sentiment should be sneered at. It's the best thing in
the world." She looked defiantly round, and Aunt Juley had to intervene
again:
"Have you bought any pictures lately, Soames?"
Her incomparable instinct for the wrong subject had not failed her.
Soames flushed. To disclose the name of his latest purchases would be
like walking into the jaws of disdain. For somehow they all knew of
June's predilection for 'genius' not yet on its legs, and her contempt
for 'success' unless she had had a finger in securing it.
"One or two," he muttered.
But June's face had changed; the Forsyte within her was seeing its
chance. Why should not Soames buy some of the pictures of Eric
Cobbley--her last lame duck? And she promptly opened her attack: Did
Soames know his work? It was so wonderful. He was the coming man.
Oh, yes, Soames knew his work. It was in his view 'splashy,' and would
never get hold of the public.
June blazed up.
"Of course it won't; that's the last thing one would wish for. I thought
you were a connoisseur, not a picture-dealer."
"Of course Soames is a connoisseur," Aunt Juley said hastily; "he has
wonderful taste--he can always tell beforehand what's going to be
successful."
"Oh!" gasped June, and sprang up from the bead-covered chair, "I hate
that standard of success. Why can't people buy things because they like
them?"
"You mean," said Francie, "because you like them."
And in the slight pause young Nicholas was heard saying gently that
Violet (his fourth) was taking lessons in pastel, he didn't know if they
were any use.
"Well, good-bye, Auntie," said June; "I must get on," and kissing her
aunts, she looked defiantly round the room, said "Good-bye" again, and
went. A breeze seemed to pass out with her, as if everyone had sighed.
The third sensation came before anyone had time to speak:
"Mr. James Forsyte."
James came in using a stick slightly and wrapped in a fur coat which gave
him a fictitious bulk.
Everyone stood up. James was so old; and he had not been at Timothy's
for nearly two years.
"It's hot in here," he said.
Soames divested him of his coat, and as he did so could not help admiring
the glossy way his father was turned out. James sat down, all knees,
elbows, frock-coat, and long white whiskers.
"What's the meaning of that?" he said.
Though there was no apparent sense in his words, they all knew that he
was referring to June. His eyes searched his son's face.
"I thought I'd come and see for myself. What have they answered Kruger?"
Soames took out an evening paper, and read the headline.
"'Instant action by our Government--state of war existing!'"
"Ah!" said James, and sighed. "I was afraid they'd cut and run like old
Gladstone. We shall finish with them this time."
All stared at him. James! Always fussy, nervous, anxious! James with
his continual, 'I told you how it would be!' and his pessimism, and his
cautious investments. There was something uncanny about such resolution
in this the oldest living Forsyte.
"Where's Timothy?" said James. "He ought to pay attention to this."
Aunt Juley said she didn't know; Timothy had not said much at lunch
to-day. Aunt Hester rose and threaded her way out of the room, and
Francie said rather maliciously:
"The Boers are a hard nut to crack, Uncle James."
"H'm!" muttered James. "Where do you get your information? Nobody tells
me."
Young Nicholas remarked in his mild voice that Nick (his eldest) was now
going to drill regularly.
"Ah!" muttered James, and stared before him--his thoughts were on Val.
"He's got to look after his mother," he said, "he's got no time for
drilling and that, with that father of his." This cryptic saying
produced silence, until he spoke again.
"What did June want here?" And his eyes rested with suspicion on all of
them in turn. "Her father's a rich man now." The conversation turned on
Jolyon, and when he had been seen last. It was supposed that he went
abroad and saw all sorts of people now that his wife was dead; his
water-colours were on the line, and he was a successful man. Francie
went so far as to say:
"I should like to see him again; he was rather a dear."
Aunt Juley recalled how he had gone to sleep on the sofa one day, where
James was sitting. He had always been very amiable; what did Soames
think?
Knowing that Jolyon was Irene's trustee, all felt the delicacy of this
question, and looked at Soames with interest. A faint pink had come up
in his cheeks.
"He's going grey," he said.
Indeed! Had Soames seen him? Soames nodded, and the pink vanished.
James said suddenly: "Well--I don't know, I can't tell."
It so exactly expressed the sentiment of everybody present that there was
something behind everything, that nobody responded. But at this moment
Aunt Hester returned.
"Timothy," she said in a low voice, "Timothy has bought a map, and he's
put in--he's put in three flags."
Timothy had ....! A sigh went round the company.
If Timothy had indeed put in three flags already, well!--it showed what
the nation could do when it was roused. The war was as good as over.
CHAPTER XIII
JOLYON FINDS OUT WHERE HE IS
Jolyon stood at the window in Holly's old night nursery, converted into a
studio, not because it had a north light, but for its view over the
prospect away to the Grand Stand at Epsom. He shifted to the side window
which overlooked the stableyard, and whistled down to the dog Balthasar
who lay for ever under the clock tower. The old dog looked up and wagged
his tail. 'Poor old boy!' thought Jolyon, shifting back to the other
window.
He had been restless all this week, since his attempt to prosecute
trusteeship, uneasy in his conscience which was ever acute, disturbed in
his sense of compassion which was easily excited, and with a queer
sensation as if his feeling for beauty had received some definite
embodiment. Autumn was getting hold of the old oak-tree, its leaves were
browning. Sunshine had been plentiful and hot this summer. As with
trees, so with men's lives! 'I ought to live long,' thought Jolyon; 'I'm
getting mildewed for want of heat. If I can't work, I shall be off to
Paris.' But memory of Paris gave him no pleasure. Besides, how could he
go? He must stay and see what Soames was going to do. 'I'm her trustee.
I can't leave her unprotected,' he thought. It had been striking him as
curious how very clearly he could still see Irene in her little
drawing-room which he had only twice entered. Her beauty must have a
sort of poignant harmony! No literal portrait would ever do her justice;
the essence of her was--ah I what?... The noise of hoofs called him back
to the other window. Holly was riding into the yard on her long-tailed
'palfrey.' She looked up and he waved to her. She had been rather
silent lately; getting old, he supposed, beginning to want her future, as
they all did--youngsters!
Time was certainly the devil! And with the feeling that to waste this
swift-travelling commodity was unforgivable folly, he took up his brush.
But it was no use; he could not concentrate his eye--besides, the light
was going. 'I'll go up to town,' he thought. In the hall a servant met
him.
"A lady to see you, sir; Mrs. Heron."
Extraordinary coincidence! Passing into the picture-gallery, as it was
still called, he saw Irene standing over by the window.
She came towards him saying:
"I've been trespassing; I came up through the coppice and garden. I
always used to come that way to see Uncle Jolyon."
"You couldn't trespass here," replied Jolyon; "history makes that
impossible. I was just thinking of you."
Irene smiled. And it was as if something shone through; not mere
spirituality--serener, completer, more alluring.
"History!" she answered; "I once told Uncle Jolyon that love was for
ever. Well, it isn't. Only aversion lasts."
Jolyon stared at her. Had she got over Bosinney at last?
"Yes!" he said, "aversion's deeper than love or hate because it's a
natural product of the nerves, and we don't change them."
"I came to tell you that Soames has been to see me. He said a thing that
frightened me. He said: 'You are still my wife!'"
"What!" ejaculated Jolyon. "You ought not to live alone." And he
continued to stare at her, afflicted by the thought that where Beauty
was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was why so many
people looked on it as immoral.
"What more?"
"He asked me to shake hands.
"Did you?"
"Yes. When he came in I'm sure he didn't want to; he changed while he
was there."
"Ah! you certainly ought not to go on living there alone."
"I know no woman I could ask; and I can't take a lover to order, Cousin
Jolyon."
"Heaven forbid!" said Jolyon. "What a damnable position! Will you stay
to dinner? No? Well, let me see you back to town; I wanted to go up
this evening."
"Truly?"
"Truly. I'll be ready in five minutes."
On that walk to the station they talked of pictures and music,
contrasting the English and French characters and the difference in their
attitude to Art. But to Jolyon the colours in the hedges of the long
straight lane, the twittering of chaffinches who kept pace with them, the
perfume of weeds being already burned, the turn of her neck, the
fascination of those dark eyes bent on him now and then, the lure of her
whole figure, made a deeper impression than the remarks they exchanged.
Unconsciously he held himself straighter, walked with a more elastic
step.
In the train he put her through a sort of catechism as to what she did
with her days.
Made her dresses, shopped, visited a hospital, played her piano,
translated from the French.
She had regular work from a publisher, it seemed, which supplemented her
income a little. She seldom went out in the evening. "I've been living
alone so long, you see, that I don't mind it a bit. I believe I'm
naturally solitary."
"I don't believe that," said Jolyon. "Do you know many people?"
"Very few."
At Waterloo they took a hansom, and he drove with her to the door of her
mansions. Squeezing her hand at parting, he said:
"You know, you could always come to us at Robin Hill; you must let me
know everything that happens. Good-bye, Irene."
"Good-bye," she answered softly.
Jolyon climbed back into his cab, wondering why he had not asked her to
dine and go to the theatre with him. Solitary, starved, hung-up life
that she had! "Hotch Potch Club," he said through the trap-door. As his
hansom debouched on to the Embankment, a man in top-hat and overcoat
passed, walking quickly, so close to the wall that he seemed to be
scraping it.
'By Jove!' thought Jolyon; 'Soames himself! What's he up to now?' And,
stopping the cab round the corner, he got out and retraced his steps to
where he could see the entrance to the mansions. Soames had halted in
front of them, and was looking up at the light in her windows. 'If he
goes in,' thought Jolyon, 'what shall I do? What have I the right to
do?' What the fellow had said was true. She was still his wife,
absolutely without protection from annoyance! 'Well, if he goes in,' he
thought, 'I follow.' And he began moving towards the mansions. Again
Soames advanced; he was in the very entrance now. But suddenly he
stopped, spun round on his heel, and came back towards the river. 'What
now?' thought Jolyon. 'In a dozen steps he'll recognise me.' And he
turned tail. His cousin's footsteps kept pace with his own. But he
reached his cab, and got in before Soames had turned the corner. "Go
on!" he said through the trap. Soames' figure ranged up alongside.
"Hansom!" he said. "Engaged? Hallo!"
"Hallo!" answered Jolyon. "You?"
The quick suspicion on his cousin's face, white in the lamplight, decided
him.
"I can give you a lift," he said, "if you're going West."
"Thanks," answered Soames, and got in.
"I've been seeing Irene," said Jolyon when the cab had started.
"Indeed!"
"You went to see her yesterday yourself, I understand."
"I did," said Soames; "she's my wife, you know."
The tone, the half-lifted sneering lip, roused sudden anger in Jolyon;
but he subdued it.
"You ought to know best," he said, "but if you want a divorce it's not
very wise to go seeing her, is it? One can't run with the hare and hunt
with the hounds?"
"You're very good to warn me," said Soames, "but I have not made up my
mind."
"She has," said Jolyon, looking straight before him; "you can't take
things up, you know, as they were twelve years ago."
"That remains to be seen."
"Look here!" said Jolyon, "she's in a damnable position, and I am the
only person with any legal say in her affairs."
"Except myself," retorted Soames, "who am also in a damnable position.
Hers is what she made for herself; mine what she made for me. I am not
at all sure that in her own interests I shan't require her to return to
me."
"What!" exclaimed Jolyon; and a shiver went through his whole body.
"I don't know what you may mean by 'what,'" answered Soames coldly; "your
say in her affairs is confined to paying out her income; please bear that
in mind. In choosing not to disgrace her by a divorce, I retained my
rights, and, as I say, I am not at all sure that I shan't require to
exercise them."
"My God!" ejaculated Jolyon, and he uttered a short laugh.
"Yes," said Soames, and there was a deadly quality in his voice. "I've
not forgotten the nickname your father gave me, 'The man of property'!
I'm not called names for nothing."
"This is fantastic," murmured Jolyon. Well, the fellow couldn't force
his wife to live with him. Those days were past, anyway! And he looked
around at Soames with the thought: 'Is he real, this man?' But Soames
looked very real, sitting square yet almost elegant with the clipped
moustache on his pale face, and a tooth showing where a lip was lifted in
a fixed smile. There was a long silence, while Jolyon thought: 'Instead
of helping her, I've made things worse.' Suddenly Soames said:
"It would be the best thing that could happen to her in many ways."
At those words such a turmoil began taking place in Jolyon that he could
barely sit still in the cab. It was as if he were boxed up with hundreds
of thousands of his countrymen, boxed up with that something in the
national character which had always been to him revolting, something
which he knew to be extremely natural and yet which seemed to him
inexplicable--their intense belief in contracts and vested rights, their
complacent sense of virtue in the exaction of those rights. Here beside
him in the cab was the very embodiment, the corporeal sum as it were, of
the possessive instinct--his own kinsman, too! It was uncanny and
intolerable! 'But there's something more in it than that!' he thought
with a sick feeling. 'The dog, they say, returns to his vomit! The
sight of her has reawakened something. Beauty! The devil's in it!'
"As I say," said Soames, "I have not made up my mind. I shall be obliged
if you will kindly leave her quite alone."
Jolyon bit his lips; he who had always hated rows almost welcomed the
thought of one now.
"I can give you no such promise," he said shortly.
"Very well," said Soames, "then we know where we are. I'll get down
here." And stopping the cab he got out without word or sign of farewell.
Jolyon travelled on to his Club.
The first news of the war was being called in the streets, but he paid no
attention. What could he do to help her? If only his father were alive!
He could have done so much! But why could he not do all that his father
could have done? Was he not old enough?--turned fifty and twice married,
with grown-up daughters and a son. 'Queer,' he thought. 'If she were
plain I shouldn't be thinking twice about it. Beauty is the devil, when
you're sensitive to it!' And into the Club reading-room he went with a
disturbed heart. In that very room he and Bosinney had talked one summer
afternoon; he well remembered even now the disguised and secret lecture
he had given that young man in the interests of June, the diagnosis of
the Forsytes he had hazarded; and how he had wondered what sort of woman
it was he was warning him against. And now! He was almost in want of a
warning himself. 'It's deuced funny!' he thought, 'really deuced
funny!'
CHAPTER XIV
SOAMES DISCOVERS WHAT HE WANTS
It is so much easier to say, "Then we know where we are," than to mean
anything particular by the words. And in saying them Soames did but vent
the jealous rankling of his instincts. He got out of the cab in a state
of wary anger--with himself for not having seen Irene, with Jolyon for
having seen her; and now with his inability to tell exactly what he
wanted.
He had abandoned the cab because he could not bear to remain seated
beside his cousin, and walking briskly eastwards he thought: 'I wouldn't
trust that fellow Jolyon a yard. Once outcast, always outcast!' The
chap had a natural sympathy with--with--laxity (he had shied at the word
sin, because it was too melodramatic for use by a Forsyte).
Indecision in desire was to him a new feeling. He was like a child
between a promised toy and an old one which had been taken away from him;
and he was astonished at himself. Only last Sunday desire had seemed
simple--just his freedom and Annette. 'I'll go and dine there,' he
thought. To see her might bring back his singleness of intention, calm
his exasperation, clear his mind.
The restaurant was fairly full--a good many foreigners and folk whom,
from their appearance, he took to be literary or artistic. Scraps of
conversation came his way through the clatter of plates and glasses. He
distinctly heard the Boers sympathised with, the British Government
blamed. 'Don't think much of their clientele,' he thought. He went
stolidly through his dinner and special coffee without making his
presence known, and when at last he had finished, was careful not to be
seen going towards the sanctum of Madame Lamotte. They were, as he
entered, having supper--such a much nicer-looking supper than the dinner
he had eaten that he felt a kind of grief--and they greeted him with a
surprise so seemingly genuine that he thought with sudden suspicion: 'I
believe they knew I was here all the time.' He gave Annette a look
furtive and searching. So pretty, seemingly so candid; could she be
angling for him? He turned to Madame Lamotte and said:
"I've been dining here."
Really! If she had only known! There were dishes she could have
recommended; what a pity! Soames was confirmed in his suspicion. 'I must
look out what I'm doing!' he thought sharply.
"Another little cup of very special coffee, monsieur; a liqueur, Grand
Marnier?" and Madame Lamotte rose to order these delicacies.
Alone with Annette Soames said, "Well, Annette?" with a defensive little
smile about his lips.
The girl blushed. This, which last Sunday would have set his nerves
tingling, now gave him much the same feeling a man has when a dog that he
owns wriggles and looks at him. He had a curious sense of power, as if
he could have said to her, 'Come and kiss me,' and she would have come.
And yet--it was strange--but there seemed another face and form in the
room too; and the itch in his nerves, was it for that--or for this? He
jerked his head towards the restaurant and said: "You have some queer
customers. Do you like this life?"
Annette looked up at him for a moment, looked down, and played with her
fork.
"No," she said, "I do not like it."
'I've got her,' thought Soames, 'if I want her. But do I want her?' She
was graceful, she was pretty--very pretty; she was fresh, she had taste
of a kind. His eyes travelled round the little room; but the eyes of his
mind went another journey--a half-light, and silvery walls, a satinwood
piano, a woman standing against it, reined back as it were from him--a
woman with white shoulders that he knew, and dark eyes that he had sought
to know, and hair like dull dark amber. And as in an artist who strives
for the unrealisable and is ever thirsty, so there rose in him at that
moment the thirst of the old passion he had never satisfied.
"Well," he said calmly, "you're young. There's everything before you."
Annette shook her head.
"I think sometimes there is nothing before me but hard work. I am not so
in love with work as mother."
"Your mother is a wonder," said Soames, faintly mocking; "she will never
let failure lodge in her house."
Annette sighed. "It must be wonderful to be rich."
"Oh! You'll be rich some day," answered Soames, still with that faint
mockery; "don't be afraid."
Annette shrugged her shoulders. "Monsieur is very kind." And between
her pouting lips she put a chocolate.
'Yes, my dear,' thought Soames, 'they're very pretty.'
Madame Lamotte, with coffee and liqueur, put an end to that colloquy.
Soames did not stay long.
Outside in the streets of Soho, which always gave him such a feeling of
property improperly owned, he mused. If only Irene had given him a son,
he wouldn't now be squirming after women! The thought had jumped out of
its little dark sentry-box in his inner consciousness. A son--something
to look forward to, something to make the rest of life worth while,
something to leave himself to, some perpetuity of self. 'If I had a
son,' he thought bitterly, 'a proper legal son, I could make shift to go
on as I used. One woman's much the same as another, after all.' But as
he walked he shook his head. No! One woman was not the same as another.
Many a time had he tried to think that in the old days of his thwarted
married life; and he had always failed. He was failing now. He was
trying to think Annette the same as that other. But she was not, she had
not the lure of that old passion. 'And Irene's my wife,' he thought, 'my
legal wife. I have done nothing to put her away from me. Why shouldn't
she come back to me? It's the right thing, the lawful thing. It makes
no scandal, no disturbance. If it's disagreeable to her--but why should
it be? I'm not a leper, and she--she's no longer in love!' Why should
he be put to the shifts and the sordid disgraces and the lurking defeats
of the Divorce Court, when there she was like an empty house only waiting
to be retaken into use and possession by him who legally owned her? To
one so secretive as Soames the thought of reentry into quiet possession
of his own property with nothing given away to the world was intensely
alluring. 'No,' he mused, 'I'm glad I went to see that girl. I know now
what I want most. If only Irene will come back I'll be as considerate as
she wishes; she could live her own life; but perhaps--perhaps she would
come round to me.' There was a lump in his throat. And doggedly along
by the railings of the Green Park, towards his father's house, he went,
trying to tread on his shadow walking before him in the brilliant
moonlight.
PART II
CHAPTER I
THE THIRD GENERATION
Jolly Forsyte was strolling down High Street, Oxford, on a November
afternoon; Val Dartie was strolling up. Jolly had just changed out of
boating flannels and was on his way to the 'Frying-pan,' to which he had
recently been elected. Val had just changed out of riding clothes and
was on his way to the fire--a bookmaker's in Cornmarket.
"Hallo!" said Jolly.
"Hallo!" replied Val.
The cousins had met but twice, Jolly, the second-year man, having invited
the freshman to breakfast; and last evening they had seen each other
again under somewhat exotic circumstances.
Over a tailor's in the Cornmarket resided one of those privileged young
beings called minors, whose inheritances are large, whose parents are
dead, whose guardians are remote, and whose instincts are vicious. At
nineteen he had commenced one of those careers attractive and
inexplicable to ordinary mortals for whom a single bankruptcy is good as
a feast. Already famous for having the only roulette table then to be
found in Oxford, he was anticipating his expectations at a dazzling rate.
He out-crummed Crum, though of a sanguine and rather beefy type which
lacked the latter's fascinating languor. For Val it had been in the
nature of baptism to be taken there to play roulette; in the nature of
confirmation to get back into college, after hours, through a window
whose bars were deceptive. Once, during that evening of delight,
glancing up from the seductive green before him, he had caught sight,
through a cloud of smoke, of his cousin standing opposite. 'Rouge gagne,
impair, et manque!' He had not seen him again.
"Come in to the Frying-pan and have tea," said Jolly, and they went in.
A stranger, seeing them together, would have noticed an unseizable
resemblance between these second cousins of the third generations of
Forsytes; the same bone formation in face, though Jolly's eyes were
darker grey, his hair lighter and more wavy.
"Tea and buttered buns, waiter, please," said Jolly.
"Have one of my cigarettes?" said Val. "I saw you last night. How did
you do?"
"I didn't play."
"I won fifteen quid."
Though desirous of repeating a whimsical comment on gambling he had once
heard his father make--'When you're fleeced you're sick, and when you
fleece you're sorry--Jolly contented himself with:
"Rotten game, I think; I was at school with that chap. He's an awful
fool."
"Oh! I don't know," said Val, as one might speak in defence of a
disparaged god; "he's a pretty good sport."
They exchanged whiffs in silence.
"You met my people, didn't you?" said Jolly. "They're coming up
to-morrow."
Val grew a little red.
"Really! I can give you a rare good tip for the Manchester November
handicap."
"Thanks, I only take interest in the classic races."
"You can't make any money over them," said Val.
"I hate the ring," said Jolly; "there's such a row and stink. I like the
paddock."
"I like to back my judgment,"' answered Val.
Jolly smiled; his smile was like his father's.
"I haven't got any. I always lose money if I bet."
"You have to buy experience, of course."
"Yes, but it's all messed-up with doing people in the eye."
"Of course, or they'll do you--that's the excitement."
Jolly looked a little scornful.
"What do you do with yourself? Row?"
"No--ride, and drive about. I'm going to play polo next term, if I can
get my granddad to stump up."
"That's old Uncle James, isn't it? What's he like?"
"Older than forty hills," said Val, "and always thinking he's going to be
ruined."
"I suppose my granddad and he were brothers."
"I don't believe any of that old lot were sportsmen," said Val; "they
must have worshipped money."
"Mine didn't!" said Jolly warmly.
Val flipped the ash off his cigarette.
"Money's only fit to spend," he said; "I wish the deuce I had more."
Jolly gave him that direct upward look of judgment which he had inherited
from old Jolyon: One didn't talk about money! And again there was
silence, while they drank tea and ate the buttered buns.
"Where are your people going to stay?" asked Val, elaborately casual.
"'Rainbow.' What do you think of the war?"
"Rotten, so far. The Boers aren't sports a bit. Why don't they come out
into the open?"
"Why should they? They've got everything against them except their way
of fighting. I rather admire them."
"They can ride and shoot," admitted Val, "but they're a lousy lot. Do you
know Crum?"
"Of Merton? Only by sight. He's in that fast set too, isn't he? Rather
La-di-da and Brummagem."
Val said fixedly: "He's a friend of mine."
"Oh! Sorry!" And they sat awkwardly staring past each other, having
pitched on their pet points of snobbery. For Jolly was forming himself
unconsciously on a set whose motto was:
'We defy you to bore us. Life isn't half long enough, and we're going to
talk faster and more crisply, do more and know more, and dwell less on
any subject than you can possibly imagine. We are "the best"--made of
wire and whipcord.' And Val was unconsciously forming himself on a set
whose motto was: 'We defy you to interest or excite us. We have had
every sensation, or if we haven't, we pretend we have. We are so
exhausted with living that no hours are too small for us. We will lose
our shirts with equanimity. We have flown fast and are past everything.
All is cigarette smoke. Bismillah!' Competitive spirit, bone-deep in the
English, was obliging those two young Forsytes to have ideals; and at the
close of a century ideals are mixed. The aristocracy had already in the
main adopted the 'jumping-Jesus' principle; though here and there one
like Crum--who was an 'honourable'--stood starkly languid for that
gambler's Nirvana which had been the summum bonum of the old 'dandies'
and of 'the mashers' in the eighties. And round Crum were still gathered
a forlorn hope of blue-bloods with a plutocratic following.
But there was between the cousins another far less obvious
antipathy--coming from the unseizable family resemblance, which each
perhaps resented; or from some half-consciousness of that old feud
persisting still between their branches of the clan, formed within them
by odd words or half-hints dropped by their elders. And Jolly, tinkling
his teaspoon, was musing: 'His tie-pin and his waistcoat and his drawl
and his betting--good Lord!'
And Val, finishing his bun, was thinking: 'He's rather a young beast!'
"I suppose you'll be meeting your people?" he said, getting up. "I wish
you'd tell them I should like to show them over B.N.C.--not that there's
anything much there--if they'd care to come."
"Thanks, I'll ask them."
"Would they lunch? I've got rather a decent scout."
Jolly doubted if they would have time.
"You'll ask them, though?"
"Very good of you," said Jolly, fully meaning that they should not go;
but, instinctively polite, he added: "You'd better come and have dinner
with us to-morrow."
"Rather. What time?"
"Seven-thirty."
"Dress?"
"No." And they parted, a subtle antagonism alive within them.
Holly and her father arrived by a midday train. It was her first visit
to the city of spires and dreams, and she was very silent, looking almost
shyly at the brother who was part of this wonderful place. After lunch
she wandered, examining his household gods with intense curiosity.
Jolly's sitting-room was panelled, and Art represented by a set of
Bartolozzi prints which had belonged to old Jolyon, and by college
photographs--of young men, live young men, a little heroic, and to be
compared with her memories of Val. Jolyon also scrutinised with care
that evidence of his boy's character and tastes.
Jolly was anxious that they should see him rowing, so they set forth to
the river. Holly, between her brother and her father, felt elated when
heads were turned and eyes rested on her. That they might see him to the
best advantage they left him at the Barge and crossed the river to the
towing-path. Slight in build--for of all the Forsytes only old Swithin
and George were beefy--Jolly was rowing 'Two' in a trial eight. He
looked very earnest and strenuous. With pride Jolyon thought him the
best-looking boy of the lot; Holly, as became a sister, was more struck
by one or two of the others, but would not have said so for the world.
The river was bright that afternoon, the meadows lush, the trees still
beautiful with colour. Distinguished peace clung around the old city;
Jolyon promised himself a day's sketching if the weather held. The Eight
passed a second time, spurting home along the Barges--Jolly's face was
very set, so as not to show that he was blown. They returned across the
river and waited for him.
"Oh!" said Jolly in the Christ Church meadows, "I had to ask that chap
Val Dartie to dine with us to-night. He wanted to give you lunch and
show you B.N.C., so I thought I'd better; then you needn't go. I don't
like him much."
Holly's rather sallow face had become suffused with pink.
"Why not?"
"Oh! I don't know. He seems to me rather showy and bad form. What are
his people like, Dad? He's only a second cousin, isn't he?"
Jolyon took refuge in a smile.
"Ask Holly," he said; "she saw his uncle."
"I liked Val," Holly answered, staring at the ground before her; "his
uncle looked--awfully different." She stole a glance at Jolly from under
her lashes.
"Did you ever," said Jolyon with whimsical intention, "hear our family
history, my dears? It's quite a fairy tale. The first Jolyon
Forsyte--at all events the first we know anything of, and that would be
your great-great-grandfather--dwelt in the land of Dorset on the edge of
the sea, being by profession an 'agriculturalist,' as your great-aunt put
it, and the son of an agriculturist--farmers, in fact; your grandfather
used to call them, 'Very small beer.'" He looked at Jolly to see how his
lordliness was standing it, and with the other eye noted Holly's
malicious pleasure in the slight drop of her brother's face.
"We may suppose him thick and sturdy, standing for England as it was
before the Industrial Era began. The second Jolyon Forsyte--your
great-grandfather, Jolly; better known as Superior Dosset Forsyte--built
houses, so the chronicle runs, begat ten children, and migrated to London
town. It is known that he drank sherry. We may suppose him representing
the England of Napoleon's wars, and general unrest. The eldest of his
six sons was the third Jolyon, your grandfather, my dears--tea merchant
and chairman of companies, one of the soundest Englishmen who ever
lived--and to me the dearest." Jolyon's voice had lost its irony, and
his son and daughter gazed at him solemnly, "He was just and tenacious,
tender and young at heart. You remember him, and I remember him. Pass
to the others! Your great-uncle James, that's young Val's grandfather,
had a son called Soames--whereby hangs a tale of no love lost, and I
don't think I'll tell it you. James and the other eight children of
'Superior Dosset,' of whom there are still five alive, may be said to
have represented Victorian England, with its principles of trade and
individualism at five per cent. and your money back--if you know what
that means. At all events they've turned thirty thousand pounds into a
cool million between them in the course of their long lives. They never
did a wild thing--unless it was your great-uncle Swithin, who I believe
was once swindled at thimble-rig, and was called 'Four-in-hand Forsyte'
because he drove a pair. Their day is passing, and their type, not
altogether for the advantage of the country. They were pedestrian, but
they too were sound. I am the fourth Jolyon Forsyte--a poor holder of
the name--"
"No, Dad," said Jolly, and Holly squeezed his hand.
"Yes," repeated Jolyon, "a poor specimen, representing, I'm afraid,
nothing but the end of the century, unearned income, amateurism, and
individual liberty--a different thing from individualism, Jolly. You are
the fifth Jolyon Forsyte, old man, and you open the ball of the new
century."
As he spoke they turned in through the college gates, and Holly said:
"It's fascinating, Dad."
None of them quite knew what she meant. Jolly was grave.
The Rainbow, distinguished, as only an Oxford hostel can be, for lack of
modernity, provided one small oak-panelled private sitting-room, in which
Holly sat to receive, white-frocked, shy, and alone, when the only guest
arrived. Rather as one would touch a moth, Val took her hand. And
wouldn't she wear this 'measly flower'? It would look ripping in her
hair. He removed a gardenia from his coat.
"Oh! No, thank you--I couldn't!" But she took it and pinned it at her
neck, having suddenly remembered that word 'showy'! Val's buttonhole
would give offence; and she so much wanted Jolly to like him. Did she
realise that Val was at his best and quietest in her presence, and was
that, perhaps, half the secret of his attraction for her?
"I never said anything about our ride, Val."
"Rather not! It's just between us."
By the uneasiness of his hands and the fidgeting of his feet he was
giving her a sense of power very delicious; a soft feeling too--the wish
to make him happy.
"Do tell me about Oxford. It must be ever so lovely."
Val admitted that it was frightfully decent to do what you liked; the
lectures were nothing; and there were some very good chaps. "Only," he
added, "of course I wish I was in town, and could come down and see you."
Holly moved one hand shyly on her knee, and her glance dropped.
"You haven't forgotten," he said, suddenly gathering courage, "that we're
going mad-rabbiting together?"
Holly smiled.
"Oh! That was only make-believe. One can't do that sort of thing after
one's grown up, you know."
"Dash it! cousins can," said Val. "Next Long Vac.--it begins in June,
you know, and goes on for ever--we'll watch our chance."
But, though the thrill of conspiracy ran through her veins, Holly shook
her head. "It won't come off," she murmured.
"Won't it!" said Val fervently; "who's going to stop it? Not your father
or your brother."
At this moment Jolyon and Jolly came in; and romance fled into Val's
patent leather and Holly's white satin toes, where it itched and tingled
during an evening not conspicuous for open-heartedness.
Sensitive to atmosphere, Jolyon soon felt the latent antagonism between
the boys, and was puzzled by Holly; so he became unconsciously ironical,
which is fatal to the expansiveness of youth. A letter, handed to him
after dinner, reduced him to a silence hardly broken till Jolly and Val
rose to go. He went out with them, smoking his cigar, and walked with
his son to the gates of Christ Church. Turning back, he took out the
letter and read it again beneath a lamp.
"DEAR JOLYON,
"Soames came again to-night--my thirty-seventh birthday. You were right,
I mustn't stay here. I'm going to-morrow to the Piedmont Hotel, but I
won't go abroad without seeing you. I feel lonely and down-hearted.
"Yours affectionately,
"IRENE."
He folded the letter back into his pocket and walked on, astonished at
the violence of his feelings. What had the fellow said or done?
He turned into High Street, down the Turf, and on among a maze of spires
and domes and long college fronts and walls, bright or dark-shadowed in
the strong moonlight. In this very heart of England's gentility it was
difficult to realise that a lonely woman could be importuned or hunted,
but what else could her letter mean? Soames must have been pressing her
to go back to him again, with public opinion and the Law on his side,
too! 'Eighteen-ninety-nine!,' he thought, gazing at the broken glass
shining on the top of a villa garden wall; 'but when it comes to property
we're still a heathen people! I'll go up to-morrow morning. I dare say
it'll be best for her to go abroad.' Yet the thought displeased him. Why
should Soames hunt her out of England! Besides, he might follow, and out
there she would be still more helpless against the attentions of her own
husband! 'I must tread warily,' he thought; 'that fellow could make
himself very nasty. I didn't like his manner in the cab the other
night.' His thoughts turned to his daughter June. Could she help? Once
on a time Irene had been her greatest friend, and now she was a 'lame
duck,' such as must appeal to June's nature! He determined to wire to
his daughter to meet him at Paddington Station. Retracing his steps
towards the Rainbow he questioned his own sensations. Would he be
upsetting himself over every woman in like case? No! he would not. The
candour of this conclusion discomfited him; and, finding that Holly had
gone up to bed, he sought his own room. But he could not sleep, and sat
for a long time at his window, huddled in an overcoat, watching the
moonlight on the roofs.
Next door Holly too was awake, thinking of the lashes above and below
Val's eyes, especially below; and of what she could do to make Jolly like
him better. The scent of the gardenia was strong in her little bedroom,
and pleasant to her.
And Val, leaning out of his first-floor window in B.N.C., was gazing at a
moonlit quadrangle without seeing it at all, seeing instead Holly, slim
and white-frocked, as she sat beside the fire when he first went in.
But Jolly, in his bedroom narrow as a ghost, lay with a hand beneath his
cheek and dreamed he was with Val in one boat, rowing a race against him,
while his father was calling from the towpath: 'Two! Get your hands away
there, bless you!'
CHAPTER II
SOAMES PUTS IT TO THE TOUCH
Of all those radiant firms which emblazon with their windows the West End
of London, Gaves and Cortegal were considered by Soames the most
'attractive' word just coming into fashion. He had never had his Uncle
Swithin's taste in precious stones, and the abandonment by Irene when she
left his house in 1887 of all the glittering things he had given her had
disgusted him with this form of investment. But he still knew a diamond
when he saw one, and during the week before her birthday he had taken
occasion, on his way into the Poultry or his way out therefrom, to dally
a little before the greater jewellers where one got, if not one's money's
worth, at least a certain cachet with the goods.
Constant cogitation since his drive with Jolyon had convinced him more
and more of the supreme importance of this moment in his life, the
supreme need for taking steps and those not wrong. And, alongside the
dry and reasoned sense that it was now or never with his
self-preservation, now or never if he were to range himself and found a
family, went the secret urge of his senses roused by the sight of her who
had once been a passionately desired wife, and the conviction that it was
a sin against common sense and the decent secrecy of Forsytes to waste
the wife he had.
In an opinion on Winifred's case, Dreamer, Q.C.--he would much have
preferred Waterbuck, but they had made him a judge (so late in the day as
to rouse the usual suspicion of a political job)--had advised that they
should go forward and obtain restitution of conjugal rights, a point
which to Soames had never been in doubt. When they had obtained a decree
to that effect they must wait to see if it was obeyed. If not, it would
constitute legal desertion, and they should obtain evidence of misconduct
and file their petition for divorce. All of which Soames knew perfectly
well. They had marked him ten and one. This simplicity in his sister's
case only made him the more desperate about the difficulty in his own.
Everything, in fact, was driving him towards the simple solution of
Irene's return. If it were still against the grain with her, had he not
feelings to subdue, injury to forgive, pain to forget? He at least had
never injured her, and this was a world of compromise! He could offer
her so much more than she had now. He would be prepared to make a
liberal settlement on her which could not be upset. He often scrutinised
his image in these days. He had never been a peacock like that fellow
Dartie, or fancied himself a woman's man, but he had a certain belief in
his own appearance--not unjustly, for it was well-coupled and preserved,
neat, healthy, pale, unblemished by drink or excess of any kind. The
Forsyte jaw and the concentration of his face were, in his eyes, virtues.
So far as he could tell there was no feature of him which need inspire
dislike.
Thoughts and yearnings, with which one lives daily, become natural, even
if far-fetched in their inception. If he could only give tangible proof
enough of his determination to let bygones be bygones, and to do all in
his power to please her, why should she not come back to him?
He entered Gaves and Cortegal's therefore, on the morning of November the
9th, to buy a certain diamond brooch. "Four twenty-five and dirt cheap,
sir, at the money. It's a lady's brooch." There was that in his mood
which made him accept without demur. And he went on into the Poultry
with the flat green morocco case in his breast pocket. Several times
that day he opened it to look at the seven soft shining stones in their
velvet oval nest.
"If the lady doesn't like it, sir, happy to exchange it any time. But
there's no fear of that." If only there were not! He got through a vast
amount of work, only soother of the nerves he knew. A cablegram came
while he was in the office with details from the agent in Buenos Aires,
and the name and address of a stewardess who would be prepared to swear
to what was necessary. It was a timely spur to Soames, with his rooted
distaste for the washing of dirty linen in public. And when he set forth
by Underground to Victoria Station he received a fresh impetus towards
the renewal of his married life from the account in his evening paper of
a fashionable divorce suit. The homing instinct of all true Forsytes in
anxiety and trouble, the corporate tendency which kept them strong and
solid, made him choose to dine at Park Lane. He neither could nor would
breath a word to his people of his intention--too reticent and proud--but
the thought that at least they would be glad if they knew, and wish him
luck, was heartening.
James was in lugubrious mood, for the fire which the impudence of
Kruger's ultimatum had lit in him had been cold-watered by the poor
success of the last month, and the exhortations to effort in The Times.
He didn't know where it would end. Soames sought to cheer him by the
continual use of the word Buller. But James couldn't tell! There was
Colley--and he got stuck on that hill, and this Ladysmith was down in a
hollow, and altogether it looked to him a 'pretty kettle of fish'; he
thought they ought to be sending the sailors--they were the chaps, they
did a lot of good in the Crimea. Soames shifted the ground of
consolation. Winifred had heard from Val that there had been a 'rag' and
a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day at Oxford, and that he had escaped detection
by blacking his face.
"Ah!" James muttered, "he's a clever little chap." But he shook his head
shortly afterwards and remarked that he didn't know what would become of
him, and looking wistfully at his son, murmured on that Soames had never
had a boy. He would have liked a grandson of his own name. And
now--well, there it was!
Soames flinched. He had not expected such a challenge to disclose the
secret in his heart. And Emily, who saw him wince, said:
"Nonsense, James; don't talk like that!"
But James, not looking anyone in the face, muttered on. There were Roger
and Nicholas and Jolyon; they all had grandsons. And Swithin and Timothy
had never married. He had done his best; but he would soon be gone now.
And, as though he had uttered words of profound consolation, he was
silent, eating brains with a fork and a piece of bread, and swallowing
the bread.
Soames excused himself directly after dinner. It was not really cold,
but he put on his fur coat, which served to fortify him against the fits
of nervous shivering to which he had been subject all day.
Subconsciously, he knew that he looked better thus than in an ordinary
black overcoat. Then, feeling the morocco case flat against his heart,
he sallied forth. He was no smoker, but he lit a cigarette, and smoked
it gingerly as he walked along. He moved slowly down the Row towards
Knightsbridge, timing himself to get to Chelsea at nine-fifteen. What
did she do with herself evening after evening in that little hole? How
mysterious women were! One lived alongside and knew nothing of them.
What could she have seen in that fellow Bosinney to send her mad? For
there was madness after all in what she had done--crazy moonstruck
madness, in which all sense of values had been lost, and her life and his
life ruined! And for a moment he was filled with a sort of exaltation,
as though he were a man read of in a story who, possessed by the
Christian spirit, would restore to her all the prizes of existence,
forgiving and forgetting, and becoming the godfather of her future.
Under a tree opposite Knightsbridge Barracks, where the moon-light struck
down clear and white, he took out once more the morocco case, and let the
beams draw colour from those stones. Yes, they were of the first water!
But, at the hard closing snap of the case, another cold shiver ran
through his nerves; and he walked on faster, clenching his gloved hands
in the pockets of his coat, almost hoping she would not be in. The
thought of how mysterious she was again beset him. Dining alone there
night after night--in an evening dress, too, as if she were making
believe to be in society! Playing the piano--to herself! Not even a dog
or cat, so far as he had seen. And that reminded him suddenly of the
mare he kept for station work at Mapledurham. If ever he went to the
stable, there she was quite alone, half asleep, and yet, on her home
journeys going more freely than on her way out, as if longing to be back
and lonely in her stable! 'I would treat her well,' he thought
incoherently. 'I would be very careful.' And all that capacity for home
life of which a mocking Fate seemed for ever to have deprived him swelled
suddenly in Soames, so that he dreamed dreams opposite South Kensington
Station. In the King's Road a man came slithering out of a public house
playing a concertina. Soames watched him for a moment dance crazily on
the pavement to his own drawling jagged sounds, then crossed over to
avoid contact with this piece of drunken foolery. A night in the
lock-up! What asses people were! But the man had noticed his movement
of avoidance, and streams of genial blasphemy followed him across the
street. 'I hope they'll run him in,' thought Soames viciously. 'To have
ruffians like that about, with women out alone!' A woman's figure in
front had induced this thought. Her walk seemed oddly familiar, and when
she turned the corner for which he was bound, his heart began to beat.
He hastened on to the corner to make certain. Yes! It was Irene; he
could not mistake her walk in that little drab street. She threaded two
more turnings, and from the last corner he saw her enter her block of
flats. To make sure of her now, he ran those few paces, hurried up the
stairs, and caught her standing at her door. He heard the latchkey in
the lock, and reached her side just as she turned round, startled, in the
open doorway.
"Don't be alarmed," he said, breathless. "I happened to see you. Let me
come in a minute."
She had put her hand up to her breast, her face was colourless, her eyes
widened by alarm. Then seeming to master herself, she inclined her head,
and said: "Very well."
Soames closed the door. He, too, had need to recover, and when she had
passed into the sitting-room, waited a full minute, taking deep breaths
to still the beating of his heart. At this moment, so fraught with the
future, to take out that morocco case seemed crude. Yet, not to take it
out left him there before her with no preliminary excuse for coming. And
in this dilemma he was seized with impatience at all this paraphernalia
of excuse and justification. This was a scene--it could be nothing else,
and he must face it. He heard her voice, uncomfortably, pathetically
soft:
"Why have you come again? Didn't you understand that I would rather you
did not?"
He noticed her clothes--a dark brown velvet corduroy, a sable boa, a
small round toque of the same. They suited her admirably. She had money
to spare for dress, evidently! He said abruptly:
"It's your birthday. I brought you this," and he held out to her the
green morocco case.
"Oh! No-no!"
Soames pressed the clasp; the seven stones gleamed out on the pale grey
velvet.
"Why not?" he said. "Just as a sign that you don't bear me ill-feeling
any longer."
"I couldn't."
Soames took it out of the case.
"Let me just see how it looks."
She shrank back.
He followed, thrusting his hand with the brooch in it against the front
of her dress. She shrank again.
Soames dropped his hand.
"Irene," he said, "let bygones be bygones. If I can, surely you might.
Let's begin again, as if nothing had been. Won't you?" His voice was
wistful, and his eyes, resting on her face, had in them a sort of
supplication.
She, who was standing literally with her back against the wall, gave a
little gulp, and that was all her answer. Soames went on:
"Can you really want to live all your days half-dead in this little hole?
Come back to me, and I'll give you all you want. You shall live your own
life; I swear it."
He saw her face quiver ironically.
"Yes," he repeated, "but I mean it this time. I'll only ask one thing.
I just want--I just want a son. Don't look like that! I want one. It's
hard." His voice had grown hurried, so that he hardly knew it for his
own, and twice he jerked his head back as if struggling for breath. It
was the sight of her eyes fixed on him, dark with a sort of fascinated
fright, which pulled him together and changed that painful incoherence to
anger.
"Is it so very unnatural?" he said between his teeth, "Is it unnatural to
want a child from one's own wife? You wrecked our life and put this
blight on everything. We go on only half alive, and without any future.
Is it so very unflattering to you that in spite of everything I--I still
want you for my wife? Speak, for Goodness' sake! do speak."
Irene seemed to try, but did not succeed.
"I don't want to frighten you," said Soames more gently. "Heaven knows.
I only want you to see that I can't go on like this. I want you back. I
want you."
Irene raised one hand and covered the lower part of her face, but her
eyes never moved from his, as though she trusted in them to keep him at
bay. And all those years, barren and bitter, since--ah! when?--almost
since he had first known her, surged up in one great wave of recollection
in Soames; and a spasm that for his life he could not control constricted
his face.
"It's not too late," he said; "it's not--if you'll only believe it."
Irene uncovered her lips, and both her hands made a writhing gesture in
front of her breast. Soames seized them.
"Don't!" she said under her breath. But he stood holding on to them,
trying to stare into her eyes which did not waver. Then she said
quietly:
"I am alone here. You won't behave again as you once behaved."
Dropping her hands as though they had been hot irons, he turned away.
Was it possible that there could be such relentless unforgiveness! Could
that one act of violent possession be still alive within her? Did it bar
him thus utterly? And doggedly he said, without looking up:
"I am not going till you've answered me. I am offering what few men
would bring themselves to offer, I want a--a reasonable answer."
And almost with surprise he heard her say:
"You can't have a reasonable answer. Reason has nothing to do with it.
You can only have the brutal truth: I would rather die."
Soames stared at her.
"Oh!" he said. And there intervened in him a sort of paralysis of speech
and movement, the kind of quivering which comes when a man has received a
deadly insult, and does not yet know how he is going to take it, or
rather what it is going to do with him.
"Oh!" he said again, "as bad as that? Indeed! You would rather die.
That's pretty!"
"I am sorry. You wanted me to answer. I can't help the truth, can I?"
At that queer spiritual appeal Soames turned for relief to actuality. He
snapped the brooch back into its case and put it in his pocket.
"The truth!" he said; "there's no such thing with women. It's
nerves-nerves."
He heard the whisper:
"Yes; nerves don't lie. Haven't you discovered that?" He was silent,
obsessed by the thought: 'I will hate this woman. I will hate her.'
That was the trouble! If only he could! He shot a glance at her who
stood unmoving against the wall with her head up and her hands clasped,
for all the world as if she were going to be shot. And he said quickly:
"I don't believe a word of it. You have a lover. If you hadn't, you
wouldn't be such a--such a little idiot." He was conscious, before the
expression in her eyes, that he had uttered something of a non-sequitur,
and dropped back too abruptly into the verbal freedom of his connubial
days. He turned away to the door. But he could not go out. Something
within him--that most deep and secret Forsyte quality, the impossibility
of letting go, the impossibility of seeing the fantastic and forlorn
nature of his own tenacity--prevented him. He turned about again, and
there stood, with his back against the door, as hers was against the wall
opposite, quite unconscious of anything ridiculous in this separation by
the whole width of the room.
"Do you ever think of anybody but yourself?" he said.
Irene's lips quivered; then she answered slowly:
"Do you ever think that I found out my mistake--my hopeless, terrible
mistake--the very first week of our marriage; that I went on trying three
years--you know I went on trying? Was it for myself?"
Soames gritted his teeth. "God knows what it was. I've never understood
you; I shall never understand you. You had everything you wanted; and
you can have it again, and more. What's the matter with me? I ask you a
plain question: What is it?" Unconscious of the pathos in that enquiry,
he went on passionately: "I'm not lame, I'm not loathsome, I'm not a
boor, I'm not a fool. What is it? What's the mystery about me?"
Her answer was a long sigh.
He clasped his hands with a gesture that for him was strangely full of
expression. "When I came here to-night I was--I hoped--I meant
everything that I could to do away with the past, and start fair again.
And you meet me with 'nerves,' and silence, and sighs. There's nothing
tangible. It's like--it's like a spider's web."
"Yes."
That whisper from across the room maddened Soames afresh.
"Well, I don't choose to be in a spider's web. I'll cut it." He walked
straight up to her. "Now!" What he had gone up to her to do he really
did not know. But when he was close, the old familiar scent of her
clothes suddenly affected him. He put his hands on her shoulders and
bent forward to kiss her. He kissed not her lips, but a little hard line
where the lips had been drawn in; then his face was pressed away by her
hands; he heard her say: "Oh! No!" Shame, compunction, sense of futility
flooded his whole being, he turned on his heel and went straight out.
CHAPTER III
VISIT TO IRENE
Jolyon found June waiting on the platform at Paddington. She had
received his telegram while at breakfast. Her abode--a studio and two
bedrooms in a St. John's Wood garden--had been selected by her for the
complete independence which it guaranteed. Unwatched by Mrs. Grundy,
unhindered by permanent domestics, she could receive lame ducks at any
hour of day or night, and not seldom had a duck without studio of its own
made use of June's. She enjoyed her freedom, and possessed herself with
a sort of virginal passion; the warmth which she would have lavished on
Bosinney, and of which--given her Forsyte tenacity--he must surely have
tired, she now expended in championship of the underdogs and budding
'geniuses' of the artistic world. She lived, in fact, to turn ducks into
the swans she believed they were. The very fervour of her protection
warped her judgments. But she was loyal and liberal; her small eager
hand was ever against the oppressions of academic and commercial opinion,
and though her income was considerable, her bank balance was often a
minus quantity.
She had come to Paddington Station heated in her soul by a visit to Eric
Cobbley. A miserable Gallery had refused to let that straight-haired
genius have his one-man show after all. Its impudent manager, after
visiting his studio, had expressed the opinion that it would only be a
'one-horse show from the selling point of view.' This crowning example
of commercial cowardice towards her favourite lame duck--and he so hard
up, with a wife and two children, that he had caused her account to be
overdrawn--was still making the blood glow in her small, resolute face,
and her red-gold hair to shine more than ever. She gave her father a
hug, and got into a cab with him, having as many fish to fry with him as
he with her. It became at once a question which would fry them first.
Jolyon had reached the words: "My dear, I want you to come with me,"
when, glancing at her face, he perceived by her blue eyes moving from
side to side--like the tail of a preoccupied cat--that she was not
attending. "Dad, is it true that I absolutely can't get at any of my
money?"
"Only the income, fortunately, my love."
"How perfectly beastly! Can't it be done somehow? There must be a way.
I know I could buy a small Gallery for ten thousand pounds."
"A small Gallery," murmured Jolyon, "seems a modest desire. But your
grandfather foresaw it."
"I think," cried June vigorously, "that all this care about money is
awful, when there's so much genius in the world simply crushed out for
want of a little. I shall never marry and have children; why shouldn't I
be able to do some good instead of having it all tied up in case of
things which will never come off?"
"Our name is Forsyte, my dear," replied Jolyon in the ironical voice to
which his impetuous daughter had never quite grown accustomed; "and
Forsytes, you know, are people who so settle their property that their
grandchildren, in case they should die before their parents, have to make
wills leaving the property that will only come to themselves when their
parents die. Do you follow that? Nor do I, but it's a fact, anyway; we
live by the principle that so long as there is a possibility of keeping
wealth in the family it must not go out; if you die unmarried, your money
goes to Jolly and Holly and their children if they marry. Isn't it
pleasant to know that whatever you do you can none of you be destitute?"
"But can't I borrow the money?"
Jolyon shook his head. "You could rent a Gallery, no doubt, if you could
manage it out of your income."
June uttered a contemptuous sound.
"Yes; and have no income left to help anybody with."
"My dear child," murmured Jolyon, "wouldn't it come to the same thing?"
"No," said June shrewdly, "I could buy for ten thousand; that would only
be four hundred a year. But I should have to pay a thousand a year rent,
and that would only leave me five hundred. If I had the Gallery, Dad,
think what I could do. I could make Eric Cobbley's name in no time, and
ever so many others."
"Names worth making make themselves in time."
"When they're dead."
"Did you ever know anybody living, my dear, improved by having his name
made?"
"Yes, you," said June, pressing his arm.
Jolyon started. 'I?' he thought. 'Oh! Ah! Now she's going to ask me
to do something. We take it out, we Forsytes, each in our different
ways.'
June came closer to him in the cab.
"Darling," she said, "you buy the Gallery, and I'll pay you four hundred
a year for it. Then neither of us will be any the worse off. Besides,
it's a splendid investment."
Jolyon wriggled. "Don't you think," he said, "that for an artist to buy
a Gallery is a bit dubious? Besides, ten thousand pounds is a lump, and
I'm not a commercial character."
June looked at him with admiring appraisement.
"Of course you're not, but you're awfully businesslike. And I'm sure we
could make it pay. It'll be a perfect way of scoring off those wretched
dealers and people." And again she squeezed her father's arm.
Jolyon's face expressed quizzical despair.
"Where is this desirable Gallery? Splendidly situated, I suppose?"
"Just off Cork Street."
'Ah!' thought Jolyon, 'I knew it was just off somewhere. Now for what I
want out of her!'
"Well, I'll think of it, but not just now. You remember Irene? I want
you to come with me and see her. Soames is after her again. She might be
safer if we could give her asylum somewhere."
The word asylum, which he had used by chance, was of all most calculated
to rouse June's interest.
"Irene! I haven't seen her since! Of course! I'd love to help her."
It was Jolyon's turn to squeeze her arm, in warm admiration for this
spirited, generous-hearted little creature of his begetting.
"Irene is proud," he said, with a sidelong glance, in sudden doubt of
June's discretion; "she's difficult to help. We must tread gently. This
is the place. I wired her to expect us. Let's send up our cards."
"I can't bear Soames," said June as she got out; "he sneers at everything
that isn't successful"
Irene was in what was called the 'Ladies' drawing-room' of the Piedmont
Hotel.
Nothing if not morally courageous, June walked straight up to her former
friend, kissed her cheek, and the two settled down on a sofa never sat on
since the hotel's foundation. Jolyon could see that Irene was deeply
affected by this simple forgiveness.
"So Soames has been worrying you?" he said.
"I had a visit from him last night; he wants me to go back to him."
"You're not going, of course?" cried June.
Irene smiled faintly and shook her head. "But his position is horrible,"
she murmured.
"It's his own fault; he ought to have divorced you when he could."
Jolyon remembered how fervently in the old days June had hoped that no
divorce would smirch her dead and faithless lover's name.
"Let us hear what Irene is going to do," he said.
Irene's lips quivered, but she spoke calmly.
"I'd better give him fresh excuse to get rid of me."
"How horrible!" cried June.
"What else can I do?"
"Out of the question," said Jolyon very quietly, "sans amour."
He thought she was going to cry; but, getting up quickly, she half turned
her back on them, and stood regaining control of herself.
June said suddenly:
"Well, I shall go to Soames and tell him he must leave you alone. What
does he want at his age?"
"A child. It's not unnatural"
"A child!" cried June scornfully. "Of course! To leave his money to.
If he wants one badly enough let him take somebody and have one; then you
can divorce him, and he can marry her."
Jolyon perceived suddenly that he had made a mistake to bring June--her
violent partizanship was fighting Soames' battle.
"It would be best for Irene to come quietly to us at Robin Hill, and see
how things shape."
"Of course," said June; "only...."
Irene looked full at Jolyon--in all his many attempts afterwards to
analyze that glance he never could succeed.
"No! I should only bring trouble on you all. I will go abroad."
He knew from her voice that this was final. The irrelevant thought
flashed through him: 'Well, I could see her there.' But he said:
"Don't you think you would be more helpless abroad, in case he followed?"
"I don't know. I can but try."
June sprang up and paced the room. "It's all horrible," she said. "Why
should people be tortured and kept miserable and helpless year after year
by this disgusting sanctimonious law?" But someone had come into the
room, and June came to a standstill. Jolyon went up to Irene:
"Do you want money?"
"No."
"And would you like me to let your flat?"
"Yes, Jolyon, please."
"When shall you be going?"
"To-morrow."
"You won't go back there in the meantime, will you?" This he said with
an anxiety strange to himself.
"No; I've got all I want here."
"You'll send me your address?"
She put out her hand to him. "I feel you're a rock."
"Built on sand," answered Jolyon, pressing her hand hard; "but it's a
pleasure to do anything, at any time, remember that. And if you change
your mind....! Come along, June; say good-bye."
June came from the window and flung her arms round Irene.
"Don't think of him," she said under her breath; "enjoy yourself, and
bless you!"
With a memory of tears in Irene's eyes, and of a smile on her lips, they
went away extremely silent, passing the lady who had interrupted the
interview and was turning over the papers on the table.
Opposite the National Gallery June exclaimed:
"Of all undignified beasts and horrible laws!"
But Jolyon did not respond. He had something of his father's balance,
and could see things impartially even when his emotions were roused.
Irene was right; Soames' position was as bad or worse than her own. As
for the law--it catered for a human nature of which it took a naturally
low view. And, feeling that if he stayed in his daughter's company he
would in one way or another commit an indiscretion, he told her he must
catch his train back to Oxford; and hailing a cab, left her to Turner's
water-colours, with the promise that he would think over that Gallery.
But he thought over Irene instead. Pity, they said, was akin to love!
If so he was certainly in danger of loving her, for he pitied her
profoundly. To think of her drifting about Europe so handicapped and
lonely! 'I hope to goodness she'll keep her head!' he thought; 'she
might easily grow desperate.' In fact, now that she had cut loose from
her poor threads of occupation, he couldn't imagine how she would go
on--so beautiful a creature, hopeless, and fair game for anyone! In his
exasperation was more than a little fear and jealousy. Women did strange
things when they were driven into corners. 'I wonder what Soames will do
now!' he thought. 'A rotten, idiotic state of things! And I suppose
they would say it was her own fault.' Very preoccupied and sore at
heart, he got into his train, mislaid his ticket, and on the platform at
Oxford took his hat off to a lady whose face he seemed to remember
without being able to put a name to her, not even when he saw her having
tea at the Rainbow.
CHAPTER IV
WHERE FORSYTES FEAR TO TREAD
Quivering from the defeat of his hopes, with the green morocco case still
flat against his heart, Soames revolved thoughts bitter as death. A
spider's web! Walking fast, and noting nothing in the moonlight, he
brooded over the scene he had been through, over the memory of her figure
rigid in his grasp. And the more he brooded, the more certain he became
that she had a lover--her words, 'I would sooner die!' were ridiculous if
she had not. Even if she had never loved him, she had made no fuss until
Bosinney came on the scene. No; she was in love again, or she would not
have made that melodramatic answer to his proposal, which in all the
circumstances was reasonable! Very well! That simplified matters.
'I'll take steps to know where I am,' he thought; 'I'll go to Polteed's
the first thing tomorrow morning.'
But even in forming that resolution he knew he would have trouble with
himself. He had employed Polteed's agency several times in the routine
of his profession, even quite lately over Dartie's case, but he had never
thought it possible to employ them to watch his own wife.
It was too insulting to himself!
He slept over that project and his wounded pride--or rather, kept vigil.
Only while shaving did he suddenly remember that she called herself by
her maiden name of Heron. Polteed would not know, at first at all
events, whose wife she was, would not look at him obsequiously and leer
behind his back. She would just be the wife of one of his clients. And
that would be true--for was he not his own solicitor?
He was literally afraid not to put his design into execution at the first
possible moment, lest, after all, he might fail himself. And making
Warmson bring him an early cup of coffee; he stole out of the house
before the hour of breakfast. He walked rapidly to one of those small
West End streets where Polteed's and other firms ministered to the
virtues of the wealthier classes. Hitherto he had always had Polteed to
see him in the Poultry; but he well knew their address, and reached it at
the opening hour. In the outer office, a room furnished so cosily that
it might have been a money-lender's, he was attended by a lady who might
have been a schoolmistress.
"I wish to see Mr. Claud Polteed. He knows me--never mind my name."
To keep everybody from knowing that he, Soames Forsyte, was reduced to
having his wife spied on, was the overpowering consideration.
Mr. Claud Polteed--so different from Mr. Lewis Polteed--was one of those
men with dark hair, slightly curved noses, and quick brown eyes, who
might be taken for Jews but are really Phoenicians; he received Soames in
a room hushed by thickness of carpet and curtains. It was, in fact,
confidentially furnished, without trace of document anywhere to be seen.
Greeting Soames deferentially, he turned the key in the only door with a
certain ostentation.
"If a client sends for me," he was in the habit of saying, "he takes what
precaution he likes. If he comes here, we convince him that we have no
leakages. I may safely say we lead in security, if in nothing
else....Now, sir, what can I do for you?"
Soames' gorge had risen so that he could hardly speak. It was absolutely
necessary to hide from this man that he had any but professional interest
in the matter; and, mechanically, his face assumed its sideway smile.
"I've come to you early like this because there's not an hour to
lose"--if he lost an hour he might fail himself yet! "Have you a really
trustworthy woman free?"
Mr. Polteed unlocked a drawer, produced a memorandum, ran his eyes over
it, and locked the drawer up again.
"Yes," he said; "the very woman."
Soames had seated himself and crossed his legs--nothing but a faint
flush, which might have been his normal complexion, betrayed him.
"Send her off at once, then, to watch a Mrs. Irene Heron of Flat C, Truro
Mansions, Chelsea, till further notice."
"Precisely," said Mr. Polteed; "divorce, I presume?" and he blew into a
speaking-tube. "Mrs. Blanch in? I shall want to speak to her in ten
minutes."
"Deal with any reports yourself," resumed Soames, "and send them to me
personally, marked confidential, sealed and registered. My client exacts
the utmost secrecy."
Mr. Polteed smiled, as though saying, 'You are teaching your grandmother,
my dear sir;' and his eyes slid over Soames' face for one unprofessional
instant.
"Make his mind perfectly easy," he said. "Do you smoke?"
"No," said Soames. "Understand me: Nothing may come of this. If a name
gets out, or the watching is suspected, it may have very serious
consequences."
Mr. Polteed nodded. "I can put it into the cipher category. Under that
system a name is never mentioned; we work by numbers."
He unlocked another drawer and took out two slips of paper, wrote on
them, and handed one to Soames.
"Keep that, sir; it's your key. I retain this duplicate. The case we'll
call 7x. The party watched will be 17; the watcher 19; the Mansions 25;
yourself--I should say, your firm--31; my firm 32, myself 2. In case you
should have to mention your client in writing I have called him 43; any
person we suspect will be 47; a second person 51. Any special hint or
instruction while we're about it?"
"No," said Soames; "that is--every consideration compatible."
Again Mr. Polteed nodded. "Expense?"
Soames shrugged. "In reason," he answered curtly, and got up. "Keep it
entirely in your own hands."
"Entirely," said Mr. Polteed, appearing suddenly between him and the
door. "I shall be seeing you in that other case before long. Good
morning, sir." His eyes slid unprofessionally over Soames once more, and
he unlocked the door.
"Good morning," said Soames, looking neither to right nor left.
Out in the street he swore deeply, quietly, to himself. A spider's web,
and to cut it he must use this spidery, secret, unclean method, so
utterly repugnant to one who regarded his private life as his most sacred
piece of property. But the die was cast, he could not go back. And he
went on into the Poultry, and locked away the green morocco case and the
key to that cipher destined to make crystal-clear his domestic
bankruptcy.
Odd that one whose life was spent in bringing to the public eye all the
private coils of property, the domestic disagreements of others, should
dread so utterly the public eye turned on his own; and yet not odd, for
who should know so well as he the whole unfeeling process of legal
regulation.
He worked hard all day. Winifred was due at four o'clock; he was to take
her down to a conference in the Temple with Dreamer Q.C., and waiting for
her he re-read the letter he had caused her to write the day of Dartie's
departure, requiring him to return.
"DEAR MONTAGUE,
"I have received your letter with the news that you have left me for ever
and are on your way to Buenos Aires. It has naturally been a great
shock. I am taking this earliest opportunity of writing to tell you that
I am prepared to let bygones be bygones if you will return to me at once.
I beg you to do so. I am very much upset, and will not say any more now.
I am sending this letter registered to the address you left at your Club.
Please cable to me.
"Your still affectionate wife,
"WINIFRED DARTIE."
Ugh! What bitter humbug! He remembered leaning over Winifred while she
copied what he had pencilled, and how she had said, laying down her pen,
"Suppose he comes, Soames!" in such a strange tone of voice, as if she
did not know her own mind. "He won't come," he had answered, "till he's
spent his money. That's why we must act at once." Annexed to the copy
of that letter was the original of Dartie's drunken scrawl from the
Iseeum Club. Soames could have wished it had not been so manifestly
penned in liquor. Just the sort of thing the Court would pitch on. He
seemed to hear the Judge's voice say: "You took this seriously!
Seriously enough to write him as you did? Do you think he meant it?"
Never mind! The fact was clear that Dartie had sailed and had not
returned. Annexed also was his cabled answer: "Impossible return.
Dartie." Soames shook his head. If the whole thing were not disposed of
within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a bad
penny. It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him, besides
all the worry to Winifred and his father. 'I must stiffen Dreamer's
back,' he thought; 'we must push it on.'
Winifred, who had adopted a kind of half-mourning which became her fair
hair and tall figure very well, arrived in James' barouche drawn by
James' pair. Soames had not seen it in the City since his father retired
from business five years ago, and its incongruity gave him a shock.
'Times are changing,' he thought; 'one doesn't know what'll go next!'
Top hats even were scarcer. He enquired after Val. Val, said Winifred,
wrote that he was going to play polo next term. She thought he was in a
very good set. She added with fashionably disguised anxiety: "Will there
be much publicity about my affair, Soames? Must it be in the papers?
It's so bad for him, and the girls."
With his own calamity all raw within him, Soames answered:
"The papers are a pushing lot; it's very difficult to keep things out.
They pretend to be guarding the public's morals, and they corrupt them
with their beastly reports. But we haven't got to that yet. We're only
seeing Dreamer to-day on the restitution question. Of course he
understands that it's to lead to a divorce; but you must seem genuinely
anxious to get Dartie back--you might practice that attitude to-day."
Winifred sighed.
"Oh! What a clown Monty's been!" she said.
Soames gave her a sharp look. It was clear to him that she could not
take her Dartie seriously, and would go back on the whole thing if given
half a chance. His own instinct had been firm in this matter from the
first. To save a little scandal now would only bring on his sister and
her children real disgrace and perhaps ruin later on if Dartie were
allowed to hang on to them, going down-hill and spending the money James
would leave his daughter. Though it was all tied up, that fellow would
milk the settlements somehow, and make his family pay through the nose to
keep him out of bankruptcy or even perhaps gaol! They left the shining
carriage, with the shining horses and the shining-hatted servants on the
Embankment, and walked up to Dreamer Q.C.'s Chambers in Crown Office Row.
"Mr. Bellby is here, sir," said the clerk; "Mr. Dreamer will be ten
minutes."
Mr. Bellby, the junior--not as junior as he might have been, for Soames
only employed barristers of established reputation; it was, indeed,
something of a mystery to him how barristers ever managed to establish
that which made him employ them--Mr. Bellby was seated, taking a final
glance through his papers. He had come from Court, and was in wig and
gown, which suited a nose jutting out like the handle of a tiny pump, his
small shrewd blue eyes, and rather protruding lower lip--no better man to
supplement and stiffen Dreamer.
The introduction to Winifred accomplished, they leaped the weather and
spoke of the war. Soames interrupted suddenly:
"If he doesn't comply we can't bring proceedings for six months. I want
to get on with the matter, Bellby."
Mr. Bellby, who had the ghost of an Irish brogue, smiled at Winifred and
murmured: "The Law's delays, Mrs. Dartie."
"Six months!" repeated Soames; "it'll drive it up to June! We shan't get
the suit on till after the long vacation. We must put the screw on,
Bellby"--he would have all his work cut out to keep Winifred up to the
scratch.
"Mr. Dreamer will see you now, sir."
They filed in, Mr. Bellby going first, and Soames escorting Winifred
after an interval of one minute by his watch.
Dreamer Q.C., in a gown but divested of wig, was standing before the
fire, as if this conference were in the nature of a treat; he had the
leathery, rather oily complexion which goes with great learning, a
considerable nose with glasses perched on it, and little greyish
whiskers; he luxuriated in the perpetual cocking of one eye, and the
concealment of his lower with his upper lip, which gave a smothered turn
to his speech. He had a way, too, of coming suddenly round the corner on
the person he was talking to; this, with a disconcerting tone of voice,
and a habit of growling before he began to speak--had secured a
reputation second in Probate and Divorce to very few. Having listened,
eye cocked, to Mr. Bellby's breezy recapitulation of the facts, he
growled, and said:
"I know all that;" and coming round the corner at Winifred, smothered the
words:
"We want to get him back, don't we, Mrs. Dartie?"
Soames interposed sharply:
"My sister's position, of course, is intolerable."
Dreamer growled. "Exactly. Now, can we rely on the cabled refusal, or
must we wait till after Christmas to give him a chance to have
written--that's the point, isn't it?"
"The sooner...." Soames began.
"What do you say, Bellby?" said Dreamer, coming round his corner.
Mr. Bellby seemed to sniff the air like a hound.
"We won't be on till the middle of December. We've no need to give um
more rope than that."
"No," said Soames, "why should my sister be incommoded by his choosing to
go..."
"To Jericho!" said Dreamer, again coming round his corner; "quite so.
People oughtn't to go to Jericho, ought they, Mrs. Dartie?" And he raised
his gown into a sort of fantail. "I agree. We can go forward. Is there
anything more?"
"Nothing at present," said Soames meaningly; "I wanted you to see my
sister."
Dreamer growled softly: "Delighted. Good evening!" And let fall the
protection of his gown.
They filed out. Winifred went down the stairs. Soames lingered. In
spite of himself he was impressed by Dreamer.
"The evidence is all right, I think," he said to Bellby. "Between
ourselves, if we don't get the thing through quick, we never may. D'you
think he understands that?"
"I'll make um," said Bellby. "Good man though--good man."
Soames nodded and hastened after his sister. He found her in a draught,
biting her lips behind her veil, and at once said:
"The evidence of the stewardess will be very complete."
Winifred's face hardened; she drew herself up, and they walked to the
carriage. And, all through that silent drive back to Green Street, the
souls of both of them revolved a single thought: 'Why, oh! why should I
have to expose my misfortune to the public like this? Why have to employ
spies to peer into my private troubles? They were not of my making.'
CHAPTER V
JOLLY SITS IN JUDGMENT
The possessive instinct, which, so determinedly balked, was animating two
members of the Forsyte family towards riddance of what they could no
longer possess, was hardening daily in the British body politic.
Nicholas, originally so doubtful concerning a war which must affect
property, had been heard to say that these Boers were a pig-headed lot;
they were causing a lot of expense, and the sooner they had their lesson
the better. He would send out Wolseley! Seeing always a little further
than other people--whence the most considerable fortune of all the
Forsytes--he had perceived already that Buller was not the man--'a bull
of a chap, who just went butting, and if they didn't look out Ladysmith
would fall.' This was early in December, so that when Black Week came, he
was enabled to say to everybody: 'I told you so.' During that week of
gloom such as no Forsyte could remember, very young Nicholas attended so
many drills in his corps, 'The Devil's Own,' that young Nicholas
consulted the family physician about his son's health and was alarmed to
find that he was perfectly sound. The boy had only just eaten his
dinners and been called to the bar, at some expense, and it was in a way
a nightmare to his father and mother that he should be playing with
military efficiency at a time when military efficiency in the civilian
population might conceivably be wanted. His grandfather, of course,
pooh-poohed the notion, too thoroughly educated in the feeling that no
British war could be other than little and professional, and profoundly
distrustful of Imperial commitments, by which, moreover, he stood to
lose, for he owned De Beers, now going down fast, more than a sufficient
sacrifice on the part of his grandson.
At Oxford, however, rather different sentiments prevailed. The inherent
effervescence of conglomerate youth had, during the two months of the
term before Black Week, been gradually crystallising out into vivid
oppositions. Normal adolescence, ever in England of a conservative
tendency though not taking things too seriously, was vehement for a fight
to a finish and a good licking for the Boers. Of this larger faction Val
Dartie was naturally a member. Radical youth, on the other hand, a small
but perhaps more vocal body, was for stopping the war and giving the
Boers autonomy. Until Black Week, however, the groups were amorphous,
without sharp edges, and argument remained but academic. Jolly was one
of those who knew not where he stood. A streak of his grandfather old
Jolyon's love of justice prevented, him from seeing one side only.
Moreover, in his set of 'the best' there was a 'jumping-Jesus' of
extremely advanced opinions and some personal magnetism. Jolly wavered.
His father, too, seemed doubtful in his views. And though, as was proper
at the age of twenty, he kept a sharp eye on his father, watchful for
defects which might still be remedied, still that father had an 'air'
which gave a sort of glamour to his creed of ironic tolerance. Artists
of course; were notoriously Hamlet-like, and to this extent one must
discount for one's father, even if one loved him. But Jolyon's original
view, that to 'put your nose in where you aren't wanted' (as the
Uitlanders had done) 'and then work the oracle till you get on top is not
being quite the clean potato,' had, whether founded in fact or no, a
certain attraction for his son, who thought a deal about gentility. On
the other hand Jolly could not abide such as his set called 'cranks,' and
Val's set called 'smugs,' so that he was still balancing when the clock
of Black Week struck. One--two--three, came those ominous repulses at
Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso. The sturdy English soul reacting
after the first cried, 'Ah! but Methuen!' after the second: 'Ah! but
Buller!' then, in inspissated gloom, hardened. And Jolly said to himself:
'No, damn it! We've got to lick the beggars now; I don't care whether
we're right or wrong.' And, if he had known it, his father was thinking
the same thought.
That next Sunday, last of the term, Jolly was bidden to wine with 'one of
the best.' After the second toast, 'Buller and damnation to the Boers,'
drunk--no heel taps--in the college Burgundy, he noticed that Val Dartie,
also a guest, was looking at him with a grin and saying something to his
neighbour. He was sure it was disparaging. The last boy in the world to
make himself conspicuous or cause public disturbance, Jolly grew rather
red and shut his lips. The queer hostility he had always felt towards
his second-cousin was strongly and suddenly reinforced. 'All right!' he
thought, 'you wait, my friend!' More wine than was good for him, as the
custom was, helped him to remember, when they all trooped forth to a
secluded spot, to touch Val on the arm.
"What did you say about me in there?"
"Mayn't I say what I like?"
"No."
"Well, I said you were a pro-Boer--and so you are!"
"You're a liar!"
"D'you want a row?"
"Of course, but not here; in the garden."
"All right. Come on."
They went, eyeing each other askance, unsteady, and unflinching; they
climbed the garden railings. The spikes on the top slightly ripped Val's
sleeve, and occupied his mind. Jolly's mind was occupied by the thought
that they were going to fight in the precincts of a college foreign to
them both. It was not the thing, but never mind--the young beast!
They passed over the grass into very nearly darkness, and took off their
coats.
"You're not screwed, are you?" said Jolly suddenly. "I can't fight you
if you're screwed."
"No more than you."
"All right then."
Without shaking hands, they put themselves at once into postures of
defence. They had drunk too much for science, and so were especially
careful to assume correct attitudes, until Jolly smote Val almost
accidentally on the nose. After that it was all a dark and ugly
scrimmage in the deep shadow of the old trees, with no one to call
'time,' till, battered and blown, they unclinched and staggered back from
each other, as a voice said:
"Your names, young gentlemen?"
At this bland query spoken from under the lamp at the garden gate, like
some demand of a god, their nerves gave way, and snatching up their
coats, they ran at the railings, shinned up them, and made for the
secluded spot whence they had issued to the fight. Here, in dim light,
they mopped their faces, and without a word walked, ten paces apart, to
the college gate. They went out silently, Val going towards the Broad
along the Brewery, Jolly down the lane towards the High. His head, still
fumed, was busy with regret that he had not displayed more science,
passing in review the counters and knockout blows which he had not
delivered. His mind strayed on to an imagined combat, infinitely unlike
that which he had just been through, infinitely gallant, with sash and
sword, with thrust and parry, as if he were in the pages of his beloved
Dumas. He fancied himself La Mole, and Aramis, Bussy, Chicot, and
D'Artagnan rolled into one, but he quite failed to envisage Val as
Coconnas, Brissac, or Rochefort. The fellow was just a confounded cousin
who didn't come up to Cocker. Never mind! He had given him one or two.
'Pro-Boer!' The word still rankled, and thoughts of enlisting jostled
his aching head; of riding over the veldt, firing gallantly, while the
Boers rolled over like rabbits. And, turning up his smarting eyes, he
saw the stars shining between the housetops of the High, and himself
lying out on the Karoo (whatever that was) rolled in a blanket, with his
rifle ready and his gaze fixed on a glittering heaven.
He had a fearful 'head' next morning, which he doctored, as became one of
'the best,' by soaking it in cold water, brewing strong coffee which he
could not drink, and only sipping a little Hock at lunch. The legend
that 'some fool' had run into him round a corner accounted for a bruise
on his cheek. He would on no account have mentioned the fight, for, on
second thoughts, it fell far short of his standards.
The next day he went 'down,' and travelled through to Robin Hill. Nobody
was there but June and Holly, for his father had gone to Paris. He spent
a restless and unsettled Vacation, quite out of touch with either of his
sisters. June, indeed, was occupied with lame ducks, whom, as a rule,
Jolly could not stand, especially that Eric Cobbley and his family,
'hopeless outsiders,' who were always littering up the house in the
Vacation. And between Holly and himself there was a strange division, as
if she were beginning to have opinions of her own, which was
so--unnecessary. He punched viciously at a ball, rode furiously but
alone in Richmond Park, making a point of jumping the stiff, high hurdles
put up to close certain worn avenues of grass--keeping his nerve in, he
called it. Jolly was more afraid of being afraid than most boys are. He
bought a rifle, too, and put a range up in the home field, shooting
across the pond into the kitchen-garden wall, to the peril of gardeners,
with the thought that some day, perhaps, he would enlist and save South
Africa for his country. In fact, now that they were appealing for
Yeomanry recruits the boy was thoroughly upset. Ought he to go? None of
'the best,' so far as he knew--and he was in correspondence with
several--were thinking of joining. If they had been making a move he
would have gone at once--very competitive, and with a strong sense of
form, he could not bear to be left behind in anything--but to do it off
his own bat might look like 'swagger'; because of course it wasn't really
necessary. Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this
young Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked. It was altogether
mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and he became quite
unlike his serene and rather lordly self.
And then one day he saw that which moved him to uneasy wrath--two riders,
in a glade of the Park close to the Ham Gate, of whom she on the
left-hand was most assuredly Holly on her silver roan, and he on the
right-hand as assuredly that 'squirt' Val Dartie. His first impulse was
to urge on his own horse and demand the meaning of this portent, tell the
fellow to 'bunk,' and take Holly home. His second--to feel that he would
look a fool if they refused. He reined his horse in behind a tree, then
perceived that it was equally impossible to spy on them. Nothing for it
but to go home and await her coming! Sneaking out with that young
bounder! He could not consult with June, because she had gone up that
morning in the train of Eric Cobbley and his lot. And his father was
still in 'that rotten Paris.' He felt that this was emphatically one of
those moments for which he had trained himself, assiduously, at school,
where he and a boy called Brent had frequently set fire to newspapers and
placed them in the centre of their studies to accustom them to coolness
in moments of danger. He did not feel at all cool waiting in the
stable-yard, idly stroking the dog Balthasar, who queasy as an old fat
monk, and sad in the absence of his master, turned up his face, panting
with gratitude for this attention. It was half an hour before Holly
came, flushed and ever so much prettier than she had any right to look.
He saw her look at him quickly--guiltily of course--then followed her in,
and, taking her arm, conducted her into what had been their grandfather's
study. The room, not much used now, was still vaguely haunted for them
both by a presence with which they associated tenderness, large drooping
white moustaches, the scent of cigar smoke, and laughter. Here Jolly, in
the prime of his youth, before he went to school at all, had been wont to
wrestle with his grandfather, who even at eighty had an irresistible
habit of crooking his leg. Here Holly, perched on the arm of the great
leather chair, had stroked hair curving silvery over an ear into which
she would whisper secrets. Through that window they had all three
sallied times without number to cricket on the lawn, and a mysterious
game called 'Wopsy-doozle,' not to be understood by outsiders, which made
old Jolyon very hot. Here once on a warm night Holly had appeared in her
'nighty,' having had a bad dream, to have the clutch of it released. And
here Jolly, having begun the day badly by introducing fizzy magnesia into
Mademoiselle Beauce's new-laid egg, and gone on to worse, had been sent
down (in the absence of his father) to the ensuing dialogue:
"Now, my boy, you mustn't go on like this."
"Well, she boxed my ears, Gran, so I only boxed hers, and then she boxed
mine again."
"Strike a lady? That'll never do! Have you begged her pardon?"
"Not yet."
"Then you must go and do it at once. Come along."
"But she began it, Gran; and she had two to my one."
"My dear, it was an outrageous thing to do."
"Well, she lost her temper; and I didn't lose mine."
"Come along."
"You come too, then, Gran."
"Well--this time only."
And they had gone hand in hand.
Here--where the Waverley novels and Byron's works and Gibbon's Roman
Empire and Humboldt's Cosmos, and the bronzes on the mantelpiece, and
that masterpiece of the oily school, 'Dutch Fishing-Boats at Sunset,'
were fixed as fate, and for all sign of change old Jolyon might have been
sitting there still, with legs crossed, in the arm chair, and domed
forehead and deep eyes grave above The Times--here they came, those two
grandchildren. And Jolly said:
"I saw you and that fellow in the Park."
The sight of blood rushing into her cheeks gave him some satisfaction;
she ought to be ashamed!
"Well?" she said.
Jolly was surprised; he had expected more, or less.
"Do you know," he said weightily, "that he called me a pro-Boer last
term? And I had to fight him."
"Who won?"
Jolly wished to answer: 'I should have,' but it seemed beneath him.
"Look here!" he said, "what's the meaning of it? Without telling
anybody!"
"Why should I? Dad isn't here; why shouldn't I ride with him?"
"You've got me to ride with. I think he's an awful young rotter."
Holly went pale with anger.
"He isn't. It's your own fault for not liking him."
And slipping past her brother she went out, leaving him staring at the
bronze Venus sitting on a tortoise, which had been shielded from him so
far by his sister's dark head under her soft felt riding hat. He felt
queerly disturbed, shaken to his young foundations. A lifelong
domination lay shattered round his feet. He went up to the Venus and
mechanically inspected the tortoise.
Why didn't he like Val Dartie? He could not tell. Ignorant of family
history, barely aware of that vague feud which had started thirteen years
before with Bosinney's defection from June in favour of Soames' wife,
knowing really almost nothing about Val he was at sea. He just did
dislike him. The question, however, was: What should he do? Val Dartie,
it was true, was a second-cousin, but it was not the thing for Holly to
go about with him. And yet to 'tell' of what he had chanced on was
against his creed. In this dilemma he went and sat in the old leather
chair and crossed his legs. It grew dark while he sat there staring out
through the long window at the old oak-tree, ample yet bare of leaves,
becoming slowly just a shape of deeper dark printed on the dusk.
'Grandfather!' he thought without sequence, and took out his watch. He
could not see the hands, but he set the repeater going. 'Five o'clock!'
His grandfather's first gold hunter watch, butter-smooth with age--all
the milling worn from it, and dented with the mark of many a fall. The
chime was like a little voice from out of that golden age, when they
first came from St. John's Wood, London, to this house--came driving
with grandfather in his carriage, and almost instantly took to the trees.
Trees to climb, and grandfather watering the geranium-beds below! What
was to be done? Tell Dad he must come home? Confide in June?--only she
was so--so sudden! Do nothing and trust to luck? After all, the Vac.
would soon be over. Go up and see Val and warn him off? But how get his
address? Holly wouldn't give it him! A maze of paths, a cloud of
possibilities! He lit a cigarette. When he had smoked it halfway
through his brow relaxed, almost as if some thin old hand had been passed
gently over it; and in his ear something seemed to whisper: 'Do nothing;
be nice to Holly, be nice to her, my dear!' And Jolly heaved a sigh of
contentment, blowing smoke through his nostrils....
But up in her room, divested of her habit, Holly was still frowning. 'He
is not--he is not!' were the words which kept forming on her lips.
CHAPTER VI
JOLYON IN TWO MINDS
A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare St.
Lazare was Jolyon's haunt in Paris. He hated his fellow Forsytes
abroad--vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden runs, the Opera,
Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge. Their air of having come because they
wanted to be somewhere else as soon as possible annoyed him. But no
other Forsyte came near this haunt, where he had a wood fire in his
bedroom and the coffee was excellent. Paris was always to him more
attractive in winter. The acrid savour from woodsmoke and
chestnut-roasting braziers, the sharpness of the wintry sunshine on
bright rays, the open cafes defying keen-aired winter, the self-contained
brisk boulevard crowds, all informed him that in winter Paris possessed a
soul which, like a migrant bird, in high summer flew away.
He spoke French well, had some friends, knew little places where pleasant
dishes could be met with, queer types observed. He felt philosophic in
Paris, the edge of irony sharpened; life took on a subtle, purposeless
meaning, became a bunch of flavours tasted, a darkness shot with shifting
gleams of light.
When in the first week of December he decided to go to Paris, he was far
from admitting that Irene's presence was influencing him. He had not been
there two days before he owned that the wish to see her had been more
than half the reason. In England one did not admit what was natural. He
had thought it might be well to speak to her about the letting of her
flat and other matters, but in Paris he at once knew better. There was a
glamour over the city. On the third day he wrote to her, and received an
answer which procured him a pleasurable shiver of the nerves:
"MY DEAR JOLYON,
"It will be a happiness for me to see you.
"IRENE."
He took his way to her hotel on a bright day with a feeling such as he
had often had going to visit an adored picture. No woman, so far as he
remembered, had ever inspired in him this special sensuous and yet
impersonal sensation. He was going to sit and feast his eyes, and come
away knowing her no better, but ready to go and feast his eyes again
to-morrow. Such was his feeling, when in the tarnished and ornate little
lounge of a quiet hotel near the river she came to him preceded by a
small page-boy who uttered the word, "Madame," and vanished. Her face,
her smile, the poise of her figure, were just as he had pictured, and the
expression of her face said plainly: 'A friend!'
"Well," he said, "what news, poor exile?"
"None."
"Nothing from Soames?"
"Nothing."
"I have let the flat for you, and like a good steward I bring you some
money. How do you like Paris?"
While he put her through this catechism, it seemed to him that he had
never seen lips so fine and sensitive, the lower lip curving just a
little upwards, the upper touched at one corner by the least conceivable
dimple. It was like discovering a woman in what had hitherto been a sort
of soft and breathed-on statue, almost impersonally admired. She owned
that to be alone in Paris was a little difficult; and yet, Paris was so
full of its own life that it was often, she confessed, as innocuous as a
desert. Besides, the English were not liked just now!
"That will hardly be your case," said Jolyon; "you should appeal to the
French."
"It has its disadvantages."
Jolyon nodded.
"Well, you must let me take you about while I'm here. We'll start
to-morrow. Come and dine at my pet restaurant; and we'll go to the
Opera-Comique."
It was the beginning of daily meetings.
Jolyon soon found that for those who desired a static condition of the
affections, Paris was at once the first and last place in which to be
friendly with a pretty woman. Revelation was alighting like a bird in
his heart, singing: 'Elle est ton reve! Elle est ton reve! Sometimes
this seemed natural, sometimes ludicrous--a bad case of elderly rapture.
Having once been ostracised by Society, he had never since had any real
regard for conventional morality; but the idea of a love which she could
never return--and how could she at his age?--hardly mounted beyond his
subconscious mind. He was full, too, of resentment, at the waste and
loneliness of her life. Aware of being some comfort to her, and of the
pleasure she clearly took in their many little outings, he was amiably
desirous of doing and saying nothing to destroy that pleasure. It was
like watching a starved plant draw up water, to see her drink in his
companionship. So far as they could tell, no one knew her address except
himself; she was unknown in Paris, and he but little known, so that
discretion seemed unnecessary in those walks, talks, visits to concerts,
picture-galleries, theatres, little dinners, expeditions to Versailles,
St. Cloud, even Fontainebleau. And time fled--one of those full months
without past to it or future. What in his youth would certainly have
been headlong passion, was now perhaps as deep a feeling, but far
gentler, tempered to protective companionship by admiration,
hopelessness, and a sense of chivalry--arrested in his veins at least so
long as she was there, smiling and happy in their friendship, and always
to him more beautiful and spiritually responsive: for her philosophy of
life seemed to march in admirable step with his own, conditioned by
emotion more than by reason, ironically mistrustful, susceptible to
beauty, almost passionately humane and tolerant, yet subject to
instinctive rigidities of which as a mere man he was less capable. And
during all this companionable month he never quite lost that feeling with
which he had set out on the first day as if to visit an adored work of
art, a well-nigh impersonal desire. The future--inexorable pendant to
the present he took care not to face, for fear of breaking up his
untroubled manner; but he made plans to renew this time in places still
more delightful, where the sun was hot and there were strange things to
see and paint. The end came swiftly on the 20th of January with a
telegram:
"Have enlisted in Imperial Yeomanry. JOLLY."
Jolyon received it just as he was setting out to meet her at the Louvre.
It brought him up with a round turn. While he was lotus-eating here, his
boy, whose philosopher and guide he ought to be, had taken this great
step towards danger, hardship, perhaps even death. He felt disturbed to
the soul, realising suddenly how Irene had twined herself round the roots
of his being. Thus threatened with severance, the tie between them--for
it had become a kind of tie--no longer had impersonal quality. The
tranquil enjoyment of things in common, Jolyon perceived, was gone for
ever. He saw his feeling as it was, in the nature of an infatuation.
Ridiculous, perhaps, but so real that sooner or later it must disclose
itself. And now, as it seemed to him, he could not, must not, make any
such disclosure. The news of Jolly stood inexorably in the way. He was
proud of this enlistment; proud of his boy for going off to fight for the
country; for on Jolyon's pro-Boerism, too, Black Week had left its mark.
And so the end was reached before the beginning! Well, luckily he had
never made a sign!
When he came into the Gallery she was standing before the 'Virgin of the
Rocks,' graceful, absorbed, smiling and unconscious. 'Have I to give up
seeing that?' he thought. 'It's unnatural, so long as she's willing that
I should see her.' He stood, unnoticed, watching her, storing up the
image of her figure, envying the picture on which she was bending that
long scrutiny. Twice she turned her head towards the entrance, and he
thought: 'That's for me!' At last he went forward.
"Look!" he said.
She read the telegram, and he heard her sigh.
That sigh, too, was for him! His position was really cruel! To be loyal
to his son he must just shake her hand and go. To be loyal to the
feeling in his heart he must at least tell her what that feeling was.
Could she, would she understand the silence in which he was gazing at
that picture?
"I'm afraid I must go home at once," he said at last. "I shall miss all
this awfully."
"So shall I; but, of course, you must go."
"Well!" said Jolyon holding out his hand.
Meeting her eyes, a flood of feeling nearly mastered him.
"Such is life!" he said. "Take care of yourself, my dear!"
He had a stumbling sensation in his legs and feet, as if his brain
refused to steer him away from her. From the doorway, he saw her lift
her hand and touch its fingers with her lips. He raised his hat
solemnly, and did not look back again.
CHAPTER VII
DARTIE VERSUS DARTIE
The suit--Dartie versus Dartie--for restitution of those conjugal rights
concerning which Winifred was at heart so deeply undecided, followed the
laws of subtraction towards day of judgment. This was not reached before
the Courts rose for Christmas, but the case was third on the list when
they sat again. Winifred spent the Christmas holidays a thought more
fashionably than usual, with the matter locked up in her low-cut bosom.
James was particularly liberal to her that Christmas, expressing thereby
his sympathy, and relief, at the approaching dissolution of her marriage
with that 'precious rascal,' which his old heart felt but his old lips
could not utter.
The disappearance of Dartie made the fall in Consols a comparatively
small matter; and as to the scandal--the real animus he felt against that
fellow, and the increasing lead which property was attaining over
reputation in a true Forsyte about to leave this world, served to drug a
mind from which all allusions to the matter (except his own) were
studiously kept. What worried him as a lawyer and a parent was the fear
that Dartie might suddenly turn up and obey the Order of the Court when
made. That would be a pretty how-de-do! The fear preyed on him in fact
so much that, in presenting Winifred with a large Christmas cheque, he
said: "It's chiefly for that chap out there; to keep him from coming
back." It was, of course, to pitch away good money, but all in the
nature of insurance against that bankruptcy which would no longer hang
over him if only the divorce went through; and he questioned Winifred
rigorously until she could assure him that the money had been sent. Poor
woman!--it cost her many a pang to send what must find its way into the
vanity-bag of 'that creature!' Soames, hearing of it, shook his head.
They were not dealing with a Forsyte, reasonably tenacious of his
purpose. It was very risky without knowing how the land lay out there.
Still, it would look well with the Court; and he would see that Dreamer
brought it out. "I wonder," he said suddenly, "where that ballet goes
after the Argentine"; never omitting a chance of reminder; for he knew
that Winifred still had a weakness, if not for Dartie, at least for not
laundering him in public. Though not good at showing admiration, he
admitted that she was behaving extremely well, with all her children at
home gaping like young birds for news of their father--Imogen just on the
point of coming out, and Val very restive about the whole thing. He felt
that Val was the real heart of the matter to Winifred, who certainly
loved him beyond her other children. The boy could spoke the wheel of
this divorce yet if he set his mind to it. And Soames was very careful
to keep the proximity of the preliminary proceedings from his nephew's
ears. He did more. He asked him to dine at the Remove, and over Val's
cigar introduced the subject which he knew to be nearest to his heart.
"I hear," he said, "that you want to play polo up at Oxford."
Val became less recumbent in his chair.
"Rather!" he said.
"Well," continued Soames, "that's a very expensive business. Your
grandfather isn't likely to consent to it unless he can make sure that
he's not got any other drain on him." And he paused to see whether the
boy understood his meaning.
Val's thick dark lashes concealed his eyes, but a slight grimace appeared
on his wide mouth, and he muttered:
"I suppose you mean my Dad!"
"Yes," said Soames; "I'm afraid it depends on whether he continues to be
a drag or not;" and said no more, letting the boy dream it over.
But Val was also dreaming in those days of a silver-roan palfrey and a
girl riding it. Though Crum was in town and an introduction to Cynthia
Dark to be had for the asking, Val did not ask; indeed, he shunned Crum
and lived a life strange even to himself, except in so far as accounts
with tailor and livery stable were concerned. To his mother, his sisters,
his young brother, he seemed to spend this Vacation in 'seeing fellows,'
and his evenings sleepily at home. They could not propose anything in
daylight that did not meet with the one response: "Sorry; I've got to see
a fellow"; and he was put to extraordinary shifts to get in and out of
the house unobserved in riding clothes; until, being made a member of the
Goat's Club, he was able to transport them there, where he could change
unregarded and slip off on his hack to Richmond Park. He kept his
growing sentiment religiously to himself. Not for a world would he
breathe to the 'fellows,' whom he was not 'seeing,' anything so
ridiculous from the point of view of their creed and his. But he could
not help its destroying his other appetites. It was coming between him
and the legitimate pleasures of youth at last on its own in a way which
must, he knew, make him a milksop in the eyes of Crum. All he cared for
was to dress in his last-created riding togs, and steal away to the Robin
Hill Gate, where presently the silver roan would come demurely sidling
with its slim and dark-haired rider, and in the glades bare of leaves
they would go off side by side, not talking very much, riding races
sometimes, and sometimes holding hands. More than once of an evening, in
a moment of expansion, he had been tempted to tell his mother how this
shy sweet cousin had stolen in upon him and wrecked his 'life.' But
bitter experience, that all persons above thirty-five were spoil-sports,
prevented him. After all, he supposed he would have to go through with
College, and she would have to 'come out,' before they could be married;
so why complicate things, so long as he could see her? Sisters were
teasing and unsympathetic beings, a brother worse, so there was no one to
confide in. Ah! And this beastly divorce business! What a misfortune
to have a name which other people hadn't! If only he had been called
Gordon or Scott or Howard or something fairly common! But Dartie--there
wasn't another in the directory! One might as well have been named
Morkin for all the covert it afforded! So matters went on, till one day
in the middle of January the silver-roan palfrey and its rider were
missing at the tryst. Lingering in the cold, he debated whether he
should ride on to the house: But Jolly might be there, and the memory of
their dark encounter was still fresh within him. One could not be always
fighting with her brother! So he returned dismally to town and spent an
evening plunged in gloom. At breakfast next day he noticed that his
mother had on an unfamiliar dress and was wearing her hat. The dress was
black with a glimpse of peacock blue, the hat black and large--she looked
exceptionally well. But when after breakfast she said to him, "Come in
here, Val," and led the way to the drawing-room, he was at once beset by
qualms. Winifred carefully shut the door and passed her handkerchief
over her lips; inhaling the violette de Parme with which it had been
soaked, Val thought: 'Has she found out about Holly?'
Her voice interrupted
"Are you going to be nice to me, dear boy?"
Val grinned doubtfully.
"Will you come with me this morning...."
"I've got to see...." began Val, but something in her face stopped him.
"I say," he said, "you don't mean...."
"Yes, I have to go to the Court this morning." Already!--that d---d
business which he had almost succeeded in forgetting, since nobody ever
mentioned it. In self-commiseration he stood picking little bits of skin
off his fingers. Then noticing that his mother's lips were all awry, he
said impulsively: "All right, mother; I'll come. The brutes!" What
brutes he did not know, but the expression exactly summed up their joint
feeling, and restored a measure of equanimity.
"I suppose I'd better change into a 'shooter,"' he muttered, escaping to
his room. He put on the 'shooter,' a higher collar, a pearl pin, and his
neatest grey spats, to a somewhat blasphemous accompaniment. Looking at
himself in the glass, he said, "Well, I'm damned if I'm going to show
anything!" and went down. He found his grandfather's carriage at the
door, and his mother in furs, with the appearance of one going to a
Mansion House Assembly. They seated themselves side by side in the
closed barouche, and all the way to the Courts of Justice Val made but
one allusion to the business in hand. "There'll be nothing about those
pearls, will there?"
The little tufted white tails of Winifred's muff began to shiver.
"Oh, no," she said, "it'll be quite harmless to-day. Your grandmother
wanted to come too, but I wouldn't let her. I thought you could take
care of me. You look so nice, Val. Just pull your coat collar up a
little more at the back--that's right."
"If they bully you...." began Val.
"Oh! they won't. I shall be very cool. It's the only way."
"They won't want me to give evidence or anything?"
"No, dear; it's all arranged." And she patted his hand. The determined
front she was putting on it stayed the turmoil in Val's chest, and he
busied himself in drawing his gloves off and on. He had taken what he
now saw was the wrong pair to go with his spats; they should have been
grey, but were deerskin of a dark tan; whether to keep them on or not he
could not decide. They arrived soon after ten. It was his first visit
to the Law Courts, and the building struck him at once.
"By Jove!" he said as they passed into the hall, "this'd make four or
five jolly good racket courts."
Soames was awaiting them at the foot of some stairs.
"Here you are!" he said, without shaking hands, as if the event had made
them too familiar for such formalities. "It's Happerly Browne, Court I.
We shall be on first."
A sensation such as he had known when going in to bat was playing now in
the top of Val's chest, but he followed his mother and uncle doggedly,
looking at no more than he could help, and thinking that the place
smelled 'fuggy.' People seemed to be lurking everywhere, and he plucked
Soames by the sleeve.
"I say, Uncle, you're not going to let those beastly papers in, are you?"
Soames gave him the sideway look which had reduced many to silence in its
time.
"In here," he said. "You needn't take off your furs, Winifred."
Val entered behind them, nettled and with his head up. In this
confounded hole everybody--and there were a good many of them--seemed
sitting on everybody else's knee, though really divided from each other
by pews; and Val had a feeling that they might all slip down together
into the well. This, however, was but a momentary vision--of mahogany,
and black gowns, and white blobs of wigs and faces and papers, all rather
secret and whispery--before he was sitting next his mother in the front
row, with his back to it all, glad of her violette de Parme, and taking
off his gloves for the last time. His mother was looking at him; he was
suddenly conscious that she had really wanted him there next to her, and
that he counted for something in this business.
All right! He would show them! Squaring his shoulders, he crossed his
legs and gazed inscrutably at his spats. But just then an 'old Johnny'
in a gown and long wig, looking awfully like a funny raddled woman, came
through a door into the high pew opposite, and he had to uncross his legs
hastily, and stand up with everybody else.
'Dartie versus Dartie!'
It seemed to Val unspeakably disgusting to have one's name called out
like this in public! And, suddenly conscious that someone nearly behind
him had begun talking about his family, he screwed his face round to see
an old be-wigged buffer, who spoke as if he were eating his own
words--queer-looking old cuss, the sort of man he had seen once or twice
dining at Park Lane and punishing the port; he knew now where they 'dug
them up.' All the same he found the old buffer quite fascinating, and
would have continued to stare if his mother had not touched his arm.
Reduced to gazing before him, he fixed his eyes on the Judge's face
instead. Why should that old 'sportsman' with his sarcastic mouth and
his quick-moving eyes have the power to meddle with their private
affairs--hadn't he affairs of his own, just as many, and probably just as
nasty? And there moved in Val, like an illness, all the deep-seated
individualism of his breed. The voice behind him droned along:
"Differences about money matters--extravagance of the respondent"
(What a word! Was that his father?)--"strained situation--frequent
absences on the part of Mr. Dartie. My client, very rightly, your
Ludship will agree, was anxious to check a course--but lead to
ruin--remonstrated--gambling at cards and on the racecourse--" ('That's
right!' thought Val, 'pile it on!') "Crisis early in October, when the
respondent wrote her this letter from his Club." Val sat up and his ears
burned. "I propose to read it with the emendations necessary to the
epistle of a gentleman who has been--shall we say dining, me Lud?"
'Old brute!' thought Val, flushing deeper; 'you're not paid to make
jokes!'
"'You will not get the chance to insult me again in my own house. I am
leaving the country to-morrow. It's played out'--an expression, your
Ludship, not unknown in the mouths of those who have not met with
conspicuous success."
'Sniggering owls!' thought Val, and his flush deepened.
"'I am tired of being insulted by you.' My client will tell your Ludship
that these so-called insults consisted in her calling him 'the limit',--a
very mild expression, I venture to suggest, in all the circumstances."
Val glanced sideways at his mother's impassive face, it had a hunted look
in the eyes. 'Poor mother,' he thought, and touched her arm with his
own. The voice behind droned on.
"'I am going to live a new life. M. D.'"
"And next day, me Lud, the respondent left by the steamship Tuscarora for
Buenos Aires. Since then we have nothing from him but a cabled refusal
in answer to the letter which my client wrote the following day in great
distress, begging him to return to her. With your Ludship's permission.
I shall now put Mrs. Dartie in the box."
When his mother rose, Val had a tremendous impulse to rise too and say:
'Look here! I'm going to see you jolly well treat her decently.' He
subdued it, however; heard her saying, 'the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth,' and looked up. She made a rich figure of it, in
her furs and large hat, with a slight flush on her cheek-bones, calm,
matter-of-fact; and he felt proud of her thus confronting all these
'confounded lawyers.' The examination began. Knowing that this was only
the preliminary to divorce, Val followed with a certain glee the
questions framed so as to give the impression that she really wanted his
father back. It seemed to him that they were 'foxing Old Bagwigs finely.'
And he received a most unpleasant jar when the Judge said suddenly:
"Now, why did your husband leave you--not because you called him 'the
limit,' you know?"
Val saw his uncle lift his eyes to the witness box, without moving his
face; heard a shuffle of papers behind him; and instinct told him that
the issue was in peril. Had Uncle Soames and the old buffer behind made
a mess of it? His mother was speaking with a slight drawl.
"No, my Lord, but it had gone on a long time."
"What had gone on?"
"Our differences about money."
"But you supplied the money. Do you suggest that he left you to better
his position?"
'The brute! The old brute, and nothing but the brute!' thought Val
suddenly. 'He smells a rat he's trying to get at the pastry!' And his
heart stood still. If--if he did, then, of course, he would know that
his mother didn't really want his father back. His mother spoke again, a
thought more fashionably.
"No, my Lord, but you see I had refused to give him any more money. It
took him a long time to believe that, but he did at last--and when he
did...."
"I see, you had refused. But you've sent him some since."
"My Lord, I wanted him back."
"And you thought that would bring him?"
"I don't know, my Lord, I acted on my father's advice."
Something in the Judge's face, in the sound of the papers behind him, in
the sudden crossing of his uncle's legs, told Val that she had made just
the right answer. 'Crafty!' he thought; 'by Jove, what humbug it all
is!'
The Judge was speaking:
"Just one more question, Mrs. Dartie. Are you still fond of your
husband?"
Val's hands, slack behind him, became fists. What business had that
Judge to make things human suddenly? To make his mother speak out of her
heart, and say what, perhaps, she didn't know herself, before all these
people! It wasn't decent. His mother answered, rather low: "Yes, my
Lord." Val saw the Judge nod. 'Wish I could take a cock-shy at your
head!' he thought irreverently, as his mother came back to her seat
beside him. Witnesses to his father's departure and continued absence
followed--one of their own maids even, which struck Val as particularly
beastly; there was more talking, all humbug; and then the Judge
pronounced the decree for restitution, and they got up to go. Val walked
out behind his mother, chin squared, eyelids drooped, doing his level
best to despise everybody. His mother's voice in the corridor roused him
from an angry trance.
"You behaved beautifully, dear. It was such a comfort to have you. Your
uncle and I are going to lunch."
"All right," said Val; "I shall have time to go and see that fellow."
And, parting from them abruptly, he ran down the stairs and out into the
air. He bolted into a hansom, and drove to the Goat's Club. His
thoughts were on Holly and what he must do before her brother showed her
this thing in to-morrow's paper.
*******************************
When Val had left them Soames and Winifred made their way to the Cheshire
Cheese. He had suggested it as a meeting place with Mr. Bellby. At that
early hour of noon they would have it to themselves, and Winifred had
thought it would be 'amusing' to see this far-famed hostelry. Having
ordered a light repast, to the consternation of the waiter, they awaited
its arrival together with that of Mr. Bellby, in silent reaction after
the hour and a half's suspense on the tenterhooks of publicity. Mr.
Bellby entered presently, preceded by his nose, as cheerful as they were
glum. Well! they had got the decree of restitution, and what was the
matter with that!
"Quite," said Soames in a suitably low voice, "but we shall have to begin
again to get evidence. He'll probably try the divorce--it will look
fishy if it comes out that we knew of misconduct from the start. His
questions showed well enough that he doesn't like this restitution
dodge."
"Pho!" said Mr. Bellby cheerily, "he'll forget! Why, man, he'll have
tried a hundred cases between now and then. Besides, he's bound by
precedent to give ye your divorce, if the evidence is satisfactory. We
won't let um know that Mrs. Dartie had knowledge of the facts. Dreamer
did it very nicely--he's got a fatherly touch about um!"
Soames nodded.
"And I compliment ye, Mrs. Dartie," went on Mr. Bellby; "ye've a natural
gift for giving evidence. Steady as a rock."
Here the, waiter arrived with three plates balanced on one arm, and the
remark: "I 'urried up the pudden, sir. You'll find plenty o' lark in it
to-day."
Mr. Bellby applauded his forethought with a dip of his nose. But Soames
and Winifred looked with dismay at their light lunch of gravified brown
masses, touching them gingerly with their forks in the hope of
distinguishing the bodies of the tasty little song-givers. Having begun,
however, they found they were hungrier than they thought, and finished
the lot, with a glass of port apiece. Conversation turned on the war.
Soames thought Ladysmith would fall, and it might last a year. Bellby
thought it would be over by the summer. Both agreed that they wanted
more men. There was nothing for it but complete victory, since it was
now a question of prestige. Winifred brought things back to more solid
ground by saying that she did not want the divorce suit to come on till
after the summer holidays had begun at Oxford, then the boys would have
forgotten about it before Val had to go up again; the London season too
would be over. The lawyers reassured her, an interval of six months was
necessary--after that the earlier the better. People were now beginning
to come in, and they parted--Soames to the city, Bellby to his chambers,
Winifred in a hansom to Park Lane to let her mother know how she had
fared. The issue had been so satisfactory on the whole that it was
considered advisable to tell James, who never failed to say day after day
that he didn't know about Winifred's affair, he couldn't tell. As his
sands ran out; the importance of mundane matters became increasingly
grave to him, as if he were feeling: 'I must make the most of it, and
worry well; I shall soon have nothing to worry about.'
He received the report grudgingly. It was a new-fangled way of going
about things, and he didn't know! But he gave Winifred a cheque, saying:
"I expect you'll have a lot of expense. That's a new hat you've got on.
Why doesn't Val come and see us?"
Winifred promised to bring him to dinner soon. And, going home, she
sought her bedroom where she could be alone. Now that her husband had
been ordered back into her custody with a view to putting him away from
her for ever, she would try once more to find out from her sore and
lonely heart what she really wanted.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CHALLENGE
The morning had been misty, verging on frost, but the sun came out while
Val was jogging towards the Roehampton Gate, whence he would canter on to
the usual tryst. His spirits were rising rapidly. There had been nothing
so very terrible in the morning's proceedings beyond the general disgrace
of violated privacy. 'If we were engaged!' he thought, 'what happens
wouldn't matter.' He felt, indeed, like human society, which kicks and
clamours at the results of matrimony, and hastens to get married. And he
galloped over the winter-dried grass of Richmond Park, fearing to be
late. But again he was alone at the trysting spot, and this second
defection on the part of Holly upset him dreadfully. He could not go
back without seeing her to-day! Emerging from the Park, he proceeded
towards Robin Hill. He could not make up his mind for whom to ask.
Suppose her father were back, or her sister or brother were in! He
decided to gamble, and ask for them all first, so that if he were in luck
and they were not there, it would be quite natural in the end to ask for
Holly; while if any of them were in--an 'excuse for a ride' must be his
saving grace.
"Only Miss Holly is in, sir."
"Oh! thanks. Might I take my horse round to the stables? And would you
say--her cousin, Mr. Val Dartie."
When he returned she was in the hall, very flushed and shy. She led him
to the far end, and they sat down on a wide window-seat.
"I've been awfully anxious," said Val in a low voice. "What's the
matter?"
"Jolly knows about our riding."
"Is he in?"
"No; but I expect he will be soon."
"Then!" cried Val, and diving forward, he seized her hand. She tried to
withdraw it, failed, gave up the attempt, and looked at him wistfully.
"First of all," he said, "I want to tell you something about my family.
My Dad, you know, isn't altogether--I mean, he's left my mother and
they're trying to divorce him; so they've ordered him to come back, you
see. You'll see that in the paper to-morrow."
Her eyes deepened in colour and fearful interest; her hand squeezed his.
But the gambler in Val was roused now, and he hurried on:
"Of course there's nothing very much at present, but there will be, I
expect, before it's over; divorce suits are beastly, you know. I wanted
to tell you, because--because--you ought to know--if--" and he began to
stammer, gazing at her troubled eyes, "if--if you're going to be a
darling and love me, Holly. I love you--ever so; and I want to be
engaged." He had done it in a manner so inadequate that he could have
punched his own head; and dropping on his knees, he tried to get nearer
to that soft, troubled face. "You do love me--don't you? If you don't
I...." There was a moment of silence and suspense, so awful that he could
hear the sound of a mowing-machine far out on the lawn pretending there
was grass to cut. Then she swayed forward; her free hand touched his
hair, and he gasped: "Oh, Holly!"
Her answer was very soft: "Oh, Val!"
He had dreamed of this moment, but always in an imperative mood, as the
masterful young lover, and now he felt humble, touched, trembly. He was
afraid to stir off his knees lest he should break the spell; lest, if he
did, she should shrink and deny her own surrender--so tremulous was she
in his grasp, with her eyelids closed and his lips nearing them. Her
eyes opened, seemed to swim a little; he pressed his lips to hers.
Suddenly he sprang up; there had been footsteps, a sort of startled
grunt. He looked round. No one! But the long curtains which barred off
the outer hall were quivering.
"My God! Who was that?"
Holly too was on her feet.
"Jolly, I expect," she whispered.
Val clenched fists and resolution.
"All right!" he said, "I don't care a bit now we're engaged," and
striding towards the curtains, he drew them aside. There at the
fireplace in the hall stood Jolly, with his back elaborately turned. Val
went forward. Jolly faced round on him.
"I beg your pardon for hearing," he said.
With the best intentions in the world, Val could not help admiring him at
that moment; his face was clear, his voice quiet, he looked somehow
distinguished, as if acting up to principle.
"Well!" Val said abruptly, "it's nothing to you."
"Oh!" said Jolly; "you come this way," and he crossed the hall. Val
followed. At the study door he felt a touch on his arm; Holly's voice
said:
"I'm coming too."
"No," said Jolly.
"Yes," said Holly.
Jolly opened the door, and they all three went in. Once in the little
room, they stood in a sort of triangle on three corners of the worn
Turkey carpet; awkwardly upright, not looking at each other, quite
incapable of seeing any humour in the situation.
Val broke the silence.
"Holly and I are engaged.",
Jolly stepped back and leaned against the lintel of the window.
"This is our house," he said; "I'm not going to insult you in it. But my
father's away. I'm in charge of my sister. You've taken advantage of
me.
"I didn't mean to," said Val hotly.
"I think you did," said Jolly. "If you hadn't meant to, you'd have
spoken to me, or waited for my father to come back."
"There were reasons," said Val.
"What reasons?"
"About my family--I've just told her. I wanted her to know before things
happen."
Jolly suddenly became less distinguished.
"You're kids," he said, "and you know you are.
"I am not a kid," said Val.
"You are--you're not twenty."
"Well, what are you?"
"I am twenty," said Jolly.
"Only just; anyway, I'm as good a man as you."
Jolly's face crimsoned, then clouded. Some struggle was evidently taking
place in him; and Val and Holly stared at him, so clearly was that
struggle marked; they could even hear him breathing. Then his face
cleared up and became oddly resolute.
"We'll see that," he said. "I dare you to do what I'm going to do."
"Dare me?"
Jolly smiled. "Yes," he said, "dare you; and I know very well you
won't."
A stab of misgiving shot through Val; this was riding very blind.
"I haven't forgotten that you're a fire-eater," said Jolly slowly, "and I
think that's about all you are; or that you called me a pro-Boer."
Val heard a gasp above the sound of his own hard breathing, and saw
Holly's face poked a little forward, very pale, with big eyes.
"Yes," went on Jolly with a sort of smile, "we shall soon see. I'm going
to join the Imperial Yeomanry, and I dare you to do the same, Mr. Val
Dartie."
Val's head jerked on its stem. It was like a blow between the eyes, so
utterly unthought of, so extreme and ugly in the midst of his dreaming;
and he looked at Holly with eyes grown suddenly, touchingly haggard.
"Sit down!" said Jolly. "Take your time! Think it over well." And he
himself sat down on the arm of his grandfather's chair.
Val did not sit down; he stood with hands thrust deep into his breeches'
pockets-hands clenched and quivering. The full awfulness of this
decision one way or the other knocked at his mind with double knocks as
of an angry postman. If he did not take that 'dare' he was disgraced in
Holly's eyes, and in the eyes of that young enemy, her brute of a
brother. Yet if he took it, ah! then all would vanish--her face, her
eyes, her hair, her kisses just begun!
"Take your time," said Jolly again; "I don't want to be unfair."
And they both looked at Holly. She had recoiled against the bookshelves
reaching to the ceiling; her dark head leaned against Gibbon's Roman
Empire, her eyes in a sort of soft grey agony were fixed on Val. And he,
who had not much gift of insight, had suddenly a gleam of vision. She
would be proud of her brother--that enemy! She would be ashamed of him!
His hands came out of his pockets as if lifted by a spring.
"All right!" he said. "Done!"
Holly's face--oh! it was queer! He saw her flush, start forward. He had
done the right thing--her face was shining with wistful admiration.
Jolly stood up and made a little bow as who should say: 'You've passed.'
"To-morrow, then," he said, "we'll go together."
Recovering from the impetus which had carried him to that decision, Val
looked at him maliciously from under his lashes. 'All right,' he
thought, 'one to you. I shall have to join--but I'll get back on you
somehow.' And he said with dignity: "I shall be ready."
"We'll meet at the main Recruiting Office, then," said Jolly, "at twelve
o'clock." And, opening the window, he went out on to the terrace,
conforming to the creed which had made him retire when he surprised them
in the hall.
The confusion in the mind of Val thus left alone with her for whom he had
paid this sudden price was extreme. The mood of 'showing-off' was still,
however, uppermost. One must do the wretched thing with an air.
"We shall get plenty of riding and shooting, anyway," he said; "that's
one comfort." And it gave him a sort of grim pleasure to hear the sigh
which seemed to come from the bottom of her heart.
"Oh! the war'll soon be over," he said; "perhaps we shan't even have to
go out. I don't care, except for you." He would be out of the way of
that beastly divorce. It was an ill-wind! He felt her warm hand slip
into his. Jolly thought he had stopped their loving each other, did he?
He held her tightly round the waist, looking at her softly through his
lashes, smiling to cheer her up, promising to come down and see her soon,
feeling somehow six inches taller and much more in command of her than he
had ever dared feel before. Many times he kissed her before he mounted
and rode back to town. So, swiftly, on the least provocation, does the
possessive instinct flourish and grow.
CHAPTER IX
DINNER AT JAMES'
Dinner parties were not now given at James' in Park Lane--to every house
the moment comes when Master or Mistress is no longer 'up to it'; no more
can nine courses be served to twenty mouths above twenty fine white
expanses; nor does the household cat any longer wonder why she is
suddenly shut up.
So with something like excitement Emily--who at seventy would still have
liked a little feast and fashion now and then--ordered dinner for six
instead of two, herself wrote a number of foreign words on cards, and
arranged the flowers--mimosa from the Riviera, and white Roman hyacinths
not from Rome. There would only be, of course, James and herself,
Soames, Winifred, Val, and Imogen--but she liked to pretend a little and
dally in imagination with the glory of the past. She so dressed herself
that James remarked:
"What are you putting on that thing for? You'll catch cold."
But Emily knew that the necks of women are protected by love of shining,
unto fourscore years, and she only answered:
"Let me put you on one of those dickies I got you, James; then you'll
only have to change your trousers, and put on your velvet coat, and there
you'll be. Val likes you to look nice."
"Dicky!" said James. "You're always wasting your money on something."
But he suffered the change to be made till his neck also shone, murmuring
vaguely:
"He's an extravagant chap, I'm afraid."
A little brighter in the eye, with rather more colour than usual in his
cheeks, he took his seat in the drawing-room to wait for the sound of the
front-door bell.
"I've made it a proper dinner party," Emily said comfortably; "I thought
it would be good practice for Imogen--she must get used to it now she's
coming out."
James uttered an indeterminate sound, thinking of Imogen as she used to
climb about his knee or pull Christmas crackers with him.
"She'll be pretty," he muttered, "I shouldn't wonder."
"She is pretty," said Emily; "she ought to make a good match."
"There you go," murmured James; "she'd much better stay at home and look
after her mother." A second Dartie carrying off his pretty granddaughter
would finish him! He had never quite forgiven Emily for having been as
much taken in by Montague Dartie as he himself had been.
"Where's Warmson?" he said suddenly. "I should like a glass of Madeira
to-night."
"There's champagne, James."
James shook his head. "No body," he said; "I can't get any good out of
it."
Emily reached forward on her side of the fire and rang the bell.
"Your master would like a bottle of Madeira opened, Warmson."
"No, no!" said James, the tips of his ears quivering with vehemence, and
his eyes fixed on an object seen by him alone. "Look here, Warmson, you
go to the inner cellar, and on the middle shelf of the end bin on the
left you'll see seven bottles; take the one in the centre, and don't
shake it. It's the last of the Madeira I had from Mr. Jolyon when we
came in here--never been moved; it ought to be in prime condition still;
but I don't know, I can't tell."
"Very good, sir," responded the withdrawing Warmson.
"I was keeping it for our golden wedding," said James suddenly, "but I
shan't live three years at my age."
"Nonsense, James," said Emily, "don't talk like that."
"I ought to have got it up myself," murmured James, "he'll shake it as
likely as not." And he sank into silent recollection of long moments
among the open gas-jets, the cobwebs and the good smell of wine-soaked
corks, which had been appetiser to so many feasts. In the wine from that
cellar was written the history of the forty odd years since he had come
to the Park Lane house with his young bride, and of the many generations
of friends and acquaintances who had passed into the unknown; its
depleted bins preserved the record of family festivity--all the
marriages, births, deaths of his kith and kin. And when he was gone
there it would be, and he didn't know what would become of it. It'd be
drunk or spoiled, he shouldn't wonder!
From that deep reverie the entrance of his son dragged him, followed very
soon by that of Winifred and her two eldest.
They went down arm-in-arm--James with Imogen, the debutante, because his
pretty grandchild cheered him; Soames with Winifred; Emily with Val,
whose eyes lighting on the oysters brightened. This was to be a proper
full 'blowout' with 'fizz' and port! And he felt in need of it, after
what he had done that day, as yet undivulged. After the first glass or
two it became pleasant to have this bombshell up his sleeve, this piece
of sensational patriotism, or example, rather, of personal daring, to
display--for his pleasure in what he had done for his Queen and Country
was so far entirely personal. He was now a 'blood,' indissolubly
connected with guns and horses; he had a right to swagger--not, of
course, that he was going to. He should just announce it quietly, when
there was a pause. And, glancing down the menu, he determined on 'Bombe
aux fraises' as the proper moment; there would be a certain solemnity
while they were eating that. Once or twice before they reached that rosy
summit of the dinner he was attacked by remembrance that his grandfather
was never told anything! Still, the old boy was drinking Madeira, and
looking jolly fit! Besides, he ought to be pleased at this set-off to the
disgrace of the divorce. The sight of his uncle opposite, too, was a
sharp incentive. He was so far from being a sportsman that it would be
worth a lot to see his face. Besides, better to tell his mother in this
way than privately, which might upset them both! He was sorry for her,
but after all one couldn't be expected to feel much for others when one
had to part from Holly.
His grandfather's voice travelled to him thinly. "Val, try a little of
the Madeira with your ice. You won't get that up at college."
Val watched the slow liquid filling his glass, the essential oil of the
old wine glazing the surface; inhaled its aroma, and thought: 'Now for
it!' It was a rich moment. He sipped, and a gentle glow spread in his
veins, already heated. With a rapid look round, he said, "I joined the
Imperial Yeomanry to-day, Granny," and emptied his glass as though
drinking the health of his own act.
"What!" It was his mother's desolate little word.
"Young Jolly Forsyte and I went down there together."
"You didn't sign?" from Uncle Soames.
"Rather! We go into camp on Monday."
"I say!" cried Imogen.
All looked at James. He was leaning forward with his hand behind his
ear.
"What's that?" he said. "What's he saying? I can't hear."
Emily reached forward to pat Val's hand.
"It's only that Val has joined the Yeomanry, James; it's very nice for
him. He'll look his best in uniform."
"Joined the--rubbish!" came from James, tremulously loud. "You can't see
two yards before your nose. He--he'll have to go out there. Why! he'll
be fighting before he knows where he is."
Val saw Imogen's eyes admiring him, and his mother still and fashionable
with her handkerchief before her lips.
Suddenly his uncle spoke.
"You're under age."
"I thought of that," smiled Val; "I gave my age as twenty-one."
He heard his grandmother's admiring, "Well, Val, that was plucky of you;"
was conscious of Warmson deferentially filling his champagne glass; and
of his grandfather's voice moaning: "I don't know what'll become of you
if you go on like this."
Imogen was patting his shoulder, his uncle looking at him sidelong; only
his mother sat unmoving, till, affected by her stillness, Val said:
"It's all right, you know; we shall soon have them on the run. I only
hope I shall come in for something."
He felt elated, sorry, tremendously important all at once. This would
show Uncle Soames, and all the Forsytes, how to be sportsmen. He had
certainly done something heroic and exceptional in giving his age as
twenty-one.
Emily's voice brought him back to earth.
"You mustn't have a second glass, James. Warmson!"
"Won't they be astonished at Timothy's!" burst out Imogen. "I'd give
anything to see their faces. Do you have a sword, Val, or only a
popgun?"
"What made you?"
His uncle's voice produced a slight chill in the pit of Val's stomach.
Made him? How answer that? He was grateful for his grandmother's
comfortable:
"Well, I think it's very plucky of Val. I'm sure he'll make a splendid
soldier; he's just the figure for it. We shall all be proud of him."
"What had young Jolly Forsyte to do with it? Why did you go together?"
pursued Soames, uncannily relentless. "I thought you weren't friendly
with him?"
"I'm not," mumbled Val, "but I wasn't going to be beaten by him." He saw
his uncle look at him quite differently, as if approving. His grandfather
was nodding too, his grandmother tossing her head. They all approved of
his not being beaten by that cousin of his. There must be a reason! Val
was dimly conscious of some disturbing point outside his range of vision;
as it might be, the unlocated centre of a cyclone. And, staring at his
uncle's face, he had a quite unaccountable vision of a woman with dark
eyes, gold hair, and a white neck, who smelt nice, and had pretty silken
clothes which he had liked feeling when he was quite small. By Jove,
yes! Aunt Irene! She used to kiss him, and he had bitten her arm once,
playfully, because he liked it--so soft. His grandfather was speaking:
"What's his father doing?"
"He's away in Paris," Val said, staring at the very queer expression on
his uncle's face, like--like that of a snarling dog.
"Artists!" said James. The word coming from the very bottom of his soul,
broke up the dinner.
Opposite his mother in the cab going home, Val tasted the after-fruits of
heroism, like medlars over-ripe.
She only said, indeed, that he must go to his tailor's at once and have
his uniform properly made, and not just put up with what they gave him.
But he could feel that she was very much upset. It was on his lips to
console her with the spoken thought that he would be out of the way of
that beastly divorce, but the presence of Imogen, and the knowledge that
his mother would not be out of the way, restrained him. He felt
aggrieved that she did not seem more proud of him. When Imogen had gone
to bed, he risked the emotional.
"I'm awfully sorry to have to leave you, Mother."
"Well, I must make the best of it. We must try and get you a commission
as soon as we can; then you won't have to rough it so. Do you know any
drill, Val?"
"Not a scrap."
"I hope they won't worry you much. I must take you about to get the
things to-morrow. Good-night; kiss me."
With that kiss, soft and hot, between his eyes, and those words, 'I hope
they won't worry you much,' in his ears, he sat down to a cigarette,
before a dying fire. The heat was out of him--the glow of cutting a
dash. It was all a damned heart-aching bore. 'I'll be even with that
chap Jolly,' he thought, trailing up the stairs, past the room where his
mother was biting her pillow to smother a sense of desolation which was
trying to make her sob.
And soon only one of the diners at James' was awake--Soames, in his
bedroom above his father's.
So that fellow Jolyon was in Paris--what was he doing there? Hanging
round Irene! The last report from Polteed had hinted that there might be
something soon. Could it be this? That fellow, with his beard and his
cursed amused way of speaking--son of the old man who had given him the
nickname 'Man of Property,' and bought the fatal house from him. Soames
had ever resented having had to sell the house at Robin Hill; never
forgiven his uncle for having bought it, or his cousin for living in it.
Reckless of the cold, he threw his window up and gazed out across the
Park. Bleak and dark the January night; little sound of traffic; a frost
coming; bare trees; a star or two. 'I'll see Polteed to-morrow,' he
thought. 'By God! I'm mad, I think, to want her still. That fellow!
If...? Um! No!'
CHAPTER X
DEATH OF THE DOG BALTHASAR
Jolyon, who had crossed from Calais by night, arrived at Robin Hill on
Sunday morning. He had sent no word beforehand, so walked up from the
station, entering his domain by the coppice gate. Coming to the log seat
fashioned out of an old fallen trunk, he sat down, first laying his
overcoat on it.
'Lumbago!' he thought; 'that's what love ends in at my time of life!'
And suddenly Irene seemed very near, just as she had been that day of
rambling at Fontainebleau when they had sat on a log to eat their lunch.
Hauntingly near! Odour drawn out of fallen leaves by the pale-filtering
sunlight soaked his nostrils. 'I'm glad it isn't spring,' he thought.
With the scent of sap, and the song of birds, and the bursting of the
blossoms, it would have been unbearable! 'I hope I shall be over it by
then, old fool that I am!' and picking up his coat, he walked on into the
field. He passed the pond and mounted the hill slowly.
Near the top a hoarse barking greeted him. Up on the lawn above the
fernery he could see his old dog Balthasar. The animal, whose dim eyes
took his master for a stranger, was warning the world against him.
Jolyon gave his special whistle. Even at that distance of a hundred
yards and more he could see the dawning recognition in the obese
brown-white body. The old dog got off his haunches, and his tail,
close-curled over his back, began a feeble, excited fluttering; he came
waddling forward, gathered momentum, and disappeared over the edge of the
fernery. Jolyon expected to meet him at the wicket gate, but Balthasar
was not there, and, rather alarmed, he turned into the fernery. On his
fat side, looking up with eyes already glazing, the old dog lay.
"What is it, my poor old man?" cried Jolyon. Balthasar's curled and
fluffy tail just moved; his filming eyes seemed saying: "I can't get up,
master, but I'm glad to see you."
Jolyon knelt down; his eyes, very dimmed, could hardly see the slowly
ceasing heave of the dog's side. He raised the head a little--very
heavy.
"What is it, dear man? Where are you hurt?" The tail fluttered once; the
eyes lost the look of life. Jolyon passed his hands all over the inert
warm bulk. There was nothing--the heart had simply failed in that obese
body from the emotion of his master's return. Jolyon could feel the
muzzle, where a few whitish bristles grew, cooling already against his
lips. He stayed for some minutes kneeling; with his hand beneath the
stiffening head. The body was very heavy when he bore it to the top of
the field; leaves had drifted there, and he strewed it with a covering of
them; there was no wind, and they would keep him from curious eyes until
the afternoon. 'I'll bury him myself,' he thought. Eighteen years had
gone since he first went into the St. John's Wood house with that tiny
puppy in his pocket. Strange that the old dog should die just now! Was
it an omen? He turned at the gate to look back at that russet mound,
then went slowly towards the house, very choky in the throat.
June was at home; she had come down hotfoot on hearing the news of
Jolly's enlistment. His patriotism had conquered her feeling for the
Boers. The atmosphere of his house was strange and pocketty when Jolyon
came in and told them of the dog Balthasar's death. The news had a
unifying effect. A link with the past had snapped--the dog Balthasar!
Two of them could remember nothing before his day; to June he represented
the last years of her grandfather; to Jolyon that life of domestic stress
and aesthetic struggle before he came again into the kingdom of his
father's love and wealth! And he was gone!
In the afternoon he and Jolly took picks and spades and went out to the
field. They chose a spot close to the russet mound, so that they need
not carry him far, and, carefully cutting off the surface turf, began to
dig. They dug in silence for ten minutes, and then rested.
"Well, old man," said Jolyon, "so you thought you ought?"
"Yes," answered Jolly; "I don't want to a bit, of course."
How exactly those words represented Jolyon's own state of mind
"I admire you for it, old boy. I don't believe I should have done it at
your age--too much of a Forsyte, I'm afraid. But I suppose the type gets
thinner with each generation. Your son, if you have one, may be a pure
altruist; who knows?"
"He won't be like me, then, Dad; I'm beastly selfish."
"No, my dear, that you clearly are not." Jolly shook his head, and they
dug again.
"Strange life a dog's," said Jolyon suddenly: "The only four-footer with
rudiments of altruism and a sense of God!"
Jolly looked at his father.
"Do you believe in God, Dad? I've never known."
At so searching a question from one to whom it was impossible to make a
light reply, Jolyon stood for a moment feeling his back tried by the
digging.
"What do you mean by God?" he said; "there are two irreconcilable ideas
of God. There's the Unknowable Creative Principle--one believes in That.
And there's the Sum of altruism in man--naturally one believes in That."
"I see. That leaves out Christ, doesn't it?"
Jolyon stared. Christ, the link between those two ideas! Out of the
mouth of babes! Here was orthodoxy scientifically explained at last!
The sublime poem of the Christ life was man's attempt to join those two
irreconcilable conceptions of God. And since the Sum of human altruism
was as much a part of the Unknowable Creative Principle as anything else
in Nature and the Universe, a worse link might have been chosen after
all! Funny--how one went through life without seeing it in that sort of
way!
"What do you think, old man?" he said.
Jolly frowned. "Of course, my first year we talked a good bit about that
sort of thing. But in the second year one gives it up; I don't know
why--it's awfully interesting."
Jolyon remembered that he also had talked a good deal about it his first
year at Cambridge, and given it up in his second.
"I suppose," said Jolly, "it's the second God, you mean, that old
Balthasar had a sense of."
"Yes, or he would never have burst his poor old heart because of
something outside himself."
"But wasn't that just selfish emotion, really?"
Jolyon shook his head. "No, dogs are not pure Forsytes, they love
something outside themselves."
Jolly smiled.
"Well, I think I'm one," he said. "You know, I only enlisted because I
dared Val Dartie to."
"But why?"
"We bar each other," said Jolly shortly.
"Ah!" muttered Jolyon. So the feud went on, unto the third
generation--this modern feud which had no overt expression?
'Shall I tell the boy about it?' he thought. But to what end--if he had
to stop short of his own part?
And Jolly thought: 'It's for Holly to let him know about that chap. If
she doesn't, it means she doesn't want him told, and I should be
sneaking. Anyway, I've stopped it. I'd better leave well alone!'
So they dug on in silence, till Jolyon said:
"Now, old man, I think it's big enough." And, resting on their spades,
they gazed down into the hole where a few leaves had drifted already on a
sunset wind.
"I can't bear this part of it," said Jolyon suddenly.
"Let me do it, Dad. He never cared much for me."
Jolyon shook his head.
"We'll lift him very gently, leaves and all. I'd rather not see him
again. I'll take his head. Now!"
With extreme care they raised the old dog's body, whose faded tan and
white showed here and there under the leaves stirred by the wind. They
laid it, heavy, cold, and unresponsive, in the grave, and Jolly spread
more leaves over it, while Jolyon, deeply afraid to show emotion before
his son, began quickly shovelling the earth on to that still shape.
There went the past! If only there were a joyful future to look forward
to! It was like stamping down earth on one's own life. They replaced
the turf carefully on the smooth little mound, and, grateful that they
had spared each other's feelings, returned to the house arm-in-arm.
CHAPTER XI
TIMOTHY STAYS THE ROT
On Forsyte 'Change news of the enlistment spread fast, together with the
report that June, not to be outdone, was going to become a Red Cross
nurse. These events were so extreme, so subversive of pure Forsyteism,
as to have a binding effect upon the family, and Timothy's was thronged
next Sunday afternoon by members trying to find out what they thought
about it all, and exchange with each other a sense of family credit.
Giles and Jesse Hayman would no longer defend the coast but go to South
Africa quite soon; Jolly and Val would be following in April; as to
June--well, you never knew what she would really do.
The retirement from Spion Kop and the absence of any good news from the
seat of war imparted an air of reality to all this, clinched in startling
fashion by Timothy. The youngest of the old Forsytes--scarcely eighty,
in fact popularly supposed to resemble their father, 'Superior Dosset,'
even in his best-known characteristic of drinking Sherry--had been
invisible for so many years that he was almost mythical. A long
generation had elapsed since the risks of a publisher's business had
worked on his nerves at the age of forty, so that he had got out with a
mere thirty-five thousand pounds in the world, and started to make his
living by careful investment. Putting by every year, at compound
interest, he had doubled his capital in forty years without having once
known what it was like to shake in his shoes over money matters. He was
now putting aside some two thousand a year, and, with the care he was
taking of himself, expected, so Aunt Hester said, to double his capital
again before he died. What he would do with it then, with his sisters
dead and himself dead, was often mockingly queried by free spirits such
as Francie, Euphemia, or young Nicholas' second, Christopher, whose
spirit was so free that he had actually said he was going on the stage.
All admitted, however, that this was best known to Timothy himself, and
possibly to Soames, who never divulged a secret.
Those few Forsytes who had seen him reported a man of thick and robust
appearance, not very tall, with a brown-red complexion, grey hair, and
little of the refinement of feature with which most of the Forsytes had
been endowed by 'Superior Dosset's' wife, a woman of some beauty and a
gentle temperament. It was known that he had taken surprising interest
in the war, sticking flags into a map ever since it began, and there was
uneasiness as to what would happen if the English were driven into the
sea, when it would be almost impossible for him to put the flags in the
right places. As to his knowledge of family movements or his views about
them, little was known, save that Aunt Hester was always declaring that
he was very upset. It was, then, in the nature of a portent when
Forsytes, arriving on the Sunday after the evacuation of Spion Kop,
became conscious, one after the other, of a presence seated in the only
really comfortable armchair, back to the light, concealing the lower part
of his face with a large hand, and were greeted by the awed voice of Aunt
Hester:
"Your Uncle Timothy, my dear."
Timothy's greeting to them all was somewhat identical; and rather, as it
were, passed over by him than expressed:
"How de do? How de do? 'Xcuse me gettin' up!"
Francie was present, and Eustace had come in his car; Winifred had
brought Imogen, breaking the ice of the restitution proceedings with the
warmth of family appreciation at Val's enlistment; and Marian Tweetyman
with the last news of Giles and Jesse. These with Aunt Juley and Hester,
young Nicholas, Euphemia, and--of all people!--George, who had come with
Eustace in the car, constituted an assembly worthy of the family's
palmiest days. There was not one chair vacant in the whole of the little
drawing-room, and anxiety was felt lest someone else should arrive.
The constraint caused by Timothy's presence having worn off a little,
conversation took a military turn. George asked Aunt Juley when she was
going out with the Red Cross, almost reducing her to a state of gaiety;
whereon he turned to Nicholas and said:
"Young Nick's a warrior bold, isn't he? When's he going to don the wild
khaki?"
Young Nicholas, smiling with a sort of sweet deprecation, intimated that
of course his mother was very anxious.
"The Dromios are off, I hear," said George, turning to Marian Tweetyman;
"we shall all be there soon. En avant, the Forsytes! Roll, bowl, or
pitch! Who's for a cooler?"
Aunt Juley gurgled, George was so droll! Should Hester get Timothy's
map? Then he could show them all where they were.
At a sound from Timothy, interpreted as assent, Aunt Hester left the
room.
George pursued his image of the Forsyte advance, addressing Timothy as
Field Marshal; and Imogen, whom he had noted at once for 'a pretty
filly,'--as Vivandiere; and holding his top hat between his knees, he
began to beat it with imaginary drumsticks. The reception accorded to
his fantasy was mixed. All laughed--George was licensed; but all felt
that the family was being 'rotted'; and this seemed to them unnatural,
now that it was going to give five of its members to the service of the
Queen. George might go too far; and there was relief when he got up,
offered his arm to Aunt Juley, marched up to Timothy, saluted him, kissed
his aunt with mock passion, said, "Oh! what a treat, dear papa! Come on,
Eustace!" and walked out, followed by the grave and fastidious Eustace,
who had never smiled.
Aunt Juley's bewildered, "Fancy not waiting for the map! You mustn't
mind him, Timothy. He's so droll!" broke the hush, and Timothy removed
the hand from his mouth.
"I don't know what things are comin' to," he was heard to say. "What's
all this about goin' out there? That's not the way to beat those Boers."
Francie alone had the hardihood to observe: "What is, then, Uncle
Timothy?"
"All this new-fangled volunteerin' and expense--lettin' money out of the
country."
Just then Aunt Hester brought in the map, handling it like a baby with
eruptions. With the assistance of Euphemia it was laid on the piano, a
small Colwood grand, last played on, it was believed, the summer before
Aunt Ann died, thirteen years ago. Timothy rose. He walked over to the
piano, and stood looking at his map while they all gathered round.
"There you are," he said; "that's the position up to date; and very poor
it is. H'm!"
"Yes," said Francie, greatly daring, "but how are you going to alter it,
Uncle Timothy, without more men?"
"Men!" said Timothy; "you don't want men--wastin' the country's money.
You want a Napoleon, he'd settle it in a month."
"But if you haven't got him, Uncle Timothy?"
"That's their business," replied Timothy. "What have we kept the Army up
for--to eat their heads off in time of peace! They ought to be ashamed
of themselves, comin' on the country to help them like this! Let every
man stick to his business, and we shall get on."
And looking round him, he added almost angrily:
"Volunteerin', indeed! Throwin' good money after bad! We must save!
Conserve energy that's the only way." And with a prolonged sound, not
quite a sniff and not quite a snort, he trod on Euphemia's toe, and went
out, leaving a sensation and a faint scent of barley-sugar behind him.
The effect of something said with conviction by one who has evidently
made a sacrifice to say it is ever considerable. And the eight Forsytes
left behind, all women except young Nicholas, were silent for a moment
round the map. Then Francie said:
"Really, I think he's right, you know. After all, what is the Army for?
They ought to have known. It's only encouraging them."
"My dear!" cried Aunt Juley, "but they've been so progressive. Think of
their giving up their scarlet. They were always so proud of it. And now
they all look like convicts. Hester and I were saying only yesterday we
were sure they must feel it very much. Fancy what the Iron Duke would
have said!"
"The new colour's very smart," said Winifred; "Val looks quite nice in
his."
Aunt Juley sighed.
"I do so wonder what Jolyon's boy is like. To think we've never seen
him! His father must be so proud of him."
"His father's in Paris," said Winifred.
Aunt Hester's shoulder was seen to mount suddenly, as if to ward off her
sister's next remark, for Juley's crumpled cheeks had gushed.
"We had dear little Mrs. MacAnder here yesterday, just back from Paris.
And whom d'you think she saw there in the street? You'll never guess."
"We shan't try, Auntie," said Euphemia.
"Irene! Imagine! After all this time; walking with a fair beard...."
"Auntie! you'll kill me! A fair beard...."
"I was going to say," said Aunt Juley severely, "a fair-bearded
gentleman. And not a day older; she was always so pretty," she added,
with a sort of lingering apology.
"Oh! tell us about her, Auntie," cried Imogen; "I can just remember her.
She's the skeleton in the family cupboard, isn't she? And they're such
fun."
Aunt Hester sat down. Really, Juley had done it now!
"She wasn't much of a skeleton as I remember her," murmured Euphemia,
"extremely well-covered."
"My dear!" said Aunt Juley, "what a peculiar way of putting it--not very
nice."
"No, but what was she like?" persisted Imogen.
"I'll tell you, my child," said Francie; "a kind of modern Venus, very
well-dressed."
Euphemia said sharply: "Venus was never dressed, and she had blue eyes of
melting sapphire."
At this juncture Nicholas took his leave.
"Mrs. Nick is awfully strict," said Francie with a laugh.
"She has six children," said Aunt Juley; "it's very proper she should be
careful."
"Was Uncle Soames awfully fond of her?" pursued the inexorable Imogen,
moving her dark luscious eyes from face to face.
Aunt Hester made a gesture of despair, just as Aunt Juley answered:
"Yes, your Uncle Soames was very much attached to her."
"I suppose she ran off with someone?"
"No, certainly not; that is--not precisely.'
"What did she do, then, Auntie?"
"Come along, Imogen," said Winifred, "we must be getting back."
But Aunt Juley interjected resolutely: "She--she didn't behave at all
well."
"Oh, bother!" cried Imogen; "that's as far as I ever get."
"Well, my dear," said Francie, "she had a love affair which ended with
the young man's death; and then she left your uncle. I always rather
liked her."
"She used to give me chocolates," murmured Imogen, "and smell nice."
"Of course!" remarked Euphemia.
"Not of course at all!" replied Francie, who used a particularly
expensive essence of gillyflower herself.
"I can't think what we are about," said Aunt Juley, raising her hands,
"talking of such things!"
"Was she divorced?" asked Imogen from the door.
"Certainly not," cried Aunt Juley; "that is--certainly not."
A sound was heard over by the far door. Timothy had re-entered the back
drawing-room. "I've come for my map," he said. "Who's been divorced?"
"No one, Uncle," replied Francie with perfect truth.
Timothy took his map off the piano.
"Don't let's have anything of that sort in the family," he said. "All
this enlistin's bad enough. The country's breakin' up; I don't know what
we're comin' to." He shook a thick finger at the room: "Too many women
nowadays, and they don't know what they want."
So saying, he grasped the map firmly with both hands, and went out as if
afraid of being answered.
The seven women whom he had addressed broke into a subdued murmur, out of
which emerged Francie's, "Really, the Forsytes!" and Aunt Juley's: "He
must have his feet in mustard and hot water to-night, Hester; will you
tell Jane? The blood has gone to his head again, I'm afraid...."
That evening, when she and Hester were sitting alone after dinner, she
dropped a stitch in her crochet, and looked up:
"Hester, I can't think where I've heard that dear Soames wants Irene to
come back to him again. Who was it told us that George had made a funny
drawing of him with the words, 'He won't be happy till he gets it'?"
"Eustace," answered Aunt Hester from behind The Times; "he had it in his
pocket, but he wouldn't show it us."
Aunt Juley was silent, ruminating. The clock ticked, The Times crackled,
the fire sent forth its rustling purr. Aunt Juley dropped another
stitch.
"Hester," she said, "I have had such a dreadful thought."
"Then don't tell me," said Aunt Hester quickly.
"Oh! but I must. You can't think how dreadful!" Her voice sank to a
whisper:
"Jolyon--Jolyon, they say, has a--has a fair beard, now."
CHAPTER XII
PROGRESS OF THE CHASE
Two days after the dinner at James', Mr. Polteed provided Soames with
food for thought.
"A gentleman," he said, consulting the key concealed in his left hand,
"47 as we say, has been paying marked attention to 17 during the last
month in Paris. But at present there seems to have been nothing very
conclusive. The meetings have all been in public places, without
concealment--restaurants, the Opera, the Comique, the Louvre, Luxembourg
Gardens, lounge of the hotel, and so forth. She has not yet been traced
to his rooms, nor vice versa. They went to Fontainebleau--but nothing of
value. In short, the situation is promising, but requires patience."
And, looking up suddenly, he added:
"One rather curious point--47 has the same name as--er--31!"
'The fellow knows I'm her husband,' thought Soames.
"Christian name--an odd one--Jolyon," continued Mr. Polteed. "We know
his address in Paris and his residence here. We don't wish, of course,
to be running a wrong hare."
"Go on with it, but be careful," said Soames doggedly.
Instinctive certainty that this detective fellow had fathomed his secret
made him all the more reticent.
"Excuse me," said Mr. Polteed, "I'll just see if there's anything fresh
in."
He returned with some letters. Relocking the door, he glanced at the
envelopes.
"Yes, here's a personal one from 19 to myself."
"Well?" said Soames.
"Um!" said Mr. Polteed, "she says: '47 left for England to-day.
Address on his baggage: Robin Hill. Parted from 17 in Louvre
Gallery at 3.30; nothing very striking. Thought it best to stay
and continue observation of 17. You will deal with 47 in England
if you think desirable, no doubt.'" And Mr. Polteed lifted an
unprofessional glance on Soames, as though he might be storing
material for a book on human nature after he had gone out of
business. "Very intelligent woman, 19, and a wonderful make-up.
Not cheap, but earns her money well. There's no suspicion of being
shadowed so far. But after a time, as you know, sensitive people
are liable to get the feeling of it, without anything definite to
go on. I should rather advise letting-up on 17, and keeping an eye
on 47. We can't get at correspondence without great risk. I
hardly advise that at this stage. But you can tell your client
that it's looking up very well." And again his narrowed eyes
gleamed at his taciturn customer.
"No," said Soames suddenly, "I prefer that you should keep the watch
going discreetly in Paris, and not concern yourself with this end."
"Very well," replied Mr. Polteed, "we can do it."
"What--what is the manner between them?"
"I'll read you what she says," said Mr. Polteed, unlocking a bureau
drawer and taking out a file of papers; "she sums it up somewhere
confidentially. Yes, here it is! '17 very attractive--conclude 47,
longer in the tooth' (slang for age, you know)--'distinctly gone--waiting
his time--17 perhaps holding off for terms, impossible to say without
knowing more. But inclined to think on the whole--doesn't know her
mind--likely to act on impulse some day. Both have style.'"
"What does that mean?" said Soames between close lips.
"Well," murmured Mr. Polteed with a smile, showing many white teeth, "an
expression we use. In other words, it's not likely to be a weekend
business--they'll come together seriously or not at all."
"H'm!" muttered Soames, "that's all, is it?"
"Yes," said Mr. Polteed, "but quite promising."
'Spider!' thought Soames. "Good-day!"
He walked into the Green Park that he might cross to Victoria Station and
take the Underground into the City. For so late in January it was warm;
sunlight, through the haze, sparkled on the frosty grass--an illumined
cobweb of a day.
Little spiders--and great spiders! And the greatest spinner of all, his
own tenacity, for ever wrapping its cocoon of threads round any clear way
out. What was that fellow hanging round Irene for? Was it really as
Polteed suggested? Or was Jolyon but taking compassion on her
loneliness, as he would call it--sentimental radical chap that he had
always been? If it were, indeed, as Polteed hinted! Soames stood still.
It could not be! The fellow was seven years older than himself, no
better looking! No richer! What attraction had he?
'Besides, he's come back,' he thought; 'that doesn't look---I'll go and
see him!' and, taking out a card, he wrote:
"If you can spare half an hour some afternoon this week, I shall be at
the Connoisseurs any day between 5.30 and 6, or I could come to the Hotch
Potch if you prefer it. I want to see you.--S. F."
He walked up St. James's Street and confided it to the porter at the
Hotch Potch.
"Give Mr. Jolyon Forsyte this as soon as he comes in," he said, and took
one of the new motor cabs into the City....
Jolyon received that card the same afternoon, and turned his face towards
the Connoisseurs. What did Soames want now? Had he got wind of Paris?
And stepping across St. James's Street, he determined to make no secret
of his visit. 'But it won't do,' he thought, 'to let him know she's
there, unless he knows already.' In this complicated state of mind he was
conducted to where Soames was drinking tea in a small bay-window.
"No tea, thanks," said Jolyon, "but I'll go on smoking if I may."
The curtains were not yet drawn, though the lamps outside were lighted;
the two cousins sat waiting on each other.
"You've been in Paris, I hear," said Soames at last.
"Yes; just back."
"Young Val told me; he and your boy are going off, then?" Jolyon nodded.
"You didn't happen to see Irene, I suppose. It appears she's abroad
somewhere."
Jolyon wreathed himself in smoke before he answered: "Yes, I saw her."
"How was she?"
"Very well."
There was another silence; then Soames roused himself in his chair.
"When I saw you last," he said, "I was in two minds. We talked, and you
expressed your opinion. I don't wish to reopen that discussion. I only
wanted to say this: My position with her is extremely difficult. I don't
want you to go using your influence against me. What happened is a very
long time ago. I'm going to ask her to let bygones be bygones."
"You have asked her, you know," murmured Jolyon.
"The idea was new to her then; it came as a shock. But the more she
thinks of it, the more she must see that it's the only way out for both
of us."
"That's not my impression of her state of mind," said Jolyon with
particular calm. "And, forgive my saying, you misconceive the matter if
you think reason comes into it at all."
He saw his cousin's pale face grow paler--he had used, without knowing
it, Irene's own words.
"Thanks," muttered Soames, "but I see things perhaps more plainly than
you think. I only want to be sure that you won't try to influence her
against me."
"I don't know what makes you think I have any influence," said Jolyon;
"but if I have I'm bound to use it in the direction of what I think is
her happiness. I am what they call a 'feminist,' I believe."
"Feminist!" repeated Soames, as if seeking to gain time. "Does that mean
that you're against me?"
"Bluntly," said Jolyon, "I'm against any woman living with any man whom
she definitely dislikes. It appears to me rotten."
"And I suppose each time you see her you put your opinions into her
mind."
"I am not likely to be seeing her."
"Not going back to Paris?"
"Not so far as I know," said Jolyon, conscious of the intent watchfulness
in Soames' face.
"Well, that's all I had to say. Anyone who comes between man and wife,
you know, incurs heavy responsibility."
Jolyon rose and made him a slight bow.
"Good-bye," he said, and, without offering to shake hands, moved away,
leaving Soames staring after him. 'We Forsytes,' thought Jolyon, hailing
a cab, 'are very civilised. With simpler folk that might have come to a
row. If it weren't for my boy going to the war....' The war! A gust of
his old doubt swept over him. A precious war! Domination of peoples or
of women! Attempts to master and possess those who did not want you!
The negation of gentle decency! Possession, vested rights; and anyone
'agin' 'em--outcast! 'Thank Heaven!' he thought, 'I always felt "agin"
'em, anyway!' Yes! Even before his first disastrous marriage he could
remember fuming over the bludgeoning of Ireland, or the matrimonial suits
of women trying to be free of men they loathed. Parsons would have it
that freedom of soul and body were quite different things! Pernicious
doctrine! Body and soul could not thus be separated. Free will was the
strength of any tie, and not its weakness. 'I ought to have told
Soames,' he thought, 'that I think him comic. Ah! but he's tragic, too!'
Was there anything, indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved
by his own possessive instinct, who couldn't see the sky for it, or even
enter fully into what another person felt! 'I must write and warn her,'
he thought; 'he's going to have another try.' And all the way home to
Robin Hill he rebelled at the strength of that duty to his son which
prevented him from posting back to Paris....
But Soames sat long in his chair, the prey of a no less gnawing ache--a
jealous ache, as if it had been revealed to him that this fellow held
precedence of himself, and had spun fresh threads of resistance to his
way out. 'Does that mean that you're against me?' he had got nothing out
of that disingenuous question. Feminist! Phrasey fellow! 'I mustn't
rush things,' he thought. 'I have some breathing space; he's not going
back to Paris, unless he was lying. I'll let the spring come!' Though
how the spring could serve him, save by adding to his ache, he could not
tell. And gazing down into the street, where figures were passing from
pool to pool of the light from the high lamps, he thought: 'Nothing seems
any good--nothing seems worth while. I'm loney--that's the trouble.'
He closed his eyes; and at once he seemed to see Irene, in a dark street
below a church--passing, turning her neck so that he caught the gleam of
her eyes and her white forehead under a little dark hat, which had gold
spangles on it and a veil hanging down behind. He opened his eyes--so
vividly he had seen her! A woman was passing below, but not she! Oh no,
there was nothing there!
CHAPTER XIII
'HERE WE ARE AGAIN!'
Imogen's frocks for her first season exercised the judgment of her mother
and the purse of her grandfather all through the month of March. With
Forsyte tenacity Winifred quested for perfection. It took her mind off
the slowly approaching rite which would give her a freedom but doubtfully
desired; took her mind, too, off her boy and his fast approaching
departure for a war from which the news remained disquieting. Like bees
busy on summer flowers, or bright gadflies hovering and darting over
spiky autumn blossoms, she and her 'little daughter,' tall nearly as
herself and with a bust measurement not far inferior, hovered in the
shops of Regent Street, the establishments of Hanover Square and of Bond
Street, lost in consideration and the feel of fabrics. Dozens of young
women of striking deportment and peculiar gait paraded before Winifred
and Imogen, draped in 'creations.' The models--'Very new, modom; quite
the latest thing--' which those two reluctantly turned down, would have
filled a museum; the models which they were obliged to have nearly
emptied James' bank. It was no good doing things by halves, Winifred
felt, in view of the need for making this first and sole untarnished
season a conspicuous success. Their patience in trying the patience of
those impersonal creatures who swam about before them could alone have
been displayed by such as were moved by faith. It was for Winifred a
long prostration before her dear goddess Fashion, fervent as a Catholic
might make before the Virgin; for Imogen an experience by no means too
unpleasant--she often looked so nice, and flattery was implicit
everywhere: in a word it was 'amusing.'
On the afternoon of the 20th of March, having, as it were, gutted
Skywards, they had sought refreshment over the way at Caramel and
Baker's, and, stored with chocolate frothed at the top with cream, turned
homewards through Berkeley Square of an evening touched with spring.
Opening the door--freshly painted a light olive-green; nothing neglected
that year to give Imogen a good send-off--Winifred passed towards the
silver basket to see if anyone had called, and suddenly her nostrils
twitched. What was that scent?
Imogen had taken up a novel sent from the library, and stood absorbed.
Rather sharply, because of the queer feeling in her breast, Winifred
said:
"Take that up, dear, and have a rest before dinner."
Imogen, still reading, passed up the stairs. Winifred heard the door of
her room slammed to, and drew a long savouring breath. Was it spring
tickling her senses--whipping up nostalgia for her 'clown,' against all
wisdom and outraged virtue? A male scent! A faint reek of cigars and
lavender-water not smelt since that early autumn night six months ago,
when she had called him 'the limit.' Whence came it, or was it ghost of
scent--sheer emanation from memory? She looked round her. Nothing--not
a thing, no tiniest disturbance of her hall, nor of the diningroom. A
little day-dream of a scent--illusory, saddening, silly! In the silver
basket were new cards, two with 'Mr. and Mrs. Polegate Thom,' and one
with 'Mr. Polegate Thom' thereon; she sniffed them, but they smelled
severe. 'I must be tired,' she thought, 'I'll go and lie down.' Upstairs
the drawing-room was darkened, waiting for some hand to give it evening
light; and she passed on up to her bedroom. This, too, was
half-curtained and dim, for it was six o'clock. Winifred threw off her
coat--that scent again!--then stood, as if shot, transfixed against the
bed-rail. Something dark had risen from the sofa in the far corner. A
word of horror--in her family--escaped her: "God!"
"It's I--Monty," said a voice.
Clutching the bed-rail, Winifred reached up and turned the switch of the
light hanging above her dressing-table. He appeared just on the rim of
the light's circumference, emblazoned from the absence of his watch-chain
down to boots neat and sooty brown, but--yes!--split at the toecap. His
chest and face were shadowy. Surely he was thin--or was it a trick of
the light? He advanced, lighted now from toe-cap to the top of his dark
head--surely a little grizzled! His complexion had darkened, sallowed;
his black moustache had lost boldness, become sardonic; there were lines
which she did not know about his face. There was no pin in his tie. His
suit--ah!--she knew that--but how unpressed, unglossy! She stared again
at the toe-cap of his boot. Something big and relentless had been 'at
him,' had turned and twisted, raked and scraped him. And she stayed, not
speaking, motionless, staring at that crack across the toe.
"Well!" he said, "I got the order. I'm back."
Winifred's bosom began to heave. The nostalgia for her husband which had
rushed up with that scent was struggling with a deeper jealousy than any
she had felt yet. There he was--a dark, and as if harried, shadow of his
sleek and brazen self! What force had done this to him--squeezed him
like an orange to its dry rind! That woman!
"I'm back," he said again. "I've had a beastly time. By God! I came
steerage. I've got nothing but what I stand up in, and that bag."
"And who has the rest?" cried Winifred, suddenly alive. "How dared you
come? You knew it was just for divorce that you got that order to come
back. Don't touch me!"
They held each to the rail of the big bed where they had spent so many
years of nights together. Many times, yes--many times she had wanted him
back. But now that he had come she was filled with this cold and deadly
resentment. He put his hand up to his moustache; but did not frizz and
twist it in the old familiar way, he just pulled it downwards.
"Gad!" he said: "If you knew the time I've had!"
"I'm glad I don't!"
"Are the kids all right?"
Winifred nodded. "How did you get in?"
"With my key."
"Then the maids don't know. You can't stay here, Monty."
He uttered a little sardonic laugh.
"Where then?"
"Anywhere."
"Well, look at me! That--that damned...."
"If you mention her," cried Winifred, "I go straight out to Park Lane and
I don't come back."
Suddenly he did a simple thing, but so uncharacteristic that it moved
her. He shut his eyes. It was as if he had said: 'All right! I'm dead
to the world!'
"You can have a room for the night," she said; "your things are still
here. Only Imogen is at home."
He leaned back against the bed-rail. "Well, it's in your hands," and his
own made a writhing movement. "I've been through it. You needn't hit
too hard--it isn't worth while. I've been frightened; I've been
frightened, Freddie."
That old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver through
Winifred.
'What am I to do with him?' she thought. 'What in God's name am I to do
with him?'
"Got a cigarette?"
She gave him one from a little box she kept up there for when she
couldn't sleep at night, and lighted it. With that action the
matter-of-fact side of her nature came to life again.
"Go and have a hot bath. I'll put some clothes out for you in the
dressing-room. We can talk later."
He nodded, and fixed his eyes on her--they looked half-dead, or was it
that the folds in the lids had become heavier?
'He's not the same,' she thought. He would never be quite the same
again! But what would he be?
"All right!" he said, and went towards the door. He even moved
differently, like a man who has lost illusion and doubts whether it is
worth while to move at all.
When he was gone, and she heard the water in the bath running, she put
out a complete set of garments on the bed in his dressing-room, then went
downstairs and fetched up the biscuit box and whisky. Putting on her coat
again, and listening a moment at the bathroom door, she went down and
out. In the street she hesitated. Past seven o'clock! Would Soames be
at his Club or at Park Lane? She turned towards the latter. Back!
Soames had always feared it--she had sometimes hoped it.... Back! So
like him--clown that he was--with this: 'Here we are again!' to make
fools of them all--of the Law, of Soames, of herself!
Yet to have done with the Law, not to have that murky cloud hanging over
her and the children! What a relief! Ah! but how to accept his return?
That 'woman' had ravaged him, taken from him passion such as he had never
bestowed on herself, such as she had not thought him capable of. There
was the sting! That selfish, blatant 'clown' of hers, whom she herself
had never really stirred, had been swept and ungarnished by another
woman! Insulting! Too insulting! Not right, not decent to take him
back! And yet she had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her now!
He was as much her husband as ever--she had put herself out of court!
And all he wanted, no doubt, was money--to keep him in cigars and
lavender-water! That scent! 'After all, I'm not old,' she thought, 'not
old yet!' But that woman who had reduced him to those words: 'I've been
through it. I've been frightened--frightened, Freddie!' She neared her
father's house, driven this way and that, while all the time the Forsyte
undertow was drawing her to deep conclusion that after all he was her
property, to be held against a robbing world. And so she came to James'.
"Mr. Soames? In his room? I'll go up; don't say I'm here."
Her brother was dressing. She found him before a mirror, tying a black
bow with an air of despising its ends.
"Hullo!" he said, contemplating her in the glass; "what's wrong?"
"Monty!" said Winifred stonily.
Soames spun round. "What!"
"Back!"
"Hoist," muttered Soames, "with our own petard. Why the deuce didn't you
let me try cruelty? I always knew it was too much risk this way."
"Oh! Don't talk about that! What shall I do?"
Soames answered, with a deep, deep sound.
"Well?" said Winifred impatiently.
"What has he to say for himself?"
"Nothing. One of his boots is split across the toe."
Soames stared at her.
"Ah!" he said, "of course! On his beam ends. So--it begins again!
This'll about finish father."
"Can't we keep it from him?"
"Impossible. He has an uncanny flair for anything that's worrying."
And he brooded, with fingers hooked into his blue silk braces. "There
ought to be some way in law," he muttered, "to make him safe."
"No," cried Winifred, "I won't be made a fool of again; I'd sooner put up
with him."
The two stared at each other. Their hearts were full of feeling, but
they could give it no expression--Forsytes that they were.
"Where did you leave him?"
"In the bath," and Winifred gave a little bitter laugh. "The only thing
he's brought back is lavender-water."
"Steady!" said Soames, "you're thoroughly upset. I'll go back with you."
"What's the use?"
"We ought to make terms with him."
"Terms! It'll always be the same. When he recovers--cards and betting,
drink and ....!" She was silent, remembering the look on her husband's
face. The burnt child--the burnt child. Perhaps...!
"Recovers?" replied Soames: "Is he ill?"
"No; burnt out; that's all."
Soames took his waistcoat from a chair and put it on, he took his coat
and got into it, he scented his handkerchief with eau-de-Cologne,
threaded his watch-chain, and said: "We haven't any luck."
And in the midst of her own trouble Winifred was sorry for him, as if in
that little saying he had revealed deep trouble of his own.
"I'd like to see mother," she said.
"She'll be with father in their room. Come down quietly to the study.
I'll get her."
Winifred stole down to the little dark study, chiefly remarkable for a
Canaletto too doubtful to be placed elsewhere, and a fine collection of
Law Reports unopened for many years. Here she stood, with her back to
maroon-coloured curtains close-drawn, staring at the empty grate, till
her mother came in followed by Soames.
"Oh! my poor dear!" said Emily: "How miserable you look in here! This is
too bad of him, really!"
As a family they had so guarded themselves from the expression of all
unfashionable emotion that it was impossible to go up and give her
daughter a good hug. But there was comfort in her cushioned voice, and
her still dimpled shoulders under some rare black lace. Summoning pride
and the desire not to distress her mother, Winifred said in her most
off-hand voice:
"It's all right, Mother; no good fussing."
"I don't see," said Emily, looking at Soames, "why Winifred shouldn't
tell him that she'll prosecute him if he doesn't keep off the premises.
He took her pearls; and if he's not brought them back, that's quite
enough."
Winifred smiled. They would all plunge about with suggestions of this
and that, but she knew already what she would be doing, and that
was--nothing. The feeling that, after all, she had won a sort of
victory, retained her property, was every moment gaining ground in her.
No! if she wanted to punish him, she could do it at home without the
world knowing.
"Well," said Emily, "come into the dining-room comfortably--you must stay
and have dinner with us. Leave it to me to tell your father." And, as
Winifred moved towards the door, she turned out the light. Not till then
did they see the disaster in the corridor.
There, attracted by light from a room never lighted, James was standing
with his duncoloured camel-hair shawl folded about him, so that his arms
were not free and his silvered head looked cut off from his fashionably
trousered legs as if by an expanse of desert. He stood, inimitably
stork-like, with an expression as if he saw before him a frog too large
to swallow.
"What's all this?" he said. "Tell your father? You never tell me
anything."
The moment found Emily without reply. It was Winifred who went up to
him, and, laying one hand on each of his swathed, helpless arms, said:
"Monty's not gone bankrupt, Father. He's only come back."
They all three expected something serious to happen, and were glad she
had kept that grip of his arms, but they did not know the depth of root
in that shadowy old Forsyte. Something wry occurred about his shaven
mouth and chin, something scratchy between those long silvery whiskers.
Then he said with a sort of dignity: "He'll be the death of me. I knew
how it would be."
"You mustn't worry, Father," said Winifred calmly. "I mean to make him
behave."
"Ah!" said James. "Here, take this thing off, I'm hot." They unwound
the shawl. He turned, and walked firmly to the dining-room.
"I don't want any soup," he said to Warmson, and sat down in his chair.
They all sat down too, Winifred still in her hat, while Warmson laid the
fourth place. When he left the room, James said: "What's he brought
back?"
"Nothing, Father."
James concentrated his eyes on his own image in a tablespoon. "Divorce!"
he muttered; "rubbish! What was I about? I ought to have paid him an
allowance to stay out of England. Soames you go and propose it to him."
It seemed so right and simple a suggestion that even Winifred was
surprised when she said: "No, I'll keep him now he's back; he must just
behave--that's all."
They all looked at her. It had always been known that Winifred had
pluck.
"Out there!" said James elliptically, "who knows what cut-throats! You
look for his revolver! Don't go to bed without. You ought to have
Warmson to sleep in the house. I'll see him myself tomorrow."
They were touched by this declaration, and Emily said comfortably:
"That's right, James, we won't have any nonsense."
"Ah!" muttered James darkly, "I can't tell."
The advent of Warmson with fish diverted conversation.
When, directly after dinner, Winifred went over to kiss her father
good-night, he looked up with eyes so full of question and distress that
she put all the comfort she could into her voice.
"It's all right, Daddy, dear; don't worry. I shan't need anyone--he's
quite bland. I shall only be upset if you worry. Good-night, bless
you!"
James repeated the words, "Bless you!" as if he did not quite know what
they meant, and his eyes followed her to the door.
She reached home before nine, and went straight upstairs.
Dartie was lying on the bed in his dressing-room, fully redressed in a
blue serge suit and pumps; his arms were crossed behind his head, and an
extinct cigarette drooped from his mouth.
Winifred remembered ridiculously the flowers in her window-boxes after a
blazing summer day; the way they lay, or rather stood--parched, yet
rested by the sun's retreat. It was as if a little dew had come already
on her burnt-up husband.
He said apathetically: "I suppose you've been to Park Lane. How's the
old man?"
Winifred could not help the bitter answer: "Not dead."
He winced, actually he winced.
"Understand, Monty," she said, "I will not have him worried. If you
aren't going to behave yourself, you may go back, you may go anywhere.
Have you had dinner?"
No.
"Would you like some?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Imogen offered me some. I didn't want any."
Imogen! In the plenitude of emotion Winifred had forgotten her.
"So you've seen her? What did she say?"
"She gave me a kiss."
With mortification Winifred saw his dark sardonic face relaxed. 'Yes!'
she thought, 'he cares for her, not for me a bit.'
Dartie's eyes were moving from side to side.
"Does she know about me?" he said.
It flashed through Winifred that here was the weapon she needed. He
minded their knowing!
"No. Val knows. The others don't; they only know you went away."
She heard him sigh with relief.
"But they shall know," she said firmly, "if you give me cause."
"All right!" he muttered, "hit me! I'm down!"
Winifred went up to the bed. "Look here, Monty! I don't want to hit
you. I don't want to hurt you. I shan't allude to anything. I'm not
going to worry. What's the use?" She was silent a moment. "I can't stand
any more, though, and I won't! You'd better know. You've made me suffer.
But I used to be fond of you. For the sake of that...." She met the
heavy-lidded gaze of his brown eyes with the downward stare of her
green-grey eyes; touched his hand suddenly, turned her back, and went
into her room.
She sat there a long time before her glass, fingering her rings, thinking
of this subdued dark man, almost a stranger to her, on the bed in the
other room; resolutely not 'worrying,' but gnawed by jealousy of what he
had been through, and now and again just visited by pity.
CHAPTER XIV
OUTLANDISH NIGHT
Soames doggedly let the spring come--no easy task for one conscious that
time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer the hand, no issue from
the web anywhere visible. Mr. Polteed reported nothing, except that his
watch went on--costing a lot of money. Val and his cousin were gone to
the war, whence came news more favourable; Dartie was behaving himself so
far; James had retained his health; business prospered almost
terribly--there was nothing to worry Soames except that he was 'held up,'
could make no step in any direction.
He did not exactly avoid Soho, for he could not afford to let them think
that he had 'piped off,' as James would have put it--he might want to
'pipe on' again at any minute. But he had to be so restrained and
cautious that he would often pass the door of the Restaurant Bretagne
without going in, and wander out of the purlieus of that region which
always gave him the feeling of having been possessively irregular.
He wandered thus one May night into Regent Street and the most amazing
crowd he had ever seen; a shrieking, whistling, dancing, jostling,
grotesque and formidably jovial crowd, with false noses and mouth-organs,
penny whistles and long feathers, every appanage of idiocy, as it seemed
to him. Mafeking! Of course, it had been relieved! Good! But was that
an excuse? Who were these people, what were they, where had they come
from into the West End? His face was tickled, his ears whistled into.
Girls cried: 'Keep your hair on, stucco!' A youth so knocked off his
top-hat that he recovered it with difficulty. Crackers were exploding
beneath his nose, between his feet. He was bewildered, exasperated,
offended. This stream of people came from every quarter, as if impulse
had unlocked flood-gates, let flow waters of whose existence he had
heard, perhaps, but believed in never. This, then, was the populace, the
innumerable living negation of gentility and Forsyteism. This
was--egad!--Democracy! It stank, yelled, was hideous! In the East End,
or even Soho, perhaps--but here in Regent Street, in Piccadilly! What
were the police about! In 1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had
never seen the cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it, could
hardly believe his scorching eyes. The whole thing was unspeakable!
These people had no restraint, they seemed to think him funny; such
swarms of them, rude, coarse, laughing--and what laughter!
Nothing sacred to them! He shouldn't be surprised if they began to break
windows. In Pall Mall, past those august dwellings, to enter which
people paid sixty pounds, this shrieking, whistling, dancing dervish of a
crowd was swarming. From the Club windows his own kind were looking out
on them with regulated amusement. They didn't realise! Why, this was
serious--might come to anything! The crowd was cheerful, but some day
they would come in different mood! He remembered there had been a mob in
the late eighties, when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and
made speeches. But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise. They were
hysterical--it wasn't English! And all about the relief of a little
town as big as--Watford, six thousand miles away. Restraint, reserve!
Those qualities to him more dear almost than life, those indispensable
attributes of property and culture, where were they? It wasn't English!
No, it wasn't English! So Soames brooded, threading his way on. It was
as if he had suddenly caught sight of someone cutting the covenant 'for
quiet possession' out of his legal documents; or of a monster lurking and
stalking out in the future, casting its shadow before. Their want of
stolidity, their want of reverence! It was like discovering that
nine-tenths of the people of England were foreigners. And if that were
so--then, anything might happen!
At Hyde Park Corner he ran into George Forsyte, very sunburnt from
racing, holding a false nose in his hand.
"Hallo, Soames!" he said, "have a nose!"
Soames responded with a pale smile.
"Got this from one of these sportsmen," went on George, who had evidently
been dining; "had to lay him out--for trying to bash my hat. I say, one
of these days we shall have to fight these chaps, they're getting so
damned cheeky--all radicals and socialists. They want our goods. You
tell Uncle James that, it'll make him sleep."
'In vino veritas,' thought Soames, but he only nodded, and passed on up
Hamilton Place. There was but a trickle of roysterers in Park Lane, not
very noisy. And looking up at the houses he thought: 'After all, we're
the backbone of the country. They won't upset us easily. Possession's
nine points of the law.'
But, as he closed the door of his father's house behind him, all that
queer outlandish nightmare in the streets passed out of his mind almost
as completely as if, having dreamed it, he had awakened in the warm clean
morning comfort of his spring-mattressed bed.
Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood still.
A wife! Somebody to talk things over with. One had a right! Damn it!
One had a right!
PART III
CHAPTER I
SOAMES IN PARIS
Soames had travelled little. Aged nineteen he had made the 'petty tour'
with his father, mother, and Winifred--Brussels, the Rhine, Switzerland,
and home by way of Paris. Aged twenty-seven, just when he began to take
interest in pictures, he had spent five hot weeks in Italy, looking into
the Renaissance--not so much in it as he had been led to expect--and a
fortnight in Paris on his way back, looking into himself, as became a
Forsyte surrounded by people so strongly self-centred and 'foreign' as
the French. His knowledge of their language being derived from his
public school, he did not understand them when they spoke. Silence he
had found better for all parties; one did not make a fool of oneself. He
had disliked the look of the men's clothes, the closed-in cabs, the
theatres which looked like bee-hives, the Galleries which smelled of
beeswax. He was too cautious and too shy to explore that side of Paris
supposed by Forsytes to constitute its attraction under the rose; and as
for a collector's bargain--not one to be had! As Nicholas might have put
it--they were a grasping lot. He had come back uneasy, saying Paris was
overrated.
When, therefore, in June of 1900 he went to Paris, it was but his third
attempt on the centre of civilisation. This time, however, the mountain
was going to Mahomet; for he felt by now more deeply civilised than
Paris, and perhaps he really was. Moreover, he had a definite objective.
This was no mere genuflexion to a shrine of taste and immorality, but the
prosecution of his own legitimate affairs. He went, indeed, because
things were getting past a joke. The watch went on and on,
and--nothing--nothing! Jolyon had never returned to Paris, and no one
else was 'suspect!' Busy with new and very confidential matters, Soames
was realising more than ever how essential reputation is to a solicitor.
But at night and in his leisure moments he was ravaged by the thought
that time was always flying and money flowing in, and his own future as
much 'in irons' as ever. Since Mafeking night he had become aware that a
'young fool of a doctor' was hanging round Annette. Twice he had come
across him--a cheerful young fool, not more than thirty.
Nothing annoyed Soames so much as cheerfulness--an indecent, extravagant
sort of quality, which had no relation to facts. The mixture of his
desires and hopes was, in a word, becoming torture; and lately the
thought had come to him that perhaps Irene knew she was being shadowed:
It was this which finally decided him to go and see for himself; to go
and once more try to break down her repugnance, her refusal to make her
own and his path comparatively smooth once more. If he failed
again--well, he would see what she did with herself, anyway!
He went to an hotel in the Rue Caumartin, highly recommended to Forsytes,
where practically nobody spoke French. He had formed no plan. He did
not want to startle her; yet must contrive that she had no chance to
evade him by flight. And next morning he set out in bright weather.
Paris had an air of gaiety, a sparkle over its star-shape which almost
annoyed Soames. He stepped gravely, his nose lifted a little sideways in
real curiosity. He desired now to understand things French. Was not
Annette French? There was much to be got out of his visit, if he could
only get it. In this laudable mood and the Place de la Concorde he was
nearly run down three times. He came on the 'Cours la Reine,' where
Irene's hotel was situated, almost too suddenly, for he had not yet fixed
on his procedure. Crossing over to the river side, he noted the building,
white and cheerful-looking, with green sunblinds, seen through a screen
of plane-tree leaves. And, conscious that it would be far better to meet
her casually in some open place than to risk a call, he sat down on a
bench whence he could watch the entrance. It was not quite eleven
o'clock, and improbable that she had yet gone out. Some pigeons were
strutting and preening their feathers in the pools of sunlight between
the shadows of the plane-trees. A workman in a blue blouse passed, and
threw them crumbs from the paper which contained his dinner. A 'bonne'
coiffed with ribbon shepherded two little girls with pig-tails and
frilled drawers. A cab meandered by, whose cocher wore a blue coat and a
black-glazed hat. To Soames a kind of affectation seemed to cling about
it all, a sort of picturesqueness which was out of date. A theatrical
people, the French! He lit one of his rare cigarettes, with a sense of
injury that Fate should be casting his life into outlandish waters. He
shouldn't wonder if Irene quite enjoyed this foreign life; she had never
been properly English--even to look at! And he began considering which of
those windows could be hers under the green sunblinds. How could he word
what he had come to say so that it might pierce the defence of her proud
obstinacy? He threw the fag-end of his cigarette at a pigeon, with the
thought: 'I can't stay here for ever twiddling my thumbs. Better give it
up and call on her in the late afternoon.' But he still sat on, heard
twelve strike, and then half-past. 'I'll wait till one,' he thought,
'while I'm about it.' But just then he started up, and shrinkingly sat
down again. A woman had come out in a cream-coloured frock, and was
moving away under a fawn-coloured parasol. Irene herself! He waited till
she was too far away to recognise him, then set out after her. She was
strolling as though she had no particular objective; moving, if he
remembered rightly, toward the Bois de Boulogne. For half an hour at
least he kept his distance on the far side of the way till she had passed
into the Bois itself. Was she going to meet someone after all? Some
confounded Frenchman--one of those 'Bel Ami' chaps, perhaps, who had
nothing to do but hang about women--for he had read that book with
difficulty and a sort of disgusted fascination. He followed doggedly
along a shady alley, losing sight of her now and then when the path
curved. And it came back to him how, long ago, one night in Hyde Park he
had slid and sneaked from tree to tree, from seat to seat, hunting
blindly, ridiculously, in burning jealousy for her and young Bosinney.
The path bent sharply, and, hurrying, he came on her sitting in front of
a small fountain--a little green-bronze Niobe veiled in hair to her
slender hips, gazing at the pool she had wept: He came on her so suddenly
that he was past before he could turn and take off his hat. She did not
start up. She had always had great self-command--it was one of the
things he most admired in her, one of his greatest grievances against
her, because he had never been able to tell what she was thinking. Had
she realised that he was following? Her self-possession made him angry;
and, disdaining to explain his presence, he pointed to the mournful
little Niobe, and said:
"That's rather a good thing."
He could see, then, that she was struggling to preserve her composure.
"I didn't want to startle you; is this one of your haunts?"
"Yes."
"A little lonely." As he spoke, a lady, strolling by, paused to look at
the fountain and passed on.
Irene's eyes followed her.
"No," she said, prodding the ground with her parasol, "never lonely. One
has always one's shadow."
Soames understood; and, looking at her hard, he exclaimed:
"Well, it's your own fault. You can be free of it at any moment. Irene,
come back to me, and be free."
Irene laughed.
"Don't!" cried Soames, stamping his foot; "it's inhuman. Listen! Is
there any condition I can make which will bring you back to me? If I
promise you a separate house--and just a visit now and then?"
Irene rose, something wild suddenly in her face and figure.
"None! None! None! You may hunt me to the grave. I will not come."
Outraged and on edge, Soames recoiled.
"Don't make a scene!" he said sharply. And they both stood motionless,
staring at the little Niobe, whose greenish flesh the sunlight was
burnishing.
"That's your last word, then," muttered Soames, clenching his hands; "you
condemn us both."
Irene bent her head. "I can't come back. Good-bye!"
A feeling of monstrous injustice flared up in Soames.
"Stop!" he said, "and listen to me a moment. You gave me a sacred
vow--you came to me without a penny. You had all I could give you. You
broke that vow without cause, you made me a by-word; you refused me a
child; you've left me in prison; you--you still move me so that I want
you--I want you. Well, what do you think of yourself?"
Irene turned, her face was deadly pale, her eyes burning dark.
"God made me as I am," she said; "wicked if you like--but not so wicked
that I'll give myself again to a man I hate."
The sunlight gleamed on her hair as she moved away, and seemed to lay a
caress all down her clinging cream-coloured frock.
Soames could neither speak nor move. That word 'hate'--so extreme, so
primitive--made all the Forsyte in him tremble. With a deep imprecation
he strode away from where she had vanished, and ran almost into the arms
of the lady sauntering back--the fool, the shadowing fool!
He was soon dripping with perspiration, in the depths of the Bois.
'Well,' he thought, 'I need have no consideration for her now; she has
not a grain of it for me. I'll show her this very day that she's my wife
still.'
But on the way home to his hotel, he was forced to the conclusion that he
did not know what he meant. One could not make scenes in public, and
short of scenes in public what was there he could do? He almost cursed
his own thin-skinnedness. She might deserve no consideration; but
he--alas! deserved some at his own hands. And sitting lunchless in the
hall of his hotel, with tourists passing every moment, Baedeker in hand,
he was visited by black dejection. In irons! His whole life, with every
natural instinct and every decent yearning gagged and fettered, and all
because Fate had driven him seventeen years ago to set his heart upon
this woman--so utterly, that even now he had no real heart to set on any
other! Cursed was the day he had met her, and his eyes for seeing in her
anything but the cruel Venus she was! And yet, still seeing her with the
sunlight on the clinging China crepe of her gown, he uttered a little
groan, so that a tourist who was passing, thought: 'Man in pain! Let's
see! what did I have for lunch?'
Later, in front of a cafe near the Opera, over a glass of cold tea with
lemon and a straw in it, he took the malicious resolution to go and dine
at her hotel. If she were there, he would speak to her; if she were not,
he would leave a note. He dressed carefully, and wrote as follows:
"Your idyll with that fellow Jolyon Forsyte is known to me at all events.
If you pursue it, understand that I will leave no stone unturned to make
things unbearable for him. 'S. F.'"
He sealed this note but did not address it, refusing to write the maiden
name which she had impudently resumed, or to put the word Forsyte on the
envelope lest she should tear it up unread. Then he went out, and made
his way through the glowing streets, abandoned to evening
pleasure-seekers. Entering her hotel, he took his seat in a far corner
of the dining-room whence he could see all entrances and exits. She was
not there. He ate little, quickly, watchfully. She did not come. He
lingered in the lounge over his coffee, drank two liqueurs of brandy.
But still she did not come. He went over to the keyboard and examined the
names. Number twelve, on the first floor! And he determined to take the
note up himself. He mounted red-carpeted stairs, past a little salon;
eight-ten-twelve! Should he knock, push the note under, or....? He
looked furtively round and turned the handle. The door opened, but into
a little space leading to another door; he knocked on that--no answer.
The door was locked. It fitted very closely to the floor; the note would
not go under. He thrust it back into his pocket, and stood a moment
listening. He felt somehow certain that she was not there. And suddenly
he came away, passing the little salon down the stairs. He stopped at
the bureau and said:
"Will you kindly see that Mrs. Heron has this note?"
"Madame Heron left to-day, Monsieur--suddenly, about three o'clock. There
was illness in her family."
Soames compressed his lips. "Oh!" he said; "do you know her address?"
"Non, Monsieur. England, I think."
Soames put the note back into his pocket and went out. He hailed an open
horse-cab which was passing.
"Drive me anywhere!"
The man, who, obviously, did not understand, smiled, and waved his whip.
And Soames was borne along in that little yellow-wheeled Victoria all
over star-shaped Paris, with here and there a pause, and the question,
"C'est par ici, Monsieur?" "No, go on," till the man gave it up in
despair, and the yellow-wheeled chariot continued to roll between the
tall, flat-fronted shuttered houses and plane-tree avenues--a little
Flying Dutchman of a cab.
'Like my life,' thought Soames, 'without object, on and on!'
CHAPTER II
IN THE WEB
Soames returned to England the following day, and on the third morning
received a visit from Mr. Polteed, who wore a flower and carried a brown
billycock hat. Soames motioned him to a seat.
"The news from the war is not so bad, is it?" said Mr. Polteed. "I hope
I see you well, sir."
"Thanks! quite."
Mr. Polteed leaned forward, smiled, opened his hand, looked into it, and
said softly:
"I think we've done your business for you at last."
"What?" ejaculated Soames.
"Nineteen reports quite suddenly what I think we shall be justified in
calling conclusive evidence," and Mr. Polteed paused.
"Well?"
"On the 10th instant, after witnessing an interview between 17 and a
party, earlier in the day, 19 can swear to having seen him coming out of
her bedroom in the hotel about ten o'clock in the evening. With a little
care in the giving of the evidence that will be enough, especially as 17
has left Paris--no doubt with the party in question. In fact, they both
slipped off, and we haven't got on to them again, yet; but we shall--we
shall. She's worked hard under very difficult circumstances, and I'm
glad she's brought it off at last." Mr. Polteed took out a cigarette,
tapped its end against the table, looked at Soames, and put it back. The
expression on his client's face was not encouraging.
"Who is this new person?" said Soames abruptly.
"That we don't know. She'll swear to the fact, and she's got his
appearance pat."
Mr. Polteed took out a letter, and began reading:
"'Middle-aged, medium height, blue dittoes in afternoon, evening dress at
night, pale, dark hair, small dark moustache, flat cheeks, good chin,
grey eyes, small feet, guilty look....'"
Soames rose and went to the window. He stood there in sardonic fury.
Congenital idiot--spidery congenital idiot! Seven months at fifteen
pounds a week--to be tracked down as his own wife's lover! Guilty look!
He threw the window open.
"It's hot," he said, and came back to his seat.
Crossing his knees, he bent a supercilious glance on Mr. Polteed.
"I doubt if that's quite good enough," he said, drawling the words, "with
no name or address. I think you may let that lady have a rest, and take
up our friend 47 at this end." Whether Polteed had spotted him he could
not tell; but he had a mental vision of him in the midst of his cronies
dissolved in inextinguishable laughter. 'Guilty look!' Damnation!
Mr. Polteed said in a tone of urgency, almost of pathos: "I assure you we
have put it through sometimes on less than that. It's Paris, you know.
Attractive woman living alone. Why not risk it, sir? We might screw it
up a peg."
Soames had sudden insight. The fellow's professional zeal was stirred:
'Greatest triumph of my career; got a man his divorce through a visit to
his own wife's bedroom! Something to talk of there, when I retire!' And
for one wild moment he thought: 'Why not?' After all, hundreds of men of
medium height had small feet and a guilty look!
"I'm not authorised to take any risk!" he said shortly.
Mr. Polteed looked up.
"Pity," he said, "quite a pity! That other affair seemed very costive."
Soames rose.
"Never mind that. Please watch 47, and take care not to find a mare's
nest. Good-morning!"
Mr. Polteed's eye glinted at the words 'mare's nest!'
"Very good. You shall be kept informed."
And Soames was alone again. The spidery, dirty, ridiculous business!
Laying his arms on the table, he leaned his forehead on them. Full ten
minutes he rested thus, till a managing clerk roused him with the draft
prospectus of a new issue of shares, very desirable, in Manifold and
Topping's. That afternoon he left work early and made his way to the
Restaurant Bretagne. Only Madame Lamotte was in. Would Monsieur have
tea with her?
Soames bowed.
When they were seated at right angles to each other in the little room,
he said abruptly:
"I want a talk with you, Madame."
The quick lift of her clear brown eyes told him that she had long
expected such words.
"I have to ask you something first: That young doctor--what's his name?
Is there anything between him and Annette?"
Her whole personality had become, as it were, like jet--clear-cut, black,
hard, shining.
"Annette is young," she said; "so is monsieur le docteur. Between young
people things move quickly; but Annette is a good daughter. Ah! what a
jewel of a nature!"
The least little smile twisted Soames' lips.
"Nothing definite, then?"
"But definite--no, indeed! The young man is veree nice, but--what would
you? There is no money at present."
She raised her willow-patterned tea-cup; Soames did the same. Their eyes
met.
"I am a married man," he said, "living apart from my wife for many years.
I am seeking to divorce her."
Madame Lamotte put down her cup. Indeed! What tragic things there were!
The entire absence of sentiment in her inspired a queer species of
contempt in Soames.
"I am a rich man," he added, fully conscious that the remark was not in
good taste. "It is useless to say more at present, but I think you
understand."
Madame's eyes, so open that the whites showed above them, looked at him
very straight.
"Ah! ca--mais nous avons le temps!" was all she said. "Another little
cup?" Soames refused, and, taking his leave, walked westward.
He had got that off his mind; she would not let Annette commit herself
with that cheerful young ass until....! But what chance of his ever
being able to say: 'I'm free.' What chance? The future had lost all
semblance of reality. He felt like a fly, entangled in cobweb filaments,
watching the desirable freedom of the air with pitiful eyes.
He was short of exercise, and wandered on to Kensington Gardens, and down
Queen's Gate towards Chelsea. Perhaps she had gone back to her flat.
That at all events he could find out. For since that last and most
ignominious repulse his wounded self-respect had taken refuge again in
the feeling that she must have a lover. He arrived before the little
Mansions at the dinner-hour. No need to enquire! A grey-haired lady was
watering the flower-boxes in her window. It was evidently let. And he
walked slowly past again, along the river--an evening of clear, quiet
beauty, all harmony and comfort, except within his heart.
CHAPTER III
RICHMOND PARK
On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was received
by Jolyon at Robin Hill:
"Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable again."
It reached a household already agitated by the imminent departure of
June, whose berth was booked for the following day. She was, indeed, in
the act of confiding Eric Cobbley and his family to her father's care
when the message arrived.
The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus of
Jolly's enlistment, had been loyally fulfilled with the irritation and
regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails their individual
liberties. Enthusiastic at first about the 'wonderfulness' of the work,
she had begun after a month to feel that she could train herself so much
better than others could train her. And if Holly had not insisted on
following her example, and being trained too, she must inevitably have
'cried off.' The departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April
had further stiffened her failing resolve. But now, on the point of
departure, the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife and two
children, adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative world weighed on
her so that she was still in danger of backing out. The reading of that
cablegram, with its disquieting reality, clinched the matter. She saw
herself already nursing Jolly--for of course they would let her nurse her
own brother! Jolyon--ever wide and doubtful--had no such hope. Poor
June!
Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal life was?
Ever since he knew of his boy's arrival at Cape Town the thought of him
had been a kind of recurrent sickness in Jolyon. He could not get
reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was in danger all the time. The
cablegram, grave though it was, was almost a relief. He was now safe
from bullets, anyway. And yet--this enteric was a virulent disease! The
Times was full of deaths therefrom. Why could he not be lying out there
in that up-country hospital, and his boy safe at home? The un-Forsytean
self-sacrifice of his three children, indeed, had quite bewildered
Jolyon. He would eagerly change places with Jolly, because he loved his
boy; but no such personal motive was influencing them. He could only
think that it marked the decline of the Forsyte type.
Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak-tree. She had
grown up very much during these last months of hospital training away
from home. And, seeing her approach, he thought: 'She has more sense
than June, child though she is; more wisdom. Thank God she isn't going
out.' She had seated herself in the swing, very silent and still. 'She
feels this,' thought Jolyon, 'as much as I' and, seeing her eyes fixed on
him, he said: "Don't take it to heart too much, my child. If he weren't
ill, he might be in much greater danger."
Holly got out of the swing.
"I want to tell you something, Dad. It was through me that Jolly
enlisted and went out."
"How's that?"
"When you were away in Paris, Val Dartie and I fell in love. We used to
ride in Richmond Park; we got engaged. Jolly found it out, and thought
he ought to stop it; so he dared Val to enlist. It was all my fault,
Dad; and I want to go out too. Because if anything happens to either of
them I should feel awful. Besides, I'm just as much trained as June."
Jolyon gazed at her in a stupefaction that was tinged with irony. So this
was the answer to the riddle he had been asking himself; and his three
children were Forsytes after all. Surely Holly might have told him all
this before! But he smothered the sarcastic sayings on his lips.
Tenderness to the young was perhaps the most sacred article of his
belief. He had got, no doubt, what he deserved. Engaged! So this was
why he had so lost touch with her! And to young Val Dartie--nephew of
Soames--in the other camp! It was all terribly distasteful. He closed
his easel, and set his drawing against the tree.
"Have you told June?"
"Yes; she says she'll get me into her cabin somehow. It's a single
cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor. If you consent, she'll go
up now and get permission."
'Consent?' thought Jolyon. 'Rather late in the day to ask for that!'
But again he checked himself.
"You're too young, my dear; they won't let you."
"June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town. If they
won't let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on training there.
Let me go, Dad!"
Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.
"I never stop anyone from doing anything," he said.
Holly flung her arms round his neck.
"Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world."
'That means the worst,' thought Jolyon. If he had ever doubted his creed
of tolerance he did so then.
"I'm not friendly with Val's family," he said, "and I don't know Val, but
Jolly didn't like him."
Holly looked at the distance and said:
"I love him."
"That settles it," said Jolyon dryly, then catching the expression on her
face, he kissed her, with the thought: 'Is anything more pathetic than
the faith of the young?' Unless he actually forbade her going it was
obvious that he must make the best of it, so he went up to town with
June. Whether due to her persistence, or the fact that the official they
saw was an old school friend of Jolyon's, they obtained permission for
Holly to share the single cabin. He took them to Surbiton station the
following evening, and they duly slid away from him, provided with money,
invalid foods, and those letters of credit without which Forsytes do not
travel.
He drove back to Robin Hill under a brilliant sky to his late dinner,
served with an added care by servants trying to show him that they
sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness to show them that he
appreciated their sympathy. But it was a real relief to get to his cigar
on the terrace of flag-stones--cunningly chosen by young Bosinney for
shape and colour--with night closing in around him, so beautiful a night,
hardly whispering in the trees, and smelling so sweet that it made him
ache. The grass was drenched with dew, and he kept to those flagstones,
up and down, till presently it began to seem to him that he was one of
three, not wheeling, but turning right about at each end, so that his
father was always nearest to the house, and his son always nearest to the
terrace edge. Each had an arm lightly within his arm; he dared not lift
his hand to his cigar lest he should disturb them, and it burned away,
dripping ash on him, till it dropped from his lips, at last, which were
getting hot. They left him then, and his arms felt chilly. Three
Jolyons in one Jolyon they had walked.
He stood still, counting the sounds--a carriage passing on the highroad,
a distant train, the dog at Gage's farm, the whispering trees, the groom
playing on his penny whistle. A multitude of stars up there--bright and
silent, so far off! No moon as yet! Just enough light to show him the
dark flags and swords of the iris flowers along the terrace edge--his
favourite flower that had the night's own colour on its curving crumpled
petals. He turned round to the house. Big, unlighted, not a soul beside
himself to live in all that part of it. Stark loneliness! He could not
go on living here alone. And yet, so long as there was beauty, why
should a man feel lonely? The answer--as to some idiot's riddle--was:
Because he did. The greater the beauty, the greater the loneliness, for
at the back of beauty was harmony, and at the back of harmony was
--union. Beauty could not comfort if the soul were out of it. The
night, maddeningly lovely, with bloom of grapes on it in starshine, and
the breath of grass and honey coming from it, he could not enjoy, while
she who was to him the life of beauty, its embodiment and essence, was
cut off from him, utterly cut off now, he felt, by honourable decency.
He made a poor fist of sleeping, striving too hard after that resignation
which Forsytes find difficult to reach, bred to their own way and left so
comfortably off by their fathers. But after dawn he dozed off, and soon
was dreaming a strange dream.
He was on a stage with immensely high rich curtains--high as the very
stars--stretching in a semi-circle from footlights to footlights. He
himself was very small, a little black restless figure roaming up and
down; and the odd thing was that he was not altogether himself, but
Soames as well, so that he was not only experiencing but watching. This
figure of himself and Soames was trying to find a way out through the
curtains, which, heavy and dark, kept him in. Several times he had
crossed in front of them before he saw with delight a sudden narrow
rift--a tall chink of beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse
of Paradise, remote, ineffable. Stepping quickly forward to pass into
it, he found the curtains closing before him. Bitterly disappointed he
--or was it Soames?--moved on, and there was the chink again through the
parted curtains, which again closed too soon. This went on and on and he
never got through till he woke with the word "Irene" on his lips. The
dream disturbed him badly, especially that identification of himself with
Soames.
Next morning, finding it impossible to work, he spent hours riding
Jolly's horse in search of fatigue. And on the second day he made up his
mind to move to London and see if he could not get permission to follow
his daughters to South Africa. He had just begun to pack the following
morning when he received this letter:
"GREEN HOTEL,
"June 13.
"RICHMOND.
"MY DEAR JOLYON,
"You will be surprised to see how near I am to you. Paris became
impossible--and I have come here to be within reach of your advice. I
would so love to see you again. Since you left Paris I don't think I
have met anyone I could really talk to. Is all well with you and with
your boy? No one knows, I think, that I am here at present.
"Always your friend,
"IRENE."
Irene within three miles of him!--and again in flight! He stood with a
very queer smile on his lips. This was more than he had bargained for!
About noon he set out on foot across Richmond Park, and as he went along,
he thought: 'Richmond Park! By Jove, it suits us Forsytes!' Not that
Forsytes lived there--nobody lived there save royalty, rangers, and the
deer--but in Richmond Park Nature was allowed to go so far and no
further, putting up a brave show of being natural, seeming to say: 'Look
at my instincts--they are almost passions, very nearly out of hand, but
not quite, of course; the very hub of possession is to possess oneself.'
Yes! Richmond Park possessed itself, even on that bright day of June,
with arrowy cuckoos shifting the tree-points of their calls, and the wood
doves announcing high summer.
The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o'clock, stood nearly
opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre; it was modest,
highly respectable, never out of cold beef, gooseberry tart, and a
dowager or two, so that a carriage and pair was almost always standing
before the door.
In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion, Irene
was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work, playing 'Hansel
and Gretel' out of an old score. Above her on a wall, not yet
Morris-papered, was a print of the Queen on a pony, amongst deer-hounds,
Scotch. caps, and slain stags; beside her in a pot on the window-sill was
a white and rosy fuchsia. The Victorianism of the room almost talked;
and in her clinging frock Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from
the shell of the past century.
"If the proprietor had eyes," he said, "he would show you the door; you
have broken through his decorations." Thus lightly he smothered up an
emotional moment. Having eaten cold beef, pickled walnut, gooseberry
tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger-beer, they walked into the Park, and
light talk was succeeded by the silence Jolyon had dreaded.
"You haven't told me about Paris," he said at last.
"No. I've been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that. But then
Soames came. By the little Niobe--the same story; would I go back to
him?"
"Incredible!"
She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now. Those
dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: 'I have come to an
end; if you want me, here I am.'
For sheer emotional intensity had he ever--old as he was--passed through
such a moment?
The words: 'Irene, I adore you!' almost escaped him. Then, with a
clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision capable, he
saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white wall.
"My boy is very ill out there," he said quietly.
Irene slipped her arm through his.
"Let's walk on; I understand."
No miserable explanation to attempt! She had understood! And they
walked on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the rabbit-holes
and the oak-trees, talking of Jolly. He left her two hours later at the
Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.
'She knows of my feeling for her, then,' he thought. Of course! One
could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!
CHAPTER IV
OVER THE RIVER
Jolly was tired to death of dreams. They had left him now too wan and
weak to dream again; left him to lie torpid, faintly remembering far-off
things; just able to turn his eyes and gaze through the window near his
cot at the trickle of river running by in the sands, at the straggling
milk-bush of the Karoo beyond. He knew what the Karoo was now, even if
he had not seen a Boer roll over like a rabbit, or heard the whine of
flying bullets. This pestilence had sneaked on him before he had smelled
powder. A thirsty day and a rash drink, or perhaps a tainted fruit--who
knew? Not he, who had not even strength left to grudge the evil thing its
victory--just enough to know that there were many lying here with him,
that he was sore with frenzied dreaming; just enough to watch that thread
of river and be able to remember faintly those far-away things....
The sun was nearly down. It would be cooler soon. He would have liked
to know the time--to feel his old watch, so butter-smooth, to hear the
repeater strike. It would have been friendly, home-like. He had not even
strength to remember that the old watch was last wound the day he began
to lie here. The pulse of his brain beat so feebly that faces which came
and went, nurse's, doctor's, orderly's, were indistinguishable, just one
indifferent face; and the words spoken about him meant all the same
thing, and that almost nothing. Those things he used to do, though far
and faint, were more distinct--walking past the foot of the old steps at
Harrow 'bill'--'Here, sir! Here, sir!'--wrapping boots in the
Westminster Gazette, greenish paper, shining boots--grandfather coming
from somewhere dark--a smell of earth--the mushroom house! Robin Hill!
Burying poor old Balthasar in the leaves! Dad! Home....
Consciousness came again with noticing that the river had no water in
it--someone was speaking too. Want anything? No. What could one want?
Too weak to want--only to hear his watch strike....
Holly! She wouldn't bowl properly. Oh! Pitch them up! Not sneaks!...
'Back her, Two and Bow!' He was Two!... Consciousness came once more
with a sense of the violet dusk outside, and a rising blood-red crescent
moon. His eyes rested on it fascinated; in the long minutes of
brain-nothingness it went moving up and up....
"He's going, doctor!" Not pack boots again? Never? 'Mind your form,
Two!' Don't cry! Go quietly--over the river--sleep!... Dark? If
somebody would--strike--his--watch!...
CHAPTER V
SOAMES ACTS
A sealed letter in the handwriting of Mr. Polteed remained unopened in
Soames' pocket throughout two hours of sustained attention to the affairs
of the 'New Colliery Company,' which, declining almost from the moment of
old Jolyon's retirement from the Chairmanship, had lately run down so
fast that there was now nothing for it but a 'winding-up.' He took the
letter out to lunch at his City Club, sacred to him for the meals he had
eaten there with his father in the early seventies, when James used to
like him to come and see for himself the nature of his future life.
Here in a remote corner before a plate of roast mutton and mashed potato,
he read:
"DEAR SIR,
"In accordance with your suggestion we have duly taken the matter up at
the other end with gratifying results. Observation of 47 has enabled us
to locate 17 at the Green Hotel, Richmond. The two have been observed to
meet daily during the past week in Richmond Park. Nothing absolutely
crucial has so far been notified. But in conjunction with what we had
from Paris at the beginning of the year, I am confident we could now
satisfy the Court. We shall, of course, continue to watch the matter
until we hear from you.
"Very faithfully yours,
"CLAUD POLTEED."
Soames read it through twice and beckoned to the waiter:
"Take this away; it's cold."
"Shall I bring you some more, sir?"
"No. Get me some coffee in the other room."
And, paying for what he had not eaten, he went out, passing two
acquaintances without sign of recognition.
'Satisfy the Court!' he thought, sitting at a little round marble table
with the coffee before him. That fellow Jolyon! He poured out his
coffee, sweetened and drank it. He would disgrace him in the eyes of his
own children! And rising, with that resolution hot within him, he found
for the first time the inconvenience of being his own solicitor. He
could not treat this scandalous matter in his own office. He must commit
the soul of his private dignity to a stranger, some other professional
dealer in family dishonour. Who was there he could go to? Linkman and
Laver in Budge Row, perhaps--reliable, not too conspicuous, only nodding
acquaintances. But before he saw them he must see Polteed again. But at
this thought Soames had a moment of sheer weakness. To part with his
secret? How find the words? How subject himself to contempt and secret
laughter? Yet, after all, the fellow knew already--oh yes, he knew!
And, feeling that he must finish with it now, he took a cab into the West
End.
In this hot weather the window of Mr. Polteed's room was positively open,
and the only precaution was a wire gauze, preventing the intrusion of
flies. Two or three had tried to come in, and been caught, so that they
seemed to be clinging there with the intention of being devoured
presently. Mr. Polteed, following the direction of his client's eye,
rose apologetically and closed the window.
'Posing ass!' thought Soames. Like all who fundamentally believe in
themselves he was rising to the occasion, and, with his little sideway
smile, he said: "I've had your letter. I'm going to act. I suppose you
know who the lady you've been watching really is?" Mr. Polteed's
expression at that moment was a masterpiece. It so clearly said: 'Well,
what do you think? But mere professional knowledge, I assure you--pray
forgive it!' He made a little half airy movement with his hand, as who
should say: 'Such things--such things will happen to us all!'
"Very well, then," said Soames, moistening his lips: "there's no need to
say more. I'm instructing Linkman and Laver of Budge Row to act for me.
I don't want to hear your evidence, but kindly make your report to them
at five o'clock, and continue to observe the utmost secrecy."
Mr. Polteed half closed his eyes, as if to comply at once. "My dear
sir," he said.
"Are you convinced," asked Soames with sudden energy, "that there is
enough?"
The faintest movement occurred to Mr. Polteed's shoulders.
"You can risk it," he murmured; "with what we have, and human nature, you
can risk it."
Soames rose. "You will ask for Mr. Linkman. Thanks; don't get up." He
could not bear Mr. Polteed to slide as usual between him and the door.
In the sunlight of Piccadilly he wiped his forehead. This had been the
worst of it--he could stand the strangers better. And he went back into
the City to do what still lay before him.
That evening in Park Lane, watching his father dine, he was overwhelmed
by his old longing for a son--a son, to watch him eat as he went down the
years, to be taken on his knee as James on a time had been wont to take
him; a son of his own begetting, who could understand him because he was
the same flesh and blood--understand, and comfort him, and become more
rich and cultured than himself because he would start even better off.
To get old--like that thin, grey wiry-frail figure sitting there--and be
quite alone with possessions heaping up around him; to take no interest
in anything because it had no future and must pass away from him to hands
and mouths and eyes for whom he cared no jot! No! He would force it
through now, and be free to marry, and have a son to care for him before
he grew to be like the old old man his father, wistfully watching now his
sweetbread, now his son.
In that mood he went up to bed. But, lying warm between those fine linen
sheets of Emily's providing, he was visited by memories and torture.
Visions of Irene, almost the solid feeling of her body, beset him. Why
had he ever been fool enough to see her again, and let this flood back on
him so that it was pain to think of her with that fellow--that stealing
fellow.
CHAPTER VI
A SUMMER DAY
His boy was seldom absent from Jolyon's mind in the days which followed
the first walk with Irene in Richmond Park. No further news had come;
enquiries at the War Office elicited nothing; nor could he expect to hear
from June and Holly for three weeks at least. In these days he felt how
insufficient were his memories of Jolly, and what an amateur of a father
he had been. There was not a single memory in which anger played a part;
not one reconciliation, because there had never been a rupture; nor one
heart-to-heart confidence, not even when Jolly's mother died. Nothing but
half-ironical affection. He had been too afraid of committing himself in
any direction, for fear of losing his liberty, or interfering with that
of his boy.
Only in Irene's presence had he relief, highly complicated by the
ever-growing perception of how divided he was between her and his son.
With Jolly was bound up all that sense of continuity and social creed of
which he had drunk deeply in his youth and again during his boy's public
school and varsity life--all that sense of not going back on what father
and son expected of each other. With Irene was bound up all his delight
in beauty and in Nature. And he seemed to know less and less which was
the stronger within him. From such sentimental paralysis he was rudely
awakened, however, one afternoon, just as he was starting off to
Richmond, by a young man with a bicycle and a face oddly familiar, who
came forward faintly smiling.
"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte? Thank you!" Placing an envelope in Jolyon's hand
he wheeled off the path and rode away. Bewildered, Jolyon opened it.
"Admiralty Probate and Divorce, Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte!"
A sensation of shame and disgust was followed by the instant reaction
'Why, here's the very thing you want, and you don't like it!' But she
must have had one too; and he must go to her at once. He turned things
over as he went along. It was an ironical business. For, whatever the
Scriptures said about the heart, it took more than mere longings to
satisfy the law. They could perfectly well defend this suit, or at least
in good faith try to. But the idea of doing so revolted Jolyon. If not
her lover in deed he was in desire, and he knew that she was ready to
come to him. Her face had told him so. Not that he exaggerated her
feeling for him. She had had her grand passion, and he could not expect
another from her at his age. But she had trust in him, affection for
him, and must feel that he would be a refuge. Surely she would not ask
him to defend the suit, knowing that he adored her! Thank Heaven she had
not that maddening British conscientiousness which refused happiness for
the sake of refusing! She must rejoice at this chance of being free
after seventeen years of death in life! As to publicity, the fat was in
the fire! To defend the suit would not take away the slur. Jolyon had
all the proper feeling of a Forsyte whose privacy is threatened: If he
was to be hung by the Law, by all means let it be for a sheep! Moreover
the notion of standing in a witness box and swearing to the truth that no
gesture, not even a word of love had passed between them seemed to him
more degrading than to take the tacit stigma of being an adulterer--more
truly degrading, considering the feeling in his heart, and just as bad
and painful for his children. The thought of explaining away, if he
could, before a judge and twelve average Englishmen, their meetings in
Paris, and the walks in Richmond Park, horrified him. The brutality and
hypocritical censoriousness of the whole process; the probability that
they would not be believed--the mere vision of her, whom he looked on as
the embodiment of Nature and of Beauty, standing there before all those
suspicious, gloating eyes was hideous to him. No, no! To defend a suit
only made a London holiday, and sold the newspapers. A thousand times
better accept what Soames and the gods had sent!
'Besides,' he thought honestly, 'who knows whether, even for my boy's
sake, I could have stood this state of things much longer? Anyway, her
neck will be out of chancery at last!' Thus absorbed, he was hardly
conscious of the heavy heat. The sky had become overcast, purplish with
little streaks of white. A heavy heat-drop plashed a little star pattern
in the dust of the road as he entered the Park. 'Phew!' he thought,
'thunder! I hope she's not come to meet me; there's a ducking up there!'
But at that very minute he saw Irene coming towards the Gate. 'We must
scuttle back to Robin Hill,' he thought.
***************************
The storm had passed over the Poultry at four o'clock, bringing welcome
distraction to the clerks in every office. Soames was drinking a cup of
tea when a note was brought in to him:
"DEAR SIR,
"Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte
"In accordance with your instructions, we beg to inform you that we
personally served the respondent and co-respondent in this suit to-day,
at Richmond, and Robin Hill, respectively.
"Faithfully yours,
"LINKMAN AND LAVER."
For some minutes Soames stared at that note. Ever since he had given
those instructions he had been tempted to annul them. It was so
scandalous, such a general disgrace! The evidence, too, what he had
heard of it, had never seemed to him conclusive; somehow, he believed
less and less that those two had gone all lengths. But this, of course,
would drive them to it; and he suffered from the thought. That fellow to
have her love, where he had failed! Was it too late? Now that they had
been brought up sharp by service of this petition, had he not a lever
with which he could force them apart? 'But if I don't act at once,' he
thought, 'it will be too late, now they've had this thing. I'll go and
see him; I'll go down!'
And, sick with nervous anxiety, he sent out for one of the 'new-fangled'
motor-cabs. It might take a long time to run that fellow to ground, and
Goodness knew what decision they might come to after such a shock! 'If I
were a theatrical ass,' he thought, 'I suppose I should be taking a
horse-whip or a pistol or something!' He took instead a bundle of papers
in the case of 'Magentie versus Wake,' intending to read them on the way
down. He did not even open them, but sat quite still, jolted and jarred,
unconscious of the draught down the back of his neck, or the smell of
petrol. He must be guided by the fellow's attitude; the great thing was
to keep his head!
London had already begun to disgorge its workers as he neared Putney
Bridge; the ant-heap was on the move outwards. What a lot of ants, all
with a living to get, holding on by their eyelids in the great scramble!
Perhaps for the first time in his life Soames thought: 'I could let go if
I liked! Nothing could touch me; I could snap my fingers, live as I
wished--enjoy myself!' No! One could not live as he had and just drop
it all--settle down in Capua, to spend the money and reputation he had
made. A man's life was what he possessed and sought to possess. Only
fools thought otherwise--fools, and socialists, and libertines!
The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace. 'Fifteen miles an
hour, I should think!' he mused; 'this'll take people out of town to
live!' and he thought of its bearing on the portions of London owned by
his father--he himself had never taken to that form of investment, the
gambler in him having all the outlet needed in his pictures. And the cab
sped on, down the hill past Wimbledon Common. This interview! Surely a
man of fifty-two with grown-up children, and hung on the line, would not
be reckless. 'He won't want to disgrace the family,' he thought; 'he was
as fond of his father as I am of mine, and they were brothers. That
woman brings destruction--what is it in her? I've never known.' The cab
branched off, along the side of a wood, and he heard a late cuckoo
calling, almost the first he had heard that year. He was now almost
opposite the site he had originally chosen for his house, and which had
been so unceremoniously rejected by Bosinney in favour of his own choice.
He began passing his handkerchief over his face and hands, taking deep
breaths to give him steadiness. 'Keep one's head,' he thought, 'keep
one's head!'
The cab turned in at the drive which might have been his own, and the
sound of music met him. He had forgotten the fellow's daughters.
"I may be out again directly," he said to the driver, "or I may be kept
some time"; and he rang the bell.
Following the maid through the curtains into the inner hall, he felt
relieved that the impact of this meeting would be broken by June or
Holly, whichever was playing in there, so that with complete surprise he
saw Irene at the piano, and Jolyon sitting in an armchair listening.
They both stood up. Blood surged into Soames' brain, and all his
resolution to be guided by this or that left him utterly. The look of
his farmer forbears--dogged Forsytes down by the sea, from 'Superior
Dosset' back--grinned out of his face.
"Very pretty!" he said.
He heard the fellow murmur:
"This is hardly the place--we'll go to the study, if you don't mind."
And they both passed him through the curtain opening. In the little room
to which he followed them, Irene stood by the open window, and the
'fellow' close to her by a big chair. Soames pulled the door to behind
him with a slam; the sound carried him back all those years to the day
when he had shut out Jolyon--shut him out for meddling with his affairs.
"Well," he said, "what have you to say for yourselves?"
The fellow had the effrontery to smile.
"What we have received to-day has taken away your right to ask. I should
imagine you will be glad to have your neck out of chancery."
"Oh!" said Soames; "you think so! I came to tell you that I'll divorce
her with every circumstance of disgrace to you both, unless you swear to
keep clear of each other from now on."
He was astonished at his fluency, because his mind was stammering and his
hands twitching. Neither of them answered; but their faces seemed to him
as if contemptuous.
"Well," he said; "you--Irene?"
Her lips moved, but Jolyon laid his hand on her arm.
"Let her alone!" said Soames furiously. "Irene, will you swear it?"
"No."
"Oh! and you?"
"Still less."
"So then you're guilty, are you?"
"Yes, guilty." It was Irene speaking in that serene voice, with that
unreached air which had maddened him so often; and, carried beyond
himself, he cried:
"You are a devil"
"Go out! Leave this house, or I'll do you an injury."
That fellow to talk of injuries! Did he know how near his throat was to
being scragged?
"A trustee," he said, "embezzling trust property! A thief, stealing his
cousin's wife."
"Call me what you like. You have chosen your part, we have chosen ours.
Go out!"
If he had brought a weapon Soames might have used it at that moment.
"I'll make you pay!" he said.
"I shall be very happy."
At that deadly turning of the meaning of his speech by the son of him who
had nicknamed him 'the man of property,' Soames stood glaring. It was
ridiculous!
There they were, kept from violence by some secret force. No blow
possible, no words to meet the case. But he could not, did not know how
to turn and go away. His eyes fastened on Irene's face--the last time
he would ever see that fatal face--the last time, no doubt!
"You," he said suddenly, "I hope you'll treat him as you treated
me--that's all."
He saw her wince, and with a sensation not quite triumph, not quite
relief, he wrenched open the door, passed out through the hall, and got
into his cab. He lolled against the cushion with his eyes shut. Never
in his life had he been so near to murderous violence, never so thrown
away the restraint which was his second nature. He had a stripped and
naked feeling, as if all virtue had gone out of him--life meaningless,
mind-striking work. Sunlight streamed in on him, but he felt cold. The
scene he had passed through had gone from him already, what was before
him would not materialise, he could catch on to nothing; and he felt
frightened, as if he had been hanging over the edge of a precipice, as if
with another turn of the screw sanity would have failed him. 'I'm not
fit for it,' he thought; 'I mustn't--I'm not fit for it.' The cab sped
on, and in mechanical procession trees, houses, people passed, but had no
significance. 'I feel very queer,' he thought; 'I'll take a Turkish
bath.--I've been very near to something. It won't do.' The cab whirred
its way back over the bridge, up the Fulham Road, along the Park.
"To the Hammam," said Soames.
Curious that on so warm a summer day, heat should be so comforting!
Crossing into the hot room he met George Forsyte coming out, red and
glistening.
"Hallo!" said George; "what are you training for? You've not got much
superfluous."
Buffoon! Soames passed him with his sideway smile. Lying back, rubbing
his skin uneasily for the first signs of perspiration, he thought: 'Let
them laugh! I won't feel anything! I can't stand violence! It's not
good for me!'
CHAPTER VII
A SUMMER NIGHT
Soames left dead silence in the little study. "Thank you for that good
lie," said Jolyon suddenly. "Come out--the air in here is not what it
was!"
In front of a long high southerly wall on which were trained peach-trees
the two walked up and down in silence. Old Jolyon had planted some
cupressus-trees, at intervals, between this grassy terrace and the
dipping meadow full of buttercups and ox-eyed daisies; for twelve years
they had flourished, till their dark spiral shapes had quite a look of
Italy. Birds fluttered softly in the wet shrubbery; the swallows swooped
past, with a steel-blue sheen on their swift little bodies; the grass
felt springy beneath the feet, its green refreshed; butterflies chased
each other. After that painful scene the quiet of Nature was wonderfully
poignant. Under the sun-soaked wall ran a narrow strip of garden-bed
full of mignonette and pansies, and from the bees came a low hum in which
all other sounds were set--the mooing of a cow deprived of her calf, the
calling of a cuckoo from an elm-tree at the bottom of the meadow. Who
would have thought that behind them, within ten miles, London began--that
London of the Forsytes, with its wealth, its misery; its dirt and noise;
its jumbled stone isles of beauty, its grey sea of hideous brick and
stucco? That London which had seen Irene's early tragedy, and Jolyon's
own hard days; that web; that princely workhouse of the possessive
instinct!
And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: 'I hope you'll treat
him as you treated me.' That would depend on himself. Could he trust
himself? Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave of what he
adored? Could beauty be confided to him? Or should she not be just a
visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments which passed, to
return only at her own choosing? 'We are a breed of spoilers!' thought
Jolyon, 'close and greedy; the bloom of life is not safe with us. Let
her come to me as she will, when she will, not at all if she will not.
Let me be just her stand-by, her perching-place; never-never her cage!'
She was the chink of beauty in his dream. Was he to pass through the
curtains now and reach her? Was the rich stuff of many possessions, the
close encircling fabric of the possessive instinct walling in that little
black figure of himself, and Soames--was it to be rent so that he could
pass through into his vision, find there something not of the senses
only? 'Let me,' he thought, 'ah! let me only know how not to grasp and
destroy!'
But at dinner there were plans to be made. To-night she would go back to
the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London. He must instruct
his solicitor--Jack Herring. Not a finger must be raised to hinder the
process of the Law. Damages exemplary, judicial strictures, costs, what
they liked--let it go through at the first moment, so that her neck might
be out of chancery at last! To-morrow he would see Herring--they would
go and see him together. And then--abroad, leaving no doubt, no
difficulty about evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth.
He looked round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more than
a woman was sitting there. The spirit of universal beauty, deep,
mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione, Botticelli, had
known how to capture and transfer to the faces of their women--this
flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her brow, her hair, her lips,
and in her eyes.
'And this is to be mine!' he thought. 'It frightens me!'
After dinner they went out on to the terrace to have coffee. They sat
there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer night come
very slowly on. It was still warm and the air smelled of lime
blossom--early this summer. Two bats were flighting with the faint
mysterious little noise they make. He had placed the chairs in front of
the study window, and moths flew past to visit the discreet light in
there. There was no wind, and not a whisper in the old oak-tree twenty
yards away! The moon rose from behind the copse, nearly full; and the
two lights struggled, till moonlight conquered, changing the colour and
quality of all the garden, stealing along the flagstones, reaching their
feet, climbing up, changing their faces.
"Well," said Jolyon at last, "you'll be tired, dear; we'd better start.
The maid will show you Holly's room," and he rang the study bell. The
maid who came handed him a telegram. Watching her take Irene away, he
thought: 'This must have come an hour or more ago, and she didn't bring
it out to us! That shows! Well, we'll be hung for a sheep soon!' And,
opening the telegram, he read:
"JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.--Your son passed painlessly away on June
20th. Deep sympathy"--some name unknown to him.
He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless. The moon shone in on him; a
moth flew in his face. The first day of all that he had not thought
almost ceaselessly of Jolly. He went blindly towards the window, struck
against the old armchair--his father's--and sank down on to the arm of
it. He sat there huddled' forward, staring into the night. Gone out
like a candle flame; far from home, from love, all by himself, in the
dark! His boy! From a little chap always so good to him--so friendly!
Twenty years old, and cut down like grass--to have no life at all! 'I
didn't really know him,' he thought, 'and he didn't know me; but we loved
each other. It's only love that matters.'
To die out there--lonely--wanting them--wanting home! This seemed to his
Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself. No shelter,
no protection, no love at the last! And all the deeply rooted clanship
in him, the family feeling and essential clinging to his own flesh and
blood which had been so strong in old Jolyon was so strong in all the
Forsytes--felt outraged, cut, and torn by his boy's lonely passing.
Better far if he had died in battle, without time to long for them to
come to him, to call out for them, perhaps, in his delirium!
The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with uncanny
life, so that it seemed watching him--the oak-tree his boy had been so
fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and hurt himself, and
hadn't cried!
The door creaked. He saw Irene come in, pick up the telegram and read
it. He heard the faint rustle of her dress. She sank on her knees close
to him, and he forced himself to smile at her. She stretched up her arms
and drew his head down on her shoulder. The perfume and warmth of her
encircled him; her presence gained slowly his whole being.
CHAPTER VIII
JAMES IN WAITING
Sweated to serenity, Soames dined at the Remove and turned his face
toward Park Lane. His father had been unwell lately. This would have to
be kept from him! Never till that moment had he realised how much the
dread of bringing James' grey hairs down with sorrow to the grave had
counted with him; how intimately it was bound up with his own shrinking
from scandal. His affection for his father, always deep, had increased
of late years with the knowledge that James looked on him as the real
prop of his decline. It seemed pitiful that one who had been so careful
all his life and done so much for the family name--so that it was almost
a byword for solid, wealthy respectability--should at his last gasp have
to see it in all the newspapers. This was like lending a hand to Death,
that final enemy of Forsytes. 'I must tell mother,' he thought, 'and
when it comes on, we must keep the papers from him somehow. He sees
hardly anyone.' Letting himself in with his latchkey, he was beginning
to ascend he stairs when he became conscious of commotion on the
second-floor landing. His mother's voice was saying:
"Now, James, you'll catch cold. Why can't you wait quietly?"
His father's answering
"Wait? I'm always waiting. Why doesn't he come in?"
"You can speak to him to-morrow morning, instead of making a guy of
yourself on the landing."
"He'll go up to bed, I shouldn't wonder. I shan't sleep."
"Now come back to bed, James."
"Um! I might die before to-morrow morning for all you can tell."
"You shan't have to wait till to-morrow morning; I'll go down and bring
him up. Don't fuss!"
"There you go--always so cock-a-hoop. He mayn't come in at all."
"Well, if he doesn't come in you won't catch him by standing out here in
your dressing-gown."
Soames rounded the last bend and came in sight of his father's tall
figure wrapped in a brown silk quilted gown, stooping over the balustrade
above. Light fell on his silvery hair and whiskers, investing his head
with, a sort of halo.
"Here he is!" he heard him say in a voice which sounded injured, and his
mother's comfortable answer from the bedroom door:
"That's all right. Come in, and I'll brush your hair." James extended a
thin, crooked finger, oddly like the beckoning of a skeleton, and passed
through the doorway of his bedroom.
'What is it?' thought Soames. 'What has he got hold of now?'
His father was sitting before the dressing-table sideways to the mirror,
while Emily slowly passed two silver-backed brushes through and through
his hair. She would do this several times a day, for it had on him
something of the effect produced on a cat by scratching between its ears.
"There you are!" he said. "I've been waiting."
Soames stroked his shoulder, and, taking up a silver button-hook,
examined the mark on it.
"Well," he said, "you're looking better."
James shook his head.
"I want to say something. Your mother hasn't heard." He announced
Emily's ignorance of what he hadn't told her, as if it were a grievance.
"Your father's been in a great state all the evening. I'm sure I don't
know what about."
The faint 'whisk-whisk' of the brushes continued the soothing of her
voice.
"No! you know nothing," said James. "Soames can tell me." And, fixing
his grey eyes, in which there was a look of strain, uncomfortable to
watch, on his son, he muttered:
"I'm getting on, Soames. At my age I can't tell. I might die any time.
There'll be a lot of money. There's Rachel and Cicely got no children;
and Val's out there--that chap his father will get hold of all he can.
And somebody'll pick up Imogen, I shouldn't wonder."
Soames listened vaguely--he had heard all this before. Whish-whish! went
the brushes.
"If that's all!" said Emily.
"All!" cried James; "it's nothing. I'm coming to that." And again his
eyes strained pitifully at Soames.
"It's you, my boy," he said suddenly; "you ought to get a divorce."
That word, from those of all lips, was almost too much for Soames'
composure. His eyes reconcentrated themselves quickly on the buttonhook,
and as if in apology James hurried on:
"I don't know what's become of her--they say she's abroad. Your Uncle
Swithin used to admire her--he was a funny fellow." (So he always
alluded to his dead twin-'The Stout and the Lean of it,' they had been
called.) "She wouldn't be alone, I should say." And with that
summing-up of the effect of beauty on human nature, he was silent,
watching his son with eyes doubting as a bird's. Soames, too, was silent.
Whish-whish went the brushes.
"Come, James! Soames knows best. It's his 'business."
"Ah!" said James, and the word came from deep down; "but there's all my
money, and there's his--who's it to go to? And when he dies the name
goes out."
Soames replaced the button-hook on the lace and pink silk of the
dressing-table coverlet.
"The name?" said Emily, "there are all the other Forsytes."
"As if that helped me," muttered James. "I shall be in my grave, and
there'll be nobody, unless he marries again."
"You're quite right," said Soames quietly; "I'm getting a divorce."
James' eyes almost started from his head.
"What?" he cried. "There! nobody tells me anything."
"Well," said Emily, "who would have imagined you wanted it? My dear boy,
that is a surprise, after all these years."
"It'll be a scandal," muttered James, as if to himself; "but I can't help
that. Don't brush so hard. When'll it come on?"
"Before the Long Vacation; it's not defended."
James' lips moved in secret calculation. "I shan't live to see my
grandson," he muttered.
Emily ceased brushing. "Of course you will, James. Soames will be as
quick as he can."
There was a long silence, till James reached out his arm.
"Here! let's have the eau-de-Cologne," and, putting it to his nose, he
moved his forehead in the direction of his son. Soames bent over and
kissed that brow just where the hair began. A relaxing quiver passed
over James' face, as though the wheels of anxiety within were running
down.
"I'll get to bed," he said; "I shan't want to see the papers when that
comes. They're a morbid lot; I can't pay attention to them, I'm too
old."
Queerly affected, Soames went to the door; he heard his father say:
"Here, I'm tired. I'll say a prayer in bed."
And his mother answering
"That's right, James; it'll be ever so much more comfy."
CHAPTER IX
OUT OF THE WEB
On Forsyte 'Change the announcement of Jolly's death, among a batch of
troopers, caused mixed sensation. Strange to read that Jolyon Forsyte
(fifth of the name in direct descent) had died of disease in the service
of his country, and not be able to feel it personally. It revived the
old grudge against his father for having estranged himself. For such was
still the prestige of old Jolyon that the other Forsytes could never
quite feel, as might have been expected, that it was they who had cut off
his descendants for irregularity. The news increased, of course, the
interest and anxiety about Val; but then Val's name was Dartie, and even
if he were killed in battle or got the Victoria Cross, it would not be at
all the same as if his name were Forsyte. Not even casualty or glory to
the Haymans would be really satisfactory. Family pride felt defrauded.
How the rumour arose, then, that 'something very dreadful, my dear,' was
pending, no one, least of all Soames, could tell, secret as he kept
everything. Possibly some eye had seen 'Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte,'
in the cause list; and had added it to 'Irene in Paris with a fair
beard.' Possibly some wall at Park Lane had ears. The fact remained
that it was known--whispered among the old, discussed among the
young--that family pride must soon receive a blow.
Soames, paying one, of his Sunday visits to Timothy's--paying it with the
feeling that after the suit came on he would be paying no more--felt
knowledge in the air as he came in. Nobody, of course, dared speak of it
before him, but each of the four other Forsytes present held their
breath, aware that nothing could prevent Aunt Juley from making them all
uncomfortable. She looked so piteously at Soames, she checked herself on
the point of speech so often, that Aunt Hester excused herself and said
she must go and bathe Timothy's eye--he had a sty coming. Soames,
impassive, slightly supercilious, did not stay long. He went out with a
curse stifled behind his pale, just smiling lips.
Fortunately for the peace of his mind, cruelly tortured by the coming
scandal, he was kept busy day and night with plans for his
retirement--for he had come to that grim conclusion. To go on seeing all
those people who had known him as a 'long-headed chap,' an astute
adviser--after that--no! The fastidiousness and pride which was so
strangely, so inextricably blended in him with possessive obtuseness,
revolted against the thought. He would retire, live privately, go on
buying pictures, make a great name as a collector--after all, his heart
was more in that than it had ever been in Law. In pursuance of this now
fixed resolve, he had to get ready to amalgamate his business with
another firm without letting people know, for that would excite curiosity
and make humiliation cast its shadow before. He had pitched on the firm
of Cuthcott, Holliday and Kingson, two of whom were dead. The full name
after the amalgamation would therefore be Cuthcott, Holliday, Kingson,
Forsyte, Bustard and Forsyte. But after debate as to which of the dead
still had any influence with the living, it was decided to reduce the
title to Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte, of whom Kingson would be the
active and Soames the sleeping partner. For leaving his name, prestige,
and clients behind him, Soames would receive considerable value.
One night, as befitted a man who had arrived at so important a stage of
his career, he made a calculation of what he was worth, and after writing
off liberally for depreciation by the war, found his value to be some
hundred and thirty thousand pounds. At his father's death, which could
not, alas, be delayed much longer, he must come into at least another
fifty thousand, and his yearly expenditure at present just reached two.
Standing among his pictures, he saw before him a future full of bargains
earned by the trained faculty of knowing better than other people.
Selling what was about to decline, keeping what was still going up, and
exercising judicious insight into future taste, he would make a unique
collection, which at his death would pass to the nation under the title
'Forsyte Bequest.'
If the divorce went through, he had determined on his line with Madame
Lamotte. She had, he knew, but one real ambition--to live on her
'renter' in Paris near her grandchildren. He would buy the goodwill of
the Restaurant Bretagne at a fancy price. Madame would live like a
Queen-Mother in Paris on the interest, invested as she would know how.
(Incidentally Soames meant to put a capable manager in her place, and
make the restaurant pay good interest on his money. There were great
possibilities in Soho.) On Annette he would promise to settle fifteen
thousand pounds (whether designedly or not), precisely the sum old Jolyon
had settled on 'that woman.'
A letter from Jolyon's solicitor to his own had disclosed the fact that
'those two' were in Italy. And an opportunity had been duly given for
noting that they had first stayed at an hotel in London. The matter was
clear as daylight, and would be disposed of in half an hour or so; but
during that half-hour he, Soames, would go down to hell; and after that
half-hour all bearers of the Forsyte name would feel the bloom was off
the rose. He had no illusions like Shakespeare that roses by any other
name would smell as sweet. The name was a possession, a concrete,
unstained piece of property, the value of which would be reduced some
twenty per cent. at least. Unless it were Roger, who had once refused to
stand for Parliament, and--oh, irony!--Jolyon, hung on the line, there
had never been a distinguished Forsyte. But that very lack of
distinction was the name's greatest asset. It was a private name,
intensely individual, and his own property; it had never been exploited
for good or evil by intrusive report. He and each member of his family
owned it wholly, sanely, secretly, without any more interference from the
public than had been necessitated by their births, their marriages, their
deaths. And during these weeks of waiting and preparing to drop the Law,
he conceived for that Law a bitter distaste, so deeply did he resent its
coming violation of his name, forced on him by the need he felt to
perpetuate that name in a lawful manner. The monstrous injustice of the
whole thing excited in him a perpetual suppressed fury. He had asked no
better than to live in spotless domesticity, and now he must go into the
witness box, after all these futile, barren years, and proclaim his
failure to keep his wife--incur the pity, the amusement, the contempt of
his kind. It was all upside down. She and that fellow ought to be the
sufferers, and they--were in Italy! In these weeks the Law he had served
so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian of all property,
seemed to him quite pitiful. What could be more insane than to tell a
man that he owned his wife, and punish him when someone unlawfully took
her away from him? Did the Law not know that a man's name was to him the
apple of his eye, that it was far harder to be regarded as cuckold than
as seducer? He actually envied Jolyon the reputation of succeeding where
he, Soames, had failed. The question of damages worried him, too. He
wanted to make that fellow suffer, but he remembered his cousin's words,
"I shall be very happy," with the uneasy feeling that to claim damages
would make not Jolyon but himself suffer; he felt uncannily that Jolyon
would rather like to pay them--the chap was so loose. Besides, to claim
damages was not the thing to do. The claim, indeed, had been made almost
mechanically; and as the hour drew near Soames saw in it just another
dodge of this insensitive and topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so
that people might sneer and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for
her!" And he gave instructions that his Counsel should state that the
money would be given to a Home for Fallen Women. He was a long time
hitting off exactly the right charity; but, having pitched on it, he used
to wake up in the night and think: 'It won't do, too lurid; it'll draw
attention. Something quieter--better taste.' He did not care for dogs,
or he would have named them; and it was in desperation at last--for his
knowledge of charities was limited--that he decided on the blind. That
could not be inappropriate, and it would make the Jury assess the damages
high.
A good many suits were dropping out of the list, which happened to be
exceptionally thin that summer, so that his case would be reached before
August. As the day grew nearer, Winifred was his only comfort. She
showed the fellow-feeling of one who had been through the mill, and was
the 'femme-sole' in whom he confided, well knowing that she would not let
Dartie into her confidence. That ruffian would be only too rejoiced! At
the end of July, on the afternoon before the case, he went in to see her.
They had not yet been able to leave town, because Dartie had already
spent their summer holiday, and Winifred dared not go to her father for
more money while he was waiting not to be told anything about this affair
of Soames.
Soames found her with a letter in her hand.
"That from Val," he asked gloomily. "What does he say?"
"He says he's married," said Winifred.
"Whom to, for Goodness' sake?"
Winifred looked up at him.
"To Holly Forsyte, Jolyon's daughter."
"What?"
"He got leave and did it. I didn't even know he knew her. Awkward, isn't
it?"
Soames uttered a short laugh at that characteristic minimisation.
"Awkward! Well, I don't suppose they'll hear about this till they come
back. They'd better stay out there. That fellow will give her money."
"But I want Val back," said Winifred almost piteously; "I miss him, he
helps me to get on."
"I know," murmured Soames. "How's Dartie behaving now?"
"It might be worse; but it's always money. Would you like me to come
down to the Court to-morrow, Soames?"
Soames stretched out his hand for hers. The gesture so betrayed the
loneliness in him that she pressed it between her two.
"Never mind, old boy. You'll feel ever so much better when it's all
over."
"I don't know what I've done," said Soames huskily; "I never have. It's
all upside down. I was fond of her; I've always been."
Winifred saw a drop of blood ooze out of his lip, and the sight stirred
her profoundly.
"Of course," she said, "it's been too bad of her all along! But what
shall I do about this marriage of Val's, Soames? I don't know how to
write to him, with this coming on. You've seen that child. Is she
pretty?"
"Yes, she's pretty," said Soames. "Dark--lady-like enough."
'That doesn't sound so bad,' thought Winifred. 'Jolyon had style.'
"It is a coil," she said. "What will father say?
"Mustn't be told," said Soames. "The war'll soon be over now, you'd
better let Val take to farming out there."
It was tantamount to saying that his nephew was lost.
"I haven't told Monty," Winifred murmured desolately.
The case was reached before noon next day, and was over in little more
than half an hour. Soames--pale, spruce, sad-eyed in the
witness-box--had suffered so much beforehand that he took it all like one
dead. The moment the decree nisi was pronounced he left the Courts of
Justice.
Four hours until he became public property! 'Solicitor's divorce suit!'
A surly, dogged anger replaced that dead feeling within him. 'Damn them
all!' he thought; 'I won't run away. I'll act as if nothing had
happened.' And in the sweltering heat of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill
he walked all the way to his City Club, lunched, and went back to his
office. He worked there stolidly throughout the afternoon.
On his way out he saw that his clerks knew, and answered their
involuntary glances with a look so sardonic that they were immediately
withdrawn. In front of St. Paul's, he stopped to buy the most
gentlemanly of the evening papers. Yes! there he was! 'Well-known
solicitor's divorce. Cousin co-respondent. Damages given to the
blind'--so, they had got that in! At every other face, he thought: 'I
wonder if you know!' And suddenly he felt queer, as if something were
racing round in his head.
What was this? He was letting it get hold of him! He mustn't! He would
be ill. He mustn't think! He would get down to the river and row about,
and fish. 'I'm not going to be laid up,' he thought.
It flashed across him that he had something of importance to do before he
went out of town. Madame Lamotte! He must explain the Law. Another six
months before he was really free! Only he did not want to see Annette!
And he passed his hand over the top of his head--it was very hot.
He branched off through Covent Garden. On this sultry day of late July
the garbage-tainted air of the old market offended him, and Soho seemed
more than ever the disenchanted home of rapscallionism. Alone, the
Restaurant Bretagne, neat, daintily painted, with its blue tubs and the
dwarf trees therein, retained an aloof and Frenchified self-respect. It
was the slack hour, and pale trim waitresses were preparing the little
tables for dinner. Soames went through into the private part. To his
discomfiture Annette answered his knock. She, too, looked pale and
dragged down by the heat.
"You are quite a stranger," she said languidly.
Soames smiled.
"I haven't wished to be; I've been busy."
"Where's your mother, Annette? I've got some news for her."
"Mother is not in."
It seemed to Soames that she looked at him in a queer way. What did she
know? How much had her mother told her? The worry of trying to make
that out gave him an alarming feeling in the head. He gripped the edge of
the table, and dizzily saw Annette come forward, her eyes clear with
surprise. He shut his own and said:
"It's all right. I've had a touch of the sun, I think." The sun! What
he had was a touch of 'darkness! Annette's voice, French and composed,
said:
"Sit down, it will pass, then." Her hand pressed his shoulder, and
Soames sank into a chair. When the dark feeling dispersed, and he opened
his eyes, she was looking down at him. What an inscrutable and odd
expression for a girl of twenty!
"Do you feel better?"
"It's nothing," said Soames. Instinct told him that to be feeble before
her was not helping him--age was enough handicap without that.
Will-power was his fortune with Annette, he had lost ground these latter
months from indecision--he could not afford to lose any more. He got up,
and said:
"I'll write to your mother. I'm going down to my river house for a long
holiday. I want you both to come there presently and stay. It's just at
its best. You will, won't you?"
"It will be veree nice." A pretty little roll of that 'r' but no
enthusiasm. And rather sadly he added:
"You're feeling the heat; too, aren't you, Annette? It'll do you good to
be on the river. Good-night." Annette swayed forward. There was a sort
of compunction in the movement.
"Are you fit to go? Shall I give you some coffee?"
"No," said Soames firmly. "Give me your hand."
She held out her hand, and Soames raised it to his lips. When he looked
up, her face wore again that strange expression. 'I can't tell,' he
thought, as he went out; 'but I mustn't think--I mustn't worry:
But worry he did, walking toward Pall Mall. English, not of her
religion, middle-aged, scarred as it were by domestic tragedy, what had
he to give her? Only wealth, social position, leisure, admiration! It
was much, but was it enough for a beautiful girl of twenty? He felt so
ignorant about Annette. He had, too, a curious fear of the French nature
of her mother and herself. They knew so well what they wanted. They
were almost Forsytes. They would never grasp a shadow and miss a
substance.
The tremendous effort it was to write a simple note to Madame Lamotte
when he reached his Club warned him still further that he was at the end
of his tether.
"MY DEAR MADAME (he said),
"You will see by the enclosed newspaper cutting that I obtained my decree
of divorce to-day. By the English Law I shall not, however, be free to
marry again till the decree is confirmed six months hence. In the
meanwhile I have the honor to ask to be considered a formal suitor for
the hand of your daughter. I shall write again in a few days and beg you
both to come and stay at my river house.
"I am, dear Madame,
"Sincerely yours,
"SOAMES FORSYTE."
Having sealed and posted this letter, he went into the dining-room. Three
mouthfuls of soup convinced him that he could not eat; and, causing a cab
to be summoned, he drove to Paddington Station and took the first train
to Reading. He reached his house just as the sun went down, and wandered
out on to the lawn. The air was drenched with the scent of pinks and
picotees in his flower-borders. A stealing coolness came off the river.
Rest-peace! Let a poor fellow rest! Let not worry and shame and anger
chase like evil night-birds in his head! Like those doves perched
half-sleeping on their dovecot, like the furry creatures in the woods on
the far side, and the simple folk in their cottages, like the trees and
the river itself, whitening fast in twilight, like the darkening
cornflower-blue sky where stars were coming up--let him cease from
himself, and rest!
CHAPTER X
PASSING OF AN AGE
The marriage of Soames with Annette took place in Paris on the last day
of January, 1901, with such privacy that not even Emily was told until it
was accomplished.
The day after the wedding he brought her to one of those quiet hotels in
London where greater expense can be incurred for less result than
anywhere else under heaven. Her beauty in the best Parisian frocks was
giving him more satisfaction than if he had collected a perfect bit of
china, or a jewel of a picture; he looked forward to the moment when he
would exhibit her in Park Lane, in Green Street, and at Timothy's.
If some one had asked him in those days, "In confidence--are you in love
with this girl?" he would have replied: "In love? What is love? If you
mean do I feel to her as I did towards Irene in those old days when I
first met her and she would not have me; when I sighed and starved after
her and couldn't rest a minute until she yielded--no! If you mean do I
admire her youth and prettiness, do my senses ache a little when I see
her moving about--yes! Do I think she will keep me straight, make me a
creditable wife and a good mother for my children?--again, yes!"
"What more do I need? and what more do three-quarters of the women who
are married get from the men who marry them?" And if the enquirer had
pursued his query, "And do you think it was fair to have tempted this
girl to give herself to you for life unless you have really touched her
heart?" he would have answered: "The French see these things differently
from us. They look at marriage from the point of view of establishments
and children; and, from my own experience, I am not at all sure that
theirs is not the sensible view. I shall not expect this time more than
I can get, or she can give. Years hence I shouldn't be surprised if I
have trouble with her; but I shall be getting old, I shall have children
by then. I shall shut my eyes. I have had my great passion; hers is
perhaps to come--I don't suppose it will be for me. I offer her a great
deal, and I don't expect much in return, except children, or at least a
son. But one thing I am sure of--she has very good sense!"
And if, insatiate, the enquirer had gone on, "You do not look, then, for
spiritual union in this marriage?" Soames would have lifted his sideway
smile, and rejoined: "That's as it may be. If I get satisfaction for my
senses, perpetuation of myself; good taste and good humour in the house;
it is all I can expect at my age. I am not likely to be going out of my
way towards any far-fetched sentimentalism." Whereon, the enquirer must
in good taste have ceased enquiry.
The Queen was dead, and the air of the greatest city upon earth grey with
unshed tears. Fur-coated and top-hatted, with Annette beside him in dark
furs, Soames crossed Park Lane on the morning of the funeral procession,
to the rails in Hyde Park. Little moved though he ever was by public
matters, this event, supremely symbolical, this summing-up of a long rich
period, impressed his fancy. In '37, when she came to the throne,
'Superior Dosset' was still building houses to make London hideous; and
James, a stripling of twenty-six, just laying the foundations of his
practice in the Law. Coaches still ran; men wore stocks, shaved their
upper lips, ate oysters out of barrels; 'tigers' swung behind cabriolets;
women said, 'La!' and owned no property; there were manners in the land,
and pigsties for the poor; unhappy devils were hanged for little crimes,
and Dickens had but just begun to write. Well-nigh two generations had
slipped by--of steamboats, railways, telegraphs, bicycles, electric
light, telephones, and now these motorcars--of such accumulated wealth,
that eight per cent. had become three, and Forsytes were numbered by the
thousand! Morals had changed, manners had changed, men had become
monkeys twice-removed, God had become Mammon--Mammon so respectable as to
deceive himself: Sixty-four years that favoured property, and had made
the upper middle class; buttressed, chiselled, polished it, till it was
almost indistinguishable in manners, morals, speech, appearance, habit,
and soul from the nobility. An epoch which had gilded individual liberty
so that if a man had money, he was free in law and fact, and if he had
not money he was free in law and not in fact. An era which had canonised
hypocrisy, so that to seem to be respectable was to be. A great Age,
whose transmuting influence nothing had escaped save the nature of man
and the nature of the Universe.
And to witness the passing of this Age, London--its pet and fancy--was
pouring forth her citizens through every gate into Hyde Park, hub of
Victorianism, happy hunting-ground of Forsytes. Under the grey heavens,
whose drizzle just kept off, the dark concourse gathered to see the show.
The 'good old' Queen, full of years and virtue, had emerged from her
seclusion for the last time to make a London holiday. From Houndsditch,
Acton, Ealing, Hampstead, Islington, and Bethnal Green; from Hackney,
Hornsey, Leytonstone, Battersea, and Fulham; and from those green
pastures where Forsytes flourish--Mayfair and Kensington, St. James' and
Belgravia, Bayswater and Chelsea and the Regent's Park, the people
swarmed down on to the roads where death would presently pass with dusky
pomp and pageantry. Never again would a Queen reign so long, or people
have a chance to see so much history buried for their money. A pity the
war dragged on, and that the Wreath of Victory could not be laid upon her
coffin! All else would be there to follow and commemorate--soldiers,
sailors, foreign princes, half-masted bunting, tolling bells, and above
all the surging, great, dark-coated crowd, with perhaps a simple sadness
here and there deep in hearts beneath black clothes put on by regulation.
After all, more than a Queen was going to her rest, a woman who had
braved sorrow, lived well and wisely according to her lights.
Out in the crowd against the railings, with his arm hooked in Annette's,
Soames waited. Yes! the Age was passing! What with this Trade Unionism,
and Labour fellows in the House of Commons, with continental fiction, and
something in the general feel of everything, not to be expressed in
words, things were very different; he recalled the crowd on Mafeking
night, and George Forsyte saying: "They're all socialists, they want our
goods." Like James, Soames didn't know, he couldn't tell--with Edward on
the throne! Things would never be as safe again as under good old Viccy!
Convulsively he pressed his young wife's arm. There, at any rate, was
something substantially his own, domestically certain again at last;
something which made property worth while--a real thing once more.
Pressed close against her and trying to ward others off, Soames was
content. The crowd swayed round them, ate sandwiches and dropped crumbs;
boys who had climbed the plane-trees chattered above like monkeys, threw
twigs and orange-peel. It was past time; they should be coming soon!
And, suddenly, a little behind them to the left, he saw a tallish man
with a soft hat and short grizzling beard, and a tallish woman in a
little round fur cap and veil. Jolyon and Irene talking, smiling at each
other, close together like Annette and himself! They had not seen him;
and stealthily, with a very queer feeling in his heart, Soames watched
those two. They looked happy! What had they come here for--inherently
illicit creatures, rebels from the Victorian ideal? What business had
they in this crowd? Each of them twice exiled by morality--making a
boast, as it were, of love and laxity! He watched them fascinated;
admitting grudgingly even with his arm thrust through Annette's
that--that she--Irene--No! he would not admit it; and he turned his eyes
away. He would not see them, and let the old bitterness, the old longing
rise up within him! And then Annette turned to him and said: "Those two
people, Soames; they know you, I am sure. Who are they?"
Soames nosed sideways.
"What people?"
"There, you see them; just turning away. They know you."
"No," Soames answered; "a mistake, my dear."
"A lovely face! And how she walk! Elle est tres distinguee!"
Soames looked then. Into his life, out of his life she had walked like
that swaying and erect, remote, unseizable; ever eluding the contact of
his soul! He turned abruptly from that receding vision of the past.
"You'd better attend," he said, "they're coming now!"
But while he stood, grasping her arm, seemingly intent on the head of the
procession, he was quivering with the sense of always missing something,
with instinctive regret that he had not got them both.
Slow came the music and the march, till, in silence, the long line wound
in through the Park gate. He heard Annette whisper, "How sad it is and
beautiful!" felt the clutch of her hand as she stood up on tiptoe; and
the crowd's emotion gripped him. There it was--the bier of the Queen,
coffin of the Age slow passing! And as it went by there came a murmuring
groan from all the long line of those who watched, a sound such as Soames
had never heard, so unconscious, primitive, deep and wild, that neither
he nor any knew whether they had joined in uttering it. Strange sound,
indeed! Tribute of an Age to its own death.... Ah! Ah!.... The hold
on life had slipped. That which had seemed eternal was gone! The
Queen--God bless her!
It moved on with the bier, that travelling groan, as a fire moves on over
grass in a thin line; it kept step, and marched alongside down the dense
crowds mile after mile. It was a human sound, and yet inhuman, pushed
out by animal subconsciousness, by intimate knowledge of universal death
and change. None of us--none of us can hold on for ever!
It left silence for a little--a very little time, till tongues began,
eager to retrieve interest in the show. Soames lingered just long enough
to gratify Annette, then took her out of the Park to lunch at his
father's in Park Lane....
James had spent the morning gazing out of his bedroom window. The last
show he would see, last of so many! So she was gone! Well, she was
getting an old woman. Swithin and he had seen her crowned--slim slip of
a girl, not so old as Imogen! She had got very stout of late. Jolyon
and he had seen her married to that German chap, her husband--he had
turned out all right before he died, and left her with that son of his.
And he remembered the many evenings he and his brothers and their cronies
had wagged their heads over their wine and walnuts and that fellow in his
salad days. And now he had come to the throne. They said he had
steadied down--he didn't know--couldn't tell! He'd make the money fly
still, he shouldn't wonder. What a lot of people out there! It didn't
seem so very long since he and Swithin stood in the crowd outside
Westminster Abbey when she was crowned, and Swithin had taken him to
Cremorne afterwards--racketty chap, Swithin; no, it didn't seem much
longer ago than Jubilee Year, when he had joined with Roger in renting a
balcony in Piccadilly.
Jolyon, Swithin, Roger all gone, and he would be ninety in August! And
there was Soames married again to a French girl. The French were a queer
lot, but they made good mothers, he had heard. Things changed! They
said this German Emperor was here for the funeral, his telegram to old
Kruger had been in shocking taste. He should not be surprised if that
chap made trouble some day. Change! H'm! Well, they must look after
themselves when he was gone: he didn't know where he'd be! And now Emily
had asked Dartie to lunch, with Winifred and Imogen, to meet Soames'
wife--she was always doing something. And there was Irene living with
that fellow Jolyon, they said. He'd marry her now, he supposed.
'My brother Jolyon,' he thought, 'what would he have said to it all?' And
somehow the utter impossibility of knowing what his elder brother, once
so looked up to, would have said, so worried James that he got up from
his chair by the window, and began slowly, feebly to pace the room.
'She was a pretty thing, too,' he thought; 'I was fond of her. Perhaps
Soames didn't suit her--I don't know--I can't tell. We never had any
trouble with our wives.' Women had changed everything had changed! And
now the Queen was dead--well, there it was! A movement in the crowd
brought him to a standstill at the window, his nose touching the pane and
whitening from the chill of it. They had got her as far as Hyde Park
Corner--they were passing now! Why didn't Emily come up here where she
could see, instead of fussing about lunch. He missed her at that
moment--missed her! Through the bare branches of the plane-trees he could
just see the procession, could see the hats coming off the people's
heads--a lot of them would catch colds, he shouldn't wonder! A voice
behind him said:
"You've got a capital view here, James!"
"There you are!" muttered James; "why didn't you come before? You might
have missed it!"
And he was silent, staring with all his might.
"What's the noise?" he asked suddenly.
"There's no noise," returned Emily; "what are you thinking of?--they
wouldn't cheer."
"I can hear it."
"Nonsense, James!"
No sound came through those double panes; what James heard was the
groaning in his own heart at sight of his Age passing.
"Don't you ever tell me where I'm buried," he said suddenly. "I shan't
want to know." And he turned from the window. There she went, the old
Queen; she'd had a lot of anxiety--she'd be glad to be out of it, he
should think!
Emily took up the hair-brushes.
"There'll be just time to brush your head," she said, "before they come.
You must look your best, James."
"Ah!" muttered James; "they say she's pretty."
The meeting with his new daughter-in-law took place in the dining-room.
James was seated by the fire when she was brought in. He placed, his
hands on the arms of the chair and slowly raised himself. Stooping and
immaculate in his frock-coat, thin as a line in Euclid, he received
Annette's hand in his; and the anxious eyes of his furrowed face, which
had lost its colour now, doubted above her. A little warmth came into
them and into his cheeks, refracted from her bloom.
"How are you?" he said. "You've been to see the Queen, I suppose? Did
you have a good crossing?"
In this way he greeted her from whom he hoped for a grandson of his name.
Gazing at him, so old, thin, white, and spotless, Annette murmured
something in French which James did not understand.
"Yes, yes," he said, "you want your lunch, I expect. Soames, ring the
bell; we won't wait for that chap Dartie." But just then they arrived.
Dartie had refused to go out of his way to see 'the old girl.' With an
early cocktail beside him, he had taken a 'squint' from the smoking-room
of the Iseeum, so that Winifred and Imogen had been obliged to come back
from the Park to fetch him thence. His brown eyes rested on Annette with
a stare of almost startled satisfaction. The second beauty that fellow
Soames had picked up! What women could see in him! Well, she would play
him the same trick as the other, no doubt; but in the meantime he was a
lucky devil! And he brushed up his moustache, having in nine months of
Green Street domesticity regained almost all his flesh and his assurance.
Despite the comfortable efforts of Emily, Winifred's composure, Imogen's
enquiring friendliness, Dartie's showing-off, and James' solicitude about
her food, it was not, Soames felt, a successful lunch for his bride. He
took her away very soon.
"That Monsieur Dartie," said Annette in the cab, "je n'aime pas ce
type-la!"
"No, by George!" said Soames.
"Your sister is veree amiable, and the girl is pretty. Your father is
veree old. I think your mother has trouble with him; I should not like
to be her."
Soames nodded at the shrewdness, the clear hard judgment in his young
wife; but it disquieted him a little. The thought may have just flashed
through him, too: 'When I'm eighty she'll be fifty-five, having trouble
with me!'
"There's just one other house of my relations I must take you to," he
said; "you'll find it funny, but we must get it over; and then we'll dine
and go to the theatre."
In this way he prepared her for Timothy's. But Timothy's was different.
They were delighted to see dear Soames after this long long time; and so
this was Annette!
"You are so pretty, my dear; almost too young and pretty for dear Soames,
aren't you? But he's very attentive and careful--such a good hush...."
Aunt Juley checked herself, and placed her lips just under each of
Annette's eyes--she afterwards described them to Francie, who dropped in,
as: "Cornflower-blue, so pretty, I quite wanted to kiss them. I must say
dear Soames is a perfect connoisseur. In her French way, and not so very
French either, I think she's as pretty--though not so distinguished, not
so alluring--as Irene. Because she was alluring, wasn't she? with that
white skin and those dark eyes, and that hair, couleur de--what was it?
I always forget."
"Feuille morte," Francie prompted.
"Of course, dead leaves--so strange. I remember when I was a girl,
before we came to London, we had a foxhound puppy--to 'walk' it was
called then; it had a tan top to its head and a white chest, and
beautiful dark brown eyes, and it was a lady."
"Yes, auntie," said Francie, "but I don't see the connection."
"Oh!" replied Aunt Juley, rather flustered, "it was so alluring, and her
eyes and hair, you know...." She was silent, as if surprised in some
indelicacy. "Feuille morte," she added suddenly; "Hester--do remember
that!"....
Considerable debate took place between the two sisters whether Timothy
should or should not be summoned to see Annette.
"Oh, don't bother!" said Soames.
"But it's no trouble, only of course Annette's being French might upset
him a little. He was so scared about Fashoda. I think perhaps we had
better not run the risk, Hester. It's nice to have her all to ourselves,
isn't it? And how are you, Soames? Have you quite got over your...."
Hester interposed hurriedly:
"What do you think of London, Annette?"
Soames, disquieted, awaited the reply. It came, sensible, composed: "Oh!
I know London. I have visited before."
He had never ventured to speak to her on the subject of the restaurant.
The French had different notions about gentility, and to shrink from
connection with it might seem to her ridiculous; he had waited to be
married before mentioning it; and now he wished he hadn't.
"And what part do you know best?" said Aunt Juley.
"Soho," said Annette simply.
Soames snapped his jaw.
"Soho?" repeated Aunt Juley; "Soho?"
'That'll go round the family,' thought Soames.
"It's very French, and interesting," he said.
"Yes," murmured Aunt Juley, "your Uncle Roger had some houses there once;
he was always having to turn the tenants out, I remember."
Soames changed the subject to Mapledurham.
"Of course," said Aunt Juley, "you will be going down there soon to
settle in. We are all so looking forward to the time when Annette has a
dear little...."
"Juley!" cried Aunt Hester desperately, "ring tea!"
Soames dared not wait for tea, and took Annette away.
"I shouldn't mention Soho if I were you," he said in the cab. "It's
rather a shady part of London; and you're altogether above that
restaurant business now; I mean," he added, "I want you to know nice
people, and the English are fearful snobs."
Annette's clear eyes opened; a little smile came on her lips.
"Yes?" she said.
'H'm!' thought Soames, 'that's meant for me!' and he looked at her hard.
'She's got good business instincts,' he thought. 'I must make her grasp
it once for all!'
"Look here, Annette! it's very simple, only it wants understanding. Our
professional and leisured classes still think themselves a cut above our
business classes, except of course the very rich. It may be stupid, but
there it is, you see. It isn't advisable in England to let people know
that you ran a restaurant or kept a shop or were in any kind of trade.
It may have been extremely creditable, but it puts a sort of label on
you; you don't have such a good time, or meet such nice people--that's
all."
"I see," said Annette; "it is the same in France."
"Oh!" murmured Soames, at once relieved and taken aback. "Of course,
class is everything, really."
"Yes," said Annette; "comme vous etes sage."
'That's all right,' thought Soames, watching her lips, 'only she's pretty
cynical.' His knowledge of French was not yet such as to make him grieve
that she had not said 'tu.' He slipped his arm round her, and murmured
with an effort:
"Et vous etes ma belle femme."
Annette went off into a little fit of laughter.
"Oh, non!" she said. "Oh, non! ne parlez pas Francais, Soames. What is
that old lady, your aunt, looking forward to?"
Soames bit his lip. "God knows!" he said; "she's always saying
something;" but he knew better than God.
CHAPTER XI
SUSPENDED ANIMATION
The war dragged on. Nicholas had been heard to say that it would cost
three hundred millions if it cost a penny before they'd done with it!
The income-tax was seriously threatened. Still, there would be South
Africa for their money, once for all. And though the possessive instinct
felt badly shaken at three o'clock in the morning, it recovered by
breakfast-time with the recollection that one gets nothing in this world
without paying for it. So, on the whole, people went about their
business much as if there were no war, no concentration camps, no
slippery de Wet, no feeling on the Continent, no anything unpleasant.
Indeed, the attitude of the nation was typified by Timothy's map, whose
animation was suspended--for Timothy no longer moved the flags, and they
could not move themselves, not even backwards and forwards as they should
have done.
Suspended animation went further; it invaded Forsyte 'Change, and
produced a general uncertainty as to what was going to happen next. The
announcement in the marriage column of The Times, 'Jolyon Forsyte to
Irene, only daughter of the late Professor Heron,' had occasioned doubt
whether Irene had been justly described. And yet, on the whole, relief
was felt that she had not been entered as 'Irene, late the wife,' or 'the
divorced wife,' 'of Soames Forsyte.' Altogether, there had been a kind
of sublimity from the first about the way the family had taken that
'affair.' As James had phrased it, 'There it was!' No use to fuss!
Nothing to be had out of admitting that it had been a 'nasty jar'--in the
phraseology of the day.
But what would happen now that both Soames and Jolyon were married again?
That was very intriguing. George was known to have laid Eustace six to
four on a little Jolyon before a little Soames. George was so droll! It
was rumoured, too, that he and Dartie had a bet as to whether James would
attain the age of ninety, though which of them had backed James no one
knew.
Early in May, Winifred came round to say that Val had been wounded in the
leg by a spent bullet, and was to be discharged. His wife was nursing
him. He would have a little limp--nothing to speak of. He wanted his
grandfather to buy him a farm out there where he could breed horses. Her
father was giving Holly eight hundred a year, so they could be quite
comfortable, because his grandfather would give Val five, he had said;
but as to the farm, he didn't know--couldn't tell: he didn't want Val to
go throwing away his money.
"But you know," said Winifred, "he must do something."
Aunt Hester thought that perhaps his dear grandfather was wise, because
if he didn't buy a farm it couldn't turn out badly.
"But Val loves horses," said Winifred. "It'd be such an occupation for
him."
Aunt Juley thought that horses were very uncertain, had not Montague
found them so?
"Val's different," said Winifred; "he takes after me."
Aunt Juley was sure that dear Val was very clever. "I always remember,"
she added, "how he gave his bad penny to a beggar. His dear grandfather
was so pleased. He thought it showed such presence of mind. I remember
his saying that he ought to go into the Navy."
Aunt Hester chimed in: Did not Winifred think that it was much better for
the young people to be secure and not run any risk at their age?
"Well," said Winifred, "if they were in London, perhaps; in London it's
amusing to do nothing. But out there, of course, he'll simply get bored
to death."
Aunt Hester thought that it would be nice for him to work, if he were
quite sure not to lose by it. It was not as if they had no money.
Timothy, of course, had done so well by retiring. Aunt Juley wanted to
know what Montague had said.
Winifred did not tell her, for Montague had merely remarked: "Wait till
the old man dies."
At this moment Francie was announced. Her eyes were brimming with a
smile.
"Well," she said, "what do you think of it?"
"Of what, dear?"
"In The Times this morning."
"We haven't seen it, we always read it after dinner; Timothy has it till
then."
Francie rolled her eyes.
"Do you think you ought to tell us?" said Aunt Juley. "What was it?"
"Irene's had a son at Robin Hill."
Aunt Juley drew in her breath. "But," she said, "they were only married
in March!"
"Yes, Auntie; isn't it interesting?"
"Well," said Winifred, "I'm glad. I was sorry for Jolyon losing his boy.
It might have been Val."
Aunt Juley seemed to go into a sort of dream. "I wonder," she murmured,
"what dear Soames will think? He has so wanted to have a son himself. A
little bird has always told me that."
"Well," said Winifred, "he's going to--bar accidents."
Gladness trickled out of Aunt Juley's eyes.
"How delightful!" she said. "When?"
"November."
Such a lucky month! But she did wish it could be sooner. It was a long
time for James to wait, at his age!
To wait! They dreaded it for James, but they were used to it themselves.
Indeed, it was their great distraction. To wait! For The Times to read;
for one or other of their nieces or nephews to come in and cheer them up;
for news of Nicholas' health; for that decision of Christopher's about
going on the stage; for information concerning the mine of Mrs.
MacAnder's nephew; for the doctor to come about Hester's inclination to
wake up early in the morning; for books from the library which were
always out; for Timothy to have a cold; for a nice quiet warm day, not
too hot, when they could take a turn in Kensington Gardens. To wait, one
on each side of the hearth in the drawing-room, for the clock between
them to strike; their thin, veined, knuckled hands plying
knitting-needles and crochet-hooks, their hair ordered to stop--like
Canute's waves--from any further advance in colour. To wait in their
black silks or satins for the Court to say that Hester might wear her
dark green, and Juley her darker maroon. To wait, slowly turning over
and over, in their old minds the little joys and sorrows, events and
expectancies, of their little family world, as cows chew patient cuds in
a familiar field. And this new event was so well worth waiting for.
Soames had always been their pet, with his tendency to give them
pictures, and his almost weekly visits which they missed so much, and his
need for their sympathy evoked by the wreck of his first marriage. This
new event--the birth of an heir to Soames--was so important for him, and
for his dear father, too, that James might not have to die without some
certainty about things. James did so dislike uncertainty; and with
Montague, of course, he could not feel really satisfied to leave no
grand-children but the young Darties. After all, one's own name did
count! And as James' ninetieth birthday neared they wondered what
precautions he was taking. He would be the first of the Forsytes to
reach that age, and set, as it were, a new standard in holding on to
life. That was so important, they felt, at their ages eighty-seven and
eighty-five; though they did not want to think of themselves when they
had Timothy, who was not yet eighty-two, to think of. There was, of
course, a better world. 'In my Father's house are many mansions' was one
of Aunt Juley's favourite sayings--it always comforted her, with its
suggestion of house property, which had made the fortune of dear Roger.
The Bible was, indeed, a great resource, and on very fine Sundays there
was church in the morning; and sometimes Juley would steal into Timothy's
study when she was sure he was out, and just put an open New Testament
casually among the books on his little table--he was a great reader, of
course, having been a publisher. But she had noticed that Timothy was
always cross at dinner afterwards. And Smither had told her more than
once that she had picked books off the floor in doing the room. Still,
with all that, they did feel that heaven could not be quite so cosy as
the rooms in which they and Timothy had been waiting so long. Aunt
Hester, especially, could not bear the thought of the exertion. Any
change, or rather the thought of a change--for there never was
any--always upset her very much. Aunt Juley, who had more spirit,
sometimes thought it would be quite exciting; she had so enjoyed that
visit to Brighton the year dear Susan died. But then Brighton one knew
was nice, and it was so difficult to tell what heaven would be like, so
on the whole she was more than content to wait.
On the morning of James' birthday, August the 5th, they felt
extraordinary animation, and little notes passed between them by the hand
of Smither while they were having breakfast in their beds. Smither must
go round and take their love and little presents and find out how Mr.
James was, and whether he had passed a good night with all the
excitement. And on the way back would Smither call in at Green
Street--it was a little out of her way, but she could take the bus up
Bond Street afterwards; it would be a nice little change for her--and ask
dear Mrs. Dartie to be sure and look in before she went out of town.
All this Smither did--an undeniable servant trained many years ago under
Aunt Ann to a perfection not now procurable. Mr. James, so Mrs. James
said, had passed an excellent night, he sent his love; Mrs. James had
said he was very funny and had complained that he didn't know what all
the fuss was about. Oh! and Mrs. Dartie sent her love, and she would
come to tea.
Aunts Juley and Hester, rather hurt that their presents had not received
special mention--they forgot every year that James could not bear to
receive presents, 'throwing away their money on him,' as he always called
it--were 'delighted'; it showed that James was in good spirits, and that
was so important for him. And they began to wait for Winifred. She came
at four, bringing Imogen, and Maud, just back from school, and 'getting
such a pretty girl, too,' so that it was extremely difficult to ask for
news about Annette. Aunt Juley, however, summoned courage to enquire
whether Winifred had heard anything, and if Soames was anxious.
"Uncle Soames is always anxious, Auntie," interrupted Imogen; "he can't
be happy now he's got it."
The words struck familiarly on Aunt Juley's ears. Ah! yes; that funny
drawing of George's, which had not been shown them! But what did Imogen
mean? That her uncle always wanted more than he could have? It was not
at all nice to think like that.
Imogen's voice rose clear and clipped:
"Imagine! Annette's only two years older than me; it must be awful for
her, married to Uncle Soames."
Aunt Juley lifted her hands in horror.
"My dear," she said, "you don't know what you're talking about. Your
Uncle Soames is a match for anybody. He's a very clever man, and
good-looking and wealthy, and most considerate and careful, and not at
all old, considering everything."
Imogen, turning her luscious glance from one to the other of the 'old
dears,' only smiled.
"I hope," said Aunt Juley quite severely, "that you will marry as good a
man."
"I shan't marry a good man, Auntie," murmured Imogen; "they're dull."
"If you go on like this," replied Aunt Juley, still very much upset, "you
won't marry anybody. We'd better not pursue the subject;" and turning to
Winifred, she said: "How is Montague?"
That evening, while they were waiting for dinner, she murmured:
"I've told Smither to get up half a bottle of the sweet champagne,
Hester. I think we ought to drink dear James' health, and--and the
health of Soames' wife; only, let's keep that quite secret. I'll Just
say like this, 'And you know, Hester!' and then we'll drink. It might
upset Timothy."
"It's more likely to upset us," said Aunt Nester. "But we must, I
suppose; for such an occasion."
"Yes," said Aunt Juley rapturously, "it is an occasion! Only fancy if he
has a dear little boy, to carry the family on! I do feel it so
important, now that Irene has had a son. Winifred says George is calling
Jolyon 'The Three-Decker,' because of his three families, you know!
George is droll. And fancy! Irene is living after all in the house
Soames had built for them both. It does seem hard on dear Soames; and
he's always been so regular."
That night in bed, excited and a little flushed still by her glass of
wine and the secrecy of the second toast, she lay with her prayer-book
opened flat, and her eyes fixed on a ceiling yellowed by the light from
her reading-lamp. Young things! It was so nice for them all! And she
would be so happy if she could see dear Soames happy. But, of course, he
must be now, in spite of what Imogen had said. He would have all that he
wanted: property, and wife, and children! And he would live to a green
old age, like his dear father, and forget all about Irene and that
dreadful case. If only she herself could be here to buy his children
their first rocking-horse! Smither should choose it for her at the
stores, nice and dappled. Ah! how Roger used to rock her until she fell
off! Oh dear! that was a long time ago! It was! 'In my Father's house
are many mansions--'A little scrattling noise caught her ear--'but no
mice!' she thought mechanically. The noise increased. There! it was a
mouse! How naughty of Smither to say there wasn't! It would be eating
through the wainscot before they knew where they were, and they would
have to have the builders in. They were such destructive things! And
she lay, with her eyes just moving, following in her mind that little
scrattling sound, and waiting for sleep to release her from it.
CHAPTER XII
BIRTH OF A FORSYTE
Soames walked out of the garden door, crossed the lawn, stood on the path
above the river, turned round and walked back to the garden door, without
having realised that he had moved. The sound of wheels crunching the
drive convinced him that time had passed, and the doctor gone. What,
exactly, had he said?
"This is the position, Mr. Forsyte. I can make pretty certain of her
life if I operate, but the baby will be born dead. If I don't operate,
the baby will most probably be born alive, but it's a great risk for the
mother--a great risk. In either case I don't think she can ever have
another child. In her state she obviously can't decide for herself, and
we can't wait for her mother. It's for you to make the decision, while
I'm getting what's necessary. I shall be back within the hour."
The decision! What a decision! No time to get a specialist down! No
time for anything!
The sound of wheels died away, but Soames still stood intent; then,
suddenly covering his ears, he walked back to the river. To come before
its time like this, with no chance to foresee anything, not even to get
her mother here! It was for her mother to make that decision, and she
couldn't arrive from Paris till to-night! If only he could have
understood the doctor's jargon, the medical niceties, so as to be sure he
was weighing the chances properly; but they were Greek to him--like a
legal problem to a layman. And yet he must decide! He brought his hand
away from his brow wet, though the air was chilly. These sounds which
came from her room! To go back there would only make it more difficult.
He must be calm, clear. On the one hand life, nearly certain, of his
young wife, death quite certain, of his child; and--no more children
afterwards! On the other, death perhaps of his wife, nearly certain life
for the child; and--no more children afterwards! Which to choose?.... It
had rained this last fortnight--the river was very full, and in the
water, collected round the little house-boat moored by his landing-stage,
were many leaves from the woods above, brought off by a frost. Leaves
fell, lives drifted down--Death! To decide about death! And no one to
give him a hand. Life lost was lost for good. Let nothing go that you
could keep; for, if it went, you couldn't get it back. It left you bare,
like those trees when they lost their leaves; barer and barer until you,
too, withered and came down. And, by a queer somersault of thought, he
seemed to see not Annette lying up there behind that window-pane on which
the sun was shining, but Irene lying in their bedroom in Montpellier
Square, as it might conceivably have been her fate to lie, sixteen years
ago. Would he have hesitated then? Not a moment! Operate, operate!
Make certain of her life! No decision--a mere instinctive cry for help,
in spite of his knowledge, even then, that she did not love him! But
this! Ah! there was nothing overmastering in his feeling for Annette!
Many times these last months, especially since she had been growing
frightened, he had wondered. She had a will of her own, was selfish in
her French way. And yet--so pretty! What would she wish--to take the
risk. 'I know she wants the child,' he thought. 'If it's born dead, and
no more chance afterwards--it'll upset her terribly. No more chance!
All for nothing! Married life with her for years and years without a
child. Nothing to steady her! She's too young. Nothing to look forward
to, for her--for me! For me!' He struck his hands against his chest!
Why couldn't he think without bringing himself in--get out of himself and
see what he ought to do? The thought hurt him, then lost edge, as if it
had come in contact with a breastplate. Out of oneself! Impossible!
Out into soundless, scentless, touchless, sightless space! The very idea
was ghastly, futile! And touching there the bedrock of reality, the
bottom of his Forsyte spirit, Soames rested for a moment. When one
ceased, all ceased; it might go on, but there'd be nothing in it!
He looked at his watch. In half an hour the doctor would be back. He
must decide! If against the operation and she died, how face her mother
and the doctor afterwards? How face his own conscience? It was his child
that she was having. If for the operation--then he condemned them both
to childlessness. And for what else had he married her but to have a
lawful heir? And his father--at death's door, waiting for the news!
'It's cruel!' he thought; 'I ought never to have such a thing to settle!
It's cruel!' He turned towards the house. Some deep, simple way of
deciding! He took out a coin, and put it back. If he spun it, he knew
he would not abide by what came up! He went into the dining-room,
furthest away from that room whence the sounds issued. The doctor had
said there was a chance. In here that chance seemed greater; the river
did not flow, nor the leaves fall. A fire was burning. Soames unlocked
the tantalus. He hardly ever touched spirits, but now--he poured himself
out some whisky and drank it neat, craving a faster flow of blood. 'That
fellow Jolyon,' he thought; 'he had children already. He has the woman I
really loved; and now a son by her! And I--I'm asked to destroy my only
child! Annette can't die; it's not possible. She's strong!'
He was still standing sullenly at the sideboard when he heard the
doctor's carriage, and went out to him. He had to wait for him to come
downstairs.
"Well, doctor?"
"The situation's the same. Have you decided?"
"Yes," said Soames; "don't operate!"
"Not? You understand--the risk's great?"
In Soames' set face nothing moved but the lips.
"You said there was a chance?"
"A chance, yes; not much of one."
"You say the baby must be born dead if you do?"
"Yes."
"Do you still think that in any case she can't have another?"
"One can't be absolutely sure, but it's most unlikely."
"She's strong," said Soames; "we'll take the risk."
The doctor looked at him very gravely. "It's on your shoulders," he
said; "with my own wife, I couldn't."
Soames' chin jerked up as if someone had hit him.
"Am I of any use up there?" he asked.
"No; keep away."
"I shall be in my picture-gallery, then; you know where."
The doctor nodded, and went upstairs.
Soames continued to stand, listening. 'By this time to-morrow,' he
thought, 'I may have her death on my hands.' No! it was unfair
--monstrous, to put it that way! Sullenness dropped on him again, and he
went up to the gallery. He stood at the window. The wind was in the
north; it was cold, clear; very blue sky, heavy ragged white clouds
chasing across; the river blue, too, through the screen of goldening
trees; the woods all rich with colour, glowing, burnished-an early
autumn. If it were his own life, would he be taking that risk? 'But
she'd take the risk of losing me,' he thought, 'sooner than lose her
child! She doesn't really love me!' What could one expect--a girl and
French? The one thing really vital to them both, vital to their marriage
and their futures, was a child! 'I've been through a lot for this,' he
thought, 'I'll hold on--hold on. There's a chance of keeping both--a
chance!' One kept till things were taken--one naturally kept! He began
walking round the gallery. He had made one purchase lately which he knew
was a fortune in itself, and he halted before it--a girl with dull gold
hair which looked like filaments of metal gazing at a little golden
monster she was holding in her hand. Even at this tortured moment he
could just feel the extraordinary nature of the bargain he had
made--admire the quality of the table, the floor, the chair, the girl's
figure, the absorbed expression on her face, the dull gold filaments of
her hair, the bright gold of the little monster. Collecting pictures;
growing richer, richer! What use, if....! He turned his back abruptly
on the picture, and went to the window. Some of his doves had flown up
from their perches round the dovecot, and were stretching their wings in
the wind. In the clear sharp sunlight their whiteness almost flashed.
They flew far, making a flung-up hieroglyphic against the sky. Annette
fed the doves; it was pretty to see her. They took it out of her hand;
they knew she was matter-of-fact. A choking sensation came into his
throat. She would not--could nod die! She was too--too sensible; and
she was strong, really strong, like her mother, in spite of her fair
prettiness.
It was already growing dark when at last he opened the door, and stood
listening. Not a sound! A milky twilight crept about the stairway and
the landings below. He had turned back when a sound caught his ear.
Peering down, he saw a black shape moving, and his heart stood still.
What was it? Death? The shape of Death coming from her door? No! only
a maid without cap or apron. She came to the foot of his flight of
stairs and said breathlessly:
"The doctor wants to see you, sir."
He ran down. She stood flat against the wall to let him pass, and said:
"Oh, Sir! it's over."
"Over?" said Soames, with a sort of menace; "what d'you mean?"
"It's born, sir."
He dashed up the four steps in front of him, and came suddenly on the
doctor in the dim passage. The man was wiping his brow.
"Well?" he said; "quick!"
"Both living; it's all right, I think."
Soames stood quite still, covering his eyes.
"I congratulate you," he heard the doctor say; "it was touch and go."
Soames let fall the hand which was covering his face.
"Thanks," he said; "thanks very much. What is it?"
"Daughter--luckily; a son would have killed her--the head."
A daughter!
"The utmost care of both," he hearts the doctor say, "and we shall do.
When does the mother come?"
"To-night, between nine and ten, I hope."
"I'll stay till then. Do you want to see them?"
"Not now," said Soames; "before you go. I'll have dinner sent up to
you." And he went downstairs.
Relief unspeakable, and yet--a daughter! It seemed to him unfair. To
have taken that risk--to have been through this agony--and what
agony!--for a daughter! He stood before the blazing fire of wood logs in
the hall, touching it with his toe and trying to readjust himself. 'My
father!' he thought. A bitter disappointment, no disguising it! One
never got all one wanted in this life! And there was no other--at least,
if there was, it was no use!
While he was standing there, a telegram was brought him.
"Come up at once, your father sinking fast.--MOTHER."
He read it with a choking sensation. One would have thought he couldn't
feel anything after these last hours, but he felt this. Half-past seven,
a train from Reading at nine, and madame's train, if she had caught it,
came in at eight-forty--he would meet that, and go on. He ordered the
carriage, ate some dinner mechanically, and went upstairs. The doctor
came out to him.
"They're sleeping."
"I won't go in," said Soames with relief. "My father's dying; I have
to--go up. Is it all right?"
The doctor's face expressed a kind of doubting admiration. 'If they were
all as unemotional' he might have been saying.
"Yes, I think you may go with an easy mind. You'll be down soon?"
"To-morrow," said Soames. "Here's the address."
The doctor seemed to hover on the verge of sympathy.
"Good-night!" said Soames abruptly, and turned away. He put on his fur
coat. Death! It was a chilly business. He smoked a cigarette in the
carriage--one of his rare cigarettes. The night was windy and flew on
black wings; the carriage lights had to search out the way. His father!
That old, old man! A comfortless night--to die!
The London train came in just as he reached the station, and Madame
Lamotte, substantial, dark-clothed, very yellow in the lamplight, came
towards the exit with a dressing-bag.
"This all you have?" asked Soames.
"But yes; I had not the time. How is my little one?"
"Doing well--both. A girl!"
"A girl! What joy! I had a frightful crossing!"
Her black bulk, solid, unreduced by the frightful crossing, climbed into
the brougham.
"And you, mon cher?"
"My father's dying," said Soames between his teeth. "I'm going up. Give
my love to Annette."
"Tiens!" murmured Madame Lamotte; "quel malheur!"
Soames took his hat off, and moved towards his train. 'The French!' he
thought.
CHAPTER XIII
JAMES IS TOLD
A simple cold, caught in the room with double windows, where the air and
the people who saw him were filtered, as it were, the room he had not
left since the middle of September--and James was in deep waters. A
little cold, passing his little strength and flying quickly to his lungs.
"He mustn't catch cold," the doctor had declared, and he had gone and
caught it. When he first felt it in his throat he had said to his
nurse--for he had one now--"There, I knew how it would be, airing the
room like that!" For a whole day he was highly nervous about himself and
went in advance of all precautions and remedies; drawing every breath
with extreme care and having his temperature taken every hour. Emily was
not alarmed.
But next morning when she went in the nurse whispered: "He won't have his
temperature taken."
Emily crossed to the side of the bed where he was lying, and said softly,
"How do you feel, James?" holding the thermometer to his lips. James
looked up at her.
"What's the good of that?" he murmured huskily; "I don't want to know."
Then she was alarmed. He breathed with difficulty, he looked terribly
frail, white, with faint red discolorations. She had 'had trouble' with
him, Goodness knew; but he was James, had been James for nearly fifty
years; she couldn't remember or imagine life without James--James, behind
all his fussiness, his pessimism, his crusty shell, deeply affectionate,
really kind and generous to them all!
All that day and the next he hardly uttered a word, but there was in his
eyes a noticing of everything done for him, a look on his face which told
her he was fighting; and she did not lose hope. His very stillness, the
way he conserved every little scrap of energy, showed the tenacity with
which he was fighting. It touched her deeply; and though her face was
composed and comfortable in the sick-room, tears ran down her cheeks when
she was out of it.
About tea-time on the third day--she had just changed her dress, keeping
her appearance so as not to alarm him, because he noticed everything--she
saw a difference. 'It's no use; I'm tired,' was written plainly across
that white face, and when she went up to him, he muttered: "Send for
Soames."
"Yes, James," she said comfortably; "all right--at once." And she kissed
his forehead. A tear dropped there, and as she wiped it off she saw that
his eyes looked grateful. Much upset, and without hope now, she sent
Soames the telegram.
When he entered out of the black windy night, the big house was still as
a grave. Warmson's broad face looked almost narrow; he took the fur coat
with a sort of added care, saying:
"Will you have a glass of wine, sir?"
Soames shook his head, and his eyebrows made enquiry.
Warmson's lips twitched. "He's asking for you, sir;" and suddenly he
blew his nose. "It's a long time, sir," he said, "that I've been with
Mr. Forsyte--a long time."
Soames left him folding the coat, and began to mount the stairs. This
house, where he had been born and sheltered, had never seemed to him so
warm, and rich, and cosy, as during this last pilgrimage to his father's
room. It was not his taste; but in its own substantial, lincrusta way it
was the acme of comfort and security. And the night was so dark and
windy; the grave so cold and lonely!
He paused outside the door. No sound came from within. He turned the
handle softly and was in the room before he was perceived. The light was
shaded. His mother and Winifred were sitting on the far side of the bed;
the nurse was moving away from the near side where was an empty chair.
'For me!' thought Soames. As he moved from the door his mother and
sister rose, but he signed with his hand and they sat down again. He
went up to the chair and stood looking at his father. James' breathing
was as if strangled; his eyes were closed. And in Soames, looking on his
father so worn and white and wasted, listening to his strangled
breathing, there rose a passionate vehemence of anger against Nature,
cruel, inexorable Nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of a body,
slowly pressing out the breath, pressing out the life of the being who
was dearest to him in the world. His father, of all men, had lived a
careful life, moderate, abstemious, and this was his reward--to have life
slowly, painfully squeezed out of him! And, without knowing that he
spoke, he said: "It's cruel!"
He saw his mother cover her eyes and Winifred bow her face towards the
bed. Women! They put up with things so much better than men. He took a
step nearer to his father. For three days James had not been shaved, and
his lips and chin were covered with hair, hardly more snowy than his
forehead. It softened his face, gave it a queer look already not of this
world. His eyes opened. Soames went quite close and bent over. The
lips moved.
"Here I am, Father:"
"Um--what--what news? They never tell...." the voice died, and a flood
of emotion made Soames' face work so that he could not speak. Tell
him?--yes. But what? He made a great effort, got his lips together, and
said:
"Good news, dear, good--Annette, a son."
"Ah!" It was the queerest sound, ugly, relieved, pitiful,
triumphant--like the noise a baby makes getting what it wants. The eyes
closed, and that strangled sound of breathing began again. Soames
recoiled to the chair and stonily sat down. The lie he had told, based,
as it were, on some deep, temperamental instinct that after death James
would not know the truth, had taken away all power of feeling for the
moment. His arm brushed against something. It was his father's naked
foot. In the struggle to breathe he had pushed it out from under the
clothes. Soames took it in his hand, a cold foot, light and thin, white,
very cold. What use to put it back, to wrap up that which must be colder
soon! He warmed it mechanically with his hand, listening to his father's
laboured breathing; while the power of feeling rose again within him. A
little sob, quickly smothered, came from Winifred, but his mother sat
unmoving with her eyes fixed on James. Soames signed to the nurse.
"Where's the doctor?" he whispered.
"He's been sent for."
"Can't you do anything to ease his breathing?"
"Only an injection; and he can't stand it. The doctor said, while he was
fighting...."
"He's not fighting," whispered Soames, "he's being slowly smothered.
It's awful."
James stirred uneasily, as if he knew what they were saying. Soames rose
and bent over him. James feebly moved his two hands, and Soames took
them.
"He wants to be pulled up," whispered the nurse.
Soames pulled. He thought he pulled gently, but a look almost of anger
passed over James' face. The nurse plumped the pillows. Soames laid the
hands down, and bending over kissed his father's forehead. As he was
raising himself again, James' eyes bent on him a look which seemed to
come from the very depths of what was left within. 'I'm done, my boy,'
it seemed to say, 'take care of them, take care of yourself; take care--I
leave it all to you.'
"Yes, Yes," Soames whispered, "yes, yes."
Behind him the nurse did he knew, not what, for his father made a tiny
movement of repulsion as if resenting that interference; and almost at
once his breathing eased away, became quiet; he lay very still. The
strained expression on his face passed, a curious white tranquillity took
its place. His eyelids quivered, rested; the whole face rested; at ease.
Only by the faint puffing of his lips could they tell that he was
breathing. Soames sank back on his chair, and fell to cherishing the
foot again. He heard the nurse quietly crying over there by the fire;
curious that she, a stranger, should be the only one of them who cried!
He heard the quiet lick and flutter of the fire flames. One more old
Forsyte going to his long rest--wonderful, they were!--wonderful how he
had held on! His mother and Winifred were leaning forward, hanging on
the sight of James' lips. But Soames bent sideways over the feet,
warming them both; they gave him comfort, colder and colder though they
grew. Suddenly he started up; a sound, a dreadful sound such as he had
never heard, was coming from his father's lips, as if an outraged heart
had broken with a long moan. What a strong heart, to have uttered that
farewell! It ceased. Soames looked into the face. No motion; no
breath! Dead! He kissed the brow, turned round and went out of the
room. He ran upstairs to the bedroom, his old bedroom, still kept for
him; flung himself face down on the bed, and broke into sobs which he
stilled with the pillow....
A little later he went downstairs and passed into the room. James lay
alone, wonderfully calm, free from shadow and anxiety, with the gravity
on his ravaged face which underlies great age, the worn fine gravity of
old coins.
Soames looked steadily at that face, at the fire, at all the room with
windows thrown open to the London night.
"Good-bye!" he whispered, and went out.
CHAPTER XIV
HIS
He had much to see to, that night and all next day. A telegram at
breakfast reassured him about Annette, and he only caught the last train
back to Reading, with Emily's kiss on his forehead and in his ears her
words:
"I don't know what I should have done without you, my dear boy."
He reached his house at midnight. The weather had changed, was mild
again, as though, having finished its work and sent a Forsyte to his last
account, it could relax. A second telegram, received at dinner-time, had
confirmed the good news of Annette, and, instead of going in, Soames
passed down through the garden in the moonlight to his houseboat. He
could sleep there quite well. Bitterly tired, he lay down on the sofa in
his fur coat and fell asleep. He woke soon after dawn and went on deck.
He stood against the rail, looking west where the river swept round in a
wide curve under the woods. In Soames, appreciation of natural beauty
was curiously like that of his farmer ancestors, a sense of grievance if
it wasn't there, sharpened, no doubt, and civilised, by his researches
among landscape painting. But dawn has power to fertilise the most
matter-of-fact vision, and he was stirred. It was another world from the
river he knew, under that remote cool light; a world into which man had
not entered, an unreal world, like some strange shore sighted by
discovery. Its colour was not the colour of convention, was hardly
colour at all; its shapes were brooding yet distinct; its silence
stunning; it had no scent. Why it should move him he could not tell,
unless it were that he felt so alone in it, bare of all relationship and
all possessions. Into such a world his father might be voyaging, for all
resemblance it had to the world he had left. And Soames took refuge from
it in wondering what painter could have done it justice. The white-grey
water was like--like the belly of a fish! Was it possible that this
world on which he looked was all private property, except the water--and
even that was tapped! No tree, no shrub, not a blade of grass, not a
bird or beast, not even a fish that was not owned. And once on a time all
this was jungle and marsh and water, and weird creatures roamed and
sported without human cognizance to give them names; rotting luxuriance
had rioted where those tall, carefully planted woods came down to the
water, and marsh-misted reeds on that far side had covered all the
pasture. Well! they had got it under, kennelled it all up, labelled it,
and stowed it in lawyers' offices. And a good thing too! But once in a
way, as now, the ghost of the past came out to haunt and brood and
whisper to any human who chanced to be awake: 'Out of my unowned
loneliness you all came, into it some day you will all return.'
And Soames, who felt the chill and the eeriness of that world-new to him
and so very old: the world, unowned, visiting the scene of its past--went
down and made himself tea on a spirit-lamp. When he had drunk it, he
took out writing materials and wrote two paragraphs:
"On the 20th instant at his residence in Park Lane, James Forsyte, in his
ninety-first year. Funeral at noon on the 24th at Highgate. No flowers
by request."
"On the 20th instant at The Shelter; Mapledurham, Annette, wife of Soames
Forsyte, of a daughter." And underneath on the blottingpaper he traced
the word "son."
It was eight o'clock in an ordinary autumn world when he went across to
the house. Bushes across the river stood round and bright-coloured out
of a milky haze; the wood-smoke went up blue and straight; and his doves
cooed, preening their feathers in the sunlight.
He stole up to his dressing-room, bathed, shaved, put on fresh linen and
dark clothes.
Madame Lamotte was beginning her breakfast when he went down.
She looked at his clothes, said, "Don't tell me!" and pressed his hand.
"Annette is prettee well. But the doctor say she can never have no more
children. You knew that?" Soames nodded. "It's a pity. Mais la petite
est adorable. Du cafe?"
Soames got away from her as soon as he could. She offended him--solid,
matter-of-fact, quick, clear--French. He could not bear her vowels, her
'r's'; he resented the way she had looked at him, as if it were his fault
that Annette could never bear him a son! His fault! He even resented
her cheap adoration of the daughter he had not yet seen.
Curious how he jibbed away from sight of his wife and child!
One would have thought he must have rushed up at the first moment. On the
contrary, he had a sort of physical shrinking from it--fastidious
possessor that he was. He was afraid of what Annette was thinking of
him, author of her agonies, afraid of the look of the baby, afraid of
showing his disappointment with the present and--the future.
He spent an hour walking up and down the drawing-room before he could
screw his courage up to mount the stairs and knock on the door of their
room.
Madame Lamotte opened it.
"Ah! At last you come! Elle vous attend!" She passed him, and Soames
went in with his noiseless step, his jaw firmly set, his eyes furtive.
Annette was very pale and very pretty lying there. The baby was hidden
away somewhere; he could not see it. He went up to the bed, and with
sudden emotion bent and kissed her forehead.
"Here you are then, Soames," she said. "I am not so bad now. But I
suffered terribly, terribly. I am glad I cannot have any more. Oh! how I
suffered!"
Soames stood silent, stroking her hand; words of endearment, of sympathy,
absolutely would not come; the thought passed through him: 'An English
girl wouldn't have said that!' At this moment he knew with certainty
that he would never be near to her in spirit and in truth, nor she to
him. He had collected her--that was all! And Jolyon's words came rushing
into his mind: "I should imagine you will be glad to have your neck out
of chancery." Well, he had got it out! Had he got it in again?
"We must feed you up," he said, "you'll soon be strong."
"Don't you want to see baby, Soames? She is asleep."
"Of course," said Soames, "very much."
He passed round the foot of the bed to the other side and stood staring.
For the first moment what he saw was much what he had expected to see--a
baby. But as he stared and the baby breathed and made little sleeping
movements with its tiny features, it seemed to assume an individual
shape, grew to be like a picture, a thing he would know again; not
repulsive, strangely bud-like and touching. It had dark hair. He
touched it with his finger, he wanted to see its eyes. They opened, they
were dark--whether blue or brown he could not tell. The eyes winked,
stared, they had a sort of sleepy depth in them. And suddenly his heart
felt queer, warm, as if elated.
"Ma petite fleur!" Annette said softly.
"Fleur," repeated Soames: "Fleur! we'll call her that."
The sense of triumph and renewed possession swelled within him.
By God! this--this thing was his! By God! this--this thing was his!
THE FORSYTE SAGA
Part 3
AWAKENING and TO LET
By John Galsworthy
AWAKENING
TO LET
TO CHARLES SCRIBNER
AWAKENING
Through the massive skylight illuminating the hall at Robin Hill, the
July sunlight at five o'clock fell just where the broad stairway turned;
and in that radiant streak little Jon Forsyte stood, blue-linen-suited.
His hair was shining, and his eyes, from beneath a frown, for he was
considering how to go downstairs, this last of innumerable times, before
the car brought his father and mother home. Four at a time, and five at
the bottom? Stale! Down the banisters? But in which fashion? On his
face, feet foremost? Very stale. On his stomach, sideways? Paltry! On
his back, with his arms stretched down on both sides? Forbidden! Or on
his face, head foremost, in a manner unknown as yet to any but himself?
Such was the cause of the frown on the illuminated face of little Jon....
In that Summer of 1909 the simple souls who even then desired to simplify
the English tongue, had, of course, no cognizance of little Jon, or they
would have claimed him for a disciple. But one can be too simple in this
life, for his real name was Jolyon, and his living father and dead
half-brother had usurped of old the other shortenings, Jo and Jolly. As
a fact little Jon had done his best to conform to convention and spell
himself first Jhon, then John; not till his father had explained the
sheer necessity, had he spelled his name Jon.
Up till now that father had possessed what was left of his heart by the
groom, Bob, who played the concertina, and his nurse "Da," who wore the
violet dress on Sundays, and enjoyed the name of Spraggins in that
private life lived at odd moments even by domestic servants. His mother
had only appeared to him, as it were in dreams, smelling delicious,
smoothing his forehead just before he fell asleep, and sometimes docking
his hair, of a golden brown colour. When he cut his head open against
the nursery fender she was there to be bled over; and when he had
nightmare she would sit on his bed and cuddle his head against her neck.
She was precious but remote, because "Da" was so near, and there is
hardly room for more than one woman at a time in a man's heart. With his
father, too, of course, he had special bonds of union; for little Jon
also meant to be a painter when he grew up--with the one small
difference, that his father painted pictures, and little Jon intended to
paint ceilings and walls, standing on a board between two step-ladders,
in a dirty-white apron, and a lovely smell of whitewash. His father also
took him riding in Richmond Park, on his pony, Mouse, so-called because
it was so-coloured.
Little Jon had been born with a silver spoon in a mouth which was rather
curly and large. He had never heard his father or his mother speak in an
angry voice, either to each other, himself, or anybody else; the groom,
Bob, Cook, Jane, Bella and the other servants, even "Da," who alone
restrained him in his courses, had special voices when they talked to
him. He was therefore of opinion that the world was a place of perfect
and perpetual gentility and freedom.
A child of 1901, he had come to consciousness when his country, just over
that bad attack of scarlet fever, the Boer War, was preparing for the
Liberal revival of 1906. Coercion was unpopular, parents had exalted
notions of giving their offspring a good time. They spoiled their rods,
spared their children, and anticipated the results with enthusiasm. In
choosing, moreover, for his father an amiable man of fifty-two, who had
already lost an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight,
whose first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely.
What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a little
prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for even little Jon
could see that she was not merely just his mother, and that he played
second fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his
mother's heart he knew not yet. As for "Auntie" June, his half-sister
(but so old that she had grown out of the relationship) she loved him, of
course, but was too sudden. His devoted "Da," too, had a Spartan touch.
His bath was cold and his knees were bare; he was not encouraged to be
sorry for himself. As to the vexed question of his education, little Jon
shared the theory of those who considered that children should not be
forced. He rather liked the Mademoiselle who came for two hours every
morning to teach him her language, together with history, geography and
sums; nor were the piano lessons which his mother gave him disagreeable,
for she had a way of luring him from tune to tune, never making him
practise one which did not give him pleasure, so that he remained eager
to convert ten thumbs into eight fingers. Under his father he learned to
draw pleasure-pigs and other animals. He was not a highly educated little
boy. Yet, on the whole, the silver spoon stayed in his mouth without
spoiling it, though "Da" sometimes said that other children would do him
a "world of good."
It was a disillusionment, then, when at the age of nearly seven she held
him down on his back, because he wanted to do something of which she did
not approve. This first interference with the free individualism of a
Forsyte drove him almost frantic. There was something appalling in the
utter helplessness of that position, and the uncertainty as to whether it
would ever come to an end. Suppose she never let him get up any more!
He suffered torture at the top of his voice for fifty seconds. Worse
than anything was his perception that "Da" had taken all that time to
realise the agony of fear he was enduring. Thus, dreadfully, was
revealed to him the lack of imagination in the human being.
When he was let up he remained convinced that "Da" had done a dreadful
thing. Though he did not wish to bear witness against her, he had been
compelled, by fear of repetition, to seek his mother and say: "Mum, don't
let 'Da' hold me down on my back again."
His mother, her hands held up over her head, and in them two plaits of
hair--"couleur de feuille morte," as little Jon had not yet learned to
call it--had looked at him with eyes like little bits of his brown velvet
tunic, and answered:
"No, darling, I won't."
She, being in the nature of a goddess, little Jon was satisfied;
especially when, from under the dining-table at breakfast, where he
happened to be waiting for a mushroom, he had overheard her say to his
father:
"Then, will you tell 'Da,' dear, or shall I? She's so devoted to him";
and his father's answer:
"Well, she mustn't show it that way. I know exactly what it feels like
to be held down on one's back. No Forsyte can stand it for a minute."
Conscious that they did not know him to be under the table, little Jon
was visited by the quite new feeling of embarrassment, and stayed where
he was, ravaged by desire for the mushroom.
Such had been his first dip into the dark abysses of existence. Nothing
much had been revealed to him after that, till one day, having gone down
to the cow-house for his drink of milk fresh from the cow, after Garratt
had finished milking, he had seen Clover's calf, dead. Inconsolable, and
followed by an upset Garratt, he had sought "Da"; but suddenly aware that
she was not the person he wanted, had rushed away to find his father, and
had run into the arms of his mother.
"Clover's calf's dead! Oh! Oh! It looked so soft!"
His mother's clasp, and her:
"Yes, darling, there, there!" had stayed his sobbing. But if Clover's
calf could die, anything could--not only bees, flies, beetles and
chickens--and look soft like that! This was appalling--and soon
forgotten!
The next thing had been to sit on a bumble bee, a poignant experience,
which his mother had understood much better than "Da"; and nothing of
vital importance had happened after that till the year turned; when,
following a day of utter wretchedness, he had enjoyed a disease composed
of little spots, bed, honey in a spoon, and many Tangerine oranges. It
was then that the world had flowered. To "Auntie" June he owed that
flowering, for no sooner was he a little lame duck than she came rushing
down from London, bringing with her the books which had nurtured her own
Berserker spirit, born in the noted year of 1869. Aged, and of many
colours, they were stored with the most formidable happenings. Of these
she read to little Jon, till he was allowed to read to himself; whereupon
she whisked back to London and left them with him in a heap. Those books
cooked his fancy, till he thought and dreamed of nothing but midshipmen
and dhows, pirates, rafts, sandal-wood traders, iron horses, sharks,
battles, Tartars, Red Indians, balloons, North Poles and other
extravagant delights. The moment he was suffered to get up, he rigged
his bed fore and aft, and set out from it in a narrow bath across green
seas of carpet, to a rock, which he climbed by means of its mahogany
drawer knobs, to sweep the horizon with his drinking tumbler screwed to
his eye, in search of rescuing sails. He made a daily raft out of the
towel stand, the tea tray, and his pillows. He saved the juice from his
French plums, bottled it in an empty medicine bottle, and provisioned the
raft with the rum that it became; also with pemmican made out of little
saved-up bits of chicken sat on and dried at the fire; and with lime
juice against scurvy, extracted from the peel of his oranges and a little
economised juice. He made a North Pole one morning from the whole of his
bedclothes except the bolster, and reached it in a birch-bark canoe (in
private life the fender), after a terrible encounter with a polar bear
fashioned from the bolster and four skittles dressed up in "Da's"
nightgown. After that, his father, seeking to steady his imagination,
brought him Ivanboe, Bevis, a book about King Arthur, and Tom Brown's
Schooldays. He read the first, and for three days built, defended and
stormed Front de Boeuf's castle, taking every part in the piece except
those of Rebecca and Rowena; with piercing cries of: "En avant, de
Bracy!" and similar utterances. After reading the book about King Arthur
he became almost exclusively Sir Lamorac de Galis, because, though there
was very little about him, he preferred his name to that of any other
knight; and he rode his old rocking-horse to death, armed with a long
bamboo. Bevis he found tame; besides, it required woods and animals, of
which he had none in his nursery, except his two cats, Fitz and Puck
Forsyte, who permitted no liberties. For Tom Brown he was as yet too
young. There was relief in the house when, after the fourth week, he was
permitted to go down and out.
The month being March the trees were exceptionally like the masts of
ships, and for little Jon that was a wonderful Spring, extremely hard on
his knees, suits, and the patience of "Da," who had the washing and
reparation of his clothes. Every morning the moment his breakfast was
over, he could be viewed by his mother and father, whose windows looked
out that way, coming from the study, crossing the terrace, climbing the
old oak tree, his face resolute and his hair bright. He began the day
thus because there was not time to go far afield before his lessons. The
old tree's variety never staled; it had mainmast, foremast, top-gallant
mast, and he could always come down by the halyards--or ropes of the
swing. After his lessons, completed by eleven, he would go to the
kitchen for a thin piece of cheese, a biscuit and two French
plums--provision enough for a jolly-boat at least--and eat it in some
imaginative way; then, armed to the teeth with gun, pistols, and sword,
he would begin the serious climbing of the morning, encountering by the
way innumerable slavers, Indians, pirates, leopards, and bears. He was
seldom seen at that hour of the day without a cutlass in his teeth (like
Dick Needham) amid the rapid explosion of copper caps. And many were the
gardeners he brought down with yellow peas shot out of his little gun.
He lived a life of the most violent action.
"Jon," said his father to his mother, under the oak tree, "is terrible.
I'm afraid he's going to turn out a sailor, or something hopeless. Do
you see any sign of his appreciating beauty?"
"Not the faintest."
"Well, thank heaven he's no turn for wheels or engines! I can bear
anything but that. But I wish he'd take more interest in Nature."
"He's imaginative, Jolyon."
"Yes, in a sanguinary way. Does he love anyone just now?"
"No; only everyone. There never was anyone born more loving or more
lovable than Jon."
"Being your boy, Irene."
At this moment little Jon, lying along a branch high above them, brought
them down with two peas; but that fragment of talk lodged, thick, in his
small gizzard. Loving, lovable, imaginative, sanguinary!
The leaves also were thick by now, and it was time for his birthday,
which, occurring every year on the twelfth of May, was always memorable
for his chosen dinner of sweetbread, mushrooms, macaroons, and ginger
beer.
Between that eighth birthday, however, and the afternoon when he stood in
the July radiance at the turning of the stairway, several important
things had happened.
"Da," worn out by washing his knees, or moved by that mysterious instinct
which forces even nurses to desert their nurslings, left the very day
after his birthday in floods of tears "to be married"--of all things--"to
a man." Little Jon, from whom it had been kept, was inconsolable for an
afternoon. It ought not to have been kept from him! Two large boxes of
soldiers and some artillery, together with The Young Buglers, which had
been among his birthday presents, cooperated with his grief in a sort of
conversion, and instead of seeking adventures in person and risking his
own life, he began to play imaginative games, in which he risked the
lives of countless tin soldiers, marbles, stones and beans. Of these
forms of "chair a canon" he made collections, and, using them
alternately, fought the Peninsular, the Seven Years, the Thirty Years,
and other wars, about which he had been reading of late in a big History
of Europe which had been his grandfather's. He altered them to suit his
genius, and fought them all over the floor in his day nursery, so that
nobody could come in, for fearing of disturbing Gustavus Adolphus, King
of Sweden, or treading on an army of Austrians. Because of the sound of
the word he was passionately addicted to the Austrians, and finding there
were so few battles in which they were successful he had to invent them
in his games. His favourite generals were Prince Eugene, the Archduke
Charles and Wallenstein. Tilly and Mack ("music-hall turns" he heard his
father call them one day, whatever that might mean) one really could not
love very much, Austrian though they were. For euphonic reasons, too, he
doted on Turenne.
This phase, which caused his parents anxiety, because it kept him indoors
when he ought to have been out, lasted through May and half of June, till
his father killed it by bringing home to him Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry
Finn. When he read those books something happened in him, and he went
out of doors again in passionate quest of a river. There being none on
the premises at Robin Hill, he had to make one out of the pond, which
fortunately had water lilies, dragonflies, gnats, bullrushes, and three
small willow trees. On this pond, after his father and Garratt had
ascertained by sounding that it had a reliable bottom and was nowhere
more than two feet deep, he was allowed a little collapsible canoe, in
which he spent hours and hours paddling, and lying down out of sight of
Indian Joe and other enemies. On the shore of the pond, too, he built
himself a wigwam about four feet square, of old biscuit tins, roofed in
by boughs. In this he would make little fires, and cook the birds he had
not shot with his gun, hunting in the coppice and fields, or the fish he
did not catch in the pond because there were none. This occupied the
rest of June and that July, when his father and mother were away in
Ireland. He led a lonely life of "make believe" during those five weeks
of summer weather, with gun, wigwam, water and canoe; and, however hard
his active little brain tried to keep the sense of beauty away, she did
creep in on him for a second now and then, perching on the wing of a
dragon-fly, glistening on the water lilies, or brushing his eyes with her
blue as he Jay on his back in ambush.
"Auntie" June, who had been left in charge, had a "grown-up" in the
house, with a cough and a large piece of putty which he was making into a
face; so she hardly ever came down to see him in the pond. Once, however,
she brought with her two other "grown-ups." Little Jon, who happened to
have painted his naked self bright blue and yellow in stripes out of his
father's water-colour box, and put some duck's feathers in his hair, saw
them coming, and--ambushed himself among the willows. As he had
foreseen, they came at once to his wigwam and knelt down to look inside,
so that with a blood-curdling yell he was able to take the scalps of
"Auntie" June and the woman "grown-up" in an almost complete manner
before they kissed him. The names of the two grown-ups were "Auntie"
Holly and "Uncle" Val, who had a brown face and a little limp, and
laughed at him terribly. He took a fancy to "Auntie" Holly, who seemed
to be a sister too; but they both went away the same afternoon and he did
not see them again. Three days before his father and mother were to come
home "Auntie" June also went off in a great hurry, taking the "grown-up"
who coughed and his piece of putty; and Mademoiselle said: "Poor man, he
was veree ill. I forbid you to go into his room, Jon." Little Jon, who
rarely did things merely because he was told not to, refrained from
going, though he was bored and lonely. In truth the day of the pond was
past, and he was filled to the brim of his soul with restlessness and the
want of something--not a tree, not a gun--something soft. Those last
two days had seemed months in spite of Cast Up by the Sea, wherein he was
reading about Mother Lee and her terrible wrecking bonfire. He had gone
up and down the stairs perhaps a hundred times in those two days, and
often from the day nursery, where he slept now, had stolen into his
mother's room, looked at everything, without touching, and on into the
dressing-room; and standing on one leg beside the bath, like Slingsby,
had whispered:
"Ho, ho, ho! Dog my cats!" mysteriously, to bring luck. Then, stealing
back, he had opened his mother's wardrobe, and taken a long sniff which
seemed to bring him nearer to--he didn't know what.
He had done this just before he stood in the streak of sunlight, debating
in which of the several ways he should slide down the banisters. They
all seemed silly, and in a sudden languor he began descending the steps
one by one. During that descent he could remember his father quite
distinctly--the short grey beard, the deep eyes twinkling, the furrow
between them, the funny smile, the thin figure which always seemed so
tall to little Jon; but his mother he couldn't see. All that represented
her was something swaying with two dark eyes looking back at him; and the
scent of her wardrobe.
Bella was in the hall, drawing aside the big curtains, and opening the
front door. Little Jon said, wheedling,
"Bella!"
"Yes, Master Jon."
"Do let's have tea under the oak tree when they come; I know they'd like
it best."
"You mean you'd like it best."
Little Jon considered.
"No, they would, to please me."
Bella smiled. "Very well, I'll take it out if you'll stay quiet here and
not get into mischief before they come."
Little Jon sat down on the bottom step, and nodded. Bella came close,
and looked him over.
"Get up!" she said.
Little Jon got up. She scrutinized him behind; he was not green, and his
knees seemed clean.
"All right!" she said. "My! Aren't you brown? Give me a kiss!"
And little Jon received a peck on his hair.
"What jam?" he asked. "I'm so tired of waiting."
"Gooseberry and strawberry."
Num! They were his favourites!
When she was gone he sat still for quite a minute. It was quiet in the
big hall open to its East end so that he could see one of his trees, a
brig sailing very slowly across the upper lawn. In the outer hall
shadows were slanting from the pillars. Little Jon got up, jumped one of
them, and walked round the clump of iris plants which filled the pool of
grey-white marble in the centre. The flowers were pretty, but only
smelled a very little. He stood in the open doorway and looked out.
Suppose!--suppose they didn't come! He had waited so long that he felt
he could not bear that, and his attention slid at once from such finality
to the dust motes in the bluish sunlight coming in: Thrusting his hand
up, he tried to catch some. Bella ought to have dusted that piece of
air! But perhaps they weren't dust--only what sunlight was made of, and
he looked to see whether the sunlight out of doors was the same. It was
not. He had said he would stay quiet in the hall, but he simply couldn't
any more; and crossing the gravel of the drive he lay down on the grass
beyond. Pulling six daisies he named them carefully, Sir Lamorac, Sir
Tristram, Sir Lancelot, Sir Palimedes, Sir Bors, Sir Gawain, and fought
them in couples till only Sir Lamorac, whom he had selected for a
specially stout stalk, had his head on, and even he, after three
encounters, looked worn and waggly. A beetle was moving slowly in the
grass, which almost wanted cutting. Every blade was a small tree, round
whose trunk the beetle had to glide. Little Jon stretched out Sir
Lamorac, feet foremost, and stirred the creature up. It scuttled
painfully. Little Jon laughed, lost interest, and sighed. His heart
felt empty. He turned over and lay on his back. There was a scent of
honey from the lime trees in flower, and in the sky the blue was
beautiful, with a few white clouds which looked and perhaps tasted like
lemon ice. He could hear Bob playing: "Way down upon de Suwannee ribber"
on his concertina, and it made him nice and sad. He turned over again
and put his ear to the ground--Indians could hear things coming ever so
far--but he could hear nothing--only the concertina! And almost
instantly he did hear a grinding sound, a faint toot. Yes! it was a
car--coming--coming! Up he jumped. Should he wait in the porch, or rush
upstairs, and as they came in, shout: "Look!" and slide slowly down the
banisters, head foremost? Should he? The car turned in at the drive. It
was too late! And he only waited, jumping up and down in his excitement.
The car came quickly, whirred, and stopped. His father got out, exactly
like life. He bent down and little Jon bobbed up--they bumped. His
father said,
"Bless us! Well, old man, you are brown!" Just as he would; and the
sense of expectation--of something wanted--bubbled unextinguished in
little Jon. Then, with a long, shy look he saw his mother, in a blue
dress, with a blue motor scarf over her cap and hair, smiling. He jumped
as high as ever he could, twined his legs behind her back, and hugged.
He heard her gasp, and felt her hugging back. His eyes, very dark blue
just then, looked into hers, very dark brown, till her lips closed on his
eyebrow, and, squeezing with all his might, he heard her creak and laugh,
and say:
"You are strong, Jon!"
He slid down at that, and rushed into the hall, dragging her by the hand.
While he was eating his jam beneath the oak tree, he noticed things about
his mother that he had never seemed to see before, her cheeks for
instance were creamy, there were silver threads in her dark goldy hair,
her throat had no knob in it like Bella's, and she went in and out
softly. He noticed, too, some little lines running away from the corners
of her eyes, and a nice darkness under them. She was ever so beautiful,
more beautiful than "Da" or Mademoiselle, or "Auntie" June or even
"Auntie" Holly, to whom he had taken a fancy; even more beautiful than
Bella, who had pink cheeks and came out too suddenly in places. This new
beautifulness of his mother had a kind of particular importance, and he
ate less than he had expected to.
When tea was over his father wanted him to walk round the gardens. He had
a long conversation with his father about things in general, avoiding his
private life--Sir Lamorac, the Austrians, and the emptiness he had felt
these last three days, now so suddenly filled up. His father told him of
a place called Glensofantrim, where he and his mother had been; and of
the little people who came out of the ground there when it was very
quiet. Little Jon came to a halt, with his heels apart.
"Do you really believe they do, Daddy?" "No, Jon, but I thought you
might."
"Why?"
"You're younger than I; and they're fairies." Little Jon squared the
dimple in his chin.
"I don't believe in fairies. I never see any." "Ha!" said his father.
"Does Mum?"
His father smiled his funny smile.
"No; she only sees Pan."
"What's Pan?"
"The Goaty God who skips about in wild and beautiful places."
"Was he in Glensofantrim?"
"Mum said so."
Little Jon took his heels up, and led on.
"Did you see him?"
"No; I only saw Venus Anadyomene."
Little Jon reflected; Venus was in his book about the Greeks and Trojans.
Then Anna was her Christian and Dyomene her surname?
But it appeared, on inquiry, that it was one word, which meant rising
from the foam.
"Did she rise from the foam in Glensofantrim?"
"Yes; every day."
"What is she like, Daddy?"
"Like Mum."
"Oh! Then she must be..." but he stopped at that, rushed at a wall,
scrambled up, and promptly scrambled down again. The discovery that his
mother was beautiful was one which he felt must absolutely be kept to
himself. His father's cigar, however, took so long to smoke, that at
last he was compelled to say:
"I want to see what Mum's brought home. Do you mind, Daddy?"
He pitched the motive low, to absolve him from unmanliness, and was a
little disconcerted when his father looked at him right through, heaved
an important sigh, and answered:
"All right, old man, you go and love her."
He went, with a pretence of slowness, and then rushed, to make up. He
entered her bedroom from his own, the door being open. She was still
kneeling before a trunk, and he stood close to her, quite still.
She knelt up straight, and said:
"Well, Jon?"
"I thought I'd just come and see."
Having given and received another hug, he mounted the window-seat, and
tucking his legs up under him watched her unpack. He derived a pleasure
from the operation such as he had not yet known, partly because she was
taking out things which looked suspicious, and partly because he liked to
look at her. She moved differently from anybody else, especially from
Bella; she was certainly the refinedest-looking person he had ever seen.
She finished the trunk at last, and knelt down in front of him.
"Have you missed us, Jon?"
Little Jon nodded, and having thus admitted his feelings, continued to
nod.
"But you had 'Auntie' June?"
"Oh! she had a man with a cough."
His mother's face changed, and looked almost angry. He added hastily:
"He was a poor man, Mum; he coughed awfully; I--I liked him."
His mother put her hands behind his waist.
"You like everybody, Jon?"
Little Jon considered.
"Up to a point," he said: "Auntie June took me to church one Sunday."
"To church? Oh!"
"She wanted to see how it would affect me." "And did it?"
"Yes. I came over all funny, so she took me home again very quick. I
wasn't sick after all. I went to bed and had hot brandy and water, and
read The Boys of Beechwood. It was scrumptious."
His mother bit her lip.
"When was that?"
"Oh! about--a long time ago--I wanted her to take me again, but she
wouldn't. You and Daddy never go to church, do you?"
"No, we don't."
"Why don't you?"
His mother smiled.
"Well, dear, we both of us went when we were little. Perhaps we went
when we were too little."
"I see," said little Jon, "it's dangerous."
"You shall judge for yourself about all those things as you grow up."
Little Jon replied in a calculating manner:
"I don't want to grow up, much. I don't want to go to school." A
sudden overwhelming desire to say something more, to say what he really
felt, turned him red. "I--I want to stay with you, and be your lover,
Mum."
Then with an instinct to improve the situation, he added quickly "I
don't want to go to bed to-night, either. I'm simply tired of going to
bed, every night."
"Have you had any more nightmares?"
"Only about one. May I leave the door open into your room to-night,
Mum?"
"Yes, just a little." Little Jon heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
"What did you see in Glensofantrim?"
"Nothing but beauty, darling."
"What exactly is beauty?"
"What exactly is--Oh! Jon, that's a poser."
"Can I see it, for instance?" His mother got up, and sat beside him.
"You do, every day. The sky is beautiful, the stars, and moonlit
nights, and then the birds, the flowers, the trees--they're all
beautiful. Look out of the window--there's beauty for you, Jon."
"Oh! yes, that's the view. Is that all?"
"All? no. The sea is wonderfully beautiful, and the waves, with their
foam flying back."
"Did you rise from it every day, Mum?"
His mother smiled. "Well, we bathed."
Little Jon suddenly reached out and caught her neck in his hands.
"I know," he said mysteriously, "you're it, really, and all the rest is
make-believe."
She sighed, laughed, said: "Oh! Jon!"
Little Jon said critically:
"Do you think Bella beautiful, for instance? I hardly do."
"Bella is young; that's something."
"But you look younger, Mum. If you bump against Bella she hurts."
"I don't believe 'Da' was beautiful, when I come to think of it; and
Mademoiselle's almost ugly."
"Mademoiselle has a very nice face." "Oh! yes; nice. I love your little
rays, Mum."
"Rays?"
Little Jon put his finger to the outer corner of her eye.
"Oh! Those? But they're a sign of age."
"They come when you smile."
"But they usen't to."
"Oh! well, I like them. Do you love me, Mum?"
"I do--I do love you, darling."
"Ever so?"
"Ever so!"
"More than I thought you did?"
"Much--much more."
"Well, so do I; so that makes it even."
Conscious that he had never in his life so given himself away, he felt a
sudden reaction to the manliness of Sir Lamorac, Dick Needham, Huck Finn,
and other heroes.
"Shall I show you a thing or two?" he said; and slipping out of her arms,
he stood on his head. Then, fired by her obvious admiration, he mounted
the bed, and threw himself head foremost from his feet on to his back,
without touching anything with his hands. He did this several times.
That evening, having inspected what they had brought, he stayed up to
dinner, sitting between them at the little round table they used when
they were alone. He was extremely excited. His mother wore a
French-grey dress, with creamy lace made out of little scriggly roses,
round her neck, which was browner than the lace. He kept looking at her,
till at last his father's funny smile made him suddenly attentive to his
slice of pineapple. It was later than he had ever stayed up, when he
went to bed. His mother went up with him, and he undressed very slowly
so as to keep her there. When at last he had nothing on but his pyjamas,
he said:
"Promise you won't go while I say my prayers!"
"I promise."
Kneeling down and plunging his face into the bed, little Jon hurried up,
under his breath, opening one eye now and then, to see her standing
perfectly still with a smile on her face. "Our Father"--so went his last
prayer, "which art in heaven, hallowed be thy Mum, thy Kingdom Mum--on
Earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily Mum and forgive us
our trespasses on earth as it is in heaven and trespass against us, for
thine is the evil the power and the glory for ever and ever. Amum! Look
out!" He sprang, and for a long minute remained in her arms. Once in
bed, he continued to hold her hand.
"You won't shut the door any more than that, will you? Are you going to
be long, Mum?"
"I must go down and play to Daddy."
"Oh! well, I shall hear you."
"I hope not; you must go to sleep."
"I can sleep any night."
"Well, this is just a night like any other."
"Oh! no--it's extra special."
"On extra special nights one always sleeps soundest."
"But if I go to sleep, Mum, I shan't hear you come up."
"Well, when I do, I'll come in and give you a kiss, then if you're awake
you'll know, and if you're not you'll still know you've had one."
Little Jon sighed, "All right!" he said: "I suppose I must put up with
that. Mum?"
"Yes?"
"What was her name that Daddy believes in? Venus Anna Diomedes?"
"Oh! my angel! Anadyomene."
"Yes! but I like my name for you much better."
"What is yours, Jon?"
Little Jon answered shyly:
"Guinevere! it's out of the Round Table--I've only just thought of it,
only of course her hair was down."
His mother's eyes, looking past him, seemed to float.
"You won't forget to come, Mum?"
"Not if you'll go to sleep."
"That's a bargain, then." And little Jon screwed up his eyes.
He felt her lips on his forehead, heard her footsteps; opened his eyes to
see her gliding through the doorway, and, sighing, screwed them up again.
Then Time began.
For some ten minutes of it he tried loyally to sleep, counting a great
number of thistles in a row, "Da's" old recipe for bringing slumber. He
seemed to have been hours counting. It must, he thought, be nearly time
for her to come up now. He threw the bedclothes back. "I'm hot!" he
said, and his voice sounded funny in the darkness, like someone else's.
Why didn't she come? He sat up. He must look! He got out of bed, went
to the window and pulled the curtain a slice aside. It wasn't dark, but
he couldn't tell whether because of daylight or the moon, which was very
big. It had a funny, wicked face, as if laughing at him, and he did not
want to look at it. Then, remembering that his mother had said moonlit
nights were beautiful, he continued to stare out in a general way. The
trees threw thick shadows, the lawn looked like spilt milk, and a long,
long way he could see; oh! very far; right over the world, and it all
looked different and swimmy. There was a lovely smell, too, in his open
window.
'I wish I had a dove like Noah!' he thought.
"The moony moon was round and bright, It shone and shone and made it
light."
After that rhyme, which came into his head all at once, he became
conscious of music, very soft-lovely! Mum playing! He bethought himself
of a macaroon he had, laid up in his chest of drawers, and, getting it,
came back to the window. He leaned out, now munching, now holding his
jaws to hear the music better. "Da" used to say that angels played on
harps in heaven; but it wasn't half so lovely as Mum playing in the moony
night, with him eating a macaroon. A cockchafer buzzed by, a moth flew
in his face, the music stopped, and little Jon drew his head in. She
must be coming! He didn't want to be found awake. He got back into bed
and pulled the clothes nearly over his head; but he had left a streak of
moonlight coming in. It fell across the floor, near the foot of the bed,
and he watched it moving ever so slowly towards him, as if it were alive.
The music began again, but he could only just hear it now; sleepy music,
pretty--sleepy--music--sleepy--slee.....
And time slipped by, the music rose, fell, ceased; the moonbeam crept
towards his face. Little Jon turned in his sleep till he lay on his
back, with one brown fist still grasping the bedclothes. The corners of
his eyes twitched--he had begun to dream. He dreamed he was drinking
milk out of a pan that was the moon, opposite a great black cat which
watched him with a funny smile like his father's. He heard it whisper:
"Don't drink too much!" It was the cat's milk, of course, and he put out
his hand amicably to stroke the creature; but it was no longer there; the
pan had become a bed, in which he was lying, and when he tried to get out
he couldn't find the edge; he couldn't find it--he--he--couldn't get out!
It was dreadful!
He whimpered in his sleep. The bed had begun to go round too; it was
outside him and inside him; going round and round, and getting fiery, and
Mother Lee out of Cast up by the Sea was stirring it! Oh! so horrible
she looked! Faster and faster!--till he and the bed and Mother Lee and
the moon and the cat were all one wheel going round and round and up and
up--awful--awful--awful!
He shrieked.
A voice saying: "Darling, darling!" got through the wheel, and he awoke,
standing on his bed, with his eyes wide open.
There was his mother, with her hair like Guinevere's, and, clutching her,
he buried his face in it.
"Oh! oh!"
"It's all right, treasure. You're awake now. There! There! It's
nothing!"
But little Jon continued to say: "Oh! oh!"
Her voice went on, velvety in his ear:
"It was the moonlight, sweetheart, coming on your face."
Little Jon burbled into her nightgown
"You said it was beautiful. Oh!"
"Not to sleep in, Jon. Who let it in? Did you draw the curtains?"
"I wanted to see the time; I--I looked out, I--I heard you playing, Mum;
I--I ate my macaroon." But he was growing slowly comforted; and the
instinct to excuse his fear revived within him.
"Mother Lee went round in me and got all fiery," he mumbled.
"Well, Jon, what can you expect if you eat macaroons after you've gone to
bed?"
"Only one, Mum; it made the music ever so more beautiful. I was waiting
for you--I nearly thought it was to-morrow."
"My ducky, it's only just eleven now."
Little Jon was silent, rubbing his nose on her neck.
"Mum, is Daddy in your room?"
"Not to-night."
"Can I come?"
"If you wish, my precious."
Half himself again, little Jon drew back.
"You look different, Mum; ever so younger."
"It's my hair, darling."
Little Jon laid hold of it, thick, dark gold, with a few silver threads.
"I like it," he said: "I like you best of all like this."
Taking her hand, he had begun dragging her towards the door. He shut it
as they passed, with a sigh of relief.
"Which side of the bed do you like, Mum?"
"The left side."
"All right."
Wasting no time, giving her no chance to change her mind, little Jon got
into the bed, which seemed much softer than his own. He heaved another
sigh, screwed his head into the pillow and lay examining the battle of
chariots and swords and spears which always went on outside blankets,
where the little hairs stood up against the light.
"It wasn't anything, really, was it?" he said.
From before her glass his mother answered:
"Nothing but the moon and your imagination heated up. You mustn't get so
excited, Jon."
But, still not quite in possession of his nerves, little Jon answered
boastfully:
"I wasn't afraid, really, of course!" And again he lay watching the
spears and chariots. It all seemed very long.
"Oh! Mum, do hurry up!"
"Darling, I have to plait my hair."
"Oh! not to-night. You'll only have to unplait it again to-morrow. I'm
sleepy now; if you don't come, I shan't be sleepy soon."
His mother stood up white and flowey before the winged mirror: he could
see three of her, with her neck turned and her hair bright under the
light, and her dark eyes smiling. It was unnecessary, and he said:
"Do come, Mum; I'm waiting."
"Very well, my love, I'll come."
Little Jon closed his eyes. Everything was turning out most
satisfactory, only she must hurry up! He felt the bed shake, she was
getting in. And, still with his eyes closed, he said sleepily: "It's
nice, isn't it?"
He heard her voice say something, felt her lips touching his nose, and,
snuggling up beside her who lay awake and loved him with her thoughts, he
fell into the dreamless sleep, which rounded off his past.
TO LET
"From out the fatal loins of those two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life."
--Romeo and Juliet.
TO CHARLES SCRIBNER
PART I
ENCOUNTER
Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was
staying, in the afternoon of the 12th of May, 1920, with the intention of
visiting a collection of pictures in a Gallery off Cork Street, and
looking into the Future. He walked. Since the War he never took a cab
if he could help it. Their drivers were, in his view, an uncivil lot,
though now that the War was over and supply beginning to exceed demand
again, getting more civil in accordance with the custom of human nature.
Still, he had not forgiven them, deeply identifying them with gloomy
memories, and now, dimly, like all members, of their class, with
revolution. The considerable anxiety he had passed through during the
War, and the more considerable anxiety he had since undergone in the
Peace, had produced psychological consequences in a tenacious nature. He
had, mentally, so frequently experienced ruin, that he had ceased to
believe in its material probability. Paying away four thousand a year in
income and super tax, one could not very well be worse off! A fortune of
a quarter of a million, encumbered only by a wife and one daughter, and
very diversely invested, afforded substantial guarantee even against that
"wildcat notion" a levy on capital. And as to confiscation of war
profits, he was entirely in favour of it, for he had none, and "serve the
beggars right!" The price of pictures, moreover, had, if anything, gone
up, and he had done better with his collection since the War began than
ever before. Air-raids, also, had acted beneficially on a spirit
congenitally cautious, and hardened a character already dogged. To be in
danger of being entirely dispersed inclined one to be less apprehensive
of the more partial dispersions involved in levies and taxation, while
the habit of condemning the impudence of the Germans had led naturally to
condemning that of Labour, if not openly at least in the sanctuary of his
soul.
He walked. There was, moreover, time to spare, for Fleur was to meet him
at the Gallery at four o'clock, and it was as yet but half-past two. It
was good for him to walk--his liver was a little constricted, and his
nerves rather on edge. His wife was always out when she was in Town, and
his daughter would flibberty-gibbet all over the place like most young
women since the War. Still, he must be thankful that she had been too
young to do anything in that War itself. Not, of course, that he had not
supported the War from its inception, with all his soul, but between that
and supporting it with the bodies of his wife and daughter, there had
been a gap fixed by something old-fashioned within him which abhorred
emotional extravagance. He had, for instance, strongly objected to
Annette, so attractive, and in 1914 only thirty-four, going to her native
France, her "chere patrie" as, under the stimulus of war, she had begun
to call it, to nurse her "braves poilus," forsooth! Ruining her health
and her looks! As if she were really a nurse! He had put a stopper on
it. Let her do needlework for them at home, or knit! She had not gone,
therefore, and had never been quite the same woman since. A bad tendency
of hers to mock at him, not openly, but in continual little ways, had
grown. As for Fleur, the War had resolved the vexed problem whether or
not she should go to school. She was better away from her mother in her
war mood, from the chance of air-raids, and the impetus to do extravagant
things; so he had placed her in a seminary as far West as had seemed to
him compatible with excellence, and had missed her horribly. Fleur! He
had never regretted the somewhat outlandish name by which at her birth he
had decided so suddenly to call her--marked concession though it had been
to the French. Fleur! A pretty name--a pretty child! But restless--too
restless; and wilful! Knowing her power too over her father! Soames
often reflected on the mistake it was to dote on his daughter. To get
old and dote! Sixty-five! He was getting on; but he didn't feel it,
for, fortunately perhaps, considering Annette's youth and good looks, his
second marriage had turned out a cool affair. He had known but one real
passion in his life--for that first wife of his--Irene. Yes, and that
fellow, his cousin Jolyon, who had gone off with her, was looking very
shaky, they said. No wonder, at seventy-two, after twenty years of a
third marriage!
Soames paused a moment in his march to lean over the railings of the Row.
A suitable spot for reminiscence, half-way between that house in Park
Lane which had seen his birth and his parents' deaths, and the little
house in Montpellier Square where thirty-five years ago he had enjoyed
his first edition of matrimony. Now, after twenty years of his second
edition, that old tragedy seemed to him like a previous existence--which
had ended when Fleur was born in place of the son he had hoped for. For
many years he had ceased regretting, even vaguely, the son who had not
been born; Fleur filled the bill in his heart. After all, she bore his
name; and he was not looking forward at all to the time when she would
change it. Indeed, if he ever thought of such a calamity, it was
seasoned by the vague feeling that he could make her rich enough to
purchase perhaps and extinguish the name of the fellow who married
her--why not, since, as it seemed, women were equal to men nowadays? And
Soames, secretly convinced that they were not, passed his curved hand
over his face vigorously, till it reached the comfort of his chin.
Thanks to abstemious habits, he had not grown fat and gabby; his nose was
pale and thin, his grey moustache close-clipped, his eyesight unimpaired.
A slight stoop closened and corrected the expansion given to his face by
the heightening of his forehead in the recession of his grey hair. Little
change had Time wrought in the "warmest" of the young Forsytes, as the
last of the old Forsytes--Timothy-now in his hundred and first year,
would have phrased it.
The shade from the plane-trees fell on his neat Homburg hat; he had given
up top hats--it was no use attracting attention to wealth in days like
these. Plane-trees! His thoughts travelled sharply to Madrid--the
Easter before the War, when, having to make up his mind about that Goya
picture, he had taken a voyage of discovery to study the painter on his
spot. The fellow had impressed him--great range, real genius! Highly as
the chap ranked, he would rank even higher before they had finished with
him. The second Goya craze would be greater even than the first; oh,
yes! And he had bought. On that visit he had--as never
before--commissioned a copy of a fresco painting called "La Vendimia,"
wherein was the figure of a girl with an arm akimbo, who had reminded him
of his daughter. He had it now in the Gallery at Mapledurham, and rather
poor it was--you couldn't copy Goya. He would still look at it, however,
if his daughter were not there, for the sake of something irresistibly
reminiscent in the light, erect balance of the figure, the width between
the arching eyebrows, the eager dreaming of the dark eyes. Curious that
Fleur should have dark eyes, when his own were grey--no pure Forsyte had
brown eyes--and her mother's blue! But of course her grandmother
Lamotte's eyes were dark as treacle!
He began to walk on again toward Hyde Park Corner. No greater change in
all England than in the Row! Born almost within hail of it, he could
remember it from 1860 on. Brought there as a child between the
crinolines to stare at tight-trousered dandies in whiskers, riding with a
cavalry seat; to watch the doffing of curly-brimmed and white top hats;
the leisurely air of it all, and the little bow-legged man in a long red
waistcoat who used to come among the fashion with dogs on several
strings, and try to sell one to his mother: King Charles spaniels,
Italian greyhounds, affectionate to her crinoline--you never saw them
now. You saw no quality of any sort, indeed, just working people sitting
in dull rows with nothing to stare at but a few young bouncing females in
pot hats, riding astride, or desultory Colonials charging up and down on
dismal-looking hacks; with, here and there, little girls on ponies, or
old gentlemen jogging their livers, or an orderly trying a great
galumphing cavalry horse; no thoroughbreds, no grooms, no bowing, no
scraping, no gossip--nothing; only the trees the same--the trees
in--different to the generations and declensions of mankind. A
democratic England--dishevelled, hurried, noisy, and seemingly without an
apex. And that something fastidious in the soul of Soames turned over
within him. Gone forever, the close borough of rank and polish! Wealth
there was--oh, yes! wealth--he himself was a richer man than his father
had ever been; but manners, flavour, quality, all gone, engulfed in one
vast, ugly, shoulder-rubbing, petrol-smelling Cheerio. Little
half-beaten pockets of gentility and caste lurking here and there,
dispersed and chetif, as Annette would say; but nothing ever again firm
and coherent to look up to. And into this new hurly-burly of bad manners
and loose morals his daughter--flower of his life--was flung! And when
those Labour chaps got power--if they ever did--the worst was yet to
come.
He passed out under the archway, at last no longer--thank goodness!
--disfigured by the gungrey of its search-light. 'They'd better put a
search-light on to where they're all going,' he thought, 'and light up
their precious democracy!' And he directed his steps along the Club
fronts of Piccadilly. George Forsyte, of course, would be sitting in the
bay window of the Iseeum. The chap was so big now that he was there
nearly all his time, like some immovable, sardonic, humorous eye noting
the decline of men and things. And Soames hurried, ever constitutionally
uneasy beneath his cousin's glance. George, who, as he had heard, had
written a letter signed "Patriot" in the middle of the War, complaining
of the Government's hysteria in docking the oats of race-horses. Yes,
there he was, tall, ponderous, neat, clean-shaven, with his smooth hair,
hardly thinned, smelling, no doubt, of the best hair-wash, and a pink
paper in his hand. Well, he didn't change! And for perhaps the first
time in his life Soames felt a kind of sympathy tapping in his waistcoat
for that sardonic kinsman. With his weight, his perfectly parted hair,
and bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that the old order would take some
shifting yet. He saw George move the pink paper as if inviting him to
ascend--the chap must want to ask something about his property. It was
still under Soames' control; for in the adoption of a sleeping
partnership at that painful period twenty years back when he had divorced
Irene, Soames had found himself almost insensibly retaining control of
all purely Forsyte affairs.
Hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in. Since the death of
his brother-in-law Montague Dartie, in Paris, which no one had quite
known what to make of, except that it was certainly not suicide--the
Iseeum Club had seemed more respectable to Soames. George, too, he knew,
had sown the last of his wild oats, and was committed definitely to the
joys of the table, eating only of the very best so as to keep his weight
down, and owning, as he said, "just one or two old screws to give me an
interest in life." He joined his cousin, therefore, in the bay window
without the embarrassing sense of indiscretion he had been used to feel
up there. George put out a well-kept hand.
"Haven't seen you since the War," he said. "How's your wife?"
"Thanks," said Soames coldly, "well enough."
Some hidden jest curved, for a moment, George's fleshy face, and gloated
from his eye.
"That Belgian chap, Profond," he said, "is a member here now. He's a rum
customer."
"Quite!" muttered Soames. "What did you want to see me about?"
"Old Timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment. I suppose he's
made his Will."
"Yes."
"Well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up--last of the old lot;
he's a hundred, you know. They say he's like a rummy. Where are you
goin' to put him? He ought to have a pyramid by rights."
Soames shook his head. "Highgate, the family vault."
"Well, I suppose the old girls would miss him, if he was anywhere else.
They say he still takes an interest in food. He might last on, you know.
Don't we get anything for the old Forsytes? Ten of them--average age
eighty-eight--I worked it out. That ought to be equal to triplets."
"Is that all?" said Soames, "I must be getting on."
'You unsociable devil,' George's eyes seemed to answer. "Yes, that's
all: Look him up in his mausoleum--the old chap might want to prophesy."
The grin died on the rich curves of his face, and he added: "Haven't you
attorneys invented a way yet of dodging this damned income tax? It hits
the fixed inherited income like the very deuce. I used to have two
thousand five hundred a year; now I've got a beggarly fifteen hundred,
and the price of living doubled."
"Ah!" murmured Soames, "the turf's in danger."
Over George's face moved a gleam of sardonic self-defence.
"Well," he said, "they brought me up to do nothing, and here I am in the
sear and yellow, getting poorer every day. These Labour chaps mean to
have the lot before they've done. What are you going to do for a living
when it comes? I shall work a six-hour day teaching politicians how to
see a joke. Take my tip, Soames; go into Parliament, make sure of your
four hundred--and employ me."
And, as Soames retired, he resumed his seat in the bay window.
Soames moved along Piccadilly deep in reflections excited by his cousin's
words. He himself had always been a worker and a saver, George always a
drone and a spender; and yet, if confiscation once began, it was he--the
worker and the saver--who would be looted! That was the negation of all
virtue, the overturning of all Forsyte principles. Could civilization be
built on any other? He did not think so. Well, they wouldn't confiscate
his pictures, for they wouldn't know their worth. But what would they be
worth, if these maniacs once began to milk capital? A drug on the
market. 'I don't care about myself,' he thought; 'I could live on five
hundred a year, and never know the difference, at my age.' But Fleur!
This fortune, so widely invested, these treasures so carefully chosen and
amassed, were all for--her. And if it should turn out that he couldn't
give or leave them to her--well, life had no meaning, and what was the
use of going in to look at this crazy, futuristic stuff with the view of
seeing whether it had any future?
Arriving at the Gallery off Cork Street, however, he paid his shilling,
picked up a catalogue, and entered. Some ten persons were prowling
round. Soames took steps and came on what looked to him like a lamp-post
bent by collision with a motor omnibus. It was advanced some three paces
from the wall, and was described in his catalogue as "Jupiter." He
examined it with curiosity, having recently turned some of his attention
to sculpture. 'If that's Jupiter,' he thought, 'I wonder what Juno's
like.' And suddenly he saw her, opposite. She appeared to him like
nothing so much as a pump with two handles, lightly clad in snow. He was
still gazing at her, when two of the prowlers halted on his left.
"Epatant!" he heard one say.
"Jargon!" growled Soames to himself.
The other's boyish voice replied
"Missed it, old bean; he's pulling your leg. When Jove and Juno created
he them, he was saying: 'I'll see how much these fools will swallow.'
And they've lapped up the lot."
"You young duffer! Vospovitch is an innovator. Don't you see that he's
brought satire into sculpture? The future of plastic art, of music,
painting, and even architecture, has set in satiric. It was bound to.
People are tired--the bottom's tumbled out of sentiment."
"Well, I'm quite equal to taking a little interest in beauty. I was
through the War. You've dropped your handkerchief, sir."
Soames saw a handkerchief held out in front of him. He took it with some
natural suspicion, and approached it to his nose. It had the right
scent--of distant Eau de Cologne--and his initials in a corner. Slightly
reassured, he raised his eyes to the young man's face. It had rather
fawn-like ears, a laughing mouth, with half a toothbrush growing out of
it on each side, and small lively eyes, above a normally dressed
appearance.
"Thank you," he said; and moved by a sort of irritation, added: "Glad to
hear you like beauty; that's rare, nowadays."
"I dote on it," said the young man; "but you and I are the last of the
old guard, sir."
Soames smiled.
"If you really care for pictures," he said, "here's my card. I can show
you some quite good ones any Sunday, if you're down the river and care to
look in."
"Awfully nice of you, sir. I'll drop in like a bird. My name's
Mont-Michael." And he took off his hat.
Soames, already regretting his impulse, raised his own slightly in
response, with a downward look at the young man's companion, who had a
purple tie, dreadful little sluglike whiskers, and a scornful look--as
if he were a poet!
It was the first indiscretion he had committed for so long that he went
and sat down in an alcove. What had possessed him to give his card to a
rackety young fellow, who went about with a thing like that? And Fleur,
always at the back of his thoughts, started out like a filigree figure
from a clock when the hour strikes. On the screen opposite the alcove
was a large canvas with a great many square tomato-coloured blobs on it,
and nothing else, so far as Soames could see from where he sat. He
looked at his catalogue: "No. 32 'The Future Town'--Paul Post." 'I
suppose that's satiric too,' he thought. 'What a thing!' But his second
impulse was more cautious. It did not do to condemn hurriedly. There had
been those stripey, streaky creations of Monet's, which had turned out
such trumps; and then the stippled school; and Gauguin. Why, even since
the Post-Impressionists there had been one or two painters not to be
sneezed at. During the thirty-eight years of his connoisseur's life,
indeed, he had marked so many "movements," seen the tides of taste and
technique so ebb and flow, that there was really no telling anything
except that there was money to be made out of every change of fashion.
This too might quite well be a case where one must subdue primordial
instinct, or lose the market. He got up and stood before the picture,
trying hard to see it with the eyes of other people. Above the tomato
blobs was what he took to be a sunset, till some one passing said: "He's
got the airplanes wonderfully, don't you think!" Below the tomato blobs
was a band of white with vertical black stripes, to which he could assign
no meaning whatever, till some one else came by, murmuring: "What
expression he gets with his foreground!" Expression? Of what? Soames
went back to his seat. The thing was "rich," as his father would have
said, and he wouldn't give a damn for it. Expression! Ah! they were all
Expressionists now, he had heard, on the Continent. So it was coming
here too, was it? He remembered the first wave of influenza in 1887--or
'8--hatched in China, so they said. He wondered where this--this
Expressionism had been hatched. The thing was a regular disease!
He had become conscious of a woman and a youth standing between him and
the "Future Town." Their backs were turned; but very suddenly Soames put
his catalogue before his face, and drawing his hat forward, gazed through
the slit between. No mistaking that back, elegant as ever though the
hair above had gone grey. Irene! His divorced wife--Irene! And this,
no doubt, was--her son--by that fellow Jolyon Forsyte--their boy, six
months older than his own girl! And mumbling over in his mind the bitter
days of his divorce, he rose to get out of sight, but quickly sat down
again. She had turned her head to speak to her boy; her profile was
still so youthful that it made her grey hair seem powdery, as if
fancy-dressed; and her lips were smiling as Soames, first possessor of
them, had never seen them smile. Grudgingly he admitted her still
beautiful and in figure almost as young as ever. And how that boy smiled
back at her! Emotion squeezed Soames' heart. The sight infringed his
sense of justice. He grudged her that boy's smile--it went beyond what
Fleur gave him, and it was undeserved. Their son might have been his
son; Fleur might have been her daughter, if she had kept straight! He
lowered his catalogue. If she saw him, all the better! A reminder of
her conduct in the presence of her son, who probably knew nothing of it,
would be a salutary touch from the finger of that Nemesis which surely
must soon or late visit her! Then, half-conscious that such a thought
was extravagant for a Forsyte of his age, Soames took out his watch.
Past four! Fleur was late. She had gone to his niece Imogen Cardigan's,
and there they would keep her smoking cigarettes and gossiping, and that.
He heard the boy laugh, and say eagerly: "I say, Mum, is this by one of
Auntie June's lame ducks?"
"Paul Post--I believe it is, darling."
The word produced a little shock in Soames; he had never heard her use
it. And then she saw him. His eyes must have had in them something of
George Forsyte's sardonic look; for her gloved hand crisped the folds of
her frock, her eyebrows rose, her face went stony. She moved on.
"It is a caution," said the boy, catching her arm again.
Soames stared after them. That boy was good-looking, with a Forsyte
chin, and eyes deep-grey, deep in; but with something sunny, like a glass
of old sherry spilled over him; his smile perhaps, his hair. Better than
they deserved--those two! They passed from his view into the next room,
and Soames continued to regard the Future Town, but saw it not. A little
smile snarled up his lips. He was despising the vehemence of his own
feelings after all these years. Ghosts! And yet as one grew old--was
there anything but what was ghost-like left? Yes, there was Fleur! He
fixed his eyes on the entrance. She was due; but she would keep him
waiting, of course! And suddenly he became aware of a sort of human
breeze--a short, slight form clad in a sea-green djibbah with a metal
belt and a fillet binding unruly red-gold hair all streaked with grey.
She was talking to the Gallery attendants, and something familiar riveted
his gaze--in her eyes, her chin, her hair, her spirit--something which
suggested a thin Skye terrier just before its dinner. Surely June
Forsyte! His cousin June--and coming straight to his recess! She sat
down beside him, deep in thought, took out a tablet, and made a pencil
note. Soames sat unmoving. A confounded thing, cousinship!
"Disgusting!" he heard her murmur; then, as if resenting the presence of
an overhearing stranger, she looked at him. The worst had happened.
"Soames!"
Soames turned his head a very little.
"How are you?" he said. "Haven't seen you for twenty years."
"No. Whatever made you come here?"
"My sins," said Soames. "What stuff!"
"Stuff? Oh, yes--of course; it hasn't arrived yet.
"It never will," said Soames; "it must be making a dead loss."
"Of course it is."
"How d'you know?"
"It's my Gallery."
Soames sniffed from sheer surprise.
"Yours? What on earth makes you run a show like this?"
"I don't treat Art as if it were grocery."
Soames pointed to the Future Town. "Look at that! Who's going to live
in a town like that, or with it on his walls?"
June contemplated the picture for a moment.
"It's a vision," she said.
"The deuce!"
There was silence, then June rose. 'Crazylooking creature!' he thought.
"Well," he said, "you'll find your young stepbrother here with a woman I
used to know. If you take my advice, you'll close this exhibition."
June looked back at him. "Oh! You Forsyte!" she said, and moved on.
About her light, fly-away figure, passing so suddenly away, was a look of
dangerous decisions. Forsyte! Of course, he was a Forsyte! And so was
she! But from the time when, as a mere girl, she brought Bosinney into
his life to wreck it, he had never hit it off with June and never would!
And here she was, unmarried to this day, owning a Gallery!... And
suddenly it came to Soames how little he knew now of his own family. The
old aunts at Timothy's had been dead so many years; there was no
clearing-house for news. What had they all done in the War? Young
Roger's boy had been wounded, St. John Hayman's second son killed; young
Nicholas' eldest had got an O. B. E., or whatever they gave them. They
had all joined up somehow, he believed. That boy of Jolyon's and
Irene's, he supposed, had been too young; his own generation, of course,
too old, though Giles Hayman had driven a car for the Red Cross--and
Jesse Hayman been a special constable--those "Dromios" had always been of
a sporting type! As for himself, he had given a motor ambulance, read
the papers till he was sick of them, passed through much anxiety, bought
no clothes, lost seven pounds in weight; he didn't know what more he
could have done at his age. Indeed, thinking it over, it struck him that
he and his family had taken this war very differently to that affair with
the Boers, which had been supposed to tax all the resources of the
Empire. In that old war, of course, his nephew Val Dartie had been
wounded, that fellow Jolyon's first son had died of enteric, "the
Dromios" had gone out on horses, and June had been a nurse; but all that
had seemed in the nature of a portent, while in this war everybody had
done "their bit," so far as he could make out, as a matter of course. It
seemed to show the growth of something or other--or perhaps the decline
of something else. Had the Forsytes become less individual, or more
Imperial, or less provincial? Or was it simply that one hated
Germans?... Why didn't Fleur come, so that he could get away? He saw
those three return together from the other room and pass back along the
far side of the screen. The boy was standing before the Juno now. And,
suddenly, on the other side of her, Soames saw--his daughter, with
eyebrows raised, as well they might be. He could see her eyes glint
sideways at the boy, and the boy look back at her. Then Irene slipped
her hand through his arm, and drew him on. Soames saw him glancing
round, and Fleur looking after them as the three went out.
A voice said cheerfully: "Bit thick, isn't it, sir?"
The young man who had handed him his handkerchief was again passing.
Soames nodded.
"I don't know what we're coming to."
"Oh! That's all right, sir," answered the young man cheerfully; "they
don't either."
Fleur's voice said: "Hallo, Father! Here you are!" precisely as if he
had been keeping her waiting.
The young man, snatching off his hat, passed on.
"Well," said Soames, looking her up and down, "you're a punctual sort of
young woman!"
This treasured possession of his life was of medium height and colour,
with short, dark chestnut hair; her wide-apart brown eyes were set in
whites so clear that they glinted when they moved, and yet in repose were
almost dreamy under very white, black-lashed lids, held over them in a
sort of suspense. She had a charming profile, and nothing of her father
in her face save a decided chin. Aware that his expression was softening
as he looked at her, Soames frowned to preserve the unemotionalism proper
to a Forsyte. He knew she was only too inclined to take advantage of his
weakness.
Slipping her hand under his arm, she said:
"Who was that?"
"He picked up my handkerchief. We talked about the pictures."
"You're not going to buy that, Father?"
"No," said Soames grimly; "nor that Juno you've been looking at."
Fleur dragged at his arm. "Oh! Let's go! It's a ghastly show."
In the doorway they passed the young man called Mont and his partner. But
Soames had hung out a board marked "Trespassers will be prosecuted," and
he barely acknowledged the young fellow's salute.
"Well," he said in the street, "whom did you meet at Imogen's?"
"Aunt Winifred, and that Monsieur Profond."
"Oh!" muttered Soames; "that chap! What does your aunt see in him?"
"I don't know. He looks pretty deep--mother says she likes him."
Soames grunted.
"Cousin Val and his wife were there, too."
"What!" said Soames. "I thought they were back in South Africa."
"Oh, no! They've sold their farm. Cousin Val is going to train
race-horses on the Sussex Downs. They've got a jolly old manor-house;
they asked me down there."
Soames coughed: the news was distasteful to him. "What's his wife like
now?"
"Very quiet, but nice, I think."
Soames coughed again. "He's a rackety chap, your Cousin Val."
"Oh! no, Father; they're awfully devoted. I promised to go--Saturday to
Wednesday next."
"Training race-horses!" said Soames. It was extravagant, but not the
reason for his distaste. Why the deuce couldn't his nephew have stayed
out in South Africa? His own divorce had been bad enough, without his
nephew's marriage to the daughter of the co-respondent; a half-sister too
of June, and of that boy whom Fleur had just been looking at from under
the pump-handle. If he didn't look out, she would come to know all about
that old disgrace! Unpleasant things! They were round him this afternoon
like a swarm of bees!
"I don't like it!" he said.
"I want to see the race-horses," murmured Fleur; "and they've promised I
shall ride. Cousin Val can't walk much, you know; but he can ride
perfectly. He's going to show me their gallops."
"Racing!" said Soames. "It's a pity the War didn't knock that on the
head. He's taking after his father, I'm afraid."
"I don't know anything about his father."
"No," said Soames, grimly. "He took an interest in horses and broke his
neck in Paris, walking down-stairs. Good riddance for your aunt." He
frowned, recollecting the inquiry into those stairs which he had attended
in Paris six years ago, because. Montague Dartie could not attend it
himself--perfectly normal stairs in a house where they played baccarat.
Either his winnings or the way he had celebrated them had gone to his
brother-in-law's head. The French procedure had been very loose; he had
had a lot of trouble with it.
A sound from Fleur distracted his attention. "Look! The people who were
in the Gallery with us."
"What people?" muttered Soames, who knew perfectly well.
"I think that woman's beautiful."
"Come into this pastry-cook's," said Soames abruptly, and tightening his
grip on her arm he turned into a confectioner's. It was--for him--a
surprising thing to do, and he said rather anxiously: "What will you
have?"
"Oh! I don't want anything. I had a cocktail and a tremendous lunch."
"We must have something now we're here," muttered Soames, keeping hold of
her arm.
"Two teas," he said; "and two of those nougat things."
But no sooner was his body seated than his soul sprang up. Those
three--those three were coming in! He heard Irene say something to her
boy, and his answer:
"Oh! no, Mum; this place is all right. My stunt." And the three sat
down.
At that moment, most awkward of his existence, crowded with ghosts and
shadows from his past, in presence of the only two women he had ever
loved--his divorced wife and his daughter by her successor--Soames was
not so much afraid of them as of his cousin June. She might make a
scene--she might introduce those two children--she was capable of
anything. He bit too hastily at the nougat, and it stuck to his plate.
Working at it with his finger, he glanced at Fleur. She was masticating
dreamily, but her eyes were on the boy. The Forsyte in him said: "Think,
feel, and you're done for!" And he wiggled his finger desperately.
Plate! Did Jolyon wear a plate? Did that woman wear a plate? Time had
been when he had seen her wearing nothing! That was something, anyway,
which had never been stolen from him. And she knew it, though she might
sit there calm and self-possessed, as if she had never been his wife. An
acid humour stirred in his Forsyte blood; a subtle pain divided by hair's
breadth from pleasure. If only June did not suddenly bring her hornets
about his ears! The boy was talking.
"Of course, Auntie June"--so he called his half-sister "Auntie," did
he?--well, she must be fifty, if she was a day!--"it's jolly good of you
to encourage them. Only--hang it all!" Soames stole a glance. Irene's
startled eyes were bent watchfully on her boy. She--she had these
devotions--for Bosinney--for that boy's father--for this boy! He touched
Fleur's arm, and said:
"Well, have you had enough?"
"One more, Father, please."
She would be sick! He went to the counter to pay. When he turned round
again he saw Fleur standing near the door, holding a handkerchief which
the boy had evidently just handed to her.
"F. F.," he heard her say. "Fleur Forsyte--it's mine all right. Thank
you ever so."
Good God! She had caught the trick from what he'd told her in the
Gallery--monkey!
"Forsyte? Why--that's my name too. Perhaps we're cousins."
"Really! We must be. There aren't any others. I live at Mapledurham;
where do you?"
"Robin Hill."
Question and answer had been so rapid that all was over before he could
lift a finger. He saw Irene's face alive with startled feeling, gave the
slightest shake of his head, and slipped his arm through Fleur's.
"Come along!" he said.
She did not move.
"Didn't you hear, Father? Isn't it queer--our name's the same. Are we
cousins?"
"What's that?" he said. "Forsyte? Distant, perhaps."
"My name's Jolyon, sir. Jon, for short."
"Oh! Ah!" said Soames. "Yes. Distant. How are you? Very good of you.
Good-bye!"
He moved on.
"Thanks awfully," Fleur was saying. "Au revoir!"
"Au revoir!" he heard the boy reply.
II
FINE FLEUR FORSYTE
Emerging from the "pastry-cook's," Soames' first impulse was to vent his
nerves by saying to his daughter: 'Dropping your hand-kerchief!' to which
her reply might well be: 'I picked that up from you!' His second impulse
therefore was to let sleeping dogs lie. But she would surely question
him. He gave her a sidelong look, and found she was giving him the same.
She said softly:
"Why don't you like those cousins, Father?" Soames lifted the corner of
his lip.
"What made you think that?"
"Cela se voit."
'That sees itself!' What a way of putting it! After twenty years of a
French wife Soames had still little sympathy with her language; a
theatrical affair and connected in his mind with all the refinements of
domestic irony.
"How?" he asked.
"You must know them; and you didn't make a sign. I saw them looking at
you."
"I've never seen the boy in my life," replied Soames with perfect truth.
"No; but you've seen the others, dear."
Soames gave her another look. What had she picked up? Had her Aunt
Winifred, or Imogen, or Val Dartie and his wife, been talking? Every
breath of the old scandal had been carefully kept from her at home, and
Winifred warned many times that he wouldn't have a whisper of it reach
her for the world. So far as she ought to know, he had never been
married before. But her dark eyes, whose southern glint and clearness
often almost frightened him, met his with perfect innocence.
"Well," he said, "your grandfather and his brother had a quarrel. The two
families don't know each other."
"How romantic!"
'Now, what does she mean by that?' he thought. The word was to him
extravagant and dangerous--it was as if she had said: "How jolly!"
"And they'll continue not to know each, other," he added, but instantly
regretted the challenge in those words. Fleur was smiling. In this age,
when young people prided themselves on going their own ways and paying no
attention to any sort of decent prejudice, he had said the very thing to
excite her wilfulness. Then, recollecting the expression on Irene's
face, he breathed again.
"What sort of a quarrel?" he heard Fleur say.
"About a house. It's ancient history for you. Your grandfather died the
day you were born. He was ninety."
"Ninety? Are there many Forsytes besides those in the Red Book?"
"I don't know," said Soames. "They're all dispersed now. The old ones
are dead, except Timothy."
Fleur clasped her hands.
"Timothy? Isn't that delicious?"
"Not at all," said Soames. It offended him that she should think
"Timothy" delicious--a kind of insult to his breed. This new generation
mocked at anything solid and tenacious. "You go and see the old boy. He
might want to prophesy." Ah! If Timothy could see the disquiet England
of his great-nephews and great-nieces, he would certainly give tongue.
And involuntarily he glanced up at the Iseeum; yes--George was still in
the window, with the same pink paper in his hand.
"Where is Robin Hill, Father?"
Robin Hill! Robin Hill, round which all that tragedy had centred! What
did she want to know for?
"In Surrey," he muttered; "not far from Richmond. Why?"
"Is the house there?"
"What house?"
"That they quarrelled about."
"Yes. But what's all that to do with you? We're going home
to-morrow--you'd better be thinking about your frocks."
"Bless you! They're all thought about. A family feud? It's like the
Bible, or Mark Twain--awfully exciting. What did you do in the feud,
Father?"
"Never you mind."
"Oh! But if I'm to keep it up?"
"Who said you were to keep it up?"
"You, darling."
"I? I said it had nothing to do with you."
"Just what I think, you know; so that's all right."
She was too sharp for him; fine, as Annette sometimes called her. Nothing
for it but to distract her attention.
"There's a bit of rosaline point in here," he said, stopping before a
shop, "that I thought you might like."
When he had paid for it and they had resumed their progress, Fleur said:
"Don't you think that boy's mother is the most beautiful woman of her age
you've ever seen?"
Soames shivered. Uncanny, the way she stuck to it!
"I don't know that I noticed her."
"Dear, I saw the corner of your eye."
"You see everything--and a great deal more, it seems to me!"
"What's her husband like? He must be your first cousin, if your fathers
were brothers."
"Dead, for all I know," said Soames, with sudden vehemence. "I haven't
seen him for twenty years."
"What was he?"
"A painter."
"That's quite jolly."
The words: "If you want to please me you'll put those people out of your
head," sprang to Soames' lips, but he choked them back--he must not let
her see his feelings.
"He once insulted me," he said.
Her quick eyes rested on his face.
"I see! You didn't avenge it, and it rankles. Poor Father! You let me
have a go!"
It was really like lying in the dark with a mosquito hovering above his
face. Such pertinacity in Fleur was new to him, and, as they reached the
hotel, he said grimly:
"I did my best. And that's enough about these people. I'm going up till
dinner."
"I shall sit here."
With a parting look at her extended in a chair--a look half-resentful,
half-adoring--Soames moved into the lift and was transported to their
suite on the fourth floor. He stood by the window of the sitting-room
which gave view over Hyde Park, and drummed a finger on its pane. His
feelings were confused, tetchy, troubled. The throb of that old wound,
scarred over by Time and new interests, was mingled with displeasure and
anxiety, and a slight pain in his chest where that nougat stuff had
disagreed. Had Annette come in? Not that she was any good to him in
such a difficulty. Whenever she had questioned him about his first
marriage, he had always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save that it
had been the great passion of his life, and his marriage with herself but
domestic makeshift. She had always kept the grudge of that up her
sleeve, as it were, and used it commercially. He listened. A sound--the
vague murmur of a woman's movements--was coming through the door. She
was in. He tapped.
"Who?"
"I," said Soames.
She had been changing her frock, and was still imperfectly clothed; a
striking figure before her glass. There was a certain magnificence about
her arms, shoulders, hair, which had darkened since he first knew her,
about the turn of her neck, the silkiness of her garments, her
dark-lashed, greyblue eyes--she was certainly as handsome at forty as she
had ever been. A fine possession, an excellent housekeeper, a sensible
and affectionate enough mother. If only she weren't always so frankly
cynical about the relations between them! Soames, who had no more real
affection for her than she had for him, suffered from a kind of English
grievance in that she had never dropped even the thinnest veil of
sentiment over their partnership. Like most of his countrymen and women,
he held the view that marriage should be based on mutual love, but that
when from a marriage love had disappeared, or, been found never to have
really existed--so that it was manifestly not based on love--you must not
admit it. There it was, and the love was not--but there you were, and
must continue to be! Thus you had it both ways, and were not tarred with
cynicism, realism, and immorality like the French. Moreover, it was
necessary in the interests of property. He knew that she knew that they
both knew there was no love between them, but he still expected her not
to admit in words or conduct such a thing, and he could never understand
what she meant when she talked of the hypocrisy of the English. He said:
"Whom have you got at 'The Shelter' next week?"
Annette went on touching her lips delicately with salve--he always wished
she wouldn't do that.
"Your sister Winifred, and the Car-r-digans"--she took up a tiny stick of
black--"and Prosper Profond."
"That Belgian chap? Why him?"
Annette turned her neck lazily, touched one eyelash, and said:
"He amuses Winifred."
"I want some one to amuse Fleur; she's restive."
"R-restive?" repeated Annette. "Is it the first time you see that, my
friend? She was born r-restive, as you call it."
Would she never get that affected roll out of her r's?
He touched the dress she had taken off, and asked:
"What have you been doing?"
Annette looked at him, reflected in her glass. Her just-brightened lips
smiled, rather full, rather ironical.
"Enjoying myself," she said.
"Oh!" answered Soames glumly. "Ribbandry, I suppose."
It was his word for all that incomprehensible running in and out of shops
that women went in for. "Has Fleur got her summer dresses?"
"You don't ask if I have mine."
"You don't care whether I do or not."
"Quite right. Well, she has; and I have mine--terribly expensive."
"H'm!" said Soames. "What does that chap Profond do in England?"
Annette raised the eyebrows she had just finished.
"He yachts."
"Ah!" said Soames; "he's a sleepy chap."
"Sometimes," answered Annette, and her face had a sort of quiet
enjoyment. "But sometimes very amusing."
"He's got a touch of the tar-brush about him."
Annette stretched herself.
"Tar-brush?" she said. "What is that? His mother was Armenienne."
"That's it, then," muttered Soames. "Does he know anything about
pictures?"
"He knows about everything--a man of the world."
"Well, get some one for Fleur. I want to distract her. She's going off
on Saturday to Val Dartie and his wife; I don't like it."
"Why not?"
Since the reason could not be explained without going into family
history, Soames merely answered:
"Racketing about. There's too much of it."
"I like that little Mrs. Val; she is very quiet and clever."
"I know nothing of her except--This thing's new." And Soames took up a
creation from the bed.
Annette received it from him.
"Would you hook me?" she said.
Soames hooked. Glancing once over her shoulder into the glass, he saw
the expression on her face, faintly amused, faintly contemptuous, as much
as to say: "Thanks! You will never learn!" No, thank God, he wasn't a
Frenchman! He finished with a jerk, and the words: "It's too low here."
And he went to the door, with the wish to get away from her and go down
to Fleur again.
Annette stayed a powder-puff, and said with startling suddenness
"Que to es grossier!"
He knew the expression--he had reason to. The first time she had used it
he had thought it meant "What a grocer you are!" and had not known
whether to be relieved or not when better informed. He resented the
word--he was not coarse! If he was coarse, what was that chap in the
room beyond his, who made those horrible noises in the morning when he
cleared his throat, or those people in the Lounge who thought it
well-bred to say nothing but what the whole world could hear at the top
of their voices--quacking inanity! Coarse, because he had said her dress
was low! Well, so it was! He went out without reply.
Coming into the Lounge from the far end, he at once saw Fleur where he
had left her. She sat with crossed knees, slowly balancing a foot in
silk stocking and grey shoe, sure sign that she was dreaming. Her eyes
showed it too--they went off like that sometimes. And then, in a moment,
she would come to life, and be as quick and restless as a monkey. And
she knew so much, so self-assured, and not yet nineteen. What was that
odious word? Flapper! Dreadful young creatures--squealing and
squawking and showing their legs! The worst of them bad dreams, the best
of them powdered angels! Fleur was not a flapper, not one of those
slangy, ill-bred young females. And yet she was frighteningly
self-willed, and full of life, and determined to enjoy it. Enjoy! The
word brought no puritan terror to Soames; but it brought the terror
suited to his temperament. He had always been afraid to enjoy to-day for
fear he might not enjoy tomorrow so much. And it was terrifying to feel
that his daughter was divested of that safeguard. The very way she sat
in that chair showed it--lost in her dream. He had never been lost in a
dream himself--there was nothing to be had out of it; and where she got
it from he did not know! Certainly not from Annette! And yet Annette,
as a young girl, when he was hanging about her, had once had a flowery
look. Well, she had lost it now!
Fleur rose from her chair-swiftly, restlessly; and flung herself down at
a writing-table. Seizing ink and writing paper, she began to write as if
she had not time to breathe before she got her letter written. And
suddenly she saw him. The air of desperate absorption vanished, she
smiled, waved a kiss, made a pretty face as if she were a little puzzled
and a little bored.
Ah! She was "fine"--"fine!"
III
AT ROBIN HILL
Jolyon Forsyte had spent his boy's nineteenth birthday at Robin Hill,
quietly going into his affairs. He did everything quietly now, because
his heart was in a poor way, and, like all his family, he disliked the
idea of dying. He had never realised how much till one day, two years
ago, he had gone to his doctor about certain symptoms, and been told:
"At any moment, on any overstrain."
He had taken it with a smile--the natural Forsyte reaction against an
unpleasant truth. But with an increase of symptoms in the train on the
way home, he had realised to the full the sentence hanging over him. To
leave Irene, his boy, his home, his work--though he did little enough
work now! To leave them for unknown darkness, for the unimaginable
state, for such nothingness that he would not even be conscious of wind
stirring leaves above his grave, nor of the scent of earth and grass. Of
such nothingness that, however hard he might try to conceive it, he never
could, and must still hover on the hope that he might see again those he
loved! To realise this was to endure very poignant spiritual anguish.
Before he reached home that day he had determined to keep it from Irene.
He would have to be more careful than man had ever been, for the least
thing would give it away and make her as wretched as himself, almost.
His doctor had passed him sound in other respects, and seventy was
nothing of an age--he would last a long time yet, if he could.
Such a conclusion, followed out for nearly two years, develops to the
full the subtler side of character. Naturally not abrupt, except when
nervously excited, Jolyon had become control incarnate. The sad patience
of old people who cannot exert themselves was masked by a smile which his
lips preserved even in private. He devised continually all manner of
cover to conceal his enforced lack of exertion.
Mocking himself for so doing, he counterfeited conversion to the Simple
Life; gave up wine and cigars, drank a special kind of coffee with no
coffee in it. In short, he made himself as safe as a Forsyte in his
condition could, under the rose of his mild irony. Secure from
discovery, since his wife and son had gone up to Town, he had spent the
fine May day quietly arranging his papers, that he might die to-morrow
without inconveniencing any one, giving in fact a final polish to his
terrestrial state. Having docketed and enclosed it in his father's old
Chinese cabinet, he put the key into an envelope, wrote the words
outside: "Key of the Chinese cabinet, wherein will be found the exact
state of me, J. F.," and put it in his breast-pocket, where it would be
always about him, in case of accident. Then, ringing for tea, he went out
to have it under the old oak-tree.
All are under sentence of death; Jolyon, whose sentence was but a little
more precise and pressing, had become so used to it that he thought
habitually, like other people, of other things. He thought of his son
now.
Jon was nineteen that day, and Jon had come of late to a decision.
Educated neither at Eton like his father, nor at Harrow, like his dead
half-brother, but at one of those establishments which, designed to avoid
the evil and contain the good of the Public School system, may or may not
contain the evil and avoid the good, Jon had left in April perfectly
ignorant of whit he wanted to become. The War, which had promised to go
on for ever, had ended just as he was about to join the Army, six months
before his time. It had taken him ever since to get used to the idea
that he could now choose for himself. He had held with his father several
discussions, from which, under a cheery show of being ready for
anything--except, of course, the Church, Army, Law, Stage, Stock
Exchange, Medicine, Business, and Engineering--Jolyon had gathered rather
clearly that Jon wanted to go in for nothing. He himself had felt
exactly like that at the same age. With him that pleasant vacuity had
soon been ended by an early marriage, and its unhappy consequences.
Forced to become an underwriter at Lloyd's, he had regained prosperity
before his artistic talent had outcropped. But having--as the simple say
--"learned" his boy to draw pigs and other animals, he knew that Jon
would never be a painter, and inclined to the conclusion that his
aversion from everything else meant that he was going to be a writer.
Holding, however, the view that experience was necessary even for that
profession, there seemed to Jolyon nothing in the meantime, for Jon, but
University, travel, and perhaps the eating of dinners for the Bar. After
that one would see, or more probably one would not. In face of these
proffered allurements, however, Jon had remained undecided.
Such discussions with his son had confirmed in Jolyon a doubt whether the
world had really changed. People said that it was a new age. With the
profundity of one not too long for any age, Jolyon perceived that under
slightly different surfaces the era was precisely what it had been.
Mankind was still divided into two species: The few who had "speculation"
in their souls, and the many who had none, with a belt of hybrids like
himself in the middle. Jon appeared to have speculation; it seemed to
his father a bad lookout.
With something deeper, therefore, than his usual smile, he had heard the
boy say, a fortnight ago: "I should like to try farming, Dad; if it won't
cost you too much. It seems to be about the only sort of life that
doesn't hurt anybody; except art, and of course that's out of the
question for me."
Jolyon subdued his smile, and answered:
"All right; you shall skip back to where we were under the first Jolyon
in 1760. It'll prove the cycle theory, and incidentally, no doubt, you
may grow a better turnip than he did."
A little dashed, Jon had answered:
"But don't you think it's a good scheme, Dad?"
"'Twill serve, my dear; and if you should really take to it, you'll do
more good than most men, which is little enough."
To himself, however, he had said: 'But he won't take to it. I give him
four years. Still, it's healthy, and harmless.'
After turning the matter over and consulting with Irene, he wrote to his
daughter, Mrs. Val Dartie, asking if they knew of a farmer near them on
the Downs who would take Jon as an apprentice. Holly's answer had been
enthusiastic. There was an excellent man quite close; she and Val would
love Jon to live with them.
The boy was due to go to-morrow.
Sipping weak tea with lemon in it, Jolyon gazed through the leaves of the
old oak-tree at that view which had appeared to him desirable for
thirty-two years. The tree beneath which he sat seemed not a day older!
So young, the little leaves of brownish gold; so old, the
whitey-grey-green of its thick rough trunk. A tree of memories, which
would live on hundreds of years yet, unless some barbarian cut it
down--would see old England out at the pace things were going! He
remembered a night three years before, when, looking from his window,
with his arm close round Irene, he had watched a German aeroplane
hovering, it seemed, right over the old tree. Next day they had found a
bomb hole in a field on Gage's farm. That was before he knew that he was
under sentence of death. He could almost have wished the bomb had
finished him. It would have saved a lot of hanging about, many hours of
cold fear in the pit of his stomach. He had counted on living to the
normal Forsyte age of eighty-five or more, when Irene would be seventy.
As it was, she would miss him. Still there was Jon, more important in
her life than himself; Jon, who adored his mother.
Under that tree, where old Jolyon--waiting for Irene to come to him
across the lawn--had breathed his last, Jolyon wondered, whimsically,
whether, having put everything in such perfect order, he had not better
close his own eyes and drift away. There was something undignified in o
parasitically clinging on to the effortless close of a life wherein he
regretted two things only--the long division between his father and
himself when he was young, and the lateness of his union o with Irene.
From where he sat he could see a cluster of apple-trees in blossom.
Nothing in Nature moved him so much as fruit-trees in blossom; and his
heart ached suddenly because he might never see them flower again.
Spring! Decidedly no man ought to have to die while his heart was still
young enough to love beauty! Blackbirds sang recklessly in the
shrubbery, swallows were flying high, the leaves above him glistened; and
over the fields was every imaginable tint of early foliage, burnished by
the level sunlight, away to where the distant "smoke-bush" blue was
trailed along the horizon. Irene's flowers in their narrow beds had
startling individuality that evening, little deep assertions of gay life.
Only Chinese and Japanese painters, and perhaps Leonardo, had known how
to get that startling little ego into each painted flower, and bird, and
beast--the ego, yet the sense of species, the universality of life as
well. They were the fellows! 'I've made nothing that will live!' thought
Jolyon; 'I've been an amateur--a mere lover, not a creator. Still, I
shall leave Jon behind me when I go.' What luck that the boy had not
been caught by that ghastly war! He might so easily have been killed,
like poor Jolly twenty years ago out in the Transvaal. Jon would do
something some day--if the Age didn't spoil him--an imaginative chap!
His whim to take up farming was but a bit of sentiment, and about as
likely to last. And just then he saw them coming up the field: Irene and
the boy; walking from the station, with their arms linked. And getting
up, he strolled down through the new rose garden to meet them....
Irene came into his room that night and sat down by the window. She sat
there without speaking till he said:
"What is it, my love?"
"We had an encounter to-day."
"With whom?"
"Soames."
Soames! He had kept that name out of his thoughts these last two years;
conscious that it was bad for him. And, now, his heart moved in a
disconcerting manner, as if it had side-slipped within his chest.
Irene went on quietly:
"He and his daughter were in the Gallery, and afterward at the
confectioner's where we had tea."
Jolyon went over and put his hand on her shoulder.
"How did he look?"
"Grey; but otherwise much the same."
"And the daughter?"
"Pretty. At least, Jon thought so."
Jolyon's heart side-slipped again. His wife's face had a strained and
puzzled look.
"You didn't-?" he began.
"No; but Jon knows their name. The girl dropped her handkerchief and he
picked it up."
Jolyon sat down on his bed. An evil chance!
"June was with you. Did she put her foot into it?"
"No; but it was all very queer and strained, and Jon could see it was."
Jolyon drew a long breath, and said:
"I've often wondered whether we've been right to keep it from him. He'll
find out some day."
"The later the better, Jolyon; the young have such cheap, hard judgment.
When you were nineteen what would you have thought of your mother if she
had done what I have?"
Yes! There it was! Jon worshipped his mother; and knew nothing of the
tragedies, the inexorable necessities of life, nothing of the prisoned
grief in an unhappy marriage, nothing of jealousy or passion--knew
nothing at all, as yet!
"What have you told him?" he said at last.
"That they were relations, but we didn't know them; that you had never
cared much for your family, or they for you. I expect he will be asking
you."
Jolyon smiled. "This promises to take the place of air-raids," he said.
"After all, one misses them."
Irene looked up at him.
"We've known it would come some day."
He answered her with sudden energy:
"I could never stand seeing Jon blame you. He shan't do that, even in
thought. He has imagination; and he'll understand if it's put to him
properly. I think I had better tell him before he gets to know
otherwise."
"Not yet, Jolyon."
That was like her--she had no foresight, and never went to meet trouble.
Still--who knew?--she might be right. It was ill going against a
mother's instinct. It might be well to let the boy go on, if possible,
till experience had given him some touchstone by which he could judge the
values of that old tragedy; till love, jealousy, longing, had deepened
his charity. All the same, one must take precautions--every precaution
possible! And, long after Irene had left him, he lay awake turning over
those precautions. He must write to Holly, telling her that Jon knew
nothing as yet of family history. Holly was discreet, she would make sure
of her husband, she would see to it! Jon could take the letter with him
when he went to-morrow.
And so the day on which he had put the polish on his material estate died
out with the chiming of the stable clock; and another began for Jolyon in
the shadow of a spiritual disorder which could not be so rounded off and
polished....
But Jon, whose room had once been his day nursery, lay awake too, the
prey of a sensation disputed by those who have never known it, "love at
first sight!" He had felt it beginning in him with the glint of those
dark eyes gazing into his athwart the Juno--a conviction that this was
his 'dream'; so that what followed had seemed to him at once natural and
miraculous. Fleur! Her name alone was almost enough for one who was
terribly susceptible to the charm of words. In a homoeopathic Age, when
boys and girls were co-educated, and mixed up in early life till sex was
almost abolished, Jon was singularly old-fashioned. His modern school
took boys only, and his holidays had been spent at Robin Hill with boy
friends, or his parents alone. He had never, therefore, been inoculated
against the germs of love by small doses of the poison. And now in the
dark his temperature was mounting fast. He lay awake, featuring
Fleur--as they called it--recalling her words, especially that "Au
revoir!" so soft and sprightly.
He was still so wide awake at dawn that he got up, slipped on tennis
shoes, trousers, and a sweater, and in silence crept downstairs and out
through the study window. It was just light; there was a smell of grass.
'Fleur!' he thought; 'Fleur!' It was mysteriously white out of doors,
with nothing awake except the birds just beginning to chirp. 'I'll go
down into the coppice,' he thought. He ran down through the fields,
reached the pond just as the sun rose, and passed into the coppice.
Bluebells carpeted the ground there; among the larch-trees there was
mystery--the air, as it were, composed of that romantic quality. Jon
sniffed its freshness, and stared at the bluebells in the sharpening
light. Fleur! It rhymed with her! And she lived at Mapleduram--a jolly
name, too, on the river somewhere. He could find it in the atlas
presently. He would write to her. But would she answer? Oh! She must.
She had said "Au revoir!" Not good-bye! What luck that she had dropped
her handkerchief! He would never have known her but for that. And the
more he thought of that handkerchief, the more amazing his luck seemed.
Fleur! It certainly rhymed with her! Rhythm thronged his head; words
jostled to be joined together; he was on the verge of a poem.
Jon remained in this condition for more than half an hour, then returned
to the house, and getting a ladder, climbed in at his bedroom window out
of sheer exhilaration. Then, remembering that the study window was open,
he went down and shut it, first removing the ladder, so as to obliterate
all traces of his feeling. The thing was too deep to be revealed to
mortal soul-even-to his mother.
IV
THE MAUSOLEUM
There are houses whose souls have passed into the limbo of Time, leaving
their bodies in the limbo of London. Such was not quite the condition of
"Timothy's" on the Bayswater Road, for Timothy's soul still had one foot
in Timothy Forsyte's body, and Smither kept the atmosphere unchanging, of
camphor and port wine and house whose windows are only opened to air it
twice a day.
To Forsyte imagination that house was now a sort of Chinese pill-box, a
series of layers in the last of which was Timothy. One did not reach
him, or so it was reported by members of the family who, out of old-time
habit or absentmindedness, would drive up once in a blue moon and ask
after their surviving uncle. Such were Francie, now quite emancipated
from God (she frankly avowed atheism), Euphemia, emancipated from old
Nicholas, and Winifred Dartie from her "man of the world." But, after
all, everybody was emancipated now, or said they were--perhaps not quite
the same thing!
When Soames, therefore, took it on his way to Paddington station on the
morning after that encounter, it was hardly with the expectation of
seeing Timothy in the flesh. His heart made a faint demonstration within
him while he stood in full south sunlight on the newly whitened doorstep
of that little house where four Forsytes had once lived, and now but one
dwelt on like a winter fly; the house into which Soames had come and out
of which he had gone times without number, divested of, or burdened with,
fardels of family gossip; the house of the "old people" of another
century, another age.
The sight of Smither--still corseted up to the armpits because the new
fashion which came in as they were going out about 1903 had never been
considered "nice" by Aunts Juley and Hester--brought a pale friendliness
to Soames' lips; Smither, still faithfully arranged to old pattern in
every detail, an invaluable servant--none such left--smiling back at
him, with the words: "Why! it's Mr. Soames, after all this time! And how
are you, sir? Mr. Timothy will be so pleased to know you've been."
"How is he?"
"Oh! he keeps fairly bobbish for his age, sir; but of course he's a
wonderful man. As I said to Mrs. Dartie when she was here last: It would
please Miss Forsyte and Mrs. Juley and Miss Hester to see how he relishes
a baked apple still. But he's quite deaf. And a mercy, I always think.
For what we should have done with him in the air-raids, I don't know."
"Ah!" said Soames. "What did you do with him?"
"We just left him in his bed, and had the bell run down into the cellar,
so that Cook and I could hear him if he rang. It would never have done
to let him know there was a war on. As I said to Cook, 'If Mr. Timothy
rings, they may do what they like--I'm going up. My dear mistresses
would have a fit if they could see him ringing and nobody going to him.'
But he slept through them all beautiful. And the one in the daytime he
was having his bath. It was a mercy, because he might have noticed the
people in the street all looking up--he often looks out of the window."
"Quite!" murmured Soames. Smither was getting garrulous! "I just want
to look round and see if there's anything to be done."
"Yes, sir. I don't think there's anything except a smell of mice in the
dining-room that we don't know how to get rid of. It's funny they should
be there, and not a crumb, since Mr. Timothy took to not coming down,
just before the War. But they're nasty little things; you never know
where they'll take you next."
"Does he leave his bed?"--
"Oh! yes, sir; he takes nice exercise between his bed and the window in
the morning, not to risk a change of air. And he's quite comfortable in
himself; has his Will out every day regular. It's a great consolation to
him--that."
"Well, Smither, I want to see him, if I can; in case he has anything to
say to me."
Smither coloured up above her corsets.
"It will be an occasion!" she said. "Shall I take you round the house,
sir, while I send Cook to break it to him?"
"No, you go to him," said Soames. "I can go round the house by myself."
One could not confess to sentiment before another, and Soames felt that
he was going to be sentimental nosing round those rooms so saturated with
the past. When Smither, creaking with excitement, had left him, Soames
entered the dining-room and sniffed. In his opinion it wasn't mice, but
incipient wood-rot, and he examined the panelling. Whether it was worth
a coat of paint, at Timothy's age, he was not sure. The room had always
been the most modern in the house; and only a faint smile curled Soames'
lips and nostrils. Walls of a rich green surmounted the oak dado; a heavy
metal chandelier hung by a chain from a ceiling divided by imitation
beams. The pictures had been bought by Timothy, a bargain, one day at
Jobson's sixty years ago--three Snyder "still lifes," two faintly
coloured drawings of a boy and a girl, rather charming, which bore the
initials "J. R."--Timothy had always believed they might turn out to be
Joshua Reynolds, but Soames, who admired them, had discovered that they
were only John Robinson; and a doubtful Morland of a white pony being
shod. Deep-red plush curtains, ten high-backed dark mahogany chairs with
deep-red plush seats, a Turkey carpet, and a mahogany dining-table as
large as the room was small, such was an apartment which Soames could
remember unchanged in soul or body since he was four years old. He
looked especially at the two drawings, and thought: 'I shall buy those at
the sale.'
From the dining-room he passed into Timothy's study. He did not remember
ever having been in that room. It was lined from floor to ceiling with
volumes, and he looked at them with curiosity. One wall seemed devoted
to educational books, which Timothy's firm had published two generations
back-sometimes as many as twenty copies of one book. Soames read their
titles and shuddered. The middle wall had precisely the same books as
used to be in the library at his own father's in Park Lane, from which he
deduced the fancy that James and his youngest brother had gone out
together one day and bought a brace of small libraries. The third wall
he approached with more excitement. Here, surely, Timothy's own taste
would be found. It was. The books were dummies. The fourth wall was
all heavily curtained window. And turned toward it was a large chair
with a mahogany reading-stand attached, on which a yellowish and folded
copy of The Times, dated July 6, 1914, the day Timothy first failed to
come down, as if in preparation for the War, seemed waiting for him
still. In a corner stood a large globe of that world never visited by
Timothy, deeply convinced of the unreality of everything but England, and
permanently upset by the sea, on which he had been very sick one Sunday
afternoon in 1836, out of a pleasure boat off the pier at Brighton, with
Juley and Hester, Swithin and Hatty Chessman; all due to Swithin, who was
always taking things into his head, and who, thank goodness, had been
sick too. Soames knew all about it, having heard the tale fifty times at
least from one or other of them. He went up to the globe, and gave it a
spin; it emitted a faint creak and moved about an inch, bringing into his
purview a daddy-long-legs which had died on it in latitude 44.
'Mausoleum!' he thought. 'George was right!' And he went out and up the
stairs. On the half-landing he stopped before the case of stuffed
humming-birds which had delighted his childhood. They looked not a day
older, suspended on wires above pampas-grass. If the case were opened
the birds would not begin to hum, but the whole thing would crumble, he
suspected. It wouldn't be worth putting that into the sale! And
suddenly he was caught by a memory of Aunt Ann--dear old Aunt
Ann--holding him by the hand in front of that case and saying: "Look,
Soamey! Aren't they bright and pretty, dear little humming-birds!"
Soames remembered his own answer: "They don't hum, Auntie." He must have
been six, in a black velveteen suit with a light-blue collar-he
remembered that suit well! Aunt Ann with her ringlets, and her spidery
kind hands, and her grave old aquiline smile--a fine old lady, Aunt Ann!
He moved on up to the drawing-room door. There on each side of it were
the groups of miniatures. Those he would certainly buy in! The
miniatures of his four aunts, one of his Uncle Swithin adolescent, and
one of his Uncle Nicholas as a boy. They had all been painted by a young
lady friend of the family at a time, 1830, about, when miniatures were
considered very genteel, and lasting too, painted as they were on ivory.
Many a time had he heard the tale of that young lady: "Very talented, my
dear; she had quite a weakness for Swithin, and very soon after she went
into a consumption and died: so like Keats--we often spoke of it."
Well, there they were! Ann, Juley, Hester, Susan--quite a small child;
Swithin, with sky-blue eyes, pink cheeks, yellow curls, white
waistcoat-large as life; and Nicholas, like Cupid with an eye on heaven.
Now he came to think of it, Uncle Nick had always been rather like
that--a wonderful man to the last. Yes, she must have had talent, and
miniatures always had a certain back-watered cachet of their own, little
subject to the currents of competition on aesthetic Change. Soames
opened the drawing-room door. The room was dusted, the furniture
uncovered, the curtains drawn back, precisely as if his aunts still dwelt
there patiently waiting. And a thought came to him: When Timothy
died--why not? Would it not be almost a duty to preserve this
house--like Carlyle's--and put up a tablet, and show it? "Specimen of
mid-Victorian abode--entrance, one shilling, with catalogue." After all,
it was the completest thing, and perhaps the deadest in the London of
to-day. Perfect in its special taste and culture, if, that is, he took
down and carried over to his own collection the four Barbizon pictures he
had given them. The still sky-blue walls, tile green curtains patterned
with red flowers and ferns; the crewel-worked fire-screen before the
cast-iron grate; the mahogany cupboard with glass windows, full of little
knickknacks; the beaded footstools; Keats, Shelley, Southey, Cowper,
Coleridge, Byron's Corsair (but nothing else), and the Victorian poets in
a bookshelf row; the marqueterie cabinet lined with dim red plush, full
of family relics: Hester's first fan; the buckles of their mother's
father's shoes; three bottled scorpions; and one very yellow elephant's
tusk, sent home from India by Great-uncle Edgar Forsyte, who had been in
jute; a yellow bit of paper propped up, with spidery writing on it,
recording God knew what! And the pictures crowding on the walls--all
water-colours save those four Barbizons looking like tile foreigners they
were, and doubtful customers at that--pictures bright and illustrative,
"Telling the Bees," "Hey for the Ferry!" and two in the style of Frith,
all thimblerig and crinolines, given them by Swithin. Oh! many, many
pictures at which Soames had gazed a thousand times in supercilious
fascination; a marvellous collection of bright, smooth gilt frames.
And the boudoir-grand piano, beautifully dusted, hermetically sealed as
ever; and Aunt Juley's album of pressed seaweed on it. And the
gilt-legged chairs, stronger than they looked. And on one side of the
fireplace the sofa of crimson silk, where Aunt Ann, and after her Aunt
Juley, had been wont to sit, facing the light and bolt upright. And on
the other side of the fire the one really easy chair, back to the light,
for Aunt Hester. Soames screwed up his eyes; he seemed to see them
sitting there. Ah! and the atmosphere--even now, of too many stuffs and
washed lace curtains, lavender in bags, and dried bees' wings. 'No,' he
thought, 'there's nothing like it left; it ought to be preserved.' And,
by George, they might laugh at it, but for a standard of gentle life
never departed from, for fastidiousness of skin and eye and nose and
feeling, it beat to-day hollow--to-day with its Tubes and cars, its
perpetual smoking, its cross-legged, bare-necked girls visible up to the
knees and down to the waist if you took the trouble (agreeable to the
satyr within each Forsyte but hardly his idea of a lady), with their
feet, too, screwed round the legs of their chairs while they ate, and
their "So longs," and their "Old Beans," and their laughter--girls who
gave him the shudders whenever he thought of Fleur in contact with them;
and the hard-eyed, capable, older women who managed life and gave him the
shudders too. No! his old aunts, if they never opened their minds, their
eyes, or very much their windows, at least had manners, and a standard,
and reverence for past and future.
With rather a choky feeling he closed the door and went tiptoeing
upstairs. He looked in at a place on the way: H'm! in perfect order of
the eighties, with a sort of yellow oilskin paper on the walls. At the
top of the stairs he hesitated between four doors. Which of them was
Timothy's? And he listened. A sound, as of a child slowly dragging a
hobby-horse about, came to his ears. That must be Timothy! He tapped,
and a door was opened by Smither, very red in the face.
Mr. Timothy was taking his walk, and she had not been able to get him to
attend. If Mr. Soames would come into the back-room, he could see him
through the door.
Soames went into the back-room and stood watching.
The last of the old Forsytes was on his feet, moving with the most
impressive slowness, and an air of perfect concentration on his own
affairs, backward and forward between the foot of his bed and the window,
a distance of some twelve feet. The lower part of his square face, no
longer clean-shaven, was covered with snowy beard clipped as short as it
could be, and his chin looked as broad as his brow where the hair was
also quite white, while nose and cheeks and brow were a good yellow. One
hand held a stout stick, and the other grasped the skirt of his Jaeger
dressing-gown, from under which could be seen his bed-socked ankles and
feet thrust into Jaeger slippers. The expression on his face was that of
a crossed child, intent on something that he has not got. Each time he
turned he stumped the stick, and then dragged it, as if to show that he
could do without it:
"He still looks strong," said Soames under his breath.
"Oh! yes, sir. You should see him take his bath--it's wonderful; he does
enjoy it so."
Those quite loud words gave Soames an insight. Timothy had resumed his
babyhood.
"Does he take any interest in things generally?" he said, also loud.
"Oh I yes, sir; his food and his Will. It's quite a sight to see him
turn it over and over, not to read it, of course; and every now and then
he asks the price of Consols, and I write it on a slate for him--very
large. Of course, I always write the same, what they were when he last
took notice, in 1914. We got the doctor to forbid him to read the paper
when the War broke out. Oh! he did take on about that at first. But he
soon came round, because he knew it tired him; and he's a wonder to
conserve energy as he used to call it when my dear mistresses were alive,
bless their hearts! How he did go on at them about that; they were
always so active, if you remember, Mr. Soames."
"What would happen if I were to go in?" asked Soames: "Would he remember
me? I made his Will, you know, after Miss Hester died in 1907."
"Oh! that, sir," replied Smither doubtfully, "I couldn't take on me to
say. I think he might; he really is a wonderful man for his age."
Soames moved into the doorway, and waiting for Timothy to turn, said in a
loud voice: "Uncle Timothy!"
Timothy trailed back half-way, and halted.
"Eh?" he said.
"Soames," cried Soames at the top of his voice, holding out his hand,
"Soames Forsyte!"
"No!" said Timothy, and stumping his stick loudly on the floor, he
continued his walk.
"It doesn't seem to work," said Soames.
"No, sir," replied Smither, rather crestfallen; "you see, he hasn't
finished his walk. It always was one thing at a time with him. I expect
he'll ask me this afternoon if you came about the gas, and a pretty job I
shall have to make him understand."
"Do you think he ought to have a man about him?"
Smither held up her hands. "A man! Oh! no. Cook and me can manage
perfectly. A strange man about would send him crazy in no time. And my
mistresses wouldn't like the idea of a man in the house. Besides, we're
so--proud of him."
"I suppose the doctor comes?"
"Every morning. He makes special terms for such a quantity, and Mr.
Timothy's so used, he doesn't take a bit of notice, except to put out his
tongue."
"Well," said Soames, turning away, "it's rather sad and painful to me."
"Oh! sir," returned Smither anxiously, "you mustn't think that. Now that
he can't worry about things, he quite enjoys his life, really he does.
As I say to Cook, Mr. Timothy is more of a man than he ever was. You
see, when he's not walkin', or takin' his bath, he's eatin', and when
he's not eatin', he's sleepin'; and there it is. There isn't an ache or a
care about him anywhere."
"Well," said Soames, "there's something in that. I'll go down. By the
way, let me see his Will."
"I should have to take my time about that, sir; he keeps it under his
pillow, and he'd see me, while he's active."
"I only want to know if it's the one I made," said Soames; "you take a
look at its date some time, and let me know."
"Yes, sir; but I'm sure it's the same, because me and Cook witnessed, you
remember, and there's our names on it still, and we've only done it
once."
"Quite," said Soames. He did remember. Smither and Jane had been proper
witnesses, having been left nothing in the Will that they might have no
interest in Timothy's death. It had been--he fully admitted--an almost
improper precaution, but Timothy had wished it, and, after all, Aunt
Hester had provided for them amply.
"Very well," he said; "good-bye, Smither. Look after him, and if he
should say anything at any time, put it down, and let me know."
"Oh I yes, Mr. Soames; I'll be sure to do that. It's been such a
pleasant change to see you. Cook will be quite excited when I tell her."
Soames shook her hand and went down-stairs. He stood for fully two
minutes by the hat-stand whereon he had hung his hat so many times. 'So
it all passes,' he was thinking; 'passes and begins again. Poor old
chap!' And he listened, if perchance the sound of Timothy trailing his
hobby-horse might come down the well of the stairs; or some ghost of an
old face show over the bannisters, and an old voice say: 'Why, it's dear
Soames, and we were only saying that we hadn't seen him for a week!'
Nothing--nothing! Just the scent of camphor, and dust-motes in a sunbeam
through the fanlight over the door. The little old house! A mausoleum!
And, turning on his heel, he went out, and caught his train.
V
THE NATIVE HEATH
"His foot's upon his native heath,
His name's--Val Dartie."
With some such feeling did Val Dartie, in the fortieth year of his age,
set out that same Thursday morning very early from the old manor-house he
had taken on the north side of the Sussex Downs. His destination was
Newmarket, and he had not been there since the autumn of 1899, when he
stole over from Oxford for the Cambridgeshire. He paused at the door to
give his wife a kiss, and put a flask of port into his pocket.
"Don't overtire your leg, Val, and don't bet too much."
With the pressure of her chest against his own, and her eyes looking into
his, Val felt both leg and pocket safe. He should be moderate; Holly was
always right--she had a natural aptitude. It did not seem so remarkable
to him, perhaps, as it might to others, that--half Dartie as he was--he
should have been perfectly faithful to his young first cousin during the
twenty years since he married her romantically out in the Boer War; and
faithful without any feeling of sacrifice or boredom--she was so quick,
so slyly always a little in front of his mood. Being first cousins they
had decided, rather needlessly, to have no children; and, though a little
sallower, she had kept her looks, her slimness, and the colour of her
dark hair. Val particularly admired the life of her own she carried on,
besides carrying on his, and riding better every year. She kept up her
music, she read an awful lot--novels, poetry, all sorts of stuff. Out on
their farm in Cape colony she had looked after all the "nigger" babies
and women in a miraculous manner. She was, in fact, clever; yet made no
fuss about it, and had no "side." Though not remarkable for humility,
Val had come to have the feeling that she was his superior, and he did
not grudge it--a great tribute. It might be noted that he never looked
at Holly without her knowing of it, but that she looked at him sometimes
unawares.
He had kissed her in the porch because he should not be doing so on the
platform, though she was going to the station with him, to drive the car
back. Tanned and wrinkled by Colonial weather and the wiles inseparable
from horses, and handicapped by the leg which, weakened in the Boer War,
had probably saved his life in the War just past, Val was still much as
he had been in the days of his courtship; his smile as wide and charming,
his eyelashes, if anything, thicker and darker, his eyes screwed up under
them, as bright a grey, his freckles rather deeper, his hair a little
grizzled at the sides. He gave the impression of one who has lived
actively with horses in a sunny climate.
Twisting the car sharp round at the gate, he said:
"When is young Jon coming?"
"To-day."
"Is there anything you want for him? I could bring it down on Saturday."
"No; but you might come by the same train as Fleur--one-forty."
Val gave the Ford full rein; he still drove like a man in a new country
on bad roads, who refuses to compromise, and expects heaven at every
hole.
"That's a young woman who knows her way about," he said. "I say, has it
struck you?"
"Yes," said Holly.
"Uncle Soames and your Dad--bit awkward, isn't it?"
"She won't know, and he won't know, and nothing must be said, of course.
It's only for five days, Val."
"Stable secret! Righto!" If Holly thought it safe, it was. Glancing
slyly round at him, she said: "Did you notice how beautifully she asked
herself?"
"No!"
"Well, she did. What do you think of her, Val?"
"Pretty and clever; but she might run out at any corner if she got her
monkey up, I should say."
"I'm wondering," Holly murmured, "whether she is the modern young woman.
One feels at sea coming home into all this."
"You? You get the hang of things so quick."
Holly slid her hand into his coat-pocket.
"You keep one in the know," said Val encouraged. "What do you think of
that Belgian fellow, Profond?"
"I think he's rather 'a good devil.'"
Val grinned.
"He seems to me a queer fish for a friend of our family. In fact, our
family is in pretty queer waters, with Uncle Soames marrying a
Frenchwoman, and your Dad marrying Soames's first. Our grandfathers
would have had fits!"
"So would anybody's, my dear."
"This car," Val said suddenly, "wants rousing; she doesn't get her hind
legs under her uphill. I shall have to give her her head on the slope if
I'm to catch that train."
There was that about horses which had prevented him from ever really
sympathising with a car, and the running of the Ford under his guidance
compared with its running under that of Holly was always noticeable. He
caught the train.
"Take care going home; she'll throw you down if she can. Good-bye,
darling."
"Good-bye," called Holly, and kissed her hand.
In the train, after quarter of an hour's indecision between thoughts of
Holly, his morning paper, the look of the bright day, and his dim memory
of Newmarket, Val plunged into the recesses of a small square book, all
names, pedigrees, tap-roots, and notes about the make and shape of
horses. The Forsyte in him was bent on the acquisition of a certain
strain of blood, and he was subduing resolutely as yet the Dartie
hankering for a Nutter. On getting back to England, after the profitable
sale of his South African farm and stud, and observing that the sun
seldom shone, Val had said to himself: "I've absolutely got to have an
interest in life, or this country will give me the blues. Hunting's not
enough, I'll breed and I'll train." With just that extra pinch of
shrewdness and decision imparted by long residence in a new country, Val
had seen the weak point of modern breeding. They were all hypnotised by
fashion and high price. He should buy for looks, and let names go hang!
And here he was already, hypnotised by the prestige of a certain strain
of blood! Half-consciously, he thought: 'There's something in this damned
climate which makes one go round in a ring. All the same, I must have a
strain of Mayfly blood.'
In this mood he reached the Mecca of his hopes. It was one of those
quiet meetings favourable to such as wish to look into horses, rather
than into the mouths of bookmakers; and Val clung to the paddock. His
twenty years of Colonial life, divesting him of the dandyism in which he
had been bred, had left him the essential neatness of the horseman, and
given him a queer and rather blighting eye over what he called "the silly
haw-haw" of some Englishmen, the "flapping cockatoory" of some
English-women--Holly had none of that and Holly was his model.
Observant, quick, resourceful, Val went straight to the heart of a
transaction, a horse, a drink; and he was on his way to the heart of a
Mayfly filly, when a slow voice said at his elbow:
"Mr. Val Dartie? How's Mrs. Val Dartie? She's well, I hope." And he
saw beside him the Belgian he had met at his sister Imogen's.
"Prosper Profond--I met you at lunch," said the voice.
"How are you?" murmured Val.
"I'm very well," replied Monsieur Profond, smiling with a certain
inimitable slowness. "A good devil," Holly had called him. Well! He
looked a little like a devil, with his dark, clipped, pointed beard; a
sleepy one though, and good-humoured, with fine eyes, unexpectedly
intelligent.
"Here's a gentleman wants to know you--cousin of yours--Mr. George
Forsyde."
Val saw a large form, and a face clean-shaven, bull-like, a little
lowering, with sardonic humour bubbling behind a full grey eye; he
remembered it dimly from old days when he would dine with his father at
the Iseeum Club.
"I used to go racing with your father," George was saying: "How's the
stud? Like to buy one of my screws?"
Val grinned, to hide the sudden feeling that the bottom had fallen out of
breeding. They believed in nothing over here, not even in horses.
George Forsyte, Prosper Profond! The devil himself was not more
disillusioned than those two.
"Didn't know you were a racing man," he said to Monsieur Profond.
"I'm not. I don't care for it. I'm a yachtin' man. I don't care for
yachtin' either, but I like to see my friends. I've got some lunch, Mr.
Val Dartie, just a small lunch, if you'd like to 'ave some; not
much--just a small one--in my car."
"Thanks," said Val; "very good of you. I'll come along in about quarter
of an hour."
"Over there. Mr. Forsyde's comin'," and Monsieur Profond "poinded" with
a yellow-gloved finger; "small car, with a small lunch"; he moved on,
groomed, sleepy, and remote, George Forsyte following, neat, huge, and
with his jesting air.
Val remained gazing at the Mayfly filly. George Forsyte, of course, was
an old chap, but this Profond might be about his own age; Val felt
extremely young, as if the Mayfly filly were a toy at which those two had
laughed. The animal had lost reality.
"That 'small' mare"--he seemed to hear the voice of Monsieur Profond
--"what do you see in her?--we must all die!"
And George Forsyte, crony of his father, racing still! The Mayfly
strain--was it any better than any other? He might just as well have a
flutter with his money instead.
"No, by gum!" he muttered suddenly, "if it's no good breeding horses,
it's no good doing anything. What did I come for? I'll buy her."
He stood back and watched the ebb of the paddock visitors toward the
stand. Natty old chips, shrewd portly fellows, Jews, trainers looking as
if they had never been guilty of seeing a horse in their lives; tall,
flapping, languid women, or brisk, loud-voiced women; young men with an
air as if trying to take it seriously--two or three of them with only one
arm.
'Life over here's a game!' thought Val. 'Muffin bell rings, horses run,
money changes hands; ring again, run again, money changes back.'
But, alarmed at his own philosophy, he went to the paddock gate to watch
the Mayfly filly canter down. She moved well; and he made his way over
to the "small" car. The "small" lunch was the sort a man dreams of but
seldom gets; and when it was concluded Monsieur Profond walked back with
him to the paddock.
"Your wife's a nice woman," was his surprising remark.
"Nicest woman I know," returned Val dryly.
"Yes," said Monsieur Profond; "she has a nice face. I admire nice
women."
Val looked at him suspiciously, but something kindly and direct in the
heavy diabolism of his companion disarmed him for the moment.
"Any time you like to come on my yacht, I'll give her a small cruise."
"Thanks," said Val, in arms again, "she hates the sea."
"So do I," said Monsieur Profond.
"Then why do you yacht?"
The Belgian's eyes smiled. "Oh! I don't know. I've done everything;
it's the last thing I'm doin'."
"It must be d-d expensive. I should want more reason than that."
Monsieur Prosper Profond raised his eyebrows, and puffed out a heavy
lower lip.
"I'm an easy-goin' man," he said.
"Were you in the War?" asked Val.
"Ye-es. I've done that too. I was gassed; it was a small bit
unpleasant." He smiled with a deep and sleepy air of prosperity, as if
he had caught it from his name.
Whether his saying "small" when he ought to have said "little" was
genuine mistake or affectation Val could not decide; the fellow was
evidently capable of anything.
Among the ring of buyers round the Mayfly filly who had won her race,
Monsieur Profond said:
"You goin' to bid?"
Val nodded. With this sleepy Satan at his elbow, he felt in need of
faith. Though placed above the ultimate blows of Providence by the
forethought of a grand-father who had tied him up a thousand a year to
which was added the thousand a year tied up for Holly by her
grand-father, Val was not flush of capital that he could touch, having
spent most of what he had realised from his South African farm on his
establishment in Sussex. And very soon he was thinking: 'Dash it! she's
going beyond me!' His limit-six hundred-was exceeded; he dropped out of
the bidding. The Mayfly filly passed under the hammer at seven hundred
and fifty guineas. He was turning away vexed when the slow voice of
Monsieur Profond said in his ear:
"Well, I've bought that small filly, but I don't want her; you take her
and give her to your wife."
Val looked at the fellow with renewed suspicion, but the good humour in
his eyes was such that he really could not take offence.
"I made a small lot of money in the War," began Monsieur Profond in
answer to that look. "I 'ad armament shares. I like to give it away.
I'm always makin' money. I want very small lot myself. I like my
friends to 'ave it."
"I'll buy her of you at the price you gave," said Val with sudden
resolution.
"No," said Monsieur Profond. "You take her. I don' want her."
"Hang it! one doesn't--"
"Why not?" smiled Monsieur Profond. "I'm a friend of your family."
"Seven hundred and fifty guineas is not a box of cigars," said Val
impatiently.
"All right; you keep her for me till I want her, and do what you like
with her."
"So long as she's yours," said Val. "I don't mind that."
"That's all right," murmured Monsieur Profond, and moved away.
Val watched; he might be "a good devil," but then again he might not. He
saw him rejoin George Forsyte, and thereafter saw him no more.
He spent those nights after racing at his mother's house in Green Street.
Winifred Dartie at sixty-two was marvellously preserved, considering the
three-and-thirty years during which she had put up with Montague Dartie,
till almost happily released by a French staircase. It was to her a
vehement satisfaction to have her favourite son back from South Africa
after all this time, to feel him so little changed, and to have taken a
fancy to his wife. Winifred, who in the late seventies, before her
marriage, had been in the vanguard of freedom, pleasure, and fashion,
confessed her youth outclassed by the donzellas of the day. They seemed,
for instance, to regard marriage as an incident, and Winifred sometimes
regretted that she had not done the same; a second, third, fourth
incident might have secured her a partner of less dazzling inebriety;
though, after all, he had left her Val, Imogen, Maud, Benedict (almost a
colonel and unharmed by the War)--none of whom had been divorced as yet.
The steadiness of her children often amazed one who remembered their
father; but, as she was fond of believing, they were really all Forsytes,
favouring herself, with the exception, perhaps, of Imogen. Her brother's
"little girl" Fleur frankly puzzled Winifred. The child was as restless
as any of these modern young women--"She's a small flame in a draught,"
Prosper Profond had said one day after dinner--but she did not flop, or
talk at the top of her voice. The steady Forsyteism in Winifred's own
character instinctively resented the feeling in the air, the modern
girl's habits and her motto: "All's much of a muchness! Spend, to-morrow
we shall be poor!" She found it a saving grace in Fleur that, having set
her heart on a thing, she had no change of heart until she got
it--though--what happened after, Fleur was, of course, too young to have
made evident. The child was a "very pretty little thing," too, and quite
a credit to take about, with her mother's French taste and gift for
wearing clothes; everybody turned to look at Fleur--great consideration
to Winifred, a lover of the style and distinction which had so cruelly
deceived her in the case of Montague Dartie.
In discussing her with Val, at breakfast on Saturday morning, Winifred
dwelt on the family skeleton.
"That little affair of your father-in-law and your Aunt Irene, Val--it's
old as the hills, of course, Fleur need know nothing about it--making a
fuss. Your Uncle Soames is very particular about that. So you'll be
careful."
"Yes! But it's dashed awkward--Holly's young half-brother is coming to
live with us while he learns farming. He's there already."
"Oh!" said Winifred. "That is a gaff! What is he like?"
"Only saw him once--at Robin Hill, when we were home in 1909; he was
naked and painted blue and yellow in stripes--a jolly little chap."
Winifred thought that "rather nice," and added comfortably: "Well,
Holly's sensible; she'll know how to deal with it. I shan't tell your
uncle. It'll only bother him. It's a great comfort to have you back, my
dear boy, now that I'm getting on."
"Getting on! Why! you're as young as ever. That chap Profond, Mother,
is he all right?"
"Prosper Profond! Oh! the most amusing man I know."
Val grunted, and recounted the story of the Mayfly filly.
"That's so like him," murmured Winifred. "He does all sorts of things."
"Well," said Val shrewdly, "our family haven't been too lucky with that
kind of cattle; they're too light-hearted for us."
It was true, and Winifred's blue study lasted a full minute before she
answered:
"Oh! well! He's a foreigner, Val; one must make allowances."
"All right, I'll use his filly and make it up to him, somehow."
And soon after he gave her his blessing, received a kiss, and left her
for his bookmaker's, the Iseeum Club, and Victoria station.
VI
JON
Mrs. Val Dartie, after twenty years of South Africa, had fallen deeply in
love, fortunately with something of her own, for the object of her
passion was the prospect in front of her windows, the cool clear light on
the green Downs. It was England again, at last! England more beautiful
than she had dreamed. Chance had, in fact, guided the Val Darties to a
spot where the South Downs had real charm when the sun shone. Holly had
enough of her father's eye to apprehend the rare quality of their
outlines and chalky radiance; to go up there by the ravine-like lane and
wander along toward Chanctonbury or Amberley, was still a delight which
she hardly attempted to share with Val, whose admiration of Nature was
confused by a Forsyte's instinct for getting something out of it, such as
the condition of the turf for his horses' exercise.
Driving the Ford home with a certain humouring, smoothness, she promised
herself that the first use she would make of Jon would be to take him up
there, and show him "the view" under this May-day sky.
She was looking forward to her young half-brother with a motherliness not
exhausted by Val. A three-day visit to Robin Hill, soon after their
arrival home, had yielded no sight of him--he was still at school; so
that her recollection, like Val's, was of a little sunny-haired boy,
striped blue and yellow, down by the pond.
Those three days at Robin Hill had been exciting, sad, embarrassing.
Memories of her dead brother, memories of Val's courtship; the ageing of
her father, not seen for twenty years, something funereal in his ironic
gentleness which did not escape one who had much subtle instinct; above
all, the presence of her stepmother, whom she could still vaguely
remember as the "lady in grey" of days when she was little and
grandfather alive and Mademoiselle Beauce so cross because that intruder
gave her music lessons--all these confused and tantalised a spirit which
had longed to find Robin Hill untroubled. But Holly was adept at keeping
things to herself, and all had seemed to go quite well.
Her father had kissed her when she left him, with lips which she was sure
had trembled.
"Well, my dear," he said, "the War hasn't changed Robin Hill, has it? If
only you could have brought Jolly back with you! I say, can you stand
this spiritualistic racket? When the oak-tree dies, it dies, I'm
afraid."
From the warmth of her embrace he probably divined that he had let the
cat out of the bag, for he rode off at once on irony.
"Spiritualism--queer word, when the more they manifest the more they
prove that they've got hold of matter."
"How?" said Holly.
"Why! Look at their photographs of auric presences. You must have
something material for light and shade to fall on before you can take a
photograph. No, it'll end in our calling all matter spirit, or all
spirit matter--I don't know which."
"But don't you believe in survival, Dad?"
Jolyon had looked at her, and the sad whimsicality of his face impressed
her deeply.
"Well, my dear, I should like to get something out of death. I've been
looking into it a bit. But for the life of me I can't find anything that
telepathy, sub-consciousness, and emanation from the storehouse of this
world can't account for just as well. Wish I could! Wishes father
thought but they don't breed evidence." Holly had pressed her lips again
to his forehead with the feeling that it confirmed his theory that all
matter was becoming spirit--his brow felt, somehow, so insubstantial.
But the most poignant memory of that little visit had been watching,
unobserved, her stepmother reading to herself a letter from Jon. It
was--she decided--the prettiest sight she had ever seen. Irene, lost as
it were in the letter of her boy, stood at a window where the light fell
on her face and her fine grey hair; her lips were moving, smiling, her
dark eyes laughing, dancing, and the hand which did not hold the letter
was pressed against her breast. Holly withdrew as from a vision of
perfect love, convinced that Jon must be nice.
When she saw him coming out of the station with a kit-bag in either hand,
she was confirmed in her predisposition. He was a little like Jolly,
that long-lost idol of her childhood, but eager-looking and less formal,
with deeper eyes and brighter-coloured hair, for he wore no hat;
altogether a very interesting "little" brother!
His tentative politeness charmed one who was accustomed to assurance in
the youthful manner; he was disturbed because she was to drive him home,
instead of his driving her. Shouldn't he have a shot? They hadn't a car
at Robin Hill since the War, of course, and he had only driven once, and
landed up a bank, so she oughtn't to mind his trying. His laugh, soft
and infectious, was very attractive, though that word, she had heard, was
now quite old-fashioned. When they reached the house he pulled out a
crumpled letter which she read while he was washing--a quite short
letter, which must have cost her father many a pang to write.
"MY DEAR,
"You and Val will not forget, I trust, that Jon knows nothing of family
history. His mother and I think he is too young at present. The boy is
very dear, and the apple of her eye. Verbum sapientibus. your loving
father,
"J. F."
That was all; but it renewed in Holly an uneasy regret that Fleur was
coming.
After tea she fulfilled that promise to herself and took Jon up the hill.
They had a long talk, sitting above an old chalk-pit grown over with
brambles and goosepenny. Milkwort and liverwort starred the green slope,
the larks sang, and thrushes in the brake, and now and then a gull
flighting inland would wheel very white against the paling sky, where the
vague moon was coming up. Delicious fragrance came to them, as if little
invisible creatures were running and treading scent out of the blades of
grass.
Jon, who had fallen silent, said rather suddenly:
"I say, this is wonderful! There's no fat on it at all. Gull's flight
and sheep-bells"
"'Gull's flight and sheep-bells'! You're a poet, my dear!"
Jon sighed.
"Oh, Golly! No go!"
"Try! I used to at your age."
"Did you? Mother says 'try' too; but I'm so rotten. Have you any of
yours for me to see?"
"My dear," Holly murmured, "I've been married nineteen years. I only
wrote verses when I wanted to be."
"Oh!" said Jon, and turned over on his face: the one cheek she could see
was a charming colour. Was Jon "touched in the wind," then, as Val would
have called it? Already? But, if so, all the better, he would take no
notice of young Fleur. Besides, on Monday he would begin his farming.
And she smiled. Was it Burns who followed the plough, or only Piers
Plowman? Nearly every young man and most young women seemed to be poets
now, judging from the number of their books she had read out in South
Africa, importing them from Hatchus and Bumphards; and quite good--oh!
quite; much better than she had been herself! But then poetry had only
really come in since her day--with motor-cars. Another long talk after
dinner over a wood fire in the low hall, and there seemed little left to
know about Jon except anything of real importance. Holly parted from him
at his bedroom door, having seen twice over that he had everything, with
the conviction that she would love him, and Val would like him. He was
eager, but did not gush; he was a splendid listener, sympathetic,
reticent about himself. He evidently loved their father, and adored his
mother. He liked riding, rowing, and fencing better than games. He saved
moths from candles, and couldn't bear spiders, but put them out of doors
in screws of paper sooner than kill them. In a word, he was amiable.
She went to sleep, thinking that he would suffer horribly if anybody hurt
him; but who would hurt him?
Jon, on the other hand, sat awake at his window with a bit of paper and a
pencil, writing his first "real poem" by the light of a candle because
there was not enough moon to see by, only enough to make the night seem
fluttery and as if engraved on silver. Just the night for Fleur to walk,
and turn her eyes, and lead on-over the hills and far away. And Jon,
deeply furrowed in his ingenuous brow, made marks on the paper and rubbed
them out and wrote them in again, and did all that was necessary for the
completion of a work of art; and he had a feeling such as the winds of
Spring must have, trying their first songs among the coming blossom. Jon
was one of those boys (not many) in whom a home-trained love of beauty
had survived school life. He had had to keep it to himself, of course,
so that not even the drawing-master knew of it; but it was there,
fastidious and clear within him. And his poem seemed to him as lame and
stilted as the night was winged. But he kept it, all the same. It was a
"beast," but better than nothing as an expression of the inexpressible.
And he thought with a sort of discomfiture: 'I shan't be able to show it
to Mother.' He slept terribly well, when he did sleep, overwhelmed by
novelty.
VII
FLEUR
To avoid the awkwardness of questions which could not be answered, all
that had been told Jon was:
"There's a girl coming down with Val for the week-end."
For the same reason, all that had been told Fleur was: "We've got a
youngster staying with us."
The two yearlings, as Val called them in his thoughts, met therefore in a
manner which for unpreparedness left nothing to be desired. They were
thus introduced by Holly:
"This is Jon, my little brother; Fleur's a cousin of ours, Jon."
Jon, who was coming in through a French window out of strong sunlight,
was so confounded by the providential nature of this miracle, that he had
time to hear Fleur say calmly: "Oh, how do you do?" as if he had never
seen her, and to understand dimly from the quickest imaginable little
movement of her head that he never had seen her. He bowed therefore over
her hand in an intoxicated manner, and became more silent than the grave.
He knew better than to speak. Once in his early life, surprised reading
by a nightlight, he had said fatuously "I was just turning over the
leaves, Mum," and his mother had replied: "Jon, never tell stories,
because of your face nobody will ever believe them."
The saying had permanently undermined the confidence necessary to the
success of spoken untruth. He listened therefore to Fleur's swift and
rapt allusions to the jolliness of everything, plied her with scones and
jam, and got away as soon as might be. They say that in delirium tremens
you see a fixed object, preferably dark, which suddenly changes shape and
position. Jon saw the fixed object; it had dark eyes and passably dark
hair, and changed its position, but never its shape. The knowledge that
between him and that object there was already a secret understanding
(however impossible to understand) thrilled him so that he waited
feverishly, and began to copy out his poem--which of course he would
never dare to--show her--till the sound of horses' hoofs roused him,
and, leaning from his window, he saw her riding forth with Val. It was
clear that she wasted no time, but the sight filled him with grief. He
wasted his. If he had not bolted, in his fearful ecstasy, he might have
been asked to go too. And from his window he sat and watched them
disappear, appear again in the chine of the road, vanish, and emerge once
more for a minute clear on the outline of the Down. 'Silly brute!' he
thought; 'I always miss my chances.'
Why couldn't he be self-confident and ready? And, leaning his chin on
his hands, he imagined the ride he might have had with her. A week-end
was but a week-end, and he had missed three hours of it. Did he know any
one except himself who would have been such a flat? He did not.
He dressed for dinner early, and was first down. He would miss no more.
But he missed Fleur, who came down last. He sat opposite her at dinner,
and it was terrible--impossible to say anything for fear of saying the
wrong thing, impossible to keep his eyes fixed on her in the only natural
way; in sum, impossible to treat normally one with whom in fancy he had
already been over the hills and far away; conscious, too, all the time,
that he must seem to her, to all of them, a dumb gawk. Yes, it was
terrible! And she was talking so well--swooping with swift wing this way
and that. Wonderful how she had learned an art which he found so
disgustingly difficult. She must think him hopeless indeed!
His sister's eyes, fixed on him with a certain astonishment, obliged him
at last to look at Fleur; but instantly her eyes, very wide and eager,
seeming to say, "Oh! for goodness' sake!" obliged him to look at Val,
where a grin obliged him to look at his cutlet--that, at least, had no
eyes, and no grin, and he ate it hastily.
"Jon is going to be a farmer," he heard Holly say; "a farmer and a poet."
He glanced up reproachfully, caught the comic lift of her eyebrow just
like their father's, laughed, and felt better.
Val recounted the incident of Monsieur Prosper Profond; nothing could
have been more favourable, for, in relating it, he regarded Holly, who in
turn regarded him, while Fleur seemed to be regarding with a slight frown
some thought of her own, and Jon was really free to look at her at last.
She had on a white frock, very simple and well made; her arms were bare,
and her hair had a white rose in it. In just that swift moment of free
vision, after such intense discomfort, Jon saw her sublimated, as one
sees in the dark a slender white fruit-tree; caught her like a verse of
poetry flashed before the eyes of the mind, or a tune which floats out in
the distance and dies. He wondered giddily how old she was--she seemed so
much more self-possessed and experienced than himself. Why mustn't he
say they had met? He remembered suddenly his mother's face; puzzled,
hurt-looking, when she answered: "Yes, they're relations, but we don't
know them." Impossible that his mother, who loved beauty, should not
admire Fleur if she did know her.
Alone with Val after dinner, he sipped port deferentially and answered
the advances of this new-found brother-in-law. As to riding (always the
first consideration with Val) he could have the young chestnut, saddle
and unsaddle it himself, and generally look after it when he brought it
in. Jon said he was accustomed to all that at home, and saw that he had
gone up one in his host's estimation.
"Fleur," said Val, "can't ride much yet, but she's keen. Of course, her
father doesn't know a horse from a cart-wheel. Does your Dad ride?"
"He used to; but now he's--you know, he's--" He stopped, so hating the
word "old." His father was old, and yet not old; no--never!
"Quite," muttered Val. "I used to know your brother up at Oxford, ages
ago, the one who died in the Boer War. We had a fight in New College
Gardens. That was a queer business," he added, musing; "a good deal came
out of it."
Jon's eyes opened wide; all was pushing him toward historical research,
when his sister's voice said gently from the doorway:
"Come along, you two," and he rose, his heart pushing him toward
something far more modern.
Fleur having declared that it was "simply too wonderful to stay indoors,"
they all went out. Moonlight was frosting the dew, and an old sundial
threw a long shadow. Two box hedges at right angles, dark and square,
barred off the orchard. Fleur turned through that angled opening.
"Come on!" she called. Jon glanced at the others, and followed. She was
running among the trees like a ghost. All was lovely and foamlike above
her, and there was a scent of old trunks, and of nettles. She vanished.
He thought he had lost her, then almost ran into her standing quite
still.
"Isn't it jolly?" she cried, and Jon answered:
"Rather!"
She reached up, twisted off a blossom and, twirling it in her fingers,
said:
"I suppose I can call you Jon?"
"I should think so just."
"All right! But you know there's a feud between our families?"
Jon stammered: "Feud? Why?"
"It's ever so romantic and silly. That's why I pretended we hadn't met.
Shall we get up early to-morrow morning and go for a walk before
breakfast and have it out? I hate being slow about things, don't you?"
Jon murmured a rapturous assent.
"Six o'clock, then. I think your mother's beautiful"
Jon said fervently: "Yes, she is."
"I love all kinds of beauty," went on Fleur, "when it's exciting. I
don't like Greek things a bit."
"What! Not Euripides?"
"Euripides? Oh! no, I can't bear Greek plays; they're so long. I think
beauty's always swift. I like to look at one picture, for instance, and
then run off. I can't bear a lot of things together. Look!" She held up
her blossom in the moonlight. "That's better than all the orchard, I
think."
And, suddenly, with her other hand she caught Jon's.
"Of all things in the world, don't you think caution's the most awful?
Smell the moonlight!"
She thrust the blossom against his face; Jon agreed giddily that of all
things in the world caution was the worst, and bending over, kissed the
hand which held his.
"That's nice and old-fashioned," said Fleur calmly. "You're frightfully
silent, Jon. Still I like silence when it's swift." She let go his
hand. "Did you think I dropped my handkerchief on purpose?"
"No!" cried Jon, intensely shocked.
"Well, I did, of course. Let's get back, or they'll think we're doing
this on purpose too." And again she ran like a ghost among the trees.
Jon followed, with love in his heart, Spring in his heart, and over all
the moonlit white unearthly blossom. They came out where they had gone
in, Fleur walking demurely.
"It's quite wonderful in there," she said dreamily to Holly.
Jon preserved silence, hoping against hope that she might be thinking it
swift.
She bade him a casual and demure good-night, which made him think he had
been dreaming....
In her bedroom Fleur had flung off her gown, and, wrapped in a shapeless
garment, with the white flower still in her hair, she looked like a
mousme, sitting cross-legged on her bed, writing by candlelight.
"DEAREST CHERRY,
"I believe I'm in love. I've got it in the neck, only the feeling is
really lower down. He's a second cousin-such a child, about six months
older and ten years younger than I am. Boys always fall in love with
their seniors, and girls with their juniors or with old men of forty.
Don't laugh, but his eyes are the truest things I ever saw; and he's
quite divinely silent! We had a most romantic first meeting in London
under the Vospovitch Juno. And now he's sleeping in the next room and
the moonlight's on the blossom; and to-morrow morning, before anybody's
awake, we're going to walk off into Down fairyland. There's a feud
between our families, which makes it really exciting. Yes! and I may
have to use subterfuge and come on you for invitations--if so, you'll
know why! My father doesn't want us to know each other, but I can't help
that. Life's too short. He's got the most beautiful mother, with lovely
silvery hair and a young face with dark eyes. I'm staying with his
sister--who married my cousin; it's all mixed up, but I mean to pump her
to-morrow. We've often talked about love being a spoil-sport; well,
that's all tosh, it's the beginning of sport, and the sooner you feel it,
my dear, the better for you.
"Jon (not simplified spelling, but short for Jolyon, which is a name in
my family, they say) is the sort that lights up and goes out; about five
feet ten, still growing, and I believe he's going to be a poet. If you
laugh at me I've done with you forever. I perceive all sorts of
difficulties, but you know when I really want a thing I get it. One of
the chief effects of love is that you see the air sort of inhabited, like
seeing a face in the moon; and you feel--you feel dancey and soft at the
same time, with a funny sensation--like a continual first sniff of
orange--blossom--Just above your stays. This is my first, and I feel as
if it were going to be my last, which is absurd, of course, by all the
laws of Nature and morality. If you mock me I will smite you, and if you
tell anybody I will never forgive you. So much so, that I almost don't
think I'll send this letter. Anyway, I'll sleep over it. So good-night,
my Cherry--oh! "Your,
"FLEUR."
VIII
IDYLL ON GRASS
When those two young Forsytes emerged from the chine lane, and set their
faces east toward the sun, there was not a cloud in heaven, and the Downs
were dewy. They had come at a good bat up the slope and were a little
out of breath; if they had anything to say they did not say it, but
marched in the early awkwardness of unbreakfasted morning under the songs
of the larks. The stealing out had been fun, but with the freedom of the
tops the sense of conspiracy ceased, and gave place to dumbness.
"We've made one blooming error," said Fleur, when they had gone half a
mile. "I'm hungry."
Jon produced a stick of chocolate. They shared it and their tongues were
loosened. They discussed the nature of their homes and previous
existences, which had a kind of fascinating unreality up on that lonely
height. There remained but one thing solid in Jon's past--his mother;
but one thing solid in Fleur's--her father; and of these figures, as
though seen in the distance with disapproving faces, they spoke little.
The Down dipped and rose again toward Chanctonbury Ring; a sparkle of far
sea came into view, a sparrow-hawk hovered in the sun's eye so that the
blood-nourished brown of his wings gleamed nearly red. Jon had a passion
for birds, and an aptitude for sitting very still to watch them;
keen-sighted, and with a memory for what interested him, on birds he was
almost worth listening to. But in Chanctonbury Ring there were none--its
great beech temple was empty of life, and almost chilly at this early
hour; they came out willingly again into the sun on the far side. It was
Fleur's turn now. She spoke of dogs, and the way people treated them.
It was wicked to keep them on chains! She would like to flog people who
did that. Jon was astonished to find her so humanitarian. She knew a
dog, it seemed, which some farmer near her home kept chained up at the
end of his chicken run, in all weathers, till it had almost lost its
voice from barking!
"And the misery is," she said vehemently, "that if the poor thing didn't
bark at every one who passes it wouldn't be kept there. I do think men
are cunning brutes. I've let it go twice, on the sly; it's nearly bitten
me both times, and then it goes simply mad with joy; but it always runs
back home at last, and they chain it up again. If I had my way, I'd
chain that man up." Jon saw her teeth and her eyes gleam. "I'd brand
him on his forehead with the word 'Brute'; that would teach him!"
Jon agreed that it would be a good remedy.
"It's their sense of property," he said, "which makes people chain
things. The last generation thought of nothing but property; and that's
why there was the War."
"Oh!" said Fleur, "I never thought of that. Your people and mine
quarrelled about property. And anyway we've all got it--at least, I
suppose your people have."
"Oh! yes, luckily; I don't suppose I shall be any good at making money."
"If you were, I don't believe I should like you."
Jon slipped his hand tremulously under her arm. Fleur looked straight
before her and chanted:
"Jon, Jon, the farmer's son, Stole a pig, and away he run!"
Jon's arm crept round her waist.
"This is rather sudden," said Fleur calmly; "do you often do it?"
Jon dropped his arm. But when she laughed his arm stole back again; and
Fleur began to sing:
"O who will oer the downs so free, O who will with me ride? O who will up
and follow me---"
"Sing, Jon!"
Jon sang. The larks joined in, sheep-bells, and an early morning church
far away over in Steyning. They went on from tune to tune, till Fleur
said:
"My God! I am hungry now!"
"Oh! I am sorry!"
She looked round into his face.
"Jon, you're rather a darling."
And she pressed his hand against her waist. Jon almost reeled from
happiness. A yellow-and-white dog coursing a hare startled them apart.
They watched the two vanish down the slope, till Fleur said with a sigh:
"He'll never catch it, thank goodness! What's the time? Mine's stopped.
I never wound it."
Jon looked at his watch. "By Jove!" he said, "mine's stopped; too."
They walked on again, but only hand in hand.
"If the grass is dry," said Fleur, "let's sit down for half a minute."
Jon took off his coat, and they shared it.
"Smell! Actually wild thyme!"
With his arm round her waist again, they sat some minutes in silence.
"We are goats!" cried Fleur, jumping up; "we shall be most fearfully
late, and look so silly, and put them on their guard. Look here, Jon We
only came out to get an appetite for breakfast, and lost our way. See?"
"Yes," said Jon.
"It's serious; there'll be a stopper put on us. Are you a good liar?"
"I believe not very; but I can try."
Fleur frowned.
"You know," she said, "I realize that they don't mean us to be friends."
"Why not?"
"I told you why."
"But that's silly."
"Yes; but you don't know my father!"
"I suppose he's fearfully fond of you."
"You see, I'm an only child. And so are you--of your mother. Isn't it a
bore? There's so much expected of one. By the time they've done
expecting, one's as good as dead."
"Yes," muttered Jon, "life's beastly short. One wants to live forever,
and know everything."
"And love everybody?"
"No," cried Jon; "I only want to love once--you."
"Indeed! You're coming on! Oh! Look! There's the chalk-pit; we can't
be very far now. Let's run."
Jon followed, wondering fearfully if he had offended her.
The chalk-pit was full of sunshine and the murmuration of bees. Fleur
flung back her hair.
"Well," she said, "in case of accidents, you may give me one kiss, Jon,"
and she pushed her cheek forward. With ecstasy he kissed that hot soft
cheek.
"Now, remember! We lost our way; and leave it to me as much as you can.
I'm going to be rather beastly to you; it's safer; try and be beastly to
me!"
Jon shook his head. "That's impossible."
"Just to please me; till five o'clock, at all events."
"Anybody will be able to see through it," said Jon gloomily.
"Well, do your best. Look! There they are! Wave your hat! Oh! you
haven't got one. Well, I'll cooee! Get a little away from me, and look
sulky."
Five minutes later, entering the house and doing his utmost to look
sulky, Jon heard her clear voice in the dining-room:
"Oh! I'm simply ravenous! He's going to be a farmer--and he loses his
way! The boy's an idiot!"
IX
GOYA
Lunch was over and Soames mounted to the picture-gallery in his house
near Mapleduram. He had what Annette called "a grief." Fleur was not
yet home. She had been expected on Wednesday; had wired that it would be
Friday; and again on Friday that it would be Sunday afternoon; and here
were her aunt, and her cousins the Cardigans, and this fellow Profond,
and everything flat as a pancake for the want of her. He stood before
his Gauguin--sorest point of his collection. He had bought the ugly great
thing with two early Matisses before the War, because there was such a
fuss about those Post-Impressionist chaps. He was wondering whether
Profond would take them off his hands--the fellow seemed not to know what
to do with his money--when he heard his sister's voice say: "I think
that's a horrid thing, Soames," and saw that Winifred had followed him
up.
"Oh! you do?" he said dryly; "I gave five hundred for it."
"Fancy! Women aren't made like that even if they are black."
Soames uttered a glum laugh. "You didn't come up to tell me that."
"No. Do you know that Jolyon's boy is staying with Val and his wife?"
Soames spun round.
"What?"
"Yes," drawled Winifred; "he's gone to live with them there while he
learns farming."
Soames had turned away, but her voice pursued him as he walked up and
down. "I warned Val that neither of them was to be spoken to about old
matters."
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
Winifred shrugged her substantial shoulders.
"Fleur does what she likes. You've always spoiled her. Besides, my dear
boy, what's the harm?"
"The harm!" muttered Soames. "Why, she--" he checked himself. The Juno,
the handkerchief, Fleur's eyes, her questions, and now this delay in her
return--the symptoms seemed to him so sinister that, faithful to his
nature, he could not part with them.
"I think you take too much care," said Winifred. "If I were you, I
should tell her of that old matter. It's no good thinking that girls in
these days are as they used to be. Where they pick up their knowledge I
can't tell, but they seem to know everything."
Over Soames' face, closely composed, passed a sort of spasm, and Winifred
added hastily:
"If you don't like to speak of it, I could for you."
Soames shook his head. Unless there was absolute necessity the thought
that his adored daughter should learn of that old scandal hurt his pride
too much.
"No," he said, "not yet. Never if I can help it.
"Nonsense, my dear. Think what people are!"
"Twenty years is a long time," muttered Soames. "Outside our family,
who's likely to remember?"
Winifred was silenced. She inclined more and more to that peace and
quietness of which Montague Dartie had deprived her in her youth. And,
since pictures always depressed her, she soon went down again.
Soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real Goya and
the copy of the fresco "La Vendimia." His acquisition of the real Goya
rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested interests and
passions which mesh the bright-winged fly of human life. The real Goya's
noble owner's ancestor had come into possession of it during some Spanish
war--it was in a word loot. The noble owner had remained in ignorance of
its value until in the nineties an enterprising critic discovered that a
Spanish painter named Goya was a genius. It was only a fair Goya, but
almost unique in England, and the noble owner became a marked man.
Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture which, independent
of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder principle that one
must know everything and be fearfully interested in life, he had fully
intended to keep an article which contributed to his reputation while he
was alive, and to leave it to the nation after he was dead. Fortunately
for Soames, the House of Lords was violently attacked in 1909, and the
noble owner became alarmed and angry. 'If,' he said to himself, 'they
think they can have it both ways they are very much mistaken. So long as
they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation can have some of my pictures
at my death. But if the nation is going to bait me, and rob me like
this, I'm damned if I won't sell the lot. They can't have my private
property and my public spirit-both.' He brooded in this fashion for
several months till one morning, after reading the speech of a certain
statesman, he telegraphed to his agent to come down and bring Bodkin. On
going over the collection Bodkin, than whose opinion on market values
none was more sought, pronounced that with a free hand to sell to
America, Germany, and other places where there was an interest in art, a
lot more money could be made than by selling in England. The noble
owner's public spirit--he said--was well known but the pictures were
unique. The noble owner put this opinion in his pipe and smoked it for a
year. At the end of that time he read another speech by the same
statesman, and telegraphed to his agents: "Give Bodkin a free hand." It
was at this juncture that Bodkin conceived the idea which salved the Goya
and two other unique pictures for the native country of the noble owner.
With one hand Bodkin proffered the pictures to the foreign market, with
the other he formed a list of private British collectors. Having
obtained what he considered the highest possible bids from across the
seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the private British collectors,
and invited them, of their public spirit, to outbid. In three instances
(including the Goya) out of twenty-one he was successful. And why? One
of the private collectors made buttons--he had made so many that he
desired that his wife should be called Lady "Buttons." He therefore
bought a unique picture at great cost, and gave it to the nation. It was
"part," his friends said, "of his general game." The second of the
private collectors was an Americophobe, and bought an unique picture to
"spite the damned Yanks." The third of the private collectors was
Soames, who--more sober than either of the, others--bought after a visit
to Madrid, because he was certain that Goya was still on the up grade.
Goya was not booming at the moment, but he would come again; and, looking
at that portrait, Hogarthian, Manetesque in its directness, but with its
own queer sharp beauty of paint, he was perfectly satisfied still that he
had made no error, heavy though the price had been--heaviest he had ever
paid. And next to it was hanging the copy of "La Vendimia." There she
was--the little wretch-looking back at him in her dreamy mood, the mood
he loved best because he felt so much safer when she looked like that.
He was still gazing when the scent of a cigar impinged on his nostrils,
and a voice said:
"Well, Mr. Forsyde, what you goin' to do with this small lot?"
That Belgian chap, whose mother-as if Flemish blood were not enough--had
been Armenian! Subduing a natural irritation, he said:
"Are you a judge of pictures?"
"Well, I've got a few myself."
"Any Post-Impressionists?"
"Ye-es, I rather like them."
"What do you think of this?" said Soames, pointing to the Gauguin.
Monsieur Profond protruded his lower lip and short pointed beard.
"Rather fine, I think," he said; "do you want to sell it?"
Soames checked his instinctive "Not particularly"--he would not chaffer
with this alien.
"Yes," he said.
"What do you want for it?"
"What I gave."
"All right," said Monsieur Profond. "I'll be glad to take that small
picture. Post-Impressionists--they're awful dead, but they're amusin'.
I don' care for pictures much, but I've got some, just a small lot."
"What do you care for?"
Monsieur Profond shrugged his shoulders.
"Life's awful like a lot of monkeys scramblin' for empty nuts."
"You're young," said Soames. If the fellow must make a generalization,
he needn't suggest that the forms of property lacked solidity!
"I don' worry," replied Monsieur Profond smiling; "we're born, and we
die. Half the world's starvin'. I feed a small lot of babies out in my
mother's country; but what's the use? Might as well throw my money in
the river."
Soames looked at him, and turned back toward his Goya. He didn't know
what the fellow wanted.
"What shall I make my cheque for?" pursued Monsieur Profond.
"Five hundred," said Soames shortly; "but I don't want you to take it if
you don't care for it more than that."
"That's all right," said Monsieur Profond; "I'll be 'appy to 'ave that
picture."
He wrote a cheque with a fountain-pen heavily chased with gold. Soames
watched the process uneasily. How on earth had the fellow known that he
wanted to sell that picture? Monsieur Profond held out the cheque.
"The English are awful funny about pictures," he said. "So are the
French, so are my people. They're all awful funny."
"I don't understand you," said Soames stiffly.
"It's like hats," said Monsieur Profond enigmatically, "small or large,
turnin' up or down--just the fashion. Awful funny." And, smiling, he
drifted out of the gallery again, blue and solid like the smoke of his
excellent cigar.
Soames had taken the cheque, feeling as if the intrinsic value of
ownership had been called in question. 'He's a cosmopolitan,' he
thought, watching Profond emerge from under the verandah with Annette,
and saunter down the lawn toward the river. What his wife saw in the
fellow he didn't know, unless it was that he could speak her language;
and there passed in Soames what Monsieur Profond would have called a
"small doubt" whether Annette was not too handsome to be walking with any
one so "cosmopolitan." Even at that distance he could see the blue fumes
from Profond's cigar wreath out in the quiet sunlight; and his grey
buckskin shoes, and his grey hat--the fellow was a dandy! And he could
see the quick turn of his wife's head, so very straight on her desirable
neck and shoulders. That turn of her neck always seemed to him a little
too showy, and in the "Queen of all I survey" manner--not quite
distinguished. He watched them walk along the path at the bottom of the
garden. A young man in flannels joined them down there--a Sunday caller
no doubt, from up the river. He went back to his Goya. He was still
staring at that replica of Fleur, and worrying over Winifred's news, when
his wife's voice said:
"Mr. Michael Mont, Soames. You invited him to see your pictures."
There was the cheerful young man of the Gallery off Cork Street!
"Turned up, you see, sir; I live only four miles from Pangbourne. Jolly
day, isn't it?"
Confronted with the results of his expansiveness, Soames scrutinized his
visitor. The young man's mouth was excessively large and curly--he
seemed always grinning. Why didn't he grow the rest of those idiotic
little moustaches, which made him look like a music-hall buffoon? What
on earth were young men about, deliberately lowering their class with
these tooth-brushes, or little slug whiskers? Ugh! Affected young
idiots! In other respects he was presentable, and his flannels very
clean.
"Happy to see you!" he said.
The young man, who had been turning his head from side to side, became
transfixed. "I say!" he said, "'some' picture!"
Soames saw, with mixed sensations, that he had addressed the remark to
the Goya copy.
"Yes," he said dryly, "that's not a Goya. It's a copy. I had it painted
because it reminded me of my daughter."
"By Jove! I thought I knew the face, sir. Is she here?"
The frankness of his interest almost disarmed Soames.
"She'll be in after tea," he said. "Shall we go round the pictures?"
And Soames began that round which never tired him. He had not
anticipated much intelligence from one who had mistaken a copy for an
original, but as they passed from section to section, period to period,
he was startled by the young man's frank and relevant remarks. Natively
shrewd himself, and even sensuous beneath his mask, Soames had not spent
thirty-eight years over his one hobby without knowing something more
about pictures than their market values. He was, as it were, the missing
link between the artist and the commercial public. Art for art's sake
and all that, of course, was cant. But aesthetics and good taste were
necessary. The appreciation of enough persons of good taste was what
gave a work of art its permanent market value, or in other words made it
"a work of art." There was no real cleavage. And he was sufficiently
accustomed to sheep-like and unseeing visitors, to be intrigued by one
who did not hesitate to say of Mauve: "Good old haystacks!" or of James
Maris: "Didn't he just paint and paper 'em! Mathew was the real swell,
sir; you could dig into his surfaces!" It was after the young man had
whistled before a Whistler, with the words, "D'you think he ever really
saw a naked woman, sir?" that Soames remarked:
"What are you, Mr. Mont, if I may ask?"
"I, sir? I was going to be a painter, but the War knocked that. Then in
the trenches, you know, I used to dream of the Stock Exchange, snug and
warm and just noisy enough. But the Peace knocked that, shares seem off,
don't they? I've only been demobbed about a year. What do you
recommend, sir?"
"Have you got money?"
"Well," answered the young man, "I've got a father; I kept him alive
during the War, so he's bound to keep me alive now. Though, of course,
there's the question whether he ought to be allowed to hang on to his
property. What do you think about that, sir?"
Soames, pale and defensive, smiled.
"The old man has fits when I tell him he may have to work yet. He's got
land, you know; it's a fatal disease."
"This is my real Goya," said Soames dryly.
"By George! He was a swell. I saw a Goya in Munich once that bowled me
middle stump. A most evil-looking old woman in the most gorgeous lace.
He made no compromise with the public taste. That old boy was 'some'
explosive; he must have smashed up a lot of convention in his day.
Couldn't he just paint! He makes Velasquez stiff, don't you think?"
"I have no Velasquez," said Soames.
The young man stared. "No," he said; "only nations or profiteers can
afford him, I suppose. I say, why shouldn't all the bankrupt nations
sell their Velasquez and Titians and other swells to the profiteers by
force, and then pass a law that any one who holds a picture by an Old
Master--see schedule--must hang it in a public gallery? There seems
something in that."
"Shall we go down to tea?" said Soames.
The young man's ears seemed to droop on his skull. 'He's not dense,'
thought Soames, following him off the premises.
Goya, with his satiric and surpassing precision, his original "line," and
the daring of his light and shade, could have reproduced to admiration
the group assembled round Annette's tea-tray in the inglenook below. He
alone, perhaps, of painters would have done justice to the sunlight
filtering through a screen of creeper, to the lovely pallor of brass, the
old cut glasses, the thin slices of lemon in pale amber tea; justice to
Annette in her black lacey dress; there was something of the fair
Spaniard in her beauty, though it lacked the spirituality of that rare
type; to Winifred's grey-haired, corseted solidity; to Soames, of a
certain grey and flat-cheeked distinction; to the vivacious Michael Mont,
pointed in ear and eye; to Imogen, dark, luscious of glance, growing a
little stout; to Prosper Profond, with his expression as who should say,
"Well, Mr. Goya, what's the use of paintin' this small party?" finally,
to Jack Cardigan, with his shining stare and tanned sanguinity betraying
the moving principle: "I'm English, and I live to be fit."
Curious, by the way, that Imogen, who as a girl had declared solemnly one
day at Timothy's that she would never marry a good man--they were so
dull--should have married Jack Cardigan, in whom health had so destroyed
all traces of original sin, that she might have retired to rest with ten
thousand other Englishmen without knowing the difference from the one she
had chosen to repose beside. "Oh!" she would say of him, in her
"amusing" way, "Jack keeps himself so fearfully fit; he's never had a
day's illness in his life. He went right through the War without a
finger-ache. You really can't imagine how fit he is!" Indeed, he was so
"fit" that he couldn't see when she was flirting, which was such a
comfort in a way. All the same she was quite fond of him, so far as one
could be of a sports-machine, and of the two little Cardigans made after
his pattern. Her eyes just then were comparing him maliciously with
Prosper Profond. There was no "small" sport or game which Monsieur
Profond had not played at too, it seemed, from skittles to
tarpon-fishing, and worn out every one. Imogen would sometimes wish that
they had worn out Jack, who continued to play at them and talk of them
with the simple zeal of a school-girl learning hockey; at the age of
Great-uncle Timothy she well knew that Jack would be playing carpet golf
in her bedroom, and "wiping somebody's eye."
He was telling them now how he had "pipped the pro--a charmin' fellow,
playin' a very good game," at the last hole this morning; and how he had
pulled down to Caversham since lunch, and trying to incite Prosper
Profond to play him a set of tennis after tea--do him good--"keep him
fit.
"But what's the use of keepin' fit?" said Monsieur Profond.
"Yes, sir," murmured Michael Mont, "what do you keep fit for?"
"Jack," cried Imogen, enchanted, "what do you keep fit for?"
Jack Cardigan stared with all his health. The questions were like the
buzz of a mosquito, and he put up his hand to wipe them away. During the
War, of course, he had kept fit to kill Germans; now that it was over he
either did not know, or shrank in delicacy from explanation of his moving
principle.
"But he's right," said Monsieur Profond unexpectedly, "there's nothin'
left but keepin' fit."
The saying, too deep for Sunday afternoon, would have passed unanswered,
but for the mercurial nature of young Mont.
"Good!" he cried. "That's the great discovery of the War. We all
thought we were progressing--now we know we're only changing."
"For the worse," said Monsieur Profond genially.
"How you are cheerful, Prosper!" murmured Annette.
"You come and play tennis!" said Jack Cardigan; "you've got the hump.
We'll soon take that down. D'you play, Mr. Mont?"
"I hit the ball about, sir."
At this juncture Soames rose, ruffled in that deep instinct of
preparation for the future which guided his existence.
"When Fleur comes--" he heard Jack Cardigan say.
Ah! and why didn't she come? He passed through drawing-room, hall, and
porch out on to the drive, and stood there listening for the car. All was
still and Sundayfied; the lilacs in full flower scented the air. There
were white clouds, like the feathers of ducks gilded by the sunlight.
Memory of the day when Fleur was born, and he had waited in such agony
with her life and her mother's balanced in his hands, came to him
sharply. He had saved her then, to be the flower of his life. And now!
was she going to give him trouble--pain--give him trouble? He did not
like the look of things! A blackbird broke in on his reverie with an
evening song--a great big fellow up in that acacia-tree. Soames had
taken quite an interest in his birds of late years; he and Fleur would
walk round and watch them; her eyes were sharp as needles, and she knew
every nest. He saw her dog, a retriever, lying on the drive in a patch
of sunlight, and called to him. "Hallo, old fellow-waiting for her too!"
The dog came slowly with a grudging tail, and Soames mechanically laid a
pat on his head. The dog, the bird, the lilac, all were part of Fleur for
him; no more, no less. 'Too fond of her!' he thought, 'too fond!' He
was like a man uninsured, with his ships at sea. Uninsured again--as in
that other time, so long ago, when he would wander dumb and jealous in
the wilderness of London, longing for that woman--his first wife--the
mother of this infernal boy. Ah! There was the car at last! It drew
up, it had luggage, but no Fleur.
"Miss Fleur is walking up, sir, by the towing-path."
Walking all those miles? Soames stared. The man's face had the
beginning of a smile on it. What was he grinning at? And very quickly
he turned, saying, "All right, Sims!" and went into the house. He
mounted to the picture-gallery once more. He had from there a view of
the river bank, and stood with his eyes fixed on it, oblivious of the
fact that it would be an hour at least before her figure showed there.
Walking up! And that fellow's grin! The boy--! He turned abruptly from
the window. He couldn't spy on her. If she wanted to keep things from
him--she must; he could not spy on her. His heart felt empty, and
bitterness mounted from it into his very mouth. The staccato shouts of
Jack Cardigan pursuing the ball, the laugh of young Mont rose in the
stillness and came in. He hoped they were making that chap Profond run.
And the girl in "La Vendimia" stood with her arm akimbo and her dreamy
eyes looking past him. 'I've done all I could for you,' he thought,
'since you were no higher than my knee. You aren't going to--to--hurt
me, are you?'
But the Goya copy answered not, brilliant in colour just beginning to
tone down. 'There's no real life in it,' thought Soames. 'Why doesn't
she come?'
X
TRIO
Among those four Forsytes of the third, and, as one might say, fourth
generation, at Wansdon under the Downs, a week-end prolonged unto the
ninth day had stretched the crossing threads of tenacity almost to
snapping-point. Never had Fleur been so "fine," Holly so watchful, Val
so stable-secretive, Jon so silent and disturbed. What he learned of
farming in that week might have been balanced on the point of a penknife
and puffed off. He, whose nature was essentially averse from intrigue,
and whose adoration of Fleur disposed him to think that any need for
concealing it was "skittles," chafed and fretted, yet obeyed, taking what
relief he could in the few moments when they were alone. On Thursday,
while they were standing in the bay window of the drawing-room, dressed
for dinner, she said to him:
"Jon, I'm going home on Sunday by the 3.40 from Paddington; if you were
to go home on Saturday you could come up on Sunday and take me down, and
just get back here by the last train, after. You were going home anyway,
weren't you?"
Jon nodded.
"Anything to be with you," he said; "only why need I pretend--"
Fleur slipped her little finger into his palm:
"You have no instinct, Jon; you must leave things to me. It's serious
about our people. We've simply got to be secret at present, if we want
to be together." The door was opened, and she added loudly: "You are a
duffer, Jon."
Something turned over within Jon; he could not bear this subterfuge about
a feeling so natural, so overwhelming, and so sweet.
On Friday night about eleven he had packed his bag, and was leaning out
of his window, half miserable, and half lost in a dream of Paddington
station, when he heard a tiny sound, as of a finger-nail tapping on his
door. He rushed to it and listened. Again the sound. It was a nail. He
opened. Oh! What a lovely thing came in!
"I wanted to show you my fancy dress," it said, and struck an attitude at
the foot of his bed.
Jon drew a long breath and leaned against the door. The apparition wore
white muslin on its head, a fichu round its bare neck over a
wine-coloured dress, fulled out below its slender waist.
It held one arm akimbo, and the other raised, right-angled, holding a fan
which touched its head.
"This ought to be a basket of grapes," it whispered, "but I haven't got
it here. It's my Goya dress. And this is the attitude in the picture.
Do you like it?"
"It's a dream."
The apparition pirouetted. "Touch it, and see."
Jon knelt down and took the skirt reverently.
"Grape colour," came the whisper, "all grapes--La Vendimia--the vintage."
Jon's fingers scarcely touched each side of the waist; he looked up, with
adoring eyes.
"Oh! Jon," it whispered; bent, kissed his forehead, pirouetted again,
and, gliding out, was gone.
Jon stayed on his knees, and his head fell forward against the bed. How
long he stayed like that he did not know. The little noises--of the
tapping nail, the feet, the skirts rustling--as in a dream--went on about
him; and before his closed eyes the figure stood and smiled and
whispered, a faint perfume of narcissus lingering in the air. And his
forehead where it had been kissed had a little cool place between the
brows, like the imprint of a flower. Love filled his soul, that love of
boy for girl which knows so little, hopes so much, would not brush the
down off for the world, and must become in time a fragrant memory--a
searing passion--a humdrum mateship--or, once in many times, vintage full
and sweet with sunset colour on the grapes.
Enough has been said about Jon Forsyte here and in another place to show
what long marches lay between him and his great-great-grandfather, the
first Jolyon, in Dorset down by the sea. Jon was sensitive as a girl,
more sensitive than nine out of ten girls of the day; imaginative as one
of his half-sister June's "lame duck" painters; affectionate as a son of
his father and his mother naturally would be. And yet, in his inner
tissue, there was something of the old founder of his family, a secret
tenacity of soul, a dread of showing his feelings, a determination not to
know when he was beaten. Sensitive, imaginative, affectionate boys get a
bad time at school, but Jon had instinctively kept his nature dark, and
been but normally unhappy there. Only with his mother had he, up till
then, been absolutely frank and natural; and when he went home to Robin
Hill that Saturday his heart was heavy because Fleur had said that he
must not be frank and natural with her from whom he had never yet kept
anything, must not even tell her that they had met again, unless he found
that she knew already. So intolerable did this seem to him that he was
very near to telegraphing an excuse and staying up in London. And the
first thing his mother said to him was:
"So you've had our little friend of the confectioner's there, Jon. What
is she like on second thoughts?"
With relief, and a high colour, Jon answered:
"Oh! awfully jolly, Mum."
Her arm pressed his.
Jon had never loved her so much as in that minute which seemed to falsify
Fleur's fears and to release his soul. He turned to look at her, but
something in her smiling face--something which only he perhaps would have
caught--stopped the words bubbling up in him. Could fear go with a smile?
If so, there was fear in her face. And out of Jon tumbled quite other
words, about farming, Holly, and the Downs. Talking fast, he waited for
her to come back to Fleur. But she did not. Nor did his father mention
her, though of course he, too, must know. What deprivation, and killing
of reality was in his silence about Fleur--when he was so full of her;
when his mother was so full of Jon, and his father so full of his mother!
And so the trio spent the evening of that Saturday.
After dinner his mother played; she seemed to play all the things he
liked best, and he sat with one knee clasped, and his hair standing up
where his fingers had run through it. He gazed at his mother while she
played, but he saw Fleur--Fleur in the moonlit orchard, Fleur in the
sunlit gravel-pit, Fleur in that fancy dress, swaying, whispering,
stooping, kissing his forehead. Once, while he listened, he forgot
himself and glanced at his father in that other easy chair. What was Dad
looking like that for? The expression on his face was so sad and
puzzling. It filled him with a sort of remorse, so that he got up and
went and sat on the arm of his father's chair. From there he could not
see his face; and again he saw Fleur--in his mother's hands, slim and
white on the keys, in the profile of her face and her powdery hair; and
down the long room in the open window where the May night walked outside.
When he went up to bed his mother came into his room. She stood at the
window, and said:
"Those cypresses your grandfather planted down there have done
wonderfully. I always think they look beautiful under a dropping moon.
I wish you had known your grandfather, Jon."
"Were you married to father when he was alive?" asked Jon suddenly.
"No, dear; he died in '92--very old--eighty-five, I think."
"Is Father like him?"
"A little, but more subtle, and not quite so solid."
"I know, from grandfather's portrait; who painted that?"
"One of June's 'lame ducks.' But it's quite good."
Jon slipped his hand through his mother's arm. "Tell me about the family
quarrel, Mum."
He felt her arm quivering. "No, dear; that's for your Father some day,
if he thinks fit."
"Then it was serious," said Jon, with a catch in his breath.
"Yes." And there was a silence, during which neither knew whether the
arm or the hand within it were quivering most.
"Some people," said Irene softly, "think the moon on her back is evil; to
me she's always lovely. Look at those cypress shadows! Jon, Father says
we may go to Italy, you and I, for two months. Would you like?"
Jon took his hand from under her arm; his sensation was so sharp and so
confused. Italy with his mother! A fortnight ago it would have been
perfection; now it filled him with dismay; he felt that the sudden
suggestion had to do with Fleur. He stammered out:
"Oh! yes; only--I don't know. Ought I--now I've just begun? I'd like to
think it over."
Her voice answered, cool and gentle:
"Yes, dear; think it over. But better now than when you've begun farming
seriously. Italy with you! It would be nice!"
Jon put his arm round her waist, still slim and firm as a girl's.
"Do you think you ought to leave Father?" he said feebly, feeling very
mean.
"Father suggested it; he thinks you ought to see Italy at least before
you settle down to anything."
The sense of meanness died in Jon; he knew, yes--he knew--that his father
and his mother were not speaking frankly, no more than he himself. They
wanted to keep him from Fleur. His heart hardened. And, as if she felt
that process going on, his mother said:
"Good-night, darling. Have a good sleep and think it over. But it would
be lovely!"
She pressed him to her so quickly that he did not see her face. Jon
stood feeling exactly as he used to when he was a naughty little boy;
sore because he was not loving, and because he was justified in his own
eyes.
But Irene, after she had stood a moment in her own room, passed through
the dressing-room between it and her husband's.
"Well?"
"He will think it over, Jolyon."
Watching her lips that wore a little drawn smile, Jolyon said quietly:
"You had better let me tell him, and have done with it. After all, Jon
has the instincts of a gentleman. He has only to understand--"
"Only! He can't understand; that's impossible."
"I believe I could have at his age."
Irene caught his hand. "You were always more of a realist than Jon; and
never so innocent."
"That's true," said Jolyon. "It's queer, isn't it? You and I would tell
our stories to the world without a particle of shame; but our own boy
stumps us."
"We've never cared whether the world approves or not."
"Jon would not disapprove of us!"
"Oh! Jolyon, yes. He's in love, I feel he's in love. And he'd say: 'My
mother once married without love! How could she have!' It'll seem to
him a crime! And so it was!"
Jolyon took her hand, and said with a wry smile:
"Ah! why on earth are we born young? Now, if only we were born old and
grew younger year by year, we should understand how things happen, and
drop all our cursed intolerance. But you know if the boy is really in
love, he won't forget, even if he goes to Italy. We're a tenacious
breed; and he'll know by instinct why he's being sent. Nothing will
really cure him but the shock of being told."
"Let me try, anyway."
Jolyon stood a moment without speaking. Between this devil and this deep
sea--the pain of a dreaded disclosure and the grief of losing his wife
for two months--he secretly hoped for the devil; yet if she wished for
the deep sea he must put up with it. After all, it would be training for
that departure from which there would be no return. And, taking her in
his arms, he kissed her eyes, and said:
"As you will, my love."
XI
DUET
That "small" emotion, love, grows amazingly when threatened with
extinction. Jon reached Paddington station half an hour before his time
and a full week after, as it seemed to him. He stood at the appointed
bookstall, amid a crowd of Sunday travellers, in a Harris tweed suit
exhaling, as it were, the emotion of his thumping heart. He read the
names of the novels on the book-stall, and bought one at last, to avoid
being regarded with suspicion by the book-stall clerk. It was called "The
Heart of the Trail!" which must mean something, though it did not seem
to. He also bought "The Lady's Mirror" and "The Landsman." Every minute
was an hour long, and full of horrid imaginings. After nineteen had
passed, he saw her with a bag and a porter wheeling her luggage. She
came swiftly; she came cool. She greeted him as if he were a brother.
"First class," she said to the porter, "corner seats; opposite."
Jon admired her frightful self-possession.
"Can't we get a carriage to ourselves," he whispered.
"No good; it's a stopping train. After Maidenhead perhaps. Look
natural, Jon."
Jon screwed his features into a scowl. They got in--with two other
beasts!--oh! heaven! He tipped the porter unnaturally, in his confusion.
The brute deserved nothing for putting them in there, and looking as if
he knew all about it into the bargain.
Fleur hid herself behind "The Lady's Mirror." Jon imitated her behind
"The Landsman." The train started. Fleur let "The Lady's Mirror" fall
and leaned forward.
"Well?" she said.
"It's seemed about fifteen days."
She nodded, and Jon's face lighted up at once.
"Look natural," murmured Fleur, and went off into a bubble of laughter.
It hurt him. How could he look natural with Italy hanging over him? He
had meant to break it to her gently, but now he blurted it out.
"They want me to go to Italy with Mother for two months."
Fleur drooped her eyelids; turned a little pale, and bit her lips. "Oh!"
she said. It was all, but it was much.
That "Oh!" was like the quick drawback of the wrist in fencing ready for
riposte. It came.
"You must go!"
"Go?" said Jon in a strangled voice.
"Of course."
"But--two months--it's ghastly."
"No," said Fleur, "six weeks. You'll have forgotten me by then. We'll
meet in the National Gallery the day after you get back."
Jon laughed.
"But suppose you've forgotten me," he muttered into the noise of the
train.
Fleur shook her head.
"Some other beast--" murmured Jon.
Her foot touched his.
"No other beast," she said, lifting "The Lady's Mirror."
The train stopped; two passengers got out, and one got in.
'I shall die,' thought Jon, 'if we're not alone at all.'
The train went on; and again Fleur leaned forward.
"I never let go," she said; "do you?"
Jon shook his head vehemently.
"Never!" he said. "Will you write to me?"
"No; but you can--to my Club."
She had a Club; she was wonderful!
"Did you pump Holly?" he muttered.
"Yes, but I got nothing. I didn't dare pump hard."
"What can it be?" cried Jon.
"I shall find out all right."
A long silence followed till Fleur said: "This is Maidenhead; stand by,
Jon!"
The train stopped. The remaining passenger got out. Fleur drew down her
blind.
"Quick!" she cried. "Hang out! Look as much of a beast as you can."
Jon blew his nose, and scowled; never in all his life had he scowled like
that! An old lady recoiled, a young one tried the handle. It turned,
but the door would not open. The train moved, the young lady darted to
another carriage.
"What luck!" cried Jon. "It Jammed."
"Yes," said Fleur; "I was holding it."
The train moved out, and Jon fell on his knees.
"Look out for the corridor," she whispered; "and--quick!"
Her lips met his. And though their kiss only lasted perhaps ten seconds,
Jon's soul left his body and went so far beyond, that, when he was again
sitting opposite that demure figure, he was pale as death. He heard her
sigh, and the sound seemed to him the most precious he had ever heard--an
exquisite declaration that he meant something to her.
"Six weeks isn't really long," she said; "and you can easily make it six
if you keep your head out there, and never seem to think of me."
Jon gasped.
"This is just what's really wanted, Jon, to convince them, don't you see?
If we're just as bad when you come back they'll stop being ridiculous
about it. Only, I'm sorry it's not Spain; there's a girl in a Goya
picture at Madrid who's like me, Father says. Only she isn't--we've got
a copy of her."
It was to Jon like a ray of sunshine piercing through a fog. "I'll make
it Spain," he said, "Mother won't mind; she's never been there. And my
Father thinks a lot of Goya."
"Oh! yes, he's a painter--isn't he?"
"Only water-colour," said Jon, with honesty.
"When we come to Reading, Jon, get out first and go down to Caversham
lock and wait for me. I'll send the car home and we'll walk by the
towing-path."
Jon seized her hand in gratitude, and they sat silent, with the world
well lost, and one eye on the corridor. But the train seemed to run
twice as fast now, and its sound was almost lost in that of Jon's
sighing.
"We're getting near," said Fleur; "the towing-path's awfully exposed. One
more! Oh! Jon, don't forget me."
Jon answered with his kiss. And very soon, a flushed, distracted-looking
youth could have been seen--as they say--leaping from the train and
hurrying along the platform, searching his pockets for his ticket.
When at last she rejoined him on the towing-path a little beyond
Caversham lock he had made an effort, and regained some measure of
equanimity. If they had to part, he would not make a scene! A breeze by
the bright river threw the white side of the willow leaves up into the
sunlight, and followed those two with its faint rustle.
"I told our chauffeur that I was train-giddy," said Fleur. "Did you look
pretty natural as you went out?"
"I don't know. What is natural?"
"It's natural to you to look seriously happy. When I first saw you I
thought you weren't a bit like other people."
"Exactly what I thought when I saw you. I knew at once I should never
love anybody else."
Fleur laughed.
"We're absurdly young. And love's young dream is out of date, Jon.
Besides, it's awfully wasteful. Think of all the fun you might have. You
haven't begun, even; it's a shame, really. And there's me. I wonder!"
Confusion came on Jon's spirit. How could she say such things just as
they were going to part?
"If you feel like that," he said, "I can't go. I shall tell Mother that
I ought to try and work. There's always the condition of the world!"
"The condition of the world!"
Jon thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
"But there is," he said; "think of the people starving!"
Fleur shook her head. "No, no, I never, never will make myself miserable
for nothing."
"Nothing! But there's an awful state of things, and of course one ought
to help."
"Oh! yes, I know all that. But you can't help people, Jon; they're
hopeless. When you pull them out they only get into another hole. Look
at them, still fighting and plotting and struggling, though they're dying
in heaps all the time. Idiots!"
"Aren't you sorry for them?"
"Oh! sorry--yes, but I'm not going to make myself unhappy about it;
that's no good."
And they were silent, disturbed by this first glimpse of each other's
natures.
"I think people are brutes and idiots," said Fleur stubbornly.
"I think they're poor wretches," said Jon. It was as if they had
quarrelled--and at this supreme and awful moment, with parting visible
out there in that last gap of the willows!
"Well, go and help your poor wretches, and don't think of me."
Jon stood still. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his limbs
trembled. Fleur too had stopped, and was frowning at the river.
"I must believe in things," said Jon with a sort of agony; "we're all
meant to enjoy life."
Fleur laughed. "Yes; and that's what you won't do, if you don't take
care. But perhaps your idea of enjoyment is to make yourself wretched.
There are lots of people like that, of course."
She was pale, her eyes had darkened, her lips had thinned. Was it Fleur
thus staring at the water? Jon had an unreal feeling as if he were
passing through the scene in a book where the lover has to choose between
love and duty. But just then she looked round at him. Never was anything
so intoxicating as that vivacious look. It acted on him exactly as the
tug of a chain acts on a dog--brought him up to her with his tail wagging
and his tongue out.
"Don't let's be silly," she said, "time's too short. Look, Jon, you can
just see where I've got to cross the river. There, round the bend, where
the woods begin."
Jon saw a gable, a chimney or two, a patch of wall through the trees
--and felt his heart sink.
"I mustn't dawdle any more. It's no good going beyond the next hedge, it
gets all open. Let's get on to it and say good-bye."
They went side by side, hand in hand, silently toward the hedge, where
the may-flower, both pink and white, was in full bloom.
"My Club's the 'Talisman,' Stratton Street, Piccadilly. Letters there
will be quite safe, and I'm almost always up once a week."
Jon nodded. His face had become extremely set, his eyes stared straight
before him.
"To-day's the twenty-third of May," said Fleur; "on the ninth of July I
shall be in front of the 'Bacchus and Ariadne' at three o'clock; will
you?"
"I will."
"If you feel as bad as I it's all right. Let those people pass!"
A man and woman airing their children went by strung out in Sunday
fashion.
The last of them passed the wicket gate.
"Domesticity!" said Fleur, and blotted herself against the hawthorn
hedge. The blossom sprayed out above her head, and one pink cluster
brushed her cheek. Jon put up his hand jealously to keep it off.
"Good-bye, Jon." For a second they stood with hands hard clasped. Then
their lips met for the third time, and when they parted Fleur broke away
and fled through the wicket gate. Jon stood where she had left him, with
his forehead against that pink cluster. Gone! For an eternity--for
seven weeks all but two days! And here he was, wasting the last sight of
her! He rushed to the gate. She was walking swiftly on the heels of the
straggling children. She turned her head, he saw her hand make a little
flitting gesture; then she sped on, and the trailing family blotted her
out from his view.
The words of a comic song--
"Paddington groan-worst ever known
He gave a sepulchral Paddington groan--"
came into his head, and he sped incontinently back to Reading station.
All the way up to London and down to Wansdon he sat with "The Heart of
the Trail" open on his knee, knitting in his head a poem so full of
feeling that it would not rhyme.
XII
CAPRICE
Fleur sped on. She had need of rapid motion; she was late, and wanted
all her wits about her when she got in. She passed the islands, the
station, and hotel, and was about to take the ferry, when she saw a skiff
with a young man standing up in it, and holding to the bushes.
"Miss Forsyte," he said; "let me put you across. I've come on purpose."
She looked at him in blank amazement.
"It's all right, I've been having tea with your people. I thought I'd
save you the last bit. It's on my way, I'm just off back to Pangbourne.
My name's Mont. I saw you at the picture-gallery--you remember--when
your father invited me to see his pictures."
"Oh!" said Fleur; "yes--the handkerchief."
To this young man she owed Jon; and, taking his hand, she stepped down
into the skiff. Still emotional, and a little out of breath, she sat
silent; not so the young man. She had never heard any one say so much in
so short a time. He told her his age, twenty-four; his weight, ten stone
eleven; his place of residence, not far away; described his sensations
under fire, and what it felt like to be gassed; criticized the Juno,
mentioned his own conception of that goddess; commented on the Goya copy,
said Fleur was not too awfully like it; sketched in rapidly the condition
of England; spoke of Monsieur Profond--or whatever his name was--as "an
awful sport"; thought her father had some "ripping" pictures and some
rather "dug-up"; hoped he might row down again and take her on the river
because he was quite trustworthy; inquired her opinion of Tchekov, gave
her his own; wished they could go to the Russian ballet together some
time--considered the name Fleur Forsyte simply topping; cursed his people
for giving him the name of Michael on the top of Mont; outlined his
father, and said that if she wanted a good book she should read "Job";
his father was rather like Job while Job still had land.
"But Job didn't have land," Fleur murmured; "he only had flocks and herds
and moved on."
"Ah!" answered Michael Mont, "I wish my gov'nor would move on. Not that
I want his land. Land's an awful bore in these days, don't you think?"
"We never have it in my family," said Fleur. "We have everything else.
I believe one of my great-uncles once had a sentimental farm in Dorset,
because we came from there originally, but it cost him more than it made
him happy."
"Did he sell it?"
"No; he kept it."
"Why?"
"Because nobody would buy it."
"Good for the old boy!"
"No, it wasn't good for him. Father says it soured him. His name was
Swithin."
"What a corking name!"
"Do you know that we're getting farther off, not nearer? This river
flows."
"Splendid!" cried Mont, dipping his sculls vaguely; "it's good to meet a
girl who's got wit."
"But better to meet a young man who's got it in the plural."
Young Mont raised a hand to tear his hair.
"Look out!" cried Fleur. "Your scull!"
"All right! It's thick enough to bear a scratch."
"Do you mind sculling?" said Fleur severely. "I want to get in."
"Ah!" said Mont; "but when you get in, you see, I shan't see you any more
to-day. Fini, as the French girl said when she jumped on her bed after
saying her prayers. Don't you bless the day that gave you a French
mother, and a name like yours?"
"I like my name, but Father gave it me. Mother wanted me called
Marguerite."
"Which is absurd. Do you mind calling me M. M. and letting me call you
F. F.? It's in the spirit of the age."
"I don't mind anything, so long as I get in."
Mont caught a little crab, and answered: "That was a nasty one!"
"Please row."
"I am." And he did for several strokes, looking at her with rueful
eagerness. "Of course, you know," he ejaculated, pausing, "that I came
to see you, not your father's pictures."
Fleur rose.
"If you don't row, I shall get out and swim."
"Really and truly? Then I could come in after you."
"Mr. Mont, I'm late and tired; please put me on shore at once."
When she stepped out on to the garden landing-stage he rose, and grasping
his hair with both hands, looked at her.
Fleur smiled.
"Don't!" cried the irrepressible Mont. "I know you're going to say:
'Out, damned hair!'"
Fleur whisked round, threw him a wave of her hand. "Good-bye, Mr. M.M.!"
she called, and was gone among the rose-trees. She looked at her
wrist-watch and the windows of the house. It struck her as curiously
uninhabited. Past six! The pigeons were just gathering to roost, and
sunlight slanted on the dovecot, on their snowy feathers, and beyond in a
shower on the top boughs of the woods. The click of billiard-balls came
from the ingle-nook--Jack Cardigan, no doubt; a faint rustling, too, from
an eucalyptus-tree, startling Southerner in this old English garden. She
reached the verandah and was passing in, but stopped at the sound of
voices from the drawing-room to her left. Mother! Monsieur Profond!
From behind the verandah screen which fenced the ingle-nook she heard
these words:
"I don't, Annette."
Did Father know that he called her mother "Annette"? Always on the side
of her Father--as children are ever on one side or the other in houses
where relations are a little strained--she stood, uncertain. Her mother
was speaking in her low, pleasing, slightly metallic voice--one word she
caught: "Demain." And Profond's answer: "All right." Fleur frowned. A
little sound came out into the stillness. Then Profond's voice: "I'm
takin' a small stroll."
Fleur darted through the window into the morning-room. There he came
from the drawing-room, crossing the verandah, down the lawn; and the
click of billiard-balls which, in listening for other sounds, she had
ceased to hear, began again. She shook herself, passed into the hall,
and opened the drawing-room door. Her mother was sitting on the sofa
between the windows, her knees crossed, her head resting on a cushion,
her lips half parted, her eyes half closed. She looked extraordinarily
handsome.
"Ah! Here you are, Fleur! Your father is beginning to fuss."
"Where is he?"
"In the picture-gallery. Go up!"
"What are you going to do to-morrow, Mother?"
"To-morrow? I go up to London with your aunt."
"I thought you might be. Will you get me a quite plain parasol?" What
colour?"
"Green. They're all going back, I suppose."
"Yes, all; you will console your father. Kiss me, then."
Fleur crossed the room, stooped, received a kiss on her forehead, and
went out past the impress of a form on the sofa-cushions in the other
corner. She ran up-stairs.
Fleur was by no means the old-fashioned daughter who demands the
regulation of her parents' lives in accordance with the standard imposed
upon herself. She claimed to regulate her own life, not those of others;
besides, an unerring instinct for what was likely to advantage her own
case was already at work. In a disturbed domestic atmosphere the heart
she had set on Jon would have a better chance. None the less was she
offended, as a flower by a crisping wind. If that man had really been
kissing her mother it was--serious, and her father ought to know.
"Demain!" "All right!" And her mother going up to Town! She turned
into her bedroom and hung out of the window to cool her face, which had
suddenly grown very hot. Jon must be at the station by now! What did
her father know about Jon? Probably everything--pretty nearly!
She changed her dress, so as to look as if she had been in some time, and
ran up to the gallery.
Soames was standing stubbornly still before his Alfred Stevens--the
picture he loved best. He did not turn at the sound of the door, but she
knew he had heard, and she knew he was hurt. She came up softly behind
him, put her arms round his neck, and poked her face over his shoulder
till her cheek lay against his. It was an advance which had never yet
failed, but it failed her now, and she augured the worst. "Well," he said
stonily, "so you've come!"
"Is that all," murmured Fleur, "from a bad parent?" And she rubbed her
cheek against his.
Soames shook his head so far as that was possible.
"Why do you keep me on tenterhooks like this, putting me off and off?"
"Darling, it was very harmless."
"Harmless! Much you know what's harmless and what isn't."
Fleur dropped her arms.
"Well, then, dear, suppose you tell me; and be quite frank about it."
And she went over to the window-seat.
Her father had turned from his picture, and was staring at his feet. He
looked very grey. 'He has nice small feet,' she thought, catching his
eye, at once averted from her.
"You're my only comfort," said Soames suddenly, "and you go on like
this."
Fleur's heart began to beat.
"Like what, dear?"
Again Soames gave her a look which, but for the affection in it, might
have been called furtive.
"You know what I told you," he said. "I don't choose to have anything to
do with that branch of our family."
"Yes, ducky, but I don't know why I shouldn't."
Soames turned on his heel.
"I'm not going into the reasons," he said; "you ought to trust me,
Fleur!"
The way he spoke those words affected Fleur, but she thought of Jon, and
was silent, tapping her foot against the wainscot. Unconsciously she had
assumed a modern attitude, with one leg twisted in and out of the other,
with her chin on one bent wrist, her other arm across her chest, and its
hand hugging her elbow; there was not a line of her that was not
involuted, and yet--in spite of all--she retained a certain grace.
"You knew my wishes," Soames went on, "and yet you stayed on there four
days. And I suppose that boy came with you to-day."
Fleur kept her eyes on him.
"I don't ask you anything," said Soames; "I make no inquisition where
you're concerned."
Fleur suddenly stood up, leaning out at the window with her chin on her
hands. The sun had sunk behind trees, the pigeons were perched, quite
still, on the edge of the dove-cot; the click of the billiard-balls
mounted, and a faint radiance shone out below where Jack Cardigan had
turned the light up.
"Will it make you any happier," she said suddenly, "if I promise you not
to see him for say--the next six weeks?" She was not prepared for a sort
of tremble in the blankness of his voice.
"Six weeks? Six years--sixty years more like. Don't delude yourself,
Fleur; don't delude yourself!"
Fleur turned in alarm.
"Father, what is it?"
Soames came close enough to see her face.
"Don't tell me," he said, "that you're foolish enough to have any feeling
beyond caprice. That would be too much!" And he laughed.
Fleur, who had never heard him laugh like that, thought: 'Then it is
deep! Oh! what is it?' And putting her hand through his arm she said
lightly:
"No, of course; caprice. Only, I like my caprices and I don't like
yours, dear."
"Mine!" said Soames bitterly, and turned away.
The light outside had chilled, and threw a chalky whiteness on the river.
The trees had lost all gaiety of colour. She felt a sudden hunger for
Jon's face, for his hands, and the feel of his lips again on hers. And
pressing her arms tight across her breast she forced out a little light
laugh.
"O la! la! What a small fuss! as Profond would say. Father, I don't
like that man."
She saw him stop, and take something out of his breast pocket.
"You don't?" he said. "Why?"
"Nothing," murmured Fleur; "just caprice!"
"No," said Soames; "not caprice!" And he tore what was in his hands
across. "You're right. I don't like him either!"
"Look!" said Fleur softly. "There he goes! I hate his shoes; they don't
make any noise."
Down in the failing light Prosper Profond moved, his hands in his side
pockets, whistling softly in his beard; he stopped, and glanced up at the
sky, as if saying: "I don't think much of that small moon."
Fleur drew back. "Isn't he a great cat?" she whispered; and the sharp
click of the billiard-balls rose, as if Jack Cardigan had capped the cat,
the moon, caprice, and tragedy with: "In off the red!"
Monsieur Profond had resumed his stroll, to a teasing little tune in his
beard. What was it? Oh! yes, from "Rigoletto": "Donna a mobile." Just
what he would think! She squeezed her father's arm.
"Prowling!" she muttered, as he turned the corner of the house. It was
past that disillusioned moment which divides the day and night-still and
lingering and warm, with hawthorn scent and lilac scent clinging on the
riverside air. A blackbird suddenly burst out. Jon would be in London
by now; in the Park perhaps, crossing the Serpentine, thinking of her! A
little sound beside her made her turn her eyes; her father was again
tearing the paper in his hands. Fleur saw it was a cheque.
"I shan't sell him my Gauguin," he said. "I don't know what your aunt
and Imogen see in him."
"Or Mother."
"Your mother!" said Soames.
'Poor Father!' she thought. 'He never looks happy--not really happy. I
don't want to make him worse, but of course I shall have to, when Jon
comes back. Oh! well, sufficient unto the night!'
"I'm going to dress," she said.
In her room she had a fancy to put on her "freak" dress. It was of gold
tissue with little trousers of the same, tightly drawn in at the ankles,
a page's cape slung from the shoulders, little gold shoes, and a
gold-winged Mercury helmet; and all over her were tiny gold bells,
especially on the helmet; so that if she shook her head she pealed. When
she was dressed she felt quite sick because Jon could not see her; it
even seemed a pity that the sprightly young man Michael Mont would not
have a view. But the gong had sounded, and she went down.
She made a sensation in the drawing-room. Winifred thought it "Most
amusing." Imogen was enraptured. Jack Cardigan called it "stunning,"
"ripping," "topping," and "corking."
Monsieur Profond, smiling with his eyes, said: "That's a nice small
dress!" Her mother, very handsome in black, sat looking at her, and said
nothing. It remained for her father to apply the test of common sense.
"What did you put on that thing for? You're not going to dance."
Fleur spun round, and the bells pealed.
"Caprice!"
Soames stared at her, and, turning away, gave his arm to Winifred. Jack
Cardigan took her mother. Prosper Profond took Imogen. Fleur went in by
herself, with her bells jingling....
The "small" moon had soon dropped down, and May night had fallen soft and
warm, enwrapping with its grape-bloom colour and its scents the billion
caprices, intrigues, passions, longings, and regrets of men and women.
Happy was Jack Cardigan who snored into Imogen's white shoulder, fit as a
flea; or Timothy in his "mausoleum," too old for anything but baby's
slumber. For so many lay awake, or dreamed, teased by the criss-cross of
the world.
The dew fell and the flowers closed; cattle grazed on in the river
meadows, feeling with their tongues for the grass they could not see; and
the sheep on the Downs lay quiet as stones. Pheasants in the tall trees
of the Pangbourne woods, larks on their grassy nests above the gravel-pit
at Wansdon, swallows in the eaves at Robin Hill, and the sparrows of
Mayfair, all made a dreamless night of it, soothed by the lack of wind.
The Mayfly filly, hardly accustomed to her new quarters, scraped at her
straw a little; and the few night-flitting things--bats, moths,
owls--were vigorous in the warm darkness; but the peace of night lay in
the brain of all day-time Nature, colourless and still. Men and women,
alone, riding the hobby-horses of anxiety or love, burned their wavering
tapers of dream and thought into the lonely hours.
Fleur, leaning out of her window, heard the hall clock's muffled chime of
twelve, the tiny splash of a fish, the sudden shaking of an aspen's
leaves in the puffs of breeze that rose along the river, the distant
rumble of a night train, and time and again the sounds which none can put
a name to in the darkness, soft obscure expressions of uncatalogued
emotions from man and beast, bird and machine, or, maybe, from departed
Forsytes, Darties, Cardigans, taking night strolls back into a world
which had once suited their embodied spirits. But Fleur heeded not these
sounds; her spirit, far from disembodied, fled with swift wing from
railway-carriage to flowery hedge, straining after Jon, tenacious of his
forbidden image, and the sound of his voice, which was taboo. And she
crinkled her nose, retrieving from the perfume of the riverside night
that moment when his hand slipped between the mayflowers and her cheek.
Long she leaned out in her freak dress, keen to burn her wings at life's
candle; while the moths brushed her cheeks on their pilgrimage to the
lamp on her dressing-table, ignorant that in a Forsyte's house there is
no open flame. But at last even she felt sleepy, and, forgetting her
bells, drew quickly in.
Through the open window of his room, alongside Annette's, Soames, wakeful
too, heard their thin faint tinkle, as it might be shaken from stars, or
the dewdrops falling from a flower, if one could hear such sounds.
'Caprice!' he thought. 'I can't tell. She's wilful. What shall I do?
Fleur!'
And long into the "small" night he brooded.
PART II
I
MOTHER AND SON
To say that Jon Forsyte accompanied his mother to Spain unwillingly would
scarcely have been adequate. He went as a well-natured dog goes for a
walk with its mistress, leaving a choice mutton-bone on the lawn. He
went looking back at it. Forsytes deprived of their mutton-bones are
wont to sulk. But Jon had little sulkiness in his composition. He
adored his mother, and it was his first travel. Spain had become Italy by
his simply saying: "I'd rather go to Spain, Mum; you've been to Italy so
many times; I'd like it new to both of us."
The fellow was subtle besides being naive. He never forgot that he was
going to shorten the proposed two months into six weeks, and must
therefore show no sign of wishing to do so. For one with so enticing a
mutton-bone and so fixed an idea, he made a good enough travelling
companion, indifferent to where or when he arrived, superior to food, and
thoroughly appreciative of a country strange to the most travelled
Englishman. Fleur's wisdom in refusing to write to him was profound, for
he reached each new place entirely without hope or fever, and could
concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and tumbling bells, the
priests, patios, beggars, children, crowing cocks, sombreros,
cactus-hedges, old high white villages, goats, olive-trees, greening
plains, singing birds in tiny cages, watersellers, sunsets, melons,
mules, great churches, pictures, and swimming grey-brown mountains of a
fascinating land.
It was already hot, and they enjoyed an absence of their compatriots.
Jon, who, so far as he knew, had no blood in him which was not English,
was often innately unhappy in the presence of his own countrymen. He
felt they had no nonsense about them, and took a more practical view of
things than himself. He confided to his mother that he must be an
unsociable beast--it was jolly to be away from everybody who could talk
about the things people did talk about. To which Irene had replied
simply:
"Yes, Jon, I know."
In this isolation he had unparalleled opportunities of appreciating what
few sons can apprehend, the whole-heartedness of a mother's love.
Knowledge of something kept from her made him, no doubt, unduly
sensitive; and a Southern people stimulated his admiration for her type
of beauty, which he had been accustomed to hear called Spanish, but which
he now perceived to be no such thing. Her beauty was neither English,
French, Spanish, nor Italian--it was special! He appreciated, too, as
never before, his mother's subtlety of instinct. He could not tell, for
instance, whether she had noticed his absorption in that Goya picture,
"La Vendimia," or whether she knew that he had slipped back there after
lunch and again next morning, to stand before it full half an hour, a
second and third time. It was not Fleur, of course, but like enough to
give him heartache--so dear to lovers--remembering her standing at the
foot of his bed with her hand held above her head. To keep a postcard
reproduction of this picture in his pocket and slip it out to look at
became for Jon one of those bad habits which soon or late disclose
themselves to eyes sharpened by love, fear, or jealousy. And his
mother's were sharpened by all three. In Granada he was fairly caught,
sitting on a sun-warmed stone bench in a little battlemented garden on
the Alhambra hill, whence he ought to have been looking at the view. His
mother, he had thought, was examining the potted stocks between the
polled acacias, when her voice said:
"Is that your favourite Goya, Jon?"
He checked, too late, a movement such as he might have made at school to
conceal some surreptitious document, and answered: "Yes."
"It certainly is most charming; but I think I prefer the 'Quitasol' Your
father would go crazy about Goya; I don't believe he saw them when he was
in Spain in '92."
In '92--nine years before he had been born! What had been the previous
existences of his father and his mother? If they had a right to share in
his future, surely he had a right to share in their pasts. He looked up
at her. But something in her face--a look of life hard-lived, the
mysterious impress of emotions, experience, and suffering-seemed, with
its incalculable depth, its purchased sanctity, to make curiosity
impertinent. His mother must have had a wonderfully interesting life;
she was so beautiful, and so--so--but he could not frame what he felt
about her. He got up, and stood gazing down at the town, at the plain
all green with crops, and the ring of mountains glamorous in sinking
sunlight. Her life was like the past of this old Moorish city, full,
deep, remote--his own life as yet such a baby of a thing, hopelessly
ignorant and innocent! They said that in those mountains to the West,
which rose sheer from the blue-green plain, as if out of a sea,
Phoenicians had dwelt--a dark, strange, secret race, above the land! His
mother's life was as unknown to him, as secret, as that Phoenician past
was to the town down there, whose cocks crowed and whose children played
and clamoured so gaily, day in, day out. He felt aggrieved that she
should know all about him and he nothing about her except that she loved
him and his father, and was beautiful. His callow ignorance--he had not
even had the advantage of the War, like nearly everybody else!--made him
small in his own eyes.
That night, from the balcony of his bedroom, he gazed down on the roof of
the town--as if inlaid with honeycomb of jet, ivory, and gold; and, long
after, he lay awake, listening to the cry of the sentry as the hours
struck, and forming in his head these lines:
"Voice in the night crying, down in the old sleeping
Spanish city darkened under her white stars!
"What says the voice-its clear-lingering anguish?
Just the watchman, telling his dateless tale of safety?
Just a road-man, flinging to the moon his song?
"No! Tis one deprived, whose lover's heart is weeping,
Just his cry: 'How long?'"
The word "deprived" seemed to him cold and unsatisfactory, but "bereaved"
was too final, and no other word of two syllables short-long came to him,
which would enable him to keep "whose lover's heart is weeping." It was
past two by the time he had finished it, and past three before he went to
sleep, having said it over to himself at least twenty-four times. Next
day he wrote it out and enclosed it in one of those letters to Fleur
which he always finished before he went down, so as to have his mind free
and companionable.
About noon that same day, on the tiled terrace of their hotel, he felt a
sudden dull pain in the back of his head, a queer sensation in the eyes,
and sickness. The sun had touched him too affectionately. The next three
days were passed in semi-darkness, and a dulled, aching indifference to
all except the feel of ice on his forehead and his mother's smile. She
never moved from his room, never relaxed her noiseless vigilance, which
seemed to Jon angelic. But there were moments when he was extremely
sorry for himself, and wished terribly that Fleur could see him. Several
times he took a poignant imaginary leave of her and of the earth, tears
oozing out of his eyes. He even prepared the message he would send to
her by his mother--who would regret to her dying day that she had ever
sought to separate them--his poor mother! He was not slow, however, in
perceiving that he had now his excuse for going home.
Toward half-past six each evening came a "gasgacha" of bells--a cascade
of tumbling chimes, mounting from the city below and falling back chime
on chime. After listening to them on the fourth day he said suddenly:
"I'd like to be back in England, Mum, the sun's too hot."
"Very well, darling. As soon as you're fit to travel" And at once he
felt better, and--meaner.
They had been out five weeks when they turned toward home. Jon's head
was restored to its pristine clarity, but he was confined to a hat lined
by his mother with many layers of orange and green silk and he still
walked from choice in the shade. As the long struggle of discretion
between them drew to its close, he wondered more and more whether she
could see his eagerness to get back to that which she had brought him
away from. Condemned by Spanish Providence to spend a day in Madrid
between their trains, it was but natural to go again to the Prado. Jon
was elaborately casual this time before his Goya girl. Now that he was
going back to her, he could afford a lesser scrutiny. It was his mother
who lingered before the picture, saying:
"The face and the figure of the girl are exquisite."
Jon heard her uneasily. Did she understand? But he felt once more that
he was no match for her in self-control and subtlety. She could, in some
supersensitive way, of which he had not the secret, feel the pulse of his
thoughts; she knew by instinct what he hoped and feared and wished. It
made him terribly uncomfortable and guilty, having, beyond most boys, a
conscience. He wished she would be frank with him, he almost hoped for
an open struggle. But none came, and steadily, silently, they travelled
north. Thus did he first learn how much better than men women play a
waiting game. In Paris they had again to pause for a day. Jon was
grieved because it lasted two, owing to certain matters in connection
with a dressmaker; as if his mother, who looked beautiful in anything,
had any need of dresses! The happiest moment of his travel was that when
he stepped on to the Folkestone boat.
Standing by the bulwark rail, with her arm in his, she said
"I'm afraid you haven't enjoyed it much, Jon. But you've been very sweet
to me."
Jon squeezed her arm.
"Oh I yes, I've enjoyed it awfully-except for my head lately."
And now that the end had come, he really had, feeling a sort of glamour
over the past weeks--a kind of painful pleasure, such as he had tried to
screw into those lines about the voice in the night crying; a feeling
such as he had known as a small boy listening avidly to Chopin, yet
wanting to cry. And he wondered why it was that he couldn't say to her
quite simply what she had said to him:
"You were very sweet to me." Odd--one never could be nice and natural
like that! He substituted the words: "I expect we shall be sick."
They were, and reached London somewhat attenuated, having been away six
weeks and two days, without a single allusion to the subject which had
hardly ever ceased to occupy their minds.
II
FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
Deprived of his wife and son by the Spanish adventure, Jolyon found the
solitude at Robin Hill intolerable. A philosopher when he has all that
he wants is different from a philosopher when he has not. Accustomed,
however, to the idea, if not to the reality of resignation, he would
perhaps have faced it out but for his daughter June. He was a "lame
duck" now, and on her conscience. Having achieved--momentarily--the
rescue of an etcher in low circumstances, which she happened to have in
hand, she appeared at Robin Hill a fortnight after Irene and Jon had
gone. June was living now in a tiny house with a big studio at Chiswick.
A Forsyte of the best period, so far as the lack of responsibility was
concerned, she had overcome the difficulty of a reduced income in a
manner satisfactory to herself and her father. The rent of the Gallery
off Cork Street which he had bought for her and her increased income tax
happening to balance, it had been quite simpl--she no longer paid him the
rent. The Gallery might be expected now at any time, after eighteen years
of barren usufruct, to pay its way, so that she was sure her father would
not feel it. Through this device she still had twelve hundred a year,
and by reducing what she ate, and, in place of two Belgians in a poor
way, employing one Austrian in a poorer, practically the same surplus for
the relief of genius. After three days at Robin Hill she carried her
father back with her to Town. In those three days she had stumbled on
the secret he had kept for two years, and had instantly decided to cure
him. She knew, in fact, the very man. He had done wonders with. Paul
Post--that painter a little in advance of Futurism; and she was impatient
with her father because his eyebrows would go up, and because he had
heard of neither. Of course, if he hadn't "faith" he would never get
well! It was absurd not to have faith in the man who had healed Paul
Post so that he had only just relapsed, from having overworked, or
overlived, himself again. The great thing about this healer was that he
relied on Nature. He had made a special study of the symptoms of
Nature--when his patient failed in any natural symptom he supplied the
poison which caused it--and there you were! She was extremely hopeful.
Her father had clearly not been living a natural life at Robin Hill, and
she intended to provide the symptoms. He was--she felt--out of touch
with the times, which was not natural; his heart wanted stimulating. In
the little Chiswick house she and the Austrian--a grateful soul, so
devoted to June for rescuing her that she was in danger of decease from
overwork--stimulated Jolyon in all sorts of ways, preparing him for his
cure. But they could not keep his eyebrows down; as, for example, when
the Austrian woke him at eight o'clock just as he was going to sleep, or
June took The Times away from him, because it was unnatural to read "that
stuff" when he ought to be taking an interest in "life." He never
failed, indeed, to be astonished at her resource, especially in the
evenings. For his benefit, as she declared, though he suspected that she
also got something out of it, she assembled the Age so far as it was
satellite to genius; and with some solemnity it would move up and down
the studio before him in the Fox-trot, and that more mental form of
dancing--the One-step--which so pulled against the music, that Jolyon's
eyebrows would be almost lost in his hair from wonder at the strain it
must impose on the dancer's will-power. Aware that, hung on the line in
the Water Colour Society, he was a back number to those with any
pretension to be called artists, he would sit in the darkest corner he
could find, and wonder about rhythm, on which so long ago he had been
raised. And when June brought some girl or young man up to him, he would
rise humbly to their level so far as that was possible, and think: 'Dear
me! This is very dull for them!' Having his father's perennial sympathy
with Youth, he used to get very tired from entering into their points of
view. But it was all stimulating, and he never failed in admiration of
his daughter's indomitable spirit. Even genius itself attended these
gatherings now and then, with its nose on one side; and June always
introduced it to her father. This, she felt, was exceptionally good for
him, for genius was a natural symptom he had never had--fond as she was
of him.
Certain as a man can be that she was his own daughter, he often wondered
whence she got herself--her red-gold hair, now greyed into a special
colour; her direct, spirited face, so different from his own rather
folded and subtilised countenance, her little lithe figure, when he and
most of the Forsytes were tall. And he would dwell on the origin of
species, and debate whether she might be Danish or Celtic. Celtic, he
thought, from her pugnacity, and her taste in fillets and djibbahs. It
was not too much to say that he preferred her to the Age with which she
was surrounded, youthful though, for the greater part, it was. She took,
however, too much interest in his teeth, for he still had some of those
natural symptoms. Her dentist at once found "Staphylococcus aureus
present in pure culture" (which might cause boils, of course), and wanted
to take out all the teeth he had and supply him with two complete sets of
unnatural symptoms. Jolyon's native tenacity was roused, and in the
studio that evening he developed his objections. He had never had any
boils, and his own teeth would last his time. Of course--June
admitted--they would last his time if he didn't have them out! But if he
had more teeth he would have a better heart and his time would be longer.
His recalcitrance--she said--was a symptom of his whole attitude; he was
taking it lying down. He ought to be fighting. When was he going to see
the man who had cured Paul Post? Jolyon was very sorry, but the fact was
he was not going to see him. June chafed. Pondridge--she said--the
healer, was such a fine man, and he had such difficulty in making two
ends meet, and getting his theories recognised. It was just such
indifference and prejudice as her father manifested which was keeping him
back. It would be so splendid for both of them!
"I perceive," said Jolyon, "that you are trying to kill two birds with
one stone."
"To cure, you mean!" cried June.
"My dear, it's the same thing."
June protested. It was unfair to say that without a trial.
Jolyon thought he might not have the chance, of saying it after.
"Dad!" cried June, "you're hopeless."
"That," said Jolyon, "is a fact, but I wish to remain hopeless as long as
possible. I shall let sleeping dogs lie, my child. They are quiet at
present."
"That's not giving science a chance," cried June. "You've no idea how
devoted Pondridge is. He puts his science before everything."
"Just," replied Jolyon, puffing the mild cigarette to which he was
reduced, "as Mr. Paul Post puts his art, eh? Art for Art's sake
--Science for the sake of Science. I know those enthusiastic egomaniac
gentry. They vivisect you without blinking. I'm enough of a Forsyte to
give them the go-by, June."
"Dad," said June, "if you only knew how old-fashioned that sounds! Nobody
can afford to be half-hearted nowadays."
"I'm afraid," murmured Jolyon, with his smile, "that's the only natural
symptom with which Mr. Pondridge need not supply me. We are born to be
extreme or to be moderate, my dear; though, if you'll forgive my saying
so, half the people nowadays who believe they're extreme are really very
moderate. I'm getting on as well as I can expect, and I must leave it at
that."
June was silent, having experienced in her time the inexorable character
of her father's amiable obstinacy so far as his own freedom of action was
concerned.
How he came to let her know why Irene had taken Jon to Spain puzzled
Jolyon, for he had little confidence in her discretion. After she had
brooded on the news, it brought a rather sharp discussion, during which
he perceived to the full the fundamental opposition between her active
temperament and his wife's passivity. He even gathered that a little
soreness still remained from that generation-old struggle between them
over the body of Philip Bosinney, in which the passive had so signally
triumphed over the active principle.
According to June, it was foolish and even cowardly to hide the past from
Jon. Sheer opportunism, she called it.
"Which," Jolyon put in mildly, "is the working principle of real life, my
dear."
"Oh!" cried June, "you don't really defend her for not telling Jon, Dad.
If it were left to you, you would."
"I might, but simply because I know he must find out, which will be worse
than if we told him."
"Then why don't you tell him? It's just sleeping dogs again."
"My dear," said Jolyon, "I wouldn't for the world go against Irene's
instinct. He's her boy."
"Yours too," cried June.
"What is a man's instinct compared with a mother's?"
"Well, I think it's very weak of you."
"I dare say," said Jolyon, "I dare say."
And that was all she got from him; but the matter rankled in her brain.
She could not bear sleeping dogs. And there stirred in her a tortuous
impulse to push the matter toward decision. Jon ought to be told, so
that either his feeling might be nipped in the bud, or, flowering in
spite of the past, come to fruition. And she determined to see Fleur,
and judge for herself. When June determined on anything, delicacy became
a somewhat minor consideration. After all, she was Soames' cousin, and
they were both interested in pictures. She would go and tell him that he
ought to buy a Paul Post, or perhaps a piece of sculpture by Boris
Strumolowski, and of course she would say nothing to her father. She
went on the following Sunday, looking so determined that she had some
difficulty in getting a cab at Reading station. The river country was
lovely in those days of her own month, and June ached at its loveliness.
She who had passed through this life without knowing what union was had a
love of natural beauty which was almost madness. And when she came to
that choice spot where Soames had pitched his tent, she dismissed her
cab, because, business over, she wanted to revel in the bright water and
the woods. She appeared at his front door, therefore, as a mere
pedestrian, and sent in her card. It was in June's character to know
that when her nerves were fluttering she was doing something worth while.
If one's nerves did not flutter, she was taking the line of least
resistance, and knew that nobleness was not obliging her. She was
conducted to a drawing-room, which, though not in her style, showed every
mark of fastidious elegance. Thinking, 'Too much taste--too many
knick-knacks,' she saw in an old lacquer-framed mirror the figure of a
girl coming in from the verandah. Clothed in white, and holding some
white roses in her hand, she had, reflected in that silvery-grey pool of
glass, a vision-like appearance, as if a pretty ghost had come out of the
green garden.
"How do you do?" said June, turning round. "I'm a cousin of your
father's."
"Oh, yes; I saw you in that confectioner's."
"With my young stepbrother. Is your father in?"
"He will be directly. He's only gone for a little walk."
June slightly narrowed her blue eyes, and lifted her decided chin.
"Your name's Fleur, isn't it? I've heard of you from Holly. What do you
think of Jon?"
The girl lifted the roses in her hand, looked at them, and answered
calmly:
"He's quite a nice boy."
"Not a bit like Holly or me, is he?"
"Not a bit."
'She's cool,' thought June.
And suddenly the girl said: "I wish you'd tell me why our families don't
get on?"
Confronted with the question she had advised her father to answer, June
was silent; whether because this girl was trying to get something out of
her, or simply because what one would do theoretically is not always what
one will do when it comes to the point.
"You know," said the girl, "the surest way to make people find out the
worst is to keep them ignorant. My father's told me it was a quarrel
about property. But I don't believe it; we've both got heaps. They
wouldn't have been so bourgeois as all that."
June flushed. The word applied to her grandfather and father offended
her.
"My grandfather," she said, "was very generous, and my father is, too;
neither of them was in the least bourgeois."
"Well, what was it then?" repeated the girl: Conscious that this young
Forsyte meant having what she wanted, June at once determined to prevent
her, and to get something for herself instead.
"Why do you want to know?"
The girl smelled at her roses. "I only want to know because they won't
tell me."
"Well, it was about property, but there's more than one kind."
"That makes it worse. Now I really must know."
June's small and resolute face quivered. She was wearing a round cap,
and her hair had fluffed out under it. She looked quite young at that
moment, rejuvenated by encounter.
"You know," she said, "I saw you drop your handkerchief. Is there
anything between you and Jon? Because, if so, you'd better drop that
too."
The girl grew paler, but she smiled.
"If there were, that isn't the way to make me."
At the gallantry of that reply, June held out her hand.
"I like you; but I don't like your father; I never have. We may as well
be frank."
"Did you come down to tell him that?"
June laughed. "No; I came down to see you."
"How delightful of you."
This girl could fence.
"I'm two and a half times your age," said June, "but I quite sympathize.
It's horrid not to have one's own way."
The girl smiled again. "I really think you might tell me."
How the child stuck to her point
"It's not my secret. But I'll see what I can do, because I think both
you and Jon ought to be told. And now I'll say good-bye."
"Won't you wait and see Father?"
June shook her head. "How can I get over to the other side?"
"I'll row you across."
"Look!" said June impulsively, "next time you're in London, come and see
me. This is where I live. I generally have young people in the evening.
But I shouldn't tell your father that you're coming."
The girl nodded.
Watching her scull the skiff across, June thought: 'She's awfully pretty
and well made. I never thought Soames would have a daughter as pretty
as this. She and Jon would make a lovely couple.
The instinct to couple, starved within herself, was always at work in
June. She stood watching Fleur row back; the girl took her hand off a
scull to wave farewell, and June walked languidly on between the meadows
and the river, with an ache in her heart. Youth to youth, like the
dragon-flies chasing each other, and love like the sun warming them
through and through. Her youth! So long ago--when Phil and she--And
since? Nothing--no one had been quite what she had wanted. And so she
had missed it all. But what a coil was round those two young things, if
they really were in love, as Holly would have it--as her father, and
Irene, and Soames himself seemed to dread. What a coil, and what a
barrier! And the itch for the future, the contempt, as it were, for what
was overpast, which forms the active principle, moved in the heart of one
who ever believed that what one wanted was more important than what other
people did not want. From the bank, awhile, in the warm summer
stillness, she watched the water-lily plants and willow leaves, the
fishes rising; sniffed the scent of grass and meadow-sweet, wondering how
she could force everybody to be happy. Jon and Fleur! Two little lame
ducks--charming callow yellow little ducks! A great pity! Surely
something could be done! One must not take such situations lying down.
She walked on, and reached a station, hot and cross.
That evening, faithful to the impulse toward direct action, which made
many people avoid her, she said to her father:
"Dad, I've been down to see young Fleur. I think she's very attractive.
It's no good hiding our heads under our wings, is it?"
The startled Jolyon set down his barley-water, and began crumbling his
bread.
"It's what you appear to be doing," he said. "Do you realise whose
daughter she is?"
"Can't the dead past bury its dead?"
Jolyon rose.
"Certain things can never be buried."
"I disagree," said June. "It's that which stands in the way of all
happiness and progress. You don't understand the Age, Dad. It's got no
use for outgrown things. Why do you think it matters so terribly that
Jon should know about his mother? Who pays any attention to that sort of
thing now? The marriage laws are just as they were when Soames and Irene
couldn't get a divorce, and you had to come in. We've moved, and they
haven't. So nobody cares. Marriage without a decent chance of relief is
only a sort of slave-owning; people oughtn't to own each other.
Everybody sees that now. If Irene broke such laws, what does it matter?"
"It's not for me to disagree there," said Jolyon; "but that's all quite
beside the mark. This is a matter of human feeling."
"Of course it is," cried June, "the human feeling of those two young
things."
"My dear," said Jolyon with gentle exasperation; "you're talking
nonsense."
"I'm not. If they prove to be really fond of each other, why should they
be made unhappy because of the past?"
"You haven't lived that past. I have--through the feelings of my wife;
through my own nerves and my imagination, as only one who is devoted
can."
June, too, rose, and began to wander restlessly.
"If," she said suddenly, "she were the daughter of Philip Bosinney, I
could understand you better. Irene loved him, she never loved Soames."
Jolyon uttered a deep sound-the sort of noise an Italian peasant woman
utters to her mule. His heart had begun beating furiously, but he paid
no attention to it, quite carried away by his feelings.
"That shows how little you understand. Neither I nor Jon, if I know him,
would mind a love-past. It's the brutality of a union without love.
This girl is the daughter of the man who once owned Jon's mother as a
negro-slave was owned. You can't lay that ghost; don't try to, June!
It's asking us to see Jon joined to the flesh and blood of the man who
possessed Jon's mother against her will. It's no good mincing words; I
want it clear once for all. And now I mustn't talk any more, or I shall
have to sit up with this all night." And, putting his hand over his
heart, Jolyon turned his back on his daughter and stood looking at the
river Thames.
June, who by nature never saw a hornet's nest until she had put her head
into it, was seriously alarmed. She came and slipped her arm through
his. Not convinced that he was right, and she herself wrong, because
that was not natural to her, she was yet profoundly impressed by the
obvious fact that the subject was very bad for him. She rubbed her cheek
against his shoulder, and said nothing.
After taking her elderly cousin across, Fleur did not land at once, but
pulled in among the reeds, into the sunshine. The peaceful beauty of the
afternoon seduced for a little one not much given to the vague and
poetic. In the field beyond the bank where her skiff lay up, a machine
drawn by a grey horse was turning an early field of hay. She watched the
grass cascading over and behind the light wheels with fascination--it
looked so cool and fresh. The click and swish blended with the rustle of
the willows and the poplars, and the cooing of a wood-pigeon, in a true
river song. Alongside, in the deep green water, weeds, like yellow
snakes, were writhing and nosing with the current; pied cattle on the
farther side stood in the shade lazily swishing their tails. It was an
afternoon to dream. And she took out Jon's letters--not flowery
effusions, but haunted in their recital of things seen and done by a
longing very agreeable to her, and all ending "Your devoted J." Fleur
was not sentimental, her desires were ever concrete and concentrated, but
what poetry there was in the daughter of Soames and Annette had certainly
in those weeks of waiting gathered round her memories of Jon. They all
belonged to grass and blossom, flowers and running water. She enjoyed
him in the scents absorbed by her crinkling nose. The stars could
persuade her that she was standing beside him in the centre of the map of
Spain; and of an early morning the dewy cobwebs, the hazy sparkle and
promise of the day down in the garden, were Jon personified to her.
Two white swans came majestically by, while she was reading his letters,
followed by their brood of six young swans in a line, with just so much
water between each tail and head, a flotilla of grey destroyers. Fleur
thrust her letters back, got out her sculls, and pulled up to the
landing-stage. Crossing the lawn, she wondered whether she should tell
her father of June's visit. If he learned of it from the butler, he
might think it odd if she did not. It gave her, too, another chance to
startle out of him the reason of the feud. She went, therefore, up the
road to meet him.
Soames had gone to look at a patch of ground on which the Local
Authorities were proposing to erect a Sanatorium for people with weak
lungs. Faithful to his native individualism, he took no part in local
affairs, content to pay the rates which were always going up. He could
not, however, remain indifferent to this new and dangerous scheme. The
site was not half a mile from his own house. He was quite of opinion
that the country should stamp out tuberculosis; but this was not the
place. It should be done farther away. He took, indeed, an attitude
common to all true Forsytes, that disability of any sort in other people
was not his affair, and the State should do its business without
prejudicing in any way the natural advantages which he had acquired or
inherited. Francie, the most free-spirited Forsyte of his generation
(except perhaps that fellow Jolyon) had once asked him in her malicious
way: "Did you ever see the name Forsyte in a subscription list, Soames?"
That was as it might be, but a Sanatorium would depreciate the
neighbourhood, and he should certainly sign the petition which was being
got up against it. Returning with this decision fresh within him, he saw
Fleur coming.
She was showing him more affection of late, and the quiet time down here
with her in this summer weather had been making him feel quite young;
Annette was always running up to Town for one thing or another, so that
he had Fleur to himself almost as much as he could wish. To be sure,
young Mont had formed a habit of appearing on his motor-cycle almost
every other day. Thank goodness, the young fellow had shaved off his
half-toothbrushes, and no longer looked like a mountebank! With a girl
friend of Fleur's who was staying in the house, and a neighbouring youth
or so, they made two couples after dinner, in the hall, to the music of
the electric pianola, which performed Fox-trots unassisted, with a
surprised shine on its expressive surface. Annette, even, now and then
passed gracefully up and down in the arms of one or other of the young
men. And Soames, coming to the drawing-room door, would lift his nose a
little sideways, and watch them, waiting to catch a smile from Fleur;
then move back to his chair by the drawing-room hearth, to peruse The
Times or some other collector's price list. To his ever-anxious eyes
Fleur showed no signs of remembering that caprice of hers.
When she reached him on the dusty road, he slipped his hand within her
arm.
"Who, do you think, has been to see you, Dad? She couldn't wait! Guess!"
"I never guess," said Soames uneasily. "Who?"
"Your cousin, June Forsyte."
Quite unconsciously Soames gripped her arm. "What did she want?"
"I don't know. But it was rather breaking through the feud, wasn't it?"
"Feud? What feud?"
"The one that exists in your imagination, dear."
Soames dropped her arm. Was she mocking, or trying to draw him on?
"I suppose she wanted me to buy a picture," he said at last.
"I don't think so. Perhaps it was just family affection."
"She's only a first cousin once removed," muttered Soames.
"And the daughter of your enemy."
"What d'you mean by that?"
"I beg your pardon, dear; I thought he was."
"Enemy!" repeated Soames. "It's ancient history. I don't know where you
get your notions."
"From June Forsyte."
It had come to her as an inspiration that if he thought she knew, or were
on the edge of knowledge, he would tell her.
Soames was startled, but she had underrated his caution and tenacity.
"If you know," he said coldly, "why do you plague me?"
Fleur saw that she had overreached herself.
"I don't want to plague you, darling. As you say, why want to know more?
Why want to know anything of that 'small' mystery--Je m'en fiche, as
Profond says?"
"That chap!" said Soames profoundly.
That chap, indeed, played a considerable, if invisible, part this
summer--for he had not turned up again. Ever since the Sunday when Fleur
had drawn attention to him prowling on the lawn, Soames had thought of
him a good deal, and always in connection with Annette, for no reason,
except that she was looking handsomer than for some time past. His
possessive instinct, subtle, less formal, more elastic since the War,
kept all misgiving underground. As one looks on some American river,
quiet and pleasant, knowing that an alligator perhaps is lying in the mud
with his snout just raised and indistinguishable from a snag of wood--so
Soames looked on the river of his own existence, subconscious of Monsieur
Profond, refusing to see more than the suspicion of his snout. He had at
this epoch in his life practically all he wanted, and was as nearly happy
as his nature would permit. His senses were at rest; his affections
found all the vent they needed in his daughter; his collection was well
known, his money well invested; his health excellent, save for a touch of
liver now and again; he had not yet begun to worry seriously about what
would happen after death, inclining to think that nothing would happen.
He resembled one of his own gilt-edged securities, and to knock the gilt
off by seeing anything he could avoid seeing would be, he felt
instinctively, perverse and retrogressive. Those two crumpled
rose-leaves, Fleur's caprice and Monsieur Profond's snout, would level
away if he lay on them industriously.
That evening Chance, which visits the lives of even the best-invested
Forsytes, put a clue into Fleur's hands. Her father came down to dinner
without a handkerchief, and had occasion to blow his nose.
"I'll get you one, dear," she had said, and ran upstairs. In the sachet
where she sought for it--an old sachet of very faded silk--there were
two compartments: one held handkerchiefs; the other was buttoned, and
contained something flat and hard. By some childish impulse Fleur
unbuttoned it. There was a frame and in it a photograph of herself as a
little girl. She gazed at it, fascinated, as one is by one's own
presentment. It slipped under her fidgeting thumb, and she saw that
another photograph was behind. She pressed her own down further, and
perceived a face, which she seemed to know, of a young woman, very
good-looking, in a very old style of evening dress. Slipping her own
photograph up over it again, she took out a handkerchief and went down.
Only on the stairs did she identify that face. Surely--surely Jon's
mother! The conviction came as a shock. And she stood still in a flurry
of thought. Why, of course! Jon's father had married the woman her
father had wanted to marry, had cheated him out of her, perhaps. Then,
afraid of showing by her manner that she had lighted on his secret, she
refused to think further, and, shaking out the silk handkerchief, entered
the dining-room.
"I chose the softest, Father."
"H'm!" said Soames; "I only use those after a cold. Never mind!"
That evening passed for Fleur in putting two and two together; recalling
the look on her father's face in the confectioner's shop--a look strange
and coldly intimate, a queer look. He must have loved that woman very
much to have kept her photograph all this time, in spite of having lost
her. Unsparing and matter-of-fact, her mind darted to his relations with
her own mother. Had he ever really loved her? She thought not. Jon was
the son of the woman he had really loved. Surely, then, he ought not to
mind his daughter loving him; it only wanted getting used to. And a sigh
of sheer relief was caught in the folds of her nightgown slipping over
her head.
III
MEETINGS
Youth only recognises Age by fits and starts. Jon, for one, had never
really seen his father's age till he came back from Spain. The face of
the fourth Jolyon, worn by waiting, gave him quite a shock--it looked so
wan and old. His father's mask had been forced awry by the emotion of
the meeting, so that the boy suddenly realised how much he must have felt
their absence. He summoned to his aid the thought: 'Well, I didn't want
to go!' It was out of date for Youth to defer to Age. But Jon was by no
means typically modern. His father had always been "so jolly" to him,
and to feel that one meant to begin again at once the conduct which his
father had suffered six weeks' loneliness to cure was not agreeable.
At the question, "Well, old man, how did the great Goya strike you?" his
conscience pricked him badly. The great Goya only existed because he had
created a face which resembled Fleur's.
On the night of their return, he went to bed full of compunction; but
awoke full of anticipation. It was only the fifth of July, and no
meeting was fixed with Fleur until the ninth. He was to have three days
at home before going back to farm. Somehow he must contrive to see her!
In the lives of men an inexorable rhythm, caused by the need for
trousers, not even the fondest parents can deny. On the second day,
therefore, Jon went to Town, and having satisfied his conscience by
ordering what was indispensable in Conduit Street, turned his face toward
Piccadilly. Stratton Street, where her Club was, adjoined Devonshire
House. It would be the merest chance that she should be at her Club.
But he dawdled down Bond Street with a beating heart, noticing the
superiority of all other young men to himself. They wore their clothes
with such an air; they had assurance; they were old. He was suddenly
overwhelmed by the conviction that Fleur must have forgotten him.
Absorbed in his own feeling for her all these weeks, he had mislaid that
possibility. The corners of his mouth drooped, his hands felt clammy.
Fleur with the pick of youth at the beck of her smile-Fleur incomparable!
It was an evil moment. Jon, however, had a great idea that one must be
able to face anything. And he braced himself with that dour refection in
front of a bric-a-brac shop. At this high-water mark of what was once
the London season, there was nothing to mark it out from any other except
a grey top hat or two, and the sun. Jon moved on, and turning the corner
into Piccadilly, ran into Val Dartie moving toward the Iseeum Club, to
which he had just been elected.
"Hallo! young man! Where are you off to?"
Jon gushed. "I've just been to my tailor's."
Val looked him up and down. "That's good! I'm going in here to order
some cigarettes; then come and have some lunch."
Jon thanked him. He might get news of her from Val!
The condition of England, that nightmare of its Press and Public men, was
seen in different perspective within the tobacconist's which they now
entered.
"Yes, sir; precisely the cigarette I used to supply your father with.
Bless me! Mr. Montague Dartie was a customer here from--let me see--the
year Melton won the Derby. One of my very best customers he was." A
faint smile illumined the tobacconist's face. "Many's the tip he's given
me, to be sure! I suppose he took a couple of hundred of these every
week, year in, year out, and never changed his cigarette. Very affable
gentleman, brought me a lot of custom. I was sorry he met with that
accident. One misses an old customer like him."
Val smiled. His father's decease had closed an account which had been
running longer, probably, than any other; and in a ring of smoke puffed
out from that time-honoured cigarette he seemed to see again his father's
face, dark, good-looking, moustachioed, a little puffy, in the only halo
it had earned. His father had his fame here, anyway--a man who smoked
two hundred cigarettes a week, who could give tips, and run accounts for
ever! To his tobacconist a hero! Even that was some distinction to
inherit!
"I pay cash," he said; "how much?"
"To his son, sir, and cash--ten and six. I shall never forget Mr.
Montague Dartie. I've known him stand talkin' to me half an hour. We
don't get many like him now, with everybody in such a hurry. The War was
bad for manners, sir--it was bad for manners. You were in it, I see."
"No," said Val, tapping his knee, "I got this in the war before. Saved my
life, I expect. Do you want any cigarettes, Jon?"
Rather ashamed, Jon murmured, "I don't smoke, you know," and saw the
tobacconist's lips twisted, as if uncertain whether to say "Good God!" or
"Now's your chance, sir!"
"That's right," said Val; "keep off it while you can. You'll want it
when you take a knock. This is really the same tobacco, then?"
"Identical, sir; a little dearer, that's all. Wonderful staying
power--the British Empire, I always say."
"Send me down a hundred a week to this address, and invoice it monthly.
Come on, Jon."
Jon entered the Iseeum with curiosity. Except to lunch now and then at
the Hotch-Potch with his father, he had never been in a London Club. The
Iseeum, comfortable and unpretentious, did not move, could not, so long
as George Forsyte sat on its Committee, where his culinary acumen was
almost the controlling force. The Club had made a stand against the
newly rich, and it had taken all George Forsyte's prestige, and praise of
him as a "good sportsman," to bring in Prosper Profond.
The two were lunching together when the half-brothers-in-law entered the
dining-room, and attracted by George's forefinger, sat down at their
table, Val with his shrewd eyes and charming smile, Jon with solemn lips
and an attractive shyness in his glance. There was an air of privilege
around that corner table, as though past masters were eating there. Jon
was fascinated by the hypnotic atmosphere. The waiter, lean in the chaps,
pervaded with such free-masonical deference. He seemed to hang on George
Forsyte's lips, to watch the gloat in his eye with a kind of sympathy, to
follow the movements of the heavy club-marked silver fondly. His
liveried arm and confidential voice alarmed Jon, they came so secretly
over his shoulder.
Except for George's "Your grandfather tipped me once; he was a deuced
good judge of a cigar!" neither he nor the other past master took any
notice of him, and he was grateful for this. The talk was all about the
breeding, points, and prices of horses, and he listened to it vaguely at
first, wondering how it was possible to retain so much knowledge in a
head. He could not take his eyes off the dark past master--what he said
was so deliberate and discouraging--such heavy, queer, smiled-out words.
Jon was thinking of butterflies, when he heard him say:
"I want to see Mr. Soames Forsyde take an interest in 'orses."
"Old Soames! He's too dry a file!"
With all his might Jon tried not to grow red, while the dark past master
went on.
"His daughter's an attractive small girl. Mr. Soames Forsyde is a bit
old-fashioned. I want to see him have a pleasure some day." George
Forsyte grinned.
"Don't you worry; he's not so miserable as he looks. He'll never show
he's enjoying anything--they might try and take it from him. Old Soames!
Once bit, twice shy!"
"Well, Jon," said Val, hastily, "if you've finished, we'll go and have
coffee."
"Who were those?" Jon asked, on the stairs. "I didn't quite---"
"Old George Forsyte is a first cousin of your father's and of my Uncle
Soames. He's always been here. The other chap, Profond, is a queer
fish. I think he's hanging round Soames' wife, if you ask me!"
Jon looked at him, startled. "But that's awful," he said: "I mean--for
Fleur."
"Don't suppose Fleur cares very much; she's very up-to-date."
"Her mother!"
"You're very green, Jon."
Jon grew red. "Mothers," he stammered angrily, "are different."
"You're right," said Val suddenly; "but things aren't what they were when
I was your age. There's a 'To-morrow we die' feeling. That's what old
George meant about my Uncle Soames. He doesn't mean to die to-morrow."
Jon said, quickly: "What's the matter between him and my father?"
"Stable secret, Jon. Take my advice, and bottle up. You'll do no good
by knowing. Have a liqueur?"
Jon shook his head.
"I hate the way people keep things from one," he muttered, "and then
sneer at one for being green."
"Well, you can ask Holly. If she won't tell you, you'll believe it's for
your own good, I suppose."
Jon got up. "I must go now; thanks awfully for the lunch."
Val smiled up at him half-sorry, and yet amused. The boy looked so
upset.
"All right! See you on Friday."
"I don't know," murmured Jon.
And he did not. This conspiracy of silence made him desperate. It was
humiliating to be treated like a child! He retraced his moody steps to
Stratton Street. But he would go to her Club now, and find out the
worst! To his enquiry the reply was that Miss Forsyte was not in the
Club. She might be in perhaps later. She was often in on Monday--they
could not say. Jon said he would call again, and, crossing into the
Green Park, flung himself down under a tree. The sun was bright, and a
breeze fluttered the leaves of the young lime-tree beneath which he lay;
but his heart ached. Such darkness seemed gathered round his happiness.
He heard Big Ben chime "Three" above the traffic. The sound moved
something in him, and, taking out a piece of paper, he began to scribble
on it with a pencil. He had jotted a stanza, and was searching the grass
for another verse, when something hard touched his shoulder-a green
parasol. There above him stood Fleur!
"They told me you'd been, and were coming back. So I thought you might
be out here; and you are--it's rather wonderful!"
"Oh, Fleur! I thought you'd have forgotten me."
"When I told you that I shouldn't!"
Jon seized her arm.
"It's too much luck! Let's get away from this side." He almost dragged
her on through that too thoughtfully regulated Park, to find some cover
where they could sit and hold each other's hands.
"Hasn't anybody cut in?" he said, gazing round at her lashes, in suspense
above her cheeks.
"There is a young idiot, but he doesn't count."
Jon felt a twitch of compassion for the-young idiot.
"You know I've had sunstroke; I didn't tell you."
"Really! Was it interesting?"
"No. Mother was an angel. Has anything happened to you?"
"Nothing. Except that I think I've found out what's wrong between our
families, Jon."
His heart began beating very fast.
"I believe my father wanted to marry your mother, and your father got her
instead."
"Oh!"
"I came on a photo of her; it was in a frame behind a photo of me. Of
course, if he was very fond of her, that would have made him pretty mad,
wouldn't it?"
Jon thought for a minute. "Not if she loved my father best."
"But suppose they were engaged?"
"If we were engaged, and you found you loved somebody better, I might go
cracked, but I shouldn't grudge it you."
"I should. You mustn't ever do that with me, Jon.
"My God! Not much!"
"I don't believe that he's ever really cared for my mother."
Jon was silent. Val's words--the two past masters in the Club!
"You see, we don't know," went on Fleur; "it may have been a great shock.
She may have behaved badly to him. People do."
"My mother wouldn't."
Fleur shrugged her shoulders. "I don't think we know much about our
fathers and mothers. We just see them in the light of the way they treat
us; but they've treated other people, you know, before we were
born-plenty, I expect. You see, they're both old. Look at your father,
with three separate families!"
"Isn't there any place," cried Jon, "in all this beastly London where we
can be alone?"
"Only a taxi."
"Let's get one, then."
When they were installed, Fleur asked suddenly: "Are you going back to
Robin Hill? I should like to see where you live, Jon. I'm staying with
my aunt for the night, but I could get back in time for dinner. I
wouldn't come to the house, of course."
Jon gazed at her enraptured.
"Splendid! I can show it you from the copse, we shan't meet anybody.
There's a train at four."
The god of property and his Forsytes great and small, leisured, official,
commercial, or professional, like the working classes, still worked their
seven hours a day, so that those two of the fourth generation travelled
down to Robin Hill in an empty first-class carriage, dusty and
sun-warmed, of that too early train. They travelled in blissful silence,
holding each other's hands.
At the station they saw no one except porters, and a villager or two
unknown to Jon, and walked out up the lane, which smelled of dust and
honeysuckle.
For Jon--sure of her now, and without separation before him--it was a
miraculous dawdle, more wonderful than those on the Downs, or along the
river Thames. It was love-in-a-mist--one of those illumined pages of
Life, where every word and smile, and every light touch they gave each
other were as little gold and red and blue butterflies and flowers and
birds scrolled in among the text--a happy communing, without
afterthought, which lasted thirty-seven minutes. They reached the
coppice at the milking hour. Jon would not take her as far as the
farmyard; only to where she could see the field leading up to the
gardens, and the house beyond. They turned in among the larches, and
suddenly, at the winding of the path, came on Irene, sitting on an old
log seat.
There are various kinds of shocks: to the vertebrae; to the nerves; to
moral sensibility; and, more potent and permanent, to personal dignity.
This last was the shock Jon received, coming thus on his mother. He
became suddenly conscious that he was doing an indelicate thing. To have
brought Fleur down openly--yes! But to sneak her in like this! Consumed
with shame, he put on a front as brazen as his nature would permit.
Fleur was smiling, a little defiantly; his mother's startled face was
changing quickly to the impersonal and gracious. It was she who uttered
the first words:
"I'm very glad to see you. It was nice of Jon to think of bringing you
down to us."
"We weren't coming to the house," Jon blurted out. "I just wanted Fleur
to see where I lived."
His mother said quietly:
"Won't you come up and have tea?"
Feeling that he had but aggravated his breach of breeding, he heard Fleur
answer:
"Thanks very much; I have to get back to dinner. I met Jon by accident,
and we thought it would be rather jolly just to see his home."
How self-possessed she was!
"Of course; but you must have tea. We'll send you down to the station.
My husband will enjoy seeing you."
The expression of his mother's eyes, resting on him for a moment, cast
Jon down level with the ground--a true worm. Then she led on, and Fleur
followed her. He felt like a child, trailing after those two, who were
talking so easily about Spain and Wansdon, and the house up there beyond
the trees and the grassy slope. He watched the fencing of their eyes,
taking each other in--the two beings he loved most in the world.
He could see his father sitting under the oaktree; and suffered in
advance all the loss of caste he must go through in the eyes of that
tranquil figure, with his knees crossed, thin, old, and elegant; already
he could feel the faint irony which would come into his voice and smile.
"This is Fleur Forsyte, Jolyon; Jon brought her down to see the house.
Let's have tea at once--she has to catch a train. Jon, tell them, dear,
and telephone to the Dragon for a car."
To leave her alone with them was strange, and yet, as no doubt his mother
had foreseen, the least of evils at the moment; so he ran up into the
house. Now he would not see Fleur alone again--not for a minute, and
they had arranged no further meeting! When he returned under cover of
the maids and teapots, there was not a trace of awkwardness beneath the
tree; it was all within himself, but not the less for that. They were
talking of the Gallery off Cork Street.
"We back numbers," his father was saying, "are awfully anxious to find
out why we can't appreciate the new stuff; you and Jon must tell us."
"It's supposed to be satiric, isn't it?" said Fleur.
He saw his father's smile.
"Satiric? Oh! I think it's more than that. What do you say, Jon?"
"I don't know at all," stammered Jon. His father's face had a sudden
grimness.
"The young are tired of us, our gods and our ideals. Off with their
heads, they say--smash their idols! And let's get back to-nothing! And,
by Jove, they've done it! Jon's a poet. He'll be going in, too, and
stamping on what's left of us. Property, beauty, sentiment--all smoke.
We mustn't own anything nowadays, not even our feelings. They stand in
the way of--Nothing."
Jon listened, bewildered, almost outraged by his father's words, behind
which he felt a meaning that he could not reach. He didn't want to stamp
on anything!
"Nothing's the god of to-day," continued Jolyon; "we're back where the
Russians were sixty years ago, when they started Nihilism."
"No, Dad," cried Jon suddenly, "we only want to live, and we don't know
how, because of the Past--that's all!"
"By George!" said Jolyon, "that's profound, Jon. Is it your own? The
Past! Old ownerships, old passions, and their aftermath. Let's have
cigarettes."
Conscious that his mother had lifted her hand to her lips, quickly, as if
to hush something, Jon handed the cigarettes. He lighted his father's
and Fleur's, then one for himself. Had he taken the knock that Val had
spoken of? The smoke was blue when he had not puffed, grey when he had;
he liked the sensation in his nose, and the sense of equality it gave
him. He was glad no one said: "So you've begun!" He felt less young.
Fleur looked at her watch, and rose. His mother went with her into the
house. Jon stayed with his father, puffing at the cigarette.
"See her into the car, old man," said Jolyon; "and when she's gone, ask
your mother to come back to me."
Jon went. He waited in the hall. He saw her into the car. There was no
chance for any word; hardly for a pressure of the hand. He waited all
that evening for something to be said to him. Nothing was said. Nothing
might have happened. He went up to bed, and in the mirror on his
dressing-table met himself. He did not speak, nor did the image; but
both looked as if they thought the more.
IV
IN GREEN STREET
Uncertain whether the impression that Prosper Profond was dangerous
should be traced to his attempt to give Val the Mayfly filly; to a remark
of Fleur's: "He's like the hosts of Midian--he prowls and prowls around";
to his preposterous inquiry of Jack Cardigan: "What's the use of keepin'
fit?" or, more simply, to the fact that he was a foreigner, or alien as
it was now called. Certain, that Annette was looking particularly
handsome, and that Soames--had sold him a Gauguin and then torn up the
cheque, so that Monsieur Profond himself had said: "I didn't get that
small picture I bought from Mr. Forsyde."
However suspiciously regarded, he still frequented Winifred's evergreen
little house in Green Street, with a good-natured obtuseness which no one
mistook for naiv ete, a word hardly applicable to Monsieur Prosper
Profond. Winifred still found him "amusing," and would write him little
notes saying: "Come and have a 'jolly' with us"--it was breath of life to
her to keep up with the phrases of the day.
The mystery, with which all felt him to be surrounded, was due to his
having done, seen, heard, and known everything, and found nothing in
it--which was unnatural. The English type of disillusionment was
familiar enough to Winifred, who had always moved in fashionable circles.
It gave a certain cachet or distinction, so that one got something out of
it. But to see nothing in anything, not as a pose, but because there was
nothing in anything, was not English; and that which was not English one
could not help secretly feeling dangerous, if not precisely bad form. It
was like having the mood which the War had left, seated--dark, heavy,
smiling, indifferent--in your Empire chair; it was like listening to that
mood talking through thick pink lips above a little diabolic beard. It
was, as Jack Cardigan expressed it--for the English character at
large--"a bit too thick"--for if nothing was really worth getting
excited about, there were always games, and one could make it so! Even
Winifred, ever a Forsyte at heart, felt that there was nothing to be had
out of such a mood of disillusionment, so that it really ought not to be
there. Monsieur Profond, in fact, made the mood too plain in a country
which decently veiled such realities.
When Fleur, after her hurried return from Robin Hill, came down to dinner
that evening, the mood was standing at the window of Winifred's little
drawing-room, looking out into Green Street, with an air of seeing
nothing in it. And Fleur gazed promptly into the fireplace with an air
of seeing a fire which was not there.
Monsieur Profond came from the window. He was in full fig, with a white
waistcoat and a white flower in his buttonhole.
"Well, Miss Forsyde," he said, "I'm awful pleased to see you. Mr.
Forsyde well? I was sayin' to-day I want to see him have some pleasure.
He worries."
"You think so?" said Fleur shortly.
"Worries," repeated Monsieur Profond, burring the r's.
Fleur spun round. "Shall I tell you," she said, "what would give him
pleasure?" But the words, "To hear that you had cleared out," died at
the expression on his face. All his fine white teeth were showing.
"I was hearin' at the Club to-day about his old trouble." Fleur opened
her eyes. "What do you mean?"
Monsieur Profond moved his sleek head as if to minimize his statement.
"Before you were born," he said; "that small business."
Though conscious that he had cleverly diverted her from his own share in
her father's worry, Fleur was unable to withstand a rush of nervous
curiosity. "Tell me what you heard."
"Why!" murmured Monsieur Profond, "you know all that."
"I expect I do. But I should like to know that you haven't heard it all
wrong."
"His first wife," murmured Monsieur Profond.
Choking back the words, "He was never married before," she said: "Well,
what about her?"
"Mr. George Forsyde was tellin' me about your father's first wife
marryin' his cousin Jolyon afterward. It was a small bit unpleasant, I
should think. I saw their boy--nice boy!"
Fleur looked up. Monsieur Profond was swimming, heavily diabolical,
before her. That--the reason! With the most heroic effort of her life
so far, she managed to arrest that swimming figure. She could not tell
whether he had noticed. And just then Winifred came in.
"Oh! here you both are already; Imogen and I have had the most amusing
afternoon at the Babies' bazaar."
"What babies?" said Fleur mechanically.
"The 'Save the Babies.' I got such a bargain, my dear. A piece of old
Armenian work--from before the Flood. I want your opinion on it,
Prosper."
"Auntie," whispered Fleur suddenly.
At the tone in the girl's voice Winifred closed in on her.'
"What's the matter? Aren't you well?"
Monsieur Profond had withdrawn into the window, where he was practically
out of hearing.
"Auntie, he-he told me that father has been married before. Is it true
that he divorced her, and she married Jon Forsyte's father?"
Never in all the life of the mother of four little Darties had Winifred
felt more seriously embarrassed. Her niece's face was so pale, her eyes
so dark, her voice so whispery and strained.
"Your father didn't wish you to hear," she said, with all the aplomb she
could muster. "These things will happen. I've often told him he ought
to let you know."
"Oh!" said Fleur, and that was all, but it made Winifred pat her
shoulder--a firm little shoulder, nice and white! She never could help
an appraising eye and touch in the matter of her niece, who would have to
be married, of course--though not to that boy Jon.
"We've forgotten all about it years and years ago," she said comfortably.
"Come and have dinner!"
"No, Auntie. I don't feel very well. May I go upstairs?"
"My dear!" murmured Winifred, concerned, "you're not taking this to
heart? Why, you haven't properly come out yet! That boy's a child!"
"What boy? I've only got a headache. But I can't stand that man
to-night."
"Well, well," said Winifred, "go and lie down. I'll send you some
bromide, and I shall talk to Prosper Profond. What business had he to
gossip? Though I must say I think it's much better you should know."
Fleur smiled. "Yes," she said, and slipped from the room.
She went up with her head whirling, a dry sensation in her throat, a
guttered frightened feeling in her breast. Never in her life as yet had
she suffered from even momentary fear that she would not get what she had
set her heart on. The sensations of the afternoon had been full and
poignant, and this gruesome discovery coming on the top of them had
really made her head ache. No wonder her father had hidden that
photograph, so secretly behind her own-ashamed of having kept it! But
could he hate Jon's mother and yet keep her photograph? She pressed her
hands over her forehead, trying to see things clearly. Had they told
Jon--had her visit to Robin Hill forced them to tell him? Everything now
turned on that! She knew, they all knew, except--perhaps--Jon!
She walked up and down, biting her lip and thinking desperately hard. Jon
loved his mother. If they had told him, what would he do? She could not
tell. But if they had not told him, should she not--could she not get
him for herself--get married to him, before he knew? She searched her
memories of Robin Hill. His mother's face so passive--with its dark
eyes and as if powdered hair, its reserve, its smile--baffled her; and
his father's--kindly, sunken, ironic. Instinctively she felt they would
shrink from telling Jon, even now, shrink from hurting him--for of course
it would hurt him awfully to know!
Her aunt must be made not to tell her father that she knew. So long as
neither she herself nor Jon were supposed to know, there was still a
chance--freedom to cover one's tracks, and get what her heart was set on.
But she was almost overwhelmed by her isolation. Every one's hand was
against her--every one's! It was as Jon had said--he and she just wanted
to live and the past was in their way, a past they hadn't shared in, and
didn't understand! Oh! What a shame! And suddenly she thought of June.
Would she help them? For somehow June had left on her the impression
that she would be sympathetic with their love, impatient of obstacle.
Then, instinctively, she thought: 'I won't give anything away, though,
even to her. I daren't. I mean to have Jon; against them all.'
Soup was brought up to her, and one of Winifred's pet headache cachets.
She swallowed both. Then Winifred herself appeared. Fleur opened her
campaign with the words:
"You know, Auntie, I do wish people wouldn't think I'm in love with that
boy. Why, I've hardly seen him!"
Winifred, though experienced, was not "fine." She accepted the remark
with considerable relief. Of course, it was not pleasant for the girl to
hear of the family scandal, and she set herself to minimise the matter, a
task for which she was eminently qualified, "raised" fashionably under a
comfortable mother and a father whose nerves might not be shaken, and for
many years the wife of Montague Dartie. Her description was a
masterpiece of understatement. Fleur's father's first wife had been very
foolish. There had been a young man who had got run over, and she had
left Fleur's father. Then, years after, when it might all have
come--right again, she had taken up with their cousin Jolyon; and, of
course, her father had been obliged to have a divorce. Nobody remembered
anything of it now, except just the family. And, perhaps, it had all
turned out for the best; her father had Fleur; and Jolyon and Irene had
been quite happy, they said, and their boy was a nice boy. "Val having
Holly, too, is a sort of plaster, don't you know?" With these soothing
words, Winifred patted her niece's shoulder; thought: 'She's a nice,
plump little thing!' and went back to Prosper Profond, who, in spite of
his indiscretion, was very "amusing" this evening.
For some minutes after her aunt had gone Fleur remained under influence
of bromide material and spiritual. But then reality came back. Her aunt
had left out all that mattered--all the feeling, the hate, the love, the
unforgivingness of passionate hearts. She, who knew so little of life,
and had touched only the fringe of love, was yet aware by instinct that
words have as little relation to fact and feeling as coin to the bread it
buys. 'Poor Father!' she thought. 'Poor me! Poor Jon! But I don't
care, I mean to have him!' From the window of her darkened room she saw
"that man" issue from the door below and "prowl" away. If he and her
mother--how would that affect her chance? Surely it must make her father
cling to her more closely, so that he would consent in the end to
anything she wanted, or become reconciled the sooner to what she did
without his knowledge.
She took some earth from the flower-box in the window, and with all her
might flung it after that disappearing figure. It fell short, but the
action did her good.
And a little puff of air came up from Green Street, smelling of petrol,
not sweet.
V
PURELY FORSYTE AFFAIRS
Soames, coming up to the City, with the intention of calling in at Green
Street at the end of his day and taking Fleur back home with him,
suffered from rumination. Sleeping partner that he was, he seldom
visited the City now, but he still had a room of his own at Cuthcott,
Kingson and Forsyte's, and one special clerk and a half assigned to the
management of purely Forsyte affairs. They were somewhat in flux just
now--an auspicious moment for the disposal of house property. And Soames
was unloading the estates of his father and Uncle Roger, and to some
extent of his Uncle Nicholas. His shrewd and matter-of-course probity in
all money concerns had made him something of an autocrat in connection
with these trusts. If Soames thought this or thought that, one had
better save oneself the bother of thinking too. He guaranteed, as it
were, irresponsibility to numerous Forsytes of the third and fourth
generations. His fellow trustees, such as his cousins Roger or Nicholas,
his cousins-in-law Tweetyman and Spender, or his sister Cicely's husband,
all trusted him; he signed first, and where he signed first they signed
after, and nobody was a penny the worse. Just now they were all a good
many pennies the better, and Soames was beginning to see the close of
certain trusts, except for distribution of the income from securities as
gilt-edged as was compatible with the period.
Passing the more feverish parts of the City toward the most perfect
backwater in London, he ruminated. Money was extraordinarily tight; and
morality extraordinarily loose! The War had done it. Banks were not
lending; people breaking contracts all over the place. There was a
feeling in the air and a look on faces that he did not like. The country
seemed in for a spell of gambling and bankruptcies. There was
satisfaction in the thought that neither he nor his trusts had an
investment which could be affected by anything less maniacal than
national repudiation or a levy on capital. If Soames had faith, it was
in what he called "English common sense"--or the power to have things, if
not one way then another. He might--like his father James before
him--say he didn't know what things were coming to, but he never in his
heart believed they were. If it rested with him, they wouldn't--and,
after all, he was only an Englishman like any other, so quietly tenacious
of what he had that he knew he would never really part with it without
something more or less equivalent in exchange. His mind was essentially
equilibristic in material matters, and his way of putting the national
situation difficult to refute in a world composed of human beings. Take
his own case, for example! He was well off. Did that do anybody harm?
He did not eat ten meals a day; he ate no more than, perhaps not so much
as, a poor man. He spent no money on vice; breathed no more air, used no
more water to speak of than the mechanic or the porter. He certainly had
pretty things about him, but they had given employment in the making, and
somebody must use them. He bought pictures, but Art must be encouraged.
He was, in fact, an accidental channel through which money flowed,
employing labour. What was there objectionable in that? In his charge
money was in quicker and more useful flux than it would be in charge of
the State and a lot of slow-fly money-sucking officials. And as to what
he saved each year--it was just as much in flux as what he didn't save,
going into Water Board or Council Stocks, or something sound and useful.
The State paid him no salary for being trustee of his own or other
people's money he did all that for nothing. Therein lay the whole case
against nationalisation--owners of private property were unpaid, and yet
had every incentive to quicken up the flux. Under nationalisation--just
the opposite! In a country smarting from officialism he felt that he had
a strong case.
It particularly annoyed him, entering that backwater of perfect peace, to
think that a lot of unscrupulous Trusts and Combinations had been
cornering the market in goods of all kinds, and keeping prices at an
artificial height. Such abusers of the individualistic system were the
ruffians who caused all the trouble, and it was some satisfaction to see
them getting into a stew at fast lest the whole thing might come down
with a run--and land them in the soup.
The offices of Cuthcott, Kingson and Forsyte occupied the ground and
first floors of a house on the right-hand side; and, ascending to his
room, Soames thought: 'Time we had a coat of paint.'
His old clerk Gradman was seated, where he always was, at a huge bureau
with countless pigeonholes. Half-the-clerk stood beside him, with a
broker's note recording investment of the proceeds from sale of the
Bryanston Square house, in Roger Forsyte's estate. Soames took it, and
said:
"Vancouver City Stock. H'm. It's down today!"
With a sort of grating ingratiation old Gradman answered him:
"Ye-es; but everything's down, Mr. Soames." And half-the-clerk withdrew.
Soames skewered the document on to a number of other papers and hung up
his hat.
"I want to look at my Will and Marriage Settlement, Gradman."
Old Gradman, moving to the limit of his swivel chair, drew out two drafts
from the bottom lefthand drawer. Recovering his body, he raised his
grizzle-haired face, very red from stooping.
"Copies, Sir."
Soames took them. It struck him suddenly how like Gradman was to the
stout brindled yard dog they had been wont to keep on his chain at The
Shelter, till one day Fleur had come and insisted it should be let loose,
so that it had at once bitten the cook and been destroyed. If you let
Gradman off his chain, would he bite the cook?
Checking this frivolous fancy, Soames unfolded his Marriage Settlement.
He had not looked at it for over eighteen years, not since he remade his
Will when his father died and Fleur was born. He wanted to see whether
the words "during coverture" were in. Yes, they were--odd expression,
when you thought of it, and derived perhaps from horse-breeding!
Interest on fifteen thousand pounds (which he paid her without deducting
income tax) so long as she remained his wife, and afterward during
widowhood "dum casta"--old-fashioned and rather pointed words, put in to
insure the conduct of Fleur's mother. His Will made it up to an annuity
of a thousand under the same conditions. All right! He returned the
copies to Gradman, who took them without looking up, swung the chair,
restored the papers to their drawer, and went on casting up.
"Gradman! I don't like the condition of the country; there are a lot of
people about without any common sense. I want to find a way by which I
can safeguard Miss Fleur against anything which might arise."
Gradman wrote the figure "2" on his blotting-paper.
"Ye-es," he said; "there's a nahsty spirit."
"The ordinary restraint against anticipation doesn't meet the case."
"Nao," said Gradman.
"Suppose those Labour fellows come in, or worse! It's these people with
fixed ideas who are the danger. Look at Ireland!"
"Ah!" said Gradman.
"Suppose I were to make a settlement on her at once with myself as
beneficiary for life, they couldn't take anything but the interest from
me, unless of course they alter the law."
Gradman moved his head and smiled.
"Ah!" he said, "they wouldn't do tha-at!"
"I don't know," muttered Soames; "I don't trust them."
"It'll take two years, sir, to be valid against death duties."
Soames sniffed. Two years! He was only sixty-five!
"That's not the point. Draw a form of settlement that passes all my
property to Miss Fleur's children in equal shares, with antecedent
life-interests first to myself and then to her without power of
anticipation, and add a clause that in the event of anything happening to
divert her life-interest, that interest passes to the trustees, to apply
for her benefit, in their absolute discretion."
Gradman grated: "Rather extreme at your age, sir; you lose control."
"That's my business," said Soames sharply.
Gradman wrote on a piece of paper: "Life-interest--anticipation--divert
interest--absolute discretion...." and said:
"What trustees? There's young Mr. Kingson; he's a nice steady young
fellow."
"Yes, he might do for one. I must have three. There isn't a Forsyte now
who appeals to me."
"Not young Mr. Nicholas? He's at the Bar. We've given 'im briefs."
"He'll never set the Thames on fire," said Soames.
A smile oozed out on Gradman's face, greasy from countless mutton-chops,
the smile of a man who sits all day.
"You can't expect it, at his age, Mr. Soames."
"Why? What is he? Forty?"
"Ye-es, quite a young fellow."
"Well, put him in; but I want somebody who'll take a personal interest.
There's no one that I can see."
"What about Mr. Valerius, now he's come home?"
"Val Dartie? With that father?"
"We-ell," murmured Gradman, "he's been dead seven years--the Statute runs
against him."
"No," said Soames. "I don't like the connection." He rose. Gradman
said suddenly:
"If they were makin' a levy on capital, they could come on the trustees,
sir. So there you'd be just the same. I'd think it over, if I were
you."
"That's true," said Soames. "I will. What have you done about that
dilapidation notice in Vere Street?"
"I 'aven't served it yet. The party's very old. She won't want to go
out at her age."
"I don't know. This spirit of unrest touches every one."
"Still, I'm lookin' at things broadly, sir. She's eighty-one."
"Better serve it," said Soames, "and see what she says. Oh! and Mr.
Timothy? Is everything in order in case of--"
"I've got the inventory of his estate all ready; had the furniture and
pictures valued so that we know what reserves to put on. I shall be
sorry when he goes, though. Dear me! It is a time since I first saw Mr.
Timothy!"
"We can't live for ever," said Soames, taking down his hat.
"Nao," said Gradman; "but it'll be a pity--the last of the old family!
Shall I take up the matter of that nuisance in Old Compton Street? Those
organs--they're nahsty things."
"Do. I must call for Miss Fleur and catch the four o'clock. Good-day,
Gradman."
"Good-day, Mr. Soames. I hope Miss Fleur--"
"Well enough, but gads about too much."
"Ye-es," grated Gradman; "she's young."
Soames went out, musing: "Old Gradman! If he were younger I'd put him in
the trust. There's nobody I can depend on to take a real interest."
Leaving the bilious and mathematical exactitude, the preposterous peace
of that backwater, he thought suddenly: 'During coverture! Why can't
they exclude fellows like Profond, instead of a lot of hard-working
Germans?' and was surprised at the depth of uneasiness which could
provoke so unpatriotic a thought. But there it was! One never got a
moment of real peace. There was always something at the back of
everything! And he made his way toward Green Street.
Two hours later by his watch, Thomas Gradman, stirring in his swivel
chair, closed the last drawer of his bureau, and putting into his
waistcoat pocket a bunch of keys so fat that they gave him a protuberance
on the liver side, brushed his old top hat round with his sleeve, took
his umbrella, and descended. Thick, short, and buttoned closely into his
old frock coat, he walked toward Covent Garden market. He never missed
that daily promenade to the Tube for Highgate, and seldom some critical
transaction on the way in connection with vegetables and fruit.
Generations might be born, and hats might change, wars be fought, and
Forsytes fade away, but Thomas Gradman, faithful and grey, would take his
daily walk and buy his daily vegetable. Times were not what they were,
and his son had lost a leg, and they never gave him those nice little
plaited baskets to carry the stuff in now, and these Tubes were
convenient things--still he mustn't complain; his health was good
considering his time of life, and after fifty-four years in the Law he
was getting a round eight hundred a year and a little worried of late,
because it was mostly collector's commission on the rents, and with all
this conversion of Forsyte property going on, it looked like drying up,
and the price of living still so high; but it was no good worrying--" The
good God made us all"--as he was in the habit of saying; still, house
property in London--he didn't know what Mr. Roger or Mr. James would say
if they could see it being sold like this--seemed to show a lack of
faith; but Mr. Soames--he worried. Life and lives in being and
twenty-one years after--beyond that you couldn't go; still, he kept his
health wonderfully--and Miss Fleur was a pretty little thing--she was;
she'd marry; but lots of people had no children nowadays--he had had his
first child at twenty-two; and Mr. Jolyon, married while he was at
Cambridge, had his child the same year--gracious Peter! That was back
in '69, a long time before old Mr. Jolyon--fine judge of property--had
taken his Will away from Mr. James--dear, yes! Those were the days when
they were buyin' property right and left, and none of this khaki and
fallin' over one another to get out of things; and cucumbers at twopence;
and a melon--the old melons, that made your mouth water! Fifty years
since he went into Mr. James' office, and Mr. James had said to him:
"Now, Gradman, you're only a shaver--you pay attention, and you'll make
your five hundred a year before you've done." And he had, and feared
God, and served the Forsytes, and kept a vegetable diet at night. And,
buying a copy of John Bull--not that he approved of it, an extravagant
affair--he entered the Tube elevator with his mere brown-paper parcel,
and was borne down into the bowels of the earth.
VI
SOAMES' PRIVATE LIFE
On his way to Green Street it occurred to Soames that he ought to go into
Dumetrius' in Suffolk Street about the possibility of the Bolderby Old
Crome. Almost worth while to have fought the war to have the Bolderby
Old Crome, as it were, in flux! Old Bolderby had died, his son and
grandson had been killed--a cousin was coming into the estate, who meant
to sell it, some said because of the condition of England, others said
because he had asthma.
If Dumetrius once got hold of it the price would become prohibitive; it
was necessary for Soames to find out whether Dumetrius had got it, before
he tried to get it himself. He therefore confined himself to discussing
with Dumetrius whether Monticellis would come again now that it was the
fashion for a picture to be anything except a picture; and the future of
Johns, with a side-slip into Buxton Knights. It was only when leaving
that he added: "So they're not selling the Bolderby Old Crome, after
all?" In sheer pride of racial superiority, as he had calculated would
be the case, Dumetrius replied:
"Oh! I shall get it, Mr. Forsyte, sir!"
The flutter of his eyelid fortified Soames in a resolution to write
direct to the new Bolderby, suggesting that the only dignified way of
dealing with an Old Crome was to avoid dealers. He therefore said,
"Well, good-day!" and went, leaving Dumetrius the wiser.
At Green Street he found that Fleur was out and would be all the evening;
she was staying one more night in London. He cabbed on dejectedly, and
caught his train.
He reached his house about six o'clock. The air was heavy, midges
biting, thunder about. Taking his letters he went up to his
dressing-room to cleanse himself of London.
An uninteresting post. A receipt, a bill for purchases on behalf of
Fleur. A circular about an exhibition of etchings. A letter beginning:
"SIR, "I feel it my duty..."
That would be an appeal or something unpleasant. He looked at once for
the signature. There was none! Incredulously he turned the page over and
examined each corner. Not being a public man, Soames had never yet had
an anonymous letter, and his first impulse was to tear it up, as a
dangerous thing; his second to read it, as a thing still more dangerous.
"SIR, "I feel it my duty to inform you that having no interest in the
matter your lady is carrying on with a foreigner--"
Reaching that word Soames stopped mechanically and examined the postmark.
So far as he could pierce the impenetrable disguise in which the Post
Office had wrapped it, there was something with a "sea" at the end and a
"t" in it. Chelsea? No! Battersea? Perhaps! He read on.
"These foreigners are all the same. Sack the lot. This one meets your
lady twice a week. I know it of my own knowledge--and to see an
Englishman put on goes against the grain. You watch it and see if what I
say isn't true. I shouldn't meddle if it wasn't a dirty foreigner that's
in it. Yours obedient."
The sensation with which Soames dropped the letter was similar to that he
would have had entering his bedroom and finding it full of black-beetles.
The meanness of anonymity gave a shuddering obscenity to the moment. And
the worst of it was that this shadow had been at the back of his mind
ever since the Sunday evening when Fleur had pointed down at Prosper
Profond strolling on the lawn, and said: "Prowling cat!" Had he not in
connection therewith, this very day, perused his Will and Marriage
Settlement? And now this anonymous ruffian, with nothing to gain,
apparently, save the venting of his spite against foreigners, had
wrenched it out of the obscurity in which he had hoped and wished it
would remain. To have such knowledge forced on him, at his time of life,
about Fleur's mother I He picked the letter up from the carpet, tore it
across, and then, when it hung together by just the fold at the back,
stopped tearing, and reread it. He was taking at that moment one of the
decisive resolutions of his life. He would not be forced into another
scandal. No! However he decided to deal with this matter--and it
required the most far-sighted and careful consideration he would do
nothing that might injure Fleur. That resolution taken, his mind answered
the helm again, and he made his ablutions. His hands trembled as he
dried them. Scandal he would not have, but something must be done to
stop this sort of thing! He went into his wife's room and stood looking
around him. The idea of searching for anything which would incriminate,
and entitle him to hold a menace over her, did not even come to him.
There would be nothing--she was much too practical. The idea of having
her watched had been dismissed before it came--too well he remembered his
previous experience of that. No! He had nothing but this torn-up letter
from some anonymous ruffian, whose impudent intrusion into his private
life he so violently resented. It was repugnant to him to make use of
it, but he might have to. What a mercy Fleur was not at home to-night!
A tap on the door broke up his painful cogitations.
"Mr. Michael Mont, sir, is in the drawing-room. Will you see him?"
"No," said Soames; "yes. I'll come down."
Anything that would take his mind off for a few minutes!
Michael Mont in flannels stood on the verandah smoking a cigarette. He
threw it away as Soames came up, and ran his hand through his hair.
Soames' feeling toward this young man was singular. He was no doubt a
rackety, irresponsible young fellow according to old standards, yet
somehow likeable, with his extraordinarily cheerful way of blurting out
his opinions.
"Come in," he said; "have you had tea?"
Mont came in.
"I thought Fleur would have been back, sir; but I'm glad she isn't. The
fact is, I--I'm fearfully gone on her; so fearfully gone that I thought
you'd better know. It's old-fashioned, of course, coming to fathers
first, but I thought you'd forgive that. I went to my own Dad, and he
says if I settle down he'll see me through. He rather cottons to the
idea, in fact. I told him about your Goya."
"Oh!" said Soames, inexpressibly dry. "He rather cottons?"
"Yes, sir; do you?"
Soames smiled faintly.
"You see," resumed Mont, twiddling his straw hat, while his hair, ears,
eyebrows, all seemed to stand up from excitement, "when you've been
through the War you can't help being in a hurry."
"To get married; and unmarried afterward," said Soames slowly.
"Not from Fleur, sir. Imagine, if you were me!"
Soames cleared his throat. That way of putting it was forcible enough.
"Fleur's too young," he said.
"Oh! no, sir. We're awfully old nowadays. My Dad seems to me a perfect
babe; his thinking apparatus hasn't turned a hair. But he's a Baronight,
of course; that keeps him back."
"Baronight," repeated Soames; "what may that be?"
"Bart, sir. I shall be a Bart some day. But I shall live it down, you
know."
"Go away and live this down," said Soames.
Young Mont said imploringly: "Oh! no, sir. I simply must hang around, or
I shouldn't have a dog's chance. You'll let Fleur do what she likes, I
suppose, anyway. Madame passes me."
"Indeed!" said Soames frigidly.
"You don't really bar me, do you?" and the young man looked so doleful
that Soames smiled.
"You may think you're very old," he said; "but you strike me as extremely
young. To rattle ahead of everything is not a proof of maturity."
"All right, sir; I give you our age. But to show you I mean
business--I've got a job."
"Glad to hear it."
"Joined a publisher; my governor is putting up the stakes."
Soames put his hand over his mouth--he had so very nearly said: "God help
the publisher!" His grey eyes scrutinised the agitated young man.
"I don't dislike you, Mr. Mont, but Fleur is everything to me:
Everything--do you understand?"
"Yes, sir, I know; but so she is to me."
"That's as may be. I'm glad you've told me, however. And now I think
there's nothing more to be said."
"I know it rests with her, sir."
"It will rest with her a long time, I hope."
"You aren't cheering," said Mont suddenly.
"No," said Soames, "my experience of life has not made me anxious to
couple people in a hurry. Good-night, Mr. Mont. I shan't tell Fleur
what you've said."
"Oh!" murmured Mont blankly; "I really could knock my brains out for want
of her. She knows that perfectly well."
"I dare say." And Soames held out his hand. A distracted squeeze, a
heavy sigh, and soon after sounds from the young man's motor-cycle called
up visions of flying dust and broken bones.
'The younger generation!' he thought heavily, and went out on to the
lawn. The gardeners had been mowing, and there was still the smell of
fresh-cut grass--the thundery air kept all scents close to earth. The sky
was of a purplish hue--the poplars black. Two or three boats passed on
the river, scuttling, as it were, for shelter before the storm. 'Three
days' fine weather,' thought Soames, 'and then a storm!' Where was
Annette? With that chap, for all he knew--she was a young woman!
Impressed with the queer charity of that thought, he entered the
summerhouse and sat down. The fact was--and he admitted it--Fleur was so
much to him that his wife was very little--very little; French--had never
been much more than a mistress, and he was getting indifferent to that
side of things! It was odd how, with all this ingrained care for
moderation and secure investment, Soames ever put his emotional eggs into
one basket. First Irene--now Fleur. He was dimly conscious of it,
sitting there, conscious of its odd dangerousness. It had brought him to
wreck and scandal once, but now--now it should save him! He cared so
much for Fleur that he would have no further scandal. If only he could
get at that anonymous letter-writer, he would teach him not to meddle and
stir up mud at the bottom of water which he wished should remain
stagnant!... A distant flash, a low rumble, and large drops of rain
spattered on the thatch above him. He remained indifferent, tracing a
pattern with his finger on the dusty surface of a little rustic table.
Fleur's future! 'I want fair sailing for her,' he thought. 'Nothing else
matters at my time of life.' A lonely business--life! What you had you
never could keep to yourself! As you warned one off, you let another in.
One could make sure of nothing! He reached up and pulled a red rambler
rose from a cluster which blocked the window. Flowers grew and
dropped--Nature was a queer thing! The thunder rumbled and crashed,
travelling east along a river, the paling flashes flicked his eyes; the
poplar tops showed sharp and dense against the sky, a heavy shower
rustled and rattled and veiled in the little house wherein he sat,
indifferent, thinking.
When the storm was over, he left his retreat and went down the wet path
to the river bank.
Two swans had come, sheltering in among the reeds. He knew the birds
well, and stood watching the dignity in the curve of those white necks
and formidable snake-like heads. 'Not dignified--what I have to do!' he
thought. And yet it must be tackled, lest worse befell. Annette must be
back by now from wherever she had gone, for it was nearly dinner-time,
and as the moment for seeing her approached, the difficulty of knowing
what to say and how to say it had increased. A new and scaring thought
occurred to him. Suppose she wanted her liberty to marry this fellow!
Well, if she did, she couldn't have it. He had not married her for that.
The image of Prosper Profond dawdled before him reassuringly. Not a
marrying man! No, no! Anger replaced that momentary scare. 'He had
better not come my way,' he thought. The mongrel represented---! But
what did Prosper Profond represent? Nothing that mattered surely. And
yet something real enough in the world--unmorality let off its chain,
disillusionment on the prowl! That expression Annette had caught from
him: "Je m'en fiche!" A fatalistic chap! A continental--a
cosmopolitan--a product of the age! If there were condemnation more
complete, Soames felt that he did not know it.
The swans had turned their heads, and were looking past him into some
distance of their own. One of them uttered a little hiss, wagged its
tail, turned as if answering to a rudder, and swam away. The other
followed. Their white bodies, their stately necks, passed out of his
sight, and he went toward the house.
Annette was in the drawing-room, dressed for dinner, and he thought as he
went up-stairs 'Handsome is as handsome does.' Handsome! Except for
remarks about the curtains in the drawing-room, and the storm, there was
practically no conversation during a meal distinguished by exactitude of
quantity and perfection of quality. Soames drank nothing. He followed
her into the drawing-room afterward, and found her smoking a cigarette on
the sofa between the two French windows. She was leaning back, almost
upright, in a low black frock, with her knees crossed and her blue eyes
half-closed; grey-blue smoke issued from her red, rather full lips, a
fillet bound her chestnut hair, she wore the thinnest silk stockings, and
shoes with very high heels showing off her instep. A fine piece in any
room! Soames, who held that torn letter in a hand thrust deep into the
side-pocket of his dinner-jacket, said:
"I'm going to shut the window; the damp's lifting in."
He did so, and stood looking at a David Cox adorning the cream-panelled
wall close by.
What was she thinking of? He had never understood a woman in his
life--except Fleur--and Fleur not always! His heart beat fast. But if
he meant to do it, now was the moment. Turning from the David Cox, he
took out the torn letter.
"I've had this."
Her eyes widened, stared at him, and hardened.
Soames handed her the letter.
"It's torn, but you can read it." And he turned back to the David Cox--a
sea-piece, of good tone--but without movement enough. 'I wonder what
that chap's doing at this moment?' he thought. 'I'll astonish him yet.'
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Annette holding the letter rigidly;
her eyes moved from side to side under her darkened lashes and frowning
darkened eyes. She dropped the letter, gave a little shiver, smiled, and
said:
"Dirrty!"
"I quite agree," said Soames; "degrading. Is it true?"
A tooth fastened on her red lower lip. "And what if it were?"
She was brazen!
"Is that all you have to say?"
"No."
"Well, speak out!"
"What is the good of talking?"
Soames said icily: "So you admit it?"
"I admit nothing. You are a fool to ask. A man like you should not ask.
It is dangerous."
Soames made a tour of the room, to subdue his rising anger.
"Do you remember," he said, halting in front of her, "what you were when
I married you? Working at accounts in a restaurant."
"Do you remember that I was not half your age?"
Soames broke off the hard encounter of their eyes, and went back to the
David Cox.
"I am not going to bandy words. I require you to give up this
--friendship. I think of the matter entirely as it affects Fleur."
"Ah!--Fleur!"
"Yes," said Soames stubbornly; "Fleur. She is your child as well as
mine."
"It is kind to admit that!"
"Are you going to do what I say?"
"I refuse to tell you."
"Then I must make you."
Annette smiled.
"No, Soames," she said. "You are helpless. Do not say things that you
will regret."
Anger swelled the veins on his forehead. He opened his mouth to vent
that emotion, and could not. Annette went on:
"There shall be no more such letters, I promise you. That is enough."
Soames writhed. He had a sense of being treated like a child by this
woman who had deserved he did not know what.
"When two people have married, and lived like us, Soames, they had better
be quiet about each other. There are things one does not drag up into
the light for people to laugh at. You will be quiet, then; not for my
sake for your own. You are getting old; I am not, yet. You have made me
ver-ry practical"
Soames, who had passed through all the sensations of being choked,
repeated dully:
"I require you to give up this friendship."
"And if I do not?"
"Then--then I will cut you out of my Will."
Somehow it did not seem to meet the case. Annette laughed.
"You will live a long time, Soames."
"You--you are a bad woman," said Soames suddenly.
Annette shrugged her shoulders.
"I do not think so. Living with you has killed things in me, it is true;
but I am not a bad woman. I am sensible--that is all. And so will you
be when you have thought it over."
"I shall see this man," said Soames sullenly, "and warn him off."
"Mon cher, you are funny. You do not want me, you have as much of me as
you want; and you wish the rest of me to be dead. I admit nothing, but I
am not going to be dead, Soames, at my age; so you had better be quiet, I
tell you. I myself will make no scandal; none. Now, I am not saying any
more, whatever you do."
She reached out, took a French novel off a little table, and opened it.
Soames watched her, silenced by the tumult of his feelings. The thought
of that man was almost making him want her, and this was a revelation of
their relationship, startling to one little given to introspective
philosophy. Without saying another word he went out and up to the
picture-gallery. This came of marrying a Frenchwoman! And yet, without
her there would have been no Fleur! She had served her purpose.
'She's right,' he thought; 'I can do nothing. I don't even know that
there's anything in it.' The instinct of self-preservation warned him to
batten down his hatches, to smother the fire with want of air. Unless one
believed there was something in a thing, there wasn't.
That night he went into her room. She received him in the most
matter-of-fact way, as if there had been no scene between them. And he
returned to his own room with a curious sense of peace. If one didn't
choose to see, one needn't. And he did not choose--in future he did not
choose. There was nothing to be gained by it--nothing! Opening the
drawer he took from the sachet a handkerchief, and the framed photograph
of Fleur. When he had looked at it a little he slipped it down, and
there was that other one--that old one of Irene. An owl hooted while he
stood in his window gazing at it. The owl hooted, the red climbing roses
seemed to deepen in colour, there came a scent of lime-blossom. God!
That had been a different thing! Passion--Memory! Dust!
VII
JUNE TAKES A HAND
One who was a sculptor, a Slav, a sometime resident in New York, an
egoist, and impecunious, was to be found of an evening in June Forsyte's
studio on the bank of the Thames at Chiswick. On the evening of July 6,
Boris Strumolowski--several of whose works were on show there because
they were as yet too advanced to be on show anywhere else--had begun
well, with that aloof and rather Christ-like silence which admirably
suited his youthful, round, broad cheek-boned countenance framed in
bright hair banged like a girl's. June had known him three weeks, and he
still seemed to her the principal embodiment of genius, and hope of the
future; a sort of Star of the East which had strayed into an
unappreciative West. Until that evening he had conversationally confined
himself to recording his impressions of the United States, whose dust he
had just shaken from off his feet--a country, in his opinion, so
barbarous in every way that he had sold practically nothing there, and
become an object of suspicion to the police; a country, as he said,
without a race of its own, without liberty, equality, or fraternity,
without principles, traditions, taste, without--in a word--a soul. He
had left it for his own good, and come to the only other country where he
could live well. June had dwelt unhappily on him in her lonely moments,
standing before his creations--frightening, but powerful and symbolic
once they had been explained! That he, haloed by bright hair like an
early Italian painting, and absorbed in his genius to the exclusion of
all else--the only sign of course by which real genius could be
told--should still be a "lame duck" agitated her warm heart almost to the
exclusion of Paul Post. And she had begun to take steps to clear her
Gallery, in order to fill it with Strumolowski masterpieces. She had at
once encountered trouble. Paul Post had kicked; Vospovitch had stung.
With all the emphasis of a genius which she did not as yet deny them,
they had demanded another six weeks at least of her Gallery. The
American stream, still flowing in, would soon be flowing out. The
American stream was their right, their only hope, their salvation--since
nobody in this "beastly" country cared for Art. June had yielded to the
demonstration. After all Boris would not mind their having the full
benefit of an American stream, which he himself so violently despised.
This evening she had put that to Boris with nobody else present, except
Hannah Hobdey, the mediaeval black-and-whitist, and Jimmy Portugal,
editor of the Neo-Artist. She had put it to him with that sudden
confidence which continual contact with the neo-artistic world had never
been able to dry up in her warm and generous nature. He had not broken
his Christ-like silence, however, for more than two minutes before she
began to move her blue eyes from side to side, as a cat moves its tail.
This--he said--was characteristic of England, the most selfish country in
the world; the country which sucked the blood of other countries;
destroyed the brains and hearts of Irishmen, Hindus, Egyptians, Boers,
and Burmese, all the best races in the world; bullying, hypocritical
England! This was what he had expected, coming to, such a country, where
the climate was all fog, and the people all tradesmen perfectly blind to
Art, and sunk in profiteering and the grossest materialism. Conscious
that Hannah Hobdey was murmuring, "Hear, hear!" and Jimmy Portugal
sniggering, June grew crimson, and suddenly rapped out:
"Then why did you ever come? We didn't ask you."
The remark was so singularly at variance with all she had led him to
expect from her, that Strumolowski stretched out his hand and took a
cigarette.
"England never wants an idealist," he said.
But in June something primitively English was thoroughly upset; old
Jolyon's sense of justice had risen, as it were, from bed. "You come and
sponge on us," she said, "and then abuse us. If you think that's playing
the game, I don't."
She now discovered that which others had discovered before her--the
thickness of hide beneath which the sensibility of genius is sometimes
veiled. Strumolowski's young and ingenuous face became the incarnation
of a sneer.
"Sponge, one does not sponge, one takes what is owing--a tenth part of
what is owing. You will repent to say that, Miss Forsyte."
"Oh, no," said June, "I shan't."
"Ah! We know very well, we artists--you take us to get what you can out
of us. I want nothing from you"--and he blew out a cloud of June's
smoke.
Decision rose in an icy puff from the turmoil of insulted shame within
her. "Very well, then, you can take your things away."
And, almost in the same moment, she thought: 'Poor boy! He's only got a
garret, and probably not a taxi fare. In front of these people, too;
it's positively disgusting!'
Young Strumolowski shook his head violently; his hair, thick, smooth,
close as a golden plate, did not fall off.
"I can live on nothing," he said shrilly; "I have often had to for the
sake of my Art. It is you bourgeois who force us to spend money."
The words hit June like a pebble, in the ribs. After all she had done
for Art, all her identification with its troubles and lame ducks. She
was struggling for adequate words when the door was opened, and her
Austrian murmured:
"A young lady, gnadiges Fraulein."
"Where?"
"In the little meal-room."
With a glance at Boris Strumolowski, at Hannah Hobdey, at Jimmy Portugal,
June said nothing, and went out, devoid of equanimity. Entering the
"little meal-room," she perceived the young lady to be Fleur--looking
very pretty, if pale. At this disenchanted moment a little lame duck of
her own breed was welcome to June, so homoeopathic by instinct.
The girl must have come, of course, because of Jon; or, if not, at least
to get something out of her. And June felt just then that to assist
somebody was the only bearable thing.
"So you've remembered to come," she said.
"Yes. What a jolly little duck of a house! But please don't let me
bother you, if you've got people."
"Not at all," said June. "I want to let them stew in their own juice for
a bit. Have you come about Jon?"
"You said you thought we ought to be told. Well, I've found out."
"Oh!" said June blankly. "Not nice, is it?"
They were standing one on each side of the little bare table at which
June took her meals. A vase on it was full of Iceland poppies; the girl
raised her hand and touched them with a gloved finger. To her
new-fangled dress, frilly about the hips and tight below the knees, June
took a sudden liking--a charming colour, flax-blue.
'She makes a picture,' thought June. Her little room, with its
whitewashed walls, its floor and hearth of old pink brick, its black
paint, and latticed window athwart which the last of the sunlight was
shining, had never looked so charming, set off by this young figure, with
the creamy, slightly frowning face. She remembered with sudden vividness
how nice she herself had looked in those old days when her heart was set
on Philip Bosinney, that dead lover, who had broken from her to destroy
for ever Irene's allegiance to this girl's father. Did Fleur know of
that, too?
"Well," she said, "what are you going to do?"
It was some seconds before Fleur answered.
"I don't want Jon to suffer. I must see him once more to put an end to
it."
"You're going to put an end to it!"
"What else is there to do?"
The girl seemed to June, suddenly, intolerably spiritless.
"I suppose you're right," she muttered. "I know my father thinks so;
but--I should never have done it myself. I can't take things lying
down."
How poised and watchful that girl looked; how unemotional her voice
sounded!
"People will assume that I'm in love."
"Well, aren't you?"
Fleur shrugged her shoulders. 'I might have known it,' thought June;
'she's Soames' daughter--fish! And yet--he!'
"What do you want me to do then?" she said with a sort of disgust.
"Could I see Jon here to-morrow on his way down to Holly's? He'd come if
you sent him a line to-night. And perhaps afterward you'd let them know
quietly at Robin Hill that it's all over, and that they needn't tell Jon
about his mother."
"All right!" said June abruptly. "I'll write now, and you can post it.
Half-past two tomorrow. I shan't be in, myself."
She sat down at the tiny bureau which filled one corner. When she looked
round with the finished note Fleur was still touching the poppies with
her gloved finger.
June licked a stamp. "Well, here it is. If you're not in love, of
course, there's no more to be said. Jon's lucky."
Fleur took the note. "Thanks awfully!"
'Cold-blooded little baggage!' thought June. Jon, son of her father, to
love, and not to be loved by the daughter of--Soames! It was
humiliating!
"Is that all?"
Fleur nodded; her frills shook and trembled as she swayed toward the
door.
"Good-bye!"
"Good-bye!... Little piece of fashion!" muttered June, closing the door.
"That family!" And she marched back toward her studio. Boris
Strumolowski had regained his Christ-like silence and Jimmy Portugal was
damning everybody, except the group in whose behalf he ran the
Neo-Artist. Among the condemned were Eric Cobbley, and several other
"lame-duck" genii who at one time or another had held first place in the
repertoire of June's aid and adoration. She experienced a sense of
futility and disgust, and went to the window to let the river-wind blow
those squeaky words away.
But when at length Jimmy Portugal had finished, and gone with Hannah
Hobdey, she sat down and mothered young Strumolowski for half an hour,
promising him a month, at least, of the American stream; so that he went
away with his halo in perfect order. 'In spite of all,' June thought,
'Boris is wonderful'
VIII
THE BIT BETWEEN THE TEETH
To know that your hand is against every one's is--for some natures--to
experience a sense of moral release. Fleur felt no remorse when she left
June's house. Reading condemnatory resentment in her little kinswoman's
blue eyes-she was glad that she had fooled her, despising June because
that elderly idealist had not seen what she was after.
End it, forsooth! She would soon show them all that she was only just
beginning. And she smiled to herself on the top of the bus which carried
her back to Mayfair. But the smile died, squeezed out by spasms of
anticipation and anxiety. Would she be able to manage Jon? She had
taken the bit between her teeth, but could she make him take it too? She
knew the truth and the real danger of delay--he knew neither; therein lay
all the difference in the world.
'Suppose I tell him,' she thought; 'wouldn't it really be safer?' This
hideous luck had no right to spoil their love; he must see that! They
could not let it! People always accepted an accomplished fact in time!
From that piece of philosophy--profound enough at her age--she passed to
another consideration less philosophic. If she persuaded Jon to a quick
and secret marriage, and he found out afterward that she had known the
truth. What then? Jon hated subterfuge. Again, then, would it not be
better to tell him? But the memory of his mother's face kept intruding
on that impulse. Fleur was afraid. His mother had power over him; more
power perhaps than she herself. Who could tell? It was too great a
risk. Deep-sunk in these instinctive calculations she was carried on past
Green Street as far as the Ritz Hotel. She got down there, and walked
back on the Green Park side. The storm had washed every tree; they still
dripped. Heavy drops fell on to her frills, and to avoid them she
crossed over under the eyes of the Iseeum Club. Chancing to look up she
saw Monsieur Profond with a tall stout man in the bay window. Turning
into Green Street she heard her name called, and saw "that prowler"
coming up. He took off his hat--a glossy "bowler" such as she
particularly detested.
"Good evenin'! Miss Forsyde. Isn't there a small thing I can do for
you?"
"Yes, pass by on the other side."
"I say! Why do you dislike me?"
"Do I?"
"It looks like it."
"Well, then, because you make me feel life isn't worth living."
Monsieur Profond smiled.
"Look here, Miss Forsyde, don't worry. It'll be all right. Nothing
lasts."
"Things do last," cried Fleur; "with me anyhow--especially likes and
dislikes."
"Well, that makes me a bit un'appy."
"I should have thought nothing could ever make you happy or unhappy."
"I don't like to annoy other people. I'm goin' on my yacht."
Fleur looked at him, startled.
"Where?"
"Small voyage to the South Seas or somewhere," said Monsieur Profond.
Fleur suffered relief and a sense of insult. Clearly he meant to convey
that he was breaking with her mother. How dared he have anything to
break, and yet how dared he break it?
"Good-night, Miss Forsyde! Remember me to Mrs. Dartie. I'm not so bad
really. Good-night!" Fleur left him standing there with his hat raised.
Stealing a look round, she saw him stroll--immaculate and heavy--back
toward his Club.
'He can't even love with conviction,' she thought. 'What will Mother
do?'
Her dreams that night were endless and uneasy; she rose heavy and
unrested, and went at once to the study of Whitaker's Almanac. A Forsyte
is instinctively aware that facts are the real crux of any situation.
She might conquer Jon's prejudice, but without exact machinery to
complete their desperate resolve, nothing would happen. From the
invaluable tome she learned that they must each be twenty-one; or some
one's consent would be necessary, which of course was unobtainable; then
she became lost in directions concerning licenses, certificates, notices,
districts, coming finally to the word "perjury." But that was nonsense!
Who would really mind their giving wrong ages in order to be married for
love! She ate hardly any breakfast, and went back to Whitaker. The more
she studied the less sure she became; till, idly turning the pages, she
came to Scotland. People could be married there without any of this
nonsense. She had only to go and stay there twenty-one days, then Jon
could come, and in front of two people they could declare themselves
married. And what was more--they would be! It was far the best way; and
at once she ran over her schoolfellows. There was Mary Lambe who lived
in Edinburgh and was "quite a sport!"
She had a brother too. She could stay with Mary Lambe, who with her
brother would serve for witnesses. She well knew that some girls would
think all this unnecessary, and that all she and Jon need do was to go
away together for a weekend and then say to their people: "We are married
by Nature, we must now be married by Law." But Fleur was Forsyte enough
to feel such a proceeding dubious, and to dread her father's face when he
heard of it. Besides, she did not believe that Jon would do it; he had
an opinion of her such as she could not bear to diminish. No! Mary
Lambe was preferable, and it was just the time of year to go to Scotland.
More at ease now she packed, avoided her aunt, and took a bus to
Chiswick. She was too early, and went on to Kew Gardens. She found no
peace among its flower-beds, labelled trees, and broad green spaces, and
having lunched off anchovy-paste sandwiches and coffee, returned to
Chiswick and rang June's bell. The Austrian admitted her to the "little
meal-room." Now that she knew what she and Jon were up against, her
longing for him had increased tenfold, as if he were a toy with sharp
edges or dangerous paint such as they had tried to take from her as a
child. If she could not have her way, and get Jon for good and all, she
felt like dying of privation. By hook or crook she must and would get
him! A round dim mirror of very old glass hung over the pink brick
hearth. She stood looking at herself reflected in it, pale, and rather
dark under the eyes; little shudders kept passing through her nerves.
Then she heard the bell ring, and, stealing to the window, saw him
standing on the doorstep smoothing his hair and lips, as if he too were
trying to subdue the fluttering of his nerves.
She was sitting on one of the two rush-seated chairs, with her back to
the door, when he came in, and she said at once--
"Sit down, Jon, I want to talk seriously."
Jon sat on the table by her side, and without looking at him she went on:
"If you don't want to lose me, we must get married."
Jon gasped.
"Why? Is there anything new?"
"No, but I felt it at Robin Hill, and among my people."
"But--" stammered Jon, "at Robin Hill--it was all smooth--and they've
said nothing to me."
"But they mean to stop us. Your mother's face was enough. And my
father's."
"Have you seen him since?"
Fleur nodded. What mattered a few supplementary lies?
"But," said Jon eagerly, "I can't see how they can feel like that after
all these years."
Fleur looked up at him.
"Perhaps you don't love me enough." "Not love you enough! Why--!"
"Then make sure of me."
"Without telling them?"
"Not till after."
Jon was silent. How much older he looked than on that day, barely two
months ago, when she first saw him--quite two years older!
"It would hurt Mother awfully," he said.
Fleur drew her hand away.
"You've got to choose."
Jon slid off the table on to his knees.
"But why not tell them? They can't really stop us, Fleur!"
"They can! I tell you, they can."
"How?"
"We're utterly dependent--by putting money pressure, and all sorts of
other pressure. I'm not patient, Jon."
"But it's deceiving them."
Fleur got up.
"You can't really love me, or you wouldn't hesitate. 'He either fears
his fate too much!'"
Lifting his hands to her waist, Jon forced her to sit down again. She
hurried on:
"I've planned it all out. We've only to go to Scotland. When we're
married they'll soon come round. People always come round to facts.
Don't you see, Jon?"
"But to hurt them so awfully!"
So he would rather hurt her than those people of his! "All right, then;
let me go!"
Jon got up and put his back against the door.
"I expect you're right," he said slowly; "but I want to think it over."
She could see that he was seething with feelings he wanted to express;
but she did not mean to help him. She hated herself at this moment and
almost hated him. Why had she to do all the work to secure their love?
It wasn't fair. And then she saw his eyes, adoring and distressed.
"Don't look like that! I only don't want to lose you, Jon."
"You can't lose me so long as you want me."
"Oh, yes, I can."
Jon put his hands on her shoulders.
"Fleur, do you know anything you haven't told me?"
It was the point-blank question she had dreaded. She looked straight at
him, and answered: "No." She had burnt her boats; but what did it
matter, if she got him? He would forgive her. And throwing her arms
round his neck, she kissed him on the lips. She was winning! She felt
it in the beating of his heart against her, in the closing of his eyes.
"I want to make sure! I want to make sure!" she whispered. "Promise!"
Jon did not answer. His face had the stillness of extreme trouble. At
last he said:
"It's like hitting them. I must think a little, Fleur. I really must."
Fleur slipped out of his arms.
"Oh! Very well!" And suddenly she burst into tears of disappointment,
shame, and overstrain. Followed five minutes of acute misery. Jon's
remorse and tenderness knew no bounds; but he did not promise. Despite
her will to cry, "Very well, then, if you don't love me enough-goodbye!"
she dared not. From birth accustomed to her own way, this check from one
so young, so tender, so devoted, baffled and surprised her. She wanted
to push him away from her, to try what anger and coldness would do, and
again she dared not. The knowledge that she was scheming to rush him
blindfold into the irrevocable weakened everything--weakened the
sincerity of pique, and the sincerity of passion; even her kisses had not
the lure she wished for them. That stormy little meeting ended
inconclusively.
"Will you some tea, gnadiges Fraulein?"
Pushing Jon from her, she cried out:
"No-no, thank you! I'm just going."
And before he could prevent her she was gone.
She went stealthily, mopping her gushed, stained cheeks, frightened,
angry, very miserable. She had stirred Jon up so fearfully, yet nothing
definite was promised or arranged! But the more uncertain and hazardous
the future, the more "the will to have" worked its tentacles into the
flesh of her heart--like some burrowing tick!
No one was at Green Street. Winifred had gone with Imogen to see a play
which some said was allegorical, and others "very exciting, don't you
know." It was because of what others said that Winifred and Imogen had
gone. Fleur went on to Paddington. Through the carriage the air from
the brick-kilns of West Drayton and the late hayfields fanned her still
gushed cheeks. Flowers had seemed to be had for the picking; now they
were all thorned and prickled. But the golden flower within the crown of
spikes seemed to her tenacious spirit all the fairer and more desirable.
IX
THE FAT IN THE FIRE
On reaching home Fleur found an atmosphere so peculiar that it penetrated
even the perplexed aura of her own private life. Her mother was
inaccessibly entrenched in a brown study; her father contemplating fate
in the vinery. Neither of them had a word to throw to a dog. 'Is it
because of me?' thought Fleur. 'Or because of Profond?' To her mother
she said:
"What's the matter with Father?"
Her mother answered with a shrug of her shoulders.
To her father:
"What's the matter with Mother?"
Her father answered:
"Matter? What should be the matter?" and gave her a sharp look.
"By the way," murmured Fleur, "Monsieur Profond is going a 'small' voyage
on his yacht, to the South Seas."
Soames examined a branch on which no grapes were growing.
"This vine's a failure," he said. "I've had young Mont here. He asked
me something about you."
"Oh! How do you like him, Father?"
"He--he's a product--like all these young people."
"What were you at his age, dear?"
Soames smiled grimly.
"We went to work, and didn't play about--flying and motoring, and making
love."
"Didn't you ever make love?"
She avoided looking at him while she said that, but she saw him well
enough. His pale face had reddened, his eyebrows, where darkness was
still mingled with the grey, had come close together.
"I had no time or inclination to philander."
"Perhaps you had a grand passion."
Soames looked at her intently.
"Yes--if you want to know--and much good it did me." He moved away,
along by the hot-water pipes. Fleur tiptoed silently after him.
"Tell me about it, Father!"
Soames became very still.
"What should you want to know about such things, at your age?"
"Is she alive?"
He nodded.
"And married?" Yes."
"It's Jon Forsyte's mother, isn't it? And she was your wife first."
It was said in a flash of intuition. Surely his opposition came from his
anxiety that she should not know of that old wound to his pride. But she
was startled. To see some one so old and calm wince as if struck, to
hear so sharp a note of pain in his voice!
"Who told you that? If your aunt! I can't bear the affair talked of."
"But, darling," said Fleur, softly, "it's so long ago."
"Long ago or not, I...."
Fleur stood stroking his arm.
"I've tried to forget," he said suddenly; "I don't wish to be reminded."
And then, as if venting some long and secret irritation, he added: "In
these days people don't understand. Grand passion, indeed! No one knows
what it is."
"I do," said Fleur, almost in a whisper.
Soames, who had turned his back on her, spun round.
"What are you talking of--a child like you!"
"Perhaps I've inherited it, Father."
"What?"
"For her son, you see."
He was pale as a sheet, and she knew that she was as bad. They stood
staring at each other in the steamy heat, redolent of the mushy scent of
earth, of potted geranium, and of vines coming along fast.
"This is crazy," said Soames at last, between dry lips.
Scarcely moving her own, she murmured:
"Don't be angry, Father. I can't help it."
But she could see he wasn't angry; only scared, deeply scared.
"I thought that foolishness," he stammered, "was all forgotten."
"Oh, no! It's ten times what it was."
Soames kicked at the hot-water pipe. The hapless movement touched her,
who had no fear of her father--none.
"Dearest!" she said. "What must be, must, you know."
"Must!" repeated Soames. "You don't know what you're talking of. Has
that boy been told?"
The blood rushed into her cheeks.
"Not yet."
He had turned from her again, and, with one shoulder a little raised,
stood staring fixedly at a joint in the pipes.
"It's most distasteful to me," he said suddenly; "nothing could be more
so. Son of that fellow! It's--it's--perverse!"
She had noted, almost unconsciously, that he did not say "son of that
woman," and again her intuition began working.
Did the ghost of that grand passion linger in some corner of his heart?
She slipped her hand under his arm.
"Jon's father is quite ill and old; I saw him."
"You--?"
"Yes, I went there with Jon; I saw them both."
"Well, and what did they say to you?"
"Nothing. They were very polite."
"They would be." He resumed his contemplation of the pipe-joint, and
then said suddenly:
"I must think this over--I'll speak to you again to-night."
She knew this was final for the moment, and stole away, leaving him still
looking at the pipe-joint. She wandered into the fruit-garden, among the
raspberry and currant bushes, without impetus to pick and eat. Two
months ago--she was light-hearted! Even two days ago--light-hearted,
before Prosper Profond told her. Now she felt tangled in a web-of
passions, vested rights, oppressions and revolts, the ties of love and
hate. At this dark moment of discouragement there seemed, even to her
hold-fast nature, no way out. How deal with it--how sway and bend
things to her will, and get her heart's desire? And, suddenly, round the
corner of the high box hedge, she came plump on her mother, walking
swiftly, with an open letter in her hand. Her bosom was heaving, her
eyes dilated, her cheeks flushed. Instantly Fleur thought: 'The yacht!
Poor Mother!'
Annette gave her a wide startled look, and said:
"J'ai la migraine."
"I'm awfully sorry, Mother."
"Oh, yes! you and your father--sorry!"
"But, Mother--I am. I know what it feels like."
Annette's startled eyes grew wide, till the whites showed above them.
"Poor innocent!" she said.
Her mother--so self-possessed, and commonsensical--to look and speak like
this! It was all frightening! Her father, her mother, herself! And only
two months back they had seemed to have everything they wanted in this
world.
Annette crumpled the letter in her hand. Fleur knew that she must ignore
the sight.
"Can't I do anything for your head, Mother?"
Annette shook that head and walked on, swaying her hips.
'It's cruel,' thought Fleur, 'and I was glad! That man! What do men
come prowling for, disturbing everything! I suppose he's tired of her.
What business has he to be tired of my mother? What business!' And at
that thought, so natural and so peculiar, she uttered a little choked
laugh.
She ought, of course, to be delighted, but what was there to be delighted
at? Her father didn't really care! Her mother did, perhaps? She
entered the orchard, and sat down under a cherry-tree. A breeze sighed in
the higher boughs; the sky seen through their green was very blue and
very white in cloud--those heavy white clouds almost always present in
river landscape. Bees, sheltering out of the wind, hummed softly, and
over the lush grass fell the thick shade from those fruit-trees planted
by her father five-and-twenty, years ago. Birds were almost silent, the
cuckoos had ceased to sing, but wood-pigeons were cooing. The breath and
drone and cooing of high summer were not for long a sedative to her
excited nerves. Crouched over her knees she began to scheme. Her father
must be made to back her up. Why should he mind so long as she was
happy? She had not lived for nearly nineteen years without knowing that
her future was all he really cared about. She had, then, only to
convince him that her future could not be happy without Jon. He thought
it a mad fancy. How foolish the old were, thinking they could tell what
the young felt! Had not he confessed that he--when young--had loved with
a grand passion? He ought to understand! 'He piles up his money for
me,' she thought; 'but what's the use, if I'm not going to be happy?'
Money, and all it bought, did not bring happiness. Love only brought
that. The ox-eyed daisies in this orchard, which gave it such a moony
look sometimes, grew wild and happy, and had their hour. 'They oughtn't
to have called me Fleur,' she mused, 'if they didn't mean me to have my
hour, and be happy while it lasts.' Nothing real stood in the way, like
poverty, or disease--sentiment only, a ghost from the unhappy past! Jon
was right. They wouldn't let you live, these old people! They made
mistakes, committed crimes, and wanted their children to go on paying!
The breeze died away; midges began to bite. She got up, plucked a piece
of honeysuckle, and went in.
It was hot that night. Both she and her mother had put on thin, pale low
frocks. The dinner flowers were pale. Fleur was struck with the pale
look of everything; her father's face, her mother's shoulders; the pale
panelled walls, the pale grey velvety carpet, the lamp-shade, even the
soup was pale. There was not one spot of colour in the room, not even
wine in the pale glasses, for no one drank it. What was not pale was
black--her father's clothes, the butler's clothes, her retriever
stretched out exhausted in the window, the curtains black with a cream
pattern. A moth came in, and that was pale. And silent was that
half-mourning dinner in the heat.
Her father called her back as she was following her mother out.
She sat down beside him at the table, and, unpinning the pale
honeysuckle, put it to her nose.
"I've been thinking," he said.
"Yes, dear?"
"It's extremely painful for me to talk, but there's no help for it. I
don't know if you understand how much you are to me I've never spoken of
it, I didn't think it necessary; but--but you're everything. Your
mother--" he paused, staring at his finger-bowl of Venetian glass.
"Yes?"'
"I've only you to look to. I've never had--never wanted anything else,
since you were born."
"I know," Fleur murmured.
Soames moistened his lips.
"You may think this a matter I can smooth over and arrange for you.
You're mistaken. I'm helpless."
Fleur did not speak.
"Quite apart from my own feelings," went on Soames with more resolution,
"those two are not amenable to anything I can say. They--they hate me,
as people always hate those whom they have injured." "But he--Jon--"
"He's their flesh and blood, her only child. Probably he means to her
what you mean to me. It's a deadlock."
"No," cried Fleur, "no, Father!"
Soames leaned back, the image of pale patience, as if resolved on the
betrayal of no emotion.
"Listen!" he said. "You're putting the feelings of two months--two
months--against the feelings of thirty-five years! What chance do you
think you have? Two months--your very first love affair, a matter of
half a dozen meetings, a few walks and talks, a few kisses--against,
against what you can't imagine, what no one could who hasn't been through
it. Come, be reasonable, Fleur! It's midsummer madness!"
Fleur tore the honeysuckle into little, slow bits.
"The madness is in letting the past spoil it all.
"What do we care about the past? It's our lives, not yours."
Soames raised his hand to his forehead, where suddenly she saw moisture
shining.
"Whose child are you?" he said. "Whose child is he? The present is
linked with the past, the future with both. There's no getting away from
that."
She had never heard philosophy pass those lips before. Impressed even in
her agitation, she leaned her elbows on the table, her chin on her hands.
"But, Father, consider it practically. We want each other. There's ever
so much money, and nothing whatever in the way but sentiment. Let's bury
the past, Father."
His answer was a sigh.
"Besides," said Fleur gently, "you can't prevent us."
"I don't suppose," said Soames, "that if left to myself I should try to
prevent you; I must put up with things, I know, to keep your affection.
But it's not I who control this matter. That's what I want you to
realise before it's too late. If you go on thinking you can get your way
and encourage this feeling, the blow will be much heavier when you find
you can't."
"Oh!" cried Fleur, "help me, Father; you can help me, you know."
Soames made a startled movement of negation. "I?" he said bitterly.
"Help? I am the impediment--the just cause and impediment--isn't that
the jargon? You have my blood in your veins."
He rose.
"Well, the fat's in the fire. If you persist in your wilfulness you'll
have yourself to blame. Come! Don't be foolish, my child--my only
child!"
Fleur laid her forehead against his shoulder.
All was in such turmoil within her. But no good to show it! No good at
all! She broke away from him, and went out into the twilight,
distraught, but unconvinced. All was indeterminate and vague within her,
like the shapes and shadows in the garden, except--her will to have. A
poplar pierced up into the dark-blue sky and touched a white star there.
The dew wetted her shoes, and chilled her bare shoulders. She went down
to the river bank, and stood gazing at a moonstreak on the darkening
water. Suddenly she smelled tobacco smoke, and a white figure emerged as
if created by the moon. It was young Mont in flannels, standing in his
boat. She heard the tiny hiss of his cigarette extinguished in the
water.
"Fleur," came his voice, "don't be hard on a poor devil! I've been
waiting hours."
"For what?"
"Come in my boat!"
"Not I."
"Why not?"
"I'm not a water-nymph."
"Haven't you any romance in you? Don't be modern, Fleur!"
He appeared on the path within a yard of her.
"Go away!"
"Fleur, I love you. Fleur!"
Fleur uttered a short laugh.
"Come again," she said, "when I haven't got my wish."
"What is your wish?"
"Ask another."
"Fleur," said Mont, and his voice sounded strange, "don't mock me! Even
vivisected dogs are worth decent treatment before they're cut up for
good."
Fleur shook her head; but her lips were trembling.
"Well, you shouldn't make me jump. Give me a cigarette."
Mont gave her one, lighted it, and another for himself.
"I don't want to talk rot," he said, "but please imagine all the rot that
all the lovers that ever were have talked, and all my special rot thrown
in."
"Thank you, I have imagined it. Good-night!" They stood for a moment
facing each other in the shadow of an acacia-tree with very moonlit
blossoms, and the smoke from their cigarettes mingled in the air between
them.
"Also ran: 'Michael Mont'?" he said. Fleur turned abruptly toward the
house. On the lawn she stopped to look back. Michael Mont was whirling
his arms above him; she could see them dashing at his head; then waving
at the moonlit blossoms of the acacia. His voice just reached her.
"Jolly-jolly!" Fleur shook herself. She couldn't help him, she had too
much trouble of her own! On the verandah she stopped very suddenly
again. Her mother was sitting in the drawing-room at her writing bureau,
quite alone. There was nothing remarkable in the expression of her face
except its utter immobility. But she looked desolate! Fleur went
upstairs. At the door of her room she paused. She could hear her father
walking up and down, up and down the picture-gallery.
'Yes,' she thought, jolly! Oh, Jon!'
X
DECISION
When Fleur left him Jon stared at the Austrian. She was a thin woman
with a dark face and the concerned expression of one who has watched
every little good that life once had slip from her, one by one. "No tea?"
she said.
Susceptible to the disappointment in her voice, Jon murmured:
"No, really; thanks."
"A lil cup--it ready. A lil cup and cigarette."
Fleur was gone! Hours of remorse and indecision lay before him! And
with a heavy sense of disproportion he smiled, and said:
"Well--thank you!"
She brought in a little pot of tea with two little cups, and a silver box
of cigarettes on a little tray.
"Sugar? Miss Forsyte has much sugar--she buy my sugar, my friend's sugar
also. Miss Forsyte is a veree kind lady. I am happy to serve her. You
her brother?"
"Yes," said Jon, beginning to puff the second cigarette of his life.
"Very young brother," said the Austrian, with a little anxious smile,
which reminded him of the wag of a dog's tail.
"May I give you some?" he said. "And won't you sit down, please?"
The Austrian shook her head.
"Your father a very nice old man--the most nice old man I ever see. Miss
Forsyte tell me all about him. Is he better?"
Her words fell on Jon like a reproach. "Oh Yes, I think he's all right."
"I like to see him again," said the Austrian, putting a hand on her
heart; "he have veree kind heart."
"Yes," said Jon. And again her words seemed to him a reproach.
"He never give no trouble to no one, and smile so gentle."
"Yes, doesn't he?"
"He look at Miss Forsyte so funny sometimes. I tell him all my story; he
so sympatisch. Your mother--she nice and well?"
"Yes, very."
"He have her photograph on his dressing-table. Veree beautiful"
Jon gulped down his tea. This woman, with her concerned face and her
reminding words, was like the first and second murderers.
"Thank you," he said; "I must go now. May--may I leave this with you?"
He put a ten-shilling note on the tray with a doubting hand and gained
the door. He heard the Austrian gasp, and hurried out. He had just time
to catch his train, and all the way to Victoria looked at every face that
passed, as lovers will, hoping against hope. On reaching Worthing he put
his luggage into the local train, and set out across the Downs for
Wansdon, trying to walk off his aching irresolution. So long as he went
full bat, he could enjoy the beauty of those green slopes, stopping now
and again to sprawl on the grass, admire the perfection of a wild rose or
listen to a lark's song. But the war of motives within him was but
postponed--the longing for Fleur, and the hatred of deception. He came
to the old chalk-pit above Wansdon with his mind no more made up than
when he started. To see both sides of a question vigorously was at once
Jon's strength and weakness. He tramped in, just as the first
dinner-bell rang. His things had already been brought up. He had a
hurried bath and came down to find Holly alone--Val had gone to Town and
would not be back till the last train.
Since Val's advice to him to ask his sister what was the matter between
the two families, so much had happened--Fleur's disclosure in the Green
Park, her visit to Robin Hill, to-day's meeting--that there seemed
nothing to ask. He talked of Spain, his sunstroke, Val's horses, their
father's health. Holly startled him by saying that she thought their
father not at all well. She had been twice to Robin Hill for the
week-end. He had seemed fearfully languid, sometimes even in pain, but
had always refused to talk about himself.
"He's awfully dear and unselfish--don't you think, Jon?"
Feeling far from dear and unselfish himself, Jon answered: "Rather!"
"I think, he's been a simply perfect father, so long as I can remember."
"Yes," answered Jon, very subdued.
"He's never interfered, and he's always seemed to understand. I shall
never forget his letting me go to South Africa in the Boer War when I was
in love with Val."
"That was before he married Mother, wasn't it?" said Jon suddenly.
"Yes. Why?"
"Oh! nothing. Only, wasn't she engaged to Fleur's father first?"
Holly put down the spoon she was using, and raised her eyes. Her stare
was circumspect. What did the boy know? Enough to make it better to
tell him? She could not decide. He looked strained and worried,
altogether older, but that might be the sunstroke.
"There was something," she said. "Of course we were out there, and got
no news of anything." She could not take the risk.
It was not her secret. Besides, she was in the dark about his feelings
now. Before Spain she had made sure he was in love; but boys were boys;
that was seven weeks ago, and all Spain between.
She saw that he knew she was putting him off, and added:
"Have you heard anything of Fleur?"
"Yes."
His face told her, then, more than the most elaborate explanations. So he
had not forgotten!
She said very quietly: "Fleur is awfully attractive, Jon, but you
know--Val and I don't really like her very much."
"Why?"
"We think she's got rather a 'having' nature."
"'Having'? I don't know what you mean. She--she--" he pushed his
dessert plate away, got up, and went to the window.
Holly, too, got up, and put her arm round his waist.
"Don't be angry, Jon dear. We can't all see people in the same light,
can we? You know, I believe each of us only has about one or two people
who can see the best that's in us, and bring it out. For you I think
it's your mother. I once saw her looking at a letter of yours; it was
wonderful to see her face. I think she's the most beautiful woman I ever
saw--Age doesn't seem to touch her."
Jon's face softened; then again became tense. Everybody--everybody was
against him and Fleur! It all strengthened the appeal of her words:
"Make sure of me--marry me, Jon!"
Here, where he had passed that wonderful week with her--the tug of her
enchantment, the ache in his heart increased with every minute that she
was not there to make the room, the garden, the very air magical. Would
he ever be able to live down here, not seeing her? And he closed up
utterly, going early to bed. It would not make him healthy, wealthy, and
wise, but it closeted him with memory of Fleur in her fancy frock. He
heard Val's arrival--the Ford discharging cargo, then the stillness of
the summer night stole back--with only the bleating of very distant
sheep, and a night-Jar's harsh purring. He leaned far out. Cold
moon--warm air--the Downs like silver! Small wings, a stream bubbling,
the rambler roses! God--how empty all of it without her! In the Bible
it was written: Thou shalt leave father and mother and cleave to--Fleur!
Let him have pluck, and go and tell them! They couldn't stop him
marrying her--they wouldn't want to stop him when they knew how he felt.
Yes! He would go! Bold and open--Fleur was wrong!
The night-jar ceased, the sheep were silent; the only sound in the
darkness was the bubbling of the stream. And Jon in his bed slept, freed
from the worst of life's evils--indecision.
XI
TIMOTHY PROPHESIES
On the day of the cancelled meeting at the National Gallery began the
second anniversary of the resurrection of England's pride and glory--or,
more shortly, the top hat. "Lord's"--that festival which the War had
driven from the field--raised its light and dark blue flags for the
second time, displaying almost every feature of a glorious past. Here,
in the luncheon interval, were all species of female and one species of
male hat, protecting the multiple types of face associated with "the
classes." The observing Forsyte might discern in the free or
unconsidered seats a certain number of the squash-hatted, but they hardly
ventured on the grass; the old school--or schools--could still rejoice
that the proletariat was not yet paying the necessary half-crown. Here
was still a close borough, the only one left on a large scale--for the
papers were about to estimate the attendance at ten thousand. And the
ten thousand, all animated by one hope, were asking each other one
question: "Where are you lunching?" Something wonderfully uplifting and
reassuring in that query and the sight of so many people like themselves
voicing it! What reserve power in the British realm--enough pigeons,
lobsters, lamb, salmon mayonnaise, strawberries, and bottles of champagne
to feed the lot! No miracle in prospect--no case of seven loaves and a
few fishes--faith rested on surer foundations. Six thousand top hats,
four thousand parasols would be doffed and furled, ten thousand mouths
all speaking the same English would be filled. There was life in the old
dog yet! Tradition! And again Tradition! How strong and how elastic!
Wars might rage, taxation prey, Trades Unions take toll, and Europe
perish of starvation; but the ten thousand would be fed; and, within
their ring fence, stroll upon green turf, wear their top hats, and
meet--themselves. The heart was sound, the pulse still regular. E-ton!
E-ton! Har-r-o-o-o-w!
Among the many Forsytes, present on a hunting-ground theirs, by personal
prescriptive right, or proxy, was Soames with his wife and daughter. He
had not been at either school, he took no interest in cricket, but he
wanted Fleur to show her frock, and he wanted to wear his top hat parade
it again in peace and plenty among his peers. He walked sedately with
Fleur between him and Annette. No women equalled them, so far as he
could see. They could walk, and hold themselves up; there was substance
in their good looks; the modern woman had no build, no chest, no
anything! He remembered suddenly with what intoxication of pride he had
walked round with Irene in the first years of his first marriage. And
how they used to lunch on the drag which his mother would make his father
have, because it was so "chic"--all drags and carriages in those days,
not these lumbering great Stands! And how consistently Montague Dartie
had drunk too much. He supposed that people drank too much still, but
there was not the scope for it there used to be. He remembered George
Forsyte--whose brothers Roger and Eustace had been at Harrow and Eton
--towering up on the top of the drag waving a light-blue flag with one
hand and a dark-blue flag with the other, and shouting "Etroow-Harrton!"
Just when everybody was silent, like the buffoon he had always been; and
Eustace got up to the nines below, too dandified to wear any colour or
take any notice. H'm! Old days, and Irene in grey silk shot with palest
green. He looked, sideways, at Fleur's face. Rather colourless-no
light, no eagerness! That love affair was preying on her--a bad
business! He looked beyond, at his wife's face, rather more touched up
than usual, a little disdainful--not that she had any business to
disdain, so far as he could see. She was taking Profond's defection with
curious quietude; or was his "small" voyage just a blind? If so, he
should refuse to see it! Having promenaded round the pitch and in front
of the pavilion, they sought Winifred's table in the Bedouin Club tent.
This Club--a new "cock and hen"--had been founded in the interests of
travel, and of a gentleman with an old Scottish name, whose father had
somewhat strangely been called Levi. Winifred had joined, not because
she had travelled, but because instinct told her that a Club with such a
name and such a founder was bound to go far; if one didn't join at once
one might never have the chance. Its tent, with a text from the Koran on
an orange ground, and a small green camel embroidered over the entrance,
was the most striking on the ground. Outside it they found Jack Cardigan
in a dark blue tie (he had once played for Harrow), batting with a
Malacca cane to show how that fellow ought to have hit that ball. He
piloted them in. Assembled in Winifred's corner were Imogen, Benedict
with his young wife, Val Dartie without Holly, Maud and her husband, and,
after Soames and his two were seated, one empty place.
"I'm expecting Prosper," said Winifred, "but he's so busy with his
yacht."
Soames stole a glance. No movement in his wife's face! Whether that
fellow were coming or not, she evidently knew all about it. It did not
escape him that Fleur, too, looked at her mother. If Annette didn't
respect his feelings, she might think of Fleur's! The conversation, very
desultory, was syncopated by Jack Cardigan talking about "mid-off." He
cited all the "great mid-offs" from the beginning of time, as if they had
been a definite racial entity in the composition of the British people.
Soames had finished his lobster, and was beginning on pigeon-pie, when he
heard the words, "I'm a small bit late, Mrs. Dartie," and saw that there
was no longer any empty place. That fellow was sitting between Annette
and Imogen. Soames ate steadily on, with an occasional word to Maud and
Winifred. Conversation buzzed around him. He heard the voice of Profond
say:
"I think you're mistaken, Mrs. Forsyde; I'll--I'll bet Miss Forsyde
agrees with me."
"In what?" came Fleur's clear voice across the table.
"I was sayin', young gurls are much the same as they always were
--there's very small difference."
"Do you know so much about them?"
That sharp reply caught the ears of all, and Soames moved uneasily on his
thin green chair.
"Well, I don't know, I think they want their own small way, and I think
they always did."
"Indeed!"
"Oh, but--Prosper," Winifred interjected comfortably, "the girls in the
streets--the girls who've been in munitions, the little flappers in the
shops; their manners now really quite hit you in the eye."
At the word "hit" Jack Cardigan stopped his disquisition; and in the
silence Monsieur Profond said:
"It was inside before, now it's outside; that's all."
"But their morals!" cried Imogen.
"Just as moral as they ever were, Mrs. Cardigan, but they've got more
opportunity."
The saying, so cryptically cynical, received a little laugh from Imogen,
a slight opening of Jack Cardigan's mouth, and a creak from Soames'
chair.
Winifred said: "That's too bad, Prosper."
"What do you say, Mrs. Forsyde; don't you think human nature's always the
same?"
Soames subdued a sudden longing to get up and kick the fellow. He heard
his wife reply:
"Human nature is not the same in England as anywhere else." That was her
confounded mockery!
"Well, I don't know much about this small country"--'No, thank God!'
thought Soames--"but I should say the pot was boilin' under the lid
everywhere. We all want pleasure, and we always did."
Damn the fellow! His cynicism was--was outrageous!
When lunch was over they broke up into couples for the digestive
promenade. Too proud to notice, Soames knew perfectly that Annette and
that fellow had gone prowling round together. Fleur was with Val; she
had chosen him, no doubt, because he knew that boy. He himself had
Winifred for partner. They walked in the bright, circling stream, a
little flushed and sated, for some minutes, till Winifred sighed:
"I wish we were back forty years, old boy!"
Before the eyes of her spirit an interminable procession of her own
"Lord's" frocks was passing, paid for with the money of her father, to
save a recurrent crisis. "It's been very amusing, after all. Sometimes I
even wish Monty was back. What do you think of people nowadays, Soames?"
"Precious little style. The thing began to go to pieces with bicycles
and motor-cars; the War has finished it."
"I wonder what's coming?" said Winifred in a voice dreamy from
pigeon-pie. "I'm not at all sure we shan't go back to crinolines and
pegtops. Look at that dress!"
Soames shook his head.
"There's money, but no faith in things. We don't lay by for the future.
These youngsters--it's all a short life and a merry one with them."
"There's a hat!" said Winifred. "I don't know--when you come to think of
the people killed and all that in the War, it's rather wonderful, I
think. There's no other country--Prosper says the rest are all bankrupt,
except America; and of course her men always took their style in dress
from us."
"Is that chap," said Soames, "really going to the South Seas?"
"Oh! one never knows where Prosper's going!"
"He's a sign of the times," muttered Soames, "if you like."
Winifred's hand gripped his arm.
"Don't turn your head," she said in a low voice, "but look to your right
in the front row of the Stand."
Soames looked as best he could under that limitation. A man in a grey
top hat, grey-bearded, with thin brown, folded cheeks, and a certain
elegance of posture, sat there with a woman in a lawn-coloured frock,
whose dark eyes were fixed on himself. Soames looked quickly at his
feet. How funnily feet moved, one after the other like that! Winifred's
voice said in his ear:
"Jolyon looks very ill; but he always had style. She doesn't change
--except her hair."
"Why did you tell Fleur about that business?"
"I didn't; she picked it up. I always knew she would."
"Well, it's a mess. She's set her heart upon their boy."
"The little wretch," murmured Winifred. "She tried to take me in about
that. What shall you do, Soames?"
"Be guided by events."
They moved on, silent, in the almost solid crowd.
"Really," said Winifred suddenly; "it almost seems like Fate. Only
that's so old-fashioned. Look! there are George and Eustace!"
George Forsyte's lofty bulk had halted before them.
"Hallo, Soames!" he said. "Just met Profond and your wife. You'll catch
'em if you put on pace. Did you ever go to see old Timothy?"
Soames nodded, and the streams forced them apart.
"I always liked old George," said Winifred. "He's so droll."
"I never did," said Soames. "Where's your seat? I shall go to mine.
Fleur may be back there."
Having seen Winifred to her seat, he regained his own, conscious of
small, white, distant figures running, the click of the bat, the cheers
and counter-cheers. No Fleur, and no Annette! You could expect nothing
of women nowadays! They had the vote. They were "emancipated," and much
good it was doing them! So Winifred would go back, would she, and put up
with Dartie all over again? To have the past once more--to be sitting
here as he had sat in '83 and '84, before he was certain that his
marriage with Irene had gone all wrong, before her antagonism had become
so glaring that with the best will in the world he could not overlook it.
The sight of her with that fellow had brought all memory back. Even now
he could not understand why she had been so impracticable. She could
love other men; she had it in her! To himself, the one person she ought
to have loved, she had chosen to refuse her heart. It seemed to him,
fantastically, as he looked back, that all this modern relaxation of
marriage--though its forms and laws were the same as when he married
her--that all this modern looseness had come out of her revolt; it seemed
to him, fantastically, that she had started it, till all decent ownership
of anything had gone, or was on the point of going. All came from her!
And now--a pretty state of things! Homes! How could you have them
without mutual ownership? Not that he had ever had a real home! But had
that been his fault? He had done his best. And his rewards were--those
two sitting in that Stand, and this affair of Fleur's!
And overcome by loneliness he thought: 'Shan't wait any longer! They
must find their own way back to the hotel--if they mean to come!' Hailing
a cab outside the ground, he said:
"Drive me to the Bayswater Road." His old aunts had never failed him.
To them he had meant an ever-welcome visitor. Though they were gone,
there, still, was Timothy!
Smither was standing in the open doorway.
"Mr. Soames! I was just taking the air. Cook will be so pleased."
"How is Mr. Timothy?"
"Not himself at all these last few days, sir; he's been talking a great
deal. Only this morning he was saying: 'My brother James, he's getting
old.' His mind wanders, Mr. Soames, and then he will talk of them. He
troubles about their investments. The other day he said: 'There's my
brother Jolyon won't look at Consols'--he seemed quite down about it.
Come in, Mr. Soames, come in! It's such a pleasant change!"
"Well," said Soames, "just for a few minutes."
"No," murmured Smither in the hall, where the air had the singular
freshness of the outside day, "we haven't been very satisfied with him,
not all this week. He's always been one to leave a titbit to the end;
but ever since Monday he's been eating it first. If you notice a dog,
Mr. Soames, at its dinner, it eats the meat first. We've always thought
it such a good sign of Mr. Timothy at his age to leave it to the last,
but now he seems to have lost all his self-control; and, of course, it
makes him leave the rest. The doctor doesn't make anything of it,
but"--Smither shook her head--"he seems to think he's got to eat it
first, in case he shouldn't get to it. That and his talking makes us
anxious."
"Has he said anything important?"
"I shouldn't like to say that, Mr. Soames; but he's turned against his
Will. He gets quite pettish--and after having had it out every morning
for years, it does seem funny. He said the other day: 'They want my
money.' It gave me such a turn, because, as I said to him, nobody wants
his money, I'm sure. And it does seem a pity he should be thinking about
money at his time of life. I took my courage in my 'ands. 'You know,
Mr. Timothy,' I said, 'my dear mistress'--that's Miss Forsyte, Mr.
Soames, Miss Ann that trained me--'she never thought about money,' I
said, 'it was all character with her.' He looked at me, I can't tell you
how funny, and he said quite dry: 'Nobody wants my character.' Think of
his saying a thing like that! But sometimes he'll say something as sharp
and sensible as anything."
Soames, who had been staring at an old print by the hat-rack, thinking,
'That's got value!' murmured: "I'll go up and see him, Smither."
"Cook's with him," answered Smither above her corsets; "she will be
pleased to see you."
He mounted slowly, with the thought: 'Shan't care to live to be that
age.'
On the second floor, he paused, and tapped. The door was opened, and he
saw the round homely face of a woman about sixty.
"Mr. Soames!" she said: "Why! Mr. Soames!"
Soames nodded. "All right, Cook!" and entered.
Timothy was propped up in bed, with his hands joined before his chest,
and his eyes fixed on the ceiling, where a fly was standing upside down.
Soames stood at the foot of the bed, facing him.
"Uncle Timothy," he said, raising his voice. "Uncle Timothy!"
Timothy's eyes left the fly, and levelled themselves on his visitor.
Soames could see his pale tongue passing over his darkish lips.
"Uncle Timothy," he said again, "is there anything I can do for you? Is
there anything you'd like to say?"
"Ha!" said Timothy.
"I've come to look you up and see that everything's all right."
Timothy nodded. He seemed trying to get used to the apparition before
him.
"Have you got everything you want?"
"No," said Timothy.
"Can I get you anything?"
"No," said Timothy.
"I'm Soames, you know; your nephew, Soames Forsyte. Your brother James'
son."
Timothy nodded.
"I shall be delighted to do anything I can for you."
Timothy beckoned. Soames went close to him:
"You--" said Timothy in a voice which seemed to have outlived tone, "you
tell them all from me--you tell them all--" and his finger tapped on
Soames' arm, "to hold on--hold on--Consols are goin' up," and he nodded
thrice.
"All right!" said Soames; "I will."
"Yes," said Timothy, and, fixing his eyes again on the ceiling, he added:
"That fly!"
Strangely moved, Soames looked at the Cook's pleasant fattish face, all
little puckers from staring at fires.
"That'll do him a world of good, sir," she said.
A mutter came from Timothy, but he was clearly speaking to himself, and
Soames went out with the cook.
"I wish I could make you a pink cream, Mr. Soames, like in old days; you
did so relish them. Good-bye, sir; it has been a pleasure."
"Take care of him, Cook, he is old."
And, shaking her crumpled hand, he went down-stairs. Smither was still
taking the air in the doorway.
"What do you think of him, Mr. Soames?"
"H'm!" Soames murmured: "He's lost touch."
"Yes," said Smither, "I was afraid you'd think that coming fresh out of
the world to see him like."
"Smither," said Soames, "we're all indebted to you."
"Oh, no, Mr. Soames, don't say that! It's a pleasure--he's such a
wonderful man."
"Well, good-bye!" said Soames, and got into his taxi.
'Going up!' he thought; 'going up!'
Reaching the hotel at Knightsbridge he went to their sitting-room, and
rang for tea. Neither of them were in. And again that sense of
loneliness came over him. These hotels. What monstrous great places
they were now! He could remember when there was nothing bigger than
Long's or Brown's, Morley's or the Tavistock, and the heads that were
shaken over the Langham and the Grand. Hotels and Clubs--Clubs and
Hotels; no end to them now! And Soames, who had just been watching at
Lord's a miracle of tradition and continuity, fell into reverie over the
changes in that London where he had been born five-and-sixty years
before. Whether Consols were going up or not, London had become a
terrific property. No such property in the world, unless it were New
York! There was a lot of hysteria in the papers nowadays; but any one
who, like himself, could remember London sixty years ago, and see it now,
realised the fecundity and elasticity of wealth. They had only to keep
their heads, and go at it steadily. Why! he remembered cobblestones, and
stinking straw on the floor of your cab. And old Timothy--what could he
not have told them, if he had kept his memory! Things were unsettled,
people in a funk or in a hurry, but here were London and the Thames, and
out there the British Empire, and the ends of the earth. "Consols are
goin' up!" He should n't be a bit surprised. It was the breed that
counted. And all that was bull-dogged in Soames stared for a moment out
of his grey eyes, till diverted by the print of a Victorian picture on
the walls. The hotel had bought three dozen of that little lot! The old
hunting or "Rake's Progress" prints in the old inns were worth looking
at--but this sentimental stuff--well, Victorianism had gone! "Tell them
to hold on!" old Timothy had said. But to what were they to hold on in
this modern welter of the "democratic principle"? Why, even privacy was
threatened! And at the thought that privacy might perish, Soames pushed
back his teacup and went to the window. Fancy owning no more of Nature
than the crowd out there owned of the flowers and trees and waters of
Hyde Park! No, no! Private possession underlay everything worth having.
The world had slipped its sanity a bit, as dogs now and again at full
moon slipped theirs and went off for a night's rabbiting; but the world,
like the dog, knew where its bread was buttered and its bed warm, and
would come back sure enough to the only home worth having--to private
ownership. The world was in its second childhood for the moment, like
old Timothy--eating its titbit first!
He heard a sound behind him, and saw that his wife and daughter had come
in.
"So you're back!" he said.
Fleur did not answer; she stood for a moment looking at him and her
mother, then passed into her bedroom. Annette poured herself out a cup
of tea.
"I am going to Paris, to my mother, Soames." "Oh! To your mother?"
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"I do not know."
"And when are you going?"
"On Monday."
Was she really going to her mother? Odd, how indifferent he felt! Odd,
how clearly she had perceived the indifference he would feel so long as
there was no scandal. And suddenly between her and himself he saw
distinctly the face he had seen that afternoon--Irene's.
"Will you want money?"
"Thank you; I have enough."
"Very well. Let us know when you are coming back."
Annette put down the cake she was fingering, and, looking up through
darkened lashes, said:
"Shall I give Maman any message?"
"My regards."
Annette stretched herself, her hands on her waist, and said in French:
"What luck that you have never loved me, Soames!" Then rising, she too
left the room. Soames was glad she had spoken it in French--it seemed to
require no dealing with. Again that other face--pale, dark-eyed,
beautiful still! And there stirred far down within him the ghost of
warmth, as from sparks lingering beneath a mound of flaky ash. And Fleur
infatuated with her boy! Queer chance! Yet, was there such a thing as
chance? A man went down a street, a brick fell on his head. Ah! that
was chance, no doubt. But this! "Inherited," his girl had said.
She--she was "holding on"!
PART III
I
OLD JOLYON WALKS
Twofold impulse had made Jolyon say to his wife at breakfast "Let's go up
to Lord's!"
"Wanted"--something to abate the anxiety in which those two had lived
during the sixty hours since Jon had brought Fleur down. "Wanted"--too,
that which might assuage the pangs of memory in one who knew he might
lose them any day!
Fifty-eight years ago Jolyon had become an Eton boy, for old Jolyon's
whim had been that he should be canonised at the greatest possible
expense. Year after year he had gone to Lord's from Stanhope Gate with a
father whose youth in the eighteen-twenties had been passed without
polish in the game of cricket. Old Jolyon would speak quite openly of
swipes, full tosses, half and three-quarter balls; and young Jolyon with
the guileless snobbery of youth had trembled lest his sire should be
overheard. Only in this supreme matter of cricket he had been nervous,
for his father--in Crimean whiskers then--had ever impressed him as the
beau ideal. Though never canonised himself, Old Jolyon's natural
fastidiousness and balance had saved him from the errors of the vulgar.
How delicious, after howling in a top hat and a sweltering heat, to go
home with his father in a hansom cab, bathe, dress, and forth to the
"Disunion" Club, to dine off white bait, cutlets, and a tart, and go--two
"swells," old and young, in lavender kid gloves--to the opera or play.
And on Sunday, when the match was over, and his top hat duly broken, down
with his father in a special hansom to the "Crown and Sceptre," and the
terrace above the river--the golden sixties when the world was simple,
dandies glamorous, Democracy not born, and the books of Whyte Melville
coming thick and fast.
A generation later, with his own boy, Jolly, Harrow-buttonholed with
corn-flowers--by old Jolyon's whim his grandson had been canonised at a
trifle less expense--again Jolyon had experienced the heat and
counter-passions of the day, and come back to the cool and the strawberry
beds of Robin Hill, and billiards after dinner, his boy making the most
heart-breaking flukes and trying to seem languid and grown-up. Those two
days each year he and his son had been alone together in the world, one
on each side--and Democracy just born!
And so, he had unearthed a grey top hat, borrowed a tiny bit of
light-blue ribbon from Irene, and gingerly, keeping cool, by car and
train and taxi, had reached Lord's Ground. There, beside her in a
lawn-coloured frock with narrow black edges, he had watched the game, and
felt the old thrill stir within him.
When Soames passed, the day was spoiled. Irene's face was distorted by
compression of the lips. No good to go on sitting here with Soames or
perhaps his daughter recurring in front of them, like decimals. And he
said:
"Well, dear, if you've had enough--let's go!"
That evening Jolyon felt exhausted. Not wanting her to see him thus, he
waited till she had begun to play, and stole off to the little study. He
opened the long window for air, and the door, that he might still hear
her music drifting in; and, settled in his father's old armchair, closed
his eyes, with his head against the worn brown leather. Like that
passage of the Cesar Franck Sonata--so had been his life with her, a
divine third movement. And now this business of Jon's--this bad
business! Drifted to the edge of consciousness, he hardly knew if it
were in sleep that he smelled the scent of a cigar, and seemed to see his
father in the blackness before his closed eyes. That shape formed, went,
and formed again; as if in the very chair where he himself was sitting,
he saw his father, black-coated, with. knees crossed, glasses balanced
between thumb and finger; saw the big white moustaches, and the deep eyes
looking up below a dome of forehead and seeming to search his own,
seeming to speak. "Are you facing it, Jo? It's for you to decide.
She's only a woman!" Ah! how well he knew his father in that phrase; how
all the Victorian Age came up with it! And his answer "No, I've funked
it--funked hurting her and Jon and myself. I've got a heart; I've funked
it." But the old eyes, so much older, so much younger than his own, kept
at it; "It's your wife, your son; your past. Tackle it, my boy!" Was it
a message from walking spirit; or but the instinct of his sire living on
within him? And again came that scent of cigar smoke-from the old
saturated leather. Well! he would tackle it, write to Jon, and put the
whole thing down in black and white! And suddenly he breathed with
difficulty, with a sense of suffocation, as if his heart were swollen.
He got up and went out into the air. The stars were very bright. He
passed along the terrace round the corner of the house, till, through the
window of the music-room, he could see Irene at the piano, with
lamp-light falling on her powdery hair; withdrawn into herself she
seemed, her dark eyes staring straight before her, her hands idle.
Jolyon saw her raise those hands and clasp them over her breast. 'It's
Jon, with her,' he thought; 'all Jon! I'm dying out of her--it's
natural!'
And, careful not to be seen, he stole back.
Next day, after a bad night, he sat down to his task. He wrote with
difficulty and many erasures.
"MY DEAREST BOY,
"You are old enough to understand how very difficult it is for elders to
give themselves away to their young. Especially when--like your mother
and myself, though I shall never think of her as anything but
young--their hearts are altogether set on him to whom they must confess.
I cannot say we are conscious of having sinned exactly--people in real
life very seldom are, I believe--but most persons would say we had, and
at all events our conduct, righteous or not, has found us out. The truth
is, my dear, we both have pasts, which it is now my task to make known to
you, because they so grievously and deeply affect your future. Many,
very many years ago, as far back indeed as 1883, when she was only
twenty, your mother had the great and lasting misfortune to make an
unhappy marriage--no, not with me, Jon. Without money of her own, and
with only a stepmother--closely related to Jezebel--she was very unhappy
in her home life. It was Fleur's father that she married, my cousin
Soames Forsyte. He had pursued her very tenaciously and to do him
justice was deeply in love with her. Within a week she knew the fearful
mistake she had made. It was not his fault; it was her error of
judgment--her misfortune."
So far Jolyon had kept some semblance of irony, but now his subject
carried him away.
"Jon, I want to explain to you if I can--and it's very hard--how it is
that an unhappy marriage such as this can so easily come about. You will
of course say: 'If she didn't really love him how could she ever have
married him?' You would be right if it were not for one or two rather
terrible considerations. From this initial mistake of hers all the
subsequent trouble, sorrow, and tragedy have come, and so I must make it
clear to you if I can. You see, Jon, in those days and even to this
day--indeed, I don't see, for all the talk of enlightenment, how it can
well be otherwise--most girls are married ignorant of the sexual side of
life. Even if they know what it means they have not experienced it.
That's the crux. It is this actual lack of experience, whatever verbal
knowledge they have, which makes all the difference and all the trouble.
In a vast number of marriages-and your mother's was one--girls are not
and cannot be certain whether they love the man they marry or not; they
do not know until after that act of union which makes the reality of
marriage. Now, in many, perhaps in most doubtful cases, this act cements
and strengthens the attachment, but in other cases, and your mother's was
one, it is a revelation of mistake, a destruction of such attraction as
there was. There is nothing more tragic in a woman's life than such a
revelation, growing daily, nightly clearer. Coarse-grained and unthinking
people are apt to laugh at such a mistake, and say, 'What a fuss about
nothing!' Narrow and self-righteous people, only capable of judging the
lives of others by their own, are apt to condemn those who make this
tragic error, to condemn them for life to the dungeons they have made for
themselves. You know the expression: 'She has made her bed, she must lie
on it!' It is a hard-mouthed saying, quite unworthy of a gentleman or
lady in the best sense of those words; and I can use no stronger
condemnation. I have not been what is called a moral man, but I wish to
use no words to you, my dear, which will make you think lightly of ties
or contracts into which you enter. Heaven forbid! But with the
experience of a life behind me I do say that those who condemn the
victims of these tragic mistakes, condemn them and hold out no hands to
help them, are inhuman, or rather they would be if they had the
understanding to know what they are doing. But they haven't! Let them
go! They are as much anathema to me as I, no doubt, am to them. I have
had to say all this, because I am going to put you into a position to
judge your mother, and you are very young, without experience of what
life is. To go on with the story. After three years of effort to subdue
her shrinking--I was going to say her loathing and it's not too strong a
word, for shrinking soon becomes loathing under such circumstances--three
years of what to a sensitive, beauty-loving nature like your mother's,
Jon, was torment, she met a young man who fell in love with her. He was
the architect of this very house that we live in now, he was building it
for her and Fleur's father to live in, a new prison to hold her, in place
of the one she inhabited with him in London. Perhaps that fact played
some part in what came of it. But in any case she, too, fell in love
with him. I know it's not necessary to explain to you that one does not
precisely choose with whom one will fall in love. It comes. Very well!
It came. I can imagine--though she never said much to me about it--the
struggle that then took place in her, because, Jon, she was brought up
strictly and was not light in her ideas--not at all. However, this was an
overwhelming feeling, and it came to pass that they loved in deed as well
as in thought. Then came a fearful tragedy. I must tell you of it
because if I don't you will never understand the real situation that you
have now to face. The man whom she had married--Soames Forsyte, the
father of Fleur one night, at the height of her passion for this young
man, forcibly reasserted his rights over her. The next day she met her
lover and told him of it. Whether he committed suicide or whether he was
accidentally run over in his distraction, we never knew; but so it was.
Think of your mother as she was that evening when she heard of his death.
I happened to see her. Your grandfather sent me to help her if I could.
I only just saw her, before the door was shut against me by her husband.
But I have never forgotten her face, I can see it now. I was not in love
with her then, not for twelve years after, but I have never for gotten.
My dear boy--it is not easy to write like this. But you see, I must.
Your mother is wrapped up in you, utterly, devotedly. I don't wish to
write harshly of Soames Forsyte. I don't think harshly of him. I have
long been sorry for him; perhaps I was sorry even then. As the world
judges she was in error, he within his rights. He loved her--in his way.
She was his property. That is the view he holds of life--of human
feelings and hearts--property. It's not his fault--so was he born. To
me it is a view that has always been abhorrent--so was I born! Knowing
you as I do, I feel it cannot be otherwise than abhorrent to you. Let me
go on with the story. Your mother fled from his house that night; for
twelve years she lived quietly alone without companionship of any sort,
until in 1899 her husband--you see, he was still her husband, for he did
not attempt to divorce her, and she of course had no right to divorce
him--became conscious, it seems, of the want of children, and commenced a
long attempt to induce her to go back to him and give him a child. I was
her trustee then, under your Grandfather's Will, and I watched this going
on. While watching, I became attached to her, devotedly attached. His
pressure increased, till one day she came to me here and practically put
herself under my protection. Her husband, who was kept informed of all
her movements, attempted to force us apart by bringing a divorce suit, or
possibly he really meant it, I don't know; but anyway our names were
publicly joined. That decided us, and we became united in fact. She was
divorced, married me, and you were born. We have lived in perfect
happiness, at least I have, and I believe your mother also. Soames, soon
after the divorce, married Fleur's mother, and she was born. That is the
story, Jon. I have told it you, because by the affection which we see
you have formed for this man's daughter you are blindly moving toward
what must utterly destroy your mother's happiness, if not your own. I
don't wish to speak of myself, because at my age there's no use supposing
I shall cumber the ground much longer, besides, what I should suffer
would be mainly on her account, and on yours. But what I want you to
realise is that feelings of horror and aversion such as those can never
be buried or forgotten. They are alive in her to-day. Only yesterday at
Lord's we happened to see Soames Forsyte. Her face, if you had seen it,
would have convinced you. The idea that you should marry his daughter is
a nightmare to her, Jon. I have nothing to say against Fleur save that
she is his daughter. But your children, if you married her, would be the
grandchildren of Soames, as much as of your mother, of a man who once
owned your mother as a man might own a slave. Think what that would
mean. By such a marriage you enter the camp which held your mother
prisoner and wherein she ate her heart out. You are just on the
threshold of life, you have only known this girl two months, and however
deeply you think you love her, I appeal to you to break it off at once.
Don't give your mother this rankling pain and humiliation during the rest
of her life. Young though she will always seem to me, she is
fifty-seven. Except for us two she has no one in the world. She will
soon have only you. Pluck up your spirit, Jon, and break away. Don't put
this cloud and barrier between you. Don't break her heart! Bless you, my
dear boy, and again forgive me for all the pain this letter must bring
you--we tried to spare it you, but Spain--it seems---was no good.
"Ever your devoted father
"JOLYON FORSYTE."
Having finished his confession, Jolyon sat with a thin cheek on his hand,
re-reading. There were things in it which hurt him so much, when he
thought of Jon reading them, that he nearly tore the letter up. To speak
of such things at all to a boy--his own boy--to speak of them in relation
to his own wife and the boy's own mother, seemed dreadful to the
reticence of his Forsyte soul. And yet without speaking of them how make
Jon understand the reality, the deep cleavage, the ineffaceable scar?
Without them, how justify this stiffing of the boy's love? He might just
as well not write at all!
He folded the confession, and put it in his pocket. It was--thank
Heaven!--Saturday; he had till Sunday evening to think it over; for even
if posted now it could not reach Jon till Monday. He felt a curious
relief at this delay, and at the fact that, whether sent or not, it was
written.
In the rose garden, which had taken the place of the old fernery, he
could see Irene snipping and pruning, with a little basket on her arm.
She was never idle, it seemed to him, and he envied her now that he
himself was idle nearly all his time. He went down to her. She held up a
stained glove and smiled. A piece of lace tied under her chin concealed
her hair, and her oval face with its still dark brows looked very young.
"The green-fly are awful this year, and yet it's cold. You look tired,
Jolyon."
Jolyon took the confession from his pocket. "I've been writing this. I
think you ought to see it?"
"To Jon?" Her whole face had changed, in that instant, becoming almost
haggard.
"Yes; the murder's out."
He gave it to her, and walked away among the roses. Presently, seeing
that she had finished reading and was standing quite still with the
sheets of the letter against her skirt, he came back to her.
"Well?"
"It's wonderfully put. I don't see how it could be put better. Thank
you, dear."
"Is there anything you would like left out?"
She shook her head.
"No; he must know all, if he's to understand."
"That's what I thought, but--I hate it!"
He had the feeling that he hated it more than she--to him sex was so much
easier to mention between man and woman than between man and man; and she
had always been more natural and frank, not deeply secretive like his
Forsyte self.
"I wonder if he will understand, even now, Jolyon? He's so young; and he
shrinks from the physical."
"He gets that shrinking from my father, he was as fastidious as a girl in
all such matters. Would it be better to rewrite the whole thing, and
just say you hated Soames?"
Irene shook her head.
"Hate's only a word. It conveys nothing. No, better as it is."
"Very well. It shall go to-morrow."
She raised her face to his, and in sight of the big house's many
creepered windows, he kissed her.
II
CONFESSION
Late that same afternoon, Jolyon had a nap in the old armchair. Face down
on his knee was La Rotisserie de la Refine Pedauque, and just before he
fell asleep he had been thinking: 'As a people shall we ever really like
the French? Will they ever really like us!' He himself had always liked
the French, feeling at home with their wit, their taste, their cooking.
Irene and he had paid many visits to France before the War, when Jon had
been at his private school. His romance with her had begun in Paris--his
last and most enduring romance. But the French--no Englishman could like
them who could not see them in some sort with the detached aesthetic eye!
And with that melancholy conclusion he had nodded off.
When he woke he saw Jon standing between him and the window. The boy had
evidently come in from the garden and was waiting for him to wake.
Jolyon smiled, still half asleep. How nice the chap looked--sensitive,
affectionate, straight! Then his heart gave a nasty jump; and a quaking
sensation overcame him. Jon! That confession! He controlled himself
with an effort. "Why, Jon, where did you spring from?"
Jon bent over and kissed his forehead.
Only then he noticed the look on the boy's face.
"I came home to tell you something, Dad."
With all his might Jolyon tried to get the better of the jumping,
gurgling sensations within his chest.
"Well, sit down, old man. Have you seen your mother?"
"No." The boy's flushed look gave place to pallor; he sat down on the
arm of the old chair, as, in old days, Jolyon himself used to sit beside
his own father, installed in its recesses. Right up to the time of the
rupture in their relations he had been wont to perch there--had he now
reached such a moment with his own son? All his life he had hated scenes
like poison, avoided rows, gone on his own way quietly and let others go
on theirs. But now--it seemed--at the very end of things, he had a scene
before him more painful than any he had avoided. He drew a visor down
over his emotion, and waited for his son to speak.
"Father," said Jon slowly, "Fleur and I are engaged."
'Exactly!' thought Jolyon, breathing with difficulty.
"I know that you and Mother don't like the idea. Fleur says that Mother
was engaged to her father before you married her. Of course I don't know
what happened, but it must be ages ago. I'm devoted to her, Dad, and she
says she is to me."
Jolyon uttered a queer sound, half laugh, half groan.
"You are nineteen, Jon, and I am seventy-two. How are we to understand
each other in a matter like this, eh?"
"You love Mother, Dad; you must know what we feel. It isn't fair to us
to let old things spoil our happiness, is it?"
Brought face to face with his confession, Jolyon resolved to do without
it if by any means he could. He laid his hand on the boy's arm.
"Look, Jon! I might put you off with talk about your both being too young
and not knowing your own minds, and all that, but you wouldn't listen,
besides, it doesn't meet the case--Youth, unfortunately, cures itself.
You talk lightly about 'old things like that,' knowing nothing--as you
say truly--of what happened. Now, have I ever given you reason to doubt
my love for you, or my word?"
At a less anxious moment he might have been amused by the conflict his
words aroused--the boy's eager clasp, to reassure him on these points,
the dread on his face of what that reassurance would bring forth; but he
could only feel grateful for the squeeze.
"Very well, you can believe what I tell you. If you don't give up this
love affair, you will make Mother wretched to the end of her days.
Believe me, my dear, the past, whatever it was, can't be buried--it can't
indeed."
Jon got off the arm of the chair.
'The girl'--thought Jolyon--'there she goes--starting up before him
--life itself--eager, pretty, loving!'
"I can't, Father; how can I--just because you say that? Of course, I
can't!"
"Jon, if you knew the story you would give this up without hesitation;
you would have to! Can't you believe me?"
"How can you tell what I should think? Father, I love her better than
anything in the world."
Jolyon's face twitched, and he said with painful slowness:
"Better than your mother, Jon?"
From the boy's face, and his clenched fists Jolyon realised the stress
and struggle he was going through.
"I don't know," he burst out, "I don't know! But to give Fleur up for
nothing--for something I don't understand, for something that I don't
believe can really matter half so much, will make me--make me"
"Make you feel us unjust, put a barrier--yes. But that's better than
going on with this."
"I can't. Fleur loves me, and I love her. You want me to trust you; why
don't you trust me, Father? We wouldn't want to know anything--we
wouldn't let it make any difference. It'll only make us both love you
and Mother all the more."
Jolyon put his hand into his breast pocket, but brought it out again
empty, and sat, clucking his tongue against his teeth.
"Think what your mother's been to you, Jon! She has nothing but you; I
shan't last much longer."
"Why not? It isn't fair to--Why not?"
"Well," said Jolyon, rather coldly, "because the doctors tell me I
shan't; that's all."
"Oh, Dad!" cried Jon, and burst into tears.
This downbreak of his son, whom he had not seen cry since he was ten,
moved Jolyon terribly. He recognised to the full how fearfully soft the
boy's heart was, how much he would suffer in this business, and in life
generally. And he reached out his hand helplessly--not wishing, indeed
not daring to get up.
"Dear man," he said, "don't--or you'll make me!"
Jon smothered down his paroxysm, and stood with face averted, very still.
'What now?' thought Jolyon. 'What can I say to move him?'
"By the way, don't speak of that to Mother," he said; "she has enough to
frighten her with this affair of yours. I know how you feel. But, Jon,
you know her and me well enough to be sure we wouldn't wish to spoil your
happiness lightly. Why, my dear boy, we don't care for anything but your
happiness--at least, with me it's just yours and Mother's and with her
just yours. It's all the future for you both that's at stake."
Jon turned. His face was deadly pale; his eyes, deep in his head, seemed
to burn.
"What is it? What is it? Don't keep me like this!"
Jolyon, who knew that he was beaten, thrust his hand again into his
breast pocket, and sat for a full minute, breathing with difficulty, his
eyes closed. The thought passed through his mind: 'I've had a good long
innings--some pretty bitter moments--this is the worst!' Then he brought
his hand out with the letter, and said with a sort of fatigue: "Well,
Jon, if you hadn't come to-day, I was going to send you this. I wanted
to spare you--I wanted to spare your mother and myself, but I see it's no
good. Read it, and I think I'll go into the garden." He reached forward
to get up.
Jon, who had taken the letter, said quickly, "No, I'll go"; and was gone.
Jolyon sank back in his chair. A blue-bottle chose that moment to come
buzzing round him with a sort of fury; the sound was homely, better than
nothing.... Where had the boy gone to read his letter? The wretched
letter--the wretched story! A cruel business--cruel to her--to
Soames--to those two children--to himself!... His heart thumped and
pained him. Life--its loves--its work--its beauty--its aching, and--its
end! A good time; a fine time in spite of all; until--you regretted that
you had ever been born. Life--it wore you down, yet did not make you
want to die--that was the cunning evil! Mistake to have a heart! Again
the blue-bottle came buzzing--bringing in all the heat and hum and scent
of summer--yes, even the scent--as of ripe fruits, dried grasses, sappy
shrubs, and the vanilla breath of cows. And out there somewhere in the
fragrance Jon would be reading that letter, turning and twisting its
pages in his trouble, his bewilderment and trouble--breaking his heart
about it! The thought made Jolyon acutely miserable. Jon was such a
tender-hearted chap, affectionate to his bones, and conscientious,
too--it was so unfair, so damned unfair! He remembered Irene saying to
him once: "Never was any one born more loving and lovable than Jon." Poor
little Jon! His world gone up the spout, all of a summer afternoon!
Youth took things so hard! And stirred, tormented by that vision of
Youth taking things hard, Jolyon got out of his chair, and went to the
window. The boy was nowhere visible. And he passed out. If one could
take any help to him now--one must!
He traversed the shrubbery, glanced into the walled garden--no Jon! Nor
where the peaches and the apricots were beginning to swell and colour.
He passed the Cupressus trees, dark and spiral, into the meadow. Where
had the boy got to? Had he rushed down to the coppice--his old
hunting-ground? Jolyon crossed the rows of hay. They would cock it on
Monday and be carrying the day after, if rain held off. Often they had
crossed this field together--hand in hand, when Jon was a little chap.
Dash it! The golden age was over by the time one was ten! He came to
the pond, where flies and gnats were dancing over a bright reedy surface;
and on into the coppice. It was cool there, fragrant of larches. Still
no Jon! He called. No answer! On the log seat he sat down, nervous,
anxious, forgetting his own physical sensations. He had been wrong to
let the boy get away with that letter; he ought to have kept him under
his eye from the start! Greatly troubled, he got up to retrace his
steps. At the farm-buildings he called again, and looked into the dark
cow-house. There in the cool, and the scent of vanilla and ammonia, away
from flies, the three Alderneys were chewing the quiet cud; just milked,
waiting for evening, to be turned out again into the lower field. One
turned a lazy head, a lustrous eye; Jolyon could see the slobber on its
grey lower lip. He saw everything with passionate clearness, in the
agitation of his nerves--all that in his time he had adored and tried to
paint--wonder of light and shade and colour. No wonder the legend put
Christ into a manger--what more devotional than the eyes and moon-white
horns of a chewing cow in the warm dusk! He called again. No answer!
And he hurried away out of the coppice, past the pond, up the hill.
Oddly ironical--now he came to think of it--if Jon had taken the gruel of
his discovery down in the coppice where his mother and Bosinney in those
old days had made the plunge of acknowledging their love. Where he
himself, on the log seat the Sunday morning he came back from Paris, had
realised to the full that Irene had become the world to him. That would
have been the place for Irony to tear the veil from before the eyes of
Irene's boy! But he was not here! Where had he got to? One must find
the poor chap!
A gleam of sun had come, sharpening to his hurrying senses all the beauty
of the afternoon, of the tall trees and lengthening shadows, of the blue,
and the white clouds, the scent of the hay, and the cooing of the
pigeons; and the flower shapes standing tall. He came to the rosery, and
the beauty of the roses in that sudden sunlight seemed to him unearthly.
"Rose, you Spaniard!" Wonderful three words! There she had stood by
that bush of dark red roses; had stood to read and decide that Jon must
know it all! He knew all now! Had she chosen wrong? He bent and
sniffed a rose, its petals brushed his nose and trembling lips; nothing
so soft as a rose-leaf's velvet, except her neck--Irene! On across the
lawn he went, up the slope, to the oak-tree. Its top alone was
glistening, for the sudden sun was away over the house; the lower shade
was thick, blessedly cool--he was greatly overheated. He paused a minute
with his hand on the rope of the swing--Jolly, Holly--Jon! The old
swing! And suddenly, he felt horribly--deadly ill. 'I've over done it!'
he thought: 'by Jove! I've overdone it--after all!' He staggered up
toward the terrace, dragged himself up the steps, and fell against the
wall of the house. He leaned there gasping, his face buried in the
honey-suckle that he and she had taken such trouble with that it might
sweeten the air which drifted in. Its fragrance mingled with awful pain.
'My love!' he thought; 'the boy!' And with a great effort he tottered in
through the long window, and sank into old Jolyon's chair. The book was
there, a pencil in it; he caught it up, scribbled a word on the open
page.... His hand dropped.... So it was like this--was it?...
There was a great wrench; and darkness....
III
IRENE
When Jon rushed away with the letter in his hand, he ran along the
terrace and round the corner of the house, in fear and confusion. Leaning
against the creepered wall he tore open the letter. It was long--very
long! This added to his fear, and he began reading. When he came to the
words: "It was Fleur's father that she married," everything seemed to
spin before him. He was close to a window, and entering by it, he
passed, through music-room and hall, up to his bedroom. Dipping his face
in cold water, he sat on his bed, and went on reading, dropping each
finished page on the bed beside him. His father's writing was easy to
read--he knew it so well, though he had never had a letter from him one
quarter so long. He read with a dull feeling--imagination only half at
work. He best grasped, on that first reading, the pain his father must
have had in writing such a letter. He let the last sheet fall, and in a
sort of mental, moral helplessness began to read the first again. It all
seemed to him disgusting--dead and disgusting. Then, suddenly, a hot
wave of horrified emotion tingled through him. He buried his face in his
hands. His mother! Fleur's father! He took up the letter again, and
read on mechanically. And again came the feeling that it was all dead
and disgusting; his own love so different! This letter said his
mother--and her father! An awful letter!
Property! Could there be men who looked on women as their property?
Faces seen in street and countryside came thronging up before him--red,
stock-fish faces; hard, dull faces; prim, dry faces; violent faces;
hundreds, thousands of them! How could he know what men who had such
faces thought and did? He held his head in his hands and groaned. His
mother! He caught up the letter and read on again: "horror and
aversion-alive in her to-day.... your children.... grandchildren.... of
a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave...." He got
up from his bed. This cruel shadowy past, lurking there to murder his
love and Fleur's, was true, or his father could never have written it.
'Why didn't they tell me the first thing,' he thought, 'the day I first
saw Fleur? They knew I'd seen her. They were afraid,
and--now--I've--got it!' Overcome by misery too acute for thought or
reason, he crept into a dusky corner of the room and sat down on the
floor. He sat there, like some unhappy little animal. There was comfort
in dusk, and the floor--as if he were back in those days when he played
his battles sprawling all over it. He sat there huddled, his hair
ruffled, his hands clasped round his knees, for how long he did not know.
He was wrenched from his blank wretchedness by the sound of the door
opening from his mother's room. The blinds were down over the windows of
his room, shut up in his absence, and from where he sat he could only
hear a rustle, her footsteps crossing, till beyond the bed he saw her
standing before his dressing-table. She had something in her hand. He
hardly breathed, hoping she would not see him, and go away. He saw her
touch things on the table as if they had some virtue in them, then face
the window-grey from head to foot like a ghost. The least turn of her
head, and she must see him! Her lips moved: "Oh! Jon!" She was speaking
to herself; the tone of her voice troubled Jon's heart. He saw in her
hand a little photograph. She held it toward the light, looking at
it--very small. He knew it--one of himself as a tiny boy, which she
always kept in her bag. His heart beat fast. And, suddenly as if she had
heard it, she turned her eyes and saw him. At the gasp she gave, and the
movement of her hands pressing the photograph against her breast, he
said:
"Yes, it's me."
She moved over to the bed, and sat down on it, quite close to him, her
hands still clasping her breast, her feet among the sheets of the letter
which had slipped to the floor. She saw them, and her hands grasped the
edge of the bed. She sat very upright, her dark eyes fixed on him. At
last she spoke.
"Well, Jon, you know, I see."
"Yes."
"You've seen Father?"
"Yes."
There was a long silence, till she said:
"Oh! my darling!"
"It's all right." The emotions in him were so, violent and so mixed that
he dared not move--resentment, despair, and yet a strange yearning for
the comfort of her hand on his forehead.
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
There was another long silence, then she got up. She stood a moment,
very still, made a little movement with her hand, and said: "My darling
boy, my most darling boy, don't think of me--think of yourself," and,
passing round the foot of the bed, went back into her room.
Jon turned--curled into a sort of ball, as might a hedgehog--into the
corner made by the two walls.
He must have been twenty minutes there before a cry roused him. It came
from the terrace below. He got up, scared. Again came the cry: "Jon!"
His mother was calling! He ran out and down the stairs, through the
empty dining-room into the study. She was kneeling before the old
armchair, and his father was lying back quite white, his head on his
breast, one of his hands resting on an open book, with a pencil clutched
in it--more strangely still than anything he had ever seen. She looked
round wildly, and said:
"Oh! Jon--he's dead--he's dead!"
Jon flung himself down, and reaching over the arm of the chair, where he
had lately been sitting, put his lips to the forehead. Icy cold! How
could--how could Dad be dead, when only an hour ago--! His mother's arms
were round the knees; pressing her breast against them. "Why--why wasn't
I with him?" he heard her whisper. Then he saw the tottering word
"Irene" pencilled on the open page, and broke down himself. It was his
first sight of human death, and its unutterable stillness blotted from
him all other emotion; all else, then, was but preliminary to this! All
love and life, and joy, anxiety, and sorrow, all movement, light and
beauty, but a beginning to this terrible white stillness. It made a
dreadful mark on him; all seemed suddenly little, futile, short. He
mastered himself at last, got up, and raised her.
"Mother! don't cry--Mother!"
Some hours later, when all was done that had to be, and his mother was
lying down, he saw his father alone, on the bed, covered with a white
sheet. He stood for a long time gazing at that face which had never
looked angry--always whimsical, and kind. "To be kind and keep your end
up--there's nothing else in it," he had once heard his father say. How
wonderfully Dad had acted up to that philosophy! He understood now that
his father had known for a long time past that this would come
suddenly--known, and not said a word. He gazed with an awed and
passionate reverence. The loneliness of it--just to spare his mother and
himself! His own trouble seemed small while he was looking at that face.
The word scribbled on the page! The farewell word! Now his mother had
no one but himself! He went up close to the dead face--not changed at
all, and yet completely changed. He had heard his father say once that
he did not believe in consciousness surviving death, or that if it did it
might be just survival till the natural age limit of the body had been
reached--the natural term of its inherent vitality; so that if the body
were broken by accident, excess, violent disease, consciousness might
still persist till, in the course of Nature uninterfered with, it would
naturally have faded out. It had struck him because he had never heard
any one else suggest it. When the heart failed like this--surely it was
not quite natural! Perhaps his father's consciousness was in the room
with him. Above the bed hung a picture of his father's father. Perhaps
his consciousness, too, was still alive; and his brother's--his
half-brother, who had died in the Transvaal. Were they all gathered
round this bed? Jon kissed the forehead, and stole back to his own room.
The door between it and his mother's was ajar; she had evidently been
in--everything was ready for him, even some biscuits and hot milk, and
the letter no longer on the floor. He ate and drank, watching the last
light fade. He did not try to see into the future--just stared at the
dark branches of the oak-tree, level with his window, and felt as if life
had stopped. Once in the night, turning in his heavy sleep, he was
conscious of something white and still, beside his bed, and started up.
His mother's voice said:
"It's only I, Jon dear!" Her hand pressed his forehead gently back; her
white figure disappeared.
Alone! He fell heavily asleep again, and dreamed he saw his mother's
name crawling on his bed.
IV
SOAMES COGITATES
The announcement in The Times of his cousin Jolyon's death affected
Soames quite simply. So that chap was gone! There had never been a time
in their two lives when love had not been lost between them. That
quick-blooded sentiment hatred had run its course long since in Soames'
heart, and he had refused to allow any recrudescence, but he considered
this early decease a piece of poetic justice. For twenty years the
fellow had enjoyed the reversion of his wife and house, and--he was dead!
The obituary notice, which appeared a little later, paid Jolyon--he
thought--too much attention. It spoke of that "diligent and agreeable
painter whose work we have come to look on as typical of the best
late-Victorian water-colour art." Soames, who had almost mechanically
preferred Mole, Morpin, and Caswell Baye, and had always sniffed quite
audibly when he came to one of his cousin's on the line, turned The Times
with a crackle.
He had to go up to Town that morning on Forsyte affairs, and was fully
conscious of Gradman's glance sidelong over his spectacles. The old clerk
had about him an aura of regretful congratulation. He smelled, as it
were, of old days. One could almost hear him thinking: "Mr. Jolyon,
ye-es--just my age, and gone--dear, dear! I dare say she feels it. She
was a mice-lookin' woman. Flesh is flesh! They've given 'im a notice in
the papers. Fancy!" His atmosphere in fact caused Soames to handle
certain leases and conversions with exceptional swiftness.
"About that settlement on Miss Fleur, Mr. Soames?"
"I've thought better of that," answered Soames shortly.
"Ah! I'm glad of that. I thought you were a little hasty. The times do
change."
How this death would affect Fleur had begun to trouble Soames. He was
not certain that she knew of it--she seldom looked at the paper, never at
the births, marriages, and deaths.
He pressed matters on, and made his way to Green Street for lunch.
Winifred was almost doleful. Jack Cardigan had broken a splashboard, so
far as one could make out, and would not be "fit" for some time. She
could not get used to the idea.
"Did Profond ever get off?" he said suddenly.
"He got off," replied Winifred, "but where--I don't know."
Yes, there it was--impossible to tell anything! Not that he wanted to
know. Letters from Annette were coming from Dieppe, where she and her
mother were staying.
"You saw that fellow's death, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Winifred. "I'm sorry for--for his children. He was very
amiable." Soames uttered a rather queer sound. A suspicion of the old
deep truth--that men were judged in this world rather by what they were
than by what they did--crept and knocked resentfully at the back doors of
his mind.
"I know there was a superstition to that effect," he muttered.
"One must do him justice now he's dead."
"I should like to have done him justice before," said Soames; "but I
never had the chance. Have you got a 'Baronetage' here?"
"Yes; in that bottom row."
Soames took out a fat red book, and ran over the leaves.
"Mont-Sir Lawrence, 9th Bt., cr. 1620, e. s. of Geoffrey, 8th Bt., and
Lavinia, daur. of Sir Charles Muskham, Bt., of Muskham Hall, Shrops:
marr. 1890 Emily, daur. of Conway Charwell, Esq., of Condaford Grange,
co. Oxon; 1 son, heir Michael Conway, b. 1895, 2 daurs. Residence:
Lippinghall Manor, Folwell, Bucks. Clubs: Snooks': Coffee House:
Aeroplane. See BidIicott."
"H'm!" he said. "Did you ever know a publisher?"
"Uncle Timothy."
"Alive, I mean."
"Monty knew one at his Club. He brought him here to dinner once. Monty
was always thinking of writing a book, you know, about how to make money
on the turf. He tried to interest that man."
"Well?"
"He put him on to a horse--for the Two Thousand. We didn't see him
again. He was rather smart, if I remember."
"Did it win?"
"No; it ran last, I think. You know Monty really was quite clever in his
way."
"Was he?" said Soames. "Can you see any connection between a sucking
baronet and publishing?"
"People do all sorts of things nowadays," replied Winifred. "The great
stunt seems not to be idle--so different from our time. To do nothing
was the thing then. But I suppose it'll come again."
"This young Mont that I'm speaking of is very sweet on Fleur. If it
would put an end to that other affair I might encourage it."
"Has he got style?" asked Winifred.
"He's no beauty; pleasant enough, with some scattered brains. There's a
good deal of land, I believe. He seems genuinely attached. But I don't
know."
"No," murmured Winifred; "it's--very difficult. I always found it best
to do nothing. It is such a bore about Jack; now we shan't get away till
after Bank Holiday. Well, the people are always amusing, I shall go into
the Park and watch them."
"If I were you," said Soames, "I should have a country cottage, and be
out of the way of holidays and strikes when you want."
"The country bores me," answered Winifred, "and I found the railway
strike quite exciting."
Winifred had always been noted for sang-froid.
Soames took his leave. All the way down to Reading he debated whether he
should tell Fleur of that boy's father's death. It did not alter the
situation except that he would be independent now, and only have his
mother's opposition to encounter. He would come into a lot of money, no
doubt, and perhaps the house--the house built for Irene and himself--the
house whose architect had wrought his domestic ruin. His
daughter--mistress of that house! That would be poetic justice! Soames
uttered a little mirthless laugh. He had designed that house to
re-establish his failing union, meant it for the seat of his descendants,
if he could have induced Irene to give him one! Her son and Fleur! Their
children would be, in some sort, offspring of the union between himself
and her!
The theatricality in that thought was repulsive to his sober sense. And
yet--it would be the easiest and wealthiest way out of the impasse, now
that Jolyon was gone. The juncture of two Forsyte fortunes had a kind of
conservative charm. And she--Irene-would be linked to him once more.
Nonsense! Absurd! He put the notion from his head.
On arriving home he heard the click of billiard-balls, and through the
window saw young Mont sprawling over the table. Fleur, with her cue
akimbo, was watching with a smile. How pretty she looked! No wonder
that young fellow was out of his mind about her. A title--land! There
was little enough in land, these days; perhaps less in a title. The old
Forsytes had always had a kind of contempt for titles, rather remote and
artificial things--not worth the money they cost, and having to do with
the Court. They had all had that feeling in differing measure--Soames
remembered. Swithin, indeed, in his most expansive days had once
attended a Levee. He had come away saying he shouldn't go again--"all
that small fry." It was suspected that he had looked too big in
knee-breeches. Soames remembered how his own mother had wished to be
presented because of the fashionable nature of the performance, and how
his father had put his foot down with unwonted decision. What did she
want with that peacocking--wasting time and money; there was nothing in
it!
The instinct which had made and kept the English Commons the chief power
in the State, a feeling that their own world was good enough and a little
better than any other because it was their world, had kept the old
Forsytes singularly free of "flummery," as Nicholas had been wont to call
it when he had the gout. Soames' generation, more self-conscious and
ironical, had been saved by a sense of Swithin in knee-breeches. While
the third and the fourth generation, as it seemed to him, laughed at
everything.
However, there was no harm in the young fellow's being heir to a title
and estate--a thing one couldn't help. He entered quietly, as Mont
missed his shot. He noted the young man's eyes, fixed on Fleur bending
over in her turn; and the adoration in them almost touched him.
She paused with the cue poised on the bridge of her slim hand, and shook
her crop of short dark chestnut hair.
"I shall never do it."
"'Nothing venture.'"
"All right." The cue struck, the ball rolled. "There!"
"Bad luck! Never mind!"
Then they saw him, and Soames said:
"I'll mark for you."
He sat down on the raised seat beneath the marker, trim and tired,
furtively studying those two young faces. When the game was over Mont
came up to him.
"I've started in, sir. Rum game, business, isn't it? I suppose you saw
a lot of human nature as a solicitor."
"I did."
"Shall I tell you what I've noticed: People are quite on the wrong tack
in offering less than they can afford to give; they ought to offer more,
and work backward."
Soames raised his eyebrows.
"Suppose the more is accepted?"
"That doesn't matter a little bit," said Mont; "it's much more paying to
abate a price than to increase it. For instance, say we offer an author
good terms--he naturally takes them. Then we go into it, find we can't
publish at a decent profit and tell him so. He's got confidence in us
because we've been generous to him, and he comes down like a lamb, and
bears us no malice. But if we offer him poor terms at the start, he
doesn't take them, so we have to advance them to get him, and he thinks
us damned screws into the bargain.
"Try buying pictures on that system," said Soames; "an offer accepted is
a contract--haven't you learned that?"
Young Mont turned his head to where Fleur was standing in the window.
"No," he said, "I wish I had. Then there's another thing. Always let a
man off a bargain if he wants to be let off."
"As advertisement?" said Soames dryly.
"Of course it is; but I meant on principle."
"Does your firm work on those lines?"
"Not yet," said Mont, "but it'll come."
"And they will go."
"No, really, sir. I'm making any number of observations, and they all
confirm my theory. Human nature is consistently underrated in business,
people do themselves out of an awful lot of pleasure and profit by that.
Of course, you must be perfectly genuine and open, but that's easy if you
feel it. The more human and generous you are the better chance you've
got in business."
Soames rose.
"Are you a partner?"
"Not for six months, yet."
"The rest of the firm had better make haste and retire."
Mont laughed.
"You'll see," he said. "There's going to be a big change. The
possessive principle has got its shutters up."
"What?" said Soames.
"The house is to let! Good-bye, sir; I'm off now."
Soames watched his daughter give her hand, saw her wince at the squeeze
it received, and distinctly heard the young man's sigh as he passed out.
Then she came from the window, trailing her finger along the mahogany
edge of the billiard-table. Watching her, Soames knew that she was going
to ask him something. Her finger felt round the last pocket, and she
looked up.
"Have you done anything to stop Jon writing to me, Father?"
Soames shook his head.
"You haven't seen, then?" he said. "His father died just a week ago
to-day."
"Oh!"
In her startled, frowning face he saw the instant struggle to apprehend
what this would mean.
"Poor Jon! Why didn't you tell me, Father?"
"I never know!" said Soames slowly; "you don't confide in me."
"I would, if you'd help me, dear."
"Perhaps I shall."
Fleur clasped her hands. "Oh! darling--when one wants a thing fearfully,
one doesn't think of other people. Don't be angry with me."
Soames put out his hand, as if pushing away an aspersion.
"I'm cogitating," he said. What on earth had made him use a word like
that! "Has young Mont been bothering you again?"
Fleur smiled. "Oh! Michael! He's always bothering; but he's such a good
sort--I don't mind him."
"Well," said Soames, "I'm tired; I shall go and have a nap before
dinner."
He went up to his picture-gallery, lay down on the couch there, and
closed his eyes. A terrible responsibility this girl of his--whose
mother was--ah! what was she? A terrible responsibility! Help her--how
could he help her? He could not alter the fact that he was her father.
Or that Irene--! What was it young Mont had said--some nonsense about
the possessive instinct--shutters up--To let? Silly!
The sultry air, charged with a scent of meadow-sweet, of river and roses,
closed on his senses, drowsing them.
V
THE FIXED IDEA
"The fixed idea," which has outrun more constables than any other form of
human disorder, has never more speed and stamina than when it takes the
avid guise of love. To hedges and ditches, and doors, to humans without
ideas fixed or otherwise, to perambulators and the contents sucking their
fixed ideas, even to the other sufferers from this fast malady--the fixed
idea of love pays no attention. It runs with eyes turned inward to its
own light, oblivious of all other stars. Those with the fixed ideas that
human happiness depends on their art, on vivisecting dogs, on hating
foreigners, on paying supertax, on remaining Ministers, on making wheels
go round, on preventing their neighbours from being divorced, on
conscientious objection, Greek roots, Church dogma, paradox and
superiority to everybody else, with other forms of ego-mania--all are
unstable compared with him or her whose fixed idea is the possession of
some her or him. And though Fleur, those chilly summer days, pursued the
scattered life of a little Forsyte whose frocks are paid for, and whose
business is pleasure, she was--as Winifred would have said in the latest
fashion of speech--"honest to God" indifferent to it all. She wished and
wished for the moon, which sailed in cold skies above the river or the
Green Park when she went to Town. She even kept Jon's letters, covered
with pink silk, on her heart, than which in days when corsets were so
low, sentiment so despised, and chests so out of fashion, there could,
perhaps, have been no greater proof of the fixity of her idea.
After hearing of his father's death, she wrote to Jon, and received his
answer three days later on her return from a river picnic. It was his
first letter since their meeting at June's. She opened it with
misgiving, and read it with dismay.
"Since I saw you I've heard everything about the past. I won't tell it
you--I think you knew when we met at June's. She says you did. If you
did, Fleur, you ought to have told me. I expect you only heard your
father's side of it. I have heard my mother's. It's dreadful. Now that
she's so sad I can't do anything to hurt her more. Of course, I long for
you all day, but I don't believe now that we shall ever come
together--there's something too strong pulling us apart."
So! Her deception had found her out. But Jon--she felt--had forgiven
that. It was what he said of his mother which caused the guttering in
her heart and the weak sensation in her legs.
Her first impulse was to reply--her second, not to reply. These impulses
were constantly renewed in the days which followed, while desperation
grew within her. She was not her father's child for nothing. The
tenacity which had at once made and undone Soames was her backbone, too,
frilled and embroidered by French grace and quickness. Instinctively she
conjugated the verb "to have" always with the pronoun "I." She
concealed, however, all signs of her growing desperation, and pursued
such river pleasures as the winds and rain of a disagreeable July
permitted, as if she had no care in the world; nor did any "sucking
baronet" ever neglect the business of a publisher more consistently than
her attendant spirit, Michael Mont.
To Soames she was a puzzle. He was almost deceived by this careless
gaiety. Almost--because he did not fail to mark her eyes often fixed on
nothing, and the film of light shining from her bedroom window late at
night. What was she thinking and brooding over into small hours when she
ought to have been asleep? But he dared not ask what was in her mind;
and, since that one little talk in the billiard-room, she said nothing to
him.
In this taciturn condition of affairs it chanced that Winifred invited
them to lunch and to go afterward to "a most amusing little play, 'The
Beggar's Opera'" and would they bring a man to make four? Soames, whose
attitude toward theatres was to go to nothing, accepted, because Fleur's
attitude was to go to everything. They motored up, taking Michael Mont,
who, being in his seventh heaven, was found by Winifred "very amusing."
"The Beggar's Opera" puzzled Soames. The people were very unpleasant,
the whole thing very cynical. Winifred was "intrigued"--by the dresses.
The music, too, did not displease her. At the Opera, the night before,
she had arrived too early for the Russian Ballet, and found the stage
occupied by singers, for a whole hour pale or apoplectic from terror lest
by some dreadful inadvertence they might drop into a tune. Michael Mont
was enraptured with the whole thing. And all three wondered what Fleur
was thinking of it. But Fleur was not thinking of it. Her fixed idea
stood on the stage and sang with Polly Peachum, mimed with Filch, danced
with Jenny Diver, postured with Lucy Lockit, kissed, trolled, and cuddled
with Macheath. Her lips might smile, her hands applaud, but the comic
old masterpiece made no more impression on her than if it had been
pathetic, like a modern "Revue." When they embarked in the car to
return, she ached because Jon was not sitting next her instead of Michael
Mont. When, at some jolt, the young man's arm touched hers as if by
accident, she only thought: 'If that were Jon's arm!' When his cheerful
voice, tempered by her proximity, murmured above the sound of the car's
progress, she smiled and answered, thinking: 'If that were Jon's voice!'
and when once he said, "Fleur, you look a perfect angel in that dress!"
she answered, "Oh, do you like it?" thinking, 'If only Jon could see it!'
During this drive she took a resolution. She would go to Robin Hill and
see him--alone; she would take the car, without word beforehand to him or
to her father. It was nine days since his letter, and she could wait no
longer. On Monday she would go! The decision made her well disposed
toward young Mont. With something to look forward to she could afford to
tolerate and respond. He might stay to dinner; propose to her as usual;
dance with her, press her hand, sigh--do what he liked. He was only a
nuisance when he interfered with her fixed idea. She was even sorry for
him so far as it was possible to be sorry for anybody but herself just
now. At dinner he seemed to talk more wildly than usual about what he
called "the death of the close borough"--she paid little attention, but
her father seemed paying a good deal, with the smile on his face which
meant opposition, if not anger.
"The younger generation doesn't think as you do, sir; does it, Fleur?"
Fleur shrugged her shoulders--the younger generation was just Jon, and
she did not know what he was thinking.
"Young people will think as I do when they're my age, Mr. Mont. Human
nature doesn't change."
"I admit that, sir; but the forms of thought change with the times. The
pursuit of self-interest is a form of thought that's going out."
"Indeed! To mind one's own business is not a form of thought, Mr. Mont,
it's an instinct."
Yes, when Jon was the business!
"But what is one's business, sir? That's the point. Everybody's
business is going to be one's business. Isn't it, Fleur?"
Fleur only smiled.
"If not," added young Mont, "there'll be blood."
"People have talked like that from time immemorial"
"But you'll admit, sir, that the sense of property is dying out?"
"I should say increasing among those who have none."
"Well, look at me! I'm heir to an entailed estate. I don't want the
thing; I'd cut the entail to-morrow."
"You're not married, and you don't know what you're talking about."
Fleur saw the young man's eyes turn rather piteously upon her.
"Do you really mean that marriage--?" he began.
"Society is built on marriage," came from between her father's close
lips; "marriage and its consequences. Do you want to do away with it?"
Young Mont made a distracted gesture. Silence brooded over the dinner
table, covered with spoons bearing the Forsyte crest--a pheasant
proper--under the electric light in an alabaster globe. And outside, the
river evening darkened, charged with heavy moisture and sweet scents.
'Monday,' thought Fleur; 'Monday!'
VI
DESPERATE
The weeks which followed the death of his father were sad and empty
to the only Jolyon Forsyte left. The necessary forms and ceremonies
--the reading of the Will, valuation of the estate, distribution of
the legacies--were enacted over the head, as it were, of one not yet
of age. Jolyon was cremated. By his special wish no one attended
that ceremony, or wore black for him. The succession of his
property, controlled to some extent by old Jolyon's Will, left his
widow in possession of Robin Hill, with two thousand five hundred
pounds a year for life. Apart from this the two Wills worked
together in some complicated way to insure that each of Jolyon's
three children should have an equal share in their grandfather's and
father's property in the future as in the present, save only that
Jon, by virtue of his sex, would have control of his capital when he
was twenty-one, while June and Holly would only have the spirit of
theirs, in order that their children might have the body after them.
If they had no children, it would all come to Jon if he outlived
them; and since June was fifty, and Holly nearly forty, it was
considered in Lincoln's Inn Fields that but for the cruelty of income
tax, young Jon would be as warm a man as his grandfather when he
died. All this was nothing to Jon, and little enough to his mother.
It was June who did everything needful for one who had left his
affairs in perfect order. When she had gone, and those two were
alone again in the great house, alone with death drawing them
together, and love driving them apart, Jon passed very painful days
secretly disgusted and disappointed with himself. His mother would
look at him with such a patient sadness which yet had in it an
instinctive pride, as if she were reserving her defence. If she
smiled he was angry that his answering smile should be so grudging
and unnatural. He did not judge or condemn her; that was all too
remote--indeed, the idea of doing so had never come to him. No! he
was grudging and unnatural because he couldn't have what he wanted be
cause of her. There was one alleviation--much to do in connection
with his father's career, which could not be safely entrusted to
June, though she had offered to undertake it. Both Jon and his
mother had felt that if she took his portfolios, unexhibited drawings
and unfinished matter, away with her, the work would encounter such
icy blasts from Paul Post and other frequenters of her studio, that
it would soon be frozen out even of her warm heart. On its
old-fashioned plane and of its kind the work was good, and they could not
bear the thought of its subjection to ridicule. A one-man exhibition
of his work was the least testimony they could pay to one they had
loved; and on preparation for this they spent many hours together.
Jon came to have a curiously increased respect for his father. The
quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre talent into
something really individual was disclosed by these researches. There
was a great mass of work with a rare continuity of growth in depth
and reach of vision. Nothing certainly went very deep, or reached
very high--but such as the work was, it was thorough, conscientious,
and complete. And, remembering his father's utter absence of "side"
or self-assertion, the chaffing humility with which he had always
spoken of his own efforts, ever calling himself "an amateur," Jon
could not help feeling that he had never really known his father. To
take himself seriously, yet never bore others by letting them know
that he did so, seemed to have been his ruling principle. There was
something in this which appealed to the boy, and made him heartily
endorse his mother's comment: "He had true refinement; he couldn't
help thinking of others, whatever he did. And when he took a
resolution which went counter, he did it with the minimum of
defiance--not like the Age, is it? Twice in his life he had to go
against everything; and yet it never made him bitter." Jon saw tears
running down her face, which she at once turned away from him. She
was so quiet about her loss that sometimes he had thought she didn't
feel it much. Now, as he looked at her, he felt how far he fell
short of the reserve power and dignity in both his father and his
mother. And, stealing up to her, he put his arm round her waist.
She kissed him swiftly, but with a sort of passion, and went out of
the room.
The studio, where they had been sorting and labelling, had once been
Holly's schoolroom, devoted to her silkworms, dried lavender, music, and
other forms of instruction. Now, at the end of July, despite its
northern and eastern aspects, a warm and slumberous air came in between
the long-faded lilac linen curtains. To redeem a little the departed
glory, as of a field that is golden and gone, clinging to a room which
its master has left, Irene had placed on the paint-stained table a bowl
of red roses. This, and Jolyon's favourite cat, who still clung to the
deserted habitat, were the pleasant spots in that dishevelled, sad
workroom. Jon, at the north window, sniffing air mysteriously scented
with warm strawberries, heard a car drive up. The lawyers again about
some nonsense! Why did that scent so make one ache? And where did it
come from--there were no strawberry beds on this side of the house.
Instinctively he took a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, and
wrote down some broken words. A warmth began spreading in his chest; he
rubbed the palms of his hands together. Presently he had jotted this:
"If I could make a little song A little song to soothe my heart! I'd make
it all of little things The plash of water, rub of wings, The puffing-off
of dandies crown, The hiss of raindrop spilling down, The purr of cat,
the trill of bird, And ev'ry whispering I've heard From willy wind in
leaves and grass, And all the distant drones that pass. A song as tender
and as light As flower, or butterfly in flight; And when I saw it
opening, I'd let it fly and sing!"
He was still muttering it over to himself at the window, when he heard
his name called, and, turning round, saw Fleur. At that amazing
apparition, he made at first no movement and no sound, while her clear
vivid glance ravished his heart. Then he went forward to the table,
saying, "How nice of you to come!" and saw her flinch as if he had thrown
something at her.
"I asked for you," she said, "and they showed me up here. But I can go
away again."
Jon clutched the paint-stained table. Her face and figure in its frilly
frock photographed itself with such startling vividness upon his eyes,
that if she had sunk through the floor he must still have seen her.
"I know I told you a lie, Jon. But I told it out of love."
"Yes, oh! yes! That's nothing!"
"I didn't answer your letter. What was the use--there wasn't anything to
answer. I wanted to see you instead." She held out both her hands, and
Jon grasped them across the table. He tried to say something, but all
his attention was given to trying not to hurt her hands. His own felt so
hard and hers so soft. She said almost defiantly:
"That old story--was it so very dreadful?"
"Yes." In his voice, too, there was a note of defiance.
She dragged her hands away. "I didn't think in these days boys were tied
to their mothers' apron-strings."
Jon's chin went up as if he had been struck.
"Oh! I didn't mean it, Jon. What a horrible thing to say!" Swiftly she
came close to him. "Jon, dear; I didn't mean it."
"All right."
She had put her two hands on his shoulder, and her forehead down on them;
the brim of her hat touched his neck, and he felt it quivering. But, in a
sort of paralysis, he made no response. She let go of his shoulder and
drew away.
"Well, I'll go, if you don't want me. But I never thought you'd have
given me up."
"I haven't," cried Jon, coming suddenly to life. "I can't. I'll try
again."
Her eyes gleamed, she swayed toward him. "Jon--I love you! Don't give
me up! If you do, I don't know what--I feel so desperate. What does it
matter--all that past-compared with this?"
She clung to him. He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. But while
he kissed her he saw, the sheets of that letter fallen down on the floor
of his bedroom--his father's white dead face--his mother kneeling before
it. Fleur's whispered, "Make her! Promise! Oh! Jon, try!" seemed
childish in his ear. He felt curiously old.
"I promise!" he muttered. "Only, you don't understand."
"She wants to spoil our lives, just because--"
"Yes, of what?"
Again that challenge in his voice, and she did not answer. Her arms
tightened round him, and he returned her kisses; but even while he
yielded, the poison worked in him, the poison of the letter. Fleur did
not know, she did not understand--she misjudged his mother; she came from
the enemy's camp! So lovely, and he loved her so--yet, even in her
embrace, he could not help the memory of Holly's words: "I think she has
a 'having' nature," and his mother's "My darling boy, don't think of
me--think of yourself!"
When she was gone like a passionate dream, leaving her image on his eyes,
her kisses on his lips, such an ache in his heart, Jon leaned in the
window, listening to the car bearing her away. Still the scent as of
warm strawberries, still the little summer sounds that should make his
song; still all the promise of youth and happiness in sighing, floating,
fluttering July--and his heart torn; yearning strong in him; hope high in
him yet with its eyes cast down, as if ashamed. The miserable task
before him! If Fleur was desperate, so was he--watching the poplars
swaying, the white clouds passing, the sunlight on the grass.
He waited till evening, till after their almost silent dinner, till his
mother had played to him and still he waited, feeling that she knew what
he was waiting to say. She kissed him and went up-stairs, and still he
lingered, watching the moonlight and the moths, and that unreality of
colouring which steals along and stains a summer night. And he would have
given anything to be back again in the past--barely three months back; or
away forward, years, in the future. The present with this dark cruelty
of a decision, one way or the other, seemed impossible. He realised now
so much more keenly what his mother felt than he had at first; as if the
story in that letter had been a poisonous germ producing a kind of fever
of partisanship, so that he really felt there were two camps, his
mother's and his--Fleur's and her father's. It might be a dead thing,
that old tragic ownership and enmity, but dead things were poisonous till
time had cleaned them away. Even his love felt tainted, less illusioned,
more of the earth, and with a treacherous lurking doubt lest Fleur, like
her father, might want to own; not articulate, just a stealing haunt,
horribly unworthy, which crept in and about the ardour of his memories,
touched with its tarnishing breath the vividness and grace of that
charmed face and figure--a doubt, not real enough to convince him of its
presence, just real enough to deflower a perfect faith. And perfect
faith, to Jon, not yet twenty, was essential. He still had Youth's
eagerness to give with both hands, to take with neither--to give
lovingly to one who had his own impulsive generosity. Surely she had!
He got up from the window-seat and roamed in the big grey ghostly room,
whose walls were hung with silvered canvas. This house his father said
in that death-bed letter--had been built for his mother to live in--with
Fleur's father! He put out his hand in the half-dark, as if to grasp the
shadowy hand of the dead. He clenched, trying to feel the thin vanished
fingers of his father; to squeeze them, and reassure him that he--he was
on his father's side. Tears, prisoned within him, made his eyes feel dry
and hot. He went back to the window. It was warmer, not so eerie, more
comforting outside, where the moon hung golden, three days off full; the
freedom of the night was comforting. If only Fleur and he had met on
some desert island without a past--and Nature for their house! Jon had
still his high regard for desert islands, where breadfruit grew, and the
water was blue above the coral. The night was deep, was free--there was
enticement in it; a lure, a promise, a refuge from entanglement, and
love! Milksop tied to his mother's...! His cheeks burned. He shut the
window, drew curtains over it, switched off the lighted sconce, and went
up-stairs.
The door of his room was open, the light turned up; his mother, still in
her evening gown, was standing at the window. She turned and said:
"Sit down, Jon; let's talk." She sat down on the window-seat, Jon on his
bed. She had her profile turned to him, and the beauty and grace of her
figure, the delicate line of the brow, the nose, the neck, the strange
and as it were remote refinement of her, moved him. His mother never
belonged to her surroundings. She came into them from somewhere--as it
were! What was she going to say to him, who had in his heart such things
to say to her?
"I know Fleur came to-day. I'm not surprised." It was as though she had
added: "She is her father's daughter!" And Jon's heart hardened. Irene
went on quietly:
"I have Father's letter. I picked it up that night and kept it. Would
you like it back, dear?"
Jon shook his head.
"I had read it, of course, before he gave it to you. It didn't quite do
justice to my criminality."
"Mother!" burst from Jon's lips.
"He put it very sweetly, but I know that in marrying Fleur's father
without love I did a dreadful thing. An unhappy marriage, Jon, can play
such havoc with other lives besides one's own. You are fearfully young,
my darling, and fearfully loving. Do you think you can possibly be happy
with this girl?"
Staring at her dark eyes, darker now from pain, Jon answered
"Yes; oh! yes--if you could be."
Irene smiled.
"Admiration of beauty and longing for possession are not love. If yours
were another case like mine, Jon--where the deepest things are stifled;
the flesh joined, and the spirit at war!"
"Why should it, Mother? You think she must be like her father, but she's
not. I've seen him."
Again the smile came on Irene's lips, and in Jon something wavered; there
was such irony and experience in that smile.
"You are a giver, Jon; she is a taker."
That unworthy doubt, that haunting uncertainty again! He said with
vehemence:
"She isn't--she isn't. It's only because I can't bear to make you
unhappy, Mother, now that Father--" He thrust his fists against his
forehead.
Irene got up.
"I told you that night, dear, not to mind me. I meant it. Think of
yourself and your own happiness! I can stand what's left--I've brought
it on myself."
Again the word "Mother!" burst from Jon's lips.
She came over to him and put her hands over his.
"Do you feel your head, darling?"
Jon shook it. What he felt was in his chest--a sort of tearing asunder
of the tissue there, by the two loves.
"I shall always love you the same, Jon, whatever you do. You won't lose
anything." She smoothed his hair gently, and walked away.
He heard the door shut; and, rolling over on the bed, lay, stifling his
breath, with an awful held-up feeling within him.
VII
EMBASSY
Enquiring for her at tea time Soames learned that Fleur had been out in
the car since two. Three hours! Where had she gone? Up to London
without a word to him? He had never become quite reconciled with cars.
He had embraced them in principle--like the born empiricist, or Forsyte,
that he was--adopting each symptom of progress as it came along with:
"Well, we couldn't do without them now." But in fact he found them
tearing, great, smelly things. Obliged by Annette to have one--a Rollhard
with pearl-grey cushions, electric light, little mirrors, trays for the
ashes of cigarettes, flower vases--all smelling of petrol and
stephanotis--he regarded it much as he used to regard his brother-in-law,
Montague Dartie. The thing typified all that was fast, insecure, and
subcutaneously oily in modern life. As modern life became faster,
looser, younger, Soames was becoming older, slower, tighter, more and
more in thought and language like his father James before him. He was
almost aware of it himself. Pace and progress pleased him less and less;
there was an ostentation, too, about a car which he considered
provocative in the prevailing mood of Labour. On one occasion that
fellow Sims had driven over the only vested interest of a working man.
Soames had not forgotten the behaviour of its master, when not many
people would have stopped to put up with it. He had been sorry for the
dog, and quite prepared to take its part against the car, if that ruffian
hadn't been so outrageous. With four hours fast becoming five, and still
no Fleur, all the old car-wise feelings he had experienced in person and
by proxy balled within him, and sinking sensations troubled the pit of
his stomach. At seven he telephoned to Winifred by trunk call. No!
Fleur had not been to Green Street. Then where was she? Visions of his
beloved daughter rolled up in her pretty frills, all blood and
dust-stained, in some hideous catastrophe, began to haunt him. He went
to her room and spied among her things. She had taken nothing--no
dressing-case, no Jewellery. And this, a relief in one sense, increased
his fears of an accident. Terrible to be helpless when his loved one was
missing, especially when he couldn't bear fuss or publicity of any kind!
What should he do if she were not back by nightfall?
At a quarter to eight he heard the car. A great weight lifted from off
his heart; he hurried down. She was getting out--pale and tired-looking,
but nothing wrong. He met her in the hall.
"You've frightened me. Where have you been?"
"To Robin Hill. I'm sorry, dear. I had to go; I'll tell you afterward."
And, with a flying kiss, she ran up-stairs.
Soames waited in the drawing-room. To Robin Hill! What did that
portend?
It was not a subject they could discuss at dinner--consecrated to the
susceptibilities of the butler. The agony of nerves Soames had been
through, the relief he felt at her safety, softened his power to condemn
what she had done, or resist what she was going to do; he waited in a
relaxed stupor for her revelation. Life was a queer business. There he
was at sixty-five and no more in command of things than if he had not
spent forty years in building up security-always something one couldn't
get on terms with! In the pocket of his dinner-jacket was a letter from
Annette. She was coming back in a fortnight. He knew nothing of what
she had been doing out there. And he was glad that he did not. Her
absence had been a relief. Out of sight was out of mind! And now she
was coming back. Another worry! And the Bolderby Old Crome was
gone--Dumetrius had got it--all because that anonymous letter had put it
out of his thoughts. He furtively remarked the strained look on his
daughter's face, as if she too were gazing at a picture that she couldn't
buy. He almost wished the War back. Worries didn't seem, then, quite so
worrying. From the caress in her voice, the look on her face, he became
certain that she wanted something from him, uncertain whether it would be
wise of him to give it her. He pushed his savoury away uneaten, and even
joined her in a cigarette.
After dinner she set the electric piano-player going. And he augured the
worst when she sat down on a cushion footstool at his knee, and put her
hand on his.
"Darling, be nice to me. I had to see Jon--he wrote to me. He's going
to try what he can do with his mother. But I've been thinking. It's
really in your hands, Father. If you'd persuade her that it doesn't mean
renewing the past in any way! That I shall stay yours, and Jon will stay
hers; that you need never see him or her, and she need never see you or
me! Only you could persuade her, dear, because only you could promise.
One can't promise for other people. Surely it wouldn't be too awkward
for you to see her just this once now that Jon's father is dead?"
"Too awkward?" Soames repeated. "The whole thing's preposterous."
"You know," said Fleur, without looking up, "you wouldn't mind seeing
her, really."
Soames was silent. Her words had expressed a truth too deep for him to
admit. She slipped her fingers between his own--hot, slim, eager, they
clung there. This child of his would corkscrew her way into a brick
wall!
"What am I to do if you won't, Father?" she said very softly.
"I'll do anything for your happiness," said Soanies; "but this isn't for
your happiness."
"Oh! it is; it is!"
"It'll only stir things up," he said grimly.
"But they are stirred up. The thing is to quiet them. To make her feel
that this is just our lives, and has nothing to do with yours or hers.
You can do it, Father, I know you can."
"You know a great deal, then," was Soames' glum answer.
"If you will, Jon and I will wait a year--two years if you like."
"It seems to me," murmured Soames, "that you care nothing about what I
feel."
Fleur pressed his hand against her cheek.
"I do, darling. But you wouldn't like me to be awfully miserable."
How she wheedled to get her ends! And trying with all his might to think
she really cared for him--he was not sure--not sure. All she cared for
was this boy! Why should he help her to get this boy, who was killing
her affection for himself? Why should he? By the laws of the Forsytes
it was foolish! There was nothing to be had out of it--nothing! To give
her to that boy! To pass her into the enemy's camp, under the influence
of the woman who had injured him so deeply! Slowly--inevitably--he would
lose this flower of his life! And suddenly he was conscious that his
hand was wet. His heart gave a little painful jump. He couldn't bear
her to cry. He put his other hand quickly over hers, and a tear dropped
on that, too. He couldn't go on like this! "Well, well," he said, "I'll
think it over, and do what I can. Come, come!" If she must have it for
her happiness--she must; he couldn't refuse to help her. And lest she
should begin to thank him he got out of his chair and went up to the
piano-player--making that noise! It ran down, as he reached it, with a
faint buzz. That musical box of his nursery days: "The Harmonious
Blacksmith," "Glorious Port"--the thing had always made him miserable
when his mother set it going on Sunday afternoons. Here it was
again--the same thing, only larger, more expensive, and now it played
"The Wild, Wild Women," and "The Policeman's Holiday," and he was no
longer in black velvet with a sky blue collar. 'Profond's right,' he
thought, 'there's nothing in it! We're all progressing to the grave!'
And with that surprising mental comment he walked out.
He did not see Fleur again that night. But, at breakfast, her eyes
followed him about with an appeal he could not escape--not that he
intended to try. No! He had made up his mind to the nerve-racking
business. He would go to Robin Hill--to that house of memories. Pleasant
memory--the last! Of going down to keep that boy's father and Irene
apart by threatening divorce. He had often thought, since, that it had
clinched their union. And, now, he was going to clinch the union of that
boy with his girl. 'I don't know what I've done,' he thought, 'to have
such things thrust on me!' He went up by train and down by train, and
from the station walked by the long rising lane, still very much as he
remembered it over thirty years ago. Funny--so near London! Some one
evidently was holding on to the land there. This speculation soothed
him, moving between the high hedges slowly, so as not to get overheated,
though the day was chill enough. After all was said and done there was
something real about land, it didn't shift. Land, and good pictures!
The values might fluctuate a bit, but on the whole they were always going
up--worth holding on to, in a world where there was such a lot of
unreality, cheap building, changing fashions, such a "Here to-day and
gone to-morrow" spirit. The French were right, perhaps, with their
peasant proprietorship, though he had no opinion of the French. One's
bit of land! Something solid in it! He had heard peasant proprietors
described as a pig-headed lot; had heard young Mont call his father a
pigheaded Morning Poster--disrespectful young devil. Well, there were
worse things than being pig-headed or reading the Morning Post. There
was Profond and his tribe, and all these Labour chaps, and loud-mouthed
politicians and 'wild, wild women'! A lot of worse things! And suddenly
Soames became conscious of feeling weak, and hot, and shaky. Sheer nerves
at the meeting before him! As Aunt Juley might have said--quoting
"Superior Dosset"--his nerves were "in a proper fautigue." He could see
the house now among its trees, the house he had watched being built,
intending it for himself and this woman, who, by such strange fate, had
lived in it with another after all! He began to think of Dumetrius, Local
Loans, and other forms of investment. He could not afford to meet her
with his nerves all shaking; he who represented the Day of Judgment for
her on earth as it was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified,
meeting lawless beauty, incarnate. His dignity demanded impassivity
during this embassy designed to link their offspring, who, if she had
behaved herself, would have been brother and sister. That wretched tune,
"The Wild, Wild Women," kept running in his head, perversely, for tunes
did not run there as a rule. Passing the poplars in front of the house,
he thought: 'How they've grown; I had them planted!' A maid answered his
ring.
"Will you say--Mr. Forsyte, on a very special matter."
If she realised who he was, quite probably she would not see him. 'By
George!' he thought, hardening as the tug came. 'It's a topsy-turvy
affair!'
The maid came back. "Would the gentleman state his business, please?"
"Say it concerns Mr. Jon," said Soames.
And once more he was alone in that hall with the pool of grey-white
marble designed by her first lover. Ah! she had been a bad lot--had
loved two men, and not himself! He must remember that when he came face
to face with her once more. And suddenly he saw her in the opening chink
between the long heavy purple curtains, swaying, as if in hesitation; the
old perfect poise and line, the old startled dark-eyed gravity, the old
calm defensive voice: "Will you come in, please?"
He passed through that opening. As in the picture-gallery and the
confectioner's shop, she seemed to him still beautiful. And this was the
first time--the very first--since he married her seven-and-thirty years
ago, that he was speaking to her without the legal right to call her his.
She was not wearing black--one of that fellow's radical notions, he
supposed.
"I apologise for coming," he said glumly; "but this business must be
settled one way or the other."
"Won't you sit down?"
"No, thank you."
Anger at his false position, impatience of ceremony between them,
mastered him, and words came tumbling out:
"It's an infernal mischance; I've done my best to discourage it. I
consider my daughter crazy, but I've got into the habit of indulging her;
that's why I'm here. I suppose you're fond of your son."
"Devotedly."
"Well?"
"It rests with him."
He had a sense of being met and baffled. Always--always she had baffled
him, even in those old first married days.
"It's a mad notion," he said.
"It is."
"If you had only--! Well--they might have been--" he did not finish that
sentence "brother and sister and all this saved," but he saw her shudder
as if he had, and stung by the sight he crossed over to the window. Out
there the trees had not grown--they couldn't, they were old!
"So far as I'm concerned," he said, "you may make your mind easy. I
desire to see neither you nor your son if this marriage comes about.
Young people in these days are--are unaccountable. But I can't bear to
see my daughter unhappy. What am I to say to her when I go back?"
"Please say to her as I said to you, that it rests with Jon."
"You don't oppose it?"
"With all my heart; not with my lips."
Soames stood, biting his finger.
"I remember an evening--" he said suddenly; and was silent. What was
there--what was there in this woman that would not fit into the four
corners of his hate or condemnation? "Where is he--your son?"
"Up in his father's studio, I think."
"Perhaps you'd have him down."
He watched her ring the bell, he watched the maid come in.
"Please tell Mr. Jon that I want him."
"If it rests with him," said Soames hurriedly, when the maid was gone, "I
suppose I may take it for granted that this unnatural marriage will take
place; in that case there'll be formalities. Whom do I deal
with--Herring's?"
Irene nodded.
"You don't propose to live with them?"
Irene shook her head.
"What happens to this house?"
"It will be as Jon wishes."
"This house," said Soames suddenly: "I had hopes when I began it. If
they live in it--their children! They say there's such a thing as
Nemesis. Do you believe in it?"
"Yes."
"Oh! You do!"
He had come back from the window, and was standing close to her, who, in
the curve of her grand piano, was, as it were, embayed.
"I'm not likely to see you again," he said slowly. "Will you shake
hands"--his lip quivered, the words came out jerkily--"and let the past
die." He held out his hand. Her pale face grew paler, her eyes so dark,
rested immovably on his, her hands remained clasped in front of her. He
heard a sound and turned. That boy was standing in the opening of the
curtains. Very queer he looked, hardly recognisable as the young fellow
he had seen in the Gallery off Cork Street--very queer; much older, no
youth in the face at all--haggard, rigid, his hair ruffled, his eyes deep
in his head. Soames made an effort, and said with a lift of his lip, not
quite a smile nor quite a sneer:
"Well, young man! I'm here for my daughter; it rests with you, it
seems--this matter. Your mother leaves it in your hands."
The boy continued staring at his mother's face, and made no answer.
"For my daughter's sake I've brought myself to come," said Soames. "What
am I to say to her when I go back?"
Still looking at his mother, the boy said, quietly:
"Tell Fleur that it's no good, please; I must do as my father wished
before he died."
"Jon!"
"It's all right, Mother."
In a kind of stupefaction Soames looked from one to the other; then,
taking up hat and umbrella which he had put down on a chair, he walked
toward the curtains. The boy stood aside for him to go by. He passed
through and heard the grate of the rings as the curtains were drawn
behind him. The sound liberated something in his chest.
'So that's that!' he thought, and passed out of the front door.
VIII
THE DARK TUNE
As Soames walked away from the house at Robin Hill the sun broke through
the grey of that chill afternoon, in smoky radiance. So absorbed in
landscape painting that he seldom looked seriously for effects of Nature
out of doors--he was struck by that moody effulgence--it mourned with a
triumph suited to his own feeling. Victory in defeat. His embassy had
come to naught. But he was rid of those people, had regained his
daughter at the expense of--her happiness. What would Fleur say to him?
Would she believe he had done his best? And under that sunlight faring
on the elms, hazels, hollies of the lane and those unexploited fields,
Soames felt dread. She would be terribly upset! He must appeal to her
pride. That boy had given her up, declared part and lot with the woman
who so long ago had given her father up! Soames clenched his hands.
Given him up, and why? What had been wrong with him? And once more he
felt the malaise of one who contemplates himself as seen by another--like
a dog who chances on his refection in a mirror and is intrigued and
anxious at the unseizable thing.
Not in a hurry to get home, he dined in town at the Connoisseurs. While
eating a pear it suddenly occurred to him that, if he had not gone down
to Robin Hill, the boy might not have so decided. He remembered the
expression on his face while his mother was refusing the hand he had held
out. A strange, an awkward thought! Had Fleur cooked her own goose by
trying to make too sure?
He reached home at half-past nine. While the car was passing in at one
drive gate he heard the grinding sputter of a motor-cycle passing out by
the other. Young Mont, no doubt, so Fleur had not been lonely. But he
went in with a sinking heart. In the cream-panelled drawing-room she was
sitting with her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her clasped hands,
in front of a white camellia plant which filled the fireplace. That
glance at her before she saw him renewed his dread. What was she seeing
among those white camellias?
"Well, Father!"
Soames shook his head. His tongue failed him. This was murderous work!
He saw her eyes dilate, her lips quivering.
"What? What? Quick, Father!"
"My dear," said Soames, "I--I did my best, but--" And again he shook his
head.
Fleur ran to him, and put a hand on each of his shoulders.
"She?"
"No," muttered Soames; "he. I was to tell you that it was no use; he must
do what his father wished before he died." He caught her by the waist.
"Come, child, don't let them hurt you. They're not worth your little
finger."
Fleur tore herself from his grasp.
"You didn't you--couldn't have tried. You--you betrayed me, Father!"
Bitterly wounded, Soames gazed at her passionate figure writhing there in
front of him.
"You didn't try--you didn't--I was a fool! Iwon't believe he could--he
ever could! Only yesterday he--! Oh! why did I ask you?"
"Yes," said Soames, quietly, "why did you? I swallowed my feelings; I
did my best for you, against my judgment--and this is my reward.
Good-night!"
With every nerve in his body twitching he went toward the door.
Fleur darted after him.
"He gives me up? You mean that? Father!"
Soames turned and forced himself to answer:
"Yes."
"Oh!" cried Fleur. "What did you--what could you have done in those old
days?"
The breathless sense of really monstrous injustice cut the power of
speech in Soames' throat. What had he done! What had they done to him!
And with quite unconscious dignity he put his hand on his breast, and
looked at her.
"It's a shame!" cried Fleur passionately.
Soames went out. He mounted, slow and icy, to his picture gallery, and
paced among his treasures. Outrageous! Oh! Outrageous! She was
spoiled! Ah! and who had spoiled her? He stood still before the Goya
copy. Accustomed to her own way in everything. Flower of his life! And
now that she couldn't have it! He turned to the window for some air.
Daylight was dying, the moon rising, gold behind the poplars! What sound
was that? Why! That piano thing! A dark tune, with a thrum and a
throb! She had set it going--what comfort could she get from that? His
eyes caught movement down there beyond the lawn, under the trellis of
rambler roses and young acacia-trees, where the moonlight fell. There
she was, roaming up and down. His heart gave a little sickening jump.
What would she do under this blow? How could he tell? What did he know
of her--he had only loved her all his life--looked on her as the apple of
his eye! He knew nothing--had no notion. There she was--and that dark
tune--and the river gleaming in the moonlight!
'I must go out,' he thought.
He hastened down to the drawing-room, lighted just as he had left it,
with the piano thrumming out that waltz, or fox-trot, or whatever they
called it in these days, and passed through on to the verandah.
Where could he watch, without her seeing him? And he stole down through
the fruit garden to the boat-house. He was between her and the river
now, and his heart felt lighter. She was his daughter, and
Annette's--she wouldn't do anything foolish; but there it was--he didn't
know! From the boat house window he could see the last acacia and the
spin of her skirt when she turned in her restless march. That tune had
run down at last--thank goodness! He crossed the floor and looked
through the farther window at the water slow-flowing past the lilies. It
made little bubbles against them, bright where a moon-streak fell. He
remembered suddenly that early morning when he had slept on the
house-boat after his father died, and she had just been born--nearly
nineteen years ago! Even now he recalled the unaccustomed world when he
woke up, the strange feeling it had given him. That day the second
passion of his life began--for this girl of his, roaming under the
acacias. What a comfort she had been to him! And all the soreness and
sense of outrage left him. If he could make her happy again, he didn't
care! An owl flew, queeking, queeking; a bat flitted by; the moonlight
brightened and broadened on the water. How long was she going to roam
about like this! He went back to the window, and suddenly saw her coming
down to the bank. She stood quite close, on the landing-stage. And
Soames watched, clenching his hands. Should he speak to her? His
excitement was intense. The stillness of her figure, its youth, its
absorption in despair, in longing, in--itself. He would always remember
it, moonlit like that; and the faint sweet reek of the river and the
shivering of the willow leaves. She had everything in the world that he
could give her, except the one thing that she could not have because of
him! The perversity of things hurt him at that moment, as might a
fish-bone in his throat.
Then, with an infinite relief, he saw her turn back toward the house.
What could he give her to make amends? Pearls, travel, horses, other
young men--anything she wanted--that he might lose the memory of her
young figure lonely by the water! There! She had set that tune going
again! Why--it was a mania! Dark, thrumming, faint, travelling from the
house. It was as though she had said: "If I can't have something to keep
me going, I shall die of this!" Soames dimly understood. Well, if it
helped her, let her keep it thrumming on all night! And, mousing back
through the fruit garden, he regained the verandah. Though he meant to
go in and speak to her now, he still hesitated, not knowing what to say,
trying hard to recall how it felt to be thwarted in love. He ought to
know, ought to remember--and he could not! Gone--all real recollection;
except that it had hurt him horribly. In this blankness he stood passing
his handkerchief over hands and lips, which were very dry. By craning
his head he could just see Fleur, standing with her back to that piano
still grinding out its tune, her arms tight crossed on her breast, a
lighted cigarette between her lips, whose smoke half veiled her face.
The expression on it was strange to Soames, the eyes shone and stared,
and every feature was alive with a sort of wretched scorn and anger.
Once or twice he had seen Annette look like that--the face was too vivid,
too naked, not his daughter's at that moment. And he dared not go in,
realising the futility of any attempt at consolation. He sat down in the
shadow of the ingle-nook.
Monstrous trick, that Fate had played him! Nemesis! That old unhappy
marriage! And in God's name-why? How was he to know, when he wanted
Irene so violently, and she consented to be his, that she would never
love him? The tune died and was renewed, and died again, and still
Soames sat in the shadow, waiting for he knew not what. The fag of
Fleur's cigarette, flung through the window, fell on the grass; he
watched it glowing, burning itself out. The moon had freed herself above
the poplars, and poured her unreality on the garden. Comfortless light,
mysterious, withdrawn--like the beauty of that woman who had never loved
him--dappling the nemesias and the stocks with a vesture not of earth.
Flowers! And his flower so unhappy! Ah! Why could one not put happiness
into Local Loans, gild its edges, insure it against going down?
Light had ceased to flow out now from the drawing-room window. All was
silent and dark in there. Had she gone up? He rose, and, tiptoeing,
peered in. It seemed so! He entered. The verandah kept the moonlight
out; and at first he could see nothing but the outlines of furniture
blacker than the darkness. He groped toward the farther window to shut
it. His foot struck a chair, and he heard a gasp. There she was, curled
and crushed into the corner of the sofa! His hand hovered. Did she want
his consolation? He stood, gazing at that ball of crushed frills and
hair and graceful youth, trying to burrow its way out of sorrow. How
leave her there? At last he touched her hair, and said:
"Come, darling, better go to bed. I'll make it up to you, somehow." How
fatuous! But what could he have said?
IX
UNDER THE OAK-TREE
When their visitor had disappeared Jon and his mother stood without
speaking, till he said suddenly:
"I ought to have seen him out."
But Soames was already walking down the drive, and Jon went upstairs to
his father's studio, not trusting himself to go back.
The expression on his mother's face confronting the man she had once been
married to, had sealed a resolution growing within him ever since she
left him the night before. It had put the finishing touch of reality.
To marry Fleur would be to hit his mother in the face; to betray his dead
father! It was no good! Jon had the least resentful of natures. He
bore his parents no grudge in this hour of his distress. For one so
young there was a rather strange power in him of seeing things in some
sort of proportion. It was worse for Fleur, worse for his mother even,
than it was for him. Harder than to give up was to be given up, or to be
the cause of some one you loved giving up for you. He must not, would
not behave grudgingly! While he stood watching the tardy sunlight, he had
again that sudden vision of the world which had come to him the night
before. Sea on sea, country on country, millions on millions of people,
all with their own lives, energies, joys, griefs, and suffering--all with
things they had to give up, and separate struggles for existence. Even
though he might be willing to give up all else for the one thing he
couldn't have, he would be a fool to think his feelings mattered much in
so vast a world, and to behave like a cry-baby or a cad. He pictured the
people who had nothing--the millions who had given up life in the War,
the millions whom the War had left with life and little else; the hungry
children he had read of, the shattered men; people in prison, every kind
of unfortunate. And--they did not help him much. If one had to miss a
meal, what comfort in the knowledge that many others had to miss it too?
There was more distraction in the thought of getting away out into this
vast world of which he knew nothing yet. He could not go on staying
here, walled in and sheltered, with everything so slick and comfortable,
and nothing to do but brood and think what might have been. He could not
go back to Wansdon, and the memories of Fleur. If he saw her again he
could not trust himself; and if he stayed here or went back there, he
would surely see her. While they were within reach of each other that
must happen. To go far away and quickly was the only thing to do. But,
however much he loved his mother, he did not want to go away with her.
Then feeling that was brutal, he made up his mind desperately to propose
that they should go to Italy. For two hours in that melancholy room he
tried to master himself, then dressed solemnly for dinner.
His mother had done the same. They ate little, at some length, and
talked of his father's catalogue. The show was arranged for October, and
beyond clerical detail there was nothing more to do.
After dinner she put on a cloak and they went out; walked a little,
talked a little, till they were standing silent at last beneath the
oak-tree. Ruled by the thought: 'If I show anything, I show all,' Jon
put his arm through hers and said quite casually:
"Mother, let's go to Italy."
Irene pressed his arm, and said as casually:
"It would be very nice; but I've been thinking you ought to see and do
more than you would if I were with you."
"But then you'd be alone."
"I was once alone for more than twelve years. Besides, I should like to
be here for the opening of Father's show."
Jon's grip tightened round her arm; he was not deceived.
"You couldn't stay here all by yourself; it's too big."
"Not here, perhaps. In London, and I might go to Paris, after the show
opens. You ought to have a year at least, Jon, and see the world."
"Yes, I'd like to see the world and rough it. But I don't want to leave
you all alone."
"My dear, I owe you that at least. If it's for your good, it'll be for
mine. Why not start tomorrow? You've got your passport."
"Yes; if I'm going it had better be at once. Only--Mother--if--if I
wanted to stay out somewhere--America or anywhere, would you mind coming
presently?"
"Wherever and whenever you send for me. But don't send until you really
want me."
Jon drew a deep breath.
"I feel England's choky."
They stood a few minutes longer under the oak-tree--looking out to where
the grand stand at Epsom was veiled in evening. The branches kept the
moonlight from them, so that it only fell everywhere else--over the
fields and far away, and on the windows of the creepered house behind,
which soon would be to let.
X
FLEUR'S WEDDING
The October paragraphs describing the wedding of Fleur Forsyte to Michael
Mont hardly conveyed the symbolic significance of this event. In the
union of the great-granddaughter of "Superior Dosset" with the heir of a
ninth baronet was the outward and visible sign of that merger of class in
class which buttresses the political stability of a realm. The time had
come when the Forsytes might resign their natural resentment against a
"flummery" not theirs by birth, and accept it as the still more natural
due of their possessive instincts. Besides, they had to mount to make
room for all those so much more newly rich. In that quiet but tasteful
ceremony in Hanover Square, and afterward among the furniture in Green
Street, it had been impossible for those not in the know to distinguish
the Forsyte troop from the Mont contingent--so far away was "Superior
Dosset" now. Was there, in the crease of his trousers, the expression of
his moustache, his accent, or the shine on his top-hat, a pin to choose
between Soames and the ninth baronet himself? Was not Fleur as
self-possessed, quick, glancing, pretty, and hard as the likeliest
Muskham, Mont, or Charwell filly present? If anything, the Forsytes had
it in dress and looks and manners. They had become "upper class" and now
their name would be formally recorded in the Stud Book, their money
joined to land. Whether this was a little late in the day, and those
rewards of the possessive instinct, lands and money, destined for the
melting-pot--was still a question so moot that it was not mooted. After
all, Timothy had said Consols were goin' up. Timothy, the last, the
missing link; Timothy, in extremis on the Bayswater Road--so Francie had
reported. It was whispered, too, that this young Mont was a sort of
socialist--strangely wise of him, and in the nature of insurance,
considering the days they lived in. There was no uneasiness on that
score. The landed classes produced that sort of amiable foolishness at
times, turned to safe uses and confined to theory. As George remarked to
his sister Francie: "They'll soon be having puppies--that'll give him
pause."
The church with white flowers and something blue in the middle of the
East window looked extremely chaste, as though endeavouring to counteract
the somewhat lurid phraseology of a Service calculated to keep the
thoughts of all on puppies. Forsytes, Haymans, Tweetymans, sat in the
left aisle; Monts, Charwells; Muskhams in the right; while a sprinkling
of Fleur's fellow-sufferers at school, and of Mont's fellow-sufferers in,
the War, gaped indiscriminately from either side, and three maiden
ladies, who had dropped in on their way from Skyward's brought up the
rear, together with two Mont retainers and Fleur's old nurse. In the
unsettled state of the country as full a house as could be expected.
Mrs. Val Dartie, who sat with her husband in the third row, squeezed his
hand more than once during the performance. To her, who knew the plot of
this tragi-comedy, its most dramatic moment was well-nigh painful. 'I
wonder if Jon knows by instinct,' she thought--Jon, out in British
Columbia. She had received a letter from him only that morning which had
made her smile and say:
"Jon's in British Columbia, Val, because he wants to be in California.
He thinks it's too nice there."
"Oh!" said Val, "so he's beginning to see a joke again."
"He's bought some land and sent for his mother."
"What on earth will she do out there?"
"All she cares about is Jon. Do you still think it a happy release?"
Val's shrewd eyes narrowed to grey pin-points between their dark lashes.
"Fleur wouldn't have suited him a bit. She's not bred right."
"Poor little Fleur!" sighed Holly. Ah! it was strange--this marriage.
The young man, Mont, had caught her on the rebound, of course, in the
reckless mood of one whose ship has just gone down. Such a plunge could
not but be--as Val put it--an outside chance. There was little to be told
from the back view of her young cousin's veil, and Holly's eyes reviewed
the general aspect of this Christian wedding. She, who had made a
love-match which had been successful, had a horror of unhappy marriages.
This might not be one in the end--but it was clearly a toss-up; and to
consecrate a toss-up in this fashion with manufactured unction before a
crowd of fashionable free-thinkers--for who thought otherwise than
freely, or not at all, when they were "dolled" up--seemed to her as near
a sin as one could find in an age which had abolished them. Her eyes
wandered from the prelate in his robes (a Charwell-the Forsytes had not
as yet produced a prelate) to Val, beside her, thinking--she was
certain--of the Mayfly filly at fifteen to one for the Cambridgeshire.
They passed on and caught the profile of the ninth baronet, in
counterfeitment of the kneeling process. She could just see the neat
ruck above his knees where he had pulled his trousers up, and thought:
'Val's forgotten to pull up his!' Her eyes passed to the pew in front of
her, where Winifred's substantial form was gowned with passion, and on
again to Soames and Annette kneeling side by side. A little smile came
on her lips--Prosper Profond, back from the South Seas of the Channel,
would be kneeling too, about six rows behind. Yes! This was a funny
"small" business, however it turned out; still it was in a proper church
and would be in the proper papers to-morrow morning.
They had begun a hymn; she could hear the ninth baronet across the aisle,
singing of the hosts of Midian. Her little finger touched Val's
thumb--they were holding the same hymn-book--and a tiny thrill passed
through her, preserved--from twenty years ago. He stooped and whispered:
"I say, d'you remember the rat?" The rat at their wedding in Cape
Colony, which had cleaned its whiskers behind the table at the
Registrar's! And between her little and third forgers she squeezed his
thumb hard.
The hymn was over, the prelate had begun to deliver his discourse. He
told them of the dangerous times they lived in, and the awful conduct of
the House of Lords in connection with divorce. They were all
soldiers--he said--in the trenches under the poisonous gas of the Prince
of Darkness, and must be manful. The purpose of marriage was children,
not mere sinful happiness.
An imp danced in Holly's eyes--Val's eyelashes were meeting. Whatever
happened; he must not snore. Her finger and thumb closed on his thigh
till he stirred uneasily.
The discourse was over, the danger past. They were signing in the
vestry; and general relaxation had set in.
A voice behind her said:
"Will she stay the course?"
"Who's that?" she whispered.
"Old George Forsyte!"
Holly demurely scrutinized one of whom she had often heard. Fresh from
South Africa, and ignorant of her kith and kin, she never saw one without
an almost childish curiosity. He was very big, and very dapper; his eyes
gave her a funny feeling of having no particular clothes.
"They're off!" she heard him say.
They came, stepping from the chancel. Holly looked first in young Mont's
face. His lips and ears were twitching, his eyes, shifting from his feet
to the hand within his arm, stared suddenly before them as if to face a
firing party. He gave Holly the feeling that he was spiritually
intoxicated. But Fleur! Ah! That was different. The girl was
perfectly composed, prettier than ever, in her white robes and veil over
her banged dark chestnut hair; her eyelids hovered demure over her dark
hazel eyes. Outwardly, she seemed all there. But inwardly, where was
she? As those two passed, Fleur raised her eyelids--the restless glint
of those clear whites remained on Holly's vision as might the flutter of
caged bird's wings.
In Green Street Winifred stood to receive, just a little less composed
than usual. Soames' request for the use of her house had come on her at
a deeply psychological moment. Under the influence of a remark of
Prosper Profond, she had begun to exchange her Empire for Expressionistic
furniture. There were the most amusing arrangements, with violet, green,
and orange blobs and scriggles, to be had at Mealard's. Another month
and the change would have been complete. Just now, the very "intriguing"
recruits she had enlisted, did not march too well with the old guard. It
was as if her regiment were half in khaki, half in scarlet and bearskins.
But her strong and comfortable character made the best of it in a
drawing-room which typified, perhaps, more perfectly than she imagined,
the semi-bolshevized imperialism of her country. After all, this was a
day of merger, and you couldn't have too much of it! Her eyes travelled
indulgently among her guests. Soames had gripped the back of a buhl
chair; young Mont was behind that "awfully amusing" screen, which no one
as yet had been able to explain to her. The ninth baronet had shied
violently at a round scarlet table, inlaid under glass with blue
Australian butteries' wings, and was clinging to her Louis-Quinze
cabinet; Francie Forsyte had seized the new mantel-board, finely carved
with little purple grotesques on an ebony ground; George, over by the old
spinet, was holding a little sky-blue book as if about to enter bets;
Prosper Profond was twiddling the knob of the open door, black with
peacock-blue panels; and Annette's hands, close by, were grasping her own
waist; two Muskhams clung to the balcony among the plants, as if feeling
ill; Lady Mont, thin and brave-looking, had taken up her long-handled
glasses and was gazing at the central light shade, of ivory and orange
dashed with deep magenta, as if the heavens had opened. Everybody, in
fact, seemed holding on to something. Only Fleur, still in her bridal
dress, was detached from all support, flinging her words and glances to
left and right.
The room was full of the bubble and the squeak of conversation. Nobody
could hear anything that anybody said; which seemed of little
consequence, since no one waited for anything so slow as an answer.
Modern conversation seemed to Winifred so different from the days of her
prime, when a drawl was all the vogue. Still it was "amusing," which, of
course, was all that mattered. Even the Forsytes were talking with
extreme rapidity--Fleur and Christopher, and Imogen, and young Nicholas's
youngest, Patrick. Soames, of course, was silent; but George, by the
spinet, kept up a running commentary, and Francie, by her mantel-shelf.
Winifred drew nearer to the ninth baronet. He seemed to promise a
certain repose; his nose was fine and drooped a little, his grey
moustaches too; and she said, drawling through her smile:
"It's rather nice, isn't it?"
His reply shot out of his smile like a snipped bread pellet
"D'you remember, in Frazer, the tribe that buries the bride up to the
waist?"
He spoke as fast as anybody! He had dark lively little eyes, too, all
crinkled round like a Catholic priest's. Winifred felt suddenly he might
say things she would regret.
"They're always so amusing--weddings," she murmured, and moved on to
Soames. He was curiously still, and Winifred saw at once what was
dictating his immobility. To his right was George Forsyte, to his left
Annette and Prosper Profond. He could not move without either seeing
those two together, or the reflection of them in George Forsyte's japing
eyes. He was quite right not to be taking notice.
"They say Timothy's sinking;" he said glumly.
"Where will you put him, Soames?"
"Highgate." He counted on his fingers. "It'll make twelve of them
there, including wives. How do you think Fleur looks?"
"Remarkably well."
Soames nodded. He had never seen her look prettier, yet he could not rid
himself of the impression that this business was unnatural--remembering
still that crushed figure burrowing into the corner of the sofa. From
that night to this day he had received from her no confidences. He knew
from his chauffeur that she had made one more attempt on Robin Hill and
drawn blank--an empty house, no one at home. He knew that she had
received a letter, but not what was in it, except that it had made her
hide herself and cry. He had remarked that she looked at him sometimes
when she thought he wasn't noticing, as if she were wondering still what
he had done--forsooth--to make those people hate him so. Well, there it
was! Annette had come back, and things had worn on through the
summer--very miserable, till suddenly Fleur had said she was going to
marry young Mont. She had shown him a little more affection when she
told him that. And he had yielded--what was the good of opposing it?
God knew that he had never wished to thwart her in anything! And the
young man seemed quite delirious about her. No doubt she was in a
reckless mood, and she was young, absurdly young. But if he opposed her,
he didn't know what she would do; for all he could tell she might want to
take up a profession, become a doctor or solicitor, some nonsense. She
had no aptitude for painting, writing, music, in his view the legitimate
occupations of unmarried women, if they must do something in these days.
On the whole, she was safer married, for he could see too well how
feverish and restless she was at home. Annette, too, had been in favour
of it--Annette, from behind the veil of his refusal to know what she was
about, if she was about anything. Annette had said: "Let her marry this
young man. He is a nice boy--not so highty-flighty as he seems." Where
she got her expressions, he didn't know--but her opinion soothed his
doubts. His wife, whatever her conduct, had clear eyes and an almost
depressing amount of common sense. He had settled fifty thousand on
Fleur, taking care that there was no cross settlement in case it didn't
turn out well. Could it turn out well? She had not got over that other
boy--he knew. They were to go to Spain for the honeymoon. He would be
even lonelier when she was gone. But later, perhaps, she would forget,
and turn to him again! Winifred's voice broke on his reverie.
"Why! Of all wonders-June!"
There, in a djibbah--what things she wore!--with her hair straying from
under a fillet, Soames saw his cousin, and Fleur going forward to greet
her. The two passed from their view out on to the stairway.
"Really," said Winifred, "she does the most impossible things! Fancy her
coming!"
"What made you ask her?" muttered Soames.
"Because I thought she wouldn't accept, of course."
Winifred had forgotten that behind conduct lies the main trend of
character; or, in other words, omitted to remember that Fleur was now a
"lame duck."
On receiving her invitation, June had first thought, 'I wouldn't go near
them for the world!' and then, one morning, had awakened from a dream of
Fleur waving to her from a boat with a wild unhappy gesture. And she had
changed her mind.
When Fleur came forward and said to her, "Do come up while I'm changing
my dress," she had followed up the stairs. The girl led the way into
Imogen's old bedroom, set ready for her toilet.
June sat down on the bed, thin and upright, like a little spirit in the
sear and yellow. Fleur locked the door.
The girl stood before her divested of her wedding dress. What a pretty
thing she was!
"I suppose you think me a fool," she said, with quivering lips, "when it
was to have been Jon. But what does it matter? Michael wants me, and I
don't care. It'll get me away from home." Diving her hand into the
frills on her breast, she brought out a letter. "Jon wrote me this."
June read: "Lake Okanagen, British Columbia. I'm not coming back to
England. Bless you always. Jon."
"She's made safe, you see," said Fleur.
June handed back the letter.
"That's not fair to Irene," she said, "she always told Jon he could do as
he wished."
Fleur smiled bitterly. "Tell me, didn't she spoil your life too?" June
looked up. "Nobody can spoil a life, my dear. That's nonsense. Things
happen, but we bob up."
With a sort of terror she saw the girl sink on her knees and bury her
face in the djibbah. A strangled sob mounted to June's ears.
"It's all right--all right," she murmured, "Don't! There, there!"
But the point of the girl's chin was pressed ever closer into her thigh,
and the sound was dreadful of her sobbing.
Well, well! It had to come. She would feel better afterward! June
stroked the short hair of that shapely head; and all the scattered
mother-sense in her focussed itself and passed through the tips of her
fingers into the girl's brain.
"Don't sit down under it, my dear," she said at last. "We can't control
life, but we can fight it. Make the best of things. I've had to. I
held on, like you; and I cried, as you're crying now. And look at me!"
Fleur raised her head; a sob merged suddenly into a little choked laugh.
In truth it was a thin and rather wild and wasted spirit she was looking
at, but it had brave eyes.
"All right!" she said. "I'm sorry. I shall forget him, I suppose, if I
fly fast and far enough."
And, scrambling to her feet, she went over to the wash-stand.
June watched her removing with cold water the traces of emotion. Save for
a little becoming pinkness there was nothing left when she stood before
the mirror. June got off the bed and took a pin-cushion in her hand. To
put two pins into the wrong places was all the vent she found for
sympathy.
"Give me a kiss," she said when Fleur was ready, and dug her chin into
the girl's warm cheek.
"I want a whiff," said Fleur; "don't wait."
June left her, sitting on the bed with a cigarette between her lips and
her eyes half closed, and went down-stairs. In the doorway of the
drawing-room stood Soames as if unquiet at his daughter's tardiness.
June tossed her head and passed down on to the half-landing. Her cousin
Francie was standing there.
"Look!" said June, pointing with her chin at Soames. "That man's fatal!"
"How do you mean," said Francie, "fatal?"
June did not answer her. "I shan't wait to see them off," she said.
"Good-bye!"
"Good-bye!" said Francie, and her eyes, of a Celtic grey, goggled. That
old feud! Really, it was quite romantic!
Soames, moving to the well of the staircase, saw June go, and drew a
breath of satisfaction. Why didn't Fleur come? They would miss their
train. That train would bear her away from him, yet he could not help
fidgeting at the thought that they would lose it. And then she did come,
running down in her tan-coloured frock and black velvet cap, and passed
him into the drawing-room. He saw her kiss her mother, her aunt, Val's
wife, Imogen, and then come forth, quick and pretty as ever. How would
she treat him at this last moment of her girlhood? He couldn't hope for
much!
Her lips pressed the middle of his cheek.
"Daddy!" she said, and was past and gone! Daddy! She hadn't called him
that for years. He drew a long breath and followed slowly down. There
was all the folly with that confetti stuff and the rest of it to go
through with yet. But he would like just to catch her smile, if she
leaned out, though they would hit her in the eye with the shoe, if they
didn't take care. Young Mont's voice said fervently in his ear:
"Good-bye, sir; and thank you! I'm so fearfully bucked."
"Good-bye," he said; "don't miss your train."
He stood on the bottom step but three, whence he could see above the
heads--the silly hats and heads. They were in the car now; and there was
that stuff, showering, and there went the shoe. A flood of something
welled up in Soames, and--he didn't know--he couldn't see!
XI
THE LAST OF THE OLD FORSYTES
When they came to prepare that terrific symbol Timothy Forsyte--the one
pure individualist left, the only man who hadn't heard of the Great
War--they found him wonderful--not even death had undermined his
soundness.
To Smither and Cook that preparation came like final evidence of what
they had never believed possible--the end of the old Forsyte family on
earth. Poor Mr. Timothy must now take a harp and sing in the company of
Miss Forsyte, Mrs. Julia, Miss Hester; with Mr. Jolyon, Mr. Swithin, Mr.
James, Mr. Roger, and Mr. Nicholas of the party. Whether Mrs. Hayman
would be there was more doubtful, seeing that she had been cremated.
Secretly Cook thought that Mr. Timothy would be upset--he had always been
so set against barrel organs. How many times had she not said: "Drat the
thing! There it is again! Smither, you'd better run up and see what you
can do." And in her heart she would so have enjoyed the tunes, if she
hadn't known that Mr. Timothy would ring the bell in a minute and say:
"Here, take him a halfpenny and tell him to move on." Often they had
been obliged to add threepence of their own before the man would
go--Timothy had ever underrated the value of emotion. Luckily he had
taken the organs for blue-bottles in his last years, which had been a
comfort, and they had been able to enjoy the tunes. But a harp! Cook
wondered. It was a change! And Mr. Timothy had never liked change. But
she did not speak of this to Smither, who did so take a line of her own
in regard to heaven that it quite put one about sometimes.
She cried while Timothy was being prepared, and they all had sherry
afterward out of the yearly Christmas bottle, which would not be needed
now. Ah! dear! She had been there five-and-forty years and Smither
three-and-forty! And now they would be going to a tiny house in Tooting,
to live on their savings and what Miss Hester had so kindly left
them--for to take fresh service after the glorious past--No! But they
would like just to see Mr. Soames again, and Mrs. Dartie, and Miss
Francie, and Miss Euphemia. And even if they had to take their own cab,
they felt they must go to the funeral. For six years Mr. Timothy had
been their baby, getting younger and younger every day, till at last he
had been too young to live.
They spent the regulation hours of waiting in polishing and dusting, in
catching the one mouse left, and asphyxiating the last beetle so as to
leave it nice, discussing with each other what they would buy at the
sale. Miss Ann's workbox; Miss Juley's (that is Mrs. Julia's) seaweed
album; the fire-screen Miss Hester had crewelled; and Mr. Timothy's
hair--little golden curls, glued into a black frame. Oh! they must have
those--only the price of things had gone up so!
It fell to Soames to issue invitations for the funeral. He had them
drawn up by Gradman in his office--only blood relations, and no flowers.
Six carriages were ordered. The Will would be read afterward at the
house.
He arrived at eleven o'clock to see that all was ready. At a quarter
past old Gradman came in black gloves and crape on his hat. He and
Soames stood in the drawing-room waiting. At half-past eleven the
carriages drew up in a long row. But no one else appeared. Gradman
said:
"It surprises me, Mr. Soames. I posted them myself."
"I don't know," said Soames; "he'd lost touch with the family." Soames
had often noticed in old days how much more neighbourly his family were
to the dead than to the living. But, now, the way they had flocked to
Fleur's wedding and abstained from Timothy's funeral, seemed to show some
vital change. There might, of course, be another reason; for Soames felt
that if he had not known the contents of Timothy's Will, he might have
stayed away himself through delicacy. Timothy had left a lot of money,
with nobody in particular to leave it to. They mightn't like to seem to
expect something.
At twelve o'clock the procession left the door; Timothy alone in the
first carriage under glass. Then Soames alone; then Gradman alone; then
Cook and Smither together. They started at a walk, but were soon
trotting under a bright sky. At the entrance to Highgate Cemetery they
were delayed by service in the Chapel. Soames would have liked to stay
outside in the sunshine. He didn't believe a word of it; on the other
hand, it was a form of insurance which could not safely be neglected, in
case there might be something in it after all.
They walked up two and two--he and Gradman, Cook and Smither--to the
family vault. It was not very distinguished for the funeral of the last
old Forsyte.
He took Gradman into his carriage on the way back to the Bayswater Road
with a certain glow in his heart. He had a surprise in pickle for the
old chap who had served the Forsytes four-and-fifty years-a treat that
was entirely his doing. How well he remembered saying to Timothy the
day--after Aunt Hester's funeral: "Well; Uncle Timothy, there's Gradman.
He's taken a lot of trouble for the family. What do you say to leaving
him five thousand?" and his surprise, seeing the difficulty there had
been in getting Timothy to leave anything, when Timothy had nodded. And
now the old chap would be as pleased as Punch, for Mrs. Gradman, he knew,
had a weak heart, and their son had lost a leg in the War. It was
extraordinarily gratifying to Soames to have left him five thousand
pounds of Timothy's money. They sat down together in the little
drawing-room, whose walls--like a vision of heaven--were sky-blue and
gold with every picture-frame unnaturally bright, and every speck of dust
removed from every piece of furniture, to read that little
masterpiece--the Will of Timothy. With his back to the light in Aunt
Hester's chair, Soames faced Gradman with his face to the light, on Aunt
Ann's sofa; and, crossing his legs, began:
"This is the last Will and Testament of me Timothy Forsyte of The Bower
Bayswater Road, London I appoint my nephew Soames Forsyte of The Shelter
Mapleduram and Thomas Gradman of 159 Folly Road Highgate (hereinafter
called my Trustees) to be the trustees and executors of this my Will To
the said Soames Forsyte I leave the sum of one thousand pounds free of
legacy duty and to the said Thomas Gradman I leave the sum of five
thousand pounds free of legacy duty."
Soames paused. Old Gradman was leaning forward, convulsively gripping a
stout black knee with each of his thick hands; his mouth had fallen open
so that the gold fillings of three teeth gleamed; his eyes were blinking,
two tears rolled slowly out of them. Soames read hastily on.
"All the rest of my property of whatsoever description I bequeath to my
Trustees upon Trust to convert and hold the same upon the following
trusts namely To pay thereout all my debts funeral expenses and outgoings
of any kind in connection with my Will and to hold the residue thereof in
trust for that male lineal descendant of my father Jolyon Forsyte by his
marriage with Ann Pierce who after the decease of all lineal descendants
whether male or female of my said father by his said marriage in being at
the time of my death shall last attain the age of twenty-one years
absolutely it being my desire that my property shall be nursed to the
extreme limit permitted by the laws of England for the benefit of such
male lineal descendant as aforesaid."
Soames read the investment and attestation clauses, and, ceasing, looked
at Gradman. The old fellow was wiping his brow with a large
handkerchief, whose brilliant colour supplied a sudden festive tinge to
the proceedings.
"My word, Mr. Soames!" he said, and it was clear that the lawyer in him
had utterly wiped out the man: "My word! Why, there are two babies now,
and some quite young children--if one of them lives to be eighty--it's
not a great age--and add twenty-one--that's a hundred years; and Mr.
Timothy worth a hundred and fifty thousand pound net if he's worth a
penny. Compound interest at five per cent. doubles you in fourteen
years. In fourteen years three hundred thousand-six hundred thousand in
twenty-eight--twelve hundred thousand in forty-two--twenty-four hundred
thousand in fifty-six--four million eight hundred thousand in
seventy--nine million six hundred thousand in eighty-four--Why, in a
hundred years it'll be twenty million! And we shan't live to use it! It
is a Will!"
Soames said dryly: "Anything may happen. The State might take the lot;
they're capable of anything in these days."
"And carry five," said Gradman to himself. "I forgot--Mr. Timothy's in
Consols; we shan't get more than two per cent. with this income tax. To
be on the safe side, say eight millions. Still, that's a pretty penny."
Soames rose and handed him the Will. "You're going into the City. Take
care of that, and do what's necessary. Advertise; but there are no
debts. When's the sale?"
"Tuesday week," said Gradman. "Life or lives in bein' and twenty-one
years afterward--it's a long way off. But I'm glad he's left it in the
family...."
The sale--not at Jobson's, in view of the Victorian nature of the
effects--was far more freely attended than the funeral, though not by
Cook and Smither, for Soames had taken it on himself to give them their
heart's desires. Winifred was present, Euphemia, and Francie, and
Eustace had come in his car. The miniatures, Barbizons, and J. R.
drawings had been bought in by Soames; and relics of no marketable value
were set aside in an off-room for members of the family who cared to have
mementoes. These were the only restrictions upon bidding characterised
by an almost tragic languor. Not one piece of furniture, no picture or
porcelain figure appealed to modern taste. The humming birds had fallen
like autumn leaves when taken from where they had not hummed for sixty
years. It was painful to Soames to see the chairs his aunts had sat on,
the little grand piano they had practically never played, the books whose
outsides they had gazed at, the china they had dusted, the curtains they
had drawn, the hearth-rug which had warmed their feet; above all, the
beds they had lain and died in--sold to little dealers, and the
housewives of Fulham. And yet--what could one do? Buy them and stick
them in a lumber-room? No; they had to go the way of all flesh and
furniture, and be worn out. But when they put up Aunt Ann's sofa and
were going to knock it down for thirty shillings, he cried out, suddenly:
"Five pounds!" The sensation was considerable, and the sofa his.
When that little sale was over in the fusty saleroom, and those Victorian
ashes scattered, he went out into the misty October sunshine feeling as
if cosiness had died out of the world, and the board "To Let" was up,
indeed. Revolutions on the horizon; Fleur in Spain; no comfort in
Annette; no Timothy's on the Bayswater Road. In the irritable desolation
of his soul he went into the Goupenor Gallery. That chap Jolyon's
watercolours were on view there. He went in to look down his nose at
them--it might give him some faint satisfaction. The news had trickled
through from June to Val's wife, from her to Val, from Val to his mother,
from her to Soames, that the house--the fatal house at Robin Hill--was
for sale, and Irene going to join her boy out in British Columbia, or
some such place. For one wild moment the thought had come to Soames:
'Why shouldn't I buy it back? I meant it for my!' No sooner come than
gone. Too lugubrious a triumph; with too many humiliating memories for
himself and Fleur. She would never live there after what had happened.
No, the place must go its way to some peer or profiteer. It had been a
bone of contention from the first, the shell of the feud; and with the
woman gone, it was an empty shell. "For Sale or To Let." With his
mind's eye he could see that board raised high above the ivied wall which
he had built.
He passed through the first of the two rooms in the Gallery. There was
certainly a body of work! And now that the fellow was dead it did not
seem so trivial. The drawings were pleasing enough, with quite a sense
of atmosphere, and something individual in the brush work. 'His father
and my father; he and I; his child and mine!' thought Soames. So it had
gone on! And all about that woman! Softened by the events of the past
week, affected by the melancholy beauty of the autumn day, Soames came
nearer than he had ever been to realisation of that truth--passing the
understanding of a Forsyte pure--that the body of Beauty has a spiritual
essence, uncapturable save by a devotion which thinks not of self. After
all, he was near that truth in his devotion to his daughter; perhaps that
made him understand a little how he had missed the prize. And there,
among the drawings of his kinsman, who had attained to that which he had
found beyond his reach, he thought of him and her with a tolerance which
surprised him. But he did not buy a drawing.
Just as he passed the seat of custom on his return to the outer air he
met with a contingency which had not been entirely absent from his mind
when he went into the Gallery--Irene, herself, coming in. So she had not
gone yet, and was still paying farewell visits to that fellow's remains!
He subdued the little involuntary leap of his subconsciousness, the
mechanical reaction of his senses to the charm of this once-owned woman,
and passed her with averted eyes. But when he had gone by he could not
for the life of him help looking back. This, then, was finality--the heat
and stress of his life, the madness and the longing thereof, the only
defeat he had known, would be over when she faded from his view this
time; even such memories had their own queer aching value.
She, too, was looking back. Suddenly she lifted her gloved hand, her
lips smiled faintly, her dark eyes seemed to speak. It was the turn of
Soames to make no answer to that smile and that little farewell wave; he
went out into the fashionable street quivering from head to foot. He
knew what she had meant to say: "Now that I am going for ever out of the
reach of you and yours--forgive me; I wish you well." That was the
meaning; last sign of that terrible reality--passing morality, duty,
common sense--her aversion from him who had owned her body, but had never
touched her spirit or her heart. It hurt; yes--more than if she had
kept her mask unmoved, her hand unlifted.
Three days later, in that fast-yellowing October, Soames took a taxi-cab
to Highgate Cemetery and mounted through its white forest to the Forsyte
vault. Close to the cedar, above catacombs and columbaria, tall, ugly,
and individual, it looked like an apex of the competitive system. He
could remember a discussion wherein Swithin had advocated the addition to
its face of the pheasant proper. The proposal had been rejected in
favour of a wreath in stone, above the stark words: "The family vault of
Jolyon Forsyte: 1850." It was in good order. All trace of the recent
interment had been removed, and its sober grey gloomed reposefully in the
sunshine. The whole family lay there now, except old Jolyon's wife, who
had gone back under a contract to her own family vault in Suffolk; old
Jolyon himself lying at Robin Hill; and Susan Hayman, cremated so that
none knew where she might be. Soames gazed at it with
satisfaction--massive, needing little attention; and this was important,
for he was well aware that no one would attend to it when he himself was
gone, and he would have to be looking out for lodgings soon. He might
have twenty years before him, but one never knew. Twenty years without
an aunt or uncle, with a wife of whom one had better not know anything,
with a daughter gone from home. His mood inclined to melancholy and
retrospection.
This cemetery was full, they said--of people with extraordinary names,
buried in extraordinary taste. Still, they had a fine view up here,
right over London. Annette had once given him a story to read by that
Frenchman, Maupassant, most lugubrious concern, where all the skeletons
emerged from their graves one night, and all the pious inscriptions on
the stones were altered to descriptions of their sins. Not a true story
at all. He didn't know about the French, but there was not much real
harm in English people except their teeth and their taste, which was
certainly deplorable. "The family vault of Jolyon Forsyte: 1850." A lot
of people had been buried here since then--a lot of English life crumbled
to mould and dust! The boom of an airplane passing under the gold-tinted
clouds caused him to lift his eyes. The deuce of a lot of expansion had
gone on. But it all came back to a cemetery--to a name and a date on a
tomb. And he thought with a curious pride that he and his family had
done little or nothing to help this feverish expansion. Good solid
middlemen, they had gone to work with dignity to manage and possess.
"Superior Dosset," indeed, had built in a dreadful, and Jolyon painted in
a doubtful, period, but so far as he remembered not another of them all
had soiled his hands by creating anything--unless you counted Val Dartie
and his horse-breeding. Collectors, solicitors, barristers, merchants,
publishers, accountants, directors, land agents, even soldiers--there
they had been! The country had expanded, as it were, in spite of them.
They had checked, controlled, defended, and taken advantage of the
process and when you considered how "Superior Dosset" had begun life with
next to nothing, and his lineal descendants already owned what old
Gradman estimated at between a million and a million and a half, it was
not so bad! And yet he sometimes felt as if the family bolt was shot,
their possessive instinct dying out. They seemed unable to make
money--this fourth generation; they were going into art, literature,
farming, or the army; or just living on what was left them--they had no
push and no tenacity. They would die out if they didn't take care.
Soames turned from the vault and faced toward the breeze. The air up
here would be delicious if only he could rid his nerves of the feeling
that mortality was in it. He gazed restlessly at the crosses and the
urns, the angels, the "immortelles," the flowers, gaudy or withering; and
suddenly he noticed a spot which seemed so different from anything else
up there that he was obliged to walk the few necessary yards and look at
it. A sober corner, with a massive queer-shaped cross of grey rough-hewn
granite, guarded by four dark yew-trees. The spot was free from the
pressure of the other graves, having a little box-hedged garden on the
far side, and in front a goldening birch-tree. This oasis in the desert
of conventional graves appealed to the aesthetic sense of Soames, and he
sat down there in the sunshine. Through those trembling gold birch
leaves he gazed out at London, and yielded to the waves of memory. He
thought of Irene in Montpellier Square, when her hair was rusty-golden
and her white shoulders his--Irene, the prize of his love-passion,
resistant to his ownership. He saw Bosinney's body lying in that white
mortuary, and Irene sitting on the sofa looking at space with the eyes of
a dying bird. Again he thought of her by the little green Niobe in the
Bois de Boulogne, once more rejecting him. His fancy took him on beside
his drifting river on the November day when Fleur was to be born, took
him to the dead leaves floating on the green-tinged water and the
snake-headed weed for ever swaying and nosing, sinuous, blind, tethered.
And on again to the window opened to the cold starry night above Hyde
Park, with his father lying dead. His fancy darted to that picture of
"the future town," to that boy's and Fleur's first meeting; to the bluish
trail of Prosper Profond's cigar, and Fleur in the window pointing down
to where the fellow prowled. To the sight of Irene and that dead fellow
sitting side by side in the stand at Lord's. To her and that boy at
Robin Hill. To the sofa, where Fleur lay crushed up in the corner; to
her lips pressed into his cheek, and her farewell "Daddy." And suddenly
he saw again Irene's grey-gloved hand waving its last gesture of release.
He sat there a long time dreaming his career, faithful to the scut of his
possessive instinct, warming himself even with its failures.
"To Let"--the Forsyte age and way of life, when a man owned his soul, his
investments, and his woman, without check or question. And now the State
had, or would have, his investments, his woman had herself, and God knew
who had his soul. "To Let"--that sane and simple creed!
The waters of change were foaming in, carrying the promise of new forms
only when their destructive flood should have passed its full. He sat
there, subconscious of them, but with his thoughts resolutely set on the
past--as a man might ride into a wild night with his face to the tail of
his galloping horse. Athwart the Victorian dykes the waters were rolling
on property, manners, and morals, on melody and the old forms of
art--waters bringing to his mouth a salt taste as of blood, lapping to
the foot of this Highgate Hill where Victorianism lay buried. And
sitting there, high up on its most individual spot, Soames--like a figure
of Investment--refused their restless sounds. Instinctively he would not
fight them--there was in him too much primeval wisdom, of Man the
possessive animal. They would quiet down when they had fulfilled their
tidal fever of dispossessing and destroying; when the creations and the
properties of others were sufficiently broken and defected--they would
lapse and ebb, and fresh forms would rise based on an instinct older than
the fever of change--the instinct of Home.
"Je m'en fiche," said Prosper Profond. Soames did not say "Je m'en
fiche"--it was French, and the fellow was a thorn in his side--but deep
down he knew that change was only the interval of death between two forms
of life, destruction necessary to make room for fresher property. What
though the board was up, and cosiness to let?--some one would come along
and take it again some day.
And only one thing really troubled him, sitting there--the melancholy
craving in his heart--because the sun was like enchantment on his face
and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's rustle
was so gentle, and the yewtree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon
pale in the sky.
He might wish and wish and never get it--the beauty and the loving in the
world!
THE END
THE DARK FLOWER
by John Galsworthy
"Take the flower from my breast, I pray thee,
Take the flower too from out my tresses;
And then go hence, for see, the night is fair,
The stars rejoice to watch thee on thy way."
--From "The Bard of the Dimbovitza."
THE DARK FLOWER
Part I
Spring
I
He walked along Holywell that afternoon of early June with his short gown
drooping down his arms, and no cap on his thick dark hair. A youth of
middle height, and built as if he had come of two very different strains,
one sturdy, the other wiry and light. His face, too, was a curious
blend, for, though it was strongly formed, its expression was rather soft
and moody. His eyes--dark grey, with a good deal of light in them, and
very black lashes--had a way of looking beyond what they saw, so that he
did not seem always to be quite present; but his smile was exceedingly
swift, uncovering teeth as white as a negro's, and giving his face a
peculiar eagerness. People stared at him a little as he passed--since in
eighteen hundred and eighty he was before his time in not wearing a cap.
Women especially were interested; they perceived that he took no notice
of them, seeming rather to be looking into distance, and making
combinations in his soul.
Did he know of what he was thinking--did he ever know quite definitely at
that time of his life, when things, especially those beyond the immediate
horizon, were so curious and interesting?--the things he was going to see
and do when he had got through Oxford, where everybody was 'awfully
decent' to him and 'all right' of course, but not so very interesting.
He was on his way to his tutor's to read an essay on Oliver Cromwell; and
under the old wall, which had once hedged in the town, he took out of his
pocket a beast. It was a small tortoise, and, with an extreme
absorption, he watched it move its little inquiring head, feeling it all
the time with his short, broad fingers, as though to discover exactly how
it was made. It was mighty hard in the back! No wonder poor old
Aeschylus felt a bit sick when it fell on his head! The ancients used it
to stand the world on--a pagoda world, perhaps, of men and beasts and
trees, like that carving on his guardian's Chinese cabinet. The Chinese
made jolly beasts and trees, as if they believed in everything having a
soul, and not only being just fit for people to eat or drive or make
houses of. If only the Art School would let him model things 'on his
own,' instead of copying and copying--it was just as if they imagined it
would be dangerous to let you think out anything for yourself!
He held the tortoise to his waistcoat, and let it crawl, till, noticing
that it was gnawing the corner of his essay, he put it back into his
pocket. What would his tutor do if he were to know it was there?--cock
his head a little to one side, and say: "Ah! there are things, Lennan,
not dreamed of in my philosophy!" Yes, there were a good many not
dreamed of by 'old Stormer,' who seemed so awfully afraid of anything
that wasn't usual; who seemed always laughing at you, for fear that you
should laugh at him. There were lots of people in Oxford like that. It
was stupid. You couldn't do anything decent if you were afraid of being
laughed at! Mrs. Stormer wasn't like that; she did things because--they
came into her head. But then, of course, she was Austrian, not English,
and ever so much younger than old Stormer.
And having reached the door of his tutor's house, he rang the bell. . . .
II
When Anna Stormer came into the study she found her husband standing at
the window with his head a little on one side--a tall, long-legged figure
in clothes of a pleasant tweed, and wearing a low turn-over collar (not
common in those days) and a blue silk tie, which she had knitted, strung
through a ring. He was humming and gently tapping the window-pane with
his well-kept finger-nails. Though celebrated for the amount of work he
got through, she never caught him doing any in this house of theirs,
chosen because it was more than half a mile away from the College which
held the 'dear young clowns,' as he called them, of whom he was tutor.
He did not turn--it was not, of course, his habit to notice what was not
absolutely necessary--but she felt that he was aware of her. She came to
the window seat and sat down. He looked round at that, and said: "Ah!"
It was a murmur almost of admiration, not usual from him, since, with the
exception of certain portions of the classics, it was hardly his custom
to admire. But she knew that she was looking her best sitting there, her
really beautiful figure poised, the sun shining on her brown hair, and
brightening her deep-set, ice-green eyes under their black lashes. It
was sometimes a great comfort to her that she remained so good-looking.
It would have been an added vexation indeed to have felt that she ruffled
her husband's fastidiousness. Even so, her cheekbones were too high for
his taste, symbols of that something in her character which did not go
with his--the dash of desperation, of vividness, that lack of a certain
English smoothness, which always annoyed him.
"Harold!"--she would never quite flatten her r's--"I want to go to the
mountains this year."
The mountains! She had not seen them since that season at San Martino di
Castrozza twelve years ago, which had ended in her marrying him.
"Nostalgia!"
"I don't know what that means--I am homesick. Can we go?"
"If you like--why not? But no leading up the Cimone della Pala for ME!"
She knew what he meant by that. No romance. How splendidly he had led
that day! She had almost worshipped him. What blindness! What
distortion! Was it really the same man standing there with those bright,
doubting eyes, with grey already in his hair? Yes, romance was over!
And she sat silent, looking out into the street--that little old street
into which she looked day and night. A figure passed out there, came to
the door, and rang.
She said softly: "Here is Mark Lennan!"
She felt her husband's eyes rest on her just for a moment, knew that he
had turned, heard him murmur: "Ah, the angel clown!" And, quite still,
she waited for the door to open. There was the boy, with his blessed
dark head, and his shy, gentle gravity, and his essay in his hand.
"Well, Lennan, and how's old Noll? Hypocrite of genius, eh? Draw up;
let's get him over!"
Motionless, from her seat at the window, she watched those two figures at
the table--the boy reading in his queer, velvety bass voice; her husband
leaning back with the tips of his fingers pressed together, his head a
little on one side, and that faint, satiric smile which never reached his
eyes. Yes, he was dozing, falling asleep; and the boy, not seeing, was
going on. Then he came to the end and glanced up. What eyes he had!
Other boys would have laughed; but he looked almost sorry. She heard him
murmur: "I'm awfully sorry, sir."
"Ah, Lennan, you caught me! Fact is, term's fagged me out. We're going
to the mountains. Ever been to the mountains? What--never! You should
come with us, eh? What do you say, Anna? Don't you think this young man
ought to come with us?"
She got up, and stood staring at them both. Had she heard aright?
Then she answered--very gravely:
"Yes; I think he ought."
"Good; we'll get HIM to lead up the Cimone della Pala!"
III
When the boy had said good-bye, and she had watched him out into the
street, Anna stood for a moment in the streak of sunlight that came in
through the open door, her hands pressed to cheeks which were flaming.
Then she shut the door and leaned her forehead against the window-pane,
seeing nothing. Her heart beat very fast; she was going over and over
again the scene just passed through. This meant so much more than it had
seemed to mean. . . .
Though she always had Heimweh, and especially at the end of the summer
term, this year it had been a different feeling altogether that made her
say to her husband: "I want to go to the mountains!"
For twelve years she had longed for the mountains every summer, but had
not pleaded for them; this year she had pleaded, but she did not long for
them. It was because she had suddenly realized the strange fact that she
did not want to leave England, and the reason for it, that she had come
and begged to go. Yet why, when it was just to get away from thought of
this boy, had she said: "Yes, I think he ought to come!" Ah! but life
for her was always a strange pull between the conscientious and the
desperate; a queer, vivid, aching business! How long was it now since
that day when he first came to lunch, silent and shy, and suddenly
smiling as if he were all lighted up within--the day when she had said to
her husband afterwards: "Ah, he's an angel!" Not yet a year--the
beginning of last October term, in fact. He was different from all the
other boys; not that he was a prodigy with untidy hair, ill-fitting
clothes, and a clever tongue; but because of something--something--Ah!
well--different; because he was--he; because she longed to take his head
between her hands and kiss it. She remembered so well the day that
longing first came to her. She was giving him tea, it was quite early in
the Easter term; he was stroking her cat, who always went to him, and
telling her that he meant to be a sculptor, but that his guardian
objected, so that, of course, he could not start till he was of age. The
lamp on the table had a rose-coloured shade; he had been rowing--a very
cold day--and his face was glowing; generally it was rather pale. And
suddenly he smiled, and said: "It's rotten waiting for things, isn't it?"
It was then she had almost stretched out her hands to draw his forehead
to her lips. She had thought then that she wanted to kiss him, because
it would have been so nice to be his mother--she might just have been his
mother, if she had married at sixteen. But she had long known now that
she wanted to kiss, not his forehead, but his lips. He was there in her
life--a fire in a cold and unaired house; it had even become hard to
understand that she could have gone on all these years without him. She
had missed him so those six weeks of the Easter vacation, she had
revelled so in his three queer little letters, half-shy,
half-confidential; kissed them, and worn them in her dress! And in
return had written him long, perfectly correct epistles in her still
rather quaint English. She had never let him guess her feelings; the
idea that he might shocked her inexpressibly. When the summer term
began, life seemed to be all made up of thoughts of him. If, ten years
ago, her baby had lived, if its cruel death--after her agony--had not
killed for good her wish to have another; if for years now she had not
been living with the knowledge that she had no warmth to expect, and that
love was all over for her; if life in the most beautiful of all old
cities had been able to grip her--there would have been forces to check
this feeling. But there was nothing in the world to divert the current.
And she was so brimful of life, so conscious of vitality running to sheer
waste. Sometimes it had been terrific, that feeling within her, of
wanting to live--to find outlet for her energy. So many hundreds of
lonely walks she had taken during all these years, trying to lose herself
in Nature--hurrying alone, running in the woods, over the fields, where
people did not come, trying to get rid of that sense of waste, trying
once more to feel as she had felt when a girl, with the whole world
before her. It was not for nothing that her figure was superb, her hair
so bright a brown, her eyes so full of light. She had tried many
distractions. Work in the back streets, music, acting, hunting; given
them up one after the other; taken to them passionately again. They had
served in the past. But this year they had not served. . . . One
Sunday, coming from confession unconfessed, she had faced herself. It
was wicked. She would have to kill this feeling--must fly from this boy
who moved her so! If she did not act quickly, she would be swept away.
And then the thought had come: Why not? Life was to be lived--not
torpidly dozed through in this queer cultured place, where age was in the
blood! Life was for love--to be enjoyed! And she would be thirty-six
next month! It seemed to her already an enormous age. Thirty-six! Soon
she would be old, actually old--and never have known passion! The
worship, which had made a hero of the distinguished-looking Englishman,
twelve years older than herself, who could lead up the Cimone della Pala,
had not been passion. It might, perhaps, have become passion if he had
so willed. But he was all form, ice, books. Had he a heart at all, had
he blood in his veins? Was there any joy of life in this too beautiful
city and these people who lived in it--this place where even enthusiasms
seemed to be formal and have no wings, where everything was settled and
sophisticated as the very chapels and cloisters? And yet, to have this
feeling for a boy--for one almost young enough to be her son! It was
so--shameless! That thought haunted her, made her flush in the dark,
lying awake at night. And desperately she would pray--for she was
devout--pray to be made pure, to be given the holy feelings of a mother,
to be filled simply with the sweet sense that she could do everything,
suffer anything for him, for his good. After these long prayers she would
feel calmed, drowsy, as though she had taken a drug. For hours, perhaps,
she would stay like that. And then it would all come over her again.
She never thought of his loving her; that would be--unnatural. Why
should he love her? She was very humble about it. Ever since that
Sunday, when she avoided the confessional, she had brooded over how to
make an end--how to get away from a longing that was too strong for her.
And she had hit on this plan--to beg for the mountains, to go back to
where her husband had come into her life, and try if this feeling would
not die. If it did not, she would ask to be left out there with her own
people, away from this danger. And now the fool--the blind fool--the
superior fool--with his satiric smile, his everlasting patronage, had
driven her to overturn her own plan. Well, let him take the consequences;
she had done her best! She would have this one fling of joy, even if it
meant that she must stay out there, and never see the boy again!
Standing in her dusky hall, where a faint scent of woodrot crept out into
the air, whenever windows and doors were closed, she was all tremulous
with secret happiness. To be with him among her mountains, to show him
all those wonderful, glittering or tawny crags, to go with him to the top
of them and see the kingdoms of the world spread out below; to wander
with him in the pine woods, on the Alps in all the scent of the trees and
the flowers, where the sun was hot! The first of July; and it was only
the tenth of June! Would she ever live so long? They would not go to
San Martino this time, rather to Cortina--some new place that had no
memories!
She moved from the window, and busied herself with a bowl of flowers.
She had heard that humming sound which often heralded her husband's
approach, as though warning the world to recover its good form before he
reached it. In her happiness she felt kind and friendly to him. If he
had not meant to give her joy, he had nevertheless given it! He came
downstairs two at a time, with that air of not being a pedagogue, which
she knew so well; and, taking his hat off the stand, half turned round to
her.
"Pleasant youth, young Lennan; hope he won't bore us out there!"
His voice seemed to have an accent of compunction, to ask pardon for
having issued that impulsive invitation. And there came to her an
overwhelming wish to laugh. To hide it, to find excuse for it, she ran
up to him, and, pulling his coat lapels till his face was within reach,
she kissed the tip of his nose. And then she laughed. And he stood
looking at her, with his head just a little on one side, and his eyebrows
just a little raised.
IV
When young Mark heard a soft tapping at his door, though out of bed, he
was getting on but dreamily--it was so jolly to watch the mountains lying
out in this early light like huge beasts. That one they were going up,
with his head just raised above his paws, looked very far away out there!
Opening the door an inch, he whispered:
"Is it late?"
"Five o'clock; aren't you ready?"
It was awfully rude of him to keep her waiting! And he was soon down in
the empty dining-room, where a sleepy maid was already bringing in their
coffee. Anna was there alone. She had on a flax-blue shirt, open at the
neck, a short green skirt, and a grey-green velvety hat, small, with one
black-cock's feather. Why could not people always wear such nice things,
and be as splendid-looking! And he said:
"You do look jolly, Mrs. Stormer!"
She did not answer for so long that he wondered if it had been rude to
say that. But she DID look so strong, and swift, and happy-looking.
Down the hill, through a wood of larch-trees, to the river, and across
the bridge, to mount at once by a path through hay-fields. How could old
Stormer stay in bed on such a morning! The peasant girls in their blue
linen skirts were already gathering into bundles what the men had
scythed. One, raking at the edge of a field, paused and shyly nodded to
them. She had the face of a Madonna, very calm and grave and sweet, with
delicate arched brows--a face it was pure pleasure to see. The boy
looked back at her. Everything to him, who had never been out of England
before, seemed strange and glamorous. The chalets, with their long wide
burnt-brown wooden balconies and low-hanging eaves jutting far beyond the
walls; these bright dresses of the peasant women; the friendly little
cream-coloured cows, with blunt, smoke-grey muzzles. Even the feel in
the air was new, that delicious crisp burning warmth that lay so lightly
as it were on the surface of frozen stillness; and the special sweetness
of all places at the foot of mountains--scent of pine-gum, burning
larch-wood, and all the meadow flowers and grasses. But newest of all
was the feeling within him--a sort of pride, a sense of importance, a
queer exhilaration at being alone with her, chosen companion of one so
beautiful.
They passed all the other pilgrims bound the same way--stout square
Germans with their coats slung through straps, who trailed behind them
heavy alpenstocks, carried greenish bags, and marched stolidly at a pace
that never varied, growling, as Anna and the boy went by: "Aber eilen ist
nichts!"
But those two could not go fast enough to keep pace with their spirits.
This was no real climb--just a training walk to the top of the Nuvolau;
and they were up before noon, and soon again descending, very hungry.
When they entered the little dining-room of the Cinque Torre Hutte, they
found it occupied by a party of English people, eating omelettes, who
looked at Anna with faint signs of recognition, but did not cease talking
in voices that all had a certain half-languid precision, a slight but
brisk pinching of sounds, as if determined not to tolerate a drawl, and
yet to have one. Most of them had field-glasses slung round them, and
cameras were dotted here and there about the room. Their faces were not
really much alike, but they all had a peculiar drooping smile, and a
particular lift of the eyebrows, that made them seem reproductions of a
single type. Their teeth, too, for the most part were a little
prominent, as though the drooping of their mouths had forced them
forward. They were eating as people eat who distrust the lower senses,
preferring not to be compelled to taste or smell.
"From our hotel," whispered Anna; and, ordering red wine and schnitzels,
she and the boy sat down. The lady who seemed in command of the English
party inquired now how Mr. Stormer was--he was not laid up, she hoped.
No? Only lazy? Indeed! He was a great climber, she believed. It
seemed to the boy that this lady somehow did not quite approve of them.
The talk was all maintained between her, a gentleman with a crumpled
collar and puggaree, and a short thick-set grey-bearded man in a dark
Norfolk jacket. If any of the younger members of the party spoke, the
remark was received with an arch lifting of the brows, and drooping of
the lids, as who should say: "Ah! Very promising!"
"Nothing in my life has given me greater pain than to observe the
aptitude of human nature for becoming crystallized." It was the lady in
command who spoke, and all the young people swayed their faces up and
down, as if assenting. How like they were, the boy thought, to
guinea-fowl, with their small heads and sloping shoulders and speckly
grey coats!
"Ah! my dear lady"--it was the gentleman with the crumpled collar--"you
novelists are always girding at the precious quality of conformity. The
sadness of our times lies in this questioning spirit. Never was there
more revolt, especially among the young. To find the individual judging
for himself is a grave symptom of national degeneration. But this is not
a subject--"
"Surely, the subject is of the most poignant interest to all young
people." Again all the young ones raised their faces and moved them
slightly from side to side.
"My dear lady, we are too prone to let the interest that things arouse
blind our judgment in regard to the advisability of discussing them. We
let these speculations creep and creep until they twine themselves round
our faith and paralyze it."
One of the young men interjected suddenly: "Madre"--and was silent.
"I shall not, I think"--it was the lady speaking--"be accused of licence
when I say that I have always felt that speculation is only dangerous
when indulged in by the crude intelligence. If culture has nothing to
give us, then let us have no culture; but if culture be, as I think it,
indispensable, then we must accept the dangers that culture brings."
Again the young people moved their faces, and again the younger of the
two young men said: "Madre--"
"Dangers? Have cultured people dangers?"
Who had spoken thus? Every eyebrow was going up, every mouth was
drooping, and there was silence. The boy stared at his companion. In
what a strange voice she had made that little interjection! There seemed
a sort of flame, too, lighted in her eyes. Then the little grey-bearded
man said, and his rather whispering voice sounded hard and acid:
"We are all human, my dear madam."
The boy felt his heart go thump at Anna's laugh. It was just as if she
had said: "Ah! but not you--surely!" And he got up to follow her towards
the door.
The English party had begun already talking--of the weather.
The two walked some way from the 'hut' in silence, before Anna said:
"You didn't like me when I laughed?"
"You hurt their feelings, I think."
"I wanted to--the English Grundys! Ah! don't be cross with me! They WERE
English Grundys, weren't they--every one?"
She looked into his face so hard, that he felt the blood rush to his
cheeks, and a dizzy sensation of being drawn forward.
"They have no blood, those people! Their voices, their supercilious eyes
that look you up and down! Oh! I've had so much of them! That woman
with her Liberalism, just as bad as any. I hate them all!"
He would have liked to hate them, too, since she did; but they had only
seemed to him amusing.
"They aren't human. They don't FEEL! Some day you'll know them. They
won't amuse you then!"
She went on, in a quiet, almost dreamy voice:
"Why do they come here? It's still young and warm and good out here.
Why don't they keep to their Culture, where no one knows what it is to
ache and feel hunger, and hearts don't beat. Feel!"
Disturbed beyond measure, the boy could not tell whether it was in her
heart or in his hand that the blood was pulsing so. Was he glad or sorry
when she let his hand go?
"Ah, well! They can't spoil this day. Let's rest."
At the edge of the larch-wood where they sat, were growing numbers of
little mountain pinks, with fringed edges and the sweetest scent
imaginable; and she got up presently to gather them. But he stayed where
he was, and odd sensations stirred in him. The blue of the sky, the
feathery green of the larch-trees, the mountains, were no longer to him
what they had been early that morning.
She came back with her hands full of the little pinks, spread her fingers
and let them drop. They showered all over his face and neck. Never was
so wonderful a scent; never such a strange feeling as they gave him.
They clung to his hair, his forehead, his eyes, one even got caught on
the curve of his lips; and he stared up at her through their fringed
petals. There must have been something wild in his eyes then, something
of the feeling that was stinging his heart, for her smile died; she
walked away, and stood with her face turned from him. Confused, and
unhappy, he gathered the strewn flowers; and not till he had collected
every one did he get up and shyly take them to her, where she still
stood, gazing into the depths of the larch-wood.
V
What did he know of women, that should make him understand? At his
public school he had seen none to speak to; at Oxford, only this one. At
home in the holidays, not any, save his sister Cicely. The two hobbies of
their guardian, fishing, and the antiquities of his native county,
rendered him averse to society; so that his little Devonshire
manor-house, with its black oak panels and its wild stone-walled park
along the river-side was, from year's end to year's end, innocent of all
petticoats, save those of Cicely and old Miss Tring, the governess.
Then, too, the boy was shy. No, there was nothing in his past, of not
yet quite nineteen years, to go by. He was not of those youths who are
always thinking of conquests. The very idea of conquest seemed to him
vulgar, mean, horrid. There must be many signs indeed before it would
come into his head that a woman was in love with him, especially the one
to whom he looked up, and thought so beautiful. For before all beauty he
was humble, inclined to think himself a clod. It was the part of life
which was always unconsciously sacred, and to be approached trembling.
The more he admired, the more tremulous and diffident he became. And so,
after his one wild moment, when she plucked those sweet-scented blossoms
and dropped them over him, he felt abashed; and walking home beside her
he was quieter than ever, awkward to the depths of his soul.
If there were confusion in his heart which had been innocent of trouble,
what must there have been in hers, that for so long had secretly desired
the dawning of that confusion? And she, too, was very silent.
Passing a church with open door in the outskirts of the village, she
said:
"Don't wait for me--I want to go in here a little."
In the empty twilight within, one figure, a countrywoman in her black
shawl, was kneeling--marvellously still. He would have liked to stay.
That kneeling figure, the smile of the sunlight filtering through into
the half darkness! He lingered long enough to see Anna, too, go down on
her knees in the stillness. Was she praying? Again he had the turbulent
feeling with which he had watched her pluck those flowers. She looked so
splendid kneeling there! It was caddish to feel like that, when she was
praying, and he turned quickly away into the road. But that sharp, sweet
stinging sensation did not leave him. He shut his eyes to get rid of her
image--and instantly she became ten times more visible, his feeling ten
times stronger. He mounted to the hotel; there on the terrace was his
tutor. And oddly enough, the sight of him at that moment was no more
embarrassing than if it had been the hotel concierge. Stormer did not
somehow seem to count; did not seem to want you to count him. Besides,
he was so old--nearly fifty!
The man who was so old was posed in a characteristic attitude--hands in
the pockets of his Norfolk jacket, one shoulder slightly raised, head
just a little on one side, as if preparing to quiz something. He spoke
as Lennan came up, smiling--but not with his eyes.
"Well, young man, and what have you done with my wife?"
"Left her in a church, sir."
"Ah! She will do that! Has she run you off your legs? No? Then let's
walk and talk a little."
To be thus pacing up and down and talking with her husband seemed quite
natural, did not even interfere with those new sensations, did not in the
least increase his shame for having them. He only wondered a little how
she could have married him--but so little! Quite far and academic was his
wonder--like his wonder in old days how his sister could care to play
with dolls. If he had any other feeling, it was just a longing to get
away and go down the hill again to the church. It seemed cold and lonely
after all that long day with her--as if he had left himself up there,
walking along hour after hour, or lying out in the sun beside her. What
was old Stormer talking about? The difference between the Greek and
Roman views of honour. Always in the past--seemed to think the present
was bad form. And he said:
"We met some English Grundys, sir, on the mountain."
"Ah, yes! Any particular brand?"
"Some advanced, and some not; but all the same, I think, really."
"I see. Grundys, I think you said?"
"Yes, sir, from this hotel. It was Mrs. Stormer's name for them. They
were so very superior."
"Quite."
There was something unusual in the tone of that little word. And the boy
stared--for the first time there seemed a real man standing there. Then
the blood rushed up into his cheeks, for there she was! Would she come
up to them? How splendid she was looking, burnt by the sun, and walking
as if just starting! But she passed into the hotel without turning her
head their way. Had he offended, hurt her? He made an excuse, and got
away to his room.
In the window from which that same morning he had watched the mountains
lying out like lions in the dim light, he stood again, and gazed at the
sun dropping over the high horizon. What had happened to him? He felt
so different, so utterly different. It was another world. And the most
strange feeling came on him, as of the flowers falling again all over his
face and neck and hands, the tickling of their soft-fringed edges, the
stinging sweetness of their scent. And he seemed to hear her voice
saying: "Feel!" and to feel her heart once more beating under his hand.
VI
Alone with that black-shawled figure in the silent church, Anna did not
pray. Resting there on her knees, she experienced only the sore
sensation of revolt. Why had Fate flung this feeling into her heart,
lighted up her life suddenly, if God refused her its enjoyment? Some of
the mountain pinks remained clinging to her belt, and the scent of them,
crushed against her, warred with the faint odour of age and incense.
While they were there, with their enticement and their memories, prayer
would never come. But did she want to pray? Did she desire the mood of
that poor soul in her black shawl, who had not moved by one hair's
breadth since she had been watching her, who seemed resting her humble
self so utterly, letting life lift from her, feeling the relief of
nothingness? Ah, yes! what would it be to have a life so toilsome, so
little exciting from day to day and hour to hour, that just to kneel
there in wistful stupor was the greatest pleasure one could know? It was
beautiful to see her, but it was sad. And there came over Anna a longing
to go up to her neighbour and say: "Tell me your troubles; we are both
women." She had lost a son, perhaps, some love--or perhaps not really
love, only some illusion. Ah! Love. . . . Why should any spirit yearn,
why should any body, full of strength and joy, wither slowly away for
want of love? Was there not enough in this great world for her, Anna, to
have a little? She would not harm him, for she would know when he had
had enough of her; she would surely have the pride and grace then to let
him go. For, of course, he would get tired of her. At her age she could
never hope to hold a boy more than a few years--months, perhaps. But
would she ever hold him at all? Youth was so hard--it had no heart! And
then the memory of his eyes came back--gazing up, troubled, almost
wild--when she had dropped on him those flowers. That memory filled her
with a sort of delirium. One look from her then, one touch, and he would
have clasped her to him. She was sure of it, yet scarcely dared to
believe what meant so much. And suddenly the torment that she must go
through, whatever happened, seemed to her too brutal and undeserved! She
rose. Just one gleam of sunlight was still slanting through the doorway;
it failed by a yard or so to reach the kneeling countrywoman, and Anna
watched. Would it steal on and touch her, or would the sun pass down
behind the mountains, and it fade away? Unconscious of that issue, the
black-shawled figure knelt, never moving. And the beam crept on. "If it
touches her, then he will love me, if only for an hour; if it fades out
too soon--" And the beam crept on. That shadowy path of light, with its
dancing dust-motes, was it indeed charged with Fate--indeed the augury of
Love or Darkness? And, slowly moving, it mounted, the sun sinking; it
rose above that bent head, hovered in a golden mist, passed--and suddenly
was gone.
Unsteadily, seeing nothing plain, Anna walked out of the church. Why she
passed her husband and the boy on the terrace without a look she could
not quite have said--perhaps because the tortured does not salute her
torturers. When she reached her room she felt deadly tired, and lying
down on her bed, almost at once fell asleep.
She was wakened by a sound, and, recognizing the delicate 'rat-tat' of
her husband's knock, did not answer, indifferent whether he came in or
no. He entered noiselessly. If she did not let him know she was awake,
he would not wake her. She lay still and watched him sit down astride of
a chair, cross his arms on its back, rest his chin on them, and fix his
eyes on her. Through her veil of eyelashes she had unconsciously
contrived that his face should be the one object plainly seen--the more
intensely visualized, because of this queer isolation. She did not feel
at all ashamed of this mutual fixed scrutiny, in which she had such
advantage. He had never shown her what was in him, never revealed what
lay behind those bright satiric eyes. Now, perhaps, she would see! And
she lay, regarding him with the intense excited absorption with which one
looks at a tiny wildflower through a magnifying-lens, and watches its
insignificance expanded to the size and importance of a hothouse bloom.
In her mind was this thought: He is looking at me with his real self,
since he has no reason for armour against me now. At first his eyes
seemed masked with their customary brightness, his whole face with its
usual decorous formality; then gradually he became so changed that she
hardly knew him. That decorousness, that brightness, melted off what lay
behind, as frosty dew melts off grass. And her very soul contracted
within her, as if she had become identified with what he was seeing--a
something to be passed over, a very nothing. Yes, his was the face of
one looking at what was unintelligible, and therefore negligible; at that
which had no soul; at something of a different and inferior species and
of no great interest to a man. His face was like a soundless avowal of
some conclusion, so fixed and intimate that it must surely emanate from
the very core of him--be instinctive, unchangeable. This was the real
he! A man despising women! Her first thought was: And he's
married--what a fate! Her second: If he feels that, perhaps thousands of
men do! Am I and all women really what they think us? The conviction in
his stare--its through-and-through conviction--had infected her; and she
gave in to it for the moment, crushed. Then her spirit revolted with
such turbulence, and the blood so throbbed in her, that she could hardly
lie still. How dare he think her like that--a nothing, a bundle of
soulless inexplicable whims and moods and sensuality? A thousand times,
No! It was HE who was the soulless one, the dry, the godless one; who,
in his sickening superiority, could thus deny her, and with her all
women! That stare was as if he saw her--a doll tricked out in garments
labelled soul, spirit, rights, responsibilities, dignity, freedom--all so
many words. It was vile, it was horrible, that he should see her thus!
And a really terrific struggle began in her between the desire to get up
and cry this out, and the knowledge that it would be stupid, undignified,
even mad, to show her comprehension of what he would never admit or even
understand that he had revealed to her. And then a sort of cynicism came
to her rescue. What a funny thing was married life--to have lived all
these years with him, and never known what was at the bottom of his
heart! She had the feeling now that, if she went up to him and said: "I
am in love with that boy!" it would only make him droop the corners of
his mouth and say in his most satiric voice: "Really! That is very
interesting!"--would not change in one iota his real thoughts of her;
only confirm him in the conviction that she was negligible, inexplicable,
an inferior strange form of animal, of no real interest to him.
And then, just when she felt that she could not hold herself in any
longer, he got up, passed on tiptoe to the door, opened it noiselessly,
and went out.
The moment he had gone, she jumped up. So, then, she was linked to one
for whom she, for whom women, did not, as it were, exist! It seemed to
her that she had stumbled on knowledge of almost sacred importance, on
the key of everything that had been puzzling and hopeless in their
married life. If he really, secretly, whole-heartedly despised her, the
only feeling she need have for one so dry, so narrow, so basically
stupid, was just contempt. But she knew well enough that contempt would
not shake what she had seen in his face; he was impregnably walled within
his clever, dull conviction of superiority. He was for ever intrenched,
and she would always be only the assailant. Though--what did it matter,
now?
Usually swift, almost careless, she was a long time that evening over her
toilette. Her neck was very sunburnt, and she lingered, doubtful whether
to hide it with powder, or accept her gipsy colouring. She did accept
it, for she saw that it gave her eyes, so like glacier ice, under their
black lashes, and her hair, with its surprising glints of flame colour, a
peculiar value.
When the dinner-bell rang she passed her husband's door without, as
usual, knocking, and went down alone.
In the hall she noticed some of the English party of the mountain hut.
They did not greet her, conceiving an immediate interest in the
barometer; but she could feel them staring at her very hard. She sat down
to wait, and at once became conscious of the boy coming over from the
other side of the room, rather like a person walking in his sleep. He
said not a word. But how he looked! And her heart began to beat. Was
this the moment she had longed for? If it, indeed, had come, dared she
take it? Then she saw her husband descending the stairs, saw him greet
the English party, heard the intoning of their drawl. She looked up at
the boy, and said quickly: "Was it a happy day?" It gave her such
delight to keep that look on his face, that look as if he had forgotten
everything except just the sight of her. His eyes seemed to have in them
something holy at that moment, something of the wonder-yearning of Nature
and of innocence. It was dreadful to know that in a moment that look
must be gone; perhaps never to come back on his face--that look so
precious! Her husband was approaching now! Let him see, if he would!
Let him see that someone could adore--that she was not to everyone a
kind of lower animal. Yes, he must have seen the boy's face; and yet his
expression never changed. He noticed nothing! Or was it that he
disdained to notice?
VII
Then followed for young Lennan a strange time, when he never knew from
minute to minute whether he was happy--always trying to be with her,
restless if he could not be, sore if she talked with and smiled at
others; yet, when he was with her, restless too, unsatisfied, suffering
from his own timidity.
One wet morning, when she was playing the hotel piano, and he listening,
thinking to have her to himself, there came a young German
violinist--pale, and with a brown, thin-waisted coat, longish hair, and
little whiskers--rather a beast, in fact. Soon, of course, this young
beast was asking her to accompany him--as if anyone wanted to hear him
play his disgusting violin! Every word and smile that she gave him hurt
so, seeing how much more interesting than himself this foreigner was!
And his heart grew heavier and heavier, and he thought: If she likes him
I ought not to mind--only, I DO mind! How can I help minding? It was
hateful to see her smiling, and the young beast bending down to her. And
they were talking German, so that he could not tell what they were
saying, which made it more unbearable. He had not known there could be
such torture.
And then he began to want to hurt her, too. But that was mean--besides,
how could he hurt her? She did not care for him. He was nothing to
her--only a boy. If she really thought him only a boy, who felt so
old--it would be horrible. It flashed across him that she might be
playing that young violinist against him! No, she never would do that!
But the young beast looked just the sort that might take advantage of her
smiles. If only he WOULD do something that was not respectful, how
splendid it would be to ask him to come for a walk in the woods, and,
having told him why, give him a thrashing. Afterwards, he would not tell
her, he would not try to gain credit by it. He would keep away till she
wanted him back. But suddenly the thought of what he would feel if she
really meant to take this young man as her friend in place of him became
so actual, so poignant, so horribly painful, that he got up abruptly and
went towards the door. Would she not say a word to him before he got out
of the room, would she not try and keep him? If she did not, surely it
would be all over; it would mean that anybody was more to her than he.
That little journey to the door, indeed, seemed like a march to
execution. Would she not call after him? He looked back. She was
smiling. But HE could not smile; she had hurt him too much! Turning his
head away, he went out, and dashed into the rain bareheaded. The feeling
of it on his face gave him a sort of dismal satisfaction. Soon he would
be wet through. Perhaps he would get ill. Out here, far away from his
people, she would have to offer to nurse him; and perhaps--perhaps in his
illness he would seem to her again more interesting than that young
beast, and then--Ah! if only he could be ill!
He mounted rapidly through the dripping leaves towards the foot of the
low mountain that rose behind the hotel. A trail went up there to the
top, and he struck into it, going at a great pace. His sense of injury
began dying away; he no longer wanted to be ill. The rain had stopped,
the sun came out; he went on, up and up. He would get to the top quicker
than anyone ever had! It was something he could do better than that
young beast. The pine-trees gave way to stunted larches, and these to
pine scrub and bare scree, up which he scrambled, clutching at the tough
bushes, terribly out of breath, his heart pumping, the sweat streaming
into his eyes. He had no feeling now but wonder whether he would get to
the top before he dropped, exhausted. He thought he would die of the
beating of his heart; but it was better to die than to stop and be beaten
by a few yards. He stumbled up at last on to the little plateau at the
top. For full ten minutes he lay there on his face without moving, then
rolled over. His heart had given up that terrific thumping; he breathed
luxuriously, stretched out his arms along the steaming grass--felt happy.
It was wonderful up here, with the sun burning hot in a sky clear-blue
already. How tiny everything looked below--hotel, trees, village,
chalets--little toy things! He had never before felt the sheer joy of
being high up. The rain-clouds, torn and driven in huge white shapes
along the mountains to the South, were like an army of giants with
chariots and white horses hurrying away. He thought suddenly: "Suppose I
had died when my heart pumped so! Would it have mattered the least bit?
Everything would be going on just the same, the sun shining, the blue up
there the same; and those toy things down in the valley." That jealousy
of his an hour ago, why--it was nothing--he himself nothing! What did it
matter if she were nice to that fellow in the brown coat? What did
anything matter when the whole thing was so big--and he such a tiny scrap
of it?
On the edge of the plateau, to mark the highest point, someone had
erected a rude cross, which jutted out stark against the blue sky. It
looked cruel somehow, sagged all crooked, and out of place up here; a
piece of bad manners, as if people with only one idea had dragged it in,
without caring whether or no it suited what was around it. One might
just as well introduce one of these rocks into that jolly dark church
where he had left her the other day, as put a cross up here.
A sound of bells, and of sniffing and scuffling, roused him; a large grey
goat had come up and was smelling at his hair--the leader of a flock,
that were soon all round him, solemnly curious, with their queer yellow
oblong-pupilled eyes, and their quaint little beards and tails. Awfully
decent beasts--and friendly! What jolly things to model! He lay still
(having learnt from the fisherman, his guardian, that necessary habit in
the presence of all beasts), while the leader sampled the flavour of his
neck. The passage of that long rough tongue athwart his skin gave him an
agreeable sensation, awakened a strange deep sense of comradeship. He
restrained his desire to stroke the creature's nose. It appeared that
they now all wished to taste his neck; but some were timid, and the touch
of their tongues simply a tickle, so that he was compelled to laugh, and
at that peculiar sound they withdrew and gazed at him. There seemed to
be no one with them; then, at a little distance, quite motionless in the
shade of a rock, he spied the goatherd, a boy about his own age. How
lonely he must be up here all day! Perhaps he talked to his goats. He
looked as if he might. One would get to have queer thoughts up here, get
to know the rocks, and clouds, and beasts, and what they all meant. The
goatherd uttered a peculiar whistle, and something, Lennan could not tell
exactly what, happened among the goats--a sort of "Here, Sir!" seemed to
come from them. And then the goatherd moved out from the shade and went
over to the edge of the plateau, and two of the goats that were feeding
there thrust their noses into his hand, and rubbed themselves against his
legs. The three looked beautiful standing there together on the edge
against the sky. . . .
That night, after dinner, the dining-room was cleared for dancing, so
that the guests might feel freedom and gaiety in the air. And, indeed,
presently, a couple began sawing up and down over the polished boards, in
the apologetic manner peculiar to hotel guests. Then three pairs of
Italians suddenly launched themselves into space--twirling and twirling,
and glaring into each other's eyes; and some Americans, stimulated by
their precept, began airily backing and filling. Two of the 'English
Grundys' with carefully amused faces next moved out. To Lennan it seemed
that they all danced very well, better than he could. Did he dare ask
HER? Then he saw the young violinist go up, saw her rise and take his
arm and vanish into the dancing-room; and leaning his forehead against a
window-pane, with a sick, beaten feeling, he stayed, looking out into the
moonlight, seeing nothing. He heard his name spoken; his tutor was
standing beside him.
"You and I, Lennan, must console each other. Dancing's for the young,
eh?"
Fortunately it was the boy's instinct and his training not to show his
feelings; to be pleasant, though suffering.
"Yes, sir. Jolly moonlight, isn't it, out there?"
"Ah! very jolly; yes. When I was your age I twirled the light fantastic
with the best. But gradually, Lennan, one came to see it could not be
done without a partner--there was the rub! Tell me--do you regard women
as responsible beings? I should like to have your opinion on that."
It was, of course, ironical--yet there was something in those
words--something!
"I think it's you, sir, who ought to give me yours."
"My dear Lennan--my experience is a mere nothing!"
That was meant for unkindness to her! He would not answer. If only
Stormer would go away! The music had stopped. They would be sitting out
somewhere, talking! He made an effort, and said:
"I was up the hill at the back this morning, where the cross is. There
were some jolly goats."
And suddenly he saw her coming. She was alone--flushed, smiling; it
struck him that her frock was the same colour as the moonlight.
"Harold, will you dance?"
He would say 'Yes,' and she would be gone again! But his tutor only made
her a little bow, and said with that smile of his:
"Lennan and I have agreed that dancing is for the young."
"Sometimes the old must sacrifice themselves. Mark, will you dance?"
Behind him he heard his tutor murmur:
"Ah! Lennan--you betray me!"
That little silent journey with her to the dancing-room was the happiest
moment perhaps that he had ever known. And he need not have been so much
afraid about his dancing. Truly, it was not polished, but it could not
spoil hers, so light, firm, buoyant! It was wonderful to dance with her.
Only when the music stopped and they sat down did he know how his head
was going round. He felt strange, very strange indeed. He heard her
say:
"What is it, dear boy? You look so white!"
Without quite knowing what he did, he bent his face towards the hand that
she had laid on his sleeve, then knew no more, having fainted.
VIII
Growing boy--over-exertion in the morning! That was all! He was himself
very quickly, and walked up to bed without assistance. Rotten of him!
Never was anyone more ashamed of his little weakness than this boy. Now
that he was really a trifle indisposed, he simply could not bear the idea
of being nursed at all or tended. Almost rudely he had got away. Only
when he was in bed did he remember the look on her face as he left her.
How wistful and unhappy, seeming to implore him to forgive her! As if
there were anything to forgive! As if she had not made him perfectly
happy when she danced with him! He longed to say to her: "If I might be
close to you like that one minute every day, then I don't mind all the
rest!" Perhaps he would dare say that to-morrow. Lying there he still
felt a little funny. He had forgotten to close the ribs of the blinds,
and moonlight was filtering in; but he was too idle, too drowsy to get up
now and do it. They had given him brandy, rather a lot--that perhaps was
the reason he felt so queer; not ill, but mazy, as if dreaming, as if he
had lost the desire ever to move again. Just to lie there, and watch the
powdery moonlight, and hear faraway music throbbing down below, and still
feel the touch of her, as in the dance she swayed against him, and all
the time to have the scent about him of flowers! His thoughts were
dreams, his dreams thoughts--all precious unreality. And then it seemed
to him that the moonlight was gathered into a single slip of
pallor--there was a thrumming, a throbbing, and that shape of moonlight
moved towards him. It came so close that he felt its warmth against his
brow; it sighed, hovered, drew back soundless, and was gone. He must
have fallen then into dreamless sleep. . . .
What time was it when he was awakened by that delicate 'rat-tat' to see
his tutor standing in the door-way with a cup of tea?
Was young Lennan all right? Yes, he was perfectly all right--would be
down directly! It was most frightfully good of Mr. Stormer to come! He
really didn't want anything.
Yes, yes; but the maimed and the halt must be attended to!
His face seemed to the boy very kind just then--only to laugh at him a
very little--just enough. And it was awfully decent of him to have come,
and to stand there while he drank the tea. He was really all right, but
for a little headache. Many times while he was dressing he stood still,
trying to remember. That white slip of moonlight? Was it moonlight?
Was it part of a dream; or was it, could it have been she, in her
moonlight-coloured frock? Why had he not stayed awake? He would not
dare to ask her, and now would never know whether the vague memory of
warmth on his brow had been a kiss.
He breakfasted alone in the room where they had danced. There were two
letters for him. One from his guardian enclosing money, and complaining
of the shyness of the trout; the other from his sister. The man she was
engaged to--he was a budding diplomat, attached to the Embassy at
Rome--was afraid that his leave was going to be curtailed. They would
have to be married at once. They might even have to get a special
licence. It was lucky Mark was coming back so soon. They simply MUST
have him for best man. The only bridesmaid now would be Sylvia. . . .
Sylvia Doone? Why, she was only a kid! And the memory of a little girl
in a very short holland frock, with flaxen hair, pretty blue eyes, and a
face so fair that you could almost see through it, came up before him.
But that, of course, was six years ago; she would not still be in a frock
that showed her knees, or wear beads, or be afraid of bulls that were
never there. It was stupid being best man--they might have got some
decent chap! And then he forgot all--for there was SHE, out on the
terrace. In his rush to join her he passed several of the 'English
Grundys,' who stared at him askance. Indeed, his conduct of the night
before might well have upset them. An Oxford man, fainting in an hotel!
Something wrong there! . . .
And then, when he reached her, he did find courage.
"Was it really moonlight?"
"All moonlight."
"But it was warm!"
And, when she did not answer that, he had within him just the same light,
intoxicated feeling as after he had won a race at school.
But now came a dreadful blow. His tutor's old guide had suddenly turned
up, after a climb with a party of Germans. The war-horse had been
aroused in Stormer. He wished to start that afternoon for a certain hut,
and go up a certain peak at dawn next day. But Lennan was not to go.
Why not? Because of last night's faint; and because, forsooth, he was
not some stupid thing they called 'an expert.' As if--! Where she could
go he could! This was to treat him like a child. Of course he could go
up this rotten mountain. It was because she did not care enough to take
him! She did not think him man enough! Did she think that he could not
climb what--her husband--could? And if it were dangerous SHE ought not
to be going, leaving him behind--that was simply cruel! But she only
smiled, and he flung away from her, not having seen that all this grief
of his only made her happy.
And that afternoon they went off without him. What deep, dark thoughts
he had then! What passionate hatred of his own youth! What schemes he
wove, by which she might come back, and find him gone-up some mountain
far more dangerous and fatiguing! If people did not think him fit to
climb with, he would climb by himself. That, anyway, everyone admitted,
was dangerous. And it would be her fault. She would be sorry then. He
would get up, and be off before dawn; he put his things out ready, and
filled his flask. The moonlight that evening was more wonderful than
ever, the mountains like great ghosts of themselves. And she was up
there at the hut, among them! It was very long before he went to sleep,
brooding over his injuries--intending not to sleep at all, so as to be
ready to be off at three o'clock. At NINE o'clock he woke. His wrath
was gone; he only felt restless and ashamed. If, instead of flying out,
he had made the best of it, he could have gone with them as far as the
hut, could have stayed the night there. And now he cursed himself for
being such a fool and idiot. Some little of that idiocy he could,
perhaps, retrieve. If he started for the hut at once, he might still be
in time to meet them coming down, and accompany them home. He swallowed
his coffee, and set off. He knew the way at first, then in woods lost
it, recovered the right track again at last, but did not reach the hut
till nearly two o'clock. Yes, the party had made the ascent that
morning--they had been seen, been heard jodelling on the top. Gewiss!
Gewiss! But they would not come down the same way. Oh, no! They would
be going home down to the West and over the other pass. They would be
back in house before the young Herr himself.
He heard this, oddly, almost with relief. Was it the long walk alone, or
being up there so high? Or simply that he was very hungry? Or just
these nice friendly folk in the hut, and their young daughter with her
fresh face, queer little black cloth sailor hat with long ribbons, velvet
bodice, and perfect simple manners; or the sight of the little
silvery-dun cows, thrusting their broad black noses against her hand?
What was it that had taken away from him all his restless feeling, made
him happy and content? . . . He did not know that the newest thing
always fascinates the puppy in its gambols! . . . He sat a long while
after lunch, trying to draw the little cows, watching the sun on the
cheek of that pretty maiden, trying to talk to her in German. And when
at last he said: "Adieu!" and she murmured "Kuss die Hand. Adieu!" there
was quite a little pang in his heart. . . . Wonderful and queer is the
heart of a man! . . . For all that, as he neared home he hastened, till
he was actually running. Why had he stayed so long up there? She would
be back--she would expect to see him; and that young beast of a violinist
would be with her, perhaps, instead! He reached the hotel just in time
to rush up and dress, and rush down to dinner. Ah! They were tired, no
doubt--were resting in their rooms. He sat through dinner as best he
could; got away before dessert, and flew upstairs. For a minute he stood
there doubtful; on which door should he knock? Then timidly he tapped on
hers. No answer! He knocked loud on his tutor's door. No answer! They
were not back, then. Not back? What could that mean? Or could it be
that they were both asleep? Once more he knocked on her door; then
desperately turned the handle, and took a flying glance. Empty, tidy,
untouched! Not back! He turned and ran downstairs again. All the guests
were streaming out from dinner, and he became entangled with a group of
'English Grundys' discussing a climbing accident which had occurred in
Switzerland. He listened, feeling suddenly quite sick. One of them, the
short grey-bearded Grundy with the rather whispering voice, said to him:
"All alone again to-night? The Stormers not back?" Lennan did his best
to answer, but something had closed his throat; he could only shake his
head.
"They had a guide, I think?" said the 'English Grundy.'
This time Lennan managed to get out: "Yes, sir."
"Stormer, I fancy, is quite an expert!" and turning to the lady whom the
young 'Grundys' addressed as 'Madre' he added:
"To me the great charm of mountain-climbing was always the freedom from
people--the remoteness."
The mother of the young 'Grundys,' looking at Lennan with her half-closed
eyes, answered:
"That, to me, would be the disadvantage; I always like to be mixing with
my own kind."
The grey-bearded 'Grundy' murmured in a muffled voice:
"Dangerous thing, that, to say--in an hotel!"
And they went on talking, but of what Lennan no longer knew, lost in this
sudden feeling of sick fear. In the presence of these 'English Grundys,'
so superior to all vulgar sensations, he could not give vent to his
alarm; already they viewed him as unsound for having fainted. Then he
grasped that there had begun all round him a sort of luxurious
speculation on what might have happened to the Stormers. The descent was
very nasty; there was a particularly bad traverse. The 'Grundy,' whose
collar was not now crumpled, said he did not believe in women climbing.
It was one of the signs of the times that he most deplored. The mother
of the young 'Grundys' countered him at once: In practice she agreed that
they were out of place, but theoretically she could not see why they
should not climb. An American standing near threw all into confusion by
saying he guessed that it might be liable to develop their
understandings. Lennan made for the front door. The moon had just come
up over in the South, and exactly under it he could see their mountain.
What visions he had then! He saw her lying dead, saw himself climbing
down in the moonlight and raising her still-living, but half-frozen, form
from some perilous ledge. Even that was almost better than this
actuality of not knowing where she was, or what had happened. People
passed out into the moonlight, looking curiously at his set face staring
so fixedly. One or two asked him if he were anxious, and he answered:
"Oh no, thanks!" Soon there would have to be a search party. How soon?
He would, he must be, of it! They should not stop him this time. And
suddenly he thought: Ah, it is all because I stayed up there this
afternoon talking to that girl, all because I forgot HER!
And then he heard a stir behind him. There they were, coming down the
passage from a side door--she in front with her alpenstock and
rucksack--smiling. Instinctively he recoiled behind some plants. They
passed. Her sunburned face, with its high cheek-bones and its deep-set
eyes, looked so happy; smiling, tired, triumphant. Somehow he could not
bear it, and when they were gone by he stole out into the wood and threw
himself down in shadow, burying his face, and choking back a horrible dry
sobbing that would keep rising in his throat.
IX
Next day he was happy; for all the afternoon he lay out in the shade of
that same wood at her feet, gazing up through larch-boughs. It was so
wonderful, with nobody but Nature near. Nature so alive, and busy, and
so big!
Coming down from the hut the day before, he had seen a peak that looked
exactly like the figure of a woman with a garment over her head, the
biggest statue in the world; from further down it had become the figure
of a bearded man, with his arm bent over his eyes. Had she seen it? Had
she noticed how all the mountains in moonlight or very early morning took
the shape of beasts? What he wanted most in life was to be able to make
images of beasts and creatures of all sorts, that were like--that
had--that gave out the spirit of--Nature; so that by just looking at them
one could have all those jolly feelings one had when one was watching
trees, and beasts, and rocks, and even some sorts of men--but not
'English Grundys.'
So he was quite determined to study Art?
Oh yes, of course!
He would want to leave--Oxford, then!
No, oh no! Only some day he would have to.
She answered: "Some never get away!"
And he said quickly: "Of course, I shall never want to leave Oxford while
you are there."
He heard her draw her breath in sharply.
"Oh yes, you will! Now help me up!" And she led the way back to the
hotel.
He stayed out on the terrace when she had gone in, restless and unhappy
the moment he was away from her. A voice close by said:
"Well, friend Lennan--brown study, or blue devils, which?"
There, in one of those high wicker chairs that insulate their occupants
from the world, he saw his tutor leaning back, head a little to one side,
and tips of fingers pressed together. He looked like an idol sitting
there inert, and yet--yesterday he had gone up that mountain!
"Cheer up! You will break your neck yet! When I was your age, I
remember feeling it deeply that I was not allowed to risk the lives of
others."
Lennan stammered out:
"I didn't think of that; but I thought where Mrs. Stormer could go, I
could."
"Ah! For all our admiration we cannot quite admit--can we, when it comes
to the point?"
The boy's loyalty broke into flame:
"It's not that. I think Mrs. Stormer as good as any man--only--only--"
"Not quite so good as you, eh?"
"A hundred times better, sir."
Stormer smiled. Ironic beast!
"Lennan," he said, "distrust hyperbole."
"Of course, I know I'm no good at climbing," the boy broke out again;
"but--but--I thought where she was allowed to risk her life, I ought to
be!"
"Good! I like that." It was said so entirely without irony for once,
that the boy was disconcerted.
"You are young, Brother Lennan," his tutor went on. "Now, at what age do
you consider men develop discretion? Because, there is just one thing
always worth remembering--women have none of that better part of valour."
"I think women are the best things in the world," the boy blurted out.
"May you long have that opinion!" His tutor had risen, and was
ironically surveying his knees. "A bit stiff!" he said. "Let me know
when you change your views!"
"I never shall, sir."
"Ah, ah! Never is a long word, Lennan. I am going to have some tea;"
and gingerly he walked away, quizzing, as it were, with a smile, his own
stiffness.
Lennan remained where he was, with burning cheeks. His tutor's words
again had seemed directed against her. How could a man say such things
about women! If they were true, he did not want to know; if they were
not true, it was wicked to say them. It must be awful never to have
generous feelings; always to have to be satirical. Dreadful to be like
the 'English Grundys'; only different, of course, because, after all, old
Stormer was much more interesting and intelligent--ever so much more;
only, just as 'superior.' "Some never get away!" Had she meant--from
that superiority? Just down below were a family of peasants scything and
gathering in the grass. One could imagine her doing that, and looking
beautiful, with a coloured handkerchief over her head; one could imagine
her doing anything simple--one could not imagine old Stormer doing
anything but what he did do. And suddenly the boy felt miserable,
oppressed by these dim glimmerings of lives misplaced. And he resolved
that he would not be like Stormer when he was old! No, he would rather
be a regular beast than be like that! . . .
When he went to his room to change for dinner he saw in a glass of water
a large clove carnation. Who had put it there? Who could have put it
there--but she? It had the same scent as the mountain pinks she had
dropped over him, but deeper, richer--a scent moving, dark, and sweet.
He put his lips to it before he pinned it into his coat.
There was dancing again that night--more couples this time, and a violin
beside the piano; and she had on a black frock. He had never seen her in
black. Her face and neck were powdered over their sunburn. The first
sight of that powder gave him a faint shock. He had not somehow thought
that ladies ever put on powder. But if SHE did--then it must be right!
And his eyes never left her. He saw the young German violinist hovering
round her, even dancing with her twice; watched her dancing with others,
but all without jealousy, without troubling; all in a sort of dream.
What was it? Had he been bewitched into that queer state, bewitched by
the gift of that flower in his coat? What was it, when he danced with
her, that kept him happy in her silence and his own? There was no
expectation in him of anything that she would say, or do--no expectation,
no desire. Even when he wandered out with her on to the terrace, even
when they went down the bank and sat on a bench above the fields where
the peasants had been scything, he had still no feeling but that quiet,
dreamy adoration. The night was black and dreamy too, for the moon was
still well down behind the mountains. The little band was playing the
next waltz; but he sat, not moving, not thinking, as if all power of
action and thought had been stolen out of him. And the scent of the
flower in his coat rose, for there was no wind. Suddenly his heart
stopped beating. She had leaned against him, he felt her shoulder press
his arm, her hair touch his cheek. He closed his eyes then, and turned
his face to her. He felt her lips press his mouth with a swift, burning
kiss. He sighed, stretched out his arms. There was nothing there but
air. The rustle of her dress against the grass was all! The flower--it,
too, was gone.
X
Not one minute all that night did Anna sleep. Was it remorse that kept
her awake, or the intoxication of memory? If she felt that her kiss had
been a crime, it was not against her husband or herself, but against the
boy--the murder of illusion, of something sacred. But she could not help
feeling a delirious happiness too, and the thought of trying to annul
what she had done did not even occur to her.
He was ready, then, to give her a little love! Ever so little, compared
to hers, but still a little! There could be no other meaning to that
movement of his face with the closed eyes, as if he would nestle it down
on her breast.
Was she ashamed of her little manoeuvres of these last few days--ashamed
of having smiled at the young violinist, of that late return from the
mountain climb, of the flower she had given him, of all the conscious
siege she had laid since the evening her husband came in and sat watching
her, without knowing that she saw him? No; not really ashamed! Her
remorse rose only from the kiss. It hurt to think of that, because it
was death, the final extinction of the mother-feeling in her; the
awakening of--who knew what--in the boy! For if she was mysterious to
him, what was he not to her, with his eagerness, and his dreaminess, his
youthful warmth, his innocence! What if it had killed in him trust,
brushed off the dew, tumbled a star down? Could she forgive herself for
that? Could she bear it if she were to make him like so many other boys,
like that young violinist; just a cynical youth, looking on women as what
they called 'fair game'? But COULD she make him into such--would he
ever grow like that? Oh! surely not; or she would not have loved him
from the moment she first set eyes on him and spoke of him as 'an angel.'
After that kiss--that crime, if it were one--in the dark she had not
known what he had done, where gone--perhaps wandering, perhaps straight
up to his room. Why had she refrained, left him there, vanished out of
his arms? This she herself hardly understood. Not shame; not fear;
reverence perhaps--for what? For love--for the illusion, the mystery,
all that made love beautiful; for youth, and the poetry of it; just for
the sake of the black still night itself, and the scent of that
flower--dark flower of passion that had won him to her, and that she had
stolen back, and now wore all night long close to her neck, and in the
morning placed withered within her dress. She had been starved so long,
and so long waited for that moment--it was little wonder if she did not
clearly know why she had done just this, and not that!
And now how should she meet him, how first look into his eyes? Would they
have changed? Would they no longer have the straight look she so loved?
It would be for her to lead, to make the future. And she kept saying to
herself: I am not going to be afraid. It is done. I will take what life
offers! Of her husband she did not think at all.
But the first moment she saw the boy, she knew that something from
outside, and untoward, had happened since that kiss. He came up to her,
indeed, but he said nothing, stood trembling all over and handed her a
telegram that contained these words: "Come back at once Wedding immediate
Expect you day after to-morrow. Cicely." The words grew indistinct even
as she read them, and the boy's face all blurred. Then, making an
effort, she said quietly:
"Of course, you must go. You cannot miss your only sister's wedding."
Without protest he looked at her; and she could hardly bear that look--it
seemed to know so little, and ask so much. She said: "It is
nothing--only a few days. You will come back, or we will come to you."
His face brightened at once.
"Will you really come to us soon, at once--if they ask you? Then I don't
mind--I--I--" And then he stopped, choking.
She said again:
"Ask us. We will come."
He seized her hand; pressed and pressed it in both his own, then stroked
it gently, and said:
"Oh! I'm hurting it!"
She laughed, not wishing to cry.
In a few minutes he would have to start to catch the only train that
would get him home in time.
She went and helped him to pack. Her heart felt like lead, but, not able
to bear that look on his face again, she kept cheerfully talking of their
return, asking about his home, how to get to it, speaking of Oxford and
next term. When his things were ready she put her arms round his neck,
and for a moment pressed him to her. Then she escaped. Looking back from
his door, she saw him standing exactly as when she had withdrawn her
arms. Her cheeks were wet; she dried them as she went downstairs. When
she felt herself safe, she went out on the terrace. Her husband was
there, and she said to him:
"Will you come with me into the town? I want to buy some things."
He raised his eyebrows, smiled dimly, and followed her. They walked
slowly down the hill into the long street of the little town. All the
time she talked of she knew not what, and all the time she thought: His
carriage will pass--his carriage will pass!
Several carriages went jingling by. At last he came. Sitting there, and
staring straight before him, he did not see them. She heard her husband
say:
"Hullo! Where is our young friend Lennan off to, with his luggage
--looking like a lion cub in trouble?"
She answered in a voice that she tried to make clear and steady:
"There must be something wrong; or else it is his sister's wedding."
She felt that her husband was gazing at her, and wondered what her face
was like; but at that moment the word "Madre!" sounded close in her ear
and they were surrounded by a small drove of 'English Grundys.'
XI
That twenty mile drive was perhaps the worst part of the journey for the
boy. It is always hard to sit still and suffer.
When Anna left him the night before, he had wandered about in the dark,
not knowing quite where he went. Then the moon came up, and he found
himself sitting under the eave of a barn close to a chalet where all was
dark and quiet; and down below him the moon-whitened valley village--its
roofs and spires and little glamorous unreal lights.
In his evening suit, his dark ruffled hair uncovered, he would have made
a quaint spectacle for the owners of that chalet, if they had chanced to
see him seated on the hay-strewn boards against their barn, staring
before him with such wistful rapture. But they were folk to whom sleep
was precious. . . .
And now it was all snatched away from him, relegated to some immensely
far-off future. Would it indeed be possible to get his guardian to ask
them down to Hayle? And would they really come? His tutor would surely
never care to visit a place right away in the country--far from books and
everything! He frowned, thinking of his tutor, but it was with
perplexity--no other feeling. And yet, if he could not have them down
there, how could he wait the two whole months till next term began! So
went his thoughts, round and round, while the horses jogged, dragging him
further and further from her.
It was better in the train; the distraction of all the strange crowd of
foreigners, the interest of new faces and new country; and then sleep--a
long night of it, snoozed up in his corner, thoroughly fagged out. And
next day more new country, more new faces; and slowly, his mood changing
from ache and bewilderment to a sense of something promised, delightful
to look forward to. Then Calais at last, and a night-crossing in a wet
little steamer, a summer gale blowing spray in his face, waves leaping
white in a black sea, and the wild sound of the wind. On again to
London, the early drive across the town, still sleepy in August haze; an
English breakfast--porridge, chops, marmalade. And, at last, the train
for home. At all events he could write to her, and tearing a page out of
his little sketch-book, he began:
"I am writing in the train, so please forgive this joggly writing--"
Then he did not know how to go on, for all that he wanted to say was such
as he had never even dreamed of writing--things about his feelings which
would look horrible in words; besides, he must not put anything that
might not be read, by anyone, so what was there to say?
"It has been such a long journey," he wrote at last, "away from the
Tyrol;" (he did not dare even to put "from you,") "I thought it would
never end. But at last it has--very nearly. I have thought a great deal
about the Tyrol. It was a lovely time--the loveliest time I have ever
had. And now it's over, I try to console myself by thinking of the
future, but not the immediate future--THAT is not very enjoyable. I
wonder how the mountains are looking to-day. Please give my love to them,
especially the lion ones that come and lie out in the moonlight--you will
not recognize them from this"--then followed a sketch. "And this is the
church we went to, with someone kneeling. And this is meant for the
'English Grundys,' looking at someone who is coming in very late with an
alpenstock--only, I am better at the 'English Grundys' than at the
person with the alpenstock. I wish I were the 'English Grundys' now,
still in the Tyrol. I hope I shall get a letter from you soon; and that
it will say you are getting ready to come back. My guardian will be
awfully keen for you to come and stay with us. He is not half bad when
you know him, and there will be his sister, Mrs. Doone, and her daughter
left there after the wedding. It will be simply disgusting if you and
Mr. Stormer don't come. I wish I could write all I feel about my lovely
time in the Tyrol, but you must please imagine it."
And just as he had not known how to address her, so he could not tell how
to subscribe himself, and only put "Mark Lennan."
He posted the letter at Exeter, where he had some time to wait; and his
mind moved still more from past to future. Now that he was nearing home
he began to think of his sister. In two days she would be gone to Italy;
he would not see her again for a long time, and a whole crowd of memories
began to stretch out hands to him. How she and he used to walk together
in the walled garden, and on the sunk croquet ground; she telling him
stories, her arm round his neck, because she was two years older, and
taller than he in those days. Their first talk each holidays, when he
came back to her; the first tea--with unlimited jam--in the old
mullion-windowed, flower-chintzed schoolroom, just himself and her and
old Tingle (Miss Tring, the ancient governess, whose chaperonage would
now be gone), and sometimes that kid Sylvia, when she chanced to be
staying there with her mother. Cicely had always understood him when he
explained to her how inferior school was, because nobody took any
interest in beasts or birds except to kill them; or in drawing, or making
things, or anything decent. They would go off together, rambling along
the river, or up the park, where everything looked so jolly and wild--the
ragged oak-trees, and huge boulders, of whose presence old Godden, the
coachman, had said: "I can't think but what these ha' been washed here by
the Flood, Mast' Mark!" These and a thousand other memories beset his
conscience now. And as the train drew closer to their station, he
eagerly made ready to jump out and greet her. There was the honeysuckle
full out along the paling of the platform over the waiting-room;
wonderful, this year--and there was she, standing alone on the platform.
No, it was not Cicely! He got out with a blank sensation, as if those
memories had played him false. It was a girl, indeed, but she only
looked about sixteen, and wore a sunbonnet that hid her hair and half her
face. She had on a blue frock, and some honeysuckle in her waist-belt.
She seemed to be smiling at him, and expecting him to smile at her; and
so he did smile. She came up to him then, and said:
"I'm Sylvia."
He answered: "Oh! thanks awfully--it was awfully good of you to come and
meet me."
"Cicely's so busy. It's only the T-cart. Have you got much luggage?"
She took up his hold-all, and he took it from her; she took his bag, and
he took it from her; then they went out to the T-cart. A small groom
stood there, holding a silver-roan cob with a black mane and black swish
tail.
She said: "D'you mind if I drive, because I'm learning."
And he answered: "Oh, no! rather not."
She got up; he noticed that her eyes looked quite excited. Then his
portmanteau came out and was deposited with the other things behind; and
he got up beside her.
She said: "Let go, Billy."
The roan rushed past the little groom, whose top boots seemed to twinkle
as he jumped up behind. They whizzed round the corner from the station
yard, and observing that her mouth was just a little open as though this
had disconcerted her, he said:
"He pulls a bit."
"Yes--but isn't he perfectly sweet?"
"He IS rather decent."
Ah! when SHE came, he would drive her; they would go off alone in the
T-cart, and he would show her all the country round.
He was re-awakened by the words:
"Oh! I know he's going to shy!" At once there was a swerve. The roan
was cantering.
They had passed a pig.
"Doesn't he look lovely now? Ought I to have whipped him when he shied?"
"Rather not."
"Why?"
"Because horses are horses, and pigs are pigs; it's natural for horses to
shy at them."
"Oh!"
He looked up at her then, sidelong. The curve of her cheek and chin
looked very soft, and rather jolly.
"I didn't know you, you know!" he said. "You've grown up so awfully."
"I knew you at once. Your voice is still furry."
There was another silence, till she said:
"He does pull, rather--doesn't he, going home?"
"Shall I drive?"
"Yes, please."
He stood up and took the reins, and she slipped past under them in front
of him; her hair smelt exactly like hay, as she was softly bumped against
him.
She kept regarding him steadily with very blue eyes, now that she was
relieved of driving.
"Cicely was afraid you weren't coming," she said suddenly. "What sort of
people are those old Stormers?"
He felt himself grow very red, choked something down, and answered:
"It's only he that's old. She's not more than about thirty-five."
"That IS old."
He restrained the words: "Of course it's old to a kid like you!" And,
instead, he looked at her. Was she exactly a kid? She seemed quite tall
(for a girl) and not very thin, and there was something frank and soft
about her face, and as if she wanted you to be nice to her.
"Is she very pretty?"
This time he did not go red, such was the disturbance that question made
in him. If he said: "Yes," it was like letting the world know his
adoration; but to say anything less would be horrible, disloyal. So he
did say: "Yes," listening hard to the tone of his own voice.
"I thought she was. Do you like her very much?" Again he struggled with
that thing in his throat, and again said: "Yes."
He wanted to hate this girl, yet somehow could not--she looked so soft
and confiding. She was staring before her now, her lips still just
parted, so evidently THAT had not been because of Bolero's pulling; they
were pretty all the same, and so was her short, straight little nose, and
her chin, and she was awfully fair. His thoughts flew back to that other
face--so splendid, so full of life. Suddenly he found himself unable to
picture it--for the first time since he had started on his journey it
would not come before him.
"Oh! Look!"
Her hand was pulling at his arm. There in the field over the hedge a
buzzard hawk was dropping like a stone.
"Oh, Mark! Oh! Oh! It's got it!"
She was covering her face with both her hands, and the hawk, with a young
rabbit in its claws, was sailing up again. It looked so beautiful that
he did not somehow feel sorry for the rabbit; but he wanted to stroke and
comfort her, and said:
"It's all right, Sylvia; it really is. The rabbit's dead already, you
know. And it's quite natural."
She took her hands away from a face that looked just as if she were going
to cry.
"Poor little rabbit! It was such a little one!"
XII
On the afternoon of the day following he sat in the smoking-room with a
prayer book in his hand, and a frown on his forehead, reading the
Marriage Service. The book had been effectively designed for not
spoiling the figure when carried in a pocket. But this did not matter,
for even if he could have read the words, he would not have known what
they meant, seeing that he was thinking how he could make a certain
petition to a certain person sitting just behind at a large bureau with a
sliding top, examining artificial flies.
He fixed at last upon this form:
"Gordy!" (Why Gordy no one quite knew now--whether because his name was
George, or by way of corruption from Guardian.) "When Cis is gone it'll
be rather awful, won't it?"
"Not a bit."
Mr. Heatherley was a man of perhaps sixty-four, if indeed guardians have
ages, and like a doctor rather than a squire; his face square and puffy,
his eyes always half-closed, and his curly mouth using bluntly a voice of
that refined coarseness peculiar to people of old family.
"But it will, you know!"
"Well, supposin' it is?"
"I only wondered if you'd mind asking Mr. and Mrs. Stormer to come here
for a little--they were awfully kind to me out there."
"Strange man and woman! My dear fellow!"
"Mr. Stormer likes fishing."
"Does he? And what does she like?"
Very grateful that his back was turned, the boy said:
"I don't know--anything--she's awfully nice."
"Ah! Pretty?"
He answered faintly:
"I don't know what YOU call pretty, Gordy."
He felt, rather than saw, his guardian scrutinizing him with those
half-closed eyes under their gouty lids.
"All right; do as you like. Have 'em here and have done with it, by all
means."
Did his heart jump? Not quite; but it felt warm and happy, and he said:
"Thanks awfully, Gordy. It's most frightfully decent of you," and turned
again to the Marriage Service. He could make out some of it. In places
it seemed to him fine, and in other places queer. About obeying, for
instance. If you loved anybody, it seemed rotten to expect them to obey
you. If you loved them and they loved you, there couldn't ever be any
question of obeying, because you would both do the things always of your
own accord. And if they didn't love you, or you them, then--oh! then it
would be simply too disgusting for anything, to go on living with a
person you didn't love or who didn't love you. But of course SHE didn't
love his tutor. Had she once? Those bright doubting eyes, that
studiously satiric mouth came very clearly up before him. You could not
love them; and yet--he was really very decent. A feeling as of pity,
almost of affection, rose in him for his remote tutor. It was queer to
feel so, since the last time they had talked together out there, on the
terrace, he had not felt at all like that.
The noise of the bureau top sliding down aroused him; Mr. Heatherley was
closing in the remains of the artificial flies. That meant he would be
going out to fish. And the moment he heard the door shut, Mark sprang
up, slid back the bureau top, and began to write his letter. It was hard
work.
"DEAR MRS. STORMER,
"My guardian wishes me to beg you and Mr. Stormer to pay us a visit as
soon as you come back from the Tyrol. Please tell Mr. Stormer that only
the very best fishermen--like him--can catch our trout; the rest catch
our trees. This is me catching our trees (here followed a sketch). My
sister is going to be married to-morrow, and it will be disgusting
afterwards unless you come. So do come, please. And with my very best
greetings,
"I am,
"Your humble servant,
"M. LENNAN."
When he had stamped this production and dropped it in the letter-box, he
had the oddest feeling, as if he had been let out of school; a desire to
rush about, to frolic. What should he do? Cis, of course, would be
busy--they were all busy about the wedding. He would go and saddle
Bolero, and jump him in the park; or should he go down along the river
and watch the jays? Both seemed lonely occupations. And he stood in the
window--dejected. At the age of five, walking with his nurse, he had been
overheard remarking: "Nurse, I want to eat a biscuit--ALL THE WAY I want
to eat a biscuit!" and it was still rather so with him perhaps--all the
way he wanted to eat a biscuit. He bethought him then of his modelling,
and went out to the little empty greenhouse where he kept his
masterpieces. They seemed to him now quite horrible--and two of them,
the sheep and the turkey, he marked out for summary destruction. The
idea occurred to him that he might try and model that hawk escaping with
the little rabbit; but when he tried, no nice feeling came, and flinging
the things down he went out. He ran along the unweeded path to the
tennis ground--lawn tennis was then just coming in. The grass looked
very rough. But then, everything about that little manor house was left
rather wild and anyhow; why, nobody quite knew, and nobody seemed to
mind. He stood there scrutinizing the condition of the ground. A sound
of humming came to his ears. He got up on the wall. There was Sylvia
sitting in the field, making a wreath of honeysuckle. He stood very
quiet and listened. She looked pretty--lost in her tune. Then he slid
down off the wall, and said gently:
"Hallo!"
She looked round at him, her eyes very wide open.
"Your voice is jolly, Sylvia!"
"Oh, no!"
"It is. Come and climb a tree!"
"Where?"
"In the park, of course."
They were some time selecting the tree, many being too easy for him, and
many too hard for her; but one was found at last, an oak of great age,
and frequented by rooks. Then, insisting that she must be roped to him,
he departed to the house for some blind-cord. The climb began at four
o'clock--named by him the ascent of the Cimone della Pala. He led the
momentous expedition, taking a hitch of the blind-cord round a branch
before he permitted her to move. Two or three times he was obliged to
make the cord fast and return to help her, for she was not an 'expert';
her arms seemed soft, and she was inclined to straddle instead of
trusting to one foot. But at last they were settled, streaked indeed
with moss, on the top branch but two. They rested there, silent,
listening to the rooks soothing an outraged dignity. Save for this
slowly subsiding demonstration it was marvellously peaceful and remote up
there, half-way to a blue sky thinly veiled from them by the crinkled
brown-green leaves. The peculiar dry mossy smell of an oak-tree was
disturbed into the air by the least motion of their feet or hands against
the bark. They could hardly see the ground, and all around, other
gnarled trees barred off any view.
He said:
"If we stay up here till it's dark we might see owls."
"Oh, no! Owls are horrible!"
"What! They're LOVELY--especially the white ones."
"I can't stand their eyes, and they squeak so when they're hunting."
"Oh! but that's so jolly, and their eyes are beautiful."
"They're always catching mice and little chickens; all sorts of little
things."
"But they don't mean to; they only want them to eat. Don't you think
things are jolliest at night?"
She slipped her arm in his.
"No; I don't like the dark."
"Why not? It's splendid--when things get mysterious." He dwelt lovingly
on that word.
"I don't like mysterious things. They frighten you."
"Oh, Sylvia!"
"No, I like early morning--especially in spring, when it's beginning to
get leafy."
"Well, of course."
She was leaning against him, for safety, just a little; and stretching
out his arm, he took good hold of the branch to make a back for her.
There was a silence. Then he said:
"If you could only have one tree, which would you have?"
"Not oaks. Limes--no--birches. Which would you?"
He pondered. There were so many trees that were perfect. Birches and
limes, of course; but beeches and cypresses, and yews, and cedars, and
holm-oaks--almost, and plane-trees; then he said suddenly:
"Pines; I mean the big ones with reddish stems and branches pretty high
up."
"Why?"
Again he pondered. It was very important to explain exactly why; his
feelings about everything were concerned in this. And while he mused she
gazed at him, as if surprised to see anyone think so deeply. At last he
said:
"Because they're independent and dignified and never quite cold, and
their branches seem to brood, but chiefly because the ones I mean are
generally out of the common where you find them. You know--just one or
two, strong and dark, standing out against the sky."
"They're TOO dark."
It occurred to him suddenly that he had forgotten larches. They, of
course, could be heavenly, when you lay under them and looked up at the
sky, as he had that afternoon out there. Then he heard her say:
"If I could only have one flower, I should have lilies of the valley, the
small ones that grow wild and smell so jolly."
He had a swift vision of another flower, dark--very different, and was
silent.
"What would you have, Mark?" Her voice sounded a little hurt. "You ARE
thinking of one, aren't you?"
He said honestly:
"Yes, I am."
"Which?"
"It's dark, too; you wouldn't care for it a bit."
"How d'you know?"
"A clove carnation."
"But I do like it--only--not very much."
He nodded solemnly.
"I knew you wouldn't."
Then a silence fell between them. She had ceased to lean against him,
and he missed the cosy friendliness of it. Now that their voices and the
cawings of the rooks had ceased, there was nothing heard but the dry
rustle of the leaves, and the plaintive cry of a buzzard hawk hunting
over the little tor across the river. There were nearly always two up
there, quartering the sky. To the boy it was lovely, that silence--like
Nature talking to you--Nature always talked in silences. The beasts, the
birds, the insects, only really showed themselves when you were still;
you had to be awfully quiet, too, for flowers and plants, otherwise you
couldn't see the real jolly separate life there was in them. Even the
boulders down there, that old Godden thought had been washed up by the
Flood, never showed you what queer shapes they had, and let you feel
close to them, unless you were thinking of nothing else. Sylvia, after
all, was better in that way than he had expected. She could keep quiet
(he had thought girls hopeless); she was gentle, and it was rather jolly
to watch her. Through the leaves there came the faint far tinkle of the
tea-bell.
She said: "We must get down."
It was much too jolly to go in, really. But if she wanted her tea
--girls always wanted tea! And, twisting the cord carefully round the
branch, he began to superintend her descent. About to follow, he heard
her cry:
"Oh, Mark! I'm stuck--I'm stuck! I can't reach it with my foot! I'm
swinging!" And he saw that she WAS swinging by her hands and the cord.
"Let go; drop on to the branch below--the cord'll hold you straight till
you grab the trunk."
Her voice mounted piteously:
"I can't--I really can't--I should slip!"
He tied the cord, and slithered hastily to the branch below her; then,
bracing himself against the trunk, he clutched her round the waist and
knees; but the taut cord held her up, and she would not come to anchor.
He could not hold her and untie the cord, which was fast round her waist.
If he let her go with one hand, and got out his knife, he would never be
able to cut and hold her at the same time. For a moment he thought he
had better climb up again and slack off the cord, but he could see by her
face that she was getting frightened; he could feel it by the quivering
of her body.
"If I heave you up," he said, "can you get hold again above?" And,
without waiting for an answer, he heaved. She caught hold frantically.
"Hold on just for a second."
She did not answer, but he saw that her face had gone very white. He
snatched out his knife and cut the cord. She clung just for that moment,
then came loose into his arms, and he hauled her to him against the
trunk. Safe there, she buried her face on his shoulder. He began to
murmur to her and smooth her softly, with quite a feeling of its being
his business to smooth her like this, to protect her. He knew she was
crying, but she let no sound escape, and he was very careful not to show
that he knew, for fear she should feel ashamed. He wondered if he ought
to kiss her. At last he did, on the top of her head, very gently. Then
she put up her face and said she was a beast. And he kissed her again on
an eyebrow.
After that she seemed all right, and very gingerly they descended to the
ground, where shadows were beginning to lengthen over the fern and the
sun to slant into their eyes.
XIII
The night after the wedding the boy stood at the window of his pleasant
attic bedroom, with one wall sloping, and a faint smell of mice. He was
tired and excited, and his brain, full of pictures. This was his first
wedding, and he was haunted by a vision of his sister's little white
form, and her face with its starry eyes. She was gone--his no more! How
fearful the Wedding March had sounded on that organ--that awful old
wheezer; and the sermon! One didn't want to hear that sort of thing when
one felt inclined to cry. Even Gordy had looked rather boiled when he was
giving her away. With perfect distinctness he could still see the group
before the altar rails, just as if he had not been a part of it himself.
Cis in her white, Sylvia in fluffy grey; his impassive brother-in-law's
tall figure; Gordy looking queer in a black coat, with a very yellow
face, and eyes still half-closed. The rotten part of it all had been
that you wanted to be just FEELING, and you had to be thinking of the
ring, and your gloves, and whether the lowest button of your white
waistcoat was properly undone. Girls could do both, it seemed--Cis
seemed to be seeing something wonderful all the time, and Sylvia had
looked quite holy. He himself had been too conscious of the rector's
voice, and the sort of professional manner with which he did it all, as
if he were making up a prescription, with directions how to take it. And
yet it was all rather beautiful in a kind of fashion, every face turned
one way, and a tremendous hush--except for poor old Godden's blowing of
his nose with his enormous red handkerchief; and the soft darkness up in
the roof, and down in the pews; and the sunlight brightening the South
windows. All the same, it would have been much jollier just taking hands
by themselves somewhere, and saying out before God what they really
felt--because, after all, God was everything, everywhere, not only in
stuffy churches. That was how HE would like to be married, out of doors
on a starry night like this, when everything felt wonderful all round
you. Surely God wasn't half as small as people seemed always making
Him--a sort of superior man a little bigger than themselves! Even the
very most beautiful and wonderful and awful things one could imagine or
make, could only be just nothing to a God who had a temple like the night
out there. But then you couldn't be married alone, and no girl would ever
like to be married without rings and flowers and dresses, and words that
made it all feel small and cosy! Cis might have, perhaps, only she
wouldn't, because of not hurting other people's feelings; but
Sylvia--never--she would be afraid. Only, of course, she was young! And
the thread of his thoughts broke--and scattered like beads from a string.
Leaning out, and resting his chin on his hands, he drew the night air
into his lungs. Honeysuckle, or was it the scent of lilies still? The
stars all out, and lots of owls to-night--four at least. What would
night be like without owls and stars? But that was it--you never could
think what things would be like if they weren't just what and where they
were. You never knew what was coming, either; and yet, when it came, it
seemed as if nothing else ever could have come. That was queer-you could
do anything you liked until you'd done it, but when you HAD done it, then
you knew, of course, that you must always have had to . . . What was
that light, below and to the left? Whose room? Old Tingle's--no, the
little spare room--Sylvia's! She must be awake, then! He leaned far
out, and whispered in the voice she had said was still furry:
"Sylvia!"
The light flickered, he could just see her head appear, with hair all
loose, and her face turning up to him. He could only half see, half
imagine it, mysterious, blurry; and he whispered:
"Isn't this jolly?"
The whisper travelled back:
"Awfully."
"Aren't you sleepy?"
"No; are you?"
"Not a bit. D'you hear the owls?"
"Rather."
"Doesn't it smell good?"
"Perfect. Can you see me?"
"Only just, not too much. Can you?"
"I can't see your nose. Shall I get the candle?"
"No--that'd spoil it. What are you sitting on?"
"The window sill."
"It doesn't twist your neck, does it?"
"No--o--only a little bit."
"Are you hungry?"
"Yes."
"Wait half a shake. I'll let down some chocolate in my big bath towel;
it'll swing along to you--reach out."
A dim white arm reached out.
"Catch! I say, you won't get cold?"
"Rather not."
"It's too jolly to sleep, isn't it?"
"Mark!"
"Yes."
"Which star is yours? Mine is the white one over the top branch of the
big sycamore, from here."
"Mine is that twinkling red one over the summer house. Sylvia!"
"Yes."
"Catch!"
"Oh! I couldn't--what was it?"
"Nothing."
"No, but what WAS it?"
"Only my star. It's caught in your hair."
"Oh!"
"Listen!"
Silence, then, until her awed whisper:
"What?"
And his floating down, dying away:
"CAVE!"
What had stirred--some window opened? Cautiously he spied along the face
of the dim house. There was no light anywhere, nor any shifting blur of
white at her window below. All was dark, remote--still sweet with the
scent of something jolly. And then he saw what that something was. All
over the wall below his window white jessamine was in flower--stars, not
only in the sky. Perhaps the sky was really a field of white flowers;
and God walked there, and plucked the stars. . . .
The next morning there was a letter on his plate when he came down to
breakfast. He couldn't open it with Sylvia on one side of him, and old
Tingle on the other. Then with a sort of anger he did open it. He need
not have been afraid. It was written so that anyone might have read; it
told of a climb, of bad weather, said they were coming home. Was he
relieved, disturbed, pleased at their coming back, or only uneasily
ashamed? She had not got his second letter yet. He could feel old
Tingle looking round at him with those queer sharp twinkling eyes of
hers, and Sylvia regarding him quite frankly. And conscious that he was
growing red, he said to himself: 'I won't!' And did not. In three days
they would be at Oxford. Would they come on here at once? Old Tingle
was speaking. He heard Sylvia answer: "No, I don't like 'bopsies.'
They're so hard!" It was their old name for high cheekbones. Sylvia
certainly had none, her cheeks went softly up to her eyes.
"Do you, Mark?"
He said slowly:
"On some people."
"People who have them are strong-willed, aren't they?"
Was SHE--Anna--strong-willed? It came to him that he did not know at all
what she was.
When breakfast was over and he had got away to his old greenhouse, he had
a strange, unhappy time. He was a beast, he had not been thinking of her
half enough! He took the letter out, and frowned at it horribly. Why
could he not feel more? What was the matter with him? Why was he such a
brute--not to be thinking of her day and night? For long he stood,
disconsolate, in the little dark greenhouse among the images of his
beasts, the letter in his hand.
He stole out presently, and got down to the river unobserved.
Comforting--that crisp, gentle sound of water; ever so comforting to sit
on a stone, very still, and wait for things to happen round you. You
lost yourself that way, just became branches, and stones, and water, and
birds, and sky. You did not feel such a beast. Gordy would never
understand why he did not care for fishing--one thing trying to catch
another--instead of watching and understanding what things were. You
never got to the end of looking into water, or grass or fern; always
something queer and new. It was like that, too, with yourself, if you
sat down and looked properly--most awfully interesting to see things
working in your mind.
A soft rain had begun to fall, hissing gently on the leaves, but he had
still a boy's love of getting wet, and stayed where he was, on the stone.
Some people saw fairies in woods and down in water, or said they did;
that did not seem to him much fun. What was really interesting was
noticing that each thing was different from every other thing, and what
made it so; you must see that before you could draw or model decently.
It was fascinating to see your creatures coming out with shapes of their
very own; they did that without your understanding how. But this
vacation he was no good--couldn't draw or model a bit!
A jay had settled about forty yards away, and remained in full view,
attending to his many-coloured feathers. Of all things, birds were the
most fascinating! He watched it a long time, and when it flew on,
followed it over the high wall up into the park. He heard the lunch-bell
ring in the far distance, but did not go in. So long as he was out there
in the soft rain with the birds and trees and other creatures, he was
free from that unhappy feeling of the morning. He did not go back till
nearly seven, properly wet through, and very hungry.
All through dinner he noticed that Sylvia seemed to be watching him, as
if wanting to ask him something. She looked very soft in her white
frock, open at the neck; and her hair almost the colour of special
moonlight, so goldy-pale; and he wanted her to understand that it wasn't
a bit because of her that he had been out alone all day. After dinner,
when they were getting the table ready to play 'red nines,' he did
murmur:
"Did you sleep last night--after?"
She nodded fervently to that.
It was raining really hard now, swishing and dripping out in the
darkness, and he whispered:
"Our stars would be drowned to-night."
"Do you really think we have stars?"
"We might. But mine's safe, of course; your hair IS jolly, Sylvia."
She gazed at him, very sweet and surprised.
XIV
Anna did not receive the boy's letter in the Tyrol. It followed her to
Oxford. She was just going out when it came, and she took it up with the
mingled beatitude and almost sickening tremor that a lover feels touching
the loved one's letter. She would not open it in the street, but carried
it all the way to the garden of a certain College, and sat down to read
it under the cedar-tree. That little letter, so short, boyish, and dry,
transported her halfway to heaven. She was to see him again at once, not
to wait weeks, with the fear that he would quite forget her! Her husband
had said at breakfast that Oxford without 'the dear young clowns'
assuredly was charming, but Oxford 'full of tourists and other strange
bodies' as certainly was not. Where should they go? Thank heaven, the
letter could be shown him! For all that, a little stab of pain went
through her that there was not one word which made it unsuitable to show.
Still, she was happy. Never had her favourite College garden seemed so
beautiful, with each tree and flower so cared for, and the very wind
excluded; never had the birds seemed so tame and friendly. The sun shone
softly, even the clouds were luminous and joyful. She sat a long time,
musing, and went back forgetting all she had come out to do. Having both
courage and decision, she did not leave the letter to burn a hole in her
corsets, but gave it to her husband at lunch, looking him in the face,
and saying carelessly:
"Providence, you see, answers your question."
He read it, raised his eyebrows, smiled, and, without looking up,
murmured:
"You wish to prosecute this romantic episode?"
Did he mean anything--or was it simply his way of putting things?
"I naturally want to be anywhere but here."
"Perhaps you would like to go alone?"
He said that, of course, knowing she could not say: Yes. And she
answered simply: "No."
"Then let us both go--on Monday. I will catch the young man's trout;
thou shalt catch--h'm!--he shall catch--What is it he catches--trees?
Good! That's settled."
And, three days later, without another word exchanged on the subject,
they started.
Was she grateful to him? No. Afraid of him? No. Scornful of him? Not
quite. But she was afraid of HERSELF, horribly. How would she ever be
able to keep herself in hand, how disguise from these people that she
loved their boy? It was her desperate mood that she feared. But since
she so much wanted all the best for him that life could give, surely she
would have the strength to do nothing that might harm him. Yet she was
afraid.
He was there at the station to meet them, in riding things and a nice
rough Norfolk jacket that she did not recognize, though she thought she
knew his clothes by heart; and as the train came slowly to a standstill
the memory of her last moment with him, up in his room amid the luggage
that she had helped to pack, very nearly overcame her. It seemed so hard
to have to meet him coldly, formally, to have to wait--who knew how
long--for a minute with him alone! And he was so polite, so beautifully
considerate, with all the manners of a host; hoping she wasn't tired,
hoping Mr. Stormer had brought his fishing-rod, though they had lots, of
course, they could lend him; hoping the weather would be fine; hoping
that they wouldn't mind having to drive three miles, and busying himself
about their luggage. All this when she just wanted to take him in her
arms and push his hair back from his forehead, and look at him!
He did not drive with them--he had thought they would be too crowded--but
followed, keeping quite close in the dust to point out the scenery,
mounted on a 'palfrey,' as her husband called the roan with the black
swish tail.
This countryside, so rich and yet a little wild, the independent-looking
cottages, the old dark cosy manor-house, all was very new to one used to
Oxford, and to London, and to little else of England. And all was
delightful. Even Mark's guardian seemed to her delightful. For Gordy,
when absolutely forced to face an unknown woman, could bring to the
encounter a certain bluff ingratiation. His sister, too, Mrs. Doone,
with her faded gentleness, seemed soothing.
When Anna was alone in her room, reached by an unexpected little
stairway, she stood looking at its carved four-poster bed and the wide
lattice window with chintz curtains, and the flowers in a blue bowl.
Yes, all was delightful. And yet! What was it? What had she missed?
Ah, she was a fool to fret! It was only his anxiety that they should be
comfortable, his fear that he might betray himself. Out there those last
few days--his eyes! And now! She brooded earnestly over what dress she
should put on. She, who tanned so quickly, had almost lost her sunburn
in the week of travelling and Oxford. To-day her eyes looked tired, and
she was pale. She was not going to disdain anything that might help.
She had reached thirty-six last month, and he would be nineteen
to-morrow! She decided on black. In black she knew that her neck looked
whiter, and the colour of her eyes and hair stranger. She put on no
jewellery, did not even pin a rose at her breast, took white gloves.
Since her husband did not come to her room, she went up the little
stairway to his. She surprised him ready dressed, standing by the
fireplace, smiling faintly. What was he thinking of, standing there with
that smile? Was there blood in him at all?
He inclined his head slightly and said:
"Good! Chaste as the night! Black suits you. Shall we find our way
down to these savage halls?"
And they went down.
Everyone was already there, waiting. A single neighbouring squire and
magistrate, by name Trusham, had been bidden, to make numbers equal.
Dinner was announced; they went in. At the round table in a dining-room,
all black oak, with many candles, and terrible portraits of departed
ancestors, Anna sat between the magistrate and Gordy. Mark was opposite,
between a quaint-looking old lady and a young girl who had not been
introduced, a girl in white, with very fair hair and very white skin,
blue eyes, and lips a little parted; a daughter evidently of the faded
Mrs. Doone. A girl like a silvery moth, like a forget-me-not! Anna
found it hard to take her eyes away from this girl's face; not that she
admired her exactly; pretty she was--yes; but weak, with those parted
lips and soft chin, and almost wistful look, as if her deep-blue
half-eager eyes were in spite of her. But she was young--so young! That
was why not to watch her seemed impossible. "Sylvia Doone?" Indeed!
Yes. A soft name, a pretty name--and very like her! Every time her eyes
could travel away from her duty to Squire Trusham, and to Gordy (on both
of whom she was clearly making an impression), she gazed at this girl,
sitting there by the boy, and whenever those two young things smiled and
spoke together she felt her heart contract and hurt her. Was THIS why
that something had gone out of his eyes? Ah, she was foolish! If every
girl or woman the boy knew was to cause such a feeling in her, what would
life be like? And her will hardened against her fears. She was looking
brilliant herself; and she saw that the girl in her turn could not help
gazing at her eagerly, wistfully, a little bewildered--hatefully young.
And the boy? Slowly, surely, as a magnet draws, Anna could feel that she
was drawing him, could see him stealing chances to look at her. Once she
surprised him full. What troubled eyes! It was not the old adoring
face; yet she knew from its expression that she could make him want
her--make him jealous--easily fire him with her kisses, if she would.
And the dinner wore to an end. Then came the moment when the girl and
she must meet under the eyes of the mother, and that sharp,
quaint-looking old governess. It would be a hard moment, that! And it
came--a hard moment and a long one, for Gordy sat full span over his
wine. But Anna had not served her time beneath the gaze of upper Oxford
for nothing; she managed to be charming, full of interest and questions
in her still rather foreign accent. Miss Doone--soon she became
Sylvia--must show her all the treasures and antiquities. Was it too dark
to go out just to look at the old house by night? Oh, no. Not a bit.
There were goloshes in the hall. And they went, the girl leading, and
talking of Anna knew not what, so absorbed was she in thinking how for a
moment, just a moment, she could contrive to be with the boy alone.
It was not remarkable, this old house, but it was his home--might some
day perhaps be his. And houses at night were strangely alive with their
window eyes.
"That is my room," the girl said, "where the jessamine is--you can just
see it. Mark's is above--look, under where the eave hangs out, away to
the left. The other night--"
"Yes; the other night?"
"Oh, I don't--! Listen. That's an owl. We have heaps of owls. Mark
likes them. I don't, much."
Always Mark!
"He's awfully keen, you see, about all beasts and birds--he models them.
Shall I show you his workshop?--it's an old greenhouse. Here, you can see
in."
There through the glass Anna indeed could just see the boy's quaint
creations huddling in the dark on a bare floor, a grotesque company of
small monsters. She murmured:
"Yes, I see them, but I won't really look unless he brings me himself."
"Oh, he's sure to. They interest him more than anything in the world."
For all her cautious resolutions Anna could not for the life of her help
saying:
"What, more than you?"
The girl gave her a wistful stare before she answered:
"Oh! I don't count much."
Anna laughed, and took her arm. How soft and young it felt! A pang went
through her heart, half jealous, half remorseful.
"Do you know," she said, "that you are very sweet?"
The girl did not answer.
"Are you his cousin?"
"No. Gordy is only Mark's uncle by marriage; my mother is Gordy's
sister--so I'm nothing."
Nothing!
"I see--just what you English call 'a connection.'"
They were silent, seeming to examine the night; then the girl said:
"I wanted to see you awfully. You're not like what I thought."
"Oh! And what DID you think?"
"I thought you would have dark eyes, and Venetian red hair, and not be
quite so tall. Of course, I haven't any imagination."
They were at the door again when the girl said that, and the hall light
was falling on her; her slip of a white figure showed clear. Young--how
young she looked! Everything she said--so young!
And Anna murmured: "And you are--more than I thought, too."
Just then the men came out from the dining-room; her husband with the
look on his face that denoted he had been well listened to; Squire
Trusham laughing as a man does who has no sense of humour; Gordy having a
curly, slightly asphyxiated air; and the boy his pale, brooding look, as
though he had lost touch with his surroundings. He wavered towards her,
seemed to lose himself, went and sat down by the old governess. Was it
because he did not dare to come up to her, or only because he saw the old
lady sitting alone? It might well be that.
And the evening, so different from what she had dreamed of, closed in.
Squire Trusham was gone in his high dog-cart, with his famous mare whose
exploits had entertained her all through dinner. Her candle had been
given her; she had said good-night to all but Mark. What should she do
when she had his hand in hers? She would be alone with him in that
grasp, whose strength no one could see. And she did not know whether to
clasp it passionately, or to let it go coolly back to its owner; whether
to claim him or to wait. But she was unable to help pressing it
feverishly. At once in his face she saw again that troubled look; and
her heart smote her. She let it go, and that she might not see him say
good-night to the girl, turned and mounted to her room.
Fully dressed, she flung herself on the bed, and there lay, her
handkerchief across her mouth, gnawing at its edges.
XV
Mark's nineteenth birthday rose in grey mist, slowly dropped its veil to
the grass, and shone clear and glistening. He woke early. From his
window he could see nothing in the steep park but the soft blue-grey,
balloon-shaped oaks suspended one above the other among the round-topped
boulders. It was in early morning that he always got his strongest
feeling of wanting to model things; then and after dark, when, for want
of light, it was no use. This morning he had the craving badly, and the
sense of not knowing how weighed down his spirit. His drawings, his
models--they were all so bad, so fumbly. If only this had been his
twenty-first birthday, and he had his money, and could do what he liked.
He would not stay in England. He would be off to Athens, or Rome, or
even to Paris, and work till he COULD do something. And in his holidays
he would study animals and birds in wild countries where there were
plenty of them, and you could watch them in their haunts. It was stupid
having to stay in a place like Oxford; but at the thought of what Oxford
meant, his roaming fancy, like a bird hypnotized by a hawk, fluttered,
stayed suspended, and dived back to earth. And that feeling of wanting
to make things suddenly left him. It was as though he had woken up, his
real self; then--lost that self again. Very quietly he made his way
downstairs. The garden door was not shuttered, not even locked--it must
have been forgotten overnight. Last night! He had never thought he would
feel like this when she came--so bewildered, and confused; drawn towards
her, but by something held back. And he felt impatient, angry with
himself, almost with her. Why could he not be just simply happy, as this
morning was happy? He got his field-glasses and searched the meadow that
led down to the river. Yes, there were several rabbits out. With the
white marguerites and the dew cobwebs, it was all moon-flowery and white;
and the rabbits being there made it perfect. He wanted one badly to
model from, and for a moment was tempted to get his rook rifle--but what
was the good of a dead rabbit--besides, they looked so happy! He put the
glasses down and went towards his greenhouse to get a drawing block,
thinking to sit on the wall and make a sort of Midsummer Night's Dream
sketch of flowers and rabbits. Someone was there, bending down and doing
something to his creatures. Who had the cheek? Why, it was Sylvia--in
her dressing-gown! He grew hot, then cold, with anger. He could not bear
anyone in that holy place! It was hateful to have his things even looked
at; and she--she seemed to be fingering them. He pulled the door open
with a jerk, and said: "What are you doing?" He was indeed so stirred by
righteous wrath that he hardly noticed the gasp she gave, and the
collapse of her figure against the wall. She ran past him, and vanished
without a word. He went up to his creatures and saw that she had placed
on the head of each one of them a little sprig of jessamine flower. Why!
It was idiotic! He could see nothing at first but the ludicrousness of
flowers on the heads of his beasts! Then the desperation of this attempt
to imagine something graceful, something that would give him pleasure
touched him; for he saw now that this was a birthday decoration. From
that it was only a second before he was horrified with himself. Poor
little Sylvia! What a brute he was! She had plucked all that jessamine,
hung out of her window and risked falling to get hold of it; and she had
woken up early and come down in her dressing-gown just to do something
that she thought he would like! Horrible--what he had done! Now, when
it was too late, he saw, only too clearly, her startled white face and
quivering lips, and the way she had shrunk against the wall. How pretty
she had looked in her dressing-gown with her hair all about her,
frightened like that! He would do anything now to make up to her for
having been such a perfect beast! The feeling, always a little with him,
that he must look after her--dating, no doubt, from days when he had
protected her from the bulls that were not there; and the feeling of her
being so sweet and decent to him always; and some other feeling too--all
these suddenly reached poignant climax. He simply must make it up to
her! He ran back into the house and stole upstairs. Outside her room he
listened with all his might, but could hear nothing; then tapped softly
with one nail, and, putting his mouth to the keyhole, whispered:
"Sylvia!" Again and again he whispered her name. He even tried the
handle, meaning to open the door an inch, but it was bolted. Once he
thought he heard a noise like sobbing, and this made him still more
wretched. At last he gave it up; she would not come, would not be
consoled. He deserved it, he knew, but it was very hard. And dreadfully
dispirited he went up to his room, took a bit of paper, and tried to
write:
"DEAREST SYLVIA,
"It was most awfully sweet of you to put your stars on my beasts. It was
just about the most sweet thing you could have done. I am an awful
brute, but, of course, if I had only known what you were doing, I should
have loved it. Do forgive me; I deserve it, I know--only it IS my
birthday.
"Your sorrowful
"MARK."
He took this down, slipped it under her door, tapped so that she might
notice it, and stole away. It relieved his mind a little, and he went
downstairs again.
Back in the greenhouse, sitting on a stool, he ruefully contemplated
those chapletted beasts. They consisted of a crow, a sheep, a turkey,
two doves, a pony, and sundry fragments. She had fastened the jessamine
sprigs to the tops of their heads by a tiny daub of wet clay, and had
evidently been surprised trying to put a sprig into the mouth of one of
the doves, for it hung by a little thread of clay from the beak. He
detached it and put it in his buttonhole. Poor little Sylvia! she took
things awfully to heart. He would be as nice as ever he could to her all
day. And, balancing on his stool, he stared fixedly at the wall against
which she had fallen back; the line of her soft chin and throat seemed
now to be his only memory. It was very queer how he could see nothing
but that, the way the throat moved, swallowed--so white, so soft. And HE
had made it go like that! It seemed an unconscionable time till
breakfast.
As the hour approached he haunted the hall, hoping she might be first
down. At last he heard footsteps, and waited, hidden behind the door of
the empty dining-room, lest at sight of him she should turn back. He had
rehearsed what he was going to do--bend down and kiss her hand and say:
"Dulcinea del Toboso is the most beautiful lady in the world, and I the
most unfortunate knight upon the earth," from his favourite passage out
of his favourite book, 'Don Quixote.' She would surely forgive him then,
and his heart would no longer hurt him. Certainly she could never go on
making him so miserable if she knew his feelings! She was too soft and
gentle for that. Alas! it was not Sylvia who came; but Anna, fresh from
sleep, with her ice-green eyes and bright hair; and in sudden strange
antipathy to her, that strong, vivid figure, he stood dumb. And this
first lonely moment, which he had so many times in fancy spent locked in
her arms, passed without even a kiss; for quickly one by one the others
came. But of Sylvia only news through Mrs. Doone that she had a
headache, and was staying in bed. Her present was on the sideboard, a
book called 'Sartor Resartus.' "Mark--from Sylvia, August 1st, 1880,"
together with Gordy's cheque, Mrs. Doone's pearl pin, old Tingle's
'Stones of Venice,' and one other little parcel wrapped in
tissue-paper--four ties of varying shades of green, red, and blue,
hand-knitted in silk--a present of how many hours made short by the
thought that he would wear the produce of that clicking. He did not fail
in outer gratitude, but did he realize what had been knitted into those
ties? Not then.
Birthdays, like Christmas days, were made for disenchantment. Always the
false gaiety of gaiety arranged--always that pistol to the head:
'Confound you! enjoy yourself!' How could he enjoy himself with the
thought of Sylvia in her room, made ill by his brutality! The vision of
her throat working, swallowing her grief, haunted him like a little
white, soft spectre all through the long drive out on to the moor, and
the picnic in the heather, and the long drive home--haunted him so that
when Anna touched or looked at him he had no spirit to answer, no spirit
even to try and be with her alone, but almost a dread of it instead.
And when at last they were at home again, and she whispered:
"What is it? What have I done?" he could only mutter:
"Nothing! Oh, nothing! It's only that I've been a brute!"
At that enigmatic answer she might well search his face.
"Is it my husband?"
He could answer that, at all events.
"Oh, no!"
"What is it, then? Tell me."
They were standing in the inner porch, pretending to examine the
ancestral chart--dotted and starred with dolphins and little full-rigged
galleons sailing into harbours--which always hung just there.
"Tell me, Mark; I don't like to suffer!"
What could he say, since he did not know himself? He stammered, tried to
speak, could not get anything out.
"Is it that girl?"
Startled, he looked away, and said:
"Of course not."
She shivered, and went into the house. But he stayed, staring at the
chart with a dreadful stirred-up feeling--of shame and irritation, pity,
impatience, fear, all mixed. What had he done, said, lost? It was that
horrid feeling of when one has not been kind and not quite true, yet
might have been kinder if one had been still less true. Ah! but it was
all so mixed up. It felt all bleak, too, and wintry in him, as if he had
suddenly lost everybody's love. Then he was conscious of his tutor.
"Ah! friend Lennan--looking deeply into the past from the less romantic
present? Nice things, those old charts. The dolphins are extremely
jolly."
It was difficult to remember not to be ill-mannered then. Why did
Stormer jeer like that? He just managed to answer:
"Yes, sir; I wish we had some now."
"There are so many moons we wish for, Lennan, and they none of them come
tumbling down."
The voice was almost earnest, and the boy's resentment fled. He felt
sorry, but why he did not know.
"In the meantime," he heard his tutor say, "let us dress for dinner."
When he came down to the drawing-room, Anna in her moonlight-coloured
frock was sitting on the sofa talking to--Sylvia. He kept away from
them; they could neither of them want him. But it did seem odd to him,
who knew not too much concerning women, that she could be talking so
gaily, when only half an hour ago she had said: "Is it that girl?"
He sat next her at dinner. Again it was puzzling that she should be
laughing so serenely at Gordy's stories. Did the whispering in the
porch, then, mean nothing? And Sylvia would not look at him; he felt
sure that she turned her eyes away simply because she knew he was going
to look in her direction. And this roused in him a sore
feeling--everything that night seemed to rouse that feeling--of
injustice; he was cast out, and he could not tell why. He had not meant
to hurt either of them! Why should they both want to hurt him so? And
presently there came to him a feeling that he did not care: Let them
treat him as they liked! There were other things besides love! If they
did not want him--he did not want them! And he hugged this reckless,
unhappy, don't-care feeling to him with all the abandonment of youth.
But even birthdays come to an end. And moods and feelings that seem so
desperately real die in the unreality of sleep.
XVI
If to the boy that birthday was all bewildered disillusionment, to Anna
it was verily slow torture; SHE found no relief in thinking that there
were things in life other than love. But next morning brought
readjustment, a sense of yesterday's extravagance, a renewal of hope.
Impossible surely that in one short fortnight she had lost what she had
made so sure of! She had only to be resolute. Only to grasp firmly what
was hers. After all these empty years was she not to have her hour? To
sit still meekly and see it snatched from her by a slip of a soft girl?
A thousand times, no! And she watched her chance. She saw him about
noon sally forth towards the river, with his rod. She had to wait a
little, for Gordy and his bailiff were down there by the tennis lawn, but
they soon moved on. She ran out then to the park gate. Once through that
she felt safe; her husband, she knew, was working in his room; the girl
somewhere invisible; the old governess still at her housekeeping; Mrs.
Doone writing letters. She felt full of hope and courage. This old wild
tangle of a park, that she had not yet seen, was beautiful--a true
trysting-place for fauns and nymphs, with its mossy trees and boulders
and the high bracken. She kept along under the wall in the direction of
the river, but came to no gate, and began to be afraid that she was going
wrong. She could hear the river on the other side, and looked for some
place where she could climb and see exactly where she was. An old
ash-tree tempted her. Scrambling up into its fork, she could just see
over. There was the little river within twenty yards, its clear dark
water running between thick foliage. On its bank lay a huge stone
balanced on another stone still more huge. And with his back to this
stone stood the boy, his rod leaning beside him. And there, on the
ground, her arms resting on her knees, her chin on her hands, that girl
sat looking up. How eager his eyes now--how different from the brooding
eyes of yesterday!
"So, you see, that was all. You might forgive me, Sylvia!"
And to Anna it seemed verily as if those two young faces formed suddenly
but one--the face of youth.
If she had stayed there looking for all time, she could not have had
graven on her heart a vision more indelible. Vision of Spring, of all
that was gone from her for ever! She shrank back out of the fork of the
old ash-tree, and, like a stricken beast, went hurrying, stumbling away,
amongst the stones and bracken. She ran thus perhaps a quarter of a
mile, then threw up her arms, fell down amongst the fern, and lay there
on her face. At first her heart hurt her so that she felt nothing but
that physical pain. If she could have died! But she knew it was nothing
but breathlessness. It left her, and that which took its place she tried
to drive away by pressing her breast against the ground, by clutching the
stalks of the bracken--an ache, an emptiness too dreadful! Youth to
youth! He was gone from her--and she was alone again! She did not cry.
What good in crying? But gusts of shame kept sweeping through her; shame
and rage. So this was all she was worth! The sun struck hot on her back
in that lair of tangled fern, where she had fallen; she felt faint and
sick. She had not known till now quite what this passion for the boy had
meant to her; how much of her very belief in herself was bound up with
it; how much clinging to her own youth. What bitterness! One soft slip
of a white girl--one YOUNG thing--and she had become as nothing! But
was that true? Could she not even now wrench him back to her with the
passion that this child knew nothing of! Surely! Oh, surely! Let him
but once taste the rapture she could give him! And at that thought she
ceased clutching at the bracken stalks, lying as still as the very stones
around her. Could she not? Might she not, even now? And all feeling,
except just a sort of quivering, deserted her--as if she had fallen into
a trance. Why spare this girl? Why falter? She was first! He had been
hers out there. And she still had the power to draw him. At dinner the
first evening she had dragged his gaze to her, away from that girl--away
from youth, as a magnet draws steel. She could still bind him with
chains that for a little while at all events he would not want to break!
Bind him? Hateful word! Take him, hankering after what she could not
give him--youth, white innocence, Spring? It would be infamous,
infamous! She sprang up from the fern, and ran along the hillside, not
looking where she went, stumbling among the tangled growth, in and out of
the boulders, till she once more sank breathless on to a stone. It was
bare of trees just here, and she could see, across the river valley, the
high larch-crowned tor on the far side. The sky was clear--the sun
bright. A hawk was wheeling over that hill; far up, very near the blue!
Infamous! She could not do that! Could not drug him, drag him to her by
his senses, by all that was least high in him, when she wished for him
all the finest things that life could give, as if she had been his
mother. She could not. It would be wicked! In that moment of intense
spiritual agony, those two down there in the sun, by the grey stone and
the dark water, seemed guarded from her, protected. The girl's white
flower-face trembling up, the boy's gaze leaping down! Strange that a
heart which felt that, could hate at the same moment that flower-face,
and burn to kill with kisses that eagerness in the boy's eyes. The storm
in her slowly passed. And she prayed just to feel nothing. It was
natural that she should lose her hour! Natural that her thirst should go
unslaked, and her passion never bloom; natural that youth should go to
youth, this boy to his own kind, by the law of--love. The breeze blowing
down the valley fanned her cheeks, and brought her a faint sensation of
relief. Nobility! Was it just a word? Or did those that gave up
happiness feel noble?
She wandered for a long time in the park. Not till late afternoon did
she again pass out by the gate, through which she had entered, full of
hope. She met no one before she reached her room; and there, to be safe,
took refuge in her bed. She dreaded only lest the feeling of utter
weariness should leave her. She wanted no vigour of mind or body till
she was away from here. She meant neither to eat nor drink; only to
sleep, if she could. To-morrow, if there were any early train, she could
be gone before she need see anyone; her husband must arrange. As to what
he would think, and she could say--time enough to decide that. And what
did it matter? The one vital thing now was not to see the boy, for she
could not again go through hours of struggle like those. She rang the
bell, and sent the startled maid with a message to her husband. And while
she waited for him to come, her pride began revolting. She must not let
him see. That would be horrible. And slipping out of bed she got a
handkerchief and the eau-de-Cologne flask, and bandaged her forehead. He
came almost instantly, entering in his quick, noiseless way, and stood
looking at her. He did not ask what was the matter, but simply waited.
And never before had she realized so completely how he began, as it were,
where she left off; began on a plane from which instinct and feeling were
as carefully ruled out as though they had been blasphemous. She summoned
all her courage, and said: "I went into the park; the sun must have been
too hot. I should like to go home to-morrow, if you don't mind. I can't
bear not feeling well in other people's houses."
She was conscious of a smile flickering over his face; then it grew
grave.
"Ah!" he said; "yes. The sun, a touch of that will last some days. Will
you be fit to travel, though?"
She had a sudden conviction that he knew all about it, but that--since
to know all about it was to feel himself ridiculous--he had the power of
making himself believe that he knew nothing. Was this fine of him, or
was it hateful?
She closed her eyes and said:
"My head is bad, but I SHALL be able. Only I don't want a fuss made.
Could we go by a train before they are down?"
She heard him say:
"Yes. That will have its advantages."
There was not the faintest sound now, but of course he was still there.
In that dumb, motionless presence was all her future. Yes, that would be
her future--a thing without feeling, and without motion. A fearful
curiosity came on her to look at it. She opened her gaze. He was still
standing just as he had been, his eyes fixed on her. But one hand, on
the edge of his coat pocket--out of the picture, as it were--was
nervously closing and unclosing. And suddenly she felt pity. Not for
her future--which must be like that; but for him. How dreadful to have
grown so that all emotion was exiled--how dreadful! And she said gently:
"I am sorry, Harold."
As if he had heard something strange and startling, his eyes dilated in a
curious way, he buried that nervous hand in his pocket, turned, and went
out.
XVII
When young Mark came on Sylvia by the logan-stone, it was less surprising
to him than if he had not known she was there--having watched her go.
She was sitting, all humped together, brooding over the water, her
sunbonnet thrown back; and that hair, in which his star had caught,
shining faint-gold under the sun. He came on her softly through the
grass, and, when he was a little way off, thought it best to halt. If he
startled her she might run away, and he would not have the heart to
follow. How still she was, lost in her brooding! He wished he could see
her face. He spoke at last, gently:
"Sylvia! . . . Would you mind?"
And, seeing that she did not move, he went up to her. Surely she could
not still be angry with him!
"Thanks most awfully for that book you gave me--it looks splendid!"
She made no answer. And leaning his rod against the stone, he sighed.
That silence of hers seemed to him unjust; what was it she wanted him to
say or do? Life was not worth living, if it was to be all bottled up
like this.
"I never meant to hurt you. I hate hurting people. It's only that my
beasts are so bad--I can't bear people to see them--especially you--I
want to please you--I do really. So, you see, that was all. You MIGHT
forgive me, Sylvia!"
Something over the wall, a rustling, a scattering in the fern--deer, no
doubt! And again he said eagerly, softly:
"You might be nice to me, Sylvia; you really might."
Very quickly, turning her head away, she said:
"It isn't that any more. It's--it's something else."
"What else?"
"Nothing--only, that I don't count--now--"
He knelt down beside her. What did she mean? But he knew well enough.
"Of course, you count! Most awfully! Oh, don't be unhappy! I hate
people being unhappy. Don't be unhappy, Sylvia!" And he began gently to
stroke her arm. It was all strange and troubled within him; one thing
only plain--he must not admit anything! As if reading that thought, her
blue eyes seemed suddenly to search right into him. Then she pulled some
blades of grass, and began plaiting them.
"SHE counts."
Ah! He was not going to say: She doesn't! It would be caddish to say
that. Even if she didn't count--Did she still?--it would be mean and
low. And in his eyes just then there was the look that had made his
tutor compare him to a lion cub in trouble.
Sylvia was touching his arm.
"Mark!"
"Yes."
"Don't!"
He got up and took his rod. What was the use? He could not stay there
with her, since he could not--must not speak.
"Are you going?"
"Yes."
"Are you angry? PLEASE don't be angry with me."
He felt a choke in his throat, bent down to her hand, and kissed it; then
shouldered his rod, and marched away. Looking back once, he saw her
still sitting there, gazing after him, forlorn, by that great stone. It
seemed to him, then, there was nowhere he could go; nowhere except among
the birds and beasts and trees, who did not mind even if you were all
mixed up and horrible inside. He lay down in the grass on the bank. He
could see the tiny trout moving round and round the stones; swallows came
all about him, flying very low; a hornet, too, bore him company for a
little. But he could take interest in nothing; it was as if his spirit
were in prison. It would have been nice, indeed, to be that water, never
staying, passing, passing; or wind, touching everything, never caught.
To be able to do nothing without hurting someone--that was what was so
ghastly. If only one were like a flower, that just sprang up and lived
its life all to itself, and died. But whatever he did, or said now,
would be like telling lies, or else being cruel. The only thing was to
keep away from people. And yet how keep away from his own guests?
He went back to the house for lunch, but both those guests were out, no
one seemed quite to know where. Restless, unhappy, puzzled, he wandered
round and about all the afternoon. Just before dinner he was told of
Mrs. Stormer's not being well, and that they would be leaving to-morrow.
Going--after three days! That plunged him deeper into his strange and
sorrowful confusion. He was reduced now to a complete brooding silence.
He knew he was attracting attention, but could not help it. Several
times during dinner he caught Gordy's eyes fixed on him, from under those
puffy half-closed lids, with asphyxiated speculation. But he simply
COULD not talk--everything that came into his mind to say seemed false.
Ah! it was a sad evening--with its glimmering vision into another's sore
heart, its confused gnawing sense of things broken, faith betrayed; and
yet always the perplexed wonder--"How could I have helped it?" And
always Sylvia's wistful face that he tried not to look at.
He stole out, leaving Gordy and his tutor still over their wine, and
roamed about the garden a long time, listening sadly to the owls. It was
a blessing to get upstairs, though of course he would not sleep.
But he did sleep, all through a night of many dreams, in the last of
which he was lying on a mountain side, Anna looking down into his eyes,
and bending her face to his. He woke just as her lips touched him.
Still under the spell of that troubling dream, he became conscious of the
sound of wheels and horses' hoofs on the gravel, and sprang out of bed.
There was the waggonette moving from the door, old Godden driving,
luggage piled up beside him, and the Stormers sitting opposite each other
in the carriage. Going away like that--having never even said good-bye!
For a moment he felt as people must when they have unwittingly killed
someone--utterly stunned and miserable. Then he dashed into his
clothes. He would not let her go thus! He would--he must--see her again!
What had he done that she should go like this? He rushed downstairs.
The hall was empty; nineteen minutes to eight! The train left at eight
o'clock. Had he time to saddle Bolero? He rushed round to the stables;
but the cob was out, being shoed. He would--he must get there in time.
It would show her anyway that he was not quite a cad. He walked till the
drive curved, then began running hard. A quarter of a mile, and already
he felt better, not so miserable and guilty; it was something to feel you
had a tough job in hand, all your work cut out--something to have to
think of economizing strength, picking out the best going, keeping out of
the sun, saving your wind uphill, flying down any slope. It was cool
still, and the dew had laid the dust; there was no traffic and scarcely
anyone to look back and gape as he ran by. What he would do, if he got
there in time--how explain this mad three-mile run--he did not think.
He passed a farm that he knew was just half-way. He had left his watch.
Indeed, he had put on only his trousers, shirt, and Norfolk jacket; no
tie, no hat, not even socks under his tennis shoes, and he was as hot as
fire, with his hair flying back--a strange young creature indeed for
anyone to meet. But he had lost now all feeling, save the will to get
there. A flock of sheep came out of a field into the lane. He pushed
through them somehow, but they lost him several seconds. More than a
mile still; and he was blown, and his legs beginning to give! Downhill
indeed they went of their own accord, but there was the long run-in,
quite level; and he could hear the train, now slowly puffing its way
along the valley. Then, in spite of exhaustion, his spirit rose. He
would not go in looking like a scarecrow, utterly done, and make a scene.
He must pull himself together at the end, and stroll in--as if he had
come for fun. But how--seeing that at any moment he felt he might fall
flat in the dust, and stay there for ever! And, as he ran, he made
little desperate efforts to mop his face, and brush his clothes. There
were the gates, at last--two hundred yards away. The train, he could
hear no longer. It must be standing in the station. And a sob came from
his overdriven lungs. He heard the guard's whistle as he reached the
gates. Instead of making for the booking-office, he ran along the
paling, where an entrance to the goods'-shed was open, and dashing
through he fell back against the honeysuckle. The engine was just
abreast of him; he snatched at his sleeve and passed it over his face, to
wipe the sweat away. Everything was blurred. He must see--surely he had
not come in time just not to see! He pushed his hands over his forehead
and hair, and spied up dizzily at the slowly passing train. She was
there, at a window! Standing, looking out! He dared not step forward,
for fear of falling, but he put out his hand--She saw him. Yes, she saw
him! Wasn't she going to make a sign? Not one? And suddenly he saw her
tear at her dress, pluck something out, and throw it. It fell close to
his feet. He did not pick it up--he wanted to see her face till she was
gone. It looked wonderful--very proud, and pale. She put her hand up to
her lips. Then everything went blurred again and when he could see once
more, the train had vanished. But at his feet was what she had thrown.
He picked it up! All dry and dark, it was the flower she had given him
in the Tyrol, and stolen back from his buttonhole.
Creeping out, past the goods'-shed, he made his way to a field, and lay
down with his face pressed to that withered thing which still had its
scent. . . .
The asphyxiated speculation in his guardian's eyes had not been without
significance. Mark did not go back to Oxford. He went instead to
Rome--to live in his sister's house, and attend a school of sculpture.
That was the beginning of a time when nothing counted except his work.
To Anna he wrote twice, but received no answer. From his tutor he had
one little note:
"MY DEAR LENNAN,
"So! You abandon us for Art? Ah! well--it was your moon, if I
remember--one of them. A worthy moon--a little dusty in these days--a
little in her decline--but to you no doubt a virgin goddess, whose hem,
etc.
"We shall retain the friendliest memories of you in spite of your
defection.
"Once your tutor and still your friend,
"HAROLD STORMER."
After that vacation it was long--very long before he saw Sylvia again.
PART II
SUMMER
I
Gleam of a thousand lights; clack and mutter of innumerable voices,
laughter, footsteps; hiss and rumble of passing trains taking gamblers
back to Nice or Mentone; fevered wailing from the violins of four
fiddlers with dark-white skins outside the cafe; and above, around,
beyond, the dark sky, and the dark mountains, and the dark sea, like some
great dark flower to whose heart is clinging a jewelled beetle. So was
Monte Carlo on that May night of 1887.
But Mark Lennan, at one of the little marble-topped tables, was in too
great maze and exaltation of spirit and of senses to be conscious of its
glare and babel, even of its beauty. He sat so very still that his
neighbours, with the instinctive aversion of the human creature to what
is too remote from its own mood, after one good stare, turned their eyes
away, as from something ludicrous, almost offensive.
He was lost, indeed, in memory of the minutes just gone by. For it had
come at last, after all these weeks of ferment, after all this strange
time of perturbation.
Very stealthily it had been creeping on him, ever since that chance
introduction nearly a year ago, soon after he settled down in London,
following those six years of Rome and Paris. First the merest
friendliness, because she was so nice about his work; then respectful
admiration, because she was so beautiful; then pity, because she was so
unhappy in her marriage. If she had been happy, he would have fled. The
knowledge that she had been unhappy long before he knew her had kept his
conscience still. And at last one afternoon she said: "Ah! if you come
out there too!" Marvelously subtle, the way that one little outslipped
saying had worked in him, as though it had a life of its own--like a
strange bird that had flown into the garden of his heart, and established
itself with its new song and flutterings, its new flight, its wistful and
ever clearer call. That and one moment, a few days later in her London
drawing-room, when he had told her that he WAS coming, and she did not,
could not, he felt, look at him. Queer, that nothing momentous said,
done--or even left undone--had altered all the future!
And so she had gone with her uncle and aunt, under whose wing one might
be sure she would meet with no wayward or exotic happenings. And he had
received from her this little letter:
"HOTEL COEUR D'OR,
"MONTE CARLO.
"MY DEAR MARK,
"We've arrived. It is so good to be in the sun. The flowers are
wonderful. I am keeping Gorbio and Roquebrune till you come.
"Your friend,
"OLIVE CRAMIER."
That letter was the single clear memory he had of the time between her
going and his following. He received it one afternoon, sitting on an old
low garden wall with the spring sun shining on him through apple-trees in
blossom, and a feeling as if all the desire of the world lay before him,
and he had but to stretch out his arms to take it.
Then confused unrest, all things vague; till at the end of his journey he
stepped out of the train at Beaulieu with a furiously beating heart. But
why? Surely he had not expected her to come out from Monte Carlo to meet
him!
A week had gone by since then in one long effort to be with her and
appear to others as though he did not greatly wish to be; two concerts,
two walks with her alone, when all that he had said seemed as nothing
said, and all her sayings but ghosts of what he wished to hear; a week of
confusion, day and night, until, a few minutes ago, her handkerchief had
fallen from her glove on to the dusty road, and he had picked it up and
put it to his lips. Nothing could take away the look she had given him
then. Nothing could ever again separate her from him utterly. She had
confessed in it to the same sweet, fearful trouble that he himself was
feeling. She had not spoken, but he had seen her lips part, her breast
rise and fall. And HE had not spoken. What was the use of words?
He felt in the pocket of his coat. There, against his fingers, was that
wisp of lawn and lace, soft, yet somehow alive; and stealthily he took it
out. The whole of her, with her fragrance, seemed pressed to his face in
the touch of that lawn border, roughened by little white stars. More
secretly than ever he put it back; and for the first time looked round.
These people! They belonged to a world that he had left. They gave him
the same feeling that her uncle and aunt had given him just now, when
they said good-night, following her into their hotel. That good Colonel,
that good Mrs. Ercott! The very concretion of the world he had been
brought up in, of the English point of view; symbolic figures of health,
reason, and the straight path, on which at that moment, seemingly, he had
turned his back. The Colonel's profile, ruddy through its tan, with grey
moustache guiltless of any wax, his cheery, high-pitched: "Good-night,
young Lennan!" His wife's curly smile, her flat, cosy, confidential
voice--how strange and remote they had suddenly become! And all these
people here, chattering, drinking--how queer and far away! Or was it
just that he was queer and remote to them?
And getting up from his table, he passed the fiddlers with the dark-white
skins, out into the Place.
II
He went up the side streets to the back of her hotel, and stood by the
railings of the garden--one of those hotel gardens which exist but to
figure in advertisements, with its few arid palms, its paths staring
white between them, and a fringe of dusty lilacs and mimosas.
And there came to him the oddest feeling--that he had been there before,
peering through blossoms at those staring paths and shuttered windows. A
scent of wood-smoke was abroad, and some dry plant rustled ever so
faintly in what little wind was stirring. What was there of memory in
this night, this garden? Some dark sweet thing, invisible, to feel whose
presence was at once ecstasy, and the irritation of a thirst that will
not be quenched.
And he walked on. Houses, houses! At last he was away from them, alone
on the high road, beyond the limits of Monaco. And walking thus through
the night he had thoughts that he imagined no one had ever had before
him. The knowledge that she loved him had made everything seem very
sacred and responsible. Whatever he did, he must not harm her. Women
were so helpless!
For in spite of six years of art in Rome and Paris, he still had a
fastidious reverence for women. If she had loved her husband she would
have been safe enough from him; but to be bound to a companionship that
she gave unwillingly--this had seemed to him atrocious, even before he
loved her. How could any husband ask that? Have so little pride--so
little pity? The unpardonable thing! What was there to respect in such
a marriage? Only, he must not do her harm! But now that her eyes had
said, I love you!--What then? It was simply miraculous to know THAT,
under the stars of this warm Southern night, burning its incense of trees
and flowers!
Climbing up above the road, he lay down. If only she were there beside
him! The fragrance of the earth not yet chilled, crept to his face; and
for just a moment it seemed to him that she did come. If he could keep
her there for ever in that embrace that was no embrace--in that ghostly
rapture, on this wild fragrant bed that no lovers before had ever
pressed, save the creeping things, and the flowers; save sunlight and
moonlight with their shadows; and the wind kissing the earth! . . .
Then she was gone; his hands touched nothing but the crumbled pine dust,
and the flowers of the wild thyme fallen into sleep.
He stood on the edge of the little cliff, above the road between the dark
mountains and the sea black with depth. Too late for any passer-by; as
far from what men thought and said and did as the very night itself with
its whispering warmth. And he conjured up her face, making certain of
it--the eyes, clear and brown, and wide apart; the close, sweet mouth;
the dark hair; the whole flying loveliness.
Then he leaped down into the road, and ran--one could not walk, feeling
this miracle, that no one had ever felt before, the miracle of love.
III
In their most reputable hotel 'Le Coeur d'Or,' long since remodelled and
renamed, Mrs. Ercott lay in her brass-bound bed looking by starlight at
the Colonel in his brass-bound bed. Her ears were carefully freed from
the pressure of her pillow, for she thought she heard a mosquito.
Companion for thirty years to one whose life had been feverishly
punctuated by the attentions of those little beasts, she had no love for
them. It was the one subject on which perhaps her imagination was
stronger than her common sense. For in fact there was not, and could not
be, a mosquito, since the first thing the Colonel did, on arriving at any
place farther South than Parallel 46 of latitude, was to open the windows
very wide, and nail with many tiny tacks a piece of mosquito netting
across that refreshing space, while she held him firmly by the
coat-tails. The fact that other people did not so secure their windows
did not at all trouble the Colonel, a true Englishman, who loved to act
in his own way, and to think in the ways of other people. After that
they would wait till night came, then burn a peculiar little lamp with a
peculiar little smell, and, in the full glare of the gaslight, stand
about on chairs, with slippers, and their eyes fixed on true or imaginary
beasts. Then would fall little slaps, making little messes, and little
joyous or doleful cries would arise: "I've got that one!" "Oh, John, I
missed him!" And in the middle of the room, the Colonel, in pyjamas, and
spectacles (only worn in very solemn moments, low down on his nose),
would revolve slowly, turning his eyes, with that look in them of
out-facing death which he had so long acquired, on every inch of wall and
ceiling, till at last he would say: "Well, Dolly, that's the lot!" At
which she would say: "Give me a kiss, dear!" and he would kiss her, and
get into his bed.
There was, then, no mosquito, save that general ghost of him which
lingered in the mind of one devoted to her husband. Spying out his
profile, for he was lying on his back, she refrained from saying: "John,
are you awake?" A whiffling sound was coming from a nose, to
which--originally straight--attention to military duties had given a
slight crook, half an inch below the level of grizzled eyebrows raised a
little, as though surprised at the sounds beneath. She could hardly see
him, but she thought: "How good he looks!" And, in fact, he did. It was
the face of a man incapable of evil, having in its sleep the candour of
one at heart a child--that simple candour of those who have never known
how to seek adventures of the mind, and have always sought adventures of
the body. Then somehow she did say:
"John! Are you asleep?"
The Colonel, instantly alive, as at some old-time attack, answered:
"Yes."
"That poor young man!"
"Which?"
"Mark Lennan. Haven't you seen?"
"What?"
"My dear, it was under your nose. But you never do see these things!"
The Colonel slowly turned his head. His wife was an imaginative woman!
She had always been so. Dimly he perceived that something romantic was
about to come from her. But with that almost professional gentleness of
a man who has cut the heads and arms off people in his time, he answered:
"What things?"
"He picked up her handkerchief."
"Whose?"
"Olive's. He put it in his pocket. I distinctly saw him."
There was silence; then Mrs. Ercott's voice rose again, impersonal, far
away.
"What always astonishes me about young people is the way they think
they're not seen--poor dears!"
Still there was silence.
"John! Are you thinking?"
For a considerable sound of breathing, not mere whiffling now, was coming
from the Colonel--to his wife a sure sign.
And indeed he WAS thinking. Dolly was an imaginative woman, but
something told him that in this case she might not be riding past the
hounds.
Mrs. Ercott raised herself. He looked more good than ever; a little
perplexed frown had climbed up with his eyebrows and got caught in the
wrinkles across his forehead.
"I'm very fond of Olive," he said.
Mrs. Ercott fell back on her pillows. In her heart there was just that
little soreness natural to a woman over fifty, whose husband has a niece.
"No doubt," she murmured.
Something vague moved deep down in the Colonel; he stretched out his
hand. In that strip of gloom between the beds it encountered another
hand, which squeezed it rather hard.
He said: "Look here, old girl!" and there was silence.
Mrs. Ercott in her turn was thinking. Her thoughts were flat and rapid
like her voice, but had that sort of sentiment which accompanies the
mental exercise of women with good hearts. Poor young man! And poor
Olive! But was a woman ever to be pitied, when she was so pretty as
that! Besides, when all was said and done, she had a fine-looking man
for husband; in Parliament, with a career, and fond of her--decidedly.
And their little house in London, so close to Westminster, was a distinct
dear; and nothing could be more charming than their cottage by the river.
Was Olive, then, to be pitied? And yet--she was not happy. It was no
good pretending that she was happy. All very well to say that such
things were within one's control, but if you read novels at all, you knew
they weren't. There was such a thing as incompatibility. Oh yes! And
there was the matter of difference in their ages! Olive was twenty-six,
Robert Cramier forty-two. And now this young Mark Lennan was in love
with her. What if she were in love with him! John would realize then,
perhaps, that the young flew to the young. For men--even the best, like
John, were funny! She would never dream of feeling for any of her
nephews as John clearly felt for Olive.
The Colonel's voice broke in on her thoughts.
"Nice young fellow--Lennan! Great pity! Better sheer off--if he's
getting--"
And, rather suddenly, she answered:
"Suppose he can't!"
"Can't?"
"Did you never hear of a 'grande passion'?"
The Colonel rose on his elbow. This was another of those occasions that
showed him how, during the later years of his service in Madras and Upper
Burmah, when Dolly's health had not been equal to the heat, she had
picked up in London a queer way of looking at things--as if they were
not--not so right or wrong as--as he felt them to be. And he repeated
those two French words in his own way, adding:
"Isn't that just what I'm saying? The sooner he stands clear, the
better."
But Mrs. Ercott, too, sat up.
"Be human," she said.
The Colonel experienced the same sensation as when one suddenly knows
that one is not digesting food. Because young Lennan was in danger of
getting into a dishonourable fix, he was told to be human! Really, Dolly
was--! The white blur of her new boudoir cap suddenly impinged on his
consciousness. Surely she was not getting--un-English! At her time of
life!
"I'm thinking of Olive," he said; "I don't want her worried with that
sort of thing."
"Perhaps Olive can manage for herself. In these days it doesn't do to
interfere with love."
"Love!" muttered the Colonel. "What? Phew!"
If one's own wife called this--this sort of--thing, love--then, why had
he been faithful to her--in very hot climates--all these years? A sense
of waste, and of injustice, tried to rear its head against all the side
of him that attached certain meanings to certain words, and acted up to
them. And this revolt gave him a feeling, strange and so unpleasant.
Love! It was not a word to use thus loosely! Love led to marriage; this
could not lead to marriage, except through--the Divorce Court. And
suddenly the Colonel had a vision of his dead brother Lindsay, Olive's
father, standing there in the dark, with his grave, clear-cut, ivory-pale
face, under the black hair supposed to be derived from a French
ancestress who had escaped from the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Upright
fellow always, Lindsay--even before he was made bishop! Queer somehow
that Olive should be his daughter. Not that she was not upright; not at
all! But she was soft! Lindsay was not! Imagine him seeing that young
fellow putting her handkerchief in his pocket. But had young Lennan
really done such a thing? Dolly was imaginative! He had mistaken it
probably for his own; if he had chanced to blow his nose, he would have
realized. For, coupled with the almost child-like candour of his mind,
the Colonel had real administrative vigour, a true sense of practical
values; an ounce of illustration was always worth to him a pound of
theory! Dolly was given to riding off on theories. Thank God! she never
acted on 'em!
He said gently:
"My dear! Young Lennan may be an artist and all that, but he's a
gentleman! I know old Heatherley, his guardian. Why I introduced him to
Olive myself!"
"What has that to do with it? He's in love with her."
One of the countless legion that hold a creed taken at face value, into
whose roots and reasons they have never dreamed of going, the Colonel was
staggered. Like some native on an island surrounded by troubled seas,
which he has stared at with a certain contemptuous awe all his life, but
never entered, he was disconcerted by thus being asked to leave the
shore. And by his own wife!
Indeed, Mrs. Ercott had not intended to go so far; but there was in her,
as in all women whose minds are more active than their husbands', a
something worrying her always to go a little farther than she meant.
With real compunction she heard the Colonel say:
"I must get up and drink some water."
She was out of bed in a moment. "Not without boiling!"
She had seriously troubled him, then! Now he would not sleep--the blood
went to his head so quickly. He would just lie awake, trying not to
disturb her. She could not bear him not to disturb her. It seemed so
selfish of her! She ought to have known that the whole subject was too
dangerous to discuss at night.
She became conscious that he was standing just behind her; his figure in
its thin covering looked very lean, his face strangely worn.
"I'm sorry you put that idea into my head!" he said. "I'm fond of
Olive."
Again Mrs. Ercott felt that jealous twinge, soon lost this time in the
motherliness of a childless woman for her husband. He must not be
troubled! He should not be troubled. And she said:
"The water's boiling! Now sip a good glass slowly, and get into bed, or
I'll take your temperature!"
Obediently the Colonel took from her the glass, and as he sipped, she put
her hand up and stroked his head.
IV
In the room below them the subject of their discussion was lying very
wide awake. She knew that she had betrayed herself, made plain to Mark
Lennan what she had never until now admitted to herself. But the
love-look, which for the life of her she could not keep back, had been
followed by a feeling of having 'lost caste.' For, hitherto, the world
of women had been strictly divided by her into those who did and those
who did not do such things; and to be no longer quite sure to which half
she belonged was frightening. But what was the good of thinking, of
being frightened?--it could not lead to anything. Yesterday she had not
known this would come; and now she could not guess at to-morrow! To-night
was enough! To-night with its swimming loveliness! Just to feel! To
love, and to be loved!
A new sensation for her--as different from those excited by the
courtships of her girlhood, or by her marriage, as light from darkness.
For she had never been in love, not even with her husband. She knew it
now. The sun was shining in a world where she had thought there was
none. Nothing could come of it. But the sun was shining; and in that
sunshine she must warm herself a little.
Quite simply she began to plan what he and she would do. There were six
days left. They had not yet been to Gorbio, nor to Castellar--none of
those long walks or rides they had designed to do for the beauty of them.
Would he come early to-morrow? What could they do together? No one
should know what these six days would be to her--not even he. To be with
him, watch his face, hear his voice, and now and then just touch him!
She could trust herself to show no one. And then, it would be--over!
Though, of course, she would see him again in London.
And, lying there in the dark, she thought of their first meeting, one
Sunday morning, in Hyde Park. The Colonel religiously observed Church
Parade, and would even come all the way down to Westminster, from his
flat near Knightsbridge, in order to fetch his niece up to it. She
remembered how, during their stroll, he had stopped suddenly in front of
an old gentleman with a puffy yellow face and eyes half open.
"Ah! Mr. Heatherley--you up from Devonshire? How's your nephew
--the--er--sculptor?"
And the old gentleman, glaring a little, as it seemed to her, from under
his eyelids and his grey top hat, had answered: "Colonel Ercott, I think?
Here's the fellow himself--Mark!" And a young man had taken off his hat.
She had only noticed at first that his dark hair grew--not long--but very
thick; and that his eyes were very deep-set. Then she saw him smile; it
made his face all eager, yet left it shy; and she decided that he was
nice. Soon after, she had gone with the Ercotts to see his 'things'; for
it was, of course, and especially in those days, quite an event to know a
sculptor--rather like having a zebra in your park. The Colonel had been
delighted and a little relieved to find that the 'things' were nearly all
of beasts and birds. "Very interestin'" to one full of curious lore
about such, having in his time killed many of them, and finding himself
at the end of it with a curious aversion to killing any more--which he
never put into words.
Acquaintanceship had ripened fast after that first visit to his studio,
and now it was her turn to be relieved that Mark Lennan devoted himself
almost entirely to beasts and birds instead of to the human form,
so-called divine. Ah! yes--she would have suffered; now that she loved
him, she saw that. At all events she could watch his work and help it
with sympathy. That could not be wrong. . . .
She fell asleep at last, and dreamed that she was in a boat alone on the
river near her country cottage, drifting along among spiky flowers like
asphodels, with birds singing and flying round her. She could move
neither face nor limbs, but that helpless feeling was not unpleasant,
till she became conscious that she was drawing nearer and nearer to what
was neither water nor land, light nor darkness, but simply some
unutterable feeling. And then she saw, gazing at her out of the rushes
on the banks, a great bull head. It moved as she moved--it was on both
sides of her, yet all the time only one head. She tried to raise her
hands and cover her eyes, but could not--and woke with a sob. . . . It
was light.
Nearly six o'clock already! Her dream made her disinclined to trust
again to sleep. Sleep was a robber now--of each minute of these few
days! She got up, and looked out. The morning was fine, the air warm
already, sweet with dew, and heliotrope nailed to the wall outside her
window. She had but to open her shutters and walk into the sun. She
dressed, took her sunshade, stealthily slipped the shutters back, and
stole forth. Shunning the hotel garden, where the eccentricity of her
early wandering might betray the condition of her spirit, she passed
through into the road toward the Casino. Without perhaps knowing it, she
was making for where she had sat with him yesterday afternoon, listening
to the band. Hatless, but defended by her sunshade, she excited the
admiration of the few connoisseurs as yet abroad, strolling in blue
blouses to their labours; and this simple admiration gave her pleasure.
For once she was really conscious of the grace in her own limbs, actually
felt the gentle vividness of her own face, with its nearly black hair and
eyes, and creamy skin--strange sensation, and very comforting!
In the Casino gardens she walked more slowly, savouring the aromatic
trees, and stopping to bend and look at almost every flower; then, on the
seat, where she had sat with him yesterday, she rested. A few paces away
were the steps that led to the railway-station, trodden upwards eagerly
by so many, day after day, night after night, and lightly or sorrowfully
descended. Above her, two pines, a pepper-tree, and a palm mingled their
shade--so fantastic the jumbling of trees and souls in this strange
place! She furled her sunshade and leaned back. Her gaze, free and
friendly, passed from bough to bough. Against the bright sky, unbesieged
as yet by heat or dust, they had a spiritual look, lying sharp and flat
along the air. She plucked a cluster of pinkish berries from the
pepper-tree, crushing and rubbing them between her hands to get their
fragrance. All these beautiful and sweet things seemed to be a part of
her joy at being loved, part of this sudden summer in her heart. The
sky, the flowers, that jewel of green-blue sea, the bright acacias, were
nothing in the world but love.
And those few who passed, and saw her sitting there under the
pepper-tree, wondered no doubt at the stillness of this dame bien mise,
who had risen so early.
V
In the small hours, which so many wish were smaller, the Colonel had
awakened, with the affair of the handkerchief swelling visibly. His
niece's husband was not a man that he had much liking for--a taciturn
fellow, with possibly a bit of the brute in him, a man who rather rode
people down; but, since Dolly and he were in charge of Olive, the notion
that young Lennan was falling in love with her under their very noses was
alarming to one naturally punctilious. It was not until he fell asleep
again, and woke in full morning light, that the remedy occurred to him.
She must be taken out of herself! Dolly and he had been slack; too
interested in this queer place, this queer lot of people! They had
neglected her, left her to. . . Boys and girls!--One ought always to
remember. But it was not too late. She was old Lindsay's daughter;
would not forget herself. Poor old Lindsay--fine fellow; bit too much,
perhaps, of the--Huguenot in him! Queer, those throw-backs! Had noticed
in horses, time and again--white hairs about the tail, carriage of the
head--skip generations and then pop out. And Olive had something of his
look--the same ivory skin, same colour of eyes and hair! Only she was not
severe, like her father, not exactly! And once more there shot through
the Colonel a vague dread, as of a trusteeship neglected. It
disappeared, however, in his bath.
He was out before eight o'clock, a thin upright figure in hard straw hat
and grey flannel clothes, walking with the indescribable loose poise of
the soldier Englishman, with that air, different from the French, German,
what not, because of shoulders ever asserting, through their drill, the
right to put on mufti; with that perfectly quiet and modest air of
knowing that, whatever might be said, there was only one way of wearing
clothes and moving legs. And, as he walked, he smoothed his drooping grey
moustache, considering how best to take his niece out of herself. He
passed along by the Terrace, and stood for a moment looking down at the
sea beyond the pigeon-shooting ground. Then he moved on round under the
Casino into the gardens at the back. A beautiful spot! Wonderful care
they had taken with the plants! It made him think a little of Tushawore,
where his old friend the Rajah--precious old rascal!--had gardens to his
palace rather like these. He paced again to the front. It was nice and
quiet in the early mornings, with the sea down there, and nobody trying
to get the better of anybody else. There were fellows never happy unless
they were doing someone in the eye. He had known men who would ride at
the devil himself, make it a point of honour to swindle a friend out of a
few pounds! Odd place this 'Monte'--sort of a Garden of Eden gone wrong.
And all the real, but quite inarticulate love of Nature, which had
supported the Colonel through deserts and jungles, on transports at sea,
and in mountain camps, awoke in the sweetness of these gardens. His dear
mother! He had never forgotten the words with which she had shown him
the sunset through the coppice down at old Withes Norton, when he was
nine years old: "That is beauty, Jack! Do you feel it, darling?" He had
not felt it at the time--not he; a thick-headed, scampering youngster.
Even when he first went to India he had had no eye for a sunset. The
rising generation were different. That young couple, for instance, under
the pepper-tree, sitting there without a word, just looking at the trees.
How long, he wondered, had they been sitting like that? And suddenly
something in the Colonel leaped; his steel-coloured eyes took on their
look of out-facing death. Choking down a cough, he faced about, back to
where he had stood above the pigeon-shooting ground. . . . Olive and
that young fellow! An assignation! At this time in the morning! The
earth reeled. His brother's child--his favourite niece! The woman whom
he most admired--the woman for whom his heart was softest. Leaning over
the stone parapet, no longer seeing either the smooth green of the
pigeon-shooting ground, or the smooth blue of the sea beyond, he was
moved, distressed, bewildered beyond words. Before breakfast! That was
the devil of it! Confession, as it were, of everything. Moreover, he had
seen their hands touching on the seat. The blood rushed up to his face;
he had seen, spied out, what was not intended for his eyes. Nice
position--that! Dolly, too, last night, had seen. But that was
different. Women might see things--it was expected of them. But for a
man--a--a gentleman! The fullness of his embarrassment gradually
disclosed itself. His hands were tied. Could he even consult Dolly? He
had a feeling of isolation, of utter solitude. Nobody--not anybody in
the world--could understand his secret and intense discomfort. To take
up a position--the position he was bound to take up, as Olive's nearest
relative and protector, and--what was it--chaperon, by the aid of
knowledge come at in such a way, however unintentionally! Never in all
his days in the regiment--and many delicate matters affecting honour had
come his way--had he had a thing like this to deal with. Poor child! But
he had no business to think of her like that. No, indeed! She had not
behaved--as--And there he paused, curiously unable to condemn her.
Suppose they got up and came that way!
He took his hands off the stone parapet, and made for his hotel. His
palms were white from the force of his grip. He said to himself as he
went along: "I must consider the whole question calmly; I must think it
out." This gave him relief. With young Lennan, at all events, he could
be angry. But even there he found, to his dismay, no finality of
judgment. And this absence of finality, so unwonted, distressed him
horribly. There was something in the way the young man had been sitting
there beside her--so quiet, so almost timid--that had touched him. This
was bad, by Jove--very bad! The two of them, they made, somehow, a nice
couple! Confound it! This would not do! The chaplain of the little
English church, passing at this moment, called out, "Fine morning,
Colonel Ercott." The Colonel saluted, and did not answer. The greeting
at the moment seemed to him paltry. No morning could be fine that
contained such a discovery. He entered the hotel, passed into the
dining-room, and sat down. Nobody was there. They all had their
breakfast upstairs, even Dolly. Olive alone was in the habit of
supporting him while he ate an English breakfast. And suddenly he
perceived that he was face to face already with this dreadful situation.
To have breakfast without, as usual, waiting for her, seemed too pointed.
She might be coming in at any minute now. To wait for her, and have it,
without showing anything--how could he do that?
He was conscious of a faint rustling behind him. There she was, and
nothing decided. In this moment of hopeless confusion the Colonel acted
by pure instinct, rose, patted her cheek, and placed a chair.
"Well, my dear," he said; "hungry?"
She was looking very dainty, very soft. That creamy dress showed off her
dark hair and eyes, which seemed somehow to be--flying off somewhere;
yes--it was queer, but that was the only way to put it. He got no
reassurance, no comfort, from the sight of her. And slowly he stripped
the skin from the banana with which he always commenced breakfast. One
might just as well be asked to shoot a tame dove or tear a pretty flower
to pieces as he expected to take her to task, even if he could, in
honour. And he sought refuge in the words:
"Been out?" Then could have bitten his tongue off. Suppose she
answered: "No."
But she did not so answer. The colour came into her cheeks, indeed, but
she nodded: "It's so lovely!"
How pretty she looked saying that! He had put himself out of court
now--could never tell her what he had seen, after setting, as it were,
that trap for her; and presently he asked:
"Got any plans to-day?"
She answered, without flinching in the least:
"Mark Lennan and I were going to take mules from Mentone up to Gorbio."
He was amazed at her steadiness--never, to his knowledge, having
encountered a woman armoured at every point to preserve a love that flies
against the world. How tell what was under her smile! And in confusion
of feeling that amounted almost to pain he heard her say:
"Will you and Aunt Dolly come?"
Between sense of trusteeship and hatred of spoiling sport; between
knowledge of the danger she was in and half-pitying admiration at the
sight of her; between real disapproval of an illicit and underhand
business (what else was it, after all?) and some dim perception that here
was something he did not begin to be able to fathom--something that
perhaps no one but those two themselves could deal with--between these
various extremes he was lost indeed. And he stammered out:
"I must ask your aunt; she's--she's not very good on a mule."
Then, in an impulse of sheer affection, he said with startling
suddenness: "My dear, I've often meant to ask, are you happy at home?"
"At home?"
There was something sinister about the way she repeated that, as if the
word "home" were strange to her.
She drank her coffee and got up; and the Colonel felt afraid of her,
standing there--afraid of what she was going to tell him. He grew very
red. But, worse than all, she said absolutely nothing; only shrugged her
shoulders with a little smile that went to his heart.
VI
On the wild thyme, under the olives below the rock village of Gorbio,
with their mules cropping at a little distance, those two sat after their
lunch, listening to the cuckoos. Since their uncanny chance meeting that
morning in the gardens, when they sat with their hands just touching,
amazed and elated by their own good fortune, there was not much need to
say what they felt, to break with words this rapture of belonging to each
other--so shyly, so wildly, so, as it were, without reality. They were
like epicures with old wine in their glasses, not yet tired of its
fragrance and the spell of anticipation.
And so their talk was not of love, but, in that pathetic way of
star-crossed lovers, of the things they loved; leaving out--each other.
It was the telling of her dream that brought the words from him at last;
but she drew away, and answered:
"It can't--it mustn't be!"
Then he just clung to her hand; and presently, seeing that her eyes were
wet, took courage enough to kiss her cheek.
Trembling and fugitive indeed that first passage of their love. Not much
of the conquering male in him, nor in her of the ordinary enchantress.
And then they went, outwardly sober enough, riding their mules down the
stony slopes back to Mentone.
But in the grey, dusty railway-carriage when she had left him, he was
like a man drugged, staring at where she had sat opposite.
Two hours later, at dinner in her hotel, between her and Mrs. Ercott,
with the Colonel opposite, he knew for the first time what he was faced
with. To watch every thought that passed within him, lest it should by
the slightest sign betray him; to regulate and veil every look and every
word he spoke to her; never for a second to forget that these other
persons were actual and dangerous, not merely the insignificant and
grotesque shadows that they seemed. It would be perhaps for ever a part
of his love for her to seem not to love her. He did not dare dream of
fulfilment. He was to be her friend, and try to bring her
happiness--burn and long for her, and not think about reward. This was
his first real overwhelming passion--so different to the loves of
spring--and he brought to it all that naivete, that touching quality of
young Englishmen, whose secret instinct it is to back away from the full
nature of love, even from admitting that it has that nature. They two
were to love, and--not to love! For the first time he understood a
little of what that meant. A few stolen adoring minutes now and then,
and, for the rest, the presence of a world that must be deceived. Already
he had almost a hatred of that orderly, brown-faced Colonel, with his
eyes that looked so steady and saw nothing; of that flat, kindly lady,
who talked so pleasantly throughout dinner, saying things that he had to
answer without knowing what they signified. He realized, with a sense of
shock, that he was deprived of all interests in life but one; not even
his work had any meaning apart from HER. It lit no fire within him to
hear Mrs. Ercott praise certain execrable pictures in the Royal Academy,
which she had religiously visited the day before leaving home. And as
the interminable meal wore on, he began even to feel grief and wonder
that Olive could be so smiling, so gay, and calm; so, as it seemed to
him, indifferent to this intolerable impossibility of exchanging even one
look of love. Did she really love him--could she love him, and show not
one little sign of it? And suddenly he felt her foot touch his own. It
was the faintest sidelong, supplicating pressure, withdrawn at once, but
it said: 'I know what you are suffering; I, too, but I love you.'
Characteristically, he felt that it cost her dear to make use of that
little primitive device of common loves; the touch awoke within him only
chivalry. He would burn for ever sooner than cause her the pain of
thinking that he was not happy.
After dinner, they sat out on a balcony. The stars glowed above the
palms; a frog was croaking. He managed to draw his chair so that he
could look at her unseen. How deep, and softly dark her eyes, when for a
second they rested on his! A moth settled on her knee--a cunning little
creature, with its hooded, horned owl's face, and tiny black slits of
eyes! Would it have come so confidingly to anyone but her? The Colonel
knew its name--he had collected it. Very common, he said. The interest
in it passed; but Lennan stayed, bent forward, gazing at that
silk-covered knee.
The voice of Mrs. Ercott, sharper than its wont, said: "What day does
Robert say he wants you back, my dear?"
He managed to remain gazing at the moth, even to take it gently from her
knee, while he listened to her calm answer.
"Tuesday, I believe."
Then he got up, and let the moth fly into the darkness; his hands and
lips were trembling, and he was afraid of their being seen. He had never
known, had not dreamed, of such a violent, sick feeling. That this man
could thus hale her home at will! It was grotesque, fantastic, awful,
but--it was true! Next Tuesday she would journey back away from him to
be again at the mercy of her Fate! The pain of this thought made him
grip the railing, and grit his teeth, to keep himself from crying out.
And another thought came to him: I shall have to go about with this
feeling, day and night, and keep it secret.
They were saying good-night; and he had to smirk and smile, and
pretend--to her above all--that he was happy, and he could see that she
knew it was pretence.
Then he was alone, with the feeling that he had failed her at the first
shot; torn, too, between horror of what he suddenly saw before him, and
longing to be back in her presence at any cost. . . . And all this on the
day of that first kiss which had seemed to him to make her so utterly his
own.
He sat down on a bench facing the Casino. Neither the lights, nor the
people passing in and out, not even the gipsy bandsmen's music,
distracted his thoughts for a second. Could it be less than twenty-four
hours since he had picked up her handkerchief, not thirty yards away? In
that twenty-four hours he seemed to have known every emotion that man
could feel. And in all the world there was now not one soul to whom he
could speak his real thoughts--not even to her, because from her, beyond
all, he must keep at any cost all knowledge of his unhappiness. So this
was illicit love--as it was called! Loneliness, and torture! Not
jealousy--for her heart was his; but amazement, outrage, fear. Endless
lonely suffering! And nobody, if they knew, would care, or pity him one
jot!
Was there really, then, as the ancients thought, a Daemon that liked to
play with men, as men liked to stir an earwig and turn it over and put a
foot on it in the end?
He got up and made his way towards the railway-station. There was the
bench where she had been sitting when he came on her that very morning.
The stars in their courses had seemed to fight for them then; but whether
for joy he no longer knew. And there on the seat were still the pepper
berries she had crushed and strewn. He broke off another bunch and
bruised them. That scent was the ghost of sacred minutes when her hand
lay against his own. The stars in their courses--for joy or sorrow!
VII
There was no peace now for Colonel and Mrs. Ercott. They felt themselves
conspirators, and of conspiracy they had never had the habit. Yet how
could they openly deal with anxieties which had arisen solely from what
they had chanced secretly to see? What was not intended for one's eyes
and ears did not exist; no canon of conduct could be quite so sacred. As
well defend the opening of another person's letters as admit the
possibility of making use of adventitious knowledge. So far tradition,
and indeed character, made them feel at one, and conspire freely. But
they diverged on a deeper plane. Mrs. Ercott had SAID, indeed, that here
was something which could not be controlled; the Colonel had FELT it--a
very different thing! Less tolerant in theory, he was touched at heart;
Mrs. Ercott, in theory almost approving--she read that dangerous
authoress, George Eliot--at heart felt cold towards her husband's niece.
For these reasons they could not in fact conspire without, in the end,
saying suddenly: "Well, it's no good talking about it!" and almost at
once beginning to talk about it again.
In proposing to her that mule, the Colonel had not had time, or, rather,
not quite conviction enough as to his line of action, to explain so
immediately the new need for her to sit upon it. It was only when, to
his somewhat strange relief, she had refused the expedition, and Olive
had started without them, that he told her of the meeting in the Gardens,
of which he had been witness. She then said at once that if she had
known she would, of course, have put up with anything in order to go; not
because she approved of interfering, but because they must think of
Robert! And the Colonel had said: "D--n the fellow!" And there the
matter had rested for the moment, for both of them were, wondering a
little which fellow it was that he had damned. That indeed was the
trouble. If the Colonel had not cared so much about his niece, and had
liked, instead of rather disliking Cramier; if Mrs. Ercott had not found
Mark Lennan a 'nice boy,' and had not secretly felt her husband's niece
rather dangerous to her peace of mind; if, in few words, those three had
been puppets made of wood and worked by law, it would have been so much
simpler for all concerned. It was the discovery that there was a
personal equation in such matters, instead of just a simple rule of
three, which disorganized the Colonel and made him almost angry; which
depressed Mrs. Ercott and made her almost silent. . . . These two good
souls had stumbled on a problem which has divided the world from birth.
Shall cases be decided on their individual merits, or according to formal
codes?
Beneath an appearance and a vocabulary more orthodox than ever, the
Colonel's allegiance to Authority and the laws of Form was really shaken;
he simply could not get out of his head the sight of those two young
people sitting side by side, nor the tone of Olive's voice, when she had
repeated his regrettable words about happiness at home.
If only the thing had not been so human! If only she had been someone
else's niece, it would clearly have been her duty to remain unhappy. As
it was, the more he thought, the less he knew what to think. A man who
had never had any balance to speak of at his bank, and from the nomadic
condition of his life had no exaggerated feeling for a settled social
status--deeming Society in fact rather a bore--he did not unduly
exaggerate the worldly dangers of this affair; neither did he honestly
believe that she would burn in everlasting torment if she did not succeed
in remaining true to 'that great black chap,' as he secretly called
Cramier. His feeling was simply that it was an awful pity; a sort of
unhappy conviction that it was not like the women of his family to fall
upon such ways; that his dead brother would turn in his grave; in two
words that it was 'not done.' Yet he was by no means of those who,
giving latitude to women in general, fall with whips on those of their
own family who take it. On the contrary, believing that 'Woman in
general' should be stainless to the world's eye, he was inclined to make
allowance for any individual woman that he knew and loved. A suspicion
he had always entertained, that Cramier was not by breeding 'quite the
clean potato' may insensibly have influenced him just a little. He had
heard indeed that he was not even entitled to the name of Cramier, but
had been adopted by a childless man, who had brought him up and left him
a lot of money. There was something in this that went against the grain
of the childless Colonel. He had never adopted, nor been adopted by
anyone himself. There was a certain lack about a man who had been
adopted, of reasonable guarantee--he was like a non-vintage wine, or a
horse without a pedigree; you could not quite rely on what he might do,
having no tradition in his blood. His appearance, too, and manner
somehow lent colour to this distrust. A touch of the tar-brush
somewhere, and a stubborn, silent, pushing fellow. Why on earth had
Olive ever married him! But then women were such kittle cattle, poor
things! and old Lindsay, with his vestments and his views on obedience,
must have been a Tartar as a father, poor old chap! Besides, Cramier, no
doubt, was what most women would call good-looking; more taking to the
eye than such a quiet fellow as young Lennan, whose features were rather
anyhow, though pleasant enough, and with a nice smile--the sort of young
man one could not help liking, and who certainly would never hurt a fly!
And suddenly there came the thought: Why should he not go to young Lennan
and put it to him straight? That he was in love with Olive? Not
quite--but the way to do it would come to him. He brooded long over this
idea, and spoke of it to Mrs. Ercott, while shaving, the next morning.
Her answer: "My dear John, bosh!" removed his last doubt.
Without saying where he was going, he strolled out the moment after
breakfast--and took a train to Beaulieu. At the young man's hotel he
sent in his card, and was told that this Monsieur had already gone out
for the day. His mood of marching straight up to the guns thus checked,
he was left pensive and distraught. Not having seen Beaulieu (they spoke
of it then as a coming place), he made his way up an incline. That whole
hillside was covered with rose-trees. Thousands of these flowers were
starring the lower air, and the strewn petals of blown and fallen roses
covered the light soil. The Colonel put his nose to blossoms here and
there, but they had little scent, as if they knew that the season was
already over. A few blue-bloused peasants were still busy among them.
And suddenly he came on young Lennan himself, sitting on a stone and
dabbing away with his fingers at a lump of putty stuff. The Colonel
hesitated. Apart from obvious reasons for discomfiture, he had that
feeling towards Art common to so many of his caste. It was not work, of
course, but it was very clever--a mystery to him how anyone could do it!
On seeing him, Lennan had risen, dropping his handkerchief over what he
was modelling--but not before the Colonel had received a dim impression
of something familiar. The young man was very red--the Colonel, too, was
conscious suddenly of the heat. He held out his hand.
"Nice quiet place this," he stammered; "never seen it before. I called
at your hotel."
Now that he had his chance, he was completely at a loss. The sight of
the face emerging from that lump of 'putty stuff' had quite unnerved him.
The notion of this young man working at it up here all by himself, just
because he was away an hour or two from the original, touched him. How
on earth to say what he had come to say? It was altogether different
from what he had thought. And it suddenly flashed through him--Dolly was
right! She's always right--hang it!
"You're busy," he said; "I mustn't interrupt you."
"Not at all, sir. It was awfully good of you to look me up."
The Colonel stared. There was something about young Lennan that he had
not noticed before; a 'Don't take liberties with me!' look that made
things difficult. But still he lingered, staring wistfully at the young
man, who stood waiting with such politeness. Then a safe question shot
into his mind:
"Ah! And when do you go back to England? We're off on Tuesday."
While he spoke, a puff of wind lifted the handkerchief from the modelled
face. Would the young fellow put it back? He did not. And the Colonel
thought:
"It would have been bad form. He knew I wouldn't take advantage. Yes!
He's a gentleman!"
Lifting his hand to the salute, he said: "Well, I must be getting back.
See you at dinner perhaps?" And turning on his heel he marched away.
The remembrance of that face in the 'putty stuff' up there by the side of
the road accompanied him home. It was bad--it was serious! And the sense
that he counted for nothing in all of it grew and grew in him. He told
no one of where he had been. . . .
When the Colonel turned with ceremony and left him, Lennan sat down again
on the flat stone, took up his 'putty stuff,' and presently effaced that
image. He sat still a long time, to all appearance watching the little
blue butterflies playing round the red and tawny roses. Then his fingers
began to work, feverishly shaping a head; not of a man, not of a beast,
but a sort of horned, heavy mingling of the two. There was something
frenetic in the movement of those rather short, blunt-ended fingers, as
though they were strangling the thing they were creating.
VIII
In those days, such as had served their country travelled, as befitted
Spartans, in ordinary first-class carriages, and woke in the morning at
La Roche or some strange-sounding place, for paler coffee and the pale
brioche. So it was with Colonel and Mrs. Ercott and their niece,
accompanied by books they did not read, viands they did not eat, and one
somnolent Irishman returning from the East. In the disposition of legs
there was the usual difficulty, no one quite liking to put them up, and
all ultimately doing so, save Olive. More than once during that night
the Colonel, lying on the seat opposite, awoke and saw her sitting,
withdrawn into her corner, with eyes still open. Staring at that little
head which he admired so much, upright and unmoving, in its dark straw
toque against the cushion, he would become suddenly alert. Kicking the
Irishman slightly in the effort, he would slip his legs down, bend across
to her in the darkness, and, conscious of a faint fragrance as of
violets, whisper huskily: "Anything I can do for you, my dear?" When she
had smiled and shaken her head, he would retreat, and after holding his
breath to see if Dolly were asleep, would restore his feet, slightly
kicking the Irishman. After one such expedition, for full ten minutes he
remained awake, wondering at her tireless immobility. For indeed she was
spending this night entranced, with the feeling that Lennan was beside
her, holding her hand in his. She seemed actually to feel the touch of
his finger against the tiny patch of her bare palm where the glove
opened. It was wonderful, this uncanny communion in the dark rushing
night--she would not have slept for worlds! Never before had she felt so
close to him, not even when he had kissed her that once under the olives;
nor even when at the concert yesterday his arm pressed hers; and his
voice whispered words she heard so thirstily. And that golden fortnight
passed and passed through her on an endless band of reminiscence. Its
memories were like flowers, such scent and warmth and colour in them; and
of all, none perhaps quite so poignant as the memory of the moment, at
the door of their carriage, when he said, so low that she just heard:
"Good-bye, my darling!"
He had never before called her that. Not even his touch on her cheek
under the olives equalled the simple treasure of that word. And above the
roar and clatter of the train, and the snoring of the Irishman, it kept
sounding in her ears, hour after dark hour. It was perhaps not
wonderful, that through all that night she never once looked the future
in the face--made no plans, took no stock of her position; just yielded
to memory, and to the half-dreamed sensation of his presence close beside
her. Whatever might come afterwards, she was his this night. Such was
the trance that gave to her the strange, soft, tireless immobility which
so moved her Uncle whenever he woke up.
In Paris they drove from station to station in a vehicle unfit for
three--'to stretch their legs'--as the Colonel said. Since he saw in his
niece no signs of flagging, no regret, his spirits were rising, and he
confided to Mrs. Ercott in the buffet at the Gare du Nord, when Olive had
gone to wash, that he did not think there was much in it, after all,
looking at the way she'd travelled.
But Mrs. Ercott answered:
"Haven't you ever noticed that Olive never shows what she does not want
to? She has not got those eyes for nothing."
"What eyes?"
"Eyes that see everything, and seem to see nothing."
Conscious that something was hurting her, the Colonel tried to take her
hand.
But Mrs. Ercott rose quickly, and went where he could not follow.
Thus suddenly deserted, the Colonel brooded, drumming on the little
table. What now! Dolly was unjust! Poor Dolly! He was as fond of her
as ever! Of course! How could he help Olive's being young--and pretty;
how could he help looking after her, and wanting to save her from this
mess! Thus he sat wondering, dismayed by the unreasonableness of women.
It did not enter his head that Mrs. Ercott had been almost as sleepless
as his niece, watching through closed eyes every one of those little
expeditions of his, and saying to herself: "Ah! He doesn't care how I
travel!"
She returned serene enough, concealing her 'grief,' and soon they were
once more whirling towards England.
But the future had begun to lay its hand on Olive; the spell of the past
was already losing power; the sense that it had all been a dream grew
stronger every minute. In a few hours she would re-enter the little
house close under the shadow of that old Wren church, which reminded her
somehow of childhood, and her austere father with his chiselled face.
The meeting with her husband! How go through that! And to-night! But
she did not care to contemplate to-night. And all those to-morrows
wherein there was nothing she had to do of which it was reasonable to
complain, yet nothing she could do without feeling that all the
friendliness and zest and colour was out of life, and she a prisoner.
Into those to-morrows she felt she would slip back, out of her dream;
lost, with hardly perhaps an effort. To get away to the house on the
river, where her husband came only at weekends, had hitherto been a
refuge; only she would not see Mark there--unless--! Then, with the
thought that she would, must still see him sometimes, all again grew
faintly glamorous. If only she did see him, what would the rest matter?
Never again as it had before!
The Colonel was reaching down her handbag; his cheery: "Looks as if it
would be rough!" aroused her. Glad to be alone, and tired enough now,
she sought the ladies' cabin, and slept through the crossing, till the
voice of the old stewardess awakened her: "You've had a nice sleep.
We're alongside, miss." Ah! if she were but THAT now! She had been
dreaming that she was sitting in a flowery field, and Lennan had drawn
her up by the hands, with the words: "We're here, my darling!"
On deck, the Colonel, laden with bags, was looking back for her, and
trying to keep a space between him and his wife. He signalled with his
chin. Threading her way towards him, she happened to look up. By the
rails of the pier above she saw her husband. He was leaning there,
looking intently down; his tall broad figure made the people on each side
of him seem insignificant. The clean-shaved, square-cut face, with those
almost epileptic, forceful eyes, had a stillness and intensity beside
which the neighbouring faces seemed to disappear. She saw him very
clearly, even noting the touch of silver in his dark hair, on each side
under his straw hat; noting that he seemed too massive for his neat blue
suit. His face relaxed; he made a little movement of one hand. Suddenly
it shot through her: Suppose Mark had travelled with them, as he had
wished to do? For ever and ever now, that dark massive creature, smiling
down at her, was her enemy; from whom she must guard and keep herself if
she could; keep, at all events, each one of her real thoughts and hopes!
She could have writhed, and cried out; instead, she tightened her grip on
the handle of her bag, and smiled. Though so skilled in knowledge of his
moods, she felt, in his greeting, his fierce grip of her shoulders, the
smouldering of some feeling the nature of which she could not quite
fathom. His voice had a grim sincerity: "Glad you're back--thought you
were never coming!" Resigned to his charge, a feeling of sheer physical
faintness so beset her that she could hardly reach the compartment he had
reserved. It seemed to her that, for all her foreboding, she had not
till this moment had the smallest inkling of what was now before her; and
at his muttered: "Must we have the old fossils in?" she looked back to
assure herself that her Uncle and Aunt were following. To avoid having
to talk, she feigned to have travelled badly, leaning back with closed
eyes, in her corner. If only she could open them and see, not this
square-jawed face with its intent gaze of possession, but that other with
its eager eyes humbly adoring her. The interminable journey ended all
too soon. She clung quite desperately to the Colonel's hand on the
platform at Charing Cross. When his kind face vanished she would be lost
indeed! Then, in the closed cab, she heard her husband's: "Aren't you
going to kiss me?" and submitted to his embrace.
She tried so hard to think: What does it matter? It's not I, not my
soul, my spirit--only my miserable lips!
She heard him say: "You don't seem too glad to see me!" And then: "I
hear you had young Lennan out there. What was HE doing?"
She felt the turmoil of sudden fear, wondered whether she was showing it,
lost it in unnatural alertness--all in the second before she answered:
"Oh! just a holiday."
Some seconds passed, and then he said:
"You didn't mention him in your letters."
She answered coolly: "Didn't I? We saw a good deal of him."
She knew that he was looking at her--an inquisitive, half-menacing
regard. Why--oh, why!--could she not then and there cry out: "And I love
him--do you hear?--I love him!" So awful did it seem to be denying her
love with these half lies! But it was all so much more grim and hopeless
than even she had thought. How inconceivable, now, that she had ever
given herself up to this man for life! If only she could get away from
him to her room, and scheme and think! For his eyes never left her,
travelling over her with their pathetic greed, their menacing inquiry,
till he said: "Well, it's not done you any harm. You look very fit."
But his touch was too much even for her self-command, and she recoiled as
if he had struck her.
"What's the matter? Did I hurt you?"
It seemed to her that he was jeering--then realized as vividly that he
was not. And the full danger to her, perhaps to Mark himself, of
shrinking from this man, striking her with all its pitiable force, she
made a painful effort, slipped her hand under his arm, and said: "I'm
very tired. You startled me."
But he put her hand away, and turning his face, stared out of the window.
And so they reached their home.
When he had left her alone, she remained where she was standing, by her
wardrobe, without sound or movement, thinking: What am I going to do?
How am I going to live?
IX
When Mark Lennan, travelling through from Beaulieu, reached his rooms in
Chelsea, he went at once to the little pile of his letters, twice hunted
through them, then stood very still, with a stunned, sick feeling. Why
had she not sent him that promised note? And now he realized--though not
yet to the full--what it meant to be in love with a married woman. He
must wait in this suspense for eighteen hours at least, till he could
call, and find out what had happened to prevent her, till he could hear
from her lips that she still loved him. The chilliest of legal lovers
had access to his love, but he must possess a soul that was on fire, in
this deadly patience, for fear of doing something that might jeopardize
her. Telegraph? He dared not. Write? She would get it by the first
post; but what could he say that was not dangerous, if Cramier chanced to
see? Call? Still more impossible till three o'clock, at very earliest,
to-morrow. His gaze wandered round the studio. Were these household
gods, and all these works of his, indeed the same he had left twenty days
ago? They seemed to exist now only in so far as she might come to see
them--come and sit in such a chair, and drink out of such a cup, and let
him put this cushion for her back, and that footstool for her feet. And
so vividly could he see her lying back in that chair looking across at
him, that he could hardly believe she had never yet sat there. It was
odd how--without any resolution taken, without admission that their love
could not remain platonic, without any change in their relations, save
one humble kiss and a few whispered words--everything was changed. A
month or so ago, if he had wanted, he would have gone at once calmly to
her house. It would have seemed harmless, and quite natural. Now it was
impossible to do openly the least thing that strict convention did not
find desirable. Sooner or later they would find him stepping over
convention, and take him for what he was not--a real lover! A real
lover! He knelt down before the empty chair and stretched out his arms.
No substance--no warmth--no fragrance--nothing! Longing that passed
through air, as the wind through grass.
He went to the little round window, which overlooked the river. The last
evening of May; gloaming above the water, dusk resting in the trees, and
the air warm! Better to be out, and moving in the night, out in the ebb
and flow of things, among others whose hearts were beating, than stay in
this place that without her was so cold and meaningless.
Lamps--the passion-fruit of towns--were turning from pallor to full
orange, and the stars were coming out. Half-past nine! At ten o'clock,
and not before, he would walk past her house. To have this something to
look forward to, however furtive and barren, helped. But on a Saturday
night there would be no sitting at the House. Cramier would be at home;
or they would both be out; or perhaps have gone down to their river
cottage. Cramier! What cruel demon had presided over that marring of
her life! Why had he never met her till after she had bound herself to
this man! From a negative contempt for one who was either not sensitive
enough to recognize that his marriage was a failure, or not chivalrous
enough to make that failure bear as little hardly as possible on his
wife, he had come already to jealous hatred as of a monster. To be face
to face with Cramier in a mortal conflict could alone have satisfied his
feeling. . . . Yet he was a young man by nature gentle!
His heart beat desperately as he approached that street--one of those
little old streets, so beautiful, that belonged to a vanished London. It
was very narrow, there was no shelter; and he thought confusedly of what
he could say, if met in this remote backwater that led nowhere. He would
tell some lie, no doubt. Lies would now be his daily business. Lies and
hatred, those violent things of life, would come to seem quite natural,
in the violence of his love.
He stood a moment, hesitating, by the rails of the old church. Black,
white-veined, with shadowy summits, in that half darkness, it was like
some gigantic vision. Mystery itself seemed modelled there. He turned
and walked quickly down the street close to the houses on the further
side. The windows of her house were lighted! So, she was not away! Dim
light in the dining-room, lights in the room above--her bedroom,
doubtless. Was there no way to bring her to the window, no way his
spirit could climb up there and beckon hers out to him? Perhaps she was
not there, perhaps it was but a servant taking up hot water. He was at
the end of the street by now, but to leave without once more passing was
impossible. And this time he went slowly, his head down, feigning
abstraction, grudging every inch of pavement, and all the time furtively
searching that window with the light behind the curtains. Nothing! Once
more he was close to the railings of the church, and once more could not
bring himself to go away. In the little, close, deserted street, not a
soul was moving, not even a cat or dog; nothing alive but many discreet,
lighted windows. Like veiled faces, showing no emotion, they seemed to
watch his indecision. And he thought: "Ah, well! I dare say there are
lots like me. Lots as near, and yet as far away! Lots who have to
suffer!" But what would he not have given for the throwing open of those
curtains. Then, suddenly scared by an approaching figure, he turned and
walked away.
X
At three o'clock next day he called.
In the middle of her white drawing-room, whose latticed window ran the
whole length of one wall, stood a little table on which was a silver jar
full of early larkspurs, evidently from her garden by the river. And
Lennan waited, his eyes fixed on those blossoms so like to little blue
butterflies and strange-hued crickets, tethered to the pale green stems.
In this room she passed her days, guarded from him. Once a week, at
most, he would be able to come there--once a week for an hour or two of
the hundred and sixty-eight hours that he longed to be with her.
And suddenly he was conscious of her. She had come in without sound, and
was standing by the piano, so pale, in her cream-white dress, that her
eyes looked jet black. He hardly knew that face, like a flower closed
against cold.
What had he done? What had happened in these five days to make her like
this to him? He took her hands and tried to kiss them; but she said
quickly:
"He's in!"
At that he stood silent, looking into that face, frozen to a dreadful
composure, on the breaking up of which his very life seemed to depend.
At last he said:
"What is it? Am I nothing to you, after all?"
But as soon as he had spoken he saw that he need not have asked, and
flung his arms round her. She clung to him with desperation; then freed
herself, and said:
"No, no; let's sit down quietly!"
He obeyed, half-divining, half-refusing to admit all that lay behind that
strange coldness, and this desperate embrace; all the self-pity, and
self-loathing, shame, rage, and longing of a married woman for the first
time face to face with her lover in her husband's house.
She seemed now to be trying to make him forget her strange behaviour; to
be what she had been during that fortnight in the sunshine. But,
suddenly, just moving her lips, she said:
"Quick! When can we see each other? I will come to you to tea
--to-morrow," and, following her eyes, he saw the door opening, and
Cramier coming in. Unsmiling, very big in the low room, he crossed over
to them, and offered his hand to Lennan; then drawing a low chair forward
between their two chairs, sat down.
"So you're back," he said. "Have a good time?"
"Thanks, yes; very."
"Luck for Olive you were there; those places are dull holes."
"It was luck for me."
"No doubt." And with those words he turned to his wife. His elbows
rested along the arms of his chair, so that his clenched palms were
upwards; it was as if he knew that he was holding those two, gripped one
in each hand.
"I wonder," he said slowly, "that fellows like you, with nothing in the
world to tie them, ever sit down in a place like London. I should have
thought Rome or Paris were your happy hunting-grounds." In his voice, in
those eyes of his, a little bloodshot, with their look of power, in his
whole attitude, there was a sort of muffled menace, and contempt, as
though he were thinking: "Step into my path, and I will crush you!"
And Lennan thought:
"How long must I sit here?" Then, past that figure planted solidly
between them, he caught a look from her, swift, sure, marvellously
timed--again and again--as if she were being urged by the very presence
of this danger. One of those glances would surely--surely be seen by
Cramier. Is there need for fear that a swallow should dash itself
against the wall over which it skims? But he got up, unable to bear it
longer.
"Going?" That one suave word had an inimitable insolence.
He could hardly see his hand touching Cramier's heavy fist. Then he
realized that she was standing so that their faces when they must say
good-bye could not be seen. Her eyes were smiling, yet imploring; her
lips shaped the word: "To-morrow!" And squeezing her hand desperately,
he got away.
He had never dreamed that to see her in the presence of the man who owned
her would be so terrible. For a moment he thought that he must give her
up, give up a love that would drive him mad.
He climbed on to an omnibus travelling West. Another twenty-four hours
of starvation had begun. It did not matter at all what he did with them.
They were simply so much aching that had to be got through somehow--so
much aching; and what relief at the end? An hour or two with her,
desperately holding himself in.
Like most artists, and few Englishmen, he lived on feelings rather than
on facts; so, found no refuge in decisive resolutions. But he made
many--the resolution to give her up; to be true to the ideal of service
for no reward; to beseech her to leave Cramier and come to him--and he
made each many times.
At Hyde Park Corner he got down, and went into the Park, thinking that to
walk would help him.
A great number of people were sitting there, taking mysterious anodyne,
doing the right thing; to avoid them, he kept along the rails, and ran
almost into the arms of Colonel and Mrs. Ercott, who were coming from the
direction of Knightsbridge, slightly flushed, having lunched and talked
of 'Monte' at the house of a certain General.
They greeted him with the surprise of those who had said to each other
many times: "That young man will come rushing back!" It was very
nice--they said--to run across him. When did he arrive? They had
thought he was going on to Italy--he was looking rather tired. They did
not ask if he had seen her--being too kind, and perhaps afraid that he
would say 'Yes,' which would be embarrassing; or that he would say 'No,'
which would be still more embarrassing when they found that he ought to
have said 'Yes.' Would he not come and sit with them a little--they were
going presently to see how Olive was? Lennan perceived that they were
warning him. And, forcing himself to look at them very straight, he
said: "I have just been there."
Mrs. Ercott phrased her impressions that same evening: "He looks quite
hunted, poor young man! I'm afraid there's going to be fearful trouble
there. Did you notice how quickly he ran away from us? He's thin, too;
if it wasn't for his tan, he'd look really ill. The boy's eyes are so
pathetic; and he used to have such a nice smile in them."
The Colonel, who was fastening her hooks, paused in an operation that
required concentration.
"It's a thousand pities," he muttered, "that he hasn't any work to do.
That puddling about with clay or whatever he does is no good at all."
And slowly fastening one hook, he unhooked several others.
Mrs. Ercott went on:
"And I saw Olive, when she thought I wasn't looking; it was just as if
she'd taken off a mask. But Robert Cramier will never put up with it.
He's in love with her still; I watched him. It's tragic, John."
The Colonel let his hands fall from the hooks.
"If I thought that," he said, "I'd do something."
"If you could, it would not be tragic."
The Colonel stared. There was always SOMETHING to be done.
"You read too many novels," he said, but without spirit.
Mrs. Ercott smiled, and made no answer to an aspersion she had heard
before.
XI
When Lennan reached his rooms again after that encounter with the
Ercotts, he found in his letterbox a visiting card: "Mrs. Doone" "Miss
Sylvia Doone," and on it pencilled the words: "Do come and see us before
we go down to Hayle--Sylvia." He stared blankly at the round handwriting
he knew so well.
Sylvia! Nothing perhaps could have made so plain to him how in this
tornado of his passion the world was drowned. Sylvia! He had almost
forgotten her existence; and yet, only last year, after he definitely
settled down in London, he had once more seen a good deal of her; and
even had soft thoughts of her again--with her pale-gold hair, her true
look, her sweetness. Then they had gone for the winter to Algiers for
her mother's health.
When they came back, he had already avoided seeing her, though that was
before Olive went to Monte Carlo, before he had even admitted his own
feeling. And since--he had not once thought of her. Not once! The
world had indeed vanished. "Do come and see us--Sylvia." The very
notion was an irritation. No rest from aching and impatience to be had
that way.
And then the idea came to him: Why not kill these hours of waiting for
to-morrow's meeting by going on the river passing by her cottage? There
was still one train that he could catch.
He reached the village after dark, and spent the night at the inn; got up
early next morning, took a boat, and pulled down-stream. The bluffs of
the opposite bank were wooded with high trees. The sun shone softly on
their leaves, and the bright stream was ruffled by a breeze that bent all
the reeds and slowly swayed the water-flowers. One thin white line of
wind streaked the blue sky. He shipped his sculls and drifted, listening
to the wood-pigeons, watching the swallows chasing. If only she were
here! To spend one long day thus, drifting with the stream! To have but
one such rest from longing! Her cottage, he knew, lay on the same side
as the village, and just beyond an island. She had told him of a hedge
of yew-trees, and a white dovecote almost at the water's edge. He came
to the island, and let his boat slide into the backwater. It was all
overgrown with willow-trees and alders, dark even in this early morning
radiance, and marvellously still. There was no room to row; he took the
boathook and tried to punt, but the green water was too deep and
entangled with great roots, so that he had to make his way by clawing
with the hook at branches. Birds seemed to shun this gloom, but a single
magpie crossed the one little clear patch of sky, and flew low behind the
willows. The air here had a sweetish, earthy odour of too rank foliage;
all brightness seemed entombed. He was glad to pass out again under a
huge poplar-tree into the fluttering gold and silver of the morning. And
almost at once he saw the yew-hedge at the border of some bright green
turf, and a pigeon-house, high on its pole, painted cream-white. About
it a number of ring-doves and snow-white pigeons were perched or flying;
and beyond the lawn he could see the dark veranda of a low house, covered
by wistaria just going out of flower. A drift of scent from late lilacs,
and new-mown grass, was borne out to him, together with the sound of a
mowing-machine, and the humming of many bees. It was beautiful here, and
seemed, for all its restfulness, to have something of that flying quality
he so loved about her face, about the sweep of her hair, the quick, soft
turn of her eyes--or was that but the darkness of the yew-trees, the
whiteness of the dovecote, and the doves themselves, flying?
He lay there a long time quietly beneath the bank, careful not to attract
the attention of the old gardener, who was methodically pushing his
machine across and across the lawn. How he wanted her with him then!
Wonderful that there could be in life such beauty and wild softness as
made the heart ache with the delight of it, and in that same life grey
rules and rigid barriers--coffins of happiness! That doors should be
closed on love and joy! There was not so much of it in the world! She,
who was the very spirit of this flying, nymph-like summer, was untimely
wintered-up in bleak sorrow. There was a hateful unwisdom in that
thought; it seemed so grim and violent, so corpse-like, gruesome, narrow
and extravagant! What possible end could it serve that she should be
unhappy! Even if he had not loved her, he would have hated her fate just
as much--all such stories of imprisoned lives had roused his anger even
as a boy.
Soft white clouds--those bright angels of the river, never very long
away--had begun now to spread their wings over the woods; and the wind
had dropped so that the slumbrous warmth and murmuring of summer gathered
full over the water. The old gardener had finished his job of mowing,
and came with a little basket of grain to feed the doves. Lennan watched
them going to him, the ring-doves, very dainty, and capricious, keeping
to themselves. In place of that old fellow, he was really seeing HER,
feeding from her hands those birds of Cypris. What a group he could have
made of her with them perching and flying round her! If she were his,
what could he not achieve--to make her immortal--like the old Greeks and
Italians, who, in their work, had rescued their mistresses from Time! . .
He was back in his rooms in London two hours before he dared begin
expecting her. Living alone there but for a caretaker who came every
morning for an hour or two, made dust, and departed, he had no need for
caution. And when he had procured flowers, and the fruits and cakes
which they certainly would not eat--when he had arranged the tea-table,
and made the grand tour at least twenty times, he placed himself with a
book at the little round window, to watch for her approach. There, very
still, he sat, not reading a word, continually moistening his dry lips
and sighing, to relieve the tension of his heart. At last he saw her
coming. She was walking close to the railings of the houses, looking
neither to right nor left. She had on a lawn frock, and a hat of the
palest coffee-coloured straw, with a narrow black velvet ribbon. She
crossed the side street, stopped for a second, gave a swift look round,
then came resolutely on. What was it made him love her so? What was the
secret of her fascination? Certainly, no conscious enticements. Never
did anyone try less to fascinate. He could not recall one single little
thing that she had done to draw him to her. Was it, perhaps, her very
passivity, her native pride that never offered or asked anything, a sort
of soft stoicism in her fibre; that and some mysterious charm, as close
and intimate as scent was to a flower?
He waited to open till he heard her footstep just outside. She came in
without a word, not even looking at him. And he, too, said not a word
till he had closed the door, and made sure of her. Then they turned to
each other. Her breast was heaving a little, under her thin frock, but
she was calmer than he, with that wonderful composure of pretty women in
all the passages of love, as who should say: This is my native air!
They stood and looked at each other, as if they could never have enough,
till he said at last:
"I thought I should die before this moment came. There isn't a minute
that I don't long for you so terribly that I can hardly live."
"And do you think that I don't long for you?"
"Then come to me!"
She looked at him mournfully and shook her head.
Well, he had known that she would not. He had not earned her. What right
had he to ask her to fly against the world, to brave everything, to have
such faith in him--as yet? He had no heart to press his words, beginning
then to understand the paralyzing truth that there was no longer any
resolving this or that; with love like his he had ceased to be a separate
being with a separate will. He was entwined with her, could act only if
her will and his were one. He would never be able to say to her: 'You
must!' He loved her too much. And she knew it. So there was nothing
for it but to forget the ache, and make the hour happy. But how about
that other truth--that in love there is no pause, no resting? . . .
With any watering, however scant, the flower will grow till its time
comes to be plucked. . . . This oasis in the desert--these few minutes
with her alone, were swept through and through with a feverish wind. To
be closer! How not try to be that? How not long for her lips when he
had but her hand to kiss? And how not be poisoned with the thought that
in a few minutes she would leave him and go back to the presence of that
other, who, even though she loathed him, could see and touch her when he
would? She was leaning back in the very chair where in fancy he had seen
her, and he only dared sit at her feet and look up. And this, which a
week ago would have been rapture, was now almost torture, so far did it
fall short of his longing. It was torture, too, to keep his voice in
tune with the sober sweetness of her voice. And bitterly he thought: How
can she sit there, and not want me, as I want her? Then at a touch of
her fingers on his hair, he lost control, and kissed her lips. Her
surrender lasted only for a second.
"No, no--you must not!"
That mournful surprise sobered him at once.
He got up, stood away from her, begged to be forgiven.
And, when she was gone, he sat in the chair where she had sat. That clasp
of her, the kiss he had begged her to forget--to forget!--nothing could
take that from him. He had done wrong; had startled her, had fallen
short of chivalry! And yet--a smile of utter happiness would cling about
his lips. His fastidiousness, his imagination almost made him think that
this was all he wanted. If he could close his eyes, now, and pass out,
before he lost that moment of half-fulfilment!
And, the smile still on his lips, he lay back watching the flies wheeling
and chasing round the hanging-lamp. Sixteen of them there were, wheeling
and chasing--never still!
XII
When, walking from Lennan's studio, Olive reentered her dark little hall,
she approached its alcove and glanced first at the hat-stand. They were
all there--the silk hat, the bowler, the straw! So he was in! And
within each hat, in turn, she seemed to see her husband's head--with the
face turned away from her--so distinctly as to note the leathery look of
the skin of his cheek and neck. And she thought: "I pray that he will
die! It is wicked, but I pray that he will die!" Then, quietly, that he
might not hear, she mounted to her bedroom. The door into his
dressing-room was open, and she went to shut it. He was standing there
at the window.
"Ah! You're in! Been anywhere?"
"To the National Gallery."
It was the first direct lie she had ever told him, and she was surprised
to feel neither shame nor fear, but rather a sense of pleasure at
defeating him. He was the enemy, all the more the enemy because she was
still fighting against herself, and, so strangely, in his behalf.
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"Rather boring, wasn't it? I should have thought you'd have got young
Lennan to take you there."
"Why?"
By instinct she had seized on the boldest answer; and there was nothing
to be told from her face. If he were her superior in strength, he was
her inferior in quickness.
He lowered his eyes, and said:
"His line, isn't it?"
With a shrug she turned away and shut the door. She sat down on the edge
of her bed, very still. In that little passage of wits she had won, she
could win in many such; but the full hideousness of things had come to
her. Lies! lies! That was to be her life! That; or to say farewell to
all she now cared for, to cause despair not only in herself, but in her
lover, and--for what? In order that her body might remain at the
disposal of that man in the next room--her spirit having flown from him
for ever. Such were the alternatives, unless those words: "Then come to
me," were to be more than words. Were they? Could they be? They would
mean such happiness if--if his love for her were more than a summer love?
And hers for him? Was it--were they--more than summer loves? How know?
And, without knowing, how give such pain to everyone? How break a vow
she had thought herself quite above breaking? How make such a desperate
departure from all the traditions and beliefs in which she had been
brought up! But in the very nature of passion is that which resents the
intrusion of hard and fast decisions. . . . And suddenly she thought: If
our love cannot stay what it is, and if I cannot yet go to him for
always, is there not still another way?
She got up and began to dress for dinner. Standing before her glass she
was surprised to see that her face showed no signs of the fears and
doubts that were now her comrades. Was it because, whatever happened,
she loved and was beloved! She wondered how she had looked when he
kissed her so passionately; had she shown her joy before she checked him?
In her garden by the river were certain flowers that, for all her care,
would grow rank and of the wrong colour--wanting a different soil. Was
she, then, like those flowers of hers? Ah! Let her but have her true
soil, and she would grow straight and true enough!
Then in the doorway she saw her husband. She had never, till to-day,
quite hated him; but now she did, with a real blind horrible feeling.
What did he want of her standing there with those eyes fixed on
her--those forceful eyes, touched with blood, that seemed at once to
threaten, covet, and beseech! She drew her wrapper close round her
shoulders. At that he came up and said:
"Look at me, Olive!"
Against instinct and will she obeyed, and he went on:
"Be careful! I say, be careful!"
Then he took her by the shoulders, and raised her up to him. And, quite
unnerved, she stood without resisting.
"I want you," he said; "I mean to keep you."
Then, suddenly letting her go, he covered his eyes with his hands. That
frightened her most--it was so unlike him. Not till now had she
understood between what terrifying forces she was balancing. She did not
speak, but her face grew white. From behind those hands he uttered a
sound, not quite like a human noise, turned sharply, and went out. She
dropped back into the chair before her mirror, overcome by the most
singular feeling she had ever known; as if she had lost everything, even
her love for Lennan, and her longing for his love. What was it all
worth, what was anything worth in a world like this? All was loathsome,
herself loathsome! All was a void! Hateful, hateful, hateful! It was
like having no heart at all! And that same evening, when her husband had
gone down to the House, she wrote to Lennan:
"Our love must never turn to earthiness as it might have this afternoon.
Everything is black and hopeless. HE suspects. For you to come here is
impossible, and too dreadful for us both. And I have no right to ask you
to be furtive, I can't bear to think of you like that, and I can't bear
it myself. I don't know what to do or say. Don't try to see me yet. I
must have time, I must think."
XIII
Colonel Ercott was not a racing man, but he had in common with others of
his countrymen a religious feeling in the matter of the Derby. His
remembrances of it went back to early youth, for he had been born and
brought up almost within sound of the coaching-road to Epsom. Every
Derby and Oaks day he had gone out on his pony to watch the passing of
the tall hats and feathers of the great, and the pot-hats and feathers of
the lowly; and afterwards, in the fields at home, had ridden races with
old Lindsay, finishing between a cow that judged and a clump of bulrushes
representing the Grand Stand.
But for one reason or another he had never seen the great race, and the
notion that it was his duty to see it had now come to him. He proposed
this to Mrs. Ercott with some diffidence. She read so many books--he did
not quite know whether she would approve. Finding that she did, he added
casually:
"And we might take Olive."
Mrs. Ercott answered dryly:
"You know the House of Commons has a holiday?"
The Colonel murmured:
"Oh! I don't want that chap!"
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Ercott, "you would like Mark Lennan."
The Colonel looked at her most dubiously. Dolly could talk of it as a
tragedy, and a--a grand passion, and yet make a suggestion like that!
Then his wrinkles began slowly to come alive, and he gave her waist a
squeeze.
Mrs. Ercott did not resist that treatment.
"Take Olive alone," she said. "I don't really care to go."
When the Colonel went to fetch his niece he found her ready, and very
half-heartedly he asked for Cramier. It appeared she had not told him.
Relieved, yet somewhat disconcerted, he murmured:
"He won't mind not going, I suppose?"
"If he went, I should not."
At this quiet answer the Colonel was beset again by all his fears. He put
his white 'topper' down, and took her hand.
"My dear," he said, "I don't want to intrude upon your feelings; but--but
is there anything I can do? It's dreadful to see things going unhappily
with you!" He felt his hand being lifted, her face pressed against it;
and, suffering acutely, with his other hand, cased in a bright new glove,
he smoothed her arm. "We'll have a jolly good day, sweetheart," he said,
"and forget all about it."
She gave the hand a kiss and turned away. And the Colonel vowed to
himself that she should not be unhappy--lovely creature that she was, so
delicate, and straight, and fine in her pearly frock. And he pulled
himself together, brushing his white 'topper' vigorously with his sleeve,
forgetting that this kind of hat has no nap.
And so he was tenderness itself on the journey down, satisfying all her
wants before she had them, telling her stories of Indian life, and
consulting her carefully as to which horse they should back. There was
the Duke's, of course, but there was another animal that appealed to him
greatly. His friend Tabor had given him the tip--Tabor, who had the
best Arabs in all India--and at a nice price. A man who practically
never gambled, the Colonel liked to feel that his fancy would bring him
in something really substantial--if it won; the idea that it could lose
not really troubling him. However, they would see it in the paddock, and
judge for themselves. The paddock was the place, away from all the dust
and racket--Olive would enjoy the paddock! Once on the course, they
neglected the first race; it was more important, the Colonel thought,
that they should lunch. He wanted to see more colour in her cheeks,
wanted to see her laugh. He had an invitation to his old regiment's
drag, where the champagne was sure to be good. And he was so proud of
her--would not have missed those young fellows' admiration of her for the
world; though to take a lady amongst them was, in fact, against the
rules. It was not, then, till the second race was due to start that they
made their way into the paddock. Here the Derby horses were being led
solemnly, attended each by a little posse of persons, looking up their
legs and down their ribs to see whether they were worthy of support,
together with a few who liked to see a whole horse at a time. Presently
they found the animal which had been recommended to the Colonel. It was
a chestnut, with a starred forehead, parading in a far corner. The
Colonel, who really loved a horse, was deep in admiration. He liked its
head and he liked its hocks; above all, he liked its eye. A fine
creature, all sense and fire--perhaps just a little straight in the
shoulder for coming down the hill! And in the midst of his examination
he found himself staring at his niece. What breeding the child showed,
with her delicate arched brows, little ears, and fine, close nostrils;
and the way she moved--so sure and springy. She was too pretty to suffer!
A shame! If she hadn't been so pretty that young fellow wouldn't have
fallen in love with her. If she weren't so pretty--that husband of hers
wouldn't--! And the Colonel dropped his gaze, startled by the discovery
he had stumbled on. If she hadn't been so pretty! Was that the meaning
of it all? The cynicism of his own reflection struck him between wind and
water. And yet something in himself seemed to confirm it somehow. What
then? Was he to let them tear her in two between them, destroying her,
because she was so pretty? And somehow this discovery of his--that
passion springs from worship of beauty and warmth, of form and
colour--disturbed him horribly, for he had no habit of philosophy. The
thought seemed to him strangely crude, even immoral. That she should be
thus between two ravening desires--a bird between two hawks, a fruit
between two mouths! It was a way of looking at things that had never
before occurred to him. The idea of a husband clutching at his wife, the
idea of that young man who looked so gentle, swooping down on her; and
the idea that if she faded, lost her looks, went off, their greed,
indeed, any man's, would die away--all these horrible ideas hurt him the
more for the remarkable suddenness with which they had come to him. A
tragic business! Dolly had said so. Queer and quick--were women! But
his resolution that the day was to be jolly soon recurred to him, and he
hastily resumed inspection of his fancy. Perhaps they ought to have a
ten-pound note on it, and they had better get back to the Stand! And as
they went the Colonel saw, standing beneath a tree at a little distance,
a young man that he could have sworn was Lennan. Not likely for an
artist chap to be down here! But it WAS undoubtedly young Lennan,
brushed-up, in a top-hat. Fortunately, however, his face was not turned
in their direction. He said nothing to Olive, not wishing--especially
after those unpleasant thoughts--to take responsibility, and he kept her
moving towards the gate, congratulating himself that his eyes had been so
sharp. In the crush there he was separated from her a little, but she
was soon beside him again; and more than ever he congratulated himself
that nothing had occurred to upset her and spoil the day. Her cheeks
were warm enough now, her dark eyes glowing. She was excited no doubt by
thoughts of the race, and of the 'tenner' he was going to put on for her.
He recounted the matter afterwards to Mrs. Ercott. "That chestnut Tabor
put me on to finished nowhere--couldn't get down the hill--knew it
wouldn't the moment I set eyes on it. But the child enjoyed herself.
Wish you'd been there, my dear!" Of his deeper thoughts and of that
glimpse of young Lennan he did not speak, for on the way home an ugly
suspicion had attacked him. Had the young fellow, after all, seen and
managed to get close to her in the crush at the paddock gateway?
XIV
That letter of hers fanned the flame in Lennan as nothing had yet fanned
it. Earthiness! Was it earthiness to love as he did? If so, then not
for all the world would he be otherwise than earthy. In the shock of
reading it, he crossed his Rubicon, and burned his boats behind him. No
more did the pale ghost, chivalrous devotion, haunt him. He knew now
that he could not stop short. Since she asked him, he must not, of
course, try to see her just yet. But when he did, then he would fight
for his life; the thought that she might be meaning to slip away from him
was too utterly unbearable. But she could not be meaning that! She would
never be so cruel! Ah! she would--she must come to him in the end! The
world, life itself, would be well lost for love of her!
Thus resolved, he was even able to work again; and all that Tuesday he
modelled at a big version of the fantastic, bull-like figure he had
conceived after the Colonel left him up on the hillside at Beaulieu. He
worked at it with a sort of evil joy. Into this creature he would put
the spirit of possession that held her from him. And while his fingers
forced the clay, he felt as if he had Cramier's neck within his grip.
Yet, now that he had resolved to take her if he could, he had not quite
the same hatred. After all, this man loved her too, could not help it
that she loathed him; could not help it that he had the disposition of
her, body and soul!
June had come in with skies of a blue that not even London glare and dust
could pale. In every square and park and patch of green the air simmered
with life and with the music of birds swaying on little boughs. Piano
organs in the streets were no longer wistful for the South; lovers
already sat in the shade of trees.
To remain indoors, when he was not working, was sheer torture; for he
could not read, and had lost all interest in the little excitements,
amusements, occupations that go to make up the normal life of man. Every
outer thing seemed to have dropped off, shrivelled, leaving him just a
condition of the spirit, a state of mind.
Lying awake he would think of things in the past, and they would mean
nothing--all dissolved and dispersed by the heat of this feeling in him.
Indeed, his sense of isolation was so strong that he could not even
believe that he had lived through the facts which his memory apprehended.
He had become one burning mood--that, and nothing more.
To be out, especially amongst trees, was the only solace.
And he sat for a long time that evening under a large lime-tree on a
knoll above the Serpentine. There was very little breeze, just enough to
keep alive a kind of whispering. What if men and women, when they had
lived their gusty lives, became trees! What if someone who had burned
and ached were now spreading over him this leafy peace--this blue-black
shadow against the stars? Or were the stars, perhaps, the souls of men
and women escaped for ever from love and longing? He broke off a branch
of the lime and drew it across his face. It was not yet in flower, but
it smelled lemony and fresh even here in London. If only for a moment he
could desert his own heart, and rest with the trees and stars!
No further letter came from her next morning, and he soon lost his power
to work. It was Derby Day. He determined to go down. Perhaps she would
be there. Even if she were not, he might find some little distraction in
the crowd and the horses. He had seen her in the paddock long before the
Colonel's sharp eyes detected him; and, following in the crush, managed
to touch her hand in the crowded gateway, and whisper: "To-morrow, the
National Gallery, at four o'clock--by the Bacchus and Ariadne. For God's
sake!" Her gloved hand pressed his hard; and she was gone. He stayed in
the paddock, too happy almost to breathe. . . .
Next day, while waiting before that picture, he looked at it with wonder.
For there seemed his own passion transfigured in the darkening
star-crowned sky, and the eyes of the leaping god. In spirit, was he not
always rushing to her like that? Minutes passed, and she did not come.
What should he do if she failed him? Surely die of disappointment and
despair. . . . He had little enough experience as yet of the toughness
of the human heart; how life bruises and crushes, yet leaves it beating.
. . . Then, from an unlikely quarter, he saw her coming.
They walked in silence down to the quiet rooms where the Turner
watercolours hung. No one, save two Frenchmen and an old official,
watched them passing slowly before those little pictures, till they came
to the end wall, and, unseen, unheard by any but her, he could begin!
The arguments he had so carefully rehearsed were all forgotten; nothing
left but an incoherent pleading. Life without her was not life; and they
had only one life for love--one summer. It was all dark where she was
not--the very sun itself was dark. Better to die than to live such
false, broken lives, apart from each other. Better to die at once than to
live wanting each other, longing and longing, and watching each other's
sorrow. And all for the sake of what? It maddened, killed him, to think
of that man touching her when he knew she did but hate him. It shamed
all manhood; it could not be good to help such things to be. A vow when
the spirit of it was gone was only superstition; it was wicked to waste
one's life for the sake of that. Society--she knew, she must know--only
cared for the forms, the outsides of things. And what did it matter what
Society thought? It had no soul, no feeling, nothing. And if it were
said they ought to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others, to make
things happier in the world, she must know that was only true when love
was light and selfish; but not when people loved as they did, with all
their hearts and souls, so that they would die for each other any minute,
so that without each other there was no meaning in anything. It would
not help a single soul, for them to murder their love and all the
happiness of their lives; to go on in a sort of living death. Even if it
were wrong, he would rather do that wrong, and take the consequences!
But it was not, it COULD not be wrong, when they felt like that!
And all the time that he was pouring forth those supplications, his eyes
searched and searched her face. But there only came from her: "I don't
know--I can't tell--if only I knew!" And then he was silent, stricken to
the heart; till, at a look or a touch from her, he would break out again:
"You do love me--you do; then what does anything else matter?"
And so it went on and on that summer afternoon, in the deserted room
meant for such other things, where the two Frenchmen were too
sympathetic, and the old official too drowsy, to come. Then it all
narrowed to one fierce, insistent question:
"What is it--WHAT is it you're afraid of?"
But to that, too, he got only the one mournful answer, paralyzing in its
fateful monotony.
"I don't know--I can't tell!"
It was awful to go on thus beating against this uncanny, dark, shadowy
resistance; these unreal doubts and dreads, that by their very dumbness
were becoming real to him, too. If only she could tell him what she
feared! It could not be poverty--that was not like her--besides, he had
enough for both. It could not be loss of a social position, which was
but irksome to her! Surely it was not fear that he would cease to love
her! What was it? In God's name--what?
To-morrow--she had told him--she was to go down, alone, to the
river-house; would she not come now, this very minute, to him instead?
And they would start off--that night, back to the South where their love
had flowered. But again it was: "I can't! I don't know--I must have
time!" And yet her eyes had that brooding love-light. How COULD she
hold back and waver? But, utterly exhausted, he did not plead again; did
not even resist when she said: "You must go, now; and leave me to get
back! I will write. Perhaps--soon--I shall know." He begged for, and
took one kiss; then, passing the old official, went quickly up and out.
XV
He reached his rooms overcome by a lassitude that was not, however, quite
despair. He had made his effort, failed--but there was still within him
the unconquerable hope of the passionate lover. . . . As well try to
extinguish in full June the beating of the heart of summer; deny to the
flowers their deepening hues, or to winged life its slumbrous buzzing, as
stifle in such a lover his conviction of fulfilment. . . .
He lay down on a couch, and there stayed a long time quite still, his
forehead pressed against the wall. His will was already beginning to
recover for a fresh attempt. It was merciful that she was going away
from Cramier, going to where he had in fancy watched her feed her doves.
No laws, no fears, not even her commands could stop his fancy from
conjuring her up by day and night. He had but to close his eyes, and she
was there.
A ring at the bell, repeated several times, roused him at last to go to
the door. His caller was Robert Cramier. And at sight of him, all
Lennan's lethargy gave place to a steely feeling. What had brought him
here? Had he been spying on his wife? The old longing for physical
combat came over him. Cramier was perhaps fifteen years his senior, but
taller, heavier, thicker. Chances, then, were pretty equal!
"Won't you come in?" he said.
"Thanks."
The voice had in it the same mockery as on Sunday; and it shot through
him that Cramier had thought to find his wife here. If so, he did not
betray it by any crude look round. He came in with his deliberate step,
light and well-poised for so big a man.
"So this," he said, "is where you produce your masterpieces! Anything
great since you came back?"
Lennan lifted the cloths from the half-modelled figure of his bull-man.
He felt malicious pleasure in doing that. Would Cramier recognize
himself in this creature with the horn-like ears, and great bossed
forehead? If this man who had her happiness beneath his heel had come
here to mock, he should at all events get what he had come to give. And
he waited.
"I see. You are giving the poor brute horns!"
If Cramier had seen, he had dared to add a touch of cynical humour, which
the sculptor himself had never thought of. And this even evoked in the
young man a kind of admiring compunction.
"Those are not horns," he said gently; "only ears."
Cramier lifted a hand and touched the edge of his own ear.
"Not quite like that, are they--human ears? But I suppose you would call
this symbolic. What, if I may ask, does it represent?"
All the softness in Lennan vanished.
"If you can't gather that from looking, it must be a failure."
"Not at all. If I am right, you want something for it to tread on, don't
you, to get your full effect?"
Lennan touched the base of the clay.
"The broken curve here"--then, with sudden disgust at this fencing, was
silent. What had the man come for? He must want something. And, as if
answering, Cramier said:
"To pass to another subject--you see a good deal of my wife. I just
wanted to tell you that I don't very much care that you should. It is as
well to be quite frank, I think."
Lennan bowed.
"Is that not," he said, "perhaps rather a matter for HER decision?"
That heavy figure--those threatening eyes! The whole thing was like a
dream come true!
"I do not feel it so. I am not one of those who let things drift. Please
understand me. You come between us at your peril."
Lennan kept silence for a moment, then he said quietly:
"Can one come between two people who have ceased to have anything in
common?"
The veins in Cramier's forehead were swollen, his face and neck had grown
crimson. And Lennan thought with strange elation: Now he's going to hit
me! He could hardly keep his hands from shooting out and seizing in
advance that great strong neck. If he could strangle, and have done with
him!
But, quite suddenly, Cramier turned on his heel. "I have warned you," he
said, and went.
Lennan took a long breath. So! That was over, and he knew where he was.
If Cramier had struck out, he would surely have seized his neck and held
on till life was gone. Nothing should have shaken him off. In fancy he
could see himself swaying, writhing, reeling, battered about by those
heavy fists, but always with his hands on the thick neck, squeezing out
its life. He could feel, absolutely feel, the last reel and stagger of
that great bulk crashing down, dragging him with it, till it lay
upturned, still. He covered his eyes with his hands. . . . Thank God!
The fellow had not hit out!
He went to the door, opened it, and stood leaning against the door-post.
All was still and drowsy out there in that quiet backwater of a street.
Not a soul in sight! How still, for London! Only the birds. In a
neighbouring studio someone was playing Chopin. Queer! He had almost
forgotten there was such a thing as Chopin. A mazurka! Spinning like
some top thing, round and round--weird little tune! . . . Well, and what
now? Only one thing certain. Sooner give up life than give her up! Far
sooner! Love her, achieve her--or give up everything, and drown to that
tune going on and on, that little dancing dirge of summer!
XVI
At her cottage Olive stood often by the river.
What lay beneath all that bright water--what strange, deep, swaying, life
so far below the ruffling of wind, and the shadows of the willow trees?
Was love down there, too? Love between sentient things, where it was
almost dark; or had all passion climbed up to rustle with the reeds, and
float with the water-flowers in the sunlight? Was there colour? Or had
colour been drowned? No scent and no music; but movement there would be,
for all the dim groping things bending one way to the current--movement,
no less than in the aspen-leaves, never quite still, and the winged
droves of the clouds. And if it were dark down there, it was dark, too,
above the water; and hearts ached, and eyes just as much searched for
that which did not come.
To watch it always flowing by to the sea; never looking back, never
swaying this way or that; drifting along, quiet as Fate--dark, or
glamorous with the gold and moonlight of these beautiful days and nights,
when every flower in her garden, in the fields, and along the river
banks, was full of sweet life; when dog-roses starred the lanes, and in
the wood the bracken was nearly a foot high.
She was not alone there, though she would much rather have been; two days
after she left London her Uncle and Aunt had joined her. It was from
Cramier they had received their invitation. He himself had not yet been
down.
Every night, having parted from Mrs. Ercott and gone up the wide shallow
stairs to her room, she would sit down at the window to write to Lennan,
one candle beside her--one pale flame for comrade, as it might be his
spirit. Every evening she poured out to him her thoughts, and ended
always: "Have patience!" She was still waiting for courage to pass that
dark hedge of impalpable doubts and fears and scruples, of a dread that
she could not make articulate even to herself. Having finished, she
would lean out into the night. The Colonel, his black figure cloaked
against the dew, would be pacing up and down the lawn, with his
good-night cigar, whose fiery spark she could just discern; and, beyond,
her ghostly dove-house; and, beyond, the river--flowing. Then she would
clasp herself close--afraid to stretch out her arms, lest she should be
seen.
Each morning she rose early, dressed, and slipped away to the village to
post her letter. From the woods across the river wild pigeons would be
calling--as though Love itself pleaded with her afresh each day. She was
back well before breakfast, to go up to her room and come down again as
if for the first time. The Colonel, meeting her on the stairs, or in the
hall, would say: "Ah, my dear! just beaten you! Slept well?" And, while
her lips touched his cheek, slanted at the proper angle for uncles, he
never dreamed that she had been three miles already through the dew.
Now that she was in the throes of an indecision, whose ending, one way or
the other, must be so tremendous, now that she was in the very swirl, she
let no sign at all escape her; the Colonel and even his wife were
deceived into thinking that after all no great harm had been done. It
was grateful to them to think so, because of that stewardship at Monte
Carlo, of which they could not render too good account. The warm sleepy
days, with a little croquet and a little paddling on the river, and much
sitting out of doors, when the Colonel would read aloud from Tennyson,
were very pleasant. To him--if not to Mrs. Ercott--it was especially
jolly to be out of Town 'this confounded crowded time of year.' And so
the days of early June went by, each finer than the last.
And then Cramier came down, without warning on a Friday evening. It was
hot in London . . . the session dull. . . . The Jubilee turning
everything upside down. . . . They were lucky to be out of Town!
A silent dinner--that!
Mrs. Ercott noticed that he drank wine like water, and for minutes at a
time fixed his eyes, that looked heavy as if he had not been sleeping,
not on his wife's face but on her neck. If Olive really disliked and
feared him--as John would have it--she disguised her feelings very well!
For so pale a woman she was looking brilliant that night. The sun had
caught her cheeks, perhaps. That black low-cut frock suited her, with
old Milanese-point lace matching her skin so well, and one carnation, of
darkest red, at her breast. Her eyes were really sometimes like black
velvet. It suited pale women to have those eyes, that looked so black at
night! She was talking, too, and laughing more than usual. One would
have said: A wife delighted to welcome her husband! And yet there was
something--something in the air, in the feel of things--the lowering
fixity of that man's eyes, or--thunder coming, after all this heat!
Surely the night was unnaturally still and dark, hardly a breath of air,
and so many moths out there, passing the beam of light, like little pale
spirits crossing a river! Mrs. Ercott smiled, pleased at that image.
Moths! Men were like moths; there were women from whom they could not
keep away. Yes, there was something about Olive that drew men to her.
Not meretricious--to do her justice, not that at all; but something soft,
and-fatal; like one of these candle-flames to the poor moths. John's
eyes were never quite as she knew them when he was looking at Olive; and
Robert Cramier's--what a queer, drugged look they had! As for that other
poor young fellow--she had never forgotten his face when they came on him
in the Park!
And when after dinner they sat on the veranda, they were all more silent
still, just watching, it seemed, the smoke of their cigarettes, rising
quite straight, as though wind had been withdrawn from the world. The
Colonel twice endeavoured to speak about the moon: It ought to be up by
now! It was going to be full.
And then Cramier said: "Put on that scarf thing, Olive, and come round
the garden with me."
Mrs. Ercott admitted to herself now that what John said was true. Just
one gleam of eyes, turned quickly this way and that, as a bird looks for
escape; and then Olive had got up and quietly gone with him down the
path, till their silent figures were lost to sight.
Disturbed to the heart, Mrs. Ercott rose and went over to her husband's
chair. He was frowning, and staring at his evening shoe balanced on a
single toe. He looked up at her and put out his hand. Mrs. Ercott gave
it a squeeze; she wanted comfort.
The Colonel spoke:
"It's heavy to-night, Dolly. I don't like the feel of it."
XVII
They had passed without a single word spoken, down through the laurels
and guelder roses to the river bank; then he had turned to the right, and
gone along it under the dove-house, to the yew-trees. There he had
stopped, in the pitch darkness of that foliage. It seemed to her
dreadfully still; if only there had been the faintest breeze, the
faintest lisping of reeds on the water, one bird to make a sound; but
nothing, nothing save his breathing, deep, irregular, with a quiver in
it. What had he brought her here for? To show her how utterly she was
his? Was he never going to speak, never going to say whatever it was he
had in mind to say? If only he would not touch her!
Then he moved, and a stone dislodged fell with a splash into the water.
She could not help a little gasp. How black the river looked! But
slowly, beyond the dim shape of the giant poplar, a shiver of light stole
outwards across the blackness from the far bank--the moon, whose rim she
could now see rising, of a thick gold like a coin, above the woods. Her
heart went out to that warm light. At all events there was one friendly
inhabitant of this darkness.
Suddenly she felt his hands on her waist. She did not move, her heart
beat too furiously; but a sort of prayer fluttered up from it against her
lips. In the grip of those heavy hands was such quivering force!
His voice sounded very husky and strange: "Olive, this can't go on. I
suffer. My God! I suffer!"
A pang went through her, a sort of surprise. Suffer! She might wish him
dead, but she did not want him to suffer--God knew! And yet, gripped by
those hands, she could not say: I am sorry!
He made a sound that was almost a groan, and dropped on his knees.
Feeling herself held fast, she tried to push his forehead back from her
waist. It was fiery hot; and she heard him mutter: "Have mercy! Love me
a little!" But the clutch of his hands, never still on the thin silk of
her dress, turned her faint. She tried to writhe away, but could not;
stood still again, and at last found her voice.
"Mercy? Can I MAKE myself love? No one ever could since the world
began. Please, please get up. Let me go!"
But he was pulling her down to him so that she was forced on to her knees
on the grass, with her face close to his. A low moaning was coming from
him. It was horrible--so horrible! And he went on pleading, the words
all confused, not looking in her face. It seemed to her that it would
never end, that she would never get free of that grip, away from that
stammering, whispering voice. She stayed by instinct utterly still,
closing her eyes. Then she felt his gaze for the first time that evening
on her face, and realized that he had not dared to look until her eyes
were closed, for fear of reading what was in them. She said very gently:
"Please let me go. I think I'm going to faint."
He relaxed the grip of his arms; she sank down and stayed unmoving on the
grass. After such utter stillness that she hardly knew whether he were
there or not, she felt his hot hand on her bare shoulder. Was it all to
begin again? She shrank down lower still, and a little moan escaped her.
He let her go suddenly, and, when at last she looked up, was gone.
She got to her feet trembling, and moved quickly from under the
yew-trees. She tried to think--tried to understand exactly what this
portended for her, for him, for her lover. But she could not. There was
around her thoughts the same breathless darkness that brooded over this
night. Ah! but to the night had been given that pale-gold moon-ray, to
herself nothing, no faintest gleam; as well try to pierce below the dark
surface of that water!
She passed her hands over her face, and hair, and dress. How long had it
lasted? How long had they been out here? And she began slowly moving
back towards the house. Thank God! She had not yielded to fear or pity,
not uttered falsities, not pretended she could love him, and betrayed her
heart. That would have been the one unbearable thing to have been left
remembering! She stood long looking down, as if trying to see the future
in her dim flower-beds; then, bracing herself, hurried to the house. No
one was on the veranda, no one in the drawing-room. She looked at the
clock. Nearly eleven. Ringing for the servant to shut the windows, she
stole up to her room. Had her husband gone away as he had come? Or would
she presently again be face to face with that dread, the nerve of which
never stopped aching now, dread of the night when he was near? She
determined not to go to bed, and drawing a long chair to the window,
wrapped herself in a gown, and lay back.
The flower from her dress, miraculously uncrushed in those dark minutes
on the grass, she set in water beside her at the window--Mark's
favourite flower, he had once told her; it was a comfort, with its scent,
and hue, and memory of him.
Strange that in her life, with all the faces seen, and people known, she
had not loved one till she had met Lennan! She had even been sure that
love would never come to her; had not wanted it--very much; had thought
to go on well enough, and pass out at the end, never having known, or
much cared to know, full summer. Love had taken its revenge on her now
for all slighted love offered her in the past; for the one hated love
that had to-night been on its knees to her. They said it must always
come once to every man and woman--this witchery, this dark sweet feeling,
springing up, who knew how or why? She had not believed, but now she
knew. And whatever might be coming, she would not have this different.
Since all things changed, she must change and get old and be no longer
pretty for him to look at, but this in her heart could not change. She
felt sure of that. It was as if something said: This is for ever, beyond
life, beyond death, this is for ever! He will be dust, and you dust, but
your love will live! Somewhere--in the woods, among the flowers, or down
in the dark water, it will haunt! For it only you have lived! . . . Then
she noticed that a slender silvery-winged thing, unlike any moth she had
ever seen, had settled on her gown, close to her neck. It seemed to be
sleeping, so delicate and drowsy, having come in from the breathless
dark, thinking, perhaps, that her whiteness was a light. What dim memory
did it rouse; something of HIM, something HE had done--in darkness, on a
night like this. Ah, yes! that evening after Gorbio, the little owl-moth
on her knee! He had touched her when he took that cosy wan velvet-eyed
thing off her!
She leaned out for air. What a night!--whose stars were hiding in the
sheer heavy warmth; whose small, round, golden moon had no transparency!
A night like a black pansy with a little gold heart. And silent! For, of
the trees, that whispered so much at night, not even the aspens had
voice. The unstirring air had a dream-solidity against her cheeks. But
in all the stillness, what sentiency, what passion--as in her heart!
Could she not draw HIM to her from those woods, from that dark gleaming
river, draw him from the flowers and trees and the passion-mood of the
sky--draw him up to her waiting here, so that she was no more this
craving creature, but one with him and the night! And she let her head
droop down on her hands.
All night long she stayed there at the window. Sometimes dozing in the
chair; once waking with a start, fancying that her husband was bending
over her. Had he been--and stolen away? And the dawn came; dew-grey,
filmy and wistful, woven round each black tree, and round the white
dove-cot, and falling scarf-like along the river. And the chirrupings of
birds stirred among leaves as yet invisible.
She slept then.
XVIII
When she awoke once more, in daylight, smiling, Cramier was standing
beside her chair. His face, all dark and bitter, had the sodden look of
a man very tired.
"So!" he said: "Sleeping this way doesn't spoil your dreams. Don't let
me disturb them. I am just going back to Town."
Like a frightened bird, she stayed, not stirring, gazing at his back as
he leaned in the window, till, turning round on her again, he said:
"But remember this: What I can't have, no one else shall! Do you
understand? No one else!" And he bent down close, repeating: "Do you
understand--you bad wife!"
Four years' submission to a touch she shrank from; one long effort not to
shrink! Bad wife! Not if he killed her would she answer now!
"Do you hear?" he said once more: "Make up your mind to that. I mean
it."
He had gripped the arms of her chair, till she could feel it quiver
beneath her. Would he drive his fist into her face that she managed to
keep still smiling? But there only passed into his eyes an expression
which she could not read.
"Well," he said, "you know!" and walked heavily towards the door.
The moment he had gone she sprang up: Yes, she was a bad wife! A wife
who had reached the end of her tether. A wife who hated instead of
loving. A wife in prison! Bad wife! Martyrdom, then, for the sake of a
faith in her that was lost already, could be but folly. If she seemed
bad and false to him, there was no longer reason to pretend to be
otherwise. No longer would she, in the words of the old song:--'sit and
sigh--pulling bracken, pulling bracken.' No more would she starve for
want of love, and watch the nights throb and ache, as last night had
throbbed and ached, with the passion that she might not satisfy.
And while she was dressing she wondered why she did not look tired. To
get out quickly! To send her lover word at once to hasten to her while
it was safe--that she might tell him she was coming to him out of prison!
She would telegraph for him to come that evening with a boat, opposite
the tall poplar. She and her Aunt and Uncle were to go to dinner at the
Rectory, but she would plead headache at the last minute. When the
Ercotts had gone she would slip out, and he and she would row over to the
wood, and be together for two hours of happiness. And they must make a
clear plan, too--for to-morrow they would begin their life together. But
it would not be safe to send that message from the village; she must go
down and over the bridge to the post-office on the other side, where they
did not know her. It was too late now before breakfast. Better after,
when she could slip away, knowing for certain that her husband had gone.
It would still not be too late for her telegram--Lennan never left his
rooms till the midday post which brought her letters.
She finished dressing, and knowing that she must show no trace of her
excitement, sat quite still for several minutes, forcing herself into
languor. Then she went down. Her husband had breakfasted and gone. At
everything she did, and every word she spoke, she was now smiling with a
sort of wonder, as if she were watching a self, that she had abandoned
like an old garment, perform for her amusement. It even gave her no
feeling of remorse to think she was going to do what would be so painful
to the good Colonel. He was dear to her--but it did not matter. She was
past all that. Nothing mattered--nothing in the world! It amused her to
believe that her Uncle and Aunt misread her last night's walk in the dark
garden, misread her languor and serenity. And at the first moment
possible she flew out, and slipped away under cover of the yew-trees
towards the river. Passing the spot where her husband had dragged her
down to him on her knees in the grass, she felt a sort of surprise that
she could ever have been so terrified. What was he? The past--nothing!
And she flew on. She noted carefully the river bank opposite the tall
poplar. It would be quite easy to get down from there into a boat. But
they would not stay in that dark backwater. They would go over to the
far side into those woods from which last night the moon had risen, those
woods from which the pigeons mocked her every morning, those woods so
full of summer. Coming back, no one would see her landing; for it would
be pitch dark in the backwater. And, while she hurried, she looked back
across her shoulder, marking where the water, entering, ceased to be
bright. A dragon-fly brushed her cheek; she saw it vanish where the
sunlight failed. How suddenly its happy flight was quenched in that dark
shade, as a candle flame blown out. The tree growth there was too
thick--the queer stumps and snags had uncanny shapes, as of monstrous
creatures, whose eyes seemed to peer out at you. She shivered. She had
seen those monsters with their peering eyes somewhere. Ah! In her dream
at Monte Carlo of that bull-face staring from the banks, while she
drifted by, unable to cry out. No! The backwater was not a happy
place--they would not stay there a single minute. And more swiftly than
ever she flew on along the path. Soon she had crossed the bridge, sent
off her message, and returned. But there were ten hours to get through
before eight o'clock, and she did not hurry now. She wanted this day of
summer to herself alone, a day of dreaming till he came; this day for
which all her life till now had been shaping her--the day of love. Fate
was very wonderful! If she had ever loved before; if she had known joy
in her marriage--she could never have been feeling what she was feeling
now, what she well knew she would never feel again. She crossed a
new-mown hayfield, and finding a bank, threw herself down on her back
among its uncut grasses. Far away at the other end men were scything. It
was all very beautiful--the soft clouds floating, the clover-stalks
pushing themselves against her palms, and stems of the tall couch grass
cool to her cheeks; little blue butterflies; a lark, invisible; the scent
of the ripe hay; and the gold-fairy arrows of the sun on her face and
limbs. To grow and reach the hour of summer; all must do that! That was
the meaning of Life! She had no more doubts and fears. She had no more
dread, no bitterness, and no remorse for what she was going to do. She
was doing it because she must. . . . As well might grass stay its
ripening because it shall be cut down! She had, instead, a sense of
something blessed and uplifting. Whatever Power had made her heart, had
placed within it this love. Whatever it was, whoever it was, could not
be angry with her!
A wild bee settled on her arm, and she held it up between her and the
sun, so that she might enjoy its dusky glamour. It would not sting
her--not to-day! The little blue butterflies, too, kept alighting on
her, who lay there so still. And the love-songs of the wood-pigeons
never ceased, nor the faint swish of scything.
At last she rose to make her way home. A telegram had come saying
simply: "Yes." She read it with an unmoved face, having resorted again
to her mask of languor. Toward tea-time she confessed to headache, and
said she would lie down. Up there in her room she spent those three
hours writing--writing as best she could all she had passed through in
thought and feeling, before making her decision. It seemed to her that
she owed it to herself to tell her lover how she had come to what she had
never thought to come to. She put what she had written in an envelope and
sealed it. She would give it to him, that he might read and understand,
when she had shown him with all of her how she loved him. It would pass
the time for him, until to-morrow--until they set out on their new life
together. For to-night they would make their plans, and to-morrow start.
At half-past seven she sent word that her headache was too bad to allow
her to go out. This brought a visit from Mrs. Ercott: The Colonel and
she were so distressed; but perhaps Olive was wise not to exert herself!
And presently the Colonel himself spoke, lugubriously through the door:
Not well enough to come? No fun without her! But she mustn't on any
account strain herself! No, no!
Her heart smote her at that. He was always so good to her.
At last, watching from the corridor, she saw them sally forth down the
drive--the Colonel a little in advance, carrying his wife's evening
shoes. How nice he looked--with his brown face, and his grey moustache;
so upright, and concerned with what he had in hand!
There was no languor in her now. She had dressed in white, and now she
took a blue silk cloak with a hood, and caught up the flower that had so
miraculously survived last night's wearing and pinned it at her breast.
Then making sure no servant was about, she slipped downstairs and out.
It was just eight, and the sun still glistened on the dove-cot. She kept
away from that lest the birds should come fluttering about her, and
betray her by cooing. When she had nearly reached the tow-path, she
stopped affrighted. Surely something had moved, something heavy, with a
sound of broken branches. Was it the memory of last night come on her
again; or, indeed, someone there? She walked back a few steps. Foolish
alarm! In the meadow beyond a cow was brushing against the hedge. And,
stealing along the grass, out on to the tow-path, she went swiftly
towards the poplar.
XIX
A hundred times in these days of her absence Lennan had been on the point
of going down, against her orders, just to pass the house, just to feel
himself within reach, to catch a glimpse of her, perhaps, from afar. If
his body haunted London, his spirit had passed down on to that river
where he had drifted once already, reconnoitring. A hundred times--by
day in fancy, and by night in dreams--pulling himself along by the
boughs, he stole down that dim backwater, till the dark yews and the
white dove-cot came into view.
For he thought now only of fulfilment. She was wasting cruelly away!
Why should he leave her where she was? Leave her to profane herself and
all womanhood in the arms of a man she hated?
And on that day of mid-June, when he received her telegram, it was as if
he had been handed the key of Paradise.
Would she--could she mean to come away with him that very night? He would
prepare for that at all events. He had so often in mind faced this
crisis in his affairs, that now it only meant translating into action
what had been carefully thought out. He packed, supplied himself
liberally with money, and wrote a long letter to his guardian. It would
hurt the old man--Gordy was over seventy now--but that could not be
helped. He would not post it till he knew for certain.
After telling how it had all come about, he went on thus: "I know that to
many people, and perhaps to you, Gordy, it will seem very wrong, but it
does not to me, and that is the simple truth. Everybody has his own views
on such things, I suppose; and as I would not--on my honour, Gordy--ever
have held or wished to hold, or ever will hold in marriage or out of
marriage, any woman who does not love me, so I do not think it is acting
as I would resent others acting towards me, to take away from such
unhappiness this lady for whom I would die at any minute. I do not mean
to say that pity has anything to do with it--I thought so at first, but I
know now that it is all swallowed up in the most mighty feeling I have
ever had or ever shall have. I am not a bit afraid of conscience. If God
is Universal Truth, He cannot look hardly upon us for being true to
ourselves. And as to people, we shall just hold up our heads; I think
that they generally take you at your own valuation. But, anyway, Society
does not much matter. We shan't want those who don't want us--you may be
sure. I hope he will divorce her quickly--there is nobody much to be
hurt by that except you and Cis; but if he doesn't--it can't be helped.
I don't think she has anything; but with my six hundred, and what I can
make, even if we have to live abroad, we shall be all right for money.
You have been awfully good to me always, Gordy, and I am very grieved to
hurt you, and still more sorry if you think I am being ungrateful; but
when one feels as I do--body and soul and spirit--there isn't any
question; there wouldn't be if death itself stood in the way. If you
receive this, we shall be gone together; I will write to you from
wherever we pitch our tent, and, of course, I shall write to Cicely. But
will you please tell Mrs. Doone and Sylvia, and give them my love if they
still care to have it. Good-bye, dear Gordy. I believe you would have
done the same, if you had been I. Always your affectionate--MARK."
In all those preparations he forgot nothing, employing every minute of
the few hours in a sort of methodic exaltation. The last thing before
setting out he took the damp cloths off his 'bull-man.' Into the face of
the monster there had come of late a hungry, yearning look. The artist
in him had done his work that unconscious justice; against his will had
set down the truth. And, wondering whether he would ever work at it
again, he redamped the cloths and wrapped it carefully.
He did not go to her village, but to one five or six miles down the
river--it was safer, and the row would steady him. Hiring a skiff, he
pulled up stream. He travelled very slowly to kill time, keeping under
the far bank. And as he pulled, his very heart seemed parched with
nervousness. Was it real that he was going to her, or only some
fantastic trick of Fate, a dream from which he would wake to find himself
alone again? He passed the dove-cot at last, and kept on till he could
round into the backwater and steal up under cover to the poplar. He
arrived a few minutes before eight o'clock, turned the boat round, and
waited close beneath the bank, holding to a branch, and standing so that
he could see the path. If a man could die from longing and anxiety,
surely Lennan must have died then!
All wind had failed, and the day was fallen into a wonderful still
evening. Gnats were dancing in the sparse strips of sunlight that
slanted across the dark water, now that the sun was low. From the
fields, bereft of workers, came the scent of hay and the heavy scent of
meadow-sweet; the musky odour of the backwater was confused with them
into one brooding perfume. No one passed. And sounds were few and far
to that wistful listener, for birds did not sing just there. How still
and warm was the air, yet seemed to vibrate against his cheeks as though
about to break into flame. That fancy came to him vividly while he stood
waiting--a vision of heat simmering in little pale red flames. On the
thick reeds some large, slow, dusky flies were still feeding, and now and
then a moorhen a few yards away splashed a little, or uttered a sharp,
shrill note. When she came--if she did come!--they would not stay here,
in this dark earthy backwater; he would take her over to the other side,
away to the woods! But the minutes passed, and his heart sank. Then it
leaped up. Someone was coming--in white, with bare head, and something
blue or black flung across her arm. It was she! No one else walked like
that! She came very quickly. And he noticed that her hair looked like
little wings on either side of her brow, as if her face were a white bird
with dark wings, flying to love! Now she was close, so close that he
could see her lips parted, and her eyes love-lighted--like nothing in the
world but darkness wild with dew and starlight. He reached up and lifted
her down into the boat, and the scent of some flower pressed against his
face seemed to pierce into him and reach his very heart, awakening the
memory of something past, forgotten. Then, seizing the branches,
snapping them in his haste, he dragged the skiff along through the
sluggish water, the gnats dancing in his face. She seemed to know where
he was taking her, and neither of them spoke a single word, while he
pulled out into the open, and over to the far bank.
There was but one field between them and the wood--a field of young
wheat, with a hedge of thorn and alder. And close to that hedge they set
out, their hands clasped. They had nothing to say yet--like children
saving up. She had put on her cloak to hide her dress, and its silk
swished against the silvery blades of the wheat. What had moved her to
put on this blue cloak? Blue of the sky, and flowers, of birds' wings,
and the black-burning blue of the night! The hue of all holy things!
And how still it was in the late gleam of the sun! Not one little sound
of beast or bird or tree; not one bee humming! And not much colour--only
the starry white hemlocks and globe-campion flowers, and the low-flying
glamour of the last warm light on the wheat.
XX
. . . Now over wood and river the evening drew in fast. And first the
swallows, that had looked as if they would never stay their hunting,
ceased; and the light, that had seemed fastened above the world, for all
its last brightenings, slowly fell wingless and dusky.
The moon would not rise till ten! And all things waited. The creatures
of night were slow to come forth after that long bright summer's day,
watching for the shades of the trees to sink deeper and deeper into the
now chalk-white water; watching for the chalk-white face of the sky to be
masked with velvet. The very black-plumed trees themselves seemed to
wait in suspense for the grape-bloom of night. All things stared, wan in
that hour of pass ing day--all things had eyes wistful and unblessed.
In those moments glamour was so dead that it was as if meaning had
abandoned the earth. But not for long. Winged with darkness, it stole
back; not the soul of meaning that had gone, but a witch-like and
brooding spirit harbouring in the black trees, in the high dark spears of
the rushes, and on the grim-snouted snags that lurked along the river
bank. Then the owls came out, and night-flying things. And in the wood
there began a cruel bird-tragedy--some dark pursuit in the twilight above
the bracken; the piercing shrieks of a creature into whom talons have
again and again gone home; and mingled with them, hoarse raging cries of
triumph. Many minutes they lasted, those noises of the night,
sound-emblems of all the cruelty in the heart of Nature; till at last
death appeased that savagery. And any soul abroad, that pitied
fugitives, might once more listen, and not weep. . . .
Then a nightingale began to give forth its long liquid gurgling; and a
corn-crake churred in the young wheat. Again the night brooded, in the
silent tops of the trees, in the more silent depths of the water. It
sent out at long intervals a sigh or murmur, a tiny scuttling splash, an
owl's hunting cry. And its breath was still hot and charged with heavy
odour, for no dew was falling. . . .
XXI
It was past ten when they came out from the wood. She had wanted to wait
for the moon to rise; not a gold coin of a moon as last night, but ivory
pale, and with a gleaming radiance level over the fern, and covering the
lower boughs, as it were, with a drift of white blossom.
Through the wicket gate they passed once more beside the moon-coloured
wheat, which seemed of a different world from that world in which they
had walked but an hour and a half ago.
And in Lennan's heart was a feeling such as a man's heart can only know
once in all his life--such humble gratitude, and praise, and adoration of
her who had given him her all. There should be nothing for her now but
joy--like the joy of this last hour. She should never know less
happiness! And kneeling down before her at the water's edge he kissed
her dress, and hands, and feet, which to-morrow would be his forever.
Then they got into the boat.
The smile of the moonlight glided over each ripple, and reed, and closing
water-lily; over her face, where the hood had fallen back from her
loosened hair; over one hand trailing the water, and the other touching
the flower at her breast; and, just above her breath, she said:
"Row, my dear love; it's late!"
Dipping his sculls, he shot the skiff into the darkness of the backwater.
. . .
What happened then he never knew, never clearly--in all those after
years. A vision of her white form risen to its feet, bending forward
like a creature caught, that cannot tell which way to spring; a crashing
shock, his head striking something hard! Nothingness! And then--an
awful, awful struggle with roots and weeds and slime, a desperate agony
of groping in that pitchy blackness, among tree-stumps, in dead water
that seemed to have no bottom--he and that other, who had leaped at them
in the dark with his boat, like a murdering beast; a nightmare search
more horrible than words could tell, till in a patch of moonlight on the
bank they laid her, who for all their efforts never stirred. . . . There
she lay all white, and they two crouched at her head and feet--like dark
creatures of the woods and waters over that which with their hunting they
had slain.
How long they stayed there, not once looking at each other, not once
speaking, not once ceasing to touch with their hands that dead thing--he
never knew. How long in the summer night, with its moonlight and its
shadows quivering round them, and the night wind talking in the reeds!
And then the most enduring of all sentient things had moved in him again;
so that he once more felt. . . . Never again to see those eyes that had
loved him with their light! Never again to kiss her lips! Frozen--like
moonlight to the earth, with the flower still clinging at her breast.
Thrown out on the bank like a plucked water-lily! Dead? No, no! Not
dead! Alive in the night--alive to him--somewhere! Not on this dim
bank, in this hideous backwater, with that dark dumb creature who had
destroyed her! Out there on the river--in the wood of their
happiness--somewhere alive! . . . And, staggering up past Cramier, who
never moved, he got into his boat, and like one demented pulled out into
the stream.
But once there in the tide, he fell huddled forward, motionless above his
oars. . . .
And the moonlight flooded his dark skiff drifting down. And the
moonlight effaced the ripples on the water that had stolen away her
spirit. Her spirit mingled now with the white beauty and the shadows,
for ever part of the stillness and the passion of a summer night;
hovering, floating, listening to the rustle of the reeds, and the
whispering of the woods; one with the endless dream--that spirit passing
out, as all might wish to pass, in the hour of happiness.
PART III
AUTUMN
I
When on that November night Lennan stole to the open door of his
dressing-room, and stood watching his wife asleep, Fate still waited for
an answer.
A low fire was burning--one of those fires that throw faint shadows
everywhere, and once and again glow so that some object shines for a
moment, some shape is clearly seen. The curtains were not quite drawn,
and a plane-tree branch with leaves still hanging, which had kept them
company all the fifteen years they had lived there, was moving darkly in
the wind, now touching the glass with a frail tap, as though asking of
him, who had been roaming in that wind so many hours, to let it in.
Unfailing comrades--London plane-trees!
He had not dared hope that Sylvia would be asleep. It was merciful that
she was, whichever way the issue went--that issue so cruel. Her face was
turned towards the fire, and one hand rested beneath her cheek. So she
often slept. Even when life seemed all at sea, its landmarks lost, one
still did what was customary. Poor tender-hearted thing--she had not
slept since he told her, forty-eight hours, that seemed such years, ago!
With her flaxen hair, and her touching candour, even in sleep, she looked
like a girl lying there, not so greatly changed from what she had been
that summer of Cicely's marriage down at Hayle. Her face had not grown
old in all those twenty-eight years. There had been till now no special
reason why it should. Thought, strong feeling, suffering, those were
what changed faces; Sylvia had never thought very deeply, never suffered
much, till now. And was it for him, who had been careful of her--very
careful on the whole, despite man's selfishness, despite her never having
understood the depths of him--was it for him of all people to hurt her
so, to stamp her face with sorrow, perhaps destroy her utterly?
He crept a little farther in and sat down in the arm-chair beyond the
fire. What memories a fire gathered into it, with its flaky ashes, its
little leaf-like flames, and that quiet glow and flicker! What tale of
passions! How like to a fire was a man's heart! The first young fitful
leapings, the sudden, fierce, mastering heat, the long, steady sober
burning, and then--that last flaming-up, that clutch back at its own
vanished youth, the final eager flight of flame, before the ashes
wintered it to nothing! Visions and memories he saw down in the fire, as
only can be seen when a man's heart, by the agony of long struggle, has
been stripped of skin, and quivers at every touch. Love! A strange
haphazard thing was love--so spun between ecstacy and torture! A thing
insidious, irresponsible, desperate. A flying sweetness, more poignant
than anything on earth, more dark in origin and destiny. A thing without
reason or coherence. A man's love-life--what say had he in the ebb and
flow of it? No more than in the flights of autumn birds, swooping down,
alighting here and there, passing on. The loves one left behind--even in
a life by no means vagabond in love, as men's lives went! The love that
thought the Tyrol skies would fall if he were not first with a certain
lady. The love whose star had caught in the hair of Sylvia, now lying
there asleep. A so-called love--that half-glamorous, yet sordid little
meal of pleasure, which youth, however sensitive, must eat, it seems,
some time or other with some young light of love--a glimpse of life that
beforehand had seemed much and had meant little, save to leave him
disillusioned with himself and sorry for his partner. And then the love
that he could not, even after twenty years, bear to remember; that
all-devouring summer passion, which in one night had gained all and lost
all terribly, leaving on his soul a scar that could never be quite
healed, leaving his spirit always a little lonely, haunted by the sense
of what might have been. Of his share in that night of tragedy--that
'terrible accident on the river'--no one had ever dreamed. And then the
long despair which had seemed the last death of love had slowly passed,
and yet another love had been born--or rather born again, pale, sober,
but quite real; the fresh springing-up of a feeling long forgotten, of
that protective devotion of his boyhood. He still remembered the
expression on Sylvia's face when he passed her by chance in Oxford
Street, soon after he came back from his four years of exile in the East
and Rome--that look, eager, yet reproachful, then stoically ironic, as if
saying: 'Oh, no! after forgetting me four years and more--you can't
remember me now!' And when he spoke, the still more touching pleasure in
her face. Then uncertain months, with a feeling of what the end would
be; and then their marriage. Happy enough--gentle, not very vivid, nor
spiritually very intimate--his work always secretly as remote from her as
when she had thought to please him by putting jessamine stars on the
heads of his beasts. A quiet successful union, not meaning, he had
thought, so very much to him nor so very much to her--until forty-eight
hours ago he told her; and she had shrunk, and wilted, and gone all to
pieces. And what was it he had told her?
A long story--that!
Sitting there by the fire, with nothing yet decided, he could see it all
from the start, with its devilish, delicate intricacy, its subtle slow
enchantment spinning itself out of him, out of his own state of mind and
body, rather than out of the spell cast over him, as though a sort of
fatal force, long dormant, were working up again to burst into dark
flower. . . .
II
Yes, it had begun within him over a year ago, with a queer unhappy
restlessness, a feeling that life was slipping, ebbing away within reach
of him, and his arms never stretched out to arrest it. It had begun with
a sort of long craving, stilled only when he was working hard--a craving
for he knew not what, an ache which was worst whenever the wind was soft.
They said that about forty-five was a perilous age for a man--especially
for an artist. All the autumn of last year he had felt this vague misery
rather badly. It had left him alone most of December and January, while
he was working so hard at his group of lions; but the moment that was
finished it had gripped him hard again. In those last days of January he
well remembered wandering about in the parks day after day, trying to get
away from it. Mild weather, with a scent in the wind! With what avidity
he had watched children playing, the premature buds on the bushes,
anything, everything young--with what an ache, too, he had been conscious
of innumerable lives being lived round him, and loves loved, and he
outside, unable to know, to grasp, to gather them; and all the time the
sands of his hourglass running out! A most absurd and unreasonable
feeling for a man with everything he wanted, with work that he loved,
quite enough money, and a wife so good as Sylvia--a feeling that no
Englishman of forty-six, in excellent health, ought for a moment to have
been troubled with. A feeling such as, indeed, no Englishman ever
admitted having--so that there was not even, as yet, a Society for its
suppression. For what was this disquiet feeling, but the sense that he
had had his day, would never again know the stir and fearful joy of
falling in love, but only just hanker after what was past and gone!
Could anything be more reprehensible in a married man?
It was--yes--the last day of January, when, returning from one of those
restless rambles in Hyde Park, he met Dromore. Queer to recognize a man
hardly seen since school-days. Yet unmistakably, Johnny Dromore,
sauntering along the rails of Piccadilly on the Green Park side, with
that slightly rolling gait of his thin, horseman's legs, his dandified
hat a little to one side, those strange, chaffing, goggling eyes, that
look, as if making a perpetual bet. Yes--the very same teasing, now
moody, now reckless, always astute Johnny Dromore, with a good heart
beneath an outside that seemed ashamed of it. Truly to have shared a
room at school--to have been at College together, were links mysteriously
indestructible.
"Mark Lennan! By gum! haven't seen you for ages. Not since you turned
out a full-blown--what d'you call it? Awfully glad to meet you, old
chap!" Here was the past indeed, long vanished in feeling and thought
and all; and Lennan's head buzzed, trying to find some common interest
with this hunting, racing man-about-town.
Johnny Dromore come to life again--he whom the Machine had stamped with
astute simplicity by the time he was twenty-two, and for ever after left
untouched in thought and feeling--Johnny Dromore, who would never pass
beyond the philosophy that all was queer and freakish which had not to do
with horses, women, wine, cigars, jokes, good-heartedness, and that
perpetual bet; Johnny Dromore, who, somewhere in him, had a pocket of
depth, a streak of hunger, that was not just Johnny Dromore.
How queer was the sound of that jerky talk!
"You ever see old Fookes now? Been racin' at all? You live in Town?
Remember good old Blenker?" And then silence, and then another spurt:
"Ever go down to 'Bambury's?' Ever go racin'? . . . Come on up to my
'digs.' You've got nothin' to do." No persuading Johnny Dromore that a
'what d'you call it' could have anything to do. "Come on, old chap.
I've got the hump. It's this damned east wind."
Well he remembered it, when they shared a room at 'Bambury's'--that hump
of Johnny Dromore's, after some reckless spree or bout of teasing.
And down that narrow bye-street of Piccadilly he had gone, and up into
those 'digs' on the first floor, with their little dark hall, their Van
Beers' drawing and Vanity Fair cartoons, and prints of racehorses, and of
the old Nightgown Steeplechase; with the big chairs, and all the
paraphernalia of Race Guides and race-glasses, fox-masks and
stags'-horns, and hunting-whips. And yet, something that from the first
moment struck him as not quite in keeping, foreign to the picture--a
little jumble of books, a vase of flowers, a grey kitten.
"Sit down, old chap. What'll you drink?"
Sunk into the recesses of a marvellous chair, with huge arms of tawny
leather, he listened and spoke drowsily. 'Bambury's,' Oxford, Gordy's
clubs--dear old Gordy, gone now!--things long passed by; they seemed all
round him once again. And yet, always that vague sense, threading this
resurrection, threading the smoke of their cigars, and Johnny Dromore's
clipped talk--of something that did not quite belong. Might it be,
perhaps, that sepia drawing--above the 'Tantalus' on the oak sideboard at
the far end--of a woman's face gazing out into the room? Mysteriously
unlike everything else, except the flowers, and this kitten that was
pushing its furry little head against his hand. Odd how a single thing
sometimes took possession of a room, however remote in spirit! It seemed
to reach like a shadow over Dromore's outstretched limbs, and weathered,
long-nosed face, behind his huge cigar; over the queer, solemn, chaffing
eyes, with something brooding in the depths of them.
"Ever get the hump? Bally awful, isn't it? It's getting old. We're
bally old, you know, Lenny!" Ah! No one had called him 'Lenny' for
twenty years. And it was true; they were unmentionably old.
"When a fellow begins to feel old, you know, it's time he went broke--or
something; doesn't bear sittin' down and lookin' at. Come out to 'Monte'
with me!"
'Monte!' That old wound, never quite healed, started throbbing at the
word, so that he could hardly speak his: "No, I don't care for 'Monte.'"
And, at once, he saw Dromore's eyes probing, questioning:
"You married?"
"Yes."
"Never thought of you as married!"
So Dromore did think of him. Queer! He never thought of Johnny Dromore.
"Winter's bally awful, when you're not huntin'. You've changed a lot;
should hardly have known you. Last time I saw you, you'd just come back
from Rome or somewhere. What's it like bein' a--a sculptor? Saw
something of yours once. Ever do things of horses?"
Yes; he had done a 'relief' of ponies only last year.
"You do women, too, I s'pose?"
"Not often."
The eyes goggled slightly. Quaint, that unholy interest! Just like
boys, the Johnny Dromores--would never grow up, no matter how life
treated them. If Dromore spoke out his soul, as he used to speak it out
at 'Bambury's,' he would say: 'You get a pull there; you have a bally
good time, I expect.' That was the way it took them; just a converse
manifestation of the very same feeling towards Art that the pious
Philistines had, with their deploring eyebrows and their 'peril to the
soul.' Babes all! Not a glimmering of what Art meant--of its effort,
and its yearnings!
"You make money at it?"
"Oh, yes."
Again that appreciative goggle, as who should say: 'Ho! there's more in
this than I thought!'
A long silence, then, in the dusk with the violet glimmer from outside
the windows, the fire flickering in front of them, the grey kitten
purring against his neck, the smoke of their cigars going up, and such a
strange, dozing sense of rest, as he had not known for many days. And
then--something, someone at the door, over by the sideboard! And Dromore
speaking in a queer voice:
"Come in, Nell! D'you know my daughter?"
A hand took Lennan's, a hand that seemed to waver between the aplomb of a
woman of the world, and a child's impulsive warmth. And a voice, young,
clipped, clear, said:
"How d'you do? She's rather sweet, isn't she--my kitten?"
Then Dromore turned the light up. A figure fairly tall, in a grey
riding-habit, stupendously well cut; a face not quite so round as a
child's nor so shaped as a woman's, blushing slightly, very calm; crinkly
light-brown hair tied back with a black ribbon under a neat hat; and eyes
like those eyes of Gainsborough's 'Perdita'--slow, grey, mesmeric, with
long lashes curling up, eyes that draw things to them, still innocent.
And just on the point of saying: "I thought you'd stepped out of that
picture"--he saw Dromore's face, and mumbled instead:
"So it's YOUR kitten?"
"Yes; she goes to everybody. Do you like Persians? She's all fur
really. Feel!"
Entering with his fingers the recesses of the kitten, he said:
"Cats without fur are queer."
"Have you seen one without fur?"
"Oh, yes! In my profession we have to go below fur--I'm a sculptor."
"That must be awfully interesting."
What a woman of the world! But what a child, too! And now he could see
that the face in the sepia drawing was older altogether--lips not so
full, look not so innocent, cheeks not so round, and something sad and
desperate about it--a face that life had rudely touched. But the same
eyes it had--and what charm, for all its disillusionment, its air of a
history! Then he noticed, fastened to the frame, on a thin rod, a
dust-coloured curtain, drawn to one side. The self-possessed young voice
was saying:
"Would you mind if I showed you my drawings? It would be awfully good of
you. You could tell me about them." And with dismay he saw her open a
portfolio. While he scrutinized those schoolgirl drawings, he could feel
her looking at him, as animals do when they are making up their minds
whether or no to like you; then she came and stood so close that her arm
pressed his. He redoubled his efforts to find something good about the
drawings. But in truth there was nothing good. And if, in other
matters, he could lie well enough to save people's feelings, where Art
was concerned he never could; so he merely said:
"You haven't been taught, you see."
"Will you teach me?"
But before he could answer, she was already effacing that naive question
in her most grown-up manner.
"Of course I oughtn't to ask. It would bore you awfully."
After that he vaguely remembered Dromore's asking if he ever rode in the
Row; and those eyes of hers following him about; and her hand giving his
another childish squeeze. Then he was on his way again down the
dimly-lighted stairs, past an interminable array of Vanity Fair cartoons,
out into the east wind.
III
Crossing the Green Park on his way home, was he more, or less, restless?
Difficult to say. A little flattered, certainly, a little warmed; yet
irritated, as always when he came into contact with people to whom the
world of Art was such an amusing unreality. The notion of trying to show
that child how to draw--that feather-pate, with her riding and her
kitten; and her 'Perdita' eyes! Quaint, how she had at once made friends
with him! He was a little different, perhaps, from what she was
accustomed to. And how daintily she spoke! A strange, attractive,
almost lovely child! Certainly not more than seventeen--and--Johnny
Dromore's daughter!
The wind was bitter, the lamps bright among the naked trees. Beautiful
always--London at night, even in January, even in an east wind, with a
beauty he never tired of. Its great, dark, chiselled shapes, its
gleaming lights, like droves of flying stars come to earth; and all
warmed by the beat and stir of innumerable lives--those lives that he
ached so to know and to be part of.
He told Sylvia of his encounter. Dromore! The name struck her. She had
an old Irish song, 'The Castle of Dromore,' with a queer, haunting
refrain.
It froze hard all the week, and he began a life-size group of their two
sheep-dogs. Then a thaw set in with that first south-west wind, which
brings each February a feeling of Spring such as is never again
recaptured, and men's senses, like sleepy bees in the sun, go roving. It
awakened in him more violently than ever the thirst to be living,
knowing, loving--the craving for something new. Not this, of course,
took him back to Dromore's rooms; oh, no! just friendliness, since he had
not even told his old room-mate where he lived, or said that his wife
would be glad to make his acquaintance, if he cared to come round. For
Johnny Dromore had assuredly not seemed too happy, under all his
hard-bitten air. Yes! it was but friendly to go again.
Dromore was seated in his long arm-chair, a cigar between his lips, a
pencil in his hand, a Ruff's Guide on his knee; beside him was a large
green book. There was a festive air about him, very different from his
spasmodic gloom of the other day; and he murmured without rising:
"Halo, old man!--glad to see you. Take a pew. Look here!
Agapemone--which d'you think I ought to put her to--San Diavolo or Ponte
Canet?--not more than four crosses of St. Paul. Goin' to get a real good
one from her this time!"
He, who had never heard these sainted names, answered:
"Oh! Ponte Canet, without doubt. But if you're working I'll come in
another time."
"Lord! no! Have a smoke. I'll just finish lookin' out their blood--and
take a pull."
And so Lennan sat down to watch those researches, wreathed in cigar smoke
and punctuated by muttered expletives. They were as sacred and
absorbing, no doubt, as his own efforts to create in clay; for before
Dromore's inner vision was the perfect racehorse--he, too, was creating.
Here was no mere dodge for making money, but a process hallowed by the
peculiar sensation felt when one rubbed the palms of the hands together,
the sensation that accompanied all creative achievement. Once only
Dromore paused to turn his head and say:
"Bally hard, gettin' a taproot right!"
Real Art! How well an artist knew that desperate search after the point
of balance, the central rivet that must be found before a form would come
to life. . . . And he noted that to-day there was no kitten, no flowers,
no sense at all of an extraneous presence--even the picture was
curtained. Had the girl been just a dream--a fancy conjured up by his
craving after youth?
Then he saw that Dromore had dropped the large green book, and was
standing before the fire.
"Nell took to you the other day. But you always were a lady's man.
Remember the girl at Coaster's?"
Coaster's tea-shop, where he would go every afternoon that he had money,
just for the pleasure of looking shyly at a face. Something beautiful to
look at--nothing more! Johnny Dromore would no better understand that
now than when they were at 'Bambury's.' Not the smallest good even
trying to explain! He looked up at the goggling eyes; he heard the
bantering voice:
"I say--you ARE goin' grey. We're bally old, Lenny! A fellow gets old
when he marries."
And he answered:
"By the way, I never knew that YOU had been."
From Dromore's face the chaffing look went, like a candle-flame blown
out; and a coppery flush spread over it. For some seconds he did not
speak, then, jerking his head towards the picture, he muttered gruffly:
"Never had the chance of marrying, there; Nell's 'outside.'"
A sort of anger leaped in Lennan; why should Dromore speak that word as
if he were ashamed of his own daughter? Just like his sort--none so
hidebound as men-about-town! Flotsam on the tide of other men's
opinions; poor devils adrift, without the one true anchorage of their own
real feelings! And doubtful whether Dromore would be pleased, or think
him gushing, or even distrustful of his morality, he said:
"As for that, it would only make any decent man or woman nicer to her.
When is she going to let me teach her drawing?"
Dromore crossed the room, drew back the curtain of the picture, and in a
muffled voice, said:
"My God, Lenny! Life's unfair. Nell's coming killed her mother. I'd
rather it had been me--bar chaff! Women have no luck."
Lennan got up from his comfortable chair. For, startled out of the past,
the memory of that summer night, when yet another woman had no luck, was
flooding his heart with its black, inextinguishable grief. He said
quietly:
"The past IS past, old man."
Dromore drew the curtain again across the picture, and came back to the
fire. And for a full minute he stared into it.
"What am I to do with Nell? She's growing up."
"What have you done with her so far?"
"She's been at school. In the summer she goes to Ireland--I've got a bit
of an old place there. She'll be eighteen in July. I shall have to
introduce her to women, and all that. It's the devil! How? Who?"
Lennan could only murmur: "My wife, for one."
He took his leave soon after. Johnny Dromore! Bizarre guardian for that
child! Queer life she must have of it, in that bachelor's den,
surrounded by Ruff's Guides! What would become of her? Caught up by some
young spark about town; married to him, no doubt--her father would see
to the thoroughness of that, his standard of respectability was evidently
high! And after--go the way, maybe, of her mother--that poor thing in
the picture with the alluring, desperate face. Well! It was no business
of his!
IV
No business of his! The merest sense of comradeship, then, took him once
more to Dromore's after that disclosure, to prove that the word 'outside'
had no significance save in his friend's own fancy; to assure him again
that Sylvia would be very glad to welcome the child at any time she liked
to come.
When he had told her of that little matter of Nell's birth, she had been
silent a long minute, looking in his face, and then had said: "Poor
child! I wonder if SHE knows! People are so unkind, even nowadays!" He
could not himself think of anyone who would pay attention to such a
thing, except to be kinder to the girl; but in such matters Sylvia was
the better judge, in closer touch with general thought. She met people
that he did not--and of a more normal species.
It was rather late when he got to Dromore's diggings on that third visit.
"Mr. Dromore, sir," the man said--he had one of those strictly
confidential faces bestowed by an all-wise Providence on servants in the
neighbourhood of Piccadilly--"Mr. Dromore, sir, is not in. But he will be
almost sure to be in to dress. Miss Nell is in, sir."
And there she was, sitting at the table, pasting photographs into an
album--lonely young creature in that abode of male middle-age! Lennan
stood, unheard, gazing at the back of her head, with its thick
crinkly-brown hair tied back on her dark-red frock. And, to the
confidential man's soft:
"Mr. Lennan, miss," he added a softer: "May I come in?"
She put her hand into his with intense composure.
"Oh, yes, do! if you don't mind the mess I'm making;" and, with a little
squeeze of the tips of his fingers, added: "Would it bore you to see my
photographs?"
And down they sat together before the photographs--snapshots of people
with guns or fishing-rods, little groups of schoolgirls, kittens, Dromore
and herself on horseback, and several of a young man with a broad,
daring, rather good-looking face. "That's Oliver--Oliver Dromore--Dad's
first cousin once removed. Rather nice, isn't he? Do you like his
expression?"
Lennan did not know. Not her second cousin; her father's first cousin
once removed! And again there leaped in him that unreasoning flame of
indignant pity.
"And how about drawing? You haven't come to be taught yet."
She went almost as red as her frock.
"I thought you were only being polite. I oughtn't to have asked. Of
course, I want to awfully--only I know it'll bore you."
"It won't at all."
She looked up at that. What peculiar languorous eyes they were!
"Shall I come to-morrow, then?"
"Any day you like, between half-past twelve and one."
"Where?"
He took out a card.
"Mark Lennan--yes--I like your name. I liked it the other day. It's
awfully nice!"
What was in a name that she should like him because of it? His fame as a
sculptor--such as it was--could have nothing to do with that, for she
would certainly not know of it. Ah! but there was a lot in a name--for
children. In his childhood what fascination there had been in the words
macaroon, and Spaniard, and Carinola, and Aldebaran, and Mr. McCrae. For
quite a week the whole world had been Mr. McCrae--a most ordinary friend
of Gordy's.
By whatever fascination moved, she talked freely enough now--of her
school; of riding and motoring--she seemed to love going very fast; about
Newmarket--which was 'perfect'; and theatres--plays of the type that
Johnny Dromore might be expected to approve; these together with 'Hamlet'
and 'King Lear' were all she had seen. Never was a girl so untouched by
thought, or Art--yet not stupid, having, seemingly, a certain natural
good taste; only, nothing, evidently, had come her way. How could
it--'Johnny Dromore duce, et auspice Johnny Dromore!' She had been
taken, indeed, to the National Gallery while at school. And Lennan had a
vision of eight or ten young maidens trailing round at the skirts of one
old maiden, admiring Landseer's dogs, giggling faintly at Botticelli's
angels, gaping, rustling, chattering like young birds in a shrubbery.
But with all her surroundings, this child of Johnny Dromoredom was as yet
more innocent than cultured girls of the same age. If those grey,
mesmeric eyes of hers followed him about, they did so frankly,
unconsciously. There was no minx in her, so far.
An hour went by, and Dromore did not come. And the loneliness of this
young creature in her incongruous abode began telling on Lennan's
equanimity.
What did she do in the evenings?
"Sometimes I go to the theatre with Dad, generally I stay at home."
"And then?"
"Oh! I just read, or talk French."
"What? To yourself?"
"Yes, or to Oliver sometimes, when he comes in."
So Oliver came in!
"How long have you known Oliver?"
"Oh! ever since I was a child."
He wanted to say: And how long is that? But managed to refrain, and got
up to go instead. She caught his sleeve and said:
"You're not to go!" Saying that she looked as a dog will, going to bite
in fun, her upper lip shortened above her small white teeth set fast on
her lower lip, and her chin thrust a little forward. A glimpse of a
wilful spirit! But as soon as he had smiled, and murmured:
"Ah! but I must, you see!" she at once regained her manners, only saying
rather mournfully: "You don't call me by my name. Don't you like it?"
"Nell?"
"Yes. It's really Eleanor, of course. DON'T you like it?"
If he had detested the name, he could only have answered: "Very much."
"I'm awfully glad! Good-bye."
When he got out into the street, he felt terribly like a man who, instead
of having had his sleeve touched, has had his heart plucked at. And that
warm, bewildered feeling lasted him all the way home.
Changing for dinner, he looked at himself with unwonted attention. Yes,
his dark hair was still thick, but going distinctly grey; there were very
many lines about his eyes, too, and those eyes, still eager when they
smiled, were particularly deepset, as if life had forced them back. His
cheekbones were almost 'bopsies' now, and his cheeks very thin and dark,
and his jaw looked too set and bony below the almost black moustache.
Altogether a face that life had worn a good deal, with nothing for a
child to take a fancy to and make friends with, that he could see.
Sylvia came in while he was thus taking stock of himself, bringing a
freshly-opened flask of eau-de-Cologne. She was always bringing him
something--never was anyone so sweet in those ways. In that grey,
low-cut frock, her white, still prettiness and pale-gold hair, so little
touched by Time, only just fell short of real beauty for lack of a spice
of depth and of incisiveness, just as her spirit lacked he knew not what
of poignancy. He would not for the world have let her know that he ever
felt that lack. If a man could not hide little rifts in the lute from
one so good and humble and affectionate, he was not fit to live.
She sang 'The Castle of Dromore' again that night with its queer haunting
lilt. And when she had gone up, and he was smoking over the fire, the
girl in her dark-red frock seemed to come, and sit opposite with her eyes
fixed on his, just as she had been sitting while they talked. Dark red
had suited her! Suited the look on her face when she said:
"You're not to go!" Odd, indeed, if she had not some devil in her, with
that parentage!
V
Next day they had summoned him from the studio to see a peculiar
phenomenon--Johnny Dromore, very well groomed, talking to Sylvia with
unnatural suavity, and carefully masking the goggle in his eyes! Mrs.
Lennan ride? Ah! Too busy, of course. Helped Mark with his--er--No!
Really! Read a lot, no doubt? Never had any time for readin'
himself--awful bore not having time to read! And Sylvia listening and
smiling, very still and soft.
What had Dromore come for? To spy out the land, discover why Lennan and
his wife thought nothing of the word 'outside'--whether, in fact, their
household was respectable. . . . A man must always look twice at
'what-d'you-call-ems,' even if they have shared his room at school! . . .
To his credit, of course, to be so careful of his daughter, at the
expense of time owed to the creation of the perfect racehorse! On the
whole he seemed to be coming to the conclusion that they might be useful
to Nell in the uncomfortable time at hand when she would have to go
about; seemed even to be falling under the spell of Sylvia's transparent
goodness--abandoning his habitual vigilance against being scored off in
life's perpetual bet; parting with his armour of chaff. Almost a relief,
indeed, once out of Sylvia's presence, to see that familiar, unholy
curiosity creeping back into his eyes, as though they were hoping against
parental hope to find something--er--amusing somewhere about that
mysterious Mecca of good times--a 'what-d'you-call-it's' studio.
Delicious to watch the conflict between relief and disappointment. Alas!
no model--not even a statue without clothes; nothing but portrait heads,
casts of animals, and such-like sobrieties--absolutely nothing that could
bring a blush to the cheek of the young person, or a glow to the eyes of
a Johnny Dromore.
With what curious silence he walked round and round the group of
sheep-dogs, inquiring into them with that long crinkled nose of his!
With what curious suddenness, he said: "Damned good! You wouldn't do me
one of Nell on horseback?" With what dubious watchfulness he listened to
the answer:
"I might, perhaps, do a statuette of her; if I did, you should have a
cast."
Did he think that in some way he was being outmanoeuvered? For he
remained some seconds in a sort of trance before muttering, as though
clinching a bet:
"Done! And if you want to ride with her to get the hang of it, I can
always mount you."
When he had gone, Lennan remained staring at his unfinished sheep-dogs in
the gathering dusk. Again that sense of irritation at contact with
something strange, hostile, uncomprehending! Why let these Dromores into
his life like this? He shut the studio, and went back to the
drawing-room. Sylvia was sitting on the fender, gazing at the fire, and
she edged along so as to rest against his knees. The light from a candle
on her writing-table was shining on her hair, her cheek, and chin, that
years had so little altered. A pretty picture she made, with just that
candle flame, swaying there, burning slowly, surely down the pale
wax--candle flame, of all lifeless things most living, most like a
spirit, so bland and vague, one would hardly have known it was fire at
all. A drift of wind blew it this way and that: he got up to shut the
window, and as he came back; Sylvia said:
"I like Mr. Dromore. I think he's nicer than he looks."
"He's asked me to make a statuette of his daughter on horseback."
"And will you?"
"I don't know."
"If she's really so pretty, you'd better."
"Pretty's hardly the word--but she's not ordinary."
She turned round, and looked up at him, and instinctively he felt that
something difficult to answer was coming next.
"Mark."
"Yes."
"I wanted to ask you: Are you really happy nowadays?"
"Of course. Why not?"
What else to be said? To speak of those feelings of the last few
months--those feelings so ridiculous to anyone who had them not--would
only disturb her horribly.
And having received her answer, Sylvia turned back to the fire, resting
silently against his knees. . . .
Three days later the sheep-dogs suddenly abandoned the pose into which he
had lured them with such difficulty, and made for the studio door. There
in the street was Nell Dromore, mounted on a narrow little black horse
with a white star, a white hoof, and devilish little goat's ears,
pricked, and very close together at the tips.
"Dad said I had better ride round and show you Magpie. He's not very
good at standing still. Are those your dogs? What darlings!"
She had slipped her knee already from the pummel, and slid down; the
sheep-dogs were instantly on their hind-feet, propping themselves against
her waist. Lennan held the black horse--a bizarre little beast, all fire
and whipcord, with a skin like satin, liquid eyes, very straight hocks,
and a thin bang-tail reaching down to them. The little creature had none
of those commonplace good looks so discouraging to artists.
He had forgotten its rider, till she looked up from the dogs, and said:
"Do you like him? It IS nice of you to be going to do us."
When she had ridden away, looking back until she turned the corner, he
tried to lure the two dogs once more to their pose. But they would sit
no more, going continually to the door, listening and sniffing; and
everything felt disturbed and out of gear.
That same afternoon at Sylvia's suggestion he went with her to call on
the Dromores.
While they were being ushered in he heard a man's voice rather
high-pitched speaking in some language not his own; then the girl:
"No, no, Oliver. 'Dans l'amour il y a toujours un qui aime, et l'autre
qui se laisse aimer.'"
She was sitting in her father's chair, and on the window-sill they saw a
young man lolling, who rose and stood stock-still, with an almost
insolent expression on his broad, good-looking face. Lennan scrutinized
him with interest--about twenty-four he might be, rather dandified,
clean-shaved, with crisp dark hair and wide-set hazel eyes, and, as in
his photograph, a curious look of daring. His voice, when he vouchsafed a
greeting, was rather high and not unpleasant, with a touch of lazy drawl.
They stayed but a few minutes, and going down those dimly lighted stairs
again, Sylvia remarked:
"How prettily she said good-bye--as if she were putting up her face to be
kissed! I think she's lovely. So does that young man. They go well
together."
Rather abruptly Lennan answered:
"Ah! I suppose they do."
VI
She came to them often after that, sometimes alone, twice with Johnny
Dromore, sometimes with young Oliver, who, under Sylvia's spell, soon
lost his stand-off air. And the statuette was begun. Then came Spring in
earnest, and that real business of life--the racing of horses 'on the
flat,' when Johnny Dromore's genius was no longer hampered by the
illegitimate risks of 'jumpin'.' He came to dine with them the day
before the first Newmarket meeting. He had a soft spot for Sylvia,
always saying to Lennan as he went away: "Charmin' woman--your wife!"
She, too, had a soft spot for him, having fathomed the utter helplessness
of this worldling's wisdom, and thinking him pathetic.
After he was gone that evening, she said:
"Ought we to have Nell to stay with us while you're finishing her? She
must be very lonely now her father's so much away."
It was like Sylvia to think of that; but would it be pleasure or vexation
to have in the house this child with her quaint grown-upness, her
confiding ways, and those 'Perdita' eyes? In truth he did not know.
She came to them with touching alacrity--very like a dog, who, left at
home when the family goes for a holiday, takes at once to those who make
much of it.
And she was no trouble, too well accustomed to amuse herself; and always
quaint to watch, with her continual changes from child to woman of the
world. A new sensation, this--of a young creature in the house. Both he
and Sylvia had wanted children, without luck. Twice illness had stood in
the way. Was it, perhaps, just that little lack in her--that lack of
poignancy, which had prevented her from becoming a mother? An only child
herself, she had no nieces or nephews; Cicely's boys had always been at
school, and now were out in the world. Yes, a new sensation, and one in
which Lennan's restless feelings seemed to merge and vanish.
Outside the hours when Nell sat to him, he purposely saw but little of
her, leaving her to nestle under Sylvia's wing; and this she did, as if
she never wanted to come out. Thus he preserved his amusement at her
quaint warmths, and quainter calmness, his aesthetic pleasure in watching
her, whose strange, half-hypnotized, half-hypnotic gaze, had a sort of
dreamy and pathetic lovingness, as if she were brimful of affections that
had no outlet.
Every morning after 'sitting' she would stay an hour bent over her own
drawing, which made practically no progress; and he would often catch her
following his movements with those great eyes of hers, while the
sheep-dogs would lie perfectly still at her feet, blinking horribly--such
was her attraction. His birds also, a jackdaw and an owl, who had the
run of the studio, tolerated her as they tolerated no other female, save
the housekeeper. The jackdaw would perch on her and peck her dress; but
the owl merely engaged her in combats of mesmeric gazing, which never
ended in victory for either.
Now that she was with them, Oliver Dromore began to haunt the house,
coming at all hours, on very transparent excuses. She behaved to him
with extreme capriciousness, sometimes hardly speaking, sometimes
treating him like a brother; and in spite of all his nonchalance, the
poor youth would just sit glowering, or gazing out his adoration,
according to her mood.
One of these July evenings Lennan remembered beyond all others. He had
come, after a hard day's work, out from his studio into the courtyard
garden to smoke a cigarette and feel the sun on his cheek before it sank
behind the wall. A piano-organ far away was grinding out a waltz; and on
an hydrangea tub, under the drawing-room window, he sat down to listen.
Nothing was visible from there, save just the square patch of a quite
blue sky, and one soft plume of smoke from his own kitchen chimney;
nothing audible save that tune, and the never-ending street murmur.
Twice birds flew across--starlings. It was very peaceful, and his
thoughts went floating like the smoke of his cigarette, to meet
who-knew-what other thoughts--for thoughts, no doubt, had little swift
lives of their own; desired, found their mates, and, lightly blending,
sent forth offspring. Why not? All things were possible in this
wonder-house of a world. Even that waltz tune, floating away, would find
some melody to wed, and twine with, and produce a fresh chord that might
float in turn to catch the hum of a gnat or fly, and breed again.
Queer--how everything sought to entwine with something else! On one of
the pinkish blooms of the hydrangea he noted a bee--of all things, in
this hidden-away garden of tiles and gravel and plants in tubs! The
little furry, lonely thing was drowsily clinging there, as if it had
forgotten what it had come for--seduced, maybe, like himself, from labour
by these last rays of the sun. Its wings, close-furled, were glistening;
its eyes seemed closed. And the piano-organ played on, a tune of
yearning, waiting, yearning. . . .
Then, through the window above his head, he heard Oliver Dromore--a voice
one could always tell, pitched high, with its slight drawl--pleading,
very softly at first, then insistent, imperious; and suddenly Nell's
answering voice:
"I won't, Oliver! I won't! I won't!"
He rose to go out of earshot. Then a door slammed, and he saw her at the
window above him, her waist on a level with his head; flushed, with her
grey eyes ominously bright, her full lips parted. And he said:
"What is it, Nell?"
She leaned down and caught his hand; her touch was fiery hot.
"He kissed me! I won't let him--I won't kiss him!"
Through his head went a medley of sayings to soothe children that are
hurt; but he felt unsteady, unlike himself. And suddenly she knelt, and
put her hot forehead against his lips.
It was as if she had really been a little child, wanting the place kissed
to make it well.
VII
After that strange outburst, Lennan considered long whether he should
speak to Oliver. But what could he say, from what standpoint say it,
and--with that feeling? Or should he speak to Dromore? Not very easy to
speak on such a subject to one off whose turf all spiritual matters were
so permanently warned. Nor somehow could he bring himself to tell
Sylvia; it would be like violating a confidence to speak of the child's
outburst and that quivering moment, when she had kneeled and put her hot
forehead to his lips for comfort. Such a disclosure was for Nell herself
to make, if she so wished.
And then young Oliver solved the difficulty by coming to the studio
himself next day. He entered with 'Dromore' composure, very well
groomed, in a silk hat, a cut-away black coat and charming lemon-coloured
gloves; what, indeed, the youth did, besides belonging to the Yeomanry
and hunting all the winter, seemed known only to himself. He made no
excuse for interrupting Lennan, and for some time sat silently smoking
his cigarette, and pulling the ears of the dogs. And Lennan worked on,
waiting. There was always something attractive to him in this young
man's broad, good-looking face, with its crisp dark hair, and
half-insolent good humour, now so clouded.
At last Oliver got up, and went over to the unfinished 'Girl on the
Magpie Horse.' Turning to it so that his face could not be seen, he
said:
"You and Mrs. Lennan have been awfully kind to me; I behaved rather like
a cad yesterday. I thought I'd better tell you. I want to marry Nell,
you know."
Lennan was glad that the young man's face was so religiously averted. He
let his hands come to anchor on what he was working at before he
answered: "She's only a child, Oliver;" and then, watching his fingers
making an inept movement with the clay, was astonished at himself.
"She'll be eighteen this month," he heard Oliver say. "If she once gets
out--amongst people--I don't know what I shall do. Old Johnny's no good
to look after her."
The young man's face was very red; he was forgetting to hide it now.
Then it went white, and he said through clenched teeth: "She sends me
mad! I don't know how not to--If I don't get her, I shall shoot myself.
I shall, you know--I'm that sort. It's her eyes. They draw you right
out of yourself--and leave you--" And from his gloved hand the
smoked-out cigarette-end fell to the floor. "They say her mother was
like that. Poor old Johnny! D'you think I've got a chance, Mr. Lennan?
I don't mean now, this minute; I know she's too young."
Lennan forced himself to answer.
"I dare say, my dear fellow, I dare say. Have you talked with my wife?"
Oliver shook his head.
"She's so good--I don't think she'd quite understand my sort of feeling."
A queer little smile came up on Lennan's lips.
"Ah, well!" he said, "you must give the child time. Perhaps when she
comes back from Ireland, after the summer."
The young man answered moodily:
"Yes. I've got the run of that, you know. And I shan't be able to keep
away." He took up his hat. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come and bored
you about this, but Nell thinks such a lot of you; and, you being
different to most people--I thought you wouldn't mind." He turned again
at the door. "It wasn't gas what I said just now--about not getting her.
Fellows say that sort of thing, but I mean it."
He put on that shining hat and went.
And Lennan stood, staring at the statuette. So! Passion broke down even
the defences of Dromoredom. Passion! Strange hearts it chose to bloom
in!
'Being different to most people--I thought you wouldn't mind'! How had
this youth known that Sylvia would not understand passion so out of hand
as this? And what had made it clear that he (Lennan) would? Was there,
then, something in his face? There must be! Even Johnny Dromore--most
reticent of creatures--had confided to him that one hour of his astute
existence, when the wind had swept him out to sea!
Yes! And that statuette would never be any good, try as he might. Oliver
was right--it was her eyes! How they had smoked--in their childish
anger--if eyes could be said to smoke, and how they had drawn and pleaded
when she put her face to his in her still more childish entreaty! If
they were like this now, what would they be when the woman in her woke?
Just as well not to think of her too much! Just as well to work, and
take heed that he would soon be forty-seven! Just as well that next week
she would be gone to Ireland!
And the last evening before she went they took her to see "Carmen" at the
Opera. He remembered that she wore a nearly high white frock, and a dark
carnation in the ribbon tying her crinkly hair, that still hung loose.
How wonderfully entranced she sat, drunk on that opera that he had seen a
score of times; now touching his arm, now Sylvia's, whispering questions:
"Who's that?" "What's coming now?" The Carmen roused her to adoration,
but Don Jose was 'too fat in his funny little coat,' till, in the
maddened jealousy of the last act, he rose superior. Then, quite lost in
excitement, she clutched Lennan's arm; and her gasp, when Carmen at last
fell dead, made all their neighbours jump. Her emotion was far more
moving than that on the stage; he wanted badly to stroke, and comfort her
and say: "There, there, my dear, it's only make-believe!" And, when it
was over, and the excellent murdered lady and her poor fat little lover
appeared before the curtain, finally forgetting that she was a woman of
the world, she started forward in her seat and clapped, and clapped.
Fortunate that Johnny Dromore was not there to see! But all things
coming to an end, they had to get up and go. And, as they made their way
out to the hall, Lennan felt a hot little finger crooked into his own, as
if she simply must have something to squeeze. He really did not know
what to do with it. She seemed to feel this half-heartedness, soon
letting it go. All the way home in the cab she was silent. With that
same abstraction she ate her sandwiches and drank her lemonade; took
Sylvia's kiss, and, quite a woman of the world once more, begged that
they would not get up to see her off--for she was to go at seven in the
morning, to catch the Irish mail. Then, holding out her hand to Lennan,
she very gravely said:
"Thanks most awfully for taking me to-night. Good-bye!"
He stayed full half an hour at the window, smoking. No street lamp shone
just there, and the night was velvety black above the plane-trees. At
last, with a sigh, he shut up, and went tiptoe-ing upstairs in darkness.
Suddenly in the corridor the white wall seemed to move at him. A warmth,
a fragrance, a sound like a tiny sigh, and something soft was squeezed
into his hand. Then the wall moved back, and he stood listening--no
sound, no anything! But in his dressing-room he looked at the soft thing
in his hand. It was the carnation from her hair. What had possessed the
child to give him that? Carmen! Ah! Carmen! And gazing at the flower,
he held it away from him with a sort of terror; but its scent arose. And
suddenly he thrust it, all fresh as it was, into a candle-flame, and held
it, burning, writhing, till it blackened to velvet. Then his heart smote
him for so cruel a deed. It was still beautiful, but its scent was gone.
And turning to the window he flung it far out into the darkness.
VIII
Now that she was gone, it was curious how little they spoke of her,
considering how long she had been with them. And they had from her but
one letter written to Sylvia, very soon after she left, ending: "Dad
sends his best respects, please; and with my love to you and Mr. Lennan,
and all the beasts.--NELL.
"Oliver is coming here next week. We are going to some races."
It was difficult, of course, to speak of her, with that episode of the
flower, too bizarre to be told--the sort of thing Sylvia would see out of
all proportion--as, indeed, any woman might. Yet--what had it really
been, but the uncontrolled impulse of an emotional child longing to
express feelings kindled by the excitement of that opera? What but a
child's feathery warmth, one of those flying peeps at the mystery of
passion that young things take? He could not give away that pretty
foolishness. And because he would not give it away, he was more than
usually affectionate to Sylvia.
They had made no holiday plans, and he eagerly fell in with her
suggestion that they should go down to Hayle. There, if anywhere, this
curious restlessness would leave him. They had not been down to the old
place for many years; indeed, since Gordy's death it was generally let.
They left London late in August. The day was closing in when they
arrived. Honeysuckle had long been improved away from that station
paling, against which he had stood twenty-nine years ago, watching the
train carrying Anna Stormer away. In the hired fly Sylvia pressed close
to him, and held his hand beneath the ancient dust-rug. Both felt the
same excitement at seeing again this old home. Not a single soul of the
past days would be there now--only the house and the trees, the owls and
the stars; the river, park, and logan stone! It was dark when they
arrived; just their bedroom and two sitting-rooms had been made ready,
with fires burning, though it was still high summer. The same old
execrable Heatherleys looked down from the black oak panellings. The
same scent of apples and old mice clung here and there about the dark
corridors with their unexpected stairways. It was all curiously
unchanged, as old houses are when they are let furnished.
Once in the night he woke. Through the wide-open, uncurtained windows
the night was simply alive with stars, such swarms of them swinging and
trembling up there; and, far away, rose the melancholy, velvet-soft
hooting of an owl.
Sylvia's voice, close to him, said:
"Mark, that night when your star caught in my hair? Do you remember?"
Yes, he remembered. And in his drowsy mind just roused from dreams,
there turned and turned the queer nonsensical refrain: "I
never--never--will desert Mr. Micawber. . . ."
A pleasant month that--of reading, and walking with the dogs the country
round, of lying out long hours amongst the boulders or along the river
banks, watching beasts and birds.
The little old green-house temple of his early masterpieces was still
extant, used now to protect watering pots. But no vestige of impulse
towards work came to him down there. He was marking time; not restless,
not bored, just waiting--but for what, he had no notion. And Sylvia, at
any rate, was happy, blooming in these old haunts, losing her fairness in
the sun; even taking again to a sunbonnet, which made her look
extraordinarily young. The trout that poor old Gordy had so harried were
left undisturbed. No gun was fired; rabbits, pigeons, even the few
partridges enjoyed those first days of autumn unmolested. The bracken
and leaves turned very early, so that the park in the hazy September
sunlight had an almost golden hue. A gentle mellowness reigned over all
that holiday. And from Ireland came no further news, save one picture
postcard with the words: "This is our house.--NELL."
In the last week of September they went back to London. And at once
there began in him again that restless, unreasonable aching--that sense
of being drawn away out of himself; so that he once more took to walking
the Park for hours, over grass already strewn with leaves, always
looking--craving--and for what?
At Dromore's the confidential man did not know when his master would be
back; he had gone to Scotland with Miss Nell after the St. Leger. Was
Lennan disappointed? Not so--relieved, rather. But his ache was there
all the time, feeding on its secrecy and loneliness, unmentionable
feeling that it was. Why had he not realized long ago that youth was
over, passion done with, autumn upon him? How never grasped the fact
that 'Time steals away'? And, as before, the only refuge was in work.
The sheep--dogs and 'The Girl on the Magpie Horse' were finished. He
began a fantastic 'relief'--a nymph peering from behind a rock, and a
wild-eyed man creeping, through reeds, towards her. If he could put into
the nymph's face something of this lure of Youth and Life and Love that
was dragging at him, into the man's face the state of his own heart, it
might lay that feeling to rest. Anything to get it out of himself! And
he worked furiously, laboriously, all October, making no great progress.
. . . What could he expect when Life was all the time knocking with that
muffled tapping at his door?
It was on the Tuesday, after the close of the last Newmarket meeting, and
just getting dusk, when Life opened the door and walked in. She wore a
dark-red dress, a new one, and surely her face--her figure--were very
different from what he had remembered! They had quickened and become
poignant. She was no longer a child--that was at once plain. Cheeks,
mouth, neck, waist--all seemed fined, shaped; the crinkly, light-brown
hair was coiled up now under a velvet cap; only the great grey eyes
seemed quite the same. And at sight of her his heart gave a sort of dive
and flight, as if all its vague and wistful sensations had found their
goal.
Then, in sudden agitation, he realized that his last moment with this
girl--now a child no longer--had been a secret moment of warmth and of
emotion; a moment which to her might have meant, in her might have bred,
feelings that he had no inkling of. He tried to ignore that fighting and
diving of his heart, held out his hand, and murmured:
"Ah, Nell! Back at last! You've grown." Then, with a sensation of
every limb gone weak, he felt her arms round his neck, and herself
pressed against him. There was time for the thought to flash through
him: This is terrible! He gave her a little convulsive squeeze--could a
man do less?--then just managed to push her gently away, trying with all
his might to think: She's a child! It's nothing more than after Carmen!
She doesn't know what I am feeling! But he was conscious of a mad desire
to clutch her to him. The touch of her had demolished all his vagueness,
made things only too plain, set him on fire.
He said uncertainly:
"Come to the fire, my child, and tell me all about it."
If he did not keep to the notion that she was just a child, his head
would go. Perdita--'the lost one'! A good name for her, indeed, as she
stood there, her eyes shining in the firelight--more mesmeric than ever
they had been! And, to get away from the lure of those eyes, he bent
down and raked the grate, saying:
"Have you seen Sylvia?" But he knew that she had not, even before she
gave that impatient shrug. Then he pulled himself together, and said:
"What has happened to you, child?"
"I'm not a child."
"No, we've both grown older. I was forty-seven the other day."
She caught his hand--Heavens! how supple she was!--and murmured:
"You're not old a bit; you're quite young." At his wits' end, with his
heart thumping, but still keeping his eyes away from her, he said:
"Where is Oliver?"
She dropped his hand at that.
"Oliver? I hate him!"
Afraid to trust himself near her, he had begun walking up and down. And
she stood, following him with her gaze--the firelight playing on her red
frock. What extraordinary stillness! What power she had developed in
these few months! Had he let her see that he felt that power? And had
all this come of one little moment in a dark corridor, of one flower
pressed into his hand? Why had he not spoken to her roughly then--told
her she was a romantic little fool? God knew what thoughts she had been
feeding on! But who could have supposed--who dreamed--? And again he
fixed his mind resolutely on that thought: She's a child--only a child!
"Come!" he said: "tell me all about your time in Ireland?"
"Oh! it was just dull--it's all been dull away from you."
It came out without hesitancy or shame, and he could only murmur:
"Ah! you've missed your drawing!"
"Yes. Can I come to-morrow?"
That was the moment to have said: No! You are a foolish child, and I an
elderly idiot! But he had neither courage nor clearness of mind enough;
nor--the desire. And, without answering, he went towards the door to
turn up the light.
"Oh, no! please don't! It's so nice like this!"
The shadowy room, the bluish dusk painted on all the windows, the fitful
shining of the fire, the pallor and darkness of the dim casts and
bronzes, and that one glowing figure there before the hearth! And her
voice, a little piteous, went on:
"Aren't you glad I'm back? I can't see you properly out there."
He went back into the glow, and she gave a little sigh of satisfaction.
Then her calm young voice said, ever so distinctly:
"Oliver wants me to marry him, and I won't, of course."
He dared not say: Why not? He dared not say anything. It was too
dangerous. And then followed those amazing words: "You know why, don't
you? Of course you do."
It was ridiculous, almost shameful to understand their meaning. And he
stood, staring in front of him, without a word; humility, dismay, pride,
and a sort of mad exultation, all mixed and seething within him in the
queerest pudding of emotion. But all he said was:
"Come, my child; we're neither of us quite ourselves to-night. Let's go
to the drawing-room."
IX
Back in the darkness and solitude of the studio, when she was gone, he
sat down before the fire, his senses in a whirl. Why was he not just an
ordinary animal of a man that could enjoy what the gods had sent? It was
as if on a November day someone had pulled aside the sober curtains of
the sky and there in a chink had been April standing--thick white
blossom, a purple cloud, a rainbow, grass vivid green, light flaring from
one knew not where, and such a tingling passion of life on it all as made
the heart stand still! This, then, was the marvellous, enchanting,
maddening end of all that year of restlessness and wanting! This bit of
Spring suddenly given to him in the midst of Autumn. Her lips, her eyes,
her hair; her touching confidence; above all--quite unbelievable--her
love. Not really love perhaps, just childish fancy. But on the wings of
fancy this child would fly far, too far--all wistfulness and warmth
beneath that light veneer of absurd composure.
To live again--to plunge back into youth and beauty--to feel Spring once
more--to lose the sense of all being over, save just the sober jogtrot of
domestic bliss; to know, actually to know, ecstasy again, in the love of
a girl; to rediscover all that youth yearns for, and feels, and hopes,
and dreads, and loves. It was a prospect to turn the head even of a
decent man. . . .
By just closing his eyes he could see her standing there with the
firelight glow on her red frock; could feel again that marvellous thrill
when she pressed herself against him in the half-innocent, seducing
moment when she first came in; could feel again her eyes drawing--drawing
him! She was a witch, a grey-eyed, brown-haired witch--even unto her
love of red. She had the witch's power of lighting fever in the veins.
And he simply wondered at himself, that he had not, as she stood there in
the firelight, knelt, and put his arms round her and pressed his face
against her waist. Why had he not? But he did not want to think; the
moment thought began he knew he must be torn this way and that, tossed
here and there between reason and desire, pity and passion. Every sense
struggled to keep him wrapped in the warmth and intoxication of this
discovery that he, in the full of Autumn, had awakened love in Spring.
It was amazing that she could have this feeling; yet there was no
mistake. Her manner to Sylvia just now had been almost dangerously
changed; there had been a queer cold impatience in her look, frightening
from one who but three months ago had been so affectionate. And, going
away, she had whispered, with that old trembling-up at him, as if
offering to be kissed: "I may come, mayn't I? And don't be angry with
me, please; I can't help it." A monstrous thing at his age to let a
young girl love him--compromise her future! A monstrous thing by all the
canons of virtue and gentility! And yet--what future?--with that
nature--those eyes--that origin--with that father, and that home? But
he would not--simply must not think!
Nevertheless, he showed the signs of thought, and badly; for after dinner
Sylvia, putting her hand on his forehead, said:
"You're working too hard, Mark. You don't go out enough."
He held those fingers fast. Sylvia! No, indeed he must not think! But
he took advantage of her words, and said that he would go out and get
some air.
He walked at a great pace--to keep thought away--till he reached the
river close to Westminster, and, moved by sudden impulse, seeking perhaps
an antidote, turned down into that little street under the big Wren
church, where he had never been since the summer night when he lost what
was then more to him than life. There SHE had lived; there was the
house--those windows which he had stolen past and gazed at with such
distress and longing. Who lived there now? Once more he seemed to see
that face out of the past, the dark hair, and dark soft eyes, and sweet
gravity; and it did not reproach him. For this new feeling was not a
love like that had been. Only once could a man feel the love that passed
all things, the love before which the world was but a spark in a draught
of wind; the love that, whatever dishonour, grief, and unrest it might
come through, alone had in it the heart of peace and joy and honour.
Fate had torn that love from him, nipped it off as a sharp wind nips off
a perfect flower. This new feeling was but a fever, a passionate fancy,
a grasping once more at Youth and Warmth. Ah, well! but it was real
enough! And, in one of those moments when a man stands outside himself,
seems to be lifted away and see his own life twirling, Lennan had a
vision of a shadow driven here and there; a straw going round and round;
a midge in the grip of a mad wind. Where was the home of this mighty
secret feeling that sprang so suddenly out of the dark, and caught you by
the throat? Why did it come now and not then, for this one and not that
other? What did man know of it, save that it made him spin and
hover--like a moth intoxicated by a light, or a bee by some dark sweet
flower; save that it made of him a distraught, humble, eager puppet of
its fancy? Had it not once already driven him even to the edge of death;
and must it now come on him again with its sweet madness, its drugging
scent? What was it? Why was it? Why these passionate obsessions that
could not decently be satisfied? Had civilization so outstripped man
that his nature was cramped into shoes too small--like the feet of a
Chinese woman? What was it? Why was it?
And faster than ever he walked away.
Pall Mall brought him back to that counterfeit presentment of the
real--reality. There, in St. James's Street, was Johnny Dromore's Club;
and, again moved by impulse, he pushed open its swing door. No need to
ask; for there was Dromore in the hall, on his way from dinner to the
card-room. The glossy tan of hard exercise and good living lay on his
cheeks as thick as clouted cream. His eyes had the peculiar shine of
superabundant vigour; a certain sub-festive air in face and voice and
movements suggested that he was going to make a night of it. And the
sardonic thought flashed through Lennan: Shall I tell him?
"Hallo, old chap! Awfully glad to see you! What you doin' with
yourself? Workin' hard? How's your wife? You been away? Been doin'
anything great?" And then the question that would have given him his
chance, if he had liked to be so cruel:
"Seen Nell?"
"Yes, she came round this afternoon."
"What d'you think of her? Comin' on nicely, isn't she?"
That old query, half furtive and half proud, as much as to say: 'I know
she's not in the stud-book, but, d--n it, I sired her!' And then the old
sudden gloom, which lasted but a second, and gave way again to chaff.
Lennan stayed very few minutes. Never had he felt farther from his old
school-chum.
No. Whatever happened, Johnny Dromore must be left out. It was a
position he had earned with his goggling eyes, and his astute philosophy;
from it he should not be disturbed.
He passed along the railings of the Green Park. On the cold air of this
last October night a thin haze hung, and the acrid fragrance from little
bonfires of fallen leaves. What was there about that scent of
burned-leaf smoke that had always moved him so? Symbol of parting!--that
most mournful thing in all the world. For what would even death be, but
for parting? Sweet, long sleep, or new adventure. But, if a man loved
others--to leave them, or be left! Ah! and it was not death only that
brought partings!
He came to the opening of the street where Dromore lived. She would be
there, sitting by the fire in the big chair, playing with her kitten,
thinking, dreaming, and--alone! He passed on at such a pace that people
stared; till, turning the last corner for home, he ran almost into the
arms of Oliver Dromore.
The young man was walking with unaccustomed indecision, his fur coat
open, his opera-hat pushed up on his crisp hair. Dark under the eyes, he
had not the proper gloss of a Dromore at this season of the year.
"Mr. Lennan! I've just been round to you."
And Lennan answered dazedly:
"Will you come in, or shall I walk your way a bit?"
"I'd rather--out here, if you don't mind."
So in silence they went back into the Square. And Oliver said:
"Let's get over by the rails."
They crossed to the railings of the Square's dark garden, where nobody
was passing. And with every step Lennan's humiliation grew. There was
something false and undignified in walking with this young man who had
once treated him as a father confessor to his love for Nell. And
suddenly he perceived that they had made a complete circuit of the Square
garden without speaking a single word.
"Yes?" he said.
Oliver turned his face away.
"You remember what I told you in the summer. Well, it's worse now. I've
been going a mucker lately in all sorts of ways to try and get rid of it.
But it's all no good. She's got me!"
And Lennan thought: You're not alone in that! But he kept silence. His
chief dread was of saying something that he would remember afterwards as
the words of Judas.
Then Oliver suddenly burst out:
"Why can't she care? I suppose I'm nothing much, but she's known me all
her life, and she used to like me. There's something--I can't make out.
Could you do anything for me with her?"
Lennan pointed across the street.
"In every other one of those houses, Oliver," he said, "there's probably
some creature who can't make out why another creature doesn't care.
Passion comes when it will, goes when it will; and we poor devils have no
say in it."
"What do you advise me, then?"
Lennan had an almost overwhelming impulse to turn on his heel and leave
the young man standing there. But he forced himself to look at his face,
which even then had its attraction--perhaps more so than ever, so pallid
and desperate it was. And he said slowly, staring mentally at every
word:
"I'm not up to giving you advice. The only thing I might say is: One
does not press oneself where one isn't wanted; all the same--who knows?
So long as she feels you're there, waiting, she might turn to you at any
moment. The more chivalrous you are, Oliver, the more patiently you
wait, the better chance you have."
Oliver took those words of little comfort without flinching. "I see," he
said. "Thanks! But, my God! it's hard. I never could wait." And with
that epigram on himself, holding out his hand, he turned away.
Lennan went slowly home, trying to gauge exactly how anyone who knew all
would judge him. It was a little difficult in this affair to keep a
shred of dignity.
Sylvia had not gone up, and he saw her looking at him anxiously. The one
strange comfort in all this was that his feeling for her, at any rate,
had not changed. It seemed even to have deepened--to be more real to
him.
How could he help staying awake that night? How could he help thinking,
then? And long time he lay, staring at the dark.
As if thinking were any good for fever in the veins!
X
Passion never plays the game. It, at all events, is free from
self-consciousness, and pride; from dignity, nerves, scruples, cant,
moralities; from hypocrisies, and wisdom, and fears for pocket, and
position in this world and the next. Well did the old painters limn it
as an arrow or a wind! If it had not been as swift and darting, Earth
must long ago have drifted through space untenanted--to let. . . .
After that fevered night Lennan went to his studio at the usual hour and
naturally did not do a stroke of work. He was even obliged to send away
his model. The fellow had been his hairdresser, but, getting ill, and
falling on dark days, one morning had come to the studio, to ask with
manifest shame if his head were any good. After having tested his
capacity for standing still, and giving him some introductions, Lennan
had noted him down: "Five feet nine, good hair, lean face, something
tortured and pathetic. Give him a turn if possible." The turn had come,
and the poor man was posing in a painful attitude, talking, whenever
permitted, of the way things had treated him, and the delights of cutting
hair. This morning he took his departure with the simple pleasure of one
fully paid for services not rendered.
And so, walking up and down, up and down, the sculptor waited for Nell's
knock. What would happen now? Thinking had made nothing clear. Here
was offered what every warm-blooded man whose Spring is past
desires--youth and beauty, and in that youth a renewal of his own; what
all men save hypocrites and Englishmen would even admit that they
desired. And it was offered to one who had neither religious nor moral
scruples, as they are commonly understood. In theory he could accept.
In practice he did not as yet know what he could do. One thing only he
had discovered during the night's reflections: That those who scouted
belief in the principle of Liberty made no greater mistake than to
suppose that Liberty was dangerous because it made a man a libertine. To
those with any decency, the creed of Freedom was--of all--the most
enchaining. Easy enough to break chains imposed by others, fling his cap
over the windmill, and cry for the moment at least: I am unfettered,
free! Hard, indeed, to say the same to his own unfettered Self! Yes, his
own Self was in the judgment-seat; by his own verdict and decision he
must abide. And though he ached for the sight of her, and his will
seemed paralyzed--many times already he had thought: It won't do! God
help me!
Then twelve o'clock had come, and she had not. Would 'The Girl on the
Magpie Horse' be all he would see of her to-day--that unsatisfying work,
so cold, and devoid of witchery? Better have tried to paint her--with a
red flower in her hair, a pout on her lips, and her eyes fey, or
languorous. Goya could have painted her!
And then, just as he had given her up, she came.
After taking one look at his face, she slipped in ever so quietly, like a
very good child. . . . Marvellous the instinct and finesse of the young
when they are women! . . . Not a vestige in her of yesterday's seductive
power; not a sign that there had been a yesterday at all--just confiding,
like a daughter. Sitting there, telling him about Ireland, showing him
the little batch of drawings she had done while she was away. Had she
brought them because she knew they would make him feel sorry for her?
What could have been less dangerous, more appealing to the protective and
paternal side of him than she was that morning; as if she only wanted
what her father and her home could not give her--only wanted to be a sort
of daughter to him!
She went away demurely, as she had come, refusing to stay to lunch,
manifestly avoiding Sylvia. Only then he realized that she must have
taken alarm from the look of strain on his face, been afraid that he
would send her away; only then perceived that, with her appeal to his
protection, she had been binding him closer, making it harder for him to
break away and hurt her. And the fevered aching began again--worse than
ever--the moment he lost sight of her. And more than ever he felt in the
grip of something beyond his power to fight against; something that,
however he swerved, and backed, and broke away, would close in on him,
find means to bind him again hand and foot.
In the afternoon Dromore's confidential man brought him a note. The
fellow, with his cast-down eyes, and his well-parted hair, seemed to
Lennan to be saying: "Yes, sir--it is quite natural that you should take
the note out of eyeshot, sir--BUT I KNOW; fortunately, there is no
necessity for alarm--I am strictly confidential."
And this was what the note contained:
"You promised to ride with me once--you DID promise, and you never have.
Do please ride with me to-morrow; then you will get what you want for the
statuette instead of being so cross with it. You can have Dad's
horse--he has gone to Newmarket again, and I'm so lonely.
Please--to-morrow, at half-past two--starting from here.--NELL."
To hesitate in view of those confidential eyes was not possible; it must
be 'Yes' or 'No'; and if 'No,' it would only mean that she would come in
the morning instead. So he said:
"Just say 'All right!'"
"Very good, sir." Then from the door: "Mr. Dromore will be away till
Saturday, sir."
Now, why had the fellow said that? Curious how this desperate secret
feeling of his own made him see sinister meaning in this servant, in
Oliver's visit of last night--in everything. It was vile--this
suspiciousness! He could feel, almost see, himself deteriorating
already, with this furtive feeling in his soul. It would soon be written
on his face! But what was the use of troubling? What would come,
would--one way or the other.
And suddenly he remembered with a shock that it was the first of
November--Sylvia's birthday! He had never before forgotten it. In the
disturbance of that discovery he was very near to going and pouring out
to her the whole story of his feelings. A charming birthday present,
that would make! Taking his hat, instead, he dashed round to the nearest
flower shop. A Frenchwoman kept it.
What had she?
What did Monsieur desire? "Des oeillets rouges? J'en ai de bien beaux
ce soir."
No--not those. White flowers!
"Une belle azalee?"
Yes, that would do--to be sent at once--at once!
Next door was a jeweller's. He had never really known if Sylvia cared
for jewels, since one day he happened to remark that they were vulgar.
And feeling that he had fallen low indeed, to be trying to atone with
some miserable gewgaw for never having thought of her all day, because he
had been thinking of another, he went in and bought the only ornament
whose ingredients did not make his gorge rise, two small pear-shaped
black pearls, one at each end of a fine platinum chain. Coming out with
it, he noticed over the street, in a clear sky fast deepening to indigo,
the thinnest slip of a new moon, like a bright swallow, with wings bent
back, flying towards the ground. That meant--fine weather! If it could
only be fine weather in his heart! And in order that the azalea might
arrive first, he walked up and down the Square which he and Oliver had
patrolled the night before.
When he went in, Sylvia was just placing the white azalea in the window
of the drawing-room; and stealing up behind her he clasped the little
necklet round her throat. She turned round and clung to him. He could
feel that she was greatly moved. And remorse stirred and stirred in him
that he was betraying her with his kiss.
But, even while he kissed her, he was hardening his heart.
XI
Next day, still following the lead of her words about fresh air and his
tired look, he told her that he was going to ride, and did not say with
whom. After applauding his resolution, she was silent for a little--then
asked:
"Why don't you ride with Nell?"
He had already so lost his dignity, that he hardly felt disgraced in
answering:
"It might bore her!"
"Oh, no; it wouldn't bore her."
Had she meant anything by that? And feeling as if he were fencing with
his own soul, he said:
"Very well, I will."
He had perceived suddenly that he did not know his wife, having always
till now believed that it was she who did not quite know him.
If she had not been out at lunch-time, he would have lunched out
himself--afraid of his own face. For feverishness in sick persons mounts
steadily with the approach of a certain hour. And surely his face, to
anyone who could have seen him being conveyed to Piccadilly, would have
suggested a fevered invalid rather than a healthy, middle-aged sculptor
in a cab.
The horses were before the door--the little magpie horse, and a
thoroughbred bay mare, weeded from Dromore's racing stable. Nell, too,
was standing ready, her cheeks very pink, and her eyes very bright. She
did not wait for him to mount her, but took the aid of the confidential
man. What was it that made her look so perfect on that little
horse--shape of limb, or something soft and fiery in her spirit that the
little creature knew of?
They started in silence, but as soon as the sound of hoofs died on the
tan of Rotten Row, she turned to him.
"It was lovely of you to come! I thought you'd be afraid--you ARE afraid
of me."
And Lennan thought: You're right!
"But please don't look like yesterday. To-day's too heavenly. Oh! I
love beautiful days, and I love riding, and--" She broke off and looked
at him. 'Why can't you just be nice to me'--she seemed to be
saying--'and love me as you ought!' That was her power--the conviction
that he did, and ought to love her; that she ought to and did love him.
How simple!
But riding, too, is a simple passion; and simple passions distract each
other. It was a treat to be on that bay mare. Who so to be trusted to
ride the best as Johnny Dromore?
At the far end of the Row she cried out: "Let's go on to Richmond now,"
and trotted off into the road, as if she knew she could do with him what
she wished. And, following meekly, he asked himself: Why? What was
there in her to make up to him for all that he was losing--his power of
work, his dignity, his self-respect? What was there? Just those eyes,
and lips, and hair?
And as if she knew what he was thinking, she looked round and smiled.
So they jogged on over the Bridge and across Barnes Common into Richmond
Park.
But the moment they touched turf, with one look back at him, she was off.
Had she all the time meant to give him this breakneck chase--or had the
loveliness of that Autumn day gone to her head--blue sky and coppery
flames of bracken in the sun, and the beech leaves and the oak leaves;
pure Highland colouring come South for once.
When in the first burst he had tested the mare's wind, this chase of her,
indeed, was sheer delight. Through glades, over fallen tree-trunks, in
bracken up to the hocks, out across the open, past a herd of amazed and
solemn deer, over rotten ground all rabbit-burrows, till just as he
thought he was up to her, she slipped away by a quick turn round trees.
Mischief incarnate, but something deeper than mischief, too! He came up
with her at last, and leaned over to seize her rein. With a cut of her
whip that missed his hand by a bare inch, and a wrench, she made him
shoot past, wheeled in her tracks, and was off again like an arrow, back
amongst the trees--lying right forward under the boughs, along the neck
of her little horse. Then out from amongst the trees she shot downhill.
Right down she went, full tilt, and after her went Lennan, lying back,
and expecting the bay mare to come down at every stride. This was her
idea of fun! She switched round at the bottom and went galloping along
the foot of the hill; and he thought: Now I've got her! She could not
break back up that hill, and there was no other cover for fully half a
mile.
Then he saw, not thirty yards in front, an old sandpit; and Great God!
she was going straight at it! And shouting frantically, he reined his
mare outwards. But she only raised her whip, cut the magpie horse over
the flank, and rode right on. He saw that little demon gather its feet
and spring--down, down, saw him pitch, struggle, sink--and she, flung
forward, roll over and lie on her back. He felt nothing at the moment,
only had that fixed vision of a yellow patch of sand, the blue sky, a
rook flying, and her face upturned. But when he came on her she was on
her feet, holding the bridle of her dazed horse. No sooner did he touch
her, than she sank down. Her eyes were closed, but he could feel that
she had not fainted; and he just held her, and kept pressing his lips to
her eyes and forehead. Suddenly she let her head fall back, and her lips
met his. Then opening her eyes, she said: "I'm not hurt, only--funny.
Has Magpie cut his knees?"
Not quite knowing what he did, he got up to look. The little horse was
cropping at some grass, unharmed--the sand and fern had saved his knees.
And the languid voice behind him said: "It's all right--you can leave
the horses. They'll come when I call."
Now that he knew she was unhurt, he felt angry. Why had she behaved in
this mad way--given him this fearful shock? But in that same languid
voice she went on: "Don't be cross with me. I thought at first I'd pull
up, but then I thought: 'If I jump he can't help being nice'--so I
did--Don't leave off loving me because I'm not hurt, please."
Terribly moved, he sat down beside her, took her hands in his, and said:
"Nell! Nell! it's all wrong--it's madness!"
"Why? Don't think about it! I don't want you to think--only to love
me."
"My child, you don't know what love is!"
For answer she only flung her arms round his neck; then, since he held
back from kissing her, let them fall again, and jumped up.
"Very well. But I love you. You can think of THAT--you can't prevent
me!" And without waiting for help, she mounted the magpie horse from the
sand-heap where they had fallen.
Very sober that ride home! The horses, as if ashamed of their mad chase,
were edging close to each other, so that now and then his arm would touch
her shoulder. He asked her once what she had felt while she was jumping.
"Only to be sure my foot was free. It was rather horrid coming down,
thinking of Magpie's knees;" and touching the little horse's goat-like
ears, she added softly: "Poor dear! He'll be stiff to-morrow."
She was again only the confiding, rather drowsy, child. Or was it that
the fierceness of those past moments had killed his power of feeling? An
almost dreamy hour--with the sun going down, the lamps being lighted one
by one--and a sort of sweet oblivion over everything!
At the door, where the groom was waiting, Lennan would have said
good-bye, but she whispered: "Oh, no, please! I AM tired now--you might
help me up a little."
And so, half carrying her, he mounted past the Vanity Fair cartoons, and
through the corridor with the red paper and the Van Beers' drawings, into
the room where he had first seen her.
Once settled back in Dromore's great chair, with the purring kitten
curled up on her neck, she murmured:
"Isn't it nice? You can make tea; and we'll have hot buttered toast."
And so Lennan stayed, while the confidential man brought tea and toast;
and, never once looking at them, seemed to know all that had passed, all
that might be to come.
Then they were alone again, and, gazing down at her stretched out in that
great chair, Lennan thought:
"Thank God that I'm tired too--body and soul!"
But suddenly she looked up at him, and pointing to the picture that
to-day had no curtain drawn, said:
"Do you think I'm like her? I made Oliver tell me about--myself this
summer. That's why you needn't bother. It doesn't matter what happens
to me, you see. And I don't care--because you can love me, without
feeling bad about it. And you will, won't you?"
Then, with her eyes still on his face, she went on quickly:
"Only we won't talk about that now, will we? It's too cosy. I AM nice
and tired. Do smoke!"
But Lennan's fingers trembled so that he could hardly light that
cigarette. And, watching them, she said: "Please give me one. Dad
doesn't like my smoking."
The virtue of Johnny Dromore! Yes! It would always be by proxy! And he
muttered:
"How do you think he would like to know about this afternoon, Nell?"
"I don't care." Then peering up through the kitten's fur she murmured:
"Oliver wants me to go to a dance on Saturday--it's for a charity. Shall
I?"
"Of course; why not?"
"Will YOU come?"
"I?"
"Oh, do! You must! It's my very first, you know. I've got an extra
ticket."
And against his will, his judgment--everything, Lennan answered: "Yes."
She clapped her hands, and the kitten crawled down to her knees.
When he got up to go, she did not move, but just looked up at him; and
how he got away he did not know.
Stopping his cab a little short of home, he ran, for he felt cold and
stiff, and letting himself in with his latch-key, went straight to the
drawing-room. The door was ajar, and Sylvia standing at the window. He
heard her sigh; and his heart smote him. Very still, and slender, and
lonely she looked out there, with the light shining on her fair hair so
that it seemed almost white. Then she turned and saw him. He noticed
her throat working with the effort she made not to show him anything, and
he said:
"Surely you haven't been anxious! Nell had a bit of a fall--jumping
into a sandpit. She's quite mad sometimes. I stayed to tea with
her--just to make sure she wasn't really hurt." But as he spoke he
loathed himself; his voice sounded so false.
She only answered: "It's all right, dear," but he saw that she kept her
eyes--those blue, too true eyes--averted, even when she kissed him.
And so began another evening and night and morning of fever, subterfuge,
wariness, aching. A round of half-ecstatic torment, out of which he
seemed no more able to break than a man can break through the walls of a
cell. . . .
Though it live but a day in the sun, though it drown in tenebrous night,
the dark flower of passion will have its hour. . . .
XII
To deceive undoubtedly requires a course of training. And, unversed in
this art, Lennan was fast finding it intolerable to scheme and watch
himself, and mislead one who had looked up to him ever since they were
children. Yet, all the time, he had a feeling that, since he alone knew
all the circumstances of his case, he alone was entitled to blame or to
excuse himself. The glib judgments that moralists would pass upon his
conduct could be nothing but the imbecilities of smug and pharisaic
fools--of those not under this drugging spell--of such as had not blood
enough, perhaps, ever to fall beneath it!
The day after the ride Nell had not come, and he had no word from her.
Was she, then, hurt, after all? She had lain back very inertly in that
chair! And Sylvia never asked if he knew how the girl was after her
fall, nor offered to send round to inquire. Did she not wish to speak of
her, or had she simply--not believed? When there was so much he could not
talk of it seemed hard that just what happened to be true should be
distrusted. She had not yet, indeed, by a single word suggested that she
felt he was deceiving her, but at heart he knew that she was not
deceived. . . . Those feelers of a woman who loves--can anything check
their delicate apprehension? . . .
Towards evening, the longing to see the girl--a sensation as if she were
calling him to come to her--became almost insupportable; yet, whatever
excuse he gave, he felt that Sylvia would know where he was going. He
sat on one side of the fire, she on the other, and they both read books;
the only strange thing about their reading was, that neither of them ever
turned a leaf. It was 'Don Quixote' he read, the page which had these
words: "Let Altisidora weep or sing, still I am Dulcinea's and hers
alone, dead or alive, dutiful and unchanged, in spite of all the
necromantic powers in the world." And so the evening passed. When she
went up to bed, he was very near to stealing out, driving up to the
Dromores' door, and inquiring of the confidential man; but the thought of
the confounded fellow's eyes was too much for him, and he held out. He
took up Sylvia's book, De Maupassant's 'Fort comme la mort'--open at the
page where the poor woman finds that her lover has passed away from her
to her own daughter. And as he read, the tears rolled down his cheek.
Sylvia! Sylvia! Were not his old favourite words from that old
favourite book still true? "Dulcinea del Toboso is the most beautiful
woman in the world, and I the most unfortunate knight upon the earth. It
were unjust that such perfection should suffer through my weakness. No,
pierce my body with your lance, knight, and let my life expire with my
honour. . . ." Why could he not wrench this feeling from his heart,
banish this girl from his eyes? Why could he not be wholly true to her
who was and always had been wholly true to him? Horrible--this
will-less, nerveless feeling, this paralysis, as if he were a puppet
moved by a cruel hand. And, as once before, it seemed to him that the
girl was sitting there in Sylvia's chair in her dark red frock, with her
eyes fixed on him. Uncannily vivid--that impression! . . . A man could
not go on long with his head in Chancery like this, without becoming
crazed!
It was growing dusk on Saturday afternoon when he gave up that
intolerable waiting and opened the studio door to go to Nell. It was now
just two days since he had seen or heard of her. She had spoken of a
dance for that very night--of his going to it. She MUST be ill!
But he had not taken six steps when he saw her coming. She had on a grey
furry scarf, hiding her mouth, making her look much older. The moment the
door was shut she threw it off, went to the hearth, drew up a little
stool, and, holding her hands out to the fire, said:
"Have you thought about me? Have you thought enough now?"
And he answered: "Yes, I've thought, but I'm no nearer."
"Why? Nobody need ever know you love me. And if they did, I wouldn't
care."
Simple! How simple! Glorious, egoistic youth!
He could not speak of Sylvia to this child--speak of his married life,
hitherto so dignified, so almost sacred. It was impossible. Then he
heard her say:
"It can't be wrong to love YOU! I don't care if it is wrong," and saw
her lips quivering, and her eyes suddenly piteous and scared, as if for
the first time she doubted of the issue. Here was fresh torment! To
watch an unhappy child. And what was the use of even trying to make
clear to her--on the very threshold of life--the hopeless maze that he
was wandering in! What chance of making her understand the marsh of mud
and tangled weeds he must drag through to reach her. "Nobody need know."
So simple! What of his heart and his wife's heart? And, pointing to his
new work--the first man bewitched by the first nymph--he said:
"Look at this, Nell! That nymph is you; and this man is me." She got
up, and came to look. And while she was gazing he greedily drank her in.
What a strange mixture of innocence and sorcery! What a wonderful young
creature to bring to full knowledge of love within his arms! And he
said: "You had better understand what you are to me--all that I shall
never know again; there it is in that nymph's face. Oh, no! not YOUR
face. And there am I struggling through slime to reach you--not MY face,
of course."
She said: "Poor face!" then covered her own. Was she going to cry, and
torture him still more? But, instead, she only murmured: "But you HAVE
reached me!" swayed towards him, and put her lips to his.
He gave way then. From that too stormy kiss of his she drew back for a
second, then, as if afraid of her own recoil, snuggled close again. But
the instinctive shrinking of innocence had been enough for Lennan--he
dropped his arms and said:
"You must go, child."
Without a word she picked up her fur, put it on, and stood waiting for
him to speak. Then, as he did not, she held out something white. It was
the card for the dance.
"You said you were coming?"
And he nodded. Her eyes and lips smiled at him; she opened the door,
and, still with that slow, happy smile, went out. . . .
Yes, he would be coming; wherever she was, whenever she wanted him! . . .
His blood on fire, heedless of everything but to rush after happiness,
Lennan spent those hours before the dance. He had told Sylvia that he
would be dining at his Club--a set of rooms owned by a small coterie of
artists in Chelsea. He had taken this precaution, feeling that he could
not sit through dinner opposite her and then go out to that dance--and
Nell! He had spoken of a guest at the Club, to account for evening
dress--another lie, but what did it matter? He was lying all the time,
if not in words, in action--must lie, indeed, to save her suffering!
He stopped at the Frenchwoman's flower shop.
"Que desirez-vous, monsieur? Des oeillets rouges--j'en ai de bien beaux,
ce soir."
Des oeillets rouges? Yes, those to-night! To this address. No green
with them; no card!
How strange the feeling--with the die once cast for love--of rushing, of
watching his own self being left behind!
In the Brompton Road, outside a little restaurant, a thin musician was
playing on a violin. Ah! and he knew this place; he would go in there,
not to the Club--and the fiddler should have all he had to spare, for
playing those tunes of love. He turned in. He had not been there since
the day before that night on the river, twenty years ago. Never since;
and yet it was not changed. The same tarnished gilt, and smell of
cooking; the same macaroni in the same tomato sauce; the same Chianti
flasks; the same staring, light-blue walls wreathed with pink flowers.
Only the waiter different--hollow-cheeked, patient, dark of eye. He,
too, should be well tipped! And that poor, over-hatted lady, eating her
frugal meal--to her, at all events, a look of kindness. For all
desperate creatures he must feel, this desperate night! And suddenly he
thought of Oliver. Another desperate one! What should he say to Oliver
at this dance--he, aged forty-seven, coming there without his wife! Some
imbecility, such as: 'Watching the human form divine in motion,'
'Catching sidelights on Nell for the statuette'--some cant; it did not
matter! The wine was drawn, and he must drink!
It was still early when he left the restaurant--a dry night, very calm,
not cold. When had he danced last? With Olive Cramier, before he knew
he loved her. Well, THAT memory could not be broken, for he would not
dance to-night! Just watch, sit with the girl a few minutes, feel her
hand cling to his, see her eyes turned back to him; and--come away! And
then--the future! For the wine was drawn! The leaf of a plane-tree,
fluttering down, caught on his sleeve. Autumn would soon be gone, and
after Autumn--only Winter! She would have done with him long before he
came to Winter. Nature would see to it that Youth called for her, and
carried her away. Nature in her courses! But just to cheat Nature for a
little while! To cheat Nature--what greater happiness!
Here was the place with red-striped awning, carriages driving away,
loiterers watching. He turned in with a beating heart. Was he before
her? How would she come to this first dance? With Oliver alone? Or had
some chaperon been found? To have come because she--this child so
lovely, born 'outside'--might have need of chaperonage, would have been
some comfort to dignity, so wistful, so lost as his. But, alas! he knew
he was only there because he could not keep away!
Already they were dancing in the hall upstairs; but not she, yet; and he
stood leaning against the wall where she must pass. Lonely and out of
place he felt; as if everyone must know why he was there. People stared,
and he heard a girl ask: "Who's that against the wall with the hair and
dark moustache?"--and her partner murmuring his answer, and her voice
again: "Yes, he looks as if he were seeing sand and lions." For whom,
then, did they take him? Thank heaven! They were all the usual sort.
There would be no one that he knew. Suppose Johnny Dromore himself came
with Nell! He was to be back on Saturday! What could he say, then? How
meet those doubting, knowing eyes, goggling with the fixed philosophy
that a man has but one use for woman? God! and it would be true! For a
moment he was on the point of getting his coat and hat, and sneaking
away. That would mean not seeing her till Monday; and he stood his
ground. But after to-night there must be no more such risks--their
meetings must be wisely planned, must sink underground. And then he saw
her at the foot of the stairs in a dress of a shell-pink colour, with one
of his flowers in her light-brown hair and the others tied to the handle
of a tiny fan. How self-possessed she looked, as if this were indeed her
native element--her neck and arms bare, her cheeks a deep soft pink, her
eyes quickly turning here and there. She began mounting the stairs, and
saw him. Was ever anything so lovely as she looked just then? Behind
her he marked Oliver, and a tall girl with red hair, and another young
man. He moved deliberately to the top of the stairs on the wall side, so
that from behind they should not see her face when she greeted him. She
put the little fan with the flowers to her lips; and, holding out her
hand, said, quick and low:
"The fourth, it's a polka; we'll sit out, won't we?"
Then swaying a little, so that her hair and the flower in it almost
touched his face, she passed, and there in her stead stood Oliver.
Lennan had expected one of his old insolent looks, but the young man's
face was eager and quite friendly.
"It was awfully good of you to come, Mr. Lennan. Is Mrs. Lennan--"
And Lennan murmured:
"She wasn't able; she's not quite--" and could have sunk into the shining
floor. Youth with its touching confidence, its eager trust! This was
the way he was fulfilling his duty towards Youth!
When they had passed into the ballroom he went back to his position
against the wall. They were dancing Number Three; his time of waiting,
then, was drawing to a close. From where he stood he could not see the
dancers--no use to watch her go round in someone else's arms.
Not a true waltz--some French or Spanish pavement song played in waltz
time; bizarre, pathetic, whirling after its own happiness. That chase for
happiness! Well, life, with all its prizes and its possibilities, had
nothing that quite satisfied--save just the fleeting moments of passion!
Nothing else quite poignant enough to be called pure joy! Or so it
seemed to him.
The waltz was over. He could see her now, on a rout seat against the
wall with the other young man, turning her eyes constantly as if to make
sure that he was still standing there. What subtle fuel was always being
added to the fire by that flattery of her inexplicable adoration--of
those eyes that dragged him to her, yet humbly followed him, too! Five
times while she sat there he saw the red-haired girl or Oliver bring men
up; saw youths cast longing glances; saw girls watching her with cold
appraisement, or with a touching, frank delight. From the moment that
she came in, there had been, in her father's phrase, 'only one in it.'
And she could pass all this by, and still want him. Incredible!
At the first notes of the polka he went to her. It was she who found
their place of refuge--a little alcove behind two palm-plants. But
sitting there, he realized, as never before, that there was no spiritual
communion between him and this child. She could tell him her troubles or
her joys; he could soothe or sympathize; but never would the gap between
their natures and their ages be crossed. His happiness was only in the
sight and touch of her. But that, God knew, was happiness enough--a
feverish, craving joy, like an overtired man's thirst, growing with the
drink on which it tries to slake itself. Sitting there, in the scent of
those flowers and of some sweet essence in her hair, with her fingers
touching his, and her eyes seeking his, he tried loyally not to think of
himself, to grasp her sensations at this her first dance, and just help
her to enjoyment. But he could not--paralyzed, made drunk by that
insensate longing to take her in his arms and crush her to him as he had
those few hours back. He could see her expanding like a flower, in all
this light, and motion, and intoxicating admiration round her. What
business had he in her life, with his dark hunger after secret hours;
he--a coin worn thin already--a destroyer of the freshness and the
glamour of her youth and beauty!
Then, holding up the flowers, she said:
"Did you give me these because of the one I gave you?"
"Yes."
"What did you do with that?"
"Burned it."
"Oh! but why?"
"Because you are a witch--and witches must be burned with all their
flowers."
"Are you going to burn me?"
He put his hand on her cool arm.
"Feel! The flames are lighted."
"You may! I don't care!"
She took his hand and laid her cheek against it; yet, to the music, which
had begun again, the tip of her shoe was already beating time. And he
said:
"You ought to be dancing, child."
"Oh, no! Only it's a pity you don't want to."
"Yes! Do you understand that it must all be secret--underground?"
She covered his lips with the fan, and said: "You're not to think; you're
not to think--never! When can I come?"
"I must find the best way. Not to-morrow. Nobody must know, Nell--for
your sake--for hers--nobody!"
She nodded, and repeated with a soft, mysterious wisdom: "Nobody." And
then, aloud: "Here's Oliver! It was awfully good of you to come.
Good-night!"
And as, on Oliver's arm, she left their little refuge, she looked back.
He lingered--to watch her through this one dance. How they made all the
other couples sink into insignificance, with that something in them both
that was better than mere good looks--that something not outre or
eccentric, but poignant, wayward. They went well together, those two
Dromores--his dark head and her fair head; his clear, brown, daring eyes,
and her grey, languorous, mesmeric eyes. Ah! Master Oliver was happy
now, with her so close to him! It was not jealousy that Lennan felt.
Not quite--one did not feel jealous of the young; something very
deep--pride, sense of proportion, who knew what--prevented that. She,
too, looked happy, as if her soul were dancing, vibrating with the music
and the scent of the flowers. He waited for her to come round once more,
to get for a last time that flying glance turned back; then found his
coat and hat and went.
XIII
Outside, he walked a few steps, then stood looking back at the windows of
the hall through some trees, the shadows of whose trunks, in the light of
a street lamp, were spilled out along the ground like the splines of a
fan. A church clock struck eleven. For hours yet she would be there,
going round and round in the arms of Youth! Try as he might he could
never recapture for himself the look that Oliver's face had worn--the
look that was the symbol of so much more than he himself could give her.
Why had she come into his life--to her undoing, and his own? And the
bizarre thought came to him: If she were dead should I really care?
Should I not be almost glad? If she were dead her witchery would be
dead, and I could stand up straight again and look people in the face!
What was this power that played with men, darted into them, twisted their
hearts to rags; this power that had looked through her eyes when she put
her fan, with his flowers, to her lips?
The thrumming of the music ceased; he walked away.
It must have been nearly twelve when he reached home. Now, once more,
would begin the gruesome process of deception--flinching of soul, and
brazening of visage. It would be better when the whole thievish business
was irretrievably begun and ordered in its secret courses!
There was no light in the drawing-room, save just the glow of the fire.
If only Sylvia might have gone to bed! Then he saw her, sitting
motionless out there by the uncurtained window.
He went over to her, and began his hateful formula:
"I'm afraid you've been lonely. I had to stay rather late. A dull
evening." And, since she did not move or answer, but just sat there very
still and white, he forced himself to go close, bend down to her, touch
her cheek; even to kneel beside her. She looked round then; her face was
quiet enough, but her eyes were strangely eager. With a pitiful little
smile she broke out:
"Oh, Mark! What is it--what is it? Anything is better than this!"
Perhaps it was the smile, perhaps her voice or eyes--but something gave
way in Lennan. Secrecy, precaution went by the board. Bowing his head
against her breast, he poured it all out, while they clung, clutched
together in the half dark like two frightened children. Only when he had
finished did he realize that if she had pushed him away, refused to let
him touch her, it would have been far less piteous, far easier to bear,
than her wan face and her hands clutching him, and her words: "I never
thought--you and I--oh! Mark--you and I--" The trust in their life
together, in himself, that those words revealed! Yet, not greater than
he had had--still had! She could not understand--he had known that she
could never understand; it was why he had fought so for secrecy, all
through. She was taking it as if she had lost everything; and in his
mind she had lost nothing. This passion, this craving for Youth and
Life, this madness--call it what one would--was something quite apart,
not touching his love and need of her. If she would only believe that!
Over and over he repeated it; over and over again perceived that she
could not take it in. The only thing she saw was that his love had gone
from her to another--though that was not true! Suddenly she broke out of
his arms, pushing him from her, and cried: "That girl--hateful, horrible,
false!" Never had he seen her look like this, with flaming spots in her
white cheeks, soft lips and chin distorted, blue eyes flaming, breast
heaving, as if each breath were drawn from lungs that received no air.
And then, as quickly, the fire went out of her; she sank down on the
sofa; covering her face with her arms, rocking to and fro. She did not
cry, but a little moan came from her now and then. And each one of those
sounds was to Lennan like the cry of something he was murdering. At last
he went and sat down on the sofa by her and said:
"Sylvia! Sylvia! Don't! oh! don't!" And she was silent, ceasing to
rock herself; letting him smooth and stroke her. But her face she kept
hidden, and only once she spoke, so low that he could hardly hear: "I
can't--I won't keep you from her." And with the awful feeling that no
words could reach or soothe the wound in that tender heart, he could only
go on stroking and kissing her hands.
It was atrocious--horrible--this that he had done! God knew that he had
not sought it--the thing had come on him. Surely even in her misery she
could see that! Deep down beneath his grief and self-hatred, he knew,
what neither she nor anyone else could know--that he could not have
prevented this feeling, which went back to days before he ever saw the
girl--that no man could have stopped that feeling in himself. This
craving and roving was as much part of him as his eyes and hands, as
overwhelming and natural a longing as his hunger for work, or his need of
the peace that Sylvia gave, and alone could give him. That was the
tragedy--it was all sunk and rooted in the very nature of a man. Since
the girl had come into their lives he was no more unfaithful to his wife
in thought than he had been before. If only she could look into him, see
him exactly as he was, as, without part or lot in the process, he had
been made--then she would understand, and even might not suffer; but she
could not, and he could never make it plain. And solemnly, desperately,
with a weary feeling of the futility of words, he went on trying: Could
she not see? It was all a thing outside him--a craving, a chase after
beauty and life, after his own youth! At that word she looked at him:
"And do you think I don't want my youth back?"
He stopped.
For a woman to feel that her beauty--the brightness of her hair and eyes,
the grace and suppleness of her limbs--were slipping from her and from
the man she loved! Was there anything more bitter?--or any more sacred
duty than not to add to that bitterness, not to push her with suffering
into old age, but to help keep the star of her faith in her charm intact!
Man and woman--they both wanted youth again; she, that she might give it
all to him; he, because it would help him towards something--new! Just
that world of difference!
He got up, and said:
"Come, dear, let's try and sleep."
He had not once said that he could give it up. The words would not pass
his lips, though he knew she must be conscious that he had not said them,
must be longing to hear them. All he had been able to say was:
"So long as you want me, you shall never lose me" . . . and, "I will
never keep anything from you again."
Up in their room she lay hour after hour in his arms, quite unresentful,
but without life in her, and with eyes that, when his lips touched them,
were always wet.
What a maze was a man's heart, wherein he must lose himself every minute!
What involved and intricate turnings and turnings on itself; what
fugitive replacement of emotion by emotion! What strife between pities
and passions; what longing for peace! . . .
And in his feverish exhaustion, which was almost sleep, Lennan hardly
knew whether it was the thrum of music or Sylvia's moaning that he heard;
her body or Nell's within his arms. . . .
But life had to be lived, a face preserved against the world, engagements
kept. And the nightmare went on for both of them, under the calm surface
of an ordinary Sunday. They were like people walking at the edge of a
high cliff, not knowing from step to step whether they would fall; or
like swimmers struggling for issue out of a dark whirlpool.
In the afternoon they went together to a concert; it was just something
to do--something that saved them for an hour or two from the possibility
of speaking on the one subject left to them. The ship had gone down, and
they were clutching at anything that for a moment would help to keep them
above water.
In the evening some people came to supper; a writer and two painters,
with their wives. A grim evening--never more so than when the
conversation turned on that perennial theme--the freedom, spiritual,
mental, physical, requisite for those who practise Art. All the stale
arguments were brought forth, and had to be joined in with unmoved faces.
And for all their talk of freedom, Lennan could see the volte-face his
friends would be making, if they only knew. It was not 'the thing' to
seduce young girls--as if, forsooth, there were freedom in doing only
what people thought 'the thing'! Their cant about the free artist spirit
experiencing everything, would wither the moment it came up against a
canon of 'good form,' so that in truth it was no freer than the bourgeois
spirit, with its conventions; or the priest spirit, with its cry of
'Sin!' No, no! To resist--if resistance were possible to this dragging
power--maxims of 'good form,' dogmas of religion and morality, were no
help--nothing was any help, but some feeling stronger than passion
itself. Sylvia's face, forced to smile!--that, indeed was a reason why
they should condemn him! None of their doctrines about freedom could
explain that away--the harm, the death that came to a man's soul when he
made a loving, faithful creature suffer.
But they were gone at last--with their "Thanks so much!" and their
"Delightful evening!"
And those two were face to face for another night.
He knew that it must begin all over again--inevitable, after the stab of
that wretched argument plunged into their hearts and turned and turned
all the evening.
"I won't, I mustn't keep you starved, and spoil your work. Don't think
of me, Mark! I can bear it!"
And then a breakdown worse than the night before. What genius, what
sheer genius Nature had for torturing her creatures! If anyone had told
him, even so little as a week ago, that he could have caused such
suffering to Sylvia--Sylvia, whom as a child with wide blue eyes and a
blue bow on her flaxen head he had guarded across fields full of
imaginary bulls; Sylvia, in whose hair his star had caught; Sylvia, who
day and night for fifteen years had been his devoted wife; whom he loved
and still admired--he would have given him the lie direct. It would have
seemed incredible, monstrous, silly. Had all married men and women such
things to go through--was this but a very usual crossing of the desert?
Or was it, once for all, shipwreck? death--unholy, violent death--in a
storm of sand?
Another night of misery, and no answer to that question yet.
He had told her that he would not see Nell again without first letting
her know. So, when morning came, he simply wrote the words: "Don't come
today!"--showed them to Sylvia, and sent them by a servant to Dromore's.
Hard to describe the bitterness with which he entered his studio that
morning. In all this chaos, what of his work? Could he ever have peace
of mind for it again? Those people last night had talked of 'inspiration
of passion, of experience.' In pleading with her he had used the words
himself. She--poor soul!--had but repeated them, trying to endure them,
to believe them true. And were they true? Again no answer, or certainly
none that he could give. To have had the waters broken up; to be plunged
into emotion; to feel desperately, instead of stagnating--some day he
might be grateful--who knew? Some day there might be fair country again
beyond this desert, where he could work even better than before. But
just now, as well expect creative work from a condemned man. It seemed
to him that he was equally destroyed whether he gave Nell up, and with
her, once for all, that roving, seeking instinct, which ought, forsooth,
to have been satisfied, and was not; or whether he took Nell, knowing
that in doing so he was torturing a woman dear to him! That was as far
as he could see to-day. What he would come to see in time God only knew!
But: 'Freedom of the Spirit!' That was a phrase of bitter irony indeed!
And, there, with his work all round him, like a man tied hand and foot,
he was swept by such a feeling of exasperated rage as he had never known.
Women! These women! Only let him be free of both, of all women, and the
passions and pities they aroused, so that his brain and his hands might
live and work again! They should not strangle, they should not destroy
him!
Unfortunately, even in his rage, he knew that flight from them both could
never help him. One way or the other the thing would have to be fought
through. If it had been a straight fight even; a clear issue between
passion and pity! But both he loved, and both he pitied. There was
nothing straight and clear about it anywhere; it was all too deeply
rooted in full human nature. And the appalling sense of rushing
ceaselessly from barrier to barrier began really to affect his brain.
True, he had now and then a lucid interval of a few minutes, when the
ingenious nature of his own torments struck him as supremely interesting
and queer; but this was not precisely a relief, for it only meant, as in
prolonged toothache, that his power of feeling had for a moment ceased.
A very pretty little hell indeed!
All day he had the premonition, amounting to certainty, that Nell would
take alarm at those three words he had sent her, and come in spite of
them. And yet, what else could he have written? Nothing save what must
have alarmed her more, or plunged him deeper. He had the feeling that
she could follow his moods, that her eyes could see him everywhere, as a
cat's eyes can see in darkness. That feeling had been with him, more or
less, ever since the last evening of October, the evening she came back
from her summer--grown-up. How long ago? Only six days--was it
possible? Ah, yes! She knew when her spell was weakening, when the
current wanted, as it were, renewing. And about six o'clock--dusk
already--without the least surprise, with only a sort of empty quivering,
he heard her knock. And just behind the closed door, as near as he could
get to her, he stood, holding his breath. He had given his word to
Sylvia--of his own accord had given it. Through the thin wood of the old
door he could hear the faint shuffle of her feet on the pavement, moved a
few inches this way and that, as though supplicating the inexorable
silence. He seemed to see her head, bent a little forward listening.
Three times she knocked, and each time Lennan writhed. It was so cruel!
With that seeing-sense of hers she must know he was there; his very
silence would be telling her--for his silence had its voice, its pitiful
breathless sound. Then, quite distinctly, he heard her sigh, and her
footsteps move away; and covering his face with his hands he rushed to
and fro in the studio, like a madman.
No sound of her any more! Gone! It was unbearable; and, seizing his
hat, he ran out. Which way? At random he ran towards the Square. There
she was, over by the railings; languidly, irresolutely moving towards
home.
XIV
But now that she was within reach, he wavered; he had given his word--was
he going to break it? Then she turned, and saw him; and he could not go
back. In the biting easterly wind her face looked small, and pinched,
and cold, but her eyes only the larger, the more full of witchery, as if
beseeching him not to be angry, not to send her away.
"I had to come; I got frightened. Why did you write such a tiny little
note?"
He tried to make his voice sound quiet and ordinary.
"You must be brave, Nell. I have had to tell her."
She clutched at his arm; then drew herself up, and said in her clear,
clipped voice:
"Oh! I suppose she hates me, then!"
"She is terribly unhappy."
They walked a minute, that might have been an hour, without a word; not
round the Square, as he had walked with Oliver, but away from the house.
At last she said in a half-choked voice: "I only want a little bit of
you."
And he answered dully: "In love, there are no little bits--no standing
still."
Then, suddenly, he felt her hand in his, the fingers lacing, twining
restlessly amongst his own; and again the half-choked voice said:
"But you WILL let me see you sometimes! You must!"
Hardest of all to stand against was this pathetic, clinging, frightened
child. And, not knowing very clearly what he said, he murmured:
"Yes--yes; it'll be all right. Be brave--you must be brave, Nell. It'll
all come right."
But she only answered:
"No, no! I'm not brave. I shall do something."
Her face looked just as when she had ridden at that gravel pit. Loving,
wild, undisciplined, without resource of any kind--what might she not do?
Why could he not stir without bringing disaster upon one or other? And
between these two, suffering so because of him, he felt as if he had lost
his own existence. In quest of happiness, he had come to that!
Suddenly she said:
"Oliver asked me again at the dance on Saturday. He said you had told
him to be patient. Did you?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I was sorry for him."
She let his hand go.
"Perhaps you would like me to marry him."
Very clearly he saw those two going round and round over the shining
floor.
"It would be better, Nell."
She made a little sound--of anger or dismay.
"You don't REALLY want me, then?"
That was his chance. But with her arm touching his, her face so pale and
desperate, and those maddening eyes turned to him, he could not tell that
lie, and answered:
"Yes--I want you, God knows!"
At that a sigh of content escaped her, as if she were saying to herself:
'If he wants me he will not let me go.' Strange little tribute to her
faith in love and her own youth!
They had come somehow to Pall Mall by now. And scared to find himself so
deep in the hunting-ground of the Dromores, Lennan turned hastily towards
St. James's Park, that they might cross it in the dark, round to
Piccadilly. To be thus slinking out of the world's sight with the
daughter of his old room-mate--of all men in the world the last perhaps
that he should do this to! A nice treacherous business! But the thing
men called honour--what was it, when her eyes were looking at him and her
shoulder touching his?
Since he had spoken those words, "Yes, I want you," she had been
silent--fearful perhaps to let other words destroy their comfort. But
near the gate by Hyde Park Corner she put her hand again into his, and
again her voice, so clear, said:
"I don't want to hurt anybody, but you WILL let me come sometimes--you
will let me see you--you won't leave me all alone, thinking that I'll
never see you again?"
And once more, without knowing what he answered, Lennan murmured:
"No, no! It'll be all right, dear--it'll all come right. It must--and
shall."
Again her fingers twined amongst his, like a child's. She seemed to have
a wonderful knowledge of the exact thing to say and do to keep him
helpless. And she went on:
"I didn't try to love you--it isn't wrong to love--it wouldn't hurt her.
I only want a little of your love."
A little--always a little! But he was solely bent on comforting her now.
To think of her going home, and sitting lonely, frightened, and unhappy,
all the evening, was dreadful. And holding her fingers tight, he kept on
murmuring words of would-be comfort.
Then he saw that they were out in Piccadilly. How far dared he go with
her along the railings before he said good-bye? A man was coming towards
them, just where he had met Dromore that first fatal afternoon nine
months ago; a man with a slight lurch in his walk and a tall, shining hat
a little on one side. But thank Heaven!--it was not Dromore--only one
somewhat like him, who in passing stared sphinx-like at Nell. And Lennan
said:
"You must go home now, child; we mustn't be seen together."
For a moment he thought she was going to break down, refuse to leave him.
Then she threw up her head, and for a second stood like that, quite
motionless, looking in his face. Suddenly stripping off her glove, she
thrust her warm, clinging hand into his. Her lips smiled faintly, tears
stood in her eyes; then she drew her hand away and plunged into the
traffic. He saw her turn the corner of her street and disappear. And
with the warmth of that passionate little hand still stinging his palm,
he almost ran towards Hyde Park.
Taking no heed of direction, he launched himself into its dark space,
deserted in this cold, homeless wind, that had little sound and no scent,
travelling its remorseless road under the grey-black sky.
The dark firmament and keen cold air suited one who had little need of
aids to emotion--one who had, indeed, but the single wish to get rid, if
he only could, of the terrible sensation in his head, that bruised,
battered, imprisoned feeling of a man who paces his cell--never, never
to get out at either end. Without thought or intention he drove his legs
along; not running, because he knew that he would have to stop the
sooner. Alas! what more comic spectacle for the eyes of a good citizen
than this married man of middle age, striding for hours over those dry,
dark, empty pastures--hunted by passion and by pity, so that he knew not
even whether he had dined! But no good citizen was abroad of an autumn
night in a bitter easterly wind. The trees were the sole witnesses of
this grim exercise--the trees, resigning to the cold blast their crinkled
leaves that fluttered past him, just a little lighter than the darkness.
Here and there his feet rustled in the drifts, waiting their turn to
serve the little bonfires, whose scent still clung in the air. A
desperate walk, in this heart of London--round and round, up and down,
hour after hour, keeping always in the dark; not a star in the sky, not a
human being spoken to or even clearly seen, not a bird or beast; just the
gleam of the lights far away, and the hoarse muttering of the traffic! A
walk as lonely as the voyage of the human soul is lonely from birth to
death with nothing to guide it but the flickering glow from its own frail
spirit lighted it knows not where. . . .
And, so tired that he could hardly move his legs, but free at last of
that awful feeling in his head--free for the first time for days and
days--Lennan came out of the Park at the gate where he had gone in, and
walked towards his home, certain that tonight, one way or the other, it
would be decided. . . .
XV
This then--this long trouble of body and of spirit--was what he
remembered, sitting in the armchair beyond his bedroom fire, watching the
glow, and Sylvia sleeping there exhausted, while the dark plane-tree
leaves tap-tapped at the window in the autumn wind; watching, with the
uncanny certainty that, he would not pass the limits of this night
without having made at last a decision that would not alter. For even
conflict wears itself out; even indecision has this measure set to its
miserable powers of torture, that any issue in the end is better than the
hell of indecision itself. Once or twice in those last days even death
had seemed to him quite tolerable; but now that his head was clear and he
had come to grips, death passed out of his mind like the shadow that it
was. Nothing so simple, extravagant, and vain could serve him. Other
issues had reality; death--none. To leave Sylvia, and take this young
love away; there was reality in that, but it had always faded as soon as
it shaped itself; and now once more it faded. To put such a public and
terrible affront on a tender wife whom he loved, do her to death, as it
were, before the world's eyes--and then, ever remorseful, grow old while
the girl was still young? He could not. If Sylvia had not loved him,
yes; or, even if he had not loved her; or if, again, though loving him
she had stood upon her rights--in any of those events he might have done
it. But to leave her whom he did love, and who had said to him so
generously: "I will not hamper you--go to her"--would be a black
atrocity. Every memory, from their boy-and-girl lovering to the desperate
clinging of her arms these last two nights--memory with its innumerable
tentacles, the invincible strength of its countless threads, bound him to
her too fast. What then? Must it come, after all, to giving up the
girl? And sitting there, by that warm fire, he shivered. How desolate,
sacrilegious, wasteful to throw love away; to turn from the most precious
of all gifts; to drop and break that vase! There was not too much love
in the world, nor too much warmth and beauty--not, anyway, for those
whose sands were running out, whose blood would soon be cold.
Could Sylvia not let him keep both her love and the girl's? Could she
not bear that? She had said she could; but her face, her eyes, her voice
gave her the lie, so that every time he heard her his heart turned sick
with pity. This, then, was the real issue. Could he accept from her such
a sacrifice, exact a daily misery, see her droop and fade beneath it?
Could he bear his own happiness at such a cost? Would it be happiness at
all? He got up from the chair and crept towards her. She looked very
fragile sleeping there! The darkness below her closed eyelids showed
cruelly on that too fair skin; and in her flax-coloured hair he saw what
he had never noticed--a few strands of white. Her softly opened lips,
almost colourless, quivered with her uneven breathing; and now and again
a little feverish shiver passed up as from her heart. All soft and
fragile! Not much life, not much strength; youth and beauty slipping!
To know that he who should be her champion against age and time would day
by day be placing one more mark upon her face, one more sorrow in her
heart! That he should do this--they both going down the years together!
As he stood there holding his breath, bending to look at her, that
slurring swish of the plane-tree branch, flung against and against the
window by the autumn wind, seemed filling the whole world. Then her lips
moved in one of those little, soft hurrying whispers that unhappy
dreamers utter, the words all blurred with their wistful rushing.
And he thought: I, who believe in bravery and kindness; I, who hate
cruelty--if I do this cruel thing, what shall I have to live for; how
shall I work; how bear myself? If I do it, I am lost--an outcast from my
own faith--a renegade from all that I believe in.
And, kneeling there close to that face so sad and lonely, that heart so
beaten even in its sleep, he knew that he could not do it--knew it with
sudden certainty, and a curious sense of peace. Over!--the long
struggle--over at last! Youth with youth, summer to summer, falling leaf
with falling leaf! And behind him the fire flickered, and the plane-tree
leaves tap-tapped.
He rose, and crept away stealthily downstairs into the drawing-room, and
through the window at the far end out into the courtyard, where he had
sat that day by the hydrangea, listening to the piano-organ. Very dark
and cold and eerie it was there, and he hurried across to his studio.
There, too, it was cold, and dark, and eerie, with its ghostly plaster
presences, stale scent of cigarettes, and just one glowing ember of the
fire he had left when he rushed out after Nell--those seven hours ago.
He went first to the bureau, turned up its lamp, and taking out some
sheets of paper, marked on them directions for his various works; for the
statuette of Nell, he noted that it should be taken with his compliments
to Mr. Dromore. He wrote a letter to his banker directing money to be
sent to Rome, and to his solicitor telling him to let the house. He
wrote quickly. If Sylvia woke, and found him still away, what might she
not think? He took a last sheet. Did it matter what he wrote, what
deliberate lie, if it helped Nell over the first shock?
"DEAR NELL,
"I write this hastily in the early hours, to say that we are called out
to Italy to my only sister, who is very ill. We leave by the first
morning boat, and may be away some time. I will write again. Don't fret,
and God bless you.
"M. L."
He could not see very well as he wrote. Poor, loving, desperate child!
Well, she had youth and strength, and would soon have--Oliver! And he
took yet another sheet.
"DEAR OLIVER,
"My wife and I are obliged to go post-haste to Italy. I watched you both
at the dance the other night. Be very gentle with Nell; and--good luck
to you! But don't say again that I told you to be patient; it is hardly
the way to make her love you.
"M. LENNAN."
That, then, was all--yes, all! He turned out the little lamp, and groped
towards the hearth. But one thing left. To say good-bye! To her, and
Youth, and Passion!--to the only salve for the aching that Spring and
Beauty bring--the aching for the wild, the passionate, the new, that
never quite dies in a man's heart. Ah! well, sooner or later, all men
had to say good-bye to that. All men--all men!
He crouched down before the hearth. There was no warmth in that
fast-blackening ember, but it still glowed like a dark-red flower. And
while it lived he crouched there, as though it were that to which he was
saying good-bye. And on the door he heard the girl's ghostly knocking.
And beside him--a ghost among the ghostly presences--she stood. Slowly
the glow blackened, till the last spark had faded out.
Then by the glimmer of the night he found his way back, softly as he had
come, to his bedroom.
Sylvia was still sleeping; and, to watch for her to wake, he sat down
again by the fire, in silence only stirred by the frail tap-tapping of
those autumn leaves, and the little catch in her breathing now and then.
It was less troubled than when he had bent over her before, as though in
her sleep she knew. He must not miss the moment of her waking, must be
beside her before she came to full consciousness, to say: "There, there!
It's all over; we are going away at once--at once." To be ready to offer
that quick solace, before she had time to plunge back into her sorrow,
was an island in this black sea of night, a single little refuge point
for his bereaved and naked being. Something to do--something fixed,
real, certain. And yet another long hour before her waking, he sat
forward in the chair, with that wistful eagerness, his eyes fixed on her
face, staring through it at some vision, some faint, glimmering
light--far out there beyond--as a traveller watches a star. . . . star
. . . .
THE END.
THE FREELANDS
By John Galsworthy
"Liberty's a glorious feast."--Burns.
PROLOGUE
One early April afternoon, in a Worcestershire field, the only field in
that immediate landscape which was not down in grass, a man moved slowly
athwart the furrows, sowing--a big man of heavy build, swinging his hairy
brown arm with the grace of strength. He wore no coat or hat; a
waistcoat, open over a blue-checked cotton shirt, flapped against belted
corduroys that were somewhat the color of his square, pale-brown face and
dusty hair. His eyes were sad, with the swimming yet fixed stare of
epileptics; his mouth heavy-lipped, so that, but for the yearning eyes,
the face would have been almost brutal. He looked as if he suffered from
silence. The elm-trees bordering the field, though only just in leaf,
showed dark against a white sky. A light wind blew, carrying already a
scent from the earth and growth pushing up, for the year was early. The
green Malvern hills rose in the west; and not far away, shrouded by
trees, a long country house of weathered brick faced to the south. Save
for the man sowing, and some rooks crossing from elm to elm, no life was
visible in all the green land. And it was quiet--with a strange, a
brooding tranquillity. The fields and hills seemed to mock the scars of
road and ditch and furrow scraped on them, to mock at barriers of hedge
and wall--between the green land and white sky was a conspiracy to
disregard those small activities. So lonely was it, so plunged in a
ground-bass of silence; so much too big and permanent for any figure of
man.
Across and across the brown loam the laborer doggedly finished out his
task; scattered the few last seeds into a corner, and stood still.
Thrushes and blackbirds were just beginning that even-song whose
blitheness, as nothing else on earth, seems to promise youth forever to
the land. He picked up his coat, slung it on, and, heaving a straw bag
over his shoulder, walked out on to the grass-bordered road between the
elms.
"Tryst! Bob Tryst!"
At the gate of a creepered cottage amongst fruit-trees, high above the
road, a youth with black hair and pale-brown face stood beside a girl
with frizzy brown hair and cheeks like poppies.
"Have you had that notice?"
The laborer answered slowly:
"Yes, Mr. Derek. If she don't go, I've got to."
"What a d--d shame!"
The laborer moved his head, as though he would have spoken, but no words
came.
"Don't do anything, Bob. We'll see about that."
"Evenin', Mr. Derek. Evenin', Miss Sheila," and the laborer moved on.
The two at the wicket gate also turned away. A black-haired woman
dressed in blue came to the wicket gate in their place. There seemed no
purpose in her standing there; it was perhaps an evening custom, some
ceremony such as Moslems observe at the muezzin-call. And any one who saw
her would have wondered what on earth she might be seeing, gazing out
with her dark glowing eyes above the white, grass-bordered roads
stretching empty this way and that between the elm-trees and green
fields; while the blackbirds and thrushes shouted out their hearts,
calling all to witness how hopeful and young was life in this English
countryside. . . .
CHAPTER I
Mayday afternoon in Oxford Street, and Felix Freeland, a little late, on
his way from Hampstead to his brother John's house in Porchester Gardens.
Felix Freeland, author, wearing the very first gray top hat of the
season. A compromise, that--like many other things in his life and
works--between individuality and the accepted view of things,
aestheticism and fashion, the critical sense and authority. After the
meeting at John's, to discuss the doings of the family of his brother
Morton Freeland--better known as Tod--he would perhaps look in on the
caricatures at the English Gallery, and visit one duchess in Mayfair,
concerning the George Richard Memorial. And so, not the soft felt hat
which really suited authorship, nor the black top hat which obliterated
personality to the point of pain, but this gray thing with narrowish
black band, very suitable, in truth, to a face of a pale buff color, to a
moustache of a deep buff color streaked with a few gray hairs, to a black
braided coat cut away from a buff-colored waistcoat, to his neat
boots--not patent leather--faintly buffed with May-day dust. Even his
eyes, Freeland gray, were a little buffed over by sedentary habit, and
the number of things that he was conscious of. For instance, that the
people passing him were distressingly plain, both men and women; plain
with the particular plainness of those quite unaware of it. It struck
him forcibly, while he went along, how very queer it was that with so
many plain people in the country, the population managed to keep up even
as well as it did. To his wonderfully keen sense of defect, it seemed
little short of marvellous. A shambling, shoddy crew, this crowd of
shoppers and labor demonstrators! A conglomeration of hopelessly
mediocre visages! What was to be done about it? Ah! what indeed!--since
they were evidently not aware of their own dismal mediocrity. Hardly a
beautiful or a vivid face, hardly a wicked one, never anything
transfigured, passionate, terrible, or grand. Nothing Greek, early
Italian, Elizabethan, not even beefy, beery, broad old Georgian.
Something clutched-in, and squashed-out about it all--on that collective
face something of the look of a man almost comfortably and warmly wrapped
round by a snake at the very beginning of its squeeze. It gave Felix
Freeland a sort of faint excitement and pleasure to notice this. For it
was his business to notice things, and embalm them afterward in ink. And
he believed that not many people noticed it, so that it contributed in
his mind to his own distinction, which was precious to him. Precious, and
encouraged to be so by the press, which--as he well knew--must print his
name several thousand times a year. And yet, as a man of culture and of
principle, how he despised that kind of fame, and theoretically believed
that a man's real distinction lay in his oblivion of the world's opinion,
particularly as expressed by that flighty creature, the Fourth Estate.
But here again, as in the matter of the gray top hat, he had
instinctively compromised, taking in press cuttings which described
himself and his works, while he never failed to describe those
descriptions--good, bad, and indifferent--as 'that stuff,' and their
writers as 'those fellows.'
Not that it was new to him to feel that the country was in a bad way. On
the contrary, it was his established belief, and one for which he was
prepared to furnish due and proper reasons. In the first place he traced
it to the horrible hold Industrialism had in the last hundred years laid
on the nation, draining the peasantry from 'the Land'; and in the second
place to the influence of a narrow and insidious Officialism, sapping the
independence of the People.
This was why, in going to a conclave with his brother John, high in
Government employ, and his brother Stanley, a captain of industry,
possessor of the Morton Plough Works, he was conscious of a certain
superiority in that he, at all events, had no hand in this paralysis
which was creeping on the country.
And getting more buff-colored every minute, he threaded his way on, till,
past the Marble Arch, he secured the elbow-room of Hyde Park. Here groups
of young men, with chivalrous idealism, were jeering at and chivying the
broken remnants of a suffrage meeting. Felix debated whether he should
oppose his body to their bodies, his tongue to theirs, or whether he
should avert his consciousness and hurry on; but, that instinct which
moved him to wear the gray top hat prevailing, he did neither, and stood
instead, looking at them in silent anger, which quickly provoked
endearments--such as: "Take it off," or "Keep it on," or "What cheer,
Toppy!" but nothing more acute. And he meditated: Culture! Could
culture ever make headway among the blind partisanships, the
hand-to-mouth mentality, the cheap excitements of this town life? The
faces of these youths, the tone of their voices, the very look of their
bowler hats, said: No! You could not culturalize the impermeable texture
of their vulgarity. And they were the coming manhood of the nation--this
inexpressibly distasteful lot of youths! The country had indeed got too
far away from 'the Land.' And this essential towny commonness was not
confined to the classes from which these youths were drawn. He had even
remarked it among his own son's school and college friends--an impatience
of discipline, an insensibility to everything but excitement and having a
good time, a permanent mental indigestion due to a permanent diet of
tit-bits. What aspiration they possessed seemed devoted to securing for
themselves the plums of official or industrial life. His boy Alan, even,
was infected, in spite of home influences and the atmosphere of art in
which he had been so sedulously soaked. He wished to enter his Uncle
Stanley's plough works, seeing in it a 'soft thing.'
But the last of the woman-baiters had passed by now, and, conscious that
he was really behind time, Felix hurried on. . . .
In his study--a pleasant room, if rather tidy--John Freeland was standing
before the fire smoking a pipe and looking thoughtfully at nothing. He
was, in fact, thinking, with that continuity characteristic of a man who
at fifty has won for himself a place of permanent importance in the Home
Office. Starting life in the Royal Engineers, he still preserved
something of a military look about his figure, and grave visage with
steady eyes and drooping moustache (both a shade grayer than those of
Felix), and a forehead bald from justness and knowing where to lay his
hand on papers. His face was thinner, his head narrower, than his
brother's, and he had acquired a way of making those he looked at doubt
themselves and feel the sudden instability of all their facts. He
was--as has been said--thinking. His brother Stanley had wired to him
that morning: "Am motoring up to-day on business; can you get Felix to
come at six o'clock and talk over the position at Tod's?" What position
at Tod's? He had indeed heard something vague--of those youngsters of
Tod's, and some fuss they were making about the laborers down there. He
had not liked it. Too much of a piece with the general unrest, and these
new democratic ideas that were playing old Harry with the country! For
in his opinion the country was in a bad way, partly owing to
Industrialism, with its rotting effect upon physique; partly to this
modern analytic Intellectualism, with its destructive and anarchic
influence on morals. It was difficult to overestimate the mischief of
those two factors; and in the approaching conference with his brothers,
one of whom was the head of an industrial undertaking, and the other a
writer, whose books, extremely modern, he never read, he was perhaps
vaguely conscious of his own cleaner hands. Hearing a car come to a halt
outside, he went to the window and looked out. Yes, it was Stanley! . .
Stanley Freeland, who had motored up from Becket--his country place,
close to his plough works in Worcestershire--stood a moment on the
pavement, stretching his long legs and giving directions to his
chauffeur. He had been stopped twice on the road for not exceeding the
limit as he believed, and was still a little ruffled. Was it not his
invariable principle to be moderate in speed as in all other things? And
his feeling at the moment was stronger even than usual, that the country
was in a bad way, eaten up by officialism, with its absurd limitations of
speed and the liberty of the subject, and the advanced ideas of these new
writers and intellectuals, always talking about the rights and sufferings
of the poor. There was no progress along either of those roads. He had
it in his heart, as he stood there on the pavement, to say something
pretty definite to John about interference with the liberty of the
subject, and he wouldn't mind giving old Felix a rap about his precious
destructive doctrines, and continual girding at the upper classes, vested
interests, and all the rest of it. If he had something to put in their
place that would be another matter. Capital and those who controlled it
were the backbone of the country--what there was left of the country,
apart from these d--d officials and aesthetic fellows! And with a
contraction of his straight eyebrows above his straight gray eyes,
straight blunt nose, blunter moustaches, and blunt chin, he kept a tight
rein on his blunt tongue, not choosing to give way even to his own anger.
Then, perceiving Felix coming--'in a white topper, by Jove!'--he crossed
the pavement to the door; and, tall, square, personable, rang the bell.
CHAPTER II
"Well, what's the matter at Tod's?"
And Felix moved a little forward in his chair, his eyes fixed with
interest on Stanley, who was about to speak.
"It's that wife of his, of course. It was all very well so long as she
confined herself to writing, and talk, and that Land Society, or whatever
it was she founded, the one that snuffed out the other day; but now she's
getting herself and those two youngsters mixed up in our local broils,
and really I think Tod's got to be spoken to."
"It's impossible for a husband to interfere with his wife's principles."
So Felix.
"Principles!" The word came from John.
"Certainly! Kirsteen's a woman of great character; revolutionary by
temperament. Why should you expect her to act as you would act
yourselves?"
When Felix had said that, there was a silence.
Then Stanley muttered: "Poor old Tod!"
Felix sighed, lost for a moment in his last vision of his youngest
brother. It was four years ago now, a summer evening--Tod standing
between his youngsters Derek and Sheila, in a doorway of his white,
black-timbered, creepered cottage, his sunburnt face and blue eyes the
serenest things one could see in a day's march!
"Why 'poor'?" he said. "Tod's much happier than we are. You've only to
look at him."
"Ah!" said Stanley suddenly. "D'you remember him at Father's
funeral?--without his hat, and his head in the clouds. Fine-lookin'
chap, old Tod--pity he's such a child of Nature."
Felix said quietly:
"If you'd offered him a partnership, Stanley--it would have been the
making of him."
"Tod in the plough works? My hat!"
Felix smiled. At sight of that smile, Stanley grew red, and John
refilled his pipe. It is always the devil to have a brother more
sarcastic than oneself!
"How old are those two?" John said abruptly.
"Sheila's twenty, Derek nineteen."
"I thought the boy was at an agricultural college?"
"Finished."
"What's he like?"
"A black-haired, fiery fellow, not a bit like Tod."
John muttered: "That's her Celtic blood. Her father, old Colonel Moray,
was just that sort; by George, he was a regular black Highlander. What's
the trouble exactly?"
It was Stanley who answered: "That sort of agitation business is all very
well until it begins to affect your neighbors; then it's time it stopped.
You know the Mallorings who own all the land round Tod's. Well, they've
fallen foul of the Mallorings over what they call injustice to some
laborers. Questions of morality involved. I don't know all the details.
A man's got notice to quit over his deceased wife's sister; and some girl
or other in another cottage has kicked over--just ordinary country
incidents. What I want is that Tod should be made to see that his family
mustn't quarrel with his nearest neighbors in this way. We know the
Mallorings well, they're only seven miles from us at Becket. It doesn't
do; sooner or later it plays the devil all round. And the air's full of
agitation about the laborers and 'the Land,' and all the rest of it--only
wants a spark to make real trouble."
And having finished this oration, Stanley thrust his hands deep into his
pockets, and jingled the money that was there.
John said abruptly:
"Felix, you'd better go down."
Felix was sitting back, his eyes for once withdrawn from his brothers'
faces.
"Odd," he said, "really odd, that with a perfectly unique person like Tod
for a brother, we only see him once in a blue moon."
"It's because he IS so d--d unique."
Felix got up and gravely extended his hand to Stanley.
"By Jove," he said, "you've spoken truth." And to John he added: "Well,
I WILL go, and let you know the upshot."
When he had departed, the two elder brothers remained for some moments
silent, then Stanley said:
"Old Felix is a bit tryin'! With the fuss they make of him in the
papers, his head's swelled!"
John did not answer. One could not in so many words resent one's own
brother being made a fuss of, and if it had been for something real, such
as discovering the source of the Black River, conquering Bechuanaland,
curing Blue-mange, or being made a Bishop, he would have been the first
and most loyal in his appreciation; but for the sort of thing Felix made
up--Fiction, and critical, acid, destructive sort of stuff, pretending to
show John Freeland things that he hadn't seen before--as if Felix
could!--not at all the jolly old romance which one could read well enough
and enjoy till it sent you to sleep after a good day's work. No! that
Felix should be made a fuss of for such work as that really almost hurt
him. It was not quite decent, violating deep down one's sense of form,
one's sense of health, one's traditions. Though he would not have
admitted it, he secretly felt, too, that this fuss was dangerous to his
own point of view, which was, of course, to him the only real one. And
he merely said:
"Will you stay to dinner, Stan?"
CHAPTER III
If John had those sensations about Felix, so--when he was away from
John--had Felix about himself. He had never quite grown out of the
feeling that to make himself conspicuous in any way was bad form. In
common with his three brothers he had been through the mills of
gentility--those unique grinding machines of education only found in his
native land. Tod, to be sure, had been publicly sacked at the end of his
third term, for climbing on to the headmaster's roof and filling up two
of his chimneys with football pants, from which he had omitted to remove
his name. Felix still remembered the august scene--the horrid thrill of
it, the ominous sound of that: "Freeland minimus!" the ominous sight of
poor little Tod emerging from his obscurity near the roof of the Speech
Room, and descending all those steps. How very small and rosy he had
looked, his bright hair standing on end, and his little blue eyes staring
up very hard from under a troubled frown. And the august hand holding up
those sooty pants, and the august voice: "These appear to be yours,
Freeland minimus. Were you so good as to put them down my chimneys?"
And the little piping, "Yes, sir."
"May I ask why, Freeland minimus?"
"I don't know, sir."
"You must have had some reason, Freeland minimus?"
"It was the end of term, sir."
"Ah! You must not come back here, Freeland minimus. You are too
dangerous, to yourself, and others. Go to your place."
And poor little Tod ascending again all those steps, cheeks more terribly
rosy than ever, eyes bluer, from under a still more troubled frown;
little mouth hard set; and breathing so that you could hear him six forms
off. True, the new Head had been goaded by other outrages, the authors
of which had not omitted to remove their names; but the want of humor,
the amazing want of humor! As if it had not been a sign of first-rate
stuff in Tod! And to this day Felix remembered with delight the little
bubbling hiss that he himself had started, squelched at once, but
rippling out again along the rows like tiny scattered lines of fire when
a conflagration is suppressed. Expulsion had been the salvation of Tod!
Or--his damnation? Which? God would know, but Felix was not certain.
Having himself been fifteen years acquiring 'Mill' philosophy, and
another fifteen years getting rid of it, he had now begun to think that
after all there might be something in it. A philosophy that took
everything, including itself, at face value, and questioned nothing, was
sedative to nerves too highly strung by the continual examination of the
insides of oneself and others, with a view to their alteration. Tod, of
course, having been sent to Germany after his expulsion, as one naturally
would be, and then put to farming, had never properly acquired 'Mill'
manner, and never sloughed it off; and yet he was as sedative a man as
you could meet.
Emerging from the Tube station at Hampstead, he moved toward home under a
sky stranger than one might see in a whole year of evenings. Between the
pine-trees on the ridge it was opaque and colored like pinkish stone, and
all around violent purple with flames of the young green, and white
spring blossom lit against it. Spring had been dull and unimaginative so
far, but this evening it was all fire and gathered torrents; Felix
wondered at the waiting passion of that sky.
He reached home just as those torrents began to fall.
The old house, beyond the Spaniard's Road, save for mice and a faint
underlying savor of wood-rot in two rooms, well satisfied the aesthetic
sense. Felix often stood in his hall, study, bedroom, and other
apartments, admiring the rich and simple glow of them--admiring the
rarity and look of studied negligence about the stuffs, the flowers, the
books, the furniture, the china; and then quite suddenly the feeling
would sweep over him: "By George, do I really own all this, when my ideal
is 'bread and water, and on feast days a little bit of cheese'?" True,
he was not to blame for the niceness of his things--Flora did it; but
still--there they were, a little hard to swallow for an epicurean. It
might, of course, have been worse, for if Flora had a passion for
collecting, it was a very chaste one, and though what she collected cost
no little money, it always looked as if it had been inherited, and--as
everybody knows--what has been inherited must be put up with, whether it
be a coronet or a cruet-stand.
To collect old things, and write poetry! It was a career; one would not
have one's wife otherwise. She might, for instance, have been like
Stanley's wife, Clara, whose career was wealth and station; or John's
wife, Anne, whose career had been cut short; or even Tod's wife,
Kirsteen, whose career was revolution. No--a wife who had two, and only
two children, and treated them with affectionate surprise, who was never
out of temper, never in a hurry, knew the points of a book or play, could
cut your hair at a pinch; whose hand was dry, figure still good, verse
tolerable, and--above all--who wished for no better fate than Fate had
given her--was a wife not to be sneezed at. And Felix never had. He
had depicted so many sneezing wives and husbands in his books, and knew
the value of a happy marriage better perhaps than any one in England. He
had laid marriage low a dozen times, wrecked it on all sorts of rocks,
and had the greater veneration for his own, which had begun early,
manifested every symptom of ending late, and in the meantime walked down
the years holding hands fast, and by no means forgetting to touch lips.
Hanging up the gray top hat, he went in search of her. He found her in
his dressing-room, surrounded by a number of little bottles, which she
was examining vaguely, and putting one by one into an 'inherited'
waste-paper basket. Having watched her for a little while with a certain
pleasure, he said:
"Yes, my dear?"
Noticing his presence, and continuing to put bottles into the basket, she
answered:
"I thought I must--they're what dear Mother's given us."
There they lay--little bottles filled with white and brown fluids, white
and blue and brown powders; green and brown and yellow ointments; black
lozenges; buff plasters; blue and pink and purple pills. All beautifully
labelled and corked.
And he said in a rather faltering voice:
"Bless her! How she does give her things away! Haven't we used ANY?"
"Not one. And they have to be cleared away before they're stale, for
fear we might take one by mistake."
"Poor Mother!"
"My dear, she's found something newer than them all by now."
Felix sighed.
"The nomadic spirit. I have it, too!"
And a sudden vision came to him of his mother's carved ivory face, kept
free of wrinkles by sheer will-power, its firm chin, slightly aquiline
nose, and measured brows; its eyes that saw everything so quickly, so
fastidiously, its compressed mouth that smiled sweetly, with a resolute
but pathetic acceptation. Of the piece of fine lace, sometimes black,
sometimes white, over her gray hair. Of her hands, so thin now, always
moving a little, as if all the composure and care not to offend any eye
by allowing Time to ravage her face, were avenging themselves in that
constant movement. Of her figure, that was short but did not seem so,
still quick-moving, still alert, and always dressed in black or gray. A
vision of that exact, fastidious, wandering spirit called Frances
Fleeming Freeland--that spirit strangely compounded of domination and
humility, of acceptation and cynicism; precise and actual to the point of
desert dryness; generous to a point that caused her family to despair;
and always, beyond all things, brave.
Flora dropped the last little bottle, and sitting on the edge of the bath
let her eyebrows rise. How pleasant was that impersonal humor which made
her superior to other wives!
"You--nomadic? How?"
"Mother travels unceasingly from place to place, person to person, thing
to thing. I travel unceasingly from motive to motive, mind to mind; my
native air is also desert air--hence the sterility of my work."
Flora rose, but her eyebrows descended.
"Your work," she said, "is not sterile."
"That, my dear," said Felix, "is prejudice." And perceiving that she was
going to kiss him, he waited without annoyance. For a woman of
forty-two, with two children and three books of poems--and not knowing
which had taken least out of her--with hazel-gray eyes, wavy eyebrows
darker than they should have been, a glint of red in her hair; wavy
figure and lips; quaint, half-humorous indolence, quaint, half-humorous
warmth--was she not as satisfactory a woman as a man could possibly have
married!
"I have got to go down and see Tod," he said. "I like that wife of his;
but she has no sense of humor. How much better principles are in theory
than in practice!"
Flora repeated softly, as if to herself:
"I'm glad I have none." She was at the window leaning out, and Felix
took his place beside her. The air was full of scent from wet leaves,
alive with the song of birds thanking the sky. Suddenly he felt her arm
round his ribs; either it or they--which, he could not at the moment
tell--seemed extraordinarily soft. . . .
Between Felix and his young daughter, Nedda, there existed the only kind
of love, except a mother's, which has much permanence--love based on
mutual admiration. Though why Nedda, with her starry innocence, should
admire him, Felix could never understand, not realizing that she read his
books, and even analyzed them for herself in the diary which she kept
religiously, writing it when she ought to have been asleep. He had
therefore no knowledge of the way his written thoughts stimulated the
ceaseless questioning that was always going on within her; the thirst to
know why this was and that was not. Why, for instance, her heart ached
so some days and felt light and eager other days? Why, when people wrote
and talked of God, they seemed to know what He was, and she never did?
Why people had to suffer; and the world be black to so many millions?
Why one could not love more than one man at a time? Why--a thousand
things? Felix's books supplied no answers to these questions, but they
were comforting; for her real need as yet was not for answers, but ever
for more questions, as a young bird's need is for opening its beak
without quite knowing what is coming out or going in. When she and her
father walked, or sat, or went to concerts together, their talk was
neither particularly intimate nor particularly voluble; they made to each
other no great confidences. Yet each was certain that the other was not
bored--a great thing; and they squeezed each other's little fingers a
good deal--very warming. Now with his son Alan, Felix had a continual
sensation of having to keep up to a mark and never succeeding--a feeling,
as in his favorite nightmare, of trying to pass an examination for which
he had neglected to prepare; of having to preserve, in fact, form proper
to the father of Alan Freeland. With Nedda he had a sense of refreshment;
the delight one has on a spring day, watching a clear stream, a bank of
flowers, birds flying. And Nedda with her father--what feeling had she?
To be with him was like a long stroking with a touch of tickle in it; to
read his books, a long tickle with a nice touch of stroking now and then
when one was not expecting it.
That night after dinner, when Alan had gone out and Flora into a dream,
she snuggled up alongside her father, got hold of his little finger, and
whispered:
"Come into the garden, Dad; I'll put on goloshes. It's an awfully nice
moon."
The moon indeed was palest gold behind the pines, so that its radiance
was a mere shower of pollen, just a brushing of white moth-down over the
reeds of their little dark pond, and the black blur of the flowering
currant bushes. And the young lime-trees, not yet in full leaf, quivered
ecstatically in that moon-witchery, still letting fall raindrops of the
past spring torrent, with soft hissing sounds. A real sense in the
garden, of God holding his breath in the presence of his own youth
swelling, growing, trembling toward perfection! Somewhere a bird--a
thrush, they thought--mixed in its little mind as to night and day, was
queerly chirruping. And Felix and his daughter went along the dark wet
paths, holding each other's arms, not talking much. For, in him, very
responsive to the moods of Nature, there was a flattered feeling, with
that young arm in his, of Spring having chosen to confide in him this
whispering, rustling hour. And in Nedda was so much of that night's
unutterable youth--no wonder she was silent! Then, somehow--neither
responsible--they stood motionless. How quiet it was, but for a distant
dog or two, and the stilly shivering-down of the water drops, and the far
vibration of the million-voiced city! How quiet and soft and fresh!
Then Nedda spoke:
"Dad, I do so want to know everything."
Not rousing even a smile, with its sublime immodesty, that aspiration
seemed to Felix infinitely touching. What less could youth want in the
very heart of Spring? And, watching her face put up to the night, her
parted lips, and the moon-gleam fingering her white throat, he answered:
"It'll all come soon enough, my pretty!"
To think that she must come to an end like the rest, having found out
almost nothing, having discovered just herself, and the particle of God
that was within her! But he could not, of course, say this.
"I want to FEEL. Can't I begin?"
How many millions of young creatures all the world over were sending up
that white prayer to climb and twine toward the stars, and--fall to earth
again! And nothing to be answered, but:
"Time enough, Nedda!"
"But, Dad, there are such heaps of things, such heaps of people, and
reasons, and--and life; and I know nothing. Dreams are the only times,
it seems to me, that one finds out anything."
"As for that, my child, I am exactly in your case. What's to be done for
us?"
She slid her hand through his arm again.
"Don't laugh at me!"
"Heaven forbid! I meant it. You're finding out much quicker than I.
It's all folk-music to you still; to me Strauss and the rest of the tired
stuff. The variations my mind spins--wouldn't I just swap them for the
tunes your mind is making?"
"I don't seem making tunes at all. I don't seem to have anything to make
them of. Take me down to see 'the Tods,' Dad!"
Why not? And yet--! Just as in this spring night Felix felt so much, so
very much, lying out there behind the still and moony dark, such
marvellous holding of breath and waiting sentiency, so behind this
innocent petition, he could not help the feeling of a lurking
fatefulness. That was absurd. And he said: "If you wish it, by all
means. You'll like your Uncle Tod; as to the others, I can't say, but
your aunt is an experience, and experiences are what you want, it seems."
Fervently, without speech, Nedda squeezed his arm.
CHAPTER IV
Stanley Freeland's country house, Becket, was almost a show place. It
stood in its park and pastures two miles from the little town of Transham
and the Morton Plough Works; close to the ancestral home of the Moretons,
his mother's family--that home burned down by Roundheads in the Civil
War. The site--certain vagaries in the ground--Mrs. Stanley had caused
to be walled round, and consecrated so to speak with a stone medallion on
which were engraved the aged Moreton arms--arrows and crescent moons in
proper juxtaposition. Peacocks, too--that bird 'parlant,' from the old
Moreton crest--were encouraged to dwell there and utter their cries, as
of passionate souls lost in too comfortable surroundings.
By one of those freaks of which Nature is so prodigal, Stanley--owner of
this native Moreton soil--least of all four Freeland brothers, had the
Moreton cast of mind and body. That was why he made so much more money
than the other three put together, and had been able, with the aid of
Clara's undoubted genius for rank and station, to restore a strain of
Moreton blood to its rightful position among the county families of
Worcestershire. Bluff and without sentiment, he himself set little store
by that, smiling up his sleeve--for he was both kindly and prudent--at
his wife who had been a Tomson. It was not in Stanley to appreciate the
peculiar flavor of the Moretons, that something which in spite of their
naivete and narrowness, had really been rather fine. To him, such
Moretons as were left were 'dry enough sticks, clean out of it.' They
were of a breed that was already gone, the simplest of all country
gentlemen, dating back to the Conquest, without one solitary conspicuous
ancestor, save the one who had been physician to a king and perished
without issue--marrying from generation to generation exactly their own
equals; living simple, pious, parochial lives; never in trade, never
making money, having a tradition and a practice of gentility more
punctilious than the so-called aristocracy; constitutionally paternal and
maternal to their dependents, constitutionally so convinced that those
dependents and all indeed who were not 'gentry,' were of different clay,
that they were entirely simple and entirely without arrogance, carrying
with them even now a sort of Early atmosphere of archery and home-made
cordials, lavender and love of clergy, together with frequent use of the
word 'nice,' a peculiar regularity of feature, and a complexion that was
rather parchmenty. High Church people and Tories, naturally, to a man
and woman, by sheer inbred absence of ideas, and sheer inbred conviction
that nothing else was nice; but withal very considerate of others, really
plucky in bearing their own ills; not greedy, and not wasteful.
Of Becket, as it now was, they would not have approved at all. By what
chance Edmund Moreton (Stanley's mother's grandfather), in the middle of
the eighteenth century, had suddenly diverged from family feeling and
ideals, and taken that 'not quite nice' resolution to make ploughs and
money, would never now be known. The fact remained, together with the
plough works. A man apparently of curious energy and character,
considering his origin, he had dropped the E from his name, and--though
he continued the family tradition so far as to marry a Fleeming of
Worcestershire, to be paternal to his workmen, to be known as Squire, and
to bring his children up in the older Moreton 'niceness'--he had yet
managed to make his ploughs quite celebrated, to found a little town, and
die still handsome and clean-shaved at the age of sixty-six. Of his four
sons, only two could be found sufficiently without the E to go on making
ploughs. Stanley's grandfather, Stuart Morton, indeed, had tried hard,
but in the end had reverted to the congenital instinct for being just a
Moreton. An extremely amiable man, he took to wandering with his family,
and died in France, leaving one daughter--Frances, Stanley's mother--and
three sons, one of whom, absorbed in horses, wandered to Australia and
was killed by falling from them; one of whom, a soldier, wandered to
India, and the embraces of a snake; and one of whom wandered into the
embraces of the Holy Roman Church.
The Morton Plough Works were dry and dwindling when Stanley's father,
seeking an opening for his son, put him and money into them. From that
moment they had never looked back, and now brought Stanley, the sole
proprietor, an income of full fifteen thousand pounds a year. He wanted
it. For Clara, his wife, had that energy of aspiration which before now
has raised women to positions of importance in the counties which are not
their own, and caused, incidentally, many acres to go out of cultivation.
Not one plough was used on the whole of Becket, not even a Morton
plough--these indeed were unsuitable to English soil and were all sent
abroad. It was the corner-stone of his success that Stanley had
completely seen through the talked-of revival of English agriculture, and
sedulously cultivated the foreign market. This was why the Becket
dining-room could contain without straining itself large quantities of
local magnates and celebrities from London, all deploring the condition
of 'the Land,' and discussing without end the regrettable position of the
agricultural laborer. Except for literary men and painters, present in
small quantities to leaven the lump, Becket was, in fact, a rallying
point for the advanced spirits of Land Reform--one of those places where
they were sure of being well done at week-ends, and of congenial and even
stimulating talk about the undoubted need for doing something, and the
designs which were being entertained upon 'the Land' by either party.
This very heart of English country that the old Moretons in their
paternal way had so religiously farmed, making out of its lush grass and
waving corn a simple and by no means selfish or ungenerous subsistence,
was now entirely lawns, park, coverts, and private golf course, together
with enough grass to support the kine which yielded that continual stream
of milk necessary to Clara's entertainments and children, all female,
save little Francis, and still of tender years. Of gardeners, keepers,
cow-men, chauffeurs, footmen, stablemen--full twenty were supported on
those fifteen hundred acres that formed the little Becket demesne. Of
agricultural laborers proper--that vexed individual so much in the air,
so reluctant to stay on 'the Land,' and so difficult to house when he was
there, there were fortunately none, so that it was possible for Stanley,
whose wife meant him to 'put up' for the Division, and his guests, who
were frequently in Parliament, to hold entirely unbiassed and impersonal
views upon the whole question so long as they were at Becket.
It was beautiful there, too, with the bright open fields hedged with
great elms, and that ever-rich serenity of its grass and trees. The
white house, timbered with dark beams in true Worcestershire fashion, and
added-to from time to time, had preserved, thanks to a fine architect, an
old-fashioned air of spacious presidency above its gardens and lawns. On
the long artificial lake, with innumerable rushy nooks and water-lilies
and coverture of leaves floating flat and bright in the sun, the
half-tame wild duck and shy water-hens had remote little worlds, and flew
and splashed when all Becket was abed, quite as if the human spirit, with
its monkey-tricks and its little divine flame, had not yet been born.
Under the shade of a copper-beech, just where the drive cut through into
its circle before the house, an old lady was sitting that afternoon on a
campstool. She was dressed in gray alpaca, light and cool, and had on
her iron-gray hair a piece of black lace. A number of Hearth and Home
and a little pair of scissors, suspended by an inexpensive chain from her
waist, rested on her knee, for she had been meaning to cut out for dear
Felix a certain recipe for keeping the head cool; but, as a fact, she sat
without doing so, very still, save that, now and then, she compressed her
pale fine lips, and continually moved her pale fine hands. She was
evidently waiting for something that promised excitement, even pleasure,
for a little rose-leaf flush had quavered up into a face that was colored
like parchment; and her gray eyes under regular and still-dark brows,
very far apart, between which there was no semblance of a wrinkle, seemed
noting little definite things about her, almost unwillingly, as an Arab's
or a Red Indian's eyes will continue to note things in the present,
however their minds may be set on the future. So sat Frances Fleeming
Freeland (nee Morton) waiting for the arrival of her son Felix and her
grandchildren Alan and Nedda.
She marked presently an old man limping slowly on a stick toward where
the drive debouched, and thought at once: "He oughtn't to be coming this
way. I expect he doesn't know the way round to the back. Poor man, he's
very lame. He looks respectable, too." She got up and went toward him,
remarking that his face with nice gray moustaches was wonderfully
regular, almost like a gentleman's, and that he touched his dusty hat
with quite old-fashioned courtesy. And smiling--her smile was sweet but
critical--she said: "You'll find the best way is to go back to that
little path, and past the greenhouses. Have you hurt your leg?"
"My leg's been like that, m'm, fifteen year come Michaelmas."
"How did it happen?"
"Ploughin'. The bone was injured; an' now they say the muscle's dried up
in a manner of speakin'."
"What do you do for it? The very best thing is this."
From the recesses of a deep pocket, placed where no one else wore such a
thing, she brought out a little pot.
"You must let me give it you. Put it on when you go to bed, and rub it
well in; you'll find it act splendidly."
The old man took the little pot with dubious reverence.
"Yes, m'm," he said; "thank you, m'm."
"What is your name?"
"Gaunt."
"And where do you live?"
"Over to Joyfields, m'm."
"Joyfields--another of my sons lives there--Mr. Morton Freeland. But it's
seven miles."
"I got a lift half-way."
"And have you business at the house?" The old man was silent; the
downcast, rather cynical look of his lined face deepened. And Frances
Freeland thought: 'He's overtired. They must give him some tea and an
egg. What can he want, coming all this way? He's evidently not a
beggar.'
The old man who was not a beggar spoke suddenly:
"I know the Mr. Freeland at Joyfields. He's a good gentleman, too."
"Yes, he is. I wonder I don't know you."
"I'm not much about, owin' to my leg. It's my grand-daughter in service
here, I come to see."
"Oh, yes! What is her name?"
"Gaunt her name is."
"I shouldn't know her by her surname."
"Alice."
"Ah! in the kitchen; a nice, pretty girl. I hope you're not in trouble."
Again the old man was silent, and again spoke suddenly:
"That's as you look at it, m'm," he said. "I've got a matter of a few
words to have with her about the family. Her father he couldn't come, so
I come instead."
"And how are you going to get back?"
"I'll have to walk, I expect, without I can pick up with a cart."
Frances Freeland compressed her lips. "With that leg you should have
come by train."
The old man smiled.
"I hadn't the fare like," he said. "I only gets five shillin's a week,
from the council, and two o' that I pays over to my son."
Frances Freeland thrust her hand once more into that deep pocket, and as
she did so she noticed that the old man's left boot was flapping open,
and that there were two buttons off his coat. Her mind was swiftly
calculating: "It is more than seven weeks to quarter day. Of course I
can't afford it, but I must just give him a sovereign."
She withdrew her hand from the recesses of her pocket and looked at the
old man's nose. It was finely chiselled, and the same yellow as his
face. "It looks nice, and quite sober," she thought. In her hand was
her purse and a boot-lace. She took out a sovereign.
"Now, if I give you this," she said, "you must promise me not to spend
any of it in the public-house. And this is for your boot. And you must
go back by train. And get those buttons sewn on your coat. And tell
cook, from me, please, to give you some tea and an egg." And noticing
that he took the sovereign and the boot-lace very respectfully, and
seemed altogether very respectable, and not at all coarse or
beery-looking, she said:
"Good-by; don't forget to rub what I gave you into your leg every night
and every morning," and went back to her camp-stool. Sitting down on it
with the scissors in her hand, she still did not cut out that recipe, but
remained as before, taking in small, definite things, and feeling with an
inner trembling that dear Felix and Alan and Nedda would soon be here;
and the little flush rose again in her cheeks, and again her lips and
hands moved, expressing and compressing what was in her heart. And close
behind her, a peacock, straying from the foundations of the old Moreton
house, uttered a cry, and moved slowly, spreading its tail under the
low-hanging boughs of the copper-beeches, as though it knew those dark
burnished leaves were the proper setting for its 'parlant' magnificence.
CHAPTER V
The day after the little conference at John's, Felix had indeed received
the following note:
"DEAR FELIX:
"When you go down to see old Tod, why not put up with us at Becket? Any
time will suit, and the car can take you over to Joyfields when you like.
Give the pen a rest. Clara joins in hoping you'll come, and Mother is
still here. No use, I suppose, to ask Flora.
"Yours ever,
"STANLEY."
During the twenty years of his brother's sojourn there Felix had been
down to Becket perhaps once a year, and latterly alone; for Flora, having
accompanied him the first few times, had taken a firm stand.
"My dear," she said, "I feel all body there."
Felix had rejoined:
"No bad thing, once in a way."
But Flora had remained firm. Life was too short! She did not get on
well with Clara. Neither did Felix feel too happy in his sister-in-law's
presence; but the gray top-hat instinct had kept him going there, for one
ought to keep in touch with one's brothers.
He replied to Stanley:
"DEAR STANLEY:
"Delighted; if I may bring my two youngsters. We'll arrive to-morrow at
four-fifty.
"Yours affectionately,
"FELIX."
Travelling with Nedda was always jolly; one could watch her eyes noting,
inquiring, and when occasion served, have one's little finger hooked in
and squeezed. Travelling with Alan was convenient, the young man having
a way with railways which Felix himself had long despaired of acquiring.
Neither of the children had ever been at Becket, and though Alan was
seldom curious, and Nedda too curious about everything to be specially so
about this, yet Felix experienced in their company the sensations of a
new adventure.
Arrived at Transham, that little town upon a hill which the Morton Plough
Works had created, they were soon in Stanley's car, whirling into the
sleepy peace of a Worcestershire afternoon. Would this young bird
nestling up against him echo Flora's verdict: 'I feel all body there!' or
would she take to its fatted luxury as a duck to water? And he said: "By
the way, your aunt's 'Bigwigs' set in on a Saturday. Are you for staying
and seeing the lions feed, or do we cut back?"
From Alan he got the answer he expected:
"If there's golf or something, I suppose we can make out all right."
From Nedda: "What sort of Bigwigs are they, Dad?"
"A sort you've never seen, my dear."
"Then I should like to stay. Only, about dresses?"
"What war paint have you?"
"Only two white evenings. And Mums gave me her Mechlin."
"'Twill serve."
To Felix, Nedda in white 'evenings' was starry and all that man could
desire.
"Only, Dad, do tell me about them, beforehand."
"My dear, I will. And God be with you. This is where Becket begins."
The car had swerved into a long drive between trees not yet full-grown,
but decorously trying to look more than their twenty years. To the right,
about a group of older elms, rooks were in commotion, for Stanley's three
keepers' wives had just baked their annual rook pies, and the birds were
not yet happy again. Those elms had stood there when the old Moretons
walked past them through corn-fields to church of a Sunday. Away on the
left above the lake, the little walled mound had come in view. Something
in Felix always stirred at sight of it, and, squeezing Nedda's arm, he
said:
"See that silly wall? Behind there Granny's ancients lived. Gone
now--new house--new lake--new trees--new everything."
But he saw from his little daughter's calm eyes that the sentiment in him
was not in her.
"I like the lake," she said. "There's Granny--oh, and a peacock!"
His mother's embrace, with its frail energy, and the pressure of her
soft, dry lips, filled Felix always with remorse. Why could he not give
the simple and direct expression to his feeling that she gave to hers?
He watched those lips transferred to Nedda, heard her say: "Oh, my
darling, how lovely to see you! Do you know this for midge-bites?" A
hand, diving deep into a pocket, returned with a little silver-coated
stick having a bluish end. Felix saw it rise and hover about Nedda's
forehead, and descend with two little swift dabs. "It takes them away at
once."
"Oh, but Granny, they're not midge-bites; they're only from my hat!"
"It doesn't matter, darling; it takes away anything like that."
And he thought: 'Mother is really wonderful!'
At the house the car had already disgorged their luggage. Only one man,
but he absolutely the butler, awaited them, and they entered, at once
conscious of Clara's special pot-pourri. Its fragrance steamed from blue
china, in every nook and crevice, a sort of baptism into luxury. Clara
herself, in the outer morning-room, smelled a little of it. Quick and
dark of eye, capable, comely, perfectly buttoned, one of those women who
know exactly how not to be superior to the general taste of the period.
In addition to that great quality she was endowed with a fine nose, an
instinct for co-ordination not to be excelled, and a genuine love of
making people comfortable; so that it was no wonder that she had risen in
the ranks of hostesses, till her house was celebrated for its ease, even
among those who at their week-ends liked to feel 'all body.' In regard to
that characteristic of Becket, not even Felix in his ironies had ever
stood up to Clara; the matter was too delicate. Frances Freeland,
indeed--not because she had any philosophic preconceptions on the matter,
but because it was 'not nice, dear, to be wasteful' even if it were only
of rose-leaves, or to 'have too much decoration,' such as Japanese prints
in places where they hum--sometimes told her daughter-in-law frankly what
was wrong, without, however, making the faintest impression upon Clara,
for she was not sensitive, and, as she said to Stanley, it was 'only
Mother.'
When they had drunk that special Chinese tea, all the rage, but which no
one really liked, in the inner morning, or afternoon room--for the
drawing-rooms were too large to be comfortable except at week-ends--they
went to see the children, a special blend of Stanley and Clara, save the
little Francis, who did not seem to be entirely body. Then Clara took
them to their rooms. She lingered kindly in Nedda's, feeling that the
girl could not yet feel quite at home, and looking in the soap-dish lest
she might not have the right verbena, and about the dressing-table to see
that she had pins and scent, and plenty of 'pot-pourri,' and thinking:
'The child is pretty--a nice girl, not like her mother.' Explaining
carefully how, because of the approaching week-end, she had been obliged
to put her in 'a very simple room' where she would be compelled to cross
the corridor to her bath, she asked her if she had a quilted
dressing-gown, and finding that she had not, left her saying she would
send one--and could she do her frocks up, or should Sirrett come?
Abandoned, the girl stood in the middle of the room, so far more 'simple'
than she had ever slept in, with its warm fragrance of rose-leaves and
verbena, its Aubusson carpet, white silk-quilted bed, sofa, cushioned
window-seat, dainty curtains, and little nickel box of biscuits on little
spindly table. There she stood and sniffed, stretched herself, and
thought: 'It's jolly--only, it smells too much!' and she went up to the
pictures, one by one. They seemed to go splendidly with the room, and
suddenly she felt homesick. Ridiculous, of course! Yet, if she had
known where her father's room was, she would have run out to it; but her
memory was too tangled up with stairs and corridors--to find her way down
to the hall again was all she could have done.
A maid came in now with a blue silk gown very thick and soft. Could she
do anything for Miss Freeland? No, thanks, she could not; only, did she
know where Mr. Freeland's room was?
"Which Mr. Freeland, miss, the young or the old?"
"Oh, the old!" Having said which, Nedda felt unhappy; her Dad was not
old! "No, miss; but I'll find out. It'll be in the walnut wing!" But
with a little flutter at the thought of thus setting people to run about
wings, Nedda murmured: "Oh! thanks, no; it doesn't matter."
She settled down now on the cushion of the window-seat, to look out and
take it all in, right away to that line of hills gone blue in the haze of
the warm evening. That would be Malvern; and there, farther to the
south, the 'Tods' lived. 'Joyfields!' A pretty name! And it was lovely
country all round; green and peaceful, with its white, timbered houses
and cottages. People must be very happy, living here--happy and quiet
like the stars and the birds; not like the crowds in London thronging
streets and shops and Hampstead Heath; not like the people in all those
disgruntled suburbs that led out for miles where London ought to have
stopped but had not; not like the thousands and thousands of those poor
creatures in Bethnal Green, where her slum work lay. The natives here
must surely be happy. Only, were there any natives? She had not seen
any. Away to the right below her window were the first trees of the
fruit garden; for many of them Spring was over, but the apple-trees had
just come into blossom, and the low sun shining through a gap in some far
elms was slanting on their creamy pink, christening them--Nedda
thought--with drops of light; and lovely the blackbirds' singing sounded
in the perfect hush! How wonderful to be a bird, going where you would,
and from high up in the air seeing everything; flying down a sunbeam,
drinking a raindrop, sitting on the very top of a tall tree, running in
grass so high that you were hidden, laying little perfect blue-green
eggs, or pure-gray speckly ones; never changing your dress, yet always
beautiful. Surely the spirit of the world was in the birds and the
clouds, roaming, floating, and in the flowers and trees that never
smelled anything but sweet, never looked anything but lovely, and were
never restless. Why was one restless, wanting things that did not
come--wanting to feel and know, wanting to love, and be loved? And at
that thought which had come to her so unexpectedly--a thought never
before shaped so definitely--Nedda planted her arms on the window-sill,
with sleeves fallen down, and let her hands meet cup-shaped beneath her
chin. Love! To have somebody with whom she could share everything--some
one to whom and for whom she could give up--some one she could protect
and comfort--some one who would bring her peace. Peace, rest--from what?
Ah! that she could not make clear, even to herself. Love! What would
love be like? Her father loved her, and she loved him. She loved her
mother; and Alan on the whole was jolly to her--it was not that. What
was it--where was it--when would it come and wake her, and kiss her to
sleep, all in one? Come and fill her as with the warmth and color, the
freshness, light, and shadow of this beautiful May evening, flood her as
with the singing of those birds, and the warm light sunning the apple
blossoms. And she sighed. Then--as with all young things whose
attention after all is but as the hovering of a butterfly--her
speculation was attracted to a thin, high-shouldered figure limping on a
stick, away from the house, down one of the paths among the apple-trees.
He wavered, not knowing, it seemed, his way. And Nedda thought: 'Poor
old man, how lame he is!' She saw him stoop, screened, as he evidently
thought, from sight, and take something very small from his pocket. He
gazed, rubbed it, put it back; what it was she could not see. Then
pressing his hand down, he smoothed and stretched his leg. His eyes
seemed closed. So a stone man might have stood! Till very slowly he
limped on, passing out of sight. And turning from the window, Nedda
began hurrying into her evening things.
When she was ready she took a long time to decide whether to wear her
mother's lace or keep it for the Bigwigs. But it was so nice and creamy
that she simply could not take it off, and stood turning and turning
before the glass. To stand before a glass was silly and old-fashioned;
but Nedda could never help it, wanting so badly to be nicer to look at
than she was, because of that something that some day was coming!
She was, in fact, pretty, but not merely pretty--there was in her face
something alive and sweet, something clear and swift. She had still that
way of a child raising its eyes very quickly and looking straight at you
with an eager innocence that hides everything by its very wonder; and
when those eyes looked down they seemed closed--their dark lashes were so
long. Her eyebrows were wide apart, arching with a slight angle, and
slanting a little down toward her nose. Her forehead under its
burnt-brown hair was candid; her firm little chin just dimpled.
Altogether, a face difficult to take one's eyes off. But Nedda was far
from vain, and her face seemed to her too short and broad, her eyes too
dark and indeterminate, neither gray nor brown. The straightness of her
nose was certainly comforting, but it, too, was short. Being creamy in
the throat and browning easily, she would have liked to be marble-white,
with blue dreamy eyes and fair hair, or else like a Madonna. And was she
tall enough? Only five foot five. And her arms were too thin. The only
things that gave her perfect satisfaction were her legs, which, of
course, she could not at the moment see; they really WERE rather jolly!
Then, in a panic, fearing to be late, she turned and ran out, fluttering
into the maze of stairs and corridors.
CHAPTER VI
Clara, Mrs. Stanley Freeland, was not a narrow woman either in mind or
body; and years ago, soon indeed after she married Stanley, she had
declared her intention of taking up her sister-in-law, Kirsteen, in spite
of what she had heard were the woman's extraordinary notions. Those were
the days of carriages, pairs, coachmen, grooms, and, with her usual
promptitude, ordering out the lot, she had set forth. It is safe to say
she had never forgotten that experience.
Imagine an old, white, timbered cottage with a thatched roof, and no
single line about it quite straight. A cottage crazy with age, buried up
to the thatch in sweetbrier, creepers, honeysuckle, and perched high
above crossroads. A cottage almost unapproachable for beehives and their
bees--an insect for which Clara had an aversion. Imagine on the rough,
pebbled approach to the door of this cottage (and Clara had on thin
shoes) a peculiar cradle with a dark-eyed baby that was staring placidly
at two bees sleeping on a coverlet made of a rough linen such as Clara
had never before seen. Imagine an absolutely naked little girl of three,
sitting in a tub of sunlight in the very doorway. Clara had turned
swiftly and closed the wicket gate between the pebbled pathway and the
mossed steps that led down to where her coachman and her footman were
sitting very still, as was the habit of those people. She had perceived
at once that she was making no common call. Then, with real courage she
had advanced, and, looking down at the little girl with a fearful smile,
had tickled the door with the handle of her green parasol. A woman
younger than herself, a girl, indeed, appeared in a low doorway. She had
often told Stanley since that she would never forget her first sight (she
had not yet had another) of Tod's wife. A brown face and black hair,
fiery gray eyes, eyes all light, under black lashes, and "such a strange
smile"; bare, brown, shapely arms and neck in a shirt of the same rough,
creamy linen, and, from under a bright blue skirt, bare, brown, shapely
ankles and feet! A voice so soft and deadly that, as Clara said: "What
with her eyes, it really gave me the shivers. And, my dear," she had
pursued, "white-washed walls, bare brick floors, not a picture, not a
curtain, not even a fire-iron. Clean--oh, horribly! They must be the
most awful cranks. The only thing I must say that was nice was the
smell. Sweetbrier, and honey, coffee, and baked apples--really
delicious. I must try what I can do with it. But that woman--girl, I
suppose she is--stumped me. I'm sure she'd have cut my head off if I'd
attempted to open my mouth on ordinary topics. The children were rather
ducks; but imagine leaving them about like that amongst the bees.
'Kirsteen!' She looked it. Never again! And Tod I didn't see at all; I
suppose he was mooning about amongst his creatures."
It was the memory of this visit, now seventeen years ago, that had made
her smile so indulgently when Stanley came back from the conference. She
had said at once that they must have Felix to stay, and for her part she
would be only too glad to do anything she could for those poor children
of Tod's, even to asking them to Becket, and trying to civilize them a
little. . . . "But as for that woman, there'll be nothing to be done
with her, I can assure you. And I expect Tod is completely under her
thumb."
To Felix, who took her in to dinner, she spoke feelingly and in a low
voice. She liked Felix, in spite of his wife, and respected him--he had
a name. Lady Malloring--she told him--the Mallorings owned, of course,
everything round Joyfields--had been telling her that of late Tod's wife
had really become quite rabid over the land question. 'The Tods' were
hand in glove with all the cottagers. She, Clara, had nothing to say
against any one who sympathized with the condition of the agricultural
laborer; quite the contrary. Becket was almost, as Felix knew--though
perhaps it wasn't for her to say so--the centre of that movement; but
there were ways of doing things, and one did so deprecate women like this
Kirsteen--what an impossibly Celtic name!--putting her finger into any
pie that really was of national importance. Nothing could come of
anything done that sort of way. If Felix had any influence with Tod it
would be a mercy to use it in getting those poor young creatures away
from home, to mix a little with people who took a sane view of things.
She would like very much to get them over to Becket, but with their
notions it was doubtful whether they had evening clothes! She had, of
course, never forgotten that naked mite in the tub of sunlight, nor the
poor baby with its bees and its rough linen. Felix replied
deferentially--he was invariably polite, and only just ironic enough, in
the houses of others--that he had the very greatest respect for Tod, and
that there could be nothing very wrong with the woman to whom Tod was so
devoted. As for the children, his own young people would get at them and
learn all about what was going on in a way that no fogey like himself
could. In regard to the land question, there were, of course, many sides
to that, and he, for one, would not be at all sorry to observe yet
another. After all, the Tods were in real contact with the laborers, and
that was the great thing. It would be very interesting.
Yes, Clara quite saw all that, but--and here she sank her voice so that
there was hardly any left--as Felix was going over there, she really must
put him au courant with the heart of this matter. Lady Malloring had
told her the whole story. It appeared there were two cases: A family
called Gaunt, an old man, and his son, who had two daughters--one of
them, Alice, quite a nice girl, was kitchen-maid here at Becket, but the
other sister--Wilmet--well! she was one of those girls that, as Felix
must know, were always to be found in every village. She was leading the
young men astray, and Lady Malloring had put her foot down, telling her
bailiff to tell the farmer for whom Gaunt worked that he and his family
must go, unless they sent the girl away somewhere. That was one case.
And the other was of a laborer called Tryst, who wanted to marry his
deceased wife's sister. Of course, whether Mildred Malloring was not
rather too churchy and puritanical--now that a deceased wife's sister was
legal--Clara did not want to say; but she was undoubtedly within her
rights if she thought it for the good of the village. This man, Tryst,
was a good workman, and his farmer had objected to losing him, but Lady
Malloring had, of course, not given way, and if he persisted he would get
put out. All the cottages about there were Sir Gerald Malloring's, so
that in both cases it would mean leaving the neighborhood. In regard to
village morality, as Felix knew, the line must be drawn somewhere.
Felix interrupted quietly:
"I draw it at Lady Malloring."
"Well, I won't argue that with you. But it really is a scandal that
Tod's wife should incite her young people to stir up the villagers.
Goodness knows where that mayn't lead! Tod's cottage and land, you see,
are freehold, the only freehold thereabouts; and his being a brother of
Stanley's makes it particularly awkward for the Mallorings."
"Quite so!" murmured Felix.
"Yes, but my dear Felix, when it comes to infecting those simple people
with inflated ideas of their rights, it's serious, especially in the
country. I'm told there's really quite a violent feeling. I hear from
Alice Gaunt that the young Tods have been going about saying that dogs
are better off than people treated in this fashion, which, of course, is
all nonsense, and making far too much of a small matter. Don't you think
so?"
But Felix only smiled his peculiar, sweetish smile, and answered:
"I'm glad to have come down just now."
Clara, who did not know that when Felix smiled like that he was angry,
agreed.
"Yes," she said; "you're an observer. You will see the thing in right
perspective."
"I shall endeavor to. What does Tod say?"
"Oh! Tod never seems to say anything. At least, I never hear of it."
Felix murmured:
"Tod is a well in the desert."
To which deep saying Clara made no reply, not indeed understanding in the
least what it might signify.
That evening, when Alan, having had his fill of billiards, had left the
smoking-room and gone to bed, Felix remarked to Stanley:
"I say, what sort of people are these Mallorings?"
Stanley, who was settling himself for the twenty minutes of whiskey,
potash, and a Review, with which he commonly composed his mind before
retiring, answered negligently:
"The Mallorings? Oh! about the best type of landowner we've got."
"What exactly do you mean by that?"
Stanley took his time to answer, for below his bluff good-nature he had
the tenacious, if somewhat slow, precision of an English man of business,
mingled with a certain mistrust of 'old Felix.'
"Well," he said at last, "they build good cottages, yellow brick, d--d
ugly, I must say; look after the character of their tenants; give 'em
rebate of rent if there's a bad harvest; encourage stock-breedin', and
machinery--they've got some of my ploughs, but the people don't like 'em,
and, as a matter of fact, they're right--they're not made for these
small fields; set an example goin' to church; patronize the Rifle Range;
buy up the pubs when they can, and run 'em themselves; send out jelly,
and let people over their place on bank holidays. Dash it all, I don't
know what they don't do. Why?"
"Are they liked?"
"Liked? No, I should hardly think they were liked; respected, and all
that. Malloring's a steady fellow, keen man on housing, and a gentleman;
she's a bit too much perhaps on the pious side. They've got one of the
finest Georgian houses in the country. Altogether they're what you call
'model.'"
"But not human."
Stanley slightly lowered the Review and looked across it at his brother.
It was evident to him that 'old Felix' was in one of his free-thinking
moods.
"They're domestic," he said, "and fond of their children, and pleasant
neighbors. I don't deny that they've got a tremendous sense of duty, but
we want that in these days."
"Duty to what?"
Stanley raised his level eyebrows. It was a stumper. Without great care
he felt that he would be getting over the border into the uncharted land
of speculation and philosophy, wandering on paths that led him nowhere.
"If you lived in the country, old man," he said, "you wouldn't ask that
sort of question."
"You don't imagine," said Felix, "that you or the Mallorings live in the
country? Why, you landlords are every bit as much town dwellers as I
am--thought, habit, dress, faith, souls, all town stuff. There IS no
'country' in England now for us of the 'upper classes.' It's gone. I
repeat: Duty to what?"
And, rising, he went over to the window, looking out at the moonlit lawn,
overcome by a sudden aversion from more talk. Of what use were words
from a mind tuned in one key to a mind tuned in another? And yet, so
ingrained was his habit of discussion, that he promptly went on:
"The Mallorings, I've not the slightest doubt, believe it their duty to
look after the morals of those who live on their property. There are
three things to be said about that: One--you can't make people moral by
adopting the attitude of the schoolmaster. Two--it implies that they
consider themselves more moral than their neighbors. Three--it's a
theory so convenient to their security that they would be exceptionally
good people if they did not adopt it; but, from your account, they are
not so much exceptionally as just typically good people. What you call
their sense of duty, Stanley, is really their sense of self-preservation
coupled with their sense of superiority."
"H'm!" said Stanley; "I don't know that I quite follow you."
"I always hate an odor of sanctity. I'd prefer them to say frankly:
'This is my property, and you'll jolly well do what I tell you, on it.'"
"But, my dear chap, after all, they really ARE superior."
"That," said Felix, "I emphatically question. Put your Mallorings to
earn their living on fifteen to eighteen shillings a week, and where
would they be? The Mallorings have certain virtues, no doubt, natural to
their fortunate environment, but of the primitive virtues of patience,
hardihood, perpetual, almost unconscious self-sacrifice, and cheerfulness
in the face of a hard fate, they are no more the equals of the people
they pretend to be superior to than I am your equal as a man of
business."
"Hang it!" was Stanley's answer, "what a d--d old heretic you are!"
Felix frowned. "Am I? Be honest! Take the life of a Malloring and take
it at its best; see how it stands comparison in the ordinary virtues with
those of an averagely good specimen of a farm-laborer. Your Malloring is
called with a cup of tea, at, say, seven o'clock, out of a nice, clean,
warm bed; he gets into a bath that has been got ready for him; into
clothes and boots that have been brushed for him; and goes down to a room
where there's a fire burning already if it's a cold day, writes a few
letters, perhaps, before eating a breakfast of exactly what he likes,
nicely prepared for him, and reading the newspaper that best comforts his
soul; when he has eaten and read, he lights his cigar or his pipe and
attends to his digestion in the most sanitary and comfortable fashion;
then in his study he sits down to steady direction of other people,
either by interview or by writing letters, or what not. In this way,
between directing people and eating what he likes, he passes the whole
day, except that for two or three hours, sometimes indeed seven or eight
hours, he attends to his physique by riding, motoring, playing a game, or
indulging in a sport that he has chosen for himself. And, at the end of
all that, he probably has another bath that has been made ready for him,
puts on clean clothes that have been put out for him, goes down to a good
dinner that has been cooked for him, smokes, reads, learns, and inwardly
digests, or else plays cards, billiards, and acts host till he is sleepy,
and so to bed, in a clean, warm bed, in a clean, fresh room. Is that
exaggerated?"
"No; but when you talk of his directing other people, you forget that he
is doing what they couldn't."
"He may be doing what they couldn't; but ordinary directive ability is
not born in a man; it's acquired by habit and training. Suppose fortune
had reversed them at birth, the Gaunt or Tryst would by now have it and
the Malloring would not. The accident that they were not reversed at
birth has given the Malloring a thousandfold advantage."
"It's no joke directing things," muttered Stanley.
"No work is any joke; but I just put it to you: Simply as work, without
taking in the question of reward, would you dream for a minute of
swapping your work with the work of one of your workmen? No. Well,
neither would a Malloring with one of his Gaunts. So that, my boy, for
work which is intrinsically more interesting and pleasurable, the
Malloring gets a hundred to a thousand times more money."
"All this is rank socialism, my dear fellow."
"No; rank truth. Now, to take the life of a Gaunt. He gets up summer
and winter much earlier out of a bed that he cannot afford time or money
to keep too clean or warm, in a small room that probably has not a large
enough window; into clothes stiff with work and boots stiff with clay;
makes something hot for himself, very likely brings some of it to his
wife and children; goes out, attending to his digestion crudely and
without comfort; works with his hands and feet from half past six or
seven in the morning till past five at night, except that twice he stops
for an hour or so and eats simple things that he would not altogether
have chosen to eat if he could have had his will. He goes home to a tea
that has been got ready for him, and has a clean-up without assistance,
smokes a pipe of shag, reads a newspaper perhaps two days old, and goes
out again to work for his own good, in his vegetable patch, or to sit on
a wooden bench in an atmosphere of beer and 'baccy.' And so, dead tired,
but not from directing other people, he drowses himself to early lying
again in his doubtful bed. Is that exaggerated?"
"I suppose not, but he--"
"Has his compensations: Clean conscience--freedom from worry--fresh air,
all the rest of it! I know. Clean conscience granted, but so has your
Malloring, it would seem. Freedom from worry--yes, except when a pair of
boots is wanted, or one of the children is ill; then he has to make up
for lost time with a vengeance. Fresh air--and wet clothes, with a good
chance of premature rheumatism. Candidly, which of those two lives
demands more of the virtues on which human life is founded--courage and
patience, hardihood and self-sacrifice? And which of two men who have
lived those two lives well has most right to the word 'superior'?"
Stanley dropped the Review and for fully a minute paced the room without
reply. Then he said:
"Felix, you're talking flat revolution."
Felix, who, faintly smiling, had watched him up and down, up and down the
Turkey carpet, answered:
"Not so. I am by no means a revolutionary person, because with all the
good-will in the world I have been unable to see how upheavals from the
bottom, or violence of any sort, is going to equalize these lives or do
any good. But I detest humbug, and I believe that so long as you and
your Mallorings go on blindly dosing yourselves with humbug about duty
and superiority, so long will you see things as they are not. And until
you see things as they are, purged of all that sickening cant, you will
none of you really move to make the conditions of life more and ever more
just. For, mark you, Stanley, I, who do not believe in revolution from
the bottom, the more believe that it is up to us in honour to
revolutionize things from the top!"
"H'm!" said Stanley; "that's all very well; but the more you give the
more they want, till there's no end to it."
Felix stared round that room, where indeed one was all body.
"By George," he said, "I've yet to see a beginning. But, anyway, if you
give in a grudging spirit, or the spirit of a schoolmaster, what can you
expect? If you offer out of real good-will, so it is taken." And
suddenly conscious that he had uttered a constructive phrase, Felix cast
down his eyes, and added:
"I am going to my clean, warm bed. Good night, old man!"
When his brother had taken up his candlestick and gone, Stanley, uttering
a dubious sound, sat down on the lounge, drank deep out of his tumbler,
and once more took up his Review.
CHAPTER VII
The next day Stanley's car, fraught with Felix and a note from Clara,
moved swiftly along the grass-bordered roads toward Joyfields. Lying
back on the cushioned seat, the warm air flying at his face, Felix
contemplated with delight his favorite countryside. Certainly this
garden of England was very lovely, its greenness, trees, and large, pied,
lazy cattle; its very emptiness of human beings even was pleasing.
Nearing Joyfields he noted the Mallorings' park and their long Georgian
house, carefully fronting south. There, too, was the pond of what
village there was, with the usual ducks on it; and three well-remembered
cottages in a row, neat and trim, of the old, thatched sort, but
evidently restored. Out of the door of one of them two young people had
just emerged, going in the same direction as the car. Felix passed them
and turned to look. Yes, it was they! He stopped the car. They were
walking, with eyes straight before them, frowning. And Felix thought:
'Nothing of Tod in either of them; regular Celts!'
The girl's vivid, open face, crisp, brown, untidy hair, cheeks brimful of
color, thick lips, eyes that looked up and out as a Skye terrier's eyes
look out of its shagginess--indeed, her whole figure struck Felix as
almost frighteningly vital; and she walked as if she despised the ground
she covered. The boy was even more arresting. What a strange, pale-dark
face, with its black, uncovered hair, its straight black brows; what a
proud, swan's-eyed, thin-lipped, straight-nosed young devil, marching
like a very Highlander; though still rather run-up, from sheer
youthfulness! They had come abreast of the car by now, and, leaning out,
he said:
"You don't remember me, I'm afraid!" The boy shook his head. Wonderful
eyes he had! But the girl put out her hand.
"Of course, Derek; it's Uncle Felix."
They both smiled now, the girl friendly, the boy rather drawn back into
himself. And feeling strangely small and ill at ease, Felix murmured:
"I'm going to see your father. Can I give you a lift home?"
The answer came as he expected:
"No, thanks." Then, as if to tone it down, the girl added:
"We've got something to do first. You'll find him in the orchard."
She had a ringing voice, full of warmth. Lifting his hat, Felix passed
on. They WERE a couple! Strange, attractive, almost frightening.
Kirsteen had brought his brother a formidable little brood.
Arriving at the cottage, he went up its mossy stones and through the
wicket gate. There was little change, indeed, since the days of Clara's
visit, save that the beehives had been moved farther out. Nor did any
one answer his knock; and mindful of the girl's words, "You'll find him
in the orchard," he made his way out among the trees. The grass was long
and starred with petals. Felix wandered over it among bees busy with the
apple-blossom. At the very end he came on his brother, cutting down a
pear-tree. Tod was in shirt-sleeves, his brown arms bare almost to the
shoulders. How tremendous the fellow was! What resounding and terrific
blows he was dealing! Down came the tree, and Tod drew his arm across
his brow. This great, burnt, curly-headed fellow was more splendid to
look upon than even Felix had remembered, and so well built that not a
movement of his limbs was heavy. His cheek-bones were very broad and
high; his brows thick and rather darker than his bright hair, so that his
deep-set, very blue eyes seemed to look out of a thicket; his level white
teeth gleamed from under his tawny moustache, and his brown, unshaven
cheeks and jaw seemed covered with gold powder. Catching sight of Felix,
he came forward.
"Fancy," he said, "old Gladstone spending his leisure cutting down
trees--of all melancholy jobs!"
Felix did not quite know what to answer, so he put his arm within his
brother's. Tod drew him toward the tree.
"Sit down!" he said. Then, looking sorrowfully at the pear-tree, he
murmured:
"Seventy years--and down in seven minutes. Now we shall burn it. Well,
it had to go. This is the third year it's had no blossom."
His speech was slow, like that of a man accustomed to think aloud. Felix
admired him askance. "I might live next door," he thought, "for all the
notice he's taken of my turning up!"
"I came over in Stanley's car," he said. "Met your two coming
along--fine couple they are!"
"Ah!" said Tod. And there was something in the way he said it that was
more than a mere declaration of pride or of affection. Then he looked at
Felix.
"What have you come for, old man?"
Felix smiled. Quaint way to put it!
"For a talk."
"Ah!" said Tod, and he whistled.
A largish, well-made dog with a sleek black coat, white underneath, and a
black tail white-tipped, came running up, and stood before Tod, with its
head rather to one side and its yellow-brown eyes saying: 'I simply must
get at what you're thinking, you know.'
"Go and tell your mistress to come--Mistress!"
The dog moved his tail, lowered it, and went off.
"A gypsy gave him to me," said Tod; "best dog that ever lived."
"Every one thinks that of his own dog, old man."
"Yes," said Tod; "but this IS."
"He looks intelligent."
"He's got a soul," said Tod. "The gypsy said he didn't steal him, but he
did."
"Do you always know when people aren't speaking the truth, then?"
"Yes."
At such a monstrous remark from any other man, Felix would have smiled;
but seeing it was Tod, he only asked: "How?"
"People who aren't speaking the truth look you in the face and never move
their eyes."
"Some people do that when they are speaking the truth."
"Yes; but when they aren't, you can see them struggling to keep their
eyes straight. A dog avoids your eye when he's something to conceal; a
man stares at you. Listen!"
Felix listened and heard nothing.
"A wren"; and, screwing up his lips, Tod emitted a sound: "Look!"
Felix saw on the branch of an apple-tree a tiny brown bird with a little
beak sticking out and a little tail sticking up. And he thought: 'Tod's
hopeless!'
"That fellow," said Tod softly, "has got his nest there just behind us."
Again he emitted the sound. Felix saw the little bird move its head with
a sort of infinite curiosity, and hop twice on the branch.
"I can't get the hen to do that," Tod murmured.
Felix put his hand on his brother's arm--what an arm!
"Yes," he said; "but look here, old man--I really want to talk to you."
Tod shook his head. "Wait for her," he said.
Felix waited. Tod was getting awfully eccentric, living this queer,
out-of-the-way life with a cranky woman year after year; never reading
anything, never seeing any one but tramps and animals and villagers. And
yet, sitting there beside his eccentric brother on that fallen tree, he
had an extraordinary sense of rest. It was, perhaps, but the beauty and
sweetness of the day with its dappling sunlight brightening the
apple-blossoms, the wind-flowers, the wood-sorrel, and in the blue sky
above the fields those clouds so unimaginably white. All the tiny noises
of the orchard, too, struck on his ear with a peculiar meaning, a strange
fulness, as if he had never heard such sounds before. Tod, who was
looking at the sky, said suddenly:
"Are you hungry?"
And Felix remembered that they never had any proper meals, but, when
hungry, went to the kitchen, where a wood-fire was always burning, and
either heated up coffee, and porridge that was already made, with boiled
eggs and baked potatoes and apples, or devoured bread, cheese, jam,
honey, cream, tomatoes, butter, nuts, and fruit, that were always set out
there on a wooden table, under a muslin awning; he remembered, too, that
they washed up their own bowls and spoons and plates, and, having
finished, went outside and drew themselves a draught of water. Queer
life, and deuced uncomfortable--almost Chinese in its reversal of
everything that every one else was doing.
"No," he said, "I'm not."
"I am. Here she is."
Felix felt his heart beating--Clara was not alone in being frightened of
this woman. She was coming through the orchard with the dog; a
remarkable-looking woman--oh, certainly remarkable! She greeted him
without surprise and, sitting down close to Tod, said: "I'm glad to see
you."
Why did this family somehow make him feel inferior? The way she sat
there and looked at him so calmly! Still more the way she narrowed her
eyes and wrinkled her lips, as if rather malicious thoughts were rising
in her soul! Her hair, as is the way of fine, soft, almost
indigo-colored hair, was already showing threads of silver; her whole
face and figure thinner than he had remembered. But a striking woman
still--with wonderful eyes! Her dress--Felix had scanned many a crank in
his day--was not so alarming as it had once seemed to Clara; its
coarse-woven, deep-blue linen and needle-worked yoke were pleasing to
him, and he could hardly take his gaze from the kingfisher-blue band or
fillet that she wore round that silver-threaded black hair.
He began by giving her Clara's note, the wording of which he had himself
dictated:
"DEAR KIRSTEEN:
"Though we have not seen each other for so long, I am sure you will
forgive my writing. It would give us so much pleasure if you and the two
children would come over for a night or two while Felix and his young
folk are staying with us. It is no use, I fear, to ask Tod; but of
course if he would come, too, both Stanley and myself would be delighted.
"Yours cordially,
"CLARA FREELAND."
She read it, handed it to Tod, who also read it and handed it to Felix.
Nobody said anything. It was so altogether simple and friendly a note
that Felix felt pleased with it, thinking: 'I expressed that well!'
Then Tod said: "Go ahead, old man! You've got something to say about the
youngsters, haven't you?"
How on earth did he know that? But then Tod HAD a sort of queer
prescience.
"Well," he brought out with an effort, "don't you think it's a pity to
embroil your young people in village troubles? We've been hearing from
Stanley--"
Kirsteen interrupted in her calm, staccato voice with just the faintest
lisp:
"Stanley would not understand."
She had put her arm through Tod's, but never removed her eyes from her
brother-in-law's face.
"Possibly," said Felix, "but you must remember that Stanley, John, and
myself represent ordinary--what shall we say--level-headed opinion."
"With which we have nothing in common, I'm afraid."
Felix glanced from her to Tod. The fellow had his head on one side and
seemed listening to something in the distance. And Felix felt a certain
irritation.
"It's all very well," he said, "but I think you really have got to look
at your children's future from a larger point of view. You don't surely
want them to fly out against things before they've had a chance to see
life for themselves."
She answered:
"The children know more of life than most young people. They've seen it
close to, they've seen its realities. They know what the tyranny of the
countryside means."
"Yes, yes," said Felix, "but youth is youth."
"They are not too young to know and feel the truth."
Felix was impressed. How those narrowing eyes shone! What conviction in
that faintly lisping voice!
'I am a fool for my pains,' he thought, and only said:
"Well, what about this invitation, anyway?"
"Yes; it will be just the thing for them at the moment."
The words had to Felix a somewhat sinister import. He knew well enough
that she did not mean by them what others would have meant. But he said:
"When shall we expect them? Tuesday, I suppose, would be best for Clara,
after her weekend. Is there no chance of you and Tod?"
She quaintly wrinkled her lips into not quite a smile, and answered:
"Tod shall say. Do you hear, Tod?"
"In the meadow. It was there yesterday--first time this year."
Felix slipped his arm through his brother's.
"Quite so, old man."
"What?" said Tod. "Ah! let's go in. I'm awfully hungry." . . .
Sometimes out of a calm sky a few drops fall, the twigs rustle, and far
away is heard the muttering of thunder; the traveller thinks: 'A storm
somewhere about.' Then all once more is so quiet and peaceful that he
forgets he ever had that thought, and goes on his way careless.
So with Felix returning to Becket in Stanley's car. That woman's face,
those two young heathens--the unconscious Tod!
There was mischief in the air above that little household. But once more
the smooth gliding of the cushioned car, the soft peace of the meadows so
permanently at grass, the churches, mansions, cottages embowered among
their elms, the slow-flapping flight of the rooks and crows lulled Felix
to quietude, and the faint far muttering of that thunder died away.
Nedda was in the drive when he returned, gazing at a nymph set up there
by Clara. It was a good thing, procured from Berlin, well known for
sculpture, and beginning to green over already, as though it had been
there a long time--a pretty creature with shoulders drooping, eyes
modestly cast down, and a sparrow perching on her head.
"Well, Dad?"
"They're coming."
"When?"
"On Tuesday--the youngsters, only."
"You might tell me a little about them."
But Felix only smiled. His powers of description faltered before that
task; and, proud of those powers, he did not choose to subject them to
failure.
CHAPTER VIII
Not till three o'clock that Saturday did the Bigwigs begin to come. Lord
and Lady Britto first from Erne by car; then Sir Gerald and Lady
Malloring, also by car from Joyfields; an early afternoon train brought
three members of the Lower House, who liked a round of golf--Colonel
Martlett, Mr. Sleesor, and Sir John Fanfar--with their wives; also Miss
Bawtrey, an American who went everywhere; and Moorsome, the
landscape-painter, a short, very heavy man who went nowhere, and that in
almost perfect silence, which he afterward avenged. By a train almost
sure to bring no one else came Literature in Public Affairs, alone, Henry
Wiltram, whom some believed to have been the very first to have ideas
about the land. He was followed in the last possible train by Cuthcott,
the advanced editor, in his habitual hurry, and Lady Maude Ughtred in her
beauty. Clara was pleased, and said to Stanley, while dressing, that
almost every shade of opinion about the land was represented this
week-end. She was not, she said, afraid of anything, if she could keep
Henry Wiltram and Cuthcott apart. The House of Commons men would, of
course, be all right. Stanley assented: "They'll be 'fed up' with talk.
But how about Britto--he can sometimes be very nasty, and Cuthcott's been
pretty rough on him, in his rag."
Clara had remembered that, and she was putting Lady Maude on one side of
Cuthcott, and Moorsome on the other, so that he would be quite safe at
dinner, and afterward--Stanley must look out!
"What have you done with Nedda?" Stanley asked.
"Given her to Colonel Martlett, with Sir John Fanfar on the other side;
they both like something fresh." She hoped, however, to foster a
discussion, so that they might really get further this week-end; the
opportunity was too good to throw away.
"H'm!" Stanley murmured. "Felix said some very queer things the other
night. He, too, might make ructions."
Oh, no!--Clara persisted--Felix had too much good taste. She thought
that something might be coming out of this occasion, something as it were
national, that would bear fruit. And watching Stanley buttoning his
braces, she grew enthusiastic. For, think how splendidly everything was
represented! Britto, with his view that the thing had gone too far, and
all the little efforts we might make now were no good, with Canada and
those great spaces to outbid anything we could do; though she could not
admit that he was right, there was a lot in what he said; he had great
gifts--and some day might--who knew? Then there was Sir John--Clara
pursued--who was almost the father of the new Tory policy: Assist the
farmers to buy their own land. And Colonel Martlett, representing the
older Tory policy of: What the devil would happen to the landowners if
they did? Secretly (Clara felt sure) he would never go into a lobby to
support that. He had said to her: 'Look at my brother James's property;
if we bring this policy in, and the farmers take advantage, his house
might stand there any day without an acre round it.' Quite true--it
might. The same might even happen to Becket.
Stanley grunted.
Exactly!--Clara went on: And that was the beauty of having got the
Mallorings; theirs was such a steady point of view, and she was not sure
that they weren't right, and the whole thing really a question of model
proprietorship.
"H'm!" Stanley muttered. "Felix will have his knife into that."
Clara did not think that mattered. The thing was to get everybody's
opinion. Even Mr. Moorsome's would be valuable--if he weren't so
terrifically silent, for he must think a lot, sitting all day, as he did,
painting the land.
"He's a heavy ass," said Stanley.
Yes; but Clara did not wish to be narrow. That was why it was so
splendid to have got Mr. Sleesor. If anybody knew the Radical mind he
did, and he could give full force to what one always felt was at the
bottom of it--that the Radicals' real supporters were the urban classes;
so that their policy must not go too far with 'the Land,' for fear of
seeming to neglect the towns. For, after all, in the end it was out of
the pockets of the towns that 'the Land' would have to be financed, and
nobody really could expect the towns to get anything out of it. Stanley
paused in the adjustment of his tie; his wife was a shrewd woman.
"You've hit it there," he said. "Wiltram will give it him hot on that,
though."
Of course, Clara assented. And it was magnificent that they had got
Henry Wiltram, with his idealism and his really heavy corn tax; not
caring what happened to the stunted products of the towns--and they truly
were stunted, for all that the Radicals and the half-penny press
said--till at all costs we could grow our own food. There was a lot in
that.
"Yes," Stanley muttered, "and if he gets on to it, shan't I have a jolly
time of it in the smoking-room? I know what Cuthcott's like with his
shirt out."
Clara's eyes brightened; she was very curious herself to see Mr. Cuthcott
with his--that is, to hear him expound the doctrine he was always writing
up, namely, that 'the Land' was gone and, short of revolution, there was
nothing for it but garden cities. She had heard he was so cutting and
ferocious that he really did seem as if he hated his opponents. She
hoped he would get a chance--perhaps Felix could encourage him.
"What about the women?" Stanley asked suddenly. "Will they stand a
political powwow? One must think of them a bit."
Clara had. She was taking a farewell look at herself in the far-away
mirror through the door into her bedroom. It was a mistake--she
added--to suppose that women were not interested in 'the Land.' Lady
Britto was most intelligent, and Mildred Malloring knew every cottage on
her estate.
"Pokes her nose into 'em often enough," Stanley muttered.
Lady Fanfar again, and Mrs. Sleesor, and even Hilda Martlett, were
interested in their husbands, and Miss Bawtrey, of course, interested in
everything. As for Maude Ughtred, all talk would be the same to her; she
was always week-ending. Stanley need not worry--it would be all right;
some real work would get done, some real advance be made. So saying, she
turned her fine shoulders twice, once this way and once that, and went
out. She had never told even Stanley her ambition that at Becket, under
her aegis, should be laid the foundation-stone of the real scheme,
whatever it might be, that should regenerate 'the Land.' Stanley would
only have laughed; even though it would be bound to make him Lord
Freeland when it came to be known some day. . . .
To the eyes and ears of Nedda that evening at dinner, all was new indeed,
and all wonderful. It was not that she was unaccustomed to society or to
conversation, for to their house at Hampstead many people came, uttering
many words, but both the people and the words were so very different.
After the first blush, the first reconnaissance of the two Bigwigs
between whom she sat, her eyes WOULD stray and her ears would only half
listen to them. Indeed, half her ears, she soon found out, were quite
enough to deal with Colonel Martlett and Sir John Fanfar. Across the
azaleas she let her glance come now and again to anchor on her father's
face, and exchanged with him a most enjoyable blink. She tried once or
twice to get through to Alan, but he was always eating; he looked very
like a young Uncle Stanley this evening.
What was she feeling? Short, quick stabs of self-consciousness as to how
she was looking; a sort of stunned excitement due to sheer noise and the
number of things offered to her to eat and drink; keen pleasure in the
consciousness that Colonel Martlett and Sir John Fanfar and other men,
especially that nice one with the straggly moustache who looked as if he
were going to bite, glanced at her when they saw she wasn't looking. If
only she had been quite certain that it was not because they thought her
too young to be there! She felt a sort of continual exhilaration, that
this was the great world--the world where important things were said and
done, together with an intense listening expectancy, and a sense most
unexpected and almost frightening, that nothing important was being said
or would be done. But this she knew to be impudent. On Sunday evenings
at home people talked about a future existence, about Nietzsche, Tolstoy,
Chinese pictures, post-impressionism, and would suddenly grow hot and
furious about peace, and Strauss, justice, marriage, and De Maupassant,
and whether people were losing their souls through materialism, and
sometimes one of them would get up and walk about the room. But to-night
the only words she could catch were the names of two politicians whom
nobody seemed to approve of, except that nice one who was going to bite.
Once very timidly she asked Colonel Martlett whether he liked Strauss,
and was puzzled by his answer: "Rather; those 'Tales of Hoffmann' are
rippin', don't you think? You go to the opera much?" She could not, of
course, know that the thought which instantly rose within her was doing
the governing classes a grave injustice--almost all of whom save Colonel
Martlett knew that the 'Tales of Hoffmann' were by one Offenbach. But
beyond all things she felt she would never, never learn to talk as they
were all talking--so quickly, so continuously, so without caring whether
everybody or only the person they were talking to heard what they said.
She had always felt that what you said was only meant for the person you
said it to, but here in the great world she must evidently not say
anything that was not meant for everybody, and she felt terribly that she
could not think of anything of that sort to say. And suddenly she began
to want to be alone. That, however, was surely wicked and wasteful, when
she ought to be learning such a tremendous lot; and yet, what was there
to learn? And listening just sufficiently to Colonel Martlett, who was
telling her how great a man he thought a certain general, she looked
almost despairingly at the one who was going to bite. He was quite
silent at that moment, gazing at his plate, which was strangely empty.
And Nedda thought: 'He has jolly wrinkles about his eyes, only they might
be heart disease; and I like the color of his face, so nice and yellow,
only that might be liver. But I DO like him--I wish I'd been sitting
next to him; he looks real.' From that thought, of the reality of a man
whose name she did not know, she passed suddenly into the feeling that
nothing else of this about her was real at all, neither the talk nor the
faces, not even the things she was eating. It was all a queer, buzzing
dream. Nor did that sensation of unreality cease when her aunt began
collecting her gloves, and they trooped forth to the drawing-room.
There, seated between Mrs. Sleesor and Lady Britto, with Lady Malloring
opposite, and Miss Bawtrey leaning over the piano toward them, she
pinched herself to get rid of the feeling that, when all these were out
of sight of each other, they would become silent and have on their lips a
little, bitter smile. Would it be like that up in their bedrooms, or
would it only be on her (Nedda's) own lips that this little smile would
come? It was a question she could not answer; nor could she very well
ask it of any of these ladies. She looked them over as they sat there
talking and felt very lonely. And suddenly her eyes fell on her
grandmother. Frances Freeland was seated halfway down the long room in a
sandalwood chair, somewhat insulated by a surrounding sea of polished
floor. She sat with a smile on her lips, quite still, save for the
continual movement of her white hands on her black lap. To her gray hair
some lace of Chantilly was pinned with a little diamond brooch, and hung
behind her delicate but rather long ears. And from her shoulders was
depended a silvery garment, of stuff that looked like the mail shirt of a
fairy, reaching the ground on either side. A tacit agreement had
evidently been come to, that she was incapable of discussing 'the Land'
or those other subjects such as the French murder, the Russian opera, the
Chinese pictures, and the doings of one, L----, whose fate was just then
in the air, so that she sat alone.
And Nedda thought: 'How much more of a lady she looks than anybody here!
There's something deep in her to rest on that isn't in the Bigwigs;
perhaps it's because she's of a different generation.' And, getting up,
she went over and sat down beside her on a little chair.
Frances Freeland rose at once and said:
"Now, my darling, you can't be comfortable in that tiny chair. You must
take mine."
"Oh, no, Granny; please!"
"Oh, yes; but you must! It's so comfortable, and I've simply been
longing to sit in the chair you're in. Now, darling, to please me!"
Seeing that a prolonged struggle would follow if she did not get up,
Nedda rose and changed chairs.
"Do you like these week-ends, Granny?"
Frances Freeland seemed to draw her smile more resolutely across her
face. With her perfect articulation, in which there was, however, no
trace of bigwiggery, she answered:
"I think they're most interesting, darling. It's so nice to see new
people. Of course you don't get to know them, but it's very amusing to
watch, especially the head-dresses!" And sinking her voice: "Just look
at that one with the feather going straight up; did you ever see such a
guy?" and she cackled with a very gentle archness. Gazing at that almost
priceless feather, trying to reach God, Nedda felt suddenly how
completely she was in her grandmother's little camp; how entirely she
disliked bigwiggery.
Frances Freeland's voice brought her round.
"Do you know, darling, I've found the most splendid thing for eyebrows?
You just put a little on every night and it keeps them in perfect order.
I must give you my little pot."
"I don't like grease, Granny."
"Oh! but this isn't grease, darling. It's a special thing; and you only
put on just the tiniest touch."
Diving suddenly into the recesses of something, she produced an exiguous
round silver box. Prizing it open, she looked over her shoulder at the
Bigwigs, then placed her little finger on the contents of the little box,
and said very softly:
"You just take the merest touch, and you put it on like that, and it
keeps them together beautifully. Let me! Nobody'll see!"
Quite well understanding that this was all part of her grandmother's
passion for putting the best face upon things, and having no belief in
her eyebrows, Nedda bent forward; but in a sudden flutter of fear lest
the Bigwigs might observe the operation, she drew back, murmuring: "Oh,
Granny, darling! Not just now!"
At that moment the men came in, and, under cover of the necessary
confusion, she slipped away into the window.
It was pitch-black outside, with the moon not yet up. The bloomy,
peaceful dark out there! Wistaria and early roses, clustering in, had
but the ghost of color on their blossoms. Nedda took a rose in her
fingers, feeling with delight its soft fragility, its coolness against
her hot palm. Here in her hand was a living thing, here was a little
soul! And out there in the darkness were millions upon millions of other
little souls, of little flame-like or coiled-up shapes alive and true.
A voice behind her said:
"Nothing nicer than darkness, is there?"
She knew at once it was the one who was going to bite; the voice was
proper for him, having a nice, smothery sound. And looking round
gratefully, she said:
"Do you like dinner-parties?"
It was jolly to watch his eyes twinkle and his thin cheeks puff out. He
shook his head and muttered through that straggly moustache:
"You're a niece, aren't you? I know your father. He's a big man."
Hearing those words spoken of her father, Nedda flushed.
"Yes, he is," she said fervently.
Her new acquaintance went on:
"He's got the gift of truth--can laugh at himself as well as others;
that's what makes him precious. These humming-birds here to-night
couldn't raise a smile at their own tomfoolery to save their silly
souls."
He spoke still in that voice of smothery wrath, and Nedda thought: 'He IS
nice!'
"They've been talking about 'the Land'"--he raised his hands and ran them
through his palish hair--"'the Land!' Heavenly Father! 'The Land!' Why!
Look at that fellow!"
Nedda looked and saw a man, like Richard Coeur de Lion in the history
books, with a straw-colored moustache just going gray.
"Sir Gerald Malloring--hope he's not a friend of yours! Divine right of
landowners to lead 'the Land' by the nose! And our friend Britto!"
Nedda, following his eyes, saw a robust, quick-eyed man with a suave
insolence in his dark, clean-shaved face.
"Because at heart he's just a supercilious ruffian, too cold-blooded to
feel, he'll demonstrate that it's no use to feel--waste of valuable
time--ha! valuable!--to act in any direction. And that's a man they
believe things of. And poor Henry Wiltram, with his pathetic: 'Grow our
own food--maximum use of the land as food-producer, and let the rest take
care of itself!' As if we weren't all long past that feeble
individualism; as if in these days of world markets the land didn't stand
or fall in this country as a breeding-ground of health and stamina and
nothing else. Well, well!"
"Aren't they really in earnest, then?" asked Nedda timidly.
"Miss Freeland, this land question is a perfect tragedy. Bar one or two,
they all want to make the omelette without breaking eggs; well, by the
time they begin to think of breaking them, mark me--there'll be no eggs
to break. We shall be all park and suburb. The real men on the land,
what few are left, are dumb and helpless; and these fellows here for one
reason or another don't mean business--they'll talk and tinker and
top-dress--that's all. Does your father take any interest in this? He
could write something very nice."
"He takes interest in everything," said Nedda. "Please go on, Mr.
--Mr.--" She was terribly afraid he would suddenly remember that she was
too young and stop his nice, angry talk.
"Cuthcott. I'm an editor, but I was brought up on a farm, and know
something about it. You see, we English are grumblers, snobs to the
backbone, want to be something better than we are; and education nowadays
is all in the direction of despising what is quiet and humdrum. We never
were a stay-at-home lot, like the French. That's at the back of this
business--they may treat it as they like, Radicals or Tories, but if they
can't get a fundamental change of opinion into the national mind as to
what is a sane and profitable life; if they can't work a revolution in
the spirit of our education, they'll do no good. There'll be lots of
talk and tinkering, tariffs and tommy-rot, and, underneath, the land-bred
men dying, dying all the time. No, madam, industrialism and vested
interests have got us! Bar the most strenuous national heroism, there's
nothing for it now but the garden city!"
"Then if we WERE all heroic, 'the Land' could still be saved?"
Mr. Cuthcott smiled.
"Of course we might have a European war or something that would shake
everything up. But, short of that, when was a country ever consciously
and homogeneously heroic--except China with its opium? When did it ever
deliberately change the spirit of its education, the trend of its ideas;
when did it ever, of its own free will, lay its vested interests on the
altar; when did it ever say with a convinced and resolute heart: 'I will
be healthy and simple before anything. I will not let the love of sanity
and natural conditions die out of me!' When, Miss Freeland, when?"
And, looking so hard at Nedda that he almost winked, he added:
"You have the advantage of me by thirty years. You'll see what I shall
not--the last of the English peasant. Did you ever read 'Erewhon,' where
the people broke up their machines? It will take almost that sort of
national heroism to save what's left of him, even."
For answer, Nedda wrinkled her brows horribly. Before her there had come
a vision of the old, lame man, whose name she had found out was Gaunt,
standing on the path under the apple-trees, looking at that little
something he had taken from his pocket. Why she thought of him thus
suddenly she had no idea, and she said quickly:
"It's awfully interesting. I do so want to hear about 'the Land.' I only
know a little about sweated workers, because I see something of them."
"It's all of a piece," said Mr. Cuthcott; "not politics at all, but
religion--touches the point of national self-knowledge and faith, the
point of knowing what we want to become and of resolving to become it.
Your father will tell you that we have no more idea of that at present
than a cat of its own chemical composition. As for these good people
here to-night--I don't want to be disrespectful, but if they think
they're within a hundred miles of the land question, I'm a--I'm a
Jingo--more I can't say."
And, as if to cool his head, he leaned out of the window.
"Nothing is nicer than darkness, as I said just now, because you can only
see the way you MUST go instead of a hundred and fifty ways you MIGHT.
In darkness your soul is something like your own; in daylight, lamplight,
moonlight, never."
Nedda's spirit gave a jump; he seemed almost at last to be going to talk
about the things she wanted, above all, to find out. Her cheeks went
hot, she clenched her hands and said resolutely:
"Mr. Cuthcott, do you believe in God?"
Mr. Cuthcott made a queer, deep little noise; it was not a laugh,
however, and it seemed as if he knew she could not bear him to look at
her just then.
"H'm!" he said. "Every one does that--according to their natures. Some
call God IT, some HIM, some HER, nowadays--that's all. You might as well
ask--do I believe that I'm alive?"
"Yes," said Nedda, "but which do YOU call God?"
As she asked that, he gave a wriggle, and it flashed through her: 'He
must think me an awful enfant terrible!' His face peered round at her,
queer and pale and puffy, with nice, straight eyes; and she added
hastily:
"It isn't a fair question, is it? Only you talked about darkness, and
the only way--so I thought--"
"Quite a fair question. My answer is, of course: 'All three'; but the
point is rather: Does one wish to make even an attempt to define God to
oneself? Frankly, I don't! I'm content to feel that there is in one
some kind of instinct toward perfection that one will still feel, I hope,
when the lights are going out; some kind of honour forbidding one to let
go and give up. That's all I've got; I really don't know that I want
more."
Nedda clasped her hands.
"I like that," she said; "only--what is perfection, Mr. Cuthcott?"
Again he emitted that deep little sound.
"Ah!" he repeated, "what is perfection? Awkward, that--isn't it?"
"Is it"--Nedda rushed the words out--"is it always to be sacrificing
yourself, or is it--is it always to be--to be expressing yourself?"
"To some--one; to some--the other; to some--half one, half the other."
"But which is it to me?"
"Ah! that you've got to find out for yourself. There's a sort of
metronome inside us--wonderful, sell-adjusting little machine; most
delicate bit of mechanism in the world--people call it conscience--that
records the proper beat of our tempos. I guess that's all we have to go
by."
Nedda said breathlessly:
"Yes; and it's frightfully hard, isn't it?"
"Exactly," Mr. Cuthcott answered. "That's why people devised religions
and other ways of having the thing done second-hand. We all object to
trouble and responsibility if we can possibly avoid it. Where do you
live?"
"In Hampstead."
"Your father must be a stand-by, isn't he?"
"Oh, yes; Dad's splendid; only, you see, I AM a good deal younger than
he. There was just one thing I was going to ask you. Are these very
Bigwigs?"
Mr. Cuthcott turned to the room and let his screwed-up glance wander. He
looked just then particularly as if he were going to bite.
"If you take 'em at their own valuation: Yes. If at the country's:
So-so. If at mine: Ha! I know what you'd like to ask: Should I be a
Bigwig in THEIR estimation? Not I! As you knock about, Miss Freeland,
you'll find out one thing--all bigwiggery is founded on: Scratch my back,
and I'll scratch yours. Seriously, these are only tenpenny ones; but the
mischief is, that in the matter of 'the Land,' the men who really are in
earnest are precious scarce. Nothing short of a rising such as there was
in 1832 would make the land question real, even for the moment. Not that
I want to see one--God forbid! Those poor doomed devils were treated
worse than dogs, and would be again."
Before Nedda could pour out questions about the rising in 1832, Stanley's
voice said:
"Cuthcott, I want to introduce you!"
Her new friend screwed his eyes up tighter and, muttering something, put
out his hand to her.
"Thank you for our talk. I hope we shall meet again. Any time you want
to know anything--I'll be only too glad. Good night!"
She felt the squeeze of his hand, warm and dry, but rather soft, as of a
man who uses a pen too much; saw him following her uncle across the room,
with his shoulders a little hunched, as if preparing to inflict, and ward
off, blows. And with the thought: 'He must be jolly when he gives them
one!' she turned once more to the darkness, than which he had said there
was nothing nicer. It smelled of new-mown grass, was full of little
shiverings of leaves, and all colored like the bloom of a black grape.
And her heart felt soothed.
CHAPTER IX
". . . When I first saw Derek I thought I should never feel anything but
shy and hopeless. In four days, only in four days, the whole world is
different. . . . And yet, if it hadn't been for that thunder-storm, I
shouldn't have got over being shy in time. He has never loved
anybody--nor have I. It can't often be like that--it makes it solemn.
There's a picture somewhere--not a good one, I know--of a young
Highlander being taken away by soldiers from his sweetheart. Derek is
fiery and wild and shy and proud and dark--like the man in that picture.
That last day along the hills--along and along--with the wind in our
faces, I could have walked forever; and then Joyfields at the end! Their
mother's wonderful; I'm afraid of her. But Uncle Tod is a perfect dear.
I never saw any one before who noticed so many things that I didn't, and
nothing that I did. I am sure he has in him what Mr. Cuthcott said we
were all losing--the love of simple, natural conditions. And then, THE
moment, when I stood with Derek at the end of the orchard, to say
good-by. The field below covered with those moony-white flowers, and the
cows all dark and sleepy; the holy feeling down there was wonderful, and
in the branches over our heads, too, and the velvety, starry sky, and the
dewiness against one's face, and the great, broad silence--it was all
worshipping something, and I was worshipping--worshipping happiness. I
WAS happy, and I think HE was. Perhaps I shall never be so happy again.
When he kissed me I didn't think the whole world had so much happiness in
it. I know now that I'm not cold a bit; I used to think I was. I
believe I could go with him anywhere, and do anything he wanted. What
would Dad think? Only the other day I was saying I wanted to know
everything. One only knows through love. It's love that makes the world
all beautiful--makes it like those pictures that seem to be wrapped in
gold, makes it like a dream--no, not like a dream--like a wonderful tune.
I suppose that's glamour--a goldeny, misty, lovely feeling, as if my soul
were wandering about with his--not in my body at all. I want it to go on
and on wandering--oh! I don't want it back in my body, all hard and
inquisitive and aching! I shall never know anything so lovely as loving
him and being loved. I don't want anything more--nothing! Stay with me,
please--Happiness! Don't go away and leave me! . . . They frighten me,
though; he frightens me--their idealism; wanting to do great things, and
fight for justice. If only I'd been brought up more like that--but
everything's been so different. It's their mother, I think, even more
than themselves. I seem to have grown up just looking on at life as at a
show; watching it, thinking about it, trying to understand--not living it
at all. I must get over that; I will. I believe I can tell the very
moment I began to love him. It was in the schoolroom the second evening.
Sheila and I were sitting there just before dinner, and he came, in a
rage, looking splendid. 'That footman put out everything just as if I
were a baby--asked me for suspenders to fasten on my socks; hung the
things on a chair in order, as if I couldn't find out for myself what to
put on first; turned the tongues of my shoes out!--curled them over!'
Then Derek looked at me and said: 'Do they do that for you?--And poor old
Gaunt, who's sixty-six and lame, has three shillings a week to buy him
everything. Just think of that! If we had the pluck of flies--' And he
clenched his fists. But Sheila got up, looked hard at me, and said:
'That'll do, Derek.' Then he put his hand on my arm and said: 'It's only
Cousin Nedda!' I began to love him then; and I believe he saw it,
because I couldn't take my eyes away. But it was when Sheila sang 'The
Red Sarafan,' after dinner, that I knew for certain. 'The Red
Sarafan'--it's a wonderful song, all space and yearning, and yet such
calm--it's the song of the soul; and he was looking at me while she sang.
How can he love me? I am nothing--no good for anything! Alan calls him
a 'run-up kid, all legs and wings.' Sometimes I hate Alan; he's
conventional and stodgy--the funny thing is that he admires Sheila.
She'll wake him up; she'll stick pins into him. No, I don't want Alan
hurt--I want every one in the world to be happy, happy--as I am. . . .
The next day was the thunder-storm. I never saw lightning so near--and
didn't care a bit. If he were struck I knew I should be; that made it
all right. When you love, you don't care, if only the something must
happen to you both. When it was over, and we came out from behind the
stack and walked home through the fields, all the beasts looked at us as
if we were new and had never been seen before; and the air was ever so
sweet, and that long, red line of cloud low down in the purple, and the
elm-trees so heavy and almost black. He put his arm round me, and I let
him. . . . It seems an age to wait till they come to stay with us next
week. If only Mother likes them, and I can go and stay at Joyfields.
Will she like them? It's all so different to what it would be if they
were ordinary. But if he were ordinary I shouldn't love him; it's
because there's nobody like him. That isn't a loverish fancy--you only
have to look at him against Alan or Uncle Stanley or even Dad.
Everything he does is so different; the way he walks, and the way he
stands drawn back into himself, like a stag, and looks out as if he were
burning and smouldering inside; even the way he smiles. Dad asked me
what I thought of him! That was only the second day. I thought he was
too proud, then. And Dad said: 'He ought to be in a Highland regiment;
pity--great pity!' He is a fighter, of course. I don't like fighting,
but if I'm not ready to, he'll stop loving me, perhaps. I've got to
learn. O Darkness out there, help me! And Stars, help me! O God, make
me brave, and I will believe in you forever! If you are the spirit that
grows in things in spite of everything, until they're like the flowers,
so perfect that we laugh and sing at their beauty, grow in me, too; make
me beautiful and brave; then I shall be fit for him, alive or dead; and
that's all I want. Every evening I shall stand in spirit with him at the
end of that orchard in the darkness, under the trees above the white
flowers and the sleepy cows, and perhaps I shall feel him kiss me again.
. . . I'm glad I saw that old man Gaunt; it makes what they feel more
real to me. He showed me that poor laborer Tryst, too, the one who
mustn't marry his wife's sister, or have her staying in the house without
marrying her. Why should people interfere with others like that? It does
make your blood boil! Derek and Sheila have been brought up to be in
sympathy with the poor and oppressed. If they had lived in London they
would have been even more furious, I expect. And it's no use my saying to
myself 'I don't know the laborer, I don't know his hardships,' because he
is really just the country half of what I do know and see, here in
London, when I don't hide my eyes. One talk showed me how desperately
they feel; at night, in Sheila's room, when we had gone up, just we four.
Alan began it; they didn't want to, I could see; but he was criticising
what some of those Bigwigs had said--the 'Varsity makes boys awfully
conceited. It was such a lovely night; we were all in the big, long
window. A little bat kept flying past; and behind the copper-beech the
moon was shining on the lake. Derek sat in the windowsill, and when he
moved he touched me. To be touched by him gives me a warm shiver all
through. I could hear him gritting his teeth at what Alan
said--frightfully sententious, just like a newspaper: 'We can't go into
land reform from feeling, we must go into it from reason.' Then Derek
broke out: 'Walk through this country as we've walked; see the pigsties
the people live in; see the water they drink; see the tiny patches of
ground they have; see the way their roofs let in the rain; see their
peeky children; see their patience and their hopelessness; see them
working day in and day out, and coming on the parish at the end! See all
that, and then talk about reason! Reason! It's the coward's excuse, and
the rich man's excuse, for doing nothing. It's the excuse of the man who
takes jolly good care not to see for fear that he may come to feel!
Reason never does anything, it's too reasonable. The thing is to act;
then perhaps reason will be jolted into doing something.' But Sheila
touched his arm, and he stopped very suddenly. She doesn't trust us. I
shall always be being pushed away from him by her. He's just twenty, and
I shall be eighteen in a week; couldn't we marry now at once? Then,
whatever happened, I couldn't be cut off from him. If I could tell Dad,
and ask him to help me! But I can't--it seems desecration to talk about
it, even to Dad. All the way up in the train to-day, coming back home, I
was struggling not to show anything; though it's hateful to keep things
from Dad. Love alters everything; it melts up the whole world and makes
it afresh. Love is the sun of our spirits, and it's the wind. Ah, and
the rain, too! But I won't think of that! . . . I wonder if he's told
Aunt Kirsteen! . . ."
CHAPTER X
While Nedda sat, long past midnight, writing her heart out in her little,
white, lilac-curtained room of the old house above the Spaniard's Road,
Derek, of whom she wrote, was walking along the Malvern hills, hurrying
upward in the darkness. The stars were his companions; though he was no
poet, having rather the fervid temper of the born swordsman, that
expresses itself in physical ecstasies. He had come straight out from a
stormy midnight talk with Sheila. What was he doing--had been the burden
of her cry--falling in love just at this moment when they wanted all
their wits and all their time and strength for this struggle with the
Mallorings? It was foolish, it was weak; and with a sweet, soft sort of
girl who could be no use. Hotly he had answered: What business was it of
hers? As if one fell in love when one wished! She didn't know--her blood
didn't run fast enough! Sheila had retorted, "I've more blood in my big
toe than Nedda in all her body! A lot of use you'll be, with your heart
mooning up in London!" And crouched together on the end of her bed,
gazing fixedly up at him through her hair, she had chanted mockingly:
"Here we go gathering wool and stars--wool and stars--wool and stars!"
He had not deigned to answer, but had gone out, furious with her,
striding over the dark fields, scrambling his way through the hedges
toward the high loom of the hills. Up on the short grass in the cooler
air, with nothing between him and those swarming stars, he lost his rage.
It never lasted long--hers was more enduring. With the innate lordliness
of a brother he already put it down to jealousy. Sheila was hurt that he
should want any one but her; as if his love for Nedda would make any
difference to their resolution to get justice for Tryst and the Gaunts,
and show those landed tyrants once for all that they could not ride
roughshod.
Nedda! with her dark eyes, so quick and clear, so loving when they looked
at him! Nedda, soft and innocent, the touch of whose lips had turned his
heart to something strange within him, and wakened such feelings of
chivalry! Nedda! To see whom for half a minute he felt he would walk a
hundred miles.
This boy's education had been administered solely by his mother till he
was fourteen, and she had brought him up on mathematics, French, and
heroism. His extensive reading of history had been focussed on the
personality of heroes, chiefly knights errant, and revolutionaries. He
had carried the worship of them to the Agricultural College, where he had
spent four years; and a rather rough time there had not succeeded in
knocking romance out of him. He had found that you could not have such
beliefs comfortably without fighting for them, and though he ended his
career with the reputation of a rebel and a champion of the weak, he had
had to earn it. To this day he still fed himself on stories of
rebellions and fine deeds. The figures of Spartacus, Montrose, Hofer,
Garibaldi, Hampden, and John Nicholson, were more real to him than the
people among whom he lived, though he had learned never to
mention--especially not to the matter-of-fact Sheila--his encompassing
cloud of heroes; but, when he was alone, he pranced a bit with them, and
promised himself that he too would reach the stars. So you may sometimes
see a little, grave boy walking through a field, unwatched as he
believes, suddenly fling his feet and his head every which way. An
active nature, romantic, without being dreamy and book-loving, is not too
prone to the attacks of love; such a one is likely to survive unscathed
to a maturer age. But Nedda had seduced him, partly by the appeal of her
touchingly manifest love and admiration, and chiefly by her eyes, through
which he seemed to see such a loyal, and loving little soul looking. She
had that indefinable something which lovers know that they can never
throw away. And he had at once made of her, secretly, the crown of his
active romanticism--the lady waiting for the spoils of his lance. Queer
is the heart of a boy--strange its blending of reality and idealism!
Climbing at a great pace, he reached Malvern Beacon just as it came dawn,
and stood there on the top, watching. He had not much aesthetic sense;
but he had enough to be impressed by the slow paling of the stars over
space that seemed infinite, so little were its dreamy confines visible in
the May morning haze, where the quivering crimson flags and spears of
sunrise were forging up in a march upon the sky. That vision of the
English land at dawn, wide and mysterious, hardly tallied with Mr.
Cuthcott's view of a future dedicate to Park and Garden City. While
Derek stood there gazing, the first lark soared up and began its ecstatic
praise. Save for that song, silence possessed all the driven dark, right
out to the Severn and the sea, and the fastnesses of the Welsh hills, and
the Wrekin, away in the north, a black point in the gray. For a moment
dark and light hovered and clung together. Would victory wing back into
night or on into day? Then, as a town is taken, all was over in one
overmastering rush, and light proclaimed. Derek tightened his belt and
took a bee-line down over the slippery grass. He meant to reach the
cottage of the laborer Tryst before that early bird was away to the
fields. He meditated as he went. Bob Tryst was all right! If they only
had a dozen or two like him! A dozen or two whom they could trust, and
who would trust each other and stand firm to form the nucleus of a
strike, which could be timed for hay harvest. What slaves these laborers
still were! If only they could be relied on, if only they would stand
together! Slavery! It WAS slavery; so long as they could be turned out
of their homes at will in this fashion. His rebellion against the
conditions of their lives, above all against the manifold petty tyrannies
that he knew they underwent, came from use of his eyes and ears in daily
contact with a class among whom he had been more or less brought up. In
sympathy with, and yet not of them, he had the queer privilege of feeling
their slights as if they were his own, together with feelings of
protection, and even of contempt that they should let themselves be
slighted. He was near enough to understand how they must feel; not near
enough to understand why, feeling as they did, they did not act as he
would have acted. In truth, he knew them no better than he should.
He found Tryst washing at his pump. In the early morning light the big
laborer's square, stubborn face, with its strange, dog-like eyes, had a
sodden, hungry, lost look. Cutting short ablutions that certainly were
never protracted, he welcomed Derek, and motioned him to pass into the
kitchen. The young man went in, and perched himself on the window-sill
beside a pot of Bridal Wreath. The cottage was one of the Mallorings',
and recently repaired. A little fire was burning, and a teapot of stewed
tea sat there beside it. Four cups and spoons and some sugar were put
out on a deal table, for Tryst was, in fact, brewing the morning draught
of himself and children, who still lay abed up-stairs. The sight made
Derek shiver and his eyes darken. He knew the full significance of what
he saw.
"Did you ask him again, Bob?"
"Yes, I asked 'im."
"What did he say?"
"Said as orders was plain. 'So long as you lives there,' he says, 'along
of yourself alone, you can't have her come back.'"
"Did you say the children wanted looking after badly? Did you make it
clear? Did you say Mrs. Tryst wished it, before she--"
"I said that."
"What did he say then?"
"'Sorry for you, m'lad, but them's m'lady's orders, an' I can't go
contrary. I don't wish to go into things,' he says; 'you know better'n I
how far 'tis gone when she was 'ere before; but seein' as m'lady don't
never give in to deceased wife's sister marryin', if she come back 'tis
certain to be the other thing. So, as that won't do neither, you go
elsewhere,' he says."
Having spoken thus at length, Tryst lifted the teapot and poured out the
dark tea into the three cups.
"Will 'ee have some, sir?"
Derek shook his head.
Taking the cups, Tryst departed up the narrow stairway. And Derek
remained motionless, staring at the Bridal Wreath, till the big man came
down again and, retiring into a far corner, sat sipping at his own cup.
"Bob," said the boy suddenly, "do you LIKE being a dog; put to what
company your master wishes?"
Tryst set his cup down, stood up, and crossed his thick arms--the swift
movement from that stolid creature had in it something sinister; but he
did not speak.
"Do you like it, Bob?"
"I'll not say what I feels, Mr. Derek; that's for me. What I does'll be
for others, p'raps."
And he lifted his strange, lowering eyes to Derek's. For a full minute
the two stared, then Derek said:
"Look out, then; be ready!" and, getting off the sill, he went out.
On the bright, slimy surface of the pond three ducks were quietly
revelling in that hour before man and his damned soul, the dog, rose to
put the fear of God into them. In the sunlight, against the green
duckweed, their whiteness was truly marvellous; difficult to believe that
they were not white all through. Passing the three cottages, in the last
of which the Gaunts lived, he came next to his own home, but did not turn
in, and made on toward the church. It was a very little one, very old,
and had for him a curious fascination, never confessed to man or beast.
To his mother, and Sheila, more intolerant, as became women, that little,
lichened, gray stone building was the very emblem of hypocrisy, of a
creed preached, not practised; to his father it was nothing, for it was
not alive, and any tramp, dog, bird, or fruit-tree meant far more. But in
Derek it roused a peculiar feeling, such as a man might have gazing at
the shores of a native country, out of which he had been thrown for no
fault of his own--a yearning deeply muffled up in pride and resentment.
Not infrequently he would come and sit brooding on the grassy hillock
just above the churchyard. Church-going, with its pageantry, its
tradition, dogma, and demand for blind devotion, would have suited him
very well, if only blind devotion to his mother had not stood across that
threshold; he could not bring himself to bow to that which viewed his
rebellious mother as lost. And yet the deep fibres of heredity from her
papistic Highland ancestors, and from old pious Moretons, drew him
constantly to this spot at times when no one would be about. It was his
enemy, this little church, the fold of all the instincts and all the
qualities against which he had been brought up to rebel; the very home of
patronage and property and superiority; the school where his friends the
laborers were taught their place! And yet it had that queer, ironical
attraction for him. In some such sort had his pet hero Montrose
rebelled, and then been drawn despite himself once more to the side of
that against which he had taken arms.
While he leaned against the rail, gazing at that ancient edifice, he saw
a girl walk into the churchyard at the far end, sit down on a gravestone,
and begin digging a little hole in the grass with the toe of her boot.
She did not seem to see him, and at his ease he studied her face, one of
those broad, bright English country faces with deep-set rogue eyes and
red, thick, soft lips, smiling on little provocation. In spite of her
disgrace, in spite of the fact that she was sitting on her mother's
grave, she did not look depressed. And Derek thought: 'Wilmet Gaunt is
the jolliest of them all! She isn't a bit a bad girl, as they say; it's
only that she must have fun. If they drive her out of here, she'll still
want fun wherever she is; she'll go to a town and end up like those girls
I saw in Bristol.' And the memory of those night girls, with their
rouged faces and cringing boldness, came back to him with horror.
He went across the grass toward her.
She looked round as he came, and her face livened.
"Well, Wilmet?"
"You're an early bird, Mr. Derek."
"Haven't been to bed."
"Oh!"
"Been up Malvern Beacon to see the sun rise."
"You're tired, I expect!"
"No."
"Must be fine up there. You'd see a long ways from there; near to London
I should think. Do you know London, Mr. Derek?"
"No."
"They say 'tis a funny place, too." Her rogue eyes gleamed from under a
heavy frown. "It'd not be all 'Do this' an' 'Do that'; an' 'You bad
girl' an' 'You little hussy!' in London. They say there's room for
more'n one sort of girl there."
"All towns are beastly places, Wilmet."
Again her rogue's eyes gleamed. "I don' know so much about that, Mr.
Derek. I'm going where I won't be chivied about and pointed at, like
what I am here."
"Your dad's stuck to you; you ought to stick to him."
"Ah, Dad! He's losin' his place for me, but that don't stop his tongue
at home. 'Tis no use to nag me--nag me. Suppose one of m'lady's
daughters had a bit of fun--they say there's lots as do--I've heard
tales--there'd be none comin' to chase her out of her home. 'No, my
girl, you can't live here no more, endangerin' the young men. You go
away. Best for you's where they'll teach you to be'ave. Go on! Out
with you! I don't care where you go; but you just go!' 'Tis as if girls
were all pats o' butter--same square, same pattern on it, same weight,
an' all."
Derek had come closer; he put his hand down and gripped her arm. Her
eloquence dried up before the intentness of his face, and she just stared
up at him.
"Now, look here, Wilmet; you promise me not to scoot without letting us
know. We'll get you a place to go to. Promise."
A little sheepishly the rogue-girl answered:
"I promise; only, I'm goin'."
Suddenly she dimpled and broke into her broad smile.
"Mr. Derek, d'you know what they say--they say you're in love. You was
seen in th' orchard. Ah! 'tis all right for you and her! But if any one
kiss and hug ME, I got to go!"
Derek drew back among the graves, as if he had been struck with a whip.
She looked up at him with coaxing sweetness.
"Don't you mind me, Mr. Derek, and don't you stay here neither. If they
saw you here with me, they'd say: 'Aw--look! Endangerin' another young
man--poor young man!' Good mornin', Mr. Derek!"
The rogue eyes followed him gravely, then once more began examining the
grass, and the toe of her boot again began kicking a little hole. But
Derek did not look back.
CHAPTER XI
It is in the nature of men and angels to pursue with death such birds as
are uncommon, such animals as are rare; and Society had no use for one
like Tod, so uncut to its pattern as to be practically unconscious of its
existence. Not that he had deliberately turned his back on anything; he
had merely begun as a very young man to keep bees. The better to do that
he had gone on to the cultivation of flowers and fruit, together with
just enough farming as kept his household in vegetables, milk, butter,
and eggs. Living thus amongst insects, birds, cows, and the peace of
trees, he had become queer. His was not a very reflective mind, it
distilled but slowly certain large conclusions, and followed intently the
minute happenings of his little world. To him a bee, a bird, a flower, a
tree was well-nigh as interesting as a man; yet men, women, and
especially children took to him, as one takes to a Newfoundland dog,
because, though capable of anger, he seemed incapable of contempt, and to
be endowed with a sort of permanent wonder at things. Then, too, he was
good to look at, which counts for more than a little in the scales of our
affections; indeed, the slight air of absence in his blue eyes was not
chilling, as is that which portends a wandering of its owner on his own
business. People recognized that it meant some bee or other in that
bonnet, or elsewhere, some sound or scent or sight of life, suddenly
perceived--always of life! He had often been observed gazing with
peculiar gravity at a dead flower, bee, bird, or beetle, and, if spoken
to at such a moment, would say, "Gone!" touching a wing or petal with his
finger. To conceive of what happened after death did not apparently come
within the few large conclusions of his reflective powers. That quaint
grief of his in the presence of the death of things that were not human
had, more than anything, fostered a habit among the gentry and clergy of
the neighborhood of drawing up the mouth when they spoke of him, and
slightly raising the shoulders. For the cottagers, to be sure, his
eccentricity consisted rather in his being a 'gentleman,' yet neither
eating flesh, drinking wine, nor telling them how they ought to behave
themselves, together with the way he would sit down on anything and
listen to what they had to tell him, without giving them the impression
that he was proud of himself for doing so. In fact, it was the
extraordinary impression he made of listening and answering without
wanting anything either for himself or for them, that they could not
understand. How on earth it came about that he did not give them advice
about their politics, religion, morals, or monetary states, was to them a
never-ending mystery; and though they were too well bred to shrug their
shoulders, there did lurk in their dim minds the suspicion that 'the good
gentleman,' as they called him, was 'a tiddy-bit off.' He had, of
course, done many practical little things toward helping them and their
beasts, but always, as it seemed, by accident, so that they could never
make up their minds afterward whether he remembered having done them,
which, in fact, he probably did not; and this seemed to them perhaps the
most damning fact of all about his being--well, about his being--not
quite all there. Another worrying habit he had, too, that of apparently
not distinguishing between them and any tramps or strangers who might
happen along and come across him. This was, in their eyes, undoubtedly a
fault; for the village was, after all, their village, and he, as it were,
their property. To crown all, there was a story, full ten years old now,
which had lost nothing in the telling, of his treatment of a
cattle-drover. To the village it had an eerie look, that windmill-like
rage let loose upon a man who, after all, had only been twisting a
bullock's tail and running a spiked stick into its softer parts, as any
drover might. People said--the postman and a wagoner had seen the
business, raconteurs born, so that the tale had perhaps lost
nothing--that he had positively roared as he came leaping down into the
lane upon the man, a stout and thick-set fellow, taken him up like a
baby, popped him into a furzebush, and held him there. People said that
his own bare arms had been pricked to the very shoulder from pressing the
drover down into that uncompromising shrub, and the man's howls had
pierced the very heavens. The postman, to this day, would tell how the
mere recollection of seeing it still made him sore all over. Of the
words assigned to Tod on this occasion, the mildest and probably most
true were: "By the Lord God, if you treat a beast like that again, I'll
cut your liver out, you hell-hearted sweep!"
The incident, which had produced a somewhat marked effect in regard to
the treatment of animals all round that neighborhood, had never been
forgotten, nor in a sense forgiven. In conjunction with the
extraordinary peace and mildness of his general behavior, it had endowed
Tod with mystery; and people, especially simple folk, cannot bring
themselves to feel quite at home with mystery. Children only--to whom
everything is so mysterious that nothing can be--treated him as he
treated them, giving him their hands with confidence. But children, even
his own, as they grew up, began to have a little of the village feeling
toward Tod; his world was not theirs, and what exactly his world was they
could not grasp. Possibly it was the sense that they partook of his
interest and affection too much on a level with any other kind of living
thing that might happen to be about, which discomfited their
understanding. They held him, however, in a certain reverence.
That early morning he had already done a good two hours' work in
connection with broad beans, of which he grew, perhaps, the best in the
whole county, and had knocked off for a moment, to examine a spider's
web. This marvellous creation, which the dew had visited and clustered
over, as stars over the firmament, was hung on the gate of the vegetable
garden, and the spider, a large and active one, was regarding Tod with
the misgiving natural to its species. Intensely still Tod stood, absorbed
in contemplation of that bright and dusty miracle. Then, taking up his
hoe again, he went back to the weeds that threatened his broad beans.
Now and again he stopped to listen, or to look at the sky, as is the way
of husbandmen, thinking of nothing, enjoying the peace of his muscles.
"Please, sir, father's got into a fit again."
Two little girls were standing in the lane below. The elder, who had
spoken in that small, anxious voice, had a pale little face with pointed
chin; her hair, the color of over-ripe corn, hung fluffy on her thin
shoulders, her flower-like eyes, with something motherly in them already,
were the same hue as her pale-blue, almost clean, overall. She had her
smaller, chubbier sister by the hand, and, having delivered her message,
stood still, gazing up at Tod, as one might at God. Tod dropped his hoe.
"Biddy come with me; Susie go and tell Mrs. Freeland, or Miss Sheila."
He took the frail little hand of the elder Tryst and ran. They ran at
the child's pace, the one so very massive, the other such a whiff of
flesh and blood.
"Did you come at once, Biddy?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where was he taken?"
"In the kitchen--just as I was cookin' breakfast."
"Ah! Is it a bad one?"
"Yes, sir, awful bad--he's all foamy."
"What did you do for it?"
"Susie and me turned him over, and Billy's seein' he don't get his tongue
down his throat--like what you told us, and we ran to you. Susie was
frightened, he hollered so."
Past the three cottages, whence a woman at a window stared in amaze to
see that queer couple running, past the pond where the ducks, whiter than
ever in the brightening sunlight, dived and circled carelessly, into the
Tryst kitchen. There on the brick floor lay the distressful man, already
struggling back out of epilepsy, while his little frightened son sat
manfully beside him.
"Towels, and hot water, Biddy!"
With extraordinary calm rapidity the small creature brought what might
have been two towels, a basin, and the kettle; and in silence she and Tod
steeped his forehead.
"Eyes look better, Biddy?"
"He don't look so funny now, sir."
Picking up that form, almost as big as his own, Tod carried it up
impossibly narrow stairs and laid it on a dishevelled bed.
"Phew! Open the window, Biddy."
The small creature opened what there was of window.
"Now, go down and heat two bricks and wrap them in something, and bring
them up."
Tryst's boots and socks removed, Tod rubbed the large, warped feet. While
doing this he whistled, and the little boy crept up-stairs and squatted
in the doorway, to watch and listen. The morning air overcame with its
sweetness the natural odor of that small room, and a bird or two went
flirting past. The small creature came back with the bricks, wrapped in
petticoats of her own, and, placing them against the soles of her
father's feet, she stood gazing at Tod, for all the world like a little
mother dog with puppies.
"You can't go to school to-day, Biddy."
"Is Susie and Billy to go?"
"Yes; there's nothing to be frightened of now. He'll be nearly all right
by evening. But some one shall stay with you."
At this moment Tryst lifted his hand, and the small creature went and
stood beside him, listening to the whispering that emerged from his thick
lips.
"Father says I'm to thank you, please."
"Yes. Have you had your breakfasts?"
The small creature and her smaller brother shook their heads.
"Go down and get them."
Whispering and twisting back, they went, and by the side of the bed Tod
sat down. In Tryst's eyes was that same look of dog-like devotion he had
bent on Derek earlier that morning. Tod stared out of the window and
gave the man's big hand a squeeze. Of what did he think, watching a
lime-tree outside, and the sunlight through its foliage painting bright
the room's newly whitewashed wall, already gray-spotted with damp again;
watching the shadows of the leaves playing in that sunlight? Almost
cruel, that lovely shadow game of outside life so full and joyful, so
careless of man and suffering; too gay almost, too alive! Of what did he
think, watching the chase and dart of shadow on shadow, as of gray
butterflies fluttering swift to the sack of flowers, while beside him on
the bed the big laborer lay? . . .
When Kirsteen and Sheila came to relieve him of that vigil he went
down-stairs. There in the kitchen Biddy was washing up, and Susie and
Billy putting on their boots for school. They stopped to gaze at Tod
feeling in his pockets, for they knew that things sometimes happened
after that. To-day there came out two carrots, some lumps of sugar, some
cord, a bill, a pruning knife, a bit of wax, a bit of chalk, three
flints, a pouch of tobacco, two pipes, a match-box with a single match in
it, a six-pence, a necktie, a stick of chocolate, a tomato, a
handkerchief, a dead bee, an old razor, a bit of gauze, some tow, a stick
of caustic, a reel of cotton, a needle, no thimble, two dock leaves, and
some sheets of yellowish paper. He separated from the rest the sixpence,
the dead bee, and what was edible. And in delighted silence the three
little Trysts gazed, till Biddy with the tip of one wet finger touched
the bee.
"Not good to eat, Biddy."
At those words, one after the other, cautiously, the three little Trysts
smiled. Finding that Tod smiled too, they broadened, and Billy burst
into chuckles. Then, clustering in the doorway, grasping the edibles and
the sixpence, and consulting with each other, they looked long after his
big figure passing down the road.
CHAPTER XII
Still later, that same morning, Derek and Sheila moved slowly up the
Mallorings' well-swept drive. Their lips were set, as though they had
spoken the last word before battle, and an old cock pheasant, running
into the bushes close by, rose with a whir and skimmed out toward his
covert, scared, perhaps, by something uncompromising in the footsteps of
those two.
Only when actually under the shelter of the porch, which some folk
thought enhanced the old Greek-temple effect of the Mallorings' house,
Derek broke through that taciturnity:
"What if they won't?"
"Wait and see; and don't lose your head, Derek." The man who stood there
when the door opened was tall, grave, wore his hair in powder, and waited
without speech.
"Will you ask Sir Gerald and Lady Malloring if Miss Freeland and Mr.
Derek Freeland could see them, please; and will you say the matter is
urgent?"
The man bowed, left them, and soon came back.
"My lady will see you, miss; Sir Gerald is not in. This way."
Past the statuary, flowers, and antlers of the hall, they traversed a
long, cool corridor, and through a white door entered a white room, not
very large, and very pretty. Two children got up as they came in and
flapped out past them like young partridges, and Lady Malloring rose from
her writing-table and came forward, holding out her hand. The two young
Freelands took it gravely. For all their hostility they could not
withstand the feeling that she would think them terrible young prigs if
they simply bowed. And they looked steadily at one with whom they had
never before been at quite such close quarters. Lady Malloring, who had
originally been the Honorable Mildred Killory, a daughter of Viscount
Silport, was tall, slender, and not very striking, with very fair hair
going rather gray; her expression in repose was pleasant, a little
anxious; only by her eyes was the suspicion awakened that she was a woman
of some character. They had that peculiar look of belonging to two
worlds, so often to be met with in English eyes, a look of self-denying
aspiration, tinctured with the suggestion that denial might not be
confined to self.
In a quite friendly voice she said:
"Can I do anything for you?" And while she waited for an answer her
glance travelled from face to face of the two young people, with a
certain curiosity. After a silence of several seconds, Sheila answered:
"Not for us, thank you; for others, you can."
Lady Malloring's eyebrows rose a little, as if there seemed to her
something rather unjust in those words--'for others.'
"Yes?" she said.
Sheila, whose hands were clenched, and whose face had been fiery red,
grew suddenly almost white.
"Lady Malloring, will you please let the Gaunts stay in their cottage and
Tryst's wife's sister come to live with the children and him?"
Lady Malloring raised one hand; the motion, quite involuntary, ended at
the tiny cross on her breast. She said quietly:
"I'm afraid you don't understand."
"Yes," said Sheila, still very pale, "we understand quite well. We
understand that you are acting in what you believe to be the interests of
morality. All the same, won't you? Do!"
"I'm very sorry, but I can't."
"May we ask why?"
Lady Malloring started, and transferred her glance to Derek.
"I don't know," she said with a smile, "that I am obliged to account for
my actions to you two young people. Besides, you must know why, quite
well."
Sheila put out her hand.
"Wilmet Gaunt will go to the bad if you turn them out."
"I am afraid I think she has gone to the bad already, and I do not mean
her to take others there with her. I am sorry for poor Tryst, and I wish
he could find some nice woman to marry; but what he proposes is
impossible."
The blood had flared up again in Sheila's cheeks; she was as red as the
comb of a turkey-cock.
"Why shouldn't he marry his wife's sister? It's legal, now, and you've
no right to stop it."
Lady Malloring bit her lips; she looked straight and hard at Sheila.
"I do not stop it; I have no means of stopping it. Only, he cannot do it
and live in one of our cottages. I don't think we need discuss this
further."
"I beg your pardon--"
The words had come from Derek. Lady Malloring paused in her walk toward
the bell. With his peculiar thin-lipped smile the boy went on:
"We imagined you would say no; we really came because we thought it fair
to warn you that there may be trouble."
Lady Malloring smiled.
"This is a private matter between us and our tenants, and we should be so
glad if you could manage not to interfere."
Derek bowed, and put his hand within his sister's arm. But Sheila did
not move; she was trembling with anger.
"Who are you," she suddenly burst out, "to dispose of the poor, body and
soul? Who are you, to dictate their private lives? If they pay their
rent, that should be enough for you."
Lady Malloring moved swiftly again toward the bell. She paused with her
hand on it, and said:
"I am sorry for you two; you have been miserably brought up!"
There was a silence; then Derek said quietly:
"Thank you; we shall remember that insult to our people. Don't ring,
please; we're going."
In a silence if anything more profound than that of their approach, the
two young people retired down the drive. They had not yet learned--most
difficult of lessons--how to believe that people could in their bones
differ from them. It had always seemed to them that if only they had a
chance of putting directly what they thought, the other side must at
heart agree, and only go on saying they didn't out of mere self-interest.
They came away, therefore, from this encounter with the enemy a little
dazed by the discovery that Lady Malloring in her bones believed that she
was right. It confused them, and heated the fires of their anger.
They had shaken off all private dust before Sheila spoke.
"They're all like that--can't see or feel--simply certain they're
superior! It makes--it makes me hate them! It's terrible, ghastly."
And while she stammered out those little stabs of speech, tears of rage
rolled down her cheeks.
Derek put his arm round her waist.
"All right! No good groaning; let's think seriously what to do."
There was comfort to the girl in that curiously sudden reversal of their
usual attitudes.
"Whatever's done," he went on, "has got to be startling. It's no good
pottering and protesting, any more." And between his teeth he muttered:
"'Men of England, wherefore plough?' . . ."
In the room where the encounter had taken place Mildred Malloring was
taking her time to recover. From very childhood she had felt that the
essence of her own goodness, the essence of her duty in life, was the
doing of 'good' to others; from very childhood she had never doubted that
she was in a position to do this, and that those to whom she did good,
although they might kick against it as inconvenient, must admit that it
WAS their 'good.' The thought: 'They don't admit that I am superior!'
had never even occurred to her, so completely was she unselfconscious, in
her convinced superiority. It was hard, indeed, to be flung against such
outspoken rudeness. It shook her more than she gave sign of, for she was
not by any means an insensitive woman--shook her almost to the point of
feeling that there was something in the remonstrance of those dreadful
young people. Yet, how could there be, when no one knew better than she
that the laborers on the Malloring estate were better off than those on
nine out of ten estates; better paid and better housed, and--better
looked after in their morals. Was she to give up that?--when she knew
that she WAS better able to tell what was good for them than they were
themselves. After all, without stripping herself naked of every thought,
experience, and action since her birth, how could she admit that she was
not better able? And slowly, in the white room with the moss-green
carpet, she recovered, till there was only just a touch of soreness left,
at the injustice implicit in their words. Those two had been 'miserably
brought up,' had never had a chance of finding their proper place, of
understanding that they were just two callow young things, for whom Life
had some fearful knocks in store. She could even feel now that she had
meant that saying: 'I am sorry for you two!' She WAS sorry for them,
sorry for their want of manners and their point of view, neither of which
they could help, of course, with a mother like that. For all her
gentleness and sensibility, there was much practical directness about
Mildred Malloring; for her, a page turned was a page turned, an idea
absorbed was never disgorged; she was of religious temperament, ever
trimming her course down the exact channel marked out with buoys by the
Port Authorities, and really incapable of imagining spiritual wants in
others that could not be satisfied by what satisfied herself. And this
pathetic strength she had in common with many of her fellow creatures in
every class. Sitting down at the writing-table from which she had been
disturbed, she leaned her thin, rather long, gentle, but stubborn face on
her hand, thinking. These Gaunts were a source of irritation in the
parish, a kind of open sore. It would be better if they could be got rid
of before quarter day, up to which she had weakly said they might remain.
Far better for them to go at once, if it could be arranged. As for the
poor fellow Tryst, thinking that by plunging into sin he could improve
his lot and his poor children's, it was really criminal of those
Freelands to encourage him. She had refrained hitherto from seriously
worrying Gerald on such points of village policy--his hands were so full;
but he must now take his part. And she rang the bell.
"Tell Sir Gerald I'd like to see him, please, as soon as he gets back."
"Sir Gerald has just come in, my lady."
"Now, then!"
Gerald Malloring--an excellent fellow, as could be seen from his face of
strictly Norman architecture, with blue stained-glass windows rather deep
set in--had only one defect: he was not a poet. Not that this would have
seemed to him anything but an advantage, had he been aware of it. His
was one of those high-principled natures who hold that breadth is
synonymous with weakness. It may be said without exaggeration that the
few meetings of his life with those who had a touch of the poet in them
had been exquisitely uncomfortable. Silent, almost taciturn by nature,
he was a great reader of poetry, and seldom went to sleep without having
digested a page or two of Wordsworth, Milton, Tennyson, or Scott. Byron,
save such poems as 'Don Juan' or 'The Waltz,' he could but did not read,
for fear of setting a bad example. Burns, Shelley, and Keats he did not
care for. Browning pained him, except by such things as: 'How They
Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix' and the 'Cavalier Tunes'; while
of 'Omar Khayyam' and 'The Hound of Heaven' he definitely disapproved.
For Shakespeare he had no real liking, though he concealed this, from
humility in the face of accepted opinion. His was a firm mind, sure of
itself, but not self-assertive. His points were so good, and he had so
many of them, that it was only when he met any one touched with poetry
that his limitations became apparent; it was rare, however, and getting
more so every year, for him to have this unpleasant experience.
When summoned by his wife, he came in with a wrinkle between his straight
brows; he had just finished a morning's work on a drainage scheme, like
the really good fellow that he was. She greeted him with a little
special smile. Nothing could be friendlier than the relations between
these two. Affection and trust, undeviating undemonstrativeness,
identity of feeling as to religion, children, property; and, in regard to
views on the question of sex, a really strange unanimity, considering
that they were man and woman.
"It's about these Gaunts, Gerald. I feel they must go at once. They're
only creating bad feeling by staying till quarter day. I have had the
young Freelands here."
"Those young pups!"
"Can't it be managed?"
Malloring did not answer hastily. He had that best point of the good
Englishman, a dislike to being moved out of a course of conduct by
anything save the appeal of his own conscience.
"I don't know," he said, "why we should alter what we thought was just.
Must give him time to look round and get a job elsewhere."
"I think the general state of feeling demands it. It's not fair to the
villagers to let the Freelands have such a handle for agitating. Labor's
badly wanted everywhere; he can't have any difficulty in getting a place,
if he likes."
"No. Only, I rather admire the fellow for sticking by his girl, though
he is such a 'land-lawyer.' I think it's a bit harsh to move him
suddenly."
"So did I, till I saw from those young furies what harm it's doing. They
really do infect the cottagers. You know how discontent spreads. And
Tryst--they're egging him on, too."
Malloring very thoughtfully filled a pipe. He was not an alarmist; if
anything, he erred on the side of not being alarmed until it was all over
and there was no longer anything to be alarmed at! His imagination would
then sometimes take fire, and he would say that such and such, or so and
so, was dangerous.
"I'd rather go and have a talk with Freeland," he said. "He's queer, but
he's not at all a bad chap."
Lady Malloring rose, and took one of his real-leather buttons in her
hand.
"My dear Gerald, Mr. Freeland doesn't exist."
"Don't know about that; a man can always come to life, if he likes, in
his own family."
Lady Malloring was silent. It was true. For all their unanimity of
thought and feeling, for all the latitude she had in domestic and village
affairs, Gerald had a habit of filling his pipe with her decisions.
Quite honestly, she had no objection to their becoming smoke through HIS
lips, though she might wriggle just a little. To her credit, she did
entirely carry out in her life her professed belief that husbands should
be the forefronts of their wives. For all that, there burst from her
lips the words:
"That Freeland woman! When I think of the mischief she's always done
here, by her example and her irreligion--I can't forgive her. I don't
believe you'll make any impression on Mr. Freeland; he's entirely under
her thumb."
Smoking slowly, and looking just over the top of his wife's head,
Malioring answered:
"I'll have a try; and don't you worry!"
Lady Malloring turned away. Her soreness still wanted salve.
"Those two young people," she murmured, "said some very unpleasant things
to me. The boy, I believe, might have some good in him, but the girl is
simply terrible."
"H'm! I think just the reverse, you know."
"They'll come to awful grief if they're not brought up sharp. They ought
to be sent to the colonies to learn reality."
Malloring nodded.
"Come out, Mildred, and see how they're getting on with the new vinery."
And they went out together through the French window.
The vinery was of their own designing, and of extraordinary interest. In
contemplation of its lofty glass and aluminium-cased pipes the feeling of
soreness left her. It was very pleasant, standing with Gerald, looking
at what they had planned together; there was a soothing sense of reality
about that visit, after the morning's happening, with its disappointment,
its reminder of immorality and discontent, and of folk ungrateful for
what was done for their good. And, squeezing her husband's arm, she
murmured:
"It's really exactly what we thought it would be, Gerald!"
CHAPTER XIII
About five o'clock of that same afternoon, Gerald Malloring went to see
Tod. An open-air man himself, who often deplored the long hours he was
compelled to spend in the special atmosphere of the House of Commons, he
rather envied Tod his existence in this cottage, crazed from age, and
clothed with wistaria, rambler roses, sweetbrier, honeysuckle, and
Virginia creeper. Freeland had, in his opinion, quite a jolly life of
it--the poor fellow not being able, of course, to help having a cranky
wife and children like that. He pondered, as he went along, over a talk
at Becket, when Stanley, still under the influence of Felix's outburst,
had uttered some rather queer sayings. For instance, he had supposed
that they (meaning, apparently, himself and Malloring) WERE rather unable
to put themselves in the position of these Trysts and Gaunts. He seemed
to speak of them as one might speak generically of Hodge, which had
struck Malloring as singular, it not being his habit to see anything in
common between an individual case, especially on his own estate, and the
ethics of a general proposition. The place for general propositions was
undoubtedly the House of Commons, where they could be supported one way
or the other, out of blue books. He had little use for them in private
life, where innumerable things such as human nature and all that came
into play. He had stared rather hard at his host when Stanley had
followed up that first remark with: "I'm bound to say, I shouldn't care
to have to get up at half past five, and go out without a bath!" What
that had to do with the land problem or the regulation of village
morality Malloring had been unable to perceive. It all depended on what
one was accustomed to; and in any case threw no light on the question, as
to whether or not he was to tolerate on his estate conduct of which his
wife and himself distinctly disapproved. At the back of national life
there was always this problem of individual conduct, especially sexual
conduct--without regularity in which, the family, as the unit of national
life, was gravely threatened, to put it on the lowest ground. And he did
not see how to bring it home to the villagers that they had got to be
regular, without making examples now and then.
He had hoped very much to get through his call without coming across
Freeland's wife and children, and was greatly relieved to find Tod,
seated on a window-sill in front of his cottage, smoking, and gazing
apparently at nothing. In taking the other corner of the window-sill,
the thought passed through his mind that Freeland was really a very
fine-looking fellow. Tod was, indeed, about Malloring's own height of
six feet one, with the same fairness and straight build of figure and
feature. But Tod's head was round and massive, his hair crisp and uncut;
Malloring's head long and narrow, his hair smooth and close-cropped.
Tod's eyes, blue and deep-set, seemed fixed on the horizon, Malloring's,
blue and deep-set, on the nearest thing they could light on. Tod smiled,
as it were, without knowing; Malloring seemed to know what he was smiling
at almost too well. It was comforting, however, that Freeland was as shy
and silent as himself, for this produced a feeling that there could not
be any real difference between their points of view. Perceiving at last
that if he did not speak they would continue sitting there dumb till it
was time for him to go, Malloring said:
"Look here, Freeland; about my wife and yours and Tryst and the Gaunts,
and all the rest of it! It's a pity, isn't it? This is a small place,
you know. What's your own feeling?"
Tod answered:
"A man has only one life."
Malloring was a little puzzled.
"In this world. I don't follow."
"Live and let live."
A part of Malloring undoubtedly responded to that curt saying, a part of
him as strongly rebelled against it; and which impulse he was going to
follow was not at first patent.
"You see, YOU keep apart," he said at last. "You couldn't say that so
easily if you had, like us, to take up the position in which we find
ourselves."
"Why take it up?"
Malloring frowned. "How would things go on?"
"All right," said Tod.
Malloring got up from the sill. This was 'laisser-faire' with a
vengeance! Such philosophy had always seemed to him to savor dangerously
of anarchism. And yet twenty years' experience as a neighbor had shown
him that Tod was in himself perhaps the most harmless person in
Worcestershire, and held in a curious esteem by most of the people about.
He was puzzled, and sat down again.
"I've never had a chance to talk things over with you," he said. "There
are a good few people, Freeland, who can't behave themselves; we're not
bees, you know!"
He stopped, having an uncomfortable suspicion that his hearer was not
listening.
"First I've heard this year," said Tod.
For all the rudeness of that interruption, Malloring felt a stir of
interest. He himself liked birds. Unfortunately, he could hear nothing
but the general chorus of their songs.
"Thought they'd gone," murmured Tod.
Malloring again got up. "Look here, Freeland," he said, "I wish you'd
give your mind to this. You really ought not to let your wife and
children make trouble in the village."
Confound the fellow! He was smiling; there was a sort of twinkle in his
smile, too, that Malloring found infectious!
"No, seriously," he said, "you don't know what harm you mayn't do."
"Have you ever watched a dog looking at a fire?" asked Tod.
"Yes, often; why?"
"He knows better than to touch it."
"You mean you're helpless? But you oughtn't to be."
The fellow was smiling again!
"Then you don't mean to do anything?"
Tod shook his head.
Malloring flushed. "Now, look here, Freeland," he said, "forgive my
saying so, but this strikes me as a bit cynical. D'you think I enjoy
trying to keep things straight?"
Tod looked up.
"Birds," he said, "animals, insects, vegetable life--they all eat each
other more or less, but they don't fuss about it."
Malloring turned abruptly and went down the path. Fuss! He never
fussed. Fuss! The word was an insult, addressed to him! If there was
one thing he detested more than another, whether in public or private
life, it was 'fussing.' Did he not belong to the League for Suppression
of Interference with the Liberty of the Subject? Was he not a member of
the party notoriously opposed to fussy legislation? Had any one ever
used the word in connection with conduct of his, before? If so, he had
never heard them. Was it fussy to try and help the Church to improve the
standard of morals in the village? Was it fussy to make a simple
decision and stick to it? The injustice of the word really hurt him.
And the more it hurt him, the slower and more dignified and upright
became his march toward his drive gate.
'Wild geese' in the morning sky had been forerunners; very heavy clouds
were sweeping up from the west, and rain beginning to fall. He passed an
old man leaning on the gate of a cottage garden and said: "Good evening!"
The old man touched his hat but did not speak.
"How's your leg, Gaunt?"
"'Tis much the same, Sir Gerald."
"Rain coming makes it shoot, I expect."
"It do."
Malloring stood still. The impulse was on him to see if, after all, the
Gaunts' affair could not be disposed of without turning the old fellow
and his son out.
"Look here!" he said; "about this unfortunate business. Why don't you
and your son make up your minds without more ado to let your
granddaughter go out to service? You've been here all your lives; I
don't want to see you go."
The least touch of color invaded the old man's carved and grayish face.
"Askin' your pardon," he said, "my son sticks by his girl, and I sticks
by my son!"
"Oh! very well; you know your own business, Gaunt. I spoke for your
good."
A faint smile curled the corners of old Gaunt's mouth downward beneath
his gray moustaches.
"Thank you kindly," he said.
Malloring raised a finger to his cap and passed on. Though he felt a
longing to stride his feelings off, he did not increase his pace, knowing
that the old man's eyes were following him. But how pig-headed they
were, seeing nothing but their own point of view! Well, he could not
alter his decision. They would go at the June quarter--not a day before,
nor after.
Passing Tryst's cottage, he noticed a 'fly' drawn up outside, and its
driver talking to a woman in hat and coat at the cottage doorway. She
avoided his eye.
'The wife's sister again!' he thought. 'So that fellow's going to be an
ass, too? Hopeless, stubborn lot!' And his mind passed on to his scheme
for draining the bottom fields at Cantley Bromage. This village trouble
was too small to occupy for long the mind of one who had so many duties.
. . .
Old Gaunt remained at the gate watching till the tall figure passed out
of sight, then limped slowly down the path and entered his son's cottage.
Tom Gaunt, not long in from work, was sitting in his shirtsleeves,
reading the paper--a short, thick-set man with small eyes, round, ruddy
cheeks, and humorous lips indifferently concealed by a ragged moustache.
Even in repose there was about him something talkative and disputatious.
He was clearly the kind of man whose eyes and wit would sparkle above a
pewter pot. A good workman, he averaged out an income of perhaps
eighteen shillings a week, counting the two shillings' worth of
vegetables that he grew. His erring daughter washed for two old ladies in
a bungalow, so that with old Gaunt's five shillings from the parish, the
total resources of this family of five, including two small boys at
school, was seven and twenty shillings a week. Quite a sum! His
comparative wealth no doubt contributed to the reputation of Tom Gaunt,
well known as local wag and disturber of political meetings. His method
with these gatherings, whether Liberal or Tory, had a certain masterly
simplicity. By interjecting questions that could not be understood, and
commenting on the answers received, he insured perpetual laughter, with
the most salutary effects on the over-consideration of any political
question, together with a tendency to make his neighbors say: "Ah! Tom
Gaunt, he's a proper caution, he is!" An encomium dear to his ears.
What he seriously thought about anything in this world, no one knew; but
some suspected him of voting Liberal, because he disturbed their meetings
most. His loyalty to his daughter was not credited to affection. It was
like Tom Gaunt to stick his toes in and kick--the Quality, for choice.
To look at him and old Gaunt, one would not have thought they could be
son and father, a relationship indeed ever dubious. As for his wife, she
had been dead twelve years. Some said he had joked her out of life,
others that she had gone into consumption. He was a reader--perhaps the
only one in all the village, and could whistle like a blackbird. To work
hard, but without too great method, to drink hard, but with perfect
method, and to talk nineteen to the dozen anywhere except at home--was
his mode of life. In a word, he was a 'character.'
Old Gaunt sat down in a wooden rocking-chair, and spoke.
"Sir Gerald 'e've a-just passed."
"Sir Gerald 'e can goo to hell. They'll know un there, by 'is little
ears."
"'E've a-spoke about us stoppin'; so as Mettie goes out to sarvice."
"'E've a-spoke about what 'e don't know 'bout, then. Let un do what they
like, they can't put Tom Gaunt about; he can get work anywhere--Tom Gaunt
can, an' don't you forget that, old man."
The old man, placing his thin brown hands on his knees, was silent. And
thoughts passed through and through him. 'If so be as Tom goes, there'll
be no one as'll take me in for less than three bob a week. Two bob a
week, that's what I'll 'ave to feed me--Two bob a week--two bob a week!
But if so be's I go with Tom, I'll 'ave to reg'lar sit down under he for
me bread and butter.' And he contemplated his son.
"Where are you goin', then?" he said.
Tom Gaunt rustled the greenish paper he was reading, and his little, hard
gray eyes fixed his father.
"Who said I was going?"
Old Gaunt, smoothing and smoothing the lined, thin cheeks of the
parchmenty, thin-nosed face that Frances Freeland had thought to be
almost like a gentleman's, answered: "I thart you said you was goin'."
"You think too much, then--that's what 'tis. You think too much, old
man."
With a slight deepening of the sardonic patience in his face, old Gaunt
rose, took a bowl and spoon down from a shelf, and very slowly proceeded
to make himself his evening meal. It consisted of crusts of bread soaked
in hot water and tempered with salt, pepper, onion, and a touch of
butter. And while he waited, crouched over the kettle, his son smoked
his grayish clay and read his greenish journal; an old clock ticked and a
little cat purred without provocation on the ledge of the tight-closed
window. Then the door opened and the rogue-girl appeared. She shook her
shoulders as though to dismiss the wetting she had got, took off her
turn-down, speckly, straw hat, put on an apron, and rolled up her
sleeves. Her arms were full and firm and red; the whole of her was full
and firm. From her rosy cheeks to her stout ankles she was superabundant
with vitality, the strangest contrast to her shadowy, thin old
grandfather. About the preparation of her father's tea she moved with a
sort of brooding stolidity, out of which would suddenly gleam a twinkle
of rogue-sweetness, as when she stopped to stroke the little cat or to
tickle the back of her grandfather's lean neck in passing. Having set
the tea, she stood by the table and said slowly: "Tea's ready, father.
I'm goin' to London."
Tom Gaunt put down his pipe and journal, took his seat at the table,
filled his mouth with sausage, and said: "You're goin' where I tell you."
"I'm goin' to London."
Tom Gaunt stayed the morsel in one cheek and fixed her with his little,
wild boar's eye.
"Ye're goin' to catch the stick," he said. "Look here, my girl, Tom
Gaunt's been put about enough along of you already. Don't you make no
mistake."
"I'm goin' to London," repeated the rogue-girl stolidly. "You can get
Alice to come over."
"Oh! Can I? Ye're not goin' till I tell you. Don't you think it!"
"I'm goin'. I saw Mr. Derek this mornin'. They'll get me a place
there."
Tom Gaunt remained with his fork as it were transfixed. The effort of
devising contradiction to the chief supporters of his own rebellion was
for the moment too much for him. He resumed mastication.
"You'll go where I want you to go; and don't you think you can tell me
where that is."
In the silence that ensued the only sound was that of old Gaunt supping
at his crusty-broth. Then the rogue-girl went to the window and, taking
the little cat on her breast, sat looking out into the rain. Having
finished his broth, old Gaunt got up, and, behind his son's back, he
looked at his granddaughter and thought:
'Goin' to London! 'Twud be best for us all. WE shudn' need to be
movin', then. Goin' to London!' But he felt desolate.
CHAPTER XIV
When Spring and first love meet in a girl's heart, then the birds sing.
The songs that blackbirds and dusty-coated thrushes flung through Nedda's
window when she awoke in Hampstead those May mornings seemed to have been
sung by herself all night. Whether the sun were flashing on the leaves,
or rain-drops sieving through on a sou'west wind, the same warmth glowed
up in her the moment her eyes opened. Whether the lawn below were a
field of bright dew, or dry and darkish in a shiver of east wind, her
eyes never grew dim all day; and her blood felt as light as ostrich
feathers.
Stormed by an attack of his cacoethes scribendi, after those few blank
days at Becket, Felix saw nothing amiss with his young daughter. The
great observer was not observant of things that other people observed.
Neither he nor Flora, occupied with matters of more spiritual importance,
could tell, offhand, for example, on which hand a wedding-ring was worn.
They had talked enough of Becket and the Tods to produce the impression
on Flora's mind that one day or another two young people would arrive in
her house on a visit; but she had begun a poem called 'Dionysus at the
Well,' and Felix himself had plunged into a satiric allegory entitled
'The Last of the Laborers.' Nedda, therefore, walked alone; but at her
side went always an invisible companion. In that long, imaginary
walking-out she gave her thoughts and the whole of her heart, and to be
doing this never surprised her, who, before, had not given them whole to
anything. A bee knows the first summer day and clings intoxicated to its
flowers; so did Nedda know and cling. She wrote him two letters and he
wrote her one. It was not poetry; indeed, it was almost all concerned
with Wilmet Gaunt, asking Nedda to find a place in London where the girl
could go; but it ended with the words:
"Your lover,
"DEREK."
This letter troubled Nedda. She would have taken it at once to Felix or
to Flora if it had not been for the first words, "Dearest Nedda," and
those last three. Except her mother, she instinctively distrusted women
in such a matter as that of Wilmet Gaunt, feeling they would want to know
more than she could tell them, and not be too tolerant of what they
heard. Casting about, at a loss, she thought suddenly of Mr. Cuthcott.
At dinner that day she fished round carefully. Felix spoke of him almost
warmly. What Cuthcott could have been doing at Becket, of all places, he
could not imagine--the last sort of man one expected to see there; a good
fellow, rather desperate, perhaps, as men of his age were apt to get if
they had too many women, or no woman, about them.
Which, said Nedda, had Mr. Cuthcott?
Oh! None. How had he struck Nedda? And Felix looked at his little
daughter with a certain humble curiosity. He always felt that the young
instinctively knew so much more than he did.
"I liked him awfully. He was like a dog."
"Ah!" said Felix, "he IS like a dog--very honest; he grins and runs about
the city, and might be inclined to bay the moon."
'I don't mind that,' Nedda thought, 'so long as he's not "superior."'
"He's very human," Felix added.
And having found out that he lived in Gray's Inn, Nedda thought: 'I will;
I'll ask him.'
To put her project into execution, she wrote this note:
"DEAR MR. CUTHCOTT:
"You were so kind as to tell me you wouldn't mind if I bothered you about
things. I've got a very bothery thing to know what to do about, and I
would be so glad of your advice. It so happens that I can't ask my
father and mother. I hope you won't think me very horrible, wasting your
time. And please say no, if you'd rather.
"Yours sincerely,
"NEDDA FREELAND."
The answer came:
"DEAR MISS FREELAND:
"Delighted. But if very bothery, better save time and ink, and have a
snack of lunch with me to-morrow at the Elgin restaurant, close to the
British Museum. Quiet and respectable. No flowers by request. One
o'clock.
"Very truly yours,
"GILES CUTHCOTT."
Putting on 'no flowers' and with a fast-beating heart, Nedda, went on her
first lonely adventure. To say truth she did not know in the least how
ever she was going to ask this almost strange man about a girl of
doubtful character. But she kept saying to herself: 'I don't care--he
has nice eyes.' And her spirit would rise as she got nearer, because,
after all, she was going to find things out, and to find things out was
jolly. The new warmth and singing in her heart had not destroyed, but
rather heightened, her sense of the extraordinary interest of all things
that be. And very mysterious to her that morning was the kaleidoscope of
Oxford Street and its innumerable girls, and women, each going about her
business, with a life of her own that was not Nedda's. For men she had
little use just now, they had acquired a certain insignificance, not
having gray-black eyes that smoked and flared, nor Harris tweed suits
that smelled delicious. Only once on her journey from Oxford Circus she
felt the sense of curiosity rise in her, in relation to a man, and this
was when she asked a policeman at Tottenham Court Road, and he put his
head down fully a foot to listen to her. So huge, so broad, so red in
the face, so stolid, it seemed wonderful to her that he paid her any
attention! If he were a human being, could she really be one, too? But
that, after all, was no more odd than everything. Why, for instance, the
spring flowers in that woman's basket had been born; why that high white
cloud floated over; why and what was Nedda Freeland?
At the entrance of the little restaurant she saw Mr. Cuthcott waiting.
In a brown suit, with his pale but freckled face, and his gnawed-at,
sandy moustache, and his eyes that looked out and beyond, he was
certainly no beauty. But Nedda thought: 'He's even nicer than I
remembered, and I'm sure he knows a lot.'
At first, to be sitting opposite to him, in front of little plates
containing red substances and small fishes, was so exciting that she
simply listened to his rapid, rather stammering voice mentioning that the
English had no idea of life or cookery, that God had so made this country
by mistake that everything, even the sun, knew it. What, however, would
she drink? Chardonnet? It wasn't bad here.
She assented, not liking to confess that she did not know what Chardonnet
might be, and hoping it was some kind of sherbet. She had never yet
drunk wine, and after a glass felt suddenly extremely strong.
"Well," said Mr. Cuthcott, and his eyes twinkled, "what's your
botheration? I suppose you want to strike out for yourself. MY
daughters did that without consulting me."
"Oh! Have you got daughters?"
"Yes--funny ones; older than you."
"That's why you understand, then"
Mr. Cuthcott smiled. "They WERE a liberal education!"
And Nedda thought: 'Poor Dad, I wonder if I am!'
"Yes," Mr. Cuthcott murmured, "who would think a gosling would ever
become a goose?"
"Ah!" said Nedda eagerly, "isn't it wonderful how things grow?"
She felt his eyes suddenly catch hold of hers.
"You're in love!" he said.
It seemed to her a great piece of luck that he had found that out. It
made everything easy at once, and her words came out pell-mell.
"Yes, and I haven't told my people yet. I don't seem able. He's given
me something to do, and I haven't much experience."
A funny little wriggle passed over Mr. Cuthcott's face. "Yes, yes; go
on! Tell us about it."
She took a sip from her glass, and the feeling that he had been going to
laugh passed away.
"It's about the daughter of a laborer, down there in Worcestershire,
where he lives, not very far from Becket. He's my cousin, Derek, the son
of my other uncle at Joyfields. He and his sister feel most awfully
strongly about the laborers."
"Ah!" said Mr. Cuthcott, "the laborers! Queer how they're in the air,
all of a sudden."
"This girl hasn't been very good, and she has to go from the village, or
else her family have. He wants me to find a place for her in London."
"I see; and she hasn't been very good?"
"Not very." She knew that her cheeks were flushing, but her eyes felt
steady, and seeing that his eyes never moved, she did not mind. She went
on:
"It's Sir Gerald Malloring's estate. Lady Malloring--won't--"
She heard a snap. Mr. Cuthcott's mouth had closed.
"Oh!" he said, "say no more!"
'He CAN bite nicely!' she thought.
Mr. Cuthcott, who had begun lightly thumping the little table with his
open hand, broke out suddenly:
"That petty bullying in the country! I know it! My God! Those prudes,
those prisms! They're the ruination of half the girls on the--" He
looked at Nedda and stopped short. "If she can do any kind of work, I'll
find her a place. In fact, she'd better come, for a start, under my old
housekeeper. Let your cousin know; she can turn up any day. Name?
Wilmet Gaunt? Right you are!" He wrote it on his cuff.
Nedda rose to her feet, having an inclination to seize his hand, or
stroke his head, or something. She subsided again with a fervid sigh,
and sat exchanging with him a happy smile. At last she said:
"Mr. Cuthcott, is there any chance of things like that changing?"
"Changing?" He certainly had grown paler, and was again lightly thumping
the table. "Changing? By gum! It's got to change! This d--d
pluto-aristocratic ideal! The weed's so grown up that it's choking us.
Yes, Miss Freeland, whether from inside or out I don't know yet, but
there's a blazing row coming. Things are going to be made new before
long."
Under his thumps the little plates had begun to rattle and leap. And
Nedda thought: 'I DO like him.'
But she said anxiously:
"You believe there's something to be done, then? Derek is simply full of
it; I want to feel like that, too, and I mean to."
His face grew twinkly; he put out his hand. And wondering a little
whether he meant her to, Nedda timidly stretched forth her own and
grasped it.
"I like you," he said. "Love your cousin and don't worry."
Nedda's eyes slipped into the distance.
"But I'm afraid for him. If you saw him, you'd know."
"One's always afraid for the fellows that are worth anything. There was
another young Freeland at your uncle's the other night--"
"My brother Alan!"
"Oh! your brother? Well, I wasn't afraid for him, and it seemed a pity.
Have some of this; it's about the only thing they do well here."
"Oh, thank you, no. I've had a lovely lunch. Mother and I generally
have about nothing." And clasping her hands she added:
"This is a secret, isn't it, Mr. Cuthcott?"
"Dead."
He laughed and his face melted into a mass of wrinkles. Nedda laughed
also and drank up the rest of her wine. She felt blissful.
"Yes," said Mr. Cuthcott, "there's nothing like loving. How long have
you been at it?"
"Only five days, but it's everything."
Mr. Cuthcott sighed. "That's right. When you can't love, the only thing
is to hate."
"Oh!" said Nedda.
Mr. Cuthcott again began banging on the little table. "Look at them,
look at them!" His eyes wandered angrily about the room, wherein sat
some few who had passed though the mills of gentility. "What do they know
of life? Where are their souls and sympathies? They haven't any. I'd
like to see their blood flow, the silly brutes."
Nedda looked at them with alarm and curiosity. They seemed to her
somewhat like everybody she knew. She said timidly: "Do you think OUR
blood ought to flow, too?"
Mr. Cuthcott relapsed into twinkles. "Rather! Mine first!"
'He IS human!' thought Nedda. And she got up: "I'm afraid I ought to go
now. It's been awfully nice. Thank you so very much. Good-by!"
He shook her firm little hand with his frail thin one, and stood smiling
till the restaurant door cut him off from her view.
The streets seemed so gorgeously full of life now that Nedda's head swam.
She looked at it all with such absorption that she could not tell one
thing from another. It seemed rather long to the Tottenham Court Road,
though she noted carefully the names of all the streets she passed, and
was sure she had not missed it. She came at last to one called POULTRY.
'Poultry!' she thought; 'I should have remembered that--Poultry?' And
she laughed. It was so sweet and feathery a laugh that the driver of an
old four-wheeler stopped his horse. He was old and anxious-looking, with
a gray beard and deep folds in his red cheeks.
"Poultry!" she said. "Please, am I right for the Tottenham Court Road?"
The old man answered: "Glory, no, miss; you're goin' East!"
'East!' thought Nedda; 'I'd better take him.' And she got in. She sat
in the four-wheeler, smiling. And how far this was due to Chardonnet she
did not consider. She was to love and not worry. It was wonderful! In
this mood she was put down, still smiling, at the Tottenham Court Road
Tube, and getting out her purse she prepared to pay the cabman. The fare
would be a shilling, but she felt like giving him two. He looked so
anxious and worn, in spite of his red face. He took them, looked at her,
and said: "Thank you, miss; I wanted that."
"Oh!" murmured Nedda, "then please take this, too. It's all I happen to
have, except my Tube fare."
The old man took it, and water actually ran along his nose.
"God bless yer!" he said. And taking up his whip, he drove off quickly.
Rather choky, but still glowing, Nedda descended to her train. It was
not till she was walking to the Spaniard's Road that a cloud seemed to
come over her sky, and she reached home dejected.
In the garden of the Freelands' old house was a nook shut away by
berberis and rhododendrons, where some bees were supposed to make honey,
but, knowing its destination, and belonging to a union, made no more than
they were obliged. In this retreat, which contained a rustic bench,
Nedda was accustomed to sit and read; she went there now. And her eyes
began filling with tears. Why must the poor old fellow who had driven
her look so anxious and call on God to bless her for giving him that
little present? Why must people grow old and helpless, like that
Grandfather Gaunt she had seen at Becket? Why was there all the tyranny
that made Derek and Sheila so wild? And all the grinding poverty that she
herself could see when she went with her mother to their Girls' Club, in
Bethnal Green? What was the use of being young and strong if nothing
happened, nothing was really changed, so that one got old and died seeing
still the same things as before? What was the use even of loving, if
love itself had to yield to death? The trees! How they grew from tiny
seeds to great and beautiful things, and then slowly, slowly dried and
decayed away to dust. What was the good of it all? What comfort was
there in a God so great and universal that he did not care to keep her
and Derek alive and loving forever, and was not interested enough to see
that the poor old cab-driver should not be haunted day and night with
fear of the workhouse for himself and an old wife, perhaps? Nedda's
tears fell fast, and how far THIS was Chardonnet no one could tell.
Felix, seeking inspiration from the sky in regard to 'The Last of the
Laborers,' heard a noise like sobbing, and, searching, found his little
daughter sitting there and crying as if her heart would break. The sight
was so unusual and so utterly disturbing that he stood rooted, quite
unable to bring her help. Should he sneak away? Should he go for Flora?
What should he do? Like many men whose work keeps them centred within
themselves, he instinctively avoided everything likely to pain or trouble
him; for this reason, when anything did penetrate those mechanical
defences he became almost strangely tender. Loath, for example, to
believe that any one was ill, if once convinced of it, he made so good a
nurse that Flora, at any rate, was in the habit of getting well with
suspicious alacrity. Thoroughly moved now, he sat down on the bench
beside Nedda, and said:
"My darling!"
She leaned her forehead against his arm and sobbed the more.
Felix waited, patting her far shoulder gently.
He had often dealt with such situations in his books, and now that one
had come true was completely at a loss. He could not even begin to
remember what was usually said or done, and he only made little soothing
noises.
To Nedda this tenderness brought a sudden sharp sense of guilt and
yearning. She began:
"It's not because of that I'm crying, Dad, but I want you to know that
Derek and I are in love."
The words: 'You! What! In those few days!' rose, and got as far as
Felix's teeth; he swallowed them and went on patting her shoulder. Nedda
in love! He felt blank and ashy. That special feeling of owning her
more than any one else, which was so warming and delightful, so really
precious--it would be gone! What right had she to take it from him,
thus, without warning! Then he remembered how odious he had always said
the elderly were, to spoke the wheels of youth, and managed to murmur:
"Good luck to you, my pretty!"
He said it, conscious that a father ought to be saying:
'You're much too young, and he's your cousin!' But what a father ought
to say appeared to him just then both sensible and ridiculous. Nedda
rubbed her cheek against his hand.
"It won't make any difference, Dad, I promise you!"
And Felix thought: 'Not to you, only to me!' But he said:
"Not a scrap, my love! What WERE you crying about?"
"About the world; it seems so heartless."
And she told him about the water that had run along the nose of the old
four-wheeler man.
But while he seemed to listen, Felix thought: 'I wish to God I were made
of leather; then I shouldn't feel as if I'd lost the warmth inside me. I
mustn't let her see. Fathers ARE queer--I always suspected that. There
goes my work for a good week!' Then he answered:
"No, my dear, the world is not heartless; it's only arranged according to
certain necessary contraries: No pain, no pleasure; no dark, no light,
and the rest of it. If you think, it couldn't be arranged differently."
As he spoke a blackbird came running with a chuckle from underneath the
berberis, looked at them with alarm, and ran back. Nedda raised her
face.
"Dad, I mean to do something with my life!"
Felix answered:
"Yes. That's right."
But long after Nedda had fallen into dreams that night, he lay awake,
with his left foot enclosed between Floras', trying to regain that sense
of warmth which he knew he must never confess to having lost.
CHAPTER XV
Flora took the news rather with the air of a mother-dog that says to her
puppy: "Oh, very well, young thing! Go and stick your teeth in it and
find out for yourself!" Sooner or later this always happened, and
generally sooner nowadays. Besides, she could not help feeling that she
would get more of Felix, to her a matter of greater importance than she
gave sign of. But inwardly the news had given her a shock almost as
sharp as that felt by him. Was she really the mother of one old enough
to love? Was the child that used to cuddle up to her in the window-seat
to be read to, gone from her; that used to rush in every morning at all
inconvenient moments of her toilet; that used to be found sitting in the
dark on the stairs, like a little sleepy owl, because, for-sooth, it was
so 'cosey'?
Not having seen Derek, she did not as yet share her husband's anxiety on
that score, though his description was dubious:
"Upstanding young cockerel, swinging his sporran and marching to pipes--a
fine spurn about him! Born to trouble, if I know anything, trying to
sweep the sky with his little broom!"
"Is he a prig?"
"No-o. There's simplicity about his scorn, and he seems to have been
brought up on facts, not on literature, like most of these young monkeys.
The cousinship I don't think matters; Kirsteen brings in too strong an
out-strain. He's HER son, not Tod's. But perhaps," he added, sighing,
"it won't last."
Flora shook her head. "It will last!" she said; "Nedda's deep."
And if Nedda held, so would Fate; no one would throw Nedda over! They
naturally both felt that. 'Dionysus at the Well,' no less than 'The Last
of the Laborers,' had a light week of it.
Though in a sense relieved at having parted with her secret, Nedda yet
felt that she had committed desecration. Suppose Derek should mind her
people knowing!
On the day that he and Sheila were to come, feeling she could not trust
herself to seem even reasonably calm, she started out, meaning to go to
the South Kensington Museum and wander the time away there; but once
out-of-doors the sky seemed what she wanted, and, turning down the hill
on the north side, she sat down under a gorse bush. Here tramps, coming
in to London, passed the night under the stars; here was a vision,
however dim, of nature. And nature alone could a little soothe her
ecstatic nerves.
How would he greet her? Would he be exactly as he was when they stood at
the edge of Tod's orchard, above the dreamy, darkening fields, joining
hands and lips, moved as they had never been moved before?
May blossom was beginning to come out along the hedge of the private
grounds that bordered that bit of Cockney Common, and from it, warmed by
the sun, the scent stole up to her. Familiar, like so many children of
the cultured classes, with the pagan and fairy-tales of nature, she
forgot them all the moment she was really by herself with earth and sky.
In their breadth, their soft and stirring continuity, they rejected
bookish fancy, and woke in her rapture and yearning, a sort of long
delight, a never-appeased hunger. Crouching, hands round knees, she
turned her face to get the warmth of the sun, and see the white clouds go
slowly by, and catch all the songs that the birds sang. And every now
and then she drew a deep breath. It was true what Dad had said: There
was no real heartlessness in nature. It was warm, beating, breathing.
And if things ate each other, what did it matter? They had lived and
died quickly, helping to make others live. The sacred swing and circle
of it went on forever, full and harmonious under the lighted sky, under
the friendly stars. It was wonderful to be alive! And all done by love.
Love! More, more, more love! And then death, if it must come! For,
after all, to Nedda death was so far away, so unimaginably dim and
distant, that it did not really count.
While she sat, letting her fingers, that were growing slowly black,
scrabble the grass and fern, a feeling came on her of a Presence, a
creature with wings above and around, that seemed to have on its face a
long, mysterious smile of which she, Nedda, was herself a tiny twinkle.
She would bring Derek here. They two would sit together and let the
clouds go over them, and she would learn all that he really thought, and
tell him all her longings and fears; they would be silent, too, loving
each other too much to talk. She made elaborate plans of what they were
to do and see, beginning with the East End and the National Gallery, and
ending with sunrise from Parliament Hill; but she somehow knew that
nothing would happen as she had designed. If only the first moment were
not different from what she hoped!
She sat there so long that she rose quite stiff, and so hungry that she
could not help going home and stealing into the kitchen. It was three
o'clock, and the old cook, as usual, asleep in an armchair, with her
apron thrown up between her face and the fire. What would Cookie say if
she knew? In that oven she had been allowed to bake in fancy perfect
little doll loaves, while Cookie baked them in reality. Here she had
watched the mysterious making of pink cream, had burned countless 'goes'
of toffy, and cocoanut ice; and tasted all kinds of loveliness. Dear old
Cookie! Stealing about on tiptoe, seeking what she might devour, she
found four small jam tarts and ate them, while the cook snored softly.
Then, by the table, that looked so like a great loaf-platter, she stood
contemplating cook. Old darling, with her fat, pale, crumply face! Hung
to the dresser, opposite, was a little mahogany looking-glass tilted
forward. Nedda could see herself almost down to her toes. 'I mean to be
prettier than I am!' she thought, putting her hands on her waist. 'I
wonder if I can pull them in a bit!' Sliding her fingers under her
blouse, she began to pull at certain strings. They would not budge.
They were loose, yes, really too comfortable. She would have to get the
next size smaller! And dropping her chin, she rubbed it on the lace
edging of her chest, where it felt warm and smelled piny. Had Cookie
ever been in love? Her gray hairs were coming, poor old duck! The
windows, where a protection of wire gauze kept out the flies, were opened
wide, and the sun shone in and dimmed the fire. The kitchen clock ticked
like a conscience; a faint perfume of frying-pan and mint scented the
air. And, for the first time since this new sensation of love had come
to her, Nedda felt as if a favorite book, read through and done with,
were dropping from her hands. The lovely times in that kitchen, in every
nook of that old house and garden, would never come again! Gone! She
felt suddenly cast down to sadness. They HAD been lovely times! To be
deserting in spirit all that had been so good to her--it seemed like a
crime! She slid down off the table and, passing behind the cook, put her
arms round those substantial sides. Without meaning to, out of sheer
emotion, she pressed them somewhat hard, and, as from a concertina
emerges a jerked and drawn-out chord, so from the cook came a long,
quaking sound; her apron fell, her body heaved, and her drowsy, flat,
soft voice, greasy from pondering over dishes, murmured:
"Ah, Miss Nedda! it's you, my dear! Bless your pretty 'eart."
But down Nedda's cheeks, behind her, rolled two tears.
"Cookie, oh, Cookie!" And she ran out. . . .
And the first moment? It was like nothing she had dreamed of. Strange,
stiff! One darting look, and then eyes down; one convulsive squeeze,
then such a formal shake of hot, dry hands, and off he had gone with
Felix to his room, and she with Sheila to hers, bewildered, biting down
consternation, trying desperately to behave 'like a little lady,' as her
old nurse would have put it--before Sheila, especially, whose hostility
she knew by instinct she had earned. All that evening, furtive watching,
formal talk, and underneath a ferment of doubt and fear and longing. All
a mistake! An awful mistake! Did he love her? Heaven! If he did not,
she could never face any one again. He could not love her! His eyes
were like those of a swan when its neck is drawn up and back in anger.
Terrible--having to show nothing, having to smile at Sheila, at Dad, and
Mother! And when at last she got to her room, she stood at the window
and at first simply leaned her forehead against the glass and shivered.
What had she done? Had she dreamed it all--dreamed that they had stood
together under those boughs in the darkness, and through their lips
exchanged their hearts? She must have dreamed it! Dreamed that most
wonderful, false dream! And the walk home in the thunder-storm, and his
arm round her, and her letters, and his letter--dreamed it all! And now
she was awake! From her lips came a little moan, and she sank down
huddled, and stayed there ever so long, numb and chilly. Undress--go to
bed? Not for the world. By the time the morning came she had got to
forget that she had dreamed. For very shame she had got to forget that;
no one should see. Her cheeks and ears and lips were burning, but her
body felt icy cold. Then--what time she did not know at all--she felt
she must go out and sit on the stairs. They had always been her
comforters, those wide, shallow, cosey stairs. Out and down the passage,
past all their rooms--his the last--to the dark stairs, eerie at night,
where the scent of age oozed out of the old house. All doors below,
above, were closed; it was like looking down into a well, to sit with her
head leaning against the banisters. And silent, so silent--just those
faint creakings that come from nowhere, as it might be the breathing of
the house. She put her arms round a cold banister and hugged it hard.
It hurt her, and she embraced it the harder. The first tears of
self-pity came welling up, and without warning a great sob burst out of
her. Alarmed at the sound, she smothered her mouth with her arm. No
good; they came breaking out! A door opened; all the blood rushed to her
heart and away from it, and with a little dreadful gurgle she was silent.
Some one was listening. How long that terrible listening lasted she had
no idea; then footsteps, and she was conscious that it was standing in
the dark behind her. A foot touched her back. She gave a little gasp.
Derek's voice whispered hoarsely:
"What? Who are you?"
And, below her breath, she answered: "Nedda."
His arms wrenched her away from the banister, his voice in her ear said:
"Nedda, darling, Nedda!"
But despair had sunk too deep; she could only quiver and shake and try to
drive sobbing out of her breath. Then, most queer, not his words, nor
the feel of his arms, comforted her--any one could pity!--but the smell
and the roughness of his Norfolk jacket. So he, too, had not been in
bed; he, too, had been unhappy! And, burying her face in his sleeve, she
murmured:
"Oh, Derek! Why?"
"I didn't want them all to see. I can't bear to give it away. Nedda,
come down lower and let's love each other!"
Softly, stumbling, clinging together, they went down to the last turn of
the wide stairs. How many times had she not sat there, in white frocks,
her hair hanging down as now, twisting the tassels of little programmes
covered with hieroglyphics only intelligible to herself, talking
spasmodically to spasmodic boys with budding 'tails,' while Chinese
lanterns let fall their rose and orange light on them and all the other
little couples as exquisitely devoid of ease. Ah! it was worth those
hours of torture to sit there together now, comforting each other with
hands and lips and whisperings. It was more, as much more than that
moment in the orchard, as sun shining after a Spring storm is more than
sun in placid mid-July. To hear him say: "Nedda, I love you!" to feel it
in his hand clasped on her heart was much more, now that she knew how
difficult it was for him to say or show it, except in the dark with her
alone. Many a long day they might have gone through together that would
not have shown her so much of his real heart as that hour of whispering
and kisses.
He had known she was unhappy, and yet he couldn't! It had only made him
more dumb! It was awful to be like that! But now that she knew, she was
glad to think that it was buried so deep in him and kept for her alone.
And if he did it again she would just know that it was only shyness and
pride. And he was not a brute and a beast, as he insisted. But suppose
she had chanced not to come out! Would she ever have lived through the
night? And she shivered.
"Are you cold, darling? Put on my coat."
It was put on her in spite of all effort to prevent him. Never was
anything so warm, so delicious, wrapping her in something more than
Harris tweed. And the hall clock struck--Two!
She could just see his face in the glimmer that filtered from the
skylight at the top. And she felt that he was learning her, learning all
that she had to give him, learning the trust that was shining through her
eyes. There was just enough light for them to realize the old house
watching from below and from above--a glint on the dark floor there, on
the dark wall here; a blackness that seemed to be inhabited by some
spirit, so that their hands clutched and twitched, when the tiny, tiny
noises of Time, playing in wood and stone, clicked out.
That stare of the old house, with all its knowledge of lives past, of
youth and kisses spent and gone, of hopes spun and faiths abashed, the
old house cynical, stirred in them desire to clutch each other close and
feel the thrill of peering out together into mystery that must hold for
them so much of love and joy and trouble! And suddenly she put her
fingers to his face, passed them softly, clingingly, over his hair,
forehead, eyes, traced the sharp cheek-bones down to his jaw, round by
the hard chin up to his lips, over the straight bone of his nose,
lingering, back, to his eyes again.
"Now, if I go blind, I shall know you. Give me one kiss, Derek. You MUST
be tired."
Buried in the old dark house that kiss lasted long; then, tiptoeing--she
in front--pausing at every creak, holding breath, they stole up to their
rooms. And the clock struck--Three!
CHAPTER XVI
Felix (nothing if not modern) had succumbed already to the feeling that
youth ruled the roost. Whatever his misgivings, his and Flora's sense of
loss, Nedda must be given a free hand! Derek gave no outward show of his
condition, and but for his little daughter's happy serenity Felix would
have thought as she had thought that first night. He had a feeling that
his nephew rather despised one so soaked in mildness and reputation as
Felix Freeland; and he got on better with Sheila, not because she was
milder, but because she was devoid of that scornful tang which clung
about her brother. No! Sheila was not mild. Rich-colored, downright of
speech, with her mane of short hair, she was a no less startling
companion. The smile of Felix had never been more whimsically employed
than during that ten-day visit. The evening John Freeland came to dinner
was the highwater mark of his alarmed amusement. Mr. Cuthcott, also
bidden, at Nedda's instigation, seemed to take a mischievous delight in
drawing out those two young people in face of their official uncle. The
pleasure of the dinner to Felix--and it was not too great--was in
watching Nedda's face. She hardly spoke, but how she listened! Nor did
Derek say much, but what he did say had a queer, sarcastic twinge about
it.
"An unpleasant young man," was John's comment afterward. "How the deuce
did he ever come to be Tod's son? Sheila, of course, is one of these
hot-headed young women that make themselves a nuisance nowadays, but
she's intelligible. By the way, that fellow Cuthcott's a queer chap!"
One subject of conversation at dinner had been the morality of
revolutionary violence. And the saying that had really upset John had
been Derek's: "Conflagration first--morality afterward!" He had looked
at his nephew from under brows which a constant need for rejecting
petitions to the Home Office had drawn permanently down and in toward the
nose, and made no answer.
To Felix these words had a more sinister significance. With his juster
appreciation both of the fiery and the official points of view, his far
greater insight into his nephew than ever John would have, he saw that
they were more than a mere arrow of controversy. And he made up his mind
that night that he would tackle his nephew and try to find out exactly
what was smouldering within that crisp, black pate.
Following him into the garden next morning, he said to himself: 'No
irony--that's fatal. Man to man--or boy to boy--whichever it is!' But,
on the garden path, alongside that young spread-eagle, whose dark,
glowering, self-contained face he secretly admired, he merely began:
"How do you like your Uncle John?"
"He doesn't like me, Uncle Felix."
Somewhat baffled, Felix proceeded:
"I say, Derek, fortunately or unfortunately, I've some claim now to a
little knowledge of you. You've got to open out a bit to me. What are
you going to do with yourself in life? You can't support Nedda on
revolution."
Having drawn this bow at a venture, he paused, doubtful of his wisdom. A
glance at Derek's face confirmed his doubt. It was closer than ever,
more defiant.
"There's a lot of money in revolution, Uncle Felix--other people's."
Dash the young brute! There was something in him! He swerved off to a
fresh line.
"How do you like London?"
"I don't like it. But, Uncle Felix, don't you wish YOU were seeing it
for the first time? What books you'd write!"
Felix felt that unconscious thrust go 'home.' Revolt against staleness
and clipped wings, against the terrible security of his too solid
reputation, smote him.
"What strikes you most about it, then?" he asked.
"That it ought to be jolly well blown up. Everybody seems to know that,
too--they look it, anyway, and yet they go on as if it oughtn't."
"Why ought it to be blown up?"
"Well, what's the good of anything while London and all these other big
towns are sitting on the country's chest? England must have been a fine
place once, though!"
"Some of us think it a fine place still."
"Of course it is, in a way. But anything new and keen gets sat on.
England's like an old tom-cat by the fire: too jolly comfortable for
anything!"
At this support to his own theory that the country was going to the dogs,
owing to such as John and Stanley, Felix thought: 'Out of the mouths of
babes!' But he merely said: "You're a cheerful young man!"
"It's got cramp," Derek muttered; "can't even give women votes. Fancy my
mother without a vote! And going to wait till every laborer is off the
land before it attends to them. It's like the port you gave us last
night, Uncle Felix, wonderful crust!"
"And what is to be your contribution to its renovation?"
Derek's face instantly resumed its peculiar defiant smile, and Felix
thought: 'Young beggar! He's as close as wax.' After their little talk,
however, he had more understanding of his nephew. His defiant
self-sufficiency seemed more genuine. . . .
In spite of his sensations when dining with Felix, John Freeland (little
if not punctilious) decided that it was incumbent on him to have the
'young Tods' to dinner, especially since Frances Freeland had come to
stay with him the day after the arrival of those two young people at
Hampstead. She had reached Porchester Gardens faintly flushed from the
prospect of seeing darling John, with one large cane trunk, and a
hand-bag of a pattern which the man in the shop had told her was the best
thing out. It had a clasp which had worked beautifully in the shop, but
which, for some reason, on the journey had caused her both pain and
anxiety. Convinced, however, that she could cure it and open the bag the
moment she could get to that splendid new pair of pincers in her trunk,
which a man had only yesterday told her were the latest, she still felt
that she had a soft thing, and dear John must have one like it if she
could get him one at the Stores to-morrow.
John, who had come away early from the Home Office, met her in that dark
hall, to which he had paid no attention since his young wife died,
fifteen years ago. Embracing him, with a smile of love almost timorous
from intensity, Frances Freeland looked him up and down, and, catching
what light there was gleaming on his temples, determined that she had in
her bag, as soon as she could get it open, the very thing for dear John's
hair. He had such a nice moustache, and it was a pity he was getting
bald. Brought to her room, she sat down rather suddenly, feeling, as a
fact, very much like fainting--a condition of affairs to which she had
never in the past and intended never in the future to come, making such a
fuss! Owing to that nice new patent clasp, she had not been able to get
at her smelling-salts, nor the little flask of brandy and the one
hard-boiled egg without which she never travelled; and for want of a cup
of tea her soul was nearly dying within her. Dear John would never think
she had not had anything since breakfast (she travelled always by a slow
train, disliking motion), and she would not for the world let him
know--so near dinner-time, giving a lot of trouble! She therefore stayed
quite quiet, smiling a little, for fear he might suspect her. Seeing
John, however, put her bag down in the wrong place, she felt stronger.
"No, darling--not there--in the window."
And while he was changing the position of the bag, her heart swelled with
joy because his back was so straight, and with the thought: 'What a pity
the dear boy has never married again! It does so keep a man from getting
moony!' With all that writing and thinking he had to do, such important
work, too, it would have been so good for him, especially at night. She
would not have expressed it thus in words--that would not have been quite
nice--but in thought Frances Freeland was a realist.
When he was gone, and she could do as she liked, she sat stiller than
ever, knowing by long experience that to indulge oneself in private only
made it more difficult not to indulge oneself in public. It really was
provoking that this nice new clasp should go wrong just this once, and
that the first time it was used! And she took from her pocket a tiny
prayer-book, and, holding it to the light, read the eighteenth psalm--it
was a particularly good one, that never failed her when she felt low--she
used no glasses, and up to the present had avoided any line between the
brows, knowing it was her duty to remain as nice as she could to look at,
so as not to spoil the pleasure of people round about her. Then saying
to herself firmly, "I do not, I WILL not want any tea--but I shall be
glad of dinner!" she rose and opened her cane trunk. Though she knew
exactly where they were, she was some time finding the pincers, because
there were so many interesting things above them, each raising a
different train of thought. A pair of field-glasses, the very
latest--the man had said--for darling Derek; they would be so useful to
keep his mind from thinking about things that it was no good thinking
about. And for dear Flora (how wonderful that she could write
poetry--poetry!) a really splendid, and perfectly new, little pill. She
herself had already taken two, and they had suited her to perfection.
For darling Felix a new kind of eau de cologne, made in Worcester,
because that was the only scent he would use. For her pet Nedda, a piece
of 'point de Venise' that she really could not be selfish enough to keep
any longer, especially as she was particularly fond of it. For Alan, a
new kind of tin-opener that the dear boy would like enormously; he was so
nice and practical. For Sheila, such a nice new novel by Mr. and Mrs.
Whirlingham--a bright, wholesome tale, with such a good description of
quite a new country in it--the dear child was so clever, it would be a
change for her. Then, actually resting on the pincers, she came on her
pass-book, recently made up, containing little or no balance, just enough
to get darling John that bag like hers with the new clasp, which would be
so handy for his papers when he went travelling. And having reached the
pincers, she took them in her hand, and sat down again to be quite quiet
a moment, with her still-dark eyelashes resting on her ivory cheeks and
her lips pressed to a colorless line; for her head swam from stooping
over. In repose, with three flies circling above her fine gray hair, she
might have served a sculptor for a study of the stoic spirit. Then,
going to the bag, her compressed lips twitching, her gray eyes piercing
into its clasp with a kind of distrustful optimism, she lifted the
pincers and tweaked it hard.
If the atmosphere of that dinner, to which all six from Hampstead came,
was less disturbed than John anticipated, it was due to his sense of
hospitality, and to every one's feeling that controversy would puzzle and
distress Granny. That there were things about which people differed,
Frances Freeland well knew, but that they should so differ as to make
them forget to smile and have good manners would not have seemed right to
her at all. And of this, in her presence, they were all conscious; so
that when they had reached the asparagus there was hardly anything left
that could by any possibility be talked about. And this--for fear of
seeming awkward--they at once proceeded to discuss, Flora remarking that
London was very full. John agreed.
Frances Freeland, smiling, said:
"It's so nice for Derek and Sheila to be seeing it like this for the
first time."
Sheila said:
"Why? Isn't it always as full as this?"
John answered:
"In August practically empty. They say a hundred thousand people, at
least, go away."
"Double!" remarked Felix.
"The figures are variously given. My estimate--"
"One in sixty. That shows you!"
At this interruption of Derek's John frowned slightly. "What does it
show you?" he said.
Derek glanced at his grandmother.
"Oh, nothing!"
"Of course it shows you," exclaimed Sheila, "what a heartless great place
it is. All 'the world' goes out of town, and 'London's empty!' But if
you weren't told so you'd never know the difference."
Derek muttered: "I think it shows more than that."
Under the table Flora was touching John's foot warningly; Nedda
attempting to touch Derek's; Felix endeavoring to catch John's eye; Alan
trying to catch Sheila's; John biting his lip and looking carefully at
nothing. Only Frances Freeland was smiling and gazing lovingly at dear
Derek, thinking he would be so handsome when he had grown a nice black
moustache. And she said:
"Yes, dear. What were you going to say?"
Derek looked up.
"Do you really want it, Granny?"
Nedda murmured across the table: "No, Derek."
Frances Freeland raised her brows quizzically. She almost looked arch.
"But of course I do, darling. I want to hear immensely. It's so
interesting."
"Derek was going to say, Mother"--every one at once looked at Felix, who
had thus broken in--"that all we West-End people--John and I and Flora
and Stanley, and even you--all we people born in purple and fine linen,
are so accustomed to think we're all that matters, that when we're out of
London there's nobody in it. He meant to say that this is appalling
enough, but that what is still more appalling is the fact that we really
ARE all that matters, and that if people try to disturb us, we can, and
jolly well will, take care they don't disturb us long. Is that what you
meant, Derek?"
Derek turned a rather startled look on Felix.
"What he meant to say," went on Felix, "was, that age and habit, vested
interests, culture and security sit so heavy on this country's chest,
that aspiration may wriggle and squirm but will never get from under.
That, for all we pretend to admire enthusiasm and youth, and the rest of
it, we push it out of us just a little faster than it grows up. Is that
what you meant, Derek?"
"You'll try to, but you won't succeed!"
"I'm afraid we shall, and with a smile, too, so that you won't see us
doing it."
"I call that devilish."
"I call it natural. Look at a man who's growing old; notice how very
gracefully and gradually he does it. Take my hair--your aunt says she
can't tell the difference from month to month. And there it is, or
rather isn't--little by little."
Frances Freeland, who during Felix's long speech had almost closed her
eyes, opened them, and looked piercingly at the top of his head.
"Darling," she said, "I've got the very thing for it. You must take some
with you when you go tonight. John is going to try it."
Checked in the flow of his philosophy, Felix blinked like an owl
surprised.
"Mother," he said, "YOU only have the gift of keeping young."
"Oh! my dear, I'm getting dreadfully old. I have the greatest difficulty
in keeping awake sometimes when people are talking. But I mean to fight
against it. It's so dreadfully rude, and ugly, too; I catch myself
sometimes with my mouth open."
Flora said quietly: "Granny, I have the very best thing for that--quite
new!"
A sweet but rather rueful smile passed over Frances Freeland's face.
"Now," she said, "you're chaffing me," and her eyes looked loving.
It is doubtful if John understood the drift of Felix's exordium, it is
doubtful if he had quite listened--he having so much to not listen to at
the Home Office that the practice was growing on him. A vested interest
to John was a vested interest, culture was culture, and security was
certainly security--none of them were symbols of age. Further, the
social question--at least so far as it had to do with outbreaks of youth
and enthusiasm--was too familiar to him to have any general significance
whatever. What with women, labor people, and the rest of it, he had no
time for philosophy--a dubious process at the best. A man who had to get
through so many daily hours of real work did not dissipate his energy in
speculation. But, though he had not listened to Felix's remarks, they
had ruffled him. There is no philosophy quite so irritating as that of a
brother! True, no doubt, that the country was in a bad way, but as to
vested interests and security, that was all nonsense! The guilty causes
were free thought and industrialism.
Having seen them all off to Hampstead, he gave his mother her good-night
kiss. He was proud of her, a wonderful woman, who always put a good face
on everything! Even her funny way of always having some new thing or
other to do you good--even that was all part of her wanting to make the
best of things. She never lost her 'form'!
John worshipped that kind of stoicism which would die with its head up
rather than live with its tail down. Perhaps the moment of which he was
most proud in all his life was that, when, at the finish of his school
mile, he overheard a vulgar bandsman say: "I like that young----'s
running; he breathes through his----nose." At that moment, if he had
stooped to breathe through his mouth, he must have won; as it was he had
lost in great distress and perfect form.
When, then, he had kissed Frances Freeland, and watched her ascend the
stairs, breathless because she WOULD breathe through her nose to the very
last step, he turned into his study, lighted his pipe, and sat down to a
couple of hours of a report upon the forces of constabulary available in
the various counties, in the event of any further agricultural rioting,
such as had recently taken place on a mild scale in one or two districts
where there was still Danish blood. He worked at the numbers steadily,
with just that engineer's touch of mechanical invention which had caused
him to be so greatly valued in a department where the evolution of twelve
policemen out of ten was constantly desired. His mastery of figures was
highly prized, for, while it had not any of that flamboyance which has
come from America and the game of poker, it possessed a kind of English
optimism, only dangerous when, as rarely happened, it was put to the
test. He worked two full pipes long, and looked at the clock. Twelve!
No good knocking off just yet! He had no liking for bed this many a long
year, having, from loyalty to memory and a drier sense of what became one
in the Home Department, preserved his form against temptations of the
flesh. Yet, somehow, to-night he felt no spring, no inspiration, in his
handling of county constabulary. A kind of English stolidity about them
baffled him--ten of them remained ten. And leaning that forehead, whose
height so troubled Frances Freeland, on his neat hand, he fell to
brooding. Those young people with everything before them! Did he envy
them? Or was he glad of his own age? Fifty! Fifty already; a fogey! An
official fogey! For all the world like an umbrella, that every day some
one put into a stand and left there till it was time to take it out
again. Neatly rolled, too, with an elastic and button! And this fancy,
which had never come to him before, surprised him. One day he, too,
would wear out, slit all up his seams, and they would leave him at home,
or give him away to the butler.
He went to the window. A scent of--of May, or something! And nothing in
sight save houses just like his own! He looked up at the strip of sky
privileged to hang just there. He had got a bit rusty with his stars.
There, however, certainly was Venus. And he thought of how he had stood
by the ship's rail on that honeymoon trip of his twenty years ago, giving
his young wife her first lesson in counting the stars. And something
very deep down, very mossed and crusted over in John's heart, beat and
stirred, and hurt him. Nedda--he had caught her looking at that young
fellow just as Anne had once looked at him, John Freeland, now an
official fogey, an umbrella in a stand. There was a policeman! How
ridiculous the fellow looked, putting one foot before the other, flirting
his lantern and trying the area gates! This confounded scent of
hawthorn--could it be hawthorn?--got here into the heart of London! The
look in that girl's eyes! What was he about, to let them make him feel
as though he could give his soul for a face looking up into his own, for
a breast touching his, and the scent of a woman's hair. Hang it! He
would smoke a cigarette and go to bed! He turned out the light and began
to mount the stairs; they creaked abominably--the felt must be wearing
out. A woman about the place would have kept them quiet. Reaching the
landing of the second floor, he paused a moment from habit, to look down
into the dark hall. A voice, thin, sweet, almost young, said:
"Is that you, darling?" John's heart stood still. What--was that? Then
he perceived that the door of the room that had been his wife's was open,
and remembered that his mother was in there.
"What! Aren't you asleep, Mother?"
Frances Freeland's voice answered cheerfully: "Oh, no, dear; I'm never
asleep before two. Come in."
John entered. Propped very high on her pillows, in perfect regularity,
his mother lay. Her carved face was surmounted by a piece of fine lace,
her thin, white fingers on the turnover of the sheet moved in continual
interlocking, her lips smiled.
"There's something you must have," she said. "I left my door open on
purpose. Give me that little bottle, darling."
John took from a small table by the bed a still smaller bottle. Frances
Freeland opened it, and out came three tiny white globules.
"Now," she said, "pop them in! You've no idea how they'll send you to
sleep! They're the most splendid things; perfectly harmless. Just let
them rest on the tongue and swallow!"
John let them rest--they were sweetish--and swallowed.
"How is it, then," he said, "that you never go to sleep before two?"
Frances Freeland corked the little bottle, as if enclosing within it that
awkward question.
"They don't happen to act with me, darling; but that's nothing. It's the
very thing for any one who has to sit up so late," and her eyes searched
his face. Yes--they seemed to say--I know you pretend to have work; but
if you only had a dear little wife!
"I shall leave you this bottle when I go. Kiss me."
John bent down, and received one of those kisses of hers that had such
sudden vitality in the middle of them, as if her lips were trying to get
inside his cheek. From the door he looked back. She was smiling,
composed again to her stoic wakefulness.
"Shall I shut the door, Mother?"
"Please, darling."
With a little lump in his throat John closed the door.
CHAPTER XVII
The London which Derek had said should be blown up was at its maximum of
life those May days. Even on this outer rampart of Hampstead, people,
engines, horses, all had a touch of the spring fever; indeed, especially
on this rampart of Hampstead was there increase of the effort to believe
that nature was not dead and embalmed in books. The poets, painters,
talkers who lived up there were at each other all the time in their great
game of make-believe. How could it be otherwise, when there was
veritably blossom on the trees and the chimneys were ceasing to smoke?
How otherwise, when the sun actually shone on the ponds? But the four
young people (for Alan joined in--hypnotized by Sheila) did not stay in
Hampstead. Chiefly on top of tram and 'bus they roamed the wilderness.
Bethnal Green and Leytonstone, Kensington and Lambeth, St. James's and
Soho, Whitechapel, Shoreditch, West Ham, and Piccadilly, they traversed
the whole ant-heap at its most ebullient moment. They knew their Whitman
and their Dostoievsky sufficiently to be aware that they ought to love
and delight in everything--in the gentleman walking down Piccadilly with
a flower in his buttonhole, and in the lady sewing that buttonhole in
Bethnal Green; in the orator bawling himself hoarse close to the Marble
Arch, the coster loading his barrow in Covent Garden; and in Uncle John
Freeland rejecting petitions in Whitehall. All these things, of course,
together with the long lines of little gray houses in Camden Town, long
lines of carts with bobtail horses rattling over Blackfriars' Bridge,
long smells drifting behind taxicabs--all these things were as delightful
and as stimulating to the soul as the clouds that trailed the heavens,
the fronds of the lilac, and Leonardo's Cartoon in the Diploma Gallery.
All were equal manifestations of that energy in flower known as 'Life.'
They knew that everything they saw and felt and smelled OUGHT equally to
make them long to catch creatures to their hearts and cry: Hosanna! And
Nedda and Alan, bred in Hampstead, even knew that to admit that these
things did not all move them in the same way would be regarded as a sign
of anaemia. Nevertheless--most queerly--these four young people
confessed to each other all sorts of sensations besides that 'Hosanna'
one. They even confessed to rage and pity and disgust one moment, and to
joy and dreams the next, and they differed greatly as to what excited
which. It was truly odd! The only thing on which they did seem to agree
was that they were having 'a thundering good time.' A sort of sense of
"Blow everything!" was in their wings, and this was due not to the fact
that they were thinking of and loving and admiring the little gray
streets and the gentleman in Piccadilly--as, no doubt, in accordance with
modern culture, they should have been--but to the fact that they were
loving and admiring themselves, and that entirely without the trouble of
thinking about it at all. The practice, too, of dividing into couples
was distinctly precious to them, for, though they never failed to start
out together, they never failed to come home two by two. In this way did
they put to confusion Whitman and Dostoievsky, and all the other thinkers
in Hampstead. In the daytime they all, save Alan, felt that London ought
to be blown up; but at night it undermined their philosophies so that
they sat silent on the tops of their respective 'buses, with arms twined
in each other's. For then a something seemed to have floated up from
that mass of houses and machines, of men and trees, and to be hovering
above them, violet-colored, caught between the stars and the lights, a
spirit of such overpowering beauty that it drenched even Alan in a kind
of awe. After all, the huge creature that sat with such a giant's weight
on the country's chest, the monster that had spoiled so many fields and
robbed so many lives of peace and health, could fly at night upon blue
and gold and purple wings, murmur a passionate lullaby, and fall into
deep sleep!
One such night they went to the gallery at the opera, to supper at an
oyster-shop, under Alan's pilotage, and then set out to walk back to
Hampstead, timing themselves to catch the dawn. They had not gone twenty
steps up Southampton Row before Alan and Sheila were forty steps in
front. A fellow-feeling had made Derek and Nedda stand to watch an old
man who walked, tortuous, extremely happy, bidding them all come. And
when they moved on, it was very slowly, just keeping sight of the others
across the lumbered dimness of Covent Garden, where tarpaulin-covered
carts and barrows seemed to slumber under the blink of lamps and
watchmen's lanterns. Across Long Acre they came into a street where there
was not a soul save the two others, a long way ahead. Walking with his
arm tightly laced with hers, touching her all down one side, Derek felt
that it would be glorious to be attacked by night-birds in this dark,
lonely street, to have a splendid fight and drive them off, showing
himself to Nedda for a man, and her protector. But nothing save one
black cat came near, and that ran for its life. He bent round and looked
under the blue veil-thing that wrapped Nedda's head. Her face seemed
mysteriously lovely, and her eyes, lifted so quickly, mysteriously true.
She said:
"Derek, I feel like a hill with the sun on it!"
"I feel like that yellow cloud with the wind in it."
"I feel like an apple-tree coming into blossom."
"I feel like a giant."
"I feel like a song."
"I feel I could sing you."
"On a river, floating along."
"A wide one, with great plains on each side, and beasts coming down to
drink, and either the sun or a yellow moon shining, and some one singing,
too, far off."
"The Red Sarafan."
"Let's run!"
From that yellow cloud sailing in moonlight a spurt of rain had driven
into their faces, and they ran as fast as their blood was flowing, and
the raindrops coming down, jumping half the width of the little dark
streets, clutching each other's arms. And peering round into her face,
so sweet and breathless, into her eyes, so dark and dancing, he felt he
could run all night if he had her there to run beside him through the
dark. Into another street they dashed, and again another, till she
stopped, panting.
"Where are we now?"
Neither knew. A policeman put them right for Portland Place. Half past
one! And it would be dawn soon after three! They walked soberly again
now into the outer circle of Regent's Park; talked soberly, too,
discussing sublunary matters, and every now and then, their arms, round
each other, gave little convulsive squeezes. The rain had stopped and
the moon shone clear; by its light the trees and flowers were clothed in
colors whose blood had spilled away; the town's murmur was dying, the
house lights dead already. They came out of the park into a road where
the latest taxis were rattling past; a face, a bare neck, silk hat, or
shirt-front gleamed in the window-squares, and now and then a laugh came
floating through. They stopped to watch them from under the low-hanging
branches of an acacia-tree, and Derek, gazing at her face, still wet with
rain, so young and round and soft, thought: 'And she loves me!' Suddenly
she clutched him round the neck, and their lips met.
They talked not at all for a long time after that kiss, walking slowly up
the long, empty road, while the whitish clouds sailed across the dark
river of the sky and the moon slowly sank. This was the most delicious
part of all that long walk home, for the kiss had made them feel as
though they had no bodies, but were just two spirits walking side by
side. This is its curious effect sometimes in first love between the
very young. . . .
Having sent Flora to bed, Felix was sitting up among his books. There was
no need to do this, for the young folk had latch-keys, but, having begun
the vigil, he went on with it, a volume about Eastern philosophies on his
knee, a bowl of narcissus blooms, giving forth unexpected whiffs of odor,
beside him. And he sank into a long reverie.
Could it be said--as was said in this Eastern book--that man's life was
really but a dream; could that be said with any more truth than it had
once been said, that he rose again in his body, to perpetual life? Could
anything be said with truth, save that we knew nothing? And was that not
really what had always been said by man--that we knew nothing, but were
just blown over and about the world like soughs of wind, in obedience to
some immortal, unknowable coherence! But had that want of knowledge ever
retarded what was known as the upward growth of man? Had it ever stopped
man from working, fighting, loving, dying like a hero if need were? Had
faith ever been anything but embroidery to an instinctive heroism, so
strong that it needed no such trappings? Had faith ever been anything
but anodyne, or gratification of the aesthetic sense? Or had it really
body and substance of its own? Was it something absolute and solid, that
he--Felix Freeland--had missed? Or again, was it, perhaps, but the
natural concomitant of youth, a naive effervescence with which thought
and brooding had to part? And, turning the page of his book, he noticed
that he could no longer see to read, the lamp had grown too dim, and
showed but a decorative glow in the bright moonlight flooding through the
study window. He got up and put another log on the fire, for these last
nights of May were chilly.
Nearly three! Where were these young people? Had he been asleep, and
they come in? Sure enough, in the hall Alan's hat and Sheila's
cloak--the dark-red one he had admired when she went forth--were lying on
a chair. But of the other two--nothing! He crept upstairs. Their doors
were open. They certainly took their time--these young lovers. And the
same sore feeling which had attacked Felix when Nedda first told him of
her love came on him badly in that small of the night when his vitality
was lowest. All the hours she had spent clambering about him, or quietly
resting on his knee with her head tucked in just where his arm and
shoulder met, listening while he read or told her stories, and now and
again turning those clear eyes of hers wide open to his face, to see if
he meant it; the wilful little tugs of her hand when they two went
exploring the customs of birds, or bees, or flowers; all her 'Daddy, I
love yous!' and her rushes to the front door, and long hugs when he came
back from a travel; all those later crookings of her little finger in
his, and the times he had sat when she did not know it, watching her, and
thinking: 'That little creature, with all that's before her, is my very
own daughter to take care of, and share joy and sorrow with. . . .' Each
one of all these seemed to come now and tweak at him, as the songs of
blackbirds tweak the heart of one who lies, unable to get out into the
Spring. His lamp had burned itself quite out; the moon was fallen below
the clump of pines, and away to the north-east something stirred in the
stain and texture of the sky. Felix opened the window. What peace out
there! The chill, scentless peace of night, waiting for dawn's renewal
of warmth and youth. Through that bay window facing north he could see
on one side the town, still wan with the light of its lamps, on the other
the country, whose dark bloom was graying fast. Suddenly a tiny bird
twittered, and Felix saw his two truants coming slowly from the gate
across the grass, his arm round her shoulders, hers round his waist.
With their backs turned to him, they passed the corner of the house,
across where the garden sloped away. There they stood above the wide
country, their bodies outlined against a sky fast growing light,
evidently waiting for the sun to rise. Silent they stood, while the
birds, one by one, twittered out their first calls. And suddenly Felix
saw the boy fling his hand up into the air. The Sun! Far away on the
gray horizon was a flare of red!
CHAPTER XVIII
The anxieties of the Lady Mallorings of this life concerning the moral
welfare of their humbler neighbors are inclined to march in front of
events. The behavior in Tryst's cottage was more correct than it would
have been in nine out of ten middle or upper class demesnes under similar
conditions. Between the big laborer and 'that woman,' who, since the
epileptic fit, had again come into residence, there had passed nothing
whatever that might not have been witnessed by Biddy and her two
nurslings. For love is an emotion singularly dumb and undemonstrative in
those who live the life of the fields; passion a feeling severely beneath
the thumb of a propriety born of the age-long absence of excitants,
opportunities, and the aesthetic sense; and those two waited, almost as a
matter of course, for the marriage which was forbidden them in this
parish. The most they did was to sit and look at one another.
On the day of which Felix had seen the dawn at Hampstead, Sir Gerald's
agent tapped on the door of Tryst's cottage, and was answered by Biddy,
just in from school for the midday meal.
"Your father home, my dear?"
"No, sir; Auntie's in."
"Ask your auntie to come and speak to me."
The mother-child vanished up the narrow stairs, and the agent sighed. A
strong-built, leathery-skinned man in a brown suit and leggings, with a
bristly little moustache and yellow whites to his eyes, he did not, as he
had said to his wife that morning, 'like the job a little bit.' And
while he stood there waiting, Susie and Billy emerged from the kitchen
and came to stare at him. The agent returned that stare till a voice
behind him said: "Yes, sir?"
'That woman' was certainly no great shakes to look at: a fresh, decent,
faithful sort of body! And he said gruffly: "Mornin', miss. Sorry to
say my orders are to make a clearance here. I suppose Tryst didn't think
we should act on it, but I'm afraid I've got to put his things out, you
know. Now, where are you all going; that's the point?"
"I shall go home, I suppose; but Tryst and the children--we don't know."
The agent tapped his leggings with a riding-cane. "So you've been
expecting it!" he said with relief. "That's right." And, staring down
at the mother-child, he added: "Well, what d'you say, my dear; you look
full of sense, you do!"
Biddy answered: "I'll go and tell Mr. Freeland, sir."
"Ah! You're a bright maid. He'll know where to put you for the time
bein'. Have you had your dinner?"
"No, sir; it's just ready."
"Better have it--better have it first. No hurry. What've you got in the
pot that smells so good?"
"Bubble and squeak, sir."
"Bubble and squeak! Ah!" And with those words the agent withdrew to
where, in a farm wagon drawn up by the side of the road, three men were
solemnly pulling at their pipes. He moved away from them a little, for,
as he expressed it to his wife afterward: "Look bad, you know, look
bad--anybody seeing me! Those three little children--that's where it
is! If our friends at the Hall had to do these jobs for themselves,
there wouldn't be any to do!"
Presently, from his discreet distance, he saw the mother-child going down
the road toward Tod's, in her blue 'pinny' and corn-colored hair. Nice
little thing! Pretty little thing, too! Pity, great pity! And he went
back to the cottage. On his way a thought struck him so that he
well-nigh shivered. Suppose the little thing brought back that Mrs.
Freeland, the lady who always went about in blue, without a hat! Phew!
Mr. Freeland--he was another sort; a bit off, certainly--harmless, quite
harmless! But that lady! And he entered the cottage. The woman was
washing up; seemed a sensible body. When the two kids cleared off to
school he could go to work and get it over; the sooner the better, before
people came hanging round. A job of this kind sometimes made nasty
blood! His yellowish eyes took in the nature of the task before him.
Funny jam-up they did get about them, to be sure! Every blessed little
thing they'd ever bought, and more, too! Have to take precious good care
nothing got smashed, or the law would be on the other leg! And he said
to the woman:
"Now, miss, can I begin?"
"I can't stop you, sir."
'No,' he thought, 'you can't stop me, and I blamed well wish you could!'
But he said: "Got an old wagon out here. Thought I'd save him damage by
weather or anything; we'll put everything in that, and run it up into the
empty barn at Marrow and leave it. And there they'll be for him when he
wants 'em."
The woman answered: "You're very kind, I'm sure."
Perceiving that she meant no irony, the agent produced a sound from
somewhere deep and went out to summon his men.
With the best intentions, however, it is not possible, even in villages
so scattered that they cannot be said to exist, to do anything without
every one's knowing; and the work of 'putting out' the household goods of
the Tryst family, and placing them within the wagon, was not an hour in
progress before the road in front of the cottage contained its knot of
watchers. Old Gaunt first, alone--for the rogue-girl had gone to Mr.
Cuthcott's and Tom Gaunt was at work. The old man had seen evictions in
his time, and looked on silently, with a faint, sardonic grin. Four
children, so small that not even school had any use for them as yet, soon
gathered round his legs, followed by mothers coming to retrieve them, and
there was no longer silence. Then came two laborers, on their way to a
job, a stone-breaker, and two more women. It was through this little
throng that the mother-child and Kirsteen passed into the
fast-being-gutted cottage.
The agent was standing by Tryst's bed, keeping up a stream of comment to
two of his men, who were taking that aged bed to pieces. It was his habit
to feel less when he talked more; but no one could have fallen into a
more perfect taciturnity than he when he saw Kirsteen coming up those
narrow stairs. In so small a space as this room, where his head nearly
touched the ceiling, was it fair to be confronted by that lady--he put it
to his wife that same evening--"Was it fair?" He had seen a mother wild
duck look like that when you took away its young--snaky fierce about the
neck, and its dark eye! He had seen a mare, going to bite, look not half
so vicious! "There she stood, and--let me have it?--not a bit! Too much
the lady for that, you know!--Just looked at me, and said very quiet:
'Ah! Mr. Simmons, and are you really doing this?' and put her hand on
that little girl of his. 'Orders are orders, ma'am!' What could I say?
'Ah!' she said, 'yes, orders are orders, but they needn't be obeyed.'
'As to that, ma'am,' I said--mind you, she's a lady; you can't help
feeling that 'I'm a working man, the same as Tryst here; got to earn my
living.' 'So have slave-drivers, Mr. Simmons.' 'Every profession,' I
said, 'has got its dirty jobs, ma'am. And that's a fact.' 'And will
have,' she said, 'so long as professional men consent to do the dirty
work of their employers.' 'And where should I be, I should like to
know,' I said, 'if I went on that lay? I've got to take the rough with
the smooth.' 'Well,' she said, 'Mr. Freeland and I will take Tryst and
the little ones in at present.' Good-hearted people, do a lot for the
laborers, in their way. All the same, she's a bit of a vixen. Picture of
a woman, too, standin' there; shows blood, mind you! Once said, all
over--no nagging. She took the little girl off with her. And pretty
small I felt, knowing I'd got to finish that job, and the folk outside
gettin' nastier all the time--not sayin' much, of course, but lookin' a
lot!" The agent paused in his recital and gazed fixedly at a bluebottle
crawling up the windowpane. Stretching out his thumb and finger, he
nipped it suddenly and threw it in the grate. "Blest if that fellow
himself didn't turn up just as I was finishing. I was sorry for the man,
you know. There was his home turned out-o'-doors. Big man, too! 'You
blanky-blank!' he says; 'if I'd been here you shouldn't ha' done this!'
Thought he was goin' to hit me. 'Come, Tryst!' I said, 'it's not my
doing, you know!' 'Ah!' he said, 'I know that; and it'll be blanky well
the worse for THEM!' Rough tongue; no class of man at all, he is!
'Yes,' he said, 'let 'em look out; I'll be even with 'em yet!' 'None o'
that!' I told him; 'you know which side the law's buttered. I'm making
it easy for you, too, keeping your things in the wagon, ready to shift
any time!' He gave me a look--he's got very queer eyes, swimmin', sad
sort of eyes, like a man in liquor--and he said: 'I've been here twenty
years,' he said. 'My wife died here.' And all of a sudden he went as
dumb as a fish. Never let his eyes off us, though, while we finished up
the last of it; made me feel funny, seein' him glowering like that all
the time. He'll savage something over this, you mark my words!" Again
the agent paused, and remained as though transfixed, holding that face of
his, whose yellow had run into the whites of the eyes, as still as wood.
"He's got some feeling for the place, I suppose," he said suddenly; "or
maybe they've put it into him about his rights; there's plenty of 'em
like that. Well, anyhow, nobody likes his private affairs turned inside
out for every one to gape at. I wouldn't myself." And with that deeply
felt remark the agent put out his leathery-yellow thumb and finger and
nipped a second bluebottle. . . .
While the agent was thus recounting to his wife the day's doings, the
evicted Tryst sat on the end of his bed in a ground-floor room of Tod's
cottage. He had taken off his heavy boots, and his feet, in their thick,
soiled socks, were thrust into a pair of Tod's carpet slippers. He sat
without moving, precisely as if some one had struck him a blow in the
centre of the forehead, and over and over again he turned the heavy
thought: 'They've turned me out o' there--I done nothing, and they turned
me out o' there! Blast them--they turned me out o' there!' . . .
In the orchard Tod sat with a grave and puzzled face, surrounded by the
three little Trysts. And at the wicket gate Kirsteen, awaiting the
arrival of Derek and Sheila--summoned home by telegram--stood in the
evening glow, her blue-clad figure still as that of any worshipper at the
muezzin-call.
CHAPTER XIX
"A fire, causing the destruction of several ricks and an empty cowshed,
occurred in the early morning of Thursday on the home farm of Sir Gerald
Malloring's estate in Worcestershire. Grave suspicions of arson are
entertained, but up to the present no arrest has been made. The
authorities are in doubt whether the occurrence has any relation with
recent similar outbreaks in the eastern counties."
So Stanley read at breakfast, in his favorite paper; and the little
leader thereon:
"The outbreak of fire on Sir Gerald Malloring's Worcestershire property
may or may not have any significance as a symptom of agrarian unrest. We
shall watch the upshot with some anxiety. Certain it is that unless the
authorities are prepared to deal sharply with arson, or other cases of
deliberate damage to the property of landlords, we may bid good-by to any
hope of ameliorating the lot of the laborer"
--and so on.
If Stanley had risen and paced the room there would have been a good deal
to be said for him; for, though he did not know as much as Felix of the
nature and sentiments of Tod's children, he knew enough to make any but
an Englishman uneasy. The fact that he went on eating ham, and said to
Clara, "Half a cup!" was proof positive of that mysterious quality called
phlegm which had long enabled his country to enjoy the peace of a weedy
duck-pond.
Stanley, a man of some intelligence--witness his grasp of the secret of
successful plough-making (none for the home market!)--had often
considered this important proposition of phlegm. People said England was
becoming degenerate and hysterical, growing soft, and nervous, and towny,
and all the rest of it. In his view there was a good deal of bosh about
that! "Look," he would say, "at the weight that chauffeurs put on! Look
at the House of Commons, and the size of the upper classes!" If there
were growing up little shrill types of working men and Socialists, and
new women, and half-penny papers, and a rather larger crop of professors
and long-haired chaps--all the better for the rest of the country! The
flesh all these skimpy ones had lost, solid people had put on. The
country might be suffering a bit from officialism, and the tendency of
modern thought, but the breed was not changing. John Bull was there all
right under his moustache. Take it off and clap on little side-whiskers,
and you had as many Bulls as you liked, any day. There would be no
social upheaval so long as the climate was what it was! And with this
simple formula, and a kind of very deep-down throaty chuckle, he would
pass to a subject of more immediate importance. There was something,
indeed, rather masterly in his grasp of the fact that rain might be
trusted to put out any fire--give it time. And he kept a special vessel
in a special corner which recorded for him faithfully the number of
inches that fell; and now and again he wrote to his paper to say that
there were more inches in his vessel than there had been "for thirty
years." His conviction that the country was in a bad way was nothing but
a skin affection, causing him local irritation rather than affecting the
deeper organs of his substantial body.
He did not readily confide in Clara concerning his own family, having in
a marked degree the truly domestic quality of thinking it superior to his
wife's. She had been a Tomson, not one of THE Tomsons, and it was quite
a question whether he or she were trying to forget that fact the faster.
But he did say to her as he was getting into the car:
"It's just possible I might go round by Tod's on my way home. I want a
run."
She answered: "Be careful what you say to that woman. I don't want her
here by any chance. The young ones were quite bad enough."
And when he had put in his day at the works he did turn the nose of his
car toward Tod's. Travelling along grass-bordered roads, the beauty of
this England struck his not too sensitive spirit and made him almost
gasp. It was that moment of the year when the countryside seems to faint
from its own loveliness, from the intoxication of its scents and sounds.
Creamy-white may, splashed here and there with crimson, flooded the
hedges in breaking waves of flower-foam; the fields were all buttercup
glory; every tree had its cuckoo, calling; every bush its blackbird or
thrush in full even-song. Swallows were flying rather low, and the sky,
whose moods they watch, had the slumberous, surcharged beauty of a long,
fine day, with showers not far away. Some orchards were still in
blossom, and the great wild bees, hunting over flowers and grasses warm
to their touch, kept the air deeply murmurous. Movement, light, color,
song, scent, the warm air, and the fluttering leaves were confused, till
one had almost become the other.
And Stanley thought, for he was not rhapsodic 'Wonderful pretty country!
The way everything's looked after--you never see it abroad!'
But the car, a creature with little patience for natural beauty, had
brought him to the crossroads and stood, panting slightly, under the
cliff-bank whereon grew Tod's cottage, so loaded now with lilac,
wistaria, and roses that from the road nothing but a peak or two of the
thatched roof could be seen.
Stanley was distinctly nervous. It was not a weakness his face and
figure were very capable of showing, but he felt that dryness of mouth
and quivering of chest which precede adventures of the soul. Advancing up
the steps and pebbled path, which Clara had trodden once, just nineteen
years ago, and he himself but three times as yet in all, he cleared his
throat and said to himself: 'Easy, old man! What is it, after all? She
won't bite!' And in the very doorway he came upon her.
What there was about this woman to produce in a man of common sense such
peculiar sensations, he no more knew after seeing her than before.
Felix, on returning from his visit, had said, "She's like a Song of the
Hebrides sung in the middle of a programme of English ballads." The
remark, as any literary man's might, had conveyed nothing to Stanley, and
that in a far-fetched way. Still, when she said: "Will you come in?" he
felt heavier and thicker than he had ever remembered feeling; as a glass
of stout might feel coming across a glass of claret. It was, perhaps,
the gaze of her eyes, whose color he could not determine, under eyebrows
that waved in the middle and twitched faintly, or a dress that was blue,
with the queerest effect of another color at the back of it, or perhaps
the feeling of a torrent flowing there under a coat of ice, that might
give way in little holes, so that your leg went in but not the whole of
you. Something, anyway, made him feel both small and heavy--that awkward
combination for a man accustomed to associate himself with cheerful but
solid dignity. In seating himself by request at a table, in what seemed
to be a sort of kitchen, he experienced a singular sensation in the legs,
and heard her say, as it might be to the air:
"Biddy, dear, take Susie and Billy out."
And thereupon a little girl with a sad and motherly face came crawling
out from underneath the table, and dropped him a little courtesy. Then
another still smaller girl came out, and a very small boy, staring with
all his eyes.
All these things were against Stanley, and he felt that if he did not
make it quite clear that he was there he would soon not know where he
was.
"I came," he said, "to talk about this business up at Malloring's." And,
encouraged by having begun, he added: "Whose kids were those?"
A level voice with a faint lisp answered him:
"They belong to a man called Tryst; he was turned out of his cottage on
Wednesday because his dead wife's sister was staying with him, so we've
taken them in. Did you notice the look on the face of the eldest?"
Stanley nodded. In truth, he had noticed something, though what he could
not have said.
"At nine years old she has to do the housework and be a mother to the
other two, besides going to school. This is all because Lady Malloring
has conscientious scruples about marriage with a deceased wife's sister."
'Certainly'--thought Stanley--'that does sound a bit thick!' And he
asked:
"Is the woman here, too?"
"No, she's gone home for the present."
He felt relief.
"I suppose Malloring's point is," he said, "whether or not you're to do
what you like with your own property. For instance, if you had let this
cottage to some one you thought was harming the neighborhood, wouldn't
you terminate his tenancy?"
She answered, still in that level voice:
"Her action is cowardly, narrow, and tyrannical, and no amount of
sophistry will make me think differently."
Stanley felt precisely as if one of his feet had gone through the ice
into water so cold that it seemed burning hot! Sophistry! In a plain
man like himself! He had always connected the word with Felix. He
looked at her, realizing suddenly that the association of his brother's
family with the outrage on Malloring's estate was probably even nearer
than he had feared.
"Look here, Kirsteen!" he said, uttering the unlikely name with
resolution, for, after all, she was his sister-in-law: "Did this fellow
set fire to Malloring's ricks?"
He was aware of a queer flash, a quiver, a something all over her face,
which passed at once back to its intent gravity.
"We have no reason to suppose so. But tyranny produces revenge, as you
know."
Stanley shrugged his shoulders. "It's not my business to go into the
rights and wrongs of what's been done. But, as a man of the world and a
relative, I do ask you to look after your youngsters and see they don't
get into a mess. They're an inflammable young couple--young blood, you
know!"
Having made this speech, Stanley looked down, with a feeling that it
would give her more chance.
"You are very kind," he heard her saying in that quiet, faintly lisping
voice; "but there are certain principles involved."
And, suddenly, his curious fear of this woman took shape. Principles! He
had unconsciously been waiting for that word, than which none was more
like a red rag to him.
"What principles can possibly be involved in going against the law?"
"And where the law is unjust?"
Stanley was startled, but he said: "Remember that your principles, as you
call them, may hurt other people besides yourself; Tod and your children
most of all. How is the law unjust, may I ask?"
She had been sitting at the table opposite, but she got up now and went
to the hearth. For a woman of forty-two--as he supposed she would
be--she was extraordinarily lithe, and her eyes, fixed on him from under
those twitching, wavy brows, had a curious glow in their darkness. The
few silver threads in the mass of her over-fine black hair seemed to give
it extra vitality. The whole of her had a sort of intensity that made
him profoundly uncomfortable. And he thought suddenly: 'Poor old Tod!
Fancy having to go to bed with that woman!'
Without raising her voice, she began answering his question.
"These poor people have no means of setting law in motion, no means of
choosing where and how they will live, no means of doing anything except
just what they are told; the Mallorings have the means to set the law in
motion, to choose where and how to live, and to dictate to others. That
is why the law is unjust. With every independent pound a year, this
equal law of yours--varies!"
"Phew!" said Stanley. "That's a proposition!"
"I give you a simple case. If I had chosen not to marry Tod but to live
with him in free love, we could have done it without inconvenience. We
have some independent income; we could have afforded to disregard what
people thought or did. We could have bought (as we did buy) our piece of
land and our cottage, out of which we could not have been turned. Since
we don't care for society, it would have made absolutely no difference to
our present position. But Tryst, who does not even want to defy the
law--what happens to him? What happens to hundreds of laborers all over
the country who venture to differ in politics, religion, or morals from
those who own them?"
'By George!' thought Stanley, 'it's true, in a way; I never looked at it
quite like that.' But the feeling that he had come to persuade her to be
reasonable, and the deeply rooted Englishry of him, conspired to make him
say:
"That's all very well; but, you see, it's only a necessary incident of
property-holding. You can't interfere with plain rights."
"You mean--an evil inherent in property-holding?"
"If you like; I don't split words. The lesser of two evils. What's your
remedy? You don't want to abolish property; you've confessed that
property gives YOU your independence!"
Again that curious quiver and flash!
"Yes; but if people haven't decency enough to see for themselves how the
law favors their independence, they must be shown that it doesn't pay to
do to others as they would hate to be done by."
"And you wouldn't try reasoning?"
"They are not amenable to reason."
Stanley took up his hat.
"Well, I think some of us are. I see your point; but, you know, violence
never did any good; it isn't--isn't English."
She did not answer. And, nonplussed thereby, he added lamely: "I should
have liked to have seen Tod and your youngsters. Remember me to them.
Clara sent her regards"; and, looking round the room in a rather lost
way, he held out his hand.
He had an impression of something warm and dry put into it, with even a
little pressure.
Back in the car, he said to his chauffeur, "Go home the other way,
Batter, past the church."
The vision of that kitchen, with its brick floor, its black oak beams,
bright copper pans, the flowers on the window-sill, the great, open
hearth, and the figure of that woman in her blue dress standing before
it, with her foot poised on a log, clung to his mind's eye with curious
fidelity. And those three kids, popping out like that--proof that the
whole thing was not a rather bad dream! 'Queer business!' he thought;
'bad business! That woman's uncommonly all there, though. Lot in what
she said, too. Where the deuce should we all be if there were many like
her!' And suddenly he noticed, in a field to the right, a number of men
coming along the hedge toward the road--evidently laborers. What were
they doing? He stopped the car. There were fifteen or twenty of them,
and back in the field he could see a girl's red blouse, where a little
group of four still lingered. 'By George!' he thought, 'those must be
the young Tods going it!' And, curious to see what it might mean,
Stanley fixed his attention on the gate through which the men were bound
to come. First emerged a fellow in corduroys tied below the knee, with
long brown moustaches decorating a face that, for all its haggardness,
had a jovial look. Next came a sturdy little red-faced, bow-legged man in
shirt-sleeves rolled up, walking alongside a big, dark fellow with a cap
pushed up on his head, who had evidently just made a joke. Then came two
old men, one of whom was limping, and three striplings. Another big man
came along next, in a little clearance, as it were, between main groups.
He walked heavily, and looked up lowering at the car. The fellow's eyes
were queer, and threatening, and sad--giving Stanley a feeling of
discomfort. Then came a short, square man with an impudent, loquacious
face and a bit of swagger in his walk. He, too, looked up at Stanley and
made some remark which caused two thin-faced fellows with him to grin
sheepishly. A spare old man, limping heavily, with a yellow face and
drooping gray moustaches, walked next, alongside a warped, bent fellow,
with yellowish hair all over his face, whose expression struck Stanley as
half-idiotic. Then two more striplings of seventeen or so, whittling at
bits of sticks; an active, clean-shorn chap with drawn-in cheeks; and,
last of all, a small man by himself, without a cap on a round head
covered with thin, light hair, moving at a 'dot-here, dot-there' walk, as
though he had beasts to drive.
Stanley noted that all--save the big man with the threatening, sad eyes,
the old, yellow-faced man with a limp, and the little man who came out
last, lost in his imaginary beasts--looked at the car furtively as they
went their ways. And Stanley thought: 'English peasant! Poor devil!
Who is he? What is he? Who'd miss him if he did die out? What's the
use of all this fuss about him? He's done for! Glad I've nothing to do
with him at Becket, anyway! "Back to the land!" "Independent peasantry!"
Not much! Shan't say that to Clara, though; knock the bottom out of her
week-ends!' And to his chauffeur he muttered:
"Get on, Batter!"
So, through the peace of that country, all laid down in grass, through
the dignity and loveliness of trees and meadows, this May evening, with
the birds singing under a sky surcharged with warmth and color, he sped
home to dinner.
CHAPTER XX
But next morning, turning on his back as it came dawn, Stanley thought,
with the curious intensity which in those small hours so soon becomes
fear: 'By Jove! I don't trust that woman a yard! I shall wire for
Felix!' And the longer he lay on his back, the more the conviction bored
a hole in him. There was a kind of fever in the air nowadays, that women
seemed to catch, as children caught the measles. What did it all mean?
England used to be a place to live in. One would have thought an old
country like this would have got through its infantile diseases!
Hysteria! No one gave in to that. Still, one must look out! Arson was
about the limit! And Stanley had a vision, suddenly, of his plough-works
in flames. Why not? The ploughs were not for the English market. Who
knew whether these laboring fellows mightn't take that as a grievance, if
trouble began to spread? This somewhat far-fetched notion, having
started to burrow, threw up a really horrid mole-hill on Stanley. And it
was only the habit, in the human mind, of saying suddenly to fears: Stop!
I'm tired of you! that sent him to sleep about half past four.
He did not, however, neglect to wire to Felix:
"If at all possible, come down again at once; awkward business at
Joyfields."
Nor, on the charitable pretext of employing two old fellows past ordinary
work, did he omit to treble his night-watchman. . .
On Wednesday, the day of which he had seen the dawn rise, Felix had
already been startled, on returning from his constitutional, to discover
his niece and nephew in the act of departure. All the explanation
vouchsafed had been: "Awfully sorry, Uncle Felix; Mother's wired for us."
Save for the general uneasiness which attended on all actions of that
woman, Felix would have felt relieved at their going. They had disturbed
his life, slipped between him and Nedda! So much so that he did not even
expect her to come and tell him why they had gone, nor feel inclined to
ask her. So little breaks the fine coherence of really tender ties! The
deeper the quality of affection, the more it 'starts and puffs,' and from
sheer sensitive feeling, each for the other, spares attempt to get back
into touch!
His paper--though he did not apply to it the word 'favorite,' having that
proper literary feeling toward all newspapers, that they took him in
rather than he them--gave him on Friday morning precisely the same news,
of the rick-burning, as it gave to Stanley at breakfast and to John on
his way to the Home Office. To John, less in the know, it merely brought
a knitting of the brow and a vague attempt to recollect the numbers of
the Worcestershire constabulary. To Felix it brought a feeling of
sickness. Men whose work in life demands that they shall daily whip
their nerves, run, as a rule, a little in advance of everything. And
goodness knows what he did not see at that moment. He said no word to
Nedda, but debated with himself and Flora what, if anything, was to be
done. Flora, whose sense of humor seldom deserted her, held the more
comfortable theory that there was nothing to be done as yet. Soon enough
to cry when milk was spilled! He did not agree, but, unable to suggest a
better course, followed her advice. On Saturday, however, receiving
Stanley's wire, he had much difficulty in not saying to her, "I told you
so!" The question that agitated him now was whether or not to take Nedda
with him. Flora said: "Yes. The child will be the best restraining
influence, if there is really trouble brewing!" Some feeling fought
against this in Felix, but, suspecting it to be mere jealousy, he decided
to take her. And, to the girl's rather puzzled delight, they arrived at
Becket that day in time for dinner. It was not too reassuring to find
John there, too. Stanley had also wired to him. The matter must indeed
be serious!
The usual week-end was in progress. Clara had made one of her greatest
efforts. A Bulgarian had providentially written a book in which he
showed, beyond doubt, that persons fed on brown bread, potatoes, and
margarine, gave the most satisfactory results of all. It was a discovery
of the first value as a topic for her dinner-table--seeming to solve the
whole vexed problem of the laborers almost at one stroke. If they could
only be got to feed themselves on this perfect programme, what a saving
of the situation! On those three edibles, the Bulgarian said--and he had
been well translated--a family of five could be maintained at full
efficiency for a shilling per day. Why! that would leave nearly eight
shillings a week, in many cases more, for rent, firing, insurance, the
man's tobacco, and the children's boots. There would be no more of that
terrible pinching by the mothers, to feed the husband and children
properly, of which one heard so much; no more lamentable deterioration in
our stock! Brown bread, potatoes, margarine--quite a great deal could be
provided for seven shillings! And what was more delicious than a
well-baked potato with margarine of good quality? The carbohydrates--or
was it hybocardrates--ah, yes! the kybohardrates--would be present in
really sufficient quantity! Little else was talked of all through dinner
at her end of the table. Above the flowers which Frances Freeland always
insisted on arranging--and very charmingly--when she was there--over bare
shoulders and white shirt-fronts, those words bombed and rebombed. Brown
bread, potatoes, margarine, carbohydrates, calorific! They mingled with
the creaming sizzle of champagne, with the soft murmur of well-bred
deglutition. White bosoms heaved and eyebrows rose at them. And now and
again some Bigwig versed in science murmured the word 'Fats.' An
agricultural population fed to the point of efficiency without
disturbance of the existing state of things! Eureka! If only into the
bargain they could be induced to bake their own brown bread and cook
their potatoes well! Faces flushed, eyes brightened, and teeth shone. It
was the best, the most stimulating, dinner ever swallowed in that room.
Nor was it until each male guest had eaten, drunk, and talked himself
into torpor suitable to the company of his wife, that the three brothers
could sit in the smoking-room together, undisturbed.
When Stanley had described his interview with 'that woman,' his glimpse
of the red blouse, and the laborers' meeting, there was a silence before
John said:
"It might be as well if Tod would send his two youngsters abroad for a
bit."
Felix shook his head.
"I don't think he would, and I don't think they'd go. But we might try
to get those two to see that anything the poor devils of laborers do is
bound to recoil on themselves, fourfold. I suppose," he added, with
sudden malice, "a laborers' rising would have no chance?"
Neither John nor Stanley winced.
"Rising? Why should they rise?"
"They did in '32."
"In '32!" repeated John. "Agriculture had its importance then. Now it
has none. Besides, they've no cohesion, no power, like the miners or
railway men. Rising? No chance, no earthly! Weight of metal's dead
against it."
Felix smiled.
"Money and guns! Guns and money! Confess with me, brethren, that we're
glad of metal."
John stared and Stanley drank off his whiskey and potash. Felix really
was a bit 'too thick' sometimes. Then Stanley said:
"Wonder what Tod thinks of it all. Will you go over, Felix, and advise
that our young friends be more considerate to these poor beggars?"
Felix nodded. And with 'Good night, old man' all round, and no shaking
of the hands, the three brothers dispersed.
But behind Felix, as he opened his bedroom door, a voice whispered:
"Dad!" And there, in the doorway of the adjoining room, was Nedda in her
dressing-gown.
"Do come in for a minute. I've been waiting up. You ARE late."
Felix followed her into her room. The pleasure he would once have had in
this midnight conspiracy was superseded now, and he stood blinking at her
gravely. In that blue gown, with her dark hair falling on its lace
collar and her face so round and childish, she seemed more than ever to
have defrauded him. Hooking her arm in his, she drew him to the window;
and Felix thought: 'She just wants to talk to me about Derek. Dog in the
manger that I am! Here goes to be decent!' So he said:
"Well, my dear?"
Nedda pressed his hand with a little coaxing squeeze.
"Daddy, darling, I do love you!"
And, though Felix knew that she had grasped what he was feeling, a sort
of warmth spread in him. She had begun counting his fingers with one of
her own, sitting close beside him. The warmth in Felix deepened, but he
thought: 'She must want a good deal out of me!' Then she began:
"Why did we come down again? I know there's something wrong! It's hard
not to know, when you're anxious." And she sighed. That little sigh
affected Felix.
"I'd always rather know the truth, Dad. Aunt Clara said something about
a fire at the Mallorings'."
Felix stole a look at her. Yes! There was a lot in this child of his!
Depth, warmth, and strength to hold to things. No use to treat her as a
child! And he answered:
"My dear, there's really nothing beyond what you know--our young man and
Sheila are hotheads, and things over there are working up a bit. We must
try and smooth them down."
"Dad, ought I to back him whatever he does?"
What a question! The more so that one cannot answer superficially the
questions of those whom one loves.
"Ah!" he said at last. "I don't know yet. Some things it's not your
duty to do; that's certain. It can't be right to do things simply
because he does them--THAT'S not real--however fond one is."
"No; I feel that. Only, it's so hard to know what I do really
think--there's always such a lot trying to make one feel that only what's
nice and cosey is right!"
And Felix thought: 'I've been brought up to believe that only Russian
girls care for truth. It seems I was wrong. The saints forbid I should
be a stumbling-block to my own daughter searching for it! And
yet--where's it all leading? Is this the same child that told me only
the other night she wanted to know everything? She's a woman now! So
much for love!' And he said:
"Let's go forward quietly, without expecting too much of ourselves."
"Yes, Dad; only I distrust myself so."
"No one ever got near the truth who didn't."
"Can we go over to Joyfields to-morrow? I don't think I could bear a
whole day of Bigwigs and eating, with this hanging--"
"Poor Bigwigs! All right! We'll go. And now, bed; and think of
nothing!"
Her whisper tickled his ear:
"You are a darling to me, Dad!"
He went out comforted.
And for some time after she had forgotten everything he leaned out of his
window, smoking cigarettes, and trying to see the body and soul of night.
How quiet she was--night, with her mystery, bereft of moon, in whose
darkness seemed to vibrate still the song of the cuckoos that had been
calling so all day! And whisperings of leaves communed with Felix.
CHAPTER XXI
What Tod thought of all this was, perhaps, as much of an enigma to Tod as
to his three brothers, and never more so than on that Sunday morning when
two police constables appeared at his door with a warrant for the arrest
of Tryst. After regarding them fixedly for full thirty seconds, he said,
"Wait!" and left them in the doorway.
Kirsteen was washing breakfast things which had a leadless glaze, and
Tryst's three children, extremely tidy, stood motionless at the edge of
the little scullery, watching.
When she had joined him in the kitchen Tod shut the door.
"Two policemen," he said, "want Tryst. Are they to have him?"
In the life together of these two there had, from the very start, been a
queer understanding as to who should decide what. It had become by now
so much a matter of instinct that combative consultations, which bulk so
large in married lives, had no place in theirs. A frowning tremor passed
over her face.
"I suppose they must. Derek is out. Leave it to me, Tod, and take the
tinies into the orchard."
Tod took the three little Trysts to the very spot where Derek and Nedda
had gazed over the darkening fields in exchanging that first kiss, and,
sitting on the stump of the apple-tree he had cut down, he presented each
of them with an apple. While they ate, he stared. And his dog stared at
him. How far there worked in Tod the feelings of an ordinary man
watching three small children whose only parent the law was just taking
into its charge it would be rash to say, but his eyes were extremely blue
and there was a frown between them.
"Well, Biddy?" he said at last.
Biddy did not reply; the habit of being a mother had imposed on her,
together with the gravity of her little, pale, oval face, a peculiar
talent for silence. But the round-cheeked Susie said:
"Billy can eat cores."
After this statement, silence was broken only by munching, till Tod
remarked:
"What makes things?"
The children, having the instinct that he had not asked them, but
himself, came closer. He had in his hand a little beetle.
"This beetle lives in rotten wood; nice chap, isn't he?"
"We kill beetles; we're afraid of them." So Susie.
They were now round Tod so close that Billy was standing on one of his
large feet, Susie leaning her elbows on one of his broad knees, and
Biddy's slender little body pressed against his huge arm.
"No," said Tod; "beetles are nice chaps."
"The birds eats them," remarked Billy.
"This beetle," said Tod, "eats wood. It eats through trees and the trees
get rotten."
Biddy spoke:
"Then they don't give no more apples." Tod put the beetle down and Billy
got off his foot to tread on it. When he had done his best the beetle
emerged and vanished in the grass. Tod, who had offered no remonstrance,
stretched out his hand and replaced Billy on his foot.
"What about my treading on you, Billy?" he said.
"Why?"
"I'm big and you're little."
On Billy's square face came a puzzled defiance. If he had not been early
taught his station he would evidently have found some poignant retort.
An intoxicated humblebee broke the silence by buzzing into Biddy's
fluffed-out, corn-gold hair. Tod took it off with his hand.
"Lovely chap, isn't he?"
The children, who had recoiled, drew close again, while the drunken bee
crawled feebly in the cage of Tod's large hand.
"Bees sting," said Biddy; "I fell on a bee and it stang me!"
"You stang it first," said Tod. "This chap wouldn't sting--not for
worlds. Stroke it!"
Biddy put out her little, pale finger but stayed it a couple of inches
from the bee.
"Go on," said Tod.
Opening her mouth a little, Biddy went on and touched the bee.
"It's soft," she said. "Why don't it buzz?"
"I want to stroke it, too," said Susie. And Billy stamped a little on
Tod's foot.
"No," said Tod; "only Biddy."
There was perfect silence till the dog, rising, approached its nose,
black with a splash of pinky whiteness on the end of the bridge, as if to
love the bee.
"No," said Tod. The dog looked at him, and his yellow-brown eyes were
dark with anxiety.
"It'll sting the dog's nose," said Biddy, and Susie and Billy came yet
closer.
It was at this moment, when the heads of the dog, the bee, Tod, Biddy,
Susie, and Billy might have been contained within a noose three feet in
diameter, that Felix dismounted from Stanley's car and, coming from the
cottage, caught sight of that little idyll under the dappled sunlight,
green, and blossom. It was something from the core of life, out of the
heartbeat of things--like a rare picture or song, the revelation of the
childlike wonder and delight, to which all other things are but the
supernumerary casings--a little pool of simplicity into which fever and
yearning sank and were for a moment drowned. And quite possibly he would
have gone away without disturbing them if the dog had not growled and
wagged his tail.
But when the children had been sent down into the field he experienced
the usual difficulty in commencing a talk with Tod. How far was his big
brother within reach of mere unphilosophic statements; how far was he
going to attend to facts?
"We came back yesterday," he began; "Nedda and I. You know all about
Derek and Nedda, I suppose?"
Tod nodded.
"What do you think of it?"
"He's a good chap."
"Yes," murmured Felix, "but a firebrand. This business at
Malloring's--what's it going to lead to, Tod? We must look out, old man.
Couldn't you send Derek and Sheila abroad for a bit?"
"Wouldn't go."
"But, after all, they're dependent on you."
"Don't say that to them; I should never see them again."
Felix, who felt the instinctive wisdom of that remark, answered
helplessly:
"What's to be done, then?"
"Sit tight." And Tod's hand came down on Felix's shoulder.
"But suppose they get into real trouble? Stanley and John don't like it;
and there's Mother." And Felix added, with sudden heat, "Besides, I
can't stand Nedda being made anxious like this."
Tod removed his hand. Felix would have given a good deal to have been
able to see into the brain behind the frowning stare of those blue eyes.
"Can't help by worrying. What must be, will. Look at the birds!"
The remark from any other man would have irritated Felix profoundly;
coming from Tod, it seemed the unconscious expression of a really felt
philosophy. And, after all, was he not right? What was this life they
all lived but a ceaseless worrying over what was to come? Was not all
man's unhappiness caused by nervous anticipations of the future? Was not
that the disease, and the misfortune, of the age; perhaps of all the
countless ages man had lived through?
With an effort he recalled his thoughts from that far flight. What if
Tod had rediscovered the secret of the happiness that belonged to birds
and lilies of the field--such overpowering interest in the moment that
the future did not exist? Why not? Were not the only minutes when he
himself was really happy those when he lost himself in work, or love?
And why were they so few? For want of pressure to the square moment.
Yes! All unhappiness was fear and lack of vitality to live the present
fully. That was why love and fighting were such poignant ecstasies--they
lived their present to the full. And so it would be almost comic to say
to those young people: Go away; do nothing in this matter in which your
interest and your feelings are concerned! Don't have a present, because
you've got to have a future! And he said:
"I'd give a good deal for your power of losing yourself in the moment,
old boy!"
"That's all right," said Tod. He was examining the bark of a tree, which
had nothing the matter with it, so far as Felix could see; while his dog,
who had followed them, carefully examined Tod. Both were obviously lost
in the moment. And with a feeling of defeat Felix led the way back to
the cottage.
In the brick-floored kitchen Derek was striding up and down; while around
him, in an equilateral triangle, stood the three women, Sheila at the
window, Kirsteen by the open hearth, Nedda against the wall opposite.
Derek exclaimed at once:
"Why did you let them, Father? Why didn't you refuse to give him up?"
Felix looked at his brother. In the doorway, where his curly head nearly
touched the wood, Tod's face was puzzled, rueful. He did not answer.
"Any one could have said he wasn't here. We could have smuggled him
away. Now the brutes have got him! I don't know that, though--" And he
made suddenly for the door.
Tod did not budge. "No," he said.
Derek turned; his mother was at the other door; at the window, the two
girls.
The comedy of this scene, if there be comedy in the face of grief, was
for the moment lost on Felix.
'It's come,' he thought. 'What now?'
Derek had flung himself down at the table and was burying his head in his
hands. Sheila went up to him.
"Don't be a fool, Derek."
However right and natural that remark, it seemed inadequate.
And Felix looked at Nedda. The blue motor scarf she had worn had slipped
off her dark head; her face was white; her eyes, fixed immovably on
Derek, seemed waiting for him to recognize that she was there. The boy
broke out again:
"It was treachery! We took him in; and now we've given him up. They
wouldn't have touched US if we'd got him away. Not they!"
Felix literally heard the breathing of Tod on one side of him and of
Kirsteen on the other. He crossed over and stood opposite his nephew.
"Look here, Derek," he said; "your mother was quite right. You might
have put this off for a day or two; but it was bound to come. You don't
know the reach of the law. Come, my dear fellow! It's no good making a
fuss, that's childish--the thing is to see that the man gets every
chance."
Derek looked up. Probably he had not yet realized that his uncle was in
the room; and Felix was astonished at his really haggard face; as if the
incident had bitten and twisted some vital in his body.
"He trusted us."
Felix saw Kirsteen quiver and flinch, and understood why they had none of
them felt quite able to turn their backs on that display of passion.
Something deep and unreasoning was on the boy's side; something that
would not fit with common sense and the habits of civilized society;
something from an Arab's tent or a Highland glen. Then Tod came up
behind and put his hands on his son's shoulders.
"Come!" he said; "milk's spilt."
"All right!" said Derek gruffly, and he went to the door.
Felix made Nedda a sign and she slipped out after him.
CHAPTER XXII
Nedda, her blue head-gear trailing, followed along at the boy's side
while he passed through the orchard and two fields; and when he threw
himself down under an ash-tree she, too, subsided, waiting for him to
notice her.
"I am here," she said at last.
At that ironic little speech Derek sat up.
"It'll kill him," he said.
"But--to burn things, Derek! To light horrible cruel flames, and burn
things, even if they aren't alive!"
Derek said through his teeth:
"It's I who did it! If I'd never talked to him he'd have been like the
others. They were taking him in a cart, like a calf."
Nedda got possession of his hand and held it tight.
That was a bitter and frightening hour under the faintly rustling
ash-tree, while the wind sprinkled over her flakes of the may blossom,
just past its prime. Love seemed now so little a thing, seemed to have
lost warmth and power, seemed like a suppliant outside a door. Why did
trouble come like this the moment one felt deeply?
The church bell was tolling; they could see the little congregation pass
across the churchyard into that weekly dream they knew too well. And
presently the drone emerged, mingling with the voices outside, of sighing
trees and trickling water, of the rub of wings, birds' songs, and the
callings of beasts everywhere beneath the sky.
In spite of suffering because love was not the first emotion in his
heart, the girl could only feel he was right not to be loving her; that
she ought to be glad of what was eating up all else within him. It was
ungenerous, unworthy, to want to be loved at such a moment. Yet she
could not help it! This was her first experience of the eternal tug
between self and the loved one pulled in the hearts of lovers. Would she
ever come to feel happy when he was just doing what he thought was right?
And she drew a little away from him; then perceived that unwittingly she
had done the right thing, for he at once tried to take her hand again.
And this was her first lesson, too, in the nature of man. If she did not
give her hand, he wanted it! But she was not one of those who calculate
in love; so she gave him her hand at once. That went to his heart; and
he put his arm round her, till he could feel the emotion under those
stays that would not be drawn any closer. In this nest beneath the
ash-tree they sat till they heard the organ wheeze and the furious sound
of the last hymn, and saw the brisk coming-forth with its air of, 'Thank
God! And now, to eat!' till at last there was no stir again about the
little church--no stir at all save that of nature's ceaseless
thanksgiving. . . .
Tod, his brown face still rueful, had followed those two out into the
air, and Sheila had gone quickly after him. Thus left alone with his
sister-in-law, Felix said gravely:
"If you don't want the boy to get into real trouble, do all you can to
show him that the last way in the world to help these poor fellows is to
let them fall foul of the law. It's madness to light flames you can't
put out. What happened this morning? Did the man resist?"
Her face still showed how bitter had been her mortification, and he was
astonished that she kept her voice so level and emotionless.
"No. He went with them quite quietly. The back door was open; he could
have walked out. I did not advise him to. I'm glad no one saw his face
except myself. You see," she added, "he's devoted to Derek, and Derek
knows it; that's why he feels it so, and will feel it more and more. The
boy has a great sense of honour, Felix."
Under that tranquillity Felix caught the pain and yearning in her voice.
Yes! This woman really felt and saw. She was not one of those who make
disturbance with their brains and powers of criticism; rebellion leaped
out from the heat in her heart. But he said:
"Is it right to fan this flame? Do you think any good end is being
served?" Waiting for her answer, he found himself gazing at the ghost of
dark down on her upper lip, wondering that he had never noticed it
before.
Very low, as if to herself, she said:
"I would kill myself to-day if I didn't believe that tyranny and
injustice must end."
"In our time?"
"Perhaps not."
"Are you content to go on working for an Utopia that you will never see?"
"While our laborers are treated and housed more like dogs than human
beings, while the best life under the sun--because life on the soil might
be the best life--is despised and starved, and made the plaything of
people's tongues, neither I nor mine are going to rest."
The admiration she inspired in Felix at that moment was mingled with a
kind of pity. He said impressively:
"Do you know the forces you are up against? Have you looked into the
unfathomable heart of this trouble? Understood the tug of the towns, the
call of money to money; grasped the destructive restlessness of modern
life; the abysmal selfishness of people when you threaten their
interests; the age-long apathy of those you want to help? Have you
grasped all these?"
"And more!"
Felix held out his hand. "Then," he said, "you are truly brave!"
She shook her head.
"It got bitten into me very young. I was brought up in the Highlands
among the crofters in their worst days. In some ways the people here are
not so badly off, but they're still slaves."
"Except that they can go to Canada if they want, and save old England."
She flushed. "I hate irony."
Felix looked at her with ever-increasing interest; she certainly was of
the kind that could be relied on to make trouble.
"Ah!" he murmured. "Don't forget that when we can no longer smile we can
only swell and burst. It IS some consolation to reflect that by the time
we've determined to do something really effectual for the ploughmen of
England there'll be no ploughmen left!"
"I cannot smile at that."
And, studying her face, Felix thought, 'You're right there! You'll get
no help from humor.' . . .
Early that afternoon, with Nedda between them, Felix and his nephew were
speeding toward Transham.
The little town--a hamlet when Edmund Moreton dropped the E from his name
and put up the works which Stanley had so much enlarged--had monopolized
by now the hill on which it stood. Living entirely on its ploughs, it
yet had but little of the true look of a British factory town, having
been for the most part built since ideas came into fashion. With its red
roofs and chimneys, it was only moderately ugly, and here and there an
old white, timbered house still testified to the fact that it had once
been country. On this fine Sunday afternoon the population were in the
streets, and presented all that long narrow-headedness, that twist and
distortion of feature, that perfect absence of beauty in face, figure,
and dress, which is the glory of the Briton who has been for three
generations in a town. 'And my great-grandfather'--thought Felix--'did
all this! God rest his soul!'
At a rather new church on the very top they halted, and went in to
inspect the Morton memorials. There they were, in dedicated corners.
'Edmund and his wife Catherine'--'Charles Edmund and his wife
Florence'--'Maurice Edmund and his wife Dorothy.' Clara had set her foot
down against 'Stanley and his wife Clara' being in the fourth; her soul
was above ploughs, and she, of course, intended to be buried at Becket,
as Clara, dowager Lady Freeland, for her efforts in regard to the land.
Felix, who had a tendency to note how things affected other people,
watched Derek's inspection of these memorials and marked that they
excited in him no tendency to ribaldry. The boy, indeed, could hardly be
expected to see in them what Felix saw--an epitome of the great, perhaps
fatal, change that had befallen his native country; a record of the
beginning of that far-back fever, whose course ran ever faster, which had
emptied country into town and slowly, surely, changed the whole spirit of
life. When Edmund Moreton, about 1780, took the infection disseminated
by the development of machinery, and left the farming of his acres to
make money, that thing was done which they were all now talking about
trying to undo, with their cries of: "Back to the land! Back to peace
and sanity in the shade of the elms! Back to the simple and patriarchal
state of feeling which old documents disclose. Back to a time before
these little squashed heads and bodies and features jutted every which
way; before there were long squashed streets of gray houses; long
squashed chimneys emitting smoke-blight; long squashed rows of graves;
and long squashed columns of the daily papers. Back to well-fed
countrymen who could not read, with Common rights, and a kindly feeling
for old 'Moretons,' who had a kindly feeling for them!" Back to all
that? A dream! Sirs! A dream! There was nothing for it now, but
--progress! Progress! On with the dance! Let engines rip, and the
little, squash-headed fellows with them! Commerce, literature, religion,
science, politics, all taking a hand; what a glorious chance had money,
ugliness, and ill will! Such were the reflections of Felix before the
brass tablet:
"IN LOVING MEMORY OF
EDMUND MORTON
AND
HIS DEVOTED WIFE
CATHERINE.
AT REST IN THE LORD. A.D., 1816."
From the church they went about their proper business, to interview a Mr.
Pogram, of the firm of Pogram & Collet, solicitors, in whose hands the
interests of many citizens of Transham and the country round were almost
securely deposited. He occupied, curiously enough, the house where
Edmund Morton himself had lived, conducting his works on the one hand and
the squirearchy of the parish on the other. Incorporated now into the
line of a long, loose street, it still stood rather apart from its
neighbors, behind some large shrubs and trees of the holmoak variety.
Mr. Pogram, who was finishing his Sunday after-lunch cigar, was a short,
clean-shaved man with strong cheeks and those rather lustful gray-blue
eyes which accompany a sturdy figure. He rose when they were introduced,
and, uncrossing his fat little thighs, asked what he could do for them.
Felix propounded the story of the arrest, so far as might be, in words of
one syllable, avoiding the sentimental aspect of the question, and
finding it hard to be on the side of disorder, as any modern writer
might. There was something, however, about Mr. Pogram that reassured
him. The small fellow looked a fighter--looked as if he would
sympathize with Tryst's want of a woman about him. The tusky but
soft-hearted little brute kept nodding his round, sparsely covered head
while he listened, exuding a smell of lavender-water, cigars, and
gutta-percha. When Felix ceased he said, rather dryly:
"Sir Gerald Malloring? Yes. Sir Gerald's country agents, I rather
think, are Messrs. Porter of Worcester. Quite so."
And a conviction that Mr. Pogram thought they should have been Messrs.
Pogram & Collet of Transham confirmed in Felix the feeling that they had
come to the right man.
"I gather," Mr. Pogram said, and he looked at Nedda with a glance from
which he obviously tried to remove all earthly desires, "that you, sir,
and your nephew wish to go and see the man. Mrs. Pogram will be
delighted to show Miss Freeland our garden. Your great-grandfather, sir,
on the mother's side, lived in this house. Delighted to meet you; often
heard of your books; Mrs. Pogram has read one--let me see--'The
Bannister,' was it?"
"'The Balustrade,'" Felix answered gently.
Mr. Pogram rang the bell. "Quite so," he said. "Assizes are just over
so that he can't come up for trial till August or September; pity--great
pity! Bail in cases of arson--for a laborer, very doubtful! Ask your
mistress to come, please."
There entered a faded rose of a woman on whom Mr. Pogram in his time had
evidently made a great impression. A vista of two or three little
Pograms behind her was hastily removed by the maid. And they all went
into the garden.
"Through here," said Mr. Pogram, coming to a side door in the garden
wall, "we can make a short cut to the police station. As we go along I
shall ask you one or two blunt questions." And he thrust out his under
lip:
"For instance, what's your interest in this matter?"
Before Felix could answer, Derek had broken in:
"My uncle has come out of kindness. It's my affair, sir. The man has
been tyrannously treated."
Mr. Pogram cocked his eye. "Yes, yes; no doubt, no doubt! He's not
confessed, I understand?"
"No; but--"
Mr. Pogram laid a finger on his lips.
"Never say die; that's what we're here for. So," he went on, "you're a
rebel; Socialist, perhaps. Dear me! Well, we're all of us something,
nowadays--I'm a humanitarian myself. Often say to Mrs.
Pogram--humanity's the thing in this age--and so it is! Well, now, what
line shall we take?" And he rubbed his hands. "Shall we have a try at
once to upset what evidence they've got? We should want a strong alibi.
Our friends here will commit if they can--nobody likes arson. I
understand he was sleeping in your cottage. His room, now? Was it on the
ground floor?"
"Yes; but--"
Mr. Pogram frowned, as who should say: Ah! Be careful! "He had better
reserve his defence and give us time to turn round," he said rather
shortly.
They had arrived at the police station and after a little parley were
ushered into the presence of Tryst.
The big laborer was sitting on the stool in his cell, leaning back
against the wall, his hands loose and open at his sides. His gaze passed
at once from Felix and Mr. Pogram, who were in advance, to Derek; and the
dumb soul seemed suddenly to look through, as one may see all there is of
spirit in a dog reach out to its master. This was the first time Felix
had seen him who had caused already so much anxiety, and that broad,
almost brutal face, with the yearning fidelity in its tragic eyes, made a
powerful impression on him. It was the sort of face one did not forget
and might be glad of not remembering in dreams. What had put this
yearning spirit into so gross a frame, destroying its solid coherence?
Why could not Tryst have been left by nature just a beer-loving serf,
devoid of grief for his dead wife, devoid of longing for the nearest he
could get to her again, devoid of susceptibility to this young man's
influence? And the thought of all that was before the mute creature,
sitting there in heavy, hopeless patience, stung Felix's heart so that he
could hardly bear to look him in the face.
Derek had taken the man's thick, brown hand; Felix could see with what
effort the boy was biting back his feelings.
"This is Mr. Pogram, Bob. A solicitor who'll do all he can for you."
Felix looked at Mr. Pogram. The little man was standing with arms
akimbo; his face the queerest mixture of shrewdness and compassion, and
he was giving off an almost needlessly strong scent of gutta-percha.
"Yes, my man," he said, "you and I are going to have a talk when these
gentlemen have done with you," and, turning on his heel, he began to
touch up the points of his little pink nails with a penknife, in front of
the constable who stood outside the cell door, with his professional air
of giving a man a chance.
Invaded by a feeling, apt to come to him in Zoos, that he was watching a
creature who had no chance to escape being watched, Felix also turned;
but, though his eyes saw not, his ears could not help hearing.
"Forgive me, Bob! It's I who got you into this!"
"No, sir; naught to forgive. I'll soon be back, and then they'll see!"
By the reddening of Mr. Pogram's ears Felix formed the opinion that the
little man, also, could hear.
"Tell her not to fret, Mr. Derek. I'd like a shirt, in case I've got to
stop. The children needn' know where I be; though I an't ashamed."
"It may be a longer job than you think, Bob."
In the silence that followed Felix could not help turning. The laborer's
eyes were moving quickly round his cell, as if for the first time he
realized that he was shut up; suddenly he brought those big hands of his
together and clasped them between his knees, and again his gaze ran round
the cell. Felix heard the clearing of a throat close by, and, more than
ever conscious of the scent of gutta-percha, grasped its connection with
compassion in the heart of Mr. Pogram. He caught Derek's muttered,
"Don't ever think we're forgetting you, Bob," and something that sounded
like, "And don't ever say you did it." Then, passing Felix and the
little lawyer, the boy went out. His head was held high, but tears were
running down his cheeks. Felix followed.
A bank of clouds, gray-white, was rising just above the red-tiled roofs,
but the sun still shone brightly. And the thought of the big laborer
sitting there knocked and knocked at Felix's heart mournfully, miserably.
He had a warmer feeling for his young nephew than he had ever had. Mr.
Pogram rejoined them soon, and they walked on together,
"Well?" said Felix.
Mr. Pogram answered in a somewhat grumpy voice:
"Not guilty, and reserve defence. You have influence, young man! Dumb as
a waiter. Poor devil!" And not another word did he say till they had
re-entered his garden.
Here the ladies, surrounded by many little Pograms, were having tea. And
seated next the little lawyer, whose eyes were fixed on Nedda, Felix was
able to appreciate that in happier mood he exhaled almost exclusively the
scent of lavender-water and cigars.
CHAPTER XXIII
On their way back to Becket, after the visit to Tryst, Felix and Nedda
dropped Derek half-way on the road to Joyfields. They found that the
Becket household already knew of the arrest. Woven into a dirge on the
subject of 'the Land,' the last town doings, and adventures on golf
courses, it formed the genial topic of the dinner-table; for the
Bulgarian with his carbohydrates was already a wonder of the past. The
Bigwigs of this week-end were quite a different lot from those of three
weeks ago, and comparatively homogeneous, having only three different
plans for settling the land question, none of which, fortunately,
involved any more real disturbance of the existing state of things than
the potato, brown-bread plan, for all were based on the belief held by
the respectable press, and constructive portions of the community, that
omelette can be made without breaking eggs. On one thing alone, the
whole house party was agreed--the importance of the question. Indeed, a
sincere conviction on this point was like the card one produces before
one is admitted to certain functions. No one came to Becket without it;
or, if he did, he begged, borrowed, or stole it the moment he smelled
Clara's special pot-pourri in the hall; and, though he sometimes threw it
out of the railway-carriage window in returning to town, there was
nothing remarkable about that. The conversational debauch of the first
night's dinner--and, alas! there were only two even at Becket during a
week-end--had undoubtedly revealed the feeling, which had set in of late,
that there was nothing really wrong with the condition of the
agricultural laborer, the only trouble being that the unreasonable fellow
did not stay on the land. It was believed that Henry Wiltram, in
conjunction with Colonel Martlett, was on the point of promoting a policy
for imposing penalties on those who attempted to leave it without good
reason, such reason to be left to the discretion of impartial district
boards, composed each of one laborer, one farmer, and one landowner,
decision going by favor of majority. And though opinion was rather
freely expressed that, since the voting would always be two to one
against, this might trench on the liberty of the subject, many thought
that the interests of the country were so much above this consideration
that something of the sort would be found, after all, to be the best
arrangement. The cruder early notions of resettling the land by
fostering peasant proprietorship, with habitable houses and security of
tenure, were already under a cloud, since it was more than suspected that
they would interfere unduly with the game laws and other soundly vested
interests. Mere penalization of those who (or whose fathers before them)
had at great pains planted so much covert, enclosed so much common, and
laid so much country down in grass was hardly a policy for statesmen. A
section of the guests, and that perhaps strongest because most silent,
distinctly favored this new departure of Henry Wiltram's. Coupled with
his swinging corn tax, it was indubitably a stout platform.
A second section of the guests spoke openly in favor of Lord Settleham's
policy of good-will. The whole thing, they thought, must be voluntary,
and they did not see any reason why, if it were left to the kindness and
good intentions of the landowner, there should be any land question at
all. Boards would be formed in every county on which such model
landowners as Sir Gerald Malloring, or Lord Settleham himself, would sit,
to apply the principles of goodwill. Against this policy the only
criticism was levelled by Felix. He could have agreed, he said, if he
had not noticed that Lord Settleham, and nearly all landowners, were
thoroughly satisfied with their existing good-will and averse to any
changes in their education that might foster an increase of it. If--he
asked--landowners were so full of good-will, and so satisfied that they
could not be improved in that matter, why had they not already done what
was now proposed, and settled the land question? He himself believed
that the land question, like any other, was only capable of settlement
through improvement in the spirit of all concerned, but he found it a
little difficult to credit Lord Settleham and the rest of the landowners
with sincerity in the matter so long as they were unconscious of any need
for their own improvement. According to him, they wanted it both ways,
and, so far as he could see, they meant to have it!
His use of the word sincere, in connection with Lord Settleham, was at
once pounced on. He could not know Lord Settleham--one of the most
sincere of men. Felix freely admitted that he did not, and hastened to
explain that he did not question the--er--parliamentary sincerity of Lord
Settleham and his followers. He only ventured to doubt whether they
realized the hold that human nature had on them. His experience, he said,
of the houses where they had been bred, and the seminaries where they had
been trained, had convinced him that there was still a conspiracy on foot
to blind Lord Settleham and those others concerning all this; and, since
they were themselves part of the conspiracy, there was very little danger
of their unmasking it. At this juncture Felix was felt to have exceeded
the limit of fair criticism, and only that toleration toward literary men
of a certain reputation, in country houses, as persons brought there to
say clever and irresponsible things, prevented people from taking him
seriously.
The third section of the guests, unquestionably more static than the
others, confined themselves to pointing out that, though the land
question was undoubtedly serious, nothing whatever would result from
placing any further impositions upon landowners. For, after all, what
was land? Simply capital invested in a certain way, and very poorly at
that. And what was capital? Simply a means of causing wages to be paid.
And whether they were paid to men who looked after birds and dogs, loaded
your guns, beat your coverts, or drove you to the shoot, or paid to men
who ploughed and fertilized the land, what did it matter? To dictate to
a man to whom he was to pay wages was, in the last degree, un-English.
Everybody knew the fate which had come, or was coming, upon capital. It
was being driven out of the country by leaps and bounds--though, to be
sure, it still perversely persisted in yielding every year a larger
revenue by way of income tax. And it would be dastardly to take
advantage of land just because it was the only sort of capital which
could not fly the country in times of need. Stanley himself, though--as
became a host--he spoke little and argued not at all, was distinctly of
this faction; and Clara sometimes felt uneasy lest her efforts to focus
at Becket all interest in the land question should not quite succeed in
outweighing the passivity of her husband's attitude. But, knowing that
it is bad policy to raise the whip too soon, she trusted to her genius to
bring him 'with one run at the finish,' as they say, and was content to
wait.
There was universal sympathy with the Mallorings. If a model landlord
like Malloring had trouble with his people, who--who should be immune?
Arson! It was the last word! Felix, who secretly shared Nedda's horror
of the insensate cruelty of flames, listened, nevertheless, to the
jubilation that they had caught the fellow, with profound disturbance.
For the memory of the big laborer seated against the wall, his eyes
haunting round his cell, quarrelled fiercely with his natural abhorrence
of any kind of violence, and his equally natural dislike of what brought
anxiety into his own life--and the life, almost as precious, of his
little daughter. Scarcely a word of the evening's conversation but gave
him in high degree the feeling: How glib all this is, how far from
reality! How fatted up with shell after shell of comfort and security!
What do these people know, what do they realize, of the pressure and beat
of raw life that lies behind--what do even I, who have seen this
prisoner, know? For us it's as simple as killing a rat that eats our
corn, or a flea that sucks our blood. Arson! Destructive brute--lock him
up! And something in Felix said: For order, for security, this may be
necessary. But something also said: Our smug attitude is odious!
He watched his little daughter closely, and several times marked the
color rush up in her face, and once could have sworn he saw tears in her
eyes. If the temper of this talk were trying to him, hardened at a
hundred dinner-tables, what must it be to a young and ardent creature!
And he was relieved to find, on getting to the drawing-room, that she had
slipped behind the piano and was chatting quietly with her Uncle John. .
As to whether this or that man liked her, Nedda perhaps was not more
ignorant than other women; and she had noted a certain warmth and twinkle
in Uncle John's eyes the other evening, a certain rather jolly tendency
to look at her when he should have been looking at the person to whom he
was talking; so that she felt toward him a trustful kindliness not
altogether unmingled with a sense that he was in that Office which
controls the destinies of those who 'get into trouble.' The motives even
of statesmen, they say, are mixed; how much more so, then, of girls in
love! Tucked away behind a Steinway, which instinct told her was not for
use, she looked up under her lashes at her uncle's still military figure
and said softly:
"It was awfully good of you to come, too, Uncle John."
And John, gazing down at that round, dark head, and those slim, pretty,
white shoulders, answered:
"Not at all--very glad to get a breath of fresh air."
And he stealthily tightened his white waistcoat--a rite neglected of
late; the garment seemed to him at the moment unnecessarily loose.
"You have so much experience, Uncle. Do you think violent rebellion is
ever justifiable?"
"I do not."
Nedda sighed. "I'm glad you think that," she murmured, "because I don't
think it is, either. I do so want you to like Derek, Uncle John,
because--it's a secret from nearly every one--he and I are engaged."
John jerked his head up a little, as though he had received a slight
blow. The news was not palatable. He kept his form, however, and
answered:
"Oh! Really! Ah!"
Nedda said still more softly: "Please don't judge him by the other night;
he wasn't very nice then, I know."
John cleared his throat.
Instinct warned her that he agreed, and she said rather sadly:
"You see, we're both awfully young. It must be splendid to have
experience."
Over John's face, with its double line between the brows, its double line
in the thin cheeks, its single firm line of mouth beneath a gray
moustache, there passed a little grimace.
"As to being young," he said, "that'll change for the--er--better only
too fast."
What was it in this girl that reminded him of that one with whom he had
lived but two years, and mourned fifteen? Was it her youth? Was it that
quick way of lifting her eyes, and looking at him with such clear
directness? Or the way her hair grew? Or what?
"Do you like the people here, Uncle John?"
The question caught John, as it were, between wind and water. Indeed, all
her queries seemed to be trying to incite him to those wide efforts of
mind which bring into use the philosophic nerve; and it was long since he
had generalized afresh about either things or people, having fallen for
many years past into the habit of reaching his opinions down out of some
pigeonhole or other. To generalize was a youthful practice that one took
off as one takes certain garments off babies when they come to years of
discretion. But since he seemed to be in for it, he answered rather
shortly: "Not at all."
Nedda sighed again.
"Nor do I. They make me ashamed of myself."
John, whose dislike of the Bigwigs was that of the dogged worker of this
life for the dogged talkers, wrinkled his brows:
"How's that?"
"They make me feel as if I were part of something heavy sitting on
something else, and all the time talking about how to make things lighter
for the thing it's sitting on."
A vague recollection of somebody--some writer, a dangerous one--having
said something of this sort flitted through John.
"Do YOU think England is done for, Uncle--I mean about 'the Land'?"
In spite of his conviction that 'the country was in a bad way,' John was
deeply, intimately shocked by that simple little question. Done for!
Never! Whatever might be happening underneath, there must be no
confession of that. No! the country would keep its form. The country
would breathe through its nose, even if it did lose the race. It must
never know, or let others know, even if it were beaten. And he said:
"What on earth put that into your head?"
"Only that it seems funny, if we're getting richer and richer, and yet
all the time farther and farther away from the life that every one agrees
is the best for health and happiness. Father put it into my head, making
me look at the little, towny people in Transham this afternoon. I know I
mean to begin at once to learn about farm work."
"You?" This pretty young thing with the dark head and the pale, slim
shoulders! Farm work! Women were certainly getting queer. In his
department he had almost daily evidence of that!
"I should have thought art was more in your line!"
Nedda looked up at him; and he was touched by that look, so straight and
young.
"It's this. I don't believe Derek will be able to stay in England. When
you feel very strongly about things it must be awfully difficult to."
In bewilderment John answered:
"Why! I should have said this was the country of all others for
movements, and social work, and--and--cranks--" he paused.
"Yes; but those are all for curing the skin, and I suppose we're really
dying of heart disease, aren't we? Derek feels that, anyway, and, you
see, he's not a bit wise, not even patient--so I expect he'll have to go.
I mean to be ready, anyway."
And Nedda got up. "Only, if he does something rash, don't let them hurt
him, Uncle John, if you can help it."
John felt her soft fingers squeezing his almost desperately, as if her
emotions had for the moment got out of hand. And he was moved, though he
knew that the squeeze expressed feeling for his nephew, not for himself.
When she slid away out of the big room all friendliness seemed to go out
with her, and very soon after he himself slipped away to the
smoking-room. There he was alone, and, lighting a cigar, because he
still had on his long-tailed coat which did not go with that pipe he
would so much have preferred, he stepped out of the French window into
the warm, dark night. He walked slowly in his evening pumps up a thin
path between columbines and peonies, late tulips, forget-me-nots, and
pansies peering up in the dark with queer, monkey faces. He had a love
for flowers, rather starved for a long time past, and, strangely, liked
to see them, not in the set and orderly masses that should seemingly have
gone with his character, but in wilder beds, where one never knew what
flower was coming next. Once or twice he stopped and bent down,
ascertaining which kind it was, living its little life down there, then
passed on in that mood of stammering thought which besets men of middle
age who walk at night--a mood caught between memory of aspirations spun
and over, and vision of aspirations that refuse to take shape. Why
should they, any more--what was the use? And turning down another path
he came on something rather taller than himself, that glowed in the
darkness as though a great moon, or some white round body, had floated to
within a few feet of the earth. Approaching, he saw it for what it
was--a little magnolia-tree in the full of its white blossoms. Those
clustering flower-stars, printed before him on the dark coat of the
night, produced in John more feeling than should have been caused by a
mere magnolia-tree; and he smoked somewhat furiously. Beauty, seeking
whom it should upset, seemed, like a girl, to stretch out arms and say:
"I am here!" And with a pang at heart, and a long ash on his cigar,
between lips that quivered oddly, John turned on his heel and retraced
his footsteps to the smoking-room. It was still deserted. Taking up a
Review, he opened it at an article on 'the Land,' and, fixing his eyes on
the first page, did not read it, but thought: 'That child! What folly!
Engaged! H'm! To that young--! Why, they're babes! And what is it
about her that reminds me--reminds me--What is it? Lucky devil,
Felix--to have her for daughter! Engaged! The little thing's got her
troubles before her. Wish I had! By George, yes--wish I had!' And with
careful fingers he brushed off the ash that had fallen on his lapel. . .
The little thing who had her troubles before her, sitting in her bedroom
window, had watched his white front and the glowing point of his cigar
passing down there in the dark, and, though she did not know that they
belonged to him, had thought: 'There's some one nice, anyway, who likes
being out instead of in that stuffy drawing-room, playing bridge, and
talking, talking.' Then she felt ashamed of her uncharitableness. After
all, it was wrong to think of them like that. They did it for rest after
all their hard work; and she--she did not work at all! If only Aunt
Kirsteen would let her stay at Joyfields, and teach her all that Sheila
knew! And lighting her candles, she opened her diary to write.
"Life," she wrote, "is like looking at the night. One never knows what's
coming, only suspects, as in the darkness you suspect which trees are
what, and try to see whether you are coming to the edge of anything. . .
A moth has just flown into my candle before I could stop it! Has it
gone quite out of the world? If so, why should it be different for us?
The same great Something makes all life and death, all light and dark,
all love and hate--then why one fate for one living thing, and the
opposite for another? But suppose there IS nothing after death--would it
make me say: 'I'd rather not live'? It would only make me delight more
in life of every kind. Only human beings brood and are discontented, and
trouble about future life. While Derek and I were sitting in that field
this morning, a bumblebee flew to the bank and tucked its head into the
grass and went to sleep, just tired out with flying and working at its
flowers; it simply snoozed its head down and went off. We ought to live
every minute to the utmost, and when we're tired out, tuck in our heads
and sleep. . . . If only Derek is not brooding over that poor man! Poor
man--all alone in the dark, with months of misery before him! Poor soul!
Oh! I am sorry for all the unhappiness of people! I can't bear to think
of it. I simply can't." And dropping her pen, Nedda went again to her
window and leaned out. So sweet the air smelled that it made her ache
with delight to breathe it in. Each leaf that lived out there, each
flower, each blade of grass, were sworn to conspiracy of perfume. And
she thought: 'They MUST all love each other; it all goes together so
beautifully!' Then, mingled with the incense of the night, she caught
the savor of woodsmoke. It seemed to make the whole scent even more
delicious, but she thought, bewildered: 'Smoke! Cruel fire--burning the
wood that once grew leaves like those. Oh! it IS so mixed!' It was a
thought others have had before her.
CHAPTER XXIV
To see for himself how it fared with the big laborer at the hands of
Preliminary Justice, Felix went into Transham with Stanley the following
morning. John having departed early for town, the brothers had not
further exchanged sentiments on the subject of what Stanley called 'the
kick-up at Joyfields.' And just as night will sometimes disperse the
brooding moods of nature, so it had brought to all three the feeling:
'Haven't we made too much of this? Haven't we been a little extravagant,
and aren't we rather bored with the whole subject?' Arson was arson; a
man in prison more or less was a man in prison more or less! This was
especially Stanley's view, and he took the opportunity to say to Felix:
"Look here, old man, the thing is, of course, to see it in proportion."
It was with this intention, therefore, that Felix entered the building
where the justice of that neighborhood was customarily dispensed. It was
a species of small hall, somewhat resembling a chapel, with distempered
walls, a platform, and benches for the public, rather well filled that
morning--testimony to the stir the little affair had made. Felix,
familiar with the appearance of London police courts, noted the efforts
that had been made to create resemblance to those models of
administration. The justices of the peace, hastily convoked and four in
number, sat on the platform, with a semicircular backing of high gray
screens and a green baize barrier in front of them, so that their legs
and feet were quite invisible. In this way had been preserved the really
essential feature of all human justice--at whose feet it is well known
one must not look! Their faces, on the contrary, were entirely exposed
to view, and presented that pleasing variety of type and unanimity of
expression peculiar to men keeping an open mind. Below them, with his
face toward the public, was placed a gray-bearded man at a table also
covered with green baize, that emblem of authority. And to the side, at
right angles, raised into the air, sat a little terrier of a man, with
gingery, wired hair, obviously the more articulate soul of these
proceedings. As Felix sat down to worship, he noticed Mr. Pogram at the
green baize table, and received from the little man a nod and the
faintest whiff of lavender and gutta-percha. The next moment he caught
sight of Derek and Sheila, screwed sideways against one of the
distempered walls, looking, with their frowning faces, for all the world
like two young devils just turned out of hell. They did not greet him,
and Felix set to work to study the visages of Justice. They impressed
him, on the whole, more favorably than he had expected. The one to his
extreme left, with a gray-whiskered face, was like a large and sleepy cat
of mature age, who moved not, except to write a word now and then on the
paper before him, or to hand back a document. Next to him, a man of
middle age with bald forehead and dark, intelligent eyes seemed conscious
now and again of the body of the court, and Felix thought: 'You have not
been a magistrate long.' The chairman, who sat next, with the moustache
of a heavy dragoon and gray hair parted in the middle, seemed, on the
other hand, oblivious of the public, never once looking at them, and
speaking so that they could not hear him, and Felix thought: 'You have
been a magistrate too long.' Between him and the terrier man, the last
of the four wrote diligently, below a clean, red face with clipped white
moustache and little peaked beard. And Felix thought: 'Retired naval!'
Then he saw that they were bringing in Tryst. The big laborer advanced
between two constables, his broad, unshaven face held high, and his
lowering eyes, through which his strange and tragical soul seemed
looking, turned this way and that. Felix, who, no more than any one
else, could keep his gaze off the trapped creature, felt again all the
sensations of the previous afternoon.
"Guilty? or, Not guilty?" As if repeating something learned by heart,
Tryst answered: "Not guilty, sir." And his big hands, at his sides, kept
clenching and unclenching. The witnesses, four in number, began now to
give their testimony. A sergeant of police recounted how he had been
first summoned to the scene of burning, and afterward arrested Tryst; Sir
Gerald's agent described the eviction and threats uttered by the evicted
man; two persons, a stone-breaker and a tramp, narrated that they had
seen him going in the direction of the rick and barn at five o'clock, and
coming away therefrom at five-fifteen. Punctuated by the barking of the
terrier clerk, all this took time, during which there passed through
Felix many thoughts. Here was a man who had done a wicked, because an
antisocial, act; the sort of act no sane person could defend; an act so
barbarous, stupid, and unnatural that the very beasts of the field would
turn noses away from it! How was it, then, that he himself could not
feel incensed? Was it that in habitually delving into the motives of
men's actions he had lost the power of dissociating what a man did from
what he was; had come to see him, with his thoughts, deeds, and
omissions, as a coherent growth? And he looked at Tryst. The big
laborer was staring with all his soul at Derek. And, suddenly, he saw
his nephew stand up--tilt his dark head back against the wall--and open
his mouth to speak. In sheer alarm Felix touched Mr. Pogram on the arm.
The little square man had already turned; he looked at that moment
extremely like a frog.
"Gentlemen, I wish to say--"
"Who are you? Sit down!" It was the chairman, speaking for the first
time in a voice that could be heard.
"I wish to say that he is not responsible. I--"
"Silence! Silence, sir! Sit down!"
Felix saw his nephew waver, and Sheila pulling at his sleeve; then, to
his infinite relief, the boy sat down. His sallow face was red; his thin
lips compressed to a white line. And slowly under the eyes of the whole
court he grew deadly pale.
Distracted by fear that the boy might make another scene, Felix followed
the proceedings vaguely. They were over soon enough: Tryst committed,
defence reserved, bail refused--all as Mr. Pogram had predicted.
Derek and Sheila had vanished, and in the street outside, idle at this
hour of a working-day, were only the cars of the four magistrates; two or
three little knots of those who had been in court, talking of the case;
and in the very centre of the street, an old, dark-whiskered man, lame,
and leaning on a stick.
"Very nearly being awkward," said the voice of Mr. Pogram in his ear. "I
say, do you think--no hand himself, surely no real hand himself?"
Felix shook his head violently. If the thought had once or twice
occurred to him, he repudiated it with all his force when shaped by
another's mouth--and such a mouth, so wide and rubbery!
"No, no! Strange boy! Extravagant sense of honour--too sensitive,
that's all!"
"Quite so," murmured Mr. Pogram soothingly. "These young people! We live
in a queer age, Mr. Freeland. All sorts of ideas about, nowadays. Young
men like that--better in the army--safe in the army. No ideas there!"
"What happens now?" said Felix.
"Wait!" said Mr. Pogram. "Nothing else for it--wait. Three
months--twiddle his thumbs. Bad system! Rotten!"
"And suppose in the end he's proved innocent?"
Mr. Pogram shook his little round head, whose ears were very red.
"Ah!" he said: "Often say to my wife: 'Wish I weren't a humanitarian!'
Heart of india-rubber--excellent thing--the greatest blessing. Well,
good-morning! Anything you want to say at any time, let me know!" And
exhaling an overpowering whiff of gutta-percha, he grasped Felix's hand
and passed into a house on the door of which was printed in brazen
letters: "Edward Pogram, James Collet. Solicitors. Agents."
On leaving the little humanitarian, Felix drifted back toward the court.
The cars were gone, the groups dispersed; alone, leaning on his stick,
the old, dark-whiskered man stood like a jackdaw with a broken wing.
Yearning, at that moment, for human intercourse, Felix went up to him.
"Fine day," he said.
"Yes, sir, 'tis fine enough." And they stood silent, side by side. The
gulf fixed by class and habit between soul and human soul yawned before
Felix as it had never before. Stirred and troubled, he longed to open
his heart to this old, ragged, dark-eyed, whiskered creature with the
game leg, who looked as if he had passed through all the thorns and
thickets of hard and primitive existence; he longed that the old fellow
should lay bare to him his heart. And for the life of him he could not
think of any mortal words which might bridge the unreal gulf between
them. At last he said:
"You a native here?"
"No, sir. From over Malvern way. Livin' here with my darter, owin' to
my leg. Her 'usband works in this here factory."
"And I'm from London," Felix said.
"Thart you were. Fine place, London, they say!"
Felix shook his head. "Not so fine as this Worcestershire of yours."
The old man turned his quick, dark gaze. "Aye!" he said, "people'll be a
bit nervy-like in towns, nowadays. The country be a good place for a
healthy man, too; I don't want no better place than the country--never
could abide bein' shut in."
"There aren't so very many like you, judging by the towns."
The old man smiled--that smile was the reverse of a bitter tonic coated
with sweet stuff to make it palatable.
"'Tes the want of a life takes 'em," he said. "There's not a many like
me. There's not so many as can't do without the smell of the earth.
With these 'ere newspapers--'tesn't taught nowadays. The boys and gells
they goes to school, and 'tes all in favor of the towns there. I can't
work no more; I'm 's good as gone meself; but I feel sometimes I'll 'ave
to go back. I don't like the streets, an' I guess 'tes worse in London."
"Ah! Perhaps," Felix said, "there are more of us like you than you
think."
Again the old man turned his dark, quick glance.
"Well, an' I widden say no to that, neither. I've seen 'em terrible
homesick. 'Tes certain sure there's lots would never go, ef 'twasn't so
mortial hard on the land. 'Tisn't a bare livin', after that. An'
they're put upon, right and left they're put upon. 'Tes only a man here
and there that 'as something in 'im too strong. I widden never 'ave
stayed in the country ef 'twasn't that I couldn't stand the town life.
'Tes like some breeds o' cattle--you take an' put 'em out o' their own
country, an' you 'ave to take an' put 'em back again. Only some breeds,
though. Others they don' mind where they go. Well, I've seen the
country pass in my time, as you might say; where you used to see three
men you only see one now."
"Are they ever going back onto the land?"
"They tark about it. I read my newspaper reg'lar. In some places I see
they're makin' unions. That an't no good."
"Why?"
The old man smiled again.
"Why! Think of it! The land's different to anythin' else--that's why!
Different work, different hours, four men's work to-day and one's
to-morrow. Work land wi' unions, same as they've got in this 'ere
factory, wi' their eight hours an' their do this an' don' do that? No!
You've got no weather in factories, an' such-like. On the land 'tes a
matter o' weather. On the land a man must be ready for anythin' at any
time; you can't work it no other way. 'Tes along o' God's comin' into
it; an' no use pullin' this way an' that. Union says to me: You mustn't
work after hours. Hoh! I've 'ad to set up all night wi' ship an' cattle
hundreds o' times, an' no extra for it. 'Tes not that way they'll do any
good to keep people on the land. Oh, no!"
"How, then?"
"Well, you'll want new laws, o' course, to prevent farmers an' landowners
takin' their advantage; you want laws to build new cottages; but mainly
'tes a case of hands together; can't be no other--the land's so ticklish.
If 'tesn't hands together, 'tes nothing. I 'ad a master once that was
never content so long's we wasn't content. That farm was better worked
than any in the parish."
"Yes, but the difficulty is to get masters that can see the other side; a
man doesn't care much to look at home."
The old man's dark eyes twinkled.
'No; an' when 'e does, 'tes generally to say: 'Lord, an't I right, an'
an't they wrong, just?' That's powerful customary!"
"It is," said Felix; "God bless us all!"
"Ah! You may well say that, sir; an' we want it, too. A bit more wages
wouldn't come amiss, neither. An' a bit more freedom; 'tes a man's
liberty 'e prizes as well as money."
"Did you hear about this arson case?"
The old man cast a glance this way and that before he answered in a lower
voice:
"They say 'e was put out of his cottage. I've seen men put out for
votin' Liberal; I've seen 'em put out for free-thinkin'; all sorts o'
things I seen em put out for. 'Tes that makes the bad blood. A man
wants to call 'is soul 'is own, when all's said an' done. An' 'e can't,
not in th' old country, unless 'e's got the dibs."
"And yet you never thought of emigrating?"
"Thart of it--ah! thart of it hundreds o' times; but some'ow cudden never
bring mysel' to the scratch o' not seein' th' Beacon any more. I can
just see it from 'ere, you know. But there's not so many like me, an'
gettin' fewer every day."
"Yes," murmured Felix, "that I believe."
"'Tes a 'and-made piece o' goods--the land! You has to be fond of it,
same as of your missis and yer chillen. These poor pitiful fellows
that's workin' in this factory, makin' these here Colonial
ploughs--union's all right for them--'tes all mechanical; but a man on
the land, 'e's got to put the land first, whether 'tes his own or some
one else's, or he'll never do no good; might as well go for a postman,
any day. I'm keepin' of you, though, with my tattle!"
In truth, Felix had looked at the old man, for the accursed question had
begun to worry him: Ought he or not to give the lame old fellow
something? Would it hurt his feelings? Why could he not say simply:
'Friend, I'm better off than you; help me not to feel so unfairly
favored'? Perhaps he might risk it. And, diving into his trousers
pockets, he watched the old man's eyes. If they followed his hand, he
would risk it. But they did not. Withdrawing his hand, he said:
"Have a cigar?"
The old fellow's dark face twinkled.
"I don' know," he said, "as I ever smoked one; but I can have a darned
old try!"
"Take the lot," said Felix, and shuffled into the other's pocket the
contents of his cigar-case. "If you get through one, you'll want the
rest. They're pretty good."
"Ah!" said the old man. "Shuldn' wonder, neither."
"Good-by. I hope your leg will soon be better."
"Thank 'ee, sir. Good-by, thank 'ee!"
Looking back from the turning, Felix saw him still standing there in the
middle of the empty street.
Having undertaken to meet his mother, who was returning this afternoon to
Becket, he had still two hours to put away, and passing Mr. Pogram's
house, he turned into a path across a clover-field and sat down on a
stile. He had many thoughts, sitting at the foot of this little
town--which his great-grandfather had brought about. And chiefly he
thought of the old man he had been talking to, sent there, as it seemed
to him, by Providence, to afford a prototype for his 'The Last of the
Laborers.' Wonderful that the old fellow should talk of loving 'the
Land,' whereon he must have toiled for sixty years or so, at a number of
shillings per week, that would certainly not buy the cigars he had
shovelled into that ragged pocket. Wonderful! And yet, a marvellous
sweet thing, when all was said--this land! Changing its sheen and
texture, the feel of its air, its very scent, from day to day. This land
with myriad offspring of flowers and flying folk; the majestic and
untiring march of seasons: Spring and its wistful ecstasy of saplings,
and its yearning, wild, wind-loosened heart; gleam and song, blossom and
cloud, and the swift white rain; each upturned leaf so little and so glad
to flutter; each wood and field so full of peeping things! Summer! Ah!
Summer, when on the solemn old trees the long days shone and lingered,
and the glory of the meadows and the murmur of life and the scent of
flowers bewildered tranquillity, till surcharge of warmth and beauty
brooded into dark passion, and broke! And Autumn, in mellow haze down on
the fields and woods; smears of gold already on the beeches, smears of
crimson on the rowans, the apple-trees still burdened, and a flax-blue
sky well-nigh merging with the misty air; the cattle browsing in the
lingering golden stillness; not a breath to fan the blue smoke of the
weed-fires--and in the fields no one moving--who would disturb such
mellow peace? And Winter! The long spaces, the long dark; and yet--and
yet, what delicate loveliness of twig tracery; what blur of rose and
brown and purple caught in the bare boughs and in the early sunset sky!
What sharp dark flights of birds in the gray-white firmament! Who cared
what season held in its arms this land that had bred them all!
Not wonderful that into the veins of those who nursed it, tending,
watching its perpetual fertility, should be distilled a love so deep and
subtle that they could not bear to leave it, to abandon its hills, and
greenness, and bird-songs, and all the impress of their forefathers
throughout the ages.
Like so many of his fellows--cultured moderns, alien to the larger forms
of patriotism, that rich liquor brewed of maps and figures, commercial
profit, and high-cockalorum, which served so perfectly to swell smaller
heads--Felix had a love of his native land resembling love for a woman, a
kind of sensuous chivalry, a passion based on her charm, on her
tranquillity, on the power she had to draw him into her embrace, to make
him feel that he had come from her, from her alone, and into her alone
was going back. And this green parcel of his native land, from which the
half of his blood came, and that the dearest half, had a potency over his
spirit that he might well be ashamed of in days when the true Briton was
a town-bred creature with a foot of fancy in all four corners of the
globe. There was ever to him a special flavor about the elm-girt fields,
the flowery coppices, of this country of the old Moretons, a special
fascination in its full, white-clouded skies, its grass-edged roads, its
pied and creamy cattle, and the blue-green loom of the Malvern hills. If
God walked anywhere for him, it was surely here. Sentiment! Without
sentiment, without that love, each for his own corner, 'the Land' was
lost indeed! Not if all Becket blew trumpets till kingdom came, would
'the Land' be reformed, if they lost sight of that! To fortify men in
love for their motherland, to see that insecurity, grinding poverty,
interference, petty tyranny, could no longer undermine that love--this
was to be, surely must be, done! Monotony? Was that cry true? What
work now performed by humble men was less monotonous than work on the
land? What work was even a tenth part so varied? Never quite the same
from day to day: Now weeding, now hay, now roots, now hedging; now corn,
with sowing, reaping, threshing, stacking, thatching; the care of beasts,
and their companionship; sheep-dipping, shearing, wood-gathering,
apple-picking, cider-making; fashioning and tarring gates; whitewashing
walls; carting; trenching--never, never two days quite the same!
Monotony! The poor devils in factories, in shops, in mines; poor devils
driving 'busses, punching tickets, cleaning roads; baking; cooking;
sewing; typing! Stokers; machine-tenders; brick-layers; dockers; clerks!
Ah! that great company from towns might well cry out: Monotony! True,
they got their holidays; true, they had more social life--a point that
might well be raised at Becket: Holidays and social life for men on the
soil! But--and suddenly Felix thought of the long, long holiday that was
before the laborer Tryst. 'Twiddle his thumbs'--in the words of the
little humanitarian--twiddle his thumbs in a space twelve feet by seven!
No sky to see, no grass to smell, no beast to bear him company; no
anything--for, what resources in himself had this poor creature? No
anything, but to sit with tragic eyes fixed on the wall before him for
eighty days and eighty nights, before they tried him. And then--not till
then--would his punishment for that moment's blind revenge for grievous
wrong begin! What on this earth of God's was more disproportioned, and
wickedly extravagant, more crassly stupid, than the arrangements of his
most perfect creature, man? What a devil was man, who could yet rise to
such sublime heights of love and heroism! What a ferocious brute, the
most ferocious and cold-blooded brute that lived! Of all creatures most
to be stampeded by fear into a callous torturer! 'Fear'--thought
Felix--'fear! Not momentary panic, such as makes our brother animals do
foolish things; conscious, calculating fear, paralyzing the reason of our
minds and the generosity of our hearts. A detestable thing Tryst has
done, a hateful act; but his punishment will be twentyfold as hateful!'
And, unable to sit and think of it, Felix rose and walked on through the
fields. . . .
CHAPTER XXV
He was duly at Transham station in time for the London train, and, after
a minute consecrated to looking in the wrong direction, he saw his mother
already on the platform with her bag, an air-cushion, and a beautifully
neat roll.
'Travelling third!' he thought. 'Why will she do these things?'
Slightly flushed, she kissed Felix with an air of abstraction.
"How good of you to meet me, darling!"
Felix pointed in silence to the crowded carriage from which she had
emerged. Frances Freeland looked a little rueful. "It would have been
delightful," she said. "There was a dear baby there and, of course, I
couldn't have the window down, so it WAS rather hot."
Felix, who could just see the dear baby, said dryly:
"So that's how you go about, is it? Have you had any lunch?"
Frances Freeland put her hand under his arm. "Now, don't fuss, darling!
Here's sixpence for the porter. There's only one trunk--it's got a
violet label. Do you know them? They're so useful. You see them at
once. I must get you some."
"Let me take those things. You won't want this cushion. I'll let the
air out."
"I'm afraid you won't be able, dear. It's quite the best screw I've ever
come across--a splendid thing; I can't get it undone."
"Ah!" said Felix. "And now we may as well go out to the car!"
He was conscious of a slight stoppage in his mother's footsteps and
rather a convulsive squeeze of her hand on his arm. Looking at her face,
he discovered it occupied with a process whose secret he could not
penetrate, a kind of disarray of her features, rapidly and severely
checked, and capped with a resolute smile. They had already reached the
station exit, where Stanley's car was snorting. Frances Freeland looked
at it, then, mounting rather hastily, sat, compressing her lips.
When they were off, Felix said:
"Would you like to stop at the church and have a look at the brasses to
your grandfather and the rest of them?"
His mother, who had slipped her hand under his arm again, answered:
"No, dear; I've seen them. The church is not at all beautiful. I like
the old church at Becket so much better; it is such a pity your
great-grandfather was not buried there."
She had never quite got over the lack of 'niceness' about those ploughs.
Going, as was the habit of Stanley's car, at considerable speed, Felix
was not at first certain whether the peculiar little squeezes his arm was
getting were due to the bounds of the creature under them or to some
cause more closely connected with his mother, and it was not till they
shaved a cart at the turning of the Becket drive that it suddenly dawned
on him that she was in terror. He discovered it in looking round just as
she drew her smile over a spasm of her face and throat. And, leaning out
of the car, he said:
"Drive very slowly, Batter; I want to look at the trees."
A little sigh rewarded him. Since SHE had said nothing, He said nothing,
and Clara's words in the hall seemed to him singularly tactless:
"Oh! I meant to have reminded you, Felix, to send the car back and take
a fly. I thought you knew that Mother's terrified of motors." And at his
mother's answer:
"Oh! no; I quite enjoyed it, dear," he thought: 'Bless her heart! She IS
a stoic!'
Whether or no to tell her of the 'kick-up at Joyfields' exercised his
mind. The question was intricate, for she had not yet been informed that
Nedda and Derek were engaged, and Felix did not feel at liberty to
forestall the young people. That was their business. On the other hand,
she would certainly glean from Clara a garbled understanding of the
recent events at Joyfields, if she were not first told of them by
himself. And he decided to tell her, with the natural trepidation of one
who, living among principles and theories, never quite knew what those,
for whom each fact is unrelated to anything else under the moon, were
going to think. Frances Freeland, he knew well, kept facts and theories
especially unrelated, or, rather, modified her facts to suit her
theories, instead of, like Felix, her theories to suit her facts. For
example, her instinctive admiration for Church and State, her instinctive
theory that they rested on gentility and people who were nice, was never
for a moment shaken when she saw a half-starved baby of the slums. Her
heart would impel her to pity and feed the poor little baby if she could,
but to correlate the creature with millions of other such babies, and
those millions with the Church and State, would not occur to her. And if
Felix made an attempt to correlate them for her she would look at him and
think: 'Dear boy! How good he is! I do wish he wouldn't let that line
come in his forehead; it does so spoil it!' And she would say: "Yes,
darling, I know, it's very sad; only I'm NOT clever." And, if a Liberal
government chanced to be in power, would add: "Of course, I do think this
Government is dreadful. I MUST show you a sermon of the dear Bishop of
Walham. I cut it out of the 'Daily Mystery.' He puts things so well--he
always has such nice ideas."
And Felix, getting up, would walk a little and sit down again too
suddenly. Then, as if entreating him to look over her want of
'cleverness,' she would put out a hand that, for all its whiteness, had
never been idle and smooth his forehead. It had sometimes touched him
horribly to see with what despair she made attempts to follow him in his
correlating efforts, and with what relief she heard him cease enough to
let her say: "Yes, dear; only, I must show you this new kind of expanding
cork. It's simply splendid. It bottles up everything!" And after
staring at her just a moment he would acquit her of irony. Very often
after these occasions he had thought, and sometimes said: "Mother, you're
the best Conservative I ever met." She would glance at him then, with a
special loving doubtfulness, at a loss as to whether or no he had
designed to compliment her.
When he had given her half an hour to rest he made his way to the blue
corridor, where a certain room was always kept for her, who never
occupied it long enough at a time to get tired of it. She was lying on a
sofa in a loose gray cashmere gown. The windows were open, and the light
breeze just moved in the folds of the chintz curtains and stirred perfume
from a bowl of pinks--her favorite flowers. There was no bed in this
bedroom, which in all respects differed from any other in Clara's house,
as though the spirit of another age and temper had marched in and
dispossessed the owner. Felix had a sensation that one was by no means
all body here. On the contrary. There was not a trace of the body
anywhere; as if some one had decided that the body was not quite nice.
No bed, no wash-stand, no chest of drawers, no wardrobe, no mirror, not
even a jar of Clara's special pot-pourri. And Felix said:
"This can't be your bedroom, Mother?"
Frances Freeland answered, with a touch of deprecating quizzicality:
"Oh yes, darling. I must show you my arrangements." And she rose.
"This," she said, "you see, goes under there, and that under here; and
that again goes under this. Then they all go under that, and then I pull
this. It's lovely."
"But why?" said Felix.
"Oh! but don't you see? It's so nice; nobody can tell. And it doesn't
give any trouble."
"And when you go to bed?"
"Oh! I just pop my clothes into this and open that. And there I am.
It's simply splendid."
"I see," said Felix. "Do you think I might sit down, or shall I go
through?"
Frances Freeland loved him with her eyes, and said:
"Naughty boy!"
And Felix sat down on what appeared to be a window-seat.
"Well," he said, with slight uneasiness, for she was hovering, "I think
you're wonderful."
Frances Freeland put away an impeachment that she evidently felt to be
too soft.
"Oh! but it's all so simple, darling." And Felix saw that she had
something in her hand, and mind.
"This is my little electric brush. It'll do wonders with your hair.
While you sit there, I'll just try it."
A clicking and a whirring had begun to occur close to his ear, and
something darted like a gadfly at his scalp.
"I came to tell you something serious, Mother."
"Yes, darling; it'll be simply lovely to hear it; and you mustn't mind
this, because it really is a first-rate thing--quite new."
Now, how is it, thought Felix, that any one who loves the new as she
does, when it's made of matter, will not even look at it when it's made
of mind? And, while the little machine buzzed about his head, he
proceeded to detail to her the facts of the state of things that existed
at Joyfields.
When he had finished, she said:
"Now, darling, bend down a little."
Felix bent down. And the little machine began severely tweaking the
hairs on the nape of his neck. He sat up again rather suddenly.
Frances Freeland was contemplating the little machine.
"How very provoking! It's never done that before!"
"Quite so!" Felix murmured. "But about Joyfields?"
"Oh, my dear, it IS such a pity they don't get on with those Mallorings!
I do think it sad they weren't brought up to go to church."
Felix stared, not knowing whether to be glad or sorry that his recital
had not roused within her the faintest suspicion of disaster. How he
envied her that single-minded power of not seeing further than was
absolutely needful! And suddenly he thought: 'She really is wonderful!
With her love of church, how it must hurt her that we none of us go, not
even John! And yet she never says a word. There really is width about
her; a power of accepting the inevitable. Never was woman more
determined to make the best of a bad job. It's a great quality!' And he
heard her say:
"Now, darling, if I give you this, you must promise me to use it every
morning. You'll find you'll soon have a splendid crop of little young
hairs."
"I know," he said gloomily; "but they won't come to anything. Age has
got my head, Mother, just as it's got 'the Land's.'"
"Oh, nonsense! You must go on with it, that's all!"
Felix turned so that he could look at her. She was moving round the room
now, meticulously adjusting the framed photographs of her family that
were the only decoration of the walls. How formal, chiselled, and
delicate her face, yet how almost fanatically decisive! How frail and
light her figure, yet how indomitably active! And the memory assailed
him of how, four years ago, she had defeated double pneumonia without
having a doctor, simply by lying on her back. 'She leaves trouble,' he
thought, 'until it's under her nose, then simply tells it that it isn't
there. There's something very English about that.'
She was chasing a bluebottle now with a little fan made of wire, and,
coming close to Felix, said:
"Have you seen these, darling? You've only to hit the fly and it kills
him at once."
"But do you ever hit the fly?"
"Oh, yes!" And she waved the fan at the bluebottle, which avoided it
without seeming difficulty.
"I can't bear hurting them, but I DON'T like flies. There!"
The bluebottle flew out of the window behind Felix and in at the one that
was not behind him. He rose.
"You ought to rest before tea, Mother."
He felt her searching him with her eyes, as if trying desperately to find
something she might bestow upon or do for him.
"Would you like this wire--"
With a feeling that he was defrauding love, he turned and fled. She would
never rest while he was there! And yet there was that in her face which
made him feel a brute to go.
Passing out of the house, sunk in its Monday hush, no vestige of a Bigwig
left, Felix came to that new-walled mound where the old house of the
Moretons had been burned 'by soldiers from Tewkesbury and Gloucester,' as
said the old chronicles dear to the heart of Clara. And on the wall he
sat him down. Above, in the uncut grass, he could see the burning blue
of a peacock's breast, where the heraldic bird stood digesting grain in
the repose of perfect breeding, and below him gardeners were busy with
the gooseberries. 'Gardeners and the gooseberries of the great!' he
thought. 'Such is the future of our Land.' And he watched them. How
methodically they went to work! How patient and well-done-for they
looked! After all, was it not the ideal future? Gardeners, gooseberries,
and the great! Each of the three content in that station of life into
which--! What more could a country want? Gardeners, gooseberries, and
the great! The phrase had a certain hypnotic value. Why trouble? Why
fuss? Gardeners, gooseberries, and the great! A perfect land! A land
dedicate to the week-end! Gardeners, goose--! And suddenly he saw that
he was not alone. Half hidden by the angle of the wall, on a stone of the
foundations, carefully preserved and nearly embedded in the nettles which
Clara had allowed to grow because they added age to the appearance, was
sitting a Bigwig. One of the Settleham faction, he had impressed Felix
alike by his reticence, the steady sincerity of his gray eyes, a
countenance that, beneath a simple and delicate urbanity, had still in it
something of the best type of schoolboy. 'How comes he to have stayed?'
he mused. 'I thought they always fed and scattered!' And having
received an answer to his salutation, he moved across and said:
"I imagined you'd gone."
"I've been having a look round. It's very jolly here. My affections are
in the North, but I suppose this is pretty well the heart of England."
"Near 'the big song,'" Felix answered. "There'll never be anything more
English than Shakespeare, when all's said and done." And he took a
steady, sidelong squint at his companion. 'This is another of the types
I've been looking for,' he reflected. The peculiar 'don't-quite-touch-me'
accent of the aristocrat--and of those who would be--had almost left
this particular one, as though he secretly aspired to rise superior and
only employed it in the nervousness of his first greetings. 'Yes,'
thought Felix, 'he's just about the very best we can do among those who
sit upon 'the Land.' I would wager there's not a better landlord nor a
better fellow in all his class, than this one. He's chalks away superior
to Malloring, if I know anything of faces--would never have turned poor
Tryst out. If this exception were the rule! And yet--! Does he, can
he, go quite far enough to meet the case? If not--what hope of
regeneration from above? Would he give up his shooting? Could he give up
feeling he's a leader? Would he give up his town house and collecting
whatever it is he collects? Could he let himself sink down and merge
till he was just unseen leaven of good-fellowship and good-will, working
in the common bread?' And squinting at that sincere, clean, charming,
almost fine face, he answered himself unwillingly: 'He could not!' And
suddenly he knew that he was face to face with the tremendous question
which soon or late confronts all thinkers. Sitting beside him--was the
highest product of the present system! With its charm, humanity,
courage, chivalry up to a point, its culture, and its cleanliness, this
decidedly rare flower at the end of a tall stalk, with dark and tortuous
roots and rank foliage, was in a sense the sole justification of power
wielded from above. And was it good enough? Was it quite good enough?
Like so many other thinkers, Felix hesitated to reply. If only merit and
the goods of this world could be finally divorced! If the reward of
virtue were just men's love and an unconscious self-respect! If only 'to
have nothing' were the highest honour! And yet, to do away with this
beside him and put in its place--What? No kiss-me-quick change had a
chance of producing anything better. To scrap the long growth of man and
start afresh was but to say: 'Since in the past the best that man has
done has not been good enough, I have a perfect faith in him for the
future!' No! That was a creed for archangels and other extremists.
Safer to work on what we had! And he began:
"Next door to this estate I'm told there's ten thousand acres almost
entirely grass and covert, owned by Lord Baltimore, who lives in Norfolk,
London, Cannes, and anywhere else that the whim takes him. He comes down
here twice a year to shoot. The case is extremely common. Surely it
spells paralysis. If land is to be owned at all in such great lumps,
owners ought at least to live on the lumps, and to pass very high
examinations as practical farmers. They ought to be the life and soul,
the radiating sun, of their little universes; or else they ought to be
cleared out. How expect keen farming to start from such an example? It
really looks to me as if the game laws would have to go." And he
redoubled his scrutiny of the Bigwig's face. A little furrow in its brow
had deepened visibly, but nodding, he said:
"The absentee landlord is a curse, of course. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a
one myself. And I'm bound to say--though I'm keen on shooting--if the
game laws were abolished, it might do a lot."
"YOU wouldn't move in that direction, I suppose?"
The Bigwig smiled--charming, rather whimsical, that smile.
"Honestly, I'm not up to it. The spirit, you know, but the flesh--! My
line is housing and wages, of course."
'There it is,' thought Felix. 'Up to a point, they'll move--not up to
THE point. It's all fiddling. One won't give up his shooting; another
won't give up his power; a third won't give up her week-ends; a fourth
won't give up his freedom. Our interest in the thing is all
lackadaisical, a kind of bun-fight of pet notions. There's no real
steam.' And abruptly changing the subject, he talked of pictures to the
pleasant Bigwig in the sleepy afternoon. Of how this man could paint, and
that man couldn't. And in the uncut grass the peacock slowly moved,
displaying his breast of burning blue; and below, the gardeners worked
among the gooseberries.
CHAPTER XXVI
Nedda, borrowing the bicycle of Clara's maid, Sirrett, had been over to
Joyfields, and only learned on her return of her grandmother's arrival.
In her bath before dinner there came to her one of those strategic
thoughts that even such as are no longer quite children will sometimes
conceive. She hurried desperately into her clothes, and, ready full
twenty minutes before the gong was due to sound, made her way to her
grandmother's room. Frances Freeland had just pulled THIS, and, to her
astonishment, THAT had not gone in properly. She was looking at it
somewhat severely, when she heard Nedda's knock. Drawing a screen
temporarily over the imperfection, she said: "Come in!"
The dear child looked charming in her white evening dress with one red
flower in her hair; and while she kissed her, she noted that the neck of
her dress was just a little too open to be quite nice, and at once
thought: 'I've got the very thing for that.'
Going to a drawer that no one could have suspected of being there, she
took from it a little diamond star. Getting delicate but firm hold of
the Mechlin at the top of the frock, she popped it in, so that the neck
was covered at least an inch higher, and said:
"Now, ducky, you're to keep that as a little present. You've no idea how
perfectly it suits you just like this." And having satisfied for the
moment her sense of niceness and that continual itch to part with
everything she had, she surveyed her granddaughter, lighted up by that
red flower, and said:
"How sweet you look!"
Nedda, looking down past cheeks colored by pleasure at the new little
star on a neck rather browned by her day in the sun, murmured:
"Oh, Granny! it's much too lovely! You mustn't give it to me!"
These were moments that Frances Freeland loved best in life; and, with
the untruthfulness in which she only indulged when she gave things away,
or otherwise benefited her neighbors with or without their will, she
added: "It's quite wasted; I never wear it myself." And, seeing Nedda's
smile, for the girl recollected perfectly having admired it during dinner
at Uncle John's, and at Becket itself, she said decisively, "So that's
that!" and settled her down on the sofa. But just as she was thinking,
'I have the very thing for the dear child's sunburn,' Nedda said:
"Granny, dear, I've been meaning to tell you--Derek and I are engaged."
For the moment Frances Freeland could do nothing but tremulously
interlace her fingers.
"Oh, but, darling," she said very gravely, "have you thought?"
"I think of nothing else, Granny."
"But has he thought?"
Nedda nodded.
Frances Freeland sat staring straight before her. Nedda and Derek, Derek
and Nedda! The news was almost unintelligible; those two were still for
her barely more than little creatures to be tucked up at night. Engaged!
Marriage! Between those who were both as near to her, almost, as her own
children had been! The effort was for the moment quite too much for her,
and a sort of pain disturbed her heart. Then the crowning principle of
her existence came a little to her aid. No use in making a fuss; must
put the best face on it, whether it were going to come to anything or
not! And she said:
"Well, darling, I don't know, I'm sure. I dare say it's very lovely for
you. But do you think you've seen enough of him?"
Nedda gave her a swift look, then dropped her lashes, so that her eyes
seemed closed. Snuggling up, she said:
"No, Granny, I do wish I could see more; if only I could go and stay with
them a little!"
And as she planted that dart of suggestion, the gong sounded.
In Frances Freeland, lying awake till two, as was her habit, the
suggestion grew. To this growth not only her custom of putting the best
face on things, but her incurable desire to make others happy, and an
instinctive sympathy with love-affairs, all contributed; moreover, Felix
had said something about Derek's having been concerned in something rash.
If darling Nedda were there it would occupy his mind and help to make him
careful. Never dilatory in forming resolutions, she decided to take the
girl over with her on the morrow. Kirsteen had a dear little spare room,
and Nedda should take her bag. It would be a nice surprise for them all.
Accordingly, next morning, not wanting to give any trouble, she sent
Thomas down to the Red Lion, where they had a comfortable fly, with a
very steady, respectable driver, and ordered it to come at half past two.
Then, without saying anything to Clara, she told Nedda to be ready to pop
in her bag, trusting to her powers of explaining everything to everybody
without letting anybody know anything. Little difficulties of this sort
never bunkered her; she was essentially a woman of action. And on the
drive to Joyfields she stilled the girl's quavering with:
"It's all right, darling; it'll be very nice for them."
She was perhaps the only person in the world who was not just a little
bit afraid of Kirsteen. Indeed, she was constitutionally unable to be
afraid of anything, except motor-cars, and, of course, earwigs, and even
them one must put up with. Her critical sense told her that this woman
in blue was just like anybody else, besides her father had been the
colonel of a Highland regiment, which was quite nice, and one must put
the best face on her.
In this way, pointing out the beauty of each feature of the scenery, and
not permitting herself or Nedda to think about the bag, they drove until
they came to Joyfields.
Kirsteen alone was in, and, having sent Nedda into the orchard to look
for her uncle, Frances Freeland came at once to the point. It was so
important, she thought, that darling Nedda should see more of dear Derek.
They were very young, and if she could stay for a few weeks, they would
both know their minds so much better. She had made her bring her bag,
because she knew dear Kirsteen would agree with her; and it would be so
nice for them all. Felix had told her about that poor man who had done
this dreadful thing, and she thought that if Nedda were here it would be
a distraction. She was a very good child, and quite useful in the house.
And while she was speaking she watched Kirsteen, and thought: 'She is
very handsome, and altogether ladylike; only it is such a pity she wears
that blue thing in her hair--it makes her so conspicuous.' And rather
unexpectedly she said:
"Do you know, dear, I believe I know the very thing to keep your hair
from getting loose. It's such lovely hair. And this is quite a new
thing, and doesn't show at all; invented by a very nice hairdresser in
Worcester. It's simplicity itself. Do let me show you!" Quickly going
over, she removed the kingfisher-blue fillet, and making certain passes
with her fingers through the hair, murmured:
"It's so beautifully fine; it seems such a pity not to show it all, dear.
Now look at yourself!" And from the recesses of her pocket she produced
a little mirror. "I'm sure Tod will simply love it like that. It'll be
such a nice change for him."
Kirsteen, with just a faint wrinkling of her lips and eyebrows, waited
till she had finished. Then she said:
"Yes, Mother, dear, I'm sure he will," and replaced the fillet. A
patient, half-sad, half-quizzical smile visited Frances Freeland's lips,
as who should say: 'Yes, I know you think that I'm a fuss-box, but it
really is a pity that you wear it so, darling!'
At sight of that smile, Kirsteen got up and kissed her gravely on the
forehead.
When Nedda came back from a fruitless search for Tod, her bag was already
in the little spare bedroom and Frances Freeland gone. The girl had
never yet been alone with her aunt, for whom she had a fervent admiration
not unmixed with awe. She idealized her, of course, thinking of her as
one might think of a picture or statue, a symbolic figure, standing for
liberty and justice and the redress of wrong. Her never-varying garb of
blue assisted the girl's fancy, for blue was always the color of ideals
and aspiration--was not blue sky the nearest one could get to
heaven--were not blue violets the flowers of spring? Then, too, Kirsteen
was a woman with whom it would be quite impossible to gossip or
small-talk; with her one could but simply and directly say what one felt,
and only that over things which really mattered. And this seemed to
Nedda so splendid that it sufficed in itself to prevent the girl from
saying anything whatever. She longed to, all the same, feeling that to
be closer to her aunt meant to be closer to Derek. Yet, with all, she
knew that her own nature was very different; this, perhaps, egged her on,
and made her aunt seem all the more exciting. She waited breathless till
Kirsteen said:
"Yes, you and Derek must know each other better. The worst kind of
prison in the world is a mistaken marriage."
Nedda nodded fervently. "It must be. But I think one knows, Aunt
Kirsteen!"
She felt as if she were being searched right down to the soul before the
answer came:
"Perhaps. I knew myself. I have seen others who did--a few. I think
you might."
Nedda flushed from sheer joy. "I could never go on if I didn't love. I
feel I couldn't, even if I'd started."
With another long look through narrowing eyes, Kirsteen answered:
"Yes. You would want truth. But after marriage truth is an unhappy
thing, Nedda, if you have made a mistake."
"It must be dreadful. Awful."
"So don't make a mistake, my dear--and don't let him."
Nedda answered solemnly:
"I won't--oh, I won't!"
Kirsteen had turned away to the window, and Nedda heard her say quietly
to herself:
"'Liberty's a glorious feast!'"
Trembling all over with the desire to express what was in her, Nedda
stammered:
"I would never keep anything that wanted to be free--never, never! I
would never try to make any one do what they didn't want to!"
She saw her aunt smile, and wondered whether she had said anything
exceptionally foolish. But it was not foolish--surely not--to say what
one really felt.
"Some day, Nedda, all the world will say that with you. Until then we'll
fight those who won't say it. Have you got everything in your room you
want? Let's come and see."
To pass from Becket to Joyfields was really a singular experience. At
Becket you were certainly supposed to do exactly what you liked, but the
tyranny of meals, baths, scents, and other accompaniments of the
'all-body' regime soon annihilated every impulse to do anything but just
obey it. At Joyfields, bodily existence was a kind of perpetual
skirmish, a sort of grudged accompaniment to a state of soul. You might
be alone in the house at any meal-time. You might or might not have water
in your jug. And as to baths, you had to go out to a little white-washed
shed at the back, with a brick floor, where you pumped on yourself,
prepared to shout out, "Halloo! I'm here!" in case any one else came
wanting to do the same. The conditions were in fact almost perfect for
seeing more of one another. Nobody asked where you were going, with whom
going, or how going. You might be away by day or night without exciting
curiosity or comment. And yet you were conscious of a certain something
always there, holding the house together; some principle of life, or
perhaps--just a woman in blue. There, too, was that strangest of all
phenomena in an English home--no game ever played, outdoors or in.
The next fortnight, while the grass was ripening, was a wonderful time
for Nedda, given up to her single passion--of seeing more of him who so
completely occupied her heart. She was at peace now with Sheila, whose
virility forbade that she should dispute pride of place with this soft
and truthful guest, so evidently immersed in rapture. Besides, Nedda had
that quality of getting on well with her own sex, found in those women
who, though tenacious, are not possessive; who, though humble, are
secretly very self-respecting; who, though they do not say much about it,
put all their eggs in one basket; above all, who disengage, no matter
what their age, a candid but subtle charm.
But that fortnight was even more wonderful for Derek, caught between two
passions--both so fervid. For though the passion of his revolt against
the Mallorings did not pull against his passion for Nedda, they both
tugged at him. And this had one curious psychological effect. It made
his love for Nedda more actual, less of an idealization. Now that she
was close to him, under the same roof, he felt the full allurement of her
innocent warmth; he would have been cold-blooded indeed if he had not
taken fire, and, his pride always checking the expression of his
feelings, they glowed ever hotter underneath.
Yet, over those sunshiny days there hung a shadow, as of something kept
back, not shared between them; a kind of waiting menace. Nedda learned of
Kirsteen and Sheila all the useful things she could; the evenings she
passed with Derek, those long evenings of late May and early June, this
year so warm and golden. They walked generally in the direction of the
hills. A favorite spot was a wood of larches whose green shoots had not
yet quite ceased to smell of lemons. Tall, slender things those trees,
whose stems and dried lower branch-growth were gray, almost sooty, up to
the feathery green of the tops, that swayed and creaked faintly in a
wind, with a soughing of their branches like the sound of the sea. From
the shelter of those Highland trees, rather strange in such a
countryside, they two could peer forth at the last sunlight
gold-powdering the fringed branches, at the sunset flush dyeing the sky
above the Beacon; watch light slowly folding gray wings above the
hay-fields and the elms; mark the squirrels scurry along, and the
pigeons' evening flight. A stream ran there at the edge, and beech-trees
grew beside it. In the tawny-dappled sand bed of that clear water, and
the gray-green dappled trunks of those beeches with their great, sinuous,
long-muscled roots, was that something which man can never tame or garden
out of the land: the strength of unconquerable fertility--the remote deep
life in Nature's heart. Men and women had their spans of existence; those
trees seemed as if there forever! From generation to generation lovers
might come and, looking on this strength and beauty, feel in their veins
the sap of the world. Here the laborer and his master, hearing the wind
in the branches and the water murmuring down, might for a brief minute
grasp the land's unchangeable wild majesty. And on the far side of that
little stream was a field of moon-colored flowers that had for Nedda a
strange fascination. Once the boy jumped across and brought her back a
handkerchief full. They were of two kinds: close to the water's edge the
marsh orchis, and farther back, a small marguerite. Out of this they
made a crown of the alternate flowers, and a girdle for her waist. That
was an evening of rare beauty, and warm enough already for an early
chafer to go blooming in the dusk. An evening when they wandered with
their arms round each other a long time, silent, stopping to listen to an
owl; stopping to point out each star coming so shyly up in the
gray-violet of the sky. And that was the evening when they had a strange
little quarrel, sudden as a white squall on a blue sea, or the tiff of
two birds shooting up in a swift spiral of attack and then--all over.
Would he come to-morrow to see her milking? He could not. Why? He could
not; he would be out. Ah! he never told her where he went; he never let
her come with him among the laborers like Sheila.
"I can't; I'm pledged not."
"Then you don't trust me!"
"Of course I trust you; but a promise is a promise. You oughtn't to ask
me, Nedda."
"No; but I would never have promised to keep anything from you."
"You don't understand."
"Oh! yes, I do. Love doesn't mean the same to you that it does to me."
"How do you know what it means to me?"
"I couldn't have a secret from you."
"Then you don't count honour."
"Honour only binds oneself!"
"What d'you mean by that?"
"I include you--you don't include me in yourself, that's all."
"I think you're very unjust. I was obliged to promise; it doesn't only
concern myself."
Then silent, motionless, a yard apart, they looked fiercely at each
other, their hearts stiff and sore, and in their brains no glimmer of
perception of anything but tragedy. What more tragic than to have come
out of an elysium of warm arms round each other, to this sudden
hostility! And the owl went on hooting, and the larches smelled sweet!
And all around was the same soft dusk wherein the flowers in her hair and
round her waist gleamed white! But for Nedda the world had suddenly
collapsed. Tears rushed into her eyes; she shook her head and turned
away, hiding them passionately. . . . A full minute passed, each
straining to make no sound and catch the faintest sound from the other,
till in her breathing there was a little clutch. His fingers came
stealing round, touched her cheeks, and were wetted. His arms suddenly
squeezed all breath out of her; his lips fastened on hers. She answered
those lips with her own desperately, bending her head back, shutting her
wet eyes. And the owl hooted, and the white flowers fell into the dusk
off her hair and waist.
After that, they walked once more enlaced, avoiding with what perfect
care any allusion to the sudden tragedy, giving themselves up to the
bewildering ecstasy that had started throbbing in their blood with that
kiss, longing only not to spoil it. And through the sheltering larch
wood their figures moved from edge to edge, like two little souls in
paradise, unwilling to come forth.
After that evening love had a poignancy it had not quite had before; at
once deeper, sweeter, tinged for both of them with the rich darkness of
passion, and with discovery that love does not mean a perfect merger of
one within another. For both felt themselves in the right over that
little quarrel. The boy that he could not, must not, resign what was not
his to resign; feeling dimly, without being quite able to shape the
thought even to himself, that a man has a life of action into which a
woman cannot always enter, with which she cannot always be identified.
The girl feeling that she did not want any life into which he did not
enter, so that it was hard that he should want to exclude her from
anything. For all that, she did not try again to move him to let her
into the secret of his plans of revolt and revenge, and disdained
completely to find them out from Sheila or her aunt.
And the grass went on ripening. Many and various as the breeds of men,
or the trees of a forest, were the stalks that made up that greenish
jungle with the waving, fawn-colored surface; of rye-grass and
brome-grass, of timothy, plantain, and yarrow; of bent-grass and
quake-grass, foxtail, and the green-hearted trefoil; of dandelion, dock,
musk-thistle, and sweet-scented vernal.
On the 10th of June Tod began cutting his three fields; the whole family,
with Nedda and the three Tryst children, working like slaves. Old Gaunt,
who looked to the harvests to clothe him for the year, came to do his
share of raking, and any other who could find some evening hours to
spare. The whole was cut and carried in three days of glorious weather.
The lovers were too tired the last evening of hay harvest to go rambling,
and sat in the orchard watching the moon slide up through the coppice
behind the church. They sat on Tod's log, deliciously weary, in the
scent of the new-mown hay, while moths flitted gray among the blue
darkness of the leaves, and the whitened trunks of the apple-trees
gleamed ghostly. It was very warm; a night of whispering air, opening
all hearts. And Derek said:
"You'll know to-morrow, Nedda."
A flutter of fear overtook her. What would she know?
CHAPTER XXVII
On the 13th of June Sir Gerald Malloring, returning home to dinner from
the House of Commons, found on his hall table, enclosed in a letter from
his agent, the following paper:
"We, the undersigned laborers on Sir Gerald Malloring's estate, beg
respectfully to inform him that we consider it unjust that any laborer
should be evicted from his cottage for any reason connected with private
life, or social or political convictions. And we respectfully demand
that, before a laborer receives notice to quit for any such reason, the
case shall be submitted to all his fellow laborers on the estate; and
that in the future he shall only receive such notice if a majority of his
fellow laborers record their votes in favor of the notice being given.
In the event of this demand being refused, we regretfully decline to take
any hand in getting in the hay on Sir Gerald Malloring's estate."
Then followed ninety-three signatures, or signs of the cross with names
printed after them.
The agent's letter which enclosed this document mentioned that the hay
was already ripe for cutting; that everything had been done to induce the
men to withdraw the demand, without success, and that the farmers were
very much upset. The thing had been sprung on them, the agent having no
notion that anything of the sort was on foot. It had been very secretly,
very cleverly, managed; and, in the agent's opinion, was due to Mr.
Freeland's family. He awaited Sir Gerald's instructions. Working double
tides, with luck and good weather, the farmers and their families might
perhaps save half of the hay.
Malloring read this letter twice, and the enclosure three times, and
crammed them deep down into his pocket.
It was pre-eminently one of those moments which bring out the qualities
of Norman blood. And the first thing he did was to look at the
barometer. It was going slowly down. After a month of first-class
weather it would not do that without some sinister intention. An old
glass, he believed in it implicitly. He tapped, and it sank further. He
stood there frowning. Should he consult his wife? General friendliness
said: Yes! A Norman instinct of chivalry, and perhaps the deeper Norman
instinct, that, when it came to the point, women were too violent, said,
No! He went upstairs three at a time, and came down two. And all
through dinner he sat thinking it over, and talking as if nothing had
happened; so that he hardly spoke. Three-quarters of the hay at stake,
if it rained soon! A big loss to the farmers, a further reduction in
rents already far too low. Should he grin and bear it, and by doing
nothing show these fellows that he could afford to despise their cowardly
device? For it WAS cowardly to let his grass get ripe and play it this
low trick! But if he left things unfought this time, they would try it
on again with the corn--not that there was much of that on the estate of
a man who only believed in corn as a policy.
Should he make the farmers sack the lot and get in other labor? But
where? Agricultural laborers were made, not born. And it took a deuce
of a lot of making, at that! Should he suspend wages till they withdrew
their demand? That might do--but he would still lose the hay. The hay!
After all, anybody, pretty well, could make hay; it was the least skilled
of all farm work, so long as the farmers were there to drive the machines
and direct. Why not act vigorously? And his jaws set so suddenly on a
piece of salmon that he bit his tongue. The action served to harden a
growing purpose. So do small events influence great! Suspend those
fellows' wages, get down strike-breakers, save the hay! And if there
were a row--well, let there be a row! The constabulary would have to
act. It was characteristic of his really Norman spirit that the notion
of agreeing to the demand, or even considering whether it were just,
never once came into his mind. He was one of those, comprising nowadays
nearly all his class, together with their press, who habitually referred
to his country as a democratic power, a champion of democracy--but did
not at present suspect the meaning of the word; nor, to say truth, was it
likely they ever would. Nothing, however, made him more miserable than
indecision. And so, now that he was on the point of deciding, and the
decision promised vigorous consequences, he felt almost elated. Closing
his jaws once more too firmly, this time on lamb, he bit his tongue
again. It was impossible to confess what he had done, for two of his
children were there, expected to eat with that well-bred detachment which
precludes such happenings; and he rose from dinner with his mind made up.
Instead of going back to the House of Commons, he went straight to a
strike-breaking agency. No grass should grow under the feet of his
decision! Thence he sought the one post-office still open, despatched a
long telegram to his agent, another to the chief constable of
Worcestershire; and, feeling he had done all he could for the moment,
returned to the 'House,' where they were debating the rural housing
question. He sat there, paying only moderate attention to a subject on
which he was acknowledged an authority. To-morrow, in all probability,
the papers would have got hold of the affair! How he loathed people
poking their noses into his concerns! And suddenly he was assailed, very
deep down, by a feeling with which in his firmness he had not reckoned--a
sort of remorse that he was going to let a lot of loafing blackguards
down onto his land, to toss about his grass, and swill their beastly beer
above it. And all the real love he had for his fields and coverts, all
the fastidiousness of an English gentleman, and, to do him justice, the
qualms of a conscience telling him that he owed better things than this
to those born on his estate, assaulted him in force. He sat back in his
seat, driving his long legs hard against the pew in front. His thick,
wavy, still brown hair was beautifully parted above the square brow that
frowned over deep-set eyes and a perfectly straight nose. Now and again
he bit into a side of his straw-colored moustache, or raised a hand and
twisted the other side. Without doubt one of the handsomest and perhaps
the most Norman-looking man in the whole 'House.' There was a feeling
among those round him that he was thinking deeply. And so he was. But
he had decided, and he was not a man who went back on his decisions.
Morning brought even worse sensations. Those ruffians that he had
ordered down--the farmers would never consent to put them up! They would
have to camp. Camp on his land! It was then that for two seconds the
thought flashed through him: Ought I to have considered whether I could
agree to that demand? Gone in another flash. If there was one thing a
man could not tolerate, it was dictation! Out of the question! But
perhaps he had been a little hasty about strike-breakers. Was there not
still time to save the situation from that, if he caught the first train?
The personal touch was everything. If he put it to the men on the spot,
with these strike-breakers up his sleeve, surely they must listen! After
all, they were his own people. And suddenly he was overcome with
amazement that they should have taken such a step. What had got into
them? Spiritless enough, as a rule, in all conscience; the sort of
fellows who hadn't steam even to join the miniature rifle-range that he
had given them! And visions of them, as he was accustomed to pass them
in the lanes, slouching along with their straw bags, their hoes, and
their shamefaced greetings, passed before him. Yes! It was all that
fellow Freeland's family! The men had been put up to it--put up to it!
The very wording of their demand showed that! Very bitterly he thought
of the unneighborly conduct of that woman and her cubs. It was
impossible to keep it from his wife! And so he told her. Rather to his
surprise, she had no scruples about the strike-breakers. Of course, the
hay must be saved! And the laborers be taught a lesson! All the
unpleasantness he and she had gone through over Tryst and that Gaunt girl
must not go for nothing! It must never be said or thought that the
Freeland woman and her children had scored over them! If the lesson were
once driven home, they would have no further trouble.
He admired her firmness, though with a certain impatience. Women never
quite looked ahead; never quite realized all the consequences of
anything. And he thought: 'By George! I'd no idea she was so hard!
But, then, she always felt more strongly about Tryst and that Gaunt girl
than I did.'
In the hall the glass was still going down. He caught the 9.15, wiring
to his agent to meet him at the station, and to the impresario of the
strike-breakers to hold up their departure until he telegraphed. The
three-mile drive up from the station, fully half of which was through his
own land, put him in possession of all the agent had to tell: Nasty
spirit abroad--men dumb as fishes--the farmers, puzzled and angry, had
begun cutting as best they could. Not a man had budged. He had seen
young Mr. and Miss Freeland going about. The thing had been worked very
cleverly. He had suspected nothing--utterly unlike the laborers as he
knew them. They had no real grievance, either! Yes, they were going on
with all their other work--milking, horses, and that; it was only the hay
they wouldn't touch. Their demand was certainly a very funny one--very
funny--had never heard of anything like it. Amounted almost to security
of tenure. The Tryst affair no doubt had done it! Malloring cut him
short:
"Till they've withdrawn this demand, Simmons, I can't discuss that or
anything."
The agent coughed behind his hand.
Naturally! Only perhaps there might be a way of wording it that would
satisfy them. Never do to really let them have such decisions in their
hands, of course!
They were just passing Tod's. The cottage wore its usual air of
embowered peace. And for the life of him Malloring could not restrain a
gesture of annoyance.
On reaching home he sent gardeners and grooms in all directions with word
that he would be glad to meet the men at four o'clock at the home farm.
Much thought, and interviews with several of the farmers, who all but
one--a shaky fellow at best--were for giving the laborers a sharp lesson,
occupied the interval. Though he had refused to admit the notion that
the men could be chicaned, as his agent had implied, he certainly did
wonder a little whether a certain measure of security might not in some
way be guaranteed, which would still leave him and the farmers a free
hand. But the more he meditated on the whole episode, the more he
perceived how intimately it interfered with the fundamental policy of all
good landowners--of knowing what was good for their people better than
those people knew themselves.
As four o'clock approached, he walked down to the home farm. The sky was
lightly overcast, and a rather chill, draughty, rustling wind had risen.
Resolved to handle the men with the personal touch, he had discouraged
his agent and the farmers from coming to the conference, and passed the
gate with the braced-up feeling of one who goes to an encounter. In that
very spick-and-span farmyard ducks were swimming leisurely on the
greenish pond, white pigeons strutting and preening on the eaves of the
barn, and his keen eye noted that some tiles were out of order up there.
Four o'clock! Ah, here was a fellow coming! And instinctively he crisped
his hands that were buried in his pockets, and ran over to himself his
opening words. Then, with a sensation of disgust, he saw that the
advancing laborer was that incorrigible 'land lawyer' Gaunt. The short,
square man with the ruffled head and the little bright-gray eyes saluted,
uttered an "Afternoon, Sir Gerald!" in his teasing voice, and stood
still. His face wore the jeering twinkle that had disconcerted so many
political meetings. Two lean fellows, rather alike, with lined faces and
bitten, drooped moustaches, were the next to come through the yard gate.
They halted behind Gaunt, touching their forelocks, shuffling a little,
and looking sidelong at each other. And Malloring waited. Five past
four! Ten past! Then he said:
"D'you mind telling the others that I'm here?"
Gaunt answered:
"If so be as you was waitin' for the meetin', I fancy as 'ow you've got
it, Sir Gerald!"
A wave of anger surged up in Malloring, dyeing his face brick-red. So!
He had come all that way with the best intentions--to be treated like
this; to meet this 'land lawyer,' who, he could see, was only here to
sharpen his tongue, and those two scarecrow-looking chaps, who had come
to testify, no doubt, to his discomfiture. And he said sharply:
"So that's the best you can do to meet me, is it?"
Gaunt answered imperturbably:
"I think it is, Sir Gerald."
"Then you've mistaken your man."
"I don't think so, Sir Gerald."
Without another look Malloring passed the three by, and walked back to
the house. In the hall was the agent, whose face clearly showed that he
had foreseen this defeat. Malloring did not wait for him to speak.
"Make arrangements. The strike-breakers will be down by noon to-morrow.
I shall go through with it now, Simmons, if I have to clear the whole lot
out. You'd better go in and see that they're ready to send police if
there's any nonsense. I'll be down again in a day or two." And, without
waiting for reply, he passed into his study. There, while the car was
being got ready, he stood in the window, very sore; thinking of what he
had meant to do; thinking of his good intentions; thinking of what was
coming to the country, when a man could not even get his laborers to come
and hear what he had to say. And a sense of injustice, of anger, of
bewilderment, harrowed his very soul.
CHAPTER XXVIII
For the first two days of this new 'kick-up,' that 'fellow Freeland's'
family undoubtedly tasted the sweets of successful mutiny. The fellow
himself alone shook his head. He, like Nedda, had known nothing, and
there was to him something unnatural and rather awful in this conduct
toward dumb crops.
From the moment he heard of it he hardly spoke, and a perpetual little
frown creased a brow usually so serene. In the early morning of the day
after Malloring went back to town, he crossed the road to a field where
the farmer, aided by his family and one of Malloring's gardeners, was
already carrying the hay; and, taking up a pitchfork, without a word to
anybody, he joined in the work. The action was deeper revelation of his
feeling than any expostulation, and the young people watched it rather
aghast.
"It's nothing," Derek said at last; "Father never has understood, and
never will, that you can't get things without fighting. He cares more
for trees and bees and birds than he does for human beings."
"That doesn't explain why he goes over to the enemy, when it's only a lot
of grass."
Kirsteen answered:
"He hasn't gone over to the enemy, Sheila. You don't understand your
father; to neglect the land is sacrilege to him. It feeds us--he would
say--we live on it; we've no business to forget that but for the land we
should all be dead."
"That's beautiful," said Nedda quickly; "and true."
Sheila answered angrily:
"It may be true in France with their bread and wine. People don't live
off the land here; they hardly eat anything they grow themselves. How
can we feel like that when we're all brought up on mongrel food?
Besides, it's simply sentimental, when there are real wrongs to fight
about."
"Your father is not sentimental, Sheila. It's too deep with him for
that, and too unconscious. He simply feels so unhappy about the waste of
that hay that he can't keep his hands off it."
Derek broke in: "Mother's right. And it doesn't matter, except that
we've got to see that the men don't follow his example. They've a funny
feeling about him."
Kirsteen shook her head.
"You needn't be afraid. He's always been too strange to them!"
"Well, I'm going to stiffen their backs. Coming Sheila?" And they went.
Left, as she seemed always to be in these days of open mutiny, Nedda said
sadly:
"What is coming, Aunt Kirsteen?"
Her aunt was standing in the porch, looking straight before her; a trail
of clematis had drooped over her fine black hair down on to the blue of
her linen dress. She answered, without turning:
"Have you ever seen, on jubilee nights, bonfire to bonfire, from hill to
hill, to the end of the land? This is the first lighted."
Nedda felt something clutch her heart. What was that figure in blue?
Priestess? Prophetess? And for a moment the girl felt herself swept
into the vision those dark glowing eyes were seeing; some violent,
exalted, inexorable, flaming vision. Then something within her revolted,
as though one had tried to hypnotize her into seeing what was not true;
as though she had been forced for the moment to look, not at what was
really there, but at what those eyes saw projected from the soul behind
them. And she said quietly:
"I don't believe, Aunt Kirsteen. I don't really believe. I think it
must go out."
Kirsteen turned.
"You are like your father," she said--"a doubter."
Nedda shook her head.
"I can't persuade myself to see what isn't there. I never can, Aunt
Kirsteen."
Without reply, save a quiver of her brows, Kirsteen went back into the
house. And Nedda stayed on the pebbled path before the cottage, unhappy,
searching her own soul. Did she fail to see because she was afraid to
see, because she was too dull to see; or because, as she had said, there
was really nothing there--no flames to leap from hill to hill, no lift,
no tearing in the sky that hung over the land? And she thought:
'London--all those big towns, their smoke, the things they make, the
things we want them to make, that we shall always want them to make.
Aren't they there? For every laborer who's a slave Dad says there are
five town workers who are just as much slaves! And all those Bigwigs
with their great houses, and their talk, and their interest in keeping
things where they are! Aren't they there? I don't--I can't believe
anything much can happen, or be changed. Oh! I shall never see visions,
and dream dreams!' And from her heart she sighed.
In the meantime Derek and Sheila were going their round on bicycles, to
stiffen the backs of the laborers. They had hunted lately, always in a
couple, desiring no complications, having decided that it was less likely
to provoke definite assault and opposition from the farmers. To their
mother was assigned all correspondence; to themselves the verbal
exhortations, the personal touch. It was past noon, and they were
already returning, when they came on the char-a-bancs containing the head
of the strike-breaking column. The two vehicles were drawn up opposite
the gate leading to Marrow Farm, and the agent was detaching the four men
destined to that locality, with their camping-gear. By the open gate the
farmer stood eying his new material askance. Dejected enough creatures
they looked--poor devils picked up at ten pound the dozen, who, by the
mingled apathy and sheepish amusement on their faces, might never have
seen a pitchfork, or smelled a field of clover, in their lives.
The two young Freelands rode slowly past; the boy's face scornfully drawn
back into itself; the girl's flaming scarlet.
"Don't take notice," Derek said; "we'll soon stop that."
And they had gone another mile before he added:
"We've got to make our round again; that's all."
The words of Mr. Pogram, 'You have influence, young man,' were just.
There was about Derek the sort of quality that belongs to the good
regimental officer; men followed and asked themselves why the devil they
had, afterward. And if it be said that no worse leader than a fiery
young fool can be desired for any movement, it may also be said that
without youth and fire and folly there is usually no movement at all.
Late in the afternoon they returned home, dead beat. That evening the
farmers and their wives milked the cows, tended the horses, did
everything that must be done, not without curses. And next morning the
men, with Gaunt and a big, dark fellow, called Tulley, for spokesmen,
again proffered their demand. The agent took counsel with Malloring by
wire. His answer, "Concede nothing," was communicated to the men in the
afternoon, and received by Gaunt with the remark: "I thart we should be
hearin' that. Please to thank Sir Gerald. The men concedes their
gratitood." . . .
That night it began to rain. Nedda, waking, could hear the heavy drops
pattering on the sweetbrier and clematis thatching her open window. The
scent of rain-cooled leaves came in drifts, and it seemed a shame to
sleep. She got up; put on her dressing-gown, and went to thrust her nose
into that bath of dripping sweetness. Dark as the clouds had made the
night, there was still the faint light of a moon somewhere behind. The
leaves of the fruit-trees joined in the long, gentle hissing, and now and
again rustled and sighed sharply; a cock somewhere, as by accident, let
off a single crow. There were no stars. All was dark and soft as velvet.
And Nedda thought: 'The world is dressed in living creatures! Trees,
flowers, grass, insects, ourselves--woven together--the world is dressed
in life! I understand Uncle Tod's feeling! If only it would rain till
they have to send these strike-breakers back because there's no hay worth
fighting about!' Suddenly her heart beat fast. The wicket gate had
clicked. There was something darker than the darkness coming along the
path! Scared, but with all protective instinct roused, she leaned out,
straining to see. A faint grating sound from underneath came up to her.
A window being opened! And she flew to her door. She neither barred it,
however, nor cried out, for in that second it had flashed across her:
'Suppose it's he! Gone out to do something desperate, as Tryst did!' If
it were, he would come up-stairs and pass her door, going to his room.
She opened it an inch, holding her breath. At first, nothing! Was it
fancy? Or was some one noiselessly rifling the room down-stairs? But
surely no one would steal of Uncle Tod, who, everybody knew, had nothing
valuable. Then came a sound as of bootless feet pressing the stairs
stealthily! And the thought darted through her, 'If it isn't he, what
shall I do?' And then--'What shall I do--if it IS!'
Desperately she opened the door, clasping her hands on the place whence
her heart had slipped down to her bare feet. But she knew it was he
before she heard him whisper: "Nedda!" and, clutching him by the sleeve,
she drew him in and closed the door. He was wet through, dripping; so
wet that the mere brushing against him made her skin feel moist through
its thin coverings.
"Where have you been? What have you been doing? Oh, Derek!"
There was just light enough to see his face, his teeth, the whites of his
eyes.
"Cutting their tent-ropes in the rain. Hooroosh!"
It was such a relief that she just let out a little gasping "Oh!" and
leaned her forehead against his coat. Then she felt his wet arms round
her, his wet body pressed to hers, and in a second he was dancing with
her a sort of silent, ecstatic war dance. Suddenly he stopped, went down
on his knees, pressing his face to her waist, and whispering: "What a
brute, what a brute! Making her wet! Poor little Nedda!"
Nedda bent over him; her hair covered his wet head, her hands trembled on
his shoulders. Her heart felt as if it would melt right out of her; she
longed so to warm and dry him with herself. And, in turn, his wet arms
clutched her close, his wet hands could not keep still on her. Then he
drew back, and whispering: "Oh, Nedda! Nedda!" fled out like a dark
ghost. Oblivious that she was damp from head to foot, Nedda stood
swaying, her eyes closed and her lips just open; then, putting out her
arms, she drew them suddenly in and clasped herself. . . .
When she came down to breakfast the next morning, he had gone out
already, and Uncle Tod, too; her aunt was writing at the bureau. Sheila
greeted her gruffly, and almost at once went out. Nedda swallowed
coffee, ate her egg, and bread and honey, with a heavy heart. A
newspaper lay open on the table; she read it idly till these words caught
her eye:
"The revolt which has paralyzed the hay harvest on Sir Gerald Malloring's
Worcestershire estate and led to the introduction of strike-breakers,
shows no sign of abatement. A very wanton spirit of mischief seems to be
abroad in this neighborhood. No reason can be ascertained for the arson
committed a short time back, nor for this further outbreak of discontent.
The economic condition of the laborers on this estate is admittedly
rather above than below the average."
And at once she thought: '"Mischief!" What a shame!' Were people, then,
to know nothing of the real cause of the revolt--nothing of the Tryst
eviction, the threatened eviction of the Gaunts? Were they not to know
that it was on principle, and to protest against that sort of petty
tyranny to the laborers all over the country, that this rebellion had
been started? For liberty! only simple liberty not to be treated as
though they had no minds or souls of their own--weren't the public to
know that? If they were allowed to think that it was all wanton
mischief--that Derek was just a mischief-maker--it would be dreadful!
Some one must write and make this known? Her father? But Dad might
think it too personal--his own relations! Mr. Cuthcott! Into whose
household Wilmet Gaunt had gone. Ah! Mr. Cuthcott who had told her that
he was always at her service! Why not? And the thought that she might
really do something at last to help made her tingle all over. If she
borrowed Sheila's bicycle she could catch the nine-o'clock train to
London, see him herself, make him do something, perhaps even bring him
back with her! She examined her purse. Yes, she had money. She would
say nothing, here, because, of course, he might refuse! At the back of
her mind was the idea that, if a real newspaper took the part of the
laborers, Derek's position would no longer be so dangerous; he would be,
as it were, legally recognized, and that, in itself, would make him more
careful and responsible. Whence she got this belief in the legalizing
power of the press it is difficult to say, unless that, reading
newspapers but seldom, she still took them at their own valuation, and
thought that when they said: "We shall do this," or "We must do that,"
they really were speaking for the country, and that forty-five millions
of people were deliberately going to do something, whereas, in truth, as
was known to those older than Nedda, they were speaking, and not too
conclusively at that, for single anonymous gentlemen in a hurry who were
not going to do anything. She knew that the press had power, great
power--for she was always hearing that--and it had not occurred to her as
yet to examine the composition of that power so as to discover that,
while the press certainly had a certain monopoly of expression, and that
same 'spirit of body' which makes police constables swear by one another,
it yet contained within its ring fence the sane and advisable futility of
a perfectly balanced contradiction; so that its only functions,
practically speaking, were the dissemination of news, seven-tenths of
which would have been happier in obscurity; and--'irritation of the
Dutch!' Not, of course, that the press realized this; nor was it
probable that any one would tell it, for it had power--great power.
She caught her train--glowing outwardly from the speed of her ride, and
inwardly from the heat of adventure and the thought that at last she was
being of some use.
The only other occupants of her third-class compartment were a friendly
looking man, who might have been a sailor or other wanderer on leave, and
his thin, dried-up, black-clothed cottage woman of an old mother. They
sat opposite each other. The son looked at his mother with beaming eyes,
and she remarked: "An' I says to him, says I, I says, 'What?' I says; so
'e says to me, he says, 'Yes,' he says; 'that's what I say,' he says."
And Nedda thought: 'What an old dear! And the son looks nice too; I do
like simple people.'
They got out at the first stop and she journeyed on alone. Taking a
taxicab from Paddington, she drove toward Gray's Inn. But now that she
was getting close she felt very nervous. How expect a busy man like Mr.
Cuthcott to spare time to come down all that way? It would be something,
though, if she could get him even to understand what was really
happening, and why; so that he could contradict that man in the other
paper. It must be wonderful to be writing, daily, what thousands and
thousands of people read! Yes! It must be a very sacred-feeling life!
To be able to say things in that particularly authoritative way which
must take such a lot of people in--that is, make such a lot of people
think in the same way! It must give a man a terrible sense of
responsibility, make him feel that he simply must be noble, even if he
naturally wasn't. Yes! it must be a wonderful profession, and only fit
for the highest! In addition to Mr. Cuthcott, she knew as yet but three
young journalists, and those all weekly.
At her timid ring the door was opened by a broad-cheeked girl, enticingly
compact in apron and black frock, whose bright color, thick lips, and
rogue eyes came of anything but London. It flashed across Nedda that
this must be the girl for whose sake she had faced Mr. Cuthcott at the
luncheon-table! And she said: "Are you Wilmet Gaunt?"
The girl smiled till her eyes almost disappeared, and answered: "Yes,
miss."
"I'm Nedda Freeland, Miss Sheila's cousin. I've just come from
Joyfields. How are you getting on?"
"Fine, thank you, miss. Plenty of life here."
Nedda thought: 'That's what Derek said of her. Bursting with life! And
so she is.' And she gazed doubtfully at the girl, whose prim black dress
and apron seemed scarcely able to contain her.
"Is Mr. Cuthcott in?"
"No, miss; he'll be down at the paper. Two hundred and five Floodgate
Street."
'Oh!' thought Nedda with dismay; 'I shall never venture there!' And
glancing once more at the girl, whose rogue slits of eyes, deep sunk
between check-bones and brow, seemed to be quizzing her and saying: 'You
and Mr. Derek--oh! I know!' she went sadly away. And first she thought
she would go home to Hampstead, then that she would go back to the
station, then: 'After all, why shouldn't I go and try? They can't eat
me. I will!'
She reached her destination at the luncheon-hour, so that the offices of
the great evening journal were somewhat deserted. Producing her card, she
was passed from hand to hand till she rested in a small bleak apartment
where a young woman was typing fast. She longed to ask her how she liked
it, but did not dare. The whole atmosphere seemed to her charged with a
strenuous solemnity, as though everything said, 'We have power--great
power.' And she waited, sitting by the window which faced the street. On
the buildings opposite she could read the name of another great evening
journal. Why, it was the one which had contained the paragraph she had
read at breakfast! She had bought a copy of it at the station. Its
temperament, she knew, was precisely opposed to that of Mr. Cuthcott's
paper. Over in that building, no doubt there would be the same
strenuously loaded atmosphere, so that if they opened the windows on both
sides little puffs of power would meet in mid-air, above the heads of the
passers-by, as might the broadsides of old three-deckers, above the
green, green sea.
And for the first time an inkling of the great comic equipoise in
Floodgate Street and human affairs stole on Nedda's consciousness. They
puffed and puffed, and only made smoke in the middle! That must be why
Dad always called them: 'Those fellows!' She had scarcely, however,
finished beginning to think these thoughts when a handbell sounded
sharply in some adjoining room, and the young woman nearly fell into her
typewriter. Readjusting her balance, she rose, and, going to the door,
passed out in haste. Through the open doorway Nedda could see a large
and pleasant room, whose walls seemed covered with prints of men standing
in attitudes such that she was almost sure they were statesmen; and, at a
table in the centre, the back of Mr. Cuthcott in a twiddly chair,
surrounded by sheets of paper reposing on the floor, shining like autumn
leaves on a pool of water. She heard his voice, smothery, hurried, but
still pleasant, say: "Take these, Miss Mayne, take these! Begin on them,
begin! Confound it! What's the time?" And the young woman's voice:
"Half past one, Mr. Cuthcott!" And a noise from Mr. Cuthcott's throat
that sounded like an adjuration to the Deity not to pass over something.
Then the young woman dipped and began gathering those leaves of paper,
and over her comely back Nedda had a clear view of Mr. Cuthcott hunching
one brown shoulder as though warding something off, and of one of his
thin hands ploughing up and throwing back his brown hair on one side, and
heard the sound of his furiously scratching pen. And her heart pattered;
it was so clear that he was 'giving them one' and had no time for her.
And involuntarily she looked at the windows beyond him to see if there
were any puffs of power issuing therefrom. But they were closed. She saw
the young woman rise and come back toward her, putting the sheets of
paper in order; and, as the door was closing, from the twiddly chair a
noise that seemed to couple God with the condemnation of silly souls.
When the young woman was once more at the typewriter she rose and said:
"Have you given him my card yet?"
The young woman looked at her surprised, as if she had broken some rule
of etiquette, and answered: "No."
"Then don't, please. I can see that he's too busy. I won't wait."
The young woman abstractedly placed a sheet of paper in her typewriter.
"Very well," she said. "Good morning!"
And before Nedda reached the door she heard the click-click of the
machine, reducing Mr. Cuthcott to legibility.
'I was stupid to come,' she thought. 'He must be terribly overworked.
Poor man! He does say lovely things!' And, crestfallen, she went along
the passages, and once more out into Floodgate Street. She walked along
it frowning, till a man who was selling newspapers said as she passed:
"Mind ye don't smile, lydy!"
Seeing that he was selling Mr. Cuthcott's paper, she felt for a coin to
buy one, and, while searching, scrutinized the newsvender's figure,
almost entirely hidden by the words:
GREAT HOUSING SCHEME
HOPE FOR THE MILLION!
on a buff-colored board; while above it, his face, that had not quite
blood enough to be scorbutic, was wrapped in the expression of those
philosophers to whom a hope would be fatal. He was, in fact, just what
he looked--a street stoic. And a dim perception of the great social
truth: "The smell of half a loaf is not better than no bread!" flickered
in Nedda's brain as she passed on. Was that what Derek was doing with
the laborers--giving them half the smell of a liberty that was not there?
And a sudden craving for her father came over her. He--he only, was any
good, because he, only, loved her enough to feel how distracted and
unhappy she was feeling, how afraid of what was coming. So, making for a
Tube station, she took train to Hampstead. . . .
It was past two, and Felix, on the point of his constitutional. He had
left Becket the day after Nedda's rather startling removal to Joyfields,
and since then had done his level best to put the whole Tryst affair,
with all its somewhat sinister relevance to her life and his own, out of
his mind as something beyond control. He had but imperfectly succeeded.
Flora, herself not too present-minded, had in these days occasion to
speak to him about the absent-minded way in which he fulfilled even the
most domestic duties, and Alan was always saying to him, "Buck up, Dad!"
With Nedda's absorption into the little Joyfields whirlpool, the sun
shone but dimly for Felix. And a somewhat febrile attention to 'The Last
of the Laborers' had not brought it up to his expectations. He fluttered
under his buff waistcoat when he saw her coming in at the gate. She must
want something of him! For to this pitch of resignation, as to his little
daughter's love for him, had he come! And if she wanted something of
him, things would be going wrong again down there! Nor did the warmth of
her embrace, and her: "Oh! Dad, it IS nice to see you!" remove that
instinctive conviction; though delicacy, born of love, forbade him to ask
her what she wanted. Talking of the sky and other matters, thinking how
pretty she was looking, he waited for the new, inevitable proof that
youth was first, and a mere father only second fiddle now. A note from
Stanley had already informed him of the strike. The news had been
something of a relief. Strikes, at all events, were respectable and
legitimate means of protest, and to hear that one was in progress had not
forced him out of his laborious attempt to believe the whole affair only
a mole-hill. He had not, however, heard of the strike-breakers, nor had
he seen any newspaper mention of the matter; and when she had shown him
the paragraph; recounted her visit to Mr. Cuthcott, and how she had
wanted to take him back with her to see for himself--he waited a moment,
then said almost timidly: "Should I be of any use, my dear?" She flushed
and squeezed his hand in silence; and he knew he would.
When he had packed a handbag and left a note for Flora, he rejoined her
in the hall.
It was past seven when they reached their destination, and, taking the
station 'fly,' drove slowly up to Joyfields, under a showery sky.
CHAPTER XXIX
When Felix and Nedda reached Tod's cottage, the three little Trysts,
whose activity could never be quite called play, were all the living
creatures about the house.
"Where is Mrs. Freeland, Biddy?"
"We don't know; a man came, and she went."
"And Miss Sheila?"
"She went out in the mornin'. And Mr. Freeland's gone."
Susie added: "The dog's gone, too."
"Then help me to get some tea."
"Yes."
With the assistance of the mother-child, and the hindrance of Susie and
Billy, Nedda made and laid tea, with an anxious heart. The absence of
her aunt, who so seldom went outside the cottage, fields, and orchard,
disturbed her; and, while Felix refreshed himself, she fluttered several
times on varying pretexts to the wicket gate.
At her third visit, from the direction of the church, she saw figures
coming on the road--dark figures carrying something, followed by others
walking alongside. What sun there had been had quite given in to heavy
clouds; the light was dull, the elm-trees dark; and not till they were
within two hundred yards could Nedda make out that these were figures of
policemen. Then, alongside that which they were carrying, she saw her
aunt's blue dress. WHAT were they carrying like that? She dashed down
the steps, and stopped. No! If it were HE they would bring him in! She
rushed back again, distracted. She could see now a form stretched on a
hurdle. It WAS he!
"Dad! Quick!"
Felix came, startled at that cry, to find his little daughter on the path
wringing her hands and flying back to the wicket gate. They were close
now. She saw them begin to mount the steps, those behind raising their
arms so that the hurdle should be level. Derek lay on his back, with head
and forehead swathed in wet blue linen, torn from his mother's skirt; and
the rest of his face very white. He lay quite still, his clothes covered
with mud. Terrified, Nedda plucked at Kirsteen's sleeve.
"What is it?"
"Concussion!" The stillness of that blue-clothed figure, so calm beside
her, gave her strength to say quietly:
"Put him in my room, Aunt Kirsteen; there's more air there!" And she
flew up-stairs, flinging wide her door, making the bed ready, snatching
her night things from the pillow; pouring out cold water, sprinkling the
air with eau de cologne. Then she stood still. Perhaps, they would not
bring him there? Yes, they were coming up. They brought him in, and laid
him on the bed. She heard one say: "Doctor'll be here directly, ma'am.
Let him lie quiet." Then she and his mother were alone beside him.
"Undo his boots," said Kirsteen.
Nedda's fingers trembled, and she hated them for fumbling so, while she
drew off those muddy boots. Then her aunt said softly: "Hold him up,
dear, while I get his things off."
And, with a strange rapture that she was allowed to hold him thus, she
supported him against her breast till he was freed and lying back inert.
Then, and only then, she whispered:
"How long before he--?"
Kirsteen shook her head; and, slipping her arm round the girl, murmured:
"Courage, Nedda!"
The girl felt fear and love rush up desperately to overwhelm her. She
choked them back, and said quite quietly: "I will. I promise. Only let
me help nurse him!"
Kirsteen nodded. And they sat down to wait.
That quarter of an hour was the longest of her life. To see him thus,
living, yet not living, with the spirit driven from him by a cruel blow,
perhaps never to come back! Curious, how things still got themselves
noticed when all her faculties were centred in gazing at his face. She
knew that it was raining again; heard the swish and drip, and smelled the
cool wet perfume through the scent of the eau de cologne that she had
spilled. She noted her aunt's arm, as it hovered, wetting the bandage;
the veins and rounded whiteness from under the loose blue sleeve slipped
up to the elbow. One of his feet lay close to her at the bed's edge; she
stole her hand beneath the sheet. That foot felt very cold, and she
grasped it tight. If only she could pass life into him through her hot
hand. She heard the ticking of her little travelling-clock, and was
conscious of flies wheeling close up beneath the white ceiling, of how
one by one they darted at each other, making swift zigzags in the air.
And something in her she had not yet known came welling up, softening her
eyes, her face, even the very pose of her young body--the hidden passion
of a motherliness, that yearned so to 'kiss the place,' to make him well,
to nurse and tend, restore and comfort him. And with all her might she
watched the movements of those rounded arms under the blue sleeves--how
firm and exact they were, how soft and quiet and swift, bathing the dark
head! Then from beneath the bandage she caught sight suddenly of his
eyes. And her heart turned sick. Oh, they were not quite closed! As if
he hadn't life enough to close them! She bit into her lip to stop a cry.
It was so terrible to see them without light. Why did not that doctor
come? Over and over and over again within her the prayer turned: Let him
live! Oh, let him live!
The blackbirds out in the orchard were tuning up for evening. It seemed
almost dreadful they should be able to sing like that. All the world was
going on just the same! If he died, the world would have no more light
for her than there was now in his poor eyes--and yet it would go on the
same! How was that possible? It was not possible, because she would die
too! She saw her aunt turn her head like a startled animal; some one was
coming up the stairs! It was the doctor, wiping his wet face--a young
man in gaiters. How young--dreadfully young! No; there was a little
gray at the sides of his hair! What would he say? And Nedda sat with
hands tight clenched in her lap, motionless as a young crouching sphinx.
An interminable testing, and questioning, and answer! Never smoked
--never drank--never been ill! The blow--ah, here! Just here!
Concussion--yes! Then long staring into the eyes, the eyelids lifted
between thumb and finger. And at last (how could he talk so loud! Yet
it was a comfort too--he would not talk like that if Derek were going to
die!)--Hair cut shorter--ice--watch him like a lynx! This and that, if
he came to. Nothing else to be done. And then those blessed words:
"But don't worry too much. I think it'll be all right." She could not
help a little sigh escaping her clenched teeth.
The doctor was looking at her. His eyes were nice.
"Sister?"
"Cousin."
"Ah! Well, I'll get back now, and send you out some ice, at once."
More talk outside the door. Nedda, alone with her lover, crouched
forward on her knees, and put her lips to his. They were not so cold as
his foot, and the first real hope and comfort came to her. Watch him like
a lynx--wouldn't she? But how had it all happened? And where was Sheila?
and Uncle Tod?
Her aunt had come back and was stroking her shoulder. There had been
fighting in the barn at Marrow Farm. They had arrested Sheila. Derek
had jumped down to rescue her and struck his head against a grindstone.
Her uncle had gone with Sheila. They would watch, turn and turn about.
Nedda must go now and eat something, and get ready to take the watch from
eight to midnight.
Following her resolve to make no fuss, the girl went out. The police had
gone. The mother-child was putting her little folk to bed; and in the
kitchen Felix was arranging the wherewithal to eat. He made her sit down
and kept handing things; watching like a cat to see that she put them in
her mouth, in the way from which only Flora had suffered hitherto; he
seemed so anxious and unhappy, and so awfully sweet, that Nedda forced
herself to swallow what she thought would never go down a dry and choky
throat. He kept coming up and touching her shoulder or forehead. Once
he said:
"It's all right, you know, my pet; concussion often takes two days."
Two days with his eyes like that! The consolation was not so vivid as
Felix might have wished; but she quite understood that he was doing his
best to give it. She suddenly remembered that he had no room to sleep
in. He must use Derek's. No! That, it appeared, was to be for her when
she came off duty. Felix was going to have an all-night sitting in the
kitchen. He had been looking forward to an all-night sitting for many
years, and now he had got his chance. It was a magnificent
opportunity--"without your mother, my dear, to insist on my sleeping."
And staring at his smile, Nedda thought: 'He's like Granny--he comes out
under difficulties. If only I did!'
The ice arrived by motor-cycle just before her watch began. It was some
comfort to have that definite thing to see to. How timorous and humble
are thoughts in a sick-room, above all when the sick are stretched behind
the muffle of unconsciousness, withdrawn from the watcher by half-death!
And yet, for him or her who loves, there is at least the sense of being
alone with the loved one, of doing all that can be done; and in some
strange way of twining hearts with the exiled spirit. To Nedda, sitting
at his feet, and hardly ever turning eyes away from his still face, it
sometimes seemed that the flown spirit was there beside her. And she saw
into his soul in those hours of watching, as one looking into a stream
sees the leopard-like dapple of its sand and dark-strewn floor, just
reached by sunlight. She saw all his pride, courage, and impatience, his
reserve, and strange unwilling tenderness, as she had never seen them.
And a queer dreadful feeling moved her that in some previous existence
she had looked at that face dead on a field of battle, frowning up at the
stars. That was absurd--there were no previous existences! Or was it
prevision of what would come some day?
When, at half past nine, the light began to fail, she lighted two candles
in tall, thin, iron candlesticks beside her. They burned without
flicker, those spires of yellow flame, slowly conquering the dying
twilight, till in their soft radiance the room was full of warm dusky
shadows, the night outside ever a deeper black. Two or three times his
mother came, looked at him, asked her if she should stay, and, receiving
a little silent shake of the head, went away again. At eleven o'clock,
when once more she changed the ice-cap, his eyes had still no lustre, and
for a moment her courage failed her utterly. It seemed to her that he
could never win back, that death possessed the room already, possessed
those candle-flames, the ticking of the clock, the dark, dripping night,
possessed her heart. Could he be gone before she had been his! Gone!
Where? She sank down on her knees, covering her eyes. What good to
watch, if he were never coming back! A long time--it seemed
hours--passed thus, with the feeling growing deeper in her that no good
would come while she was watching. And behind the barrier of her hands
she tried desperately to rally courage. If things were--they were! One
must look them in the face! She took her hands away. His eyes! Was it
light in them? Was it? They were seeing--surely they saw. And his lips
made the tiniest movement. In that turmoil of exultation she never knew
how she managed to continue kneeling there, with her hands on his. But
all her soul shone down to him out of her eyes, and drew and drew at his
spirit struggling back from the depths of him. For many minutes that
struggle lasted; then he smiled. It was the feeblest smile that ever was
on lips, but it made the tears pour down Nedda's cheeks and trickle off
on to his hands. Then, with a stoicism that she could not believe in, so
hopelessly unreal it seemed, so utterly the negation of the tumult within
her, she settled back again at his feet to watch and not excite him. And
still his lips smiled that faint smile, and his opened eyes grew dark and
darker with meaning.
So at midnight Kirsteen found them.
CHAPTER XXX
In the early hours of his all-night sitting Felix had first only
memories, and then Kirsteen for companion.
"I worry most about Tod," she said. "He had that look in his face when
he went off from Marrow Farm. He might do something terrible if they
ill-treat Sheila. If only she has sense enough to see and not provoke
them."
"Surely she will," Felix murmured.
"Yes, if she realizes. But she won't, I'm afraid. Even I have only
known him look like that three times. Tod is so gentle--passion stores
itself in him; and when it comes, it's awful. If he sees cruelty, he
goes almost mad. Once he would have killed a man if I hadn't got between
them. He doesn't know what he's doing at such moments. I wish--I wish
he were back. It's hard one can't pierce through, and see him."
Gazing at her eyes so dark and intent, Felix thought: 'If YOU can't
pierce through--none can.'
He learned the story of the disaster.
Early that morning Derek had assembled twenty of the strongest laborers,
and taken them a round of the farms to force the strike-breakers to
desist. There had been several fights, in all of which the
strike-breakers had been beaten. Derek himself had fought three times.
In the afternoon the police had come, and the laborers had rushed with
Derek and Sheila, who had joined them, into a barn at Marrow Farm, barred
it, and thrown mangolds at the police, when they tried to force an
entrance. One by one the laborers had slipped away by a rope out of a
ventilation-hole high up at the back, and they had just got Sheila down
when the police appeared on that side, too. Derek, who had stayed to the
last, covering their escape with mangolds, had jumped down twenty feet
when he saw them taking Sheila, and, pitching forward, hit his head
against a grindstone. Then, just as they were marching Sheila and two of
the laborers away, Tod had arrived and had fallen in alongside the
policemen--he and the dog. It was then she had seen that look on his
face.
Felix, who had never beheld his big brother in Berserk mood, could offer
no consolation; nor had he the heart to adorn the tale, and inflict on
this poor woman his reflection: 'This, you see, is what comes of the
ferment you have fostered. This is the reward of violence!' He longed,
rather, to comfort her; she seemed so lonely and, in spite of all her
stoicism, so distraught and sad. His heart went out, too, to Tod. How
would he himself have felt, walking by the side of policemen whose arms
were twisted in Nedda's! But so mixed are the minds of men that at this
very moment there was born within him the germ of a real revolt against
the entry of his little daughter into this family of hotheads. It was
more now than mere soreness and jealousy; it was fear of a danger
hitherto but sniffed at, but now only too sharply savored.
When she left him to go up-stairs, Felix stayed consulting the dark
night. As ever, in hours of ebbed vitality, the shapes of fear and doubt
grew clearer and more positive; they loomed huge out there among the
apple-trees, where the drip-drip of the rain made music. But his thoughts
were still nebulous, not amounting to resolve. It was no moment for
resolves--with the boy lying up there between the tides of chance; and
goodness knew what happening to Tod and Sheila. The air grew sharper; he
withdrew to the hearth, where a wood fire still burned, gray ash, red
glow, scent oozing from it. And while he crouched there, blowing it with
bellows, he heard soft footsteps, and saw Nedda standing behind him
transformed.
But in the midst of all his glad sympathy Felix could not help thinking:
'Better for you, perhaps, if he had never returned from darkness!'
She came and crouched down by him.
"Let me sit with you, Dad. It smells so good."
"Very well; but you must sleep."
"I don't believe I'll ever want to sleep again."
And at the glow in her Felix glowed too. What is so infectious as
delight? They sat a long time talking, as they had not talked since the
first fatal visit to Becket. Of how love, and mountains, works of art,
and doing things for others were the only sources of happiness; except
scents, and lying on one's back looking through tree-tops at the sky; and
tea, and sunlight, flowers, and hard exercise; oh, and the sea! Of how,
when things went hard, one prayed--but what did one pray to? Was it not
to something in oneself? It was of no use to pray to the great
mysterious Force that made one thing a cabbage, and the other a king; for
That could obviously not be weak-minded enough to attend. And gradually
little pauses began to creep into their talk; then a big pause, and
Nedda, who would never want to sleep again, was fast asleep.
Felix watched those long, dark lashes resting on her cheeks; the slow,
soft rise of her breast; the touching look of trust and goodness in that
young face abandoned to oblivion after these hours of stress; watched the
little tired shadows under the eyes, the tremors of the just-parted lips.
And, getting up, stealthy as a cat, he found a light rug, and ever more
stealthily laid it over her. She stirred at that, smiled up at him, and
instantly went off again. And he thought: 'Poor little sweetheart, she
WAS tired!' And a passionate desire to guard her from trials and troubles
came on him.
At four o'clock Kirsteen slipped in again, and whispered: "She made me
promise to come for her. How pretty she looks, sleeping!"
"Yes," Felix answered; "pretty and good!"
Nedda raised her head, stared up at her aunt, and a delighted smile
spread over her face. "Is it time again? How lovely!" Then, before
either could speak or stop her, she was gone.
"She is more in love," Kirsteen murmured, "than I ever saw a girl of her
age."
"She is more in love," Felix answered, "than is good to see."
"She is not truer than Derek is."
"That may be, but she will suffer from him."
"Women who love must always suffer."
Her cheeks were sunken, shadowy; she looked very tired. When she had
gone to get some sleep, Felix restored the fire and put on a kettle,
meaning to make himself some coffee. Morning had broken, clear and
sparkling after the long rain, and full of scent and song. What glory
equalled this early morning radiance, the dewy wonder of everything!
What hour of the day was such a web of youth and beauty as this, when all
the stars from all the skies had fallen into the grass! A cold nose was
thrust into his hand, and he saw beside him Tod's dog. The animal was
wet, and lightly moved his white-tipped tail; while his dark-yellow eyes
inquired of Felix what he was going to give a dog to eat. Then Felix saw
his brother coming in. Tod's face was wild and absent as a man with all
his thoughts turned on something painful in the distance. His ruffled
hair had lost its brightness; his eyes looked as if driven back into his
head; he was splashed with mud, and wet from head to foot. He walked up
to the hearth without a word.
"Well, old man?" said Felix anxiously.
Tod looked at him, but did not answer.
"Come," said Felix; "tell us!"
"Locked up," said Tod in a voice unlike his own. "I didn't knock them
down."
"Heavens! I should hope not."
"I ought to have."
Felix put his hand within his brother's arm.
"They twisted her arms; one of them pushed her from behind. I can't
understand it. How was it I didn't? I can't understand."
"I can," said Felix. "They were the Law. If they had been mere men
you'd have done it, fast enough."
"I can't understand," Tod repeated. "I've been walking ever since."
Felix stroked his shoulder.
"Go up-stairs, old man. Kirsteen's anxious."
Tod sat down and took his boots off.
"I can't understand," he said once more. Then, without another word, or
even a look at Felix, he went out and up the stairs.
And Felix thought: 'Poor Kirsteen! Ah, well--they're all about as queer,
one as the other! How to get Nedda out of it?'
And, with that question gnawing at him, he went out into the orchard.
The grass was drenching wet, so he descended to the road. Two
wood-pigeons were crooning to each other, truest of all sounds of summer;
there was no wind, and the flies had begun humming. In the air, cleared
of dust, the scent of hay was everywhere. What about those poor devils
of laborers, now? They would get the sack for this! and he was suddenly
beset with a feeling of disgust. This world where men, and women too,
held what they had, took what they could; this world of seeing only one
thing at a time; this world of force, and cunning, of struggle, and
primitive appetites; of such good things, too, such patience, endurance,
heroism--and yet at heart so unutterably savage!
He was very tired; but it was too wet to sit down, so he walked on. Now
and again he passed a laborer going to work; but very few in all those
miles, and they quite silent. 'Did they ever really whistle?' Felix
thought. 'Were they ever jolly ploughmen? Or was that always a fiction?
Surely, if they can't give tongue this morning, they never can!' He
crossed a stile and took a slanting path through a little wood. The
scent of leaves and sap, the dapple of sunlight--all the bright early
glow and beauty struck him with such force that he could have cried out
in the sharpness of sensation. At that hour when man was still abed and
the land lived its own life, how full and sweet and wild that life
seemed, how in love with itself! Truly all the trouble in the world came
from the manifold disharmonies of the self-conscious animal called Man!
Then, coming out on the road again, he saw that he must be within a mile
or two of Becket; and finding himself suddenly very hungry, determined to
go there and get some breakfast.
CHAPTER XXXI
Duly shaved with one of Stanley's razors, bathed, and breakfasted, Felix
was on the point of getting into the car to return to Joyfields when he
received a message from his mother: Would he please go up and see her
before he went?
He found her looking anxious and endeavoring to conceal it.
Having kissed him, she drew him to her sofa and said: "Now, darling, come
and sit down here, and tell me all about this DREADFUL business." And
taking up an odorator she blew over him a little cloud of scent. "It's
quite a new perfume; isn't it delicious?"
Felix, who dreaded scent, concealed his feelings, sat down, and told her.
And while he told her he was conscious of how pathetically her
fastidiousness was quivering under those gruesome details--fighting with
policemen, fighting with common men, prison--FOR A LADY; conscious too
of her still more pathetic effort to put a good face on it. When he had
finished she remained so perfectly still, with lips so hard compressed,
that he said:
"It's no good worrying, Mother."
Frances Freeland rose, pulled something hard, and a cupboard appeared.
She opened it, and took out a travelling-bag.
"I must go back with you at once," she said.
"I don't think it's in the least necessary, and you'll only knock
yourself up."
"Oh, nonsense, darling! I must."
Knowing that further dissuasion would harden her determination, Felix
said: "I'm going in the car."
"That doesn't matter. I shall be ready in ten minutes. Oh! and do you
know this? It's splendid for taking lines out under the eyes!" She was
holding out a little round box with the lid off. "Just wet your finger
with it, and dab it gently on."
Touched by this evidence of her deep desire that he should put as good a
face on it as herself, Felix dabbed himself under the eyes.
"That's right. Now, wait for me, dear; I shan't be a minute. I've only
to get my things. They'll all go splendidly in this little bag."
In a quarter of an hour they had started. During that journey Frances
Freeland betrayed no sign of tremor. She was going into action, and,
therefore, had no patience with her nerves.
"Are you proposing to stay, Mother?" Felix hazarded; "because I don't
think there's a room for you."
"Oh! that's nothing, darling. I sleep beautifully in a chair. It suits
me better than lying down." Felix cast up his eyes, and made no answer.
On arriving, they found that the doctor had been there, expressed his
satisfaction, and enjoined perfect quiet. Tod was on the point of
starting back to Transham, where Sheila and the two laborers would be
brought up before the magistrates. Felix and Kirsteen took hurried
counsel. Now that Mother, whose nursing was beyond reproach, had come,
it would be better if they went with Tod. All three started forthwith in
the car.
Left alone, Frances Freeland took her bag--a noticeably old one, without
any patent clasp whatever, so that she could open it--went noiselessly
upstairs, tapped on Derek's door, and went in. A faint but cheerful
voice remarked: "Halloo, Granny!"
Frances Freeland went up to the bed, smiled down on him ineffably, laid a
finger on his lips, and said, in the stillest voice: "You mustn't talk,
darling!" Then she sat down in the window with her bag beside her. Half
a tear had run down her nose, and she had no intention that it should be
seen. She therefore opened her bag, and, having taken out a little
bottle, beckoned Nedda.
"Now, darling," she whispered, "you must just take one of these. It's
nothing new; they're what my mother used to give me at your age. And for
one hour you must go out and get some fresh air, and then you can come
back."
"Must I, Granny?"
"Yes; you must keep up your strength. Kiss me."
Nedda kissed a cheek that seemed extraordinarily smooth and soft,
received a kiss in the middle of her own, and, having stayed a second by
the bed, looking down with all her might, went out.
Frances Freeland, in the window, wasted no thoughts, but began to run
over in her mind the exact operations necessary to defeat this illness of
darling Derek's. Her fingers continually locked and interlocked
themselves with fresh determinations; her eyes, fixed on imaginary foods,
methods of washing, and ways of keeping him quiet, had an almost
fanatical intensity. Like a good general she marshalled her means of
attack and fixed them in perfect order. Now and then she gazed into her
bag, making quite sure that she had everything, and nothing that was
new-fangled or liable to go wrong. For into action she never brought any
of those patent novelties that delighted her soul in times of peace. For
example, when she herself had pneumonia and no doctor, for two months, it
was well known that she had lain on her back, free from every kind of
remedy, employing only courage, nature, and beef tea, or some such simple
sustenance.
Having now made her mental dispositions, she got up without sound and
slipped off a petticoat that she suspected of having rustled a little
when she came in; folding and popping it where it could not be suspected
any more, she removed her shoes and put on very old velvet slippers. She
walked in these toward the bed, listening to find out whether she could
hear herself, without success. Then, standing where she could see when
his eyes opened, she began to take stock. That pillow wasn't very
comfortable! A little table was wanted on both sides, instead of on one.
There was no odorator, and she did not see one of those arrangements!
All these things would have to be remedied.
Absorbed in this reconnoitring, she failed to observe that darling Derek
was looking at her through eyelashes that were always so nice and black.
He said suddenly, in that faint and cheerful voice:
"All right, Granny; I'm going to get up to-morrow."
Frances Freeland, whose principle it was that people should always be
encouraged to believe themselves better than they were, answered. "Yes,
darling, of course; you'll be up in no time. It'll be delightful to see
you in a chair to-morrow. But you mustn't talk."
Derek sighed, closed his eyes, and went off into a faint.
It was in moments such as these that Frances Freeland was herself. Her
face flushed a little and grew terribly determined. Conscious that she
was absolutely alone in the house, she ran to her bag, took out her sal
volatile, applied it vigorously to his nose, and poured a little between
his lips. She did other things to him, and not until she had brought him
round, and the best of it was already made, did she even say to herself:
'It's no use fussing; I must make the best of it.'
Then, having discovered that he felt quite comfortable--as he said--she
sat down in a chair to fan him and tremble vigorously. She would not
have allowed that movement of her limbs if it had in any way interfered
with the fanning. But since, on the contrary, it seemed to be of
assistance, she certainly felt it a relief; for, whatever age her spirit
might be, her body was seventy-three.
And while she fanned she thought of Derek as a little, black-haired,
blazing-gray-eyed slip of a sallow boy, all little thin legs and arms
moving funnily like a foal's. He had been such a dear, gentlemanlike
little chap. It was dreadful he should be forgetting himself so, and
getting into such trouble. And her thoughts passed back beyond him to
her own four little sons, among whom she had been so careful not to have
a favorite, but to love them all equally. And she thought of how their
holland suits wore out, especially in the elastic, and got green behind,
almost before they were put on; and of how she used to cut their hairs,
spending at least three-quarters of an hour on each, because she had
never been quick at it, while they sat so good--except Stanley, and
darling Tod, who WOULD move just as she had got into the comb
particularly nice bits of his hair, always so crisp and difficult! And of
how she had cut off Felix's long golden curls when he was four, and would
have cried over it, if crying hadn't always been silly! And of how
beautifully they had all had their measles together, so that she had been
up with them day and night for about a fortnight. And of how it was a
terrible risk with Derek and darling Nedda, not at all a wise match, she
was afraid. And yet, if they really were attached, of course one must
put the best face on it! And how lovely it would be to see another
little baby some day; and what a charming little mother Nedda would
make--if only the dear child would do her hair just a little differently!
And she perceived that Derek was asleep--and one of her own legs, from
the knee down. She would certainly have bad pins and needles if she did
not get up; but, since she would not wake him for the world, she must do
something else to cure it. And she hit upon this plan. She had only to
say, 'Nonsense, you haven't anything of the sort!' and it was sure to go
away. She said this to her leg, but, being a realist, she only made it
feel like a pin-cushion. She knew, however, that she had only to
persevere, because it would never do to give in. She persevered, and her
leg felt as if red-hot needles were being stuck in it. Then, for the
life of her, she could not help saying a little psalm. The sensation
went away and left her leg quite dead. She would have no strength in it
at all when she got up. But that would be easily cured, when she could
get to her bag, with three globules of nux vomica--and darling Derek must
not be waked up for anything! She waited thus till Nedda came back, and
then said, "Sssh!"
He woke at once, so that providentially she was able to get up, and,
having stood with her weight on one leg for five minutes, so as to be
quite sure she did not fall, she crossed back to the window, took her nux
vomica, and sat down with her tablets to note down the little affairs she
would require, while Nedda took her place beside the bed, to fan him.
Having made her list, she went to Nedda and whispered that she was going
down to see about one or two little things, and while she whispered she
arranged the dear child's hair. If only she would keep it just like
that, it would be so much more becoming! And she went down-stairs.
Accustomed to the resources of Stanley's establishment, or at least to
those of John's and Felix's, and of the hotels she stayed at, she felt
for a moment just a little nonplussed at discovering at her disposal
nothing but three dear little children playing with a dog, and one
bicycle. For a few seconds she looked at the latter hard. If only it
had been a tricycle! Then, feeling certain that she could not make it
into one, she knew that she must make the best of it, especially as, in
any case, she could not have used it, for it would never do to leave
darling Nedda alone in the house. She decided therefore to look in every
room to see if she could find the things she wanted. The dog, who had
been attracted by her, left the children and came too, and the children,
attracted by the dog, followed; so they all five went into a room on the
ground floor. It was partitioned into two by a screen; in one portion
was a rough camp bedstead, and in the other two dear little child's beds,
that must once have been Derek's and Sheila's, and one still smaller,
made out of a large packing-case. The eldest of the little children
said:
"That's where Billy sleeps, Susie sleeps here, and I sleeps there; and
our father sleeped in here before he went to prison." Frances Freeland
experienced a shock. To prison! The idea of letting these little things
know such a thing as that! The best face had so clearly not been put on
it that she decided to put it herself.
"Oh, not to prison, dear! Only into a house in the town for a little
while."
It seemed to her quite dreadful that they should know the truth--it was
simply necessary to put it out of their heads. That dear little girl
looked so old already, such a little mother! And, as they stood about
her, she gazed piercingly at their heads. They were quite clean.
The second dear little thing said:
"We like bein' here; we hope Father won't be comin' back from prison for
a long time, so as we can go on stayin' here. Mr. Freeland gives us
apples."
The failure of her attempt to put a nicer idea into their heads
disconcerted Frances Freeland for a moment only. She said:
"Who told you he was in prison?"
Biddy answered slowly: "Nobody didn't tell us; we picked it up."
"Oh, but you should never pick things up! That's not at all nice. You
don't know what harm they may do you."
Billy replied: "We picked up a dead cat yesterday. It didn't scratch a
bit, it didn't."
And Biddy added: "Please, what is prison like?"
Pity seized on Frances Freeland for these little derelicts, whose heads
and pinafores and faces were so clean. She pursed her lips very tight
and said:
"Hold out your hands, all of you."
Three small hands were held out, and three small pairs of gray-blue eyes
looked up at her. From the recesses of her pocket she drew forth her
purse, took from it three shillings, and placed one in the very centre of
each palm. The three small hands closed; two small grave bodies dipped
in little courtesies; the third remained stock-still, but a grin spread
gradually on its face from ear to ear.
"What do you say?" said Frances Freeland.
"Thank you."
"Thank you--what?"
"Thank you, ma'am."
"That's right. Now run away and play a nice game in the orchard."
The three turned immediately and went. A sound of whispering rose busily
outside. Frances Freeland, glancing through the window, saw them
unlatching the wicket gate. Sudden alarm seized her. She put out her
head and called. Biddy came back.
"You mustn't spend them all at once."
Biddy shook her head.
"No. Once we had a shillin', and we were sick. We're goin' to spend
three pennies out of one shillin' every day, till they're gone."
"And aren't you going to put any by for a rainy day?"
"No."
Frances Freeland did not know what to answer. Dear little things!
The dear little things vanished.
In Tod's and Kirsteen's room she found a little table and a pillow, and
something that might do, and having devised a contrivance by which this
went into that and that into this and nothing whatever showed, she
conveyed the whole very quietly up near dear Derek's room, and told
darling Nedda to go down-stairs and look for something that she knew she
would not find, for she could not think at the moment of any better
excuse. When the child had gone, she popped this here, and popped that
there. And there she was! And she felt better. It was no use whatever
to make a fuss about that aspect of nursing which was not quite nice.
One just put the best face upon it, quietly did what was necessary, and
pretended that it was not there. Kirsteen had not seen to things quite
as she should have. But then dear Kirsteen was so clever.
Her attitude, indeed, to that blue bird, who had alighted now twenty-one
years ago in the Freeland nest, had always, after the first few shocks,
been duly stoical. For, however her fastidiousness might jib at neglect
of the forms of things, she was the last woman not to appreciate really
sterling qualities. Though it was a pity dear Kirsteen did expose her
neck and arms so that they had got quite brown, a pity that she never
went to church and had brought up the dear children not to go, and to
have ideas that were not quite right about 'the Land,' still she was
emphatically a lady, and devoted to dear Tod, and very good. And her
features were so regular, and she had such a good color, and was so slim
and straight in the back, that she was always a pleasure to look at. And
if she was not quite so practical as she might have been, that was not
everything; and she would never get stout, as there was every danger of
Clara doing. So that from the first she had always put a good face on
her. Derek's voice interrupted her thoughts:
"I'm awfully thirsty, Granny."
"Yes, darling. Don't move your head; and just let me pop in some of this
delicious lemonade with a spoon."
Nedda, returning, found her supporting his head with one hand, while with
the other she kept popping in the spoon, her soul smiling at him lovingly
through her lips and eyes.
CHAPTER XXXII
Felix went back to London the afternoon of Frances Freeland's
installation, taking Sheila with him. She had been 'bound over to keep
the peace'--a task which she would obviously be the better able to
accomplish at a distance. And, though to take charge of her would be
rather like holding a burning match till there was no match left, he felt
bound to volunteer.
He left Nedda with many misgivings; but had not the heart to wrench her
away.
The recovery of a young man who means to get up to-morrow is not so rapid
when his head, rather than his body, is the seat of trouble. Derek's
temperament was against him. He got up several times in spirit, to find
that his body had remained in bed. And this did not accelerate his
progress. It had been impossible to dispossess Frances Freeland from
command of the sick-room; and, since she was admittedly from experience
and power of paying no attention to her own wants, the fittest person for
the position, there she remained, taking turn and turn about with Nedda,
and growing a little whiter, a little thinner, more resolute in face, and
more loving in her eyes, from day to day. That tragedy of the old--the
being laid aside from life before the spirit is ready to resign, the
feeling that no one wants you, that all those you have borne and brought
up have long passed out on to roads where you cannot follow, that even
the thought-life of the world streams by so fast that you lie up in a
backwater, feebly, blindly groping for the full of the water, and always
pushed gently, hopelessly back; that sense that you are still young and
warm, and yet so furbelowed with old thoughts and fashions that none can
see how young and warm you are, none see how you long to rub hearts with
the active, how you yearn for something real to do that can help life on,
and how no one will give it you! All this--this tragedy--was for the time
defeated. She was, in triumph, doing something real for those she loved
and longed to do things for. She had Sheila's room.
For a week at least Derek asked no questions, made no allusion to the
mutiny, not even to the cause of his own disablement. It had been
impossible to tell whether the concussion had driven coherent
recollection from his mind, or whether he was refraining from an instinct
of self-preservation, barring such thoughts as too exciting. Nedda
dreaded every day lest he should begin. She knew that the questions
would fall on her, since no answer could possibly be expected from Granny
except: "It's all right, darling, everything's going on perfectly--only
you mustn't talk!"
It began the last day of June, the very first day that he got up.
"They didn't save the hay, did they?"
Was he fit to hear the truth? Would he forgive her if she did not tell
it? If she lied about this, could she go on lying to his other
questions? When he discovered, later, would not the effect undo the good
of lies now? She decided to lie; but, when she opened her lips, simply
could not, with his eyes on her; and said faintly: "Yes, they did."
His face contracted. She slipped down at once and knelt beside his
chair. He said between his teeth:
"Go on; tell me. Did it all collapse?"
She could only stroke his hands and bow her head.
"I see. What's happened to them?"
Without looking up, she murmured:
"Some have been dismissed; the others are working again all right."
"All right!"
She looked up then so pitifully that he did not ask her anything more.
But the news put him back a week. And she was in despair. The day he got
up again he began afresh:
"When are the assizes?"
"The 7th of August."
"Has anybody been to see Bob Tryst?"
"Yes; Aunt Kirsteen has been twice."
Having been thus answered, he was quiet for a long time. She had slipped
again out of her chair to kneel beside him; it seemed the only place from
which she could find courage for her answers. He put his hand, that had
lost its brown, on her hair. At that she plucked up spirit to ask:
"Would you like me to go and see him?"
He nodded.
"Then, I will--to-morrow."
"Don't ever tell me what isn't true, Nedda! People do; that's why I
didn't ask before."
She answered fervently:
"I won't! Oh, I won't!"
She dreaded this visit to the prison. Even to think of those places gave
her nightmare. Sheila's description of her night in a cell had made her
shiver with horror. But there was a spirit in Nedda that went through
with things; and she started early the next day, refusing Kirsteen's
proffered company.
The look of that battlemented building, whose walls were pierced with
emblems of the Christian faith, turned her heartsick, and she stood for
several minutes outside the dark-green door before she could summon
courage to ring the bell.
A stout man in blue, with a fringe of gray hair under his peaked cap, and
some keys dangling from a belt, opened, and said:
"Yes, miss?"
Being called 'miss' gave her a little spirit, and she produced the card
she had been warming in her hand.
"I have come to see a man called Robert Tryst, waiting for trial at the
assizes."
The stout man looked at the card back and front, as is the way of those
in doubt, closed the door behind her, and said:
"Just a minute, miss."
The shutting of the door behind her sent a little shiver down Nedda's
spine; but the temperature of her soul was rising, and she looked round.
Beyond the heavy arch, beneath which she stood, was a courtyard where she
could see two men, also in blue, with peaked caps. Then, to her left,
she became conscious of a shaven-headed noiseless being in drab-gray
clothes, on hands and knees, scrubbing the end of a corridor. Her tremor
at the stealthy ugliness of this crouching figure yielded at once to a
spasm of pity. The man gave her a look, furtive, yet so charged with
intense penetrating curiosity that it seemed to let her suddenly into
innumerable secrets. She felt as if the whole life of people shut away
in silence and solitude were disclosed to her in the swift, unutterably
alive look of this noiseless kneeling creature, riving out of her
something to feed his soul and body on. That look seemed to lick its
lips. It made her angry, made her miserable, with a feeling of pity she
could hardly bear. Tears, too startled to flow, darkened her eyes. Poor
man! How he must hate her, who was free, and all fresh from the open
world and the sun, and people to love and talk to! The 'poor man'
scrubbed on steadily, his ears standing out from his shaven head; then,
dragging his knee-mat skew-ways, he took the chance to look at her again.
Perhaps because his dress and cap and stubble of hair and even the color
of his face were so drab-gray, those little dark eyes seemed to her the
most terribly living things she had ever seen. She felt that they had
taken her in from top to toe, clothed and unclothed, taken in the
resentment she had felt and the pity she was feeling; they seemed at once
to appeal, to attack, and to possess her ravenously, as though all the
starved instincts in a whole prisoned world had rushed up and for a
second stood outside their bars. Then came the clank of keys, the eyes
left her as swiftly as they had seized her, and he became again just that
stealthy, noiseless creature scrubbing a stone floor. And, shivering,
Nedda thought:
'I can't bear myself here--me with everything in the world I want--and
these with nothing!'
But the stout janitor was standing by her again, together with another
man in blue, who said:
"Now, miss; this way, please!"
And down that corridor they went. Though she did not turn, she knew well
that those eyes were following, still riving something from her; and she
heaved a sigh of real relief when she was round a corner. Through barred
windows that had no glass she could see another court, where men in the
same drab-gray clothes printed with arrows were walking one behind the
other, making a sort of moving human hieroglyphic in the centre of the
concrete floor. Two warders with swords stood just outside its edge.
Some of those walking had their heads up, their chests expanded, some
slouched along with heads almost resting on their chests; but most had
their eyes fixed on the back of the neck of the man in front; and there
was no sound save the tramp of feet.
Nedda put her hand to her throat. The warder beside her said in a chatty
voice:
"That's where the 'ards takes their exercise, miss. You want to see a
man called Tryst, waitin' trial, I think. We've had a woman here to see
him, and a lady in blue, once or twice."
"My aunt."
"Ah! just so. Laborer, I think--case of arson. Funny thing; never yet
found a farm-laborer that took to prison well."
Nedda shivered. The words sounded ominous. Then a little flame lit
itself within her.
"Does anybody ever 'take to' prison?"
The warder uttered a sound between a grunt and chuckle.
"There's some has a better time here than they have out, any day. No
doubt about it--they're well fed here."
Her aunt's words came suddenly into Nedda's mind: 'Liberty's a glorious
feast!' But she did not speak them.
"Yes," the warder proceeded, "some o' them we get look as if they didn't
have a square meal outside from one year's end to the other. If you'll
just wait a minute, miss, I'll fetch the man down to you."
In a bare room with distempered walls, and bars to a window out of which
she could see nothing but a high brick wall, Nedda waited. So rapid is
the adjustment of the human mind, so quick the blunting of human
sensation, that she had already not quite the passion of pitiful feeling
which had stormed her standing under that archway. A kind of numbness
gripped her nerves. There were wooden forms in this room, and a
blackboard, on which two rows of figures had been set one beneath the
other, but not yet added up.
The silence at first was almost deathly. Then it was broken by a sound
as of a heavy door banged, and the shuffling tramp of marching
men--louder, louder, softer--a word of command--still softer, and it died
away. Dead silence again! Nedda pressed her hands to her breast. Twice
she added up those figures on the blackboard; each time the number was
the same. Ah, there was a fly--two flies! How nice they looked, moving,
moving, chasing each other in the air. Did flies get into the cells?
Perhaps not even a fly came there--nothing more living than walls and
wood! Nothing living except what was inside oneself! How dreadful! Not
even a clock ticking, not even a bird's song! Silent, unliving, worse
than in this room! Something pressed against her leg. She started
violently and looked down. A little cat! Oh, what a blessed thing! A
little sandy, ugly cat! It must have crept in through the door. She was
not locked in, then, anyway! Thus far had nerves carried her already!
Scrattling the little cat's furry pate, she pulled herself together. She
would not tremble and be nervous. It was disloyal to Derek and to her
purpose, which was to bring comfort to poor Tryst. Then the door was
pushed open, and the warder said:
"A quarter of an hour, miss. I'll be just outside."
She saw a big man with unshaven cheeks come in, and stretched out her
hand.
"I am Mr. Derek's cousin, going to be married to him. He's been ill, but
he's getting well again now. We knew you'd like to hear." And she
thought: 'Oh! What a tragic face! I can't bear to look at his eyes!'
He took her hand, said, "Thank you, miss," and stood as still as ever.
"Please come and sit down, and we can talk."
Tryst moved to a form and took his seat thereon, with his hands between
his knees, as if playing with an imaginary cap. He was dressed in an
ordinary suit of laborer's best clothes, and his stiff, dust-colored hair
was not cut particularly short. The cheeks of his square-cut face had
fallen in, the eyes had sunk back, and the prominence thus given to his
cheek and jawbones and thick mouth gave his face a savage look--only his
dog-like, terribly yearning eyes made Nedda feel so sorry that she simply
could not feel afraid.
"The children are such dears, Mr. Tryst. Billy seems to grow every day.
They're no trouble at all, and quite happy. Biddy's wonderful with
them."
"She's a good maid." The thick lips shaped the words as though they had
almost lost power of speech.
"Do they let you see the newspapers we send? Have you got everything you
want?"
For a minute he did not seem to be going to answer; then, moving his head
from side to side, he said:
"Nothin' I want, but just get out of here."
Nedda murmured helplessly:
"It's only a month now to the assizes. Does Mr. Pogram come to see you?"
"Yes, he comes. He can't do nothin'!"
"Oh, don't despair! Even if they don't acquit you, it'll soon be over.
Don't despair!" And she stole her hand out and timidly touched his arm.
She felt her heart turning over and over, he looked so sad.
He said in that stumbling, thick voice:
"Thank you kindly. I must get out. I won't stand long of it--not much
longer. I'm not used to it--always been accustomed to the air, an' bein'
about, that's where 'tis. But don't you tell him, miss. You say I'm
goin' along all right. Don't you tell him what I said. 'Tis no use him
frettin' over me. 'Twon' do me no good."
And Nedda murmured:
"No, no; I won't tell him."
Then suddenly came the words she had dreaded:
"D'you think they'll let me go, miss?"
"Oh, yes, I think so--I hope so!" But she could not meet his eyes, and
hearing him grit his boot on the floor knew he had not believed her.
He said slowly:
"I never meant to do it when I went out that mornin'. It came on me
sudden, lookin' at the straw."
Nedda gave a little gasp. Could that man outside hear?
Tryst went on: "If they don't let me go, I won' stand it. 'Tis too much
for a man. I can't sleep, I can't eat, nor nothin'. I won' stand it.
It don' take long to die, if you put your mind to it."
Feeling quite sick with pity, Nedda got up and stood beside him; and,
moved by an uncontrollable impulse, she lifted one of his great hands and
clasped it in both her own. "Oh, try and be brave and look forward!
You're going to be ever so happy some day."
He gave her a strange long stare.
"Yes, I'll be happy some day. Don' you never fret about me."
And Nedda saw that the warder was standing in the doorway.
"Sorry, miss, time's up."
Without a word Tryst rose and went out.
Nedda was alone again with the little sandy cat. Standing under the
high-barred window she wiped her cheeks, that were all wet. Why, why must
people suffer so? Suffer so slowly, so horribly? What were men made of
that they could go on day after day, year after year, watching others
suffer?
When the warder came back to take her out, she did not trust herself to
speak, or even to look at him. She walked with hands tight clenched, and
eyes fixed on the ground. Outside the prison door she drew a long, long
breath. And suddenly her eyes caught the inscription on the corner of a
lane leading down alongside the prison wall--"Love's Walk"!
CHAPTER XXXIII
Peremptorily ordered by the doctor to the sea, but with instructions to
avoid for the present all excitement, sunlight, and color, Derek and his
grandmother repaired to a spot well known to be gray, and Nedda went home
to Hampstead. This was the last week in July. A fortnight spent in the
perfect vacuity of an English watering-place restored the boy
wonderfully. No one could be better trusted than Frances Freeland to
preserve him from looking on the dark side of anything, more specially
when that thing was already not quite nice. Their conversation was
therefore free from allusion to the laborers, the strike, or Bob Tryst.
And Derek thought the more. The approaching trial was hardly ever out of
his mind. Bathing, he would think of it; sitting on the gray jetty
looking over the gray sea, he would think of it. Up the gray cobbled
streets and away on the headlands, he would think of it. And, so as not
to have to think of it, he would try to walk himself to a standstill.
Unfortunately the head will continue working when the legs are at rest.
And when he sat opposite to her at meal-times, Frances Freeland would
gaze piercingly at his forehead and muse: 'The dear boy looks much
better, but he's getting a little line between his brows--it IS such a
pity!' It worried her, too, that the face he was putting on their little
holiday together was not quite as full as she could have wished--though
the last thing in the world she could tolerate were really fat cheeks,
those signs of all that her stoicism abhorred, those truly unforgivable
marks of the loss of 'form.' He struck her as dreadfully silent, too,
and she would rack her brains for subjects that would interest him, often
saying to herself: 'If only I were clever!' It was natural he should
think of dear Nedda, but surely it was not that which gave him the little
line. He must be brooding about those other things. He ought not to be
melancholy like this and let anything prevent the sea from doing him
good. The habit--hard-learned by the old, and especially the old of her
particular sex--of not wishing for the moon, or at all events of not
letting others know that you are wishing for it, had long enabled Frances
Freeland to talk cheerfully on the most indifferent subjects whether or
no her heart were aching. One's heart often did ache, of course, but it
simply didn't do to let it interfere, making things uncomfortable for
others. And once she said to him: "You know, darling, I think it would
be so nice for you to take a little interest in politics. They're very
absorbing when you once get into them. I find my paper most enthralling.
And it really has very good principles."
"If politics did anything for those who most need things done,
Granny--but I can't see that they do."
She thought a little, then, making firm her lips, said:
"I don't think that's quite just, darling, there are a great many
politicians who are very much looked up to--all the bishops, for
instance, and others whom nobody could suspect of self-seeking."
"I didn't mean that politicians were self-seeking, Granny; I meant that
they're comfortable people, and the things that interest them are those
that interest comfortable people. What have they done for the laborers,
for instance?"
"Oh, but, darling! they're going to do a great deal. In my paper they're
continually saying that."
"Do you believe it?"
"I'm sure they wouldn't say so if they weren't. There's quite a new
plan, and it sounds most sensible. And so I don't think, darling, that
if I were you I should make myself unhappy about all that kind of thing.
They must know best. They're all so much older than you. And you're
getting quite a little line between your eyes."
Derek smiled.
"All right, Granny; I shall have a big one soon."
Frances Freeland smiled, too, but shook her head.
"Yes; and that's why I really think you ought to take interest in
politics."
"I'd rather take interest in you, Granny. You're very jolly to look at."
Frances Freeland raised her brows.
"I? My dear, I'm a perfect fright nowadays."
Thus pushing away what her stoicism and perpetual aspiration to an
impossibly good face would not suffer her to admit, she added:
"Where would you like to drive this afternoon?"
For they took drives in a small victoria, Frances Freeland holding her
sunshade to protect him from the sun whenever it made the mistake of
being out.
On August the fourth he insisted that he was well and must go back home.
And, though to bring her attendance on him to an end was a grief, she
humbly admitted that he must be wanting younger company, and, after one
wistful attempt, made no further bones. The following day they
travelled.
On getting home he found that the police had been to see little Biddy
Tryst, who was to be called as a witness. Tod would take her over on the
morning of the trial. Derek did not wait for this, but on the day before
the assizes repacked his bag and went off to the Royal Charles Hostel at
Worcester. He slept not at all that night, and next morning was early at
the court, for Tryst's case would be the first. Anxiously he sat
watching all the queer and formal happenings that mark the initiation of
the higher justice--the assemblage of the gentlemen in wigs; the sifting,
shifting, settling of clerks, and ushers, solicitors, and the public; the
busy indifference, the cheerful professionalism of it all. He saw little
Mr. Pogram come in, more square and rubbery than ever, and engage in
conclave with one of the bewigged. The smiles, shrugs, even the sharp
expressions on that barrister's face; the way he stood, twisting round,
one hand wrapped in his gown, one foot on the bench behind; it was all as
if he had done it hundreds of times before and cared not the snap of one
of his thin, yellow fingers. Then there was a sudden hush; the judge came
in, bowed, and took his seat. And that, too, seemed so professional.
Haunted by the thought of him to whom this was almost life and death, the
boy was incapable of seeing how natural it was that they should not all
feel as he did.
The case was called and Tryst brought in. Derek had once more to undergo
the torture of those tragic eyes fixed on him. Round that heavy figure,
that mournful, half-brutal, and half-yearning face, the pleadings, the
questions, the answers buzzed, bringing out facts with damning clearness,
yet leaving the real story of that early morning as hidden as if the
court and all were but gibbering figures of air. The real story of
Tryst, heavy and distraught, rising and turning out from habit into the
early haze on the fields, where his daily work had lain, of Tryst
brooding, with the slow, the wrathful incoherence that centuries of
silence in those lonely fields had passed into the blood of his forebears
and himself. Brooding, in the dangerous disproportion that enforced
continence brings to certain natures, loading the brain with violence
till the storm bursts and there leap out the lurid, dark insanities of
crime. Brooding, while in the air flies chased each other, insects
crawled together in the grass, and the first principle of nature worked
everywhere its sane fulfilment. They might talk and take evidence as
they would, be shrewd and sharp with all the petty sharpness of the Law;
but the secret springs would still lie undisclosed, too natural and true
to bear the light of day. The probings and eloquence of justice would
never paint the picture of that moment of maniacal relief, when, with jaw
hanging loose, eyes bulging in exultation of revenge, he had struck those
matches with his hairy hands and let them flare in the straw, till the
little red flames ran and licked, rustled and licked, and there was
nothing to do but watch them lick and burn. Nor of that sudden wildness
of dumb fear that rushed into the heart of the crouching creature,
changing the madness of his face to palsy. Nor of the recoil from the
burning stack; those moments empty with terror. Nor of how terror,
through habit of inarticulate, emotionless existence, gave place again to
brute stolidity. And so, heavily back across the dewy fields, under the
larks' songs, the cooings of pigeons, the hum of wings, and all the
unconscious rhythm of ageless Nature. No! The probings of Justice could
never reach the whole truth. And even Justice quailed at its own
probings when the mother-child was passed up from Tod's side into the
witness-box and the big laborer was seen to look at her and she at him.
She seemed to have grown taller; her pensive little face and beautifully
fluffed-out corn-brown hair had an eerie beauty, perched up there in the
arid witness-box, as of some small figure from the brush of Botticelli.
"Your name, my dear?"
"Biddy Tryst."
"How old?"
"Ten next month, please."
"Do you remember going to live at Mr. Freeland's cottage?"
"Yes, sir."
"And do you remember the first night?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where did you sleep, Biddy?"
"Please, sir, we slept in a big room with a screen. Billy and Susie and
me; and father behind the screen."
"And where was the room?"
"Down-stairs, sir."
"Now, Biddy, what time did you wake up the first morning?"
"When Father got up."
"Was that early or late?"
"Very early."
"Would you know the time?"
"No, sir."
"But it was very early; how did you know that?"
"It was a long time before we had any breakfast."
"And what time did you have breakfast?"
"Half past six by the kitchen clock."
"Was it light when you woke up?"
"Yes, sir."
"When Father got up, did he dress or did he go to bed again?"
"He hadn't never undressed, sir."
"Then did he stay with you or did he go out?"
"Out, sir."
"And how long was it before he came back?"
"When I was puttin' on Billy's boots."
"What had you done in between?"
"Helped Susie and dressed Billy."
"And how long does that take you generally?"
"Half an hour, sir."
"I see. What did Father look like when he came in, Biddy?"
The mother-child paused. For the first time it seemed to dawn on her
that there was something dangerous in these questions. She twisted her
small hands before her and gazed at her father.
The judge said gently:
"Well, my child?"
"Like he does now, sir."
"Thank you, Biddy."
That was all; the mother-child was suffered to step down and take her
place again by Tod. And in the silence rose the short and rubbery report
of little Mr. Pogram blowing his nose. No evidence given that morning
was so conclusive, actual, terrible as that unconscious: "Like he does
now, sir." That was why even Justice quailed a little at its own
probings.
From this moment the boy knew that Tryst's fate was sealed. What did all
those words matter, those professional patterings one way and the other;
the professional jeers: 'My friend has told you this' and 'My friend will
tell you that.' The professional steering of the impartial judge, seated
there above them all; the cold, calculated rhapsodies about the
heinousness of arson; the cold and calculated attack on the characters of
the stone-breaker witness and the tramp witness; the cold and calculated
patter of the appeal not to condemn a father on the evidence of his
little child; the cold and calculated outburst on the right of every man
to be assumed innocent except on overwhelming evidence such as did not
here exist. The cold and calculated balancing of pro and con; and those
minutes of cold calculation veiled from the eyes of the court. Even the
verdict: 'Guilty'; even the judgment: 'Three years' penal servitude.'
All nothing, all superfluity to the boy supporting the tragic gaze of
Tryst's eyes and making up his mind to a desperate resort.
"Three years' penal servitude!" The big laborer paid no more attention
to those words than to any others spoken during that hour's settlement of
his fate. True, he received them standing, as is the custom, fronting
the image of Justice, from whose lips they came. But by no single
gesture did he let any one see the dumb depths of his soul. If life had
taught him nothing else, it had taught him never to express himself.
Mute as any bullock led into the slaughtering-house, with something of a
bullock's dulled and helpless fear in his eyes, he passed down and away
between his jailers. And at once the professional noises rose, and the
professional rhapsodists, hunching their gowns, swept that little lot of
papers into their pink tape, and, turning to their neighbors, smiled, and
talked, and jerked their eyebrows.
CHAPTER XXXIV
The nest on the Spaniard's Road had not been able to contain Sheila long.
There are certain natures, such as that of Felix, to whom the claims and
exercise of authority are abhorrent, who refuse to exercise it themselves
and rage when they see it exercised over others, but who somehow never
come into actual conflict with it. There are other natures, such as
Sheila's, who do not mind in the least exercising authority themselves,
but who oppose it vigorously when they feel it coming near themselves or
some others. Of such is the kingdom of militancy. Her experience with
the police had sunk deep into her soul. They had not, as a fact, treated
her at all badly, which did not prevent her feeling as if they had
outraged in her the dignity of woman. She arrived, therefore, in
Hampstead seeing red even where red was not. And since, undoubtedly,
much real red was to be seen, there was little other color in the world
or in her cheeks those days. Long disagreements with Alan, to whom she
was still a magnet but whose Stanley-like nature stood firm against the
blandishments of her revolting tongue, drove her more and more toward a
decision the seeds of which had, perhaps, been planted during her former
stay among the breezy airs of Hampstead.
Felix, coming one day into his wife's study--for the house knew not the
word drawing-room--found Flora, with eyebrows lifted up and smiling lips,
listening to Sheila proclaiming the doctrine that it was impossible not
to live 'on one's own.' Nothing else--Felix learned--was compatible with
dignity, or even with peace of mind. She had, therefore, taken a back
room high up in a back street, in which she was going to live perfectly
well on ten shillings a week; and, having thirty-two pounds saved up, she
would be all right for a year, after which she would be able to earn her
living. The principle she purposed to keep before her eyes was that of
committing herself to nothing which would seriously interfere with her
work in life. Somehow, it was impossible to look at this girl, with her
glowing cheeks and her glowing eyes, and her hair frizzy from ardor, and
to distrust her utterances. Yes! She would arrive, if not where she
wanted, at all events somewhere; which, after all, was the great thing.
And in fact she did arrive the very next day in the back room high up in
the back street, and neither Tod's cottage nor the house on the
Spaniard's Road saw more than flying gleams of her, thenceforth.
Another by-product, this, of that little starting episode, the notice
given to Tryst! Strange how in life one little incident, one little
piece of living stress, can attract and gather round it the feelings,
thoughts, actions of people whose lives run far and wide away therefrom.
But episodes are thus potent only when charged with a significance that
comes from the clash of the deepest instincts.
During the six weeks which had elapsed between his return home from
Joyfields and the assizes, Felix had much leisure to reflect that if Lady
Malloring had not caused Tryst to be warned that he could not marry his
deceased wife's sister and continue to stay on the estate--the lives of
Felix himself, his daughter, mother, brother, brother's wife, their son
and daughter, and in less degree of his other brothers, would have been
free of a preoccupation little short of ludicrous in proportion to the
face value of the cause. But he had leisure, too, to reflect that in
reality the issue involved in that tiny episode concerned human existence
to its depths--for, what was it but the simple, all-important question of
human freedom? The simple, all-important issue of how far men and women
should try to rule the lives of others instead of trying only to rule
their own, and how far those others should allow their lives to be so
ruled? This it was which gave that episode its power of attracting and
affecting the thoughts, feelings, actions of so many people otherwise
remote. And though Felix was paternal enough to say to himself nearly
all the time, 'I can't let Nedda get further into this mess!' he was
philosopher enough to tell himself, in the unfatherly balance of his
hours, that the mess was caused by the fight best of all worth
fighting--of democracy against autocracy, of a man's right to do as he
likes with his life if he harms not others; of 'the Land' against the
fetterers of 'the Land.' And he was artist enough to see how from that
little starting episode the whole business had sprung--given, of course,
the entrance of the wilful force called love. But a father, especially
when he has been thoroughly alarmed, gives the artist and philosopher in
him short shrift.
Nedda came home soon after Sheila went, and to the eyes of Felix she came
back too old and thoughtful altogether. How different a girl from the
Nedda who had so wanted 'to know everything' that first night of May!
What was she brooding over, what planning, in that dark, round, pretty
head? At what resolve were those clear eyes so swiftly raised to look?
What was going on within, when her breast heaved so, without seeming
cause, and the color rushed up in her cheeks at a word, as though she had
been so far away that the effort of recall was alone enough to set all
her veins throbbing. And yet Felix could devise no means of attack on her
infatuation. For a man cannot cultivate the habit of never interfering
and then suddenly throw it over; least of all when the person to be
interfered with is his pet and only daughter.
Flora, not of course in the swim of those happenings at Joyflelds, could
not be got to take the matter very seriously. In fact--beyond what
concerned Felix himself and poetry--the matter that she did take
seriously had yet to be discovered. Hers was one of those semi-detached
natures particularly found in Hampstead. When exhorted to help tackle
the question, she could only suggest that Felix should take them all
abroad when he had finished 'The Last of the Laborers.' A tour, for
instance, in Norway and Sweden, where none of them had ever been, and
perhaps down through Finland into Russia.
Feeling like one who squirts on a burning haystack with a garden syringe,
Felix propounded this scheme to his little daughter. She received it
with a start, a silence, a sort of quivering all over, as of an animal
who scents danger. She wanted to know when, and being told--'not before
the middle of August', relapsed into her preoccupation as if nothing had
been said. Felix noted on the hall table one afternoon a letter in her
handwriting, addressed to a Worcester newspaper, and remarked thereafter
that she began to receive this journal daily, obviously with a view to
reports of the coming assizes. Once he tried to break through into her
confidence. It was August Bank Holiday, and they had gone out on to the
heath together to see the people wonderfully assembled. Coming back
across the burnt-up grass, strewn with paper bags, banana peel, and the
cores of apples, he hooked his hand into her arm.
"What is to be done with a child that goes about all day thinking and
thinking and not telling anybody what she is thinking?"
She smiled round at him and answered:
"I know, Dad. She IS a pig, isn't she?"
This comparison with an animal of proverbial stubbornness was not
encouraging. Then his hand was squeezed to her side and he heard her
murmur:
"I wonder if all daughters are such beasts!"
He understood well that she had meant: 'There is only one thing I
want--one thing I mean to have--one thing in the world for me now!'
And he said soberly:
"We can't expect anything else."
"Oh, Daddy!" she answered, but nothing more.
Only four days later she came to his study with a letter, and a face so
flushed and troubled that he dropped his pen and got up in alarm.
"Read this, Dad! It's impossible! It's not true! It's terrible! Oh!
What am I to do?"
The letter ran thus, in a straight, boyish handwriting:
"ROYAL CHARLES HOSTEL,
"WORCESTER, Aug. 7th.
"MY NEDDA,
"I have just seen Bob tried. They have given him three years' penal. It
was awful to sit there and watch him. He can never stand it. It was
awful to watch him looking at ME. It's no good. I'm going to give myself
up. I must do it. I've got everything ready; they'll have to believe me
and squash his sentence. You see, but for me it would never have been
done. It's a matter of honour. I can't let him suffer any more. This
isn't impulse. I've been meaning to do it for some time, if they found
him guilty. So in a way, it's an immense relief. I'd like to have seen
you first, but it would only distress you, and I might not have been able
to go through with it after. Nedda, darling, if you still love me when I
get out, we'll go to New Zealand, away from this country where they bully
poor creatures like Bob. Be brave! I'll write to-morrow, if they let
me.
"Your
"Derek."
The first sensation in Felix on reading this effusion was poignant
recollection of the little lawyer's look after Derek had made the scene
at Tryst's committal and of his words: 'Nothing in it, is there?' His
second thought: 'Is this the cutting of the knot that I've been looking
for?' His third, which swept all else away: 'My poor little darling!
What business has that boy to hurt her again like this!'
He heard her say:
"Tryst told me himself he did it, Dad! He told me when I went to see him
in the prison. Honour doesn't demand what isn't true! Oh, Dad, help
me!"
Felix was slow in getting free from the cross currents of reflection.
"He wrote this last night," he said dismally. "He may have done it
already. We must go and see John."
Nedda clasped her hands. "Ah! Yes!"
And Felix had not the heart to add what he was thinking: 'Not that I see
what good he can do!' But, though sober reason told him this, it was
astonishingly comforting to be going to some one who could be relied on
to see the facts of the situation without any of that 'flimflam' with
which imagination is accustomed to surround them. "And we'll send Derek
a wire for what it's worth."
They went at once to the post-office, Felix composing this message on the
way: 'Utterly mistaken chivalry you have no right await our arrival Felix
Freeland.' He handed it to her to read, and passed it under the brass
railing to the clerk, not without the feeling of shame due from one who
uses the word chivalry in a post-office.
On the way to the Tube station he held her arm tightly, but whether to
impart courage or receive it he could not have said, so strung-up in
spirit did he feel her. With few words exchanged they reached Whitehall.
Marking their card 'Urgent,' they were received within ten minutes.
John was standing in a high, white room, smelling a little of papers and
tobacco, and garnished solely by five green chairs, a table, and a bureau
with an immense number of pigeonholes, whereat he had obviously been
seated. Quick to observe what concerned his little daughter, Felix noted
how her greeting trembled up at her uncle and how a sort of warmth thawed
for the moment the regularity of his brother's face. When they had taken
two of the five green chairs and John was back at his bureau, Felix
handed over the letter. John read it and looked at Nedda. Then taking a
pipe out of his pocket, which he had evidently filled before they came
in, he lighted it and re-read the letter. Then, looking very straight at
Nedda, he said:
"Nothing in it? Honour bright, my dear!"
"No, Uncle John, nothing. Only that he fancies his talk about injustice
put it into Tryst's head."
John nodded; the girl's face was evidence enough for him.
"Any proof?"
"Tryst himself told me in the prison that he did it. He said it came on
him suddenly, when he saw the straw."
A pause followed before John said:
"Good! You and I and your father will go down and see the police."
Nedda lifted her hands and said breathlessly:
"But, Uncle! Dad! Have I the right? He says--honour. Won't it be
betraying him?"
Felix could not answer, but with relief he heard John say:
"It's not honorable to cheat the law."
"No; but he trusted me or he wouldn't have written."
John answered slowly:
"I think your duty's plain, my dear. The question for the police will be
whether or not to take notice of this false confession. For us to keep
the knowledge that it's false from them, under the circumstances, is
clearly not right. Besides being, to my mind, foolish."
For Felix to watch this mortal conflict going on in the soul of his
daughter--that soul which used to seem, perhaps even now seemed, part of
himself; to know that she so desperately wanted help for her decision,
and to be unable to give it, unable even to trust himself to be
honest--this was hard for Felix. There she sat, staring before her; and
only her tight-clasped hands, the little movements of her lips and
throat, showed the struggle going on in her.
"I couldn't, without seeing him; I MUST see him first, Uncle!"
John got up and went over to the window; he, too, had been affected by
her face.
"You realize," he said, "that you risk everything by that. If he's given
himself up, and they've believed him, he's not the sort to let it fall
through. You cut off your chance if he won't let you tell. Better for
your father and me to see him first, anyway." And Felix heard a mutter
that sounded like: 'Confound him!'
Nedda rose. "Can we go at once, then, Uncle?"
With a solemnity that touched Felix, John put a hand on each side of her
face, raised it, and kissed her on the forehead.
"All right!" he said. "Let's be off!"
A silent trio sought Paddington in a taxi-cab, digesting this desperate
climax of an affair that sprang from origins so small.
In Felix, contemplating his daughter's face, there was profound
compassion, but also that family dismay, that perturbation of
self-esteem, which public scandal forces on kinsmen, even the most
philosophic. He felt exasperation against Derek, against Kirsteen,
almost even against Tod, for having acquiesced passively in the
revolutionary bringing-up which had brought on such a disaster. War
against injustice; sympathy with suffering; chivalry! Yes! But not quite
to the point whence they recoiled on his daughter, his family, himself!
The situation was impossible! He was fast resolving that, whether or no
they saved Derek from this quixotry, the boy should not have Nedda. And
already his eyes found difficulty in meeting hers.
They secured a compartment to themselves and, having settled down in
corners, began mechanically unfolding evening journals. For after all,
whatever happens, one must read the papers! Without that, life would
indeed be insupportable! Felix had bought Mr. Cuthcott's, but, though he
turned and turned the sheets, they seemed to have no sense till these
words caught his eyes: "Convict's tragic death! Yesterday afternoon at
Worcester, while being conveyed from the assize court back to prison, a
man named Tryst, sentenced to three years' penal servitude for arson,
suddenly attacked the warders in charge of him and escaped. He ran down
the street, hotly pursued, and, darting out into the traffic, threw
himself under a motor-car going at some speed. The car struck him on the
head, and the unfortunate man was killed on the spot. No reason whatever
can be assigned for this desperate act. He is known, however, to have
suffered from epilepsy, and it is thought an attack may have been coming
on him at the time."
When Felix had read these words he remained absolutely still, holding
that buff-colored paper before his face, trying to decide what he must do
now. What was the significance--exactly the significance of this? Now
that Tryst was dead, Derek's quixotic action had no meaning. But had he
already 'confessed'? It seemed from this account that the suicide was
directly after the trial; even before the boy's letter to Nedda had been
written. He must surely have heard of it since and given up his mad
idea! He leaned over, touched John on the knee, and handed him the
paper. John read the paragraph, handed it back; and the two brothers
stared fixedly at each other. Then Felix made the faintest movement of
his head toward his daughter, and John nodded. Crossing to Nedda, Felix
hooked his arm in hers and said:
"Just look at this, my child."
Nedda read, started to her feet, sank back, and cried out:
"Poor, poor man! Oh, Dad! Poor man!"
Felix felt ashamed. Though Tryst's death meant so much relief to her,
she felt first this rush of compassion; he himself, to whom it meant so
much less relief, had felt only that relief.
"He said he couldn't stand it; he told me that. But I never thought--Oh!
Poor man!" And, burying her face against his arm, she gave way.
Petrified, and conscious that John at the far end of the carriage was
breathing rather hard, Felix could only stroke her arm till at last she
whispered:
"There's nobody now for Derek to save. Oh, if you'd seen that poor man
in prison, Dad!"
And the only words of comfort Felix could find were:
"My child, there are thousands and thousands of poor prisoners and
captives!"
In a truce to agitation they spent the rest of that three hours' journey,
while the train rattled and rumbled through the quiet, happy-looking
land.
CHAPTER XXXV
It was tea-time when they reached Worcester, and at once went up to the
Royal Charles Hostel. A pretty young woman in the office there informed
them that the young gentleman had paid his bill and gone out about ten
o'clock; but had left his luggage. She had not seen him come in. His
room was up that little staircase at the end of the passage. There was
another entrance that he might have come in at. The 'Boots' would take
them.
Past the hall stuffed with furniture and decorated with the stags' heads
and battle-prints common to English county-town hotels, they followed the
'Boots' up five red-carpeted steps, down a dingy green corridor, to a
door at the very end. There was no answer to their knock. The dark
little room, with striped walls, and more battle-prints, looked out on a
side street and smelled dusty. On a shiny leather sofa an old valise,
strapped-up ready for departure, was reposing with Felix's telegram,
unopened, deposited thereon. Writing on his card, "Have come down with
Nedda. F. F.," and laying it on the telegram, in case Derek should come
in by the side entrance, Felix and Nedda rejoined John in the hall.
To wait in anxiety is perhaps the hardest thing in life; tea, tobacco,
and hot baths perhaps the only anodynes. These, except the baths, they
took. Without knowing what had happened, neither John nor Felix liked to
make inquiry at the police station, nor did they care to try and glean
knowledge from the hotel people by questions that might lead to gossip.
They could but kick their heels till it became reasonably certain that
Derek was not coming back. The enforced waiting increased Felix's
exasperation. Everything Derek did seemed designed to cause Nedda pain.
To watch her sitting there, trying resolutely to mask her anxiety, became
intolerable. At last he got up and said to John:
"I think we'd better go round there," and, John nodding, he added: "Wait
here, my child. One of us'll come back at once and tell you anything we
hear."
She gave them a grateful look and the two brothers went out. They had
not gone twenty yards when they met Derek striding along, pale, wild,
unhappy-looking. When Felix touched him on the arm, he started and
stared blankly at his uncle.
"We've seen about Tryst," Felix said: "You've not done anything?"
Derek shook his head.
"Good! John, tell Nedda that, and stay with her a bit. I want to talk
to Derek. We'll go in the other way." He put his hand under the boy's
arm and turned him down into the side street. When they reached the
gloomy little bedroom Felix pointed to the telegram.
"From me. I suppose the news of his death stopped you?"
"Yes." Derek opened the telegram, dropped it, and sat down beside his
valise on the shiny sofa. He looked positively haggard.
Taking his stand against the chest of drawers, Felix said quietly:
"I'm going to have it out with you, Derek. Do you understand what all
this means to Nedda? Do you realize how utterly unhappy you're making
her? I don't suppose you're happy yourself--"
The boy's whole figure writhed.
"Happy! When you've killed some one you don't think much of
happiness--your own or any one's!"
Startled in his turn, Felix said sharply:
"Don't talk like that. It's monomania."
Derek laughed. "Bob Tryst's dead--through me! I can't get out of that."
Gazing at the boy's tortured face, Felix grasped the gruesome fact that
this idea amounted to obsession.
"Derek," he said, "you've dwelt on this till you see it out of all
proportion. If we took to ourselves the remote consequences of all our
words we should none of us survive a week. You're overdone. You'll see
it differently to-morrow."
Derek got up to pace the room.
"I swear I would have saved him. I tried to do it when they committed
him at Transham." He looked wildly at Felix. "Didn't I? You were there;
you heard!"
"Yes, yes; I heard."
"They wouldn't let me then. I thought they mightn't find him guilty
here--so I let it go on. And now he's dead. You don't know how I feel!"
His throat was working, and Felix said with real compassion:
"My dear boy! Your sense of honour is too extravagant altogether. A
grown man like poor Tryst knew perfectly what he was doing."
"No. He was like a dog--he did what he thought was expected of him. I
never meant him to burn those ricks."
"Exactly! No one can blame you for a few wild words. He might have been
the boy and you the man by the way you take it! Come!"
Derek sat down again on the shiny sofa and buried his head in his hands.
"I can't get away from him. He's been with me all day. I see him all
the time."
That the boy was really haunted was only too apparent. How to attack
this mania? If one could make him feel something else! And Felix said:
"Look here, Derek! Before you've any right to Nedda you've got to find
ballast. That's a matter of honour, if you like."
Derek flung up his head as if to escape a blow. Seeing that he had
riveted him, Felix pressed on, with some sternness:
"A man can't serve two passions. You must give up this championing the
weak and lighting flames you can't control. See what it leads to!
You've got to grow and become a man. Until then I don't trust my
daughter to you."
The boy's lips quivered; a flush darkened his face, ebbed, and left him
paler than ever.
Felix felt as if he had hit that face. Still, anything was better than
to leave him under this gruesome obsession! Then, to his consternation,
Derek stood up and said:
"If I go and see his body at the prison, perhaps he'll leave me alone a
little!"
Catching at that, as he would have caught at anything, Felix said:
"Good! Yes! Go and see the poor fellow; we'll come, too."
And he went out to find Nedda.
By the time they reached the street Derek had already started, and they
could see him going along in front. Felix racked his brains to decide
whether he ought to prepare her for the state the boy was in. Twice he
screwed himself up to take the plunge, but her face--puzzled, as though
wondering at her lover's neglect of her--stopped him. Better say
nothing!
Just as they reached the prison she put her hand on his arm:
"Look, Dad!"
And Felix read on the corner of the prison lane those words: 'Love's
Walk'!
Derek was waiting at the door. After some difficulty they were admitted
and taken down the corridor where the prisoner on his knees had stared up
at Nedda, past the courtyard where those others had been pacing out their
living hieroglyphic, up steps to the hospital. Here, in a white-washed
room on a narrow bed, the body of the big laborer lay, wrapped in a
sheet.
"We bury him Friday, poor chap! Fine big man, too!" And at the warder's
words a shudder passed through Felix. The frozen tranquillity of that
body!
As the carved beauty of great buildings, so is the graven beauty of
death, the unimaginable wonder of the abandoned thing lying so quiet,
marvelling at its resemblance to what once lived! How strange this
thing, still stamped by all that it had felt, wanted, loved, and hated,
by all its dumb, hard, commonplace existence! This thing with the calm,
pathetic look of one who asks of his own fled spirit: Why have you
abandoned me?
Death! What more wonderful than a dead body--that still perfect work of
life, for which life has no longer use! What more mysterious than this
sight of what still is, yet is not!
Below the linen swathing the injured temples, those eyes were closed
through which such yearning had looked forth. From that face, where the
hair had grown faster than if it had been alive, death's majesty had
planed away the aspect of brutality, removed the yearning, covering all
with wistful acquiescence. Was his departed soul coherent? Where was
it? Did it hover in this room, visible still to the boy? Did it stand
there beside what was left of Tryst the laborer, that humblest of all
creatures who dared to make revolt--serf, descendant of serfs, who, since
the beginning, had hewn wood, drawn water, and done the will of others?
Or was it winged, and calling in space to the souls of the oppressed?
This body would go back to the earth that it had tended, the wild grass
would grow over it, the seasons spend wind and rain forever above it.
But that which had held this together--the inarticulate, lowly spirit,
hardly asking itself why things should be, faithful as a dog to those who
were kind to it, obeying the dumb instinct of a violence that in his
betters would be called 'high spirit,' where--Felix wondered--where was
it?
And what were they thinking--Nedda and that haunted boy--so motionless?
Nothing showed on their faces, nothing but a sort of living
concentration, as if they were trying desperately to pierce through and
see whatever it was that held this thing before them in such awful
stillness. Their first glimpse of death; their first perception of that
terrible remoteness of the dead! No wonder they seemed to be conjured
out of the power of thought and feeling!
Nedda was first to turn away. Walking back by her side, Felix was
surprised by her composure. The reality of death had not been to her
half so harrowing as the news of it. She said softly:
"I'm glad to have seen him like that; now I shall think of him--at peace;
not as he was that other time."
Derek rejoined them, and they went in silence back to the hotel. But at
the door she said:
"Come with me to the cathedral, Derek; I can't go in yet!"
To Felix's dismay the boy nodded, and they turned to go. Should he stop
them? Should he go with them? What should a father do? And, with a
heavy sigh, he did nothing but retire into the hotel.
CHAPTER XXXVI
It was calm, with a dark-blue sky, and a golden moon, and the lighted
street full of people out for airing. The great cathedral, cutting the
heavens with its massive towers, was shut. No means of getting in; and
while they stood there looking up the thought came into Nedda's mind:
Where would they bury poor Tryst who had killed himself? Would they
refuse to bury that unhappy one in a churchyard? Surely, the more
unhappy and desperate he was, the kinder they ought to be to him!
They turned away down into a little lane where an old, white, timbered
cottage presided ghostly at the corner. Some church magnate had his
garden back there; and it was quiet, along the waving line of a high
wall, behind which grew sycamores spreading close-bunched branches, whose
shadows, in the light of the corner lamps, lay thick along the ground
this glamourous August night. A chafer buzzed by, a small black cat
played with its tail on some steps in a recess. Nobody passed.
The girl's heart was beating fast. Derek's face was so strange and
strained. And he had not yet said one word to her. All sorts of fears
and fancies beset her till she was trembling all over.
"What is it?" she said at last. "You haven't--you haven't stopped loving
me, Derek?"
"No one could stop loving you."
"What is it, then? Are you thinking of poor Tryst?"
With a catch in his throat and a sort of choked laugh he answered:
"Yes."
"But it's all over. He's at peace."
"Peace!" Then, in a queer, dead voice, he added: "I'm sorry, Nedda.
It's beastly for you. But I can't help it."
What couldn't he help? Why did he keep her suffering like this--not
telling her? What was this something that seemed so terribly between
them? She walked on silently at his side, conscious of the rustling of
the sycamores, of the moonlit angle of the church magnate's house, of the
silence in the lane, and the gliding of their own shadows along the wall.
What was this in his face, his thoughts, that she could not reach! And
she cried out:
"Tell me! Oh, tell me, Derek! I can go through anything with you!"
"I can't get rid of him, that's all. I thought he'd go when I'd seen him
there. But it's no good!"
Terror got hold of her then. She peered at his face--very white and
haggard. There seemed no blood in it. They were going downhill now,
along the blank wall of a factory; there was the river in front, with the
moonlight on it and boats drawn up along the bank. From a chimney a
scroll of black smoke was flung out across the sky, and a lighted bridge
glowed above the water. They turned away from that, passing below the
dark pile of the cathedral. Here couples still lingered on benches along
the river-bank, happy in the warm night, under the August moon! And on
and on they walked in that strange, miserable silence, past all those
benches and couples, out on the river-path by the fields, where the scent
of hay-stacks, and the freshness from the early stubbles and the grasses
webbed with dew, overpowered the faint reek of the river mud. And still
on and on in the moonlight that haunted through the willows. At their
footsteps the water-rats scuttled down into the water with tiny splashes;
a dog barked somewhere a long way off; a train whistled; a frog croaked.
From the stubbles and second crops of sun-baked clover puffs of warm air
kept stealing up into the chillier air beneath the willows. Such moonlit
nights never seem to sleep. And there was a kind of triumph in the
night's smile, as though it knew that it ruled the river and the fields,
ruled with its gleams the silent trees that had given up all rustling.
Suddenly Derek said:
"He's walking with us! Look! Over there!"
And for a second there did seem to Nedda a dim, gray shape moving square
and dogged, parallel with them at the stubble edges. Gasping out:
"Oh, no; don't frighten me! I can't bear it tonight!" She hid her face
against his shoulder like a child. He put his arm round her and she
pressed her face deep into his coat. This ghost of Bob Tryst holding him
away from her! This enemy! This uncanny presence! She pressed closer,
closer, and put her face up to his. It was wonderfully lonely, silent,
whispering, with the moongleams slipping through the willow boughs into
the shadow where they stood. And from his arms warmth stole through her!
Closer and closer she pressed, not quite knowing what she did, not quite
knowing anything but that she wanted him never to let her go; wanted his
lips on hers, so that she might feel his spirit pass, away from what was
haunting it, into hers, never to escape. But his lips did not come to
hers. They stayed drawn back, trembling, hungry-looking, just above her
lips. And she whispered:
"Kiss me!"
She felt him shudder in her arms, saw his eyes darken, his lips quiver
and quiver, as if he wanted them to, but they would not. What was it?
Oh, what was it? Wasn't he going to kiss her--not to kiss her? And
while in that unnatural pause they stood, their heads bent back among the
moongleams and those willow shadows, there passed through Nedda such
strange trouble as she had never known. Not kiss her! Not kiss her!
Why didn't he? When in her blood and in the night all round, in the feel
of his arms, the sight of his hungry lips, was something unknown,
wonderful, terrifying, sweet! And she wailed out:
"I want you--I don't care--I want you!" She felt him sway, reel, and
clutch her as if he were going to fall, and all other feeling vanished in
the instinct of the nurse she had already been to him. He was ill again!
Yes, he was ill! And she said:
"Derek--don't! It's all right. Let's walk on quietly!"
She got his arm tightly in hers and drew him along toward home. By the
jerking of that arm, the taut look on his face, she could feel that he
did not know from step to step whether he could stay upright. But she
herself was steady and calm enough, bent on keeping emotion away, and
somehow getting him back along the river-path, abandoned now to the moon
and the bright, still spaces of the night and the slow-moving, whitened
water. Why had she not felt from the first that he was overwrought and
only fit for bed?
Thus, very slowly, they made their way up by the factory again into the
lane by the church magnate's garden, under the branches of the sycamores,
past the same white-faced old house at the corner, to the high street
where some few people were still abroad.
At the front door of the hotel stood Felix, looking at his watch,
disconsolate as an old hen. To her great relief he went in quickly when
he saw them coming. She could not bear the thought of talk and
explanation. The one thing was to get Derek to bed. All the time he had
gone along with that taut face; and now, when he sat down on the shiny
sofa in the little bedroom, he shivered so violently that his teeth
chattered. She rang for a hot bottle and brandy and hot water. When he
had drunk he certainly shivered less, professed himself all right, and
would not let her stay. She dared not ask, but it did seem as if the
physical collapse had driven away, for the time at all events, that
ghostly visitor, and, touching his forehead with her lips--very
motherly--so that he looked up and smiled at her--she said in a
matter-of-fact voice:
"I'll come back after a bit and tuck you up," and went out.
Felix was waiting in the hall, at a little table on which stood a bowl of
bread and milk. He took the cover off it for her without a word. And
while she supped he kept glancing at her, trying to make up his mind to
words. But her face was sealed. And all he said was:
"Your uncle's gone to Becket for the night. I've got you a room next
mine, and a tooth-brush, and some sort of comb. I hope you'll be able to
manage, my child."
Nedda left him at the door of his room and went into her own. After
waiting there ten minutes she stole out again. It was all quiet, and she
went resolutely back down the stairs. She did not care who saw her or
what they thought. Probably they took her for Derek's sister; but even
if they didn't she would not have cared. It was past eleven, the light
nearly out, and the hall in the condition of such places that await a
morning's renovation. His corridor, too, was quite dark. She opened the
door without sound and listened, till his voice said softly:
"All right, little angel; I'm not asleep."
And by a glimmer of moonlight, through curtains designed to keep out
nothing, she stole up to the bed. She could just see his face, and eyes
looking up at her with a sort of adoration. She put her hand on his
forehead and whispered: "Are you comfy?"
He murmured back: "Yes, quite comfy."
Kneeling down, she laid her face beside his on the pillow. She could not
help doing that; it made everything seem holy, cuddley, warm. His lips
touched her nose. Her eyes, for just that instant, looked up into his,
that were very dark and soft; then she got up.
"Would you like me to stay till you're asleep?"
"Yes; forever. But I shouldn't exactly sleep. Would you?"
In the darkness Nedda vehemently shook her head. Sleep! No! She would
not sleep!
"Good night, then!"
"Good night, little dark angel!"
"Good night!" With that last whisper she slipped back to the door and
noiselessly away.
CHAPTER XXXVII
It was long before she closed her eyes, spending the hours in fancy where
still less she would have slept. But when she did drop off she dreamed
that he and she were alone upon a star, where all the trees were white,
the water, grass, birds, everything, white, and they were walking arm in
arm, among white flowers. And just as she had stooped to pick one--it
was no flower, but--Tryst's white-banded face! She woke with a little
cry.
She was dressed by eight and went at once to Derek's room. There was no
answer to her knock, and in a flutter of fear she opened the door. He
had gone--packed, and gone. She ran back to the hall. There was a note
for her in the office, and she took it out of sight to read. It said:
"He came back this morning. I'm going home by the first train. He seems
to want me to do something.
"DEREK."
Came back! That thing--that gray thing that she, too, had seemed to see
for a moment in the fields beside the river! And he was suffering again
as he had suffered yesterday! It was awful. She waited miserably till
her father came down. To find that he, too, knew of this trouble was
some relief. He made no objection when she begged that they should
follow on to Joyfields. Directly after breakfast they set out. Once on
her way to Derek again, she did not feel so frightened. But in the train
she sat very still, gazing at her lap, and only once glanced up from
under those long lashes.
"Can you understand it, Dad?"
Felix, not much happier than she, answered:
"The man had something queer about him. Besides Derek's been ill, don't
forget that. But it's too bad for you, Nedda. I don't like it; I don't
like it."
"I can't be parted from him, Dad. That's impossible."
Felix was silenced by the vigor of those words.
"His mother can help, perhaps," he said.
Ah! If his mother would help--send him away from the laborers, and all
this!
Up from the station they took the field paths, which cut off quite a
mile. The grass and woods were shining brightly, peacefully in the sun;
it seemed incredible that there should be heartburnings about a land so
smiling, that wrongs and miseries should haunt those who lived and worked
in these bright fields. Surely in this earthly paradise the dwellers
were enviable, well-nourished souls, sleek and happy as the pied cattle
that lifted their inquisitive muzzles! Nedda tried to stroke the nose of
one--grayish, blunt, moist. But the creature backed away from her hand,
snuffling, and its cynical, soft eyes with chestnut lashes seemed warning
the girl that she belonged to the breed that might be trusted to annoy.
In the last fields before the Joyfields crossroads they came up with a
little, square, tow-headed man, without coat or cap, who had just driven
some cattle in and was returning with his dog, at a 'dot-here dot-there'
walk, as though still driving them. He gave them a look rather like that
of the bullock Nedda had tried to stroke. She knew he must be one of the
Malloring men, and longed to ask him questions; but he, too, looked shy
and distrustful, as if he suspected that they wanted something out of
him. She summoned up courage, however, to say: "Did you see about poor
Bob Tryst?"
"I 'eard tell. 'E didn' like prison. They say prison takes the 'eart
out of you. 'E didn' think o' that." And the smile that twisted the
little man's lips seemed to Nedda strange and cruel, as if he actually
found pleasure in the fate of his fellow. All she could find to answer
was:
"Is that a good dog?"
The little man looked down at the dog trotting alongside with drooped
tail, and shook his head:
"'E's no good wi' beasts--won't touch 'em!" Then, looking up sidelong, he
added surprisingly:
"Mast' Freeland 'e got a crack on the head, though!" Again there was
that satisfied resentment in his voice and the little smile twisting his
lips. Nedda felt more lost than ever.
They parted at the crossroads and saw him looking back at them as they
went up the steps to the wicket gate. Amongst a patch of early
sunflowers, Tod, in shirt and trousers, was surrounded by his dog and the
three small Trysts, all apparently engaged in studying the biggest of the
sunflowers, where a peacock-butterfly and a bee were feeding, one on a
gold petal, the other on the black heart. Nedda went quickly up to them
and asked:
"Has Derek come, Uncle Tod?"
Tod raised his eyes. He did not seem in the least surprised to see her,
as if his sky were in the habit of dropping his relatives at ten in the
morning.
"Gone out again," he said.
Nedda made a sign toward the children.
"Have you heard, Uncle Tod?"
Tod nodded and his blue eyes, staring above the children's heads,
darkened.
"Is Granny still here?"
Again Tod nodded.
Leaving Felix in the garden, Nedda stole upstairs and tapped on Frances
Freeland's door.
She, whose stoicism permitted her the one luxury of never coming down to
breakfast, had just made it for herself over a little spirit-lamp. She
greeted Nedda with lifted eyebrows.
"Oh, my darling! Where HAVE you come from? You must have my nice cocoa!
Isn't this the most perfect lamp you ever saw? Did you ever see such a
flame? Watch!"
She touched the spirit-lamp and what there was of flame died out.
"Now, isn't that provoking? It's really a splendid thing, quite a new
kind. I mean to get you one. Now, drink your cocoa; it's beautifully
hot."
"I've had breakfast, Granny."
Frances Freeland gazed at her doubtfully, then, as a last resource, began
to sip the cocoa, of which, in truth, she was badly in want.
"Granny, will you help me?"
"Of course, darling. What is it?"
"I do so want Derek to forget all about this terrible business."
Frances Freeland, who had unscrewed the top of a little canister,
answered:
"Yes, dear, I quite agree. I'm sure it's best for him. Open your mouth
and let me pop in one of these delicious little plasmon biscuits.
They're perfect after travelling. Only," she added wistfully, "I'm
afraid he won't pay any attention to me."
"No, but you could speak to Aunt Kirsteen; it's for her to stop him."
One of her most pathetic smiles came over Frances Freeland's face.
"Yes, I could speak to her. But, you see, I don't count for anything.
One doesn't when one gets old."
"Oh, Granny, you do! You count for a lot; every one admires you so. You
always seem to have something that--that other people haven't got. And
you're not a bit old in spirit."
Frances Freeland was fingering her rings; she slipped one off.
"Well," she said, "it's no good thinking about that, is it? I've wanted
to give you this for ages, darling; it IS so uncomfortable on my finger.
Now, just let me see if I can pop it on!"
Nedda recoiled.
"Oh, Granny!" she said. "You ARE--!" and vanished.
There was still no one in the kitchen, and she sat down to wait for her
aunt to finish her up-stairs duties.
Kirsteen came down at last, in her inevitable blue dress, betraying her
surprise at this sudden appearance of her niece only by a little
quivering of her brows. And, trembling with nervousness, Nedda took her
plunge, pouring out the whole story--of Derek's letter; their journey
down; her father's talk with him; the visit to Tryst's body; their walk
by the river; and of how haunted and miserable he was. Showing the
little note he had left that morning, she clasped her hands and said:
"Oh, Aunt Kirsteen, make him happy again! Stop that awful haunting and
keep him from all this!"
Kirsteen had listened, with one foot on the hearth in her favorite
attitude. When the girl had finished she said quietly:
"I'm not a witch, Nedda!"
"But if it wasn't for you he would never have started. And now that poor
Tryst's dead he would leave it alone. I'm sure only you can make him
lose that haunted feeling."
Kirsteen shook her head.
"Listen, Nedda!" she said slowly, as though weighing each word. "I
should like you to understand. There's a superstition in this country
that people are free. Ever since I was a girl your age I've known that
they are not; no one is free here who can't pay for freedom. It's one
thing to see, another to feel this with your whole being. When, like me,
you have an open wound, which something is always inflaming, you can't
wonder, can you, that fever escapes into the air. Derek may have caught
the infection of my fever--that's all! But I shall never lose that
fever, Nedda--never!"
"But, Aunt Kirsteen, this haunting is dreadful. I can't bear to see it."
"My dear, Derek is very highly strung, and he's been ill. It's in my
family to see things. That'll go away."
Nedda said passionately:
"I don't believe he'll ever lose it while he goes on here, tearing his
heart out. And they're trying to get me away from him. I know they
are!"
Kirsteen turned; her eyes seemed to blaze.
"They? Ah! Yes! You'll have to fight if you want to marry a rebel,
Nedda!"
Nedda put her hands to her forehead, bewildered. "You see, Nedda,
rebellion never ceases. It's not only against this or that injustice,
it's against all force and wealth that takes advantage of its force and
wealth. That rebellion goes on forever. Think well before you join in."
Nedda turned away. Of what use to tell her to think when 'I won't--I
can't be parted from him!' kept every other thought paralyzed. And she
pressed her forehead against the cross-bar of the window, trying to find
better words to make her appeal again. Out there above the orchard the
sky was blue, and everything light and gay, as the very butterflies that
wavered past. A motor-car seemed to have stopped in the road close by;
its whirring and whizzing was clearly audible, mingled with the cooings
of pigeons and a robin's song. And suddenly she heard her aunt say:
"You have your chance, Nedda! Here they are!"
Nedda turned. There in the doorway were her Uncles John and Stanley
coming in, followed by her father and Uncle Tod.
What did this mean? What had they come for? And, disturbed to the
heart, she gazed from one to the other. They had that curious look of
people not quite knowing what their reception will be like, yet with
something resolute, almost portentous, in their mien. She saw John go up
to her aunt and hold out his hand.
"I dare say Felix and Nedda have told you about yesterday," he said.
"Stanley and I thought it best to come over." Kirsteen answered:
"Tod, will you tell Mother who's here?"
Then none of them seemed to know quite what to say, or where to look,
till Frances Freeland, her face all pleased and anxious, came in. When
she had kissed them they all sat down. And Nedda, at the window,
squeezed her hands tight together in her lap.
"We've come about Derek," John said.
"Yes," broke in Stanley. "For goodness' sake, Kirsteen, don't let's have
any more of this! Just think what would have happened yesterday if that
poor fellow hadn't providentially gone off the hooks!"
"Providentially!"
"Well, it was. You see to what lengths Derek was prepared to go. Hang it
all! We shouldn't have been exactly proud of a felon in the family."
Frances Freeland, who had been lacing and unlacing her fingers, suddenly
fixed her eyes on Kirsteen.
"I don't understand very well, darling, but I am sure that whatever dear
John says will be wise and right. You must remember that he is the
eldest and has a great deal of experience."
Kirsteen bent her head. If there was irony in the gesture, it was not
perceived by Frances Freeland.
"It can't be right for dear Derek, or any gentleman, to go against the
law of the land or be mixed up with wrong-doing in any way. I haven't
said anything, but I HAVE felt it very much. Because--it's all been not
quite nice, has it?"
Nedda saw her father wince. Then Stanley broke in again:
"Now that the whole thing's done with, do, for Heaven's sake, let's have
a little peace!"
At that moment her aunt's face seemed wonderful to Nedda; so quiet, yet
so burningly alive.
"Peace! There is no peace in this world. There is death, but no peace!"
And, moving nearer to Tod, she rested her hand on his shoulder, looking,
as it seemed to Nedda, at something far away, till John said:
"That's hardly the point, is it? We should be awfully glad to know that
there'll be no more trouble. All this has been very worrying. And now
the cause seems to be--removed."
There was always a touch of finality in John's voice. Nedda saw that all
had turned to Kirsteen for her answer.
"If those up and down the land who profess belief in liberty will cease
to filch from the helpless the very crust of it, the cause will be
removed."
"Which is to say--never!"
At those words from Felix, Frances Freeland, gazing first at him and then
at Kirsteen, said in a pained voice:
"I don't think you ought to talk like that, Kirsteen, dear. Nobody who's
at all nice means to be unkind. We're all forgetful sometimes. I know I
often forget to be sympathetic. It vexes me dreadfully!"
"Mother, don't defend tyranny!"
"I'm sure it's often from the best motives, dear."
"So is rebellion."
"Well, I don't understand about that, darling. But I do think, with dear
John, it's a great pity. It will be a dreadful drawback to Derek if he
has to look back on something that he regrets when he's older. It's
always best to smile and try to look on the bright side of things and not
be grumbly-grumbly!"
After that little speech of Frances Freeland's there was a silence that
Nedda thought would last forever, till her aunt, pressing close to Tod's
shoulder, spoke.
"You want me to stop Derek. I tell you all what I've just told Nedda. I
don't attempt to control Derek; I never have. For myself, when I see a
thing I hate I can't help fighting against it. I shall never be able to
help that. I understand how you must dislike all this; I know it must be
painful to you, Mother. But while there is tyranny in this land, to
laborers, women, animals, anything weak and helpless, so long will there
be rebellion against it, and things will happen that will disturb you."
Again Nedda saw her father wince. But Frances Freeland, bending forward,
fixed her eyes piercingly on Kirsteen's neck, as if she were noticing
something there more important than that about tyranny!
Then John said very gravely:
"You seem to think that we approve of such things being done to the
helpless!"
"I know that you disapprove."
"With the masterly inactivity," Felix said suddenly, in a voice more
bitter than Nedda had ever heard from him, "of authority, money, culture,
and philosophy. With the disapproval that lifts no finger--winking at
tyrannies lest worse befall us. Yes, WE--brethren--we--and so we shall
go on doing. Quite right, Kirsteen!"
"No. The world is changing, Felix, changing!"
But Nedda had started up. There at the door was Derek.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Derek, who had slept the sleep of the dead, having had none for two
nights, woke thinking of Nedda hovering above him in the dark; of her
face laid down beside him on the pillow. And then, suddenly, up started
that thing, and stood there, haunting him! Why did it come? What did it
want of him? After writing the little note to Nedda, he hurried to the
station and found a train about to start. To see and talk with the
laborers; to do something, anything to prove that this tragic companion
had no real existence! He went first to the Gaunts' cottage. The door,
there, was opened by the rogue-girl, comely and robust as ever, in a
linen frock, with her sleeves rolled up, and smiling broadly at his
astonishment.
"Don't be afraid, Mr. Derek; I'm only here for the week-end, just to
tiddy up a bit. 'Tis all right in London. I wouldn't come back here, I
wouldn't--not if you was to give me--" and she pouted her red lips.
"Where's your father, Wilmet?"
"Over in Willey's Copse cuttin' stakes. I hear you've been ill, Mr.
Derek. You do look pale. Were you very bad?" And her eyes opened as
though the very thought of illness was difficult for her to grasp. "I
saw your young lady up in London. She's very pretty. Wish you happiness,
Mr. Derek. Grandfather, here's Mr. Derek!"
The face of old Gaunt, carved, cynical, yellow, appeared above her
shoulder. There he stood, silent, giving Derek no greeting. And with a
sudden miserable feeling the boy said:
"I'll go and find him. Good-by, Wilmet!"
"Good-by, Mr. Derek. 'Tis quiet enough here now; there's changes."
Her rogue face twinkled again, and, turning her chin, she rubbed it on
her plump shoulder, as might a heifer, while from behind her Grandfather
Gaunt's face looked out with a faint, sardonic grin.
Derek, hurrying on to Willey's Copse, caught sight, along a far hedge, of
the big dark laborer, Tulley, who had been his chief lieutenant in the
fighting; but, whether the man heard his hail or no, he continued along
the hedgeside without response and vanished over a stile. The field
dipped sharply to a stream, and at the crossing Derek came suddenly on
the little 'dot-here dot-there' cowherd, who, at Derek's greeting, gave
him an abrupt "Good day!" and went on with his occupation of mending a
hurdle. Again that miserable feeling beset the boy, and he hastened on.
A sound of chopping guided him. Near the edge of the coppice Tom Gaunt
was lopping at some bushes. At sight of Derek he stopped and stood
waiting, his loquacious face expressionless, his little, hard eye cocked.
"Good morning, Tom. It's ages since I saw you."
"Ah, 'tis a proper long time! You 'ad a knock."
Derek winced; it was said as if he had been disabled in an affair in
which Gaunt had neither part nor parcel. Then, with a great effort, the
boy brought out his question:
"You've heard about poor Bob?"
"Yaas; 'tis the end of HIM."
Some meaning behind those words, the unsmiling twist of that hard-bitten
face, the absence of the 'sir' that even Tom Gaunt generally gave him,
all seemed part of an attack. And, feeling as if his heart were being
squeezed, Derek looked straight into his face.
"What's the matter, Tom?"
"Matter! I don' know as there's anything the matter, ezactly!"
"What have I done? Tell me!"
Tom Gaunt smiled; his little, gray eyes met Derek's full.
"'Tisn't for a gentleman to be held responsible."
"Come!" Derek cried passionately. "What is it? D'you think I deserted
you, or what? Speak out, man!"
Abating nothing of his stare and drawl, Gaunt answered:
"Deserted? Oh, dear no! Us can't afford to do no more dyin' for
you--that's all!"
"For me! Dying! My God! D'you think I wouldn't have--? Oh! Confound
you!"
"Aye! Confounded us you 'ave! Hope you're satisfied!"
Pale as death and quivering all over, Derek answered:
"So you think I've just been frying fish of my own?"
Tom Gaunt, emitted a little laugh.
"I think you've fried no fish at all. That's what I think. And no one
else does, neither, if you want to know--except poor Bob. You've fried
his fish, sure enough!"
Stung to the heart, the boy stood motionless. A pigeon was cooing; the
sappy scent from the lopped bushes filled all the sun-warmed air.
"I see!" he said. "Thanks, Tom; I'm glad to know."
Without moving a muscle, Tom Gaunt answered:
"Don't mention it!" and resumed his lopping.
Derek turned and walked out of the little wood. But when he had put a
field between him and the sound of Gaunt's bill-hook, he lay down and
buried his face in the grass, chewing at its green blades, scarce dry of
dew, and with its juicy sweetness tasting the full of bitterness. And
the gray shade stalked out again, and stood there in the warmth of the
August day, with its scent and murmur of full summer, while the pigeons
cooed and dandelion fluff drifted by. . . .
When, two hours later, he entered the kitchen at home, of the company
assembled Frances Freeland alone retained equanimity enough to put up her
face to be kissed.
"I'm so thankful you've come back in time to see your uncles, darling.
Your Uncle John thinks, and we all agree, that to encourage those poor
laborers to do things which are not nice is--is--you know what I mean,
darling!"
Derek gave a bitter little laugh.
"Criminal, Granny! Yes, and puppyish! I've learned all that."
The sound of his voice was utterly unlike his own, and Kirsteen, starting
forward, put her arm round him.
"It's all right, Mother. They've chucked me."
At that moment, when all, save his mother, wanted so to express their
satisfaction, Frances Freeland alone succeeded.
"I'm so glad, darling!"
Then John rose and, holding out his hand to his nephew, said:
"That's the end of the trouble, then, Derek?"
"Yes. And I beg your pardon, Uncle John; and all--Uncle Stanley, Uncle
Felix; you, Dad; Granny."
They had all risen now. The boy's face gave them--even John, even
Stanley--a choke in the throat. Frances Freeland suddenly took their
arms and went to the door; her other two sons followed. And quietly they
all went out.
Derek, who had stayed perfectly still, staring past Nedda into a corner
of the room, said:
"Ask him what he wants, Mother."
Nedda smothered down a cry. But Kirsteen, tightening her clasp of him
and looking steadily into that corner, answered:
"Nothing, my boy. He's quite friendly. He only wants to be with you for
a little."
"But I can't do anything for him."
"He knows that."
"I wish he wouldn't, Mother. I can't be more sorry than I have been."
Kirsteen's face quivered.
"My dear, it will go quite soon. Love Nedda! See! She wants you!"
Derek answered in the same quiet voice:
"Yes, Nedda is the comfort. Mother, I want to go away--away out of
England--right away."
Nedda rushed and flung her arms round him.
"I, too, Derek; I, too!"
That evening Felix came out to the old 'fly,' waiting to take him from
Joyfields to Becket. What a sky! All over its pale blue a far-up wind
had drifted long, rosy clouds, and through one of them the half-moon
peered, of a cheese-green hue; and, framed and barred by the elm-trees,
like some roseate, stained-glass window, the sunset blazed. In a corner
of the orchard a little bonfire had been lighted, and round it he could
see the three small Trysts dropping armfuls of leaves and pointing at the
flames leaping out of the smoulder. There, too, was Tod's big figure,
motionless, and his dog sitting on its haunches, with head poked forward,
staring at those red tongues of flame. Kirsteen had come with him to the
wicket gate. He held her hand long in his own and pressed it hard. And
while that blue figure, turned to the sunset, was still visible, he
screwed himself back to look.
They had been in painful conclave, as it seemed to Felix, all day, coming
to the decision that those two young things should have their wish,
marry, and go out to New Zealand. The ranch of Cousin Alick Morton (son
of that brother of Frances Freeland, who, absorbed in horses, had
wandered to Australia and died in falling from them) had extended a
welcome to Derek. Those two would have a voyage of happiness--see
together the red sunsets in the Mediterranean, Pompeii, and the dark ants
of men swarming in endless band up and down with their coal-sacks at Port
Said; smell the cinnamon gardens of Colombo; sit up on deck at night and
watch the stars. . . . Who could grudge it them? Out there youth and
energy would run unchecked. For here youth had been beaten!
On and on the old 'fly' rumbled between the shadowy fields. 'The world
is changing, Felix--changing!' Was that defeat of youth, then, nothing?
Under the crust of authority and wealth, culture and philosophy--was the
world really changing; was liberty truly astir, under that sky in the
west all blood; and man rising at long last from his knees before the God
of force? The silent, empty fields darkened, the air gathered dewy
thickness, and the old 'fly' rumbled and rolled as slow as fate. Cottage
lamps were already lighted for the evening meal. No laborer abroad at
this hour! And Felix thought of Tryst, the tragic fellow--the moving,
lonely figure; emanation of these solitary fields, shade of the departing
land! One might well see him as that boy saw him, silent, dogged, in a
gray light such as this now clinging above the hedgerows and the grass!
The old 'fly' turned into the Becket drive. It had grown dark now, save
for the half-moon; the last chafer was booming by, and a bat flitting, a
little, blind, eager bat, through the quiet trees. He got out to walk
the last few hundred yards. A lovely night, silent below her stars--cool
and dark, spread above field after field, wood on wood, for hundreds of
miles on every side. Night covering his native land. The same silence
had reigned out there, the same perfume stolen up, the same star-shine
fallen, for millions of years in the past, and would for millions of
years to come. Close to where the half-moon floated, a slow, narrow,
white cloud was passing--curiously shaped. At one end of it Felix could
see distinctly the form of a gleaming skull, with dark sky showing
through its eyeholes, cheeks, and mouth. A queer phenomenon;
fascinating, rather ghastly! It grew sharper in outline, more distinct.
One of those sudden shudders, that seize men from the crown of the head
to the very heels, passed down his back. He shut his eyes. And,
instead, there came up before him Kirsteen's blue-clothed figure turned
to the sunset glow. Ah! Better to see that than this skull above the
land! Better to believe her words: 'The world is changing,
Felix--changing!' world is changing, Felix--changing!'
THE END
BEYOND
by JOHN GALSWORTHY
"Che faro senza--!"
To THOMAS HARDY
BEYOND
Part I
I
At the door of St. George's registry office, Charles Clare Winton
strolled forward in the wake of the taxi-cab that was bearing his
daughter away with "the fiddler fellow" she had married. His sense of
decorum forbade his walking with Nurse Betty--the only other witness of
the wedding. A stout woman in a highly emotional condition would have
been an incongruous companion to his slim, upright figure, moving with
just that unexaggerated swing and balance becoming to a lancer of the old
school, even if he has been on the retired list for sixteen years.
Poor Betty! He thought of her with irritated sympathy--she need not have
given way to tears on the door-step. She might well feel lost now Gyp
was gone, but not so lost as himself! His pale-gloved hand--the one real
hand he had, for his right hand had been amputated at the wrist--twisted
vexedly at the small, grizzling moustache lifting itself from the corners
of his firm lips. On this grey February day he wore no overcoat;
faithful to the absolute, almost shamefaced quietness of that wedding, he
had not even donned black coat and silk hat, but wore a blue suit and a
hard black felt. The instinct of a soldier and hunting man to exhibit no
sign whatever of emotion did not desert him this dark day of his life;
but his grey-hazel eyes kept contracting, staring fiercely, contracting
again; and, at moments, as if overpowered by some deep feeling, they
darkened and seemed to draw back in his head. His face was narrow and
weathered and thin-cheeked, with a clean-cut jaw, small ears, hair darker
than the moustache, but touched at the side wings with grey--the face of
a man of action, self-reliant, resourceful. And his bearing was that of
one who has always been a bit of a dandy, and paid attention to "form,"
yet been conscious sometimes that there were things beyond. A man, who,
preserving all the precision of a type, yet had in him a streak of
something that was not typical. Such often have tragedy in their pasts.
Making his way towards the park, he turned into Mount Street. There was
the house still, though the street had been very different then--the
house he had passed, up and down, up and down in the fog, like a ghost,
that November afternoon, like a cast-out dog, in such awful, unutterable
agony of mind, twenty-three years ago, when Gyp was born. And then to be
told at the door--he, with no right to enter, he, loving as he believed
man never loved woman--to be told at the door that SHE was dead--dead in
bearing what he and she alone knew was their child! Up and down in the
fog, hour after hour, knowing her time was upon her; and at last to be
told that! Of all fates that befall man, surely the most awful is to
love too much.
Queer that his route should take him past the very house to-day, after
this new bereavement! Accursed luck--that gout which had sent him to
Wiesbaden, last September! Accursed luck that Gyp had ever set eyes on
this fellow Fiorsen, with his fatal fiddle! Certainly not since Gyp had
come to live with him, fifteen years ago, had he felt so forlorn and fit
for nothing. To-morrow he would get back to Mildenham and see what hard
riding would do. Without Gyp--to be without Gyp! A fiddler! A chap who
had never been on a horse in his life! And with his crutch-handled cane
he switched viciously at the air, as though carving a man in two.
His club, near Hyde Park Corner, had never seemed to him so desolate.
From sheer force of habit he went into the card-room. The afternoon had
so darkened that electric light already burned, and there were the usual
dozen of players seated among the shaded gleams falling decorously on
dark-wood tables, on the backs of chairs, on cards and tumblers, the
little gilded coffee-cups, the polished nails of fingers holding cigars.
A crony challenged him to piquet. He sat down listless. That
three-legged whist--bridge--had always offended his fastidiousness--a
mangled short cut of a game! Poker had something blatant in it. Piquet,
though out of fashion, remained for him the only game worth playing--the
only game which still had style. He held good cards and rose the winner
of five pounds that he would willingly have paid to escape the boredom of
the bout. Where would they be by now? Past Newbury; Gyp sitting
opposite that Swedish fellow with his greenish wildcat's eyes. Something
furtive, and so foreign, about him! A mess--if he were any judge of
horse or man! Thank God he had tied Gyp's money up--every farthing! And
an emotion that was almost jealousy swept him at the thought of the
fellow's arms round his soft-haired, dark-eyed daughter--that pretty,
willowy creature, so like in face and limb to her whom he had loved so
desperately.
Eyes followed him when he left the card-room, for he was one who inspired
in other men a kind of admiration--none could say exactly why. Many
quite as noted for general good sportsmanship attracted no such
attention. Was it "style," or was it the streak of something not quite
typical--the brand left on him by the past?
Abandoning the club, he walked slowly along the railings of Piccadilly
towards home, that house in Bury Street, St. James's, which had been his
London abode since he was quite young--one of the few in the street that
had been left untouched by the general passion for puffing down and
building up, which had spoiled half London in his opinion.
A man, more silent than anything on earth, with the soft, quick, dark
eyes of a woodcock and a long, greenish, knitted waistcoat, black
cutaway, and tight trousers strapped over his boots, opened the door.
"I shan't go out again, Markey. Mrs. Markey must give me some dinner.
Anything'll do."
Markey signalled that he had heard, and those brown eyes under eyebrows
meeting and forming one long, dark line, took his master in from head to
heel. He had already nodded last night, when his wife had said the
gov'nor would take it hard. Retiring to the back premises, he jerked his
head toward the street and made a motion upward with his hand, by which
Mrs. Markey, an astute woman, understood that she had to go out and shop
because the gov'nor was dining in. When she had gone, Markey sat down
opposite Betty, Gyp's old nurse. The stout woman was still crying in a
quiet way. It gave him the fair hump, for he felt inclined to howl like a
dog himself. After watching her broad, rosy, tearful face in silence for
some minutes, he shook his head, and, with a gulp and a tremor of her
comfortable body, Betty desisted. One paid attention to Markey.
Winton went first into his daughter's bedroom, and gazed at its emptied
silken order, its deserted silver mirror, twisting viciously at his
little moustache. Then, in his sanctum, he sat down before the fire,
without turning up the light. Anyone looking in, would have thought he
was asleep; but the drowsy influence of that deep chair and cosy fire had
drawn him back into the long-ago. What unhappy chance had made him pass
HER house to-day!
Some say there is no such thing as an affinity, no case--of a man, at
least--made bankrupt of passion by a single love. In theory, it may be
so; in fact, there are such men--neck-or-nothing men, quiet and
self-contained, the last to expect that nature will play them such a
trick, the last to desire such surrender of themselves, the last to know
when their fate is on them. Who could have seemed to himself, and,
indeed, to others, less likely than Charles Clare Winton to fall over
head and ears in love when he stepped into the Belvoir Hunt ballroom at
Grantham that December evening, twenty-four years ago? A keen soldier, a
dandy, a first-rate man to hounds, already almost a proverb in his
regiment for coolness and for a sort of courteous disregard of women as
among the minor things of life--he had stood there by the door, in no
hurry to dance, taking a survey with an air that just did not give an
impression of "side" because it was not at all put on. And--behold!--SHE
had walked past him, and his world was changed for ever. Was it an
illusion of light that made her whole spirit seem to shine through a
half-startled glance? Or a little trick of gait, a swaying, seductive
balance of body; was it the way her hair waved back, or a subtle scent,
as of a flower? What was it? The wife of a squire of those parts, with
a house in London. Her name? It doesn't matter--she has been long enough
dead. There was no excuse--not an ill-treated woman; an ordinary,
humdrum marriage, of three years standing; no children. An amiable good
fellow of a husband, fifteen years older than herself, inclined already
to be an invalid. No excuse! Yet, in one month from that night, Winton
and she were lovers, not only in thought but in deed. A thing so utterly
beyond "good form" and his sense of what was honourable and becoming in
an officer and gentleman that it was simply never a question of weighing
pro and con, the cons had it so completely. And yet from that first
evening, he was hers, she his. For each of them the one thought was how
to be with the other. If so--why did they not at least go off together?
Not for want of his beseeching. And no doubt, if she had survived Gyp's
birth, they would have gone. But to face the prospect of ruining two
men, as it looked to her, had till then been too much for that
soft-hearted creature. Death stilled her struggle before it was decided.
There are women in whom utter devotion can still go hand in hand with a
doubting soul. Such are generally the most fascinating; for the power of
hard and prompt decision robs women of mystery, of the subtle atmosphere
of change and chance. Though she had but one part in four of foreign
blood, she was not at all English. But Winton was English to his
back-bone, English in his sense of form, and in that curious streak of
whole-hearted desperation that will break form to smithereens in one
department and leave it untouched in every other of its owner's life. To
have called Winton a "crank" would never have occurred to any one--his
hair was always perfectly parted; his boots glowed; he was hard and
reticent, accepting and observing every canon of well-bred existence.
Yet, in that, his one infatuation, he was as lost to the world and its
opinion as the longest-haired lentil-eater of us all. Though at any
moment during that one year of their love he would have risked his life
and sacrificed his career for a whole day in her company, he never, by
word or look, compromised her. He had carried his punctilious observance
of her "honour" to a point more bitter than death, consenting, even, to
her covering up the tracks of their child's coming. Paying that
gambler's debt was by far the bravest deed of his life, and even now its
memory festered.
To this very room he had come back after hearing she was dead; this very
room which he had refurnished to her taste, so that even now, with its
satinwood chairs, little dainty Jacobean bureau, shaded old brass
candelabra, divan, it still had an air exotic to bachelordom. There, on
the table, had been a letter recalling him to his regiment, ordered on
active service. If he had realized what he would go through before he
had the chance of trying to lose his life out there, he would undoubtedly
have taken that life, sitting in this very chair before the fire--the
chair sacred to her and memory. He had not the luck he wished for in
that little war--men who don't care whether they live or die seldom have.
He secured nothing but distinction. When it was over, he went on, with a
few more lines in his face, a few more wrinkles in his heart, soldiering,
shooting tigers, pig-sticking, playing polo, riding to hounds harder than
ever; giving nothing away to the world; winning steadily the curious,
uneasy admiration that men feel for those who combine reckless daring
with an ice-cool manner. Since he was less of a talker even than most of
his kind, and had never in his life talked of women, he did not gain the
reputation of a woman-hater, though he so manifestly avoided them. After
six years' service in India and Egypt, he lost his right hand in a charge
against dervishes, and had, perforce, to retire, with the rank of major,
aged thirty-four. For a long time he had hated the very thought of the
child--his child, in giving birth to whom the woman he loved had died.
Then came a curious change of feeling; and for three years before his
return to England, he had been in the habit of sending home odds and ends
picked up in the bazaars, to serve as toys. In return, he had received,
twice annually at least, a letter from the man who thought himself Gyp's
father. These letters he read and answered. The squire was likable, and
had been fond of HER; and though never once had it seemed possible to
Winton to have acted otherwise than he did, he had all the time preserved
a just and formal sense of the wrong he had done this man. He did not
experience remorse, but he had always an irksome feeling as of a debt
unpaid, mitigated by knowledge that no one had ever suspected, and
discounted by memory of the awful torture he had endured to make sure
against suspicion.
When, plus distinction and minus his hand, he was at last back in
England, the squire had come to see him. The poor man was failing fast
from Bright's disease. Winton entered again that house in Mount Street
with an emotion, to stifle which required more courage than any cavalry
charge. But one whose heart, as he would have put it, is "in the right
place" does not indulge the quaverings of his nerves, and he faced those
rooms where he had last seen her, faced that lonely little dinner with
her husband, without sign of feeling. He did not see little Ghita, or
Gyp, as she had nicknamed herself, for she was already in her bed; and it
was a whole month before he brought himself to go there at an hour when
he could see the child if he would. The fact is, he was afraid. What
would the sight of this little creature stir in him? When Betty, the
nurse, brought her in to see the soldier gentleman with "the leather
hand," who had sent her those funny toys, she stood calmly staring with
her large, deep-brown eyes. Being seven, her little brown-velvet frock
barely reached the knees of her thin, brown-stockinged legs planted one
just in front of the other, as might be the legs of a small brown bird;
the oval of her gravely wondering face was warm cream colour without red
in it, except that of the lips, which were neither full nor thin, and had
a little tuck, the tiniest possible dimple at one corner. Her hair of
warm dark brown had been specially brushed and tied with a narrow red
ribbon back from her forehead, which was broad and rather low, and this
added to her gravity. Her eyebrows were thin and dark and perfectly
arched; her little nose was perfectly straight, her little chin in
perfect balance between round and point. She stood and stared till
Winton smiled. Then the gravity of her face broke, her lips parted, her
eyes seemed to fly a little. And Winton's heart turned over within
him--she was the very child of her that he had lost! And he said, in a
voice that seemed to him to tremble:
"Well, Gyp?"
"Thank you for my toys; I like them."
He held out his hand, and she gravely put her small hand into it. A sense
of solace, as if some one had slipped a finger in and smoothed his heart,
came over Winton. Gently, so as not to startle her, he raised her hand a
little, bent, and kissed it. It may have been from his instant
recognition that here was one as sensitive as child could be, or the way
many soldiers acquire from dealing with their men--those simple, shrewd
children--or some deeper instinctive sense of ownership between them;
whatever it was, from that moment, Gyp conceived for him a rushing
admiration, one of those headlong affections children will sometimes take
for the most unlikely persons.
He used to go there at an hour when he knew the squire would be asleep,
between two and five. After he had been with Gyp, walking in the park,
riding with her in the Row, or on wet days sitting in her lonely nursery
telling stories, while stout Betty looked on half hypnotized, a rather
queer and doubting look on her comfortable face--after such hours, he
found it difficult to go to the squire's study and sit opposite him,
smoking. Those interviews reminded him too much of past days, when he
had kept such desperate check on himself--too much of the old inward
chafing against the other man's legal ownership--too much of the debt
owing. But Winton was triple-proofed against betrayal of feeling. The
squire welcomed him eagerly, saw nothing, felt nothing, was grateful for
his goodness to the child. Well, well! He had died in the following
spring. And Winton found that he had been made Gyp's guardian and
trustee. Since his wife's death, the squire had muddled his affairs, his
estate was heavily mortgaged; but Winton accepted the position with an
almost savage satisfaction, and, from that moment, schemed deeply to get
Gyp all to himself. The Mount Street house was sold; the Lincolnshire
place let. She and Nurse Betty were installed at his own hunting-box,
Mildenham. In this effort to get her away from all the squire's
relations, he did not scruple to employ to the utmost the power he
undoubtedly had of making people feel him unapproachable. He was never
impolite to any of them; he simply froze them out. Having plenty of
money himself, his motives could not be called in question. In one year
he had isolated her from all except stout Betty. He had no qualms, for
Gyp was no more happy away from him than he from her. He had but one bad
half-hour. It came when he had at last decided that she should be called
by his name, if not legally at least by custom, round Mildenham. It was
to Markey he had given the order that Gyp was to be little Miss Winton
for the future. When he came in from hunting that day, Betty was waiting
in his study. She stood in the centre of the emptiest part of that
rather dingy room, as far as possible away from any good or chattel. How
long she had been standing there, heaven only knew; but her round, rosy
face was confused between awe and resolution, and she had made a sad mess
of her white apron. Her blue eyes met Winton's with a sort of
desperation.
"About what Markey told me, sir. My old master wouldn't have liked it,
sir."
Touched on the raw by this reminder that before the world he had been
nothing to the loved one, that before the world the squire, who had been
nothing to her, had been everything, Winton said icily:
"Indeed! You will be good enough to comply with my wish, all the same."
The stout woman's face grew very red. She burst out, breathless:
"Yes, sir; but I've seen what I've seen. I never said anything, but I've
got eyes. If Miss Gyp's to take your name, sir, then tongues'll wag, and
my dear, dead mistress--"
But at the look on his face she stopped, with her mouth open.
"You will be kind enough to keep your thoughts to yourself. If any word
or deed of yours gives the slightest excuse for talk--you go. Understand
me, you go, and you never see Gyp again! In the meantime you will do
what I ask. Gyp is my adopted daughter."
She had always been a little afraid of him, but she had never seen that
look in his eyes or heard him speak in that voice. And she bent her full
moon of a face and went, with her apron crumpled as apron had never been,
and tears in her eyes. And Winton, at the window, watching the darkness
gather, the leaves flying by on a sou'-westerly wind, drank to the dregs
a cup of bitter triumph. He had never had the right to that dead,
forever-loved mother of his child. He meant to have the child. If
tongues must wag, let them! This was a defeat of all his previous
precaution, a deep victory of natural instinct. And his eyes narrowed
and stared into the darkness.
II
In spite of his victory over all human rivals in the heart of Gyp, Winton
had a rival whose strength he fully realized perhaps for the first time
now that she was gone, and he, before the fire, was brooding over her
departure and the past. Not likely that one of his decisive type, whose
life had so long been bound up with swords and horses, would grasp what
music might mean to a little girl. Such ones, he knew, required to be
taught scales, and "In a Cottage near a Wood" with other melodies. He
took care not to go within sound of them, so that he had no conception of
the avidity with which Gyp had mopped up all, and more than all, her
governess could teach her. He was blind to the rapture with which she
listened to any stray music that came its way to Mildenham--to carols in
the Christmas dark, to certain hymns, and one special "Nunc Dimittis" in
the village church, attended with a hopeless regularity; to the horn of
the hunter far out in the quivering, dripping coverts; even to Markey's
whistling, which was full and strangely sweet.
He could share her love of dogs and horses, take an anxious interest in
her way of catching bumblebees in the hollow of her hand and putting them
to her small, delicate ears to hear them buzz, sympathize with her
continual ravages among the flowerbeds, in the old-fashioned garden, full
of lilacs and laburnums in spring, pinks, roses, cornflowers in summer,
dahlias and sunflowers in autumn, and always a little neglected and
overgrown, a little squeezed in, and elbowed by the more important
surrounding paddocks. He could sympathize with her attempts to draw his
attention to the song of birds; but it was simply not in him to
understand how she loved and craved for music. She was a cloudy little
creature, up and down in mood--rather like a brown lady spaniel that she
had, now gay as a butterfly, now brooding as night. Any touch of
harshness she took to heart fearfully. She was the strangest compound of
pride and sell-disparagement; the qualities seemed mixed in her so deeply
that neither she nor any one knew of which her cloudy fits were the
result. Being so sensitive, she "fancied" things terribly. Things that
others did to her, and thought nothing of, often seemed to her conclusive
evidence that she was not loved by anybody, which was dreadfully unjust,
because she wanted to love everyone--nearly. Then suddenly she would
feel: "If they don't love me, I don't care. I don't want anything of
anybody!" Presently, all would blow away just like a cloud, and she
would love and be gay, until something fresh, perhaps not at all meant to
hurt her, would again hurt her horribly. In reality, the whole household
loved and admired her. But she was one of those delicate-treading beings,
born with a skin too few, who--and especially in childhood--suffer from
themselves in a world born with a skin too many.
To Winton's extreme delight, she took to riding as a duck to water, and
knew no fear on horseback. She had the best governess he could get her,
the daughter of an admiral, and, therefore, in distressed circumstances;
and later on, a tutor for her music, who came twice a week all the way
from London--a sardonic man who cherished for her even more secret
admiration than she for him. In fact, every male thing fell in love with
her at least a little. Unlike most girls, she never had an epoch of
awkward plainness, but grew like a flower, evenly, steadily. Winton
often gazed at her with a sort of intoxication; the turn of her head, the
way those perfectly shaped, wonderfully clear brown eyes would "fly," the
set of her straight, round neck, the very shaping of her limbs were all
such poignant reminders of what he had so loved. And yet, for all that
likeness to her mother, there was a difference, both in form and
character. Gyp had, as it were, an extra touch of "breeding," more
chiselling in body, more fastidiousness in soul, a little more poise, a
little more sheer grace; in mood, more variance, in mind, more clarity
and, mixed with her sweetness, a distinct spice of scepticism which her
mother had lacked.
In modern times there are no longer "toasts," or she would have been one
with both the hunts. Though delicate in build, she was not frail, and
when her blood was up would "go" all day, and come in so bone-tired that
she would drop on to the tiger skin before the fire, rather than face the
stairs. Life at Mildenham was lonely, save for Winton's hunting cronies,
and they but few, for his spiritual dandyism did not gladly suffer the
average country gentleman and his frigid courtesy frightened women.
Besides, as Betty had foreseen, tongues did wag--those tongues of the
countryside, avid of anything that might spice the tedium of dull lives
and brains. And, though no breath of gossip came to Winton's ears, no
women visited at Mildenham. Save for the friendly casual
acquaintanceships of churchyard, hunting-field, and local race-meetings,
Gyp grew up knowing hardly any of her own sex. This dearth developed her
reserve, kept her backward in sex-perception, gave her a faint,
unconscious contempt for men--creatures always at the beck and call of
her smile, and so easily disquieted by a little frown--gave her also a
secret yearning for companions of her own gender. Any girl or woman that
she did chance to meet always took a fancy to her, because she was so
nice to them, which made the transitory nature of these friendships
tantalizing. She was incapable of jealousies or backbiting. Let men
beware of such--there is coiled in their fibre a secret fascination!
Gyp's moral and spiritual growth was not the sort of subject that Winton
could pay much attention to. It was pre-eminently a matter one did not
talk about. Outward forms, such as going to church, should be preserved;
manners should be taught her by his own example as much as possible;
beyond this, nature must look after things. His view had much real
wisdom. She was a quick and voracious reader, bad at remembering what
she read; and though she had soon devoured all the books in Winton's
meagre library, including Byron, Whyte-Melville, and Humboldt's "Cosmos,"
they had not left too much on her mind. The attempts of her little
governess to impart religion were somewhat arid of result, and the
interest of the vicar, Gyp, with her instinctive spice of scepticism soon
put into the same category as the interest of all the other males she
knew. She felt that he enjoyed calling her "my dear" and patting her
shoulder, and that this enjoyment was enough reward for his exertions.
Tucked away in that little old dark manor house, whose stables alone were
up to date--three hours from London, and some thirty miles from The Wash,
it must be confessed that her upbringing lacked modernity. About twice a
year, Winton took her up to town to stay with his unmarried sister
Rosamund in Curzon Street. Those weeks, if they did nothing else,
increased her natural taste for charming clothes, fortified her teeth,
and fostered her passion for music and the theatre. But the two main
nourishments of the modern girl--discussion and games--she lacked
utterly. Moreover, those years of her life from fifteen to nineteen were
before the social resurrection of 1906, and the world still crawled like
a winter fly on a window-pane. Winton was a Tory, Aunt Rosamund a Tory,
everybody round her a Tory. The only spiritual development she underwent
all those years of her girlhood was through her headlong love for her
father. After all, was there any other way in which she could really
have developed? Only love makes fruitful the soul. The sense of form
that both had in such high degree prevented much demonstration; but to be
with him, do things for him, to admire, and credit him with perfection;
and, since she could not exactly wear the same clothes or speak in the
same clipped, quiet, decisive voice, to dislike the clothes and voices of
other men--all this was precious to her beyond everything. If she
inherited from him that fastidious sense of form, she also inherited his
capacity for putting all her eggs in one basket. And since her company
alone gave him real happiness, the current of love flowed over her heart
all the time. Though she never realized it, abundant love FOR somebody
was as necessary to her as water running up the stems of flowers,
abundant love FROM somebody as needful as sunshine on their petals. And
Winton's somewhat frequent little runs to town, to Newmarket, or where
not, were always marked in her by a fall of the barometer, which
recovered as his return grew near.
One part of her education, at all events, was not neglected--cultivation
of an habitual sympathy with her poorer neighbours. Without concerning
himself in the least with problems of sociology, Winton had by nature an
open hand and heart for cottagers, and abominated interference with their
lives. And so it came about that Gyp, who, by nature also never set foot
anywhere without invitation, was always hearing the words: "Step in, Miss
Gyp"; "Step in, and sit down, lovey," and a good many words besides from
even the boldest and baddest characters. There is nothing like a soft
and pretty face and sympathetic listening for seducing the hearts of "the
people."
So passed the eleven years till she was nineteen and Winton forty-six.
Then, under the wing of her little governess, she went to the hunt-ball.
She had revolted against appearing a "fluffy miss," wanting to be
considered at once full-fledged; so that her dress, perfect in fit, was
not white but palest maize-colour, as if she had already been to dances.
She had all Winton's dandyism, and just so much more as was appropriate
to her sex. With her dark hair, wonderfully fluffed and coiled, waving
across her forehead, her neck bare for the first time, her eyes really
"flying," and a demeanour perfectly cool--as though she knew that light
and movement, covetous looks, soft speeches, and admiration were her
birthright--she was more beautiful than even Winton had thought her. At
her breast she wore some sprigs of yellow jasmine procured by him from
town--a flower of whose scent she was very fond, and that he had never
seen worn in ballrooms. That swaying, delicate creature, warmed by
excitement, reminded him, in every movement and by every glance of her
eyes, of her whom he had first met at just such a ball as this. And by
the carriage of his head, the twist of his little moustache, he conveyed
to the world the pride he was feeling.
That evening held many sensations for Gyp--some delightful, one confused,
one unpleasant. She revelled in her success. Admiration was very dear
to her. She passionately enjoyed dancing, loved feeling that she was
dancing well and giving pleasure. But, twice over, she sent away her
partners, smitten with compassion for her little governess sitting there
against the wall--all alone, with no one to take notice of her, because
she was elderly, and roundabout, poor darling! And, to that loyal
person's horror, she insisted on sitting beside her all through two
dances. Nor would she go in to supper with anyone but Winton. Returning
to the ballroom on his arm, she overheard an elderly woman say: "Oh,
don't you know? Of course he really IS her father!" and an elderly man
answer: "Ah, that accounts for it--quite so!" With those eyes at the
back of the head which the very sensitive possess, she could see their
inquisitive, cold, slightly malicious glances, and knew they were
speaking of her. And just then her partner came for her.
"Really IS her father!" The words meant TOO much to be grasped this
evening of full sensations. They left a little bruise somewhere, but
softened and anointed, just a sense of confusion at the back of her mind.
And very soon came that other sensation, so disillusioning, that all else
was crowded out. It was after a dance--a splendid dance with a
good-looking man quite twice her age. They were sitting behind some
palms, he murmuring in his mellow, flown voice admiration for her dress,
when suddenly he bent his flushed face and kissed her bare arm above the
elbow. If he had hit her he could not have astonished or hurt her more.
It seemed to her innocence that he would never have done such a thing if
she had not said something dreadful to encourage him. Without a word she
got up, gazed at him a moment with eyes dark from pain, shivered, and
slipped away. She went straight to Winton. From her face, all closed
up, tightened lips, and the familiar little droop at their corners, he
knew something dire had happened, and his eyes boded ill for the person
who had hurt her; but she would say nothing except that she was tired and
wanted to go home. And so, with the little faithful governess, who,
having been silent perforce nearly all the evening, was now full of
conversation, they drove out into the frosty night. Winton sat beside
the chauffeur, smoking viciously, his fur collar turned up over his ears,
his eyes stabbing the darkness, under his round, low-drawn fur cap. Who
had dared upset his darling? And, within the car, the little governess
chattered softly, and Gyp, shrouded in lace, in her dark corner sat
silent, seeing nothing but the vision of that insult. Sad end to a
lovely night!
She lay awake long hours in the darkness, while a sort of coherence was
forming in her mind. Those words: "Really IS her father!" and that man's
kissing of her bare arm were a sort of revelation of sex-mystery,
hardening the consciousness that there was something at the back of her
life. A child so sensitive had not, of course, quite failed to feel the
spiritual draughts around her; but instinctively she had recoiled from
more definite perceptions. The time before Winton came was all so
faint--Betty, toys, short glimpses of a kind, invalidish man called
"Papa." As in that word there was no depth compared with the word "Dad"
bestowed on Winton, so there had been no depth in her feelings towards
the squire. When a girl has no memory of her mother, how dark are many
things! None, except Betty, had ever talked of her mother. There was
nothing sacred in Gyp's associations, no faiths to be broken by any
knowledge that might come to her; isolated from other girls, she had
little realisation even of the conventions. Still, she suffered
horribly, lying there in the dark--from bewilderment, from thorns dragged
over her skin, rather than from a stab in the heart. The knowledge of
something about her conspicuous, doubtful, provocative of insult, as she
thought, grievously hurt her delicacy. Those few wakeful hours made a
heavy mark. She fell asleep at last, still all in confusion, and woke up
with a passionate desire to KNOW. All that morning she sat at her piano,
playing, refusing to go out, frigid to Betty and the little governess,
till the former was reduced to tears and the latter to Wordsworth. After
tea she went to Winton's study, that dingy little room where he never
studied anything, with leather chairs and books which--except "Mr.
Jorrocks," Byron, those on the care of horses, and the novels of
Whyte-Melville--were never read; with prints of superequine celebrities,
his sword, and photographs of Gyp and of brother officers on the walls.
Two bright spots there were indeed--the fire, and the little bowl that
Gyp always kept filled with flowers.
When she came gliding in like that, a slender, rounded figure, her
creamy, dark-eyed, oval face all cloudy, she seemed to Winton to have
grown up of a sudden. He had known all day that something was coming,
and had been cudgelling his brains finely. From the fervour of his love
for her, he felt an anxiety that was almost fear. What could have
happened last night--that first night of her entrance into
society--meddlesome, gossiping society! She slid down to the floor
against his knee. He could not see her face, could not even touch her;
for she had settled down on his right side. He mastered his tremors and
said:
"Well, Gyp--tired?"
"No."
"A little bit?"
"No."
"Was it up to what you thought, last night?"
"Yes."
The logs hissed and crackled; the long flames ruffled in the
chimney-draught; the wind roared outside--then, so suddenly that it took
his breath away:
"Dad, are you really and truly my father?"
When that which one has always known might happen at last does happen,
how little one is prepared! In the few seconds before an answer that
could in no way be evaded, Winton had time for a tumult of reflection. A
less resolute character would have been caught by utter mental blankness,
then flung itself in panic on "Yes" or "No." But Winton was incapable of
losing his head; he would not answer without having faced the
consequences of his reply. To be her father was the most warming thing
in his life; but if he avowed it, how far would he injure her love for
him? What did a girl know? How make her understand? What would her
feeling be about her dead mother? How would that dead loved one feel?
What would she have wished?
It was a cruel moment. And the girl, pressed against his knee, with face
hidden, gave him no help. Impossible to keep it from her, now that her
instinct was roused! Silence, too, would answer for him. And clenching
his hand on the arm of his chair, he said:
"Yes, Gyp; your mother and I loved each other." He felt a quiver go
through her, would have given much to see her face. What, even now, did
she understand? Well, it must be gone through with, and he said:
"What made you ask?"
She shook her head and murmured:
"I'm glad."
Grief, shock, even surprise would have roused all his loyalty to the
dead, all the old stubborn bitterness, and he would have frozen up
against her. But this acquiescent murmur made him long to smooth it
down.
"Nobody has ever known. She died when you were born. It was a fearful
grief to me. If you've heard anything, it's just gossip, because you go
by my name. Your mother was never talked about. But it's best you should
know, now you're grown up. People don't often love as she and I loved.
You needn't be ashamed."
She had not moved, and her face was still turned from him. She said
quietly:
"I'm not ashamed. Am I very like her?"
"Yes; more than I could ever have hoped."
Very low she said:
"Then you don't love me for myself?"
Winton was but dimly conscious of how that question revealed her nature,
its power of piercing instinctively to the heart of things, its sensitive
pride, and demand for utter and exclusive love. To things that go too
deep, one opposes the bulwark of obtuseness. And, smiling, he simply
said:
"What do you think?"
Then, to his dismay, he perceived that she was crying--struggling against
it so that her shoulder shook against his knee. He had hardly ever known
her cry, not in all the disasters of unstable youth, and she had received
her full meed of knocks and tumbles. He could only stroke that shoulder,
and say:
"Don't cry, Gyp; don't cry!"
She ceased as suddenly as she had begun, got up, and, before he too could
rise, was gone.
That evening, at dinner, she was just as usual. He could not detect the
slightest difference in her voice or manner, or in her good-night kiss.
And so a moment that he had dreaded for years was over, leaving only the
faint shame which follows a breach of reticence on the spirits of those
who worship it. While the old secret had been quite undisclosed, it had
not troubled him. Disclosed, it hurt him. But Gyp, in those twenty-four
hours, had left childhood behind for good; her feeling toward men had
hardened. If she did not hurt them a little, they would hurt her! The
sex-instinct had come to life. To Winton she gave as much love as ever,
even more, perhaps; but the dew was off.
III
The next two years were much less solitary, passed in more or less
constant gaiety. His confession spurred Winton on to the fortification
of his daughter's position. He would stand no nonsense, would not have
her looked on askance. There is nothing like "style" for carrying the
defences of society--only, it must be the genuine thing. Whether at
Mildenham, or in London under the wing of his sister, there was no
difficulty. Gyp was too pretty, Winton too cool, his quietness too
formidable. She had every advantage. Society only troubles itself to
make front against the visibly weak.
The happiest time of a girl's life is that when all appreciate and covet
her, and she herself is free as air--a queen of hearts, for none of which
she hankers; or, if not the happiest, at all events it is the gayest
time. What did Gyp care whether hearts ached for her--she knew not love
as yet, perhaps would never know the pains of unrequited love.
Intoxicated with life, she led her many admirers a pretty dance, treating
them with a sort of bravura. She did not want them to be unhappy, but
she simply could not take them seriously. Never was any girl so
heart-free. She was a queer mixture in those days, would give up any
pleasure for Winton, and most for Betty or her aunt--her little governess
was gone--but of nobody else did she seem to take account, accepting all
that was laid at her feet as the due of her looks, her dainty frocks, her
music, her good riding and dancing, her talent for amateur theatricals
and mimicry. Winton, whom at least she never failed, watched that
glorious fluttering with quiet pride and satisfaction. He was getting to
those years when a man of action dislikes interruption of the grooves
into which his activity has fallen. He pursued his hunting, racing,
card-playing, and his very stealthy alms and services to lame ducks of
his old regiment, their families, and other unfortunates--happy in
knowing that Gyp was always as glad to be with him as he to be with her.
Hereditary gout, too, had begun to bother him.
The day that she came of age they were up in town, and he summoned her to
the room, in which he now sat by the fire recalling all these things, to
receive an account of his stewardship. He had nursed her greatly
embarrassed inheritance very carefully till it amounted to some twenty
thousand pounds. He had never told her of it--the subject was dangerous,
and, since his own means were ample, she had not wanted for anything.
When he had explained exactly what she owned, shown her how it was
invested, and told her that she must now open her own banking account,
she stood gazing at the sheets of paper, whose items she had been
supposed to understand, and her face gathered the look which meant that
she was troubled. Without lifting her eyes she asked:
"Does it all come from--him?"
He had not expected that, and flushed under his tan.
"No; eight thousand of it was your mother's."
Gyp looked at him, and said:
"Then I won't take the rest--please, Dad."
Winton felt a sort of crabbed pleasure. What should be done with that
money if she did not take it, he did not in the least know. But not to
take it was like her, made her more than ever his daughter--a kind of
final victory. He turned away to the window from which he had so often
watched for her mother. There was the corner she used to turn! In one
minute, surely she would be standing there, colour glowing in her cheeks,
her eyes soft behind her veil, her breast heaving a little with her
haste, waiting for his embrace. There she would stand, drawing up her
veil. He turned round. Difficult to believe it was not she! And he
said:
"Very well, my love. But you will take the equivalent from me instead.
The other can be put by; some one will benefit some day!"
At those unaccustomed words, "My love," from his undemonstrative lips,
the colour mounted in her cheeks and her eyes shone. She threw her arms
round his neck.
She had her fill of music in those days, taking piano lessons from a
Monsieur Harmost, a grey-haired native of Liege, with mahogany cheeks and
the touch of an angel, who kept her hard at it and called her his "little
friend." There was scarcely a concert of merit that she did not attend
or a musician of mark whose playing she did not know, and, though
fastidiousness saved her from squirming in adoration round the feet of
those prodigious performers, she perched them all on pedestals, men and
women alike, and now and then met them at her aunt's house in Curzon
Street.
Aunt Rosamund, also musical, so far as breeding would allow, stood for a
good deal to Gyp, who had built up about her a romantic story of love
wrecked by pride from a few words she had once let drop. She was a tall
and handsome woman, a year older than Winton, with a long, aristocratic
face, deep-blue, rather shining eyes, a gentlemanly manner, warm heart,
and one of those indescribable, not unmelodious drawls that one connects
with an unshakable sense of privilege. She, in turn, was very fond of
Gyp; and what passed within her mind, by no means devoid of shrewdness,
as to their real relationship, remained ever discreetly hidden. She was,
so far again as breeding would allow, something of a humanitarian and
rebel, loving horses and dogs, and hating cats, except when they had four
legs. The girl had just that softness which fascinates women who perhaps
might have been happier if they had been born men. Not that Rosamund
Winton was of an aggressive type--she merely had the resolute "catch hold
of your tail, old fellow" spirit so often found in Englishwomen of the
upper classes. A cheery soul, given to long coats and waistcoats,
stocks, and a crutch-handled stick, she--like her brother--had "style,"
but more sense of humour--valuable in musical circles! At her house, the
girl was practically compelled to see fun as well as merit in all those
prodigies, haloed with hair and filled to overflowing with music and
themselves. And, since Gyp's natural sense of the ludicrous was extreme,
she and her aunt could rarely talk about anything without going into fits
of laughter.
Winton had his first really bad attack of gout when Gyp was twenty-two,
and, terrified lest he might not be able to sit a horse in time for the
opening meets, he went off with her and Markey to Wiesbaden. They had
rooms in the Wilhelmstrasse, overlooking the gardens, where leaves were
already turning, that gorgeous September. The cure was long and
obstinate, and Winton badly bored. Gyp fared much better. Attended by
the silent Markey, she rode daily on the Neroberg, chafing at regulations
which reduced her to specified tracks in that majestic wood where the
beeches glowed. Once or even twice a day she went to the concerts in the
Kurhaus, either with her father or alone.
The first time she heard Fiorsen play she was alone. Unlike most
violinists, he was tall and thin, with great pliancy of body and swift
sway of movement. His face was pale, and went strangely with hair and
moustache of a sort of dirt-gold colour, and his thin cheeks with very
broad high cheek-bones had little narrow scraps of whisker. Those little
whiskers seemed to Gyp awful--indeed, he seemed rather awful
altogether--but his playing stirred and swept her in the most uncanny
way. He had evidently remarkable technique; and the emotion, the intense
wayward feeling of his playing was chiselled by that technique, as if a
flame were being frozen in its swaying. When he stopped, she did not
join in the tornado of applause, but sat motionless, looking up at him.
Quite unconstrained by all those people, he passed the back of his hand
across his hot brow, shoving up a wave or two of that queer-coloured
hair; then, with a rather disagreeable smile, he made a short supple bow
or two. And she thought, "What strange eyes he has--like a great cat's!"
Surely they were green; fierce, yet shy, almost furtive--mesmeric!
Certainly the strangest man she had ever seen, and the most frightening.
He seemed looking straight at her; and, dropping her gaze, she clapped.
When she looked again, his face had lost that smile for a kind of
wistfulness. He made another of those little supple bows straight at
her--it seemed to Gyp--and jerked his violin up to his shoulder. "He's
going to play to me," she thought absurdly. He played without
accompaniment a little tune that seemed to twitch the heart. When he
finished, this time she did not look up, but was conscious that he gave
one impatient bow and walked off.
That evening at dinner she said to Winton:
"I heard a violinist to-day, Dad, the most wonderful playing--Gustav
Fiorsen. Is that Swedish, do you think--or what?"
Winton answered:
"Very likely. What sort of a bounder was he to look at? I used to know
a Swede in the Turkish army--nice fellow, too."
"Tall and thin and white-faced, with bumpy cheek-bones, and hollows under
them, and queer green eyes. Oh, and little goldy side-whiskers."
"By Jove! It sounds the limit."
Gyp murmured, with a smile:
"Yes; I think perhaps he is."
She saw him next day in the gardens. They were sitting close to the
Schiller statue, Winton reading The Times, to whose advent he looked
forward more than he admitted, for he was loath by confessions of boredom
to disturb Gyp's manifest enjoyment of her stay. While perusing the
customary comforting animadversions on the conduct of those "rascally
Radicals" who had just come into power, and the account of a Newmarket
meeting, he kept stealing sidelong glances at his daughter.
Certainly she had never looked prettier, daintier, shown more breeding
than she did out here among these Germans with their thick pasterns, and
all the cosmopolitan hairy-heeled crowd in this God-forsaken place! The
girl, unconscious of his stealthy regalement, was letting her clear eyes
rest, in turn, on each figure that passed, on the movements of birds and
dogs, watching the sunlight glisten on the grass, burnish the copper
beeches, the lime-trees, and those tall poplars down there by the water.
The doctor at Mildenham, once consulted on a bout of headache, had called
her eyes "perfect organs," and certainly no eyes could take things in
more swiftly or completely. She was attractive to dogs, and every now
and then one would stop, in two minds whether or no to put his nose into
this foreign girl's hand. From a flirtation of eyes with a great Dane,
she looked up and saw Fiorsen passing, in company with a shorter, square
man, having very fashionable trousers and a corseted waist. The
violinist's tall, thin, loping figure was tightly buttoned into a
brownish-grey frock-coat suit; he wore a rather broad-brimmed, grey,
velvety hat; in his buttonhole was a white flower; his cloth-topped boots
were of patent leather; his tie was bunched out at the ends over a soft
white-linen shirt--altogether quite a dandy! His most strange eyes
suddenly swept down on hers, and he made a movement as if to put his hand
to his hat.
'Why, he remembers me,' thought Gyp. That thin-waisted figure with head
set just a little forward between rather high shoulders, and its long
stride, curiously suggested a leopard or some lithe creature. He touched
his short companion's arm, muttered something, turned round, and came
back. She could see him staring her way, and knew he was coming simply
to look at her. She knew, too, that her father was watching. And she
felt that those greenish eyes would waver before his stare--that stare of
the Englishman of a certain class, which never condescends to be
inquisitive. They passed; Gyp saw Fiorsen turn to his companion,
slightly tossing back his head in their direction, and heard the
companion laugh. A little flame shot up in her.
Winton said:
"Rum-looking Johnnies one sees here!"
"That was the violinist I told you of--Fiorsen."
"Oh! Ah!" But he had evidently forgotten.
The thought that Fiorsen should have picked her out of all that audience
for remembrance subtly flattered her vanity. She lost her ruffled
feeling. Though her father thought his dress awful, it was really rather
becoming. He would not have looked as well in proper English clothes.
Once, at least, during the next two days, she noticed the short, square
young man who had been walking with him, and was conscious that he
followed her with his eyes.
And then a certain Baroness von Maisen, a cosmopolitan friend of Aunt
Rosamund's, German by marriage, half-Dutch, half-French by birth, asked
her if she had heard the Swedish violinist, Fiorsen. He would be, she
said, the best violinist of the day, if--and she shook her head. Finding
that expressive shake unquestioned, the baroness pursued her thoughts:
"Ah, these musicians! He wants saving from himself. If he does not halt
soon, he will be lost. Pity! A great talent!"
Gyp looked at her steadily and asked:
"Does he drink, then?"
"Pas mal! But there are things besides drink, ma chere."
Instinct and so much life with Winton made the girl regard it as beneath
her to be shocked. She did not seek knowledge of life, but refused to
shy away from it or be discomfited; and the baroness, to whom innocence
was piquant, went on:
"Des femmes--toujours des femmes! C'est grand dommage. It will spoil
his spirit. His sole chance is to find one woman, but I pity her;
sapristi, quelle vie pour elle!"
Gyp said calmly:
"Would a man like that ever love?"
The baroness goggled her eyes.
"I have known such a man become a slave. I have known him running after
a woman like a lamb while she was deceiving him here and there. On ne
peut jamais dire. Ma belle, il y a des choses que vous ne savez pas
encore." She took Gyp's hand. "And yet, one thing is certain. With
those eyes and those lips and that figure, YOU have a time before you!"
Gyp withdrew her hand, smiled, and shook her head; she did not believe in
love.
"Ah, but you will turn some heads! No fear! as you English say. There is
fatality in those pretty brown eyes!"
A girl may be pardoned who takes as a compliment the saying that her eyes
are fatal. The words warmed Gyp, uncontrollably light-hearted in these
days, just as she was warmed when people turned to stare at her. The
soft air, the mellowness of this gay place, much music, a sense of being
a rara avis among people who, by their heavier type, enhanced her own,
had produced in her a kind of intoxication, making her what the baroness
called "un peu folle." She was always breaking into laughter, having that
precious feeling of twisting the world round her thumb, which does not
come too often in the life of one who is sensitive. Everything to her
just then was either "funny" or "lovely." And the baroness, conscious of
the girl's chic, genuinely attracted by one so pretty, took care that she
saw all the people, perhaps more than all, that were desirable.
To women and artists, between whom there is ever a certain kinship,
curiosity is a vivid emotion. Besides, the more a man has conquered, the
more precious field he is for a woman's conquest. To attract a man who
has attracted many, what is it but a proof that one's charm is superior
to that of all those others? The words of the baroness deepened in Gyp
the impression that Fiorsen was "impossible," but secretly fortified the
faint excitement she felt that he should have remembered her out of all
that audience. Later on, they bore more fruit than that. But first came
that queer incident of the flowers.
Coming in from a ride, a week after she had sat with Winton under the
Schiller statue, Gyp found on her dressing-table a bunch of Gloire de
Dijon and La France roses. Plunging her nose into them, she thought:
"How lovely! Who sent me these?" There was no card. All that the German
maid could say was that a boy had brought them from a flower shop "fur
Fraulein Vinton"; it was surmised that they came from the baroness. In
her bodice at dinner, and to the concert after, Gyp wore one La France
and one Gloire de Dijon--a daring mixture of pink and orange against her
oyster-coloured frock, which delighted her, who had a passion for
experiments in colour. They had bought no programme, all music being the
same to Winton, and Gyp not needing any. When she saw Fiorsen come
forward, her cheeks began to colour from sheer anticipation.
He played first a minuet by Mozart; then the Cesar Franck sonata; and
when he came back to make his bow, he was holding in his hand a Gloire de
Dijon and a La France rose. Involuntarily, Gyp raised her hand to her
own roses. His eyes met hers; he bowed just a little lower. Then, quite
naturally, put the roses to his lips as he was walking off the platform.
Gyp dropped her hand, as if it had been stung. Then, with the swift
thought: "Oh, that's schoolgirlish!" she contrived a little smile. But
her cheeks were flushing. Should she take out those roses and let them
fall? Her father might see, might notice Fiorsen's--put two and two
together! He would consider she had been insulted. Had she? She could
not bring herself to think so. It was too pretty a compliment, as if he
wished to tell her that he was playing to her alone. The baroness's
words flashed through her mind: "He wants saving from himself. Pity! A
great talent!" It WAS a great talent. There must be something worth
saving in one who could play like that! They left after his last solo.
Gyp put the two roses carefully back among the others.
Three days later, she went to an afternoon "at home" at the Baroness von
Maisen's. She saw him at once, over by the piano, with his short, square
companion, listening to a voluble lady, and looking very bored and
restless. All that overcast afternoon, still and with queer lights in
the sky, as if rain were coming, Gyp had been feeling out of mood, a
little homesick. Now she felt excited. She saw the short companion
detach himself and go up to the baroness; a minute later, he was brought
up to her and introduced--Count Rosek. Gyp did not like his face; there
were dark rings under the eyes, and he was too perfectly self-possessed,
with a kind of cold sweetness; but he was very agreeable and polite, and
spoke English well. He was--it seemed--a Pole, who lived in London, and
seemed to know all that was to be known about music. Miss Winton--he
believed--had heard his friend Fiorsen play; but not in London? No?
That was odd; he had been there some months last season. Faintly annoyed
at her ignorance, Gyp answered:
"Yes; but I was in the country nearly all last summer."
"He had a great success. I shall take him back; it is best for his
future. What do you think of his playing?"
In spite of herself, for she did not like expanding to this sphinxlike
little man, Gyp murmured:
"Oh, simply wonderful, of course!"
He nodded, and then rather suddenly said, with a peculiar little smile:
"May I introduce him? Gustav--Miss Winton!"
Gyp turned. There he was, just behind her, bowing; and his eyes had a
look of humble adoration which he made no attempt whatever to conceal.
Gyp saw another smile slide over the Pole's lips; and she was alone in
the bay window with Fiorsen. The moment might well have fluttered a
girl's nerves after his recognition of her by the Schiller statue, after
that episode of the flowers, and what she had heard of him. But life had
not yet touched either her nerves or spirit; she only felt amused and a
little excited. Close to, he had not so much that look of an animal
behind bars, and he certainly was in his way a dandy, beautifully
washed--always an important thing--and having some pleasant essence on
his handkerchief or hair, of which Gyp would have disapproved if he had
been English. He wore a diamond ring also, which did not somehow seem
bad form on that particular little finger. His height, his broad
cheek-bones, thick but not long hair, the hungry vitality of his face,
figure, movements, annulled those evidences of femininity. He was male
enough, rather too male. Speaking with a queer, crisp accent, he said:
"Miss Winton, you are my audience here. I play to you--only to you."
Gyp laughed.
"You laugh at me; but you need not. I play for you because I admire you.
I admire you terribly. If I sent you those flowers, it was not to be
rude. It was my gratitude for the pleasure of your face." His voice
actually trembled. And, looking down, Gyp answered:
"Thank you. It was very kind of you. I want to thank you for your
playing. It is beautiful--really beautiful!"
He made her another little bow.
"When I go back to London, will you come and hear me?"
"I should think any one would go to hear you, if they had the chance."
He gave a short laugh.
"Bah! Here, I do it for money; I hate this place. It bores me--bores
me! Was that your father sitting with you under the statue?"
Gyp nodded, suddenly grave. She had not forgotten the slighting turn of
his head.
He passed his hand over his face, as if to wipe off its expression.
"He is very English. But you--of no country--you belong to all!"
Gyp made him an ironical little bow.
"No; I should not know your country--you are neither of the North nor of
the South. You are just Woman, made to be adored. I came here hoping to
meet you; I am extremely happy. Miss Winton, I am your very devoted
servant."
He was speaking very fast, very low, with an agitated earnestness that
surely could not be put on. But suddenly muttering: "These people!" he
made her another of his little bows and abruptly slipped away. The
baroness was bringing up another man. The chief thought left by that
meeting was: "Is that how he begins to everyone?" She could not quite
believe it. The stammering earnestness of his voice, those humbly
adoring looks! Then she remembered the smile on the lips of the little
Pole, and thought: "But he must know I'm not silly enough just to be
taken in by vulgar flattery!"
Too sensitive to confide in anyone, she had no chance to ventilate the
curious sensations of attraction and repulsion that began fermenting in
her, feelings defying analysis, mingling and quarrelling deep down in her
heart. It was certainly not love, not even the beginning of that; but it
was the kind of dangerous interest children feel in things mysterious,
out of reach, yet within reach, if only they dared! And the tug of music
was there, and the tug of those words of the baroness about
salvation--the thought of achieving the impossible, reserved only for the
woman of supreme charm, for the true victress. But all these thoughts
and feelings were as yet in embryo. She might never see him again! And
she certainly did not know whether she even wanted to.
IV
Gyp was in the habit of walking with Winton to the Kochbrunnen, where,
with other patient-folk, he was required to drink slowly for twenty
minutes every morning. While he was imbibing she would sit in a remote
corner of the garden, and read a novel in the Reclam edition, as a daily
German lesson.
She was sitting there, the morning after the "at-home" at the Baroness
von Maisen's, reading Turgenev's "Torrents of Spring," when she saw Count
Rosek sauntering down the path with a glass of the waters in his hand.
Instant memory of the smile with which he had introduced Fiorsen made her
take cover beneath her sunshade. She could see his patent-leathered feet,
and well-turned, peg-top-trousered legs go by with the gait of a man
whose waist is corseted. The certainty that he wore those prerogatives
of womanhood increased her dislike. How dare men be so effeminate? Yet
someone had told her that he was a good rider, a good fencer, and very
strong. She drew a breath of relief when he was past, and, for fear he
might turn and come back, closed her little book and slipped away. But
her figure and her springing step were more unmistakable than she knew.
Next morning, on the same bench, she was reading breathlessly the scene
between Gemma and Sanin at the window, when she heard Fiorsen's voice,
behind her, say:
"Miss Winton!"
He, too, held a glass of the waters in one hand, and his hat in the
other.
"I have just made your father's acquaintance. May I sit down a minute?"
Gyp drew to one side on the bench, and he sat down.
"What are you reading?"
"A story called 'Torrents of Spring.'"
"Ah, the finest ever written! Where are you?"
"Gemma and Sanin in the thunderstorm."
"Wait! You have Madame Polozov to come! What a creation! How old are
you, Miss Winton?"
"Twenty-two."
"You would be too young to appreciate that story if you were not YOU.
But you know much--by instinct. What is your Christian name--forgive
me!"
"Ghita."
"Ghita? Not soft enough."
"I am always called Gyp."
"Gyp--ah, Gyp! Yes; Gyp!"
He repeated her name so impersonally that she could not be angry.
"I told your father I have had the pleasure of meeting you. He was very
polite."
Gyp said coldly:
"My father is always polite."
"Like the ice in which they put champagne."
Gyp smiled; she could not help it.
And suddenly he said:
"I suppose they have told you that I am a mauvais sujet." Gyp inclined
her head. He looked at her steadily, and said: "It is true. But I could
be better--much."
She wanted to look at him, but could not. A queer sort of exultation had
seized on her. This man had power; yet she had power over him. If she
wished she could make him her slave, her dog, chain him to her. She had
but to hold out her hand, and he would go on his knees to kiss it. She
had but to say, "Come," and he would come from wherever he might be. She
had but to say, "Be good," and he would be good. It was her first
experience of power; and it was intoxicating. But--but! Gyp could never
be self-confident for long; over her most victorious moments brooded the
shadow of distrust. As if he read her thought, Fiorsen said:
"Tell me to do something--anything; I will do it, Miss Winton."
"Then--go back to London at once. You are wasting yourself here, you
know. You said so!"
He looked at her, bewildered and upset, and muttered:
"You have asked me the one thing I can't do, Miss--Miss Gyp!"
"Please--not that; it's like a servant!"
"I AM your servant!"
"Is that why you won't do what I ask you?"
"You are cruel."
Gyp laughed.
He got up and said, with sudden fierceness:
"I am not going away from you; do not think it." Bending with the utmost
swiftness, he took her hand, put his lips to it, and turned on his heel.
Gyp, uneasy and astonished, stared at her hand, still tingling from the
pressure of his bristly moustache. Then she laughed again--it was just
"foreign" to have your hand kissed--and went back to her book, without
taking in the words.
Was ever courtship more strange than that which followed? It is said
that the cat fascinates the bird it desires to eat; here the bird
fascinated the cat, but the bird too was fascinated. Gyp never lost the
sense of having the whip-hand, always felt like one giving alms, or
extending favour, yet had a feeling of being unable to get away, which
seemed to come from the very strength of the spell she laid on him. The
magnetism with which she held him reacted on herself. Thoroughly
sceptical at first, she could not remain so. He was too utterly morose
and unhappy if she did not smile on him, too alive and excited and
grateful if she did. The change in his eyes from their ordinary
restless, fierce, and furtive expression to humble adoration or wistful
hunger when they looked at her could never have been simulated. And she
had no lack of chance to see that metamorphosis. Wherever she went,
there he was. If to a concert, he would be a few paces from the door,
waiting for her entrance. If to a confectioner's for tea, as likely as
not he would come in. Every afternoon he walked where she must pass,
riding to the Neroberg.
Except in the gardens of the Kochbrunnen, when he would come up humbly
and ask to sit with her five minutes, he never forced his company, or
tried in any way to compromise her. Experience, no doubt, served him
there; but he must have had an instinct that it was dangerous with one so
sensitive. There were other moths, too, round that bright candle, and
they served to keep his attentions from being too conspicuous. Did she
comprehend what was going on, understand how her defences were being
sapped, grasp the danger to retreat that lay in permitting him to hover
round her? Not really. It all served to swell the triumphant
intoxication of days when she was ever more and more in love with living,
more and more conscious that the world appreciated and admired her, that
she had power to do what others couldn't.
Was not Fiorsen, with his great talent, and his dubious reputation, proof
of that? And he excited her. Whatever else one might be in his moody,
vivid company, one would not be dull. One morning, he told her something
of his life. His father had been a small Swedish landowner, a very
strong man and a very hard drinker; his mother, the daughter of a
painter. She had taught him the violin, but died while he was still a
boy. When he was seventeen he had quarrelled with his father, and had to
play his violin for a living in the streets of Stockholm. A well-known
violinist, hearing him one day, took him in hand. Then his father had
drunk himself to death, and he had inherited the little estate. He had
sold it at once--"for follies," as he put it crudely. "Yes, Miss Winton;
I have committed many follies, but they are nothing to those I shall
commit the day I do not see you any more!" And, with that disturbing
remark, he got up and left her. She had smiled at his words, but within
herself she felt excitement, scepticism, compassion, and something she
did not understand at all. In those days, she understood herself very
little.
But how far did Winton understand, how far see what was going on? He was
a stoic; but that did not prevent jealousy from taking alarm, and causing
him twinges more acute than those he still felt in his left foot. He was
afraid of showing disquiet by any dramatic change, or he would have
carried her off a fortnight at least before his cure was over. He knew
too well the signs of passion. That long, loping, wolfish fiddling
fellow with the broad cheekbones and little side-whiskers (Good God!) and
greenish eyes whose looks at Gyp he secretly marked down, roused his
complete distrust. Perhaps his inbred English contempt for foreigners
and artists kept him from direct action. He COULD not take it quite
seriously. Gyp, his fastidious perfect Gyp, succumbing, even a little to
a fellow like that! Never! His jealous affection, too, could not admit
that she would neglect to consult him in any doubt or difficulty. He
forgot the sensitive secrecy of girls, forgot that his love for her had
ever shunned words, her love for him never indulged in confidences. Nor
did he see more than a little of what there was to see, and that little
was doctored by Fiorsen for his eyes, shrewd though they were. Nor was
there in all so very much, except one episode the day before they left,
and of that he knew nothing.
That last afternoon was very still, a little mournful. It had rained the
night before, and the soaked tree-trunks, the soaked fallen leaves gave
off a faint liquorice-like perfume. In Gyp there was a feeling, as if
her spirit had been suddenly emptied of excitement and delight. Was it
the day, or the thought of leaving this place where she had so enjoyed
herself? After lunch, when Winton was settling his accounts, she
wandered out through the long park stretching up the valley. The sky was
brooding-grey, the trees were still and melancholy. It was all a little
melancholy, and she went on and on, across the stream, round into a muddy
lane that led up through the outskirts of a village, on to the higher
ground whence she could return by the main road. Why must things come to
an end? For the first time in her life, she thought of Mildenham and
hunting without enthusiasm. She would rather stay in London. There she
would not be cut off from music, from dancing, from people, and all the
exhilaration of being appreciated. On the air came the shrilly, hollow
droning of a thresher, and the sound seemed exactly to express her
feelings. A pigeon flew over, white against the leaden sky; some
birch-trees that had gone golden shivered and let fall a shower of drops.
It was lonely here! And, suddenly, two little boys bolted out of the
hedge, nearly upsetting her, and scurried down the road. Something had
startled them. Gyp, putting up her face to see, felt on it soft
pin-points of rain. Her frock would be spoiled, and it was one she was
fond of--dove-coloured, velvety, not meant for weather. She turned for
refuge to the birch-trees. It would be over directly, perhaps. Muffled
in distance, the whining drone of that thresher still came travelling,
deepening her discomfort. Then in the hedge, whence the boys had bolted
down, a man reared himself above the lane, and came striding along toward
her. He jumped down the bank, among the birch-trees. And she saw it was
Fiorsen--panting, dishevelled, pale with heat. He must have followed
her, and climbed straight up the hillside from the path she had come
along in the bottom, before crossing the stream. His artistic dandyism
had been harshly treated by that scramble. She might have laughed; but,
instead, she felt excited, a little scared by the look on his hot, pale
face. He said, breathlessly:
"I have caught you. So you are going to-morrow, and never told me! You
thought you would slip away--not a word for me! Are you always so cruel?
Well, I will not spare you, either!"
Crouching suddenly, he took hold of her broad ribbon sash, and buried his
face in it. Gyp stood trembling--the action had not stirred her sense of
the ridiculous. He circled her knees with his arms.
"Oh, Gyp, I love you--I love you--don't send me away--let me be with you!
I am your dog--your slave. Oh, Gyp, I love you!"
His voice moved and terrified her. Men had said "I love you" several
times during those last two years, but never with that lost-soul ring of
passion, never with that look in the eyes at once fiercely hungry and so
supplicating, never with that restless, eager, timid touch of hands. She
could only murmur:
"Please get up!"
But he went on:
"Love me a little, only a little--love me! Oh, Gyp!"
The thought flashed through Gyp: 'To how many has he knelt, I wonder?'
His face had a kind of beauty in its abandonment--the beauty that comes
from yearning--and she lost her frightened feeling. He went on, with his
stammering murmur: "I am a prodigal, I know; but if you love me, I will
no longer be. I will do great things for you. Oh, Gyp, if you will some
day marry me! Not now. When I have proved. Oh, Gyp, you are so
sweet--so wonderful!"
His arms crept up till he had buried his face against her waist. Without
quite knowing what she did, Gyp touched his hair, and said again:
"No; please get up."
He got up then, and standing near, with his hands hard clenched at his
sides, whispered:
"Have mercy! Speak to me!"
She could not. All was strange and mazed and quivering in her, her
spirit straining away, drawn to him, fantastically confused. She could
only look into his face with her troubled, dark eyes. And suddenly she
was seized and crushed to him. She shrank away, pushing him back with
all her strength. He hung his head, abashed, suffering, with eyes shut,
lips trembling; and her heart felt again that quiver of compassion. She
murmured:
"I don't know. I will tell you later--later--in England."
He bowed, folding his arms, as if to make her feel safe from him. And
when, regardless of the rain, she began to move on, he walked beside her,
a yard or so away, humbly, as though he had never poured out those words
or hurt her lips with the violence of his kiss.
Back in her room, taking off her wet dress, Gyp tried to remember what he
had said and what she had answered. She had not promised anything. But
she had given him her address, both in London and the country. Unless
she resolutely thought of other things, she still felt the restless touch
of his hands, the grip of his arms, and saw his eyes as they were when he
was kissing her; and once more she felt frightened and excited.
He was playing at the concert that evening--her last concert. And surely
he had never played like that--with a despairing beauty, a sort of
frenzied rapture. Listening, there came to her a feeling--a feeling of
fatality--that, whether she would or no, she could not free herself from
him.
V
Once back in England, Gyp lost that feeling, or very nearly. Her
scepticism told her that Fiorsen would soon see someone else who seemed
all he had said she was! How ridiculous to suppose that he would stop
his follies for her, that she had any real power over him! But, deep
down, she did not quite believe this. It would have wounded her belief
in herself too much--a belief so subtle and intimate that she was not
conscious of it; belief in that something about her which had inspired
the baroness to use the word "fatality."
Winton, who breathed again, hurried her off to Mildenham. He had bought
her a new horse. They were in time for the last of the cubbing. And,
for a week at least, the passion for riding and the sight of hounds
carried all before it. Then, just as the real business of the season was
beginning, she began to feel dull and restless. Mildenham was dark; the
autumn winds made dreary noises. Her little brown spaniel, very old, who
seemed only to have held on to life just for her return, died. She
accused herself terribly for having left it so long when it was failing.
Thinking of all the days Lass had been watching for her to come home--as
Betty, with that love of woeful recital so dear to simple hearts, took
good care to make plain--she felt as if she had been cruel. For events
such as these, Gyp was both too tender-hearted and too hard on herself.
She was quite ill for several days. The moment she was better, Winton,
in dismay, whisked her back to Aunt Rosamund, in town. He would lose her
company, but if it did her good, took her out of herself, he would be
content. Running up for the week-end, three days later, he was relieved
to find her decidedly perked-up, and left her again with the easier
heart.
It was on the day after he went back to Mildenham that she received a
letter from Fiorsen, forwarded from Bury Street. He was--it said--just
returning to London; he had not forgotten any look she had ever given
him, or any word she had spoken. He should not rest till he could see
her again. "For a long time," the letter ended, "before I first saw you,
I was like the dead--lost. All was bitter apples to me. Now I am a ship
that comes from the whirlpools to a warm blue sea; now I see again the
evening star. I kiss your hands, and am your faithful slave--Gustav
Fiorsen." These words, which from any other man would have excited her
derision, renewed in Gyp that fluttered feeling, the pleasurable,
frightened sense that she could not get away from his pursuit.
She wrote in answer to the address he gave her in London, to say that she
was staying for a few days in Curzon Street with her aunt, who would be
glad to see him if he cared to come in any afternoon between five and
six, and signed herself "Ghita Winton." She was long over that little
note. Its curt formality gave her satisfaction. Was she really mistress
of herself--and him; able to dispose as she wished? Yes; and surely the
note showed it.
It was never easy to tell Gyp's feelings from her face; even Winton was
often baffled. Her preparation of Aunt Rosamund for the reception of
Fiorsen was a masterpiece of casualness. When he duly came, he, too,
seemed doubly alive to the need for caution, only gazing at Gyp when he
could not be seen doing so. But, going out, he whispered: "Not like
this--not like this; I must see you alone--I must!" She smiled and shook
her head. But bubbles had come back to the wine in her cup.
That evening she said quietly to Aunt Rosamund:
"Dad doesn't like Mr. Fiorsen--can't appreciate his playing, of course."
And this most discreet remark caused Aunt Rosamund, avid--in a well-bred
way--of music, to omit mention of the intruder when writing to her
brother. The next two weeks he came almost every day, always bringing
his violin, Gyp playing his accompaniments, and though his hungry stare
sometimes made her feel hot, she would have missed it.
But when Winton next came up to Bury Street, she was in a quandary. To
confess that Fiorsen was here, having omitted to speak of him in her
letters? Not to confess, and leave him to find it out from Aunt
Rosamund? Which was worse? Seized with panic, she did neither, but told
her father she was dying for a gallop. Hailing that as the best of
signs, he took her forthwith back to Mildenham. And curious were her
feelings--light-hearted, compunctious, as of one who escapes yet knows
she will soon be seeking to return. The meet was rather far next day,
but she insisted on riding to it, since old Pettance, the superannuated
jockey, charitably employed as extra stable help at Mildenham, was to
bring on her second horse. There was a good scenting-wind, with rain in
the offing, and outside the covert they had a corner to
themselves--Winton knowing a trick worth two of the field's at-large.
They had slipped there, luckily unseen, for the knowing were given to
following the one-handed horseman in faded pink, who, on his bang-tailed
black mare, had a knack of getting so well away. One of the whips, a
little dark fellow with smouldery eyes and sucked-in weathered cheeks,
dashed out of covert, rode past, saluting, and dashed in again. A jay
came out with a screech, dived, and doubled back; a hare made off across
the fallow--the light-brown lopping creature was barely visible against
the brownish soil. Pigeons, very high up, flew over and away to the next
wood. The shrilling voices of the whips rose from the covert-depths, and
just a whimper now and then from the hounds, swiftly wheeling their noses
among the fern and briers.
Gyp, crisping her fingers on the reins, drew-in deep breaths. It smelled
so sweet and soft and fresh under that sky, pied of blue, and of white
and light-grey swift-moving clouds--not half the wind down here that
there was up there, just enough to be carrying off the beech and oak
leaves, loosened by frost two days before. If only a fox would break
this side, and they could have the first fields to themselves! It was so
lovely to be alone with hounds! One of these came trotting out, a pretty
young creature, busy and unconcerned, raising its tan-and-white head, its
mild reproachful deep-brown eyes, at Winton's, "Loo-in Trix!" What a
darling! A burst of music from the covert, and the darling vanished
among the briers.
Gyp's new brown horse pricked its ears. A young man in a grey cutaway,
buff cords, and jack-boots, on a low chestnut mare, came slipping round
the covert. Oh--did that mean they were all coming? Impatiently she
glanced at this intruder, who raised his hat a little and smiled. That
smile, faintly impudent, was so infectious, that Gyp was melted to a
slight response. Then she frowned. He had spoiled their lovely
loneliness. Who was he? He looked unpardonably serene and happy sitting
there. She did not remember his face at all, yet there was something
familiar about it. He had taken his hat off--a broad face, very well
cut, and clean-shaved, with dark curly hair, extraordinary clear eyes, a
bold, cool, merry look. Where had she seen somebody like him?
A tiny sound from Winton made her turn her head. The fox--stealing out
beyond those further bushes! Breathless, she fixed her eyes on her
father's face. It was hard as steel, watching. Not a sound, not a
quiver, as if horse and man had turned to metal. Was he never going to
give the view-halloo? Then his lips writhed, and out it came. Gyp cast
a swift smile of gratitude at the young man for having had taste and
sense to leave that to her father, and again he smiled at her. There
were the first hounds streaming out--one on the other--music and feather!
Why didn't Dad go? They would all be round this way in a minute!
Then the black mare slid past her, and, with a bound, her horse followed.
The young man on the chestnut was away on the left. Only the hunts-man
and one whip--beside their three selves! Glorious! The brown horse went
too fast at that first fence and Winton called back: "Steady, Gyp!
Steady him!" But she couldn't; and it didn't matter. Grass, three
fields of grass! Oh, what a lovely fox--going so straight! And each
time the brown horse rose, she thought: "Perfect! I CAN ride! Oh, I am
happy!" And she hoped her father and the young man were looking. There
was no feeling in the world like this, with a leader like Dad, hounds
moving free, good going, and the field distanced. Better than dancing;
better--yes, better than listening to music. If one could spend one's
life galloping, sailing over fences; if it would never stop! The new
horse was a darling, though he DID pull.
She crossed the next fence level with the young man, whose low chestnut
mare moved with a stealthy action. His hat was crammed down now, and his
face very determined, but his lips still had something of that smile.
Gyp thought: "He's got a good seat--very strong, only he looks like
'thrusting.' Nobody rides like Dad--so beautifully quiet!" Indeed,
Winton's seat on a horse was perfection, all done with such a minimum
expenditure. The hounds swung round in a curve. Now she was with them,
really with them! What a pace--cracking! No fox could stand this long!
And suddenly she caught sight of him, barely a field ahead, scurrying
desperately, brush down; and the thought flashed through her: 'Oh! don't
let's catch you. Go on, fox; go on! Get away!' Were they really all
after that little hunted red thing--a hundred great creatures, horses and
men and women and dogs, and only that one little fox! But then came
another fence, and quickly another, and she lost feelings of shame and
pity in the exultation of flying over them. A minute later the fox went
to earth within a few hundred yards of the leading hound, and she was
glad. She had been in at deaths before--horrid! But it had been a
lovely gallop. And, breathless, smiling rapturously, she wondered whether
she could mop her face before the field came up, without that young man
noticing.
She could see him talking to her father, and taking out a wisp of a
handkerchief that smelled of cyclamen, she had a good scrub round. When
she rode up, the young man raised his hat, and looking full at her said:
"You did go!" His voice, rather high-pitched, had in it a spice of
pleasant laziness. Gyp made him an ironical little bow, and murmured:
"My new horse, you mean." He broke again into that irrepressible smile,
but, all the same, she knew that he admired her. And she kept thinking:
'Where HAVE I seen someone like him?'
They had two more runs, but nothing like that first gallop. Nor did she
again see the young man, whose name--it seemed--was Summerhay, son of a
certain Lady Summerhay at Widrington, ten miles from Mildenham.
All that long, silent jog home with Winton in fading daylight, she felt
very happy--saturated with air and elation. The trees and fields, the
hay-stacks, gates, and ponds beside the lanes grew dim; lights came up in
the cottage windows; the air smelled sweet of wood smoke. And, for the
first time all day, she thought of Fiorsen, thought of him almost
longingly. If he could be there in the cosy old drawing-room, to play to
her while she lay back--drowsing, dreaming by the fire in the scent of
burning cedar logs--the Mozart minuet, or that little heart-catching tune
of Poise, played the first time she heard him, or a dozen other of the
things he played unaccompanied! That would be the most lovely ending to
this lovely day. Just the glow and warmth wanting, to make all
perfect--the glow and warmth of music and adoration!
And touching the mare with her heel, she sighed. To indulge fancies
about music and Fiorsen was safe here, far away from him; she even
thought she would not mind if he were to behave again as he had under the
birch-trees in the rain at Wiesbaden. It was so good to be adored. Her
old mare, ridden now six years, began the series of contented snuffles
that signified she smelt home. Here was the last turn, and the loom of
the short beech-tree avenue to the house--the old manor-house,
comfortable, roomy, rather dark, with wide shallow stairs. Ah, she was
tired; and it was drizzling now. She would be nicely stiff to-morrow.
In the light coming from the open door she saw Markey standing; and while
fishing from her pocket the usual lumps of sugar, heard him say: "Mr.
Fiorsen, sir--gentleman from Wiesbaden--to see you."
Her heart thumped. What did this mean? Why had he come? How had he
dared? How could he have been so treacherous to her? Ah, but he was
ignorant, of course, that she had not told her father. A veritable
judgment on her! She ran straight in and up the stairs. The voice of
Betty, "Your bath's ready, Miss Gyp," roused her. And crying, "Oh, Betty
darling, bring me up my tea!" she ran into the bathroom. She was safe
there; and in the delicious heat of the bath faced the situation better.
There could be only one meaning. He had come to ask for her. And,
suddenly, she took comfort. Better so; there would be no more secrecy
from Dad! And he would stand between her and Fiorsen if--if she decided
not to marry him. The thought staggered her. Had she, without knowing
it, got so far as this? Yes, and further. It was all no good; Fiorsen
would never accept refusal, even if she gave it! But, did she want to
refuse?
She loved hot baths, but had never stayed in one so long. Life was so
easy there, and so difficult outside. Betty's knock forced her to get
out at last, and let her in with tea and the message. Would Miss Gyp
please to go down when she was ready?
VI
Winton was staggered. With a glance at Gyp's vanishing figure, he said
curtly to Markey, "Where have you put this gentleman?" But the use of
the word "this" was the only trace he showed of his emotions. In that
little journey across the hall he entertained many extravagant thoughts.
Arrived at the study, he inclined his head courteously enough, waiting
for Fiorsen to speak. The "fiddler," still in his fur-lined coat, was
twisting a squash hat in his hands. In his own peculiar style he was
impressive. But why couldn't he look you in the face; or, if he did, why
did he seem about to eat you?
"You knew I was returned to London, Major Winton?"
Then Gyp had been seeing the fellow without letting him know! The
thought was chill and bitter to Winton. He must not give her away,
however, and he simply bowed. He felt that his visitor was afraid of his
frigid courtesy; and he did not mean to help him over that fear. He
could not, of course, realize that this ascendancy would not prevent
Fiorsen from laughing at him behind his back and acting as if he did not
exist. No real contest, in fact, was possible between men moving on such
different planes, neither having the slightest respect for the other's
standards or beliefs.
Fiorsen, who had begun to pace the room, stopped, and said with
agitation:
"Major Winton, your daughter is the most beautiful thing on earth. I love
her desperately. I am a man with a future, though you may not think it.
I have what future I like in my art if only I can marry her. I have a
little money, too--not much; but in my violin there is all the fortune
she can want."
Winton's face expressed nothing but cold contempt. That this fellow
should take him for one who would consider money in connection with his
daughter simply affronted him.
Fiorsen went on:
"You do not like me--that is clear. I saw it the first moment. You are
an English gentleman"--he pronounced the words with a sort of irony--"I
am nothing to you. Yet, in MY world, I am something. I am not an
adventurer. Will you permit me to beg your daughter to be my wife?" He
raised his hands that still held the hat; involuntarily they had assumed
the attitude of prayer.
For a second, Winton realized that he was suffering. That weakness went
in a flash, and he said frigidly:
"I am obliged to you, sir, for coming to me first. You are in my house,
and I don't want to be discourteous, but I should be glad if you would be
good enough to withdraw and take it that I shall certainly oppose your
wish as best I can."
The almost childish disappointment and trouble in Fiorsen's face changed
quickly to an expression fierce, furtive, mocking; and then shifted to
despair.
"Major Winton, you have loved; you must have loved her mother. I
suffer!"
Winton, who had turned abruptly to the fire, faced round again.
"I don't control my daughter's affections, sir; she will do as she
wishes. I merely say it will be against my hopes and judgment if she
marries you. I imagine you've not altogether waited for my leave. I was
not blind to the way you hung about her at Wiesbaden, Mr. Fiorsen."
Fiorsen answered with a twisted, miserable smile:
"Poor wretches do what they can. May I see her? Let me just see her."
Was it any good to refuse? She had been seeing the fellow already
without his knowledge, keeping from him--HIM--all her feelings, whatever
they were. And he said:
"I'll send for her. In the meantime, perhaps you'll have some
refreshment?"
Fiorsen shook his head, and there followed half an hour of acute
discomfort. Winton, in his mud-stained clothes before the fire,
supported it better than his visitor. That child of nature, after
endeavouring to emulate his host's quietude, renounced all such efforts
with an expressive gesture, fidgeted here, fidgeted there, tramped the
room, went to the window, drew aside the curtains and stared out into the
dark; came back as if resolved again to confront Winton; then, baffled by
that figure so motionless before the fire, flung himself down in an
armchair, and turned his face to the wall. Winton was not cruel by
nature, but he enjoyed the writhings of this fellow who was endangering
Gyp's happiness. Endangering? Surely not possible that she would accept
him! Yet, if not, why had she not told him? And he, too, suffered.
Then she came. He had expected her to be pale and nervous; but Gyp never
admitted being naughty till she had been forgiven. Her smiling face had
in it a kind of warning closeness. She went up to Fiorsen, and holding
out her hand, said calmly:
"How nice of you to come!"
Winton had the bitter feeling that he--he--was the outsider. Well, he
would speak plainly; there had been too much underhand doing.
"Mr. Fiorsen has done us the honour to wish to marry you. I've told him
that you decide such things for yourself. If you accept him, it will be
against my wish, naturally."
While he was speaking, the glow in her cheeks deepened; she looked
neither at him nor at Fiorsen. Winton noted the rise and fall of the
lace on her breast. She was smiling, and gave the tiniest shrug of her
shoulders. And, suddenly smitten to the heart, he walked stiffly to the
door. It was evident that she had no use for his guidance. If her love
for him was not worth to her more than this fellow! But there his
resentment stopped. He knew that he could not afford wounded feelings;
could not get on without her. Married to the greatest rascal on earth, he
would still be standing by her, wanting her companionship and love. She
represented too much in the present and--the past. With sore heart,
indeed, he went down to dinner.
Fiorsen was gone when he came down again. What the fellow had said, or
she had answered, he would not for the world have asked. Gulfs between
the proud are not lightly bridged. And when she came up to say
good-night, both their faces were as though coated with wax.
In the days that followed, she gave no sign, uttered no word in any way
suggesting that she meant to go against his wishes. Fiorsen might not
have existed, for any mention made of him. But Winton knew well that she
was moping, and cherishing some feeling against himself. And this he
could not bear. So, one evening, after dinner, he said quietly:
"Tell me frankly, Gyp; do you care for that chap?"
She answered as quietly:
"In a way--yes."
"Is that enough?"
"I don't know, Dad."
Her lips had quivered; and Winton's heart softened, as it always did when
he saw her moved. He put his hand out, covered one of hers, and said:
"I shall never stand in the way of your happiness, Gyp. But it must BE
happiness. Can it possibly be that? I don't think so. You know what
they said of him out there?"
"Yes."
He had not thought she knew. And his heart sank.
"That's pretty bad, you know. And is he of our world at all?"
Gyp looked up.
"Do you think I belong to 'our world,' Dad?"
Winton turned away. She followed, slipping her hand under his arm.
"I didn't mean to hurt. But it's true, isn't it? I don't belong among
society people. They wouldn't have me, you know--if they knew about what
you told me. Ever since that I've felt I don't belong to them. I'm
nearer him. Music means more to me than anything!"
Winton gave her hand a convulsive grip. A sense of coming defeat and
bereavement was on him.
"If your happiness went wrong, Gyp, I should be most awfully cut up."
"But why shouldn't I be happy, Dad?"
"If you were, I could put up with anyone. But, I tell you, I can't
believe you would be. I beg you, my dear--for God's sake, make sure.
I'll put a bullet into the man who treats you badly."
Gyp laughed, then kissed him. But they were silent. At bedtime he said:
"We'll go up to town to-morrow."
Whether from a feeling of the inevitable, or from the forlorn hope that
seeing more of the fellow might be the only chance of curing her--he put
no more obstacles in the way.
And the queer courtship began again. By Christmas she had consented,
still under the impression that she was the mistress, not the slave--the
cat, not the bird. Once or twice, when Fiorsen let passion out of hand
and his overbold caresses affronted her, she recoiled almost with dread
from what she was going toward. But, in general, she lived elated,
intoxicated by music and his adoration, withal remorseful that she was
making her father sad. She was but little at Mildenham, and he, in his
unhappiness, was there nearly all the time, riding extra hard, and
leaving Gyp with his sister. Aunt Rosamund, though under the spell of
Fiorsen's music, had agreed with her brother that Fiorsen was
"impossible." But nothing she said made any effect on Gyp. It was new
and startling to discover in this soft, sensitive girl such a vein of
stubbornness. Opposition seemed to harden her resolution. And the good
lady's natural optimism began to persuade her that Gyp would make a silk
purse out of that sow's ear yet. After all, the man was a celebrity in
his way!
It was settled for February. A house with a garden was taken in St.
John's Wood. The last month went, as all such last months go, in those
intoxicating pastimes, the buying of furniture and clothes. If it were
not for that, who knows how many engagement knots would slip!
And to-day they had been married. To the last, Winton had hardly
believed it would come to that. He had shaken the hand of her husband
and kept pain and disappointment out of his face, knowing well that he
deceived no one. Thank heaven, there had been no church, no
wedding-cake, invitations, congratulations, fal-lals of any kind--he
could never have stood them. Not even Rosamund--who had influenza--to
put up with!
Lying back in the recesses of that old chair, he stared into the fire.
They would be just about at Torquay by now--just about. Music! Who would
have thought noises made out of string and wood could have stolen her
away from him? Yes, they would be at Torquay by now, at their hotel.
And the first prayer Winton had uttered for years escaped his lips:
"Let her be happy! Let her be happy!"
Then, hearing Markey open the door, he closed his eyes and feigned sleep.
Part II
I
When a girl first sits opposite the man she has married, of what does she
think? Not of the issues and emotions that lie in wait. They are too
overwhelming; she would avoid them while she can. Gyp thought of her
frock, a mushroom-coloured velvet cord. Not many girls of her class are
married without "fal-lals," as Winton had called them. Not many girls
sit in the corner of their reserved first-class compartments without the
excitement of having been supreme centre of the world for some flattering
hours to buoy them up on that train journey, with no memories of friends'
behaviour, speech, appearance, to chat of with her husband, so as to keep
thought away. For Gyp, her dress, first worn that day, Betty's
breakdown, the faces, blank as hats, of the registrar and clerk, were
about all she had to distract her. She stole a look at her husband,
clothed in blue serge, just opposite. Her husband! Mrs. Gustav Fiorsen!
No! People might call her that; to herself, she was Ghita Winton. Ghita
Fiorsen would never seem right. And, not confessing that she was afraid
to meet his eyes, but afraid all the same, she looked out of the window.
A dull, bleak, dismal day; no warmth, no sun, no music in it--the Thames
as grey as lead, the willows on its banks forlorn.
Suddenly she felt his hand on hers. She had not seen his face like that
before--yes; once or twice when he was playing--a spirit shining though.
She felt suddenly secure. If it stayed like that, then!--His hand rested
on her knee; his face changed just a little; the spirit seemed to waver,
to be fading; his lips grew fuller. He crossed over and sat beside her.
Instantly she began to talk about their house, where they were going to
put certain things--presents and all that. He, too, talked of the house;
but every now and then he glanced at the corridor, and muttered. It was
pleasant to feel that the thought of her possessed him through and
through, but she was tremulously glad of that corridor. Life is
mercifully made up of little things! And Gyp was always able to live in
the moment. In the hours they had spent together, up to now, he had been
like a starved man snatching hasty meals; now that he had her to himself
for good, he was another creature altogether--like a boy out of school,
and kept her laughing nearly all the time.
Presently he got down his practise violin, and putting on the mute,
played, looking at her over his shoulder with a droll smile. She felt
happy, much warmer at heart, now. And when his face was turned away, she
looked at him. He was so much better looking now than when he had those
little whiskers. One day she had touched one of them and said: "Ah! if
only these wings could fly!" Next morning they had flown. His face was
not one to be easily got used to; she was not used to it yet, any more
than she was used to his touch. When it grew dark, and he wanted to draw
down the blinds, she caught him by the sleeve, and said:
"No, no; they'll know we're honeymooners!"
"Well, my Gyp, and are we not?"
But he obeyed; only, as the hours went on, his eyes seemed never to let
her alone.
At Torquay, the sky was clear and starry; the wind brought whiffs of
sea-scent into their cab; lights winked far out on a headland; and in the
little harbour, all bluish dark, many little boats floated like tame
birds. He had put his arm round her, and she could feel his hand resting
on her heart. She was grateful that he kept so still. When the cab
stopped and they entered the hall of the hotel, she whispered:
"Don't let's let them see!"
Still, mercifully, little things! Inspecting the three rooms, getting
the luggage divided between dressing-room and bedroom, unpacking,
wondering which dress to put on for dinner, stopping to look out over the
dark rocks and the sea, where the moon was coming up, wondering if she
dared lock the door while she was dressing, deciding that it would be
silly; dressing so quickly, fluttering when she found him suddenly there
close behind her, beginning to do up her hooks. Those fingers were too
skilful! It was the first time she had thought of his past with a sort
of hurt pride and fastidiousness. When he had finished, he twisted her
round, held her away, looked at her from head to foot, and said below his
breath:
"Mine!"
Her heart beat fast then; but suddenly he laughed, slipped his arm about
her, and danced her twice round the room. He let her go demurely down
the stairs in front of him, saying:
"They shan't see--my Gyp. Oh, they shan't see! We are old married
people, tired of each other--very!"
At dinner it amused him at first--her too, a little--to keep up this
farce of indifference. But every now and then he turned and stared at
some inoffensive visitor who was taking interest in them, with such
fierce and genuine contempt that Gyp took alarm; whereon he laughed.
When she had drunk a little wine and he had drunk a good deal, the farce
of indifference came to its end. He talked at a great rate now, slying
nicknaming the waiters and mimicking the people around--happy thrusts
that made her smile but shiver a little, lest they should be heard or
seen. Their heads were close together across the little table. They
went out into the lounge. Coffee came, and he wanted her to smoke with
him. She had never smoked in a public room. But it seemed stiff and
"missish" to refuse--she must do now as his world did. And it was
another little thing; she wanted little things, all the time wanted them.
She drew back a window-curtain, and they stood there side by side. The
sea was deep blue beneath bright stars, and the moon shone through a
ragged pine-tree on a little headland. Though she stood five feet six in
her shoes, she was only up to his mouth. He sighed and said: "Beautiful
night, my Gyp!" And suddenly it struck her that she knew nothing of what
was in him, and yet he was her husband! "Husband"--funny word, not
pretty! She felt as a child opening the door of a dark room, and,
clutching his arm, said:
"Look! There's a sailing-boat. What's it doing out there at night?"
Another little thing! Any little thing!
Presently he said:
"Come up-stairs! I'll play to you."
Up in their sitting-room was a piano, but--not possible; to-morrow they
would have to get another. To-morrow! The fire was hot, and he took off
his coat to play. In one of his shirt-sleeves there was a rent. She
thought, with a sort of triumph: 'I shall mend that!' It was something
definite, actual--a little thing. There were lilies in the room that
gave a strong, sweet scent. He brought them up to her to sniff, and,
while she was sniffing, stooped suddenly and kissed her neck. She shut
her eyes with a shiver. He took the flowers away at once, and when she
opened her eyes again, his violin was at his shoulder. For a whole hour
he played, and Gyp, in her cream-coloured frock, lay back, listening. She
was tired, not sleepy. It would have been nice to have been sleepy. Her
mouth had its little sad tuck or dimple at the corner; her eyes were deep
and dark--a cloudy child. His gaze never left her face; he played and
played, and his own fitful face grew clouded. At last he put away the
violin, and said:
"Go to bed, Gyp; you're tired."
Obediently she got up and went into the bedroom. With a sick feeling in
her heart, and as near the fire as she could get, she undressed with
desperate haste, and got to bed. An age--it seemed--she lay there
shivering in her flimsy lawn against the cold sheets, her eyes not quite
closed, watching the flicker of the firelight. She did not think--could
not--just lay stiller than the dead. The door creaked. She shut her
eyes. Had she a heart at all? It did not seem to beat. She lay thus,
with eyes shut, till she could bear it no longer. By the firelight she
saw him crouching at the foot of the bed; could just see his face--like a
face--a face--where seen? Ah yes!--a picture--of a wild man crouching at
the feet of Iphigenia--so humble, so hungry--so lost in gazing. She gave
a little smothered sob and held out her hand.
II
Gyp was too proud to give by halves. And in those early days she gave
Fiorsen everything except--her heart. She earnestly desired to give that
too; but hearts only give themselves. Perhaps if the wild man in him,
maddened by beauty in its power, had not so ousted the spirit man, her
heart might have gone with her lips and the rest of her. He knew he was
not getting her heart, and it made him, in the wildness of his nature and
the perversity of a man, go just the wrong way to work, trying to conquer
her by the senses, not the soul.
Yet she was not unhappy--it cannot be said she was unhappy, except for a
sort of lost feeling sometimes, as if she were trying to grasp something
that kept slipping, slipping away. She was glad to give him pleasure.
She felt no repulsion--this was man's nature. Only there was always that
feeling that she was not close. When he was playing, with the
spirit-look on his face, she would feel: 'Now, now, surely I shall get
close to him!' But the look would go; how to keep it there she did not
know, and when it went, her feeling went too.
Their little suite of rooms was at the very end of the hotel, so that he
might play as much as he wished. While he practised in the mornings she
would go into the garden, which sloped in rock-terraces down to the sea.
Wrapped in fur, she would sit there with a book. She soon knew each
evergreen, or flower that was coming out--aubretia, and laurustinus, a
little white flower whose name was uncertain, and one star-periwinkle.
The air was often soft; the birds sang already and were busy with their
weddings, and twice, at least, spring came in her heart--that wonderful
feeling when first the whole being scents new life preparing in the earth
and the wind--the feeling that only comes when spring is not yet, and one
aches and rejoices all at once. Seagulls often came over her, craning
down their greedy bills and uttering cries like a kitten's mewing.
Out here she had feelings, that she did not get with him, of being at one
with everything. She did not realize how tremendously she had grown up
in these few days, how the ground bass had already come into the light
music of her life. Living with Fiorsen was opening her eyes to much
beside mere knowledge of "man's nature"; with her perhaps fatal
receptivity, she was already soaking up the atmosphere of his philosophy.
He was always in revolt against accepting things because he was expected
to; but, like most executant artists, he was no reasoner, just a mere
instinctive kicker against the pricks. He would lose himself in delight
with a sunset, a scent, a tune, a new caress, in a rush of pity for a
beggar or a blind man, a rush of aversion from a man with large feet or a
long nose, of hatred for a woman with a flat chest or an expression of
sanctimony. He would swing along when he was walking, or dawdle, dawdle;
he would sing and laugh, and make her laugh too till she ached, and half
an hour later would sit staring into some pit of darkness in a sort of
powerful brooding of his whole being. Insensibly she shared in this deep
drinking of sensation, but always gracefully, fastidiously, never losing
sense of other people's feelings.
In his love-raptures, he just avoided setting her nerves on edge, because
he never failed to make her feel his enjoyment of her beauty; that
perpetual consciousness, too, of not belonging to the proper and
respectable, which she had tried to explain to her father, made her set
her teeth against feeling shocked. But in other ways he did shock her.
She could not get used to his utter oblivion of people's feelings, to the
ferocious contempt with which he would look at those who got on his
nerves, and make half-audible comments, just as he had commented on her
own father when he and Count Rosek passed them, by the Schiller statue.
She would visibly shrink at those remarks, though they were sometimes so
excruciatingly funny that she had to laugh, and feel dreadful immediately
after. She saw that he resented her shrinking; it seemed to excite him
to run amuck the more. But she could not help it. Once she got up and
walked away. He followed her, sat on the floor beside her knees, and
thrust his head, like a great cat, under her hand.
"Forgive me, my Gyp; but they are such brutes. Who could help it? Now
tell me--who could, except my Gyp?" And she had to forgive him. But,
one evening, when he had been really outrageous during dinner, she
answered:
"No; I can't. It's you that are the brute. You WERE a brute to them!"
He leaped up with a face of furious gloom and went out of the room. It
was the first time he had given way to anger with her. Gyp sat by the
fire, very disturbed; chiefly because she was not really upset at having
hurt him. Surely she ought to be feeling miserable at that!
But when, at ten o'clock, he had not come back, she began to flutter in
earnest. She had said a dreadful thing! And yet, in her heart, she did
not take back her judgment. He really HAD been a brute. She would have
liked to soothe herself by playing, but it was too late to disturb
people, and going to the window, she looked out over the sea, feeling
beaten and confused. This was the first time she had given free rein to
her feeling against what Winton would have called his "bounderism." If
he had been English, she would never have been attracted by one who could
trample so on other people's feelings. What, then, had attracted her?
His strangeness, wildness, the mesmeric pull of his passion for her, his
music! Nothing could spoil that in him. The sweep, the surge, and sigh
in his playing was like the sea out there, dark, and surf-edged, beating
on the rocks; or the sea deep-coloured in daylight, with white gulls over
it; or the sea with those sinuous paths made by the wandering currents,
the subtle, smiling, silent sea, holding in suspense its unfathomable
restlessness, waiting to surge and spring again. That was what she
wanted from him--not his embraces, not even his adoration, his wit, or
his queer, lithe comeliness touched with felinity; no, only that in his
soul which escaped through his fingers into the air and dragged at her
soul. If, when he came in, she were to run to him, throw her arms round
his neck, make herself feel close, lose herself in him! Why not? It was
her duty; why not her delight, too? But she shivered. Some instinct too
deep for analysis, something in the very heart of her nerves made her
recoil, as if she were afraid, literally scared of letting herself go, of
loving--the subtlest instinct of self-preservation against something
fatal; against being led on beyond--yes, it was like that curious,
instinctive sinking which some feel at the mere sight of a precipice, a
dread of going near, lest they should be drawn on and over by resistless
attraction.
She passed into their bedroom and began slowly to undress. To go to bed
without knowing where he was, what doing, thinking, seemed already a
little odd; and she sat brushing her hair slowly with the silver-backed
brushes, staring at her own pale face, whose eyes looked so very large
and dark. At last there came to her the feeling: "I can't help it! I
don't care!" And, getting into bed, she turned out the light. It seemed
queer and lonely; there was no fire. And then, without more ado, she
slept.
She had a dream of being between Fiorsen and her father in a
railway-carriage out at sea, with the water rising higher and higher,
swishing and sighing. Awakening always, like a dog, to perfect presence
of mind, she knew that he was playing in the sitting-room, playing--at
what time of night? She lay listening to a quivering, gibbering tune
that she did not know. Should she be first to make it up, or should she
wait for him? Twice she half slipped out of bed, but both times, as if
fate meant her not to move, he chose that moment to swell out the sound,
and each time she thought: 'No, I can't. It's just the same now; he
doesn't care how many people he wakes up. He does just what he likes,
and cares nothing for anyone.' And covering her ears with her hands, she
continued to lie motionless.
When she withdrew her hands at last, he had stopped. Then she heard him
coming, and feigned sleep. But he did not spare even sleep. She
submitted to his kisses without a word, her heart hardening within
her--surely he smelled of brandy! Next morning he seemed to have
forgotten it all. But Gyp had not. She wanted badly to know what he had
felt, where he had gone, but was too proud to ask.
She wrote twice to her father in the first week, but afterwards, except
for a postcard now and then, she never could. Why tell him what she was
doing, in company of one whom he could not bear to think of? Had he been
right? To confess that would hurt her pride too much. But she began to
long for London. The thought of her little house was a green spot to
dwell on. When they were settled in, and could do what they liked
without anxiety about people's feelings, it would be all right perhaps.
When he could start again really working, and she helping him, all would
be different. Her new house, and so much to do; her new garden, and
fruit-trees coming into blossom! She would have dogs and cats, would
ride when Dad was in town. Aunt Rosamund would come, friends, evenings
of music, dances still, perhaps--he danced beautifully, and loved it, as
she did. And his concerts--the elation of being identified with his
success! But, above all, the excitement of making her home as dainty as
she could, with daring experiments in form and colour. And yet, at heart
she knew that to be already looking forward, banning the present, was a
bad sign.
One thing, at all events, she enjoyed--sailing. They had blue days when
even the March sun was warm, and there was just breeze enough. He got on
excellently well with the old salt whose boat they used, for he was at
his best with simple folk, whose lingo he could understand about as much
as they could understand his.
In those hours, Gyp had some real sensations of romance. The sea was so
blue, the rocks and wooded spurs of that Southern coast so dreamy in the
bright land-haze. Oblivious of "the old salt," he would put his arm
round her; out there, she could swallow down her sense of form, and be
grateful for feeling nearer to him in spirit. She made loyal efforts to
understand him in these weeks that were bringing a certain
disillusionment. The elemental part of marriage was not the trouble; if
she did not herself feel passion, she did not resent his. When, after
one of those embraces, his mouth curled with a little bitter smile, as if
to say, "Yes, much you care for me," she would feel compunctious and yet
aggrieved. But the trouble lay deeper--the sense of an insuperable
barrier; and always that deep, instinctive recoil from letting herself
go. She could not let herself be known, and she could not know him. Why
did his eyes often fix her with a stare that did not seem to see her?
What made him, in the midst of serious playing, break into some furious
or desolate little tune, or drop his violin? What gave him those long
hours of dejection, following the maddest gaiety? Above all, what dreams
had he in those rare moments when music transformed his strange pale
face? Or was it a mere physical illusion--had he any dreams? "The heart
of another is a dark forest"--to all but the one who loves.
One morning, he held up a letter.
"Ah, ha! Paul Rosek went to see our house. 'A pretty dove's nest!' he
calls it."
The memory of the Pole's sphinxlike, sweetish face, and eyes that seemed
to know so many secrets, always affected Gyp unpleasantly. She said
quietly:
"Why do you like him, Gustav?"
"Like him? Oh, he is useful. A good judge of music, and--many things."
"I think he is hateful."
Fiorsen laughed.
"Hateful? Why hateful, my Gyp? He is a good friend. And he admires
you--oh, he admires you very much! He has success with women. He always
says, 'J'ai une technique merveilleuse pour seduire une femme'"
Gyp laughed.
"Ugh! He's like a toad, I think."
"Ah, I shall tell him that! He will be flattered."
"If you do; if you give me away--I--"
He jumped up and caught her in his arms; his face was so comically
compunctious that she calmed down at once. She thought over her words
afterwards and regretted them. All the same, Rosek was a sneak and a
cold sensualist, she was sure. And the thought that he had been spying
at their little house tarnished her anticipations of homecoming.
They went to Town three days later. While the taxi was skirting Lord's
Cricket-ground, Gyp slipped her hand into Fiorsen's. She was brimful of
excitement. The trees were budding in the gardens that they passed; the
almond-blossom coming--yes, really coming! They were in the road now.
Five, seven, nine--thirteen! Two more! There it was, nineteen, in white
figures on the leaf-green railings, under the small green lilac buds;
yes, and their almond-blossom was out, too! She could just catch a
glimpse over those tall railings of the low white house with its green
outside shutters. She jumped out almost into the arms of Betty, who
stood smiling all over her broad, flushed face, while, from under each
arm peered forth the head of a black devil, with pricked ears and eyes as
bright as diamonds.
"Betty! What darlings!"
"Major Winton's present, my dear--ma'am!"
Giving the stout shoulders a hug, Gyp seized the black devils, and ran up
the path under the trellis, while the Scotch-terrier pups, squeezed
against her breast, made confused small noises and licked her nose and
ears. Through the square hall she ran into the drawing-room, which
opened out on to the lawn; and there, in the French window, stood spying
back at the spick-and-span room, where everything was, of course, placed
just wrong. The colouring, white, ebony, and satinwood, looked nicer
even than she had hoped. Out in the garden--her own garden--the
pear-trees were thickening, but not in blossom yet; a few daffodils were
in bloom along the walls, and a magnolia had one bud opened. And all the
time she kept squeezing the puppies to her, enjoying their young, warm,
fluffy savour, and letting them kiss her. She ran out of the
drawing-room, up the stairs. Her bedroom, the dressing-room, the spare
room, the bathroom--she dashed into them all. Oh, it was nice to be in
your own place, to be--Suddenly she felt herself lifted off the ground
from behind, and in that undignified position, her eyes flying, she
turned her face till he could reach her lips.
III
To wake, and hear the birds at early practise, and feel that winter is
over--is there any pleasanter moment?
That first morning in her new house, Gyp woke with the sparrow, or
whatever the bird which utters the first cheeps and twitters, soon
eclipsed by so much that is more important in bird-song. It seemed as if
all the feathered creatures in London must be assembled in her garden;
and the old verse came into her head:
"All dear Nature's children sweet
Lie at bride and bridegroom's feet,
Blessing their sense.
Not a creature of the air,
Bird melodious or bird fair,
Be absent hence!"
She turned and looked at her husband. He lay with his head snoozled down
into the pillow, so that she could only see his thick, rumpled hair. And
a shiver went through her, exactly as if a strange man were lying there.
Did he really belong to her, and she to him--for good? And was this
their house--together? It all seemed somehow different, more serious and
troubling, in this strange bed, of this strange room, that was to be so
permanent. Careful not to wake him, she slipped out and stood between the
curtains and the window. Light was all in confusion yet; away low down
behind the trees, the rose of dawn still clung. One might almost have
been in the country, but for the faint, rumorous noises of the town
beginning to wake, and that film of ground-mist which veils the feet of
London mornings. She thought: "I am mistress in this house, have to
direct it all--see to everything! And my pups! Oh, what do they eat?"
That was the first of many hours of anxiety, for she was very
conscientious. Her fastidiousness desired perfection, but her
sensitiveness refused to demand it of others--especially servants. Why
should she harry them?
Fiorsen had not the faintest notion of regularity. She found that he
could not even begin to appreciate her struggles in housekeeping. And
she was much too proud to ask his help, or perhaps too wise, since he was
obviously unfit to give it. To live like the birds of the air was his
motto. Gyp would have liked nothing better; but, for that, one must not
have a house with three servants, several meals, two puppy-dogs, and no
great experience of how to deal with any of them.
She spoke of her difficulties to no one and suffered the more. With
Betty--who, bone-conservative, admitted Fiorsen as hardly as she had once
admitted Winton--she had to be very careful. But her great trouble was
with her father. Though she longed to see him, she literally dreaded
their meeting. He first came--as he had been wont to come when she was a
tiny girl--at the hour when he thought the fellow to whom she now
belonged would most likely be out. Her heart beat, when she saw him
under the trellis. She opened the door herself, and hung about him so
that his shrewd eyes should not see her face. And she began at once to
talk of the puppies, whom she had named Don and Doff. They were perfect
darlings; nothing was safe from them; her slippers were completely done
for; they had already got into her china-cabinet and gone to sleep there!
He must come and see all over.
Hooking her arm into his, and talking all the time, she took him
up-stairs and down, and out into the garden, to the studio, or
music-room, at the end, which had an entrance to itself on to a back
lane. This room had been the great attraction. Fiorsen could practice
there in peace. Winton went along with her very quietly, making a shrewd
comment now and then. At the far end of the garden, looking over the
wall, down into that narrow passage which lay between it and the back of
another garden he squeezed her arm suddenly and said:
"Well, Gyp, what sort of a time?"
The question had come at last.
"Oh, rather lovely--in some ways." But she did not look at him, nor he
at her. "See, Dad! The cats have made quite a path there!"
Winton bit his lips and turned from the wall. The thought of that fellow
was bitter within him. She meant to tell him nothing, meant to keep up
that lighthearted look--which didn't deceive him a bit!
"Look at my crocuses! It's really spring today!"
It was. Even a bee or two had come. The tiny leaves had a transparent
look, too thin as yet to keep the sunlight from passing through them.
The purple, delicate-veined crocuses, with little flames of orange
blowing from their centres, seemed to hold the light as in cups. A wind,
without harshness, swung the boughs; a dry leaf or two still rustled
round here and there. And on the grass, and in the blue sky, and on the
almond-blossom was the first spring brilliance. Gyp clasped her hands
behind her head.
"Lovely--to feel the spring!"
And Winton thought: 'She's changed!' She had softened, quickened--more
depth of colour in her, more gravity, more sway in her body, more
sweetness in her smile. But--was she happy?
A voice said:
"Ah, what a pleasure!"
The fellow had slunk up like the great cat he was. And it seemed to
Winton that Gyp had winced.
"Dad thinks we ought to have dark curtains in the music-room, Gustav."
Fiorsen made a bow.
"Yes, yes--like a London club."
Winton, watching, was sure of supplication in her face. And, forcing a
smile, he said:
"You seem very snug here. Glad to see you again. Gyp looks splendid."
Another of those bows he so detested! Mountebank! Never, never would he
be able to stand the fellow! But he must not, would not, show it. And,
as soon as he decently could, he went, taking his lonely way back through
this region, of which his knowledge was almost limited to Lord's
Cricket-ground, with a sense of doubt and desolation, an irritation more
than ever mixed with the resolve to be always at hand if the child wanted
him.
He had not been gone ten minutes before Aunt Rosamund appeared, with a
crutch-handled stick and a gentlemanly limp, for she, too, indulged her
ancestors in gout. A desire for exclusive possession of their friends is
natural to some people, and the good lady had not known how fond she was
of her niece till the girl had slipped off into this marriage. She
wanted her back, to go about with and make much of, as before. And her
well-bred drawl did not quite disguise this feeling.
Gyp could detect Fiorsen subtly mimicking that drawl; and her ears began
to burn. The puppies afforded a diversion--their points, noses,
boldness, and food, held the danger in abeyance for some minutes. Then
the mimicry began again. When Aunt Rosamund had taken a somewhat sudden
leave, Gyp stood at the window of her drawing-room with the mask off her
face. Fiorsen came up, put his arm round her from behind, and said with
a fierce sigh:
"Are they coming often--these excellent people?"
Gyp drew back from him against the wall.
"If you love me, why do you try to hurt the people who love me too?"
"Because I am jealous. I am jealous even of those puppies."
"And shall you try to hurt them?"
"If I see them too much near you, perhaps I shall."
"Do you think I can be happy if you hurt things because they love me?"
He sat down and drew her on to his knee. She did not resist, but made
not the faintest return to his caresses. The first time--the very first
friend to come into her own new home! It was too much!
Fiorsen said hoarsely:
"You do not love me. If you loved me, I should feel it through your
lips. I should see it in your eyes. Oh, love me, Gyp! You shall!"
But to say to Love: "Stand and deliver!" was not the way to touch Gyp.
It seemed to her mere ill-bred stupidity. She froze against him in soul,
all the more that she yielded her body. When a woman refuses nothing to
one whom she does not really love, shadows are already falling on the
bride-house. And Fiorsen knew it; but his self-control about equalled
that of the two puppies.
Yet, on the whole, these first weeks in her new home were happy, too busy
to allow much room for doubting or regret. Several important concerts
were fixed for May. She looked forward to these with intense eagerness,
and pushed everything that interfered with preparation into the
background. As though to make up for that instinctive recoil from giving
her heart, of which she was always subconscious, she gave him all her
activities, without calculation or reserve. She was ready to play for
him all day and every day, just as from the first she had held herself at
the disposal of his passion. To fail him in these ways would have
tarnished her opinion of herself. But she had some free hours in the
morning, for he had the habit of lying in bed till eleven, and was never
ready for practise before twelve. In those early hours she got through
her orders and her shopping--that pursuit which to so many women is the
only real "sport"--a chase of the ideal; a pitting of one's taste and
knowledge against that of the world at large; a secret passion, even in
the beautiful, for making oneself and one's house more beautiful. Gyp
never went shopping without that faint thrill running up and down her
nerves. She hated to be touched by strange fingers, but not even that
stopped her pleasure in turning and turning before long mirrors, while
the saleswoman or man, with admiration at first crocodilic and then
genuine, ran the tips of fingers over those curves, smoothing and
pinning, and uttering the word, "moddam."
On other mornings, she would ride with Winton, who would come for her,
leaving her again at her door after their outings. One day, after a ride
in Richmond Park, where the horse-chestnuts were just coming into flower,
they had late breakfast on the veranda of a hotel before starting for
home. Some fruit-trees were still in blossom just below them, and the
sunlight showering down from a blue sky brightened to silver the windings
of the river, and to gold the budding leaves of the oak-trees. Winton,
smoking his after-breakfast cigar, stared down across the tops of those
trees toward the river and the wooded fields beyond. Stealing a glance
at him, Gyp said very softly:
"Did you ever ride with my mother, Dad?"
"Only once--the very ride we've been to-day. She was on a black mare; I
had a chestnut--" Yes, in that grove on the little hill, which they had
ridden through that morning, he had dismounted and stood beside her.
Gyp stretched her hand across the table and laid it on his.
"Tell me about her, dear. Was she beautiful?"
"Yes."
"Dark? Tall?"
"Very like you, Gyp. A little--a little"--he did not know how to
describe that difference--"a little more foreign-looking perhaps. One of
her grandmothers was Italian, you know."
"How did you come to love her? Suddenly?"
"As suddenly as"--he drew his hand away and laid it on the veranda
rail--"as that sun came on my hand."
Gyp said quietly, as if to herself:
"Yes; I don't think I understand that--yet."
Winton drew breath through his teeth with a subdued hiss.
"Did she love you at first sight, too?"
He blew out a long puff of smoke.
"One easily believes what one wants to--but I think she did. She used to
say so."
"And how long?"
"Only a year."
Gyp said very softly:
"Poor darling Dad." And suddenly she added: "I can't bear to think I
killed her--I can't bear it!"
Winton got up in the discomfort of these sudden confidences; a blackbird,
startled by the movement, ceased his song. Gyp said in a hard voice:
"No; I don't want to have any children."
"Without that, I shouldn't have had you, Gyp."
"No; but I don't want to have them. And I don't--I don't want to love
like that. I should be afraid."
Winton looked at her for a long time without speaking, his brows drawn
down, frowning, puzzled, as though over his own past.
"Love," he said, "it catches you, and you're gone. When it comes, you
welcome it, whether it's to kill you or not. Shall we start back, my
child?"
When she got home, it was not quite noon. She hurried over her bath and
dressing, and ran out to the music-room. Its walls had been hung with
Willesden scrim gilded over; the curtains were silver-grey; there was a
divan covered with silver-and-gold stuff, and a beaten brass fireplace.
It was a study in silver, and gold, save for two touches of fantasy--a
screen round the piano-head, covered with brilliantly painted peacocks'
tails, and a blue Persian vase, in which were flowers of various hues of
red.
Fiorsen was standing at the window in a fume of cigarette smoke. He did
not turn round. Gyp put her hand within his arm, and said:
"So sorry, dear. But it's only just half-past twelve."
His face was as if the whole world had injured him.
"Pity you came back! Very nice, riding, I'm sure!"
Could she not go riding with her own father? What insensate jealousy and
egomania! She turned away, without a word, and sat down at the piano.
She was not good at standing injustice--not good at all! The scent of
brandy, too, was mixed with the fumes of his cigarette. Drink in the
morning was so ugly--really horrid! She sat at the piano, waiting. He
would be like this till he had played away the fumes of his ill mood, and
then he would come and paw her shoulders and put his lips to her neck.
Yes; but it was not the way to behave, not the way to make her love him.
And she said suddenly:
"Gustav; what exactly have I done that you dislike?"
"You have had a father."
Gyp sat quite still for a few seconds, and then began to laugh. He
looked so like a sulky child, standing there. He turned swiftly on her
and put his hand over her mouth. She looked up over that hand which
smelled of tobacco. Her heart was doing the grand ecart within her, this
way in compunction, that way in resentment. His eyes fell before hers;
he dropped his hand.
"Well, shall we begin?" she said.
He answered roughly: "No," and went out into the garden.
Gyp was left dismayed, disgusted. Was it possible that she could have
taken part in such a horrid little scene? She remained sitting at the
piano, playing over and over a single passage, without heeding what it
was.
IV
So far, they had seen nothing of Rosek at the little house. She wondered
if Fiorsen had passed on to him her remark, though if he had, he would
surely say he hadn't; she had learned that her husband spoke the truth
when convenient, not when it caused him pain. About music, or any art,
however, he could be implicitly relied on; and his frankness was
appalling when his nerves were ruffled.
But at the first concert she saw Rosek's unwelcome figure on the other
side of the gangway, two rows back. He was talking to a young girl,
whose face, short and beautifully formed, had the opaque transparency of
alabaster. With her round blue eyes fixed on him, and her lips just
parted, she had a slightly vacant look. Her laugh, too, was just a little
vacant. And yet her features were so beautiful, her hair so smooth and
fair, her colouring so pale and fine, her neck so white and round, the
poise of her body so perfect that Gyp found it difficult to take her
glance away. She had refused her aunt's companionship. It might irritate
Fiorsen and affect his playing to see her with "that stiff English
creature." She wanted, too, to feel again the sensations of Wiesbaden.
There would be a kind of sacred pleasure in knowing that she had helped
to perfect sounds which touched the hearts and senses of so many
listeners. She had looked forward to this concert so long. And she sat
scarcely breathing, abstracted from consciousness of those about her,
soft and still, radiating warmth and eagerness.
Fiorsen looked his worst, as ever, when first coming before an
audience--cold, furtive, defensive, defiant, half turned away, with those
long fingers tightening the screws, touching the strings. It seemed
queer to think that only six hours ago she had stolen out of bed from
beside him. Wiesbaden! No; this was not like Wiesbaden! And when he
played she had not the same emotions. She had heard him now too often,
knew too exactly how he produced those sounds; knew that their fire and
sweetness and nobility sprang from fingers, ear, brain--not from his
soul. Nor was it possible any longer to drift off on those currents of
sound into new worlds, to hear bells at dawn, and the dews of evening as
they fell, to feel the divinity of wind and sunlight. The romance and
ecstasy that at Wiesbaden had soaked her spirit came no more. She was
watching for the weak spots, the passages with which he had struggled and
she had struggled; she was distracted by memories of petulance, black
moods, and sudden caresses. And then she caught his eye. The look was
like, yet how unlike, those looks at Wiesbaden. It had the old
love-hunger, but had lost the adoration, its spiritual essence. And she
thought: 'Is it my fault, or is it only because he has me now to do what
he likes with?' It was all another disillusionment, perhaps the greatest
yet. But she kindled and flushed at the applause, and lost herself in
pleasure at his success. At the interval, she slipped out at once, for
her first visit to the artist's room, the mysterious enchantment of a
peep behind the scenes. He was coming down from his last recall; and at
sight of her his look of bored contempt vanished; lifting her hand, he
kissed it. Gyp felt happier than she had since her marriage. Her eyes
shone, and she whispered:
"Beautiful!"
He whispered back:
"So! Do you love me, Gyp?"
She nodded. And at that moment she did, or thought so.
Then people began to come; amongst them her old music-master, Monsieur
Harmost, grey and mahogany as ever, who, after a "Merveilleux," "Tres
fort" or two to Fiorsen, turned his back on him to talk to his old pupil.
So she had married Fiorsen--dear, dear! That was extraordinary, but
extraordinary! And what was it like, to be always with him--a little
funny--not so? And how was her music? It would be spoiled now. Ah,
what a pity! No? She must come to him, then; yes, come again. All the
time he patted her arm, as if playing the piano, and his fingers, that
had the touch of an angel, felt the firmness of her flesh, as though
debating whether she were letting it deteriorate. He seemed really to
have missed "his little friend," to be glad at seeing her again; and Gyp,
who never could withstand appreciation, smiled at him. More people came.
She saw Rosek talking to her husband, and the young alabaster girl
standing silent, her lips still a little parted, gazing up at Fiorsen. A
perfect figure, though rather short; a dovelike face, whose exquisitely
shaped, just-opened lips seemed to be demanding sugar-plums. She could
not be more than nineteen. Who was she?
A voice said almost in her ear:
"How do you do, Mrs. Fiorsen? I am fortunate to see you again at last."
She was obliged to turn. If Gustav had given her away, one would never
know it from this velvet-masked creature, with his suave watchfulness and
ready composure, who talked away so smoothly. What was it that she so
disliked in him? Gyp had acute instincts, the natural intelligence deep
in certain natures not over intellectual, but whose "feelers" are too
delicate to be deceived. And, for something to say, she asked:
"Who is the girl you were talking to, Count Rosek? Her face is so
lovely."
He smiled, exactly the smile she had so disliked at Wiesbaden; following
his glance, she saw her husband talking to the girl, whose lips at that
moment seemed more than ever to ask for sugar-plums.
"A young dancer, Daphne Wing--she will make a name. A dove flying! So
you admire her, Madame Gyp?"
Gyp said, smiling:
"She's very pretty--I can imagine her dancing beautifully."
"Will you come one day and see her? She has still to make her debut."
Gyp answered:
"Thank you. I don't know. I love dancing, of course."
"Good! I will arrange it."
And Gyp thought: "No, no! I don't want to have anything to do with you!
Why do I not speak the truth? Why didn't I say I hate dancing?"
Just then a bell sounded; people began hurrying away. The girl came up
to Rosek.
"Miss Daphne Wing--Mrs. Fiorsen."
Gyp put out her hand with a smile--this girl was certainly a picture.
Miss Daphne Wing smiled, too, and said, with the intonation of those who
have been carefully corrected of an accent:
"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, how beautifully your husband plays--doesn't he?"
It was not merely the careful speech but something lacking when the
perfect mouth moved--spirit, sensibility, who could say? And Gyp felt
sorry, as at blight on a perfect flower. With a friendly nod, she turned
away to Fiorsen, who was waiting to go up on to the platform. Was it at
her or at the girl he had been looking? She smiled at him and slid away.
In the corridor, Rosek, in attendance, said:
"Why not this evening? Come with Gustav to my rooms. She shall dance to
us, and we will all have supper. She admires you, Madame Gyp. She will
love to dance for you."
Gyp longed for the simple brutality to say: "I don't want to come. I
don't like you!" But all she could manage was:
"Thank you. I--I will ask Gustav."
Once in her seat again, she rubbed the cheek that his breath had touched.
A girl was singing now--one of those faces that Gyp always admired,
reddish-gold hair, blue eyes--the very antithesis of herself--and the
song was "The Bens of Jura," that strange outpouring from a heart broken
by love:
"And my heart reft of its own sun--"
Tears rose in her eyes, and the shiver of some very deep response passed
through her. What was it Dad had said: "Love catches you, and you're
gone!"
She, who was the result of love like that, did not want to love!
The girl finished singing. There was little applause. Yet she had sung
beautifully; and what more wonderful song in the world? Was it too
tragic, too painful, too strange--not "pretty" enough? Gyp felt sorry
for her. Her head ached now. She would so have liked to slip away when
it was all over. But she had not the needful rudeness. She would have
to go through with this evening at Rosek's and be gay. And why not? Why
this shadow over everything? But it was no new sensation, that of having
entered by her own free will on a life which, for all effort, would not
give her a feeling of anchorage or home. Of her own accord she had
stepped into the cage!
On the way to Rosek's rooms, she disguised from Fiorsen her headache and
depression. He was in one of his boy-out-of-school moods, elated by
applause, mimicking her old master, the idolatries of his worshippers,
Rosek, the girl dancer's upturned expectant lips. And he slipped his arm
round Gyp in the cab, crushing her against him and sniffing at her cheek
as if she had been a flower.
Rosek had the first floor of an old-time mansion in Russell Square. The
smell of incense or some kindred perfume was at once about one; and, on
the walls of the dark hall, electric light burned, in jars of alabaster
picked up in the East. The whole place was in fact a sanctum of the
collector's spirit. Its owner had a passion for black--the walls,
divans, picture-frames, even some of the tilings were black, with
glimmerings of gold, ivory, and moonlight. On a round black table there
stood a golden bowl filled with moonlight-coloured velvety "palm" and
"honesty"; from a black wall gleamed out the ivory mask of a faun's face;
from a dark niche the little silver figure of a dancing girl. It was
beautiful, but deathly. And Gyp, though excited always by anything new,
keenly alive to every sort of beauty, felt a longing for air and
sunlight. It was a relief to get close to one of the black-curtained
windows, and see the westering sun shower warmth and light on the trees
of the Square gardens. She was introduced to a Mr. and Mrs. Gallant, a
dark-faced, cynical-looking man with clever, malicious eyes, and one of
those large cornucopias of women with avid blue stares. The little
dancer was not there. She had "gone to put on nothing," Rosek informed
them.
He took Gyp the round of his treasures, scarabs, Rops drawings,
death-masks, Chinese pictures, and queer old flutes, with an air of
displaying them for the first time to one who could truly appreciate.
And she kept thinking of that saying, "Une technique merveilleuse." Her
instinct apprehended the refined bone-viciousness of this place, where
nothing, save perhaps taste, would be sacred. It was her first glimpse
into that gilt-edged bohemia, whence the generosities, the elans, the
struggles of the true bohemia are as rigidly excluded as from the spheres
where bishops moved. But she talked and smiled; and no one could have
told that her nerves were crisping as if at contact with a corpse. While
showing her those alabaster jars, her host had laid his hand softly on
her wrist, and in taking it away, he let his fingers, with a touch softer
than a kitten's paw, ripple over the skin, then put them to his lips.
Ah, there it was--the--the TECHNIQUE! A desperate desire to laugh seized
her. And he saw it--oh, yes, he saw it! He gave her one look, passed
that same hand over his smooth face, and--behold!--it showed as before,
unmortified, unconscious. A deadly little man!
When they returned to the salon, as it was called, Miss Daphne Wing in a
black kimono, whence her face and arms emerged more like alabaster than
ever, was sitting on a divan beside Fiorsen. She rose at once and came
across to Gyp.
"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen"--why did everything she said begin with "Oh"--"isn't
this room lovely? It's perfect for dancing. I only brought cream, and
flame-colour; they go so beautifully with black."
She threw back her kimono for Gyp to inspect her dress--a girdled
cream-coloured shift, which made her ivory arms and neck seem more than
ever dazzling; and her mouth opened, as if for a sugar-plum of praise.
Then, lowering her voice, she murmured:
"Do you know, I'm rather afraid of Count Rosek."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know; he's so critical, and smooth, and he comes up so
quietly. I do think your husband plays wonderfully. Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen,
you are beautiful, aren't you?" Gyp laughed. "What would you like me to
dance first? A waltz of Chopin's?"
"Yes; I love Chopin."
"Then I shall. I shall dance exactly what you like, because I do admire
you, and I'm sure you're awfully sweet. Oh, yes; you are; I can see
that! And I think your husband's awfully in love with you. I should be,
if I were a man. You know, I've been studying five years, and I haven't
come out yet. But now Count Rosek's going to back me, I expect it'll be
very soon. Will you come to my first night? Mother says I've got to be
awfully careful. She only let me come this evening because you were
going to be here. Would you like me to begin?"
She slid across to Rosek, and Gyp heard her say:
"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen wants me to begin; a Chopin waltz, please. The one
that goes like this."
Rosek went to the piano, the little dancer to the centre of the room.
Gyp sat down beside Fiorsen.
Rosek began playing, his eyes fixed on the girl, and his mouth loosened
from compression in a sweetish smile. Miss Daphne Wing was standing with
her finger-tips joined at her breast--a perfect statue of ebony and
palest wax. Suddenly she flung away the black kimono. A thrill swept
Gyp from head to foot. She COULD dance--that common little girl! Every
movement of her round, sinuous body, of her bare limbs, had the ecstasy
of natural genius, controlled by the quivering balance of a really fine
training. "A dove flying!" So she was. Her face had lost its vacancy,
or rather its vacancy had become divine, having that look--not lost but
gone before--which dance demands. Yes, she was a gem, even if she had a
common soul. Tears came up in Gyp's eyes. It was so lovely--like a
dove, when it flings itself up in the wind, breasting on up, up--wings
bent back, poised. Abandonment, freedom--chastened, shaped, controlled!
When, after the dance, the girl came and sat down beside her, she
squeezed her hot little hand, but the caress was for her art, not for
this moist little person with the lips avid of sugar-plums.
"Oh, did you like it? I'm so glad. Shall I go and put on my
flame-colour, now?"
The moment she was gone, comment broke out freely. The dark and cynical
Gallant thought the girl's dancing like a certain Napierkowska whom he
had seen in Moscow, without her fire--the touch of passion would have to
be supplied. She wanted love! Love! And suddenly Gyp was back in the
concert-hall, listening to that other girl singing the song of a broken
heart.
"Thy kiss, dear love
--Like watercress gathered fresh from cool streams."
Love! in this abode--of fauns' heads, deep cushions, silver dancing
girls! Love! She had a sudden sense of deep abasement. What was she,
herself, but just a feast for a man's senses? Her home, what but a place
like this? Miss Daphne Wing was back again. Gyp looked at her husband's
face while she was dancing. His lips! How was it that she could see
that disturbance in him, and not care? If she had really loved him, to
see his lips like that would have hurt her, but she might have understood
perhaps, and forgiven. Now she neither quite understood nor quite
forgave.
And that night, when he kissed her, she murmured:
"Would you rather it were that girl--not me?"
"That girl! I could swallow her at a draft. But you, my Gyp--I want to
drink for ever!"
Was that true? IF she had loved him--how good to hear!
V
After this, Gyp was daily more and more in contact with high bohemia,
that curious composite section of society which embraces the neck of
music, poetry, and the drama. She was a success, but secretly she felt
that she did not belong to it, nor, in truth, did Fiorsen, who was much
too genuine a bohemian, and artist, and mocked at the Gallants and even
the Roseks of this life, as he mocked at Winton, Aunt Rosamund, and their
world. Life with him had certainly one effect on Gyp; it made her feel
less and less a part of that old orthodox, well-bred world which she had
known before she married him; but to which she had confessed to Winton
she had never felt that she belonged, since she knew the secret of her
birth. She was, in truth, much too impressionable, too avid of beauty,
and perhaps too naturally critical to accept the dictates of their
fact-and-form-governed routine; only, of her own accord, she would never
have had initiative enough to step out of its circle. Loosened from
those roots, unable to attach herself to this new soil, and not
spiritually leagued with her husband, she was more and more lonely. Her
only truly happy hours were those spent with Winton or at her piano or
with her puppies. She was always wondering at what she had done, longing
to find the deep, the sufficient reason for having done it. But the more
she sought and longed, the deeper grew her bewilderment, her feeling of
being in a cage. Of late, too, another and more definite uneasiness had
come to her.
She spent much time in her garden, where the blossoms had all dropped,
lilac was over, acacias coming into bloom, and blackbirds silent.
Winton, who, by careful experiment, had found that from half-past three
to six there was little or no chance of stumbling across his son-in-law,
came in nearly every day for tea and a quiet cigar on the lawn. He was
sitting there with Gyp one afternoon, when Betty, who usurped the
functions of parlour-maid whenever the whim moved her, brought out a card
on which were printed the words, "Miss Daphne Wing."
"Bring her out, please, Betty dear, and some fresh tea, and buttered
toast--plenty of buttered toast; yes, and the chocolates, and any other
sweets there are, Betty darling."
Betty, with that expression which always came over her when she was
called "darling," withdrew across the grass, and Gyp said to her father:
"It's the little dancer I told you of, Dad. Now you'll see something
perfect. Only, she'll be dressed. It's a pity."
She was. The occasion had evidently exercised her spirit. In warm
ivory, shrouded by leaf-green chiffon, with a girdle of tiny artificial
leaves, and a lightly covered head encircled by other green leaves, she
was somewhat like a nymph peering from a bower. If rather too arresting,
it was charming, and, after all, no frock could quite disguise the beauty
of her figure. She was evidently nervous.
"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I thought you wouldn't mind my coming. I did so want
to see you again. Count Rosek said he thought I might. It's all fixed
for my coming-out. Oh, how do you do?" And with lips and eyes opening
at Winton, she sat down in the chair he placed for her. Gyp, watching
his expression, felt inclined to laugh. Dad, and Daphne Wing! And the
poor girl so evidently anxious to make a good impression! Presently she
asked:
"Have you been dancing at Count Rosek's again lately?"
"Oh, yes, haven't you--didn't you--I--" And she stopped.
The thought flashed through Gyp, 'So Gustav's been seeing her, and hasn't
told me!' But she said at once:
"Ah, yes, of course; I forgot. When is the night of your coming-out?"
"Next Friday week. Fancy! The Octagon. Isn't it splendid? They've
given me such a good engagement. I do so want you and Mr. Fiorsen to
come, though!"
Gyp, smiling, murmured:
"Of course we will. My father loves dancing, too; don't you, Dad?"
Winton took his cigar from his mouth.
"When it's good," he said, urbanely.
"Oh, mine IS good; isn't it, Mrs. Fiorsen? I mean, I HAVE worked--ever
since I was thirteen, you know. I simply love it. I think YOU would
dance beautifully, Mrs. Fiorsen. You've got such a perfect figure. I
simply love to see you walk."
Gyp flushed, and said:
"Do have one of these, Miss Wing--they've got whole raspberries inside."
The little dancer put one in her mouth.
"Oh, but please don't call me Miss Wing! I wish you'd call me Daphne.
Mr. Fior--everybody does."
Conscious of her father's face, Gyp murmured:
"It's a lovely name. Won't you have another? These are apricot."
"They're perfect. You know, my first dress is going to be all
orange-blossom; Mr. Fiorsen suggested that. But I expect he told you.
Perhaps you suggested it really; did you?" Gyp shook her head. "Count
Rosek says the world is waiting for me--" She paused with a sugar-plum
halfway to her lips, and added doubtfully: "Do you think that's true?"
Gyp answered with a soft: "I hope so."
"He says I'm something new. It would be nice to think that. He has
great taste; so has Mr. Fiorsen, hasn't he?"
Conscious of the compression in the lips behind the smoke of her father's
cigar, and with a sudden longing to get up and walk away, Gyp nodded.
The little dancer placed the sweet in her mouth, and said complacently:
"Of course he has; because he married you."
Then, seeming to grow conscious of Winton's eyes fixed so intently on
her, she became confused, swallowed hastily, and said:
"Oh, isn't it lovely here--like the country! I'm afraid I must go; it's
my practice-time. It's so important for me not to miss any now, isn't
it?" And she rose.
Winton got up, too. Gyp saw the girl's eyes, lighting on his rigid hand,
grow round and rounder; and from her, walking past the side of the house,
the careful voice floated back:
"Oh, I do hope--" But what, could not be heard.
Sinking back in her chair, Gyp sat motionless. Bees were murmurous among
her flowers, pigeons murmurous among the trees; the sunlight warmed her
knees, and her stretched-out feet through the openwork of her stockings.
The maid's laughter, the delicious growling of the puppies at play in the
kitchen came drifting down the garden, with the distant cry of a milkman
up the road. All was very peaceful. But in her heart were such curious,
baffled emotions, such strange, tangled feelings. This moment of
enlightenment regarding the measure of her husband's frankness came close
on the heels of the moment fate had chosen for another revelation, for
clinching within her a fear felt for weeks past. She had said to Winton
that she did not want to have a child. In those conscious that their
birth has caused death or even too great suffering, there is sometimes
this hostile instinct. She had not even the consolation that Fiorsen
wanted children; she knew that he did not. And now she was sure one was
coming. But it was more than that. She had not reached, and knew she
could not reach, that point of spirit-union which alone makes marriage
sacred, and the sacrifices demanded by motherhood a joy. She was fairly
caught in the web of her foolish and presumptuous mistake! So few months
of marriage--and so sure that it was a failure, so hopeless for the
future! In the light of this new certainty, it was terrifying. A hard,
natural fact is needed to bring a yearning and bewildered spirit to
knowledge of the truth. Disillusionment is not welcome to a woman's
heart; the less welcome when it is disillusionment with self as much as
with another. Her great dedication--her scheme of life! She had been
going to--what?--save Fiorsen from himself! It was laughable. She had
only lost herself. Already she felt in prison, and by a child would be
all the more bound. To some women, the knowledge that a thing must be
brings assuagement of the nerves. Gyp was the opposite of those. To
force her was the way to stiver up every contrary emotion. She might
will herself to acquiesce, but--one cannot change one's nature.
And so, while the pigeons cooed and the sunlight warmed her feet, she
spent the bitterest moments of her life--so far. Pride came to her help.
She had made a miserable mess of it, but no one must know--certainly not
her father, who had warned her so desperately! She had made her bed, and
she would have to lie on it.
When Winton came back, he found her smiling, and said:
"I don't see the fascination, Gyp."
"Don't you think her face really rather perfect?"
"Common."
"Yes; but that drops off when she's dancing."
Winton looked at her from under half-closed eyelids.
"With her clothes? What does Fiorsen think of her?"
Gyp smiled.
"Does he think of her? I don't know."
She could feel the watchful tightening of his face. And suddenly he
said:
"Daphne Wing! By George!"
The words were a masterpiece of resentment and distrust. His daughter in
peril from--such as that!
After he was gone Gyp sat on till the sun had quite vanished and the dew
was stealing through her thin frock. She would think of anything,
anybody except herself! To make others happy was the way to be happy--or
so they said. She would try--must try. Betty--so stout, and with that
rheumatism in her leg--did she ever think of herself? Or Aunt Rosamund,
with her perpetual rescuings of lost dogs, lame horses, and penniless
musicians? And Dad, for all his man-of-the-world ways, was he not always
doing little things for the men of his old regiment, always thinking of
her, too, and what he could do to give her pleasure? To love everybody,
and bring them happiness! Was it not possible? Only, people were hard
to love, different from birds and beasts and flowers, to love which
seemed natural and easy.
She went up to her room and began to dress for dinner. Which of her
frocks did he like best? The pale, low-cut amber, or that white, soft
one, with the coffee-dipped lace? She decided on the latter.
Scrutinizing her supple, slender image in the glass, a shudder went
through her. That would all go; she would be like those women taking
careful exercise in the streets, who made her wonder at their hardihood
in showing themselves. It wasn't fair that one must become unsightly,
offensive to the eye, in order to bring life into the world. Some women
seemed proud to be like that. How was that possible? She would never
dare to show herself in the days coming.
She finished dressing and went downstairs. It was nearly eight, and
Fiorsen had not come in. When the gong was struck, she turned from the
window with a sigh, and went in to dinner. That sigh had been relief.
She ate her dinner with the two pups beside her, sent them off, and sat
down at her piano. She played Chopin--studies, waltzes, mazurkas,
preludes, a polonaise or two. And Betty, who had a weakness for that
composer, sat on a chair by the door which partitioned off the back
premises, having opened it a little. She wished she could go and take a
peep at her "pretty" in her white frock, with the candle-flames on each
side, and those lovely lilies in the vase close by, smelling beautiful.
And one of the maids coming too near, she shooed her angrily away.
It grew late. The tray had been brought up; the maids had gone to bed.
Gyp had long stopped playing, had turned out, ready to go up, and, by the
French window, stood gazing out into the dark. How warm it was--warm
enough to draw forth the scent of the jessamine along the garden wall!
Not a star. There always seemed so few stars in London. A sound made
her swing round. Something tall was over there in the darkness, by the
open door. She heard a sigh, and called out, frightened:
"Is that you, Gustav?"
He spoke some words that she could not understand. Shutting the window
quickly, she went toward him. Light from the hall lit up one side of his
face and figure. He was pale; his eyes shone strangely; his sleeve was
all white. He said thickly:
"Little ghost!" and then some words that must be Swedish. It was the
first time Gyp had ever come to close quarters with drunkenness. And her
thought was simply: 'How awful if anybody were to see--how awful!' She
made a rush to get into the hall and lock the door leading to the back
regions, but he caught her frock, ripping the lace from her neck, and his
entangled fingers clutched her shoulder. She stopped dead, fearing to
make a noise or pull him over, and his other hand clutched her other
shoulder, so that he stood steadying himself by her. Why was she not
shocked, smitten to the ground with grief and shame and rage? She only
felt: "What am I to do? How get him upstairs without anyone knowing?"
And she looked up into his face--it seemed to her so pathetic with its
shining eyes and its staring whiteness that she could have burst into
tears. She said gently:
"Gustav, it's all right. Lean on me; we'll go up."
His hands, that seemed to have no power or purpose, touched her cheeks,
mechanically caressing. More than disgust, she felt that awful pity.
Putting her arm round his waist, she moved with him toward the stairs.
If only no one heard; if only she could get him quietly up! And she
murmured:
"Don't talk; you're not well. Lean on me hard."
He seemed to make a big effort; his lips puffed out, and with an
expression of pride that would have been comic if not so tragic, he
muttered something.
Holding him close with all her strength, as she might have held one
desperately loved, she began to mount. It was easier than she had
thought. Only across the landing now, into the bedroom, and then the
danger would be over. Done! He was lying across the bed, and the door
shut. Then, for a moment, she gave way to a fit of shivering so violent
that she could hear her teeth chattering yet could not stop them. She
caught sight of herself in the big mirror. Her pretty lace was all torn;
her shoulders were red where his hands had gripped her, holding himself
up. She threw off her dress, put on a wrapper, and went up to him. He
was lying in a sort of stupor, and with difficulty she got him to sit up
and lean against the bed-rail. Taking off his tie and collar, she racked
her brains for what to give him. Sal volatile! Surely that must be
right. It brought him to himself, so that he even tried to kiss her. At
last he was in bed, and she stood looking at him. His eyes were closed;
he would not see if she gave way now. But she would not cry--she would
not. One sob came--but that was all. Well, there was nothing to be done
now but get into bed too. She undressed, and turned out the light. He
was in a stertorous sleep. And lying there, with eyes wide open, staring
into the dark, a smile came on her lips--a very strange smile! She was
thinking of all those preposterous young wives she had read of, who,
blushing, trembling, murmur into the ears of their young husbands that
they "have something--something to tell them!"
VI
Looking at Fiorsen, next morning, still sunk in heavy sleep, her first
thought was: 'He looks exactly the same.' And, suddenly, it seemed queer
to her that she had not been, and still was not, disgusted. It was all
too deep for disgust, and somehow, too natural. She took this new
revelation of his unbridled ways without resentment. Besides, she had
long known of this taste of his--one cannot drink brandy and not betray
it.
She stole noiselessly from bed, noiselessly gathered up his boots and
clothes all tumbled on to a chair, and took them forth to the
dressing-room. There she held the garments up to the early light and
brushed them, then, noiseless, stole back to bed, with needle and thread
and her lace. No one must know; not even he must know. For the moment
she had forgotten that other thing so terrifically important. It came
back to her, very sudden, very sickening. So long as she could keep it
secret, no one should know that either--he least of all.
The morning passed as usual; but when she came to the music-room at noon,
she found that he had gone out. She was just sitting down to lunch when
Betty, with the broad smile which prevailed on her moon-face when someone
had tickled the right side of her, announced:
"Count Rosek."
Gyp got up, startled.
"Say that Mr. Fiorsen is not in, Betty. But--but ask if he will come and
have some lunch, and get a bottle of hock up, please."
In the few seconds before her visitor appeared, Gyp experienced the sort
of excitement one has entering a field where a bull is grazing.
But not even his severest critics could accuse Rosek of want of tact. He
had hoped to see Gustav, but it was charming of her to give him lunch--a
great delight!
He seemed to have put off, as if for her benefit, his corsets, and some,
at all events, of his offending looks--seemed simpler, more genuine. His
face was slightly browned, as if, for once, he had been taking his due of
air and sun. He talked without cynical submeanings, was most
appreciative of her "charming little house," and even showed some warmth
in his sayings about art and music. Gyp had never disliked him less. But
her instincts were on the watch. After lunch, they went out across the
garden to see the music-room, and he sat down at the piano. He had the
deep, caressing touch that lies in fingers of steel worked by a real
passion for tone. Gyp sat on the divan and listened. She was out of his
sight there; and she looked at him, wondering. He was playing Schumann's
Child Music. How could one who produced such fresh idyllic sounds have
sinister intentions? And presently she said:
"Count Rosek!"
"Madame?"
"Will you please tell me why you sent Daphne Wing here yesterday?"
"I send her?"
"Yes."
But instantly she regretted having asked that question. He had swung
round on the music-stool and was looking full at her. His face had
changed.
"Since you ask me, I thought you should know that Gustav is seeing a good
deal of her."
He had given the exact answer she had divined.
"Do you think I mind that?"
A flicker passed over his face. He got up and said quietly:
"I am glad that you do not."
"Why glad?"
She, too, had risen. Though he was little taller than herself, she was
conscious suddenly of how thick and steely he was beneath his dapper
garments, and of a kind of snaky will-power in his face. Her heart beat
faster.
He came toward her and said:
"I am glad you understand that it is over with Gustav--finished--" He
stopped dead, seeing at once that he had gone wrong, and not knowing
quite where. Gyp had simply smiled. A flush coloured his cheeks, and he
said:
"He is a volcano soon extinguished. You see, I know him. Better you
should know him, too. Why do you smile?"
"Why is it better I should know?"
He went very pale, and said between his teeth:
"That you may not waste your time; there is love waiting for you."
But Gyp still smiled.
"Was it from love of me that you made him drunk last night?"
His lips quivered.
"Gyp!" Gyp turned. But with the merest change of front, he had put
himself between her and the door. "You never loved him. That is my
excuse. You have given him too much already--more than he is worth. Ah!
God! I am tortured by you; I am possessed."
He had gone white through and through like a flame, save for his
smouldering eyes. She was afraid, and because she was afraid, she stood
her ground. Should she make a dash for the door that opened into the
little lane and escape that way? Then suddenly he seemed to regain
control; but she could feel that he was trying to break through her
defences by the sheer intensity of his gaze--by a kind of mesmerism,
knowing that he had frightened her.
Under the strain of this duel of eyes, she felt herself beginning to
sway, to get dizzy. Whether or no he really moved his feet, he seemed
coming closer inch by inch. She had a horrible feeling--as if his arms
were already round her.
With an effort, she wrenched her gaze from his, and suddenly his crisp
hair caught her eyes. Surely--surely it was curled with tongs! A kind
of spasm of amusement was set free in her heart, and, almost inaudibly,
the words escaped her lips: "Une technique merveilleuse!" His eyes
wavered; he uttered a little gasp; his lips fell apart. Gyp walked
across the room and put her hand on the bell. She had lost her fear.
Without a word, he turned, and went out into the garden. She watched him
cross the lawn. Gone! She had beaten him by the one thing not even
violent passions can withstand--ridicule, almost unconscious ridicule.
Then she gave way and pulled the bell with nervous violence. The sight
of the maid, in her trim black dress and spotless white apron, coming
from the house completed her restoration. Was it possible that she had
really been frightened, nearly failing in that encounter, nearly
dominated by that man--in her own house, with her own maids down there at
hand? And she said quietly:
"I want the puppies, please."
"Yes, ma'am."
Over the garden, the day brooded in the first-gathered warmth of summer.
Mid-June of a fine year. The air was drowsy with hum and scent.
And Gyp, sitting in the shade, while the puppies rolled and snapped,
searched her little world for comfort and some sense of safety, and could
not find it; as if there were all round her a hot heavy fog in which
things lurked, and where she kept erect only by pride and the will not to
cry out that she was struggling and afraid.
Fiorsen, leaving his house that morning, had walked till he saw a
taxi-cab. Leaning back therein, with hat thrown off, he caused himself
to be driven rapidly, at random. This was one of his habits when his
mind was not at ease--an expensive idiosyncrasy, ill-afforded by a pocket
that had holes. The swift motion and titillation by the perpetual close
shaving of other vehicles were sedative to him. He needed sedatives this
morning. To wake in his own bed without the least remembering how he had
got there was no more new to him than to many another man of
twenty-eight, but it was new since his marriage. If he had remembered
even less he would have been more at ease. But he could just recollect
standing in the dark drawing-room, seeing and touching a ghostly Gyp
quite close to him. And, somehow, he was afraid. And when he was
afraid--like most people--he was at his worst.
If she had been like all the other women in whose company he had eaten
passion-fruit, he would not have felt this carking humiliation. If she
had been like them, at the pace he had been going since he obtained
possession of her, he would already have "finished," as Rosek had said.
And he knew well enough that he had not "finished." He might get drunk,
might be loose-ended in every way, but Gyp was hooked into his senses,
and, for all that he could not get near her, into his spirit. Her very
passivity was her strength, the secret of her magnetism. In her, he felt
some of that mysterious sentiency of nature, which, even in yielding to
man's fevers, lies apart with a faint smile--the uncapturable smile of
the woods and fields by day or night, that makes one ache with longing.
He felt in her some of the unfathomable, soft, vibrating indifference of
the flowers and trees and streams, of the rocks, of birdsongs, and the
eternal hum, under sunshine or star-shine. Her dark, half-smiling eyes
enticed him, inspired an unquenchable thirst. And his was one of those
natures which, encountering spiritual difficulty, at once jib off, seek
anodynes, try to bandage wounded egoism with excess--a spoiled child,
with the desperations and the inherent pathos, the something repulsive
and the something lovable that belong to all such. Having wished for
this moon, and got her, he now did not know what to do with her, kept
taking great bites at her, with a feeling all the time of getting further
and further away. At moments, he desired revenge for his failure to get
near her spiritually, and was ready to commit follies of all kinds. He
was only kept in control at all by his work. For he did work hard;
though, even there, something was lacking. He had all the qualities of
making good, except the moral backbone holding them together, which alone
could give him his rightful--as he thought--pre-eminence. It often
surprised and vexed him to find that some contemporary held higher rank
than himself.
Threading the streets in his cab, he mused:
"Did I do anything that really shocked her last night? Why didn't I wait
for her this morning and find out the worst?" And his lips twisted
awry--for to find out the worst was not his forte. Meditation, seeking as
usual a scapegoat, lighted on Rosek. Like most egoists addicted to
women, he had not many friends. Rosek was the most constant. But even
for him, Fiorsen had at once the contempt and fear that a man naturally
uncontrolled and yet of greater scope has for one of less talent but
stronger will-power. He had for him, too, the feeling of a wayward child
for its nurse, mixed with the need that an artist, especially an
executant artist, feels for a connoisseur and patron with well-lined
pockets.
'Curse Paul!' he thought. 'He must know--he does know--that brandy of
his goes down like water. Trust him, he saw I was getting silly! He had
some game on. Where did I go after? How did I get home?' And again:
'Did I hurt Gyp?' If the servants had seen--that would be the worst;
that would upset her fearfully! And he laughed. Then he had a fresh
access of fear. He didn't know her, never knew what she was thinking or
feeling, never knew anything about her. And he thought angrily: 'That's
not fair! I don't hide myself from her. I am as free as nature; I let
her see everything. What did I do? That maid looked very queerly at me
this morning!' And suddenly he said to the driver: "Bury Street, St.
James's." He could find out, at all events, whether Gyp had been to her
father's. The thought of Winton ever afflicted him; and he changed his
mind several times before the cab reached that little street, but so
swiftly that he had not time to alter his instructions to the driver. A
light sweat broke out on his forehead while he was waiting for the door
to be opened.
"Mrs. Fiorsen here?"
"No, sir."
"Not been here this morning?"
"No, sir."
He shrugged away the thought that he ought to give some explanation of
his question, and got into the cab again, telling the man to drive to
Curzon Street. If she had not been to "that Aunt Rosamund" either it
would be all right. She had not. There was no one else she would go to.
And, with a sigh of relief, he began to feel hungry, having had no
breakfast. He would go to Rosek's, borrow the money to pay his cab, and
lunch there. But Rosek was not in. He would have to go home to get the
cab paid. The driver seemed to eye him queerly now, as though conceiving
doubts about the fare.
Going in under the trellis, Fiorsen passed a man coming out, who held in
his hand a long envelope and eyed him askance.
Gyp, who was sitting at her bureau, seemed to be adding up the
counterfoils in her cheque-book. She did not turn round, and Fiorsen
paused. How was she going to receive him?
"Is there any lunch?" he said.
She reached out and rang the bell. He felt sorry for himself. He had
been quite ready to take her in his arms and say: "Forgive me, little
Gyp; I'm sorry!"
Betty answered the bell.
"Please bring up some lunch for Mr. Fiorsen."
He heard the stout woman sniff as she went out. She was a part of his
ostracism. And, with sudden rage, he said:
"What do you want for a husband--a bourgeois who would die if he missed
his lunch?"
Gyp turned round to him and held out her cheque-book.
"I don't in the least mind about meals; but I do about this." He read on
the counterfoil:
"Messrs. Travers & Sanborn, Tailors, Account rendered: L54 35s. 7d."
"Are there many of these, Gustav?"
Fiorsen had turned the peculiar white that marked deep injury to his
sell-esteem. He said violently:
"Well, what of that? A bill! Did you pay it? You have no business to
pay my bills."
"The man said if it wasn't paid this time, he'd sue you." Her lips
quivered. "I think owing money is horrible. It's undignified. Are there
many others? Please tell me!"
"I shall not tell you. What is it to you?"
"It is a lot to me. I have to keep this house and pay the maids and
everything, and I want to know how I stand. I am not going to make
debts. That's hateful."
Her face had a hardness that he did not know. He perceived dimly that
she was different from the Gyp of this hour yesterday--the last time
when, in possession of his senses, he had seen or spoken to her. The
novelty of her revolt stirred him in strange ways, wounded his
self-conceit, inspired a curious fear, and yet excited his senses. He
came up to her, said softly:
"Money! Curse money! Kiss me!" With a certain amazement at the sheer
distaste in her face, he heard her say:
"It's childish to curse money. I will spend all the income I have; but I
will not spend more, and I will not ask Dad."
He flung himself down in a chair.
"Ho! Ho! Virtue!"
"No--pride."
He said gloomily:
"So you don't believe in me. You don't believe I can earn as much as I
want--more than you have--any time? You never have believed in me."
"I think you earn now as much as you are ever likely to earn."
"That is what you think! I don't want money--your money! I can live on
nothing, any time. I have done it--often."
"Hssh!"
He looked round and saw the maid in the doorway.
"Please, sir, the driver says can he have his fare, or do you want him
again? Twelve shillings."
Fiorsen stared at her a moment in the way that--as the maid often
said--made you feel like a silly.
"No. Pay him."
The girl glanced at Gyp, answered: "Yes, sir," and went out.
Fiorsen laughed; he laughed, holding his sides. It was droll coming on
the top of his assertion, too droll! And, looking up at her, he said:
"That was good, wasn't it, Gyp?"
But her face had not abated its gravity; and, knowing that she was even
more easily tickled by the incongruous than himself, he felt again that
catch of fear. Something was different. Yes; something was really
different.
"Did I hurt you last night?"
She shrugged her shoulders and went to the window. He looked at her
darkly, jumped up, and swung out past her into the garden. And, almost at
once, the sound of his violin, furiously played in the music-room, came
across the lawn.
Gyp listened with a bitter smile. Money, too! But what did it matter?
She could not get out of what she had done. She could never get out.
Tonight he would kiss her; and she would pretend it was all right. And
so it would go on and on! Well, it was her own fault. Taking twelve
shillings from her purse, she put them aside on the bureau to give the
maid. And suddenly she thought: 'Perhaps he'll get tired of me. If only
he would get tired!' That was a long way the furthest she had yet gone.
VII
They who have known the doldrums--how the sails of the listless ship
droop, and the hope of escape dies day by day--may understand something
of the life Gyp began living now. On a ship, even doldrums come to an
end. But a young woman of twenty-three, who has made a mistake in her
marriage, and has only herself to blame, looks forward to no end, unless
she be the new woman, which Gyp was not. Having settled that she would
not admit failure, and clenched her teeth on the knowledge that she was
going to have a child, she went on keeping things sealed up even from
Winton. To Fiorsen, she managed to behave as usual, making material life
easy and pleasant for him--playing for him, feeding him well, indulging
his amorousness. It did not matter; she loved no one else. To count
herself a martyr would be silly! Her malaise, successfully concealed,
was deeper--of the spirit; the subtle utter discouragement of one who has
done for herself, clipped her own wings.
As for Rosek, she treated him as if that little scene had never taken
place. The idea of appealing to her husband in a difficulty was gone for
ever since the night he came home drunk. And she did not dare to tell
her father. He would--what would he not do? But she was always on her
guard, knowing that Rosek would not forgive her for that dart of
ridicule. His insinuations about Daphne Wing she put out of mind, as she
never could have if she had loved Fiorsen. She set up for herself the
idol of pride, and became its faithful worshipper. Only Winton, and
perhaps Betty, could tell she was not happy. Fiorsen's debts and
irresponsibility about money did not worry her much, for she paid
everything in the house--rent, wages, food, and her own dress--and had so
far made ends meet; and what he did outside the house she could not help.
So the summer wore on till concerts were over, and it was supposed to be
impossible to stay in London. But she dreaded going away. She wanted to
be left quiet in her little house. It was this which made her tell
Fiorsen her secret one night, after the theatre. He had begun to talk of
a holiday, sitting on the edge of the settee, with a glass in his hand
and a cigarette between his lips. His cheeks, white and hollow from too
much London, went a curious dull red; he got up and stared at her. Gyp
made an involuntary movement with her hands.
"You needn't look at me. It's true."
He put down glass and cigarette and began to tramp the room. And Gyp
stood with a little smile, not even watching him. Suddenly he clasped
his forehead and broke out:
"But I don't want it; I won't have it--spoiling my Gyp." Then quickly
going up to her with a scared face: "I don't want it; I'm afraid of it.
Don't have it."
In Gyp's heart came the same feeling as when he had stood there drunk,
against the wall--compassion, rather than contempt of his childishness.
And taking his hand she said:
"All right, Gustav. It shan't bother you. When I begin to get ugly,
I'll go away with Betty till it's over."
He went down on his knees.
"Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no! My beautiful Gyp!"
And Gyp sat like a sphinx, for fear that she too might let slip those
words: "Oh, no!"
The windows were open, and moths had come in. One had settled on the
hydrangea plant that filled the hearth. Gyp looked at the soft, white,
downy thing, whose head was like a tiny owl's against the bluish petals;
looked at the purple-grey tiles down there, and the stuff of her own
frock, in the shaded gleam of the lamps. And all her love of beauty
rebelled, called up by his: "Oh, no!" She would be unsightly soon, and
suffer pain, and perhaps die of it, as her own mother had died. She set
her teeth, listening to that grown-up child revolting against what he had
brought on her, and touched his hand, protectingly.
It interested, even amused her this night and next day to watch his
treatment of the disconcerting piece of knowledge. For when at last he
realized that he had to acquiesce in nature, he began, as she had known
he would, to jib away from all reminder of it. She was careful not to
suggest that he should go away without her, knowing his perversity. But
when he proposed that she should come to Ostend with him and Rosek, she
answered, after seeming deliberation, that she thought she had better
not--she would rather stay at home quite quietly; but he must certainly
go and get a good holiday.
When he was really gone, peace fell on Gyp--peace such as one feels,
having no longer the tight, banded sensations of a fever. To be without
that strange, disorderly presence in the house! When she woke in the
sultry silence of the next morning, she utterly failed to persuade
herself that she was missing him, missing the sound of his breathing, the
sight of his rumpled hair on the pillow, the outline of his long form
under the sheet. Her heart was devoid of any emptiness or ache; she only
felt how pleasant and cool and tranquil it was to lie there alone. She
stayed quite late in bed. It was delicious, with window and door wide
open and the puppies running in and out, to lie and doze off, or listen
to the pigeons' cooing, and the distant sounds of traffic, and feel in
command once more of herself, body and soul. Now that she had told
Fiorsen, she had no longer any desire to keep her condition secret.
Feeling that it would hurt her father to learn of it from anyone but
herself, she telephoned to tell him she was alone, and asked if she might
come to Bury Street and dine with him.
Winton had not gone away, because, between Goodwood and Doncaster there
was no racing that he cared for; one could not ride at this time of year,
so might just as well be in London. In fact, August was perhaps the
pleasantest of all months in town; the club was empty, and he could sit
there without some old bore buttonholing him. Little Boncarte, the
fencing-master, was always free for a bout--Winton had long learned to
make his left hand what his right hand used to be; the Turkish baths in
Jermyn Street were nearly void of their fat clients; he could saunter
over to Covent Garden, buy a melon, and carry it home without meeting any
but the most inferior duchesses in Piccadilly; on warm nights he could
stroll the streets or the parks, smoking his cigar, his hat pushed back
to cool his forehead, thinking vague thoughts, recalling vague memories.
He received the news that his daughter was alone and free from that
fellow with something like delight. Where should he dine her? Mrs.
Markey was on her holiday. Why not Blafard's? Quiet---small rooms--not
too respectable--quite fairly cool--good things to eat. Yes; Blafard's!
When she drove up, he was ready in the doorway, his thin brown face with
its keen, half-veiled eyes the picture of composure, but feeling at heart
like a schoolboy off for an exeat. How pretty she was looking--though
pale from London--her dark eyes, her smile! And stepping quickly to the
cab, he said:
"No; I'm getting in--dining at Blafard's, Gyp--a night out!"
It gave him a thrill to walk into that little restaurant behind her; and
passing through its low red rooms to mark the diners turn and stare with
envy--taking him, perhaps, for a different sort of relation. He settled
her into a far corner by a window, where she could see the people and be
seen. He wanted her to be seen; while he himself turned to the world
only the short back wings of his glossy greyish hair. He had no notion
of being disturbed in his enjoyment by the sight of Hivites and Amorites,
or whatever they might be, lapping champagne and shining in the heat.
For, secretly, he was living not only in this evening but in a certain
evening of the past, when, in this very corner, he had dined with her
mother. HIS face then had borne the brunt; hers had been turned away
from inquisition. But he did not speak of this to Gyp.
She drank two full glasses of wine before she told him her news. He took
it with the expression she knew so well--tightening his lips and staring
a little upward. Then he said quietly:
"When?"
"November, Dad."
A shudder, not to be repressed, went through Winton. The very month!
And stretching his hand across the table, he took hers and pressed it
tightly.
"It'll be all right, child; I'm glad."
Clinging to his hand, Gyp murmured:
"I'm not; but I won't be frightened--I promise."
Each was trying to deceive the other; and neither was deceived. But both
were good at putting a calm face on things. Besides, this was "a night
out"--for her, the first since her marriage--of freedom, of feeling
somewhat as she used to feel with all before her in a ballroom of a
world; for him, the unfettered resumption of a dear companionship and a
stealthy revel in the past. After his, "So he's gone to Ostend?" and his
thought: 'He would!' they never alluded to Fiorsen, but talked of horses,
of Mildenham--it seemed to Gyp years since she had been there--of her
childish escapades. And, looking at him quizzically, she asked:
"What were you like as a boy, Dad? Aunt Rosamund says that you used to
get into white rages when nobody could go near you. She says you were
always climbing trees, or shooting with a catapult, or stalking things,
and that you never told anybody what you didn't want to tell them. And
weren't you desperately in love with your nursery-governess?"
Winton smiled. How long since he had thought of that first affection.
Miss Huntley! Helena Huntley--with crinkly brown hair, and blue eyes,
and fascinating frocks! He remembered with what grief and sense of
bitter injury he heard in his first school-holidays that she was gone.
And he said:
"Yes, yes. By Jove, what a time ago! And my father's going off to
India. He never came back; killed in that first Afghan business. When I
was fond, I WAS fond. But I didn't feel things like you--not half so
sensitive. No; not a bit like you, Gyp."
And watching her unconscious eyes following the movements of the waiters,
never staring, but taking in all that was going on, he thought:
'Prettiest creature in the world!'
"Well," he said: "What would you like to do now--drop into a theatre or
music-hall, or what?"
Gyp shook her head. It was so hot. Could they just drive, and then
perhaps sit in the park? That would be lovely. It had gone dark, and
the air was not quite so exhausted--a little freshness of scent from the
trees in the squares and parks mingled with the fumes of dung and petrol.
Winton gave the same order he had given that long past evening:
"Knightsbridge Gate." It had been a hansom then, and the night air had
blown in their faces, instead of as now in these infernal taxis, down the
back of one's neck. They left the cab and crossed the Row; passed the
end of the Long Water, up among the trees. There, on two chairs covered
by Winton's coat, they sat side by side. No dew was falling yet; the
heavy leaves hung unstirring; the air was warm, sweet-smelling. Blotted
against trees or on the grass were other couples darker than the
darkness, very silent. All was quiet save for the never-ceasing hum of
traffic. From Winton's lips, the cigar smoke wreathed and curled. He was
dreaming. The cigar between his teeth trembled; a long ash fell.
Mechanically he raised his hand to brush it off--his right hand! A voice
said softly in his ear:
"Isn't it delicious, and warm, and gloomy black?"
Winton shivered, as one shivers recalled from dreams; and, carefully
brushing off the ash with his left hand, he answered:
"Yes; very jolly. My cigar's out, though, and I haven't a match."
Gyp's hand slipped through his arm.
"All these people in love, and so dark and whispery--it makes a sort of
strangeness in the air. Don't you feel it?"
Winton murmured:
"No moon to-night!"
Again they were silent. A puff of wind ruffled the leaves; the night,
for a moment, seemed full of whispering; then the sound of a giggle
jarred out and a girl's voice:
"Oh! Chuck it, 'Arry."
Gyp rose.
"I feel the dew now, Dad. Can we walk on?"
They went along paths, so as not to wet her feet in her thin shoes. And
they talked. The spell was over; the night again but a common London
night; the park a space of parching grass and gravel; the people just
clerks and shop-girls walking out.
VIII
Fiorsen's letters were the source of one long smile to Gyp. He missed
her horribly; if only she were there!--and so forth--blended in the
queerest way with the impression that he was enjoying himself uncommonly.
There were requests for money, and careful omission of any real account
of what he was doing. Out of a balance running rather low, she sent him
remittances; this was her holiday, too, and she could afford to pay for
it. She even sought out a shop where she could sell jewelry, and, with a
certain malicious joy, forwarded him the proceeds. It would give him and
herself another week.
One night she went with Winton to the Octagon, where Daphne Wing was
still performing. Remembering the girl's squeaks of rapture at her
garden, she wrote next day, asking her to lunch and spend a lazy
afternoon under the trees.
The little dancer came with avidity. She was pale, and droopy from the
heat, but happily dressed in Liberty silk, with a plain turn-down straw
hat. They lunched off sweetbreads, ices, and fruit, and then, with
coffee, cigarettes, and plenty of sugar-plums, settled down in the
deepest shade of the garden, Gyp in a low wicker chair, Daphne Wing on
cushions and the grass. Once past the exclamatory stage, she seemed a
great talker, laying bare her little soul with perfect liberality. And
Gyp--excellent listener--enjoyed it, as one enjoys all confidential
revelations of existences very different from one's own, especially when
regarded as a superior being.
"Of course I don't mean to stay at home any longer than I can help; only
it's no good going out into life"--this phrase she often used--"till you
know where you are. In my profession, one has to be so careful. Of
course, people think it's worse than it is; father gets fits sometimes.
But you know, Mrs. Fiorsen, home's awful. We have mutton--you know what
mutton is--it's really awful in your bedroom in hot weather. And there's
nowhere to practise. What I should like would be a studio. It would be
lovely, somewhere down by the river, or up here near you. That WOULD be
lovely. You know, I'm putting by. As soon as ever I have two hundred
pounds, I shall skip. What I think would be perfectly lovely would be to
inspire painters and musicians. I don't want to be just a common
'turn'--ballet business year after year, and that; I want to be something
rather special. But mother's so silly about me; she thinks I oughtn't to
take any risks at all. I shall never get on that way. It IS so nice to
talk to you, Mrs. Fiorsen, because you're young enough to know what I
feel; and I'm sure you'd never be shocked at anything. You see, about
men: Ought one to marry, or ought one to take a lover? They say you
can't be a perfect artist till you've felt passion. But, then, if you
marry, that means mutton over again, and perhaps babies, and perhaps the
wrong man after all. Ugh! But then, on the other hand, I don't want to
be raffish. I hate raffish people--I simply hate them. What do you
think? It's awfully difficult, isn't it?"
Gyp, perfectly grave, answered:
"That sort of thing settles itself. I shouldn't bother beforehand."
Miss Daphne Wing buried her perfect chin deeper in her hands, and said
meditatively:
"Yes; I rather thought that, too; of course I could do either now. But,
you see, I really don't care for men who are not distinguished. I'm sure
I shall only fall in love with a really distinguished man. That's what
you did--isn't it?--so you MUST understand. I think Mr. Fiorsen is
wonderfully distinguished."
Sunlight, piercing the shade, suddenly fell warm on Gyp's neck where her
blouse ceased, and fortunately stilled the medley of emotion and laughter
a little lower down. She continued to look gravely at Daphne Wing, who
resumed:
"Of course, Mother would have fits if I asked her such a question, and I
don't know what Father would do. Only it is important, isn't it? One
may go all wrong from the start; and I do really want to get on. I
simply adore my work. I don't mean to let love stand in its way; I want
to make it help, you know. Count Rosek says my dancing lacks passion. I
wish you'd tell me if you think it does. I should believe YOU."
Gyp shook her head.
"I'm not a judge."
Daphne Wing looked up reproachfully.
"Oh, I'm sure you are! If I were a man, I should be passionately in love
with you. I've got a new dance where I'm supposed to be a nymph pursued
by a faun; it's so difficult to feel like a nymph when you know it's only
the ballet-master. Do you think I ought to put passion into that? You
see, I'm supposed to be flying all the time; but it would be much more
subtle, wouldn't it, if I could give the impression that I wanted to be
caught. Don't you think so?"
Gyp said suddenly:
"Yes, I think it WOULD do you good to be in love."
Miss Daphne's mouth fell a little open; her eyes grew round. She said:
"You frightened me when you said that. You looked so
different--so--intense."
A flame indeed had leaped up in Gyp. This fluffy, flabby talk of love
set her instincts in revolt. She did not want to love; she had failed to
fall in love. But, whatever love was like, it did not bear talking
about. How was it that this little suburban girl, when she once got on
her toes, could twirl one's emotions as she did?
"D'you know what I should simply revel in?" Daphne Wing went on: "To
dance to you here in the garden some night. It must be wonderful to
dance out of doors; and the grass is nice and hard now. Only, I suppose
it would shock the servants. Do they look out this way?" Gyp shook her
head. "I could dance over there in front of the drawing-room window.
Only it would have to be moonlight. I could come any Sunday. I've got a
dance where I'm supposed to be a lotus flower--that would do splendidly.
And there's my real moonlight dance that goes to Chopin. I could bring
my dresses, and change in the music-room, couldn't I?" She wriggled up,
and sat cross-legged, gazing at Gyp, and clasping her hands. "Oh, may
I?"
Her excitement infected Gyp. A desire to give pleasure, the queerness of
the notion, and her real love of seeing this girl dance, made her say:
"Yes; next Sunday."
Daphne Wing got up, made a rush, and kissed her. Her mouth was soft, and
she smelled of orange blossom; but Gyp recoiled a little--she hated
promiscuous kisses. Somewhat abashed, Miss Daphne hung her head, and
said:
"You did look so lovely; I couldn't help it, really."
And Gyp gave her hand the squeeze of compunction.
They went indoors, to try over the music of the two dances; and soon
after Daphne Wing departed, full of sugar-plums and hope.
She arrived punctually at eight o'clock next Sunday, carrying an exiguous
green linen bag, which contained her dresses. She was subdued, and, now
that it had come to the point, evidently a little scared. Lobster salad,
hock, and peaches restored her courage. She ate heartily. It did not
apparently matter to her whether she danced full or empty; but she would
not smoke.
"It's bad for the--" She checked herself.
When they had finished supper, Gyp shut the dogs into the back premises;
she had visions of their rending Miss Wing's draperies, or calves. Then
they went into the drawing-room, not lighting up, that they might tell
when the moonlight was strong enough outside. Though it was the last
night of August, the heat was as great as ever--a deep, unstirring
warmth; the climbing moon shot as yet but a thin shaft here and there
through the heavy foliage. They talked in low voices, unconsciously
playing up to the nature of the escapade. As the moon drew up, they
stole out across the garden to the music-room. Gyp lighted the candles.
"Can you manage?"
Miss Daphne had already shed half her garments.
"Oh, I'm so excited, Mrs. Fiorsen! I do hope I shall dance well."
Gyp stole back to the house; it being Sunday evening, the servants had
been easily disposed of. She sat down at the piano, turning her eyes
toward the garden. A blurred white shape flitted suddenly across the
darkness at the far end and became motionless, as it might be a
white-flowering bush under the trees. Miss Daphne had come out, and was
waiting for the moon. Gyp began to play. She pitched on a little
Sicilian pastorale that the herdsmen play on their pipes coming down from
the hills, softly, from very far, rising, rising, swelling to full
cadence, and failing, failing away again to nothing. The moon rose over
the trees; its light flooded the face of the house, down on to the grass,
and spread slowly back toward where the girl stood waiting. It caught
the border of sunflowers along the garden wall with a stroke of magical,
unearthly colour--gold that was not gold.
Gyp began to play the dance. The pale blurr in the darkness stirred.
The moonlight fell on the girl now, standing with arms spread, holding
out her drapery--a white, winged statue. Then, like a gigantic moth she
fluttered forth, blanched and noiseless flew over the grass, spun and
hovered. The moonlight etched out the shape of her head, painted her
hair with pallid gold. In the silence, with that unearthly gleam of
colour along the sunflowers and on the girl's head, it was as if a spirit
had dropped into the garden and was fluttering to and fro, unable to get
out.
A voice behind Gyp said: "My God! What's this? An angel?"
Fiorsen was standing hall-way in the darkened room staring out into the
garden, where the girl had halted, transfixed before the window, her eyes
as round as saucers, her mouth open, her limbs rigid with interest and
affright. Suddenly she turned and, gathering her garment, fled, her
limbs gleaming in the moonlight.
And Gyp sat looking up at the apparition of her husband. She could just
see his eyes straining after that flying nymph. Miss Daphne's faun!
Why, even his ears were pointed! Had she never noticed before, how like
a faun he was? Yes--on her wedding-night! And she said quietly:
"Daphne Wing was rehearsing her new dance. So you're back! Why didn't
you let me know? Are you all right--you look splendid!"
Fiorsen bent down and clutched her by the shoulders.
"My Gyp! Kiss me!"
But even while his lips were pressed on hers, she felt rather than saw
his eyes straying to the garden, and thought, "He would like to be
kissing that girl!"
The moment he had gone to get his things from the cab, she slipped out to
the music-room.
Miss Daphne was dressed, and stuffing her garments into the green linen
bag. She looked up, and said piteously:
"Oh! Does he mind? It's awful, isn't it?"
Gyp strangled her desire to laugh.
"It's for you to mind."
"Oh, I don't, if you don't! How did you like the dance?"
"Lovely! When you're ready--come along!"
"Oh, I think I'd rather go home, please! It must seem so funny!"
"Would you like to go by this back way into the lane? You turn to the
right, into the road."
"Oh, yes; please. It would have been better if he could have seen the
dance properly, wouldn't it? What will he think?"
Gyp smiled, and opened the door into the lane. When she returned,
Fiorsen was at the window, gazing out. Was it for her or for that flying
nymph?
IX
September and October passed. There were more concerts, not very well
attended. Fiorsen's novelty had worn off, nor had his playing sweetness
and sentiment enough for the big Public. There was also a financial
crisis. It did not seem to Gyp to matter. Everything seemed remote and
unreal in the shadow of her coming time. Unlike most mothers to be, she
made no garments, no preparations of any kind. Why make what might never
be needed? She played for Fiorsen a great deal, for herself not at all,
read many books--poetry, novels, biographies--taking them in at the
moment, and forgetting them at once, as one does with books read just to
distract the mind. Winton and Aunt Rosamund, by tacit agreement, came on
alternate afternoons. And Winton, almost as much under that shadow as
Gyp herself, would take the evening train after leaving her, and spend
the next day racing or cub-hunting, returning the morning of the day
after to pay his next visit. He had no dread just then like that of an
unoccupied day face to face with anxiety.
Betty, who had been present at Gyp's birth, was in a queer state. The
obvious desirability of such events to one of motherly type defrauded by
fate of children was terribly impinged on by that old memory, and a
solicitude for her "pretty" far exceeding what she would have had for a
daughter of her own. What a peony regards as a natural happening to a
peony, she watches with awe when it happens to the lily. That other
single lady of a certain age, Aunt Rosamund, the very antithesis to
Betty--a long, thin nose and a mere button, a sense of divine rights and
no sense of rights at all, a drawl and a comforting wheeze, length and
circumference, decision and the curtsey to providence, humour and none,
dyspepsia, and the digestion of an ostrich, with other oppositions--Aunt
Rosamund was also uneasy, as only one could be who disapproved heartily
of uneasiness, and habitually joked and drawled it into retirement.
But of all those round Gyp, Fiorsen gave the most interesting display.
He had not even an elementary notion of disguising his state of mind.
And his state of mind was weirdly, wistfully primitive. He wanted Gyp as
she had been. The thought that she might never become herself again
terrified him so at times that he was forced to drink brandy, and come
home only a little less far gone than that first time. Gyp had often to
help him go to bed. On two or three occasions, he suffered so that he was
out all night. To account for this, she devised the formula of a room at
Count Rosek's, where he slept when music kept him late, so as not to
disturb her. Whether the servants believed her or not, she never knew.
Nor did she ever ask him where he went--too proud, and not feeling that
she had the right.
Deeply conscious of the unaesthetic nature of her condition, she was
convinced that she could no longer be attractive to one so easily upset
in his nerves, so intolerant of ugliness. As to deeper feelings about
her--had he any? He certainly never gave anything up, or sacrificed
himself in any way. If she had loved, she felt she would want to give up
everything to the loved one; but then--she would never love! And yet he
seemed frightened about her. It was puzzling! But perhaps she would not
be puzzled much longer about that or anything; for she often had the
feeling that she would die. How could she be going to live, grudging her
fate? What would give her strength to go through with it? And, at times,
she felt as if she would be glad to die. Life had defrauded her, or she
had defrauded herself of life. Was it really only a year since that
glorious day's hunting when Dad and she, and the young man with the clear
eyes and the irrepressible smile, had slipped away with the hounds ahead
of all the field--the fatal day Fiorsen descended from the clouds and
asked for her? An overwhelming longing for Mildenham came on her, to get
away there with her father and Betty.
She went at the beginning of November.
Over her departure, Fiorsen behaved like a tired child that will not go
to bed. He could not bear to be away from her, and so forth; but when
she had gone, he spent a furious bohemian evening. At about five, he woke
with "an awful cold feeling in my heart," as he wrote to Gyp next
day--"an awful feeling, my Gyp; I walked up and down for hours" (in
reality, half an hour at most). "How shall I bear to be away from you at
this time? I feel lost." Next day, he found himself in Paris with
Rosek. "I could not stand," he wrote, "the sight of the streets, of the
garden, of our room. When I come back I shall stay with Rosek. Nearer
to the day I will come; I must come to you." But Gyp, when she read the
letter, said to Winton: "Dad, when it comes, don't send for him. I don't
want him here."
With those letters of his, she buried the last remnants of her feeling
that somewhere in him there must be something as fine and beautiful as
the sounds he made with his violin. And yet she felt those letters
genuine in a way, pathetic, and with real feeling of a sort.
From the moment she reached Mildenham, she began to lose that
hopelessness about herself; and, for the first time, had the sensation of
wanting to live in the new life within her. She first felt it, going
into her old nursery, where everything was the same as it had been when
she first saw it, a child of eight; there was her old red doll's house,
the whole side of which opened to display the various floors; the worn
Venetian blinds, the rattle of whose fall had sounded in her ears so many
hundred times; the high fender, near which she had lain so often on the
floor, her chin on her hands, reading Grimm, or "Alice in Wonderland," or
histories of England. Here, too, perhaps this new child would live
amongst the old familiars. And the whim seized her to face her hour in
her old nursery, not in the room where she had slept as a girl. She
would not like the daintiness of that room deflowered. Let it stay the
room of her girlhood. But in the nursery--there was safety, comfort!
And when she had been at Mildenham a week, she made Betty change her
over.
No one in that house was half so calm to look at in those days as Gyp.
Betty was not guiltless of sitting on the stairs and crying at odd
moments. Mrs. Markey had never made such bad soups. Markey so far
forgot himself as frequently to talk. Winton lamed a horse trying an
impossible jump that he might get home the quicker, and, once back, was
like an unquiet spirit. If Gyp were in the room, he would make the
pretence of wanting to warm his feet or hand, just to stroke her shoulder
as he went back to his chair. His voice, so measured and dry, had a ring
in it, that too plainly disclosed the anxiety of his heart. Gyp, always
sensitive to atmosphere, felt cradled in all the love about her.
Wonderful that they should all care so much! What had she done for
anyone, that people should be so sweet--he especially, whom she had so
grievously distressed by her wretched marriage? She would sit staring
into the fire with her wide, dark eyes, unblinking as an owl's at
night--wondering what she could do to make up to her father, whom already
once she had nearly killed by coming into life. And she began to
practise the bearing of the coming pain, trying to project herself into
this unknown suffering, so that it should not surprise from her cries and
contortions.
She had one dream, over and over again, of sinking and sinking into a
feather bed, growing hotter and more deeply walled in by that which had
no stay in it, yet through which her body could not fall and reach
anything more solid. Once, after this dream, she got up and spent the
rest of the night wrapped in a blanket and the eider-down, on the old
sofa, where, as a child, they had made her lie flat on her back from
twelve to one every day. Betty was aghast at finding her there asleep in
the morning. Gyp's face was so like the child-face she had seen lying
there in the old days, that she bundled out of the room and cried
bitterly into the cup of tea. It did her good. Going back with the tea,
she scolded her "pretty" for sleeping out there, with the fire out, too!
But Gyp only said:
"Betty, darling, the tea's awfully cold! Please get me some more!"
X
From the day of the nurse's arrival, Winton gave up hunting. He could
not bring himself to be out of doors for more than half an hour at a
time. Distrust of doctors did not prevent him having ten minutes every
morning with the old practitioner who had treated Gyp for mumps, measles,
and the other blessings of childhood. The old fellow--his name was
Rivershaw--was a most peculiar survival. He smelled of mackintosh, had
round purplish cheeks, a rim of hair which people said he dyed, and
bulging grey eyes slightly bloodshot. He was short in body and wind,
drank port wine, was suspected of taking snuff, read The Times, spoke
always in a husky voice, and used a very small brougham with a very old
black horse. But he had a certain low cunning, which had defeated many
ailments, and his reputation for assisting people into the world stood
extremely high. Every morning punctually at twelve, the crunch of his
little brougham's wheels would be heard. Winton would get up, and,
taking a deep breath, cross the hall to the dining-room, extract from a
sideboard a decanter of port, a biscuit-canister, and one glass. He
would then stand with his eyes fixed on the door, till, in due time, the
doctor would appear, and he could say:
"Well, doctor? How is she?"
"Nicely; quite nicely."
"Nothing to make one anxious?"
The doctor, puffing out his cheeks, with eyes straying to the decanter,
would murmur:
"Cardiac condition, capital--a little--um--not to matter. Taking its
course. These things!"
And Winton, with another deep breath, would say:
"Glass of port, doctor?"
An expression of surprise would pass over the doctor's face.
"Cold day--ah, perhaps--" And he would blow his nose on his
purple-and-red bandanna.
Watching him drink his port, Winton would mark:
"We can get you at any time, can't we?"
And the doctor, sucking his lips, would answer:
"Never fear, my dear sir! Little Miss Gyp--old friend of mine. At her
service day and night. Never fear!"
A sensation of comfort would pass through Winton, which would last quite
twenty minutes after the crunching of the wheels and the mingled perfumes
of him had died away.
In these days, his greatest friend was an old watch that had been his
father's before him; a gold repeater from Switzerland, with a chipped
dial-plate, and a case worn wondrous thin and smooth--a favourite of
Gyp's childhood. He would take it out about every quarter of an hour,
look at its face without discovering the time, finger it, all smooth and
warm from contact with his body, and put it back. Then he would listen.
There was nothing whatever to listen to, but he could not help it. Apart
from this, his chief distraction was to take a foil and make passes at a
leather cushion, set up on the top of a low bookshelf. In these
occupations, varied by constant visits to the room next the nursery,
where--to save her the stairs--Gyp was now established, and by excursions
to the conservatory to see if he could not find some new flower to take
her, he passed all his time, save when he was eating, sleeping, or
smoking cigars, which he had constantly to be relighting.
By Gyp's request, they kept from him knowledge of when her pains began.
After that first bout was over and she was lying half asleep in the old
nursery, he happened to go up. The nurse--a bonny creature--one of those
free, independent, economic agents that now abound--met him in the
sitting-room. Accustomed to the "fuss and botheration of men" at such
times, she was prepared to deliver him a little lecture. But, in
approaching, she became affected by the look on his face, and, realizing
somehow that she was in the presence of one whose self-control was proof,
she simply whispered:
"It's beginning; but don't be anxious--she's not suffering just now. We
shall send for the doctor soon. She's very plucky"; and with an
unaccustomed sensation of respect and pity she repeated: "Don't be
anxious, sir."
"If she wants to see me at any time, I shall be in my study. Save her
all you can, nurse."
The nurse was left with a feeling of surprise at having used the word
"Sir"; she had not done such a thing since--since--! And, pensive, she
returned to the nursery, where Gyp said at once:
"Was that my father? I didn't want him to know."
The nurse answered mechanically:
"That's all right, my dear."
"How long do you think before--before it'll begin again, nurse? I'd like
to see him."
The nurse stroked her hair.
"Soon enough when it's all over and comfy. Men are always fidgety."
Gyp looked at her, and said quietly:
"Yes. You see, my mother died when I was born."
The nurse, watching those lips, still pale with pain, felt a queer pang.
She smoothed the bed-clothes and said:
"That's nothing--it often happens--that is, I mean,--you know it has no
connection whatever."
And seeing Gyp smile, she thought: 'Well, I am a fool.'
"If by any chance I don't get through, I want to be cremated; I want to
go back as quick as I can. I can't bear the thought of the other thing.
Will you remember, nurse? I can't tell my father that just now; it might
upset him. But promise me."
And the nurse thought: 'That can't be done without a will or something,
but I'd better promise. It's a morbid fancy, and yet she's not a morbid
subject, either.' And she said:
"Very well, my dear; only, you're not going to do anything of the sort.
That's flat."
Gyp smiled again, and there was silence, till she said:
"I'm awfully ashamed, wanting all this attention, and making people
miserable. I've read that Japanese women quietly go out somewhere by
themselves and sit on a gate."
The nurse, still busy with the bedclothes, murmured abstractedly:
"Yes, that's a very good way. But don't you fancy you're half the
trouble most of them are. You're very good, and you're going to get on
splendidly." And she thought: 'Odd! She's never once spoken of her
husband. I don't like it for this sort--too perfect, too sensitive; her
face touches you so!'
Gyp murmured again:
"I'd like to see my father, please; and rather quick."
The nurse, after one swift look, went out.
Gyp, who had clinched her hands under the bedclothes, fixed her eyes on
the window. November! Acorns and the leaves--the nice, damp, earthy
smell! Acorns all over the grass. She used to drive the old retriever
in harness on the lawn covered with acorns and the dead leaves, and the
wind still blowing them off the trees--in her brown velvet--that was a
ducky dress! Who was it had called her once "a wise little owl," in that
dress? And, suddenly, her heart sank. The pain was coming again.
Winton's voice from the door said:
"Well, my pet?"
"It was only to see how you are. I'm all right. What sort of a day is
it? You'll go riding, won't you? Give my love to the horses. Good-bye,
Dad; just for now."
Her forehead was wet to his lips.
Outside, in the passage, her smile, like something actual on the air,
preceded him--the smile that had just lasted out. But when he was back
in the study, he suffered--suffered! Why could he not have that pain to
bear instead?
The crunch of the brougham brought his ceaseless march over the carpet to
an end. He went out into the hall and looked into the doctor's face--he
had forgotten that this old fellow knew nothing of his special reason for
deadly fear. Then he turned back into his study. The wild south wind
brought wet drift-leaves whirling against the panes. It was here that he
had stood looking out into the dark, when Fiorsen came down to ask for
Gyp a year ago. Why had he not bundled the fellow out neck and crop, and
taken her away?--India, Japan--anywhere would have done! She had not
loved that fiddler, never really loved him. Monstrous--monstrous! The
full bitterness of having missed right action swept over Winton, and he
positively groaned aloud. He moved from the window and went over to the
bookcase; there in one row were the few books he ever read, and he took
one out. "Life of General Lee." He put it back and took another, a
novel of Whyte Melville's: "Good for Nothing." Sad book--sad ending! The
book dropped from his hand and fell with a flump on the floor. In a sort
of icy discovery, he had seen his life as it would be if for a second
time he had to bear such loss. She must not--could not die! If she
did--then, for him--! In old times they buried a man with his horse and
his dog, as if at the end of a good run. There was always that! The
extremity of this thought brought relief. He sat down, and, for a long
time, stayed staring into the fire in a sort of coma. Then his feverish
fears began again. Why the devil didn't they come and tell him
something, anything--rather than this silence, this deadly solitude and
waiting? What was that? The front door shutting. Wheels? Had that
hell-hound of an old doctor sneaked off? He started up. There at the
door was Markey, holding in his hand some cards. Winton scanned them.
"Lady Summerhay; Mr. Bryan Summerhay. I said, 'Not at home,' sir."
Winton nodded.
"Well?"
"Nothing at present. You have had no lunch, sir."
"What time is it?"
"Four o'clock."
"Bring in my fur coat and the port, and make the fire up. I want any
news there is."
Markey nodded.
Odd to sit in a fur coat before a fire, and the day not cold! They said
you lived on after death. He had never been able to feel that SHE was
living on. SHE lived in Gyp. And now if Gyp--! Death--your own--no
great matter! But--for her! The wind was dropping with the darkness.
He got up and drew the curtains.
It was seven o'clock when the doctor came down into the hall, and stood
rubbing his freshly washed hands before opening the study door. Winton
was still sitting before the fire, motionless, shrunk into his fur coat.
He raised himself a little and looked round dully.
The doctor's face puckered, his eyelids drooped half-way across his
bulging eyes; it was his way of smiling. "Nicely," he said; "nicely--a
girl. No complications."
Winton's whole body seemed to swell, his lips opened, he raised his hand.
Then, the habit of a lifetime catching him by the throat, he stayed
motionless. At last he got up and said:
"Glass of port, doctor?"
The doctor spying at him above the glass thought: 'This is "the
fifty-two." Give me "the sixty-eight"--more body.'
After a time, Winton went upstairs. Waiting in the outer room he had a
return of his cold dread. "Perfectly successful--the patient died from
exhaustion!" The tiny squawking noise that fell on his ears entirely
failed to reassure him. He cared nothing for that new being. Suddenly
he found Betty just behind him, her bosom heaving horribly.
"What is it, woman? Don't!"
She had leaned against his shoulder, appearing to have lost all sense of
right and wrong, and, out of her sobbing, gurgled:
"She looks so lovely--oh dear, she looks so lovely!"
Pushing her abruptly from him, Winton peered in through the just-opened
door. Gyp was lying extremely still, and very white; her eyes, very
large, very dark, were fastened on her baby. Her face wore a kind of
wonder. She did not see Winton, who stood stone-quiet, watching, while
the nurse moved about her business behind a screen. This was the first
time in his life that he had seen a mother with her just-born baby. That
look on her face--gone right away somewhere, right away--amazed him. She
had never seemed to like children, had said she did not want a child.
She turned her head and saw him. He went in. She made a faint motion
toward the baby, and her eyes smiled. Winton looked at that swaddled
speckled mite; then, bending down, he kissed her hand and tiptoed away.
At dinner he drank champagne, and benevolence towards all the world
spread in his being. Watching the smoke of his cigar wreathe about him,
he thought: 'Must send that chap a wire.' After all, he was a fellow
being--might be suffering, as he himself had suffered only two hours ago.
To keep him in ignorance--it wouldn't do! And he wrote out the form--
"All well, a daughter.--WINTON,"
and sent it out with the order that a groom should take it in that night.
Gyp was sleeping when he stole up at ten o'clock.
He, too, turned in, and slept like a child.
XI
Returning the next afternoon from the first ride for several days, Winton
passed the station fly rolling away from the drive-gate with the
light-hearted disillusionment peculiar to quite empty vehicles.
The sight of a fur coat and broad-brimmed hat in the hall warned him of
what had happened.
"Mr. Fiorsen, sir; gone up to Mrs. Fiorsen."
Natural, but a d--d bore! And bad, perhaps, for Gyp. He asked:
"Did he bring things?"
"A bag, sir."
"Get a room ready, then."
To dine tete-a-tete with that fellow!
Gyp had passed the strangest morning in her life, so far. Her baby
fascinated her, also the tug of its lips, giving her the queerest
sensation, almost sensual; a sort of meltedness, an infinite warmth, a
desire to grip the little creature right into her--which, of course, one
must not do. And yet, neither her sense of humour nor her sense of
beauty were deceived. It was a queer little affair with a tuft of black
hair, in grace greatly inferior to a kitten. Its tiny, pink, crisped
fingers with their infinitesimal nails, its microscopic curly toes, and
solemn black eyes--when they showed, its inimitable stillness when it
slept, its incredible vigour when it fed, were all, as it were,
miraculous. Withal, she had a feeling of gratitude to one that had not
killed nor even hurt her so very desperately--gratitude because she had
succeeded, performed her part of mother perfectly--the nurse had said
so--she, so distrustful of herself! Instinctively she knew, too, that
this was HER baby, not his, going "to take after her," as they called it.
How it succeeded in giving that impression she could not tell, unless it
were the passivity, and dark eyes of the little creature. Then from one
till three they had slept together with perfect soundness and unanimity.
She awoke to find the nurse standing by the bed, looking as if she wanted
to tell her something.
"Someone to see you, my dear."
And Gyp thought: 'He! I can't think quickly; I ought to think quickly--I
want to, but I can't.' Her face expressed this, for the nurse said at
once:
"I don't think you're quite up to it yet."
Gyp answered:
"Yes. Only, not for five minutes, please."
Her spirit had been very far away, she wanted time to get it back before
she saw him--time to know in some sort what she felt now; what this mite
lying beside her had done for her and him. The thought that it was his,
too--this tiny, helpless being--seemed unreal. No, it was not his! He
had not wanted it, and now that she had been through the torture it was
hers, not his--never his. The memory of the night when she first yielded
to the certainty that the child was coming, and he had come home drunk,
swooped on her, and made her shrink and shudder and put her arm round her
baby. It had not made any difference. Only--Back came the old accusing
thought, from which these last days she had been free: 'But I married
him--I chose to marry him. I can't get out of that!' And she felt as if
she must cry out to the nurse: "Keep him away; I don't want to see him.
Oh, please, I'm tired." She bit the words back. And presently, with a
very faint smile, said:
"Now, I'm ready."
She noticed first what clothes he had on--his newest suit, dark grey,
with little lighter lines--she had chosen it herself; that his tie was in
a bow, not a sailor's knot, and his hair brighter than usual--as always
just after being cut; and surely the hair was growing down again in front
of his ears. Then, gratefully, almost with emotion, she realized that
his lips were quivering, his whole face quivering. He came in on tiptoe,
stood looking at her a minute, then crossed very swiftly to the bed, very
swiftly knelt down, and, taking her hand, turned it over and put his face
to it. The bristles of his moustache tickled her palm; his nose flattened
itself against her fingers, and his lips kept murmuring words into the
hand, with the moist warm touch of his lips. Gyp knew he was burying
there all his remorse, perhaps the excesses he had committed while she
had been away from him, burying the fears he had felt, and the emotion at
seeing her so white and still. She felt that in a minute he would raise
a quite different face. And it flashed through her: "If I loved him I
wouldn't mind what he did--ever! Why don't I love him? There's
something loveable. Why don't I?"
He did raise his face; his eyes lighted on the baby, and he grinned.
"Look at this!" he said. "Is it possible? Oh, my Gyp, what a funny one!
Oh, oh, oh!" He went off into an ecstasy of smothered laughter; then his
face grew grave, and slowly puckered into a sort of comic disgust. Gyp
too had seen the humours of her baby, of its queer little reddish pudge
of a face, of its twenty-seven black hairs, and the dribble at its almost
invisible mouth; but she had also seen it as a miracle; she had felt it,
and there surged up from her all the old revolt and more against his lack
of consideration. It was not a funny one--her baby! It was not ugly!
Or, if it were, she was not fit to be told of it. Her arm tightened
round the warm bundled thing against her. Fiorsen put his finger out and
touched its cheek.
"It IS real--so it is. Mademoiselle Fiorsen. Tk, tk!"
The baby stirred. And Gyp thought: 'If I loved I wouldn't even mind his
laughing at my baby. It would be different.'
"Don't wake her!" she whispered. She felt his eyes on her, knew that his
interest in the baby had ceased as suddenly as it came, that he was
thinking, "How long before I have you in my arms again?" He touched her
hair. And, suddenly, she had a fainting, sinking sensation that she had
never yet known. When she opened her eyes again, the economic agent was
holding something beneath her nose and making sounds that seemed to be
the words: "Well, I am a d--d fool!" repeatedly expressed. Fiorsen was
gone.
Seeing Gyp's eyes once more open, the nurse withdrew the ammonia,
replaced the baby, and saying: "Now go to sleep!" withdrew behind the
screen. Like all robust personalities, she visited on others her
vexations with herself. But Gyp did not go to sleep; she gazed now at
her sleeping baby, now at the pattern of the wall-paper, trying
mechanically to find the bird caught at intervals amongst its
brown-and-green foliage--one bird in each alternate square of the
pattern, so that there was always a bird in the centre of four other
birds. And the bird was of green and yellow with a red beak.
On being turned out of the nursery with the assurance that it was "all
right--only a little faint," Fiorsen went down-stairs disconsolate. The
atmosphere of this dark house where he was a stranger, an unwelcome
stranger, was insupportable. He wanted nothing in it but Gyp, and Gyp
had fainted at his touch. No wonder he felt miserable. He opened a
door. What room was this? A piano! The drawing-room. Ugh! No
fire--what misery! He recoiled to the doorway and stood listening. Not
a sound. Grey light in the cheerless room; almost dark already in the
hall behind him. What a life these English lived--worse than the winter
in his old country home in Sweden, where, at all events, they kept good
fires. And, suddenly, all his being revolted. Stay here and face that
father--and that image of a servant! Stay here for a night of this! Gyp
was not his Gyp, lying there with that baby beside her, in this hostile
house. Smothering his footsteps, he made for the outer hall. There were
his coat and hat. He put them on. His bag? He could not see it. No
matter! They could send it after him. He would write to her--say that
her fainting had upset him--that he could not risk making her faint
again--could not stay in the house so near her, yet so far. She would
understand. And there came over him a sudden wave of longing. Gyp! He
wanted her. To be with her! To look at her and kiss her, and feel her
his own again! And, opening the door, he passed out on to the drive and
strode away, miserable and sick at heart. All the way to the station
through the darkening lanes, and in the railway carriage going up, he
felt that aching wretchedness. Only in the lighted street, driving back
to Rosek's, did he shake it off a little. At dinner and after, drinking
that special brandy he nearly lost it; but it came back when he went to
bed, till sleep relieved him with its darkness and dreams.
XII
Gyp's recovery proceeded at first with a sure rapidity which delighted
Winton. As the economic agent pointed out, she was beautifully made, and
that had a lot to do with it!
Before Christmas Day, she was already out, and on Christmas morning the
old doctor, by way of present, pronounced her fit and ready to go home
when she liked. That afternoon, she was not so well, and next day back
again upstairs. Nothing seemed definitely wrong, only a sort of
desperate lassitude; as if the knowledge that to go back was within her
power, only needing her decision, had been too much for her. And since
no one knew her inward feelings, all were puzzled except Winton. The
nursing of her child was promptly stopped.
It was not till the middle of January that she said to him.
"I must go home, Dad."
The word "home" hurt him, and he only answered:
"Very well, Gyp; when?"
"The house is quite ready. I think I had better go to-morrow. He's still
at Rosek's. I won't let him know. Two or three days there by myself
first would be better for settling baby in."
"Very well; I'll take you up."
He made no effort to ascertain her feelings toward Fiorsen. He knew too
well.
They travelled next day, reaching London at half-past two. Betty had
gone up in the early morning to prepare the way. The dogs had been with
Aunt Rosamund all this time. Gyp missed their greeting; but the
installation of Betty and the baby in the spare room that was now to be
the nursery, absorbed all her first energies. Light was just beginning
to fail when, still in her fur, she took a key of the music-room and
crossed the garden, to see how all had fared during her ten weeks'
absence. What a wintry garden! How different from that languorous,
warm, moonlit night when Daphne Wing had come dancing out of the shadow
of the dark trees. How bare and sharp the boughs against the grey,
darkening sky--and not a song of any bird, not a flower! She glanced
back at the house. Cold and white it looked, but there were lights in her
room and in the nursery, and someone just drawing the curtains. Now that
the leaves were off, one could see the other houses of the road, each
different in shape and colour, as is the habit of London houses. It was
cold, frosty; Gyp hurried down the path. Four little icicles had formed
beneath the window of the music-room. They caught her eye, and, passing
round to the side, she broke one off. There must be a fire in there, for
she could see the flicker through the curtains not quite drawn.
Thoughtful Ellen had been airing it! But, suddenly, she stood still.
There was more than a fire in there! Through the chink in the drawn
curtains she had seen two figures seated on the divan. Something seemed
to spin round in her head. She turned to rush away. Then a kind of
superhuman coolness came to her, and she deliberately looked in. He and
Daphne Wing! His arm was round her neck. The girl's face riveted her
eyes. It was turned a little back and up, gazing at him, the lips
parted, the eyes hypnotized, adoring; and her arm round him seemed to
shiver--with cold, with ecstasy?
Again that something went spinning through Gyp's head. She raised her
hand. For a second it hovered close to the glass. Then, with a sick
feeling, she dropped it and turned away.
Never! Never would she show him or that girl that they could hurt her!
Never! They were safe from any scene she would make--safe in their nest!
And blindly, across the frosty grass, through the unlighted drawing-room,
she went upstairs to her room, locked the door, and sat down before the
fire. Pride raged within her. She stuffed her handkerchief between her
teeth and lips; she did it unconsciously. Her eyes felt scorched from
the fire-flames, but she did not trouble to hold her hand before them.
Suddenly she thought: 'Suppose I HAD loved him?' and laughed. The
handkerchief dropped to her lap, and she looked at it with wonder--it was
blood-stained. She drew back in the chair, away from the scorching of
the fire, and sat quite still, a smile on her lips. That girl's eyes,
like a little adoring dog's--that girl, who had fawned on her so! She
had got her "distinguished man"! She sprang up and looked at herself in
the glass; shuddered, turned her back on herself, and sat down again. In
her own house! Why not here--in this room? Why not before her eyes?
Not yet a year married! It was almost funny--almost funny! And she had
her first calm thought: 'I am free.'
But it did not seem to mean anything, had no value to a spirit so
bitterly stricken in its pride. She moved her chair closer to the fire
again. Why had she not tapped on the window? To have seen that girl's
face ashy with fright! To have seen him--caught--caught in the room she
had made beautiful for him, the room where she had played for him so many
hours, the room that was part of the house that she paid for! How long
had they used it for their meetings--sneaking in by that door from the
back lane? Perhaps even before she went away--to bear his child! And
there began in her a struggle between mother instinct and her sense of
outrage--a spiritual tug-of-war so deep that it was dumb, unconscious--to
decide whether her baby would be all hers, or would have slipped away
from her heart, and be a thing almost abhorrent.
She huddled nearer the fire, feeling cold and physically sick. And
suddenly the thought came to her: 'If I don't let the servants know I'm
here, they might go out and see what I saw!' Had she shut the
drawing-room window when she returned so blindly? Perhaps already--! In
a fever, she rang the bell, and unlocked the door. The maid came up.
"Please shut the drawing-room, window, Ellen; and tell Betty I'm afraid I
got a little chill travelling. I'm going to bed. Ask her if she can
manage with baby." And she looked straight into the girl's face. It
wore an expression of concern, even of commiseration, but not that
fluttered look which must have been there if she had known.
"Yes, m'm; I'll get you a hot-water bottle, m'm. Would you like a hot
bath and a cup of hot tea at once?"
Gyp nodded. Anything--anything! And when the maid was gone, she thought
mechanically: 'A cup of hot tea! How quaint! What should it be but
hot?'
The maid came back with the tea; she was an affectionate girl, full of
that admiring love servants and dogs always felt for Gyp, imbued, too,
with the instinctive partisanship which stores itself one way or the
other in the hearts of those who live in houses where the atmosphere
lacks unity. To her mind, the mistress was much too good for him--a
foreigner--and such 'abits! Manners--he hadn't any! And no good would
come of it. Not if you took her opinion!
"And I've turned the water in, m'm. Will you have a little mustard in
it?"
Again Gyp nodded. And the girl, going downstairs for the mustard, told
cook there was "that about the mistress that makes you quite pathetic."
The cook, who was fingering her concertina, for which she had a passion,
answered:
"She 'ides up her feelin's, same as they all does. Thank 'eaven she
haven't got that drawl, though, that 'er old aunt 'as--always makes me
feel to want to say, 'Buck up, old dear, you ain't 'alf so precious as
all that!'"
And when the maid Ellen had taken the mustard and gone, she drew out her
concertina to its full length and, with cautionary softness, began to
practise "Home, Sweet Home!"
To Gyp, lying in her hot bath, those muffled strains just mounted, not
quite as a tune, rather as some far-away humming of large flies. The
heat of the water, the pungent smell of the mustard, and that droning hum
slowly soothed and drowsed away the vehemence of feeling. She looked at
her body, silver-white in the yellowish water, with a dreamy sensation.
Some day she, too, would love! Strange feeling she had never had before!
Strange, indeed, that it should come at such a moment, breaking through
the old instinctive shrinking. Yes; some day love would come to her.
There floated before her brain the adoring look on Daphne Wing's face,
the shiver that had passed along her arm, and pitifulness crept into her
heart--a half-bitter, half-admiring pitifulness. Why should she
grudge--she who did not love? The sounds, like the humming of large
flies, grew deeper, more vibrating. It was the cook, in her passion
swelling out her music on the phrase,
"Be it ne-e-ver so humble,
There's no-o place like home!"
XIII
That night, Gyp slept peacefully, as though nothing had happened, as
though there were no future at all before her. She woke into misery.
Her pride would never let her show the world what she had discovered,
would force her to keep an unmoved face and live an unmoved life. But
the struggle between mother-instinct and revolt was still going on within
her. She was really afraid to see her baby, and she sent word to Betty
that she thought it would be safer if she kept quite quiet till the
afternoon.
She got up at noon and stole downstairs. She had not realized how
violent was her struggle over HIS child till she was passing the door of
the room where it was lying. If she had not been ordered to give up
nursing, that struggle would never have come. Her heart ached, but a
demon pressed her on and past the door. Downstairs she just pottered
round, dusting her china, putting in order the books which, after
house-cleaning, the maid had arranged almost too carefully, so that the
first volumes of Dickens and Thackeray followed each other on the top
shell, and the second volumes followed each other on the bottom shelf.
And all the time she thought dully: 'Why am I doing this? What do I care
how the place looks? It is not my home. It can never be my home!'
For lunch she drank some beef tea, keeping up the fiction of her
indisposition. After that, she sat down at her bureau to write.
Something must be decided! There she sat, her forehead on her hand, and
nothing came--not one word--not even the way to address him; just the
date, and that was all. At a ring of the bell she started up. She could
not see anybody! But the maid only brought a note from Aunt Rosamund,
and the dogs, who fell frantically on their mistress and instantly began
to fight for her possession. She went on her knees to separate them, and
enjoin peace and good-will, and their little avid tongues furiously
licked her cheeks. Under the eager touch of those wet tongues the band
round her brain and heart gave way; she was overwhelmed with longing for
her baby. Nearly a day since she had seen her--was it possible? Nearly a
day without sight of those solemn eyes and crinkled toes and fingers! And
followed by the dogs, she went upstairs.
The house was invisible from the music-room; and, spurred on by thought
that, until Fiorsen knew she was back, those two might be there in each
other's arms any moment of the day or night, Gyp wrote that evening:
"DEAR GUSTAV,--We are back.--GYP."
What else in the world could she say? He would not get it till he woke
about eleven. With the instinct to take all the respite she could, and
knowing no more than before how she would receive his return, she went
out in the forenoon and wandered about all day shopping and trying not to
think. Returning at tea-time, she went straight up to her baby, and
there heard from Betty that he had come, and gone out with his violin to
the music-room.
Bent over the child, Gyp needed all her self-control--but her
self-control was becoming great. Soon, the girl would come fluttering
down that dark, narrow lane; perhaps at this very minute her fingers were
tapping at the door, and he was opening it to murmur, "No; she's back!"
Ah, then the girl would shrink! The rapid whispering--some other
meeting-place! Lips to lips, and that look on the girl's face; till she
hurried away from the shut door, in the darkness, disappointed! And he,
on that silver-and-gold divan, gnawing his moustache, his
eyes--catlike---staring at the fire! And then, perhaps, from his violin
would come one of those swaying bursts of sound, with tears in them, and
the wind in them, that had of old bewitched her! She said:
"Open the window just a little, Betty dear--it's hot."
There it was, rising, falling! Music! Why did it so move one even when,
as now, it was the voice of insult! And suddenly she thought: "He will
expect me to go out there again and play for him. But I will not, never!"
She put her baby down, went into her bedroom, and changed hastily into a
teagown for the evening, ready to go downstairs. A little shepherdess in
china on the mantel-shelf attracted her attention, and she took it in her
hand. She had bought it three and more years ago, when she first came to
London, at the beginning of that time of girl-gaiety when all life seemed
a long cotillion, and she its leader. Its cool daintiness made it seem
the symbol of another world, a world without depths or shadows, a world
that did not feel--a happy world!
She had not long to wait before he tapped on the drawing-room window.
She got up from the tea-table to let him in. Why do faces gazing in
through glass from darkness always look hungry--searching, appealing for
what you have and they have not? And while she was undoing the latch she
thought: 'What am I going to say? I feel nothing!' The ardour of his
gaze, voice, hands seemed to her so false as to be almost comic; even
more comically false his look of disappointment when she said:
"Please take care; I'm still brittle!" Then she sat down again and
asked:
"Will you have some tea?"
"Tea! I have you back, and you ask me if I will have tea Gyp! Do you
know what I have felt like all this time? No; you don't know. You know
nothing of me--do you?"
A smile of sheer irony formed on her lips--without her knowing it was
there. She said:
"Have you had a good time at Count Rosek's?" And, without her will,
against her will, the words slipped out: "I'm afraid you've missed the
music-room!"
His stare wavered; he began to walk up and down.
"Missed! Missed everything! I have been very miserable, Gyp. You've no
idea how miserable. Yes, miserable, miserable, miserable!" With each
repetition of that word, his voice grew gayer. And kneeling down in
front of her, he stretched his long arms round her till they met behind
her waist: "Ah, my Gyp! I shall be a different being, now."
And Gyp went on smiling. Between that, and stabbing these false raptures
to the heart, there seemed to be nothing she could do. The moment his
hands relaxed, she got up and said:
"You know there's a baby in the house?"
He laughed.
"Ah, the baby! I'd forgotten. Let's go up and see it."
Gyp answered:
"You go."
She could feel him thinking: 'Perhaps it will make her nice to me!' He
turned suddenly and went.
She stood with her eyes shut, seeing the divan in the music-room and the
girl's arm shivering. Then, going to the piano, she began with all her
might to play a Chopin polonaise.
That evening they dined out, and went to "The Tales of Hoffmann." By such
devices it was possible to put off a little longer what she was going to
do. During the drive home in the dark cab, she shrank away into her
corner, pretending that his arm would hurt her dress; her exasperated
nerves were already overstrung. Twice she was on the very point of
crying out: "I am not Daphne Wing!" But each time pride strangled the
words in her throat. And yet they would have to come. What other reason
could she find to keep him from her room?
But when in her mirror she saw him standing behind her--he had crept into
the bedroom like a cat--fierceness came into her. She could see the
blood rush up in her own white face, and, turning round she said:
"No, Gustav, go out to the music-room if you want a companion."
He recoiled against the foot of the bed and stared at her haggardly, and
Gyp, turning back to her mirror, went on quietly taking the pins out of
her hair. For fully a minute she could see him leaning there, moving his
head and hands as though in pain. Then, to her surprise, he went. And a
vague feeling of compunction mingled with her sense of deliverance. She
lay awake a long time, watching the fire-glow brighten and darken on the
ceiling, tunes from "The Tales of Hoffmann" running in her head; thoughts
and fancies crisscrossing in her excited brain. Falling asleep at last,
she dreamed she was feeding doves out of her hand, and one of them was
Daphne Wing. She woke with a start. The fire still burned, and by its
light she saw him crouching at the foot of the bed, just as he had on
their wedding-night--the same hungry yearning in his face, and an arm
outstretched. Before she could speak, he began:
"Oh, Gyp, you don't understand! All that is nothing--it is only you I
want--always. I am a fool who cannot control himself. Think! It's a
long time since you went away from me."
Gyp said, in a hard voice:
"I didn't want to have a child."
He said quickly:
"No; but now you have it you are glad. Don't be unmerciful, my Gyp! It
is like you to be merciful. That girl--it is all over--I swear--I
promise."
His hand touched her foot through the soft eiderdown. Gyp thought: 'Why
does he come and whine to me like this? He has no dignity--none!' And
she said:
"How can you promise? You have made the girl love you. I saw her face."
He drew his hand back.
"You saw her?"
"Yes."
He was silent, staring at her. Presently he began again:
"She is a little fool. I do not care for the whole of her as much as I
care for your one finger. What does it matter what one does in that way
if one does not care? The soul, not the body, is faithful. A man
satisfies appetite--it is nothing."
Gyp said:
"Perhaps not; but it is something when it makes others miserable."
"Has it made you miserable, my Gyp?"
His voice had a ring of hope. She answered, startled:
"I? No--her."
"Her? Ho! It is an experience for her--it is life. It will do her no
harm."
"No; nothing will do anybody harm if it gives you pleasure."
At that bitter retort, he kept silence a long time, now and then heaving
a long sigh. His words kept sounding in her heart: "The soul, not the
body, is faithful." Was he, after all, more faithful to her than she had
ever been, could ever be--who did not love, had never loved him? What
right had she to talk, who had married him out of vanity, out of--what?
And suddenly he said:
"Gyp! Forgive!"
She uttered a sigh, and turned away her face.
He bent down against the eider-down. She could hear him drawing long,
sobbing breaths, and, in the midst of her lassitude and hopelessness, a
sort of pity stirred her. What did it matter? She said, in a choked
voice:
"Very well, I forgive."
XIV
The human creature has wonderful power of putting up with things. Gyp
never really believed that Daphne Wing was of the past. Her sceptical
instinct told her that what Fiorsen might honestly mean to do was very
different from what he would do under stress of opportunity carefully put
within his reach.
Since her return, Rosek had begun to come again, very careful not to
repeat his mistake, but not deceiving her at all. Though his
self-control was as great as Fiorsen's was small, she felt he had not
given up his pursuit of her, and would take very good care that Daphne
Wing was afforded every chance of being with her husband. But pride never
let her allude to the girl. Besides, what good to speak of her? They
would both lie--Rosek, because he obviously saw the mistaken line of his
first attack; Fiorsen, because his temperament did not permit him to
suffer by speaking the truth.
Having set herself to endure, she found she must live in the moment,
never think of the future, never think much of anything. Fortunately,
nothing so conduces to vacuity as a baby. She gave herself up to it with
desperation. It was a good baby, silent, somewhat understanding. In
watching its face, and feeling it warm against her, Gyp succeeded daily
in getting away into the hypnotic state of mothers, and cows that chew
the cud. But the baby slept a great deal, and much of its time was
claimed by Betty. Those hours, and they were many, Gyp found difficult.
She had lost interest in dress and household elegance, keeping just
enough to satisfy her fastidiousness; money, too, was scarce, under the
drain of Fiorsen's irregular requirements. If she read, she began almost
at once to brood. She was cut off from the music-room, had not crossed
its threshold since her discovery. Aunt Rosamund's efforts to take her
into society were fruitless--all the effervescence was out of that, and,
though her father came, he never stayed long for fear of meeting Fiorsen.
In this condition of affairs, she turned more and more to her own music,
and one morning, after she had come across some compositions of her
girlhood, she made a resolution. That afternoon she dressed herself with
pleasure, for the first time for months, and sallied forth into the
February frost.
Monsieur Edouard Harmost inhabited the ground floor of a house in the
Marylebone Road. He received his pupils in a large back room overlooking
a little sooty garden. A Walloon by extraction, and of great vitality,
he grew old with difficulty, having a soft corner in his heart for women,
and a passion for novelty, even for new music, that was unappeasable.
Any fresh discovery would bring a tear rolling down his mahogany cheeks
into his clipped grey beard, the while he played, singing wheezily to
elucidate the wondrous novelty; or moved his head up and down, as if
pumping.
When Gyp was shown into this well-remembered room he was seated, his
yellow fingers buried in his stiff grey hair, grieving over a pupil who
had just gone out. He did not immediately rise, but stared hard at Gyp.
"Ah," he said, at last, "my little old friend! She has come back! Now
that is good!" And, patting her hand he looked into her face, which had
a warmth and brilliance rare to her in these days. Then, making for the
mantelpiece, he took therefrom a bunch of Parma violets, evidently
brought by his last pupil, and thrust them under her nose. "Take them,
take them--they were meant for me. Now--how much have you forgotten?
Come!" And, seizing her by the elbow, he almost forced her to the piano.
"Take off your furs. Sit down!"
And while Gyp was taking off her coat, he fixed on her his prominent
brown eyes that rolled easily in their slightly blood-shot whites, under
squared eyelids and cliffs of brow. She had on what Fiorsen called her
"humming-bird" blouse--dark blue, shot with peacock and old rose, and
looked very warm and soft under her fur cap. Monsieur Harmost's stare
seemed to drink her in; yet that stare was not unpleasant, having in it
only the rather sad yearning of old men who love beauty and know that
their time for seeing it is getting short.
"Play me the 'Carnival,'" he said. "We shall soon see!"
Gyp played. Twice he nodded; once he tapped his fingers on his teeth,
and showed her the whites of his eyes--which meant: "That will have to be
very different!" And once he grunted. When she had finished, he sat
down beside her, took her hand in his, and, examining the fingers, began:
"Yes, yes, soon again! Spoiling yourself, playing for that fiddler!
Trop sympathique! The back-bone, the back-bone--we shall improve that.
Now, four hours a day for six weeks--and we shall have something again."
Gyp said softly:
"I have a baby, Monsieur Harmost."
Monsieur Harmost bounded.
"What! That is a tragedy!" Gyp shook her head. "You like it? A baby!
Does it not squall?"
"Very little."
"Mon Dieu! Well, well, you are still as beautiful as ever. That is
something. Now, what can you do with this baby? Could you get rid of it
a little? This is serious. This is a talent in danger. A fiddler, and a
baby! C'est beaucoup! C'est trop!"
Gyp smiled. And Monsieur Harmost, whose exterior covered much
sensibility, stroked her hand.
"You have grown up, my little friend," he said gravely. "Never mind;
nothing is wasted. But a baby!" And he chirruped his lips. "Well;
courage! We shall do things yet!"
Gyp turned her head away to hide the quiver of her lips. The scent of
latakia tobacco that had soaked into things, and of old books and music,
a dark smell, like Monsieur Harmost's complexion; the old brown curtains,
the sooty little back garden beyond, with its cat-runs, and its one
stunted sumach tree; the dark-brown stare of Monsieur Harmost's rolling
eyes brought back that time of happiness, when she used to come week
after week, full of gaiety and importance, and chatter away, basking in
his brusque admiration and in music, all with the glamourous feeling that
she was making him happy, and herself happy, and going to play very
finely some day.
The voice of Monsieur Harmost, softly gruff, as if he knew what she was
feeling, increased her emotion; her breast heaved under the humming-bird
blouse, water came into her eyes, and more than ever her lips quivered.
He was saying:
"Come, come! The only thing we cannot cure is age. You were right to
come, my child. Music is your proper air. If things are not all what
they ought to be, you shall soon forget. In music--in music, we can get
away. After all, my little friend, they cannot take our dreams from
us--not even a wife, not even a husband can do that. Come, we shall have
good times yet!"
And Gyp, with a violent effort, threw off that sudden weakness. From
those who serve art devotedly there radiates a kind of glamour. She left
Monsieur Harmost that afternoon, infected by his passion for music.
Poetic justice--on which all homeopathy is founded--was at work to try
and cure her life by a dose of what had spoiled it. To music, she now
gave all the hours she could spare. She went to him twice a week,
determining to get on, but uneasy at the expense, for monetary conditions
were ever more embarrassed. At home, she practised steadily and worked
hard at composition. She finished several songs and studies during the
spring and summer, and left still more unfinished. Monsieur Harmost was
tolerant of these efforts, seeming to know that harsh criticism or
disapproval would cut her impulse down, as frost cuts the life of
flowers. Besides, there was always something fresh and individual in her
things. He asked her one day:
"What does your husband think of these?"
Gyp was silent a moment.
"I don't show them to him."
She never had; she instinctively kept back the knowledge that she
composed, dreading his ruthlessness when anything grated on his nerves,
and knowing that a breath of mockery would wither her belief in herself,
frail enough plant already. The only person, besides her master, to whom
she confided her efforts was--strangely enough--Rosek. But he had
surprised her one day copying out some music, and said at once: "I knew.
I was certain you composed. Ah, do play it to me! I am sure you have
talent." The warmth with which he praised that little "caprice" was
surely genuine; and she felt so grateful that she even played him others,
and then a song for him to sing. From that day, he no longer seemed to
her odious; she even began to have for him a certain friendliness, to be
a little sorry, watching him, pale, trim, and sphinx-like, in her
drawing-room or garden, getting no nearer to the fulfilment of his
desire. He had never again made love to her, but she knew that at the
least sign he would. His face and his invincible patience made him
pathetic to her. Women such as Gyp cannot actively dislike those who
admire them greatly. She consulted him about Fiorsen's debts. There
were hundreds of pounds owing, it seemed, and, in addition, much to Rosek
himself. The thought of these debts weighed unbearably on her. Why did
he, HOW did he get into debt like this? What became of the money he
earned? His fees, this summer, were good enough. There was such a
feeling of degradation about debt. It was, somehow, so underbred to owe
money to all sorts of people. Was it on that girl, on other women, that
he spent it all? Or was it simply that his nature had holes in every
pocket?
Watching Fiorsen closely, that spring and early summer, she was conscious
of a change, a sort of loosening, something in him had given way--as
when, in winding a watch, the key turns on and on, the ratchet being
broken. Yet he was certainly working hard--perhaps harder than ever.
She would hear him, across the garden, going over and over a passage, as
if he never would be satisfied. But his playing seemed to her to have
lost its fire and sweep; to be stale, and as if disillusioned. It was
all as though he had said to himself: "What's the use?" In his face,
too, there was a change. She knew--she was certain that he was drinking
secretly. Was it his failure with her? Was it the girl? Was it simply
heredity from a hard-drinking ancestry?
Gyp never faced these questions. To face them would mean useless
discussion, useless admission that she could not love him, useless
asseveration from him about the girl, which she would not believe,
useless denials of all sorts. Hopeless!
He was very irritable, and seemed especially to resent her music lessons,
alluding to them with a sort of sneering impatience. She felt that he
despised them as amateurish, and secretly resented it. He was often
impatient, too, of the time she gave to the baby. His own conduct with
the little creature was like all the rest of him. He would go to the
nursery, much to Betty's alarm, and take up the baby; be charming with it
for about ten minutes, then suddenly dump it back into its cradle, stare
at it gloomily or utter a laugh, and go out. Sometimes, he would come up
when Gyp was there, and after watching her a little in silence, almost
drag her away.
Suffering always from the guilty consciousness of having no love for him,
and ever more and more from her sense that, instead of saving him she
was, as it were, pushing him down-hill--ironical nemesis for vanity!--Gyp
was ever more and more compliant to his whims, trying to make up. But
this compliance, when all the time she felt further and further away, was
straining her to breaking-point. Hers was a nature that goes on
passively enduring till something snaps; after that--no more.
Those months of spring and summer were like a long spell of drought, when
moisture gathers far away, coming nearer, nearer, till, at last, the
deluge bursts and sweeps the garden.
XV
The tenth of July that year was as the first day of summer. There had
been much fine weather, but always easterly or northerly; now, after a
broken, rainy fortnight, the sun had come in full summer warmth with a
gentle breeze, drifting here and there scent of the opening lime blossom.
In the garden, under the trees at the far end, Betty sewed at a garment,
and the baby in her perambulator had her seventh morning sleep. Gyp
stood before a bed of pansies and sweet peas. How monkeyish the pansies'
faces! The sweet peas, too, were like tiny bright birds fastened to
green perches swaying with the wind. And their little green tridents,
growing out from the queer, flat stems, resembled the antennae of
insects. Each of these bright frail, growing things had life and
individuality like herself!
The sound of footsteps on the gravel made her turn. Rosek was coming
from the drawing-room window. Rather startled, Gyp looked at him over
her shoulder. What had brought him at eleven o'clock in the morning? He
came up to her, bowed, and said:
"I came to see Gustav. He's not up yet, it seems. I thought I would
speak to you first. Can we talk?"
Hesitating just a second, Gyp drew off her gardening-gloves:
"Of course! Here? Or in the drawing-room?"
Rosek answered:
"In the drawing-room, please."
A faint tremor passed through her, but she led the way, and seated
herself where she could see Betty and the baby. Rosek stood looking down
at her; his stillness, the sweetish gravity of his well-cut lips, his
spotless dandyism stirred in Gyp a kind of unwilling admiration.
"What is it?" she said.
"Bad business, I'm afraid. Something must be done at once. I have been
trying to arrange things, but they will not wait. They are even
threatening to sell up this house."
With a sense of outrage, Gyp cried:
"Nearly everything here is mine."
Rosek shook his head.
"The lease is in his name--you are his wife. They can do it, I assure
you." A sort of shadow passed over his face, and he added: "I cannot
help him any more--just now."
Gyp shook her head quickly.
"No--of course! You ought not to have helped him at all. I can't
bear--" He bowed, and she stopped, ashamed. "How much does he owe
altogether?"
"About thirteen hundred pounds. It isn't much, of course. But there is
something else--"
"Worse?"
Rosek nodded.
"I am afraid to tell you; you will think again perhaps that I am trying
to make capital out of it. I can read your thoughts, you see. I cannot
afford that you should think that, this time."
Gyp made a little movement as though putting away his words.
"No; tell me, please."
Rosek shrugged his shoulders.
"There is a man called Wagge, an undertaker--the father of someone you
know--"
"Daphne Wing?"
"Yes. A child is coming. They have made her tell. It means the
cancelling of her engagements, of course--and other things."
Gyp uttered a little laugh; then she said slowly:
"Can you tell me, please, what this Mr.--Wagge can do?"
Again Rosek shrugged his shoulders.
"He is rabid--a rabid man of his class is dangerous. A lot of money will
be wanted, I should think--some blood, perhaps."
He moved swiftly to her, and said very low:
"Gyp, it is a year since I told you of this. You did not believe me
then. I told you, too, that I loved you. I love you more, now, a
hundred times! Don't move! I am going up to Gustav."
He turned, and Gyp thought he was really going; but he stopped and came
back past the line of the window. The expression of his face was quite
changed, so hungry that, for a moment, she felt sorry for him. And that
must have shown in her face, for he suddenly caught at her, and tried to
kiss her lips; she wrenched back, and he could only reach her throat, but
that he kissed furiously. Letting her go as suddenly, he bent his head
and went out without a look.
Gyp stood wiping his kisses off her throat with the back of her hand,
dumbly, mechanically thinking: "What have I done to be treated like this?
What HAVE I done?" No answer came. And such rage against men flared up
that she just stood there, twisting her garden-gloves in her hands, and
biting the lips he would have kissed. Then, going to her bureau, she
took up her address book and looked for the name: Wing, 88, Frankland
Street, Fulham. Unhooking her little bag from off the back of the chair,
she put her cheque-book into it. Then, taking care to make no sound, she
passed into the hall, caught up her sunshade, and went out, closing the
door without noise.
She walked quickly toward Baker Street. Her gardening-hat was right
enough, but she had come out without gloves, and must go into the first
shop and buy a pair. In the choosing of them, she forgot her emotions
for a minute. Out in the street again, they came back as bitterly as
ever. And the day was so beautiful--the sun bright, the sky blue, the
clouds dazzling white; from the top of her 'bus she could see all its
brilliance. There rose up before her the memory of the man who had
kissed her arm at the first ball. And now--this! But, mixed with her
rage, a sort of unwilling compassion and fellow feeling kept rising for
that girl, that silly, sugar-plum girl, brought to such a pass by--her
husband. These feelings sustained her through that voyage to Fulham. She
got down at the nearest corner, walked up a widish street of narrow grey
houses till she came to number eighty-eight. On that newly scrubbed
step, waiting for the door to open, she very nearly turned and fled.
What exactly had she come to do?
The door was opened by a servant in an untidy frock. Mutton! The smell
of mutton--there it was, just as the girl had said!
"Is Miss--Miss Daphne Wing at home?"
In that peculiar "I've given it up" voice of domestics in small
households, the servant answered:
"Yes; Miss Disey's in. D'you want to see 'er? What nyme?"
Gyp produced her card. The maid looked at it, at Gyp, and at two
brown-painted doors, as much as to say, "Where will you have it?" Then,
opening the first of them, she said:
"Tyke a seat, please; I'll fetch her."
Gyp went in. In the middle of what was clearly the dining-room, she
tried to subdue the tremor of her limbs and a sense of nausea. The table
against which her hand rested was covered with red baize, no doubt to
keep the stains of mutton from penetrating to the wood. On the mahogany
sideboard reposed a cruet-stand and a green dish of very red apples. A
bamboo-framed talc screen painted with white and yellow marguerites stood
before a fireplace filled with pampas-grass dyed red. The chairs were of
red morocco, the curtains a brownish-red, the walls green, and on them
hung a set of Landseer prints. The peculiar sensation which red and
green in juxtaposition produce on the sensitive was added to Gyp's
distress. And, suddenly, her eyes lighted on a little deep-blue china
bowl. It stood on a black stand on the mantel-piece, with nothing in it.
To Gyp, in this room of red and green, with the smell of mutton creeping
in, that bowl was like the crystallized whiff of another world. Daphne
Wing--not Daisy Wagge--had surely put it there! And, somehow, it touched
her--emblem of stifled beauty, emblem of all that the girl had tried to
pour out to her that August afternoon in her garden nearly a year ago.
Thin Eastern china, good and really beautiful! A wonder they allowed it
to pollute this room!
A sigh made her turn round. With her back against the door and a white,
scared face, the girl was standing. Gyp thought: 'She has suffered
horribly.' And, going impulsively up to her, she held out her hand.
Daphne Wing sighed out: "Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen!" and, bending over that hand,
kissed it. Gyp saw that her new glove was wet. Then the girl relapsed,
her feet a little forward, her head a little forward, her back against
the door. Gyp, who knew why she stood thus, was swept again by those two
emotions--rage against men, and fellow feeling for one about to go
through what she herself had just endured.
"It's all right," she said, gently; "only, what's to be done?"
Daphne Wing put her hands up over her white face and sobbed. She sobbed
so quietly but so terribly deeply that Gyp herself had the utmost
difficulty not to cry. It was the sobbing of real despair by a creature
bereft of hope and strength, above all, of love--the sort of weeping
which is drawn from desolate, suffering souls only by the touch of fellow
feeling. And, instead of making Gyp glad or satisfying her sense of
justice, it filled her with more rage against her husband--that he had
taken this girl's infatuation for his pleasure and then thrown her away.
She seemed to see him discarding that clinging, dove-fair girl, for
cloying his senses and getting on his nerves, discarding her with caustic
words, to abide alone the consequences of her infatuation. She put her
hand timidly on that shaking shoulder, and stroked it. For a moment the
sobbing stopped, and the girl said brokenly:
"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I do love him so!" At those naive words, a painful
wish to laugh seized on Gyp, making her shiver from head to foot. Daphne
Wing saw it, and went on: "I know--I know--it's awful; but I do--and now
he--he--" Her quiet but really dreadful sobbing broke out again. And
again Gyp began stroking and stroking her shoulder. "And I have been so
awful to you! Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, do forgive me, please!"
All Gyp could find to answer, was:
"Yes, yes; that's nothing! Don't cry--don't cry!"
Very slowly the sobbing died away, till it was just a long shivering, but
still the girl held her hands over her face and her face down. Gyp felt
paralyzed. The unhappy girl, the red and green room, the smell of
mutton--creeping!
At last, a little of that white face showed; the lips, no longer craving
for sugar-plums, murmured:
"It's you he--he--really loves all the time. And you don't love
him--that's what's so funny--and--and--I can't understand it. Oh, Mrs.
Fiorsen, if I could see him--just see him! He told me never to come
again; and I haven't dared. I haven't seen him for three weeks--not
since I told him about IT. What shall I do? What shall I do?"
His being her own husband seemed as nothing to Gyp at that moment. She
felt such pity and yet such violent revolt that any girl should want to
crawl back to a man who had spurned her. Unconsciously, she had drawn
herself up and pressed her lips together. The girl, who followed every
movement, said piteously:
"I don't seem to have any pride. I don't mind what he does to me, or
what he says, if only I can see him."
Gyp's revolt yielded to her pity. She said:
"How long before?"
"Three months."
Three months--and in this state of misery!
"I think I shall do something desperate. Now that I can't dance, and
THEY know, it's too awful! If I could see him, I wouldn't mind anything.
But I know--I know he'll never want me again. Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I wish I
was dead! I do!"
A heavy sigh escaped Gyp, and, bending suddenly, she kissed the girl's
forehead. Still that scent of orange blossom about her skin or hair, as
when she asked whether she ought to love or not; as when she came,
moth-like, from the tree-shade into the moonlight, spun, and fluttered,
with her shadow spinning and fluttering before her. Gyp turned away,
feeling that she must relieve the strain and pointing to the bowl, said:
"YOU put that there, I'm sure. It's beautiful."
The girl answered, with piteous eagerness:
"Oh, would you like it? Do take it. Count Rosek gave it me." She
started away from the door. "Oh, that's papa. He'll be coming in!"
Gyp heard a man clear his throat, and the rattle of an umbrella falling
into a stand; the sight of the girl wilting and shrinking against the
sideboard steadied her. Then the door opened, and Mr. Wagge entered.
Short and thick, in black frock coat and trousers, and a greyish beard,
he stared from one to the other. He looked what he was, an Englishman
and a chapelgoer, nourished on sherry and mutton, who could and did make
his own way in the world. His features, coloured, as from a deep
liverishness, were thick, like his body, and not ill-natured, except for
a sort of anger in his small, rather piggy grey eyes. He said in a voice
permanently gruff, but impregnated with a species of professional
ingratiation:
"Ye-es? Whom 'ave I--?"
"Mrs. Fiorsen."
"Ow!" The sound of his breathing could be heard distinctly; he twisted a
chair round and said:
"Take a seat, won't you?"
Gyp shook her head.
In Mr. Wagge's face a kind of deference seemed to struggle with some more
primitive emotion. Taking out a large, black-edged handkerchief, he blew
his nose, passed it freely over his visage, and turning to his daughter,
muttered:
"Go upstairs."
The girl turned quickly, and the last glimpse of her white face whipped
up Gyp's rage against men. When the door was shut, Mr. Wagge cleared his
throat; the grating sound carried with it the suggestion of enormously
thick linings.
He said more gruffly than ever:
"May I ask what 'as given us the honour?"
"I came to see your daughter."
His little piggy eyes travelled from her face to her feet, to the walls
of the room, to his own watch-chain, to his hands that had begun to rub
themselves together, back to her breast, higher than which they dared not
mount. Their infinite embarrassment struck Gyp. She could almost hear
him thinking: 'Now, how can I discuss it with this attractive young
female, wife of the scoundrel who's ruined my daughter? Delicate-that's
what it is!' Then the words burst hoarsely from him.
"This is an unpleasant business, ma'am. I don't know what to say. Reelly
I don't. It's awkward; it's very awkward."
Gyp said quietly:
"Your daughter is desperately unhappy; and that can't be good for her
just now."
Mr. Wagge's thick figure seemed to writhe. "Pardon me, ma'am," he
spluttered, "but I must call your husband a scoundrel. I'm sorry to be
impolite, but I must do it. If I had 'im 'ere, I don't know that I
should be able to control myself--I don't indeed." Gyp made a movement
of her gloved hands, which he seemed to interpret as sympathy, for he
went on in a stream of husky utterance: "It's a delicate thing before a
lady, and she the injured party; but one has feelings. From the first I
said this dancin' was in the face of Providence; but women have no more
sense than an egg. Her mother she would have it; and now she's got it!
Career, indeed! Pretty career! Daughter of mine! I tell you, ma'am, I'm
angry; there's no other word for it--I'm angry. If that scoundrel comes
within reach of me, I shall mark 'im--I'm not a young man, but I shall
mark 'im. An' what to say to you, I'm sure I don't know. That my
daughter should be'ave like that! Well, it's made a difference to me.
An' now I suppose her name'll be dragged in the mud. I tell you frankly
I 'oped you wouldn't hear of it, because after all the girl's got her
punishment. And this divorce-court--it's not nice--it's a horrible thing
for respectable people. And, mind you, I won't see my girl married to
that scoundrel, not if you do divorce 'im. No; she'll have her disgrace
for nothing."
Gyp, who had listened with her head a little bent, raised it suddenly,
and said:
"There'll be no public disgrace, Mr. Wagge, unless you make it yourself.
If you send Daphne--Daisy--quietly away somewhere till her trouble's
over, no one need know anything."
Mr. Wagge, whose mouth had opened slightly, and whose breathing could
certainly have been heard in the street, took a step forward and said:
"Do I understand you to say that you're not goin' to take proceedings,
ma'am?"
Gyp shuddered, and shook her head.
Mr. Wagge stood silent, slightly moving his face up and down.
"Well," he said, at length, "it's more than she deserves; but I don't
disguise it's a relief to me. And I must say, in a young lady like you,
and--and handsome, it shows a Christian spirit." Again Gyp shivered, and
shook her head. "It does. You'll allow me to say so, as a man old
enough to be your father--and a regular attendant."
He held out his hand. Gyp put her gloved hand into it.
"I'm very, very sorry. Please be nice to her."
Mr. Wagge recoiled a little, and for some seconds stood ruefully rubbing
his hands together and looking from side to side.
"I'm a domestic man," he said suddenly. "A domestic man in a serious
line of life; and I never thought to have anything like this in my
family--never! It's been--well, I can't tell you what it's been!"
Gyp took up her sunshade. She felt that she must get away; at any moment
he might say something she could not bear--and the smell of mutton rising
fast!
"I am sorry," she said again; "good-bye"; and moved past him to the door.
She heard him breathing hard as he followed her to open it, and thought:
'If only--oh! please let him be silent till I get outside!' Mr. Wagge
passed her and put his hand on the latch of the front door. His little
piggy eyes scanned her almost timidly.
"Well," he said, "I'm very glad to have the privilege of your
acquaintance; and, if I may say so, you 'ave--you 'ave my 'earty
sympathy. Good-day."
The door once shut behind her, Gyp took a long breath and walked swiftly
away. Her cheeks were burning; and, with a craving for protection, she
put up her sunshade. But the girl's white face came up again before her,
and the sound of her words:
"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I wish I was dead! I DO!"
XVI
Gyp walked on beneath her sunshade, making unconsciously for the peace of
trees. Her mind was a whirl of impressions--Daphne Wing's figure against
the door, Mr. Wagge's puggy grey-bearded countenance, the red
pampas-grass, the blue bowl, Rosek's face swooping at her, her last
glimpse of her baby asleep under the trees!
She reached Kensington Gardens, turned into that walk renowned for the
beauty of its flowers and the plainness of the people who frequent it,
and sat down on a bench. It was near the luncheon-hour; nursemaids,
dogs, perambulators, old gentlemen--all were hurrying a little toward
their food. They glanced with critical surprise at this pretty young
woman, leisured and lonely at such an hour, trying to find out what was
wrong with her, as one naturally does with beauty--bow legs or something,
for sure, to balance a face like that! But Gyp noticed none of them,
except now and again a dog which sniffed her knees in passing. For
months she had resolutely cultivated insensibility, resolutely refused to
face reality; the barrier was forced now, and the flood had swept her
away. "Proceedings!" Mr. Wagge had said. To those who shrink from
letting their secret affairs be known even by their nearest friends, the
notion of a public exhibition of troubles simply never comes, and it had
certainly never come to Gyp. With a bitter smile she thought: 'I'm
better off than she is, after all! Suppose I loved him, too? No, I
never--never--want to love. Women who love suffer too much.'
She sat on that bench a long time before it came into her mind that she
was due at Monsieur Harmost's for a music lesson at three o'clock. It
was well past two already; and she set out across the grass. The summer
day was full of murmurings of bees and flies, cooings of blissful
pigeons, the soft swish and stir of leaves, and the scent of lime blossom
under a sky so blue, with few white clouds slow, and calm, and full. Why
be unhappy? And one of those spotty spaniel dogs, that have broad heads,
with frizzy topknots, and are always rascals, smelt at her frock and
moved round and round her, hoping that she would throw her sunshade on
the water for him to fetch, this being in his view the only reason why
anything was carried in the hand.
She found Monsieur Harmost fidgeting up and down the room, whose opened
windows could not rid it of the smell of latakia.
"Ah," he said, "I thought you were not coming! You look pale; are you
not well? Is it the heat? Or"--he looked hard into her face--"has
someone hurt you, my little friend?" Gyp shook her head. "Ah, yes," he
went on irritably; "you tell me nothing; you tell nobody nothing! You
close up your pretty face like a flower at night. At your age, my child,
one should make confidences; a secret grief is to music as the east wind
to the stomach. Put off your mask for once." He came close to her.
"Tell me your troubles. It is a long time since I have been meaning to
ask. Come! We are only once young; I want to see you happy."
But Gyp stood looking down. Would it be relief to pour her soul out?
Would it? His brown eyes questioned her like an old dog's. She did not
want to hurt one so kind. And yet--impossible!
Monsieur Harmost suddenly sat down at the piano. Resting his hands on
the keys, he looked round at her, and said:
"I am in love with you, you know. Old men can be very much in love, but
they know it is no good--that makes them endurable. Still, we like to
feel of use to youth and beauty; it gives us a little warmth. Come; tell
me your grief!" He waited a moment, then said irritably: "Well, well, we
go to music then!"
It was his habit to sit by her at the piano corner, but to-day he stood
as if prepared to be exceptionally severe. And Gyp played, whether from
overexcited nerves or from not having had any lunch, better than she had
ever played. The Chopin polonaise in A flat, that song of revolution,
which had always seemed so unattainable, went as if her fingers were
being worked for her. When she had finished, Monsieur Harmost, bending
forward, lifted one of her hands and put his lips to it. She felt the
scrub of his little bristly beard, and raised her face with a deep sigh
of satisfaction. A voice behind them said mockingly:
"Bravo!"
There, by the door, stood Fiorsen.
"Congratulations, madame! I have long wanted to see you under the
inspiration of your--master!"
Gyp's heart began to beat desperately. Monsieur Harmost had not moved.
A faint grin slowly settled in his beard, but his eyes were startled.
Fiorsen kissed the back of his own hand.
"To this old Pantaloon you come to give your heart. Ho--what a lover!"
Gyp saw the old man quiver; she sprang up and cried:
"You brute!"
Fiorsen ran forward, stretching out his arms toward Monsieur Harmost, as
if to take him by the throat.
The old man drew himself up. "Monsieur," he said, "you are certainly
drunk."
Gyp slipped between, right up to those outstretched hands till she could
feel their knuckles against her. Had he gone mad? Would he strangle
her? But her eyes never moved from his, and his began to waver; his
hands dropped, and, with a kind of moan, he made for the door.
Monsieur Harmost's voice behind her said:
"Before you go, monsieur, give me some explanation of this imbecility!"
Fiorsen spun round, shook his fist, and went out muttering. They heard
the front door slam. Gyp turned abruptly to the window, and there, in
her agitation, she noticed little outside things as one does in moments
of bewildered anger. Even into that back yard, summer had crept. The
leaves of the sumach-tree were glistening; in a three-cornered little
patch of sunlight, a black cat with a blue ribbon round its neck was
basking. The voice of one hawking strawberries drifted melancholy from a
side street. She was conscious that Monsieur Harmost was standing very
still, with a hand pressed to his mouth, and she felt a perfect passion
of compunction and anger. That kind and harmless old man--to be so
insulted! This was indeed the culmination of all Gustav's outrages! She
would never forgive him this! For he had insulted her as well, beyond
what pride or meekness could put up with. She turned, and, running up to
the old man, put both her hands into his.
"I'm so awfully sorry. Good-bye, dear, dear Monsieur Harmost; I shall
come on Friday!" And, before he could stop her, she was gone.
She dived into the traffic; but, just as she reached the pavement on the
other side, felt her dress plucked and saw Fiorsen just behind her. She
shook herself free and walked swiftly on. Was he going to make a scene
in the street? Again he caught her arm. She stopped dead, faced round
on him, and said, in an icy voice:
"Please don't make scenes in the street, and don't follow me like this.
If you want to talk to me, you can--at home."
Then, very calmly, she turned and walked on. But he was still following
her, some paces off. She did not quicken her steps, and to the first
taxicab driver that passed she made a sign, and saying:
"Bury Street--quick!" got in. She saw Fiorsen rush forward, too late to
stop her. He threw up his hand and stood still, his face deadly white
under his broad-brimmed hat. She was far too angry and upset to care.
From the moment she turned to the window at Monsieur Harmost's, she had
determined to go to her father's. She would not go back to Fiorsen; and
the one thought that filled her mind was how to get Betty and her baby.
Nearly four! Dad was almost sure to be at his club. And leaning out,
she said: "No; Hyde Park Corner, please."
The hall porter, who knew her, after calling to a page-boy: "Major
Winton--sharp, now!" came specially out of his box to offer her a seat
and The Times.
Gyp sat with it on her knee, vaguely taking in her surroundings--a thin
old gentleman anxiously weighing himself in a corner, a white-calved
footman crossing with a tea-tray; a number of hats on pegs; the
green-baize board with its white rows of tapelike paper, and three
members standing before it. One of them, a tall, stout,
good-humoured-looking man in pince-nez and a white waistcoat, becoming
conscious, removed his straw hat and took up a position whence, without
staring, he could gaze at her; and Gyp knew, without ever seeming to
glance at him, that he found her to his liking. She saw her father's
unhurried figure passing that little group, all of whom were conscious
now, and eager to get away out of this sanctum of masculinity, she met
him at the top of the low steps, and said:
"I want to talk to you, Dad."
He gave her a quick look, selected his hat, and followed to the door. In
the cab, he put his hand on hers and said:
"Now, my dear?"
But all she could get out was:
"I want to come back to you. I can't go on there. It's--it's--I've come
to an end."
His hand pressed hers tightly, as if he were trying to save her the need
for saying more. Gyp went on:
"I must get baby; I'm terrified that he'll try to keep her, to get me
back."
"Is he at home?"
"I don't know. I haven't told him that I'm going to leave him."
Winton looked at his watch and asked:
"Does the baby ever go out as late as this?"
"Yes; after tea. It's cooler."
"I'll take this cab on, then. You stay and get the room ready for her.
Don't worry, and don't go out till I return."
And Gyp thought: 'How wonderful of him not to have asked a single
question.'
The cab stopped at the Bury Street door. She took his hand, put it to
her cheek, and got out. He said quietly:
"Do you want the dogs?"
"Yes--oh, yes! He doesn't care for them."
"All right. There'll be time to get you in some things for the night
after I come back. I shan't run any risks to-day. Make Mrs. Markey give
you tea."
Gyp watched the cab gather way again, saw him wave his hand; then, with a
deep sigh, half anxiety, half relief, she rang the bell.
XVII
When the cab debouched again into St. James' Street, Winton gave the
order: "Quick as you can!" One could think better going fast! A little
red had come into his brown cheeks; his eyes under their half-drawn lids
had a keener light; his lips were tightly closed; he looked as he did
when a fox was breaking cover. Gyp could do no wrong, or, if she could,
he would stand by her in it as a matter of course. But he was going to
take no risks--make no frontal attack. Time for that later, if necessary.
He had better nerves than most people, and that kind of steely
determination and resource which makes many Englishmen of his class
formidable in small operations. He kept his cab at the door, rang, and
asked for Gyp, with a kind of pleasure in his ruse.
"She's not in yet, sir. Mr. Fiorsen's in."
"Ah! And baby?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'll come in and see her. In the garden?"
"Yes, sir."
"Dogs there, too?"
"Yes, sir. And will you have tea, please, sir?"
"No, thanks." How to effect this withdrawal without causing gossip, and
yet avoid suspicion of collusion with Gyp? And he added: "Unless Mrs.
Fiorsen comes in."
Passing out into the garden, he became aware that Fiorsen was at the
dining-room window watching him, and decided to make no sign that he knew
this. The baby was under the trees at the far end, and the dogs came
rushing thence with a fury which lasted till they came within scent of
him. Winton went leisurely up to the perambulator, and, saluting Betty,
looked down at his grandchild. She lay under an awning of muslin, for
fear of flies, and was awake. Her solemn, large brown eyes, already like
Gyp's, regarded him with gravity. Clucking to her once or twice, as is
the custom, he moved so as to face the house. In this position, he had
Betty with her back to it. And he said quietly:
"I'm here with a message from your mistress, Betty. Keep your head;
don't look round, but listen to me. She's at Bury Street and going to
stay there; she wants you and baby and the dogs." The stout woman's eyes
grew round and her mouth opened. Winton put his hand on the
perambulator. "Steady, now! Go out as usual with this thing. It's
about your time; and wait for me at the turning to Regent's Park. I'll
come on in my cab and pick you all up. Don't get flurried; don't take
anything; do exactly as you usually would. Understand?"
It is not in the nature of stout women with babies in their charge to
receive such an order without question. Her colour, and the heaving of
that billowy bosom made Winton add quickly:
"Now, Betty, pull yourself together; Gyp wants you. I'll tell you all
about it in the cab."
The poor woman, still heaving vaguely, could only stammer:
"Yes, sir. Poor little thing! What about its night-things? And Miss
Gyp's?"
Conscious of that figure still at the window, Winton made some passes
with his fingers at the baby, and said:
"Never mind them. As soon as you see me at the drawing-room window, get
ready and go. Eyes front, Betty; don't look round; I'll cover your
retreat! Don't fail Gyp now. Pull yourself together."
With a sigh that could have been heard in Kensington, Betty murmured:
"Very well, sir; oh dear!" and began to adjust the strings of her bonnet.
With nods, as if he had been the recipient of some sage remarks about the
baby, Winton saluted, and began his march again towards the house. He
carefully kept his eyes to this side and to that, as if examining the
flowers, but noted all the same that Fiorsen had receded from the window.
Rapid thought told him that the fellow would come back there to see if he
were gone, and he placed himself before a rose-bush, where, at that
reappearance, he could make a sign of recognition. Sure enough, he came;
and Winton quietly raising his hand to the salute passed on through the
drawing-room window. He went quickly into the hall, listened a second,
and opened the dining-room door. Fiorsen was pacing up and down, pale
and restless. He came to a standstill and stared haggardly at Winton,
who said:
"How are you? Gyp not in?"
"No."
Something in the sound of that "No" touched Winton with a vague--a very
vague--compunction. To be left by Gyp! Then his heart hardened again.
The fellow was a rotter--he was sure of it, had always been sure.
"Baby looks well," he said.
Fiorsen turned and began to pace up and down again.
"Where is Gyp? I want her to come in. I want her."
Winton took out his watch.
"It's not late." And suddenly he felt a great aversion for the part he
was playing. To get the baby; to make Gyp safe--yes! But, somehow, not
this pretence that he knew nothing about it. He turned on his heel and
walked out. It imperilled everything; but he couldn't help it. He could
not stay and go on prevaricating like this. Had that woman got clear?
He went back into the drawing-room. There they were--just passing the
side of the house. Five minutes, and they would be down at the turning.
He stood at the window, waiting. If only that fellow did not come in!
Through the partition wall he could hear him still tramping up and down
the dining-room. What a long time a minute was! Three had gone when he
heard the dining-room door opened, and Fiorsen crossing the hall to the
front door. What was he after, standing there as if listening? And
suddenly he heard him sigh. It was just such a sound as many times, in
the long-past days, had escaped himself, waiting, listening for
footsteps, in parched and sickening anxiety. Did this fellow then really
love--almost as he had loved? And in revolt at spying on him like this,
he advanced and said:
"Well, I won't wait any longer."
Fiorsen started; he had evidently supposed himself alone. And Winton
thought: 'By Jove! he does look bad!'
"Good-bye!" he said; but the words: "Give my love to Gyp," perished on
their way up to his lips.
"Good-bye!" Fiorsen echoed. And Winton went out under the trellis,
conscious of that forlorn figure still standing at the half-opened door.
Betty was nowhere in sight; she must have reached the turning. His
mission had succeeded, but he felt no elation. Round the corner, he
picked up his convoy, and, with the perambulator hoisted on to the taxi,
journeyed on at speed. He had said he would explain in the cab, but the
only remark he made was:
"You'll all go down to Mildenham to-morrow."
And Betty, who had feared him ever since their encounter so many years
ago, eyed his profile, without daring to ask questions. Before he reached
home, Winton stopped at a post-office, and sent this telegram:
"Gyp and the baby are with me letter follows.--WINTON."
It salved a conscience on which that fellow's figure in the doorway
weighed; besides, it was necessary, lest Fiorsen should go to the police.
The rest must wait till he had talked with Gyp.
There was much to do, and it was late before they dined, and not till
Markey had withdrawn could they begin their talk.
Close to the open windows where Markey had placed two hydrangea
plants--just bought on his own responsibility, in token of silent
satisfaction--Gyp began. She kept nothing back, recounting the whole
miserable fiasco of her marriage. When she came to Daphne Wing and her
discovery in the music-room, she could see the glowing end of her
father's cigar move convulsively. That insult to his adored one seemed
to Winton so inconceivable that, for a moment, he stopped her recital by
getting up to pace the room. In her own house--her own house!
And--after that, she had gone on with him! He came back to his chair and
did not interrupt again, but his stillness almost frightened her.
Coming to the incidents of the day itself, she hesitated. Must she tell
him, too, of Rosek--was it wise, or necessary? The all-or-nothing
candour that was part of her nature prevailed, and she went straight on,
and, save for the feverish jerking of his evening shoe, Winton made no
sign. When she had finished, he got up and slowly extinguished the end
of his cigar against the window-sill; then looking at her lying back in
her chair as if exhausted, he said: "By God!" and turned his face away to
the window.
At that hour before the theatres rose, a lull brooded in the London
streets; in this quiet narrow one, the town's hum was only broken by the
clack of a half-drunken woman bickering at her man as they lurched along
for home, and the strains of a street musician's fiddle, trying to make
up for a blank day. The sound vaguely irritated Winton, reminding him of
those two damnable foreigners by whom she had been so treated. To have
them at the point of a sword or pistol--to teach them a lesson! He heard
her say:
"Dad, I should like to pay his debts. Then things would be as they were
when I married him."
He emitted an exasperated sound. He did not believe in heaping coals of
fire.
"I want to make sure, too, that the girl is all right till she's over her
trouble. Perhaps I could use some of that--that other money, if mine is
all tied up?"
It was sheer anger, not disapproval of her impulse, that made him
hesitate; money and revenge would never be associated in his mind. Gyp
went on:
"I want to feel as if I'd never let him marry me. Perhaps his debts are
all part of that--who knows? Please!"
Winton looked at her. How like--when she said that "Please!" How
like--her figure sunk back in the old chair, and the face lifted in
shadow! A sort of exultation came to him. He had got her back--had got
her back!
XVIII
Fiorsen's bedroom was--as the maid would remark--"a proper pigsty"--until
he was out of it and it could be renovated each day. He had a talent for
disorder, so that the room looked as if three men instead of one had gone
to bed in it. Clothes and shoes, brushes, water, tumblers,
breakfast-tray, newspapers, French novels, and cigarette-ends--none were
ever where they should have been; and the stale fumes from the many
cigarettes he smoked before getting up incommoded anyone whose duty it
was to take him tea and shaving-water. When, on that first real summer
day, the maid had brought Rosek up to him, he had been lying a long time
on his back, dreamily watching the smoke from his cigarette and four
flies waltzing in the sunlight that filtered through the green
sun-blinds. This hour, before he rose, was his creative moment, when he
could best see the form of music and feel inspiration for its rendering.
Of late, he had been stale and wretched, all that side of him dull; but
this morning he felt again the delicious stir of fancy, that vibrating,
half-dreamy state when emotion seems so easily to find shape and the mind
pierces through to new expression. Hearing the maid's knock, and her
murmured: "Count Rosek to see you, sir," he thought: 'What the devil does
he want?' A larger nature, drifting without control, in contact with a
smaller one, who knows his own mind exactly, will instinctively be
irritable, though he may fail to grasp what his friend is after.
And pushing the cigarette-box toward Rosek, he turned away his head. It
would be money he had come about, or--that girl! That girl--he wished
she was dead! Soft, clinging creature! A baby! God! What a fool he had
been--ah, what a fool! Such absurdity! Unheard of! First Gyp--then her!
He had tried to shake the girl off. As well try to shake off a burr!
How she clung! He had been patient--oh, yes--patient and kind, but how
go on when one was tired--tired of her--and wanting only Gyp, only his
own wife? That was a funny thing! And now, when, for an hour or two, he
had shaken free of worry, had been feeling happy--yes, happy--this fellow
must come, and stand there with his face of a sphinx! And he said
pettishly:
"Well, Paul! sit down. What troubles have you brought?"
Rosek lit a cigarette but did not sit down. He struck even Fiorsen by
his unsmiling pallor.
"You had better look out for Mr. Wagge, Gustav; he came to me yesterday.
He has no music in his soul."
Fiorsen sat up.
"Satan take Mr. Wagge! What can he do?"
"I am not a lawyer, but I imagine he can be unpleasant--the girl is
young."
Fiorsen glared at him, and said:
"Why did you throw me that cursed girl?"
Rosek answered, a little too steadily:
"I did not, my friend."
"What! You did. What was your game? You never do anything without a
game. You know you did. Come; what was your game?"
"You like pleasure, I believe."
Fiorsen said violently:
"Look here: I have done with your friendship--you are no friend to me. I
have never really known you, and I should not wish to. It is finished.
Leave me in peace."
Rosek smiled.
"My dear, that is all very well, but friendships are not finished like
that. Moreover, you owe me a thousand pounds."
"Well, I will pay it." Rosek's eyebrows mounted. "I will. Gyp will
lend it to me."
"Oh! Is Gyp so fond of you as that? I thought she only loved her
music-lessons."
Crouching forward with his knees drawn up, Fiorsen hissed out:
"Don't talk of Gyp! Get out of this! I will pay you your thousand
pounds."
Rosek, still smiling, answered:
"Gustav, don't be a fool! With a violin to your shoulder, you are a man.
Without--you are a child. Lie quiet, my friend, and think of Mr. Wagge.
But you had better come and talk it over with me. Good-bye for the
moment. Calm yourself." And, flipping the ash off his cigarette on to
the tray by Fiorsen's elbow, he nodded and went.
Fiorsen, who had leaped out of bed, put his hand to his head. The cursed
fellow! Cursed be every one of them--the father and the girl, Rosek and
all the other sharks! He went out on to the landing. The house was
quite still below. Rosek had gone--good riddance! He called, "Gyp!" No
answer. He went into her room. Its superlative daintiness struck his
fancy. A scent of cyclamen! He looked out into the garden. There was
the baby at the end, and that fat woman. No Gyp! Never in when she was
wanted. Wagge! He shivered; and, going back into his bedroom, took a
brandy-bottle from a locked cupboard and drank some. It steadied him; he
locked up the cupboard again, and dressed.
Going out to the music-room, he stopped under the trees to make passes
with his fingers at the baby. Sometimes he felt that it was an adorable
little creature, with its big, dark eyes so like Gyp's. Sometimes it
excited his disgust--a discoloured brat. This morning, while looking at
it, he thought suddenly of the other that was coming--and grimaced.
Catching Betty's stare of horrified amazement at the face he was making
at her darling, he burst into a laugh and turned away into the
music-room.
While he was keying up his violin, Gyp's conduct in never having come
there for so long struck him as bitterly unjust. The girl--who cared
about the wretched girl? As if she made any real difference! It was all
so much deeper than that. Gyp had never loved him, never given him what
he wanted, never quenched his thirst of her! That was the heart of it.
No other woman he had ever had to do with had been like that--kept his
thirst unquenched. No; he had always tired of them before they tired of
him. She gave him nothing really--nothing! Had she no heart or did she
give it elsewhere? What was that Paul had said about her music-lessons?
And suddenly it struck him that he knew nothing, absolutely nothing, of
where she went or what she did. She never told him anything.
Music-lessons? Every day, nearly, she went out, was away for hours. The
thought that she might go to the arms of another man made him put down
his violin with a feeling of actual sickness. Why not? That deep and
fearful whipping of the sexual instinct which makes the ache of jealousy
so truly terrible was at its full in such a nature as Fiorsen's. He drew
a long breath and shuddered. The remembrance of her fastidious pride,
her candour, above all her passivity cut in across his fear. No, not
Gyp!
He went to a little table whereon stood a tantalus, tumblers, and a
syphon, and pouring out some brandy, drank. It steadied him. And he
began to practise. He took a passage from Brahms' violin concerto and
began to play it over and over. Suddenly, he found he was repeating the
same flaws each time; he was not attending. The fingering of that thing
was ghastly! Music-lessons! Why did she take them? Waste of time and
money--she would never be anything but an amateur! Ugh! Unconsciously,
he had stopped playing. Had she gone there to-day? It was past
lunch-time. Perhaps she had come in.
He put down his violin and went back to the house. No sign of her! The
maid came to ask if he would lunch. No! Was the mistress to be in? She
had not said. He went into the dining-room, ate a biscuit, and drank a
brandy and soda. It steadied him. Lighting a cigarette, he came back to
the drawing-room and sat down at Gyp's bureau. How tidy! On the little
calendar, a pencil-cross was set against to-day--Wednesday, another
against Friday. What for? Music-lessons! He reached to a pigeon-hole,
and took out her address-book. "H--Harmost, 305A, Marylebone Road," and
against it the words in pencil, "3 P.M."
Three o'clock. So that was her hour! His eyes rested idly on a little
old coloured print of a Bacchante, with flowing green scarf, shaking a
tambourine at a naked Cupid, who with a baby bow and arrow in his hands,
was gazing up at her. He turned it over; on the back was written in a
pointed, scriggly hand, "To my little friend.--E. H." Fiorsen drew smoke
deep down into his lungs, expelled it slowly, and went to the piano. He
opened it and began to play, staring vacantly before him, the cigarette
burned nearly to his lips. He went on, scarcely knowing what he played.
At last he stopped, and sat dejected. A great artist? Often, nowadays,
he did not care if he never touched a violin again. Tired of standing up
before a sea of dull faces, seeing the blockheads knock their silly hands
one against the other! Sick of the sameness of it all! Besides--besides,
were his powers beginning to fail? What was happening to him of late?
He got up, went into the dining-room, and drank some brandy. Gyp could
not bear his drinking. Well, she shouldn't be out so much--taking
music-lessons. Music-lessons! Nearly three o'clock. If he went for
once and saw what she really did--Went, and offered her his escort home!
An attention. It might please her. Better, anyway, than waiting here
until she chose to come in with her face all closed up. He drank a
little more brandy--ever so little--took his hat and went. Not far to
walk, but the sun was hot, and he reached the house feeling rather dizzy.
A maid-servant opened the door to him.
"I am Mr. Fiorsen. Mrs. Fiorsen here?"
"Yes, sir; will you wait?"
Why did she look at him like that? Ugly girl! How hateful ugly people
were! When she was gone, he reopened the door of the waiting-room, and
listened.
Chopin! The polonaise in A flat. Good! Could that be Gyp? Very good!
He moved out, down the passage, drawn on by her playing, and softly
turned the handle. The music stopped. He went in.
When Winton had left him, an hour and a half later that afternoon,
Fiorsen continued to stand at the front door, swaying his body to and
fro. The brandy-nurtured burst of jealousy which had made him insult his
wife and old Monsieur Harmost had died suddenly when Gyp turned on him in
the street and spoke in that icy voice; since then he had felt fear,
increasing every minute. Would she forgive? To one who always acted on
the impulse of the moment, so that he rarely knew afterward exactly what
he had done, or whom hurt, Gyp's self-control had ever been mysterious
and a little frightening. Where had she gone? Why did she not come in?
Anxiety is like a ball that rolls down-hill, gathering momentum. Suppose
she did not come back! But she must--there was the baby--their baby!
For the first time, the thought of it gave him unalloyed satisfaction.
He left the door, and, after drinking a glass to steady him, flung
himself down on the sofa in the drawing-room. And while he lay there, the
brandy warm within him, he thought: 'I will turn over a new leaf; give up
drink, give up everything, send the baby into the country, take Gyp to
Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Rome--anywhere out of this England, anywhere, away
from that father of hers and all these stiff, dull folk! She will like
that--she loves travelling!' Yes, they would be happy! Delicious
nights--delicious days--air that did not weigh you down and make you feel
that you must drink--real inspiration--real music! The acrid wood-smoke
scent of Paris streets, the glistening cleanness of the Thiergarten, a
serenading song in a Florence back street, fireflies in the summer dusk
at Sorrento--he had intoxicating memories of them all! Slowly the warmth
of the brandy died away, and, despite the heat, he felt chill and
shuddery. He shut his eyes, thinking to sleep till she came in. But
very soon he opened them, because--a thing usual with him of late--he saw
such ugly things--faces, vivid, changing as he looked, growing ugly and
uglier, becoming all holes--holes--horrible holes--Corruption--matted,
twisted, dark human-tree-roots of faces! Horrible! He opened his eyes,
for when he did that, they always went. It was very silent. No sound
from above. No sound of the dogs. He would go up and see the baby.
While he was crossing the hall, there came a ring. He opened the door
himself. A telegram! He tore the envelope.
"Gyp and the baby are with me letter follows.--WINTON."
He gave a short laugh, shut the door in the boy's face, and ran upstairs;
why--heaven knew! There was nobody there now! Nobody! Did it mean that
she had really left him--was not coming back? He stopped by the side of
Gyp's bed, and flinging himself forward, lay across it, burying his face.
And he sobbed, as men will, unmanned by drink. Had he lost her? Never
to see her eyes closing and press his lips against them! Never to soak
his senses in her loveliness! He leaped up, with the tears still wet on
his face. Lost her? Absurd! That calm, prim, devilish Englishman, her
father--he was to blame--he had worked it all--stealing the baby!
He went down-stairs and drank some brandy. It steadied him a little.
What should he do? "Letter follows." Drink, and wait? Go to Bury
Street? No. Drink! Enjoy himself!
He laughed, and, catching up his hat, went out, walking furiously at
first, then slower and slower, for his head began to whirl, and, taking a
cab, was driven to a restaurant in Soho. He had eaten nothing but a
biscuit since his breakfast, always a small matter, and ordered soup and
a flask of their best Chianti--solids he could not face. More than two
hours he sat, white and silent, perspiration on his forehead, now and
then grinning and flourishing his fingers, to the amusement and sometimes
the alarm of those sitting near. But for being known there, he would
have been regarded with suspicion. About half-past nine, there being no
more wine, he got up, put a piece of gold on the table, and went out
without waiting for his change.
In the streets, the lamps were lighted, but daylight was not quite gone.
He walked unsteadily, toward Piccadilly. A girl of the town passed and
looked up at him. Staring hard, he hooked his arm in hers without a
word; it steadied him, and they walked on thus together. Suddenly he
said:
"Well, girl, are you happy?" The girl stopped and tried to disengage her
arm; a rather frightened look had come into her dark-eyed powdered face.
Fiorsen laughed, and held it firm. "When the unhappy meet, they walk
together. Come on! You are just a little like my wife. Will you have a
drink?"
The girl shook her head, and, with a sudden movement, slipped her arm out
of this madman's and dived away like a swallow through the pavement
traffic. Fiorsen stood still and laughed with his head thrown back. The
second time to-day. SHE had slipped from his grasp. Passers looked at
him, amazed. The ugly devils! And with a grimace, he turned out of
Piccadilly, past St. James's Church, making for Bury Street. They
wouldn't let him in, of course--not they! But he would look at the
windows; they had flower-boxes--flower-boxes! And, suddenly, he groaned
aloud--he had thought of Gyp's figure busy among the flowers at home.
Missing the right turning, he came in at the bottom of the street. A
fiddler in the gutter was scraping away on an old violin. Fiorsen
stopped to listen. Poor devil! "Pagliacci!" Going up to the man--dark,
lame, very shabby, he took out some silver, and put his other hand on the
man's shoulder.
"Brother," he said, "lend me your fiddle. Here's money for you. Come;
lend it to me. I am a great violinist."
"Vraiment, monsieur!"
"Ah! Vraiment! Voyons! Donnez--un instant--vous verrez."
The fiddler, doubting but hypnotized, handed him the fiddle; his dark
face changed when he saw this stranger fling it up to his shoulder and
the ways of his fingers with bow and strings. Fiorsen had begun to walk
up the street, his eyes searching for the flower-boxes. He saw them,
stopped, and began playing "Che faro?" He played it wonderfully on that
poor fiddle; and the fiddler, who had followed at his elbow, stood
watching him, uneasy, envious, but a little entranced. Sapristi! This
tall, pale monsieur with the strange face and the eyes that looked drunk
and the hollow chest, played like an angel! Ah, but it was not so easy
as all that to make money in the streets of this sacred town! You might
play like forty angels and not a copper! He had begun another tune--like
little pluckings at your heart--tres joli--tout a fait ecoeurant! Ah,
there it was--a monsieur as usual closing the window, drawing the
curtains! Always same thing! The violin and the bow were thrust back
into his hands; and the tall strange monsieur was off as if devils were
after him--not badly drunk, that one! And not a sou thrown down! With
an uneasy feeling that he had been involved in something that he did not
understand, the lame, dark fiddler limped his way round the nearest
corner, and for two streets at least did not stop. Then, counting the
silver Fiorsen had put into his hand and carefully examining his fiddle,
he used the word, "Bigre!" and started for home.
XIX
Gyp hardly slept at all. Three times she got up, and, stealing to the
door, looked in at her sleeping baby, whose face in its new bed she could
just see by the night-light's glow. The afternoon had shaken her nerves.
Nor was Betty's method of breathing while asleep conducive to the slumber
of anything but babies. It was so hot, too, and the sound of the violin
still in her ears. By that little air of Poise, she had known for
certain it was Fiorsen; and her father's abrupt drawing of the curtains
had clinched that certainty. If she had gone to the window and seen him,
she would not have been half so deeply disturbed as she was by that echo
of an old emotion. The link which yesterday she thought broken for good
was reforged in some mysterious way. The sobbing of that old fiddle had
been his way of saying, "Forgive me; forgive!" To leave him would have
been so much easier if she had really hated him; but she did not.
However difficult it may be to live with an artist, to hate him is quite
as difficult. An artist is so flexible--only the rigid can be hated.
She hated the things he did, and him when he was doing them; but
afterward again could hate him no more than she could love him, and that
was--not at all. Resolution and a sense of the practical began to come
back with daylight. When things were hopeless, it was far better to
recognize it and harden one's heart.
Winton, whose night had been almost as sleepless--to play like a beggar
in the street, under his windows, had seemed to him the limit!--announced
at breakfast that he must see his lawyer, make arrangements for the
payment of Fiorsen's debts, and find out what could be done to secure Gyp
against persecution. Some deed was probably necessary; he was vague on
all such matters. In the meantime, neither Gyp nor the baby must go out.
Gyp spent the morning writing and rewriting to Monsieur Harmost, trying
to express her chagrin, but not saying that she had left Fiorsen.
Her father came back from Westminster quiet and angry. He had with
difficulty been made to understand that the baby was Fiorsen's property,
so that, if the fellow claimed it, legally they would be unable to
resist. The point opened the old wound, forced him to remember that his
own daughter had once belonged to another--father. He had told the
lawyer in a measured voice that he would see the fellow damned first, and
had directed a deed of separation to be prepared, which should provide
for the complete payment of Fiorsen's existing debts on condition that he
left Gyp and the baby in peace. After telling Gyp this, he took an
opportunity of going to the extempore nursery and standing by the baby's
cradle. Until then, the little creature had only been of interest as
part of Gyp; now it had for him an existence of its own--this tiny,
dark-eyed creature, lying there, watching him so gravely, clutching his
finger. Suddenly the baby smiled--not a beautiful smile, but it made on
Winton an indelible impression.
Wishing first to settle this matter of the deed, he put off going down to
Mildenham; but "not trusting those two scoundrels a yard"--for he never
failed to bracket Rosek and Fiorsen--he insisted that the baby should not
go out without two attendants, and that Gyp should not go out alone. He
carried precaution to the point of accompanying her to Monsieur Harmost's
on the Friday afternoon, and expressed a wish to go in and shake hands
with the old fellow. It was a queer meeting. Those two had as great
difficulty in finding anything to say as though they were denizens of
different planets. And indeed, there ARE two planets on this earth!
When, after a minute or so of the friendliest embarrassment, he had
retired to wait for her, Gyp sat down to her lesson.
Monsieur Harmost said quietly:
"Your letter was very kind, my little friend--and your father is very
kind. But, after all, it was a compliment your husband paid me." His
smile smote Gyp; it seemed to sum up so many resignations. "So you stay
again with your father!" And, looking at her very hard with his
melancholy brown eyes, "When will you find your fate, I wonder?"
"Never!"
Monsieur Harmost's eyebrows rose.
"Ah," he said, "you think! No, that is impossible!" He walked twice
very quickly up and down the room; then spinning round on his heel, said
sharply: "Well, we must not waste your father's time. To work."
Winton's simple comment in the cab on the way home was:
"Nice old chap!"
At Bury Street, they found Gyp's agitated parlour-maid. Going to do the
music-room that morning, she had "found the master sitting on the sofa,
holding his head, and groaning awful. He's not been at home, ma'am,
since you--you went on your visit, so I didn't know what to do. I ran
for cook and we got him up to bed, and not knowing where you'd be, ma'am,
I telephoned to Count Rosek, and he came--I hope I didn't do wrong--and
he sent me down to see you. The doctor says his brain's on the touch and
go, and he keeps askin' for you, ma'am. So I didn't know what to do."
Gyp, pale to the lips, said:
"Wait here a minute, Ellen," and went into the dining-room. Winton
followed. She turned to him at once, and said:
"Oh, Dad, what am I to do? His brain! It would be too awful to feel I'd
brought that about."
Winton grunted. Gyp went on:
"I must go and see. If it's really that, I couldn't bear it. I'm afraid
I must go, Dad."
Winton nodded.
"Well, I'll come too," he said. "The girl can go back in the cab and say
we're on the way."
Taking a parting look at her baby, Gyp thought bitterly: 'My fate? THIS
is my fate, and no getting out of it!' On the journey, she and Winton
were quite silent--but she held his hand tight. While the cook was
taking up to Rosek the news of their arrival, Gyp stood looking out at
her garden. Two days and six hours only since she had stood there above
her pansies; since, at this very spot, Rosek had kissed her throat!
Slipping her hand through Winton's arm, she said:
"Dad, please don't make anything of that kiss. He couldn't help himself,
I suppose. What does it matter, too?"
A moment later Rosek entered. Before she could speak, Winton was saying:
"Thank you for letting us know, sir. But now that my daughter is here,
there will be no further need for your kind services. Good-day!"
At the cruel curtness of those words, Gyp gave the tiniest start forward.
She had seen them go through Rosek's armour as a sword through brown
paper. He recovered himself with a sickly smile, bowed, and went out.
Winton followed--precisely as if he did not trust him with the hats in
the hall. When the outer door was shut, he said:
"I don't think he'll trouble you again."
Gyp's gratitude was qualified by a queer compassion. After all, his
offence had only been that of loving her.
Fiorsen had been taken to her room, which was larger and cooler than his
own; and the maid was standing by the side of the bed with a scared face.
Gyp signed to her to go. He opened his eyes presently:
"Gyp! Oh! Gyp! Is it you? The devilish, awful things I see--don't go
away again! Oh, Gyp!" With a sob he raised himself and rested his
forehead against her. And Gyp felt--as on the first night he came home
drunk--a merging of all other emotions in the desire to protect and heal.
"It's all right, all right," she murmured. "I'm going to stay. Don't
worry about anything. Keep quite quiet, and you'll soon be well."
In a quarter of an hour, he was asleep. His wasted look went to her
heart, and that expression of terror which had been coming and going
until he fell asleep! Anything to do with the brain was so horrible!
Only too clear that she must stay--that his recovery depended on her.
She was still sitting there, motionless, when the doctor came, and,
seeing him asleep, beckoned her out. He looked a kindly man, with two
waistcoats, the top one unbuttoned; and while he talked, he winked at Gyp
involuntarily, and, with each wink, Gyp felt that he ripped the veil off
one more domestic secret. Sleep was the ticket--the very ticket for him!
Had something on his mind--yes! And--er--a little given to--brandy? Ah!
all that must stop! Stomach as well as nerves affected. Seeing
things--nasty things--sure sign. Perhaps not a very careful life before
marriage. And married--how long? His kindly appreciative eyes swept Gyp
from top to toe. Year and a half! Quite so! Hard worker at his violin,
too? No doubt! Musicians always a little inclined to be immoderate--too
much sense of beauty--burn the candle at both ends! She must see to
that. She had been away, had she not--staying with her father? Yes.
But--no one like a wife for nursing. As to treatment? Well! One would
shove in a dash of what he would prescribe, night and morning. Perfect
quiet. No stimulant. A little cup of strong coffee without milk, if he
seemed low. Keep him in bed at present. No worry; no excitement. Young
man still. Plenty of vitality. As to herself, no undue anxiety.
To-morrow they would see whether a night nurse would be necessary. Above
all, no violin for a month, no alcohol--in every way the strictest
moderation! And with a last and friendliest wink, leaning heavily on
that word "moderation," he took out a stylographic pen, scratched on a
leaf of his note-book, shook Gyp's hand, smiled whimsically, buttoned his
upper waistcoat, and departed.
Gyp went back to her seat by the bed. Irony! She whose only desire was
to be let go free, was mainly responsible for his breakdown! But for
her, there would be nothing on his mind, for he would not be married!
Brooding morbidly, she asked herself--his drinking, debts, even the
girl--had she caused them, too? And when she tried to free him and
herself--this was the result! Was there something fatal about her that
must destroy the men she had to do with? She had made her father
unhappy, Monsieur Harmost--Rosek, and her husband! Even before she
married, how many had tried for her love, and gone away unhappy! And,
getting up, she went to a mirror and looked at herself long and sadly.
XX
Three days after her abortive attempt to break away, Gyp, with much
heart-searching, wrote to Daphne Wing, telling her of Fiorsen's illness,
and mentioning a cottage near Mildenham, where--if she liked to go--she
would be quite comfortable and safe from all curiosity, and finally
begging to be allowed to make good the losses from any broken
dance-contracts.
Next morning, she found Mr. Wagge with a tall, crape-banded hat in his
black-gloved hands, standing in the very centre of her drawing-room. He
was staring into the garden, as if he had been vouchsafed a vision of
that warm night when the moonlight shed its ghostly glamour on the
sunflowers, and his daughter had danced out there. She had a perfect view
of his thick red neck in its turndown collar, crossed by a black bow over
a shiny white shirt. And, holding out her hand, she said:
"How do you do, Mr. Wagge? It was kind of you to come."
Mr. Wagge turned. His pug face wore a downcast expression.
"I hope I see you well, ma'am. Pretty place you 'ave 'ere. I'm fond of
flowers myself. They've always been my 'obby."
"They're a great comfort in London, aren't they?"
"Ye-es; I should think you might grow the dahlia here." And having thus
obeyed the obscure instincts of savoir faire, satisfied some obscurer
desire to flatter, he went on: "My girl showed me your letter. I didn't
like to write; in such a delicate matter I'd rather be vivey vocey. Very
kind, in your position; I'm sure I appreciate it. I always try to do the
Christian thing myself. Flesh passes; you never know when you may have to
take your turn. I said to my girl I'd come and see you."
"I'm very glad. I hoped perhaps you would."
Mr. Wagge cleared his throat, and went on, in a hoarser voice:
"I don't want to say anything harsh about a certain party in your
presence, especially as I read he's indisposed, but really I hardly know
how to bear the situation. I can't bring myself to think of money in
relation to that matter; all the same, it's a serious loss to my
daughter, very serious loss. I've got my family pride to think of. My
daughter's name, well--it's my own; and, though I say it, I'm
respected--a regular attendant--I think I told you. Sometimes, I assure
you, I feel I can't control myself, and it's only that--and you, if I may
say so, that keeps me in check."
During this speech, his black-gloved hands were clenching and
unclenching, and he shifted his broad, shining boots. Gyp gazed at them,
not daring to look up at his eyes thus turning and turning from
Christianity to shekels, from his honour to the world, from his anger to
herself. And she said:
"Please let me do what I ask, Mr. Wagge. I should be so unhappy if I
mightn't do that little something."
Mr. Wagge blew his nose.
"It's a delicate matter," he said. "I don't know where my duty lays. I
don't, reelly."
Gyp looked up then.
"The great thing is to save Daisy suffering, isn't it?"
Mr. Wagge's face wore for a moment an expression of affront, as if from
the thought: 'Sufferin'! You must leave that to her father!' Then it
wavered; the curious, furtive warmth of the attracted male came for a
moment into his little eyes; he averted them, and coughed. Gyp said
softly:
"To please me."
Mr. Wagge's readjusted glance stopped in confusion at her waist. He
answered, in a voice that he strove to make bland:
"If you put it in that way, I don't reelly know 'ow to refuse; but it
must be quite between you and me--I can't withdraw my attitude."
Gyp murmured:
"No, of course. Thank you so much; and you'll let me know about
everything later. I mustn't take up your time now." And she held out
her hand.
Mr. Wagge took it in a lingering manner.
"Well, I HAVE an appointment," he said; "a gentleman at Campden Hill. He
starts at twelve. I'm never late. GOOD-morning."
When she had watched his square, black figure pass through the outer
gate, busily rebuttoning those shining black gloves, she went upstairs
and washed her face and hands.
For several days, Fiorsen wavered; but his collapse had come just in
time, and with every hour the danger lessened. At the end of a fortnight
of a perfectly white life, there remained nothing to do in the words of
the doctor but "to avoid all recurrence of the predisposing causes, and
shove in sea air!" Gyp had locked up all brandy--and violins; she could
control him so long as he was tamed by his own weakness. But she passed
some very bitter hours before she sent for her baby, Betty, and the dogs,
and definitely took up life in her little house again. His debts had
been paid, including the thousand pounds to Rosek, and the losses of
Daphne Wing. The girl had gone down to that cottage where no one had
ever heard of her, to pass her time in lonely grief and terror, with the
aid of a black dress and a gold band on her third finger.
August and the first half of September were spent near Bude. Fiorsen's
passion for the sea, a passion Gyp could share, kept him singularly
moderate and free from restiveness. He had been thoroughly frightened,
and such terror is not easily forgotten. They stayed in a farmhouse,
where he was at his best with the simple folk, and his best could be
charming. He was always trying to get his "mermaid," as he took to
calling Gyp, away from the baby, getting her away to himself, along the
grassy cliffs and among the rocks and yellow sands of that free coast.
His delight was to find every day some new nook where they could bathe,
and dry themselves by sitting in the sun. And very like a mermaid she
was, on a seaweedy rock, with her feet close together in a little pool,
her fingers combing her drowned hair, and the sun silvering her wet body.
If she had loved him, it would have been perfect. But though, close to
nature like this--there are men to whom towns are poison--he was so much
more easy to bear, even to like, her heart never opened to him, never
fluttered at his voice, or beat more quickly under his kisses. One
cannot regulate these things. The warmth in her eyes when they looked at
her baby, and the coolness when they looked at him, was such that not
even a man, and he an egoist, could help seeing; and secretly he began to
hate that tiny rival, and she began to notice that he did.
As soon as the weather broke, he grew restless, craving his violin, and
they went back to town, in robust health--all three. During those weeks,
Gyp had never been free of the feeling that it was just a lull, of forces
held up in suspense, and the moment they were back in their house, this
feeling gathered density and darkness, as rain gathers in the sky after a
fine spell. She had often thought of Daphne Wing, and had written twice,
getting in return one naive and pathetic answer:
'DEAR MRS. FIORSEN,
'Oh, it is kind of you to write, because I know what you must be feeling
about me; and it was so kind of you to let me come here. I try not to
think about things, but of course I can't help it; and I don't seem to
care what happens now. Mother is coming down here later on. Sometimes I
lie awake all night, listening to the wind. Don't you think the wind is
the most melancholy thing in the world? I wonder if I shall die? I hope
I shall. Oh, I do, really! Good-bye, dear Mrs. Fiorsen. I shall never
forgive myself about you.
'Your grateful,
'DAPHNE WING.'
The girl had never once been mentioned between her and Fiorsen since the
night when he sat by her bed, begging forgiveness; she did not know
whether he ever gave the little dancer and her trouble a thought, or even
knew what had become of her. But now that the time was getting near, Gyp
felt more and more every day as if she must go down and see her. She
wrote to her father, who, after a dose of Harrogate with Aunt Rosamund,
was back at Mildenham. Winton answered that the nurse was there, and that
there seemed to be a woman, presumably the mother, staying with her, but
that he had not of course made direct inquiry. Could not Gyp come down?
He was alone, and cubbing had begun. It was like him to veil his
longings under such dry statements. But the thought of giving him
pleasure, and of a gallop with hounds fortified intensely her feeling
that she ought to go. Now that baby was so well, and Fiorsen still not
drinking, she might surely snatch this little holiday and satisfy her
conscience about the girl. Since the return from Cornwall, she had
played for him in the music-room just as of old, and she chose the finish
of a morning practice to say:
"Gustav, I want to go to Mildenham this afternoon for a week. Father's
lonely."
He was putting away his violin, but she saw his neck grow red.
"To him? No. He will steal you as he stole the baby. Let him have the
baby if he likes. Not you. No."
Gyp, who was standing by the piano, kept silence at this unexpected
outburst, but revolt blazed up in her. She never asked him anything; he
should not refuse this. He came up behind and put his arms round her.
"My Gyp, I want you here--I am lonely, too. Don't go away."
She tried to force his arms apart, but could not, and her anger grew.
She said coldly:
"There's another reason why I must go."
"No, no! No good reason--to take you from me."
"There is! The girl who is just going to have your child is staying near
Mildenham, and I want to see how she is."
He let go of her then, and recoiling against the divan, sat down. And Gyp
thought: 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to--but it serves him right.'
He muttered, in a dull voice:
"Oh, I hoped she was dead."
"Yes! For all you care, she might be. I'm going, but you needn't be
afraid that I shan't come back. I shall be back to-day week; I promise."
He looked at her fixedly.
"Yes. You don't break your promises; you will not break it." But,
suddenly, he said again: "Gyp, don't go!"
"I must."
He got up and caught her in his arms.
"Say you love me, then!"
But she could not. It was one thing to put up with embraces, quite
another to pretend that. When at last he was gone, she sat smoothing her
hair, staring before her with hard eyes, thinking: "Here--where I saw him
with that girl! What animals men are!"
Late that afternoon, she reached Mildenham. Winton met her at the
station. And on the drive up, they passed the cottage where Daphne Wing
was staying. It stood in front of a small coppice, a creepered,
plain-fronted, little brick house, with a garden still full of
sunflowers, tenanted by the old jockey, Pettance, his widowed daughter,
and her three small children. "That talkative old scoundrel," as Winton
always called him, was still employed in the Mildenham stables, and his
daughter was laundress to the establishment. Gyp had secured for Daphne
Wing the same free, independent, economic agent who had watched over her
own event; the same old doctor, too, was to be the presiding deity.
There were no signs of life about the cottage, and she would not stop,
too eager to be at home again, to see the old rooms, and smell the old
savour of the house, to get to her old mare, and feel its nose nuzzling
her for sugar. It was so good to be back once more, feeling strong and
well and able to ride. The smile of the inscrutable Markey at the front
door was a joy to her, even the darkness of the hall, where a gleam of
last sunlight fell across the skin of Winton's first tiger, on which she
had so often sunk down dead tired after hunting. Ah, it was nice to be
at home!
In her mare's box, old Pettance was putting a last touch to cleanliness.
His shaven, skin-tight, wicked old face, smiled deeply. He said in
honeyed tones:
"Good evenin', miss; beautiful evenin', ma'am!" And his little burning
brown eyes, just touched by age, regarded her lovingly.
"Well, Pettance, how are you? And how's Annie, and how are the children?
And how's this old darling?"
"Wonderful, miss; artful as a kitten. Carry you like a bird to-morrow,
if you're goin' out."
"How are her legs?"
And while Gyp passed her hand down those iron legs, the old mare examined
her down the back of her neck.
"They 'aven't filled not once since she come in--she was out all July and
August; but I've kept 'er well at it since, in 'opes you might be
comin'."
"They feel splendid." And, still bending down, Gyp asked: "And how is
your lodger--the young lady I sent you?"
"Well, ma'am, she's very young, and these very young ladies they get a
bit excited, you know, at such times; I should say she've never been--"
With obvious difficulty he checked the words, "to an 'orse before!"
"Well, you must expect it. And her mother, she's a dreadful funny one,
miss. She does needle me! Oh, she puts my back up properly! No class,
of course--that's where it is. But this 'ere nurse--well, you know,
miss, she won't 'ave no nonsense; so there we are. And, of course,
you're bound to 'ave 'ighsteria, a bit--losin' her 'usband as young as
that."
Gyp could feel his wicked old smile even before she raised herself. But
what did it matter if he did guess? She knew he would keep a stable
secret.
"Oh, we've 'ad some pretty flirts--up and cryin', dear me! I sleeps in
the next room--oh, yes, at night-time--when you're a widder at that age,
you can't expect nothin' else. I remember when I was ridin' in Ireland
for Captain O'Neill, there was a young woman--"
Gyp thought: 'I mustn't let him get off--or I shall be late for dinner,'
and she said:
"Oh, Pettance, who bought the young brown horse?"
"Mr. Bryn Summer'ay, ma'am, over at Widrington, for an 'unter, and 'ack
in town, miss."
"Summerhay? Ah!" With a touch of the whip to her memory, Gyp recalled
the young man with the clear eyes and teasing smile, on the chestnut
mare, the bold young man who reminded her of somebody, and she added:
"That'll be a good home for him, I should think."
"Oh, yes, miss; good 'ome--nice gentleman, too. He come over here to see
it, and asked after you. I told 'im you was a married lady now, miss.
'Ah,' he said; 'she rode beautiful!' And he remembered the 'orse well.
The major, he wasn't 'ere just then, so I let him try the young un; he
popped 'im over a fence or two, and when he come back he says, 'Well, I'm
goin' to have 'im.' Speaks very pleasant, an' don't waste no time--'orse
was away before the end of the week. Carry 'im well; 'e's a strong
rider, too, and a good plucked one, but bad 'ands, I should say."
"Yes, Pettance; I must go in now. Will you tell Annie I shall be round
to-morrow, to see her?"
"Very good, miss. 'Ounds meets at Filly Cross, seven-thirty. You'll be
goin' out?"
"Rather. Good-night."
Flying back across the yard, Gyp thought: "'She rode beautiful!' How
jolly! I'm glad he's got my horse."
XXI
Still glowing from her morning in the saddle, Gyp started out next day at
noon on her visit to the "old scoundrel's" cottage. It was one of those
lingering mellow mornings of late September, when the air, just warmed
through, lifts off the stubbles, and the hedgerows are not yet dried of
dew. The short cut led across two fields, a narrow strip of village
common, where linen was drying on gorse bushes coming into bloom, and one
field beyond; she met no one. Crossing the road, she passed into the
cottage-garden, where sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies in great
profusion were tangled along the low red-brick garden-walls, under some
poplar trees yellow-flecked already. A single empty chair, with a book
turned face downward, stood outside an open window. Smoke wreathing from
one chimney was the only sign of life. But, standing undecided before
the half-open door, Gyp was conscious, as it were, of too much stillness,
of something unnatural about the silence. She was just raising her hand
to knock when she heard the sound of smothered sobbing. Peeping through
the window, she could just see a woman dressed in green, evidently Mrs.
Wagge, seated at a table, crying into her handkerchief. At that very
moment, too, a low moaning came from the room above. Gyp recoiled; then,
making up her mind, she went in and knocked at the room where the woman
in green was sitting. After fully half a minute, it was opened, and Mrs.
Wagge stood there. The nose and eyes and cheeks of that thinnish, acid
face were red, and in her green dress, and with her greenish hair (for it
was going grey and she put on it a yellow lotion smelling of
cantharides), she seemed to Gyp just like one of those green apples that
turn reddish so unnaturally in the sun. She had rubbed over her face,
which shone in streaks, and her handkerchief was still crumpled in her
hand. It was horrible to come, so fresh and glowing, into the presence
of this poor woman, evidently in bitter sorrow. And a desperate desire
came over Gyp to fly. It seemed dreadful for anyone connected with him
who had caused this trouble to be coming here at all. But she said as
softly as she could:
"Mrs. Wagge? Please forgive me--but is there any news? I am--It was I
who got Daphne down here."
The woman before her was evidently being torn this way and that, but at
last she answered, with a sniff:
"It--it--was born this morning--dead." Gyp gasped. To have gone through
it all for that! Every bit of mother-feeling in her rebelled and
sorrowed; but her reason said: Better so! Much better! And she
murmured:
"How is she?"
Mrs. Wagge answered, with profound dejection:
"Bad--very bad. I don't know I'm sure what to say--my feelings are all
anyhow, and that's the truth. It's so dreadfully upsetting altogether."
"Is my nurse with her?"
"Yes; she's there. She's a very headstrong woman, but capable, I don't
deny. Daisy's very weak. Oh, it IS upsetting! And now I suppose
there'll have to be a burial. There really seems no end to it. And all
because of--of that man." And Mrs. Wagge turned away again to cry into
her handkerchief.
Feeling she could never say or do the right thing to the poor lady, Gyp
stole out. At the bottom of the stairs, she hesitated whether to go up
or no. At last, she mounted softly. It must be in the front room that
the bereaved girl was lying--the girl who, but a year ago, had debated
with such naive self-importance whether or not it was her duty to take a
lover. Gyp summoned courage to tap gently. The economic agent opened
the door an inch, but, seeing who it was, slipped her robust and handsome
person through into the corridor.
"You, my dear!" she said in a whisper. "That's nice!"
"How is she?"
"Fairly well--considering. You know about it?"
"Yes; can I see her?"
"I hardly think so. I can't make her out. She's got no spirit, not an
ounce. She doesn't want to get well, I believe. It's the man, I
expect." And, looking at Gyp with her fine blue eyes, she asked: "Is
that it? Is he tired of her?"
Gyp met her gaze better than she had believed possible.
"Yes, nurse."
The economic agent swept her up and down. "It's a pleasure to look at
you. You've got quite a colour, for you. After all, I believe it MIGHT
do her good to see you. Come in!"
Gyp passed in behind her, and stood gazing, not daring to step forward.
What a white face, with eyes closed, with fair hair still damp on the
forehead, with one white hand lying on the sheet above her heart! What a
frail madonna of the sugar-plums! On the whole of that bed the only
colour seemed the gold hoop round the wedding-finger.
The economic agent said very quietly:
"Look, my dear; I've brought you a nice visitor."
Daphne Wing's eyes and lips opened and closed again. And the awful
thought went through Gyp: 'Poor thing! She thought it was going to be
him, and it's only me!' Then the white lips said:
"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, it's you--it is kind of you!" And the eyes opened
again, but very little, and differently.
The economic agent slipped away. Gyp sat down by the bed and timidly
touched the hand.
Daphne Wing looked at her, and two tears slowly ran down her cheeks.
"It's over," she said just audibly, "and there's nothing now--it was
dead, you know. I don't want to live. Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, why can't they
let me die, too?"
Gyp bent over and kissed the hand, unable to bear the sight of those two
slowly rolling tears. Daphne Wing went on:
"You ARE good to me. I wish my poor little baby hadn't--"
Gyp, knowing her own tears were wetting that hand, raised herself and
managed to get out the words:
"Bear up! Think of your work!"
"Dancing! Ho!" She gave the least laugh ever heard. "It seems so long
ago."
"Yes; but now it'll all come back to you again, better than ever."
Daphne Wing answered by a feeble sigh.
There was silence. Gyp thought: 'She's falling asleep.'
With eyes and mouth closed like that, and all alabaster white, the face
was perfect, purged of its little commonnesses. Strange freak that this
white flower of a face could ever have been produced by Mr. and Mrs.
Wagge!
Daphne Wing opened her eyes and said:
"Oh! Mrs. Fiorsen, I feel so weak. And I feel much more lonely now.
There's nothing anywhere."
Gyp got up; she felt herself being carried into the mood of the girl's
heart, and was afraid it would be seen. Daphne Wing went on:
"Do you know, when nurse said she'd brought a visitor, I thought it was
him; but I'm glad now. If he had looked at me like he did--I couldn't
have borne it."
Gyp bent down and put her lips to the damp forehead. Faint, very faint,
there was still the scent of orange-blossom.
When she was once more in the garden, she hurried away; but instead of
crossing the fields again, turned past the side of the cottage into the
coppice behind. And, sitting down on a log, her hands pressed to her
cheeks and her elbows to her breast, she stared at the sunlit bracken and
the flies chasing each other over it. Love! Was it always something
hateful and tragic that spoiled lives? Criss-cross! One darting on
another, taking her almost before she knew she was seized, then darting
away and leaving her wanting to be seized again. Or darting on her, who,
when seized, was fatal to the darter, yet had never wanted to be seized.
Or darting one on the other for a moment, then both breaking away too
soon. Did never two dart at each other, seize, and cling, and ever after
be one? Love! It had spoiled her father's life, and Daphne Wing's;
never came when it was wanted; always came when it was not. Malevolent
wanderer, alighting here, there; tiring of the spirit before it tired of
the body; or of the body before it tired of the spirit. Better to have
nothing to do with it--far better! If one never loved, one would never
feel lonely--like that poor girl. And yet! No--there was no "and yet."
Who that was free would wish to become a slave? A slave--like Daphne
Wing! A slave--like her own husband to his want of a wife who did not
love him. A slave like her father had been--still was, to a memory. And
watching the sunlight on the bracken, Gyp thought: 'Love! Keep far from
me. I don't want you. I shall never want you!'
Every morning that week she made her way to the cottage, and every
morning had to pass through the hands of Mrs. Wagge. The good lady had
got over the upsetting fact that Gyp was the wife of that villain, and
had taken a fancy to her, confiding to the economic agent, who confided
it to Gyp, that she was "very distangey--and such pretty eyes, quite
Italian." She was one of those numberless persons whose passion for
distinction was just a little too much for their passionate propriety.
It was that worship of distinction which had caused her to have her young
daughter's talent for dancing fostered. Who knew to what it might lead
in these days? At great length she explained to Gyp the infinite care
with which she had always "brought Daisy up like a lady--and now this is
the result." And she would look piercingly at Gyp's hair or ears, at her
hands or her instep, to see how it was done. The burial worried her
dreadfully. "I'm using the name of Daisy Wing; she was christened
'Daisy' and the Wing's professional, so that takes them both in, and it's
quite the truth. But I don't think anyone would connect it, would they?
About the father's name, do you think I might say the late Mr. Joseph
Wing, this once? You see, it never was alive, and I must put something
if they're not to guess the truth, and that I couldn't bear; Mr. Wagge
would be so distressed. It's in his own line, you see. Oh, it is
upsetting!"
Gyp murmured desperately:
"Oh! yes, anything."
Though the girl was so deathly white and spiritless, it soon became clear
that she was going to pull through. With each day, a little more colour
and a little more commonness came back to her. And Gyp felt
instinctively that she would, in the end, return to Fulham purged of her
infatuation, a little harder, perhaps a little deeper.
Late one afternoon toward the end of her week at Mildenham, Gyp wandered
again into the coppice, and sat down on that same log. An hour before
sunset, the light shone level on the yellowing leaves all round her; a
startled rabbit pelted out of the bracken and pelted back again, and,
from the far edge of the little wood, a jay cackled harshly, shifting its
perch from tree to tree. Gyp thought of her baby, and of that which
would have been its half-brother; and now that she was so near having to
go back to Fiorsen, she knew that she had not been wise to come here. To
have been in contact with the girl, to have touched, as it were, that
trouble, had made the thought of life with him less tolerable even than
it was before. Only the longing to see her baby made return seem
possible. Ah, well--she would get used to it all again! But the
anticipation of his eyes fixed on her, then sliding away from the meeting
with her eyes, of all--of all that would begin again, suddenly made her
shiver. She was very near to loathing at that moment. He, the father of
her baby! The thought seemed ridiculous and strange. That little
creature seemed to bind him to her no more than if it were the offspring
of some chance encounter, some pursuit of nymph by faun. No! It was
hers alone. And a sudden feverish longing to get back to it overpowered
all other thought. This longing grew in her so all night that at
breakfast she told her father. Swallowing down whatever his feeling may
have been, he said:
"Very well, my child; I'll come up with you."
Putting her into the cab in London, he asked:
"Have you still got your key of Bury Street? Good! Remember, Gyp--any
time day or night--there it is for you."
She had wired to Fiorsen from Mildenham that she was coming, and she
reached home soon after three. He was not in, and what was evidently her
telegram lay unopened in the hall. Tremulous with expectation, she ran
up to the nursery. The pathetic sound of some small creature that cannot
tell what is hurting it, or why, met her ears. She went in, disturbed,
yet with the half-triumphant thought: 'Perhaps that's for me!'
Betty, very flushed, was rocking the cradle, and examining the baby's
face with a perplexed frown. Seeing Gyp, she put her hand to her side,
and gasped:
"Oh, be joyful! Oh, my dear! I AM glad. I can't do anything with baby
since the morning. Whenever she wakes up, she cries like that. And till
to-day she's been a little model. Hasn't she! There, there!"
Gyp took up the baby, whose black eyes fixed themselves on her mother in
a momentary contentment; but, at the first movement, she began again her
fretful plaint. Betty went on:
"She's been like that ever since this morning. Mr. Fiorsen's been in
more than once, ma'am, and the fact is, baby don't like it. He stares at
her so. But this morning I thought--well--I thought: 'You're her father.
It's time she was getting used to you.' So I let them be a minute; and
when I came back--I was only just across to the bathroom--he was comin'
out lookin' quite fierce and white, and baby--oh, screamin'! And except
for sleepin', she's hardly stopped cryin' since."
Pressing the baby to her breast, Gyp sat very still, and queer thoughts
went through her mind.
"How has he been, Betty?" she said.
Betty plaited her apron; her moon-face was troubled.
"Well," she said, "I think he's been drinkin'. Oh, I'm sure he has--I've
smelt it about him. The third day it began. And night before last he
came in dreadfully late--I could hear him staggerin' about, abusing the
stairs as he was comin' up. Oh dear--it IS a pity!"
The baby, who had been still enough since she lay in her mother's lap,
suddenly raised her little voice again. Gyp said:
"Betty, I believe something hurts her arm. She cries the moment she's
touched there. Is there a pin or anything? Just see. Take her things
off. Oh--look!"
Both the tiny arms above the elbow were circled with dark marks, as if
they had been squeezed by ruthless fingers. The two women looked at each
other in horror; and under her breath Gyp said: "He!"
She had flushed crimson; her eyes filled but dried again almost at once.
And, looking at her face, now gone very pale, and those lips tightened to
a line, Betty stopped in her outburst of ejaculation. When they had
wrapped the baby's arm in remedies and cotton-wool, Gyp went into her
bedroom, and, throwing herself down on her bed, burst into a passion of
weeping, smothering it deep in her pillow.
It was the crying of sheer rage. The brute! Not to have control enough
to stop short of digging his claws into that precious mite! Just because
the poor little thing cried at that cat's stare of his! The brute! The
devil! And he would come to her and whine about it, and say: "My Gyp, I
never meant--how should I know I was hurting? Her crying was so--Why
should she cry at me? I was upset! I wasn't thinking!" She could hear
him pleading and sighing to her to forgive him. But she would not--not
this time! He had hurt a helpless thing once too often. Her fit of
crying ceased, and she lay listening to the tick of the clock, and
marshalling in her mind a hundred little evidences of his malevolence
toward her baby--his own baby. How was it possible? Was he really going
mad? And a fit of such chilly shuddering seized her that she crept under
the eider down to regain warmth. In her rage, she retained enough sense
of proportion to understand that he had done this, just as he had
insulted Monsieur Harmost and her father--and others--in an ungovernable
access of nerve-irritation; just as, perhaps, one day he would kill
someone. But to understand this did not lessen her feeling. Her baby!
Such a tiny thing! She hated him at last; and she lay thinking out the
coldest, the cruellest, the most cutting things to say. She had been too
long-suffering.
But he did not come in that evening; and, too upset to eat or do
anything, she went up to bed at ten o'clock. When she had undressed, she
stole across to the nursery; she had a longing to have the baby with
her--a feeling that to leave her was not safe. She carried her off, still
sleeping, and, locking her doors, got into bed. Having warmed a nest
with her body for the little creature, she laid it there; and then for a
long time lay awake, expecting every minute to hear him return. She fell
asleep at last, and woke with a start. There were vague noises down
below or on the stairs. It must be he! She had left the light on in her
room, and she leaned over to look at the baby's face. It was still
sleeping, drawing its tiny breaths peacefully, little dog-shivers passing
every now and then over its face. Gyp, shaking back her dark plaits of
hair, sat up by its side, straining her ears.
Yes; he WAS coming up, and, by the sounds, he was not sober. She heard a
loud creak, and then a thud, as if he had clutched at the banisters and
fallen; she heard muttering, too, and the noise of boots dropped.
Swiftly the thought went through her: 'If he were quite drunk, he would
not have taken them off at all;--nor if he were quite sober. Does he
know I'm back?' Then came another creak, as if he were raising himself
by support of the banisters, and then--or was it fancy?--she could hear
him creeping and breathing behind the door. Then--no fancy this time--he
fumbled at the door and turned the handle. In spite of his state, he
must know that she was back, had noticed her travelling-coat or seen the
telegram. The handle was tried again, then, after a pause, the handle of
the door between his room and hers was fiercely shaken. She could hear
his voice, too, as she knew it when he was flown with drink, thick, a
little drawling.
"Gyp--let me in--Gyp!"
The blood burned up in her cheeks, and she thought: 'No, my friend;
you're not coming in!'
After that, sounds were more confused, as if he were now at one door, now
at the other; then creakings, as if on the stairs again, and after that,
no sound at all.
For fully half an hour, Gyp continued to sit up, straining her ears.
Where was he? What doing? On her over-excited nerves, all sorts of
possibilities came crowding. He must have gone downstairs again. In
that half-drunken state, where would his baffled frenzies lead him? And,
suddenly, she thought that she smelled burning. It went, and came again;
she got up, crept to the door, noiselessly turned the key, and, pulling
it open a few inches, sniffed.
All was dark on the landing. There was no smell of burning out there.
Suddenly, a hand clutched her ankle. All the blood rushed from her
heart; she stifled a scream, and tried to pull the door to. But his arm
and her leg were caught between, and she saw the black mass of his figure
lying full-length on its face. Like a vice, his hand held her; he drew
himself up on to his knees, on to his feet, and forced his way through.
Panting, but in utter silence, Gyp struggled to drive him out. His
drunken strength seemed to come and go in gusts, but hers was continuous,
greater than she had ever thought she had, and she panted:
"Go! go out of my room--you--you--wretch!"
Then her heart stood still with horror, for he had slued round to the bed
and was stretching his hands out above the baby. She heard him mutter:
"Ah-h-h!--YOU--in my place--YOU!"
Gyp flung herself on him from behind, dragging his arms down, and,
clasping her hands together, held him fast. He twisted round in her arms
and sat down on the bed. In that moment of his collapse, Gyp snatched up
her baby and fled out, down the dark stairs, hearing him stumbling,
groping in pursuit. She fled into the dining-room and locked the door.
She heard him run against it and fall down. Snuggling her baby, who was
crying now, inside her nightgown, next to her skin for warmth, she stood
rocking and hushing it, trying to listen. There was no more sound. By
the hearth, whence a little heat still came forth from the ashes, she
cowered down. With cushions and the thick white felt from the
dining-table, she made the baby snug, and wrapping her shivering self in
the table-cloth, sat staring wide-eyed before her--and always listening.
There were sounds at first, then none. A long, long time she stayed like
that, before she stole to the door. She did not mean to make a second
mistake. She could hear the sound of heavy breathing. And she listened
to it, till she was quite certain that it was really the breathing of
sleep. Then stealthily she opened, and looked. He was over there, lying
against the bottom chair, in a heavy, drunken slumber. She knew that
sleep so well; he would not wake from it.
It gave her a sort of evil pleasure that they would find him like that in
the morning when she was gone. She went back to her baby and, with
infinite precaution, lifted it, still sleeping, cushion and all, and
stole past him up the stairs that, under her bare feet, made no sound.
Once more in her locked room, she went to the window and looked out. It
was just before dawn; her garden was grey and ghostly, and she thought:
'The last time I shall see you. Good-bye!'
Then, with the utmost speed, she did her hair and dressed. She was very
cold and shivery, and put on her fur coat and cap. She hunted out two
jerseys for the baby, and a certain old camel's-hair shawl. She took a
few little things she was fondest of and slipped them into her wrist-bag
with her purse, put on her hat and a pair of gloves. She did everything
very swiftly, wondering, all the time, at her own power of knowing what
to take. When she was quite ready, she scribbled a note to Betty to
follow with the dogs to Bury Street, and pushed it under the nursery
door. Then, wrapping the baby in the jerseys and shawl, she went
downstairs. The dawn had broken, and, from the long narrow window above
the door with spikes of iron across it, grey light was striking into the
hall. Gyp passed Fiorsen's sleeping figure safely, and, for one moment,
stopped for breath. He was lying with his back against the wall, his
head in the hollow of an arm raised against a stair, and his face turned
a little upward. That face which, hundreds of times, had been so close
to her own, and something about this crumpled body, about his tumbled
hair, those cheek-bones, and the hollows beneath the pale lips just
parted under the dirt-gold of his moustache--something of lost divinity
in all that inert figure--clutched for a second at Gyp's heart. Only for
a second. It was over, this time! No more--never again! And, turning
very stealthily, she slipped her shoes on, undid the chain, opened the
front door, took up her burden, closed the door softly behind her, and
walked away.
Part III
I
Gyp was going up to town. She sat in the corner of a first-class
carriage, alone. Her father had gone up by an earlier train, for the
annual June dinner of his old regiment, and she had stayed to consult the
doctor concerning "little Gyp," aged nearly nineteen months, to whom
teeth were making life a burden.
Her eyes wandered from window to window, obeying the faint excitement
within her. All the winter and spring, she had been at Mildenham, very
quiet, riding much, and pursuing her music as best she could, seeing
hardly anyone except her father; and this departure for a spell of London
brought her the feeling that comes on an April day, when the sky is blue,
with snow-white clouds, when in the fields the lambs are leaping, and the
grass is warm for the first time, so that one would like to roll in it.
At Widrington, a porter entered, carrying a kit-bag, an overcoat, and
some golf-clubs; and round the door a little group, such as may be seen
at any English wayside station, clustered, filling the air with their
clean, slightly drawling voices. Gyp noted a tall woman whose blonde
hair was going grey, a young girl with a fox-terrier on a lead, a young
man with a Scotch terrier under his arm and his back to the carriage.
The girl was kissing the Scotch terrier's head.
"Good-bye, old Ossy! Was he nice! Tumbo, keep DOWN! YOU'RE not going!"
"Good-bye, dear boy! Don't work too hard!"
The young man's answer was not audible, but it was followed by
irrepressible gurgles and a smothered:
"Oh, Bryan, you ARE--Good-bye, dear Ossy!" "Good-bye!" "Good-bye!" The
young man who had got in, made another unintelligible joke in a rather
high-pitched voice, which was somehow familiar, and again the gurgles
broke forth. Then the train moved. Gyp caught a side view of him,
waving his hat from the carriage window. It was her acquaintance of the
hunting-field--the "Mr. Bryn Summer'ay," as old Pettance called him, who
had bought her horse last year. Seeing him pull down his overcoat, to
bank up the old Scotch terrier against the jolting of the journey, she
thought: 'I like men who think first of their dogs.' His round head,
with curly hair, broad brow, and those clean-cut lips, gave her again the
wonder: 'Where HAVE I seen someone like him?' He raised the window, and
turned round.
"How would you like--Oh, how d'you do! We met out hunting. You don't
remember me, I expect."
"Yes; perfectly. And you bought my horse last summer. How is he?"
"In great form. I forgot to ask what you called him; I've named him
Hotspur--he'll never be steady at his fences. I remember how he pulled
with you that day."
They were silent, smiling, as people will in remembrance of a good run.
Then, looking at the dog, Gyp said softly:
"HE looks rather a darling. How old?"
"Twelve. Beastly when dogs get old!"
There was another little silence while he contemplated her steadily with
his clear eyes.
"I came over to call once--with my mother; November the year before last.
Somebody was ill."
"Yes--I."
"Badly?"
Gyp shook her head.
"I heard you were married--" The little drawl in his voice had
increased, as though covering the abruptness of that remark. Gyp looked
up.
"Yes; but my little daughter and I live with my father again." What "came
over" her--as they say--to be so frank, she could not have told.
He said simply:
"Ah! I've often thought it queer I've never seen you since. What a run
that was!"
"Perfect! Was that your mother on the platform?"
"Yes--and my sister Edith. Extraordinary dead-alive place, Widrington; I
expect Mildenham isn't much better?"
"It's very quiet, but I like it."
"By the way, I don't know your name now?"
"Fiorsen."
"Oh, yes! The violinist. Life's a bit of a gamble, isn't it?"
Gyp did not answer that odd remark, did not quite know what to make of
this audacious young man, whose hazel eyes and lazy smile were queerly
lovable, but whose face in repose had such a broad gravity. He took from
his pocket a little red book.
"Do you know these? I always take them travelling. Finest things ever
written, aren't they?"
The book--Shakespeare's Sonnets--was open at that which begins:
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove--"
Gyp read on as far as the lines:
"Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out even to the edge of doom--"
and looked out of the window. The train was passing through a country of
fields and dykes, where the sun, far down in the west, shone almost level
over wide, whitish-green space, and the spotted cattle browsed or stood
by the ditches, lazily flicking their tufted tails. A shaft of sunlight
flowed into the carriage, filled with dust motes; and, handing the little
book back through that streak of radiance, she said softly:
"Yes; that's wonderful. Do you read much poetry?"
"More law, I'm afraid. But it is about the finest thing in the world,
isn't it?"
"No; I think music."
"Are you a musician?"
"Only a little."
"You look as if you might be."
"What? A little?"
"No; I should think you had it badly."
"Thank you. And you haven't it at all?"
"I like opera."
"The hybrid form--and the lowest!"
"That's why it suits me. Don't you like it, though?"
"Yes; that's why I'm going up to London."
"Really? Are you a subscriber?"
"This season."
"So am I. Jolly--I shall see you."
Gyp smiled. It was so long since she had talked to a man of her own age,
so long since she had seen a face that roused her curiosity and
admiration, so long since she had been admired. The sun-shaft, shifted
by a westward trend of the train, bathed her from the knees up; and its
warmth increased her light-hearted sense of being in luck--above her
fate, instead of under it.
Astounding how much can be talked of in two or three hours of a railway
journey! And what a friendly after-warmth clings round those hours!
Does the difficulty of making oneself heard provoke confidential
utterance? Or is it the isolation or the continual vibration that
carries friendship faster and further than will a spasmodic
acquaintanceship of weeks? But in that long talk he was far the more
voluble. There was, too, much of which she could not speak. Besides,
she liked to listen. His slightly drawling voice fascinated her--his
audacious, often witty way of putting things, and the irrepressible
bubble of laughter that would keep breaking from him. He disclosed his
past, such as it was, freely--public-school and college life, efforts at
the bar, ambitions, tastes, even his scrapes. And in this spontaneous
unfolding there was perpetual flattery; Gyp felt through it all, as
pretty women will, a sort of subtle admiration. Presently he asked her
if she played piquet.
"Yes; I play with my father nearly every evening."
"Shall we have a game, then?"
She knew he only wanted to play because he could sit nearer, joined by
the evening paper over their knees, hand her the cards after dealing,
touch her hand by accident, look in her face. And this was not
unpleasant; for she, in turn, liked looking at his face, which had what
is called "charm"--that something light and unepiscopal, entirely lacking
to so many solid, handsome, admirable faces.
But even railway journeys come to an end; and when he gripped her hand to
say good-bye, she gave his an involuntary little squeeze. Standing at her
cab window, with his hat raised, the old dog under his arm, and a look of
frank, rather wistful, admiration on his face, he said:
"I shall see you at the opera, then, and in the Row perhaps; and I may
come along to Bury Street, some time, mayn't I?"
Nodding to those friendly words, Gyp drove off through the sultry London
evening. Her father was not back from the dinner, and she went straight
to her room. After so long in the country, it seemed very close in Bury
Street; she put on a wrapper and sat down to brush the train-smoke out of
her hair.
For months after leaving Fiorsen, she had felt nothing but relief. Only
of late had she begun to see her new position, as it was--that of a woman
married yet not married, whose awakened senses have never been gratified,
whose spirit is still waiting for unfoldment in love, who, however
disillusioned, is--even if in secret from herself--more and more surely
seeking a real mate, with every hour that ripens her heart and beauty.
To-night--gazing at her face, reflected, intent and mournful, in the
mirror--she saw that position more clearly, in all its aridity, than she
had ever seen it. What was the use of being pretty? No longer use to
anyone! Not yet twenty-six, and in a nunnery! With a shiver, but not of
cold, she drew her wrapper close. This time last year she had at least
been in the main current of life, not a mere derelict. And yet--better
far be like this than go back to him whom memory painted always standing
over her sleeping baby, with his arms stretched out and his fingers
crooked like claws.
After that early-morning escape, Fiorsen had lurked after her for weeks,
in town, at Mildenham, followed them even to Scotland, where Winton had
carried her off. But she had not weakened in her resolution a second
time, and suddenly he had given up pursuit, and gone abroad. Since
then--nothing had come from him, save a few wild or maudlin letters,
written evidently during drinking-bouts. Even they had ceased, and for
four months she had heard no word. He had "got over" her, it seemed,
wherever he was--Russia, Sweden--who knew--who cared?
She let the brush rest on her knee, thinking again of that walk with her
baby through empty, silent streets, in the early misty morning last
October, of waiting dead-tired outside here, on the pavement, ringing
till they let her in. Often, since, she had wondered how fear could have
worked her up to that weird departure. She only knew that it had not been
unnatural at the time. Her father and Aunt Rosamund had wanted her to
try for a divorce, and no doubt they had been right. But her instincts
had refused, still refused to let everyone know her secrets and
sufferings--still refused the hollow pretence involved, that she had
loved him when she never had. No, it had been her fault for marrying him
without love--
"Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds!"
What irony--giving her that to read--if her fellow traveller had only
known!
She got up from before the mirror, and stood looking round her room, the
room she had always slept in as a girl. So he had remembered her all
this time! It had not seemed like meeting a stranger. They were not
strangers now, anyway. And, suddenly, on the wall before her, she saw
his face; or, if not, what was so like that she gave a little gasp. Of
course! How stupid of her not to have known at once! There, in a brown
frame, hung a photograph of the celebrated Botticelli or Masaccio "Head
of a Young Man" in the National Gallery. She had fallen in love with it
years ago, and on the wall of her room it had been ever since. That
broad face, the clear eyes, the bold, clean-cut mouth, the
audacity--only, the live face was English, not Italian, had more humour,
more "breeding," less poetry--something "old Georgian" about it. How he
would laugh if she told him he was like that peasant acolyte with
fluffed-out hair, and a little ruching round his neck! And, smiling, Gyp
plaited her own hair and got into bed.
But she could not sleep; she heard her father come in and go up to his
room, heard the clocks strike midnight, and one, and two, and always the
dull roar of Piccadilly. She had nothing over her but a sheet, and still
it was too hot. There was a scent in the room, as of honeysuckle. Where
could it come from? She got up at last, and went to the window. There,
on the window-sill, behind the curtains, was a bowl of jessamine. Her
father must have brought it up for her--just like him to think of that!
And, burying her nose in those white blossoms, she was visited by a
memory of her first ball--that evening of such delight and
disillusionment. Perhaps Bryan Summerhay had been there--all that time
ago! If he had been introduced to her then, if she had happened to dance
with him instead of with that man who had kissed her arm, might she not
have felt different toward all men? And if he had admired her--and had
not everyone, that night--might she not have liked, perhaps more than
liked, him in return? Or would she have looked on him as on all her
swains before she met Fiorsen, so many moths fluttering round a candle,
foolish to singe themselves, not to be taken seriously? Perhaps she had
been bound to have her lesson, to be humbled and brought low!
Taking a sprig of jessamine and holding it to her nose, she went up to
that picture. In the dim light, she could just see the outline of the
face and the eyes gazing at her. The scent of the blossom penetrated her
nerves; in her heart, something faintly stirred, as a leaf turns over, as
a wing flutters. And, blossom and all, she clasped her hands over her
breast, where again her heart quivered with that faint, shy tremor.
It was late, no--early, when she fell asleep and had a strange dream.
She was riding her old mare through a field of flowers. She had on a
black dress, and round her head a crown of bright, pointed crystals; she
sat without saddle, her knee curled up, perched so lightly that she
hardly felt the mare's back, and the reins she held were long twisted
stems of honeysuckle. Singing as she rode, her eyes flying here and
there, over the field, up to the sky, she felt happier, lighter than
thistledown. While they raced along, the old mare kept turning her head
and biting at the honeysuckle flowers; and suddenly that chestnut face
became the face of Summerhay, looking back at her with his smile. She
awoke. Sunlight, through the curtains where she had opened them to find
the flowers, was shining on her.
II
Very late that same night, Summerhay came out of the little Chelsea
house, which he inhabited, and walked toward the river. In certain moods
men turn insensibly toward any space where nature rules a little--downs,
woods, waters--where the sky is free to the eye and one feels the broad
comradeship of primitive forces. A man is alone when he loves, alone
when he dies; nobody cares for one so absorbed, and he cares for nobody,
no--not he! Summerhay stood by the river-wall and looked up at the stars
through the plane-tree branches. Every now and then he drew a long
breath of the warm, unstirring air, and smiled, without knowing that he
smiled. And he thought of little, of nothing; but a sweetish sensation
beset his heart, a kind of quivering lightness his limbs. He sat down on
a bench and shut his eyes. He saw a face--only a face. The lights went
out one by one in the houses opposite; no cabs passed now, and scarce a
passenger was afoot, but Summerhay sat like a man in a trance, the smile
coming and going on his lips; and behind him the air that ever stirs
above the river faintly moved with the tide flowing up.
It was nearly three, just coming dawn, when he went in, and, instead of
going to bed, sat down to a case in which he was junior on the morrow,
and worked right on till it was time to ride before his bath and
breakfast. He had one of those constitutions, not uncommon among
barristers--fostered perhaps by ozone in the Courts of Law--that can do
this sort of thing and take no harm. Indeed, he worked best in such long
spurts of vigorous concentration. With real capacity and a liking for
his work, this young man was certainly on his way to make a name; though,
in the intervals of energy, no one gave a more complete impression of
imperturbable drifting on the tides of the moment. Altogether, he was
rather a paradox. He chose to live in that little Chelsea house which
had a scrap of garden rather than in the Temple or St. James's, because
he often preferred solitude; and yet he was an excellent companion, with
many friends, who felt for him the affectionate distrust inspired by
those who are prone to fits and starts of work and play, conviviality and
loneliness. To women, he was almost universally attractive. But if he
had scorched his wings a little once or twice, he had kept heart-free on
the whole. He was, it must be confessed, a bit of a gambler, the sort of
gambler who gets in deep, and then, by a plucky, lucky plunge, gets out
again, until some day perhaps--he stays there. His father, a
diplomatist, had been dead fifteen years; his mother was well known in
the semi-intellectual circles of society. He had no brothers, two
sisters, and an income of his own. Such was Bryan Summerhay at the age
of twenty-six, his wisdom-teeth to cut, his depths unplumbed.
When he started that morning for the Temple, he had still a feeling of
extraordinary lightness in his limbs, and he still saw that face--its
perfect regularity, its warm pallor, and dark smiling eyes rather wide
apart, its fine, small, close-set ears, and the sweep of the black-brown
hair across the low brow. Or was it something much less definite he
saw--an emanation or expression, a trick, a turn, an indwelling grace, a
something that appealed, that turned, and touched him? Whatever it was,
it would not let him be, and he did not desire that it should. For this
was in his character; if he saw a horse that he liked, he put his money
on whatever it ran; if charmed by an opera, he went over and over again;
if by a poem, he almost learned it by heart. And while he walked along
the river--his usual route--he had queer and unaccustomed sensations, now
melting, now pugnacious. And he felt happy.
He was rather late, and went at once into court. In wig and gown, that
something "old Georgian" about him was very visible. A beauty-spot or
two, a full-skirted velvet coat, a sword and snuff-box, with that grey
wig or its equivalent, and there would have been a perfect
eighteenth-century specimen of the less bucolic stamp--the same strong,
light build, breadth of face, brown pallor, clean and unpinched cut of
lips, the same slight insolence and devil-may-caredom, the same clear
glance, and bubble of vitality. It was almost a pity to have been born so
late.
Except that once or twice he drew a face on blotting-paper and smeared it
over, he remained normally attentive to his "lud" and the matters in hand
all day, conducted without error the examination of two witnesses and
with terror the cross-examination of one; lunched at the Courts in
perfect amity with the sucking barrister on the other side of the case,
for they had neither, as yet, reached that maturity which enables an
advocate to call his enemy his "friend," and treat him with considerable
asperity. Though among his acquaintances Summerhay always provoked
badinage, in which he was scarcely ever defeated, yet in chambers and
court, on circuit, at his club, in society or the hunting-field, he had
an unfavourable effect on the grosser sort of stories. There are men--by
no means strikingly moral--who exercise this blighting influence. They
are generally what the French call "spirituel," and often have rather
desperate love-affairs which they keep very closely to themselves.
When at last in chambers, he had washed off that special reek of clothes,
and parchment, far-away herrings, and distemper, which clings about the
law, dipping his whole curly head in water, and towelling vigorously, he
set forth alone along the Embankment, his hat tilted up, smoking a cigar.
It was nearly seven. Just this time yesterday he had got into the train,
just this time yesterday turned and seen the face which had refused to
leave him since. Fever recurs at certain hours, just so did the desire to
see her mount within him, becoming an obsession, because it was
impossible to gratify it. One could not call at seven o'clock! The idea
of his club, where at this time of day he usually went, seemed flat and
stale, until he remembered that he might pass up Bury Street to get to
it. But, near Charing Cross, a hand smote him on the shoulder, and the
voice of one of his intimates said:
"Halo, Bryan!"
Odd, that he had never noticed before how vacuous this fellow was--with
his talk of politics, and racing, of this ass and that ass--subjects
hitherto of primary importance! And, stopping suddenly, he drawled out:
"Look here, old chap, you go on; see you at the club--presently."
"Why? What's up?"
With his lazy smile, Summerhay answered:
"'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,'" and turned on his
heel.
When his friend had disappeared, he resumed his journey toward Bury
Street. He passed his boot shop, where, for some time, he had been
meaning to order two pairs, and went by thinking: 'I wonder where SHE
goes for things.' Her figure came to him so vividly--sitting back in
that corner, or standing by the cab, her hand in his. The blood rushed
up in his cheeks. She had been scented like flowers, and--and a rainy
wind! He stood still before a plate-glass window, in confusion, and
suddenly muttered aloud: "Damn it! I believe I am!" An old gentleman,
passing, turned so suddenly, to see what he was, that he ricked his neck.
But Summerhay still stood, not taking in at all the reflected image of
his frowning, rueful face, and of the cigar extinct between his lips.
Then he shook his head vigorously and walked on. He walked faster, his
mind blank, as it is sometimes for a short space after a piece of
sell-revelation that has come too soon for adjustment or even quite for
understanding. And when he began to think, it was irritably and at
random. He had come to Bury Street, and, while he passed up it, felt a
queer, weak sensation down the back of his legs. No flower-boxes this
year broke the plain front of Winton's house, and nothing whatever but
its number and the quickened beating of his heart marked it out for
Summerhay from any other dwelling. The moment he turned into Jermyn
Street, that beating of the heart subsided, and he felt suddenly morose.
He entered his club at the top of St. James' Street and passed at once
into the least used room. This was the library; and going to the French
section, he took down "The Three Musketeers" and seated himself in a
window, with his back to anyone who might come in. He had taken
this--his favourite romance, feeling in want of warmth and companionship;
but he did not read. From where he sat he could throw a stone to where
she was sitting perhaps; except for walls he could almost reach her with
his voice, could certainly see her. This was imbecile! A woman he had
only met twice. Imbecile! He opened the book--
"Oh, no; it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown altho' its height be taken."
"Point of five! Three queens--three knaves! Do you know that thing of
Dowson's: 'I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion'? Better
than any Verlaine, except 'Les sanglots longs.' What have you got?"
"Only quart to the queen. Do you like the name 'Cynara'?"
"Yes; don't you?"
"Cynara! Cynara! Ye-es--an autumn, rose-petal, whirling, dead-leaf
sound."
"Good! Pipped. Shut up, Ossy--don't snore!"
"Ah, poor old dog! Let him. Shuffle for me, please. Oh! there goes
another card!" Her knee was touching his--! . . .
The book had dropped--Summerhay started.
Dash it! Hopeless! And, turning round in that huge armchair, he snoozed
down into its depths. In a few minutes, he was asleep. He slept without
a dream.
It was two hours later when the same friend, seeking distraction, came on
him, and stood grinning down at that curly head and face which just then
had the sleepy abandonment of a small boy's. Maliciously he gave the
chair a little kick.
Summerhay stirred, and thought: 'What! Where am I?'
In front of the grinning face, above him, floated another, filmy,
charming. He shook himself, and sat up. "Oh, damn you!"
"Sorry, old chap!"
"What time is it?"
"Ten o'clock."
Summerhay uttered an unintelligible sound, and, turning over on the other
arm, pretended to snooze down again. But he slept no more. Instead, he
saw her face, heard her voice, and felt again the touch of her warm,
gloved hand.
III
At the opera, that Friday evening, they were playing "Cavalleria" and
"Pagliacci"--works of which Gyp tolerated the first and loved the second,
while Winton found them, with "Faust" and "Carmen," about the only operas
he could not sleep through.
Women's eyes, which must not stare, cover more space than the eyes of
men, which must not stare, but do; women's eyes have less method, too,
seeing all things at once, instead of one thing at a time. Gyp had seen
Summerhay long before he saw her; seen him come in and fold his opera hat
against his white waistcoat, looking round, as if for--someone. Her eyes
criticized him in this new garb--his broad head, and its crisp, dark,
shining hair, his air of sturdy, lazy, lovable audacity. He looked well
in evening clothes. When he sat down, she could still see just a little
of his profile; and, vaguely watching the stout Santuzza and the stouter
Turiddu, she wondered whether, by fixing her eyes on him, she could make
him turn and see her. Just then he did see her, and his face lighted up.
She smiled back. Why not? She had not so many friends nowadays. But it
was rather startling to find, after that exchange of looks, that she at
once began to want another. Would he like her dress? Was her hair nice?
She wished she had not had it washed that morning. But when the interval
came, she did not look round, until his voice said:
"How d'you do, Major Winton? Oh, how d'you do?"
Winton had been told of the meeting in the train. He was pining for a
cigarette, but had not liked to desert his daughter. After a few
remarks, he got up and said:
"Take my pew a minute, Summerhay, I'm going to have a smoke."
He went out, thinking, not for the first time by a thousand: 'Poor child,
she never sees a soul! Twenty-five, pretty as paint, and clean out of
the running. What the devil am I to do about her?'
Summerhay sat down. Gyp had a queer feeling, then, as if the
house and people vanished, and they two were back again in the
railway-carriage--alone together. Ten minutes to make the most of! To
smile and talk, and enjoy the look in his eyes, the sound of his voice
and laugh. To laugh, too, and be warm and nice to him. Why not? They
were friends. And, presently, she said, smiling:
"Oh, by the way, there's a picture in the National Gallery, I want you to
look at."
"Yes? Which? Will you take me?"
"If you like."
"To-morrow's Saturday; may I meet you there? What time? Three?"
Gyp nodded. She knew she was flushing, and, at that moment, with the
warmth in her cheeks and the smile in her eyes, she had the sensation, so
rare and pleasant, of feeling beautiful. Then he was gone! Her father
was slipping back into his stall; and, afraid of her own face, she
touched his arm, and murmured:
"Dad, do look at that head-dress in the next row but one; did you ever
see anything so delicious!"
And while Winton was star-gazing, the orchestra struck up the overture to
"Pagliacci." Watching that heart-breaking little plot unfold, Gyp had
something more than the old thrill, as if for the first time she
understood it with other than her aesthetic sense. Poor Nedda! and poor
Canio! Poor Silvio! Her breast heaved, and her eyes filled with tears.
Within those doubled figures of the tragi-comedy she seemed to see, to
feel that passionate love--too swift, too strong, too violent, sweet and
fearful within them.
"Thou hast my heart, and I am thine for ever
--To-night and for ever I am thine!
What is there left to me? What have I but a heart that is broken?"
And the clear, heart-aching music mocking it all, down to those last
words:
La commedia e finita!
While she was putting on her cloak, her eyes caught Summerhay's. She
tried to smile--could not, gave a shake of her head, slowly forced her
gaze away from his, and turned to follow Winton.
At the National Gallery, next day, she was not late by coquetry, but
because she had changed her dress at the last minute, and because she was
afraid of letting him think her eager. She saw him at once standing
under the colonnade, looking by no means imperturbable, and marked the
change in his face when he caught sight of her, with a little thrill.
She led him straight up into the first Italian room to contemplate his
counterfeit. A top hat and modern collar did not improve the likeness,
but it was there still.
"Well! Do you like it?"
"Yes. What are you smiling at?"
"I've had a photograph of that, ever since I was fifteen; so you see I've
known you a long time."
He stared.
"Great Scott! Am I like that? All right; I shall try and find YOU now."
But Gyp shook her head.
"No. Come and look at my very favourite picture 'The Death of Procris.'
What is it makes one love it so? Procris is out of drawing, and not
beautiful; the faun's queer and ugly. What is it--can you tell?"
Summerhay looked not at the picture, but at her. In aesthetic sense, he
was not her equal. She said softly:
"The wonder in the faun's face, Procris's closed eyes; the dog, and the
swans, and the pity for what might have been!"
Summerhay repeated:
"Ah, for what might have been! Did you enjoy 'Pagliacci'?"
Gyp shivered.
"I think I felt it too much."
"I thought you did. I watched you."
"Destruction by--love--seems such a terrible thing! Now show me your
favourites. I believe I can tell you what they are, though."
"Well?"
"The 'Admiral,' for one."
"Yes. What others?"
"The two Bellini's."
"By Jove, you ARE uncanny!"
Gyp laughed.
"You want decision, clarity, colour, and fine texture. Is that right?
Here's another of MY favourites."
On a screen was a tiny "Crucifixion" by da Messina--the thinnest of high
crosses, the thinnest of simple, humble, suffering Christs, lonely, and
actual in the clear, darkened landscape.
"I think that touches one more than the big, idealized sort. One feels
it WAS like that. Oh! And look--the Francesca's! Aren't they lovely?"
He repeated:
"Yes; lovely!" But his eyes said: "And so are you."
They spent two hours among those endless pictures, talking a little of
art and of much besides, almost as alone as in the railway carriage.
But, when she had refused to let him walk back with her, Summerhay stood
stock-still beneath the colonnade. The sun streamed in under; the
pigeons preened their feathers; people passed behind him and down there
in the square, black and tiny against the lions and the great column. He
took in nothing of all that. What was it in her? She was like no one he
had ever known--not one! Different from girls and women in society
as--Simile failed. Still more different from anything in the half-world
he had met! Not the new sort--college, suffrage! Like no one! And he
knew so little of her! Not even whether she had ever really been in
love. Her husband--where was he; what was he to her? "The rare, the
mute, the inexpressive She!" When she smiled; when her eyes--but her
eyes were so quick, would drop before he could see right into them! How
beautiful she had looked, gazing at that picture--her favourite, so
softly, her lips just smiling! If he could kiss them, would he not go
nearly mad? With a deep sigh, he moved down the wide, grey steps into
the sunlight. And London, throbbing, overflowing with the season's life,
seemed to him empty. To-morrow--yes, to-morrow he could call!
IV
After that Sunday call, Gyp sat in the window at Bury Street close to a
bowl of heliotrope on the window-sill. She was thinking over a passage
of their conversation.
"Mrs. Fiorsen, tell me about yourself."
"Why? What do you want to know?"
"Your marriage?"
"I made a fearful mistake--against my father's wish. I haven't seen my
husband for months; I shall never see him again if I can help it. Is
that enough?"
"And you love him?"
"No."
"It must be like having your head in chancery. Can't you get it out?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Divorce-court! Ugh! I couldn't!"
"Yes, I know--it's hellish!"
Was he, who gripped her hand so hard and said that, really the same
nonchalant young man who had leaned out of the carriage window, gurgling
with laughter? And what had made the difference? She buried her face in
the heliotrope, whose perfume seemed the memory of his visit; then, going
to the piano, began to play. She played Debussy, McDowell, Ravel; the
chords of modern music suited her feelings just then. And she was still
playing when her father came in. During these last nine months of his
daughter's society, he had regained a distinct measure of youthfulness,
an extra twist in his little moustache, an extra touch of dandyism in his
clothes, and the gloss of his short hair. Gyp stopped playing at once,
and shut the piano.
"Mr. Summerhay's been here, Dad. He was sorry to miss you."
There was an appreciable pause before Winton answered:
"My dear, I doubt it."
And there passed through Gyp the thought that she could never again be
friends with a man without giving that pause. Then, conscious that her
father was gazing at her, she turned and said:
"Well, was it nice in the Park?"
"Thirty years ago they were all nobs and snobs; now God himself doesn't
know what they are!"
"But weren't the flowers nice?"
"Ah--and the trees, and the birds--but, by Jove, the humans do their best
to dress the balance!"
"What a misanthrope you're getting!"
"I'd like to run a stud for two-leggers; they want proper breeding. What
sort of a fellow is young Summerhay? Not a bad face."
She answered impassively:
"Yes; it's so alive."
In spite of his self-control, she could always read her father's thoughts
quicker than he could read hers, and knew that he was struggling between
the wish that she should have a good time and the desire to convey some
kind of warning. He said, with a sigh:
"What does a young man's fancy turn to in summer, Gyp?"
Women who have subtle instincts and some experience are able to impose
their own restraint on those who, at the lifting of a hand, would become
their lovers. From that afternoon on, Gyp knew that a word from her
would change everything; but she was far from speaking it. And yet,
except at week-ends, when she went back to her baby at Mildenham, she saw
Summerhay most days--in the Row, at the opera, or at Bury Street. She
had a habit of going to St. James's Park in the late afternoon and
sitting there by the water. Was it by chance that he passed one day on
his way home from chambers, and that, after this, they sat there together
constantly? Why make her father uneasy--when there was nothing to be
uneasy about--by letting him come too often to Bury Street? It was so
pleasant, too, out there, talking calmly of many things, while in front
of them the small ragged children fished and put the fishes into clear
glass bottles, to eat, or watch on rainy days, as is the custom of man
with the minor works of God.
So, in nature, when the seasons are about to change, the days pass,
tranquil, waiting for the wind that brings in the new. And was it not
natural to sit under the trees, by the flowers and the water, the pigeons
and the ducks, that wonderful July? For all was peaceful in Gyp's mind,
except, now and then, when a sort of remorse possessed her, a sort of
terror, and a sort of troubling sweetness.
V
Summerhay did not wear his heart on his sleeve, and when, on the
closing-day of term, he left his chambers to walk to that last meeting,
his face was much as usual under his grey top hat. But, in truth, he had
come to a pretty pass. He had his own code of what was befitting to a
gentleman. It was perhaps a trifle "old Georgian," but it included doing
nothing to distress a woman. All these weeks he had kept himself in
hand; but to do so had cost him more than he liked to reflect on. The
only witness of his struggles was his old Scotch terrier, whose dreams he
had disturbed night after night, tramping up and down the long
back-to-front sitting-room of his little house. She knew--must
know--what he was feeling. If she wanted his love, she had but to raise
her finger; and she had not raised it. When he touched her, when her
dress disengaged its perfume or his eyes traced the slow, soft movement
of her breathing, his head would go round, and to keep calm and friendly
had been torture.
While he could see her almost every day, this control had been just
possible; but now that he was about to lose her--for weeks--his heart
felt sick within him. He had been hard put to it before the world. A
man passionately in love craves solitude, in which to alternate between
fierce exercise and that trance-like stillness when a lover simply aches
or is busy conjuring her face up out of darkness or the sunlight. He had
managed to do his work, had been grateful for having it to do; but to his
friends he had not given attention enough to prevent them saying: "What's
up with old Bryan?" Always rather elusive in his movements, he was now
too elusive altogether for those who had been accustomed to lunch, dine,
dance, and sport with him. And yet he shunned his own company--going
wherever strange faces, life, anything distracted him a little, without
demanding real attention. It must be confessed that he had come
unwillingly to discovery of the depth of his passion, aware that it meant
giving up too much. But there are women who inspire feeling so direct
and simple that reason does not come into play; and he had never asked
himself whether Gyp was worth loving, whether she had this or that
quality, such or such virtue. He wanted her exactly as she was; and did
not weigh her in any sort of balance. It is possible for men to love
passionately, yet know that their passion is but desire, possible for men
to love for sheer spiritual worth, feeling that the loved one lacks this
or that charm.
Summerhay's love had no such divided consciousness. About her past, too,
he dismissed speculation. He remembered having heard in the
hunting-field that she was Winton's natural daughter; even then it had
made him long to punch the head of that covertside scandal-monger. The
more there might be against the desirability of loving her, the more he
would love her; even her wretched marriage only affected him in so far as
it affected her happiness. It did not matter--nothing mattered except to
see her and be with her as much as she would let him. And now she was
going to the sea for a month, and he himself--curse it!--was due in
Perthshire to shoot grouse. A month!
He walked slowly along the river. Dared he speak? At times, her face
was like a child's when it expects some harsh or frightening word. One
could not hurt her--impossible! But, at times, he had almost thought she
would like him to speak. Once or twice he had caught a slow soft
glance--gone the moment he had sight of it.
He was before his time, and, leaning on the river parapet, watched the
tide run down. The sun shone on the water, brightening its yellowish
swirl, and little black eddies--the same water that had flowed along
under the willows past Eynsham, past Oxford, under the church at Clifton,
past Moulsford, past Sonning. And he thought: 'My God! To have her to
myself one day on the river--one whole long day!' Why had he been so
pusillanimous all this time? He passed his hand over his face. Broad
faces do not easily grow thin, but his felt thin to him, and this gave
him a kind of morbid satisfaction. If she knew how he was longing, how
he suffered! He turned away, toward Whitehall. Two men he knew stopped
to bandy a jest. One of them was just married. They, too, were off to
Scotland for the twelfth. Pah! How stale and flat seemed that which
till then had been the acme of the whole year to him! Ah, but if he had
been going to Scotland WITH HER! He drew his breath in with a sigh that
nearly removed the Home Office.
Oblivious of the gorgeous sentries at the Horse Guards, oblivious of all
beauty, he passed irresolute along the water, making for their usual
seat; already, in fancy, he was sitting there, prodding at the gravel, a
nervous twittering in his heart, and that eternal question: Dare I speak?
asking itself within him. And suddenly he saw that she was before him,
sitting there already. His heart gave a jump. No more craning--he WOULD
speak!
She was wearing a maize-coloured muslin to which the sunlight gave a sort
of transparency, and sat, leaning back, her knees crossed, one hand
resting on the knob of her furled sunshade, her face half hidden by her
shady hat. Summerhay clenched his teeth, and went straight up to her.
"Gyp! No, I won't call you anything else. This can't go on! You know
it can't. You know I worship you! If you can't love me, I've got to
break away. All day, all night, I think and dream of nothing but you.
Gyp, do you want me to go?"
Suppose she said: "Yes, go!" She made a little movement, as if in
protest, and without looking at him, answered very low:
"Of course I don't want you to go. How could I?"
Summerhay gasped.
"Then you DO love me?"
She turned her face away.
"Wait, please. Wait a little longer. When we come back I'll tell you: I
promise!"
"So long?"
"A month. Is that long? Please! It's not easy for me." She smiled
faintly, lifted her eyes to him just for a second. "Please not any more
now."
That evening at his club, through the bluish smoke of cigarette after
cigarette, he saw her face as she had lifted it for that one second; and
now he was in heaven, now in hell.
VI
The verandahed bungalow on the South Coast, built and inhabited by an
artist friend of Aunt Rosamund's, had a garden of which the chief feature
was one pine-tree which had strayed in advance of the wood behind. The
little house stood in solitude, just above a low bank of cliff whence the
beach sank in sandy ridges. The verandah and thick pine wood gave ample
shade, and the beach all the sun and sea air needful to tan little Gyp, a
fat, tumbling soul, as her mother had been at the same age, incurably
fond and fearless of dogs or any kind of beast, and speaking words
already that required a glossary.
At night, Gyp, looking from her bedroom through the flat branches of the
pine, would get a feeling of being the only creature in the world. The
crinkled, silvery sea, that lonely pine-tree, the cold moon, the sky dark
corn-flower blue, the hiss and sucking rustle of the surf over the beach
pebbles, even the salt, chill air, seemed lonely. By day, too--in the
hazy heat when the clouds merged, scarce drifting, into the blue, and the
coarse sea-grass tufts hardly quivered, and sea-birds passed close above
the water with chuckle and cry--it all often seemed part of a dream. She
bathed, and grew as tanned as her little daughter, a regular Gypsy, in
her broad hat and linen frocks; and yet she hardly seemed to be living
down here at all, for she was never free of the memory of that last
meeting with Summerhay. Why had he spoken and put an end to their quiet
friendship, and left her to such heart-searchings all by herself? But
she did not want his words unsaid. Only, how to know whether to recoil
and fly, or to pass beyond the dread of letting herself go, of plunging
deep into the unknown depths of love--of that passion, whose nature for
the first time she had tremulously felt, watching "Pagliacci"--and had
ever since been feeling and trembling at! Must it really be neck or
nothing? Did she care enough to break through all barriers, fling
herself into midstream? When they could see each other every day, it was
so easy to live for the next meeting--not think of what was coming after.
But now, with all else cut away, there was only the future to think
about--hers and his. But need she trouble about his? Would he not just
love her as long as he liked?
Then she thought of her father--still faithful to a memory--and felt
ashamed. Some men loved on--yes--even beyond death! But, sometimes, she
would think: 'Am I a candle-flame again? Is he just going to burn
himself? What real good can I be to him--I, without freedom, and with my
baby, who will grow up?' Yet all these thoughts were, in a way, unreal.
The struggle was in herself, so deep that she could hardly understand it;
as might be an effort to subdue the instinctive dread of a precipice.
And she would feel a kind of resentment against all the happy life round
her these summer days--the sea-birds, the sunlight, and the waves; the
white sails far out; the calm sun-steeped pine-trees; her baby, tumbling
and smiling and softly twittering; and Betty and the other servants--all
this life that seemed so simple and untortured.
To the one post each day she looked forward terribly. And yet his
letters, which began like hers: "My dear friend," might have been read by
anyone--almost. She spent a long time over her answers. She was not
sleeping well; and, lying awake, she could see his face very distinct
before her closed eyes--its teasing, lazy smile, its sudden intent
gravity. Once she had a dream of him, rushing past her down into the
sea. She called, but, without turning his head, he swam out further,
further, till she lost sight of him, and woke up suddenly with a pain in
her heart. "If you can't love me, I've got to break away!" His face,
his flung-back head reminded her too sharply of those words. Now that he
was away from her, would he not feel that it was best to break, and
forget her? Up there, he would meet girls untouched by life--not like
herself. He had everything before him; could he possibly go on wanting
one who had nothing before her? Some blue-eyed girl with auburn
hair--that type so superior to her own--would sweep, perhaps had already
swept him, away from her! What then? No worse than it used to be? Ah,
so much worse that she dared not think of it!
Then, for five days, no letter came. And, with each blank morning, the
ache in her grew--a sharp, definite ache of longing and jealousy, utterly
unlike the mere feeling of outraged pride when she had surprised Fiorsen
and Daphne Wing in the music-room--a hundred years ago, it seemed. When
on the fifth day the postman left nothing but a bill for little Gyp's
shoes, and a note from Aunt Rosamund at Harrogate, where she had gone
with Winton for the annual cure, Gyp's heart sank to the depths. Was
this the end? And, with a blind, numb feeling, she wandered out into the
wood, where the fall of the pine-needles, season after season, had made
of the ground one soft, dark, dust-coloured bed, on which the sunlight
traced the pattern of the pine boughs, and ants rummaged about their
great heaped dwellings.
Gyp went along till she could see no outer world for the grey-brown
tree-stems streaked with gum-resin; and, throwing herself down on her
face, dug her elbows deep into the pine dust. Tears, so rare with her,
forced their way up, and trickled slowly to the hands whereon her chin
rested. No good--crying! Crying only made her ill; crying was no
relief. She turned over on her back and lay motionless, the sunbeams
warm on her cheeks. Silent here, even at noon! The sough of the calm
sea could not reach so far; the flies were few; no bird sang. The tall
bare pine stems rose up all round like columns in a temple roofed with
the dark boughs and sky. Cloud-fleeces drifted slowly over the blue.
There should be peace--but in her heart there was none!
A dusky shape came padding through the trees a little way off,
another--two donkeys loose from somewhere, who stood licking each other's
necks and noses. Those two humble beasts, so friendly, made her feel
ashamed. Why should she be sorry for herself, she who had everything in
life she wanted--except love--the love she had thought she would never
want? Ah, but she wanted it now, wanted it at last with all her being!
With a shudder, she sprang up; the ants had got to her, and she had to
pick them off her neck and dress. She wandered back towards the beach.
If he had truly found someone to fill his thoughts, and drive her out,
all the better for him; she would never, by word or sign, show him that
she missed, and wanted him--never! She would sooner die!
She came out into the sunshine. The tide was low; and the wet foreshore
gleamed with opal tints; there were wandering tracks on the sea, as of
great serpents winding their way beneath the surface; and away to the
west the archwayed, tawny rock that cut off the line of coast was like a
dream-shape. All was dreamy. And, suddenly her heart began beating to
suffocation and the colour flooded up in her cheeks. On the edge of the
low cliff bank, by the side of the path, Summerhay was sitting!
He got up and came toward her. Putting her hands up to her glowing face,
she said:
"Yes; it's me. Did you ever see such a gipsified object? I thought you
were still in Scotland. How's dear Ossy?" Then her self-possession
failed, and she looked down.
"It's no good, Gyp. I must know."
It seemed to Gyp that her heart had given up beating; she said quietly:
"Let's sit down a minute"; and moved under the cliff bank where they
could not be seen from the house. There, drawing the coarse grass blades
through her fingers, she said, with a shiver:
"I didn't try to make you, did I? I never tried."
"No; never."
"It's wrong."
"Who cares? No one could care who loves as I do. Oh, Gyp, can't you
love me? I know I'm nothing much." How quaint and boyish! "But it's
eleven weeks to-day since we met in the train. I don't think I've had
one minute's let-up since."
"Have you tried?"
"Why should I, when I love you?"
Gyp sighed; relief, delight, pain--she did not know.
"Then what is to be done? Look over there--that bit of blue in the grass
is my baby daughter. There's her--and my father--and--"
"And what?"
"I'm afraid--afraid of love, Bryan!"
At that first use of his name, Summerhay turned pale and seized her hand.
"Afraid--how--afraid?"
Gyp said very low:
"I might love too much. Don't say any more now. No; don't! Let's go in
and have lunch." And she got up.
He stayed till tea-time, and not a word more of love did he speak. But
when he was gone, she sat under the pine-tree with little Gyp on her lap.
Love! If her mother had checked love, she herself would never have been
born. The midges were biting before she went in. After watching Betty
give little Gyp her bath, she crossed the passage to her bedroom and
leaned out of the window. Could it have been to-day she had lain on the
ground with tears of despair running down on to her hands? Away to the
left of the pine-tree, the moon had floated up, soft, barely visible in
the paling sky. A new world, an enchanted garden! And between her and
it--what was there?
That evening she sat with a book on her lap, not reading; and in her went
on the strange revolution which comes in the souls of all women who are
not half-men when first they love--the sinking of 'I' into 'Thou,' the
passionate, spiritual subjection, the intense, unconscious giving-up of
will, in preparation for completer union.
She slept without dreaming, awoke heavy and oppressed. Too languid to
bathe, she sat listless on the beach with little Gyp all the morning.
Had she energy or spirit to meet him in the afternoon by the rock
archway, as she had promised? For the first time since she was a small
and naughty child, she avoided the eyes of Betty. One could not be afraid
of that stout, devoted soul, but one could feel that she knew too much.
When the time came, after early tea, she started out; for if she did not
go, he would come, and she did not want the servants to see him two days
running.
This last day of August was warm and still, and had a kind of
beneficence--the corn all gathered in, the apples mellowing, robins
singing already, a few slumberous, soft clouds, a pale blue sky, a
smiling sea. She went inland, across the stream, and took a footpath
back to the shore. No pines grew on that side, where the soil was
richer--of a ruddy brown. The second crops of clover were already high;
in them humblebees were hard at work; and, above, the white-throated
swallows dipped and soared. Gyp gathered a bunch of chicory flowers.
She was close above the shore before she saw him standing in the rock
archway, looking for her across the beach. After the hum of the bees and
flies, it was very quiet here--only the faintest hiss of tiny waves. He
had not yet heard her coming, and the thought flashed through her: 'If I
take another step, it is for ever! She stood there scarcely breathing,
the chicory flowers held before her lips. Then she heard him sigh, and,
moving quickly forward, said:
"Here I am."
He turned round, seized her hand, and, without a word, they passed
through the archway. They walked on the hard sand, side by side, till he
said:
"Let's go up into the fields."
They scrambled up the low cliff and went along the grassy top to a gate
into a stubble field. He held it open for her, but, as she passed,
caught her in his arms and kissed her lips as if he would never stop. To
her, who had been kissed a thousand times, it was the first kiss. Deadly
pale, she fell back from him against the gate; then, her lips still
quivering, her eyes very dark, she looked at him distraught with passion,
drunk on that kiss. And, suddenly turning round to the gate, she laid
her arms on the top bar and buried her face on them. A sob came up in
her throat that seemed to tear her to bits, and she cried as if her heart
would break. His timid despairing touches, his voice close to her ear:
"Gyp, Gyp! My darling! My love! Oh, don't, Gyp!" were not of the least
avail; she could not stop. That kiss had broken down something in her
soul, swept away her life up to that moment, done something terrible and
wonderful. At last, she struggled out:
"I'm sorry--so sorry! Don't--don't look at me! Go away a little, and
I'll--I'll be all right."
He obeyed without a word, and, passing through the gate, sat down on the
edge of the cliff with his back to her, looking out over the sea.
Gripping the wood of the old grey gate till it hurt her hands, Gyp gazed
at the chicory flowers and poppies that had grown up again in the stubble
field, at the butterflies chasing in the sunlight over the hedge toward
the crinkly foam edging the quiet sea till they were but fluttering white
specks in the blue.
But when she had rubbed her cheeks and smoothed her face, she was no
nearer to feeling that she could trust herself. What had happened in her
was too violent, too sweet, too terrifying. And going up to him she
said:
"Let me go home now by myself. Please, let me go, dear. To-morrow!"
Summerhay looked up.
"Whatever you wish, Gyp--always!"
He pressed her hand against his cheek, then let it go, and, folding his
arms tight, resumed his meaningless stare at the sea. Gyp turned away.
She crossed back to the other side of the stream, but did not go in for a
long time, sitting in the pine wood till the evening gathered and the
stars crept out in a sky of that mauve-blue which the psychic say is the
soul-garment colour of the good.
Late that night, when she had finished brushing her hair, she opened her
window and stepped out on to the verandah. How warm! How still! Not a
sound from the sleeping house--not a breath of wind! Her face, framed in
her hair, her hands, and all her body, felt as if on fire. The moon
behind the pine-tree branches was filling every cranny of her brain with
wakefulness. The soft shiver of the wellnigh surfless sea on a rising
tide, rose, fell, rose, fell. The sand cliff shone like a bank of snow.
And all was inhabited, as a moonlit night is wont to be, by a magical
Presence. A big moth went past her face, so close that she felt the
flutter of its wings. A little night beast somewhere was scruttling in
bushes or the sand. Suddenly, across the wan grass the shadow of the
pine-trunk moved. It moved--ever so little--moved! And, petrified--Gyp
stared. There, joined to the trunk, Summerhay was standing, his face
just visible against the stem, the moonlight on one cheek, a hand shading
his eyes. He moved that hand, held it out in supplication. For
long--how long--Gyp did not stir, looking straight at that beseeching
figure. Then, with a feeling she had never known, she saw him coming.
He came up to the verandah and stood looking up at her. She could see
all the workings of his face--passion, reverence, above all amazement;
and she heard his awed whisper:
"Is it you, Gyp? Really you? You look so young--so young!"
VII
From the moment of surrender, Gyp passed straight into a state the more
enchanted because she had never believed in it, had never thought that
she could love as she now loved. Days and nights went by in a sort of
dream, and when Summerhay was not with her, she was simply waiting with a
smile on her lips for the next hour of meeting. Just as she had never
felt it possible to admit the world into the secrets of her married life,
so, now she did not consider the world at all. Only the thought of her
father weighed on her conscience. He was back in town. And she felt
that she must tell him. When Summerhay heard this he only said: "All
right, Gyp, whatever you think best."
And two days before her month at the bungalow was up, she went, leaving
Betty and little Gyp to follow on the last day. Winton, pale and
somewhat languid, as men are when they have been cured, found her when he
came in from the club. She had put on evening dress, and above the
pallor of her shoulders, her sunwarmed face and throat had almost the
colour of a nectarine. He had never seen her look like that, never seen
her eyes so full of light. And he uttered a quiet grunt of satisfaction.
It was as if a flower, which he had last seen in close and elegant shape,
had bloomed in full perfection. She did not meet his gaze quite steadily
and all that evening kept putting her confession off and off. It was not
easy--far from easy. At last, when he was smoking his "go-to-bed"
cigarette, she took a cushion and sank down on it beside his chair,
leaning against his knee, where her face was hidden from him, as on that
day after her first ball, when she had listened to HIS confession. And
she began:
"Dad, do you remember my saying once that I didn't understand what you
and my mother felt for each other?" Winton did not speak; misgiving had
taken possession of him. Gyp went on: "I know now how one would rather
die than give someone up."
Winton drew his breath in sharply:
"Who? Summerhay?"
"Yes; I used to think I should never be in love, but you knew better."
Better!
In disconsolate silence, he thought rapidly: 'What's to be done? What can
I do? Get her a divorce?'
Perhaps because of the ring in her voice, or the sheer seriousness of the
position, he did not feel resentment as when he lost her to Fiorsen.
Love! A passion such as had overtaken her mother and himself! And this
young man? A decent fellow, a good rider--comprehensible! Ah, if the
course had only been clear! He put his hand on her shoulder and said:
"Well, Gyp, we must go for the divorce, then, after all."
She shook her head.
"It's too late. Let HIM divorce me, if he only will!"
Winton needed all his self-control at that moment. Too late? Already!
Sudden recollection that he had not the right to say a word alone kept
him silent. Gyp went on:
"I love him, with every bit of me. I don't care what comes--whether it's
open or secret. I don't care what anybody thinks."
She had turned round now, and if Winton had doubt of her feeling, he lost
it. This was a Gyp he had never seen! A glowing, soft, quick-breathing
creature, with just that lithe watchful look of the mother cat or lioness
whose whelps are threatened. There flashed through him a recollection of
how, as a child, with face very tense, she would ride at fences that were
too big. At last he said:
"I'm sorry you didn't tell me sooner."
"I couldn't. I didn't know. Oh, Dad, I'm always hurting you! Forgive
me!"
She was pressing his hand to her cheek that felt burning hot. And he
thought: "Forgive! Of course I forgive. That's not the point; the point
is--"
And a vision of his loved one talked about, besmirched, bandied from
mouth to mouth, or else--for her what there had been for him, a
hole-and-corner life, an underground existence of stealthy meetings kept
dark, above all from her own little daughter. Ah, not that! And
yet--was not even that better than the other, which revolted to the soul
his fastidious pride in her, roused in advance his fury against tongues
that would wag, and eyes that would wink or be uplifted in righteousness?
Summerhay's world was more or less his world; scandal, which--like all
parasitic growths--flourishes in enclosed spaces, would have every
chance. And, at once, his brain began to search, steely and quick, for
some way out; and the expression as when a fox broke covert, came on his
face.
"Nobody knows, Gyp?"
"No; nobody."
That was something! With an irritation that rose from his very soul, he
muttered:
"I can't stand it that you should suffer, and that fellow Fiorsen go
scot-free. Can you give up seeing Summerhay while we get you a divorce?
We might do it, if no one knows. I think you owe it to me, Gyp."
Gyp got up and stood by the window a long time without answering. Winton
watched her face. At last she said:
"I couldn't. We might stop seeing each other; it isn't that. It's what
I should feel. I shouldn't respect myself after; I should feel so mean.
Oh, Dad, don't you see? He really loved me in his way. And to pretend!
To make out a case for myself, tell about Daphne Wing, about his
drinking, and baby; pretend that I wanted him to love me, when I got to
hate it and didn't care really whether he was faithful or not--and
knowing all the while that I've been everything to someone else! I
couldn't. I'd much rather let him know, and ask him to divorce me."
Winton replied:
"And suppose he won't?"
"Then my mind would be clear, anyway; and we would take what we could."
"And little Gyp?"
Staring before her as if trying to see into the future, she said slowly:
"Some day, she'll understand, as I do. Or perhaps it will be all over
before she knows. Does happiness ever last?"
And, going up to him, she bent over, kissed his forehead, and went out.
The warmth from her lips, and the scent of her remained with Winton like
a sensation wafted from the past.
Was there then nothing to be done--nothing? Men of his stamp do not, as
a general thing, see very deep even into those who are nearest to them;
but to-night he saw his daughter's nature more fully perhaps than ever
before. No use to importune her to act against her instincts--not a bit
of use! And yet--how to sit and watch it all--watch his own passion with
its ecstasy and its heart-burnings re-enacted with her--perhaps for many
years? And the old vulgar saying passed through his mind: "What's bred
in the bone will come out in the meat." Now she had given, she would
give with both hands--beyond measure--beyond!--as he himself, as her
mother had given! Ah, well, she was better off than his own loved one
had been. One must not go ahead of trouble, or cry over spilled milk!
VIII
Gyp had a wakeful night. The question she herself had raised, of telling
Fiorsen, kept her thoughts in turmoil. Was he likely to divorce her if
she did? His contempt for what he called 'these bourgeois morals,' his
instability, the very unpleasantness, and offence to his vanity--all this
would prevent him. No; he would not divorce her, she was sure, unless by
any chance he wanted legal freedom, and that was quite unlikely. What
then would be gained? Ease for her conscience? But had she any right to
ease her conscience if it brought harm to her lover? And was it not
ridiculous to think of conscience in regard to one who, within a year of
marriage, had taken to himself a mistress, and not even spared the home
paid for and supported by his wife? No; if she told Fiorsen, it would
only be to salve her pride, wounded by doing what she did not avow.
Besides, where was he? At the other end of the world for all she knew.
She came down to breakfast, dark under the eyes and no whit advanced
toward decision. Neither of them mentioned their last night's talk, and
Gyp went back to her room to busy herself with dress, after those weeks
away. It was past noon when, at a muffled knock, she found Markey
outside her door.
"Mr. Fiorsen, m'm."
Gyp beckoned him in, and closed the door.
"In the hall, m'm--slipped in when I answered the bell; short of shoving,
I couldn't keep him out."
Gyp stood full half a minute before she said:
"Is my father in?"
"No, m'm; the major's gone to the fencin'-club."
"What did you say?"
"Said I would see. So far as I was aware, nobody was in. Shall I have a
try to shift him, m'm?"
With a faint smile Gyp shook her head.
"Say no one can see him."
Markey's woodcock eyes, under their thin, dark, twisting brows, fastened
on her dolefully; he opened the door to go. Fiorsen was standing there,
and, with a quick movement, came in. She saw Markey raise his arms as if
to catch him round the waist, and said quietly:
"Markey--wait outside, please."
When the door was shut, she retreated against her dressing-table and
stood gazing at her husband, while her heart throbbed as if it would leap
through its coverings.
He had grown a short beard, his cheeks seemed a little fatter, and his
eyes surely more green; otherwise, he looked much as she remembered him.
And the first thought that passed through her was: 'Why did I ever pity
him? He'll never fret or drink himself to death--he's got enough
vitality for twenty men.'
His face, which had worn a fixed, nervous smile, grew suddenly grave as
her own, and his eyes roved round the room in the old half-fierce,
half-furtive way.
"Well, Gyp," he said, and his voice shook a little: "At last! Won't you
kiss me?"
The question seemed to Gyp idiotic; and suddenly she felt quite cool.
"If you want to speak to my father, you must come later; he's out."
Fiorsen gave one of his fierce shrugs.
"Is it likely? Look, Gyp! I returned from Russia yesterday. I was a
great success, made a lot of money out there. Come back to me! I will
be good--I swear it! Now I have seen you again, I can't be without you.
Ah, Gyp, come back to me! And see how good I will be. I will take you
abroad, you and the bambina. We will go to Rome--anywhere you like--live
how you like. Only come back to me!"
Gyp answered stonily:
"You are talking nonsense."
"Gyp, I swear to you I have not seen a woman--not one fit to put beside
you. Oh, Gyp, be good to me once more. This time I will not fail. Try
me! Try me, my Gyp!"
Only at this moment of his pleading, whose tragic tones seemed to her
both false and childish, did Gyp realize the strength of the new feeling
in her heart. And the more that feeling throbbed within her, the harder
her face and her voice grew. She said:
"If that is all you came to say--please go. I will never come back to
you. Once for all, understand, PLEASE."
The silence in which he received her words, and his expression, impressed
her far more than his appeal; with one of his stealthy movements he came
quite close, and, putting his face forward till it almost touched her,
said:
"You are my wife. I want you back. I must have you back. If you do not
come, I will kill either you or myself."
And suddenly she felt his arms knotted behind her back, crushing her to
him. She stilled a scream; then, very swiftly, took a resolve, and,
rigid in his arms, said:
"Let go; you hurt me. Sit down quietly. I will tell you something."
The tone of her voice made him loosen his grasp and crane back to see her
face. Gyp detached his arms from her completely, sat down on an old oak
chest, and motioned him to the window-seat. Her heart thumped pitifully;
cold waves of almost physical sickness passed through and through her.
She had smelt brandy in his breath when he was close to her. It was like
being in the cage of a wild beast; it was like being with a madman! The
remembrance of him with his fingers stretched out like claws above her
baby was so vivid at that moment that she could scarcely see him as he
was, sitting there quietly, waiting for what she was going to say. And
fixing her eyes on him, she said softly:
"You say you love me, Gustav. I tried to love you, too, but I never
could--never from the first. I tried very hard. Surely you care what a
woman feels, even if she happens to be your wife."
She could see his face quiver; and she went on:
"When I found I couldn't love you, I felt I had no right over you. I
didn't stand on my rights. Did I?"
Again his face quivered, and again she hurried on:
"But you wouldn't expect me to go all through my life without ever
feeling love--you who've felt it so many times?" Then, clasping her
hands tight, with a sort of wonder at herself, she murmured: "I AM in
love. I've given myself."
He made a queer, whining sound, covering his face. And the beggar's tag:
"'Ave a feelin' 'eart, gentleman--'ave a feelin' 'eart!" passed
idiotically through Gyp's mind. Would he get up and strangle her?
Should she dash to the door--escape? For a long, miserable moment, she
watched him swaying on the window-seat, with his face covered. Then,
without looking at her, he crammed a clenched hand up against his mouth,
and rushed out.
Through the open door, Gyp had a glimpse of Markey's motionless figure,
coming to life as Fiorsen passed. She drew a long breath, locked the
door, and lay down on her bed. Her heart beat dreadfully. For a moment,
something had checked his jealous rage. But if on this shock he began to
drink, what might not happen? He had said something wild. And she
shuddered. But what right had he to feel jealousy and rage against her?
What right? She got up and went to the glass, trembling, mechanically
tidying her hair. Miraculous that she had come through unscathed!
Her thoughts flew to Summerhay. They were to meet at three o'clock by
the seat in St. James's Park. But all was different, now; difficult and
dangerous! She must wait, take counsel with her father. And yet if she
did not keep that tryst, how anxious he would be--thinking that all sorts
of things had happened to her; thinking perhaps--oh, foolish!--that she
had forgotten, or even repented of her love. What would she herself
think, if he were to fail her at their first tryst after those days of
bliss? Certainly that he had changed his mind, seen she was not worth
it, seen that a woman who could give herself so soon, so easily, was one
to whom he could not sacrifice his life.
In this cruel uncertainty, she spent the next two hours, till it was
nearly three. If she did not go out, he would come on to Bury Street,
and that would be still more dangerous. She put on her hat and walked
swiftly towards St. James's Palace. Once sure that she was not being
followed, her courage rose, and she passed rapidly down toward the water.
She was ten minutes late, and seeing him there, walking up and down,
turning his head every few seconds so as not to lose sight of the bench,
she felt almost lightheaded from joy. When they had greeted with that
pathetic casualness of lovers which deceives so few, they walked on
together past Buckingham Palace, up into the Green Park, beneath the
trees. During this progress, she told him about her father; but only
when they were seated in that comparative refuge, and his hand was
holding hers under cover of the sunshade that lay across her knee, did
she speak of Fiorsen.
He tightened his grasp of her hand; then, suddenly dropping it, said:
"Did he touch you, Gyp?"
Gyp heard that question with a shock. Touch her! Yes! But what did it
matter?
He made a little shuddering sound; and, wondering, mournful, she looked
at him. His hands and teeth were clenched. She said softly:
"Bryan! Don't! I wouldn't let him kiss me."
He seemed to have to force his eyes to look at her.
"It's all right," he said, and, staring before him, bit his nails.
Gyp sat motionless, cut to the heart. She was soiled, and spoiled for
him! Of course! And yet a sense of injustice burned in her. Her heart
had never been touched; it was his utterly. But that was not enough for
a man--he wanted an untouched body, too. That she could not give; he
should have thought of that sooner, instead of only now. And, miserably,
she, too, stared before her, and her face hardened.
A little boy came and stood still in front of them, regarding her with
round, unmoving eyes. She was conscious of a slice of bread and jam in
his hand, and that his mouth and cheeks were smeared with red. A woman
called out: "Jacky! Come on, now!" and he was hauled away, still looking
back, and holding out his bread and jam as though offering her a bite.
She felt Summerhay's arm slipping round her.
"It's over, darling. Never again--I promise you!"
Ah, he might promise--might even keep that promise. But he would suffer,
always suffer, thinking of that other. And she said:
"You can only have me as I am, Bryan. I can't make myself new for you; I
wish I could--oh, I wish I could!"
"I ought to have cut my tongue out first! Don't think of it! Come home
to me and have tea--there's no one there. Ah, do, Gyp--come!"
He took her hands and pulled her up. And all else left Gyp but the joy
of being close to him, going to happiness.
IX
Fiorsen, passing Markey like a blind man, made his way out into the
street, but had not gone a hundred yards before he was hurrying back. He
had left his hat. The servant, still standing there, handed him that
wide-brimmed object and closed the door in his face. Once more he moved
away, going towards Piccadilly. If it had not been for the expression on
Gyp's face, what might he not have done? And, mixed with sickening
jealousy, he felt a sort of relief, as if he had been saved from
something horrible. So she had never loved him! Never at all?
Impossible! Impossible that a woman on whom he had lavished such passion
should never have felt passion for him--never any! Innumerable images of
her passed before him--surrendering, always surrendering. It could not
all have been pretence! He was not a common man--she herself had said
so; he had charm--or, other women thought so! She had lied; she must
have lied, to excuse herself!
He went into a cafe and asked for a fine champagne. They brought him a
carafe, with the measures marked. He sat there a long time. When he
rose, he had drunk nine, and he felt better, with a kind of ferocity that
was pleasant in his veins and a kind of nobility that was pleasant in his
soul. Let her love, and be happy with her lover! But let him get his
fingers on that fellow's throat! Let her be happy, if she could keep her
lover from him! And suddenly, he stopped in his tracks, for there on a
sandwich-board just in front of him were the words: "Daphne Wing.
Pantheon. Daphne Wing. Plastic Danseuse. Poetry of Motion. To-day at
three o'clock. Pantheon. Daphne Wing."
Ah, SHE had loved him--little Daphne! It was past three. Going in, he
took his place in the stalls, close to the stage, and stared before him,
with a sort of bitter amusement. This was irony indeed! Ah--and here
she came! A Pierrette--in short, diaphanous muslin, her face whitened to
match it; a Pierrette who stood slowly spinning on her toes, with arms
raised and hands joined in an arch above her glistening hair.
Idiotic pose! Idiotic! But there was the old expression on her face,
limpid, dovelike. And that something of the divine about her dancing
smote Fiorsen through all the sheer imbecility of her posturings. Across
and across she flitted, pirouetting, caught up at intervals by a Pierrot
in black tights with a face as whitened as her own, held upside down, or
right end up with one knee bent sideways, and the toe of a foot pressed
against the ankle of the other, and arms arched above her. Then, with
Pierrot's hands grasping her waist, she would stand upon one toe and
slowly twiddle, lifting her other leg toward the roof, while the
trembling of her form manifested cunningly to all how hard it was; then,
off the toe, she capered out to the wings, and capered back, wearing on
her face that divine, lost, dovelike look, while her perfect legs gleamed
white up to the very thigh-joint. Yes; on the stage she was adorable!
And raising his hands high, Fiorsen clapped and called out: "Brava!" He
marked the sudden roundness of her eyes, a tiny start--no more. She had
seen him. 'Ah! Some don't forget me!' he thought.
And now she came on for her second dance, assisted this time only by her
own image reflected in a little weedy pool about the middle of the stage.
From the programme Fiorsen read, "Ophelia's last dance," and again he
grinned. In a clinging sea-green gown, cut here and there to show her
inevitable legs, with marguerites and corn-flowers in her unbound hair,
she circled her own reflection, languid, pale, desolate; then slowly
gaining the abandon needful to a full display, danced with frenzy till,
in a gleam of limelight, she sank into the apparent water and floated
among paper water-lilies on her back. Lovely she looked there, with her
eyes still open, her lips parted, her hair trailing behind. And again
Fiorsen raised his hands high to clap, and again called out: 'Brava!'
But the curtain fell, and Ophelia did not reappear. Was it the sight of
him, or was she preserving the illusion that she was drowned? That "arty"
touch would be just like her.
Averting his eyes from two comedians in calico, beating each other about
the body, he rose with an audible "Pish!" and made his way out. He
stopped in the street to scribble on his card, "Will you see me?--G. F."
and took it round to the stage-door. The answer came back:
"Miss Wing will see you m a minute, sir."
And leaning against the distempered wall of the draughty corridor, a
queer smile on his face, Fiorsen wondered why the devil he was there, and
what the devil she would say.
When he was admitted, she was standing with her hat on, while her
"dresser" buttoned her patent-leather shoes. Holding out her hand above
the woman's back, she said:
"Oh, Mr. Fiorsen, how do you do?"
Fiorsen took the little moist hand; and his eyes passed over her,
avoiding a direct meeting with her eyes. He received an impression of
something harder, more self-possessed, than he remembered. Her face was
the same, yet not the same; only her perfect, supple little body was as
it had been. The dresser rose, murmured: "Good-afternoon, miss," and
went.
Daphne Wing smiled faintly.
"I haven't seen you for a long time, have I?"
"No; I've been abroad. You dance as beautifully as ever."
"Oh, yes; it hasn't hurt my dancing."
With an effort, he looked her in the face. Was this really the same girl
who had clung to him, cloyed him with her kisses, her tears, her appeals
for love--just a little love? Ah, but she was more desirable, much more
desirable than he had remembered! And he said:
"Give me a kiss, little Daphne!"
Daphne Wing did not stir; her white teeth rested on her lower lip; she
said:
"Oh, no, thank you! How is Mrs. Fiorsen?"
Fiorsen turned abruptly.
"There is none."
"Oh, has she divorced you?"
"No. Stop talking of her; stop talking, I say!"
Daphne Wing, still motionless in the centre of her little crowded
dressing-room said, in a matter-of-fact voice:
"You are polite, aren't you? It's funny; I can't tell whether I'm glad
to see you. I had a bad time, you know; and Mrs. Fiorsen was an angel.
Why do you come to see me now?"
Exactly! Why had he come? The thought flashed through him: 'She'll help
me to forget.' And he said:
"I was a great brute to you, Daphne. I came to make up, if I can."
"Oh, no; you can't make up--thank you!" A shudder ran through her, and
she began drawing on her gloves. "You taught me a lot, you know. I
ought to be quite grateful. Oh, you've grown a little beard! D'you
think that improves you? It makes you look rather like Mephistopheles, I
think."
Fiorsen stared fixedly at that perfectly shaped face, where a faint,
underdone pink mingled with the fairness of the skin. Was she mocking
him? Impossible! She looked too matter of fact.
"Where do you live now?" he said.
"I'm on my own, in a studio. You can come and see it, if you like."
"With pleasure."
"Only, you'd better understand. I've had enough of love."
Fiorsen grinned.
"Even for another?" he said.
Daphne Wing answered calmly:
"I wish you would treat me like a lady."
Fiorsen bit his lip, and bowed.
"May I have the pleasure of giving you some tea?"
"Yes, thank you; I'm very hungry. I don't eat lunch on matinee-days; I
find it better not. Do you like my Ophelia dance?"
"It's artificial."
"Yes, it IS artificial--it's done with mirrors and wire netting, you
know. But do I give you the illusion of being mad?" Fiorsen nodded.
"I'm so glad. Shall we go? I do want my tea."
She turned round, scrutinized herself in the glass, touched her hat with
both hands, revealing, for a second, all the poised beauty of her figure,
took a little bag from the back of a chair, and said:
"I think, if you don't mind going on, it's less conspicuous. I'll meet
you at Ruffel's--they have lovely things there. Au revoir."
In a state of bewilderment, irritation, and queer meekness, Fiorsen
passed down Coventry Street, and entering the empty Ruffel's, took a
table near the window. There he sat staring before him, for the sudden
vision of Gyp sitting on that oaken chest, at the foot of her bed, had
blotted the girl clean out. The attendant coming to take his order,
gazed at his pale, furious face, and said mechanically:
"What can I get you, please?"
Looking up, Fiorsen saw Daphne Wing outside, gazing at the cakes in the
window. She came in.
"Oh, here you are! I should like iced coffee and walnut cake, and some
of those marzipan sweets--oh, and some whipped cream with my cake. Do
you mind?" And, sitting down, she fixed her eyes on his face and asked:
"Where have you been abroad?"
"Stockholm, Budapest, Moscow, other places."
"How perfect! Do you think I should make a success in Budapest or
Moscow?"
"You might; you are English enough."
"Oh! Do you think I'm very English?"
"Utterly. Your kind of--" But even he was not quite capable of
finishing that sentence--"your kind of vulgarity could not be produced
anywhere else." Daphne Wing finished it for him:
"My kind of beauty?"
Fiorsen grinned and nodded.
"Oh, I think that's the nicest thing you ever said to me! Only, of
course, I should like to think I'm more of the Greek type--pagan, you
know."
She fell silent, casting her eyes down. Her profile at that moment,
against the light, was very pure and soft in line. And he said:
"I suppose you hate me, little Daphne? You ought to hate me."
Daphne Wing looked up; her round, blue-grey eyes passed over him much as
they had been passing over the marzipan.
"No; I don't hate you--now. Of course, if I had any love left for you, I
should. Oh, isn't that Irish? But one can think anybody a rotter
without hating them, can't one?"
Fiorsen bit his lips.
"So you think me a 'rotter'?"
Daphne Wing's eyes grew rounder.
"But aren't you? You couldn't be anything else--could you?--with the
sort of things you did."
"And yet you don't mind having tea with me?"
Daphne Wing, who had begun to eat and drink, said with her mouth full:
"You see, I'm independent now, and I know life. That makes you
harmless."
Fiorsen stretched out his hand and seized hers just where her little warm
pulse was beating very steadily. She looked at it, changed her fork
over, and went on eating with the other hand. Fiorsen drew his hand away
as if he had been stung.
"Ah, you HAVE changed--that is certain!"
"Yes; you wouldn't expect anything else, would you? You see, one doesn't
go through that for nothing. I think I was a dreadful little fool--"
She stopped, with her spoon on its way to her mouth--"and yet--"
"I love you still, little Daphne."
She slowly turned her head toward him, and a faint sigh escaped her.
"Once I would have given a lot to hear that."
And turning her head away again, she picked a large walnut out of her
cake and put it in her mouth.
"Are you coming to see my studio? I've got it rather nice and new. I'm
making twenty-five a week; my next engagement, I'm going to get thirty.
I should like Mrs. Fiorsen to know--Oh, I forgot; you don't like me to
speak of her! Why not? I wish you'd tell me!" Gazing, as the attendant
had, at his furious face, she went on: "I don't know how it is, but I'm
not a bit afraid of you now. I used to be. Oh, how is Count Rosek? Is
he as pale as ever? Aren't you going to have anything more? You've had
hardly anything. D'you know what I should like--a chocolate eclair and a
raspberry ice-cream soda with a slice of tangerine in it."
When she had slowly sucked up that beverage, prodding the slice of
tangerine with her straws, they went out and took a cab. On that journey
to her studio, Fiorsen tried to possess himself of her hand, but, folding
her arms across her chest, she said quietly:
"It's very bad manners to take advantage of cabs." And, withdrawing
sullenly into his corner, he watched her askance. Was she playing with
him? Or had she really ceased to care the snap of a finger? It seemed
incredible. The cab, which had been threading the maze of the Soho
streets, stopped. Daphne Wing alighted, proceeded down a narrow passage
to a green door on the right, and, opening it with a latch-key, paused to
say:
"I like it's being in a little sordid street--it takes away all
amateurishness. It wasn't a studio, of course; it was the back part of a
paper-maker's. Any space conquered for art is something, isn't it?" She
led the way up a few green-carpeted stairs, into a large room with a
skylight, whose walls were covered in Japanese silk the colour of yellow
azaleas. Here she stood for a minute without speaking, as though lost in
the beauty of her home: then, pointing to the walls, she said:
"It took me ages, I did it all myself. And look at my little Japanese
trees; aren't they dickies?" Six little dark abortions of trees were
arranged scrupulously on a lofty window-sill, whence the skylight sloped.
She added suddenly: "I think Count Rosek would like this room. There's
something bizarre about it, isn't there? I wanted to surround myself with
that, you know--to get the bizarre note into my work. It's so important
nowadays. But through there I've got a bedroom and a bathroom and a
little kitchen with everything to hand, all quite domestic; and hot water
always on. My people are SO funny about this room. They come sometimes,
and stand about. But they can't get used to the neighbourhood; of course
it IS sordid, but I think an artist ought to be superior to that."
Suddenly touched, Fiorsen answered gently:
"Yes, little Daphne."
She looked at him, and another tiny sigh escaped her.
"Why did you treat me like you did?" she said. "It's such a pity,
because now I can't feel anything at all." And turning, she suddenly
passed the back of her hand across her eyes. Really moved by that,
Fiorsen went towards her, but she had turned round again, and putting out
her hand to keep him off, stood shaking her head, with half a tear
glistening on her eyelashes.
"Please sit down on the divan," she said. "Will you smoke? These are
Russians." And she took a white box of pink-coloured cigarettes from a
little golden birchwood table. "I have everything Russian and Japanese
so far as I can; I think they help more than anything with atmosphere.
I've got a balalaika; you can't play on it, can you? What a pity! If
only I had a violin! I SHOULD have liked to hear you play again." She
clasped her hands: "Do you remember when I danced to you before the
fire?"
Fiorsen remembered only too well. The pink cigarette trembled in his
fingers, and he said rather hoarsely:
"Dance to me now, Daphne!"
She shook her head.
"I don't trust you a yard. Nobody would--would they?"
Fiorsen started up.
"Then why did you ask me here? What are you playing at, you little--"
At sight of her round, unmoving eyes, he stopped. She said calmly:
"I thought you'd like to see that I'd mastered my fate--that's all. But,
of course, if you don't, you needn't stop."
Fiorsen sank back on the divan. A conviction that everything she said
was literal had begun slowly to sink into him. And taking a long pull at
that pink cigarette he puffed the smoke out with a laugh.
"What are you laughing at?"
"I was thinking, little Daphne, that you are as great an egoist as I."
"I want to be. It's the only thing, isn't it?"
Fiorsen laughed again.
"You needn't worry. You always were."
She had seated herself on an Indian stool covered with a bit of Turkish
embroidery, and, joining her hands on her lap, answered gravely:
"No; I think I wasn't, while I loved you. But it didn't pay, did it?"
Fiorsen stared at her.
"It has made a woman of you, Daphne. Your face is different. Your mouth
is prettier for my kisses--or the want of them. All over, you are
prettier." Pink came up in Daphne Wing's cheeks. And, encouraged by
that flush, he went on warmly: "If you loved me now, I should not tire of
you. Oh, you can believe me! I--"
She shook her head.
"We won't talk about love, will we? Did you have a big triumph in Moscow
and St. Petersburg? It must be wonderful to have really great triumphs!"
Fiorsen answered gloomily:
"Triumphs? I made a lot of money."
Daphne Wing purred:
"Oh, I expect you're very happy."
Did she mean to be ironic?
"I'm miserable."
He got up and went towards her. She looked up in his face.
"I'm sorry if you're miserable. I know what it feels like."
"You can help me not to be. Little Daphne, you can help me to forget."
He had stopped, and put his hands on her shoulders. Without moving Daphne
Wing answered:
"I suppose it's Mrs. Fiorsen you want to forget, isn't it?"
"As if she were dead. Ah, let it all be as it was, Daphne! You have
grown up; you are a woman, an artist, and you--"
Daphne Wing had turned her head toward the stairs.
"That was the bell," she said. "Suppose it's my people? It's just their
time! Oh, isn't that awkward?"
Fiorsen dropped his grasp of her and recoiled against the wall. There
with his head touching one of the little Japanese trees, he stood biting
his fingers. She was already moving toward the door.
"My mother's got a key, and it's no good putting you anywhere, because
she always has a good look round. But perhaps it isn't them. Besides,
I'm not afraid now; it makes a wonderful difference being on one's own."
She disappeared. Fiorsen could hear a woman's acid voice, a man's,
rather hoarse and greasy, the sound of a smacking kiss. And, with a
vicious shrug, he stood at bay. Trapped! The little devil! The little
dovelike devil! He saw a lady in a silk dress, green shot with beetroot
colour, a short, thick gentleman with a round, greyish beard, in a grey
suit, having a small dahlia in his buttonhole, and, behind them, Daphne
Wing, flushed, and very round-eyed. He took a step, intending to escape
without more ado. The gentleman said:
"Introduce us, Daisy. I didn't quite catch--Mr. Dawson? How do you do,
sir? One of my daughter's impresarios, I think. 'Appy to meet you, I'm
sure."
Fiorsen took a long breath, and bowed. Mr. Wagge's small piggy eyes had
fixed themselves on the little trees.
"She's got a nice little place here for her work--quiet and
unconventional. I hope you think well of her talent, sir? You might go
further and fare worse, I believe."
Again Fiorsen bowed.
"You may be proud of her," he said; "she is the rising star."
Mr. Wagge cleared his throat.
"Ow," he said; "ye'es! From a little thing, we thought she had stuff in
her. I've come to take a great interest in her work. It's not in my
line, but I think she's a sticker; I like to see perseverance. Where
you've got that, you've got half the battle of success. So many of these
young people seem to think life's all play. You must see a lot of that
in your profession, sir."
"Robert!"
A shiver ran down Fiorsen's spine.
"Ye-es?"
"The name was not DAWson!"
There followed a long moment. On the one side was that vinegary woman
poking her head forward like an angry hen, on the other, Daphne Wing, her
eyes rounder and rounder, her cheeks redder and redder, her lips opening,
her hands clasped to her perfect breast, and, in the centre, that broad,
grey-bearded figure, with reddening face and angry eyes and hoarsening
voice:
"You scoundrel! You infernal scoundrel!" It lurched forward, raising a
pudgy fist. Fiorsen sprang down the stairs and wrenched open the door.
He walked away in a whirl of mortification. Should he go back and take
that pug-faced vulgarian by the throat? As for that minx! But his
feelings about HER were too complicated for expression. And then--so
dark and random are the ways of the mind--his thoughts darted back to
Gyp, sitting on the oaken chest, making her confession; and the whips and
stings of it scored him worse than ever.
X
That same evening, standing at the corner of Bury Street, Summerhay
watched Gyp going swiftly to her father's house. He could not bring
himself to move while there was still a chance to catch a glimpse of her
face, a sign from her hand. Gone! He walked away with his head down.
The more blissful the hours just spent, the greater the desolation when
they are over. Of such is the nature of love, as he was now discerning.
The longing to have her always with him was growing fast. Since her
husband knew--why wait? There would be no rest for either of them in an
existence of meetings and partings like this, with the menace of that
fellow. She must come away with him at once--abroad--until things had
declared themselves; and then he must find a place where they could live
and she feel safe and happy. He must show he was in dead earnest, set
his affairs in order. And he thought: 'No good doing things by halves.
Mother must know. The sooner the better. Get it over--at once!' And,
with a grimace of discomfort, he set out for his aunt's house in Cadogan
Gardens, where his mother always stayed when she was in town.
Lady Summerhay was in the boudoir, waiting for dinner and reading a book
on dreams. A red-shaded lamp cast a mellow tinge over the grey frock,
over one reddish cheek and one white shoulder. She was a striking
person, tall and well built, her very blonde hair only just turning grey,
for she had married young and been a widow fifteen years--one of those
women whose naturally free spirits have been netted by association with
people of public position. Bubbles were still rising from her submerged
soul, but it was obvious that it would not again set eyes on the horizon.
With views neither narrow nor illiberal, as views in society go, she
judged everything now as people of public position must--discussion, of
course, but no alteration in one's way of living. Speculation and ideas
did not affect social usage. The countless movements in which she and
her friends were interested for the emancipation and benefit of others
were, in fact, only channels for letting off her superfluous goodwill,
conduit-pipes, for the directing spirit bred in her. She thought and
acted in terms of the public good, regulated by what people of position
said at luncheon and dinner. And it was surely not her fault that such
people must lunch and dine. When her son had bent and kissed her, she
held up the book to him and said:
"Well, Bryan, I think this man's book disgraceful; he simply runs his
sex-idea to death. Really, we aren't all quite so obsessed as that. I
do think he ought to be put in his own lunatic asylum."
Summerhay, looking down at her gloomily, answered:
"I've got bad news for you, Mother."
Lady Summerhay closed the book and searched his face with apprehension.
She knew that expression. She knew that poise of his head, as if butting
at something. He looked like that when he came to her in gambling
scrapes. Was this another? Bryan had always been a pickle. His next
words took her breath away.
"The people at Mildenham, Major Winton and his daughter--you know. Well,
I'm in love with her--I'm--I'm her lover."
Lady Summerhay uttered a gasp.
"But--but--Bryan--"
"That fellow she married drinks. He's impossible. She had to leave him
a year ago, with her baby--other reasons, too. Look here, Mother: This
is hateful, but you'd got to know. I can't talk of her. There's no
chance of a divorce." His voice grew higher. "Don't try to persuade me
out of it. It's no good."
Lady Summerhay, from whose comely face a frock, as it were, had slipped,
clasped her hands together on the book.
Such a swift descent of "life" on one to whom it had for so long been a
series of "cases" was cruel, and her son felt this without quite
realizing why. In the grip of his new emotions, he still retained enough
balance to appreciate what an abominably desolate piece of news this must
be to her, what a disturbance and disappointment. And, taking her hand,
he put it to his lips.
"Cheer up, Mother! It's all right. She's happy, and so am I."
Lady Summerhay could only press her hand against his kiss, and murmur:
"Yes; that's not everything, Bryan. Is there--is there going to be a
scandal?"
"I don't know. I hope not; but, anyway, HE knows about it."
"Society doesn't forgive."
Summerhay shrugged his shoulders.
"Awfully sorry for YOU, Mother."
"Oh, Bryan!"
This repetition of her plaint jarred his nerves.
"Don't run ahead of things. You needn't tell Edith or Flo. You needn't
tell anybody. We don't know what'll happen yet."
But in Lady Summerhay all was too sore and blank. This woman she had
never seen, whose origin was doubtful, whose marriage must have soiled
her, who was some kind of a siren, no doubt. It really was too hard!
She believed in her son, had dreamed of public position for him, or,
rather, felt he would attain it as a matter of course. And she said
feebly:
"This Major Winton is a man of breeding, isn't he?"
"Rather!" And, stopping before her, as if he read her thoughts, he
added: "You think she's not good enough for me? She's good enough for
anyone on earth. And she's the proudest woman I've ever met. If you're
bothering as to what to do about her--don't! She won't want anything of
anybody--I can tell you that. She won't accept any crumbs."
"That's lucky!" hovered on Lady Summerhay's lips; but, gazing at her son,
she became aware that she stood on the brink of a downfall in his heart.
Then the bitterness of her disappointment rising up again, she said
coldly:
"Are you going to live together openly?"
"Yes; if she will."
"You don't know yet?"
"I shall--soon."
Lady Summerhay got up, and the book on dreams slipped off her lap with a
thump. She went to the fireplace, and stood there looking at her son.
He had altered. His merry look was gone; his face was strange to her.
She remembered it like that, once in the park at Widrington, when he lost
his temper with a pony and came galloping past her, sitting back, his
curly hair stivered up like a little demon's. And she said sadly:
"You can hardly expect me to like it for you, Bryan, even if she is what
you say. And isn't there some story about--"
"My dear mother, the more there is against her, the more I shall love
her--that's obvious."
Lady Summerhay sighed again.
"What is this man going to do? I heard him play once."
"I don't know. Nothing, I dare say. Morally and legally, he's out of
court. I only wish to God he WOULD bring a case, and I could marry her;
but Gyp says he won't."
Lady Summerhay murmured:
"Gyp? Is that her name?" And a sudden wish, almost a longing, not a
friendly one, to see this woman seized her. "Will you bring her to see
me? I'm alone here till Wednesday."
"I'll ask her, but I don't think she'll come." He turned his head away.
"Mother, she's wonderful!"
An unhappy smile twisted Lady Summerhay's lips. No doubt! Aphrodite
herself had visited her boy. Aphrodite! And--afterward? She asked
desolately:
"Does Major Winton know?"
"Yes."
"What does he say to it?"
"Say? What can anyone say? From your point of view, or his, it's
rotten, of course. But in her position, anything's rotten."
At that encouraging word, the flood-gates gave way in Lady Summerhay, and
she poured forth a stream of words.
"Oh, my dear, can't you pull up? I've seen so many of these affairs go
wrong. It really is not for nothing that law and conventions are what
they are--believe me! Really, Bryan, experience does show that the
pressure's too great. It's only once in a way--very exceptional people,
very exceptional circumstances. You mayn't think now it'll hamper you,
but you'll find it will--most fearfully. It's not as if you were a
writer or an artist, who can take his work where he likes and live in a
desert if he wants. You've got to do yours in London, your whole career
is bound up with society. Do think, before you go butting up against it!
It's all very well to say it's no affair of anyone's, but you'll find it
is, Bryan. And then, can you--can you possibly make her happy in the
long-run?"
She stopped at the expression on his face. It was as if he were saying:
"I have left your world. Talk to your fellows; all this is nothing to
me."
"Look here, Mother: you don't seem to understand. I'm devoted--devoted
so that there's nothing else for me."
"How long will that last, Bryan? You mean bewitched."
Summerhay said, with passion:
"I don't. I mean what I said. Good-night!" And he went to the door.
"Won't you stay to dinner, dear?"
But he was gone, and the full of vexation, anxiety, and wretchedness came
on Lady Summerhay. It was too hard! She went down to her lonely dinner,
desolate and sore. And to the book on dreams, opened beside her plate,
she turned eyes that took in nothing.
Summerhay went straight home. The lamps were brightening in the
early-autumn dusk, and a draughty, ruffling wind flicked a yellow leaf
here and there from off the plane trees. It was just the moment when
evening blue comes into the colouring of the town--that hour of fusion
when day's hard and staring shapes are softening, growing dark,
mysterious, and all that broods behind the lives of men and trees and
houses comes down on the wings of illusion to repossess the world--the
hour when any poetry in a man wells up. But Summerhay still heard his
mother's, "Oh, Bryan!" and, for the first time, knew the feeling that his
hand was against everyone's. There was a difference already, or so it
seemed to him, in the expression of each passer-by. Nothing any more
would be a matter of course; and he was of a class to whom everything has
always been a matter of course. Perhaps he did not realize this clearly
yet; but he had begun to take what the nurses call "notice," as do those
only who are forced on to the defensive against society.
Putting his latch-key into the lock, he recalled the sensation with
which, that afternoon, he had opened to Gyp for the first time--half
furtive, half defiant. It would be all defiance now. This was the end
of the old order! And, lighting a fire in his sitting-room, he began
pulling out drawers, sorting and destroying. He worked for hours,
burning, making lists, packing papers and photographs. Finishing at
last, he drank a stiff whisky and soda, and sat down to smoke. Now that
the room was quiet, Gyp seemed to fill it again with her presence.
Closing his eyes, he could see her there by the hearth, just as she stood
before they left, turning her face up to him, murmuring: "You won't stop
loving me, now you're so sure I love you?" Stop loving her! The more
she loved him, the more he would love her. And he said aloud: "By God! I
won't!" At that remark, so vehement for the time of night, the old
Scotch terrier, Ossian, came from his corner and shoved his long black
nose into his master's hand.
"Come along up, Ossy! Good dog, Oss!" And, comforted by the warmth of
that black body beside him in the chair, Summerhay fell asleep in front
of the fire smouldering with blackened fragments of his past.
XI
Though Gyp had never seemed to look round she had been quite conscious of
Summerhay still standing where they had parted, watching her into the
house in Bury Street. The strength of her own feeling surprised her, as
a bather in the sea is surprised, finding her feet will not touch bottom,
that she is carried away helpless--only, these were the waters of
ecstasy.
For the second night running, she hardly slept, hearing the clocks of St.
James's strike, and Big Ben boom, hour after hour. At breakfast, she
told her father of Fiorsen's reappearance. He received the news with a
frown and a shrewd glance.
"Well, Gyp?"
"I told him."
His feelings, at that moment, were perhaps as mixed as they had ever
been--curiosity, parental disapproval, to which he knew he was not
entitled, admiration of her pluck in letting that fellow know, fears for
the consequences of this confession, and, more than all, his profound
disturbance at knowing her at last launched into the deep waters of love.
It was the least of these feelings that found expression.
"How did he take it?"
"Rushed away. The only thing I feel sure of is that he won't divorce
me."
"No, by George; I don't suppose even he would have that impudence!" And
Winton was silent, trying to penetrate the future. "Well," he said
suddenly, "it's on the knees of the gods then. But be careful, Gyp."
About noon, Betty returned from the sea, with a solemn, dark-eyed, cooing
little Gyp, brown as a roasted coffee-berry. When she had been given all
that she could wisely eat after the journey, Gyp carried her off to her
own room, undressed her for sheer delight of kissing her from head to
foot, and admiring her plump brown legs, then cuddled her up in a shawl
and lay down with her on the bed. A few sleepy coos and strokings, and
little Gyp had left for the land of Nod, while her mother lay gazing at
her black lashes with a kind of passion. She was not a child-lover by
nature; but this child of her own, with her dark softness, plump
delicacy, giving disposition, her cooing voice, and constant adjurations
to "dear mum," was adorable. There was something about her insidiously
seductive. She had developed so quickly, with the graceful roundness of
a little animal, the perfection of a flower. The Italian blood of her
great-great-grandmother was evidently prepotent in her as yet; and,
though she was not yet two years old, her hair, which had lost its baby
darkness, was already curving round her neck and waving on her forehead.
One of her tiny brown hands had escaped the shawl and grasped its edge
with determined softness. And while Gyp gazed at the pinkish nails and
their absurdly wee half-moons, at the sleeping tranquillity stirred by
breathing no more than a rose-leaf on a windless day, her lips grew
fuller, trembled, reached toward the dark lashes, till she had to rein
her neck back with a jerk to stop such self-indulgence. Soothed,
hypnotized, almost in a dream, she lay there beside her baby.
That evening, at dinner, Winton said calmly:
"Well, I've been to see Fiorsen, and warned him off. Found him at that
fellow Rosek's." Gyp received the news with a vague sensation of alarm.
"And I met that girl, the dancer, coming out of the house as I was going
in--made it plain I'd seen her, so I don't think he'll trouble you."
An irresistible impulse made her ask:
"How was she looking, Dad?"
Winton smiled grimly. How to convey his impression of the figure he had
seen coming down the steps--of those eyes growing rounder and rounder at
sight of him, of that mouth opening in an: "Oh!"
"Much the same. Rather flabbergasted at seeing me, I think. A white
hat--very smart. Attractive in her way, but common, of course. Those
two were playing the piano and fiddle when I went up. They tried not to
let me in, but I wasn't to be put off. Queer place, that!"
Gyp smiled. She could see it all so well. The black walls, the silver
statuettes, Rops drawings, scent of dead rose-leaves and pastilles and
cigarettes--and those two by the piano--and her father so cool and dry!
"One can't stand on ceremony with fellows like that. I hadn't forgotten
that Polish chap's behaviour to you, my dear."
Through Gyp passed a quiver of dread, a vague return of the feelings once
inspired by Rosek.
"I'm almost sorry you went, Dad. Did you say anything very--"
"Did I? Let's see! No; I think I was quite polite." He added, with a
grim, little smile: "I won't swear I didn't call one of them a ruffian.
I know they said something about my presuming on being a cripple."
"Oh, darling!"
"Yes; it was that Polish chap--and so he is!"
Gyp murmured:
"I'd almost rather it had been--the other." Rosek's pale, suave face,
with the eyes behind which there were such hidden things, and the lips
sweetish and restrained and sensual--he would never forgive! But Winton
only smiled again, patting her arm. He was pleased with an encounter
which had relieved his feelings.
Gyp spent all that evening writing her first real love-letter. But when,
next afternoon at six, in fulfilment of its wording, she came to
Summerhay's little house, her heart sank; for the blinds were down and it
had a deserted look. If he had been there, he would have been at the
window, waiting. Had he, then, not got her letter, not been home since
yesterday? And that chill fear which besets lovers' hearts at failure of
a tryst smote her for the first time. In the three-cornered garden stood
a decayed statue of a naked boy with a broken bow--a sparrow was perching
on his greenish shoulder; sooty, heart-shaped lilac leaves hung round his
head, and at his legs the old Scotch terrier was sniffing. Gyp called:
"Ossian! Ossy!" and the old dog came, wagging his tail feebly.
"Master! Where is your master, dear?"
Ossian poked his long nose into her calf, and that gave her a little
comfort. She passed, perforce, away from the deserted house and returned
home; but all manner of frightened thoughts beset her. Where had he gone?
Why had he gone? Why had he not let her know? Doubts--those hasty
attendants on passion--came thronging, and scepticism ran riot. What did
she know of his life, of his interests, of him, except that he said he
loved her? Where had he gone? To Widrington, to some smart house-party,
or even back to Scotland? The jealous feelings that had so besieged her
at the bungalow when his letters ceased came again now with redoubled
force. There must be some woman who, before their love began, had claim
on him, or some girl that he admired. He never told her of any such--of
course, he would not! She was amazed and hurt by her capacity for
jealousy. She had always thought she would be too proud to feel
jealousy--a sensation so dark and wretched and undignified,
but--alas!--so horribly real and clinging.
She had said she was not dining at home; so Winton had gone to his club,
and she was obliged to partake of a little trumped-up lonely meal. She
went up to her room after it, but there came on her such restlessness
that presently she put on her things and slipped out. She went past St.
James's Church into Piccadilly, to the further, crowded side, and began
to walk toward the park. This was foolish; but to do a foolish thing was
some relief, and she went along with a faint smile, mocking her own
recklessness. Several women of the town--ships of night with sails
set--came rounding out of side streets or down the main stream, with
their skilled, rapid-seeming slowness. And at the discomfited,
half-hostile stares on their rouged and powdered faces, Gyp felt a wicked
glee. She was disturbing, hurting them--and she wanted to hurt.
Presently, a man, in evening dress, with overcoat thrown open, gazed
pointblank into her face, and, raising his hat, ranged up beside her.
She walked straight on, still with that half-smile, knowing him puzzled
and fearfully attracted. Then an insensate wish to stab him to the heart
made her turn her head and look at him. At the expression on her face,
he wilted away from her, and again she felt that wicked glee at having
hurt him.
She crossed out into the traffic, to the park side, and turned back
toward St. James's; and now she was possessed by profound, black sadness.
If only her lover were beside her that beautiful evening, among the
lights and shadows of the trees, in the warm air! Why was he not among
these passers-by? She who could bring any casual man to her side by a
smile could not conjure up the only one she wanted from this great desert
of a town! She hurried along, to get in and hide her longing. But at
the corner of St. James's Street, she stopped. That was his club, nearly
opposite. Perhaps he was there, playing cards or billiards, a few yards
away, and yet as in another world. Presently he would come out, go to
some music-hall, or stroll home thinking of her--perhaps not even
thinking of her! Another woman passed, giving her a furtive glance. But
Gyp felt no glee now. And, crossing over, close under the windows of the
club, she hurried home. When she reached her room, she broke into a
storm of tears. How could she have liked hurting those poor women,
hurting that man--who was only paying her a man's compliment, after all?
And with these tears, her jealous, wild feelings passed, leaving only her
longing.
Next morning brought a letter. Summerhay wrote from an inn on the river,
asking her to come down by the eleven o'clock train, and he would meet
her at the station. He wanted to show her a house that he had seen; and
they could have the afternoon on the river! Gyp received this letter,
which began: "My darling!" with an ecstasy that she could not quite
conceal. And Winton, who had watched her face, said presently:
"I think I shall go to Newmarket, Gyp. Home to-morrow evening."
In the train on the way down, she sat with closed eyes, in a sort of
trance. If her lover had been there holding her in his arms, he could
not have seemed nearer.
She saw him as the train ran in; but they met without a hand-clasp,
without a word, simply looking at each other and breaking into smiles.
A little victoria "dug up"--as Summerhay said--"horse, driver and all,"
carried them slowly upward. Under cover of the light rugs their hands
were clasped, and they never ceased to look into each other's faces,
except for those formal glances of propriety which deceive no one.
The day was beautiful, as only early September days can be--when the sun
is hot, yet not too hot, and its light falls in a silken radiance on
trees just losing the opulent monotony of summer, on silvery-gold reaped
fields, silvery-green uplands, golden mustard; when shots ring out in the
distance, and, as one gazes, a leaf falls, without reason, as it would
seem. Presently they branched off the main road by a lane past a clump
of beeches and drew up at the gate of a lonely house, built of very old
red brick, and covered by Virginia creeper just turning--a house with an
ingle-nook and low, broad chimneys. Before it was a walled, neglected
lawn, with poplars and one large walnut-tree. The sunlight seemed to
have collected in that garden, and there was a tremendous hum of bees.
Above the trees, the downs could be seen where racehorses, they said,
were trained. Summerhay had the keys of the house, and they went in. To
Gyp, it was like a child's "pretending"--to imagine they were going to
live there together, to sort out the rooms and consecrate each. She
would not spoil this perfect day by argument or admission of the need for
a decision. And when he asked:
"Well, darling, what do you think of it?" she only answered:
"Oh, lovely, in a way; but let's go back to the river and make the most
of it."
They took boat at 'The Bowl of Cream,' the river inn where Summerhay was
staying. To him, who had been a rowing man at Oxford, the river was
known from Lechlade to Richmond; but Gyp had never in her life been on
it, and its placid magic, unlike that of any other river in the world,
almost overwhelmed her. On this glistening, windless day, to drift along
past the bright, flat water-lily leaves over the greenish depths, to
listen to the pigeons, watch the dragon-flies flitting past, and the fish
leaping lazily, not even steering, letting her hand dabble in the water,
then cooling her sun-warmed cheek with it, and all the time gazing at
Summerhay, who, dipping his sculls gently, gazed at her--all this was
like a voyage down some river of dreams, the very fulfilment of felicity.
There is a degree of happiness known to the human heart which seems to
belong to some enchanted world--a bright maze into which, for a moment
now and then, we escape and wander. To-day, he was more than ever like
her Botticelli "Young Man," with his neck bare, and his face so
clear-eyed and broad and brown. Had she really had a life with another
man? And only a year ago? It seemed inconceivable!
But when, in the last backwater, he tied the boat up and came to sit with
her once more, it was already getting late, and the vague melancholy of
the now shadowy river was stealing into her. And, with a sort of sinking
in her heart, she heard him begin:
"Gyp, we MUST go away together. We can never stand it going on apart,
snatching hours here and there."
Pressing his hand to her cheeks, she murmured:
"Why not, darling? Hasn't this been perfect? What could we ever have
more perfect? It's been paradise itself!"
"Yes; but to be thrown out every day! To be whole days and nights
without you! Gyp, you must--you must! What is there against it? Don't
you love me enough?"
She looked at him, and then away into the shadows.
"Too much, I think. It's tempting Providence to change. Let's go on as
we are, Bryan. No; don't look like that--don't be angry!"
"Why are you afraid? Are you sorry for our love?"
"No; but let it be like this. Don't let's risk anything."
"Risk? Is it people--society--you're afraid of? I thought YOU wouldn't
care."
Gyp smiled.
"Society? No; I'm not afraid of that."
"What, then? Of me?"
"I don't know. Men soon get tired. I'm a doubter, Bryan, I can't help
it."
"As if anyone could get tired of you! Are you afraid of yourself?"
Again Gyp smiled.
"Not of loving too little, I told you."
"How can one love too much?"
She drew his head down to her. But when that kiss was over, she only
said again:
"No, Bryan; let's go on as we are. I'll make up to you when I'm with
you. If you were to tire of me, I couldn't bear it."
For a long time more he pleaded--now with anger, now with kisses, now
with reasonings; but, to all, she opposed that same tender, half-mournful
"No," and, at last, he gave it up, and, in dogged silence, rowed her to
the village, whence she was to take train back. It was dusk when they
left the boat, and dew was falling. Just before they reached the station,
she caught his hand and pressed it to her breast.
"Darling, don't be angry with me! Perhaps I will--some day."
And, in the train, she tried to think herself once more in the boat,
among the shadows and the whispering reeds and all the quiet wonder of
the river.
XII
On reaching home she let herself in stealthily, and, though she had not
had dinner, went up at once to her room. She was just taking off her
blouse when Betty entered, her round face splotched with red, and tears
rolling down her cheeks.
"Betty! What is it?"
"Oh, my dear, where HAVE you been? Such a dreadful piece of news!
They've stolen her! That wicked man--your husband--he took her right out
of her pram--and went off with her in a great car--he and that other one!
I've been half out of my mind!" Gyp stared aghast. "I hollered to a
policeman. 'He's stolen her--her father! Catch them!' I said. 'However
shall I face my mistress?'" She stopped for breath, then burst out
again. "'He's a bad one,' I said. 'A foreigner! They're both
foreigners!' 'Her father?' he said. 'Well, why shouldn't he? He's only
givin' her a joy ride. He'll bring her back, never you fear.' And I ran
home--I didn't know where you were. Oh dear! The major away and
all--what was I to do? I'd just turned round to shut the gate of the
square gardens, and I never saw him till he'd put his great long arm over
the pram and snatched her out." And, sitting on the bed, she gave way
utterly.
Gyp stood still. Nemesis for her happiness? That vengeful wretch,
Rosek! This was his doing. And she said:
"Oh, Betty, she must be crying!"
A fresh outburst of moans was the only answer. Gyp remembered suddenly
what the lawyer had said over a year ago--it had struck her with terror
at the time. In law, Fiorsen owned and could claim her child. She could
have got her back, then, by bringing a horrible case against him, but
now, perhaps, she had no chance. Was it her return to Fiorsen that they
aimed at--or the giving up of her lover? She went over to her mirror,
saying:
"We'll go at once, Betty, and get her back somehow. Wash your face."
While she made ready, she fought down those two horrible fears--of losing
her child, of losing her lover; the less she feared, the better she could
act, the more subtly, the swifter. She remembered that she had somewhere
a little stiletto, given her a long time ago. She hunted it out, slipped
off its red-leather sheath, and, stabbing the point into a tiny cork,
slipped it beneath her blouse. If they could steal her baby, they were
capable of anything. She wrote a note to her father, telling him what
had happened, and saying where she had gone. Then, in a taxi, they set
forth. Cold water and the calmness of her mistress had removed from
Betty the main traces of emotion; but she clasped Gyp's hand hard and
gave vent to heavy sighs.
Gyp would not think. If she thought of her little one crying, she knew
she would cry, too. But her hatred for those who had dealt this cowardly
blow grew within her. She took a resolution and said quietly:
"Mr. Summerhay, Betty. That's why they've stolen our darling. I suppose
you know he and I care for each other. They've stolen her so as to make
me do anything they like."
A profound sigh answered her.
Behind that moon-face with the troubled eyes, what conflict was in
progress--between unquestioning morality and unquestioning belief in Gyp,
between fears for her and wishes for her happiness, between the loyal
retainer's habit of accepting and the old nurse's feeling of being in
charge? She said faintly:
"Oh dear! He's a nice gentleman, too!" And suddenly, wheezing it out
with unexpected force: "To say truth, I never did hold you was rightly
married to that foreigner in that horrible registry place--no music, no
flowers, no blessin' asked, nor nothing. I cried me eyes out at the
time."
Gyp said quietly:
"No; Betty, I never was. I only thought I was in love." A convulsive
squeeze and creaking, whiffling sounds heralded a fresh outburst. "Don't
cry; we're just there. Think of our darling!"
The cab stopped. Feeling for her little weapon, she got out, and with
her hand slipped firmly under Betty's arm, led the way upstairs. Chilly
shudders ran down her spine--memories of Daphne Wing and Rosek, of that
large woman--what was her name?--of many other faces, of unholy hours
spent up there, in a queer state, never quite present, never comfortable
in soul; memories of late returnings down these wide stairs out to their
cab, of Fiorsen beside her in the darkness, his dim, broad-cheekboned
face moody in the corner or pressed close to hers. Once they had walked
a long way homeward in the dawn, Rosek with them, Fiorsen playing on his
muted violin, to the scandal of the policemen and the cats. Dim, unreal
memories! Grasping Betty's arm more firmly, she rang the bell. When the
man servant, whom she remembered well, opened the door, her lips were so
dry that they could hardly form the words:
"Is Mr. Fiorsen in, Ford?"
"No, ma'am; Mr. Fiorsen and Count Rosek went into the country this
afternoon. I haven't their address at present." She must have turned
white, for she could hear the man saying: "Anything I can get you,
ma'am?"
"When did they start, please?"
"One o'clock, ma'am--by car. Count Rosek was driving himself. I should
say they won't be away long--they just had their bags with them." Gyp
put out her hand helplessly; she heard the servant say in a concerned
voice: "I could let you know the moment they return, ma'am, if you'd
kindly leave me your address."
Giving her card, and murmuring:
"Thank you, Ford; thank you very much," she grasped Betty's arm again and
leaned heavily on her going down the stairs.
It was real, black fear now. To lose helpless
things--children--dogs--and know for certain that one cannot get to them,
no matter what they may be suffering! To be pinned down to ignorance and
have in her ears the crying of her child--this horror, Gyp suffered now.
And nothing to be done! Nothing but to go to bed and wait--hardest of
all tasks! Mercifully--thanks to her long day in the open--she fell at
last into a dreamless sleep, and when she was called, there was a letter
from Fiorsen on the tray with her tea.
"Gyp:
"I am not a baby-stealer like your father. The law gives me the right to
my own child. But swear to give up your lover, and the baby shall come
back to you at once. If you do not give him up, I will take her away out
of England. Send me an answer to this post-office, and do not let your
father try any tricks upon me.
"GUSTAV FIORSEN."
Beneath was written the address of a West End post-office.
When Gyp had finished reading, she went through some moments of such
mental anguish as she had never known, but--just as when Betty first told
her of the stealing--her wits and wariness came quickly back. Had he
been drinking when he wrote that letter? She could almost fancy that she
smelled brandy, but it was so easy to fancy what one wanted to. She read
it through again--this time, she felt almost sure that it had been
dictated to him. If he had composed the wording himself, he would never
have resisted a gibe at the law, or a gibe at himself for thus
safeguarding her virtue. It was Rosek's doing. Her anger flamed up
anew. Since they used such mean, cruel ways, why need she herself be
scrupulous? She sprang out of bed and wrote:
"How COULD you do such a brutal thing? At all events, let the darling
have her nurse. It's not like you to let a little child suffer. Betty
will be ready to come the minute you send for her. As for myself, you
must give me time to decide. I will let you know within two days.
"GYP."
When she had sent this off, and a telegram to her father at Newmarket,
she read Fiorsen's letter once more, and was more than ever certain that
it was Rosek's wording. And, suddenly, she thought of Daphne Wing, whom
her father had seen coming out of Rosek's house. Through her there might
be a way of getting news. She seemed to see again the girl lying so white
and void of hope when robbed by death of her own just-born babe. Yes;
surely it was worth trying.
An hour later, her cab stopped before the Wagges' door in Frankland
Street. But just as she was about to ring the bell, a voice from behind
her said:
"Allow me; I have a key. What may I--Oh, it's you!" She turned. Mr.
Wagge, in professional habiliments, was standing there. "Come in; come
in," he said. "I was wondering whether perhaps we shouldn't be seeing
you after what's transpired."
Hanging his tall black hat, craped nearly to the crown, on a knob of the
mahogany stand, he said huskily:
"I DID think we'd seen the last of that," and opened the dining-room
door. "Come in, ma'am. We can put our heads together better in here."
In that too well remembered room, the table was laid with a stained white
cloth, a cruet-stand, and bottle of Worcestershire sauce. The little blue
bowl was gone, so that nothing now marred the harmony of red and green.
Gyp said quickly:
"Doesn't Daph--Daisy live at home, then, now?"
The expression on Mr. Wagge's face was singular; suspicion, relief, and a
sort of craftiness were blended with that furtive admiration which Gyp
seemed always to excite in him.
"Do I understand that you--er--"
"I came to ask if Daisy would do something for me."
Mr. Wagge blew his nose.
"You didn't know--" he began again.
"Yes; I dare say she sees my husband, if that's what you mean; and I
don't mind--he's nothing to me now."
Mr. Wagge's face became further complicated by the sensations of a
husband.
"Well," he said, "it's not to be wondered at, perhaps, in the
circumstances. I'm sure I always thought--"
Gyp interrupted swiftly.
"Please, Mr. Wagge--please! Will you give me Daisy's address?"
Mr. Wagge remained a moment in deep thought; then he said, in a gruff,
jerky voice:
"Seventy-three Comrade Street, So'o. Up to seeing him there on Tuesday,
I must say I cherished every hope. Now I'm sorry I didn't strike him--he
was too quick for me--" He had raised one of his gloved hands and was
sawing it up and down. The sight of that black object cleaving the air
nearly made Gyp scream, her nerves were so on edge. "It's her blasted
independence--I beg pardon--but who wouldn't?" he ended suddenly.
Gyp passed him.
"Who wouldn't?" she heard his voice behind her. "I did think she'd have
run straight this time--" And while she was fumbling at the outer door,
his red, pudgy face, with its round grey beard, protruded almost over her
shoulder. "If you're going to see her, I hope you'll--"
Gyp was gone. In her cab she shivered. Once she had lunched with her
father at a restaurant in the Strand. It had been full of Mr. Wagges.
But, suddenly, she thought: 'It's hard on him, poor man!'
XIII
Seventy-three Comrade Street, Soho, was difficult to find; but, with the
aid of a milk-boy, Gyp discovered the alley at last, and the right door.
There her pride took sudden alarm, and but for the milk-boy's eyes fixed
on her while he let out his professional howl, she might have fled. A
plump white hand and wrist emerging took the can, and Daphne Wing's voice
said:
"Oh, where's the cream?"
"Ain't got none."
"Oh! I told you always--two pennyworth at twelve o'clock."
"Two penn'orth." The boy's eyes goggled.
"Didn't you want to speak to her, miss?" He beat the closing door. "Lidy
wants to speak to you! Good-mornin', miss."
The figure of Daphne Wing in a blue kimono was revealed. Her eyes peered
round at Gyp.
"Oh!" she said.
"May I come in?"
"Oh, yes! Oh, do! I've been practising. Oh, I am glad to see you!"
In the middle of the studio, a little table was laid for two. Daphne Wing
went up to it, holding in one hand the milk-can and in the other a short
knife, with which she had evidently been opening oysters. Placing the
knife on the table, she turned round to Gyp. Her face was deep pink, and
so was her neck, which ran V-shaped down into the folds of her kimono.
Her eyes, round as saucers, met Gyp's, fell, met them again. She said:
"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I am glad! I really am. I wanted you so much to see
my room--do you like it? How DID you know where I was?" She looked down
and added: "I think I'd better tell you. Mr. Fiorsen came here, and,
since then, I've seen him at Count Rosek's--and--and--"
"Yes; but don't trouble to tell me, please."
Daphne Wing hurried on.
"Of course, I'm quite mistress of myself now." Then, all at once, the
uneasy woman-of-the-world mask dropped from her face and she seized Gyp's
hand. "Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I shall never be like you!"
With a little shiver, Gyp said:
"I hope not." Her pride rushed up in her. How could she ask this girl
anything? She choked back that feeling, and said stonily: "Do you
remember my baby? No, of course; you never saw her. HE and Count Rosek
have just taken her away from me."
Daphne Wing convulsively squeezed the hand of which she had possessed
herself.
"Oh, what a wicked thing! When?"
"Yesterday afternoon."
"Oh, I AM glad I haven't seen him since! Oh, I DO think that was wicked!
Aren't you dreadfully distressed?" The least of smiles played on Gyp's
mouth. Daphne Wing burst forth: "D'you know--I think--I think your
self-control is something awful. It frightens me. If my baby had lived
and been stolen like that, I should have been half dead by now."
Gyp answered stonily as ever:
"Yes; I want her back, and I wondered--"
Daphne Wing clasped her hands.
"Oh, I expect I can make him--" She stopped, confused, then added
hastily: "Are you sure you don't mind?"
"I shouldn't mind if he had fifty loves. Perhaps he has."
Daphne Wing uttered a little gasp; then her teeth came down rather
viciously on her lower lip.
"I mean him to do what I want now, not what he wants me. That's the only
way when you love. Oh, don't smile like that, please; you do make me
feel so--uncertain."
"When are you going to see him next?"
Daphne Wing grew very pink.
"I don't know. He might be coming in to lunch. You see, it's not as if
he were a stranger, is it?" Casting up her eyes a little, she added: "He
won't even let me speak your name; it makes him mad. That's why I'm sure
he still loves you; only, his love is so funny." And, seizing Gyp's
hand: "I shall never forget how good you were to me. I do hope you--you
love somebody else." Gyp pressed those damp, clinging fingers, and
Daphne Wing hurried on: "I'm sure your baby's a darling. How you must be
suffering! You look quite pale. But it isn't any good suffering. I
learned that."
Her eyes lighted on the table, and a faint ruefulness came into them, as
if she were going to ask Gyp to eat the oysters.
Gyp bent forward and put her lips to the girl's forehead.
"Good-bye. My baby would thank you if she knew."
And she turned to go. She heard a sob. Daphne Wing was crying; then,
before Gyp could speak, she struck herself on the throat, and said, in a
strangled voice:
"Tha--that's idiotic! I--I haven't cried since--since, you know. I--I'm
perfect mistress of myself; only, I--only--I suppose you reminded me--I
NEVER cry!"
Those words and the sound of a hiccough accompanied Gyp down the alley to
her cab.
When she got back to Bury Street, she found Betty sitting in the hall
with her bonnet on. She had not been sent for, nor had any reply come
from Newmarket. Gyp could not eat, could settle to nothing. She went up
to her bedroom to get away from the servants' eyes, and went on
mechanically with a frock of little Gyp's she had begun on the fatal
morning Fiorsen had come back. Every other minute she stopped to listen
to sounds that never meant anything, went a hundred times to the window
to look at nothing. Betty, too, had come upstairs, and was in the
nursery opposite; Gyp could hear her moving about restlessly among her
household gods. Presently, those sounds ceased, and, peering into the
room, she saw the stout woman still in her bonnet, sitting on a trunk,
with her back turned, uttering heavy sighs. Gyp stole back into her own
room with a sick, trembling sensation. If--if her baby really could not
be recovered except by that sacrifice! If that cruel letter were the
last word, and she forced to decide between them! Which would she give
up? Which follow--her lover or her child?
She went to the window for air--the pain about her heart was dreadful.
And, leaning there against the shutter, she felt quite dizzy from the
violence of a struggle that refused coherent thought or feeling, and was
just a dumb pull of instincts, both so terribly strong--how terribly
strong she had not till then perceived.
Her eyes fell on the picture that reminded her of Bryan; it seemed now to
have no resemblance--none. He was much too real, and loved, and wanted.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, she had turned a deaf ear to his
pleading that she should go to him for ever. How funny! Would she not
rush to him now--go when and where he liked? Ah, if only she were back
in his arms! Never could she give him up--never! But then in her ears
sounded the cooing words, "Dear mum!" Her baby--that tiny thing--how
could she give her up, and never again hold close and kiss that round,
perfect little body, that grave little dark-eyed face?
The roar of London came in through the open window. So much life, so
many people--and not a soul could help! She left the window and went to
the cottage-piano she had there, out of Winton's way. But she only sat
with arms folded, looking at the keys. The song that girl had sung at
Fiorsen's concert--song of the broken heart--came back to her.
No, no; she couldn't--couldn't! It was to her lover she would cling.
And tears ran down her cheeks.
A cab had stopped below, but not till Betty came rushing in did she look
up.
XIV
When, trembling all over, she entered the dining-room, Fiorsen was
standing by the sideboard, holding the child.
He came straight up and put her into Gyp's arms.
"Take her," he said, "and do what you will. Be happy."
Hugging her baby, close to the door as she could get, Gyp answered
nothing. Her heart was in such a tumult that she could not have spoken a
word to save her life; relieved, as one dying of thirst by unexpected
water; grateful, bewildered, abashed, yet instinctively aware of
something evanescent and unreal in his altruism. Daphne Wing! What
bargain did this represent?
Fiorsen must have felt the chill of this instinctive vision, for he cried
out:
"Yes! You never believed in me; you never thought me capable of good!
Why didn't you?"
Gyp bent her face over her baby to hide the quivering of her lips.
"I am sorry--very, very sorry."
Fiorsen came closer and looked into her face.
"By God, I am afraid I shall never forget you--never!"
Tears had come into his eyes, and Gyp watched them, moved, troubled, but
still deeply mistrusting.
He brushed his hand across his face; and the thought flashed through her:
'He means me to see them! Ah, what a cynical wretch I am!'
Fiorsen saw that thought pass, and muttering suddenly:
"Good-bye, Gyp! I am not all bad. I AM NOT!" He tore the door open and
was gone.
That passionate "I am not!" saved Gyp from a breakdown. No; even at his
highest pitch of abnegation, he could not forget himself.
Relief, if overwhelming, is slowly realized; but when, at last, what she
had escaped and what lay before her were staring full in each other's
face, it seemed to her that she must cry out, and tell the whole world of
her intoxicating happiness. And the moment little Gyp was in Betty's
arms, she sat down and wrote to Summerhay:
"DARLING,
"I've had a fearful time. My baby was stolen by him while I was with
you. He wrote me a letter saying that he would give her back to me if I
gave you up. But I found I couldn't give you up, not even for my baby.
And then, a few minutes ago, he brought her--none the worse. Tomorrow we
shall all go down to Mildenham; but very soon, if you still want me, I'll
come with you wherever you like. My father and Betty will take care of
my treasure till we come back; and then, perhaps, the old red house we
saw--after all. Only--now is the time for you to draw back. Look into
the future--look far! Don't let any foolish pity--or honour--weigh with
you; be utterly sure, I do beseech you. I can just bear it now if I know
it's for your good. But afterward it'll be too late. It would be the
worst misery of all if I made you unhappy. Oh, make sure--make sure! I
shall understand. I mean this with every bit of me. And now,
good-night, and perhaps--good-bye.
"Your
"GYP."
She read it over and shivered. Did she really mean that she could bear
it if he drew back--if he did look far, far into the future, and decided
that she was not worth the candle? Ah, but better now--than later.
She closed and sealed the letter, and sat down to wait for her father.
And she thought: 'Why does one have a heart? Why is there in one
something so much too soft?'
Ten days later, at Mildenham station, holding her father's hand, Gyp
could scarcely see him for the mist before her eyes. How good he had
been to her all those last days, since she told him that she was going to
take the plunge! Not a word of remonstrance or complaint.
"Good-bye, my love! Take care of yourself; wire from London, and again
from Paris." And, smiling up at her, he added: "He has luck; I had
none."
The mist became tears, rolled down, fell on his glove.
"Not too long out there, Gyp!"
She pressed her wet cheek passionately to his. The train moved, but, so
long as she could see, she watched him standing on the platform, waving
his grey hat, then, in her corner, sat down, blinded with tears behind
her veil. She had not cried when she left him the day of her fatal
marriage; she cried now that she was leaving him to go to her incredible
happiness.
Strange! But her heart had grown since then.
PART IV
I
Little Gyp, aged nearly four and a half that first of May, stood at the
edge of the tulip border, bowing to two hen turkeys who were poking their
heads elegantly here and there among the flowers. She was absurdly like
her mother, the same oval-shaped face, dark arched brows, large and clear
brown eyes; but she had the modern child's open-air look; her hair, that
curled over at the ends, was not allowed to be long, and her polished
brown legs were bare to the knees.
"Turkeys! You aren't good, are you? Come ON!" And, stretching out her
hands with the palms held up, she backed away from the tulip-bed. The
turkeys, trailing delicately their long-toed feet and uttering soft,
liquid interrogations, moved after her in hopes of what she was not
holding in her little brown hands. The sun, down in the west, for it was
past tea-time, slanted from over the roof of the red house, and painted
up that small procession--the deep blue frock of little Gyp, the glint of
gold in the chestnut of her hair; the daisy-starred grass; the dark birds
with translucent red dewlaps, and checkered tails and the tulip
background, puce and red and yellow. When she had lured them to the open
gate, little Gyp raised herself, and said:
"Aren't you duffies, dears? Shoo!" And on the tails of the turkeys she
shut the gate. Then she went to where, under the walnut-tree--the one
large tree of that walled garden--a very old Scotch terrier was lying,
and sitting down beside him, began stroking his white muzzle, saying:
"Ossy, Ossy, do you love me?"
Presently, seeing her mother in the porch, she jumped up, and crying out:
"Ossy--Ossy! Walk!" rushed to Gyp and embraced her legs, while the old
Scotch terrier slowly followed.
Thus held prisoner, Gyp watched the dog's approach. Nearly three years
had changed her a little. Her face was softer, and rather more grave,
her form a little fuller, her hair, if anything, darker, and done
differently--instead of waving in wings and being coiled up behind, it
was smoothly gathered round in a soft and lustrous helmet, by which
fashion the shape of her head was better revealed.
"Darling, go and ask Pettance to put a fresh piece of sulphur in Ossy's
water-bowl, and to cut up his meat finer. You can give Hotspur and
Brownie two lumps of sugar each; and then we'll go out." Going down on
her knees in the porch, she parted the old dog's hair, and examined his
eczema, thinking: "I must rub some more of that stuff in to-night. Oh,
ducky, you're not smelling your best! Yes; only--not my face!"
A telegraph-boy was coming from the gate. Gyp opened the missive with
the faint tremor she always felt when Summerhay was not with her.
"Detained; shall be down by last train; need not come up
to-morrow.--BRYAN."
When the boy was gone, she stooped down and stroked the old dog's head.
"Master home all day to-morrow, Ossy--master home!"
A voice from the path said, "Beautiful evenin', ma'am."
The "old scoundrel," Pettance, stiffer in the ankle-joints, with more
lines in his gargoyle's face, fewer stumps in his gargoyle's mouth, more
film over his dark, burning little eyes, was standing before her, and,
behind him, little Gyp, one foot rather before the other, as Gyp had been
wont to stand, waited gravely.
"Oh, Pettance, Mr. Summerhay will be at home all to-morrow, and we'll go
a long ride: and when you exercise, will you call at the inn, in case I
don't go that way, and tell Major Winton I expect him to dinner
to-night?"
"Yes, ma'am; and I've seen the pony for little Miss Gyp this morning,
ma'am. It's a mouse pony, five year old, sound, good temper, pretty
little paces. I says to the man: 'Don't you come it over me,' I says; 'I
was born on an 'orse. Talk of twenty pounds, for that pony! Ten, and
lucky to get it!' 'Well,' he says, 'Pettance, it's no good to talk round
an' round with you. Fifteen!' he says. 'I'll throw you one in,' I says,
'Eleven! Take it or leave it.' 'Ah!' he says, 'Pettance, YOU know 'ow
to buy an 'orse. All right,' he says; 'twelve!' She's worth all of
fifteen, ma'am, and the major's passed her. So if you likes to have 'er,
there she is!"
Gyp looked at her little daughter, who had given one excited hop, but now
stood still, her eyes flying up at her mother and her lips parted; and
she thought: "The darling! She never begs for anything!"
"Very well, Pettance; buy her."
The "old scoundrel" touched his forelock:
"Yes, ma'am--very good, ma'am. Beautiful evenin', ma'am." And,
withdrawing at his gait of one whose feet are at permanent right angles
to the legs, he mused: 'And that'll be two in my pocket.'
Ten minutes later Gyp, little Gyp, and Ossian emerged from the garden
gate for their evening walk. They went, not as usual, up to the downs,
but toward the river, making for what they called "the wild." This was
an outlying plot of neglected ground belonging to their farm, two sedgy
meadows, hedged by banks on which grew oaks and ashes. An old stone
linhay, covered to its broken thatch by a huge ivy bush, stood at the
angle where the meadows met. The spot had a strange life to itself in
that smooth, kempt countryside of cornfields, grass, and beech-clumps; it
was favoured by beasts and birds, and little Gyp had recently seen two
baby hares there. From an oak-tree, where the crinkled leaves were not
yet large enough to hide him, a cuckoo was calling and they stopped to
look at the grey bird till he flew off. The singing and serenity, the
green and golden oaks and ashes, the flowers--marsh-orchis, ladies'
smocks, and cuckoo-buds, starring the rushy grass--all brought to Gyp
that feeling of the uncapturable spirit which lies behind the forms of
nature, the shadowy, hovering smile of life that is ever vanishing and
ever springing again out of death. While they stood there close to the
old linhay a bird came flying round them in wide circles, uttering shrill
cries. It had a long beak and long, pointed wings, and seemed distressed
by their presence. Little Gyp squeezed her mother's hand.
"Poor bird! Isn't it a poor bird, mum?"
"Yes, dear, it's a curlew--I wonder what's the matter with it. Perhaps
its mate is hurt."
"What is its mate?"
"The bird it lives with."
"It's afraid of us. It's not like other birds. Is it a real bird, mum?
Or one out of the sky?"
"I think it's real. Shall we go on and see if we can find out what's the
matter?"
"Yes."
They went on into the sedgy grass and the curlew continued to circle,
vanishing and reappearing from behind the trees, always uttering those
shrill cries. Little Gyp said:
"Mum, could we speak to it? Because we're not going to hurt nothing, are
we?"
"Of course not, darling! But I'm afraid the poor bird's too wild. Try,
if you like. Call to it: 'Courlie! Courlie!"'
Little Gyp's piping joined the curlew's cries and other bird-songs in the
bright shadowy quiet of the evening till Gyp said:
"Oh, look; it's dipping close to the ground, over there in that
corner--it's got a nest! We won't go near, will we?"
Little Gyp echoed in a hushed voice:
"It's got a nest."
They stole back out of the gate close to the linhay, the curlew still
fighting and crying behind them.
"Aren't we glad the mate isn't hurt, mum?"
Gyp answered with a shiver:
"Yes, darling, fearfully glad. Now then, shall we go down and ask Grandy
to come up to dinner?"
Little Gyp hopped. And they went toward the river.
At "The Bowl of Cream," Winton had for two years had rooms, which he
occupied as often as his pursuits permitted. He had refused to make his
home with Gyp, desiring to be on hand only when she wanted him; and a
simple life of it he led in those simple quarters, riding with her when
Summerhay was in town, visiting the cottagers, smoking cigars, laying
plans for the defence of his daughter's position, and devoting himself to
the whims of little Gyp. This moment, when his grandchild was to begin
to ride, was in a manner sacred to one for whom life had scant meaning
apart from horses. Looking at them, hand in hand, Gyp thought: 'Dad loves
her as much as he loves me now--more, I think.'
Lonely dinner at the inn was an infliction which he studiously concealed
from Gyp, so he accepted their invitation without alacrity, and they
walked on up the hill, with little Gyp in the middle, supported by a hand
on each side.
The Red House contained nothing that had been in Gyp's married home
except the piano. It had white walls, furniture of old oak, and for
pictures reproductions of her favourites. "The Death of Procris" hung in
the dining-room. Winton never failed to scrutinize it when he came in to
a meal--that "deuced rum affair" appeared to have a fascination for him.
He approved of the dining-room altogether; its narrow oak "last supper"
table made gay by a strip of blue linen, old brick hearth, casement
windows hung with flowered curtains--all had a pleasing austerity,
uncannily redeemed to softness. He got on well enough with Summerhay,
but he enjoyed himself much more when he was there alone with his
daughter. And this evening he was especially glad to have her to
himself, for she had seemed of late rather grave and absent-minded. When
dinner was over and they were undisturbed, he said:
"It must be pretty dull for you, my dear, sometimes. I wish you saw more
people."
"Oh no, Dad."
Watching her smile, he thought: 'That's not sour grapes"--What is the
trouble, then?'
"I suppose you've not heard anything of that fellow Fiorsen lately?"
"Not a word. But he's playing again in London this season, I see."
"Is he? Ah, that'll cheer them." And he thought: 'It's not that, then.
But there's something--I'll swear!'
"I hear that Bryan's going ahead. I met a man in town last week who
spoke of him as about the most promising junior at the bar."
"Yes; he's doing awfully well." And a sound like a faint sigh caught his
ears. "Would you say he's changed much since you knew him, Dad?"
"I don't know--perhaps a little less jokey."
"Yes; he's lost his laugh."
It was very evenly and softly said, yet it affected Winton.
"Can't expect him to keep that," he answered, "turning people inside out,
day after day--and most of them rotten. By George, what a life!"
But when he had left her, strolling back in the bright moonlight, he
reverted to his suspicions and wished he had said more directly: "Look
here, Gyp, are you worrying about Bryan--or have people been making
themselves unpleasant?"
He had, in these last three years, become unconsciously inimical to his
own class and their imitators, and more than ever friendly to the
poor--visiting the labourers, small farmers, and small tradesmen, doing
them little turns when he could, giving their children sixpences, and so
forth. The fact that they could not afford to put on airs of virtue
escaped him; he perceived only that they were respectful and friendly to
Gyp and this warmed his heart toward them in proportion as he grew
exasperated with the two or three landed families, and that parvenu lot
in the riverside villas.
When he first came down, the chief landowner--a man he had known for
years--had invited him to lunch. He had accepted with the deliberate
intention of finding out where he was, and had taken the first natural
opportunity of mentioning his daughter. She was, he said, devoted to her
flowers; the Red House had quite a good garden. His friend's wife,
slightly lifting her brows, had answered with a nervous smile: "Oh! yes;
of course--yes." A silence had, not unnaturally, fallen. Since then,
Winton had saluted his friend and his friend's wife with such frigid
politeness as froze the very marrow in their bones. He had not gone
there fishing for Gyp to be called on, but to show these people that his
daughter could not be slighted with impunity. Foolish of him, for, man of
the world to his fingertips, he knew perfectly well that a woman living
with a man to whom she was not married could not be recognized by people
with any pretensions to orthodoxy; Gyp was beyond even the debatable
ground on which stood those who have been divorced and are married again.
But even a man of the world is not proof against the warping of devotion,
and Winton was ready to charge any windmill at any moment on her behalf.
Outside the inn door, exhaling the last puffs of his good-night
cigarette, he thought: 'What wouldn't I give for the old days, and a
chance to wing some of these moral upstarts!'
II
The last train was not due till eleven-thirty, and having seen that the
evening tray had sandwiches, Gyp went to Summerhay's study, the room at
right angles to the body of the house, over which was their bedroom.
Here, if she had nothing to do, she always came when he was away, feeling
nearer to him. She would have been horrified if she had known of her
father's sentiments on her behalf. Her instant denial of the wish to see
more people had been quite genuine. The conditions of her life, in that
respect, often seemed to her ideal. It was such a joy to be free of
people one did not care two straws about, and of all empty social
functions. Everything she had now was real--love, and nature, riding,
music, animals, and poor people. What else was worth having? She would
not have changed for anything. It often seemed to her that books and
plays about the unhappiness of women in her position were all false. If
one loved, what could one want better? Such women, if unhappy, could
have no pride; or else could not really love! She had recently been
reading "Anna Karenina," and had often said to herself: "There's
something not true about it--as if Tolstoy wanted to make us believe that
Anna was secretly feeling remorse. If one loves, one doesn't feel
remorse. Even if my baby had been taken away, I shouldn't have felt
remorse. One gives oneself to love--or one does not."
She even derived a positive joy from the feeling that her love imposed a
sort of isolation; she liked to be apart--for him. Besides, by her very
birth she was outside the fold of society, her love beyond the love of
those within it--just as her father's love had been. And her pride was
greater than theirs, too. How could women mope and moan because they
were cast out, and try to scratch their way back where they were not
welcome? How could any woman do that? Sometimes, she wondered whether,
if Fiorsen died, she would marry her lover. What difference would it
make? She could not love him more. It would only make him feel,
perhaps, too sure of her, make it all a matter of course. For herself,
she would rather go on as she was. But for him, she was not certain, of
late had been less and less certain. He was not bound now, could leave
her when he tired! And yet--did he perhaps feel himself more bound than
if they were married--unfairly bound? It was this thought--barely more
than the shadow of a thought--which had given her, of late, the extra
gravity noticed by her father.
In that unlighted room with the moonbeams drifting in, she sat down at
Summerhay's bureau, where he often worked too late at his cases,
depriving her of himself. She sat there resting her elbows on the bare
wood, crossing her finger-tips, gazing out into the moonlight, her mind
drifting on a stream of memories that seemed to have beginning only from
the year when he came into her life. A smile crept out on her face, and
now and then she uttered a little sigh of contentment.
So many memories, nearly all happy! Surely, the most adroit work of the
jeweller who put the human soul together was his provision of its power
to forget the dark and remember sunshine. The year and a half of her
life with Fiorsen, the empty months that followed it were gone, dispersed
like mist by the radiance of the last three years in whose sky had hung
just one cloud, no bigger than a hand, of doubt whether Summerhay really
loved her as much as she loved him, whether from her company he got as
much as the all she got from his. She would not have been her
distrustful self if she could have settled down in complacent security;
and her mind was ever at stretch on that point, comparing past days and
nights with the days and nights of the present. Her prevision that, when
she loved, it would be desperately, had been fulfilled. He had become
her life. When this befalls one whose besetting strength and weakness
alike is pride--no wonder that she doubts.
For their Odyssey they had gone to Spain--that brown un-European land of
"lyrio" flowers, and cries of "Agua!" in the streets, where the men seem
cleft to the waist when they are astride of horses, under their wide
black hats, and the black-clothed women with wonderful eyes still look as
if they missed their Eastern veils. It had been a month of gaiety and
glamour, last days of September and early days of October, a revel of
enchanted wanderings in the streets of Seville, of embraces and laughter,
of strange scents and stranger sounds, of orange light and velvety
shadows, and all the warmth and deep gravity of Spain. The Alcazar, the
cigarette-girls, the Gipsy dancers of Triana, the old brown ruins to
which they rode, the streets, and the square with its grave talkers
sitting on benches in the sun, the water-sellers and the melons; the
mules, and the dark ragged man out of a dream, picking up the ends of
cigarettes, the wine of Malaga, burnt fire and honey! Seville had
bewitched them--they got no further. They had come back across the brown
uplands of Castile to Madrid and Goya and Velasquez, till it was time for
Paris, before the law-term began. There, in a queer little French
hotel--all bedrooms, and a lift, coffee and carved beds, wood fires, and
a chambermaid who seemed all France, and down below a restaurant, to
which such as knew about eating came, with waiters who looked like monks,
both fat and lean--they had spent a week. Three special memories of that
week started up in the moonlight before Gyp's eyes: The long drive in
the Bois among the falling leaves of trees flashing with colour in the
crisp air under a brilliant sky. A moment in the Louvre before the
Leonardo "Bacchus," when--his "restored" pink skin forgotten--all the
world seemed to drop away while she listened, with the listening figure
before her, to some mysterious music of growing flowers and secret life.
And that last most disconcerting memory, of the night before they
returned. They were having supper after the theatre in their restaurant,
when, in a mirror she saw three people come in and take seats at a table
a little way behind--Fiorsen, Rosek, and Daphne Wing! How she managed to
show no sign she never knew! While they were ordering, she was safe, for
Rosek was a gourmet, and the girl would certainly be hungry; but after
that, she knew that nothing could save her being seen--Rosek would mark
down every woman in the room! Should she pretend to feel faint and slip
out into the hotel? Or let Bryan know? Or sit there laughing and
talking, eating and drinking, as if nothing were behind her?
Her own face in the mirror had a flush, and her eyes were bright. When
they saw her, they would see that she was happy, safe in her love. Her
foot sought Summerhay's beneath the table. How splendid and brown and
fit he looked, compared with those two pale, towny creatures! And he was
gazing at her as though just discovering her beauty. How could she
ever--that man with his little beard and his white face and those
eyes--how could she ever! Ugh! And then, in the mirror, she saw Rosek's
dark-circled eyes fasten on her and betray their recognition by a sudden
gleam, saw his lips compressed, and a faint red come up in his cheeks.
What would he do? The girl's back was turned--her perfect back--and she
was eating. And Fiorsen was staring straight before him in that moody
way she knew so well. All depended on that deadly little man, who had
once kissed her throat. A sick feeling seized on Gyp. If her lover knew
that within five yards of him were those two men! But she still smiled
and talked, and touched his foot. Rosek had seen that she was
conscious--was getting from it a kind of satisfaction. She saw him lean
over and whisper to the girl, and Daphne Wing turning to look, and her
mouth opening for a smothered "Oh!" Gyp saw her give an uneasy glance at
Fiorsen, and then begin again to eat. Surely she would want to get away
before he saw. Yes; very soon she rose. What little airs of the world
she had now--quite mistress of the situation! The wrap must be placed
exactly on her shoulders; and how she walked, giving just one startled
look back from the door. Gone! The ordeal over! And Gyp said:
"Let's go up, darling."
She felt as if they had both escaped a deadly peril--not from anything
those two could do to him or her, but from the cruel ache and jealousy of
the past, which the sight of that man would have brought him.
Women, for their age, are surely older than men--married women, at all
events, than men who have not had that experience. And all through those
first weeks of their life together, there was a kind of wise watchfulness
in Gyp. He was only a boy in knowledge of life as she saw it, and though
his character was so much more decided, active, and insistent than her
own, she felt it lay with her to shape the course and avoid the shallows
and sunken rocks. The house they had seen together near the river, under
the Berkshire downs, was still empty; and while it was being got ready,
they lived at a London hotel. She had insisted that he should tell no
one of their life together. If that must come, she wanted to be firmly
settled in, with little Gyp and Betty and the horses, so that it should
all be for him as much like respectable married life as possible. But,
one day, in the first week after their return, while in her room, just
back from a long day's shopping, a card was brought up to her: "Lady
Summerhay." Her first impulse was to be "not at home"; her second, "I'd
better face it. Bryan would wish me to see her!" When the page-boy was
gone, she turned to the mirror and looked at herself doubtfully. She
seemed to know exactly what that tall woman whom she had seen on the
platform would think of her--too soft, not capable, not right for
him!--not even if she were legally his wife. And touching her hair,
laying a dab of scent on her eyebrows, she turned and went downstairs
fluttering, but outwardly calm enough.
In the little low-roofed inner lounge of that old hotel, whose rooms were
all "entirely renovated," Gyp saw her visitor standing at a table,
rapidly turning the pages of an illustrated magazine, as people will when
their minds are set upon a coming operation. And she thought: 'I believe
she's more frightened than I am!'
Lady Summerhay held out a gloved hand.
"How do you do?" she said. "I hope you'll forgive my coming."
Gyp took the hand.
"Thank you. It was very good of you. I'm sorry Bryan isn't in yet.
Will you have some tea?"
"I've had tea; but do let's sit down. How do you find the hotel?"
"Very nice."
On a velvet lounge that had survived the renovation, they sat side by
side, screwed round toward each other.
"Bryan's told me what a pleasant time you had abroad. He's looking very
well, I think. I'm devoted to him, you know."
Gyp answered softly:
"Yes, you must be." And her heart felt suddenly as hard as flint.
Lady Summerhay gave her a quick look.
"I--I hope you won't mind my being frank--I've been so worried. It's an
unhappy position, isn't it?" Gyp did not answer, and she hurried on.
"If there's anything I can do to help, I should be so glad--it must be
horrid for you."
Gyp said very quietly:
"Oh! no. I'm perfectly happy--couldn't be happier." And she thought: 'I
suppose she doesn't believe that.'
Lady Summerhay was looking at her fixedly.
"One doesn't realize these things at first--neither of you will, till you
see how dreadfully Society can cold-shoulder."
Gyp made an effort to control a smile.
"One can only be cold-shouldered if one puts oneself in the way of it. I
should never wish to see or speak to anyone who couldn't take me just for
what I am. And I don't really see what difference it will make to Bryan;
most men of his age have someone, somewhere." She felt malicious
pleasure watching her visitor jib and frown at the cynicism of that soft
speech; a kind of hatred had come on her of this society woman,
who--disguise it as she would--was at heart her enemy, who regarded her,
must regard her, as an enslaver, as a despoiler of her son's worldly
chances, a Delilah dragging him down. She said still more quietly: "He
need tell no one of my existence; and you can be quite sure that if ever
he feels he's had enough of me, he'll never be troubled by the sight of
me again."
And she got up. Lady Summerhay also rose.
"I hope you don't think--I really am only too anxious to--"
"I think it's better to be quite frank. You will never like me, or
forgive me for ensnaring Bryan. And so it had better be, please, as it
would be if I were just his common mistress. That will be perfectly all
right for both of us. It was very good of you to come, though. Thank
you--and good-bye."
Lady Summerhay literally faltered with speech and hand.
With a malicious smile, Gyp watched her retirement among the little
tables and elaborately modern chairs till her tall figure had disappeared
behind a column. Then she sat down again on the lounge, pressing her
hands to her burning ears. She had never till then known the strength of
the pride-demon within her; at the moment, it was almost stronger than
her love. She was still sitting there, when the page-boy brought her
another card--her father's. She sprang up saying:
"Yes, here, please."
Winton came in all brisk and elated at sight of her after this long
absence; and, throwing her arms round his neck, she hugged him tight. He
was doubly precious to her after the encounter she had just gone though.
When he had given her news of Mildenham and little Gyp, he looked at her
steadily, and said:
"The coast'll be clear for you both down there, and at Bury Street,
whenever you like to come, Gyp. I shall regard this as your real
marriage. I shall have the servants in and make that plain."
A row like family prayers--and Dad standing up very straight, saying in
his dry way: "You will be so good in future as to remember--" "I shall
be obliged if you will," and so on; Betty's round face pouting at being
brought in with all the others; Markey's soft, inscrutable; Mrs. Markey's
demure and goggling; the maids' rabbit-faces; old Pettance's carved grin
the film lifting from his little burning eyes: "Ha! Mr. Bryn Summer'ay;
he bought her orse, and so she's gone to 'im!" And she said:
"Darling, I don't know! It's awfully sweet of you. We'll see later."
Winton patted her hand. "We must stand up to 'em, you know, Gyp. You
mustn't get your tail down."
Gyp laughed.
"No, Dad; never!"
That same night, across the strip of blackness between their beds, she
said:
"Bryan, promise me something!"
"It depends. I know you too well."
"No; it's quite reasonable, and possible. Promise!"
"All right; if it is."
"I want you to let me take the lease of the Red House--let it be mine,
the whole thing--let me pay for everything there."
"Reasonable! What's the point?"
"Only that I shall have a proper home of my own. I can't explain, but
your mother's coming to-day made me feel I must."
"My child, how could I possibly live on YOU there? It's absurd!"
"You can pay for everything else; London--travelling--clothes, if you
like. We can make it square up. It's not a question of money, of
course. I only want to feel that if, at any moment, you don't need me
any more, you can simply stop coming."
"I think that's brutal, Gyp."
"No, no; so many women lose men's love because they seem to claim things
of them. I don't want to lose yours that way--that's all."
"That's silly, darling!"
"It's not. Men--and women, too--always tug at chains. And when there is
no chain--"
"Well then; let me take the house, and you can go away when you're tired
of me." His voice sounded smothered, resentful; she could hear him
turning and turning, as if angry with his pillows. And she murmured:
"No; I can't explain. But I really mean it."
"We're just beginning life together, and you talk as if you want to split
it up. It hurts, Gyp, and that's all about it."
She said gently:
"Don't be angry, dear."
"Well! Why don't you trust me more?"
"I do. Only I must make as sure as I can."
The sound came again of his turning and turning.
"I can't!"
Gyp said slowly:
"Oh! Very well!"
A dead silence followed, both lying quiet in the darkness, trying to get
the better of each other by sheer listening. An hour perhaps passed
before he sighed, and, feeling his lips on hers, she knew that she had
won.
III
There, in the study, the moonlight had reached her face; an owl was
hooting not far away, and still more memories came--the happiest of all,
perhaps--of first days in this old house together.
Summerhay damaged himself out hunting that first winter. The memory of
nursing him was strangely pleasant, now that it was two years old. For
convalescence they had gone to the Pyrenees--Argeles in March, all
almond-blossom and snows against the blue--a wonderful fortnight. In
London on the way back they had their first awkward encounter. Coming
out of a theatre one evening, Gyp heard a woman's voice, close behind,
say: "Why, it's Bryan! What ages!" And his answer defensively drawled
out:
"Halo! How are you, Diana?"
"Oh, awfully fit. Where are you, nowadays? Why don't you come and see
us?"
Again the drawl:
"Down in the country. I will, some time. Good-bye."
A tall woman or girl--red-haired, with one of those wonderful white skins
that go therewith; and brown--yes, brown eyes; Gyp could see those eyes
sweeping her up and down with a sort of burning-live curiosity. Bryan's
hand was thrust under her arm at once.
"Come on, let's walk and get a cab."
As soon as they were clear of the crowd, she pressed his hand to her
breast, and said:
"Did you mind?"
"Mind? Of course not. It's for you to mind."
"Who was it?"
"A second cousin. Diana Leyton."
"Do you know her very well?"
"Oh yes--used to."
"And do you like her very much?"
"Rather!"
He looked round into her face, with laughter bubbling up behind his
gravity. Ah, but could one tease on such a subject as their love? And to
this day the figure of that tall girl with the burning-white skin, the
burning-brown eyes, the burning-red hair was not quite a pleasant memory
to Gyp. After that night, they gave up all attempt to hide their union,
going to whatever they wished, whether they were likely to meet people or
not. Gyp found that nothing was so easily ignored as Society when the
heart was set on other things. Besides, they were seldom in London, and
in the country did not wish to know anyone, in any case. But she never
lost the feeling that what was ideal for her might not be ideal for him.
He ought to go into the world, ought to meet people. It would not do for
him to be cut off from social pleasures and duties, and then some day
feel that he owed his starvation to her. To go up to London, too, every
day was tiring, and she persuaded him to take a set of residential
chambers in the Temple, and sleep there three nights a week. In spite of
all his entreaties, she herself never went to those chambers, staying
always at Bury Street when she came up. A kind of superstition prevented
her; she would not risk making him feel that she was hanging round his
neck. Besides, she wanted to keep herself desirable--so little a matter
of course that he would hanker after her when he was away. And she never
asked him where he went or whom he saw. But, sometimes, she wondered
whether he could still be quite faithful to her in thought, love her as
he used to; and joy would go down behind a heavy bank of clouds, till, at
his return, the sun came out again. Love such as hers--passionate,
adoring, protective, longing to sacrifice itself, to give all that it had
to him, yet secretly demanding all his love in return--for how could a
proud woman love one who did not love her?--such love as this is always
longing for a union more complete than it is likely to get in a world
where all things move and change. But against the grip of this love she
never dreamed of fighting now. From the moment when she knew she must
cling to him rather than to her baby, she had made no reservations; all
her eggs were in one basket, as her father's had been before her--all!
The moonlight was shining full on the old bureau and a vase of tulips
standing there, giving those flowers colour that was not colour, and an
unnamed look, as if they came from a world which no human enters. It
glinted on a bronze bust of old Voltaire, which she had bought him for a
Christmas present, so that the great writer seemed to be smiling from the
hollows of his eyes. Gyp turned the bust a little, to catch the light on
its far cheek; a letter was disclosed between it and the oak. She drew
it out thinking: 'Bless him! He uses everything for paper-weights'; and,
in the strange light, its first words caught her eyes:
"DEAR BRYAN,
"But I say--you ARE wasting yourself--"
She laid it down, methodically pushing it back under the bust. Perhaps he
had put it there on purpose! She got up and went to the window, to check
the temptation to read the rest of that letter and see from whom it was.
No! She did not admit that she was tempted. One did not read letters.
Then the full import of those few words struck into her: "Dear Bryan.
But I say--you ARE wasting yourself." A letter in a chain of
correspondence, then! A woman's hand; but not his mother's, nor his
sisters'--she knew their writings. Who had dared to say he was wasting
himself? A letter in a chain of letters! An intimate correspondent,
whose name she did not know, because--he had not told her! Wasting
himself--on what?--on his life with her down here? And was he? Had she
herself not said that very night that he had lost his laugh? She began
searching her memory. Yes, last Christmas vacation--that clear, cold,
wonderful fortnight in Florence, he had been full of fun. It was May
now. Was there no memory since--of his old infectious gaiety? She could
not think of any. "But I say--you ARE wasting yourself." A sudden
hatred flared up in her against the unknown woman who had said that
thing--and fever, running through her veins, made her ears burn. She
longed to snatch forth and tear to pieces the letter, with its
guardianship of which that bust seemed mocking her; and she turned away
with the thought: 'I'll go and meet him; I can't wait here.'
Throwing on a cloak she walked out into the moonlit garden, and went
slowly down the whitened road toward the station. A magical, dewless
night! The moonbeams had stolen in to the beech clump, frosting the
boles and boughs, casting a fine ghostly grey over the shadow-patterned
beech-mast. Gyp took the short cut through it. Not a leaf moved in
there, no living thing stirred; so might an earth be where only trees
inhabited! She thought: 'I'll bring him back through here.' And she
waited at the far corner of the clump, where he must pass, some little
distance from the station. She never gave people unnecessary food for
gossip--any slighting of her irritated him, she was careful to spare him
that. The train came in; a car went whizzing by, a cyclist, then the
first foot-passenger, at a great pace, breaking into a run. She saw that
it was he, and, calling out his name, ran back into the shadow of the
trees. He stopped dead in his tracks, then came rushing after her. That
pursuit did not last long, and, in his arms, Gyp said:
"If you aren't too hungry, darling, let's stay here a little--it's so
wonderful!"
They sat down on a great root, and leaning against him, looking up at the
dark branches, she said:
"Have you had a hard day?"
"Yes; got hung up by a late consultation; and old Leyton asked me to come
and dine."
Gyp felt a sensation as when feet happen on ground that gives a little.
"The Leytons--that's Eaton Square, isn't it? A big dinner?"
"No. Only the old people, and Bertie and Diana."
"Diana? That's the girl we met coming out of the theatre, isn't it?"
"When? Oh--ah--what a memory, Gyp!"
"Yes; it's good for things that interest me."
"Why? Did she interest you?"
Gyp turned and looked into his face.
"Yes. Is she clever?"
"H'm! I suppose you might call her so."
"And in love with you?"
"Great Scott! Why?"
"Is it very unlikely? I am."
He began kissing her lips and hair. And, closing her eyes, Gyp thought:
'If only that's not because he doesn't want to answer!' Then, for some
minutes, they were silent as the moonlit beech clump.
"Answer me truly, Bryan. Do you never--never--feel as if you were
wasting yourself on me?"
She was certain of a quiver in his grasp; but his face was open and
serene, his voice as usual when he was teasing.
"Well, hardly ever! Aren't you funny, dear?"
"Promise me faithfully to let me know when you've had enough of me.
Promise!"
"All right! But don't look for fulfilment in this life."
"I'm not so sure."
"I am."
Gyp put up her lips, and tried to drown for ever in a kiss the memory of
those words: "But I say--you ARE wasting yourself."
IV
Summerhay, coming down next morning, went straight to his bureau; his
mind was not at ease. "Wasting yourself!" What had he done with that
letter of Diana's? He remembered Gyp's coming in just as he finished
reading it. Searching the pigeonholes and drawers, moving everything
that lay about, he twitched the bust--and the letter lay disclosed. He
took it up with a sigh of relief:
"DEAR BRYAN,
"But I say--you ARE wasting yourself. Why, my dear, of course! 'Il faut
se faire valoir!' You have only one foot to put forward; the other is
planted in I don't know what mysterious hole. One foot in the grave--at
thirty! Really, Bryan! Pull it out. There's such a lot waiting for you.
It's no good your being hoity-toity, and telling me to mind my business.
I'm speaking for everyone who knows you. We all feel the blight on the
rose. Besides, you always were my favourite cousin, ever since I was five
and you a horrid little bully of ten; and I simply hate to think of you
going slowly down instead of quickly up. Oh! I know 'D--n the world!'
But--are you? I should have thought it was 'd--ning' you! Enough! When
are you coming to see us? I've read that book. The man seems to think
love is nothing but passion, and passion always fatal. I wonder!
Perhaps you know.
"Don't be angry with me for being such a grandmother.
"Au revoir.
"Your very good cousin,
"DIANA LEYTON."
He crammed the letter into his pocket, and sat there, appalled. It must
have lain two days under that bust! Had Gyp seen it? He looked at the
bronze face; and the philosopher looked back from the hollows of his
eyes, as if to say: "What do you know of the human heart, my boy--your
own, your mistress's, that girl's, or anyone's? A pretty dance the heart
will lead you yet! Put it in a packet, tie it round with string, seal it
up, drop it in a drawer, lock the drawer! And to-morrow it will be out
and skipping on its wrappings. Ho! Ho!" And Summerhay thought: 'You
old goat. You never had one!' In the room above, Gyp would still be
standing as he had left her, putting the last touch to her hair--a man
would be a scoundrel who, even in thought, could--"Hallo!" the eyes of
the bust seemed to say. "Pity! That's queer, isn't it? Why not pity
that red-haired girl, with the skin so white that it burns you, and the
eyes so brown that they burn you--don't they?" Old Satan! Gyp had his
heart; no one in the world would ever take it from her!
And in the chair where she had sat last night conjuring up memories, he
too now conjured. How he had loved her, did love her! She would always
be what she was and had been to him. And the sage's mouth seemed to
twist before him with the words: "Quite so, my dear! But the heart's
very funny--very--capacious!" A tiny sound made him turn.
Little Gyp was standing in the doorway.
"Hallo!" he said.
"Hallo, Baryn!" She came flying to him, and he caught her up so that she
stood on his knees with the sunlight shining on her fluffed out hair.
"Well, Gipsy! Who's getting a tall girl?"
"I'm goin' to ride."
"Ho, ho!"
"Baryn, let's do Humpty-Dumpty!"
"All right; come on!" He rose and carried her upstairs.
Gyp was still doing one of those hundred things which occupy women for a
quarter of an hour after they are "quite ready," and at little Gyp's
shout of, "Humpty!" she suspended her needle to watch the sacred rite.
Summerhay had seated himself on the foot-rail of the bed, rounding his
arms, sinking his neck, blowing out his cheeks to simulate an egg; then,
with an unexpectedness that even little Gyp could always see through, he
rolled backward on to the bed.
And she, simulating "all the king's horses," tried in vain to put him up
again. This immemorial game, watched by Gyp a hundred times, had to-day
a special preciousness. If he could be so ridiculously young, what
became of her doubts? Looking at his face pulled this way and that,
lazily imperturbable under the pommelings of those small fingers, she
thought: 'And that girl dared to say he was WASTING HIMSELF!' For in the
night conviction had come to her that those words were written by the
tall girl with the white skin, the girl of the theatre--the Diana of his
last night's dinner. Humpty-Dumpty was up on the bed-rail again for the
finale; all the king's horses were clasped to him, making the egg more
round, and over they both went with shrieks and gurgles. What a boy he
was! She would not--no, she would not brood and spoil her day with him.
But that afternoon, at the end of a long gallop on the downs, she turned
her head away and said suddenly:
"Is she a huntress?"
"Who?"
"Your cousin--Diana."
In his laziest voice, he answered:
"I suppose you mean--does she hunt me?"
She knew that tone, that expression on his face, knew he was angry; but
could not stop herself.
"I did."
"So you're going to become jealous, Gyp?"
It was one of those cold, naked sayings that should never be spoken
between lovers--one of those sayings at which the heart of the one who
speaks sinks with a kind of dismay, and the heart of the one who hears
quivers. She cantered on. And he, perforce, after her. When she reined
in again, he glanced into her face and was afraid. It was all closed up
against him. And he said softly:
"I didn't mean that, Gyp."
But she only shook her head. He HAD meant it--had wanted to hurt her!
It didn't matter--she wouldn't give him the chance again. And she said:
"Look at that long white cloud, and the apple-green in the sky--rain
to-morrow. One ought to enjoy any fine day as if it were the last."
Uneasy, ashamed, yet still a little angry, Summerhay rode on beside her.
That night, she cried in her sleep; and, when he awakened her, clung to
him and sobbed out:
"Oh! such a dreadful dream! I thought you'd left off loving me!"
For a long time he held and soothed her. Never, never! He would never
leave off loving her!
But a cloud no broader than your hand can spread and cover the whole day.
V
The summer passed, and always there was that little patch of silence in
her heart, and in his. The tall, bright days grew taller, slowly passed
their zenith, slowly shortened. On Saturdays and Sundays, sometimes with
Winton and little Gyp, but more often alone, they went on the river. For
Gyp, it had never lost the magic of their first afternoon upon it--never
lost its glamour as of an enchanted world. All the week she looked
forward to these hours of isolation with him, as if the surrounding water
secured her not only against a world that would take him from her, if it
could, but against that side of his nature, which, so long ago she had
named "old Georgian." She had once adventured to the law courts by
herself, to see him in his wig and gown. Under that stiff grey crescent
on his broad forehead, he seemed so hard and clever--so of a world to
which she never could belong, so of a piece with the brilliant bullying
of the whole proceeding. She had come away feeling that she only
possessed and knew one side of him. On the river, she had that side
utterly--her lovable, lazy, impudently loving boy, lying with his head in
her lap, plunging in for a swim, splashing round her; or with his sleeves
rolled up, his neck bare, and a smile on his face, plying his slow sculls
down-stream, singing, "Away, my rolling river," or puffing home like a
demon in want of his dinner. It was such a blessing to lose for a few
hours each week this growing consciousness that she could never have the
whole of him. But all the time the patch of silence grew, for doubt in
the heart of one lover reacts on the heart of the other.
When the long vacation came, she made an heroic resolve. He must go to
Scotland, must have a month away from her, a good long rest. And while
Betty was at the sea with little Gyp, she would take her father to his
cure. She held so inflexibly to this resolve, that, after many protests,
he said with a shrug:
"Very well, I will then--if you're so keen to get rid of me."
"Keen to get rid!" When she could not bear to be away from him! But she
forced her feeling back, and said, smiling:
"At last! There's a good boy!" Anything! If only it would bring him
back to her exactly as he had been. She asked no questions as to where,
or to whom, he would go.
Tunbridge Wells, that charming purgatory where the retired prepare their
souls for a more permanent retirement, was dreaming on its hills in long
rows of adequate villas. Its commons and woods had remained unscorched,
so that the retired had not to any extent deserted it, that August, for
the sea. They still shopped in the Pantiles, strolled the uplands, or
flourished their golf-clubs in the grassy parks; they still drank tea in
each other's houses and frequented the many churches. One could see
their faces, as it were, goldened by their coming glory, like the chins
of children by reflection from buttercups. From every kind of life they
had retired, and, waiting now for a more perfect day, were doing their
utmost to postpone it. They lived very long.
Gyp and her father had rooms in a hotel where he could bathe and drink
the waters without having to climb three hills. This was the first cure
she had attended since the long-past time at Wiesbaden. Was it possible
that was only six years ago? She felt so utterly, so strangely
different! Then life had been sparkling sips of every drink, and of none
too much; now it was one long still draft, to quench a thirst that would
not be quenched.
During these weeks she held herself absolutely at her father's disposal,
but she lived for the post, and if, by any chance, she did not get her
daily letter, her heart sank to the depths. She wrote every day,
sometimes twice, then tore up that second letter, remembering for what
reason she had set herself to undergo this separation. During the first
week, his letters had a certain equanimity; in the second week they
became ardent; in the third, they were fitful--now beginning to look
forward, now moody and dejected; and they were shorter. During this
third week Aunt Rosamund joined them. The good lady had become a staunch
supporter of Gyp's new existence, which, in her view, served Fiorsen
right. Why should the poor child's life be loveless? She had a
definitely low opinion of men, and a lower of the state of the
marriage-laws; in her view, any woman who struck a blow in that direction
was something of a heroine. And she was oblivious of the fact that Gyp
was quite guiltless of the desire to strike a blow against the
marriage-laws, or anything else. Aunt Rosamund's aristocratic and
rebellious blood boiled with hatred of what she called the "stuffy
people" who still held that women were men's property. It had made her
specially careful never to put herself in that position.
She had brought Gyp a piece of news.
"I was walking down Bond Street past that tea-and-tart shop, my dear--you
know, where they have those special coffee-creams, and who should come
out of it but Miss Daphne Wing and our friend Fiorsen; and pretty hangdog
he looked. He came up to me, with his little lady watching him like a
lynx. Really, my dear, I was rather sorry for him; he'd got that hungry
look of his; she'd been doing all the eating, I'm sure. He asked me how
you were. I told him, 'Very well.'
"'When you see her,' he said, 'tell her I haven't forgotten her, and
never shall. But she was quite right; this is the sort of lady that I'm
fit for.' And the way he looked at that girl made me feel quite
uncomfortable. Then he gave me one of his little bows; and off they
went, she as pleased as Punch. I really was sorry for him."
Gyp said quietly:
"Ah! you needn't have been, Auntie; he'll always be able to be sorry for
himself."
A little shocked at her niece's cynicism, Aunt Rosamund was silent. The
poor lady had not lived with Fiorsen!
That same afternoon, Gyp was sitting in a shelter on the common, a book
on her knee--thinking her one long thought: 'To-day is Thursday--Monday
week! Eleven days--still!'--when three figures came slowly toward her, a
man, a woman, and what should have been a dog. English love of beauty
and the rights of man had forced its nose back, deprived it of half its
ears, and all but three inches or so of tail. It had asthma--and waddled
in disillusionment. A voice said:
"This'll do, Maria. We can take the sun 'ere."
But for that voice, with the permanent cold hoarseness caught beside
innumerable graves, Gyp might not have recognized Mr. Wagge, for he had
taken off his beard, leaving nothing but side-whiskers, and Mrs. Wagge
had filled out wonderfully. They were some time settling down beside
her.
"You sit here, Maria; you won't get the sun in your eyes."
"No, Robert; I'll sit here. You sit there."
"No, YOU sit there."
"No, I will. Come, Duckie!"
But the dog, standing stockily on the pathway was gazing at Gyp, while
what was left of its broad nose moved from side to side. Mr. Wagge
followed the direction of its glance.
"Oh!" he said, "oh, this is a surprise!" And fumbling at his straw hat,
he passed his other hand over his sleeve and held it out to Gyp. It felt
almost dry, and fatter than it had been. While she was shaking it, the
dog moved forward and sat down on her feet. Mrs. Wagge also extended her
hand, clad in a shiny glove.
"This is a--a--pleasure," she murmured. "Who WOULD have thought of
meeting you! Oh, don't let Duckie sit against your pretty frock! Come,
Duckie!"
But Duckie did not move, resting his back against Gyp's shin-bones. Mr.
Wagge, whose tongue had been passing over a mouth which she saw to its
full advantage for the first time, said abruptly:
"You 'aven't come to live here, 'ave you?"
"Oh no! I'm only with my father for the baths."
"Ah, I thought not, never havin' seen you. We've been retired here
ourselves a matter of twelve months. A pretty spot."
"Yes; lovely, isn't it?"
"We wanted nature. The air suits us, though a bit--er--too irony, as you
might say. But it's a long-lived place. We were quite a time lookin'
round."
Mrs. Wagge added in her thin voice:
"Yes--we'd thought of Wimbledon, you see, but Mr. Wagge liked this
better; he can get his walk, here; and it's more--select, perhaps. We
have several friends. The church is very nice."
Mr. Wagge's face assumed an uncertain expression. He said bluffly:
"I was always a chapel man; but--I don't know how it is--there's
something in a place like this that makes church seem more--more
suitable; my wife always had a leaning that way. I never conceal my
actions."
Gyp murmured:
"It's a question of atmosphere, isn't it?"
Mr. Wagge shook his head.
"No; I don't hold with incense--we're not 'Igh Church. But how are YOU,
ma'am? We often speak of you. You're looking well."
His face had become a dusky orange, and Mrs. Wagge's the colour of a
doubtful beetroot. The dog on Gyp's feet stirred, snuffled, turned
round, and fell heavily against her legs again. She said quietly:
"I was hearing of Daisy only to-day. She's quite a star now, isn't she?"
Mrs. Wagge sighed. Mr. Wagge looked away and answered:
"It's a sore subject. There she is, making her forty and fifty pound a
week, and run after in all the papers. She's a success--no doubt about
it. And she works. Saving a matter of fifteen 'undred a year, I
shouldn't be surprised. Why, at my best, the years the influenza was so
bad, I never cleared a thousand net. No, she's a success."
Mrs. Wagge added:
"Have you seen her last photograph--the one where she's standing between
two hydrangea-tubs? It was her own idea."
Mr. Wagge mumbled suddenly:
"I'm always glad to see her when she takes a run down in a car. But I've
come here for quiet after the life I've led, and I don't want to think
about it, especially before you, ma'am. I don't--that's a fact."
A silence followed, during which Mr. and Mrs. Wagge looked at their feet,
and Gyp looked at the dog.
"Ah!--here you are!" It was Winton, who had come up from behind the
shelter, and stood, with eyebrows slightly raised. Gyp could not help a
smile. Her father's weathered, narrow face, half-veiled eyes, thin nose,
little crisp, grey moustache that did not hide his firm lips, his lean,
erect figure, the very way he stood, his thin, dry, clipped voice were
the absolute antithesis of Mr. Wagge's thickset, stoutly planted form,
thick-skinned, thick-featured face, thick, rather hoarse yet oily voice.
It was as if Providence had arranged a demonstration of the extremes of
social type. And she said:
"Mr. and Mrs. Wagge--my father."
Winton raised his hat. Gyp remained seated, the dog Duckie being still
on her feet.
"'Appy to meet you, sir. I hope you have benefit from the waters.
They're supposed to be most powerful, I believe."
"Thank you--not more deadly than most. Are you drinking them?"
Mr. Wagge smiled.
"Nao!" he said, "we live here."
"Indeed! Do you find anything to do?"
"Well, as a fact, I've come here for rest. But I take a Turkish bath
once a fortnight--find it refreshing; keeps the pores of the skin
acting."
Mrs. Wagge added gently:
"It seems to suit my husband wonderfully."
Winton murmured:
"Yes. Is this your dog? Bit of a philosopher, isn't he?"
Mrs. Wagge answered:
"Oh, he's a naughty dog, aren't you, Duckie?"
The dog Duckie, feeling himself the cynosure of every eye, rose and stood
panting into Gyp's face. She took the occasion to get up.
"We must go, I'm afraid. Good-bye. It's been very nice to meet you
again. When you see Daisy, will you please give her my love?"
Mrs. Wagge unexpectedly took a handkerchief from her reticule. Mr. Wagge
cleared his throat heavily. Gyp was conscious of the dog Duckie waddling
after them, and of Mrs. Wagge calling, "Duckie, Duckie!" from behind her
handkerchief.
Winton said softly:
"So those two got that pretty filly! Well, she didn't show much quality,
when you come to think of it. She's still with our friend, according to
your aunt."
Gyp nodded.
"Yes; and I do hope she's happy."
"HE isn't, apparently. Serves him right."
Gyp shook her head.
"Oh no, Dad!"
"Well, one oughtn't to wish any man worse than he's likely to get. But
when I see people daring to look down their noses at you--by Jove! I
get--"
"Darling, what does that matter?"
Winton answered testily:
"It matters very much to me--the impudence of it!" His mouth relaxed in
a grim little smile: "Ah, well--there's not much to choose between us so
far as condemning our neighbours goes. 'Charity Stakes--also ran, Charles
Clare Winton, the Church, and Mrs. Grundy.'"
They opened out to each other more in those few days at Tunbridge Wells
than they had for years. Whether the process of bathing softened his
crust, or the air that Mr. Wagge found "a bit--er--too irony, as you
might say," had upon Winton the opposite effect, he certainly relaxed
that first duty of man, the concealment of his spirit, and disclosed his
activities as he never had before--how such and such a person had been
set on his feet, so and so sent out to Canada, this man's wife helped
over her confinement, that man's daughter started again after a slip.
And Gyp's child-worship of him bloomed anew.
On the last afternoon of their stay, she strolled out with him through
one of the long woods that stretched away behind their hotel. Excited by
the coming end of her self-inflicted penance, moved by the beauty among
those sunlit trees, she found it difficult to talk. But Winton, about to
lose her, was quite loquacious. Starting from the sinister change in the
racing-world--so plutocratic now, with the American seat, the increase of
bookmaking owners, and other tragic occurrences--he launched forth into a
jeremiad on the condition of things in general. Parliament, he thought,
especially now that members were paid, had lost its self-respect; the
towns had eaten up the country; hunting was threatened; the power and
vulgarity of the press were appalling; women had lost their heads; and
everybody seemed afraid of having any "breeding." By the time little Gyp
was Gyp's age, they would all be under the thumb of Watch Committees,
live in Garden Cities, and have to account for every half-crown they
spent, and every half-hour of their time; the horse, too, would be an
extinct animal, brought out once a year at the lord-mayor's show. He
hoped--the deuce--he might not be alive to see it. And suddenly he
added: "What do you think happens after death, Gyp?"
They were sitting on one of those benches that crop up suddenly in the
heart of nature. All around them briars and bracken were just on the
turn; and the hum of flies, the vague stir of leaves and life formed but
a single sound. Gyp, gazing into the wood, answered:
"Nothing, Dad. I think we just go back."
"Ah--My idea, too!"
Neither of them had ever known what the other thought about it before!
Gyp murmured:
"La vie est vaine
--Un peu d'amour,
Un peu de haine,
Et puis bonjour!"
Not quite a grunt or quite a laugh emerged from the depths of Winton,
and, looking up at the sky, he said:
"And what they call 'God,' after all, what is it? Just the very best you
can get out of yourself--nothing more, so far as I can see. Dash it, you
can't imagine anything more than you can imagine. One would like to die
in the open, though, like Whyte-Melville. But there's one thing that's
always puzzled me, Gyp. All one's life one's tried to have a single
heart. Death comes, and out you go! Then why did one love, if there's
to be no meeting after?"
"Yes; except for that, who would care? But does the wanting to meet make
it any more likely, Dad? The world couldn't go on without love; perhaps
loving somebody or something with all your heart is all in itself."
Winton stared; the remark was a little deep.
"Ye-es," he said at last. "I often think the religious johnnies are
saving their money to put on a horse that'll never run after all. I
remember those Yogi chaps in India. There they sat, and this jolly world
might rot round them for all they cared--they thought they were going to
be all right themselves, in Kingdom Come. But suppose it doesn't come?"
Gyp murmured with a little smile:
"Perhaps they were trying to love everything at once."
"Rum way of showing it. And, hang it, there are such a lot of things one
can't love! Look at that!" He pointed upwards. Against the grey bole of
a beech-tree hung a board, on which were the freshly painted words:
PRIVATE
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED
"That board is stuck up all over this life and the next. Well, WE won't
give them the chance to warn us off, Gyp."
Slipping her hand through his arm, she pressed close up to him.
"No, Dad; you and I will go off with the wind and the sun, and the trees
and the waters, like Procris in my picture."
VI
The curious and complicated nature of man in matters of the heart is not
sufficiently conceded by women, professors, clergymen, judges, and other
critics of his conduct. And naturally so, since they all have vested
interests in his simplicity. Even journalists are in the conspiracy to
make him out less wayward than he is, and dip their pens in epithets, if
his heart diverges inch or ell.
Bryan Summerhay was neither more curious nor more complicated than those
of his own sex who would condemn him for getting into the midnight
express from Edinburgh with two distinct emotions in his heart--a
regretful aching for the girl, his cousin, whom he was leaving behind,
and a rapturous anticipation of the woman whom he was going to rejoin.
How was it possible that he could feel both at once? "Against all the
rules," women and other moralists would say. Well, the fact is, a man's
heart knows no rules. And he found it perfectly easy, lying in his bunk,
to dwell on memories of Diana handing him tea, or glancing up at him,
while he turned the leaves of her songs, with that enticing mockery in
her eyes and about her lips; and yet the next moment to be swept from
head to heel by the longing to feel Gyp's arms around him, to hear her
voice, look in her eyes, and press his lips on hers. If, instead of
being on his way to rejoin a mistress, he had been going home to a wife,
he would not have felt a particle more of spiritual satisfaction, perhaps
not so much. He was returning to the feelings and companionship that he
knew were the most deeply satisfying spiritually and bodily he would ever
have. And yet he could ache a little for that red-haired girl, and this
without any difficulty. How disconcerting! But, then, truth is.
From that queer seesawing of his feelings, he fell asleep, dreamed of all
things under the sun as men only can in a train, was awakened by the
hollow silence in some station, slept again for hours, it seemed, and
woke still at the same station, fell into a sound sleep at last that
ended at Willesden in broad daylight. Dressing hurriedly, he found he had
but one emotion now, one longing--to get to Gyp. Sitting back in his
cab, hands deep-thrust into the pockets of his ulster, he smiled,
enjoying even the smell of the misty London morning. Where would she
be--in the hall of the hotel waiting, or upstairs still?
Not in the hall! And asking for her room, he made his way to its door.
She was standing in the far corner motionless, deadly pale, quivering
from head to foot; and when he flung his arms round her, she gave a long
sigh, closing her eyes. With his lips on hers, he could feel her almost
fainting; and he too had no consciousness of anything but that long kiss.
Next day, they went abroad to a little place not far from Fecamp, in that
Normandy countryside where all things are large--the people, the beasts,
the unhedged fields, the courtyards of the farms guarded so squarely by
tall trees, the skies, the sea, even the blackberries large. And Gyp was
happy. But twice there came letters, in that too-well-remembered
handwriting, which bore a Scottish postmark. A phantom increases in
darkness, solidifies when seen in mist. Jealousy is rooted not in
reason, but in the nature that feels it--in her nature that loved
desperately, felt proudly. And jealousy flourishes on scepticism. Even
if pride would have let her ask, what good? She would not have believed
the answers. Of course he would say--if only out of pity--that he never
let his thoughts rest on another woman. But, after all, it was only a
phantom. There were many hours in those three weeks when she felt he
really loved her, and so--was happy.
They went back to the Red House at the end of the first week in October.
Little Gyp, home from the sea, was now an almost accomplished horsewoman.
Under the tutelage of old Pettance, she had been riding steadily round
and round those rough fields by the linhay which they called "the wild,"
her firm brown legs astride of the mouse-coloured pony, her little brown
face, with excited, dark eyes, very erect, her auburn crop of short curls
flopping up and down on her little straight back. She wanted to be able
to "go out riding" with Grandy and Mum and Baryn. And the first days
were spent by them all more or less in fulfilling her new desires. Then
term began, and Gyp sat down again to the long sharing of Summerhay with
his other life.
VII
One afternoon at the beginning of November, the old Scotch terrier,
Ossian, lay on the path in the pale sunshine. He had lain there all the
morning since his master went up by the early train. Nearly sixteen years
old, he was deaf now and disillusioned, and every time that Summerhay
left him, his eyes seemed to say: "You will leave me once too often!"
The blandishments of the other nice people about the house were becoming
to him daily less and less a substitute for that which he felt he had not
much time left to enjoy; nor could he any longer bear a stranger within
the gate. From her window, Gyp saw him get up and stand with his back
ridged, growling at the postman, and, fearing for the man's calves, she
hastened out.
Among the letters was one in that dreaded hand writing marked
"Immediate," and forwarded from his chambers. She took it up, and put it
to her nose. A scent--of what? Too faint to say. Her thumb nails
sought the edge of the flap on either side. She laid the letter down.
Any other letter, but not that--she wanted to open it too much.
Readdressing it, she took it out to put with the other letters. And
instantly the thought went through her: 'What a pity! If I read it, and
there was nothing!' All her restless, jealous misgivings of months past
would then be set at rest! She stood, uncertain, with the letter in her
hand. Ah--but if there WERE something! She would lose at one stroke her
faith in him, and her faith in herself--not only his love but her own
self-respect. She dropped the letter on the table. Could she not take it
up to him herself? By the three o'clock slow train, she could get to him
soon after five. She looked at her watch. She would just have time to
walk down. And she ran upstairs. Little Gyp was sitting on the top
stair--her favourite seat--looking at a picture-book.
"I'm going up to London, darling. Tell Betty I may be back to-night, or
perhaps I may not. Give me a good kiss."
Little Gyp gave the good kiss, and said:
"Let me see you put your hat on, Mum."
While Gyp was putting on hat and furs, she thought: "I shan't take a bag;
I can always make shift at Bury Street if--" She did not finish the
thought, but the blood came up in her cheeks. "Take care of Ossy,
darling!" She ran down, caught up the letter, and hastened away to the
station. In the train, her cheeks still burned. Might not this first
visit to his chambers be like her old first visit to the little house in
Chelsea? She took the letter out. How she hated that large, scrawly
writing for all the thoughts and fears it had given her these past
months! If that girl knew how much anxiety and suffering she had caused,
would she stop writing, stop seeing him? And Gyp tried to conjure up her
face, that face seen only for a minute, and the sound of that clipped,
clear voice but once heard--the face and voice of one accustomed to have
her own way. No! It would only make her go on all the more. Fair game,
against a woman with no claim--but that of love. Thank heaven she had
not taken him away from any woman--unless--that girl perhaps thought she
had! Ah! Why, in all these years, had she never got to know his
secrets, so that she might fight against what threatened her? But would
she have fought? To fight for love was degrading, horrible! And yet--if
one did not? She got up and stood at the window of her empty carriage.
There was the river--and there--yes, the very backwater where he had
begged her to come to him for good. It looked so different, bare and
shorn, under the light grey sky; the willows were all polled, the reeds
cut down. And a line from one of his favourite sonnets came into her
mind:
"Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang."
Ah, well! Time enough to face things when they came. She would only
think of seeing him! And she put the letter back to burn what hole it
liked in the pocket of her fur coat.
The train was late; it was past five, already growing dark, when she
reached Paddington and took a cab to the Temple. Strange to be going
there for the first time--not even to know exactly where Harcourt
Buildings were. At Temple Lane, she stopped the cab and walked down that
narrow, ill-lighted, busy channel into the heart of the Great Law.
"Up those stone steps, miss; along the railin', second doorway." Gyp came
to the second doorway and in the doubtful light scrutinized the names.
"Summerhay--second floor." She began to climb the stairs. Her heart
beat fast. What would he say? How greet her? Was it not absurd,
dangerous, to have come? He would be having a consultation perhaps.
There would be a clerk or someone to beard, and what name could she give?
On the first floor she paused, took out a blank card, and pencilled on
it:
"Can I see you a minute?--G."
Then, taking a long breath to quiet her heart, she went on up. There was
the name, and there the door. She rang--no one came; listened--could
hear no sound. All looked so massive and bleak and dim--the iron
railings, stone stairs, bare walls, oak door. She rang again. What
should she do? Leave the letter? Not see him after all--her little
romance all come to naught--just a chilly visit to Bury Street, where
perhaps there would be no one but Mrs. Markey, for her father, she knew,
was at Mildenham, hunting, and would not be up till Sunday! And she
thought: 'I'll leave the letter, go back to the Strand, have some tea,
and try again.'
She took out the letter, with a sort of prayer pushed it through the slit
of the door, heard it fall into its wire cage; then slowly descended the
stairs to the outer passage into Temple Lane. It was thronged with men
and boys, at the end of the day's work. But when she had nearly reached
the Strand, a woman's figure caught her eye. She was walking with a man
on the far side; their faces were turned toward each other. Gyp heard
their voices, and, faint, dizzy, stood looking back after them. They
passed under a lamp; the light glinted on the woman's hair, on a trick of
Summerhay's, the lift of one shoulder, when he was denying something; she
heard his voice, high-pitched. She watched them cross, mount the stone
steps she had just come down, pass along the railed stone passage, enter
the doorway, disappear. And such horror seized on her that she could
hardly walk away.
"Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!" So it went in her mind--a kind of moaning, like
that of a cold, rainy wind through dripping trees. What did it mean? Oh,
what did it mean? In this miserable tumult, the only thought that did
not come to her was that of going back to his chambers. She hurried
away. It was a wonder she was not run over, for she had no notion what
she was doing, where going, and crossed the streets without the least
attention to traffic. She came to Trafalgar Square, and stood leaning
against its parapet in front of the National Gallery. Here she had her
first coherent thought: So that was why his chambers had been empty! No
clerk--no one! That they might be alone. Alone, where she had dreamed
of being alone with him! And only that morning he had kissed her and
said, "Good-bye, treasure!" A dreadful little laugh got caught in her
throat, confused with a sob. Why--why had she a heart? Down there,
against the plinth of one of the lions, a young man leaned, with his arms
round a girl, pressing her to him. Gyp turned away from the sight and
resumed her miserable wandering. She went up Bury Street. No light; not
any sign of life! It did not matter; she could not have gone in, could
not stay still, must walk! She put up her veil to get more air, feeling
choked.
The trees of the Green Park, under which she was passing now, had still a
few leaves, and they gleamed in the lamplight copper-coloured as that
girl's hair. All sorts of torturing visions came to her. Those empty
chambers! She had seen one little minute of their intimacy. A hundred
kisses might have passed between them--a thousand words of love! And he
would lie to her. Already he had acted a lie! She had not deserved
that. And this sense of the injustice done her was the first relief she
felt--this definite emotion of a mind clouded by sheer misery. She had
not deserved that he should conceal things from her. She had not had one
thought or look for any man but him since that night down by the sea,
when he came to her across the garden in the moonlight--not one
thought--and never would! Poor relief enough! She was in Hyde Park now,
wandering along a pathway which cut diagonally across the grass. And
with more resolution, more purpose, she began searching her memory for
signs, proofs of WHEN he had changed to her. She could not find them.
He had not changed in his ways to her; not at all. Could one act love,
then? Act passion, or--horrible thought!--when he kissed her nowadays,
was he thinking of that girl?
She heard the rustling of leaves behind. A youth was following her along
the path, some ravening youth, whose ungoverned breathing had a kind of
pathos in it. Heaven! What irony! She was too miserable to care,
hardly even knew when, in the main path again, she was free from his
pursuit. Love! Why had it such possession of her, that a little
thing--yes, a little thing--only the sight of him with another, should
make her suffer so? She came out on the other side of the park. What
should she do? Crawl home, creep into her hole, and lie there stricken!
At Paddington she found a train just starting and got in. There were
other people in the carriage, business men from the city, lawyers, from
that--place where she had been. And she was glad of their company, glad
of the crackle of evening papers and stolid faces giving her looks of
stolid interest from behind them, glad to have to keep her mask on,
afraid of the violence of her emotion. But one by one they got out, to
their cars or their constitutionals, and she was left alone to gaze at
darkness and the deserted river just visible in the light of a moon
smothered behind the sou'westerly sky. And for one wild moment she
thought: 'Shall I open the door and step out--one step--peace!'
She hurried away from the station. It was raining, and she drew up her
veil to feel its freshness on her hot face. There was just light enough
for her to see the pathway through the beech clump. The wind in there was
sighing, soughing, driving the dark boughs, tearing off the leaves,
little black wet shapes that came whirling at her face. The wild
melancholy in that swaying wood was too much for Gyp; she ran, thrusting
her feet through the deep rustling drifts of leaves not yet quite
drenched. They clung all wet round her thin stockings, and the rainy
wind beat her forehead. At the edge, she paused for breath, leaning
against the bole of a beech, peering back, where the wild whirling wind
was moaning and tearing off the leaves. Then, bending her head to the
rain, she went on in the open, trying to prepare herself to show nothing
when she reached home.
She got in and upstairs to her room, without being seen. If she had
possessed any sedative drug she would have taken it. Anything to secure
oblivion from this aching misery! Huddling before the freshly lighted
fire, she listened to the wind driving through the poplars; and once more
there came back to her the words of that song sung by the Scottish girl
at Fiorsen's concert:
"And my heart reft of its own sun,
Deep lies in death-torpor cold and grey."
Presently she crept into bed, and at last fell asleep.
She woke next morning with the joyful thought: 'It's Saturday; he'll be
down soon after lunch!' And then she remembered. Ah, no! It was too
much! At the pang of that remembrance, it was as if a devil entered into
her--a devil of stubborn pride, which grew blacker with every hour of
that morning. After lunch, that she might not be in when he came, she
ordered her mare, and rode up on the downs alone. The rain had ceased,
but the wind still blew strong from the sou'west, and the sky was torn
and driven in swathes of white and grey to north, south, east, and west,
and puffs of what looked like smoke scurried across the cloud banks and
the glacier-blue rifts between. The mare had not been out the day
before, and on the springy turf stretched herself in that thoroughbred
gallop which bears a rider up, as it were, on air, till nothing but the
thud of hoofs, the grass flying by, the beating of the wind in her face
betrayed to Gyp that she was moving. For full two miles they went
without a pull, only stopped at last by the finish of the level. From
there, one could see far--away over to Wittenham Clumps across the
Valley, and to the high woods above the river in the east--away, in the
south and west, under that strange, torn sky, to a whole autumn land, of
whitish grass, bare fields, woods of grey and gold and brown, fast being
pillaged. But all that sweep of wind, and sky, freshness of rain, and
distant colour could not drive out of Gyp's heart the hopeless aching and
the devil begotten of it.
VIII
There are men who, however well-off--either in money or love--must
gamble. Their affections may be deeply rooted, but they cannot repulse
fate when it tantalizes them with a risk.
Summerhay, who loved Gyp, was not tired of her either physically or
mentally, and even felt sure he would never tire, had yet dallied for
months with this risk which yesterday had come to a head. And now,
taking his seat in the train to return to her, he felt unquiet; and since
he resented disquietude, he tried defiantly to think of other things, but
he was very unsuccessful. Looking back, it was difficult for him to tell
when the snapping of his defences had begun. A preference shown by one
accustomed to exact preference is so insidious. The girl, his cousin,
was herself a gambler. He did not respect her as he respected Gyp; she
did not touch him as Gyp touched him, was not--no, not half--so deeply
attractive; but she had--confound her! the power of turning his head at
moments, a queer burning, skin-deep fascination, and, above all, that
most dangerous quality in a woman--the lure of an imperious vitality. In
love with life, she made him feel that he was letting things slip by.
And since to drink deep of life was his nature, too--what chance had he
of escape? Far-off cousinhood is a dangerous relationship. Its
familiarity is not great enough to breed contempt, but sufficient to
remove those outer defences to intimacy, the conquest of which, in other
circumstances, demands the conscious effort which warns people whither
they are going.
Summerhay had not realized the extent of the danger, but he had known
that it existed, especially since Scotland. It would be interesting--as
the historians say--to speculate on what he would have done, if he could
have foretold what would happen. But he had certainly not foretold the
crisis of yesterday evening. He had received a telegram from her at
lunch-time, suggesting the fulfilment of a jesting promise, made in
Scotland, that she should have tea with him and see his chambers--a small
and harmless matter. Only, why had he dismissed his clerk so early?
That is the worst of gamblers--they will put a polish on the risks they
run. He had not reckoned, perhaps, that she would look so pretty, lying
back in his big Oxford chair, with furs thrown open so that her white
throat showed, her hair gleaming, a smile coming and going on her lips;
her white hand, with polished nails, holding that cigarette; her brown
eyes, so unlike Gyp's, fixed on him; her slim foot with high instep
thrust forward in transparent stocking. Not reckoned that, when he bent
to take her cup, she would put out her hands, draw his head down, press
her lips to his, and say: "Now you know!" His head had gone round, still
went round, thinking of it! That was all. A little matter--except that,
in an hour, he would be meeting the eyes of one he loved much more. And
yet--the poison was in his blood; a kiss so cut short--by what--what
counter impulse?--leaving him gazing at her without a sound, inhaling
that scent of hers--something like a pine wood's scent, only sweeter,
while she gathered up her gloves, fastened her furs, as if it had been
he, not she, who had snatched that kiss. But her hand had pressed his
arm against her as they went down the stairs. And getting into her cab
at the Temple Station, she had looked back at him with a little
half-mocking smile of challenge and comradeship and promise. The link
would be hard to break--even if he wanted to. And yet nothing would come
of it! Heavens, no! He had never thought! Marriage! Impossible!
Anything else--even more impossible! When he got back to his chambers,
he had found in the box the letter, which her telegram had repeated,
readdressed by Gyp from the Red House. And a faint uneasiness at its
having gone down there passed through him. He spent a restless evening
at the club, playing cards and losing; sat up late in his chambers over a
case; had a hard morning's work, and only now that he was nearing Gyp,
realized how utterly he had lost the straightforward simplicity of
things.
When he reached the house and found that she had gone out riding alone,
his uneasiness increased. Why had she not waited as usual for him to
ride with her? And he paced up and down the garden, where the wind was
melancholy in the boughs of the walnut-tree that had lost all its leaves.
Little Gyp was out for her walk, and only poor old Ossy kept him company.
Had she not expected him by the usual train? He would go and try to find
out. He changed and went to the stables. Old Pettance was sitting on a
corn-bin, examining an aged Ruff's Guide, which contained records of his
long-past glory, scored under by a pencil: "June Stakes: Agility. E.
Pettance 3rd." "Tidport Selling H'Cap: Dorothea, E. Pettance, o."
"Salisbury Cup: Also ran Plum Pudding, E. Pettance," with other
triumphs. He got up, saying:
"Good-afternoon, sir; windy afternoon, sir. The mistress 'as been gone
out over two hours, sir. She wouldn't take me with 'er."
"Hurry up, then, and saddle Hotspur."
"Yes, sir; very good, sir."
Over two hours! He went up on to the downs, by the way they generally
came home, and for an hour he rode, keeping a sharp lookout for any sign
of her. No use; and he turned home, hot and uneasy. On the hall table
were her riding-whip and gloves. His heart cleared, and he ran upstairs.
She was doing her hair and turned her head sharply as he entered.
Hurrying across the room he had the absurd feeling that she was standing
at bay. She drew back, bent her face away from him, and said:
"No! Don't pretend! Anything's better than pretence!"
He had never seen her look or speak like that--her face so hard, her eyes
so stabbing! And he recoiled dumbfounded.
"What's the matter, Gyp?"
"Nothing. Only--don't pretend!" And, turning to the glass, she went on
twisting and coiling up her hair.
She looked lovely, flushed from her ride in the wind, and he had a
longing to seize her in his arms. But her face stopped him. With fear
and a sort of anger, he said:
"You might explain, I think."
An evil little smile crossed her face.
"YOU can do that. I am in the dark."
"I don't in the least understand what you mean."
"Don't you?" There was something deadly in her utter disregard of him,
while her fingers moved swiftly about her dark, shining hair--something
so appallingly sudden in this hostility that Summerhay felt a peculiar
sensation in his head, as if he must knock it against something. He sat
down on the side of the bed. Was it that letter? But how? It had not
been opened. He said:
"What on earth has happened, Gyp, since I went up yesterday? Speak out,
and don't keep me like this!"
She turned and looked at him.
"Don't pretend that you're upset because you can't kiss me! Don't be
false, Bryan! You know it's been pretence for months."
Summerhay's voice grew high.
"I think you've gone mad. I don't know what you mean."
"Oh, yes, you do. Did you get a letter yesterday marked 'Immediate'?"
Ah! So it WAS that! To meet the definite, he hardened, and said
stubbornly:
"Yes; from Diana Leyton. Do you object?"
"No; only, how do you think it got back to you from here so quickly?"
He said dully:
"I don't know. By post, I suppose."
"No; I put it in your letter-box myself--at half-past five."
Summerhay's mind was trained to quickness, and the full significance of
those words came home to him at once. He stared at her fixedly.
"I suppose you saw us, then."
"Yes."
He got up, made a helpless movement, and said:
"Oh, Gyp, don't! Don't be so hard! I swear by--"
Gyp gave a little laugh, turned her back, and went on coiling at her
hair. And again that horrid feeling that he must knock his head against
something rose in Summerhay. He said helplessly:
"I only gave her tea. Why not? She's my cousin. It's nothing! Why
should you think the worst of me? She asked to see my chambers. Why
not? I couldn't refuse."
"Your EMPTY chambers? Don't, Bryan--it's pitiful! I can't bear to hear
you."
At that lash of the whip, Summerhay turned and said:
"It pleases you to think the worst, then?"
Gyp stopped the movement of her fingers and looked round at him.
"I've always told you you were perfectly free. Do you think I haven't
felt it going on for months? There comes a moment when pride
revolts--that's all. Don't lie to me, PLEASE!"
"I am not in the habit of lying." But still he did not go. That awful
feeling of encirclement, of a net round him, through which he could not
break--a net which he dimly perceived even in his resentment to have been
spun by himself, by that cursed intimacy, kept from her all to no
purpose--beset him more closely every minute. Could he not make her see
the truth, that it was only her he REALLY loved? And he said:
"Gyp, I swear to you there's nothing but one kiss, and that was not--"
A shudder went through her from head to foot; she cried out:
"Oh, please go away!"
He went up to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and said:
"It's only you I really love. I swear it! Why don't you believe me?
You must believe me. You can't be so wicked as not to. It's
foolish--foolish! Think of our life--think of our love--think of all--"
Her face was frozen; he loosened his grasp of her, and muttered: "Oh,
your pride is awful!"
"Yes, it's all I've got. Lucky for you I have it. You can go to her
when you like."
"Go to her! It's absurd--I couldn't--If you wish, I'll never see her
again."
She turned away to the glass.
"Oh, don't! What IS the use?"
Nothing is harder for one whom life has always spoiled than to find his
best and deepest feelings disbelieved in. At that moment, Summerhay
meant absolutely what he said. The girl was nothing to him! If she was
pursuing him, how could he help it? And he could not make Gyp believe
it! How awful! How truly terrible! How unjust and unreasonable of her!
And why? What had he done that she should be so unbelieving--should
think him such a shallow scoundrel? Could he help the girl's kissing
him? Help her being fond of him? Help having a man's nature?
Unreasonable, unjust, ungenerous! And giving her a furious look, he went
out.
He went down to his study, flung himself on the sofa and turned his face
to the wall. Devilish! But he had not been there five minutes before
his anger seemed childish and evaporated into the chill of deadly and
insistent fear. He was perceiving himself up against much more than a
mere incident, up against her nature--its pride and scepticism--yes--and
the very depth and singleness of her love. While she wanted nothing but
him, he wanted and took so much else. He perceived this but dimly, as
part of that feeling that he could not break through, of the irritable
longing to put his head down and butt his way out, no matter what the
obstacles. What was coming? How long was this state of things to last?
He got up and began to pace the room, his hands clasped behind him, his
head thrown back; and every now and then he shook that head, trying to
free it from this feeling of being held in chancery. And then Diana! He
had said he would not see her again. But was that possible? After that
kiss--after that last look back at him! How? What could he say--do? How
break so suddenly? Then, at memory of Gyp's face, he shivered. Ah, how
wretched it all was! There must be some way out--some way! Surely some
way out! For when first, in the wood of life, fatality halts, turns her
dim dark form among the trees, shows her pale cheek and those black eyes
of hers, shows with awful swiftness her strange reality--men would be
fools indeed who admitted that they saw her!
IX
Gyp stayed in her room doing little things--as a woman will when she is
particularly wretched--sewing pale ribbons into her garments, polishing
her rings. And the devil that had entered into her when she woke that
morning, having had his fling, slunk away, leaving the old bewildered
misery. She had stabbed her lover with words and looks, felt pleasure in
stabbing, and now was bitterly sad. What use--what satisfaction? How by
vengeful prickings cure the deep wound, disperse the canker in her life?
How heal herself by hurting him whom she loved so? If he came up again
now and made but a sign, she would throw herself into his arms. But
hours passed, and he did not come, and she did not go down--too truly
miserable. It grew dark, but she did not draw the curtains; the sight of
the windy moonlit garden and the leaves driving across brought a
melancholy distraction. Little Gyp came in and prattled. There was a
tree blown down, and she had climbed on it; they had picked up two
baskets of acorns, and the pigs had been so greedy; and she had been
blown away, so that Betty had had to run after her. And Baryn was
walking in the study; he was so busy he had only given her one kiss.
When she was gone, Gyp opened the window and let the wind full into her
face. If only it would blow out of her heart this sickening sense that
all was over, no matter how he might pretend to love her out of pity! In
a nature like hers, so doubting and self-distrustful, confidence, once
shaken to the roots, could never be restored. A proud nature that went
all lengths in love could never be content with a half-love. She had
been born too doubting, proud, and jealous, yet made to love too utterly.
She--who had been afraid of love, and when it came had fought till it
swept her away; who, since then, had lived for love and nothing else, who
gave all, and wanted all--knew for certain and for ever that she could
not have all.
It was "nothing" he had said! Nothing! That for months he had been
thinking at least a little of another woman besides herself. She believed
what he had told her, that there had been no more than a kiss--but was it
nothing that they had reached that kiss? This girl--this cousin--who
held all the cards, had everything on her side--the world, family
influence, security of life; yes, and more, so terribly much more--a
man's longing for the young and unawakened. This girl he could marry!
It was this thought which haunted her. A mere momentary outbreak of
man's natural wildness she could forgive and forget--oh, yes! It was the
feeling that it was a girl, his own cousin, besieging him, dragging him
away, that was so dreadful. Ah, how horrible it was--how horrible! How,
in decent pride, keep him from her, fetter him?
She heard him come up to his dressing-room, and while he was still there,
stole out and down. Life must go on, the servants be hoodwinked, and so
forth. She went to the piano and played, turning the dagger in her
heart, or hoping forlornly that music might work some miracle. He came
in presently and stood by the fire, silent.
Dinner, with the talk needful to blinding the household--for what is more
revolting than giving away the sufferings of the heart?--was almost
unendurable and directly it was over, they went, he to his study, she
back to the piano. There she sat, ready to strike the notes if anyone
came in; and tears fell on the hands that rested in her lap. With all
her soul she longed to go and clasp him in her arms and cry: "I don't
care--I don't care! Do what you like--go to her--if only you'll love me
a little!" And yet to love--a LITTLE! Was it possible? Not to her!
In sheer misery she went upstairs and to bed. She heard him come up and
go into his dressing-room--and, at last, in the firelight saw him
kneeling by her.
"Gyp!"
She raised herself and threw her arms round him. Such an embrace a
drowning woman might have given. Pride and all were abandoned in an
effort to feel him close once more, to recover the irrecoverable past.
For a long time she listened to his pleading, explanations,
justifications, his protestations of undying love--strange to her and
painful, yet so boyish and pathetic. She soothed him, clasping his head
to her breast, gazing out at the flickering fire. In that hour, she rose
to a height above herself. What happened to her own heart did not matter
so long as he was happy, and had all that he wanted with her and away
from her--if need be, always away from her.
But, when he had gone to sleep, a terrible time began; for in the small
hours, when things are at their worst, she could not keep back her
weeping, though she smothered it into the pillow. It woke him, and all
began again; the burden of her cry: "It's gone!" the burden of his: "It's
NOT--can't you see it isn't?" Till, at last, that awful feeling that he
must knock his head against the wall made him leap up and tramp up and
down like a beast in a cage--the cage of the impossible. For, as in all
human tragedies, both were right according to their natures. She gave
him all herself, wanted all in return, and could not have it. He wanted
her, the rest besides, and no complaining, and could not have it. He did
not admit impossibility; she did.
At last came another of those pitying lulls till he went to sleep in her
arms. Long she lay awake, staring at the darkness, admitting despair,
trying to find how to bear it, not succeeding. Impossible to cut his
other life away from him--impossible that, while he lived it, this girl
should not be tugging him away from her. Impossible to watch and
question him. Impossible to live dumb and blind, accepting the crumbs
left over, showing nothing. Would it have been better if they had been
married? But then it might have been the same--reversed; perhaps worse!
The roots were so much deeper than that. He was not single-hearted and
she was. In spite of all that he said, she knew he didn't really want to
give up that girl. How could he? Even if the girl would let him go!
And slowly there formed within her a gruesome little plan to test him.
Then, ever so gently withdrawing her arms, she turned over and slept,
exhausted.
Next morning, remorselessly carrying out that plan, she forced herself to
smile and talk as if nothing had happened, watching the relief in his
face, his obvious delight at the change, with a fearful aching in her
heart. She waited till he was ready to go down, and then, still smiling,
said:
"Forget all about yesterday, darling. Promise me you won't let it make
any difference. You must keep up your friendship; you mustn't lose
anything. I shan't mind; I shall be quite happy." He knelt down and
leaned his forehead against her waist. And, stroking his hair, she
repeated: "I shall only be happy if you take everything that comes your
way. I shan't mind a bit." And she watched his face that had lost its
trouble.
"Do you really mean that?"
"Yes; really!"
"Then you do see that it's nothing, never has been anything--compared
with you--never!"
He had accepted her crucifixion. A black wave surged into her heart.
"It would be so difficult and awkward for you to give up that intimacy.
It would hurt your cousin so."
She saw the relief deepen in his face and suddenly laughed. He got up
from his knees and stared at her.
"Oh, Gyp, for God's sake don't begin again!"
But she went on laughing; then, with a sob, turned away and buried her
face in her hands. To all his prayers and kisses she answered nothing,
and breaking away from him, she rushed toward the door. A wild thought
possessed her. Why go on? If she were dead, it would be all right for
him, quiet--peaceful, quiet--for them all! But he had thrown himself in
the way.
"Gyp, for heaven's sake! I'll give her up--of course I'll give her up.
Do--do--be reasonable! I don't care a finger-snap for her compared with
you!"
And presently there came another of those lulls that both were beginning
to know were mere pauses of exhaustion. They were priceless all the
same, for the heart cannot go on feeling at that rate.
It was Sunday morning, the church-bells ringing, no wind, a lull in the
sou'westerly gale--one of those calms that fall in the night and last, as
a rule, twelve or fifteen hours, and the garden all strewn with leaves of
every hue, from green spotted with yellow to deep copper.
Summerhay was afraid; he kept with her all the morning, making all sorts
of little things to do in her company. But he gradually lost his fear,
she seemed so calm now, and his was a nature that bore trouble badly,
ever impatient to shake it off. And then, after lunch, the spirit-storm
beat up again, with a swiftness that showed once more how deceptive were
those lulls, how fearfully deep and lasting the wound. He had simply
asked her whether he should try to match something for her when he went
up, to-morrow. She was silent a moment, then answered:
"Oh, no, thanks; you'll have other things to do; people to see!"
The tone of her voice, the expression on her face showed him, with a
fresh force of revelation, what paralysis had fallen on his life. If he
could not reconvince her of his love, he would be in perpetual fear--that
he might come back and find her gone, fear that she might even do
something terrible to herself. He looked at her with a sort of horror,
and, without a word, went out of the room. The feeling that he must hit
his head against something was on him once more, and once more he sought
to get rid of it by tramping up and down. Great God! Such a little
thing, such fearful consequences! All her balance, her sanity almost,
destroyed. Was what he had done so very dreadful? He could not help
Diana loving him!
In the night, Gyp had said: "You are cruel. Do you think there is any
man in the world that I wouldn't hate the sight of if I knew that to see
him gave you a moment's pain?" It was true--he felt it was true. But
one couldn't hate a girl simply because she loved you; at least he
couldn't--not even to save Gyp pain. That was not reasonable, not
possible. But did that difference between a man and a woman necessarily
mean that Gyp loved him so much more than he loved her? Could she not
see things in proportion? See that a man might want, did want, other
friendships, even passing moments of passion, and yet could love her just
the same? She thought him cruel, called him cruel--what for? Because he
had kissed a girl who had kissed him; because he liked talking to her,
and--yes, might even lose his head with her. But cruel! He was not!
Gyp would always be first with him. He must MAKE her see--but how? Give
up everything? Give up--Diana? (Truth is so funny--it will out even in
a man's thoughts!) Well, and he could! His feeling was not deep--that
was God's truth! But it would be difficult, awkward, brutal to give her
up completely! It could be done, though, sooner than that Gyp should
think him cruel to her. It could be--should be done!
Only, would it be any use? Would she believe? Would she not always now
be suspecting him when he was away from her, whatever he did? Must he
then sit down here in inactivity? And a gust of anger with her swept
him. Why should she treat him as if he were utterly unreliable? Or--was
he? He stood still. When Diana had put her arms round his neck, he
could no more have resisted answering her kiss than he could now fly
through the window and over those poplar trees. But he was not a
blackguard, not cruel, not a liar! How could he have helped it all? The
only way would have been never to have answered the girl's first letter,
nearly a year ago. How could he foresee? And, since then, all so
gradual, and nothing, really, or almost nothing. Again the surge of
anger swelled his heart. She must have read the letter which had been
under that cursed bust of old Voltaire all those months ago. The poison
had been working ever since! And in sudden fury at that miserable
mischance, he drove his fist into the bronze face. The bust fell over,
and Summerhay looked stupidly at his bruised hand. A silly thing to do!
But it had quenched his anger. He only saw Gyp's face now--so pitifully
unhappy. Poor darling! What could he do? If only she would believe!
And again he had the sickening conviction that whatever he did would be
of no avail. He could never get back, was only at the beginning, of a
trouble that had no end. And, like a rat in a cage, his mind tried to
rush out of this entanglement now at one end, now at the other. Ah,
well! Why bruise your head against walls? If it was hopeless--let it
go! And, shrugging his shoulders, he went out to the stables, and told
old Pettance to saddle Hotspur. While he stood there waiting, he
thought: 'Shall I ask her to come?' But he could not stand another bout
of misery--must have rest! And mounting, he rode up towards the downs.
Hotspur, the sixteen-hand brown horse, with not a speck of white, that
Gyp had ridden hunting the day she first saw Summerhay, was nine years
old now. His master's two faults as a horseman--a habit of thrusting,
and not too light hands--had encouraged his rather hard mouth, and
something had happened in the stables to-day to put him into a queer
temper; or perhaps he felt--as horses will--the disturbance raging within
his rider. At any rate, he gave an exhibition of his worst qualities,
and Summerhay derived perverse pleasure from that waywardness. He rode a
good hour up there; then, hot, with aching arms--for the brute was
pulling like the devil!--he made his way back toward home and entered
what little Gyp called "the wild," those two rough sedgy fields with the
linhay in the corner where they joined. There was a gap in the
hedge-growth of the bank between them, and at this he put Hotspur at
speed. The horse went over like a bird; and for the first time since
Diana's kiss Summerhay felt a moment's joy. He turned him round and sent
him at it again, and again Hotspur cleared it beautifully. But the
animal's blood was up now. Summerhay could hardly hold him. Muttering:
"Oh, you BRUTE, don't pull!" he jagged the horse's mouth. There darted
into his mind Gyp's word: "Cruel!" And, viciously, in one of those queer
nerve-crises that beset us all, he struck the pulling horse.
They were cantering toward the corner where the fields joined, and
suddenly he was aware that he could no more hold the beast than if a
steam-engine had been under him. Straight at the linhay Hotspur dashed,
and Summerhay thought: "My God! He'll kill himself!" Straight at the old
stone linhay, covered by the great ivy bush. Right at it--into it!
Summerhay ducked his head. Not low enough--the ivy concealed a beam! A
sickening crash! Torn backward out of the saddle, he fell on his back in
a pool of leaves and mud. And the horse, slithering round the linhay
walls, checked in his own length, unhurt, snorting, frightened, came out,
turning his wild eyes on his master, who never stirred, then trotted back
into the field, throwing up his head.
X
When, at her words, Summerhay went out of the room, Gyp's heart sank.
All the morning she had tried so hard to keep back her despairing
jealousy, and now at the first reminder had broken down again. It was
beyond her strength! To live day after day knowing that he, up in
London, was either seeing that girl or painfully abstaining from seeing
her! And then, when he returned, to be to him just what she had been, to
show nothing--would it ever be possible? Hardest to bear was what seemed
to her the falsity of his words, maintaining that he still really loved
her. If he did, how could he hesitate one second? Would not the very
thought of the girl be abhorrent to him? He would have shown that, not
merely said it among other wild things. Words were no use when they
contradicted action. She, who loved with every bit of her, could not
grasp that a man can really love and want one woman and yet, at the same
time, be attracted by another.
That sudden fearful impulse of the morning to make away with herself and
end it for them both recurred so vaguely that it hardly counted in her
struggles; the conflict centred now round the question whether life would
be less utterly miserable if she withdrew from him and went back to
Mildenham. Life without him? That was impossible! Life with him? Just
as impossible, it seemed! There comes a point of mental anguish when the
alternatives between which one swings, equally hopeless, become each so
monstrous that the mind does not really work at all, but rushes
helplessly from one to the other, no longer trying to decide, waiting on
fate. So in Gyp that Sunday afternoon, doing little things all the
time--mending a hole in one of his gloves, brushing and applying ointment
to old Ossy, sorting bills and letters.
At five o'clock, knowing little Gyp must soon be back from her walk, and
feeling unable to take part in gaiety, she went up and put on her hat.
She turned from contemplation of her face with disgust. Since it was no
longer the only face for him, what was the use of beauty? She slipped
out by the side gate and went down toward the river. The lull was over;
the south-west wind had begun sighing through the trees again, and
gorgeous clouds were piled up from the horizon into the pale blue. She
stood by the river watching its grey stream, edged by a scum of torn-off
twigs and floating leaves, watched the wind shivering through the spoiled
plume-branches of the willows. And, standing there, she had a sudden
longing for her father; he alone could help her--just a little--by his
quietness, and his love, by his mere presence.
She turned away and went up the lane again, avoiding the inn and the
riverside houses, walking slowly, her head down. And a thought came, her
first hopeful thought. Could they not travel--go round the world? Would
he give up his work for that--that chance to break the spell? Dared she
propose it? But would even that be anything more than a putting-off? If
she was not enough for him now, would she not be still less, if his work
were cut away? Still, it was a gleam, a gleam in the blackness. She came
in at the far end of the fields they called "the wild." A rose-leaf hue
tinged the white cloud-banks, which towered away to the east beyond the
river; and peeping over that mountain-top was the moon, fleecy and
unsubstantial in the flax-blue sky. It was one of nature's moments of
wild colour. The oak-trees above the hedgerows had not lost their
leaves, and in the darting, rain-washed light from the setting sun, had a
sheen of old gold with heart of ivy-green; the hail-stripped beeches
flamed with copper; the russet tufts of the ash-trees glowed. And past
Gyp, a single leaf blown off, went soaring, turning over and over, going
up on the rising wind, up--up, higher--higher into the sky, till it was
lost--away.
The rain had drenched the long grass, and she turned back. At the gate
beside the linhay, a horse was standing. It whinnied. Hotspur, saddled,
bridled, with no rider! Why? Where--then? Hastily she undid the latch,
ran through, and saw Summerhay lying in the mud--on his back, with eyes
wide-open, his forehead and hair all blood. Some leaves had dropped on
him. God! O God! His eyes had no sight, his lips no breath; his heart
did not beat; the leaves had dropped even on his face--in the blood on
his poor head. Gyp raised him--stiffened, cold as ice! She gave one cry,
and fell, embracing his dead, stiffened body with all her strength,
kissing his lips, his eyes, his broken forehead; clasping, warming him,
trying to pass life into him; till, at last, she, too, lay still, her
lips on his cold lips, her body on his cold body in the mud and the
fallen leaves, while the wind crept and rustled in the ivy, and went over
with the scent of rain. Close by, the horse, uneasy, put his head down
and sniffed at her, then, backing away, neighed, and broke into a wild
gallop round the field. . . .
Old Pettance, waiting for Summerhay's return to stable-up for the night,
heard that distant neigh and went to the garden gate, screwing up his
little eyes against the sunset. He could see a loose horse galloping
down there in "the wild," where no horse should be, and thinking: "There
now; that artful devil's broke away from the guv'nor! Now I'll 'ave to
ketch 'im!" he went back, got some oats, and set forth at the best gait
of his stiff-jointed feet. The old horseman characteristically did not
think of accidents. The guv'nor had got off, no doubt, to unhitch that
heavy gate--the one you had to lift. That 'orse--he was a masterpiece of
mischief! His difference with the animal still rankled in a mind that
did not easily forgive.
Half an hour later, he entered the lighted kitchen shaking and gasping,
tears rolling down his furrowed cheeks into the corners of his gargoyle's
mouth, and panted out:
"O, my Gord! Fetch the farmer--fetch an 'urdle! O my Gord! Betty, you
and cook--I can't get 'er off him. She don't speak. I felt her--all
cold. Come on, you sluts--quick! O my Gord! The poor guv'nor! That
'orse must 'a' galloped into the linhay and killed him. I've see'd the
marks on the devil's shoulder where he rubbed it scrapin' round the wall.
Come on--come on! Fetch an 'urdle or she'll die there on him in the mud.
Put the child to bed and get the doctor, and send a wire to London, to
the major, to come sharp. Oh, blarst you all--keep your 'eads! What's
the good o' howlin' and blubberin'!"
In the whispering corner of those fields, light from a lantern and the
moon fell on the old stone linhay, on the ivy and the broken gate, on the
mud, the golden leaves, and the two quiet bodies clasped together. Gyp's
consciousness had flown; there seemed no difference between them. And
presently, over the rushy grass, a procession moved back in the wind and
the moonlight--two hurdles, two men carrying one, two women and a man the
other, and, behind, old Pettance and the horse.
XI
When Gyp recovered a consciousness, whose flight had been mercifully
renewed with morphia, she was in her bed, and her first drowsy movement
was toward her mate. With eyes still closed, she turned, as she was
wont, and put out her hand to touch him before she dozed off again.
There was no warmth, no substance; through her mind, still away in the
mists of morphia, the thoughts passed vague and lonely: 'Ah, yes, in
London!' And she turned on her back. London! Something--something up
there! She opened her eyes. So the fire had kept in all night! Someone
was in a chair there, or--was she dreaming! And suddenly, without
knowing why, she began breathing hurriedly in little half-sobbing gasps.
The figure moved, turned her face in the firelight. Betty! Gyp closed
her eyes. An icy sweat had broken out all over her. A dream! In a
whisper, she said:
"Betty!"
The muffled answer came.
"Yes, my darlin'."
"What is it?"
No answer; then a half-choked, "Don't 'ee think--don't 'ee think! Your
Daddy'll be here directly, my sweetie!"
Gyp's eyes, wide open, passed from the firelight and that rocking figure
to the little chink of light that was hardly light as yet, coming in at
one corner of the curtain. She was remembering. Her tongue stole out
and passed over her lips; beneath the bedclothes she folded both her
hands tight across her heart. Then she was not dead with him--not dead!
Not gone back with him into the ground--not--And suddenly there flickered
in her a flame of maniacal hatred. They were keeping her alive! A
writhing smile forced its way up on to her parched lips.
"Betty, I'm so thirsty--so thirsty. Get me a cup of tea."
The stout form heaved itself from the chair and came toward the bed.
"Yes, my lovey, at once. It'll do you good. That's a brave girl."
"Yes."
The moment the door clicked to, Gyp sprang up. Her veins throbbed; her
whole soul was alive with cunning. She ran to the wardrobe, seized her
long fur coat, slipped her bare feet into her slippers, wound a piece of
lace round her head, and opened the door. All dark and quiet! Holding
her breath, stifling the sound of her feet, she glided down the stairs,
slipped back the chain of the front door, opened it, and fled. Like a
shadow she passed across the grass, out of the garden gate, down the road
under the black dripping trees. The beginning of light was mixing its
grey hue into the darkness; she could just see her feet among the puddles
on the road. She heard the grinding and whirring of a motor-car on its
top gear approaching up the hill, and cowered away against the hedge.
Its light came searching along, picking out with a mysterious momentary
brightness the bushes and tree-trunks, making the wet road gleam. Gyp
saw the chauffeur turn his head back at her, then the car's body passed
up into darkness, and its tail-light was all that was left to see.
Perhaps that car was going to the Red House with her father, the doctor,
somebody, helping to keep her alive! The maniacal hate flared up in her
again; she flew on. The light grew; a man with a dog came out of a gate
she had passed, and called "Hallo!" She did not turn her head. She had
lost her slippers, and ran with bare feet, unconscious of stones, or the
torn-off branches strewing the road, making for the lane that ran right
down to the river, a little to the left of the inn, the lane of
yesterday, where the bank was free.
She turned into the lane; dimly, a hundred or more yards away, she could
see the willows, the width of lighter grey that was the river. The
river--"Away, my rolling river!"--the river--and the happiest hours of
all her life! If he were anywhere, she would find him there, where he
had sung, and lain with his head on her breast, and swum and splashed
about her; where she had dreamed, and seen beauty, and loved him so! She
reached the bank. Cold and grey and silent, swifter than yesterday, the
stream was flowing by, its dim far shore brightening slowly in the first
break of dawn. And Gyp stood motionless, drawing her breath in gasps
after her long run; her knees trembled; gave way. She sat down on the
wet grass, clasping her arms round her drawn-up legs, rocking herself to
and fro, and her loosened hair fell over her face. The blood beat in her
ears; her heart felt suffocated; all her body seemed on fire, yet numb.
She sat, moving her head up and down--as the head of one moves that is
gasping her last--waiting for breath--breath and strength to let go life,
to slip down into the grey water. And that queer apartness from self,
which is the property of fever, came on her, so that she seemed to see
herself sitting there, waiting, and thought: 'I shall see myself dead,
floating among the reeds. I shall see the birds wondering above me!'
And, suddenly, she broke into a storm of dry sobbing, and all things
vanished from her, save just the rocking of her body, the gasping of her
breath, and the sound of it in her ears. Her boy--her boy--and his poor
hair! "Away, my rolling river!" Swaying over, she lay face down,
clasping at the wet grass and the earth.
The sun rose, laid a pale bright streak along the water, and hid himself
again. A robin twittered in the willows; a leaf fell on her bare ankle.
Winton, who had been hunting on Saturday, had returned to town on Sunday
by the evening tram, and gone straight to his club for some supper.
There falling asleep over his cigar, he had to be awakened when they
desired to close the club for the night. It was past two when he reached
Bury Street and found a telegram.
"Something dreadful happened to Mr. Summerhay. Come quick.--BETTY."
Never had he so cursed the loss of his hand as during the time that
followed, when Markey had to dress, help his master, pack bags, and fetch
a taxi equipped for so long a journey. At half-past three they started.
The whole way down, Winton, wrapped in his fur coat, sat a little forward
on his seat, ready to put his head through the window and direct the
driver. It was a wild night, and he would not let Markey, whose chest
was not strong, go outside to act as guide. Twice that silent one,
impelled by feelings too strong even for his respectful taciturnity, had
spoken.
"That'll be bad for Miss Gyp, sir."
"Bad, yes--terrible."
And later:
"D'you think it means he's dead, sir?"
Winton answered sombrely:
"God knows, Markey! We must hope for the best."
Dead! Could Fate be cruel enough to deal one so soft and loving such a
blow? And he kept saying to himself: "Courage. Be ready for the worst.
Be ready."
But the figures of Betty and a maid at the open garden gate, in the
breaking darkness, standing there wringing their hands, were too much for
his stoicism. Leaping out, he cried:
"What is it, woman? Quick!"
"Oh, sir! My dear's gone. I left her a moment to get her a cup of tea.
And she's run out in the cold!"
Winton stood for two seconds as if turned to stone. Then, taking Betty
by the shoulder, he asked quietly:
"What happened to HIM?"
Betty could not answer, but the maid said:
"The horse killed him at that linhay, sir, down in 'the wild.' And the
mistress was unconscious till quarter of an hour ago."
"Which way did she go?"
"Out here, sir; the door and the gate was open--can't tell which way."
Through Winton flashed one dreadful thought: The river!
"Turn the cab round! Stay in, Markey! Betty and you, girl, go down to
'the wild,' and search there at once. Yes? What is it?"
The driver was leaning out.
"As we came up the hill, sir, I see a lady or something in a long dark
coat with white on her head, against the hedge."
"Right! Drive down again sharp, and use your eyes."
At such moments, thought is impossible, and a feverish use of every sense
takes its place. But of thought there was no need, for the gardens of
villas and the inn blocked the river at all but one spot. Winton stopped
the car where the narrow lane branched down to the bank, and jumping out,
ran. By instinct he ran silently on the grass edge, and Markey,
imitating, ran behind. When he came in sight of a black shape lying on
the bank, he suffered a moment of intense agony, for he thought it was
just a dark garment thrown away. Then he saw it move, and, holding up
his hand for Markey to stand still, walked on alone, tiptoeing in the
grass, his heart swelling with a sort of rapture. Stealthily moving
round between that prostrate figure and the water, he knelt down and
said, as best he could, for the husk in his throat:
"My darling!"
Gyp raised her head and stared at him. Her white face, with eyes
unnaturally dark and large, and hair falling all over it, was strange to
him--the face of grief itself, stripped of the wrappings of form. And he
knew not what to do, how to help or comfort, how to save. He could see
so clearly in her eyes the look of a wild animal at the moment of its
capture, and instinct made him say:
"I lost her just as cruelly, Gyp."
He saw the words reach her brain, and that wild look waver. Stretching
out his arm, he drew her close to him till her cheek was against his, her
shaking body against him, and kept murmuring:
"For my sake, Gyp; for my sake!"
When, with Markey's aid, he had got her to the cab, they took her, not
back to the house, but to the inn. She was in high fever, and soon
delirious. By noon, Aunt Rosamund and Mrs. Markey, summoned by telegram,
had arrived; and the whole inn was taken lest there should be any noise
to disturb her.
At five o'clock, Winton was summoned downstairs to the little so-called
reading-room. A tall woman was standing at the window, shading her eyes
with the back of a gloved hand. Though they had lived so long within ten
miles of each other he only knew Lady Summerhay by sight, and he waited
for the poor woman to speak first. She said in a low voice:
"There is nothing to say; only, I thought I must see you. How is she?"
"Delirious."
They stood in silence a full minute, before she whispered:
"My poor boy! Did you see him--his forehead?" Her lips quivered. "I
will take him back home." And tears rolled, one after the other, slowly
down her flushed face under her veil. Poor woman! Poor woman! She had
turned to the window, passing her handkerchief up under the veil, staring
out at the little strip of darkening lawn, and Winton, too, stared out
into that mournful daylight. At last, he said:
"I will send you all his things, except--except anything that might help
my poor girl."
She turned quickly.
"And so it's ended like this! Major Winton, is there anything
behind--were they really happy?"
Winton looked straight at her and answered:
"Ah, too happy!"
Without a quiver, he met those tear-darkened, dilated eyes straining at
his; with a heavy sigh, she once more turned away, and, brushing her
handkerchief across her face, drew down her veil.
It was not true--he knew from the mutterings of Gyp's fever--but no one,
not even Summerhay's mother, should hear a whisper if he could help it.
At the door, he murmured:
"I don't know whether my girl will get through, or what she will do
after. When Fate hits, she hits too hard. And you! Good-bye."
Lady Summerhay pressed his outstretched hand.
"Good-bye," she said, in a strangled voice. "I wish you--good-bye."
Then, turning abruptly, she hastened away.
Winton went back to his guardianship upstairs.
In the days that followed, when Gyp, robbed of memory, hung between life
and death, Winton hardly left her room, that low room with creepered
windows whence the river could be seen, gliding down under the pale
November sunshine or black beneath the stars. He would watch it,
fascinated, as one sometimes watches the relentless sea. He had snatched
her as by a miracle from that snaky river.
He had refused to have a nurse. Aunt Rosamund and Mrs. Markey were
skilled in sickness, and he could not bear that a strange person should
listen to those delirious mutterings. His own part of the nursing was
just to sit there and keep her secrets from the others--if he could. And
he grudged every minute away from his post. He would stay for hours,
with eyes fixed on her face. No one could supply so well as he just that
coherent thread of the familiar, by which the fevered, without knowing
it, perhaps find their way a little in the dark mazes where they wander.
And he would think of her as she used to be--well and happy--adopting
unconsciously the methods of those mental and other scientists whom he
looked upon as quacks.
He was astonished by the number of inquiries, even people whom he had
considered enemies left cards or sent their servants, forcing him to the
conclusion that people of position are obliged to reserve their human
kindness for those as good as dead. But the small folk touched him daily
by their genuine concern for her whose grace and softness had won their
hearts. One morning he received a letter forwarded from Bury Street.
"DEAR MAJOR WINTON,
"I have read a paragraph in the paper about poor Mr. Summerhay's death.
And, oh, I feel so sorry for her! She was so good to me; I do feel it
most dreadfully. If you think she would like to know how we all feel for
her, you would tell her, wouldn't you? I do think it's cruel.
"Very faithfully yours,
"DAPHNE WING."
So they knew Summerhay's name--he had not somehow expected that. He did
not answer, not knowing what to say.
During those days of fever, the hardest thing to bear was the sound of
her rapid whisperings and mutterings--incoherent phrases that said so
little and told so much. Sometimes he would cover his ears, to avoid
hearing of that long stress of mind at which he had now and then
glimpsed. Of the actual tragedy, her wandering spirit did not seem
conscious; her lips were always telling the depth of her love, always
repeating the dread of losing his; except when they would give a
whispering laugh, uncanny and enchanting, as at some gleam of perfect
happiness. Those little laughs were worst of all to hear; they never
failed to bring tears into his eyes. But he drew a certain gruesome
comfort from the conclusion slowly forced on him, that Summerhay's tragic
death had cut short a situation which might have had an even more tragic
issue. One night in the big chair at the side of her bed, he woke from a
doze to see her eyes fixed on him. They were different; they saw, were
her own eyes again. Her lips moved.
"Dad."
"Yes, my pet."
"I remember everything."
At that dreadful little saying, Winton leaned forward and put his lips to
her hand, that lay outside the clothes.
"Where is he buried?"
"At Widrington."
"Yes."
It was rather a sigh than a word and, raising his head, Winton saw her
eyes closed again. Now that the fever had gone, the white transparency
of her cheeks and forehead against the dark lashes and hair was too
startling. Was it a living face, or was its beauty that of death?
He bent over. She was breathing--asleep.
XII
The return to Mildenham was made by easy stages nearly two months after
Summerhay's death, on New Year's day--Mildenham, dark, smelling the same,
full of ghosts of the days before love began. For little Gyp, more than
five years old now, and beginning to understand life, this was the
pleasantest home yet. In watching her becoming the spirit of the place,
as she herself had been when a child, Gyp found rest at times, a little
rest. She had not picked up much strength, was shadowy as yet, and if
her face was taken unawares, it was the saddest face one could see. Her
chief preoccupation was not being taken unawares. Alas! To Winton, her
smile was even sadder. He was at his wits' end about her that winter and
spring. She obviously made the utmost effort to keep up, and there was
nothing to do but watch and wait. No use to force the pace. Time alone
could heal--perhaps. Meanwhile, he turned to little Gyp, so that they
became more or less inseparable.
Spring came and passed. Physically, Gyp grew strong again, but since
their return to Mildenham, she had never once gone outside the garden,
never once spoken of The Red House, never once of Summerhay. Winton had
hoped that warmth and sunlight would bring some life to her spirit, but
it did not seem to. Not that she cherished her grief, appeared, rather,
to do all in her power to forget and mask it. She only had what used to
be called a broken heart. Nothing to be done. Little Gyp, who had been
told that "Baryn" had gone away for ever, and that she must "never speak
of him for fear of making Mum sad," would sometimes stand and watch her
mother with puzzled gravity. She once remarked uncannily to Winton:
"Mum doesn't live with us, Grandy; she lives away somewhere, I think. Is
it with Baryn?"
Winton stared, and answered:
"Perhaps it is, sweetheart; but don't say that to anybody but me. Don't
ever talk of Baryn to anyone else."
"Yes, I know; but where is he, Grandy?"
What could Winton answer? Some imbecility with the words "very far" in
it; for he had not courage to broach the question of death, that mystery
so hopelessly beyond the grasp of children, and of himself--and others.
He rode a great deal with the child, who, like her mother before her, was
never so happy as in the saddle; but to Gyp he did not dare suggest it.
She never spoke of horses, never went to the stables, passed all the days
doing little things about the house, gardening, and sitting at her piano,
sometimes playing a little, sometimes merely looking at the keys, her
hands clasped in her lap. This was early in the fateful summer, before
any as yet felt the world-tremors, or saw the Veil of the Temple rending
and the darkness beginning to gather. Winton had no vision of the coif
above the dark eyes of his loved one, nor of himself in a strange brown
garb, calling out old familiar words over barrack-squares. He often
thought: 'If only she had something to take her out of herself!'
In June he took his courage in both hands and proposed a visit to London.
To his surprise, she acquiesced without hesitation. They went up in
Whit-week. While they were passing Widrington, he forced himself to an
unnatural spurt of talk; and it was not till fully quarter of an hour
later that, glancing stealthily round his paper, he saw her sitting
motionless, her face turned to the fields and tears rolling down it. And
he dared not speak, dared not try to comfort her. She made no sound, the
muscles of her face no movement; only, those tears kept rolling down.
And, behind his paper, Winton's eyes narrowed and retreated; his face
hardened till the skin seemed tight drawn over the bones, and every inch
of him quivered.
The usual route from the station to Bury Street was "up," and the cab
went by narrow by-streets, town lanes where the misery of the world is on
show, where ill-looking men, draggled and over-driven women, and the
jaunty ghosts of little children in gutters and on doorsteps proclaim, by
every feature of their clay-coloured faces and every movement of their
unfed bodies, the post-datement of the millennium; where the lean and
smutted houses have a look of dissolution indefinitely put off, and there
is no more trace of beauty than in a sewer. Gyp, leaning forward, looked
out, as one does after a long sea voyage; Winton felt her hand slip into
his and squeeze it hard.
That evening after dinner--in the room he had furnished for her mother,
where the satinwood chairs, the little Jacobean bureau, the old brass
candelabra were still much as they had been just on thirty years ago--she
said:
"Dad, I've been thinking. Would you mind if I could make a sort of home
at Mildenham where poor children could come to stay and get good air and
food? There are such thousands of them."
Strangely moved by this, the first wish he had heard her express since
the tragedy, Winton took her hand, and, looking at it as if for answer to
his question, said:
"My dear, are, you strong enough?"
"Quite. There's nothing wrong with me now except here." She drew his
hand to her and pressed it against her heart. "What's given, one can't
get back. I can't help it; I would if I could. It's been so dreadful
for you. I'm so sorry." Winton made an unintelligible sound, and she
went on: "If I had them to see after, I shouldn't be able to think so
much; the more I had to do the better. Good for our gipsy-bird, too, to
have them there. I should like to begin it at once."
Winton nodded. Anything that she felt could do her good--anything!
"Yes, yes," he said; "I quite see--you could use the two old cottages to
start with, and we can easily run up anything you want."
"Only let me do it all, won't you?"
At that touch of her old self, Winton smiled. She should do everything,
pay for everything, bring a whole street of children down, if it would
give her any comfort!
"Rosamund'll help you find 'em," he muttered. "She's first-rate at all
that sort of thing." Then, looking at her fixedly, he added: "Courage,
my soul; it'll all come back some day."
Gyp forced herself to smile. Watching her, he understood only too well
the child's saying: "Mum lives away somewhere, I think."
Suddenly, she said, very low:
"And yet I wouldn't have been without it."
She was sitting, her hands clasped in her lap, two red spots high in her
cheeks, her eyes shining strangely, the faint smile still on her lips.
And Winton, staring with narrowed eyes, thought: 'Love! Beyond
measure--beyond death--it nearly kills. But one wouldn't have been
without it. Why?'
Three days later, leaving Gyp with his sister, he went back to Mildenham
to start the necessary alterations in the cottages. He had told no one
he was coming, and walked up from the station on a perfect June day,
bright and hot. When he turned through the drive gate, into the
beech-tree avenue, the leaf-shadows were thick on the ground, with golden
gleams of the invincible sunlight thrusting their way through. The grey
boles, the vivid green leaves, those glistening sun-shafts through the
shade entranced him, coming from the dusty road. Down in the very middle
of the avenue, a small, white figure was standing, as if looking out for
him. He heard a shrill shout.
"Oh, Grandy, you've come back--you've come back! What FUN!"
Winton took her curls in his hand, and, looking into her face, said:
"Well, my gipsy-bird, will you give me one of these?"
Little Gyp looked at him with flying eyes, and, hugging his legs,
answered furiously:
"Yes; because I love you. PULL!" "Yes; because I love you. PULL!"
THE END.
VILLA RUBEIN
Contents:
Villa Rubein
A Man of Devon
A Knight
Salvation of a Forsyte
The Silence
VILLA RUBEIN
PREFACE
Writing not long ago to my oldest literary friend, I expressed in a
moment of heedless sentiment the wish that we might have again one of our
talks of long-past days, over the purposes and methods of our art. And
my friend, wiser than I, as he has always been, replied with this
doubting phrase "Could we recapture the zest of that old time?"
I would not like to believe that our faith in the value of imaginative
art has diminished, that we think it less worth while to struggle for
glimpses of truth and for the words which may pass them on to other eyes;
or that we can no longer discern the star we tried to follow; but I do
fear, with him, that half a lifetime of endeavour has dulled the
exuberance which kept one up till morning discussing the ways and means
of aesthetic achievement. We have discovered, perhaps with a certain
finality, that by no talk can a writer add a cubit to his stature, or
change the temperament which moulds and colours the vision of life he
sets before the few who will pause to look at it. And so--the rest is
silence, and what of work we may still do will be done in that dogged
muteness which is the lot of advancing years.
Other times, other men and modes, but not other truth. Truth, though
essentially relative, like Einstein's theory, will never lose its
ever-new and unique quality-perfect proportion; for Truth, to the human
consciousness at least, is but that vitally just relation of part to
whole which is the very condition of life itself. And the task before
the imaginative writer, whether at the end of the last century or all
these aeons later, is the presentation of a vision which to eye and ear
and mind has the implicit proportions of Truth.
I confess to have always looked for a certain flavour in the writings of
others, and craved it for my own, believing that all true vision is so
coloured by the temperament of the seer, as to have not only the just
proportions but the essential novelty of a living thing for, after all,
no two living things are alike. A work of fiction should carry the hall
mark of its author as surely as a Goya, a Daumier, a Velasquez, and a
Mathew Maris, should be the unmistakable creations of those masters. This
is not to speak of tricks and manners which lend themselves to that
facile elf, the caricaturist, but of a certain individual way of seeing
and feeling. A young poet once said of another and more popular poet:
"Oh! yes, but be cuts no ice." And, when one came to think of it, he did
not; a certain flabbiness of spirit, a lack of temperament, an absence,
perhaps, of the ironic, or passionate, view, insubstantiated his work; it
had no edge--just a felicity which passed for distinction with the crowd.
Let me not be understood to imply that a novel should be a sort of
sandwich, in which the author's mood or philosophy is the slice of ham.
One's demand is for a far more subtle impregnation of flavour; just that,
for instance, which makes De Maupassant a more poignant and fascinating
writer than his master Flaubert, Dickens and Thackeray more living and
permanent than George Eliot or Trollope. It once fell to my lot to be the
preliminary critic of a book on painting, designed to prove that the
artist's sole function was the impersonal elucidation of the truths of
nature. I was regretfully compelled to observe that there were no such
things as the truths of Nature, for the purposes of art, apart from the
individual vision of the artist. Seer and thing seen, inextricably
involved one with the other, form the texture of any masterpiece; and I,
at least, demand therefrom a distinct impression of temperament. I never
saw, in the flesh, either De Maupassant or Tchekov--those masters of such
different methods entirely devoid of didacticism--but their work leaves
on me a strangely potent sense of personality. Such subtle intermingling
of seer with thing seen is the outcome only of long and intricate
brooding, a process not too favoured by modern life, yet without which we
achieve little but a fluent chaos of clever insignificant impressions, a
kind of glorified journalism, holding much the same relation to the
deeply-impregnated work of Turgenev, Hardy, and Conrad, as a film bears
to a play.
Speaking for myself, with the immodesty required of one who hazards an
introduction to his own work, I was writing fiction for five years before
I could master even its primary technique, much less achieve that union
of seer with thing seen, which perhaps begins to show itself a little in
this volume--binding up the scanty harvests of 1899, 1900, and
1901--especially in the tales: "A Knight," and "Salvation of a Forsyte."
Men, women, trees, and works of fiction--very tiny are the seeds from
which they spring. I used really to see the "Knight"--in 1896, was
it?--sitting in the "Place" in front of the Casino at Monte Carlo; and
because his dried-up elegance, his burnt straw hat, quiet courtesy of
attitude, and big dog, used to fascinate and intrigue me, I began to
imagine his life so as to answer my own questions and to satisfy, I
suppose, the mood I was in. I never spoke to him, I never saw him again.
His real story, no doubt, was as different from that which I wove around
his figure as night from day.
As for Swithin, wild horses will not drag from me confession of where and
when I first saw the prototype which became enlarged to his bulky
stature. I owe Swithin much, for he first released the satirist in me,
and is, moreover, the only one of my characters whom I killed before I
gave him life, for it is in "The Man of Property" that Swithin Forsyte
more memorably lives.
Ranging beyond this volume, I cannot recollect writing the first words of
"The Island Pharisees"--but it would be about August, 1901. Like all the
stories in "Villa Rubein," and, indeed, most of my tales, the book
originated in the curiosity, philosophic reflections, and unphilosophic
emotions roused in me by some single figure in real life. In this case
it was Ferrand, whose real name, of course, was not Ferrand, and who died
in some "sacred institution" many years ago of a consumption brought on
by the conditions of his wandering life. If not "a beloved," he was a
true vagabond, and I first met him in the Champs Elysees, just as in "The
Pigeon" he describes his meeting with Wellwyn. Though drawn very much
from life, he did not in the end turn out very like the Ferrand of real
life--the, figures of fiction soon diverge from their prototypes.
The first draft of "The Island Pharisees" was buried in a drawer; when
retrieved the other day, after nineteen years, it disclosed a picaresque
string of anecdotes told by Ferrand in the first person. These two-thirds
of a book were laid to rest by Edward Garnett's dictum that its author
was not sufficiently within Ferrand's skin; and, struggling heavily with
laziness and pride, he started afresh in the skin of Shelton. Three
times be wrote that novel, and then it was long in finding the eye of
Sydney Pawling, who accepted it for Heinemann's in 1904. That was a
period of ferment and transition with me, a kind of long awakening to the
home truths of social existence and national character. The liquor
bubbled too furiously for clear bottling. And the book, after all,
became but an introduction to all those following novels which
depict--somewhat satirically--the various sections of English "Society"
with a more or less capital "S."
Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is
interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the
emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the other,
getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result has the
mellowness of full achievement. One can even tell the nature of one's
readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more of this side
than of that. My early work was certainly more emotional than critical.
But from 1901 came nine years when the critical was, in the main, holding
sway. From 1910 to 1918 the emotional again struggled for the upper
hand; and from that time on there seems to have been something of a "dead
beat." So the conflict goes, by what mysterious tides promoted, I know
not.
An author must ever wish to discover a hapless member of the Public who,
never yet having read a word of his writing, would submit to the ordeal
of reading him right through from beginning to end. Probably the effect
could only be judged through an autopsy, but in the remote case of
survival, it would interest one so profoundly to see the differences, if
any, produced in that reader's character or outlook over life. This,
however, is a consummation which will remain devoutly to be wished, for
there is a limit to human complaisance. One will never know the exact
measure of one's infecting power; or whether, indeed, one is not just a
long soporific.
A writer they say, should not favouritize among his creations; but then a
writer should not do so many things that he does. This writer,
certainly, confesses to having favourites, and of his novels so far be
likes best: The Forsyte Series; "The Country House"; "Fraternity"; "The
Dark Flower"; and "Five Tales"; believing these to be the works which
most fully achieve fusion of seer with thing seen, most subtly disclose
the individuality of their author, and best reveal such of truth as has
been vouchsafed to him. JOHN GALSWORTHY.
TO
MY SISTER BLANCHE LILIAN SAUTER
VILLA RUBEIN
I
Walking along the river wall at Botzen, Edmund Dawney said to Alois Harz:
"Would you care to know the family at that pink house, Villa Rubein?"
Harz answered with a smile:
"Perhaps."
"Come with me then this afternoon."
They had stopped before an old house with a blind, deserted look, that
stood by itself on the wall; Harz pushed the door open.
"Come in, you don't want breakfast yet. I'm going to paint the river
to-day."
He ran up the bare broad stairs, and Dawney followed leisurely, his
thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat, and his head thrown back.
In the attic which filled the whole top story, Harz had pulled a canvas
to the window. He was a young man of middle height, square shouldered,
active, with an angular face, high cheek-bones, and a strong, sharp chin.
His eyes were piercing and steel-blue, his eyebrows very flexible, nose
long and thin with a high bridge; and his dark, unparted hair fitted him
like a cap. His clothes looked as if he never gave them a second
thought.
This room, which served for studio, bedroom, and sitting-room, was bare
and dusty. Below the window the river in spring flood rushed down the
valley, a stream, of molten bronze. Harz dodged before the canvas like a
fencer finding his distance; Dawney took his seat on a packingcase.
"The snows have gone with a rush this year," he drawled. "The Talfer
comes down brown, the Eisack comes down blue; they flow into the Etsch
and make it green; a parable of the Spring for you, my painter."
Harz mixed his colours.
"I've no time for parables," he said, "no time for anything. If I could
be guaranteed to live to ninety-nine, like Titian--he had a chance. Look
at that poor fellow who was killed the other day! All that struggle, and
then--just at the turn!"
He spoke English with a foreign accent; his voice was rather harsh, but
his smile very kindly.
Dawney lit a cigarette.
"You painters," he said, "are better off than most of us. You can strike
out your own line. Now if I choose to treat a case out of the ordinary
way and the patient dies, I'm ruined."
"My dear Doctor--if I don't paint what the public likes, I starve; all
the same I'm going to paint in my own way; in the end I shall come out on
top."
"It pays to work in the groove, my friend, until you've made your name;
after that--do what you like, they'll lick your boots all the same."
"Ah, you don't love your work."
Dawney answered slowly: "Never so happy as when my hands are full. But I
want to make money, to get known, to have a good time, good cigars, good
wine. I hate discomfort. No, my boy, I must work it on the usual lines;
I don't like it, but I must lump it. One starts in life with some notion
of the ideal--it's gone by the board with me. I've got to shove along
until I've made my name, and then, my little man--then--"
"Then you'll be soft!"
"You pay dearly for that first period!"
"Take my chance of that; there's no other way."
"Make one!"
"Humph!"
Harz poised his brush, as though it were a spear:
"A man must do the best in him. If he has to suffer--let him!"
Dawney stretched his large soft body; a calculating look had come into
his eyes.
"You're a tough little man!" he said.
"I've had to be tough."
Dawney rose; tobacco smoke was wreathed round his unruffled hair.
"Touching Villa Rubein," he said, "shall I call for you? It's a mixed
household, English mostly--very decent people."
"No, thank you. I shall be painting all day. Haven't time to know the
sort of people who expect one to change one's clothes."
"As you like; ta-to!" And, puffing out his chest, Dawney vanished
through a blanket looped across the doorway.
Harz set a pot of coffee on a spirit-lamp, and cut himself some bread.
Through the window the freshness of the morning came; the scent of sap
and blossom and young leaves; the scent of earth, and the mountains freed
from winter; the new flights and songs of birds; all the odorous,
enchanted, restless Spring.
There suddenly appeared through the doorway a white rough-haired terrier
dog, black-marked about the face, with shaggy tan eyebrows. He sniffed at
Harz, showed the whites round his eyes, and uttered a sharp bark. A
young voice called:
"Scruff! Thou naughty dog!" Light footsteps were heard on the stairs;
from the distance a thin, high voice called:
"Greta! You mustn't go up there!"
A little girl of twelve, with long fair hair under a wide-brimmed hat,
slipped in.
Her blue eyes opened wide, her face flushed up. That face was not
regular; its cheek-bones were rather prominent, the nose was flattish;
there was about it an air, innocent, reflecting, quizzical, shy.
"Oh!" she said.
Harz smiled: "Good-morning! This your dog?"
She did not answer, but looked at him with soft bewilderment; then
running to the dog seized him by the collar.
"Scr-ruff! Thou naughty dog--the baddest dog!" The ends of her hair
fell about him; she looked up at Harz, who said:
"Not at all! Let me give him some bread."
"Oh no! You must not--I will beat him--and tell him he is bad; then he
shall not do such things again. Now he is sulky; he looks so always when
he is sulky. Is this your home?"
"For the present; I am a visitor."
"But I think you are of this country, because you speak like it."
"Certainly, I am a Tyroler."
"I have to talk English this morning, but I do not like it very much
--because, also I am half Austrian, and I like it best; but my sister,
Christian, is all English. Here is Miss Naylor; she shall be very angry
with me."
And pointing to the entrance with a rosy-tipped forefinger, she again
looked ruefully at Harz.
There came into the room with a walk like the hopping of a bird an
elderly, small lady, in a grey serge dress, with narrow bands of
claret-coloured velveteen; a large gold cross dangled from a steel chain
on her chest; she nervously twisted her hands, clad in black kid gloves,
rather white about the seams.
Her hair was prematurely grey; her quick eyes brown; her mouth twisted at
one corner; she held her face, kind-looking, but long and narrow, rather
to one side, and wore on it a look of apology. Her quick sentences
sounded as if she kept them on strings, and wanted to draw them back as
soon as she had let them forth.
"Greta, how can, you do such things? I don't know what your father would
say! I am sure I don't know how to--so extraordinary--"
"Please!" said Harz.
"You must come at once--so very sorry--so awkward!" They were standing
in a ring: Harz with his eyebrows working up and down; the little lady
fidgeting her parasol; Greta, flushed and pouting, her eyes all dewy,
twisting an end of fair hair round her finger.
"Oh, look!" The coffee had boiled over. Little brown streams trickled
spluttering from the pan; the dog, with ears laid back and tail tucked
in, went scurrying round the room. A feeling of fellowship fell on them
at once.
"Along the wall is our favourite walk, and Scruff--so awkward, so
unfortunate--we did not think any one lived here--the shutters are
cracked, the paint is peeling off so dreadfully. Have you been long in
Botzen? Two months? Fancy! You are not English? You are Tyrolese? But
you speak English so well--there for seven years? Really? So
fortunate!--It is Greta's day for English."
Miss Naylor's eyes darted bewildered glances at the roof where the
crossing of the beams made such deep shadows; at the litter of brushes,
tools, knives, and colours on a table made out of packing-cases; at the
big window, innocent of glass, and flush with the floor, whence dangled a
bit of rusty chain--relic of the time when the place had been a
store-loft; her eyes were hastily averted from an unfnished figure of the
nude.
Greta, with feet crossed, sat on a coloured blanket, dabbling her fnger
in a little pool of coffee, and gazing up at Harz. And he thought: 'I
should like to paint her like that. "A forget-me-not."'
He took out his chalks to make a sketch of her.
"Shall you show me?" cried out Greta, scrambling to her feet.
"'Will,' Greta--'will'; how often must I tell you? I think we should be
going--it is very late--your father--so very kind of you, but I think we
should be going. Scruff!" Miss Naylor gave the floor two taps. The
terrier backed into a plaster cast which came down on his tail, and sent
him flying through the doorway. Greta followed swiftly, crying:
"Ach! poor Scrufee!"
Miss Naylor crossed the room; bowing, she murmured an apology, and also
disappeared.
Harz was left alone, his guests were gone; the little girl with the fair
hair and the eyes like forget-me-nots, the little lady with kindly
gestures and bird-like walk, the terrier. He looked round him; the room
seemed very empty. Gnawing his moustache, he muttered at the fallen
cast.
Then taking up his brush, stood before his picture, smiling and frowning.
Soon he had forgotten it all in his work.
II
It was early morning four days later, and Harz was loitering homewards.
The shadows of the clouds passing across the vines were vanishing over
the jumbled roofs and green-topped spires of the town. A strong sweet
wind was blowing from the mountains, there was a stir in the branches of
the trees, and flakes of the late blossom were drifting down. Amongst
the soft green pods of a kind of poplar chafers buzzed, and numbers of
their little brown bodies were strewn on the path.
He passed a bench where a girl sat sketching. A puff of wind whirled her
drawing to the ground; Harz ran to pick it up. She took it from him with
a bow; but, as he turned away, she tore the sketch across.
"Ah!" he said; "why did you do that?"
This girl, who stood with a bit of the torn sketch in either hand, was
slight and straight; and her face earnest and serene. She gazed at Harz
with large, clear, greenish eyes; her lips and chin were defiant, her
forehead tranquil.
"I don't like it."
"Will you let me look at it? I am a painter."
"It isn't worth looking at, but--if you wish--"
He put the two halves of the sketch together.
"You see!" she said at last; "I told you."
Harz did not answer, still looking at the sketch. The girl frowned.
Harz asked her suddenly:
"Why do you paint?"
She coloured, and said:
"Show me what is wrong."
"I cannot show you what is wrong, there is nothing wrong--but why do you
paint?"
"I don't understand."
Harz shrugged his shoulders.
"You've no business to do that," said the girl in a hurt voice; "I want
to know."
"Your heart is not in it," said Harz.
She looked at him, startled; her eyes had grown thoughtful.
"I suppose that is it. There are so many other things--"
"There should be nothing else," said Harz.
She broke in: "I don't want always to be thinking of myself. Suppose--"
"Ah! When you begin supposing!"
The girl confronted him; she had torn the sketch again.
"You mean that if it does not matter enough, one had better not do it at
all. I don't know if you are right--I think you are."
There was the sound of a nervous cough, and Harz saw behind him his three
visitors--Miss Naylor offering him her hand; Greta, flushed, with a bunch
of wild flowers, staring intently in his face; and the terrier, sniffing
at his trousers.
Miss Naylor broke an awkward silence.
"We wondered if you would still be here, Christian. I am sorry to
interrupt you--I was not aware that you knew Mr. Herr--"
"Harz is my name--we were just talking"
"About my sketch. Oh, Greta, you do tickle! Will you come and have
breakfast with us to-day, Herr Harz? It's our turn, you know."
Harz, glancing at his dusty clothes, excused himself.
But Greta in a pleading voice said: "Oh! do come! Scruff likes you. It
is so dull when there is nobody for breakfast but ourselves."
Miss Naylor's mouth began to twist. Harz hurriedly broke in:
"Thank you. I will come with pleasure; you don't mind my being dirty?"
"Oh no! we do not mind; then we shall none of us wash, and afterwards I
shall show you my rabbits."
Miss Naylor, moving from foot to foot, like a bird on its perch,
exclaimed:
"I hope you won't regret it, not a very good meal--the girls are so
impulsive--such informal invitation; we shall be very glad."
But Greta pulled softly at her sister's sleeve, and Christian, gathering
her things, led the way.
Harz followed in amazement; nothing of this kind had come into his life
before. He kept shyly glancing at the girls; and, noting the speculative
innocence in Greta's eyes, he smiled. They soon came to two great
poplar-trees, which stood, like sentinels, one on either side of an
unweeded gravel walk leading through lilac bushes to a house painted dull
pink, with green-shuttered windows, and a roof of greenish slate. Over
the door in faded crimson letters were written the words, "Villa Rubein."
"That is to the stables," said Greta, pointing down a path, where some
pigeons were sunning themselves on a wall. "Uncle Nic keeps his horses
there: Countess and Cuckoo--his horses begin with C, because of
Chris--they are quite beautiful. He says he could drive them to
Kingdom-Come and they would not turn their hair. Bow, and say
'Good-morning' to our house!"
Harz bowed.
"Father said all strangers should, and I think it brings good luck." From
the doorstep she looked round at Harz, then ran into the house.
A broad, thick-set man, with stiff, brushed-up hair, a short, brown,
bushy beard parted at the chin, a fresh complexion, and blue glasses
across a thick nose, came out, and called in a bluff voice:
"Ha! my good dears, kiss me quick--prrt! How goes it then this morning?
A good walk, hein?" The sound of many loud rapid kisses followed.
"Ha, Fraulein, good!" He became aware of Harz's figure standing in the
doorway: "Und der Herr?"
Miss Naylor hurriedly explained.
"Good! An artist! Kommen Sie herein, I am delight. You will breakfast?
I too--yes, yes, my dears--I too breakfast with you this morning. I have
the hunter's appetite."
Harz, looking at him keenly, perceived him to be of middle height and
age, stout, dressed in a loose holland jacket, a very white, starched
shirt, and blue silk sash; that he looked particularly clean, had an air
of belonging to Society, and exhaled a really fine aroma of excellent
cigars and the best hairdresser's essences.
The room they entered was long and rather bare; there was a huge map on
the wall, and below it a pair of globes on crooked supports, resembling
two inflated frogs erect on their hind legs. In one corner was a cottage
piano, close to a writing-table heaped with books and papers; this nook,
sacred to Christian, was foreign to the rest of the room, which was
arranged with supernatural neatness. A table was laid for breakfast, and
the sun-warmed air came in through French windows.
The meal went merrily; Herr Paul von Morawitz was never in such spirits
as at table. Words streamed from him. Conversing with Harz, he talked
of Art as who should say: "One does not claim to be a connoisseur--pas si
bete--still, one has a little knowledge, que diable!" He recommended him
a man in the town who sold cigars that were "not so very bad." He
consumed porridge, ate an omelette; and bending across to Greta gave her
a sounding kiss, muttering: "Kiss me quick!"--an expression he had picked
up in a London music-hall, long ago, and considered chic. He asked his
daughters' plans, and held out porridge to the terrier, who refused it
with a sniff.
"Well," he said suddenly, looking at Miss Naylor, "here is a gentleman
who has not even heard our names!"
The little lady began her introductions in a breathless voice.
"Good!" Herr Paul said, puffing out his lips: "Now we know each other!"
and, brushing up the ends of his moustaches, he carried off Harz into
another room, decorated with pipe-racks, prints of dancing-girls,
spittoons, easy-chairs well-seasoned by cigar smoke, French novels, and
newspapers.
The household at Villa Rubein was indeed of a mixed and curious nature.
Cut on both floors by corridors, the Villa was divided into four
divisions; each of which had its separate inhabitants, an arrangement
which had come about in the following way:
When old Nicholas Treffry died, his estate, on the boundary of Cornwall,
had been sold and divided up among his three surviving
children--Nicholas, who was much the eldest, a partner in the well-known
firm of Forsyte and Treffry, teamen, of the Strand; Constance, married to
a man called Decie; and Margaret, at her father's death engaged to the
curate of the parish, John Devorell, who shortly afterwards became its
rector. By his marriage with Margaret Treffry the rector had one child
called Christian. Soon after this he came into some property, and died,
leaving it unfettered to his widow. Three years went by, and when the
child was six years old, Mrs. Devorell, still young and pretty, came to
live in London with her brother Nicholas. It was there that she met Paul
von Morawitz--the last of an old Czech family, who had lived for many
hundred years on their estates near Budweiss. Paul had been left an
orphan at the age of ten, and without a solitary ancestral acre. Instead
of acres, he inherited the faith that nothing was too good for a von
Morawitz. In later years his savoir faire enabled him to laugh at faith,
but it stayed quietly with him all the same. The absence of acres was of
no great consequence, for through his mother, the daughter of a banker in
Vienna, he came into a well-nursed fortune. It befitted a von Morawitz
that he should go into the Cavalry, but, unshaped for soldiering, he soon
left the Service; some said he had a difference with his Colonel over the
quality of food provided during some manoeuvres; others that he had
retired because his chargers did not fit his legs, which were, indeed,
rather round.
He had an admirable appetite for pleasure; a man-about-town's life suited
him. He went his genial, unreflecting, costly way in Vienna, Paris,
London. He loved exclusively those towns, and boasted that he was as
much at home in one as in another. He combined exuberant vitality with
fastidiousness of palate, and devoted both to the acquisition of a
special taste in women, weeds, and wines; above all he was blessed with a
remarkable digestion. He was thirty when he met Mrs. Devorell; and she
married him because he was so very different from anybody she had ever
seen. People more dissimilar were never mated. To Paul--accustomed to
stage doors--freshness, serene tranquillity, and obvious purity were the
baits; he had run through more than half his fortune, too, and the fact
that she had money was possibly not overlooked. Be that as it may, he
was fond of her; his heart was soft, he developed a domestic side.
Greta was born to them after a year of marriage. The instinct of the
"freeman" was, however, not dead in Paul; he became a gambler. He lost
the remainder of his fortune without being greatly disturbed. When he
began to lose his wife's fortune too things naturally became more
difficult. Not too much remained when Nicholas Treffry stepped in, and
caused his sister to settle what was left on her daughters, after
providing a life-interest for herself and Paul. Losing his supplies, the
good man had given up his cards. But the instinct of the "freeman" was
still living in his breast; he took to drink. He was never grossly
drunk, and rarely very sober. His wife sorrowed over this new passion;
her health, already much enfeebled, soon broke down. The doctors sent
her to the Tyrol. She seemed to benefit by this, and settled down at
Botzen. The following year, when Greta was just ten, she died. It was a
shock to Paul. He gave up excessive drinking; became a constant smoker,
and lent full rein to his natural domesticity. He was fond of both the
girls, but did not at all understand them; Greta, his own daughter, was
his favourite. Villa Rubein remained their home; it was cheap and roomy.
Money, since Paul became housekeeper to himself, was scarce.
About this time Mrs. Decie, his wife's sister, whose husband had died in
the East, returned to England; Paul invited her to come and live with
them. She had her own rooms, her own servant; the arrangement suited
Paul--it was economically sound, and there was some one always there to
take care of the girls. In truth he began to feel the instinct of the
"freeman" rising again within him; it was pleasant to run over to Vienna
now and then; to play piquet at a Club in Gries, of which he was the
shining light; in a word, to go "on the tiles" a little. One could not
always mourn--even if a woman were an angel; moreover, his digestion was
as good as ever.
The fourth quarter of this Villa was occupied by Nicholas Treffry, whose
annual sojourn out of England perpetually surprised himself. Between him
and his young niece, Christian, there existed, however, a rare sympathy;
one of those affections between the young and old, which, mysteriously
born like everything in life, seems the only end and aim to both, till
another feeling comes into the younger heart.
Since a long and dangerous illness, he had been ordered to avoid the
English winter, and at the commencement of each spring he would appear at
Botzen, driving his own horses by easy stages from the Italian Riviera,
where he spent the coldest months. He always stayed till June before
going back to his London Club, and during all that time he let no day
pass without growling at foreigners, their habits, food, drink, and
raiment, with a kind of big dog's growling that did nobody any harm. The
illness had broken him very much; he was seventy, but looked more. He
had a servant, a Luganese, named Dominique, devoted to him. Nicholas
Treffry had found him overworked in an hotel, and had engaged him with
the caution: "Look--here, Dominique! I swear!" To which Dominique, dark
of feature, saturnine and ironical, had only replied: "Tres biens,
M'sieur!"
III
Harz and his host sat in leather chairs; Herr Paul's square back was
wedged into a cushion, his round legs crossed. Both were smoking, and
they eyed each other furtively, as men of different stamp do when first
thrown together. The young artist found his host extremely new and
disconcerting; in his presence he felt both shy and awkward. Herr Paul,
on the other hand, very much at ease, was thinking indolently:
'Good-looking young fellow--comes of the people, I expect, not at all the
manner of the world; wonder what he talks about.'
Presently noticing that Harz was looking at a photograph, he said: "Ah!
yes! that was a woman! They are not to be found in these days. She could
dance, the little Coralie! Did you ever see such arms? Confess that she
is beautiful, hein?"
"She has individuality," said Harz. "A fine type!"
Herr Paul blew out a cloud of smoke.
"Yes," he murmured, "she was fine all over!" He had dropped his
eyeglasses, and his full brown eyes, with little crow's-feet at the
corners, wandered from his visitor to his cigar.
'He'd be like a Satyr if he wasn't too clean,' thought Harz. 'Put vine
leaves in his hair, paint him asleep, with his hands crossed, so!'
"When I am told a person has individuality," Herr Paul was saying in a
rich and husky voice, "I generally expect boots that bulge, an umbrella
of improper colour; I expect a creature of 'bad form' as they say in
England; who will shave some days and some days will not shave; who
sometimes smells of India-rubber, and sometimes does not smell, which is
discouraging!"
"You do not approve of individuality?" said Harz shortly.
"Not if it means doing, and thinking, as those who know better do not do,
or think."
"And who are those who know better?"
"Ah! my dear, you are asking me a riddle? Well, then--Society, men of
birth, men of recognised position, men above eccentricity, in a word, of
reputation."
Harz looked at him fixedly. "Men who haven't the courage of their own
ideas, not even the courage to smell of India-rubber; men who have no
desires, and so can spend all their time making themselves flat!"
Herr Paul drew out a red silk handkerchief and wiped his beard. "I
assure you, my dear," he said, "it is easier to be flat; it is more
respectable to be flat. Himmel! why not, then, be flat?"
"Like any common fellow?"
"Certes; like any common fellow--like me, par exemple!" Herr Paul waved
his hand. When he exercised unusual tact, he always made use of a French
expression.
Harz flushed. Herr Paul followed up his victory. "Come, come!" he said.
"Pass me my men of repute! que diable! we are not anarchists."
"Are you sure?" said Harz.
Herr Paul twisted his moustache. "I beg your pardon," he said slowly.
But at this moment the door was opened; a rumbling voice remarked:
"Morning, Paul. Who's your visitor?" Harz saw a tall, bulky figure in
the doorway.
"Come in,"' called out Herr Paul. "Let me present to you a new
acquaintance, an artist: Herr Harz--Mr. Nicholas Treffry. Psumm bumm!
All this introducing is dry work." And going to the sideboard he poured
out three glasses of a light, foaming beer.
Mr. Treffry waved it from him: "Not for me," he said: "Wish I could!
They won't let me look at it." And walking over, to the window with a
heavy tread, which trembled like his voice, he sat down. There was
something in his gait like the movements of an elephant's hind legs. He
was very tall (it was said, with the customary exaggeration of family
tradition, that there never had been a male Treffry under six feet in
height), but now he stooped, and had grown stout. There was something at
once vast and unobtrusive about his personality.
He wore a loose brown velvet jacket, and waistcoat, cut to show a soft
frilled shirt and narrow black ribbon tie; a thin gold chain was looped
round his neck and fastened to his fob. His heavy cheeks had folds in
them like those in a bloodhound's face. He wore big, drooping,
yellow-grey moustaches, which he had a habit of sucking, and a goatee
beard. He had long loose ears that might almost have been said to gap.
On his head there was a soft black hat, large in the brim and low in the
crown. His grey eyes, heavy-lidded, twinkled under their bushy brows
with a queer, kind cynicism. As a young man he had sown many a wild oat;
but he had also worked and made money in business; he had, in fact,
burned the candle at both ends; but he had never been unready to do his
fellows a good turn. He had a passion for driving, and his reckless
method of pursuing this art had caused him to be nicknamed: "The
notorious Treffry."
Once, when he was driving tandem down a hill with a loose rein, the
friend beside him had said: "For all the good you're doing with those
reins, Treffry, you might as well throw them on the horses' necks."
"Just so," Treffry had answered. At the bottom of the hill they had gone
over a wall into a potato patch. Treffry had broken several ribs; his
friend had gone unharmed.
He was a great sufferer now, but, constitutionally averse to being
pitied, he had a disconcerting way of humming, and this, together with
the shake in his voice, and his frequent use of peculiar phrases, made
the understanding of his speech depend at times on intuition rather than
intelligence.
The clock began to strike eleven. Harz muttered an excuse, shook hands
with his host, and bowing to his new acquaintance, went away. He caught a
glimpse of Greta's face against the window, and waved his hand to her. In
the road he came on Dawney, who was turning in between the poplars, with
thumbs as usual hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat.
"Hallo!" the latter said.
"Doctor!" Harz answered slyly; "the Fates outwitted me, it seems."
"Serve you right," said Dawney, "for your confounded egoism! Wait here
till I come out, I shan't be many minutes."
But Harz went on his way. A cart drawn by cream-coloured oxen was
passing slowly towards the bridge. In front of the brushwood piled on it
two peasant girls were sitting with their feet on a mat of grass--the
picture of contentment.
"I'm wasting my time!" he thought. "I've done next to nothing in two
months. Better get back to London! That girl will never make a
painter!" She would never make a painter, but there was something in her
that he could not dismiss so rapidly. She was not exactly beautiful, but
she was sympathetic. The brow was pleasing, with dark-brown hair softly
turned back, and eyes so straight and shining. The two sisters were very
different! The little one was innocent, yet mysterious; the elder seemed
as clear as crystal!
He had entered the town, where the arcaded streets exuded their peculiar
pungent smell of cows and leather, wood-smoke, wine-casks, and drains.
The sound of rapid wheels over the stones made him turn his head. A
carriage drawn by red-roan horses was passing at a great pace. People
stared at it, standing still, and looking alarmed. It swung from side to
side and vanished round a corner. Harz saw Mr. Nicholas Treffry in a
long, whitish dust-coat; his Italian servant, perched behind, was holding
to the seat-rail, with a nervous grin on his dark face.
'Certainly,' Harz thought, 'there's no getting away from these people
this morning--they are everywhere.'
In his studio he began to sort his sketches, wash his brushes, and drag
out things he had accumulated during his two months' stay. He even began
to fold his blanket door. But suddenly he stopped. Those two girls! Why
not try? What a picture! The two heads, the sky, and leaves! Begin
to-morrow! Against that window--no, better at the Villa! Call the
picture--Spring...!
IV
The wind, stirring among trees and bushes, flung the young leaves
skywards. The trembling of their silver linings was like the joyful
flutter of a heart at good news. It was one of those Spring mornings
when everything seems full of a sweet restlessness--soft clouds chasing
fast across the sky; soft scents floating forth and dying; the notes of
birds, now shrill and sweet, now hushed in silences; all nature striving
for something, nothing at peace.
Villa Rubein withstood the influence of the day, and wore its usual look
of rest and isolation. Harz sent in his card, and asked to see "der
Herr." The servant, a grey-eyed, clever-looking Swiss with no hair on
his face, came back saying:
"Der Herr, mein Herr, is in the Garden gone." Harz followed him.
Herr Paul, a small white flannel cap on his head, gloves on his hands,
and glasses on his nose, was watering a rosebush, and humming the
serenade from Faust.
This aspect of the house was very different from the other. The sun fell
on it, and over a veranda creepers clung and scrambled in long scrolls.
There was a lawn, with freshly mown grass; flower-beds were laid out, and
at the end of an avenue of young acacias stood an arbour covered with
wisteria.
In the east, mountain peaks--fingers of snow--glittered above the mist.
A grave simplicity lay on that scene, on the roofs and spires, the
valleys and the dreamy hillsides, with their yellow scars and purple
bloom, and white cascades, like tails of grey horses swishing in the
wind.
Herr Paul held out his hand: "What can we do for you?" he said.
"I have to beg a favour," replied Harz. "I wish to paint your daughters.
I will bring the canvas here--they shall have no trouble. I would paint
them in the garden when they have nothing else to do."
Herr Paul looked at him dubiously--ever since the previous day he had
been thinking: 'Queer bird, that painter--thinks himself the devil of a
swell! Looks a determined fellow too!' Now--staring in the painter's
face--it seemed to him, on the whole, best if some one else refused this
permission.
"With all the pleasure, my dear sir," he said. "Come, let us ask these
two young ladies!" and putting down his hose, he led the way towards the
arbour, thinking: 'You'll be disappointed, my young conqueror, or I'm
mistaken.'
Miss Naylor and the girls were sitting in the shade, reading La
Fontaine's fables. Greta, with one eye on her governess, was stealthily
cutting a pig out of orange peel.
"Ah! my dear dears!" began Herr Paul, who in the presence of Miss Naylor
always paraded his English. "Here is our friend, who has a very
flattering request to make; he would paint you, yes--both together,
alfresco, in the air, in the sunshine, with the birds, the little birds!"
Greta, gazing at Harz, gushed deep pink, and furtively showed him her
pig.
Christian said: "Paint us? Oh no!"
She saw Harz looking at her, and added, slowly: "If you really wish it, I
suppose we could!" then dropped her eyes.
"Ah!" said Herr Paul raising his brows till his glasses fell from his
nose: "And what says Gretchen? Does she want to be handed up to
posterities a little peacock along with the other little birds?"
Greta, who had continued staring at the painter, said: "Of--course
--I--want--to--be."
"Prrt!" said Herr Paul, looking at Miss Naylor. The little lady indeed
opened her mouth wide, but all that came forth was a tiny squeak, as
sometimes happens when one is anxious to say something, and has not
arranged beforehand what it shall be.
The affair seemed ended; Harz heaved a sigh of satisfaction. But Herr
Paul had still a card to play.
"There is your Aunt," he said; "there are things to be considered--one
must certainly inquire--so, we shall see." Kissing Greta loudly on both
cheeks, he went towards the house.
"What makes you want to paint us?" Christian asked, as soon as he was
gone.
"I think it very wrong," Miss Naylor blurted out.
"Why?" said Harz, frowning.
"Greta is so young--there are lessons--it is such a waste of time!"
His eyebrows twitched: "Ah! You think so!"
"I don't see why it is a waste of time," said Christian quietly; "there
are lots of hours when we sit here and do nothing."
"And it is very dull," put in Greta, with a pout.
"You are rude, Greta," said Miss Naylor in a little rage, pursing her
lips, and taking up her knitting.
"I think it seems always rude to speak the truth," said Greta. Miss
Naylor looked at her in that concentrated manner with which she was in
the habit of expressing displeasure.
But at this moment a servant came, and said that Mrs. Decie would be glad
to see Herr Harz. The painter made them a stiff bow, and followed the
servant to the house. Miss Naylor and the two girls watched his progress
with apprehensive eyes; it was clear that he had been offended.
Crossing the veranda, and passing through an open window hung with silk
curtains, Hart entered a cool dark room. This was Mrs. Decie's sanctum,
where she conducted correspondence, received her visitors, read the
latest literature, and sometimes, when she had bad headaches, lay for
hours on the sofa, with a fan, and her eyes closed. There was a scent of
sandalwood, a suggestion of the East, a kind of mystery, in here, as if
things like chairs and tables were not really what they seemed, but
something much less commonplace.
The visitor looked twice, to be quite sure of anything; there were many
plants, bead curtains, and a deal of silverwork and china.
Mrs. Decie came forward in the slightly rustling silk which--whether in
or out of fashion--always accompanied her. A tall woman, over fifty, she
moved as if she had been tied together at the knees. Her face was long,
with broad brows, from which her sandy-grey hair was severely waved back;
she had pale eyes, and a perpetual, pale, enigmatic smile. Her complexion
had been ruined by long residence in India, and might unkindly have been
called fawn-coloured. She came close to Harz, keeping her eyes on his,
with her head bent slightly forward.
"We are so pleased to know you," she said, speaking in a voice which had
lost all ring. "It is charming to find some one in these parts who can
help us to remember that there is such a thing as Art. We had Mr.
C---here last autumn, such a charming fellow. He was so interested in
the native customs and dresses. You are a subject painter, too, I think?
Won't you sit down?"
She went on for some time, introducing painters' names, asking questions,
skating round the edge of what was personal. And the young man stood
before her with a curious little smile fixed on his lips. 'She wants to
know whether I'm worth powder and shot,' he thought.
"You wish to paint my nieces?" Mrs. Decie said at last, leaning back on
her settee.
"I wish to have that honour," Harz answered with a bow.
"And what sort of picture did you think of?"
"That," said Harz, "is in the future. I couldn't tell you." And he
thought: 'Will she ask me if I get my tints in Paris, like the woman
Tramper told me of?'
The perpetual pale smile on Mrs. Decie's face seemed to invite his
confidence, yet to warn him that his words would be sucked in somewhere
behind those broad fine brows, and carefully sorted. Mrs. Decie, indeed,
was thinking: 'Interesting young man, regular Bohemian--no harm in that
at his age; something Napoleonic in his face; probably has no dress
clothes. Yes, should like to see more of him!' She had a fine eye for
points of celebrity; his name was unfamiliar, would probably have been
scouted by that famous artist Mr. C---, but she felt her instinct urging
her on to know him. She was, to do her justice, one of those "lion"
finders who seek the animal for pleasure, not for the glory it brings
them; she had the courage of her instincts--lion-entities were
indispensable to her, but she trusted to divination to secure them;
nobody could foist a "lion" on her.
"It will be very nice. You will stay and have some lunch? The
arrangements here are rather odd. Such a mixed household--but there is
always lunch at two o'clock for any one who likes, and we all dine at
seven. You would have your sittings in the afternoons, perhaps? I
should so like to see your sketches. You are using the old house on the
wall for studio; that is so original of you!"
Harz would not stay to lunch, but asked if he might begin work that
afternoon; he left a little suffocated by the sandalwood and sympathy of
this sphinx-like woman.
Walking home along the river wall, with the singing of the larks and
thrushes, the rush of waters, the humming of the chafers in his ears, he
felt that he would make something fine of this subject. Before his eyes
the faces of the two girls continually started up, framed by the sky,
with young leaves guttering against their cheeks.
V
Three days had passed since Harz began his picture, when early in the
morning, Greta came from Villa Rubein along the river dyke and sat down
on a bench from which the old house on the wall was visible. She had not
been there long before Harz came out.
"I did not knock," said Greta, "because you would not have heard, and it
is so early, so I have been waiting for you a quarter of an hour."
Selecting a rosebud, from some flowers in her hand, she handed it to him.
"That is my first rosebud this year," she said; "it is for you because
you are painting me. To-day I am thirteen, Herr Harz; there is not to be
a sitting, because it is my birthday; but, instead, we are all going to
Meran to see the play of Andreas Hofer. You are to come too, please; I
am here to tell you, and the others shall be here directly."
Harz bowed: "And who are the others?"
"Christian, and Dr. Edmund, Miss Naylor, and Cousin Teresa. Her husband
is ill, so she is sad, but to-day she is going to forget that. It is not
good to be always sad, is it, Herr Harz?"
He laughed: "You could not be."
Greta answered gravely: "Oh yes, I could. I too am often sad. You are
making fun. You are not to make fun to-day, because it is my birthday.
Do you think growing up is nice, Herr Harz?"
"No, Fraulein Greta, it is better to have all the time before you."
They walked on side by side.
"I think," said Greta, "you are very much afraid of losing time. Chris
says that time is nothing."
"Time is everything," responded Harz.
"She says that time is nothing, and thought is everything," Greta
murmured, rubbing a rose against her cheek, "but I think you cannot have
a thought unless you have the time to think it in. There are the others!
Look!"
A cluster of sunshades on the bridge glowed for a moment and was lost in
shadow.
"Come," said Harz, "let's join them!"
At Meran, under Schloss Tirol, people were streaming across the meadows
into the open theatre. Here were tall fellows in mountain dress, with
leather breeches, bare knees, and hats with eagles' feathers; here were
fruit-sellers, burghers and their wives, mountebanks, actors, and every
kind of visitor. The audience, packed into an enclosure of high boards,
sweltered under the burning sun. Cousin Teresa, tall and thin, with hard,
red cheeks, shaded her pleasant eyes with her hand.
The play began. It depicted the rising in the Tyrol of 1809: the village
life, dances and yodelling; murmurings and exhortations, the warning beat
of drums; then the gathering, with flintlocks, pitchforks, knives; the
battle and victory; the homecoming, and festival. Then the second
gathering, the roar of cannon; betrayal, capture, death. The impassive
figure of the patriot Andreas Hofer always in front, black-bearded,
leathern-girdled, under the blue sky, against a screen of mountains.
Harz and Christian sat behind the others. He seemed so intent on the
play that she did not speak, but watched his face, rigid with a kind of
cold excitement; he seemed to be transported by the life passing before
them. Something of his feeling seized on her; when the play was over she
too was trembling. In pushing their way out they became separated from
the others.
"There's a short cut to the station here," said Christian; "let's go this
way."
The path rose a little; a narrow stream crept alongside the meadow, and
the hedge was spangled with wild roses. Christian kept glancing shyly at
the painter. Since their meeting on the river wall her thoughts had
never been at rest. This stranger, with his keen face, insistent eyes,
and ceaseless energy, had roused a strange feeling in her; his words had
put shape to something in her not yet expressed. She stood aside at a
stile to make way for some peasant boys, dusty and rough-haired, who sang
and whistled as they went by.
"I was like those boys once," said Harz.
Christian turned to him quickly. "Ah! that was why you felt the play, so
much."
"It's my country up there. I was born amongst the mountains. I looked
after the cows, and slept in hay-cocks, and cut the trees in winter. They
used to call me a 'black sheep,' a 'loafer' in my village."
"Why?"
"Ah! why? I worked as hard as any of them. But I wanted to get away. Do
you think I could have stayed there all my life?"
Christian's eyes grew eager.
"If people don't understand what it is you want to do, they always call
you a loafer!" muttered Harz.
"But you did what you meant to do in spite of them," Christian said.
For herself it was so hard to finish or decide. When in the old days she
told Greta stories, the latter, whose instinct was always for the
definite, would say: "And what came at the end, Chris? Do finish it this
morning!" but Christian never could. Her thoughts were deep, vague,
dreamy, invaded by both sides of every question. Whatever she did, her
needlework, her verse-making, her painting, all had its charm; but it was
not always what it was intended for at the beginning. Nicholas Treffry
had once said of her: "When Chris starts out to make a hat, it may turn
out an altar-cloth, but you may bet it won't be a hat." It was her
instinct to look for what things meant; and this took more than all her
time. She knew herself better than most girls of nineteen, but it was
her reason that had informed her, not her feelings. In her sheltered
life, her heart had never been ruffled except by rare fits of
passion--"tantrums" old Nicholas Treffry dubbed them--at what seemed to
her mean or unjust.
"If I were a man," she said, "and going to be great, I should have wanted
to begin at the very bottom as you did."
"Yes," said Harz quickly, "one should be able to feel everything."
She did not notice how simply he assumed that he was going to be great.
He went on, a smile twisting his mouth unpleasantly beneath its dark
moustache--"Not many people think like you! It's a crime not to have
been born a gentleman."
"That's a sneer," said Christian; "I didn't think you would have
sneered!"
"It is true. What is the use of pretending that it isn't?"
"It may be true, but it is finer not to say it!"
"By Heavens!" said Harz, striking one hand into the other, "if more truth
were spoken there would not be so many shams."
Christian looked down at him from her seat on the stile.
"You are right all the same, Fraulein Christian," he added suddenly;
"that's a very little business. Work is what matters, and trying to see
the beauty in the world."
Christian's face changed. She understood, well enough, this craving
after beauty. Slipping down from the stile, she drew a slow deep breath.
"Yes!" she said. Neither spoke for some time, then Harz said shyly:
"If you and Fraulein Greta would ever like to come and see my studio, I
should be so happy. I would try and clean it up for you!"
"I should like to come. I could learn something. I want to learn."
They were both silent till the path joined the road.
"We must be in front of the others; it's nice to be in front--let's
dawdle. I forgot--you never dawdle, Herr Harz."
"After a big fit of work, I can dawdle against any one; then I get
another fit of work--it's like appetite."
"I'm always dawdling," answered Christian.
By the roadside a peasant woman screwed up her sun-dried face, saying in
a low voice: "Please, gracious lady, help me to lift this basket!"
Christian stooped, but before she could raise it, Harz hoisted it up on
his back.
"All right," he nodded; "this good lady doesn't mind."
The woman, looking very much ashamed, walked along by Christian; she kept
rubbing her brown hands together, and saying; "Gracious lady, I would not
have wished. It is heavy, but I would not have wished."
"I'm sure he'd rather carry it," said Christian.
They had not gone far along the road, however, before the others passed
them in a carriage, and at the strange sight Miss Naylor could be seen
pursing her lips; Cousin Teresa nodding pleasantly; a smile on Dawney's
face; and beside him Greta, very demure. Harz began to laugh.
"What are you laughing at?" asked Christian.
"You English are so funny. You mustn't do this here, you mustn't do that
there, it's like sitting in a field of nettles. If I were to walk with
you without my coat, that little lady would fall off her seat." His
laugh infected Christian; they reached the station feeling that they knew
each other better.
The sun had dipped behind the mountains when the little train steamed
down the valley. All were subdued, and Greta, with a nodding head, slept
fitfully. Christian, in her corner, was looking out of the window, and
Harz kept studying her profile.
He tried to see her eyes. He had remarked indeed that, whatever their
expression, the brows, arched and rather wide apart, gave them a peculiar
look of understanding. He thought of his picture. There was nothing in
her face to seize on, it was too sympathetic, too much like light. Yet
her chin was firm, almost obstinate.
The train stopped with a jerk; she looked round at him. It was as though
she had said: "You are my friend."
At Villa Rubein, Herr Paul had killed the fatted calf for Greta's Fest.
When the whole party were assembled, he alone remained standing; and
waving his arm above the cloth, cried: "My dears! Your happiness! There
are good things here--Come!" And with a sly look, the air of a conjurer
producing rabbits, he whipped the cover off the soup tureen:
"Soup-turtle, fat, green fat!" He smacked his lips.
No servants were allowed, because, as Greta said to Harz:
"It is that we are to be glad this evening."
Geniality radiated from Herr Paul's countenance, mellow as a bowl of
wine. He toasted everybody, exhorting them to pleasure.
Harz passed a cracker secretly behind Greta's head, and Miss Naylor,
moved by a mysterious impulse, pulled it with a sort of gleeful horror;
it exploded, and Greta sprang off her chair. Scruff, seeing this,
appeared suddenly on the sideboard with his forelegs in a plate of soup;
without moving them, he turned his head, and appeared to accuse the
company of his false position. It was the signal for shrieks of
laughter. Scruff made no attempt to free his forelegs; but sniffed the
soup, and finding that nothing happened, began to lap it.
"Take him out! Oh! take him out!" wailed Greta, "he shall be ill!"
"Allons! Mon cher!" cried Herr Paul, "c'est magnifique, mais, vous
savez, ce nest guere la guerre!" Scruff, with a wild spring, leaped past
him to the ground.
"Ah!" cried Miss Naylor, "the carpet!" Fresh moans of mirth shook the
table; for having tasted the wine of laughter, all wanted as much more as
they could get. When Scruff and his traces were effaced, Herr Paul took
a ladle in his hand.
"I have a toast," he said, waving it for silence; "a toast we will drink
all together from our hearts; the toast of my little daughter, who to-day
has thirteen years become; and there is also in our hearts," he
continued, putting down the ladle and suddenly becoming grave, "the
thought of one who is not today with us to see this joyful occasion; to
her, too, in this our happiness we turn our hearts and glasses because it
is her joy that we should yet be joyful. I drink to my little daughter;
may God her shadow bless!"
All stood up, clinking their glasses, and drank: then, in the hush that
followed, Greta, according to custom, began to sing a German carol; at
the end of the fourth line she stopped, abashed.
Heir Paul blew his nose loudly, and, taking up a cap that had fallen from
a cracker, put it on.
Every one followed his example, Miss Naylor attaining the distinction of
a pair of donkey's ears, which she wore, after another glass of wine,
with an air of sacrificing to the public good.
At the end of supper came the moment for the offering of gifts. Herr
Paul had tied a handkerchief over Greta's eyes, and one by one they
brought her presents. Greta, under forfeit of a kiss, was bound to tell
the giver by the feel of the gift. Her swift, supple little hands
explored noiselessly; and in every case she guessed right.
Dawney's present, a kitten, made a scene by clawing at her hair.
"That is Dr. Edmund's," she cried at once. Christian saw that Harz had
disappeared, but suddenly he came back breathless, and took his place at
the end of the rank of givers.
Advancing on tiptoe, he put his present into Greta's hands. It was a
small bronze copy of a Donatello statue.
"Oh, Herr Harz!" cried Greta; "I saw it in the studio that day. It stood
on the table, and it is lovely."
Mrs. Decie, thrusting her pale eyes close to it, murmured: "Charming!"
Mr. Treffry took it in his forgers.
"Rum little toad! Cost a pot of money, I expect!" He eyed Harz
doubtfully.
They went into the next room now, and Herr Paul, taking Greta's bandage,
transferred it to his own eyes.
"Take care--take care, all!" he cried; "I am a devil of a catcher," and,
feeling the air cautiously, he moved forward like a bear about to hug.
He caught no one. Christian and Greta whisked under his arms and left
him grasping at the air. Mrs. Decie slipped past with astonishing
agility. Mr. Treffry, smoking his cigar, and barricaded in a corner,
jeered: "Bravo, Paul! The active beggar! Can't he run! Go it, Greta!"
At last Herr Paul caught Cousin Teresa, who, fattened against the wall,
lost her head, and stood uttering tiny shrieks.
Suddenly Mrs. Decie started playing The Blue Danube. Herr Paul dropped
the handkerchief, twisted his moustache up fiercely, glared round the
room, and seizing Greta by the waist, began dancing furiously, bobbing up
and down like a cork in lumpy water. Cousin Teresa followed suit with
Miss Naylor, both very solemn, and dancing quite different steps. Harz,
went up to Christian.
"I can't dance," he said, "that is, I have only danced once, but--if you
would try with me!"
She put her hand on his arm, and they began. She danced, light as a
feather, eyes shining, feet flying, her body bent a little forward. It
was not a great success at first, but as soon as the time had got into
Harz's feet, they went swinging on when all the rest had stopped.
Sometimes one couple or another slipped through the window to dance on
the veranda, and came whirling in again. The lamplight glowed on the
girls' white dresses; on Herr Paul's perspiring face. He constituted in
himself a perfect orgy, and when the music stopped flung himself, full
length, on the sofa gasping out:
"My God! But, my God!"
Suddenly Christian felt Harz cling to her arm.
Glowing and panting she looked at him.
"Giddy!" he murmured: "I dance so badly; but I'll soon learn."
Greta clapped her hands: "Every evening we will dance, every evening we
will dance."
Harz looked at Christian; the colour had deepened in her face.
"I'll show you how they dance in my village, feet upon the ceiling!" And
running to Dawney, he said:
"Hold me here! Lift me--so! Now, on--two," he tried to swing his feet
above his head, but, with an "Ouch!" from Dawney, they collapsed, and sat
abruptly on the floor. This untimely event brought the evening to an
end. Dawney left, escorting Cousin Teresa, and Harz strode home humming
The Blue Danube, still feeling Christian's waist against his arm.
In their room the two girls sat long at the window to cool themselves
before undressing.
"Ah!" sighed Greta, "this is the happiest birthday I have had."
Cristian too thought: 'I have never been so happy in my life as I have
been to-day. I should like every day to be like this!' And she leant
out into the night, to let the air cool her cheeks.
"Chris!" said Greta some days after this, "Miss Naylor danced last
evening; I think she shall have a headache to-day. There is my French
and my history this morning."
"Well, I can take them."
"That is nice; then we can talk. I am sorry about the headache. I shall
give her some of my Eau de Cologne."
Miss Naylor's headaches after dancing were things on which to calculate.
The girls carried their books into the arbour; it was a showery day, and
they had to run for shelter through the raindrops and sunlight.
"The French first, Chris!" Greta liked her French, in which she was not
far inferior to Christian; the lesson therefore proceeded in an admirable
fashion. After one hour exactly by her watch (Mr. Treffry's birthday
present loved and admired at least once every hour) Greta rose.
"Chris, I have not fed my rabbits."
"Be quick! there's not much time for history."
Greta vanished. Christian watched the bright water dripping from the
roof; her lips were parted in a smile. She was thinking of something
Harz had said the night before. A discussion having been started as to
whether average opinion did, or did not, safeguard Society, Harz, after
sitting silent, had burst out: "I think one man in earnest is better than
twenty half-hearted men who follow tamely; in the end he does Society
most good."
Dawney had answered: "If you had your way there would be no Society."
"I hate Society because it lives upon the weak."
"Bah!" Herr Paul chimed in; "the weak goes to the wall; that is as
certain as that you and I are here."
"Let them fall against the wall," cried Harz; "don't push them there...."
Greta reappeared, walking pensively in the rain.
"Bino," she said, sighing, "has eaten too much. I remember now, I did
feed them before. Must we do the history, Chris?"
"Of course!"
Greta opened her book, and put a finger in the page. "Herr Harz is very
kind to me," she said. "Yesterday he brought a bird which had. come into
his studio with a hurt wing; he brought it very gently in his
handkerchief--he is very kind, the bird was not even frightened of him.
You did not know about that, Chris?"
Chris flushed a little, and said in a hurt voice
"I don't see what it has to--do with me."
"No," assented Greta.
Christian's colour deepened. "Go on with your history, Greta."
"Only," pursued Greta, "that he always tells you all about things,
Chris."
"He doesn't! How can you say that!"
"I think he does, and it is because you do not make him angry. It is
very easy to make him angry; you have only to think differently, and he
shall be angry at once."
"You are a little cat!" said Christian; "it isn't true, at all. He hates
shams, and can't bear meanness; and it is mean to cover up dislikes and
pretend that you agree with people."
"Papa says that he thinks too much about himself."
"Father!" began Christian hotly; biting her lips she stopped, and turned
her wrathful eyes on Greta.
"You do not always show your dislikes, Chris."
"I? What has that to do with it? Because one is a coward that doesn't
make it any better, does it?"
"I think that he has a great many dislikes," murmured Greta.
"I wish you would attend to your own faults, and not pry into other
people's," and pushing the book aside, Christian gazed in front of her.
Some minutes passed, then Greta leaning over, rubbed a cheek against her
shoulder.
"I am very sorry, Chris--I only wanted to be talking. Shall I read some
history?"
"Yes," said Christian coldly.
"Are you angry with me, Chris?"
There was no answer. The lingering raindrops pattered down on the roof.
Greta pulled at her sister's sleeve.
"Look, Chris!" she said. "There is Herr Harz!"
Christian looked up, dropped her eyes again, and said: "Will you go on
with the history, Greta?"
Greta sighed.
"Yes, I will--but, oh! Chris, there is the luncheon gong!" and she
meekly closed the book.
During the following weeks there was a "sitting" nearly every afternoon.
Miss Naylor usually attended them; the little lady was, to a certain
extent, carried past objection. She had begun to take an interest in the
picture, and to watch the process out of the corner of her eye; in the
depths of her dear mind, however, she never quite got used to the vanity
and waste of time; her lips would move and her knitting-needles click in
suppressed remonstrances.
What Harz did fast he did best; if he had leisure he "saw too much,"
loving his work so passionately that he could never tell exactly when to
stop. He hated to lay things aside, always thinking: "I can get it
better." Greta was finished, but with Christian, try as he would, he was
not satisfied; from day to day her face seemed to him to change, as if
her soul were growing.
There were things too in her eyes that he could neither read nor
reproduce.
Dawney would often stroll out to them after his daily visit, and lying on
the grass, his arms crossed behind his head, and a big cigar between his
lips, would gently banter everybody. Tea came at five o'clock, and then
Mrs. Decie appeared armed with a magazine or novel, for she was proud of
her literary knowledge. The sitting was suspended; Harz, with a
cigarette, would move between the table and the picture, drinking his
tea, putting a touch in here and there; he never sat down till it was all
over for the day. During these "rests" there was talk, usually ending in
discussion. Mrs. Decie was happiest in conversations of a literary
order, making frequent use of such expressions as: "After all, it
produces an illusion--does anything else matter?" "Rather a poseur, is
he not?" "A question, that, of temperament," or "A matter of the
definition of words"; and other charming generalities, which sound well,
and seem to go far, and are pleasingly irrefutable. Sometimes the
discussion turned on Art--on points of colour or technique; whether
realism was quite justified; and should we be pre-Raphaelites? When
these discussions started, Christian's eyes would grow bigger and
clearer, with a sort of shining reasonableness; as though they were
trying to see into the depths. And Harz would stare at them. But the
look in those eyes eluded him, as if they had no more meaning than Mrs.
Decie's, which, with their pale, watchful smile, always seemed saying:
"Come, let us take a little intellectual exercise."
Greta, pulling Scruff's ears, would gaze up at the speakers; when the
talk was over, she always shook herself. But if no one came to the
"sittings," there would sometimes be very earnest, quick talk, sometimes
long silences.
One day Christian said: "What is your religion?"
Harz finished the touch he was putting on the canvas, before he answered:
"Roman Catholic, I suppose; I was baptised in that Church."
"I didn't mean that. Do you believe in a future life?"
"Christian," murmured Greta, who was plaiting blades of grass, "shall
always want to know what people think about a future life; that is so
funny!"
"How can I tell?" said Harz; "I've never really thought of it--never had
the time."
"How can you help thinking?" Christian said: "I have to--it seems to me
so awful that we might come to an end."
She closed her book, and it slipped off her lap. She went on: "There
must be a future life, we're so incomplete. What's the good of your
work, for instance? What's the use of developing if you have to stop?"
"I don't know," answered Harz. "I don't much care. All I know is, I've
got to work."
"But why?"
"For happiness--the real happiness is fighting--the rest is nothing. If
you have finished a thing, does it ever satisfy you? You look forward to
the next thing at once; to wait is wretched!"
Christian clasped her hands behind her neck; sunlight flickered through
the leaves on to the bosom of her dress.
"Ah! Stay like that!" cried Harz.
She let her eyes rest on his face, swinging her foot a little.
"You work because you must; but that's not enough. Why do you feel you
must? I want to know what's behind. When I was travelling with Aunt
Constance the winter before last we often talked--I've heard her discuss
it with her friends. She says we move in circles till we reach Nirvana.
But last winter I found I couldn't talk to her; it seemed as if she never
really meant anything. Then I started reading--Kant and Hegel--"
"Ah!" put in Harz, "if they would teach me to draw better, or to see a
new colour in a flower, or an expression in a face, I would read them
all."
Christian leaned forward: "It must be right to get as near truth as
possible; every step gained is something. You believe in truth; truth is
the same as beauty--that was what you said--you try to paint the truth,
you always see the beauty. But how can we know truth, unless we know
what is at the root of it?"
"I--think," murmured Greta, sotto voce, "you see one way--and he sees
another--because--you are not one person."
"Of course!" said Christian impatiently, "but why--"
A sound of humming interrupted her.
Nicholas Treffry was coming from the house, holding the Times in one
hand, and a huge meerschaum pipe in the other.
"Aha!" he said to Harz: "how goes the picture?" and he lowered himself
into a chair.
"Better to-day, Uncle?" said Christian softly.
Mr. Treffry growled. "Confounded humbugs, doctors!" he said. "Your
father used to swear by them; why, his doctor killed him--made him drink
such a lot of stuff!"
"Why then do you have a doctor, Uncle Nic?" asked Greta.
Mr. Treffry looked at her; his eyes twinkled. "I don't know, my dear. If
they get half a chance, they won't let go of you!"
There had been a gentle breeze all day, but now it had died away; not a
leaf quivered, not a blade of grass was stirring; from the house were
heard faint sounds as of some one playing on a pipe. A blackbird came
hopping down the path.
"When you were a boy, did you go after birds' nests, Uncle Nic?" Greta
whispered.
"I believe you, Greta." The blackbird hopped into the shrubbery.
"You frightened him, Uncle Nic! Papa says that at Schloss Konig, where
he lived when he was young, he would always be after jackdaws' nests."
"Gammon, Greta. Your father never took a jackdaw's nest, his legs are
much too round!"
"Are you fond of birds, Uncle Nic?"
"Ask me another, Greta! Well, I s'pose so."
"Then why did you go bird-nesting? I think it is cruel"
Mr. Treffry coughed behind his paper: "There you have me, Greta," he
remarked.
Harz began to gather his brushes: "Thank you," he said, "that's all I can
do to-day."
"Can I look?" Mr. Treffry inquired.
"Certainly!"
Uncle Nic got up slowly, and stood in front of the picture. "When it's
for sale," he said at last, "I'll buy it."
Harz bowed; but for some reason he felt annoyed, as if he had been asked
to part with something personal.
"I thank you," he said. A gong sounded.
"You'll stay and have a snack with us?" said Mr. Treffry; "the doctor's
stopping." Gathering up his paper, he moved off to the house with his
hand on Greta's shoulder, the terrier running in front. Harz and
Christian were left alone. He was scraping his palette, and she was
sitting with her elbows resting on her knees; between them, a gleam of
sunlight dyed the path golden. It was evening already; the bushes and
the flowers, after the day's heat, were breathing out perfume; the birds
had started their evensong.
"Are you tired of sitting for your portrait, Fraulein Christian?"
Christian shook her head.
"I shall get something into it that everybody does not see--something
behind the surface, that will last."
Christian said slowly: "That's like a challenge. You were right when you
said fighting is happiness--for yourself, but not for me. I'm a coward.
I hate to hurt people, I like them to like me. If you had to do anything
that would make them hate you, you would do it all the same, if it helped
your work; that's fine--it's what I can't do. It's--it's everything. Do
you like Uncle Nic?"
The young painter looked towards the house, where under the veranda old
Nicholas Treffry was still in sight; a smile came on his lips.
"If I were the finest painter in the world, he wouldn't think anything of
me for it, I'm afraid; but if I could show him handfuls of big cheques
for bad pictures I had painted, he would respect me."
She smiled, and said: "I love him."
"Then I shall like him," Harz answered simply.
She put her hand out, and her fingers met his. "We shall be late," she
said, glowing, and catching up her book: "I'm always late!"
VII
There was one other guest at dinner, a well-groomed person with pale,
fattish face, dark eyes, and hair thin on the temples, whose clothes had
a military cut. He looked like a man fond of ease, who had gone out of
his groove, and collided with life. Herr Paul introduced him as Count
Mario Sarelli.
Two hanging lamps with crimson shades threw a rosy light over the table,
where, in the centre stood a silver basket, full of irises. Through the
open windows the garden was all clusters of black foliage in the dying
light. Moths fluttered round the lamps; Greta, following them with her
eyes, gave quite audible sighs of pleasure when they escaped. Both girls
wore white, and Harz, who sat opposite Christian, kept looking at her,
and wondering why he had not painted her in that dress.
Mrs. Decie understood the art of dining--the dinner, ordered by Herr
Paul, was admirable; the servants silent as their, shadows; there was
always a hum of conversation.
Sarelli, who sat on her right hand, seemed to partake of little except
olives, which he dipped into a glass of sherry. He turned his black,
solemn eyes silently from face to face, now and then asking the meaning
of an English word. After a discussion on modern Rome, it was debated
whether or no a criminal could be told by the expression of his face.
"Crime," said Mrs. Decie, passing her hand across her brow--"crime is but
the hallmark of strong individuality."
Miss Naylor, gushing rather pink, stammered: "A great crime must show
itself--a murder. Why, of course!"
"If that were so," said Dawney, "we should only have to look about us--no
more detectives."
Miss Naylor rejoined with slight severity: "I cannot conceive that such a
thing can pass the human face by, leaving no impression!"
Harz said abruptly: "There are worse things than murder."
"Ah! par exemple!" said Sarelli.
There was a slight stir all round the table.
"Verry good," cried out Herr Paul, "a vot' sante, cher."
Miss Naylor shivered, as if some one had put a penny down her back; and
Mrs. Decie, leaning towards Harz, smiled like one who has made a pet dog
do a trick. Christian alone was motionless, looking thoughtfully at
Harz.
"I saw a man tried for murder once," he said, "a murder for revenge; I
watched the judge, and I thought all the time: 'I'd rather be that
murderer than you; I've never seen a meaner face; you crawl through life;
you're not a criminal, simply because you haven't the courage.'"
In the dubious silence following the painter's speech, Mr. Treffry could
distinctly be heard humming. Then Sarelli said: "What do you say to
anarchists, who are not men, but savage beasts, whom I would tear to
pieces!"
"As to that," Harz answered defiantly, "it maybe wise to hang them, but
then there are so many other men that it would be wise to hang."
"How can we tell what they went through; what their lives were?" murmured
Christian.
Miss Naylor, who had been rolling a pellet of bread, concealed it
hastily. "They are--always given a chance to--repent--I believe," she
said.
"For what they are about to receive," drawled Dawney.
Mrs. Decie signalled with her fan: "We are trying to express the
inexpressible--shall we go into the garden?"
All rose; Harz stood by the window, and in passing, Christian looked at
him.
He sat down again with a sudden sense of loss. There was no white figure
opposite now. Raising his eyes he met Sarelli's. The Italian was
regarding him with a curious stare.
Herr Paul began retailing apiece of scandal he had heard that afternoon.
"Shocking affair!" he said; "I could never have believed it of her!
B---is quite beside himself. Yesterday there was a row, it seems!"
"There has been one every day for months," muttered Dawney.
"But to leave without a word, and go no one knows where! B---is 'viveur'
no doubt, mais, mon Dieu, que voulezvous? She was always a poor, pale
thing. Why! when my---" he flourished his cigar; "I was not
always---what I should have been---one lives in a world of flesh and
blood---we are not all angels---que diable! But this is a very vulgar
business. She goes off; leaves everything---without a word; and B---is
very fond of her. These things are not done!" the starched bosom of his
shirt seemed swollen by indignation.
Mr. Treffry, with a heavy hand on the table, eyed him sideways. Dawney
said slowly:
"B---is a beast; I'm sorry for the poor woman; but what can she do
alone?"
"There is, no doubt, a man," put in Sarelli.
Herr Paul muttered: "Who knows?"
"What is B---going to do?" said Dawney.
"Ah!" said Herr Paul. "He is fond of her. He is a chap of resolution,
he will get her back. He told me: 'Well, you know, I shall follow her
wherever she goes till she comes back.' He will do it, he is a
determined chap; he will follow her wherever she goes."
Mr. Treffry drank his wine off at a gulp, and sucked his moustache in
sharply.
"She was a fool to marry him," said Dawney; "they haven't a point in
common; she hates him like poison, and she's the better of the two. But
it doesn't pay a woman to run off like that. B---had better hurry up,
though. What do you think, sir?" he said to Mr. Treffry.
"Eh?" said Mr. Treffry; "how should I know? Ask Paul there, he's one of
your moral men, or Count Sarelli."
The latter said impassively: "If I cared for her I should very likely
kill her--if not--" he shrugged his shoulders.
Harz, who was watching, was reminded of his other words at dinner, "wild
beasts whom I would tear to pieces." He looked with interest at this
quiet man who said these extremely ferocious things, and thought: 'I
should like to paint that fellow.'
Herr Paul twirled his wine-glass in his fingers. "There are family
ties," he said, "there is society, there is decency; a wife should be
with her husband. B---will do quite right. He must go after her; she
will not perhaps come back at first; he will follow her; she will begin
to think, 'I am helpless--I am ridiculous!' A woman is soon beaten.
They will return. She is once more with her husband--Society will
forgive, it will be all right."
"By Jove, Paul," growled Mr. Treffry, "wonderful power of argument!"
"A wife is a wife," pursued Herr Paul; "a man has a right to her
society."
"What do you say to that, sir?" asked Dawney.
Mr. Treffry tugged at his beard: "Make a woman live with you, if she
don't want to? I call it low."
"But, my dear," exclaimed Herr Paul, "how should you know? You have not
been married."
"No, thank the Lord!" Mr. Treffry replied.
"But looking at the question broadly, sir," said Dawney; "if a husband
always lets his wife do as she likes, how would the thing work out? What
becomes of the marriage tie?"
"The marriage tie," growled Mr. Treffry, "is the biggest thing there is!
But, by Jove, Doctor, I'm a Dutchman if hunting women ever helped the
marriage tie!"
"I am not thinking of myself," Herr Paul cried out, "I think of the
community. There are rights."
"A decent community never yet asked a man to tread on his self-respect.
If I get my fingers skinned over my marriage, which I undertake at my own
risk, what's the community to do with it? D'you think I'm going to whine
to it to put the plaster on? As to rights, it'd be a deuced sight better
for us all if there wasn't such a fuss about 'em. Leave that to women! I
don't give a tinker's damn for men who talk about their rights in such
matters."
Sarelli rose. "But your honour," he said, "there is your honour!"
Mr. Treffry stared at him.
"Honour! If huntin' women's your idea of honour, well--it isn't mine."
"Then you'd forgive her, sir, whatever happened," Dawney said.
"Forgiveness is another thing. I leave that to your sanctimonious
beggars. But, hunt a woman! Hang it, sir, I'm not a cad!" and bringing
his hand down with a rattle, he added: "This is a subject that don't bear
talking of."
Sarelli fell back in his seat, twirling his moustaches fiercely. Harz,
who had risen, looked at Christian's empty place.
'If I were married!' he thought suddenly.
Herr Paul, with a somewhat vinous glare, still muttered, "But your duty
to the family!"
Harz slipped through the window. The moon was like a wonderful white
lantern in the purple sky; there was but a smoulder of stars. Beneath the
softness of the air was the iciness of the snow; it made him want to run
and leap. A sleepy beetle dropped on its back; he turned it over and
watched it scurry across the grass.
Someone was playing Schumann's Kinderscenen. Harz stood still to listen.
The notes came twining, weaving round his thoughts; the whole night
seemed full of girlish voices, of hopes and fancies, soaring away to
mountain heights--invisible, yet present. Between the stems of the
acacia-trees he could see the flicker of white dresses, where Christian
and Greta were walking arm in arm. He went towards them; the blood
flushed up in his face, he felt almost surfeited by some sweet emotion.
Then, in sudden horror, he stood still. He was in love! With nothing
done with everything before him! He was going to bow down to a face! The
flicker of the dresses was no longer visible. He would not be fettered,
he would stamp it out! He turned away; but with each step, something
seemed to jab at his heart.
Round the corner of the house, in the shadow of the wall, Dominique, the
Luganese, in embroidered slippers, was smoking a long cherry-wood pipe,
leaning against a tree--Mephistopheles in evening clothes. Harz went up
to him.
"Lend me a pencil, Dominique."
"Bien, M'sieu."
Resting a card against the tree Harz wrote to Mrs. Decie: "Forgive me, I
am obliged to go away. In a few days I shall hope to return, and finish
the picture of your nieces."
He sent Dominique for his hat. During the man's absence he was on the
point of tearing up the card and going back into the house.
When the Luganese returned he thrust the card into his hand, and walked
out between the tall poplars, waiting, like ragged ghosts, silver with
moonlight.
VIII
Harz walked away along the road. A dog was howling. The sound seemed
too appropriate. He put his fingers to his ears, but the lugubrious
noise passed those barriers, and made its way into his heart. Was there
nothing that would put an end to this emotion? It was no better in the
old house on the wall; he spent the night tramping up and down.
Just before daybreak he slipped out with a knapsack, taking the road
towards Meran.
He had not quite passed through Gries when he overtook a man walking in
the middle of the road and leaving a trail of cigar smoke behind him.
"Ah! my friend," the smoker said, "you walk early; are you going my way?"
It was Count Sarelli. The raw light had imparted a grey tinge to his
pale face, the growth of his beard showed black already beneath the skin;
his thumbs were hooked in the pockets of a closely buttoned coat, he
gesticulated with his fingers.
"You are making a journey?" he said, nodding at the knapsack. "You are
early--I am late; our friend has admirable kummel--I have drunk too much.
You have not been to bed, I think? If there is no sleep in one's bed it
is no good going to look for it. You find that? It is better to drink
kummel...! Pardon! You are doing the right thing: get away! Get away
as fast as possible! Don't wait, and let it catch you!"
Harz stared at him amazed.
"Pardon!" Sarelli said again, raising his hat, "that girl--the white
girl--I saw. You do well to get away!" he swayed a little as he walked.
"That old fellow--what is his name-Trrreffr-ry! What ideas of honour!"
He mumbled: "Honour is an abstraction! If a man is not true to an
abstraction, he is a low type; but wait a minute!"
He put his hand to his side as though in pain.
The hedges were brightening with a faint pinky glow; there was no sound
on the long, deserted road, but that of their footsteps; suddenly a bird
commenced to chirp, another answered--the world seemed full of these
little voices.
Sarelli stopped.
"That white girl," he said, speaking with rapidity. "Yes! You do well!
get away! Don't let it catch you! I waited, it caught me--what
happened? Everything horrible--and now--kummel!" Laughing a thick
laugh, he gave a twirl to his moustache, and swaggered on.
"I was a fine fellow--nothing too big for Mario Sarelli; the regiment
looked to me. Then she came--with her eyes and her white dress, always
white, like this one; the little mole on her chin, her hands for ever
moving--their touch as warm as sunbeams. Then, no longer Sarelli this,
and that! The little house close to the ramparts! Two arms, two eyes,
and nothing here," he tapped his breast, "but flames that made ashes
quickly--in her, like this ash--!" he flicked the white flake off his
cigar. "It's droll! You agree, hein? Some day I shall go back and kill
her. In the meantime--kummel!"
He stopped at a house close to the road, and stood still, his teeth bared
in a grin.
"But I bore you," he said. His cigar, flung down, sputtered forth its
sparks on the road in front of Harz. "I live here--good-morning! You are
a man for work--your honour is your Art! I know, and you are young! The
man who loves flesh better than his honour is a low type--I am a low
type. I! Mario Sarelli, a low type! I love flesh better than my
honour!"
He remained swaying at the gate with the grin fixed on his face; then
staggered up the steps, and banged the door. But before Harz had walked
on, he again appeared, beckoning, in the doorway. Obeying an impulse,
Harz went in.
"We will make a night of it," said Sarelli; "wine, brandy, kummel? I am
virtuous--kummel it must be for me!"
He sat down at a piano, and began to touch the keys. Harz poured out
some wine. Sarelli nodded.
"You begin with that? Allegro--piu--presto!
"Wine--brandy--kummel!" he quickened the time of the tune: "it is not too
long a passage, and this"--he took his hands off the keys--"comes after."
Harz smiled.
"Some men do not kill themselves," he said.
Sarelli, who was bending and swaying to the music of a tarantella, broke
off, and letting his eyes rest on the painter, began playing Schumann's
Kinderscenen. Harz leaped to his feet.
"Stop that!" he cried.
"It pricks you?" said Sarelli suavely; "what do you think of this?" he
played again, crouching over the piano, and making the notes sound like
the crying of a wounded animal.
"For me!" he said, swinging round, and rising.
"Your health! And so you don't believe in suicide, but in murder? The
custom is the other way; but you don't believe in customs? Customs are
only for Society?" He drank a glass of kummel. "You do not love
Society?"
Harz looked at him intently; he did not want to quarrel.
"I am not too fond of other people's thoughts," he said at last; "I
prefer to think my own.
"And is Society never right? That poor Society!"
"Society! What is Society--a few men in good coats? What has it done
for me?"
Sarelli bit the end off a cigar.
"Ah!" he said; "now we are coming to it. It is good to be an artist, a
fine bantam of an artist; where other men have their dis-ci-pline, he has
his, what shall we say--his mound of roses?"
The painter started to his feet.
"Yes," said Sarelli, with a hiccough, "you are a fine fellow!"
"And you are drunk!" cried Harz.
"A little drunk--not much, not enough to matter!"
Harz broke into laughter. It was crazy to stay there listening to this
mad fellow. What had brought him in? He moved towards the door.
"Ah!" said Sarelli, "but it is no good going to bed--let us talk. I have
a lot to say--it is pleasant to talk to anarchists at times."
Full daylight was already coming through the chinks of the shutters.
"You are all anarchists, you painters, you writing fellows. You live by
playing ball with facts. Images--nothing solid--hein? You're all for
new things too, to tickle your nerves. No discipline! True anarchists,
every one of you!"
Harz poured out another glass of wine and drank it off. The man's
feverish excitement was catching.
"Only fools," he replied, "take things for granted. As for discipline,
what do you aristocrats, or bourgeois know of discipline? Have you ever
been hungry? Have you ever had your soul down on its back?"
"Soul on its back? That is good!"
"A man's no use," cried Harz, "if he's always thinking of what others
think; he must stand on his own legs."
"He must not then consider other people?"
"Not from cowardice anyway."
Sarelli drank.
"What would you do," he said, striking his chest, "if you had a
devil-here? Would you go to bed?"
A sort of pity seized on Harz. He wanted to say something that would be
consoling but could find no words; and suddenly he felt disgusted. What
link was there between him and this man; between his love and this man's
love?
"Harz!" muttered Sarelli; "Harz means 'tar,' hein? Your family is not an
old one?"
Harz glared, and said: "My father is a peasant."
Sarelli lifted the kummel bottle and emptied it into his glass, with a
steady hand.
"You're honest--and we both have devils. I forgot; I brought you in to
see a picture!"
He threw wide the shutters; the windows were already open, and a rush of
air came in.
"Ah!" he said, sniffing, "smells of the earth, nicht wahr, Herr Artist?
You should know--it belongs to your father.... Come, here's my picture;
a Correggio! What do you think of it?"
"It is a copy."
"You think?"
"I know."
"Then you have given me the lie, Signor," and drawing out his
handkerchief Sarelli flicked it in the painter's face.
Harz turned white.
"Duelling is a good custom!" said Sarelli. "I shall have the honour to
teach you just this one, unless you are afraid. Here are pistols--this
room is twenty feet across at least, twenty feet is no bad distance."
And pulling out a drawer he took two pistols from a case, and put them on
the table.
"The light is good--but perhaps you are afraid."
"Give me one!" shouted the infuriated painter; "and go to the devil for a
fool"
"One moment!" Sarelli murmured: "I will load them, they are more useful
loaded."
Harz leaned out of the window; his head was in a whirl. 'What on earth
is happening?' he thought. 'He's mad--or I am! Confound him! I'm not
going to be killed!' He turned and went towards the table. Sarelli's
head was sunk on his arms, he was asleep. Harz methodically took up the
pistols, and put them back into the drawer. A sound made him turn his
head; there stood a tall, strong young woman in a loose gown caught
together on her chest. Her grey eyes glanced from the painter to the
bottles, from the bottles to the pistol-case. A simple reasoning, which
struck Harz as comic.
"It is often like this," she said in the country patois; "der Herr must
not be frightened."
Lifting the motionless Sarelli as if he were a baby, she laid him on a
couch.
"Ah!" she said, sitting down and resting her elbow on the table; "he will
not wake!"
Harz bowed to her; her patient figure, in spite of its youth and
strength, seemed to him pathetic. Taking up his knapsack, he went out.
The smoke of cottages rose straight; wisps of mist were wandering about
the valley, and the songs of birds dropping like blessings. All over the
grass the spiders had spun a sea of threads that bent and quivered to the
pressure of the air, like fairy tight-ropes.
All that day he tramped.
Blacksmiths, tall stout men with knotted muscles, sleepy eyes, and great
fair beards, came out of their forges to stretch and wipe their brows,
and stare at him.
Teams of white oxen, waiting to be harnessed, lashed their tails against
their flanks, moving their heads slowly from side to side in the heat.
Old women at chalet doors blinked and knitted.
The white houses, with gaping caves of storage under the roofs, the red
church spire, the clinking of hammers in the forges, the slow stamping of
oxen-all spoke of sleepy toil, without ideas or ambition. Harz knew it
all too well; like the earth's odour, it belonged to him, as Sarelli had
said.
Towards sunset coming to a copse of larches, he sat down to rest. It was
very still, but for the tinkle of cowbells, and, from somewhere in the
distance, the sound of dropping logs.
Two barefooted little boys came from the wood, marching earnestly along,
and looking at Harz as if he were a monster. Once past him, they began
to run.
'At their age,' he thought, 'I should have done the same.' A hundred
memories rushed into his mind.
He looked down at the village straggling below--white houses with russet
tiles and crowns of smoke, vineyards where the young leaves were
beginning to unfold, the red-capped spire, a thread of bubbling stream,
an old stone cross. He had been fourteen years struggling up from all
this; and now just as he had breathing space, and the time to give
himself wholly to his work--this weakness was upon him! Better, a
thousand times, to give her up!
In a house or two lights began to wink; the scent of wood smoke reached
him, the distant chimes of bells, the burring of a stream.
IX
Next day his one thought was to get back to work. He arrived at the
studio in the afternoon, and, laying in provisions, barricaded the lower
door. For three days he did not go out; on the fourth day he went to
Villa Rubein....
Schloss Runkelstein--grey, blind, strengthless--still keeps the valley.
The windows which once, like eyes, watched men and horses creeping
through the snow, braved the splutter of guns and the gleam of torches,
are now holes for the birds to nest in. Tangled creepers have spread to
the very summits of the walls. In the keep, instead of grim men in
armour, there is a wooden board recording the history of the castle and
instructing visitors on the subject of refreshments. Only at night, when
the cold moon blanches everything, the castle stands like the grim ghost
of its old self, high above the river.
After a long morning's sitting the girls had started forth with Harz and
Dawney to spend the afternoon at the ruin; Miss Naylor, kept at home by
headache, watched them depart with words of caution against sunstroke,
stinging nettles, and strange dogs.
Since the painter's return Christian and he had hardly spoken to each
other. Below the battlement on which they sat, in a railed gallery with
little tables, Dawney and Greta were playing dominoes, two soldiers
drinking beer, and at the top of a flight of stairs the Custodian's wife
sewing at a garment. Christian said suddenly: "I thought we were
friends."
"Well, Fraulein Christian, aren't we?"
"You went away without a word; friends don't do that."
Harz bit his lips.
"I don't think you care," she went on with a sort of desperate haste,
"whether you hurt people or not. You have been here all this time
without even going to see your father and mother."
"Do you think they would want to see me?"
Christian looked up.
"It's all been so soft for you," he said bitterly; "you don't
understand."
He turned his head away, and then burst out: "I'm proud to come straight
from the soil--I wouldn't have it otherwise; but they are of 'the
people,' everything is narrow with them--they only understand what they
can see and touch."
"I'm sorry I spoke like that," said Christian softly; "you've never told
me about yourself."
There was something just a little cruel in the way the painter looked at
her, then seeming to feel compunction, he said quickly: "I always
hated--the peasant life--I wanted to get away into the world; I had a
feeling in here--I wanted--I don't know what I wanted! I did run away at
last to a house-painter at Meran. The priest wrote me a letter from my
father--they threw me off; that's all."
Christian's eyes were very bright, her lips moved, like the lips of a
child listening to a story.
"Go on," she said.
"I stayed at Meran two years, till I'd learnt all I could there, then a
brother of my mother's helped me to get to Vienna; I was lucky enough to
find work with a man who used to decorate churches. We went about the
country together. Once when he was ill I painted the roof of a church
entirely by myself; I lay on my back on the scaffold boards all day for a
week--I was proud of that roof." He paused.
"When did you begin painting pictures?"
"A friend asked me why I didn't try for the Academie. That started me
going to the night schools; I worked every minute--I had to get my living
as well, of course, so I worked at night.
"Then when the examination came, I thought I could do nothing--it was
just as if I had never had a brush or pencil in my hand. But the second
day a professor in passing me said, 'Good! Quite good!' That gave me
courage. I was sure I had failed though; but I was second out of sixty."
Christian nodded.
"To work in the schools after that I had to give up my business, of
course. There was only one teacher who ever taught me anything; the
others all seemed fools. This man would come and rub out what you'd done
with his sleeve. I used to cry with rage--but I told him I could only
learn from him, and he was so astonished that he got me into his class."
"But how did you live without money?" asked Christian.
His face burned with a dark flush. "I don't know how I lived; you must
have been through these things to know, you would never understand."
"But I want to understand, please."
"What do you want me to tell you? How I went twice a week to eat free
dinners! How I took charity! How I was hungry! There was a rich cousin
of my mother's--I used to go to him. I didn't like it. But if you're
starving in the winter"
Christian put out her hand.
"I used to borrow apronsful of coals from other students who were as
poor--but I never went to the rich students."
The flush had died out of his face.
"That sort of thing makes you hate the world! You work till you stagger;
you're cold and hungry; you see rich people in their carriages, wrapped
in furs, and all the time you want to do something great. You pray for a
chance, any chance; nothing comes to the poor! It makes you hate the
world."
Christian's eyes filled with tears. He went on:
"But I wasn't the only one in that condition; we used to meet. Garin, a
Russian with a brown beard and patches of cheek showing through, and
yellow teeth, who always looked hungry. Paunitz, who came from sympathy!
He had fat cheeks and little eyes, and a big gold chain--the swine! And
little Misek. It was in his room we met, with the paper peeling off the
walls, and two doors with cracks in them, so that there was always a
draught. We used to sit on his bed, and pull the dirty blankets over us
for warmth; and smoke--tobacco was the last thing we ever went without.
Over the bed was a Virgin and Child--Misek was a very devout Catholic;
but one day when he had had no dinner and a dealer had kept his picture
without paying him, he took the image and threw it on the floor before
our eyes; it broke, and he trampled on the bits. Lendorf was another, a
heavy fellow who was always puffing out his white cheeks and smiting
himself, and saying: 'Cursed society!' And Schonborn, an aristocrat who
had quarrelled with his family. He was the poorest of us all; but only
he and I would ever have dared to do anything--they all knew that!"
Christian listened with awe. "Do you mean?" she said, "do you mean, that
you--?"
"You see! you're afraid of me at once. It's impossible even for you to
understand. It only makes you afraid. A hungry man living on charity,
sick with rage and shame, is a wolf even to you!"
Christian looked straight into his eyes.
"That's not true. If I can't understand, I can feel. Would you be the
same now if it were to come again?"
"Yes, it drives me mad even now to think of people fatted with
prosperity, sneering and holding up their hands at poor devils who have
suffered ten times more than the most those soft animals could bear. I'm
older; I've lived--I know things can't be put right by violence--nothing
will put things right, but that doesn't stop my feeling."
"Did you do anything? You must tell me all now."
"We talked--we were always talking."
"No, tell me everything!"
Unconsciously she claimed, and he seemed unconsciously to admit her right
to this knowledge.
"There's not much to tell. One day we began talking in low voices
--Garin began it; he had been in some affair in Russia. We took an oath;
after that we never raised our voices. We had a plan. It was all new to
me, and I hated the whole thing--but I was always hungry, or sick from
taking charity, and I would have done anything. They knew that; they
used to look at me and Schonborn; we knew that no one else had any
courage. He and I were great friends, but we never talked of that; we
tried to keep our minds away from the thought of it. If we had a good
day and were not so hungry, it seemed unnatural; but when the day had not
been good--then it seemed natural enough. I wasn't afraid, but I used to
wake up in the night; I hated the oath we had taken, I hated every one of
those fellows; the thing was not what I was made for, it wasn't my work,
it wasn't my nature, it was forced on me--I hated it, but sometimes I was
like a madman."
"Yes, yes," she murmured.
"All this time I was working at the Academie, and learning all I
could.... One evening that we met, Paunitz was not there. Misek was
telling us how the thing had been arranged. Schonborn and I looked at
each other--it was warm--perhaps we were not hungry--it was springtime,
too, and in the Spring it's different. There is something."
Christian nodded.
"While we were talking there came a knock at the door. Lendorf put his
eye to the keyhole, and made a sign. The police were there. Nobody said
anything, but Misek crawled under the bed; we all followed; and the
knocking grew louder and louder. In the wall at the back of the bed was
a little door into an empty cellar. We crept through. There was a
trap-door behind some cases, where they used to roll barrels in. We
crawled through that into the back street. We went different ways."
He paused, and Christian gasped.
"I thought I would get my money, but there was a policeman before my
door. They had us finely. It was Paunitz; if I met him even now I
should wring his neck. I swore I wouldn't be caught, but I had no idea
where to go. Then I thought of a little Italian barber who used to shave
me when I had money for a shave; I knew he would help. He belonged to
some Italian Society; he often talked to me, under his breath, of course.
I went to him. He was shaving himself before going to a ball. I told
him what had happened; it was funny to see him put his back against the
door. He was very frightened, understanding this sort of thing better
than I did--for I was only twenty then. He shaved my head and moustache
and put me on a fair wig. Then he brought me macaroni, and some meat, to
eat. He gave me a big fair moustache, and a cap, and hid the moustache
in the lining. He brought me a cloak of his own, and four gulden. All
the time he was extremely frightened, and kept listening, and saying:
'Eat!'
"When I had done, he just said: 'Go away, I refuse to know anything more
of you.'
"I thanked him and went out. I walked about all that night; for I
couldn't think of anything to do or anywhere to go. In the morning I
slept on a seat in one of the squares. Then I thought I would go to the
Gallerien; and I spent the whole day looking at the pictures. When the
Galleries were shut I was very tired, so I went into a cafe, and had some
beer. When I came out I sat on the same seat in the Square. I meant to
wait till dark and then walk out of the city and take the train at some
little station, but while I was sitting there I went to sleep. A
policeman woke me. He had my wig in his hand.
"'Why do you wear a wig?' he said.
"I answered: 'Because I am bald.'
"'No,' he said, 'you're not bald, you've been shaved. I can feel the
hair coming.'
"He put his finger on my head. I felt reckless and laughed.
"'Ah!' he said, 'you'll come with me and explain all this; your nose and
eyes are looked for.'
"I went with him quietly to the police-station...."
Harz seemed carried away by his story. His quick dark face worked, his
steel-grey eyes stared as though he were again passing through all these
long-past emotions.
The hot sun struck down; Christian drew herself together, sitting with
her hands clasped round her knees.
X
"I didn't care by then what came of it. I didn't even think what I was
going to say. He led me down a passage to a room with bars across the
windows and long seats, and maps on the walls. We sat and waited. He
kept his eye on me all the time; and I saw no hope. Presently the
Inspector came. 'Bring him in here,' he said; I remember feeling I could
kill him for ordering me about! We went into the next room. It had a
large clock, a writing-table, and a window, without bars, looking on a
courtyard. Long policemen's coats and caps were hanging from some pegs.
The Inspector told me to take off my cap. I took it off, wig and all. He
asked me who I was, but I refused to answer. Just then there was a loud
sound of voices in the room we had come from. The Inspector told the
policeman to look after me, and went to see what it was. I could hear
him talking. He called out: 'Come here, Becker!' I stood very quiet,
and Becker went towards the door. I heard the Inspector say: 'Go and
find Schwartz, I will see after this fellow.' The policeman went, and
the Inspector stood with his back to me in the half-open door, and began
again to talk to the man in the other room. Once or twice he looked
round at me, but I stood quiet all the time. They began to disagree, and
their voices got angry. The Inspector moved a little into the other
room. 'Now!' I thought, and slipped off my cloak. I hooked off a
policeman's coat and cap, and put them on. My heart beat till I felt
sick. I went on tiptoe to the window. There was no one outside, but at
the entrance a man was holding some horses. I opened the window a little
and held my breath. I heard the Inspector say: 'I will report you for
impertinence!' and slipped through the window. The coat came down nearly
to my heels, and the cap over my eyes. I walked up to the man with the
horses, and said: 'Good-evening.' One of the horses had begun to kick,
and he only grunted at me. I got into a passing tram; it was five
minutes to the West Bahnhof; I got out there. There was a train starting;
they were shouting 'Einsteigen!' I ran. The collector tried to stop me.
I shouted: 'Business--important!' He let me by. I jumped into a
carriage. The train started."
He paused, and Christian heaved a sigh.
Harz went on, twisting a twig of ivy in his hands: "There was another man
in the carriage reading a paper. Presently I said to him, 'Where do we
stop first?' 'St. Polten.' Then I knew it was the Munich express--St.
Polten, Amstetten, Linz, and Salzburg--four stops before the frontier.
The man put down his paper and looked at me; he had a big fair moustache
and rather shabby clothes. His looking at me disturbed me, for I thought
every minute he would say: 'You're no policeman!' And suddenly it came
into my mind that if they looked for me in this train, it would be as a
policeman!--they would know, of course, at the station that a policeman
had run past at the last minute. I wanted to get rid of the coat and cap,
but the man was there, and I didn't like to move out of the carriage for
other people to notice. So I sat on. We came to St. Polten at last.
The man in my carriage took his bag, got out, and left his paper on the
seat. We started again; I breathed at last, and as soon as I could took
the cap and coat and threw them out into the darkness. I thought: 'I
shall get across the frontier now.' I took my own cap out and found the
moustache Luigi gave me; rubbed my clothes as clean as possible; stuck on
the moustache, and with some little ends of chalk in my pocket made my
eyebrows light; then drew some lines in my face to make it older, and
pulled my cap well down above my wig. I did it pretty well--I was quite
like the man who had got out. I sat in his corner, took up his
newspaper, and waited for Amstetten. It seemed a tremendous time before
we got there. From behind my paper I could see five or six policemen on
the platform, one quite close. He opened the door, looked at me, and
walked through the carriage into the corridor. I took some tobacco and
rolled up a cigarette, but it shook, Harz lifted the ivy twig, like this.
In a minute the conductor and two more policemen came. 'He was here,'
said the conductor, 'with this gentleman.' One of them looked at me, and
asked: 'Have you seen a policeman travelling on this train?' 'Yes,' I
said. 'Where?' 'He got out at St. Polten.' The policeman asked the
conductor: 'Did you see him get out there?' The conductor shook his
head. I said: 'He got out as the train was moving.' 'Ah!' said the
policeman, 'what was he like?' 'Rather short, and no moustache. Why?'
'Did you notice anything unusual?' 'No,' I said, 'only that he wore
coloured trousers. What's the matter?' One policeman said to the other:
'That's our man! Send a telegram to St. Polten; he has more than an
hour's start.' He asked me where I was going. I told him: 'Linz.'
'Ah!' he said, 'you'll have to give evidence; your name and address
please?' 'Josef Reinhardt, 17 Donau Strasse.' He wrote it down. The
conductor said: 'We are late, can we start?' They shut the door. I
heard them say to the conductor: 'Search again at Linz, and report to the
Inspector there.' They hurried on to the platform, and we started. At
first I thought I would get out as soon as the train had left the
station. Then, that I should be too far from the frontier; better to go
on to Linz and take my chance there. I sat still and tried not to think.
"After a long time, we began to run more slowly. I put my head out and
could see in the distance a ring of lights hanging in the blackness. I
loosened the carriage door and waited for the train to run slower still;
I didn't mean to go into Linz like a rat into a trap. At last I could
wait no longer; I opened the door, jumped and fell into some bushes. I
was not much hurt, but bruised, and the breath knocked out of me. As
soon as I could, I crawled out. It was very dark. I felt heavy and
sore, and for some time went stumbling in and out amongst trees.
Presently I came to a clear space; on one side I could see the town's
shape drawn in lighted lamps, and on the other a dark mass, which I think
was forest; in the distance too was a thin chain of lights. I thought:
'They must be the lights of a bridge.' Just then the moon came out, and
I could see the river shining below. It was cold and damp, and I walked
quickly. At last I came out on a road, past houses and barking dogs,
down to the river bank; there I sat against a shed and went to sleep. I
woke very stiff. It was darker than before; the moon was gone. I could
just see the river. I stumbled on, to get through the town before dawn.
It was all black shapes-houses and sheds, and the smell of the river, the
smell of rotting hay, apples, tar, mud, fish; and here and there on a
wharf a lantern. I stumbled over casks and ropes and boxes; I saw I
should never get clear--the dawn had begun already on the other side.
Some men came from a house behind me. I bent, and crept behind some
barrels. They passed along the wharf; they seemed to drop into the
river. I heard one of them say: 'Passau before night.' I stood up and
saw they had walked on board a steamer which was lying head up-stream,
with some barges in tow. There was a plank laid to the steamer, and a
lantern at the other end. I could hear the fellows moving below deck,
getting up steam. I ran across the plank and crept to the end of the
steamer. I meant to go with them to Passau! The rope which towed the
barges was nearly taut; and I knew if I could get on to the barges I
should be safe. I climbed down on this rope and crawled along. I was
desperate, I knew they'd soon be coming up, and it was getting light. I
thought I should fall into the water several times, but I got to the
barge at last. It was laden with straw. There was nobody on board. I
was hungry and thirsty--I looked for something to eat; there was nothing
but the ashes of a fire and a man's coat. I crept into the straw. Soon
a boat brought men, one for each barge, and there were sounds of steam.
As soon as we began moving through the water, I fell asleep. When I woke
we were creeping through a heavy mist. I made a little hole in the straw
and saw the bargeman. He was sitting by a fire at the barge's edge, so
that the sparks and smoke blew away over the water. He ate and drank with
both hands, and funny enough he looked in the mist, like a big bird
flapping its wings; there was a good smell of coffee, and I sneezed. How
the fellow started! But presently he took a pitchfork and prodded the
straw. Then I stood up. I couldn't help laughing, he was so
surprised--a huge, dark man, with a great black beard. I pointed to the
fire and said 'Give me some, brother!' He pulled me out of the straw; I
was so stiff, I couldn't move. I sat by the fire, and ate black bread
and turnips, and drank coffee; while he stood by, watching me and
muttering. I couldn't understand him well--he spoke a dialect from
Hungary. He asked me: How I got there--who I was--where I was from? I
looked up in his face, and he looked down at me, sucking his pipe. He
was a big man, he lived alone on the river, and I was tired of telling
lies, so I told him the whole thing. When I had done he just grunted. I
can see him now standing over me, with the mist hanging in his beard, and
his great naked arms. He drew me some water, and I washed and showed him
my wig and moustache, and threw them overboard. All that day we lay out
on the barge in the mist, with our feet to the fire, smoking; now and
then he would spit into the ashes and mutter into his beard. I shall
never forget that day. The steamer was like a monster with fiery
nostrils, and the other barges were dumb creatures with eyes, where the
fires were; we couldn't see the bank, but now and then a bluff and high
trees, or a castle, showed in the mist. If I had only had paint and
canvas that day!" He sighed.
"It was early Spring, and the river was in flood; they were going to
Regensburg to unload there, take fresh cargo, and back to Linz. As soon
as the mist began to clear, the bargeman hid me in the straw. At Passau
was the frontier; they lay there for the night, but nothing happened, and
I slept in the straw. The next day I lay out on the barge deck; there
was no mist, but I was free--the sun shone gold on the straw and the
green sacking; the water seemed to dance, and I laughed--I laughed all
the time, and the barge man laughed with me. A fine fellow he was! At
Regensburg I helped them to unload; for more than a week we worked; they
nicknamed me baldhead, and when it was all over I gave the money I earned
for the unloading to the big bargeman. We kissed each other at parting.
I had still three of the gulden that Luigi gave me, and I went to a
house-painter and got work with him. For six months I stayed there to
save money; then I wrote to my mother's cousin in Vienna, and told him I
was going to London. He gave me an introduction to some friends there. I
went to Hamburg, and from there to London in a cargo steamer, and I've
never been back till now."
XI
After a minute's silence Christian said in a startled voice: "They could
arrest you then!"
Harz laughed.
"If they knew; but it's seven years ago."
"Why did you come here, when it's so dangerous?"
"I had been working too hard, I wanted to see my country--after seven
years, and when it's forbidden! But I'm ready to go back now." He
looked down at her, frowning.
"Had you a hard time in London, too?"
"Harder, at first--I couldn't speak the language. In my profession it's
hard work to get recognised, it's hard work to make a living. There are
too many whose interest it is to keep you down--I shan't forget them."
"But every one is not like that?"
"No; there are fine fellows, too. I shan't forget them either. I can
sell my pictures now; I'm no longer weak, and I promise you I shan't
forget. If in the future I have power, and I shall have power--I shan't
forget."
A shower of fine gravel came rattling on the wall. Dawney was standing
below them with an amused expression on his upturned face.
"Are you going to stay there all night?" he asked. "Greta and I have
bored each other."
"We're coming," called Christian hastily.
On the way back neither spoke a word, but when they reached the Villa,
Harz took her hand, and said: "Fraulein Christian, I can't do any more
with your picture. I shan't touch it again after this."
She made no answer, but they looked at each other, and both seemed to
ask, to entreat, something more; then her eyes fell. He dropped her
hand, and saying, "Good-night," ran after Dawney.
In the corridor, Dominique, carrying a dish of fruit, met the sisters; he
informed them that Miss Naylor had retired to bed; that Herr Paul would
not be home to dinner; his master was dining in his room; dinner would be
served for Mrs. Decie and the two young ladies in a quarter of an hour:
"And the fish is good to-night; little trouts! try them, Signorina!" He
moved on quickly, softly, like a cat, the tails of his dress-coat
flapping, and the heels of his white socks gleaming.
Christian ran upstairs. She flew about her room, feeling that if she
once stood still it would all crystallise in hard painful thought, which
motion alone kept away. She washed, changed her dress and shoes, and ran
down to her uncle's room. Mr. Treffry had just finished dinner, pushed
the little table back, and was sitting in his chair, with his glasses on
his nose, reading the Tines. Christian touched his forehead with her
lips.
"Glad to see you, Chris. Your stepfather's out to dinner, and I can't
stand your aunt when she's in one of her talking moods--bit of a humbug,
Chris, between ourselves; eh, isn't she?" His eyes twinkled.
Christian smiled. There was a curious happy restlessness in her that
would not let her keep still.
"Picture finished?" Mr. Treffry asked suddenly, taking up the paper with
a crackle. "Don't go and fall in love with the painter, Chris."
Christian was still enough now.
'Why not?' she thought. 'What should you know about him? Isn't he good
enough for me?' A gong sounded.
"There's your dinner," Mr. Treffry remarked.
With sudden contrition she bent and kissed him.
But when she had left the room Mr. Treffry put down the Times and stared
at the door, humming to himself, and thoughtfully fingering his chin.
Christian could not eat; she sat, indifferent to the hoverings of
Dominique, tormented by uneasy fear and longings. She answered Mrs.
Decie at random. Greta kept stealing looks at her from under her lashes.
"Decided characters are charming, don't you think so, Christian?" Mrs.
Decie said, thrusting her chin a little forward, and modelling the words.
"That is why I like Mr. Harz so much; such an immense advantage for a man
to know his mind. You have only to look at that young man to see that he
knows what he wants, and means to have it."
Christian pushed her plate away. Greta, flushing, said abruptly: "Doctor
Edmund is not a decided character, I think. This afternoon he said:
'Shall I have some beer-yes, I shall--no, I shall not'; then he ordered
the beer, so, when it came, he gave it to the soldiers."
Mrs. Decie turned her enigmatic smile from one girl to the other.
When dinner was over they went into her room. Greta stole at once to the
piano, where her long hair fell almost to the keys; silently she sat
there fingering the notes, smiling to herself, and looking at her aunt,
who was reading Pater's essays. Christian too had taken up a book, but
soon put it down--of several pages she had not understood a word. She
went into the garden and wandered about the lawn, clasping her hands
behind her head. The air was heavy; very distant thunder trembled among
the mountains, flashes of summer lightning played over the trees; and two
great moths were hovering about a rosebush. Christian watched their soft
uncertain rushes. Going to the little summer-house she flung herself
down on a seat, and pressed her hands to her heart.
There was a strange and sudden aching there. Was he going from her? If
so, what would be left? How little and how narrow seemed the outlook of
her life--with the world waiting for her, the world of beauty, effort,
self-sacrifice, fidelity! It was as though a flash of that summer
lightning had fled by, singeing her, taking from her all powers of
flight, burning off her wings, as off one of those pale hovering moths.
Tears started up, and trickled down her face. 'Blind!' she thought; 'how
could I have been so blind?'
Some one came down the path.
"Who's there?" she cried.
Harz stood in the doorway.
"Why did you come out?" he said. "Ah! why did you come out?" He caught
her hand; Christian tried to draw it from him, and to turn her eyes away,
but she could not. He flung himself down on his knees, and cried: "I
love you!"
In a rapture of soft terror Christian bent her forehead down to his hand.
"What are you doing?" she heard him say. "Is it possible that you love
me?" and she felt his kisses on her hair.
"My sweet! it will be so hard for you; you are so little, so little, and
so weak." Clasping his hand closer to her face, she murmured: "I don't
care."
There was a long, soft silence, that seemed to last for ever. Suddenly
she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.
"Whatever comes!" she whispered, and gathering her dress, escaped from
him into the darkness.
XII
Christian woke next morning with a smile. In her attitudes, her voice,
her eyes, there was a happy and sweet seriousness, as if she were hugging
some holy thought. After breakfast she took a book and sat in the open
window, whence she could see the poplar-trees guarding the entrance.
There was a breeze; the roses close by kept nodding to her; the cathedral
bells were in full chime; bees hummed above the lavender; and in the sky
soft clouds were floating like huge, white birds.
The sounds of Miss Naylor's staccato dictation travelled across the room,
and Greta's sighs as she took it down, one eye on her paper, one eye on
Scruff, who lay with a black ear flapped across his paw, and his tan
eyebrows quivering. He was in disgrace, for Dominique, coming on him
unawares, had seen him "say his prayers" before a pudding, and take the
pudding for reward.
Christian put her book down gently, and slipped through the window. Harz
was coming in from the road. "I am all yours!" she whispered. His
fingers closed on hers, and he went into the house.
She slipped back, took up her book, and waited. It seemed long before he
came out, but when he did he waved her back, and hurried on; she had a
glimpse of his face, white to the lips. Feeling faint and sick, she flew
to her stepfather's room.
Herr Paul was standing in a corner with the utterly disturbed appearance
of an easy-going man, visited by the unexpected. His fine shirt-front
was crumpled as if his breast had heaved too suddenly under strong
emotion; his smoked eyeglasses dangled down his back; his fingers were
embedded in his beard. He was fixing his eye on a spot in the floor as
though he expected it to explode and blow them to fragments. In another
corner Mrs. Decie, with half-closed eyes, was running her finger-tips
across her brow.
"What have you said to him?" cried Christian.
Herr Paul regarded her with glassy eyes.
"Mein Gott!" he said. "Your aunt and I!"
"What have you said to him?" repeated Christian.
"The impudence! An anarchist! A beggar!"
"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie.
"The outlaw! The fellow!" Herr Paul began to stride about the room.
Quivering from head to foot, Christian cried: "How dared you?" and ran
from the room, pushing aside Miss Naylor and Greta, who stood blanched
and frightened in the doorway.
Herr Paul stopped in his tramp, and, still with his eyes fixed on the
floor, growled:
"A fine thing-hein? What's coming? Will you please tell me? An
anarchist--a beggar!"
"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie.
"Paul! Paul! And you!" he pointed to Miss Naylor--"Two women with
eyes!--hein!"
"There is nothing to be gained by violence," Mrs. Decie murmured, passing
her handkerchief across her lips. Miss Naylor, whose thin brown cheeks
had flushed, advanced towards him.
"I hope you do not--" she said; "I am sure there was nothing that I could
have prevented--I should be glad if that were understood." And, turning
with some dignity, the little lady went away, closing the door behind
her.
"You hear!" Herr Paul said, violently sarcastic: "nothing she could have
prevented! Enfin! Will you please tell me what I am to do?"
"Men of the world"--whose philosophy is a creature of circumstance and
accepted things--find any deviation from the path of their convictions
dangerous, shocking, and an intolerable bore. Herr Paul had spent his
life laughing at convictions; the matter had but to touch him personally,
and the tap of laughter was turned off. That any one to whom he was the
lawful guardian should marry other than a well-groomed man, properly
endowed with goods, properly selected, was beyond expression horrid.
From his point of view he had great excuse for horror; and he was
naturally unable to judge whether he had excuse for horror from other
points of view. His amazement had in it a spice of the pathetic; he was
like a child in the presence of a thing that he absolutely could not
understand. The interview had left him with a sense of insecurity which
he felt to be particularly unfair.
The door was again opened, and Greta flew in, her cheeks flushed, her
hair floating behind her, and tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Papa!" she cried, "you have been cruel to Chris. The door is locked; I
can hear her crying--why have you been cruel?" Without waiting to be
answered, she flew out again.
Herr Paul seized his hair with both his hands: "Good! Very good! My own
child, please! What next then?"
Mrs. Decie rose from her chair languidly. "My head is very bad," she
said, shading her eyes and speaking in low tones: "It is no use making a
fuss--nothing can come of this--he has not a penny. Christian will have
nothing till you die, which will not be for a long time yet, if you can
but avoid an apoplectic fit!"
At these last words Herr Paul gave a start of real disgust. "Hum!" he
muttered; it was as if the world were bent on being brutal to him. Mrs.
Decie continued:
"If I know anything of this young man, he will not come here again, after
the words you have spoken. As for Christian--you had better talk to
Nicholas. I am going to lie down."
Herr Paul nervously fingered the shirt-collar round his stout, short
neck.
"Nicholas! Certainly--a good idea. Quelle diable d'afaire!"
'French!' thought Mrs. Decie; 'we shall soon have peace. Poor Christian!
I'm sorry! After all, these things are a matter of time and
opportunity.' This consoled her a good deal.
But for Christian the hours were a long nightmare of grief and shame,
fear and anger. Would he forgive? Would he be true to her? Or would he
go away without a word? Since yesterday it was as if she had stepped
into another world, and lost it again. In place of that new feeling,
intoxicating as wine, what was coming? What bitter; dreadful ending?
A rude entrance this into the life of facts, and primitive emotions!
She let Greta into her room after a time, for the child had begun
sobbing; but she would not talk, and sat hour after hour at the window
with the air fanning her face, and the pain in her eyes turned to the sky
and trees. After one or two attempts at consolation, Greta sank on the
floor, and remained there, humbly gazing at her sister in a silence only
broken when Christian cleared her throat of tears, and by the song of
birds in the garden. In the afternoon she slipped away and did not come
back again.
After his interview with Mr. Treffry, Herr Paul took a bath, perfumed
himself with precision, and caused it to be clearly understood that,
under circumstances such as these, a man's house was not suited for a pig
to live in. He shortly afterwards went out to the Kurbaus, and had not
returned by dinner-time.
Christian came down for dinner. There were crimson spots in her cheeks,
dark circles round her eyes; she behaved, however, as though nothing had
happened. Miss Naylor, affected by the kindness of her heart and the
shock her system had sustained, rolled a number of bread pills, looking
at each as it came, with an air of surprise, and concealing it with
difficulty. Mr. Treffry was coughing, and when he talked his voice
seemed to rumble even more than usual. Greta was dumb, trying to catch
Christian's eye; Mrs. Decie alone seemed at ease. After dinner Mr.
Treffry went off to his room, leaning heavily on Christian's shoulder. As
he sank into his chair, he said to her:
"Pull yourself together, my dear!" Christian did not answer him.
Outside his room Greta caught her by the sleeve.
"Look!" she whispered, thrusting a piece of paper into Christian's hand.
"It is to me from Dr. Edmund, but you must read it."
Christian opened the note, which ran as follows:
"MY PHILOSOPHER AND FRIEND,--I received your note, and went to our
friend's studio; he was not in, but half an hour ago I stumbled on him in
the Platz. He is not quite himself; has had a touch of the sun--nothing
serious: I took him to my hotel, where he is in bed. If he will stay
there he will be all right in a day or two. In any case he shall not
elude my clutches for the present.
"My warm respects to Mistress Christian.--Yours in friendship and
philosophy, "EDMUND DAWNEY."
Christian read and re-read this note, then turned to Greta.
"What did you say to Dr. Dawney?"
Greta took back the piece of paper, and replied: "I said:
"'DEAR DR. EDMUND,--We are anxious about Herr Harz. We think he is
perhaps not very well to-day. We (I and Christian) should like to know.
You can tell us. Please shall you? GRETA.'
"That is what I said."
Christian dropped her eyes. "What made you write?"
Greta gazed at her mournfully: "I thought--O Chris! come into the garden.
I am so hot, and it is so dull without you!"
Christian bent her head forward and rubbed her cheek against Greta's,
then without another word ran upstairs and locked herself into her room.
The child stood listening; hearing the key turn in the lock, she sank
down on the bottom step and took Scruff in her arms.
Half an hour later Miss Naylor, carrying a candle, found her there fast
asleep, with her head resting on the terrier's back, and tear stains on
her cheeks....
Mrs. Decie presently came out, also carrying a candle, and went to her
brother's room. She stood before his chair, with folded hands.
"Nicholas, what is to be done?"
Mr. Treffry was pouring whisky into a glass.
"Damn it, Con!" he answered; "how should I know?"
"There's something in Christian that makes interference dangerous. I
know very well that I've no influence with her at all."
"You're right there, Con," Mr. Treffry replied.
Mrs. Decie's pale eyes, fastened on his face, forced him to look up.
"I wish you would leave off drinking whisky and attend to me. Paul is an
element--"
"Paul," Mr. Treffry growled, "is an ass!"
"Paul," pursued Mrs. Decie, "is an element of danger in the situation;
any ill-timed opposition of his might drive her to I don't know what.
Christian is gentle, she is 'sympathetic' as they say; but thwart her,
and she is as obstinate as....
"You or I! Leave her alone!"
"I understand her character, but I confess that I am at a loss what to
do."
"Do nothing!" He drank again.
Mrs. Decie took up the candle.
"Men!" she said with a mysterious intonation; shrugging her shoulders,
she walked out.
Mr. Treffry put down his glass.
'Understand?' he thought; 'no, you don't, and I don't. Who understands a
young girl? Vapourings, dreams, moonshine I.... What does she see in
this painter fellow? I wonder!' He breathed heavily. 'By heavens! I
wouldn't have had this happen for a hundred thousand pounds!'
XIII
For many hours after Dawney had taken him to his hotel, Harz was
prostrate with stunning pains in the head and neck. He had been all day
without food, exposed to burning sun, suffering violent emotion. Movement
of any sort caused him such agony that he could only lie in stupor,
counting the spots dancing before, his eyes. Dawney did everything for
him, and Harz resented in a listless way the intent scrutiny of the
doctor's calm, black eyes.
Towards the end of the second day he was able to get up; Dawney found him
sitting on the bed in shirt and trousers.
"My son," he said, "you had better tell me what the trouble is--it will
do your stubborn carcase good."
"I must go back to work," said Harz.
"Work!" said Dawney deliberately: "you couldn't, if you tried."
"I must."
"My dear fellow, you couldn't tell one colour from another."
"I must be doing something; I can't sit here and think."
Dawney hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat: "You won't see the sun for
three days yet, if I can help it."
Harz got up.
"I'm going to my studio to-morrow," he said. "I promise not to go out. I
must be where I can see my work. If I can't paint, I can draw; I can
feel my brushes, move my things about. I shall go mad if I do nothing."
Dawney took his arm, and walked him up and down.
"I'll let you go," he said, "but give me a chance! It's as much to me to
put you straight as it is to you to paint a decent picture. Now go to
bed; I'll have a carriage for you to-morrow morning."
Harz sat down on the bed again, and for a long time stayed without
moving, his eyes fixed on the floor. The sight of him, so desperate and
miserable, hurt the young doctor.
"Can you get to bed by yourself?" he asked at last.
Harz nodded.
"Then, good-night, old chap!" and Dawney left the room.
He took his hat and turned towards the Villa. Between the poplars he
stopped to think. The farther trees were fret-worked black against the
lingering gold of the sunset; a huge moth, attracted by the tip of his
cigar, came fluttering in his face. The music of a concertina rose and
fell, like the sighing of some disillusioned spirit. Dawney stood for
several minutes staring at the house.
He was shown to Mrs. Decie's room. She was holding a magazine before her
eyes, and received him with as much relief as philosophy permitted.
"You are the very person I wanted to see," she said.
He noticed that the magazine she held was uncut.
"You are a young man," pursued Mrs. Decie, "but as my doctor I have a
right to your discretion."
Dawney smiled; the features of his broad, clean-shaven face looked
ridiculously small on such occasions, but his eyes retained their air of
calculation.
"That is so," he answered.
"It is about this unfortunate affair. I understand that Mr. Harz is with
you. I want you to use your influence to dissuade him from attempting to
see my niece."
"Influence!" said Dawney; "you know Harz!"
Mrs. Decie's voice hardened.
"Everybody," she said, "has his weak points. This young man is open to
approach from at least two quarters--his pride is one, his work an other.
I am seldom wrong in gauging character; these are his vital spots, and
they are of the essence of this matter. I'm sorry for him, of
course--but at his age, and living a man's life, these things--" Her
smile was extra pale. "I wish you could give me something for my head.
It's foolish to worry. Nerves of course! But I can't help it! You know
my opinion, Dr. Dawney. That young man will go far if he remains
unfettered; he will make a name. You will be doing him a great service
if you could show him the affair as it really is--a drag on him, and
quite unworthy of his pride! Do help me! You are just the man to do
it!"
Dawney threw up his head as if to shake off this impeachment; the curve
of his chin thus displayed was imposing in its fulness; altogether he was
imposing, having an air of capability.
She struck him, indeed, as really scared; it was as if her mask of smile
had become awry, and failed to cover her emotion; and he was puzzled,
thinking, 'I wouldn't have believed she had it in her....' "It's not an
easy business," he said; "I'll think it over."
"Thank you!" murmured Mrs. Decie. "You are most kind."
Passing the schoolroom, he looked in through the open door. Christian was
sitting there. The sight of her face shocked him, it was so white, so
resolutely dumb. A book lay on her knees; she was not reading, but
staring before her. He thought suddenly: 'Poor thing! If I don't say
something to her, I shall be a brute!'
"Miss Devorell," he said: "You can reckon on him."
Christian tried to speak, but her lips trembled so that nothing came
forth.
"Good-night," said Dawney, and walked out....
Three days later Harz was sitting in the window of his studio. It was
the first day he had found it possible to work, and now, tired out, he
stared through the dusk at the slowly lengthening shadows of the rafters.
A solitary mosquito hummed, and two house sparrows, who had built beneath
the roof, chirruped sleepily. Swallows darted by the window, dipping
their blue wings towards the quiet water; a hush had stolen over
everything. He fell asleep.
He woke, with a dim impression of some near presence. In the pale
glimmer from innumerable stars, the room was full of shadowy shapes. He
lit his lantern. The flame darted forth, bickered, then slowly lit up
the great room.
"Who's there?"
A rustling seemed to answer. He peered about, went to the doorway, and
drew the curtain. A woman's cloaked figure shrank against the wall. Her
face was buried in her hands; her arms, from which the cloak fell back,
were alone visible.
"Christian?"
She ran past him, and when he had put the lantern down, was standing at
the window. She turned quickly to him. "Take me away from here! Let me
come with you!"
"Do you mean it?"
"You said you wouldn't give me up!"
"You know what you are doing?"
She made a motion of assent.
"But you don't grasp what this means. Things to bear that you know
nothing of--hunger perhaps! Think, even hunger! And your people won't
forgive--you'll lose everything."
She shook her head.
"I must choose--it's one thing or the other. I can't give you up! I
should be afraid!"
"But, dear; how can you come with me? We can't be married here."
"I am giving my life to you."
"You are too good for me," said Harz. "The life you're going into--may
be dark, like that!" he pointed to the window.
A sound of footsteps broke the hush. They could see a figure on the path
below. It stopped, seemed to consider, vanished. They heard the sounds
of groping hands, of a creaking door, of uncertain feet on the stairs.
Harz seized her hand.
"Quick!" he whispered; "behind this canvas!"
Christian was trembling violently. She drew her hood across her face.
The heavy breathing and ejaculations of the visitor were now plainly
audible.
"He's there! Quick! Hide!"
She shook her head.
With a thrill at his heart, Harz kissed her, then walked towards the
entrance. The curtain was pulled aside.
It was Herr Paul, holding a cigar in one hand, his hat in the other, and
breathing hard.
"Pardon!" he said huskily, "your stairs are steep, and dark! mais en,
fin! nous voila! I have ventured to come for a talk." His glance fell
on the cloaked figure in the shadow.
"Pardon! A thousand pardons! I had no idea! I beg you to forgive this
indiscretion! I may take it you resign pretensions then? You have a
lady here--I have nothing more to say; I only beg a million pardons for
intruding. A thousand times forgive me! Good-night!"
He bowed and turned to go. Christian stepped forward, and let the hood
fall from her head.
"It's I!"
Herr Paul pirouetted.
"Good God!" he stammered, dropping cigar and hat. "Good God!"
The lantern flared suddenly, revealing his crimson, shaking cheeks.
"You came here, at night! You, the daughter of my wife!" His eyes
wandered with a dull glare round the room.
"Take care!" cried Harz: "If you say a word against her---"
The two men stared at each other's eyes. And without warning, the
lantern flickered and went out. Christian drew the cloak round her
again. Herr Paul's voice broke the silence; he had recovered his
self-possession.
"Ah! ah!" he said: "Darkness! Tant mieux! The right thing for what we
have to say. Since we do not esteem each other, it is well not to see
too much."
"Just so," said Harz.
Christian had come close to them. Her pale face and great shining eyes
could just be seen through the gloom.
Herr Paul waved his arm; the gesture was impressive, annihilating.
"This is a matter, I believe, between two men," he said, addressing Harz.
"Let us come to the point. I will do you the credit to suppose that you
have a marriage in view. You know, perhaps, that Miss Devorell has no
money till I die?"
"Yes."
"And I am passably young! You have money, then?"
"No."
"In that case, you would propose to live on air?"
"No, to work; it has been done before."
"It is calculated to increase hunger! You are prepared to take Miss
Devorell, a young lady accustomed to luxury, into places like--this!" he
peered about him, "into places that smell of paint, into the milieu of
'the people,' into the society of Bohemians--who knows? of anarchists,
perhaps?"
Harz clenched his hands: "I will answer no more questions."
"In that event, we reach the ultimatum," said Herr Paul. "Listen, Herr
Outlaw! If you have not left the country by noon to-morrow, you shall be
introduced to the police!"
Christian uttered a cry. For a minute in the gloom the only sound heard
was the short, hard breathing of the two men.
Suddenly Harz cried: "You coward, I defy you!"
"Coward!" Herr Paul repeated. "That is indeed the last word. Look to
yourself, my friend!"
Stooping and fumbling on the floor, he picked up his hat. Christian had
already vanished; the sound of her hurrying footsteps was distinctly
audible at the top of the dark stairs. Herr Paul stood still a minute.
"Look to yourself, my dear friend!" he said in a thick voice, groping for
the wall. Planting his hat askew on his head, he began slowly to descend
the stairs.
XV
Nicholas Treffry sat reading the paper in his room by the light of a lamp
with a green shade; on his sound foot the terrier Scruff was asleep and
snoring lightly--the dog habitually came down when Greta was in bed, and
remained till Mr. Treffry, always the latest member of the household,
retired to rest.
Through the long window a little river of light shone out on the veranda
tiles, and, flowing past, cut the garden in two.
There was the sound of hurried footsteps, a rustling of draperies;
Christian, running through the window, stood before him.
Mr. Treffry dropped his paper, such a fury of passion and alarm shone in
the girl's eyes.
"Chris! What is it?"
"Hateful!"
"Chris!"
"Oh! Uncle! He's insulted, threatened! And I love his little finger
more than all the, world!"
Her passionate voice trembled, her eyes were shining.
Mr. Treffry's profound discomfort found vent in the gruff words: "Sit
down!"
"I'll never speak to Father again! Oh! Uncle! I love him!"
Quiet in the extremity of his disturbance, Mr. Treffry leaned forward in
his chair, rested his big hands on its arms, and stared at her.
Chris! Here was a woman he did not know! His lips moved under the heavy
droop of his moustache. The girl's face had suddenly grown white. She
sank down on her knees, and laid her cheek against his hand. He felt it
wet; and a lump rose in his throat. Drawing his hand away, he stared at
it, and wiped it with his sleeve.
"Don't cry!" he said.
She seized it again and clung to it; that clutch seemed to fill him with
sudden rage.
"What's the matter? How the devil can I do anything if you don't tell
me?"
She looked up at him. The distress of the last days, the passion and
fear of the last hour, the tide of that new life of the spirit and the
flesh, stirring within her, flowed out in a stream of words.
When she had finished, there was so dead a silence that the fluttering of
a moth round the lamp could be heard plainly.
Mr. Treffry raised himself, crossed the room, and touched the bell. "Tell
the groom," he said to Dominique, "to put the horses to, and have 'em
round at once; bring my old boots; we drive all night...."
His bent figure looked huge, body and legs outlined by light, head and
shoulders towering into shadow. "He shall have a run for his money!" he
said. His eyes stared down sombrely at his niece. "It's more than he
deserves!--it's more than you deserve, Chris. Sit down there and write
to him; tell him to put himself entirely in my hands." He turned his
back on her, and went into his bedroom.
Christian rose, and sat down at the writing-table. A whisper startled
her. It came from Dominique, who was holding out a pair of boots.
"M'mselle Chris, what is this?--to run about all night?" But Christian
did not answer.
"M'mselle Chris, are you ill?" Then seeing her face, he slipped away
again.
She finished her letter and went out to the carriage. Mr. Treffry was
seated under the hood.
"Shan't want you," he called out to the groom, "Get up, Dominique."
Christian thrust her letter into his hand. "Give him that," she said,
clinging to his arm with sudden terror. "Oh! Uncle! do take care!"
"Chris, if I do this for you--" They looked wistfully at one another.
Then, shaking his head, Mr. Treffry gathered up the reins.
"Don't fret, my dear, don't fret! Whoa, mare!"
The carriage with a jerk plunged forward into darkness, curved with a
crunch of wheels, and vanished, swinging between the black treepillars at
the entrance....
Christian stood, straining to catch the failing sound of the hoofs.
Down the passage came a flutter of white garments; soft limbs were twined
about her, some ends of hair fell on her face.
"What is it, Chris? Where have you been? Where is Uncle Nic going?
Tell me!"
Christian tore herself away. "I don't know," she cried, "I know
nothing!"
Greta stroked her face. "Poor Chris!" she murmured. Her bare feet
gleamed, her hair shone gold against her nightdress. "Come to bed, poor
Chris!"
Christian laughed. "You little white moth! Feel how hot I am! You'll
burn your wings!"
Harz had lain down, fully dressed. He was no longer angry, but felt that
he would rather die than yield. Presently he heard footsteps coming up
the stairs.
"M'sieu!"
It was the voice of Dominique, whose face, illumined by a match, wore an
expression of ironical disgust.
"My master," he said, "makes you his compliments; he says there is no
time to waste. You are to please come and drive with him!"
"Your master is very kind. Tell him I'm in bed."
"Ah, M'sieu," said Dominique, grimacing, "I must not go back with such an
answer. If you would not come, I was to give you this."
Harz broke the seal and read Christian's letter.
"I will come," he said.
A clock was striking as they went out through the gate. From within the
dark cave of the phaeton hood Mr. Treffry said gruffly: "Come along,
sir!"
Harz flung his knapsack in, and followed.
His companion's figure swayed, the whiplash slid softly along the flank
of the off horse, and, as the carriage rattled forward, Mr. Treffry
called out, as if by afterthought: "Hallo, Dominique!" Dominque's voice,
shaken and ironical, answered from behind: "M'v'la, M'sieu!"
In the long street of silent houses, men sitting in the lighted cafes
turned with glasses at their lips to stare after the carriage. The
narrow river of the sky spread suddenly to a vast, limpid ocean tremulous
with stars. They had turned into the road for Italy.
Mr. Treffry took a pull at his horses. "Whoa, mare! Dogged does it!"
and the near horse, throwing up her head, whinnied; a fleck of foam
drifted into Harz's face.
The painter had come on impulse; because Christian had told him to, not
of his own free will. He was angry with himself, wounded in self-esteem,
for having allowed any one to render him this service. The smooth swift
movement through velvet blackness splashed on either hand with the flying
lamp-light; the strong sweet air blowing in his face-air that had kissed
the tops of mountains and stolen their spirit; the snort and snuffle of
the horses, and crisp rattling of their hoofs--all this soon roused in
him another feeling. He looked at Mr. Treffry's profile, with its tufted
chin; at the grey road adventuring in darkness; at the purple mass of
mountains piled above it. All seemed utterly unreal.
As if suddenly aware that he had a neighbour, Mr. Treffry turned his
head. "We shall do better than this presently," he said, "bit of a slope
coming. Haven't had 'em out for three days. Whoa-mare! Steady!"
"Why are you taking this trouble for me?" asked Harz.
"I'm an old chap, Mr. Harz, and an old chap may do a stupid thing once in
a while!"
"You are very good," said Harz, "but I want no favours."
Mr. Treffry stared at him.
"Just so," he said drily, "but you see there's my niece to be thought of.
Look here! We're not at the frontier yet, Mr. Harz, by forty miles; it's
long odds we don't get there--so, don't spoil sport!" He pointed to the
left.
Harz caught the glint of steel. They were already crossing the railway.
The sigh of the telegraph wires fluttered above them.
"Hear 'em," said Mr. Treffry, "but if we get away up the mountains, we'll
do yet!" They had begun to rise, the speed slackened. Mr. Treffry
rummaged out a flask.
"Not bad stuff, Mr. Harz--try it. You won't? Mother's milk! Fine
night, eh?" Below them the valley was lit by webs of milky mist like the
glimmer of dew on grass.
These two men sitting side by side--unlike in face, age, stature,
thought, and life--began to feel drawn towards each other, as if, in the
rolling of the wheels, the snorting of the horses, the huge dark space,
the huge uncertainty, they had found something they could enjoy in
common. The, steam from the horses' flanks and nostrils enveloped them
with an odour as of glue.
"You smoke, Mr. Harz?"
Harz took the proffered weed, and lighted it from the glowing tip of Mr.
Treffry's cigar, by light of which his head and hat looked like some
giant mushroom. Suddenly the wheels jolted on a rubble of loose stones;
the carriage was swung sideways. The scared horses, straining asunder,
leaped forward, and sped downwards, in the darkness.
Past rocks, trees, dwellings, past a lighted house that gleamed and
vanished. With a clink and clatter, a flirt of dust and pebbles, and the
side lamps throwing out a frisky orange blink, the carriage dashed down,
sinking and rising like a boat crossing billows. The world seemed to
rock and sway; to dance up, and be flung flat again. Only the stars stood
still.
Mr. Treffry, putting on the brake, muttered apologetically: "A little out
o'hand!"
Suddenly with a headlong dive, the carriage swayed as if it would fly in
pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself. Harz lifted
his voice in a shout of pure excitement. Mr. Treffry let out a short
shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail. But the hill was over and
the startled horses were cantering with a free, smooth motion. Mr.
Treffry and Harz looked at each other.
XVII
Mr. Treffry said with a sort of laugh: "Near go, eh? You drive? No?
That's a pity! Broken most of my bones at the game--nothing like it!"
Each felt a kind of admiration for the other that he had not felt before.
Presently Mr. Treffry began: "Look here, Mr. Harz, my niece is a slip of
a thing, with all a young girl's notions! What have you got to give her,
eh? Yourself? That's surely not enough; mind this--six months after
marriage we all turn out much the same--a selfish lot! Not to mention
this anarchist affair!
"You're not of her blood, nor of her way of life, nor anything--it's
taking chances--and--" his hand came down on the young man's knee, "I'm
fond of her, you see."
"If you were in my place," said Harz, "would you give her up?"
Mr. Treffry groaned. "Lord knows!"
"Men have made themselves before now. For those who don't believe in
failure, there's no such thing. Suppose she does suffer a little? Will
it do her any harm? Fair weather love is no good."
Mr. Treffry sighed.
"Brave words, sir! You'll pardon me if I'm too old to understand 'em
when they're used about my niece."
He pulled the horses up, and peered into the darkness. "We're going
through this bit quietly; if they lose track of us here so much the
better. Dominique! put out the lamps. Soho, my beauties!" The horses
paced forward at a walk the muffled beat of their hoofs in the dust
hardly broke the hush. Mr. Treffry pointed to the left: "It'll be
another thirty-five miles to the frontier."
They passed the whitewashed houses, and village church with its sentinel
cypress-trees. A frog was croaking in a runlet; there was a faint spicy
scent of lemons. But nothing stirred.
It was wood now on either side, the high pines, breathing their fragrance
out into the darkness, and, like ghosts amongst them, the silver stems of
birch-trees.
Mr. Treffry said gruffly: "You won't give her up? Her happiness means a
lot to me."
"To you!" said Harz: "to him! And I am nothing! Do you think I don't
care for her happiness? Is it a crime for me to love her?"
"Almost, Mr. Harz--considering...."
"Considering that I've no money! Always money!"
To this sneer Mr. Treffry made no answer, clucking to his horses.
"My niece was born and bred a lady," he said at last. "I ask you plainly
What position have you got to give her?"
"If she marries me," said Harz, "she comes into my world. You think that
I'm a common...."
Mr. Treffry shook his head: "Answer my question, young man."
But the painter did not answer it, and silence fell.
A light breeze had sprung up; the whispering in the trees, the rolling of
the wheels in this night progress, the pine-drugged air, sent Harz to
sleep. When he woke it was to the same tune, varied by Mr. Treffry's
uneasy snoring; the reins were hanging loose, and, peering out, he saw
Dominique shuffling along at the horses' heads. He joined him, and, one
on each side, they plodded up and up. A haze had begun to bathe the
trees, the stars burnt dim, the air was colder. Mr. Treffry woke
coughing. It was like some long nightmare, this interminable experience
of muffled sounds and shapes, of perpetual motion, conceived, and carried
out in darkness. But suddenly the day broke. Heralded by the snuffle of
the horses, light began glimmering over a chaos of lines and shadows,
pale as mother-o'-pearl. The stars faded, and in a smouldering zigzag
the dawn fled along the mountain tops, flinging out little isles of
cloud. From a lake, curled in a hollow like a patch of smoke, came the
cry of a water-bird. A cuckoo started a soft mocking; and close to the
carriage a lark flew up. Beasts and men alike stood still, drinking in
the air-sweet with snows and dew, and vibrating faintly with the running
of the water and the rustling of the leaves.
The night had played sad tricks with Mr. Nicholas Treffry; his hat was
grey with dust; his cheeks brownish-purple, there were heavy pouches
beneath his eyes, which stared painfully.
"We'll call a halt," he said, "and give the gees their grub, poor things.
Can you find some water, Mr. Harz? There's a rubber bucket in behind.
"Can't get about myself this morning; make that lazy fellow of mine stir
his stumps."
Harz saw that he had drawn off one of his boots, and stretched the foot
out on a cushion.
"You're not fit to go farther," he said; "you're ill."
"Ill!" replied Mr. Treffry; "not a bit of it!"
Harz looked at him, then catching up the bucket, made off in search of
water. When he came back the horses were feeding from an india-rubber
trough slung to the pole; they stretched their heads towards the bucket,
pushing aside each other's noses.
The flame in the east had died, but the tops of the larches were bathed
in a gentle radiance; and the peaks ahead were like amber. Everywhere
were threads of water, threads of snow, and little threads of dewy green,
glistening like gossamer.
Mr. Treffry called out: "Give me your arm, Mr. Harz; I'd like to shake
the reefs out of me. When one comes to stand over at the knees, it's no
such easy matter, eh?" He groaned as he put his foot down, and gripped
the young man's shoulder as in a vise. Presently he lowered himself on
to a stone.
"'All over now!' as Chris would say when she was little; nasty temper she
had too--kick and scream on the floor! Never lasted long though....
'Kiss her! take her up! show her the pictures!' Amazing fond of pictures
Chris was!" He looked dubiously at Harz; then took a long pull at his
flask. "What would the doctor say? Whisky at four in the morning! Well!
Thank the Lord Doctors aren't always with us." Sitting on the stone,
with one hand pressed against his side, and the other tilting up the
flask, he was grey from head to foot.
Harz had dropped on to another stone. He, too, was worn out by the
excitement and fatigue, coming so soon after his illness. His head was
whirling, and the next thing he remembered was a tree walking at him,
turning round, yellow from the roots up; everything seemed yellow, even
his own feet. Somebody opposite to him was jumping up and down, a grey
bear--with a hat--Mr. Treffry! He cried: "Ha-alloo!" And the figure
seemed to fall and disappear....
When Harz came to himself a hand was pouring liquor into his mouth, and a
wet cloth was muffled round his brows; a noise of humming and hoofs
seemed familiar. Mr. Treffry loomed up alongside, smoking a cigar; he
was muttering: "A low trick, Paul--bit of my mind!" Then, as if a
curtain had been snatched aside, the vision before Harz cleared again.
The carriage was winding between uneven, black-eaved houses, past
doorways from which goats and cows were coming out, with bells on their
necks. Black-eyed boys, and here and there a drowsy man with a long,
cherry-stemmed pipe between his teeth, stood aside to stare.
Mr. Treffry seemed to have taken a new lease of strength; like an angry
old dog, he stared from side to side. "My bone!" he seemed to say:
"let's see who's going to touch it!"
The last house vanished, glowing in the early sunshine, and the carriage
with its trail of dust became entombed once more in the gloom of tall
trees, along a road that cleft a wilderness of mossgrown rocks, and dewy
stems, through which the sun had not yet driven paths.
Dominique came round to them, bearing appearance of one who has seen
better days, and a pot of coffee brewed on a spirit lamp. Breakfast--he
said--was served!
The ears of the horses were twitching with fatigue. Mr. Treffry said
sadly: "If I can see this through, you can. Get on, my beauties!"
As soon as the sun struck through the trees, Mr. Treffry's strength ebbed
again. He seemed to suffer greatly; but did not complain. They had
reached the pass at last, and the unchecked sunlight was streaming down
with a blinding glare.
"Jump up!" Mr. Treffry cried out. "We'll make a finish of it!" and he
gave the reins a jerk. The horses flung up their heads, and the bleak
pass with its circling crown of jagged peaks soon slipped away.
Between the houses on the very top, they passed at a slow trot; and soon
began slanting down the other side. Mr. Treffry brought them to a halt
where a mule track joined the road.
"That's all I can do for you; you'd better leave me here," he said. "Keep
this track down to the river--go south--you'll be in Italy in a couple of
hours. Get rail at Feltre. Money? Yes? Well!" He held out his hand;
Harz gripped it.
"Give her up, eh?"
Harz shook his head.
"No? Then it's 'pull devil, pull baker,' between us. Good-bye, and good
luck to you!" And mustering his strength for a last attempt at dignity,
Mr. Treffry gathered up the reins.
Harz watched his figure huddled again beneath the hood. The carriage
moved slowly away.
XVIII
At Villa Rubein people went about, avoiding each other as if detected in
conspiracy. Miss Naylor, who for an inscrutable reason had put on her
best frock, a purple, relieved at the chest with bird's-eye blue,
conveyed an impression of trying to count a chicken which ran about too
fast. When Greta asked what she had lost she was heard to mutter:
"Mr.--Needlecase."
Christian, with big circles round her eyes, sat silent at her little
table. She had had no sleep. Herr Paul coming into the room about noon
gave her a furtive look and went out again; after this he went to his
bedroom, took off all his clothes, flung them passionately one by one
into a footbath, and got into bed.
"I might be a criminal!" he muttered to himself, while the buttons of his
garments rattled on the bath.
"Am I her father? Have I authority? Do I know the world? Bssss! I
might be a frog!"
Mrs. Decie, having caused herself to be announced, found him smoking a
cigar, and counting the flies on the ceiling.
"If you have really done this, Paul," she said in a restrained voice,
"you have done a very unkind thing, and what is worse, you have made us
all ridiculous. But perhaps you have not done it?"
"I have done it," cried Herr Paul, staring dreadfully: "I have done it, I
tell you, I have done it--"
"Very well, you have done it--and why, pray? What conceivable good was
there in it? I suppose you know that Nicholas has driven him to the
frontier? Nicholas is probably more dead than alive by this time; you
know his state of health."
Herr Paul's fingers ploughed up his beard.
"Nicholas is mad--and the girl is mad! Leave me alone! I will not be
made angry; do you understand? I will not be worried--I am not fit for
it." His prominent brown eyes stared round the room, as if looking for a
way of escape.
"If I may prophesy, you will be worried a good deal," said Mrs. Decie
coldly, "before you have finished with this affair."
The anxious, uncertain glance which Herr Paul gave her at these words
roused an unwilling feeling of compunction in her.
"You are not made for the outraged father of the family," she said. "You
had better give up the attitude, Paul; it does not suit you."
Herr Paul groaned.
"I suppose it is not your fault," she added.
Just then the door was opened, and Fritz, with an air of saying the right
thing, announced:
"A gentleman of the police to see you, sir."
Herr Paul bounded.
"Keep him out!" he cried.
Mrs. Decie, covering her lips, disappeared with a rustling of silk; in
her place stood a stiff man in blue....
Thus the morning dragged itself away without any one being able to settle
to anything, except Herr Paul, who was settled in bed. As was fitting in
a house that had lost its soul, meals were neglected, even by the dog.
About three o'clock a telegram came for Christian, containing these
words: "All right; self returns to-morrow. Treffry." After reading it
she put on her hat and went out, followed closely by Greta, who, when she
thought that she would not be sent away, ran up from behind and pulled
her by the sleeve.
"Let me come, Chris--I shall not talk."
The two girls walked on together. When they had gone some distance
Christian said:
"I'm going to get his pictures, and take charge of them!"
"Oh!" said Greta timidly.
"If you are afraid," said Christian, "you had better go back home."
"I am not afraid, Chris," said Greta meekly.
Neither girl spoke again till they had taken the path along the wall.
Over the tops of the vines the heat was dancing.
"The sun-fairies are on the vines!" murmured Greta to herself.
At the old house they stopped, and Christian, breathing quickly, pushed
the door; it was immovable.
"Look!" said Greta, "they have screwed it!" She pointed out three screws
with a rosy-tipped forefinger.
Christian stamped her foot.
"We mustn't stand here," she said; "let's sit on that bench and think."
"Yes," murmured Greta, "let us think." Dangling an end of hair, she
regarded Christian with her wide blue eyes.
"I can't make any plan," Christian cried at last, "while you stare at me
like that."
"I was thinking," said Greta humbly, "if they have screwed it up, perhaps
we shall screw it down again; there is the big screw-driver of Fritz."
"It would take a long time; people are always passing."
"People do not pass in the evening," murmured Greta, "because the gate at
our end is always shut."
Christian rose.
"We will come this evening, just before the gate is shut."
"But, Chris, how shall we get back again?"
"I don't know; I mean to have the pictures."
"It is not a high gate," murmured Greta.
After dinner the girls went to their room, Greta bearing with her the big
screw-driver of Fritz. At dusk they slipped downstairs and out.
They arrived at the old house, and stood, listening, in the shadow of the
doorway. The only sounds were those of distant barking dogs, and of the
bugles at the barracks.
"Quick!" whispered Christian; and Greta, with all the strength of her
small hands, began to turn the screws. It was some time before they
yielded; the third was very obstinate, till Christian took the
screw-driver and passionately gave the screw a starting twist.
"It is like a pig--that one," said Greta, rubbing her wrists mournfully.
The opened door revealed the gloom of the dank rooms and twisting
staircase, then fell to behind them with a clatter.
Greta gave a little scream, and caught her sister's dress.
"It is dark," she gasped; "O Chris! it is dark!"
Christian groped for the bottom stair, and Greta felt her arm shaking.
"Suppose there is a man to keep guard! O Chris! suppose there are bats!"
"You are a baby!" Christian answered in a trembling voice. "You had
better go home!"
Greta choked a little in the dark.
"I am--not--going home, but I'm afraid of bats. O Chris! aren't you
afraid?"
"Yes," said Christian, "but I'm going to have the pictures."
Her cheeks were burning; she was trembling all over. Having found the
bottom step she began to mount with Greta clinging to her skirts.
The haze above inspired a little courage in the child, who, of all
things, hated darkness. The blanket across the doorway of the loft had
been taken down, there was nothing to veil the empty room.
"Nobody here, you see," said Christian.
"No-o," whispered Greta, running to the window, and clinging to the wall,
like one of the bats she dreaded.
"But they have been here!" cried Christian angrily. "They have broken
this." She pointed to the fragments of a plaster cast that had been
thrown down.
Out of the corner she began to pull the canvases set in rough, wooden
frames, dragging them with all her strength.
"Help me!" she cried; "it will be dark directly."
They collected a heap of sketches and three large pictures, piling them
before the window, and peering at them in the failing light.
Greta said ruefully:
"O Chris! they are heavy ones; we shall never carry them, and the gate is
shut now!"
Christian took a pointed knife from the table.
"I shall cut them out of the frames," she said. "Listen! What's that?"
It was the sound of whistling, which stopped beneath the window. The
girls, clasping each other's hands, dropped on their knees.
"Hallo!" cried a voice.
Greta crept to the window, and, placing her face level with the floor,
peered over.
"It is only Dr. Edmund; he doesn't know, then," she whispered; "I shall
call him; he is going away!" cried Christian catching her sister's
--"Don't!" cried Christian catching her sister's dress.
"He would help us," Greta said reproachfully, "and it would not be so
dark if he were here."
Christian's cheeks were burning.
"I don't choose," she said, and began handling the pictures, feeling
their edges with her knife.
"Chris! Suppose anybody came?"
"The door is screwed," Christian answered absently.
"O Chris! We screwed it unscrewed; anybody who wishes shall come!"
Christian, leaning her chin in her hands, gazed at her thoughtfully.
"It will take a long time to cut these pictures out carefully; or,
perhaps I can get them out without cutting. You must screw me up and go
home. In the morning you must come early, when the gate is open, unscrew
me again, and help carry the pictures."
Greta did not answer at once. At last she shook her head violently.
"I am afraid," she gasped.
"We can't both stay here all night," said Christian; "if any one comes to
our room there will be nobody to answer. We can't lift these pictures
over the gate. One of us must go back; you can climb over the
gate--there is nothing to be afraid of"
Greta pressed her hands together.
"Do you want the pictures badly, Chris?"
Christian nodded.
"Very badly?"
"Yes--yes--yes!"
Greta remained sitting where she was, shivering violently, as a little
animal shivers when it scents danger. At last she rose.
"I am going," she said in a despairing voice. At the doorway she turned.
"If Miss Naylor shall ask me where you are, Chris, I shall be telling her
a story."
Christian started.
"I forgot that--O Greta, I am sorry! I will go instead."
Greta took another step--a quick one.
"I shall die if I stay here alone," she said; "I can tell her that you
are in bed; you must go to bed here, Chris, so it shall be true after
all."
Christian threw her arms about her.
"I am so sorry, darling; I wish I could go instead. But if you have to
tell a lie, I would tell a straight one."
"Would you?" said Greta doubtfully.
"Yes."
"I think," said Greta to herself, beginning to descend the stairs, "I
think I will tell it in my way." She shuddered and went on groping in
the darkness.
Christian listened for the sound of the screws. It came slowly,
threatening her with danger and solitude.
Sinking on her knees she began to work at freeing the canvas of a
picture. Her heart throbbed distressfully; at the stir of wind-breath or
any distant note of clamour she stopped, and held her breathing. No
sounds came near. She toiled on, trying only to think that she was at
the very spot where last night his arms had been round her. How long ago
it seemed! She was full of vague terror, overmastered by the darkness,
dreadfully alone. The new glow of resolution seemed suddenly to have
died down in her heart, and left her cold.
She would never be fit to be his wife, if at the first test her courage
failed! She set her teeth; and suddenly she felt a kind of exultation,
as if she too were entering into life, were knowing something within
herself that she had never known before. Her fingers hurt, and the pain
even gave pleasure; her cheeks were burning; her breath came fast. They
could not stop her now! This feverish task in darkness was her baptism
into life. She finished; and rolling the pictures very carefully, tied
them with cord. She had done something for him! Nobody could take that
from her! She had a part of him! This night had made him hers! They
might do their worst! She lay down on his mattress and soon fell
asleep....
She was awakened by Scruff's tongue against her face. Greta was standing
by her side.
"Wake up, Chris! The gate is open!"
In the cold early light the child seemed to glow with warmth and colour;
her eyes were dancing.
"I am not afraid now; Scruff and I sat up all night, to catch the
morning--I--think it was fun; and O Chris!" she ended with a rueful gleam
in her eyes, "I told it."
Christian hugged her.
"Come--quick! There is nobody about. Are those the pictures?"
Each supporting an end, the girls carried the bundle downstairs, and set
out with their corpse-like burden along the wall-path between the river
and the vines.
XIX
Hidden by the shade of rose-bushes Greta lay stretched at length, cheek
on arm, sleeping the sleep of the unrighteous. Through the flowers the
sun flicked her parted lips with kisses, and spilled the withered petals
on her. In a denser islet of shade, Scruff lay snapping at a fly. His
head lolled drowsily in the middle of a snap, and snapped in the middle
of a loll.
At three o'clock Miss Naylor too came out, carrying a basket and pair of
scissors. Lifting her skirts to avoid the lakes of water left by the
garden hose, she stopped in front of a rose-bush, and began to snip off
the shrivelled flowers. The little lady's silvered head and thin, brown
face sustained the shower of sunlight unprotected, and had a gentle
dignity in their freedom.
Presently, as the scissors flittered in and out of the leaves, she, began
talking to herself.
"If girls were more like what they used to be, this would not have
happened. Perhaps we don't understand; it's very easy to forget."
Burying her nose and lips in a rose, she sniffed. "Poor dear girl! It's
such a pity his father is--a--"
"A farmer," said a sleepy voice behind the rosebush.
Miss Naylor leaped. "Greta! How you startled me! A farmer--that is
--an--an agriculturalist!"
"A farmer with vineyards--he told us, and he is not ashamed. Why is it a
pity, Miss Naylor?"
Miss Naylor's lips looked very thin.
"For many reasons, of which you know nothing."
"That is what you always say," pursued the sleepy voice; "and that is
why, when I am to be married, there shall also be a pity."
"Greta!" Miss Naylor cried, "it is not proper for a girl of your age to
talk like that."
"Why?" said Greta. "Because it is the truth?"
Miss Naylor made no reply to this, but vexedly cut off a sound rose,
which she hastily picked up and regarded with contrition. Greta spoke
again:
"Chris said: 'I have got the pictures, I shall tell her'; but I shall
tell you instead, because it was I that told the story."
Miss Naylor stared, wrinkling her nose, and holding the scissors wide
apart....
"Last night," said Greta slowly, "I and Chris went to his studio and took
his pictures, and so, because the gate was shut, I came back to tell it;
and when you asked me where Chris was, I told it; because she was in the
studio all night, and I and Scruff sat up all night, and in the morning
we brought the pictures, and hid them under our beds, and that is
why--we--are--so--sleepy."
Over the rose-bush Miss Naylor peered down at her; and though she was
obliged to stand on tiptoe this did not altogether destroy her dignity.
"I am surprised at you, Greta; I am surprised at Christian, more
surprised at Christian. The world seems upside down."
Greta, a sunbeam entangled in her hair, regarded her with inscrutable,
innocent eyes.
"When you were a girl, I think you would be sure to be in love," she
murmured drowsily.
Miss Naylor, flushing deeply, snipped off a particularly healthy bud.
"And so, because you are not married, I think--"
The scissors hissed.
Greta nestled down again. "I think it is wicked to cut off all the good
buds," she said, and shut her eyes.
Miss Naylor continued to peer across the rosebush; but her thin face,
close to the glistening leaves, had become oddly soft, pink, and girlish.
At a deeper breath from Greta, the little lady put down her basket, and
began to pace the lawn, followed dubiously by Scruff. It was thus that
Christian came on them.
Miss Naylor slipped her arm into the girl's and though she made no sound,
her lips kept opening and shutting, like the beak of a bird contemplating
a worm.
Christian spoke first:
"Miss Naylor, I want to tell you please--"
"Oh, my dear! I know; Greta has been in the confessional before you."
She gave the girl's arm a squeeze. "Isn't it a lovely day? Did you ever
see 'Five Fingers' look so beautiful?" And she pointed to the great
peaks of the Funffingerspitze glittering in the sun like giant crystals.
"I like them better with clouds about them."
"Well," agreed Miss Naylor nervously, "they certainly are nicer with
clouds about them. They look almost hot and greasy, don't they.... My
dear!" she went on, giving Christian's arm a dozen little squeezes, "we
all of us--that is, we all of us--"
Christian turned her eyes away.
"My dear," Miss Naylor tried again, "I am far--that is, I mean, to all of
us at some time or another--and then you see--well--it is hard!"
Christian kissed the gloved hand resting on her arm. Miss Naylor bobbed
her head; a tear trickled off her nose.
"Do let us wind your skein of woof!" she said with resounding gaiety.
Some half-hour later Mrs. Decie called Christian to her room.
"My dear!" she said; "come here a minute; I have a message for you."
Christian went with an odd, set look about her mouth.
Her aunt was sitting, back to the light, tapping a bowl of goldfish with
the tip of a polished finger-nail; the room was very cool. She held a
letter out. "Your uncle is not coming back tonight."
Christian took the letter. It was curtly worded, in a thin, toppling
hand:
"DEAR CON--Can't get back to-night. Sending Dominique for things. Tell
Christian to come over with him for night if possible.--Yr. aff. brother,
NICLS. TREFFRY."
"Dominique has a carriage here," said Mrs. Decie. "You will have nice
time to catch the train. Give my love to your uncle. You must take
Barbi with you, I insist on that." She rose from her chair and held
Christian's hand: "My dear! You look very tired--very! Almost ill. I
don't like to see you look like that. Come!" She thrust her pale lips
forward, and kissed the girl's paler cheek.
Then as Christian left the room she sank back in her chair, with creases
in her forehead, and began languidly to cut a magazine. 'Poor Christian!'
she thought, 'how hardly she does take it! I am sorry for her; but
perhaps it's just as well, as things are turning out. Psychologically it
is interesting!'
Christian found her things packed, and the two servants waiting. In a
few minutes they were driving to the station. She made Dominique take
the seat opposite.
"Well?" she asked him.
Dominique's eyebrows twitched, he smiled deprecatingly.
"M'mselle, Mr. Treffry told me to hold my tongue."
"But you can tell me, Dominique; Barbi can't understand."
"To you, then, M'mselle," said Dominique, as one who accepts his fate;
"to you, then, who will doubtless forget all that I shall tell you--my
master is not well; he has terrible pain here; he has a cough; he is not
well at all; not well at all."
A feeling of dismay seized on the girl.
"We were a caravan for all that night," Dominique resumed. "In the
morning by noon we ceased to be a caravan; Signor Harz took a mule path;
he will be in Italy--certainly in Italy. As for us, we stayed at San
Martino, and my master went to bed. It was time; I had much trouble with
his clothes, his legs were swollen. In the afternoon came a signor of
police, on horseback, red and hot; I persuaded him that we were at
Paneveggio, but as we were not, he came back angry--Mon Die! as angry as
a cat. It was not good to meet him--when he was with my master I was
outside. There was much noise. I do not know what passed, but at last
the signor came out through the door, and went away in a hurry."
Dominique's features were fixed in a sardonic grin; he rubbed the palm of
one hand with the finger of the other. "Mr. Treffry made me give him
whisky afterwards, and he had no money to pay the bill--that I know
because I paid it. Well, M'mselle, to-day he would be dressed and very
slowly we came as far as Auer; there he could do no more, so went to bed.
He is not well at all."
Christian was overwhelmed by forebodings; the rest of the journey was
made in silence, except when Barbi, a country girl, filled with the
delirium of railway travel, sighed: "Ach! gnadige Fraulein!" looking at
Christian with pleasant eyes.
At once, on arriving at the little hostel, Christian went to see her
uncle. His room was darkened, and smelt of beeswax.
"Ah! Chris," he said, "glad to see you."
In a blue flannel gown, with a rug over his feet, he was lying on a couch
lengthened artificially by chairs; the arm he reached out issued many
inches from its sleeve, and showed the corded veins of the wrist.
Christian, settling his pillows, looked anxiously into his eyes.
"I'm not quite the thing, Chris," said Mr. Treffry. "Somehow, not quite
the thing. I'll come back with you to-morrow."
"Let me send for Dr. Dawney, Uncle?"
"No--no! Plenty of him when I get home. Very good young fellow, as
doctors go, but I can't stand his puddin's--slops and puddin's, and all
that trumpery medicine on the top. Send me Dominique, my dear--I'll put
myself to rights a bit!" He fingered his unshaven cheek, and clutched
the gown together on his chest. "Got this from the landlord. When you
come back we'll have a little talk!"
He was asleep when she came into the room an hour later. Watching his
uneasy breathing, she wondered what it was that he was going to say.
He looked ill! And suddenly she realised that her thoughts were not of
him.... When she was little he would take her on his back; he had built
cocked hats for her and paper boats; had taught her to ride; slid her
between his knees; given her things without number; and taken his payment
in kisses. And now he was ill, and she was not thinking of him! He had
been all that was most dear to her, yet before her eyes would only come
the vision of another.
Mr. Treffry woke suddenly. "Not been asleep, have I? The beds here are
infernal hard."
"Uncle Nic, won't you give me news of him?"
Mr. Treffry looked at her, and Christian could not bear that look.
"He's safe into Italy; they aren't very keen after him, it's so long ago;
I squared 'em pretty easily. Now, look here, Chris!"
Christian came close; he took her hand.
"I'd like to see you pull yourself together. 'Tisn't so much the
position; 'tisn't so much the money; because after all there's always
mine--" Christian shook her head. "But," he went on with shaky
emphasis, "there's the difference of blood, and that's a serious thing;
and there's this anarch--this political affair; and there's the sort of
life, an' that's a serious thing; but--what I'm coming to is this,
Chris--there's the man!"
Christian drew away her hand. Mr. Treffry went on:
"Ah! yes. I'm an old chap and fond of you, but I must speak out what I
think. He's got pluck, he's strong, he's in earnest; but he's got a
damned hot temper, he's an egotist, and--he's not the man for you. If you
marry him, as sure as I lie here, you'll be sorry for it. You're not your
father's child for nothing; nice fellow as ever lived, but soft as
butter. If you take this chap, it'll be like mixing earth and ironstone,
and they don't blend!" He dropped his head back on the pillows, and
stretching out his hand, repeated wistfully: "Take my word for it, my
dear, he's not the man for you."
Christian, staring at the wall beyond, said quietly: "I can't take any
one's word for that."
"Ah!" muttered Mr. Treffry, "you're obstinate enough, but obstinacy isn't
strength.
"You'll give up everything to him, you'll lick his shoes; and you'll
never play anything but second fiddle in his life. He'll always be first
with himself, he and his work, or whatever he calls painting pictures;
and some day you'll find that out. You won't like it, and I don't like
it for you, Chris, and that's flat."
He wiped his brow where the perspiration stood in beads.
Christian said: "You don't understand; you don't believe in him; you
don't see! If I do come after his work--if I do give him everything, and
he can't give all back--I don't care! He'll give what he can; I don't
want any more. If you're afraid of the life for me, uncle, if you think
it'll be too hard--"
Mr. Treffry bowed his head. "I do, Chris."
"Well, then, I hate to be wrapped in cotton wool; I want to breathe. If I
come to grief, it's my own affair; nobody need mind."
Mr. Treffry's fingers sought his beard. "Ah! yes. Just so!"
Christian sank on her knees.
"Oh! Uncle! I'm a selfish beast!"
Mr. Treffry laid his hand against her cheek. "I think I could do with a
nap," he said.
Swallowing a lump in her throat, she stole out of the room.
By a stroke of Fate Mr. Treffry's return to Villa Rubein befell at the
psychological moment when Herr Paul, in a suit of rather too bright blue,
was starting for Vienna.
As soon as he saw the carriage appear between the poplars he became as
pensive as a boy caught in the act of stealing cherries. Pitching his
hatbox to Fritz, he recovered himself, however, in time to whistle while
Mr. Treffry was being assisted into the house. Having forgotten his
anger, he was only anxious now to smooth out its after effects; in the
glances he cast at Christian and his brother-in-law there was a kind of
shamed entreaty which seemed to say: "For goodness' sake, don't worry me
about that business again! Nothing's come of it, you see!"
He came forward: "Ah! Mon cher! So you return; I put off my departure,
then. Vienna must wait for me--that poor Vienna!"
But noticing the extreme feebleness of Mr. Treffry's advance, he
exclaimed with genuine concern:
"What is it? You're ill? My God!" After disappearing for five minutes,
he came back with a whitish liquid in a glass.
"There!" he said, "good for the gout--for a cough--for everything!"
Mr. Treffry sniffed, drained the glass, and sucked his moustache.
"Ah!" he said. "No doubt! But it's uncommonly like gin, Paul." Then
turning to Christian, he said: "Shake hands, you two!"
Christian looked from one to the other, and at last held out her hand to
Herr Paul, who brushed it with his moustache, gazing after her as she
left the room with a queer expression.
"My dear!" he began, "you support her in this execrable matter? You
forget my position, you make me ridiculous. I have been obliged to go to
bed in my own house, absolutely to go to bed, because I was in danger of
becoming funny."
"Look here, Paul!" Mr. Treffry said gruffly, "if any one's to bully
Chris, it's I."
"In that case," returned Herr Paul sarcastically, "I will go to Vienna."
"You may go to the devil!" said Mr. Treffry; "and I'll tell you what--in
my opinion it was low to set the police on that young chap; a low, dirty
trick."
Herr Paul divided his beard carefully in two, took his seat on the very
edge of an arm-chair, and placing his hands on his parted knees, said:
"I have regretted it since--mais, que diable! He called me a coward--it
is very hot weather!--there were drinks at the Kurhaus--I am her
guardian--the affair is a very beastly one--there were more drinks--I was
a little enfin!" He shrugged his shoulders. "Adieu, my dear; I shall be
some time in Vienna; I need rest!" He rose and went to the door; then he
turned, and waved his cigar. "Adieu! Be good; get well! I will buy you
some cigars up there." And going out, he shut the door on any
possibility of answer.
Mr. Treffry lay back amongst his cushions. The clock ticked; pigeons
cooed on the veranda; a door opened in the distance, and for a moment a
treble voice was heard. Mr. Treffry's head drooped forward; across his
face, gloomy and rugged, fell a thin line of sunlight.
The clock suddenly stopped ticking, and outside, in mysterious accord,
the pigeons rose with a great fluttering of wings, and flew off'. Mr.
Treffry made a startled, heavy movement. He tried to get on to his feet
and reach the bell, but could not, and sat on the side of the couch with
drops of sweat rolling off his forehead, and his hands clawing his chest.
There was no sound at all throughout the house. He looked about him, and
tried to call, but again could not. He tried once more to reach the bell,
and, failing, sat still, with a thought that made him cold.
"I'm done for," he muttered. "By George! I believe I'm done for this
time!" A voice behind him said:
"Can we have a look at you, sir?"
"Ah! Doctor, bear a hand, there's a good fellow."
Dawney propped him against the cushions, and loosened his shirt.
Receiving no answer to his questions, he stepped alarmed towards the
bell. Mr. Treffry stopped him with a sign.
"Let's hear what you make of me," he said.
When Dawney had examined him, he asked:
"Well?"
"Well," answered Dawney slowly, "there's trouble, of course."
Mr. Treffry broke out with a husky whisper: "Out with it, Doctor; don't
humbug me."
Dawney bent down, and took his wrist.
"I don't know how you've got into this state, sir," he said with the
brusqueness of emotion. "You're in a bad way. It's the old trouble; and
you know what that means as well as I. All I can tell you is, I'm going
to have a big fight with it. It shan't be my fault, there's my hand on
that."
Mr. Treffry lay with his eyes fixed on the ceiling; at last he said:
"I want to live."
"Yes--yes."
"I feel better now; don't make a fuss about it. It'll be very awkward if
I die just now. Patch me up, for the sake of my niece."
Dawney nodded. "One minute, there are a few things I want," and he went
out.
A moment later Greta stole in on tiptoe. She bent over till her hair
touched Mr. Treffry's face.
"Uncle Nic!" she whispered. He opened his eyes.
"Hallo, Greta!"
"I have come to bring you my love, Uncle Nic, and to say good-bye. Papa
says that I and Scruff and Miss Naylor are going to Vienna with him; we
have had to pack in half an hour; in five minutes we are going to Vienna,
and it is my first visit there, Uncle Nic."
"To Vienna!" Mr. Treffry repeated slowly. "Don't have a guide, Greta;
they're humbugs."
"No, Uncle Nic," said Greta solemnly.
"Draw the curtains, old girl, let's have a look at you. Why, you're as
smart as ninepence!"
"Yes," said Greta with a sigh, touching the buttons of her cape, "because
I am going to Vienna; but I am sorry to leave you, Uncle Nic."
"Are you, Greta?"
"But you will have Chris, and you are fonder of Chris than of me, Uncle
Nic."
"I've known her longer."
"Perhaps when you've known me as long as Chris, you shall be as fond of
me."
"When I've known you as long--may be."
"While I am gone, Uncle Nic, you are to get well, you are not very well,
you know."
"What put that into your head?"
"If you were well you would be smoking a cigar--it is just three o'clock.
This kiss is for myself, this is for Scruff, and this is for Miss
Naylor."
She stood upright again; a tremulous, joyful gravity was in her eyes and
on her lips.
"Good-bye, my dear; take care of yourselves; and don't you have a guide,
they're humbugs."
"No, Uncle Nic. There is the carriage! To Vienna, Uncle Nic!" The dead
gold of her hair gleamed in the doorway. Mr. Treffry raised himself upon
his elbow.
"Give us one more, for luck!"
Greta ran back.
"I love you very much!" she said, and kissing him, backed slowly, then,
turning, flew out like a bird.
Mr. Treffry fixed his eyes on the shut door.
XXI
After many days of hot, still weather, the wind had come, and whirled the
dust along the parched roads. The leaves were all astir, like tiny
wings. Round Villa Rubein the pigeons cooed uneasily, all the other
birds were silent. Late in the afternoon Christian came out on the
veranda, reading a letter:
"DEAR CHRIS,--We are here now six days, and it is a very large place with
many churches. In the first place then we have been to a great many, but
the nicest of them is not St. Stephan's Kirche, it is another, but I do
not remember the name. Papa is out nearly all the night; he says he is
resting here, so he is not able to come to the churches with us, but I do
not think he rests very much. The day before yesterday we, that is,
Papa, I, and Miss Naylor, went to an exhibition of pictures. It was
quite beautiful and interesting (Miss Naylor says it is not right to say
'quite' beautiful, but I do not know what other word could mean 'quite'
except the word 'quite,' because it is not exceedingly and not
extremely). And O Chris! there was one picture painted by him; it was
about a ship without masts--Miss Naylor says it is a barge, but I do not
know what a barge is--on fire, and, floating down a river in a fog. I
think it is extremely beautiful. Miss Naylor says it is very
impressionistick--what is that? and Papa said 'Puh!' but he did not know
it was painted by Herr Harz, so I did not tell him.
"There has also been staying at our hotel that Count Sarelli who came one
evening to dinner at our house, but he is gone away now. He sat all day
in the winter garden reading, and at night he went out with Papa. Miss
Naylor says he is unhappy, but I think he does not take enough exercise;
and O Chris! one day he said to me, 'That is your sister, Mademoiselle,
that young lady in the white dress? Does she always wear white dresses?'
and I said to him: 'It is not always a white dress; in the picture, it is
green, because the picture is called "Spring.' But I did not tell him
the colours of all your dresses because he looked so tired. Then he said
to me: 'She is very charming.' So I tell you this, Chris, because I
think you shall like to know. Scruff' has a sore toe; it is because he
has eaten too much meat.
"It is not nice without you, Chris, and Miss Naylor says I am improving
my mind here, but I do not think it shall improve very much, because at
night I like it always best, when the shops are lighted and the carriages
are driving past; then I am wanting to dance. The first night Papa said
he would take me to the theatre, but yesterday he said it was not good
for me; perhaps to-morrow he shall think it good for me again.
"Yesterday we have been in the Prater, and saw many people, and some that
Papa knew; and then came the most interesting part of all, sitting under
the trees in the rain for two hours because we could not get a carriage
(very exciting).
"There is one young lady here, only she is not any longer very young, who
knew Papa when he was a boy. I like her very much; she shall soon know
me quite to the bottom and is very kind.
"The ill husband of Cousin Teresa who went with us to Meran and lost her
umbrella and Dr. Edmund was so sorry about it, has been very much worse,
so she is not here but in Baden. I wrote to her but have no news, so I
do not know whether he is still living or not, at any rate he can't get
well again so soon (and I don't think he ever shall). I think as the
weather is very warm you and Uncle Nic are sitting much out of doors. I
am sending presents to you all in a wooden box and screwed very firm, so
you shall have to use again the big screw-driver of Fritz. For Aunt
Constance, photographs; for Uncle Nic, a green bird on a stand with a
hole in the back of the bird to put his ashes in; it is a good green and
not expensif please tell him, because he does not like expensif presents
(Miss Naylor says the bird has an inquiring eye--it is a parrat); for
you, a little brooch of turquoise because I like them best; for Dr.
Edmund a machine to weigh medicines in because he said he could not get a
good one in Botzen; this is a very good one, the shopman told me so, and
is the most expensif of all the presents--so that is all my money, except
two gulden. If Papa shall give me some more, I shall buy for Miss Naylor
a parasol, because it is useful and the handle of hers is 'wobbley' (that
is one of Dr. Edmund's words and I like it).
"Good-bye for this time. Greta sends you her kiss.
"P. S.--Miss Naylor has read all this letter (except about the parasol)
and there are several things she did not want me to put, so I have copied
it without the things, but at the last I have kept that copy myself, so
that is why this is smudgy and several words are not spelt well, but all
the things are here."
Christian read, smiling, but to finish it was like dropping a talisman,
and her face clouded. A sudden draught blew her hair about, and from
within, Mr. Treffry's cough mingled with the soughing of the wind; the
sky was fast blackening. She went indoors, took a pen and began to
write:
"MY FRIEND,--Why haven't you written to me? It is so, long to wait.
Uncle says you are in Italy--it is dreadful not to know for certain. I
feel you would have written if you could; and I can't help thinking of
all the things that may have happened. I am unhappy. Uncle Nic is ill;
he will not confess it, that is his way; but he is very ill. Though
perhaps you will never see this, I must write down all my thoughts.
Sometimes I feel that I am brutal to be always thinking about you,
scheming how to be with you again, when he is lying there so ill. How
good he has always been to me; it is terrible that love should pull one
apart so. Surely love should be beautiful, and peaceful, instead of
filling me with bitter, wicked thoughts. I love you--and I love him; I
feel as if I were torn in two. Why should it be so? Why should the
beginning of one life mean the ending of another, one love the
destruction of another? I don't understand. The same spirit makes me
love you and him, the same sympathy, the same trust--yet it sometimes
seems as if I were a criminal in loving you. You know what he thinks--he
is too honest not to have shown you. He has talked to me; he likes you
in a way, but you are a foreigner--he says-your life is not my life. 'He
is not the man for you!' Those were his words. And now he doesn't talk
to me, but when I am in the room he looks at me--that's worse--a thousand
times; when he talks it rouses me to fight--when it's his eyes only, I'm
a coward at once; I feel I would do anything, anything, only not to hurt
him. Why can't he see? Is it because he's old and we are young? He may
consent, but he will never, never see; it will always hurt him.
"I want to tell you everything; I have had worse thoughts than these
--sometimes I have thought that I should never have the courage to face
the struggle which you have to face. Then I feel quite broken; it is
like something giving way in me. Then I think of you, and it is over;
but it has been there, and I am ashamed--I told you I was a coward. It's
like the feeling one would have going out into a storm on a dark night,
away from a warm fire--only of the spirit not the body--which makes it
worse. I had to tell you this; you mustn't think of it again, I mean to
fight it away and forget that it has ever been there. But Uncle
Nic--what am I to do? I hate myself because I am young, and he is old
and weak--sometimes I seem even to hate him. I have all sorts of
thoughts, and always at the end of them, like a dark hole at the end of a
passage, the thought that I ought to give you up. Ought I? Tell me. I
want to know, I want to do what is right; I still want to do that, though
sometimes I think I am all made of evil.
"Do you remember once when we were talking, you said: 'Nature always has
an answer for every question; you cannot get an answer from laws,
conventions, theories, words, only from Nature.' What do you say to me
now; do you tell me it is Nature to come to you in spite of everything,
and so, that it must be right? I think you would; but can it be Nature
to do something which will hurt terribly one whom I love and who loves
me? If it is--Nature is cruel. Is that one of the 'lessons of life'?
Is that what Aunt Constance means when she says: 'If life were not a
paradox, we could not get on at all'? I am beginning to see that
everything has its dark side; I never believed that before.
"Uncle Nic dreads the life for me; he doesn't understand (how should
he?--he has always had money) how life can be tolerable without money--it
is horrible that the accident of money should make such difference in our
lives. I am sometimes afraid myself, and I can't outface that fear in
him; he sees the shadow of his fear in me--his eyes seem to see
everything that is in me now; the eyes of old people are the saddest
things in the world. I am writing like a wretched coward, but you will
never see this letter I suppose, and so it doesn't matter; but if you do,
and I pray that you may--well, if I am only worth taking at my best, I am
not worth taking at all. I want you to know the worst of me--you, and no
one else.
"With Uncle Nic it is not as with my stepfather; his opposition only
makes me angry, mad, ready to do anything, but with Uncle Nic I feel so
bruised--so sore. He said: 'It is not so much the money, because there
is always mine.' I could never do a thing he cannot bear, and take his
money, and you would never let me. One knows very little of anything in
the world till trouble comes. You know how it is with flowers and trees;
in the early spring they look so quiet and self-contained; then all in a
moment they change--I think it must be like that with the heart. I used
to think I knew a great deal, understood why and how things came about; I
thought self-possession and reason so easy; now I know nothing. And
nothing in the world matters but to see you and hide away from that look
in Uncle Nic's eyes. Three months ago I did not know you, now I write
like this. Whatever I look at, I try to see as you would see; I feel,
now you are away even more than when you were with me, what your thoughts
would be, how you would feel about this or that. Some things you have
said seem always in my mind like lights--"
A slanting drift of rain was striking the veranda tiles with a cold,
ceaseless hissing. Christian shut the window, and went into her uncle's
room.
He was lying with closed eyes, growling at Dominique, who moved about
noiselessly, putting the room ready for the night. When he had finished,
and with a compassionate bow had left the room, Mr. Treffry opened his
eyes, and said:
"This is beastly stuff of the doctor's, Chris, it puts my monkey up; I
can't help swearing after I've taken it; it's as beastly as a vulgar
woman's laugh, and I don't know anything beastlier than that!"
"I have a letter from Greta, Uncle Nic; shall I read it?"
He nodded, and Christian read the letter, leaving out the mention of
Harz, and for some undefined reason the part about Sarelli.
"Ay!" said Mr. Treffry with a feeble laugh, "Greta and her money! Send
her some more, Chris. Wish I were a youngster again; that's a beast of a
proverb about a dog and his day. I'd like to go fishing again in the
West Country! A fine time we had when we were youngsters. You don't get
such times these days. 'Twasn't often the fishing-smacks went out
without us. We'd watch their lights from our bedroom window; when they
were swung aboard we were out and down to the quay before you could say
'knife.' They always waited for us; but your Uncle Dan was the
favourite, he was the chap for luck. When I get on my legs, we might go
down there, you and I? For a bit, just to see? What d'you say, old
girl?"
Their eyes met.
"I'd like to look at the smack lights going to sea on a dark night; pity
you're such a duffer in a boat--we might go out with them. Do you a
power of good! You're not looking the thing, my dear."
His voice died wistfully, and his glance, sweeping her face, rested on
her hands, which held and twisted Greta's letter. After a minute or two
of silence he boomed out again with sudden energy:
"Your aunt'll want to come and sit with me, after dinner; don't let her,
Chris, I can't stand it. Tell her I'm asleep--the doctor'll be here
directly; ask him to make up some humbug for you--it's his business."
He was seized by a violent fit of pain which seemed to stab his breath
away, and when it was over signed that he would be left alone. Christian
went back to her letter in the other room, and had written these words,
when the gong summoned her to dinner:
"I'm like a leaf in the wind, I put out my hand to one thing, and it's
seized and twisted and flung aside. I want you--I want you; if I could
see you I think I should know what to do--"
XXII
The rain drove with increasing fury. The night was very black. Nicholas
Treffry slept heavily. By the side of his bed the night-lamp cast on to
the opposite wall a bright disc festooned by the hanging shadow of the
ceiling. Christian was leaning over him. For the moment he filled all
her heart, lying there, so helpless. Fearful of waking him she slipped
into the sitting-room. Outside the window stood a man with his face
pressed to the pane. Her heart thumped; she went up and unlatched the
window. It was Harz, with the rain dripping off him. He let fall his
hat and cape.
"You!" she said, touching his sleeve. "You! You!"
He was sodden with wet, his face drawn and tired; a dark growth of beard
covered his cheeks and chin.
"Where is your uncle?" he said; "I want to see him."
She put her hand up to his lips, but he caught it and covered it with
kisses.
"He's asleep--ill--speak gently!"
"I came to him first," he muttered.
Christian lit the lamp; and he looked at her hungrily without a word.
"It's not possible to go on like this; I came to tell your uncle so. He
is a man. As for the other, I want to have nothing to do with him! I
came back on foot across the mountains. It's not possible to go on like
this, Christian."
She handed him her letter. He held it to the light, clearing his brow of
raindrops. When he had read to the last word he gave it her back, and
whispered: "Come!"
Her lips moved, but she did not speak.
"While this goes on I can't work; I can do nothing. I can't--I won't
bargain with my work; if it's to be that, we had better end it. What are
we waiting for? Sooner or later we must come to this. I'm sorry that
he's ill, God knows! But that changes nothing. To wait is tying me hand
and foot--it's making me afraid! Fear kills! It will kill you! It
kills work, and I must work, I can't waste time--I won't! I will sooner
give you up." He put his hands on her shoulders. "I love you! I want
you! Look in my eyes and see if you dare hold back!"
Christian stood with the grip of his strong hands on her shoulders,
without a movement or sign. Her face was very white. And suddenly he
began to kiss that pale, still face, to kiss its eyes and lips, to kiss
it from its chin up to its hair; and it stayed pale, as a white flower,
beneath those kisses--as a white flower, whose stalk the fingers bend
back a little.
There was a sound of knocking on the wall; Mr. Treffry called feebly.
Christian broke away from Harz.
"To-morrow!" he whispered, and picking up his hat and cloak, went out
again into the rain.
XXIII
It was not till morning that Christian fell into a troubled sleep. She
dreamed that a voice was calling her, and she was filled with a helpless,
dumb dream terror.
When she woke the light was streaming in; it was Sunday, and the
cathedral bells were chiming. Her first thought was of Harz. One step,
one moment of courage! Why had she not told her uncle? If he had only
asked! But why--why should she tell him? When it was over and she was
gone, he would see that all was for the best.
Her eyes fell on Greta's empty bed. She sprang up, and bending over,
kissed the pillow. 'She will mind at first; but she's so young! Nobody
will really miss me, except Uncle Nic!' She stood along while in the
window without moving. When she was dressed she called out to her maid:
"Bring me some milk, Barbi; I'm going to church."
"Ach! gnadiges Fraulein, will you no breakfast have?"
"No thank you, Barbi."
"Liebes Fraulein, what a beautiful morning after the rain it has become!
How cool! It is for you good--for the colour in your cheeks; now they
will bloom again!" and Barbi stroked her own well-coloured cheeks.
Dominique, sunning himself outside with a cloth across his arm, bowed as
she passed, and smiled affectionately:
"He is better this morning, M'mselle. We march--we are getting on. Good
news will put the heart into you."
Christian thought: 'How sweet every one is to-day!'
Even the Villa seemed to greet her, with the sun aslant on it; and the
trees, trembling and weeping golden tears. At the cathedral she was
early for the service, but here and there were figures on their knees;
the faint, sickly odour of long-burnt incense clung in the air; a priest
moved silently at the far end. She knelt, and when at last she rose the
service had begun. With the sound of the intoning a sense of peace came
to her--the peace of resolution. For good or bad she felt that she had
faced her fate.
She went out with a look of quiet serenity and walked home along the
dyke. Close to Harz's studio she sat down. Now--it was her own; all
that had belonged to him, that had ever had a part in him.
An old beggar, who had been watching her, came gently from behind.
"Gracious lady!" he said, peering at her eyes, "this is the lucky day for
you. I have lost my luck."
Christian opened her purse, there was only one coin in it, a gold piece;
the beggar's eyes sparkled.
She thought suddenly: 'It's no longer mine; I must begin to be careful,'
but she felt ashamed when she looked at the old man.
"I am sorry," she said; "yesterday I would have given you this, but--but
now it's already given."
He seemed so old and poor--what could she give him? She unhooked a
little silver brooch at her throat. "You will get something for that,"
she said; "it's better than nothing. I am very sorry you are so old and
poor."
The beggar crossed himself. "Gracious lady," he muttered, "may you never
want!"
Christian hurried on; the rustling of leaves soon carried the words away.
She did not feel inclined to go in, and crossing the bridge began to
climb the hill. There was a gentle breeze, drifting the clouds across
the sun; lizards darted out over the walls, looked at her, and whisked
away.
The sunshine, dappling through the tops of trees, gashed down on a
torrent. The earth smelt sweet, the vineyards round the white farms
glistened; everything seemed to leap and dance with sap and life; it was
a moment of Spring in midsummer. Christian walked on, wondering at her
own happiness.
'Am I heartless?' she thought. 'I am going to leave him--I am going into
life; I shall have to fight now, there'll be no looking back.'
The path broke away and wound down to the level of the torrent; on the
other side it rose again, and was lost among trees. The woods were dank;
she hastened home.
In her room she began to pack, sorting and tearing up old letters. 'Only
one thing matters,' she thought; 'singleness of heart; to see your way,
and keep to it with all your might.'
She looked up and saw Barbi standing before her with towels in her hands,
and a scared face.
"Are you going a journey, gnadiges Fraulein?"
"I am going away to be married, Barbi," said Christian at last; "don't
speak of it to any one, please."
Barbi leant a little forward with the towels clasped to the blue cotton
bosom of her dress.
"No, no! I will not speak. But, dear Fraulein, that is a big matter;
have you well thought?"
"Thought, Barbi? Have I not!"
"But, dear Fraulein, will you be rich?"
"No! I shall be as poor as you."
"Ach! dear God! that is terrible. Katrina, my sister, she is married;
she tells me all her life; she tells me it is very hard, and but for the
money in her stocking it would be harder. Dear Fraulein, think again!
And is he good? Sometimes they are not good."
"He is good," said Christian, rising; "it is all settled!" and she kissed
Barbi on the cheek.
"You are crying, liebes Fraulein! Think yet again, perhaps it is not
quite all settled; it is not possible that a maiden should not a way out
leave?"
Christian smiled. "I don't do things that way, Barbi."
Barbi hung the towels on the horse, and crossed herself.
Mr. Treffry's gaze was fixed on a tortoise-shell butterfly fluttering
round the ceiling. The insect seemed to fascinate him, as things which
move quickly always fascinate the helpless. Christian came softly in.
"Couldn't stay in bed, Chris," he called out with an air of guilt. "The
heat was something awful. The doctor piped off in a huff, just because
o' this." He motioned towards a jug of claret-cup and a pipe on the
table by his elbow. "I was only looking at 'em."
Christian, sitting down beside him, took up a fan.
"If I could get out of this heat--" he said, and closed his eyes.
'I must tell him,' she thought; 'I can't slink away.'
"Pour me out some of that stuff, Chris."
She reached for the jug. Yes! She must tell him! Her heart sank.
Mr. Treffry took a lengthy draught. "Broken my promise; don't
matter--won't hurt any one but me." He took up the pipe and pressed
tobacco into it. "I've been lying here with this pain going right
through me, and never a smoke! D'you tell me anything the parsons say
can do me half the good of this pipe?" He leaned back, steeped in a
luxury of satisfaction. He went on, pursuing a private train of thought:
"Things have changed a lot since my young days. When I was a youngster,
a young fellow had to look out for peck and perch--he put the future in
his pocket. He did well or not, according as he had stuff in him. Now
he's not content with that, it seems--trades on his own opinion of
himself; thinks he is what he says he's going to be."
"You are unjust," said Christian.
Mr. Treffry grunted. "Ah, well! I like to know where I am. If I lend
money to a man, I like to know whether he's going to pay it back; I may
not care whether he does or not, but I like to know. The same with other
things. I don't care what a man has--though, mind you, Chris, it's not a
bad rule that measures men by the balance at their banks; but when it
comes to marriage, there's a very simple rule, What's not enough for one
is not enough for two. You can't talk black white, or bread into your
mouth. I don't care to speak about myself, as you know, Chris, but I
tell you this--when I came to London I wanted to marry--I hadn't any
money, and I had to want. When I had the money--but that's neither here
nor there!" He frowned, fingering his pipe.
"I didn't ask her, Chris; I didn't think it the square thing; it seems
that's out of fashion!"
Christian's cheeks were burning.
"I think a lot while I lie here," Mr. Treffry went on; "nothing much else
to do. What I ask myself is this: What do you know about what's best for
you? What do you know of life? Take it or leave it, life's not all you
think; it's give and get all the way, a fair start is everything."
Christian thought: 'Will he never see?'
Mr. Treffry went on:
"I get better every day, but I can't last for ever. It's not pleasant to
lie here and know that when I'm gone there'll be no one to keep a hand on
the check string!"
"Don't talk like that, dear!" Christian murmured.
"It's no use blinking facts, Chris. I've lived a long time in the world;
I've seen things pretty well as they are; and now there's not much left
for me to think about but you."
"But, Uncle, if you loved him, as I do, you couldn't tell me to be
afraid! It's cowardly and mean to be afraid. You must have forgotten!"
Mr. Treffry closed his eyes.
"Yes," he said; "I'm old."
The fan had dropped into Christian's lap; it rested on her white frock
like a large crimson leaf; her eyes were fixed on it.
Mr. Treffry looked at her. "Have you heard from him?" he asked with
sudden intuition.
"Last night, in that room, when you thought I was talking to Dominique--"
The pipe fell from his hand.
"What!" he stammered: "Back?"
Christian, without looking up, said:
"Yes, he's back; he wants me--I must go to him, Uncle."
There was a long silence.
"You must go to him?" he repeated.
She longed to fling herself down at his knees, but he was so still, that
to move seemed impossible; she remained silent, with folded hands.
Mr. Treffry spoke:
"You'll let me know--before--you--go. Goodnight!"
Christian stole out into the passage. A bead curtain rustled in the
draught; voices reached her.
"My honour is involved, or I would give the case up."
"He is very trying, poor Nicholas! He always had that peculiar quality
of opposition; it has brought him to grief a hundred times. There is
opposition in our blood; my family all have it. My eldest brother died
of it; with my poor sister, who was as gentle as a lamb, it took the form
of doing the right thing in the wrong place. It is a matter of
temperament, you see. You must have patience."
"Patience," repeated Dawney's voice, "is one thing; patience where there
is responsibility is another. I've not had a wink of sleep these last
two nights."
There was a faint, shrill swish of silk.
"Is he so very ill?"
Christian held her breath. The answer came at last.
"Has he made his will? With this trouble in the side again, I tell you
plainly, Mrs. Decie, there's little or no chance."
Christian put her hands up to her ears, and ran out into the air. What
was she about to do, then--to leave him dying!
On the following day Harz was summoned to the Villa. Mr. Treffry had
just risen, and was garbed in a dressing-suit, old and worn, which had a
certain air of magnificence. His seamed cheeks were newly shaved.
"I hope I see you well," he said majestically.
Thinking of the drive and their last parting, Harz felt sorry and
ashamed. Suddenly Christian came into the room; she stood for a moment
looking at him; then sat down.
"Chris!" said Mr. Treffry reproachfully. She shook her head, and did not
move; mournful and intent, her eyes seemed full of secret knowledge.
Mr. Treffry spoke:
"I've no right to blame you, Mr. Harz, and Chris tells me you came to see
me first, which is what I would have expected of you; but you shouldn't
have come back."
"I came back, sir, because I found I was obliged. I must speak out."
"I ask nothing better," Mr. Treffry replied.
Harz looked again at Christian; but she made no sign, sitting with her
chin resting on her hands.
"I have come for her," he said; "I can make my living--enough for both of
us. But I can't wait."
"Why?"
Harz made no answer.
Mr. Treffry boomed out again: "Why? Isn't she worth waiting for? Isn't
she worth serving for?"
"I can't expect you to understand me," the painter said. "My art is my
life to me. Do you suppose that if it wasn't I should ever have left my
village; or gone through all that I've gone through, to get as far even
as I am? You tell me to wait. If my thoughts and my will aren't free,
how can I work? I shan't be worth my salt. You tell me to go back to
England--knowing she is here, amongst you who hate me, a thousand miles
away. I shall know that there's a death fight going on in her and
outside her against me--you think that I can go on working under these
conditions. Others may be able, I am not. That's the plain truth. If I
loved her less--"
There was a silence, then Mr. Treffry said:
"It isn't fair to come here and ask what you're asking. You don't know
what's in the future for you, you don't know that you can keep a wife. It
isn't pleasant, either, to think you can't hold up your head in your own
country."
Harz turned white.
"Ah! you bring that up again!" he broke out. "Seven years ago I was a
boy and starving; if you had been in my place you would have done what I
did. My country is as much to me as your country is to you. I've been an
exile seven years, I suppose I shall always be I've had punishment
enough; but if you think I am a rascal, I'll go and give myself up." He
turned on his heel.
"Stop! I beg your pardon! I never meant to hurt you. It isn't easy for
me to eat my words," Mr. Treffry said wistfully, "let that count for
something." He held out his hand.
Harz came quickly back and took it. Christian's gaze was never for a
moment withdrawn; she seemed trying to store up the sight of him within
her. The light darting through the half-closed shutters gave her eyes a
strange, bright intensity, and shone in the folds of her white dress like
the sheen of birds' wings.
Mr. Treffry glanced uneasily about him. "God knows I don't want anything
but her happiness," he said. "What is it to me if you'd murdered your
mother? It's her I'm thinking of."
"How can you tell what is happiness to her? You have your own ideas of
happiness--not hers, not mine. You can't dare to stop us, sir!"
"Dare?" said Mr. Treffry. "Her father gave her over to me when she was a
mite of a little thing; I've known her all her life. I've--I've loved
her--and you come here with your 'dare'!" His hand dragged at his beard,
and shook as though palsied.
A look of terror came into Christian's face.
"All right, Chris! I don't ask for quarter, and I don't give it!"
Harz made a gesture of despair.
"I've acted squarely by you, sir," Mr. Treffry went on, "I ask the same
of you. I ask you to wait, and come like an honest man, when you can
say, 'I see my way--here's this and that for her.' What makes this art
you talk of different from any other call in life? It doesn't alter
facts, or give you what other men have no right to expect. It doesn't
put grit into you, or keep your hands clean, or prove that two and two
make five."
Harz answered bitterly:
"You know as much of art as I know of money. If we live a thousand years
we shall never understand each other. I am doing what I feel is best for
both of us."
Mr. Treffry took hold of the painter's sleeve.
"I make you an offer," he said. "Your word not to see or write to her
for a year! Then, position or not, money or no money, if she'll have
you, I'll make it right for you."
"I could not take your money."
A kind of despair seemed suddenly to seize on Mr. Nicholas Treffry. He
rose, and stood towering over them.
"All my life--" he said; but something seemed to click deep down in his
throat, and he sank back in his seat.
"Go!" whispered Christian, "go!" But Mr. Treffry found his voice again:
"It's for the child to say. Well, Chris!"
Christian did not speak.
It was Harz who broke the silence. He pointed to Mr. Treffry.
"You know I can't tell you to come with--that, there. Why did you send
for me?" And, turning, he went out.
Christian sank on her knees, burying her face in her hands. Mr. Treffry
pressed his handkerchief with a stealthy movement to his mouth. It was
dyed crimson with the price of his victory.
XXVI
A telegram had summoned Herr Paul from Vienna. He had started forthwith,
leaving several unpaid accounts to a more joyful opportunity, amongst
them a chemist's bill, for a wonderful quack medicine of which he brought
six bottles.
He came from Mr. Treffry's room with tears rolling down his cheeks,
saying:
"Poor Nicholas! Poor Nicholas! Il n'a pas de chance!"
It was difficult to find any one to listen; the women were scared and
silent, waiting for the orders that were now and then whispered through
the door. Herr Paul could not bear this silence, and talked to his
servant for half an hour, till Fritz also vanished to fetch something
from the town. Then in despair Herr Paul went to his room.
It was hard not to be allowed to help--it was hard to wait! When the
heart was suffering, it was frightful! He turned and, looking furtively
about him, lighted a cigar. Yes, it came to every one--at some time or
other; and what was it, that death they talked of? Was it any worse than
life? That frightful jumble people made for themselves! Poor Nicholas!
After all, it was he that had the luck!
His eyes filled with tears, and drawing a penknife from his pocket, he
began to stab it into the stuffing of his chair. Scruff, who sat
watching the chink of light under the door, turned his head, blinked at
him, and began feebly tapping with a claw.
It was intolerable, this uncertainty--to be near, and yet so far, was not
endurable!
Herr Paul stepped across the room. The dog, following, threw his
black-marked muzzle upwards with a gruff noise, and went back to the
door. His master was holding in his hand a bottle of champagne.
Poor Nicholas! He had chosen it. Herr Paul drained a glass.
Poor Nicholas! The prince of fellows, and of what use was one? They
kept him away from Nicholas!
Herr Paul's eyes fell on the terrier. "Ach! my dear," he said, "you and
I, we alone are kept away!"
He drained a second glass.
What was it? This life! Froth-like that! He tossed off a third glass.
Forget! If one could not help, it was better to forget!
He put on his hat. Yes. There was no room for him there! He was not
wanted!
He finished the bottle, and went out into the passage. Scruff ran and
lay down at Mr. Treffry's door. Herr Paul looked at him. "Ach!" he
said, tapping his chest, "ungrateful hound!" And opening the front door
he went out on tiptoe....
Late that afternoon Greta stole hatless through the lilac bushes; she
looked tired after her night journey, and sat idly on a chair in the
speckled shadow of a lime-tree.
'It is not like home,' she thought; 'I am unhappy. Even the birds are
silent, but perhaps that is because it is so hot. I have never been sad
like this--for it is not fancy that I am sad this time, as it is
sometimes. It is in my heart like the sound the wind makes through a
wood, it feels quite empty in my heart. If it is always like this to be
unhappy, then I am sorry for all the unhappy things in the world; I am
sorrier than I ever was before.'
A shadow fell on the grass, she raised her eyes, and saw Dawney.
"Dr. Edmund!" she whispered.
Dawney turned to her; a heavy furrow showed between his brows. His eyes,
always rather close together, stared painfully.
"Dr. Edmund," Greta whispered, "is it true?"
He took her hand, and spread his own palm over it.
"Perhaps," he said; "perhaps not. We must hope."
Greta looked up, awed.
"They say he is dying."
"We have sent for the best man in Vienna."
Greta shook her head.
"But you are clever, Dr. Edmund; and you are afraid."
"He is brave," said Dawney; "we must all be brave, you know. You too!"
"Brave?" repeated Greta; "what is it to be brave? If it is not to cry
and make a fuss--that I can do. But if it is not to be sad in here," she
touched her breast, "that I cannot do, and it shall not be any good for
me to try."
"To be brave is to hope; don't give up hope, dear."
"No," said Greta, tracing the pattern of the sunlight on her skirt. "But
I think that when we hope, we are not brave, because we are expecting
something for ourselves. Chris says that hope is prayer, and if it is
prayer, then all the time we are hoping, we are asking for something, and
it is not brave to ask for things."
A smile curved Dawney's mouth.
"Go on, Philosopher!" he said. "Be brave in your own way, it will be
just as good as anybody else's."
"What are you going to do to be brave, Dr. Edmund?"
"I? Fight! If only we had five years off his life!"
Greta watched him as he walked away.
"I shall never be brave," she mourned; "I shall always be wanting to be
happy." And, kneeling down, she began to disentangle a fly, imprisoned
in a cobweb. A plant of hemlock had sprung up in the long grass by her
feet. Greta thought, dismayed: 'There are weeds!'
It seemed but another sign of the death of joy.
'But it's very beautiful,' she thought, 'the blossoms are like stars. I
am not going to pull it up. I will leave it; perhaps it will spread all
through the garden; and if it does I do not care, for now things are not
like they used to be and I do not, think they ever shall be again.'
XXVII
The days went by; those long, hot days, when the heat haze swims up about
ten of the forenoon, and, as the sun sinks level with the mountains,
melts into golden ether which sets the world quivering with sparkles.
At the lighting of the stars those sparkles die, vanishing one by one off
the hillsides; evening comes flying down the valleys, and life rests
under her cool wings. The night falls; and the hundred little voices of
the night arise.
It was near grape-gathering, and in the heat the fight for Nicholas
Treffry's life went on, day in, day out, with gleams of hope and moments
of despair. Doctors came, but after the first he refused to see them.
"No," he said to Dawney--"throwing away money. If I pull through it
won't be because of them."
For days together he would allow no one but Dawney, Dominique, and the
paid nurse in the room.
"I can stand it better," he said to Christian, "when I don't see any of
you; keep away, old girl, and let me get on with it!"
To have been able to help would have eased the tension of her nerves, and
the aching of her heart. At his own request they had moved his bed into
a corner so that he might face the wall. There he would lie for hours
together, not speaking a word, except to ask for drink.
Sometimes Christian crept in unnoticed, and sat watching, with her arms
tightly folded across her breast. At night, after Greta was asleep, she
would toss from side to side, muttering feverish prayers. She spent hours
at her little table in the schoolroom, writing letters to Harz that were
never sent. Once she wrote these words: "I am the most wicked of all
creatures--I have even wished that he may die!" A few minutes afterwards
Miss Naylor found her with her head buried on her arms. Christian sprang
up; tears were streaming down her cheeks. "Don't touch me!" she cried,
and rushed away. Later, she stole into her uncle's room, and sank down
on the floor beside the bed. She sat there silently, unnoticed all the
evening. When night came she could hardly be persuaded to leave the
room.
One day Mr. Treffry expressed a wish to see Herr Paul; it was a long
while before the latter could summon courage to go in.
"There's a few dozen of the Gordon sherry at my Chambers, in London,
Paul," Mr. Treffry said; "I'd be glad to think you had 'em. And my man,
Dominique, I've made him all right in my will, but keep your eye on him;
he's a good sort for a foreigner, and no chicken, but sooner or later,
the women'll get hold of him. That's all I had to say. Send Chris to
me."
Herr Paul stood by the bedside speechless. Suddenly he blurted out.
"Ah! my dear! Courage! We are all mortal. You will get well!" All the
morning he walked about quite inconsolable. "It was frightful to see
him, you know, frightful! An iron man could not have borne it."
When Christian came to him, Mr. Treffry raised himself and looked at her
a long while.
His wistful face was like an accusation. But that very afternoon the
news came from the sickroom that he was better, having had no pain for
several hours.
Every one went about with smiles lurking in their eyes, and ready to
break forth at a word. In the kitchen Barbi burst out crying, and,
forgetting to toss the pan, spoiled a Kaiser-Schmarn she was making.
Dominique was observed draining a glass of Chianti, and solemnly casting
forth the last drops in libation. An order was given for tea to be taken
out under the acacias, where it was always cool; it was felt that
something in the nature of high festival was being held. Even Herr Paul
was present; but Christian did not come. Nobody spoke of illness; to
mention it might break the spell.
Miss Naylor, who had gone into the house, came back, saying:
"There is a strange man standing over there by the corner of the house."
"Really!" asked Mrs. Decie; "what does he want?"
Miss Naylor reddened. "I did not ask him. I--don't--know--whether he is
quite respectable. His coat is buttoned very close, and he--doesn't
seem--to have a--collar."
"Go and see what he wants, dear child," Mrs. Decie said to Greta.
"I don't know--I really do not know--" began Miss Naylor; "he has
very--high--boots," but Greta was already on her way, with hands clasped
behind her, and demure eyes taking in the stranger's figure.
"Please?" she said, when she was close to him.
The stranger took his cap off with a jerk.
"This house has no bells," he said in a nasal voice; "it has a tendency
to discourage one."
"Yes," said Greta gravely, "there is a bell, but it does not ring now,
because my uncle is so ill."
"I am very sorry to hear that. I don't know the people here, but I am
very sorry to hear that.
"I would be glad to speak a few words to your sister, if it is your
sister that I want."
And the stranger's face grew very red.
"Is it," said Greta, "that you are a friend of Herr Harz? If you are a
friend of his, you will please come and have some tea, and while you are
having tea I will look for Chris."
Perspiration bedewed the stranger's forehead.
"Tea? Excuse me! I don't drink tea."
"There is also coffee," Greta said.
The stranger's progress towards the arbour was so slow that Greta arrived
considerably before him.
"It is a friend of Herr Harz," she whispered; "he will drink coffee. I am
going to find Chris."
"Greta!" gasped Miss Naylor.
Mrs. Decie put up her hand.
"Ah!" she said, "if it is so, we must be very nice to him for Christian's
sake."
Miss Naylor's face grew soft.
"Ah, yes!" she said; "of course."
"Bah!" muttered Herr Paul, "that recommences.'
"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie, "you lack the elements of wisdom."
Herr Paul glared at the approaching stranger.
Mrs. Decie had risen, and smilingly held out her hand.
"We are so glad to know you; you are an artist too, perhaps? I take a
great interest in art, and especially in that school which Mr. Harz
represents."
The stranger smiled.
"He is the genuine article, ma'am," he said. "He represents no school,
he is one of that kind whose corpses make schools."
"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Decie, "you are an American. That is so nice. Do sit
down! My niece will soon be here."
Greta came running back.
"Will you come, please?" she said. "Chris is ready."
Gulping down his coffee, the stranger included them all in a single bow,
and followed her.
"Ach!" said Herr Paul, "garcon tres chic, celui-la!"
Christian was standing by her little table. The stranger began.
"I am sending Mr. Harz's things to England; there are some pictures here.
He would be glad to have them."
A flood of crimson swept over her face.
"I am sending them to London," the stranger repeated; "perhaps you could
give them to me to-day."
"They are ready; my sister will show you."
Her eyes seemed to dart into his soul, and try to drag something from it.
The words rushed from her lips:
"Is there any message for me?"
The stranger regarded her curiously.
"No," he stammered, "no! I guess not. He is well.... I wish...." He
stopped; her white face seemed to flash scorn, despair, and entreaty on
him all at once. And turning, she left him standing there.
XXVII
When Christian went that evening to her uncle's room he was sitting up in
bed, and at once began to talk. "Chris," he said, "I can't stand this
dying by inches. I'm going to try what a journey'll do for me. I want
to get back to the old country. The doctor's promised. There's a shot
in the locker yet! I believe in that young chap; he's stuck to me like a
man.... It'll be your birthday, on Tuesday, old girl, and you'll be
twenty. Seventeen years since your father died. You've been a lot to
me.... A parson came here today. That's a bad sign. Thought it his
duty! Very civil of him! I wouldn't see him, though. If there's
anything in what they tell you, I'm not going to sneak in at this time o'
day. There's one thing that's rather badly on my mind. I took advantage
of Mr. Harz with this damned pitifulness of mine. You've a right to look
at me as I've seen you sometimes when you thought I was asleep. If I
hadn't been ill he'd never have left you. I don't blame you, Chris--not
I! You love me? I know that, my dear. But one's alone when it comes to
the run-in. Don't cry! Our minds aren't Sunday-school books; you're
finding it out, that's all!" He sighed and turned away.
The noise of sun-blinds being raised vibrated through the house. A
feeling of terror seized on the girl; he lay so still, and yet the
drawing of each breath was a fight. If she could only suffer in his
place! She went close, and bent over him.
"It's air we want, both you and I!" he muttered. Christian beckoned to
the nurse, and stole out through the window.
A regiment was passing in the road; she stood half-hidden amongst the
lilac bushes watching. The poplar leaves drooped lifeless and almost
black above her head, the dust raised by the soldiers' feet hung in the
air; it seemed as if in all the world no freshness and no life were
stirring. The tramp of feet died away. Suddenly within arm's length of
her a man appeared, his stick shouldered like a sword. He raised his
hat.
"Good-evening! You do not remember me? Sarelli. Pardon! You looked
like a ghost standing there. How badly those fellows marched! We hang,
you see, on the skirts of our profession and criticise; it is all we are
fit for." His black eyes, restless and malevolent like a swan's, seemed
to stab her face. "A fine evening! Too hot. The storm is wanted; you
feel that? It is weary waiting for the storm; but after the storm, my
dear young lady, comes peace." He smiled, gently, this time, and baring
his head again, was lost to view in the shadow of the trees.
His figure had seemed to Christian like the sudden vision of a
threatening, hidden force. She thrust out her hands, as though to keep
it off.
No use; it was within her, nothing could keep it away! She went to Mrs.
Decie's room, where her aunt and Miss Naylor were conversing in low
tones. To hear their voices brought back the touch of this world of
everyday which had no part or lot in the terrifying powers within her.
Dawney slept at the Villa now. In the dead of night he was awakened by a
light flashed in his eyes. Christian was standing there, her face pale
and wild with terror, her hair falling in dark masses on her shoulders.
"Save him! Save him!" she cried. "Quick! The bleeding!"
He saw her muffle her face in her white sleeves, and seizing the candle,
leaped out of bed and rushed away.
The internal haemorrhage had come again, and Nicholas Treffry wavered
between life and death. When it had ceased, he sank into a sort of
stupor. About six o'clock he came back to consciousness; watching his
eyes, they could see a mental struggle taking place within him. At last
he singled Christian out from the others by a sign.
"I'm beat, Chris," he whispered. "Let him know, I want to see him."
His voice grew a little stronger. "I thought that I could see it
through--but here's the end." He lifted his hand ever so little, and let
it fall again. When told a little later that a telegram had been sent to
Harz his eyes expressed satisfaction.
Herr Paul came down in ignorance of the night's events. He stopped in
front of the barometer and tapped it, remarking to Miss Naylor: "The
glass has gone downstairs; we shall have cool weather--it will still go
well with him!"
When, with her brown face twisted by pity and concern, she told him that
it was a question of hours, Herr Paul turned first purple, then pale, and
sitting down, trembled violently. "I cannot believe it," he exclaimed
almost angrily. "Yesterday he was so well! I cannot believe it! Poor
Nicholas! Yesterday he spoke to me!" Taking Miss Naylor's hand, he
clutched it in his own. "Ah!" he cried, letting it go suddenly, and
striking at his forehead, "it is too terrible; only yesterday he spoke to
me of sherry. Is there nobody, then, who can do good?"
"There is only God," replied Miss Naylor softly.
"God?" said Herr Paul in a scared voice.
"We--can--all--pray to Him," Miss Naylor murmured; little spots of colour
came into her cheeks. "I am going to do it now."
Herr Paul raised her hand and kissed it.
"Are you?" he said; "good! I too." He passed through his study door,
closed it carefully behind him, then for some unknown reason set his back
against it. Ugh! Death! It came to all! Some day it would come to
him. It might come tomorrow! One must pray!
The day dragged to its end. In the sky clouds had mustered, and,
crowding close on one another, clung round the sun, soft, thick,
greywhite, like the feathers on a pigeon's breast. Towards evening faint
tremblings were felt at intervals, as from the shock of immensely distant
earthquakes.
Nobody went to bed that night, but in the morning the report was the
same: "Unconscious--a question of hours." Once only did he recover
consciousness, and then asked for Harz. A telegram had come from him, he
was on the way. Towards seven of the evening the long-expected storm
broke in a sky like ink. Into the valleys and over the crests of
mountains it seemed as though an unseen hand were spilling goblets of
pale wine, darting a sword-blade zigzag over trees, roofs, spires, peaks,
into the very firmament, which answered every thrust with great bursts of
groaning. Just beyond the veranda Greta saw a glowworm shining, as it
might be a tiny bead of the fallen lightning. Soon the rain covered
everything. Sometimes a jet of light brought the hilltops, towering,
dark, and hard, over the house, to disappear again behind the raindrops
and shaken leaves. Each breath drawn by the storm was like the clash of a
thousand cymbals; and in his room Mr. Treffry lay unconscious of its
fury.
Greta had crept in unobserved; and sat curled in a corner, with Scruff in
her arms, rocking slightly to and fro. When Christian passed, she caught
her skirt, and whispered: "It is your birthday, Chris!"
Mr. Treffry stirred.
"What's that? Thunder?--it's cooler. Where am I? Chris!"
Dawney signed for her to take his place.
"Chris!" Mr. Treffry said. "It's near now." She bent across him, and
her tears fell on his forehead.
"Forgive!" she whispered; "love me!"
He raised his finger, and touched her cheek.
For an hour or more he did not speak, though once or twice he moaned, and
faintly tightened his pressure on her fingers. The storm had died away,
but very far off the thunder was still muttering.
His eyes opened once more, rested on her, and passed beyond, into that
abyss dividing youth from age, conviction from conviction, life from
death.
At the foot of the bed Dawney stood covering his face; behind him
Dominique knelt with hands held upwards; the sound of Greta's breathing,
soft in sleep, rose and fell in the stillness.
XXIX
One afternoon in March, more than three years after Mr. Treffry's death,
Christian was sitting at the window of a studio in St. John's Wood. The
sky was covered with soft, high clouds, through which shone little gleams
of blue. Now and then a bright shower fell, sprinkling the trees, where
every twig was curling upwards as if waiting for the gift of its new
leaves. And it seemed to her that the boughs thickened and budded under
her very eyes; a great concourse of sparrows had gathered on those
boughs, and kept raising a shrill chatter. Over at the far side of the
room Harz was working at a picture.
On Christian's face was the quiet smile of one who knows that she has
only to turn her eyes to see what she wishes to see; of one whose
possessions are safe under her hand. She looked at Harz with that
possessive smile. But as into the brain of one turning in his bed grim
fancies will suddenly leap up out of warm nothingness, so there leaped
into her mind the memory of that long ago dawn, when he had found her
kneeling by Mr. Treffry's body. She seemed to see again the dead face,
so gravely quiet, and furrowless. She seemed to see her lover and
herself setting forth silently along the river wall where they had first
met; sitting down, still silent, beneath the poplar-tree where the little
bodies of the chafers had lain strewn in the Spring. To see the trees
changing from black to grey, from grey to green, and in the dark sky long
white lines of cloud, lighting to the south like birds; and, very far
away, rosy peaks watching the awakening of the earth. And now once
again, after all that time, she felt her spirit shrink away from his; as
it had shrunk in that hour, when she had seemed hateful to herself. She
remembered the words she had spoken: "I have no heart left. You've torn
it in two between you. Love is all self--I wanted him to die." She
remembered too the raindrops on the vines like a million tiny lamps, and
the throstle that began singing. Then, as dreams die out into warm
nothingness, recollection vanished, and the smile came back to her lips.
She took out a letter.
"....O Chris! We are really coming; I seem to be always telling it to
myself, and I have told Scruff many times, but he does not care, because
he is getting old. Miss Naylor says we shall arrive for breakfast, and
that we shall be hungry, but perhaps she will not be very hungry, if it
is rough. Papa said to me: 'Je serai inconsolable, mais inconsolable!'
But I think he will not be, because he is going to Vienna. When we are
come, there will be nobody at Villa Rubein; Aunt Constance has gone a
fortnight ago to Florence. There is a young man at her hotel; she says
he will be one of the greatest playwriters in England, and she sent me a
play of his to read; it was only a little about love, I did not like it
very much.... O Chris! I think I shall cry when I see you. As I am
quite grown up, Miss Naylor is not to come back with me; sometimes she is
sad, but she will be glad to see you, Chris. She seems always sadder
when it is Spring. Today I walked along the wall; the little green balls
of wool are growing on the poplars already, and I saw one chafer; it will
not be long before the cherry blossom comes; and I felt so funny, sad and
happy together, and once I thought that I had wings and could fly away up
the valley to Meran--but I had none, so I sat on the bench where we sat
the day we took the pictures, and I thought and thought; there was
nothing came to me in my thoughts, but all was sweet and a little noisy,
and rather sad; it was like the buzzing of the chafer, in my head; and
now I feel so tired and all my blood is running up and down me. I do not
mind, because I know it is the Spring.
"Dominique came to see us the other day; he is very well, and is half the
proprietor of the Adler Hotel, at Meran; he is not at all different, and
he asked about you and about Alois--do you know, Chris, to myself I call
him Herr Harz, but when I have seen him this time I shall call him Alois
in my heart also.
"I have a letter from Dr. Edmund; he is in London, so perhaps you have
seen him, only he has a great many patients and some that he has 'hopes
of killing soon'! especially one old lady, because she is always wanting
him to do things for her, and he is never saying 'No,' so he does not
like her. He says that he is getting old. When I have finished this
letter I am going to write and tell him that perhaps he shall see me
soon, and then I think he will be very sad. Now that the Spring is come
there are more flowers to take to Uncle Nic's grave, and every day, when
I am gone, Barbi is to take them so that he shall not miss you, Chris,
because all the flowers I put there are for you.
"I am buying some toys without paint on for my niece."
"O Chris! this will be the first baby that I have known."
"I am only to stay three weeks with you, but I think when I am once there
I shall be staying longer. I send a kiss for my niece, and to Herr Harz,
my love--that is the last time I shall call him Herr Harz; and to you,
Chris, all the joy that is in my heart.--Your loving "GRETA."
Christian rose, and, turning very softly, stood, leaning her elbows on
the back of a high seat, looking at her husband.
In her eyes there was a slow, clear, faintly smiling, yet yearning look,
as though this strenuous figure bent on its task were seen for a moment
as something apart, and not all the world to her.
"Tired?" asked Harz, putting his lips to her hand.
"No, it's only--what Greta says about the Spring; it makes one want more
than one has got."
Slipping her hand away, she went back to the window. Harz stood, looking
after her; then, taking up his palette, again began painting.
In the world, outside, the high soft clouds flew by; the trees seemed
thickening and budding.
And Christian thought:
'Can we never have quite enough?'
December 1890.
TO
MY FATHER A MAN OF DEVON I
"MOOR, 20th July.
.......It is quiet here, sleepy, rather--a farm is never quiet; the sea,
too, is only a quarter of a mile away, and when it's windy, the sound of
it travels up the combe; for distraction, you must go four miles to
Brixham or five to Kingswear, and you won't find much then. The farm lies
in a sheltered spot, scooped, so to speak, high up the combe side--behind
is a rise of fields, and beyond, a sweep of down. You have the feeling of
being able to see quite far, which is misleading, as you soon find out if
you walk. It is true Devon country-hills, hollows, hedge-banks, lanes
dipping down into the earth or going up like the sides of houses,
coppices, cornfields, and little streams wherever there's a place for
one; but the downs along the cliff, all gorse and ferns, are wild. The
combe ends in a sandy cove with black rock on one side, pinkish cliffs
away to the headland on the other, and a coastguard station. Just now,
with the harvest coming on, everything looks its richest, the apples
ripening, the trees almost too green. It's very hot, still weather; the
country and the sea seem to sleep in the sun. In front of the farm are
half-a-dozen pines that look as if they had stepped out of another land,
but all round the back is orchard as lush, and gnarled, and orthodox as
any one could wish. The house, a long, white building with three levels
of roof, and splashes of brown all over it, looks as if it might be
growing down into the earth. It was freshly thatched two years ago--and
that's all the newness there is about it; they say the front door, oak,
with iron knobs, is three hundred years old at least. You can touch the
ceilings with your hand. The windows certainly might be larger--a
heavenly old place, though, with a flavour of apples, smoke, sweetbriar,
bacon, honeysuckle, and age, all over it.
The owner is a man called John Ford, about seventy, and seventeen stone
in weight--very big, on long legs, with a grey, stubbly beard, grey,
watery eyes, short neck and purplish complexion; he is asthmatic, and has
a very courteous, autocratic manner. His clothes are made of Harris
tweed--except on Sundays, when he puts on black--a seal ring, and a thick
gold cable chain. There's nothing mean or small about John Ford; I
suspect him of a warm heart, but he doesn't let you know much about him.
He's a north-country man by birth, and has been out in New Zealand all
his life. This little Devonshire farm is all he has now. He had a large
"station" in the North Island, and was much looked up to, kept open
house, did everything, as one would guess, in a narrow-minded,
large-handed way. He came to grief suddenly; I don't quite know how. I
believe his only son lost money on the turf, and then, unable to face his
father, shot himself; if you had seen John Ford, you could imagine that.
His wife died, too, that year. He paid up to the last penny, and came
home, to live on this farm. He told me the other night that he had only
one relation in the world, his granddaughter, who lives here with him.
Pasiance Voisey--old spelling for Patience, but they pronounce, it
Pash-yence--is sitting out here with me at this moment on a sort of
rustic loggia that opens into the orchard. Her sleeves are rolled up,
and she's stripping currants, ready for black currant tea. Now and then
she rests her elbows on the table, eats a berry, pouts her lips, and,
begins again. She has a round, little face; a long, slender body; cheeks
like poppies; a bushy mass of black-brown hair, and dark-brown, almost
black, eyes; her nose is snub; her lips quick, red, rather full; all her
motions quick and soft. She loves bright colours. She's rather like a
little cat; sometimes she seems all sympathy, then in a moment as hard as
tortoise-shell. She's all impulse; yet she doesn't like to show her
feelings; I sometimes wonder whether she has any. She plays the violin.
It's queer to see these two together, queer and rather sad. The old man
has a fierce tenderness for her that strikes into the very roots of him.
I see him torn between it, and his cold north-country horror of his
feelings; his life with her is an unconscious torture to him. She's a
restless, chafing thing, demure enough one moment, then flashing out into
mocking speeches or hard little laughs. Yet she's fond of him in her
fashion; I saw her kiss him once when he was asleep. She obeys him
generally--in a way as if she couldn't breathe while she was doing it.
She's had a queer sort of education--history, geography, elementary
mathematics, and nothing else; never been to school; had a few lessons on
the violin, but has taught herself most of what she knows. She is well up
in the lore of birds, flowers, and insects; has three cats, who follow
her about; and is full of pranks. The other day she called out to me,
"I've something for you. Hold out your hand and shut your eyes!" It was
a large, black slug! She's the child of the old fellow's only daughter,
who was sent home for schooling at Torquay, and made a runaway match with
one Richard Voisey, a yeoman farmer, whom she met in the hunting-field.
John Ford was furious--his ancestors, it appears, used to lead ruffians
on the Cumberland side of the Border--he looked on "Squire" Rick Voisey
as a cut below him. He was called "Squire," as far as I can make out,
because he used to play cards every evening with a parson in the
neighbourhood who went by the name of "Devil" Hawkins. Not that the
Voisey stock is to be despised. They have had this farm since it was
granted to one Richard Voysey by copy dated 8th September, 13 Henry VIII.
Mrs. Hopgood, the wife of the bailiff--a dear, quaint, serene old soul
with cheeks like a rosy, withered apple, and an unbounded love of
Pasiance--showed me the very document.
"I kape it," she said. "Mr. Ford be tu proud--but other folks be proud
tu. 'Tis a pra-aper old fam'ly: all the women is Margery, Pasiance, or
Mary; all the men's Richards an' Johns an' Rogers; old as they
apple-trees."
Rick Voisey was a rackety, hunting fellow, and "dipped" the old farm up
to its thatched roof. John Ford took his revenge by buying up the
mortgages, foreclosing, and commanding his daughter and Voisey to go on
living here rent free; this they dutifully did until they were both
killed in a dog-cart accident, eight years ago. Old Ford's financial
smash came a year later, and since then he's lived here with Pasiance. I
fancy it's the cross in her blood that makes her so restless, and
irresponsible: if she had been all a native she'd have been happy enough
here, or all a stranger like John Ford himself, but the two strains
struggling for mastery seem to give her no rest. You'll think this a
far-fetched theory, but I believe it to be the true one. She'll stand
with lips pressed together, her arms folded tight across her narrow
chest, staring as if she could see beyond the things round her; then
something catches her attention, her eyes will grow laughing, soft, or
scornful all in a minute! She's eighteen, perfectly fearless in a boat,
but you can't get her to mount a horse--a sore subject with her
grandfather, who spends most of his day on a lean, half-bred pony, that
carries him like a feather, for all his weight.
They put me up here as a favour to Dan Treffry; there's an arrangement of
L. s. d. with Mrs. Hopgood in the background. They aren't at all well
off; this is the largest farm about, but it doesn't bring them in much.
To look at John Ford, it seems incredible he should be short of
money--he's too large.
We have family prayers at eight, then, breakfast--after that freedom for
writing or anything else till supper and evening prayers. At midday one
forages for oneself. On Sundays, two miles to church twice, or you get
into John Ford's black books.... Dan Treffry himself is staying at
Kingswear. He says he's made his pile; it suits him down here--like a
sleep after years of being too wide-awake; he had a rough time in New
Zealand, until that mine made his fortune. You'd hardly remember him; he
reminds me of his uncle, old Nicholas Treffry; the same slow way of
speaking, with a hesitation, and a trick of repeating your name with
everything he says; left-handed too, and the same slow twinkle in his
eyes. He has a dark, short beard, and red-brown cheeks; is a little bald
on the temples, and a bit grey, but hard as iron. He rides over nearly
every day, attended by a black spaniel with a wonderful nose and a horror
of petticoats. He has told me lots of good stories of John Ford in the
early squatter's times; his feats with horses live to this day; and he
was through the Maori wars; as Dan says, "a man after Uncle Nic's own
heart."
They are very good friends, and respect each other; Dan has a great
admiration for the old man, but the attraction is Pasiance. He talks
very little when she's in the room, but looks at her in a sidelong,
wistful sort of way. Pasiance's conduct to him would be cruel in any one
else, but in her, one takes it with a pinch of salt. Dan goes off, but
turns up again as quiet and dogged as you please.
Last night, for instance, we were sitting in the loggia after supper.
Pasiance was fingering the strings of her violin, and suddenly Dan (a
bold thing for him) asked her to play.
"What!" she said, "before men? No, thank you!"
"Why not?"
"Because I hate them."
Down came John Ford's hand on the wicker table: "You forget yourself! Go
to bed!"
She gave Dan a look, and went; we could hear her playing in her bedroom;
it sounded like a dance of spirits; and just when one thought she had
finished, out it would break again like a burst of laughter. Presently,
John Ford begged our pardons ceremoniously, and stumped off indoors. The
violin ceased; we heard his voice growling at her; down he came again.
Just as he was settled in his chair there was a soft swish, and something
dark came falling through the apple boughs. The violin! You should have
seen his face! Dan would have picked the violin up, but the old man
stopped him. Later, from my bedroom window, I saw John Ford come out and
stand looking at the violin. He raised his foot as if to stamp on it. At
last he picked it up, wiped it carefully, and took it in....
My room is next to hers. I kept hearing her laugh, a noise too as if she
were dragging things about the room. Then I fell asleep, but woke with a
start, and went to the window for a breath of fresh air. Such a black,
breathless night! Nothing to be seen but the twisted, blacker branches;
not the faintest stir of leaves, no sound but muffled grunting from the
cowhouse, and now and then a faint sigh. I had the queerest feeling of
unrest and fear, the last thing to expect on such a night. There is
something here that's disturbing; a sort of suppressed struggle. I've
never in my life seen anything so irresponsible as this girl, or so
uncompromising as the old man; I keep thinking of the way he wiped that
violin. It's just as if a spark would set everything in a blaze. There's
a menace of tragedy--or--perhaps it's only the heat, and too much of
Mother Hopgood's crame....
II
"Tuesday.
......I've made a new acquaintance. I was lying in the orchard, and
presently, not seeing me, he came along--a man of middle height, with a
singularly good balance, and no lumber--rather old blue clothes, a
flannel shirt, a dull red necktie, brown shoes, a cap with a leather peak
pushed up on the forehead. Face long and narrow, bronzed with a kind of
pale burnt-in brownness; a good forehead. A brown moustache, beard
rather pointed, blackening about the cheeks; his chin not visible, but
from the beard's growth must be big; mouth I should judge sensuous. Nose
straight and blunt; eyes grey, with an upward look, not exactly frank,
because defiant; two parallel furrows down each cheek, one from the inner
corner of the eye, one from the nostril; age perhaps thirty-five. About
the face, attitude, movements, something immensely vital, adaptable,
daring, and unprincipled.
He stood in front of the loggia, biting his fingers, a kind of
nineteenth-century buccaneer, and I wondered what he was doing in this
galley. They say you can tell a man of Kent or a Somersetshire man;
certainly you can tell a Yorkshire man, and this fellow could only have
been a man of Devon, one of the two main types found in this county. He
whistled; and out came Pasiance in a geranium-coloured dress, looking
like some tall poppy--you know the slight droop of a poppy's head, and
the way the wind sways its stem.... She is a human poppy, her fuzzy dark
hair is like a poppy's lustreless black heart, she has a poppy's
tantalising attraction and repulsion, something fatal, or rather fateful.
She came walking up to my new friend, then caught sight of me, and
stopped dead.
"That," she said to me, "is Zachary Pearse. This," she said to him, "is
our lodger." She said it with a wonderful soft malice. She wanted to
scratch me, and she scratched. Half an hour later I was in the yard,
when up came this fellow Pearse.
"Glad to know you," he said, looking thoughtfully at the pigs.
"You're a writer, aren't you?"
"A sort of one," I said.
"If by any chance," he said suddenly, "you're looking for a job, I could
put something in your way. Walk down to the beach with me, and I'll tell
you; my boat's at anchor, smartest little craft in these parts."
It was very hot, and I had no desire whatever to go down to the beach--I
went, all the same. We had not gone far when John Ford and Dan Treffry
came into the lane. Our friend seemed a little disconcerted, but soon
recovered himself. We met in the middle of the lane, where there was
hardly room to pass. John Ford, who looked very haughty, put on his
pince-nez and stared at Pearse.
"Good-day!" said Pearse; "fine weather! I've been up to ask Pasiance to
come for a sail. Wednesday we thought, weather permitting; this
gentleman's coming. Perhaps you'll come too, Mr. Treffry. You've never
seen my place. I'll give you lunch, and show you my father. He's worth a
couple of hours' sail any day." It was said in such an odd way that one
couldn't resent his impudence. John Ford was seized with a fit of
wheezing, and seemed on the eve of an explosion; he glanced at me, and
checked himself.
"You're very good," he said icily; "my granddaughter has other things to
do. You, gentlemen, will please yourselves"; and, with a very slight
bow, he went stumping on to the house. Dan looked at me, and I looked at
him.
"You'll come?" said Pearse, rather wistfully. Dan stammered: "Thank you,
Mr. Pearse; I'm a better man on a horse than in a boat, but--thank you."
Cornered in this way, he's a shy, soft-hearted being. Pearse smiled his
thanks. "Wednesday, then, at ten o'clock; you shan't regret it."
"Pertinacious beggar!" I heard Dan mutter in his beard; and found myself
marching down the lane again by Pearse's side. I asked him what he was
good enough to mean by saying I was coming, without having asked me. He
answered, unabashed:
"You see, I'm not friends with the old man; but I knew he'd not be
impolite to you, so I took the liberty."
He has certainly a knack of turning one's anger to curiosity. We were
down in the combe now; the tide was running out, and the sand all little,
wet, shining ridges. About a quarter of a mile out lay a cutter, with
her tan sail half down, swinging to the swell. The sunlight was making
the pink cliffs glow in the most wonderful way; and shifting in bright
patches over the sea like moving shoals of goldfish. Pearse perched
himself on his dinghy, and looked out under his hand. He seemed lost in
admiration.
"If we could only net some of those spangles," he said, "an' make gold of
'em! No more work then."
"It's a big job I've got on," he said presently; "I'll tell you about it
on Wednesday. I want a journalist."
"But I don't write for the papers," I said; "I do other sort of work. My
game is archaeology."
"It doesn't matter," he said, "the more imagination the better. It'd be
a thundering good thing for you."
His assurance was amazing, but it was past supper-time, and hunger
getting the better of my curiosity, I bade him good-night. When I looked
back, he was still there, on the edge of his boat, gazing at the sea. A
queer sort of bird altogether, but attractive somehow.
Nobody mentioned him that evening; but once old Ford, after staring a
long time at Pasiance, muttered a propos of nothing, "Undutiful
children!" She was softer than usual; listening quietly to our talk, and
smiling when spoken to. At bedtime she went up to her grand-father,
without waiting for the usual command, "Come and kiss me, child."
Dan did not stay to supper, and he has not been here since. This morning
I asked Mother Hopgood who Zachary Pearse was. She's a true Devonian; if
there's anything she hates, it is to be committed to a definite
statement. She ambled round her answer, and at last told me that he was
"son of old Cap'en Jan Pearse to Black Mill. 'Tes an old family to
Dartymouth an' Plymouth," she went on in a communicative outburst. "They
du say Francis Drake tuke five o' they Pearses with 'en to fight the
Spaniards. At least that's what I've heard Mr. Zachary zay; but
Ha-apgood can tell yu." Poor Hopgood, the amount of information she
saddles him with in the course of the day! Having given me thus to
understand that she had run dry, she at once went on:
"Cap'en Jan Pearse made a dale of ventures. He's old now--they du say
nigh an 'undred. Ha-apgood can tell yu."
"But the son, Mrs. Hopgood?"
Her eyes twinkled with sudden shrewdness: She hugged herself placidly.
"An' what would yu take for dinner to-day? There's duck; or yu might
like 'toad in the hole,' with an apple tart; or then, there's--Well!
we'll see what we can du like." And off she went, without waiting for my
answer.
To-morrow is Wednesday. I shan't be sorry to get another look at this
fellow Pearse....
III
"Friday, 29th July.
.......Why do you ask me so many questions, and egg me on to write about
these people instead of minding my business? If you really want to hear,
I'll tell you of Wednesday's doings.
It was a splendid morning; and Dan turned up, to my surprise--though I
might have known that when he says a thing, he does it. John Ford came
out to shake hands with him, then, remembering why he had come, breathed
loudly, said nothing, and went in again. Nothing was to be seen of
Pasiance, and we went down to the beach together.
"I don't like this fellow Pearse, George," Dan said to me on the way; "I
was fool enough to say I'd go, and so I must, but what's he after? Not
the man to do things without a reason, mind you."
I remarked that we should soon know.
"I'm not so sure--queer beggar; I never look at him without thinking of a
pirate."
The cutter lay in the cove as if she had never moved. There too was
Zachary Pearse seated on the edge of his dinghy.
"A five-knot breeze," he said, "I'll run you down in a couple of hours."
He made no inquiry about Pasiance, but put us into his cockleshell and
pulled for the cutter. A lantern-Jawed fellow, named Prawle, with a
spiky, prominent beard, long, clean-shaven upper lip, and tanned
complexion--a regular hard-weather bird--received us.
The cutter was beautifully clean; built for a Brixham trawler, she still
had her number--DH 113--uneffaced. We dived into a sort of cabin, airy,
but dark, fitted with two bunks and a small table, on which stood some
bottles of stout; there were lockers, too, and pegs for clothes. Prawle,
who showed us round, seemed very proud of a steam contrivance for
hoisting sails. It was some minutes before we came on deck again; and
there, in the dinghy, being pulled towards the cutter, sat Pasiance.
"If I'd known this," stammered Dan, getting red, "I wouldn't have come."
She had outwitted us, and there was nothing to be done.
It was a very pleasant sail. The breeze was light from the south-east,
the sun warm, the air soft. Presently Pasiance began singing:
"Columbus is dead and laid in his grave, Oh! heigh-ho! and laid in his
grave; Over his head the apple-trees wave Oh! heigh-ho! the apple-trees
wave....
"The apples are ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall;
There came an old woman and gathered them all, Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered
them all....
"The apples are gathered, and laid on the shelf, Oh! heigh-ho! and laid
on the shelf; If you want any more, you must sing for yourself, Oh!
heigh-ho! and sing for yourself."
Her small, high voice came to us in trills and spurts, as the wind let
it, like the singing of a skylark lost in the sky. Pearse went up to her
and whispered something. I caught a glimpse of her face like a startled
wild creature's; shrinking, tossing her hair, laughing, all in the same
breath. She wouldn't sing again, but crouched in the bows with her chin
on her hands, and the sun falling on one cheek, round, velvety, red as a
peach....
We passed Dartmouth, and half an hour later put into a little wooded bay.
On a low reddish cliff was a house hedged round by pine-trees. A bit of
broken jetty ran out from the bottom of the cliff. We hooked on to this,
and landed. An ancient, fish-like man came slouching down and took
charge of the cutter. Pearse led us towards the house, Pasiance
following mortally shy all of a sudden.
The house had a dark, overhanging thatch of the rush reeds that grow in
the marshes hereabouts; I remember nothing else remarkable. It was
neither old, nor new; neither beautiful, nor exactly ugly; neither clean,
nor entirely squalid; it perched there with all its windows over the sea,
turning its back contemptuously on the land.
Seated in a kind of porch, beside an immense telescope, was a very old
man in a panama hat, with a rattan cane. His pure-white beard and
moustache, and almost black eyebrows, gave a very singular, piercing look
to his little, restless, dark-grey eyes; all over his mahogany cheeks and
neck was a network of fine wrinkles. He sat quite upright, in the full
sun, hardly blinking.
"Dad!" said Zachary, "this is Pasiance Voisey." The old man turned his
eyes on her and muttered, "How do you do, ma'am?" then took no further
notice. And Pasiance, who seemed to resent this, soon slipped away and
went wandering about amongst the pines. An old woman brought some plates
and bottles and laid them casually on a table; and we sat round the
figure of old Captain Pearse without a word, as if we were all under a
spell.
Before lunch there was a little scene between Zachary Pearse and Dan, as
to which of them should summon Pasiance. It ended in both going, and
coming back without her. She did not want any lunch, would stay where
she was amongst the pines.
For lunch we had chops, wood-pigeons, mushrooms, and mulberry preserve,
and drank wonderful Madeira out of common wine-glasses. I asked the old
man where he got it; he gave me a queer look, and answered with a little
bow:
"Stood me in tu shillin' the bottle, an' the country got nothing out of
it, sir. In the early Thirties; tu shillin' the bottle; there's no such
wine nowadays and," he added, looking at Zachary, "no such men."
Zachary smiled and said: "You did nothing so big, dad, as what I'm after,
now!"
The old man's eyes had a sort of disdain in them.
"You're going far, then, in the Pied Witch, Zack?"
"I am," said Zachary.
"And where might yu be goin' in that old trampin' smut factory?"
"Morocco."
"Heu!" said the old man, "there's nothing there; I know that coast, as I
know the back o' my hand." He stretched out a hand covered with veins
and hair.
Zachary began suddenly to pour out a flood of words:
"Below Mogador--a fellow there--friend of mine--two years ago now.
Concessions--trade-gunpowder--cruisers--feuds--money&
mdash;chiefs--Gatling guns--Sultan--rifles--rebellion--gold." He
detailed a reckless, sordid, bold scheme, which, on the pivot of a
trading venture, was intended to spin a whole wheel of political
convulsions.
"They'll never let you get there," said old Pearse.
"Won't they?" returned Zachary. "Oh yes, they will, an' when I leave,
there'll be another dynasty, and I'll be a rich man."
"Yu'll never leave," answered the old man.
Zachary took out a sheet of paper covered with figures. He had worked
the whole thing out. So much--equipment, so much--trade, so
much--concessions, so much--emergencies. "My last mag!" he ended, "a
thousand short; the ship's ready, and if I'm not there within a month my
chance is as good as gone."
This was the pith of his confidences--an appeal for money, and we all
looked as men will when that crops up.
"Mad!" muttered the old man, looking at the sea.
"No," said Zachary. That one word was more eloquent than all the rest of
his words put together. This fellow is no visionary. His scheme may be
daring, and unprincipled, but--he knows very well what he's about.
"Well!" said old Pearse, "you shall have five 'undred of my money, if
it's only to learn what yu're made of. Wheel me in!" Zachary wheeled
him into the house, but soon came back.
"The old man's cheque for five hundred pounds!" he said, holding it up.
"Mr. Treffry, give me another, and you shall have a third of the
profits."
I expected Dan to give a point-blank refusal. But he only asked:
"Would that clear you for starting?"
"With that," said Zachary, "I can get to sea in a fortnight."
"Good!" Dan said slowly. "Give me a written promise! To sea in fourteen
days and my fair share on the five hundred pounds--no more--no less."
Again I thought Pearse would have jumped at this, but he leaned his chin
on his hand, and looked at Dan, and Dan looked at him. While they were
staring at each other like this, Pasiance came up with a kitten.
"See!" she said, "isn't it a darling?" The kitten crawled and clawed its
way up behind her neck. I saw both men's eyes as they looked at
Pasiance, and suddenly understood what they were at. The kitten rubbed
itself against Pasiance's cheek, overbalanced, and fell, clawing, down
her dress. She caught it up and walked away. Some one, I don't know
which of us, sighed, and Pearse cried "Done!"
The bargain had been driven.
"Good-bye, Mr. Pearse," said Dan; "I guess that's all I'm wanted for.
I'll find my pony waiting in the village. George, you'll see Pasiance
home?"
We heard the hoofs of his pony galloping down the road; Pearse suddenly
excused himself, and disappeared.
This venture of his may sound romantic and absurd, but it's
matter-of-fact enough. He's after L. s. d.! Shades of Drake, Raleigh,
Hawkins, Oxenham! The worm of suspicion gnaws at the rose of romance.
What if those fellows, too, were only after L. s. d....?
I strolled into the pine-wood. The earth there was covered like a bee's
body with black and gold stripes; there was the blue sea below, and
white, sleepy clouds, and bumble-bees booming above the heather; it was
all softness, a summer's day in Devon. Suddenly I came on Pearse
standing at the edge of the cliff with Pasiance sitting in a little
hollow below, looking up at him. I heard him say:
"Pasiance--Pasiance!" The sound of his voice, and the sight of her soft,
wondering face made me furious. What business has she with love, at her
age? What business have they with each other?
He told me presently that she had started off for home, and drove me to
the ferry, behind an old grey pony. On the way he came back to his offer
of the other day.
"Come with me," he said. "It doesn't do to neglect the Press; you can
see the possibilities. It's one of the few countries left. If I once
get this business started you don't know where it's going to stop. You'd
have free passage everywhere, and whatever you like in reason."
I answered as rudely as I could--but by no means as rudely as I
wanted--that his scheme was mad. As a matter of fact, it's much too sane
for me; for, whatever the body of a scheme, its soul is the fibre of the
schemer.
"Think of it," he urged, as if he could see into me. "You can make what
you like of it. Press paragraphs, of course. But that's mechanical;
why, even I could do it, if I had time. As for the rest, you'll be as
free--as free as a man."
There, in five words of one syllable, is the kernel of this fellow
Pearse--"As free as a man!" No rule, no law, not even the mysterious
shackles that bind men to their own self-respects! "As free as a man!"
No ideals; no principles; no fixed star for his worship; no coil he can't
slide out of! But the fellow has the tenacity of one of the old Devon
mastiffs, too. He wouldn't take "No" for an answer.
"Think of it," he said; "any day will do--I've got a fortnight.... Look!
there she is!" I thought that he meant Pasiance; but it was an old
steamer, sluggish and black in the blazing sun of mid-stream, with a
yellow-and-white funnel, and no sign of life on her decks.
"That's her--the Pied Witch! Do her twelve knots; you wouldn't think it!
Well! good-evening! You'd better come. A word to me at any time. I'm
going aboard now."
As I was being ferried across I saw him lolling in the stern-sheets of a
little boat, the sun crowning his straw hat with glory.
I came on Pasiance, about a mile up the road, sitting in the hedge. We
walked on together between the banks--Devonshire banks, as high as
houses, thick with ivy and ferns, bramble and hazel boughs, and
honeysuckle.
"Do you believe in a God?" she said suddenly.
"Grandfather's God is simply awful. When I'm playing the fiddle, I can
feel God; but grandfather's is such a stuffy God--you know what I mean:
the sea, the wind, the trees, colours too--they make one feel. But I
don't believe that life was meant to 'be good' in. Isn't there anything
better than being good? When I'm 'good,' I simply feel wicked." She
reached up, caught a flower from the hedge, and slowly tore its petals.
"What would you do," she muttered, "if you wanted a thing, but were
afraid of it? But I suppose you're never afraid!" she added, mocking me.
I admitted that I was sometimes afraid, and often afraid of being afraid.
"That's nice! I'm not afraid of illness, nor of grandfather, nor of his
God; but--I want to be free. If you want a thing badly, you're afraid
about it."
I thought of Zachary Pearse's words, "free as a man."
"Why are you looking at me like that?" she said.
I stammered: "What do you mean by freedom?"
"Do you know what I shall do to-night?" she answered. "Get out of my
window by the apple-tree, and go to the woods, and play!"
We were going down a steep lane, along the side of a wood, where there's
always a smell of sappy leaves, and the breath of the cows that come
close to the hedge to get the shade.
There was a cottage in the bottom, and a small boy sat outside playing
with a heap of dust.
"Hallo, Johnny!" said Pasiance. "Hold your leg out and show this man
your bad place!" The small boy undid a bandage round his bare and dirty
little leg, and proudly revealed a sore.
"Isn't it nasty?" cried Pasiance ruefully, tying up the bandage again;
"poor little feller! Johnny, see what I've brought you!" She produced
from her pocket a stick of chocolate, the semblance of a soldier made of
sealing-wax and worsted, and a crooked sixpence.
It was a new glimpse of her. All the way home she was telling me the
story of little Johnny's family; when she came to his mother's death, she
burst out: "A beastly shame, wasn't it, and they're so poor; it might
just as well have been somebody else. I like poor people, but I hate
rich ones--stuck-up beasts."
Mrs. Hopgood was looking over the gate, with her cap on one side, and one
of Pasiance's cats rubbing itself against her skirts. At the sight of us
she hugged herself.
"Where's grandfather?" asked Pasiance. The old lady shook her head.
"Is it a row?" Mrs. Hopgood wriggled, and wriggled, and out came:
"Did you get yure tay, my pretty? No? Well, that's a pity; yu'll be
falin' low-like."
Pasiance tossed her head, snatched up the cat, and ran indoors. I
remained staring at Mrs. Hopgood.
"Dear-dear," she clucked, "poor lamb. So to spake it's--" and she
blurted out suddenly, "chuckin' full of wra-ath, he is. Well, there!"
My courage failed that evening. I spent it at the coastguard station,
where they gave me bread and cheese and some awful cider. I passed the
kitchen as I came back. A fire was still burning there, and two figures,
misty in the darkness, flitted about with stealthy laughter like spirits
afraid of being detected in a carnal-meal. They were Pasiance and Mrs.
Hopgood; and so charming was the smell of eggs and bacon, and they had
such an air of tender enjoyment of this dark revel, that I stifled many
pangs, as I crept hungry up to bed.
In the middle of the night I woke and heard what I thought was screaming;
then it sounded like wind in trees, then like the distant shaking of a
tambourine, with the high singing of a human voice. Suddenly it
stopped--two long notes came wailing out like sobs--then utter stillness;
and though I listened for an hour or more there was no other sound ....
IV
"4th August.
......For three days after I wrote last, nothing at all happened here. I
spent the mornings on the cliff reading, and watching the sun-sparks
raining on the sea. It's grand up there with the gorse all round, the
gulls basking on the rocks, the partridges calling in the corn, and now
and then a young hawk overhead. The afternoons I spent out in the
orchard. The usual routine goes on at the farm all the
time--cow-milking, bread-baking, John Ford riding in and out, Pasiance in
her garden stripping lavender, talking to the farm hands; and the smell
of clover, and cows and hay; the sound of hens and pigs and pigeons, the
soft drawl of voices, the dull thud of the farm carts; and day by day the
apples getting redder. Then, last Monday, Pasiance was away from sunrise
till sunset--nobody saw her go--nobody knew where she had gone. It was a
wonderful, strange day, a sky of silver-grey and blue, with a drift of
wind-clouds, all the trees sighing a little, the sea heaving in a long,
low swell, the animals restless, the birds silent, except the gulls with
their old man's laughter and kitten's mewing.
A something wild was in the air; it seemed to sweep across the downs and
combe, into the very house, like a passionate tune that comes drifting to
your ears when you're sleepy. But who would have thought the absence of
that girl for a few hours could have wrought such havoc! We were like
uneasy spirits; Mrs. Hopgood's apple cheeks seemed positively to wither
before one's eyes. I came across a dairymaid and farm hand discussing it
stolidly with very downcast faces. Even Hopgood, a hard-bitten fellow
with immense shoulders, forgot his imperturbability so far as to harness
his horse, and depart on what he assured me was "just a wild-guse
chaace." It was long before John Ford gave signs of noticing that
anything was wrong, but late in the afternoon I found him sitting with
his hands on his knees, staring straight before him. He rose heavily
when he saw me, and stalked out. In the evening, as I was starting for
the coastguard station to ask for help to search the cliff, Pasiance
appeared, walking as if she could hardly drag one leg after the other.
Her cheeks were crimson; she was biting her lips to keep tears of sheer
fatigue out of her eyes. She passed me in the doorway without a word.
The anxiety he had gone through seemed to forbid the old man from
speaking. He just came forward, took her face in his hands, gave it a
great kiss, and walked away. Pasiance dropped on the floor in the dark
passage, and buried her face on her arms. "Leave me alone!" was all she
would say. After a bit she dragged herself upstairs. Presently Mrs.
Hopgood came to me.
"Not a word out of her--an' not a bite will she ate, an' I had a pie all
ready--scrumptious. The good Lord knows the truth--she asked for brandy;
have you any brandy, sir? Ha-apgood'e don't drink it, an' Mister Ford 'e
don't allaow for anything but caowslip wine."
I had whisky.
The good soul seized the flask, and went off hugging it. She returned it
to me half empty.
"Lapped it like a kitten laps milk. I misdaoubt it's straong, poor lamb,
it lusened 'er tongue praaperly. 'I've a-done it,' she says to me,
'Mums-I've a-done it,' an' she laughed like a mad thing; and then, sir,
she cried, an' kissed me, an' pusshed me thru the door. Gude Lard! What
is 't she's a-done...?"
It rained all the next day and the day after. About five o'clock
yesterday the rain ceased; I started off to Kingswear on Hopgood's nag to
see Dan Treffry. Every tree, bramble, and fern in the lanes was dripping
water; and every bird singing from the bottom of his heart. I thought of
Pasiance all the time. Her absence that day was still a mystery; one
never ceased asking oneself what she had done. There are people who never
grow up--they have no right to do things. Actions have consequences--and
children have no business with consequences.
Dan was out. I had supper at the hotel, and rode slowly home. In the
twilight stretches of the road, where I could touch either bank of the
lane with my whip, I thought of nothing but Pasiance and her grandfather;
there was something in the half light suited to wonder and uncertainty.
It had fallen dark before I rode into the straw-yard. Two young bullocks
snuffled at me, a sleepy hen got up and ran off with a tremendous
shrieking. I stabled the horse, and walked round to the back. It was
pitch black under the apple-trees, and the windows were all darkened. I
stood there a little, everything smelled so delicious after the rain;
suddenly I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was being watched. Have
you ever felt like that on a dark night? I called out at last: "Is any
one there?" Not a sound! I walked to the gate-nothing! The trees still
dripped with tiny, soft, hissing sounds, but that was all. I slipped
round to the front, went in, barricaded the door, and groped up to bed.
But I couldn't sleep. I lay awake a long while; dozed at last, and woke
with a jump. A stealthy murmur of smothered voices was going on quite
close somewhere. It stopped. A minute passed; suddenly came the soft
thud as of something falling. I sprang out of bed and rushed to the
window. Nothing--but in the distance something that sounded like
footsteps. An owl hooted; then clear as crystal, but quite low, I heard
Pasiance singing in her room:
"The apples are ripe and ready to fall. Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall."
I ran to her door and knocked.
"What is it?" she cried.
"Is anything the matter?"
"Matter?"
"Is anything the matter?"
"Ha-ha-ha-ha! Good-night!" then quite low, I heard her catch her breath,
hard, sharply. No other answer, no other sound.
I went to bed and lay awake for hours....
This evening Dan came; during supper he handed Pasiance a roll of music;
he had got it in Torquay. The shopman, he said, had told him that it was
a "corker."
It was Bach's "Chaconne." You should have seen her eyes shine, her
fingers actually tremble while she turned over the pages. Seems odd to
think of her worshipping at the shrine of Bach as odd as to think of a
wild colt running of its free will into the shafts; but that's just it
with her you can never tell. "Heavenly!" she kept saying.
John Ford put down his knife and fork.
"Heathenish stuff!" he muttered, and suddenly thundered out, "Pasiance!"
She looked up with a start, threw the music from her, and resumed her
place.
During evening prayers, which follow every night immediately on food, her
face was a study of mutiny. She went to bed early. It was rather late
when we broke up--for once old Ford had been talking of his squatter's
life. As we came out, Dan held up his hand. A dog was barking. "It's
Lass," he said. "She'll wake Pasiance."
The spaniel yelped furiously. Dan ran out to stop her. He was soon
back.
"Somebody's been in the orchard, and gone off down to the cove." He ran
on down the path. I, too, ran, horribly uneasy. In front, through the
darkness, came the spaniel's bark; the lights of the coastguard station
faintly showed. I was first on the beach; the dog came to me at once,
her tail almost in her mouth from apology. There was the sound of oars
working in rowlocks; nothing visible but the feathery edges of the waves.
Dan said behind, "No use! He's gone." His voice sounded hoarse, like
that of a man choking with passion.
"George," he stammered, "it's that blackguard. I wish I'd put a bullet
in him." Suddenly a light burned up in the darkness on the sea, seemed
to swing gently, and vanished. Without another word we went back up the
hill. John Ford stood at the gate motionless, indifferent--nothing had
dawned on him as yet. I whispered to Dan, "Let it alone!"
"No," he said, "I'm going to show you." He struck a match, and slowly
hunted the footsteps in the wet grass of the orchard. "Look--here!"
He stopped under Pasiance's window and swayed the match over the ground.
Clear as daylight were the marks of some one who had jumped or fallen.
Dan held the match over his head.
"And look there!" he said. The bough of an apple-tree below the window
was broken. He blew the match out.
I could see the whites of his eyes, like an angry animal's.
"Drop it, Dan!" I said.
He turned on his heel suddenly, and stammered out, "You're right."
But he had turned into John Ford's arms.
The old man stood there like some great force, darker than the darkness,
staring up at the window, as though stupefied. We had not a word to say.
He seemed unconscious of our presence. He turned round, and left us
standing there.
"Follow him!" said Dan. "Follow him--by God! it's not safe."
We followed. Bending, and treading heavily, he went upstairs. He struck
a blow on Pasiance's door. "Let me in!" he said. I drew Dan into my
bedroom. The key was slowly turned, her door was flung open, and there
she stood in her dressing-gown, a candle in her hand, her face crimson,
and oh! so young, with its short, crisp hair and round cheeks. The old
man--like a giant in front of her--raised his hands, and laid them on her
shoulders.
"What's this? You--you've had a man in your room?"
Her eyes did not drop.
"Yes," she said. Dan gave a groan.
"Who?"
"Zachary Pearse," she answered in a voice like a bell.
He gave her one awful shake, dropped his hands, then raised them as
though to strike her. She looked him in the eyes; his hands dropped, and
he too groaned. As far as I could see, her face never moved.
"I'm married to him," she said, "d' you hear? Married to him. Go out of
my room!" She dropped the candle on the floor at his feet, and slammed
the door in his face. The old man stood for a minute as though stunned,
then groped his way downstairs.
"Dan," I said, "is it true?"
"Ah!" he answered, "it's true; didn't you hear her?"
I was glad I couldn't see his face.
"That ends it," he said at last; "there's the old man to think of."
"What will he do?"
"Go to the fellow this very night." He seemed to have no doubt. Trust
one man of action to know another.
I muttered something about being an outsider--wondered if there was
anything I could do to help.
"Well," he said slowly, "I don't know that I'm anything but an outsider
now; but I'll go along with him, if he'll have me."
He went downstairs. A few minutes later they rode out from the
straw-yard. I watched them past the line of hayricks, into the blacker
shadows of the pines, then the tramp of hoofs began to fail in the
darkness, and at last died away.
I've been sitting here in my bedroom writing to you ever since, till my
candle's almost gone. I keep thinking what the end of it is to be; and
reproaching myself for doing nothing. And yet, what could I have done?
I'm sorry for her--sorrier than I can say. The night is so quiet--I
haven't heard a sound; is she asleep, awake, crying, triumphant?
It's four o'clock; I've been asleep.
They're back. Dan is lying on my bed. I'll try and tell you his story
as near as I can, in his own words.
"We rode," he said, "round the upper way, keeping out of the lanes, and
got to Kingswear by half-past eleven. The horse-ferry had stopped
running, and we had a job to find any one to put us over. We hired the
fellow to wait for us, and took a carriage at the 'Castle.' Before we got
to Black Mill it was nearly one, pitch-dark. With the breeze from the
southeast, I made out he should have been in an hour or more. The old
man had never spoken to me once: and before we got there I had begun to
hope we shouldn't find the fellow after all. We made the driver pull up
in the road, and walked round and round, trying to find the door. Then
some one cried, 'Who are you?'
"'John Ford.'
"'What do you want?' It was old Pearse.
"'To see Zachary Pearse.'
"The long window out of the porch where we sat the other day was open,
and in we went. There was a door at the end of the room, and a light
coming through. John Ford went towards it; I stayed out in the dark.
"'Who's that with you?'
"'Mr. Treffry.'
"'Let him come in!' I went in. The old fellow was in bed, quite still on
his pillows, a candle by his side; to look at him you'd think nothing of
him but his eyes were alive. It was queer being there with those two old
men!"
Dan paused, seemed to listen, then went on doggedly.
"'Sit down, gentleman,' said old Pearse. 'What may you want to see my
son for?' John Ford begged his pardon, he had something to say, he said,
that wouldn't wait.
"They were very polite to one another," muttered Dan ....
"'Will you leave your message with me?' said Pearse.
"'What I have to say to your son is private.'
"'I'm his father.'
"'I'm my girl's grandfather; and her only stand-by.'
"'Ah!' muttered old Pearse, 'Rick Voisey's daughter?'
"'I mean to see your son.'
"Old Pearse smiled. Queer smile he's got, sort of sneering sweet.
"'You can never tell where Zack may be,' he said. 'You think I want to
shield him. You're wrong; Zack can take care of himself.'
"'Your son's here!' said John Ford. 'I know.' Old Pearse gave us a very
queer look.
"'You come into my house like thieves in the night,' he said, 'and give
me the lie, do you?'
"'Your son came to my child's room like a thief in the night; it's for
that I want to see him,' and then," said Dan, "there was a long silence.
At last Pearse said:
"'I don't understand; has he played the blackguard?'
"John Ford answered, 'He's married her, or, before God, I'd kill him.'
"Old Pearse seemed to think this over, never moving on his pillows. 'You
don't know Zack,' he said; 'I'm sorry for you, and I'm sorry for Rick
Voisey's daughter; but you don't know Zack.'
"'Sorry!' groaned out John Ford; 'he's stolen my child, and I'll punish
him.'
"'Punish!' cried old Pearse, 'we don't take punishment, not in my
family.'
"'Captain Jan Pearse, as sure as I stand here, you and your breed will
get your punishment of God.' Old Pearse smiled.
"'Mr. John Ford, that's as may be; but sure as I lie here we won't take
it of you. You can't punish unless you make to feel, and that you can't
du.'"
And that is truth!
Dan went on again:
"'You won't tell me where your son is!' but old Pearse never blinked.
"'I won't,' he said, 'and now you may get out. I lie here an old man
alone, with no use to my legs, night on night, an' the house open; any
rapscallion could get in; d' ye think I'm afraid of you?'
"We were beat; and walked out without a word. But that old man; I've
thought of him a lot--ninety-two, and lying there. Whatever he's been,
and they tell you rum things of him, whatever his son may be, he's a man.
It's not what he said, nor that there was anything to be afraid of just
then, but somehow it's the idea of the old chap lying there. I don't
ever wish to see a better plucked one...."
We sat silent after that; out of doors the light began to stir among the
leaves. There were all kinds of rustling sounds, as if the world were
turning over in bed.
Suddenly Dan said:
"He's cheated me. I paid him to clear out and leave her alone. D' you
think she's asleep?" He's made no appeal for sympathy, he'd take pity
for an insult; but he feels it badly.
"I'm tired as a cat," he said at last, and went to sleep on my bed.
It's broad daylight now; I too am tired as a cat....
V
"Saturday, 6th August.
.......I take up my tale where I left off yesterday.... Dan and I
started as soon as we could get Mrs. Hopgood to give us coffee. The old
lady was more tentative, more undecided, more pouncing, than I had ever
seen her. She was manifestly uneasy: Ha-apgood--who "don't slape" don't
he, if snores are any criterion--had called out in the night, "Hark to
th' 'arses' 'oofs!" Had we heard them? And where might we be going
then? 'Twas very earrly to start, an' no breakfast. Haapgood had said
it was goin' to shaowerr. Miss Pasiance was not to 'er violin yet, an'
Mister Ford 'e kept 'is room. Was it?--would there be--? "Well, an'
therr's an 'arvest bug; 'tis some earrly for they!" Wonderful how she
pounces on all such creatures, when I can't even see them. She pressed
it absently between finger and thumb, and began manoeuvring round another
way. Long before she had reached her point, we had gulped down our
coffee, and departed. But as we rode out she came at a run, holding her
skirts high with either hand, raised her old eyes bright and anxious in
their setting of fine wrinkles, and said:
"'Tidden sorrow for her?"
A shrug of the shoulders was all the answer she got. We rode by the
lanes; through sloping farmyards, all mud and pigs, and dirty straw, and
farmers with clean-shaven upper lips and whiskers under the chin; past
fields of corn, where larks were singing. Up or down, we didn't draw
rein till we came to Dan's hotel.
There was the river gleaming before us under a rainbow mist that hallowed
every shape. There seemed affinity between the earth and the sky. I've
never seen that particular soft unity out of Devon. And every ship,
however black or modern, on those pale waters, had the look of a dream
ship. The tall green woods, the red earth, the white houses, were all
melted into one opal haze. It was raining, but the sun was shining
behind. Gulls swooped by us--ghosts of the old greedy wanderers of the
sea.
We had told our two boatmen to pull us out to the Pied Witch! They
started with great resolution, then rested on their oars.
"The Pied Witch, zurr?" asked one politely; "an' which may her be?"
That's the West countryman all over! Never say you "nay," never lose an
opportunity, never own he doesn't know, or can't do anything
--independence, amiability, and an eye to the main chance. We mentioned
Pearse's name.
"Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse!" They exchanged a look half-amused,
half-admiring.
"The Zunflaower, yu mane. That's her. Zunflaower, ahoy!" As we mounted
the steamer's black side I heard one say:
"Pied Witch! A pra-aper name that--a dandy name for her!" They laughed
as they made fast.
The mate of the Sunflower, or Pied Witch, or whatever she was called, met
us--a tall young fellow in his shirtsleeves, tanned to the roots of his
hair, with sinewy, tattooed arms, and grey eyes, charred round the rims
from staring at weather.
"The skipper is on board," he said. "We're rather busy, as you see. Get
on with that, you sea-cooks," he bawled at two fellows who were doing
nothing. All over the ship, men were hauling, splicing, and stowing
cargo.
"To-day's Friday: we're off on Wednesday with any luck. Will you come
this way?" He led us down the companion to a dark hole which he called
the saloon. "Names? What! are you Mr. Treffry? Then we're partners!" A
schoolboy's glee came on his face.
"Look here!" he said; "I can show you something," and he unlocked the
door of a cabin. There appeared to be nothing in it but a huge piece of
tarpaulin, which depended, bulging, from the topmost bunk. He pulled it
up. The lower bunk had been removed, and in its place was the ugly body
of a dismounted Gatling gun.
"Got six of them," he whispered, with unholy mystery, through which his
native frankness gaped out. "Worth their weight in gold out there just
now, the skipper says. Got a heap of rifles, too, and lots of
ammunition. He's given me a share. This is better than the P. and O.,
and playing deck cricket with the passengers. I'd made up my mind
already to chuck that, and go in for plantin' sugar, when I ran across
the skipper. Wonderful chap, the skipper! I'll go and tell him. He's
been out all night; only came aboard at four bells; having a nap now, but
he won't mind that for you."
Off he went. I wondered what there was in Zachary Pearse to attract a
youngster of this sort; one of the customary twelve children of some
country parson, no doubt-burning to shoot a few niggers, and for ever
frank and youthful.
He came back with his hands full of bottles.
"What'll you drink? The skipper'll be here in a jiffy. Excuse my goin'
on deck. We're so busy."
And in five minutes Zachary Pearse did come. He made no attempt to shake
hands, for which I respected him. His face looked worn, and more defiant
than usual.
"Well, gentlemen?" he said.
"We've come to ask what you're going to do?" said Dan.
"I don't know," answered Pearse, "that that's any of your business."
Dan's little eyes were like the eyes of an angry pig.
"You've got five hundred pounds of mine," he said; "why do you think I
gave it you?"
Zachary bit his fingers.
"That's no concern of mine," he said. "I sail on Wednesday. Your
money's safe."
"Do you know what I think of you?" said Dan.
"No, and you'd better not tell me!" Then, with one of his peculiar
changes, he smiled: "As you like, though."
Dan's face grew very dark. "Give me a plain answer," he said: "What are
you going to do about her?"
Zachary looked up at him from under his brows.
"Nothing."
"Are you cur enough to deny that you've married her?"
Zachary looked at him coolly. "Not at all," he said.
"What in God's name did you do it for?"
"You've no monopoly in the post of husband, Mr. Treffry."
"To put a child in that position! Haven't you the heart of a man? What
d' ye come sneaking in at night for? By Gad! Don't you know you've done
a beastly thing?"
Zachary's face darkened, he clenched his fists. Then he seemed to shut
his anger into himself.
"You wanted me to leave her to you," he sneered. "I gave her my promise
that I'd take her out there, and we'd have gone off on Wednesday quietly
enough, if you hadn't come and nosed the whole thing out with your
infernal dog. The fat's in the fire! There's no reason why I should
take her now. I'll come back to her a rich man, or not at all."
"And in the meantime?" I slipped in.
He turned to me, in an ingratiating way.
"I would have taken her to save the fuss--I really would--it's not my
fault the thing's come out. I'm on a risky job. To have her with me
might ruin the whole thing; it would affect my nerve. It isn't safe for
her."
"And what's her position to be," I said, "while you're away? Do you
think she'd have married you if she'd known you were going to leave her
like this? You ought to give up this business.
"You stole her. Her life's in your hands; she's only a child!"
A quiver passed over his face; it showed that he was suffering.
"Give it up!" I urged.
"My last farthing's in it," he sighed; "the chance of a lifetime."
He looked at me doubtfully, appealingly, as if for the first time in his
life he had been given a glimpse of that dilemma of consequences which
his nature never recognises. I thought he was going to give in.
Suddenly, to my horror, Dan growled, "Play the man!"
Pearse turned his head. "I don't want your advice anyway," he said;
"I'll not be dictated to."
"To your last day," said Dan, "you shall answer to me for the way you
treat her."
Zachary smiled.
"Do you see that fly?" he said. "Wel--I care for you as little as this,"
and he flicked the fly off his white trousers. "Good-morning...!"
The noble mariners who manned our boat pulled lustily for the shore, but
we had hardly shoved off' when a storm of rain burst over the ship, and
she seemed to vanish, leaving a picture on my eyes of the mate waving his
cap above the rail, with his tanned young face bent down at us, smiling,
keen, and friendly.
...... We reached the shore drenched, angry with ourselves, and with each
other; I started sulkily for home.
As I rode past an orchard, an apple, loosened by the rainstorm, came down
with a thud.
"The apples were ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to
fall."
I made up my mind to pack, and go away. But there's a strangeness, a
sort of haunting fascination in it all. To you, who don't know the
people, it may only seem a piece of rather sordid folly. But it isn't
the good, the obvious, the useful that puts a spell on us in life. It's
the bizarre, the dimly seen, the mysterious for good or evil.
The sun was out again when I rode up to the farm; its yellow thatch shone
through the trees as if sheltering a store of gladness and good news.
John Ford himself opened the door to me.
He began with an apology, which made me feel more than ever an intruder;
then he said:
"I have not spoken to my granddaughter--I waited to see Dan Treffry."
He was stern and sad-eyed, like a man with a great weight of grief on his
shoulders. He looked as if he had not slept; his dress was out of order,
he had not taken his clothes off, I think. He isn't a man whom you can
pity. I felt I had taken a liberty in knowing of the matter at all. When
I told him where we had been, he said:
"It was good of you to take this trouble. That you should have had to!
But since such things have come to pass--" He made a gesture full of
horror. He gave one the impression of a man whose pride was struggling
against a mortal hurt. Presently he asked:
"You saw him, you say? He admitted this marriage? Did he give an
explanation?"
I tried to make Pearse's point of view clear. Before this old man, with
his inflexible will and sense of duty, I felt as if I held a brief for
Zachary, and must try to do him justice.
"Let me understand," he said at last. "He stole her, you say, to make
sure; and deserts her within a fortnight."
"He says he meant to take her--"
"Do you believe that?"
Before I could answer, I saw Pasiance standing at the window. How long
she had been there I don't know.
"Is it true that he is going to leave me behind?" she cried out.
I could only nod.
"Did you hear him your own self?"
"Yes."
She stamped her foot.
"But he promised! He promised!"
John Ford went towards her.
"Don't touch me, grandfather! I hate every one! Let him do what he
likes, I don't care."
John Ford's face turned quite grey.
"Pasiance," he said, "did you want to leave me so much?"
She looked straight at us, and said sharply:
"What's the good of telling stories. I can't help its hurting you."
"What did you think you would find away from here?"
She laughed.
"Find? I don't know--nothing; I wouldn't be stifled anyway. Now I
suppose you'll shut me up because I'm a weak girl, not strong like men!"
"Silence!" said John Ford; "I will make him take you."
"You shan't!" she cried; "I won't let you. He's free to do as he likes.
He's free--I tell you all, everybody--free!"
She ran through the window, and vanished.
John Ford made a movement as if the bottom had dropped out of his world.
I left him there.
I went to the kitchen, where Hopgood was sitting at the table, eating
bread and cheese. He got up on seeing me, and very kindly brought me
some cold bacon and a pint of ale.
"I thart I shude be seeing yu, zurr," he said between his bites; "Therr's
no thart to 'atin' 'bout the 'ouse to-day. The old wumman's puzzivantin'
over Miss Pasiance. Young girls are skeery critters"--he brushed his
sleeve over his broad, hard jaws, and filled a pipe "specially when it's
in the blood of 'em. Squire Rick Voisey werr a dandy; an' Mistress
Voisey--well, she werr a nice lady tu, but"--rolling the stem of his pipe
from corner to corner of his mouth--"she werr a pra-aper vixen."
Hopgood's a good fellow, and I believe as soft as he looks hard, but he's
not quite the sort with whom one chooses to talk over a matter like this.
I went upstairs, and began to pack, but after a bit dropped it for a
book, and somehow or other fell asleep.
I woke, and looked at my watch; it was five o'clock. I had been asleep
four hours. A single sunbeam was slanting across from one of my windows
to the other, and there was the cool sound of milk dropping into pails;
then, all at once, a stir as of alarm, and heavy footsteps.
I opened my door. Hopgood and a coast-guardsman were carrying Pasiance
slowly up the stairs. She lay in their arms without moving, her face
whiter than her dress, a scratch across the forehead, and two or three
drops there of dried blood. Her hands were clasped, and she slowly
crooked and stiffened out her fingers. When they turned with her at the
stair top, she opened her lips, and gasped, "All right, don't put me
down. I can bear it." They passed, and, with a half-smile in her eyes,
she said something to me that I couldn't catch; the door was shut, and
the excited whispering began again below. I waited for the men to come
out, and caught hold of Hopgood. He wiped the sweat off his forehead.
"Poor young thing!" he said. "She fell--down the cliffs--'tis her
back--coastguard saw her 'twerr they fetched her in. The Lord 'elp her
mebbe she's not broken up much! An' Mister Ford don't know! I'm gwine
for the doctor."
There was an hour or more to wait before he came; a young fellow; almost
a boy. He looked very grave, when he came out of her room.
"The old woman there fond of her? nurse her well...? Fond as a
dog!--good! Don't know--can't tell for certain! Afraid it's the spine,
must have another opinion! What a plucky girl! Tell Mr. Ford to have
the best man he can get in Torquay--there's C---. I'll be round the
first thing in the morning. Keep her dead quiet. I've left a sleeping
draught; she'll have fever tonight."
John Ford came in at last. Poor old man! What it must have cost him not
to go to her for fear of the excitement! How many times in the next few
hours didn't I hear him come to the bottom of the stairs; his heavy
wheezing, and sighing; and the forlorn tread of his feet going back!
About eleven, just as I was going to bed, Mrs. Hopgood came to my door.
"Will yu come, sir," she said; "she's asking for yu. Naowt I can zay but
what she will see yu; zeems crazy, don't it?" A tear trickled down the
old lady's cheek. "Du 'ee come; 'twill du 'err 'arm mebbe, but I
dunno--she'll fret else."
I slipped into the room. Lying back on her pillows, she was breathing
quickly with half-closed eyes. There was nothing to show that she had
wanted me, or even knew that I was there. The wick of the candle, set by
the bedside, had been snuffed too short, and gave but a faint light; both
window and door stood open, still there was no draught, and the feeble
little flame burned quite still, casting a faint yellow stain on the
ceiling like the refection from a buttercup held beneath a chin. These
ceilings are far too low! Across the wide, squat window the apple
branches fell in black stripes which never stirred. It was too dark to
see things clearly. At the foot of the bed was a chest, and there Mrs.
Hopgood had sat down, moving her lips as if in speech. Mingled with the
half-musty smell of age; there were other scents, of mignonette, apples,
and some sweet-smelling soap. The floor had no carpet, and there was not
one single dark object except the violin, hanging from a nail over the
bed. A little, round clock ticked solemnly.
"Why won't you give me that stuff, Mums?" Pasiance said in a faint, sharp
voice. "I want to sleep."
"Have you much pain?" I asked.
"Of course I have; it's everywhere."
She turned her face towards me.
"You thought I did it on purpose, but you're wrong. If I had, I'd have
done it better than this. I wouldn't have this brutal pain." She put her
fingers over her eyes. "It's horrible to complain! Only it's so bad!
But I won't again--promise."
She took the sleeping draught gratefully, making a face, like a child
after a powder.
"How long do you think it'll be before I can play again? Oh! I
forgot--there are other things to think about." She held out her hand to
me. "Look at my ring. Married--isn't it funny? Ha, ha! Nobody will
ever understand--that's funny too! Poor Gran! You see, there wasn't any
reason--only me. That's the only reason I'm telling you now; Mums is
there--but she doesn't count; why don't you count, Mums?"
The fever was fighting against the draught; she had tossed the clothes
back from her throat, and now and then raised one thin arm a little, as
if it eased her; her eyes had grown large, and innocent like a child's;
the candle, too, had flared, and was burning clearly.
"Nobody is to tell him--nobody at all; promise...! If I hadn't slipped,
it would have been different. What would have happened then? You can't
tell; and I can't--that's funny! Do you think I loved him? Nobody
marries without love, do they? Not quite without love, I mean. But you
see I wanted to be free, he said he'd take me; and now he's left me after
all! I won't be left, I can't! When I came to the cliff--that bit where
the ivy grows right down--there was just the sea there, underneath; so I
thought I would throw myself over and it would be all quiet; and I
climbed on a ledge, it looked easier from there, but it was so high, I
wanted to get back; and then my foot slipped; and now it's all pain. You
can't think much, when you're in pain."
From her eyes I saw that she was dropping off.
"Nobody can take you away from-yourself. He's not to be told--not
even--I don't--want you--to go away, because--" But her eyes closed, and
she dropped off to sleep.
They don't seem to know this morning whether she is better or worse....
VI
"Tuesday, 9th August.
It seems more like three weeks than three days since I wrote. The time
passes slowly in a sickhouse...! The doctors were here this morning,
they give her forty hours. Not a word of complaint has passed her lips
since she knew. To see her you would hardly think her ill; her cheeks
have not had time to waste or lose their colour. There is not much pain,
but a slow, creeping numbness.... It was John Ford's wish that she
should be told. She just turned her head to the wall and sighed; then to
poor old Mrs. Hopgood, who was crying her heart out: "Don't cry, Mums, I
don't care."
When they had gone, she asked for her violin. She made them hold it for
her, and drew the bow across the strings; but the notes that came out
were so trembling and uncertain that she dropped the bow and broke into a
passion of sobbing. Since then, no complaint or moan of any kind....
But to go back. On Sunday, the day after I wrote, as I was coming from a
walk, I met a little boy making mournful sounds on a tin whistle.
"Coom ahn!" he said, "the Miss wahnts t' zee yu."
I went to her room. In the morning she had seemed better, but now looked
utterly exhausted. She had a letter in her hand.
"It's this," she said. "I don't seem to understand it. He wants me to
do something--but I can't think, and my eyes feel funny. Read it to me,
please."
The letter was from Zachary. I read it to her in a low voice, for Mrs.
Hopgood was in the room, her eyes always fixed on Pasiance above her
knitting. When I'd finished, she made me read it again, and yet again.
At first she seemed pleased, almost excited, then came a weary, scornful
look, and before I'd finished the third time she was asleep. It was a
remarkable letter, that seemed to bring the man right before one's eyes.
I slipped it under her fingers on the bed-clothes, and went out. Fancy
took me to the cliff where she had fallen. I found the point of rock
where the cascade of ivy flows down the cliff; the ledge on which she had
climbed was a little to my right--a mad place. It showed plainly what
wild emotions must have been driving her! Behind was a half-cut
cornfield with a fringe of poppies, and swarms of harvest insects
creeping and flying; in the uncut corn a landrail kept up a continual
charring. The sky was blue to the very horizon, and the sea wonderful,
under that black wild cliff stained here and there with red. Over the
dips and hollows of the fields great white clouds hung low down above the
land. There are no brassy, east-coast skies here; but always sleepy,
soft-shaped clouds, full of subtle stir and change. Passages of
Zachary's Pearse's letter kept rising to my lips. After all he's the man
that his native place, and life, and blood have made him. It is useless
to expect idealists where the air is soft and things good to look on (the
idealist grows where he must create beauty or comfort for himself);
useless to expect a man of law and order, in one whose fathers have
stared at the sea day and night for a thousand years--the sea, full of
its promises of unknown things, never quite the same, a slave to its own
impulses. Man is an imitative animal....
"Life's hard enough," he wrote, "without tying yourself down. Don't
think too hardly of me! Shall I make you happier by taking you into
danger? If I succeed you'll be a rich woman; but I shall fail if you're
with me. To look at you makes me soft. At sea a man dreams of all the
good things on land, he'll dream of the heather, and honey--you're like
that; and he'll dream of the apple-trees, and the grass of the
orchards--you're like that; sometimes he only lies on his back and
wishes--and you're like that, most of all like that...."
When I was reading those words I remember a strange, soft, half-scornful
look came over Pasiance's face; and once she said, "But that's all
nonsense, isn't it...?"
Then followed a long passage about what he would gain if he succeeded,
about all that he was risking, the impossibility of failure, if he kept
his wits about him. "It's only a matter of two months or so," he went
on; "stay where you are, dear, or go to my Dad. He'll be glad to have
you. There's my mother's room. There's no one to say 'No' to your
fiddle there; you can play it by the sea; and on dark nights you'll have
the stars dancing to you over the water as thick as bees. I've looked at
them often, thinking of you...."
Pasiance had whispered to me, "Don't read that bit," and afterwards I
left it out.... Then the sensuous side of him shows up: "When I've
brought this off, there's the whole world before us. There are places I
can take you to. There's one I know, not too warm and not too cold,
where you can sit all day in the shade and watch the creepers, and the
cocoa-palms, still as still; nothing to do or care about; all the fruits
you can think of; no noise but the parrots and the streams, and a splash
when a nigger dives into a water-hole. Pasiance, we'll go there! With an
eighty-ton craft there's no sea we couldn't know. The world's a fine
place for those who go out to take it; there's lots of unknown stuff' in
it yet. I'll fill your lap, my pretty, so full of treasures that you
shan't know yourself. A man wasn't meant to sit at home...."
Throughout this letter--for all its real passion--one could feel how the
man was holding to his purpose--the rather sordid purpose of this
venture. He's unconscious of it; for he is in love with her; but he must
be furthering his own ends. He is vital--horribly vital! I wonder less
now that she should have yielded.
What visions hasn't he dangled before her. There was physical
attraction, too--I haven't forgotten the look I saw on her face at Black
Mill. But when all's said and done, she married him, because she's
Pasiance Voisey, who does things and wants "to get back." And she lies
there dying; not he nor any other man will ever take her away. It's
pitiful to think of him tingling with passion, writing that letter to
this doomed girl in that dark hole of a saloon. "I've wanted money," he
wrote, "ever since I was a little chap sitting in the fields among the
cows.... I want it for you now, and I mean to have it. I've studied the
thing two years; I know what I know....
"The moment this is in the post I leave for London. There are a hundred
things to look after still; I can't trust myself within reach of you
again till the anchor's weighed. When I re-christened her the Pied
Witch, I thought of you--you witch to me...."
There followed a solemn entreaty to her to be on the path leading to the
cove at seven o'clock on Wednesday evening (that is, to-morrow) when he
would come ashore and bid her good-bye. It was signed, "Your loving
husband, Zachary Pearse...."
I lay at the edge of that cornfield a long time; it was very peaceful.
The church bells had begun to ring. The long shadows came stealing out
from the sheaves; woodpigeons rose one by one, and flapped off to roost;
the western sky was streaked with red, and all the downs and combe bathed
in the last sunlight. Perfect harvest weather; but oppressively still,
the stillness of suspense....
Life at the farm goes on as usual. We have morning and evening prayers.
John Ford reads them fiercely, as though he were on the eve of a revolt
against his God. Morning and evening he visits her, comes out wheezing
heavily, and goes to his own room; I believe, to pray. Since this
morning I haven't dared meet him. He is a strong old man--but this will
break him up....
VII
"KINGSWEAR, Saturday, 13th August.
It's over--I leave here to-morrow, and go abroad.
A quiet afternoon--not a breath up in the churchyard! I was there quite
half an hour before they came. Some red cows had strayed into the
adjoining orchard, and were rubbing their heads against the railing.
While I stood there an old woman came and drove them away; afterwards,
she stooped and picked up the apples that had fallen before their time.
"The apples are ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall;
There came an old woman and gathered them all, Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered
them all."
......They brought Pasiance very simply--no hideous funeral trappings,
thank God--the farm hands carried her, and there was no one there but
John Ford, the Hopgoods, myself, and that young doctor. They read the
service over her grave. I can hear John Ford's "Amen!" now. When it was
over he walked away bareheaded in the sun, without a word. I went up
there again this evening, and wandered amongst the tombstones. "Richard
Voisey," "John, the son of Richard and Constance Voisey," "Margery
Voisey," so many generations of them in that corner; then "Richard Voisey
and Agnes his wife," and next to it that new mound on which a sparrow was
strutting and the shadows of the apple-trees already hovering.
I will tell you the little left to tell....
On Wednesday afternoon she asked for me again.
"It's only till seven," she whispered. "He's certain to come then. But
if I--were to die first--then tell him--I'm sorry for him. They keep
saying: 'Don't talk--don't talk!' Isn't it stupid? As if I should have
any other chance! There'll be no more talking after to-night! Make
everybody come, please--I want to see them all. When you're dying you're
freer than any other time--nobody wants you to do things, nobody cares
what you say.... He promised me I should do what I liked if I married
him--I never believed that really--but now I can do what I like; and say
all the things I want to." She lay back silent; she could not after all
speak the inmost thoughts that are in each of us, so sacred that they
melt away at the approach of words.
I shall remember her like that--with the gleam of a smile in her
half-closed eyes, her red lips parted--such a quaint look of mockery,
pleasure, regret, on her little round, upturned face; the room white, and
fresh with flowers, the breeze guttering the apple-leaves against the
window. In the night they had unhooked the violin and taken it away; she
had not missed it.... When Dan came, I gave up my place to him. He took
her hand gently in his great paw, without speaking.
"How small my hand looks there," she said, "too small." Dan put it
softly back on the bedclothes and wiped his forehead. Pasiance cried in
a sharp whisper: "Is it so hot in here? I didn't know." Dan bent down,
put his lips to her fingers and left the room.
The afternoon was long, the longest I've ever spent. Sometimes she
seemed to sleep, sometimes whispered to herself about her mother, her
grandfather, the garden, or her cats--all sorts of inconsequent, trivial,
even ludicrous memories seemed to throng her mind--never once, I think,
did she speak of Zachary, but, now and then, she asked the time.... Each
hour she grew visibly weaker. John Ford sat by her without moving, his
heavy breathing was often the only sound; sometimes she rubbed her
fingers on his hand, without speaking. It was a summary of their lives
together. Once he prayed aloud for her in a hoarse voice; then her
pitiful, impatient eyes signed to me.
"Quick," she whispered, "I want him; it's all so--cold."
I went out and ran down the path towards the cove.
Leaning on a gate stood Zachary, an hour before his time; dressed in the
same old blue clothes and leather-peaked cap as on the day when I saw him
first. He knew nothing of what had happened. But at a quarter of the
truth, I'm sure he divined the whole, though he would not admit it to
himself. He kept saying, "It can't be. She'll be well in a few days--a
sprain! D' you think the sea-voyage.... Is she strong enough to be
moved now at once?"
It was painful to see his face, so twisted by the struggle between his
instinct and his vitality. The sweat poured down his forehead. He turned
round as we walked up the path, and pointed out to sea. There was his
steamer. "I could get her on board in no time. Impossible! What is it,
then? Spine? Good God! The doctors.... Sometimes they'll do wonders!"
It was pitiful to see his efforts to blind himself to the reality.
"It can't be, she's too young. We're walking very slow." I told him she
was dying.
For a second I thought he was going to run away. Then he jerked up his
head, and rushed on towards the house. At the foot of the staircase he
gripped me by the shoulder.
"It's not true!" he said; "she'll get better now I'm here. I'll stay.
Let everything go. I'll stay."
"Now's the time," I said, "to show you loved her. Pull yourself
together, man!" He shook all over.
"Yes!" was all he answered. We went into her room. It seemed impossible
she was going to die; the colour was bright in her cheeks, her lips
trembling and pouted as if she had just been kissed, her eyes gleaming,
her hair so dark and crisp, her face so young....
Half an hour later I stole to the open door of her room. She was still
and white as the sheets of her bed. John Ford stood at the foot; and,
bowed to the level of the pillows, his head on his clenched fists, sat
Zachary. It was utterly quiet. The guttering of the leaves had ceased.
When things have come to a crisis, how little one feels--no fear, no
pity, no sorrow, rather the sense, as when a play is over, of anxiety to
get away!
Suddenly Zachary rose, brushed past me without seeing, and ran
downstairs.
Some hours later I went out on the path leading to the cove. It was
pitch-black; the riding light of the Pied Witch was still there, looking
no bigger than a firefly. Then from in front I heard sobbing--a man's
sobs; no sound is quite so dreadful. Zachary Pearse got up out of the
bank not ten paces off.
I had no heart to go after him, and sat down in the hedge. There was
something subtly akin to her in the fresh darkness of the young night;
the soft bank, the scent of honeysuckle, the touch of the ferns and
brambles. Death comes to all of us, and when it's over it's over; but
this blind business--of those left behind!
A little later the ship whistled twice; her starboard light gleamed
faintly--and that was all....
VIII
"TORQUAY, 30th October.
....Do you remember the letters I wrote you from Moor Farm nearly three
years ago? To-day I rode over there. I stopped at Brixham on the way
for lunch, and walked down to the quay. There had been a shower--but the
sun was out again, shining on the sea, the brown-red sails, and the
rampart of slate roofs.
A trawler was lying there, which had evidently been in a collision. The
spiky-bearded, thin-lipped fellow in torn blue jersey and sea-boots who
was superintending the repairs, said to me a little proudly:
"Bane in collision, zurr; like to zee over her?" Then suddenly screwing
up his little blue eyes, he added:
"Why, I remembers yu. Steered yu along o' the young lady in this yer
very craft."
It was Prawle, Zachary Pearse's henchman.
"Yes," he went on, "that's the cutter."
"And Captain Pearse?"
He leant his back against the quay, and spat. "He was a pra-aper man; I
never zane none like 'en."
"Did you do any good out there?"
Prawle gave me a sharp glance.
"Gude? No, t'was arrm we done, vrom ztart to finish--had trouble all the
time. What a man cude du, the skipper did. When yu caan't du right,
zome calls it 'Providence'! 'Tis all my eye an' Betty Martin! What I zay
es, 'tis these times, there's such a dale o' folk, a dale of puzzivantin'
fellers; the world's to small."
With these words there flashed across me a vision of Drake crushed into
our modern life by the shrinkage of the world; Drake caught in the meshes
of red tape, electric wires, and all the lofty appliances of our
civilization. Does a type survive its age; live on into times that have
no room for it? The blood is there--and sometimes there's a
throw-back.... All fancy! Eh?
"So," I said, "you failed?"
Prawle wriggled.
"I wudden' goo for to zay that, zurr--'tis an ugly word. Da-am!" he
added, staring at his boots, "'twas thru me tu. We were along among the
haythen, and I mus' nades goo for to break me leg. The capt'n he wudden'
lave me. 'One Devon man,' he says to me, 'don' lave anotherr.' We werr
six days where we shuld ha' been tu; when we got back to the ship a
cruiser had got her for gun-runnin'."
"And what has become of Captain Pearse?"
Prawle answered, "Zurr, I belave 'e went to China, 'tis onsartin."
"He's not dead?"
Prawle looked at me with a kind of uneasy anger.
"Yu cudden' kell 'en! 'Tis true, mun 'll die zome day. But therr's not
a one that'll show better zport than Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse."
I believe that; he will be hard to kill. The vision of him comes up,
with his perfect balance, defiant eyes, and sweetish smile; the way the
hair of his beard crisped a little, and got blacker on the cheeks; the
sort of desperate feeling he gave, that one would never get the better of
him, that he would never get the better of himself.
I took leave of Prawle and half a crown. Before I was off the quay I
heard him saying to a lady, "Bane in collision, marm! Like to zee over
her?"
After lunch I rode on to Moor. The old place looked much the same; but
the apple-trees were stripped of fruit, and their leaves beginning to go
yellow and fall. One of Pasiance's cats passed me in the orchard hunting
a bird, still with a ribbon round its neck. John Ford showed me all his
latest improvements, but never by word or sign alluded to the past. He
inquired after Dan, back in New Zealand now, without much interest; his
stubbly beard and hair have whitened; he has grown very stout, and I
noticed that his legs are not well under control; he often stops to lean
on his stick. He was very ill last winter; and sometimes, they say, will
go straight off to sleep in the middle of a sentence.
I managed to get a few minutes with the Hopgoods. We talked of Pasiance
sitting in the kitchen under a row of plates, with that clinging smell of
wood-smoke, bacon, and age bringing up memories, as nothing but scents
can. The dear old lady's hair, drawn so nicely down her forehead on each
side from the centre of her cap, has a few thin silver lines; and her
face is a thought more wrinkled. The tears still come into her eyes when
she talks of her "lamb."
Of Zachary I heard nothing, but she told me of old Pearse's death.
"Therr they found 'en, zo to spake, dead--in th' sun; but Ha-apgood can
tell yu," and Hopgood, ever rolling his pipe, muttered something, and
smiled his wooden smile.
He came to see me off from the straw-yard. "'Tis like death to the
varrm, zurr," he said, putting all the play of his vast shoulders into
the buckling of my girths. "Mister Ford--well! And not one of th' old
stock to take it when 'e's garn.... Ah! it werr cruel; my old woman's
never been hersel' since. Tell 'ee what 'tis--don't du t' think to
much."
I went out of my way to pass the churchyard. There were flowers, quite
fresh, chrysanthemums, and asters; above them the white stone, already
stained:
"PASIANCE
"WIFE OF ZACHARY PEARSE
"'The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away.'"
The red cows were there too; the sky full of great white clouds, some
birds whistling a little mournfully, and in the air the scent of fallen
leaves....
May, 1900.
A KNIGHT
TO MY MOTHER
A KNIGHT
I
At Monte Carlo, in the spring of the year 189-, I used to notice an old
fellow in a grey suit and sunburnt straw hat with a black ribbon. Every
morning at eleven o'clock, he would come down to the Place, followed by a
brindled German boarhound, walk once or twice round it, and seat himself
on a bench facing the casino. There he would remain in the sun, with his
straw hat tilted forward, his thin legs apart, his brown hands crossed
between them, and the dog's nose resting on his knee. After an hour or
more he would get up, and, stooping a little from the waist, walk slowly
round the Place and return up hill. Just before three, he would come
down again in the same clothes and go into the casino, leaving the dog
outside.
One afternoon, moved by curiosity, I followed him. He passed through the
hall without looking at the gambling-rooms, and went into the concert. It
became my habit after that to watch for him. When he sat in the Place I
could see him from the window of my room. The chief puzzle to me was the
matter of his nationality.
His lean, short face had a skin so burnt that it looked like leather; his
jaw was long and prominent, his chin pointed, and he had hollows in his
cheeks. There were wrinkles across his forehead; his eyes were brown;
and little white moustaches were brushed up from the corners of his lips.
The back of his head bulged out above the lines of his lean neck and
high, sharp shoulders; his grey hair was cropped quite close. In the
Marseilles buffet, on the journey out, I had met an Englishman, almost
his counterpart in features--but somehow very different! This old fellow
had nothing of the other's alert, autocratic self-sufficiency. He was
quiet and undemonstrative, without looking, as it were, insulated against
shocks and foreign substances. He was certainly no Frenchman. His eyes,
indeed, were brown, but hazel-brown, and gentle--not the red-brown
sensual eye of the Frenchman. An American? But was ever an American so
passive? A German? His moustache was certainly brushed up, but in a
modest, almost pathetic way, not in the least Teutonic. Nothing seemed
to fit him. I gave him up, and named him "the Cosmopolitan."
Leaving at the end of April, I forgot him altogether. In the same month,
however, of the following year I was again at Monte Carlo, and going one
day to the concert found myself seated next this same old fellow. The
orchestra was playing Meyerbeer's "Prophete," and my neighbour was
asleep, snoring softly. He was dressed in the same grey suit, with the
same straw hat (or one exactly like it) on his knees, and his hands
crossed above it. Sleep had not disfigured him--his little white
moustache was still brushed up, his lips closed; a very good and gentle
expression hovered on his face. A curved mark showed on his right
temple, the scar of a cut on the side of his neck, and his left hand was
covered by an old glove, the little forger of which was empty. He woke
up when the march was over and brisked up his moustache.
The next thing on the programme was a little thing by Poise from Le joli
Gilles, played by Mons. Corsanego on the violin. Happening to glance at
my old neighbour, I saw a tear caught in the hollow of his cheek, and
another just leaving the corner of his eye; there was a faint smile on
his lips. Then came an interval; and while orchestra and audience were
resting, I asked him if he were fond of music. He looked up without
distrust, bowed, and answered in a thin, gentle voice: "Certainly. I
know nothing about it, play no instrument, could never sing a note; but
fond of it! Who would not be?" His English was correct enough, but with
an emphasis not quite American nor quite foreign. I ventured to remark
that he did not care for Meyerbeer. He smiled.
"Ah!" he said, "I was asleep? Too bad of me. He is a little noisy--I
know so little about music. There is Bach, for instance. Would you
believe it, he gives me no pleasure? A great misfortune to be no
musician!" He shook his head.
I murmured, "Bach is too elevating for you perhaps."
"To me," he answered, "any music I like is elevating. People say some
music has a bad effect on them. I never found any music that gave me a
bad thought--no--no--quite the opposite; only sometimes, as you see, I go
to sleep. But what a lovely instrument the violin!" A faint flush came
on his parched cheeks. "The human soul that has left the body. A
curious thing, distant bugles at night have given me the same feeling."
The orchestra was now coming back, and, folding his hands, my neighbour
turned his eyes towards them. When the concert was over we came out
together. Waiting at the entrance was his dog.
"You have a beautiful dog!"
"Ah! yes. Freda. mia cara, da su mano!" The dog squatted on her
haunches, and lifted her paw in the vague, bored way of big dogs when
requested to perform civilities. She was a lovely creature--the purest
brindle, without a speck of white, and free from the unbalanced look of
most dogs of her breed.
"Basta! basta!" He turned to me apologetically. "We have agreed to
speak Italian; in that way I keep up the language; astonishing the number
of things that dog will understand!" I was about to take my leave, when
he asked if I would walk a little way with him--"If you are free, that
is." We went up the street with Freda on the far side of her master.
"Do you never 'play' here?" I asked him.
"Play? No. It must be very interesting; most exciting, but as a matter
of fact, I can't afford it. If one has very little, one is too nervous."
He had stopped in front of a small hairdresser's shop. "I live here," he
said, raising his hat again. "Au revoir!--unless I can offer you a glass
of tea. It's all ready. Come! I've brought you out of your way; give
me the pleasure!"
I have never met a man so free from all self-consciousness, and yet so
delicate and diffident the combination is a rare one. We went up a steep
staircase to a room on the second floor. My companion threw the shutters
open, setting all the flies buzzing. The top of a plane-tree was on a
level with the window, and all its little brown balls were dancing, quite
close, in the wind. As he had promised, an urn was hissing on a table;
there was also a small brown teapot, some sugar, slices of lemon, and
glasses. A bed, washstand, cupboard, tin trunk, two chairs, and a small
rug were all the furniture. Above the bed a sword in a leather sheath
was suspended from two nails. The photograph of a girl stood on the
closed stove. My host went to the cupboard and produced a bottle, a
glass, and a second spoon. When the cork was drawn, the scent of rum
escaped into the air. He sniffed at it and dropped a teaspoonful into
both glasses.
"This is a trick I learned from the Russians after Plevna; they had my
little finger, so I deserved something in exchange." He looked round;
his eyes, his whole face, seemed to twinkle. "I assure you it was worth
it--makes all the difference. Try!" He poured off the tea.
"Had you a sympathy with the Turks?"
"The weaker side--" He paused abruptly, then added: "But it was not
that." Over his face innumerable crow's-feet had suddenly appeared, his
eyes twitched; he went on hurriedly, "I had to find something to do just
then--it was necessary." He stared into his glass; and it was some time
before I ventured to ask if he had seen much fighting.
"Yes," he replied gravely, "nearly twenty years altogether; I was one of
Garibaldi's Mille in '60."
"Surely you are not Italian?"
He leaned forward with his hands on his knees. "I was in Genoa at that
time learning banking; Garibaldi was a wonderful man! One could not help
it." He spoke quite simply. "You might say it was like seeing a little
man stand up to a ring of great hulking fellows; I went, just as you
would have gone, if you'd been there. I was not long with them--our war
began; I had to go back home." He said this as if there had been but one
war since the world began. "In '60," he mused, "till '65. Just think of
it! The poor country. Why, in my State, South Carolina--I was through
it all--nobody could be spared there--we were one to three."
"I suppose you have a love of fighting?"
"H'm!" he said, as if considering the idea for the first time. "Sometimes
I fought for a living, and sometimes--because I was obliged; one must try
to be a gentleman. But won't you have some more?"
I refused more tea and took my leave, carrying away with me a picture of
the old fellow looking down from the top of the steep staircase, one hand
pressed to his back, the other twisting up those little white moustaches,
and murmuring, "Take care, my dear sir, there's a step there at the
corner."
"To be a gentleman!" I repeated in the street, causing an old French
lady to drop her parasol, so that for about two minutes we stood bowing
and smiling to each other, then separated full of the best feeling.
II
A week later I found myself again seated next him at a concert. In the
meantime I had seen him now and then, but only in passing. He seemed
depressed. The corners of his lips were tightened, his tanned cheeks had
a greyish tinge, his eyes were restless; and, between two numbers of the
programme, he murmured, tapping his fingers on his hat, "Do you ever have
bad days? Yes? Not pleasant, are they?"
Then something occurred from which all that I have to tell you followed.
There came into the concert-hall the heroine of one of those romances,
crimes, follies, or irregularities, call it what you will, which had just
attracted the "world's" stare. She passed us with her partner, and sat
down in a chair a few rows to our right. She kept turning her head round,
and at every turn I caught the gleam of her uneasy eyes. Some one behind
us said: "The brazen baggage!"
My companion turned full round, and glared at whoever it was who had
spoken. The change in him was quite remarkable. His lips were drawn
back from his teeth; he frowned; the scar on his temple had reddened.
"Ah!" he said to me. "The hue and cry! Contemptible! How I hate it!
But you wouldn't understand--!" he broke off, and slowly regained his
usual air of self-obliteration; he even seemed ashamed, and began trying
to brush his moustaches higher than ever, as if aware that his heat had
robbed them of neatness.
"I'm not myself, when I speak of such matters," he said suddenly; and
began reading his programme, holding it upside down. A minute later,
however, he said in a peculiar voice: "There are people to be found who
object to vivisecting animals; but the vivisection of a woman, who minds
that? Will you tell me it's right, that because of some tragedy like
this--believe me, it is always a tragedy--we should hunt down a woman?
That her fellow-women should make an outcast of her? That we, who are
men, should make a prey of her? If I thought that...." Again he broke
off, staring very hard in front of him. "It is we who make them what they
are; and even if that is not so--why! if I thought there was a woman in
the world I could not take my hat off to--I--I--couldn't sleep at night."
He got up from his seat, put on his old straw hat with trembling fingers,
and, without a glance back, went out, stumbling over the chair-legs.
I sat there, horribly disturbed; the words, "One must try to be a
gentleman!" haunting me. When I came out, he was standing by the
entrance with one hand on his hip and the other on his dog. In that
attitude of waiting he was such a patient figure; the sun glared down and
showed the threadbare nature of his clothes and the thinness of his brown
hands, with their long forgers and nails yellow from tobacco. Seeing me
he came up the steps again, and raised his hat.
"I am glad to have caught you; please forget all that." I asked if he
would do me the honour of dining at my hotel.
"Dine?" he repeated with the sort of smile a child gives if you offer him
a box of soldiers; "with the greatest pleasure. I seldom dine out, but I
think I can muster up a coat. Yes--yes--and at what time shall I come?
At half-past seven, and your hotel is--? Good! I shall be there.
Freda, mia cara, you will be alone this evening. You do not smoke
caporal, I fear. I find it fairly good; though it has too much bite." He
walked off with Freda, puffing at his thin roll of caporal.
Once or twice he stopped, as if bewildered or beset by some sudden doubt
or memory; and every time he stopped, Freda licked his hand. They
disappeared round the corner of the street, and I went to my hotel to see
about dinner. On the way I met Jules le Ferrier, and asked him to come
too.
"My faith, yes!" he said, with the rosy pessimism characteristic of the
French editor. "Man must dine!"
At half-past six we assembled. My "Cosmopolitan" was in an old
frock-coat braided round the edges, buttoned high and tight, defining
more than ever the sharp lines of his shoulders and the slight kink of
his back; he had brought with him, too, a dark-peaked cap of military
shape, which he had evidently selected as more fitting to the coat than a
straw hat. He smelled slightly of some herb.
We sat down to dinner, and did not rise for two hours. He was a charming
guest, praised everything he ate--not with commonplaces, but in words
that made you feel it had given him real pleasure. At first, whenever
Jules made one of his caustic remarks, he looked quite pained, but
suddenly seemed to make up his mind that it was bark, not bite; and then
at each of them he would turn to me and say, "Aha! that's good--isn't
it?" With every glass of wine he became more gentle and more genial,
sitting very upright, and tightly buttoned-in; while the little white
wings of his moustache seemed about to leave him for a better world.
In spite of the most leading questions, however, we could not get him to
talk about himself, for even Jules, most cynical of men, had recognised
that he was a hero of romance. He would answer gently and precisely, and
then sit twisting his moustaches, perfectly unconscious that we wanted
more. Presently, as the wine went a little to his head, his thin, high
voice grew thinner, his cheeks became flushed, his eyes brighter; at the
end of dinner he said: "I hope I have not been noisy."
We assured him that he had not been noisy enough. "You're laughing at
me," he answered. "Surely I've been talking all the time!"
"Mon Dieu!" said Jules, "we have been looking for some fables of your
wars; but nothing--nothing, not enough to feed a frog!"
The old fellow looked troubled.
"To be sure!" he mused. "Let me think! there is that about Colhoun at
Gettysburg; and there's the story of Garibaldi and the Miller." He
plunged into a tale, not at all about himself, which would have been
extremely dull, but for the conviction in his eyes, and the way he
stopped and commented. "So you see," he ended, "that's the sort of man
Garibaldi was! I could tell you another tale of him." Catching an
introspective look in Jules's eye, however, I proposed taking our cigars
over to the cafe opposite.
"Delightful!" the old fellow said: "We shall have a band and the fresh
air, and clear consciences for our cigars. I cannot like this smoking in
a room where there are ladies dining."
He walked out in front of us, smoking with an air of great enjoyment.
Jules, glowing above his candid shirt and waistcoat, whispered to me,
"Mon cher Georges, how he is good!" then sighed, and added darkly: "The
poor man!"
We sat down at a little table. Close by, the branches of a plane-tree
rustled faintly; their leaves hung lifeless, speckled like the breasts of
birds, or black against the sky; then, caught by the breeze, fluttered
suddenly.
The old fellow sat, with head thrown back, a smile on his face, coming
now and then out of his enchanted dreams to drink coffee, answer our
questions, or hum the tune that the band was playing. The ash of his
cigar grew very long. One of those bizarre figures in Oriental garb,
who, night after night, offer their doubtful wares at a great price,
appeared in the white glare of a lamp, looked with a furtive smile at his
face, and glided back, discomfited by its unconsciousness. It was a
night for dreams! A faint, half-eastern scent in the air, of black
tobacco and spice; few people as yet at the little tables, the waiters
leisurely, the band soft! What was he dreaming of, that old fellow,
whose cigar-ash grew so long? Of youth, of his battles, of those things
that must be done by those who try to be gentlemen; perhaps only of his
dinner; anyway of something gilded in vague fashion as the light was
gilding the branches of the plane-tree.
Jules pulled my sleeve: "He sleeps." He had smilingly dropped off; the
cigar-ash--that feathery tower of his dreams--had broken and fallen on
his sleeve. He awoke, and fell to dusting it.
The little tables round us began to fill. One of the bandsmen played a
czardas on the czymbal. Two young Frenchmen, talking loudly, sat down at
the adjoining table. They were discussing the lady who had been at the
concert that afternoon.
"It's a bet," said one of them, "but there's the present man. I take
three weeks, that's enough 'elle est declassee; ce n'est que le premier
pas--'"
My old friend's cigar fell on the table. "Monsieur," he stammered, "you
speak of a lady so, in a public place?"
The young man stared at him. "Who is this person?" he said to his
companion.
My guest took up Jules's glove that lay on the table; before either of us
could raise a finger, he had swung it in the speaker's face. "Enough!" he
said, and, dropping the glove, walked away.
We all jumped to our feet. I left Jules and hurried after him. His face
was grim, his eyes those of a creature who has been struck on a raw
place. He made a movement of his fingers which said plainly. "Leave me,
if you please!"
I went back to the cafe. The two young men had disappeared, so had
Jules, but everything else was going on just as before; the bandsman
still twanging out his czardas; the waiters serving drinks; the orientals
trying to sell their carpets. I paid the bill, sought out the manager,
and apologised. He shrugged his shoulders, smiled and said: "An
eccentric, your friend, nicht wahr?" Could he tell me where M. Le
Ferrier was? He could not. I left to look for Jules; could not find
him, and returned to my hotel disgusted. I was sorry for my old guest,
but vexed with him too; what business had he to carry his Quixotism to
such an unpleasant length? I tried to read. Eleven o'clock struck; the
casino disgorged a stream of people; the Place seemed fuller of life than
ever; then slowly it grew empty and quite dark. The whim seized me to go
out. It was a still night, very warm, very black. On one of the seats a
man and woman sat embraced, on another a girl was sobbing, on a
third--strange sight--a priest dozed. I became aware of some one at my
side; it was my old guest.
"If you are not too tired," he said, "can you give me ten minutes?"
"Certainly; will you come in?"
"No, no; let us go down to the Terrace. I shan't keep you long."
He did not speak again till we reached a seat above the pigeon-shooting
grounds; there, in a darkness denser for the string of lights still
burning in the town, we sat down.
"I owe you an apology," he said; "first in the afternoon, then again this
evening--your guest--your friend's glove! I have behaved as no gentleman
should." He was leaning forward with his hands on the handle of a stick.
His voice sounded broken and disturbed.
"Oh!" I muttered. "It's nothing!"'
"You are very good," he sighed; "but I feel that I must explain. I
consider I owe this to you, but I must tell you I should not have the
courage if it were not for another reason. You see I have no friend." He
looked at me with an uncertain smile. I bowed, and a minute or two later
he began....
III
"You will excuse me if I go back rather far. It was in '74, when I had
been ill with Cuban fever. To keep me alive they had put me on board a
ship at Santiago, and at the end of the voyage I found myself in London.
I had very little money; I knew nobody. I tell you, sir, there are times
when it's hard for a fighting man to get anything to do. People would
say to me: 'Afraid we've nothing for a man like you in our business.' I
tried people of all sorts; but it was true--I had been fighting here and
there since '60, I wasn't fit for anything--" He shook his head. "In
the South, before the war, they had a saying, I remember, about a dog and
a soldier having the same value. But all this has nothing to do with
what I have to tell you." He sighed again and went on, moistening his
lips: "I was walking along the Strand one day, very disheartened, when I
heard my name called. It's a queer thing, that, in a strange street. By
the way," he put in with dry ceremony, "you don't know my name, I think:
it is Brune--Roger Brune. At first I did not recognise the person who
called me. He had just got off an omnibus--a square-shouldered man with
heavy moustaches, and round spectacles. But when he shook my hand I knew
him at once. He was a man called Dalton, who was taken prisoner at
Gettysburg; one of you Englishmen who came to fight with us--a major in
the regiment where I was captain. We were comrades during two campaigns.
If I had been his brother he couldn't have seemed more pleased to see me.
He took me into a bar for the sake of old times. The drink went to my
head, and by the time we reached Trafalgar Square I was quite unable to
walk. He made me sit down on a bench. I was in fact--drunk. It's
disgraceful to be drunk, but there was some excuse. Now I tell you, sir"
(all through his story he was always making use of that expression, it
seemed to infuse fresh spirit into him, to help his memory in obscure
places, to give him the mastery of his emotions; it was like the piece of
paper a nervous man holds in his hand to help him through a speech),
"there never was a man with a finer soul than my friend Dalton. He was
not clever, though he had read much; and sometimes perhaps he was too
fond of talking. But he was a gentleman; he listened to me as if I had
been a child; he was not ashamed of me--and it takes a gentleman not to
be ashamed of a drunken man in the streets of London; God knows what
things I said to him while we were sitting there! He took me to his home
and put me to bed himself; for I was down again with fever." He stopped,
turned slightly from me, and put his hand up to his brow. "Well, then it
was, sir, that I first saw her. I am not a poet and I cannot tell you
what she seemed to me. I was delirious, but I always knew when she was
there. I had dreams of sunshine and cornfields, of dancing waves at sea,
young trees--never the same dreams, never anything for long together; and
when I had my senses I was afraid to say so for fear she would go away.
She'd be in the corner of the room, with her hair hanging about her neck,
a bright gold colour; she never worked and never read, but sat and talked
to herself in a whisper, or looked at me for a long time together out of
her blue eyes, a little frown between them, and her upper lip closed firm
on her lower lip, where she had an uneven tooth. When her father came,
she'd jump up and hang on to his neck until he groaned, then run away,
but presently come stealing back on tiptoe. I used to listen for her
footsteps on the stairs, then the knock, the door flung back or opened
quietly--you never could tell which; and her voice, with a little lisp,
'Are you better today, Mr. Brune? What funny things you say when you're
delirious! Father says you've been in heaps of battles!"'
He got up, paced restlessly to and fro, and sat down again. "I remember
every word as if it were yesterday, all the things she said, and did;
I've had a long time to think them over, you see. Well, I must tell you,
the first morning that I was able to get up, I missed her. Dalton came
in her place, and I asked him where she was. 'My dear fellow,' he
answered, 'I've sent Eilie away to her old nurse's inn down on the river;
she's better there at this time of year.' We looked at each other, and I
saw that he had sent her away because he didn't trust me. I was hurt by
this. Illness spoils one. He was right, he was quite right, for all he
knew about me was that I could fight and had got drunk; but I am very
quick-tempered. I made up my mind at once to leave him. But I was too
weak--he had to put me to bed again. The very next morning he came and
proposed that I should go into partnership with him. He kept a
fencing-school and pistol-gallery. It seemed like the finger of God; and
perhaps it was--who knows?" He fell into a reverie, and taking out his
caporal, rolled himself a cigarette; having lighted it, he went on
suddenly: "There, in the room above the school, we used to sit in the
evenings, one on each side of the grate. The room was on the second
floor, I remember, with two windows, and a view of nothing but the houses
opposite. The furniture was covered up with chintz. The things on the
bookshelf were never disturbed, they were Eilie's--half-broken cases with
butterflies, a dead frog in a bottle, a horse-shoe covered with tinfoil,
some shells too, and a cardboard box with three speckled eggs in it, and
these words written on the lid: 'Missel-thrush from Lucy's tree--second
family, only one blown.'" He smoked fiercely, with puffs that were like
sharp sighs.
"Dalton was wrapped up in her. He was never tired of talking to me about
her, and I was never tired of hearing. We had a number of pupils; but in
the evening when we sat there, smoking--our talk would sooner or
later--come round to her. Her bedroom opened out of that sitting--room;
he took me in once and showed me a narrow little room the width of a
passage, fresh and white, with a photograph of her mother above the bed,
and an empty basket for a dog or cat." He broke off with a vexed air,
and resumed sternly, as if trying to bind himself to the narration of his
more important facts: "She was then fifteen--her mother had been dead
twelve years--a beautiful, face, her mother's; it had been her death that
sent Dalton to fight with us. Well, sir, one day in August, very hot
weather, he proposed a run into the country, and who should meet us on
the platform when we arrived but Eilie, in a blue sun-bonnet and
frock-flax blue, her favourite colour. I was angry with Dalton for not
telling me that we should see her; my clothes were not quite--my hair
wanted cutting. It was black then, sir," he added, tracing a pattern in
the darkness with his stick. "She had a little donkey-cart; she drove,
and, while we walked one on each side, she kept looking at me from under
her sunbonnet. I must tell you that she never laughed--her eyes danced,
her cheeks would go pink, and her hair shake about on her neck, but she
never laughed. Her old nurse, Lucy, a very broad, good woman, had married
the proprietor of the inn in the village there. I have never seen
anything like that inn: sweethriar up to the roof! And the scent--I am
very susceptible to scents!" His head drooped, and the cigarette fell
from his hand. A train passing beneath sent up a shower of sparks. He
started, and went on: "We had our lunch in the parlour--I remember that
room very well, for I spent the happiest days of my life afterwards in
that inn.... We went into a meadow after lunch, and my friend Dalton
fell asleep. A wonderful thing happened then. Eilie whispered to me,
'Let's have a jolly time.' She took me for the most glorious walk. The
river was close by. A lovely stream, your river Thames, so calm and
broad; it is like the spirit of your people. I was bewitched; I forgot
my friend, I thought of nothing but how to keep her to myself. It was
such a day! There are days that are the devil's, but that was truly one
of God's. She took me to a little pond under an elm-tree, and we dragged
it, we two, an hour, for a kind of tiny red worm to feed some creature
that she had. We found them in the mud, and while she was bending over,
the curls got in her eyes. If you could have seen her then, I think,
sir, you would have said she was like the first sight of spring.... We
had tea afterwards, all together, in the long grass under some
fruit-trees. If I had the knack of words, there are things that I could
say." He bent, as though in deference to those unspoken memories.
"Twilight came on while we were sitting there. A wonderful thing is
twilight in the country! It became time for us to go. There was an
avenue of trees close by--like a church with a window at the end, where
golden light came through. I walked up and down it with her. 'Will you
come again?' she whispered, and suddenly she lifted up her face to be
kissed. I kissed her as if she were a little child. And when we said
good-bye, her eyes were looking at me across her father's shoulder, with
surprise and sorrow in them. 'Why do you go away?' they seemed to
say.... But I must tell you," he went on hurriedly, "of a thing that
happened before we had gone a hundred yards. We were smoking our pipes,
and I, thinking of her--when out she sprang from the hedge and stood in
front of us. Dalton cried out, 'What are you here for again, you mad
girl?' She rushed up to him and hugged him; but when she looked at me,
her face was quite different--careless, defiant, as one might say--it
hurt me. I couldn't understand it, and what one doesn't understand
frightens one."
IV
"Time went on. There was no swordsman, or pistol-shot like me in London,
they said. We had as many pupils as we liked--it was the only part of my
life when I have been able to save money. I had no chance to spend it.
We gave lessons all day, and in the evening were too tired to go out.
That year I had the misfortune to lose my dear mother. I became a rich
man--yes, sir, at that time I must have had not less than six hundred a
year.
"It was a long time before I saw Eilie again. She went abroad to Dresden
with her father's sister to learn French and German. It was in the
autumn of 1875 when she came back to us. She was seventeen then--a
beautiful young creature." He paused, as if to gather his forces for
description, and went on.
"Tall, as a young tree, with eyes like the sky. I would not say she was
perfect, but her imperfections were beautiful to me. What is it makes
you love--ah! sir, that is very hidden and mysterious. She had never
lost the trick of closing her lips tightly when she remembered her uneven
tooth. You may say that was vanity, but in a young girl--and which of
us is not vain, eh? 'Old men and maidens, young men and children!'
"As I said, she came back to London to her little room, and in the
evenings was always ready with our tea. You mustn't suppose she was
housewifely; there is something in me that never admired
housewifeliness--a fine quality, no doubt, still--" He sighed.
"No," he resumed, "Eilie was not like that, for she was never quite the
same two days together. I told you her eyes were like the sky--that was
true of all of her. In one thing, however, at that time, she always
seemed the same--in love for her father. For me! I don't know what I
should have expected; but my presence seemed to have the effect of making
her dumb; I would catch her looking at me with a frown, and then, as if
to make up to her own nature--and a more loving nature never came into
this world, that I shall maintain to my dying day--she would go to her
father and kiss him. When I talked with him she pretended not to notice,
but I could see her face grow cold and stubborn. I am not quick; and it
was a long time before I understood that she was jealous, she wanted him
all to herself. I've often wondered how she could be his daughter, for
he was the very soul of justice and a slow man too--and she was as quick
as a bird. For a long time after I saw her dislike of me, I refused to
believe it--if one does not want to believe a thing there are always
reasons why it should not seem true, at least so it is with me, and I
suppose with all selfish men.
"I spent evening after evening there, when, if I had not thought only of
myself, I should have kept away. But one day I could no longer be blind.
"It was a Sunday in February. I always had an invitation on Sundays to
dine with them in the middle of the day. There was no one in the
sitting-room; but the door of Eilie's bedroom was open. I heard her
voice: 'That man, always that man!' It was enough for me, I went down
again without coming in, and walked about all day.
"For three weeks I kept away. To the school of course I came as usual,
but not upstairs. I don't know what I told Dalton--it did not signify
what you told him, he always had a theory of his own, and was persuaded
of its truth--a very single-minded man, sir.
"But now I come to the most wonderful days of my life. It was an early
spring that year. I had fallen away already from my resolution, and used
to slink up--seldom, it's true--and spend the evening with them as
before. One afternoon I came up to the sitting-room; the light was
failing--it was warm, and the windows were open. In the air was that
feeling which comes to you once a year, in the spring, no matter where
you may be, in a crowded street, or alone in a forest; only once--a
feeling like--but I cannot describe it.
"Eilie was sitting there. If you don't know, sir, I can't tell you what
it means to be near the woman one loves. She was leaning on the
windowsill, staring down into the street. It was as though she might be
looking out for some one. I stood, hardly breathing. She turned her
head, and saw me. Her eyes were strange. They seemed to ask me a
question. But I couldn't have spoken for the world. I can't tell you
what I felt--I dared not speak, or think, or hope. I have been in
nineteen battles--several times in positions of some danger, when the
lifting of a finger perhaps meant death; but I have never felt what I was
feeling at that moment. I knew something was coming; and I was paralysed
with terror lest it should not come!" He drew a long breath.
"The servant came in with a light and broke the spell. All that night I
lay awake and thought of how she had looked at me, with the colour coming
slowly up in her cheeks--"It was three days before I plucked up courage
to go again; and then I felt her eyes on me at once--she was making a
'cat's cradle' with a bit of string, but I could see them stealing up
from her hands to my face. And she went wandering about the room,
fingering at everything. When her father called out: 'What's the matter
with you, Elie?' she stared at him like a child caught doing wrong. I
looked straight at her then, she tried to look at me, but she couldn't;
and a minute later she went out of the room. God knows what sort of
nonsense I talked--I was too happy.
"Then began our love. I can't tell you of that time. Often and often
Dalton said to me: 'What's come to the child? Nothing I can do pleases
her.' All the love she had given him was now for me; but he was too
simple and straight to see what was going on. How many times haven't I
felt criminal towards him! But when you're happy, with the tide in your
favour, you become a coward at once...."
V
"Well, sir," he went on, "we were married on her eighteenth birthday. It
was a long time before Dalton became aware of our love. But one day he
said to me with a very grave look:
"'Eilie has told me, Brune; I forbid it. She's too young, and
you're--too old!' I was then forty-five, my hair as black and thick as a
rook's feathers, and I was strong and active. I answered him: 'We shall
be married within a month!' We parted in anger. It was a May night, and
I walked out far into the country. There's no remedy for anger, or,
indeed, for anything, so fine as walking. Once I stopped--it was on a
common, without a house or light, and the stars shining like jewels. I
was hot from walking, I could feel the blood boiling in my veins--I said
to myself 'Old, are you?' And I laughed like a fool. It was the thought
of losing her--I wished to believe myself angry, but really I was afraid;
fear and anger in me are very much the same. A friend of mine, a bit of
a poet, sir, once called them 'the two black wings of self.' And so they
are, so they are...! The next morning I went to Dalton again, and
somehow I made him yield. I'm not a philosopher, but it has often seemed
to me that no benefit can come to us in this life without an equal loss
somewhere, but does that stop us? No, sir, not often....
"We were married on the 30th of June 1876, in the parish church. The
only people present were Dalton, Lucy, and Lucy's husband--a big,
red-faced fellow, with blue eyes and a golden beard parted in two. It had
been arranged that we should spend the honeymoon down at their inn on the
river. My wife, Dalton and I, went to a restaurant for lunch. She was
dressed in grey, the colour of a pigeon's feathers." He paused, leaning
forward over the crutch handle of his stick; trying to conjure up, no
doubt, that long-ago image of his young bride in her dress "the colour of
a pigeon's feathers," with her blue eyes and yellow hair, the little
frown between her brows, the firmly shut red lips, opening to speak the
words, "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in
health."
"At that time, sir," he went on suddenly, "I was a bit of a dandy. I
wore, I remember, a blue frock-coat, with white trousers, and a grey top
hat. Even now I should always prefer to be well dressed....
"We had an excellent lunch, and drank Veuve Clicquot, a wine that you
cannot get in these days! Dalton came with us to the railway station. I
can't bear partings; and yet, they must come.
"That evening we walked out in the cool under the aspen-trees. What
should I remember in all my life if not that night--the young bullocks
snuffling in the gateways--the campion flowers all lighted up along the
hedges--the moon with a halo-bats, too, in and out among the stems, and
the shadows of the cottages as black and soft as that sea down there.
For a long time we stood on the river-bank beneath a lime-tree. The
scent of the lime flowers! A man can only endure about half his joy;
about half his sorrow. Lucy and her husband," he went on, presently,
"his name was Frank Tor--a man like an old Viking, who ate nothing but
milk, bread, and fruit--were very good to us! It was like Paradise in
that inn--though the commissariat, I am bound to say, was limited. The
sweethriar grew round our bedroom windows; when the breeze blew the
leaves across the opening--it was like a bath of perfume. Eilie grew as
brown as a gipsy while we were there. I don't think any man could have
loved her more than I did. But there were times when my heart stood
still; it didn't seem as if she understood how much I loved her. One
day, I remember, she coaxed me to take her camping. We drifted
down-stream all the afternoon, and in the evening pulled into the reeds
under the willow-boughs and lit a fire for her to cook by--though, as a
matter of fact, our provisions were cooked already--but you know how it
is; all the romance was in having a real fire. 'We won't pretend,' she
kept saying. While we were eating our supper a hare came to our
clearing--a big fellow--how surprised he looked! 'The tall hare,' Eilie
called him. After that we sat by the ashes and watched the shadows, till
at last she roamed away from me. The time went very slowly; I got up to
look for her. It was past sundown. I called and called. It was a long
time before I found her--and she was like a wild thing, hot and flushed,
her pretty frock torn, her hands and face scratched, her hair down, like
some beautiful creature of the woods. If one loves, a little thing will
scare one. I didn't think she had noticed my fright; but when we got
back to the boat she threw her arms round my neck, and said, 'I won't
ever leave you again!'
"Once in the night I woke--a water-hen was crying, and in the moonlight a
kingfisher flew across. The wonder on the river--the wonder of the moon
and trees, the soft bright mist, the stillness! It was like another
world, peaceful, enchanted, far holier than ours. It seemed like a vision
of the thoughts that come to one--how seldom! and go if one tries to
grasp them. Magic--poetry-sacred!" He was silent a minute, then went on
in a wistful voice: "I looked at her, sleeping like a child, with her
hair loose, and her lips apart, and I thought: 'God do so to me, if ever
I bring her pain!' How was I to understand her? the mystery and
innocence of her soul! The river has had all my light and all my
darkness, the happiest days, and the hours when I've despaired; and I
like to think of it, for, you know, in time bitter memories fade, only
the good remain.... Yet the good have their own pain, a different kind
of aching, for we shall never get them back. Sir," he said, turning to
me with a faint smile, "it's no use crying over spilt milk.... In the
neighbourhood of Lucy's inn, the Rose and Maybush--Can you imagine a
prettier name? I have been all over the world, and nowhere found names
so pretty as in the English country. There, too, every blade of grass;
and flower, has a kind of pride about it; knows it will be cared for; and
all the roads, trees, and cottages, seem to be certain that they will
live for ever.... But I was going to tell you: Half a mile from the inn
was a quiet old house which we used to call the 'Convent'--though I
believe it was a farm. We spent many afternoons there, trespassing in
the orchard--Eilie was fond of trespassing; if there were a long way
round across somebody else's property, she would always take it. We spent
our last afternoon in that orchard, lying in the long grass. I was
reading Childe Harold for the first time--a wonderful, a memorable poem!
I was at that passage--the bull-fight--you remember:
"'Thrice sounds the clarion; lo! the signal falls,
The din expands, and expectation mute'
--"when suddenly Eilie said: 'Suppose I were to leave off loving you?' It
was as if some one had struck me in the face. I jumped up, and tried to
take her in my arms, but she slipped away; then she turned, and began
laughing softly. I laughed too. I don't know why...."
VI
"We went back to London the next day; we lived quite close to the school,
and about five days a week Dalton came to dine with us. He would have
come every day, if he had not been the sort of man who refuses to consult
his own pleasure. We had more pupils than ever. In my leisure I taught
my wife to fence. I have never seen any one so lithe and quick; or so
beautiful as she looked in her fencing dress, with embroidered shoes.
"I was completely happy. When a man has obtained his desire he becomes
careless and self-satisfied; I was watchful, however, for I knew that I
was naturally a selfish man. I studied to arrange my time and save my
money, to give her as much pleasure as I could. What she loved best in
the world just then was riding. I bought a horse for her, and in the
evenings of the spring and summer we rode together; but when it was too
dark to go out late, she would ride alone, great distances, sometimes
spend the whole day in the saddle, and come back so tired she could
hardly walk upstairs--I can't say that I liked that. It made me nervous,
she was so headlong--but I didn't think it right to interfere with her.
I had a good deal of anxiety about money, for though I worked hard and
made more than ever, there never seemed enough. I was anxious to save--I
hoped, of course--but we had no child, and this was a trouble to me. She
grew more beautiful than ever, and I think was happy. Has it ever struck
you that each one of us lives on the edge of a volcano? There is, I
imagine, no one who has not some affection or interest so strong that he
counts the rest for nothing, beside it. No doubt a man may live his life
through without discovering that. But some of us--! I am not
complaining; what is--is." He pulled the cap lower over his eyes, and
clutched his hands firmly on the top of his stick. He was like a man who
rushes his horse at some hopeless fence, unwilling to give himself time,
for fear of craning at the last moment. "In the spring of '78, a new
pupil came to me, a young man of twenty-one who was destined for the
army. I took a fancy to him, and did my best to turn him into a good
swordsman; but there was a kind of perverse recklessness in him; for a
few minutes one would make a great impression, then he would grow utterly
careless. 'Francis,' I would say, 'if I were you I should be ashamed.'
'Mr. Brune,' he would answer, 'why should I be ashamed? I didn't make
myself.' God knows, I wish to do him justice, he had a heart--one day he
drove up in a cab, and brought in his poor dog, who had been run over,
and was dying: For half an hour he shut himself up with its body, we
could hear him sobbing like a child; he came out with his eyes all red,
and cried: 'I know where to find the brute who drove over him,' and off
he rushed. He had beautiful Italian eyes; a slight figure, not very
tall; dark hair, a little dark moustache; and his lips were always a
trifle parted--it was that, and his walk, and the way he drooped his
eyelids, which gave him a peculiar, soft, proud look. I used to tell him
that he'd never make a soldier! 'Oh!' he'd answer, 'that'll be all right
when the time comes! He believed in a kind of luck that was to do
everything for him, when the time came. One day he came in as I was
giving Eilie her lesson. This was the first time they saw each other.
After that he came more often, and sometimes stayed to dinner with us. I
won't deny, sir, that I was glad to welcome him; I thought it good for
Eilie. Can there be anything more odious," he burst out, "than such a
self-complacent blindness? There are people who say, 'Poor man, he had
such faith!' Faith, sir! Conceit! I was a fool--in this world one pays
for folly....
"The summer came; and one Saturday in early June, Eilie, I, and
Francis--I won't tell you his other name--went riding. The night had
been wet; there was no dust, and presently the sun came out--a glorious
day! We rode a long way. About seven o'clock we started back-slowly,
for it was still hot, and there was all the cool of night before us. It
was nine o'clock when we came to Richmond Park. A grand place, Richmond
Park; and in that half-light wonderful, the deer moving so softly, you
might have thought they were spirits. We were silent too--great trees
have that effect on me....
"Who can say when changes come? Like a shift of the wind, the old
passes, the new is on you. I am telling you now of a change like that.
Without a sign of warning, Eilie put her horse into a gallop. 'What are
you doing?' I shouted. She looked back with a smile, then he dashed past
me too. A hornet might have stung them both: they galloped over fallen
trees, under low hanging branches, up hill and down. I had to watch that
madness! My horse was not so fast. I rode like a demon; but fell far
behind. I am not a man who takes things quietly. When I came up with
them at last, I could not speak for rage. They were riding side by side,
the reins on the horses' necks, looking in each other's faces. 'You
should take care,' I said. 'Care!' she cried; 'life is not all taking
care!' My anger left me. I dropped behind, as grooms ride behind their
mistresses... Jealousy! No torture is so ceaseless or so black.... In
those minutes a hundred things came up in me--a hundred memories, true,
untrue, what do I know? My soul was poisoned. I tried to reason with
myself. It was absurd to think such things! It was unmanly.... Even if
it were true, one should try to be a gentleman! But I found myself
laughing; yes, sir, laughing at that word." He spoke faster, as if
pouring his heart out not to a live listener, but to the night. "I could
not sleep that night. To lie near her with those thoughts in my brain
was impossible! I made an excuse, and sat up with some papers. The
hardest thing in life is to see a thing coming and be able to do nothing
to prevent it. What could I do? Have you noticed how people may become
utter strangers without a word? It only needs a thought.... The very
next day she said: 'I want to go to Lucy's.' 'Alone?' 'Yes.' I had made
up my mind by then that she must do just as she wished. Perhaps I acted
wrongly; I do not know what one ought to do in such a case; but before
she went I said to her: 'Eilie, what is it?' 'I don't know,' she
answered; and I kissed her--that was all.... A month passed; I wrote to
her nearly every day, and I had short letters from her, telling me very
little of herself. Dalton was a torture to me, for I could not tell him;
he had a conviction that she was going to become a mother. 'Ah, Brune!'
he said, 'my poor wife was just like that.' Life, sir, is a somewhat
ironical affair...! He--I find it hard to speak his name--came to the
school two or three times a week. I used to think I saw a change, a
purpose growing up through his recklessness; there seemed a violence in
him as if he chafed against my blade. I had a kind of joy in feeling I
had the mastery, and could toss the iron out of his hand any minute like
a straw. I was ashamed, and yet I gloried in it. Jealousy is a low
thing, sir--a low, base thing! When he asked me where my wife was, I
told him; I was too proud to hide it. Soon after that he came no more to
the school.
"One morning, when I could bear it no longer, I wrote, and said I was
coming down. I would not force myself on her, but I asked her to meet me
in the orchard of the old house we called the Convent. I asked her to be
there at four o'clock. It has always been my, belief that a man must
neither beg anything of a woman, nor force anything from her. Women are
generous--they will give you what they can. I sealed my letter, and
posted it myself. All the way down I kept on saying to myself, 'She must
come--surely she will come!'"
VII
"I was in high spirits, but the next moment trembled like a man with
ague. I reached the orchard before my time. She was not there. You
know what it is like to wait? I stood still and listened; I went to the
point whence I could see farthest; I said to myself, 'A watched pot never
boils; if I don't look for her she will come.' I walked up and down with
my eyes on the ground. The sickness of it! A hundred times I took out
my watch.... Perhaps it was fast, perhaps hers was slow--I can't tell you
a thousandth part of my hopes and fears. There was a spring of water, in
one corner. I sat beside it, and thought of the last time I had been
there--and something seemed to burst in me. It was five o'clock before I
lost all hope; there comes a time when you're glad that hope is dead, it
means rest. 'That's over,' you say, 'now I can act.' But what was I to
do? I lay down with my face to the ground; when one's in trouble, it's
the only thing that helps--something to press against and cling to that
can't give way. I lay there for two hours, knowing all the time that I
should play the coward. At seven o'clock I left the orchard and went
towards the inn; I had broken my word, but I felt happy.... I should see
her--and, sir, nothing--nothing seemed to matter beside that. Tor was in
the garden snipping at his roses. He came up, and I could see that he
couldn't look me in the face. 'Where's my wife?' I said. He answered,
'Let's get Lucy.' I ran indoors. Lucy met me with two letters; the
first--my own--unopened; and the second, this:
"'I have left you. You were good to me, but now--it is no use.
EILIE.'"
"She told me that a boy had brought a letter for my wife the day before,
from a young gentleman in a boat. When Lucy delivered it she asked, 'Who
is he, Miss Eilie? What will Mr. Brune say?' My wife looked at her
angrily, but gave her no answer--and all that day she never spoke. In the
evening she was gone, leaving this note on the bed.... Lucy cried as if
her heart would break. I took her by the shoulders and put her from the
room; I couldn't bear the noise. I sat down and tried to think. While I
was sitting there Tor came in with a letter. It was written on the
notepaper of an inn twelve miles up the river: these were the words.
"'Eilie is mine. I am ready to meet you where you like.'"
He went on with a painful evenness of speech. "When I read those words,
I had only one thought--to reach them; I ran down to the river, and chose
out the lightest boat. Just as I was starting, Tor came running. 'You
dropped this letter, sir,' he said. 'Two pair of arms are better than
one.' He came into the boat. I took the sculls and I pulled out into
the stream. I pulled like a madman; and that great man, with his bare
arms crossed, was like a huge, tawny bull sitting there opposite me.
Presently he took my place, and I took the rudder lines. I could see his
chest, covered with hair, heaving up and down, it gave me a sort of
comfort--it meant that we were getting nearer. Then it grew dark, there
was no moon, I could barely see the bank; there's something in the dark
which drives one into oneself. People tell you there comes a moment when
your nature is decided--'saved' or 'lost' as they call it--for good or
evil. That is not true, your self is always with you, and cannot be
altered; but, sir, I believe that in a time of agony one finds out what
are the things one can do, and what are those one cannot. You get to
know yourself, that's all. And so it was with me. Every thought and
memory and passion was so clear and strong! I wanted to kill him. I
wanted to kill myself. But her--no! We are taught that we possess our
wives, body and soul, we are brought up in that faith, we are commanded
to believe it--but when I was face to face with it, those words had no
meaning; that belief, those commands, they were without meaning to me,
they were--vile. Oh yes, I wanted to find comfort in them, I wanted to
hold on to them--but I couldn't. You may force a body; how can you force
a soul? No, no--cowardly! But I wanted to--I wanted to kill him and
force her to come back to me! And then, suddenly, I felt as if I were
pressing right on the most secret nerve of my heart. I seemed to see her
face, white and quivering, as if I'd stamped my heel on it. They say
this world is ruled by force; it may be true--I know I have a weak spot
in me.... I couldn't bear it. At last I Jumped to my feet and shouted
out, 'Turn the boat round!' Tor looked up at me as if I had gone mad.
And I had gone mad. I seized the boat-hook and threatened him; I called
him fearful names. 'Sir,' he said, 'I don't take such names from any
one!' 'You'll take them from me,' I shouted; 'turn the boat round, you
idiot, you hound, you fish!...' I have a terrible temper, a perfect curse
to me. He seemed amazed, even frightened; he sat down again suddenly and
pulled the boat round. I fell on the seat, and hid my face. I believe
the moon came up; there must have been a mist too, for I was cold as
death. In this life, sir, we cannot hide our faces--but by degrees the
pain of wounds grows less. Some will have it that such blows are mortal;
it is not so. Time is merciful.
"In the early morning I went back to London. I had fever on me--and was
delirious. I dare say I should have killed myself if I had not been so
used to weapons--they and I were too old friends, I suppose--I can't
explain. It was a long while before I was up and about. Dalton nursed me
through it; his great heavy moustache had grown quite white. We never
mentioned her; what was the good? There were things to settle of course,
the lawyer--this was unspeakably distasteful to me. I told him it was to
be as she wished, but the fellow would come to me, with his--there, I
don't want to be unkind. I wished him to say it was my fault, but he
said--I remember his smile now--he said, that was impossible, would be
seen through, talked of collusion--I don't understand these things, and
what's more, I can't bear them, they are--dirty.
"Two years later, when I had come back to London, after the Russo-Turkish
war, I received a letter from her. I have it here." He took an old,
yellow sheet of paper out of a leathern pockethook, spread it in his
fingers, and sat staring at it. For some minutes he did not speak.
"In the autumn of that same year she died in childbirth. He had deserted
her. Fortunately for him, he was killed on the Indian frontier, that
very year. If she had lived she would have been thirty-two next June;
not a great age.... I know I am what they call a crank; doctors will
tell you that you can't be cured of a bad illness, and be the same man
again. If you are bent, to force yourself straight must leave you weak
in another place. I must and will think well of women--everything done,
and everything said against them is a stone on her dead body. Could you
sit, and listen to it?" As though driven by his own question, he rose,
and paced up and down. He came back to the seat at last.
"That, sir, is the reason of my behaviour this afternoon, and again this
evening. You have been so kind, I wanted!--wanted to tell you. She had a
little daughter--Lucy has her now. My friend Dalton is dead; there would
have been no difficulty about money, but, I am sorry to say, that he was
swindled--disgracefully. It fell to me to administer his affairs--he
never knew it, but he died penniless; he had trusted some wretched
fellows--had an idea they would make his fortune. As I very soon found,
they had ruined him. It was impossible to let Lucy--such a dear
woman--bear that burden. I have tried to make provision; but, you see,"
he took hold of my sleeve, "I, too, have not been fortunate; in fact,
it's difficult to save a great deal out of L 190 a year; but the capital
is perfectly safe--and I get L 47, 10s. a quarter, paid on the nail. I
have often been tempted to reinvest at a greater rate of interest, but
I've never dared. Anyway, there are no debts--I've been obliged to make
a rule not to buy what I couldn't pay for on the spot.... Now I am
really plaguing you--but I wanted to tell you--in case-anything should
happen to me." He seemed to take a sudden scare, stiffened, twisted his
moustache, and muttering, "Your great kindness! Shall never forget!"
turned hurriedly away.
He vanished; his footsteps, and the tap of his stick grew fainter and
fainter. They died out. He was gone. Suddenly I got up and hastened
after him. I soon stopped--what was there to say?
VIII
The following day I was obliged to go to Nice, and did not return till
midnight. The porter told me that Jules le Ferrier had been to see me.
The next morning, while I was still in bed, the door was opened, and
Jules appeared. His face was very pale; and the moment he stood still
drops of perspiration began coursing down his cheeks.
"Georges!" he said, "he is dead. There, there! How stupid you look! My
man is packing. I have half an hour before the train; my evidence shall
come from Italy. I have done my part, the rest is for you. Why did you
have that dinner? The Don Quixote! The idiot! The poor man! Don't
move! Have you a cigar? Listen! When you followed him, I followed the
other two. My infernal curiosity! Can you conceive a greater folly? How
fast they walked, those two! feeling their cheeks, as if he had struck
them both, you know; it was funny. They soon saw me, for their eyes were
all round about their heads; they had the mark of a glove on their
cheeks." The colour began to come back, into Jules's face; he
gesticulated with his cigar and became more and more dramatic. "They
waited for me. 'Tiens!' said one, 'this gentleman was with him. My
friend's name is M. Le Baron de---. The man who struck him was an
odd-looking person; kindly inform me whether it is possible for my friend
to meet him?' Eh!" commented Jules, "he was offensive! Was it for me to
give our dignity away? 'Perfectly, monsieur!' I answered. 'In that
case,' he said, 'please give me his name and ad dress.... I could not
remember his name, and as for the address, I never knew it...! I
reflected. 'That,' I said, 'I am unable to do, for special reasons.'
'Aha!' he said, 'reasons that will prevent our fighting him, I suppose?
'On the contrary,' I said. 'I will convey your request to him; I may
mention that I have heard he is the best swordsman and pistol-shot in
Europe. Good-night!' I wished to give them something to dream of, you
understand.... Patience, my dear! Patience! I was, coming to you, but
I thought I would let them sleep on it--there was plenty of time! But
yesterday morning I came into the Place, and there he was on the bench,
with a big dog. I declare to you he blushed like a young girl. 'Sir,' he
said, 'I was hoping to meet you; last evening I made a great disturbance.
I took an unpardonable liberty'--and he put in my hand an envelope. My
friend, what do you suppose it contained--a pair of gloves! Senor Don
Punctilioso, hein? He was the devil, this friend of yours; he fascinated
me with his gentle eyes and his white moustachettes, his humility, his
flames--poor man...! I told him I had been asked to take him a
challenge. 'If anything comes of it,' I said, 'make use of me!' 'Is
that so?' he said. 'I am most grateful for your kind offer. Let me
see--it is so long since I fought a duel. The sooner it's over the
better. Could you arrange to-morrow morning? Weapons? Yes; let them
choose.' You see, my friend, there was no hanging back here; nous voila
en train."
Jules took out his watch. "I have sixteen minutes. It is lucky for you
that you were away yesterday, or you would be in my shoes now. I fixed
the place, right hand of the road to Roquebrune, just by the railway
cutting, and the time--five-thirty of the morning. It was arranged that
I should call for him. Disgusting hour; I have not been up so early
since I fought Jacques Tirbaut in '85. At five o'clock I found him ready
and drinking tea with rum in it--singular man! he made me have some too,
brrr! He was shaved, and dressed in that old frock-coat. His great dog
jumped into the carriage, but he bade her get out, took her paws on his
shoulders, and whispered in her ear some Italian words; a charm, hein!
and back she went, the tail between the legs. We drove slowly, so as not
to shake his arm. He was more gay than I. All the way he talked to me of
you: how kind you were! how good you had been to him! 'You do not speak
of yourself!' I said. 'Have you no friends, nothing to say? Sometimes an
accident will happen!' 'Oh!' he answered, 'there is no danger; but if by
any chance--well, there is a letter in my pocket.' 'And if you should
kill him?' I said. 'But I shall not,' he answered slyly: 'do you think I
am going to fire at him? No, no; he is too young.' 'But,' I said, 'I--'I
am not going to stand that!' 'Yes,' he replied, 'I owe him a shot; but
there is no danger--not the least danger.' We had arrived; already they
were there. Ah bah! You know the preliminaries, the politeness--this
duelling, you know, it is absurd, after all. We placed them at twenty
paces. It is not a bad place. There are pine-trees round, and rocks; at
that hour it was cool and grey as a church. I handed him the pistol.
How can I describe him to you, standing there, smoothing the barrel with
his fingers! 'What a beautiful thing a good pistol!' he said. 'Only a
fool or a madman throws away his life,' I said. 'Certainly,' he replied,
'certainly; but there is no danger,' and he regarded me, raising his
moustachette.
"There they stood then, back to back, with the mouths of their pistols to
the sky. 'Un!' I cried, 'deux! tirez!' They turned, I saw the smoke of
his shot go straight up like a prayer; his pistol dropped. I ran to him.
He looked surprised, put out his hand, and fell into my arms. He was
dead. Those fools came running up. 'What is it?' cried one. I made him
a bow. 'As you see,' I said; 'you have made a pretty shot. My friend
fired in the air. Messieurs, you had better breakfast in Italy.' We
carried him to the carriage, and covered him with a rug; the others drove
for the frontier. I brought him to his room. Here is his letter." Jules
stopped; tears were running down his face. "He is dead; I have closed
his eyes. Look here, you know, we are all of us cads--it is the rule;
but this--this, perhaps, was the exception." And without another word he
rushed away....
Outside the old fellow's lodging a dismounted cocher was standing
disconsolate in the sun. "How was I to know they were going to fight a
duel?" he burst out on seeing me. "He had white hair--I call you to
witness he had white hair. This is bad for me: they will ravish my
licence. Aha! you will see--this is bad for me!" I gave him the slip
and found my way upstairs. The old fellow was alone, lying on the bed,
his feet covered with a rug as if he might feel cold; his eyes were
closed, but in this sleep of death, he still had that air of faint
surprise. At full length, watching the bed intently, Freda lay, as she
lay nightly when he was really asleep. The shutters were half open; the
room still smelt slightly of rum. I stood for a long time looking at the
face: the little white fans of moustache brushed upwards even in death,
the hollows in his cheeks, the quiet of his figure; he was like some old
knight.... The dog broke the spell. She sat up, and resting her paws on
the bed, licked his face. I went downstairs--I couldn't bear to hear her
howl. This was his letter to me, written in a pointed handwriting:
"MY DEAR SIR,--Should you read this, I shall be gone. I am ashamed to
trouble you--a man should surely manage so as not to give trouble; and
yet I believe you will not consider me importunate. If, then, you will
pick up the pieces of an old fellow, I ask you to have my sword, the
letter enclosed in this, and the photograph that stands on the stove
buried with me. My will and the acknowledgments of my property are
between the leaves of the Byron in my tin chest; they should go to Lucy
Tor--address thereon. Perhaps you will do me the honour to retain for
yourself any of my books that may give you pleasure. In the Pilgrim's
Progress you will find some excellent recipes for Turkish coffee, Italian
and Spanish dishes, and washing wounds. The landlady's daughter speaks
Italian, and she would, I know, like to have Freda; the poor dog will
miss me. I have read of old Indian warriors taking their horses and dogs
with them to the happy hunting-grounds. Freda would come--noble animals
are dogs! She eats once a day--a good large meal--and requires much
salt. If you have animals of your own, sir, don't forget--all animals
require salt. I have no debts, thank God! The money in my pockets would
bury me decently--not that there is any danger. And I am ashamed to
weary you with details--the least a man can do is not to make a fuss--and
yet he must be found ready.--Sir, with profound gratitude, your servant,
"ROGER BRUNE."
Everything was as he had said. The photograph on the stove was that of a
young girl of nineteen or twenty, dressed in an old-fashioned style, with
hair gathered backward in a knot. The eyes gazed at you with a little
frown, the lips were tightly closed; the expression of the face was
eager, quick, wilful, and, above all, young.
The tin trunk was scented with dry fragments of some herb, the history of
which in that trunk man knoweth not.... There were a few clothes, but
very few, all older than those he usually wore. Besides the Byron and
Pilgrim's Progress were Scott's Quentin Durward, Captain Marryat's
Midshipman Easy, a pocket Testament, and a long and frightfully stiff
book on the art of fortifying towns, much thumbed, and bearing date 1863.
By far the most interesting thing I found, however, was a diary, kept
down to the preceding Christmas. It was a pathetic document, full of
calculations of the price of meals; resolutions to be careful over this
or that; doubts whether he must not give up smoking; sentences of fear
that Freda had not enough to eat. It appeared that he had tried to live
on ninety pounds a year, and send the other hundred pounds home to Lucy
for the child; in this struggle he was always failing, having to send
less than the amount-the entries showed that this was a nightmare to him.
The last words, written on Christmas Day, were these "What is the use of
writing this, since it records nothing but failure!"
The landlady's daughter and myself were at the funeral. The same
afternoon I went into the concert-room, where I had spoken to him first.
When I came out Freda was lying at the entrance, looking into the faces
of every one that passed, and sniffing idly at their heels. Close by the
landlady's daughter hovered, a biscuit in her hand, and a puzzled, sorry
look on her face.
September 1900.
TO
MY BROTHER HUBERT GALSWORTHY
SALVATION OF A FORSYTE
I
Swithin Forsyte lay in bed. The corners of his mouth under his white
moustache drooped towards his double chin. He panted:
"My doctor says I'm in a bad way, James."
His twin-brother placed his hand behind his ear. "I can't hear you. They
tell me I ought to take a cure. There's always a cure wanted for
something. Emily had a cure."
Swithin replied: "You mumble so. I hear my man, Adolph. I trained
him.... You ought to have an ear-trumpet. You're getting very shaky,
James."
There was silence; then James Forsyte, as if galvanised, remarked: "I
s'pose you've made your will. I s'pose you've left your money to the
family; you've nobody else to leave it to. There was Danson died the
other day, and left his money to a hospital"
The hairs of Swithin's white moustache bristled. "My fool of a doctor
told me to make my will," he said, "I hate a fellow who tells you to make
your will. My appetite's good; I ate a partridge last night. I'm all
the better for eating. He told me to leave off champagne! I eat a good
breakfast. I'm not eighty. You're the same age, James. You look very
shaky."
James Forsyte said: "You ought to have another opinion. Have Blank; he's
the first man now. I had him for Emily; cost me two hundred guineas. He
sent her to Homburg; that's the first place now. The Prince was
there--everybody goes there."
Swithin Forsyte answered: "I don't get any sleep at night, now I can't
get out; and I've bought a new carriage--gave a pot of money for it. D'
you ever have bronchitis? They tell me champagne's dangerous; it's my
belief I couldn't take a better thing."
James Forsyte rose.
"You ought to have another opinion. Emily sent her love; she would have
come in, but she had to go to Niagara. Everybody goes there; it's the
place now. Rachel goes every morning: she overdoes it--she'll be laid up
one of these days. There's a fancy ball there to-night; the Duke gives
the prizes."
Swithin Forsyte said angrily: "I can't get things properly cooked here;
at the club I get spinach decently done." The bed-clothes jerked at the
tremor of his legs.
James Forsyte replied: "You must have done well with Tintos; you must
have made a lot of money by them. Your ground-rents must be falling in,
too. You must have any amount you don't know what to do with." He
mouthed the words, as if his lips were watering.
Swithin Forsyte glared. "Money!" he said; "my doctor's bill's enormous."
James Forsyte stretched out a cold, damp hand "Goodbye! You ought to
have another opinion. I can't keep the horses waiting: they're a new
pair--stood me in three hundred. You ought to take care of yourself. I
shall speak to Blank about you. You ought to have him--everybody says
he's the first man. Good-bye!"
Swithin Forsyte continued to stare at the ceiling. He thought: 'A poor
thing, James! a selfish beggar! Must be worth a couple of hundred
thousand!' He wheezed, meditating on life....
He was ill and lonely. For many years he had been lonely, and for two
years ill; but as he had smoked his first cigar, so he would live his
life-stoutly, to its predestined end. Every day he was driven to the
club; sitting forward on the spring cushions of a single brougham, his
hands on his knees, swaying a little, strangely solemn. He ascended the
steps into that marble hall--the folds of his chin wedged into the
aperture of his collar--walking squarely with a stick. Later he would
dine, eating majestically, and savouring his food, behind a bottle of
champagne set in an ice-pail--his waistcoat defended by a napkin, his
eyes rolling a little or glued in a stare on the waiter. Never did he
suffer his head or back to droop, for it was not distinguished so to do.
Because he was old and deaf, he spoke to no one; and no one spoke to him.
The club gossip, an Irishman, said to each newcomer: "Old Forsyte! Look
at 'um! Must ha' had something in his life to sour 'um!" But Swithin
had had nothing in his life to sour him.
For many days now he had lain in bed in a room exuding silver, crimson,
and electric light, smelling of opopanax and of cigars. The curtains
were drawn, the firelight gleamed; on a table by his bed were a jug of
barley-water and the Times. He made an attempt to read, failed, and fell
again to thinking. His face with its square chin, looked like a block of
pale leather bedded in the pillow. It was lonely! A woman in the room
would have made all the difference! Why had he never married? He
breathed hard, staring froglike at the ceiling; a memory had come into
his mind. It was a long time ago--forty odd years--but it seemed like
yesterday....
It happened when he was thirty-eight, for the first and only time in his
life travelling on the Continent, with his twin-brother James and a man
named Traquair. On the way from Germany to Venice, he had found himself
at the Hotel Goldene Alp at Salzburg. It was late August, and weather
for the gods: sunshine on the walls and the shadows of the vine-leaves,
and at night, the moonlight, and again on the walls the shadows of the
vine-leaves. Averse to the suggestions of other people, Swithin had
refused to visit the Citadel; he had spent the day alone in the window of
his bedroom, smoking a succession of cigars, and disparaging the
appearance of the passers-by. After dinner he was driven by boredom into
the streets. His chest puffed out like a pigeon's, and with something of
a pigeon's cold and inquiring eye, he strutted, annoyed at the frequency
of uniforms, which seemed to him both needless and offensive. His spleen
rose at this crowd of foreigners, who spoke an unintelligible language,
wore hair on their faces, and smoked bad tobacco. 'A queer lot!' he
thought. The sound of music from a cafe attracted him; he walked in,
vaguely moved by a wish for the distinction of adventure, without the
trouble which adventure usually brought with it; spurred too, perhaps, by
an after-dinner demon. The cafe was the bier-halle of the 'Fifties, with
a door at either end, and lighted by a large wooden lantern. On a small
dais three musicians were fiddling. Solitary men, or groups, sat at some
dozen tables, and the waiters hurried about replenishing glasses; the air
was thick with smoke. Swithin sat down. "Wine!" he said sternly. The
astonished waiter brought him wine. Swithin pointed to a beer glass on
the table. "Here!" he said, with the same ferocity. The waiter poured
out the wine. 'Ah!' thought Swithin, 'they can understand if they like.'
A group of officers close by were laughing; Swithin stared at them
uneasily. A hollow cough sounded almost in his ear. To his left a man
sat reading, with his elbows on the corners of a journal, and his gaunt
shoulders raised almost to his eyes. He had a thin, long nose,
broadening suddenly at the nostrils; a black-brown beard, spread in a
savage fan over his chest; what was visible of the face was the colour of
old parchment. A strange, wild, haughty-looking creature! Swithin
observed his clothes with some displeasure--they were the clothes of a
journalist or strolling actor. And yet he was impressed. This was
singular. How could he be impressed by a fellow in such clothes! The
man reached out a hand, covered with black hairs, and took up a tumbler
that contained a dark-coloured fluid. 'Brandy!' thought Swithin. The
crash of a falling chair startled him--his neighbour had risen. He was
of immense height, and very thin; his great beard seemed to splash away
from his mouth; he was glaring at the group of officers, and speaking.
Swithin made out two words: "Hunde! Deutsche Hunde!" 'Hounds! Dutch
hounds!' he thought: 'Rather strong!' One of the officers had jumped up,
and now drew his sword. The tall man swung his chair up, and brought it
down with a thud. Everybody round started up and closed on him. The
tall man cried out, "To me, Magyars!"
Swithin grinned. The tall man fighting such odds excited his unwilling
admiration; he had a momentary impulse to go to his assistance. 'Only
get a broken nose!' he thought, and looked for a safe corner. But at
that moment a thrown lemon struck him on the jaw. He jumped out of his
chair and rushed at the officers. The Hungarian, swinging his chair,
threw him a look of gratitude--Swithin glowed with momentary admiration
of himself. A sword blade grazed his--arm; he felt a sudden dislike of
the Hungarian. 'This is too much,' he thought, and, catching up a chair,
flung it at the wooden lantern. There was a crash--faces and swords
vanished. He struck a match, and by the light of it bolted for the door.
A second later he was in the street.
II
A voice said in English, "God bless you, brother!"
Swithin looked round, and saw the tall Hungarian holding out his hand. He
took it, thinking, 'What a fool I've been!' There was something in the
Hungarian's gesture which said, "You are worthy of me!"
It was annoying, but rather impressive. The man seemed even taller than
before; there was a cut on his cheek, the blood from which was trickling
down his beard. "You English!" he said. "I saw you stone Haynau--I saw
you cheer Kossuth. The free blood of your people cries out to us." He
looked at Swithin. "You are a big man, you have a big soul--and strong,
how you flung them down! Ha!" Swithin had an impulse to take to his
heels. "My name," said the Hungarian, "is Boleskey. You are my friend."
His English was good.
'Bulsh-kai-ee, Burlsh-kai-ee,' thought Swithin; 'what a devil of a name!'
"Mine," he said sulkily, "is Forsyte."
The Hungarian repeated it.
"You've had a nasty jab on the cheek," said Swithin; the sight of the
matted beard was making him feel sick. The Hungarian put his fingers to
his cheek, brought them away wet, stared at them, then with an
indifferent air gathered a wisp of his beard and crammed it against the
cut.
"Ugh!" said Swithin. "Here! Take my handkerchief!"
The Hungarian bowed. "Thank you!" he said; "I couldn't think of it!
Thank you a thousand times!"
"Take it!" growled Swithin; it seemed to him suddenly of the first
importance. He thrust the handkerchief into the Hungarian's hand, and
felt a pain in his arm. 'There!' he thought, 'I've strained a muscle.'
The Hungarian kept muttering, regardless of passers-by, "Swine! How you
threw them over! Two or three cracked heads, anyway--the cowardly
swine!"
"Look here!" said Swithin suddenly; "which is my way to the Goldene Alp?"
The Hungarian replied, "But you are coming with me, for a glass of wine?"
Swithin looked at the ground. 'Not if I know it!' he thought.
"Ah!" said the Hungarian with dignity, "you do not wish for my
friendship!"
'Touchy beggar!' thought Swithin. "Of course," he stammered, "if you put
it in that way--"
The Hungarian bowed, murmuring, "Forgive me!"
They had not gone a dozen steps before a youth, with a beardless face and
hollow cheeks, accosted them. "For the love of Christ, gentlemen," he
said, "help me!"
"Are you a German?" asked Boleskey.
"Yes," said the youth.
"Then you may rot!"
"Master, look here!" Tearing open his coat, the youth displayed his skin,
and a leather belt drawn tight round it. Again Swithin felt that desire
to take to his heels. He was filled with horrid forebodings--a sense of
perpending intimacy with things such as no gentleman had dealings with.
The Hungarian crossed himself. "Brother," he said to the youth, "come
you in!"
Swithin looked at them askance, and followed. By a dim light they groped
their way up some stairs into a large room, into which the moon was
shining through a window bulging over the street. A lamp burned low;
there was a smell of spirits and tobacco, with a faint, peculiar scent,
as of rose leaves. In one corner stood a czymbal, in another a great
pile of newspapers. On the wall hung some old-fashioned pistols, and a
rosary of yellow beads. Everything was tidily arranged, but dusty. Near
an open fireplace was a table with the remains of a meal. The ceiling,
floor, and walls were all of dark wood. In spite of the strange
disharmony, the room had a sort of refinement. The Hungarian took a
bottle out of a cupboard and, filling some glasses, handed one to
Swithin. Swithin put it gingerly to his nose. 'You never know your
luck! Come!' he thought, tilting it slowly into his mouth. It was
thick, too sweet, but of a fine flavour.
"Brothers!" said the Hungarian, refilling, "your healths!"
The youth tossed off his wine. And Swithin this time did the same; he
pitied this poor devil of a youth now. "Come round to-morrow!" he said,
"I'll give you a shirt or two." When the youth was gone, however, he
remembered with relief that he had not given his address.
'Better so,' he reflected. 'A humbug, no doubt.'
"What was that you said to him?" he asked of the Hungarian.
"I said," answered Boleskey, "'You have eaten and drunk; and now you are
my enemy!'"
"Quite right!" said Swithin, "quite right! A beggar is every man's
enemy."
"You do not understand," the Hungarian replied politely. "While he was a
beggar--I, too, have had to beg" (Swithin thought, 'Good God! this is
awful!'), "but now that he is no longer hungry, what is he but a German?
No Austrian dog soils my floors!"
His nostrils, as it seemed to Swithin, had distended in an unpleasant
fashion; and a wholly unnecessary raucousness invaded his voice. "I am
an exile--all of my blood are exiles. Those Godless dogs!" Swithin
hurriedly assented.
As he spoke, a face peeped in at the door.
"Rozsi!" said the Hungarian. A young girl came in. She was rather
short, with a deliciously round figure and a thick plait of hair. She
smiled, and showed her even teeth; her little, bright, wide-set grey eyes
glanced from one man to the other. Her face was round, too, high in the
cheekbones, the colour of wild roses, with brows that had a twist-up at
the corners. With a gesture of alarm, she put her hand to her cheek, and
called, "Margit!" An older girl appeared, taller, with fine shoulders,
large eyes, a pretty mouth, and what Swithin described to himself
afterwards as a "pudding" nose. Both girls, with little cooing sounds,
began attending to their father's face.
Swithin turned his back to them. His arm pained him.
'This is what comes of interfering,' he thought sulkily; 'I might have
had my neck broken!' Suddenly a soft palm was placed in his, two eyes,
half-fascinated, half-shy, looked at him; then a voice called, "Rozsi!"
the door was slammed, he was alone again with the Hungarian, harassed by
a sense of soft disturbance.
"Your daughter's name is Rosy?" he said; "we have it in England--from
rose, a flower."
"Rozsi (Rozgi)," the Hungarian replied; "your English is a hard tongue,
harder than French, German, or Czechish, harder than Russian, or
Roumanian--I know no more."
"What?" said Swithin, "six languages?" Privately he thought, 'He knows
how to lie, anyway.'
"If you lived in a country like mine," muttered the Hungarian, "with all
men's hands against you! A free people--dying--but not dead!"
Swithin could not imagine what he was talking of. This man's face, with
its linen bandage, gloomy eyes, and great black wisps of beard, his
fierce mutterings, and hollow cough, were all most unpleasant. He seemed
to be suffering from some kind of mental dog-bite. His emotion indeed
appeared so indecent, so uncontrolled and open, that its obvious
sincerity produced a sort of awe in Swithin. It was like being forced to
look into a furnace. Boleskey stopped roaming up and down. "You think
it's over?" he said; "I tell you, in the breast of each one of us Magyars
there is a hell. What is sweeter than life? What is more sacred than
each breath we draw? Ah! my country!" These words were uttered so
slowly, with such intense mournfulness, that Swithin's jaw relaxed; he
converted the movement to a yawn.
"Tell me," said Boleskey, "what would you do if the French conquered
you?"
Swithin smiled. Then suddenly, as though something had hurt him, he
grunted, "The 'Froggies'? Let 'em try!"
"Drink!" said Boleskey--"there is nothing like it"; he filled Swithin's
glass. "I will tell you my story."
Swithin rose hurriedly. "It's late," he said. "This is good stuff,
though; have you much of it?"
"It is the last bottle."
"What?" said Swithin; "and you gave it to a beggar?"
"My name is Boleskey--Stefan," the Hungarian said, raising his head; "of
the Komorn Boleskeys." The simplicity of this phrase--as who shall say:
What need of further description?--made an impression on Swithin; he
stopped to listen. Boleskey's story went on and on. "There were many
abuses," boomed his deep voice, "much wrong done--much cowardice. I
could see clouds gathering--rolling over our plains. The Austrian wished
to strangle the breath of our mouths--to take from us the shadow of our
liberty--the shadow--all we had. Two years ago--the year of '48, when
every man and boy answered the great voice--brother, a dog's life!--to
use a pen when all of your blood are fighting, but it was decreed for me!
My son was killed; my brothers taken--and myself was thrown out like a
dog--I had written out my heart, I had written out all the blood that was
in my body!" He seemed to tower, a gaunt shadow of a man, with gloomy,
flickering eyes staring at the wall.
Swithin rose, and stammered, "Much obliged--very interesting." Boleskey
made no effort to detain him, but continued staring at the wall.
"Good-night!" said Swithin, and stamped heavily downstairs.
III
When at last Swithin reached the Goldene Alp, he found his brother and
friend standing uneasily at the door. Traquair, a prematurely dried-up
man, with whiskers and a Scotch accent, remarked, "Ye're airly, man!"
Swithin growled something unintelligible, and swung up to bed. He
discovered a slight cut on his arm. He was in a savage temper--the
elements had conspired to show him things he did not want to see; yet now
and then a memory of Rozsi, of her soft palm in his, a sense of having
been stroked and flattered, came over him. During breakfast next morning
his brother and Traquair announced their intention of moving on. James
Forsyte, indeed, remarked that it was no place for a "collector," since
all the "old" shops were in the hands of Jews or very grasping
persons--he had discovered this at once. Swithin pushed his cup aside.
"You may do what you like," he said, "I'm staying here."
James Forsyte replied, tumbling over his own words: "Why! what do you
want to stay here for? There's nothing for you to do here--there's
nothing to see here, unless you go up the Citadel, an' you won't do
that."
Swithin growled, "Who says so?" Having gratified his perversity, he felt
in a better temper. He had slung his arm in a silk sash, and accounted
for it by saying he had slipped. Later he went out and walked on to the
bridge. In the brilliant sunshine spires were glistening against the
pearly background of the hills; the town had a clean, joyous air. Swithin
glanced at the Citadel and thought, 'Looks a strong place! Shouldn't
wonder if it were impregnable!' And this for some occult reason gave him
pleasure. It occurred to him suddenly to go and look for the Hungarian's
house.
About noon, after a hunt of two hours, he was gazing about him blankly,
pale with heat, but more obstinate than ever, when a voice above him
called, "Mister!" He looked up and saw Rozsi. She was leaning her round
chin on her round hand, gazing down at him with her deepset, clever eyes.
When Swithin removed his hat, she clapped her hands. Again he had the
sense of being admired, caressed. With a careless air, that sat
grotesquely on his tall square person, he walked up to the door; both
girls stood in the passage. Swithin felt a confused desire to speak in
some foreign tongue. "Maam'selles," he began, "er--bong jour-er, your
father--pare, comment?"
"We also speak English," said the elder girl; "will you come in, please?"
Swithin swallowed a misgiving, and entered. The room had a worn
appearance by daylight, as if it had always been the nest of tragic or
vivid lives. He sat down, and his eyes said: "I am a stranger, but don't
try to get the better of me, please--that is impossible." The girls
looked at him in silence. Rozsi wore a rather short skirt of black
stuff, a white shirt, and across her shoulders an embroidered yoke; her
sister was dressed in dark green, with a coral necklace; both girls had
their hair in plaits. After a minute Rozsi touched the sleeve of his
hurt arm.
"It's nothing!" muttered Swithin.
"Father fought with a chair, but you had no chair," she said in a
wondering voice.
He doubled the fist of his sound arm and struck a blow at space. To his
amazement she began to laugh. Nettled at this, he put his hand beneath
the heavy table and lifted it. Rozsi clapped her hands. "Ah I now I
see--how strong you are!" She made him a curtsey and whisked round to
the window. He found the quick intelligence of her eyes confusing;
sometimes they seemed to look beyond him at something invisible--this,
too, confused him. From Margit he learned that they had been two years
in England, where their father had made his living by teaching languages;
they had now been a year in Salzburg.
"We wait," suddenly said. Rozsi; and Margit, with a solemn face,
repeated, "We wait."
Swithin's eyes swelled a little with his desire to see what they were
waiting for. How queer they were, with their eyes that gazed beyond him!
He looked at their figures. 'She would pay for dressing,' he thought,
and he tried to imagine Rozsi in a skirt with proper flounces, a thin
waist, and hair drawn back over her ears. She would pay for dressing,
with that supple figure, fluffy hair, and little hands! And instantly
his own hands, face, and clothes disturbed him. He got up, examined the
pistols on the wall, and felt resentment at the faded, dusty room.
'Smells like a pot-house!' he thought. He sat down again close to Rozsi.
"Do you love to dance?" she asked; "to dance is to live. First you hear
the music--how your feet itch! It is wonderful! You begin slow,
quick--quicker; you fly--you know nothing--your feet are in the air. It
is wonderful!"
A slow flush had mounted into Swithin's face.
"Ah!" continued Rozsi, her eyes fixed on him, "when I am dancing--out
there I see the plains--your feet go one--two--three--quick, quick,
quick, quicker--you fly."
She stretched herself, a shiver seemed to pass all down her. "Margit!
dance!" and, to Swithin's consternation, the two girls--their hands on
each other's shoulders--began shuffling their feet and swaying to and
fro. Their heads were thrown back, their eyes half-closed; suddenly the
step quickened, they swung to one side, then to the other, and began
whirling round in front of him. The sudden fragrance of rose leaves
enveloped him. Round they flew again. While they were still dancing,
Boleskey came into the room. He caught Swithin by both hands.
"Brother, welcome! Ah! your arm is hurt! I do not forget." His yellow
face and deep-set eyes expressed a dignified gratitude. "Let me
introduce to you my friend Baron Kasteliz."
Swithin bowed to a man with a small forehead, who had appeared softly,
and stood with his gloved hands touching his waist. Swithin conceived a
sudden aversion for this catlike man. About Boleskey there was that
which made contempt impossible--the sense of comradeship begotten in the
fight; the man's height; something lofty and savage in his face; and an
obscure instinct that it would not pay to show distaste; but this
Kasteliz, with his neat jaw, low brow, and velvety, volcanic look,
excited his proper English animosity. "Your friends are mine," murmured
Kasteliz. He spoke with suavity, and hissed his s's. A long, vibrating
twang quavered through the room. Swithin turned and saw Rozsi sitting at
the czymbal; the notes rang under the little hammers in her hands,
incessant, metallic, rising and falling with that strange melody.
Kasteliz had fixed his glowing eyes on her; Boleskey, nodding his head,
was staring at the floor; Margit, with a pale face, stood like a statue.
'What can they see in it?' thought Swithin; 'it's not a tune.' He took
up his hat. Rozsi saw him and stopped; her lips had parted with a
faintly dismayed expression. His sense of personal injury diminished; he
even felt a little sorry for her. She jumped up from her seat and
twirled round with a pout. An inspiration seized on Swithin. "Come and
dine with me," he said to Boleskey, "to-morrow--the Goldene Alp--bring
your friend." He felt the eyes of the whole room on him--the Hungarian's
fine eyes; Margit's wide glance; the narrow, hot gaze of Kasteliz; and
lastly--Rozsi's. A glow of satisfaction ran down his spine. When he
emerged into the street he thought gloomily, 'Now I've done it!' And not
for some paces did he look round; then, with a forced smile, turned and
removed his hat to the faces at the window.
Notwithstanding this moment of gloom, however, he was in an exalted state
all day, and at dinner kept looking at his brother and Traquair
enigmatically. 'What do they know of life?' he thought; 'they might be
here a year and get no farther.' He made jokes, and pinned the menu to
the waiter's coat-tails. "I like this place," he said, "I shall spend
three weeks here." James, whose lips were on the point of taking in a
plum, looked at him uneasily.
IV
On the day of the dinner Swithin suffered a good deal. He reflected
gloomily on Boleskey's clothes. He had fixed an early hour--there would
be fewer people to see them. When the time approached he attired himself
with a certain neat splendour, and though his arm was still sore, left
off the sling....
Nearly three hours afterwards he left the Goldene Alp between his guests.
It was sunset, and along the riverbank the houses stood out, unsoftened
by the dusk; the streets were full of people hurrying home. Swithin had
a hazy vision of empty bottles, of the ground before his feet, and the
accessibility of all the world. Dim recollections of the good things he
had said, of his brother and Traquair seated in the background eating
ordinary meals with inquiring, acid visages, caused perpetual smiles to
break out on his face, and he steered himself stubbornly, to prove that
he was a better man than either' of his guests. He knew, vaguely, that
he was going somewhere with an object; Rozsi's face kept dancing before
him, like a promise. Once or twice he gave Kasteliz a glassy stare.
Towards Boleskey, on the other hand, he felt quite warm, and recalled
with admiration the way he had set his glass down empty, time after time.
'I like to see him take his liquor,' he thought; 'the fellow's a
gentleman, after all.' Boleskey strode on, savagely inattentive to
everything; and Kasteliz had become more like a cat than ever. It was
nearly dark when they reached a narrow street close to the cathedral.
They stopped at a door held open by an old woman. The change from the
fresh air to a heated corridor, the noise of the door closed behind him,
the old woman's anxious glances, sobered Swithin.
"I tell her," said Boleskey, "that I reply for you as for my son."
Swithin was angry. What business had this man to reply for him!
They passed into a large room, crowded with men all women; Swithin
noticed that they all looked fit him. He stared at them in turn--they
seemed of all classes, some in black coats or silk dresses, others in the
clothes of work-people; one man, a cobbler, still wore his leather apron,
as if he had rushed there straight from his work. Laying his hand on
Swithin's arm, Boleskey evidently began explaining who he was; hands were
extended, people beyond reach bowed to him. Swithin acknowledged the
greetings with a stiff motion of his head; then seeing other people
dropping into seats, he, too, sat down. Some one whispered his
name--Margit and Rozsi were just behind him.
"Welcome!" said Margit; but Swithin was looking at Rozsi. Her face was
so alive and quivering! 'What's the excitement all about?' he thought.
'How pretty she looks!' She blushed, drew in her hands with a quick
tense movement, and gazed again beyond him into the room. 'What is it?'
thought Swithin; he had a longing to lean back and kiss her lips. He
tried angrily to see what she was seeing in those faces turned all one
way.
Boleskey rose to speak. No one moved; not a sound could be heard but the
tone of his deep voice. On and on he went, fierce and solemn, and with
the rise of his voice, all those faces-fair or swarthy--seemed to be
glowing with one and the same feeling. Swithin felt the white heat in
those faces--it was not decent! In that whole speech he only understood
the one word--"Magyar" which came again and again. He almost dozed off at
last. The twang of a czymbal woke him. 'What?' he thought, 'more of that
infernal music!' Margit, leaning over him, whispered: "Listen! Racoczy!
It is forbidden!" Swithin saw that Rozsi was no longer in her seat; it
was she who was striking those forbidden notes. He looked
round--everywhere the same unmoving faces, the same entrancement, and
fierce stillness. The music sounded muffled, as if it, too, were
bursting its heart in silence. Swithin felt within him a touch of panic.
Was this a den of tigers? The way these people listened, the ferocity of
their stillness, was frightful...! He gripped his chair and broke into a
perspiration; was there no chance to get away? 'When it stops,' he
thought, 'there'll be a rush!' But there was only a greater silence. It
flashed across him that any hostile person coming in then would be torn
to pieces. A woman sobbed. The whole thing was beyond words unpleasant.
He rose, and edged his way furtively towards the doorway. There was a
cry of "Police!" The whole crowd came pressing after him. Swithin would
soon have been out, but a little behind he caught sight of Rozsi swept
off her feet. Her frightened eyes angered him. 'She doesn't deserve
it,' he thought sulkily; 'letting all this loose!' and forced his way
back to her. She clung to him, and a fever went stealing through his
veins; he butted forward at the crowd, holding her tight. When they were
outside he let her go.
"I was afraid," she said.
"Afraid!" muttered Swithin; "I should think so." No longer touching her,
he felt his grievance revive.
"But you are so strong," she murmured.
"This is no place for you," growled Swithin, "I'm going to see you home."
"Oh!" cried Rozsi; "but papa and--Margit!"
"That's their look-out!" and he hurried her away.
She slid her hand under his arm; the soft curves of her form brushed him
gently, each touch only augmented his ill-humour. He burned with a
perverse rage, as if all the passions in him were simmering and ready to
boil over; it was as if a poison were trying to work its way out of him,
through the layers of his stolid flesh. He maintained a dogged silence;
Rozsi, too, said nothing, but when they reached the door, she drew her
hand away.
"You are angry!" she said.
"Angry," muttered Swithin; "no! How d'you make that out?" He had a
torturing desire to kiss her.
"Yes, you are angry," she repeated; "I wait here for papa and Margit."
Swithin also waited, wedged against the wall. Once or twice, for his
sight was sharp, he saw her steal a look at him, a beseeching look, and
hardened his heart with a kind of pleasure. After five minutes Boleskey,
Margit, and Kasteliz appeared. Seeing Rozsi they broke into exclamations
of relief, and Kasteliz, with a glance at Swithin, put his lips to her
hand. Rozsi's look said, "Wouldn't you like to do that?" Swithin turned
short on his heel, and walked away.
V
All night he hardly slept, suffering from fever, for the first time in
his life. Once he jumped out of bed, lighted a candle, and going to the
glass, scrutinised himself long and anxiously. After this he fell
asleep, but had frightful dreams. His first thought when he woke was,
'My liver's out of order!' and, thrusting his head into cold water, he
dressed hastily and went out. He soon left the house behind. Dew
covered everything; blackbirds whistled in the bushes; the air was fresh
and sweet. He had not been up so early since he was a boy. Why was he
walking through a damp wood at this hour of the morning? Something
intolerable and unfamiliar must have sent him out. No fellow in his
senses would do such a thing! He came to a dead stop, and began
unsteadily to walk back. Regaining the hotel, he went to bed again, and
dreamed that in some wild country he was living in a room full of
insects, where a housemaid--Rozsi--holding a broom, looked at him with
mournful eyes. There seemed an unexplained need for immediate departure;
he begged her to forward his things; and shake them out carefully before
she put them into the trunk. He understood that the charge for sending
would be twenty-two shillings, thought it a great deal, and had the
horrors of indecision. "No," he muttered, "pack, and take them myself."
The housemaid turned suddenly into a lean creature; and he awoke with a
sore feeling in his heart.
His eye fell on his wet boots. The whole thing was scaring, and jumping
up, he began to throw his clothes into his trunks. It was twelve o'clock
before he went down, and found his brother and Traquair still at the
table arranging an itinerary; he surprised them by saying that he too was
coming; and without further explanation set to work to eat. James had
heard that there were salt-mines in the neighbourhood--his proposal was
to start, and halt an hour or so on the road for their inspection; he
said: "Everybody'll ask you if you've seen the salt-mines: I shouldn't
like to say I hadn't seen the salt-mines. What's the good, they'd say,
of your going there if you haven't seen the salt-mines?" He wondered,
too, if they need fee the second waiter--an idle chap!
A discussion followed; but Swithin ate on glumly, conscious that his mind
was set on larger affairs. Suddenly on the far side of the street Rozsi
and her sister passed, with little baskets on their arms. He started up,
and at that moment Rozsi looked round--her face was the incarnation of
enticement, the chin tilted, the lower lip thrust a little forward, her
round neck curving back over her shoulder. Swithin muttered, "Make your
own arrangements--leave me out!" and hurried from the room, leaving James
beside himself with interest and alarm.
When he reached the street, however, the girls had disappeared. He
hailed a carriage. "Drive!" he called to the man, with a flourish of his
stick, and as soon as the wheels had begun to clatter on the stones he
leaned back, looking sharply to right and left. He soon had to give up
thought of finding them, but made the coachman turn round and round
again. All day he drove about, far into the country, and kept urging the
driver to use greater speed. He was in a strange state of hurry and
elation. Finally, he dined at a little country inn; and this gave the
measure of his disturbance--the dinner was atrocious.
Returning late in the evening he found a note written by Traquair. "Are
you in your senses, man?" it asked; "we have no more time to waste idling
about here. If you want to rejoin us, come on to Danielli's Hotel,
Venice." Swithin chuckled when he read it, and feeling frightfully
tired, went to bed and slept like a log.
VI
Three weeks later he was still in Salzburg, no longer at the Goldene Alp,
but in rooms over a shop near the Boleskeys'. He had spent a small
fortune in the purchase of flowers. Margit would croon over them, but
Rozsi, with a sober "Many tanks!" as if they were her right, would look
long at herself in the glass, and pin one into her hair. Swithin ceased
to wonder; he ceased to wonder at anything they did. One evening he
found Boleskey deep in conversation with a pale, dishevelled-looking
person.
"Our friend Mr. Forsyte--Count D....," said Boleskey.
Swithin experienced a faint, unavoidable emotion; but looking at the
Count's trousers, he thought: 'Doesn't look much like one!' And with an
ironic bow to the silent girls, he turned, and took his hat. But when he
had reached the bottom of the dark stairs he heard footsteps. Rozsi came
running down, looked out at the door, and put her hands up to her breast
as if disappointed; suddenly with a quick glance round she saw him.
Swithin caught her arm. She slipped away, and her face seemed to bubble
with defiance or laughter; she ran up three steps, stopped, looked at him
across her shoulder, and fled on up the stairs. Swithin went out
bewildered and annoyed.
'What was she going to say to me?' he kept thinking. During these three
weeks he had asked himself all sorts of questions: whether he were being
made a fool of; whether she were in love with him; what he was doing
there, and sometimes at night, with all his candles burning as if he
wanted light, the breeze blowing on him through the window, his cigar,
half-smoked, in his hand, he sat, an hour or more, staring at the wall.
'Enough of this!' he thought every morning. Twice he packed fully--once
he ordered his travelling carriage, but countermanded it the following
day. What definitely he hoped, intended, resolved, he could not have
said. He was always thinking of Rozsi, he could not read the riddle in
her face--she held him in a vice, notwithstanding that everything about
her threatened the very fetishes of his existence. And Boleskey!
Whenever he looked at him he thought, 'If he were only clean?' and
mechanically fingered his own well-tied cravatte. To talk with the
fellow, too, was like being forced to look at things which had no place
in the light of day. Freedom, equality, self-sacrifice!
'Why can't he settle down at some business,' he thought, 'instead of all
this talk?' Boleskey's sudden diffidences, self-depreciation, fits of
despair, irritated him. "Morbid beggar!" he would mutter; "thank God I
haven't a thin skin." And proud too! Extraordinary! An impecunious
fellow like that! One evening, moreover, Boleskey had returned home
drunk. Swithin had hustled him away into his bedroom, helped him to
undress, and stayed until he was asleep. 'Too much of a good thing!' he
thought, 'before his own daughters, too!' It was after this that he
ordered his travelling carriage. The other occasion on which he packed
was one evening, when not only Boleskey, but Rozsi herself had picked
chicken bones with her fingers.
Often in the mornings he would go to the Mirabell Garden to smoke his
cigar; there, in stolid contemplation of the statues--rows of half-heroic
men carrying off half-distressful females--he would spend an hour
pleasantly, his hat tilted to keep the sun off his nose. The day after
Rozsi had fled from him on the stairs, he came there as usual. It was a
morning of blue sky and sunlight glowing on the old prim garden, on its
yew-trees, and serio-comic statues, and walls covered with apricots and
plums. When Swithin approached his usual seat, who should be sitting
there but Rozsi--"Good-morning," he stammered; "you knew this was my
seat then?"
Rozsi looked at the ground. "Yes," she answered.
Swithin felt bewildered. "Do you know," he said, "you treat me very
funnily?"
To his surprise Rozsi put her little soft hand down and touched his;
then, without a word, sprang up and rushed away. It took him a minute to
recover. There were people present; he did not like to run, but overtook
her on the bridge, and slipped her hand beneath his arm.
"You shouldn't have done that," he said; "you shouldn't have run away
from me, you know."
Rozsi laughed. Swithin withdrew his arm; a desire to shake her seized
him. He walked some way before he said, "Will you have the goodness to
tell me what you came to that seat for?"
Rozsi flashed a look at him. "To-morrow is the fete," she answered.
Swithin muttered, "Is that all?"
"If you do not take us, we cannot go."
"Suppose I refuse," he said sullenly, "there are plenty of others."
Rozsi bent her head, scurrying along. "No," she murmured, "if you do not
go--I do not wish."
Swithin drew her hand back within his arm. How round and soft it was! He
tried to see her face. When she was nearly home he said goodbye, not
wishing, for some dark reason, to be seen with her. He watched till she
had disappeared; then slowly retraced his steps to the Mirabell Garden.
When he came to where she had been sitting, he slowly lighted his cigar,
and for a long time after it was smoked out remained there in the silent
presence of the statues.
VII
A crowd of people wandered round the booths, and Swithin found himself
obliged to give the girls his arms. 'Like a little Cockney clerk!' he
thought. His indignation passed unnoticed; they talked, they laughed,
each sight and sound in all the hurly-burly seemed to go straight into
their hearts. He eyed them ironically--their eager voices, and little
coos of sympathy seemed to him vulgar. In the thick of the crowd he
slipped his arm out of Margit's, but, just as he thought that he was
free, the unwelcome hand slid up again. He tried again, but again Margit
reappeared, serene, and full of pleasant humour; and his failure this
time appeared to him in a comic light. But when Rozsi leaned across him,
the glow of her round cheek, her curving lip, the inscrutable grey gleam
of her eyes, sent a thrill of longing through him. He was obliged to
stand by while they parleyed with a gipsy, whose matted locks and skinny
hands inspired him with a not unwarranted disgust. "Folly!" he muttered,
as Rozsi held out her palm. The old woman mumbled, and shot a malignant
look at him. Rozsi drew back her hand, and crossed herself. 'Folly!'
Swithin thought again; and seizing the girls' arms, he hurried them away.
"What did the old hag say?" he asked.
Rozsi shook her head.
"You don't mean that you believe?"
Her eyes were full of tears. "The gipsies are wise," she murmured.
"Come, what did she tell you?"
This time Rozsi looked hurriedly round, and slipped away into the crowd.
After a hunt they found her, and Swithin, who was scared, growled: "You
shouldn't do such things--it's not respectable."
On higher ground, in the centre of a clear space, a military band was
playing. For the privilege of entering this charmed circle Swithin paid
three kronen, choosing naturally the best seats. He ordered wine, too,
watching Rozsi out of the corner of his eye as he poured it out. The
protecting tenderness of yesterday was all lost in this medley. It was
every man for himself, after all! The colour had deepened again in her
cheeks, she laughed, pouting her lips. Suddenly she put her glass aside.
"Thank you, very much," she said, "it is enough!"
Margit, whose pretty mouth was all smiles, cried, "Lieber Gott! is it not
good-life?" It was not a question Swithin could undertake to answer. The
band began to play a waltz. "Now they will dance. Lieber Gott! and are
the lights not wonderful?" Lamps were flickering beneath the trees like
a swarm of fireflies. There was a hum as from a gigantic beehive.
Passers-by lifted their faces, then vanished into the crowd; Rozsi stood
gazing at them spellbound, as if their very going and coming were a
delight.
The space was soon full of whirling couples. Rozsi's head began to beat
time. "O Margit!" she whispered.
Swithin's face had assumed a solemn, uneasy expression. A man raising
his hat, offered his arm to Margit. She glanced back across her shoulder
to reassure Swithin. "It is a friend," she said.
Swithin looked at Rozsi--her eyes were bright, her lips tremulous. He
slipped his hand along the table and touched her fingers. Then she
flashed a look at him--appeal, reproach, tenderness, all were expressed
in it. Was she expecting him to dance? Did she want to mix with the
rift-raff there; wish him to make an exhibition of himself in this
hurly-burly? A voice said, "Good-evening!" Before them stood Kasteliz,
in a dark coat tightly buttoned at the waist.
"You are not dancing, Rozsi Kozsanony?" (Miss Rozsi). "Let me, then,
have the pleasure." He held out his arm. Swithin stared in front of
him. In the very act of going she gave him a look that said as plain as
words: "Will you not?" But for answer he turned his eyes away, and when
he looked again she was gone. He paid the score and made his way into
the crowd. But as he went she danced by close to him, all flushed and
panting. She hung back as if to stop him, and he caught the glistening
of tears. Then he lost sight of her again. To be deserted the first
minute he was alone with her, and for that jackanapes with the small head
and the volcanic glances! It was too much! And suddenly it occurred to
him that she was alone with Kasteliz--alone at night, and far from home.
'Well,' he thought, 'what do I care?' and shouldered his way on through
the crowd. It served him right for mixing with such people here. He left
the fair, but the further he went, the more he nursed his rage, the more
heinous seemed her offence, the sharper grew his jealousy. "A beggarly
baron!" was his thought.
A figure came alongside--it was Boleskey. One look showed Swithin his
condition. Drunk again! This was the last straw!
Unfortunately Boleskey had recognised him. He seemed violently excited.
"Where--where are my daughters?" he began.
Swithin brushed past, but Boleskey caught his arm. "Listen--brother!"
he said; "news of my country! After to-morrow...."
"Keep it to yourself!" growled Swithin, wrenching his arm free. He went
straight to his lodgings, and, lying on the hard sofa of his unlighted
sitting-room, gave himself up to bitter thoughts. But in spite of all
his anger, Rozsi's supply-moving figure, with its pouting lips, and
roguish appealing eyes, still haunted him.
VIII
Next morning there was not a carriage to be had, and Swithin was
compelled to put off his departure till the morrow. The day was grey and
misty; he wandered about with the strained, inquiring look of a lost dog
in his eyes.
Late in the afternoon he went back to his lodgings. In a corner of the
sitting-room stood Rozsi. The thrill of triumph, the sense of
appeasement, the emotion, that seized on him, crept through to his lips
in a faint smile. Rozsi made no sound, her face was hidden by her hands.
And this silence of hers weighed on Swithin. She was forcing him to
break it. What was behind her hands? His own face was visible! Why
didn't she speak? Why was she here? Alone? That was not right surely.
Suddenly Rozsi dropped her hands; her flushed face was quivering--it
seemed as though a word, a sign, even, might bring a burst of tears.
He walked over to the window. 'I must give her time!' he thought; then
seized by unreasoning terror at this silence, spun round, and caught her
by the arms. Rozsi held back from him, swayed forward and buried her
face on his breast....
Half an hour later Swithin was pacing up and down his room. The scent of
rose leaves had not yet died away. A glove lay on the floor; he picked
it up, and for a long time stood weighing it in his hand. All sorts of
confused thoughts and feelings haunted him. It was the purest and least
selfish moment of his life, this moment after she had yielded. But that
pure gratitude at her fiery, simple abnegation did not last; it was
followed by a petty sense of triumph, and by uneasiness. He was still
weighing the little glove in his hand, when he had another visitor. It
was Kasteliz.
"What can I do for you?" Swithin asked ironically.
The Hungarian seemed suffering from excitement. Why had Swithin left his
charges the night before? What excuse had he to make? What sort of
conduct did he call this?
Swithin, very like a bull-dog at that moment, answered: What business was
it of his?
The business of a gentleman! What right had the Englishman to pursue a
young girl?
"Pursue?" said Swithin; "you've been spying, then?"
"Spying--I--Kasteliz--Maurus Johann--an insult!"
"Insult!" sneered Swithin; "d'you mean to tell me you weren't in the
street just now?"
Kasteliz answered with a hiss, "If you do not leave the city I will make
you, with my sword--do you understand?"
"And if you do not leave my room I will throw you out of the window!"
For some minutes Kasteliz spoke in pure Hungarian while Swithin waited,
with a forced smile and a fixed look in his eye. He did not understand
Hungarian.
"If you are still in the city to-morrow evening," said Kasteliz at last
in English, "I will spit you in the street."
Swithin turned to the window and watched his visitor's retiring back with
a queer mixture of amusement, stubbornness, and anxiety. 'Well,' he
thought, 'I suppose he'll run me through!' The thought was unpleasant;
and it kept recurring, but it only served to harden his determination.
His head was busy with plans for seeing Rozsi; his blood on fire with the
kisses she had given him.
IX
Swithin was long in deciding to go forth next day. He had made up his
mind not to go to Rozsi till five o'clock. 'Mustn't make myself too
cheap,' he thought. It was a little past that hour when he at last
sallied out, and with a beating heart walked towards Boleskey's. He
looked up at the window, more than half expecting to see Rozsi there; but
she was not, and he noticed with faint surprise that the window was not
open; the plants, too, outside, looked singularly arid. He knocked. No
one came. He beat a fierce tattoo. At last the door was opened by a man
with a reddish beard, and one of those sardonic faces only to be seen on
shoemakers of Teutonic origin.
"What do you want, making all this noise?" he asked in German.
Swithin pointed up the stairs. The man grinned, and shook his head.
"I want to go up," said Swithin.
The cobbler shrugged his shoulders, and Swithin rushed upstairs. The
rooms were empty. The furniture remained, but all signs of life were
gone. One of his own bouquets, faded, stood in a glass; the ashes of a
fire were barely cold; little scraps of paper strewed the hearth; already
the room smelt musty. He went into the bedrooms, and with a feeling of
stupefaction stood staring at the girls' beds, side by side against the
wall. A bit of ribbon caught his eye; he picked it up and put it in his
pocket--it was a piece of evidence that she had once existed. By the
mirror some pins were dropped about; a little powder had been spilled.
He looked at his own disquiet face and thought, 'I've been cheated!'
The shoemaker's voice aroused him. "Tausend Teufel! Eilen Sie, nur!
Zeit is Geld! Kann nich' Langer warten!" Slowly he descended.
"Where have they gone?" asked Swithin painfully. "A pound for every
English word you speak. A pound!" and he made an O with his fingers.
The corners of the shoemaker's lips curled. "Geld! Mf! Eilen Sie,
nur!"
But in Swithin a sullen anger had begun to burn. "If you don't tell me,"
he said, "it'll be the worse for you."
"Sind ein komischer Kerl!" remarked the shoemaker. "Hier ist meine
Frau!"
A battered-looking woman came hurrying down the passage, calling out in
German, "Don't let him go!"
With a snarling sound the shoemaker turned his back, and shambled off.
The woman furtively thrust a letter into Swithin's hand, and furtively
waited.
The letter was from Rozsi.
"Forgive me"--it ran--"that I leave you and do not say goodbye. To-day
our father had the call from our dear Father-town so long awaited. In two
hours we are ready. I pray to the Virgin to keep you ever safe, and that
you do not quite forget me.--Your unforgetting good friend, ROZSI"
When Swithin read it his first sensation was that of a man sinking in a
bog; then his obstinacy stiffened. 'I won't be done,' he thought. Taking
out a sovereign he tried to make the woman comprehend that she could earn
it, by telling him where they had gone. He got her finally to write the
words out in his pocket-book, gave her the sovereign, and hurried to the
Goldene Alp, where there was a waiter who spoke English. The translation
given him was this:
"At three o'clock they start in a carriage on the road to Linz--they have
bad horses--the Herr also rides a white horse."
Swithin at once hailed a carriage and started at full gallop on the road
to Linz. Outside the Mirabell Garden he caught sight of Kasteliz and
grinned at him. 'I've sold him anyway,' he thought; 'for all their talk,
they're no good, these foreigners!'
His spirits rose, but soon fell again. What chance had he of catching
them? They had three hours' start! Still, the roads were heavy from the
rain of the last two nights--they had luggage and bad horses; his own
were good, his driver bribed--he might overtake them by ten o'clock! But
did he want to? What a fool he had been not to bring his luggage; he
would then have had a respectable position. What a brute he would look
without a change of shirt, or anything to shave with! He saw himself
with horror, all bristly, and in soiled linen. People would think him
mad. 'I've given myself away,' flashed across him, 'what the devil can I
say to them?' and he stared sullenly at the driver's back. He read
Rozsi's letter again; it had a scent of her. And in the growing
darkness, jolted by the swinging of the carriage, he suffered tortures
from his prudence, tortures from his passion.
It grew colder and dark. He turned the collar of his coat up to his
ears. He had visions of Piccadilly. This wild-goose chase appeared
suddenly a dangerous, unfathomable business. Lights, fellowship,
security! 'Never again!' he brooded; 'why won't they let me alone?' But
it was not clear whether by 'they' he meant the conventions, the
Boleskeys, his passions, or those haunting memories of Rozsi. If he had
only had a bag with him! What was he going to say? What was he going to
get by this? He received no answer to these questions. The darkness
itself was less obscure than his sensations. From time to time he took
out his watch. At each village the driver made inquiries. It was past
ten when he stopped the carriage with a jerk. The stars were bright as
steel, and by the side of the road a reedy lake showed in the moonlight.
Swithin shivered. A man on a horse had halted in the centre of the road.
"Drive on!" called Swithin, with a stolid face. It turned out to be
Boleskey, who, on a gaunt white horse, looked like some winged creature.
He stood where he could bar the progress of the carriage, holding out a
pistol.
'Theatrical beggar!' thought Swithin, with a nervous smile. He made no
sign of recognition. Slowly Boleskey brought his lean horse up to the
carriage. When he saw who was within he showed astonishment and joy.
"You?" he cried, slapping his hand on his attenuated thigh, and leaning
over till his beard touched Swithin. "You have come? You followed us?"
"It seems so," Swithin grunted out.
"You throw in your lot with us. Is it possible? You--you are a
knight-errant then!"
"Good God!" said Swithin. Boleskey, flogging his dejected steed,
cantered forward in the moonlight. He came back, bringing an old cloak,
which he insisted on wrapping round Swithin's shoulders. He handed him,
too, a capacious flask.
"How cold you look!" he said. "Wonderful! Wonderful! you English!" His
grateful eyes never left Swithin for a moment. They had come up to the
heels of the other carriage now, but Swithin, hunched in the cloak, did
not try to see what was in front of him. To the bottom of his soul he
resented the Hungarian's gratitude. He remarked at last, with wasted
irony:
"You're in a hurry, it seems!"
"If we had wings," Boleskey answered, "we would use them."
"Wings!" muttered Swithin thickly; "legs are good enough for me."
X
Arrived at the inn where they were to pass the night, Swithin waited,
hoping to get into the house without a "scene," but when at last he
alighted the girls were in the doorway, and Margit greeted him with an
admiring murmur, in which, however, he seemed to detect irony. Rozsi,
pale and tremulous, with a half-scared look, gave him her hand, and,
quickly withdrawing it, shrank behind her sister. When they had gone up
to their room Swithin sought Boleskey. His spirits had risen remarkably.
"Tell the landlord to get us supper," he said; "we'll crack a bottle to
our luck." He hurried on the landlord's preparations. The window of
the, room faced a wood, so near that he could almost touch the trees. The
scent from the pines blew in on him. He turned away from that scented
darkness, and began to draw the corks of winebottles. The sound seemed
to conjure up Boleskey. He came in, splashed all over, smelling slightly
of stables; soon after, Margit appeared, fresh and serene, but Rozsi did
not come.
"Where is your sister?" Swithin said. Rozsi, it seemed, was tired. "It
will do her good to eat," said Swithin. And Boleskey, murmuring, "She
must drink to our country," went out to summon her, Margit followed him,
while Swithin cut up a chicken. They came back without her. She had "a
megrim of the spirit."
Swithin's face fell. "Look here!" he said, "I'll go and try. Don't wait
for me."
"Yes," answered Boleskey, sinking mournfully into a chair; "try, brother,
try-by all means, try."
Swithin walked down the corridor with an odd, sweet, sinking sensation in
his chest; and tapped on Rozsi's door. In a minute, she peeped forth,
with her hair loose, and wondering eyes.
"Rozsi," he stammered, "what makes you afraid of me, now?"
She stared at him, but did not answer.
"Why won't you come?"
Still she did not speak, but suddenly stretched out to him her bare arm.
Swithin pressed his face to it. With a shiver, she whispered above him,
"I will come," and gently shut the door.
Swithin stealthily retraced his steps, and paused a minute outside the
sitting-room to regain his self-control.
The sight of Boleskey with a bottle in his hand steadied him.
"She is coming," he said. And very soon she did come, her thick hair
roughly twisted in a plait.
Swithin sat between the girls; but did not talk, for he was really
hungry. Boleskey too was silent, plunged in gloom; Rozsi was dumb;
Margit alone chattered.
"You will come to our Father-town? We shall have things to show you.
Rozsi, what things we will show him!" Rozsi, with a little appealing
movement of her hands, repeated, "What things we will show you!" She
seemed suddenly to find her voice, and with glowing cheeks, mouths full,
and eyes bright as squirrels', they chattered reminiscences of the "dear
Father-town," of "dear friends," of the "dear home."
'A poor place!' Swithin could not help thinking. This enthusiasm seemed
to him common; but he was careful to assume a look of interest, feeding
on the glances flashed at him from Rozsi's restless eyes.
As the wine waned Boleskey grew more and more gloomy, but now and then a
sort of gleaming flicker passed over his face. He rose to his feet at
last.
"Let us not forget," he said, "that we go perhaps to ruin, to death; in
the face of all this we go, because our country needs--in this there is
no credit, neither to me nor to you, my daughters; but for this noble
Englishman, what shall we say? Give thanks to God for a great heart. He
comes--not for country, not for fame, not for money, but to help the weak
and the oppressed. Let us drink, then, to him; let us drink again and
again to heroic Forsyte!" In the midst of the dead silence, Swithin
caught the look of suppliant mockery in Rozsi's eyes. He glanced at the
Hungarian. Was he laughing at him? But Boleskey, after drinking up his
wine, had sunk again into his seat; and there suddenly, to the surprise
of all, he began to snore. Margit rose and, bending over him like a
mother, murmured: "He is tired--it is the ride!" She raised him in her
strong arms, and leaning on her shoulder Boleskey staggered from the
room. Swithin and Rozsi were left alone. He slid his hand towards her
hand that lay so close, on the rough table-cloth. It seemed to await his
touch. Something gave way in him, and words came welling up; for the
moment he forgot himself, forgot everything but that he was near her. Her
head dropped on his shoulder, he breathed the perfume of her hair.
"Good-night!" she whispered, and the whisper was like a kiss; yet before
he could stop her she was gone. Her footsteps died away in the passage,
but Swithin sat gazing intently at a single bright drop of spilt wine
quivering on the table's edge. In that moment she, in her helplessness
and emotion, was all in all to him--his life nothing; all the real
things--his conventions, convictions, training, and himself--all seemed
remote, behind a mist of passion and strange chivalry. Carefully with a
bit of bread he soaked up the bright drop; and suddenly he thought: 'This
is tremendous!' For a long time he stood there in the window, close to
the dark pine-trees.
XI
In the early morning he awoke, full of the discomfort of this strange
place and the medley of his dreams. Lying, with his nose peeping over
the quilt, he was visited by a horrible suspicion. When he could bear it
no longer, he started up in bed. What if it were all a plot to get him
to marry her? The thought was treacherous, and inspired in him a faint
disgust. Still, she might be ignorant of it! But was she so innocent?
What innocent girl would have come to his room like that? What innocent
girl? Her father, who pretended to be caring only for his country? It
was not probable that any man was such a fool; it was all part of the
game-a scheming rascal! Kasteliz, too--his threats! They intended him
to marry her! And the horrid idea was strengthened by his reverence for
marriage. It was the proper, the respectable condition; he was genuinely
afraid of this other sort of liaison--it was somehow too primitive! And
yet the thought of that marriage made his blood run cold. Considering
that she had already yielded, it would be all the more monstrous! With
the cold, fatal clearness of the morning light he now for the first time
saw his position in its full bearings. And, like a fish pulled out of
water, he gasped at what was disclosed. Sullen resentment against this
attempt to force him settled deep into his soul.
He seated himself on the bed, holding his head in his hands, solemnly
thinking out what such marriage meant. In the first place it meant
ridicule, in the next place ridicule, in the last place ridicule. She
would eat chicken bones with her fingers--those fingers his lips still
burned to kiss. She would dance wildly with other men. She would talk
of her "dear Father-town," and all the time her eyes would look beyond
him, some where or other into some d--d place he knew nothing of. He
sprang up and paced the room, and for a moment thought he would go mad.
They meant him to marry her! Even she--she meant him to marry her! Her
tantalising inscrutability; her sudden little tendernesses; her quick
laughter; her swift, burning kisses; even the movements of her hands; her
tears--all were evidence against her. Not one of these things that
Nature made her do counted on her side, but how they fanned his longing,
his desire, and distress! He went to the glass and tried to part his
hair with his fingers, but being rather fine, it fell into lank streaks.
There was no comfort to be got from it. He drew his muddy boots on.
Suddenly he thought: 'If I could see her alone, I could arrive at some
arrangement!' Then, with a sense of stupefaction, he made the discovery
that no arrangement could possibly be made that would not be dangerous,
even desperate. He seized his hat, and, like a rabbit that has been
fired at, bolted from the room. He plodded along amongst the damp woods
with his head down, and resentment and dismay in his heart. But, as the
sun rose, and the air grew sweet with pine scent, he slowly regained a
sort of equability. After all, she had already yielded; it was not as
if...! And the tramp of his own footsteps lulled him into feeling that
it would all come right.
'Look at the thing practically,' he thought. The faster he walked the
firmer became his conviction that he could still see it through. He took
out his watch--it was past seven--he began to hasten back. In the yard of
the inn his driver was harnessing the horses; Swithin went up to him.
"Who told you to put them in?" he asked.
The driver answered, "Der Herr."
Swithin turned away. 'In ten minutes,' he thought, 'I shall be in that
carriage again, with this going on in my head! Driving away from
England, from all I'm used to-driving to-what?' Could he face it? Could
he face all that he had been through that morning; face it day after day,
night after night? Looking up, he saw Rozsi at her open window gazing
down at him; never had she looked sweeter, more roguish. An inexplicable
terror seized on him; he ran across the yard and jumped into his
carriage. "To Salzburg!" he cried; "drive on!" And rattling out of the
yard without a look behind, he flung a sovereign at the hostler. Flying
back along the road faster even than he had come, with pale face, and
eyes blank and staring like a pug-dog's, Swithin spoke no single word;
nor, till he had reached the door of his lodgings, did he suffer the
driver to draw rein.
XII
Towards evening, five days later, Swithin, yellow and travel-worn, was
ferried in a gondola to Danielli's Hotel. His brother, who was on the
steps, looked at him with an apprehensive curiosity.
"Why, it's you!" he mumbled. "So you've got here safe?"
"Safe?" growled Swithin.
James replied, "I thought you wouldn't leave your friends!" Then, with a
jerk of suspicion, "You haven't brought your friends?"
"What friends?" growled Swithin.
James changed the subject. "You don't look the thing," he said.
"Really!" muttered Swithin; "what's that to you?"
He appeared at dinner that night, but fell asleep over his coffee.
Neither Traquair nor James asked him any further question, nor did they
allude to Salzburg; and during the four days which concluded the stay in
Venice Swithin went about with his head up, but his eyes half-closed like
a dazed man. Only after they had taken ship at Genoa did he show signs
of any healthy interest in life, when, finding that a man on board was
perpetually strumming, he locked the piano up and pitched the key into
the sea.
That winter in London he behaved much as usual, but fits of moroseness
would seize on him, during which he was not pleasant to approach.
One evening when he was walking with a friend in Piccadilly, a girl
coming from a side-street accosted him in German. Swithin, after staring
at her in silence for some seconds, handed her a five-pound note, to the
great amazement of his friend; nor could he himself have explained the
meaning of this freak of generosity.
Of Rozsi he never heard again....
This, then, was the substance of what he remembered as he lay ill in bed.
Stretching out his hand he pressed the bell. His valet appeared,
crossing the room like a cat; a Swede, who had been with Swithin many
years; a little man with a dried face and fierce moustache, morbidly
sharp nerves, and a queer devotion to his master.
Swithin made a feeble gesture. "Adolf," he said, "I'm very bad."
"Yes, sir!"
"Why do you stand there like a cow?" asked Swithin; "can't you see I'm
very bad?"
"Yes, sir!" The valet's face twitched as though it masked the dance of
obscure emotions.
"I shall feel better after dinner. What time is it?"
"Five o'clock."
"I thought it was more. The afternoons are very long."
"Yes, sir!" Swithin sighed, as though he had expected the consolation of
denial.
"Very likely I shall have a nap. Bring up hot water at half-past six and
shave me before dinner."
The valet moved towards the door. Swithin raised himself.
"What did Mr. James say to you?"
"He said you ought to have another doctor; two doctors, he said, better
than one. He said, also, he would look in again on his way 'home.'"
Swithin grunted, "Umph! What else did he say?"
"He said you didn't take care of yourself."
Swithin glared.
"Has anybody else been to see me?"
The valet turned away his eyes. "Mrs. Thomas Forsyte came last Monday
fortnight."
"How long have I been ill?"
"Five weeks on Saturday."
"Do you think I'm very bad?"
Adolf's face was covered suddenly with crow's-feet. "You have no
business to ask me question like that! I am not paid, sir, to answer
question like that."
Swithin said faintly: "You're a peppery fool! Open a bottle of
champagne!"
Adolf took a bottle of champagne--from a cupboard and held nippers to it.
He fixed his eyes on Swithin. "The doctor said--"
"Open the bottle!"
"It is not--"
"Open the bottle--or I give you warning."
Adolf removed the cork. He wiped a glass elaborately, filled it, and
bore it scrupulously to the bedside. Suddenly twirling his moustaches,
he wrung his hands, and burst out: "It is poison."
Swithin grinned faintly. "You foreign fool!" he said. "Get out!"
The valet vanished.
'He forgot himself!' thought Swithin. Slowly he raised the glass, slowly
put it back, and sank gasping on his pillows. Almost at once he fell
asleep.
He dreamed that he was at his club, sitting after dinner in the crowded
smoking-room, with its bright walls and trefoils of light. It was there
that he sat every evening, patient, solemn, lonely, and sometimes fell
asleep, his square, pale old face nodding to one side. He dreamed that he
was gazing at the picture over the fireplace, of an old statesman with a
high collar, supremely finished face, and sceptical eyebrows--the
picture, smooth, and reticent as sealing-wax, of one who seemed for ever
exhaling the narrow wisdom of final judgments. All round him, his fellow
members were chattering. Only he himself, the old sick member, was
silent. If fellows only knew what it was like to sit by yourself and
feel ill all the time! What they were saying he had heard a hundred
times. They were talking of investments, of cigars, horses, actresses,
machinery. What was that? A foreign patent for cleaning boilers? There
was no such thing; boilers couldn't be cleaned, any fool knew that! If
an Englishman couldn't clean a boiler, no foreigner could clean one. He
appealed to the old statesman's eyes. But for once those eyes seemed
hesitating, blurred, wanting in finality. They vanished. In their place
were Rozsi's little deep-set eyes, with their wide and far-off look; and
as he gazed they seemed to grow bright as steel, and to speak to him.
Slowly the whole face grew to be there, floating on the dark background
of the picture; it was pink, aloof, unfathomable, enticing, with its
fluffy hair and quick lips, just as he had last seen it. "Are you
looking for something?" she seemed to say: "I could show you."
"I have everything safe enough," answered Swithin, and in his sleep he
groaned.
He felt the touch of fingers on his forehead. 'I'm dreaming,' he thought
in his dream.
She had vanished; and far away, from behind the picture, came a sound of
footsteps.
Aloud, in his sleep, Swithin muttered: "I've missed it."
Again he heard the rustling of those light footsteps, and close in his
ear a sound, like a sob. He awoke; the sob was his own. Great drops of
perspiration stood on his forehead. 'What is it?' he thought; 'what have
I lost?' Slowly his mind travelled over his investments; he could not
think of any single one that was unsafe. What was it, then, that he had
lost? Struggling on his pillows, he clutched the wine-glass. His lips
touched the wine. 'This isn't the "Heidseck"!' he thought angrily, and
before the reality of that displeasure all the dim vision passed away.
But as he bent to drink, something snapped, and, with a sigh, Swithin
Forsyte died above the bubbles....
When James Forsyte came in again on his way home, the valet, trembling
took his hat and stick.
"How's your master?"
"My master is dead, sir!"
"Dead! He can't be! I left him safe an hour ago."
On the bed Swithin's body was doubled like a sack; his hand still grasped
the glass.
James Forsyte paused. "Swithin!" he said, and with his hand to his ear
he waited for an answer; but none came, and slowly in the glass a last
bubble rose and burst.
December 1900.
To
MY SISTER MABEL EDITH REYNOLDS
THE SILENCE
I
In a car of the Naples express a mining expert was diving into a bag for
papers. The strong sunlight showed the fine wrinkles on his brown face
and the shabbiness of his short, rough beard. A newspaper cutting
slipped from his fingers; he picked it up, thinking: 'How the dickens did
that get in here?' It was from a colonial print of three years back; and
he sat staring, as if in that forlorn slip of yellow paper he had
encountered some ghost from his past.
These were the words he read: "We hope that the setback to civilisation,
the check to commerce and development, in this promising centre of our
colony may be but temporary; and that capital may again come to the
rescue. Where one man was successful, others should surely not fail? We
are convinced that it only needs...." And the last words: "For what can
be sadder than to see the forest spreading its lengthening shadows, like
symbols of defeat, over the untenanted dwellings of men; and where was
once the merry chatter of human voices, to pass by in the silence...."
On an afternoon, thirteen years before, he had been in the city of
London, at one of those emporiums where mining experts perch, before
fresh flights, like sea-gulls on some favourite rock. A clerk said to
him: "Mr. Scorrier, they are asking for you downstairs--Mr. Hemmings of
the New Colliery Company."
Scorrier took up the speaking tube. "Is that you, Mr. Scorrier? I hope
you are very well, sir, I am--Hemmings--I am--coming up."
In two minutes he appeared, Christopher Hemmings, secretary of the New
Colliery Company, known in the City-behind his back--as
"Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings. He grasped Scorrier's hand--the gesture
was deferential, yet distinguished. Too handsome, too capable, too
important, his figure, the cut of his iron-grey beard, and his
intrusively fine eyes, conveyed a continual courteous invitation to
inspect their infallibilities. He stood, like a City "Atlas," with his
legs apart, his coat-tails gathered in his hands, a whole globe of
financial matters deftly balanced on his nose. "Look at me!" he seemed
to say. "It's heavy, but how easily I carry it. Not the man to let it
down, Sir!"
"I hope I see you well, Mr. Scorrier," he began. "I have come round
about our mine. There is a question of a fresh field being opened
up--between ourselves, not before it's wanted. I find it difficult to
get my Board to take a comprehensive view. In short, the question is:
Are you prepared to go out for us, and report on it? The fees will be
all right." His left eye closed. "Things have been very--er--dicky; we
are going to change our superintendent. I have got little Pippin--you
know little Pippin?"
Scorrier murmured, with a feeling of vague resentment: "Oh yes. He's not
a mining man!"
Hemmings replied: "We think that he will do." 'Do you?' thought
Scorrier; 'that's good of you!'
He had not altogether shaken off a worship he had felt for Pippin
--"King" Pippin he was always called, when they had been boys at the
Camborne Grammar-school. "King" Pippin! the boy with the bright colour,
very bright hair, bright, subtle, elusive eyes, broad shoulders, little
stoop in the neck, and a way of moving it quickly like a bird; the boy
who was always at the top of everything, and held his head as if looking
for something further to be the top of. He remembered how one day "King"
Pippin had said to him in his soft way, "Young Scorrie, I'll do your sums
for you"; and in answer to his dubious, "Is that all right?" had replied,
"Of course--I don't want you to get behind that beast Blake, he's not a
Cornishman" (the beast Blake was an Irishman not yet twelve). He
remembered, too, an occasion when "King" Pippin with two other boys
fought six louts and got a licking, and how Pippin sat for half an hour
afterwards, all bloody, his head in his hands, rocking to and fro, and
weeping tears of mortification; and how the next day he had sneaked off
by himself, and, attacking the same gang, got frightfully mauled a second
time.
Thinking of these things he answered curtly: "When shall I start?"
"Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings replied with a sort of fearful
sprightliness: "There's a good fellow! I will send instructions; so glad
to see you well." Conferring on Scorrier a look--fine to the verge of
vulgarity--he withdrew. Scorrier remained, seated; heavy with
insignificance and vague oppression, as if he had drunk a tumbler of
sweet port.
A week later, in company with Pippin, he was on board a liner.
The "King" Pippin of his school-days was now a man of forty-four. He
awakened in Scorrier the uncertain wonder with which men look backward at
their uncomplicated teens; and staggering up and down the decks in the
long Atlantic roll, he would steal glances at his companion, as if he
expected to find out from them something about himself. Pippin had still
"King" Pippin's bright, fine hair, and dazzling streaks in his short
beard; he had still a bright colour and suave voice, and what there were
of wrinkles suggested only subtleties of humour and ironic sympathy. From
the first, and apparently without negotiation, he had his seat at the
captain's table, to which on the second day Scorrier too found himself
translated, and had to sit, as he expressed it ruefully, "among the
big-wigs."
During the voyage only one incident impressed itself on Scorrier's
memory, and that for a disconcerting reason. In the forecastle were the
usual complement of emigrants. One evening, leaning across the rail to
watch them, he felt a touch on his arm; and, looking round, saw Pippin's
face and beard quivering in the lamplight. "Poor people!" he said. The
idea flashed on Scorrier that he was like some fine wire sound-recording
instrument.
'Suppose he were to snap!' he thought. Impelled to justify this fancy,
he blurted out: "You're a nervous chap. The way you look at those poor
devils!"
Pippin hustled him along the deck. "Come, come, you took me off my
guard," he murmured, with a sly, gentle smile, "that's not fair."
He found it a continual source of wonder that Pippin, at his age, should
cut himself adrift from the associations and security of London life to
begin a new career in a new country with dubious prospect of success. 'I
always heard he was doing well all round,' he thought; 'thinks he'll
better himself, perhaps. He's a true Cornishman.'
The morning of arrival at the mines was grey and cheerless; a cloud of
smoke, beaten down by drizzle, clung above the forest; the wooden houses
straggled dismally in the unkempt semblance of a street, against a
background of endless, silent woods. An air of blank discouragement
brooded over everything; cranes jutted idly over empty trucks; the long
jetty oozed black slime; miners with listless faces stood in the rain;
dogs fought under their very legs. On the way to the hotel they met no
one busy or serene except a Chinee who was polishing a dish-cover.
The late superintendent, a cowed man, regaled them at lunch with his
forebodings; his attitude toward the situation was like the food, which
was greasy and uninspiring. Alone together once more, the two newcomers
eyed each other sadly.
"Oh dear!" sighed Pippin. "We must change all this, Scorrier; it will
never do to go back beaten. I shall not go back beaten; you will have to
carry me on my shield;" and slyly: "Too heavy, eh? Poor fellow!" Then
for a long time he was silent, moving his lips as if adding up the cost.
Suddenly he sighed, and grasping Scorrier's arm, said: "Dull, aren't I?
What will you do? Put me in your report, 'New Superintendent--sad, dull
dog--not a word to throw at a cat!'" And as if the new task were too much
for him, he sank back in thought. The last words he said to Scorrier
that night were: "Very silent here. It's hard to believe one's here for
life. But I feel I am. Mustn't be a coward, though!" and brushing his
forehead, as though to clear from it a cobweb of faint thoughts, he
hurried off.
Scorrier stayed on the veranda smoking. The rain had ceased, a few stars
were burning dimly; even above the squalor of the township the scent of
the forests, the interminable forests, brooded. There sprang into his
mind the memory of a picture from one of his children's fairy books--the
picture of a little bearded man on tiptoe, with poised head and a great
sword, slashing at the castle of a giant. It reminded him of Pippin.
And suddenly, even to Scorrier--whose existence was one long encounter
with strange places--the unseen presence of those woods, their heavy,
healthy scent, the little sounds, like squeaks from tiny toys, issuing
out of the gloomy silence, seemed intolerable, to be shunned, from the
mere instinct of self-preservation. He thought of the evening he had
spent in the bosom of "Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings' family, receiving his
last instructions--the security of that suburban villa, its discouraging
gentility; the superior acidity of the Miss Hemmings; the noble names of
large contractors, of company promoters, of a peer, dragged with the
lightness of gun-carriages across the conversation; the autocracy of
Hemmings, rasped up here and there, by some domestic contradiction. It
was all so nice and safe--as if the whole thing had been fastened to an
anchor sunk beneath the pink cabbages of the drawing-room carpet!
Hemmings, seeing him off the premises, had said with secrecy: "Little
Pippin will have a good thing. We shall make his salary L----. He'll be
a great man-quite a king. Ha-ha!"
Scorrier shook the ashes from his pipe. 'Salary!' he thought, straining
his ears; 'I wouldn't take the place for five thousand pounds a year. And
yet it's a fine country,' and with ironic violence he repeated, 'a dashed
fine country!'
Ten days later, having finished his report on the new mine, he stood on
the jetty waiting to go abroad the steamer for home.
"God bless you!" said Pippin. "Tell them they needn't be afraid; and
sometimes when you're at home think of me, eh?"
Scorrier, scrambling on board, had a confused memory of tears in his
eyes, and a convulsive handshake.
II
It was eight years before the wheels of life carried Scorrier back to
that disenchanted spot, and this time not on the business of the New
Colliery Company. He went for another company with a mine some thirty
miles away. Before starting, however, he visited Hemmings. The secretary
was surrounded by pigeon-holes and finer than ever; Scorrier blinked in
the full radiance of his courtesy. A little man with eyebrows full of
questions, and a grizzled beard, was seated in an arm-chair by the fire.
"You know Mr. Booker," said Hemmings--"one of my directors. This is Mr.
Scorrier, sir--who went out for us."
These sentences were murmured in a way suggestive of their uncommon
value. The director uncrossed his legs, and bowed. Scorrier also bowed,
and Hemmings, leaning back, slowly developed the full resources of his
waistcoat.
"So you are going out again, Scorrier, for the other side? I tell Mr.
Scorrier, sir, that he is going out for the enemy. Don't find them a
mine as good as you found us, there's a good man."
The little director asked explosively: "See our last dividend? Twenty
per cent; eh, what?"
Hemmings moved a finger, as if reproving his director. "I will not
disguise from you," he murmured, "that there is friction between us
and--the enemy; you know our position too well--just a little too well,
eh? 'A nod's as good as a wink.'"
His diplomatic eyes flattered Scorrier, who passed a hand over his
brow--and said: "Of course."
"Pippin doesn't hit it off with them. Between ourselves, he's a leetle
too big for his boots. You know what it is when a man in his position
gets a sudden rise!"
Scorrier caught himself searching on the floor for a sight of Hemmings'
boots; he raised his eyes guiltily. The secretary continued: "We don't
hear from him quite as often as we should like, in fact."
To his own surprise Scorrier murmured: "It's a silent place!"
The secretary smiled. "Very good! Mr. Scorrier says, sir, it's a silent
place; ha-ha! I call that very good!" But suddenly a secret irritation
seemed to bubble in him; he burst forth almost violently: "He's no
business to let it affect him; now, has he? I put it to you, Mr.
Scorrier, I put it to you, sir!"
But Scorrier made no reply, and soon after took his leave: he had been
asked to convey a friendly hint to Pippin that more frequent letters
would be welcomed. Standing in the shadow of the Royal Exchange, waiting
to thread his way across, he thought: 'So you must have noise, must
you--you've got some here, and to spare....'
On his arrival in the new world he wired to Pippin asking if he might
stay with him on the way up country, and received the answer: "Be sure
and come."
A week later he arrived (there was now a railway) and found Pippin
waiting for him in a phaeton. Scorrier would not have known the place
again; there was a glitter over everything, as if some one had touched it
with a wand. The tracks had given place to roads, running firm,
straight, and black between the trees under brilliant sunshine; the
wooden houses were all painted; out in the gleaming harbour amongst the
green of islands lay three steamers, each with a fleet of busy boats; and
here and there a tiny yacht floated, like a sea-bird on the water. Pippin
drove his long-tailed horses furiously; his eyes brimmed with subtle
kindness, as if according Scorrier a continual welcome. During the two
days of his stay Scorrier never lost that sense of glamour. He had every
opportunity for observing the grip Pippin had over everything. The wooden
doors and walls of his bungalow kept out no sounds. He listened to
interviews between his host and all kinds and conditions of men. The
voices of the visitors would rise at first--angry, discontented,
matter-of-fact, with nasal twang, or guttural drawl; then would come the
soft patter of the superintendent's feet crossing and recrossing the
room. Then a pause, the sound of hard breathing, and quick
questions--the visitor's voice again, again the patter, and Pippin's
ingratiating but decisive murmurs. Presently out would come the visitor
with an expression on his face which Scorrier soon began to know by
heart, a kind of pleased, puzzled, helpless look, which seemed to say,
"I've been done, I know--I'll give it to myself when I'm round the
corner."
Pippin was full of wistful questions about "home." He wanted to talk of
music, pictures, plays, of how London looked, what new streets there
were, and, above all, whether Scorrier had been lately in the West
Country. He talked of getting leave next winter, asked whether Scorrier
thought they would "put up with him at home"; then, with the agitation
which had alarmed Scorrier before, he added: "Ah! but I'm not fit for
home now. One gets spoiled; it's big and silent here. What should I go
back to? I don't seem to realise."
Scorrier thought of Hemmings. "'Tis a bit cramped there, certainly," he
muttered.
Pippin went on as if divining his thoughts. "I suppose our friend
Hemmings would call me foolish; he's above the little weaknesses of
imagination, eh? Yes; it's silent here. Sometimes in the evening I
would give my head for somebody to talk to--Hemmings would never give his
head for anything, I think. But all the same, I couldn't face them at
home. Spoiled!" And slyly he murmured: "What would the Board say if
they could hear that?"
Scorrier blurted out: "To tell you the truth, they complain a little of
not hearing from you."
Pippin put out a hand, as if to push something away. "Let them try the
life here!" he broke out; "it's like sitting on a live volcano--what
with our friends, 'the enemy,' over there; the men; the American
competition. I keep it going, Scorrier, but at what a cost--at what a
cost!"
"But surely--letters?"
Pippin only answered: "I try--I try!"
Scorrier felt with remorse and wonder that he had spoken the truth. The
following day he left for his inspection, and while in the camp of "the
enemy" much was the talk he heard of Pippin.
"Why!" said his host, the superintendent, a little man with a face
somewhat like an owl's, "d'you know the name they've given him down in
the capital--'the King'--good, eh? He's made them 'sit up' all along
this coast. I like him well enough--good--hearted man, shocking nervous;
but my people down there can't stand him at any price. Sir, he runs this
colony. You'd think butter wouldn't melt in that mouth of his; but he
always gets his way; that's what riles 'em so; that and the success he's
making of his mine. It puzzles me; you'd think he'd only be too glad of
a quiet life, a man with his nerves. But no, he's never happy unless
he's fighting, something where he's got a chance to score a victory. I
won't say he likes it, but, by Jove, it seems he's got to do it. Now
that's funny! I'll tell you one thing, though shouldn't be a bit
surprised if he broke down some day; and I'll tell you another," he added
darkly, "he's sailing very near the wind, with those large contracts that
he makes. I wouldn't care to take his risks. Just let them have a
strike, or something that shuts them down for a spell--and mark my words,
sir--it'll be all up with them. But," he concluded confidentially, "I
wish I had his hold on the men; it's a great thing in this country. Not
like home, where you can go round a corner and get another gang. You have
to make the best you can out of the lot you have; you won't, get another
man for love or money without you ship him a few hundred miles." And
with a frown he waved his arm over the forests to indicate the barrenness
of the land.
Scorrier finished his inspection and went on a shooting trip into the
forest. His host met him on his return. "Just look at this!" he said,
holding out a telegram. "Awful, isn't it?" His face expressed a profound
commiseration, almost ludicrously mixed with the ashamed contentment that
men experience at the misfortunes of an enemy.
The telegram, dated the day before, ran thus "Frightful explosion New
Colliery this morning, great loss of life feared."
Scorrier had the bewildered thought: 'Pippin will want me now.'
He took leave of his host, who called after him: "You'd better wait for a
steamer! It's a beastly drive!"
Scorrier shook his head. All night, jolting along a rough track cut
through the forest, he thought of Pippin. The other miseries of this
calamity at present left him cold; he barely thought of the smothered
men; but Pippin's struggle, his lonely struggle with this hydra-headed
monster, touched him very nearly. He fell asleep and dreamed of watching
Pippin slowly strangled by a snake; the agonised, kindly, ironic face
peeping out between two gleaming coils was so horribly real, that he
awoke. It was the moment before dawn: pitch-black branches barred the
sky; with every jolt of the wheels the gleams from the lamps danced,
fantastic and intrusive, round ferns and tree-stems, into the cold heart
of the forest. For an hour or more Scorrier tried to feign sleep, and
hide from the stillness, and overmastering gloom of these great woods.
Then softly a whisper of noises stole forth, a stir of light, and the
whole slow radiance of the morning glory. But it brought no warmth; and
Scorrier wrapped himself closer in his cloak, feeling as though old age
had touched him.
Close on noon he reached the township. Glamour seemed still to hover
over it. He drove on to the mine. The winding-engine was turning, the
pulley at the top of the head-gear whizzing round; nothing looked
unusual. 'Some mistake!' he thought. He drove to the mine buildings,
alighted, and climbed to the shaft head. Instead of the usual rumbling
of the trolleys, the rattle of coal discharged over the screens, there
was silence. Close by, Pippin himself was standing, smirched with dirt.
The cage, coming swift and silent from below, shot open its doors with a
sharp rattle. Scorrier bent forward to look. There lay a dead man, with
a smile on his face.
"How many?" he whispered.
Pippin answered: "Eighty-four brought up--forty-seven still below," and
entered the man's name in a pocket-book.
An older man was taken out next; he too was smiling--there had been
vouchsafed to him, it seemed, a taste of more than earthly joy. The
sight of those strange smiles affected Scorrier more than all the anguish
or despair he had seen scored on the faces of other dead men. He asked an
old miner how long Pippin had been at work.
"Thirty hours. Yesterday he wer' below; we had to nigh carry mun up at
last. He's for goin' down again, but the chaps won't lower mun;" the old
man gave a sigh. "I'm waiting for my boy to come up, I am."
Scorrier waited too--there was fascination about those dead, smiling
faces. The rescuing of these men who would never again breathe went on
and on. Scorrier grew sleepy in the sun. The old miner woke him,
saying: "Rummy stuff this here chokedamp; see, they all dies drunk!" The
very next to be brought up was the chief engineer. Scorrier had known
him quite well, one of those Scotsmen who are born at the age of forty
and remain so all their lives. His face--the only one that wore no
smile--seemed grieving that duty had deprived it of that last luxury.
With wide eyes and drawn lips he had died protesting.
Late in the afternoon the old miner touched Scorrier's arm, and said:
"There he is--there's my boy!" And he departed slowly, wheeling the body
on a trolley.
As the sun set, the gang below came up. No further search was possible
till the fumes had cleared. Scorrier heard one man say: "There's some
we'll never get; they've had sure burial"
Another answered him: "'Tis a gude enough bag for me!" They passed him,
the whites of their eyes gleaming out of faces black as ink.
Pippin drove him home at a furious pace, not uttering a single word. As
they turned into the main street, a young woman starting out before the
horses obliged Pippin to pull up. The glance he bent on Scorrier was
ludicrously prescient of suffering. The woman asked for her husband.
Several times they were stopped thus by women asking for their husbands
or sons. "This is what I have to go through," Pippin whispered.
When they had eaten, he said to Scorrier: "It was kind of you to come and
stand by me! They take me for a god, poor creature that I am. But shall
I ever get the men down again? Their nerve's shaken. I wish I were one
of those poor lads, to die with a smile like that!"
Scorrier felt the futility of his presence. On Pippin alone must be the
heat and burden. Would he stand under it, or would the whole thing come
crashing to the ground? He urged him again and again to rest, but Pippin
only gave him one of his queer smiles. "You don't know how strong I am!"
he said.
IV
He himself slept heavily; and, waking at dawn, went down. Pippin was
still at his desk; his pen had dropped; he was asleep. The ink was wet;
Scorrier's eye caught the opening words:
"GENTLEMEN,--Since this happened I have not slept...."
He stole away again with a sense of indignation that no one could be
dragged in to share that fight. The London Board-room rose before his
mind. He imagined the portentous gravity of Hemmings; his face and voice
and manner conveying the impression that he alone could save the
situation; the six directors, all men of commonsense and certainly
humane, seated behind large turret-shaped inkpots; the concern and
irritation in their voices, asking how it could have happened; their
comments: "An awful thing!" "I suppose Pippin is doing the best he can!"
"Wire him on no account to leave the mine idle!" "Poor devils!" "A
fund? Of course, what ought we to give?" He had a strong conviction that
nothing of all this would disturb the commonsense with which they would
go home and eat their mutton. A good thing too; the less it was taken to
heart the better! But Scorrier felt angry. The fight was so unfair! A
fellow all nerves--with not a soul to help him! Well, it was his own
lookout! He had chosen to centre it all in himself, to make himself its
very soul. If he gave way now, the ship must go down! By a thin thread,
Scorrier's hero-worship still held. 'Man against nature,' he thought, 'I
back the man.' The struggle in which he was so powerless to give aid,
became intensely personal to him, as if he had engaged his own good faith
therein.
The next day they went down again to the pit-head; and Scorrier himself
descended. The fumes had almost cleared, but there were some places
which would never be reached. At the end of the day all but four bodies
had been recovered. "In the day o' judgment," a miner said, "they
four'll come out of here." Those unclaimed bodies haunted Scorrier. He
came on sentences of writing, where men waiting to be suffocated had
written down their feelings. In one place, the hour, the word "Sleepy,"
and a signature. In another, "A. F.--done for." When he came up at last
Pippin was still waiting, pocket-book in hand; they again departed at a
furious pace.
Two days later Scorrier, visiting the shaft, found its neighbourhood
deserted--not a living thing of any sort was there except one Chinaman
poking his stick into the rubbish. Pippin was away down the coast
engaging an engineer; and on his return, Scorrier had not the heart to
tell him of the desertion. He was spared the effort, for Pippin said:
"Don't be afraid--you've got bad news? The men have gone on strike."
Scorrier sighed. "Lock, stock, and barrel"
"I thought so--see what I have here!" He put before Scorrier a telegram:
"At all costs keep working--fatal to stop--manage this somehow.
--HEMMINGS."
Breathing quickly, he added: "As if I didn't know! 'Manage this
somehow'--a little hard!"
"What's to be done?" asked Scorrier.
"You see I am commanded!" Pippin answered bitterly. "And they're quite
right; we must keep working--our contracts! Now I'm down--not a soul
will spare me!"
The miners' meeting was held the following day on the outskirts of the
town. Pippin had cleared the place to make a public recreation-ground--a
sort of feather in the company's cap; it was now to be the spot whereon
should be decided the question of the company's life or death.
The sky to the west was crossed by a single line of cloud like a bar of
beaten gold; tree shadows crept towards the groups of men; the evening
savour, that strong fragrance of the forest, sweetened the air. The
miners stood all round amongst the burnt tree-stumps, cowed and sullen.
They looked incapable of movement or expression. It was this dumb
paralysis that frightened Scorrier. He watched Pippin speaking from his
phaeton, the butt of all those sullen, restless eyes. Would he last out?
Would the wires hold? It was like the finish of a race. He caught a
baffled look on Pippin's face, as if he despaired of piercing that
terrible paralysis. The men's eyes had begun to wander. 'He's lost his
hold,' thought Scorrier; 'it's all up!'
A miner close beside him muttered: "Look out!"
Pippin was leaning forward, his voice had risen, the words fell like a
whiplash on the faces of the crowd: "You shan't throw me over; do you
think I'll give up all I've done for you? I'll make you the first power
in the colony! Are you turning tail at the first shot? You're a set of
cowards, my lads!"
Each man round Scorrier was listening with a different motion of the
hands--one rubbed them, one clenched them, another moved his closed fist,
as if stabbing some one in the back. A grisly-bearded, beetle-browed,
twinkling-eyed old Cornishman muttered: "A'hm not troublin' about that."
It seemed almost as if Pippin's object was to get the men to kill him;
they had gathered closer, crouching for a rush. Suddenly Pippin's voice
dropped to a whisper: "I'm disgraced Men, are you going back on me?"
The old miner next Scorrier called out suddenly: "Anny that's Cornishmen
here to stand by the superintendent?" A group drew together, and with
murmurs and gesticulation the meeting broke up.
In the evening a deputation came to visit Pippin; and all night long
their voices and the superintendent's footsteps could be heard. In the
morning, Pippin went early to the mine. Before supper the deputation
came again; and again Scorrier had to listen hour after hour to the sound
of voices and footsteps till he fell asleep. Just before dawn he was
awakened by a light. Pippin stood at his bedside. "The men go down
to-morrow," he said: "What did I tell you? Carry me home on my shield,
eh?"
In a week the mine was in full work.
V
Two years later, Scorrier heard once more of Pippin. A note from
Hemmings reached him asking if he could make it convenient to attend
their Board meeting the following Thursday. He arrived rather before the
appointed time. The secretary received him, and, in answer to inquiry,
said: "Thank you, we are doing well--between ourselves, we are doing very
well."
"And Pippin?"
The secretary frowned. "Ah, Pippin! We asked you to come on his
account. Pippin is giving us a lot of trouble. We have not had a single
line from him for just two years!" He spoke with such a sense of
personal grievance that Scorrier felt quite sorry for him. "Not a single
line," said Hemmings, "since that explosion--you were there at the time,
I remember! It makes it very awkward; I call it personal to me."
"But how--" Scorrier began.
"We get--telegrams. He writes to no one, not even to his family. And
why? Just tell me why? We hear of him; he's a great nob out there.
Nothing's done in the colony without his finger being in the pie. He
turned out the last Government because they wouldn't grant us an
extension for our railway--shows he can't be a fool. Besides, look at
our balance-sheet!"
It turned out that the question on which Scorrier's opinion was desired
was, whether Hemmings should be sent out to see what was the matter with
the superintendent. During the discussion which. ensued, he was an
unwilling listener to strictures on Pippin's silence. "The explosion,"
he muttered at last, "a very trying time!"
Mr. Booker pounced on him. "A very trying time! So it was--to all of
us. But what excuse is that--now, Mr. Scorrier, what excuse is that?"
Scorrier was obliged to admit that it was none.
"Business is business--eh, what?"
Scorrier, gazing round that neat Board-room, nodded. A deaf director,
who had not spoken for some months, said with sudden fierceness: "It's
disgraceful!" He was obviously letting off the fume of long-unuttered
disapprovals. One perfectly neat, benevolent old fellow, however, who
had kept his hat on, and had a single vice--that of coming to the
Board-room with a brown paper parcel tied up with string--murmured: "We
must make all allowances," and started an anecdote about his youth. He
was gently called to order by his secretary. Scorrier was asked for his
opinion. He looked at Hemmings. "My importance is concerned," was
written all over the secretary's face. Moved by an impulse of loyalty to
Pippin, Scorrier answered, as if it were all settled: "Well, let me know
when you are starting, Hemmings--I should like the trip myself."
As he was going out, the chairman, old Jolyon Forsyte, with a grave,
twinkling look at Hemmings, took him aside. "Glad to hear you say that
about going too, Mr. Scorrier; we must be careful--Pippin's such a good
fellow, and so sensitive; and our friend there--a bit heavy in the hand,
um?"
Scorrier did in fact go out with Hemmings. The secretary was sea-sick,
and his prostration, dignified but noisy, remained a memory for ever; it
was sonorous and fine--the prostration of superiority; and the way in
which he spoke of it, taking casual acquaintances into the caves of his
experience, was truly interesting.
Pippin came down to the capital to escort them, provided for their
comforts as if they had been royalty, and had a special train to take
them to the mines.
He was a little stouter, brighter of colour, greyer of beard, more
nervous perhaps in voice and breathing. His manner to Hemmings was full
of flattering courtesy; but his sly, ironical glances played on the
secretary's armour like a fountain on a hippopotamus. To Scorrier,
however, he could not show enough affection:
The first evening, when Hemmings had gone to his room, he jumped up like
a boy out of school. "So I'm going to get a wigging," he said; "I
suppose I deserve it; but if you knew--if you only knew...! Out here
they've nicknamed me 'the King'--they say I rule the colony. It's myself
that I can't rule"; and with a sudden burst of passion such as Scorrier
had never seen in him: "Why did they send this man here? What can he know
about the things that I've been through?" In a moment he calmed down
again. "There! this is very stupid; worrying you like this!" and with a
long, kind look into Scorrier's face, he hustled him off to bed.
Pippin did not break out again, though fire seemed to smoulder behind the
bars of his courteous irony. Intuition of danger had evidently smitten
Hemmings, for he made no allusion to the object of his visit. There were
moments when Scorrier's common-sense sided with Hemmings--these were
moments when the secretary was not present.
'After all,' he told himself, 'it's a little thing to ask--one letter a
month. I never heard of such a case.' It was wonderful indeed how they
stood it! It showed how much they valued Pippin! What was the matter
with him? What was the nature of his trouble? One glimpse Scorrier had
when even Hemmings, as he phrased it, received "quite a turn." It was
during a drive back from the most outlying of the company's trial mines,
eight miles through the forest. The track led through a belt of trees
blackened by a forest fire. Pippin was driving. The secretary seated
beside him wore an expression of faint alarm, such as Pippin's driving
was warranted to evoke from almost any face. The sky had darkened
strangely, but pale streaks of light, coming from one knew not where,
filtered through the trees. No breath was stirring; the wheels and
horses' hoofs made no sound on the deep fern mould. All around, the
burnt tree-trunks, leafless and jagged, rose like withered giants, the
passages between them were black, the sky black, and black the silence.
No one spoke, and literally the only sound was Pippin's breathing. What
was it that was so terrifying? Scorrier had a feeling of entombment;
that nobody could help him; the feeling of being face to face with
Nature; a sensation as if all the comfort and security of words and rules
had dropped away from him. And-nothing happened. They reached home and
dined.
During dinner he had again that old remembrance of a little man chopping
at a castle with his sword. It came at a moment when Pippin had raised
his hand with the carving-knife grasped in it to answer some remark of
Hemmings' about the future of the company. The optimism in his uplifted
chin, the strenuous energy in his whispering voice, gave Scorrier a more
vivid glimpse of Pippin's nature than he had perhaps ever had before.
This new country, where nothing but himself could help a man--that was
the castle! No wonder Pippin was impatient of control, no wonder he was
out of hand, no wonder he was silent--chopping away at that! And suddenly
he thought: 'Yes, and all the time one knows, Nature must beat him in the
end!'
That very evening Hemmings delivered himself of his reproof. He had sat
unusually silent; Scorrier, indeed, had thought him a little drunk, so
portentous was his gravity; suddenly, however he rose. It was hard on a
man, he said, in his position, with a Board (he spoke as of a family of
small children), to be kept so short of information. He was actually
compelled to use his imagination to answer the shareholders' questions.
This was painful and humiliating; he had never heard of any secretary
having to use his imagination! He went further--it was insulting! He had
grown grey in the service of the company. Mr. Scorrier would bear him
out when he said he had a position to maintain--his name in the City was
a high one; and, by George! he was going to keep it a high one; he would
allow nobody to drag it in the dust--that ought clearly to be understood.
His directors felt they were being treated like children; however that
might be, it was absurd to suppose that he (Hemmings) could be treated
like a child...! The secretary paused; his eyes seemed to bully the
room.
"If there were no London office," murmured Pippin, "the shareholders
would get the same dividends."
Hemmings gasped. "Come!" he said, "this is monstrous!"
"What help did I get from London when I first came here? What help have
I ever had?"
Hemmings swayed, recovered, and with a forced smile replied that, if this
were true, he had been standing on his head for years; he did not believe
the attitude possible for such a length of time; personally he would have
thought that he too had had a little something to say to the company's
position, but no matter...! His irony was crushing.... It was possible
that Mr. Pippin hoped to reverse the existing laws of the universe with
regard to limited companies; he would merely say that he must not begin
with a company of which he (Hemmings) happened to be secretary. Mr.
Scorrier had hinted at excuses; for his part, with the best intentions in
the world, he had great difficulty in seeing them. He would go further
--he did not see them! The explosion...! Pippin shrank so visibly that
Hemmings seemed troubled by a suspicion that he had gone too far.
"We know," he said, "that it was trying for you...."
"Trying!" "burst out Pippin.
"No one can say," Hemmings resumed soothingly, "that we have not dealt
liberally." Pippin made a motion of the head. "We think we have a good
superintendent; I go further, an excellent superintendent. What I say
is: Let's be pleasant! I am not making an unreasonable request!" He
ended on a fitting note of jocularity; and, as if by consent, all three
withdrew, each to his own room, without another word.
In the course of the next day Pippin said to Scorrier: "It seems I have
been very wicked. I must try to do better"; and with a touch of bitter
humour, "They are kind enough to think me a good superintendent, you see!
After that I must try hard."
Scorrier broke in: "No man could have done so much for them;" and,
carried away by an impulse to put things absolutely straight, went on
"But, after all, a letter now and then--what does it amount to?"
Pippin besieged him with a subtle glance. "You too?" he said--"I must
indeed have been a wicked man!" and turned away.
Scorrier felt as if he had been guilty of brutality; sorry for Pippin,
angry with himself; angry with Pippin, sorry for himself. He earnestly
desired to see the back of Hemmings. The secretary gratified the wish a
few days later, departing by steamer with ponderous expressions of regard
and the assurance of his goodwill.
Pippin gave vent to no outburst of relief, maintaining a courteous
silence, making only one allusion to his late guest, in answer to a
remark of Scorrier:
"Ah! don't tempt me! mustn't speak behind his back."
A month passed, and Scorrier still--remained Pippin's guest. As each
mail-day approached he experienced a queer suppressed excitement. On one
of these occasions Pippin had withdrawn to his room; and when Scorrier
went to fetch him to dinner he found him with his head leaning on his
hands, amid a perfect fitter of torn paper. He looked up at Scorrier.
"I can't do it," he said, "I feel such a hypocrite; I can't put myself
into leading-strings again. Why should I ask these people, when I've
settled everything already? If it were a vital matter they wouldn't want
to hear--they'd simply wire, 'Manage this somehow!'"
Scorrier said nothing, but thought privately 'This is a mad business!'
What was a letter? Why make a fuss about a letter? The approach of
mail-day seemed like a nightmare to the superintendent; he became
feverishly nervous like a man under a spell; and, when the mail had gone,
behaved like a respited criminal. And this had been going on two years!
Ever since that explosion. Why, it was monomania!
One day, a month after Hemmings' departure, Pippin rose early from
dinner; his face was flushed, he had been drinking wine. "I won't be
beaten this time," he said, as he passed Scorrier. The latter could hear
him writing in the next room, and looked in presently to say that he was
going for a walk. Pippin gave him a kindly nod.
It was a cool, still evening: innumerable stars swarmed in clusters over
the forests, forming bright hieroglyphics in the middle heavens,
showering over the dark harbour into the sea. Scorrier walked slowly. A
weight seemed lifted from his mind, so entangled had he become in that
uncanny silence. At last Pippin had broken through the spell. To get
that, letter sent would be the laying of a phantom, the rehabilitation of
commonsense. Now that this silence was in the throes of being broken, he
felt curiously tender towards Pippin, without the hero-worship of old
days, but with a queer protective feeling. After all, he was different
from other men. In spite of his feverish, tenacious energy, in spite of
his ironic humour, there was something of the woman in him! And as for
this silence, this horror of control--all geniuses had "bees in their
bonnets," and Pippin was a genius in his way!
He looked back at the town. Brilliantly lighted it had a thriving
air-difficult to believe of the place he remembered ten years back; the
sounds of drinking, gambling, laughter, and dancing floated to his ears.
'Quite a city!' he thought.
With this queer elation on him he walked slowly back along the street,
forgetting that he was simply an oldish mining expert, with a look of
shabbiness, such as clings to men who are always travelling, as if their
"nap" were for ever being rubbed off. And he thought of Pippin, creator
of this glory.
He had passed the boundaries of the town, and had entered the forest. A
feeling of discouragement instantly beset him. The scents and silence,
after the festive cries and odours of the town, were undefinably
oppressive. Notwithstanding, he walked a long time, saying to himself
that he would give the letter every chance. At last, when he thought
that Pippin must have finished, he went back to the house.
Pippin had finished. His forehead rested on the table, his arms hung at
his sides; he was stone-dead! His face wore a smile, and by his side lay
an empty laudanum bottle.
The letter, closely, beautifully written, lay before him. It was a fine
document, clear, masterly, detailed, nothing slurred, nothing concealed,
nothing omitted; a complete review of the company's position; it ended
with the words: "Your humble servant, RICHARD PIPPIN."
Scorrier took possession of it. He dimly understood that with those last
words a wire had snapped. The border-line had been overpassed; the point
reached where that sense of proportion, which alone makes life possible,
is lost. He was certain that at the moment of his death Pippin could
have discussed bimetallism, or any intellectual problem, except the one
problem of his own heart; that, for some mysterious reason, had been too
much for him. His death had been the work of a moment of supreme
revolt--a single instant of madness on a single subject! He found on the
blotting-paper, scrawled across the impress of the signature, "Can't
stand it!" The completion of that letter had been to him a struggle
ungraspable by Scorrier. Slavery? Defeat? A violation of Nature? The
death of justice? It were better not to think of it! Pippin could have
told--but he would never speak again. Nature, at whom, unaided, he had
dealt so many blows, had taken her revenge...!
In the night Scorrier stole down, and, with an ashamed face, cut off a
lock of the fine grey hair. 'His daughter might like it!' he thought....
He waited till Pippin was buried, then, with the letter in his pocket,
started for England.
He arrived at Liverpool on a Thursday morning, and travelling to town,
drove straight to the office of the company. The Board were sitting.
Pippin's successor was already being interviewed. He passed out as
Scorrier came in, a middle-aged man with a large, red beard, and a foxy,
compromising face. He also was a Cornishman. Scorrier wished him luck
with a very heavy heart.
As an unsentimental man, who had a proper horror of emotion, whose living
depended on his good sense, to look back on that interview with the Board
was painful. It had excited in him a rage of which he was now heartily
ashamed. Old Jolyon Forsyte, the chairman, was not there for once,
guessing perhaps that the Board's view of this death would be too small
for him; and little Mr. Booker sat in his place. Every one had risen,
shaken hands with Scorrier, and expressed themselves indebted for his
coming. Scorrier placed Pippin's letter on the table, and gravely the
secretary read out to his Board the last words of their superintendent.
When he had finished, a director said, "That's not the letter of a
madman!" Another answered: "Mad as a hatter; nobody but a madman would
have thrown up such a post." Scorrier suddenly withdrew. He heard
Hemmings calling after him. "Aren't you well, Mr. Scorrier? aren't you
well, sir?"
He shouted back: "Quite sane, I thank you...."
The Naples "express" rolled round the outskirts of the town. Vesuvius
shone in the sun, uncrowned by smoke. But even as Scorrier looked, a
white puff went soaring up. It was the footnote to his memories.
February 1901.
THE END.
SAINTS PROGRESS
By John Galsworthy
PART I
I
Such a day made glad the heart. All the flags of July were waving; the
sun and the poppies flaming; white butterflies spiring up and twining,
and the bees busy on the snapdragons. The lime-trees were coming into
flower. Tall white lilies in the garden beds already rivaled the
delphiniums; the York and Lancaster roses were full-blown round their
golden hearts. There was a gentle breeze, and a swish and stir and hum
rose and fell above the head of Edward Pierson, coming back from his
lonely ramble over Tintern Abbey. He had arrived at Kestrel, his brother
Robert's home on the bank of the Wye only that morning, having stayed at
Bath on the way down; and now he had got his face burnt in that
parti-coloured way peculiar to the faces of those who have been too long
in London. As he came along the narrow, rather overgrown avenue, the
sound of a waltz thrummed out on a piano fell on his ears, and he smiled,
for music was the greatest passion he had. His dark grizzled hair was
pushed back off his hot brow, which he fanned with his straw hat. Though
not broad, that brow was the broadest part of a narrow oval face whose
length was increased by a short, dark, pointed beard--a visage such as
Vandyk might have painted, grave and gentle, but for its bright grey
eyes, cinder-lashed and crow's-footed, and its strange look of not seeing
what was before it. He walked quickly, though he was tired and hot;
tall, upright, and thin, in a grey parsonical suit, on whose black
kerseymere vest a little gold cross dangled.
Above his brother's house, whose sloping garden ran down to the railway
line and river, a large room had been built out apart. Pierson stood
where the avenue forked, enjoying the sound of the waltz, and the cool
whipping of the breeze in the sycamores and birches. A man of fifty,
with a sense of beauty, born and bred in the country, suffers fearfully
from nostalgia during a long unbroken spell of London; so that his
afternoon in the old Abbey had been almost holy. He had let his senses
sink into the sunlit greenery of the towering woods opposite; he had
watched the spiders and the little shining beetles, the flycatchers, and
sparrows in the ivy; touched the mosses and the lichens; looked the
speedwells in the eye; dreamed of he knew not what. A hawk had been
wheeling up there above the woods, and he had been up there with it in
the blue. He had taken a real spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret
of London off his soul.
For a year he had been working his parish single-handed--no joke--for his
curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real holiday since
the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to his brother's
home. He looked down at the garden, and up at the trees of the avenue.
Bob had found a perfect retreat after his quarter of a century in Ceylon.
Dear old Bob! And he smiled at the thought of his elder brother, whose
burnt face and fierce grey whiskers somewhat recalled a Bengal tiger; the
kindest fellow that ever breathed! Yes, he had found a perfect home for
Thirza and himself. And Edward Pierson sighed. He too had once had a
perfect home, a perfect wife; the wound of whose death, fifteen years
ago, still bled a little in his heart. Their two daughters, Gratian and
Noel, had not "taken after" her; Gratian was like his own mother, and
Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always reminded him of his cousin
Leila, who--poor thing!--had made that sad mess of her life, and now, he
had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa. Ah! What a pretty
girl she had been!
Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the
music-room. A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet
slipping on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly in
the arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went,
circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to
have come in recently, for he did not recognise them. At the piano sat
his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face. But it was at his
young daughter that Edward Pierson looked. Her eyes were half-closed,
her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite short, curled into
her slim round neck. Quite cool she seemed, though the young man in
whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery hot; a handsome boy, with
blue eyes and a little golden down on the upper lip of his sunny
red-cheeked face. Edward Pierson thought: 'Nice couple!' And had a
moment's vision of himself and Leila, dancing at that long-ago Cambridge
May Week--on her seventeenth birthday, he remembered, so that she must
have been a year younger than Nollie was now! This would be the young
man she had talked of in her letters during the last three weeks. Were
they never going to stop?
He passed into view of those within, and said:
"Aren't you very hot, Nollie?"
She blew him a kiss; the young man looked startled and self-conscious,
and Eve called out:
"It's a bet, Uncle. They've got to dance me down."
Pierson said mildly:
"A bet? My dears!"
Noel murmured over her shoulder:
"It's all right, Daddy!" And the young man gasped:
"She's bet us one of her puppies against one of mine, sir!"
Pierson sat down, a little hypnotized by the sleepy strumming, the slow
giddy movement of the dancers, and those half-closed swimming eyes of his
young daughter, looking at him over her shoulder as she went by. He sat
with a smile on his lips. Nollie was growing up! Now that Gratian was
married, she had become a great responsibility. If only his dear wife had
lived! The smile faded from his lips; he looked suddenly very tired.
The struggle, physical and spiritual, he had been through, these fifteen
years, sometimes weighed him almost to the ground: Most men would have
married again, but he had always felt it would be sacrilege. Real unions
were for ever, even though the Church permitted remarriage.
He watched his young daughter with a mixture of aesthetic pleasure and
perplexity. Could this be good for her? To go on dancing indefinitely
with one young man could that possibly be good for her? But they looked
very happy; and there was so much in young creatures that he did not
understand. Noel, so affectionate, and dreamy, seemed sometimes
possessed of a little devil. Edward Pierson was naif; attributed those
outbursts of demonic possession to the loss of her mother when she was
such a mite; Gratian, but two years older, had never taken a mother's
place. That had been left to himself, and he was more or less conscious
of failure.
He sat there looking up at her with a sort of whimsical distress. And,
suddenly, in that dainty voice of hers, which seemed to spurn each word a
little, she said:
"I'm going to stop!" and, sitting down beside him, took up his hat to fan
herself.
Eve struck a triumphant chord. "Hurrah I've won!"
The young man muttered:
"I say, Noel, we weren't half done!"
"I know; but Daddy was getting bored, weren't you, dear? This is Cyril
Morland."
Pierson shook the young man's hand.
"Daddy, your nose is burnt!"
"My dear; I know."
"I can give you some white stuff for it. You have to sleep with it on
all night. Uncle and Auntie both use it."
"Nollie!"
"Well, Eve says so. If you're going to bathe, Cyril, look out for that
current!"
The young man, gazing at her with undisguised adoration, muttered:
"Rather!" and went out.
Noel's eyes lingered after him; Eve broke a silence.
"If you're going to have a bath before tea, Nollie, you'd better hurry
up."
"All right. Was it jolly in the Abbey, Daddy?"
"Lovely; like a great piece of music."
"Daddy always puts everything into music. You ought to see it by
moonlight; it's gorgeous then. All right, Eve; I'm coming." But she did
not get up, and when Eve was gone, cuddled her arm through her father's
and murmured:
"What d'you think of Cyril?"
"My dear, how can I tell? He seems a nice-looking young man."
"All right, Daddy; don't strain yourself. It's jolly down here, isn't
it?" She got up, stretched herself a little, and moved away, looking
like a very tall child, with her short hair curling in round her head.
Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a lovely
thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following, went to the
piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in E minor. He
had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy passion. It was his
way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way which never quite
failed him.
At Cambridge, he had intended to take up music as a profession, but
family tradition had destined him for Holy Orders, and an emotional
Church revival of that day had caught him in its stream. He had always
had private means, and those early years before he married had passed
happily in an East-End parish. To have not only opportunity but power to
help in the lives of the poor had been fascinating; simple himself, the
simple folk of his parish had taken hold of his heart. When, however, he
married Agnes Heriot, he was given a parish of his own on the borders of
East and West, where he had been ever since, even after her death had
nearly killed him. It was better to go on where work and all reminded
him of one whom he had resolved never to forget in other ties. But he
knew that his work had not the zest it used to have in her day, or even
before her day. It may well be doubted whether he, who had been in Holy
Orders twenty-six years, quite knew now what he believed. Everything had
become circumscribed, and fixed, by thousands of his own utterances; to
have taken fresh stock of his faith, to have gone deep into its roots,
would have been like taking up the foundations of a still-standing house.
Some men naturally root themselves in the inexpressible--for which one
formula is much the same as another; though Edward Pierson, gently
dogmatic, undoubtedly preferred his High-Church statement of the
inexpressible to that of, say, the Zoroastrians. The subtleties of
change, the modifications by science, left little sense of inconsistency
or treason on his soul. Sensitive, charitable, and only combative deep
down, he instinctively avoided discussion on matters where he might hurt
others or they hurt him. And, since explanation was the last thing which
o could be expected of one who did not base himself on Reason, he had
found but scant occasion ever to examine anything. Just as in the old
Abbey he had soared off into the infinite with the hawk, the beetles, and
the grasses, so now, at the piano, by these sounds of his own making, he
was caught away again into emotionalism, without realising that he was in
one of his, most religious moods.
"Aren't you coming to tea, Edward?"
The woman standing behind him, in a lilac-coloured gown, had one of those
faces which remain innocent to the end of the chapter, in spite of the
complete knowledge of life which appertains to mothers. In days of
suffering and anxiety, like these of the great war, Thirza Pierson was a
valuable person. Without ever expressing an opinion on cosmic matters,
she reconfirmed certain cosmic truths, such as that though the whole
world was at war, there was such a thing as peace; that though all the
sons of mothers were being killed, there remained such a thing as
motherhood; that while everybody was living for the future, the present
still existed. Her tranquil, tender, matter-of-fact busyness, and the
dew in her eyes, had been proof against twenty-three years of life on a
tea-plantation in the hot part of Ceylon; against Bob Pierson; against
the anxiety of having two sons at the front, and the confidences of
nearly every one she came across. Nothing disturbed her. She was like a
painting of "Goodness" by an Old Master, restored by Kate Greenaway. She
never went to meet life, but when it came, made the best of it. This was
her secret, and Pierson always felt rested in her presence.
He rose, and moved by her side, over the lawn, towards the big tree at
the bottom of the garden.
"How d'you think Noel is looking, Edward?"
"Very pretty. That young man, Thirza?"
"Yes; I'm afraid he's over head and ears in love with her."
At the dismayed sound he uttered, she slipped her soft round arm within
his. "He's going to the front soon, poor boy!"
"Have they talked to you?"
"He has. Nollie hasn't yet."
"Nollie is a queer child, Thirza."
"Nollie is a darling, but rather a desperate character, Edward."
Pierson sighed.
In a swing under the tree, where the tea-things were set out, the "rather
desperate character" was swaying. "What a picture she is!" he said, and
sighed again.
The voice of his brother came to them,--high and steamy, as though
corrupted by the climate of Ceylon:
"You incorrigible dreamy chap, Ted! We've eaten all the raspberries.
Eve, give him some jam; he must be dead! Phew! the heat! Come on, my
dear, and pour out his tea. Hallo, Cyril! Had a good bathe? By George,
wish my head was wet! Squattez-vous down over there, by Nollie; she'll
swing, and keep the flies off you."
"Give me a cigarette, Uncle Bob--"
"What! Your father doesn't--"
"Just for the flies. You don't mind, Daddy?"
"Not if it's necessary, my dear."
Noel smiled, showing her upper teeth, and her eyes seemed to swim under
their long lashes.
"It isn't necessary, but it's nice."
"Ah, ha!" said Bob Pierson. "Here you are, Nollie!"
But Noel shook her head. At that moment she struck her father as
startlingly grown-up-so composed, swaying above that young man at her
feet, whose sunny face was all adoration. 'No longer a child!' he
thought. 'Dear Nollie!'
II
1
Awakened by that daily cruelty, the advent of hot water, Edward Pierson
lay in his chintz-curtained room, fancying himself back in London. A
wild bee hunting honey from the bowl of flowers on the window-sill, and
the scent of sweetbrier, shattered that illusion. He drew the curtain,
and, kneeling on the window-seat thrust his head out into the morning.
The air was intoxicatingly sweet. Haze clung over the river and the
woods beyond; the lawn sparkled with dew, and two wagtails strutted in
the dewy sunshine. 'Thank God for loveliness!' he thought. 'Those poor
boys at the front!' And kneeling with his elbows on the sill, he began
to say his prayers. The same feeling which made him beautify his church,
use vestments, good music, and incense, filled him now. God was in the
loveliness of His world, as well as in His churches. One could worship
Him in a grove of beech trees, in a beautiful garden, on a high hill, by
the banks of a bright river. God was in the rustle of the leaves, and
the hum of a bee, in the dew on the grass, and the scent of flowers; God
was in everything! And he added to his usual prayer this whisper: "I
give Thee thanks for my senses, O Lord. In all of us, keep them bright,
and grateful for beauty." Then he remained motionless, prey to a sort of
happy yearning very near, to melancholy. Great beauty ever had that
effect on him. One could capture so little of it--could never enjoy it
enough! Who was it had said not long ago: "Love of beauty is really only
the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies." Ah! yes,
George--Gratian's husband. George Laird! And a little frown came
between his brows, as though at some thorn in the flesh. Poor George!
But then, all doctors were materialists at heart--splendid fellows,
though; a fine fellow, George, working himself to death out there in
France. One must not take them too seriously. He plucked a bit of
sweetbrier and put it to his nose, which still retained the shine of that
bleaching ointment Noel had insisted on his using. The sweet smell of
those little rough leaves stirred up an acute aching. He dropped them,
and drew back. No longings, no melancholy; one ought to be out, this
beautiful morning!
It was Sunday; but he had not to take three Services and preach at least
one sermon; this day of rest was really to be his own, for once. It was
almost disconcerting; he had so long felt like the cab horse who could
not be taken out of the shafts lest he should fall down. He dressed with
extraordinary deliberation, and had not quite finished when there came a
knock on his door, and Noel's voice said: "Can I come in, Daddy?"
In her flax-blue frock, with a Gloire de Dijon rose pinned where it met
on her faintly browned neck, she seemed to her father a perfect vision of
freshness.
"Here's a letter from Gratian; George has been sent home ill, and he's
gone to our house. She's got leave from her hospital to come home and
nurse him."
Pierson read the letter. "Poor George!"
"When are you going to let me be a nurse, Daddy?"
"We must wait till you're eighteen, Nollie."
"I could easily say I was. It's only a month; and I look much more."
Pierson smiled.
"Don't I?"
"You might be anything from fifteen to twenty-five, my dear, according as
you behave."
"I want to go out as near the front as possible."
Her head was poised so that the sunlight framed her face, which was
rather broad--the brow rather too broad--under the waving light-brown
hair, the nose short and indeterminate; cheeks still round from youth,
almost waxen-pale, and faintly hollowed under the eyes. It was her lips,
dainty yet loving, and above all her grey eyes, big and dreamily alive,
which made her a swan. He could not imagine her in nurse's garb.
"This is new, isn't it, Nollie?"
"Cyril Morland's sisters are both out; and he'll be going soon. Everybody
goes."
"Gratian hasn't got out yet: It takes a long time to get trained."
"I know; all the more reason to begin."
She got up, looked at him, looked at her hands, seemed about to speak,
but did not. A little colour had come into her cheeks. Then, obviously
making conversation, she asked:
"Are you going to church? It's worth anything to hear Uncle Bob read the
Lessons, especially when he loses his place. No; you're not to put on
your long coat till just before church time. I won't have it!"
Obediently Pierson resigned his long coat.
"Now, you see, you can have my rose. Your nose is better!" She kissed
his nose, and transferred her rose to the buttonhole of his short coat.
"That's all. Come along!" And with her arm through his, they went down.
But he knew she had come to say something which she had not said.
2
Bob Pierson, in virtue of greater wealth than the rest of the
congregation, always read the Lessons, in his high steamy voice, his
breathing never adjusted to the length of any period. The congregation,
accustomed, heard nothing peculiar; he was the necessary gentry with the
necessary finger in the pie. It was his own family whom he perturbed.
In the second row, Noel, staring solemnly at the profile of her father in
the front row, was thinking: 'Poor Daddy! His eyes look as if they were
coming out. Oh, Daddy! Smile! or it'll hurt you!' Young Morland beside
her, rigid in his tunic, was thinking: 'She isn't thinking of me!' And
just then her little finger crooked into his. Edward Pierson was
thinking: 'Oh! My dear old Bob! Oh!' And, beside him, Thirza thought:
'Poor dear Ted I how nice for him to be having a complete rest! I must
make him eat he's so thin!' And Eve was thinking: 'Oh, Father! Mercy!'
But Bob Pierson was thinking: 'Cheer oh! Only another three verses!'
Noel's little finger unhooked itself, but her eyes stole round to young
Morland's eyes, and there was a light in them which lingered through the
singing and the prayers. At last, in the reverential rustle of the
settling congregation, a surpliced figure mounted the pulpit.
"I come not to bring Peace, but a sword."
Pierson looked up. He felt deep restfulness. There was a pleasant light
in this church; the hum of a country bluebottle made all the difference
to the quality of silence. No critical thought stirred within him, nor
any excitement. He was thinking: 'Now I shall hear something for my
good; a fine text; when did I preach from it last?' Turned a little away
from the others, he saw nothing but the preacher's homely face up there
above the carved oak; it was so long since he had been preached to, so
long since he had had a rest! The words came forth, dropped on his
forehead, penetrated, met something which absorbed them, and disappeared.
'A good plain sermon!' he thought. 'I suppose I'm stale; I don't seem--'
"Let us not, dear brethren," droned the preacher's earnest voice, "think
that our dear Lord, in saying that He brought a sword, referred to a
physical sword. It was the sword of the spirit to which He was
undoubtedly referring, that bright sword of the spirit which in all ages
has cleaved its way through the fetters imposed on men themselves by
their own desires, imposed by men on other men in gratification of their
ambitions, as we have had so striking an example in the invasion by our
cruel enemies of a little neighbouring country which had done them no
harm. Dear brethren, we may all bring swords." Pierson's chin jerked; he
raised his hand quickly and passed it over his face. 'All bring swords,'
he thought, 'swords--I wasn't asleep--surely!' "But let us be sure that
our swords are bright; bright with hope, and bright with faith, that we
may see them flashing among the carnal desires of this mortal life,
carving a path for us towards that heavenly kingdom where alone is peace,
perfect peace. Let us pray."
Pierson did not shut his eyes; he opened them as he fell on his knees.
In the seat behind, Noel and young Morland had also fallen on their knees
their faces covered each with a single hand; but her left hand and his
right hung at their sides. They prayed a little longer than any others
and, on rising, sang the hymn a little louder.
3
No paper came on Sundays--not even the local paper, which had so long and
so nobly done its bit with headlines to win the war. No news whatever
came, of men blown up, to enliven the hush of the hot July afternoon, or
the sense of drugging--which followed Aunt Thirza's Sunday lunch. Some
slept, some thought they were awake; but Noel and young Morland walked
upward through the woods towards a high common of heath and furze,
crowned by what was known as Kestrel rocks. Between these two young
people no actual word of love had yet been spoken. Their lovering had
advanced by glance and touch alone.
Young Morland was a school and college friend of the two Pierson boys now
at the front. He had no home of his own, for his parents were dead; and
this was not his first visit to Kestrel. Arriving three weeks ago, for
his final leave before he should go out, he had found a girl sitting in a
little wagonette outside the station, and had known his fate at once.
But who knows when Noel fell in love? She was--one supposes--just ready
for that sensation. For the last two years she had been at one of those
high-class finishing establishments where, in spite of the healthy
curriculum, perhaps because of it, there is ever an undercurrent of
interest in the opposing sex; and not even the gravest efforts to
eliminate instinct are quite successful. The disappearance of every
young male thing into the maw of the military machine put a premium on
instinct. The thoughts of Noel and her school companions were turned,
perforce, to that which, in pre-war freedom of opportunity they could
afford to regard as of secondary interest. Love and Marriage and
Motherhood, fixed as the lot of women by the countless ages, were
threatened for these young creatures. They not unnaturally pursued what
they felt to be receding.
When young Morland showed, by following her about with his eyes, what was
happening to him, Noel was pleased. From being pleased, she became a
little excited; from being excited she became dreamy. Then, about a week
before her father's arrival, she secretly began to follow the young man
about with her eyes; became capricious too, and a little cruel. If there
had been another young man to favour--but there was not; and she favoured
Uncle Bob's red setter. Cyril Morland grew desperate. During those
three days the demon her father dreaded certainly possessed her. And
then, one evening, while they walked back together from the hay-fields,
she gave him a sidelong glance; and he gasped out: "Oh! Noel, what have
I done?" She caught his hand, and gave it a quick squeeze. What a
change! What blissful alteration ever since!
Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing himself up to
put things to the touch. Noel too mounted silently, thinking: 'I will
kiss him if he kisses me!' Eagerness, and a sort of languor, were
running in her veins; she did not look at him from under her shady hat.
Sun light poured down through every chink in the foliage; made the
greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive; flashed on
beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground in little
runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the beech mast, the
ferns; butterflies chased each other in that sunlight, and myriads of
ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by a frenzy of life. The whole
wood seemed possessed, as if the sunshine were a happy Being which had
come to dwell therein. At a half-way spot, where the trees opened and
they could see, far below them, the gleam of the river, she sat down on
the bole of a beech-tree, and young Morland stood looking at her. Why
should one face and not an other, this voice and not that, make a heart
beat; why should a touch from one hand awaken rapture, and a touch from
another awaken nothing? He knelt down and pressed his lips to her foot.
Her eyes grew very bright; but she got up and ran on--she had not
expected him to kiss her foot. She heard him hurrying after her, and
stopped, leaning against a birch trunk. He rushed to her, and, without a
word spoken, his lips were on her lips. The moment in life, which no
words can render, had come for them. They had found their enchanted
spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their arms round each
other, while the happy Being of the wood watched. A marvellous
speeder-up of Love is War. What might have taken six months, was thus
accomplished in three weeks.
A short hour passed, then Noel said:
"I must tell Daddy, Cyril. I meant to tell him something this morning,
only I thought I'd better wait, in case you didn't."
Morland answered: "Oh, Noel!" It was the staple of his conversation
while they sat there.
Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:
"I shall go off my chump if we're not married before I go out."
"How long does it take?"
"No time, if we hurry up. I've got six days before I rejoin, and perhaps
the Chief will give me another week, if I tell him."
"Poor Daddy! Kiss me again; a long one."
When the long one was over, she said:
"Then I can come and be near you till you go out? Oh, Cyril!"
"Oh, Noel!"
"Perhaps you won't go so soon. Don't go if you can help it!"
"Not if I can help it, darling; but I shan't be able."
"No, of course not; I know."
Young Morland clutched his hair. "Everyone's in the same boat, but it
can't last for ever; and now we're engaged we can be together all the
time till I've got the licence or whatever it is. And then--!"
"Daddy won't like our not being married in a church; but I don't care!"
Looking down at her closed eyes, and their lashes resting on her cheeks,
young Morland thought:
'My God! I'm in heaven!'
Another short hour passed before she freed herself.
"We must go, Cyril. Kiss me once more!"
It was nearly dinner-time, and they ran down.
4
Edward Pierson, returning from the Evening Service, where he had read the
Lessons, saw them in the distance, and compressed his lips. Their long
absence had vexed him. What ought he to do? In the presence of Love's
young dream, he felt strange and helpless. That night, when he opened
the door of his room, he saw Noel on the window-seat, in her
dressing-gown, with the moonlight streaming in on her.
"Don't light up, Daddy; I've got something to say."
She took hold of the little gold cross on his vest, and turned it over.
"I'm engaged to Cyril; we want to be married this week."
It was exactly as if someone had punched him in the ribs; and at the
sound he made she hurried on:
"You see, we must be; he may be going out any day."
In the midst of his aching consternation, he admitted a kind of reason in
her words. But he said:
"My dear, you're only a child. Marriage is the most serious thing in
life; you've only known him three weeks."
"I know all that, Daddy" her voice sounded so ridiculously calm; "but we
can't afford to wait. He might never come back, you see, and then I
should have missed him."
"But, Noel, suppose he never did come back; it would only be much worse
for you."
She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand, pressing it
against her heart. But still her voice was calm:
"No; much better, Daddy; you think I don't know my own feelings, but I
do,"'
The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.
"Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that, time is
wanted. Time to know that you feel and think the same, and love the same
things."
"Yes, I know; but we do."
"You can't tell that, my dear; no one could in three weeks."
"But these aren't ordinary times, are they? People have to do things in
a hurry. Oh, Daddy! Be an angel! Mother would have understood, and let
me, I know!"
Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder of his loss,
from reminder of the poor substitute he was.
"Look, Nollie!" he said. "After all these years since she left us, I'm
as lonely as ever, because we were really one. If you marry this young
man without knowing more of your own hearts than you can in such a little
time, you may regret it dreadfully; you may find it turn out, after all,
nothing but a little empty passion; or again, if anything happens to him
before you've had any real married life together, you'll have a much
greater grief and sense of loss to put up with than if you simply stay
engaged till after the war. Besides, my child, you're much too young."
She sat so still that he looked at her in alarm. "But I must!"
He bit his lips, and said sharply: "You can't, Nollie!"
She got up, and before he could stop her, was gone. With the closing of
the door, his anger evaporated, and distress took its place. Poor child!
What to do with this wayward chicken just out of the egg, and wanting to
be full-fledged at once? The thought that she would be lying miserable,
crying, perhaps, beset him so that he went out into the passage and
tapped on her door. Getting no answer, he went in. It was dark but for a
streak of moonlight, and in that he saw her, lying on her bed, face down;
and stealing up laid his hand on her head. She did not move; and,
stroking her hair, he said gently:
"Nollie dear, I didn't mean to be harsh. If I were your mother, I should
know how to make you see, but I'm only an old bumble-daddy."
She rolled over, scrambling into a cross-legged posture on the bed. He
could see her eyes shining. But she did not speak; she seemed to know
that in silence was her strength.
He said with a sort of despair:
"You must let me talk it over with your aunt. She has a lot of good
sense."
"Yes."
He bent over and kissed her hot forehead.
"Good night, my dear; don't cry. Promise me!"
She nodded, and lifted her face; he felt her hot soft lips on his
forehead, and went away a little comforted.
But Noel sat on her bed, hugging her knees, listening to the night, to
the emptiness and silence; each minute so much lost of the little, little
time left, that she might have been with him.
III
Pierson woke after a troubled and dreamful night, in which he had thought
himself wandering in heaven like a lost soul.
After regaining his room last night nothing had struck him more forcibly
than the needlessness of his words: "Don't cry, Nollie!" for he had
realised with uneasiness that she had not been near crying. No; there
was in her some emotion very different from the tearful. He kept seeing
her cross-legged figure on the bed in that dim light; tense, enigmatic,
almost Chinese; kept feeling the feverish touch of her lips. A good
girlish burst of tears would have done her good, and been a guarantee.
He had the uncomfortable conviction that his refusal had passed her by,
as if unspoken. And, since he could not go and make music at that time
of night, he had ended on his knees, in a long search for guidance, which
was not vouchsafed him.
The culprits were demure at breakfast; no one could have told that for
the last hour they had been sitting with their arms round each other,
watching the river flow by, talking but little, through lips too busy.
Pierson pursued his sister-in-law to the room where she did her flowers
every morning. He watched her for a minute dividing ramblers from
pansies, cornflowers from sweet peas, before he said:
"I'm very troubled, Thirza. Nollie came to me last night. Imagine!
They want to get married--those two!"
Accepting life as it came, Thirza showed no dismay, but her cheeks grew a
little pinker, and her eyes a little rounder. She took up a sprig of
mignonette, and said placidly:
"Oh, my dear!"
"Think of it, Thirza--that child! Why, it's only a year or two since she
used to sit on my knee and tickle my face with her hair."
Thirza went on arranging her flowers.
"Noel is older than you think, Edward; she is more than her age. And
real married life wouldn't begin for them till after--if it ever began."
Pierson experienced a sort of shock. His sister-in-law's words seemed
criminally light-hearted.
"But--but--" he stammered; "the union, Thirza! Who can tell what will
happen before they come together again!"
She looked at his quivering face, and said gently:
"I know, Edward; but if you refuse, I should be afraid, in these days, of
what Noel might do. I told you there's a streak of desperation in her."
"Noel will obey me."
"I wonder! There are so many of these war marriages now."
Pierson turned away.
"I think they're dreadful. What do they mean--Just a momentary
gratification of passion. They might just as well not be."
"They mean pensions, as a rule," said Thirza calmly.
"Thirza, that is cynical; besides, it doesn't affect this case. I can't
bear to think of my little Nollie giving herself for a moment which may
come to nothing, or may turn out the beginning of an unhappy marriage.
Who is this boy--what is he? I know nothing of him. How can I give her
to him--it's impossible! If they had been engaged some time and I knew
something of him--yes, perhaps; even at her age. But this hasty
passionateness--it isn't right, it isn't decent. I don't understand, I
really don't--how a child like that can want it. The fact is, she
doesn't know what she's asking, poor little Nollie. She can't know the
nature of marriage, and she can't realise its sacredness. If only her
mother were here! Talk to her, Thirza; you can say things that I can't!"
Thirza looked after the retreating figure. In spite of his cloth,
perhaps a little because of it, he seemed to her like a child who had
come to show her his sore finger. And, having finished the arrangement
of her flowers, she went out to find her niece. She had not far to go;
for Noel was standing in the hall, quite evidently lying in wait. They
went out together to the avenue.
The girl began at once:
"It isn't any use talking to me, Auntie; Cyril is going to get a
license."
"Oh! So you've made up your minds?"
"Quite."
"Do you think that's fair by me, Nollie? Should I have asked him here if
I'd thought this was going to happen?"
Noel only smiled.
"Have you the least idea what marriage means?"
Noel nodded.
"Really?"
"Of course. Gratian is married. Besides, at school--"
"Your father is dead against it. This is a sad thing for him. He's a
perfect saint, and you oughtn't to hurt him. Can't you wait, at least
till Cyril's next leave?"
"He might never have one, you see."
The heart of her whose boys were out there too, and might also never have
another leave; could not but be responsive to those words. She looked at
her niece, and a dim appreciation of this revolt of life menaced by
death, of youth threatened with extinction, stirred in her. Noel's teeth
were clenched, her lips drawn back, and she was staring in front of her.
"Daddy oughtn't to mind. Old people haven't to fight, and get killed;
they oughtn't to mind us taking what we can. They've had their good
time."
It was such a just little speech that Thirza answered:
"Yes; perhaps he hasn't quite realised that."
"I want to make sure of Cyril, Auntie; I want everything I can have with
him while there's the chance. I don't think it's much to ask, when
perhaps I'll never have any more of him again."
Thirza slipped her hand through the girl's arm.
"I understand," she said. "Only, Nollie, suppose, when all this is over,
and we breathe and live naturally once more, you found you'd made a
mistake?"
Noel shook her head. "I haven't."
"We all think that, my dear; but thousands of mistakes are made by people
who no more dream they're making them than you do now; and then it's a
very horrible business. It would be especially horrible for you; your
father believes heart and soul in marriage being for ever."
"Daddy's a darling; but I don't always believe what he believes, you
know. Besides, I'm not making a mistake, Auntie! I love Cyril ever so."
Thirza gave her waist a squeeze.
"You mustn't make a mistake. We love you too much, Nollie. I wish we
had Gratian here."
"Gratian would back me up," said Noel; "she knows what the war is. And
you ought to, Auntie. If Rex or Harry wanted to be married, I'm sure
you'd never oppose them. And they're no older than Cyril. You must
understand what it means to me Auntie dear, to feel that we belong to
each other properly before--before it all begins for him, and--and there
may be no more. Daddy doesn't realise. I know he's awfully good,
but--he's forgotten."
"My dear, I think he remembers only too well. He was desperately
attached to your mother."
Noel clenched her hands.
"Was he? Well, so am I to Cyril, and he to me. We wouldn't be
unreasonable if it wasn't--wasn't necessary. Talk, to Cyril, Auntie;
then you'll understand. There he is; only, don't keep him long, because
I want him. Oh! Auntie; I want him so badly!"
She turned; and slipped back into the house; and Thirza, conscious of
having been decoyed to this young man, who stood there with his arms
folded, like Napoleon before a battle, smiled and said:
"Well, Cyril, so you've betrayed me!"
Even in speaking she was conscious of the really momentous change in this
sunburnt, blue-eyed, lazily impudent youth since the day he arrived,
three weeks ago, in their little wagonette. He took her arm, just as
Noel had, and made her sit down beside him on the rustic bench, where he
had evidently been told to wait.
"You see, Mrs. Pierson," he said, "it's not as if Noel were an ordinary
girl in an ordinary time, is it? Noel is the sort of girl one would
knock one's brains out for; and to send me out there knowing that I could
have been married to her and wasn't, will take all the heart out of me.
Of course I mean to come back, but chaps do get knocked over, and I think
it's cruel that we can't take what we can while we can. Besides, I've
got money; and that would be hers anyway. So, do be a darling, won't
you?" He put his arm round her waist, just as if he had been her son,
and her heart, which wanted her own boys so badly, felt warmed within
her.
"You see, I don't know Mr. Pierson, but he seems awfully gentle and
jolly, and if he could see into me he wouldn't mind, I know. We don't
mind risking our lives and all that, but we do think we ought to have the
run of them while we're alive. I'll give him my dying oath or anything,
that I could never change towards Noel, and she'll do the same. Oh!
Mrs. Pierson, do be a jolly brick, and put in a word for me, quick!
We've got so few days!"
"But, my dear boy," said Thirza feebly, "do you think it's fair to such a
child as Noel?"
"Yes, I do. You don't understand; she's simply had to grow up. She is
grown-up--all in this week; she's quite as old as I am, really--and I'm
twenty-two. And you know it's going to be--it's got to be--a young
world, from now on; people will begin doing things much earlier. What's
the use of pretending it's like what it was, and being cautious, and all
that? If I'm going to be killed, I think we've got a right to be married
first; and if I'm not, then what does it matter?"
"You've known each other twenty-one days, Cyril."
"No; twenty-one years! Every day's a year when Oh! Mrs. Pierson,
this isn't like you, is it? You never go to meet trouble, do you?"
At that shrewd remark, Thirza put her hand on the hand which still
clasped her waist, and pressed it closer.
"Well, my dear," she said softly, "we must see what can be done."
Cyril Morland kissed her cheek. "I will bless you for ever," he said.
"I haven't got any people, you know, except my two sisters."
And something like tears started up on Thirza's eyelashes. They seemed
to her like the babes in the wood--those two!
IV
1
In the dining-room of her father's house in that old London Square
between East and West, Gratian Laird, in the outdoor garb of a nurse, was
writing a telegram: "Reverend Edward Pierson, Kestrel, Tintern,
Monmouthshire. George terribly ill. Please come if you can. Gratian."
Giving it to a maid, she took off her long coat and sat down for a
moment. She had been travelling all night, after a full day's work, and
had only just arrived, to find her husband between life and death. She
was very different from Noel; not quite so tall, but of a stronger build;
with dark chestnut-coloured hair, clear hazel eyes, and a broad brow.
The expression of her face was earnest, with a sort of constant spiritual
enquiry; and a singularly truthful look: She was just twenty; and of the
year that she had been married, had only spent six weeks with her
husband; they had not even a house of their own as yet. After resting
five minutes, she passed her hand vigorously over her face, threw back
her head, and walked up stairs to the room where he lay. He was not
conscious, and there was nothing to be done but sit and watch him.
'If he dies,' she thought, 'I shall hate God for His cruelty. I have had
six weeks with George; some people have sixty years.' She fixed her eyes
on his face, short and broad, with bumps of "observation" on the brows.
He had been sunburnt. The dark lashes of his closed eyes lay on deathly
yellow cheeks; his thick hair grew rather low on his broad forehead. The
lips were just open and showed strong white teeth. He had a little
clipped moustache, and hair had grown on his clean-cut jaw. His pyjama
jacket had fallen open. Gratian drew it close. It was curiously still,
for a London day, though the window was wide open. Anything to break
this heavy stupor, which was not only George's, but her own, and the very
world's! The cruelty of it--when she might be going to lose him for
ever, in a few hours or days! She thought of their last parting. It had
not been very loving, had come too soon after one of those arguments they
were inclined to have, in which they could not as yet disagree with
suavity. George had said there was no future life for the individual;
she had maintained there was. They had grown hot and impatient. Even in
the cab on the way to his train they had pursued the wretched discussion,
and the last kiss had been from lips on lips yet warm from disagreement.
Ever since, as if in compunction, she had been wavering towards his point
of view; and now, when he was perhaps to solve the problem--find out for
certain--she had come to feel that if he died, she would never see him
after. It was cruel that such a blight should have come on her belief at
this, of all moments.
She laid her hand on his. It was warm, felt strong, although so
motionless and helpless. George was so vigorous, so alive, and
strong-willed; it seemed impossible that life might be going to play him
false. She recalled the unflinching look of his steel-bright eyes, his
deep, queerly vibrating voice, which had no trace of self-consciousness
or pretence. She slipped her hand on to his heart, and began very
slowly, gently rubbing it. He, as doctor, and she, as nurse, had both
seen so much of death these last two years! Yet it seemed suddenly as if
she had never seen death, and that the young faces she had seen, empty
and white, in the hospital wards, had just been a show. Death would
appear to her for the first time, if this face which she loved were to be
drained for ever of light and colour and movement and meaning.
A humblebee from the Square Garden boomed in and buzzed idly round the
room. She caught her breath in a little sob....
2
Pierson received that telegram at midday, returning from a lonely walk
after his talk with Thirza. Coming from Gratian so self-reliant--it
meant the worst. He prepared at once to catch the next train. Noel was
out, no one knew where: so with a sick feeling he wrote:
"DEAREST CHILD,
"I am going up to Gratian; poor George is desperately ill. If it goes
badly you should be with your sister. I will wire to-morrow morning
early. I leave you in your aunt's hands, my dear. Be reasonable and
patient. God bless you.
"Your devoted
"DADDY."
He was alone in his third-class compartment, and, leaning forward,
watched the ruined Abbey across the river till it was out of sight. Those
old monks had lived in an age surely not so sad as this. They must have
had peaceful lives, remote down here, in days when the Church was great
and lovely, and men laid down their lives for their belief in her, and
built everlasting fanes to the glory of God! What a change to this age
of rush and hurry, of science, trade, material profit, and this terrible
war! He tried to read his paper, but it was full of horrors and hate.
'When will it end?' he thought. And the train with its rhythmic jolting
seemed grinding out the answer: "Never--never!"
At Chepstow a soldier got in, followed by a woman with a very flushed
face and curious, swimmy eyes; her hair was in disorder, and her lip
bleeding, as if she had bitten it through. The soldier, too, looked
strained and desperate. They sat down, far apart, on the seat opposite.
Pierson, feeling that he was in their way, tried to hide himself behind
his paper; when he looked again, the soldier had taken off his tunic and
cap and was leaning out of the window. The woman, on the seat's edge,
sniffing and wiping her face, met his glance with resentful eyes, then,
getting up, she pulled the man's sleeve.
"Sit dahn; don't 'ang out o' there."
The soldier flung himself back on the seat and looked at Pierson.
"The wife an' me's 'ad a bit of a row," he said companionably. "Gits on
me nerves; I'm not used to it. She was in a raid, and 'er nerves are all
gone funny; ain't they, old girl? Makes me feel me 'ead. I've been
wounded there, you know; can't stand much now. I might do somethin' if
she was to go on like this for long."
Pierson looked at the woman, but her eyes still met his resentfully. The
soldier held out a packet of cigarettes. "Take one," he said. Pierson
took one and, feeling that the soldier wanted him to speak, murmured: "We
all have these troubles with those we're fond of; the fonder we are of
people, the more we feel them, don't we? I had one with my daughter last
night."
"Ah!" said the soldier; "that's right. The wife and me'll make it up.
'Ere, come orf it, old girl."
From behind his paper he soon became conscious of the sounds of
reconciliation--reproaches because someone had been offered a drink,
kisses mixed with mild slappings, and abuse. When they got out at
Bristol the soldier shook his hand warmly, but the woman still gave him
her resentful stare, and he thought dreamily: 'The war! How it affects
everyone!' His carriage was invaded by a swarm of soldiers, and the rest
of the journey was passed in making himself small. When at last he
reached home, Gratian met him in the hall.
"Just the same. The doctor says we shall know in a few hours now. How
sweet of you to come! You must be tired, in this heat. It was dreadful
to spoil your holiday."
"My dear! As if May I go up and see him?"
George Laird was still lying in that stupor. And Pierson stood gazing
down at him compassionately. Like most parsons, he had a wide
acquaintance with the sick and dying; and one remorseless fellowship with
death. Death! The commonest thing in the world, now--commoner than
life! This young doctor must have seen many die in these last two years,
saved many from death; and there he lay, not able to lift a finger to
save himself. Pierson looked at his daughter; what a strong, promising
young couple they were! And putting his arm round her, he led her away
to the sofa, whence they could see the sick man.
"If he dies, Dad--" she whispered.
"He will have died for the Country, my love, as much as ever our soldiers
do."
"I know; but that's no comfort. I've been watching here all day; I've
been thinking; men will be just as brutal afterwards--more brutal. The
world will go on the same."
"We must hope not. Shall we pray, Gracie?"
Gratian shook her head.
"If I could believe that the world--if I could believe anything! I've
lost the power, Dad; I don't even believe in a future life. If George
dies, we shall never meet again."
Pierson stared at her without a word.
Gratian went on: "The last time we talked, I was angry with George
because he laughed at my belief; now that I really want belief, I feel
that he was right."
Pierson said tremulously:
"No, no, my dear; it's only that you're overwrought. God in His mercy
will give you back belief."
"There is no God, Dad"
"My darling child, what are you saying?"
"No God who can help us; I feel it. If there were any God who could take
part in our lives, alter anything without our will, knew or cared what we
did--He wouldn't let the world go on as it does."
"But, my dear, His purposes are inscrutable. We dare not say He should
not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends He is working."
"Then He's no good to us. It's the same as if He didn't exist. Why
should I pray for George's life to One whose ends are just His own? I
know George oughtn't to die. If there's a God who can help, it will be a
wicked shame if George dies; if there's a God who can help, it's a wicked
shame when babies die, and all these millions of poor boys. I would
rather think there's no God than a helpless or a wicked God--"
Her father had suddenly thrown up his hands to his ears. She moved
closer, and put her arm round him.
"Dad dear, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."
Pierson pressed her face down to his shoulder; and said in a dull voice:
"What do you think would have happened to me, Gracie, if I had lost
belief when your mother died? I have never lost belief. Pray God I
never shall!"
Gratian murmured:
"George would not wish me to pretend I believe--he would want me to be
honest. If I'm not honest, I shan't deserve that he should live. I don't
believe, and I can't pray."
"My darling, you're overtired."
"No, Dad." She raised her head from his shoulder and, clasping her hands
round her knees, looked straight before her. "We can only help
ourselves; and I can only bear it if I rebel."
Pierson sat with trembling lips, feeling that nothing he could say would
touch her just then. The sick man's face was hardly visible now in the
twilight, and Gratian went over to his bed. She stood looking down at
him a long time.
"Go and rest, Dad; the doctor's coming again at eleven. I'll call you if
I want anything. I shall lie down a little, beside him."
Pierson kissed her, and went out. To lie there beside him would be the
greatest comfort she could get. He went to the bare narrow little room
he had occupied ever since his wife died; and, taking off his boots,
walked up and down, with a feeling of almost crushing loneliness. Both
his daughters in such trouble, and he of no use to them! It was as if
Life were pushing him utterly aside! He felt confused, helpless,
bewildered. Surely if Gratian loved George, she had not left God's side,
whatever she might say. Then, conscious of the profound heresy of this
thought, he stood still at the open window.
Earthly love--heavenly love; was there any analogy between them?
From the Square Gardens the indifferent whisper of the leaves answered;
and a newsvendor at the far end, bawling his nightly tale of murder.
3
George Laird passed the crisis of his illness that night, and in the
morning was pronounced out of danger. He had a splendid constitution,
and--Scotsman on his father's side--a fighting character. He came back
to life very weak, but avid of recovery; and his first words were: "I've
been hanging over the edge, Gracie!"
A very high cliff, and his body half over, balancing; one inch, the
merest fraction of an inch more, and over he would have gone. Deuced rum
sensation! But not so horrible as it would have been in real life. With
the slip of that last inch he felt he would have passed at once into
oblivion, without the long horror of a fall. So this was what it was for
all the poor fellows he had seen slip in the past two years! Mercifully,
at the end, one was not alive enough to be conscious of what one was
leaving, not alive enough even to care. If he had been able to take in
the presence of his young wife, able to realise that he was looking at
her face, touching her for the last time--it would have been hell; if he
had been up to realising sunlight, moonlight, the sound of the world's
life outside, the softness of the bed he lay on--it would have meant the
most poignant anguish of defraudment. Life was a rare good thing, and to
be squashed out of it with your powers at full, a wretched mistake in
Nature's arrangements, a wretched villainy on the part of Man--for his
own death, like all those other millions of premature deaths, would have
been due to the idiocy and brutality of men! He could smile now, with
Gratian looking down at him, but the experience had heaped fuel on a fire
which had always smouldered in his doctor's soul against that half
emancipated breed of apes, the human race. Well, now he would get a few
days off from his death-carnival! And he lay, feasting his returning
senses on his wife. She made a pretty nurse, and his practised eye
judged her a good one--firm and quiet.
George Laird was thirty. At the opening of the war he was in an East-End
practice, and had volunteered at once for service with the Army. For the
first nine months he had been right up in the thick of it. A poisoned
arm; rather than the authorities, had sent him home. During that leave he
married Gratian. He had known the Piersons some time; and, made
conscious of the instability of life, had resolved to marry her at the
first chance he got. For his father-in-law he had respect and liking,
ever mixed with what was not quite contempt and not quite pity. The
blend of authority with humility, cleric with dreamer, monk with artist,
mystic with man of action, in Pierson, excited in him an interested, but
often irritated, wonder. He saw things so differently himself, and had
little of the humorous curiosity which enjoys what is strange simply
because it is strange. They could never talk together without soon
reaching a point when he wanted to say: "If we're not to trust our reason
and our senses for what they're worth, sir--will you kindly tell me what
we are to trust? How can we exert them to the utmost in some matters,
and in others suddenly turn our backs on them?" Once, in one of their
discussions, which often bordered on acrimony, he had expounded himself
at length.
"I grant," he had said, "that there's a great ultimate Mystery, that we
shall never know anything for certain about the origin of life and the
principle of the Universe; but why should we suddenly shut up our
enquiring apparatus and deny all the evidence of our reason--say, about
the story of Christ, or the question of a future life, or our moral code?
If you want me to enter a temple of little mysteries, leaving my reason
and senses behind--as a Mohammedan leaves his shoes--it won't do to say
to me simply: 'There it is! Enter!' You must show me the door; and you
can't! And I'll tell you why, sir. Because in your brain there's a
little twist which is not in mine, or the lack of a little twist which is
in mine. Nothing more than that divides us into the two main species of
mankind, one of whom worships, and one of whom doesn't. Oh, yes! I
know; you won't admit that, because it makes your religions natural
instead of what you call supernatural. But I assure you there's nothing
more to it. Your eyes look up or they look down--they never look straight
before them. Well, mine do just the opposite."
That day Pierson had been feeling very tired, and though to meet this
attack was vital, he had been unable to meet it. His brain had
stammered. He had turned a little away, leaning his cheek on his hand,
as if to cover that momentary break in his defences. Some days later he
had said:
"I am able now to answer your questions, George. I think I can make you
understand."
Laird had answered: "All right, sir; go ahead."
"You begin by assuming that the human reason is the final test of all
things. What right have you to assume that? Suppose you were an ant.
You would take your ant's reason as the final test, wouldn't you? Would
that be the truth?" And a smile had fixed itself on his lips above his
little grave beard.
George Laird also had smiled.
"That seems a good point, sir," he said, "until you recognise that I
don't take, the human reason as final test in any absolute sense. I only
say it's the highest test we can apply; and that, behind that test all is
quite dark and unknowable."
"Revelation, then, means nothing to you?"
"Nothing, sir."
"I don't think we can usefully go on, George."
"I don't think we can, sir. In talking with you, I always feel like
fighting a man with one hand tied behind his back."
"And I, perhaps, feel that I am arguing with one who was blind from
birth."
For all that, they had often argued since; but never without those
peculiar smiles coming on their faces. Still, they respected each other,
and Pierson had not opposed his daughter's marriage to this heretic, whom
he knew to be an honest and trustworthy man. It had taken place before
Laird's arm was well, and the two had snatched a month's honeymoon before
he went back to France, and she to her hospital in Manchester. Since
then, just one February fortnight by the sea had been all their time
together....
In the afternoon he had asked for beef tea, and, having drunk a cup,
said:
"I've got something to tell your father."
But warned by the pallor of his smiling lips, Gratian answered:
"Tell me first, George."
"Our last talk, Gracie; well--there's nothing--on the other side. I
looked over; it's as black as your hat."
Gratian shivered.
"I know. While you were lying here last night, I told father."
He squeezed her hand, and said: "I also want to tell him."
"Dad will say the motive for life is gone."
"I say it leaps out all the more, Gracie. What a mess we make of it--we
angel-apes! When shall we be men, I wonder? You and I, Gracie, will
fight for a decent life for everybody. No hands-upping about that! Bend
down! It's good to touch you again; everything's good. I'm going to have
a sleep...."
After the relief of the doctor's report in the early morning Pierson had
gone through a hard struggle. What should he wire to Noel? He longed to
get her back home, away from temptation to the burning indiscretion of
this marriage. But ought he to suppress reference to George's progress?
Would that be honest? At last he sent this telegram: "George out of
danger but very weak. Come up." By the afternoon post, however, he
received a letter from Thirza:
"I have had two long talks with Noel and Cyril. It is impossible to
budge them. And I really think, dear Edward, that it will be a mistake
to oppose it rigidly. He may not go out as soon as we think. How would
it be to consent to their having banns published?--that would mean
another three weeks anyway, and in absence from each other they might be
influenced to put it off. I'm afraid this is the only chance, for if you
simply forbid it, I feel they will run off and get married somewhere at a
registrar's."
Pierson took this letter out with him into the Square Garden, for painful
cogitation. No man can hold a position of spiritual authority for long
years without developing the habit of judgment. He judged Noel's conduct
to be headlong and undisciplined, and the vein of stubbornness in his
character fortified the father and the priest within him. Thirza
disappointed him; she did not seem to see the irretrievable gravity of
this hasty marriage. She seemed to look on it as something much lighter
than it was, to consider that it might be left to Chance, and that if
Chance turned out unfavourable, there would still be a way out. To him
there would be no way out. He looked up at the sky, as if for
inspiration. It was such a beautiful day, and so bitter to hurt his
child, even for her good! What would her mother have advised? Surely
Agnes had felt at least as deeply as himself the utter solemnity of
marriage! And, sitting there in the sunlight, he painfully hardened his
heart. He must do what he thought right, no matter what the
consequences. So he went in and wrote that he could not agree, and
wished Noel to come back home at once.
V
1
But on the same afternoon, just about that hour, Noel was sitting on the
river-bank with her arms folded tight across her chest, and by her side
Cyril Morland, with despair in his face, was twisting a telegram "Rejoin
tonight. Regiment leaves to-morrow."
What consolation that a million such telegrams had been read and sorrowed
over these last two years! What comfort that the sun was daily blotted
dim for hundreds of bright eyes; the joy of life poured out and sopped up
by the sands of desolation!
"How long have we got, Cyril?"
"I've engaged a car from the Inn, so I needn't leave till midnight. I've
packed already, to have more time."
"Let's have it to ourselves, then. Let's go off somewhere. I've got
some chocolate."
Morland answered miserably:
"I can send the car up here for my things, and have it pick me up at the
Inn, if you'll say goodbye to them for me, afterwards. We'll walk down
the line, then we shan't meet anyone."
And in the bright sunlight they walked hand in hand on each side of a
shining rail. About six they reached the Abbey.
"Let's get a boat," said Noel. "We can come back here when it's
moonlight. I know a way of getting in, after the gate's shut."
They hired a boat, rowed over to the far bank, and sat on the stern seat,
side by side under the trees where the water was stained deep green by
the high woods. If they talked, it was but a word of love now and then,
or to draw each other's attention to a fish, a bird, a dragon-fly. What
use making plans--for lovers the chief theme? Longing paralysed their
brains. They could do nothing but press close to each other, their hands
enlaced, their lips meeting now and then. On Noel's face was a strange
fixed stillness, as if she were waiting--expecting! They ate their
chocolates. The sun set, dew began to fall; the river changed, and grew
whiter; the sky paled to the colour of an amethyst; shadows lengthened,
dissolved slowly. It was past nine already; a water-rat came out, a
white owl flew over the river, towards the Abbey. The moon had come up,
but shed no light as yet. They saw no beauty in all this--too young, too
passionate, too unhappy.
Noel said: "When she's over those trees, Cyril, let's go. It'll be half
dark."
They waited, watching the moon, which crept with infinite slowness up and
up, brightening ever so little every minute.
"Now!" said Noel. And Morland rowed across.
They left the boat, and she led the way past an empty cottage, to a shed
with a roof sloping up to the Abbey's low outer wall.
"We can get over here," she whispered.
They clambered up, and over, to a piece of grassy courtyard, and passed
on to an inner court, under the black shadow of the high walls.
"What's the time?" said Noel.
"Half-past ten."
"Already! Let's sit here in the dark, and watch for the moon."
They sat down close together. Noel's face still had on it that strange
look of waiting; and Morland sat obedient, with his hand on her heart,
and his own heart beating almost to suffocation. They sat, still as
mice, and the moon crept up. It laid a first vague greyness on the high
wall, which spread slowly down, and brightened till the lichen and the
grasses up there were visible; then crept on, silvering the dark above
their heads. Noel pulled his sleeve, and whispered: "See!" There came
the white owl, soft as a snowflake, drifting across in that unearthly
light, as if flying to the moon. And just then the top of the moon itself
looked over the wall, a shaving of silvery gold. It grew, became a
bright spread fan, then balanced there, full and round, the colour of
pale honey.
"Ours!" Noel whispered.
2
From the side of the road Noel listened till the sound of the car was
lost in the folds of the valley. She did not cry, but passed her hands
over her face, and began to walk home, keeping to the shadow of the
trees. How many years had been added to her age in those six hours since
the telegram came! Several times in that mile and a half she stepped
into a patch of brighter moonlight, to take out and kiss a little
photograph, then slip it back next her heart, heedless that so warm a
place must destroy any effigy. She felt not the faintest compunction for
the recklessness of her love--it was her only comfort against the
crushing loneliness of the night. It kept her up, made her walk on with
a sort of pride, as if she had got the best of Fate. He was hers for ever
now, in spite of anything that could be done. She did not even think what
she would say when she got in. She came to the avenue, and passed up it
still in a sort of dream. Her uncle was standing before the porch; she
could hear his mutterings. She moved out of the shadow of the trees,
went straight up to him, and, looking in his perturbed face, said calmly:
"Cyril asked me to say good-bye to you all, Uncle. Good night!"
"But, I say, Nollie look here you!"
She had passed on. She went up to her room. There, by the door, her
aunt was standing, and would have kissed her. She drew back:
"No, Auntie. Not to-night!" And, slipping by, she locked her door.
Bob and Thirza Pierson, meeting in their own room, looked at each other
askance. Relief at their niece's safe return was confused by other
emotions. Bob Pierson expressed his first:
"Phew! I was beginning to think we should w have to drag the river. What
girls are coming to!"
"It's the war, Bob."
"I didn't like her face, old girl. I don't know what it was, but I
didn't like her face."
Neither did Thirza, but she would not admit it, and encourage Bob to take
it to heart. He took things so hardly, and with such a noise!
She only said: "Poor young things! I suppose it will be a relief to
Edward!"
"I love Nollie!" said Bob Pierson suddenly. "She's an affectionate
creature. D-nit, I'm sorry about this. It's not so bad for young
Morland; he's got the excitement--though I shouldn't like to be leaving
Nollie, if I were young again. Thank God, neither of our boys is
engaged. By George! when I think of them out there, and myself here, I
feel as if the top of my head would come off. And those politician chaps
spouting away in every country--how they can have the cheek!"
Thirza looked at him anxiously.
"And no dinner!" he said suddenly. "What d'you think they've been doing
with themselves?"
"Holding each other's hands, poor dears! D'you know what time it is,
Bob? Nearly one o'clock."
"Well, all I can say is, I've had a wretched evening. Get to bed, old
girl. You'll be fit for nothing."
He was soon asleep, but Thirza lay awake, not exactly worrying, for that
was not her nature, but seeing Noel's face, pale, languid, passionate,
possessed by memory.
VI
1
Noel reached her father's house next day late in the afternoon. There was
a letter in the hall for her. She tore it open, and read:
"MY DARLING LOVE,
"I got back all right, and am posting this at once to tell you we shall
pass through London, and go from Charing Cross, I expect about nine
o'clock to-night. I shall look out for you, there, in case you are up in
time. Every minute I think of you, and of last night. Oh! Noel!
"Your devoted lover, "C."
She looked at the wrist-watch which, like every other little patriot, she
possessed. Past seven! If she waited, Gratian or her father would seize
on her.
"Take my things up, Dinah. I've got a headache from travelling; I'm
going to walk it off. Perhaps I shan't be in till past nine or so. Give
my love to them all."
"Oh, Miss Noel, you can't,--"
But Noel was gone. She walked towards Charing Cross; and, to kill time,
went into a restaurant and had that simple repast, coffee and a bun,
which those in love would always take if Society did not forcibly feed
them on other things. Food was ridiculous to her. She sat there in the
midst of a perfect hive of creatures eating hideously. The place was
shaped like a modern prison, having tiers of gallery round an open space,
and in the air was the smell of viands and the clatter of plates and the
music of a band. Men in khaki everywhere, and Noel glanced from form to
form to see if by chance one might be that which represented, for her,
Life and the British Army. At half-past eight she went out and made her
way: through the crowd, still mechanically searching "khaki" for what she
wanted; and it was perhaps fortunate that there was about her face and
walk something which touched people. At the station she went up to an
old porter, and, putting a shilling into his astonished hand, asked him
to find out for her whence Morland's regiment would start. He came back
presently, and said:
"Come with me, miss."
Noel went. He was rather lame, had grey whiskers, and a ghostly thin
resemblance to her uncle Bob, which perhaps had been the reason why she
had chosen him. 64
"Brother goin' out, miss?"
Noel nodded.
"Ah! It's a crool war. I shan't be sorry when it's over. Goin' out and
comin' in, we see some sad sights 'ere. Wonderful spirit they've got,
too. I never look at the clock now but what I think: 'There you go,
slow-coach! I'd like to set you on to the day the boys come back!' When
I puts a bag in: 'Another for 'ell' I thinks. And so it is, miss, from
all I can 'ear. I've got a son out there meself. It's 'ere they'll come
along. You stand quiet and keep a lookout, and you'll get a few minutes
with him when he's done with 'is men. I wouldn't move, if I were you;
he'll come to you, all right--can't miss you, there.' And, looking at
her face, he thought: 'Astonishin' what a lot o' brothers go. Wot oh!
Poor little missy! A little lady, too. Wonderful collected she is.
It's 'ard!'" And trying to find something consoling to say, he mumbled
out: "You couldn't be in a better place for seen'im off. Good night,
miss; anything else I can do for you?"
"No, thank you; you're very kind."
He looked back once or twice at her blue-clad figure standing very still.
He had left her against a little oasis of piled-up empty milk-cans, far
down the platform where a few civilians in similar case were scattered.
The trainway was empty as yet. In the grey immensity of the station and
the turmoil of its noise, she felt neither lonely nor conscious of others
waiting; too absorbed in the one thought of seeing him and touching him
again. The empty train began backing in, stopped, and telescoped with a
series of little clattering bangs, backed on again, and subsided to rest.
Noel turned her eyes towards the station arch ways. Already she felt
tremulous, as though the regiment were sending before it the vibration of
its march.
She had not as yet seen a troop-train start, and vague images of brave
array, of a flag fluttering, and the stir of drums, beset her. Suddenly
she saw a brown swirling mass down there at the very edge, out of which a
thin brown trickle emerged towards her; no sound of music, no waved flag.
She had a longing to rush down to the barrier, but remembering the words
of the porter, stayed where she was, with her hands tightly squeezed
together. The trickle became a stream, a flood, the head of which began
to reach her. With a turbulence of voices, sunburnt men, burdened up to
the nose, passed, with rifles jutting at all angles; she strained her
eyes, staring into that stream as one might into a walking wood, to
isolate a single tree. Her head reeled with the strain of it, and the
effort to catch his voice among the hubbub of all those cheery, common,
happy-go-lucky sounds. Some who saw her clucked their tongues, some went
by silent, others seemed to scan her as though she might be what they
were looking for. And ever the stream and the hubbub melted into the
train, and yet came pouring on. And still she waited motionless, with an
awful fear. How could he ever find her, or she him? Then she saw that
others of those waiting had found their men. And the longing to rush up
and down the platform almost overcame her; but still she waited. And
suddenly she saw him with two other officer boys, close to the carriages,
coming slowly down towards her. She stood with her eyes fixed on his
face; they passed, and she nearly cried out. Then he turned, broke away
from the other two, and came straight to her. He had seen her before she
had seen him. He was very flushed, had a little fixed frown between his
blue eyes and a set jaw. They stood looking at each other, their hands
hard gripped; all the emotion of last night welling up within them, so
that to speak would have been to break down. The milk-cans formed a kind
of shelter, and they stood so close together that none could see their
faces. Noel was the first to master her power of speech; her words came
out, dainty as ever, through trembling lips:
"Write to me as much as ever you can, Cyril. I'm going to be a nurse at
once. And the first leave you get, I shall come to you--don't forget."
"Forget! Move a little back, darling; they can't see us here. Kiss me!"
She moved back, thrust her face forward so that he need not stoop, and
put her lips up to his. Then, feeling that she might swoon and fall over
among the cans, she withdrew her mouth, leaving her forehead against his
lips. He murmured:
"Was it all right when you got in last night?"
"Yes; I said good-bye for you."
"Oh! Noel--I've been afraid--I oughtn't--I oughtn't--"
"Yes, yes; nothing can take you from me now."
"You have got pluck. More than!"
Along whistle sounded. Morland grasped her hands convulsively:
"Good-bye, my little wife! Don't fret. Goodbye! I must go. God bless
you, Noel!"
"I love you."
They looked at each other, just another moment, then she took her hands
from his and stood back in the shadow of the milk-cans, rigid, following
him with her eyes till he was lost in the train.
Every carriage window was full of those brown figures and red-brown
faces, hands were waving vaguely, voices calling vaguely, here and there
one cheered; someone leaning far out started to sing: "If auld
acquaintance--" But Noel stood quite still in the shadow of the
milk-cans, her lips drawn in, her hands hard clenched in front of her;
and young Morland at his window gazed back at her.
2
How she came to be sitting in Trafalgar Square she did not know. Tears
had formed a mist between her and all that seething, summer-evening
crowd. Her eyes mechanically followed the wandering search-lights, those
new milky ways, quartering the heavens and leading nowhere. All was
wonderfully beautiful, the sky a deep dark blue, the moonlight whitening
the spire of St. Martin's, and everywhere endowing the great blacked-out
buildings with dream-life. Even the lions had come to life, and stared
out over this moonlit desert of little human figures too small to be
worth the stretching out of a paw. She sat there, aching dreadfully, as
if the longing of every bereaved heart in all the town had settled in
her. She felt it tonight a thousand times worse; for last night she had
been drugged on the new sensation of love triumphantly fulfilled. Now
she felt as if life had placed her in the corner of a huge silent room,
blown out the flame of joy, and locked the door. A little dry sob came
from her. The hay-fields and Cyril, with shirt unbuttoned at the neck,
pitching hay and gazing at her while she dabbled her fork in the thin
leavings. The bright river, and their boat grounded on the shallows, and
the swallows flitting over them. And that long dance, with the feel of
his hand between her shoulder-blades! Memories so sweet and sharp that
she almost cried out. She saw again their dark grassy courtyard in the
Abbey, and the white owl flying over them. The white owl! Flying there
again to-night, with no lovers on the grass below! She could only
picture Cyril now as a brown atom in that swirling brown flood of men,
flowing to a huge brown sea. Those cruel minutes on the platform, when
she had searched and searched the walking wood for her, one tree, seemed
to have burned themselves into her eyes. Cyril was lost, she could not
single him out, all blurred among those thousand other shapes. And
suddenly she thought: 'And I--I'm lost to him; he's never seen me at
home, never seen me in London; he won't be able to imagine me. It's all
in the past, only the past--for both of us. Is there anybody so
unhappy?' And the town's voices-wheels, and passing feet, whistles,
talk, laughter--seemed to answer callously: 'Not one.' She looked at her
wrist-watch; like his, it had luminous hands: 'Half-past ten' was
greenishly imprinted there. She got up in dismay. They would think she
was lost, or run over, or something silly! She could not find an empty
taxi, and began to walk, uncertain of her way at night. At last she
stopped a policeman, and said:
"Which is the way towards Bloomsbury, please? I can't find a taxi." The
man looked at her, and took time to think it over; then he said:
"They're linin' up for the theatres," and looked at her again. Something
seemed to move in his mechanism:
"I'm goin' that way, miss. If you like, you can step along with me."
Noel stepped along.
"The streets aren't what they ought to be," the policeman said. "What
with the darkness, and the war turning the girls heads--you'd be
surprised the number of them that comes out. It's the soldiers, of
course."
Noel felt her cheeks burning.
"I daresay you wouldn't have noticed it," the policeman went on: "but
this war's a funny thing. The streets are gayer and more crowded at
night than I've ever seen them; it's a fair picnic all the time. What
we're goin' to settle down to when peace comes, I don't know. I suppose
you find it quiet enough up your way, miss?"
"Yes," said Noel; "quite quiet."
"No soldiers up in Bloomsbury. You got anyone in the Army, miss?"
Noel nodded.
"Ah! It's anxious times for ladies. What with the Zeps, and their
brothers and all in France, it's 'arassin'. I've lost a brother meself,
and I've got a boy out there in the Garden of Eden; his mother carries on
dreadful about him. What we shall think of it when it's all over, I
can't tell. These Huns are a wicked tough lot!"
Noel looked at him; a tall man, regular and orderly, with one of those
perfectly decent faces so often seen in the London police.
"I'm sorry you've lost someone," she said. "I haven't lost anyone very
near, yet."
"Well, let's 'ope you won't, miss. These times make you feel for others,
an' that's something. I've noticed a great change in folks you'd never
think would feel for anyone. And yet I've seen some wicked things too;
we do, in the police. Some of these English wives of aliens, and
'armless little German bakers, an' Austrians, and what-not: they get a
crool time. It's their misfortune, not their fault, that's what I think;
and the way they get served--well, it makes you ashamed o' bein' English
sometimes--it does straight: And the women are the worst. I said to my
wife only last night, I said: 'They call themselves Christians,' I said,
'but for all the charity that's in 'em they might as well be Huns.' She
couldn't see it-not she!' Well, why do they drop bombs?' she says.
'What!' I said, 'those English wives and bakers drop bombs? Don't be
silly,' I said. 'They're as innocent as we.' It's the innocent that gets
punished for the guilty. 'But they're all spies,' she says. 'Oh!' I
said, 'old lady! Now really! At your time of life!' But there it is;
you can't get a woman to see reason. It's readin' the papers. I often
think they must be written by women--beggin' your pardon, miss--but
reely, the 'ysterics and the 'atred--they're a fair knockout. D'you find
much hatred in your household, miss?"
Noel shook her head. "No; my father's a clergyman, you see."
"Ah!" said the policeman. And in the glance he bestowed on her could be
seen an added respect.
"Of course," he went on, "you're bound to have a sense of justice against
these Huns; some of their ways of goin' on have been above the limit.
But what I always think is--of course I don't say these things--no use to
make yourself unpopular--but to meself I often think: Take 'em man for
man, and you'd find 'em much the same as we are, I daresay. It's the
vicious way they're brought up, of actin' in the mass, that's made 'em
such a crool lot. I see a good bit of crowds in my profession, and I've
a very low opinion of them. Crowds are the most blunderin' blighted
things that ever was. They're like an angry woman with a bandage over
her eyes, an' you can't have anything more dangerous than that. These
Germans, it seems, are always in a crowd. They get a state o' mind read
out to them by Bill Kaser and all that bloody-minded lot, an' they never
stop to think for themselves."
"I suppose they'd be shot if they did," said Noel.
"Well, there is that," said the policeman reflectively. "They've brought
discipline to an 'igh pitch, no doubt. An' if you ask me,"--he lowered
his voice till it was almost lost in his chin-strap, "we'll be runnin'
'em a good second 'ere, before long. The things we 'ave to protect now
are gettin' beyond a joke. There's the City against lights, there's the
streets against darkness, there's the aliens, there's the aliens' shops,
there's the Belgians, there's the British wives, there's the soldiers
against the women, there's the women against the soldiers, there's the
Peace Party, there's 'orses against croolty, there's a Cabinet Minister
every now an' then; and now we've got these Conchies. And, mind you,
they haven't raised our pay; no war wages in the police. So far as I can
see, there's only one good result of the war--the burglaries are off.
But there again, you wait a bit and see if we don't have a prize crop of
'm, or my name's not 'Arris."
"You must have an awfully exciting life!" said Noel.
The policeman looked down at her sideways, without lowering his face, as
only a policeman can, and said indulgently:
"We're used to it, you see; there's no excitement in what you're used to.
They find that in the trenches, I'm told. Take our seamen--there's lots
of 'em been blown up over and over again, and there they go and sign on
again next day. That's where the Germans make their mistake! England in
war-time! I think a lot, you know, on my go; you can't 'elp it--the mind
will work--an' the more I think, the more I see the fightin' spirit in
the people. We don't make a fuss about it like Bill Kaser. But you
watch a little shopman, one o' those fellows who's had his house bombed;
you watch the way he looks at the mess--sort of disgusted. You watch his
face, and you see he's got his teeth into it. You watch one of our
Tommies on 'is crutches, with the sweat pourin' off his forehead an' 'is
eyes all strainy, stumpin' along--that gives you an idea! I pity these
Peace fellows, reely I pity them; they don't know what they're up
against. I expect there's times when you wish you was a man, don't you,
miss? I'm sure there's times when I feel I'd like to go in the trenches.
That's the worst o' my job; you can't be a human bein'--not in the full
sense of the word. You mustn't let your passions rise, you mustn't
drink, you mustn't talk; it's a narrow walk o' life. Well, here you are,
miss; your Square's the next turnin' to the right. Good night and thank
you for your conversation."
Noel held out her hand. "Good night!" she said.
The policeman took her hand with a queer, flattered embarrassment.
"Good night, miss," he said again. "I see you've got a trouble; and I'm
sure I hope it'll turn out for the best."
Noel gave his huge hand a squeeze; her eyes had filled with tears, and
she turned quickly up towards the Square, where a dark figure was coming
towards her, in whom she recognised her father. His face was worn and
harassed; he walked irresolutely, like a man who has lost something.
"Nollie!" he said. "Thank God!" In his voice was an infinite relief.
"My child, where have you been?"
"It's all right, Daddy. Cyril has just gone to the front. I've been
seeing him off from Charing Cross."
Pierson slipped his arm round her. They entered the house without
speaking....
3
By the rail of his transport, as far--about two feet--as he could get
from anyone, Cyril Morland stood watching Calais, a dream city, brighten
out of the heat and grow solid. He could hear the guns already, the
voice of his new life-talking in the distance. It came with its strange
excitement into a being held by soft and marvellous memories, by one long
vision of Noel and the moonlit grass, under the dark Abbey wall. This
moment of passage from wonder to wonder was quite too much for a boy
unused to introspection, and he stood staring stupidly at Calais, while
the thunder of his new life came rolling in on that passionate moonlit
dream.
VII
After the emotions of those last three days Pierson woke with the feeling
a ship must have when it makes landfall. Such reliefs are natural, and
as a rule delusive; for events are as much the parents of the future as
they were the children of the past. To be at home with both his girls,
and resting--for his holiday would not be over for ten days--was like old
times. Now George was going on so well Gratian would be herself again;
now Cyril Morland was gone Noel would lose that sudden youthful love
fever. Perhaps in two or three days if George continued to progress, one
might go off with Noel somewhere for one's last week. In the meantime
the old house, wherein was gathered so much remembrance of happiness and
pain, was just as restful as anywhere else, and the companionship of his
girls would be as sweet as on any of their past rambling holidays in
Wales or Ireland. And that first morning of perfect idleness--for no one
knew he was back in London--pottering, and playing the piano in the
homely drawing-room where nothing to speak of was changed since his
wife's day, was very pleasant. He had not yet seen the girls, for Noel
did not come down to breakfast, and Gratian was with George.
Discovery that there was still a barrier between him and them came but
slowly in the next two days. He would not acknowledge it, yet it was
there, in their voices, in their movements--rather an absence of
something old than the presence of something new. It was as if each had
said to him: "We love you, but you are not in our secrets--and you must
not be, for you would try to destroy them." They showed no fear of him,
but seemed to be pushing him unconsciously away, lest he should restrain
or alter what was very dear to them. They were both fond of him, but
their natures had set foot on definitely diverging paths. The closer the
affection, the more watchful they were against interference by that
affection. Noel had a look on her face, half dazed, half proud, which
touched, yet vexed him. What had he done to forfeit her
confidence--surely she must see how natural and right his opposition had
been! He made one great effort to show the real sympathy he felt for
her. But she only said: "I can't talk of Cyril, Daddy; I simply can't!"
And he, who easily shrank into his shell, could not but acquiesce in her
reserve.
With Gratian it was different. He knew that an encounter was before him;
a struggle between him and her husband--for characteristically he set the
change in her, the defection of her faith, down to George, not to
spontaneous thought and feeling in herself. He dreaded and yet looked
forward to this encounter. It came on the third day, when Laird was up,
lying on that very sofa where Pierson had sat listening to Gratian's
confession of disbelief. Except for putting in his head to say good
morning, he had not yet seen his son-in-law: The young doctor could not
look fragile, the build of his face, with that law and those heavy
cheekbones was too much against it, but there was about him enough of the
look of having come through a hard fight to give Pierson's heart a
squeeze.
"Well, George," he said, "you gave us a dreadful fright! I thank God's
mercy." With that half-mechanical phrase he had flung an unconscious
challenge. Laird looked up whimsically.
"So you really think God merciful, sir?"
"Don't let us argue, George; you're not strong enough."
"Oh! I'm pining for something to bite on."
Pierson looked at Gratian, and said softly:
"God's mercy is infinite, and you know it is."
Laird also looked at Gratian, before he answered:
"God's mercy is surely the amount of mercy man has succeeded in arriving
at. How much that is, this war tells you, sir."
Pierson flushed. "I don't follow you," he said painfully. "How can you
say such things, when you yourself are only just No; I refuse to argue,
George; I refuse."
Laird stretched out his hand to his wife, who came to him, and stood
clasping it with her own. "Well, I'm going to argue," he said; "I'm
simply bursting with it. I challenge you, sir, to show me where there's
any sign of altruistic pity, except in man. Mother love doesn't
count--mother and child are too much one."
The curious smile had come already, on both their faces.
"My dear George, is not man the highest work of God, and mercy the
highest quality in man?"
"Not a bit. If geological time be taken as twenty-four hours, man's
existence on earth so far equals just two seconds of it; after a few more
seconds, when man has been frozen off the earth, geological time will
stretch for as long again, before the earth bumps into something, and
becomes nebula once more. God's hands haven't been particularly full,
sir, have they--two seconds out of twenty-four hours--if man is His pet
concern? And as to mercy being the highest quality in, man, that's only
a modern fashion of talking. Man's highest quality is the sense of
proportion, for that's what keeps him alive; and mercy, logically
pursued, would kill him off. It's a sort of a luxury or by-product."
"George! You can have no music in your soul! Science is such a little
thing, if you could only see."
"Show me a bigger, sir."
"Faith."
"In what?"
"In what has been revealed to us."
"Ah! There it is again! By whom--how?
"By God Himself--through our Lord."
A faint flush rose in Laird's yellow face, and his eyes brightened.
"Christ," he said; "if He existed, which some people, as you know, doubt,
was a very beautiful character; there have been others. But to ask us to
believe in His supernaturalness or divinity at this time of day is to ask
us to walk through the world blindfold. And that's what you do, don't
you?"
Again Pierson looked at his daughter's face. She was standing quite
still, with her eyes fixed on her husband. Somehow he was aware that all
these words of the sick man's were for her benefit. Anger, and a sort of
despair rose within him, and he said painfully:
"I cannot explain. There are things that I can't make clear, because you
are wilfully blind to all that I believe in. For what do you imagine we
are fighting this great war, if it is not to reestablish the belief in
love as the guiding principle of life?"
Laird shook his head. "We are fighting to redress a balance, which was
in danger of being lost."
"The balance of power?"
"Heavens!--no! The balance of philosophy."
Pierson smiled. "That sounds very clever, George; but again, I don't
follow you."
"The balance between the sayings: 'Might is Right,' and 'Right is Might.'
They're both half-truth, but the first was beating the other out of the
field. All the rest of it is cant, you know. And by the way, sir, your
Church is solid for punishment of the evildoer. Where's mercy there?
Either its God is not merciful, or else it doesn't believe in its God."
"Just punishment does not preclude mercy, George."
"It does in Nature."
"Ah! Nature, George--always Nature. God transcends Nature."
"Then why does He give it a free rein? A man too fond of drink, or
women--how much mercy does he get from Nature? His overindulgence brings
its exact equivalent of penalty; let him pray to God as much as he
likes--unless he alters his ways he gets no mercy. If he does alter his
ways, he gets no mercy either; he just gets Nature's due reward. We
English who have neglected brain and education--how much mercy are we
getting in this war? Mercy's a man-made ornament, disease, or
luxury--call it what you will. Except that, I've nothing to say against
it. On the contrary, I am all for it."
Once more Pierson looked at his daughter. Something in her face hurt
him--the silent intensity with which she was hanging on her husband's
words, the eager search of her eyes. And he turned to the door, saying:
"This is bad for you, George."
He saw Gratian put her hand on her husband's forehead, and
thought--jealously: 'How can I save my poor girl from this infidelity?
Are my twenty years of care to go for nothing, against this modern
spirit?'
Down in his study, the words went through his mind: "Holy, holy, holy,
Merciful and Mighty!" And going to the little piano in the corner, he
opened it, and began playing the hymn. He played it softly on the shabby
keys of this thirty-year old friend, which had been with him since
College days; and sang it softly in his worn voice.
A sound made him look up. Gratian had come in. She put her hand on his
shoulder, and said:
"I know it hurts you, Dad. But we've got to find out for ourselves,
haven't we? All the time you and George were talking, I felt that you
didn't see that it's I who've changed. It's not what he thinks, but what
I've come to think of my own accord. I wish you'd understand that I've
got a mind of my own, Dad."
Pierson looked up with amazement.
"Of course you have a mind."
Gratian shook her head. "No, you thought my mind was yours; and now you
think it's George's. But it's my own. When you were my age weren't you
trying hard to find the truth yourself, and differing from your father?"
Pierson did not answer. He could not remember. It was like stirring a
stick amongst a drift of last year's leaves, to awaken but a dry
rustling, a vague sense of unsubstantiality. Searched? No doubt he had
searched, but the process had brought him nothing. Knowledge was all
smoke! Emotional faith alone was truth--reality!
"Ah, Gracie!" he said, "search if you must, but where will you find
bottom? The well is too deep for us. You will come back to God, my
child, when you're tired out; the only rest is there."
"I don't want to rest. Some people search all their lives, and die
searching. Why shouldn't I.
"You will be most unhappy, my child."
"If I'm unhappy, Dad, it'll be because the world's unhappy. I don't
believe it ought to be; I think it only is, because it shuts its eyes."
Pierson got up. "You think I shut my eyes?"
Gratian nodded.
"If I do, it is because there is no other way to happiness."
"Are you happy; Dad?"
"As happy as my nature will let me be. I miss your mother. If I lose
you and Noel--"
"Oh, but we won't let you!"
Pierson smiled. "My dear," he said, "I think I have!"
VIII
1
Some wag, with a bit of chalk, had written the word "Peace" on three
successive doors of a little street opposite Buckingham Palace.
It caught the eye of Jimmy Fort, limping home to his rooms from a very
late discussion at his Club, and twisted his lean shaven lips into a sort
of smile. He was one of those rolling-stone Englishmen, whose early
lives are spent in all parts of the world, and in all kinds of physical
conflict--a man like a hickory stick, tall, thin, bolt-upright, knotty,
hard as nails, with a curved fighting back to his head and a straight
fighting front to his brown face. His was the type which becomes, in a
generation or so, typically Colonial or American; but no one could
possibly have taken Jimmy Fort for anything but an Englishman. Though he
was nearly forty, there was still something of the boy in his face,
something frank and curly-headed, gallant and full of steam, and his
small steady grey eyes looked out on life with a sort of combative
humour. He was still in uniform, though they had given him up as a bad
job after keeping him nine months trying to mend a wounded leg which
would never be sound again; and he was now in the War Office in
connection with horses, about which he knew. He did not like it, having
lived too long with all sorts and conditions of men who were neither
English nor official, a combination which he found trying. His life
indeed, just now, bored him to distraction, and he would ten times rather
have been back in France. This was why he found the word "Peace" so
exceptionally tantalising.
Reaching his rooms, he threw off his tunic, to whose stiff regularity he
still had a rooted aversion; and, pulling out a pipe, filled it and sat
down at his window.
Moonshine could not cool the hot town, and it seemed sleeping badly--the
seven million sleepers in their million homes. Sound lingered on, never
quite ceased; the stale odours clung in the narrow street below, though a
little wind was creeping about to sweeten the air. 'Curse the war!' he
thought. 'What wouldn't I give to be sleeping out, instead of in this
damned city!' They who slept in the open, neglecting morality, would
certainly have the best of it tonight, for no more dew was falling than
fell into Jimmy Fort's heart to cool the fret of that ceaseless thought:
'The war! The cursed war!' In the unending rows of little grey houses,
in huge caravanserais, and the mansions of the great, in villas, and high
slum tenements; in the government offices, and factories, and railway
stations where they worked all night; in the long hospitals where they
lay in rows; in the camp prisons of the interned; in bar racks,
work-houses, palaces--no head, sleeping or waking, would be free of that
thought: 'The, cursed war!' A spire caught his eye, rising ghostly over
the roofs. Ah! churches alone, void of the human soul, would be
unconscious! But for the rest, even sleep would not free them! Here a
mother would be whispering the name of her boy; there a merchant would
snore and dream he was drowning, weighted with gold; and a wife would be
turning to stretch out her arms to-no one; and a wounded soldier wake out
of a dream trench with sweat on his brow; and a newsvendor in his garret
mutter hoarsely. By thousands the bereaved would be tossing, stifling
their moans; by thousands the ruined would be gazing into the dark
future; and housewives struggling with sums; and soldiers sleeping like
logs--for to morrow they died; and children dreaming of them; and
prostitutes lying in stale wonder at the busyness of their lives; and
journalists sleeping the sleep of the just. And over them all, in the
moonlight that thought 'The cursed war!' flapped its black wings, like an
old crow! "If Christ were real," he mused, "He'd reach that moon down,
and go chalking 'Peace' with it on every door of every house, all over
Europe. But Christ's not real, and Hindenburg and Harmsworth are!" As
real they were as two great bulls he had once seen in South Africa,
fighting. He seemed to hear again the stamp and snort and crash of those
thick skulls, to see the beasts recoiling and driving at each other, and
the little red eyes of them. And pulling a letter out of his pocket, he
read it again by the light of the moon:
"15, Camelot Mansions, "St. John's Wood.
"DEAR MR. FORT, "I came across your Club address to-night, looking at
some old letters. Did you know that I was in London? I left Steenbok
when my husband died, five years ago. I've had a simply terrific time
since. While the German South West campaign was on I was nursing out
there, but came back about a year ago to lend a hand here. It would be
awfully nice to meet you again, if by any chance you are in England. I'm
working in a V. A. D. hospital in these parts, but my evenings are
usually free. Do you remember that moonlit night at grape harvest? The
nights here aren't scented quite like that. Listerine! Oh! This war!
"With all good remembrances, "LEILA LYNCH."
A terrific time! If he did not mistake, Leila Lynch had always had a
terrific time. And he smiled, seeing again the stoep of an old Dutch
house at High Constantia, and a woman sitting there under the white
flowers of a sweet-scented creeper--a pretty woman, with eyes which could
put a spell on you, a woman he would have got entangled with if he had
not cut and run for it! Ten years ago, and here she was again,
refreshing him out of the past. He sniffed the fragrance of the little
letter. How everybody always managed to work into a letter what they
were doing in the war! If he answered her he would be sure to say:
"Since I got lamed, I've been at the War Office, working on remounts, and
a dull job it is!" Leila Lynch! Women didn't get younger, and he
suspected her of being older than himself. But he remembered agreeably
her white shoulders and that turn of her neck when she looked at you with
those big grey eyes of hers. Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they
had crowded much into it as one did in a strange land. The episode had
been a green and dangerous spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of
bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set foot on which was to let you
down up to the neck, at least. Well, there was none of that danger now,
for her husband was dead-poor chap! It would be nice, in these dismal
days, when nobody spent any time whatever except in the service of the
country, to improve his powers of service by a few hours' recreation in
her society. 'What humbugs we are!' he thought: 'To read the newspapers
and the speeches you'd believe everybody thought of nothing but how to
get killed for the sake of the future. Drunk on verbiage! What heads
and mouths we shall all have when we wake up some fine morning with Peace
shining in at the window! Ah! If only we could; and enjoy ourselves
again!' And he gazed at the moon. She was dipping already, reeling away
into the dawn. Water carts and street sweepers had come out into the
glimmer; sparrows twittered in the eaves. The city was raising a strange
unknown face to the grey light, shuttered and deserted as Babylon. Jimmy
Fort tapped out his pipe, sighed, and got into bed.
2
Coming off duty at that very moment, Leila Lynch decided to have her
hour's walk before she went home. She was in charge of two wards, and as
a rule took the day watches; but some slight upset had given her this
extra spell. She was, therefore, at her worst, or perhaps at her best,
after eighteen hours in hospital. Her cheeks were pale, and about her
eyes were little lines, normally in hiding. There was in this face a
puzzling blend of the soft and hard, for the eyes, the rather full lips,
and pale cheeks, were naturally soft; but they were hardened by the
self-containment which grows on women who have to face life for
themselves, and, conscious of beauty, intend to keep it, in spite of age.
Her figure was contradictory, also; its soft modelling a little too
rigidified by stays. In this desert of the dawn she let her long blue
overcoat flap loose, and swung her hat on a finger, so that her
light-brown, touched-up hair took the morning breeze with fluffy freedom.
Though she could not see herself, she appreciated her appearance, swaying
along like that, past lonely trees and houses. A pity there was no one
to see her in that round of Regent's Park, which took her the best part
of an hour, walking in meditation, enjoying the colour coming back into
the world, as if especially for her.
There was character in Leila Lynch, and she had lived an interesting life
from a certain point of view. In her girlhood she had fluttered the
hearts of many besides Cousin Edward Pierson, and at eighteen had made a
passionate love match with a good-looking young Indian civilian, named
Fane. They had loved each other to a standstill in twelve months. Then
had begun five years of petulance, boredom, and growing cynicism, with
increasing spells of Simla, and voyages home for her health which was
really harmed by the heat. All had culminated, of course, in another
passion for a rifleman called Lynch. Divorce had followed, remarriage,
and then the Boer War, in which he had been badly wounded. She had gone
out and nursed him back to half his robust health, and, at twenty-eight,
taken up life with him on an up-country farm in Cape Colony. This middle
period had lasted ten years, between the lonely farm and an old Dutch
house at High Constantia. Lynch was not a bad fellow, but, like most
soldiers of the old Army, had been quite carefully divested of an
aesthetic sense. And it was Leila's misfortune to have moments when
aesthetic sense seemed necessary. She had struggled to overcome this
weakness, and that other weakness of hers--a liking for men's admiration;
but there had certainly been intervals when she had not properly
succeeded. Her acquaintance with Jimmy Fort had occurred during one of
these intervals, and when he went back to England so abruptly, she had
been feeling very tenderly towards him. She still remembered him with a
certain pleasure. Before Lynch died, these "intervals" had been
interrupted by a spell of returning warmth for the invalided man to whom
she had joined her life under the romantic conditions of divorce. He had
failed, of course, as a farmer, and his death left her with nothing but
her own settled income of a hundred and fifty pounds a year. Faced by
the prospect of having almost to make her living, at thirty-eight, she
felt but momentary dismay--for she had real pluck. Like many who have
played with amateur theatricals, she fancied herself as an actress; but,
after much effort, found that only her voice and the perfect preservation
of her legs were appreciated by the discerning managers and public of
South Africa; and for three chequered years she made face against fortune
with the help of them, under an assumed name. What she did--keeping a
certain bloom of refinement, was far better than the achievements of many
more respectable ladies in her shoes. At least she never bemoaned her
"reduced circumstances," and if her life was irregular and had at least
three episodes, it was very human. She bravely took the rough with the
smooth, never lost the power of enjoying herself, and grew in sympathy
with the hardships of others. But she became deadly tired. When the war
broke out, remembering that she was a good nurse, she took her real name
again and a change of occupation. For one who liked to please men, and
to be pleased by them, there was a certain attraction about that life in
war-time; and after two years of it she could still appreciate the way
her Tommies turned their heads to look at her when she passed their beds.
But in a hard school she had learned perfect self-control; and though the
sour and puritanical perceived her attraction, they knew her to be
forty-three. Besides, the soldiers liked her; and there was little
trouble in her wards. The war moved her in simple ways; for she was
patriotic in the direct fashion of her class. Her father had been a
sailor, her husbands an official and a soldier; the issue for her was
uncomplicated by any abstract meditation. The Country before everything!
And though she had tended during those two years so many young wrecked
bodies, she had taken it as all in the a day's work, lavishing her
sympathy on the individual, without much general sense of pity and waste.
Yes, she had worked really hard, had "done her bit"; but of late she had
felt rising within her the old vague craving for "life," for pleasure,
for something more than the mere negative admiration bestowed on her by
her "Tommies." Those old letters--to look them through them had been a
sure sign of this vague craving--had sharpened to poignancy the feeling
that life was slipping away from her while she was still comely. She had
been long out of England, and so hard-worked since she came back that
there were not many threads she could pick up suddenly. Two letters out
of that little budget of the past, with a far cry between them, had
awakened within her certain sentimental longings.
"DEAR LADY OF THE STARRY FLOWERS,
"Exiturus (sic) to saluto! The tender carries you this message of
good-bye. Simply speaking, I hate leaving South Africa. And of all my
memories, the last will live the longest. Grape harvest at Constantia,
and you singing: 'If I could be the falling dew: If ever you and your
husband come to England, do let me know, that I may try and repay a
little the happiest five days I've spent out here.
"Your very faithful servant,
"TIMMY FORT."
She remembered a very brown face, a tall slim figure, and something
gallant about the whole of him. What was he like after ten years?
Grizzled, married, with a large family? An odious thing--Time! And
Cousin Edward's little yellow letter.
Good heavens! Twenty-six years ago--before he was a parson, or married
or anything! Such a good partner, really musical; a queer, dear fellow,
devoted, absentminded, easily shocked, yet with flame burning in him
somewhere.
'DEAR LEILA,
"After our last dance I went straight off'--I couldn't go in. I went
down to the river, and walked along the bank; it was beautiful, all grey
and hazy, and the trees whispered, and the cows looked holy; and I walked
along and thought of you. And a farmer took me for a lunatic, in my
dress clothes. Dear Leila, you were so pretty last night, and I did love
our dances. I hope you are not tired, and that I shall see you soon
again:
"Your affectionate cousin,
"EDWARD PIERSON."
And then he had gone and become a parson, and married, and been a widower
fifteen years. She remembered the death of his wife, just before she
left for South Africa, at that period of disgrace when she had so shocked
her family by her divorce. Poor Edward--quite the nicest of her cousins!
The only one she would care to see again. He would be very old and
terribly good and proper, by now.
Her wheel of Regent's Park was coming full circle, and the sun was up
behind the houses, but still no sound of traffic stirred. She stopped
before a flower-bed where was some heliotrope, and took a long, luxurious
sniff: She could not resist plucking a sprig, too, and holding it to her
nose. A sudden want of love had run through every nerve and fibre of
her; she shivered, standing there with her eyes half closed, above the
pale violet blossom. Then, noting by her wrist-watch that it was four
o'clock, she hurried on, to get to her bed, for she would have to be on
duty again at noon. Oh! the war! She was tired! If only it were over,
and one could live!...
Somewhere by Twickenham the moon had floated down; somewhere up from
Kentish Town the sun came soaring; wheels rolled again, and the seven
million sleepers in their million houses woke from morning sleep to that
same thought....
IX
Edward Pierson, dreaming over an egg at breakfast, opened a letter in a
handwriting which he did not recognise.
"V. A. D. Hospital,
"Mulberry Road, St. John's Wood N. W.
"DEAR COUSIN EDWARD,
"Do you remember me, or have I gone too far into the shades of night? I
was Leila Pierson once upon a time, and I often think of you and wonder
what you are like now, and what your girls are like. I have been here
nearly a year, working for our wounded, and for a year before that was
nursing in South Africa. My husband died five years ago out there.
Though we haven't met for I dare not think how long, I should awfully
like to see you again. Would you care to come some day and look over my
hospital? I have two wards under me; our men are rather dears.
"Your forgotten but still affectionate cousin
"LEILA LYNCH."
"P. S. I came across a little letter you once wrote me; it brought back
old days."
No! He had not forgotten. There was a reminder in the house. And he
looked up at Noel sitting opposite. How like the eyes were! And he
thought: 'I wonder what Leila has become. One mustn't be uncharitable.
That man is dead; she has been nursing two years. She must be greatly
changed; I should certainly like to see her. I will go!' Again he
looked at Noel. Only yesterday she had renewed her request to be allowed
to begin her training as a nurse.
"I'm going to see a hospital to-day, Nollie," he said; "if you like, I'll
make enquiries. I'm afraid it'll mean you have to begin by washing up."
"I know; anything, so long as I do begin."
"Very well; I'll see about it." And he went back to his egg.
Noel's voice roused him. "Do you feel the war much, Daddy? Does it hurt
you here?" She had put her hand on her heart. "Perhaps it doesn't,
because you live half in the next world, don't you?"
The words: "God forbid," sprang to Pierson's lips; he did not speak them,
but put his egg-spoon down, hurt and bewildered. What did the child
mean? Not feel the war! He smiled.
"I hope I'm able to help people sometimes, Nollie," and was conscious
that he had answered his own thoughts, not her words. He finished his
breakfast quickly, and very soon went out. He crossed the Square, and
passed East, down two crowded streets to his church. In the traffic of
those streets, all slipshod and confused, his black-clothed figure and
grave face, with its Vandyk beard, had a curious remote appearance, like
a moving remnant of a past civilisation. He went in by the side door.
Only five days he had been away, but they had been so full of emotion
that the empty familiar building seemed almost strange to him. He had
come there unconsciously, groping for anchorage and guidance in this
sudden change of relationship between him and his daughters. He stood by
the pale brazen eagle, staring into the chancel. The choir were wanting
new hymn-books--he must not forget to order them! His eyes sought the
stained-glass window he had put in to the memory of his wife. The sun,
too high to slant, was burnishing its base, till it glowed of a deep
sherry colour. "In the next world!" What strange words of Noel's! His
eyes caught the glimmer of the organ-pipes; and, mounting to the loft, he
began to play soft chords wandering into each other. He finished, and
stood gazing down. This space within high walls, under high vaulted
roof, where light was toned to a perpetual twilight, broken here and
there by a little glow of colour from glass and flowers, metal, and dark
wood, was his home, his charge, his refuge. Nothing moved down there,
and yet--was not emptiness mysteriously living, the closed-in air
imprinted in strange sort, as though the drone of music and voices in
prayer and praise clung there still? Had not sanctity a presence?
Outside, a barrel-organ drove its tune along; a wagon staggered on the
paved street, and the driver shouted to his horses; some distant guns
boomed out in practice, and the rolling of wheels on wheels formed a net
of sound. But those invading noises were transmuted to a mere murmuring
in here; only the silence and the twilight were real to Pierson, standing
there, a little black figure in a great empty space.
When he left the church, it was still rather early to go to Leila's
hospital; and, having ordered the new hymn-books, he called in at the
house of a parishioner whose son had been killed in France. He found her
in her kitchen; an oldish woman who lived by charing. She wiped a seat
for the Vicar.
"I was just makin' meself a cup o' tea, sir."
"Ah! What a comfort tea is, Mrs. Soles!" And he sat down, so that she
should feel "at home."
"Yes; it gives me 'eart-burn; I take eight or ten cups a day, now. I
take 'em strong, too. I don't seem able to get on without it. I 'ope
the young ladies are well, sir?"
"Very well, thank you. Miss Noel is going to begin nursing, too."
"Deary-me! She's very young; but all the young gells are doin' something
these days. I've got a niece in munitions-makin' a pretty penny she is.
I've been meanin' to tell you--I don't come to church now; since my son
was killed, I don't seem to 'ave the 'eart to go anywhere--'aven't been
to a picture-palace these three months. Any excitement starts me
cryin'."
"I know; but you'd find rest in church."
Mrs. Soles shook her head, and the small twisted bob of her discoloured
hair wobbled vaguely.
"I can't take any recreation," she said. "I'd rather sit 'ere, or be at
work. My son was a real son to me. This tea's the only thing that does
me any good. I can make you a fresh cup in a minute."
"Thank you, Mrs. Soles, but I must be getting on. We must all look
forward to meeting our beloved again, in God's mercy. And one of these
days soon I shall be seeing you in church, shan't I."
Mrs. Soles shifted her weight from one slippered foot to the other.
"Well! let's 'ope so," she said. "But I dunno when I shall 'ave the
spirit. Good day, sir, and thank you kindly for calling, I'm sure."
Pierson walked away with a very faint smile. Poor queer old soul!--she
was no older than himself, but he thought of her as ancient--cut off from
her son, like so many--so many; and how good and patient! The melody of
an anthem began running in his head. His fingers moved on the air beside
him, and he stood still, waiting for an omnibus to take him to St. John's
Wood. A thousand people went by while he was waiting, but he did not
notice them, thinking of that anthem, of his daughters, and the mercy of
God; and on the top of his 'bus, when it came along, he looked lonely and
apart, though the man beside him was so fat that there was hardly any
seat left to sit on. Getting down at Lord's Cricket-ground, he asked his
way of a lady in a nurse's dress.
"If you'll come with me," she said, "I'm just going there."
"Oh! Do you happen to know a Mrs. Lynch who nurses"
"I am Mrs. Lynch. Why, you're Edward Pierson!"
He looked into her face, which he had not yet observed.
"Leila!" he said.
"Yes, Leila! How awfully nice of you to come, Edward!"
They continued to stand, searching each for the other's youth, till she
murmured:
"In spite of your beard, I should have known you anywhere!" But she
thought: 'Poor Edward! He is old, and monk-like!'
And Pierson, in answer, murmured:
"You're very little changed, Leila! We haven't, seen each other since my
youngest girl was born. She's just a little like you." But he thought:
'My Nollie! So much more dewy; poor Leila!'
They walked on, talking of his daughters, till they reached the hospital.
"If you'll wait here a minute, I'll take you over my wards."
She had left him in a bare hall, holding his hat in one hand and touching
his gold cross with the other; but she soon came hack, and a little
warmth crept about his heart. How works of mercy suited women! She
looked so different, so much softer, beneath the white coif, with a white
apron over the bluish frock.
At the change in his face, a little warmth crept about Leila, too, just
where the bib of her apron stopped; and her eyes slid round at him while
they went towards what had once been a billiard-room.
"My men are dears," she said; "they love to be talked to."
Under a skylight six beds jutted out from a green distempered wall,
opposite to six beds jutting out from another green distempered wall, and
from each bed a face was turned towards them young faces, with but little
expression in them. A nurse, at the far end, looked round, and went on
with her work. The sight of the ward was no more new to Pierson than to
anyone else in these days. It was so familiar, indeed, that it had
practically no significance. He stood by the first bed, and Leila stood
alongside. The man smiled up when she spoke, and did not smile when he
spoke, and that again was familiar to him. They passed from bed to bed,
with exactly the same result, till she was called away, and he sat down
by a young soldier with a long, very narrow head and face, and a heavily
bandaged shoulder. Touching the bandage reverently, Pierson said:
"Well, my dear fellow-still bad?"
"Ah!" replied the soldier. "Shrapnel wound: It's cut the flesh
properly."
"But not the spirit, I can see!"
The young soldier gave him a quaint look, as much as to say: "Not 'arf
bad!" and a gramophone close to the last bed began to play: "God bless
Daddy at the war!"
"Are you fond of music?"
"I like it well enough. Passes the time."
"I'm afraid the time hangs heavy in hospital."
"Yes; it hangs a bit 'eavy; it's just 'orspital life. I've been wounded
before, you see. It's better than bein' out there. I expect I'll lose
the proper use o' this arm. I don't worry; I'll get my discharge."
"You've got some good nurses here."
"Yes; I like Mrs. Lynch; she's the lady I like."
"My cousin."
"I see you come in together. I see everything 'ere. I think a lot, too.
Passes the time."
"Do they let you smoke?"
"Oh, yes! They let us smoke."
"Have one of mine?"
The young soldier smiled for the first time. "Thank you; I've got
plenty."
The nurse came by, and smiled at Pierson.
"He's one of our blase ones; been in before, haven't you, Simson?"
Pierson looked at the young man, whose long, narrow face; where one
sandy-lashed eyelid drooped just a little, seemed armoured with a sort of
limited omniscience. The gramophone had whirred and grunted into "Sidi
Brahim." The nurse passed on.
"'Seedy Abram,'" said the young soldier. "The Frenchies sing it; they
takes it up one after the other, ye know."
"Ah!" murmured Pierson; "it's pretty." And his fingers drummed on the
counterpane, for the tune was new to him. Something seemed to move in
the young man's face, as if a blind had been drawn up a little.
"I don't mind France," he said abruptly; "I don't mind the shells and
that; but I can't stick the mud. There's a lot o' wounded die in the
mud; can't get up--smothered." His unwounded arm made a restless
movement. "I was nearly smothered myself. Just managed to keep me nose
up."
Pierson shuddered. "Thank God you did!"
"Yes; I didn't like that. I told Mrs. Lynch about that one day when I
had the fever. She's a nice lady; she's seen a lot of us boys: That
mud's not right, you know." And again his unwounded arm made that
restless movement; while the gramophone struck up: "The boys in brown."
The movement of the arm affected Pierson horribly; he rose and, touching
the bandaged shoulder, said:
"Good-bye; I hope you'll soon be quite recovered."
The young soldier's lips twisted in the semblance of a smile; his drooped
eyelid seemed to try and raise itself.
"Good day, sir," he said; "and thank you."
Pierson went back to the hall. The sunlight fell in a pool just inside
the open door, and an uncontrollable impulse made him move into it, so
that it warmed him up to the waist. The mud! How ugly life was! Life
and Death! Both ugly! Poor boys! Poor boys!
A voice behind him said:
"Oh! There you are, Edward! Would you like to see the other ward, or
shall I show you our kitchen?"
Pierson took her hand impulsively. "You're doing a noble work, Leila. I
wanted to ask you: Could you arrange for Noel to come and get trained
here? She wants to begin at once. The fact is, a boy she is attracted
to has just gone out to the Front."
"Ah!" murmured Leila, and her eyes looked very soft. "Poor child! We
shall be wanting an extra hand next week. I'll see if she could come
now. I'll speak to our Matron, and let you know to-night." She squeezed
his hand hard.
"Dear Edward, I'm so glad to see you again. You're the first of our
family I've seen for sixteen years. I wonder if you'd bring Noel to have
supper at my flat to-night--Just nothing to eat, you know! It's a tiny
place. There's a Captain Fort coming; a nice man."
Pierson accepted, and as he walked away he thought: 'Dear Leila! I
believe it was Providence. She wants sympathy. She wants to feel the
past is the past. How good women are!'
And the sun, blazing suddenly out of a cloud, shone on his black figure
and the little gold cross, in the middle of Portland Place.
X
Men, even if they are not artistic, who have been in strange places and
known many nooks of the world, get the scenic habit, become open to
pictorial sensation. It was as a picture or series of pictures that
Jimmy Fort ever afterwards remembered his first supper at Leila's. He
happened to have been all day in the open, motoring about to horse farms
under a hot sun; and Leila's hock cup possessed a bland and subtle
strength. The scenic sense derived therefrom had a certain poignancy,
the more so because the tall child whom he met there did not drink it,
and her father seemed but to wet his lips, so that Leila and he had all
the rest. Rather a wonderful little scene it made in his mind, very
warm, glowing, yet with a strange dark sharpness to it, which came
perhaps from the black walls.
The flat had belonged to an artist who was at the war. It was but a
pocket dwelling on the third floor. The two windows of the little square
sitting-room looked out on some trees and a church. But Leila, who hated
dining by daylight, had soon drawn curtains of a deep blue over them.
The picture which Fort remembered was this: A little four-square table of
dark wood, with a Chinese mat of vivid blue in the centre, whereon stood
a silver lustre bowl of clove carnations; some greenish glasses with hock
cup in them; on his left, Leila in a low lilac frock, her neck and
shoulders very white, her face a little powdered, her eyes large, her
lips smiling; opposite him a black-clothed padre with a little gold
cross, over whose thin darkish face, with its grave pointed beard, passed
little gentle smiles, but whose deep sunk grey eyes were burnt and
bright; on his right, a girl in a high grey frock, almost white, just
hollowed at the neck, with full sleeves to the elbow, so that her slim
arms escaped; her short fair hair a little tumbled; her big grey eyes
grave; her full lips shaping with a strange daintiness round every
word--and they not many; brilliant red shades over golden lights dotting
the black walls; a blue divan; a little black piano flush with the wall;
a dark polished floor; four Japanese prints; a white ceiling. He was
conscious that his own khaki spoiled something as curious and rare as
some old Chinese tea-chest. He even remembered what they ate; lobster;
cold pigeon pie; asparagus; St. Ivel cheese; raspberries and cream. He
did not remember half so well what they talked of, except that he himself
told them stories of the Boer War, in which he had served in the
Yeomanry, and while he was telling them, the girl, like a child listening
to a fairy-tale, never moved her eyes from his face. He remembered that
after supper they all smoked cigarettes, even the tall child, after the
padre had said to her mildly, "My dear!" and she had answered: "I simply
must, Daddy, just one." He remembered Leila brewing Turkish coffee--very
good, and how beautiful her white arms looked, hovering about the cups.
He remembered her making the padre sit down at the piano, and play to
them. And she and the girl on the divan together, side by side, a
strange contrast; with just as strange a likeness to each other. He
always remembered how fine and rare that music sounded in the little
room, flooding him with a dreamy beatitude. Then--he remembered--Leila
sang, the padre standing-by; and the tall child on the divan bending
forward over her knees, with her chin on her hands. He remembered rather
vividly how Leila turned her neck and looked up, now at the padre, now at
himself; and, all through, the delightful sense of colour and warmth, a
sort of glamour over all the evening; and the lingering pressure of
Leila's hand when he said good-bye and they went away, for they all went
together. He remembered talking a great deal to the padre in the cab,
about the public school they had both been at, and thinking: 'It's a good
padre--this!' He remembered how their taxi took them to an old Square
which he did not know, where the garden trees looked densely black in the
starshine. He remembered that a man outside the house had engaged the
padre in earnest talk, while the tall child and himself stood in the open
doorway, where the hall beyond was dark. Very exactly he remembered the
little conversation which then took place between them, while they waited
for her father.
"Is it very horrid in the trenches, Captain Fort?"
"Yes, Miss Pierson; it is very horrid, as a rule."
"Is it dangerous all the time?"
"Pretty well."
"Do officers run more risks than the men?"
"Not unless there's an attack."
"Are there attacks very often?"
It had seemed to him so strangely primitive a little catechism, that he
had smiled. And, though it was so dark, she had seen that smile, for her
face went proud and close all of a sudden. He had cursed himself, and
said gently:
"Have you a brother out there?"
She shook her head.
"But someone?"
"Yes."
Someone! He had heard that answer with a little shock. This child--this
fairy princess of a child already to have someone! He wondered if she
went about asking everyone these questions, with that someone in her
thoughts. Poor child! And quickly he said:
"After all, look at me! I was out there a year, and here I am with only
half a game leg; times were a lot worse, then, too. I often wish I were
back there. Anything's better than London and the War Office." But just
then he saw the padre coming, and took her hand. "Good night, Miss
Pierson. Don't worry. That does no good, and there isn't half the risk
you think."
Her hand stirred, squeezed his gratefully, as a child's would squeeze.
"Good night," she murmured; "thank you awfully."
And, in the dark cab again, he remembered thinking: 'Fancy that child! A
jolly lucky boy, out there! Too bad! Poor little fairy princess!'
PART II
I
1
To wash up is not an exciting operation. To wash up in August became for
Noel a process which taxed her strength and enthusiasm. She combined it
with other forms of instruction in the art of nursing, had very little
leisure, and in the evenings at home would often fall asleep curled up in
a large chintz-covered chair.
George and Gratian had long gone back to their respective hospitals, and
she and her father had the house to themselves. She received many
letters from Cyril which she carried about with her and read on her way
to and from the hospital; and every other day she wrote to him. He was
not yet in the firing line; his letters were descriptive of his men, his
food, or the natives, or reminiscent of Kestrel; hers descriptive of
washing up, or reminiscent of Kestrel. But in both there was always some
little word of the longing within them.
It was towards the end of August when she had the letter which said that
he had been moved up. From now on he would be in hourly danger! That
evening after dinner she did not go to sleep in the chair, but sat under
the open window, clenching her hands, and reading "Pride and Prejudice"
without understanding a word. While she was so engaged her father came
up and said:
"Captain Fort, Nollie. Will you give him some coffee? I'm afraid I must
go out."
When he had gone, Noel looked at her visitor drinking his coffee. He had
been out there, too, and he was alive; with only a little limp. The
visitor smiled and said:
"What were you thinking about when we came in?"
"Only the war."
"Any news of him?"
Noel frowned, she hated to show her feelings.
"Yes! he's gone to the Front. Won't you have a cigarette?"
"Thanks. Will you?"
"I want one awfully. I think sitting still and waiting is more dreadful
than anything in the world."
"Except, knowing that others are waiting. When I was out there I used to
worry horribly over my mother. She was ill at the time. The cruelest
thing in war is the anxiety of people about each other--nothing touches
that."
The words exactly summed up Noel's hourly thought. He said nice things,
this man with the long legs and the thin brown bumpy face!
"I wish I were a man," she said, "I think women have much the worst time
in the war. Is your mother old?" But of course she was old why he was
old himself!
"She died last Christmas."
"Oh! I'm so sorry!"
"You lost your mother when you were a babe, didn't you?"
"Yes. That's her portrait." At the end of the room, hanging on a strip
of black velvet was a pastel, very faint in colouring, as though faded,
of a young woman, with an eager, sweet face, dark eyes, and bent a little
forward, as if questioning her painter. Fort went up to it.
"It's not a bit like you. But she must have been a very sweet woman."
"It's a sort of presence in the room. I wish I were like her!"
Fort turned. "No," he said; "no. Better as you are. It would only have
spoiled a complete thing."
"She was good."
"And aren't you?"
"Oh! no. I get a devil."
"You! Why, you're out of a fairy-tale!"
"It comes from Daddy--only he doesn't know, because he's a perfect saint;
but I know he's had a devil somewhere, or he couldn't be the saint he
is."
"H'm!" said Fort. "That's very deep: and I believe it's true--the saints
did have devils."
"Poor Daddy's devil has been dead ages. It's been starved out of him, I
think."
"Does your devil ever get away with you?"
Noel felt her cheeks growing red under his stare, and she turned to the
window:
"Yes. It's a real devil."
Vividly there had come before her the dark Abbey, and the moon balancing
over the top of the crumbling wall, and the white owl flying across.
And, speaking to the air, she said:
"It makes you do things that you want to do."
She wondered if he would laugh--it sounded so silly. But he did not.
"And damn the consequences? I know. It's rather a jolly thing to have."
Noel shook her head. "Here's Daddy coming back!"
Fort held out his hand.
"I won't stay. Good night; and don't worry too much, will you?"
He kept her hand rather a long time, and gave it a hard squeeze.
Don't worry! What advice! Ah! if she could see Cyril just for a minute!
2
In September, 1916, Saturday still came before Sunday, in spite of the
war. For Edward Pierson this Saturday had been a strenuous day, and even
now, at nearly midnight, he was still conning his just-completed sermon.
A patriot of patriots, he had often a passionate longing to resign his
parish, and go like his curate for a chaplain at the Front. It seemed to
him that people must think his life idle and sheltered and useless. Even
in times of peace he had been sensitive enough to feel the cold draughty
blasts which the Church encounters in a material age. He knew that nine
people out of ten looked on him as something of a parasite, with no real
work in the world. And since he was nothing if not conscientious, he
always worked himself to the bone.
To-day he had risen at half-past six, and after his bath and exercises,
had sat down to his sermon--for, even now, he wrote a new sermon once a
month, though he had the fruits of twenty-six years to choose from.
True, these new sermons were rather compiled than written, because,
bereft of his curate, he had not time enough for fresh thought on old
subjects. At eight he had breakfasted with Noel, before she went off to
her hospital, whence she would return at eight in the evening. Nine to
ten was his hour for seeing parishioners who had troubles, or wanted help
or advice, and he had received three to-day who all wanted help, which he
had given. From ten to eleven he had gone back to his sermon, and had
spent from eleven to one at his church, attending to small matters,
writing notices, fixing hymns, holding the daily half-hour Service
instituted during wartime, to which but few ever came. He had hurried
back to lunch, scamping it so that he might get to his piano for an hour
of forgetfulness. At three he had christened a very noisy baby, and been
detained by its parents who wished for information on a variety of
topics. At half-past four he had snatched a cup of tea, reading the
paper; and had spent from five to seven visiting two Parish Clubs, and
those whose war-pension matters he had in hand, and filling up forms
which would be kept in official places till such time as the system
should be changed and a fresh set of forms issued. From seven to eight he
was at home again, in case his flock wanted to see him; to-day four sheep
had come, and gone away, he was afraid, but little the wiser. From
half-past eight to half-past nine he had spent in choir practice, because
the organist was on his holiday. Slowly in the cool of the evening he had
walked home, and fallen asleep in his chair on getting in. At eleven he
had woken with a start, and, hardening his heart, had gone back to his
sermon. And now, at nearly midnight, it was still less than twenty
minutes long. He lighted one of his rare cigarettes, and let thought
wander. How beautiful those pale pink roses were in that old silver
bowl-like a little strange poem, or a piece of Debussy music, or a
Mathieu Maris picture-reminding him oddly of the word Leila. Was he
wrong in letting Noel see so much of Leila? But then she was so
improved--dear Leila!... The pink roses were just going to fall! And
yet how beautiful!... It was quiet to-night; he felt very drowsy....
Did Nollie still think of that young man, or had it passed? She had
never confided in him since! After the war, it would be nice to take her
to Italy, to all the little towns. They would see the Assisi of St.
Francis. The Little Flowers of St. Francis. The Little Flowers!... His
hand dropped, the cigarette went out. He slept with his face in shadow.
Slowly into the silence of his sleep little sinister sounds intruded.
Short concussions, dragging him back out of that deep slumber. He
started up. Noel was standing at the door, in a long coat. She said in
her calm voice:
"Zeps, Daddy!"
"Yes, my dear. Where are the maids?"
An Irish voice answered from the hall: "Here, sir; trustin' in God; but
'tis better on the ground floor."
He saw a huddle of three figures, queerly costumed, against the stairs.
"Yes, Yes, Bridgie; you're safe down here." Then he noticed that Noel
was gone. He followed her out into the Square, alive with faces faintly
luminous in the darkness, and found her against the garden railings.
"You must come back in, Nollie."
"Oh, no! Cyril has this every day."
He stood beside her; not loth, for excitement had begun to stir his
blood. They stayed there for some minutes, straining their eyes for
sight of anything save the little zagged splashes of bursting shrapnel,
while voices buzzed, and muttered: "Look! There! There! There it is!"
But the seers had eyes of greater faith than Pierson's, for he saw
nothing: He took her arm at last, and led her in. In the hall she broke
from him.
"Let's go up on the roof, Daddy!" and ran upstairs.
Again he followed, mounting by a ladder, through a trapdoor on to the
roof.
"It's splendid up here!" she cried.
He could see her eyes blazing, and thought: 'How my child does love
excitement--it's almost terrible!'
Over the wide, dark, star-strewn sky travelling searchlights, were
lighting up the few little clouds; the domes and spires rose from among
the spread-out roofs, all fine and ghostly. The guns had ceased firing,
as though puzzled. One distant bang rumbled out.
"A bomb! Oh! If we could only get one of the Zeps!"
A furious outburst of firing followed, lasting perhaps a minute, then
ceased as if by magic. They saw two searchlights converge and meet right
overhead.
"It's above us!" murmured Noel.
Pierson put his arm round her waist. 'She feels no fear!' he thought.
The search-lights switched apart; and suddenly, from far away, came a
confusion of weird sounds.
"What is it? They're cheering. Oh! Daddy, look!" There in the heavens,
towards the east, hung a dull red thing, lengthening as they gazed.
"They've got it. It's on fire! Hurrah!"
Through the dark firmament that fiery orange shape began canting
downward; and the cheering swelled in a savage frenzy of sound. And
Pierson's arm tightened on her waist.
"Thank God!" he muttered.
The bright oblong seemed to break and spread, tilted down below the level
of the roofs; and suddenly the heavens flared, as if some huge jug of
crimson light had been flung out on them. Something turned over in
Pierson's heart; he flung up his hand to his eyes.
"The poor men in it!" he said. "How terrible!"
Noel's voice answered, hard and pitiless:
"They needn't have come. They're murderers!"
Yes, they were murderers--but how terrible! And he stood quivering, with
his hands pressed to his face, till the cheering had died out into
silence.
"Let's pray, Nollie!" he whispered. "O God, Who in Thy great mercy hath
delivered us from peril, take into Thy keeping the souls of these our
enemies, consumed by Thy wrath before our eyes; give us the power to pity
them--men like ourselves."
But even while he prayed he could see Noel's face flame-white in the
darkness; and, as that glow in the sky faded out, he felt once more the
thrill of triumph.
They went down to tell the maids, and for some time after sat up
together, talking over what they had seen, eating biscuits and drinking
milk, which they warmed on an etna. It was nearly two o'clock before
they went to bed. Pierson fell asleep at once, and never turned till
awakened at half-past six by his alarum. He had Holy Communion to
administer at eight, and he hurried to get early to his church and see
that nothing untoward had happened to it. There it stood in the
sunlight; tall, grey, quiet, unharmed, with bell gently ringing.
3
And at that hour Cyril Morland, under the parapet of his trench,
tightening his belt, was looking at his wrist-watch for the hundredth
time, calculating exactly where he meant to put foot and hand for the
going over: 'I absolutely mustn't let those chaps get in front of me,' he
thought. So many yards before the first line of trenches, so many yards
to the second line, and there stop. So his rehearsals had gone; it was
the performance now! Another minute before the terrific racket of the
drum-fire should become the curtain-fire, which would advance before
them. He ran his eye down the trench. The man next him was licking his
two first fingers, as if he might be going to bowl at cricket. Further
down, a man was feeling his puttees. A voice said: "Wot price the
orchestra nah!" He saw teeth gleam in faces burnt almost black. Then he
looked up; the sky was blue beyond the brownish film of dust raised by
the striking shells. Noel! Noel! Noel!... He dug his fingers deep
into the left side of his tunic till he could feel the outline of her
photograph between his dispatch-case and his heart. His heart fluttered
just as it used when he was stretched out with hand touching the ground,
before the start of the "hundred yards" at school. Out of the corner of
his eye he caught the flash of a man's "briquet" lighting a cigarette.
All right for those chaps, but not for him; he wanted all his
breath--this rifle, and kit were handicap enough! Two days ago he had
been reading in some paper how men felt just before an attack. And now
he knew. He just felt nervous. If only the moment would come, and get
itself over! For all the thought he gave to the enemy there might have
been none--nothing but shells and bullets, with lives of their own. He
heard the whistle; his foot was on the spot he had marked down; his hand
where he had seen it; he called out: "Now, boys!" His head was over the
top, his body over; he was conscious of someone falling, and two men neck
and neck beside him. Not to try and run, not to break out of a walk; to
go steady, and yet keep ahead! D--n these holes! A bullet tore through
his sleeve, grazing his arm--a red-hot sensation, like the touch of an
iron. A British shell from close over his head burst sixty yards ahead;
he stumbled, fell flat, picked himself up. Three ahead of him now! He
walked faster, and drew alongside. Two of them fell. 'What luck!' he
thought; and gripping his rifle harder, pitched headlong into a
declivity. Dead bodies lay there! The first German trench line, and
nothing alive in it, nothing to clean up, nothing of it left! He
stopped, getting his wind; watching the men panting and stumbling in.
The roar of the guns was louder than ever again, barraging the second
line. So far, good! And here was his captain!
"Ready, boys? On, then!"
This time he moved more slowly still, over terrible going, all holes and
hummocks. Half consciously he took cover all he could. The air was
alive with the whistle from machine-gun fire storming across zigzag
fashion-alive it was with bullets, dust, and smoke. 'How shall I tell
her?' he thought. There would be nothing to tell but just a sort of
jagged brown sensation. He kept his eyes steadily before him, not
wanting to seethe men falling, not wanting anything to divert him from
getting there. He felt the faint fanning of the passing bullets. The
second line must be close now. Why didn't that barrage lift? Was this
new dodge of firing till the last second going to do them in? Another
hundred yards and he would be bang into it. He flung himself flat and
waited; looking at his wrist-watch he noted that his arm was soaked with
blood. He thought: 'A wound! Now I shall go home. Thank God! Oh,
Noel!' The passing bullets whirled above him; he could hear them even
through the screech and thunder of the shell-fire. 'The beastly things!'
he thought: A voice beside him gasped out:
"It's lifted, sir."
He called: "Come on, boys!" and went forward, stooping. A bullet struck
his rifle. The shock made him stagger and sent an electric shock
spinning up his arm. 'Luck again!' he thought. 'Now for it! I haven't
seen a German yet!' He leaped forward, spun round, flung up his arms, and
fell on his back, shot through and through....
The position was consolidated, as they say, and in the darkness
stretcher-bearers were out over the half-mile. Like will-o'-the-wisps,
with their shaded lanterns, they moved, hour after hour, slowly
quartering the black honeycomb which lay behind the new British line.
Now and then in the light of some star-shell their figures were
disclosed, bending and raising the forms of the wounded, or wielding pick
and shovel.
"Officer."
"Dead?"
"Sure."
"Search."
From the shaded lantern, lowered to just above the body, a yellowish
glare fell on face and breast. The hands of the searcher moved in that
little pool of light. The bearer who was taking notes bent down.
"Another boy," he said. "That all he has?"
The searcher raised himself.
"Just those, and a photo."
"Dispatch-case; pound loose; cigarette-case; wristwatch; photo. Let's see
it."
The searcher placed the photo in the pool of light. The tiny face of a
girl stared up at them, unmoved, from its short hair.
"Noel," said the searcher, reading.
"H'm! Take care of it. Stick it in his case. Come on!"
The pool of light dissolved, and darkness for ever covered Cyril Morland.
II
When those four took their seats in the Grand Circle at Queen's Hall the
programme was already at the second number, which, in spite of all the
efforts of patriotism, was of German origin--a Brandenburg concerto by
Bach. More curious still, it was encored. Pierson did not applaud, he
was too far gone in pleasure, and sat with a rapt smile on his face,
oblivious of his surroundings. He remained thus removed from mortal joys
and sorrows till the last applause had died away, and Leila's voice said
in his ear:
"Isn't it a wonderful audience, Edward? Look at all that khaki. Who'd
have thought those young men cared for music--good music--German music,
too?"
Pierson looked down at the patient mass of standing figures in straw hats
and military caps, with faces turned all one way, and sighed.
"I wish I could get an audience like that in my church."
A smile crept out at the corner of Leila's lips. She was thinking: 'Ah!
Your Church is out of date, my dear, and so are you! Your Church, with
its smell of mould and incense, its stained-glass, and narrowed length
and droning organ. Poor Edward, so out of the world!' But she only
pressed his arm, and whispered:
"Look at Noel!"
The girl was talking to Jimmy Fort. Her cheeks were gushed, and she
looked prettier than Pierson had seen her look for a long time now, ever
since Kestrel, indeed. He heard Leila sigh.
"Does she get news of her boy? Do you remember that May Week, Edward?
We were very young then; even you were young. That was such a pretty
little letter you wrote me. I can see you still-wandering in your dress
clothes along the river, among the 'holy' cows."
But her eyes slid round again, watching her other neighbour and the girl.
A violinist had begun to play the Cesar Franck Sonata. It was Pierson's
favourite piece of music, bringing him, as it were, a view of heaven, of
devotional blue air where devout stars were shining in a sunlit noon,
above ecstatic trees and waters where ecstatic swans were swimming.
"Queer world, Mr. Pierson! Fancy those boys having to go back to barrack
life after listening to that! What's your feeling? Are we moving back
to the apes? Did we touch top note with that Sonata?"
Pierson turned and contemplated his questioner shrewdly.
"No, Captain Fort, I do not think we are moving back to the apes; if we
ever came from them. Those boys have the souls of heroes!"
"I know that, sir, perhaps better than you do."
"Ah! yes," said Pierson humbly, "I forgot, of course." But he still
looked at his neighbour doubtfully. This Captain Fort, who was a friend
of Leila's, and who had twice been to see them, puzzled him. He had a
frank face, a frank voice, but queer opinions, or so it seemed to,
Pierson--little bits of Moslemism, little bits of the backwoods, and the
veldt; queer unexpected cynicisms, all sorts of side views on England had
lodged in him, and he did not hide them. They came from him like bullets,
in that frank voice, and drilled little holes in the listener. Those
critical sayings flew so much more poignantly from one who had been
through the same educational mill as himself, than if they had merely
come from some rough diamond, some artist, some foreigner, even from a
doctor like George. And they always made him uncomfortable, like the
touch of a prickly leaf; they did not amuse him. Certainly Edward
Pierson shrank from the rough touches of a knock-about philosophy. After
all, it was but natural that he should.
He and Noel left after the first part of the concert, parting from the
other two at the door. He slipped his hand through her arm; and,
following out those thoughts of his in the concert-hall, asked:
"Do you like Captain Fort, Nollie?"
"Yes; he's a nice man."
"He seems a nice man, certainly; he has a nice smile, but strange views,
I'm afraid."
"He thinks the Germans are not much worse than we are; he says that a
good many of us are bullies too."
"Yes, that is the sort of thing I mean."
"But are we, Daddy?"
"Surely not."
"A policeman I talked to once said the same. Captain Fort says that very
few men can stand having power put into their hands without being
spoiled. He told me some dreadful stories. He says we have no
imagination, so that we often do things without seeing how brutal they
are."
"We're not perfect, Nollie; but on the whole I think we're a kind
people."
Noel was silent a moment, then said suddenly:
"Kind people often think others are kind too, when they really aren't.
Captain Fort doesn't make that mistake."
"I think he's a little cynical, and a little dangerous."
"Are all people dangerous who don't think like others, Daddy?"
Pierson, incapable of mockery, was not incapable of seeing when he was
being mocked. He looked at his daughter with a smile.
"Not quite so bad as that, Nollie; but Mr. Fort is certainly subversive.
I think perhaps he has seen too many queer sides of life."
"I like him the better for that."
"Well, well," Pierson answered absently. He had work to do in
preparation for a Confirmation Class, and sought his study on getting in.
Noel went to the dining-room to drink her hot milk. The curtains were
not drawn, and bright moonlight was coming in. Without lighting up, she
set the etna going, and stood looking at the moon-full for the second
time since she and Cyril had waited for it in the Abbey. And pressing her
hands to her breast, she shivered. If only she could summon him from the
moonlight out there; if only she were a witch-could see him, know where
he was, what doing! For a fortnight now she had received no letter.
Every day since he had left she had read the casualty lists, with the
superstitious feeling that to do so would keep him out of them. She took
up the Times. There was just enough light, and she read the roll of
honour--till the moon shone in on her, lying on the floor, with the
dropped journal....
But she was proud, and soon took grief to her room, as on that night
after he left her, she had taken love. No sign betrayed to the house her
disaster; the journal on the floor, and the smell of the burnt milk which
had boiled over, revealed nothing. After all, she was but one of a
thousand hearts which spent that moonlit night in agony. Each night, year
in, year out, a thousand faces were buried in pillows to smother that
first awful sense of desolation, and grope for the secret spirit-place
where bereaved souls go, to receive some feeble touch of healing from
knowledge of each other's trouble....
In the morning she got up from her sleepless bed, seemed to eat her
breakfast, and went off to her hospital. There she washed up plates and
dishes, with a stony face, dark under the eyes.
The news came to Pierson in a letter from Thirza, received at lunch-time.
He read it with a dreadful aching. Poor, poor little Nollie! What an
awful trouble for her! And he, too, went about his work with the
nightmare thought that he had to break the news to her that evening.
Never had he felt more lonely, more dreadfully in want of the mother of
his children. She would have known how to soothe, how to comfort. On
her heart the child could have sobbed away grief. And all that hour, from
seven to eight, when he was usually in readiness to fulfil the functions
of God's substitute to his parishioners, he spent in prayer of his own,
for guidance how to inflict and heal this blow. When, at last, Noel
came, he opened. the door to her himself, and, putting back the hair from
her forehead, said: "Come in here a moment, my darling!" Noel followed
him into the study, and sat down. "I know already, Daddy." Pierson was
more dismayed by this stoicism than he would have been by any natural out
burst. He stood, timidly stroking her hair, murmuring to her what he had
said to Gratian, and to so many others in these days: "There is no death;
look forward to seeing him again; God is merciful" And he marvelled at
the calmness of that pale face--so young.
"You are very brave, my child!" he said.
"There's nothing else to be, is there?"
"Isn't there anything I can do for you, Nollie?"
"No, Daddy."
"When did you see it?"
"Last night." She had already known for twenty-four hours without
telling him!
"Have you prayed, my darling?"
"No."
"Try, Nollie!"
"No."
"Ah, try!"
"It would be ridiculous, Daddy; you don't know."
Grievously upset and bewildered, Pierson moved away from her, and said:
"You look dreadfully tired. Would you like a hot bath, and your dinner
in bed?"
"I'd like some tea; that's all." And she went out.
When he had seen that the tea had gone up to her, he too went out; and,
moved by a longing for woman's help, took a cab to Leila's flat.
III
On leaving the concert Leila and Jimmy Fort had secured a taxi; a vehicle
which, at night, in wartime, has certain advantages for those who desire
to become better acquainted. Vibration, sufficient noise, darkness, are
guaranteed; and all that is lacking for the furtherance of emotion is the
scent of honeysuckle and roses, or even of the white flowering creeper
which on the stoep at High Constantia had smelled so much sweeter than
petrol.
When Leila found herself with Fort in that loneliness to which she had
been looking forward, she was overcome by an access of nervous silence.
She had been passing through a strange time for weeks past. Every night
she examined her sensations without quite understanding them as yet.
When a woman comes to her age, the world-force is liable to take
possession, saying:
"You were young, you were beautiful, you still have beauty, you are not,
cannot be, old. Cling to youth, cling to beauty; take all you can get,
before your face gets lines and your hair grey; it is impossible that you
have been loved for the last time."
To see Jimmy Fort at the concert, talking to Noel, had brought this
emotion to a head. She was not of a grudging nature, and could genuinely
admire Noel, but the idea that Jimmy Fort might also admire disturbed her
greatly. He must not; it was not fair; he was too old--besides, the girl
had her boy; and she had taken care that he should know it. So, leaning
towards him, while a bare-shouldered young lady sang, she had whispered:
"Penny?"
And he had whispered back:
"Tell you afterwards."
That had comforted her. She would make him take her home. It was time
she showed her heart.
And now, in the cab, resolved to make her feelings known, in sudden
shyness she found it very difficult. Love, to which for quite three
years she had been a stranger, was come to life within her. The
knowledge was at once so sweet, and so disturbing, that she sat with face
averted, unable to turn the precious minutes to account. They arrived at
the flat without having done more than agree that the streets were dark,
and the moon bright. She got out with a sense of bewilderment, and said
rather desperately:
"You must come up and have a cigarette. It's quite early, still."
He went up.
"Wait just a minute," said Leila.
Sitting there with his drink and his cigarette, he stared at some
sunflowers in a bowl--Famille Rose--and waited just ten; smiling a
little, recalling the nose of the fairy princess, and the dainty way her
lips shaped the words she spoke. If she had not had that lucky young
devil of a soldier boy, one would have wanted to buckle her shoes, lay
one's coat in the mud for her, or whatever they did in fairytales. One
would have wanted--ah! what would one not have wanted! Hang that soldier
boy! Leila said he was twenty-two. By George! how old it made a man
feel who was rising forty, and tender on the off-fore! No fairy
princesses for him! Then a whiff of perfume came to his nostrils; and,
looking up, he saw Leila standing before him, in a long garment of dark
silk, whence her white arms peeped out.
"Another penny? Do you remember these things, Jimmy? The Malay women
used to wear them in Cape Town. You can't think what a relief it is to
get out of my slave's dress. Oh! I'm so sick of nursing! Jimmy, I want
to live again a little!"
The garment had taken fifteen years off her age, and a gardenia, just
where the silk crossed on her breast, seemed no whiter than her skin. He
wondered whimsically whether it had dropped to her out of the dark!
"Live?" he said. "Why! Don't you always?"
She raised her hands so that the dark silk fell, back from the whole
length of those white arms.
"I haven't lived for two years. Oh, Jimmy! Help me to live a little!
Life's so short, now."
Her eyes disturbed him, strained and pathetic; the sight of her arms; the
scent of the flower disturbed him; he felt his cheeks growing warm, and
looked down.
She slipped suddenly forward on to her knees at his feet, took his hand,
pressed it with both of hers, and murmured:
"Love me a little! What else is there? Oh! Jimmy, what else is there?"
And with the scent of the flower, crushed by their hands, stirring his
senses, Fort thought: 'Ah, what else is there, in these forsaken days?'
To Jimmy Fort, who had a sense of humour, and was in some sort a
philosopher, the haphazard way life settled things seldom failed to seem
amusing. But when he walked away from Leila's he was pensive. She was a
good sort, a pretty creature, a sportswoman, an enchantress; but--she was
decidedly mature. And here he was--involved in helping her to "live";
involved almost alarmingly, for there had been no mistaking the fact that
she had really fallen in love with him.
This was flattering and sweet. Times were sad, and pleasure scarce,
but--! The roving instinct which had kept him, from his youth up,
rolling about the world, shied instinctively at bonds, however pleasant,
the strength and thickness of which he could not gauge; or, was it that
perhaps for the first time in his life he had been peeping into fairyland
of late, and this affair with Leila was by no means fairyland? He had
another reason, more unconscious, for uneasiness. His heart, for all his
wanderings, was soft, he had always found it difficult to hurt anyone,
especially anyone who did him the honour to love him. A sort of
presentiment weighed on him while he walked the moonlit streets at this
most empty hour, when even the late taxis had ceased to run. Would she
want him to marry her? Would it be his duty, if she did? And then he
found himself thinking of the concert, and that girl's face, listening to
the tales he was telling her. 'Deuced queer world,' he thought, 'the way
things go! I wonder what she would think of us, if she knew--and that
good padre! Phew!'
He made such very slow progress, for fear of giving way in his leg, and
having to spend the night on a door-step, that he had plenty of time for
rumination; but since it brought him no confidence whatever, he began at
last to feel: 'Well; it might be a lot worse. Take the goods the gods
send you and don't fuss!' And suddenly he remembered with extreme
vividness that night on the stoep at High Constantia, and thought with
dismay: 'I could have plunged in over head and ears then; and now--I
can't! That's life all over! Poor Leila! Me miserum, too, perhaps--who
knows!'
IV
When Leila opened her door to Edward Pierson, her eyes were smiling, and
her lips were soft. She seemed to smile and be soft all over, and she
took both his hands. Everything was a pleasure to her that day, even the
sight of this sad face. She was in love and was loved again; had a
present and a future once more, not only her own full past; and she must
finish with Edward in half an hour, for Jimmy was coming. She sat down
on the divan, took his hand in a sisterly way, and said:
"Tell me, Edward; I can see you're in trouble. What is it?"
"Noel. The boy she was fond of has been killed."
She dropped his hand.
"Oh, no! Poor child! It's too cruel!" Tears started up in her grey
eyes, and she touched them with a tiny handkerchief. "Poor, poor little
Noel! Was she very fond of him?"
"A very sudden, short engagement; but I'm afraid she takes it desperately
to heart. I don't know how to comfort her; only a woman could. I came
to ask you: Do you think she ought to go on with her work? What do you
think, Leila? I feel lost!"
Leila, gazing at him, thought: 'Lost? Yes, you look lost, my poor
Edward!'
"I should let her go on," she said: "it helps; it's the only thing that
does help. I'll see if I can get them to let her come into the wards.
She ought to be in touch with suffering and the men; that kitchen work
will try her awfully just now: Was he very young?"
"Yes. They wanted to get married. I was opposed to it."
Leila's lip curled ever so little. 'You would be!' she thought.
"I couldn't bear to think of Nollie giving herself hastily, like that;
they had only known each other three weeks. It was very hard for me,
Leila. And then suddenly he was sent to the front."
Resentment welled up in Leila. The kill-Joys! As if life didn't kill
joy fast enough! Her cousin's face at that moment was almost abhorrent
to her, its gentle perplexed goodness darkened and warped by that monkish
look. She turned away, glanced at the clock over the hearth, and
thought: 'Yes, and he would stop Jimmy and me! He would say: "Oh, no!
dear Leila--you mustn't love--it's sin!" How I hate that word!'
"I think the most dreadful thing in life," she said abruptly, "is the way
people suppress their natural instincts; what they suppress in themselves
they make other people suppress too, if they can; and that's the cause of
half the misery in this world."
Then at the surprise on his face at this little outburst, whose cause he
could not know, she added hastily: "I hope Noel will get over it quickly,
and find someone else."
"Yes. If they had been married--how much worse it would have been. Thank
God, they weren't!"
"I don't know. They would have had an hour of bliss. Even an hour of
bliss is worth something in these days."
"To those who only believe in this 'life--perhaps."
'Ten minutes more!' she thought: 'Oh, why doesn't he go?' But at that
very moment he got up, and instantly her heart went out to him again.
"I'm so sorry, Edward. If I can help in any way--I'll try my best with
Noel to-morrow; and do come to me whenever you feel inclined."
She took his hand in hers; afraid that he would sit down again, she yet
could not help a soft glance into his eyes, and a little rush of pitying
warmth in the pressure of her hand.
Pierson smiled; the smile which always made her sorry for him.
"Good-bye, Leila; you're very good and kind to me. Good-bye."
Her bosom swelled with relief and compassion; and--she let him out.
Running upstairs again she thought: 'I've just time. What shall I put
on? Poor Edward, poor Noel! What colour does Jimmy like? Oh! Why
didn't I keep him those ten years ago--what utter waste!' And,
feverishly adorning herself, she came back to the window, and stood there
in the dark to watch, while some jasmine which grew below sent up its
scent to her. 'Would I marry him?' she thought, 'if he asked me? But he
won't ask me--why should he now? Besides, I couldn't bear him to feel I
wanted position or money from him. I only want love--love--love!' The
silent repetition of that word gave her a wonderful sense of solidity and
comfort. So long as she only wanted love, surely he would give it.
A tall figure turned down past the church, coming towards her. It was
he! And suddenly she bethought herself. She went to the little black
piano, sat down, and began to sing the song she had sung to him ten years
ago: "If I could be the falling dew and fall on thee all day!" She did
not even look round when he came in, but continued to croon out the
words, conscious of him just behind her shoulder in the dark. But when
she had finished, she got up and threw her arms round him, strained him
to her, and burst into tears on his shoulder; thinking of Noel and that
dead boy, thinking of the millions of other boys, thinking of her own
happiness, thinking of those ten years wasted, of how short was life, and
love; thinking--hardly knowing what she thought! And Jimmy Fort, very
moved by this emotion which he only half understood, pressed her tightly
in his arms, and kissed her wet cheeks and her neck, pale and warm in the
darkness.
V
1
Noel went on with her work for a month, and then, one morning, fainted
over a pile of dishes. The noise attracted attention, and Mrs. Lynch was
summoned.
The sight of her lying there so deadly white taxed Leila's nerves
severely. But the girl revived quickly, and a cab was sent for. Leila
went with her, and told the driver to stop at Camelot Mansions. Why take
her home in this state, why not save the jolting, and let her recover
properly? They went upstairs arm in arm. Leila made her lie down on the
divan, and put a hot-water bottle to her feet. Noel was still so passive
and pale that even to speak to her seemed a cruelty. And, going to her
little sideboard, Leila stealthily extracted a pint bottle of some
champagne which Jimmy Fort had sent in, and took it with two glasses and
a corkscrew into her bedroom. She drank a little herself, and came out
bearing a glass to the girl. Noel shook her head, and her eyes seemed to
say: "Do you really think I'm so easily mended?" But Leila had been
through too much in her time to despise earthly remedies, and she held it
to the girl's lips until she drank. It was excellent champagne, and,
since Noel had never yet touched alcohol, had an instantaneous effect.
Her eyes brightened; little red spots came up in her cheeks. And
suddenly she rolled over and buried her face deep in a cushion. With her
short hair, she looked so like a child lying there, that Leila knelt
down, stroking her head, and saying: "There, there; my love! There,
there!"
At last the girl raised herself; now that the pallid, masklike despair of
the last month was broken, she seemed on fire, and her face had a wild
look. She withdrew herself from Leila's touch, and, crossing her arms
tightly across her chest, said:
"I can't bear it; I can't sleep. I want him back; I hate life--I hate
the world. We hadn't done anything--only just loved each other. God
likes punishing; just because we loved each other; we had only one day to
love each other--only one day--only one!"
Leila could see the long white throat above those rigid arms straining
and swallowing; it gave her a choky feeling to watch it. The voice,
uncannily dainty for all the wildness of the words and face, went on:
"I won't--I don't want to live. If there's another life, I shall go to
him. And if there isn't--it's just sleep."
Leila put out her hand to ward of these wild wanderings. Like most women
who live simply the life of their senses and emotions, she was orthodox;
or rather never speculated on such things.
"Tell me about yourself and him," she said.
Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin. "We loved each other; and
children are born, aren't they, after you've loved? But mine won't be!"
From the look on her face rather than from her words, the full reality of
her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again. Nonsense! But--what an
awful thing, if true! That which had always seemed to her such an
exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of life--why! now, it was a
tragedy! Instinctively she raised herself and put her arms round the
girl.
"My poor dear!" she said; "you're fancying things!"
The colour had faded out of Noel's face, and, with her head thrown back
and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scornful young ghost.
"If it is--I shan't live. I don't mean to--it's easy to die. I don't
mean Daddy to know."
"Oh! my dear, my dear!" was all Leila could stammer.
"Was it wrong, Leila?"
"Wrong? I don't know--wrong? If it really is so--it was--unfortunate.
But surely, surely--you're mistaken?"
Noel shook her head. "I did it so that we should belong to each other.
Nothing could have taken him from me."
Leila caught at the girl's words.
"Then, my dear--he hasn't quite gone from you, you see?"
Noel's lips formed a "No" which was inaudible. "But Daddy!" she
whispered.
Edward's face came before Leila so vividly that she could hardly see the
girl for the tortured shape of it. Then the hedonist in her revolted
against that ascetic vision. Her worldly judgment condemned and deplored
this calamity, her instinct could not help applauding that hour of life
and love, snatched out of the jaws of death. "Need he ever know?" she
said.
"I could never lie to Daddy. But it doesn't matter. Why should one go
on living, when life is rotten?"
Outside the sun was shining brightly, though it was late October. Leila
got up from her knees. She stood at the window thinking hard.
"My dear," she said at last, "you mustn't get morbid. Look at me! I've
had two husbands, and--and--well, a pretty stormy up and down time of it;
and I daresay I've got lots of trouble before me. But I'm not going to
cave in. Nor must you. The Piersons have plenty of pluck; you mustn't
be a traitor to your blood. That's the last thing. Your boy would have
told you to stick it. These are your 'trenches,' and you're not going to
be downed, are you?"
After she had spoken there was a long silence, before Noel said:
"Give me a cigarette, Leila."
Leila produced the little flat case she carried.
"That's brave," she said. "Nothing's incurable at your age. Only one
thing's incurable--getting old."
Noel laughed. "That's curable too, isn't it?"
"Not without surrender."
Again there was a silence, while the blue fume from two cigarettes
fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling. Then Noel got up from the
divan, and went over to the piano. She was still in her hospital dress
of lilac-coloured linen, and while she stood there touching the keys,
playing a chord now, and then, Leila's heart felt hollow from compassion;
she was so happy herself just now, and this child so very wretched!
"Play to me," she said; "no--don't; I'll play to you." And sitting down,
she began to play and sing a little French song, whose first line ran:
"Si on est jolie, jolie comme vous." It was soft, gay, charming. If the
girl cried, so much the better. But Noel did not cry. She seemed
suddenly to have recovered all her self-possession. She spoke calmly,
answered Leila's questions without emotion, and said she would go home.
Leila went out with her, and walked some way in the direction of her
home; distressed, but frankly at a loss. At the bottom of Portland Place
Noel stopped and said: "I'm quite all right now, Leila; thank you
awfully. I shall just go home and lie down. And I shall come to-morrow,
the same as usual. Goodbye!" Leila could only grasp the girl's hand, and
say: "My dear, that's splendid. There's many a slip--besides, it's
war-time."
With that saying, enigmatic even to herself, she watched the girl moving
slowly away; and turned back herself towards her hospital, with a
disturbed and compassionate heart.
2
But Noel did not go east; she walked down Regent Street. She had
received a certain measure of comfort, been steadied by her experienced
cousin's vitality, and the new thoughts suggested by those words: "He
hasn't quite gone from you, has he?" "Besides, it's war-time." Leila
had spoken freely, too, and the physical ignorance in which the girl had
been groping these last weeks was now removed. Like most proud natures,
she did not naturally think much about the opinion of other people;
besides, she knew nothing of the world, its feelings and judgments. Her
nightmare was the thought of her father's horror and grief. She tried to
lessen that nightmare by remembering his opposition to her marriage, and
the resentment she had felt. He had never realised, never understood,
how she and Cyril loved. Now, if she were really going to have a child,
it would be Cyril's--Cyril's son--Cyril over again. The instinct
stronger than reason, refinement, tradition, upbringing, which had pushed
her on in such haste to make sure of union--the irrepressible pulse of
life faced with annihilation--seemed to revive within her, and make her
terrible secret almost precious. She had read about "War babies" in the
papers, read with a dull curiosity; but now the atmosphere, as it were,
of those writings was illumined for her. These babies were wrong, were a
"problem," and yet, behind all that, she seemed now to know that people
were glad of them; they made up, they filled the gaps. Perhaps, when she
had one, she would be proud, secretly proud, in spite of everyone, in
spite of her father! They had tried to kill Cyril--God and everyone; but
they hadn't been able, he was alive within her! A glow came into her
face, walking among the busy shopping crowd, and people turned to look at
her; she had that appearance of seeing no one, nothing, which is strange
and attractive to those who have a moment to spare from contemplation of
their own affairs. Fully two hours she wandered thus, before going in,
and only lost that exalted feeling when, in her own little room, she had
taken up his photograph, and was sitting on her bed gazing at it. She had
a bad breakdown then. Locked in there, she lay on her bed, crying,
dreadfully lonely, till she fell asleep exhausted, with the tear-stained
photograph clutched in her twitching fingers. She woke with a start. It
was dark, and someone was knocking on her door.
"Miss Noel!"
Childish perversity kept her silent. Why couldn't they leave her alone?
They would leave her alone if they knew. Then she heard another kind of
knocking, and her father's voice:
"Nollie! Nollie!"
She scrambled up, and opened. He looked scared, and her heart smote her.
"It's all right, Daddy; I was asleep."
"My dear, I'm sorry, but dinner's ready."
"I don't want any dinner; I think I'll go to bed."
The frown between his brows deepened.
"You shouldn't lock your door, Nollie: I was quite frightened. I went
round to the hospital to bring you home, and they told me about your
fainting. I want you to see a doctor."
Noel shook her head vigorously. "Oh, no! It's nothing!"
"Nothing? To faint like that? Come, my child. To please me." He took
her face in his hands. Noel shrank away.
"No, Daddy. I won't see a doctor. Extravagance in wartime! I won't.
It's no good trying to make me. I'll come down if you like; I shall be
all right to-morrow."
With this Pierson had to be content; but, often that evening, she saw him
looking at her anxiously. And when she went up, he came out of his
study, followed to her room, and insisted on lighting her fire. Kissing
her at the door, he said very quietly:
"I wish I could be a mother to you, my child!"
For a moment it flashed through Noel: 'He knows!' then, by the puzzled
look on his face, she knew that he did not. If only he did know; what a
weight it would be off her mind! But she answered quietly too; "Good
night, Daddy dear!" kissed him, and shut the door.
She sat down before the little new fire, and spread her hands out to it;
all was so cold and wintry in her heart. And the firelight flickered on
her face, where shadows lay thick under her eyes, for all the roundness
of her cheeks, and on her slim pale hands, and the supple grace of her
young body. And out in the night, clouds raced over the moon, which had
come full once more.
VI
1
Pierson went back to his study, and wrote to Gratian.
"If you can get leave for a few days, my dear, I want you at home. I am
troubled about Nollie. Ever since that disaster happened to her she has
been getting paler; and to-day she fainted. She won't see a doctor, but
perhaps you could get her to see George. If you come up, he will surely
be able to run up to us for a day or two. If not, you must take her down
to him at the sea. I have just seen the news of your second cousin
Charlie Pierson's death; he was killed in one of the last attacks on the
Somme; he was nephew of my cousin Leila whom, as you know, Noel sees
every day at her hospital. Bertram has the D. S. O. I have been less
hard-pressed lately; Lauder has been home on leave and has taken some
Services for me. And now the colder weather has come, I am feeling much
fresher. Try your best to come. I am seriously concerned for our beloved
child. "Your affectionate father "EDWARD PIERSON."
Gratian answered that she could get week-end leave, and would come on
Friday. He met her at the station, and they drove thence straight to the
hospital, to pick up Noel. Leila came to them in the waiting-room, and
Pierson, thinking they would talk more freely about Noel's health if he
left them alone, went into the recreation room, and stood watching a game
of bagatelle between two convalescents. When he returned to the little
sitting-room they were still standing by the hearth, talking in low
voices. Gratian must surely have been stooping over the fire, for her
face was red, almost swollen, and her eyes looked as if she had scorched
them.
Leila said lightly:
"Well, Edward, aren't the men delightful? When are we going to another
concert together?"
She, too, was flushed and looking almost young.
"Ah! If we could do the things we want to.
"That's very pretty, Edward; but you should, you know--for a tonic." He
shook his head and smiled.
"You're a temptress, Leila. Will you let Nollie know, please, that we
can take her back with us? Can you let her off to-morrow?"
"For as long as you like; she wants a rest. I've been talking to
Gratian. We oughtn't to have let her go on after a shock like that--my
fault, I'm afraid. I thought that work might be best."
Pierson was conscious of Gratian walking past him out of the room. He
held out his hand to Leila, and followed. A small noise occurred behind
him such as a woman makes when she has put a foot through her own skirt,
or has other powerful cause for dismay. Then he saw Noel in the hall,
and was vaguely aware of being the centre of a triangle of women whose
eyes were playing catch-glance. His daughters kissed each other; and he
became seated between them in the taxi. The most unobservant of men, he
parted from them in the hall without having perceived anything except
that they were rather silent; and, going to his study, he took up a Life
of Sir Thomas More. There was a passage therein which he itched to show
George Laird, who was coming up that evening.
Gratian and Noel had mounted the stairs with lips tight set, and eyes
averted; both were very pale. When they reached the door of Gratian's
room the room which had been their mother's--Noel was for passing on, but
Gratian caught her by the arm, and said: "Come in." The fire was burning
brightly in there, and the two sisters stood in front of it, one on each
side, their hands clutching the mantel-shelf, staring at the flames. At
last Noel put one hand in front of her eyes, and said:
"I asked her to tell you."
Gratian made the movement of one who is gripped by two strong emotions,
and longs to surrender to one or to the other.
"It's too horrible," was all she said.
Noel turned towards the door.
"Stop, Nollie!"
Noel stopped with her hand on the door knob. "I don't want to be
forgiven and sympathised with. I just want to be let alone."
"How can you be let alone?"
The tide of misery surged up in Noel, and she cried out passionately:
"I hate sympathy from people who can't understand. I don't want
anyone's. I can always go away, and lose myself."
The words "can't understand" gave Gratian a shock.
"I can understand," she said.
"You can't; you never saw him. You never saw--" her lips quivered so
that she had to stop and bite them, to keep back a rush of tears.
"Besides you would never have done it yourself."
Gratian went towards her, but stopped, and sat down on the bed. It was
true. She would never have done it herself; it was just that which, for
all her longing to help her sister, iced her love and sympathy. How
terrible, wretched, humiliating! Her own sister, her only sister, in the
position of all those poor, badly brought up girls, who forgot
themselves! And her father--their father! Till that moment she had
hardly thought of him, too preoccupied by the shock to her own pride.
The word: "Dad!" was forced from her.
Noel shuddered.
"That boy!" said Gratian suddenly; "I can't forgive him. If you didn't
know--he did. It was--it was--" She stopped at the sight of Noel's face.
"I did know," she said. "It was I. He was my husband, as much as yours
is. If you say a word against him, I'll never speak to you again: I'm
glad, and you would be, if you were going to have one. What's the
difference, except that you've had luck, and I--haven't." Her lips
quivered again, and she was silent.
Gratian stared up at her. She had a longing for George--to know what he
thought and felt.
"Do you mind if I tell George?" she said.
Noel shook her head. "No! not now. Tell anybody." And suddenly the
misery behind the mask of her face went straight to Gratian's heart. She
got up and put her arms round her sister.
"Nollie dear, don't look like that!"
Noel suffered the embrace without response, but when it was over, went to
her own room.
Gratian stayed, sorry, sore and vexed, uncertain, anxious. Her pride was
deeply wounded, her heart torn; she was angry with herself. Why couldn't
she have been more sympathetic? And yet, now that Noel was no longer
there, she again condemned the dead. What he had done was unpardonable.
Nollie was such--a child! He had committed sacrilege. If only George
would come, and she could talk it all out with him! She, who had married
for love and known passion, had insight enough to feel that Noel's love
had been deep--so far as anything, of course, could be deep in such a
child. Gratian was at the mature age of twenty. But to have forgotten
herself like that! And this boy! If she had known him, that feeling
might have been mitigated by the personal element, so important to all
human judgment; but never having seen him, she thought of his conduct as
"caddish." And she knew that this was, and would be, the trouble between
her and her sister. However she might disguise it, Noel would feel that
judgment underneath.
She stripped off her nurse's garb, put on an evening frock, and fidgeted
about the room. Anything rather than go down and see her father again
before she must. This, which had happened, was beyond words terrible for
him; she dreaded the talk with him about Noel's health which would have
to come. She could say nothing, of course, until Noel wished; and, very
truthful by nature, the idea, of having to act a lie distressed her.
She went down at last, and found them both in the drawing-room already;
Noel in a frilly evening frock, sitting by the fire with her chin on her
hand, while her father was reading out the war news from the evening
paper. At sight of that cool, dainty, girlish figure brooding over the
fire, and of her father's worn face, the tragedy of this business thrust
itself on her with redoubled force. Poor Dad! Poor Nollie! Awful!
Then Noel turned, and gave a little shake of her head, and her eyes said,
almost as plainly as lips could have said it: 'Silence!' Gratian nodded,
and came forward to the fire. And so began one of those calm, domestic
evenings, which cover sometimes such depths of heartache.
2
Noel stayed up until her father went to bed, then went upstairs at once.
She had evidently determined that they should not talk about her.
Gratian sat on alone, waiting for her husband! It was nearly midnight
when he came, and she did not tell him the family news till next morning.
He received it with a curious little grunt. Gratian saw his eyes
contract, as they might have, perhaps, looking at some bad and
complicated wound, and then stare steadily at the ceiling. Though they
had been married over a year, she did not yet know what he thought about
many things, and she waited with a queer sinking at her heart. This
skeleton in the family cupboard was a test of his affection for herself,
a test of the quality of the man she had married. He did not speak for a
little, and her anxiety grew. Then his hand sought hers, and gave it a
hard squeeze.
"Poor little Nollie! This is a case for Mark Tapleyism. But cheer up,
Gracie! We'll get her through somehow."
"But father! It's impossible to keep it from him, and impossible to tell
him! Oh George! I never knew what family pride was till now. It's
incredible. That wretched boy!"
"'De mortuis.' Come, Gracie! In the midst of death we are in life!
Nollie was a plumb little idiot. But it's the war--the war! Your father
must get used to it; it's a rare chance for his Christianity."
"Dad will be as sweet as anything--that's what makes it so horrible!"
George Laird redoubled his squeeze. "Quite right! The old-fashioned
father could let himself go. But need he know? We can get her away from
London, and later on, we must manage somehow. If he does hear, we must
make him feel that Nollie was 'doing her bit.'"
Gratian withdrew her hand. "Don't!" she said in a muffled voice.
George Laird turned and looked at her. He was greatly upset himself,
realising perhaps more truly than his young wife the violence of this
disaster; he was quite capable, too, of feeling how deeply she was
stirred and hurt; but, a born pragmatist, confronting life always in the
experimental spirit, he was impatient of the: "How awful!" attitude. And
this streak of her father's ascetic traditionalism in Gratian always
roused in him a wish to break it up. If she had not been his wife he
would have admitted at once that he might just as well try and alter the
bone-formation of her head, as break down such a fundamental trait of
character, but, being his wife, he naturally considered alteration as
possible as putting a new staircase in a house, or throwing two rooms
into one. And, taking her in his arms, he said: "I know; but it'll all
come right, if we put a good face on it. Shall I talk to Nollie?"
Gratian assented, from the desire to be able to say to her father:
"George is seeing her!" and so stay the need for a discussion. But the
whole thing seemed to her more and more a calamity which nothing could
lessen or smooth away.
George Laird had plenty of cool courage, invaluable in men who have to
inflict as well as to alleviate pain, but he did not like his mission "a
little bit" as he would have said; and he proposed a walk because he
dreaded a scene. Noel accepted for the same reason. She liked George,
and with the disinterested detachment of a sister-in-law, and the
shrewdness of extreme youth, knew him perhaps better than did his wife.
She was sure, at all events, of being neither condemned nor sympathised
with.
They might have gone, of course, in any direction, but chose to make for
the City. Such deep decisions are subconscious. They sought, no doubt,
a dry, unemotional region; or perhaps one where George, who was in
uniform, might rest his arm from the automatic-toy game which the
military play. They had reached Cheapside before he was conscious to the
full of the bizarre nature of this walk with his pretty young
sister-in-law among all the bustling, black-coated mob of money-makers.
'I wish the devil we hadn't come out!' he thought; 'it would have been
easier indoors, after all.'
He cleared his throat, however, and squeezing her arm gently, began:
"Gratian's told me, Nollie. The great thing is to keep your spirit up,
and not worry."
"I suppose you couldn't cure me."
The words, in that delicate spurning voice, absolutely staggered George;
but he said quickly:
"Out of the question, Nollie; impossible! What are you thinking of?"
"Daddy."
The words: "D--n Daddy!" rose to his teeth; he bit them off, and said:
"Bless him! We shall have to see to all that. Do you really want to
keep it from him? It must be one way or the other; no use concealing it,
if it's to come out later."
"No."
He stole a look at her. She was gazing straight before her. How
damnably young she was, how pretty! A lump came up in his throat.
"I shouldn't do anything yet," he said; "too early. Later on, if you'd
like me to tell him. But that's entirely up to you, my dear; he need
never know."
"No."
He could not follow her thought. Then she said:
"Gratian condemns Cyril. Don't let her. I won't have him badly thought
of. It was my doing. I wanted to make sure of him."
George answered stoutly:
"Gracie's upset, of course, but she'll soon be all right. You mustn't
let it come between you. The thing you've got to keep steadily before
you is that life's a huge wide adaptable thing. Look at all these
people! There's hardly one of them who hasn't got now, or hasn't had,
some personal difficulty or trouble before them as big as yours almost;
bigger perhaps. And here they are as lively as fleas. That's what makes
the fascination of life--the jolly irony of it all. It would do you good
to have a turn in France, and see yourself in proportion to the whole."
He felt her fingers suddenly slip under his arm, and went on with greater
confidence:
"Life's going to be the important thing in the future, Nollie; not
comfort and cloistered virtue and security; but living, and pressure to
the square inch. Do you twig? All the old hard-and-fast traditions and
drags on life are in the melting-pot. Death's boiling their bones, and
they'll make excellent stock for the new soup. When you prune and dock
things, the sap flows quicker. Regrets and repinings and repressions are
going out of fashion; we shall have no time or use for them in the
future. You're going to make life--well, that's something to be thankful
for, anyway. You've kept Cyril Morland alive. And--well, you know,
we've all been born; some of us properly, and some improperly, and there
isn't a ha'porth of difference in the value of the article, or the
trouble of bringing it into the world. The cheerier you are the better
your child will be, and that's all you've got to think about. You
needn't begin to trouble at all for another couple of months, at least;
after that, just let us know where you'd like to go, and I'll arrange it
somehow."
She looked round at him, and under that young, clear, brooding gaze he
had the sudden uncomfortable feeling of having spoken like a charlatan.
Had he really touched the heart of the matter? What good were his
generalities to this young, fastidiously nurtured girl, brought up to
tell the truth, by a father so old-fashioned and devoted, whom she loved?
It was George's nature, too, to despise words; and the conditions of his
life these last two years had given him a sort of horror of those who act
by talking. He felt inclined to say: 'Don't pay the slightest attention
to me; it's all humbug; what will be will be, and there's an end of it:
Then she said quietly:
"Shall I tell Daddy or not?"
He wanted to say: "No," but somehow couldn't. After all, the
straightforward course was probably the best. For this would have to be
a lifelong concealment. It was impossible to conceal a thing for ever;
sooner or later he would find out. But the doctor rose up in him, and he
said:
"Don't go to meet trouble, Nollie; it'll be time enough in two months.
Then tell him, or let me."
She shook her head. "No; I will, if it is to be done."
He put his hand on hers, within his arm, and gave it a squeeze.
"What shall I do till then?" she asked.
"Take a week's complete rest, and then go on where you are."
Noel was silent a minute, then said: "Yes; I will."
They spoke no more on the subject, and George exerted himself to talk
about hospital experiences, and that phenomenon, the British soldier. But
just before they reached home he said:
"Look here, Nollie! If you're not ashamed of yourself, no one will be
ashamed of you. If you put ashes on your own head, your fellow-beings
will, assist you; for of such is their charity."
And, receiving another of those clear, brooding looks, he left her with
the thought: 'A lonely child!'
VII
Noel went back to her hospital after a week's rest. George had done more
for her than he suspected, for his saying: "Life's a huge wide adaptable
thing!" had stuck in her mind. Did it matter what happened to her? And
she used to look into the faces of the people she met, and wonder what
was absorbing them. What secret griefs and joys were they carrying about
with them? The loneliness of her own life now forced her to this
speculation concerning others, for she was extraordinarily lonely;
Gratian and George were back at work, her father must be kept at bay;
with Leila she felt ill at ease, for the confession had hurt her pride;
and family friends and acquaintances of all sorts she shunned like the
plague. The only person she did not succeed in avoiding was Jimmy Fort,
who came in one evening after dinner, bringing her a large bunch of
hothouse violets. But then, he did not seem to matter--too new an
acquaintance, too detached. Something he said made her aware that he had
heard of her loss, and that the violets were a token of sympathy. He
seemed awfully kind that evening, telling her "tales of Araby," and
saying nothing which would shock her father. It was wonderful to be a
man and roll about the world as he had, and see all life, and queer
places, and people--Chinamen, and Gauchos, and Boers, and Mexicans. It
gave her a kind of thirst. And she liked to watch his brown, humorous
face; which seemed made of dried leather. It gave her the feeling that
life and experience were all that mattered, doing and seeing things; it
made her own trouble seem smaller; less important. She squeezed his hand
when she said good night: "Thank you for my violets and for coming; it
was awfully kind of you! I wish I could have adventures!" And he
answered: "You will, my dear fairy princess!" He said it queerly and very
kindly.
Fairy Princess! What a funny thing to call her! If he had only known!
There were not many adventures to be had in those regions where she
washed up. Not much "wide and adaptable life" to take her thoughts off
herself. But on her journeys to and from the hospital she had more than
one odd little experience. One morning she noticed a poorly dressed
woman with a red and swollen face, flapping along Regent Street like a
wounded bird, and biting strangely at her hand. Hearing her groan, Noel
asked her what the matter was. The woman held out the hand. "Oh!" she
moaned, "I was scrubbin' the floor and I got this great needle stuck
through my 'and, and it's broke off, and I can't get it out. Oh! Oh!"
She bit at the needle-end, not quite visible, but almost within reach of
teeth, and suddenly went very white. In dismay, Noel put an arm round
her, and turned her into a fine chemist's shop. Several ladies were in
there, buying perfumes, and they looked with acerbity at this disordered
dirty female entering among them. Noel went up to a man behind the
counter. "Please give me something quick, for this poor woman, I think
she's going to faint. She's run a needle through her hand, and can't get
it out." The man gave her "something quick," and Noel pushed past two of
the dames back to where the woman was sitting. She was still obstinately
biting at her hand, and suddenly her chin flew up, and there, between her
teeth, was the needle. She took it from them with her other hand, stuck
it proudly in the front of her dress, and out tumbled the words: "Oh!
there--I've got it!"
When she had swallowed the draught, she looked round her, bewildered, and
said:
"Thank you kindly, miss!" and shuffled out. Noel paid for the draught,
and followed; and, behind her, the shining shop seemed to exhale a
perfumed breath of relief.
"You can't go back to work," she said to the woman. "Where do you live?"
"'Ornsey, miss."
"You must take a 'bus and go straight home, and put your hand at once
into weak Condy's fluid and water. It's swelling. Here's five
shillings."
"Yes, miss; thank you, miss, I'm sure. It's very kind of you. It does
ache cruel."
"If it's not better this afternoon, you must go to a doctor. Promise!"
"Oh, dear, yes. 'Ere's my 'bus. Thank you kindly, miss."
Noel saw her borne away, still sucking at her dirty swollen hand. She
walked on in a glow of love for the poor woman, and hate for the ladies
in the chemist's shop, and forgot her own trouble till she had almost
reached the hospital.
Another November day, a Saturday, leaving early, she walked to Hyde Park.
The plane-trees were just at the height of their spotted beauty.
Few--very few-yellow leaves still hung; and the slender pretty trees
seemed rejoicing in their freedom from summer foliage. All their delicate
boughs and twigs were shaking and dancing in the wind; and their
rain-washed leopard-like bodies had a lithe un-English gaiety. Noel
passed down their line, and seated herself on a bench. Close by, an
artist was painting. His easel was only some three yards away from her,
and she could see the picture; a vista of the Park Lane houses through,
the gay plane-tree screen. He was a tall man, about forty, evidently
foreign, with a thin, long, oval, beardless face, high brow, large grey
eyes which looked as if he suffered from headaches and lived much within
himself. He cast many glances at her, and, pursuant of her new interest
in "life" she watched him discreetly; a little startled however, when,
taking off his broad-brimmed squash hat, he said in a broken accent:
"Forgive me the liberty I take, mademoiselle, but would you so very
kindly allow me to make a sketch of you sitting there? I work very
quick. I beg you will let me. I am Belgian, and have no manners, you
see." And he smiled.
"If you like," said Noel.
"I thank you very much:"
He shifted his easel, and began to draw. She felt flattered, and a
little fluttered. He was so pale, and had a curious, half-fed look,
which moved her.
"Have you been long in England?" she said presently.
"Ever since the first months of the war."
"Do you like it?"
"I was very homesick at first. But I live in my pictures; there are
wonderful things in London."
"Why did you want to sketch me?"
The painter smiled again. "Mademoiselle, youth is so mysterious. Those
young trees I have been painting mean so much more than the old big
trees. Your eyes are seeing things that have not yet happened. There is
Fate in them, and a look of defending us others from seeing it. We have
not such faces in my country; we are simpler; we do not defend our
expressions. The English are very mysterious. We are like children to
them. Yet in some ways you are like children to us. You are not people
of the world at all. You English have been good to us, but you do not
like us."
"And I suppose you do not like us, either?"
He smiled again, and she noticed how white his teeth were.
"Well, not very much. The English do things from duty, but their hearts
they keep to themselves. And their Art--well, that is really amusing!"
"I don't know much about Art," Noel murmured.
"It is the world to me," said the painter, and was silent, drawing with
increased pace and passion.
"It is so difficult to get subjects," he remarked abruptly. "I cannot
afford to pay models, and they are not fond of me painting out of doors.
If I had always a subject like you! You--you have a grief, have you
not?"
At that startling little question, Noel looked up, frowning.
"Everybody has, now."
The painter grasped his chin; his eyes had suddenly become tragical.
"Yes," he said, "everybody. Tragedy is daily bread. I have lost my
family; they are in Belgium. How they live I do not know."
"I'm sorry; very sorry, too, if we aren't nice to you, here. We ought to
be."
He shrugged his shoulders. "What would you have? We are different. That
is unpardonable. An artist is always lonely, too; he has a skin fewer
than other people, and he sees things that they do not. People do not
like you to be different. If ever in your life you act differently from
others, you will find it so, mademoiselle."
Noel felt herself flushing. Was he reading her secret? His eyes had
such a peculiar, secondsighted look.
"Have you nearly finished?" she asked.
"No, mademoiselle; I could go on for hours; but I do not wish to keep
you. It is cold for you, sitting there."
Noel got up. "May I look?"
"Certainly."
She did not quite recognise herself--who does?--but she saw a face which
affected her oddly, of a girl looking at something which was, and yet was
not, in front of her.
"My name is Lavendie," the painter said; "my wife and I live here," and
he gave her a card.
Noel could not help answering: "My name is Noel Pierson; I live with my
father; here's the address"--she found her case, and fished out a card.
"My father is a clergyman; would you care to come and see him? He loves
music and painting."
"It would be a great pleasure; and perhaps I might be allowed to paint
you. Alas! I have no studio."
Noel drew back. "I'm afraid that I work in a hospital all day, and--and
I don't want to be painted, thank you. But, Daddy would like to meet
you, I'm sure."
The painter bowed again; she saw that he was hurt.
"Of course I can see that you're a very fine painter," she said quickly;
"only--only--I don't want to, you see. Perhaps you'd like to paint
Daddy; he's got a most interesting face."
The painter smiled. "He is your father, mademoiselle. May I ask you one
question? Why do you not want to be painted?"
"Because--because I don't, I'm afraid." She held out her hand. The
painter bowed over it. "Au revoir, mademoiselle."
"Thank you," said Noel; "it was awfully interesting." And she walked
away. The sky had become full of clouds round the westerly sun; and the
foreign crinkled tracery of the plane-tree branches against that
French-grey, golden-edged mass, was very lovely. Beauty, and the
troubles of others, soothed her. She felt sorry for the painter, but his
eyes saw too much! And his words: "If ever you act differently from
others," made her feel him uncanny. Was it true that people always
disliked and condemned those who acted differently? If her old
school-fellows now knew what was before her, how would they treat her?
In her father's study hung a little reproduction of a tiny picture in the
Louvre, a "Rape of Europa," by an unknown painter--a humorous delicate
thing, of an enraptured; fair-haired girl mounted on a prancing white
bull, crossing a shallow stream, while on the bank all her white
girl-companions were gathered, turning half-sour, half-envious faces away
from that too-fearful spectacle, while one of them tried with timid
desperation to mount astride of a sitting cow, and follow. The face of
the girl on the bull had once been compared by someone with her own. She
thought of this picture now, and saw her school fellows-a throng of
shocked and wondering girls. Suppose one of them had been in her
position! 'Should I have been turning my face away, like the rest? I
wouldn't no, I wouldn't,' she thought; 'I should have understood!' But
she knew there was a kind of false emphasis in her thought.
Instinctively she felt the painter right. One who acted differently from
others, was lost.
She told her father of the encounter, adding:
"I expect he'll come, Daddy."
Pierson answered dreamily: "Poor fellow, I shall be glad to see him if he
does."
"And you'll sit to him, won't you?"
"My dear--I?"
"He's lonely, you know, and people aren't nice to him. Isn't it hateful
that people should hurt others, because they're foreign or different?"
She saw his eyes open with mild surprise, and went on: "I know you think
people are charitable, Daddy, but they aren't, of course."
"That's not exactly charitable, Nollie."
"You know they're not. I think sin often just means doing things
differently. It's not real sin when it only hurts yourself; but that
doesn't prevent people condemning you, does it?"
"I don't know what you mean, Nollie."
Noel bit her lips, and murmured: "Are you sure we're really Christians,
Daddy?"
The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson took
refuge in an attempt at wit. "I should like notice of that question,
Nollie, as they say in Parliament."
"That means you don't."
Pierson flushed. "We're fallible enough; but, don't get such ideas into
your head, my child. There's a lot of rebellious talk and writing in
these days...."
Noel clasped her hands behind her head. "I think," she said, looking
straight before her, and speaking to the air, "that Christianity is what
you do, not what you think or say. And I don't believe people can be
Christians when they act like others--I mean, when they join together to
judge and hurt people."
Pierson rose and paced the room. "You have not seen enough of life to
talk like that," he said. But Noel went on:
"One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treatment of
conscientious objectors--it was horrible. Why do they treat them like
that, just because they disagree? Captain Fort says it's fear which
makes people bullies. But how can it be fear when they're hundreds to
one? He says man has domesticated his animals but has never succeeded in
domesticating himself. Man must be a wild beast, you know, or the world
couldn't be so awfully brutal. I don't see much difference between being
brutal for good reasons, and being brutal for bad ones."
Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile. There was something
fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one whom he had watched
grow up from a tiny thing. Out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings--sometimes! But then the young generation was always something
of a sealed book to him; his sensitive shyness, and, still more, his
cloth, placed a sort of invisible barrier between him and the hearts of
others, especially the young. There were so many things of which he was
compelled to disapprove, or which at least he couldn't discuss. And they
knew it too well. Until these last few months he had never realised that
his own daughters had remained as undiscovered by him as the interior of
Brazil. And now that he perceived this, he was bewildered, yet could not
imagine how to get on terms with them.
And he stood looking at Noel, intensely puzzled, suspecting nothing of
the hard fact which was altering her--vaguely jealous, anxious, pained.
And when she had gone up to bed, he roamed up and down the room a long
time, thinking. He longed for a friend to confide in, and consult; but
he knew no one. He shrank from them all, as too downright, bluff, and
active; too worldly and unaesthetic; or too stiff and narrow. Amongst
the younger men in his profession he was often aware of faces which
attracted him, but one could not confide deep personal questions to men
half one's age. But of his own generation, or his elders, he knew not
one to whom he could have gone.
VIII
Leila was deep in her new draught of life. When she fell in love it had
always been over head and ears, and so far her passion had always burnt
itself out before that of her partner. This had been, of course, a great
advantage to her. Not that Leila had ever expected her passions to burn
themselves out. When she fell in love she had always thought it was for
always. This time she was sure it was, surer than she had ever been.
Jimmy Fort seemed to her the man she had been looking for all her life.
He was not so good-looking as either Farie or Lynch, but beside him these
others seemed to her now almost ridiculous. Indeed they did not figure
at all, they shrank, they withered, they were husks, together with the
others for whom she had known passing weaknesses. There was only one man
in the world for her now, and would be for evermore. She did not
idealise him either, it was more serious than that; she was thrilled by
his voice, and his touch, she dreamed of him, longed for him when he was
not with her. She worried, too, for she was perfectly aware that he was
not half as fond of her as she was of him. Such a new experience puzzled
her, kept her instincts painfully on the alert. It was perhaps just this
uncertainty about his affection which made him seem more precious than
any of the others. But there was ever the other reason,
too-consciousness that Time was after her, and this her last grand
passion. She watched him as a mother-cat watches her kitten, without
seeming to, of course, for she had much experience. She had begun to
have a curious secret jealousy of Noel though why she could not have
said. It was perhaps merely incidental to her age, or sprang from that
vague resemblance between her and one who outrivalled even what she had
been as a girl; or from the occasional allusions Fort made to what he
called "that little fairy princess." Something intangible, instinctive,
gave her that jealousy. Until the death of her young cousin's lover she
had felt safe, for she knew that Jimmy Fort would not hanker after
another man's property; had he not proved that in old days, with herself,
by running away from her? And she had often regretted having told him of
Cyril Morland's death. One day she determined to repair that error. It
was at the Zoo, where they often went on Sunday afternoons. They were
standing before a creature called the meercat, which reminded them both
of old days on the veldt. Without turning her head she said, as if to
the little animal: "Do you know that your fairy princess, as you call
her, is going to have what is known as a war-baby?"
The sound of his "What!" gave her quite a stab. It was so utterly
horrified.
She said stubbornly: "She came and told me all about it. The boy is
dead, as you know. Yes, terrible, isn't it?" And she looked at him. His
face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with incredulity.
"That lovely child! But it's impossible!"
"The impossible is sometimes true, Jimmy."
"I refuse to believe it."
"I tell you it is so," she said angrily.
"What a ghastly shame!"
"It was her own doing; she said so, herself."
"And her father--the padre! My God!"
Leila was suddenly smitten with a horrible doubt. She had thought it
would disgust him, cure him of any little tendency to romanticise that
child; and now she perceived that it was rousing in him, instead, a
dangerous compassion. She could have bitten her tongue out for having
spoken. When he got on the high horse of some championship, he was not
to be trusted, she had found that out; was even finding it out bitterly
in her own relations with him, constantly aware that half her hold on
him, at least, lay in his sense of chivalry, aware that he knew her
lurking dread of being flung on the beach, by age. Only ten minutes ago
he had uttered a tirade before the cage of a monkey which seemed unhappy.
And now she had roused that dangerous side of him in favour of Noel.
What an idiot she had been!
"Don't look like that, Jimmy. I'm sorry I told you."
His hand did not answer her pressure in the least, but he muttered:
"Well, I do think that's the limit. What's to be done for her?"
Leila answered softly: "Nothing, I'm afraid. Do you love me?" And she
pressed his hand hard.
"Of course."
But Leila thought: 'If I were that meercat he'd have taken more notice of
my paw!' Her heart began suddenly to ache, and she walked on to the next
cage with head up, and her mouth hard set.
Jimmy Fort walked away from Camelot Mansions that evening in extreme
discomfort of mind. Leila had been so queer that he had taken leave
immediately after supper. She had refused to talk about Noel; had even
seemed angry when he had tried to. How extraordinary some women were!
Did they think that a man could hear of a thing like that about such a
dainty young creature without being upset! It was the most perfectly
damnable news! What on earth would she do--poor little fairy princess!
Down had come her house of cards with a vengeance! The whole of her
life--the whole of her life! With her bringing-up and her father and
all--it seemed inconceivable that she could ever survive it. And Leila
had been almost callous about the monstrous business. Women were hard to
each other! Bad enough, these things, when it was a simple working girl,
but this dainty, sheltered, beautiful child! No, it was altogether too
strong--too painful! And following an impulse which he could not resist,
he made his way to the old Square. But having reached the house, he
nearly went away again. While he stood hesitating with his hand on the
bell, a girl and a soldier passed, appearing as if by magic out of the
moonlit November mist, blurred and solid shapes embraced, then vanished
into it again, leaving the sound of footsteps. Fort jerked the bell. He
was shown into what seemed, to one coming out of that mist, to be a
brilliant, crowded room, though in truth there were but two lamps and
five people in it. They were sitting round the fire, talking, and paused
when he came in. When he had shaken hands with Pierson and been
introduced to "my daughter Gratian" and a man in khaki "my son-in-law
George Laird," to a tall thin-faced, foreign-looking man in a black stock
and seemingly no collar, he went up to Noel, who had risen from a chair
before the fire. 'No!' he thought, 'I've dreamed it, or Leila has lied!'
She was so perfectly the self-possessed, dainty maiden he remembered.
Even the feel of her hand was the same-warm and confident; and sinking
into a chair, he said: "Please go on, and let me chip in."
"We were quarrelling about the Universe, Captain Fort," said the man in
khaki; "delighted to have your help. I was just saying that this
particular world has no particular importance, no more than a
newspaper-seller would accord to it if it were completely destroyed
tomorrow--''Orrible catastrophe, total destruction of the world--six
o'clock edition-pyper!' I say that it will become again the nebula out
of which it was formed, and by friction with other nebula re-form into a
fresh shape and so on ad infinitum--but I can't explain why. My wife
wonders if it exists at all except in the human mind--but she can't
explain what the human mind is. My father-in-law thinks that it is God's
hobby--but he can't explain who or what God is. Nollie is silent. And
Monsieur Lavendie hasn't yet told us what he thinks. What do you think,
monsieur?" The thin-faced, big-eyed man put up his hand to his high,
veined brow as if he had a headache, reddened, and began to speak in
French, which Fort followed with difficulty.
"For me the Universe is a limitless artist, monsieur, who from all time
and to all time is ever expressing himself in differing forms--always
trying to make a masterpiece, and generally failing. For me this world,
and all the worlds, are like ourselves, and the flowers and trees--little
separate works of art, more or less perfect, whose little lives run their
course, and are spilled or powdered back into this Creative Artist,
whence issue ever fresh attempts at art. I agree with Monsieur Laird, if
I understand him right; but I agree also with Madame Laird, if I
understand her. You see, I think mind and matter are one, or perhaps
there is no such thing as either mind or matter, only growth and decay
and growth again, for ever and ever; but always conscious growth--an
artist expressing himself in millions of ever-changing forms; decay and
death as we call them, being but rest and sleep, the ebbing of the tide,
which must ever come between two rising tides, or the night which comes
between two days. But the next day is never the same as the day before,
nor the tide as the last tide; so the little shapes of the world and of
ourselves, these works of art by the Eternal Artist, are never renewed in
the same form, are never twice alike, but always fresh-fresh worlds,
fresh individuals, fresh flowers, fresh everything. I do not see
anything depressing in that. To me it would be depressing to think that
I would go on living after death, or live again in a new body, myself yet
not myself. How stale that would be! When I finish a picture it is
inconceivable to me that this picture should ever become another picture,
or that one can divide the expression from the mind-stuff it has
expressed. The Great Artist who is the whole of Everything, is ever in
fresh effort to achieve new things. He is as a fountain who throws up
new drops, no two ever alike, which fall back into the water, flow into
the pipe, and so are thrown up again in fresh-shaped drops. But I cannot
explain why there should be this Eternal Energy, ever expressing itself
in fresh individual shapes, this Eternal Working Artist, instead of
nothing at all--just empty dark for always; except indeed that it must be
one thing or the other, either all or nothing; and it happens to be this
and not that, the all and not the nothing."
He stopped speaking, and his big eyes, which had fixed themselves on
Fort's face, seemed to the latter not to be seeing him at all, but to
rest on something beyond. The man in khaki, who had risen and was
standing with his hand on his wife's shoulder, said:
"Bravo, monsieur; Jolly well put from the artist's point of view. The
idea is pretty, anyway; but is there any need for an idea at all? Things
are; and we have just to take them." Fort had the impression of
something dark and writhing; the thin black form of his host, who had
risen and come close to the fire.
"I cannot admit," he was saying, "the identity of the Creator with the
created. God exists outside ourselves. Nor can I admit that there is no
defnite purpose and fulfilment. All is shaped to His great ends. I
think we are too given to spiritual pride. The world has lost reverence;
I regret it, I bitterly regret it."
"I rejoice at it," said the man in khaki. "Now, Captain Fort, your turn
to bat!"
Fort, who had been looking at Noel, gave himself a shake, and said: "I
think what monsieur calls expression, I call fighting. I suspect the
Universe of being simply a long fight, a sum of conquests and defeats.
Conquests leading to defeats, defeats to conquests. I want to win while
I'm alive, and because I want to win, I want to live on after death.
Death is a defeat. I don't want to admit it. While I have that
instinct, I don't think I shall really die; when I lose it, I think I
shall." He was conscious of Noel's face turning towards him, but had the
feeling that she wasn't really listening. "I suspect that what we call
spirit is just the fighting instinct; that what we call matter is the
mood of lying down. Whether, as Mr. Pierson says, God is outside us, or,
as monsieur thinks, we are all part of God, I don't know, I'm sure."
"Ah! There we are!" said the man in khaki. "We all speak after our
temperaments, and none of us know. The religions of the world are just
the poetic expressions of certain strongly marked temperaments. Monsieur
was a poet just now, and his is the only temperament which has never yet
been rammed down the world's throat in the form of religion. Go out and
proclaim your views from the housetops, monsieur, and see what happens."
The painter shook his head with a smile which seemed to Fort very bright
on the surface, and very sad underneath.
"Non, monsieur," he said; "the artist does not wish to impose his
temperament. Difference of temperament is the very essence of his joy,
and his belief in life. Without difference there would be no life for
him. 'Tout casse, tout lasse,' but change goes on for ever: We artists
reverence change, monsieur; we reverence the newness of each morning, of
each night, of each person, of each expression of energy. Nothing is
final for us; we are eager for all and always for more. We are in love,
you see, even with-death."
There was a silence; then Fort heard Pierson murmur:
"That is beautiful, monsieur; but oh! how wrong!" "And what do you
think, Nollie?" said the man in khaki suddenly. The girl had been
sitting very still in her low chair, with her hands crossed in her lap,
her eyes on the fire, and the lamplight shining down on her fair hair;
she looked up, startled, and her eyes met Fort's.
"I don't know; I wasn't listening." Something moved in him, a kind of
burning pity, a rage of protection. He said quickly:
"These are times of action. Philosophy seems to mean nothing nowadays.
The one thing is to hate tyranny and cruelty, and protect everything
that's weak and lonely. It's all that's left to make life worth living,
when all the packs of all the world are out for blood."
Noel was listening now, and he went on fervently: "Why! Even we who
started out to fight this Prussian pack, have caught the pack feeling--so
that it's hunting all over the country, on every sort of scent. It's a
most infectious thing."
"I cannot see that we are being infected, Captain Fort."
"I'm afraid we are, Mr. Pierson. The great majority of people are
always inclined to run with the hounds; the pressure's great just now;
the pack spirit's in the air."
Pierson shook his head. "No, I cannot see it," he repeated; "it seems to
me that we are all more brotherly, and more tolerant."
"Ah! monsieur le cure," Fort heard the painter say very gently, "it is
difficult for a good man to see the evil round him. There are those whom
the world's march leaves apart, and reality cannot touch. They walk with
God, and the bestialities of us animals are fantastic to them. The
spirit of the pack, as monsieur says, is in the air. I see all human
nature now, running with gaping mouths and red tongues lolling out, their
breath and their cries spouting thick before them. On whom they will fall
next--one never knows; the innocent with the guilty. Perhaps if you were
to see some one dear to you devoured before your eyes, monsieur le cure,
you would feel it too; and yet I do not know."
Fort saw Noel turn her face towards her father; her expression at that
moment was very strange, searching, half frightened. No! Leila had not
lied, and he had not dreamed! That thing was true!
When presently he took his leave, and was out again in the Square, he
could see nothing but her face and form before him in the moonlight: its
soft outline, fair colouring, slender delicacy, and the brooding of the
big grey eyes. He had already crossed New Oxford Street and was some way
down towards the Strand, when a voice behind him murmured: "Ah! c'est
vous, monsieur!" and the painter loomed up at his elbow.
"Are you going my way?" said Fort. "I go slowly, I'm afraid."
"The slower the better, monsieur. London is so beautiful in the dark.
It is the despair of the painter--these moonlit nights. There are
moments when one feels that reality does not exist. All is in
dreams--like the face of that young lady."
Fort stared sharply round at him. "Oh! She strikes you like that, does
she?"
"Ah! What a charming figure! What an atmosphere of the past and future
round her! And she will not let me paint her! Well, perhaps only
Mathieu Maris." He raised his broad Bohemian hat, and ran his fingers
through his hair.
"Yes," said Fort, "she'd make a wonderful picture. I'm not a judge of
Art, but I can see that."
The painter smiled, and went on in his rapid French:
"She has youth and age all at once--that is rare. Her father is an
interesting man, too; I am trying to paint him; he is very difficult. He
sits lost in some kind of vacancy of his own; a man whose soul has gone
before him somewhere, like that of his Church, escaped from this age of
machines, leaving its body behind--is it not? He is so kind; a saint, I
think. The other clergymen I see passing in the street are not at all
like him; they look buttoned-up and busy, with faces of men who might be
schoolmasters or lawyers, or even soldiers--men of this world. Do you
know this, monsieur--it is ironical, but it is true, I think a man cannot
be a successful priest unless he is a man of this world. I do not see
any with that look of Monsieur Pierson, a little tortured within, and not
quite present. He is half an artist, really a lover of music, that man.
I am painting him at the piano; when he is playing his face is alive, but
even then, so far away. To me, monsieur, he is exactly like a beautiful
church which knows it is being deserted. I find him pathetic. Je suis
socialiste, but I have always an aesthetic admiration for that old
Church, which held its children by simple emotion. The times have
changed; it can no longer hold them so; it stands in the dusk, with its
spire to a heaven which exists no more, its bells, still beautiful but
out of tune with the music of the streets. It is something of that which
I wish to get into my picture of Monsieur Pierson; and sapristi! it is
difficult!" Fort grunted assent. So far as he could make out the
painter's words, it seemed to him a large order.
"To do it, you see," went on the painter, "one should have the proper
background--these currents of modern life and modern types, passing him
and leaving him untouched. There is no illusion, and no dreaming, in
modern life. Look at this street. La, la!"
In the darkened Strand, hundreds of khaki-clad figures and girls were
streaming by, and all their voices had a hard, half-jovial vulgarity. The
motor-cabs and buses pushed along remorselessly; newspaper-sellers
muttered their ceaseless invitations. Again the painter made his gesture
of despair: "How am I to get into my picture this modern life, which
washes round him as round that church, there, standing in the middle of
the street? See how the currents sweep round it, as if to wash it away;
yet it stands, seeming not to see them. If I were a phantasist, it would
be easy enough: but to be a phantasist is too simple for me--those
romantic gentlemen bring what they like from anywhere, to serve their
ends. Moi, je suis realiste. And so, monsieur, I have invented an idea.
I am painting over his head while he sits there at the piano a picture
hanging on the wall--of one of these young town girls who have no
mysteriousness at all, no youth; nothing but a cheap knowledge and
defiance, and good humour. He is looking up at it, but he does not see
it. I will make the face of that girl the face of modern life, and he
shall sit staring at it, seeing nothing. What do you think of my idea?"
But Fort had begun to feel something of the revolt which the man of
action so soon experiences when he listens to an artist talking.
"It sounds all right," he said abruptly; "all the same, monsieur, all my
sympathy is with modern life. Take these young girls, and these Tommies.
For all their feather-pated vulgarity and they are damned vulgar, I must
say--they're marvellous people; they do take the rough with the smooth;
they're all 'doing their bit,' you know, and facing this particularly
beastly world. Aesthetically, I daresay, they're deplorable, but can you
say that on the whole their philosophy isn't an advance on anything we've
had up till now? They worship nothing, it's true; but they keep their
ends up marvellously."
The painter, who seemed to feel the wind blowing cold on his ideas,
shrugged his shoulders.
"I am not concerned with that, monsieur; I set down what I see; better or
worse, I do not know. But look at this!" And he pointed down the
darkened and moonlit street. It was all jewelled and enamelled with
little spots and splashes of subdued red and green-blue light, and the
downward orange glow of the high lamps--like an enchanted dream-street
peopled by countless moving shapes, which only came to earth-reality when
seen close to. The painter drew his breath in with a hiss.
"Ah!" he said, "what beauty! And they don't see it--not one in a
thousand! Pity, isn't it? Beauty is the holy thing!"
Fort, in his turn, shrugged his shoulders. "Every man to his vision!"
he said. "My leg's beginning to bother me; I'm afraid I must take a cab.
Here's my address; any time you like to come. I'm often in about seven.
I can't take you anywhere, I suppose?"
"A thousand thanks, monsieur; but I go north. I loved your words about
the pack. I often wake at night and hear the howling of all the packs of
the world. Those who are by nature gentle nowadays feel they are
strangers in a far land. Good night, monsieur!"
He took off his queer hat, bowed low, and crossed out into the Strand,
like one who had come in a dream, and faded out with the waking. Fort
hailed a cab, and went home, still seeing Noel's face. There was one, if
you liked, waiting to be thrown to the wolves, waiting for the world's
pack to begin howling round her--that lovely child; and the first, the
loudest of all the pack, perhaps, must be her own father, the lean, dark
figure with the gentle face, and the burnt bright eyes. What a ghastly
business! His dreams that night were not such as Leila would have
approved.
IX
When in the cupboard there is a real and very bony skeleton, carefully
kept from the sight of a single member of the family, the position of
that member is liable to become lonely. But Pierson, who had been lonely
fifteen years, did not feel it so much, perhaps, as most men would have.
In his dreamy nature there was a curious self-sufficiency, which only
violent shocks disturbed, and he went on with his routine of duty, which
had become for him as set as the pavements he trod on his way to and from
it. It was not exactly true, as the painter had said, that this routine
did not bring him into touch with life. After all he saw people when
they were born, when they married, when they died. He helped them when
they wanted money, and when they were ill; he told their children Bible
stories on Sunday afternoons; he served those who were in need with soup
and bread from his soup kitchen. He never spared himself in any way, and
his ears were always at the service of their woes. And yet he did not
understand them, and they knew that. It was as though he, or they, were
colour-blind. The values were all different. He was seeing one set of
objects, they another.
One street of his parish touched a main line of thoroughfare, and formed
a little part of the new hunting-grounds of women, who, chased forth from
their usual haunts by the Authorities under pressure of the country's
danger, now pursued their calling in the dark. This particular evil had
always been a sort of nightmare to Pierson. The starvation which ruled
his own existence inclined him to a particularly severe view and severity
was not his strong point. In consequence there was ever within him a
sort of very personal and poignant struggle going on beneath that seeming
attitude of rigid disapproval. He joined the hunters, as it were,
because he was afraid-not, of course, of his own instincts, for he was
fastidious, a gentleman, and a priest, but of being lenient to a sin, to
something which God abhorred: He was, as it were, bound to take a
professional view of this particular offence. When in his walks abroad
he passed one of these women, he would unconsciously purse his lips, and
frown. The darkness of the streets seemed to lend them such power, such
unholy sovereignty over the night. They were such a danger to the
soldiers, too; and in turn, the soldiers were such a danger to the lambs
of his flock. Domestic disasters in his parish came to his ears from
time to time; cases of young girls whose heads were turned by soldiers,
so that they were about to become mothers. They seemed to him pitiful
indeed; but he could not forgive them for their giddiness, for putting
temptation in the way of brave young men, fighting, or about to fight.
The glamour which surrounded soldiers was not excuse enough. When the
babies were born, and came to his notice, he consulted a Committee he had
formed, of three married and two maiden ladies, who visited the mothers,
and if necessary took the babies into a creche; for those babies had a
new value to the country, and were not--poor little things!--to be held
responsible for their mothers' faults. He himself saw little of the
young mothers; shy of them, secretly afraid, perhaps, of not being
censorious enough. But once in a way Life set him face to face with one.
On New Year's Eve he was sitting in his study after tea, at that hour
which he tried to keep for his parishioners, when a Mrs. Mitchett was
announced, a small bookseller's wife, whom he knew for an occasional
Communicant. She came in, accompanied by a young dark-eyed girl in a
loose mouse-coloured coat. At his invitation they sat down in front of
the long bookcase on the two green leather chairs which had grown worn in
the service of the parish; and, screwed round in his chair at the bureau,
with his long musician's fingers pressed together, he looked at them and
waited. The woman had taken out her handkerchief, and was wiping her
eyes; but the girl sat quiet, as the mouse she somewhat resembled in that
coat.
"Yes, Mrs. Mitchett?" He said gently, at last.
The woman put away her handkerchief, sniffed resolutely, and began:
"It's 'Ilda, sir. Such a thing Mitchett and me never could 'ave
expected, comin' on us so sudden. I thought it best to bring 'er round,
poor girl. Of course, it's all the war. I've warned 'er a dozen times;
but there it is, comin' next month, and the man in France." Pierson
instinctively averted his gaze from the girl, who had not moved her eyes
from his face, which she scanned with a seeming absence of interest, as
if she had long given up thinking over her lot, and left it now to
others.
"That is sad," he said; "very, very sad."
"Yes," murmured Mrs. Mitchett; "that's what I tell 'Ilda."
The girl's glance, lowered for a second, resumed its impersonal scrutiny
of Pierson's face.
"What is the man's name and regiment? Perhaps we can get leave for him
to come home and marry Hilda at once."
Mrs. Mitchett sniffed. "She won't give it, sir. Now, 'Ilda, give it to
Mr. Pierson." And her voice had a real note of entreaty. The girl
shook her head. Mrs. Mitchett murmured dolefully: "That's 'ow she is,
sir; not a word will she say. And as I tell her, we can only think there
must 'ave been more than one. And that does put us to shame so!"
But still the girl made no sign.
"You speak to her, sir; I'm really at my wit's end."
"Why won't you tell us?" said Pierson. "The man will want to do the
right thing, 'I'm sure."
The girl shook her head, and spoke for the first time.
"I don't know his name."
Mrs. Mitchett's face twitched.
"Oh, dear!" she said: "Think of that! She's never said as much to us."
"Not know his name?" Pierson murmured. "But how--how could you--" he
stopped, but his face had darkened. "Surely you would never have done
such a thing without affection? Come, tell me!"
"I don't know it," the girl repeated.
"It's these Parks," said Mrs. Mitchett, from behind her handkerchief.
"And to think that this'll be our first grandchild and all! 'Ilda is
difficult; as quiet, as quiet; but that stubborn--"
Pierson looked at the girl, who seemed, if anything, less interested than
ever. This impenetrability and something mulish in her attitude annoyed
him. "I can't think," he said, "how you could so have forgotten
yourself. It's truly grievous."
Mrs. Mitchett murmured: "Yes, sir; the girls gets it into their heads
that there's going to be no young men for them."
"That's right," said the girl sullenly.
Pierson's lips grew tighter. "Well, what can I do for you, Mrs.
Mitchett?" he said. "Does your daughter come to church?"
Mrs. Mitchett shook her head mournfully. "Never since she had her
byke."
Pierson rose from his chair. The old story! Control and discipline
undermined, and these bitter apples the result!
"Well," he said, "if you need our creche, you have only to come to me,"
and he turned to the girl. "And you--won't you let this dreadful
experience move your heart? My dear girl, we must all master ourselves,
our passions, and our foolish wilfulness, especially in these times when
our country needs us strong, and self-disciplined, not thinking of
ourselves. I'm sure you're a good girl at heart."
The girl's dark eyes, unmoved from his face, roused in him a spasm of
nervous irritation. "Your soul is in great danger, and you're very
unhappy, I can see. Turn to God for help, and in His mercy everything
will be made so different for you--so very different! Come!"
The girl said with a sort of surprising quietness: "I don't want the
baby!"
The remark staggered him, almost as if she had uttered a hideous oath.
"'Ilda was in munitions," said her mother in an explanatory voice:
"earnin' a matter of four pound a week. Oh! dear, it is a waste an'
all!" A queer, rather terrible little smile curled Pierson's lips.
"A judgment!" he said. "Good evening, Mrs. Mitchett. Good evening,
Hilda. If you want me when the time comes, send for me."
They stood up; he shook hands with them; and was suddenly aware that the
door was open, and Noel standing there. He had heard no sound; and how
long she had been there he could not tell. There was a singular fixity
in her face and attitude. She was staring at the girl, who, as she
passed, lifted her face, so that the dark eyes and the grey eyes met.
The door was shut, and Noel stood there alone with him.
"Aren't you early, my child?" said Pierson. "You came in very quietly."
"Yes; I heard."
A slight shock went through him at the tone of her voice; her face had
that possessed look which he always dreaded. "What did you hear?" he
said.
"I heard you say: 'A judgment!' You'll say the same to me, won't you?
Only, I do want my baby."
She was standing with her back to the door, over which a dark curtain
hung; her face looked young and small against its stuff, her eyes very
large. With one hand she plucked at her blouse, just over her heart.
Pierson stared at her, and gripped the back of the chair he had been
sitting in. A lifetime of repression served him in the half-realised
horror of that moment. He stammered out the single word--
"Nollie!"
"It's quite true," she said, turned round, and went out.
Pierson had a sort of vertigo; if he had moved, he must have fallen down.
Nollie! He slid round and sank into his chair, and by some horrible
cruel fiction of his nerves, he seemed to feel Noel on his knee, as, when
a little girl, she had been wont to sit, with her fair hair fluffing
against his cheek. He seemed to feel that hair tickling his skin; it
used to be the greatest comfort he had known since her mother died. At
that moment his pride shrivelled like a flower held to a flame; all that
abundant secret pride of a father who loves and admires, who worships
still a dead wife in the children she has left him; who, humble by
nature, yet never knows how proud he is till the bitter thing happens;
all the long pride of the priest who, by dint of exhortation and
remonstrance has coated himself in a superiority he hardly suspects--all
this pride shrivelled in him. Then something writhed and cried within, as
a tortured beast cries, at loss to know why it is being tortured. How
many times has not a man used those words: "My God! My God! Why hast
Thou forsaken me!" He sprang up and tried to pace his way out of this
cage of confusion: His thoughts and feelings made the strangest medley,
spiritual and worldly--Social ostracism--her soul in peril--a trial sent
by God! The future! Imagination failed him. He went to his little
piano, opened it, closed it again; took his hat, and stole out. He
walked fast, without knowing where. It was very cold--a clear, bitter
evening. Silent rapid motion in the frosty air was some relief. As Noel
had fled from him, having uttered her news, so did he fly from her. The
afflicted walk fast. He was soon down by the river, and turned West
along its wall. The moon was up, bright and nearly full, and the
steel-like shimmer of its light burnished the ebbing water. A cruel
night! He came to the Obelisk, and leaned against it, overcome by a
spasm of realisation. He seemed to see his dead wife's face staring at
him out of the past, like an accusation. "How have you cared for Nollie,
that she should have come to this?" It became the face of the moonlit
sphinx, staring straight at him, the broad dark face with wide nostrils,
cruel lips, full eyes blank of pupils, all livened and whitened by the
moonlight--an embodiment of the marvellous unseeing energy of Life,
twisting and turning hearts without mercy. He gazed into those eyes with
a sort of scared defiance. The great clawed paws of the beast, the
strength and remorseless serenity of that crouching creature with human
head, made living by his imagination and the moonlight, seemed to him
like a temptation to deny God, like a refutation of human virtue.
Then, the sense of beauty stirred in him; he moved where he could see its
flanks coated in silver by the moonlight, the ribs and the great muscles,
and the tail with tip coiled over the haunch, like the head of a serpent.
It was weirdly living; fine and cruel, that great man-made thing. It
expressed something in the soul of man, pitiless and remote from love--or
rather, the remorselessness which man had seen, lurking within man's
fate. Pierson recoiled from it, and resumed his march along the
Embankment, almost deserted in the bitter cold. He came to where, in the
opening of the Underground railway, he could see the little forms of
people moving, little orange and red lights glowing. The sight arrested
him by its warmth and motion. Was it not all a dream? That woman and
her daughter, had they really come? Had not Noel been but an apparition,
her words a trick which his nerves had played him? Then, too vividly
again, he saw her face against the dark stuff of the curtain, the curve
of her hand plucking at her blouse, heard the sound of his own horrified:
"Nollie!" No illusion, no deception! The edifice of his life was in the
dust. And a queer and ghastly company of faces came about him; faces he
had thought friendly, of good men and women whom he knew, yet at that
moment did not know, all gathered round Noel, with fingers pointing at
her. He staggered back from that vision, could not bear it, could not
recognise this calamity. With a sort of comfort, yet an aching sense of
unreality, his mind flew to all those summer holidays spent in Scotland,
Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, by mountain and lake, with his two girls; what
sunsets, and turning leaves, birds, beasts, and insects they had watched
together! From their youthful companionship, their eagerness, their
confidence in him, he had known so much warmth and pleasure. If all
those memories were true, surely this could not be true. He felt
suddenly that he must hurry back, go straight to Noel, tell her that she
had been cruel to him, or assure himself that, for the moment, she had
been insane: His temper rose suddenly, took fire. He felt anger against
her, against every one he knew, against life itself. Thrusting his hands
deep into the pockets of his thin black overcoat, he plunged into that
narrow glowing tunnel of the station booking-office, which led back to
the crowded streets. But by the time he reached home his anger had
evaporated; he felt nothing but utter lassitude. It was nine o'clock,
and the maids had cleared the dining table. In despair Noel had gone up
to her room. He had no courage left, and sat down supperless at his
little piano, letting his fingers find soft painful harmonies, so that
Noel perhaps heard the faint far thrumming of that music through uneasy
dreams. And there he stayed, till it became time for him to go forth to
the Old Year's Midnight Service.
When he returned, Pierson wrapped himself in a rug and lay down on the
old sofa in his study. The maid, coming in next morning to "do" the
grate, found him still asleep. She stood contemplating him in awe; a
broad-faced, kindly, fresh-coloured girl. He lay with his face resting
on his hand, his dark, just grizzling hair unruffled, as if he had not
stirred all night; his other hand clutched the rug to his chest, and his
booted feet protruded beyond it. To her young eyes he looked rather
appallingly neglected. She gazed with interest at the hollows in his
cheeks, and the furrows in his brow, and the lips, dark-moustached and
bearded, so tightly compressed, even in. sleep. Being holy didn't make a
man happy, it seemed! What fascinated her were the cindery eyelashes
resting on the cheeks, the faint movement of face and body as he
breathed, the gentle hiss of breath escaping through the twitching
nostrils. She moved nearer, bending down over him, with the childlike
notion of counting those lashes. Her lips parted in readiness to say:
"Oh!" if he waked. Something in his face, and the little twitches which
passed over it, made her feel "that sorry" for him. He was a gentleman,
had money, preached to her every Sunday, and was not so very old--what
more could a man want? And yet--he looked so tired, with those cheeks.
She pitied him; helpless and lonely he seemed to her, asleep there
instead of going to bed properly. And sighing, she tiptoed towards the
door.
"Is that you, Bessie?"
The girl turned: "Yes, sir. I'm sorry I woke you, sir. 'Appy New Year,
sir!"
"Ah, yes. A Happy New Year, Bessie."
She saw his usual smile, saw it die, and a fixed look come on his face;
it scared her, and she hurried away. Pierson had remembered. For full
five minutes he lay there staring at nothing. Then he rose, folded the
rug mechanically, and looked at the clock. Eight! He went upstairs,
knocked on Noel's door, and entered.
The blinds were drawn up, but she was still in bed. He stood looking
down at her. "A Happy New Year, my child!" he said; and he trembled all
over, shivering visibly. She looked so young and innocent, so
round-faced and fresh, after her night's sleep, that the thought sprang
up in him again: 'It must have been a dream!' She did not move, but a
slow flush came up in her cheeks. No dream--dream! He said tremulously:
"I can't realise. I--I hoped I had heard wrong. Didn't I, Nollie?
Didn't I?"
She just shook her head.
"Tell me--everything," he said; "for God's sake!"
He saw her lips moving, and caught the murmur: "There 's nothing more.
Gratian and George know, and Leila. It can't be undone, Daddy. Perhaps I
wouldn't have wanted to make sure, if you hadn't tried to stop Cyril and
me--and I'm glad sometimes, because I shall have something of his--" She
looked up at him. "After all, it's the same, really; only, there's no
ring. It's no good talking to me now, as if I hadn't been thinking of
this for ages. I'm used to anything you can say; I've said it to myself,
you see. There's nothing but to make the best of it."
Her hot hand came out from under the bedclothes, and clutched his very
tight. Her flush had deepened, and her eyes seemed to him to glitter.
"Oh, Daddy! You do look tired! Haven't you been to bed? Poor Daddy!"
That hot clutch, and the words: "Poor Daddy!" brought tears into his
eyes. They rolled slowly down to his beard, and he covered his face with
the other hand. Her grip tightened convulsively; suddenly she dragged it
to her lips, kissed it, and let it drop.
"Don't!" she said, and turned away her face.
Pierson effaced his emotion, and said quite calmly:
"Shall you wish to be at home, my dear, or to go elsewhere?"
Noel had begun to toss her head on her pillow, like a feverish child
whose hair gets in its eyes and mouth.
"Oh! I don't know; what does it matter?"
"Kestrel; would you like to go there? Your aunt--I could write to her."
Noel stared at him a moment; a struggle seemed going on within her.
"Yes," she said, "I would. Only, not Uncle Bob."
"Perhaps your uncle would come up here, and keep me company."
She turned her face away, and that tossing movement of the limbs beneath
the clothes began again. "I don't care," she said; "anywhere--it doesn't
matter."
Pierson put his chilly hand on her forehead. "Gently!" he said, and
knelt down by the bed. "Merciful Father," he murmured, "give us strength
to bear this dreadful trial. Keep my beloved child safe, and bring her
peace; and give me to understand how I have done wrong, how I have failed
towards Thee, and her. In all things chasten and strengthen her, my
child, and me."
His thoughts moved on in the confused, inarticulate suspense of prayer,
till he heard her say: "You haven't failed; why do you talk of
failing--it isn't true; and don't pray for me, Daddy."
Pierson raised himself, and moved back from the bed. Her words
confounded him, yet he was afraid to answer. She pushed her head deep
into the pillow, and lay looking up at the ceiling.
"I shall have a son; Cyril won't quite have died. And I don't want to be
forgiven."
He dimly perceived what long dumb processes of thought and feeling had
gone on in her to produce this hardened state of mind, which to him
seemed almost blasphemous. And in the very midst of this turmoil in his
heart, he could not help thinking how lovely her face looked, lying back
so that the curve of her throat was bared, with the short tendrils of
hair coiling about it. That flung-back head, moving restlessly from side
to side in the heat of the soft pillow, had such a passion of protesting
life in it! And he kept silence.
"I want you to know it was all me. But I can't pretend. Of course I'll
try and not let it hurt you more than I possibly can. I'm sorry for you,
poor Daddy; oh! I'm sorry for you!" With a movement incredibly lithe
and swift, she turned and pressed her face down in the pillow, so that
all he could see was her tumbled hair and the bedclothes trembling above
her shoulders. He tried to stroke that hair, but she shook her head
free, and he stole out.
She did not come to breakfast; and when his own wretched meal was over,
the mechanism of his professional life caught him again at once. New
Year's Day! He had much to do. He had, before all, to be of a cheerful
countenance before his flock, to greet all and any with an air of hope
and courage.
X
1
Thirza Pierson, seeing her brother-in-law's handwriting, naturally said:
"Here's a letter from Ted."
Bob Pierson, with a mouth full of sausage, as naturally responded:
"What does he say?"
In reading on, she found that to answer that question was one of the most
difficult tasks ever set her. Its news moved and disturbed her deeply.
Under her wing this disaster had happened! Down here had been wrought
this most deplorable miracle, fraught with such dislocation of lives!
Noel's face, absorbed and passionate, outside the door of her room on the
night when Cyril Morland went away--her instinct had been right!
"He wants you to go up and stay with him, Bob."
"Why not both of us?"
"He wants Nollie to come down to me; she's not well."
"Not well? What's the matter?"
To tell him seemed disloyalty to her sex; not to tell him, disloyalty to
her husband. A simple consideration of fact and not of principle,
decided her. He would certainly say in a moment: 'Here! Pitch it over!'
and she would have to. She said tranquilly:
"You remember that night when Cyril Morland went away, and Noel behaved
so strangely. Well, my dear; she is going to have a child at the
beginning of April. The poor boy is dead, Bob; he died for the Country."
She saw the red tide flow up into his face.
"What!"
"Poor Edward is dreadfully upset. We must do what we can. I blame
myself." By instinct she used those words.
"Blame yourself? Stuff! That young--!" He stopped.
Thirza said quietly: "No, Bob; of the two, I'm sure it was Noel; she was
desperate that day. Don't you remember her face? Oh! this war! It's
turned the whole world upside down. That's the only comfort; nothing's
normal"
Bob Pierson possessed beyond most men the secret of happiness, for he was
always absorbed in the moment, to the point of unself-consciousness.
Eating an egg, cutting down a tree, sitting on a Tribunal, making up his
accounts, planting potatoes, looking at the moon, riding his cob, reading
the Lessons--no part of him stood aside to see how he was doing it, or
wonder why he was doing it, or not doing it better. He grew like a
cork-tree, and acted like a sturdy and well-natured dog. His griefs,
angers, and enjoyments were simple as a child's, or as his somewhat noisy
slumbers. They were notably well-suited, for Thirza had the same secret
of happiness, though her, absorption in the moment did not--as became a
woman--prevent her being conscious of others; indeed, such formed the
chief subject of her absorptions. One might say that they neither of
them had philosophy yet were as philosophic a couple as one could meet on
this earth of the self-conscious. Daily life to these two was still of
simple savour. To be absorbed in life--the queer endless tissue of
moments and things felt and done and said and made, the odd inspiriting
conjunctions of countless people--was natural to them; but they never
thought whether they were absorbed or not, or had any particular attitude
to Life or Death--a great blessing at the epoch in which they were
living.
Bob Pierson, then, paced the room, so absorbed in his dismay and concern,
that he was almost happy.
"By Jove!" he said, "what a ghastly thing!
"Nollie, of all people! I feel perfectly wretched, Thirza; wretched
beyond words." But with each repetition his voice grew cheerier, and
Thirza felt that he was already over the worst.
"Your coffee's getting cold!" she said.
"What do you advise? Shall I go up, heh?"
"I think you'll be a godsend to poor Ted; you'll keep his spirits up. Eve
won't get any leave till Easter; and I can be quite alone, and see to
Nollie here. The servants can have a holiday--, Nurse and I will run the
house together. I shall enjoy it."
"You're a good woman, Thirza!" Taking his wife's hand, he put it to his
lips. "There isn't another woman like you in the world."
Thirza's eyes smiled. "Pass me your cup; I'll give you some fresh
coffee."
It was decided to put the plan into operation at mid-month, and she bent
all her wits to instilling into her husband the thought that a baby more
or less was no great matter in a world which already contained twelve
hundred million people. With a man's keener sense of family propriety,
he could not see that this baby would be the same as any other baby. "By
heaven!" he would say, "I simply can't get used to it; in our family!
And Ted a parson! What the devil shall we do with it?"
"If Nollie will let us, why shouldn't we adopt it? It'll be something to
take my thoughts off the boys."
"That's an idea! But Ted's a funny fellow. He'll have some doctrine of
atonement, or other in his bonnet."
"Oh, bother!" said Thirza with asperity.
The thought of sojourning in town for a spell was not unpleasant to Bob
Pierson. His Tribunal work was over, his early, potatoes in, and he had
visions of working for the Country, of being a special constable, and
dining at his Club. The nearer he was to the front, and the more he
could talk about the war, the greater the service he felt he would be
doing. He would ask for a job where his brains would be of use. He
regretted keenly that Thirza wouldn't be with him; a long separation like
this would be a great trial. And he would sigh and run his fingers
through his whiskers. Still for the Country, and for Nollie, one must
put up with it!
When Thirza finally saw him into the train, tears stood in the eyes of
both, for they were honestly attached, and knew well enough that this
job, once taken in hand, would have to be seen through; a three months'
separation at least.
"I shall write every day."
"So shall I, Bob."
"You won't fret, old girl?"
"Only if you do."
"I shall be up at 5.5, and she'll be down at 4.50. Give us a kiss--damn
the porters. God bless you! I suppose she'd mind if--I--were to come
down now and then?"
"I'm afraid she would. It's--it's--well, you know."
"Yes, Yes; I do." And he really did; for underneath, he had true
delicacy.
Her last words: "You're very sweet, Bob," remained in his ears all the
way to Severn Junction.
She went back to the house, emptied of her husband, daughter, boys, and
maids; only the dogs left and the old nurse whom she had taken into
confidence. Even in that sheltered, wooded valley it was very cold this
winter. The birds hid themselves, not one flower bloomed, and the
red-brown river was full and swift. The sound of trees being felled for
trench props, in the wood above the house resounded all day long in the
frosty air. She meant to do the cooking herself; and for the rest of the
morning and early afternoon she concocted nice things, and thought out
how she herself would feel if she were Noel and Noel she, so as to smooth
out of the way anything which would hurt the girl. In the afternoon she
went down to the station in the village car, the same which had borne
Cyril Morland away that July night, for their coachman had been taken for
the army, and the horses were turned out.
Noel looked tired and white, but calm--too calm. Her face seemed to
Thirza to have fined down, and with those brooding eyes, to be more
beautiful. In the car she possessed herself of the girl's hand, and
squeezed it hard; their only allusion to the situation, except Noel's
formal:
"Thank you so much, Auntie, for having me; it's most awfully sweet of you
and Uncle Bob."
"There's no one in the house, my dear, except old Nurse. It'll be very
dull for you; but I thought I'd teach you to cook; it's rather useful."
The smile which slipped on to Noel's face gave Thirza quite a turn.
She had assigned the girl a different room, and had made it
extraordinarily cheerful with a log fire, chrysanthemums, bright copper
candlesticks, warming-pans, and such like.
She went up with her at bedtime, and standing before the fire, said:
"You know, Nollie, I absolutely refuse to regard this as any sort of
tragedy. To bring life into the worlds in these days, no matter how,
ought to make anyone happy. I only wish I could do it again, then I
should feel some use. Good night dear; and if you want anything, knock
on the wall. I'm next door. Bless you!" She saw that the girl was
greatly moved, underneath her pale mask; and went out astonished at her
niece's powers of self-control.
But she did not sleep at all well; for in imagination, she kept on seeing
Noel turning from side to side in the big bed, and those great eyes of
hers staring at the dark.
2
The meeting of the brothers Pierson took place at the dinner-hour, and
was characterised by a truly English lack of display. They were so
extremely different, and had been together so little since early days in
their old Buckinghamshire home, that they were practically strangers,
with just the potent link of far-distant memories in common. It was of
these they talked, and about the war. On this subject they agreed in the
large, and differed in the narrow. For instance, both thought they knew
about Germany and other countries, and neither of course had any real
knowledge of any country outside their own; for, though both had passed
through considerable tracts of foreign ground at one time or another,
they had never remarked anything except its surface,--its churches, and
its sunsets. Again, both assumed that they were democrats, but neither
knew the meaning of the word, nor felt that the working man could be
really trusted; and both revered Church and, King: Both disliked
conscription, but considered it necessary. Both favoured Home Rule for
Ireland, but neither thought it possible to grant it. Both wished for
the war to end, but were for prosecuting it to Victory, and neither knew
what they meant by that word. So much for the large. On the narrower
issues, such as strategy, and the personality of their country's leaders,
they were opposed. Edward was a Westerner, Robert an Easterner, as was
natural in one who had lived twenty-five years in Ceylon. Edward
favoured the fallen government, Robert the risen. Neither had any
particular reasons for their partisanship except what he had read in the
journals. After all--what other reasons could they have had? Edward
disliked the Harmsworth Press; Robert thought it was doing good. Robert
was explosive, and rather vague; Edward dreamy, and a little didactic.
Robert thought poor Ted looking like a ghost; Edward thought poor Bob
looking like the setting sun. Their faces were indeed as curiously
contrasted as their views and voices; the pale-dark, hollowed, narrow
face of Edward, with its short, pointed beard, and the red-skinned,
broad, full, whiskered face of Robert. They parted for the night with an
affectionate hand-clasp. So began a queer partnership which consisted, as
the days went on, of half an hour's companionship at breakfast, each
reading the paper; and of dinner together perhaps three times a week.
Each thought his brother very odd, but continued to hold the highest
opinion of him. And, behind it all, the deep tribal sense that they stood
together in trouble, grew. But of that trouble they never spoke, though
not seldom Robert would lower his journal, and above the glasses perched
on his well-shaped nose, contemplate his brother, and a little frown of
sympathy would ridge his forehead between his bushy eyebrows. And once
in a way he would catch Edward's eyes coming off duty from his journal,
to look, not at his brother, but at--the skeleton; when that happened,
Robert would adjust his glasses hastily, damn the newspaper type, and
apologise to Edward for swearing. And he would think: 'Poor Ted! He
ought to drink port, and--and enjoy himself, and forget it. What a pity
he's a parson!'
In his letters to Thirza he would deplore Edward's asceticism. "He eats
nothing, he drinks nothing, he smokes a miserable cigarette once in a
blue moon. He's as lonely as a coot; it's a thousand pities he ever lost
his wife. I expect to see his wings sprout any day; but--dash it all
I--I don't believe he's got the flesh to grow them on. Send him up some
clotted cream; I'll see if I can get him to eat it." When the cream came,
he got Edward to eat some the first morning, and at tea time found that
he had finished it himself. "We never talk about Nollie," he wrote, "I'm
always meaning to have it out with him and tell him to buck up, but when
it comes to the point I dry up; because, after all, I feel it too; it
sticks in my gizzard horribly. We Piersons are pretty old, and we've
always been respectable, ever since St. Bartholomew, when that Huguenot
chap came over and founded us. The only black sheep I ever heard of is
Cousin Leila. By the way, I saw her the other day; she came round here
to see Ted. I remember going to stay with her and her first husband;
young Fane, at Simla, when I was coming home, just before we were
married. Phew! That was a queer menage; all the young chaps fluttering
round her, and young Fane looking like a cynical ghost. Even now she
can't help setting her cap a little at Ted, and he swallows her whole;
thinks her a devoted creature reformed to the nines with her hospital and
all that. Poor old Ted; he is the most dreamy chap that ever was."
"We have had Gratian and her husband up for the week-end," he wrote a
little later; "I don't like her so well as Nollie; too serious and
downright for me. Her husband seems a sensible fellow, though; but the
devil of a free-thinker. He and poor Ted are like cat and dog. We had
Leila in to dinner again on Saturday, and a man called Fort came too.
She's sweet on him, I could see with half an eye, but poor old Ted can't.
The doctor and Ted talked up hill and down dale. The doctor said a thing
which struck me. 'What divides us from the beasts? Will power: nothing
else. What's this war, really, but a death carnival of proof that man's
will is invincible?' I stuck it down to tell you, when I got upstairs.
He's a clever fellow. I believe in God, as you know, but I must say when
it comes to an argument, poor old Ted does seem a bit weak, with his:
'We're told this,' and 'We're told that: Nobody mentioned Nollie. I must
have the whole thing out with Ted; we must know how to act when it's all
over."
But not till the middle of March, when the brothers had been sitting
opposite each other at meals for two months, was the subject broached
between them, and then not by Robert. Edward, standing by the hearth
after dinner, in his familiar attitude, one foot on the fender, one hand
grasping the mantel-shelf, and his eyes fixed on the flames, said: "I've
never asked your forgiveness, Bob."
Robert, lingering at the table over his glass of port, started, looked at
Edward's back in its parson's coat, and answered:
"My dear old chap!"
"It has been very difficult to speak of this."
"Of course, of course!" And there was a silence, while Robert's eyes
travelled round the walls for inspiration. They encountered only the
effigies of past Piersons very oily works, and fell back on the
dining-table. Edward went on speaking to the fire:
"It still seems to me incredible. Day and night I think of what it's my
duty to do."
"Nothing!" ejaculated Robert. "Leave the baby with Thirza; we'll take
care of it, and when Nollie's fit, let her go back to work in a hospital
again. She'll soon get over it." He saw his brother shake his head, and
thought: 'Ah! yes; now there's going to be some d--d conscientious
complication.'
Edward turned round on him: "That is very sweet of you both, but it would
be wrong and cowardly for me to allow it."
The resentment which springs up in fathers when other fathers dispose of
young lives, rose in Robert.
"Dash it all, my dear Ted, that's for Nollie to say. She's a woman now,
remember."
A smile went straying about in the shadows of his brother's face. "A
woman? Little Nollie! Bob, I've made a terrible mess of it with my
girls." He hid his lips with his hand, and turned again to the flames.
Robert felt a lump in his throat. "Oh! Hang it, old boy, I don't think
that. What else could you have done? You take too much on yourself.
After all, they're fine girls. I'm sure Nollie's a darling. It's these
modern notions, and this war. Cheer up! It'll all dry straight." He
went up to his brother and put a hand on his shoulder. Edward seemed to
stiffen under that touch.
"Nothing comes straight," he said, "unless it's faced; you know that,
Bob."
Robert's face was a study at that moment. His cheeks filled and
collapsed again like a dog's when it has been rebuked. His colour
deepened, and he rattled some money in a trouser pocket.
"Something in that, of course," he said gruffly. "All the same, the
decision's with Nollie. We'll see what Thirza says. Anyway, there's no
hurry. It's a thousand pities you're a parson; the trouble's enough
without that:"
Edward shook his head. "My position is nothing; it's the thought of my
child, my wife's child. It's sheer pride; and I can't subdue it. I can't
fight it down. God forgive me, I rebel."
And Robert thought: 'By George, he does take it to heart! Well, so
should I! I do, as it is!' He took out his pipe, and filled it, pushing
the tobacco down and down.
"I'm not a man of the world," he heard his brother say; "I'm out of touch
with many things. It's almost unbearable to me to feel that I'm joining
with the world to condemn my own daughter; not for their reasons,
perhaps--I don't know; I hope not, but still, I'm against her."
Robert lit his pipe.
"Steady, old man!" he said. "It's a misfortune. But if I were you I
should feel: 'She's done a wild, silly thing, but, hang it, if anybody
says a word against her, I'll wring his neck.' And what's more, you'll
feel much the same, when it comes to the point." He emitted a huge puff
of smoke, which obscured his brother's face, and the blood, buzzing in
his temples, seemed to thicken the sound of Edward's voice.
"I don't know; I've tried to see clearly. I have prayed to be shown what
her duty is, and mine. It seems to me there can be no peace for her
until she has atoned, by open suffering; that the world's judgment is her
cross, and she must bear it; especially in these days, when all the world
is facing suffering so nobly. And then it seems so hard-so bitter; my
poor little Nollie!"
There was a silence, broken only by the gurgling of Robert's pipe, till
he said abruptly:
"I don't follow you, Ted; no, I don't. I think a man should screen his
children all he can. Talk to her as you like, but don't let the world do
it. Dash it, the world's a rotten gabbling place. I call myself a man
of the world, but when it comes to private matters--well, then I draw the
line. It seems to me it seems to me inhuman. What does George Laird
think about it? He's a knowing chap. I suppose you've--no, I suppose
you haven't--" For a peculiar smile had come on Edward's face.
"No," he said, "I should hardly ask George Laird's opinion."
And Robert realised suddenly the stubborn loneliness of that thin black
figure, whose fingers were playing with a little gold cross. 'By Jove!'
he thought, 'I believe old Ted's like one of those Eastern chaps who go
into lonely places. He's got himself surrounded by visions of things
that aren't there. He lives in unreality--something we can't understand.
I shouldn't be surprised if he heard voices, like--'who was it? Tt, tt!
What a pity!' Ted was deceptive. He was gentle and--all that, a
gentleman of course, and that disguised him; but underneath; what was
there--a regular ascetic, a fakir! And a sense of bewilderment, of
dealing with something which he could not grasp, beset Bob Pierson, so
that he went back to the table, and sat down again beside his port.
"It seems to me," he said rather gruffly, "that the chicken had better be
hatched before we count it." And then, sorry for his brusqueness,
emptied his glass. As the fluid passed over his palate, he thought:
'Poor old Ted! He doesn't even drink--hasn't a pleasure in life, so far
as I can see, except doing his duty, and doesn't even seem to know what
that is. There aren't many like him--luckily! And yet I love
him--pathetic chap!'
The "pathetic chap" was still staring at the flames.
3
And at this very hour, when the brothers were talking--for thought and
feeling do pass mysteriously over the invisible wires of space Cyril
Morland's son was being born of Noel, a little before his time.
PART III
I
Down by the River Wye, among plum-trees in blossom, Noel had laid her
baby in a hammock, and stood reading a letter:
"MY DEAREST NOLLIE, "Now that you are strong again, I feel that I must
put before you my feeling as to your duty in this crisis of your life.
Your aunt and uncle have made the most kind and generous offer to adopt
your little boy. I have known that this was in their minds for some
time, and have thought it over day and night for weeks. In the worldly
sense it would be the best thing, no doubt. But this is a spiritual
matter. The future of our souls depends on how we meet the consequences
of our conduct. And painful, dreadful, indeed, as they must be, I am
driven to feel that you can only reach true peace by facing them in a
spirit of brave humility. I want you to think and think--till you arrive
at a certainty which satisfies your conscience. If you decide, as I
trust you will, to come back to me here with your boy, I shall do all in
my power to make you happy while we face the future together. To do as
your aunt and uncle in their kindness wish, would, I am sore afraid, end
in depriving you of the inner strength and happiness which God only gives
to those who do their duty and try courageously to repair their errors.
I have confidence in you, my dear child. "Ever your most loving father,
"EDWARD PIERSON."
She read it through a second time, and looked at her baby. Daddy seemed
to think that she might be willing to part from this wonderful creature!
Sunlight fell through the plum blossom, in an extra patchwork quilt over
the bundle lying there, touched the baby's nose and mouth, so that he
sneezed. Noel laughed, and put her lips close to his face. 'Give you
up!' she thought: 'Oh, no! And I'm going to be happy too. They shan't
stop me:
In answer to the letter she said simply that she was coming up; and a
week later she went, to the dismay of her uncle and aunt. The old nurse
went too. Everything had hitherto been so carefully watched and guarded
against by Thirza, that Noel did not really come face to face with her
position till she reached home.
Gratian, who had managed to get transferred to a London Hospital, was now
living at home. She had provided the house with new maids against her
sister's return; and though Noel was relieved not to meet her old
familiars, she encountered with difficulty the stolid curiosity of new
faces. That morning before she left Kestrel, her aunt had come into her
room while she was dressing, taken her left hand and slipped a little
gold band on to its third finger. "To please me, Nollie, now that you're
going, just for the foolish, who know nothing about you."
Noel had suffered it with the thought: 'It's all very silly!' But now,
when the new maid was pouring out her hot water, she was suddenly aware
of the girl's round blue eyes wandering, as it were, mechanically to her
hand. This little hoop of gold, then, had an awful power! A rush of
disgust came over her. All life seemed suddenly a thing of forms and
sham. Everybody then would look at that little ring; and she was a
coward, saving herself from them! When she was alone again, she slipped
it off, and laid it on the washstand, where the sunlight fell. Only this
little shining band of metal, this little yellow ring, stood between her
and the world's hostile scorn! Her lips trembled. She took up the ring,
and went to the open window; to throw it out. But she did not, uncertain
and unhappy--half realising the cruelty of life. A knock at the door
sent her flying back to the washstand. The visitor was Gratian.
"I've been looking at him," she said softly; "he's like you, Nollie,
except for his nose."
"He's hardly got one yet. But aren't his eyes intelligent? I think
they're wonderful." She held up the ring: "What shall I do about this,
Gratian?"
Gratian flushed. "Wear it. I don't see why outsiders should know. For
the sake of Dad I think you ought. There's the parish."
Noel slipped the ring back on to her finger. "Would you?"
"I can't tell. I think I would."
Noel laughed suddenly. "I'm going to get cynical; I can feel it in my
bones. How is Daddy looking?"
"Very thin; Mr. Lauder is back again from the Front for a bit, and taking
some of the work now."
"Do I hurt him very much still?"
"He's awfully pleased that you've come. He's as sweet as he can be about
you."
"Yes," murmured Noel, "that's what's dreadful. I'm glad he wasn't in
when I came. Has he told anyone?"
Gratian shook her head. "I don't think anybody knows; unless--perhaps
Captain Fort. He came in again the other night; and somehow--"
Noel flushed. "Leila!" she said enigmatically. "Have you seen her?"
"I went to her flat last week with Dad--he likes her."
"Delilah is her real name, you know. All men like her. And Captain Fort
is her lover."
Gratian gasped. Noel would say things sometimes which made her feel the
younger of the two.
"Of course he is," went on Noel in a hard voice. "She has no men
friends; her sort never have, only lovers. Why do you think he knows
about me?"
"When he asked after you he looked--"
"Yes; I've seen him look like that when he's sorry for anything. I don't
care. Has Monsieur Lavendie been in lately?"
"Yes; he looks awfully unhappy."
"His wife drugs."
"Oh, Nollie! How do you know?"
"I saw her once; I'm sure she does; there was a smell; and she's got
wandering eyes that go all glassy. He can paint me now, if he likes. I
wouldn't let him before. Does he know?"
"Of course not."
"He knows there was something; he's got second sight, I think. But I
mind him less than anybody. Is his picture of Daddy good?"
"Powerful, but it hurts, somehow."
"Let's go down and see it."
The picture was hung in the drawing-room, and its intense modernity made
that old-fashioned room seem lifeless and strange. The black figure,
with long pale fingers touching the paler piano keys, had a frightening
actuality. The face, three-quarters full, was raised as if for
inspiration, and the eyes rested, dreamy and unseeing, on the face of a
girl painted and hung on a background of wall above the piano.
"It's the face of that girl," said Gratian, when they had looked at the
picture for some time in silence:
"No," said Noel, "it's the look in his eyes."
"But why did he choose such a horrid, common girl? Isn't she fearfully
alive, though? She looks as if she were saying: 'Cheerio!'"
"She is; it's awfully pathetic, I think. Poor Daddy!"
"It's a libel," said Gratian stubbornly.
"No. That's what hurts. He isn't quite--quite all there. Will he be
coming in soon?"
Gratian took her arm, and pressed it hard. "Would you like me at dinner
or not; I can easily be out?"
Noel shook her head. "It's no good to funk it. He wanted me, and now
he's got me. Oh! why did he? It'll be awful for him."
Gratian sighed. "I've tried my best, but he always said: 'I've thought
so long about it all that I can't think any longer. I can only feel the
braver course is the best. When things are bravely and humbly met, there
will be charity and forgiveness.'"
"There won't," said Noel, "Daddy's a saint, and he doesn't see."
"Yes, he is a saint. But one must think for oneself--one simply must. I
can't believe as he does, any more; can you, Nollie?"
"I don't know. When I was going through it, I prayed; but I don't know
whether I really believed. I don't think I mind much about that, one way
or the other."
"I mind terribly," said Gratian, "I want the truth."
"I don't know what I want," said Noel slowly, "except that sometimes I
want--life; awfully."
And the two sisters were silent, looking at each other with a sort of
wonder.
Noel had a fancy to put on a bright-coloured blue frock that evening, and
at her neck she hung a Breton cross of old paste, which had belonged to
her mother. When she had finished dressing she went into the nursery and
stood by the baby's cot. The old nurse who was sitting there beside him,
got up at once and said:
"He's sleeping beautiful--the lamb. I'll go down and get a cup o' tea,
and come up, ma'am, when the gong goes." In the way peculiar to those
who have never to initiate, but only to support positions in which they
are placed by others, she had adopted for herself the theory that Noel
was a real war-widow. She knew the truth perfectly; for she had watched
that hurried little romance at Kestrel, but by dint of charity and
blurred meditations it was easy for her to imagine the marriage ceremony
which would and should have taken place; and she was zealous that other
people should imagine it too. It was so much more regular and natural
like that, and "her" baby invested with his proper dignity. She went
downstairs to get a "cup o' tea," thinking: 'A picture they make--that
they do, bless his little heart; and his pretty little mother--no more
than a child, all said and done.'
Noel had been standing there some minutes in the failing light, absorbed
in the face of the sleeping baby, when, raising her eyes, she saw in a
mirror the refection of her father's dark figure by the door. She could
hear him breathing as if the ascent of the stairs had tired him; and
moving to the head of the cot, she rested her hand on it, and turned her
face towards him. He came up and stood beside her, looking silently down
at the baby. She saw him make the sign of the Cross above it, and the
movement of his lips in prayer. Love for her father, and rebellion
against this intercession for her perfect baby fought so hard in the
girl's heart that she felt suffocated, and glad of the dark, so that he
could not see her eyes. Then he took her hand and put it to his lips, but
still without a word; and for the life of her she could not speak either.
In silence, he kissed her forehead; and there mounted in Noel a sudden
passion of longing to show him her pride and love for her baby. She put
her finger down and touched one of his hands. The tiny sleeping fingers
uncurled and, like some little sea anemone, clutched round it. She heard
her father draw his breath in; saw him turn away quickly, silently, and
go out. And she stayed, hardly breathing, with the hand of her baby
squeezing her finger.
II
1
When Edward Pierson, afraid of his own emotion, left the twilit nursery,
he slipped into his own room, and fell on his knees beside his bed,
absorbed in the vision he had seen. That young figure in Madonna blue,
with the halo of bright hair; the sleeping babe in the fine dusk; the
silence, the adoration in that white room! He saw, too; a vision of the
past, when Noel herself had been the sleeping babe within her mother's
arm, and he had stood beside them, wondering and giving praise. It
passed with its other-worldliness and the fine holiness which belongs to
beauty, passed and left the tormenting realism of life. Ah! to live with
only the inner meaning, spiritual and beautifed, in a rare wonderment
such as he had experienced just now!
His alarum clock, while he knelt in his narrow, monkish little
room--ticked the evening hour away into darkness. And still he knelt,
dreading to come back into it all, to face the world's eyes, and the
sound of the world's tongue, and the touch of the rough, the gross, the
unseemly. How could he guard his child? How preserve that vision in her
life, in her spirit, about to enter such cold, rough waters? But the
gong sounded; he got up, and went downstairs.
But this first family moment, which all had dreaded, was relieved, as
dreaded moments so often are, by the unexpected appearance of the Belgian
painter. He had a general invitation, of which he often availed himself;
but he was so silent, and his thin, beardless face, which seemed all eyes
and brow, so mournful, that all three felt in the presence of a sorrow
deeper even than their own family grief. During the meal he gazed
silently at Noel. Once he said: "You will let me paint you now,
mademoiselle, I hope?" and his face brightened a little when she nodded.
There was never much talk when he came, for any depth of discussion, even
of art, brought out at once too wide a difference. And Pierson could
never avoid a vague irritation with one who clearly had spirituality, but
of a sort which he could not understand. After dinner he excused
himself, and went off to his study. Monsieur would be happier alone with
the two girls! Gratian, too, got up. She had remembered Noel's words:
"I mind him less than anybody." It was a chance for Nollie to break the
ice.
2
"I have not seen you for a long time, mademoiselle," said the painter,
when they were alone.
Noel was sitting in front of the empty drawing-room hearth, with her arms
stretched out as if there had been a fire there.
"I've been away. How are you going to paint me, monsieur?"
"In that dress, mademoiselle; Just as you are now, warming yourself at
the fire of life."
"But it isn't there."
"Yes, fires soon go out. Mademoiselle, will you come and see my wife?
She is ill."
"Now?" asked Noel, startled.
"Yes, now. She is really ill, and I have no one there. That is what I
came to ask of your sister; but--now you are here, it's even better. She
likes you."
Noel got up. "Wait one minute!" she said, and ran upstairs. Her baby
was asleep, and the old nurse dozing. Putting on a cloak and cap of grey
rabbit's fur, she ran down again to the hall where the painter was
waiting; and they went out together.
"I do not know if I am to blame," he said, "my wife has been no real wife
to me since she knew I had a mistress and was no real husband to her."
Noel stared round at his face lighted by a queer, smile.
"Yes," he went on, "from that has come her tragedy. But she should have
known before I married her. Nothing was concealed. Bon Dieu! she should
have known! Why cannot a woman see things as they are? My mistress,
mademoiselle, is not a thing of flesh. It is my art. It has always been
first with me, and always will. She has never accepted that, she is
incapable of accepting it. I am sorry for her. But what would you? I
was a fool to marry her. Chere mademoiselle, no troubles are anything
beside the trouble which goes on day and night, meal after meal, year,
after year, between two people who should never have married, because one
loves too much and requires all, and the other loves not at all--no, not
at all, now, it is long dead--and can give but little."
"Can't you separate?" asked Noel, wondering.
"It is hard to separate from one who craves for you as she craves her
drugs--yes, she takes drugs now, mademoiselle. It is impossible for one
who has any compassion in his soul. Besides, what would she do? We live
from hand to mouth, in a strange land. She has no friends here, not one.
How could I leave her while this war lasts? As well could two persons on
a desert island separate. She is killing herself, too, with these drugs,
and I cannot stop her."
"Poor madame!" murmured Noel. "Poor monsieur!"
The painter drew his hand across his eyes.
"I cannot change my nature," he said in a stifled voice, "nor she hers.
So we go on. But life will stop suddenly some day for one of us. After
all, it is much worse for her than for me. Enter, mademoiselle. Do not
tell her I am going to paint you; she likes you, because you refused to
let me."
Noel went up the stairs, shuddering; she had been there once before, and
remembered that sickly scent of drugs. On the third floor they entered a
small sitting-room whose walls were covered with paintings and drawings;
from one corner a triangular stack of canvases jutted out. There was
little furniture save an old red sofa, and on this was seated a stoutish
man in the garb of a Belgian soldier, with his elbows on his knees and
his bearded cheeks resting on his doubled fists. Beside him on the sofa,
nursing a doll, was a little girl, who looked up at Noel. She had a most
strange, attractive, pale little face, with pointed chin and large eyes,
which never moved from this apparition in grey rabbits' skins.
"Ah, Barra! You here!" said the painter:
"Mademoiselle, this is Monsieur Barra, a friend of ours from the front;
and this is our landlady's little girl. A little refugee, too, aren't
you, Chica?"
The child gave him a sudden brilliant smile and resumed her grave
scrutiny of the visitor. The soldier, who had risen heavily, offered
Noel one of his podgy hands, with a sad and heavy giggle.
"Sit down, mademoiselle," said Lavendie, placing a chair for her: "I will
bring my wife in," and he went out through some double doors.
Noel sat down. The soldier had resumed his old attitude, and the little
girl her nursing of the doll, though her big eyes still watched the
visitor. Overcome by strangeness, Noel made no attempt to talk. And
presently through the double doors the painter and his wife came in. She
was a thin woman in a red wrapper, with hollow cheeks, high cheek-bones,
and hungry eyes; her dark hair hung loose, and one hand played restlessly
with a fold of her gown. She took Noel's hand; and her uplifted eyes
seemed to dig into the girl's face, to let go suddenly, and flutter.
"How do you do?" she said in English. "So Pierre brought you, to see me
again. I remember you so well. You would not let him paint you. Ah!
que c'est drole! You are so pretty, too. Hein, Monsieur Barra, is not
mademoiselle pretty?"
The soldier gave his heavy giggle, and resumed his scrutiny of the floor.
"Henriette," said Lavendie, "sit down beside Chica--you must not stand.
Sit down, mademoiselle, I beg."
"I'm so sorry you're not well," said Noel, and sat down again.
The painter stood leaning against the wall, and his wife looked up at his
tall, thin figure, with eyes which had in them anger, and a sort of
cunning.
"A great painter, my husband, is he not?" she said to Noel. "You would
not imagine what that man can do. And how he paints--all day long; and
all night in his head. And so you would not let him paint you, after
all?"
Lavendie said impatiently: "Voyons, Henriette, causez d'autre chose."
His wife plucked nervously at a fold in her red gown, and gave him the
look of a dog that has been rebuked.
"I am a prisoner here, mademoiselle, I never leave the house. Here I
live day after day--my husband is always painting. Who would go out
alone under this grey sky of yours, and the hatreds of the war in every
face? I prefer to keep my room. My husband goes painting; every face he
sees interests him, except that which he sees every day. But I am a
prisoner. Monsieur Barra is our first visitor for a long time."
The soldier raised his face from his fists. "Prisonnier, madame! What
would you say if you were out there?" And he gave his thick giggle. "We
are the prisoners, we others. What would you say to imprisonment by
explosion day and night; never a minute free. Bom! Bom! Bom! Ah! les
tranchees! It's not so free as all that, there."
"Every one has his own prison," said Lavendie bitterly. "Mademoiselle
even, has her prison--and little Chica, and her doll. Every one has his
prison, Barra. Monsieur Barra is also a painter, mademoiselle."
"Moi!" said Barra, lifting his heavy hairy hand. "I paint puddles,
star-bombs, horses' ribs--I paint holes and holes and holes, wire and
wire and wire, and water--long white ugly water. I paint splinters, and
men's souls naked, and men's bodies dead, and nightmare--nightmare--all
day and all night--I paint them in my head." He suddenly ceased speaking
and relapsed into contemplation of the carpet, with his bearded cheeks
resting on his fists. "And their souls as white as snow, les camarades,"
he added suddenly and loudly, "millions of Belgians, English, French,
even the Boches, with white souls. I paint those souls!"
A little shiver ran through Noel, and she looked appealingly at Lavendie.
"Barra," he said, as if the soldier were not there, "is a great painter,
but the Front has turned his head a little. What he says is true,
though. There is no hatred out there. It is here that we are prisoners
of hatred, mademoiselle; avoid hatreds--they are poison!"
His wife put out her hand and touched the child's shoulder.
"Why should we not hate?" she said. "Who killed Chica's father, and
blew her home to-rags? Who threw her out into this horrible
England--pardon, mademoiselle, but it is horrible. Ah! les Boches! If
my hatred could destroy them there would not be one left. Even my
husband was not so mad about his painting when we lived at home. But
here--!" Her eyes darted at his face again, and then sank as if rebuked.
Noel saw the painter's lips move. The sick woman's whole figure writhed.
"It is mania, your painting!" She looked at Noel with a smile. "Will you
have some tea, mademoiselle? Monsieur Barra, some tea?"
The soldier said thickly: "No, madame; in the trenches we have tea
enough. It consoles us. But when we get away--give us wine, le bon vin;
le bon petit vin!"
"Get some wine, Pierre!"
Noel saw from the painter's face that there was no wine, and perhaps no
money to get any; but he went quickly out. She rose and said:
"I must be going, madame."
Madame Lavendie leaned forward and clutched her wrist. "Wait a little,
mademoiselle. We shall have some wine, and Pierre shall take you back
presently. You cannot go home alone--you are too pretty. Is she not,
Monsieur Barra?"
The soldier looked up: "What would you say," he said, "to bottles of wine
bursting in the air, bursting red and bursting white, all day long, all
night long? Great steel bottles, large as Chica: bits of bottles,
carrying off men's heads? Bsum, garra-a-a, and a house comes down, and
little bits of people ever so small, ever so small, tiny bits in the air
and all over the ground. Great souls out there, madame. But I will tell
you a secret," and again he gave his heavy giggle, "all a little, little
mad; nothing to speak of--just a little bit mad; like a watch, you know,
that you can wind for ever. That is the discovery of this war,
mademoiselle," he said, addressing Noel for the first time, "you cannot
gain a great soul till you are a little mad." And lowering his piggy
grey eyes at once, he resumed his former attitude. "It is that madness I
shall paint some day," he announced to the carpet; "lurking in one tiny
corner of each soul of all those millions, as it creeps, as it peeps,
ever so sudden, ever so little when we all think it has been put to bed,
here--there, now--then, when you least think; in and out like a mouse
with bright eyes. Millions of men with white souls, all a little mad. A
great subject, I think," he added heavily. Involuntarily Noel put her
hand to her heart, which was beating fast. She felt quite sick.
"How long have you been at the Front, monsieur?"
"Two years, mademoiselle. Time to go home and paint, is it not? But
art--!" he shrugged his heavy round shoulders, his whole bear-like body.
"A little mad," he muttered once more. "I will tell you a story. Once
in winter after I had rested a fortnight, I go back to the trenches at
night, and I want some earth to fill up a hole in the ground where I was
sleeping; when one has slept in a bed one becomes particular. Well, I
scratch it from my parapet, and I come to something funny. I strike my
briquet, and there is a Boche's face all frozen and earthy and dead and
greeny-white in the flame from my briquet."
"Oh, no!"
"Oh! but yes, mademoiselle; true as I sit here. Very useful in the
parapet--dead Boche. Once a man like me. But in the morning I could not
stand him; we dug him out and buried him, and filled the hole up with
other things. But there I stood in the night, and my face as close to
his as this"--and he held his thick hand a foot before his face. "We
talked of our homes; he had a soul, that man. 'Il me disait des choses',
how he had suffered; and I, too, told him my sufferings. Dear God, we
know all; we shall never know more than we know out there, we others, for
we are mad--nothing to speak of, but just a little, little mad. When you
see us, mademoiselle, walking the streets, remember that." And he
dropped his face on to his fists again.
A silence had fallen in the room-very queer and complete. The little
girl nursed her doll, the soldier gazed at the floor, the woman's mouth
moved stealthily, and in Noel the thought rushed continually to the verge
of action: 'Couldn't I get up and run downstairs?' But she sat on,
hypnotised by that silence, till Lavendie reappeared with a bottle and
four glasses.
"To drink our health, and wish us luck, mademoiselle," he said.
Noel raised the glass he had given her. "I wish you all happiness."
"And you, mademoiselle," the two men murmured.
She drank a little, and rose.
"And now, mademoiselle," said Lavendie, "if you must go, I will see you
home."
Noel took Madame Lavendie's hand; it was cold, and returned no pressure;
her eyes had the glazed look that she remembered. The soldier had put
his empty glass down on the floor, and was regarding it unconscious of
her. Noel turned quickly to the door; the last thing she saw was the
little girl nursing her doll.
In the street the painter began at once in his rapid French:
'I ought not to have asked you to come, mademoiselle; I did not know our
friend Barra was there. Besides, my wife is not fit to receive a lady;
vous voyez qu'il y a de la manie dans cette pauvre tote. I should not
have asked you; but I was so miserable."
"Oh!" murmured Noel, "I know."
"In our home over there she had interests. In this great town she can
only nurse her grief against me. Ah! this war! It seems to me we are
all in the stomach of a great coiling serpent. We lie there, being
digested. In a way it is better out there in the trenches; they are
beyond hate, they have attained a height that we have not. It is
wonderful how they still can be for going on till they have beaten the
Boche; that is curious and it is very great. Did Barra tell you how,
when they come back--all these fighters--they are going to rule, and
manage the future of the world? But it will not be so. They will mix in
with life, separate--be scattered, and they will be ruled as they were
before. The tongue and the pen will rule them: those who have not seen
the war will rule them."
"Oh!"' cried Noel, "surely they will be the bravest and strongest in the
future."
The painter smiled.
"War makes men simple," he said, "elemental; life in peace is neither
simple nor elemental, it is subtle, full of changing environments, to
which man must adapt himself; the cunning, the astute, the adaptable,
will ever rule in times of peace. It is pathetic, the belief of those
brave soldiers that the-future is theirs."
"He said, a strange thing," murmured Noel; "that they were all a little
mad."
"He is a man of queer genius--Barra; you should see some of his earlier
pictures. Mad is not quite the word, but something is loosened, is
rattling round in them, they have lost proportion, they are being forced
in one direction. I tell you, mademoiselle, this war is one great
forcing-house; every living plant is being made to grow too fast, each
quality, each passion; hate and love, intolerance and lust and avarice,
courage and energy; yes, and self-sacrifice--all are being forced and
forced beyond their strength, beyond the natural flow of the sap, forced
till there has come a great wild luxuriant crop, and then--Psum! Presto!
The change comes, and these plants will wither and rot and stink. But we
who see Life in forms of Art are the only ones who feel that; and we are
so few. The natural shape of things is lost. There is a mist of blood
before all eyes. Men are afraid of being fair. See how we all hate not
only our enemies, but those who differ from us. Look at the streets
too--see how men and women rush together, how Venus reigns in this
forcing-house. Is it not natural that Youth about to die should yearn
for pleasure, for love, for union, before death?"
Noel stared up at him. 'Now!' she thought: I will.'
"Yes," she said, "I know that's true, because I rushed, myself. I'd like
you to know. We couldn't be married--there wasn't time. And--he was
killed. But his son is alive. That's why I've been away so long. I
want every one to know." She spoke very calmly, but her cheeks felt
burning hot.
The painter had made an upward movement of his hands, as if they had been
jerked by an electric current, then he said quite quietly:
"My profound respect, mademoiselle, and my great sympathy. And your
father?"
"It's awful for him."
The painter said gently: "Ah! mademoiselle, I am not so sure. Perhaps he
does not suffer so greatly. Perhaps not even your trouble can hurt him
very much. He lives in a world apart. That, I think, is his true
tragedy to be alive, and yet not living enough to feel reality. Do you
know Anatole France's description of an old woman: 'Elle vivait, mais si
peu.' Would that not be well said of the Church in these days: 'Elle
vivait, mais si peu.' I see him always like a rather beautiful dark
spire in the night-time when you cannot see how it is attached to the
earth. He does not know, he never will know, Life."
Noel looked round at him. "What do you mean by Life, monsieur? I'm
always reading about Life, and people talk of seeing Life! What is
it--where is it? I never see anything that you could call Life."
The painter smiled.
"To 'see life'!" he said. "Ah! that is different. To enjoy yourself!
Well, it is my experience that when people are 'seeing life' as they call
it, they are not enjoying themselves. You know when one is very thirsty
one drinks and drinks, but the thirst remains all the same. There are
places where one can see life as it is called, but the only persons you
will see enjoying themselves at such places are a few humdrums like
myself, who go there for a talk over a cup of coffee. Perhaps at your
age, though, it is different."
Noel clasped her hands, and her eyes seemed to shine in the gloom. "I
want music and dancing and light, and beautiful things and faces; but I
never get them."
"No, there does not exist in this town, or in any other, a place which
will give you that. Fox-trots and ragtime and paint and powder and glare
and half-drunken young men, and women with red lips you can get them in
plenty. But rhythm and beauty and charm never. In Brussels when I was
younger I saw much 'life' as they call it, but not one lovely thing
unspoiled; it was all as ashes in the mouth. Ah! you may smile, but I
know what I am talking of. Happiness never comes when you are looking
for it, mademoiselle; beauty is in Nature and in real art, never in these
false silly make believes. There is a place just here where we Belgians
go; would you like to see how true my words are?
"Oh, yes!"
"Tres-bien! Let us go in?"
They passed into a revolving doorway with little glass compartments which
shot them out into a shining corridor. At the end of this the painter
looked at Noel and seemed to hesitate, then he turned off from the room
they were about to enter into a room on the right. It was large, full of
gilt and plush and marble tables, where couples were seated; young men in
khaki and older men in plain clothes, together or with young women. At
these last Noel looked, face after face, while they were passing down a
long way to an empty table. She saw that some were pretty, and some only
trying to be, that nearly all were powdered and had their eyes darkened
and their lips reddened, till she felt her own face to be dreadfully
ungarnished: Up in a gallery a small band was playing an attractive
jingling hollow little tune; and the buzz of talk and laughter was almost
deafening.
"What will you have, mademoiselle?" said the painter. "It is just nine
o'clock; we must order quickly."
"May I have one of those green things?"
"Deux cremes de menthe," said Lavendie to the waiter.
Noel was too absorbed to see the queer, bitter little smile hovering
about his face. She was busy looking at the faces of women whose eyes,
furtively cold and enquiring, were fixed on her; and at the faces of men
with eyes that were furtively warm and wondering.
"I wonder if Daddy was ever in a place like this?" she said, putting the
glass of green stuff to her lips. "Is it nice? It smells of
peppermint."
"A beautiful colour. Good luck, mademoiselle!" and he chinked his glass
with hers.
Noel sipped, held it away, and sipped again.
"It's nice; but awfully sticky. May I have a cigarette?"
"Des cigarettes," said Lavendie to the waiter, "Et deux cafes noirs. Now,
mademoiselle," he murmured when they were brought, "if we imagine that we
have drunk a bottle of wine each, we shall have exhausted all the
preliminaries of what is called Vice. Amusing, isn't it?" He shrugged
his shoulders.
His face struck Noel suddenly as tarnished and almost sullen.
"Don't be angry, monsieur, it's all new to me, you see."
The painter smiled, his bright, skin-deep smile.
"Pardon! I forget myself. Only, it hurts me to see beauty in a place
like this. It does not go well with that tune, and these voices, and
these faces. Enjoy yourself, mademoiselle; drink it all in! See the way
these people look at each other; what love shines in their eyes! A pity,
too, we cannot hear what they are saying. Believe me, their talk is most
subtle, tres-spirituel. These young women are 'doing their bit,' as you
call it; bringing le plaisir to all these who are serving their country.
Eat, drink, love, for tomorrow we die. Who cares for the world simple or
the world beautiful, in days like these? The house of the spirit is
empty."
He was looking at her sidelong as if he would enter her very soul.
Noel got up. "I'm ready to go, monsieur."
He put her cloak on her shoulders, paid the bill, and they went out,
threading again through the little tables, through the buzz of talk and
laughter and the fumes of tobacco, while another hollow little tune
jingled away behind them.
"Through there," said the painter, pointing to another door, "they dance.
So it goes. London in war-time! Well, after all, it is never very
different; no great town is. Did you enjoy your sight of 'life,'
mademoiselle?"
"I think one must dance, to be happy. Is that where your friends go?"
"Oh, no! To a room much rougher, and play dominoes, and drink coffee and
beer, and talk. They have no money to throw away."
"Why didn't you show me?"
"Mademoiselle, in that room you might see someone perhaps whom one day
you would meet again; in the place we visited you were safe enough at
least I hope so."
Noel shrugged. "I suppose it doesn't matter now, what I do."
And a rush of emotion caught at her throat--a wave from the past--the
moonlit night, the dark old Abbey, the woods and the river. Two tears
rolled down her cheeks.
"I was thinking of--something," she said in a muffled voice. "It's all
right."
"Chere mademoiselle!" Lavendie murmured; and all the way home he was
timid and distressed. Shaking his hand at the door, she murmured:
"I'm sorry I was such a fool; and thank you awfully, monsieur. Good
night."
"Good night; and better dreams. There is a good time coming--Peace and
Happiness once more in the world. It will not always be this
Forcing-House. Good night, chere mademoiselle!"
Noel went up to the nursery, and stole in. A night-light was burning,
Nurse and baby were fast asleep. She tiptoed through into her own room.
Once there, she felt suddenly so tired that she could hardly undress; and
yet curiously rested, as if with that rush of emotion, Cyril and the past
had slipped from her for ever.
III
Noel's first encounter with Opinion took place the following day. The
baby had just come in from its airing; she had seen it comfortably
snoozing, and was on her way downstairs, when a voice from the hall said:
"How do you do?" and she saw the khaki-clad figure of Adrian Lauder, her
father's curate! Hesitating just a moment, she finished her descent, and
put her fingers in his. He was a rather heavy, dough-coloured young man
of nearly thirty, unsuited by khaki, with a round white collar buttoned
behind; but his aspiring eyes redeemed him, proclaiming the best
intentions in the world, and an inclination towards sentiment in the
presence of beauty.
"I haven't seen you for ages," he said rather fatuously, following her
into her father's study.
"No," said Noel. "How--do you like being at the Front?"
"Ah!" he said, "they're wonderful!" And his eyes shone. "It's so nice
to see you again."
"Is it?"
He seemed puzzled by that answer; stammered, and said:
"I didn't know your sister had a baby. A jolly baby."
"She hasn't."
Lauder's mouth opened. 'A silly mouth,' she thought.
"Oh!" he said. "Is it a protegee--Belgian or something?"
"No, it's mine; my own." And, turning round, she slipped the little ring
off her finger. When she turned back to him, his face had not recovered
from her words. It had a hapless look, as of one to whom such a thing
ought not to have happened.
"Don't look like that," said Noel. "Didn't you understand? It's
mine-mine." She put out her left hand. "Look! There's no ring."
He stammered: "I say, you oughtn't to--you oughtn't to--!"
"What?"
"Joke about--about such things; ought you?"
"One doesn't joke if one's had a baby without being married, you know."
Lauder went suddenly slack. A shell might have burst a few paces from
him. And then, just as one would in such a case, he made an effort,
braced himself, and said in a curious voice, both stiff and heavy: "I
can't--one doesn't--it's not--"
"It is," said Noel. "If you don't believe me, ask Daddy."
He put his hand up to his round collar; and with the wild thought that he
was going to tear it off, she cried: "Don't!"
"You!" he said. "You! But--"
Noel turned away from him to the window: She stood looking out, but saw
nothing whatever.
"I don't want it hidden," she said without turning round, "I want every
one to know. It's stupid as it is--stupid!" and she stamped her foot.
"Can't you see how stupid it is--everybody's mouth falling open!"
He uttered a little sound which had pain in it, and she felt a real pang
of compunction. He had gripped the back of a chair; his face had lost
its heaviness. A dull flush coloured his cheeks. Noel had a feeling, as
if she had been convicted of treachery. It was his silence, the curious
look of an impersonal pain beyond power of words; she felt in him
something much deeper than mere disapproval--something which echoed
within herself. She walked quickly past him and escaped. She ran
upstairs and threw herself on her bed. He was nothing: it was not that!
It was in herself, the awful feeling, for the first time developed and
poignant, that she had betrayed her caste, forfeited the right to be
thought a lady, betrayed her secret reserve and refinement, repaid with
black ingratitude the love lavished on her up bringing, by behaving like
any uncared-for common girl. She had never felt this before--not even
when Gratian first heard of it, and they had stood one at each end of the
hearth, unable to speak. Then she still had her passion, and her grief
for the dead. That was gone now as if it had never been; and she had no
defence, nothing between her and this crushing humiliation and chagrin.
She had been mad! She must have been mad! The Belgian Barra was right:
"All a little mad" in this "forcing-house" of a war! She buried her face
deep in the pillow, till it almost stopped her power of breathing; her
head and cheeks and ears seemed to be on fire. If only he had shown
disgust, done something which roused her temper, her sense of justice,
her feeling that Fate had been too cruel to her; but he had just stood
there, bewilderment incarnate, like a creature with some very deep
illusion shattered. It was horrible! Then, feeling that she could not
stay still, must walk, run, get away somehow from this feeling of
treachery and betrayal, she sprang up. All was quiet below, and she
slipped downstairs and out, speeding along with no knowledge of
direction, taking the way she had taken day after day to her hospital.
It was the last of April, trees and shrubs were luscious with blossom and
leaf; the dogs ran gaily; people had almost happy faces in the sunshine.
'If I could get away from myself, I wouldn't care,' she thought. Easy to
get away from people, from London, even from England perhaps; but from
oneself--impossible! She passed her hospital; and looked at it dully, at
the Red Cross flag against its stucco wall, and a soldier in his blue
slops and red tie, coming out. She had spent many miserable hours there,
but none quite so miserable as this. She passed the church opposite to
the flats where Leila lived, and running suddenly into a tall man coming
round the corner, saw Fort. She bent her head, and tried to hurry past.
But his hand was held out, she could not help putting hers into it; and
looking up hardily, she said:
"You know about me, don't you?"
His face, naturally so frank, seemed to clench up, as if he were riding
at a fence. 'He'll tell a lie,' she thought bitterly. But he did not.
"Yes, Leila told me."
And she thought: 'I suppose he'll try and pretend that I've not been a
beast!'
"I admire your pluck," he said.
"I haven't any."
"We never know ourselves, do we? I suppose you wouldn't walk my pace a
minute or two, would you? I'm going the same way."
"I don't know which way I'm going."
"That is my case, too."
They walked on in silence.
"I wish to God I were back in France," said Fort abruptly. "One doesn't
feel clean here."
Noel's heart applauded.
Ah! to get away--away from oneself! But at the thought of her baby, her
heart fell again. "Is your leg quite hopeless?" she said.
"Quite."
"That must be horrid."
"Hundreds of thousands would look on it as splendid luck; and so it is if
you count it better to be alive than dead, which I do, in spite of the
blues."
"How is Cousin Leila?"
"Very well. She goes on pegging away at the hospital; she's a brick."
But he did not look at her, and again there was silence, till he stopped
by Lord's Cricket-ground.
"I mustn't keep you crawling along at this pace."
"Oh, I don't mind!"
"I only wanted to say that if I can be of any service to you at any time
in any way whatever, please command me."
He gave her hand a squeeze, took his hat off; and Noel walked slowly on.
The little interview, with its suppressions, and its implications, had
but exasperated her restlessness, and yet, in a way, it had soothed the
soreness of her heart. Captain Fort at all events did not despise her;
and he was in trouble like herself. She felt that somehow by the look of
his face, and the tone of his voice when he spoke of Leila. She
quickened her pace. George's words came back to her: "If you're not
ashamed of yourself, no one will be of you!" How easy to say! The old
days, her school, the little half grown-up dances she used to go to, when
everything was happy. Gone! All gone!
But her meetings with Opinion were not over for the day, for turning
again at last into the home Square, tired out by her three hours' ramble,
she met an old lady whom she and Gratian had known from babyhood--a
handsome dame, the widow of an official, who spent her days, which showed
no symptom of declining, in admirable works. Her daughter, the widow of
an officer killed at the Marne, was with her, and the two greeted Noel
with a shower of cordial questions: So she was back from the country, and
was she quite well again? And working at her hospital? And how was her
dear father? They had thought him looking very thin and worn. But now
Gratian was at home--How dreadfully the war kept husbands and wives
apart! And whose was the dear little baby they had in the house?
"Mine," said Noel, walking straight past them with her head up. In every
fibre of her being she could feel the hurt, startled, utterly bewildered
looks of those firm friendly persons left there on the pavement behind
her; could feel the way they would gather themselves together, and walk
on, perhaps without a word, and then round the corner begin: "What has
come to Noel? What did she mean?" And taking the little gold hoop out
of her pocket, she flung it with all her might into the Square Garden.
The action saved her from a breakdown; and she went in calmly. Lunch was
long over, but her father had not gone out, for he met her in the hall
and drew her into the dining-room.
"You must eat, my child," he said. And while she was swallowing down
what he had caused to be kept back for her, he stood by the hearth in
that favourite attitude of his, one foot on the fender, and one hand
gripping the mantel-shelf.
"You've got your wish, Daddy," she said dully: "Everybody knows now. I've
told Mr. Lauder, and Monsieur, and the Dinnafords."
She saw his fingers uncrisp, then grip the shelf again. "I'm glad," he
said.
"Aunt Thirza gave me a ring to wear, but I've thrown it away."
"My dearest child," he began, but could not go on, for the quivering of
his lips.
"I wanted to say once more, Daddy, that I'm fearfully sorry about you.
And I am ashamed of myself; I thought I wasn't, but I am--only, I think
it was cruel, and I'm not penitent to God; and it's no good trying to
make me."
Pierson turned and looked at her. For a long time after, she could not
get that look out of her memory.
Jimmy Fort had turned away from Noel feeling particularly wretched. Ever
since the day when Leila had told him of the girl's misfortune he had
been aware that his liaison had no decent foundation, save a sort of
pity. One day, in a queer access of compunction, he had made Leila an
offer of marriage. She had refused; and he had respected her the more,
realising by the quiver in her voice and the look in her eyes that she
refused him, not because she did not love him well enough, but because
she was afraid of losing any of his affection. She was a woman of great
experience.
To-day he had taken advantage of the luncheon interval to bring her some
flowers, with a note to say that he could not come that evening. Letting
himself in with his latchkey, he had carefully put those Japanese azaleas
in the bowl "Famille Rose," taking water from her bedroom. Then he had
sat down on the divan with his head in his hands.
Though he had rolled so much about the world, he had never had much to do
with women. And there was nothing in him of the Frenchman, who takes
what life puts in his way as so much enjoyment on the credit side, and
accepts the ends of such affairs as they naturally and rather rapidly
arrive. It had been a pleasure, and was no longer a pleasure; but this
apparently did not dissolve it, or absolve him. He felt himself bound by
an obscure but deep instinct to go on pretending that he was not tired of
her, so long as she was not tired of him. And he sat there trying to
remember any sign, however small, of such a consummation, quite without
success. On the contrary, he had even the wretched feeling that if only
he had loved her, she would have been much more likely to have tired of
him by now. For her he was still the unconquered, in spite of his loyal
endeavour to seem conquered. He had made a fatal mistake, that evening
after the concert at Queen's Hall, to let himself go, on a mixed tide of
desire and pity!
His folly came to him with increased poignancy after he had parted from
Noel. How could he have been such a base fool, as to have committed
himself to Leila on an evening when he had actually been in the company
of that child? Was it the vague, unseizable likeness between them which
had pushed him over the edge? 'I've been an ass,' he thought; 'a
horrible ass.' I would always have given every hour I've ever spent with
Leila, for one real smile from that girl.'
This sudden sight of Noel after months during which he had tried loyally
to forget her existence, and not succeeded at all, made him realise as he
never had yet that he was in love with her; so very much in love with her
that the thought of Leila was become nauseating. And yet the instincts
of a gentleman seemed to forbid him to betray that secret to either of
them. It was an accursed coil! He hailed a cab, for he was late; and
all the way back to the War Office he continued to see the girl's figure
and her face with its short hair. And a fearful temptation rose within
him. Was it not she who was now the real object for chivalry and pity?
Had he not the right to consecrate himself to championship of one in such
a deplorable position? Leila had lived her life; but this child's
life--pretty well wrecked--was all before her. And then he grinned from
sheer disgust. For he knew that this was Jesuitry. Not chivalry was
moving him, but love! Love! Love of the unattainable! And with a heavy
heart, indeed, he entered the great building, where, in a small room,
companioned by the telephone, and surrounded by sheets of paper covered
with figures, he passed his days. The war made everything seem dreary,
hopeless. No wonder he had caught at any distraction which came
along--caught at it, till it had caught him!
IV
1
To find out the worst is, for human nature, only a question of time. But
where the "worst" is attached to a family haloed, as it were, by the
authority and reputation of an institution like the Church, the process
of discovery has to break through many a little hedge. Sheer
unlikelihood, genuine respect, the defensive instinct in those identified
with an institution, who will themselves feel weaker if its strength be
diminished, the feeling that the scandal is too good to be true--all
these little hedges, and more, had to be broken through. To the
Dinnafords, the unholy importance of what Noel had said to them would
have continued to keep them dumb, out of self-protection; but its
monstrosity had given them the feeling that there must be some mistake,
that the girl had been overtaken by a wild desire to "pull their legs" as
dear Charlie would say. With the hope of getting this view confirmed,
they lay in wait for the old nurse who took the baby out, and obtained
the information, shortly imparted: "Oh, yes; Miss Noel's. Her 'usband
was killed--poor lamb!" And they felt rewarded. They had been sure there
was some mistake. The relief of hearing that word "'usband" was intense.
One of these hasty war marriages, of which the dear Vicar had not
approved, and so it had been kept dark. Quite intelligible, but so sad!
Enough misgiving however remained in their minds, to prevent their going
to condole with the dear Vicar; but not enough to prevent their roundly
contradicting the rumours and gossip already coming to their ears. And
then one day, when their friend Mrs. Curtis had said too positively:
"Well, she doesn't wear a wedding-ring, that I'll swear, because I took
very good care to look!" they determined to ask Mr. Lauder. He
would--indeed must--know; and, of course, would not tell a story. When
they asked him it was so manifest that he did know, that they almost
withdrew the question. The poor young man had gone the colour of a
tomato.
"I prefer not to answer," he said. The rest of a very short interview
was passed in exquisite discomfort. Indeed discomfort, exquisite and
otherwise, within a few weeks of Noel's return, had begun to pervade all
the habitual congregation of Pierson's church. It was noticed that
neither of the two sisters attended Service now. Certain people who went
in the sincere hope of seeing Noel, only fell off again when she did not
appear. After all, she would not have the face! And Gratian was too
ashamed, no doubt. It was constantly remarked that the Vicar looked very
grave and thin, even for him. As the rumours hardened into certainty,
the feeling towards him became a curious medley of sympathy and
condemnation. There was about the whole business that which English
people especially resent. By the very fact of his presence before them
every Sunday, and his public ministrations, he was exhibiting to them, as
it were, the seamed and blushing face of his daughter's private life,
besides affording one long and glaring demonstration of the failure of
the Church to guide its flock: If a man could not keep his own daughter
in the straight path--whom could he? Resign! The word began to be
thought about, but not yet spoken. He had been there so long; he had
spent so much money on the church and the parish; his gentle dreamy
manner was greatly liked. He was a gentleman; and had helped many
people; and, though his love of music and vestments had always caused
heart-burnings, yet it had given a certain cachet to the church. The
women, at any rate, were always glad to know that the church they went to
was capable of drawing their fellow women away from other churches.
Besides, it was war-time, and moral delinquency which in time of peace
would have bulked too large to neglect, was now less insistently dwelt
on, by minds preoccupied by food and air-raids. Things, of course, could
not go on as they were; but as yet they did go on.
The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk; and nothing
concrete or tangible came Pierson's way. He went about his usual routine
without seeming change. And yet there was a change, secret and creeping.
Wounded almost to death himself, he felt as though surrounded by one
great wound in others; but it was some weeks before anything occurred to
rouse within him the weapon of anger or the protective impulse.
And then one day a little swift brutality shook him to the very soul. He
was coming home from a long parish round, and had turned into the Square,
when a low voice behind him said:
"Wot price the little barstard?"
A cold, sick feeling stifled his very breathing; he gasped, and spun
round, to see two big loutish boys walking fast away. With swift and
stealthy passion he sprang after them, and putting his hands on their two
neighbouring shoulders, wrenched them round so that they faced him, with
mouths fallen open in alarm. Shaking them with all his force, he said:
"How dare you--how dare you use that word?" His face and voice must have
been rather terrible, for the scare in their faces brought him to sudden
consciousness of his own violence, and he dropped his hands. In two
seconds they were at the corner. They stopped there for a second; one of
them shouted "Gran'pa"; then they vanished. He was left with lips and
hands quivering, and a feeling that he had not known for years--the weak
white empty feeling one has after yielding utterly to sudden murderous
rage. He crossed over, and stood leaning against the Garden railings,
with the thought: 'God forgive me! I could have killed them--I could
have killed them!' There had been a devil in him. If he had had
something in his hand, he might now have been a murderer: How awful!
Only one had spoken; but he could have killed them both! And the word
was true, and was in all mouths--all low common mouths, day after day, of
his own daughter's child! The ghastliness of this thought, brought home
so utterly, made him writhe, and grasp the railings as if he would have
bent them.
From that day on, a creeping sensation of being rejected of men, never
left him; the sense of identification with Noel and her tiny outcast
became ever more poignant, more real; the desire to protect them ever
more passionate; and the feeling that round about there were whispering
voices, pointing fingers, and a growing malevolence was ever more
sickening. He was beginning too to realise the deep and hidden truth:
How easily the breath of scandal destroys the influence and sanctity of
those endowed therewith by vocation; how invaluable it is to feel
untarnished, and how difficult to feel that when others think you
tarnished.
He tried to be with Noel as much as possible; and in the evenings they
sometimes went walks together, without ever talking of what was always in
their minds. Between six and eight the girl was giving sittings to
Lavendie in the drawing-room, and sometimes Pierson would come there and
play to them. He was always possessed now by a sense of the danger Noel
ran from companionship with any man. On three occasions, Jimmy Fort made
his appearance after dinner. He had so little to say that it was
difficult to understand why he came; but, sharpened by this new dread for
his daughter, Pierson noticed his eyes always following her. 'He admires
her,' he thought; and often he would try his utmost to grasp the
character of this man, who had lived such a roving life. 'Is he--can he
be the sort of man I would trust Nollie to?' he would think. 'Oh, that I
should have to hope like this that some good man would marry her--my
little Nollie, a child only the other day!'
In these sad, painful, lonely weeks he found a spot of something like
refuge in Leila's sitting-room, and would go there often for half an hour
when she was back from her hospital. That little black-walled room with
its Japanese prints and its flowers, soothed him. And Leila soothed him,
innocent as he was of any knowledge of her latest aberration, and perhaps
conscious that she herself was not too happy. To watch her arranging
flowers, singing her little French songs, or to find her beside him,
listening to his confidences, was the only real pleasure he knew in these
days. And Leila, in turn, would watch him and think: 'Poor Edward! He
has never lived; and never will; now!' But sometimes the thought would
shoot through her: 'Perhaps he's to be envied. He doesn't feel what I
feel, anyway. Why did I fall in love again?'
They did not speak of Noel as a rule, but one evening she expressed her
views roundly.
"It was a great mistake to make Noel come back. Edward. It was
Quixotic. You'll be lucky if real mischief doesn't come of it. She's not
a patient character; one day she'll do something rash. And, mind you,
she'll be much more likely to break out if she sees the world treating
you badly than if it happens to herself. I should send her back to the
country, before she makes bad worse."
"I can't do that, Leila. We must live it down together."
"Wrong, Edward. You should take things as they are."
With a heavy sigh Pierson answered:
"I wish I could see her future. She's so attractive. And her defences
are gone. She's lost faith, and belief in all that a good woman should
be. The day after she came back she told me she was ashamed of herself.
But since--she's not given a sign. She's so proud--my poor little
Nollie. I see how men admire her, too. Our Belgian friend is painting
her. He's a good man; but he finds her beautiful, and who can wonder.
And your friend Captain Fort. Fathers are supposed to be blind, but they
see very clear sometimes."
Leila rose and drew down a blind.
"This sun," she said. "Does Jimmy Fort come to you--often?"
"Oh! no; very seldom. But still--I can see."
'You bat--you blunderer!' thought Leila: 'See! You can't even see this
beside you!'
"I expect he's sorry for her," she said in a queer voice.
"Why should he be sorry? He doesn't know:"
"Oh, yes! He knows; I told him."
"You told him!"
"Yes," Leila repeated stubbornly; "and he's sorry for her."
And even then "this monk" beside her did not see, and went blundering on.
"No, no; it's not merely that he's sorry. By the way he looks at her, I
know I'm not mistaken. I've wondered--what do you think, Leila. He's
too old for her; but he seems an honourable, kind man."
"Oh! a most honourable, kind man." But only by pressing her hand against
her lips had she smothered a burst of bitter laughter. He, who saw
nothing, could yet notice Fort's eyes when he looked at Noel, and be
positive that he was in love with her! How plainly those eyes must
speak! Her control gave way.
"All this is very interesting," she said, spurning her words like Noel,
"considering that he's more than my friend, Edward." It gave her a sort
of pleasure to see him wince. 'These blind bats!' she thought, terribly
stung that he should so clearly assume her out of the running. Then she
was sorry, his face had become so still and wistful. And turning away,
she said:
"Oh! I shan't break my heart; I'm a good loser. And I'm a good fighter,
too; perhaps I shan't lose." And snapping off a sprig of geranium, she
pressed it to her lips.
"Forgive me," said Pierson slowly; "I didn't know. I'm stupid. I
thought your love for your poor soldiers had left no room for other
feelings."
Leila uttered a shrill laugh. "What have they to do with each other?
Did you never hear of passion, Edward? Oh! Don't look at me like that.
Do you think a woman can't feel passion at my age? As much as ever, more
than ever, because it's all slipping away."
She took her hand from her lips, but a geranium petal was left clinging
there, like a bloodstain. "What has your life been all these years," she
went on vehemently--"suppression of passion, nothing else! You monks
twist Nature up with holy words, and try to disguise what the eeriest
simpleton can see. Well, I haven't suppressed passion, Edward. That's
all."
"And are you happier for that?"
"I was; and I shall be again."
A little smile curled Pierson's lips. "Shall be?" he said. "I hope so.
It's just two ways of looking at things, Leila."
"Oh, Edward! Don't be so gentle! I suppose you don't think a person
like me can ever really love?"
He was standing before her with his head down, and a sense that, naive
and bat-like as he was, there was something in him she could not reach or
understand, made her cry out:
"I've not been nice to you. Forgive me, Edward! I'm so unhappy."
"There was a Greek who used to say: 'God is the helping of man by man.'
It isn't true, but it's beautiful. Good-bye, dear Leila, and don't be
sorrowful"
She squeezed his hand, and turned to the window.
She stood there watching his black figure cross the road in the sunshine,
and pass round the corner by the railings of the church. He walked
quickly, very upright; there was something unseeing even about that back
view of him; or was it that he saw-another world? She had never lost the
mental habits of her orthodox girlhood, and in spite of all impatience,
recognised his sanctity. When he had disappeared she went into her
bedroom. What he had said, indeed, was no discovery. She had known.
Oh! She had known. 'Why didn't I accept Jimmy's offer? Why didn't I
marry him? Is it too late?' she thought. 'Could I? Would he--even
now?' But then she started away from her own thought. Marry him! knowing
his heart was with this girl?
She looked long at her face in the mirror, studying with a fearful
interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light
coating of powder. She examined the cunning touches of colouring matter
here and there in her front hair. Were they cunning enough? Did they
deceive? They seemed to her suddenly to stare out. She fingered and
smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin below her chin.
She stretched herself, and passed her hands down over her whole form,
searching as it were for slackness, or thickness. And she had the bitter
thought: 'I'm all out. I'm doing all I can.' The lines of a little poem
Fort had showed her went thrumming through her head:
"Time, you old gipsy man
Will you not stay
Put up your caravan
Just for a day?"
What more could she do? He did not like to see her lips reddened. She
had marked his disapprovals, watched him wipe his mouth after a kiss,
when he thought she couldn't see him. 'I need'nt!' she thought. 'Noel's
lips are no redder, really. What has she better than I? Youth--dew on
the grass!' That didn't last long! But long enough to "do her in" as
her soldier-men would say. And, suddenly she revolted against herself,
against Fort, against this chilled and foggy country; felt a fierce
nostalgia for African sun, and the African flowers; the happy-go-lucky,
hand-to-mouth existence of those five years before the war began. High
Constantia at grape harvest! How many years ago--ten years, eleven
years! Ah! To have before her those ten years, with him! Ten years in
the sun! He would have loved her then, and gone on loving her! And she
would not have tired of him, as she had tired of those others. 'In half
an hour,' she thought, 'he'll be here, sit opposite me; I shall see him
struggling forcing himself to seem affectionate! It's too humbling! But
I don't care; I want him!'
She searched her wardrobe, for some garment or touch of colour, novelty
of any sort, to help her. But she had tried them all--those little
tricks--was bankrupt. And such a discouraged, heavy mood came on her,
that she did not even "change," but went back in her nurse's dress and
lay down on the divan, pretending to sleep, while the maid set out the
supper. She lay there moody and motionless, trying to summon courage,
feeling that if she showed herself beaten she was beaten; knowing that
she only held him by pity. But when she heard his footstep on the stairs
she swiftly passed her hands over her cheeks, as if to press the blood
out of them, and lay absolutely still. She hoped that she was white, and
indeed she was, with finger-marks under the eyes, for she had suffered
greatly this last hour. Through her lashes she saw him halt, and look at
her in surprise. Asleep, or-ill, which? She did not move. She wanted
to watch him. He tiptoed across the room and stood looking down at her.
There was a furrow between his eyes. 'Ah!' she thought, 'it would suit
you, if I were dead, my kind friend.' He bent a little towards her; and
she wondered suddenly whether she looked graceful lying there, sorry now
that she had not changed her dress. She saw him shrug his shoulders ever
so faintly with a puzzled little movement. He had not seen that she was
shamming. How nice his face was--not mean, secret, callous! She opened
her eyes, which against her will had in them the despair she was feeling.
He went on his knees, and lifting her hand to his lips, hid them with it.
"Jimmy," she said gently, "I'm an awful bore to you. Poor Jimmy! No!
Don't pretend! I know what I know!" 'Oh, God! What am I saying?' she
thought. 'It's fatal-fatal. I ought never!' And drawing his head to
her, she put it to her heart. Then, instinctively aware that this moment
had been pressed to its uttermost, she scrambled up, kissed his forehead,
stretched herself, and laughed.
"I was asleep, dreaming; dreaming you loved me. Wasn't it funny? Come
along. There are oysters, for the last time this season."
All that evening, as if both knew they had been looking over a precipice,
they seemed to be treading warily, desperately anxious not to rouse
emotion in each other, or touch on things which must bring a scene. And
Leila talked incessantly of Africa.
"Don't you long for the sun, Jimmy? Couldn't we--couldn't you go? Oh!
why doesn't this wretched war end? All that we've got here at home every
scrap of wealth, and comfort, and age, and art, and music, I'd give it
all for the light and the sun out there. Wouldn't you?"
And Fort said he would, knowing well of one thing which he would not
give. And she knew that, as well as he.
They were both gayer than they had been for a long time; so that when he
had gone, she fell back once more on to the divan, and burying her face
in a cushion, wept bitterly.
V
1
It was not quite disillusionment that Pierson felt while he walked away.
Perhaps he had not really believed in Leila's regeneration. It was more
an acute discomfort, an increasing loneliness. A soft and restful spot
was now denied him; a certain warmth and allurement had gone out of his
life. He had not even the feeling that it was his duty to try and save
Leila by persuading her to marry Fort. He had always been too sensitive,
too much as it were of a gentleman, for the robuster sorts of evangelism.
Such delicacy had been a stumbling-block to him all through professional
life. In the eight years when his wife was with him, all had been more
certain, more direct and simple, with the help of her sympathy, judgment;
and companionship. At her death a sort of mist had gathered in his soul.
No one had ever spoken plainly to him. To a clergyman, who does? No one
had told him in so many words that he should have married again--that to
stay unmarried was bad for him, physically and spiritually, fogging and
perverting life; not driving him, indeed, as it drove many, to
intolerance and cruelty, but to that half-living dreaminess, and the
vague unhappy yearnings which so constantly beset him. All these
celibate years he had really only been happy in his music, or in far-away
country places, taking strong exercise, and losing himself in the
beauties of Nature; and since the war began he had only once, for those
three days at Kestrel, been out of London.
He walked home, going over in his mind very anxiously all the evidence he
had of Fort's feeling for Noel. How many times had he been to them since
she came back? Only three times--three evening visits! And he had not
been alone with her a single minute! Before this calamity befell his
daughter, he would never have observed anything in Fort's demeanour; but,
in his new watchfulness, he had seen the almost reverential way he looked
at her, noticed the extra softness of his voice when he spoke to her, and
once a look of sudden pain, a sort of dulling of his whole self, when
Noel had got up and gone out of the room. And the girl herself? Twice
he had surprised her gazing at Fort when he was not looking, with a sort
of brooding interest. He remembered how, as a little girl, she would
watch a grown-up, and then suddenly one day attach herself to him, and be
quite devoted. Yes, he must warn her, before she could possibly become
entangled. In his fastidious chastity, the opinion he had held of Fort
was suddenly lowered. He, already a free-thinker, was now revealed as a
free-liver. Poor little Nollie! Endangered again already! Every man a
kind of wolf waiting to pounce on her!
He found Lavendie and Noel in the drawing-room, standing before the
portrait which was nearing completion. He looked at it for a long
minute, and turned away:
"Don't you think it's like me, Daddy?"
"It's like you; but it hurts me. I can't tell why."
He saw the smile of a painter whose picture is being criticised come on
Lavendie's face.
"It is perhaps the colouring which does not please you, monsieur?"
"No, no; deeper. The expression; what is she waiting for?"
The defensive smile died on Lavendie's lips.
"It is as I see her, monsieur le cure."
Pierson turned again to the picture, and suddenly covered his eyes. "She
looks 'fey,"' he said, and went out of the room.
Lavendie and Noel remained staring at the picture. "Fey? What does that
mean, mademoiselle?"
"Possessed, or something."
And they continued to stare at the picture, till Lavendie said:
"I think there is still a little too much light on that ear."
The same evening, at bedtime, Pierson called Noel back.
"Nollie, I want you to know something. In all but the name, Captain Fort
is a married man."
He saw her flush, and felt his own face darkening with colour.
She said calmly: "I know; to Leila."
"Do you mean she has told you?"
Noel shook her head.
"Then how?"
"I guessed. Daddy, don't treat me as a child any more. What's the use,
now?"
He sat down in the chair before the hearth, and covered his face with his
hands. By the quivering of those hands, and the movement of his
shoulders, she could tell that he was stifling emotion, perhaps even
crying; and sinking down on his knees she pressed his hands and face to
her, murmuring: "Oh, Daddy dear! Oh, Daddy dear!"
He put his arms round her, and they sat a long time with their cheeks
pressed together, not speaking a word.
VI
1
The day after that silent outburst of emotion in the drawing-room was a
Sunday. And, obeying the longing awakened overnight to be as good as she
could to her father; Noel said to him:
"Would you like me to come to Church?"
"Of course, Nollie."
How could he have answered otherwise? To him Church was the home of
comfort and absolution, where people must bring their sins and
troubles--a haven of sinners, the fount of charity, of forgiveness, and
love. Not to have believed that, after all these years, would have been
to deny all his usefulness in life, and to cast a slur on the House of
God.
And so Noel walked there with him, for Gratian had gone down to George,
for the week-end. She slipped quietly up the side aisle to their empty
pew, under the pulpit. Never turning her eyes from the chancel, she
remained unconscious of the stir her presence made, during that hour and
twenty minutes. Behind her, the dumb currents of wonder, disapproval,
and resentment ran a stealthy course. On her all eyes were fixed sooner
or later, and every mind became the play ground of judgments. From every
soul, kneeling, standing, or sitting, while the voice of the Service
droned, sang, or spoke, a kind of glare radiated on to that one small
devoted head, which seemed so ludicrously devout. She disturbed their
devotions, this girl who had betrayed her father, her faith, her class.
She ought to repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there
was something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she
was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church's authority, too
visible a rent in the raiment of their priest. Her figure focused all
the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks. Mothers
quivered with the knowledge that their daughters could see her; wives
with the idea that their husbands were seeing her. Men experienced
sensations varying from condemnation to a sort of covetousness. Young
folk wondered, and felt inclined to giggle. Old maids could hardly bear
to look. Here and there a man or woman who had seen life face to face,
was simply sorry! The consciousness of all who knew her personally was
at stretch how to behave if they came within reach of her in going out.
For, though only half a dozen would actually rub shoulders with her, all
knew that they might be, and many felt it their duty to be, of that
half-dozen, so as to establish their attitude once for all. It was, in
fact, too severe a test for human nature and the feelings which Church
ought to arouse. The stillness of that young figure, the impossibility of
seeing her face and judging of her state of mind thereby; finally, a
faint lurking shame that they should be so intrigued and disturbed by
something which had to do with sex, in this House of Worship--all
combined to produce in every mind that herd-feeling of defence, which so
soon becomes, offensive. And, half unconscious, half aware of it all,
Noel stood, and sat, and knelt. Once or twice she saw her father's eyes
fixed on her; and, still in the glow of last night's pity and remorse,
felt a kind of worship for his thin grave face. But for the most part,
her own wore the expression Lavendie had translated to his canvas--the
look of one ever waiting for the extreme moments of life, for those few
and fleeting poignancies which existence holds for the human heart. A
look neither hungry nor dissatisfied, but dreamy and expectant, which
might blaze into warmth and depth at any moment, and then go back to its
dream.
When the last notes of the organ died away she continued to sit very
still, without looking round.
There was no second Service, and the congregation melted out behind her,
and had dispersed into the streets and squares long before she came
forth. After hesitating whether or no to go to the vestry door, she
turned away and walked home alone.
It was this deliberate evasion of all contact which probably clinched the
business. The absence of vent, of any escape-pipe for the feelings, is
always dangerous. They felt cheated. If Noel had come out amongst all
those whose devotions her presence had disturbed, if in that exit, some
had shown and others had witnessed one knows not what of a manifested
ostracism, the outraged sense of social decency might have been appeased
and sleeping dogs allowed to lie, for we soon get used to things; and,
after all, the war took precedence in every mind even over social
decency. But none of this had occurred, and a sense that Sunday after
Sunday the same little outrage would happen to them, moved more than a
dozen quite unrelated persons, and caused the posting that evening of as
many letters, signed and unsigned, to a certain quarter. London is no
place for parish conspiracy, and a situation which in the country would
have provoked meetings more or less public, and possibly a resolution,
could perhaps only thus be dealt with. Besides, in certain folk there is
ever a mysterious itch to write an unsigned letter--such missives satisfy
some obscure sense of justice, some uncontrollable longing to get even
with those who have hurt or disturbed them, without affording the
offenders chance for further hurt or disturbance.
Letters which are posted often reach their destination.
On Wednesday morning Pierson was sitting in his study at the hour devoted
to the calls of his parishioners, when the maid announced, "Canon
Rushbourne, sir," and he saw before him an old College friend whom he had
met but seldom in recent years. His visitor was a short, grey-haired man
of rather portly figure, whose round, rosy, good-humoured face had a look
of sober goodness, and whose light-blue eyes shone a little. He grasped
Pierson's hand, and said in a voice to whose natural heavy resonance
professional duty had added a certain unction:
"My dear Edward, how many years it is since we met! Do you remember dear
old Blakeway? I saw him only yesterday. He's just the same. I'm
delighted to see you again," and he laughed a little soft nervous laugh.
Then for a few moments he talked of the war and old College days, and
Pierson looked at him and thought: 'What has he come for?'
"You've something to say to me, Alec," he said, at last.
Canon Rushbourne leaned forward in his chair, and answered with evident
effort: "Yes; I wanted to have a little talk with you, Edward. I hope
you won't mind. I do hope you won't."
"Why should I mind?"
Canon Rushbourne's eyes shone more than ever, there was real friendliness
in his face.
"I know you've every right to say to me: 'Mind your own business.' But I
made up my mind to come as a friend, hoping to save you from--er" he
stammered, and began again: "I think you ought to know of the feeling in
your parish that--er--that--er--your position is very delicate. Without
breach of confidence I may tell you that letters have been sent to
headquarters; you can imagine perhaps what I mean. Do believe, my dear
friend, that I'm actuated by my old affection for you; nothing else, I do
assure you."
In the silence, his breathing could be heard, as of a man a little
touched with asthma, while he continually smoothed his thick black knees,
his whole face radiating an anxious kindliness. The sun shone brightly
on those two black figures, so very different, and drew out of their
well-worn garments the faint latent green mossiness which. underlies the
clothes of clergymen.
At last Pierson said: "Thank you, Alec; I understand."
The Canon uttered a resounding sigh. "You didn't realise how very easily
people misinterpret her being here with you; it seems to them a kind--a
kind of challenge. They were bound, I think, to feel that; and I'm
afraid, in consequence--" He stopped, moved by the fact that Pierson had
closed his eyes.
"I am to choose, you mean, between my daughter and my parish?"
The Canon seemed, with a stammer of words, to try and blunt the edge of
that clear question.
"My visit is quite informal, my dear fellow; I can't say at all. But
there is evidently much feeling; that is what I wanted you to know. You
haven't quite seen, I think, that--"
Pierson raised his hand. "I can't talk of this."
The Canon rose. "Believe me, Edward, I sympathise deeply. I felt I had
to warn you." He held out his hand. "Good-bye, my dear friend, do
forgive me"; and he went out. In the hall an adventure befell him so
plump, and awkward, that he could barely recite it to Mrs. Rushbourne
that night.
"Coming out from my poor friend," he said, "I ran into a baby's
perambulator and that young mother, whom I remember as a little
thing"--he held his hand at the level of his thigh--"arranging it for
going out. It startled me; and I fear I asked quite foolishly: 'Is it a
boy?' The poor young thing looked up at me. She has very large eyes,
quite beautiful, strange eyes. 'Have you been speaking to Daddy about
me?' 'My dear young lady,' I said, 'I'm such an old friend, you see.
You must forgive me.' And then she said: 'Are they going to ask him to
resign?' 'That depends on you,' I said. Why do I say these things,
Charlotte? I ought simply to have held my tongue. Poor young thing; so
very young! And the little baby!" "She has brought it on herself, Alec,"
Mrs, Rushbourne replied.
VII
1
The moment his visitor had vanished, Pierson paced up and down the study,
with anger rising in his, heart. His daughter or his parish! The old
saw, "An Englishman's house is his castle!" was being attacked within
him. Must he not then harbour his own daughter, and help her by candid
atonement to regain her inward strength and peace? Was he not thereby
acting as a true Christian, in by far the hardest course he and she could
pursue? To go back on that decision and imperil his daughter's spirit,
or else resign his parish--the alternatives were brutal! This was the
centre of his world, the only spot where so lonely a man could hope to
feel even the semblance of home; a thousand little threads tethered him
to his church, his parishioners, and this house--for, to live on here if
he gave up his church was out of the question. But his chief feeling was
a bewildered anger that for doing what seemed to him his duty, he should
be attacked by his parishioners.
A passion of desire to know what they really thought and felt--these
parishioners of his, whom he had befriended, and for whom he had worked
so long--beset him now, and he went out. But the absurdity of his quest
struck him before he had gone the length of the Square. One could not go
to people and say: "Stand and deliver me your inmost judgments." And
suddenly he was aware of how far away he really was from them. Through
all his ministrations had he ever come to know their hearts? And now, in
this dire necessity for knowledge, there seemed no way of getting it. He
went at random into a stationer's shop; the shopman sang bass in his
choir. They had met Sunday after Sunday for the last seven years. But
when, with this itch for intimate knowledge on him, he saw the man behind
the counter, it was as if he were looking on him for the first time. The
Russian proverb, "The heart of another is a dark forest," gashed into his
mind, while he said:
"Well, Hodson, what news of your son?"
"Nothing more, Mr. Pierson, thank you, sir, nothing more at present."
And it seemed to Pierson, gazing at the man's face clothed in a short,
grizzling beard cut rather like his own, that he must be thinking: 'Ah!
sir, but what news of your daughter?' No one would ever tell him to his
face what he was thinking. And buying two pencils, he went out. On the
other side of the road was a bird-fancier's shop, kept by a woman whose
husband had been taken for the Army. She was not friendly towards him,
for it was known to her that he had expostulated with her husband for
keeping larks, and other wild birds. And quite deliberately he crossed
the road, and stood looking in at the window, with the morbid hope that
from this unfriendly one he might hear truth. She was in her shop, and
came to the door.
"Have you any news of your husband, Mrs. Cherry?"
"No, Mr. Pierson, I 'ave not; not this week."
"He hasn't gone out yet?"
"No, Mr. Pierson; 'e 'as not."
There was no expression on her face, perfectly blank it was--Pierson had
a mad longing to say 'For God's sake, woman, speak out what's in your
mind; tell me what you think of me and my daughter. Never mind my
cloth!' But he could no more say it than the woman could tell him what
was in her mind. And with a "Good morning" he passed on. No man or
woman would tell him anything, unless, perhaps, they were drunk. He came
to a public house, and for a moment even hesitated before it, but the
thought of insult aimed at Noel stopped him, and he passed that too. And
then reality made itself known to him. Though he had come out to hear
what they were thinking, he did not really want to hear it, could not
endure it if he did. He had been too long immune from criticism, too
long in the position of one who may tell others what he thinks of them.
And standing there in the crowded street, he was attacked by that longing
for the country which had always come on him when he was hard pressed.
He looked at his memoranda. By stupendous luck it was almost a blank
day. An omnibus passed close by which would take him far out. He
climbed on to it, and travelled as far as Hendon; then getting down, set
forth on foot. It was bright and hot, and the May blossom in full foam.
He walked fast along the perfectly straight road till he came to the top
of Elstree Hill. There for a few moments he stood gazing at the school
chapel, the cricket-field, the wide land beyond. All was very quiet, for
it was lunch-time. A horse was tethered there, and a strolling cat, as
though struck by the tall black incongruity of his figure, paused in her
progress, then, slithering under the wicket gate, arched her back and
rubbed herself against his leg, crinkling and waving the tip of her tail.
Pierson bent down and stroked the creature's head; but uttering a faint
miaou, the cat stepped daintily across the road, Pierson too stepped on,
past the village, and down over the stile, into a field path. At the
edge of the young clover, under a bank of hawthorn, he lay down on his
back, with his hat beside him and his arms crossed over his chest, like
the effigy of some crusader one may see carved on an old tomb. Though he
lay quiet as that old knight, his eyes were not closed, but fixed on the
blue, where a lark was singing. Its song refreshed his spirit; its
passionate light-heartedness stirred all the love of beauty in him, awoke
revolt against a world so murderous and uncharitable. Oh! to pass up
with that song into a land of bright spirits, where was nothing ugly,
hard, merciless, and the gentle face of the Saviour radiated everlasting
love! The scent of the mayflowers, borne down by the sun shine, drenched
his senses; he closed his eyes, and, at once, as if resenting that
momentary escape, his mind resumed debate with startling intensity. This
matter went to the very well-springs, had a terrible and secret
significance. If to act as conscience bade him rendered him unfit to
keep his parish, all was built on sand, had no deep reality, was but
rooted in convention. Charity, and the forgiveness of sins honestly
atoned for--what became of them? Either he was wrong to have espoused
straightforward confession and atonement for her, or they were wrong in
chasing him from that espousal. There could be no making those extremes
to meet. But if he were wrong, having done the hardest thing
already--where could he turn? His Church stood bankrupt of ideals. He
felt as if pushed over the edge of the world, with feet on space, and
head in some blinding cloud. 'I cannot have been wrong,' he thought;
'any other course was so much easier. I sacrificed my pride, and my poor
girl's pride; I would have loved to let her run away. If for this we are
to be stoned and cast forth, what living force is there in the religion I
have loved; what does it all come to? Have I served a sham? I cannot
and will not believe it. Something is wrong with me, something is
wrong--but where--what?' He rolled over, lay on his face, and prayed.
He prayed for guidance and deliverance from the gusts of anger which kept
sweeping over him; even more for relief from the feeling of personal
outrage, and the unfairness of this thing. He had striven to be loyal to
what he thought the right, had sacrificed all his sensitiveness, all his
secret fastidious pride in his child and himself. For that he was to be
thrown out! Whether through prayer, or in the scent and feel of the
clover, he found presently a certain rest. Away in the distance he could
see the spire of Harrow Church.
The Church! No! She was not, could not be, at fault. The fault was in
himself. 'I am unpractical,' he thought. 'It is so, I know. Agnes used
to say so, Bob and Thirza think so. They all think me unpractical and
dreamy. Is it a sin--I wonder?' There were lambs in the next field; he
watched their gambollings and his heart relaxed; brushing the clover dust
off his black clothes, he began to retrace his steps. The boys were
playing cricket now, and he stood a few minutes watching them. He had
not seen cricket played since the war began; it seemed almost
otherworldly, with the click of the bats, and the shrill young 'voices,
under the distant drone of that sky-hornet threshing along to Hendon. A
boy made a good leg hit. "Well played!" he called. Then, suddenly
conscious of his own incongruity and strangeness in that green spot, he
turned away on the road back to London. To resign; to await events; to
send Noel away--of those three courses, the last alone seemed impossible.
'Am I really so far from them,' he thought, 'that they can wish me to go,
for this? If so, I had better go. It will be just another failure. But
I won't believe it yet; I can't believe it.'
The heat was sweltering, and he became very tired before at last he
reached his omnibus, and could sit with the breeze cooling his hot face.
He did not reach home till six, having eaten nothing since breakfast.
Intending to have a bath and lie down till dinner, he went upstairs.
Unwonted silence reigned. He tapped on the nursery door. It was
deserted; he passed through to Noel's room; but that too was empty. The
wardrobe stood open as if it had been hastily ransacked, and her
dressing-table was bare. In alarm he went to the bell and pulled it
sharply. The old-fashioned ring of it jingled out far below. The
parlour-maid came up.
"Where are Miss Noel and Nurse, Susan?"
"I didn't know you were in, sir. Miss Noel left me this note to give
you. They--I--"
Pierson stopped her with his hand. "Thank you, Susan; get me some tea,
please." With the note unopened in his hand, he waited till she was
gone. His head was going round, and he sat down on the side of Noel's
bed to read:
"DARLING DADDY,
"The man who came this morning told me of what is going to happen. I
simply won't have it. I'm sending Nurse and baby down to Kestrel at
once, and going to Leila's for the night, until I've made up my mind what
to do. I knew it was a mistake my coming back. I don't care what
happens to me, but I won't have you hurt. I think it's hateful of people
to try and injure you for my fault. I've had to borrow money from
Susan--six pounds. Oh! Daddy dear, forgive me.
"Your loving
"NOLLIE."
He read it with unutterable relief; at all events he knew where she
was--poor, wilful, rushing, loving-hearted child; knew where she was, and
could get at her. After his bath and some tea, he would go to Leila's
and bring her back. Poor little Nollie, thinking that by just leaving
his house she could settle this deep matter! He did not hurry, feeling
decidedly exhausted, and it was nearly eight before he set out, leaving a
message for Gratian, who did not as a rule come in from her hospital till
past nine.
The day was still glowing, and now, in the cool of evening, his refreshed
senses soaked up its beauty. 'God has so made this world,' he thought,
'that, no matter what our struggles and sufferings, it's ever a joy to
live when the sun shines, or the moon is bright, or the night starry.
Even we can't spoil it.' In Regent's Park the lilacs and laburnums were
still in bloom though June had come, and he gazed at them in passing, as
a lover might at his lady. His conscience pricked him suddenly. Mrs.
Mitchett and the dark-eyed girl she had brought to him on New Year's Eve,
the very night he had learned of his own daughter's tragedy--had he ever
thought of them since? How had that poor girl fared? He had been too
impatient of her impenetrable mood. What did he know of the hearts of
others, when he did not even know his own, could not rule his feelings of
anger and revolt, had not guided his own daughter into the waters of
safety! And Leila! Had he not been too censorious in thought? How
powerful, how strange was this instinct of sex, which hovered and swooped
on lives, seized them, bore them away, then dropped them exhausted and
defenceless! Some munition-wagons, painted a dull grey, lumbered past,
driven by sunburned youths in drab. Life-force, Death-force--was it all
one; the great unknowable momentum from which there was but the one
escape, in the arms of their Heavenly Father? Blake's little old stanzas
came into his mind:
"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
"For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying: Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice!"
Learned the heat to bear! Those lambs he had watched in a field that
afternoon, their sudden little leaps and rushes, their funny quivering
wriggling tails, their tiny nuzzling black snouts--what little miracles
of careless joy among the meadow flowers! Lambs, and flowers, and
sunlight! Famine, lust, and the great grey guns! A maze, a wilderness;
and but for faith, what issue, what path for man to take which did not
keep him wandering hopeless, in its thicket? 'God preserve our faith in
love, in charity, and the life to come!' he thought. And a blind man
with a dog, to whose neck was tied a little deep dish for pennies, ground
a hurdy-gurdy as he passed. Pierson put a shilling in the dish. The man
stopped playing, his whitish eyes looked up. "Thank you kindly, sir;
I'll go home now. Come on, Dick!" He tapped his way round the corner,
with his dog straining in front. A blackbird hidden among the blossoms
of an acacia, burst into evening song, and another great grey
munition-wagon rumbled out through the Park gate.
2
The Church-clock was striking nine when he reached Leila's flat, went up,
and knocked. Sounds from-a piano ceased; the door was opened by Noel.
She recoiled when she saw who it was, and said:
"Why did you come, Daddy? It was much better not."
"Are you alone here?"
"Yes; Leila gave me her key. She has to be at the hospital till ten
to-night"
"You must come home with me, my dear."
Noel closed the piano, and sat down on the divan. Her face had the same
expression as when he had told her that she could not marry Cyril
Morland.
"Come, Nollie," he said; "don't be unreasonable. We must see this
through together."
"No."
"My dear, that's childish. Do you think the mere accident of your being
or not being at home can affect my decision as to what my duty is?"
"Yes; it's my being there that matters. Those people don't care, so long
as it isn't an open scandal"
"Nollie!"
"But it is so, Daddy. Of course it's so, and you know it. If I'm away
they'll just pity you for having a bad daughter. And quite right too. I
am a bad daughter."
Pierson smiled. "Just like when you were a tiny."
"I wish I were a tiny again, or ten years older. It's this half age--But
I'm not coming back with you, Daddy; so it's no good."
Pierson sat down beside her.
"I've been thinking this over all day," he said quietly. "Perhaps in my
pride I made a mistake when I first knew of your trouble. Perhaps I
ought to have accepted the consequences of my failure, then, and have
given up, and taken you away at once. After all, if a man is not fit to
have the care of souls, he should have the grace to know it."
"But you are fit," cried Noel passionately; "Daddy, you are fit!"
"I'm afraid not. There is something wanting in me, I don't know exactly
what; but something very wanting."
"There isn't. It's only that you're too good--that's why!"
Pierson shook his head. "Don't, Nollie!"
"I will," cried Noel. "You're too gentle, and you're too good. You're
charitable, and you're simple, and you believe in another world; that's
what's the matter with you, Daddy. Do you think they do, those people
who want to chase us out? They don't even begin to believe, whatever
they say or think. I hate them, and sometimes I hate the Church; either
it's hard and narrow, or else it's worldly." She stopped at the
expression on her father's face, the most strange look of pain, and
horror, as if an unspoken treachery of his own had been dragged forth for
his inspection.
"You're talking wildly," he said, but his lips were trembling. "You
mustn't say things like that; they're blasphemous and wicked."
Noel bit her lips, sitting very stiff and still, against a high blue
cushion. Then she burst out again:
"You've slaved for those people years and years, and you've had no
pleasure and you've had no love; and they wouldn't care that if you broke
your heart. They don't care for anything, so long as it all seems
proper. Daddy, if you let them hurt you, I won't forgive you!"
"And what if you hurt me now, Nollie?"
Noel pressed his hand against her warm cheek.
"Oh, no! Oh, no! I don't--I won't. Not again. I've done that
already."
"Very well, my dear! then come home with me, and we'll see what's best to
be done. It can't be settled by running away."
Noel dropped his hand. "No. Twice I've done what you wanted, and it's
been a mistake. If I hadn't gone to Church on Sunday to please you,
perhaps it would never have come to this. You don't see things, Daddy.
I could tell, though I was sitting right in front. I knew what their
faces were like, and what they were thinking."
"One must do right, Nollie, and not mind."
"Yes; but what is right? It's not right for me to hurt you, and I'm not
going to."
Pierson understood all at once that it was useless to try and move her.
"What are you going to do, then?"
"I suppose I shall go to Kestrel to-morrow. Auntie will have me, I know;
I shall talk to Leila."
"Whatever you do, promise to let me know."
Noel nodded.
"Daddy, you--look awfully, awfully tired. I'm going to give you some
medicine." She went to a little three-cornered cupboard, and bent down.
Medicine! The medicine he wanted was not for the body; knowledge of what
his duty was--that alone could heal him!
The loud popping of a cork roused him. "What are you doing, Nollie?"
Noel rose with a flushed face, holding in one hand a glass of champagne,
in the other a biscuit.
"You're to take this; and I'm going to have some myself."
"My dear," said Pierson bewildered; "it's not yours."
"Drink it; Daddy! Don't you know that Leila would never forgive me if I
let you go home looking like that. Besides, she told me I was to eat.
Drink it. You can send her a nice present. Drink it!" And she stamped
her foot.
Pierson took the glass, and sat there nibbling and sipping. It was nice,
very! He had not quite realised how much he needed food and drink. Noel
returned from the cupboard a second time; she too had a glass and a
biscuit.
"There, you look better already. Now you're to go home at once, in a cab
if you can get one; and tell Gratian to make you feed up, or you won't
have a body at all; you can't do your duty if you haven't one, you know."
Pierson smiled, and finished the champagne.
Noel took the glass from him. "You're my child to-night, and I'm going
to send you to bed. Don't worry, Daddy; it'll all come right." And,
taking his arm, she went downstairs with him, and blew him a kiss from
the doorway.
He walked away in a sort of dream. Daylight was not quite gone, but the
moon was up, just past its full, and the search-lights had begun their
nightly wanderings. It was a sky of ghosts and shadows, fitting to the
thought which came to him. The finger of Providence was in all this,
perhaps! Why should he not go out to France! At last; why not? Some
better man, who understood men's hearts, who knew the world, would take
his place; and he could go where death made all things simple, and he
could not fail. He walked faster and faster, full of an intoxicating
relief. Thirza and Gratian would take care of Nollie far better than he.
Yes, surely it was ordained! Moonlight had the town now; and all was
steel blue, the very air steel-blue; a dream-city of marvellous beauty,
through which he passed, exalted. Soon he would be where that poor boy,
and a million others, had given their lives; with the mud and the shells
and the scarred grey ground, and the jagged trees, where Christ was daily
crucified--there where he had so often longed to be these three years
past. It was ordained!
And two women whom he met looked at each other when he had gone by, and
those words 'the blighted crow' which they had been about to speak, died
on their lips.
VIII
Noel felt light-hearted too, as if she had won a victory. She found some
potted meat, spread it on another biscuit, ate it greedily, and finished
the pint bottle of champagne. Then she hunted for the cigarettes, and
sat down at the piano. She played old tunes--"There is a Tavern in the
Town," "Once I Loved a Maiden Fair," "Mowing the Barley," "Clementine,"
"Lowlands," and sang to them such words as she remembered. There was a
delicious running in her veins, and once she got up and danced. She was
kneeling at the window, looking out, when she heard the door open, and
without getting up, cried out:
"Isn't it a gorgeous night! I've had Daddy here. I gave him some of
your champagne, and drank the rest--" then was conscious of a figure far
too tall for Leila, and a man's voice saying:
"I'm awfully sorry. It's only I, Jimmy Fort."
Noel scrambled up. "Leila isn't in; but she will be directly--it's past
ten."
He was standing stock-still in the middle of the room.
"Won't you sit down? Oh! and won't you have a cigarette?"
"Thanks."
By the flash of his briquette she saw his face clearly; the look on it
filled her with a sort of malicious glee.
"I'm going now," she said. "Would you mind telling Leila that I found I
couldn't stop?" She made towards the divan to get her hat. When she had
put it on, she found him standing just in front of her.
"Noel-if you don't mind me calling you that?"
"Not a bit."
"Don't go; I'm going myself."
"Oh, no! Not for worlds." She tried to slip past, but he took hold of
her wrist.
"Please; just one minute!"
Noel stayed motionless, looking at him, while his hand still held her
wrist. He said quietly:
"Do you mind telling me why you came here?"
"Oh, just to see Leila."
"Things have come to a head at home, haven't they?"
Noel shrugged her shoulders.
"You came for refuge, didn't you?"
"From whom?"
"Don't be angry; from the need of hurting your father."
She nodded.
"I knew it would come to that. What are you going to do?"
"Enjoy myself." She was saying something fatuous, yet she meant it.
"That's absurd. Don't be angry! You're quite right. Only, you must
begin at the right end, mustn't you? Sit down!"
Noel tried to free her wrist.
"No; sit down, please."
Noel sat down; but as he loosed her wrist, she laughed. This was where
he sat with Leila, where they would sit when she was gone. "It's awfully
funny, isn't it?" she said.
"Funny?" he muttered savagely. "Most things are, in this funny world."
The sound of a taxi stopping not far off had come to her ears, and she
gathered her feet under her, planting them firmly. If she sprang up,
could she slip by him before he caught her arm again, and get that taxi?
"If I go now," he said, "will you promise me to stop till you've seen
Leila?"
"No."
"That's foolish. Come, promise!"
Noel shook her head. She felt a perverse pleasure at his embarrassment.
"Leila's lucky, isn't she? No children, no husband, no father, no
anything. Lovely!"
She saw his arm go up as if to ward off a blow. "Poor Leila!" he said.
"Why are you sorry for her? She has freedom! And she has you!"
She knew it would hurt; but she wanted to hurt him.
"You needn't envy her for that."
He had just spoken, when Noel saw a figure over by the door.
She jumped up, and said breathlessly:
"Oh, here you are, Leila! Father's been here, and we've had some of your
champagne!"
"Capital! You are in the dark!"
Noel felt the blood rush into her cheeks. The light leaped up, and Leila
came forward. She looked extremely pale, calm, and self-contained, in
her nurse's dress; her full lips were tightly pressed together, but Noel
could see her breast heaving violently. A turmoil of shame and wounded
pride began raging in the girl. Why had she not flown long ago? Why had
she let herself be trapped like this? Leila would think she had been
making up to him! Horrible! Disgusting! Why didn't he--why didn't some
one, speak? Then Leila said:
"I didn't expect you, Jimmy; I'm glad you haven't been dull. Noel is
staying here to-night. Give me a cigarette. Sit down, both of you. I'm
awfully tired!"
She sank into a chair, leaning back, with her knees crossed; and at that
moment Noel admired her. She had said it beautifully; she looked so
calm. Fort was lighting her cigarette; his hand was shaking, his face
all sorry and mortified.
"Give Noel one, too, and draw the curtains, Jimmy. Quick! Not that it
makes any difference; it's as light as day. Sit down, dear."
But Noel remained standing.
"What have you been talking of? Love and Chinese lanterns, or only me?"
At those words Fort, who was drawing the last curtain, turned round; his
tall figure was poised awkwardly against the wall, his face, unsuited to
diplomacy, had a look as of flesh being beaten. If weals had started up
across it, Noel would not have been surprised.
He said with painful slowness:
"I don't exactly know; we had hardly begun, had we?"
"The night is young," said Leila. "Go on while I just take off my
things."
She rose with the cigarette between her lips, and went into the inner
room. In passing, she gave Noel a look. What there was in that look,
the girl could never make clear even to herself. Perhaps a creature shot
would gaze like that, with a sort of profound and distant questioning,
reproach, and anger, with a sort of pride, and the quiver of death. As
the door closed, Fort came right across the room.
"Go to her;" cried Noel; "she wants you. Can't you see, she wants you?"
And before he could move, she was at the door. She flew downstairs, and
out into the moonlight. The taxi, a little way off, was just beginning
to move away; she ran towards it, calling out:
"Anywhere! Piccadilly!" and jumping in, blotted herself against the
cushions in the far corner.
She did not come to herself, as it were, for several minutes, and then
feeling she 'could no longer bear the cab, stopped it, and got out.
Where was she? Bond Street! She began, idly, wandering down its narrow
length; the fullest street by day, the emptiest by night. Oh! it had been
horrible! Nothing said by any of them--nothing, and yet everything
dragged out--of him, of Leila, of herself! She seemed to have no pride
or decency left, as if she had been caught stealing. All her happy
exhilaration was gone, leaving a miserable recklessness. Nothing she did
was right, nothing turned out well, so what did it all matter? The
moonlight flooding down between the tall houses gave her a peculiar heady
feeling. "Fey" her father had called her. She laughed. 'But I'm not
going home,' she thought. Bored with the street's length; she turned off,
and was suddenly in Hanover Square. There was the Church, grey-white,
where she had been bridesmaid to a second cousin, when she was fifteen.
She seemed to see it all again--her frock, the lilies in her hand, the
surplices of the choir, the bride's dress, all moonlight-coloured, and
unreal. 'I wonder what's become of her!' she thought. 'He's dead, I
expect, like Cyril!' She saw her father's face as he was marrying them,
heard his voice: "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
sickness and in health, till death do you part." And the moonlight on
the Church seemed to shift and quiver-some pigeons perhaps had been
disturbed up there. Then instead of that wedding vision, she saw
Monsieur Barra, sitting on his chair, gazing at the floor, and Chica
nursing her doll. "All mad, mademoiselle, a little mad. Millions of men
with white souls, but all a little tiny bit mad, you know." Then Leila's
face came before her, with that look in her eyes. She felt again the hot
clasp of Fort's fingers on her wrist, and walked on, rubbing it with the
other hand. She turned into Regent Street. The wide curve of the
Quadrant swept into a sky of unreal blue, and the orange-shaded lamps
merely added to the unreality. 'Love and Chinese lanterns! I should
like some coffee,' she thought suddenly. She was quite close to the
place where Lavendie had taken her. Should she go in there? Why not?
She must go somewhere. She turned into the revolving cage of glass. But
no sooner was she imprisoned there than in a flash Lavendie's face of
disgust; and the red-lipped women, the green stuff that smelled of
peppermint came back, filling her with a rush of dismay. She made the
full circle in the revolving cage; and came out into the street again
with a laugh. A tall young man in khaki stood there: "Hallo!" he said.
"Come in and dance!" She started, recoiled from him and began to walk
away as fast as ever she could. She passed a woman whose eyes seemed to
scorch her. A woman like a swift vision of ruin with those eyes, and
thickly powdered cheeks, and loose red mouth. Noel shuddered and fled
along, feeling that her only safety lay in speed. But she could not walk
about all night. There would be no train for Kestrel till the
morning--and did she really want to go there, and eat her heart out?
Suddenly she thought of George. Why should she not go down to him? He
would know what was best for her to do. At the foot of the steps below
the Waterloo Column she stood still. All was quiet there and empty, the
great buildings whitened, the trees blurred and blue; and sweeter air was
coming across their flowering tops. The queer "fey" moony sensation was
still with her; so that she felt small and light, as if she could have
floated through a ring. Faint rims of light showed round the windows of
the Admiralty. The war! However lovely the night, however sweet the
lilac smelt-that never stopped! She turned away and passed out under the
arch, making for the station. The train of the wounded had just come in,
and she stood in the cheering crowd watching the ambulances run out.
Tears of excited emotion filled her eyes, and trickled down. Steady,
smooth, grey, one after the other they came gliding, with a little burst
of cheers greeting each one. All were gone now, and she could pass in.
She went to the buffet and got a large cup of coffee, and a bun. Then,
having noted the time of her early morning train, she sought the ladies'
waiting-room, and sitting down in a corner, took out her purse and
counted her money. Two pounds fifteen-enough to go to the hotel, if she
liked. But, without luggage--it was so conspicuous, and she could sleep
in this corner all right, if she wanted. What did girls do who had no
money, and no friends to go to? Tucked away in the corner of that empty,
heavy, varnished room, she seemed to see the cruelty and hardness of life
as she had never before seen it, not even when facing her confinement.
How lucky she had been, and was! Everyone was good to her. She had no
real want or dangers, to face. But, for women--yes, and men too--who had
no one to fall back on, nothing but their own hands and health and luck,
it must be awful. That girl whose eyes had scorched her--perhaps she had
no one--nothing. And people who were born ill, and the millions of poor
women, like those whom she had gone visiting with Gratian sometimes in
the poorer streets of her father's parish--for the first time she seemed
to really know and feel the sort of lives they led. And then, Leila's
face came back to her once more--Leila whom she had robbed. And the
worst of it was, that, alongside her remorseful sympathy, she felt a sort
of satisfaction. She could not help his not loving Leila, she could not
help it if he loved herself! And he did--she knew it! To feel that
anyone loved her was so comforting. But it was all awful! And she--the
cause of it! And yet--she had never done or said anything to attract
him. No! She could not have helped it.
She had begun to feel drowsy, and closed her eyes. And gradually there
came on her a cosey sensation, as if she were leaning up against someone
with her head tucked in against his shoulder, as she had so often leaned
as a child against her father, coming back from some long darkening drive
in Wales or Scotland. She seemed even to feel the wet soft Westerly air
on her face and eyelids, and to sniff the scent of a frieze coat; to hear
the jog of hoofs and the rolling of the wheels; to feel the closing in of
the darkness. Then, so dimly and drowsily, she seemed to know that it
was not her father, but someone--someone--then no more, no more at all.
IX
She was awakened by the scream of an engine, and looked around her
amazed. Her neck had fallen sideways while she slept, and felt horridly
stiff; her head ached, and she was shivering. She saw by the clock that
it was past five. 'If only I could get some tea!' she thought. 'Anyway
I won't stay here any longer!' When she had washed, and rubbed some of
the stiffness out of her neck, the tea renewed her sense of adventure
wonderfully. Her train did not start for an hour; she had time for a
walk, to warm herself, and went down to the river. There was an early
haze, and all looked a little mysterious; but people were already passing
on their way to work. She walked along, looking at the water flowing up
under the bright mist to which the gulls gave a sort of hovering life.
She went as far as Blackfriars Bridge, and turning back, sat down on a
bench under a plane-tree, just as the sun broke through. A little pasty
woman with a pinched yellowish face was already sitting there, so still,
and seeming to see so little, that Noel wondered of what she could be
thinking. While she watched, the woman's face began puckering, and tears
rolled slowly, down, trickling from pucker to pucker, till, summoning up
her courage, Noel sidled nearer, and said:
"Oh! What's the matter?"
The tears seemed to stop from sheer surprise; little grey eyes gazed
round, patient little eyes from above an almost bridgeless nose.
"I'ad a baby. It's dead.... its father's dead in France.... I was
goin' in the water, but I didn't like the look of it, and now I never
will."
That "Now I never will," moved Noel terribly. She slid her arm along the
back of the bench and clasped the skinniest of shoulders.
"Don't cry!"
"It was my first. I'm thirty-eight. I'll never 'ave another. Oh! Why
didn't I go in the water?"
The face puckered again, and the squeezed-out tears ran down. 'Of course
she must cry,' thought Noel; 'cry and cry till it feels better.' And she
stroked the shoulder of the little woman, whose emotion was disengaging
the scent of old clothes.
"The father of my baby was killed in France, too," she said at last. The
little sad grey eyes looked curiously round.
"Was 'e? 'Ave you got your baby still?"
"Yes, oh, yes!"
"I'm glad of that. It 'urts so bad, it does. I'd rather lose me 'usband
than me baby, any day." The sun was shining now on a cheek of that
terribly patient face; its brightness seemed cruel perching there.
"Can I do anything to help you?" Noel murmured.
"No, thank you, miss. I'm goin' 'ome now. I don't live far. Thank you
kindly." And raising her eyes for one more of those half-bewildered
looks, she moved away along the Embankment wall. When she was out of
sight, Noel walked back to the station. The train was in, and she took
her seat. She had three fellow passengers, all in khaki; very silent and
moody, as men are when they have to get up early. One was tall, dark,
and perhaps thirty-five; the second small, and about fifty, with cropped,
scanty grey hair; the third was of medium height and quite sixty-five,
with a long row of little coloured patches on his tunic, and a bald,
narrow, well-shaped head, grey hair brushed back at the sides, and the
thin, collected features and drooping moustache of the old school. It
was at him that Noel looked. When he glanced out of the window, or
otherwise retired within himself, she liked his face; but when he turned
to the ticket-collector or spoke to the others, she did not like it half
so much. It was as if the old fellow had two selves, one of which he used
when alone, the other in which he dressed every morning to meet the
world. They had begun to talk about some Tribunal on which they had to
sit. Noel did not listen, but a word or two carried to her now and then.
"How many to-day?" she heard the old fellow ask, and the little cropped
man answering: "Hundred and fourteen."
Fresh from the sight of the poor little shabby woman and her grief, she
could not help a sort of shrinking from that trim old soldier, with his
thin, regular face, who held the fate of a "Hundred and fourteen" in his
firm, narrow grasp, perhaps every day. Would he understand their
troubles or wants? Of course he wouldn't! Then, she saw him looking at
her critically with his keen eyes. If he had known her secret, he would
be thinking: 'A lady and act like that! Oh, no! Quite-quite out of the
question!' And she felt as if she could, sink under the seat with shame.
But no doubt he was only thinking: 'Very young to be travelling by
herself at this hour of the morning. Pretty too!' If he knew the real
truth of her--how he would stare! But why should this utter stranger,
this old disciplinarian, by a casual glance, by the mere form of his
face, make her feel more guilty and ashamed than she had yet felt? That
puzzled her. He was, must be, a narrow, conventional old man; but he had
this power to make her feel ashamed, because she felt that he had faith
in his gods, and was true to them; because she knew he would die sooner
than depart from his creed of conduct. She turned to the window, biting
her lips-angry and despairing. She would never--never get used to her
position; it was no good! And again she had the longing of her dream, to
tuck her face away into that coat, smell the scent of the frieze, snuggle
in, be protected, and forget. 'If I had been that poor lonely little
woman,' she thought, 'and had lost everything, I should have gone into
the water. I should have rushed and jumped. It's only luck that I'm
alive. I won't look at that old man again: then I shan't feel so bad.'
She had bought some chocolate at the station, and nibbled it, gazing
steadily at the fields covered with daisies and the first of the
buttercups and cowslips. The three soldiers were talking now in
carefully lowered voices. The words: "women," "under control," "perfect
plague," came to her, making her ears burn. In the hypersensitive mood
caused by the strain of yesterday, her broken night, and the emotional
meeting with the little woman, she felt as if they were including her
among those "women." 'If we stop, I'll get out,' she thought. But when
the train did stop it was they who got out. She felt the old General's
keen veiled glance sum her up for the last time, and looked full at him
just for a moment. He touched his cap, and said: "Will you have the
window up or down?" and lingered to draw it half-way up.' His
punctiliousness made her feel worse than ever. When the train had
started again she roamed up and down her empty carriage; there was no
more a way out of her position than out of this rolling cushioned
carriage! And then she seemed to hear Fort's voice saying: 'Sit down,
please!' and to feel his fingers clasp her wrist, Oh! he was nice and
comforting; he would never reproach or remind her! And now, probably,
she would never see him again.
The train drew up at last. She did not know where George lodged, and
would have to go to his hospital. She planned to get there at half past
nine, and having eaten a sort of breakfast at the station, went forth
into the town. The seaside was still wrapped in the early glamour which
haunts chalk of a bright morning. But the streets were very much alive.
Here was real business of the war. She passed houses which had been
wrecked. Trucks clanged and shunted, great lorries rumbled smoothly by.
Sea--and Air-planes were moving like great birds far up in the bright
haze, and khaki was everywhere. But it was the sea Noel wanted. She
made her way westward to a little beach; and, sitting down on a stone,
opened her arms to catch the sun on her face and chest. The tide was
nearly up, with the wavelets of a blue bright sea. The great fact, the
greatest fact in the world, except the sun; vast and free, making
everything human seem small and transitory! It did her good, like a
tranquillising friend. The sea might be cruel and terrible, awful things
it could do, and awful things were being done on it; but its wide level
line, its never-ending song, its sane savour, were the best medicine she
could possibly have taken. She rubbed the Shelly sand between her
fingers in absurd ecstasy; took off her shoes and stockings, paddled, and
sat drying her legs in the sun.
When she left the little beach, she felt as if someone had said to her:
'Your troubles are very little. There's the sun, the sea, the air; enjoy
them. They can't take those from you.'
At the hospital she had to wait half an hour in a little bare room before
George came.
"Nollie! Splendid. I've got an hour. Let's get out of this cemetery.
We'll have time for a good stretch on the tops. Jolly of you to have
come to me. Tell us all about it."
When she had finished, he squeezed her arm. 348
"I knew it wouldn't do. Your Dad forgot that he's a public figure, and
must expect to be damned accordingly. But though you've cut and run,
he'll resign all the same, Nollie."
"Oh, no!" cried Noel.
George shook his head.
"Yes, he'll resign, you'll see, he's got no worldly sense; not a grain."
"Then I shall have spoiled his life, just as if--oh, no!"
"Let's sit down here. I must be back at eleven."
They sat down on a bench, where the green cliff stretched out before
them, over a sea quite clear of haze, far down and very blue.
"Why should he resign," cried Noel again, "now that I've gone? He'll be
lost without it all."
George smiled.
"Found, my dear. He'll be where he ought to be, Nollie, where the Church
is, and the Churchmen are not--in the air!"
"Don't!" cried Noel passionately.
"No, no, I'm not chaffing. There's no room on earth for saints in
authority. There's use for a saintly symbol, even if one doesn't hold
with it, but there's no mortal use for those who try to have things both
ways--to be saints and seers of visions, and yet to come the practical
and worldly and rule ordinary men's lives. Saintly example yes; but not
saintly governance. You've been his deliverance, Nollie."
"But Daddy loves his Church."
George frowned. "Of course, it'll be a wrench. A man's bound to have a
cosey feeling about a place where he's been boss so long; and there is
something about a Church--the drone, the scent, the half darkness;
there's beauty in it, it's a pleasant drug. But he's not being asked to
give up the drug habit; only to stop administering drugs to others.
Don't worry, Nollie; I don't believe that's ever suited him, it wants a
thicker skin than he's got."
"But all the people he helps?"
"No reason he shouldn't go on helping people, is there?"
"But to go on living there, without--Mother died there, you know!"
George grunted. "Dreams, Nollie, all round him; of the past and the
future, of what people are and what he can do with them. I never see him
without a skirmish, as you know, and yet I'm fond of him. But I should
be twice as fond, and half as likely to skirmish, if he'd drop the habits
of authority. Then I believe he'd have some real influence over me;
there's something beautiful about him, I know that quite well."
"Yes," murmured Noel fervently.
"He's such a queer mixture," mused George. "Clean out of his age; chalks
above most of the parsons in a spiritual sense and chalks below most of
them in the worldly. And yet I believe he's in the right of it. The
Church ought to be a forlorn hope, Nollie; then we should believe in it.
Instead of that, it's a sort of business that no one can take too
seriously. You see, the Church spiritual can't make good in this
age--has no chance of making good, and so in the main it's given it up
for vested interests and social influence. Your father is a symbol of
what the Church is not. But what about you, my dear? There's a room at
my boarding-house, and only one old lady besides myself, who knits all
the time. If Grace can get shifted we'll find a house, and you can have
the baby. They'll send your luggage on from Paddington if you write; and
in the meantime Gracie's got some things here that you can have."
"I'll have to send a wire to Daddy."
"I'll do that. You come to my diggings at half past one, and I'll settle
you in. Until then, you'd better stay up here."
When he had gone she roamed a little farther, and lay down on the short
grass, where the chalk broke through in patches. She could hear a
distant rumbling, very low, travelling in that grass, the long mutter of
the Flanders guns. 'I wonder if it's as beautiful a day there,' she
thought. 'How dreadful to see no green, no butterflies, no flowers-not
even sky-for the dust of the shells. Oh! won't it ever, ever end?' And
a sort of passion for the earth welled up in her, the warm grassy earth
along which she lay, pressed so close that she could feel it with every
inch of her body, and the soft spikes of the grass against her nose and
lips. An aching sweetness tortured her, she wanted the earth to close
its arms about her, she wanted the answer to her embrace of it. She was
alive, and wanted love. Not death--not loneliness--not death! And out
there, where the guns muttered, millions of men would be thinking that
same thought!
X
Pierson had passed nearly the whole night with the relics of his past,
the records of his stewardship, the tokens of his short married life.
The idea which had possessed him walking home in the moonlight sustained
him in that melancholy task of docketing and destruction. There was not
nearly so much to do as one would have supposed, for, with all his
dreaminess, he had been oddly neat and businesslike in all parish
matters. But a hundred times that night he stopped, overcome by
memories. Every corner, drawer, photograph, paper was a thread in the
long-spun web of his life in this house. Some phase of his work, some
vision of his wife or daughters started forth from each bit of furniture,
picture, doorway. Noiseless, in his slippers, he stole up and down
between the study, diningroom, drawing-room, and anyone seeing him at his
work in the dim light which visited the staircase from above the front
door and the upper-passage window, would have thought: 'A ghost, a ghost
gone into mourning for the condition of the world.' He had to make this
reckoning to-night, while the exaltation of his new idea was on him; had
to rummage out the very depths of old association, so that once for all
he might know whether he had strength to close the door on the past.
Five o'clock struck before he had finished, and, almost dropping from
fatigue, sat down at his little piano in bright daylight. The last
memory to beset him was the first of all; his honeymoon, before they came
back to live in this house, already chosen, furnished, and waiting for
them. They had spent it in Germany--the first days in Baden-baden, and
each morning had been awakened by a Chorale played down in the gardens of
the Kurhaus, a gentle, beautiful tune, to remind them that they were in
heaven. And softly, so softly that the tunes seemed to be but dreams he
began playing those old Chorales, one after another, so that the stilly
sounds floated out, through the opened window, puzzling the early birds
and cats and those few humans who were abroad as yet.....
He received the telegram from Noel in the afternoon of the same day, just
as he was about to set out for Leila's to get news of her; and close on
the top of it came Lavendie. He found the painter standing disconsolate
in front of his picture.
"Mademoiselle has deserted me?"
"I'm afraid we shall all desert you soon, monsieur."
"You are going?"
"Yes, I am leaving here. I hope to go to France."
"And mademoiselle?"
"She is at the sea with my son-in-law."
The painter ran his hands through his hair, but stopped them half-way, as
if aware that he was being guilty of ill-breeding.
"Mon dieu!" he said: "Is this not a calamity for you, monsieur le cure?"
But his sense of the calamity was so patently limited to his unfinished
picture that Pierson could not help a smile.
"Ah, monsieur!" said the painter, on whom nothing was lost. "Comme je
suis egoiste! I show my feelings; it is deplorable. My disappointment
must seem a bagatelle to you, who will be so distressed at leaving your
old home. This must be a time of great trouble. Believe me; I
understand. But to sympathise with a grief which is not shown would be
an impertinence, would it not? You English gentlefolk do not let us
share your griefs; you keep them to yourselves."
Pierson stared. "True," he said. "Quite true!"
"I am no judge of Christianity, monsieur, but for us artists the doors of
the human heart stand open, our own and others. I suppose we have no
pride--c'est tres-indelicat. Tell me, monsieur, you would not think it
worthy of you to speak to me of your troubles, would you, as I have
spoken of mine?"
Pierson bowed his head, abashed.
"You preach of universal charity and love," went on Lavendie; "but how
can there be that when you teach also secretly the keeping of your
troubles to yourselves? Man responds to example, not to teaching; you
set the example of the stranger, not the brother. You expect from others
what you do not give. Frankly, monsieur, do you not feel that with every
revelation of your soul and feelings, virtue goes out of you? And I will
tell you why, if you will not think it an offence. In opening your
hearts you feel that you lose authority. You are officers, and must never
forget that. Is it not so?"
Pierson grew red. "I hope there is another feeling too. I think we feel
that to speak of our sufferings or, deeper feelings is to obtrude
oneself, to make a fuss, to be self-concerned, when we might be concerned
with others."
"Monsieur, au fond we are all concerned with self. To seem selfless is
but your particular way of cultivating the perfection of self. You admit
that not to obtrude self is the way to perfect yourself. Eh bien! What
is that but a deeper concern with self? To be free of this, there is no
way but to forget all about oneself in what one is doing, as I forget
everything when I am painting. But," he added, with a sudden smile, "you
would not wish to forget the perfecting of self--it would not be right in
your profession. So I must take away this picture, must I not? It is
one of my best works: I regret much not to have finished it."
"Some day, perhaps--"
"Some day! The picture will stand still, but mademoiselle will not. She
will rush at something, and behold! this face will be gone. No; I prefer
to keep it as it is. It has truth now." And lifting down the canvas, he
stood it against the wall and folded up the easel. "Bon soir, monsieur,
you have been very good to me." He wrung Pierson's hand; and his face
for a moment seemed all eyes and spirit. "Adieu!"
"Good-bye," Pierson murmured. "God bless you!"
"I don't know if I have great confidence in Him," replied Lavendie, "but
I shall ever remember that so good a man as you has wished it. To
mademoiselle my distinguished salutations, if you please. If you will
permit me, I will come back for my other things to-morrow." And carrying
easel and canvas, he departed.
Pierson stayed in the old drawing-room, waiting for Gratian to come in,
and thinking over the painter's words. Had his education and position
really made it impossible for him to be brotherly? Was this the secret
of the impotence which he sometimes felt; the reason why charity and love
were not more alive in the hearts of his congregation? 'God knows I've
no consciousness of having felt myself superior,' he thought; 'and yet I
would be truly ashamed to tell people of my troubles and of my struggles.
Can it be that Christ, if he were on earth, would count us Pharisees,
believing ourselves not as other men? But surely it is not as Christians
but rather as gentlemen that we keep ourselves to ourselves. Officers,
he called us. I fear--I fear it is true.' Ah, well! There would not be
many more days now. He would learn out there how to open the hearts of
others, and his own. Suffering and death levelled all barriers, made all
men brothers. He was still sitting there when Gratian came in; and
taking her hand, he said:
"Noel has gone down to George, and I want you to get transferred and go
to them, Gracie. I'm giving up the parish and asking for a chaplaincy."
"Giving up? After all this time? Is it because of Nollie?"
"No, I think not; I think the time has come. I feel my work here is
barren."
"Oh, no! And even if it is, it's only because--"
Pierson smiled. "Because of what, Gracie?"
"Dad, it's what I've felt in myself. We want to think and decide things
for ourselves, we want to own our consciences, we can't take things at
second-hand any longer."
Pierson's face darkened. "Ah!" he said, "to have lost faith is a
grievous thing."
"We're gaining charity," cried Gratian.
"The two things are not opposed, my dear."
"Not in theory; but in practice I think they often are. Oh, Dad! you
look so tired. Have you really made up your mind? Won't you feel lost?"
"For a little. I shall find myself, out there."
But the look on his face was too much for Gratian's composure, and she
turned away.
Pierson went down to his study to write his letter of resignation.
Sitting before that blank sheet of paper, he realised to the full how
strongly he had resented the public condemnation passed on his own flesh
and blood, how much his action was the expression of a purely mundane
championship of his daughter; of a mundane mortification. 'Pride,' he
thought. 'Ought I to stay and conquer it?' Twice he set his pen down,
twice took it up again. He could not conquer it. To stay where he was
not wanted, on a sort of sufferance--never! And while he sat before that
empty sheet of paper he tried to do the hardest thing a man can do--to
see himself as others see him; and met with such success as one might
expect--harking at once to the verdicts, not of others at all, but of his
own conscience; and coming soon to that perpetual gnawing sense which had
possessed him ever since the war began, that it was his duty to be dead.
This feeling that to be alive was unworthy of him when so many of his
flock had made the last sacrifice, was reinforced by his domestic tragedy
and the bitter disillusionment it had brought. A sense of having lost
caste weighed on him, while he sat there with his past receding from him,
dusty and unreal. He had the queerest feeling of his old life falling
from him, dropping round his feet like the outworn scales of a serpent,
rung after rung of tasks and duties performed day after day, year after
year. Had they ever been quite real? Well, he had shed them now, and
was to move out into life illumined by the great reality-death! And
taking up his pen, he wrote his resignation.
XI
1
The last Sunday, sunny and bright! Though he did not ask her to go,
Gratian went to every Service that day. And the sight of her, after this
long interval, in their old pew, where once he had been wont to see his
wife's face, and draw refreshment therefrom, affected Pierson more than
anything else. He had told no one of his coming departure, shrinking
from the falsity and suppression which must underlie every allusion and
expression of regret. In the last minute of his last sermon he would
tell them! He went through the day in a sort of dream. Truly proud and
sensitive, under this social blight, he shrank from all alike, made no
attempt to single out supporters or adherents from those who had fallen
away. He knew there would be some, perhaps many, seriously grieved that
he was going; but to try and realise who they were, to weigh them in the
scales against the rest and so forth, was quite against his nature. It
was all or nothing. But when for the last time of all those hundreds, he
mounted the steps of his dark pulpit, he showed no trace of finality, did
not perhaps even feel it yet. For so beautiful a summer evening the
congregation was large. In spite of all reticence, rumour was busy and
curiosity still rife. The writers of the letters, anonymous and
otherwise, had spent a week, not indeed in proclaiming what they had
done, but in justifying to themselves the secret fact that they had done
it. And this was best achieved by speaking to their neighbours of the
serious and awkward situation of the poor Vicar. The result was visible
in a better attendance than had been seen since summer-time began.
Pierson had never been a great preacher, his voice lacked resonance and
pliancy, his thought breadth and buoyancy, and he was not free from, the
sing-song which mars the utterance of many who have to speak
professionally. But he always made an impression of goodness and
sincerity. On this last Sunday evening he preached again the first
sermon he had ever preached from that pulpit, fresh from the honeymoon
with his young wife. "Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one
of these." It lacked now the happy fervour of that most happy of all his
days, yet gained poignancy, coming from so worn a face and voice.
Gratian, who knew that he was going to end with his farewell, was in a
choke of emotion long before he came to it. She sat winking away her
tears, and not till he paused, for so long that she thought his strength
had failed, did she look up. He was leaning a little forward, seeming to
see nothing; but his hands, grasping the pulpit's edge, were quivering.
There was deep silence in the Church, for the look of his face and figure
was strange, even to Gratian. When his lips parted again to speak, a
mist covered her eyes, and she lost sight of him.
"Friends, I am leaving you; these are the last words I shall ever speak
in this place. I go to other work. You have been very good to me. God
has been very good to me. I pray with my whole heart that He may bless
you all. Amen! Amen!"
The mist cleared into tears, and she could see him again gazing down at
her. Was it at her? He was surely seeing something--some vision sweeter
than reality, something he loved more dearly. She fell on her knees, and
buried her face in her hand. All through the hymn she knelt, and through
his clear slow Benediction: "The peace of God, which passeth all
understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of
God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing of God
Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you and
remain with you always." And still she knelt on; till she was alone in
the Church. Then she rose and stole home. He did not come in; she did
not expect him. 'It's over,' she kept thinking; 'all over. My beloved
Daddy! Now he has no home; Nollie and I have pulled him down. And yet I
couldn't help it, and perhaps she couldn't. Poor Nollie!...'
2
Pierson had stayed in the vestry, talking with his choir and wardens;
there was no hitch, for his resignation had been accepted, and he had
arranged with a friend to carry on till the new Vicar was appointed. When
they were gone he went back into the empty Church, and mounted to the
organ-loft. A little window up there was open, and he stood leaning
against the stone, looking out, resting his whole being. Only now that it
was over did he know what stress he had been through. Sparrows were
chirping, but sound of traffic had almost ceased, in that quiet Sunday
hour of the evening meal. Finished! Incredible that he would never come
up here again, never see those roof-lines, that corner of Square Garden,
and hear this familiar chirping of the sparrows. He sat down at the
organ and began to play. The last time the sound would roll out and echo
'round the emptied House of God. For a long time he played, while the
building darkened slowly down there below him. Of all that he would
leave, he would miss this most--the right to come and play here in the
darkening Church, to release emotional sound in this dim empty space
growing ever more beautiful. From chord to chord he let himself go
deeper and deeper into the surge and swell of those sound waves, losing
all sense of actuality, till the music and the whole dark building were
fused in one rapturous solemnity. Away down there the darkness crept
over the Church, till the pews, the altar-all was invisible, save the
columns; and the walls. He began playing his favourite slow movement
from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony--kept to the end, for the visions it
ever brought him. And a cat, which had been stalking the sparrows, crept
in through the little window, and crouched, startled, staring at him with
her green eyes. He closed the organ, went quickly down, and locked up
his Church for the last time. It was warmer outside than in, and
lighter, for daylight was not quite gone. He moved away a few yards, and
stood looking up. Walls, buttresses, and spire were clothed in milky
shadowy grey. The top of the spire seemed to touch a star. 'Goodbye, my
Church!' he thought. 'Good-bye, good-bye!' He felt his face quiver;
clenched his teeth, and turned away.
XII
When Noel fled, Fort had started forward to stop her; then, realising
that with his lameness he could never catch her, he went back and entered
Leila's bedroom.
She had taken off her dress, and was standing in front of her glass, with
the cigarette still in her mouth; and the only movement was the curling
of its blue smoke. He could see her face reflected, pale, with a little
spot of red in each cheek, and burning red ears. She had not seemed to
hear him coming in, but he saw her eyes change when they caught his
reflection in the mirror. From lost and blank, they became alive and
smouldering.
"Noel's gone!" he said.
She answered, as if to his reflection in the glass
"And you haven't gone too? Ah, no! Of course--your leg! She fled, I
suppose? It was rather a jar, my coming in, I'm afraid."
"No; it was my coming in that was the jar."
Leila turned round. "Jimmy! I wonder you could discuss me. The rest--"
She shrugged her shoulders--"But that!"
"I was not discussing you. I merely said you were not to be envied for
having me. Are you?"
The moment he had spoken, he was sorry. The anger in her eyes changed
instantly, first to searching, then to misery. She cried out:
"I was to be envied. Oh! Jimmy; I was!" and flung herself face down on
the bed.
Through Fort's mind went the thought: 'Atrocious!' How could he
soothe--make her feel that he loved her, when he didn't--that he wanted
her, when he wanted Noel. He went up to the bedside and touched her
timidly:
"Leila, what is it? You're overtired. What's the matter? I couldn't
help the child's being here. Why do you let it upset you? She's gone.
It's all right. Things are just as they were."
"Yes!" came the strangled echo; "just!"
He knelt down and stroked her arm. It shivered under the touch, seemed
to stop shivering and wait for the next touch, as if hoping it might be
warmer; shivered again.
"Look at me!" he said. "What is it you want? I'm ready to do anything."
She turned and drew herself up on the bed, screwing herself back against
the pillow as if for support, with her knees drawn under her. He was
astonished at the strength of her face and figure, thus entrenched.
"My dear Jimmy!" she said, "I want you to do nothing but get me another
cigarette. At my age one expects no more than one gets!" She held out
her thumb and finger: "Do you mind?"
Fort turned away to get the cigarette. With what bitter restraint and
curious little smile she had said that! But no sooner was he out of the
room and hunting blindly for the cigarettes, than his mind was filled
with an aching concern for Noel, fleeing like that, reckless and hurt,
with nowhere to go. He found the polished birch-wood box which held the
cigarettes, and made a desperate effort to dismiss the image of the girl
before he again reached Leila. She was still sitting there, with her
arms crossed, in the stillness of one whose every nerve and fibre was
stretched taut.
"Have one yourself," she said. "The pipe of peace."
Fort lit the cigarettes, and sat down on the edge of the bed; and his
mind at once went back to Noel.
"Yes," she said suddenly; "I wonder where she's gone. Can you see her?
She might do something reckless a second time. Poor Jimmy! It would be
a pity. And so that monk's been here, and drunk champagne. Good idea!
Get me some, Jimmy!"
Again Fort went, and with him the image of the girl. When he came back
the second time; she had put on that dark silk garment in which she had
appeared suddenly radiant the fatal night after the Queen's Hall concert.
She took the wineglass, and passed him, going into the sitting-room.
"Come and sit down," she said. "Is your leg hurting you?"
"Not more than usual," and he sat down beside her.
"Won't you have some? 'In vino veritas;' my friend."
He shook his head, and said humbly: "I admire you, Leila."
"That's lucky. I don't know anyone else who, would." And she drank her
champagne at a draught.
"Don't you wish," she said suddenly, "that I had been one of those
wonderful New Women, all brain and good works. How I should have talked
the Universe up and down, and the war, and Causes, drinking tea, and
never boring you to try and love me. What a pity!"
But to Fort there had come Noel's words: "It's awfully funny, isn't it?"
"Leila," he said suddenly, "something's got to be done. So long as you
don't wish me to, I'll promise never to see that child again."
"My dear boy, she's not a child. She's ripe for love; and--I'm too ripe
for love. That's what's the matter, and I've got to lump it." She
wrenched her hand out of his and, dropping the empty glass, covered her
face. The awful sensation which visits the true Englishman when a scene
stares him in the face spun in Fort's brain. Should he seize her hands,
drag them down, and kiss her? Should he get up and leave her alone?
Speak, or keep silent; try to console; try to pretend? And he did
absolutely nothing. So far as a man can understand that moment in a
woman's life when she accepts the defeat of Youth and Beauty, he
understood perhaps; but it was only a glimmering. He understood much
better how she was recognising once for all that she loved where she was
not loved.
'And I can't help that,' he thought dumbly; 'simply can't help that!'
Nothing he could say or do would alter it. No words can convince a woman
when kisses have lost reality. Then, to his infinite relief, she took
her hands from her face, and said:
"This is very dull. I think you'd better go, Jimmy."
He made an effort to speak, but was too afraid of falsity in his voice.
"Very nearly a scene!" said Leila. "My God!
"How men hate them! So do I. I've had too many in my time; nothing
comes of them but a headache next morning. I've spared you that, Jimmy.
Give me a kiss for it."
He bent down and put his lips to hers. With all his heart he tried to
answer the passion in her kiss. She pushed him away suddenly, and said
faintly:
"Thank you; you did try!"
Fort dashed his hand across his eyes. The sight of her face just then
moved him horribly. What a brute he felt! He took her limp hand, put it
to his lips, and murmured:
"I shall come in to-morrow. We'll go to the theatre, shall we? Good
night, Leila!"
But, in opening the door, he caught sight of her face, staring at him,
evidently waiting for him to turn; the eyes had a frightened look. They
went suddenly soft, so soft as to give his heart a squeeze.
She lifted her hand, blew him a kiss, and he saw her smiling. Without
knowing what his own lips answered, he went out. He could not make up
his mind to go away, but, crossing to the railings, stood leaning against
them, looking up at her windows. She had been very good to him. He felt
like a man who has won at cards, and sneaked away without giving the
loser his revenge. If only she hadn't loved him; and it had been a
soulless companionship, a quite sordid business. Anything rather than
this! English to the backbone, he could not divest himself of a sense of
guilt. To see no way of making up to her, of straightening it out, made
him feel intensely mean. 'Shall I go up again?' he thought. The
window-curtain moved. Then the shreds of light up there vanished. 'She's
gone to bed,' he thought. 'I should only upset her worse. Where is
Noel, now, I wonder? I shall never see her again, I suppose. Altogether
a bad business. My God, yes! A bad-bad business!'
And, painfully, for his leg was hurting him, he walked away.
Leila was only too well aware of a truth that feelings are no less real,
poignant, and important to those outside morality's ring fence than to
those within. Her feelings were, indeed, probably even more real and
poignant, just as a wild fruit's flavour is sharper than that of the tame
product. Opinion--she knew--would say, that having wilfully chosen a
position outside morality she had not half the case for brokenheartedness
she would have had if Fort had been her husband: Opinion--she knew--would
say she had no claim on him, and the sooner an illegal tie was broken,
the better! But she felt fully as wretched as if she had been married.
She had not wanted to be outside morality; never in her life wanted to be
that. She was like those who by confession shed their sins and start
again with a clear conscience. She never meant to sin, only to love, and
when she was in love, nothing else mattered for the moment. But, though
a gambler, she had always so far paid up. Only, this time the stakes
were the heaviest a woman can put down. It was her last throw; and she
knew it. So long as a woman believed in her attraction, there was hope,
even when the curtain fell on a love-affair! But for Leila the lamp of
belief had suddenly gone out, and when this next curtain dropped she felt
that she must sit in the dark until old age made her indifferent. And
between forty-four and real old age a gulf is fixed. This was the first
time a man had tired of her. Why! he had been tired before he began, or
so she felt. In one swift moment as of a drowning person, she saw again
all the passages of their companionship, knew with certainty that it had
never been a genuine flame. Shame ran, consuming, in her veins. She
buried her face in the cushions. This girl had possessed his real heart
all the time. With a laugh she thought: 'I put my money on the wrong
horse; I ought to have backed Edward. I could have turned that poor
monk's head. If only I had never seen Jimmy again; if I had torn his
letter up, I could have made poor Edward love me!' Ifs! What folly!
Things happened as they must!
And, starting up, she began to roam the little room. Without Jimmy she
would be wretched, with him she would be wretched too! 'I can't bear to
see his face,' she thought; 'and I can't live here without him! It's
really funny!' The thought of her hospital filled her with loathing. To
go there day after day with this despair eating at her heart--she simply
could not. She went over her resources. She had more money than she
thought; Jimmy had given her a Christmas present of five hundred pounds.
She had wanted to tear up the cheque, or force him to take it back; but
the realities of the previous five years had prevailed with her, and she
had banked it. She was glad now. She had not to consider money. Her
mind sought to escape in the past. She thought of her first husband,
Ronny Fane; of their mosquito-curtained rooms in that ghastly Madras
heat. Poor Ronny! What a pale, cynical young ghost started up under
that name. She thought of Lynch, his horsey, matter-of-fact solidity.
She had loved them both--for a time. She thought of the veldt, of
Constantia, and the loom of Table Mountain under the stars; and the first
sight of Jimmy, his straight look, the curve of his crisp head, the kind,
fighting-schoolboy frankness of his face. Even now, after all those
months of their companionship, that long-ago evening at grape harvest,
when she sang to him under the scented creepers, was the memory of him
most charged with real feeling. That one evening at any rate he had
longed for her, eleven: years ago, when she was in her prime. She could
have held her own then; Noel would have come in vain. To think that this
girl had still fifteen years before she would be even in her prime.
Fifteen years of witchery; and then another ten before she was on the
shelf. Why! if Noel married Jimmy, he would be an old man doting on her
still, by the time she had reached this fatal age of forty-four: She felt
as if she must scream, and; stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth,
turned out the light. Darkness cooled her, a little. She pulled aside
the curtains, and let in the moon light. Jimmy and that girl were out in
it some where, seeking each other, if not in body, then in thought. And
soon, somehow, somewhere, they would come together--come together because
Fate meant them to! Fate which had given her young cousin a likeness to
herself; placed her, too, in just such a hopeless position as appealed to
Jimmy, and gave him a chance against younger men. She saw it with bitter
surety. Good gamblers cut their losses! Yes, and proud women did not
keep unwilling lovers! If she had even an outside chance, she would
trail her pride, drag it through the mud, through thorns! But she had
not. And she clenched her fist, and struck out at the night, as though
at the face of that Fate which one could never reach--impalpable,
remorseless, surrounding Fate with its faint mocking smile, devoid of all
human warmth. Nothing could set back the clock, and give her what this
girl had. Time had "done her in," as it "did in" every woman, one by
one. And she saw herself going down the years, powdering a little more,
painting a little more, touching up her hair, till it was all artifice,
holding on by every little device--and all, to what end? To see his face
get colder and colder, hear his voice more and more constrained to
gentleness; and know that underneath, aversion was growing with the
thought 'You are keeping me from life, and love!' till one evening, in
sheer nerve-break, she would say or do some fearful thing, and he would
come no more. 'No, Jimmy!' she thought; 'find her, and stay with her.
You're not worth all that!' And puffing to the curtains, as though with
that gesture she could shut out her creeping fate, she turned up the
light and sat down at her writing table. She stayed some minutes
motionless, her chin resting on her hands, the dark silk fallen down from
her arms. A little mirror, framed in curiously carved ivory, picked up
by her in an Indian bazaar twenty-five years ago, hung on a level with
her face and gave that face back to her. 'I'm not ugly,' she thought
passionately, 'I'm not. I still have some looks left. If only that girl
hadn't come. And it was all my doing. Oh, what made me write to both of
them, Edward and Jimmy?' She turned the mirror aside, and took up a pen.
"MY DEAR JIMMY," she wrote: "It will be better for us both if you take a
holiday from here. Don't come again till I write for you. I'm sorry I
made you so much disturbance to-night. Have a good time, and a good
rest; and don't worry. "Your--"
So far she had written when a tear dropped on the page, and she had to
tear it up and begin again. This time she wrote to the end--"Your
Leila." 'I must post it now,' she thought, 'or he may not get it before
to-morrow evening. I couldn't go through with this again.' She hurried
out with it and slipped it in a pillar box. The night smelled of
flowers; and, hastening back, she lay down, and stayed awake for hours,
tossing, and staring at the dark.
XIII
1
Leila had pluck, but little patience. Her one thought was to get away
and she at once began settling up her affairs and getting a permit to
return to South Africa. The excitements of purchase and preparation were
as good an anodyne as she could have taken. The perils of the sea were
at full just then, and the prospect of danger gave her a sort of
pleasure. 'If I go down,' she thought, 'all the better; brisk, instead
of long and dreary.' But when she had the permit and her cabin was
booked, the irrevocability of her step came to her with full force.
Should she see him again or no? Her boat started in three days, and she
must decide. If in compunction he were to be affectionate, she knew she
would never keep to her decision, and then the horror would begin again,
till again she was forced to this same action. She let the hours go and
go till the very day before, when the ache to see him and the dread of it
had become so unbearable that she could not keep quiet. Late that
afternoon--everything, to the last label, ready--she went out, still
undecided. An itch to turn the dagger in her wound, to know what had
become of Noel, took her to Edward's house. Almost unconsciously she had
put on her prettiest frock, and spent an hour before the glass. A
feverishness of soul, more than of body, which had hung about her ever
since that night, gave her colour. She looked her prettiest; and she
bought a gardenia at a shop in Baker Street and fastened it in her dress.
Reaching the old Square, she was astonished to see a board up with the
words: "To let," though the house still looked inhabited. She rang, and
was shown into the drawing-room. She had only twice been in this house
before; and for some reason, perhaps because of her own unhappiness, the
old, rather shabby room struck her as pathetic, as if inhabited by the
past. 'I wonder what his wife was like,' she thought: And then she saw,
hanging against a strip of black velvet on the wall, that faded colour
sketch of the slender young woman leaning forward, with her hands crossed
in her lap. The colouring was lavender and old ivory, with faint touches
of rose. The eyes, so living, were a little like Gratian's; the whole
face delicate, eager, good. 'Yes,' she thought, 'he must have loved you
very much. To say good-bye must have been hard.' She was still standing
before it when Pierson came in.
"That's a dear face, Edward. I've come to say good-bye. I'm leaving for
South Africa to-morrow." And, as her hand touched his, she thought: 'I
must have been mad to think I could ever have made him love me.'
"Are you--are you leaving him?"
Leila nodded:
"That's very brave, and wonderful."
"Oh! no. Needs must when the devil drives--that's all. I don't give up
happiness of my own accord. That's not within a hundred miles of the
truth. What I shall become, I don't know, but nothing better, you may be
sure. I give up because I can't keep, and you know why. Where is Noel?"
"Down at the sea, with George and Gratian."
He was looking at her in wonder; and the pained, puzzled expression on
his face angered her.
"I see the house is to let. Who'd have thought a child like that could
root up two fossils like us? Never mind, Edward, there's the same blood
in us. We'll keep our ends up in our own ways. Where are you going?"
"They'll give me a chaplaincy in the East, I think."
For a wild moment Leila thought: 'Shall I offer to go with him--the two
lost dogs together?'
"What would have happened, Edward, if you had proposed to me that May
week, when we were--a little bit in love? Which would it have been,
worst for, you or me?"
"You wouldn't have taken me, Leila."
"Oh, one never knows. But you'd never have been a priest then, and you'd
never have become a saint."
"Don't use that silly word. If you knew--"
"I do; I can see that you've been half burned alive; half burned and half
buried! Well, you have your reward, whatever it is, and I mine.
Good-bye, Edward!" She took his hand. "You might give me your blessing;
I want it."
Pierson put his other hand on her shoulder and, bending forward, kissed
her forehead.
The tears rushed up in Leila's eyes. "Ah me!" she said, "it's a sad
world!" And wiping the quivering off her lips with the back of her
gloved hand, she went quickly past him to the door. She looked back from
there. He had not stirred, but his lips were moving. 'He's praying for
me!' she thought. 'How funny!'
2
The moment she was outside, she forgot him; the dreadful ache for Fort
seemed to have been whipped up within her, as if that figure of lifelong
repression had infuriated the love of life and pleasure in her. She must
and would see Jimmy again, if she had to wait and seek for him all night!
It was nearly seven, he would surely have finished at the War Office; he
might be at his Club or at his rooms. She made for the latter.
The little street near Buckingham Gate, where no wag had chalked "Peace"
on the doors for nearly a year now, had an arid look after a hot day's
sun. The hair-dresser's shop below his rooms was still open, and the
private door ajar: 'I won't ring,' she thought; 'I'll go straight up.'
While she was mounting the two flights of stairs, she stopped twice,
breathless, from a pain in her side. She often had that pain now, as if
the longing in her heart strained it physically. On the modest landing
at the top, outside his rooms, she waited, leaning against the wall,
which was covered with a red paper. A window at the back was open and the
confused sound of singing came in--a chorus "Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la
ve. Vive la compagnie." So it came to her. 'O God!' she thought: 'Let
him be in, let him be nice to me. It's the last time.' And, sick from
anxiety, she opened the door. He was in--lying on a wicker-couch against
the wall in the far corner, with his arms crossed behind his head, and a
pipe in his mouth; his eyes were closed, and he neither moved, nor opened
them, perhaps supposing her to be the servant. Noiseless as a cat, Leila
crossed the room till she stood above him. And waiting for him to come
out of that defiant lethargy, she took her fill of his thin, bony face,
healthy and hollow at the same time. With teeth clenched on the pipe it
had a look of hard resistance, as of a man with his head back, his arms
pinioned to his sides, stiffened against some creature, clinging and
climbing and trying to drag him down. The pipe was alive, and dribbled
smoke; and his leg, the injured one, wriggled restlessly, as if worrying
him; but the rest of him was as utterly and obstinately still as though
he were asleep. His hair grew thick and crisp, not a thread of grey in
it, the teeth which held the pipe glinted white and strong. His face was
young; so much younger than hers. Why did she love it--the face of a man
who couldn't love her? For a second she felt as if she could seize the
cushion which had slipped down off the couch, and smother him as he lay
there, refusing, so it seemed to her, to come to consciousness. Love
despised! Humiliation! She nearly turned and stole away. Then through
the door, left open, behind her, the sound of that chorus: "Vive-la,
vive-la, vive-la ve!" came in and jolted her nerves unbearably. Tearing
the gardenia from her breast, she flung it on to his upturned face.
"Jimmy!"
Fort struggled up, and stared at her. His face was comic from
bewilderment, and she broke into a little nervous laugh.
"You weren't dreaming of me, dear Jimmy, that's certain. In what garden
were you wandering?"
"Leila! You! How--how jolly!"
"How--how jolly! I wanted to see you, so I came. And I have seen you,
as you are, when you aren't with me. I shall remember it; it was good
for me--awfully good for me."
"I didn't hear you."
"Far, far away, my dear. Put my gardenia in, your buttonhole. Stop,
I'll pin it in. Have you had a good rest all this week? Do you like my
dress? It's new. You wouldn't have noticed it, would you?"
"I should have noticed. I think it's charming.
"Jimmy, I believe that nothing--nothing will ever shake your chivalry."
"Chivalry? I have none."
"I am going to shut the door, do you mind?" But he went to the door
himself, shut it, and came back to her. Leila looked up at him.
"Jimmy, if ever you loved me a little bit, be nice to me today. And if I
say things--if I'm bitter--don't mind; don't notice it. Promise!"
"I promise."
She took off her hat and sat leaning against him on the couch, so that
she could not see his face. And with his arm round her, she let herself
go, deep into the waters of illusion; down-down, trying to forget there
was a surface to which she must return; like a little girl she played
that game of make-believe. 'He loves me-he loves me--he loves me!' To
lose herself like that for, just an hour, only an hour; she felt that she
would give the rest of the time vouchsafed to her; give it all and
willingly. Her hand clasped his against her heart, she turned her face
backward, up to his, closing her eyes so as still not to see his face;
the scent of the gardenia in his coat hurt her, so sweet and strong it
was.
3
When with her hat on she stood ready to go, it was getting dark. She had
come out of her dream now, was playing at make-believe no more. And she
stood with a stony smile, in the half-dark, looking between her lashes at
the mortified expression on his unconscious face.
"Poor Jimmy!" she said; "I'm not going to keep you from dinner any
longer. No, don't come with me. I'm going alone; and don't light up,
for heaven's sake."
She put her hand on the lapel of his coat. "That flower's gone brown at
the edges. Throw it away; I can't bear faded flowers. Nor can you. Get
yourself a fresh one tomorrow."
She pulled the flower from his buttonhole and, crushing it in her hand,
held her face up.
"Well, kiss me once more; it won't hurt you."
For one moment her lips clung to his with all their might. She wrenched
them away, felt for the handle blindly, opened the door, and, shutting it
in his face, went slowly, swaying a little, down the stairs. She trailed
a gloved hand along the wall, as if its solidity could help her. At the
last half-landing, where a curtain hung, dividing off back premises, she
stopped and listened. There wasn't a sound. 'If I stand here behind
this curtain,' she thought, 'I shall see him again.' She slipped behind
the curtain, close drawn but for a little chink. It was so dark there
that she could not see her own hand. She heard the door open, and his
slow footsteps coming down the stairs. His feet, knees, whole figure
came into sight, his face just a dim blur. He passed, smoking a
cigarette. She crammed her hand against her mouth to stop herself from
speaking and the crushed gardenia filled her nostrils with its cold,
fragrant velvet. He was gone, the door below was shut. A wild,
half-stupid longing came on her to go up again, wait till he came in,
throw herself upon him, tell him she was going, beg him to keep her with
him. Ah! and he would! He would look at her with that haggard pity she
could not bear, and say, "Of course, Leila, of course." No! By God, no!
"I am going quietly home," she muttered; "just quietly home! Come along,
be brave; don't be a fool! Come along!" And she went down into the
street: At the entrance to the Park she saw him, fifty yards in front,
dawdling along. And, as if she had been his shadow lengthened out to
that far distance, she moved behind him. Slowly, always at that
distance, she followed him under the plane-trees, along the Park
railings, past St. James's Palace, into Pall Mall. He went up some
steps, and vanished into his Club. It was the end. She looked up at the
building; a monstrous granite tomb, all dark. An emptied cab was just
moving from the door. She got in. "Camelot Mansions, St. John's Wood."
And braced against the cushions, panting, and clenching her hands, she
thought: 'Well, I've seen him again. Hard crust's better than no bread.
Oh, God! All finished--not a crumb, not a crumb! Vive-la, vive-la,
vive-la ve. Vive-la compagnie!'
XIV
Fort had been lying there about an hour, sleeping and awake, before that
visit: He had dreamed a curious and wonderfully emotionalising dream. A
long grey line, in a dim light, neither of night nor morning, the whole
length of the battle-front in France, charging in short drives, which
carried the line a little forward, with just a tiny pause and suck-back;
then on again irresistibly, on and on; and at each rush, every voice, his
own among them, shouted "Hooray! the English! Hooray! the English!" The
sensation of that advancing tide of dim figures in grey light, the throb
and roar, the wonderful, rhythmic steady drive of it, no more to be
stopped than the waves of an incoming tide, was gloriously fascinating;
life was nothing, death nothing. "Hooray, the English!" In that dream,
he was his country, he was every one of that long charging line, driving
forward in. those great heaving pulsations, irresistible, on and on. Out
of the very centre of this intoxicating dream he had been dragged by some
street noise, and had closed his eyes again, in the vain hope that he
might dream it on to its end. But it came no more; and lighting his
pipe, he lay there wondering at its fervid, fantastic realism. Death was
nothing, if his country lived and won. In waking hours he never had
quite that single-hearted knowledge of himself. And what marvellously
real touches got mixed into the fantastic stuff of dreams, as if
something were at work to convince the dreamer in spite of
himself--"Hooray!" not "Hurrah!" Just common "Hooray!" And "the
English," not the literary "British." And then the soft flower had
struck his forehead, and Leila's voice cried: "Jimmy!"
When she left him, his thought was just a tired: 'Well, so it's begun
again!' What did it matter, since common loyalty and compassion cut him
off from what his heart desired; and that desire was absurd, as little
likely of attainment as the moon. What did it matter? If it gave her
any pleasure to love him, let it go on! Yet, all the time that he was
walking across under the plane trees, Noel seemed to walk in front of
him, just out of reach, so that he ached with the thought that he would
never catch her up, and walk beside her.
Two days later, on reaching his rooms in the evening, he found this
letter on ship's note-paper, with the Plymouth postmark--
"Fare thee well, and if for ever,
Then for ever fare thee well"
"Leila"
He read it with a really horrible feeling, for all the world as if he had
been accused of a crime and did not know whether he had committed it or
not. And, trying to collect his thoughts, he took a cab and drove to her
fiat. It was closed, but her address was given him; a bank in Cape Town.
He had received his release. In his remorse and relief, so confusing and
so poignant, he heard the driver of the cab asking where he wanted to go
now. "Oh, back again!" But before they had gone a mile he corrected the
address, in an impulse of which next moment he felt thoroughly ashamed.
What he was doing indeed, was as indecent as if he were driving from the
funeral of his wife to the boudoir of another woman. When he reached the
old Square, and the words "To let" stared him in the face, he felt a
curious relief, though it meant that he would not see her whom to see for
ten minutes he felt he would give a year of life. Dismissing his cab, he
stood debating whether to ring the bell. The sight of a maid's face at
the window decided him. Mr. Pierson was out, and the young ladies were
away. He asked for Mrs. Laird's address, and turned away, almost into
the arms of Pierson himself. The greeting was stiff and strange. 'Does
he know that Leila's gone?' he thought. 'If so, he must think me the
most awful skunk. And am I? Am I?' When he reached home, he sat down to
write to Leila. But having stared at the paper for an hour and written
these three lines--
"MY DEAR LEILA, "I cannot express to you the feelings with which I
received your letter--"
he tore it up. Nothing would be adequate, nothing would be decent. Let
the dead past bury its dead--the dead past which in his heart had never
been alive! Why pretend? He had done his best to keep his end up. Why
pretend?
PART IV
I
In the boarding-house, whence the Lairds had not yet removed, the old
lady who knitted, sat by the fireplace, and light from the setting sun
threw her shadow on the wall, moving spidery and grey, over the yellowish
distemper, in time to the tune of her needles. She was a very old
lady--the oldest lady in the world, Noel thought--and she knitted without
stopping, without breathing, so that the girl felt inclined to scream.
In the evening when George and Gratian were not in, Noel would often sit
watching the needles, brooding over her as yet undecided future. And now
and again the old lady would look up above her spectacles; move the
corners of her lips ever so slightly, and drop her gaze again. She had
pitted herself against Fate; so long as she knitted, the war could not
stop--such was the conclusion Noel had come to. This old lady knitted
the epic of acquiescence to the tune of her needles; it was she who kept
the war going such a thin old lady! 'If I were to hold her elbows from
behind,' the girl used to think, 'I believe she'd die. I expect I ought
to; then the war would stop. And if the war stopped, there'd be love and
life again.' Then the little silvery tune would click itself once more
into her brain, and stop her thinking. In her lap this evening lay a
letter from her father.
"MY DEAREST NOLLIE,
"I am glad to say I have my chaplaincy, and am to start for Egypt very
soon. I should have wished to go to France, but must take what I can
get, in view of my age, for they really don't want us who are getting on,
I fear. It is a great comfort to me to think that Gratian is with you,
and no doubt you will all soon be in a house where my little grandson can
join you. I have excellent accounts of him in a letter from your aunt,
just received: My child, you must never again think that my resignation
has been due to you. It is not so. You know, or perhaps you don't, that
ever since the war broke out, I have chafed over staying at home, my
heart has been with our boys out there, and sooner or later it must have
come to this, apart from anything else. Monsieur Lavendie has been round
in the evening, twice; he is a nice man, I like him very much, in spite
of our differences of view. He wanted to give me the sketch he made of
you in the Park, but what can I do with it now? And to tell you the
truth, I like it no better than the oil painting. It is not a likeness,
as I know you. I hope I didn't hurt his feelings, the feelings of an
artist are so very easily wounded. There is one thing I must tell you.
Leila has gone back to South Africa; she came round one evening about ten
days ago, to say goodbye. She was very brave, for I fear it means a
great wrench for her. I hope and pray she may find comfort and
tranquillity out there. And now, my dear, I want you to promise me not
to see Captain Fort. I know that he admires you. But, apart from the
question of his conduct in regard to Leila, he made the saddest
impression on me by coming to our house the very day after her departure.
There is something about that which makes me feel he cannot be the sort
of man in whom I could feel any confidence. I don't suppose for a moment
that he is in your thoughts, and yet before going so far from you, I feel
I must warn you. I should rejoice to see you married to a good man; but,
though I don't wish to think hardly of anyone, I cannot believe Captain
Fort is that.
"I shall come down to you before I start, which may be in quite a short
time now. My dear love to you and Gracie, and best wishes to George.
"Your ever loving father, "EDWARD PIERSON
Across this letter lying on her knees, Noel gazed at the spidery movement
on the wall. Was it acquiescence that the old lady knitted, or was it
resistance--a challenge to death itself, a challenge dancing to the tune
of the needles like the grey ghost of human resistance to Fate! She
wouldn't give in, this oldest lady in the world, she meant to knit till
she fell into the grave. And so Leila had gone! It hurt her to know
that; and yet it pleased her. Acquiescence--resistance! Why did Daddy
always want to choose the way she should go? So gentle he was, yet he
always wanted to! And why did he always make her feel that she must go
the other way? The sunlight ceased to stream in, the old lady's shadow
faded off the wall, but the needles still sang their little tune. And
the girl said:
"Do you enjoy knitting, Mrs. Adam?"
The old lady looked at her above the spectacles.
"Enjoy, my dear? It passes the time."
"But do you want the time to pass?"
There was no answer for a moment, and Noel thought: 'How dreadful of me
to have said that!'
"Eh?" said the old lady.
"I said: Isn't it very tiring?"
"Not when I don't think about it, my dear."
"What do you think about?"
The old lady cackled gently.
"Oh--well!" she said.
And Noel thought: 'It must be dreadful to grow old, and pass the time!'
She took up her father's letter, and bent it meditatively against her
chin. He wanted her to pass the time--not to live, not to enjoy! To
pass the time. What else had he been doing himself, all these years,
ever since she could remember, ever since her mother died, but just
passing the time? Passing the time because he did not believe in this
life; not living at all, just preparing for the life he did believe in.
Denying himself everything that was exciting and nice, so that when he
died he might pass pure and saintly to his other world. He could not
believe Captain Fort a good man, because he had not passed the time, and
resisted Leila; and Leila was gone! And now it was a sin for him to love
someone else; he must pass the time again. 'Daddy doesn't believe in
life,' she thought; 'it's monsieur's picture. Daddy's a saint; but I
don't want to be a saint, and pass the time. He doesn't mind making
people unhappy, because the more they're repressed, the saintlier they'll
be. But I can't bear to be unhappy, or to see others unhappy. I wonder
if I could bear to be unhappy to save someone else--as Leila is? I
admire her! Oh! I admire her! She's not doing it because she thinks it
good for her soul; only because she can't bear making him unhappy. She
must love him very much. Poor Leila! And she's done it all by herself,
of her own accord.' It was like what George said of the soldiers; they
didn't know why they were heroes, it was not because they'd been told to
be, or because they believed in a future life. They just had to be, from
inside somewhere, to save others. 'And they love life as much as I do,'
she thought. 'What a beast it makes one feel!' Those needles!
Resistance--acquiescence? Both perhaps. The oldest lady in the world,
with her lips moving at the corners, keeping things in, had lived her
life, and knew it. How dreadful to live on when you were of no more
interest to anyone, but must just "pass the time" and die. But how much
more dreadful to "pass the time" when you were strong, and life and love
were yours for the taking! 'I shan't answer Daddy,' she thought.
II
The maid, who one Saturday in July opened the door to Jimmy Fort, had
never heard the name of Laird, for she was but a unit in the ceaseless
procession which pass through the boarding-houses of places subject to
air-raids. Placing him in a sitting-room, she said she would find Miss
'Allow. There he waited, turning the leaves of an illustrated Journal,
wherein Society beauties; starving Servians, actresses with pretty legs,
prize dogs, sinking ships, Royalties, shells bursting, and padres reading
funeral services, testified to the catholicity of the public taste, but
did not assuage his nerves. What if their address were not known here?
Why, in his fear of putting things to the test, had he let this month go
by? An old lady was sitting by the hearth, knitting, the click of whose
needles blended with the buzzing of a large bee on the window-pane. 'She
may know,' he thought, 'she looks as if she'd been here for ever.' And
approaching her, he said:
"I can assure you those socks are very much appreciated, ma'am."
The old lady bridled over her spectacles.
"It passes the time," she said.
"Oh, more than that; it helps to win the war, ma'am."
The old lady's lips moved at the corners; she did not answer. 'Deaf!' he
thought.
"May I ask if you knew my friends, Doctor and Mrs. Laird, and Miss
Pierson?"
The old lady cackled gently.
"Oh, yes! A pretty young girl; as pretty as life. She used to sit with
me. Quite a pleasure to watch her; such large eyes she had."
"Where have they gone? Can you tell me?"
"Oh, I don't know at all."
It was a little cold douche on his heart. He longed to say: 'Stop
knitting a minute, please. It's my life, to know.' But the tune of the
needles answered: 'It's my life to knit.' And he turned away to the
window.
"She used to sit just there; quite still; quite still."
Fort looked down at the window-seat. So, she used to sit just here,
quite still.
"What a dreadful war this is!" said the old lady. "Have you been at the
front?"
"Yes."
"To think of the poor young girls who'll never have husbands! I'm sure I
think it's dreadful."
"Yes," said Fort; "it's dreadful--" And then a voice from the doorway
said:
"Did you want Doctor and Mrs. Laird, sir? East Bungalow their address
is; it's a little way out on the North Road. Anyone will tell you."
With a sigh of relief Fort looked gratefully at the old lady who had
called Noel as pretty as life. "Good afternoon, ma'am."
"Good afternoon." The needles clicked, and little movements occurred at
the corners of her mouth. Fort went out. He could not find a vehicle,
and was a long time walking. The Bungalow was ugly, of yellow brick
pointed with red. It lay about two-thirds up between the main road and
cliffs, and had a rock-garden and a glaring, brand-new look, in the
afternoon sunlight. He opened the gate, uttering one of those prayers
which come so glibly from unbelievers when they want anything. A baby's
crying answered it, and he thought with ecstasy: 'Heaven, she is here!'
Passing the rock-garden he could see a lawn at the back of the house and
a perambulator out there under a holm-oak tree, and Noel--surely Noel
herself! Hardening his heart, he went forward. In a lilac sunbonnet she
was bending over the perambulator. He trod softly on the grass, and was
quite close before she heard him. He had prepared no words, but just
held out his hand. The baby, interested in the shadow failing across its
pram, ceased crying. Noel took his hand. Under the sunbonnet, which hid
her hair, she seemed older and paler, as if she felt the heat. He had no
feeling that she was glad to see him.
"How do you do? Have you seen Gratian; she ought to be in."
"I didn't come to see her; I came to see you."
Noel turned to the baby.
"Here he is."
Fort stood at the end of the perambulator, and looked at that other
fellow's baby. In the shade of the hood, with the frilly clothes, it
seemed to him lying with its head downhill. It had scratched its snub
nose and bumpy forehead, and it stared up at its mother with blue eyes,
which seemed to have no underlids so fat were its cheeks.
"I wonder what they think about," he said.
Noel put her finger into the baby's fist.
"They only think when they want some thing."
"That's a deep saying: but his eyes are awfully interested in you."
Noel smiled; and very slowly the baby's curly mouth unclosed, and
discovered his toothlessness.
"He's a darling," she said in a whisper.
'And so are you,' he thought, 'if only I dared say it!'
"Daddy is here," she said suddenly, without looking up. "He's sailing
for Egypt the day after to-morrow. He doesn't like you."
Fort's heart gave a jump. Why did she tell him that, unless--unless she
was just a little on his side?
"I expected that," he said. "I'm a sinner, as you know."
Noel looked up at him. "Sin!" she said, and bent again over her baby.
The word, the tone in which she said it, crouching over her baby, gave
him the thought: 'If it weren't for that little creature, I shouldn't
have a dog's chance.' He said, "I'll go and see your father. Is he in?"
"I think so."
"May I come to-morrow?"
"It's Sunday; and Daddy's last day."
"Ah! Of course." He did not dare look back, to see if her gaze was
following him, but he thought: 'Chance or no chance, I'm going to fight
for her tooth and nail.'
In a room darkened against the evening sun Pierson was sitting on a sofa
reading. The sight of that figure in khaki disconcerted Fort, who had
not realised that there would be this metamorphosis. The narrow face,
clean-shaven now, with its deep-set eyes and compressed lips, looked more
priestly than ever, in spite of this brown garb. He felt his hope
suddenly to be very forlorn indeed. And rushing at the fence, he began
abruptly:
"I've come to ask you, sir, for your permission to marry Noel, if she
will have me."
He had thought Pierson's face gentle; it was not gentle now. "Did you
know I was here, then, Captain Fort?"
"I saw Noel in the garden. I've said nothing to her, of course. But she
told me you were starting to-morrow for Egypt, so I shall have no other
chance."
"I am sorry you have come. It is not for me to judge, but I don't think
you will make Noel happy."
"May I ask you why, sir?"
"Captain Fort, the world's judgment of these things is not mine; but
since you ask me. I will tell you frankly. My cousin Leila has a claim
on you. It is her you should ask to marry you."
"I did ask her; she refused."
"I know. She would not refuse you again if you went out to her."
"I am not free to go out to her; besides, she would refuse. She knows I
don't love her, and never have."
"Never have?"
"No."
"Then why--"
"Because I'm a man, I suppose, and a fool"
"If it was simply, 'because you are a man' as you call it, it is clear
that no principle or faith governs you. And yet you ask me to give you
Noel; my poor Noel, who wants the love and protection not of a 'man' but
of a good man. No, Captain Fort, no!"
Fort bit his lips. "I'm clearly not a good man in your sense of the
word; but I love her terribly, and I would protect her. I don't in the
least know whether she'll have me. I don't expect her to, naturally.
But I warn you that I mean to ask her, and to wait for her. I'm so much
in love that I can do nothing else."
"The man who is truly in love does what is best for the one he loves."
Fort bent his head; he felt as if he were at school again, confronting
his head-master. "That's true," he said. "And I shall never trade on
her position. If she can't feel anything for me now or in the future, I
shan't trouble her, you may be sure of that. But if by some wonderful
chance she should, I know I can make her happy, sir."
"She is a child."
"No, she's not a child," said Fort stubbornly.
Pierson touched the lapel of his new tunic. "Captain Fort, I am going
far away from her, and leaving her without protection. I trust to your
chivalry not to ask her, till I come back."
Fort threw back his head. "No, no, I won't accept that position. With or
without your presence the facts will be the same. Either she can love
me, or she can't. If she can, she'll be happier with me. If she can't,
there's an end of it."
Pierson came slowly up to him. "In my view," he said, "you are as bound
to Leila as if you were married to her."
"You can't, expect me to take the priest's view, sir."
Pierson's lips trembled.
"You call it a priest's view; I think it is only the view of a man of
honour."
Fort reddened. "That's for my conscience," he said stubbornly. "I can't
tell you, and I'm not going to, how things began. I was a fool. But I
did my best, and I know that Leila doesn't think I'm bound. If she had,
she would never have gone. When there's no feeling--there never was real
feeling on my side--and when there's this terribly real feeling for Noel,
which I never sought, which I tried to keep down, which I ran away
from--"
"Did you?"
"Yes. To go on with the other was foul. I should have thought you might
have seen that, sir; but I did go on with it. It was Leila who made an
end."
"Leila behaved nobly, I think."
"She was splendid; but that doesn't make me a brute.".
Pierson turned away to the window, whence he must see Noel.
"It is repugnant to me," he said. "Is there never to be any purity in
her life?"
"Is there never to be any life for her? At your rate, sir, there will be
none. I'm no worse than other men, and I love her more than they could."
For fully a minute Pierson stood silent, before he said: "Forgive me if
I've spoken harshly. I didn't mean to. I love her intensely; I wish for
nothing but her good. But all my life I have believed that for a man
there is only one woman--for a woman only one man."
"Then, Sir," Fort burst out, "you wish her--"
Pierson had put his hand up, as if to ward off a blow; and, angry though
he was, Fort stopped.
"We are all made of flesh and blood," he continued coldly, "and it seems
to me that you think we aren't."
"We have spirits too, Captain Fort." The voice was suddenly so gentle
that Fort's anger evaporated.
"I have a great respect for you, sir; but a greater love for Noel, and
nothing in this world will prevent me trying to give my life to her."
A smile quivered over Pierson's face. "If you try, then I can but pray
that you will fail."
Fort did not answer, and went out.
He walked slowly away from the bungalow, with his head down, sore, angry,
and yet-relieved. He knew where he stood; nor did he feel that he had
been worsted--those strictures had not touched him. Convicted of
immorality, he remained conscious of private justifications, in a way
that human beings have. Only one little corner of memory, unseen and
uncriticised by his opponent, troubled him. He pardoned himself the
rest; the one thing he did not pardon was the fact that he had known Noel
before his liaison with Leila commenced; had even let Leila sweep him
away on, an evening when he had been in Noel's company. For that he felt
a real disgust with himself. And all the way back to the station he kept
thinking: 'How could I? I deserve to lose her! Still, I shall try; but
not now--not yet!' And, wearily enough, he took the train back to town.
III
Both girls rose early that last day, and went with their father to
Communion. As Gratian had said to George: "It's nothing to me now, but
it will mean a lot to him out there, as a memory of us. So I must go."
And he had answered: "Quite right, my dear. Let him have all he can get
of you both to-day. I'll keep out of the way, and be back the last thing
at night." Their father's smile when he saw them waiting for him went
straight to both their hearts. It was a delicious day, and the early
freshness had not yet dried out of the air, when they were walking home
to breakfast. Each girl had slipped a hand under his arm. 'It's like
Moses or was it Aaron?' Noel thought absurdly Memory had complete hold of
her. All the old days! Nursery hours on Sundays after tea, stories out
of the huge Bible bound in mother-o'pearl, with photogravures of the Holy
Land--palms, and hills, and goats, and little Eastern figures, and funny
boats on the Sea of Galilee, and camels--always camels. The book would
be on his knee, and they one on each arm of his chair, waiting eagerly
for the pages to be turned so that a new picture came. And there would
be the feel of his cheek, prickly against theirs; and the old names with
the old glamour--to Gratian, Joshua, Daniel, Mordecai, Peter; to Noel
Absalom because of his hair, and Haman because she liked the sound, and
Ruth because she was pretty and John because he leaned on Jesus' breast.
Neither of them cared for Job or David, and Elijah and Elisha they
detested because they hated the name Eliza. And later days by firelight
in the drawing-room, roasting chestnuts just before evening church, and
telling ghost stories, and trying to make Daddy eat his share. And hours
beside him at the piano, each eager for her special hymns--for Gratian,
"Onward, Christian Soldiers," "Lead, Kindly Light," and "O God Our Help";
for Noel, "Nearer, My God, to Thee," the one with "The Hosts of Midian"
in it, and "For Those in Peril on the Sea." And carols! Ah! And
Choristers! Noel had loved one deeply--the word "chorister" was so
enchanting; and because of his whiteness, and hair which had no grease on
it, but stood up all bright; she had never spoken to him--a far worship,
like that for a star. And always, always Daddy had been gentle;
sometimes angry, but always gentle; and they sometimes not at all! And
mixed up with it all, the dogs they had had, and the cats they had had,
and the cockatoo, and the governesses, and their red cloaks, and the
curates, and the pantomimes, and "Peter Pan," and "Alice in
Wonderland"--Daddy sitting between them, so that one could snuggle up.
And later, the school-days, the hockey, the prizes, the holidays, the
rush into his arms; and the great and wonderful yearly exodus to far
places, fishing and bathing; walks and drives; rides and climbs, always
with him. And concerts and Shakespeare plays in the Christmas and Easter
holidays; and the walk home through the streets--all lighted in those
days--one on each side of him. And this was the end! They waited on him
at breakfast: they kept stealing glances at him, photographing him in
their minds. Gratian got her camera and did actually photograph him in
the morning sunlight with Noel, without Noel, with the baby; against all
regulations for the defence of the realm. It was Noel who suggested:
"Daddy, let's take lunch out and go for all day on the cliffs, us three,
and forget there's a war."
So easy to say, so difficult to do, with the boom of the guns travelling
to their ears along the grass, mingled with the buzz of insects. Yet
that hum of summer, the innumerable voices of tiny lives, gossamer things
all as alive as they, and as important to their frail selves; and the
white clouds, few and so slow-moving, and the remote strange purity which
clings to the chalky downs, all this white and green and blue of land and
sea had its peace, which crept into the spirits of those three alone with
Nature, this once more, the last time for--who could say how long? They
talked, by tacit agreement, of nothing but what had happened before the
war began, while the flock of the blown dandelions drifted past. Pierson
sat cross-legged on the grass, without his cap, suffering a little still
from the stiffness of his unwonted garments. And the girls lay one on
each side of him, half critical, and half admiring. Noel could not bear
his collar.
"If you had a soft collar you'd be lovely, Daddy. Perhaps out there
they'll let you take it off. It must be fearfully hot in Egypt. Oh! I
wish I were going. I wish I were going everywhere in the world. Some
day!" Presently he read to them, Murray's "Hippolytus" of Euripides.
And now and then Gratian and he discussed a passage. But Noel lay
silent, looking at the sky. Whenever his voice ceased, there was the
song of the larks, and very faint, the distant mutter of the guns.
They stayed up there till past six, and it was time to go and have tea
before Evening Service. Those hours in the baking sun had drawn virtue
out of them; they were silent and melancholy all the evening. Noel was
the first to go up to her bedroom. She went without saying good
night--she knew her father would come to her room that last evening.
George had not yet come in; and Gratian was left alone with Pierson in
the drawing-room, round whose single lamp, in spite of close-drawn
curtains, moths were circling: She moved over to him on the sofa.
"Dad, promise me not to worry about Nollie; we'll take care of her."
"She can only take care of herself, Gracie, and will she? Did you know
that Captain Fort was here yesterday?"
"She told me."
"What is her feeling about him?"
"I don't think she knows. Nollie dreams along, and then suddenly
rushes."
"I wish she were safe from that man."
"But, Dad, why? George likes him and so do I."
A big grey moth was fluttering against the lamp. Pierson got up and
caught it in the curve of his palm. "Poor thing! You're like my Nollie;
so soft, and dreamy, so feckless, so reckless." And going to the
curtains, he thrust his hand through, and released the moth.
"Dad!" said Gratian suddenly, "we can only find out for ourselves, even
if we do singe our wings in doing it. We've been reading James's
'Pragmatism.' George says the only chapter that's important is
missing--the one on ethics, to show that what we do is not wrong till
it's proved wrong by the result. I suppose he was afraid to deliver that
lecture."
Pierson's face wore the smile which always came on it when he had to deal
with George, the smile which said: "Ah, George, that's very clever; but I
know."
"My dear," he said, "that doctrine is the most dangerous in the world. I
am surprised at George."
"I don't think George is in danger, Dad."
"George is a man of wide experience and strong judgment and character;
but think how fatal it would be for Nollie, my poor Nollie, whom a little
gust can blow into the candle."
"All the same," said Gratian stubbornly, "I don't think anyone can be
good or worth anything unless they judge for themselves and take risks."
Pierson went close to her; his face was quivering.
"Don't let us differ on this last night; I must go up to Nollie for a
minute, and then to bed. I shan't see you to-morrow; you mustn't get up;
I can bear parting better like this. And my train goes at eight. God
bless you, Gracie; give George my love. I know, I have always known that
he's a good man, though we do fight so. Good-bye, my darling."
He went out with his cheeks wet from Gratian's tears, and stood in the
porch a minute to recover his composure. The shadow of the house
stretched velvet and blunt over the rock-garden. A night-jar was
spinning; the churring sound affected him oddly. The last English
night-bird he would hear. England! What a night-to say good-bye! 'My
country!' he thought; 'my beautiful country!' The dew was lying thick and
silvery already on the little patch of grass-the last dew, the last scent
of an English night. The call of a bugle floated out. "England!" he
prayed; "God be about you!" A little sound answered from across the
grass, like an old man's cough, and the scrape and rattle of a chain. A
face emerged at the edge of the house's shadow; bearded and horned like
that of Pan, it seemed to stare at him. And he saw the dim grey form of
the garden goat, heard it scuttle round the stake to which it was
tethered, as though alarmed at this visitor to its' domain.
He went up the half-flight of stairs to Noel's narrow little room, next
the nursery. No voice answered his tap. It was dark, but he could see
her at the window, leaning far out, with her chin on her hands.
"Nollie!"
She answered without turning: "Such a lovely night, Daddy. Come and
look! I'd like to set the goat free, only he'd eat the rock plants. But
it is his night, isn't it? He ought to be running and skipping in it:
it's such a shame to tie things up. Did you never, feel wild in your
heart, Daddy?"
"Always, I think, Nollie; too wild. It's been hard to tame oneself."
Noel slipped her hand through his arm. "Let's go and take the goat and
skip together on the hills. If only we had a penny whistle! Did you
hear the bugle? The bugle and the goat!"
Pierson pressed the hand against him.
"Nollie, be good while I'm away. You know what I don't want. I told you
in my letter." He looked at her cheek, and dared say no more. Her face
had its "fey" look again.
"Don't you feel," she said suddenly, "on a night like this, all the
things, all the things--the stars have lives, Daddy, and the moon has a
big life, and the shadows have, and the moths and the birds and the goats
and the trees, and the flowers, and all of us--escaped? Oh! Daddy, why
is there a war? And why are people so bound and so unhappy? Don't tell
me it's God--don't!"
Pierson could not answer, for there came into his mind the Greek song he
had been reading aloud that afternoon--
"O for a deep and dewy Spring,
With runlets cold to draw and drink,
And a great meadow blossoming,
Long-grassed, and poplars in a ring,
To rest me by the brink.
O take me to the mountain, O,
Past the great pines and through the wood,
Up where the lean hounds softly go,
A-whine for wild things' blood,
And madly flies the dappled roe,
O God, to shout and speed them there;
An arrow by my chestnut hair
Drawn tight and one keen glimmering spear
Ah! if I could!"
All that in life had been to him unknown, of venture and wild savour; all
the emotion he had stifled; the swift Pan he had denied; the sharp
fruits, the burning suns, the dark pools, the unearthly moonlight, which
were not of God--all came with the breath of that old song, and the look
on the girl's face. And he covered his eyes.
Noel's hand tugged at his arm. "Isn't beauty terribly alive," she
murmured, "like a lovely person? it makes you ache to kiss it."
His lips felt parched. "There is a beauty beyond all that," he said
stubbornly.
"Where?"
"Holiness, duty, faith. O Nollie, my love!" But Noel's hand tightened
on his arm.
"Shall I tell you what I should like?" she whispered. "To take God's
hand and show Him things. I'm certain He's not seen everything."
A shudder went through Pierson, one of those queer sudden shivers, which
come from a strange note in a voice, or a new sharp scent or sight.
"My dear, what things you say!"
"But He hasn't, and it's time He did. We'd creep, and peep, and see it
all for once, as He can't in His churches. Daddy, oh! Daddy! I can't
bear it any more; to think of them being killed on a night like this;
killed and killed so that they never see it all again--never see
it--never see it!" She sank down, and covered her face with her arms.
"I can't, I can't! Oh! take it all away, the cruelty! Why does it
come--why the stars and the flowers, if God doesn't care any more than
that?"
Horribly affected he stood bending over her, stroking her head. Then the
habit of a hundred death-beds helped him. "Come, Nollie! This life is
but a minute. We must all die."
"But not they--not so young!" She clung to his knees, and looked up.
"Daddy, I don't want you to go; promise me to come back!"
The childishness of those words brought back his balance.
"My dear sweetheart, of course! Come, Nollie, get up. The sun's been
too much for you."
Noel got up, and put her hands on her father's shoulders. "Forgive me
for all my badness, and all my badness to come, especially all my badness
to come!"
Pierson smiled. "I shall always forgive you, Nollie; but there won't
be--there mustn't be any badness to come. I pray God to keep you, and
make you like your mother."
"Mother never had a devil, like you and me."
He was silent from surprise. How did this child know the devil of wild
feeling he had fought against year after year; until with the many years
he had felt it weakening within him! She whispered on: "I don't hate my
devil.
"Why should I?--it's part of me. Every day when the sun sets, I'll think
of you, Daddy; and you might do the same--that'll keep me good. I shan't
come to the station tomorrow, I should only cry. And I shan't say
good-bye now. It's unlucky."
She flung her arms round him; and half smothered by that fervent embrace,
he kissed her cheeks and hair. Freed of each other at last, he stood for
a moment looking at her by the moonlight.
"There never was anyone more loving than you; Nollie!" he said quietly.
"Remember my letter. And good night, my love!" Then, afraid to stay
another second, he went quickly out of the dark little room....
George Laird, returning half an hour later, heard a voice saying softly:
"George, George!"
Looking up, he saw a little white blur at the window, and Noel's face
just visible.
"George, let the goat loose, just for to-night, to please me."
Something in that voice, and in the gesture of her stretched-out arm
moved George in a queer way, although, as Pierson had once said, he had
no music in his soul. He loosed the goat.
IV
1
In the weeks which succeeded Pierson's departure, Gratian and George
often discussed Noel's conduct and position by the light of the Pragmatic
theory. George held a suitably scientific view. Just as he would point
out to his wife--in the physical world, creatures who diverged from the
normal had to justify their divergence in competition with their
environments, or else go under, so in the ethical world it was all a
question of whether Nollie could make good her vagary. If she could, and
grew in strength of character thereby, it was ipso facto all right, her
vagary would be proved an advantage, and the world enriched. If not, the
world by her failure to make good would be impoverished, and her vagary
proved wrong. The orthodox and academies--he insisted--were always
forgetting the adaptability of living organisms; how every action which
was out of the ordinary, unconsciously modified all the other actions
together with the outlook, and philosophy of the doer. "Of course Nollie
was crazy," he said, "but when she did what she did, she at once began to
think differently about life and morals. The deepest instinct we all
have is the instinct that we must do what we must, and think that what
we've done is really all right; in fact the--instinct of
self-preservation. We're all fighting animals; and we feel in our bones
that if we admit we're beaten--we are beaten; but that every fight we
win, especially against odds, hardens those bones. But personally I
don't think she can make good on her own."
Gratian, whose Pragmatism was not yet fully baked, responded doubtfully:
"No, I don't think she can. And if she could I'm not sure. But isn't
Pragmatism a perfectly beastly word, George? It has no sense of humour
in it at all."
"It is a bit thick, and in the hands of the young, deuced likely to
become Prigmatism; but not with Nollie."
They watched the victim of their discussions with real anxiety. The
knowledge that she would never be more sheltered than she was with them,
at all events until she married, gravely impeded the formation of any
judgment as to whether or no she could make good. Now and again there
would come to Gratian who after all knew her sister better than
George--the disquieting thought that whatever conclusion Noel led them to
form, she would almost certainly force them to abandon sooner or later.
Three days after her father's departure Noel had declared that she wanted
to work on the land. This George had promptly vetoed.
"You aren't strong enough yet, my dear: Wait till the harvest begins.
Then you can go and help on the farm here. If you can stand that without
damage, we'll think about it."
But the weather was wet and harvest late, and Noel had nothing much to do
but attend to her baby, already well attended to by Nurse, and dream and
brood, and now and then cook an omelette or do some housework for the
sake of a gnawing conscience. Since Gratian and George were away in
hospital all day, she was very much alone. Several times in the evenings
Gratian tried to come at the core of her thoughts, Twice she flew the
kite of Leila. The first time Noel only answered: "Yes, she's a brick."
The second time, she said: "I don't want to think about her."
But, hardening her heart, Gratian went on: "Don't you think it's queer
we've never heard from Captain Fort since he came down?"
In her calmest voice Noel answered: "Why should we, after being told that
he wasn't liked?"
"Who told him that?"
"I told him, that Daddy didn't; but I expect Daddy said much worse
things." She gave a little laugh, then softly added: "Daddy's wonderful,
isn't he?"
"How?"
"The way he drives one to do the other thing. If he hadn't opposed my
marriage to Cyril, you know, that wouldn't have happened, it just made
all the difference. It stirred me up so fearfully." Gratian stared at
her, astonished that she could see herself so clearly. Towards the end of
August she had a letter from Fort.
"DEAR MRS. LAIRD, "You know all about things, of course, except the one
thing which to me is all important. I can't go on without knowing
whether I have a chance with your sister. It is against your father's
expressed wish that she should have anything to do with me, but I told
him that I could not and would not promise not to ask her. I get my
holiday at the end of this month, and am coming down to put it to the
touch. It means more to me than you can possibly imagine. "I am, dear
Mrs. Laird, "Your very faithful servant, "JAMES FORT."
She discussed the letter with George, whose advice was: "Answer it
politely, but say nothing; and nothing to Nollie. I think it would be a
very good thing. Of course it's a bit of a make-shift--twice her age;
but he's a genuine man, if not exactly brilliant."
Gratian answered almost sullenly: "I've always wanted the very best for
Nollie."
George screwed up his steel-coloured eyes, as he might have looked at one
on whom he had to operate. "Quite so," he said. "But you must remember,
Gracie, that out of the swan she was, Nollie has made herself into a lame
duck. Fifty per cent at least is off her value, socially. We must look
at things as they are."
"Father is dead against it."
George smiled, on the point of saying: 'That makes me feel it must be a
good thing!' But he subdued the impulse.
"I agree that we're bound by his absence not to further it actively.
Still Nollie knows his wishes, and it's up to her and no one else. After
all, she's no longer a child."
His advice was followed. But to write that polite letter, which said
nothing, cost Gratian a sleepless night, and two or three hours'
penmanship. She was very conscientious. Knowledge of this impending
visit increased the anxiety with which she watched her sister, but the
only inkling she obtained of Noel's state of mind was when the girl
showed her a letter she had received from Thirza, asking her to come back
to Kestrel. A postscript, in Uncle Bob's handwriting, added these words:
"We're getting quite fossilised down here; Eve's gone and left us again.
We miss you and the youngster awfully. Come along down, Nollie there's a
dear!"
"They're darlings," Noel said, "but I shan't go. I'm too restless, ever
since Daddy went; you don't know how restless. This rain simply makes me
want to die."
2
The weather improved next day, and at the end of that week harvest began.
By what seemed to Noel a stroke of luck the farmer's binder was broken;
he could not get it repaired, and wanted all the human binders he could
get. That first day in the fields blistered her hands, burnt her face
and neck, made every nerve and bone in her body ache; but was the
happiest day she had spent for weeks, the happiest perhaps since Cyril
Morland left her, over a year ago. She had a bath and went to bed the
moment she got in.
Lying there nibbling chocolate and smoking a cigarette, she luxuriated in
the weariness which had stilled her dreadful restlessness. Watching the
smoke of her cigarette curl up against the sunset glow which filled her
window, she mused: If only she could be tired out like this every day!
She would be all right then, would lose the feeling of not knowing what
she wanted, of being in a sort o of large box, with the lid slammed down,
roaming round it like a dazed and homesick bee in an overturned tumbler;
the feeling of being only half alive, of having a wing maimed so that she
could only fly a little way, and must then drop.
She slept like a top that night. But the next day's work was real
torture, and the third not much better. By the end of the week, however,
she was no longer stiff.
Saturday was cloudless; a perfect day. The field she was working in lay
on a slope. It was the last field to be cut, and the best wheat yet,
with a glorious burnt shade in its gold and the ears blunt and full. She
had got used now to the feel of the great sheaves in her arms, and the
binding wisps drawn through her hand till she held them level, below the
ears, ready for the twist. There was no new sensation in it now; just
steady, rather dreamy work, to keep her place in the row, to the
swish-swish of the cutter and the call of the driver to his horses at the
turns; with continual little pauses, to straighten and rest her back a
moment, and shake her head free from the flies, or suck her finger, sore
from the constant pushing of the straw ends under. So the hours went on,
rather hot and wearisome, yet with a feeling of something good being
done, of a job getting surely to its end. And gradually the centre patch
narrowed, and the sun slowly slanted down.
When they stopped for tea, instead of running home as usual, she drank it
cold out of a flask she had brought, ate a bun and some chocolate, and
lay down on her back against the hedge. She always avoided that group of
her fellow workers round the tea-cans which the farmer's wife brought
out. To avoid people, if she could, had become habitual to her now.
They must know about her, or would soon if she gave them the chance. She
had never lost consciousness of her ring-finger, expecting every eye to
fall on it as a matter of course. Lying on her face, she puffed her
cigarette into the grass, and watched a beetle, till one of the
sheep-dogs, scouting for scraps, came up, and she fed him with her second
bun. Having finished the bun, he tried to eat the beetle, and, when she
rescued it, convinced that she had nothing more to give him, sneezed at
her, and went away. Pressing the end of her cigarette out against the
bank, she turned over. Already the driver was perched on his tiny seat,
and his companion, whose business it was to free the falling corn, was
getting up alongside. Swish-swish! It had begun again. She rose,
stretched herself, and went back to her place in the row. The field
would be finished to-night; she would have a lovely rest-all Sunday I
Towards seven o'clock a narrow strip, not twenty yards broad, alone was
left. This last half hour was what Noel dreaded. To-day it was worse,
for the farmer had no cartridges left, and the rabbits were dealt with by
hullabaloo and sticks and chasing dogs. Rabbits were vermin, of course,
and ate the crops, and must be killed; besides, they were good food, and
fetched two shillings apiece; all this she knew but to see the poor
frightened things stealing out, pounced on, turned, shouted at, chased,
rolled over by great swift dogs, fallen on by the boys and killed and
carried with their limp grey bodies upside down, so dead and soft and
helpless, always made her feel quite sick. She stood very still, trying
not to see or hear, and in the corn opposite to her a rabbit stole along,
crouched, and peeped. 'Oh!' she thought, 'come out here, bunny. I'll let
you away--can't you see I will? It's your only chance. Come out!' But
the rabbit crouched, and gazed, with its little cowed head poked forward,
and its ears laid flat; it seemed trying to understand whether this still
thing in front of it was the same as those others. With the thought, 'Of
course it won't while I look at it,' Noel turned her head away. Out of
the corner of her eye she could see a man standing a few yards off. The
rabbit bolted out. Now the man would shout and turn it. But he did not,
and the rabbit scuttled past him and away to the hedge. She heard a
shout from the end of the row, saw a dog galloping. Too late! Hurrah!
And clasping her hands, she looked at the man. It was Fort! With the
queerest feeling--amazement, pleasure, the thrill of conspiracy, she saw
him coming up to her.
"I did want that rabbit to get off," she sighed out; "I've been watching
it. Thank you!"
He looked at her. "My goodness!" was all he said.
Noel's hands flew up to her cheeks. "Yes, I know; is my nose very red?"
"No; you're as lovely as Ruth, if she was lovely."
Swish-swish! The cutter came by; Noel started forward to her place in
the row; but catching her arm, he said: "No, let me do this little bit.
I haven't had a day in the fields since the war began. Talk to me while
I'm binding."
She stood watching him. He made a different, stronger twist from hers,
and took larger sheaves, so that she felt a sort of jealousy.
"I didn't know you knew about this sort of thing."
"Oh, Lord, yes! I had a farm once out West. Nothing like field-work, to
make you feel good. I've been watching you; you bind jolly well."
Noel gave a sigh of pleasure.
"Where have you come from?" she asked.
"Straight from the station. I'm on my holiday." He looked up at her,
and they both fell silent.
Swish-swish! The cutter was coming again. Noel went to the beginning of
her portion of the falling corn, he to the end of it. They worked towards
each other, and met before the cutter was on them a third time.
"Will you come in to supper?"
"I'd love to."
"Then let's go now, please. I don't want to see any more rabbits
killed."
They spoke very little on the way to the bungalow, but she felt his eyes
on her all the time. She left him with George and Gratian who had just
come in, and went up for her bath.
Supper had been laid out in the verandah, and it was nearly dark before
they had finished. In rhyme with the failing of the light Noel became
more and more silent. When they went in, she ran up to her baby. She
did not go down again, but as on the night before her father went away,
stood at her window, leaning out. A dark night, no moon; in the
starlight she could only just see the dim garden, where no goat was
grazing. Now that her first excitement had worn off, this sudden
reappearance of Fort filled her with nervous melancholy: She knew
perfectly well what he had come for, she had always known. She had no
certain knowledge of her own mind; but she knew that all these weeks she
had been between his influence and her father's, listening to them, as it
were, pleading with her. And, curiously, the pleading of each, instead
of drawing her towards the pleader, had seemed dragging her away from
him, driving her into the arms of the other. To the protection of one or
the other she felt she must go; and it humiliated her to think that in
all the world there was no other place for her. The wildness of that one
night in the old Abbey seemed to have power to govern all her life to
come. Why should that one night, that one act, have this uncanny power
to drive her this way or that, to those arms or these? Must she, because
of it, always need protection? Standing there in the dark it was almost
as if they had come up behind her, with their pleadings; and a shiver ran
down her back. She longed to turn on them, and cry out: "Go away; oh; go
away! I don't want either of you; I just want to be left alone!" Then
something, a moth perhaps, touched her neck. She gasped and shook
herself. How silly!
She heard the back door round the corner of the house opening; a man's
low voice down in the dark said:
"Who's the young lady that comes out in the fields?"
Another voice--one of the maids--answered:
"The Missis's sister."
"They say she's got a baby."
"Never you mind what she's got."
Noel heard the man's laugh. It seemed to her the most odious laugh she
had ever heard. She thought swiftly and absurdly: 'I'll get away from
all this.' The window was only a few feet up. She got out on to the
ledge, let herself down, and dropped. There was a flower-bed below,
quite soft, with a scent of geranium-leaves and earth. She brushed
herself, and went tiptoeing across the gravel and the little front lawn,
to the gate. The house was quite dark, quite silent. She walked on, down
the road. 'Jolly!' she thought. 'Night after night we sleep, and never
see the nights: sleep until we're called, and never see anything. If
they want to catch me they'll have to run.' And she began running down
the road in her evening frock and shoes, with nothing on her head. She
stopped after going perhaps three hundred yards, by the edge of the wood.
It was splendidly dark in there, and she groped her way from trunk to
trunk, with a delicious, half-scared sense of adventure and novelty. She
stopped at last by a thin trunk whose bark glimmered faintly. She felt
it with her cheek, quite smooth--a birch tree; and, with her arms round
it, she stood perfectly still. Wonderfully, magically silent, fresh and
sweet-scented and dark! The little tree trembled suddenly within her
arms, and she heard the low distant rumble, to which she had grown so
accustomed--the guns, always at work, killing--killing men and killing
trees, little trees perhaps like this within her arms, little trembling
trees! Out there, in this dark night, there would not be a single
unscarred tree like this smooth quivering thing, no fields of corn, not
even a bush or a blade of grass, no leaves to rustle and smell sweet, not
a bird, no little soft-footed night beasts, except the rats; and she
shuddered, thinking of the Belgian soldier-painter. Holding the tree
tight, she squeezed its smooth body against her. A rush of the same
helpless, hopeless revolt and sorrow overtook her, which had wrung from
her that passionate little outburst to her father, the night before he
went away. Killed, torn, and bruised; burned, and killed, like Cyril!
All the young things, like this little tree.
Rumble! Rumble! Quiver! Quiver! And all else so still, so sweet and
still, and starry, up there through the leaves.... 'I can't bear it!'
she thought. She pressed her lips, which the sun had warmed all day,
against the satiny smooth bark. But the little tree stood within her
arms insentient, quivering only to the long rumbles. With each of those
dull mutterings, life and love were going out, like the flames of candles
on a Christmas-tree, blown, one by one. To her eyes, accustomed by now
to the darkness in there, the wood seemed slowly to be gathering a sort
of life, as though it were a great thing watching her; a great thing with
hundreds of limbs and eyes, and the power of breathing. The little tree,
which had seemed so individual and friendly, ceased to be a comfort and
became a part of the whole living wood, absorbed in itself, and coldly
watching her, this intruder of the mischievous breed, the fatal breed
which loosed those rumblings on the earth. Noel unlocked her arms, and
recoiled. A bough scraped her neck, some leaves flew against her eyes;
she stepped aside, tripped over a root, and fell. A bough had hit her
too, and she lay a little dazed, quivering at such dark unfriendliness.
She held her hands up to her face for the mere pleasure of seeing
something a little less dark; it was childish, and absurd, but she was
frightened. The wood seemed to have so many eyes, so many arms, and all
unfriendly; it seemed waiting to give her other blows, other falls, and
to guard her within its darkness until--! She got up, moved a few steps,
and stood still, she had forgotten from where she had come in. And
afraid of moving deeper into the unfriendly wood, she turned slowly
round, trying to tell which way to go. It was all just one dark watching
thing, of limbs on the ground and in the air. 'Any way,' she thought;
'any way of course will take me out!' And she groped forward, keeping her
hands up to guard her face. It was silly, but she could not help the
sinking, scattered feeling which comes to one bushed, or lost in a fog.
If the wood had not been so dark, so,--alive! And for a second she had
the senseless, terrifying thought of a child: 'What if I never get out!'
Then she laughed at it, and stood still again, listening. There was no
sound to guide her, no sound at all except that faint dull rumble, which
seemed to come from every side, now. And the trees watched her. 'Ugh!'
she thought; 'I hate this wood!' She saw it now, its snaky branches, its
darkness, and great forms, as an abode of giants and witches. She groped
and scrambled on again, tripped once more, and fell, hitting her forehead
against a trunk. The blow dazed and sobered her. 'It's idiotic,' she
thought; 'I'm a baby! I'll Just walk very slowly till I reach the edge.
I know it isn't a large wood!' She turned deliberately to face each
direction; solemnly selected that from which the muttering of the guns
seemed to come, and started again, moving very slowly with her hands
stretched out. Something rustled in the undergrowth, quite close; she
saw a pair of green eyes shining. Her heart jumped into her mouth. The
thing sprang--there was a swish of ferns and twigs, and silence. Noel
clasped her breast. A poaching cat! And again she moved forward. But
she had lost direction. 'I'm going round and round,' she thought. 'They
always do.' And the sinking scattered feeling of the "bushed" clutched at
her again. 'Shall I call?' she thought. 'I must be near the road. But
it's so babyish.' She moved on again. Her foot struck something soft. A
voice muttered a thick oath; a hand seized her ankle. She leaped, and
dragged and wrenched it free; and, utterly unnerved, she screamed, and
ran forward blindly.
V
No one could have so convinced a feeling as Jimmy Fort that he would be a
'bit of a makeshift' for Noel. He had spent the weeks after his
interview with her father obsessed by her image, often saying to himself
"It won't do. It's playing it too low down to try and get that child,
when I know that, but for her trouble, I shouldn't have a chance." He
had never had much opinion of his looks, but now he seemed to himself
absurdly old and dried-up in this desert of a London. He loathed the
Office job to which they had put him, and the whole atmosphere of
officialdom. Another year of it, and he would shrivel like an old apple!
He began to look at himself anxiously, taking stock of his physical
assets now that he had this dream of young beauty. He would be forty
next month, and she was nineteen! But there would be times too when he
would feel that, with her, he could be as much of a "three-year-old" as
the youngster she had loved. Having little hope of winning her, he took
her "past" but lightly. Was it not that past which gave him what chance
he had? On two things he was determined: He would not trade on her past.
And if by any chance she took him, he would never show her that he
remembered that she had one.
After writing to Gratian he had spent the week before his holiday began,
in an attempt to renew the youthfulness of his appearance, which made him
feel older, leaner, bonier and browner than ever. He got up early, rode
in the rain, took Turkish baths, and did all manner of exercises; neither
smoked nor drank, and went to bed early, exactly as if he had been going
to ride a steeplechase. On the afternoon, when at last he left on that
terrific pilgrimage, he gazed at his face with a sort of despair, it was
so lean, and leather-coloured, and he counted almost a dozen grey hairs.
When he reached the bungalow, and was told that she was working in the
corn-fields, he had for the first time a feeling that Fate was on his
side. Such a meeting would be easier than any other! He had been
watching her for several minutes before she saw him, with his heart
beating more violently than it had ever beaten in the trenches; and that
new feeling of hope stayed with him--all through the greeting, throughout
supper, and even after she had left them and gone upstairs. Then, with
the suddenness of a blind drawn down, it vanished, and he sat on, trying
to talk, and slowly getting more and more silent and restless.
"Nollie gets so tired, working," Gratian said: He knew she meant it
kindly but that she should say it at all was ominous. He got up at last,
having lost hope of seeing Noel again, conscious too that he had answered
the last three questions at random.
In the porch George said: "You'll come in to lunch tomorrow, won't you?"
"Oh, thanks, I'm afraid it'll bore you all."
"Not a bit. Nollie won't be so tired."
Again--so well meant. They were very kind. He looked up from the gate,
trying to make out which her window might be; but all was dark. A little
way down the road he stopped to light a cigarette; and, leaning against a
gate, drew the smoke of it deep into his lungs, trying to assuage the
ache in his heart. So it was hopeless! She had taken the first, the
very first chance, to get away from him! She knew that he loved her,
could not help knowing, for he had never been able to keep it out of his
eyes and voice. If she had felt ever so little for him, she would not
have avoided him this first evening. 'I'll go back to that desert,' he
thought; 'I'm not going to whine and crawl. I'll go back, and bite on
it; one must have some pride. Oh, why the hell am I crocked-up like this?
If only I could get out to France again!' And then Noel's figure bent
over the falling corn formed before him. 'I'll have one more try,' he
thought; 'one more--tomorrow somewhere, I'll get to know for certain.
And if I get what Leila's got I shall deserve it, I suppose. Poor Leila!
Where is she? Back at High Constantia?' What was that? A cry--of
terror--in that wood! Crossing to the edge, he called "Coo-ee!" and
stood peering into its darkness. He heard the sound of bushes being
brushed aside, and whistled. A figure came bursting out, almost into his
arms.
"Hallo!" he said; "what's up?"
A voice gasped: "Oh! It's--it's nothing!"
He saw Noel. She had swayed back, and stood about a yard away. He could
dimly see her covering her face with her arms. Feeling instinctively
that she wanted to hide her fright, he said quietly:
"What luck! I was just passing. It's awfully dark."
"I--I got lost; and a man--caught my foot, in there!"
Moved beyond control by the little gulps and gasps of her breathing, he
stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders. He held her lightly,
without speaking, terrified lest he should wound her pride.
"I-I got in there," she gasped, "and the trees--and I stumbled over a
roan asleep, and he--"
"Yes, Yes, I know," he murmured, as if to a child. She had dropped her
arms now, and he could see her face, with eyes unnaturally dilated, and
lips quivering. Then moved again beyond control, he drew her so close
that he could feel the throbbing of her heart, and put his lips to her
forehead all wet with heat. She closed her eyes, gave a little choke,
and buried her face against his coat.
"There, there, my darling!" he kept on saying. "There, there, my
darling!" He could feel the snuggling of her cheek against his shoulder.
He had got her--had got her! He was somehow certain that she would not
draw back now. And in the wonder and ecstasy of that thought, all the
world above her head, the stars in their courses, the wood which had
frightened her, seemed miracles of beauty and fitness. By such fortune
as had never come to man, he had got her! And he murmured over and over
again:
"I love you!" She was resting perfectly quiet against him, while her
heart ceased gradually to beat so fast. He could feel her cheek rubbing
against his coat of Harris tweed. Suddenly she sniffed at it, and
whispered:
"It smells good."
VI
When summer sun has burned all Egypt, the white man looks eagerly each
day for evening, whose rose-coloured veil melts opalescent into the dun
drift, of the hills, and iridescent above, into the slowly deepening
blue. Pierson stood gazing at the mystery of the desert from under the
little group of palms and bougainvillea which formed the garden of the
hospital. Even-song was in full voice: From the far wing a gramophone
was grinding out a music-hall ditty; two aeroplanes, wheeling exactly
like the buzzards of the desert, were letting drip the faint whir of
their flight; metallic voices drifted from the Arab village; the wheels
of the water-wells creaked; and every now and then a dry rustle was
stirred from the palm-leaves by puffs of desert wind. On either hand an
old road ran out, whose line could be marked by the little old
watch-towers of another age. For how many hundred years had human life
passed along it to East and West; the brown men and their camels,
threading that immemorial track over the desert, which ever filled him
with wonder, so still it was, so wide, so desolate, and every evening so
beautiful! He sometimes felt that he could sit for ever looking at it;
as though its cruel mysterious loveliness were--home; and yet he never
looked at it without a spasm of homesickness.
So far his new work had brought him no nearer to the hearts of men. Or at
least he did not feel it had. Both at the regimental base, and now in
this hospital--an intermediate stage--waiting for the draft with which he
would be going into Palestine, all had been very nice to him, friendly,
and as it were indulgent; so might schoolboys have treated some
well-intentioned dreamy master, or business men a harmless idealistic
inventor who came visiting their offices. He had even the feeling that
they were glad to have him about, just as they were glad to have their
mascots and their regimental colours; but of heart-to-heart simple
comradeship--it seemed they neither wanted it of him nor expected him to
give it, so that he had a feeling that he would be forward and
impertinent to offer it. Moreover, he no longer knew how. He was very
lonely. 'When I come face to face with death,' he would think, 'it will
be different. Death makes us all brothers. I may be of real use to them
then.'
They brought him a letter while he stood there listening to that
even-song, gazing at the old desert road.
"DARLING DAD,
"I do hope this will reach you before you move on to Palestine. You said
in your last--at the end of September, so I hope you'll just get it.
There is one great piece of news, which I'm afraid will hurt and trouble
you; Nollie is married to Jimmy Fort. They were married down here this
afternoon, and have just gone up to Town. They have to find a house of
course. She has been very restless, lonely, and unhappy ever since you
went, and I'm sure it is really for the best: She is quite another
creature, and simply devoted, headlong. It's just like Nollie. She says
she didn't know what she wanted, up to the last minute. But now she
seems as if she could never want anything else.
"Dad dear, Nollie could never have made good by herself. It isn't her
nature, and it's much better like this, I feel sure, and so does George.
Of course it isn't ideal--and one wanted that for her; but she did break
her wing, and he is so awfully good and devoted to her, though you didn't
believe it, and perhaps won't, even now. The great thing is to feel her
happy again, and know she's safe. Nollie is capable of great devotion;
only she must be anchored. She was drifting all about; and one doesn't
know what she might have done, in one of her moods. I do hope you won't
grieve about it. She's dreadfully anxious about how you'll feel. I know
it will be wretched for you, so far off; but do try and believe it's for
the best.... She's out of danger; and she was really in a horrible
position. It's so good for the baby, too, and only fair to him. I do
think one must take things as they are, Dad dear. It was impossible to
mend Nollie's wing. If she were a fighter, and gloried in it, or if she
were the sort who would 'take the veil'--but she isn't either. So it is
all right, Dad. She's writing to you herself. I'm sure Leila didn't
want Jimmy Fort to be unhappy because he couldn't love her; or she would
never have gone away. George sends you his love; we are both very well.
And Nollie is looking splendid still, after her harvest work. All, all
my love, Dad dear. Is there anything we can get, and send you? Do take
care of your blessed self, and don't grieve about Nollie.
"GRATIAN."
A half-sheet of paper fluttered down; he picked it up from among the
parched fibre of dead palm-leaves.
"DADDY DARLING,
"I've done it. Forgive me-I'm so happy.
"Your NOLLIE."
The desert shimmered, the palm-leaves rustled, and Pierson stood trying
to master the emotion roused in him by those two letters. He felt no
anger, not even vexation; he felt no sorrow, but a loneliness so utter
and complete that he did not know how to bear it. It seemed as if some
last link with life had' snapped. 'My girls are happy,' he thought. 'If
I am not--what does it matter? If my faith and my convictions mean
nothing to them--why should they follow? I must and will not feel
lonely. I ought to have the sense of God present, to feel His hand in
mine. If I cannot, what use am I--what use to the poor fellows in there,
what use in all the world?'
An old native on a donkey went by, piping a Soudanese melody on a little
wooden Arab flute. Pierson turned back into the hospital humming it. A
nurse met him there.
"The poor boy at the end of A ward is sinking fast, sir; I expect he'd
like to see you,"
He went into A ward, and walked down between the beds to the west window
end, where two screens had been put, to block off the cot. Another nurse,
who was sitting beside it, rose at once.
"He's quite conscious," she whispered; "he can still speak a little. He's
such a dear." A tear rolled down her cheek, and she passed out behind
the screens. Pierson looked down at the boy; perhaps he was twenty, but
the unshaven down on his cheeks was soft and almost colourless. His eyes
were closed. He breathed regularly, and did not seem in pain; but there
was about him that which told he was going; something resigned, already
of the grave. The window was wide open, covered by mosquito-netting, and
a tiny line of sunlight, slanting through across the foot of the cot,
crept slowly backwards over the sheets and the boy's body, shortening as
it crept. In the grey whiteness of the walls; the bed, the boy's face,
just that pale yellow bar of sunlight, and one splash of red and blue
from a little flag on the wall glowed out. At this cooler hour, the ward
behind the screens was almost empty, and few sounds broke the stillness;
but from without came that intermittent rustle of dry palm-leaves.
Pierson waited in silence, watching the sun sink. If the boy might pass
like this, it would be God's mercy. Then he saw the boy's eyes open,
wonderfully clear eyes of the lighted grey which has dark rims; his lips
moved, and Pierson bent down to hear.
"I'm goin' West, zurr." The whisper had a little soft burr; the lips
quivered; a pucker as of a child formed on his face, and passed.
Through Pierson's mind there flashed the thought: 'O God! Let me be some
help to him!'
"To God, my dear son!" he said.
A flicker of humour, of ironic question, passed over the boy's lips.
Terribly moved, Pierson knelt down, and began softly, fervently praying.
His whispering mingled with the rustle of the palm-leaves, while the bar
of sunlight crept up the body. In the boy's smile had been the whole of
stoic doubt, of stoic acquiescence. It had met him with an unconscious
challenge; had seemed to know so much. Pierson took his hand, which lay
outside the sheet. The boy's lips moved, as though in thanks; he drew a
long feeble breath, as if to suck in the thread of sunlight; and his eyes
closed. Pierson bent over the hand. When he looked up the boy was dead.
He kissed his forehead and went quietly out.
The sun had set, and he walked away from the hospital to a hillock beyond
the track on the desert's edge, and stood looking at the afterglow. The
sun and the boy--together they had gone West, into that wide glowing
nothingness.
The muezzin call to sunset prayer in the Arab village came to him clear
and sharp, while he sat there, unutterably lonely. Why had that smile so
moved him? Other death smiles had been like this evening smile on the
desert hills--a glowing peace, a promise of heaven. But the boy's smile
had said: 'Waste no breath on me--you cannot help. Who knows--who knows?
I have no hope, no faith; but I am adventuring. Good-bye!' Poor boy!
He had braved all things, and moved out uncertain, yet undaunted! Was
that, then, the uttermost truth, was faith a smaller thing? But from
that strange notion he. recoiled with horror. 'In faith I have lived, in
faith I will die!' he thought, 'God helping me!' And the breeze,
ruffling the desert sand, blew the grains against the palms of his hands,
outstretched above the warm earth.
THE END.
THE ISLAND PHARISEES
By John Galsworthy
"But this is a worshipful society"
KING JOHN
PREFACE
Each man born into the world is born like Shelton in this book--to go a
journey, and for the most part he is born on the high road. At first he
sits there in the dust, with his little chubby hands reaching at nothing,
and his little solemn eyes staring into space. As soon as he can toddle,
he moves, by the queer instinct we call the love of life, straight along
this road, looking neither to the right nor left, so pleased is he to
walk. And he is charmed with everything--with the nice flat road, all
broad and white, with his own feet, and with the prospect he can see on
either hand. The sun shines, and he finds the road a little hot and
dusty; the rain falls, and he splashes through the muddy puddles. It
makes no matter--all is pleasant; his fathers went this way before him;
they made this road for him to tread, and, when they bred him, passed
into his fibre the love of doing things as they themselves had done them.
So he walks on and on, resting comfortably at nights under the roofs that
have been raised to shelter him, by those who went before.
Suddenly one day, without intending to, he notices a path or opening in
the hedge, leading to right or left, and he stands, looking at the
undiscovered. After that he stops at all the openings in the hedge; one
day, with a beating heart, he tries one.
And this is where the fun begins.
Out of ten of him that try the narrow path, nine of him come back to the
broad road, and, when they pass the next gap in the hedge, they say: "No,
no, my friend, I found you pleasant for a while, but after that-ah! after
that! The way my fathers went is good enough for me, and it is obviously
the proper one; for nine of me came back, and that poor silly tenth--I
really pity him!"
And when he comes to the next inn, and snuggles in his well-warmed, bed,
he thinks of the wild waste of heather where he might have had to spend
the night alone beneath the stars; nor does it, I think, occur to him
that the broad road he treads all day was once a trackless heath itself.
But the poor silly tenth is faring on. It is a windy night that he is
travelling through a windy night, with all things new around, and nothing
to help him but his courage. Nine times out of ten that courage fails,
and he goes down into the bog. He has seen the undiscovered, and--like
Ferrand in this book--the undiscovered has engulfed him; his spirit,
tougher than the spirit of the nine that burned back to sleep in inns,
was yet not tough enough. The tenth time he wins across, and on the
traces he has left others follow slowly, cautiously--a new road is opened
to mankind! A true saying goes: Whatever is, is right! And if all men
from the world's beginning had said that, the world would never have
begun--at all. Not even the protoplasmic jelly could have commenced its
journey; there would have been no motive force to make it start.
And so, that other saying had to be devised before the world could set up
business: Whatever is, is wrong! But since the Cosmic Spirit found that
matters moved too fast if those that felt "All things that are, are
wrong" equalled in number those that felt "All things that are, are
right," It solemnly devised polygamy (all, be it said, in a spiritual way
of speaking); and to each male spirit crowing "All things that are, are
wrong" It decreed nine female spirits clucking "All things that are, are
right." The Cosmic Spirit, who was very much an artist, knew its work,
and had previously devised a quality called courage, and divided it in
three, naming the parts spiritual, moral, physical. To all the male-bird
spirits, but to no female (spiritually, not corporeally speaking), It
gave courage that was spiritual; to nearly all, both male and female, It
gave courage that was physical; to very many hen-bird spirits It gave
moral courage too. But, because It knew that if all the male-bird
spirits were complete, the proportion of male to female--one to
ten--would be too great, and cause upheavals, It so arranged that only
one in ten male-bird spirits should have all three kinds of courage; so
that the other nine, having spiritual courage, but lacking either in
moral or in physical, should fail in their extensions of the poultry-run.
And having started them upon these lines, it left them to get along as
best they might.
Thus, in the subdivision of the poultry-run that we call England, the
proportion of the others to the complete male-bird spirit, who, of
course, is not infrequently a woman, is ninety-nine to one; and with
every Island Pharisee, when he or she starts out in life, the interesting
question ought to be, "Am I that one?" Ninety very soon find out that
they are not, and, having found it out, lest others should discover, they
say they are. Nine of the other ten, blinded by their spiritual courage,
are harder to convince; but one by one they sink, still proclaiming their
virility. The hundredth Pharisee alone sits out the play.
Now, the journey of this young man Shelton, who is surely not the
hundredth Pharisee, is but a ragged effort to present the working of the
truth "All things that are, are wrong," upon the truth "All things that
are, are right."
The Institutions of this country, like the Institutions of all other
countries, are but half-truths; they are the working daily clothing of
the nation; no more the body's permanent dress than is a baby's frock.
Slowly but surely they wear out, or are outgrown; and in their fashion
they are always thirty years at least behind the fashions of those
spirits who are concerned with what shall take their place. The
conditions that dictate our education, the distribution of our property,
our marriage laws, amusements, worship, prisons, and all other things,
change imperceptibly from hour to hour; the moulds containing them, being
inelastic, do not change, but hold on to the point of bursting, and then
are hastily, often clumsily, enlarged. The ninety desiring peace and
comfort for their spirit, the ninety of the well-warmed beds, will have
it that the fashions need not change, that morality is fixed, that all is
ordered and immutable, that every one will always marry, play, and
worship in the way that they themselves are marrying, playing,
worshipping. They have no speculation, and they hate with a deep hatred
those who speculate with thought. This is the function they were made
for. They are the dough, and they dislike that yeasty stuff of life which
comes and works about in them. The Yeasty Stuff--the other ten--chafed
by all things that are, desirous ever of new forms and moulds, hate in
their turn the comfortable ninety. Each party has invented for the other
the hardest names that it can think of: Philistines, Bourgeois, Mrs.
Grundy, Rebels, Anarchists, and Ne'er-do-weels. So we go on! And so, as
each of us is born to go his journey, he finds himself in time ranged on
one side or on the other, and joins the choruses of name-slingers.
But now and then--ah! very seldom--we find ourselves so near that thing
which has no breadth, the middle line, that we can watch them both, and
positively smile to see the fun.
When this book was published first, many of its critics found that
Shelton was the only Pharisee, and a most unsatisfactory young man--and
so, no doubt, he is. Belonging to the comfortable ninety, they felt, in
fact, the need of slinging names at one who obviously was of the ten.
Others of its critics, belonging to the ten, wielded their epithets upon
Antonia, and the serried ranks behind her, and called them Pharisees; as
dull as ditch-water--and so, I fear, they are.
One of the greatest charms of authorship is the privilege it gives the
author of studying the secret springs of many unseen persons, of
analysing human nature through the criticism that his work
evokes--criticism welling out of the instinctive likings or aversions,
out of the very fibre of the human being who delivers it; criticism that
often seems to leap out against the critic's will, startled like a fawn
from some deep bed, of sympathy or of antipathy. And so, all authors
love to be abused--as any man can see.
In the little matter of the title of this book, we are all Pharisees,
whether of the ninety or the ten, and we certainly do live upon an
Island.
JOHN GALSWORTHY.
January 1, 1908
PART I
THE TOWN
CHAPTER I
SOCIETY
A quiet, well-dressed man named Shelton, with a brown face and a short,
fair beard, stood by the bookstall at Dover Station. He was about to
journey up to London, and had placed his bag in the corner of a
third-class carriage.
After his long travel, the flat-vowelled voice of the bookstall clerk
offering the latest novel sounded pleasant--pleasant the independent
answers of a bearded guard, and the stodgy farewell sayings of a man and
wife. The limber porters trundling their barrows, the greyness of the
station and the good stolid humour clinging to the people, air, and
voices, all brought to him the sense of home. Meanwhile he wavered
between purchasing a book called Market Hayborough, which he had read and
would certainly enjoy a second time, and Carlyle's French Revolution,
which he had not read and was doubtful of enjoying; he felt that he ought
to buy the latter, but he did not relish giving up the former. While he
hesitated thus, his carriage was beginning to fill up; so, quickly buying
both, he took up a position from which he could defend his rights.
"Nothing," he thought, "shows people up like travelling."
The carriage was almost full, and, putting his bag, up in the rack, he
took his seat. At the moment of starting yet another passenger, a girl
with a pale face, scrambled in.
"I was a fool to go third," thought Shelton, taking in his neighbours
from behind his journal.
They were seven. A grizzled rustic sat in the far corner; his empty
pipe, bowl downwards, jutted like a handle from his face, all bleared
with the smear of nothingness that grows on those who pass their lives in
the current of hard facts. Next to him, a ruddy, heavy-shouldered man
was discussing with a grey-haired, hatchet-visaged person the condition
of their gardens; and Shelton watched their eyes till it occurred to him
how curious a look was in them--a watchful friendliness, an allied
distrust--and that their voices, cheerful, even jovial, seemed to be
cautious all the time. His glance strayed off, and almost rebounded from
the semi-Roman, slightly cross, and wholly self-complacent face of a
stout lady in a black-and-white costume, who was reading the Strand
Magazine, while her other, sleek, plump hand, freed from its black glove,
and ornamented with a thick watch-bracelet, rested on her lap. A
younger, bright-cheeked, and self-conscious female was sitting next her,
looking at the pale girl who had just got in.
"There's something about that girl," thought Shelton, "they don't like."
Her brown eyes certainly looked frightened, her clothes were of a foreign
cut. Suddenly he met the glance of another pair of eyes; these eyes,
prominent and blue, stared with a sort of subtle roguery from above a
thin, lopsided nose, and were at once averted. They gave Shelton the
impression that he was being judged, and mocked, enticed, initiated. His
own gaze did not fall; this sanguine face, with its two-day growth of
reddish beard, long nose, full lips, and irony, puzzled him. "A cynical
face!" he thought, and then, "but sensitive!" and then, "too cynical,"
again.
The young man who owned it sat with his legs parted at the knees, his
dusty trouser-ends and boots slanting back beneath the seat, his yellow
finger-tips crisped as if rolling cigarettes. A strange air of
detachment was about that youthful, shabby figure, and not a scrap of
luggage filled the rack above his head.
The frightened girl was sitting next this pagan personality; it was
possibly the lack of fashion in his looks that caused, her to select him
for her confidence.
"Monsieur," she asked, "do you speak French?"
"Perfectly."
"Then can you tell me where they take the tickets?
"The young man shook his head.
"No," said he, "I am a foreigner."
The girl sighed.
"But what is the matter, ma'moiselle?"
The girl did not reply, twisting her hands on an old bag in her lap.
Silence had stolen on the carriage--a silence such as steals on animals
at the first approach of danger; all eyes were turned towards the figures
of the foreigners.
"Yes," broke out the red-faced man, "he was a bit squiffy that
evening--old Tom."
"Ah!" replied his neighbour, "he would be."
Something seemed to have destroyed their look of mutual distrust. The
plump, sleek hand of the lady with the Roman nose curved convulsively;
and this movement corresponded to the feeling agitating Shelton's heart.
It was almost as if hand and heart feared to be asked for something.
"Monsieur," said the girl, with a tremble in her voice, "I am very
unhappy; can you tell me what to do? I had no money for a ticket."
The foreign youth's face flickered.
"Yes?" he said; "that might happen to anyone, of course."
"What will they do to me?" sighed the girl.
"Don't lose courage, ma'moiselle." The young man slid his eyes from left
to right, and rested them on Shelton. "Although I don't as yet see your
way out."
"Oh, monsieur!" sighed the girl, and, though it was clear that none but
Shelton understood what they were saying, there was a chilly feeling in
the carriage.
"I wish I could assist you," said the foreign youth; "unfortunately----"
he shrugged his shoulders, and again his eyes returned to Shelton.
The latter thrust his hand into his pocket.
"Can I be of any use?" he asked in English.
"Certainly, sir; you could render this young lady the greatest possible
service by lending her the money for a ticket."
Shelton produced a sovereign, which the young man took. Passing it to
the girl, he said:
"A thousand thanks--'voila une belle action'!"
The misgivings which attend on casual charity crowded up in Shelton's
mind; he was ashamed of having them and of not having them, and he stole
covert looks at this young foreigner, who was now talking to the girl in
a language that he did not understand. Though vagabond in essence, the
fellow's face showed subtle spirit, a fortitude and irony not found upon
the face of normal man, and in turning from it to the other passengers
Shelton was conscious of revolt, contempt, and questioning, that he could
not define. Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he tried to diagnose
this new sensation. He found it disconcerting that the faces and
behaviour of his neighbours lacked anything he could grasp and secretly
abuse. They continued to converse with admirable and slightly conscious
phlegm, yet he knew, as well as if each one had whispered to him
privately, that this shady incident had shaken them. Something
unsettling to their notions of propriety-something dangerous and
destructive of complacency--had occurred, and this was unforgivable.
Each had a different way, humorous or philosophic, contemptuous, sour, or
sly, of showing this resentment. But by a flash of insight Shelton saw
that at the bottom of their minds and of his own the feeling was the
same. Because he shared in their resentment he was enraged with them and
with himself. He looked at the plump, sleek hand of the woman with the
Roman nose. The insulation and complacency of its pale skin, the passive
righteousness about its curve, the prim separation from the others of the
fat little finger, had acquired a wholly unaccountable importance. It
embodied the verdict of his fellow-passengers, the verdict of Society;
for he knew that, whether or no repugnant to the well-bred mind, each
assemblage of eight persons, even in a third-class carriage, contains the
kernel of Society.
But being in love, and recently engaged, Shelton had a right to be immune
from discontent of any kind, and he reverted to his mental image of the
cool, fair face, quick movements, and the brilliant smile that now in his
probationary exile haunted his imagination; he took out his fiancee's
last letter, but the voice of the young foreigner addressing him in rapid
French caused him to put it back abruptly.
"From what she tells me, sir," he said, bending forward to be out of
hearing of the girl, "hers is an unhappy case. I should have been only
too glad to help her, but, as you see"--and he made a gesture by which
Shelton observed that he had parted from his waistcoat--"I am not
Rothschild. She has been abandoned by the man who brought her over to
Dover under promise of marriage. Look"--and by a subtle flicker of his
eyes he marked how the two ladies had edged away from the French girl
"they take good care not to let their garments touch her. They are
virtuous women. How fine a thing is virtue, sir! and finer to know you
have it, especially when you are never likely to be tempted."
Shelton was unable to repress a smile; and when he smiled his face grew
soft.
"Haven't you observed," went on the youthful foreigner, "that those who
by temperament and circumstance are worst fitted to pronounce judgment
are usually the first to judge? The judgments of Society are always
childish, seeing that it's composed for the most part of individuals who
have never smelt the fire. And look at this: they who have money run too
great a risk of parting with it if they don't accuse the penniless of
being rogues and imbeciles."
Shelton was startled, and not only by an outburst of philosophy from an
utter stranger in poor clothes, but at this singular wording of his own
private thoughts. Stifling his sense of the unusual for the queer
attraction this young man inspired, he said:
"I suppose you're a stranger over here?"
"I've been in England seven months, but not yet in London," replied the
other. "I count on doing some good there--it is time!" A bitter and
pathetic smile showed for a second on his lips. "It won't be my fault if
I fail. You are English, Sir?"
Shelton nodded.
"Forgive my asking; your voice lacks something I've nearly always noticed
in the English a kind of--'comment cela s'appelle'--cocksureness, coming
from your nation's greatest quality."
"And what is that?" asked Shelton with a smile.
"Complacency," replied the youthful foreigner.
"Complacency!" repeated Shelton; "do you call that a great quality?"
"I should rather say, monsieur, a great defect in what is always a great
people. You are certainly the most highly-civilised nation on the earth;
you suffer a little from the fact. If I were an English preacher my
desire would be to prick the heart of your complacency."
Shelton, leaning back, considered this impertinent suggestion.
"Hum!" he said at last, "you'd be unpopular; I don't know that we're any
cockier than other nations."
The young foreigner made a sign as though confirming this opinion.
"In effect," said he, "it is a sufficiently widespread disease. Look at
these people here"--and with a rapid glance he pointed to the inmates of
the carnage,--"very average persons! What have they done to warrant
their making a virtuous nose at those who do not walk as they do? That
old rustic, perhaps, is different--he never thinks at all--but look at
those two occupied with their stupidities about the price of hops, the
prospects of potatoes, what George is doing, a thousand things all of
that sort--look at their faces; I come of the bourgeoisie myself--have
they ever shown proof of any quality that gives them the right to pat
themselves upon the back? No fear! Outside potatoes they know nothing,
and what they do not understand they dread and they despise--there are
millions of that breed. 'Voila la Societe'! The sole quality these
people have shown they have is cowardice. I was educated by the
Jesuits," he concluded; "it has given me a way of thinking."
Under ordinary circumstances Shelton would have murmured in a well-bred
voice, "Ah! quite so," and taken refuge in the columns of the Daily
Telegraph. In place of this, for some reason that he did not understand,
he looked at the young foreigner, and asked,
"Why do you say all this to me?"
The tramp--for by his boots he could hardly have been better--hesitated.
"When you've travelled like me," he said, as if resolved to speak the
truth, "you acquire an instinct in choosing to whom and how you speak.
It is necessity that makes the law; if you want to live you must learn
all that sort of thing to make face against life."
Shelton, who himself possessed a certain subtlety, could not but observe
the complimentary nature of these words. It was like saying "I'm not
afraid of you misunderstanding me, and thinking me a rascal just because
I study human nature."
"But is there nothing to be done for that poor girl?"
His new acquaintance shrugged his shoulders.
"A broken jug," said he; "--you'll never mend her. She's going to a
cousin in London to see if she can get help; you've given her the means
of getting there--it's all that you can do. One knows too well what'll
become of her."
Shelton said gravely,
"Oh! that's horrible! Could n't she be induced to go back home? I
should be glad--"
The foreign vagrant shook his head.
"Mon cher monsieur," he said, "you evidently have not yet had occasion to
know what the 'family' is like. 'The family' does not like damaged
goods; it will have nothing to say to sons whose hands have dipped into
the till or daughters no longer to be married. What the devil would they
do with her? Better put a stone about her neck and let her drown at
once. All the world is Christian, but Christian and good Samaritan are
not quite the same."
Shelton looked at the girl, who was sitting motionless, with her hands
crossed on her bag, and a revolt against the unfair ways of life arose
within him.
"Yes," said the young foreigner, as if reading all his thoughts, "what's
called virtue is nearly always only luck." He rolled his eyes as though
to say: "Ah! La, Conventions? Have them by all means--but don't look
like peacocks because you are preserving them; it is but cowardice and
luck, my friends--but cowardice and luck!"
"Look here," said Shelton, "I'll give her my address, and if she wants to
go back to her family she can write to me."
"She'll never go back; she won't have the courage."
Shelton caught the cringing glance of the girl's eyes; in the droop of
her lip there was something sensuous, and the conviction that the young
man's words were true came over him.
"I had better not give them my private address," he thought, glancing at
the faces opposite; and he wrote down the following: "Richard Paramor
Shelton, c/o Paramor and Herring, Lincoln's Inn Fields."
"You're very good, sir. My name is Louis Ferrand; no address at present.
I'll make her understand; she's half stupefied just now."
Shelton returned to the perusal of his paper, too disturbed to read; the
young vagrant's words kept sounding in his ears. He raised his eyes.
The plump hand of the lady with the Roman nose still rested on her lap;
it had been recased in its black glove with large white stitching. Her
frowning gaze was fixed on him suspiciously, as if he had outraged her
sense of decency.
"He did n't get anything from me," said the voice of the red-faced man,
ending a talk on tax-gatherers. The train whistled loudly, and Shelton
reverted to his paper. This time he crossed his legs, determined to
enjoy the latest murder; once more he found himself looking at the
vagrant's long-nosed, mocking face. "That fellow," he thought, "has seen
and felt ten times as much as I, although he must be ten years younger."
He turned for distraction to the landscape, with its April clouds, trim
hedgerows, homely coverts. But strange ideas would come, and he was
discontented with himself; the conversation he had had, the personality
of this young foreigner, disturbed him. It was all as though he had made
a start in some fresh journey through the fields of thought.
CHAPTER II
ANTONIA
Five years before the journey just described Shelton had stood one
afternoon on the barge of his old college at the end of the summer races.
He had been "down" from Oxford for some years, but these Olympian
contests still attracted him.
The boats were passing, and in the usual rush to the barge side his arm
came in contact with a soft young shoulder. He saw close to him a young
girl with fair hair knotted in a ribbon, whose face was eager with
excitement. The pointed chin, long neck, the fluffy hair, quick
gestures, and the calm strenuousness of her grey-blue eyes, impressed him
vividly.
"Oh, we must bump them!" he heard her sigh.
"Do you know my people, Shelton?" said a voice behind his back; and he
was granted a touch from the girl's shy, impatient hand, the warmer
fingers of a lady with kindly eyes resembling a hare's, the dry
hand-clasp of a gentleman with a thin, arched nose, and a quizzical brown
face.
"Are you the Mr. Shelton who used to play the 'bones' at Eton?" said the
lady. "Oh; we so often heard of you from Bernard! He was your fag, was
n't he? How distressin' it is to see these poor boys in the boats!"
"Mother, they like it!" cried the girl.
"Antonia ought to be rowing, herself," said her father, whose name was
Dennant.
Shelton went back with them to their hotel, walking beside Antonia
through the Christchurch meadows, telling her details of his college
life. He dined with them that evening, and, when he left, had a feeling
like that produced by a first glass of champagne.
The Dennants lived at Holm Oaks, within six miles of Oxford, and two days
later he drove over and paid a call. Amidst the avocations of reading
for the Bar, of cricket, racing, shooting, it but required a whiff of
some fresh scent--hay, honeysuckle, clover--to bring Antonia's face
before him, with its uncertain colour and its frank, distant eyes. But
two years passed before he again saw her. Then, at an invitation from
Bernard Dennant, he played cricket for the Manor of Holm Oaks against a
neighbouring house; in the evening there was dancing oh the lawn. The
fair hair was now turned up, but the eyes were quite unchanged. Their
steps went together, and they outlasted every other couple on the
slippery grass. Thence, perhaps, sprang her respect for him; he was
wiry, a little taller than herself, and seemed to talk of things that
interested her. He found out she was seventeen, and she found out that
he was twenty-nine. The following two years Shelton went to Holm Oaks
whenever he was asked; to him this was a period of enchanted games, of
cub-hunting, theatricals, and distant sounds of practised music, and
during it Antonia's eyes grew more friendly and more curious, and his own
more shy, and schooled, more furtive and more ardent. Then came his
father's death, a voyage round the world, and that peculiar hour of mixed
sensations when, one March morning, abandoning his steamer at Marseilles,
he took train for Hyeres.
He found her at one of those exclusive hostelries amongst the pines where
the best English go, in common with Americans, Russian princesses, and
Jewish families; he would not have been shocked to find her elsewhere,
but he would have been surprised. His sunburnt face and the new beard,
on which he set some undefined value, apologetically displayed, were
scanned by those blue eyes with rapid glances, at once more friendly and
less friendly. "Ah!" they seemed to say, "here you are; how glad I am!
But--what now?"
He was admitted to their sacred table at the table d'hote, a snowy oblong
in an airy alcove, where the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, Miss Dennant, and
the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, a maiden aunt with insufficient lungs,
sat twice a day in their own atmosphere. A momentary weakness came on
Shelton the first time he saw them sitting there at lunch. What was it
gave them their look of strange detachment? Mrs. Dennant was bending
above a camera.
"I'm afraid, d' you know, it's under-exposed," she said.
"What a pity! The kitten was rather nice!" The maiden aunt, placing the
knitting of a red silk tie beside her plate, turned her aspiring,
well-bred gaze on Shelton.
"Look, Auntie," said Antonia in her clear, quick voice, "there's the
funny little man again!"
"Oh," said the maiden aunt--a smile revealed her upper teeth; she looked
for the funny little man (who was not English)--"he's rather nice!"
Shelton did not look for the funny little man; he stole a glance that
barely reached Antonia's brow, where her eyebrows took their tiny upward
slant at the outer corners, and her hair was still ruffled by a windy
walk. From that moment he became her slave.
"Mr. Shelton, do you know anything about these periscopic binoculars?"
said Mrs. Dennant's voice; "they're splendid for buildin's, but buildin's
are so disappointin'. The thing is to get human interest, isn't it?" and
her glance wandered absently past Shelton in search of human interest.
"You haven't put down what you've taken, mother."
From a little leather bag Mrs. Dennant took a little leather book.
"It's so easy to forget what they're about," she said, "that's so
annoyin'."
Shelton was not again visited by his uneasiness at their detachment; he
accepted them and all their works, for there was something quite sublime
about the way that they would leave the dining-room, unconscious that
they themselves were funny to all the people they had found so funny
while they had been sitting there, and he would follow them out
unnecessarily upright and feeling like a fool.
In the ensuing fortnight, chaperoned by the maiden aunt, for Mrs. Dennant
disliked driving, he sat opposite to Antonia during many drives; he
played sets of tennis with her; but it was in the evenings after
dinner--those long evenings on a parquet floor in wicker chairs dragged
as far as might be from the heating apparatus--that he seemed so very
near her. The community of isolation drew them closer. In place of a
companion he had assumed the part of friend, to whom she could confide
all her home-sick aspirations. So that, even when she was sitting
silent, a slim, long foot stretched out in front, bending with an air of
cool absorption over some pencil sketches which she would not show
him--even then, by her very attitude, by the sweet freshness that clung
about her, by her quick, offended glances at the strange persons round,
she seemed to acknowledge in some secret way that he was necessary. He
was far from realising this; his intellectual and observant parts were
hypnotised and fascinated even by her failings. The faint freckling
across her nose, the slim and virginal severeness of her figure, with its
narrow hips and arms, the curve of her long neck-all were added charms.
She had the wind and rain look, a taste of home; and over the glaring
roads, where the palm-tree shadows lay so black, she seemed to pass like
the very image of an English day.
One afternoon he had taken her to play tennis with some friends, and
afterwards they strolled on to her favourite view. Down the Toulon road
gardens and hills were bathed in the colour of ripe apricot; an evening
crispness had stolen on the air; the blood, released from the sun's
numbing, ran gladly in the veins. On the right hand of the road was a
Frenchman playing bowls. Enormous, busy, pleased, and upright as a
soldier, pathetically trotting his vast carcass from end to end, he
delighted Shelton. But Antonia threw a single look at the huge creature,
and her face expressed disgust. She began running up towards the ruined
tower.
Shelton let her keep in front, watching her leap from stone to stone and
throw back defiant glances when he pressed behind. She stood at the top,
and he looked up at her. Over the world, gloriously spread below, she,
like a statue, seemed to rule. The colour was brilliant in her cheeks,
her young bosom heaved, her eyes shone, and the flowing droop of her
long, full sleeves gave to her poised figure the look of one who flies.
He pulled himself up and stood beside her; his heart choked him, all the
colour had left his cheeks.
"Antonia," he said, "I love you."
She started, as if his whisper had intruded on her thoughts; but his face
must have expressed his hunger, for the resentment in her eyes vanished.
They stood for several minutes without speaking, and then went home.
Shelton painfully revolved the riddle of the colour in her face. Had he
a chance then? Was it possible? That evening the instinct vouchsafed at
times to lovers in place of reason caused him to pack his bag and go to
Cannes. On returning, two days later, and approaching the group in the
centre of the Winter Garden, the voice of the maiden aunt reading aloud
an extract from the Morning Post reached him across the room.
"Don't you think that's rather nice?" he heard her ask, and then: "Oh,
here you aye! It's very nice to see you back!"
Shelton slipped into a wicker chair. Antonia looked up quickly from her
sketch-book, put out a hand, but did not speak.
He watched her bending head, and his eagerness was changed to gloom. With
desperate vivacity he sustained the five intolerable minutes of inquiry,
where had he been, what had he been doing? Then once again the maiden
aunt commenced her extracts from the Morning Post.
A touch on his sleeve startled him. Antonia was leaning forward; her
cheeks were crimson above the pallor of her neck.
"Would you like to see my sketches?"
To Shelton, bending above those sketches, that drawl of the well-bred
maiden aunt intoning the well-bred paper was the most pleasant sound that
he had ever listened to.
"My dear Dick," Mrs. Dennant said to him a fortnight later, "we would
rather, after you leave here, that you don't see each other again until
July. Of course I know you count it an engagement and all that, and
everybody's been writin' to congratulate you. But Algie thinks you ought
to give yourselves a chance. Young people don't always know what they're
about, you know; it's not long to wait."
"Three months!" gasped Shelton.
He had to swallow down this pill with what grace he could command. There
was no alternative. Antonia had acquiesced in the condition with a
queer, grave pleasure, as if she expected it to do her good.
"It'll be something to look forward to, Dick," she said.
He postponed departure as long as possible, and it was not until the end
of April that he left for England. She came alone to see him off. It
was drizzling, but her tall, slight figure in the golf cape looked
impervious to cold and rain amongst the shivering natives. Desperately he
clutched her hand, warm through the wet glove; her smile seemed heartless
in its brilliancy. He whispered "You will write?"
"Of course; don't be so stupid, you old Dick!"
She ran forward as the train began to move; her clear "Good-bye!" sounded
shrill and hard above the rumble of the wheels. He saw her raise her
hand, an umbrella waving, and last of all, vivid still amongst receding
shapes, the red spot of her scarlet tam-o'-shanter.
CHAPTER III
A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN
After his journey up from Dover, Shelton was still fathering his luggage
at Charing Cross, when the foreign girl passed him, and, in spite of his
desire to say something cheering, he could get nothing out but a
shame-faced smile. Her figure vanished, wavering into the hurly-burly;
one of his bags had gone astray, and so all thought of her soon faded
from his mind. His cab, however, overtook the foreign vagrant marching
along towards Pall Mall with a curious, lengthy stride--an observant,
disillusioned figure.
The first bustle of installation over, time hung heavy on his hands. July
loomed distant, as in some future century; Antonia's eyes beckoned him
faintly, hopelessly. She would not even be coming back to England for
another month.
. . . I met a young foreigner in the train from Dover [he wrote to
her]--a curious sort of person altogether, who seems to have infected me.
Everything here has gone flat and unprofitable; the only good things in
life are your letters . . . . John Noble dined with me yesterday; the
poor fellow tried to persuade me to stand for Parliament. Why should I
think myself fit to legislate for the unhappy wretches one sees about in
the streets? If people's faces are a fair test of their happiness, I' d
rather not feel in any way responsible . . . .
The streets, in fact, after his long absence in the East, afforded him
much food for thought: the curious smugness of the passers-by; the
utterly unending bustle; the fearful medley of miserable, over-driven
women, and full-fed men, with leering, bull-beef eyes, whom he saw
everywhere--in club windows, on their beats, on box seats, on the steps
of hotels, discharging dilatory duties; the appalling chaos of hard-eyed,
capable dames with defiant clothes, and white-cheeked hunted-looking men;
of splendid creatures in their cabs, and cadging creatures in their
broken hats--the callousness and the monotony!
One afternoon in May he received this letter couched in French:
3, BLANK ROW
WESTMINSTER.
MY DEAR SIR,
Excuse me for recalling to your memory the offer of assistance you so
kindly made me during the journey from Dover to London, in which I
was so fortunate as to travel with a man like you. Having beaten the
whole town, ignorant of what wood to make arrows, nearly at the end
of my resources, my spirit profoundly discouraged, I venture to avail
myself of your permission, knowing your good heart. Since I saw you
I have run through all the misfortunes of the calendar, and cannot
tell what door is left at which I have not knocked. I presented
myself at the business firm with whose name you supplied me, but
being unfortunately in rags, they refused to give me your address.
Is this not very much in the English character? They told me to
write, and said they would forward the letter. I put all my hopes in
you.
Believe me, my dear sir,
(whatever you may decide)
Your devoted
LOUIS FERRAND.
Shelton looked at the envelope, and saw, that it, bore date a week ago.
The face of the young vagrant rose before him, vital, mocking, sensitive;
the sound of his quick French buzzed in his ears, and, oddly, the whole
whiff of him had a power of raising more vividly than ever his memories
of Antonia. It had been at the end of the journey from Hyeres to London
that he had met him; that seemed to give the youth a claim.
He took his hat and hurried, to Blank Row. Dismissing his cab at the
corner of Victoria Street he with difficulty found the house in question.
It was a doorless place, with stone-flagged corridor--in other words, a
"doss-house." By tapping on a sort of ticket-office with a sliding
window, he attracted the attention of a blowsy woman with soap-suds on
her arms, who informed him that the person he was looking for had gone
without leaving his address.
"But isn't there anybody," asked Shelton, "of whom I can make inquiry?"
"Yes; there's a Frenchman." And opening an inner door she bellowed:
"Frenchy! Wanted!" and disappeared.
A dried-up, yellow little man, cynical and weary in the face, as if a
moral steam-roller had passed over it, answered this call, and stood,
sniffing, as it were, at Shelton, on whom he made the singular impression
of some little creature in a cage.
"He left here ten days ago, in the company of a mulatto. What do you
want with him, if I may ask?" The little man's yellow cheeks were
wrinkled with suspicion.
Shelton produced the letter.
"Ah! now I know you"--a pale smile broke through the Frenchman's
crow's-feet--"he spoke of you. 'If I can only find him,' he used to say,
'I 'm saved.' I liked that young man; he had ideas."
"Is there no way of getting at him through his consul?"
The Frenchman shook his head.
"Might as well look for diamonds at the bottom of the sea."
"Do you think he will come back here? But by that time I suppose, you'll
hardly be here yourself?"
A gleam of amusement played about the Frenchman's teeth:
"I? Oh, yes, sir! Once upon a time I cherished the hope of emerging; I
no longer have illusions. I shave these specimens for a living, and
shall shave them till the day of judgment. But leave a letter with me by
all means; he will come back. There's an overcoat of his here on which
he borrowed money--it's worth more. Oh, yes; he will come back--a youth
of principle. Leave a letter with me; I'm always here."
Shelton hesitated, but those last three words, "I'm always here," touched
him in their simplicity. Nothing more dreadful could be said.
"Can you find me a sheet of paper, then?" he asked; "please keep the
change for the trouble I am giving you."
"Thank you," said the Frenchman simply; "he told me that your heart was
good. If you don't mind the kitchen, you could write there at your
ease."
Shelton wrote his letter at the table of this stone-flagged kitchen in
company with an aged, dried-up gentleman; who was muttering to himself;
and Shelton tried to avoid attracting his attention, suspecting that he
was not sober. Just as he was about to take his leave, however, the old
fellow thus accosted him:
"Did you ever go to the dentist, mister?" he said, working at a loose
tooth with his shrivelled fingers. "I went to a dentist once, who
professed to stop teeth without giving pain, and the beggar did stop my
teeth without pain; but did they stay in, those stoppings? No, my bhoy;
they came out before you could say Jack Robinson. Now, I shimply ask you,
d'you call that dentistry?" Fixing his eyes on Shelton's collar, which
had the misfortune to be high and clean, he resumed with drunken scorn:
"Ut's the same all over this pharisaical counthry. Talk of high morality
and Anglo-Shaxon civilisation! The world was never at such low ebb!
Phwhat's all this morality? Ut stinks of the shop. Look at the
condition of Art in this counthry! look at the fools you see upon th'
stage! look at the pictures and books that sell! I know what I'm talking
about, though I am a sandwich man. Phwhat's the secret of ut all? Shop,
my bhoy! Ut don't pay to go below a certain depth! Scratch the skin,
but pierce ut--Oh! dear, no! We hate to see the blood fly, eh?"
Shelton stood disconcerted, not knowing if he were expected to reply; but
the old gentleman, pursing up his lips, went on:
"Sir, there are no extremes in this fog-smitten land. Do ye think blanks
loike me ought to exist? Whoy don't they kill us off?
Palliatives--palliatives--and whoy? Because they object to th' extreme
course. Look at women: the streets here are a scandal to the world.
They won't recognise that they exist--their noses are so dam high! They
blink the truth in this middle-class counthry. My bhoy"--and he
whispered confidentially--"ut pays 'em. Eh? you say, why shouldn't they,
then?" (But Shelton had not spoken.) "Well, let'em! let 'em! But don't
tell me that'sh morality, don't tell me that'sh civilisation! What can
you expect in a counthry where the crimson, emotions are never allowed to
smell the air? And what'sh the result? My bhoy, the result is
sentiment, a yellow thing with blue spots, like a fungus or a Stilton
cheese. Go to the theatre, and see one of these things they call plays.
Tell me, are they food for men and women? Why, they're pap for babes and
shop-boys! I was a blanky actor moyself!"
Shelton listened with mingled feelings of amusement and dismay, till the
old actor, having finished, resumed his crouching posture at the table.
"You don't get dhrunk, I suppose?" he said suddenly--"too much of 'n
Englishman, no doubt."
"Very seldom," said Shelton.
"Pity! Think of the pleasures of oblivion! Oi 'm dhrunk every night."
"How long will you last at that rate?"
"There speaks the Englishman! Why should Oi give up me only pleasure to
keep me wretched life in? If you've anything left worth the keeping
shober for, keep shober by all means; if not, the sooner you are dhrunk
the better--that stands to reason."
In the corridor Shelton asked the Frenchman where the old man came from.
"Oh, and Englishman! Yes, yes, from Belfast very drunken old man. You
are a drunken nation"--he made a motion with his hands "he no longer
eats--no inside left. It is unfortunate-a man of spirit. If you have
never seen one of these palaces, monsieur, I shall be happy to show you
over it."
Shelton took out his cigarette case.
"Yes, yes," said the Frenchman, making a wry nose and taking a cigarette;
"I'm accustomed to it. But you're wise to fumigate the air; one is n't
in a harem."
And Shelton felt ashamed of his fastidiousness.
"This," said the guide, leading him up-stairs and opening a door, "is a
specimen of the apartments reserved for these princes of the blood."
There were four empty beds on iron legs, and, with the air of a showman,
the Frenchman twitched away a dingy quilt. "They go out in the mornings,
earn enough to make them drunk, sleep it off, and then begin again.
That's their life. There are people who think they ought to be reformed.
'Mon cher monsieur', one must face reality a little, even in this
country. It would be a hundred times better for these people to spend
their time reforming high Society. Your high Society makes all these
creatures; there's no harvest without cutting stalks. 'Selon moi'," he
continued, putting back the quilt, and dribbling cigarette smoke through
his nose, "there's no grand difference between your high Society and
these individuals here; both want pleasure, both think only of
themselves, which is very natural. One lot have had the luck, the
other--well, you see." He shrugged. "A common set! I've been robbed
here half a dozen times. If you have new shoes, a good waistcoat, an
overcoat, you want eyes in the back of your head. And they are
populated! Change your bed, and you'll run all the dangers of not
sleeping alone. 'V'la ma clientele'! The half of them don't pay me!"
He, snapped his yellow sticks of fingers. "A penny for a shave, twopence
a cut! 'Quelle vie'! Here," he continued, standing by a bed, "is a
gentleman who owes me fivepence. Here's one who was a soldier; he's done
for! All brutalised; not one with any courage left! But, believe me,
monsieur," he went on, opening another door, "when you come down to
houses of this sort you must have a vice; it's as necessary as breath is
to the lungs. No matter what, you must have a vice to give you a little
solace--'un peu de soulagement'. Ah, yes! before you judge these swine,
reflect on life! I've been through it. Monsieur, it is not nice never to
know where to get your next meal. Gentlemen who have food in their
stomachs, money in their pockets, and know where to get more, they never
think. Why should they--'pas de danger'! All these cages are the same.
Come down, and you shall see the pantry." He took Shelton through the
kitchen, which seemed the only sitting-room of the establishment, to an
inner room furnished with dirty cups and saucers, plates, and knives.
Another fire was burning there. "We always have hot water," said the
Frenchman, "and three times a week they make a fire down there"--he
pointed to a cellar--"for our clients to boil their vermin. Oh, yes, we
have all the luxuries."
Shelton returned to the kitchen, and directly after took leave of the
little Frenchman, who said, with a kind of moral button-holing, as if
trying to adopt him as a patron:
"Trust me, monsieur; if he comes back--that young man--he shall have your
letter without fail. My name is Carolan Jules Carolan; and I am always
at your service."
CHAPTER IV
THE PLAY
Shelton walked away; he had been indulging in a nightmare. "That old
actor was drunk," thought he, "and no doubt he was an Irishman; still,
there may be truth in what he said. I am a Pharisee, like all the rest
who are n't in the pit. My respectability is only luck. What should I
have become if I'd been born into his kind of life?" and he stared at a
stream of people coming from the Stares, trying to pierce the mask of
their serious, complacent faces. If these ladies and gentlemen were put
into that pit into which he had been looking, would a single one of them
emerge again? But the effort of picturing them there was too much for
him; it was too far--too ridiculously far.
One particular couple, a large; fine man and wife, who, in the midst of
all the dirt and rumbling hurry, the gloomy, ludicrous, and desperately
jovial streets, walked side by side in well-bred silence, had evidently
bought some article which pleased them. There was nothing offensive in
their manner; they seemed quite unconcerned at the passing of the other
people. The man had that fine solidity of shoulder and of waist, the
glossy self-possession that belongs to those with horses, guns, and
dressing-bags. The wife, her chin comfortably settled in her fur, kept
her grey eyes on the ground, and, when she spoke, her even and unruffled
voice reached Shelton's ears above all the whirring of the traffic. It
was leisurely precise, as if it had never hurried, had never been
exhausted, or passionate, or afraid. Their talk, like that of many
dozens of fine couples invading London from their country places, was of
where to dine, what theatre they should go to, whom they had seen, what
they should buy. And Shelton knew that from day's end to end, and even
in their bed, these would be the subjects of their conversation. They
were the best-bred people of the sort he met in country houses and
accepted as of course, with a vague discomfort at the bottom of his soul.
Antonia's home, for instance, had been full of them. They were the
best-bred people of the sort who supported charities, knew everybody, had
clear, calm judgment, and intolerance of all such conduct as seemed to
them "impossible," all breaches of morality, such as mistakes of
etiquette, such as dishonesty, passion, sympathy (except with a canonised
class of objects--the legitimate sufferings, for instance, of their own
families and class). How healthy they were! The memory of the
doss-house worked in Shelton's mind like poison. He was conscious that
in his own groomed figure, in the undemonstrative assurance of his walk,
he bore resemblance to the couple he apostrophised. "Ah!" he thought,
"how vulgar our refinement is!" But he hardly believed in his own
outburst. These people were so well mannered, so well conducted, and so
healthy, he could not really understand what irritated him. What was the
matter with them? They fulfilled their duties, had good appetites, clear
consciences, all the furniture of perfect citizens; they merely
lacked-feelers, a loss that, he had read, was suffered by plants and
animals which no longer had a need for using them. Some rare national
faculty of seeing only the obvious and materially useful had destroyed
their power of catching gleams or scents to right or left.
The lady looked up at her husband. The light of quiet, proprietary
affection shone in her calm grey eyes, decorously illumining her features
slightly reddened by the wind. And the husband looked back at her, calm,
practical, protecting. They were very much alike. So doubtless he
looked when he presented himself in snowy shirt-sleeves for her to
straighten the bow of his white tie; so nightly she would look, standing
before the full-length mirror, fixing his gifts upon her bosom. Calm,
proprietary, kind! He passed them and walked behind a second less
distinguished couple, who manifested a mutual dislike as matter-of-fact
and free from nonsense as the unruffled satisfaction of the first; this
dislike was just as healthy, and produced in Shelton about the same
sensation. It was like knocking at a never-opened door, looking at a
circle--couple after couple all the same. No heads, toes, angles of
their souls stuck out anywhere. In the sea of their environments they
were drowned; no leg braved the air, no arm emerged wet and naked waving
at the skies; shop-persons, aristocrats, workmen, officials, they were
all respectable. And he himself as respectable as any.
He returned, thus moody, to his rooms and, with the impetuosity which
distinguished him when about to do an unwise thing, he seized a pen and
poured out before Antonia some of his impressions:
. . . . Mean is the word, darling; we are mean, that's what 's the matter
with us, dukes and dustmen, the whole human species--as mean as
caterpillars. To secure our own property and our own comfort, to dole
out our sympathy according to rule just so that it won't really hurt us,
is what we're all after. There's something about human nature that is
awfully repulsive, and the healthier people are, the more repulsive they
seem to me to be . . . .
He paused, biting his pen. Had he one acquaintance who would not counsel
him to see a doctor for writing in that style? How would the world go
round, how could Society exist, without common-sense, practical ability,
and the lack of sympathy?
He looked out of the open window. Down in the street a footman was
settling the rug over the knees of a lady in a carriage, and the decorous
immovability of both their faces, which were clearly visible to him, was
like a portion of some well-oiled engine.
He got up and walked up and down. His rooms, in a narrow square skirting
Belgravia, were unchanged since the death of his father had made him a
man of means. Selected for their centrality, they were furnished in a
very miscellaneous way. They were not bare, but close inspection
revealed that everything was damaged, more or less, and there was
absolutely nothing that seemed to have an interest taken in it. His
goods were accidents, presents, or the haphazard acquisitions of a
pressing need. Nothing, of course, was frowsy, but everything was
somewhat dusty, as if belonging to a man who never rebuked a servant.
Above all, there was nothing that indicated hobbies.
Three days later he had her answer to his letter:
. . . I don't think I understand what you mean by "the healthier
people are, the more repulsive they seem to be"; one must be healthy to
be perfect, must n't one? I don't like unhealthy people. I had to play
on that wretched piano after reading your letter; it made me feel
unhappy. I've been having a splendid lot of tennis lately, got the
back-handed lifting stroke at last--hurrah! . . .
By the same post, too, came the following note in an autocratic writing:
DEAR BIRD [for this was Shelton's college nickname],
My wife has gone down to her people, so I'm 'en garcon' for a few
days. If you've nothing better to do, come and dine to-night at
seven, and go to the theatre. It's ages since I saw you.
Yours as ever,
B. M. HALIDOME.
Shelton had nothing better to do, for pleasant were his friend Halidome's
well-appointed dinners. At seven, therefore, he went to Chester Square.
His friend was in his study, reading Matthew Arnold by the light of an
electric lamp. The walls of the room were hung with costly etchings,
arranged with solid and unfailing taste; from the carving of the
mantel-piece to the binding of the books, from the miraculously-coloured
meerschaums to the chased fire-irons, everything displayed an
unpretentious luxury, an order and a finish significant of life
completely under rule of thumb. Everything had been collected. The
collector rose as Shelton entered, a fine figure of a man, clean
shaven,--with dark hair, a Roman nose, good eyes, and the rather weighty
dignity of attitude which comes from the assurance that one is in the
right.
Taking Shelton by the lapel, he drew him into the radius of the lamp,
where he examined him, smiling a slow smile. "Glad to see you, old chap.
I rather like your beard," he said with genial brusqueness; and nothing,
perhaps, could better have summed up his faculty for forming independent
judgments which Shelton found so admirable. He made no apology for the
smallness of the dinner, which, consisting of eight courses and three
wines, served by a butler and one footman, smacked of the same perfection
as the furniture; in fact, he never apologised for anything, except with
a jovial brusqueness that was worse than the offence. The suave and
reasonable weight of his dislikes and his approvals stirred Shelton up to
feel ironical and insignificant; but whether from a sense of the solid,
humane, and healthy quality of his friend's egoism, or merely from the
fact that this friendship had been long in bottle, he did not resent his
mixed sensations.
"By the way, I congratulate you, old chap," said Halidome, while driving
to the theatre; there was no vulgar hurry about his congratulations, no
more than about himself. "They're awfully nice people, the Dennants."
A sense of having had a seal put on his choice came over Shelton.
"Where are you going to live? You ought to come down and live near us;
there are some ripping houses to be had down there; it's really a ripping
neighbourhood. Have you chucked the Bar? You ought to do something, you
know; it'll be fatal for you to have nothing to do. I tell you what,
Bird: you ought to stand for the County Council."
But before Shelton had replied they reached the theatre, and their
energies were spent in sidling to their stalls. He had time to pass his
neighbours in review before the play began. Seated next to him was a
lady with large healthy shoulders, displayed with splendid liberality;
beyond her a husband, red-cheeked, with drooping, yellow-grey moustache
and a bald head; beyond him again two men whom he had known at Eton. One
of them had a clean-shaved face, dark hair, and a weather-tanned
complexion; his small mouth with its upper lip pushed out above the
lower, his eyelids a little drooped over his watchful eyes, gave him a
satirical and resolute expression. "I've got hold of your tail, old
fellow," he seemed to say, as though he were always busy with the
catching of some kind of fox. The other's goggling eyes rested on
Shelton with a chaffing smile; his thick, sleek hair, brushed with water
and parted in the middle, his neat moustache and admirable waistcoat,
suggested the sort of dandyism that despises women. From his recognition
of these old schoolfellows Shelton turned to look at Halidome, who,
having cleared his throat, was staring straight before him at the
curtain. Antonia's words kept running in her lover's head, "I don't like
unhealthy people." Well, all these people, anyway, were healthy; they
looked as if they had defied the elements to endow them with a spark of
anything but health. Just then the curtain rose.
Slowly, unwillingly, for he was of a trustful disposition, Shelton
recognised that this play was one of those masterpieces of the modern
drama whose characters were drawn on the principle that men were made for
morals rather than morals made by men, and he watched the play unfold
with all its careful sandwiching of grave and gay.
A married woman anxious to be ridded of her husband was the pivot of the
story, and a number of scenes, ingeniously contrived, with a hundred
reasons why this desire was wrong and inexpedient, were revealed to
Shelton's eyes. These reasons issued mainly from the mouth of a
well-preserved old gentleman who seemed to play the part of a sort of
Moral Salesman. He turned to Halidome and whispered:
"Can you stand that old woman?"
His friend fixed his fine eyes on him wonderingly.
"What old woman?"
"Why, the old ass with the platitudes!"
Halidome's countenance grew cold, a little shocked, as though he had been
assailed in person.
"Do you mean Pirbright?" he said. "I think he's ripping."
Shelton turned to the play rebuffed; he felt guilty of a breach of
manners, sitting as he was in one of his friend's stalls, and he
naturally set to work to watch the play more critically than ever.
Antonia's words again recurred to him, "I don't like unhealthy people,"
and they seemed to throw a sudden light upon this play. It was healthy!
The scene was a drawing-room, softly lighted by electric lamps, with a
cat (Shelton could not decide whether she was real or not) asleep upon
the mat.
The husband, a thick-set, healthy man in evening dress, was drinking off
neat whisky. He put down his tumbler, and deliberately struck a match;
then with even greater deliberation he lit a gold-tipped cigarette....
Shelton was no inexperienced play-goer. He shifted his elbows, for he
felt that something was about to happen; and when the match was pitched
into the fire, he leaned forward in his seat. The husband poured more
whisky out, drank it at a draught, and walked towards the door; then,
turning to the audience as if to admit them to the secret of some
tremendous resolution, he puffed at them a puff of smoke. He left the
room, returned, and once more filled his glass. A lady now entered, pale
of face and dark of eye--his wife. The husband crossed the stage, and
stood before the fire, his legs astride, in the attitude which somehow
Shelton had felt sure he would assume. He spoke:
"Come in, and shut the door."
Shelton suddenly perceived that he was face to face with one of those
dumb moments in which two people declare their inextinguishable
hatred--the hatred underlying the sexual intimacy of two ill-assorted
creatures--and he was suddenly reminded of a scene he had once witnessed
in a restaurant. He remembered with extreme minuteness how the woman and
the man had sat facing each other across the narrow patch of white,
emblazoned by a candle with cheap shades and a thin green vase with
yellow flowers. He remembered the curious scornful anger of their
voices, subdued so that only a few words reached him. He remembered the
cold loathing in their eyes. And, above all, he remembered his
impression that this sort of scene happened between them every other day,
and would continue so to happen; and as he put on his overcoat and paid
his bill he had asked himself, "Why in the name of decency do they go on
living together?" And now he thought, as he listened to the two players
wrangling on the stage: "What 's the good of all this talk? There's
something here past words."
The curtain came down upon the act, and he looked at the lady next him.
She was shrugging her shoulders at her husband, whose face was healthy
and offended.
"I do dislike these unhealthy women," he was saying, but catching
Shelton's eye he turned square in his seat and sniffed ironically.
The face of Shelton's friend beyond, composed, satirical as ever, was
clothed with a mask of scornful curiosity, as if he had been listening to
something that had displeased him not a little. The goggle-eyed man was
yawning. Shelton turned to Halidome:
"Can you stand this sort of thing?" said he.
"No; I call that scene a bit too hot," replied his friend.
Shelton wriggled; he had meant to say it was not hot enough.
"I'll bet you anything," he said, "I know what's going to happen now.
You'll have that old ass--what's his name?--lunching off cutlets and
champagne to fortify himself--for a lecture to the wife. He'll show her
how unhealthy her feelings are--I know him--and he'll take her hand and
say, 'Dear lady, is there anything in this poor world but the good
opinion of Society?' and he'll pretend to laugh at himself for saying it;
but you'll see perfectly well that the old woman means it. And then
he'll put her into a set of circumstances that are n't her own but his
version of them, and show her the only way of salvation is to kiss her
husband"; and Shelton grinned. "Anyway, I'll bet you anything he takes
her hand and says, 'Dear lady.'"
Halidome turned on him the disapproval of his eyes, and again he said,
"I think Pirbright 's ripping!"
But as Shelton had predicted, so it turned out, amidst great applause.
CHAPTER V
THE GOOD CITIZEN
Leaving the theatre, they paused a moment in the hall to don their coats;
a stream of people with spotless bosoms eddied round the doors, as if in
momentary dread of leaving this hothouse of false morals and emotions for
the wet, gusty streets, where human plants thrive and die, human weeds
flourish and fade under the fresh, impartial skies. The lights revealed
innumerable solemn faces, gleamed innumerably on jewels, on the silk of
hats, then passed to whiten a pavement wet with newly-fallen rain, to
flare on horses, on the visages of cabmen, and stray, queer objects that
do not bear the light.
"Shall we walk?" asked Halidome.
"Has it ever struck you," answered Shelton, "that in a play nowadays
there's always a 'Chorus of Scandalmongers' which seems to have acquired
the attitude of God?"
Halidome cleared his throat, and there was something portentous in the
sound.
"You're so d---d fastidious," was his answer.
"I've a prejudice for keeping the two things separate," went on Shelton.
"That ending makes me sick."
"Why?" replied Halidome. "What other end is possible? You don't want a
play to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth."
"But this does."
Halidome increased his stride, already much too long; for in his walk, as
in all other phases of his life, he found it necessary to be in front.
"How do you mean?" he asked urbanely; "it's better than the woman making
a fool of herself."
"I'm thinking of the man."
"What man?"
"The husband."
"What 's the matter with him? He was a bit of a bounder, certainly."
"I can't understand any man wanting to live with a woman who doesn't want
him."
Some note of battle in Shelton's voice, rather than the sentiment itself,
caused his friend to reply with dignity:
"There's a lot of nonsense talked about that sort of thing. Women don't
really care; it's only what's put into their heads."
"That's much the same as saying to a starving man: 'You don't really want
anything; it's only what's put into your head!' You are begging the
question, my friend."
But nothing was more calculated to annoy Halidome than to tell him he was
"begging the question," for he prided himself on being strong in logic.
"That be d---d," he said.
"Not at all, old chap. Here is a case where a woman wants her freedom,
and you merely answer that she dogs n't want it."
"Women like that are impossible; better leave them out of court."
Shelton pondered this and smiled; he had recollected an acquaintance of
his own, who, when his wife had left him, invented the theory that she
was mad, and this struck him now as funny. But then he thought: "Poor
devil! he was bound to call her mad! If he didn't, it would be
confessing himself distasteful; however true, you can't expect a man to
consider himself that." But a glance at his friend's eye warned him that
he, too, might think his wife mad in such a case.
"Surely," he said, "even if she's his wife, a man's bound to behave like
a gentleman."
"Depends on whether she behaves like a lady."
"Does it? I don't see the connection."
Halidome paused in the act of turning the latch-key in his door; there
was a rather angry smile in his fine eyes.
"My dear chap," he said, "you're too sentimental altogether."
The word "sentimental" nettled Shelton. "A gentleman either is a
gentleman or he is n't; what has it to do with the way other people
behave?"
Halidome turned the key in the lock and opened the door into his hall,
where the firelight fell on the decanters and huge chairs drawn towards
the blaze.
"No, Bird," he said, resuming his urbanity, and gathering his coat-tails
in his hands; "it's all very well to talk, but wait until you're married.
A man must be master, and show it, too."
An idea occurred to Shelton.
"Look here, Hal," he said: "what should you do if your wife got tired of
you?"
The expression on Halidome's face was a mixture of amusement and
contempt.
"I don't mean anything personal, of course, but apply the situation to
yourself."
Halidome took out a toothpick, used it brusquely, and responded:
"I shouldn't stand any humbug--take her travelling; shake her mind up.
She'd soon come round."
"But suppose she really loathed you?"
Halidome cleared his throat; the idea was so obviously indecent. How
could anybody loathe him? With great composure, however, regarding
Shelton as if he were a forward but amusing child, he answered:
"There are a great many things to be taken into consideration."
"It appears to me," said Shelton, "to be a question of common pride. How
can you, ask anything of a woman who doesn't want to give it."
His friend's voice became judicial.
"A man ought not to suffer," he said, poring over his whisky, "because a
woman gets hysteria. You have to think of Society, your children, house,
money arrangements, a thousand things. It's all very well to talk. How
do you like this whisky?"
"The part of the good citizen, in fact," said Shelton,
"self-preservation!"
"Common-sense," returned his friend; "I believe in justice before
sentiment." He drank, and callously blew smoke at Shelton. "Besides,
there are many people with religious views about it."
"It's always seemed to me," said Shelton, "to be quaint that people
should assert that marriage gives them the right to 'an eye for an eye,'
and call themselves Christians. Did you ever know anybody stand on their
rights except out of wounded pride or for the sake of their own comfort?
Let them call their reasons what they like, you know as well as I do that
it's cant."
"I don't know about that," said Halidome, more and more superior as
Shelton grew more warm; "when you stand on your rights, you do it for the
sake of Society as well as for your own. If you want to do away with
marriage, why don't you say so?"
"But I don't," said Shelton, "is it likely? Why, I'm going--" He
stopped without adding the words "to be married myself," for it suddenly
occurred to him that the reason was not the most lofty and philosophic in
the world. "All I can say is," he went on soberly, "that you can't make
a horse drink by driving him. Generosity is the surest way of tightening
the knot with people who've any sense of decency; as to the rest, the
chief thing is to prevent their breeding."
Halidome smiled.
"You're a rum chap," he said.
Shelton jerked his cigarette into the fire.
"I tell you what"--for late at night a certain power of vision came to
him--"it's humbug to talk of doing things for the sake of Society; it's
nothing but the instinct to keep our own heads above the water."
But Halidome remained unruffled.
"All right," he said, "call it that. I don't see why I should go to the
wall; it wouldn't do any good."
"You admit, then," said Shelton, "that our morality is the sum total of
everybody's private instinct of self-preservation?"
Halidome stretched his splendid frame and yawned.
"I don't know," he began, "that I should quite call it that--"
But the compelling complacency of his fine eyes, the dignified posture of
his healthy body, the lofty slope of his narrow forehead, the perfectly
humane look of his cultivated brutality, struck Shelton as ridiculous.
"Hang it, Hall" he cried, jumping from his chair, "what an old fraud you
are! I'll be off."
"No, look here!" said Halidome; the faintest shade of doubt had appeared
upon his face; he took Shelton by a lapel: "You're quite wrong--"
"Very likely; good-night, old chap!"
Shelton walked home, letting the spring wind into him. It was Saturday,
and he passed many silent couples. In every little patch of shadow he
could see two forms standing or sitting close together, and in their
presence Words the Impostors seemed to hold their tongues. The wind
rustled the buds; the stars, one moment bright as diamonds, vanished the
next. In the lower streets a large part of the world was under the
influence of drink, but by this Shelton was far from being troubled. It
seemed better than Drama, than dressing-bagged men, unruffled women, and
padded points of view, better than the immaculate solidity of his
friend's possessions.
"So," he reflected, "it's right for every reason, social, religious, and
convenient, to inflict one's society where it's not desired. There are
obviously advantages about the married state; charming to feel
respectable while you're acting in a way that in any other walk of life
would bring on you contempt. If old Halidome showed that he was tired of
me, and I continued to visit him, he'd think me a bit of a cad; but if
his wife were to tell him she couldn't stand him, he'd still consider
himself a perfect gentleman if he persisted in giving her the burden of
his society; and he has the cheek to bring religion into it--a religion
that says, 'Do unto others!'"
But in this he was unjust to Halidome, forgetting how impossible it was
for him to believe that a woman could not stand him. He reached his
rooms, and, the more freely to enjoy the clear lamplight, the soft, gusty
breeze, and waning turmoil of the streets, waited a moment before
entering.
"I wonder," thought he, "if I shall turn out a cad when I marry, like
that chap in the play. It's natural. We all want our money's worth, our
pound of flesh! Pity we use such fine words--'Society, Religion,
Morality.' Humbug!"
He went in, and, throwing his window open, remained there a long time,
his figure outlined against the lighted room for the benefit of the dark
square below, his hands in his pockets, his head down, a reflective frown
about his eyes. A half-intoxicated old ruffian, a policeman, and a man
in a straw hat had stopped below, and were holding a palaver.
"Yus," the old ruffian said, "I'm a rackety old blank; but what I say is,
if we wus all alike, this would n't be a world!"
They went their way, and before the listener's eyes there rose Antonia's
face, with its unruffled brow; Halidome's, all health and dignity; the
forehead of the goggle-eyed man, with its line of hair parted in the
centre, and brushed across. A light seemed to illumine the plane of
their existence, as the electric lamp with the green shade had illumined
the pages of the Matthew Arnold; serene before Shelton's vision lay that
Elysium, untouched by passion or extremes of any kind, autocratic;
complacent, possessive, and well-kept as any Midland landscape. Healthy,
wealthy, wise! No room but for perfection, self-preservation, the
survival of the fittest! "The part of the good citizen," he thought:
"no, if we were all alike, this would n't be a world!"
CHAPTER VI
MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT
"My dear Richard" (wrote Shelton's uncle the next day), "I shall be glad
to see you at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon upon the question of your
marriage settlement...." At that hour accordingly Shelton made his way
to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where in fat black letters the names "Paramor
and Herring (Commissioners for Oaths)" were written on the wall of a
stone entrance. He ascended the solid steps with nervousness, and by a
small red-haired boy was introduced to a back room on the first floor.
Here, seated at a table in the very centre, as if he thereby better
controlled his universe, a pug-featured gentleman, without a beard, was
writing. He paused. "Ow, Mr. Richard!" he said; "glad to see you, sir.
Take a chair. Your uncle will be disengaged in 'arf a minute"; and in the
tone of his allusion to his employer was the satirical approval that
comes with long and faithful service. "He will do everything himself,"
he went on, screwing up his sly, greenish, honest eyes, "and he 's not a
young man."
Shelton never saw his uncle's clerk without marvelling at the prosperity
deepening upon his face. In place of the look of harassment which on
most faces begins to grow after the age of fifty, his old friend's
countenance, as though in sympathy with the nation, had expanded--a
little greasily, a little genially, a little coarsely--every time he met
it. A contemptuous tolerance for people who were not getting on was
spreading beneath its surface; it left each time a deeper feeling that
its owner could never be in the wrong.
"I hope you're well, sir," he resumed: "most important for you to have
your health now you're going-to"--and, feeling for the delicate way to
put it, he involuntarily winked--"to become a family man. We saw it in
the paper. My wife said to me the other morning at breakfast: 'Bob,
here's a Mr. Richard Paramor Shelton goin' to be married. Is that any
relative of your Mr. Shelton?' 'My dear,' I said to her, 'it's the very
man!'"
It disquieted Shelton to perceive that his old friend did not pass the
whole of his life at that table writing in the centre of the room, but
that somewhere (vistas of little grey houses rose before his eyes) he
actually lived another life where someone called him "Bob." Bob! And
this, too, was a revelation. Bob! Why, of course, it was the only name
for him! A bell rang.
"That's your uncle"; and again the head clerk's voice sounded ironical.
"Good-bye, sir."
He seemed to clip off intercourse as one clips off electric light.
Shelton left him writing, and preceded the red-haired boy to an enormous
room in the front where his uncle waited.
Edmund Paramor was a medium-sized and upright man of seventy, whose brown
face was perfectly clean-shaven. His grey, silky hair was brushed in a
cock's comb from his fine forehead, bald on the left side. He stood
before the hearth facing the room, and his figure had the springy
abruptness of men who cannot fatten. There was a certain youthfulness,
too, in his eyes, yet they had a look as though he had been through fire;
and his mouth curled at the corners in surprising smiles. The room was
like the man--morally large, void of red-tape and almost void of
furniture; no tin boxes were ranged against the walls, no papers littered
up the table; a single bookcase contained a complete edition of the law
reports, and resting on the Law Directory was a single red rose in a
glass of water. It looked the room of one with a sober magnanimity, who
went to the heart of things, despised haggling, and before whose smiles
the more immediate kinds of humbug faded.
"Well, Dick," said he, "how's your mother?"
Shelton replied that his mother was all right.
"Tell her that I'm going to sell her Easterns after all, and put into
this Brass thing. You can say it's safe, from me."
Shelton made a face.
"Mother," said he, "always believes things are safe."
His uncle looked through him with his keen, half-suffering glance, and up
went the corners of his mouth.
"She's splendid," he said.
"Yes," said Shelton, "splendid."
The transaction, however, did not interest him; his uncle's judgment in
such matters had a breezy soundness he would never dream of questioning.
"Well, about your settlement"; and, touching a bell three times, Mr.
Paramor walked up and down the room. "Bring me the draft of Mr.
Richard's marriage settlement."
The stalwart commissionaire reappearing with a document--"Now then,
Dick," said Mr. Paramor. "She 's not bringing anything into settlement,
I understand; how 's that?"
"I did n't want it," replied Shelton, unaccountably ashamed.
Mr. Paramor's lips quivered; he drew the draft closer, took up a blue
pencil, and, squeezing Shelton's arm, began to read. The latter,
following his uncle's rapid exposition of the clauses, was relieved when
he paused suddenly.
"If you die and she marries again," said Mr. Paramor, "she forfeits her
life interest--see?"
"Oh!" said Shelton; "wait a minute, Uncle Ted."
Mr. Paramor waited, biting his pencil; a smile flickered on his mouth,
and was decorously subdued. It was Shelton's turn to walk about.
"If she marries again," he repeated to himself.
Mr. Paramor was a keen fisherman; he watched his nephew as he might have
watched a fish he had just landed.
"It's very usual," he remarked.
Shelton took another turn.
"She forfeits," thought he; "exactly."
When he was dead, he would have no other way of seeing that she continued
to belong to him. Exactly!
Mr. Paramor's haunting eyes were fastened on his nephew's face.
"Well, my dear," they seemed to say, "what 's the matter?"
Exactly! Why should she have his money if she married again? She would
forfeit it. There was comfort in the thought. Shelton came back and
carefully reread the clause, to put the thing on a purely business basis,
and disguise the real significance of what was passing in his mind.
"If I die and she marries again," he repeated aloud, "she forfeits."
What wiser provision for a man passionately in love could possibly have
been devised? His uncle's eye travelled beyond him, humanely turning
from the last despairing wriggles of his fish.
"I don't want to tie her," said Shelton suddenly.
The corners of Mr. Paramour's mouth flew up.
"You want the forfeiture out?" he asked.
The blood rushed into Shelton's face; he felt he had been detected in a
piece of sentiment.
"Ye-es," he stammered.
"Sure?"
"Quite!" The answer was a little sulky.
Her uncle's pencil descended on the clause, and he resumed the reading of
the draft, but Shelton could not follow it; he was too much occupied in
considering exactly why Mr. Paramor had been amused, and to do this he
was obliged to keep his eyes upon him. Those features, just pleasantly
rugged; the springy poise of the figure; the hair neither straight nor
curly, neither short nor long; the haunting look of his eyes and the
humorous look of his mouth; his clothes neither shabby nor dandified; his
serviceable, fine hands; above all, the equability of the hovering blue
pencil, conveyed the impression of a perfect balance between heart and
head, sensibility and reason, theory and its opposite.
"'During coverture,'" quoted Mr. Paramor, pausing again, "you understand,
of course, if you don't get on, and separate, she goes on taking?"
If they didn't get on! Shelton smiled. Mr. Paramor did not smile, and
again Shelton had the sense of having knocked up against something poised
but firm. He remarked irritably:
"If we 're not living together, all the more reason for her having it."
This time his uncle smiled. It was difficult for Shelton to feel angry
at that ironic merriment, with its sudden ending; it was too impersonal
to irritate: it was too concerned with human nature.
"If--hum--it came to the other thing," said Mr. Paramor, "the
settlement's at an end as far as she 's concerned. We 're bound to look
at every case, you know, old boy."
The memory of the play and his conversation with Halidome was still
strong in Shelton. He was not one of those who could not face the notion
of transferred affections--at a safe distance.
"All right, Uncle Ted," said he. For one mad moment he was attacked by
the desire to "throw in" the case of divorce. Would it not be common
chivalry to make her independent, able to change her affections if she
wished, unhampered by monetary troubles? You only needed to take out the
words "during coverture."
Almost anxiously he looked into his uncle's face. There was no meanness
there, but neither was there encouragement in that comprehensive brow
with its wide sweep of hair. "Quixotism," it seemed to say, "has merits,
but--" The room, too, with its wide horizon and tall windows, looking as
if it dealt habitually in common-sense, discouraged him. Innumerable men
of breeding and the soundest principles must have bought their wives in
here. It was perfumed with the atmosphere of wisdom and law-calf. The
aroma of Precedent was strong; Shelton swerved his lance, and once more
settled down to complete the purchase of his wife.
"I can't conceive what you're--in such a hurry for; you 're not going to
be married till the autumn," said Mr. Paramor, finishing at last.
Replacing the blue pencil in the rack, he took the red rose from the
glass, and sniffed at it. "Will you come with me as far as Pall Mall? I
'm going to take an afternoon off; too cold for Lord's, I suppose?"
They walked into the Strand.
"Have you seen this new play of Borogrove's?" asked Shelton, as they
passed the theatre to which he had been with Halidome.
"I never go to modern plays," replied Mr. Paramor; "too d---d gloomy."
Shelton glanced at him; he wore his hat rather far back on his head, his
eyes haunted the street in front; he had shouldered his umbrella.
"Psychology 's not in your line, Uncle Ted?"
"Is that what they call putting into words things that can't be put in
words?"
"The French succeed in doing it," replied Shelton, "and the Russians; why
should n't we?"
Mr. Paramor stopped to look in at a fishmonger's.
"What's right for the French and Russians, Dick," he said "is wrong for
us. When we begin to be real, we only really begin to be false. I should
like to have had the catching of that fellow; let's send him to your
mother." He went in and bought a salmon:
"Now, my dear," he continued, as they went on, "do you tell me that it's
decent for men and women on the stage to writhe about like eels? Is n't
life bad enough already?"
It suddenly struck Shelton that, for all his smile, his uncle's face had
a look of crucifixion. It was, perhaps, only the stronger sunlight in
the open spaces of Trafalgar Square.
"I don't know," he said; "I think I prefer the truth."
"Bad endings and the rest," said Mr. Paramor, pausing under one of
Nelson's lions and taking Shelton by a button. "Truth 's the very
devil!"
He stood there, very straight, his eyes haunting his nephew's face; there
seemed to Shelton a touching muddle in his optimism--a muddle of
tenderness and of intolerance, of truth and second-handedness. Like the
lion above him, he seemed to be defying Life to make him look at her.
"No, my dear," he said, handing sixpence to a sweeper; "feelings are
snakes! only fit to be kept in bottles with tight corks. You won't come
to my club? Well, good-bye, old boy; my love to your mother when you see
her"; and turning up the Square, he left Shelton to go on to his own
club, feeling that he had parted, not from his uncle, but from the nation
of which they were both members by birth and blood and education.
CHAPTER VII
THE CLUB
He went into the library of his club, and took up Burke's Peerage. The
words his uncle had said to him on hearing his engagement had been these:
"Dennant! Are those the Holm Oaks Dennants? She was a Penguin."
No one who knew Mr. Paramor connected him with snobbery, but there had
been an "Ah! that 's right; this is due to us" tone about the saying.
Shelton hunted for the name of Baltimore: "Charles Penguin, fifth Baron
Baltimore. Issue: Alice, b. 184-, m. 186-Algernon Dennant, Esq., of
Holm Oaks, Cross Eaton, Oxfordshire." He put down the Peerage and took
up the 'Landed Gentry': "Dennant, Algernon Cuffe, eldest son of the late
Algernon Cuffe Dennant, Esq., J. P., and Irene, 2nd daur. of the Honble.
Philip and Lady Lillian March Mallow; ed. Eton and Ch. Ch., Oxford, J. P.
for Oxfordshire. Residence, Holm Oaks," etc., etc. Dropping the 'Landed
Gentry', he took up a volume of the 'Arabian Nights', which some member
had left reposing on the book-rest of his chair, but instead of reading
he kept looking round the room. In almost every seat, reading or
snoozing, were gentlemen who, in their own estimation, might have married
Penguins. For the first time it struck him with what majestic
leisureliness they turned the pages of their books, trifled with their
teacups, or lightly snored. Yet no two were alike--a tall man-with dark
moustache, thick hair, and red, smooth cheeks; another, bald, with
stooping shoulders; a tremendous old buck, with a grey, pointed beard and
large white waistcoat; a clean-shaven dapper man past middle age, whose
face was like a bird's; a long, sallow, misanthrope; and a sanguine
creature fast asleep. Asleep or awake, reading or snoring, fat or thin,
hairy or bald, the insulation of their red or pale faces was complete.
They were all the creatures of good form. Staring at them or reading the
Arabian Nights Shelton spent the time before dinner. He had not been
long seated in the dining-room when a distant connection strolled up and
took the next table.
"Ah, Shelton! Back? Somebody told me you were goin' round the world."
He scrutinised the menu through his eyeglass. "Clear soup! . . . Read
Jellaby's speech? Amusing the way he squashes all those fellows. Best
man in the House, he really is."
Shelton paused in the assimilation of asparagus; he, too, had been in the
habit of admiring Jellaby, but now he wondered why. The red and shaven
face beside him above a broad, pure shirt-front was swollen by good
humour; his small, very usual, and hard eyes were fixed introspectively
on the successful process of his eating.
"Success!" thought Shelton, suddenly enlightened--"success is what we
admire in Jellaby. We all want success . . . . Yes," he admitted, "a
successful beast."
"Oh!" said his neighbour, "I forgot. You're in the other camp?"
"Not particularly. Where did you get that idea?"
His neighbour looked round negligently.
"Oh," said he, "I somehow thought so"; and Shelton almost heard him
adding, "There's something not quite sound about you."
"Why do you admire Jellaby?" he asked.
"Knows his own mind," replied his neighbour; "it 's more than the others
do . . . . This whitebait is n't fit for cats! Clever fellow,
Jellaby! No nonsense about him! Have you ever heard him speak? Awful
good sport to watch him sittin' on the Opposition. A poor lot they are!"
and he laughed, either from appreciation of Jellaby sitting on a small
minority, or from appreciation of the champagne bubbles in his glass.
"Minorities are always depressing," said Shelton dryly.
"Eh? what?"
"I mean," said Shelton, "it's irritating to look at people who have n't a
chance of success--fellows who make a mess of things, fanatics, and all
that."
His neighbour turned his eyes inquisitively.
"Er--yes, quite," said he; "don't you take mint sauce? It's the best
part of lamb, I always think."
The great room with its countless little tables, arranged so that every
man might have the support of the gold walls to his back, began to regain
its influence on Shelton. How many times had he not sat there, carefully
nodding to acquaintances, happy if he got the table he was used to, a
paper with the latest racing, and someone to gossip with who was not a
bounder; while the sensation of having drunk enough stole over him.
Happy! That is, happy as a horse is happy who never leaves his stall.
"Look at poor little Bing puffin' about," said his neighbour, pointing to
a weazened, hunchy waiter. "His asthma's awf'ly bad; you can hear him
wheezin' from the street."
He seemed amused.
"There 's no such thing as moral asthma, I suppose?" said Shelton.
His neighbour dropped his eyeglass.
"Here, take this away; it's overdone;" said he. "Bring me some lamb."
Shelton pushed his table back.
"Good-night," he said; "the Stilton's excellent!"
His neighbour raised his brows, and dropped his eyes again upon his
plate.
In the hall Shelton went from force of habit to the weighing-scales and
took his weight. "Eleven stone!" he thought; "gone up!" and, clipping a
cigar, he sat down in the smoking-room with a novel.
After half an hour he dropped the book. There seemed something rather
fatuous about this story, for though it had a thrilling plot, and was
full of well-connected people, it had apparently been contrived to throw
no light on anything whatever. He looked at the author's name; everyone
was highly recommending it. He began thinking, and staring at the fire .
. . .
Looking up, he saw Antonia's second brother, a young man in the Rifles,
bending over him with sunny cheeks and lazy smile, clearly just a little
drunk.
"Congratulate you, old chap! I say, what made you grow that b-b-eastly
beard?"
Shelton grinned.
"Pillbottle of the Duchess!" read young Dennant, taking up the book.
"You been reading that? Rippin', is n't it?"
"Oh, ripping!" replied Shelton.
"Rippin' plot! When you get hold of a novel you don't want any rot
about--what d'you call it?--psychology, you want to be amused."
"Rather!" murmured Shelton.
"That's an awfully good bit where the President steals her diamonds
There's old Benjy! Hallo, Benjy!"
"Hallo, Bill, old man!"
This Benjy was a young, clean-shaven creature, whose face and voice and
manner were a perfect blend of steel and geniality.
In addition to this young man who was so smooth and hard and cheery, a
grey, short-bearded gentleman, with misanthropic eyes, called Stroud,
came up; together with another man of Shelton's age, with a moustache and
a bald patch the size of a crown-piece, who might be seen in the club any
night of the year when there was no racing out of reach of London.
"You know," began young Dennant, "that this bounder"--he slapped the
young man Benjy on the knee--"is going to be spliced to-morrow. Miss
Casserol--you know the Casserols--Muncaster Gate."
"By Jove!" said Shelton, delighted to be able to say something they would
understand.
"Young Champion's the best man, and I 'm the second best. I tell you
what, old chap, you 'd better come with me and get your eye in; you won't
get such another chance of practice. Benjy 'll give you a card."
"Delighted!" murmured Benjy.
"Where is it?"
"St. Briabas; two-thirty. Come and see how they do the trick. I'll call
for you at one; we'll have some lunch and go together"; again he patted
Benjy's knee.
Shelton nodded his assent; the piquant callousness of the affair had made
him shiver, and furtively he eyed the steely Benjy, whose suavity had
never wavered, and who appeared to take a greater interest in some
approaching race than in his coming marriage. But Shelton knew from his
own sensations that this could not really be the case; it was merely a
question of "good form," the conceit of a superior breeding, the duty not
to give oneself away. And when in turn he marked the eyes of Stroud
fixed on Benjy, under shaggy brows, and the curious greedy glances of the
racing man, he felt somehow sorry for him.
"Who 's that fellow with the game leg--I'm always seeing him about?"
asked the racing man.
And Shelton saw a sallow man, conspicuous for a want of parting in his
hair and a certain restlessness of attitude.
"His name is Bayes," said Stroud; "spends half his time among the
Chinese--must have a grudge against them! And now he 's got his leg he
can't go there any more."
"Chinese? What does he do to them?"
"Bibles or guns. Don't ask me! An adventurer."
"Looks a bit of a bounder," said the racing man.
Shelton gazed at the twitching eyebrows of old Stroud; he saw at once how
it must annoy a man who had a billet in the "Woods and Forests," and
plenty of time for "bridge" and gossip at his club, to see these people
with untidy lives. A minute later the man with the "game leg" passed
close behind his chair, and Shelton perceived at once how intelligible
the resentment of his fellow-members was. He had eyes which, not
uncommon in this country, looked like fires behind steel bars; he seemed
the very kind of man to do all sorts of things that were "bad form," a
man who might even go as far as chivalry. He looked straight at Shelton,
and his uncompromising glance gave an impression of fierce loneliness;
altogether, an improper person to belong to such a club. Shelton
remembered the words of an old friend of his father's: "Yes, Dick, all
sorts of fellows belong here, and they come here for all sorts o'
reasons, and a lot of em come because they've nowhere else to go, poor
beggars"; and, glancing from the man with the "game leg" to Stroud, it
occurred to Shelton that even he, old Stroud, might be one of these poor
beggars. One never knew! A look at Benjy, contained and cheery,
restored him. Ah, the lucky devil! He would not have to come here any
more! and the thought of the last evening he himself would be spending
before long flooded his mind with a sweetness that was almost pain.
"Benjy, I'll play you a hundred up!" said young Bill Dennant.
Stroud and the racing man went to watch the game; Shelton was left once
more to reverie.
"Good form!" thought he; "that fellow must be made of steel. They'll go
on somewhere; stick about half the night playing poker, or some such
foolery."
He crossed over to the window. Rain had begun to fall; the streets
looked wild and draughty. The cabmen were putting on their coats. Two
women scurried by, huddled under one umbrella, and a thin-clothed,
dogged-looking scarecrow lounged past with a surly, desperate step.
Shelton, returning to his chair, threaded his way amongst his
fellow-members. A procession of old school and college friends came up
before his eyes. After all, what had there been in his own education, or
theirs, to give them any other standard than this "good form"? What had
there been to teach them anything of life? Their imbecility was
incredible when you came to think of it. They had all the air of knowing
everything, and really they knew nothing--nothing of Nature, Art, or the
Emotions; nothing of the bonds that bind all men together. Why, even
such words were not "good form"; nothing outside their little circle was
"good form." They had a fixed point of view over life because they came
of certain schools, and colleges, and regiments! And they were those in
charge of the state, of laws, and science, of the army, and religion.
Well, it was their system--the system not to start too young, to form
healthy fibre, and let the after-life develop it!
"Successful!" he thought, nearly stumbling over a pair of patent-leather
boots belonging to a moon-faced, genial-looking member with gold
nose-nippers; "oh, it 's successful!"
Somebody came and picked up from the table the very volume which had
originally inspired this train of thought, and Shelton could see his
solemn pleasure as he read. In the white of his eye there was a torpid
and composed abstraction. There was nothing in that book to startle him
or make him think.
The moon-faced member with the patent boots came up and began talking of
his recent visit to the south of France. He had a scandalous anecdote or
two to tell, and his broad face beamed behind his gold nose-nippers; he
was a large man with such a store of easy, worldly humour that it was
impossible not to appreciate his gossip, he gave so perfect an impression
of enjoying life, and doing himself well. "Well, good-night!" he
murmured--"An engagement!"--and the certainty he left behind that his
engagement must be charming and illicit was pleasant to the soul.
And, slowly taking up his glass, Shelton drank; the sense of well-being
was upon him. His superiority to these his fellow-members soothed him.
He saw through all the sham of this club life, the meanness of this
worship of success, the sham of kid-gloved novelists, "good form," and
the terrific decency of our education. It was soothing thus to see
through things, soothing thus to be superior; and from the soft recesses
of his chair he puffed out smoke and stretched his limbs toward the fire;
and the fire burned back at him with a discreet and venerable glow.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WEDDING
Puncutal to his word, Bill Dennant called for Shelton at one o'clock.
"I bet old Benjy's feeling a bit cheap," said he, as they got out of
their cab at the church door and passed between the crowded files of
unelect, whose eyes, so curious and pitiful, devoured them from the
pavement.
The ashen face of a woman, with a baby in her arms and two more by her
side, looked as eager as if she had never experienced the pangs of ragged
matrimony. Shelton went in inexplicably uneasy; the price of his tie was
their board and lodging for a week. He followed his future
brother-in-law to a pew on the bridegroom's side, for, with intuitive
perception of the sexes' endless warfare, each of the opposing parties to
this contract had its serried battalion, the arrows of whose suspicion
kept glancing across and across the central aisle.
Bill Dennant's eyes began to twinkle.
"There's old Benjy!" he whispered; and Shelton looked at the hero of the
day. A subdued pallor was traceable under the weathered uniformity of
his shaven face; but the well-bred, artificial smile he bent upon the
guests had its wonted steely suavity. About his dress and his neat
figure was that studied ease which lifts men from the ruck of common
bridegrooms. There were no holes in his armour through which the
impertinent might pry.
"Good old Benjy!" whispered young Dennant; "I say, they look a bit short
of class, those Casserols."
Shelton, who was acquainted with this family, smiled. The sensuous
sanctity all round had begun to influence him. A perfume of flowers and
dresses fought with the natural odour of the church; the rustle of
whisperings and skirts struck through the native silence of the aisles,
and Shelton idly fixed his eyes on a lady in the pew in front; without in
the least desiring to make a speculation of this sort, he wondered
whether her face was as charming as the lines of her back in their
delicate, skin-tight setting of pearl grey; his glance wandered to the
chancel with its stacks of flowers, to the grave, business faces of the
presiding priests, till the organ began rolling out the wedding march.
"They're off!" whispered young Dermant.
Shelton was conscious of a shiver running through the audience which
reminded him of a bullfight he had seen in Spain. The bride came slowly
up the aisle. "Antonia will look like that," he thought, "and the church
will be filled with people like this . . . . She'll be a show to
them!" The bride was opposite him now, and by an instinct of common
chivalry he turned away his eyes; it seemed to him a shame to look at
that downcast head above the silver mystery of her perfect raiment; the
modest head full, doubtless, of devotion and pure yearnings; the stately
head where no such thought as "How am I looking, this day of all days,
before all London?" had ever entered; the proud head, which no such fear
as "How am I carrying it off?" could surely be besmirching.
He saw below the surface of this drama played before his eyes, and set
his face, as a man might who found himself assisting at a sacrifice. The
words fell, unrelenting, on his ears: "For better, for worse, for richer,
for poorer; in sickness and in health--" and opening the Prayer Book he
found the Marriage Service, which he had not looked at since he was a
boy, and as he read he had some very curious sensations.
All this would soon be happening to himself! He went on reading in a
kind of stupor, until aroused by his companion whispering, "No luck!" All
around there rose a rustling of skirts; he saw a tall figure mount the
pulpit and stand motionless. Massive and high-featured, sunken of eye,
he towered, in snowy cambric and a crimson stole, above the blackness of
his rostrum; it seemed he had been chosen for his beauty. Shelton was
still gazing at the stitching of his gloves, when once again the organ
played the Wedding March. All were smiling, and a few were weeping,
craning their heads towards the bride. "Carnival of second-hand
emotions!" thought Shelton; and he, too, craned his head and brushed his
hat. Then, smirking at his friends, he made his way towards the door.
In the Casserols' house he found himself at last going round the presents
with the eldest Casserol surviving, a tall girl in pale violet, who had
been chief bridesmaid.
"Did n't it go off well, Mr. Shelton?" she was saying
"Oh, awfully!"
"I always think it's so awkward for the man waiting up there for the
bride to come."
"Yes," murmured Shelton.
"Don't you think it's smart, the bridesmaids having no hats?"
Shelton had not noticed this improvement, but he agreed.
"That was my idea; I think it 's very chic. They 've had fifteen
tea-sets-so dull, is n't it?"
"By Jove!" Shelton hastened to remark.
"Oh, its fearfully useful to have a lot of things you don't want; of
course, you change them for those you do."
The whole of London seemed to have disgorged its shops into this room; he
looked at Miss Casserol's face, and was greatly struck by the shrewd
acquisitiveness of her small eyes.
"Is that your future brother-in-law?" she asked, pointing to Bill Dennant
with a little movement of her chin; "I think he's such a bright boy. I
want you both to come to dinner, and help to keep things jolly. It's so
deadly after a wedding."
And Shelton said they would.
They adjourned to the hall now, to wait for the bride's departure. Her
face as she came down the stairs was impassive, gay, with a furtive
trouble in the eyes, and once more Shelton had the odd sensation of
having sinned against his manhood. Jammed close to him was her old
nurse, whose puffy, yellow face was pouting with emotion, while tears
rolled from her eyes. She was trying to say something, but in the hubbub
her farewell was lost. There was a scamper to the carriage, a flurry of
rice and flowers; the shoe was flung against the sharply drawn-up window.
Then Benjy's shaven face was seen a moment, bland and steely; the footman
folded his arms, and with a solemn crunch the brougham wheels rolled
away. "How splendidly it went off!" said a voice on Shelton's right.
"She looked a little pale," said a voice on Shelton's left. He put his
hand up to his forehead; behind him the old nurse sniffed.
"Dick," said young Dennant in his ear, "this isn't good enough; I vote we
bolt."
Shelton assenting, they walked towards the Park; nor could he tell
whether the slight nausea he experienced was due to afternoon champagne
or to the ceremony that had gone so well.
"What's up with you?" asked Dennant; "you look as glum as any m-monkey."
"Nothing," said Shelton; "I was only thinking what humbugs we all are!"
Bill Dennant stopped in the middle of the crossing, and clapped his
future brother-in-law upon the shoulder.
"Oh," said he, "if you're going to talk shop, I 'm off."
CHAPTER IX
THE DINNER
The dinner at the Casserols' was given to those of the bride's friends
who had been conspicuous in the day's festivities. Shelton found himself
between Miss Casserol and a lady undressed to much the same degree.
Opposite sat a man with a single diamond stud, a white waistcoat, black
moustache, and hawk-like face. This was, in fact, one of those
interesting houses occupied by people of the upper middle class who have
imbibed a taste for smart society. Its inhabitants, by nature
acquisitive and cautious, economical, tenacious, had learnt to worship
the word "smart." The result was a kind of heavy froth, an air of
thoroughly domestic vice. In addition to the conventionally fast,
Shelton had met there one or two ladies, who, having been divorced, or
having yet to be, still maintained their position in "society." Divorced
ladies who did not so maintain their place were never to be found, for
the Casserols had a great respect for marriage. He had also met there
American ladies who were "too amusing"--never, of course, American men,
Mesopotamians of the financial or the racing type, and several of those
gentlemen who had been, or were about to be, engaged in a transaction
which might or again might not, "come off," and in conduct of an order
which might, or again might not be spotted. The line he knew, was always
drawn at those in any category who were actually found out, for the value
of these ladies and these gentlemen was not their claim to pity--nothing
so sentimental--but their "smartness," clothes, jokes, racing tips, their
"bridge parties," and their motors.
In sum, the house was one whose fundamental domesticity attracted and
sheltered those who were too "smart" to keep their heads for long above
the water.
His host, a grey, clean-shaven city man, with a long upper lip, was
trying to understand a lady the audacity of whose speech came ringing
down the table. Shelton himself had given up the effort with his
neighbours, and made love to his dinner, which, surviving the incoherence
of the atmosphere, emerged as a work of art. It was with surprise that
he found Miss Casserol addressing him.
"I always say that the great thing is to be jolly. If you can't find
anything to make you laugh, pretend you do; it's so much 'smarter to be
amusin'. Now don't you agree?"
The philosophy seemed excellent.
"We can't all be geniuses, but we can all look jolly."
Shelton hastened to look jolly.
"I tell the governor, when he 's glum, that I shall put up the shutters
and leave him. What's the good of mopin' and lookin' miserable? Are you
going to the Four-in-Hand Meet? We're making a party. Such fun; all the
smart people!"
The splendour of her shoulders, her frizzy hair (clearly not two hours
out of the barber's hands), might have made him doubtful; but the frank
shrewdness in her eyes, and her carefully clipped tone of voice, were
guarantees that she was part of the element at the table which was really
quite respectable. He had never realised before how "smart" she was, and
with an effort abandoned himself to a sort of gaiety that would have
killed a Frenchman.
And when she left him, he reflected upon the expression of her eyes when
they rested on a lady opposite, who was a true bird-of-prey. "What is
it," their envious, inquisitive glance had seemed to say, "that makes you
so really 'smart'?" And while still seeking for the reason, he noticed
his host pointing out the merits of his port to the hawk-like man, with a
deferential air quite pitiful to see, for the hawk-like man was clearly a
"bad hat." What in the name of goodness did these staid bourgeois mean
by making up to vice? Was it a craving to be thought distinguished, a
dread of being dull, or merely an effect of overfeeding? Again he looked
at his host, who had not yet enumerated all the virtues of his port, and
again felt sorry for him.
"So you're going to marry Antonia Dennant?" said a voice on his right,
with that easy coarseness which is a mark of caste. "Pretty girl!
They've a nice place, the, Dennants. D' ye know, you're a lucky feller!"
The speaker was an old baronet, with small eyes, a dusky, ruddy face, and
peculiar hail-fellow-well-met expression, at once morose and sly. He was
always hard up, but being a man of enterprise knew all the best people,
as well as all the worst, so that he dined out every night.
"You're a lucky feller," he repeated; "he's got some deuced good
shootin', Dennant! They come too high for me, though; never touched a
feather last time I shot there. She's a pretty girl. You 're a lucky
feller!"
"I know that," said Shelton humbly.
"Wish I were in your shoes. Who was that sittin' on the other side of
you? I'm so dashed short-sighted. Mrs. Carruther? Oh, ay!" An
expression which, if he had not been a baronet, would have been a leer,
came on his lips.
Shelton felt that he was referring to the leaf in his mental pocket-book
covered with the anecdotes, figures, and facts about that lady. "The old
ogre means," thought he, "that I'm lucky because his leaf is blank about
Antonia." But the old baronet had turned, with his smile, and his
sardonic, well-bred air, to listen to a bit of scandal on the other side.
The two men to Shelton's left were talking.
"What! You don't collect anything? How's that? Everybody collects
something. I should be lost without my pictures."
"No, I don't collect anything. Given it up; I was too awfully had over
my Walkers."
Shelton had expected a more lofty reason; he applied himself to the
Madeira in his glass. That, had been "collected" by his host, and its
price was going up! You couldn't get it every day; worth two guineas a
bottle! How precious the idea that other people couldn't get it, made it
seem! Liquid delight; the price was going up! Soon there would be none
left; immense! Absolutely no one, then, could drink it!
"Wish I had some of this," said the old baronet, "but I have drunk all
mine."
"Poor old chap!" thought Shelton; "after all, he's not a bad old boy. I
wish I had his pluck. His liver must be splendid."
The drawing-room was full of people playing a game concerned with horses
ridden by jockeys with the latest seat. And Shelton was compelled to
help in carrying on this sport till early in the morning. At last he
left, exhausted by his animation.
He thought of the wedding; he thought over his dinner and the wine that
he had drunk. His mood of satisfaction fizzled out. These people were
incapable of being real, even the smartest, even the most respectable;
they seemed to weigh their pleasures in the scales and to get the most
that could be gotten for their money.
Between the dark, safe houses stretching for miles and miles, his
thoughts were of Antonia; and as he reached his rooms he was overtaken by
the moment when the town is born again. The first new air had stolen
down; the sky was living, but not yet alight; the trees were quivering
faintly; no living creature stirred, and nothing spoke except his heart.
Suddenly the city seemed to breathe, and Shelton saw that he was not
alone; an unconsidered trifle with inferior boots was asleep upon his
doorstep.
CHAPTER X
AN ALIEN
The individual on the doorstep had fallen into slumber over his own
knees. No greater air of prosperity clung about him than is conveyed by
a rusty overcoat and wisps of cloth in place of socks. Shelton
endeavoured to pass unseen, but the sleeper woke.
"Ah, it's you, monsieur!" he said "I received your letter this evening,
and have lost no time." He looked down at himself and tittered, as
though to say, "But what a state I 'm in!"
The young foreigner's condition was indeed more desperate than on the
occasion of their first meeting, and Shelton invited him upstairs.
"You can well understand," stammered Ferrand, following his host, "that I
did n't want to miss you this time. When one is like this--" and a spasm
gripped his face.
"I 'm very glad you came," said Shelton doubtfully.
His visitor's face had a week's growth of reddish beard; the deep tan of
his cheeks gave him a robust appearance at variance with the fit of,
trembling which had seized on him as soon as he had entered.
"Sit down-sit down," said Shelton; "you 're feeling ill!"
Ferrand smiled. "It's nothing," said he; "bad nourishment."
Shelton left him seated on the edge of an armchair, and brought him in
some whisky.
"Clothes," said Ferrand, when he had drunk, "are what I want. These are
really not good enough."
The statement was correct, and Shelton, placing some garments in the
bath-room, invited his visitor to make himself at home. While the
latter, then, was doing this, Shelton enjoyed the luxuries of
self-denial, hunting up things he did not want, and laying them in two
portmanteaus. This done, he waited for his visitor's return.
The young foreigner at length emerged, unshaved indeed, and innocent of
boots, but having in other respects an air of gratifying affluence.
"This is a little different," he said. "The boots, I fear"--and, pulling
down his, or rather Shelton's, socks he exhibited sores the size of half
a crown. "One does n't sow without reaping some harvest or another. My
stomach has shrunk," he added simply. "To see things one must suffer.
'Voyager, c'est plus fort que moi'!"
Shelton failed to perceive that this was one way of disguising the human
animal's natural dislike of work--there was a touch of pathos, a
suggestion of God-knows-what-might-have-been, about this fellow.
"I have eaten my illusions," said the young foreigner, smoking a
cigarette. "When you've starved a few times, your eyes are opened.
'Savoir, c'est mon metier; mais remarquez ceci, monsieur': It 's not
always the intellectuals who succeed."
"When you get a job," said Shelton, "you throw it away, I suppose."
"You accuse me of restlessness? Shall I explain what I think about that?
I'm restless because of ambition; I want to reconquer an independent
position. I put all my soul into my trials, but as soon as I see there's
no future for me in that line, I give it up and go elsewhere. 'Je ne
veux pas etre rond de cuir,' breaking my back to economise sixpence a
day, and save enough after forty years to drag out the remains of an
exhausted existence. That's not in my character." This ingenious
paraphrase of the words "I soon get tired of things" he pronounced with
an air of letting Shelton into a precious secret.
"Yes; it must be hard," agreed the latter.
Ferrand shrugged his shoulders.
"It's not all butter," he replied; "one is obliged to do things that are
not too delicate. There's nothing I pride myself on but frankness."
Like a good chemist, however, he administered what Shelton could stand in
a judicious way. "Yes, yes," he seemed to say, "you'd like me to think
that you have a perfect knowledge of life: no morality, no prejudices, no
illusions; you'd like me to think that you feel yourself on an equality
with me, one human animal talking to another, without any barriers of
position, money, clothes, or the rest--'ca c'est un peu trop fort'!
You're as good an imitation as I 've come across in your class,
notwithstanding your unfortunate education, and I 'm grateful to you, but
to tell you everything, as it passes through my mind would damage my
prospects. You can hardly expect that."
In one of Shelton's old frock-coats he was impressive, with his air of
natural, almost sensitive refinement. The room looked as if it were
accustomed to him, and more amazing still was the sense of familiarity
that he inspired, as, though he were a part of Shelton's soul. It came
as a shock to realise that this young foreign vagabond had taken such a
place within his thoughts. The pose of his limbs and head, irregular but
not ungraceful; his disillusioned lips; the rings of smoke that issued
from them--all signified rebellion, and the overthrow of law and order.
His thin, lopsided nose, the rapid glances of his goggling, prominent
eyes, were subtlety itself; he stood for discontent with the accepted.
"How do I live when I am on the tramp?" he said, "well, there are the
consuls. The system is not delicate, but when it's a question of
starving, much is permissible; besides, these gentlemen were created for
the purpose. There's a coterie of German Jews in Paris living entirely
upon consuls." He hesitated for the fraction of a second, and resumed:
"Yes, monsieur; if you have papers that fit you, you can try six or seven
consuls in a single town. You must know a language or two; but most of
these gentlemen are not too well up in the tongues of the country they
represent. Obtaining money under false pretences? Well, it is. But
what's the difference at bottom between all this honourable crowd of
directors, fashionable physicians, employers of labour, ferry-builders,
military men, country priests, and consuls themselves perhaps, who take
money and give no value for it, and poor devils who do the same at far
greater risk? Necessity makes the law. If those gentlemen were in my
position, do you think that they would hesitate?"
Shelton's face remaining doubtful, Ferrand went on instantly: "You're
right; they would, from fear, not principle. One must be hard pressed
before committing these indelicacies. Look deep enough, and you will see
what indelicate things are daily done by the respectable for not half so
good a reason as the want of meals."
Shelton also took a cigarette--his own income was derived from property
for which he gave no value in labour.
"I can give you an instance," said Ferrand, "of what can be done by
resolution. One day in a German town, 'etant dans la misere', I decided
to try the French consul. Well, as you know, I am a Fleming, but
something had to be screwed out somewhere. He refused to see me; I sat
down to wait. After about two hours a voice bellowed: 'Has n't the brute
gone?' and my consul appears. 'I 've nothing for fellows like you,' says
he; 'clear out!'
"'Monsieur,' I answered, 'I am skin and bone; I really must have
assistance.'
"'Clear out,' he says, 'or the police shall throw you out!'
"I don't budge. Another hour passes, and back he comes again.
"'Still here?' says he. 'Fetch a sergeant.'
"The sergeant comes.
"'Sergeant,' says the consul, 'turn this creature out.'
"'Sergeant,' I say, 'this house is France!' Naturally, I had calculated
upon that. In Germany they're not too fond of those who undertake the
business of the French.
"'He is right,' says the sergeant; 'I can do nothing.'
"'You refuse?'
"'Absolutely.' And he went away.
"'What do you think you'll get by staying?' says my consul.
"'I have nothing to eat or drink, and nowhere to sleep,' says I.
"'What will you go for?'
"'Ten marks.'
"'Here, then, get out!' I can tell you, monsieur, one must n't have a
thin skin if one wants to exploit consuls."
His yellow fingers slowly rolled the stump of his cigarette, his ironical
lips flickered. Shelton thought of his own ignorance of life. He could
not recollect ever having gone without a meal.
"I suppose," he said feebly, "you've often starved." For, having always
been so well fed, the idea of starvation was attractive.
Ferrand smiled.
"Four days is the longest," said he. "You won't believe that story. . .
. It was in Paris, and I had lost my money on the race-course. There was
some due from home which didn't come. Four days and nights I lived on
water. My clothes were excellent, and I had jewellery; but I never even
thought of pawning them. I suffered most from the notion that people
might guess my state. You don't recognise me now?"
"How old were you then?" said Shelton.
"Seventeen; it's curious what one's like at that age."
By a flash of insight Shelton saw the well-dressed boy, with sensitive,
smooth face, always on the move about the streets of Paris, for fear that
people should observe the condition of his stomach. The story was a
valuable commentary. His thoughts were brusquely interrupted; looking in
Ferrand's face, he saw to his dismay tears rolling down his cheeks.
"I 've suffered too much," he stammered; "what do I care now what becomes
of me?"
Shelton was disconcerted; he wished 'to say something sympathetic,' but,
being an Englishman, could only turn away his eyes.
"Your turn 's coming," he said at last.
"Ah! when you've lived my life," broke out his visitor, "nothing 's any
good. My heart's in rags. Find me anything worth keeping, in this
menagerie."
Moved though he was, Shelton wriggled in his chair, a prey to racial
instinct, to an ingrained over-tenderness, perhaps, of soul that forbade
him from exposing his emotions, and recoiled from the revelation of other
people's. He could stand it on the stage, he could stand it in a book,
but in real life he could not stand it. When Ferrand had gone off with a
portmanteau in each hand, he sat down and told Antonia:
. . . The poor chap broke down and sat crying like a child; and
instead of making me feel sorry, it turned me into stone. The more
sympathetic I wanted to be, the gruffer I grew. Is it fear of ridicule,
independence, or consideration, for others that prevents one from showing
one's feelings?
He went on to tell her of Ferrand's starving four days sooner than face a
pawnbroker; and, reading the letter over before addressing it, the faces
of the three ladies round their snowy cloth arose before him--Antonia's
face, so fair and calm and wind-fresh; her mother's face, a little
creased by time and weather; the maiden aunt's somewhat too thin-and they
seemed to lean at him, alert and decorous, and the words "That's rather
nice!" rang in his ears. He went out to post the letter, and buying a
five-shilling order enclosed it to the little barber, Carolan, as a
reward for delivering his note to Ferrand. He omitted to send his
address with this donation, but whether from delicacy or from caution he
could not have said. Beyond doubt, however, on receiving through Ferrand
the following reply, he felt ashamed and pleased.
3, BLANK Row, WESTMINSTER.
From every well-born soul humanity is owing. A thousand thanks. I
received this morning your postal order; your heart henceforth for me
will be placed beyond all praise.
J. CAROLAN.
CHAPTER XI
THE VISION
A few days later he received a letter from Antonia which filled him with
excitement:
. . . Aunt Charlotte is ever so much better, so mother thinks we can
go home-hurrah! But she says that you and I must keep to our arrangement
not to see each other till July. There will be something fine in being
so near and having the strength to keep apart . . . All the English are
gone. I feel it so empty out here; these people are so funny-all foreign
and shallow. Oh, Dick! how splendid to have an ideal to look up to!
Write at once to Brewer's Hotel and tell me you think the same . . . .
We arrive at Charing Cross on Sunday at half-past seven, stay at Brewer's
for a couple of nights, and go down on Tuesday to Holm Oaks.
Always your
ANTONIA.
"To-morrow!" he thought; "she's coming tomorrow!" and, leaving his
neglected breakfast, he started out to walk off his emotion. His square
ran into one of those slums that still rub shoulders with the most
distinguished situations, and in it he came upon a little crowd assembled
round a dogfight. One of the dogs was being mauled, but the day was
muddy, and Shelton, like any well-bred Englishman, had a horror of making
himself conspicuous even in a decent cause; he looked for a policeman.
One was standing by, to see fair play, and Shelton made appeal to him.
The official suggested that he should not have brought out a fighting
dog, and advised him to throw cold water over them.
"It is n 't my dog," said Shelton.
"Then I should let 'em be," remarked the policeman with evident surprise.
Shelton appealed indefinitely to the lower orders. The lower orders,
however, were afraid of being bitten.
"I would n't meddle with that there job if I was you," said one.
"Nasty breed o' dawg is that."
He was therefore obliged to cast away respectability, spoil his trousers
and his gloves, break his umbrella, drop his hat in the mud, and separate
the dogs. At the conclusion of the "job," the lower orders said to him
in a rather shamefaced spanner:
"Well, I never thought you'd have managed that, sir"; but, like all men
of inaction, Shelton after action was more dangerous.
"D----n it!" he said, "one can't let a dog be killed"; and he marched
off, towing the injured dog with his pocket-handkerchief, and looking
scornfully at harmless passers-by. Having satisfied for once the
smouldering fires within him, he felt entitled to hold a low opinion of
these men in the street. "The brutes," he thought, "won't stir a finger
to save a poor dumb creature, and as for policemen--" But, growing
cooler, he began to see that people weighted down by "honest toil" could
not afford to tear their trousers or get a bitten hand, and that even the
policeman, though he had looked so like a demi-god, was absolutely made
of flesh and blood. He took the dog home, and, sending for a vet., had
him sewn up.
He was already tortured by the doubt whether or no he might venture to
meet Antonia at the station, and, after sending his servant with the dog
to the address marked on its collar, he formed the resolve to go and see
his mother, with some vague notion that she might help him to decide.
She lived in Kensington, and, crossing the Brompton Road, he was soon
amongst that maze of houses into the fibre of whose structure architects
have wrought the motto: "Keep what you have--wives, money, a good
address, and all the blessings of a moral state!"
Shelton pondered as he passed house after house of such intense
respectability that even dogs were known to bark at them. His blood was
still too hot; it is amazing what incidents will promote the loftiest
philosophy. He had been reading in his favourite review an article
eulogising the freedom and expansion which had made the upper middle
class so fine a body; and with eyes wandering from side to side he nodded
his head ironically. "Expansion and freedom," ran his thoughts: "Freedom
and expansion!"
Each house-front was cold and formal, the shell of an owner with from
three to five thousand pounds a year, and each one was armoured against
the opinion of its neighbours by a sort of daring regularity. "Conscious
of my rectitude; and by the strict observance of exactly what is
necessary and no more, I am enabled to hold my head up in the world. The
person who lives in me has only four thousand two hundred and fifty-five
pounds each year, after allowing for the income tax." Such seemed the
legend of these houses.
Shelton passed ladies in ones and twos and threes going out shopping, or
to classes of drawing, cooking, ambulance. Hardly any men were seen, and
they were mostly policemen; but a few disillusioned children were being
wheeled towards the Park by fresh-cheeked nurses, accompanied by a great
army of hairy or of hairless dogs.
There was something of her brother's large liberality about Mrs. Shelton,
a tiny lady with affectionate eyes, warm cheeks, and chilly feet; fond
as a cat of a chair by the fire, and full of the sympathy that has no
insight. She kissed her son at once with rapture, and, as usual, began
to talk of his engagement. For the first time a tremor of doubt ran
through her son; his mother's view of it grated on him like the sight of
a blue-pink dress; it was too rosy. Her splendid optimism, damped him;
it had too little traffic with the reasoning powers.
"What right," he asked himself, "has she to be so certain? It seems to
me a kind of blasphemy."
"The dear!" she cooed. "And she is coming back to-morrow? Hurrah! how I
long to see her!"
"But you know, mother, we've agreed not to meet again until July."
Mrs. Shelton rocked her foot, and, holding her head on one side like a
little bird, looked at her son with shining eyes.
"Dear old Dick!" she said, "how happy you must be!"
Half a century of sympathy with weddings of all sorts--good, bad,
indifferent--beamed from her.
"I suppose," said Shelton gloomily, "I ought not to go and see her at the
station."
"Cheer up!" replied the mother, and her son felt dreadfully depressed.
That "Cheer-up!"--the panacea which had carried her blind and bright
through every evil--was as void of meaning to him as wine without a
flavour.
"And how is your sciatica?" he asked.
"Oh, pretty bad," returned his mother; "I expect it's all right, really.
Cheer up!" She stretched her little figure, canting her head still more.
"Wonderful woman!" Shelton thought. She had, in fact, like many of her
fellow-countrymen, mislaid the darker side of things, and, enjoying the
benefits of orthodoxy with an easy conscience, had kept as young in heart
as any girl of thirty.
Shelton left her house as doubtful whether he might meet Antonia as when
he entered it. He spent a restless afternoon.
The next day--that of her arrival--was a Sunday. He had made Ferrand a
promise to go with him to hear a sermon in the slums, and, catching at
any diversion which might allay excitement, he fulfilled it. The
preacher in question--an amateur, so Ferrand told him--had an original
method of distributing the funds that he obtained. To male sheep he gave
nothing, to ugly female sheep a very little, to pretty female sheep the
rest. Ferrand hazarded an inference, but he was a foreigner. The
Englishman preferred to look upon the preacher as guided by a purely
abstract love of beauty. His eloquence, at any rate, was unquestionable,
and Shelton came out feeling sick.
It was not yet seven o'clock, so, entering an Italian restaurant to kill
the half-hour before Antonia's arrival, he ordered a bottle of wine for
his companion, a cup of coffee for himself, and, lighting a cigarette,
compressed his lips. There was a strange, sweet sinking in his heart.
His companion, ignorant of this emotion, drank his wine, crumbled his
roll, and blew smoke through his nostrils, glancing caustically at the
rows of little tables, the cheap mirrors, the hot, red velvet, the
chandeliers. His juicy lips seemed to be murmuring, "Ah! if you only
knew of the dirt behind these feathers!" Shelton watched him with
disgust. Though his clothes were now so nice, his nails were not quite
clean, and his fingertips seemed yellow to the bone. An anaemic waiter
in a shirt some four days old, with grease-spots on his garments and a
crumpled napkin on his arm, stood leaning an elbow amongst doubtful
fruits, and reading an Italian journal. Resting his tired feet in turn,
he looked like overwork personified, and when he moved, each limb accused
the sordid smartness of the walls. In the far corner sat a lady eating,
and, mirrored opposite, her feathered hat, her short, round face, its
coat of powder, and dark eyes, gave Shelton a shiver of disgust. His
companion's gaze rested long and subtly on her.
"Excuse me, monsieur," he said at length. "I think I know that lady!"
And, leaving his host, he crossed the room, bowed, accosted her, and sat
down. With Pharisaic delicacy, Shelton refrained from looking. But
presently Ferrand came back; the lady rose and left the restaurant; she
had been crying. The young foreigner was flushed, his face contorted; he
did not touch his wine.
"I was right," he said; "she is the wife of an old friend. I used to
know her well."
He was suffering from emotion, but someone less absorbed than Shelton
might have noticed a kind of relish in his voice, as though he were
savouring life's dishes, and glad to have something new, and spiced with
tragic sauce, to set before his patron.
"You can find her story by the hundred in your streets, but nothing
hinders these paragons of virtue"--he nodded at the stream of
carriages--"from turning up their eyes when they see ladies of her sort
pass. She came to London--just three years ago. After a year one of her
little boys took fever--the shop was avoided--her husband caught it, and
died. There she was, left with two children and everything gone to pay
the debts. She tried to get work; no one helped her. There was no money
to pay anyone to stay with the children; all the work she could get in
the house was not enough to keep them alive. She's not a strong woman.
Well, she put the children out to nurse, and went to the streets. The
first week was frightful, but now she's used to it--one gets used to
anything."
"Can nothing be done?" asked Shelton, startled.
"No," returned his companion. "I know that sort; if they once take to it
all's over. They get used to luxury. One does n't part with luxury,
after tasting destitution. She tells me she does very nicely; the
children are happy; she's able to pay well and see them sometimes. She
was a girl of good family, too, who loved her husband, and gave up much
for him. What would you have? Three quarters of your virtuous ladies
placed in her position would do the same if they had the necessary
looks."
It was evident that he felt the shock of this discovery, and Shelton
understood that personal acquaintance makes a difference, even in a
vagabond.
"This is her beat," said the young foreigner, as they passed the
illuminated crescent, where nightly the shadows of hypocrites and women
fall; and Shelton went from these comments on Christianity to the station
of Charing Cross. There, as he stood waiting in the shadow, his heart
was in his mouth; and it struck him as odd that he should have come to
this meeting fresh from a vagabond's society.
Presently, amongst the stream of travellers, he saw Antonia. She was
close to her mother, who was parleying with a footman; behind them were a
maid carrying a bandbox and a porter with the travelling-bags. Antonia's
figure, with its throat settled in the collar of her cape, slender, tall,
severe, looked impatient and remote amongst the bustle. Her eyes,
shadowed by the journey, glanced eagerly about, welcoming all she saw; a
wisp of hair was loose above her ear, her cheeks glowed cold and rosy.
She caught sight of Shelton, and bending her neck, stag-like, stood
looking at him; a brilliant smile parted her lips, and Shelton trembled.
Here was the embodiment of all he had desired for weeks. He could not
tell what was behind that smile of hers--passionate aching or only some
ideal, some chaste and glacial intangibility. It seemed to be shining
past him into the gloomy station. There was no trembling and
uncertainty, no rage of possession in that brilliant smile; it had the
gleam of fixedness, like the smiling of a star. What did it matter? She
was there, beautiful as a young day, and smiling at him; and she was his,
only divided from him by a space of time. He took a step; her eyes fell
at once, her face regained aloofness; he saw her, encircled by mother,
footman, maid, and porter, take her seat and drive away. It was over; she
had seen him, she had smiled, but alongside his delight lurked another
feeling, and, by a bitter freak, not her face came up before him but the
face of that lady in the restaurant--short, round, and powdered, with
black-circled eyes. What right had we to scorn them? Had they mothers,
footmen, porters, maids? He shivered, but this time with physical
disgust; the powdered face with dark-fringed eyes had vanished; the fair,
remote figure of the railway-station came back again.
He sat long over dinner, drinking, dreaming; he sat long after, smoking,
dreaming, and when at length he drove away, wine and dreams fumed in his
brain. The dance of lamps, the cream-cheese moon, the rays of clean wet
light on his horse's harness, the jingling of the cab bell, the whirring
wheels, the night air and the branches--it was all so good! He threw
back the hansom doors to feel the touch of the warm breeze. The crowds
on the pavement gave him strange delight; they were like shadows, in some
great illusion, happy shadows, thronging, wheeling round the single
figure of his world.
CHAPTER XII
ROTTEN ROW
With a headache and a sense of restlessness, hopeful and unhappy, Shelton
mounted his hack next morning for a gallop in the Park.
In the sky was mingled all the languor and the violence of the spring.
The trees and flowers wore an awakened look in the gleams of light that
came stealing down from behind the purple of the clouds. The air was
rain-washed, and the passers by seemed to wear an air of tranquil
carelessness, as if anxiety were paralysed by their responsibility of the
firmament.
Thronged by riders, the Row was all astir.
Near to Hyde Park Corner a figure by the rails caught Shelton's eye.
Straight and thin, one shoulder humped a little, as if its owner were
reflecting, clothed in a frock-coat and a brown felt hat pinched up in
lawless fashion, this figure was so detached from its surroundings that
it would have been noticeable anywhere. It belonged to Ferrand,
obviously waiting till it was time to breakfast with his patron. Shelton
found pleasure in thus observing him unseen, and sat quietly on his
horse, hidden behind a tree.
It was just at that spot where riders, unable to get further, are for
ever wheeling their horses for another turn; and there Ferrand, the bird
of passage, with his head a little to one side, watched them cantering,
trotting, wheeling up and down.
Three men walking along the rails were snatching off their hats before a
horsewoman at exactly the same angle and with precisely the same air, as
though in the modish performance of this ancient rite they were
satisfying some instinct very dear to them.
Shelton noted the curl of Ferrand's lip as he watched this sight. "Many
thanks, gentlemen," it seemed to say; "in that charming little action you
have shown me all your souls."
What a singular gift the fellow had of divesting things and people of
their garments, of tearing away their veil of shams, and their
phylacteries! Shelton turned and cantered on; his thoughts were with
Antonia, and he did not want the glamour stripped away.
He was glancing at the sky, that every moment threatened to discharge a
violent shower of rain, when suddenly he heard his name called from
behind, and who should ride up to him on either side but Bill Dennant
and--Antonia herself!
They had been galloping; and she was flushed--flushed as when she stood
on the old tower at Hyeres, but with a joyful radiance different from the
calm and conquering radiance of that other moment. To Shelton's delight
they fell into line with him, and all three went galloping along the
strip between the trees and rails. The look she gave him seemed to say,
"I don't care if it is forbidden!" but she did not speak. He could not
take his eyes off her. How lovely she looked, with the resolute curve of
her figure, the glimpse of gold under her hat, the glorious colour in her
cheeks, as if she had been kissed.
"It 's so splendid to be at home! Let 's go faster, faster!" she cried
out.
"Take a pull. We shall get run in," grumbled her brother, with a
chuckle.
They reined in round the bend and jogged more soberly down on the far
side; still not a word from her to Shelton, and Shelton in his turn spoke
only to Bill Dennant. He was afraid to speak to her, for he knew that
her mind was dwelling on this chance forbidden meeting in a way quite
different from his own.
Approaching Hyde Park Corner, where Ferrand was still standing against
the rails, Shelton, who had forgotten his existence, suffered a shock
when his eyes fell suddenly on that impassive figure. He was about to
raise his hand, when he saw that the young foreigner, noting his
instinctive feeling, had at once adapted himself to it. They passed
again without a greeting, unless that swift inquisition; followed by
unconsciousness in Ferrand's eyes, could so be called. But the feeling of
idiotic happiness left Shelton; he grew irritated at this silence. It
tantalised him more and more, for Bill Dennant had lagged behind to
chatter to a friend; Shelton and Antonia were alone, walking their
horses, without a word, not even looking at each other. At one moment he
thought of galloping ahead and leaving her, then of breaking the vow of
muteness she seemed to be imposing on him, and he kept thinking: "It
ought to be either one thing or the other. I can't stand this." Her
calmness was getting on his nerves; she seemed to have determined just
how far she meant to go, to have fixed cold-bloodedly a limit. In her
happy young beauty and radiant coolness she summed up that sane
consistent something existing in nine out of ten of the people Shelton
knew. "I can't stand it long," he thought, and all of a sudden spoke;
but as he did so she frowned and cantered on. When he caught her she was
smiling, lifting her face to catch the raindrops which were falling fast.
She gave him just a nod, and waved her hand as a sign for him to go; and
when he would not, she frowned. He saw Bill Dennant, posting after them,
and, seized by a sense of the ridiculous, lifted his hat, and galloped
off.
The rain was coming down in torrents now, and every one was scurrying for
shelter. He looked back from the bend, and could still make out Antonia
riding leisurely, her face upturned, and revelling in the shower. Why
had n't she either cut him altogether or taken the sweets the gods had
sent? It seemed wicked to have wasted such a chance, and, ploughing back
to Hyde Park Corner, he turned his head to see if by any chance she had
relented.
His irritation was soon gone, but his longing stayed. Was ever anything
so beautiful as she had looked with her face turned to the rain? She
seemed to love the rain. It suited her--suited her ever so much better
than the sunshine of the South. Yes, she was very English! Puzzling and
fretting, he reached his rooms. Ferrand had not arrived, in fact did not
turn up that day. His non-appearance afforded Shelton another proof of
the delicacy that went hand in hand with the young vagrant's cynicism.
In the afternoon he received a note.
. . . You see, Dick [he read], I ought to have cut you; but I felt too
crazy--everything seems so jolly at home, even this stuffy old London.
Of course, I wanted to talk to you badly--there are heaps of things one
can't say by letter--but I should have been sorry afterwards. I told
mother. She said I was quite right, but I don't think she took it in.
Don't you feel that the only thing that really matters is to have an
ideal, and to keep it so safe that you can always look forward and feel
that you have been--I can't exactly express my meaning.
Shelton lit a cigarette and frowned. It seemed to him queer that she
should set more store by an "ideal" than by the fact that they had met
for the first and only time in many weeks.
"I suppose she 's right," he thought--"I suppose she 's right. I ought
not to have tried to speak to her!" As a matter of fact, he did not at
all feel that she was right.
CHAPTER XIII
AN "AT HOME"
On Tuesday morning he wandered off to Paddington, hoping for a chance
view of her on her way down to Holm Oaks; but the sense of the
ridiculous, on which he had been nurtured, was strong enough to keep him
from actually entering the station and lurking about until she came.
With a pang of disappointment he retraced his steps from Praed Street to
the Park, and once there tried no further to waylay her. He paid a round
of calls in the afternoon, mostly on her relations; and, seeking out Aunt
Charlotte, he dolorously related his encounter in the Row. But she found
it "rather nice," and on his pressing her with his views, she murmured
that it was "quite romantic, don't you know."
"Still, it's very hard," said Shelton; and he went away disconsolate.
As he was dressing for dinner his eye fell on a card announcing the "at
home" of one of his own cousins. Her husband was a composer, and he had
a vague idea that he would find at the house of a composer some quite
unusually free kind of atmosphere. After dining at the club, therefore,
he set out for Chelsea. The party was held in a large room on the
ground-floor, which was already crowded with people when Shelton entered.
They stood or sat about in groups with smiles fixed on their lips, and
the light from balloon-like lamps fell in patches on their heads and
hands and shoulders. Someone had just finished rendering on the piano a
composition of his own. An expert could at once have picked out from
amongst the applauding company those who were musicians by profession,
for their eyes sparkled, and a certain acidity pervaded their enthusiasm.
This freemasonry of professional intolerance flew from one to the other
like a breath of unanimity, and the faint shrugging of shoulders was as
harmonious as though one of the high windows had been opened suddenly,
admitting a draught of chill May air.
Shelton made his way up to his cousin--a fragile, grey-haired woman in
black velvet and Venetian lace, whose starry eyes beamed at him, until
her duties, after the custom of these social gatherings, obliged her to
break off conversation just as it began to interest him. He was passed
on to another lady who was already talking to two gentlemen, and, their
volubility being greater than his own, he fell into the position of
observer. Instead of the profound questions he had somehow expected to
hear raised, everybody seemed gossiping, or searching the heart of such
topics as where to go this summer, or how to get new servants. Trifling
with coffee-cups, they dissected their fellow artists in the same way as
his society friends of the other night had dissected the fellow--"smart";
and the varnish on the floor, the pictures, and the piano were reflected
on all the faces around. Shelton moved from group to group disconsolate.
A tall, imposing person stood under a Japanese print holding the palm of
one hand outspread; his unwieldy trunk and thin legs wobbled in concert
to his ingratiating voice.
"War," he was saying, "is not necessary. War is not necessary. I hope I
make myself clear. War is not necessary; it depends on nationality, but
nationality is not necessary." He inclined his head to one side, "Why do
we have nationality? Let us do away with boundaries--let us have the
warfare of commerce. If I see France looking at Brighton"--he laid his
head upon one side, and beamed at Shelton,--"what do I do? Do I say
'Hands off'? No. 'Take it,' I say--take it!'" He archly smiled. "But
do you think they would?"
And the softness of his contours fascinated Shelton.
"The soldier," the person underneath the print resumed, "is necessarily
on a lower plane--intellectually--oh, intellectually--than the
philanthropist. His sufferings are less acute; he enjoys the
compensations of advertisement--you admit that?" he breathed
persuasively. "For instance--I am quite impersonal--I suffer; but do I
talk about it?" But, someone gazing at his well-filled waistcoat, he put
his thesis in another form: "I have one acre and one cow, my brother has
one acre and one cow: do I seek to take them away from him?"
Shelton hazarded, "Perhaps you 're weaker than your brother."
"Come, come! Take the case of women: now, I consider our marriage laws
are barbarous."
For the first time Shelton conceived respect for them; he made a
comprehensive gesture, and edged himself into the conversation of another
group, for fear of having all his prejudices overturned. Here an Irish
sculptor, standing in a curve, was saying furiously, "Bees are not
bhumpkins, d---n their sowls!" A Scotch painter, who listened with a
curly smile, seemed trying to compromise this proposition, which appeared
to have relation to the middle classes; and though agreeing with the
Irishman, Shelton felt nervous over his discharge of electricity. Next
to them two American ladies, assembled under the tent of hair belonging
to a writer of songs, were discussing the emotions aroused in them by
Wagner's operas.
"They produce a strange condition of affairs in me," said the thinner
one.
"They 're just divine," said the fatter.
"I don't know if you can call the fleshly lusts divine," replied the
thinner, looking into the eyes of the writer of the songs.
Amidst all the hum of voices and the fumes of smoke, a sense of formality
was haunting Shelton. Sandwiched between a Dutchman and a Prussian poet,
he could understand neither of his neighbours; so, assuming an
intelligent expression, he fell to thinking that an assemblage of free
spirits is as much bound by the convention of exchanging their ideas as
commonplace people are by the convention of having no ideas to traffic
in. He could not help wondering whether, in the bulk, they were not just
as dependent on each other as the inhabitants of Kensington; whether,
like locomotives, they could run at all without these opportunities for
blowing off the steam, and what would be left when the steam had all
escaped. Somebody ceased playing the violin, and close to him a group
began discussing ethics. Aspirations were in the air all round, like a
lot of hungry ghosts. He realised that, if tongue be given to them, the
flavour vanishes from ideas which haunt the soul.
Again the violinist played.
"Cock gracious!" said the Prussian poet, falling into English as the
fiddle ceased: "Colossal! 'Aber, wie er ist grossartig'!"
"Have you read that thing of Besom's?" asked shrill voice behind.
"Oh, my dear fellow! too horrid for words; he ought to be hanged!"
"The man's dreadful," pursued the voice, shriller than ever; "nothing but
a volcanic eruption would cure him."
Shelton turned in alarm to look at the authors of these statements. They
were two men of letters talking of a third.
"'C'est un grand naif, vous savez,'" said the second speaker.
"These fellows don't exist," resumed the first; his small eyes gleamed
with a green light, his whole face had a look as if he gnawed himself.
Though not a man of letters, Shelton could not help recognising from
those eyes what joy it was to say those words: "These fellows don't
exist!"
"Poor Besom! You know what Moulter said . . ."
Shelton turned away, as if he had been too close to one whose hair smelt
of cantharides; and, looking round the room, he frowned. With the
exception of his cousin, he seemed the only person there of English
blood. Americans, Mesopotamians, Irish, Italians, Germans, Scotch, and
Russians. He was not contemptuous of them for being foreigners; it was
simply that God and the climate had made him different by a skin or so.
But at this point his conclusions were denied (as will sometimes happen)
by his introduction to an Englishman--a Major Somebody, who, with smooth
hair and blond moustache, neat eyes and neater clothes, seemed a little
anxious at his own presence there. Shelton took a liking to him, partly
from a fellow-feeling, and partly because of the gentle smile with which
he was looking at his wife. Almost before he had said "How do you do?"
he was plunged into a discussion on imperialism.
"Admitting all that," said Shelton, "what I hate is the humbug with which
we pride ourselves on benefiting the whole world by our so-called
civilising methods."
The soldier turned his reasonable eyes.
"But is it humbug?"
Shelton saw his argument in peril. If we really thought it, was it
humbug? He replied, however:
"Why should we, a small portion of the world's population, assume that
our standards are the proper ones for every kind of race? If it 's not
humbug, it 's sheer stupidity."
The soldier, without taking his hands out of his pockets, but by a
forward movement of his face showing that he was both sincere and just,
re-replied:
"Well, it must be a good sort of stupidity; it makes us the nation that
we are."
Shelton felt dazed. The conversation buzzed around him; he heard the
smiling prophet saying, "Altruism, altruism," and in his voice a
something seemed to murmur, "Oh, I do so hope I make a good impression!"
He looked at the soldier's clear-cut head with its well-opened eyes, the
tiny crow's-feet at their corners, the conventional moustache; he envied
the certainty of the convictions lying under that well-parted hair.
"I would rather we were men first and then Englishmen," he muttered; "I
think it's all a sort of national illusion, and I can't stand illusions."
"If you come to that," said the soldier, "the world lives by illusions.
I mean, if you look at history, you'll see that the creation of illusions
has always been her business, don't you know."
This Shelton was unable to deny.
"So," continued the soldier (who was evidently a highly cultivated man),
"if you admit that movement, labour, progress, and all that have been
properly given to building up these illusions, that--er--in fact, they're
what you might call--er--the outcome of the world's crescendo," he rushed
his voice over this phrase as if ashamed of it--"why do you want to
destroy them?"
Shelton thought a moment, then, squeezing his body with his folded arms,
replied:
"The past has made us what we are, of course, and cannot be destroyed;
but how about the future? It 's surely time to let in air. Cathedrals
are very fine, and everybody likes the smell of incense; but when they
've been for centuries without ventilation you know what the atmosphere
gets like."
The soldier smiled.
"By your own admission," he said, "you'll only be creating a fresh set of
illusions."
"Yes," answered Shelton, "but at all events they'll be the honest
necessities of the present."
The pupils of the soldier's eyes contracted; he evidently felt the
conversation slipping into generalities; he answered:
"I can't see how thinking small beer of ourselves is going to do us any
good!"
An "At Home!"
Shelton felt in danger of being thought unpractical in giving vent to the
remark:
"One must trust one's reason; I never can persuade myself that I believe
in what I don't."
A minute later, with a cordial handshake, the soldier left, and Shelton
watched his courteous figure shepherding his wife away.
"Dick, may I introduce you to Mr. Wilfrid Curly?" said his cousin's voice
behind, and he found his hand being diffidently shaken by a fresh-cheeked
youth with a dome-like forehead, who was saying nervously:
"How do you do? Yes, I am very well, thank you!"
He now remembered that when he had first come in he had watched this
youth, who had been standing in a corner indulging himself in private
smiles. He had an uncommon look, as though he were in love with life--as
though he regarded it as a creature to whom one could put questions to
the very end--interesting, humorous, earnest questions. He looked
diffident, and amiable, and independent, and he, too, was evidently
English.
"Are you good at argument?" said Shelton, at a loss for a remark.
The youth smiled, blushed, and, putting back his hair, replied:
"Yes--no--I don't know; I think my brain does n't work fast enough for
argument. You know how many motions of the brain-cells go to each
remark. It 's awfully interesting"; and, bending from the waist in a
mathematical position, he extended the palm of one hand, and started to
explain.
Shelton stared at the youth's hand, at his frowns and the taps he gave
his forehead while he found the expression of his meaning; he was
intensely interested. The youth broke off, looked at his watch, and,
blushing brightly, said:
"I 'm afraid I have to go; I have to be at the 'Den' before eleven."
"I must be off, too," said Shelton. Making their adieux together, they
sought their hats and coats.
CHAPTER XIV
THE NIGHT CLUB
"May I ask," said Shelton, as he and the youth came out into the chilly
street, "What it is you call the 'Den'?"
His companion smilingly answered:
"Oh, the night club. We take it in turns. Thursday is my night. Would
you like to come? You see a lot of types. It's only round the corner."
Shelton digested a momentary doubt, and answered:
"Yes, immensely."
They reached the corner house in an angle of a, dismal street, through
the open door of which two men had just gone in. Following, they
ascended some wooden, fresh-washed stairs, and entered a large boarded
room smelling of sawdust, gas, stale coffee, and old clothes. It was
furnished with a bagatelle board, two or three wooden tables, some wooden
forms, and a wooden bookcase. Seated on these wooden chairs, or standing
up, were youths, and older men of the working class, who seemed to
Shelton to be peculiarly dejected. One was reading, one against the wall
was drinking coffee with a disillusioned air, two were playing chess, and
a group of four made a ceaseless clatter with the bagatelle.
A little man in a dark suit, with a pale face, thin lips, and deep-set,
black-encircled eyes, who was obviously in charge, came up with an
anaemic smile.
"You 're rather late," he said to Curly, and, looking ascetically at
Shelton, asked, without waiting for an introduction: "Do you play chess?
There 's young Smith wants a game."
A youth with a wooden face, already seated before a fly-blown
chess-board, asked him drearily if he would have black or white. Shelton
took white; he was oppressed by the virtuous odour of this room.
The little man with the deep blue eyes came up, stood in an uneasy
attitude, and watched:
"Your play's improving, young Smith," he said; "I should think you'd be
able to give Banks a knight." His eyes rested on Shelton, fanatical and
dreary; his monotonous voice was suffering and nasal; he was continually
sucking in his lips, as though determined to subdue 'the flesh. "You
should come here often," he said to Shelton, as the latter received
checkmate; "you 'd get some good practice. We've several very fair
players. You're not as good as Jones or Bartholomew," he added to
Shelton's opponent, as though he felt it a duty to put the latter in his
place. "You ought to come here often," he repeated to Shelton; "we have
a lot of very good young fellows"; and, with a touch of complacence, he
glanced around the dismal room. "There are not so many here tonight as
usual. Where are Toombs and Body?"
Shelton, too, looked anxiously around. He could not help feeling
sympathy with Toombs and Body.
"They 're getting slack, I'm afraid," said the little deep-eyed man. "Our
principle is to amuse everyone. Excuse me a minute; I see that Carpenter
is doing nothing." He crossed over to the man who had been drinking
coffee, but Shelton had barely time to glance at his opponent and try to
think of a remark, before the little man was back. "Do you know anything
about astronomy?" he asked of Shelton. "We have several very interested
in astronomy; if you could talk to them a little it would help."
Shelton made a motion of alarm.
"Please-no," said he; "I--"
"I wish you'd come sometimes on Wednesdays; we have most interesting
talks, and a service afterwards. We're always anxious to get new blood";
and his eyes searched Shelton's brown, rather tough-looking face, as
though trying to see how much blood there was in it. "Young Curly says
you 've just been around the world; you could describe your travels."
"May I ask," said Shelton, "how your club is made up?"
Again a look of complacency, and blessed assuagement, visited the little
man.
"Oh," he said, "we take anybody, unless there 's anything against them.
The Day Society sees to that. Of course, we shouldn't take anyone if
they were to report against them. You ought to come to our committee
meetings; they're on Mondays at seven. The women's side, too--"
"Thank you," said Shelton; "you 're very kind--"
"We should be pleased," said the little man; and his face seemed to
suffer more than ever. "They 're mostly young fellows here to-night, but
we have married men, too. Of course, we 're very careful about that," he
added hastily, as though he might have injured Shelton's
prejudices--"that, and drink, and anything criminal, you know."
"And do you give pecuniary assistance, too?"
"Oh yes," replied the little man; "if you were to come to our committee
meetings you would see for yourself. Everything is most carefully gone
into; we endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff."
"I suppose," said Shelton, "you find a great deal of chaff?"
The little man smiled a suffering smile. The twang of his toneless voice
sounded a trifle shriller.
"I was obliged to refuse a man to-day--a man and a woman, quite young
people, with three small children. He was ill and out of work; but on
inquiry we found that they were not man and wife."
There was a slight pause; the little man's eyes were fastened on his
nails, and, with an appearance of enjoyment, he began to bite them.
Shelton's face had grown a trifle red.
"And what becomes of the woman and the children in a case like that?" he
said.
The little man's eyes began to smoulder.
"We make a point of not encouraging sin, of course. Excuse me a minute;
I see they've finished bagatelle."
He hurried off, and in a moment the clack of bagatelle began again. He
himself was playing with a cold and spurious energy, running after the
balls and exhorting the other players, upon whom a wooden acquiescence
seemed to fall.
Shelton crossed the room, and went up to young Curly. He was sitting on
a bench, smiling to himself his private smiles.
"Are you staying here much longer?" Shelton asked.
Young Curly rose with nervous haste.
"I 'm afraid," he said, "there 's nobody very interesting here to-night."
"Oh, not at all!" said Shelton; "on the contrary. Only I 've had a
rather tiring day, and somehow I don't feel up to the standard here."
His new acquaintance smiled.
"Oh, really! do you think--that is--"
But he had not time to finish before the clack of bagatelle balls ceased,
and the voice of the little deep-eyed man was heard saying: "Anybody who
wants a book will put his name down. There will be the usual
prayer-meeting on Wednesday next. Will you all go quietly? I am going
to turn the lights out."
One gas-jet vanished, and the remaining jet flared suddenly. By its
harder glare the wooden room looked harder too, and disenchanting. The
figures of its occupants began filing through the door. The little man
was left in the centre of the room, his deep eyes smouldering upon the
backs of the retreating members, his thumb and finger raised to the
turncock of the metre.
"Do you know this part?" asked young Curly as they emerged into the
street. "It 's really jolly; one of the darkest bits in London--it is
really. If you care, I can take you through an awfully dangerous place
where the police never go." He seemed so anxious for the honour that
Shelton was loath to disappoint him. "I come here pretty often," he went
on, as they ascended a sort of alley rambling darkly between a wall and
row of houses.
"Why?" asked Shelton; "it does n't smell too nice."
The young man threw up his nose and sniffed, as if eager to add any new
scent that might be about to his knowledge of life.
"No, that's one of the reasons, you know," he said; "one must find out.
The darkness is jolly, too; anything might happen here. Last week there
was a murder; there 's always the chance of one."
Shelton stared; but the charge of morbidness would not lie against this
fresh-cheeked stripling.
"There's a splendid drain just here," his guide resumed; "the people are
dying like flies of typhoid in those three houses"; and under the first
light he turned his grave, cherubic face to indicate the houses. "If we
were in the East End, I could show you other places quite as good.
There's a coffee-stall keeper in one that knows all the thieves in
London; he 's a splendid type, but," he added, looking a little anxiously
at Shelton, "it might n't be safe for you. With me it's different; they
're beginning to know me. I've nothing to take, you see."
"I'm afraid it can't be to-night," said Shelton; "I must get back."
"Do you mind if I walk with you? It's so jolly now the stars are out."
"Delighted," said Shelton; "do you often go to that club?"
His companion raised his hat, and ran his fingers through his hair.
"They 're rather too high-class for me," he said. "I like to go where
you can see people eat--school treats, or somewhere in the country. It
does one good to see them eat. They don't get enough, you see, as a
rule, to make bone; it's all used up for brain and muscle. There are
some places in the winter where they give them bread and cocoa; I like to
go to those."
"I went once," said Shelton, "but I felt ashamed for putting my nose in."
"Oh, they don't mind; most of them are half-dead with cold, you know. You
see splendid types; lots of dipsomaniacs . . . . It 's useful to me,"
he went on as they passed a police-station, "to walk about at night; one
can take so much more notice. I had a jolly night last week in Hyde
Park; a chance to study human nature there."
"And do you find it interesting?" asked Shelton.
His companion smiled.
"Awfully," he replied; "I saw a fellow pick three pockets."
"What did you do?"
"I had a jolly talk with him."
Shelton thought of the little deep-eyed man; who made a point of not
encouraging sin.
"He was one of the professionals from Notting Hill, you know; told me his
life. Never had a chance, of course. The most interesting part was
telling him I 'd seen him pick three pockets--like creeping into a cave,
when you can't tell what 's inside."
"Well?"
"He showed me what he 'd got--only fivepence halfpenny."
"And what became of your friend?" asked Shelton.
"Oh, went off; he had a splendidly low forehead."
They had reached Shelton's rooms.
"Will you come in," said the latter, "and have a drink?"
The youth smiled, blushed, and shook his head.
"No, thank you," he said; "I have to walk to Whitechapel. I 'm living on
porridge now; splendid stuff for making bone. I generally live on
porridge for a week at the end of every month. It 's the best diet if
you're hard up"; once more blushing and smiling, he was gone.
Shelton went upstairs and sat down on his bed. He felt a little
miserable. Sitting there, slowly pulling out the ends of his white tie,
disconsolate, he had a vision of Antonia with her gaze fixed wonderingly
on him. And this wonder of hers came as a revelation--just as that
morning, when, looking from his window, he had seen a passer-by stop
suddenly and scratch his leg; and it had come upon him in a flash that
that man had thoughts and feelings of his own. He would never know what
Antonia really felt and thought. "Till I saw her at the station, I did
n't know how much I loved her or how little I knew her"; and, sighing
deeply, he hurried into bed.
CHAPTER XV
POLE TO POLE
The waiting in London for July to come was daily more unbearable to
Shelton, and if it had not been for Ferrand, who still came to breakfast,
he would have deserted the Metropolis. On June first the latter
presented himself rather later than was his custom, and announced that,
through a friend, he had heard of a position as interpreter to an hotel
at Folkestone.
"If I had money to face the first necessities," he said, swiftly turning
over a collection of smeared papers with his yellow fingers, as if
searching for his own identity, "I 'd leave today. This London blackens
my spirit."
"Are you certain to get this place," asked Shelton.
"I think so," the young foreigner replied; "I 've got some good enough
recommendations."
Shelton could not help a dubious glance at the papers in his hand. A
hurt look passed on to Ferrand's curly lips beneath his nascent red
moustache.
"You mean that to have false papers is as bad as theft. No, no; I shall
never be a thief--I 've had too many opportunities," said he, with pride
and bitterness. "That's not in my character. I never do harm to anyone.
This"--he touched the papers--"is not delicate, but it does harm to no
one. If you have no money you must have papers; they stand between you
and starvation. Society, has an excellent eye for the helpless--it never
treads on people unless they 're really down." He looked at Shelton.
"You 've made me what I am, amongst you," he seemed to say; "now put up
with me!"
"But there are always the workhouses," Shelton remarked at last.
"Workhouses!" returned Ferrand; "certainly there are--regular palaces: I
will tell you one thing: I've never been in places so discouraging as
your workhouses; they take one's very heart out."
"I always understood," said Shelton coldly; "that our system was better
than that of other countries."
Ferrand leaned over in his chair, an elbow on his knee, his favourite
attitude when particularly certain of his point.
"Well," he replied, "it 's always permissible to think well of your own
country. But, frankly, I've come out of those places here with little
strength and no heart at all, and I can tell you why." His lips lost
their bitterness, and he became an artist expressing the result of his
experience. "You spend your money freely, you have fine buildings,
self-respecting officers, but you lack the spirit of hospitality. The
reason is plain; you have a horror of the needy. You invite us--and when
we come you treat us justly enough, but as if we were numbers, criminals,
beneath contempt--as if we had inflicted a personal injury on you; and
when we get out again, we are naturally degraded."
Shelton bit his lips.
"How much money will you want for your ticket, and to make a start?" he
asked.
The nervous gesture escaping Ferrand at this juncture betrayed how far
the most independent thinkers are dependent when they have no money in
their pockets. He took the note that Shelton proffered him.
"A thousand thanks," said he; "I shall never forget what you have done
for me"; and Shelton could not help feeling that there was true emotion
behind his titter of farewell.
He stood at the window watching Ferrand start into the world again; then
looked back at his own comfortable room, with the number of things that
had accumulated somehow--the photographs of countless friends, the old
arm-chairs, the stock of coloured pipes. Into him restlessness had
passed with the farewell clasp of the foreigner's damp hand. To wait
about in London was unbearable.
He took his hat, and, heedless of direction, walked towards the river.
It was a clear, bright day, with a bleak wind driving showers before it.
During one of such Shelton found himself in Little Blank Street. "I
wonder how that little Frenchman that I saw is getting on!" he thought.
On a fine day he would probably have passed by on the other side; he now
entered and tapped upon the wicket.
No. 3 Little Blank Street had abated nothing of its stone-flagged
dreariness; the same blowsy woman answered his inquiry. Yes, Carolan was
always in; you could never catch him out--seemed afraid to go into the
street! To her call the little Frenchman made his appearance as
punctually as if he had been the rabbit of a conjurer. His face was as
yellow as a guinea.
"Ah! it's you, monsieur!" he said.
"Yes," said Shelton; "and how are you?"
"It 's five days since I came out of hospital," muttered the little
Frenchman, tapping on his chest; "a crisis of this bad atmosphere. I live
here, shut up in a box; it does me harm, being from the South. If there's
anything I can do for you, monsieur, it will give me pleasure."
"Nothing," replied Shelton, "I was just passing, and thought I should
like to hear how you were getting on."
"Come into the kitchen,--monsieur, there is nobody in there. 'Brr! Il
fait un froid etonnant'!"
"What sort of customers have you just now?" asked Shelton, as they
passed into the kitchen.
"Always the same clientele," replied the little man; "not so numerous, of
course, it being summer."
"Could n't you find anything better than this to do?"
The barber's crow's-feet radiated irony.
"When I first came to London," said he, "I secured an engagement at one
of your public institutions. I thought my fortune made. Imagine,
monsieur, in that sacred place I was obliged to shave at the rate of ten
a penny! Here, it's true, they don't pay me half the time; but when I'm
paid, I 'm paid. In this, climate, and being 'poitrinaire', one doesn't
make experiments. I shall finish my days here. Have you seen that young
man who interested you? There 's another! He has spirit, as I had
once--'il fait de la philosophie', as I do--and you will see, monsieur,
it will finish him. In this world what you want is to have no spirit.
Spirit ruins you."
Shelton looked sideways at the little man with his sardonic, yellow,
half-dead face, and the incongruity of the word "spirit" in his mouth
struck him so sharply that he smiled a smile with more pity in it than
any burst of tears.
"Shall we 'sit down?" he said, offering a cigarette.
"Merci, monsieur, it is always a pleasure to smoke a good cigarette. You
remember, that old actor who gave you a Jeremiad? Well, he's dead. I
was the only one at his bedside; 'un vrai drole'. He was another who had
spirit. And you will see, monsieur, that young man in whom you take an
interest, he'll die in a hospital, or in some hole or other, or even on
the highroad; having closed his eyes once too often some cold night; and
all because he has something in him which will not accept things as they
are, believing always that they should be better. 'Il n'y a riens de
plus tragique'!"
"According to you, then," said Shelton--and the conversation seemed to
him of a sudden to have taken too personal a turn--"rebellion of any sort
is fatal."
"Ah!" replied the little man, with the eagerness of one whose ideal it
is to sit under the awning of a cafe, and talk life upside down, "you
pose me a great problem there! If one makes rebellion; it is always
probable that one will do no good to any one and harm one's self. The
law of the majority arranges that. But I would draw your attention to
this"--and he paused; as if it were a real discovery to blow smoke
through his nose--"if you rebel it is in all likelihood because you are
forced by your nature to rebel; this is one of the most certain things in
life. In any case, it is necessary to avoid falling between two
stools--which is unpardonable," he ended with complacence.
Shelton thought he had never seen a man who looked more completely as if
he had fallen between two stools, and he had inspiration enough to feel
that the little barber's intellectual rebellion and the action logically
required by it had no more than a bowing acquaintanceship.
"By nature," went on the little man, "I am an optimist; it is in
consequence of this that I now make pessimism. I have always had ideals;
seeing myself cut off from them for ever, I must complain; to complain,
monsieur, is very sweet!"
Shelton wondered what these ideals had been, but had no answer ready; so
he nodded, and again held out his cigarettes, for, like a true
Southerner, the little man had thrown the first away, half smoked.
"The greatest pleasure in life," continued the Frenchman, with a bow, "is
to talk a little to a being who is capable of understanding you. At
present we have no one here, now that that old actor's dead. Ah! there
was a man who was rebellion incarnate! He made rebellion as other men
make money, 'c'etait son metier'; when he was no longer capable of active
revolution, he made it getting drunk. At the last this was his only way
of protesting against Society. An interesting personality, 'je le
regrette beaucoup'. But, as you see, he died in great distress, without
a soul to wave him farewell, because as you can well understand,
monsieur, I don't count myself. He died drunk. 'C'etait un homme'!"
Shelton had continued staring kindly at the little man; the barber added
hastily:
"It's difficult to make an end like that one has moments of weakness."
"Yes," assented Shelton, "one has indeed."
The little barber looked at him with cynical discretion.
"Oh!" he said, "it 's to the destitute that such things are important.
When one has money, all these matters--"
He shrugged his shoulders. A smile had lodged amongst his crow's-feet;
he waved his hand as though to end the subject.
A sense of having been exposed came over Shelton.
"You think, then," said he, "that discontent is peculiar to the
destitute?"
"Monsieur," replied the little barber, "a plutocrat knows too well that
if he mixes in that 'galere' there 's not a dog in the streets more lost
than he."
Shelton rose.
"The rain is over. I hope you 'll soon be better; perhaps you 'll accept
this in memory of that old actor," and he slipped a sovereign into the
little Frenchman's hand.
The latter bowed.
"Whenever you are passing, monsieur," he said eagerly, "I shall be
charmed to see you."
And Shelton walked away. "'Not a dog in the streets more lost,'" thought
he; "now what did he mean by that?"
Something of that "lost dog" feeling had gripped his spirit. Another
month of waiting would kill all the savour of anticipation, might even
kill his love. In the excitement of his senses and his nerves, caused by
this strain of waiting, everything seemed too vivid; all was beyond life
size; like Art--whose truths; too strong for daily use, are thus,
unpopular with healthy people. As will the, bones in a worn face, the
spirit underlying things had reached the surface; the meanness and
intolerable measure of hard facts, were too apparent. Some craving for
help, some instinct, drove him into Kensington, for he found himself
before his, mother's house. Providence seemed bent on flinging him from
pole to pole.
Mrs. Shelton was in town; and, though it was the first of June, sat
warming her feet before a fire; her face, with its pleasant colour, was
crow's-footed like the little barber's, but from optimism, not rebellion.
She, smiled when she saw her son; and the wrinkles round her eyes
twinkled, with vitality.
"Well, my dear boy," she said, "it's lovely to see you. And how is that
sweet girl?"
"Very well, thank you," replied Shelton.
"She must be such a dear!"
"Mother," stammered Shelton, "I must give it up."
"Give it up? My dear Dick, give what up? You look quite worried. Come
and sit down, and have a cosy chat. Cheer up!" And Mrs. Shelton; with
her head askew, gazed at her son quite irrepressibly.
"Mother," said Shelton, who, confronted by her optimism, had never, since
his time of trial began, felt so wretchedly dejected, "I can't go on
waiting about like this."
"My dear boy, what is the matter?";
"Everything is wrong!"
"Wrong?" cried Mrs. Shelton. "Come, tell me all, about it!"
But Shelton, shook his head.
"You surely have not had a quarrel----"
Mrs. Shelton stopped; the question seemed so vulgar--one might have asked
it of a groom.
"No," said Shelton, and his answer sounded like a groan.
"You know, my dear old Dick," murmured his mother, "it seems a little
mad."
"I know it seems mad."
"Come!" said Mrs. Shelton, taking his hand between her own; "you never
used to be like this."
"No," said Shelton, with a laugh; "I never used to be like this."
Mrs. Shelton snuggled in her Chuda shawl.
"Oh," she said, with cheery sympathy, "I know exactly how you feel!"
Shelton, holding his head, stared at the fire, which played and bubbled
like his mother's face.
"But you're so fond of each other," she began again. "Such a sweet
girl!"
"You don't understand," muttered Shelton gloomily; "it 's not her--it's
nothing--it's--myself!"
Mrs. Shelton again seized his hand, and this time pressed it to her soft,
warm cheek, that had lost the elasticity of youth.
"Oh!" she cried again; "I understand. I know exactly what you 're
feeling." But Shelton saw from the fixed beam in her eyes that she had
not an inkling. To do him justice, he was not so foolish as to try to
give her one. Mrs. Shelton sighed. "It would be so lovely if you could
wake up to-morrow and think differently. If I were you, my dear, I would
have a good long walk, and then a Turkish bath; and then I would just
write to her, and tell her all about it, and you'll see how beautifully
it'll all come straight"; and in the enthusiasm of advice Mrs. Shelton
rose, and, with a faint stretch of her tiny figure, still so young,
clasped her hands together. "Now do, that 's a dear old Dick! You 'll
just see how lovely it'll be!" Shelton smiled; he had not the heart to
chase away this vision. "And give her my warmest love, and tell her I 'm
longing for the wedding. Come, now, my dear boy, promise me that's what
you 'll do."
And Shelton said: "I'll think about it."
Mrs. Shelton had taken up her stand with one foot on the fender, in spite
of her sciatica.
"Cheer up!" she cried; her eyes beamed as if intoxicated by her
sympathy.
Wonderful woman! The uncomplicated optimism that carried her through
good and ill had not descended to her son.
From pole to pole he had been thrown that day, from the French barber,
whose intellect accepted nothing without carping, and whose little
fingers worked all day, to save himself from dying out, to his own
mother, whose intellect accepted anything presented with sufficient glow,
but who, until she died, would never stir a finger. When Shelton reached
his rooms, he wrote to Antonia:
I can't wait about in London any longer; I am going down to Bideford to
start a walking tour. I shall work my way to Oxford, and stay there till
I may come to Holm Oaks. I shall send you my address; do write as usual.
He collected all the photographs he had of her--amateur groups, taken by
Mrs. Dennant--and packed them in the pocket of his shooting-jacket.
There was one where she was standing just below her little brother, who
was perched upon a wall. In her half-closed eyes, round throat, and
softly tilted chin, there was something cool and watchful, protecting the
ragamuffin up above her head. This he kept apart to be looked at daily,
as a man says his prayers.
PART II
THE COUNTRY
CHAPTER XVI
THE INDIAN CIVILIAN
One morning then, a week later, Shelton found himself at the walls of
Princetown Prison.
He had seen this lugubrious stone cage before. But the magic of his
morning walk across the moor, the sight of the pagan tors, the songs of
the last cuckoo, had unprepared him for that dreary building. He left
the street, and, entering the fosse, began a circuit, scanning the walls
with morbid fascination.
This, then, was the system by which men enforced the will of the
majority, and it was suddenly borne in on him that all the ideas and
maxims which his Christian countrymen believed themselves to be
fulfilling daily were stultified in every cellule of the social
honeycomb. Such teachings as "He that is without sin amongst you" had
been pronounced unpractical by peers and judges, bishops, statesmen,
merchants, husbands--in fact, by every truly Christian person in the
country.
"Yes," thought Shelton, as if he had found out something new, "the more
Christian the nation, the less it has to do with the Christian spirit."
Society was a charitable organisation, giving nothing for nothing, little
for sixpence; and it was only fear that forced it to give at all!
He took a seat on a wall, and began to watch a warder who was slowly
paring a last year's apple. The expression of his face, the way he stood
with his solid legs apart, his head poked forward and his lower jaw
thrust out, all made him a perfect pillar of Society. He was undisturbed
by Shelton's scrutiny, watching the rind coil down below the apple; until
in a springing spiral it fell on the path and collapsed like a toy snake.
He took a bite; his teeth were jagged; and his mouth immense. It was
obvious that he considered himself a most superior man. Shelton frowned,
got down slowly, from the wall, and proceeded on his way.
A little further down the hill he stopped again to watch a group of
convicts in a field. They seemed to be dancing in a slow and sad
cotillon, while behind the hedge on every side were warders armed with
guns. Just such a sight, substituting spears could have been seen in
Roman times.
While he thus stood looking, a man, walking, rapidly, stopped beside him,
and asked how many miles it was to Exeter. His round visage; and long,
brown eyes, sliding about beneath their, brows, his cropped hair and
short neck, seemed familiar.
"Your name is Crocker, is n't it?"
"Why! it's the Bird!" exclaimed the traveller; putting out his hand.
"Have n't seen you since we both went down."
Shelton returned his handgrip. Crocker had lived above his head at
college, and often kept him, sleepless half the night by playing on the
hautboy.
"Where have you sprung from?"
"India. Got my long leave. I say, are you going this way? Let's go
together."
They went, and very fast; faster and faster every minute.
"Where are you going at this pace?" asked Shelton.
"London."
"Oh! only as far as London?"
"I 've set myself to do it in a week."
"Are you in training?"
"No."
"You 'll kill yourself."
Crocker answered with a chuckle.
Shelton noted with alarm the expression of his eye; there was a sort of
stubborn aspiration in it. "Still an idealist!" he thought; "poor
fellow!" "Well," he inquired, "what sort of a time have you had in
India?"
"Oh," said the Indian civilian absently, "I've, had the plague."
"Good God!"
Crocker smiled, and added:
"Caught it on famine duty."
"I see," said Shelton; "plague and famine! I suppose you fellows really
think you 're doing good out there?"
His companion looked at him surprised, then answered modestly:
"We get very good screws."
"That 's the great thing," responded Shelton.
After a moment's silence, Crocker, looking straight before him, asked:
"Don't you think we are doing good?"
"I 'm not an authority; but, as a matter of fact, I don't."
Crocker seemed disconcerted.
"Why?" he bluntly asked.
Shelton was not anxious to explain his views, and he did not reply.
His friend repeated:
"Why don't you think we're doing good in India?"
"Well," said Shelton gruffly, "how can progress be imposed on nations
from outside?"
The Indian civilian, glancing at Shelton in an affectionate and doubtful
way, replied:
"You have n't changed a bit, old chap."
"No, no," said Shelton; "you 're not going to get out of it that way.
Give me a single example of a nation, or an individual, for that matter,
who 's ever done any good without having worked up to it from within."
Crocker, grunting, muttered, "Evils."
"That 's it," said Shelton; "we take peoples entirely different from our
own, and stop their natural development by substituting a civilisation
grown for our own use. Suppose, looking at a tropical fern in a
hothouse, you were to say: 'This heat 's unhealthy for me; therefore it
must be bad for the fern, I 'll take it up and plant it outside in the
fresh air.'"
"Do you know that means giving up India?" said the Indian civilian
shrewdly.
"I don't say that; but to talk about doing good to India is--h'm!"
Crocker knitted his brows, trying to see the point of view his friend was
showing him.
"Come, now! Should we go on administering India if it were dead loss?
No. Well, to talk about administering the country for the purpose of
pocketing money is cynical, and there 's generally some truth in
cynicism; but to talk about the administration of a country by which we
profit, as if it were a great and good thing, is cant. I hit you in the
wind for the benefit of myself--all right: law of nature; but to say it
does you good at the same time is beyond me."
"No, no," returned Crocker, grave and anxious; "you can't persuade me
that we 're not doing good."
"Wait a bit. It's all a question of horizons; you look at it from too
close. Put the horizon further back. You hit India in the wind, and say
it's virtuous. Well, now let's see what happens. Either the wind never
comes back, and India gasps to an untimely death, or the wind does come
back, and in the pant of reaction your blow--that's to say your
labour--is lost, morally lost labour that you might have spent where it
would n't have been lost."
"Are n't you an Imperialist?" asked Crocker, genuinely concerned.
"I may be, but I keep my mouth shut about the benefits we 're conferring
upon other people."
"Then you can't believe in abstract right, or justice?"
"What on earth have our ideas of justice or right got to do with India?"
"If I thought as you do," sighed the unhappy Crocker, "I should be all
adrift."
"Quite so. We always think our standards best for the whole world. It's
a capital belief for us. Read the speeches of our public men. Does n't
it strike you as amazing how sure they are of being in the right? It's
so charming to benefit yourself and others at the same time, though, when
you come to think of it, one man's meat is usually another's poison.
Look at nature. But in England we never look at nature--there's no
necessity. Our national point of view has filled our pockets, that's all
that matters."
"I say, old chap, that's awfully bitter," said Crocker, with a sort of
wondering sadness.
"It 's enough to make any one bitter the way we Pharisees wax fat, and at
the same time give ourselves the moral airs of a balloon. I must stick a
pin in sometimes, just to hear the gas escape." Shelton was surprised at
his own heat, and for some strange reason thought of Antonia--surely, she
was not a Pharisee.
His companion strode along, and Shelton felt sorry for the signs of
trouble on his face.
"To fill your pockets," said Crocker, "is n't the main thing. One has
just got to do things without thinking of why we do them."
"Do you ever see the other side to any question?" asked Shelton. "I
suppose not. You always begin to act before you stop thinking, don't
you?"
Crocker grinned.
"He's a Pharisee, too," thought Shelton, "without a Pharisee's pride.
Queer thing that!"
After walking some distance, as if thinking deeply, Crocker chuckled out:
"You 're not consistent; you ought to be in favour of giving up India."
Shelton smiled uneasily.
"Why should n't we fill our pockets? I only object to the humbug that we
talk."
The Indian civilian put his hand shyly through his arm.
"If I thought like you," he said, "I could n't stay another day in
India."
And to this Shelton made no reply.
The wind had now begun to drop, and something of the morning's magic was
stealing again upon the moor. They were nearing the outskirt fields of
cultivation. It was past five when, dropping from the level of the tors,
they came into the sunny vale of Monkland.
"They say," said Crocker, reading from his guide-book--"they say this
place occupies a position of unique isolation."
The two travellers, in tranquil solitude, took their seats under an old
lime-tree on the village green. The smoke of their pipes, the sleepy
air, the warmth from the baked ground, the constant hum, made Shelton
drowsy.
"Do you remember," his companion asked, "those 'jaws' you used to have
with Busgate and old Halidome in my rooms on Sunday evenings? How is old
Halidome?"
"Married," replied Shelton.
Crocker sighed. "And are you?" he asked.
"Not yet," said Shelton grimly; "I 'm--engaged."
Crocker took hold of his arm above the elbow, and, squeezing it, he
grunted. Shelton had not received congratulations that pleased him more;
there was the spice of envy in them.
"I should like to get married while I 'm home," said the civilian after a
long pause. His legs were stretched apart, throwing shadows on the
green, his hands deep thrust into his pockets, his head a little to one
side. An absent-minded smile played round his mouth.
The sun had sunk behind a tor, but the warmth kept rising from the
ground, and the sweet-briar on a cottage bathed them with its spicy
perfume. From the converging lanes figures passed now and then, lounged
by, staring at the strangers, gossiping amongst themselves, and vanished
into the cottages that headed the incline. A clock struck seven, and
round the shady lime-tree a chafer or some heavy insect commenced its
booming rushes. All was marvellously sane and slumbrous. The soft air,
the drawling voices, the shapes and murmurs, the rising smell of
wood-smoke from fresh-kindled fires--were full of the spirit of security
and of home. The outside world was far indeed. Typical of some island
nation was this nest of refuge--where men grew quietly tall, fattened,
and without fuss dropped off their perches; where contentment flourished,
as sunflowers flourished in the sun.
Crocker's cap slipped off; he was nodding, and Shelton looked at him.
From a manor house in some such village he had issued; to one of a
thousand such homes he would find his way at last, untouched by the
struggles with famines or with plagues, uninfected in his fibre, his
prejudices, and his principles, unchanged by contact with strange
peoples, new conditions, odd feelings, or queer points of view!
The chafer buzzed against his shoulder, gathered flight again, and boomed
away. Crocker roused himself, and, turning his amiable face, jogged
Shelton's arm.
"What are you thinking about, Bird?" he asked.
CHAPTER XVII
A PARSON
Shelton continued to travel with his college friend, and on Wednesday
night, four days after joining company, they reached the village of
Dowdenhame. All day long the road had lain through pastureland, with
thick green hedges and heavily feathered elms. Once or twice they had
broken the monotony by a stretch along the towing-path of a canal, which,
choked with water-lily plants and shining weeds, brooded sluggishly
beside the fields. Nature, in one of her ironic moods, had cast a grey
and iron-hard cloak over all the country's bland luxuriance. From dawn
till darkness fell there had been no movement in the steely distant sky;
a cold wind ruffed in the hedge-tops, and sent shivers through the
branches of the elms. The cattle, dappled, pied, or bay, or white,
continued grazing with an air of grumbling at their birthright. In a
meadow close to the canal Shelton saw five magpies, and about five
o'clock the rain began, a steady, coldly-sneering rain, which Crocker,
looking at the sky, declared was going to be over in a minute. But it
was not over in a minute; they were soon drenched. Shelton was tired,
and it annoyed him very much that his companion, who was also tired,
should grow more cheerful. His thoughts kept harping upon Ferrand: "This
must be something like what he described to me, tramping on and on when
you're dead-beat, until you can cadge up supper and a bed." And sulkily
he kept on ploughing through the mud with glances at the exasperating
Crocker, who had skinned one heel and was limping horribly. It suddenly
came home to him that life for three quarters of the world meant physical
exhaustion every day, without a possibility of alternative, and that as
soon as, for some cause beyond control, they failed thus to exhaust
themselves, they were reduced to beg or starve. "And then we, who don't
know the meaning of the word exhaustion, call them 'idle scamps,'" he
said aloud.
It was past nine and dark when they reached Dowdenhame. The street
yielded no accommodation, and while debating where to go they passed the
church, with a square tower, and next to it a house which was certainly
the parsonage.
"Suppose," said Crocker, leaning on his arms upon the gate, "we ask him
where to go"; and, without waiting for Shelton's answer, he rang the
bell.
The door was opened by the parson, a bloodless and clean-shaven man,
whose hollow cheeks and bony hands suggested a perpetual struggle.
Ascetically benevolent were his grey eyes; a pale and ghostly smile
played on the curves of his thin lips.
"What can I do for you?" he asked. "Inn? yes, there's the Blue Chequers,
but I 'm afraid you 'll find it shut. They 're early people, I 'm glad
to say"; and his eyes seemed to muse over the proper fold for these damp
sheep. "Are you Oxford men, by any chance?" he asked, as if that might
throw some light upon the matter. "Of Mary's? Really! I'm of Paul's
myself. Ladyman--Billington Ladyman; you might remember my youngest
brother. I could give you a room here if you could manage without
sheets. My housekeeper has two days' holiday; she's foolishly taken the
keys."
Shelton accepted gladly, feeling that the intonation in the parson's
voice was necessary unto his calling, and that he did not want to
patronise.
"You 're hungry, I expect, after your tramp. I'm very much afraid there
's--er--nothing in the house but bread; I could boil you water; hot
lemonade is better than nothing."
Conducting them into the kitchen, he made a fire, and put a kettle on to
boil; then, after leaving them to shed their soaking clothes, returned
with ancient, greenish coats, some carpet slippers, and some blankets.
Wrapped in these, and carrying their glasses, the travellers followed to
the study, where, by doubtful lamp-light, he seemed, from books upon the
table, to have been working at his sermon.
"We 're giving you a lot of trouble," said Shelton, "it's really very
good of you."
"Not at all," the parson answered; "I'm only grieved the house is empty."
It was a truly dismal contrast to the fatness of the land they had been
passing through, and the parson's voice issuing from bloodless lips,
although complacent, was pathetic. It was peculiar, that voice of his,
seeming to indicate an intimate acquaintanceship with what was fat and
fine, to convey contempt for the vulgar need of money, while all the time
his eyes--those watery, ascetic eyes--as plain as speech they said, "Oh,
to know what it must be like to have a pound or two to spare just once a
year, or so!"
Everything in the room had been bought for cheapness; no luxuries were
there, and necessaries not enough. It was bleak and bare; the ceiling
cracked, the wall-paper discoloured, and those books--prim, shining
books, fat-backed, with arms stamped on them--glared in the surrounding
barrenness.
"My predecessor," said the parson, "played rather havoc with the house.
The poor fellow had a dreadful struggle, I was told. You can,
unfortunately, expect nothing else these days, when livings have come
down so terribly in value! He was a married man--large family!"
Crocker, who had drunk his steaming lemonade, was smiling and already
nodding in his chair; with his black garment buttoned closely round his
throat, his long legs rolled up in a blanket, and stretched towards the
feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather patchy air.
Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of fatigue; the
strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he kept stealing
glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture,
the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have
outgrown their trousers. But there was something underlying that
leanness of the landscape, something superior and academic, which defied
all sympathy. It was pure nervousness which made him say:
"Ah! why do they have such families?"
A faint red mounted to the parson's cheeks; its appearance there was
startling, and Crocker chuckled, as a sleepy man will chuckle who feels
bound to show that he is not asleep.
"It's very unfortunate," murmured the parson, "certainly, in many cases."
Shelton would now have changed the subject, but at this moment the
unhappy Crocker snored. Being a man of action, he had gone to sleep.
"It seems to me," said Shelton hurriedly, as he saw the parson's eyebrows
rising at the sound, "almost what you might call wrong."
"Dear me, but how can it be wrong?"
Shelton now felt that he must justify his saying somehow.
"I don't know," he said, "only one hears of such a lot of
cases--clergymen's families; I've two uncles of my own, who--"
A new expression gathered on the parson's face; his mouth had tightened,
and his chin receded slightly. "Why, he 's like a mule!" thought
Shelton. His eyes, too, had grown harder, greyer, and more parroty.
Shelton no longer liked his face.
"Perhaps you and I," the parson said, "would not understand each other on
such matters."
And Shelton felt ashamed.
"I should like to ask you a question in turn, however," the parson said,
as if desirous of meeting Shelton on his low ground: "How do you justify
marriage if it is not to follow the laws of nature?"
"I can only tell you what I personally feel."
"My dear sir, you forget that a woman's chief delight is in her
motherhood."
"I should have thought it a pleasure likely to pall with too much
repetition. Motherhood is motherhood, whether of one or of a dozen."
"I 'm afraid," replied the parson, with impatience, though still keeping
on his guest's low ground, "your theories are not calculated to populate
the world."
"Have you ever lived in London?" Shelton asked. "It always makes me feel
a doubt whether we have any right to have children at all."
"Surely," said the parson with wonderful restraint, and the joints of his
fingers cracked with the grip he had upon his chair, "you are leaving out
duty towards the country; national growth is paramount!"
"There are two ways of looking at that. It depends on what you want your
country to become."
"I did n't know," said the parson--fanaticism now had crept into his
smile--"there could be any doubt on such a subject."
The more Shelton felt that commands were being given him, the more
controversial he naturally became--apart from the merits of this subject,
to which he had hardly ever given thought.
"I dare say I'm wrong," he said, fastening his eyes on the blanket in
which his legs were wrapped; "but it seems to me at least an open
question whether it's better for the country to be so well populated as
to be quite incapable of supporting itself."
"Surely," said the parson, whose face regained its pallor, "you're not a
Little Englander?"
On Shelton this phrase had a mysterious effect. Resisting an impulse to
discover what he really was, he answered hastily:
"Of course I'm not!"
The parson followed up his triumph, and, shifting the ground of the
discussion from Shelton's to his own, he gravely said:
"Surely you must see that your theory is founded in immorality. It is,
if I may say so, extravagant, even wicked."
But Shelton, suffering from irritation at his own dishonesty, replied
with heat:
"Why not say at once, sir, 'hysterical, unhealthy'? Any opinion which
goes contrary to that of the majority is always called so, I believe."
"Well," returned the parson, whose eyes seemed trying to bind Shelton to
his will, "I must say your ideas do seem to me both extravagant and
unhealthy. The propagation of children is enjoined of marriage."
Shelton bowed above his blanket, but the parson did not smile.
"We live in very dangerous times," he said, "and it grieves me when a man
of your standing panders to these notions."
"Those," said Shelton, "whom the shoe does n't pinch make this rule of
morality, and thrust it on to such as the shoe does pinch."
"The rule was never made," said the parson; "it was given us."
"Oh!" said Shelton, "I beg your pardon." He was in danger of forgetting
the delicate position he was in. "He wants to ram his notions down my
throat," he thought; and it seemed to him that the parson's face had
grown more like a mule's, his accent more superior, his eyes more
dictatorial: To be right in this argument seemed now of great importance,
whereas, in truth, it was of no importance whatsoever. That which,
however, was important was the fact that in nothing could they ever have
agreed.
But Crocker had suddenly ceased to snore; his head had fallen so that a
peculiar whistling arose instead. Both Shelton and the parson looked at
him, and the sight sobered them.
"Your friend seems very tired," said the parson.
Shelton forgot all his annoyance, for his host seemed suddenly pathetic,
with those baggy garments, hollow cheeks, and the slightly reddened nose
that comes from not imbibing quite enough. A kind fellow, after all!
The kind fellow rose, and, putting his hands behind his back, placed
himself before the blackening fire. Whole centuries of authority stood
behind him. It was an accident that the mantelpiece was chipped and
rusty, the fire-irons bent and worn, his linen frayed about the cuffs.
"I don't wish to dictate," said he, "but where it seems to me that you
are wholly wrong in that your ideas foster in women those lax views of
the family life that are so prevalent in Society nowadays."
Thoughts of Antonia with her candid eyes, the touch of freckling on her
pink-white skin, the fair hair gathered back, sprang up in Shelton, and
that word--"lax" seemed ridiculous. And the women he was wont to see
dragging about the streets of London with two or three small children,
Women bent beneath the weight of babies that they could not leave, women
going to work with babies still unborn, anaemic-looking women,
impecunious mothers in his own class, with twelve or fourteen children,
all the victims of the sanctity of marriage, and again the word "lax"
seemed to be ridiculous.
"We are not put into the world to exercise our wits,"--muttered Shelton.
"Our wanton wills," the parson said severely.
"That, sir, may have been all right for the last generation, the country
is more crowded now. I can't see why we should n't decide it for
ourselves."
"Such a view of morality," said the parson, looking down at Crocker with
a ghostly smile, "to me is unintelligible."
Cracker's whistling grew in tone and in variety.
"What I hate," said Shelton, "is the way we men decide what women are to
bear, and then call them immoral, decadent, or what you will, if they
don't fall in with our views."
"Mr. Shelton," said the parson, "I think we may safely leave it in the
hands of God."
Shelton was silent.
"The questions of morality," said the parson promptly, "have always lain
through God in the hands of men, not women. We are the reasonable sex."
Shelton stubbornly replied
"We 're certainly the greater humbugs, if that 's the same."
"This is too bad," exclaimed the parson with some heat.
"I 'm sorry, sir; but how can you expect women nowadays to have the same
views as our grandmothers? We men, by our commercial enterprise, have
brought about a different state of things; yet, for the sake of our own
comfort, we try to keep women where they were. It's always those men who
are most keen about their comfort"--and in his heat the sarcasm of using
the word "comfort" in that room was lost on him--"who are so ready to
accuse women of deserting the old morality."
The parson quivered with impatient irony.
"Old morality! new morality!" he said. "These are strange words."
"Forgive me," explained Shelton; "we 're talking of working morality, I
imagine. There's not a man in a million fit to talk of true morality."
The eyes of his host contracted.
"I think," he said--and his voice sounded as if he had pinched it in the
endeavour to impress his listener--"that any well-educated man who
honestly tries to serve his God has the right humbly--I say humbly--to
claim morality."
Shelton was on the point of saying something bitter, but checked himself.
"Here am I," thought he, "trying to get the last word, like an old
woman."
At this moment there was heard a piteous mewing; the parson went towards
the door.
"Excuse me a moment; I 'm afraid that's one of my cats out in the wet."
He returned a minute later with a wet cat in his arms. "They will get
out," he said to Shelton, with a smile on his thin face, suffused by
stooping. And absently he stroked the dripping cat, while a drop of wet
ran off his nose. "Poor pussy, poor pussy!" The sound of that "Poor
pussy!" like nothing human in its cracked superiority, the softness of
that smile, like the smile of gentleness itself, haunted Shelton till he
fell asleep.
CHAPTER XVIII
ACADEMIC
The last sunlight was playing on the roofs when the travellers entered
that High Street grave and holy to all Oxford men. The spirit hovering
above the spires was as different from its concretions in their caps and
gowns as ever the spirit of Christ was from church dogmas.
"Shall we go into Grinnings'?" asked Shelton, as they passed the club.
But each looked at his clothes, for two elegant young men in flannel
suits were coming out.
"You go," said Crocker, with a smirk.
Shelton shook his head. Never before had he felt such love for this old
city. It was gone now from out his life, but everything about it seemed
so good and fine; even its exclusive air was not ignoble. Clothed in the
calm of history, the golden web of glorious tradition, radiant with the
alchemy of memories, it bewitched him like the perfume of a woman's
dress. At the entrance of a college they glanced in at the cool grey
patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of a window flowerbox--secluded,
mysteriously calm--a narrow vision of the sacred past. Pale and
trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face and random nose, grabbing at
his cloven gown, was gazing at the noticeboard. The college
porter--large man, fresh-faced, and small-mouthed--stood at his lodge
door in a frank and deferential attitude. An image of routine, he looked
like one engaged to give a decorous air to multitudes of pecadilloes.
His blue eyes rested on the travellers. "I don't know you, sirs, but if
you want to speak I shall be glad to hear the observations you may have
to make," they seemed to say.
Against the wall reposed a bicycle with tennis-racquet buckled to its
handle. A bull-dog bitch, working her snout from side to side, was
snuffling horribly; the great iron-studded door to which her chain was
fastened stayed immovable. Through this narrow mouth, human metal had
been poured for centuries--poured, moulded, given back.
"Come along," said Shelton.
They now entered the Bishop's Head, and had their dinner in the room
where Shelton had given his Derby dinner to four-and-twenty well-bred
youths; here was the picture of the racehorse that the wineglass, thrown
by one of them, had missed when it hit the waiter; and there, serving
Crocker with anchovy sauce, was the very waiter. When they had finished,
Shelton felt the old desire to rise with difficulty from the table; the
old longing to patrol the streets with arm hooked in some other arm; the
old eagerness to dare and do something heroic--and unlawful; the old
sense that he was of the forest set, in the forest college, of the forest
country in the finest world. The streets, all grave and mellow in the
sunset, seemed to applaud this after-dinner stroll; the entrance quad of
his old college--spaciously majestic, monastically modern, for years the
heart of his universe, the focus of what had gone before it in his life,
casting the shadow of its grey walls over all that had come after-brought
him a sense of rest from conflict, and trust in his own important safety.
The garden-gate, whose lofty spikes he had so often crowned with empty
water-bottles, failed to rouse him. Nor when they passed the staircase
where he had flung a leg of lamb at some indelicate disturbing tutor, did
he feel remorse. High on that staircase were the rooms in which he had
crammed for his degree, upon the system by which the scholar simmers on
the fire of cramming, boils over at the moment of examination, and is
extinct for ever after. His coach's face recurred to him, a man with
thrusting eyes, who reeled off knowledge all the week, and disappeared to
town on Sundays.
They passed their tutor's staircase.
"I wonder if little Turl would remember us?" said Crocker; "I should like
to see him. Shall we go and look him up?"
"Little Turl?" said Shelton dreamily.
Mounting, they knocked upon a solid door.
"Come in," said the voice of Sleep itself.
A little man with a pink face and large red ears was sitting in a fat
pink chair, as if he had been grown there.
"What do you want?" he asked of them, blinking.
"Don't you know me, sir?"
"God bless me! Crocker, isn't it? I didn't recognise you with a beard."
Crocker, who had not been shaved since starting on his travels, chuckled
feebly.
"You remember Shelton, sir?" he said.
"Shelton? Oh yes! How do you do, Shelton? Sit down; take a cigar";
and, crossing his fat little legs, the little gentleman looked them up
and down with drowsy interest, as who should say, "Now, after, all you
know, why come and wake me up like this?"
Shelton and Crocker took two other chairs; they too seemed thinking,
"Yes, why did we come and wake him up like this?" And Shelton, who could
not tell the reason why, took refuge in the smoke of his cigar. The
panelled walls were hung with prints of celebrated Greek remains; the
soft, thick carpet on the floor was grateful to his tired feet; the backs
of many books gleamed richly in the light of the oil lamps; the culture
and tobacco smoke stole on his senses; he but vaguely comprehended
Crocker's amiable talk, vaguely the answers of his little host, whose
face, blinking behind the bowl of his huge meerschaum pipe, had such a
queer resemblance to a moon. The door was opened, and a tall creature,
whose eyes were large and brown, whose face was rosy and ironical,
entered with a manly stride.
"Oh!" he said, looking round him with his chin a little in the air, "am I
intruding, Turl?"
The little host, blinking more than ever, murmured,
"Not at all, Berryman--take a pew!"
The visitor called Berryman sat down, and gazed up at the wall with his
fine eyes.
Shelton had a faint remembrance of this don, and bowed; but the newcomer
sat smiling, and did not notice the salute.
"Trimmer and Washer are coming round," he said, and as he spoke the door
opened to admit these gentlemen. Of the same height, but different
appearance, their manner was faintly jocular, faintly supercilious, as if
they tolerated everything. The one whose name was Trimmer had patches of
red on his large cheek-bones, and on his cheeks a bluish tint. His lips
were rather full, so that he had a likeness to a spider. Washer, who was
thin and pale, wore an intellectual smile.
The little fat host moved the hand that held the meerschaum.
"Crocker, Shelton," he said.
An awkward silence followed. Shelton tried to rouse the cultured portion
of his wits; but the sense that nothing would be treated seriously
paralysed his faculties; he stayed silent, staring at the glowing tip of
his cigar. It seemed to him unfair to have intruded on these gentlemen
without its having been made quite clear to them beforehand who and what
he was; he rose to take his leave, but Washer had begun to speak.
"Madame Bovary!" he said quizzically, reading the title of the book on
the little fat man's bookrest; and, holding it closer to his
boiled-looking eyes, he repeated, as though it were a joke, "Madame
Bovary!"
"Do you mean to say, Turl, that you can stand that stuff?" said Berryman.
As might have been expected, this celebrated novel's name had galvanised
him into life; he strolled over to the bookcase, took down a book, opened
it, and began to read, wandering in a desultory way about the room.
"Ha! Berryman," said a conciliatory voice behind--it came from Trimmer,
who had set his back against the hearth, and grasped with either hand a
fistful of his gown--"the book's a classic!"
"Classic!" exclaimed Berryman, transfixing Shelton with his eyes; "the
fellow ought to have been horsewhipped for writing such putridity!"
A feeling of hostility instantly sprang up in Shelton; he looked at his
little host, who, however, merely blinked.
"Berryman only means," explains Washer, a certain malice in his smile,
"that the author is n't one of his particular pets."
"For God's sake, you know, don't get Berryman on his horse!" growled the
little fat man suddenly.
Berryman returned his volume to the shelf and took another down. There
was something almost godlike in his sarcastic absent-mindedness.
"Imagine a man writing that stuff," he said, "if he'd ever been at Eton!
What do we want to know about that sort of thing? A writer should be a
sportsman and a gentleman"; and again he looked down over his chin at
Shelton, as though expecting him to controvert the sentiment.
"Don't you--" began the latter.
But Berryman's attention had wandered to the wall.
"I really don't care," said he, "to know what a woman feels when she is
going to the dogs; it does n't interest me."
The voice of Trimmer made things pleasant:
"Question of moral standards, that, and nothing more."
He had stretched his legs like compasses,--and the way he grasped his
gown-wings seemed to turn him to a pair of scales. His lowering smile
embraced the room, deprecating strong expressions. "After all," he
seemed to say, "we are men of the world; we know there 's not very much
in anything. This is the modern spirit; why not give it a look in?"
"Do I understand you to say, Berryman, that you don't enjoy a spicy
book?" asked Washer with his smile; and at this question the little fat
man sniggered, blinking tempestuously, as if to say, "Nothing pleasanter,
don't you know, before a hot fire in cold weather."
Berryman paid no attention to the impertinent inquiry, continuing to dip
into his volume and walk up and down.
"I've nothing to say," he remarked, stopping before Shelton, and looking
down, as if at last aware of him, "to those who talk of being justified
through Art. I call a spade a spade."
Shelton did not answer, because he could not tell whether Berryman was
addressing him or society at large. And Berryman went on:
"Do we want to know about the feelings of a middle-class woman with a
taste for vice? Tell me the point of it. No man who was in the habit
of taking baths would choose such a subject."
"You come to the question of-ah-subjects," the voice of Trimmer genially
buzzed he had gathered his garments tight across his back--"my dear
fellow, Art, properly applied, justifies all subjects."
"For Art," squeaked Berryman, putting back his second volume and taking
down a third, "you have Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Ossian; for
garbage, a number of unwashed gentlemen."
There was a laugh; Shelton glanced round at all in turn. With the
exception of Crocker, who was half asleep and smiling idiotically, they
wore, one and all, a look as if by no chance could they consider any
subject fit to move their hearts; as if, one and all, they were so
profoundly anchored on the sea of life that waves could only seem
impertinent. It may have been some glimmer in this glance of Shelton's
that brought Trimmer once more to the rescue with his compromising air.
"The French," said he, "have quite a different standard from ourselves in
literature, just as they have a different standard in regard to honour.
All this is purely artificial."
What he, meant, however, Shelton found it difficult to tell.
"Honour," said Washer, "'l'honneur, die Ehre' duelling, unfaithful
wives--"
He was clearly going to add to this, but it was lost; for the little fat
man, taking the meerschaum with trembling fingers, and holding it within
two inches of his chin, murmured:
"You fellows, Berryman's awf'ly strong on honour."
He blinked twice, and put the meerschaum back between his lips.
Without returning the third volume to its shelf, Berryman took down a
fourth; with chest expanded, he appeared about to use the books as
dumb-bells.
"Quite so," said Trimmer; "the change from duelling to law courts is
profoundly--"
Whether he were going to say "significant" or "insignificant," in
Shelton's estimate he did not know himself. Fortunately Berryman broke
in:
"Law courts or not, when a man runs away with a wife of mine, I shall
punch his head!"
"Come, come!" said Turner, spasmodically grasping his two wings.
Shelton had a gleam of inspiration. "If your wife deceived you," he
thought, looking at Trimmer's eyes, "you 'd keep it quiet, and hold it
over her."
Washer passed his hand over his pale chaps: his smile had never wavered;
he looked like one for ever lost in the making of an epigram.
The punching theorist stretched his body, holding the books level with
his shoulders, as though to stone his hearers with his point of view.
His face grew paler, his fine eyes finer, his lips ironical. Almost
painful was this combination of the "strong" man and the student who was
bound to go to pieces if you hit him a smart blow.
"As for forgiving faithless wives," he said, "and all that sort of thing,
I don't believe in sentiment."
The words were high-pitched and sarcastic. Shelton looked hastily
around. All their faces were complacent. He grew red, and suddenly
remarked, in a soft; clear voice:
"I see!"
He was conscious that he had never before made an impression of this
sort, and that he never would again. The cold hostility flashing out all
round was most enlightening; it instantly gave way to the polite,
satirical indulgence peculiar to highly-cultivated men. Crocker rose
nervously; he seemed scared, and was obviously relieved when Shelton,
following his example, grasped the little fat man's hand, who said
good-night in a voice shaken by tobacco.
"Who are your unshaven friends?" he heard as the door was closed behind
them.
CHAPTER XIX
AN INCIDENT
"Eleven o'clock," said Crocker, as they went out of college. "I don't
feel sleepy; shall we stroll along the 'High' a bit?"
Shelton assented; he was too busy thinking of his encounter with the dons
to heed the soreness of his feet. This, too, was the last day of his
travels, for he had not altered his intention of waiting at Oxford till
July.
"We call this place the heart of knowledge," he said, passing a great
building that presided, white and silent, over darkness; "it seems to me
as little that, as Society is the heart of true gentility."
Crocker's answer was a grunt; he was looking at the stars, calculating
possibly in how long he could walk to heaven.
"No," proceeded Shelton; "we've too much common-sense up here to strain
our minds. We know when it's time to stop. We pile up news of Papias
and all the verbs in 'ui' but as for news of life or of oneself! Real
seekers after knowledge are a different sort. They fight in the dark--no
quarter given. We don't grow that sort up here."
"How jolly the limes smell!" said Crocker.
He had halted opposite a garden, and taken hold of Shelton by a button of
his coat. His eyes, like a dog's, stared wistfully. It seemed as though
he wished to speak, but feared to give offence.
"They tell you," pursued Shelton, "that we learn to be gentlemen up here.
We learn that better through one incident that stirs our hearts than we
learn it here in all the time we're up."
"Hum!" muttered Crocker, twisting at the button; "those fellows who
seemed the best sorts up here have turned out the best sorts afterwards."
"I hope not," said Shelton gloomily; "I was a snob when I was up here. I
believed all I was told, anything that made things pleasant; my "set"
were nothing but--"
Crocker smiled in the darkness; he had been too "cranky" to belong to
Shelton's "set."
"You never were much like your 'set,' old chap," he said.
Shelton turned away, sniffing the perfume of the limes. Images were
thronging through his mind. The faces of his old friends strangely mixed
with those of people he had lately met--the girl in the train, Ferrand,
the lady with the short, round, powdered face, the little barber; others,
too, and floating, mysterious,--connected with them all, Antonia's face.
The scent of the lime-trees drifted at him with its magic sweetness.
From the street behind, the footsteps of the passers-by sounded muffled,
yet exact, and on the breeze was borne the strain: "For he's a jolly good
fellow!"
"For he's a jolly good fellow! For he's a jolly good fe-ellow! And so
say all of us!"
"Ah!" he said, "they were good chaps."
"I used to think," said Crocker dreamily, "that some of them had too much
side."
And Shelton laughed.
"The thing sickens me," said he, "the whole snobbish, selfish business.
The place sickens me, lined with cotton-wool-made so beastly
comfortable."
Crocker shook his head.
"It's a splendid old place," he said, his eyes fastening at last on
Shelton's boots. "You know, old chap," he stammered, "I think you--you
ought to take care!"
"Take care? What of?"
Crocker pressed his arm convulsively.
"Don't be waxy, old boy," he said; "I mean that you seem somehow--to
be--to be losing yourself."
"Losing myself! Finding myself, you mean!"
Crocker did not answer; his face was disappointed. Of what exactly was
he thinking? In Shelton's heart there was a bitter pleasure in knowing
that his friend was uncomfortable on his account, a sort of contempt, a
sort of aching. Crocker broke the silence.
"I think I shall do a bit more walking to-night," he said; "I feel very
fit. Don't you really mean to come any further with me, Bird?"
And there was anxiety in his voice, as though Shelton were in danger of
missing something good. The latter's feet had instantly begun to ache
and burn.
"No!"? he said; "you know what I'm staying here for."
Crocker nodded.
"She lives near here. Well, then, I'll say good-bye. I should like to
do another ten miles to-night."
"My dear fellow, you're tired and lame."
Crocker chuckled.
"No," he said; "I want to get on. See you in London. Good-bye!" and,
gripping Shelton's hand, he turned and limped away.
Shelton called after him: "Don't be an idiot: You 'll only knock yourself
up."
But the sole answer was the pale moon of Crocker's face screwed round
towards him in the darkness, and the waving of his stick.
Shelton strolled slowly on; leaning over the bridge, he watched the oily
gleam of lamps, on the dark water underneath the trees. He felt
relieved, yet sorry. His thoughts were random, curious, half mutinous,
half sweet. That afternoon five years ago, when he had walked back from
the river with Antonia across the Christchurch meadows, was vivid to his
mind; the scent of that afternoon had never died away from him-the aroma
of his love. Soon she would be his wife--his wife! The faces of the
dons sprang up before him. They had wives, perhaps. Fat, lean,
satirical, and compromising--what was it that through diversity they had
in common? Cultured intolerance! . . . Honour! . . . A queer
subject to discuss. Honour! The honour that made a fuss, and claimed
its rights! And Shelton smiled. "As if man's honour suffered when he's
injured!" And slowly he walked along the echoing, empty street to his
room at the Bishop's Head. Next morning he received the following wire:
Thirty miles left eighteen hours heel bad but going
strong CROCKER
He passed a fortnight at the Bishop's Head, waiting for the end of his
probation, and the end seemed long in coming. To be so near Antonia, and
as far as if he lived upon another planet, was worse than ever. Each day
he took a sculling skiff, and pulled down to near Holm Oaks, on the
chance of her being on the river; but the house was two miles off, and
the chance but slender. She never came. After spending the afternoons
like this he would return, pulling hard against the stream, with a queer
feeling of relief, dine heartily, and fall a-dreaming over his cigar.
Each morning he awoke in an excited mood, devoured his letter if he had
one, and sat down to write to her. These letters of his were the most
amazing portion of that fortnight. They were remarkable for failing to
express any single one of his real thoughts, but they were full of
sentiments which were not what he was truly feeling; and when he set
himself to analyse, he had such moments of delirium that he was scared,
and shocked, and quite unable to write anything. He made the discovery
that no two human beings ever tell each other what they really feel,
except, perhaps, in situations with which he could not connect Antonia's
ice-blue eyes and brilliant smile. All the world was too engaged in
planning decency.
Absorbed by longings, he but vaguely realised the turmoil of
Commemoration, which had gathered its hundreds for their annual cure of
salmon mayonnaise and cheap champagne. In preparation for his visit to
Holm Oaks he shaved his beard and had some clothes sent down from London.
With them was forwarded a letter from Ferrand, which ran as follows:
IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL, FOLKESTONE,
June 20.
MY DEAR SIR,
Forgive me for not having written to you before, but I have been so
bothered that I have felt no taste for writing; when I have the time,
I have some curious stories to tell you. Once again I have
encountered that demon of misfortune which dogs my footsteps. Being
occupied all day and nearly all night upon business which brings me a
heap of worries and next to no profit, I have no chance to look after
my things. Thieves have entered my room, stolen everything, and left
me an empty box. I am once again almost without clothes, and know
not where to turn to make that figure necessary for the fulfilment of
my duties. You see, I am not lucky. Since coming to your country,
the sole piece of fortune I have had was to tumble on a man like you.
Excuse me for not writing more at this moment. Hoping that you are
in good health, and in affectionately pressing your hand,
I am,
Always your devoted
LOUIS FERRAND.
Upon reading this letter Shelton had once more a sense of being
exploited, of which he was ashamed; he sat down immediately and wrote the
following reply:
BISHOPS HEAD HOTEL, OXFORD,
June 25.
MY DEAR FERRAND,
I am grieved to hear of your misfortunes. I was much hoping that you had
made a better start. I enclose you Post Office Orders for four pounds.
Always glad to hear from you.
Yours sincerely,
RICHARD SHELTON.
He posted it with the satisfaction that a man feels who nobly shakes off
his responsibilities.
Three days before July he met with one of those disturbing incidents
which befall no persons who attend quietly to their, property and
reputation.
The night was unbearably hot, and he had wandered out with his cigar; a
woman came sidling up and spoke to him. He perceived her to be one of
those made by men into mediums for their pleasure, to feel sympathy with
whom was sentimental. Her face was flushed, her whisper hoarse; she had
no attractions but the curves of a tawdry figure. Shelton was repelled
by her proprietary tone, by her blowzy face, and by the scent of
patchouli. Her touch on his arm startled him, sending a shiver through
his marrow; he almost leaped aside, and walked the faster. But her
breathing as she followed sounded laboured; it suddenly seemed pitiful
that a woman should be panting after him like that.
"The least I can do," he thought, "is to speak to her." He stopped, and,
with a mixture of hardness and compassion, said, "It 's impossible."
In spite of her smile, he saw by her disappointed eyes that she accepted
the impossibility.
"I 'm sorry," he said.
She muttered something. Shelton shook his head.
"I 'm sorry," he said once more. "Good.-night."
The woman bit her lower lip.
"Good-night," she answered dully.
At the corner of the street he turned his head. The woman was hurrying
uneasily; a policeman coming from behind had caught her by the arm.
His heart began to beat. "Heavens!" he thought, "what shall I do now?"
His first impulse was to walk away, and think no more about it--to act,
indeed, like any averagely decent man who did not care to be concerned in
such affairs.
He retraced his steps, however, and halted half a dozen paces from their
figures.
"Ask the gentleman! He spoke to me," she was saying in her brassy voice,
through the emphasis of which Shelton could detect her fear.
"That's all right," returned the policeman, "we know all about that."
"You--police!" cried the woman tearfully; "I 've got to get my living,
have n't I, the same as you?"
Shelton hesitated, then, catching the expression in her frightened face,
stepped forward. The policeman turned, and at the sight of his pale,
heavy jowl, cut by the cheek-strap, and the bullying eyes, he felt both
hate and fear, as if brought face to face with all that he despised and
loathed, yet strangely dreaded. The cold certainty of law and order
upholding the strong, treading underfoot the weak, the smug front of
meanness that only the purest spirits may attack, seemed to be facing
him. And the odd thing was, this man was only carrying out his duty.
Shelton moistened his lips.
"You're not going to charge her?"
"Aren't I?" returned the policeman.
"Look here; constable, you 're making a mistake."
The policeman took out his note-book.
"Oh, I 'm making a mistake? I 'll take your name and address, please; we
have to report these things."
"By all means," said Shelton, angrily giving it. "I spoke to her first."
"Perhaps you'll come up to the court tomorrow morning, and repeat that,"
replied the policeman, with incivility.
Shelton looked at him with all the force at his command.
"You had better be careful, constable," he said; but in the act of
uttering these words he thought how pitiable they sounded.
"We 're not to be trifled with," returned the policeman in a threatening
voice.
Shelton could think of nothing but to repeat:
"You had better be careful, constable."
"You're a gentleman," replied the policeman. "I'm only a policeman.
You've got the riches, I've got the power."
Grasping the woman's arm, he began to move along with her.
Shelton turned, and walked away.
He went to Grinnings' Club, and flung himself down upon a sofa. His
feeling was not one of pity for the woman, nor of peculiar anger with the
policeman, but rather of dissatisfaction with himself.
"What ought I to have done?" he thought, "the beggar was within his
rights."
He stared at the pictures on the wall, and a tide of disgust surged up in
him.
"One or other of us," he reflected, "we make these women what they are.
And when we've made them, we can't do without them; we don't want to; but
we give them no proper homes, so that they're reduced to prowl about the
streets, and then we run them in. Ha! that's good--that's excellent! We
run them in! And here we sit and carp. But what do we do? Nothing!
Our system is the most highly moral known. We get the benefit without
soiling even the hem of our phylacteries--the women are the only ones
that suffer. And why should n't they--inferior things?"
He lit a cigarette, and ordered the waiter to bring a drink.
"I'll go to the Court," he thought; but suddenly it occurred to him that
the case would get into the local papers. The press would never miss so
nice a little bit of scandal--"Gentleman v. Policeman!" And he had a
vision of Antonia's father, a neighbouring and conscientious magistrate,
solemnly reading this. Someone, at all events, was bound to see his name
and make a point of mentioning it too good to be missed! And suddenly he
saw with horror that to help the woman he would have to assert again that
he had spoken to her first. "I must go to the Court!" he kept thinking,
as if to assure himself that he was not a coward.
He lay awake half the night worrying over this dilemma.
"But I did n't speak to her first," he told himself; "I shall only be
telling a lie, and they 'll make me swear it, too!"
He tried to persuade himself that this was against his principles, but at
the bottom of his heart he knew that he would not object to telling such
a lie if only guaranteed immune from consequences; it appeared to him,
indeed, but obvious humanity.
"But why should I suffer?" he thought; "I've done nothing. It's neither
reasonable nor just."
He hated the unhappy woman who was causing him these horrors of
uncertainty. Whenever he decided one way or other, the policeman's face,
with its tyrannical and muddy eyes, rose before him like a nightmare, and
forced him to an opposite conviction. He fell asleep at last with the
full determination to go and see what happened.
He woke with a sense of odd disturbance. "I can do no good by going," he
thought, remembering, aid lying very still; "they 're certain to believe
the policeman; I shall only blacken myself for nothing;" and the combat
began again within him, but with far less fury. It was not what other
people thought, not even the risk of perjury that mattered (all this he
made quite clear)--it was Antonia. It was not fair to her to put himself
in such a false position; in fact, not decent.
He breakfasted. In the room were some Americans, and the face of one
young girl reminded him a little of Antonia. Fainter and fainter grew
the incident; it seemed to have its right proportions.
Two hours later, looking at the clock, he found that it was lunch-time.
He had not gone, had not committed perjury; but he wrote to a daily
paper, pointing out the danger run by the community from the power which
a belief in their infallibility places in the hands of the police--how,
since they are the sworn abettors of right and justice, their word is
almost necessarily taken to be gospel; how one and all they hang
together, from mingled interest and esprit de corps. Was it not, he
said, reasonable to suppose that amongst thousands of human beings
invested with such opportunities there would be found bullies who would
take advantage of them, and rise to distinction in the service upon the
helplessness of the unfortunate and the cowardice of people with anything
to lose? Those who had in their hands the sacred duties of selecting a
practically irresponsible body of men were bound, for the sake of freedom
and humanity, to exercise those duties with the utmost care and
thoroughness . . . .
However true, none of this helped him to think any better of himself at
heart, and he was haunted by the feeling that a stout and honest bit of
perjury was worth more than a letter to a daily paper.
He never saw his letter printed, containing, as it did, the germs of an
unpalatable truth.
In the afternoon he hired a horse, and galloped on Port Meadow. The
strain of his indecision over, he felt like a man recovering from an
illness, and he carefully abstained from looking at the local papers.
There was that within him, however, which resented the worsting of his
chivalry.
CHAPTER XX
HOLM OAKS
Holm Oaks stood back but little from the road--an old manor-house, not
set upon display, but dwelling close to its barns, stables, and walled
gardens, like a good mother; long, flat-roofed, red, it had Queen Anne
windows, on whose white-framed diamond panes the sunbeams glinted.
In front of it a fringe of elms, of all trees the tree of most
established principle, bordered the stretch of turf between the gravel
drive and road; and these elms were the homes of rooks of all birds the
most conventional. A huge aspen--impressionable creature--shivered and
shook beyond, apologising for appearance among such imperturbable
surroundings. It was frequented by a cuckoo, who came once a year to
hoot at the rules of life, but seldom made long stay; for boys threw
stones at it, exasperated by the absence of its morals.
The village which clustered in the dip had not yet lost its dread of
motor-cars. About this group of flat-faced cottages with gabled roofs
the scent of hay, manure, and roses clung continually; just now the odour
of the limes troubled its servile sturdiness. Beyond the dip, again, a
square-towered church kept within grey walls the record of the village
flock, births, deaths, and marriages--even the births of bastards, even
the deaths of suicides--and seemed to stretch a hand invisible above the
heads of common folk to grasp the forgers of the manor-house. Decent and
discreet, the two roofs caught the eye to the exclusion of all meaner
dwellings, seeming to have joined in a conspiracy to keep them out of
sight.
The July sun had burned his face all the way from Oxford, yet pale was
Shelton when he walked up the drive and rang the bell.
"Mrs. Dennant at home, Dobson?" he asked of the grave butler, who, old
servant that he was, still wore coloured trousers (for it was not yet
twelve o'clock, and he regarded coloured trousers up to noon as a sacred
distinction between the footmen and himself).
"Mrs. Dennant," replied this personage, raising his round and hairless
face, while on his mouth appeared that apologetic pout which comes of
living with good families--"Mrs. Dennant has gone into the village, sir;
but Miss Antonia is in the morning-room."
Shelton crossed the panelled, low-roofed hall, through whose far side the
lawn was visible, a vision of serenity. He mounted six wide, shallow
steps, and stopped. From behind a closed door there came the sound of
scales, and he stood, a prey to his emotions, the notes mingling in his
ears with the beating of his heart. He softly turned the handle, a fixed
smile on his lips.
Antonia was at the piano; her head was bobbing to the movements of her
fingers, and pressing down the pedals were her slim monotonously moving
feet. She had been playing tennis, for a racquet and her tam-o'-shanter
were flung down, and she was dressed in a blue skirt and creamy blouse,
fitting collarless about her throat. Her face was flushed, and wore a
little frown; and as her fingers raced along the keys, her neck swayed,
and the silk clung and shivered on her arms.
Shelton's eyes fastened on the silent, counting lips, on the fair hair
about her forehead, the darker eyebrows slanting down towards the nose,
the undimpled cheeks with the faint finger-marks beneath the ice-blue
eyes, the softly-pouting and undimpled chin, the whole remote, sweet,
suntouched, glacial face.
She turned her head, and, springing up, cried:
"Dick! What fun!" She gave him both her hands, but her smiling face
said very plainly, "Oh; don't let us be sentimental!"
"Are n't you glad to see me?" muttered Shelton.
"Glad to see you! You are funny, Dick!--as if you did n't know! Why,
you 've shaved your beard! Mother and Sybil have gone into the village
to see old Mrs. Hopkins. Shall we go out? Thea and the boys are playing
tennis. It's so jolly that you 've come!" She caught up the
tam-o'-shanter, and pinned it to her hair. Almost as tall as Shelton,
she looked taller, with arms raised and loose sleeves quivering like
wings to the movements of her fingers. "We might have a game before
lunch; you can have my other racquet."
"I've got no things," said Shelton blankly.
Her calm glance ran over him.
"You can have some of old Bernard's; he's got any amount. I'll wait for
you." She swung her racquet, looked at Shelton, cried, "Be quick!" and
vanished.
Shelton ran up-stairs, and dressed in the undecided way of men assuming
other people's clothes. She was in the hall when he descended, humming a
tune and prodding at her shoe; her smile showed all her pearly upper
teeth. He caught hold of her sleeve and whispered:
"Antonia!"
The colour rushed into her cheeks; she looked back across her shoulder.
"Come along, old Dick!" she cried; and, flinging open the glass door,
ran into the garden.
Shelton followed.
The tennis-ground was divided by tall netting from a paddock. A holm oak
tree shaded one corner, and its thick dark foliage gave an unexpected
depth to the green smoothness of the scene. As Shelton and Antonia came
up, Bernard Dennant stopped and cordially grasped Shelton's hand. From
the far side of the net Thea, in a shortish skirt, tossed back her
straight fair hair, and, warding off the sun, came strolling up to them.
The umpire, a small boy of twelve, was lying on his stomach, squealing
and tickling a collie. Shelton bent and pulled his hair.
"Hallo, Toddles! you young ruffian!"
One and all they stood round Shelton, and there was a frank and pitiless
inquiry in their eyes, in the angle of their noses something chaffing and
distrustful, as though about him were some subtle poignant scent exciting
curiosity and disapproval.
When the setts were over, and the girls resting in the double hammock
underneath the holm oak, Shelton went with Bernard to the paddock to hunt
for the lost balls.
"I say, old chap," said his old school-fellow, smiling dryly, "you're in
for a wigging from the Mater."
"A wigging?" murmured Shelton.
"I don't know much about it, but from something she let drop it seems
you've been saying some queer things in your letters to Antonia"; and
again he looked at Shelton with his dry smile.
"Queer things?" said the latter angrily. "What d' you mean?"
"Oh, don't ask me. The Mater thinks she's in a bad way--unsettled, or
what d' you call at. You've been telling her that things are not what
they seem. That's bad, you know"; and still smiling he shook his head.
Shelton dropped his eyes.
"Well, they are n't!" he said.
"Oh, that's all right! But don't bring your philosophy down here, old
chap."
"Philosophy!" said Shelton, puzzled.
"Leave us a sacred prejudice or two."
"Sacred! Nothing's sacred, except--" But Shelton did not finish his
remark. "I don't understand," he said.
"Ideals, that sort of thing! You've been diving down below the line of
'practical politics,' that's about the size of it, my boy"; and, stooping
suddenly, he picked up the last ball. "There is the Mater!" Shelton saw
Mrs. Dennant coming down the lawn with her second daughter, Sybil.
By the time they reached the holm oak the three girls had departed
towards the house, walking arm in arm, and Mrs. Dennant was standing
there alone, in a grey dress, talking to an undergardener. Her hands,
cased in tan gauntlets, held a basket which warded off the bearded
gardener from the severe but ample lines of her useful-looking skirt.
The collie, erect upon his haunches, looked at their two faces, pricking
his ears in his endeavour to appreciate how one of these two bipeds
differed from the other.
"Thank you; that 'll do, Bunyan. Ah, Dick! Charmin' to see you here, at
last!"
In his intercourse with Mrs. Dennant, Shelton never failed to mark the
typical nature of her personality. It always seemed to him that he had
met so many other ladies like her. He felt that her undoubtable quality
had a non-individual flavour, as if standing for her class. She thought
that standing for herself was not the thing; yet she was full of
character. Tall, with nose a trifle beaked, long, sloping chin, and an
assured, benevolent mouth, showing, perhaps, too many teeth--though thin,
she was not unsubstantial. Her accent in speaking showed her heritage;
it was a kind of drawl which disregarded vulgar merits such as tone;
leaned on some syllables, and despised the final 'g'--the peculiar
accent, in fact, of aristocracy, adding its deliberate joys to life.
Shelton knew that she had many interests; she was never really idle, from
the time (7 A.M.) when her maid brought her a little china pot of tea
with a single biscuit and her pet dog, Tops, till eleven o'clock at
night, when she lighted a wax candle in a silver candlestick, and with
this in one hand, and in the other a new novel, or, better still, one of
those charming volumes written by great people about the still greater
people they have met, she said good-night to her children and her guests.
No! What with photography, the presidency of a local league, visiting
the rich, superintending all the poor, gardening, reading, keeping all
her ideas so tidy that no foreign notions might stray in, she was never
idle. The information she collected from these sources was both vast and
varied, but she never let it flavour her opinions, which lacked sauce,
and were drawn from some sort of dish into which, with all her class, she
dipped her fingers.
He liked her. No one could help liking her. She was kind, and of such
good quality, with a suggestion about her of thin, excellent, and useful
china; and she was scented, too--not with verbena, violets, or those
essences which women love, but with nothing, as if she had taken stand
against all meretricity. In her intercourse with persons not "quite the
thing" (she excepted the vicar from this category, though his father had
dealt in haberdashery), her refinement, gently, unobtrusively, and with
great practical good sense, seemed continually to murmur, "I am, and
you--well, are you, don't you know?" But there was no self-consciousness
about this attitude, for she was really not a common woman. She simply
could not help it; all her people had done this. Their nurses breathed
above them in their cradles something that, inhaled into their systems,
ever afterwards prevented them from taking good, clear breaths. And her
manner! Ah! her manner--it concealed the inner woman so as to leave
doubt of her existence!
Shelton listened to the kindly briskness with which she dwelt upon the
under-gardener.
"Poor Bunyan! he lost his wife six months ago, and was quite cheerful
just at first, but now he 's really too distressin'. I 've done all I
can to rouse him; it's so melancholy to see him mopin'. And, my dear
Dick, the way he mangles the new rose-trees! I'm afraid he's goin' mad;
I shall have to send him away; poor fellow!"
It was clear that she sympathised with Bunyan, or, rather, believed him
entitled to a modicum of wholesome grief, the loss of wives being a
canonised and legal, sorrow. But excesses! O dear, no!
"I 've told him I shall raise his wages," she sighed. "He used to be
such a splendid gardener! That reminds me, my dear Dick; I want to have
a talk with you. Shall we go in to lunch?"
Consulting the memorandum-book in which she had been noting the case of
Mrs. Hopkins, she slightly preceded Shelton to the house.
It was somewhat late that afternoon when Shelton had his "wigging"; nor
did it seem to him, hypnotised by the momentary absence of Antonia, such
a very serious affair.
"Now, Dick," the Honourable Mrs. Dennant said, in her decisive drawl, "I
don't think it 's right to put ideas into Antonia's head."
"Ideas!" murmured Shelton in confusion.
"We all know," continued Mrs. Dennant, "that things are not always what
they ought to be."
Shelton looked at her; she was seated at her writing-table, addressing in
her large, free writing a dinner invitation to a bishop. There was not
the faintest trace of awkwardness about her, yet Shelton could not help a
certain sense of shock. If she--she--did not think things were what they
ought to be--in a bad way things must be indeed!
"Things!" he muttered.
Mrs. Dennant looked at him firmly but kindly with the eyes that would
remind him of a hare's.
"She showed me some of your letters, you know. Well, it 's not a bit of
use denyin', my dear Dick, that you've been thinkin' too much lately."
Shelton perceived that he had done her an injustice; she handled "things"
as she handled under-gardeners--put them away when they showed signs of
running to extremes.
"I can't help that, I 'm afraid," he answered.
"My dear boy! you'll never get on that way. Now, I want you to promise
me you won't talk to Antonia about those sort of things."
Shelton raised his eyebrows.
"Oh, you know what I mean!"
He saw that to press Mrs. Dennant to say what she meant by "things" would
really hurt her sense of form; it would be cruel to force her thus below
the surface!
He therefore said, "Quite so!"
To his extreme surprise, flushing the peculiar and pathetic flush of
women past their prime, she drawled out:
"About the poor--and criminals--and marriages--there was that wedding,
don't you know?"
Shelton bowed his head. Motherhood had been too strong for her; in her
maternal flutter she had committed the solecism of touching in so many
words on "things."
"Does n't she really see the fun," he thought, "in one man dining out of
gold and another dining in the gutter; or in two married people living on
together in perfect discord 'pour encourages les autres', or in
worshipping Jesus Christ and claiming all her rights at the same time; or
in despising foreigners because they are foreigners; or in war; or in
anything that is funny?" But he did her a certain amount of justice by
recognising that this was natural, since her whole life had been passed
in trying not to see the fun in all these things.
But Antonia stood smiling in the doorway. Brilliant and gay she looked,
yet resentful, as if she knew they had been talking of her. She sat down
by Shelton's side, and began asking him about the youthful foreigner whom
he had spoken of; and her eyes made him doubt whether she, too, saw the
fun that lay in one human being patronising others.
"But I suppose he's really good," she said, "I mean, all those things he
told you about were only--"
"Good!" he answered, fidgeting; "I don't really know what the word
means."
Her eyes clouded. "Dick, how can you?" they seemed to say.
Shelton stroked her sleeve.
"Tell us about Mr. Crocker," she said, taking no heed of his caress.
"The lunatic!" he said.
"Lunatic! Why, in your letters he was splendid."
"So he is," said Shelton, half ashamed; "he's not a bit mad, really--that
is, I only wish I were half as mad."
"Who's that mad?" queried Mrs. Dennant from behind the urn--"Tom Crocker?
Ah, yes! I knew his mother; she was a Springer."
"Did he do it in the week?" said Thea, appearing in the window with a
kitten.
"I don't know," Shelton was obliged to answer.
Thea shook back her hair.
"I call it awfully slack of you not to have found out," she said.
Antonia frowned.
"You were very sweet to that young foreigner, Dick," she murmured with a
smile at Shelton. "I wish that we could see him."
But Shelton shook his head.
"It seems to me," he muttered, "that I did about as little for him as I
could."
Again her face grew thoughtful, as though his words had chilled her.
"I don't see what more you could have done," she answered.
A desire to get close to her, half fear, half ache, a sense of futility
and bafflement, an inner burning, made him feel as though a flame were
licking at his heart.
CHAPTER XXI
ENGLISH
Just as Shelton was starting to walk back to Oxford he met Mr. Dennant
coming from a ride. Antonia's father was a spare man of medium height,
with yellowish face, grey moustache, ironical eyebrows, and some tiny
crow's-feet. In his old, short grey coat, with a little slit up the
middle of the back, his drab cord breeches, ancient mahogany leggings,
and carefully blacked boats, he had a dry, threadbare quality not without
distinction.
"Ah, Shelton!" he said, in his quietly festive voice; "glad to see the
pilgrim here, at last. You're not off already?" and, laying his hand on
Shelton's arm, he proposed to walk a little way with him across the
fields.
This was the first time they had met since the engagement; and Shelton
began to nerve himself to express some sentiment, however bald, about it.
He squared his shoulders, cleared his throat, and looked askance at Mr.
Dennant. That gentleman was walking stiffly, his cord breeches faintly
squeaking. He switched a yellow, jointed cane against his leggings, and
after each blow looked at his legs satirically. He himself was rather
like that yellow cane-pale, and slim, and jointed, with features arching
just a little, like the arching of its handle.
"They say it'll be a bad year for fruit," Shelton said at last.
"My dear fellow, you don't know your farmer, I 'm afraid. We ought to
hang some farmers--do a world of good. Dear souls! I've got some
perfect strawberries."
"I suppose," said Shelton, glad to postpone the evil moment, "in a
climate like this a man must grumble."
"Quite so, quite so! Look at us poor slaves of land-owners; if I
couldn't abuse the farmers I should be wretched. Did you ever see
anything finer than this pasture? And they want me to lower their
rents!"
And Mr. Dennant's glance satirically wavered, rested on Shelton, and
whisked back to the ground as though he had seen something that alarmed
him. There was a pause.
"Now for it!" thought the younger man.
Mr. Dennant kept his eyes fixed on his boots.
"If they'd said, now," he remarked jocosely, "that the frost had nipped
the partridges, there 'd have been some sense in it; but what can you
expect? They've no consideration, dear souls!"
Shelton took a breath, and, with averted eyes, he hurriedly began:
"It's awfully hard, sir, to--"
Mr. Dennant switched his cane against his shin.
"Yes," he said, "it 's awfully hard to put up with, but what can a fellow
do? One must have farmers. Why, if it was n't for the farmers, there 'd
be still a hare or two about the place!"
Shelton laughed spasmodically; again he glanced askance at his future
father-in-law. What did the waggling of his head mean, the deepening of
his crow's-feet, the odd contraction of the mouth? And his eye caught
Mr. Dennant's eye; its expression was queer above the fine, dry nose (one
of the sort that reddens in a wind).
"I've never had much to do with farmers," he said at last.
"Have n't you? Lucky fellow! The most--yes, quite the most trying
portion of the human species--next to daughters."
"Well, sir, you can hardly expect me--" began Shelton.
"I don't--oh, I don't! D 'you know, I really believe we're in for a
ducking."
A large black cloud had covered up the sun, and some drops were
spattering on Mr. Dennant's hard felt hat.
Shelton welcomed the shower; it appeared to him an intervention on the
part of Providence. He would have to say something, but not now, later.
"I 'll go on," he said; "I don't mind the rain. But you'd better get
back, sir."
"Dear me! I've a tenant in this cottage," said Mr. Dennant in his,
leisurely, dry manner "and a beggar he is to poach, too. Least we can do
's to ask for a little shelter; what do you think?" and smiling
sarcastically, as though deprecating his intention to keep dry, he rapped
on the door of a prosperous-looking cottage.
It was opened by a girl of Antonia's age and height.
"Ah, Phoebe! Your father in?"
"No," replied the girl, fluttering; "father's out, Mr. Dennant."
"So sorry! Will you let us bide a bit out of the rain?"
The sweet-looking Phoebe dusted them two chairs, and, curtseying, left
them in the parlour.
"What a pretty girl!" said Shelton.
"Yes, she's a pretty girl; half the young fellows are after her, but she
won't leave her father. Oh, he 's a charming rascal is that fellow!"
This remark suddenly brought home to Shelton the conviction that he was
further than ever from avoiding the necessity for speaking. He walked
over to the window. The rain was coming down with fury, though a golden
line far down the sky promised the shower's quick end. "For goodness'
sake," he thought, "let me say something, however idiotic, and get it
over!" But he did not turn; a kind of paralysis had seized on him.
"Tremendous heavy rain!" he said at last; "coming down in waterspouts."
It would have been just as easy to say: "I believe your daughter to be
the sweetest thing on earth; I love her, and I 'm going to make her
happy!" Just as easy, just about the same amount of breath required; but
he couldn't say it! He watched the rain stream and hiss against the
leaves and churn the dust on the parched road with its insistent torrent;
and he noticed with precision all the details of the process going on
outside how the raindrops darted at the leaves like spears, and how the
leaves shook themselves free a hundred times a minute, while little
runnels of water, ice-clear, rolled over their edges, soft and quick. He
noticed, too, the mournful head of a sheltering cow that was chewing at
the hedge.
Mr. Dennant had not replied to his remark about the rain. So
disconcerting was this silence that Shelton turned. His future
father-in-law, upon his wooden chair, was staring at his well-blacked
boots, bending forward above his parted knees, and prodding at the
carpet; a glimpse at his face disturbed Shelton's resolution. It was not
forbidding, stern, discouraging--not in the least; it had merely for the
moment ceased to look satirical. This was so startling that Shelton lost
his chance of speaking. There seemed a heart to Mr. Dennant's gravity;
as though for once he were looking grave because he felt so. But
glancing up at Shelton, his dry jocosity reappeared at once.
"What a day for ducks!" he said; and again there was unmistakable alarm
about the eye. Was it possible that he, too, dreaded something?
"I can't express--" began Shelton hurriedly.
"Yes, it's beastly to get wet," said Mr. Dennant, and he sang--
"For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
And jump out anywhere."
"You 'll be with us for that dinner-party next week, eh? Capital!
There's the Bishop of Blumenthal and old Sir Jack Buckwell; I must get my
wife to put you between them--"
"For it's my delight of a starry night--"
"The Bishop's a great anti-divorce man, and old Buckwell 's been in the
court at least twice--"
"In the season of the year!"
"Will you please to take some tea, gentlemen?" said the voice of Phoebe
in the doorway.
"No, thank you, Phoebe. That girl ought to get married," went on Mr.
Dennant, as Phoebe blushingly withdrew. A flush showed queerly on his
sallow cheeks. "A shame to keep her tied like this to her father's
apron-strings--selfish fellow, that!" He looked up sharply, as if he had
made a dangerous remark.
The keeper he was watching us,
For him we did n't care!
Shelton suddenly felt certain that Antonia's father was just as anxious
to say something expressive of his feelings, and as unable as himself.
And this was comforting.
"You know, sir--" he began.
But Mr. Dennant's eyebrows rose, his crow's-feet twinkled; his
personality seemed to shrink together.
"By Jove!" he said, "it's stopped! Now's our chance! Come along, my
dear fellow; delays are dangerous!" and with his bantering courtesy he
held the door for Shelton to pass out. "I think we'll part here," he
said--"I almost think so. Good luck to you!"
He held out his dry, yellow hand. Shelton seized it, wrung it hard, and
muttered the word:
"Grateful!"
Again Mr. Dennant's eyebrows quivered as if they had been tweaked; he had
been found out, and he disliked it. The colour in his face had died
away; it was calm, wrinkled, dead-looking under the flattened, narrow
brim of his black hat; his grey moustache drooped thinly; the crow's-feet
hardened round his eyes; his nostrils were distended by the queerest
smile.
"Gratitude!" he said; "almost a vice, is n't it? Good-night!"
Shelton's face quivered; he raised his hat, and, turning as abruptly as
his senior, proceeded on his way. He had been playing in a comedy that
could only have been played in England. He could afford to smile now at
his past discomfort, having no longer the sense of duty unfulfilled.
Everything had been said that was right and proper to be said, in the way
that we such things should say. No violence had been done; he could
afford to smile--smile at himself, at Mr. Dennant, at to-morrow; smile at
the sweet aroma of the earth, the shy, unwilling sweetness that only rain
brings forth.
CHAPTER XXII
THE COUNTRY HOUSE
The luncheon hour at Holm Oaks, was, as in many well-bred country
houses--out of the shooting season, be it understood--the soulful hour.
The ferment of the daily doings was then at its full height, and the
clamour of its conversation on the weather, and the dogs, the horses,
neighbours, cricket, golf, was mingled with a literary murmur; for the
Dennants were superior, and it was quite usual to hear remarks like these
"Have you read that charmin' thing of Poser's?" or, "Yes, I've got the
new edition of old Bablington: delightfully bound--so light." And it was
in July that Holm Oaks, as a gathering-place of the elect, was at its
best. For in July it had become customary to welcome there many of those
poor souls from London who arrived exhausted by the season, and than whom
no seamstress in a two-pair back could better have earned a holiday. The
Dennants themselves never went to London for the season. It was their
good pleasure not to. A week or fortnight of it satisfied them. They
had a radical weakness for fresh air, and Antonia, even after her
presentation two seasons back, had insisted on returning home,
stigmatising London balls as "stuffy things."
When Shelton arrived the stream had only just begun, but every day
brought fresh, or rather jaded, people to occupy the old, dark,
sweet-smelling bedrooms. Individually, he liked his fellow-guests, but
he found himself observing them. He knew that, if a man judged people
singly, almost all were better than himself; only when judged in bulk
were they worthy of the sweeping criticisms he felt inclined to pass on
them. He knew this just as he knew that the conventions, having been
invented to prevent man following his natural desires, were merely the
disapproving sums of innumerable individual approvals.
It was in the bulk; then, that he found himself observing. But with his
amiability and dread of notoriety he remained to all appearance a
well-bred, docile creature, and he kept his judgments to himself.
In the matter of intellect he made a rough division of the guests--those
who accepted things without a murmur, those who accepted them with
carping jocularity; in the matter of morals he found they all accepted
things without the semblance of a kick. To show sign of private moral
judgment was to have lost your soul, and, worse, to be a bit of an
outsider. He gathered this by intuition rather than from conversation;
for conversation naturally tabooed such questions, and was carried on in
the loud and cheerful tones peculiar to people of good breeding. Shelton
had never been able to acquire this tone, and he could not help feeling
that the inability made him more or less an object of suspicion. The
atmosphere struck him as it never had before, causing him to feel a doubt
of his gentility. Could a man suffer from passion, heart-searchings, or
misgivings, and remain a gentleman? It seemed improbable. One of his
fellow-guests, a man called Edgbaston, small-eyed and semi-bald, with a
dark moustache and a distinguished air of meanness, disconcerted him one
day by remarking of an unknown person, "A half-bred lookin' chap; did n't
seem to know his mind." Shelton was harassed by a horrid doubt.
Everything seemed divided into classes, carefully docketed and valued.
For instance, a Briton was of more value than a man, and wives than
women. Those things or phases of life with which people had no personal
acquaintance were regarded with a faint amusement and a certain
disapproval. The principles of the upper class, in fact, were strictly
followed.
He was in that hypersenstive and nervous state favourable for recording
currents foreign to itself. Things he had never before noticed now had
profound effect on him, such as the tone in which men spoke of women--not
precisely with hostility, nor exactly with contempt best, perhaps,
described as cultured jeering; never, of course, when men spoke of their
own wives, mothers, sisters, or immediate friends, but merely when they
spoke of any other women. He reflected upon this, and came to the
conclusion that, among the upper classes, each man's own property was
holy, while other women were created to supply him with gossip, jests,
and spice. Another thing that struck him was the way in which the war
then going on was made into an affair of class. In their view it was a
baddish business, because poor hack Blank and Peter Blank-Blank had lost
their lives, and poor Teddy Blank had now one arm instead of two.
Humanity in general was omitted, but not the upper classes, nor,
incidentally, the country which belonged to them. For there they were,
all seated in a row, with eyes fixed on the horizon of their lawns.
Late one evening, billiards and music being over and the ladies gone,
Shelton returned from changing to his smoking-suit, and dropped into one
of the great arm-chairs that even in summer made a semicircle round the
fendered hearth. Fresh from his good-night parting with Antonia, he sat
perhaps ten minutes before he began to take in all the figures in their
parti-coloured smoking jackets, cross-legged, with glasses in their
hands, and cigars between their teeth.
The man in the next chair roused him by putting down his tumbler with a
tap, and seating himself upon the cushioned fender. Through the mist of
smoke, with shoulders hunched, elbows and knees crooked out, cigar
protruding, beak-ways, below his nose, and the crimson collar of his
smoking jacket buttoned close as plumage on his breast, he looked a
little like a gorgeous bird.
"They do you awfully well," he said.
A voice from the chair on Shelton's right replied,
"They do you better at Verado's."
"The Veau d'Or 's the best place; they give you Turkish baths for
nothing!" drawled a fat man with a tiny mouth.
The suavity of this pronouncement enfolded all as with a blessing. And at
once, as if by magic, in the old, oak-panelled room, the world fell
naturally into its three departments: that where they do you well; that
where they do you better; and that where they give you Turkish baths for
nothing.
"If you want Turkish baths," said a tall youth with clean red face, who
had come into the room, and stood, his mouth a little open, and long feet
jutting with sweet helplessness in front of him, "you should go, you
know, to Buda Pesth; most awfully rippin' there."
Shelton saw an indescribable appreciation rise on every face, as though
they had been offered truffles or something equally delicious.
"Oh no, Poodles," said the man perched on the fender. "A Johnny I know
tells me they 're nothing to Sofia." His face was transfigured by the
subtle gloating of a man enjoying vice by proxy.
"Ah!" drawled the small-mouthed man, "there 's nothing fit to hold a
candle to Baghda-ad."
Once again his utterance enfolded all as with a blessing, and once again
the world fell into its three departments: that where they do you well;
that where they do you better; and--Baghdad.
Shelton thought to himself: "Why don't I know a place that's better than
Baghdad?"
He felt so insignificant. It seemed that he knew none of these
delightful spots; that he was of no use to any of his fellow-men; though
privately he was convinced that all these speakers were as ignorant as
himself, and merely found it warming to recall such things as they had
heard, with that peculiar gloating look. Alas! his anecdotes would never
earn for him that prize of persons in society, the label of a "good chap"
and "sportsman."
"Have you ever been in Baghdad?" he feebly asked.
The fat man did not answer; he had begun an anecdote, and in his broad
expanse of face his tiny mouth writhed like a caterpillar. The anecdote
was humorous.
With the exception of Antonia, Shelton saw but little of the ladies, for,
following the well-known custom of the country house, men and women
avoided each other as much as might be. They met at meals, and
occasionally joined in tennis and in croquet; otherwise it seemed--almost
Orientally--agreed that they were better kept apart.
Chancing one day to enter the withdrawing room, while searching for
Antonia, he found that he had lighted on a feminine discussion; he would
have beaten a retreat, of course, but it seemed too obvious that he was
merely looking for his fiancee, so, sitting down, he listened.
The Honourable Charlotte Penguin, still knitting a silk tie--the sixth
since that she had been knitting at Hyeres--sat on the low window-seat
close to a hydrangea, the petals of whose round flowers almost kissed her
sanguine cheek. Her eyes were fixed with languid aspiration on the lady
who was speaking. This was a square woman of medium height, with grey
hair brushed from her low forehead, the expression of whose face was
brisk and rather cross. She was standing with a book, as if delivering a
sermon. Had she been a man she might have been described as a bright
young man of business; for, though grey, she never could be old, nor ever
lose the power of forming quick decisions. Her features and her eyes
were prompt and slightly hard, tinged with faith fanatical in the justice
of her judgments, and she had that fussy simpleness of dress which
indicates the right to meddle. Not red, not white, neither yellow nor
quite blue, her complexion was suffused with a certain mixture of these
colours, adapted to the climate; and her smile had a strange sour
sweetness, like nothing but the flavour of an apple on the turn.
"I don't care what they tell you," she was saying--not offensively,
though her voice seemed to imply that she had no time to waste in
pleasing--"in all my dealings with them I've found it best to treat them
quite like children."
A lady, behind the Times, smiled; her mouth--indeed, her whole hard,
handsome face--was reminiscent of dappled rocking-horses found in the
Soho Bazaar. She crossed her feet, and some rich and silk stuff rustled.
Her whole personality seemed to creak as, without looking, she answered
in harsh tones:
"I find the poor are most delightful persons."
Sybil Dennant, seated on the sofa, with a feathery laugh shot a barking
terrier dog at Shelton.
"Here's Dick," she said. "Well, Dick, what's your opinion?"
Shelton looked around him, scared. The elder ladies who had spoken had
fixed their eyes on him, and in their gaze he read his utter
insignificance.
"Oh, that young man!" they seemed to say. "Expect a practical remark
from him? Now, come!"
"Opinion," he stammered, "of the poor? I haven't any."
The person on her feet, whose name was Mrs. Mattock, directing her
peculiar sweet-sour smile at the distinguished lady with the Times, said:
"Perhaps you 've not had experience of them in London, Lady Bonington?"
Lady Bonington, in answer, rustled.
"Oh, do tell us about the slums, Mrs. Mattock!" cried Sybil.
"Slumming must be splendid! It's so deadly here--nothing but flannel
petticoats."
"The poor, my dear," began Mrs. Mattock, "are not the least bit what you
think them--"
"Oh, d' you know, I think they're rather nice!" broke in Aunt Charlotte
close to the hydrangea.
"You think so?" said Mrs. Mattock sharply. "I find they do nothing but
grumble."
"They don't grumble at me: they are delightful persons", and Lady
Bonington gave Shelton a grim smile.
He could not help thinking that to grumble in the presence of that rich,
despotic personality would require a superhuman courage.
"They're the most ungrateful people in the world," said Mrs. Mattock.
"Why, then," thought Shelton, "do you go amongst them?"
She continued, "One must do them good, one, must do one's duty, but as to
getting thanks--"
Lady Bonington sardonically said,
"Poor things! they have a lot to bear."
"The little children!" murmured Aunt Charlotte, with a flushing cheek
and shining eyes; "it 's rather pathetic."
"Children indeed!" said Mrs. Mattock. "It puts me out of all patience
to see the way that they neglect them. People are so sentimental about
the poor."
Lady Bonington creaked again. Her splendid shoulders were wedged into
her chair; her fine dark hair, gleaming with silver, sprang back upon her
brow; a ruby bracelet glowed on the powerful wrist that held the journal;
she rocked her copper-slippered foot. She did not appear to be too
sentimental.
"I know they often have a very easy time," said Mrs. Mattock, as if some
one had injured her severely. And Shelton saw, not without pity, that
Fate had scored her kind and squashed-up face with wrinkles, whose tiny
furrows were eloquent of good intentions frustrated by the unpractical
and discontented poor. "Do what you will, they are never satisfied; they
only resent one's help, or else they take the help and never thank you
for it!"
"Oh!" murmured Aunt Charlotte, "that's rather hard."
Shelton had been growing, more uneasy. He said abruptly:
"I should do the same if I were they."
Mrs. Mattock's brown eyes flew at him; Lady Bonington spoke to the Times;
her ruby bracelet and a bangle jingled.
"We ought to put ourselves in their places."
Shelton could not help a smile; Lady Bonington in the places of the poor!
"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Mattock, "I put myself entirely in their place. I
quite understand their feelings. But ingratitude is a repulsive
quality."
"They seem unable to put themselves in your place," murmured Shelton; and
in a fit of courage he took the room in with a sweeping glance.
Yes, that room was wonderfully consistent, with its air of perfect
second-handedness, as if each picture, and each piece of furniture, each
book, each lady present, had been made from patterns. They were all
widely different, yet all (like works of art seen in some exhibitions)
had the look of being after the designs of some original spirit. The
whole room was chaste, restrained, derived, practical, and comfortable;
neither in virtue nor in work, neither in manner, speech, appearance, nor
in theory, could it give itself away.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE STAINED-GLASS MAN
Still looking for Antonia, Shelton went up to the morning-room. Thea
Dennant and another girl were seated in the window, talking. From the
look they gave him he saw that he had better never have been born; he
hastily withdrew. Descending to the hall, he came on Mr. Dennant
crossing to his study, with a handful of official-looking papers.
"Ah, Shelton!" said he, "you look a little lost. Is the shrine
invisible?"
Shelton grinned, said "Yes," and went on looking. He was not fortunate.
In the dining-room sat Mrs. Dennant, making up her list of books.
"Do give me your opinion, Dick," she said. "Everybody 's readin' this
thing of Katherine Asterick's; I believe it's simply because she's got a
title."
"One must read a book for some reason or other," answered Shelton.
"Well," returned Mrs. Dennant, "I hate doin' things just because other
people do them, and I sha'n't get it."
"Good!"
Mrs. Dennant marked the catalogue.
"Here 's Linseed's last, of course; though I must say I don't care for
him, but I suppose we ought to have it in the house. And there's
Quality's 'The Splendid Diatribes': that 's sure to be good, he's always
so refined. But what am I to do about this of Arthur Baal's? They say
that he's a charlatan, but everybody reads him, don't you know"; and over
the catalogue Shelton caught the gleam of hare-like eyes.
Decision had vanished from her face, with its arched nose and slightly
sloping chin, as though some one had suddenly appealed to her to trust
her instincts. It was quite pathetic. Still, there was always the
book's circulation to form her judgment by.
"I think I 'd better mark it," she said, "don't you? Were you lookin'
for Antonia? If you come across Bunyan in the garden, Dick, do say I
want to see him; he's gettin' to be a perfect nuisance. I can understand
his feelin's, but really he 's carryin' it too far."
Primed with his message to the under-gardener, Shelton went. He took a
despairing look into the billiard-room. Antonia was not there. Instead,
a tall and fat-cheeked gentleman with a neat moustache, called Mabbey,
was practising the spot-stroke. He paused as Shelton entered, and,
pouting like a baby, asked in a sleepy voice,
"Play me a hundred up?"
Shelton shook his head, stammered out his sorrow, and was about to go.
The gentleman called Mabbey, plaintively feeling the places where his
moustaches joined his pink and glossy cheeks, asked with an air of some
surprise,
"What's your general game, then?"
"I really don't know," said Shelton.
The gentleman called Mabbey chalked his cue, and, moving his round,
knock-kneed legs in their tight trousers, took up his position for the
stroke.
"What price that?" he said, as he regained the perpendicular; and his
well-fed eyes followed Shelton with sleepy inquisition. "Curious dark
horse, Shelton," they seemed to say.
Shelton hurried out, and was about to run down the lower lawn, when he
was accosted by another person walking in the sunshine--a slight-built
man in a turned-down collar, with a thin and fair moustache, and a faint
bluish tint on one side of his high forehead, caused by a network of thin
veins. His face had something of the youthful, optimistic, stained-glass
look peculiar to the refined English type. He walked elastically, yet
with trim precision, as if he had a pleasant taste in furniture and
churches, and held the Spectator in his hand.
"Ah, Shelton!" he said in high-tuned tones, halting his legs in such an
easy attitude that it was impossible to interrupt it: "come to take the
air?"
Shelton's own brown face, nondescript nose, and his amiable but dogged
chin contrasted strangely with the clear-cut features of the
stained-glass man.
"I hear from Halidome that you're going to stand for Parliament," the
latter said.
Shelton, recalling Halidome's autocratic manner of settling other
people's business, smiled.
"Do I look like it?" he asked.
The eyebrows quivered on the stained-glass man. It had never occurred to
him, perhaps, that to stand for Parliament a man must look like it; he
examined Shelton with some curiosity.
"Ah, well," he said, "now you mention it, perhaps not." His eyes, so
carefully ironical, although they differed from the eyes of Mabbey, also
seemed to ask of Shelton what sort of a dark horse he was.
"You 're still in the Domestic Office, then?" asked Shelton.
The stained-glass man stooped to sniff a rosebush. "Yes," he said; "it
suits me very well. I get lots of time for my art work."
"That must be very interesting," said Shelton, whose glance was roving
for Antonia; "I never managed to begin a hobby."
"Never had a hobby!" said the stained-glass man, brushing back his hair
(he was walking with no hat); "why, what the deuce d' you do?"
Shelton could not answer; the idea had never troubled him.
"I really don't know," he said, embarrassed; "there's always something
going on, as far as I can see."
The stained-glass man placed his hands within his pockets, and his bright
glance swept over his companion.
"A fellow must have a hobby to give him an interest in life," he said.
"An interest in life?" repeated Shelton grimly; "life itself is good
enough for me."
"Oh!" replied the stained-glass man, as though he disapproved of
regarding life itself as interesting.
"That's all very well, but you want something more than that. Why don't
you take up woodcarving?"
"Wood-carving?"
"The moment I get fagged with office papers and that sort of thing I take
up my wood-carving; good as a game of hockey."
"I have n't the enthusiasm."
The eyebrows of the stained-glass man twitched; he twisted his moustache.
"You 'll find not having a hobby does n't pay," he said; "you 'll get
old, then where 'll you be?"
It came as a surprise that he should use the words "it does n't pay," for
he had a kind of partially enamelled look, like that modern jewellery
which really seems unconscious of its market value.
"You've given up the Bar? Don't you get awfully bored having nothing to
do?" pursued the stained-glass man, stopping before an ancient sundial.
Shelton felt a delicacy, as a man naturally would, in explaining that
being in love was in itself enough to do. To do nothing is unworthy of a
man! But he had never felt as yet the want of any occupation. His
silence in no way disconcerted his acquaintance.
"That's a nice old article of virtue," he said, pointing with his chin;
and, walking round the sundial, he made its acquaintance from the other
side. Its grey profile cast a thin and shortening shadow on the turf;
tongues of moss were licking at its sides; the daisies clustered thick
around its base; it had acquired a look of growing from the soil. "I
should like to get hold of that," the stained-glass man remarked; "I
don't know when I 've seen a better specimen," and he walked round it
once again.
His eyebrows were still ironically arched, but below them his eyes were
almost calculating, and below them, again, his mouth had opened just a
little. A person with a keener eye would have said his face looked
greedy, and even Shelton was surprised, as though he had read in the
Spectator a confession of commercialism.
"You could n't uproot a thing like that," he said; "it would lose all its
charm."
His companion turned impatiently, and his countenance looked wonderfully
genuine.
"Couldn't I?" he said. "By Jove! I thought so. 1690! The best
period." He ran his forger round the sundial's edge. "Splendid
line-clean as the day they made it. You don't seem to care much about
that sort of thing"; and once again, as though accustomed to the
indifference of Vandals, his face regained its mask.
They strolled on towards the kitchen gardens, Shelton still busy
searching every patch of shade. He wanted to say "Can't stop," and
hurry off; but there was about the stained-glass man a something
that, while stinging Shelton's feelings, made the showing of them
quite impossible. "Feelings!" that person seemed to say; "all very
well, but you want more than that. Why not take up wood-carving?
. . . . Feelings! I was born in England, and have been at
Cambridge."
"Are you staying long?" he asked Shelton. "I go on to Halidome's
to-morrow; suppose I sha'n't see you there? Good, chap, old Halidome!
Collection of etchings very fine!"
"No; I 'm staying on," said Shelton.
"Ah!" said the stained-glass man, "charming people, the Dennants!"
Shelton, reddening slowly, turned his head away; he picked a gooseberry,
and muttered, "Yes."
"The eldest girl especially; no nonsense about her. I thought she was a
particularly nice girl."
Shelton heard this praise of Antonia with an odd sensation; it gave him
the reverse of pleasure, as though the words had cast new light upon her.
He grunted hastily,
"I suppose you know that we 're engaged?"
"Really!" said the stained-glass man, and again his bright, clear,
iron-committal glance swept over Shelton--"really! I didn't know.
Congratulate you!"
It was as if he said: "You're a man of taste; I should say she would go
well in almost any drawing-room!"
"Thanks," said Shelton; "there she' is. If you'll excuse me, I want to
speak to her."
CHAPTER XXIV
PARADISE
Antonia, in a sunny angle of the old brick wall, amid the pinks and
poppies and cornflowers, was humming to herself. Shelton saw the
stained-glass man pass out of sight, then, unobserved, he watched her
smelling at the flowers, caressing her face with each in turn, casting
away spoiled blossoms, and all the time humming that soft tune.
In two months, or three, all barriers between himself and this
inscrutable young Eve would break; she would be a part of him, and he a
part of her; he would know all her thoughts, and she all his; together
they would be as one, and all would think of them, and talk of them, as
one; and this would come about by standing half an hour together in a
church, by the passing of a ring, and the signing of their names.
The sun was burnishing her hair--she wore no hat flushing her cheeks,
sweetening and making sensuous her limbs; it had warmed her through and
through, so that, like the flowers and bees, the sunlight and the air,
she was all motion, light, and colour.
She turned and saw Shelton standing there.
"Oh, Dick!" she said: "Lend me your hand-kerchief to put these flowers
in, there 's a good boy!"
Her candid eyes, blue as the flowers in her hands, were clear and cool as
ice, but in her smile was all the warm profusion of that corner; the
sweetness had soaked into her, and was welling forth again. The sight of
those sun-warmed cheeks, and fingers twining round the flower-stalks, her
pearly teeth, and hair all fragrant, stole the reason out of Shelton. He
stood before her, weak about the knees.
"Found you at last!" he said.
Curving back her neck, she cried out, "Catch!" and with a sweep of both
her hands flung the flowers into Shelton's arms.
Under the rain of flowers, all warm and odorous, he dropped down on his
knees, and put them one by one together, smelling at the pinks, to hide
the violence of his feelings. Antonia went on picking flowers, and every
time her hand was full she dropped them on his hat, his shoulder, or his
arms, and went on plucking more; she smiled, and on her lips a little
devil danced, that seemed to know what he was suffering. And Shelton
felt that she did know.
"Are you tired?" she asked; "there are heaps more wanted. These are the
bedroom-flowers--fourteen lots. I can't think how people can live
without flowers, can you?" and close above his head she buried her face
in pinks.
He kept his eyes on the plucked flowers before him on the grass, and
forced himself to answer,
"I think I can hold out."
"Poor old Dick!" She had stepped back. The sun lit the clear-cut
profile of her cheek, and poured its gold over the bosom of her blouse.
"Poor old Dick! Awfully hard luck, is n't it?" Burdened with
mignonette, she came so close again that now she touched his shoulder,
but Shelton did not look; breathless, with wildly beating heart, he went
on sorting out the flowers. The seeds of mignonette rained on his neck,
and as she let the blossoms fall, their perfume fanned his face. "You
need n't sort them out!" she said.
Was she enticing him? He stole a look; but she was gone again, swaying
and sniffing at the flowers.
"I suppose I'm only hindering you," he growled; "I 'd better go."
She laughed.
"I like to see you on your knees, you look so funny!" and as she spoke
she flung a clove carnation at him. "Does n't it smell good?"
"Too good Oh, Antonia! why are you doing this?"
"Why am I doing what?"
"Don't you know what you are doing?"
"Why, picking flowers!" and once more she was back, bending and sniffing
at the blossoms.
"That's enough."
"Oh no," she called; "it's not not nearly.
"Keep on putting them together, if you love me."
"You know I love you," answered Shelton, in a smothered voice.
Antonia gazed at him across her shoulder; puzzled and inquiring was her
face.
"I'm not a bit like you," she said. "What will you have for your room?"
"Choose!"
"Cornflowers and clove pinks. Poppies are too frivolous, and pinks
too--"
"White," said Shelton.
"And mignonette too hard and--"
"Sweet. Why cornflowers?"
Antonia stood before him with her hands against her sides; her figure was
so slim and young, her face uncertain and so grave.
"Because they're dark and deep."
"And why clove pinks?"
Antonia did not answer.
"And why clove pinks?"
"Because," she said, and, flushing, touched a bee that had settled on her
skirt, "because of something in you I don't understand."
"Ah! And what flowers shall t give YOU?"
She put her hands behind her.
"There are all the other flowers for me."
Shelton snatched from the mass in front of him an Iceland poppy with
straight stem and a curved neck, white pinks, and sprigs of hard, sweet
mignonette, and held it out to her.
"There," he said, "that's you." But Antonia did not move.
"Oh no, it is n't!" and behind her back her fingers slowly crushed the
petals of a blood-red poppy. She shook her head, smiling a brilliant
smile. The blossoms fell, he flung his arms around her, and kissed her
on the lips.
But his hands dropped; not fear exactly, nor exactly shame, had come to
him. She had not resisted, but he had kissed the smile away; had kissed
a strange, cold, frightened look, into her eyes.
"She did n't mean to tempt me, then," he thought, in surprise and anger.
"What did she mean?" and, like a scolded dog, he kept his troubled watch
upon her face.
CHAPTER XXV
THE RIDE
"Where now?" Antonia asked, wheeling her chestnut mare, as they turned up
High Street, Oxford City. "I won't go back the same way, Dick!"
"We could have a gallop on Port Meadow, cross the Upper River twice, and
get home that way; but you 'll be tired."
Antonia shook her head. Aslant her cheek the brim of a straw hat threw a
curve of shade, her ear glowed transparent in the sun.
A difference had come in their relations since that kiss; outwardly she
was the same good comrade, cool and quick. But as before a change one
feels the subtle difference in the temper of the wind, so Shelton was
affected by the inner change in her. He had made a blot upon her
candour; he had tried to rub it out again, but there was left a mark, and
it was ineffaceable. Antonia belonged to the most civilised division of
the race most civilised in all the world, whose creed is "Let us love and
hate, let us work and marry, but let us never give ourselves away; to
give ourselves away is to leave a mark, and that is past forgive ness.
Let our lives be like our faces, free from every kind of wrinkle, even
those of laughter; in this way alone can we be really civilised."
He felt that she was ruffled by a vague discomfort. That he should give
himself away was natural, perhaps, and only made her wonder, but that he
should give her the feeling that she had given herself away was a very
different thing.
"Do you mind if I just ask at the Bishop's Head for letters?" he said, as
they passed the old hotel.
A dirty and thin envelope was brought to him, addressed "Mr. Richard
Shelton, Esq.," in handwriting that was passionately clear, as though the
writer had put his soul into securing delivery of the letter. It was
dated three days back, and, as they rode away, Shelton read as follows:
IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL,
FOLKESTONE.
MON CHER MONSIEUR SHELTON,
This is already the third time I have taken up pen to write to you, but,
having nothing but misfortune to recount, I hesitated, awaiting better
days. Indeed, I have been so profoundly discouraged that if I had not
thought it my duty to let you know of my fortunes I know not even now if
I should have found the necessary spirit. 'Les choses vont de mal en
mal'. From what I hear there has never been so bad a season here.
Nothing going on. All the same, I am tormented by a mob of little
matters which bring me not sufficient to support my life. I know not
what to do; one thing is certain, in no case shall I return here another
year. The patron of this hotel, my good employer, is one of those
innumerable specimens who do not forge or steal because they have no
need, and if they had would lack the courage; who observe the marriage
laws because they have been brought up to believe in them, and know that
breaking them brings risk and loss of reputation; who do not gamble
because they dare not; do not drink because it disagrees with them; go to
church because their neighbours go, and to procure an appetite for the
mid-day meal; commit no murder because, not transgressing in any other
fashion, they are not obliged. What is there to respect in persons of
this sort? Yet they are highly esteemed, and form three quarters of
Society. The rule with these good gentlemen is to shut their eyes, never
use their thinking powers, and close the door on all the dogs of life for
fear they should get bitten.
Shelton paused, conscious of Antonia's eyes fixed on him with the
inquiring look that he had come to dread. In that chilly questioning she
seemed to say: "I am waiting. I am prepared to be told things--that is,
useful things--things that help one to believe without the risk of too
much thinking."
"It's from that young foreigner," he said; and went on reading to
himself.
I have eyes, and here I am; I have a nose 'pour, flairer le humbug'. I
see that amongst the value of things nothing is the equal of "free
thought." Everything else they can take from me, 'on ne pent pas m'oter
cela'! I see no future for me here, and certainly should have departed
long ago if I had had the money, but, as I have already told you, all
that I can do barely suffices to procure me 'de quoi vivre'. 'Je me sens
ecceuye'. Do not pay too much attention to my Jeremiads; you know what a
pessimist I am. 'Je ne perds pas courage'.
Hoping that you are well, and in the cordial pressing of your hand, I
subscribe myself,
Your very devoted
LOUIS FERRAND.
He rode with the letter open in his hand, frowning at the curious turmoil
which Ferrand excited in his heart. It was as though this foreign
vagrant twanged within him a neglected string, which gave forth moans of
a mutiny.
"What does he say?" Antonia asked.
Should he show it to her? If he might not, what should he do when they
were married?
"I don't quite know," he said at last; "it 's not particularly
cheering."'
"What is he like, Dick--I mean, to look at? Like a gentleman, or what?"
Shelton stifled a desire to laugh.
"He looks very well in a frock-coat," he replied; "his father was a wine
merchant."
Antonia flicked her whip against her skirt.
"Of course," she murmured, "I don't want to hear if there's anything I
ought not."
But instead of soothing Shelton, these words had just the opposite
effect. His conception of the ideal wife was not that of one from whom
the half of life must be excluded.
"It's only," he stammered again, "that it's not cheerful."
"Oh, all right!" she cried, and, touching her horse, flew off in front.
"I hate dismal things."
Shelton bit his lips. It was not his fault that half the world was dark.
He knew her words were loosed against himself, and, as always at a sign
of her displeasure, was afraid. He galloped after her on the scorched
turf.
"What is it?" he said. "You 're angry with me!"
"Oh no!"
"Darling, I can't help it if things are n't cheerful. We have eyes," he
added, quoting from the letter.
Antonia did not look at him; but touched her horse again.
"Well, I don't want to see the gloomy side," she said, "and I can't see
why YOU should. It's wicked to be discontented;" and she galloped off.
It was not his fault if there were a thousand different kinds of men, a
thousand different points of view, outside the fence of her experience!
"What business," he thought, digging in his dummy spurs, "has our class
to patronise? We 're the only people who have n't an idea of what life
really means." Chips of dried turf and dust came flying back, stinging
his face. He gained on her, drew almost within reach, then, as though
she had been playing with him, was left hopelessly behind.
She stooped under the far hedge, fanning her flushed face with
dock-leaves:
"Aha, Dick! I knew you'd never catch me" and she patted the chestnut
mare, who turned her blowing muzzle with contemptuous humour towards
Shelton's steed, while her flanks heaved rapturously, gradually darkening
with sweat.
"We'd better take them steadily," grunted Shelton, getting off and
loosening his girths, "if we mean to get home at all."
"Don't be cross, Dick!"
"We oughtn't to have galloped them like this; they 're not in condition.
We'd better go home the way we came."
Antonia dropped the reins, and straightened her back hair.
"There 's no fun in that," she said. "Out and back again; I hate a dog's
walk."
"Very well," said Shelton; he would have her longer to himself!
The road led up and up a hill, and from the top a vision of Saxonia lay
disclosed in waves of wood and pasture. Their way branched down a
gateless glade, and Shelton sidled closer till his knee touched the
mare's off-flank.
Antonia's profile conjured up visions. She was youth itself; her eyes so
brilliant, and so innocent, her cheeks so glowing, and her brow
unruffled; but in her smile and in the setting of her jaw lurked
something resolute and mischievous. Shelton put his hand out to the
mare's mane.
"What made you promise to marry me?" he said.
She smiled.
"Well, what made you?"
"I?" cried Shelton.
She slipped her hand over his hand.
"Oh, Dick!" she said.
"I want," he stammered, "to be everything to you. Do you think I shall?"
"Of course!"
Of course! The words seemed very much or very little.
She looked down at the river, gleaming below the glade in a curving
silver line. "Dick, there are such a lot of splendid things that we
might do."
Did she mean, amongst those splendid things, that they might understand
each other; or were they fated to pretend to only, in the old
time-honoured way?
They crossed the river by a ferry, and rode a long time in silence, while
the twilight slowly fell behind the aspens. And all the beauty of the
evening, with its restless leaves, its grave young moon, and lighted
campion flowers, was but a part of her; the scents, the witchery and
shadows, the quaint field noises, the yokels' whistling, and the splash
of water-fowl, each seemed to him enchanted. The flighting bats, the
forms of the dim hayricks, and sweet-brier perfume-she summed them all up
in herself. The fingermarks had deepened underneath her eyes, a languor
came upon her; it made her the more sweet and youthful. Her shoulders
seemed to bear on them the very image of our land--grave and aspiring,
eager yet contained--before there came upon that land the grin of greed,
the folds of wealth, the simper of content. Fair, unconscious, free!
And he was silent, with a beating heart.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE BIRD 'OF PASSAGE
That night, after the ride, when Shelton was about to go to bed, his eyes
fell on Ferrand's letter, and with a sleepy sense of duty he began to
read it through a second time. In the dark, oak-panelled bedroom, his
four-post bed, with back of crimson damask and its dainty sheets, was
lighted by the candle glow; the copper pitcher of hot water in the basin,
the silver of his brushes, and the line of his well-polished boots all
shone, and Shelton's face alone was gloomy, staring at the yellowish
paper in his hand.
"The poor chap wants money, of course," he thought. But why go on for
ever helping one who had no claim on him, a hopeless case, incurable--one
whom it was his duty to let sink for the good of the community at large?
Ferrand's vagabond refinement had beguiled him into charity that should
have been bestowed on hospitals, or any charitable work but foreign
missions. To give a helping hand, a bit of himself, a nod of fellowship
to any fellow-being irrespective of a claim, merely because he happened
to be down, was sentimental nonsense! The line must be drawn! But in
the muttering of this conclusion he experienced a twinge of honesty.
"Humbug! You don't want to part with your money, that's all!"
So, sitting down in shirt-sleeves at his writing table, he penned the
following on paper stamped with the Holm Oaks address and crest:
MY DEAR FERRAND,
I am sorry you are having such a bad spell. You seem to be dead out of
luck. I hope by the time you get this things will have changed for the
better. I should very much like to see you again and have a talk, but
shall be away for some time longer, and doubt even when I get back
whether I should be able to run down and look you up. Keep me 'au
courant' as to your movements. I enclose a cheque.
Yours sincerely,
RICHARD SHELTON.
Before he had written out the cheque, a moth fluttering round the candle
distracted his attention, and by the time he had caught and put it out he
had forgotten that the cheque was not enclosed. The letter, removed with
his clothes before he was awake, was posted in an empty state.
One morning a week later he was sitting in the smoking-room in the
company of the gentleman called Mabbey, who was telling him how many
grouse he had deprived of life on August 12 last year, and how many he
intended to deprive of life on August 12 this year, when the door was
opened, and the butler entered, carrying his head as though it held some
fatal secret.
"A young man is asking for you, sir," he said to Shelton, bending down
discreetly; "I don't know if you would wish to see him, sir."
"A young man!" repeated Shelton; "what sort of a young man?"
"I should say a sort of foreigner, sir," apologetically replied the
butler. "He's wearing a frock-coat, but he looks as if he had been
walking a good deal."
Shelton rose with haste; the description sounded to him ominous.
"Where is he?"
"I put him in the young ladies' little room, sir."
"All right," said Shelton; "I 'll come and see him. Now, what the
deuce!" he thought, running down the stairs.
It was with a queer commingling of pleasure and vexation that he entered
the little chamber sacred to the birds, beasts, racquets, golf-clubs, and
general young ladies' litter. Ferrand was standing underneath the cage
of a canary, his hands folded on his pinched-up hat, a nervous smile upon
his lips. He was dressed in Shelton's old frock-coat, tightly buttoned,
and would have cut a stylish figure but far his look of travel. He wore
a pair of pince-nez, too, which somewhat veiled his cynical blue eyes,
and clashed a little with the pagan look of him. In the midst of the
strange surroundings he still preserved that air of knowing, and being
master of, his fate, which was his chief attraction.
"I 'm glad to see you," said Shelton, holding out his hand.
"Forgive this liberty," began Ferrand, "but I thought it due to you after
all you've done for me not to throw up my efforts to get employment in
England without letting you know first. I'm entirely at the end of my
resources."
The phrase struck Shelton as one that he had heard before.
"But I wrote to you," he said; "did n't you get my letter?"
A flicker passed across the vagrant's face; he drew the letter from his
pocket and held it out.
"Here it is, monsieur."
Shelton stared at it.
"Surely," said he, "I sent a cheque?"
Ferrand did not smile; there was a look about him as though Shelton by
forgetting to enclose that cheque had done him a real injury.
Shelton could not quite hide a glance of doubt.
"Of course," he said, "I--I--meant to enclose a cheque."
Too subtle to say anything, Ferrand curled his lip. "I am capable of
much, but not of that," he seemed to say; and at once Shelton felt the
meanness of his doubt.
"Stupid of me," he said.
"I had no intention of intruding here," said Ferrand; "I hoped to see you
in the neighbourhood, but I arrive exhausted with fatigue. I've eaten
nothing since yesterday at noon, and walked thirty miles." He shrugged
his shoulders. "You see, I had no time to lose before assuring myself
whether you were here or not."
"Of course--" began Shelton, but again he stopped.
"I should very much like," the young foreigner went on, "for one of your
good legislators to find himself in these country villages with a penny
in his pocket. In other countries bakers are obliged to sell you an
equivalent of bread for a penny; here they won't sell you as much as a
crust under twopence. You don't encourage poverty."
"What is your idea now?" asked Shelton, trying to gain time.
"As I told you," replied Ferrand, "there 's nothing to be done at
Folkestone, though I should have stayed there if I had had the money to
defray certain expenses"; and again he seemed to reproach his patron with
the omission of that cheque. "They say things will certainly be better
at the end of the month. Now that I know English well, I thought perhaps
I could procure a situation for teaching languages."
"I see," said Shelton.
As a fact, however, he was far from seeing; he literally did not know
what to do. It seemed so brutal to give Ferrand money and ask him to
clear out; besides, he chanced to have none in his pocket.
"It needs philosophy to support what I 've gone through this week," said
Ferrand, shrugging his shoulders. "On Wednesday last, when I received
your letter, I had just eighteen-pence, and at once I made a resolution
to come and see you; on that sum I 've done the journey. My strength is
nearly at an end."
Shelton stroked his chin.
"Well," he had just begun, "we must think it over," when by Ferrand's
face he saw that some one had come in. He turned, and saw Antonia in the
doorway. "Excuse me," he stammered, and, going to Antonia, drew her from
the room.
With a smile she said at once: "It's the young foreigner; I'm certain.
Oh, what fun!"
"Yes," answered Shelton slowly; "he's come to see me about getting some
sort of tutorship or other. Do you think your mother would mind if I
took him up to have a wash? He's had a longish walk. And might he have
some breakfast? He must be hungry."
"Of course! I'll tell Dobson. Shall I speak to mother? He looks nice,
Dick."
He gave her a grateful, furtive look, and went back to his guest; an
impulse had made him hide from her the true condition of affairs.
Ferrand was standing where he had been left his face still clothed in
mordant impassivity.
"Come up to my room!" said Shelton; and while his guest was washing,
brushing, and otherwise embellishing his person, he stood reflecting that
Ferrand was by no means unpresentable, and he felt quite grateful to him.
He took an opportunity, when the young man's back was turned, of
examining his counterfoils. There was no record, naturally, of a cheque
drawn in Ferrand's favour. Shelton felt more mean than ever.
A message came from Mrs. Dennant; so he took the traveller to the
dining-room and left him there, while he himself went to the lady of the
house. He met Antonia coming down.
"How many days did you say he went without food that time--you know?" she
asked in passing.
"Four."
"He does n't look a bit common, Dick."
Shelton gazed at her dubiously.
"They're surely not going to make a show of him!" he thought.
Mrs. Dennant was writing, in a dark-blue dress starred over with white
spots, whose fine lawn collar was threaded with black velvet.
"Have you seen the new hybrid Algy's brought me back from Kidstone? Is
n't it charmin'?" and she bent her face towards this perfect rose. "They
say unique; I'm awfully interested to find out if that's true. I've told
Algy I really must have some."
Shelton thought of the unique hybrid breakfasting downstairs; he wished
that Mrs. Dennant would show in him the interest she had manifested in
the rose. But this was absurd of him, he knew, for the potent law of
hobbies controlled the upper classes, forcing them to take more interest
in birds, and roses, missionaries, or limited and highly-bound editions
of old books (things, in a word, in treating which you knew exactly where
you were) than in the manifestations of mere life that came before their
eyes.
"Oh, Dick, about that young Frenchman. Antonia says he wants a
tutorship; now, can you really recommend him? There's Mrs. Robinson at
the Gateways wants someone to teach her boys languages; and, if he were
quite satisfactory, it's really time Toddles had a few lessons in French;
he goes to Eton next half."
Shelton stared at the rose; he had suddenly realised why it was that
people take more interest in roses than in human beings--one could do it
with a quiet heart.
"He's not a Frenchman, you know," he said to gain a little time.
"He's not a German, I hope," Mrs. Dennant answered, passing her forgers
round a petal, to impress its fashion on her brain; "I don't like
Germans. Is n't he the one you wrote about--come down in the world?
Such a pity with so young a fellow! His father was a merchant, I think
you told us. Antonia says he 's quite refined to look at."
"Oh, yes," said Shelton, feeling on safe ground; "he's refined enough to
look at."
Mrs. Dennant took the rose and put it to her nose.
"Delicious perfume! That was a very touchin' story about his goin'
without food in Paris. Old Mrs. Hopkins has a room to let; I should like
to do her a good turn. I'm afraid there's a hole in the ceilin', though.
Or there's the room here in the left wing on the ground-floor where John
the footman used to sleep. It's quite nice; perhaps he could have that."
"You 're awfully kind," said Shelton, "but--"
"I should like to do something to restore his self-respect,", went on
Mrs. Dennant, "if, as you say, he 's clever and all that. Seein' a
little refined life again might make a world of difference to him. It's
so sad when a young man loses self-respect."
Shelton was much struck by the practical way in which she looked at
things. Restore his self-respect! It seemed quite a splendid notion!
He smiled, and said,
"You're too kind. I think--"
"I don't believe in doin' things by halves," said Mrs. Dennant; "he does
n't drink, I suppose?"
"Oh, no," said Shelton. "He's rather a tobacco maniac, of course."
"Well, that's a mercy! You would n't believe the trouble I 've had with
drink, especially over cooks and coachmen. And now Bunyan's taken to
it."
"Oh, you'd have no trouble with Ferrand," returned Shelton; "you couldn't
tell him from a gentleman as far as manners go."
Mrs. Dennant smiled one of her rather sweet and kindly smiles.
"My dear Dick," she said, "there's not much comfort in that. Look at
poor Bobby Surcingle, look at Oliver Semples and Victor Medallion; you
could n't have better families. But if you 're sure he does n't drink!
Algy 'll laugh, of course; that does n't matter--he laughs at
everything."
Shelton felt guilty; being quite unprepared for so rapid an adoption of
his client.
"I really believe there's a lot of good in him," he stammered; "but, of
course, I know very little, and from what he tells me he's had a very
curious life. I shouldn't like--"
"Where was he educated?" inquired Mrs. Dennant. "They have no public
schools in France, so I 've been told; but, of course, he can't help
that, poor young fellow! Oh, and, Dick, there 's one thing--has he
relations? One has always to be so careful about that. It 's one thing
to help a young fellow, but quite another to help his family too. One
sees so many cases of that where men marry girls without money, don't you
know."
"He has told me," answered Shelton, "his only relations are some cousins,
and they are rich."
Mrs. Dennant took out her handkerchief, and, bending above the rose,
removed a tiny insect.
"These green-fly get in everywhere," she said.
"Very sad story; can't they do anything for him?" and she made researches
in the rose's heart.
"He's quarrelled with them, I believe," said Shelton; "I have n't liked
to press him, about that."
"No, of course not," assented Mrs. Dennant absently--she had found
another green-fly "I always think it's painful when a young man seems so
friendless."
Shelton was silent; he was thinking deeply. He had never before felt so
distrustful of the youthful foreigner.
"I think," he said at last, "the best thing would be for you to see him
for yourself."
"Very well," said Mrs. Dennant. "I should be so glad if you would tell
him to come up. I must say I do think that was a most touchin' story
about Paris. I wonder whether this light's strong enough now for me to
photograph this rose."
Shelton withdrew and went down-stairs. Ferrand was still at breakfast.
Antonia stood at the sideboard carving beef for him, and in the window
sat Thea with her Persian kitten.
Both girls were following the traveller's movements with inscrutable blue
eyes. A shiver ran down Shelton's spine. To speak truth, he cursed the
young man's coming, as though it affected his relations with Antonia.
CHAPTER XXVII
SUB ROSA
From the interview, which Shelton had the mixed delight of watching,
between Ferrand and the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, certain definite results
accrued, the chief of which was the permission accorded the young
wanderer to occupy the room which had formerly been tenanted by the
footman John. Shelton was lost in admiration of Ferrand's manner in this
scene.. Its subtle combination of deference and dignity was almost
paralysing; paralysing, too, the subterranean smile upon his lips.
"Charmin' young man, Dick," said Mrs. Dennant, when Shelton lingered to
say once more that he knew but very little of him; "I shall send a note
round to Mrs. Robinson at once. They're rather common, you know--the
Robinsons. I think they'll take anyone I recommend."
"I 'm sure they will," said Shelton; "that's why I think you ought to
know--"
But Mrs. Dennant's eyes, fervent, hare-like, were fixed on something far
away; turning, he saw the rose in a tall vase on a tall and spindly
stool. It seemed to nod towards them in the sunshine. Mrs. Dennant
dived her nose towards her camera.
"The light's perfect now," she said, in a voice muffled by the cloth. "I
feel sure that livin' with decent people will do wonders for him. Of
course, he understands that his meals will be served to him apart."
Shelton, doubly anxious, now that his efforts had lodged his client in a
place of trust, fell, back on hoping for the best; his instinct told him
that, vagabond as Ferrand was, he had a curious self-respect, that would
save him from a mean ingratitude.
In fact, as Mrs. Dennant, who was by no means void of common-sense,
foresaw, the arrangement worked all right. Ferrand entered on his duties
as French tutor to the little Robinsons. In the Dennants' household he
kept himself to his own room, which, day and night, he perfumed with
tobacco, emerging at noon into the garden, or, if wet, into the study, to
teach young Toddles French. After a time it became customary for him to
lunch with the house-party, partly through a mistake of Toddles, who
seemed to think that it was natural, and partly through John Noble, one
of Shelton's friends, who had come to stay, and discovered Ferrand to be
a most awfully interesting person he was always, indeed, discovering the
most awfully interesting persons. In his grave and toneless voice,
brushing his hair from off his brow, he descanted upon Ferrand with
enthusiasm, to which was joined a kind of shocked amusement, as who
should say, "Of course, I know it's very odd, but really he 's such an
awfully interesting person." For John Noble was a politician, belonging
to one of those two Peculiar parties, which, thoroughly in earnest, of an
honesty above suspicion, and always very busy, are constitutionally
averse to anything peculiar for fear of finding they have overstepped the
limit of what is practical in politics. As such he inspired confidence,
not caring for things unless he saw some immediate benefit to be had from
them, having a perfect sense of decency, and a small imagination. He
discussed all sorts of things with Ferrand; on one occasion Shelton
overheard them arguing on anarchism.
"No Englishman approves of murder," Noble was saying, in the gloomy voice
that contrasted with the optimistic cast of his fine head, "but the main
principle is right. Equalisation of property is bound to come. I
sympathise with then, not with their methods."
"Forgive me," struck in Ferrand; "do you know any anarchists?"
"No," returned Noble; "I certainly do not."
"You say you sympathise with them, but the first time it comes to
action--"
"Well?"
"Oh, monsieur! one doesn't make anarchism with the head."
Shelton perceived that he had meant to add, "but with the heart, the
lungs, the liver." He drew a deeper meaning from the saying, and seemed
to see, curling with the smoke from Ferrand's lips, the words: "What do
you, an English gentleman, of excellent position, and all the prejudices
of your class, know about us outcasts? If you want to understand us you
must be an outcast too; we are not playing at the game."
This talk took place upon the lawn, at the end of one of Toddles's French
lessons, and Shelton left John Noble maintaining to the youthful
foreigner, with stubborn logic, that he, John Noble, and the anarchists
had much, in common. He was returning to the house, when someone called
his name from underneath the holm oak. There, sitting Turkish fashion on
the grass, a pipe between his teeth, he found a man who had arrived the
night before, and impressed him by his friendly taciturnity. His name
was Whyddon, and he had just returned from Central Africa; a brown-faced,
large-jawed man, with small but good and steady eyes, and strong, spare
figure.
"Oh, Mr. Shelton!" he said, "I wondered if you could tell me what tips I
ought to give the servants here; after ten years away I 've forgotten all
about that sort of thing."
Shelton sat down beside him; unconsciously assuming, too, a cross-legged
attitude, which caused him much discomfort.
"I was listening," said his new acquaintance, "to the little chap
learning his French. I've forgotten mine. One feels a hopeless duffer
knowing no, languages."
"I suppose you speak Arabic?" said Shelton.
"Oh, Arabic, and a dialect or two; they don't count. That tutor has a
curious face."
"You think so?" said Shelton, interested. "He's had a curious life."
The traveller spread his hands, palms downwards, on the grass and looked
at Shelton with, a smile.
"I should say he was a rolling stone," he said. "It 's odd, I' ve seen
white men in Central Africa with a good deal of his look about them.
"Your diagnosis is a good one," answered Shelton.
"I 'm always sorry for those fellows. There's generally some good in
them. They are their own enemies. A bad business to be unable to take
pride in anything one does!" And there was a look of pity on his face.
"That's exactly it," said Shelton. "I 've often tried to put it into
words. Is it incurable?"
"I think so."
"Can you tell me why?"
Whyddon pondered.
"I rather think," he said at last, "it must be because they have too
strong a faculty of criticism. You can't teach a man to be proud of his
own work; that lies in his blood "; folding his arms across his breast,
he heaved a sigh. Under the dark foliage, his eyes on the sunlight, he
was the type of all those Englishmen who keep their spirits bright and
wear their bodies out in the dark places of hard work. "You can't
think," he said, showing his teeth in a smile, "how delightful it is to
be at home! You learn to love the old country when you're away from it."
Shelton often thought, afterwards; of this diagnosis of the vagabond, for
he was always stumbling on instances of that power of subtle criticism
which was the young foreigner's prime claim to be "a most awfully
interesting" and perhaps a rather shocking person.
An old school-fellow of Shelton's and his wife were staying in the house,
who offered to the eye the picture of a perfect domesticity. Passionless
and smiling, it was impossible to imagine they could ever have a
difference. Shelton, whose bedroom was next to theirs, could hear them
in the mornings talking in exactly the tones they used at lunch, and
laughing the same laughs. Their life seemed to accord them perfect
satisfaction; they were supplied with their convictions by Society just
as, when at home, they were supplied with all the other necessaries of
life by some co-operative stores. Their fairly handsome faces, with the
fairly kind expressions, quickly and carefully regulated by a sense of
compromise, began to worry him so much that when in the same room he
would even read to avoid the need of looking at them. And yet they were
kind--that is, fairly kind--and clean and quiet in the house, except when
they laughed, which was often, and at things which made him want to howl
as a dog howls at music.
"Mr. Shelton," Ferrand said one day, "I 'm not an amateur of
marriage--never had the chance, as you may well suppose; but, in any
case, you have some people in the house who would make me mark time
before I went committing it. They seem the ideal young married
people--don't quarrel, have perfect health, agree with everybody, go to
church, have children--but I should like to hear what is beautiful in
their life," and he grimaced. "It seems to me so ugly that I can only
gasp. I would much rather they ill-treated each other, just to show they
had the corner of a soul between them. If that is marriage, 'Dieu m'en
garde!'"
But Shelton did not answer; he was thinking deeply.
The saying of John Noble's, "He's really a most interesting person," grew
more and more upon his nerves; it seemed to describe the Dennant attitude
towards this stranger within their gates. They treated him with a sort
of wonder on the "don't touch" system, like an object in an exhibition.
The restoration, however, of, his self-respect proceeded with success.
For all the semblance of having grown too big for Shelton's clothes, for
all his vividly burnt face, and the quick but guarded play of cynicism on
his lips--he did much credit to his patrons. He had subdued his terror
of a razor, and looked well in a suit of Shelton's flannels. For, after
all, he had only been eight years exiled from middle-class gentility, and
he had been a waiter half that time. But Shelton wished him at the
devil. Not for his manners' sake--he was never tired of watching how
subtly the vagabond adapted his conduct to the conduct of his hosts,
while keeping up his critical detachment--but because that critical
detachment was a constant spur to his own vision, compelling him to
analyse the life into which, he had been born and was about to marry.
This process was disturbing; and to find out when it had commenced, he
had to go back to his meeting with Ferrand on the journey up from Dover.
There was kindness in a hospitality which opened to so strange a bird;
admitting the kindness, Shelton fell to analysing it. To himself, to
people of his class, the use of kindness was a luxury, not significant of
sacrifice, but productive of a pleasant feeling in the heart, such as
massage will setup in the legs. "Everybody's kind," he thought; "the
question is, What understanding is there, what real sympathy?" This
problem gave him food for thought.
The progress, which Mrs. Dennant not unfrequently remarked upon, in
Ferrand's conquest of his strange position, seemed to Shelton but a sign
that he was getting what he could out of his sudden visit to green
pastures; under the same circumstances, Shelton thought that he himself
would do the same. He felt that the young foreigner was making a
convenient bow to property, but he had more respect for the sarcastic
smile on the lips of Ferrand's heart.
It was not long before the inevitable change came in the spirit of the
situation; more and more was Shelton conscious of a quaint uneasiness in
the very breathing of the household.
"Curious fellow you've got hold of there, Shelton," Mr. Dennant said to
him during a game of croquet; "he 'll never do any good for himself, I'm
afraid."
"In one sense I'm afraid not," admitted Shelton.
"Do you know his story? I will bet you sixpence"--and Mr. Dennant
paused to swing his mallet with a proper accuracy "that he's been in
prison."
"Prison!" ejaculated Shelton.
"I think," said Mr. Dennant, with bent knees carefully measuring his next
shot, "that you ought to make inquiries--ah! missed it! Awkward these
hoops! One must draw the line somewhere."
"I never could draw," returned Shelton, nettled and uneasy; "but I
understand--I 'll give him a hint to go."
"Don't," said Mr. Dennant, moving after his second ball, which Shelton
had smitten to the farther end, "be offended, my dear Shelton, and by no
means give him a hint; he interests me very much--a very clever, quiet
young fellow."
That this was not his private view Shelton inferred by studying Mr.
Dennant's manner in the presence of the vagabond. Underlying the
well-bred banter of the tranquil voice, the guarded quizzicality of his
pale brown face, it could be seen that Algernon Cuffe Dennant, Esq.,
J.P., accustomed to laugh at other people, suspected that he was being
laughed at. What more natural than that he should grope about to see how
this could be? A vagrant alien was making himself felt by an English
Justice of the Peace--no small tribute, this, to Ferrand's personality.
The latter would sit silent through a meal, and yet make his effect. He,
the object of their kindness, education, patronage, inspired their fear.
There was no longer any doubt; it was not of Ferrand that they were
afraid, but of what they did not understand in him; of horrid subtleties
meandering in the brain under that straight, wet-looking hair; of
something bizarre popping from the curving lips below that thin, lopsided
nose.
But to Shelton in this, as in all else, Antonia was what mattered. At
first, anxious to show her lover that she trusted him, she seemed never
tired of doing things for his young protege, as though she too had set
her heart on his salvation; but, watching her eyes when they rested on
the vagabond, Shelton was perpetually reminded of her saying on the first
day of his visit to Holm Oaks, "I suppose he 's really good--I mean all
these things you told me about were only...."
Curiosity never left her glance, nor did that story of his four days'
starving leave her mind; a sentimental picturesqueness clung about that
incident more valuable by far than this mere human being with whom she
had so strangely come in contact. She watched Ferrand, and Shelton
watched her. If he had been told that he was watching her, he would have
denied it in good faith; but he was bound to watch her, to find out with
what eyes she viewed this visitor who embodied all the rebellious
under-side of life, all that was absent in herself.
"Dick," she said to him one day, "you never talk to me of Monsieur
Ferrand."
"Do you want to talk of him?"
"Don't you think that he's improved?"
"He's fatter."
Antonia looked grave.
"No, but really?"
"I don't know," said Shelton; "I can't judge him."
Antonia turned her face away, and something in her attitude alarmed him.
"He was once a sort of gentleman," she said; "why shouldn't he become one
again?"
Sitting on the low wall of the kitchen-garden, her head was framed by
golden plums. The sun lay barred behind the foliage of the holm oak, but
a little patch filtering through a gap had rested in the plum-tree's
heart. It crowned the girl. Her raiment, the dark leaves, the red wall,
the golden plums, were woven by the passing glow to a block of pagan
colour. And her face above it, chaste, serene, was like the scentless
summer evening. A bird amongst the currant bushes kept a little chant
vibrating; and all the plum-tree's shape and colour seemed alive.
"Perhaps he does n't want to be a gentleman," said Shelton.
Antonia swung her foot.
"How can he help wanting to?"
"He may have a different philosophy of life."
Antonia was slow to answer.
"I know nothing about philosophies of life," she said at last.
Shelton answered coldly,
"No two people have the same."
With the falling sun-glow the charm passed off the tree. Chilled and
harder, yet less deep, it was no more a block of woven colour, warm and
impassive, like a southern goddess; it was now a northern tree, with a
grey light through its leaves.
"I don't understand you in the least," she said; "everyone wishes to be
good."
"And safe?" asked Shelton gently.
Antonia stared.
"Suppose," he said--"I don't pretend to know, I only suppose--what
Ferrand really cares for is doing things differently from other people?
If you were to load him with a character and give him money on condition
that he acted as we all act, do you think he would accept it?"
"Why not?"
"Why are n't cats dogs; or pagans Christians?"
Antonia slid down from the wall.
"You don't seem to think there 's any use in trying," she said, and
turned away.
Shelton made a movement as if he would go after her, and then stood
still, watching her figure slowly pass, her head outlined above the wall,
her hands turned back across her narrow hips. She halted at the bend,
looked back, then, with an impatient gesture, disappeared.
Antonia was slipping from him!
A moment's vision from without himself would have shown him that it was
he who moved and she who was standing still, like the figure of one
watching the passage of a stream with clear, direct, and sullen eyes.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE RIVER
One day towards the end of August Shelton took Antonia on the river--the
river that, like soft music, soothes the land; the river of the reeds and
poplars, the silver swan-sails, sun and moon, woods, and the white
slumbrous clouds; where cuckoos, and the wind, the pigeons, and the weirs
are always singing; and in the flash of naked bodies, the play of
waterlily leaves, queer goblin stumps, and the twilight faces of the
twisted tree-roots, Pan lives once more.
The reach which Shelton chose was innocent of launches, champagne bottles
and loud laughter; it was uncivilised, and seldom troubled by these
humanising influences. He paddled slowly, silent and absorbed, watching
Antonia. An unaccustomed languor clung about her; her eyes had shadows,
as though she had not slept; colour glowed softly in her cheeks, her
frock seemed all alight with golden radiance. She made Shelton pull into
the reeds, and plucked two rounded lilies sailing like ships against
slow-moving water.
"Pull into the shade, please," she said; "it's too hot out here."
The brim of her linen hat kept the sun from her face, but her head was
drooping like a flower's head at noon.
Shelton saw that the heat was really harming her, as too hot a day will
dim the icy freshness of a northern plant. He dipped his sculls, the
ripples started out and swam in grave diminuendo till they touched the
banks.
He shot the boat into a cleft, and caught the branches of an overhanging
tree. The skiff rested, balancing with mutinous vibration, like a living
thing.
"I should hate to live in London," said Antonia suddenly; "the slums must
be so awful. What a pity, when there are places like this! But it's no
good thinking."
"No," answered Shelton slowly! "I suppose it is no good."
"There are some bad cottages at the lower end of Cross Eaton. I went
them one day with Miss Truecote. The people won't help themselves. It's
so discouraging to help people who won't help themselves."
She was leaning her elbows on her knees, and, with her chin resting on
her hands, gazed up at Shelton. All around them hung a tent of soft,
thick leaves, and, below, the water was deep-dyed with green refraction.
Willow boughs, swaying above the boat, caressed Antonia's arms and
shoulders; her face and hair alone were free.
"So discouraging," she said again.
A silence fell.... Antonia seemed thinking deeply.
"Doubts don't help you," she said suddenly; "how can you get any good
from doubts? The thing is to win victories."
"Victories?" said Shelton. "I 'd rather understand than conquer!"
He had risen to his feet, and grasped stunted branch, canting the boat
towards the bank.
"How can you let things slide like that, Dick? It's like Ferrand."
"Have you such a bad opinion of him, then?" asked Shelton. He felt on
the verge of some, discovery.
She buried her chin deeper in her hands.
"I liked him at first," she said; "I thought that he was different. I
thought he couldn't really be--"
"Really be what?"
Antonia did not answer.
"I don't know," she said at last. "I can't explain. I thought--"
Shelton still stood, holding to the branch, and the oscillation of the
boat freed an infinity of tiny ripples.
"You thought--what?" he said.
He ought to have seen her face grow younger, more childish, even timid.
She said in a voice smooth, round, and young:
"You know, Dick, I do think we ought to try. I know I don't try half
hard enough. It does n't do any good to think; when you think,
everything seems so mixed, as if there were nothing to lay hold of. I do
so hate to feel like that. It is n't as if we didn't know what's right.
Sometimes I think, and think, and it 's all no good, only a waste of
time, and you feel at the end as if you had been doing wrong."
Shelton frowned.
"What has n't been through fire's no good," he said; and, letting go the
branch, sat down. Freed from restraint, the boat edged out towards the
current. "But what about Ferrand?"
"I lay awake last night wondering what makes you like him so. He's so
bitter; he makes me feel unhappy. He never seems content with anything.
And he despises"--her face hardened--"I mean, he hates us all!"
"So should I if I were he," said Shelton.
The boat was drifting on, and gleams of sunlight chased across their
faces. Antonia spoke again.
"He seems to be always looking at dark things, or else he seems as if--as
if he could--enjoy himself too much. I thought--I thought at first," she
stammered, "that we could do him good."
"Do him good! Ha, ha!"
A startled rat went swimming for its life against the stream; and Shelton
saw that he had done a dreadful thing: he had let Antonia with a jerk
into a secret not hitherto admitted even by himself--the secret that her
eyes were not his eyes, her way of seeing things not his nor ever would
be. He quickly muffled up his laughter. Antonia had dropped her gaze;
her face regained its languor, but the bosom of her dress was heaving.
Shelton watched her, racking his brains to find excuses for that fatal
laugh; none could he find. It was a little piece of truth. He paddled
slowly on, close to the bank, in the long silence of the river.
The breeze had died away, not a fish was rising; save for the lost music
of the larks no birds were piping; alone, a single pigeon at brief
intervals cooed from the neighbouring wood.
They did not stay much longer in the boat.
On the homeward journey in the pony-cart, rounding a corner of the road,
they came on Ferrand in his pince-nez, holding a cigarette between his
fingers and talking to a tramp, who was squatting on the bank. The young
foreigner recognised them, and at once removed his hat.
"There he is," said Shelton, returning the salute.
Antonia bowed.
"Oh!" she, cried, when they were out of hearing, "I wish he 'd go. I
can't bear to see him; it's like looking at the dark."
CHAPTER XXIX
ON THE WING
That night, having gone up to his room, Shelton filled his pipe for his
unpleasant duty. He had resolved to hint to Ferrand that he had better
go. He was still debating whether to write or go himself to the young
foreigner, when there came a knock and Ferrand himself appeared.
"I should be sorry," he said, breaking an awkward silence, "if you were
to think me ungrateful, but I see no future for me here. It would be
better for me to go. I should never be content to pass my life in
teaching languages 'ce n'est guere dans mon caractre'."
As soon as what he had been cudgelling his brains to find a way of saying
had thus been said for him, Shelton experienced a sense of disapproval.
"What do you expect to get that's better?" he said, avoiding Ferrand's
eyes.
"Thanks to your kindness," replied the latter, "I find myself restored.
I feel that I ought to make some good efforts to dominate my social
position."
"I should think it well over, if I were you!" said Shelton.
"I have, and it seems to me that I'm wasting my time. For a man with any
courage languages are no career; and, though I 've many defects, I still
have courage."
Shelton let his pipe go out, so pathetic seemed to him this young man's
faith in his career; it was no pretended faith, but neither was it, he
felt, his true motive for departure. "He's tired," he thought; "that 's
it. Tired of one place." And having the instinctive sense that nothing
would keep Ferrand, he redoubled his advice.
"I should have thought," he said, "that you would have done better to
have held on here and saved a little before going off to God knows what."
"To save," said Ferrand, "is impossible for me, but, thanks to you and
your good friends, I 've enough to make front to first necessities. I'm
in correspondence with a friend; it's of great importance for me to reach
Paris before all the world returns. I 've a chance to get, a post in one
of the West African companies. One makes fortunes out there--if one
survives, and, as you know, I don't set too much store by life."
"We have a proverb," said Shelton, "'A bird in the hand is worth two
birds in the bush!'"
"That," returned Ferrand, "like all proverbs, is just half true. This is
an affair of temperament. It 's not in my character to dandle one when I
see two waiting to be caught; 'voyager, apprendre, c'est plus fort que
moi'." He paused; then, with a nervous goggle of the eyes and an ironic
smile he said: "Besides, 'mon cher monsieur', it is better that I go. I
have never been one to hug illusions, and I see pretty clearly that my
presence is hardly acceptable in this house."
"What makes you say that?" asked, Shelton, feeling that the murder was
now out."
"My dear sir, all the world has not your understanding and your lack of
prejudice, and, though your friends have been extremely kind to me, I am
in a false position; I cause them embarrassment, which is not
extraordinary when you reflect what I have been, and that they know my
history."
"Not through me," said Shelton quickly, "for I don't know it myself."
"It's enough," the vagrant said, "that they feel I'm not a bird of their
feather. They cannot change, neither can I. I have never wanted to
remain where I 'm not welcome."
Shelton turned to the window, and stared into the darkness; he would
never quite understand this vagabond, so delicate, so cynical, and he
wondered if Ferrand had been swallowing down the words, "Why, even you
won't be sorry to see my back!"
"Well," he said at last, "if you must go, you must. When do you start?"
"I 've arranged with a man to carry my things to the early train. I
think it better not to say good-bye. I 've written a letter instead;
here it is. I left it open for you to read if you should wish,"
"Then," said Shelton, with a curious mingling of relief, regret,
good-will, "I sha'n't see you again?"
Ferrand gave his hand a stealthy rub, and held it out.
"I shall never forget what you have done for me," he said.
"Mind you write," said Shelton.
"Yes, yes"--the, vagrant's face was oddly twisted--"you don't know what a
difference it makes to have a correspondent; it gives one courage. I
hope to remain a long time in correspondence with you."
"I dare say you do," thought Shelton grimly, with a certain queer
emotion.
"You will do me the justice to remember that I have never asked you for
anything," said Ferrand. "Thank you a thousand times. Good-bye!"
He again wrung his patron's hand in his damp grasp, and, going out, left
Shelton with an odd sensation in his throat. "You will do me the justice
to remember that I have never asked you for anything." The phrase seemed
strange, and his mind flew back over all this queer acquaintanceship. It
was a fact: from the beginning to the end the youth had never really
asked for anything. Shelton sat down on his bed, and began to read the
letter in his hand. It was in French.
DEAR MADAME (it ran),
It will be insupportable to me, after your kindness, if you take me for
ungrateful. Unfortunately, a crisis has arrived which plunges me into
the necessity of leaving your hospitality. In all lives, as you are well
aware, there arise occasions that one cannot govern, and I know that you
will pardon me that I enter into no explanation on an event which gives
me great chagrin, and, above all, renders me subject to an imputation of
ingratitude, which, believe me, dear Madame, by no means lies in my
character. I know well enough that it is a breach of politeness to leave
you without in person conveying the expression of my profound
reconnaissance, but if you consider how hard it is for me to be compelled
to abandon all that is so distinguished in domestic life, you will
forgive my weakness. People like me, who have gone through existence
with their eyes open, have remarked that those who are endowed with
riches have a right to look down on such as are not by wealth and
breeding fitted to occupy the same position. I shall never dispute a
right so natural and salutary, seeing that without this distinction, this
superiority, which makes of the well-born and the well-bred a race apart,
the rest of the world would have no standard by which to rule their
lives, no anchor to throw into the depths of that vast sea of fortune and
of misfortune on which we others drive before the wind. It is because of
this, dear Madame, that I regard myself so doubly fortunate to have been
able for a few minutes in this bitter pilgrimage called life, to sit
beneath the tree of safety. To have been able, if only for an hour, to
sit and set the pilgrims pass, the pilgrims with the blistered feet and
ragged clothes, and who yet, dear Madame, guard within their hearts a
certain joy in life, illegal joy, like the desert air which travellers
will tell you fills men as with wine to be able thus to sit an hour, and
with a smile to watch them pass, lame and blind, in all the rags of their
deserved misfortunes, can you not conceive, dear Madame, how that must be
for such as I a comfort? Whatever one may say, it is sweet, from a
position of security, to watch the sufferings of others; it gives one a
good sensation in the heart.
In writing this, I recollect that I myself once had the chance of passing
all my life in this enviable safety, and as you may suppose, dear Madame,
I curse myself that I should ever have had the courage to step beyond the
boundaries of this fine tranquil state. Yet, too, there have been times
when I have asked myself: "Do we really differ from the wealthy--we
others, birds of the fields, who have our own philosophy, grown from the
pains of needing bread--we who see that the human heart is not always an
affair of figures, or of those good maxims that one finds in
copy-books--do we really differ?" It is with shame that I confess to
have asked myself a question so heretical. But now, when for these four
weeks I have had the fortune of this rest beneath your roof, I see how
wrong I was to entertain such doubts. It is a great happiness to have
decided once for all this point, for it is not in my character to pass
through life uncertain--mistaken, perhaps--on psychological matters such
as these. No, Madame; rest happily assured that there is a great
difference, which in the future will be sacred for me. For, believe me,
Madame, it would be calamity for high Society if by chance there should
arise amongst them any understanding of all that side of life which--vast
as the plains and bitter as the sea, black as the ashes of a corpse, and
yet more free than any wings of birds who fly away--is so justly beyond
the grasp of their philosophy. Yes, believe me, dear Madame, there is no
danger in the world so much to be avoided by all the members of that
circle, most illustrious, most respectable, called high Society.
From what I have said you may imagine how hard it is for me to take my
flight. I shall always keep for you the most distinguished sentiments.
With the expression of my full regard for you and your good family, and
of a gratitude as sincere as it is badly worded,
Believe me, dear Madame,
Your devoted
LOUIS FERRAND.
Shelton's first impulse was to tear the letter up, but this he reflected
he had no right to do. Remembering, too, that Mrs. Dennant's French was
orthodox, he felt sure she would never understand the young foreigner's
subtle innuendoes. He closed the envelope and went to bed, haunted still
by Ferrand's parting look.
It was with no small feeling of embarrassment, however, that, having sent
the letter to its destination by an early footman, he made his appearance
at the breakfast-table. Behind the Austrian coffee-urn, filled with
French coffee, Mrs. Dennant, who had placed four eggs in a German
egg-boiler, said "Good-morning," with a kindly smile.
"Dick, an egg?" she asked him, holding up a fifth.
"No, thank you," replied Shelton, greeting the table and fitting down.
He was a little late; the buzz of conversation rose hilariously around.
"My dear," continued Mr. Dennant, who was talking to his youngest
daughter, "you'll have no chance whatever--not the least little bit of
chance."
"Father, what nonsense! You know we shall beat your heads off!"
"Before it 's too late, then, I will eat a muffin. Shelton, pass the
muffins!" But in making this request, Mr. Dennant avoided looking in his
face.
Antonia, too, seemed to keep her eyes away from him. She was talking to
a Connoisseur on Art of supernatural appearances, and seemed in the
highest spirits. Shelton rose, and, going to the sideboard, helped
himself to grouse.
"Who was the young man I saw yesterday on the lawn?" he heard the
Connoisseur remark. "Struck me as having an--er--quite intelligent
physiog."
His own intelligent physiog, raised at a slight slant so that he might
look the better through his nose-nippers, was the very pattern of
approval. "It's curious how one's always meeting with intelligence;" it
seemed to say. Mrs. Dennant paused in the act of adding cream, and
Shelton scrutinised her face; it was hare-like, and superior as ever.
Thank goodness she had smelt no rat! He felt strangely disappointed.
"You mean Monsieur Ferrand, teachin' Toddles French? Dobson, the
Professor's cup."
"I hope I shall see him again," cooed the Connoisseur; "he was quite
interesting on the subject of young German working men. It seems they
tramp from place to place to learn their trades. What nationality was
he, may I ask?"
Mr. Dennant, of whom he asked this question, lifted his brows, and said,
"Ask Shelton."
"Half Dutch, half French."
"Very interesting breed; I hope I shall see him again."
"Well, you won't," said Thea suddenly; "he's gone."
Shelton saw that their good breeding alone prevented all from adding,
"And thank goodness, too!"
"Gone? Dear me, it's very--"
"Yes," said Mr. Dennant, "very sudden."
"Now, Algie," murmured Mrs. Dennant, "it 's quite a charmin' letter. Must
have taken the poor young man an hour to write."
"Oh, mother!" cried Antonia.
And Shelton felt his face go crimson. He had suddenly remembered that
her French was better than her mother's.
"He seems to have had a singular experience," said the Connoisseur.
"Yes," echoed Mr. Dennant; "he 's had some singular experience. If you
want to know the details, ask friend Shelton; it's quite romantic. In
the meantime, my dear; another cup?"
The Connoisseur, never quite devoid of absent-minded malice, spurred his
curiosity to a further effort; and, turning his well-defended eyes on
Shelton, murmured,
"Well, Mr. Shelton, you are the historian, it seems."
"There is no history," said Shelton, without looking up.
"Ah, that's very dull," remarked the Connoisseur.
"My dear Dick," said Mrs. Dennant, "that was really a most touchin' story
about his goin' without food in Paris."
Shelton shot another look at Antonia; her face was frigid. "I hate your
d---d superiority!" he thought, staring at the Connoisseur.
"There's nothing," said that gentleman, "more enthralling than
starvation. Come, Mr Shelton."
"I can't tell stories," said Shelton; "never could."
He cared not a straw for Ferrand, his coming, going, or his history; for,
looking at Antonia, his heart was heavy.
CHAPTER XXX
THE LADY FROM BEYOND
The morning was sultry, brooding, steamy. Antonia was at her music, and
from the room where Shelton tried to fix attention on a book he could
hear her practising her scales with a cold fury that cast an added gloom
upon his spirit. He did not see her until lunch, and then she again sat
next the Connoisseur. Her cheeks were pale, but there was something
feverish in her chatter to her neighbour; she still refused to look at
Shelton. He felt very miserable. After lunch, when most of them had
left the table, the rest fell to discussing country neighbours.
"Of course," said Mrs. Dennant, "there are the Foliots; but nobody calls
on them."
"Ah!" said the Connoisseur, "the Foliots--the Foliots--the
people--er--who--quite so!"
"It's really distressin'; she looks so sweet ridin' about. Many people
with worse stories get called on," continued Mrs. Dennant, with that
large frankness of intrusion upon doubtful subjects which may be made by
certain people in a certain way, "but, after all, one couldn't ask them
to meet anybody."
"No," the Connoisseur assented. "I used to know Foliot. Thousand
pities. They say she was a very pretty woman."
"Oh, not pretty!" said Mrs. Dennant! "more interestin than pretty, I
should say."
Shelton, who knew the lady slightly, noticed that they spoke of her as in
the past. He did not look towards Antonia; for, though a little troubled
at her presence while such a subject was discussed, he hated his
conviction that her face, was as unruffled as though the Foliots had been
a separate species. There was, in fact, a curiosity about her eyes, a
faint impatience on her lips; she was rolling little crumbs of bread.
Suddenly yawning, she muttered some remark, and rose. Shelton stopped
her at the door.
"Where are you going?"
"For a walk."
"May n't I come?".
She shook her head.
"I 'm going to take Toddles."
Shelton held the door open, and went back to the table.
"Yes," the Connoisseur said, sipping at his sherry, "I 'm afraid it's all
over with young Foliot."
"Such a pity!" murmured Mrs. Dennant, and her kindly face looked quite
disturbed. "I've known him ever since he was a boy. Of course, I think
he made a great mistake to bring her down here. Not even bein' able to
get married makes it doubly awkward. Oh, I think he made a great
mistake!"
"Ah!" said the Connoisseur, "but d' you suppose that makes much
difference? Even if What 's--his-name gave her a divorce, I don't think,
don't you know, that--"
"Oh, it does! So many people would be inclined to look over it in time.
But as it is it's hopeless, quite. So very awkward for people, too,
meetin' them about. The Telfords and the Butterwicks--by the way,
they're comin' here to dine to-night--live near them, don't you know."
"Did you ever meet her before-er-before the flood?" the Connoisseur
inquired; and his lips parting and unexpectedly revealing teeth gave him
a shadowy resemblance to a goat.
"Yes; I did meet her once at the Branksomes'. I thought her quite a
charmin' person."
"Poor fellow!" said the Connoisseur; "they tell me he was going to take
the hounds."
"And there are his delightful coverts, too. Algie often used to shoot
there, and now they say he just has his brother down to shoot with him.
It's really quite too melancholy! Did you know him, Dick?"
"Foliot?" replied Shelton absently. "No; I never met him: I've seen her
once or twice at Ascot."
Through the window he could see Antonia in her scarlet Tam-o'-shanter,
swinging her stick, and he got up feigning unconcern. Just then Toddles
came bounding up against his sister. They went off arm in arm. She had
seen him at the window, yet she gave no friendly glance; Shelton felt
more miserable than ever. He stepped out upon the drive. There was a
lurid, gloomy canopy above; the elm-trees drooped their heavy blackish
green, the wonted rustle of the aspen-tree was gone, even the rooks were
silent. A store of force lay heavy on the heart of nature. He started
pacing slowly up and down, his pride forbidding him to follow her, and
presently sat down on an old stone seat that faced the road. He stayed a
long time staring at the elms, asking himself what he had done and what
he ought to do. And somehow he was frightened. A sense of loneliness was
on him, so real, so painful, that he shivered in the sweltering heat. He
was there, perhaps, an hour, alone, and saw nobody pass along the road.
Then came the sound of horse's hoofs, and at the same time he heard a
motor-car approaching from the opposite direction. The rider made
appearance first, riding a grey horse with an Arab's high set head and
tail. She was holding him with difficulty, for the whirr of the
approaching car grew every moment louder. Shelton rose; the car flashed
by. He saw the horse stagger in the gate-way, crushing its rider up
against the gatepost.
He ran, but before he reached the gate the lady was on foot, holding the
plunging horse's bridle.
"Are you hurt?" cried Shelton breathlessly, and he, too, grabbed the
bridle. "Those beastly cars!"
"I don't know," she said. "Please don't; he won't let strangers touch
him."
Shelton let go, and watched her coax the horse. She was rather tall,
dressed in a grey habit, with a grey Russian cap upon her head, and he
suddenly recognised the Mrs. Foliot whom they had been talking of at
lunch.
"He 'll be quiet now," she said, "if you would n't mind holding him a
minute."
She gave the reins to him, and leaned against the gate. She was very
pale.
"I do hope he has n't hurt you," Shelton said. He was quite close to
her, well able to see her face--a curious face with high cheek-bones and
a flatfish moulding, enigmatic, yet strangely passionate for all its
listless pallor. Her smiling, tightened lips were pallid; pallid, too,
her grey and deep-set eyes with greenish tints; above all, pale the ashy
mass of hair coiled under her grey cap.
"Th-thanks!" she said; "I shall be all right directly. I'm sorry to
have made a fuss."
She bit her lips and smiled.
"I 'm sure you're hurt; do let me go for--" stammered Shelton. "I can
easily get help."
"Help!" she said, with a stony little laugh; "oh, no, thanks!"
She left the gate, and crossed the road to where he held the horse.
Shelton, to conceal embarrassment, looked at the horse's legs, and
noticed that the grey was resting one of them. He ran his hand down.
"I 'm afraid," he said, "your horse has knocked his off knee; it's
swelling."
She smiled again.
"Then we're both cripples."
"He'll be lame when he gets cold. Would n't you like to put him in the
stable here? I 'm sure you ought to drive home."
"No, thanks; if I 'm able to ride him he can carry me. Give me a hand
up."
Her voice sounded as though something had offended her. Rising from
inspection of the horse's leg, Shelton saw Antonia and Toddles standing
by. They had come through a wicketgate leading from the fields.
The latter ran up to him at once.
"We saw it," he whispered--"jolly smash-up. Can't I help?"
"Hold his bridle," answered Shelton, and he looked from one lady to the
other.
There are moments when the expression of a face fixes itself with painful
clearness; to Shelton this was such a moment. Those two faces close
together, under their coverings of scarlet and of grey, showed a contrast
almost cruelly vivid. Antonia was flushed, her eyes had grown deep blue;
her look of startled doubt had passed and left a question in her face.
"Would you like to come in and wait? We could send you home, in the
brougham," she said.
The lady called Mrs. Foliot stood, one arm across the crupper of her
saddle, biting her lips and smiling still her enigmatic smile, and it was
her face that stayed most vividly on Shelton's mind, its ashy hail, its
pallor, and fixed, scornful eyes.
"Oh, no, thanks! You're very kind."
Out of Antonia's face the timid, doubting friendliness had fled, and was
replaced by enmity. With a long, cold look at both of them she turned
away. Mrs. Foliot gave a little laugh, and raised her foot for Shelton's
help. He heard a hiss of pain as he swung her up, but when he looked at
her she smiled.
"Anyway," he said impatiently, "let me come and see you don't break
down."
She shook her head. "It 's only two miles. I'm not made of sugar."
"Then I shall simply have to follow."
She shrugged her shoulders, fixing her resolute eyes on him.
"Would that boy like to come?" she asked.
Toddles left the horse's head.
"By Jove!" he cried. "Would n't I just!"
"Then," she said, "I think that will be best. You 've been so kind."
She bowed, smiled inscrutably once more, touched the Arab with her whip,
and started, Toddles trotting at her side.
Shelton was left with Antonia underneath the elms. A sudden puff of
tepid air blew in their faces, like a warning message from the heavy,
purple heat clouds; low rumbling thunder travelled slowly from afar.
"We're going to have a storm," he said.
Antonia nodded. She was pale now, and her face still wore its cold look
of offence.
"I 've got a headache," she said, "I shall go in and lie down."
Shelton tried to speak, but something kept him silent--submission to what
was coming, like the mute submission of the fields and birds to the
menace of the storm.
He watched her go, and went back to his seat. And the silence seemed to
grow; the flowers ceased to exude their fragrance, numbed by the weighty
air. All the long house behind him seemed asleep, deserted. No noise
came forth, no laughter, the echo of no music, the ringing of no bell;
the heat had wrapped it round with drowsiness. And the silence added to
the solitude within him. What an unlucky chance, that woman's accident!
Designed by Providence to put Antonia further from him than before! Why
was not the world composed of the immaculate alone? He started pacing up
and down, tortured by a dreadful heartache.
"I must get rid of this," he thought. "I 'll go for a good tramp, and
chance the storm."
Leaving the drive he ran on Toddles, returning in the highest spirits.
"I saw her home," he crowed. "I say, what a ripper, isn't she? She 'll
be as lame as a tree to-morrow; so will the gee. Jolly hot!"
This meeting showed Shelton that he had been an hour on the stone seat;
he had thought it some ten minutes, and the discovery alarmed him. It
seemed to bring the import of his miserable fear right home to him. He
started with a swinging stride, keeping his eyes fixed on the road, the
perspiration streaming down his face.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE STORM
It was seven and more when Shelton returned, from his walk; a few heat
drops had splashed the leaves, but the storm had not yet broken. In
brooding silence the world seemed pent beneath the purple firmament.
By rapid walking in the heat Shelton had got rid of his despondency. He
felt like one who is to see his mistress after long estrangement. He,
bathed, and, straightening his tie-ends, stood smiling at the glass. His
fear, unhappiness, and doubts seemed like an evil dream; how much worse
off would he not have been, had it all been true?
It was dinner-party night, and when he reached the drawing-room the
guests were there already, chattering of the coming storm. Antonia was
not yet down, and Shelton stood by the piano waiting for her entry. Red
faces, spotless shirt-fronts, white arms; and freshly-twisted hair were
all around him. Some one handed him a clove carnation, and, as he held
it to his nose, Antonia came in, breathless, as though she had rushed
down-stairs, Her cheeks were pale no longer; her hand kept stealing to
her throat. The flames of the coming storm seemed to have caught fire
within her, to be scorching her in her white frock; she passed him close,
and her fragrance whipped his senses.
She had never seemed to him so lovely.
Never again will Shelton breathe the perfume of melons and pineapples
without a strange emotion. From where he sat at dinner he could not see
Antonia, but amidst the chattering of voices, the clink of glass and
silver, the sights and sounds and scents of feasting, he thought how he
would go to her and say that nothing mattered but her love. He drank the
frosted, pale-gold liquid of champagne as if it had been water.
The windows stood wide open in the heat; the garden lay in thick, soft
shadow, where the pitchy shapes of trees could be discerned. There was
not a breath of air to fan the candle-flames above the flowers; but two
large moths, fearful of the heavy dark, flew in and wheeled between the
lights over the diners' heads. One fell scorched into a dish of fruit,
and was removed; the other, eluding all the swish of napkins and the
efforts of the footmen, continued to make soft, fluttering rushes till
Shelton rose and caught it in his hand. He took it to the window and
threw it out into the darkness, and he noticed that the air was thick and
tepid to his face. At a sign from Mr. Dennant the muslin curtains were
then drawn across the windows, and in gratitude, perhaps, for this
protection, this filmy barrier between them and the muffled threats of
Nature, everyone broke out in talk. It was such a night as comes in
summer after perfect weather, frightening in its heat, and silence, which
was broken by the distant thunder travelling low along the ground like
the muttering of all dark places on the earth--such a night as seems, by
very breathlessness, to smother life, and with its fateful threats to
justify man's cowardice.
The ladies rose at last. The circle of the rosewood dining-table, which
had no cloth, strewn with flowers and silver gilt, had a likeness to some
autumn pool whose brown depths of oily water gleam under the sunset with
red and yellow leaves; above it the smoke of cigarettes was clinging,
like a mist to water when the sun goes down. Shelton became involved in
argument with his neighbour on the English character.
"In England we've mislaid the recipe of life," he said. "Pleasure's a
lost art. We don't get drunk, we're ashamed of love, and as to beauty,
we've lost the eye for' it. In exchange we have got money, but what 's
the good of money when we don't know how to spend it?" Excited by his
neighbour's smile, he added: "As to thought, we think so much of what our
neighbours think that we never think at all.... Have you ever watched a
foreigner when he's listening to an Englishman? We 're in the habit of
despising foreigners; the scorn we have for them is nothing to the scorn
they have for us. And they are right! Look at our taste! What is the
good of owning riches if we don't know how to use them?"
"That's rather new to me," his neighbour said. "There may be something
in it.... Did you see that case in the papers the other day of old
Hornblower, who left the 1820 port that fetched a guinea a bottle? When
the purchaser--poor feller!--came to drink it he found eleven bottles out
of twelve completely ullaged--ha! ha! Well, there's nothing wrong with
this"; and he drained his glass.
"No," answered Shelton.
When they rose to join the ladies, he slipped out on the lawn.
At once he was enveloped in a bath of heat. A heavy odour, sensual,
sinister, was in the air, as from a sudden flowering of amorous shrubs.
He stood and drank it in with greedy nostrils. Putting his hand down, he
felt the grass; it was dry, and charged with electricity. Then he saw,
pale and candescent in the blackness, three or four great lilies, the
authors of that perfume. The blossoms seemed to be rising at him through
the darkness; as though putting up their faces to be kissed. He
straightened himself abruptly and went in.
The guests were leaving when Shelton, who was watching; saw Antonia slip
through the drawing-room window. He could follow the white glimmer of
her frock across the lawn, but lost it in the shadow of the trees;
casting a hasty look to see that he was not observed, he too slipped out.
The blackness and the heat were stifling he took great breaths of it as
if it were the purest mountain air, and, treading softly on the grass,
stole on towards the holm oak. His lips were dry, his heart beat
painfully. The mutter of the distant thunder had quite ceased; waves of
hot air came wheeling in his face, and in their midst a sudden rush of
cold. He thought, "The storm is coming now!" and stole on towards the
tree. She was lying in the hammock, her figure a white blur in, the
heart of the tree's shadow, rocking gently to a little creaking of the
branch. Shelton held his breath; she had not heard him. He crept up
close behind the trunk till he stood in touch of her. "I mustn't startle
her," he thought. "Antonia!"
There was a faint stir in the hammock, but no answer. He stood over her,
but even then he could not see her face; he only, had a sense of
something breathing and alive within a yard of him--of something warm and
soft. He whispered again, "Antonia!" but again there came no answer, and
a sort of fear and frenzy seized on him. He could no longer hear her
breathe; the creaking of the branch had ceased. What was passing in that
silent, living creature there so close? And then he heard again the
sound of breathing, quick and scared, like the fluttering of a bird; in a
moment he was staring in the dark at an empty hammock.
He stayed beside the empty hammock till he could bear uncertainty no
longer. But as he crossed the lawn the sky was rent from end to end by
jagged lightning, rain spattered him from head to foot, and with a
deafening crack the thunder broke.
He sought the smoking-room, but, recoiling at the door, went to his own
room, and threw himself down on the bed. The thunder groaned and
sputtered in long volleys; the lightning showed him the shapes of things
within the room, with a weird distinctness that rent from them all
likeness to the purpose they were made for, bereaved them of utility, of
their matter-of-factness, presented them as skeletons, abstractions, with
indecency in their appearance, like the naked nerves and sinews of a leg
preserved in, spirit. The sound of the rain against the house stunned
his power of thinking, he rose to shut his windows; then, returning to
his bed, threw himself down again. He stayed there till the storm was
over, in a kind of stupor; but when the boom of the retreating thunder
grew every minute less distinct, he rose. Then for the first time he saw
something white close by the door.
It was a note:
I have made a mistake. Please forgive me, and go away.--ANTONIA.
CHAPTER XXXII
WILDERNESS
When he had read this note, Shelton put it down beside his sleeve-links
on his dressing table, stared in the mirror at himself, and laughed. But
his lips soon stopped him laughing; he threw himself upon his bed and
pressed his face into the pillows. He lay there half-dressed throughout
the night, and when he rose, soon after dawn, he had not made his mind up
what to do. The only thing he knew for certain was that he must not meet
Antonia.
At last he penned the following:
I have had a sleepless night with toothache, and think it best to run up
to the dentist at once. If a tooth must come out, the sooner the better.
He addressed it to Mrs. Dennant, and left it on his table. After doing
this he threw himself once more upon his bed, and this time fell into a
doze.
He woke with a start, dressed, and let himself quietly out. The likeness
of his going to that of Ferrand struck him. "Both outcasts now," he
thought.
He tramped on till noon without knowing or caring where he went; then,
entering a field, threw himself down under the hedge, and fell asleep.
He was awakened by a whirr. A covey of partridges, with wings glistening
in the sun, were straggling out across the adjoining field of mustard.
They soon settled in the old-maidish way of partridges, and began to call
upon each other.
Some cattle had approached him in his sleep, and a beautiful bay cow,
with her head turned sideways, was snuffing at him gently, exhaling her
peculiar sweetness. She was as fine in legs and coat as any race-horse.
She dribbled at the corners of her black, moist lips; her eye was soft
and cynical. Breathing the vague sweetness of the mustard-field, rubbing
dry grasp-stalks in his fingers, Shelton had a moment's happiness--the
happiness of sun and sky, of the eternal quiet, and untold movements of
the fields. Why could not human beings let their troubles be as this cow
left the flies that clung about her eyes? He dozed again, and woke up
with a laugh, for this was what he dreamed:
He fancied he was in a room, at once the hall and drawing-room of some
country house. In the centre of this room a lady stood, who was looking
in a hand-glass at her face. Beyond a door or window could be seen a
garden with a row of statues, and through this door people passed without
apparent object.
Suddenly Shelton saw his mother advancing to the lady with the
hand-glass, whom now he recognised as Mrs. Foliot. But, as he looked,
his mother changed to Mrs. Dennant, and began speaking in a voice that
was a sort of abstract of refinement. "Je fais de la philosophic," it
said; "I take the individual for what she's worth. I do not condemn;
above all, one must have spirit!" The lady with the mirror continued
looking in the glass; and, though he could not see her face, he could see
its image-pale, with greenish eyes, and a smile like scorn itself. Then,
by a swift transition, he was walking in the garden talking to Mrs.
Dennant.
It was from this talk that he awoke with laughter. "But," she had been
saying, "Dick, I've always been accustomed to believe what I was told.
It was so unkind of her to scorn me just because I happen to be
second-hand." And her voice awakened Shelton's pity; it was like a
frightened child's. "I don't know what I shall do if I have to form
opinions for myself. I was n't brought up to it. I 've always had them
nice and secondhand. How am I to go to work? One must believe what
other people do; not that I think much of other people, but, you do know
what it is--one feels so much more comfortable," and her skirts rustled.
"But, Dick, whatever happens"--her voice entreated--"do let Antonia get
her judgments secondhand. Never mind for me--if I must form opinions for
myself, I must--but don't let her; any old opinions so long as they are
old. It 's dreadful to have to think out new ones for oneself." And he
awoke. His dream had had in it the element called Art, for, in its gross
absurdity, Mrs. Dennant had said things that showed her soul more fully
than anything she would have said in life.
"No," said a voice quite close, behind the hedge, "not many Frenchmen,
thank the Lord! A few coveys of Hungarians over from the Duke's. Sir
James, some pie?"
Shelton raised himself with drowsy curiosity--still half asleep--and
applied his face to a gap in the high, thick osiers of the hedge. Four
men were seated on camp-stools round a folding-table, on which was a pie
and other things to eat. A game-cart, well-adorned with birds and hares,
stood at a short distance; the tails of some dogs were seen moving
humbly, and a valet opening bottles. Shelton had forgotten that it was
"the first." The host was a soldierly and freckled man; an older man sat
next him, square-jawed, with an absent-looking eye and sharpened nose;
next him, again, there was a bearded person whom they seemed to call the
Commodore; in the fourth, to his alarm, Shelton recognised the gentleman
called Mabbey. It was really no matter for surprise to meet him miles
from his own place, for he was one of those who wander with a valet and
two guns from the twelfth of August to the end of January, and are then
supposed to go to Monte Carlo or to sleep until the twelfth of August
comes again.
He was speaking.
"Did you hear what a bag we made on the twelfth, Sir James?"
"Ah! yes; what was that? Have you sold your bay horse, Glennie?"
Shelton had not decided whether or no to sneak away, when the Commodore's
thick voice began:
"My man tellsh me that Mrs. Foliot--haw--has lamed her Arab. Does she
mean to come out cubbing?"
Shelton observed the smile that came on all their faces. "Foliot 's
paying for his good time now; what a donkey to get caught!" it seemed to
say. He turned his back and shut his eyes.
"Cubbing?" replied Glennie; "hardly."
"Never could shee anything wonderful in her looks," went on the
Commodore; "so quiet, you never knew that she was in the room. I
remember sayin' to her once, 'Mrs. Lutheran, now what do you like besht
in all the world?' and what do you think she answered? 'Music!' Haw!"
The voice of Mabbey said:
"He was always a dark horse, Foliot: It 's always the dark horses that
get let in for this kind of thing"; and there was a sound as though he
licked his lips.
"They say," said the voice of the host, "he never gives you back a
greeting now. Queer fish; they say that she's devoted to him."
Coming so closely on his meeting with this lady, and on the dream from
which he had awakened, this conversation mesmerised the listener behind
the hedge.
"If he gives up his huntin' and his shootin', I don't see what the deuce
he 'll do; he's resigned his clubs; as to his chance of Parliament--"
said the voice of Mabbey.
"Thousand pities," said Sir James; "still, he knew what to expect."
"Very queer fellows, those Foliots," said the Commodore. "There was his
father: he 'd always rather talk to any scarecrow he came across than to
you or me. Wonder what he'll do with all his horses; I should like that
chestnut of his."
"You can't tell what a fellow 'll do," said the voice of Mabbey--"take to
drink or writin' books. Old Charlie Wayne came to gazin' at stars, and
twice a week he used to go and paddle round in Whitechapel, teachin'
pothooks--"
"Glennie," said Sir James, "what 's become of Smollett, your old keeper?"
"Obliged to get rid of him." Shelton tried again to close his ears, but
again he listened. "Getting a bit too old; lost me a lot of eggs last
season."
"Ah!" said the Commodore, "when they oncesh begin to lose eggsh--"
"As a matter of fact, his son--you remember him, Sir James, he used to
load for you?--got a girl into trouble; when her people gave her the
chuck old Smollet took her in; beastly scandal it made, too. The girl
refused to marry Smollett, and old Smollett backed her up. Naturally, the
parson and the village cut up rough; my wife offered to get her into one
of those reformatory what-d' you-call-'ems, but the old fellow said she
should n't go if she did n't want to. Bad business altogether; put him
quite off his stroke. I only got five hundred pheasants last year
instead of eight."
There was a silence. Shelton again peeped through the hedge. All were
eating pie.
"In Warwickshire," said the Commodore, "they always marry--haw--and live
reshpectable ever after."
"Quite so," remarked the host; "it was a bit too thick, her refusing to
marry him. She said he took advantage of her."
"She's sorry by this time," said Sir James; "lucky escape for young
Smollett. Queer, the obstinacy of some of these old fellows!"
"What are we doing after lunch?" asked the Commodore.
"The next field," said the host, "is pasture. We line up along the
hedge, and drive that mustard towards the roots; there ought to be a good
few birds."
"Shelton rose, and, crouching, stole softly to the gate:
"On the twelfth, shootin' in two parties," followed the voice of Mabbey
from the distance.
Whether from his walk or from his sleepless night, Shelton seemed to ache
in every limb; but he continued his tramp along the road. He was no
nearer to deciding what to do. It was late in the afternoon when he
reached Maidenhead, and, after breaking fast, got into a London train and
went to sleep. At ten o'clock that evening he walked into St. James's
Park and there sat down.
The lamplight dappled through the tired foliage on to these benches which
have rested many vagrants. Darkness has ceased to be the lawful cloak of
the unhappy; but Mother Night was soft and moonless, and man had not
despoiled her of her comfort, quite.
Shelton was not alone upon the seat, for at the far end was sitting a
young girl with a red, round, sullen face; and beyond, and further still,
were dim benches and dim figures sitting on them, as though life's
institutions had shot them out in an endless line of rubbish.
"Ah!" thought Shelton, in the dreamy way of tired people; "the
institutions are all right; it's the spirit that's all--"
"Wrong?" said a voice behind him; "why, of course! You've taken the
wrong turn, old man."
He saw a policeman, with a red face shining through the darkness, talking
to a strange old figure like some aged and dishevelled bird.
"Thank you, constable," the old man said, "as I've come wrong I'll take a
rest." Chewing his gums, he seemed to fear to take the liberty of
sitting down.
Shelton made room, and the old fellow took the vacant place.
"You'll excuse me, sir, I'm sure," he said in shaky tones, and snatching
at his battered hat; "I see you was a gentleman"--and lovingly he dwelt
upon the word--"would n't disturb you for the world. I'm not used to
being out at night, and the seats do get so full. Old age must lean on
something; you'll excuse me, sir, I 'm sure."
"Of course," said Shelton gently.
"I'm a respectable old man, really," said his neighbour; "I never took a
liberty in my life. But at my age, sir, you get nervous; standin' about
the streets as I been this last week, an' sleepin' in them
doss-houses--Oh, they're dreadful rough places--a dreadful rough lot
there! Yes," the old man said again, as Shelton turned to look at him,
struck by the real self-pity in his voice, "dreadful rough places!"
A movement of his head, which grew on a lean, plucked neck like that of
an old fowl, had brought his face into the light. It was long, and run
to seed, and had a large, red nose; its thin, colourless lips were
twisted sideways and apart, showing his semi-toothless mouth; and his
eyes had that aged look of eyes in which all colour runs into a thin rim
round the iris; and over them kept coming films like the films over
parrots' eyes. He was, or should have been, clean-shaven. His hair--for
he had taken off his hat was thick and lank, of dusty colour, as far as
could be seen, without a speck of grey, and parted very beautifully just
about the middle.
"I can put up with that," he said again. "I never interferes with
nobody, and nobody don't interfere with me; but what frightens me"--his
voice grew steady, as if too terrified to shake, is never knowin' day to
day what 's to become of yer. Oh, that 'a dreadful, that is!"
"It must be," answered Shelton.
"Ah! it is," the old man said; "and the winter cumin' on. I never was
much used to open air, bein' in domestic service all my life; but I don't
mind that so long as I can see my way to earn a livin'. Well, thank God!
I've got a job at last"; and his voice grew cheerful suddenly. "Sellin'
papers is not what I been accustomed to; but the Westminister, they tell
me that's one of the most respectable of the evenin' papers--in fact, I
know it is. So now I'm sure to get on; I try hard."
"How did you get the job?" asked Shelton.
"I 've got my character," the old fellow said, making a gesture with a
skinny hand towards his chest, as if it were there he kept his character.
"Thank God, nobody can't take that away! I never parts from that"; and
fumbling, he produced a packet, holding first one paper to the light, and
then another, and he looked anxiously at Shelton. "In that house where I
been sleepin' they're not honest; they 've stolen a parcel of my
things--a lovely shirt an' a pair of beautiful gloves a gentleman gave me
for holdin' of his horse. Now, would n't you prosecute 'em, sir?"
"It depends on what you can prove."
"I know they had 'em. A man must stand up for his rights; that's only
proper. I can't afford to lose beautiful things like them. I think I
ought to prosecute, now, don't you, sir?"
Shelton restrained a smile.
"There!" said the old man, smoothing out a piece of paper shakily,
"that's Sir George!" and his withered finger-tips trembled on the middle
of the page: 'Joshua Creed, in my service five years as butler, during
which time I have found him all that a servant should be.' And this
'ere'--he fumbled with another--"this 'ere 's Lady Glengow: 'Joshua
Creed--' I thought I'd like you to read 'em since you've been so kind."
"Will you have a pipe?"
"Thank ye, sir," replied the aged butler, filling his clay from
Shelton's pouch; then, taking a front tooth between his finger and his
thumb, he began to feel it tenderly, working it to and fro with a sort of
melancholy pride.
"My teeth's a-comin' out," he said; "but I enjoys pretty good health for
a man of my age."
"How old is that?"
"Seventy-two! Barrin' my cough, and my rupture, and this 'ere
affliction"--he passed his hand over his face--"I 've nothing to complain
of; everybody has somethink, it seems. I'm a wonder for my age, I
think."
Shelton, for all his pity, would have given much to laugh.
"Seventy-two!" he said; "yes, a great age. You remember the country when
it was very different to what it is now?"
"Ah!" said the old butler, "there was gentry then; I remember them
drivin' down to Newmarket (my native place, sir) with their own horses.
There was n't so much o' these here middle classes then. There was more,
too, what you might call the milk o' human kindness in people then--none
o' them amalgamated stores, every man keepin' his own little shop; not so
eager to cut his neighbour's throat, as you might say. And then look at
the price of bread! O dear! why, it is n't a quarter what it was!"
"And are people happier now than they were then?" asked Shelton.
The old butler sucked his pipe.
"No," he answered, shaking his old head; "they've lost the contented
spirit. I see people runnin' here and runnin' there, readin' books,
findin' things out; they ain't not so self-contented as they were."
"Is that possible?" thought Shelton.
"No," repeated the old man, again sucking at his pipe, and this time
blowing out a lot of smoke; "I don't see as much happiness about, not the
same look on the faces. 'T isn't likely. See these 'ere motorcars, too;
they say 'orses is goin' out"; and, as if dumbfounded at his own
conclusion, he sat silent for some time, engaged in the lighting and
relighting of his pipe.
The girl at the far end stirred, cleared her throat, and settled down
again; her movement disengaged a scent of frowsy clothes. The policeman
had approached and scrutinised these ill-assorted faces; his glance was
jovially contemptuous till he noticed Shelton, and then was modified by
curiosity.
"There's good men in the police," the aged butler said, when the
policeman had passed on--"there's good men in the police, as good men as
you can see, and there 's them that treats you like the dirt--a dreadful
low class of man. Oh dear, yes! when they see you down in the world,
they think they can speak to you as they like; I don't give them no
chance to worry me; I keeps myself to myself, and speak civil to all the
world. You have to hold the candle to them; for, oh dear! if they 're
crossed--some of them--they 're a dreadful unscrup'lous lot of men!"
"Are you going to spend the night here?"
"It's nice and warm to-night," replied the aged butler. "I said to the
man at that low place I said: 'Don't you ever speak to me again,' I said,
'don't you come near me!' Straightforward and honest 's been my motto
all my life; I don't want to have nothing to say to them low fellows"--he
made an annihilating gesture--"after the way they treated me, takin' my
things like that. Tomorrow I shall get a room for three shillin's a
week, don't you think so, sir? Well, then I shall be all right. I 'm
not afraid now; the mind at rest. So long as I ran keep myself, that's
all I want. I shall do first-rate, I think"; and he stared at Shelton,
but the look in his eyes and the half-scared optimism of his voice
convinced the latter that he lived in dread. "So long as I can keep
myself," he said again, "I sha'n't need no workhouse nor lose
respectability."
"No," thought Shelton; and for some time sat without a word. "When you
can;" he said at last, "come and see me; here's my card."
The aged butler became conscious with a jerk, for he was nodding.
"Thank ye, sir; I will," he said, with pitiful alacrity. "Down by
Belgravia? Oh, I know it well; I lived down in them parts with a
gentleman of the name of Bateson--perhaps you knew him; he 's dead
now--the Honourable Bateson. Thank ye, sir; I'll be sure to come"; and,
snatching at his battered hat, he toilsomely secreted Shelton's card
amongst his character. A minute later he began again to nod.
The policeman passed a second time; his gaze seemed to say, "Now, what's
a toff doing on that seat with those two rotters?" And Shelton caught
his eye.
"Ah!" he thought; "exactly! You don't know what to make of me--a man of
my position sitting here! Poor devil! to spend your days in spying on
your fellow-creatures! Poor devil! But you don't know that you 're a
poor devil, and so you 're not one."
The man on the next bench sneezed--a shrill and disapproving sneeze.
The policeman passed again, and, seeing that the lower creatures were
both dozing, he spoke to Shelton:
"Not very safe on these 'ere benches, sir," he said; "you never know who
you may be sittin' next to. If I were you, sir, I should be gettin'
on--if you 're not goin' to spend the night here, that is"; and he
laughed, as at an admirable joke.
Shelton looked at him, and itched to say, "Why shouldn't I?" but it
struck him that it would sound very odd. "Besides," he thought, "I shall
only catch a cold"; and, without speaking, he left the seat, and went
along towards his rooms.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE END
He reached his rooms at midnight so exhausted that, without waiting to
light up, he dropped into a chair. The curtains and blinds had been
removed for cleaning, and the tall windows admitted the night's staring
gaze. Shelton fixed his eyes on that outside darkness, as one lost man
might fix his eyes upon another.
An unaired, dusty odour clung about the room, but, like some God-sent
whiff of grass or flowers wafted to one sometimes in the streets, a
perfume came to him, the spice from the withered clove carnation still
clinging, to his button-hole; and he suddenly awoke from his queer
trance. There was a decision to be made. He rose to light a candle; the
dust was thick on everything he touched. "Ugh!" he thought, "how
wretched!" and the loneliness that had seized him on the stone seat at
Holm Oaks the day before returned with fearful force.
On his table, heaped without order, were a pile of bills and circulars.
He opened them, tearing at their covers with the random haste of men back
from their holidays. A single long envelope was placed apart.
MY DEAR DICK [he read],
I enclose you herewith the revised draft of your marriage settlement.
It is now shipshape. Return it before the end of the week, and I
will have it engrossed for signature. I go to Scotland next
Wednesday for a month; shall be back in good time for your wedding.
My love to your mother when you see her.
Your-affectionate uncle,
EDMUND PARAMOR.
Shelton smiled and took out the draft.
"This Indenture made the___day of 190_, between Richard Paramor
Shelton--"
He put it down and sank back in his chair, the chair in which the foreign
vagrant had been wont to sit on mornings when he came to preach
philosophy.
He did not stay there long, but in sheer unhappiness got up, and, taking
his candle, roamed about the room, fingering things, and gazing in the
mirror at his face, which seemed to him repulsive in its wretchedness.
He went at last into the hall and opened the door, to go downstairs again
into the street; but the sudden certainty that, in street or house, in
town or country, he would have to take his trouble with him, made him
shut it to. He felt in the letterbox, drew forth a letter, and with this
he went back to the sitting-room.
It was from Antonia. And such was his excitement that he was forced to
take three turns between the window and the wall before he could read;
then, with a heart beating so that he could hardly hold the paper, he
began:
I was wrong to ask you to go away. I see now that it was breaking my
promise, and I did n't mean to do that. I don't know why things have
come to be so different. You never think as I do about anything.
I had better tell you that that letter of Monsieur Ferrand's to mother
was impudent. Of course you did n't know what was in it; but when
Professor Brayne was asking you about him at breakfast, I felt that you
believed that he was right and we were wrong, and I can't understand it.
And then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her horse, it was all as
if you were on her side. How can you feel like that?
I must say this, because I don't think I ought to have asked you to go
away, and I want you to believe that I will keep my promise, or I should
feel that you and everybody else had a right to condemn me. I was awake
all last night, and have a bad headache this morning. I can't write any
more.
ANTONIA.
His first sensation was a sort of stupefaction of relief that had in it
an element of anger. He was reprieved! She would not break her promise;
she considered herself bound! In the midst of the exaltation of this
thought he smiled, and that smile was strange.
He read it through again, and, like a judge, began to weigh what she had
written, her thoughts when she was writing, the facts which had led up to
this.
The vagrant's farewell document had done the business. True to his fatal
gift of divesting things of clothing, Ferrand had not vanished without
showing up his patron in his proper colours; even to Shelton those
colours were made plain. Antonia had felt her lover was a traitor.
Sounding his heart even in his stress of indecision, Shelton knew that
this was true.
"Then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her horse-" That woman! "It
was as if you were on her side!"
He saw too well her mind, its clear rigidity, its intuitive perception of
that with which it was not safe to sympathise, its instinct for
self-preservation, its spontaneous contempt for those without that
instinct. And she had written these words considering herself bound to
him--a man of sentiment, of rebellious sympathies, of untidiness of
principle! Here was the answer to the question he had asked all day:
"How have things come to such a pass?" and he began to feel compassion
for her.
Poor child! She could not jilt him; there was something vulgar in the
word! Never should it be said that Antonia Dennant had accented him and
thrown him over. No lady did these things! They were impossible! At
the bottom of his heart he had a queer, unconscious sympathy with, this
impossibility.
Once again he read the letter, which seemed now impregnated with fresh
meaning, and the anger which had mingled with his first sensation of
relief detached itself and grew in force. In that letter there was
something tyrannous, a denial of his right to have a separate point of
view. It was like a finger pointed at him as an unsound person. In
marrying her he would be marrying not only her, but her class--his class.
She would be there always to make him look on her and on himself, and all
the people that they knew and all the things they did, complacently; she
would be there to make him feel himself superior to everyone whose life
was cast in other moral moulds. To feel himself superior, not blatantly,
not consciously, but with subconscious righteousness.
But his anger, which was like the paroxysm that two days before had made
him mutter at the Connoisseur, "I hate your d---d superiority," struck
him all at once as impotent and ludicrous. What was the good of being
angry? He was on the point of losing her! And the anguish of that
thought, reacting on his anger, intensified it threefold. She was so
certain of herself, so superior to her emotions, to her natural
impulses--superior to her very longing to be free from him. Of that fact,
at all events, Shelton had no longer any doubt. It was beyond argument.
She did not really love him; she wanted to be free of him!
A photograph hung in his bedroom at Holm Oaks of a group round the hall
door; the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, Mrs. Dennant, Lady Bonington,
Halidome, Mr. Dennant, and the stained-glass man--all were there; and on
the left-hand side, looking straight in front of her, Antonia. Her face
in its youthfulness, more than all those others, expressed their point of
view: Behind those calm young eyes lay a world of safety and tradition.
"I am not as others are," they seemed to say.
And from that photograph Mr. and Mrs. Dennant singled themselves out; he
could see their faces as they talked--their faces with a peculiar and
uneasy look on them; and he could hear their voices, still decisive, but
a little acid, as if they had been quarrelling:
"He 's made a donkey of himself!"
"Ah! it's too distressin'!"
They, too, thought him unsound, and did n't want him; but to save the
situation they would be glad to keep him. She did n't want him, but she
refused to lose her right to say, "Commoner girls may break their
promises; I will not!" He sat down at the table between the candles,
covering his face. His grief and anger grew and grew within him. If she
would not free herself, the duty was on him! She was ready without love
to marry him, as a sacrifice to her ideal of what she ought to be!
But she had n't, after all, the monopoly of pride!
As if she stood before him, he could see the shadows underneath her eyes
that he had dreamed of kissing, the eager movements of her lips. For
several minutes he remained, not moving hand or limb. Then once more his
anger blazed. She was going to sacrifice herself and--him! All his
manhood scoffed at such a senseless sacrifice. That was not exactly what
he wanted!
He went to the bureau, took a piece of paper and an envelope, and wrote
as follows:
There never was, is not, and never would have been any question of being
bound between us. I refuse to trade on any such thing. You are
absolutely free. Our engagement is at an end by mutual consent.
RICHARD SHELTON.
He sealed it, and, sitting with his hands between his knees, he let his
forehead droop lower and lower to the table, till it rested on his
marriage settlement. And he had a feeling of relief, like one who drops
exhausted at his journey's end.
THE END.
THE COUNTRY HOUSE
By John Galsworthy
CHAPTER I
A PARTY AT WORSTED SKEYNES
The year was 1891, the month October, the day Monday. In the dark
outside the railway-station at Worsted Skeynes Mr. Horace Pendyce's
omnibus, his brougham, his luggage-cart, monopolised space. The face of
Mr. Horace Pendyce's coachman monopolised the light of the solitary
station lantern. Rosy-gilled, with fat close-clipped grey whiskers and
inscrutably pursed lips, it presided high up in the easterly air like an
emblem of the feudal system. On the platform within, Mr. Horace
Pendyce's first footman and second groom in long livery coats with silver
buttons, their appearance slightly relieved by the rakish cock of their
top-hats, awaited the arrival of the 6.15.
The first footman took from his pocket a half-sheet of stamped and
crested notepaper covered with Mr. Horace Pendyce's small and precise
calligraphy. He read from it in a nasal, derisive voice:
"Hon. Geoff, and Mrs. Winlow, blue room and dress; maid, small drab. Mr.
George, white room. Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, gold. The Captain, red. General
Pendyce, pink room; valet, back attic. That's the lot."
The groom, a red-cheeked youth, paid no attention.
"If this here Ambler of Mr. George's wins on Wednesday," he said, "it's
as good as five pounds in my pocket. Who does for Mr. George?"
"James, of course."
The groom whistled.
"I'll try an' get his loadin' to-morrow. Are you on, Tom?"
The footman answered:
"Here's another over the page. Green room, right wing--that Foxleigh;
he's no good. 'Take all you can and give nothing' sort! But can't he
shoot just! That's why they ask him!"
From behind a screen of dark trees the train ran in.
Down the platform came the first passengers--two cattlemen with long
sticks, slouching by in their frieze coats, diffusing an odour of beast
and black tobacco; then a couple, and single figures, keeping as far
apart as possible, the guests of Mr. Horace Pendyce. Slowly they came
out one by one into the loom of the carriages, and stood with their eyes
fixed carefully before them, as though afraid they might recognise each
other. A tall man in a fur coat, whose tall wife carried a small bag of
silver and shagreen, spoke to the coachman:
"How are you, Benson? Mr. George says Captain Pendyce told him he
wouldn't be down till the 9.30. I suppose we'd better----"
Like a breeze tuning through the frigid silence of a fog, a high, clear
voice was heard:
"Oh, thanks; I'll go up in the brougham."
Followed by the first footman carrying her wraps, and muffled in a white
veil, through which the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow's leisurely gaze caught the
gleam of eyes, a lady stepped forward, and with a backward glance
vanished into the brougham. Her head appeared again behind the swathe of
gauze.
"There's plenty of room, George."
George Pendyce walked quickly forward, and disappeared beside her. There
was a crunch of wheels; the brougham rolled away.
The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow raised his face again.
"Who was that, Benson?"
The coachman leaned over confidentially, holding his podgy white-gloved
hand outspread on a level with the Hon. Geoffrey's hat.
"Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, sir. Captain Bellew's lady, of the Firs."
"But I thought they weren't---"
"No, sir; they're not, sir."
"Ah!"
A calm rarefied voice was heard from the door of the omnibus:
"Now, Geoff!"
The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow followed his wife, Mr. Foxleigh, and General
Pendyce into the omnibus, and again Mrs. Winlow's voice was heard:
"Oh, do you mind my maid? Get in, Tookson!"
Mr. Horace Pendyce's mansion, white and long and low, standing well
within its acres, had come into the possession of his
great-great-great-grandfather through an alliance with the last of the
Worsteds. Originally a fine property let in smallish holdings to tenants
who, having no attention bestowed on them, did very well and paid
excellent rents, it was now farmed on model lines at a slight loss. At
stated intervals Mr. Pendyce imported a new kind of cow, or partridge,
and built a wing to the schools. His income was fortunately independent
of this estate. He was in complete accord with the Rector and the
sanitary authorities, and not infrequently complained that his tenants
did not stay on the land. His wife was a Totteridge, and his coverts
admirable. He had been, needless to say, an eldest son. It was his
individual conviction that individualism had ruined England, and he had
set himself deliberately to eradicate this vice from the character of his
tenants. By substituting for their individualism his own tastes, plans,
and sentiments, one might almost say his own individualism, and losing
money thereby, he had gone far to demonstrate his pet theory that the
higher the individualism the more sterile the life of the community. If,
however, the matter was thus put to him he grew both garrulous and angry,
for he considered himself not an individualist, but what he called a
"Tory Communist." In connection with his agricultural interests he was
naturally a Fair Trader; a tax on corn, he knew, would make all the
difference in the world to the prosperity of England. As he often said:
"A tax of three or four shillings on corn, and I should be farming my
estate at a profit."
Mr. Pendyce had other peculiarities, in which he was not too individual.
He was averse to any change in the existing order of things, made lists
of everything, and was never really so happy as when talking of himself
or his estate. He had a black spaniel dog called John, with a long nose
and longer ears, whom he had bred himself till the creature was not happy
out of his sight.
In appearance Mr. Pendyce was rather of the old school, upright and
active, with thin side-whiskers, to which, however, for some years past
he had added moustaches which drooped and were now grizzled. He wore
large cravats and square-tailed coats. He did not smoke.
At the head of his dining-table loaded with flowers and plate, he sat
between the Hon. Mrs. Winlow and Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, nor could he have
desired more striking and contrasted supporters. Equally tall,
full-figured, and comely, Nature had fixed between these two women a gulf
which Mr. Pendyce, a man of spare figure, tried in vain to fill. The
composure peculiar to the ashen type of the British aristocracy wintered
permanently on Mrs. Winlow's features like the smile of a frosty day.
Expressionless to a degree, they at once convinced the spectator that she
was a woman of the best breeding. Had an expression ever arisen upon
these features, it is impossible to say what might have been the
consequences. She had followed her nurse's adjuration: "Lor, Miss Truda,
never you make a face--You might grow so!" Never since that day had
Gertrude Winlow, an Honourable in her own right and in that of her
husband, made a face, not even, it is believed, when her son was born.
And then to find on the other side of Mr. Pendyce that puzzling Mrs.
Bellew with the green-grey eyes, at which the best people of her own sex
looked with instinctive disapproval! A woman in her position should
avoid anything conspicuous, and Nature had given her a too-striking
appearance. People said that when, the year before last, she had
separated from Captain Bellew, and left the Firs, it was simply because
they were tired of one another. They said, too, that it looked as if she
were encouraging the attentions of George, Mr. Pendyce's eldest son.
Lady Maiden had remarked to Mrs. Winlow in the drawing-room before
dinner:
"What is it about that Mrs. Bellew? I never liked her. A woman situated
as she is ought to be more careful. I don't understand her being asked
here at all, with her husband still at the Firs, only just over the way.
Besides, she's very hard up. She doesn't even attempt to disguise it. I
call her almost an adventuress."
Mrs. Winlow had answered:
"But she's some sort of cousin to Mrs. Pendyce. The Pendyces are related
to everybody! It's so boring. One never knows---"
Lady Maiden replied:
"Did you know her when she was living down here? I dislike those
hard-riding women. She and her husband were perfectly reckless. One
heard of nothing else but what she had jumped and how she had jumped it;
and she bets and goes racing. If George Pendyce is not in love with her,
I'm very much mistaken. He's been seeing far too much of her in town.
She's one of those women that men are always hanging about!"
At the head of his dinner-table, where before each guest was placed a
menu carefully written in his eldest daughter's handwriting, Horace
Pendyce supped his soup.
"This soup," he said to Mrs. Bellew, "reminds me of your dear old father;
he was extraordinarily fond of it. I had a great respect for your
father--a wonderful man! I always said he was the most determined man
I'd met since my own dear father, and he was the most obstinate man in
the three kingdoms!"
He frequently made use of the expression "in the three kingdoms," which
sometimes preceded a statement that his grandmother was descended from
Richard III., while his grandfather came down from the Cornish giants,
one of whom, he would say with a disparaging smile, had once thrown a cow
over a wall.
"Your father was too much of an individualist, Mrs. Bellew. I have a
lot of experience of individualism in the management of my estate,
and I find that an individualist is never contented. My tenants have
everything they want, but it's impossible to satisfy them. There's a
fellow called Peacock, now, a most pig-headed, narrowminded chap. I
don't give in to him, of course. If he had his way, he'd go back to
the old days, farm the land in his own fashion. He wants to buy it
from me. Old vicious system of yeoman farming. Says his grandfather
had it. He's that sort of man. I hate individualism; it's ruining
England. You won't fend better cottages, or better farm-buildings
anywhere than on my estate. I go in for centralisation. I dare say
you know what I call myself--a 'Tory Communist.' To my mind, that's
the party of the future. Now, your father's motto was: 'Every man
for himself!' On the land that would never do. Landlord and tenant
must work together. You'll come over to Newmarket with us on
Wednesday? George has a very fine horse running in the Rutlandshire
a very fine horse. He doesn't bet, I'm glad to say. If there's one
thing I hate more than another, it's gambling!"
Mrs. Bellew gave him a sidelong glance, and a little ironical smile
peeped out on her full red lips. But Mr. Pendyce had been called away to
his soup. When he was ready to resume the conversation she was talking
to his son, and the Squire, frowning, turned to the Hon. Mrs. Winlow.
Her attention was automatic, complete, monosyllabic; she did not appear
to fatigue herself by an over-sympathetic comprehension, nor was she
subservient. Mr. Pendyce found her a competent listener.
"The country is changing," he said, "changing every day. Country houses
are not what they were. A great responsibility rests on us landlords.
If we go, the whole thing goes."
What, indeed, could be more delightful than this country-house life of
Mr. Pendyce; its perfect cleanliness, its busy leisure, its combination
of fresh air and scented warmth, its complete intellectual repose, its
essential and professional aloofness from suffering of any kind, and its
soup--emblematically and above all, its soup--made from the rich remains
of pampered beasts?
Mr. Pendyce thought this life the one right life; those who lived it the
only right people. He considered it a duty to live this life, with its
simple, healthy, yet luxurious curriculum, surrounded by creatures bred
for his own devouring, surrounded, as it were, by a sea of soup! And
that people should go on existing by the million in the towns, preying on
each other, and getting continually out of work, with all those other
depressing concomitants of an awkward state, distressed him. While
suburban life, that living in little rows of slate-roofed houses so
lamentably similar that no man of individual taste could bear to see
them, he much disliked. Yet, in spite of his strong prejudice in favour
of country-house life, he was not a rich man, his income barely exceeding
ten thousand a year.
The first shooting-party of the season, devoted to spinneys and the
outlying coverts, had been, as usual, made to synchronise with the last
Newmarket Meeting, for Newmarket was within an uncomfortable distance of
Worsted Skeynes; and though Mr. Pendyce had a horror of gaming, he liked
to figure there and pass for a man interested in sport for sport's sake,
and he was really rather proud of the fact that his son had picked up so
good a horse as the Ambler promised to be for so little money, and was
racing him for pure sport.
The guests had been carefully chosen. On Mrs. Winlow's right was Thomas
Brandwhite (of Brown and Brandwhite), who had a position in the financial
world which could not well be ignored, two places in the country, and a
yacht. His long, lined face, with very heavy moustaches, wore habitually
a peevish look. He had retired from his firm, and now only sat on the
Boards of several companies. Next to him was Mrs. Hussell Barter, with
that touching look to be seen on the faces of many English ladies, that
look of women who are always doing their duty, their rather painful duty;
whose eyes, above cheeks creased and withered, once rose-leaf hued, now
over-coloured by strong weather, are starry and anxious; whose speech is
simple, sympathetic, direct, a little shy, a little hopeless, yet always
hopeful; who are ever surrounded by children, invalids, old people, all
looking to them for support; who have never known the luxury of breaking
down--of these was Mrs. Hussell Barter, the wife of the Reverend Hussell
Barter, who would shoot to-morrow, but would not attend the race-meeting
on the Wednesday. On her other hand was Gilbert Foxleigh, a lean-flanked
man with a long, narrow head, strong white teeth, and hollow, thirsting
eyes. He came of a county family of Foxleighs, and was one of six
brothers, invaluable to the owners of coverts or young, half-broken
horses in days when, as a Foxleigh would put it, "hardly a Johnny of the
lot could shoot or ride for nuts." There was no species of beast, bird,
or fish, that he could not and did not destroy with equal skill and
enjoyment. The only thing against him was his income, which was very
small. He had taken in Mrs. Brandwhite, to whom, however, he talked but
little, leaving her to General Pendyce, her neighbour on the other side.
Had he been born a year before his brother, instead of a year after,
Charles Pendyce would naturally have owned Worsted Skeynes, and Horace
would have gone into the Army instead. As it was, having almost
imperceptibly become a Major-General, he had retired, taking with him his
pension. The third brother, had he chosen to be born, would have gone
into the Church, where a living awaited him; he had elected otherwise,
and the living had passed perforce to a collateral branch. Between
Horace and Charles, seen from behind, it was difficult to distinguish.
Both were spare, both erect, with the least inclination to bottle
shoulders, but Charles Pendyce brushed his hair, both before and behind,
away from a central parting, and about the back of his still active knees
there was a look of feebleness. Seen from the front they could readily
be differentiated, for the General's whiskers broadened down his cheeks
till they reached his moustaches, and there was in his face and manner a
sort of formal, though discontented, effacement, as of an individualist
who has all his life been part of a system, from which he has issued at
last, unconscious indeed of his loss, but with a vague sense of injury.
He had never married, feeling it to be comparatively useless, owing to
Horace having gained that year on him at the start, and he lived with a
valet close to his club in Pall Mall.
In Lady Maiden, whom he had taken in to dinner, Worsted Skeynes
entertained a good woman and a personality, whose teas to Working Men in
the London season were famous. No Working Man who had attended them had
ever gone away without a wholesome respect for his hostess. She was
indeed a woman who permitted no liberties to be taken with her in any
walk of life. The daughter of a Rural Dean, she appeared at her best
when seated, having rather short legs. Her face was well-coloured, her
mouth, firm and rather wide, her nose well-shaped, her hair dark. She
spoke in a decided voice, and did not mince her words. It was to her
that her husband, Sir James, owed his reactionary principles on the
subject of woman.
Round the corner at the end of the table the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow was
telling his hostess of the Balkan Provinces, from a tour in which he had
just returned. His face, of the Norman type, with regular, handsome
features, had a leisurely and capable expression. His manner was easy
and pleasant; only at times it became apparent that his ideas were in
perfect order, so that he would naturally not care to be corrected. His
father, Lord Montrossor, whose seat was at Coldingham six miles away,
would ultimately yield to him his place in the House of Lords.
And next him sat Mrs. Pendyce. A portrait of this lady hung over the
sideboard at the end of the room, and though it had been painted by a
fashionable painter, it had caught a gleam of that "something" still in
her face these twenty years later. She was not young, her dark hair was
going grey; but she was not old, for she had been married at nineteen and
was still only fifty-two. Her face was rather long and very pale, and
her eyebrows arched and dark and always slightly raised. Her eyes were
dark grey, sometimes almost black, for the pupils dilated when she was
moved; her lips were the least thing parted, and the expression of those
lips and eyes was of a rather touching gentleness, of a rather touching
expectancy. And yet all this was not the "something"; that was rather
the outward sign of an inborn sense that she had no need to ask for
things, of an instinctive faith that she already had them. By that
"something," and by her long, transparent hands, men could tell that she
had been a Totteridge. And her voice, which was rather slow, with a
little, not unpleasant, trick of speech, and her eyelids by second nature
just a trifle lowered, confirmed this impression. Over her bosom, which
hid the heart of a lady, rose and fell a piece of wonderful old lace.
Round the corner again Sir James Maiden and Bee Pendyce (the eldest
daughter) were talking of horses and hunting--Bee seldom from choice
spoke of anything else. Her face was pleasant and good, yet not quite
pretty, and this little fact seemed to have entered into her very nature,
making her shy and ever willing to do things for others.
Sir James had small grey whiskers and a carved, keen visage. He came of
an old Kentish family which had migrated to Cambridgeshire; his coverts
were exceptionally fine; he was also a Justice of the Peace, a Colonel of
Yeomanry, a keen Churchman, and much feared by poachers. He held the
reactionary views already mentioned, being a little afraid of Lady
Malden.
Beyond Miss Pendyce sat the Reverend Hussell Barter, who would shoot
to-morrow, but would not attend the race-meeting on Wednesday.
The Rector of Worsted Skeynes was not tall, and his head had been
rendered somewhat bald by thought. His broad face, of very straight
build from the top of the forehead to the base of the chin, was
well-coloured, clean-shaven, and of a shape that may be seen in portraits
of the Georgian era. His cheeks were full and folded, his lower lip had
a habit of protruding, and his eyebrows jutted out above his full, light
eyes. His manner was authoritative, and he articulated his words in a
voice to which long service in the pulpit had imparted remarkable
carrying-power--in fact, when engaged in private conversation, it was
with difficulty that he was not overheard. Perhaps even in confidential
matters he was not unwilling that what he said should bear fruit. In
some ways, indeed, he was typical. Uncertainty, hesitation,
toleration--except of such opinions as he held--he did not like.
Imagination he distrusted. He found his duty in life very clear, and
other people's perhaps clearer, and he did not encourage his parishioners
to think for themselves. The habit seemed to him a dangerous one. He
was outspoken in his opinions, and when he had occasion to find fault,
spoke of the offender as "a man of no character," "a fellow like that,"
with such a ring of conviction that his audience could not but be
convinced of the immorality of that person. He had a bluff jolly way of
speaking, and was popular in his parish--a good cricketer, a still better
fisherman, a fair shot, though, as he said, he could not really afford
time for shooting. While disclaiming interference in secular matters, he
watched the tendencies of his flock from a sound point of view, and
especially encouraged them to support the existing order of things--the
British Empire and the English Church. His cure was hereditary, and he
fortunately possessed some private means, for he had a large family. His
partner at dinner was Norah, the younger of the two Pendyce girls, who
had a round, open face, and a more decided manner than her sister Bee.
Her brother George, the eldest son, sat on her right. George was of
middle height, with a red-brown, clean-shaved face and solid jaw. His
eyes were grey; he had firm lips, and darkish, carefully brushed hair, a
little thin on the top, but with that peculiar gloss seen on the hair of
some men about town. His clothes were unostentatiously perfect. Such
men may be seen in Piccadilly at any hour of the day or night. He had
been intended for the Guards, but had failed to pass the necessary
examination, through no fault of his own, owing to a constitutional
inability to spell. Had he been his younger brother Gerald, he would
probably have fulfilled the Pendyce tradition, and passed into the Army
as a matter of course. And had Gerald (now Captain Pendyce) been George
the elder son, he might possibly have failed. George lived at his club
in town on an allowance of six hundred a year, and sat a great deal in a
bay-window reading Ruff's "Guide to the Turf."
He raised his eyes from the menu and looked stealthily round. Helen
Bellew was talking to his father, her white shoulder turned a little
away. George was proud of his composure, but there was a strange longing
in his face. She gave, indeed, just excuse for people to consider her
too good-looking for the position in which she was placed. Her figure
was tall and supple and full, and now that she no longer hunted was
getting fuller. Her hair, looped back in loose bands across a broad low
brow, had a peculiar soft lustre.
There was a touch of sensuality about her lips. The face was too broad
across the brow and cheekbones, but the eyes were magnificent--ice-grey,
sometimes almost green, always luminous, and set in with dark lashes.
There was something pathetic in George's gaze, as of a man forced to look
against his will.
It had been going on all that past summer, and still he did not know
where he stood. Sometimes she seemed fond of him, sometimes treated him
as though he had no chance. That which he had begun as a game was now
deadly earnest. And this in itself was tragic. That comfortable ease of
spirit which is the breath of life was taken away; he could think of
nothing but her. Was she one of those women who feed on men's
admiration, and give them no return? Was she only waiting to make her
conquest more secure? These riddles he asked of her face a hundred
times, lying awake in the dark. To George Pendyce, a man of the world,
unaccustomed to privation, whose simple creed was "Live and enjoy," there
was something terrible about a longing which never left him for a moment,
which he could not help any more than he could help eating, the end of
which he could not see. He had known her when she lived at the Firs, he
had known her in the hunting-field, but his passion was only of last
summer's date. It had sprung suddenly out of a flirtation started at a
dance.
A man about town does not psychologise himself; he accepts his condition
with touching simplicity. He is hungry; he must be fed. He is thirsty;
he must drink. Why he is hungry, when he became hungry, these inquiries
are beside the mark. No ethical aspect of the matter troubled him; the
attainment of a married woman, not living with her husband, did not
impinge upon his creed. What would come after, though full of unpleasant
possibilities, he left to the future. His real disquiet, far nearer, far
more primitive and simple, was the feeling of drifting helplessly in a
current so strong that he could not keep his feet.
"Ah yes; a bad case. Dreadful thing for the Sweetenhams! That young
fellow's been obliged to give up the Army. Can't think what old
Sweetenham was about. He must have known his son was hit. I should say
Bethany himself was the only one in the dark. There's no doubt Lady Rose
was to blame!" Mr. Pendyce was speaking.
Mrs. Bellew smiled.
"My sympathies are all with Lady Rose. What do you say, George?"
George frowned.
"I always thought," he said, "that Bethany was an ass."
"George," said Mr. Pendyce, "is immoral. All young men are immoral. I
notice it more and more. You've given up your hunting, I hear."
Mrs. Bellew sighed.
"One can't hunt on next to nothing!"
"Ah, you live in London. London spoils everybody. People don't take the
interest in hunting and farming they used to. I can't get George here at
all. Not that I'm a believer in apron-strings. Young men will be young
men!"
Thus summing up the laws of Nature, the Squire resumed his knife and
fork.
But neither Mrs. Bellew nor George followed his example; the one sat with
her eyes fixed on her plate and a faint smile playing on her lips, the
other sat without a smile, and his eyes, in which there was such a deep
resentful longing, looked from his father to Mrs. Bellew, and from Mrs.
Bellew to his mother. And as though down that vista of faces and fruits
and flowers a secret current had been set flowing, Mrs. Pendyce nodded
gently to her son.
CHAPTER II
THE COVERT SHOOT
At the head of the breakfast-table sat Mr. Pendyce, eating methodically.
He was somewhat silent, as became a man who has just read family prayers;
but about that silence, and the pile of half-opened letters on his right,
was a hint of autocracy.
"Be informal--do what you like, dress as you like, sit where you like,
eat what you like, drink tea or coffee, but----" Each glance of his eyes,
each sentence of his sparing, semi-genial talk, seemed to repeat that
"but."
At the foot of the breakfast-table sat Mrs. Pendyce behind a silver urn
which emitted a gentle steam. Her hands worked without ceasing amongst
cups, and while they worked her lips worked too in spasmodic utterances
that never had any reference to herself. Pushed a little to her left and
entirely neglected, lay a piece of dry toast on a small white plate.
Twice she took it up, buttered a bit of it, and put it down again. Once
she rested, and her eyes, which fell on Mrs. Bellow, seemed to say: "How
very charming you look, my dear!" Then, taking up the sugar-tongs, she
began again.
On the long sideboard covered with a white cloth reposed a number of
edibles only to be found amongst that portion of the community which
breeds creatures for its own devouring. At one end of this row of viands
was a large game pie with a triangular gap in the pastry; at the other,
on two oval dishes, lay four cold partridges in various stages of
decomposition. Behind them a silver basket of openwork design was
occupied by three bunches of black, one bunch of white grapes, and a
silver grape-cutter, which performed no function (it was so blunt), but
had once belonged to a Totteridge and wore their crest.
No servants were in the room, but the side-door was now and again opened,
and something brought in, and this suggested that behind the door persons
were collected, only waiting to be called upon. It was, in fact, as
though Mr. Pendyce had said: "A butler and two footmen at least could
hand you things, but this is a simple country house."
At times a male guest rose, napkin in hand, and said to a lady: "Can I
get you anything from the sideboard?" Being refused, he went and filled
his own plate. Three dogs--two fox-terriers and a decrepit Skye circled
round uneasily, smelling at the visitors' napkins. And there went up a
hum of talk in which sentences like these could be distinguished:
"Rippin' stand that, by the wood. D'you remember your rockettin'
woodcock last year, Jerry?" "And the dear old Squire never touched a
feather! Did you, Squire?" "Dick--Dick! Bad dog!--come and do your
tricks. Trust-trust! Paid for! Isn't he rather a darling?"
On Mr. Pendyce's foot, or by the side of his chair, whence he could see
what was being eaten, sat the spaniel John, and now and then Mr. Pendyce,
taking a small portion of something between his finger and thumb, would
say:
"John!--Make a good breakfast, Sir James; I always say a half-breakfasted
man is no good!"
And Mrs. Pendyce, her eyebrows lifted, would look anxiously up and down
the table, murmuring: "Another cup, dear; let me see--are you sugar?"
When all had finished a silence fell, as if each sought to get away from
what he had been eating, as if each felt he had been engaged in an
unworthy practice; then Mr. Pendyce, finishing his last grape, wiped his
mouth.
"You've a quarter of an hour, gentlemen; we start at ten-fifteen."
Mrs. Pendyce, left seated with a vague, ironical smile, ate one mouthful
of her buttered toast, now very old and leathery, gave the rest to "the
dear dogs," and called:
"George! You want a new shooting tie, dear boy; that green one's quite
faded. I've been meaning to get some silks down for ages. Have you had
any news of your horse this morning?"
"Yes, Blacksmith says he's fit as a fiddle."
"I do so hope he'll win that race for you. Your Uncle Hubert once lost
four thousand pounds over the Rutlandshire. I remember perfectly; my
father had to pay it. I'm so glad you don't bet, dear boy!"
"My dear mother, I do bet."
"Oh, George, I hope not much! For goodness' sake, don't tell your
father; he's like all the Pendyces, can't bear a risk."
"My dear mother, I'm not likely to; but, as a matter of fact, there is no
risk. I stand to win a lot of money to nothing."
"But, George, is that right?"
"Of course it's all right."
"Oh, well, I don't understand." Mrs. Pendyce dropped her eyes, a flush
came into her white cheeks; she looked up again and said quickly:
"George, I should like just a little bet on your horse--a real bet, say
about a sovereign."
George Pendyce's creed permitted the show of no emotion. He smiled.
"All right, mother, I'll put it on for you. It'll be about eight to
one."
"Does that mean that if he wins I shall get eight?"
George nodded.
Mrs. Pendyce looked abstractedly at his tie.
"I think it might be two sovereigns; one seems very little to lose,
because I do so want him to win. Isn't Helen Bellew perfectly charming
this morning! It's delightful to see a woman look her best in the
morning."
George turned, to hide the colour in his cheeks.
"She looks fresh enough, certainly."
Mrs. Pendyce glanced up at him; there was a touch of quizzicality in one
of her lifted eyebrows.
"I mustn't keep you, dear; you'll be late for the shooting."
Mr. Pendyce, a sportsman of the old school, who still kept pointers,
which, in the teeth of modern fashion, he was unable to employ, set his
face against the use of two guns.
"Any man," he would say, "who cares to shoot at Worsted Skeynes must do
with one gun, as my dear old father had to do before me. He'll get a
good day's sport--no barndoor birds" (for he encouraged his pheasants to
remain lean, that they might fly the better), "but don't let him expect
one of these battues--sheer butchery, I call them."
He was excessively fond of birds--it was, in fact, his hobby, and he had
collected under glass cases a prodigious number of specimens of those
species which are in danger of becoming extinct, having really, in some
Pendycean sort of way, a feeling that by this practice he was doing them
a good turn, championing them, as it were, to a world that would soon be
unable to look upon them in the flesh. He wished, too, that his
collection should become an integral part of the estate, and be passed on
to his son, and his son's son after him.
"Look at this Dartford Warbler," he would say; "beautiful little
creature--getting rarer every day. I had the greatest difficulty in
procuring this specimen. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what I
had to pay for him!"
Some of his unique birds he had shot himself, having in his youth made
expeditions to foreign countries solely with this object, but the great
majority he had been compelled to purchase. In his library were row upon
row of books carefully arranged and bearing on this fascinating subject;
and his collection of rare, almost extinct, birds' eggs was one of the
finest in the "three kingdoms." One egg especially he would point to
with pride as the last obtainable of that particular breed. "This was
procured," he would say, "by my dear old gillie Angus out of the bird's
very nest. There was just the single egg. The species," he added,
tenderly handling the delicate, porcelain-like oval in his brown hand
covered with very fine, blackish hairs, "is now extinct." He was, in
fact, a true bird-lover, strongly condemning cockneys, or rough, ignorant
persons who, with no collections of their own, wantonly destroyed
kingfishers, or scarce birds of any sort, out of pure stupidity. "I would
have them flogged," he would say, for he believed that no such bird
should be killed except on commission, and for choice--barring such
extreme cases as that Dartford Warbler--in some foreign country or
remoter part of the British Isles. It was indeed illustrative of Mr.
Pendyce's character and whole point of view that whenever a rare, winged
stranger appeared on his own estate it was talked of as an event, and
preserved alive with the greatest care, in the hope that it might breed
and be handed down with the property; but if it were personally known to
belong to Mr. Fuller or Lord Quarryman, whose estates abutted on Worsted
Skeynes, and there was grave and imminent danger of its going back, it
was promptly shot and stuffed, that it might not be lost to posterity.
An encounter with another landowner having the same hobby, of whom there
were several in his neighbourhood, would upset him for a week, making him
strangely morose, and he would at once redouble his efforts to add
something rarer than ever to his own collection.
His arrangements for shooting were precisely conceived. Little slips of
paper with the names of the "guns" written thereon were placed in a hat,
and one by one drawn out again, and this he always did himself. Behind
the right wing of the house he held a review of the beaters, who filed
before him out of the yard, each with a long stick in his hand, and no
expression on his face. Five minutes of directions to the keeper, and
then the guns started, carrying their own weapons and a sufficiency of
cartridges for the first drive in the old way.
A misty radiance clung over the grass as the sun dried the heavy dew; the
thrushes hopped and ran and hid themselves, the rooks cawed peacefully in
the old elms. At an angle the game cart, constructed on Mr. Pendyce's
own pattern, and drawn by a hairy horse in charge of an aged man, made
its way slowly to the end of the first beat:
George lagged behind, his hands deep in his pockets, drinking in the joy
of the tranquil day, the soft bird sounds, so clear and friendly, that
chorus of wild life. The scent of the coverts stole to him, and he
thought:
'What a ripping day for shooting!'
The Squire, wearing a suit carefully coloured so that no bird should see
him, leather leggings, and a cloth helmet of his own devising, ventilated
by many little holes, came up to his son; and the spaniel John, who had a
passion for the collection of birds almost equal to his master's, came up
too.
"You're end gun, George," he said; "you'll get a nice high bird!"
George felt the ground with his feet, and blew a speck of dust off his
barrels, and the smell of the oil sent a delicious tremor darting through
him. Everything, even Helen Bellew, was forgotten. Then in the silence
rose a far-off clamour; a cock pheasant, skimming low, his plumage silken
in the sun, dived out of the green and golden spinney, curled to the
right, and was lost in undergrowth. Some pigeons passed over at a great
height. The tap-tap of sticks beating against trees began; then with a
fitful rushing noise a pheasant came straight out. George threw up his
gun and pulled. The bird stopped in mid-air, jerked forward, and fell
headlong into the grass sods with a thud. In the sunlight the dead bird
lay, and a smirk of triumph played on George's lips. He was feeling the
joy of life.
During his covert shoots the Squire had the habit of recording his
impressions in a mental note-book. He put special marks against such as
missed, or shot birds behind the waist, or placed lead in them to the
detriment of their market value, or broke only one leg of a hare at a
time, causing the animal to cry like a tortured child, which some men do
not like; or such as, anxious for fame, claimed dead creatures that they
had not shot, or peopled the next beat with imaginary slain, or too
frequently "wiped an important neighbour's eye," or shot too many beaters
in the legs. Against this evidence, however, he unconsciously weighed
the more undeniable social facts, such as the title of Winlow's father;
Sir James Malden's coverts, which must also presently be shot; Thomas
Brandwhite's position in the financial world; General Pendyce's
relationship to himself; and the importance of the English Church.
Against Foxleigh alone he could put no marks. The fellow destroyed
everything that came within reach with utter precision, and this was
perhaps fortunate, for Foxleigh had neither title, coverts, position, nor
cloth! And the Squire weighed one thing else besides--the pleasure of
giving them all a good day's sport, for his heart was kind.
The sun had fallen well behind the home wood when the guns stood waiting
for the last drive of the day. From the keeper's cottage in the hollow,
where late threads of crimson clung in the brown network of Virginia
creeper, rose a mist of wood smoke, dispersed upon the breeze. Sound
there was none, only that faint stir--the far, far callings of men and
beasts and birds--that never quite dies of a country evening. High above
the wood some startled pigeons were still wheeling, no other life in
sight; but a gleam of sunlight stole down the side of the covert and laid
a burnish on the turned leaves till the whole wood seemed quivering with
magic. Out of that quivering wood a wounded rabbit had stolen and was
dying. It lay on its side on the slope of a tussock of grass, its hind
legs drawn under it, its forelegs raised like the hands of a praying
child. Motionless as death, all its remaining life was centred in its
black soft eyes. Uncomplaining, ungrudging, unknowing, with that poor
soft wandering eye, it was going back to Mother Earth. There Foxleigh,
too, some day must go, asking of Nature why she had murdered him.
CHAPTER III
THE BLISSFUL HOUR
It was the hour between tea and dinner, when the spirit of the country
house was resting, conscious of its virtue, half asleep.
Having bathed and changed, George Pendyce took his betting-book into the
smoking-room. In a nook devoted to literature, protected from draught
and intrusion by a high leather screen, he sat down in an armchair and
fell into a doze.
With legs crossed, his chin resting on one hand, his comely figure
relaxed, he exhaled a fragrance of soap, as though in this perfect peace
his soul were giving off its natural odour. His spirit, on the
borderland of dreams, trembled with those faint stirrings of chivalry and
aspiration, the outcome of physical well-being after a long day in the
open air, the outcome of security from all that is unpleasant and fraught
with danger. He was awakened by voices.
"George is not a bad shot!"
"Gave a shocking exhibition at the last stand; Mrs. Bellew was with him.
They were going over him like smoke; he couldn't touch a feather."
It was Winlow's voice. A silence, then Thomas Brandwhite's:
"A mistake, the ladies coming out. I never will have them myself. What
do you say, Sir James?"
"Bad principle--very bad!"
A laugh--Thomas Brandwhite's laugh, the laugh of a man never quite sure
of himself.
"That fellow Bellew is a cracked chap. They call him the 'desperate
character' about here. Drinks like a fish, and rides like the devil. She
used to go pretty hard, too. I've noticed there's always a couple like
that in a hunting country. Did you ever see him? Thin, high-shouldered,
white-faced chap, with little dark eyes and a red moustache."
"She's still a young woman?"
"Thirty or thirty-two."
"How was it they didn't get on?"
The sound of a match being struck.
"Case of the kettle and the pot."
"It's easy to see she's fond of admiration. Love of admiration plays old
Harry with women!"
Winlow's leisurely tones again
"There was a child, I believe, and it died. And after that--I know there
was some story; you never could get to the bottom of it. Bellew chucked
his regiment in consequence. She's subject to moods, they say, when
nothing's exciting enough; must skate on thin ice, must have a man
skating after her. If the poor devil weighs more than she does, in he
goes."
"That's like her father, old Cheriton. I knew him at the club--one of
the old sort of squires; married his second wife at sixty and buried her
at eighty. Old 'Claret and Piquet,' they called him; had more children
under the rose than any man in Devonshire. I saw him playing half-crown
points the week before he died. It's in the blood. What's George's
weight?--ah, ha!"
"It's no laughing matter, Brandwhite. There's time for a hundred up
before dinner if you care for a game, Winlow?"
The sound of chairs drawn back, of footsteps, and the closing of a door.
George was alone again, a spot of red in either of his cheeks. Those
vague stirrings of chivalry and aspiration were gone, and gone that sense
of well-earned ease. He got up, came out of his corner, and walked to
and fro on the tiger-skin before the fire. He lit a cigarette, threw it
away, and lit another.
Skating on thin ice! That would not stop him! Their gossip would not
stop him, nor their sneers; they would but send him on the faster!
He threw away the second cigarette. It was strange for him to go to the
drawing-room at this hour of the day, but he went.
Opening the door quietly, he saw the long, pleasant room lighted with
tall oil-lamps, and Mrs. Bellew seated at the piano, singing. The
tea-things were still on a table at one end, but every one had finished.
As far away as might be, in the embrasure of the bay-window, General
Pendyce and Bee were playing chess. Grouped in the centre of the room,
by one of the lamps, Lady Maiden, Mrs. Winlow, and Mrs. Brandwhite had
turned their faces towards the piano, and a sort of slight unwillingness
or surprise showed on those faces, a sort of "We were having a most
interesting talk; I don't think we ought to have been stopped"
expression.
Before the fire, with his long legs outstretched, stood Gerald Pendyce.
And a little apart, her dark eyes fixed on the singer, and a piece of
embroidery in her lap, sat Mrs. Pendyce, on the edge of whose skirt lay
Roy, the old Skye terrier.
"But had I wist, before I lost,
That love had been sae ill to win;
I had lockt my heart in a case of gowd
And pinn'd it with a siller pin....
O waly! waly! but love be bonny
A little time while it is new,
But when 'tis auld, it waxeth cauld,
And fades awa' like morning dew!"
This was the song George heard, trembling and dying to the chords of the
fine piano that was a little out of tune.
He gazed at the singer, and though he was not musical, there came a look
into his eyes that he quickly hid away.
A slight murmur occurred in the centre of the room, and from the
fireplace Gerald called out, "Thanks; that's rippin!"
The voice of General Pendyce rose in the bay-window: "Check!"
Mrs. Pendyce, taking up her embroidery, on which a tear had dropped, said
gently:
"Thank you, dear; most charming!"
Mrs. Bellew left the piano, and sat down beside her. George moved into
the bay-window. He knew nothing of chess-indeed, he could not stand the
game; but from here, without attracting attention, he could watch Mrs.
Bellew.
The air was drowsy and sweet-scented; a log of cedarwood had just been
put on the fire; the voices of his mother and Mrs. Bellew, talking of
what he could not hear, the voices of Lady Malden, Mrs. Brandwhite, and
Gerald, discussing some neighbours, of Mrs. Winlow dissenting or
assenting in turn, all mingled in a comfortable, sleepy sound, clipped
now and then by the voice of General Pendyce calling, "Check!" and of Bee
saying, "Oh, uncle!"
A feeling of rage rose in George. Why should they all be so comfortable
and cosy while this perpetual fire was burning in himself? And he
fastened his moody eyes on her who was keeping him thus dancing to her
pipes.
He made an awkward movement which shook the chess-table. The General
said behind him: "Look out, George! What--what!"
George went up to his mother.
"Let's have a look at that, Mother."
Mrs. Pendyce leaned back in her chair and handed up her work with a smile
of pleased surprise.
"My dear boy, you won't understand it a bit. It's for the front of my
new frock."
George took the piece of work. He did not understand it, but turning and
twisting it he could breathe the warmth of the woman he loved. In bending
over the embroidery he touched Mrs. Bellew's shoulder; it was not drawn
away, a faint pressure seemed to answer his own. His mother's voice
recalled him:
"Oh, my needle, dear! It's so sweet of you, but perhaps"
George handed back the embroidery. Mrs. Pendyce received it with a
grateful look. It was the first time he had ever shown an interest in
her work.
Mrs. Bellew had taken up a palm-leaf fan to screen her face from the
fire. She said slowly:
"If we win to-morrow I'll embroider you something, George."
"And if we lose?"
Mrs. Bellew raised her eyes, and involuntarily George moved so that his
mother could not see the sort of slow mesmerism that was in them.
"If we lose," she said, "I shall sink into the earth. We must win,
George."
He gave an uneasy little laugh, and glanced quickly at his mother. Mrs.
Pendyce had begun to draw her needle in and out with a half-startled look
on her face.
"That's a most haunting little song you sang, dear," she said.
Mrs. Bellew answered: "The words are so true, aren't they?"
George felt her eyes on him, and tried to look at her, but those
half-smiling, half-threatening eyes seemed to twist and turn him about as
his hands had twisted and turned about his mother's embroidery. Again
across Mrs. Pendyce's face flitted that half-startled look.
Suddenly General Pendyce's voice was heard saying very loud, "Stale?
Nonsense, Bee, nonsense! Why, damme, so it is!"
A hum of voices from the centre of the room covered up that outburst, and
Gerald, stepping to the hearth, threw another cedar log upon the fire.
The smoke came out in a puff.
Mrs. Pendyce leaned back in her chair smiling, and wrinkling her fine,
thin nose.
"Delicious!" she said, but her eyes did not leave her son's face, and in
them was still that vague alarm.
CHAPTER IV
THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUND
Of all the places where, by a judicious admixture of whip and spur, oats
and whisky, horses are caused to place one leg before another with
unnecessary rapidity, in order that men may exchange little pieces of
metal with the greater freedom, Newmarket Heath is "the topmost, and
merriest, and best."
This museum of the state of flux--the secret reason of horse-racing being
to afford an example of perpetual motion (no proper racing-man having
ever been found to regard either gains or losses in the light of an
accomplished fact)--this museum of the state of flux has a climate
unrivalled for the production of the British temperament.
Not without a due proportion of that essential formative of character,
east wind, it has at once the hottest sun, the coldest blizzards, the
wettest rain, of any place of its size in the "three kingdoms." It
tends--in advance even of the City of London--to the nurture and
improvement of individualism, to that desirable "I'll see you d---d"
state of mind which is the proud objective of every Englishman, and
especially of every country gentleman. In a word--a mother to the
self-reliant secretiveness which defies intrusion and forms an integral
part in the Christianity of this country--Newmarket Heath is beyond all
others the happy hunting-ground of the landed classes.
In the Paddock half an hour before the Rutlandshire Handicap was to be
run numbers of racing-men were gathered in little knots of two and three,
describing to each other with every precaution the points of strength in
the horses they had laid against, the points of weakness in the horses
they had backed, or vice versa, together with the latest discrepancies of
their trainers and jockeys. At the far end George Pendyce, his trainer
Blacksmith, and his jockey Swells, were talking in low tones. Many
people have observed with surprise the close-buttoned secrecy of all who
have to do with horses. It is no matter for wonder. The horse is one of
those generous and somewhat careless animals that, if not taken firmly
from the first, will surely give itself away. Essential to a man who has
to do with horses is a complete closeness of physiognomy, otherwise the
animal will never know what is expected of him. The more that is
expected of him, the closer must be the expression of his friends, or a
grave fiasco may have to be deplored.
It was for these reasons that George's face wore more than its habitual
composure, and the faces of his trainer and his jockey were alert,
determined, and expressionless. Blacksmith, a little man, had in his
hand a short notched cane, with which, contrary to expectation, he did
not switch his legs. His eyelids drooped over his shrewd eyes, his upper
lip advanced over the lower, and he wore no hair on his face. The Jockey
Swells' pinched-up countenance, with jutting eyebrows and practically no
cheeks, had under George's racing-cap of "peacock blue" a subfusc hue
like that of old furniture.
The Ambler had been bought out of the stud of Colonel Dorking, a man
opposed on high grounds to the racing of two-year-olds, and at the age of
three had never run. Showing more than a suspicion of form in one or two
home trials, he ran a bye in the Fane Stakes, when obviously not up to
the mark, and was then withdrawn from the public gaze. The Stable had
from the start kept its eye on the Rutlandshire Handicap, and no sooner
was Goodwood over than the commission was placed in the hands of
Barney's, well known for their power to enlist at the most appropriate
moment the sympathy of the public in a horse's favour. Almost
coincidentally with the completion of the Stable Commission it was found
that the public were determined to support the Ambler at any price over
seven to one. Barney's at once proceeded judiciously to lay off the
Stable Money, and this having been done, George found that he stood to
win four thousand pounds to nothing. If he had now chosen to bet this
sum against the horse at the then current price of eight to one, it is
obvious that he could have made an absolute certainty of five hundred
pounds, and the horse need never even have started. But George, who
would have been glad enough of such a sum, was not the man to do this
sort of thing. It was against the tenets of his creed. He believed,
too, in his horse; and had enough of the Totteridge in him to like a race
for a race's sake. Even when beaten there was enjoyment to be had out of
the imperturbability with which he could take that beating, out of a
sense of superiority to men not quite so sportsmanlike as himself.
"Come and see the nag saddled," he said to his brother Gerald.
In one of the long line of boxes the Ambler was awaiting his toilette, a
dark-brown horse, about sixteen hands, with well-placed shoulders,
straight hocks, a small head, and what is known as a rat-tail. But of
all his features, the most remarkable was his eye. In the depths of that
full, soft eye was an almost uncanny gleam, and when he turned it,
half-circled by a moon of white, and gave bystanders that look of strange
comprehension, they felt that he saw to the bottom of all this that was
going on around him. He was still but three years old, and had not yet
attained the age when people apply to action the fruits of understanding;
yet there was little doubt that as he advanced in years he would manifest
his disapproval of a system whereby men made money at his expense. And
with that eye half-circled by the moon he looked at George, and in
silence George looked back at him, strangely baffled by the horse's long,
soft, wild gaze. On this heart beating deep within its warm, dark satin
sheath, on the spirit gazing through that soft, wild eye, too much was
hanging, and he turned away.
"Mount, jockeys!"
Through the crowd of hard-looking, hatted, muffled, two-legged men, those
four-legged creatures in their chestnut, bay, and brown, and satin
nakedness, most beautiful in all the world, filed proudly past, as though
going forth to death. The last vanished through the gate, the crowd
dispersed.
Down by the rails of Tattersall's George stood alone. He had screwed
himself into a corner, whence he could watch through his long glasses
that gay-coloured, shifting wheel at the end of the mile and more of
turf. At this moment, so pregnant with the future, he could not bear the
company of his fellows.
"They're off!"
He looked no longer, but hunched his shoulders, holding his elbows stiff,
that none might see what he was feeling. Behind him a man said:
"The favourite's beat. What's that in blue on the rails?"
Out by himself on the far rails, out by himself, sweeping along like a
home-coming bird, was the Ambler. And George's heart leaped, as a fish
leaps of a summer evening out of a dark pool.
"They'll never catch him. The Ambler wins! It's a walk-over! The
Ambler!"
Silent amidst the shouting throng, George thought: 'My horse! my horse!'
and tears of pure emotion sprang into his eyes. For a full minute he
stood quite still; then, instinctively adjusting hat and tie, made his
way calmly to the Paddock. He left it to his trainer to lead the Ambler
back, and joined him at the weighing-room.
The little jockey was seated, nursing his saddle, negligent and
saturnine, awaiting the words "All right."
Blacksmith said quietly:
"Well, sir, we've pulled it off. Four lengths. I've told Swells he does
no more riding for me. There's a gold-mine given away. What on earth
was he about to come in by himself like that? We shan't get into the
'City' now under nine stone. It's enough to make a man cry!"
And, looking at his trainer, George saw the little man's lips quiver.
In his stall, streaked with sweat, his hind-legs outstretched, fretting
under the ministrations of the groom, the Ambler stayed the whisking of
his head to look at his owner, and once more George met that long, proud,
soft glance. He laid his gloved hand on the horse's lather-flecked neck.
The Ambler tossed his head and turned it away.
George came out into the open, and made his way towards the Stand. His
trainer's words had instilled a drop of poison into his cup. "A goldmine
given away!"
He went up to Swells. On his lips were the words: "What made you give
the show away like that?" He did not speak them, for in his soul he felt
it would not become him to ask his jockey why he had not dissembled and
won by a length. But the little jockey understood at once.
"Mr. Blacksmith's been at me, sir. You take my tip: he's a queer one,
that 'orse. I thought it best to let him run his own race. Mark my
words, he knows what's what. When they're like that, they're best let
alone."
A voice behind him said:
"Well, George, congratulate you! Not the way I should have ridden the
race myself. He should have lain off to the distance. Remarkable turn of
speed that horse. There's no riding nowadays!"
The Squire and General Pendyce were standing there. Erect and slim,
unlike and yet so very much alike, the eyes of both of them seemed
saying:
'I shall differ from you; there are no two opinions about it. I shall
differ from you!'
Behind them stood Mrs. Bellew. Her eyes could not keep still under their
lashes, and their light and colour changed continually. George walked on
slowly at her side. There was a look of triumph and softness about her;
the colour kept deepening in her cheeks, her figure swayed. They did not
look at each other.
Against the Paddock railings stood a man in riding-clothes, of spare
figure, with a horseman's square, high shoulders, and thin long legs a
trifle bowed. His narrow, thin-lipped, freckled face, with close-cropped
sandy hair and clipped red moustache, was of a strange dead pallor. He
followed the figures of George and his companion with little fiery
dark-brown eyes, in which devils seemed to dance. Someone tapped him on
the arm.
"Hallo, Bellew! had a good race?"
"Devil take you, no! Come and have a drink?"
Still without looking at each other, George and Mrs. Bellew walked
towards the gate.
"I don't want to see any more," she said. "I should like to get away at
once."
"We'll go after this race," said George. "There's nothing running in the
last."
At the back of the Grand Stand, in the midst of all the hurrying crowd,
he stopped.
"Helen?" he said.
Mrs. Bellew raised her eyes and looked full into his.
Long and cross-country is the drive from Royston Railway Station to
Worsted Skeynes. To George Pendyce, driving the dog cart, with Helen
Bellew beside him, it seemed but a minute--that strange minute when the
heaven is opened and a vision shows between. To some men that vision
comes but once, to some men many times. It comes after long winter, when
the blossom hangs; it comes after parched summer, when the leaves are
going gold; and of what hues it is painted--of frost-white and fire, of
wine and purple, of mountain flowers, or the shadowy green of still deep
pools--the seer alone can tell. But this is certain--the vision steals
from him who looks on it all images of other things, all sense of law, of
order, of the living past, and the living present. It is the future,
fair-scented, singing, jewelled, as when suddenly between high banks a
bough of apple-blossom hangs quivering in the wind loud with the song of
bees.
George Pendyce gazed before him at this vision over the grey mare's back,
and she who sat beside him muffled in her fur was touching his arm with
hers. And back to them the second groom, hugging himself above the road
that slipped away beneath, saw another kind of vision, for he had won
five pounds, and his eyes were closed. And the grey mare saw a vision of
her warm light stall, and the oats dropping between her manger bars, and
fled with light hoofs along the lanes where the side-lamps shot two
moving gleams over dark beech-hedges that rustled crisply in the
northeast wind. Again and again she sneezed in the pleasure of that
homeward flight, and the light foam of her nostrils flicked the faces of
those behind. And they sat silent, thrilling at the touch of each
other's arms, their cheeks glowing in the windy darkness, their eyes
shining and fixed before them.
The second groom awoke suddenly from his dream.
"If I owned that 'orse, like Mr. George, and had such a topper as this
'ere Mrs. Bellew beside me, would I be sittin' there without a word?"
CHAPTER V
MRS. PENDYCE'S DANCE
Mrs. Pendyce believed in the practice of assembling county society for
the purpose of inducing it to dance, a hardy enterprise in a county where
the souls, and incidentally the feet, of the inhabitants were shaped for
more solid pursuits. Men were her chief difficulty, for in spite of
really national discouragement, it was rare to find a girl who was not
"fond of dancing."
"Ah, dancing; I did so love it! Oh, poor Cecil Tharp!" And with a queer
little smile she pointed to a strapping red-faced youth dancing with her
daughter. "He nearly trips Bee up every minute, and he hugs her so, as
if he were afraid of falling on his head. Oh, dear, what a bump! It's
lucky she's so nice and solid. I like to see the dear boy. Here come
George and Helen Bellew. Poor George is not quite up to her form, but
he's better than most of them. Doesn't she look lovely this evening?"
Lady Maiden raised her glasses to her eyes by the aid of a tortoise-shell
handle.
"Yes, but she's one of those women you never can look at without seeing
that she has a--a--body. She's too-too--d'you see what I mean? It's
almost--almost like a Frenchwoman!"
Mrs. Bellew had passed so close that the skirt of her seagreen dress
brushed their feet with a swish, and a scent as of a flower-bed was
wafted from it. Mrs. Pendyce wrinkled her nose.
"Much nicer. Her figure's so delicious," she said.
Lady Maiden pondered.
"She's a dangerous woman. James quite agrees with me."
Mrs. Pendyce raised her eyebrows; there was a touch of scorn in that
gentle gesture.
"She's a very distant cousin of mine," she said. "Her father was quite a
wonderful man. It's an old Devonshire family. The Cheritons of Bovey
are mentioned in Twisdom. I like young people to enjoy. themselves."
A smile illumined softly the fine wrinkles round her eyes. Beneath her
lavender satin bodice, with strips of black velvet banding it at
intervals, her heart was beating faster than usual. She was thinking of
a night in her youth, when her old playfellow, young Trefane of the
Blues, danced with her nearly all the evening, and of how at her window
she saw the sun rise, and gently wept because she was married to Horace
Pendyce.
"I always feel sorry for a woman who can dance as she does. I should
have liked to have got some men from town, but Horace will only have the
county people. It's not fair to the girls. It isn't so much their
dancing, as their conversation--all about the first meet, and yesterday's
cubbing, and to-morrow's covert-shooting, and their fox-terriers (though
I'm awfully fond of the dear dogs), and then that new golf course.
Really, it's quite distressing to me at times." Again Mrs. Pendyce looked
out into the room with her patient smile, and two little lines of
wrinkles formed across her forehead between the regular arching of her
eyebrows that were still dark-brown. "They don't seem able to be gay. I
feel they don't really care about it. They're only just waiting till
to-morrow morning, so that they can go out and kill something. Even
Bee's like that!"
Mrs. Pendyce was not exaggerating. The guests at Worsted Skeynes on the
night of the Rutlandshire Handicap were nearly all county people, from
the Hon. Gertrude Winlow, revolving like a faintly coloured statue, to
young Tharp, with his clean face and his fair bullety head, who danced as
though he were riding at a bullfinch. In a niche old Lord Quarryman, the
Master of the Gaddesdon, could be discerned in conversation with Sir
James Malden and the Reverend Hussell Barter.
Mrs. Pendyce said:
"Your husband and Lord Quarryman are talking of poachers; I can tell that
by the look of their hands. I can't help sympathising a little with
poachers."
Lady Malden dropped her eyeglasses.
"James takes a very just view of them," she said. "It's such an
insidious offence. The more insidious the offence the more important it
is to check it. It seems hard to punish people for stealing bread or
turnips, though one must, of course; but I've no sympathy with poachers.
So many of them do it for sheer love of sport!"
Mrs. Pendyce answered:
"That's Captain Maydew dancing with her now. He is a good dancer. Don't
their steps fit? Don't they look happy? I do like people to enjoy
themselves! There is such a dreadful lot of unnecessary sadness and
suffering in the world. I think it's really all because people won't
make allowances for each other."
Lady Malden looked at her sideways, pursing her lips; but Mrs. Pendyce,
by race a Totteridge, continued to smile. She had been born unconscious
of her neighbours' scrutinies.
"Helen Bellew," she said, "was such a lovely girl. Her grandfather was
my mother's cousin. What does that make her? Anyway, my cousin, Gregory
Vigil, is her first cousin once removed--the Hampshire Vigils. Do you
know him?"
Lady Malden answered:
"Gregory Vigil? The man with a lot of greyish hair? I've had to do with
him in the S.R.W.C."
But Mrs. Pendyce was dancing mentally.
"Such a good fellow! What is that--the----?"
Lady Malden gave her a sharp look.
"Society for the Rescue of Women and Children, of course. Surely you
know about that?"
Mrs. Pendyce continued to smile.
"Ah, yes, that is nice! What a beautiful figure she has! It's so
refreshing. I envy a woman with a figure like that; it looks as if it
would never grow old. 'Society for the Regeneration of Women'? Gregory's
so good about that sort of thing. But he never seems quite successful,
have you noticed? There was a woman he was very interested in this
spring. I think she drank."
"They all do," said Lady Malden; "it's the curse of the day."
Mrs. Pendyce wrinkled her forehead.
"Most of the Totteridges," she said, "were great drinkers. They ruined
their constitutions. Do you know Jaspar Bellew?"
"No."
"It's such a pity he drinks. He came to dinner here once, and I'm afraid
he must have come intoxicated. He took me in; his little eyes quite
burned me up. He drove his dog cart into a ditch on the way home. That
sort of thing gets about so. It's such a pity. He's quite interesting.
Horace can't stand him."
The music of the waltz had ceased. Lady Maiden put her glasses to her
eyes. From close beside them George and Mrs. Bellew passed by. They
moved on out of hearing, but the breeze of her fan had touched the
arching hair on Lady Maiden's forehead, the down on her upper lip.
"Why isn't she with her husband?" she asked abruptly.
Mrs. Pendyce lifted her brows.
"Do you concern yourself to ask that which a well-bred woman leaves
unanswered?" she seemed to say, and a flush coloured her cheeks.
Lady Maiden winced, but, as though it were forced through her mouth by
some explosion in her soul, she said:
"You have only to look and see how dangerous she is!"
The colour in Mrs. Pendyce's cheeks deepened to a blush like a girl's.
"Every man," she said, "is in love with Helen Bellew. She's so
tremendously alive. My cousin Gregory has been in love with her for
years, though he is her guardian or trustee, or whatever they call them
now. It's quite romantic. If I were a man I should be in love with her
myself." The flush vanished and left her cheeks to their true colour,
that of a faded rose.
Once more she was listening to the voice of young Trefane, "Ah, Margery,
I love you!"--to her own half whispered answer, "Poor boy!" Once more she
was looking back through that forest of her life where she had wandered
so long, and where every tree was Horace Pendyce.
"What a pity one can't always be young!" she said.
Through the conservatory door, wide open to the lawn, a full moon flooded
the country with pale gold light, and in that light the branches of the
cedar-trees seemed printed black on the grey-blue paper of the sky; all
was cold, still witchery out there, and not very far away an owl was
hooting.
The Reverend Husell Barter, about to enter the conservatory for a breath
of air, was arrested by the sight of a couple half-hidden by a bushy
plant; side by side they were looking at the moonlight, and he knew them
for Mrs. Bellew and George Pendyce. Before he could either enter or
retire, he saw George seize her in his arms. She seemed to bend her head
back, then bring her face to his. The moonlight fell on it, and on the
full, white curve of her neck. The Rector of Worsted Skeynes saw, too,
that her eyes were closed, her lips parted.
CHAPTER VI
INFLUENCE OF THE REVEREND HUSSELL BARTER
Along the walls of the smoking-room, above a leather dado, were prints of
horsemen in night-shirts and nightcaps, or horsemen in red coats and
top-hats, with words underneath such as:
"'Yeoicks' says Thruster; 'Yeoicks' says Dick. 'My word! these d---d
Quornites shall now see the trick!'"
Two pairs of antlers surmounted the hearth, mementoes of Mr. Pendyce's
deer-forest, Strathbegally, now given up, where, with the assistance of
his dear old gillie Angus McBane, he had secured the heads of these
monarchs of the glen. Between them was the print of a personage in
trousers, with a rifle under his arm and a smile on his lips, while two
large deerhounds worried a dying stag, and a lady approached him on a
pony.
The Squire and Sir James Malden had retired; the remaining guests were
seated round the fire. Gerald Pendyce stood at a side-table, on which
was a tray of decanters, glasses, and mineral water.
"Who's for a dhrop of the craythur? A wee dhrop of the craythur? Rector,
a dhrop of the craythur? George, a dhrop--"
George shook his head. A smile was on his lips, and that smile had in it
a quality of remoteness, as though it belonged to another sphere, and had
strayed on to the lips of this man of the world against his will. He
seemed trying to conquer it, to twist his face into its habitual shape,
but, like the spirit of a strange force, the smile broke through. It had
mastered him, his thoughts, his habits, and his creed; he was stripped of
fashion, as on a thirsty noon a man stands stripped for a cool plunge
from which he hardly cares if he come up again.
And this smile, not by intrinsic merit, but by virtue of its strangeness,
attracted the eye of each man in the room; so, in a crowd, the most
foreign-looking face will draw all glances.
The Reverend Husell Barter with a frown watched that smile, and strange
thoughts chased through his mind.
"Uncle Charles, a dhrop of the craythur a wee dhrop of the craythur?"
General Pendyce caressed his whisker.
"The least touch," he said, "the least touch! I hear that our friend Sir
Percival is going to stand again."
Mr. Barter rose and placed his back before the fire.
"Outrageous!" he said. "He ought to be told at once that we can't have
him."
The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow answered from his chair:
"If he puts up, he'll get in; they can't afford to lose him." And with a
leisurely puff of smoke: "I must say, sir, I don't quite see what it has
to do with his public life."
Mr. Barter thrust forth his lower lip.
"An impenitent man," he said.
"But a woman like that! What chance has a fellow if she once gets hold
of him?"
"When I was stationed at Halifax," began General Pendyce, "she was the
belle of the place---"
Again Mr. Barter thrust out his lower lip.
"Don't let's talk of her---the jade!" Then suddenly to George: "Let's
hear your opinion, George. Dreaming of your victories, eh?" And the tone
of his voice was peculiar.
But George got up.
"I'm too sleepy," he said; "good-night." Curtly nodding, he left the
room.
Outside the door stood a dark oak table covered with silver candlesticks;
a single candle burned thereon, and made a thin gold path in the velvet
blackness. George lighted his candle, and a second gold path leaped out
in front; up this he began to ascend. He carried his candle at the level
of his breast, and the light shone sideways and up over his white
shirt-front and the comely, bulldog face above it. It shone, too, into
his eyes, 'grey and slightly bloodshot, as though their surfaces
concealed passions violently struggling for expression. At the turning
platform of the stair he paused. In darkness above and in darkness below
the country house was still; all the little life of its day, its petty
sounds, movements, comings, goings, its very breathing, seemed to have
fallen into sleep. The forces of its life had gathered into that pool of
light where George stood listening. The beating of his heart was the
only sound; in that small sound was all the pulse of this great
slumbering space. He stood there long, motionless, listening to the
beating of his heart, like a man fallen into a trance. Then floating up
through the darkness came the echo of a laugh. George started. "The
d----d parson!" he muttered, and turned up the stairs again; but now he
moved like a man with a purpose, and held his candle high so that the
light fell far out into the darkness. He went beyond his own room, and
stood still again. The light of the candle showed the blood flushing his
forehead, beating and pulsing in the veins at the side of his temples;
showed, too, his lips quivering, his shaking hand. He stretched out that
hand and touched the handle of a door, then stood again like a man of
stone, listening for the laugh. He raised the candle, and it shone into
every nook; his throat clicked, as though he found it hard to swallow....
It was at Barnard Scrolls, the next station to Worsted Skeynes, on the
following afternoon, that a young man entered a first-class compartment
of the 3.10 train to town. The young man wore a Newmarket coat, natty
white gloves, and carried an eyeglass. His face was well coloured, his
chestnut moustache well brushed, and his blue eyes with their loving
expression seemed to say, "Look at me--come, look at me--can anyone be
better fed?" His valise and hat-box, of the best leather, bore the
inscription, "E. Maydew, 8th Lancers."
There was a lady leaning back in a corner, wrapped to the chin in a fur
garment, and the young man, encountering through his eyeglass her cool,
ironical glance, dropped it and held out his hand.
"Ah, Mrs. Bellew, great pleasure t'see you again so soon. You goin' up
to town? Jolly dance last night, wasn't it? Dear old sort, the Squire,
and Mrs. Pendyce such an awf'ly nice woman."
Mrs. Bellew took his hand, and leaned back again in her corner. She was
rather paler than usual, but it became her, and Captain Maydew thought he
had never seen so charming a creature.
"Got a week's leave, thank goodness. Most awf'ly slow time of year.
Cubbin's pretty well over, an' we don't open till the first."
He turned to the window. There in the sunlight the hedgerows ran golden
and brown away from the clouds of trailing train smoke. Young Maydew
shook his head at their beauty.
"The country's still very blind," he said. "Awful pity you've given up
your huntin'."
Mrs. Bellew did not trouble to answer, and it was just that certainty
over herself, the cool assurance of a woman who has known the world, her
calm, almost negligent eyes, that fascinated this young man. He looked
at her quite shyly.
'I suppose you will become my slave,' those eyes seemed to say, 'but I
can't help you, really.'
"Did you back George's horse? I had an awf'ly good race. I was at
school with George. Charmin' fellow, old George."
In Mrs. Bellew's eyes something seemed to stir down in the depths, but
young Maydew was looking at his glove. The handle of the carriage had
left a mark that saddened him.
"You know him well, I suppose, old George?"
"Very well."
"Some fellows, if they have a good thing, keep it so jolly dark. You
fond of racin', Mrs. Bellew?"
"Passionately."
"So am I" And his eyes continued, 'It's ripping to like what you like,'
for, hypnotised, they could not tear themselves away from that creamy
face, with its full lips and the clear, faintly smiling eyes above the
high collar of white fur.
At the terminus his services were refused, and rather crestfallen, with
his hat raised, he watched her walk away. But soon, in his cab, his face
regained its normal look, his eyes seemed saying to the little mirror,
'Look at me come, look at me--can anyone be better fed?'
CHAPTER VII
SABBATH AT WORSTED SKEYNES
In the white morning-room which served for her boudoir Mrs. Pendyce sat
with an opened letter in her lap. It was her practice to sit there on
Sunday mornings for an hour before she went to her room adjoining to put
on her hat for church. It was her pleasure during that hour to do
nothing but sit at the window, open if the weather permitted, and look
over the home paddock and the squat spire of the village church rising
among a group of elms. It is not known what she thought about at those
times, unless of the countless Sunday mornings she had sat there with her
hands in her lap waiting to be roused at 10.45 by the Squire's entrance
and his "Now, my dear, you'll be late!" She had sat there till her hair,
once dark-brown, was turning grey; she would sit there until it was
white. One day she would sit there no longer, and, as likely as not, Mr.
Pendyce, still well preserved, would enter and say, "Now, my dear, you'll
be late!" having for the moment forgotten.
But this was all to be expected, nothing out of the common; the same
thing was happening in hundreds of country houses throughout the "three
kingdoms," and women were sitting waiting for their hair to turn white,
who, long before, at the altar of a fashionable church, had parted with
their imaginations and all the changes and chances of this mortal life.
Round her chair "the dear dogs" lay--this was their practice too, and now
and again the Skye (he was getting very old) would put out a long tongue
and lick her little pointed shoe. For Mrs. Pendyce had been a pretty
woman, and her feet were as small as ever.
Beside her on a spindley table stood a china bowl filled with dried
rose-leaves, whereon had been scattered an essence smelling like
sweetbriar, whose secret she had learned from her mother in the old
Warwickshire home of the Totteridges, long since sold to Mr. Abraham
Brightman. Mrs. Pendyce, born in the year 1840, loved sweet perfumes,
and was not ashamed of using them.
The Indian summer sun was soft and bright; and wistful, soft, and bright
were Mrs. Pendyce's eyes, fixed on the letter in her lap. She turned it
over and began to read again. A wrinkle visited her brow. It was not
often that a letter demanding decision or involving responsibility came
to her hands past the kind and just censorship of Horace Pendyce. Many
matters were under her control, but were not, so to speak, connected with
the outer world. Thus ran the letter:
"S.R.W.C., HANOVER SQUARE,
"November 1, 1891.
"DEAR MARGERY,
"I want to see you and talk something over, so I'm running down on Sunday
afternoon. There is a train of sorts. Any loft will do for me to sleep
in if your house is full, as it may be, I suppose, at this time of year.
On second thoughts I will tell you what I want to see you about. You
know, of course, that since her father died I am Helen Bellew's only
guardian. Her present position is one in which no woman should be
placed; I am convinced it ought to be put an end to. That man Bellew
deserves no consideration. I cannot write of him coolly, so I won't
write at all. It is two years now since they separated, entirely, as I
consider, through his fault. The law has placed her in a cruel and
helpless position all this time; but now, thank God, I believe we can
move for a divorce. You know me well enough to realise what I have gone
through before coming to this conclusion. Heaven knows if I could hit on
some other way in which her future could be safeguarded, I would take it
in preference to this, which is most repugnant; but I cannot. You are
the only woman I can rely on to be interested in her, and I must see
Bellew. Let not the fat and just Benson and his estimable horses be
disturbed on my account; I will walk up and carry my toothbrush.
"Affectionately your cousin,
"GREGORY VIGIL."
Mrs. Pendyce smiled. She saw no joke, but she knew from the wording of
the last sentence that Gregory saw one, and she liked to give it a
welcome; so smiling and wrinkling her forehead, she mused over the
letter. Her thoughts wandered. The last scandal--Lady Rose Bethany's
divorce--had upset the whole county, and even now one had to be careful
what one said. Horace would not like the idea of another divorce-suit,
and that so close to Worsted Skeynes. When Helen left on Thursday he had
said:
"I'm not sorry she's gone. Her position is a queer one. People don't
like it. The Maidens were quite----"
And Mrs. Pendyce remembered with a glow at her heart how she had broken
in:
"Ellen Maiden is too bourgeoise for anything!"
Nor had Mr. Pendyce's look of displeasure effaced the comfort of that
word.
Poor Horace! The children took after him, except George, who took after
her brother Hubert. The dear boy had gone back to his club on
Friday--the day after Helen and the others went. She wished he could
have stayed. She wished----The wrinkle deepened on her brow. Too much
London was bad for him! Too much----Her fancy flew to the London which
she saw now only for three weeks in June and July, for the sake of the
girls, just when her garden was at its best, and when really things were
such a whirl that she never knew whether she was asleep or awake. It was
not like London at all--not like that London under spring skies, or in
early winter lamplight, where all the passers-by seemed so interesting,
living all sorts of strange and eager lives, with strange and eager
pleasures, running all sorts of risks, hungry sometimes, homeless
even--so fascinating, so unlike--
"Now, my dear, you'll be late!"
Mr. Pendyce, in his Norfolk jacket, which he was on his way to change for
a black coat, passed through the room, followed by the spaniel John. He
turned at the door, and the spaniel John turned too.
"I hope to goodness Barter'll be short this morning. I want to talk to
old Fox about that new chaff-cutter."
Round their mistress the three terriers raised their heads; the aged Skye
gave forth a gentle growl. Mrs. Pendyce leaned over and stroked his
nose.
"Roy, Roy, how can you, dear?"
Mr. Pendyce said:
"The old dog's losing all his teeth; he'll have to be put away."
His wife flushed painfully.
"Oh no, Horace--oh no!"
The Squire coughed.
"We must think of the dog!" he said.
Mrs. Pendyce rose, and crumpling the letter nervously, followed him from
the room.
A narrow path led through the home paddock towards the church, and along
it the household were making their way. The maids in feathers hurried
along guiltily by twos and threes; the butler followed slowly by himself.
A footman and a groom came next, leaving trails of pomatum in the air.
Presently General Pendyce, in a high square-topped bowler hat, carrying a
malacca cane, and Prayer-Book, appeared walking between Bee and Norah,
also carrying Prayer-Books, with fox-terriers by their sides. Lastly,
the Squire in a high hat, six or seven paces in advance of his wife, in a
small velvet toque.
The rooks had ceased their wheeling and their cawing; the five-minutes
bell, with its jerky, toneless tolling, alone broke the Sunday hush. An
old horse, not yet taken up from grass, stood motionless, resting a
hind-leg, with his face turned towards the footpath. Within the
churchyard wicket the Rector, firm and square, a low-crowned hat tilted
up on his bald forehead, was talking to a deaf old cottager. He raised
his hat and nodded to the ladies; then, leaving his remark unfinished,
disappeared within the vestry. At the organ Mrs. Barter was drawing out
stops in readiness to play her husband into church, and her eyes,
half-shining and half-anxious, were fixed intently on the vestry door.
The Squire and Mrs. Pendyce, now almost abreast, came down the aisle and
took their seats beside their daughters and the General in the first pew
on the left. It was high and cushioned. They knelt down on tall red
hassocks. Mrs. Pendyce remained over a minute buried in thought; Mr.
Pendyce rose sooner, and looking down, kicked the hassock that had been
put too near the seat. Fixing his glasses on his nose, he consulted a
worn old Bible, then rising, walked to the lectern and began to find the
Lessons. The bell ceased; a wheezing, growling noise was heard. Mrs.
Barter had begun to play; the Rector, in a white surplice, was coming in.
Mr. Pendyce, with his back turned, continued to find the Lessons. The
service began.
Through a plain glass window high up in the right-hand aisle the sun shot
a gleam athwart the Pendyces' pew. It found its last resting-place on
Mrs. Barter's face, showing her soft crumpled cheeks painfully flushed,
the lines on her forehead, and those shining eyes, eager and anxious,
travelling ever from her husband to her music and back again. At the
least fold or frown on his face the music seemed to quiver, as to some
spasm in the player's soul. In the Pendyces' pew the two girls sang
loudly and with a certain sweetness. Mr. Pendyce, too, sang, and once or
twice he looked in surprise at his brother, as though he were not making
a creditable noise.
Mrs. Pendyce did not sing, but her lips moved, and her eyes followed the
millions of little dust atoms dancing in the long slanting sunbeam. Its
gold path canted slowly from her, then, as by magic, vanished. Mrs.
Pendyce let her eyes fall. Something had fled from her soul with the
sunbeam; her lips moved no more.
The Squire sang two loud notes, spoke three, sang two again; the Psalms
ceased. He left his seat, and placing his hands on the lectern's sides,
leaned forward and began to read the Lesson. He read the story of
Abraham and Lot, and of their flocks and herds, and how they could not
dwell together, and as he read, hypnotised by the sound of his own voice,
he was thinking:
'This Lesson is well read by me, Horace Pendyce. I am Horace
Pendyce--Horace Pendyce. Amen, Horace Pendyce!'
And in the first pew on the left Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes upon him,
for this was her habit, and she thought how, when the spring came again,
she would run up to town, alone, and stay at Green's Hotel, where she had
always stayed with her father when a girl. George had promised to look
after her, and take her round the theatres. And forgetting that she had
thought this every autumn for the last ten years, she gently smiled and
nodded. Mr. Pendyce said:
"'And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can
number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.
Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of
it; for I will give it unto thee. Then Abram removed his tent, and came
and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an
altar unto the Lord.' Here endeth the first Lesson."
The sun, reaching the second window, again shot a gold pathway athwart
the church; again the millions of dust atoms danced, and the service went
on.
There came a hush. The spaniel John, crouched close to the ground
outside, poked his long black nose under the churchyard gate; the
fox-terriers, seated patient in the grass, pricked their ears. A voice
speaking on one note broke the hush. The spaniel John sighed, the
fox-terriers dropped their ears, and lay down heavily against each other.
The Rector had begun to preach. He preached on fruitfulness, and in the
first right-hand pew six of his children at once began to fidget. Mrs.
Barter, sideways and unsupported on her seat, kept her starry eyes fixed
on his cheek; a line of perplexity furrowed her brow. Now and again she
moved as though her back ached. The Rector quartered his congregation
with his gaze, lest any amongst them should incline to sleep. He spoke
in a loud-sounding voice.
God-he said-wished men to be fruitful, intended them to be fruitful,
commanded them to be fruitful. God--he said--made men, and made the
earth; He made man to be fruitful in the earth; He made man neither to
question nor answer nor argue; He made him to be fruitful and possess the
land. As they had heard in that beautiful Lesson this morning, God had
set bounds, the bounds of marriage, within which man should multiply;
within those bounds it was his duty to multiply, and that
exceedingly--even as Abraham multiplied. In these days dangers,
pitfalls, snares, were rife; in these days men went about and openly,
unashamedly advocated shameful doctrines. Let them beware. It would be
his sacred duty to exclude such men from within the precincts of that
parish entrusted to his care by God. In the language of their greatest
poet, "Such men were dangerous"--dangerous to Christianity, dangerous to
their country, and to national life. They were not brought into this
world to follow sinful inclination, to obey their mortal reason. God
demanded sacrifices of men. Patriotism demanded sacrifices of men, it
demanded that they should curb their inclinations and desires. It
demanded of them their first duty as men and Christians, the duty of
being fruitful and multiplying, in order that they might till this
fruitful earth, not selfishly, not for themselves alone. It demanded of
them the duty of multiplying in order that they and their children might
be equipped to smite the enemies of their Queen and country, and uphold
the name of England in whatever quarrel, against all who rashly sought to
drag her flag in the dust.
The Squire opened his eyes and looked at his watch. Folding his arms, he
coughed, for he was thinking of the chaff-cutter. Beside him Mrs.
Pendyce, with her eyes on the altar, smiled as if in sleep. She was
thinking, 'Skyward's in Bond Street used to have lovely lace. Perhaps in
the spring I could----Or there was Goblin's, their Point de Venise----'
Behind them, four rows back, an aged cottage woman, as upright as a girl,
sat with a rapt expression on her carved old face. She never moved, her
eyes seemed drinking in the movements of the Rector's lips, her whole
being seemed hanging on his words. It is true her dim eyes saw nothing
but a blur, her poor deaf ears could not hear one word, but she sat at
the angle she was used to, and thought of nothing at all. And perhaps it
was better so, for she was near her end.
Outside the churchyard, in the sun-warmed grass, the fox-terriers lay one
against the other, pretending to shiver, with their small bright eyes
fixed on the church door, and the rubbery nostrils of the spaniel John
worked ever busily beneath the wicket gate.
CHAPTER VIII
GREGORY VIGIL PROPOSES
About three o'clock that afternoon a tall man walked up the avenue at
Worsted Skeynes, in one hand carrying his hat, in the other a small brown
bag. He stopped now and then, and took deep breaths, expanding the
nostrils of his straight nose. He had a fine head, with wings of
grizzled hair. His clothes were loose, his stride was springy. Standing
in the middle of the drive, taking those long breaths, with his moist
blue eyes upon the sky, he excited the attention of a robin, who ran out
of a rhododendron to see, and when he had passed began to whistle.
Gregory Vigil turned, and screwed up his humorous lips, and, except that
he was completely lacking in embonpoint, he had a certain resemblance to
this bird, which is supposed to be peculiarly British.
He asked for Mrs. Pendyce in a high, light voice, very pleasant to the
ear, and was at once shown to the white morning-room.
She greeted him affectionately, like many women who have grown used to
hearing from their husbands the formula "Oh! your people!"--she had a
strong feeling for her kith and kin.
"You know, Grig," she said, when her cousin was seated, "your letter was
rather disturbing. Her separation from Captain Bellew has caused such a
lot of talk about here. Yes; it's very common, I know, that sort of
thing, but Horace is so----! All the squires and parsons and county
people we get about here are just the same. Of course, I'm very fond of
her, she's so charming to look at; but, Gregory, I really don't dislike
her husband. He's a desperate sort of person--I think that's rather,
refreshing; and you know I do think she's a little like him in that!"
The blood rushed up into Gregory Vigil's forehead; he put his hand to his
head, and said:
"Like him? Like that man? Is a rose like an artichoke?"
Mrs. Pendyce went on:
"I enjoyed having her here immensely. It's the first time she's been
here since she left the Firs. How long is that? Two years? But you
know, Grig, the Maidens were quite upset about her. Do you think a
divorce is really necessary?"
Gregory Vigil answered: "I'm afraid it is."
Mrs. Pendyce met her cousin's gaze serenely; if anything, her brows were
uplifted more than usual; but, as at the stirring of secret trouble, her
fingers began to twine and twist. Before her rose a vision of George and
Mrs. Bellew side by side. It was a vague maternal feeling, an
instinctive fear. She stilled her fingers, let her eyelids droop, and
said:
"Of course, dear Grig, if I can help you in any way--Horace does so
dislike anything to do with the papers."
Gregory Vigil drew in his breath.
"The papers!" he said. "How hateful it is! To think that our
civilisation should allow women to be cast to the dogs! Understand,
Margery, I'm thinking of her. In this matter I'm not capable of
considering anything else."
Mrs. Pendyce murmured: "Of course, dear Grig, I quite understand."
"Her position is odious; a woman should not have to live like that,
exposed to everyone's foul gossip."
"But, dear Grig, I don't think she minds; she seemed to me in such
excellent spirits."
Gregory ran his fingers through his hair.
"Nobody understands her," he said; "she's so plucky!"
Mrs. Pendyce stole a glance at him, and a little ironical smile flickered
over her face.
"No one can look at her without seeing her spirit. But, Grig, perhaps
you don't quite understand her either!"
Gregory Vigil put his hand to his head.
"I must open the window a moment," he said.
Again Mrs. Pendyce's fingers began twisting, again she stilled them.
"We were quite a large party last week, and now there's only Charles.
Even George has gone back; he'll be so sorry to have missed you!"
Gregory neither turned nor answered, and a wistful look came into Mrs.
Pendyce's face.
"It was so nice for the dear boy to win that race! I'm afraid he bets
rather! It's such a comfort Horace doesn't know."
Still Gregory did not speak.
Mrs. Pendyce's face lost its anxious look, and gained a sort of gentle
admiration.
"Dear Grig," she said, "where do you go about your hair? It is so nice
and long and wavy!"
Gregory turned with a blush.
"I've been wanting to get it cut for ages. Do you really mean, Margery,
that your husband can't realise the position she's placed in?"
Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes on her lap.
"You see, Grig," she began, "she was here a good deal before she left the
Firs, and, of course, she's related to me--though it's very distant.
With those horrid cases, you never know what will happen. Horace is
certain to say that she ought to go back to her husband; or, if that's
impossible, he'll say she ought to think of Society. Lady Rose Bethany's
case has shaken everybody, and Horace is nervous. I don't know how it is,
there's a great feeling amongst people about here against women asserting
themselves. You should hear Mr. Barter and Sir James Maiden, and dozens
of others; the funny thing is that the women take their side. Of course,
it seems odd to me, because so many of the Totteridges ran away, or did
something funny. I can't help sympathising with her, but I have to think
of--of----In the country, you don't know how things that people do get
about before they've done them! There's only that and hunting to talk
of."
Gregory Vigil clutched at his head.
"Well, if this is what chivalry has come to, thank God I'm not a squire!"
Mrs. Pendyce's eyes flickered.
"Ah!" she said, "I've thought like that so often."
Gregory broke the silence.
"I can't help the customs of the country. My duty's plain. There's
nobody else to look after her."
Mrs. Pendyce sighed, and, rising from her chair, said: "Very well, dear
Grig; do let us go and have some tea."
Tea at Worsted Skeynes was served in the hall on Sundays, and was usually
attended by the Rector and his wife. Young Cecil Tharp had walked over
with his dog, which could be heard whimpering faintly outside the
front-door.
General Pendyce, with his knees crossed and the tips of his fingers
pressed together, was leaning back in his chair and staring at the wall.
The Squire, who held his latest bird's-egg in his hand, was showing its
spots to the Rector.
In a corner by a harmonium, on which no one ever played, Norah talked of
the village hockey club to Mrs. Barter, who sat with her eyes fixed on
her husband. On the other side of the fire Bee and young Tharp, whose
chairs seemed very close together, spoke of their horses in low tones,
stealing shy glances at each other. The light was failing, the wood logs
crackled, and now and then over the cosy hum of talk there fell short,
drowsy silences--silences of sheer warmth and comfort, like the silence
of the spaniel John asleep against his master's boot.
"Well," said Gregory softly, "I must go and see this man."
"Is it really necessary, Grig, to see him at all? I mean--if you've made
up your mind----"
Gregory ran his hand through his hair.
"It's only fair, I think!" And crossing the hall, he let himself out so
quietly that no one but Mrs. Pendyce noticed he had gone.
An hour and a half later, near the railway-station, on the road from the
village back to Worsted Skeynes, Mr. Pendyce and his daughter Bee were
returning from their Sunday visit to their old butler, Bigson. The Squire
was talking.
"He's failing, Bee-dear old Bigson's failing. I can't hear what he says,
he mumbles so; and he forgets. Fancy his forgetting that I was at
Oxford. But we don't get servants like him nowadays. That chap we've
got now is a sleepy fellow. Sleepy! he's----What's that in the road?
They've no business to be coming at that pace. Who is it? I can't see."
Down the middle of the dark road a dog cart was approaching at top speed.
Bee seized her father's arm and pulled it vigorously, for Mr. Pendyce was
standing stock-still in disapproval. The dog cart passed within a foot
of him and vanished, swinging round into the station. Mr. Pendyce turned
in his tracks.
"Who was that? Disgraceful! On Sunday, too! The fellow must be drunk;
he nearly ran over my legs. Did you see, Bee, he nearly ran over----"
Bee answered:
"It was Captain Bellew, Father; I saw his face." "Bellew? That drunken
fellow? I shall summons him. Did you see, Bee, he nearly ran over
my----"
"Perhaps he's had bad news," said Bee. "There's the train going out now;
I do hope he caught it!"
"Bad news! Is that an excuse for driving over me? You hope he caught
it? I hope he's thrown himself out. The ruffian! I hope he's killed
himself."
In this strain Mr. Pendyce continued until they reached the church. On
their way up the aisle they passed Gregory Vigil leaning forward with his
elbows on the desk and his hand covering his eyes....
At eleven o'clock that night a man stood outside the door of Mrs.
Bellew's flat in Chelsea violently ringing the bell. His face was
deathly white, but his little dark eyes sparkled. The door was opened,
and Helen Bellew in evening dress stood there holding a candle in her
hand.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
The man moved into the light.
"Jaspar! You? What on earth----"
"I want to talk."
"Talk? Do you know what time it is?"
"Time--there's no such thing. You might give me a kiss after two years.
I've been drinking, but I'm not drunk."
Mrs. Bellew did not kiss him, neither did she draw back her face. No
trace of alarm showed in her ice-grey eyes. She said: "If I let you in,
will you promise to say what you want to say quickly, and go away?"
The little brown devils danced in Bellew's face. He nodded. They stood
by the hearth in the sitting-room, and on the lips of both came and went
a peculiar smile.
It was difficult to contemplate too seriously a person with whom one had
lived for years, with whom one had experienced in common the range of
human passion, intimacy, and estrangement, who knew all those little
daily things that men and women living together know of each other, and
with whom in the end, without hatred, but because of one's nature, one
had ceased to live. There was nothing for either of them to find out,
and with a little smile, like the smile of knowledge itself, Jaspar
Bellew and Helen his wife looked at each other.
"Well," she said again; "what have you come for?"
Bellew's face had changed. Its expression was furtive; his mouth
twitched; a furrow had come between his eyes.
"How--are--you?" he said in a thick, muttering voice.
Mrs. Bellew's clear voice answered:
"Now, Jaspar, what is it that you want?"
The little brown devils leaped up again in Jaspar's face.
"You look very pretty to-night!"
His wife's lips curled.
"I'm much the same as I always was," she said.
A violent shudder shook Bellew. He fixed his eyes on the floor a little
beyond her to the left; suddenly he raised them. They were quite
lifeless.
"I'm perfectly sober," he murmured thickly; then with startling quickness
his eyes began to sparkle again. He came a step nearer.
"You're my wife!" he said.
Mrs. Bellew smiled.
"Come," she answered, "you must go!" and she put out her bare arm to push
him back. But Bellew recoiled of his own accord; his eyes were fixed
again on the floor a little beyond her to the left.
"What's that?" he stammered. "What's that--that black----?"
The devilry, mockery, admiration, bemusement, had gone out of his face;
it was white and calm, and horribly pathetic.
"Don't turn me out," he stammered; "don't turn me out!"
Mrs. Bellew looked at him hard; the defiance in her eyes changed to a
sort of pity. She took a quick step and put her hand on his shoulder.
"It's all right, old boy--all right!" she said. "There's nothing
there!"
CHAPTER IX
MR. PARAMOR DISPOSES
Mrs. Pendyce, who, in accordance with her husband's wish, still occupied
the same room as Mr. Pendyce, chose the ten minutes before he got up to
break to him Gregory's decision. The moment was auspicious, for he was
only half awake.
"Horace," she said, and her face looked young and anxious, "Grig says
that Helen Bellew ought not to go on in her present position. Of course,
I told him that you'd be annoyed, but Grig says that she can't go on like
this, that she simply must divorce Captain Bellew."
Mr. Pendyce was lying on his back.
"What's that?" he said.
Mrs. Pendyce went on
"I knew it would worry you; but really"--she fixed her eyes on the
ceiling--"I suppose we ought only to think of her."
The Squire sat up.
"What was that," he said, "about Bellew?"
Mrs. Pendyce went on in a languid voice and without moving her eyes:
"Don't be angrier than you can help, dear; it is so wearing. If Grig
says she ought to divorce Captain Bellew, then I'm sure she ought."
Horace Pendyce subsided on his pillow with a bounce, and he too lay with
his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
"Divorce him!" he said--"I should think so! He ought to be hanged, a
fellow like that. I told you last night he nearly drove over me. Living
just as he likes, setting an example of devilry to the whole
neighbourhood! If I hadn't kept my head he'd have bowled me over like a
ninepin, and Bee into the bargain."
Mrs. Pendyce sighed.
"It was a narrow escape," she said.
"Divorce him!" resumed Mr. Pendyce--"I should think so! She ought to
have divorced him long ago. It was the nearest thing in the world;
another foot and I should have been knocked off my feet!"
Mrs. Pendyce withdrew her glance from the ceiling.
"At first," she said, "I wondered whether it was quite--but I'm very glad
you've taken it like this."
"Taken it! I can tell you, Margery, that sort of thing makes one think.
All the time Barter was preaching last night I was wondering what on
earth would have happened to this estate if--if----" And he looked round
with a frown. "Even as it is, I barely make the two ends of it meet. As
to George, he's no more fit at present to manage it than you are; he'd
make a loss of thousands."
"I'm afraid George is too much in London. That's the reason I wondered
whether--I'm afraid he sees too much of----"
Mrs. Pendyce stopped; a flush suffused her cheeks; she had pinched
herself violently beneath the bedclothes.
"George," said Mr. Pendyce, pursuing his own thoughts, "has no gumption.
He'd never manage a man like Peacock--and you encourage him! He ought to
marry and settle down."
Mrs. Pendyce, the flush dying in her cheeks, said:
"George is very like poor Hubert."
Horace Pendyce drew his watch from beneath his pillow.
"Ah!" But he refrained from adding, "Your people!" for Hubert
Totteridge had not been dead a year. "Ten minutes to eight! You keep me
talking here; it's time I was in my bath."
Clad in pyjamas with a very wide blue stripe, grey-eyed, grey-moustached,
slim and erect, he paused at the door.
"The girls haven't a scrap of imagination. What do you think Bee said?
'I hope he hasn't lost his train.' Lost his train! Good God! and I
might have--I might have----" The Squire did not finish his sentence; no
words but what seemed to him violent and extreme would have fulfilled his
conception of the danger he had escaped, and it was against his nature
and his training to exaggerate a physical risk.
At breakfast he was more cordial than usual to Gregory, who was going up
by the first train, for as a rule Mr. Pendyce rather distrusted him, as
one would a wife's cousin, especially if he had a sense of humour.
"A very good fellow," he was wont to say of him, "but an out-and-out
Radical." It was the only label he could find for Gregory's
peculiarities.
Gregory departed without further allusion to the object of his visit. He
was driven to the station in a brougham by the first groom, and sat with
his hat off and his head at the open window, as if trying to get
something blown out of his brain. Indeed, throughout the whole of his
journey up to town he looked out of the window, and expressions half
humorous and half puzzled played on his face. Like a panorama slowly
unrolled, country house after country house, church after church,
appeared before his eyes in the autumn sunlight, among the hedgerows and
the coverts that were all brown and gold; and far away on the rising
uplands the slow ploughman drove, outlined against the sky:
He took a cab from the station to his solicitors' in Lincoln's Inn
Fields. He was shown into a room bare of all legal accessories, except a
series of Law Reports and a bunch of violets in a glass of fresh water.
Edmund Paramor, the senior partner of Paramor and Herring, a clean-shaven
man of sixty, with iron-grey hair brushed in a cockscomb off his
forehead, greeted him with a smile.
"Ah, Vigil, how are you? Up from the country?"
"From Worsted Skeynes."
"Horace Pendyce is a client of mine. Well, what can we do for you? Your
Society up a tree?"
Gregory Vigil, in the padded leather chair that had held so many
aspirants for comfort, sat a full minute without speaking; and Mr.
Paramor, too, after one keen glance at his client that seemed to come
from very far down in his soul, sat motionless and grave. There was at
that moment something a little similar in the eyes of these two very
different men, a look of kindred honesty and aspiration. Gregory spoke at
last.
"It's a painful subject to me."
Mr. Paramor drew a face on his blotting-paper.
"I have come," went on Gregory, "about a divorce for my ward."
"Mrs. Jaspar Bellew?"
"Yes; her position is intolerable."
Mr. Paramor gave him a searching look.
"Let me see: I think she and her husband have been separated for some
time."
"Yes, for two years."
"You're acting with her consent, of course?"
"I have spoken to her."
"You know the law of divorce, I suppose?"
Gregory answered with a painful smile:
"I'm not very clear about it; I hardly ever look at those cases in the
paper. I hate the whole idea."
Mr. Paramor smiled again, became instantly grave, and said:
"We shall want evidence of certain things, Have you got any evidence?"
Gregory ran his hand through his hair.
"I don't think there'll be any difficulty," he said. "Bellew agrees
--they both agree!"
Mr. Paramor stared.
"What's that to do with it?"
Gregory caught him up.
"Surely, where both parties are anxious, and there's no opposition, it
can't be difficult."
"Good Lord!" said Mr. Paramor.
"But I've seen Bellew; I saw him yesterday. I'm sure I can get him to
admit anything you want!"
Mr. Paramor drew his breath between his teeth.
"Did you ever," he said drily, "hear of what's called collusion?"
Gregory got up and paced the room.
"I don't know that I've ever heard anything very exact about the thing at
all," he said. "The whole subject is hateful to me. I regard marriage
as sacred, and when, which God forbid, it proves unsacred, it is horrible
to think of these formalities. This is a Christian country; we are all
flesh and blood. What is this slime, Paramor?"
With this outburst he sank again into the chair, and leaned his head on
his hand. And oddly, instead of smiling, Mr. Paramor looked at him with
haunting eyes.
"Two unhappy persons must not seem to agree to be parted," he said. "One
must be believed to desire to keep hold of the other, and must pose as an
injured person. There must be evidence of misconduct, and in this case
of cruelty or of desertion. The evidence must be impartial. This is the
law."
Gregory said without looking up:
"But why?"
Mr. Paramor took his violets out of the water, and put them to his nose.
"How do you mean--why?"
"I mean, why this underhand, roundabout way?"
Mr. Paramor's face changed with startling speed from its haunting look
back to his smile.
"Well," he said, "for the preservation of morality. What do you
suppose?"
"Do you call it moral so to imprison people that you drive them to sin in
order to free themselves?"
Mr. Paramor obliterated the face on his blotting-pad.
"Where's your sense of humour?" he said.
"I see no joke, Paramor."
Mr. Paramor leaned forward.
"My dear friend," he said earnestly, "I don't say for a minute that our
system doesn't cause a great deal of quite unnecessary suffering; I don't
say that it doesn't need reform. Most lawyers and almost any thinking
man will tell you that it does. But that's a wide question which doesn't
help us here. We'll manage your business for you, if it can be done.
You've made a bad start, that's all. The first thing is for us to write
to Mrs. Bellew, and ask her to come and see us. We shall have to get
Bellew watched."
Gregory said:
"That's detestable. Can't it be done without that?"
Mr. Paramor bit his forefinger.
"Not safe," he said. "But don't bother; we'll see to all that."
Gregory rose and went to the window. He said suddenly:
"I can't bear this underhand work."
Mr. Paramor smiled.
"Every honest man," he said, "feels as you do. But, you see, we must
think of the law."
Gregory burst out again:
"Can no one get a divorce, then, without making beasts or spies of
themselves?"
Mr. Paramor said gravely
"It is difficult, perhaps impossible. You see, the law is based on
certain principles."
"Principles?"
A smile wreathed Mr. Paramor's mouth, but died instantly.
"Ecclesiastical principles, and according to these a person desiring a
divorce 'ipso facto' loses caste. That they should have to make spies or
beasts of themselves is not of grave importance."
Gregory came back to the table, and again buried his head in his hands.
"Don't joke, please, Paramor," he said; "it's all so painful to me."
Mr. Paramor's eyes haunted his client's bowed head.
"I'm not joking," he said. "God forbid! Do you read poetry?" And
opening a drawer, he took out a book bound in red leather. "This is a
man I'm fond of:
"'Life is mostly froth and bubble;
Two things stand like stone--
KINDNESS in another's trouble,
COURAGE in your own.'
"That seems to me the sum of all philosophy."
"Paramor," said Gregory, "my ward is very dear to me; she is dearer to me
than any woman I know. I am here in a most dreadful dilemma. On the one
hand there is this horrible underhand business, with all its publicity;
and on the other there is her position--a beautiful woman, fond of
gaiety, living alone in this London, where every man's instincts and
every woman's tongue look upon her as fair game. It has been brought
home to me only too painfully of late. God forgive me! I have even
advised her to go back to Bellew, but that seems out of the question.
What am I to do?"
Mr. Paramor rose.
"I know," he said--"I know. My dear friend, I know!" And for a full
minute he remained motionless, a little turned from Gregory. "It will be
better," he said suddenly, "for her to get rid of him. I'll go and see
her myself. We'll spare her all we can. I'll go this afternoon, and let
you know the result."
As though by mutual instinct, they put out their hands, which they shook
with averted faces. Then Gregory, seizing his hat, strode out of the
room.
He went straight to the rooms of his Society in Hanover Square. They
were on the top floor, higher than the rooms of any other Society in the
building--so high, in fact, that from their windows, which began five
feet up, you could practically only see the sky.
A girl with sloping shoulders, red cheeks, and dark eyes, was working a
typewriter in a corner, and sideways to the sky at a bureau littered with
addressed envelopes, unanswered letters, and copies of the Society's
publications, was seated a grey-haired lady with a long, thin,
weatherbeaten face and glowing eyes, who was frowning at a page of
manuscript.
"Oh, Mr. Vigil," she said, "I'm so glad you've come. This paragraph
mustn't go as it is. It will never do."
Gregory took the manuscript and read the paragraph in question.
"This case of Eva Nevill is so horrible that we ask those of our women
readers who live in the security, luxury perhaps, peace certainly, of
their country homes, what they would have done, finding themselves
suddenly in the position of this poor girl--in a great city, without
friends, without money, almost without clothes, and exposed to all the
craft of one of those fiends in human form who prey upon our womankind.
Let each one ask herself: Should I have resisted where she fell?"
"It will never do to send that out," said the lady again.
"What is the matter with it, Mrs. Shortman?"
"It's too personal. Think of Lady Maiden, or most of our subscribers.
You can't expect them to imagine themselves like poor Eva. I'm sure they
won't like it."
Gregory clutched at his hair.
"Is it possible they can't stand that?" he said.
"It's only because you've given such horrible details of poor Eva."
Gregory got up and paced the room.
Mrs. Shortman went on
"You've not lived in the country for so long, Mr. Vigil, that you don't
remember. You see, I know. People don't like to be harrowed. Besides,
think how difficult it is for them to imagine themselves in such a
position. It'll only shock them, and do our circulation harm."
Gregory snatched up the page and handed it to the girl who sat at the
typewriter in the corner.
"Read that, please, Miss Mallow."
The girl read without raising her eyes.
"Well, is it what Mrs. Shortman says?"
The girl handed it back with a blush.
"It's perfect, of course, in itself, but I think Mrs. Shortman is right.
It might offend some people."
Gregory went quickly to the window, threw it up, and stood gazing at the
sky. Both women looked at his back.
Mrs. Shortman said gently:
"I would only just alter it like this, from after 'country homes':
'whether they do not pity and forgive this poor girl in a great city,
without friends, without money, almost without clothes, and exposed to
all the craft of one of those fiends in human form who prey upon our
womankind,' and just stop there."
Gregory returned to the table.
"Not 'forgive,"' he said, "not 'forgive'!"
Mrs. Shortman raised her pen.
"You don't know," she said, "what a strong feeling there is. Mind, it
has to go to numbers of parsonages, Mr. Vigil. Our principle has always
been to be very careful. And you have been plainer than usual in stating
the case. It's not as if they really could put themselves in her
position; that's impossible. Not one woman in a hundred could,
especially among those who live in the country and have never seen life.
I'm a squire's daughter myself."
"And I a parson's," said Gregory, with a smile.
Mrs. Shortman looked at him reproachfully.
"Joking apart, Mr. Vigil, it's touch and go with our paper as it is; we
really can't afford it. I've had lots of letters lately complaining that
we put the cases unnecessarily strongly. Here's one:
"'BOURNEFIELD RECTORY,
"'November 1.
"'DEAR MADAM,
"'While sympathising with your good work, I am afraid I cannot become a
subscriber to your paper while it takes its present form, as I do not
feel that it is always fit reading for my girls. I cannot think it
either wise or right that they should become acquainted with such
dreadful aspects of life, however true they may be.
"'I am, dear madam,
"'Respectfully yours,
"'WINIFRED TUDDENHAM.
"'P.S.--I could never feel sure, too, that my maids would not pick it up,
and perhaps take harm.'"
"I had that only this morning."
Gregory buried his face in his hands, and sitting thus he looked so like
a man praying that no one spoke. When he raised his face it was to say:
"Not 'forgive,' Mrs. Shortman, not 'forgive'!"
Mrs. Shortman ran her pen through the word.
"Very well, Mr. Vigil," she said; "it's a risk."
The sound of the typewriter, which had been hushed, began again from the
corner.
"That case of drink, Mr. Vigil--Millicent Porter--I'm afraid there's very
little hope there."
Gregory asked:
"What now?"
"Relapsed again; it's the fifth time."
Gregory turned his face to the window, and looked at the sky.
"I must go and see her. Just give me her address."
Mrs. Shortman read from a green book:
"'Mrs. Porter, 2 Bilcock Buildings, Bloomsbury.' Mr. Vigil!"
"Yes."
"Mr. Vigil, I do sometimes wish you would not persevere so long with
those hopeless cases; they never seem to come to anything, and your time
is so valuable."
"How can I give them up, Mrs. Shortman? There's no choice."
"But, Mr. Vigil, why is there no choice? You must draw the line
somewhere. Do forgive me for saying that I think you sometimes waste
your time."
Gregory turned to the girl at the typewriter.
"Miss Mallow, is Mrs. Shortman right? do I waste my time?"
The girl at the typewriter blushed vividly, and, without looking round,
said:
"How can I tell, Mr. Vigil? But it does worry one."
A humorous and perplexed smile passed over Gregory's lips.
"Now I know I shall cure her," he said. "2 Bilcock Buildings." And he
continued to look at the sky. "How's your neuralgia, Mrs. Shortman?"
Mrs. Shortman smiled.
"Awful!"
Gregory turned quickly.
"You feel that window, then; I'm so sorry."
Mrs. Shortman shook her head.
"No, but perhaps Molly does."
The girl at the typewriter said:
"Oh no; please, Mr. Vigil, don't shut it for me."
"Truth and honour?"
"Truth and honour," replied both women. And all three for a moment sat
looking at the sky. Then Mrs. Shortman said:
"You see, you can't get to the root of the evil--that husband of hers."
Gregory turned.
"Ah," he said, "that man! If she could only get rid of him! That ought
to have been done long ago, before he drove her to drink like this. Why
didn't she, Mrs. Shortman, why didn't she?"
Mrs. Shortman raised her eyes, which had such a peculiar spiritual glow.
"I don't suppose she had the money," she said; "and she must have been
such a nice woman then. A nice woman doesn't like to divorce--"
Gregory looked at her.
"What, Mrs. Shortman, you too, you too among the Pharisees?"
Mrs. Shortman flushed.
"She wanted to save him," she said; "she must have wanted to save him."
"Then you and I----" But Gregory did not finish, and turned again to the
window. Mrs. Shortman, too, biting her lips, looked anxiously at the
sky.
Miss Mallow at the typewriter, with a scared face, plied her fingers
faster than ever.
Gregory was the first to speak.
"You must please forgive me," he said gently. "A personal matter; I
forgot myself."
Mrs. Shortman withdrew her gaze from the sky.
"Oh, Mr. Vigil, if I had known----"
Gregory Gregory smiled.
"Don't, don't!" he said; "we've quite frightened poor Miss Mallow!"
Miss Mallow looked round at him, he looked at her, and all three once
more looked at the sky. It was the chief recreation of this little
society.
Gregory worked till nearly three, and walked out to a bun-shop, where he
lunched off a piece of cake and a cup of coffee. He took an omnibus, and
getting on the top, was driven West with a smile on his face and his hat
in his hand. He was thinking of Helen Bellew. It had become a habit
with him to think of her, the best and most beautiful of her sex--a habit
in which he was growing grey, and with which, therefore, he could not
part. And those women who saw him with his uncovered head smiled, and
thought:
'What a fine-looking man!'
But George Pendyce, who saw him from the window of the Stoics' Club,
smiled a different smile; the sight of him was always a little unpleasant
to George.
Nature, who had made Gregory Vigil a man, had long found that he had got
out of her hands, and was living in celibacy, deprived of the comfort of
woman, even of those poor creatures whom he befriended; and Nature, who
cannot bear that man should escape her control, avenged herself through
his nerves and a habit of blood to the head. Extravagance, she said, I
cannot have, and when I made this man I made him quite extravagant
enough. For his temperament (not uncommon in a misty climate) had been
born seven feet high; and as a man cannot add a cubit to his stature, so
neither can he take one off. Gregory could not bear that a yellow man
must always remain a yellow man, but trusted by care and attention some
day to see him white. There lives no mortal who has not a philosophy as
distinct from every other mortal's as his face is different from their
faces; but Gregory believed that philosophers unfortunately alien must
gain in time a likeness to himself if he were careful to tell them often
that they had been mistaken. Other men in this Great Britain had the
same belief.
To Gregory's reforming instinct it was a constant grief that he had been
born refined. A natural delicacy would interfere and mar his noblest
efforts. Hence failures deplored by Mrs. Pendyce to Lady Maiden the
night they danced at Worsted Skeynes.
He left his bus near to the flat where Mrs. Bellow lived; with reverence
he made the tour of the building and back again. He had long fixed a
rule, which he never broke, of seeing her only once a fortnight; but to
pass her windows he went out of his way most days and nights. And having
made this tour, not conscious of having done anything ridiculous, still
smiling, and with his hat on his knee, perhaps really happier because he
had not seen her, was driven East, once more passing George Pendyce in
the bow-window of the Stoics' Club, and once more raising on his face a
jeering smile.
He had been back at his rooms in Buckingham Street half an hour when a
club commissionaire arrived with Mr. Paramor's promised letter.
He opened it hastily.
"THE NELSON CLUB,
"TRAFALGAR SQUARE.
"MY DEAR VIGIL,
"I've just come from seeing your ward. An embarrassing complexion is
lent to affairs by what took place last night. It appears that after
your visit to him yesterday afternoon her husband came up to town, and
made his appearance at her flat about eleven o'clock. He was in a
condition bordering on delirium tremens, and Mrs. Bellew was obliged to
keep him for the night. 'I could not,' she said to me, 'have refused a
dog in such a state.' The visit lasted until this afternoon--in fact,
the man had only just gone when I arrived. It is a piece of irony, of
which I must explain to you the importance. I think I told you that the
law of divorce is based on certain principles. One of these excludes any
forgiveness of offences by the party moving for a divorce. In technical
language, any such forgiveness or overlooking is called condonation, and
it is a complete bar to further action for the time being. The Court is
very jealous of this principle of non-forgiveness, and will regard with
grave suspicion any conduct on the part of the offended party which might
be construed as amounting to condonation. I fear that what your ward
tells me will make it altogether inadvisable to apply for a divorce on
any evidence that may lie in the past. It is too dangerous. In other
words, the Court would almost certainly consider that she has condoned
offences so far. Any further offence, however, will in technical
language 'revive' the past, and under these circumstances, though nothing
can be done at present, there may be hope in the future. After seeing
your ward, I quite appreciate your anxiety in the matter, though I am by
no means sure that you are right in advising this divorce. If you remain
in the same mind, however, I will give the matter my best personal
attention, and my counsel to you is not to worry. This is no matter for
a layman, especially not for one who, like you, judges of things rather
as they ought to be than as they are.
"I am, my dear Vigil,
"Very sincerely yours,
"EDMUND PARAMOR.
"GREGORY VIGIL, ESQ.
"If you want to see me, I shall be at my club all the evening.-E. P."
When Gregory had read this note he walked to the window, and stood
looking out over the lights on the river. His heart beat furiously, his
temples were crimson. He went downstairs, and took a cab to the Nelson
Club.
Mr. Paramor, who was about to dine, invited his visitor to join him.
Gregory shook his head.
"No, thanks," he said; "I don't feel like dining. What is this, Paramor?
Surely there's some mistake? Do you mean to tell me that because she
acted like a Christian to that man she is to be punished for it in this
way?"
Mr. Paramor bit his finger.
"Don't confuse yourself by dragging in Christianity. Christianity has
nothing to do with law."
"You talked of principles," said Gregory--"ecclesiastical"
"Yes, yes; I meant principles imported from the old ecclesiastical
conception of marriage, which held man and wife to be undivorceable. That
conception has been abandoned by the law, but the principles still
haunt----"
"I don't understand."
Mr. Paramor said slowly:
"I don't know that anyone does. It's our usual muddle. But I know this,
Vigil--in such a case as your ward's we must tread very carefully. We
must 'save face,' as the Chinese say. We must pretend we don't want to
bring this divorce, but that we have been so injured that we are obliged
to come forward. If Bellew says nothing, the Judge will have to take
what's put before him. But there's always the Queen's Proctor. I don't
know if you know anything about him?"
"No," said Gregory, "I don't."
"Well, if he can find out anything against our getting this divorce, he
will. It is not my habit to go into Court with a case in which anybody
can find out anything."
"Do you mean to say"
"I mean to say that she must not ask for a divorce merely because she is
miserable, or placed in a position that no woman should be placed in, but
only if she has been offended in certain technical ways; and if--by
condonation, for instance--she has given the Court technical reason for
refusing her a divorce, that divorce will be refused her. To get a
divorce, Vigil, you must be as hard as nails and as wary as a cat. Now
do you understand?"
Gregory did not answer.
Mr. Paramor looked searchingly and rather pityingly in his face.
"It won't do to go for it at present," he said. "Are you still set on
this divorce? I told you in my letter that I am not sure you are right."
"How can you ask me, Paramor? After that man's conduct last night, I am
more than ever set on it."
"Then," said Mr. Paramor, "we must keep a sharp eye on Bellew, and hope
for the best."
Gregory held out his hand.
"You spoke of morality," he said. "I can't tell you how inexpressibly
mean the whole thing seems to me. Goodnight."
And, turning rather quickly, he went out.
His mind was confused and his heart torn. He thought of Helen Bellew as
of the woman dearest to him in the coils of a great slimy serpent, and
the knowledge that each man and woman unhappily married was, whether by
his own, his partner's, or by no fault at all, in the same embrace,
afforded him no comfort whatsoever. It was long before he left the windy
streets to go to his home.
CHAPTER X
AT BLAFARD'S
There comes now and then to the surface of our modern civilisation one of
those great and good men who, unconscious, like all great and good men,
of the goodness and greatness of their work, leave behind a lasting
memorial of themselves before they go bankrupt.
It was so with the founder of the Stoics' Club.
He came to the surface in the year 187-, with nothing in the world but
his clothes and an idea. In a single year he had floated the Stoics'
Club, made ten thousand pounds, lost more, and gone down again.
The Stoics' Club lived after him by reason of the immortal beauty of his
idea. In 1891 it was a strong and corporate body, not perhaps quite so
exclusive as it had been, but, on the whole, as smart and aristocratic as
any club in London, with the exception of that one or two into which
nobody ever got. The idea with which its founder had underpinned the
edifice was, like all great ideas, simple, permanent, and perfect--so
simple, permanent, and perfect that it seemed amazing no one had ever
thought of it before. It was embodied in No. 1 of the members' rules:
"No member of this club shall have any occupation whatsoever."
Hence the name of a club renowned throughout London for the excellence of
its wines and cuisine.
Its situation was in Piccadilly, fronting the Green Park, and through the
many windows of its ground-floor smoking-room the public were privileged
to see at all hours of the day numbers of Stoics in various attitudes
reading the daily papers or gazing out of the window.
Some of them who did not direct companies, grow fruit, or own yachts,
wrote a book, or took an interest in a theatre. The greater part eked
out existence by racing horses, hunting foxes, and shooting birds.
Individuals among them, however, had been known to play the piano, and
take up the Roman Catholic religion. Many explored the same spots of the
Continent year after year at stated seasons. Some belonged to the
Yeomanry; others called themselves barristers; once in a way one painted
a picture or devoted himself to good works. They were, in fact, of all
sorts and temperaments, but their common characteristic was an
independent income, often so settled by Providence that they could not in
any way get rid of it.
But though the principle of no occupation overruled all class
distinctions, the Stoics were mainly derived from the landed gentry. An
instinct that the spirit of the club was safest with persons of this
class guided them in their elections, and eldest sons, who became members
almost as a matter of course, lost no time in putting up their younger
brothers, thereby keeping the wine as pure as might be, and preserving
that fine old country-house flavour which is nowhere so appreciated as in
London.
After seeing Gregory pass on the top of a bus, George Pendyce went into
the card-room, and as it was still empty, set to contemplation of the
pictures on the walls. They were effigies of all those members of the
Stoics' Club who from time to time had come under the notice of a
celebrated caricaturist in a celebrated society paper. Whenever a Stoic
appeared, he was at once cut out, framed, glassed, and hung alongside his
fellows in this room. And George moved from one to another till he came
to the last. It was himself. He was represented in very perfectly cut
clothes, with slightly crooked elbows, and race-glasses slung across him.
His head, disproportionately large, was surmounted by a black billycock
hat with a very flat brim. The artist had thought long and carefully
over the face. The lips and cheeks and chin were moulded so as to convey
a feeling of the unimaginative joy of life, but to their shape and
complexion was imparted a suggestion of obstinacy and choler. To the
eyes was given a glazed look, and between them set a little line, as
though their owner were thinking:
'Hard work, hard work! Noblesse oblige. I must keep it going!'
Underneath was written: "The Ambler."
George stood long looking at the apotheosis of his fame. His star was
high in the heavens. With the eye of his mind he saw a long procession
of turf triumphs, a long vista of days and nights, and in them, round
them, of them--Helen Bellow; and by an odd coincidence, as he stood
there, the artist's glazed look came over his eyes, the little line
sprang up between them.
He turned at the sound of voices and sank into a chair. To have been
caught thus gazing at himself would have jarred on his sense of what was
right.
It was twenty minutes past seven, when, in evening dress, he left the
club, and took a shilling's-worth to Buckingham Gate. Here he dismissed
his cab, and turned up the large fur collar of his coat. Between the brim
of his opera-hat and the edge of that collar nothing but his eyes were
visible. He waited, compressing his lips, scrutinising each hansom that
went by. In the soft glow of one coming fast he saw a hand raised to the
trap. The cab stopped; George stepped out of the shadow and got in. The
cab went on, and Mrs. Bellew's arm was pressed against his own.
It was their simple formula for arriving at a restaurant together.
In the third of several little rooms, where the lights were shaded, they
sat down at a table in a corner, facing each a wall, and, underneath, her
shoe stole out along the floor and touched his patent leather boot. In
their eyes, for all their would-be wariness, a light smouldered which
would not be put out. An habitue, sipping claret at a table across the
little room, watched them in a mirror, and there came into his old heart
a glow of warmth, half ache, half sympathy; a smile of understanding
stirred the crow's-feet round his eyes. Its sweetness ebbed, and left a
little grin about his shaven lips. Behind the archway in the
neighbouring room two waiters met, and in their nods and glances was that
same unconscious sympathy, the same conscious grin. And the old habitue
thought:
'How long will it last?'.... "Waiter, some coffee and my bill!"
He had meant to go to the play, but he lingered instead to look at Mrs.
Bellew's white shoulders and bright eyes in the kindly mirror. And he
thought:
'Young days at present. Ah, young days!'....
"Waiter, a Benedictine!" And hearing her laugh, O his old heart ached.
'No one,' he thought, 'will ever laugh like that for me again!'....
"Here, waiter, how's this? You've charged me for an ice!" But when the
waiter had gone he glanced back into the mirror, and saw them clink their
glasses filled with golden bubbling wine, and he thought: 'Wish you good
luck! For a flash of those teeth, my dear, I'd give----'
But his eyes fell on the paper flowers adorning his little table--yellow
and red and green; hard, lifeless, tawdry. He saw them suddenly as they
were, with the dregs of wine in his glass, the spill of gravy on the
cloth, the ruin of the nuts that he had eaten. Wheezing and coughing,
'This place is not what it was,' he thought; 'I shan't come here again!'
He struggled into his coat to go, but he looked once more in the mirror,
and met their eyes resting on himself. In them he read the careless pity
of the young for the old. His eyes answered the reflection of their
eyes, 'Wait, wait! It is young days yet! I wish you no harm, my dears!'
and limping-for one of his legs was lame--he went away.
But George and his partner sat on, and with every glass of wine the light
in their eyes grew brighter. For who was there now in the room to mind?
Not a living soul! Only a tall, dark young waiter, a little cross-eyed,
who was in consumption; only the little wine-waiter, with a pallid face,
and a look as if he suffered. And the whole world seemed of the colour
of the wine they had been drinking; but they talked of indifferent
things, and only their eyes, bemused and shining, really spoke. The dark
young waiter stood apart, unmoving, and his cross-eyed glance, fixed on
her shoulders, had all unconsciously the longing of a saint in some holy
picture. Unseen, behind the serving screen, the little wine-waiter
poured out and drank a glass from a derelict bottle. Through a chink of
the red blinds an eye peered in from the chill outside, staring and
curious, till its owner passed on in the cold.
It was long after nine when they rose. The dark young waiter laid her
cloak upon her with adoring hands. She looked back at him, and in her
eyes was an infinite indulgence. 'God knows,' she seemed to say, 'if I
could make you happy as well, I would. Why should one suffer? Life is
strong and good!'
The young waiter's cross-eyed glance fell before her, and he bowed above
the money in his hand. Quickly before them the little wine-waiter
hurried to the door, his suffering face screwed into one long smile.
"Good-night, madam; good-night, sir. Thank you very much!"
And he, too, remained bowed over his hand, and his smile relaxed.
But in the cab George's arm stole round her underneath the cloak, and
they were borne on in the stream of hurrying hansoms, carrying couples
like themselves, cut off from all but each other's eyes, from all but
each other's touch; and with their eyes turned in the half-dark they
spoke together in low tones.
PART II
CHAPTER I
GREGORY REOPENS THE CAMPAIGN
At one end of the walled garden which Mr. Pendyce had formed in imitation
of that at dear old Strathbegally, was a virgin orchard of pear and
cherry trees. They blossomed early, and by the end of the third week in
April the last of the cherries had broken into flower. In the long grass,
underneath, a wealth of daffodils, jonquils, and narcissus, came up year
after year, and sunned their yellow stars in the light which dappled
through the blossom.
And here Mrs. Pendyce would come, tan gauntlets on her hands, and stand,
her face a little flushed with stooping, as though the sight of all that
bloom was restful. It was due to her that these old trees escaped year
after year the pruning and improvements which the genius of the Squire
would otherwise have applied. She had been brought up in an old
Totteridge tradition that fruit-trees should be left to themselves, while
her husband, possessed of a grasp of the subject not more than usually
behind the times, was all for newer methods. She had fought for those
trees. They were as yet the only things she had fought for in her
married life, and Horace Pendyce still remembered with a discomfort
robbed by time of poignancy how she had stood with her back to their
bedroom door and said, "If you cut those poor trees, Horace, I won't live
here!" He had at once expressed his determination to have them pruned;
but, having put off the action for a day or two, the trees still stood
unpruned thirty-three years later. He had even come to feel rather proud
of the fact that they continued to bear fruit, and would speak of them
thus: "Queer fancy of my wife's, never been cut. And yet, remarkable
thing, they do better than any of the others!"
This spring, when all was so forward, and the cuckoos already in full
song, when the scent of young larches in the New Plantation (planted the
year of George's birth) was in the air like the perfume of celestial
lemons, she came to the orchard more than usual, and her spirit felt the
stirring, the old, half-painful yearning for she knew not what, that she
had felt so often in her first years at Worsted Skeynes. And sitting
there on a green-painted seat under the largest of the cherry-trees, she
thought even more than her wont of George, as though her son's spirit,
vibrating in its first real passion, were calling to her for sympathy.
He had been down so little all that winter, twice for a couple of days'
shooting, once for a week-end, when she had thought him looking thinner
and rather worn. He had missed Christmas for the first time. With
infinite precaution she had asked him casually if he had seen Helen
Bellew, and he had answered, "Oh yes, I see her once in a way!"
Secretly all through the winter she consulted the Times newspaper for
mention of George's horse, and was disappointed not to find any. One
day, however, in February, discovering him absolutely at the head of
several lists of horses with figures after them, she wrote off at once
with a joyful heart. Of five lists in which the Ambler's name appeared,
there was only one in which he was second. George's answer came in the
course of a week or so.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,
"What you saw were the weights for the Spring Handicaps. They've simply
done me out of everything. In great haste,
"Your affectionate son,
"GEORGE PENDYCE."
As the spring approached, the vision of her independent visit to London,
which had sustained her throughout the winter, having performed its
annual function, grew mistier and mistier, and at last faded away. She
ceased even to dream of it, as though it had never been, nor did George
remind her, and as usual, she ceased even to wonder whether he would
remind her. She thought instead of the season visit, and its scurry of
parties, with a sort of languid fluttering. For Worsted Skeynes, and all
that Worsted Skeynes stood for, was like a heavy horseman guiding her
with iron hands along a narrow lane; she dreamed of throwing him in the
open, but the open she never reached.
She woke at seven with her tea, and from seven to eight made little notes
on tablets, while on his back Mr. Pendyce snored lightly. She rose at
eight. At nine she poured out coffee. From half-past nine to ten she
attended to the housekeeper and her birds. From ten to eleven she
attended to the gardener and her dress. From eleven to twelve she wrote
invitations to persons for whom she did not care, and acceptances to
persons who did not care for her; she drew out also and placed in due
sequence cheques for Mr. Pendyce's signature; and secured receipts,
carefully docketed on the back, within an elastic band; as a rule, also,
she received a visit from Mrs. Husell Barter. From twelve to one she
walked with her and "the dear dogs" to the village, where she stood
hesitatingly in the cottage doors of persons who were shy of her. From
half-past one to two she lunched. From two to three she rested on a sofa
in the white morning-room with the newspaper in her hand, trying to read
the Parliamentary debate, and thinking of other things. From three to
half-past four she went to her dear flowers, from whom she was liable to
be summoned at any moment by the arrival of callers; or, getting into the
carriage, was driven to some neighbour's mansion, where she sat for half
an hour and came away. At half-past four she poured out tea. At five
she knitted a tie, or socks, for George or Gerald, and listened with a
gentle smile to what was going on. From six to seven she received from
the Squire his impressions of Parliament and things at large. From seven
to seven-thirty she changed to a black low dress, with old lace about the
neck. At seven-thirty she dined. At a quarter to nine she listened to
Norah playing two waltzes of Chopin's, and a piece called "Serenade du
Printemps" by Baff, and to Bee singing "The Mikado," or the "Saucy Girl"
From nine to ten thirty she played a game called piquet, which her father
had taught her, if she could get anyone with whom to play; but as this
was seldom, she played as a rule patience by herself. At ten-thirty she
went to bed. At eleven-thirty punctually the Squire woke her. At one
o'clock she went to sleep. On Mondays she wrote out in her clear
Totteridge hand, with its fine straight strokes, a list of library books,
made up without distinction of all that were recommended in the Ladies'
Paper that came weekly to Worsted Skeynes. Periodically Mr. Pendyce
would hand her a list of his own, compiled out of the Times and the Field
in the privacy of his study; this she sent too.
Thus was the household supplied with literature unerringly adapted to its
needs; nor was it possible for any undesirable book to find its way into
the house--not that this would have mattered much to Mrs. Pendyce, for as
she often said with gentle regret, "My dear, I have no time to read."
This afternoon it was so warm that the bees were all around among the
blossoms, and two thrushes, who had built in a yew-tree that watched over
the Scotch garden, were in a violent flutter because one of their chicks
had fallen out of the nest. The mother bird, at the edge of the long
orchard grass, was silent, trying by example to still the tiny creature's
cheeping, lest it might attract some large or human thing.
Mrs. Pendyce, sitting under the oldest cherry-tree, looked for the sound,
and when she had located it, picked up the baby bird, and, as she knew
the whereabouts of all the nests, put it back into its cradle, to the
loud terror and grief of the parent birds. She went back to the bench
and sat down again.
She had in her soul something of the terror of the mother thrush. The
Maidens had been paying the call that preceded their annual migration to
town, and the peculiar glow which Lady Maiden had the power of raising
had not yet left her cheeks. True, she had the comfort of the thought,
'Ellen Maiden is so bourgeoise,' but to-day it did not still her heart.
Accompanied by one pale daughter who never left her, and two pale dogs
forced to run all the way, now lying under the carriage with their
tongues out, Lady Maiden had come and stayed full time; and for
three-quarters of that time she had seemed, as it were, labouring under a
sense of duty unfulfilled; for the remaining quarter Mrs. Pendyce had
laboured under a sense of duty fulfilled.
"My dear," Lady Maiden had said, having told the pale daughter to go into
the conservatory, "I'm the last person in the world to repeat gossip, as
you know; but I think it's only right to tell you that I've been hearing
things. You see, my boy Fred" (who would ultimately become Sir Frederick
Maiden) "belongs to the same club as your son George--the Stoics. All
young men belong there of course-I mean, if they're anybody. I'm sorry
to say there's no doubt about it; your son has been seen dining
at--perhaps I ought not to mention the name--Blafard's, with Mrs. Bellew.
I dare say you don't know what sort of a place Blafard's is--a lot of
little rooms where people go when they don't want to be seen. I've never
been there, of course; but I can imagine it perfectly. And not once, but
frequently. I thought I would speak to you, because I do think it's so
scandalous of her in her position."
An azalea in a blue and white pot had stood between them, and in this
plant Mrs. Pendyce buried her cheeks and eyes; but when she raised her
face her eyebrows were lifted to their utmost limit, her lips trembled
with anger.
"Oh," she said, "didn't you know? There's nothing in that; it's the
latest thing!"
For a moment Lady Maiden wavered, then duskily flushed; her temperament
and principles had recovered themselves.
"If that," she said with some dignity, "is the latest thing, I think it
is quite time we were back in town."
She rose, and as she rose, such was her unfortunate conformation, it
flashed through Mrs. Pendyce's mind 'Why was I afraid? She's only--' And
then as quickly: 'Poor woman! how can she help her legs being short?'
But when she was gone, side by side with the pale daughter, the pale dogs
once more running behind the carriage, Margery Pendyce put her hand to
her heart.
And out here amongst the bees and blossom, where the blackbirds were
improving each minute their new songs, and the air was so fainting sweet
with scents, her heart would not be stilled, but throbbed as though
danger were coming on herself; and she saw her son as a little boy again
in a dirty holland suit with a straw hat down the back of his neck,
flushed and sturdy, as he came to her from some adventure.
And suddenly a gush of emotion from deep within her heart and the heart
of the spring day, a sense of being severed from him by a great,
remorseless power, came over her; and taking out a tiny embroidered
handkerchief, she wept. Round her the bees hummed carelessly, the
blossom dropped, the dappled sunlight covered her with a pattern as of
her own fine lace. From the home farm came the lowing of the cows on
their way to milking, and, strange sound in that well-ordered home, a
distant piping on a penny flute ....
"Mother, Mother, Mo-o-ther!"
Mrs. Pendyce passed her handkerchief across her eyes, and instinctively
obeying the laws of breeding, her face lost all trace of its emotion.
She waited, crumpling the tiny handkerchief in her gauntleted hand.
"Mother! Oh, there you are! Here's Gregory Vigil!"
Norah, a fox-terrier on either side, was coming down the path; behind
her, unhatted, showed Gregory's sanguine face between his wings of
grizzled hair.
"I suppose you're going to talk. I'm going over to the Rectory. Ta-to!"
And preceded by her dogs, Norah went on.
Mrs. Pendyce put out her hand.
"Well, Grig," she said, "this is a surprise."
Gregory seated himself beside her on the bench.
"I've brought you this," he said. "I want you to look at it before I
answer."
Mrs. Pendyce, who vaguely felt that he would want her to see things as he
was seeing them, took a letter from him with a sinking heart.
"Private.
"LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,
"April 21, 1892.
"MY DEAR VIGIL,
"I have now secured such evidence as should warrant our instituting a
suit. I've written your ward to that effect, and am awaiting her
instructions. Unfortunately, we have no act of cruelty, and I've been
obliged to draw her attention to the fact that, should her husband defend
the suit, it will be very difficult to get the Court to accept their
separation in the light of desertion on his part--difficult indeed, even
if he doesn't defend the suit. In divorce cases one has to remember that
what has to be kept out is often more important than what has to be got
in, and it would be useful to know, therefore, whether there is
likelihood of opposition. I do not advise any direct approaching of the
husband, but if you are possessed of the information you might let me
know. I hate humbug, my dear Vigil, and I hate anything underhand, but
divorce is always a dirty business, and while the law is shaped as at
present, and the linen washed in public, it will remain impossible for
anyone, guilty or innocent, and even for us lawyers, to avoid soiling our
hands in one way or another. I regret it as much as you do.
"There is a new man writing verse in the Tertiary, some of it quite
first-rate. You might look at the last number. My blossom this year is
magnificent.
"With kind regards, I am,
"Very sincerely yours,
"EDMUND PARAMOR.
"Gregory Vigil, Esq."
Mrs. Pendyce dropped the letter in her lap, and looked at her cousin.
"He was at Harrow with Horace. I do like him. He is one of the very
nicest men I know."
It was clear that she was trying to gain time.
Gregory began pacing up and down.
"Paramor is a man for whom I have the highest respect. I would trust him
before anyone."
It was clear that he, too, was trying to gain time.
"Oh, mind my daffodils, please!"
Gregory went down on his knees, and raised the bloom that he had trodden
on. He then offered it to Mrs. Pendyce. The action was one to which she
was so unaccustomed that it struck her as slightly ridiculous.
"My dear Grig, you'll get rheumatism, and spoil that nice suit; the grass
comes off so terribly!"
Gregory got up, and looked shamefacedly at his knees.
"The knee is not what it used to be," he said.
Mrs. Pendyce smiled.
"You should keep your knees for Helen Bellow, Grig. I was always five
years older than you."
Gregory rumpled up his hair.
"Kneeling's out of fashion, but I thought in the country you wouldn't
mind!"
"You don't notice things, dear Grig. In the country it's still more out
of fashion. You wouldn't find a woman within thirty miles of here who
would like a man to kneel to her. We've lost the habit. She would think
she was being made fun of. We soon grow out of vanity!"
"In London," said Gregory, "I hear all women intend to be men; but in the
country I thought----"
"In the country, Grig, all women would like to be men, but they don't
dare to try. They trot behind."
As if she had been guilty of thoughts too insightful, Mrs. Pendyce
blushed.
Gregory broke out suddenly:
"I can't bear to think of women like that!"
Again Mrs. Pendyce smiled.
"You see, Grig dear, you are not married."
"I detest the idea that marriage changes our views, Margery; I loathe
it."
"Mind my daffodils!" murmured Mrs. Pendyce.
She was thinking all the time: 'That dreadful letter! What am I to do?'
And as though he knew her thoughts, Gregory said:
"I shall assume that Bellew will not defend the case. If he has a spark
of chivalry in him he will be only too glad to see her free. I will never
believe that any man could be such a soulless clod as to wish to keep her
bound. I don't pretend to understand the law, but it seems to me that
there's only one way for a man to act and after all Bellew's a gentleman.
You'll see that he will act like one!"
Mrs. Pendyce looked at the daffodil in her lap.
"I have only seen him three or four times, but it seemed to me, Grig,
that he was a man who might act in one way today and another tomorrow.
He is so very different from all the men about here."
"When it comes to the deep things of life," said Gregory, "one man is
much as another. Is there any man you know who would be so lacking in
chivalry as to refuse in these circumstances?"
Mrs. Pendyce looked at him with a confused expression--wonder,
admiration, irony, and even fear, struggled in her eyes.
"I can think of dozens."
Gregory clutched his forehead.
"Margery," he said, "I hate your cynicism. I don't know where you get it
from."
"I'm so sorry; I didn't mean to be cynical--I didn't, really. I only
spoke from what I've seen."
"Seen?" said Gregory. "If I were to go by what I saw daily, hourly, in
London in the course of my work I should commit suicide within a week."
"But what else can one go by?"
Without answering, Gregory walked to the edge of the orchard, and stood
gazing over the Scotch garden, with his face a little tilted towards the
sky. Mrs. Pendyce felt he was grieving that she failed to see whatever
it was he saw up there, and she was sorry. He came back, and said:
"We won't discuss it any more."
Very dubiously she heard those words, but as she could not express the
anxiety and doubt torturing her soul, she told him tea was ready. But
Gregory would not come in just yet out of the sun.
In the drawing-room Beatrix was already giving tea to young Tharp and the
Reverend Husell Barter. And the sound of these well-known voices
restored to Mrs. Pendyce something of her tranquillity. The Rector came
towards her at once with a teacup in his hand.
"My wife has got a headache," he said. "She wanted to come over with me,
but I made her lie down. Nothing like lying down for a headache. We
expect it in June, you know. Let me get you your tea."
Mrs. Pendyce, already aware even to the day of what he expected in June,
sat down, and looked at Mr. Barter with a slight feeling of surprise. He
was really a very good fellow; it was nice of him to make his wife lie
down! She thought his broad, red-brown face, with its protecting, not
unhumorous, lower lip, looked very friendly. Roy, the Skye terrier at her
feet, was smelling at the reverend gentleman's legs with a slow movement
of his tail.
"The old dog likes me," said the Rector; "they know a dog-lover when they
see one wonderful creatures, dogs! I'm sometimes tempted to think they
may have souls!"
Mrs. Pendyce answered:
"Horace says he's getting too old."
The dog looked up in her face, and her lip quivered.
The Rector laughed.
"Don't you worry about that; there's plenty of life in him." And he
added unexpectedly: "I couldn't bear to put a dog away, the friend of
man. No, no; let Nature see to that."
Over at the piano Bee and young Tharp were turning the pages of the
"Saucy Girl"; the room was full of the scent of azaleas; and Mr. Barter,
astride of a gilt chair, looked almost sympathetic, gazing tenderly at
the old Skye.
Mrs. Pendyce felt a sudden yearning to free her mind, a sudden longing to
ask a man's advice.
"Oh, Mr. Barter," she said, "my cousin, Gregory Vigil, has just brought
me some news; it is confidential, please. Helen Bellew is going to sue
for a divorce. I wanted to ask you whether you could tell me----"
Looking in the Rector's face, she stopped.
"A divorce! H'm! Really!"
A chill of terror came over Mrs. Pendyce.
"Of course you will not mention it to anyone, not even to Horace. It has
nothing to do with us."
Mr. Barter bowed; his face wore the expression it so often wore in school
on Sunday mornings.
"H'm!" he said again.
It flashed through Mrs. Pendyce that this man with the heavy jowl and
menacing eyes, who sat so square on that flimsy chair, knew something.
It was as though he had answered:
"This is not a matter for women; you will be good enough to leave it to
me."
With the exception of those few words of Lady Malden's, and the
recollection of George's face when he had said, "Oh yes, I see her now
and then," she had no evidence, no knowledge, nothing to go on; but she
knew from some instinctive source that her son was Mrs. Bellew's lover.
So, with terror and a strange hope, she saw Gregory entering the room.
"Perhaps," she thought, "he will make Grig stop it."
She poured out Gregory's tea, followed Bee and Cecil Tharp into the
conservatory, and left the two men together:
CHAPTER II
CONTINUED INFLUENCE OF THE REVEREND HUSSELL BARTER
To understand and sympathise with the feelings and action of the Rector
of Worsted Skeynes, one must consider his origin and the circumstances of
his life.
The second son of an old Suffolk family, he had followed the routine of
his house, and having passed at Oxford through certain examinations, had
been certificated at the age of twenty-four as a man fitted to impart to
persons of both sexes rules of life and conduct after which they had been
groping for twice or thrice that number of years. His character, never
at any time undecided, was by this fortunate circumstance crystallised
and rendered immune from the necessity for self-search and spiritual
struggle incidental to his neighbours. Since he was a man neither below
nor above the average, it did not occur to him to criticise or place
himself in opposition to a system which had gone on so long and was about
to do him so much good. Like all average men, he was a believer in
authority, and none the less because authority placed a large portion of
itself in his hands. It would, indeed, have been unwarrantable to expect
a man of his birth, breeding, and education to question the machine of
which he was himself a wheel.
He had dropped, therefore, at the age of twenty-six, insensibly, on the
death of an uncle, into the family living at Worsted Skeynes. He had
been there ever since. It was a constant and natural grief to him that
on his death the living would go neither to his eldest nor his second
son, but to the second son of his elder brother, the Squire. At the age
of twenty-seven he had married Miss Rose Twining, the fifth daughter of a
Huntingdonshire parson, and in less than eighteen years begotten ten
children, and was expecting the eleventh, all healthy and hearty like him
self. A family group hung over the fireplace in the study, under the
framed and illuminated text, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," which he
had chosen as his motto in the first year of his cure, and never seen any
reason to change. In that family group Mr. Barter sat in the centre with
his dog between his legs; his wife stood behind him, and on both sides
the children spread out like the wings of a fan or butterfly. The bills
of their schooling were beginning to weigh rather heavily, and he
complained a good deal; but in principle he still approved of the habit
into which he had got, and his wife never complained of anything.
The study was furnished with studious simplicity; many a boy had been,
not unkindly, caned there, and in one place the old Turkey carpet was
rotted away, but whether by their tears or by their knees, not even Mr.
Barter knew. In a cabinet on one side of the fire he kept all his
religious books, many of them well worn; in a cabinet on the other side
he kept his bats, to which he was constantly attending; a fishing-rod and
a gun-case stood modestly in a corner. The archway between the drawers of
his writing-table held a mat for his bulldog, a prize animal, wont to lie
there and guard his master's legs when he was writing his sermons. Like
those of his dog, the Rector's good points were the old English virtues
of obstinacy, courage, intolerance, and humour; his bad points, owing to
the circumstances of his life, had never been brought to his notice.
When, therefore, he found himself alone with Gregory Vigil, he approached
him as one dog will approach another, and came at once to the matter in
hand.
"It's some time since I had the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Vigil," he
said. "Mrs. Pendyce has been giving me in confidence the news you've
brought down. I'm bound to tell you at once that I'm surprised."
Gregory made a little movement of recoil, as though his delicacy had
received a shock.
"Indeed!" he said, with a sort of quivering coldness.
The Rector, quick to note opposition, repeated emphatically:
"More than surprised; in fact, I think there must be some mistake."
"Indeed?" said Gregory again.
A change came over Mr. Barter's face. It had been grave, but was now
heavy and threatening.
"I have to say to you," he said, "that somehow--somehow, this divorce
must be put a stop to."
Gregory flushed painfully.
"On what grounds? I am not aware that my ward is a parishioner of yours,
Mr. Barter, or that if she were----"
The Rector closed in on him, his head thrust forward, his lower lip
projecting.
"If she were doing her duty," he said, "she would be. I'm not
considering her--I'm considering her husband; he is a parishioner of
mine, and I say this divorce must be stopped."
Gregory retreated no longer.
"On what grounds?" he said again, trembling all over.
"I've no wish to enter into particulars," said Mr. Barter, "but if you
force me to, I shall not hesitate."
"I regret that I must," answered Gregory.
"Without mentioning names, then, I say that she is not a fit person to
bring a suit for divorce!"
"You say that?" said Gregory. "You----"
He could not go on.
"You will not move me, Mr. Vigil," said the Rector, with a grim little
smile. "I have my duty to do."
Gregory recovered possession of himself with an effort.
"You have said that which no one but a clergyman could say with
impunity," he said freezingly. "Be so good as to explain yourself."
"My explanation," said Mr. Barter, "is what I have seen with my own
eyes."
He raised those eyes to Gregory. Their pupils were contracted to
pin-points, the light-grey irises around had a sort of swimming glitter,
and round these again the whites were injected with blood.
"If you must know, with my own eyes I've seen her in that very
conservatory over there kissing a man."
Gregory threw up his hand.
"How dare you!" he whispered.
Again Mr. Barter's humorous under-lip shot out.
"I dare a good deal more than that, Mr. Vigil," he said, "as you will
find; and I say this to you--stop this divorce, or I'll stop it myself!"
Gregory turned to the window. When he came back he was outwardly calm.
"You have been guilty of indelicacy," he said. "Continue in your
delusion, think what you like, do what you like. The matter will go on.
Good-evening, sir."
And turning on his heel, he left the room.
Mr. Barter stepped forward. The words, "You have been guilty of
indelicacy," whirled round his brain till every blood vessel in his face
and neck was swollen to bursting, and with a hoarse sound like that of an
animal in pain he pursued Gregory to the door. It was shut in his face.
And since on taking Orders he had abandoned for ever the use of bad
language, he was very near an apoplectic fit. Suddenly he became aware
that Mrs. Pendyce was looking at him from the conservatory door. Her
face was painfully white, her eyebrows lifted, and before that look Mr.
Barter recovered a measure of self-possession.
"Is anything the matter, Mr. Barter?"
The Rector smiled grimly.
"Nothing, nothing," he said. "I must ask you to excuse me, that's all.
I've a parish matter to attend to."
When he found himself in the drive, the feeling of vertigo and
suffocation passed, but left him unrelieved. He had, in fact, happened
on one of those psychological moments which enable a man's true nature to
show itself. Accustomed to say of himself bluffly, "Yes, yes; I've a hot
temper, soon over," he had never, owing to the autocracy of his position,
had a chance of knowing the tenacity of his soul. So accustomed and so
able for many years to vent displeasure at once, he did not himself know
the wealth of his old English spirit, did not know of what an ugly grip
he was capable. He did not even know it at this minute, conscious only
of a sort of black wonder at this monstrous conduct to a man in his
position, doing his simple duty. The more he reflected, the more
intolerable did it seem that a woman like this Mrs. Bellew should have
the impudence to invoke the law of the land in her favour a woman who was
no better than a common baggage--a woman he had seen kissing George
Pendyce. To have suggested to Mr. Barter that there was something
pathetic in this black wonder of his, pathetic in the spectacle of his
little soul delivering its little judgments, stumbling its little way
along with such blind certainty under the huge heavens, amongst millions
of organisms as important as itself, would have astounded him; and with
every step he took the blacker became his wonder, the more fixed his
determination to permit no such abuse of morality, no such disregard of
Hussell Barter.
"You have been guilty of indelicacy!" This indictment had a wriggling
sting, and lost no venom from the fact that he could in no wise have
perceived where the indelicacy of his conduct lay. But he did not try to
perceive it. Against himself, clergyman and gentleman, the monstrosity
of the charge was clear. This was a point of morality. He felt no anger
against George; it was the woman that excited his just wrath. For so
long he had been absolute among women, with the power, as it were, over
them of life and death. This was flat immorality! He had never approved
of her leaving her husband; he had never approved of her at all! He
turned his steps towards the Firs.
From above the hedges the sleepy cows looked down; a yaffle laughed a
field or two away; in the sycamores, which had come out before their
time, the bees hummed. Under the smile of the spring the innumerable
life of the fields went carelessly on around that square black figure
ploughing along the lane with head bent down under a wide-brimmed hat.
George Pendyce, in a fly drawn by an old grey horse, the only vehicle
that frequented the station at Worsted Skeynes, passed him in the lane,
and leaned back to avoid observation. He had not forgotten the tone of
the Rector's voice in the smoking-room on the night of the dance. George
was a man who could remember as well as another. In the corner of the
old fly, that rattled and smelled of stables and stale tobacco, he fixed
his moody eyes on the driver's back and the ears of the old grey horse,
and never stirred till they set him down at the hall door.
He went at once to his room, sending word that he had come for the night.
His mother heard the news with feelings of joy and dread, and she dressed
quickly for dinner, that she might see him the sooner. The Squire came
into her room just as she was going down. He had been engaged all day at
Sessions, and was in one of the moods of apprehension as to the future
which but seldom came over him.
"Why didn't you keep Vigil to dinner?" he said. "I could have given him
things for the night. I wanted to talk to him about insuring my life; he
knows, about that. There'll be a lot of money wanted, to pay my
death-duties. And if the Radicals get in I shouldn't be surprised if
they put them up fifty per cent."
"I wanted to keep him," said Mrs. Pendyce, "but he went away without
saying good-bye."
"He's an odd fellow!"
For some moments Mr. Pendyce made reflections on this breach of manners.
He had a nice standard of conduct in all social affairs.
"I'm having trouble with that man Peacock again. He's the most
pig-headed----What are you in such a hurry for, Margery?"
"George is here!"
"George? Well, I suppose he can wait till dinner. I have a lot of
things I want to tell you about. We had a case of arson to-day. Old
Quarryman was away, and I was in the chair. It was that fellow Woodford
that we convicted for poaching--a very gross case. And this is what he
does when he comes out. They tried to prove insanity. It's the rankest
case of revenge that ever came before me. We committed him, of course.
He'll get a swinging sentence. Of all dreadful crimes, arson is the
most----"
Mr. Pendyce could find no word to characterise his opinion of this
offence, and drawing his breath between his teeth, passed into his
dressing-room. Mrs. Pendyce hastened quietly out, and went to her son's
room. She found George in his shirtsleeves, inserting the links of his
cuffs.
"Let me do that for you, my dear boy! How dreadfully they starch your
cuffs! It is so nice to do something for you sometimes!"
George answered her:
"Well, Mother, and how have you been?"
Over Mrs. Pendyce's face came a look half sorrowful, half arch, but
wholly pathetic. 'What! is it beginning already? Oh, don't put me away
from you!' she seemed to say.
"Very well, thank you, dear. And you?"
George did not meet her eyes.
"So-so," he said. "I took rather a nasty knock over the 'City' last
week."
"Is that a race?" asked Mrs. Pendyce.
And by some secret process she knew that he had hurried out that piece of
bad news to divert her attention from another subject, for George had
never been a "crybaby."
She sat down on the edge of the sofa, and though the gong was about to
sound, incited him to dawdle and stay with her.
"And have you any other news, dear? It seems such an age since we've
seen you. I think I've told you all our budget in my letters. You know
there's going to be another event at the Rectory?"
"Another? I passed Barter on the way up. I thought he looked a bit
blue."
A look of pain shot into Mrs. Pendyce's eyes.
"Oh, I'm afraid that couldn't have been the reason, dear." And she
stopped, but to still her own fears hurried on again. "If I'd known
you'd been coming, I'd have kept Cecil Tharp. Vic has had such dear
little puppies. Would you like one? They've all got that nice black
smudge round the eye."
She was watching him as only a mother can watch-stealthily, minutely,
longingly, every little movement, every little change of his face, and
more than all, that fixed something behind which showed the abiding
temper and condition of his heart.
'Something is making him unhappy,' she thought. 'He is changed since I
saw him last, and I can't get at it. I seem to be so far from him--so
far!'
And somehow she knew he had come down this evening because he was lonely
and unhappy, and instinct had made him turn to her.
But she knew that trying to get nearer would only make him put her
farther off, and she could not bear this, so she asked him nothing, and
bent all her strength on hiding from him the pain she felt.
She went downstairs with her arm in his, and leaned very heavily on it,
as though again trying to get close to him, and forget the feeling she
had had all that winter--the feeling of being barred away, the feeling of
secrecy and restraint.
Mr. Pendyce and the two girls were in the drawing-room.
"Well, George," said the Squire dryly, "I'm glad you've come. How you
can stick in London at this time of year! Now you're down you'd better
stay a couple of days. I want to take you round the estate; you know
nothing about anything. I might die at any moment, for all you can tell.
Just make up your mind to stay."
George gave him a moody look.
"Sorry," he said; "I've got an engagement in town."
Mr. Pendyce rose and stood with his back to the fire.
"That's it," he said: "I ask you to do a simple thing for your own
good--and--you've got an engagement. It's always like that, and your
mother backs you up. Bee, go and play me something."
The Squire could not bear being played to, but it was the only command
likely to be obeyed that came into his head.
The absence of guests made little difference to a ceremony esteemed at
Worsted Skeynes the crowning blessing of the day. The courses, however,
were limited to seven, and champagne was not drunk. The Squire drank a
glass or so of claret, for, as he said, "My dear old father took his
bottle of port every night of his life, and it never gave him a twinge.
If I were to go on at that rate it would kill me in a year."
His daughters drank water. Mrs. Pendyce, cherishing a secret preference
for champagne, drank sparingly of a Spanish burgundy, procured for her by
Mr. Pendyce at a very reasonable price, and corked between meals with a
special cork. She offered it to George.
"Try some of my burgundy, dear; it's so nice."
But George refused and asked for whisky-and-soda, glancing at the butler,
who brought it in a very yellow state.
Under the influence of dinner the Squire recovered equanimity, though he
still dwelt somewhat sadly on the future.
"You young fellows," he said, with a friendly look at George, "are such
individualists. You make a business of enjoying yourselves. With your
piquet and your racing and your billiards and what not, you'll be used up
before you're fifty. You don't let your imaginations work. A green old
age ought to be your ideal, instead of which it seems to be a green
youth. Ha!" Mr. Pendyce looked at his daughters till they said:
"Oh, Father, how can you!"
Norah, who had the more character of the two, added:
"Isn't Father rather dreadful, Mother?"
But Mrs. Pendyce was looking at her son. She had longed so many evenings
to see him sitting there.
"We'll have a game of piquet to-night, George."
George looked up and nodded with a glum smile.
On the thick, soft carpet round the table the butler and second footman
moved. The light of the wax candles fell lustrous and subdued on the
silver and fruit and flowers, on the girls' white necks, on George's
well-coloured face and glossy shirt-front, gleamed in the jewels on his
mother's long white fingers, showed off the Squire's erect and still
spruce figure; the air was languorously sweet with the perfume of azaleas
and narcissus bloom. Bee, with soft eyes, was thinking of young Tharp,
who to-day had told her that he loved her, and wondering if father would
object. Her mother was thinking of George, stealing timid glances at his
moody face. There was no sound save the tinkle of forks and the voices
of Norah and the Squire, talking of little things. Outside, through the
long opened windows, was the still, wide country; the full moon, tinted
apricot and figured like a coin, hung above the cedar-trees, and by her
light the whispering stretches of the silent fields lay half enchanted,
half asleep, and all beyond that little ring of moonshine, unfathomed and
unknown, was darkness--a great darkness wrapping from their eyes the
restless world.
CHAPTER III
THE SINISTER NIGHT
On the day of the big race at Kempton Park, in which the Ambler, starting
favourite, was left at the post, George Pendyce had just put his
latch-key in the door of the room he had taken near Mrs. Bellew, when a
man, stepping quickly from behind, said:
"Mr. George Pendyce, I believe."
George turned.
"Yes; what do you want?"
The man put into George's hand a long envelope.
"From Messrs. Frost and Tuckett."
George opened it, and read from the top of a slip of paper:
"'ADMIRALTY, PROBATE, AND DIVORCE. The humble petition of Jaspar
Bellew-----'"
He lifted his eyes, and his look, uncannily impassive, unresenting,
unangered, dogged, caused the messenger to drop his gaze as though he had
hit a man who was down.
"Thanks. Good-night!"
He shut the door, and read the document through. It contained some
precise details, and ended in a claim for damages, and George smiled.
Had he received this document three months ago, he would not have taken
it thus. Three months ago he would have felt with rage that he was
caught. His thoughts would have run thus 'I have got her into a mess; I
have got myself into a mess. I never thought this would happen. This is
the devil! I must see someone--I must stop it. There must be a way out.'
Having but little imagination, his thoughts would have beaten their wings
against this cage, and at once he would have tried to act. But this was
not three months ago, and now----
He lit a cigarette and sat down on the sofa, and the chief feeling in his
heart was a strange hope, a sort of funereal gladness. He would have to
go and see her at once, that very night; an excuse--no need to wait in
here--to wait--wait on the chance of her coming.
He got up and drank some whisky, then went back to the sofa and sat down
again.
'If she is not here by eight,' he thought, 'I will go round.'
Opposite was a full-length mirror, and he turned to the wall to avoid it.
There was fixed on his face a look of gloomy determination, as though he
were thinking, 'I'll show them all that I'm not beaten yet.'
At the click of a latch-key he scrambled off the sofa, and his face
resumed its mask. She came in as usual, dropped her opera cloak, and
stood before him with bare shoulders. Looking in her face, he wondered
if she knew.
"I thought I'd better come," she said. "I suppose you've had the same
charming present?"
George nodded. There was a minute's silence.
"It's really rather funny. I'm sorry for you, George."
George laughed too, but his laugh was different.
"I will do all I can," he said.
Mrs. Bellew came close to him.
"I've seen about the Kempton race. What shocking luck! I suppose you've
lost a lot. Poor boy! It never rains but it pours."
George looked down.
"That's all right; nothing matters when I have you."
He felt her arms fasten behind his neck, but they were cool as marble; he
met her eyes, and they were mocking and compassionate.
Their cab, wheeling into the main thoroughfare, joined in the race of
cabs flying as for life toward the East--past the Park, where the trees,
new-leafed, were swinging their skirts like ballet-dancers in the wind;
past the Stoics' and the other clubs, rattling, jingling, jostling for
the lead, shooting past omnibuses that looked cosy in the half-light with
their lamps and rows of figures solemnly opposed.
At Blafard's the tall dark young waiter took her cloak with reverential
fingers; the little wine-waiter smiled below the suffering in his eyes.
The same red-shaded lights fell on her arms and shoulders, the same
flowers of green and yellow grew bravely in the same blue vases. On the
menu were written the same dishes. The same idle eye peered through the
chink at the corner of the red blinds with its stare of apathetic wonder.
Often during that dinner George looked at her face by stealth, and its
expression baffled him, so careless was it. And, unlike her mood of
late, that had been glum and cold, she was in the wildest spirits.
People looked round from the other little tables, all full now that the
season had begun, her laugh was so infectious; and George felt a sort of
disgust. What was it in this woman that made her laugh, when his own
heart was heavy? But he said nothing; he dared not even look at her, for
fear his eyes should show his feeling.
'We ought to be squaring our accounts,' he thought--'looking things in
the face. Something must be done; and here she is laughing and making
everyone stare!' Done! But what could be done, when it was all like
quicksand?
The other little tables emptied one by one.
"George," she said, "take me somewhere where we can dance!"
George stared at her.
"My dear girl, how can I? There is no such place!"
"Take me to your Bohemians!"
"You can't possibly go to a place like that."
"Why not? Who cares where we go, or what we do?"
"I care!"
"Ah, my dear George, you and your sort are only half alive!"
Sullenly George answered:
"What do you take me for? A cad?"
But there was fear, not anger, in his heart.
"Well, then, let's drive into the East End. For goodness' sake, let's do
something not quite proper!"
They took a hansom and drove East. It was the first time either had ever
been in that unknown land.
"Close your cloak, dear; it looks odd down here."
Mrs. Bellew laughed.
"You'll be just like your father when you're sixty, George."
And she opened her cloak the wider. Round a barrel-organ at the corner
of a street were girls in bright colours dancing.
She called to the cabman to stop.
"Let's watch those children!"
"You'll only make a show of us."
Mrs. Bellew put her hands on the cab door.
"I've a good mind to get out and dance with them!"
"You're mad to-night," said George. "Sit still!"
He stretched out his arm and barred her way. The passers-by looked
curiously at the little scene. A crowd began to collect.
"Go on!" cried George.
There was a cheer from the crowd; the driver whipped his horse; they
darted East again.
It was striking twelve when the cab put them down at last near the old
church on Chelsea Embankment, and they had hardly spoken for an hour.
And all that hour George was feeling:
'This is the woman for whom I've given it all up. This is the woman to
whom I shall be tied. This is the woman I cannot tear myself away from.
If I could, I would never see her again. But I can't live without her.
I must go on suffering when she's with me, suffering when she's away from
me. And God knows how it's all to end!'
He took her hand in the darkness; it was cold and unresponsive as a
stone. He tried to see her face, but could read nothing in those
greenish eyes staring before them, like a cat's, into the darkness.
When the cab was gone they stood looking at each other by the light of a
street lamp. And George thought:
'So I must leave her like this, and what then?'
She put her latch-key in the door, and turned round to him. In the
silent, empty street, where the wind was rustling and scraping round the
corners of tall houses, and the lamplight flickered, her face and figure
were so strange, motionless, Sphinx-like. Only her eyes seemed alive,
fastened on his own.
"Good-night!" he muttered.
She beckoned.
"Take what you can of me, George!" she said.
CHAPTER IV
Mr. PENDYCE'S HEAD
Mr. Pendyce's head, seen from behind at his library bureau, where it was
his practice to spend most mornings from half-past nine to eleven or even
twelve, was observed to be of a shape to throw no small light upon his
class and character. Its contour was almost national. Bulging at the
back, and sloping rapidly to a thin and wiry neck, narrow between the
ears and across the brow, prominent in the jaw, the length of a line
drawn from the back headland to the promontory at the chin would have
been extreme. Upon the observer there was impressed the conviction that
here was a skull denoting, by surplusage of length, great precision of
character and disposition to action, and, by deficiency of breadth, a
narrow tenacity which might at times amount to wrong-headedness. The
thin cantankerous neck, on which little hairs grew low, and the
intelligent ears, confirmed this impression; and when his face, with its
clipped hair, dry rosiness, into which the east wind had driven a shade
of yellow and the sun a shade of brown, and grey, rather discontented
eyes, came into view, the observer had no longer any hesitation in saying
that he was in the presence of an Englishman, a landed proprietor, and,
but for Mr. Pendyce's rooted belief to the contrary, an individualist.
His head, indeed, was like nothing so much as the Admiralty Pier at
Dover--that strange long narrow thing, with a slight twist or bend at the
end, which first disturbs the comfort of foreigners arriving on these
shores, and strikes them with a sense of wonder and dismay.
He sat very motionless at his bureau, leaning a little over his papers
like a man to whom things do not come too easily; and every now and then
he stopped to refer to the calendar at his left hand, or to a paper in
one of the many pigeonholes. Open, and almost out of reach, was a back
volume of Punch, of which periodical, as a landed proprietor, he had an
almost professional knowledge. In leisure moments it was one of his
chief recreations to peruse lovingly those aged pictures, and at the
image of John Bull he never failed to think: 'Fancy making an Englishman
out a fat fellow like that!'
It was as though the artist had offered an insult to himself, passing him
over as the type, and conferring that distinction on someone fast going
out of fashion. The Rector, whenever he heard Mr. Pendyce say this,
strenuously opposed him, for he was himself of a square, stout build, and
getting stouter.
With all their aspirations to the character of typical Englishmen, Mr.
Pendyce and Mr. Barter thought themselves far from the old beef and beer,
port and pigskin types of the Georgian and early Victorian era. They
were men of the world, abreast of the times, who by virtue of a public
school and 'Varsity training had acquired a manner, a knowledge of men
and affairs, a standard of thought on which it had really never been
needful to improve. Both of them, but especially Mr. Pendyce, kept up
with all that was going forward by visiting the Metropolis six or seven
or even eight times a year. On these occasions they rarely took their
wives, having almost always important business in hand--old College,
Church, or Conservative dinners, cricket-matches, Church Congress, the
Gaiety Theatre, and for Mr. Barter the Lyceum. Both, too, belonged to
clubs--the Rector to a comfortable, old-fashioned place where he could
get a rubber without gambling, and Mr. Pendyce to the Temple of things as
they had been, as became a man who, having turned all social problems
over in his mind, had decided that there was no real safety but in the
past.
They always went up to London grumbling, but this was necessary, and
indeed salutary, because of their wives; and they always came back
grumbling, because of their livers, which a good country rest always
fortunately reduced in time for the next visit. In this way they kept
themselves free from the taint of provincialism.
In the silence of his master's study the spaniel John, whose head, too,
was long and narrow, had placed it over his paw, as though suffering from
that silence, and when his master cleared his throat he guttered his tail
and turned up an eye with a little moon of white, without stirring his
chin.
The clock ticked at the end of the long, narrow room; the sunlight
through the long, narrow windows fell on the long, narrow backs of books
in the glassed book-case that took up the whole of one wall; and this
room, with its slightly leathery smell, seemed a fitting place for some
long, narrow ideal to be worked out to its long and narrow ending.
But Mr. Pendyce would have scouted the notion of an ending to ideals
having their basis in the hereditary principle.
"Let me do my duty and carry on the estate as my dear old father did, and
hand it down to my son enlarged if possible," was sometimes his saying,
very, very often his thought, not seldom his prayer. "I want to do no
more than that."
The times were bad and dangerous. There was every chance of a Radical
Government being returned, and the country going to the dogs. It was but
natural and human that he should pray for the survival of the form of
things which he believed in and knew, the form of things bequeathed to
him, and embodied in the salutary words "Horace Pendyce." It was not his
habit to welcome new ideas. A new idea invading the country of the
Squire's mind was at once met with a rising of the whole population, and
either prevented from landing, or if already on shore instantly taken
prisoner. In course of time the unhappy creature, causing its squeaks
and groans to penetrate the prison walls, would be released from sheer
humaneness and love of a quiet life, and even allowed certain privileges,
remaining, however, "that poor, queer devil of a foreigner." One day, in
an inattentive moment, the natives would suffer it to marry, or find that
in some disgraceful way it had caused the birth of children unrecognised
by law; and their respect for the accomplished fact, for something that
already lay in the past, would then prevent their trying to unmarry it,
or restoring the children to an unborn state, and very gradually they
would tolerate this intrusive brood. Such was the process of Mr.
Pendyce's mind. Indeed, like the spaniel John, a dog of conservative
instincts, at the approach of any strange thing he placed himself in the
way, barking and showing his teeth; and sometimes truly he suffered at
the thought that one day Horace Pendyce would no longer be there to bark.
But not often, for he had not much imagination.
All the morning he had been working at that old vexed subject of Common
Rights on Worsted Scotton, which his father had fenced in and taught him
once for all to believe was part integral of Worsted Skeynes. The matter
was almost beyond doubt, for the cottagers--in a poor way at the time of
the fencing, owing to the price of bread--had looked on apathetically
till the very last year required by law to give the old Squire squatter's
rights, when all of a sudden that man, Peacock's father, had made a gap
in the fence and driven in beasts, which had reopened the whole
unfortunate question. This had been in '65, and ever since there had
been continual friction bordering on a law suit. Mr. Pendyce never for a
moment allowed it to escape his mind that the man Peacock was at the
bottom of it all; for it was his way to discredit all principles as
ground of action, and to refer everything to facts and persons; except,
indeed, when he acted himself, when he would somewhat proudly admit that
it was on principle. He never thought or spoke on an abstract question;
partly because his father had avoided them before him, partly because he
had been discouraged from doing so at school, but mainly because he
temperamentally took no interest in such unpractical things.
It was, therefore, a source of wonder to him that tenants of his own
should be ungrateful. He did his duty by them, as the Rector, in whose
keeping were their souls, would have been the first to affirm; the books
of his estate showed this, recording year by year an average gross profit
of some sixteen hundred pounds, and (deducting raw material incidental to
the upkeep of Worsted Skeynes) a net loss of three.
In less earthly matters, too, such as non-attendance at church, a
predisposition to poaching, or any inclination to moral laxity, he could
say with a clear conscience that the Rector was sure of his support. A
striking instance had occurred within the last month, when, discovering
that his under-keeper, an excellent man at his work, had got into a
scrape with the postman's wife, he had given the young fellow notice, and
cancelled the lease of his cottage.
He rose and went to the plan of the estate fastened to the wall, which he
unrolled by pulling a green silk cord, and stood there scrutinising it
carefully and placing his finger here and there. His spaniel rose too,
and settled himself unobtrusively on his master's foot. Mr. Pendyce
moved and trod on him. The spaniel yelped.
"D--n the dog! Oh, poor fellow, John!" said Mr. Pendyce. He went back
to his seat, but since he had identified the wrong spot he was obliged in
a minute to return again to the plan. The spaniel John, cherishing the
hope that he had been justly treated, approached in a half circle,
fluttering his tail; he had scarcely reached Mr. Pendyce's foot when the
door was opened, and the first footman brought in a letter on a silver
salver.
Mr. Pendyce took the note, read it, turned to his bureau, and said: "No
answer."
He sat staring at this document in the silent room, and over his face in
turn passed anger, alarm, distrust, bewilderment. He had not the power
of making very clear his thought, except by speaking aloud, and he
muttered to himself. The spaniel John, who still nurtured a belief that
he had sinned, came and lay down very close against his leg.
Mr. Pendyce, never having reflected profoundly on the working morality of
his times, had the less difficulty in accepting it. Of violating it he
had practically no opportunity, and this rendered his position stronger.
It was from habit and tradition rather than from principle and conviction
that he was a man of good moral character.
And as he sat reading this note over and over, he suffered from a sense
of nausea.
It was couched in these terms:
"THE FIRS,
"May 20.
"DEAR SIR,
"You may or may not have heard that I have made your son, Mr. George
Pendyce, correspondent in a divorce suit against my wife. Neither for
your sake nor your son's, but for the sake of Mrs. Pendyce, who is the
only woman in these parts that I respect, I will withdraw the suit if
your son will give his word not to see my wife again.
"Please send me an early answer.
"I am,
"Your obedient servant,
"JASPAR BELLEW."
The acceptance of tradition (and to accept it was suitable to the
Squire's temperament) is occasionally marred by the impingement of
tradition on private life and comfort. It was legendary in his class
that young men's peccadilloes must be accepted with a certain indulgence.
They would, he said, be young men. They must, he would remark, sow their
wild oats. Such was his theory. The only difficulty he now had was in
applying it to his own particular case, a difficulty felt by others in
times past, and to be felt again in times to come. But, since he was not
a philosopher, he did not perceive the inconsistency between his theory
and his dismay. He saw his universe reeling before that note, and he was
not a man to suffer tamely; he felt that others ought to suffer too. It
was monstrous that a fellow like this Bellew, a loose fish, a drunkard, a
man who had nearly run over him, should have it in his power to trouble
the serenity of Worsted Skeynes. It was like his impudence to bring such
a charge against his son. It was like his d----d impudence! And going
abruptly to the bell, he trod on his spaniel's ear.
"D---n the dog! Oh, poor fellow, John!" But the spaniel John, convinced
at last that he had sinned, hid himself in a far corner whence he could
see nothing, and pressed his chin closely to the ground.
"Ask your mistress to come here."
Standing by the hearth, waiting for his wife, the Squire displayed to
greater advantage than ever the shape of his long and narrow head; his
neck had grown conspicuously redder; his eyes, like those of an offended
swan, stabbed, as it were, at everything they saw.
It was not seldom that Mrs. Pendyce was summoned to the study to hear him
say: "I want to ask your advice. So-and-so has done such and such.... I
have made up my mind."
She came, therefore, in a few minutes. In compliance with his "Look at
that, Margery," she read the note, and gazed at him with distress in her
eyes, and he looked back at her with wrath in his. For this was tragedy.
Not to everyone is it given to take a wide view of things--to look over
the far, pale streams, the purple heather, and moonlit pools of the wild
marches, where reeds stand black against the sundown, and from long
distance comes the cry of a curlew--nor to everyone to gaze from steep
cliffs over the wine-dark, shadowy sea--or from high mountainsides to see
crowned chaos, smoking with mist, or gold-bright in the sun.
To most it is given to watch assiduously a row of houses, a back-yard,
or, like Mrs. and Mr. Pendyce, the green fields, trim coverts, and Scotch
garden of Worsted Skeynes. And on that horizon the citation of their
eldest son to appear in the Divorce Court loomed like a cloud, heavy with
destruction.
So far as such an event could be realised imagination at Worsted Skeynes
was not too vivid--it spelled ruin to an harmonious edifice of ideas and
prejudice and aspiration. It would be no use to say of that event, "What
does it matter? Let people think what they like, talk as they like." At
Worsted Skeynes (and Worsted Skeynes was every country house) there was
but one set of people, one church, one pack of hounds, one everything.
The importance of a clear escutcheon was too great. And they who had
lived together for thirty-four years looked at each other with a new
expression in their eyes; their feelings were for once the same. But
since it is always the man who has the nicer sense of honour, their
thoughts were not the same, for Mr. Pendyce was thinking: 'I won't
believe it--disgracing us all!' and Mrs. Pendyce was thinking: 'My boy!'
It was she who spoke first.
"Oh, Horace!"
The sound of her voice restored the Squire's fortitude.
"There you go, Margery! D'you mean to say you believe what this fellow
says? He ought to be horsewhipped. He knows my opinion of him.
"It's a piece of his confounded impudence! He nearly ran over me, and
now----"
Mrs. Pendyce broke in:
"But, Horace, I'm afraid it's true! Ellen Maiden----"
"Ellen Maiden?" said Mr. Pendyce. "What business has she----" He was
silent, staring gloomily at the plan of Worsted Skeynes, still unrolled,
like an emblem of all there was at stake. "If George has really," he
burst out, "he's a greater fool than I took him for! A fool? He's a
knave!"
Again he was silent.
Mrs. Pendyce flushed at that word, and bit her lips.
"George could never be a knave!" she said.
Mr. Pendyce answered heavily:
"Disgracing his name!"
Mrs. Pendyce bit deeper into her lips.
"Whatever he has done," she said, "George is sure to have behaved like a
gentleman!"
An angry smile twisted the Squire's mouth.
"Just like a woman!" he said.
But the smile died away, and on both their faces came a helpless look.
Like people who have lived together without real sympathy--though,
indeed, they had long ceased to be conscious of that--now that something
had occurred in which their interests were actually at one, they were
filled with a sort of surprise. It was no good to differ. Differing,
even silent differing, would not help their son.
"I shall write to George," said Mr. Pendyce at last. "I shall believe
nothing till I've heard from him. He'll tell us the truth, I suppose."
There was a quaver in his voice.
Mrs. Pendyce answered quickly:
"Oh, Horace, be careful what you say! I'm sure he is suffering!"
Her gentle soul, disposed to pleasure, was suffering, too, and the tears
stole up in her eyes. Mr. Pendyce's sight was too long to see them. The
infirmity had been growing on him ever since his marriage.
"I shall say what I think right," he said. "I shall take time to
consider what I shall say; I won't be hurried by this ruffian."
Mrs. Pendyce wiped her lips with her lace-edged handkerchief.
"I hope you will show me the letter," she said.
The Squire looked at her, and he realised that she was trembling and very
white, and, though this irritated him, he answered almost kindly:
"It's not a matter for you, my dear."
Mrs. Pendyce took a step towards him; her gentle face expressed a strange
determination.
"He is my son, Horace, as well as yours."
Mr. Pendyce turned round uneasily.
"It's no use your getting nervous, Margery. I shall do what's best. You
women lose your heads. That d----d fellow's lying! If he isn't----"
At these words the spaniel John rose from his corner and advanced to the
middle of the floor. He stood there curved in a half-circle, and looked
darkly at his master.
"Confound it!" said Mr. Pendyce. "It's--it's damnable!"
And as if answering for all that depended on Worsted Skeynes, the spaniel
John deeply wagged that which had been left him of his tail.
Mrs. Pendyce came nearer still.
"If George refuses to give you that promise, what will you do, Horace?"
Mr. Pendyce stared.
"Promise? What promise?"
Mrs. Pendyce thrust forward the note.
"This promise not to see her again."
Mr. Pendyce motioned it aside.
"I'll not be dictated to by that fellow Bellew," he said. Then, by an
afterthought: "It won't do to give him a chance. George must promise me
that in any case."
Mrs. Pendyce pressed her lips together.
"But do you think he will?"
"Think--think who will? Think he will what? Why can't you express
yourself, Margery? If George has really got us into this mess he must
get us out again."
Mrs. Pendyce flushed.
"He would never leave her in the lurch!"
The Squire said angrily:
"Lurch! Who said anything about lurch? He owes it to her. Not that she
deserves any consideration, if she's been----You don't mean to say you
think he'll refuse? He'd never be such a donkey?"
Mrs. Pendyce raised her hands and made what for her was a passionate
gesture.
"Oh, Horace!" she said, "you don't understand. He's in love with her!"
Mr. Pendyce's lower lip trembled, a sign with him of excitement or
emotion. All the conservative strength of his nature, all the immense
dumb force of belief in established things, all that stubborn hatred and
dread of change, that incalculable power of imagining nothing, which,
since the beginning of time, had made Horace Pendyce the arbiter of his
land, rose up within his sorely tried soul.
"What on earth's that to do with it?" he cried in a rage. "You women!
You've no sense of anything! Romantic, idiotic, immoral--I don't know
what you're at. For God's sake don't go putting ideas into his head!"
At this outburst Mrs. Pendyce's face became rigid; only the flicker of
her eyelids betrayed how her nerves were quivering. Suddenly she threw
her hands up to her ears.
"Horace!" she cried, "do----Oh, poor John!"
The Squire had stepped hastily and heavily on to his dog's paw. The
creature gave a grievous howl. Mr. Pendyce went down on his knees and
raised the limb.
"Damn the dog!" he stuttered. "Oh, poor fellow, John!"
And the two long and narrow heads for a moment were close together.
CHAPTER V
RECTOR AND SQUIRE
The efforts of social man, directed from immemorial time towards the
stability of things, have culminated in Worsted Skeynes. Beyond
commercial competition--for the estate no longer paid for living on
it--beyond the power of expansion, set with tradition and sentiment, it
was an undoubted jewel, past need of warranty. Cradled within it were
all those hereditary institutions of which the country was most proud,
and Mr. Pendyce sometimes saw before him the time when, for services to
his party, he should call himself Lord Worsted, and after his own death
continue sitting in the House of Lords in the person of his son. But
there was another feeling in the Squire's heart--the air and the woods
and the fields had passed into his blood a love for this, his home and
the home of his fathers.
And so a terrible unrest pervaded the whole household after the receipt
of Jaspar Bellew's note. Nobody was told anything, yet everybody knew
there was something; and each after his fashion, down to the very dogs,
betrayed their sympathy with the master and mistress of the house.
Day after day the girls wandered about the new golf course knocking the
balls aimlessly; it was all they could do. Even Cecil Tharp, who had
received from Bee the qualified affirmative natural under the
circumstances, was infected. The off foreleg of her grey mare was being
treated by a process he had recently discovered, and in the stables he
confided to Bee that the dear old Squire seemed "off his feed;" he did
not think it was any good worrying him at present. Bee, stroking the
mare's neck, looked at him shyly and slowly.
"It's about George," she said; "I know it's about George! Oh, Cecil! I
do wish I had been a boy!"
Young Tharp assented in spite of himself:
"Yes; it must be beastly to be a girl."
A faint flush coloured Bee's cheeks. It hurt her a little that he should
agree; but her lover was passing his hand down the mare's shin.
"Father is rather trying," she said. "I wish George would marry."
Cecil Tharp raised his bullet head; his blunt, honest face was extremely
red from stooping.
"Clean as a whistle," he said; "she's all right, Bee. I expect George
has too good a time."
Bee turned her face away and murmured:
"I should loathe living in London." And she, too, stooped and felt the
mare's shin.
To Mrs. Pendyce in these days the hours passed with incredible slowness.
For thirty odd years she had waited at once for everything and nothing;
she had, so to say, everything she could wish for, and--nothing, so that
even waiting had been robbed of poignancy; but to wait like this, in
direct suspense, for something definite was terrible. There was hardly a
moment when she did not conjure up George, lonely and torn by conflicting
emotions; for to her, long paralysed by Worsted Skeynes, and ignorant of
the facts, the proportions of the struggle in her son's soul appeared
Titanic; her mother instinct was not deceived as to the strength of his
passion. Strange and conflicting were the sensations with which she
awaited the result; at one moment thinking, 'It is madness; he must
promise--it is too awful!' at another, 'Ah! but how can he, if he loves
her so? It is impossible; and she, too--ah! how awful it is!'
Perhaps, as Mr. Pendyce had said, she was romantic; perhaps it was only
the thought of the pain her boy must suffer. The tooth was too big, it
seemed to her; and, as in old days, when she took him to Cornmarket to
have an aching tooth out, she ever sat with his hand in hers while the
little dentist pulled, and ever suffered the tug, too, in her own mouth,
so now she longed to share this other tug, so terrible, so fierce.
Against Mrs. Bellew she felt only a sort of vague and jealous aching; and
this seemed strange even to herself--but, again, perhaps she was
romantic.
Now it was that she found the value of routine. Her days were so well
and fully occupied that anxiety was forced below the surface. The nights
were far more terrible; for then, not only had she to bear her own
suspense, but, as was natural in a wife, the fears of Horace Pendyce as
well. The poor Squire found this the only time when he could get relief
from worry; he came to bed much earlier on purpose. By dint of
reiterating dreads and speculation he at length obtained some rest. Why
had not George answered? What was the fellow about? And so on and so on,
till, by sheer monotony, he caused in himself the need for slumber. But
his wife's torments lasted till after the birds, starting with a sleepy
cheeping, were at full morning chorus. Then only, turning softly for fear
she should awaken him, the poor lady fell asleep.
For George had not answered.
In her morning visits to the village Mrs. Pendyce found herself, for the
first time since she had begun this practice, driven by her own trouble
over that line of diffident distrust which had always divided her from
the hearts of her poorer neighbours. She was astonished at her own
indelicacy, asking questions, prying into their troubles, pushed on by a
secret aching for distraction; and she was surprised how well they took
it--how, indeed, they seemed to like it, as though they knew that they
were doing her good. In one cottage, where she had long noticed with
pitying wonder a white-faced, black-eyed girl, who seemed to crouch away
from everyone, she even received a request. It was delivered with
terrified secrecy in a back-yard, out of Mrs. Barter's hearing.
"Oh, ma'am! Get me away from here! I'm in trouble--it's comin', and I
don't know what I shall do."
Mrs. Pendyce shivered, and all the way home she thought: 'Poor little
soul--poor little thing!' racking her brains to whom she might confide
this case and ask for a solution; and something of the white-faced,
black-eyed girl's terror and secrecy fell on her, for, she found no one
not even Mrs. Barter, whose heart, though soft, belonged to the Rector.
Then, by a sort of inspiration, she thought of Gregory.
'How can I write to him,' she mused, 'when my son----'
But she did write, for, deep down, the Totteridge instinct felt that
others should do things for her; and she craved, too, to allude, however
distantly, to what was on her mind. And, under the Pendyce eagle and the
motto: 'Strenuus aureaque penna', thus her letter ran:
"DEAR GRIG,
"Can you do anything for a poor little girl in the village here who is
'in trouble'?--you know what I mean. It is such a terrible crime in this
part of the country, and she looks so wretched and frightened, poor
little thing! She is twenty years old. She wants a hiding-place for her
misfortune, and somewhere to go when it is over. Nobody, she says, will
have anything to do with her where they know; and, really, I have noticed
for a long time how white and wretched she looks, with great black
frightened eyes. I don't like to apply to our Rector, for though he is a
good fellow in many ways, he has such strong opinions; and, of course,
Horace could do nothing. I would like to do something for her, and I
could spare a little money, but I can't find a place for her to go, and
that makes it difficult. She seems to be haunted, too, by the idea that
wherever she goes it will come out. Isn't it dreadful? Do do something,
if you can. I am rather anxious about George. I hope the dear boy is
well. If you are passing his club some day you might look in and just
ask after him. He is sometimes so naughty about writing. I wish we
could see you here, dear Grig; the country is looking beautiful just
now--the oak-trees especially--and the apple-blossom isn't over, but I
suppose you are too busy. How is Helen Bellew? Is she in town?
"Your affectionate cousin,
"MARGERY PENDYCE."
It was four o'clock this same afternoon when the second groom, very much
out of breath, informed the butler that there was a fire at Peacock's
farm. The butler repaired at once to the library. Mr. Pendyce, who had
been on horseback all the morning, was standing in his riding-clothes,
tired and depressed, before the plan of Worsted Skeynes.
"What do you want, Bester?"
"There is a fire at Peacock's farm, sir." Mr. Pendyce stared.
"What?" he said. "A fire in broad daylight! Nonsense!"
"You can see the flames from the front, sir." The worn and querulous
look left Mr. Pendyce's face.
"Ring the stable-bell!" he said. "Tell them all to run with buckets and
ladders. Send Higson off to Cornmarket on the mare. Go and tell Mr.
Barter, and rouse the village. Don't stand there--God bless me! Ring the
stable-bell!" And snatching up his riding-crop and hat, he ran past the
butler, closely followed by the spaniel John.
Over the stile and along the footpath which cut diagonally across a field
of barley he moved at a stiff trot, and his spaniel, who had not grasped
the situation, frolicked ahead with a certain surprise. The Squire was
soon out of breath--it was twenty years or more since he had run a
quarter of a mile. He did not, however, relax his speed. Ahead of him
in the distance ran the second groom; behind him a labourer and a
footman. The stable-bell at Worsted Skeynes began to ring. Mr. Pendyce
crossed the stile and struck into the lane, colliding with the Rector,
who was running, too, his face flushed to the colour of tomatoes. They
ran on, side by side.
"You go on!" gasped Mr. Pendyce at last, "and tell them I'm coming."
The Rector hesitated--he, too, was very out of breath--and started again,
panting. The Squire, with his hand to his side, walked painfully on; he
had run himself to a standstill. At a gap in the corner of the lane he
suddenly saw pale-red tongues of flame against the sunlight.
"God bless me!" he gasped, and in sheer horror started to run again.
Those sinister tongues were licking at the air over a large barn, some
ricks, and the roofs of stables and outbuildings. Half a dozen figures
were dashing buckets of water on the flames. The true insignificance of
their efforts did not penetrate the Squire's mind. Trembling, and with a
sickening pain in his lungs, he threw off his coat, wrenched a bucket
from a huge agricultural labourer, who resigned it with awe, and joined
the string of workers. Peacock, the farmer, ran past him; his face and
round red beard were the colour of the flames he was trying to put out;
tears dropped continually from his eyes and ran down that fiery face.
His wife, a little dark woman with a twisted mouth, was working like a
demon at the pump. Mr. Pendyce gasped to her:
"This is dreadful, Mrs. Peacock--this is dreadful!"
Conspicuous in black clothes and white shirt-sleeves, the Rector was
hewing with an axe at the boarding of a cowhouse, the door end of which
was already in flames, and his voice could be heard above the tumult
shouting directions to which nobody paid any heed.
"What's in that cow-house?" gasped Mr. Pendyce.
Mrs. Peacock, in a voice harsh with rage and grief answered:
"It's the old horse and two of the cows!"
"God bless me!" cried the Squire, rushing forward with his bucket.
Some villagers came running up, and he shouted to these, but what he said
neither he nor they could tell. The shrieks and snortings of the horse
and cows, the steady whirr of the flames, drowned all lesser sounds. Of
human cries, the Rector's voice alone was heard, between the crashing
blows of his axe upon the woodwork.
Mr. Pendyce tripped; his bucket rolled out of his hand; he lay where he
had fallen, too exhausted to move. He could still hear the crash of the
Rector's axe, the sound of his shouts. Somebody helped him up, and
trembling so that he could hardly stand, he caught an axe out of the hand
of a strapping young fellow who had just arrived, and placing himself by
the Rector's side, swung it feebly against the boarding. The flames and
smoke now filled the whole cow-house, and came rushing through the gap
that they were making. The Squire and the Rector stood their ground.
With a furious blow Mr. Barter cleared a way. A cheer rose behind them,
but no beast came forth. All three were dead in the smoke and flames.
The Squire, who could see in, flung down his axe, and covered his eyes
with his hands. The Rector uttered a sound like a deep oath, and he,
too, flung down his axe.
Two hours later, with torn and blackened clothes, the Squire stood by the
ruins of the barn. The fire was out, but the ashes were still
smouldering. The spaniel John, anxious, panting, was licking his
master's boots, as though begging forgiveness that he had been so
frightened, and kept so far away. Yet something in his eye seemed to be
saying:
"Must you really have these fires, master?"
A black hand grasped the Squire's arm, a hoarse voice said:
"I shan't forget, Squire!"
"God bless me, Peacock!" returned Mr. Pendyce, "that's nothing! You're
insured, I hope?'
"Aye, I'm insured; but it's the beasts I'm thinking of!"
"Ah!" said the Squire, with a gesture of horror.
The brougham took him and the Rector back together. Under their feet
crouched their respective dogs, faintly growling at each other. A cheer
from the crowd greeted their departure.
They started in silence, deadly tired. Mr. Pendyce said suddenly:
"I can't get those poor beasts out of my head, Barter!"
The Rector put his hand up to his eyes.
"I hope to God I shall never see such a sight again! Poor brutes, poor
brutes!"
And feeling secretly for his dog's muzzle, he left his hand against the
animal's warm, soft, rubbery mouth, to be licked again and again.
On his side of the brougham Mr. Pendyce, also unseen, was doing precisely
the same thing.
The carriage went first to the Rectory, where Mrs. Barter and her
children stood in the doorway. The Rector put his head back into the
brougham to say:
"Good-night, Pendyce. You'll be stiff tomorrow. I shall get my wife to
rub me with Elliman!"
Mr. Pendyce nodded, raised his hat, and the carriage went on. Leaning
back, he closed his eyes; a pleasanter sensation was stealing over him.
True, he would be stiff to-morrow, but he had done his duty. He had
shown them all that blood told; done something to bolster up that system
which was-himself. And he had a new and kindly feeling towards Peacock,
too. There was nothing like a little danger for bringing the lower
classes closer; then it was they felt the need for officers, for
something!
The spaniel John's head rose between his knees, turning up eyes with a
crimson touch beneath.
'Master,' he seemed to say, 'I am feeling old. I know there are things
beyond me in this life, but you, who know all things, will arrange that
we shall be together even when we die.'
The carriage stopped at the entrance of the drive, and the Squire's
thoughts changed. Twenty years ago he would have beaten Barter running
down that lane. Barter was only forty-five. To give him fourteen years
and a beating was a bit too much to expect: He felt a strange irritation
with Barter--the fellow had cut a very good figure! He had shirked
nothing. Elliman was too strong! Homocea was the thing. Margery would
have to rub him! And suddenly, as though springing naturally from the
name of his wife, George came into Mr. Pendyce's mind, and the respite
that he had enjoyed from care was over. But the spaniel John, who
scented home, began singing feebly for the brougham to stop, and beating
a careless tail against his master's boot.
It was very stiffly, with frowning brows and a shaking under-lip, that
the Squire descended from the brougham, and began sorely to mount the
staircase to his wife's room.
CHAPTER VI
THE PARK
There comes a day each year in May when Hyde Park is possessed. A cool
wind swings the leaves; a hot sun glistens on Long Water, on every bough,
on every blade of grass. The birds sing their small hearts out, the band
plays its gayest tunes, the white clouds race in the high blue heaven.
Exactly why and how this day differs from those that came before and
those that will come after, cannot be told; it is as though the Park
said: 'To-day I live; the Past is past. I care not for the Future!'
And on this day they who chance in the Park cannot escape some measure of
possession. Their steps quicken, their skirts swing, their sticks
flourish, even their eyes brighten--those eyes so dulled with looking at
the streets; and each one, if he has a Love, thinks of her, and here and
there among the wandering throng he has her with him. To these the Park
and all sweet-blooded mortals in it nod and smile.
There had been a meeting that afternoon at Lady Maiden's in Prince's Gate
to consider the position of the working-class woman. It had provided a
somewhat heated discussion, for a person had got up and proved almost
incontestably that the working-class woman had no position whatsoever.
Gregory Vigil and Mrs. Shortman had left this meeting together, and,
crossing the Serpentine, struck a line over the grass.
"Mrs. Shortman," said Gregory, "don't you think we're all a little mad?"
He was carrying his hat in his hand, and his fine grizzled hair, rumpled
in the excitement of the meeting, had not yet subsided on his head.
"Yes, Mr. Vigil. I don't exactly----"
"We are all a little mad! What did that woman, Lady Maiden, mean by
talking as she did? I detest her!"
"Oh, Mr. Vigil! She has the best intentions!"
"Intentions?" said Gregory. "I loathe her! What did we go to her stuffy
drawing-room for? Look at that sky!"
Mrs. Shortman looked at the sky.
"But, Mr. Vigil," she said earnestly, "things would never get done.
Sometimes I think you look at everything too much in the light of the way
it ought to be!"
"The Milky Way," said Gregory.
Mrs. Shortman pursed her lips; she found it impossible to habituate
herself to Gregory's habit of joking.
They had scant talk for the rest of their journey to the S. R. W. C.,
where Miss Mallow, at the typewriter, was reading a novel.
"There are several letters for you, Mr. Vigil"
"Mrs. Shortman says I am unpractical," answered Gregory. "Is that true,
Miss Mallow?"
The colour in Miss Mallow's cheeks spread to her sloping shoulders.
"Oh no. You're most practical, only--perhaps--I don't know, perhaps you
do try to do rather impossible things, Mr. Vigil"
"Bilcock Buildings!"
There was a minute's silence. Then Mrs. Shortman at her bureau beginning
to dictate, the typewriter started clicking.
Gregory, who had opened a letter, was seated with his head in his hands.
The voice ceased, the typewriter ceased, but Gregory did not stir. Both
women, turning a little in their seats, glanced at him. Their eyes caught
each other's and they looked away at once. A few seconds later they were
looking at him again. Still Gregory did not stir. An anxious appeal
began to creep into the women's eyes.
"Mr. Vigil," said Mrs. Shortman at last, "Mr. Vigil, do you think---"
Gregory raised his face; it was flushed to the roots of his hair.
"Read that, Mrs. Shortman."
Handing her a pale grey letter stamped with an eagle and the motto
'Strenuus aureaque penna' he rose and paced the room. And as with his
long, light stride he was passing to and fro, the woman at the bureau
conned steadily the writing, the girl at the typewriter sat motionless
with a red and jealous face.
Mrs. Shortman folded the letter, placed it on the top of the bureau, and
said without raising her eyes--
"Of course, it is very sad for the poor little girl; but surely, Mr.
Vigil, it must always be, so as to check, to check----"
Gregory stopped, and his shining eyes disconcerted her; they seemed to
her unpractical. Sharply lifting her voice, she went on:
"If there were no disgrace, there would be no way of stopping it. I know
the country better than you do, Mr. Vigil."
Gregory put his hands to his ears.
"We must find a place for her at once."
The window was fully open, so that he could not open it any more, and he
stood there as though looking for that place in the sky. And the sky he
looked at was very blue, and large white birds of cloud were flying over
it.
He turned from the window, and opened another letter.
"LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,
"May 24, 1892.
"MY DEAR VIGIL,
"I gathered from your ward when I saw her yesterday that she has not told
you of what, I fear, will give you much pain. I asked her point-blank
whether she wished the matter kept from you, and her answer was, 'He had
better know--only I'm sorry for him.' In sum it is this: Bellow has
either got wind of our watching him, or someone must have put him up to
it; he has anticipated us and brought a suit against your ward, joining
George Pendyce in the cause. George brought the citation to me. If
necessary he's prepared to swear there's nothing in it. He takes, in
fact, the usual standpoint of the 'man of honour.'
"I went at once to see your ward. She admitted that the charge is true.
I asked her if she wished the suit defended, and a counter-suit brought
against her husband. Her answer to that was: 'I absolutely don't care.'
I got nothing from her but this, and, though it sounds odd, I believe it
to be true. She appears to be in a reckless mood, and to have no
particular ill-will against her husband.
"I want to see you, but only after you have turned this matter over
carefully. It is my duty to put some considerations before you. The
suit, if brought, will be a very unpleasant matter for George, a still
more unpleasant, even disastrous one, for his people. The innocent in
such cases are almost always the greatest sufferers. If the cross-suit
is instituted, it will assume at once, considering their position in
Society, the proportions of a 'cause celebre', and probably occupy the
court and the daily presses anything from three days to a week, perhaps
more, and you know what that means. On the other hand, not to defend the
suit, considering what we know, is, apart from ethics, revolting to my
instincts as a fighter. My advice, therefore, is to make every effort to
prevent matters being brought into court at all.
"I am an older man than you by thirteen years. I have a sincere regard
for you, and I wish to save you pain. In the course of our interviews I
have observed your ward very closely, and at the risk of giving you
offence, I am going to speak out my mind. Mrs. Bellew is a rather
remarkable woman. From two or three allusions that you have made in my
presence, I believe that she is altogether different from what you think.
She is, in my opinion, one of those very vital persons upon whom our
judgments, censures, even our sympathies, are wasted. A woman of this
sort, if she comes of a county family, and is thrown by circumstances
with Society people, is always bound to be conspicuous. If you would
realise something of this, it would, I believe, save you a great deal of
pain. In short, I beg of you not to take her, or her circumstances, too
seriously. There are quite a number of such men and women as her husband
and herself, and they are always certain to be more or less before the
public eye. Whoever else goes down, she will swim, simply because she
can't help it. I want you to see things as they are.
"I ask you again, my dear Vigil, to forgive me for writing thus, and to
believe that my sole desire is to try and save you unnecessary suffering.
"Come and see me as soon as you have reflected:
"I am,
"Your sincere friend,
"EDMUND PARAMOR."
Gregory made a movement like that of a blind man. Both women were on
their feet at once.
"What is it, Mr. Vigil? Can I get you anything?"
"Thanks; nothing, nothing. I've had some rather bad news. I'll go out
and get some air. I shan't be back to-day."
He found his hat and went.
He walked towards the Park, unconsciously attracted towards the biggest
space, the freshest air; his hands were folded behind him, his head
bowed. And since, of all things, Nature is ironical, it was fitting that
he should seek the Park this day when it was gayest. And far in the Park,
as near the centre as might be, he lay down on the grass. For a long
time he lay without moving, his hands over his eyes, and in spite of Mr.
Paramor's reminder that his suffering was unnecessary, he suffered.
And mostly he suffered from black loneliness, for he was a very lonely
man, and now he had lost that which he had thought he had. It is
difficult to divide suffering, difficult to say how much he suffered,
because, being in love with her, he had secretly thought she must love
him a little, and how much he suffered because his private portrait of
her, the portrait that he, and he alone, had painted, was scored through
with the knife. And he lay first on his face, and then on his back, with
his hand always over his eyes. And around him were other men lying on
the grass, and some were lonely, and some hungry, and some asleep, and
some were lying there for the pleasure of doing nothing and for the sake
of the hot sun on their cheeks; and by the side of some lay their girls,
and it was these that Gregory could not bear to see, for his spirit and
his senses were a-hungered. In the plantations close by were pigeons,
and never for a moment did they stop cooing; never did the blackbirds
cease their courting songs; the sun its hot, sweet burning; the clouds
above their love-chase in the sky. It was the day without a past,
without a future, when it is not good for man to be alone. And no man
looked at him, because it was no man's business, but a woman here and
there cast a glance on that long, tweed-suited figure with the hand over
the eyes, and wondered, perhaps, what was behind that hand. Had they but
known, they would have smiled their woman's smile that he should so have
mistaken one of their sex.
Gregory lay quite still, looking at the sky, and because he was a loyal
man he did not blame her, but slowly, very slowly, his spirit, like a
spring stretched to the point of breaking, came back upon itself, and
since he could not bear to see things as they were, he began again to see
them as they were not.
'She has been forced into this,' he thought. 'It is George Pendyce's
fault. To me she is, she must be, the same!'
He turned again on to his face. And a small dog who had lost its master
sniffed at his boots, and sat down a little way off, to wait till Gregory
could do something for him, because he smelled that he was that sort of
man.
CHAPTER VII
DOUBTFUL POSITION AT WORSTED SKEYNES
Then George's answer came at last, the flags were in full bloom round the
Scotch garden at Worsted Skeynes. They grew in masses and of all shades,
from deep purple to pale grey, and their scent, very penetrating, very
delicate, floated on the wind.
While waiting for that answer, it had become Mr. Pendyce's habit to
promenade between these beds, his hand to his back, for he was still a
little stiff, followed at a distance of seven paces by the spaniel John,
very black, and moving his rubbery nostrils uneasily from side to side.
In this way the two passed every day the hour from twelve to one. Neither
could have said why they walked thus, for Mr. Pendyce had a horror of
idleness, and the spaniel John disliked the scent of irises; both, in
fact, obeyed that part of themselves which is superior to reason. During
this hour, too, Mrs. Pendyce, though longing to walk between her flowers,
also obeyed that part of her, superior to reason, which told her that it
would be better not.
But George's answer came at last.
"STOICS' CLUB.
"DEAR FATHER,
"Yes, Bellew is bringing a suit. I am taking steps in the matter. As to
the promise you ask for, I can give no promise of the sort. You may tell
Bellew I will see him d---d first.
"Your affectionate son,
"GEORGE PENDYCE."
Mr. Pendyce received this at the breakfast-table, and while he read it
there was a hush, for all had seen the handwriting on the envelope.
Mr. Pendyce read it through twice, once with his glasses on and once
without, and when he had finished the second reading he placed it in his
breast pocket. No word escaped him; his eyes, which had sunk a little
the last few days, rested angrily on his wife's white face. Bee and Norah
looked down, and, as if they understood, the four dogs were still. Mr.
Pendyce pushed his plate back, rose, and left the room.
Norah looked up.
"What's the matter, Mother?"
Mrs. Pendyce was swaying. She recovered herself in a moment.
"Nothing, dear. It's very hot this morning, don't you think? I'll Just
go to my room and take some sal volatile."
She went out, followed by old Roy, the Skye; the spaniel John, who had
been cut off at the door by his master's abrupt exit, preceded her.
Norah and Bee pushed back their plates.
"I can't eat, Norah," said Bee. "It's horrible not to know what's going
on."
Norah answered
"It's perfectly brutal not being a man. You might just as well be a dog
as a girl, for anything anyone tells you!"
Mrs. Pendyce did not go to her room; she went to the library. Her
husband, seated at his table, had George's letter before him. A pen was
in his hand, but he was not writing.
"Horace," she said softly, "here is poor John!"
Mr. Pendyce did not answer, but put down the hand that did not hold his
pen. The spaniel John covered it with kisses.
"Let me see the letter, won't you?"
Mr. Pendyce handed it to her without a word. She touched his shoulder
gratefully, for his unusual silence went to her heart. Mr. Pendyce took
no notice, staring at his pen as though surprised that, of its own
accord, it did not write his answer; but suddenly he flung it down and
looked round, and his look seemed to say: 'You brought this fellow into
the world; now see the result!'
He had had so many days to think and put his finger on the doubtful spots
of his son's character. All that week he had become more and more
certain of how, without his wife, George would have been exactly like
himself. Words sprang to his lips, and kept on dying there. The doubt
whether she would agree with him, the feeling that she sympathised with
her son, the certainty that something even in himself responded to those
words: "You can tell Bellew I will see him d---d first!"--all this, and
the thought, never out of his mind, 'The name--the estate!' kept him
silent. He turned his head away, and took up his pen again.
Mrs. Pendyce had read the letter now three times, and instinctively had
put it in her bosom. It was not hers, but Horace must know it by heart,
and in his anger he might tear it up. That letter, for which they had
waited so long; told her nothing; she had known all there was to tell.
Her hand had fallen from Mr. Pendyce's shoulder, and she did not put it
back, but ran her fingers through and through each other, while the
sunlight, traversing the narrow windows, caressed her from her hair down
to her knees. Here and there that stream of sunlight formed little pools
in her eyes, giving them a touching, anxious brightness; in a curious
heart-shaped locket of carved steel, worn by her mother and her
grandmother before her, containing now, not locks of their son's hair,
but a curl of George's; in her diamond rings, and a bracelet of amethyst
and pearl which she wore for the love of pretty things. And the warm
sunlight disengaged from her a scent of lavender. Through the library
door a scratching noise told that the dear dogs knew she was not in her
bedroom. Mr. Pendyce, too, caught that scent of lavender, and in some
vague way it augmented his discomfort. Her silence, too, distressed him.
It did not occur to him that his silence was distressing her. He put
down his pen.
"I can't write with you standing there, Margery!"
Mrs. Pendyce moved out of the sunlight.
"George says he is taking steps. What does that mean, Horace?"
This question, focusing his doubts, broke down the Squire's dumbness.
"I won't be treated like this!" he said. "I'll go up and see him
myself!"
He went by the 10.20, saying that he would be down again by the 5.55
Soon after seven the same evening a dogcart driven by a young groom and
drawn by a raking chestnut mare with a blaze face, swung into the
railway-station at Worsted Skeynes, and drew up before the
booking-office. Mr. Pendyce's brougham, behind a brown horse, coming a
little later, was obliged to range itself behind. A minute before the
train's arrival a wagonette and a pair of bays, belonging to Lord
Quarryman, wheeled in, and, filing past the other two, took up its place
in front. Outside this little row of vehicles the station fly and two
farmers' gigs presented their backs to the station buildings. And in this
arrangement there was something harmonious and fitting, as though
Providence itself had guided them all and assigned to each its place.
And Providence had only made one error--that of placing Captain Bellew's
dogcart precisely opposite the booking-office, instead of Lord
Quarryman's wagonette, with Mr. Pendyce's brougham next.
Mr. Pendyce came out first; he stared angrily at the dogcart, and moved
to his own carriage. Lord Quarryman came out second. His massive
sun-burned head--the back of which, sparsely adorned by hairs, ran
perfectly straight into his neck--was crowned by a grey top-hat. The
skirts of his grey coat were square-shaped, and so were the toes of his
boots.
"Hallo, Pendyce!" he called out heartily; "didn't see you on the
platform. How's your wife?"
Mr. Pendyce, turning to answer, met the little burning eyes of Captain
Bellew, who came out third. They failed to salute each other, and
Bellow, springing into his cart, wrenched his mare round, circled the
farmers' gigs, and, sitting forward, drove off at a furious pace. His
groom, running at full speed, clung to the cart and leaped on to the step
behind. Lord Quarryman's wagonette backed itself into the place left
vacant. And the mistake of Providence was rectified.
"Cracked chap, that fellow Bellew. D'you see anything of him?"
Mr. Pendyce answered:
"No; and I want to see less. I wish he'd take himself off!"
His lordship smiled.
"A huntin' country seems to breed fellows like that; there's always one
of 'em to every pack of hounds. Where's his wife now? Good-lookin'
woman; rather warm member, eh?"
It seemed to Mr. Pendyce that Lord Quarryman's eyes searched his own with
a knowing look, and muttering "God knows!" he vanished into his
brougham.
Lord Quarryman looked kindly at his horses.
He was not a man who reflected on the whys, the wherefores, the becauses,
of this life. The good God had made him Lord Quarryman, had made his
eldest son Lord Quantock; the good God had made the Gaddesdon hounds--it
was enough!
When Mr. Pendyce reached home he went to his dressing-room. In a corner
by the bath the spaniel John lay surrounded by an assortment of his
master's slippers, for it was thus alone that he could soothe in measure
the bitterness of separation. His dark brown eye was fixed upon the
door, and round it gleamed a crescent moon of white. He came to the
Squire fluttering his tail, with a slipper in his mouth, and his eye said
plainly: 'Oh, master, where have you been? Why have you been so long? I
have been expecting you ever since half-past ten this morning!'
Mr. Pendyce's heart opened a moment and closed again. He said "John!"
and began to dress for dinner.
Mrs. Pendyce found him tying his white tie. She had plucked the first
rosebud from her garden; she had plucked it because she felt sorry for
him, and because of the excuse it would give her to go to his
dressing-room at once.
"I've brought you a buttonhole, Horace. Did you see him?"
"No."
Of all answers this was the one she dreaded most. She had not believed
that anything would come of an interview; she had trembled all day long
at the thought of their meeting; but now that they had not met she knew
by the sinking in her heart that anything was better than uncertainty.
She waited as long as she could, then burst out:
"Tell me something, Horace!"
Mr. Pendyce gave her an angry glance.
"How can I tell you, when there's nothing to tell? I went to his club.
He's not living there now. He's got rooms, nobody knows where. I waited
all the afternoon. Left a message at last for him to come down here
to-morrow. I've sent for Paramor, and told him to come down too. I
won't put up with this sort of thing."
Mrs. Pendyce looked out of the window, but there was nothing to see save
the ha-ha, the coverts, the village spire, the cottage roofs, which for
so long had been her world.
"George won't come down here," she said.
"George will do what I tell him."
Again Mrs. Pendyce shook her head, knowing by instinct that she was
right.
Mr. Pendyce stopped putting on his waist-coat.
"George had better take care," he said; "he's entirely dependent on me."
And as if with those words he had summed up the situation, the philosophy
of a system vital to his son, he no longer frowned. On Mrs. Pendyce
those words had a strange effect. They stirred within her terror. It
was like seeing her son's back bared to a lifted whip-lash; like seeing
the door shut against him on a snowy night. But besides terror they
stirred within her a more poignant feeling yet, as though someone had
dared to show a whip to herself, had dared to defy that something more
precious than life in her soul, that something which was of her blood, so
utterly and secretly passed by the centuries into her fibre that no one
had ever thought of defying it before. And there flashed before her with
ridiculous concreteness the thought: 'I've got three hundred a year of my
own!' Then the whole feeling left her, just as in dreams a mordant
sensation grips and passes, leaving a dull ache, whose cause is
forgotten, behind.
"There's the gong, Horace," she said. "Cecil Tharp is here to dinner. I
asked the Barters, but poor Rose didn't feel up to it. Of course they are
expecting it very soon now. They talk of the 15th of June."
Mr. Pendyce took from his wife his coat, passing his arms down the satin
sleeves.
"If I could get the cottagers to have families like that," he said, "I
shouldn't have much trouble about labour. They're a pig-headed lot--do
nothing that they're told. Give me some eau-de-Cologne, Margery."
Mrs. Pendyce dabbed the wicker flask on her husband's handkerchief.
"Your eyes look tired," she said. "Have you a headache, dear?"
CHAPTER VIII
COUNCIL AT WORSTED SKEYNES
It was on the following evening--the evening on which he was expecting
his son and Mr. Paramor that the Squire leaned forward over the
dining-table and asked:
"What do you say, Barter? I'm speaking to you as a man of the world."
The Rector bent over his glass of port and moistened his lower lip.
"There's no excuse for that woman," he answered. "I always thought she
was a bad lot."
Mr. Pendyce went on:
"We've never had a scandal in my family. I find the thought of it hard
to bear, Barter--I find it hard to bear----"
The Rector emitted a low sound. He had come from long usage to have a
feeling like affection for his Squire.
Mr. Pendyce pursued his thoughts.
"We've gone on," he said, "father and son for hundreds of years. It's a
blow to me, Barter."
Again the Rector emitted that low sound.
"What will the village think?" said Mr. Pendyce; "and the farmers--I
mind that more than anything. Most of them knew my dear old father--not
that he was popular. It's a bitter thing."
The Rector said:
"Well, well, Pendyce, perhaps it won't come to that."
He looked a little shamefaced, and his light eyes were full of something
like contrition.
"How does Mrs. Pendyce take it?"
The Squire looked at him for the first time.
"Ah!" he said; "you never know anything about women. I'd as soon trust
a woman to be just as I'd--I'd finish that magnum; it'd give me gout in
no time."
The Rector emptied his glass.
"I've sent for George and my solicitor," pursued the Squire; "they'll be
here directly."
Mr. Barter pushed his chair back, and raising his right ankle on to his
left leg, clasped his hands round his right knee; then, leaning forward,
he stared up under his jutting brows at Mr. Pendyce. It was the attitude
in which he thought best.
Mr. Pendyce ran on:
"I've nursed the estate ever since it came to me; I've carried on the
tradition as best I could; I've not been as good a man, perhaps, as I
should have wished, but I've always tried to remember my old father's
words: 'I'm done for, Horry; the estate's in your hands now.'" He
cleared his throat.
For a full minute there was no sound save the ticking of the clock. Then
the spaniel John, coming silently from under the sideboard, fell heavily
down against his master's leg with a lengthy snore of satisfaction. Mr.
Pendyce looked down.
"This fellow of mine," he muttered, "is getting fat."
It was evident from the tone of his voice that he desired his emotion to
be forgotten. Something very deep in Mr. Barter respected that desire.
"It's a first-rate magnum," he said.
Mr. Pendyce filled his Rector's glass.
"I forget if you knew Paramor. He was before your time. He was at
Harrow with me."
The Rector took a prolonged sip.
"I shall be in the way," he said. "I'll take myself off'."
The Squire put out his hand affectionately.
"No, no, Barter, don't you go. It's all safe with you. I mean to act.
I can't stand this uncertainty. My wife's cousin Vigil is coming
too--he's her guardian. I wired for him. You know Vigil? He was about
your time."
The Rector turned crimson, and set his underlip. Having scented his
enemy, nothing would now persuade him to withdraw; and the conviction
that he had only done his duty, a little shaken by the Squire's
confidence, returned as though by magic.
"Yes, I know him."
"We'll have it all out here," muttered Mr. Pendyce, "over this port.
There's the carriage. Get up, John."
The spaniel John rose heavily, looked sardonically at Mr. Barter, and
again flopped down against his master's leg.
"Get up, John," said Mr. Pendyce again. The spaniel John snored.
'If I move, you'll move too, and uncertainty will begin for me again,' he
seemed to say.
Mr. Pendyce disengaged his leg, rose, and went to the door. Before
reaching it he turned and came back to the table.
"Barter," he said, "I'm not thinking of myself--I'm not thinking of
myself--we've been here for generations--it's the principle." His face
had the least twist to one side, as though conforming to a kink in his
philosophy; his eyes looked sad and restless.
And the Rector, watching the door for the sight of his enemy, also
thought:
'I'm not thinking of myself--I'm satisfied that I did right--I'm Rector
of this parish it's the principle.'
The spaniel John gave three short barks, one for each of the persons who
entered the room. They were Mrs. Pendyce, Mr. Paramor, and Gregory
Vigil.
"Where's George?" asked the Squire, but no one answered him.
The Rector, who had resumed his seat, stared at a little gold cross which
he had taken out of his waistcoat pocket. Mr. Paramor lifted a vase and
sniffed at the rose it contained; Gregory walked to the window.
When Mr. Pendyce realised that his son had not come, he went to the door
and held it open.
"Be good enough to take John out, Margery," he said. "John!"
The spaniel John, seeing what lay before him, rolled over on his back.
Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes on her husband, and in those eyes she put all
the words which the nature of a lady did not suffer her to speak.
'I claim to be here. Let me stay; it is my right. Don't send me away.'
So her eyes spoke, and so those of the spaniel John, lying on his back,
in which attitude he knew that he was hard to move.
Mr. Pendyce turned him over with his foot.
"Get up, John! Be good enough to take John out, Margery."
Mrs. Pendyce flushed, but did not move.
"John," said Mr. Pendyce, "go with your mistress." The spaniel John
fluttered a drooping tail. Mr. Pendyce pressed his foot to it.
"This is not a subject for women."
Mrs. Pendyce bent down.
"Come, John," she said. The spaniel John, showing the whites of his
eyes, and trying to back through his collar, was assisted from the room.
Mr. Pendyce closed the door behind them.
"Have a glass of port, Vigil; it's the '47. My father laid it down in
'56, the year before he died. Can't drink it myself--I've had to put
down two hogsheads of the Jubilee wine. Paramor, fill your glass. Take
that chair next to Paramor, Vigil. You know Barter?"
Both Gregory's face and the Rector's were very red.
"We're all Harrow men here," went on Mr. Pendyce. And suddenly turning
to Mr. Paramor, he said: "Well?"
Just as round the hereditary principle are grouped the State, the Church,
Law, and Philanthropy, so round the dining-table at Worsted Skeynes sat
the Squire, the Rector, Mr. Paramor, and Gregory Vigil, and none of them
wished to be the first to speak. At last Mr. Paramor, taking from his
pocket Bellew's note and George's answer, which were pinned in strange
alliance, returned them to the Squire.
"I understand the position to be that George refuses to give her up; at
the same time he is prepared to defend the suit and deny everything.
Those are his instructions to me." Taking up the vase again, he sniffed
long and deep at the rose.
Mr. Pendyce broke the silence.
"As a gentleman," he said in a voice sharpened by the bitterness of his
feelings, "I suppose he's obliged----"
Gregory, smiling painfully, added:
"To tell lies."
Mr. Pendyce turned on him at once.
"I've nothing to say about that, Vigil. George has behaved abominably.
I don't uphold him; but if the woman wishes the suit defended he can't
play the cur--that's what I was brought up to believe."
Gregory leaned his forehead on his hand.
"The whole system is odious----" he was beginning.
Mr. Paramor chimed in.
"Let us keep to the facts; without the system."
The Rector spoke for the first time.
"I don't know what you mean about the system; both this man and this
woman are guilty----"
Gregory said in a voice that quivered with rage:
"Be so kind as not to use the expression, 'this woman.'"
The Rector glowered.
"What expression then----"
Mr. Pendyce's voice, to which the intimate trouble of his thoughts lent a
certain dignity, broke in:
"Gentlemen, this is a question concerning the honour of my house."
There was another and a longer silence, during which Mr. Paramor's eyes
haunted from face to face, while beyond the rose a smile writhed on his
lips.
"I suppose you have brought me down here, Pendyce, to give you my
opinion," he said at last. "Well; don't let these matters come into
court. If there is anything you can do to prevent it, do it. If your
pride stands in the way, put it in your pocket. If your sense of truth
stands in the way, forget it. Between personal delicacy and our law of
divorce there is no relation; between absolute truth and our law of
divorce there is no relation. I repeat, don't let these matters come
into court. Innocent and guilty, you will all suffer; the innocent will
suffer more than the guilty, and nobody will benefit. I have come to
this conclusion deliberately. There are cases in which I should give the
opposite opinion. But in this case, I repeat, there's nothing to be
gained by it. Once more, then, don't let these matters come into court.
Don't give people's tongues a chance. Take my advice, appeal to George
again to give you that promise. If he refuses, well, we must try and
bluff Bellew out of it."
Mr. Pendyce had listened, as he had formed the habit of listening to
Edmund Paramor, in silence. He now looked up and said:
"It's all that red-haired ruffian's spite. I don't know what you were
about to stir things up, Vigil. You must have put him on the scent." He
looked moodily at Gregory. Mr. Barter, too, looked at Gregory with a
sort of half-ashamed defiance.
Gregory, who had been staring at his untouched wineglass, turned his
face, very flushed, and began speaking in a voice that emotion and anger
caused to tremble. He avoided looking at the Rector, and addressed
himself to Mr. Paramor.
"George can't give up the woman who has trusted herself to him; that
would be playing the cur, if you like. Let them go and live together
honestly until they can be married. Why do you all speak as if it were
the man who mattered? It is the woman that we should protect!"
The Rector first recovered speech.
"You're talking rank immorality," he said almost good-humouredly.
Mr. Pendyce rose.
"Marry her!" he cried. "What on earth--that's worse than all--the very
thing we're trying to prevent! We've been here, father and son--father
and son--for generations!"
"All the more shame," burst out Gregory, "if you can't stand by a woman
at the end of them----!"
Mr. Paramor made a gesture of reproof.
"There's moderation in all things," he said. "Are you sure that Mrs.
Bellew requires protection? If you are right, I agree; but are you
right?"
"I will answer for it," said Gregory.
Mr. Paramor paused a full minute with his head resting on his hand.
"I am sorry," he said at last, "I must trust to my own judgment."
The Squire looked up.
"If the worst comes to the worst, can I cut the entail, Paramor?"
"No."
"What? But that's all wrong--that's----"
"You can't have it both ways," said Mr. Paramor.
The Squire looked at him dubiously, then blurted out:
"If I choose to leave him nothing but the estate, he'll soon find himself
a beggar. I beg your pardon, gentlemen; fill your glasses! I'm
forgetting everything!"
The Rector filled his glass.
"I've said nothing so far," he began; "I don't feel that it's my
business. My conviction is that there's far too much divorce nowadays.
Let this woman go back to her husband, and let him show her where she's
to blame"--his voice and his eyes hardened--"then let them forgive each
other like Christians. You talk," he said to Gregory, "about standing up
for the woman. I've no patience with that; it's the way immorality's
fostered in these days. I raise my voice against this sentimentalism. I
always have, and I always shall!"
Gregory jumped to his feet.
"I've told you once before," he said, "that you were indelicate; I tell
you so again."
Mr. Barter got up, and stood bending over the table, crimson in the face,
staring at Gregory, and unable to speak.
"Either you or I," he said at last, stammering with passion, "must leave
this room!"
Gregory tried to speak; then turning abruptly, he stepped out on to the
terrace, and passed from the view of those within.
The Rector said:
"Good-night, Pendyce; I'm going, too!"
The Squire shook the hand held out to him with a face perplexed to
sadness. There was silence when Mr. Barter had left the room.
The Squire broke it with a sigh.
"I wish we were back at Oxenham's, Paramor. This serves me right for
deserting the old house. What on earth made me send George to Eton?"
Mr. Paramor buried his nose in the vase. In this saying of his old
schoolfellow was the whole of the Squire's creed:
'I believe in my father, and his father, and his father's father, the
makers and keepers of my estate; and I believe in myself and my son and
my son's son. And I believe that we have made the country, and shall
keep the country what it is. And I believe in the Public Schools, and
especially the Public School that I was at. And I believe in my social
equals and the country house, and in things as they are, for ever and
ever. Amen.'
Mr. Pendyce went on:
"I'm not a Puritan, Paramor; I dare say there are allowances to be made
for George. I don't even object to the woman herself; she may be too
good for Bellew; she must be too good for a fellow like that! But for
George to marry her would be ruination. Look at Lady Rose's case!
Anyone but a star-gazing fellow like Vigil must see that! It's taboo!
It's sheer taboo! And think--think of my--my grandson! No, no, Paramor;
no, no, by God!"
The Squire covered his eyes with his hand.
Mr. Paramor, who had no son himself, answered with feeling:
"Now, now, old fellow; it won't come to that!"
"God knows what it will come to, Paramor! My nerve's shaken! You know
yourself that if there's a divorce he'll be bound to marry her!"
To this Mr. Paramor made no reply, but pressed his lips together.
"There's your poor dog whining," he said.
And without waiting for permission he opened the door. Mrs. Pendyce and
the spaniel John came in. The Squire looked up and frowned. The spaniel
John, panting with delight, rubbed against him. 'I have been through
torment, master,' he seemed to say. 'A second separation at present is
not possible for me!'
Mrs. Pendyce stood waiting silently, and Mr. Paramor addressed himself to
her.
"You can do more than any of us, Mrs. Pendyce, both with George and with
this man Bellew--and, if I am not mistaken, with his wife."
The Squire broke in:
"Don't think that I'll have any humble pie eaten to that fellow Bellew!"
The look Mr. Paramor gave him at those words, was like that of a doctor
diagnosing a disease. Yet there was nothing in the expression of the
Squire's face with its thin grey whiskers and moustache, its twist to the
left, its swan-like eyes, decided jaw, and sloping brow, different from
what this idea might bring on the face of any country gentleman.
Mrs. Pendyce said eagerly
"Oh, Mr. Paramor, if I could only see George!"
She longed so for a sight of her son that her thoughts carried her no
further.
"See him!" cried the Squire. "You'll go on spoiling him till he's
disgraced us all!"
Mrs. Pendyce turned from her husband to his solicitor. Excitement had
fixed an unwonted colour in her cheeks; her lips twitched as if she
wished to speak.
Mr. Paramor answered for her:
"No, Pendyce; if George is spoilt, the system is to blame."
"System!" said the Squire. "I've never had a system for him. I'm no
believer in systems! I don't know what you're talking of. I have
another son, thank God!"
Mrs. Pendyce took a step forward.
"Horace," she said, "you would never----"
Mr. Pendyce turned from his wife, and said sharply:
"Paramor, are you sure I can't cut the entail?"
"As sure," said Mr. Paramor, "as I sit here!"
CHAPTER IX
DEFINITION OF "PENDYCITIS"
Gregory walked long in the Scotch garden with his eyes on the stars. One,
larger than all the rest, over the larches, shone on him ironically, for
it was the star of love. And on his beat between the yew-trees that,
living before Pendyces came to Worsted Skeynes, would live when they were
gone, he cooled his heart in the silver light of that big star. The
irises restrained their perfume lest it should whip his senses; only the
young larch-trees and the far fields sent him their fugitive sweetness
through the dark. And the same brown owl that had hooted when Helen
Bellew kissed George Pendyce in the conservatory hooted again now that
Gregory walked grieving over the fruits of that kiss.
His thoughts were of Mr. Barter, and with the injustice natural to a man
who took a warm and personal view of things, he painted the Rector in
colours darker than his cloth.
'Indelicate, meddlesome,' he thought. 'How dare he speak of her like
that!'
Mr. Paramor's voice broke in on his meditations.
"Still cooling your heels? Why did you play the deuce with us in there?"
"I hate a sham," said Gregory. "This marriage of my ward's is a sham.
She had better live honestly with the man she really loves!"
"So you said just now," returned Mr. Paramor. "Would you apply that to
everyone?"
"I would."
"Well," said Mr. Paramor with a laugh, "there is nothing like an idealist
for-making hay! You once told me, if I remember, that marriage was
sacred to you!"
"Those are my own private feelings, Paramor. But here the mischief's
done already. It is a sham, a hateful sham, and it ought to come to an
end!"
"That's all very well," replied Mr. Paramor, "but when you come to put it
into practice in that wholesale way it leads to goodness knows what. It
means reconstructing marriage on a basis entirely different from the
present. It's marriage on the basis of the heart, and not on the basis
of property. Are you prepared to go to that length?"
"I am."
"You're as much of an extremist one way as Barter is the other. It's you
extremists who do all the harm. There's a golden mean, my friend. I
agree that something ought to be done. But what you don't see is that
laws must suit those they are intended to govern. You're too much in the
stars, Vigil. Medicine must be graduated to the patient. Come, man,
where's your sense of humour? Imagine your conception of marriage
applied to Pendyce and his sons, or his Rector, or his tenants, and the
labourers on his estate."
"No, no," said Gregory; "I refuse to believe----"
"The country classes," said Mr. Paramor quietly, "are especially backward
in such matters. They have strong, meat-fed instincts, and what with the
county Members, the Bishops, the Peers, all the hereditary force of the
country, they still rule the roast. And there's a certain disease--to
make a very poor joke, call it 'Pendycitis' with which most of these
people are infected. They're 'crass.' They do things, but they do them
the wrong way! They muddle through with the greatest possible amount of
unnecessary labour and suffering! It's part of the hereditary principle.
I haven't had to do with them thirty five years for nothing!"
Gregory turned his face away.
"Your joke is very poor," he said. "I don't believe they are like that!
I won't admit it. If there is such a disease, it's our business to find
a remedy."
"Nothing but an operation will cure it," said Mr. Paramor; "and before
operating there's a preliminary process to be gone through. It was
discovered by Lister."
Gregory answered
"Paramor, I hate your pessimism!"
Mr. Paramor's eyes haunted Gregory's back.
"But I am not a pessimist," he said. "Far from it.
"'When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree----'"
Gregory turned on him.
"How can you quote poetry, and hold the views you do? We ought to
construct----"
"You want to build before you've laid your foundations," said Mr.
Paramor. "You let your feelings carry you away, Vigil. The state of the
marriage laws is only a symptom. It's this disease, this grudging narrow
spirit in men, that makes such laws necessary. Unlovely men, unlovely
laws--what can you expect?"
"I will never believe that we shall be content to go on living in a
slough of--of----"
"Provincialism!" said Mr. Paramor. "You should take to gardening; it
makes one recognise what you idealists seem to pass over--that men, my
dear friend, are, like plants, creatures of heredity and environment;
their growth is slow. You can't get grapes from thorns, Vigil, or figs
from thistles--at least, not in one generation--however busy and hungry
you may be!"
"Your theory degrades us all to the level of thistles."
"Social laws depend for their strength on the harm they have it in their
power to inflict, and that harm depends for its strength on the ideals
held by the man on whom the harm falls. If you dispense with the
marriage tie, or give up your property and take to Brotherhood, you'll
have a very thistley time, but you won't mind that if you're a fig. And
so on ad lib. It's odd, though, how soon the thistles that thought
themselves figs get found out. There are many things I hate, Vigil. One
is extravagance, and another humbug!"
But Gregory stood looking at the sky.
"We seem to have wandered from the point," said Mr. Paramor, "and I think
we had better go in. It's nearly eleven."
Throughout the length of the low white house there were but three windows
lighted, three eyes looking at the moon, a fairy shallop sailing the
night sky. The cedar-trees stood black as pitch. The old brown owl had
ceased his hooting. Mr. Paramor gripped Gregory by the arm.
"A nightingale! Did you hear him down in that spinney? It's a sweet
place, this! I don't wonder Pendyce is fond of it. You're not a
fisherman, I think? Did you ever watch a school of fishes coasting along
a bank? How blind they are, and how they follow their leader! In our
element we men know just about as much as the fishes do. A blind lot,
Vigil! We take a mean view of things; we're damnably provincial!"
Gregory pressed his hands to his forehead.
"I'm trying to think," he said, "what will be the consequences to my ward
of this divorce."
"My friend, listen to some plain speaking. Your ward and her husband and
George Pendyce are just the sort of people for whom our law of divorce is
framed. They've all three got courage, they're all reckless and
obstinate, and--forgive me--thick-skinned. Their case, if fought, will
take a week of hard swearing, a week of the public's money and time. It
will give admirable opportunities to eminent counsel, excellent reading
to the general public, first-rate sport all round.
"The papers will have a regular carnival. I repeat, they are the very
people for whom our law of divorce is framed. There's a great deal to be
said for publicity, but all the same it puts a premium on insensibility,
and causes a vast amount of suffering to innocent people. I told you
once before, to get a divorce, even if you deserve it, you mustn't be a
sensitive person. Those three will go through it all splendidly, but
every scrap of skin will be torn off you and our poor friends down here,
and the result will be a drawn battle at the end! That's if it's fought,
and if it comes on I don't see how we can let it go unfought; it's
contrary to my instincts. If we let it go undefended, mark my words,
your ward and George Pendyce will be sick of each other before the law
allows them to marry, and George, as his father says, for the sake of
'morality,' will have to marry a woman who is tired of him, or of whom he
is tired. Now you've got it straight from the shoulder, and I'm going up
to bed. It's a heavy dew. Lock this door after you."
Mr. Paramor made his way into the conservatory. He stopped and came
back.
"Pendyce," he said, "perfectly understands all I've been telling you.
He'd give his eyes for the case not to come on, but you'll see he'll rub
everything up the wrong way, and it'll be a miracle if we succeed.
That's 'Pendycitis'! We've all got a touch of it. Good-night!"
Gregory was left alone outside the country house with his big star. And
as his thoughts were seldom of an impersonal kind he did not reflect on
"Pendycitis," but on Helen Bellew. And the longer he thought the more he
thought of her as he desired to think, for this was natural to him; and
ever more ironical grew the twinkling of his star above the spinney where
the nightingale was singing.
CHAPTER X
GEORGE GOES FOR THE GLOVES
On the Thursday of the Epsom Summer Meeting, George Pendyce sat in the
corner of a first-class railway-carriage trying to make two and two into
five. On a sheet of Stoics' Club note-paper his racing-debts were stated
to a penny--one thousand and forty five pounds overdue, and below, seven
hundred and fifty lost at the current meeting. Below these again his
private debts were indicated by the round figure of one thousand pounds.
It was round by courtesy, for he had only calculated those bills which
had been sent in, and Providence, which knows all things, preferred the
rounder figure of fifteen hundred. In sum, therefore, he had against him
a total of three thousand two hundred and ninety-five pounds. And since
at Tattersalls and the Stock Exchange, where men are engaged in perpetual
motion, an almost absurd punctiliousness is required in the payment of
those sums which have for the moment inadvertently been lost, seventeen
hundred and ninety-five of this must infallibly be raised by Monday next.
Indeed, only a certain liking for George, a good loser and a good winner,
and the fear of dropping a good customer, had induced the firm of
bookmakers to let that debt of one thousand and forty-five stand over the
Epsom Meeting.
To set against these sums (in which he had not counted his current
trainer's bill, and the expenses, which he could not calculate, of the
divorce suit), he had, first, a bank balance which he might still
overdraw another twenty pounds; secondly, the Ambler and two bad selling
platers; and thirdly (more considerable item), X, or that which he might,
or indeed must, win over the Ambler's race this afternoon.
Whatever else, it was not pluck that was lacking in the character of
George Pendyce. This quality was in his fibre, in the consistency of his
blood, and confronted with a situation which, to some men, and especially
to men not brought up on the hereditary plan, might have seemed
desperate, he exhibited no sign of anxiety or distress. Into the
consideration of his difficulties he imported certain principles: (1) He
did not intend to be posted at Tattersalls. Sooner than that he would go
to the Jews; the entail was all he could look to borrow on; the Hebrews
would force him to pay through the nose. (2) He did not intend to show
the white feather, and in backing his horse meant to "go for the gloves."
(3) He did not intend to think of the future; the thought of the present
was quite bad enough.
The train bounded and swung as though rushing onwards to a tune, and
George sat quietly in his corner.
Amongst his fellows in the carriage was the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow, who,
though not a racing-man, took a kindly interest in our breed of horses,
which by attendance at the principal meetings he hoped to improve.
"Your horse going to run, George?"
George nodded.
"I shall have a fiver on him for luck. I can't afford to bet. Saw your
mother at the Foxholme garden-party last week. You seen them lately?"
George shook his head and felt an odd squeeze: at his heart.
"You know they had a fire at old Peacock's farm; I hear the Squire and
Barter did wonders. He's as game as a pebble, the Squire."
Again George nodded, and again felt that squeeze at his heart.
"Aren't they coming to town this season?"
"Haven't heard," answered George. "Have a cigar?"
Winlow took the cigar, and cutting it with a small penknife, scrutinised
George's square face with his leisurely eyes. It needed a physiognomist
to penetrate its impassivity. Winlow thought to himself:
'I shouldn't be surprised if what they say about old George is true.' .
. . "Had a good meeting so far?"
"So-so."
They parted on the racecourse. George went at once to see his trainer
and thence into Tattersalls' ring. He took with him that equation with
X, and sought the society of two gentlemen quietly dressed, one of whom
was making a note in a little book with a gold pencil. They greeted him
respectfully, for it was to them that he owed the bulk of that seventeen
hundred and ninety-five pounds.
"What price will you lay against my horse?"
"Evens, Mr. Pendyce," replied the gentleman with the gold pencil, "to a
monkey."
George booked the bet. It was not his usual way of doing business, but
to-day everything seemed different, and something stronger than custom
was at work.
'I am going for the gloves,' he thought; 'if it doesn't come off', I'm
done anyhow.'
He went to another quietly dressed gentleman with a diamond pin and a
Jewish face. And as he went from one quietly dressed gentleman to
another there preceded him some subtle messenger, who breathed the words,
'Mr. Pendyce is going for the gloves,' so that at each visit he found
they had greater confidence than ever in his horse. Soon he had promised
to pay two thousand pounds if the Ambler lost, and received the assurance
of eminent gentlemen, quietly dressed, that they would pay him fifteen
hundred if the Ambler won. The odds now stood at two to one on, and he
had found it impossible to back the Ambler for "a place," in accordance
with his custom.
'Made a fool of myself,' he thought; 'ought never to have gone into the
ring at all; ought to have let Barney's work it quietly. It doesn't
matter!'
He still required to win three hundred pounds to settle on the Monday,
and laid a final bet of seven hundred to three hundred and fifty pounds
upon his horse. Thus, without spending a penny, simply by making a few
promises, he had solved the equation with X.
On leaving the ring, he entered the bar and drank some whisky. He then
went to the paddock. The starting-bell for the second race had rung;
there was hardly anyone there, but in a far corner the Ambler was being
led up and down by a boy.
George glanced round to see that no acquaintances were near, and joined
in this promenade. The Ambler turned his black, wild eye, crescented
with white, threw up his head, and gazed far into the distance.
'If one could only make him understand!' thought George.
When his horse left the paddock for the starting-post George went back to
the stand. At the bar he drank some more whisky, and heard someone say:
"I had to lay six to four. I want to find Pendyce; they say he's backed
it heavily."
George put down his glass, and instead of going to his usual place,
mounted slowly to the top of the stand.
'I don't want them buzzing round me,' he thought.
At the top of the stand--that national monument, visible for twenty miles
around--he knew himself to be safe. Only "the many" came here, and
amongst the many he thrust himself till at the very top he could rest his
glasses on a rail and watch the colours. Besides his own peacock blue
there was a straw, a blue with white stripes, a red with white stars.
They say that through the minds of drowning men troop ghosts of past
experience. It was not so with George; his soul was fastened on that
little daub of peacock blue. Below the glasses his lips were colourless
from hard compression; he moistened them continually. The four little
Coloured daubs stole into line, the flag fell.
"They're off!" That roar, like the cry of a monster, sounded all around.
George steadied his glasses on the rail. Blue with white stripes was
leading, the Ambler lying last. Thus they came round the further bend.
And Providence, as though determined that someone should benefit by his
absorption, sent a hand sliding under George's elbows, to remove the pin
from his tie and slide away. Round Tattenham Corner George saw his horse
take the lead. So, with straw closing up, they came into the straight.
The Ambler's jockey looked back and raised his whip; in that instant, as
if by magic, straw drew level; down came the whip on the Ambler's flank;
again as by magic straw was in front. The saying of his old jockey
darted through George's mind: "Mark my words, sir, that 'orse knows
what's what, and when they're like that they're best let alone."
"Sit still, you fool!" he muttered.
The whip came down again; straw was two lengths in front.
Someone behind said:
"The favourite's beat! No, he's not, by Jove!" For as though George's
groan had found its way to the jockey's ears, he dropped his whip. The
Ambler sprang forward. George saw that he was gaining. All his soul went
out to his horse's struggle. In each of those fifteen seconds he died
and was born again; with each stride all that was loyal and brave in his
nature leaped into flame, all that was base sank, for he himself was
racing with his horse, and the sweat poured down his brow. And his lips
babbled broken sounds that no one heard, for all around were babbling
too.
Locked together, the Ambler and straw ran home. Then followed a hush,
for no one knew which of the two had won. The numbers went up
"Seven-Two-Five."
"The favourite's second! Beaten by a nose!" said a voice.
George bowed his head, and his whole spirit felt numb. He closed his
glasses and moved with the crowd to the stairs. A voice behind him said:
"He'd have won in another stride!"
Another answered:
"I hate that sort of horse. He curled up at the whip."
George ground his teeth.
"Curse you!" he muttered, "you little Cockney; what do you know about a
horse?"
The crowd surged; the speakers were lost to sight.
The long descent from the stand gave him time. No trace of emotion
showed on his face when he appeared in the paddock. Blacksmith the
trainer stood by the Ambler's stall.
"That idiot Tipping lost us the race, sir," he began with quivering lips.
"If he'd only left him alone, the horse would have won in a canter. What
on earth made him use his whip? He deserves to lose his license.
He----"
The gall and bitterness of defeat surged into George's brain.
"It's no good your talking, Blacksmith," he said; "you put him up. What
the devil made you quarrel with Swells?"
The little man's chin dropped in sheer surprise.
George turned away, and went up to the jockey, but at the sick look on
the poor youth's face the angry words died off his tongue.
"All right, Tipping; I'm not going to rag you." And with the ghost of a
smile he passed into the Ambler's stall. The groom had just finished
putting him to rights; the horse stood ready to be led from the field of
his defeat. The groom moved out, and George went to the Ambler's head.
There is no place, no corner, on a racecourse where a man may show his
heart. George did but lay his forehead against the velvet of his horse's
muzzle, and for one short second hold it there. The Ambler awaited the
end of that brief caress, then with a snort threw up his head, and with
his wild, soft eyes seemed saying, 'You fools! what do you know of me?'
George stepped to one side.
"Take him away," he said, and his eyes followed the Ambler's receding
form.
A racing-man of a different race, whom he knew and did not like, came up
to him as he left the paddock.
"I suppothe you won't thell your horse, Pendythe?" he said. "I'll give
you five thou. for him. He ought never to have lotht; the beating won't
help him with the handicappers a little bit."
'You carrion crow!' thought George.
"Thanks; he's not for sale," he answered.
He went back to the stand, but at every step and in each face, he seemed
to see the equation which now he could only solve with X2. Thrice he went
into the bar. It was on the last of these occasions that he said to
himself: "The horse must go. I shall never have a horse like him again."
Over that green down which a hundred thousand feet had trodden brown,
which a hundred thousand hands had strewn with bits of paper, cigar-ends,
and the fragments of discarded food, over the great approaches to the
battlefield, where all was pathway leading to and from the fight, those
who make livelihood in such a fashion, least and littlest followers, were
bawling, hawking, whining to the warriors flushed with victory or wearied
by defeat: Over that green down, between one-legged men and ragged
acrobats, women with babies at the breast, thimble-riggers, touts, walked
George Pendyce, his mouth hard set and his head bent down.
"Good luck, Captain, good luck to-morrow; good luck, good luck!... For
the love of Gawd, your lordship!... Roll, bowl, or pitch!"
The sun, flaming out after long hiding, scorched the back of his neck;
the free down wind, fouled by foetid odours, brought to his ears the
monster's last cry, "They're off!"
A voice hailed him.
George turned and saw Winlow, and with a curse and a smile he answered:
"Hallo!"
The Hon. Geoffrey ranged alongside, examining George's face at leisure.
"Afraid you had a bad race, old chap! I hear you've sold the Ambler to
that fellow Guilderstein."
In George's heart something snapped.
'Already?' he thought. 'The brute's been crowing. And it's that little
bounder that my horse--my horse'
He answered calmly:
"Wanted the money."
Winlow, who was not lacking in cool discretion, changed the subject.
Late that evening George sat in the Stoics' window overlooking
Piccadilly. Before his eyes, shaded by his hand, the hansoms passed,
flying East and West, each with the single pale disc of face, or the twin
discs of faces close together; and the gentle roar of the town came in,
and the cool air refreshed by night. In the light of the lamps the trees
of the Green Park stood burnished out of deep shadow where nothing moved;
and high over all, the stars and purple sky seemed veiled with golden
gauze. Figures without end filed by. Some glanced at the lighted
windows and the man in the white shirt-front sitting there. And many
thought: 'Wish I were that swell, with nothing to do but step into his
father's shoes;' and to many no thought came. But now and then some
passer murmured to himself: "Looks lonely sitting there."
And to those faces gazing up, George's lips were grim, and over them came
and went a little bitter smile; but on his forehead he felt still the
touch of his horse's muzzle, and his eyes, which none could see, were
dark with pain.
CHAPTER XI
MR. BARTER TAKES A WALK
The event at the Rectory was expected every moment. The Rector, who
practically never suffered, disliked the thought and sight of others'
suffering. Up to this day, indeed, there had been none to dislike, for
in answer to inquiries his wife had always said "No, dear, no; I'm all
right--really, it's nothing." And she had always said it smiling, even
when her smiling lips were white. But this morning in trying to say it
she had failed to smile. Her eyes had lost their hopelessly hopeful
shining, and sharply between her teeth she said: "Send for Dr. Wilson,
Hussell"
The Rector kissed her, shutting his eyes, for he was afraid of her face
with its lips drawn back, and its discoloured cheeks. In five minutes
the groom was hastening to Cornmarket on the roan cob, and the Rector
stood in his study, looking from one to another of his household gods, as
though calling them to his assistance. At last he took down a bat and
began oiling it. Sixteen years ago, when Husell was born, he had been
overtaken by sounds that he had never to this day forgotten; they had
clung to the nerves of his memory, and for no reward would he hear them
again. They had never been uttered since, for like most wives, his wife
was a heroine; but, used as he was to this event, the Rector had ever
since suffered from panic. It was as though Providence, storing all the
anxiety which he might have felt throughout, let him have it with a rush
at the last moment. He put the bat back into its case, corked the
oil-bottle, and again stood looking at his household gods. None came to
his aid. And his thoughts were as they had nine times been before. 'I
ought not to go out. I ought to wait for Wilson. Suppose anything were
to happen. Still, nurse is with her, and I can do nothing. Poor
Rose--poor darling! It's my duty to----What's that? I'm better out of
the way.'
Softly, without knowing that it was softly, he opened the door; softly,
without knowing it was softly, he stepped to the hat-rack and took his
black straw hat; softly, without knowing it was softly, he went out, and,
unfaltering, hurried down the drive.
Three minutes later he appeared again, approaching the house faster than
he had set forth.
He passed the hall door, ran up the stairs, and entered his wife's room.
"Rose dear, Rose, can I do anything?"
Mrs. Barter put out her hand, a gleam of malice shot into her eyes.
Through her set lips came a vague murmur, and the words:
"No, dear, nothing. Better go for your walk."
Mr. Barter pressed his lips to her quivering hand, and backed from the
room. Outside the door he struck at the air with his fist, and, running
downstairs, was once more lost to sight. Faster and faster he walked,
leaving the village behind, and among the country sights and sounds and
scents--his nerves began to recover. He was able to think again of other
things: of Cecil's school report--far from satisfactory; of old Hermon in
the village, whom he suspected of overdoing his bronchitis with an eye to
port; of the return match with Coldingham, and his belief that their
left-hand bowler only wanted "hitting"; of the new edition of hymn-books,
and the slackness of the upper village in attending church--five
households less honest and ductile than the rest, a foreign look about
them, dark people, un-English. In thinking of these things he forgot
what he wanted to forget; but hearing the sound of wheels, he entered a
field as though to examine the crops until the vehicle had passed.
It was not Wilson, but it might have been, and at the next turning he
unconsciously branched off the Cornmarket road.
It was noon when he came within sight of Coldingham, six miles from
Worsted Skeynes. He would have enjoyed a glass of beer, but, unable to
enter the public-house, he went into the churchyard instead. He sat down
on a bench beneath a sycamore opposite the Winlow graves, for Coldingham
was Lord Montrossor's seat, and it was here that all the Winlows lay.
Bees were busy above them in the branches, and Mr. Barter thought:
'Beautiful site. We've nothing like this at Worsted Skeynes....'
But suddenly he found that he could not sit there and think. Suppose his
wife were to die! It happened sometimes; the wife of John Tharp of
Bletchingham had died in giving birth to her tenth child! His forehead
was wet, and he wiped it. Casting an angry glance at the Winlow graves,
he left the seat.
He went down by the further path, and came out on the green. A
cricket-match was going on, and in spite of himself the Rector stopped.
The Coldingham team were in the field. Mr. Barter watched. As he had
thought, that left-hand bowler bowled a good pace, and "came in" from the
off, but his length was poor, very poor! A determined batsman would soon
knock him off! He moved into line with the wickets to see how much the
fellow "came in," and he grew so absorbed that he did not at first notice
the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow in pads and a blue and green blazer, smoking a
cigarette astride of a camp-stool.
"Ah, Winlow, it's your team against the village. Afraid I can't stop to
see you bat. I was just passing--matter I had to attend to--must get
back!"
The real solemnity of his face excited Winlow's curiosity.
"Can't you stop and have lunch with us?"
"No, no; my wife--Must get back!"
Winlow murmured:
"Ah yes, of course." His leisurely blue eyes, always in command of the
situation, rested on the Rector's heated face. "By the way," he said,
"I'm afraid George Pendyce is rather hard hit. Been obliged to sell his
horse. I saw him at Epsom the week before last."
The Rector brightened.
"I made certain he'd come to grief over that betting," he said. "I'm
very sorry--very sorry indeed."
"They say," went on Winlow, "that he dropped four thousand over the
Thursday race.
"He was pretty well dipped before, I know. Poor old George! such an
awfully good chap!"
"Ah," repeated Mr. Barter, "I'm very sorry--very sorry indeed. Things
were bad enough as it was."
A ray of interest illumined the leisureliness of the Hon. Geoffrey's
eyes.
"You mean about Mrs.----H'm, yes?" he said. "People are talking; you
can't stop that. I'm so sorry for the poor Squire, and Mrs. Pendyce. I
hope something'll be done."
The Rector frowned.
"I've done my best," he said. "Well hit, sir! I've always said that
anyone with a little pluck can knock off that lefthand man you think so
much of. He 'comes in' a bit, but he bowls a shocking bad length. Here I
am dawdling. I must get back!"
And once more that real solemnity came over Mr. Barter's face.
"I suppose you'll be playing for Coldingham against us on Thursday?
Good-bye!"
Nodding in response to Winlow's salute, he walked away.
He avoided the churchyard, and took a path across the fields. He was
hungry and thirsty. In one of his sermons there occurred this passage:
"We should habituate ourselves to hold our appetites in check. By
constantly accustoming our selves to abstinence little abstinences in our
daily life--we alone can attain to that true spirituality without which
we cannot hope to know God." And it was well known throughout his
household and the village that the Rector's temper was almost dangerously
spiritual if anything detained him from his meals. For he was a man
physiologically sane and healthy to the core, whose digestion and
functions, strong, regular, and straightforward as the day, made calls
upon him which would not be denied. After preaching that particular
sermon, he frequently for a week or more denied himself a second glass of
ale at lunch, or his after-dinner cigar, smoking a pipe instead. And he
was perfectly honest in his belief that he attained a greater
spirituality thereby, and perhaps indeed he did. But even if he did not,
there was no one to notice this, for the majority of his flock accepted
his spirituality as matter of course, and of the insignificant minority
there were few who did not make allowance for the fact that he was their
pastor by virtue of necessity, by virtue of a system which had placed him
there almost mechanically, whether he would or no. Indeed, they respected
him the more that he was their Rector, and could not be removed, and were
glad that theirs was no common Vicar like that of Coldingham, dependent
on the caprices of others. For, with the exception of two bad characters
and one atheist, the whole village, Conservatives or Liberals (there were
Liberals now that they were beginning to believe that the ballot was
really secret), were believers in the hereditary system.
Insensibly the Rector directed himself towards Bletchingham, where there
was a temperance house. At heart he loathed lemonade and gingerbeer in
the middle of the day, both of which made his economy cold and uneasy,
but he felt he could go nowhere else. And his spirits rose at the sight
of Bletchingham spire.
'Bread and cheese,' he thought. 'What's better than bread and cheese?
And they shall make me a cup of coffee.'
In that cup of coffee there was something symbolic and fitting to his
mental state. It was agitated and thick, and impregnated with the
peculiar flavour of country coffee. He swallowed but little, and resumed
his march. At the first turning he passed the village school, whence
issued a rhythmic but discordant hum, suggestive of some dull machine
that had served its time. The Rector paused to listen. Leaning on the
wall of the little play-yard, he tried to make out the words that, like a
religious chant, were being intoned within. It sounded like, "Twice
two's four, twice four's six, twice six's eight," and he passed on,
thinking, 'A fine thing; but if we don't take care we shall go too far;
we shall unfit them for their stations,' and he frowned. Crossing a
stile, he took a footpath. The air was full of the singing of larks, and
the bees were pulling down the clover-stalks. At the bottom of the field
was a little pond overhung with willows. On a bare strip of pasture,
within thirty yards, in the full sun, an old horse was tethered to a peg.
It stood with its face towards the pond, baring its yellow teeth, and
stretching out its head, all bone and hollows, to the water which it
could not reach. The Rector stopped. He did not know the horse
personally, for it was three fields short of his parish, but he saw that
the poor beast wanted water. He went up, and finding that the knot of
the halter hurt his fingers, stooped down and wrenched at the peg. While
he was thus straining and tugging, crimson in the face, the old horse
stood still, gazing at him out of his bleary eyes. Mr. Barter sprang
upright with a jerk, the peg in his hand, and the old horse started back.
"So ho, boy!" said the Rector, and angrily he muttered: "A shame to tie
the poor beast up here in the sun. I should like to give his owner a bit
of my mind!"
He led the animal towards the water. The old horse followed tranquilly
enough, but as he had done nothing to deserve his misfortune, neither did
he feel any gratitude towards his deliverer. He drank his fill, and fell
to grazing. The Rector experienced a sense of disillusionment, and drove
the peg again into the softer earth under the willows; then raising
himself, he looked hard at the old horse.
The animal continued to graze. The Rector took out his handkerchief,
wiped the perspiration from his brow, and frowned. He hated ingratitude
in man or beast.
Suddenly he realised that he was very tired.
"It must be over by now," he said to himself, and hastened on in the heat
across the fields.
The Rectory door was open. Passing into the study, he sat down a moment
to collect his thoughts. People were moving above; he heard a long
moaning sound that filled his heart with terror.
He got up and rushed to the bell, but did not ring it, and ran upstairs
instead. Outside his wife's room he met his children's old nurse. She
was standing on the mat, with her hands to her ears, and the tears were
rolling down her face.
"Oh, sir!" she said--"oh, sir!"
The Rector glared.
"Woman!" he cried--"woman!"
He covered his ears and rushed downstairs again. There was a lady in the
hall. It was Mrs. Pendyce, and he ran to her, as a hurt child runs to
its mother.
"My wife," he said--"my poor wife! God knows what they're doing to her
up there, Mrs. Pendyce!" and he hid his face in his hands.
She, who had been a Totteridge, stood motionless; then, very gently
putting her gloved hand on his thick arm, where the muscles stood out
from the clenching of his hands, she said:
"Dear Mr. Barter, Dr. Wilson is so clever! Come into the drawing-room!"
The Rector, stumbling like a blind man, suffered himself to be led. He
sat down on the sofa, and Mrs. Pendyce sat down beside him, her hand
still on his arm; over her face passed little quivers, as though she were
holding herself in. She repeated in her gentle voice:
"It will be all right--it will be all right. Come, come!"
In her concern and sympathy there was apparent, not aloofness, but a
faint surprise that she should be sitting there stroking the Rector's
arm.
Mr. Barter took his hands from before his face.
"If she dies," he said in a voice unlike his own, "I'll not bear it."
In answer to those words, forced from him by that which is deeper than
habit, Mrs. Pendyce's hand slipped from his arm and rested on the shiny
chintz covering of the sofa, patterned with green and crimson. Her soul
shrank from the violence in his voice.
"Wait here," she said. "I will go up and see."
To command was foreign to her nature, but Mr. Barter, with a look such as
a little rueful boy might give, obeyed.
When she was gone he stood listening at the door for some sound--for any
sound, even the sound of her dress--but there was none, for her petticoat
was of lawn, and the Rector was alone with a silence that he could not
bear. He began to pace the room in his thick boots, his hands clenched
behind him, his forehead butting the air, his lips folded; thus a bull,
penned for the first time, turns and turns, showing the whites of its
full eyes.
His thoughts drove here and there, fearful, angered, without guidance; he
did not pray. The words he had spoken so many times left him as though
of malice. "We are all in the hands of God!--we are all in the hands of
God!" Instead of them he could think of nothing but the old saying Mr.
Paramor had used in the Squire's dining-room, "There is moderation in all
things," and this with cruel irony kept humming in his ears. "Moderation
in all things--moderation in all things!" and his wife lying there--his
doing, and
There was a sound. The Rector's face, so brown and red, could not grow
pale, but his great fists relaxed. Mrs. Pendyce was standing in the
doorway with a peculiar half-pitiful, half-excited smile.
"It's all right--a boy. The poor dear has had a dreadful time!"
The Rector looked at her, but did not speak; then abruptly he brushed
past her in the doorway, hurried into his study and locked the door.
Then, and then only, he kneeled down, and remained there many minutes,
thinking of nothing.
CHAPTER XII
THE SQUIRE MAKES UP HIS MIND
That same evening at nine o'clock, sitting over the last glass of a pint
of port, Mr. Barter felt an irresistible longing for enjoyment, an
impulse towards expansion and his fellow-men.
Taking his hat and buttoning his coat--for though the June evening was
fine the easterly breeze was eager--he walked towards the village.
Like an emblem of that path to God of which he spoke on Sundays, the grey
road between trim hedges threaded the shadow of the elm-trees where the
rooks had long since gone to bed. A scent of wood-smoke clung in the
air; the cottages appeared, the forge, the little shops facing the
village green. Lights in the doors and windows deepened; a breeze, which
hardly stirred the chestnut leaves, fled with a gentle rustling through
the aspens. Houses and trees, houses and trees! Shelter through the
past and through the days to come!
The Rector stopped the first man he saw.
"Fine weather for the hay, Aiken! How's your wife doing--a girl? Ah,
ha! You want some boys! You heard of our event at the Rectory? I'm
thankful to say----"
From man to man and house to house he soothed his thirst for fellowship,
for the lost sense of dignity that should efface again the scar of
suffering. And above him the chestnuts in their breathing stillness, the
aspens with their tender rustling, seemed to watch and whisper: "Oh,
little men! oh, little men!"
The moon, at the end of her first quarter, sailed out of the shadow of
the churchyard--the same young moon that had sailed in her silver irony
when the first Barter preached, the first Pendyce was Squire at Worsted
Skeynes; the same young moon that, serene, ineffable, would come again
when the last Barter slept, the last Pendyce was gone, and on their
gravestones, through the amethystine air, let fall her gentle light.
The Rector thought:
'I shall set Stedman to work on that corner. We must have more room; the
stones there are a hundred and fifty years old if they're a day. You
can't read a single word. They'd better be the first to go.'
He passed on along the paddock footway leading to the Squire's.
Day was gone, and only the moonbeams lighted the tall grasses.
At the Hall the long French windows of the dining-room were open; the
Squire was sitting there alone, brooding sadly above the remnants of the
fruit he had been eating. Flanking him on either wall hung a silent
company, the effigies of past Pendyces; and at the end, above the oak and
silver of the sideboard, the portrait of his wife was looking at them
under lifted brows, with her faint wonder.
He raised his head.
"Ah, Barter! How's your wife?"
"Doing as well as can be expected."
"Glad to hear that! A fine constitution--wonderful vitality. Port or
claret?"
"Thanks; just a glass of port."
"Very trying for your nerves. I know what it is. We're different from
the last generation; they thought nothing of it. When Charles was born
my dear old father was out hunting all day. When my wife had George, it
made me as nervous as a cat!"
The Squire stopped, then hurriedly added:
"But you're so used to it."
Mr. Barter frowned.
"I was passing Coldingham to-day," he said. "I saw Winlow. He asked
after you."
"Ah! Winlow! His wife's a very nice woman. They've only the one child,
I think?"
The Rector winced.
"Winlow tells me," he said abruptly, "that George has sold his horse."
The Squire's face changed. He glanced suspiciously at Mr. Barter, but
the Rector was looking at his glass.
"Sold his horse! What's the meaning of that? He told you why, I
suppose?"
The Rector drank off his wine.
"I never ask for reasons," he said, "where racing-men are concerned. It's
my belief they know no more what they're about than so many dumb
animals."
"Ah! racing-men!" said Mr. Pendyce. "But George doesn't bet."
A gleam of humour shot into the Rector's eyes. He pressed his lips
together.
The Squire rose.
"Come now, Barter!" he said.
The Rector blushed. He hated tale-bearing--that is, of course, in the
case of a man; the case of a woman was different--and just as, when he
went to Bellew he had been careful not to give George away, so now he was
still more on his guard.
"No, no, Pendyce."
The Squire began to pace the room, and Mr. Barter felt something stir
against his foot; the spaniel John emerging at the end, just where the
moonlight shone, a symbol of all that was subservient to the Squire,
gazed up at his master with tragic eyes. 'Here, again,' they seemed to
say, 'is something to disturb me!'
The Squire broke the silence.
"I've always counted on you, Barter; I count on you as I would on my own
brother. Come, now, what's this about George?"
'After all,' thought the Rector, 'it's his father!'--"I know nothing but
what they say," he blurted forth; "they talk of his having lost a lot of
money. I dare say it's all nonsense. I never set much store by rumour.
And if he's sold the horse, well, so much the better. He won't be
tempted to gamble again."
But Horace Pendyce made no answer. A single thought possessed his
bewildered, angry mind:
'My son a gambler! Worsted Skeynes in the hands of a gambler!'
The Rector rose.
"It's all rumour. You shouldn't pay any attention. I should hardly
think he's been such a fool. I only know that I must get back to my
wife. Good-night."
And, nodding but confused, Mr. Barter went away through the French window
by which he had come.
The Squire stood motionless.
A gambler!
To him, whose existence was bound up in Worsted Skeynes, whose every
thought had some direct or indirect connection with it, whose son was but
the occupier of that place he must at last vacate, whose religion was
ancestor-worship, whose dread was change, no word could be so terrible.
A gambler!
It did not occur to him that his system was in any way responsible for
George's conduct. He had said to Mr. Paramor: "I never had a system; I'm
no believer in systems." He had brought him up simply as a gentleman.
He would have preferred that George should go into the Army, but George
had failed; he would have preferred that George should devote himself to
the estate, marry, and have a son, instead of idling away his time in
town, but George had failed; and so, beyond furthering his desire to join
the Yeomanry, and getting him proposed for the Stoics' Club, what was
there he could have done to keep him out of mischief? And now he was a
gambler!
Once a gambler always a gambler!
To his wife's face, looking down from the wall, he said:
"He gets it from you!"
But for all answer the face stared gently.
Turning abruptly, he left the room, and the spaniel John, for whom he had
been too quick, stood with his nose to the shut door, scenting for
someone to come and open it.
Mr. Pendyce went to his study, took some papers from a locked drawer, and
sat a long time looking at them. One was the draft of his will, another
a list of the holdings at Worsted Skeynes, their acreage and rents, a
third a fair copy of the settlement, re-settling the estate when he had
married. It was at this piece of supreme irony that Mr. Pendyce looked
longest. He did not read it, but he thought:
'And I can't cut it! Paramor says so! A gambler!'
That "crassness" common to all men in this strange world, and in the
Squire intensified, was rather a process than a quality--obedience to an
instinctive dread of what was foreign to himself, an instinctive fear of
seeing another's point of view, an instinctive belief in precedent. And
it was closely allied to his most deep and moral quality--the power of
making a decision. Those decisions might be "crass" and stupid, conduce
to unnecessary suffering, have no relation to morality or reason; but he
could make them, and he could stick to them. By virtue of this power he
was where he was, had been for centuries, and hoped to be for centuries
to come. It was in his blood. By this alone he kept at bay the
destroying forces that Time brought against him, his order, his
inheritance; by this alone he could continue to hand down that
inheritance to his son. And at the document which did hand it down he
looked with angry and resentful eyes.
Men who conceive great resolutions do not always bring them forth with
the ease and silence which they themselves desire. Mr. Pendyce went to
his bedroom determined to say no word of what he had resolved to do. His
wife was asleep. The Squire's entrance wakened her, but she remained
motionless, with her eyes closed, and it was the sight of that
immobility, when he himself was so disturbed, which drew from him the
words:
"Did you know that George was a gambler?"
By the light of the candle in his silver candlestick her dark eyes seemed
suddenly alive.
"He's been betting; he's sold his horse. He'd never have sold that horse
unless he were pushed. For all I know, he may be posted at Tattersalls!"
The sheets shivered as though she who lay within them were struggling.
Then came her voice, cool and gentle:
"All young men bet, Horace; you must know that!"
The Squire at the foot of the bed held up the candle; the movement had a
sinister significance.
"Do you defend him?" it seemed to say. "Do you defy me?"
Gripping the bed-rail, he cried:
"I'll have no gambler and profligate for my son! I'll not risk the
estate!"
Mrs. Pendyce raised herself, and for many seconds stared at her husband.
Her heart beat furiously. It had come! What she had been expecting all
these days had come! Her pale lips answered:
"What do you mean? I don't understand you, Horace."
Mr. Pendyce's eyes searched here and therefor what, he did not know.
"This has decided me," he said. "I'll have no half-measures. Until he
can show me he's done with that woman, until he can prove he's given up
this betting, until--until the heaven's fallen, I'll have no more to do
with him!"
To Margery Pendyce, with all her senses quivering, that saying, "Until
the heaven's fallen," was frightening beyond the rest. On the lips of
her husband, those lips which had never spoken in metaphors, never
swerved from the direct and commonplace, nor deserted the shibboleth of
his order, such words had an evil and malignant sound.
He went on:
"I've brought him up as I was brought up myself. I never thought to have
had a scamp for my son!"
Mrs. Pendyce's heart stopped fluttering.
"How dare you, Horace!" she cried.
The Squire, letting go the bed-rail, paced to and fro. There was
something savage in the sound of his footsteps through the utter silence.
"I've made up my mind," he said. "The estate----"
There broke from Mrs. Pendyce a torrent of words:
"You talk of the way you brought George up! You--you never understood
him! You--you never did anything for him! He just grew up like you all
grow up in this-----" But no word followed, for she did not know herself
what was that against which her soul had blindly fluttered its wings.
"You never loved him as I do! What do I care about the estate? I wish
it were sold! D'you think I like living here? D'you think I've ever
liked it? D'you think I've ever----" But she did not finish that saying:
D'you think I've ever loved you? "My boy a scamp! I've heard you laugh
and shake your head and say a hundred times: 'Young men will be young
men!' You think I don't know how you'd all go on if you dared! You
think I don't know how you talk among yourselves! As for gambling, you'd
gamble too, if you weren't afraid! And now George is in trouble----"
As suddenly as it had broken forth the torrent of her words dried up.
Mr. Pendyce had come back to the foot of the bed, and once more gripped
the rail whereon the candle, still and bright, showed them each other's
faces, very changed from the faces that they knew. In the Squire's lean
brown throat, between the parted points of his stiff collar, a string
seemed working. He stammered:
"You--you're talking like a madwoman! My father would have cut me off,
his father would have cut him off! By God! do you think I'll stand
quietly by and see it all played ducks and drakes with, and see that
woman here, and see her son, a--a bastard, or as bad as a bastard, in my
place? You don't know me!"
The last words came through his teeth like the growl of a dog. Mrs.
Pendyce made the crouching movement of one who gathers herself to spring.
"If you give him up, I shall go to him; I will never come back!"
The Squire's grip on the rail relaxed; in the light of the candle, still
and steady and bright--his jaw could be seen to fall. He snapped his
teeth together, and turning abruptly, said:
"Don't talk such rubbish!"
Then, taking the candle, he went into his dressing-room.
And at first his feelings were simple enough; he had merely that sore
sensation, that sense of raw offence, as at some gross and violent breach
of taste.
'What madness,' he thought, 'gets into women! It would serve her right
if I slept here!'
He looked around him. There was no place where he could sleep, not even
a sofa, and taking up the candle, he moved towards the door. But a
feeling of hesitation and forlornness rising, he knew not whence, made
him pause irresolute before the window.
The young moon, riding low, shot her light upon his still, lean figure,
and in that light it was strange to see how grey he looked--grey from
head to foot, grey, and sad, and old, as though in summary of all the
squires who in turn had looked upon that prospect frosted with young
moonlight to the boundary of their lands. Out in the paddock he saw his
old hunter Bob, with his head turned towards the house; and from the very
bottom of his heart he sighed.
In answer to that sigh came a sound of something falling outside against
the door. He opened it to see what might be there. The spaniel John,
lying on a cushion of blue linen, with his head propped up against the
wall, darkly turned his eyes.
'I am here, master,' he seemed to say; 'it is late--I was about to go to
sleep; it has done me good, however, to see you;' and hiding his eyes
from the light under a long black ear, he drew a stertorous breath. Mr.
Pendyce shut-to the door. He had forgotten the existence of his dog.
But, as though with the sight of that faithful creature he had regained
belief in all that he was used to, in all that he was master of, in all
that was--himself, he opened the bedroom door and took his place beside
his wife.
And soon he was asleep.
PART III
CHAPTER I
MRS. PENDYCE'S ODYSSEY
But Mrs. Pendyce did not sleep. That blessed anodyne of the long day
spent in his farmyards and fields was on her husband's eyes--no anodyne
on hers; and through them, all that was deep, most hidden, sacred, was
laid open to the darkness. If only those eyes could have been seen that
night! But if the darkness had been light, nothing of all this so deep
and sacred would have been there to see, for more deep, more sacred
still, in Margery Pendyce, was the instinct of a lady. So elastic and so
subtle, so interwoven of consideration for others and consideration for
herself, so old, so very old, this instinct wrapped her from all eyes,
like a suit of armour of the finest chain. The night must have been
black indeed when she took that off and lay without it in the darkness.
With the first light she put it on again, and stealing from bed, bathed
long and stealthily those eyes which felt as though they had been burned
all night; thence went to the open window and leaned out. Dawn had
passed, the birds were at morning music. Down there in the garden her
flowers were meshed with the grey dew, and the trees were grey, spun with
haze; dim and spectrelike, the old hunter, with his nose on the paddock
rail, dozed in the summer mist.
And all that had been to her like prison out there, and all that she had
loved, stole up on the breath of the unaired morning, and kept beating in
her face, fluttering at the white linen above her heart like the wings of
birds flying.
The first morning song ceased, and at the silence the sun smiled out in
golden irony, and everything was shot with colour. A wan glow fell on
Mrs. Pendyce's spirit, that for so many hours had been heavy and grey in
lonely resolution. For to her gentle soul, unused to action, shrinking
from violence, whose strength was the gift of the ages, passed into it
against her very nature, the resolution she had formed was full of pain.
Yet painful, even terrible in its demand for action, it did not waver,
but shone like a star behind the dark and heavy clouds. In Margery
Pendyce (who had been a Totteridge) there was no irascible and acrid
"people's blood," no fierce misgivings, no ill-digested beer and
cider--it was pure claret in her veins--she had nothing thick and angry
in her soul to help her; that which she had resolved she must carry out,
by virtue of a thin, fine flame, breathing far down in her--so far that
nothing could extinguish it, so far that it had little warmth. It was
not "I will not be overridden" that her spirit felt, but "I must not be
over-ridden, for if I am over-ridden, I, and in me something beyond me,
more important than myself, is all undone." And though she was far from
knowing this, that something was her country's civilisation, its very
soul, the meaning of it all gentleness, balance. Her spirit, of that
quality so little gross that it would never set up a mean or petty
quarrel, make mountains out of mole-hills, distort proportion, or get
images awry, had taken its stand unconsciously, no sooner than it must,
no later than it ought, and from that stand would not recede. The issue
had passed beyond mother love to that self-love, deepest of all, which
says:
"Do this, or forfeit the essence of your soul"
And now that she stole to her bed again, she looked at her sleeping
husband whom she had resolved to leave, with no anger, no reproach, but
rather with a long, incurious look which toad nothing even to herself.
So, when the morning came of age and it was time to rise, by no action,
look, or sign, did she betray the presence of the unusual in her soul.
If this which was before her must be done, it would be carried out as
though it were of no import, as though it were a daily action; nor did
she force herself to quietude, or pride herself thereon, but acted thus
from instinct, the instinct for avoiding fuss and unnecessary suffering
that was bred in her.
Mr. Pendyce went out at half-past ten accompanied by his bailiff and the
spaniel John. He had not the least notion that his wife still meant the
words she had spoken overnight. He had told her again while dressing
that he would have no more to do with George, that he would cut him out
of his will, that he would force him by sheer rigour to come to heel,
that, in short, he meant to keep his word, and it would have been
unreasonable in him to believe that a woman, still less his wife, meant
to keep hers.
Mrs. Pendyce spent the early part of the morning in the usual way. Half
an hour after the Squire went out she ordered the carriage round, had two
small trunks, which she had packed herself, brought down, and leisurely,
with her little green bag, got in. To her maid, to the butler Bester, to
the coachman Benson, she said that she was going up to stay with Mr.
George. Norah and Bee were at the Tharps', so that there was no one to
take leave of but old Roy, the Skye; and lest that leave-taking should
prove too much for her, she took him with her to the station.
For her husband she left a little note, placing it where she knew he must
see it at once, and no one else see it at all.
"DEAR HORACE,
"I have gone up to London to be with George. My address will be Green's
Hotel, Bond Street. You will remember what I said last night. Perhaps
you did not quite realise that I meant it. Take care of poor old Roy,
and don't let them give him too much meat this hot weather. Jackman
knows better than Ellis how to manage the roses this year. I should like
to be told how poor Rose Barter gets on. Please do not worry about me. I
shall write to dear Gerald when necessary, but I don't feel like writing
to him or the girls at present.
"Good-bye, dear Horace; I am sorry if I grieve you.
"Your wife,
"MARGERY PENDYCE."
Just as there was nothing violent in her manner of taking this step, so
there was nothing violent in her conception of it. To her it was not
running away, a setting of her husband at defiance; there was no
concealment of address, no melodramatic "I cannot come back to you." Such
methods, such pistol-holdings, would have seemed to her ridiculous. It
is true that practical details, such as the financial consequences,
escaped the grasp of her mind, but even in this, her view, or rather lack
of view, was really the wide, the even one. Horace would not let her
starve: the idea was inconceivable. There was, too, her own three
hundred a year. She had, indeed, no idea how much this meant, or what it
represented, neither was she concerned, for she said to herself, "I
should be quite happy in a cottage with Roy and my flowers;" and though,
of course, she had not the smallest experience to go by, it was quite
possible that she was right. Things which to others came only by money,
to a Totteridge came without, and even if they came not, could well be
dispensed with--for to this quality of soul, this gentle
self-sufficiency, had the ages worked to bring her.
Yet it was hastily and with her head bent that she stepped from the
carriage at the station, and the old Skye, who from the brougham seat
could just see out of the window, from the tears on his nose that were
not his own, from something in his heart that was, knew this was no
common parting and whined behind the glass.
Mrs. Pendyce told her cabman to drive to Green's Hotel, and it was only
after she had arrived, arranged her things, washed, and had lunch, that
the beginnings of confusion and home-sickness stirred within her. Up to
then a simmering excitement had kept her from thinking of how she was to
act, or of what she had hoped, expected, dreamed, would come of her
proceedings. Taking her sunshade, she walked out into Bond Street.
A passing man took off his hat.
'Dear me,' she thought, 'who was that? I ought to know!'
She had a rather vague memory for faces, and though she could not recall
his name, felt more at home at once, not so lonely and adrift. Soon a
quaint brightness showed in her eyes, looking at the toilettes of the
passers-by, and at each shop-front, more engrossing than the last.
Pleasure, like that which touches the soul of a young girl at her first
dance, the souls of men landing on strange shores, touched Margery
Pendyce. A delicious sense of entering the unknown, of braving the
unexpected, and of the power to go on doing this delightfully for ever,
enveloped her with the gay London air of this bright June day. She
passed a perfume shop, and thought she had never smelt anything so nice.
And next door she lingered long looking at some lace; and though she said
to herself, "I must not buy anything; I shall want all my money for poor
George," it made no difference to that sensation of having all things to
her hand.
A list of theatres, concerts, operas confronted her in the next window,
together with the effigies of prominent artistes. She looked at them
with an eagerness that might have seemed absurd to anyone who saw her
standing there. Was there, indeed, all this going on all day and every
day, to be seen and heard for so few shillings? Every year, religiously,
she had visited the opera once, the theatre twice, and no concerts; her
husband did not care for music that was "classical." While she was
standing there a woman begged of her, looking very tired and hot, with a
baby in her arms so shrivelled and so small that it could hardly be seen.
Mrs. Pendyce took out her purse and gave her half a crown, and as she did
so felt a gush of feeling which was almost rage.
'Poor little baby!' she thought. 'There must be thousands like that, and
I know nothing of them!'
She smiled to the woman, who smiled back at her; and a fat Jewish youth
in a shop doorway, seeing them smile, smiled too, as though he found them
charming. Mrs. Pendyce had a feeling that the town was saying pretty
things to her, and this was so strange and pleasant that she could hardly
believe it, for Worsted Skeynes had omitted to say that sort of thing to
her for over thirty years. She looked in the window of a hat shop, and
found pleasure in the sight of herself. The window was kind to her grey
linen, with black velvet knots and guipure, though it was two years old;
but, then, she had only been able to wear it once last summer, owing to
poor Hubert's death. The window was kind, too, to her cheeks, and eyes,
which had that touching brightness, and to the silver-powdered darkness
of her hair. And she thought: 'I don't look so very old!' But her own
hat reflected in the hat-shop window displeased her now; it turned down
all round, and though she loved that shape, she was afraid it was not
fashionable this year. And she looked long in the window of that shop,
trying to persuade herself that the hats in there would suit her, and
that she liked what she did not like. In other shop windows she looked,
too. It was a year since she had seen any, and for thirty-four years
past she had only seen them in company with the Squire or with her
daughters, none of whom cared much for shops.
The people, too, were different from the people that she saw when she
went about with Horace or her girls. Almost all seemed charming, having
a new, strange life, in which she--Margery Pendyce--had unaccountably a
little part; as though really she might come to know them, as though they
might tell her something of themselves, of what they felt and thought,
and even might stand listening, taking a kindly interest in what she
said. This, too, was strange, and a friendly smile became fixed upon her
face, and of those who saw it--shop-girls, women of fashion, coachmen,
clubmen, policemen--most felt a little warmth about their hearts; it was
pleasant to see on the lips of that faded lady with the silvered arching
hair under a hat whose brim turned down all round.
So Mrs. Pendyce came to Piccadilly and turned westward towards George's
club. She knew it well, for she never failed to look at the windows when
she passed, and once--on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Jubilee--had
spent a whole day there to see that royal show.
She began to tremble as she neared it, for though she did not, like the
Squire, torture her mind with what might or might not come to pass, care
had nested in her heart.
George was not in his club, and the porter could not tell her where he
was. Mrs. Pendyce stood motionless. He was her son; how could she ask
for his address? The porter waited, knowing a lady when he saw one.
Mrs. Pendyce said gently:
"Is there a room where I could write a note, or would it be----"
"Certainly not, ma'am. I can show you to a room at once."
And though it was only a mother to a son, the porter preceded her with
the quiet discretion of one who aids a mistress to her lover; and perhaps
he was right in his view of the relative values of love, for he had great
experience, having lived long in the best society.
On paper headed with the fat white "Stoics' Club," so well known on
George's letters, Mrs. Pendyce wrote what she had to say. The little
dark room where she sat was without sound, save for the buzzing of a
largish fly in a streak of sunlight below the blind. It was dingy in
colour; its furniture was old. At the Stoics' was found neither the new
art nor the resplendent drapings of those larger clubs sacred to the
middle classes. The little writing-room had an air of mourning: "I am so
seldom used; but be at home in me; you might find me tucked away in
almost any country-house!"
Yet many a solitary Stoic had sat there and written many a note to many a
woman. George, perhaps, had written to Helen Bellew at that very table
with that very pen, and Mrs. Pendyce's heart ached jealously.
"DEAREST GEORGE" (she wrote),
"I have something very particular to tell you. Do come to me at
Green's Hotel. Come soon, my dear. I shall be lonely and unhappy
till I see you.
"Your loving
"MARGERY PENDYCE."
And this note, which was just what she would have sent to a lover, took
that form, perhaps unconsciously, because she had never had a lover thus
to write to.
She slipped the note and half a crown diffidently into the porter's hand;
refused his offer of some tea, and walked vaguely towards the Park.
It was five o'clock; the sun was brighter than ever. People in carriages
and people on foot in one leisurely, unending stream were filing in at
Hyde Park Corner. Mrs. Pendyce went, too, and timidly--she was unused
to traffic--crossed to the further side and took a chair. Perhaps George
was in the Park and she might see him; perhaps Helen Bellew was there,
and she might see her; and the thought of this made her heart beat and
her eyes under their uplifted brows stare gently at each figure-old men
and young men, women of the world, fresh young girls. How charming they
looked, how sweetly they were dressed! A feeling of envy mingled with
the joy she ever felt at seeing pretty things; she was quite unconscious
that she herself was pretty under that hat whose brim turned down all
round. But as she sat a leaden feeling slowly closed her heart, varied
by nervous flutterings, when she saw someone whom she ought to know. And
whenever, in response to a salute, she was forced to bow her head, a
blush rose in her cheeks, a wan smile seemed to make confession:
"I know I look a guy; I know it's odd for me to be sitting here alone!"
She felt old--older than she had ever felt before. In the midst of this
gay crowd, of all this life and sunshine, a feeling of loneliness which
was almost fear--a feeling of being utterly adrift, cut off from all the
world--came over her; and she felt like one of her own plants, plucked up
from its native earth, with all its poor roots hanging bare, as though
groping for the earth to cling to. She knew now that she had lived too
long in the soil that she had hated; and was too old to be transplanted.
The custom of the country--that weighty, wingless creature born of time
and of the earth--had its limbs fast twined around her. It had made of
her its mistress, and was not going to let her go.
CHAPTER II
THE SON AND THE MOTHER
Harder than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle is it for a
man to become a member of the Stoics' Club, except by virtue of the
hereditary principle; for unless he be nourished he cannot be elected,
and since by the club's first rule he may have no occupation whatsoever,
he must be nourished by the efforts of those who have gone before. And
the longer they have gone before the more likely he is to receive no
blackballs.
Yet without entering into the Stoics' Club it is difficult for a man to
attain that supreme outward control which is necessary to conceal his
lack of control within; and, indeed, the club is an admirable instance of
how Nature places the remedy to hand for the disease. For, perceiving how
George Pendyce and hundreds of other young men "to the manner born" had
lived from their birth up in no connection whatever with the struggles
and sufferings of life, and fearing lest, when Life in her careless and
ironical fashion brought them into abrupt contact with ill-bred events
they should make themselves a nuisance by their cries of dismay and
wonder, Nature had devised a mask and shaped it to its highest form
within the portals of the Stoics' Club. With this mask she clothed the
faces of these young men whose souls she doubted, and called
them--gentlemen. And when she, and she alone, heard their poor squeaks
behind that mask, as Life placed clumsy feet on them, she pitied them,
knowing that it was not they who were in fault, but the unpruned system
which had made them what they were. And in her pity she endowed many of
them with thick skins, steady feet, and complacent souls, so that,
treading in well-worn paths their lives long, they might slumber to their
deaths in those halls where their fathers had slumbered to their deaths
before them. But sometimes Nature (who was not yet a Socialist) rustled
her wings and heaved a sigh, lest the excesses and excrescences of their
system should bring about excesses and excrescences of the opposite sort.
For extravagance of all kinds was what she hated, and of that particular
form of extravagance which Mr. Paramor so vulgarly called "Pendycitis"
she had a horror.
It may happen that for long years the likeness between father and son
will lie dormant, and only when disintegrating forces threaten the links
of the chain binding them together will that likeness leap forth, and by
a piece of Nature's irony become the main factor in destroying the
hereditary principle for which it is the silent, the most worthy, excuse.
It is certain that neither George nor his father knew the depth to which
this "Pendycitis" was rooted in the other; neither suspected, not even in
themselves, the amount of essential bulldog at the bottom of their souls,
the strength of their determination to hold their own in the way that
would cause the greatest amount of unnecessary suffering. They did not
deliberately desire to cause unnecessary suffering; they simply could not
help an instinct passed by time into their fibre, through atrophy of the
reasoning powers and the constant mating, generation after generation, of
those whose motto had been, "Kings of our own dunghills." And now George
came forward, defying his mother's belief that he was a Totteridge, as
champion of the principle in tail male; for in the Totteridges, from whom
in this stress he diverged more and more towards his father's line, there
was some freer strain, something non-provincial, and this had been so
ever since Hubert de-Totteridge had led his private crusade, from which
he had neglected to return. With the Pendyces it had been otherwise;
from immemorial time "a county family," they had construed the phrase
literally, had taken no poetical licences. Like innumerable other county
families, they were perforce what their tradition decreed--provincial in
their souls.
George, a man-about-town, would have stared at being called provincial,
but a man cannot stare away his nature. He was provincial enough to keep
Mrs. Bellew bound when she herself was tired of him, and consideration
for her, and for his own self-respect asked him to give her up. He had
been keeping her bound for two months or more. But there was much excuse
for him. His heart was sore to breaking-point; he was sick with longing,
and deep, angry wonder that he, of all men, should be cast aside like a
worn-out glove. Men tired of women daily--that was the law. But what
was this? His dogged instinct had fought against the knowledge as long
as he could, and now that it was certain he fought against it still.
George was a true Pendyce!
To the world, however, he behaved as usual. He came to the club about
ten o'clock to eat his breakfast and read the sporting papers. Towards
noon a hansom took him to the railway-station appropriate to whatever
race-meeting was in progress, or, failing that, to the cricket-ground at
Lord's, or Prince's Tennis Club. Half-past six saw him mounting the
staircase at the Stoics' to that card-room where his effigy still hung,
with its look of "Hard work, hard work; but I must keep it going!" At
eight he dined, a bottle of champagne screwed deep down into ice, his
face flushed with the day's sun, his shirt-front and his hair shining
with gloss. What happier man in all great London!
But with the dark the club's swing-doors opened for his passage into the
lighted streets, and till next morning the world knew him no more. It
was then that he took revenge for all the hours he wore a mask. He would
walk the pavements for miles trying to wear himself out, or in the Park
fling himself down on a chair in the deep shadow of the trees, and sit
there with his arms folded and his head bowed down. On other nights he
would go into some music-hall, and amongst the glaring lights, the vulgar
laughter, the scent of painted women, try for a moment to forget the
face, the laugh, the scent of that woman for whom he craved. And all the
time he was jealous, with a dumb, vague jealousy of he knew not whom; it
was not his nature to think impersonally, and he could not believe that a
woman would drop him except for another man. Often he went to her
Mansions, and walked round and round casting a stealthy stare at her
windows. Twice he went up to her door, but came away without ringing the
bell. One evening, seeing a light in her sitting-room, he rang, but there
came no answer. Then an evil spirit leaped up in him, and he rang again
and again. At last he went away to his room--a studio he had taken
near--and began to write to her. He was long composing that letter, and
many times tore it up; he despised the expression of feelings in writing.
He only tried because his heart wanted relief so badly. And this, in the
end, was all that he produced:
"I know you were in to-night. It's the only time I've come. Why
couldn't you have let me in? You've no right to treat me like this.
You are leading me the life of a dog."
GEORGE.
The first light was silvering the gloom above the river, the lamps were
paling to the day, when George went out and dropped this missive in the
letter-box. He came back to the river and lay down on an empty bench
under the plane-trees of the Embankment, and while he lay there one of
those without refuge or home, who lie there night after night, came up
unseen and looked at him.
But morning comes, and with it that sense of the ridiculous, so merciful
to suffering men. George got up lest anyone should see a Stoic lying
there in his evening clothes; and when it became time he put on his mask
and sallied forth. At the club he found his mother's note, and set out
for her hotel.
Mrs. Pendyce was not yet down, but sent to ask him to come up. George
found her standing in her dressing-gown in the middle of the room, as
though she knew not where to place herself for this, their meeting. Only
when he was quite close did she move and throw her arms round his neck.
George could not see her face, and his own was hidden from her, but
through the thin dressing-gown he felt her straining to him, and her arms
that had pulled his head down quivering; and for a moment it seemed to
him as if he were dropping a burden. But only for a moment, for at the
clinging of those arms his instinct took fright. And though she was
smiling, the tears were in her eyes, and this offended him.
"Don't, mother!"
Mrs. Pendyce's answer was a long look. George could not bear it, and
turned away.
"Well," he said gruffly, "when you can tell me what's brought you up----"
Mrs. Pendyce sat down on the sofa. She had been brushing her hair;
though silvered, it was still thick and soft, and the sight of it about
her shoulders struck George. He had never thought of her having hair
that would hang down.
Sitting on the sofa beside her, he felt her fingers stroking his, begging
him not to take offence and leave her. He felt her eyes trying to see
his eyes, and saw her lips trembling; but a stubborn, almost evil smile
was fixed upon his face.
"And so, dear--and so," she stammered, "I told your father that I
couldn't see that done, and so I came up to you."
Many sons have found no hardship in accepting all that their mothers do
for them as a matter of right, no difficulty in assuming their devotion a
matter of course, no trouble in leaving their own affections to be
understood; but most sons have found great difficulty in permitting their
mothers to diverge one inch from the conventional, to swerve one hair's
breadth from the standard of propriety appropriate to mothers of men of
their importance.
It is decreed of mothers that their birth pangs shall not cease until
they die.
And George was shocked to hear his mother say that she had left his
father to come to him. It affected his self-esteem in a strange and
subtle way. The thought that tongues might wag about her revolted his
manhood and his sense of form. It seemed strange, incomprehensible, and
wholly wrong; the thought, too, gashed through his mind: 'She is trying
to put pressure on me!'
"If you think I'll give her up, Mother----" he said.
Mrs. Pendyce's fingers tightened.
"No, dear," she answered painfully; "of course, if she loves you so much,
I couldn't ask you. That's why I----"
George gave a grim little laugh.
"What on earth can you do, then? What's the good of your coming up like
this? How are you to get on here all alone? I can fight my own battles.
You'd much better go back."
Mrs. Pendyce broke in:
"Oh, George; I can't see you cast off from us! I must be with you!"
George felt her trembling all over. He got up and walked to the window.
Mrs. Pendyce's voice followed:
"I won't try to separate you, George; I promise, dear. I couldn't, if
she loves you, and you love her so!"
Again George laughed that grim little laugh. And the fact that he was
deceiving her, meant to go on deceiving her, made him as hard as iron.
"Go back, Mother!" he said. "You'll only make things worse. This isn't
a woman's business. Let father do what he likes; I can hold on!"
Mrs. Pendyce did not answer, and he was obliged to look round. She was
sitting perfectly still with her hands in her lap, and his man's hatred
of anything conspicuous happening to a woman, to his own mother of all
people, took fiercer fire.
"Go back!" he repeated, "before there's any fuss! What good can you
possibly do? You can't leave father; that's absurd! You must go!"
Mrs. Pendyce answered:
"I can't do that, dear."
George made an angry sound, but she was so motionless and pale that he
dimly perceived how she was suffering, and how little he knew of her who
had borne him.
Mrs. Pendyce broke the silence:
"But you, George dear? What is going to happen? How are you going to
manage?" And suddenly clasping her hands: "Oh! what is coming?"
Those words, embodying all that had been in his heart so long, were too
much for George. He went abruptly to the door.
"I can't stop now," he said; "I'll come again this evening."
Mrs. Pendyce looked up.
"Oh, George"
But as she had the habit of subordinating her feelings to the feelings of
others, she said no more, but tried to smile.
That smile smote George to the heart.
"Don't worry, Mother; try and cheer up. We'll go to the theatre. You get
the tickets!"
And trying to smile too, but turning lest he should lose his
self-control, he went away.
In the hall he came on his uncle, General Pendyce. He came on him from
behind, but knew him at once by that look of feeble activity about the
back of his knees, by his sloping yet upright shoulders, and the sound of
his voice, with its dry and querulous precision, as of a man whose
occupation has been taken from him.
The General turned round.
"Ah, George," he said, "your mother's here, isn't she? Look at this that
your father's sent me!"
He held out a telegram in a shaky hand.
"Margery up at Green's Hotel. Go and see her at once.
HORACE."
And while George read the General looked at his nephew with eyes that
were ringed by little circles of darker pigment, and had crow's-footed
purses of skin beneath, earned by serving his country in tropical climes.
"What's the meaning of it?" he said. "Go and see her? Of course, I'll
go and see her! Always glad to see your mother. But where's all the
hurry?"
George perceived well enough that his father's pride would not let him
write to her, and though it was for himself that his mother had taken
this step, he sympathised with his father. The General fortunately gave
him little time to answer.
"She's up to get herself some dresses, I suppose? I've seen nothing of
you for a long time. When are you coming to dine with me? I heard at
Epsom that you'd sold your horse. What made you do that? What's your
father telegraphing to me like this for? It's not like him. Your
mother's not ill, is she?"
George shook his head, and muttering something about "Sorry, an
engagement--awful hurry," was gone.
Left thus abruptly to himself, General Pendyce summoned a page, slowly
pencilled something on his card, and with his back to the only persons in
the hall, waited, his hands folded on the handle of his cane. And while
he waited he tried as far as possible to think of nothing. Having served
his country, his time now was nearly all devoted to waiting, and to think
fatigued and made him feel discontented, for he had had sunstroke once,
and fever several times. In the perfect precision of his collar, his
boots, his dress, his figure; in the way from time to time he cleared his
throat, in the strange yellow driedness of his face between his carefully
brushed whiskers, in the immobility of his white hands on his cane, he
gave the impression of a man sucked dry by a system. Only his eyes,
restless and opinionated, betrayed the essential Pendyce that was behind.
He went up to the ladies' drawing-room, clutching that telegram. It
worried him. There was something odd about it, and he was not accustomed
to pay calls in the morning. He found his sister-in-law seated at an
open window, her face unusually pink, her eyes rather defiantly bright.
She greeted him gently, and General Pendyce was not the man to discern
what was not put under his nose. Fortunately for him, that had never
been his practice.
"How are you, Margery?" he said. "Glad to see you in town. How's
Horace? Look here what he's sent me!" He offered her the telegram, with
the air of slightly avenging an offence; then added in surprise, as
though he had lust thought of it: "Is there anything I can do for you?"
Mrs. Pendyce read the telegram, and she, too, like George, felt sorry for
the sender.
"Nothing, thanks, dear Charles," she said slowly. "I'm all right. Horace
gets so nervous!"
General Pendyce looked at her; for a moment his eyes flickered, then,
since the truth was so improbable and so utterly in any case beyond his
philosophy, he accepted her statement.
"He shouldn't go sending telegrams like this," he said. "You might have
been ill for all I could tell. It spoiled my breakfast!" For though, as
a fact, it had not prevented his completing a hearty meal, he fancied
that he felt hungry. "When I was quartered at Halifax there was a fellow
who never sent anything but telegrams. Telegraph Jo they called him. He
commanded the old Bluebottles. You know the old Bluebottles? If Horace
is going to take to this sort of thing he'd better see a specialist; it's
almost certain to mean a breakdown. You're up about dresses, I see.
When do you come to town? The season's getting on."
Mrs. Pendyce was not afraid of her husband's brother, for though
punctilious and accustomed to his own way with inferiors, he was hardly a
man to inspire awe in his social equals. It was, therefore, not through
fear that she did not tell him the truth, but through an instinct for
avoiding all unnecessary suffering too strong for her, and because the
truth was really untellable. Even to herself it seemed slightly
ridiculous, and she knew the poor General would take it so dreadfully to
heart.
"I don't know about coming up this season. The garden is looking so
beautiful, and there's Bee's engagement. The dear child is so happy!"
The General caressed a whisker with his white hand.
"Ah yes," he said--"young Tharp! Let's see, he's not the eldest. His
brother's in my old corps. What does this young fellow do with himself?"
Mrs. Pendyce answered:
"He's only farming. I'm afraid he'll have nothing to speak of, but he's
a dear good boy. It'll be a long engagement. Of course, there's nothing
in farming, and Horace insists on their having a thousand a year. It
depends so much on Mr. Tharp. I think they could do perfectly well on
seven hundred to start with, don't you, Charles?"
General Pendyce's answer was not more conspicuously to the point than
usual, for he was a man who loved to pursue his own trains of thought.
"What about George?", he said. "I met him in the hall as I was coming
in, but he ran off in the very deuce of a hurry. They told me at Epsom
that he was hard hit."
His eyes, distracted by a fly for which he had taken a dislike, failed to
observe his sister-in-law's face.
"Hard hit?" she repeated.
"Lost a lot of money. That won't do, you know, Margery--that won't do.
A little mild gambling's one thing."
Mrs. Pendyce said nothing; her face was rigid: It was the face of a woman
on the point of saying: "Do not compel me to hint that you are boring
me!"
The General went on:
"A lot of new men have taken to racing that no one knows anything about.
That fellow who bought George's horse, for instance; you'd never have
seen his nose in Tattersalls when I was a young man. I find when I go
racing I don't know half the colours. It spoils the pleasure. It's no
longer the close borough that it was. George had better take care what
he's about. I can't imagine what we're coming to!"
On Margery Pendyce's hearing, those words, "I can't imagine what we're
coming to," had fallen for four-and-thirty years, in every sort of
connection, from many persons. It had become part of her life, indeed,
to take it for granted that people could imagine nothing; just as the
solid food and solid comfort of Worsted Skeynes and the misty mornings
and the rain had become part of her life. And it was only the fact that
her nerves were on edge and her heart bursting that made those words seem
intolerable that morning; but habit was even now too strong, and she kept
silence.
The General, to whom an answer was of no great moment, pursued his
thoughts.
"And you mark my words, Margery; the elections will go against us. The
country's in a dangerous state."
Mrs. Pendyce said:
"Oh, do you think the Liberals will really get in?"
From custom there was a shade of anxiety in her voice which she did not
feel.
"Think?" repeated General Pendyce. "I pray every night to God they
won't!"
Folding both hands on the silver knob of his Malacca cane, he stared over
them at the opposing wall; and there was something universal in that
fixed stare, a sort of blank and not quite selfish apprehension. Behind
his personal interests his ancestors had drilled into him the
impossibility of imagining that he did not stand for the welfare of his
country. Mrs. Pendyce, who had so often seen her husband look like that,
leaned out of the window above the noisy street.
The General rose.
"Well," he said, "if I can't do anything for you, Margery, I'll take
myself off; you're busy with your dressmakers. Give my love to Horace,
and tell him not to send me another telegram like that."
And bending stiffly, he pressed her hand with a touch of real courtesy
and kindness, took up his hat, and went away. Mrs. Pendyce, watching him
descend the stairs, watching his stiff sloping shoulders, his head with
its grey hair brushed carefully away from the centre parting, the backs
of his feeble, active knees, put her hand to her breast and sighed, for
with him she seemed to see descending all her past life, and that one
cannot see unmoved.
CHAPTER III
MRS. BELLEW SQUARES HER ACCOUNTS
Mrs. Bellew sat on her bed smoothing out the halves of a letter; by her
side was her jewel-case. Taking from it an amethyst necklet, an emerald
pendant, and a diamond ring, she wrapped them in cottonwool, and put them
in an envelope. The other jewels she dropped one by one into her lap,
and sat looking at them. At last, putting two necklets and two rings
back into the jewel-case, she placed the rest in a little green box, and
taking that and the envelope, went out. She called a hansom, drove to a
post-office, and sent a telegram:
PENDYCE, STOICS' CLUB.
"Be at studio six to seven.--H."
From the post-office she drove to her jeweller's, and many a man who saw
her pass with the flush on her cheeks and the smouldering look in her
eyes, as though a fire were alight within her, turned in his tracks and
bitterly regretted that he knew not who she was, or whither going. The
jeweller took the jewels from the green box, weighed them one by one, and
slowly examined each through his lens. He was a little man with a yellow
wrinkled face and a weak little beard, and having fixed in his mind the
sum that he would give, he looked at his client prepared to mention less.
She was sitting with her elbows on the counter, her chin resting in her
hands, and her eyes were fixed on him. He decided somehow to mention the
exact sum.
"Is that all?"
"Yes, madam; that is the utmost."
"Very well, but I must have it now in cash!"
The jeweller's eyes flickered.
"It's a large sum," he said--"most unusual. I haven't got such a sum in
the place."
"Then please send out and get it, or I must go elsewhere."
The jeweller brought his hands together, and washed them nervously.
"Excuse me a moment; I'll consult my partner."
He went away, and from afar he and his partner spied her nervously. He
came back with a forced smile. Mrs. Bellew was sitting as he had left
her.
"It's a fortunate chance; I think we can just do it, madam."
"Give me notes, please, and a sheet of paper." The jeweller brought
them.
Mrs. Bellew wrote a letter, enclosed it with the bank notes in the bulky
envelope she had brought, addressed it, and sealed the whole.
"Call a cab, please!"
The jeweller called a cab.
"Chelsea Embankment!"
The cab bore her away.
Again in the crowded streets so full of traffic, people turned to look
after her. The cabman, who put her down at the Albert Bridge, gazed
alternately at the coins in his hands and the figure of his fare, and
wheeling his cab towards the stand, jerked his thumb in her direction.
Mrs. Bellew walked fast down a street till, turning a corner, she came
suddenly on a small garden with three poplar-trees in a row. She opened
its green gate without pausing, went down a path, and stopped at the
first of three green doors. A young man with a beard, resembling an
artist, who was standing behind the last of the three doors, watched her
with a knowing smile on his face. She took out a latch-key, put it in
the lock, opened the door, and passed in.
The sight of her face seemed to have given the artist an idea. Propping
his door open, he brought an easel and canvas, and setting them so that
he could see the corner where she had gone in, began to sketch.
An old stone fountain with three stone frogs stood in the garden near
that corner, and beyond it was a flowering currant-bush, and beyond this
again the green door on which a slanting gleam of sunlight fell. He
worked for an hour, then put his easel back and went out to get his tea.
Mrs. Bellew came out soon after he was gone. She closed the door behind
her, and stood still. Taking from her pocket the bulky envelope, she
slipped it into the letter-box; then bending down, picked up a twig, and
placed it in the slit, to prevent the lid falling with a rattle. Having
done this, she swept her hands down her face and breast as though to
brush something from her, and walked away. Beyond the outer gate she
turned to the left, and took the same street back to the river. She
walked slowly, luxuriously, looking about her. Once or twice she
stopped, and drew a deep breath, as though she could not have enough of
the air. She went as far as the Embankment, and stood leaning her elbows
on the parapet. Between the finger and thumb of one hand she held a small
object on which the sun was shining. It was a key. Slowly, luxuriously,
she stretched her hand out over the water, parted her thumb and finger,
and let it fall.
CHAPTER IV
MRS. PENDYCE'S INSPIRATION
But George did not come to take his mother to the theatre, and she whose
day had been passed in looking forward to the evening, passed that
evening in a drawing-room full of furniture whose history she did not
know, and a dining-room full of people eating in twos and threes and
fours, at whom she might look, but to whom she must not speak, to whom
she did not even want to speak, so soon had the wheel of life rolled over
her wonder and her expectation, leaving it lifeless in her breast. And
all that night, with one short interval of sleep, she ate of bitter
isolation and futility, and of the still more bitter knowledge: "George
does not want me; I'm no good to him!"
Her heart, seeking consolation, went back again and again to the time
when he had wanted her; but it was far to go, to the days of holland
suits, when all those things that he desired--slices of pineapple,
Benson's old carriage-whip, the daily reading out of "Tom Brown's
School-days," the rub with Elliman when he sprained his little ankle, the
tuck-up in bed--were in her power alone to give.
This night she saw with fatal clearness that since he went to school he
had never wanted her at all. She had tried so many years to believe that
he did, till it had become part of her life, as it was part of her life
to say her prayers night and morning; and now she found it was all
pretence. But, lying awake, she still tried to believe it, because to
that she had been bound when she brought him, firstborn, into the world.
Her other son, her daughters, she loved them too, but it was not the same
thing, quite; she had never wanted them to want her, because that part of
her had been given once for all to George.
The street noises died down at last; she had slept two hours when they
began again. She lay listening. And the noises and her thoughts became
tangled in her exhausted brain--one great web of weariness, a feeling
that it was all senseless and unnecessary, the emanation of
cross-purposes and cross-grainedness, the negation of that gentle
moderation, her own most sacred instinct. And an early wasp, attracted
by the sweet perfumes of her dressing-table, roused himself from the
corner where he had spent the night, and began to hum and hover over the
bed. Mrs. Pendyce was a little afraid of wasps, so, taking a moment when
he was otherwise engaged, she stole out, and fanned him with her
nightdress-case till, perceiving her to be a lady, he went away. Lying
down again, she thought: 'People will worry them until they sting, and
then kill them; it's so unreasonable,' not knowing that she was putting
all her thoughts on suffering in a single nutshell.
She breakfasted upstairs, unsolaced by any news from George. Then with
no definite hope, but a sort of inner certainty, she formed the
resolution to call on Mrs. Bellew. She determined, however, first to
visit Mr. Paramor, and, having but a hazy notion of the hour when men
begin to work, she did not dare to start till past eleven, and told her
cabman to drive her slowly. He drove her, therefore, faster than his
wont. In Leicester Square the passage of a Personage between two
stations blocked the traffic, and on the footways were gathered a crowd
of simple folk with much in their hearts and little in their stomachs,
who raised a cheer as the Personage passed. Mrs. Pendyce looked eagerly
from her cab, for she too loved a show.
The crowd dispersed, and the cab went on.
It was the first time she had ever found herself in the business
apartment of any professional man less important than a dentist. From the
little waiting-room, where they handed her the Times, which she could not
read from excitement, she caught sight of rooms lined to the ceilings
with leather books and black tin boxes, initialed in white to indicate
the brand, and of young men seated behind lumps of paper that had been
written on. She heard a perpetual clicking noise which roused her
interest, and smelled a peculiar odour of leather and disinfectant which
impressed her disagreeably. A youth with reddish hair and a pen in his
hand passed through and looked at her with a curious stare immediately
averted. She suddenly felt sorry for him and all those other young men
behind the lumps of paper, and the thought went flashing through her
mind, 'I suppose it's all because people can't agree.'
She was shown in to Mr. Paramor at last. In his large empty room, with
its air of past grandeur, she sat gazing at three La France roses in a
tumbler of water with the feeling that she would never be able to begin.
Mr. Paramor's eyebrows, which jutted from his clean, brown face like
little clumps of pothooks, were iron-grey, and iron-grey his hair brushed
back from his high forehead. Mrs. Pendyce wondered why he looked five
years younger than Horace, who was his junior, and ten years younger than
Charles, who, of course, was younger still. His eyes, which from
iron-grey some inner process of spiritual manufacture had made into steel
colour, looked young too, although they were grave; and the smile which
twisted up the corners of his mouth looked very young.
"Well," he said, "it's a great pleasure to see you."
Mrs. Pendyce could only answer with a smile.
Mr. Paramor put the roses to his nose.
"Not so good as yours," he said, "are they? but the best I can do."
Mrs. Pendyce blushed with pleasure.
"My garden is looking so beautiful----" Then, remembering that she no
longer had a garden, she stopped; but remembering also that, though she
had lost her garden, Mr. Paramor still had his, she added quickly: "And
yours, Mr. Paramor--I'm sure it must be looking lovely."
Mr. Paramor drew out a kind of dagger with which he had stabbed some
papers to his desk, and took a letter from the bundle.
"Yes," he said, "it's looking very nice. You'd like to see this, I
expect."
"Bellew v. Bellew and Pendyce" was written at the top. Mrs. Pendyce
stared at those words as though fascinated by their beauty; it was long
before she got beyond them. For the first time the full horror of these
matters pierced the kindly armour that lies between mortals and what they
do not like to think of. Two men and a woman wrangling, fighting,
tearing each other before the eyes of all the world. A woman and two men
stripped of charity and gentleness, of moderation and sympathy-stripped
of all that made life decent and lovable, squabbling like savages before
the eyes of all the world. Two men, and one of them her son, and between
them a woman whom both of them had loved! "Bellew v. Bellew and
Pendyce"! And this would go down to fame in company with the pitiful
stories she had read from time to time with a sort of offended interest;
in company with "Snooks v. Snooks and Stiles," "Horaday v. Horaday,"
"Bethany v. Bethany and Sweetenham." In company with all those cases
where everybody seemed so dreadful, yet where she had often and often
felt so sorry, as if these poor creatures had been fastened in the stocks
by some malignant, loutish spirit, for all that would to come and jeer
at. And horror filled her heart. It was all so mean, and gross, and
common.
The letter contained but a few words from a firm of solicitors confirming
an appointment. She looked up at Mr. Paramor. He stopped pencilling on
his blotting-paper, and said at once:
"I shall be seeing these people myself tomorrow afternoon. I shall do my
best to make them see reason."
She felt from his eyes that he knew what she was suffering, and was even
suffering with her.
"And if--if they won't?"
"Then I shall go on a different tack altogether, and they must look out
for themselves."
Mrs. Pendyce sank back in her chair; she seemed to smell again that smell
of leather and disinfectant, and hear a sound of incessant clicking. She
felt faint, and to disguise that faintness asked at random, "What does
'without prejudice' in this letter mean?"
Mr. Paramor smiled.
"That's an expression we always use," he said. "It means that when we
give a thing away, we reserve to ourselves the right of taking it back
again."
Mrs. Pendyce, who did not understand, murmured:
"I see. But what have they given away?"
Paramor put his elbows on the desk, and lightly pressed his finger-tips
together.
"Well," he said, "properly speaking, in a matter like this, the other
side and I are cat and dog.
"We are supposed to know nothing about each other and to want to know
less, so that when we do each other a courtesy we are obliged to save our
faces by saying, 'We don't really do you one.' D'you understand?"
Again Mrs. Pendyce murmured:
"I see."
"It sounds a little provincial, but we lawyers exist by reason of
provincialism. If people were once to begin making allowances for each
other, I don't know where we should be."
Mrs. Pendyce's eyes fell again on those words, "Bellew v. Bellew and
Pendyce," and again, as though fascinated by their beauty, rested there.
"But you wanted to see me about something else too, perhaps?" said Mr.
Paramor.
A sudden panic came over her.
"Oh no, thank you. I just wanted to know what had been done. I've come
up on purpose to see George. You told me that I----"
Mr. Paramor hastened to her aid.
"Yes, yes; quite right--quite right."
"Horace hasn't come with me."
"Good!"
"He and George sometimes don't quite----"
"Hit it off? They're too much alike."
"Do you think so? I never saw-----"
"Not in face, not in face; but they've both got----"
Mr. Paramor's meaning was lost in a smile; and Mrs. Pendyce, who did not
know that the word "Pendycitis" was on the tip of his tongue, smiled
vaguely too.
"George is very determined," she said. "Do you think--oh, do you think,
Mr. Paramor, that you will be able to persuade Captain Bellew's
solicitors----"
Mr. Paramor threw himself back in his chair, and his hand covered what he
had written on his blotting-paper.
"Yes," he said slowly----"oh yes, yes!"
But Mrs. Pendyce had had her answer. She had meant to speak of her visit
to Helen Bellew, but now her thought was:
'He won't persuade them; I feel it. Let me get away!'
Again she seemed to hear the incessant clicking, to smell leather and
disinfectant, to see those words, "Bellew v. Bellew and, Pendyce."
She held out her hand.
Mr. Paramor took it in his own and looked at the floor.
"Good-bye," he said-"good-bye. What's your address--Green's Hotel? I'll
come and tell you what I do. I know--I know!"
Mrs. Pendyce, on whom those words "I know--I know!" had a strange,
emotionalising effect, as though no one had ever known before, went away
with quivering lips. In her life no one had ever "known"--not indeed
that she could or would complain of such a trifle, but the fact remained.
And at this moment, oddly, she thought of her husband, and wondered what
he was doing, and felt sorry for him.
But Mr. Paramor went back to his seat and stared at what he had written
on his blotting paper. It ran thus:
"We stand on our petty rights here,
And our potty dignity there;
We make no allowance for others,
They make no allowance for us;
We catch hold of them by the ear,
They grab hold of us by the hair
The result is a bit of a muddle
That ends in a bit of a fuss."
He saw that it neither rhymed nor scanned, and with a grave face he tore
it up.
Again Mrs. Pendyce told her cabman to drive slowly, and again he drove
her faster than usual; yet that drive to Chelsea seemed to last for ever,
and interminable were the turnings which the cabman took, each one
shorter than the last, as if he had resolved to see how much his horse's
mouth could bear.
'Poor thing!' thought Mrs. Pendyce; 'its mouth must be so sore, and it's
quite unnecessary.' She put her hand up through the trap. "Please take me
in a straight line. I don't like corners."
The cabman obeyed. It worried him terribly to take one corner instead of
the six he had purposed on his way; and when she asked him his fare, he
charged her a shilling extra for the distance he had saved by going
straight. Mrs. Pendyce paid it, knowing no better, and gave him sixpence
over, thinking it might benefit the horse; and the cabman, touching his
hat, said:
"Thank you, my lady," for to say "my lady" was his principle when he
received eighteen pence above his fare.
Mrs. Pendyce stood quite a minute on the pavement, stroking the horse's
nose and thinking:
'I must go in; it's silly to come all this way and not go in!'
But her heart beat so that she could hardly swallow.
At last she rang.
Mrs. Bellew was seated on the sofa in her little drawing-room whistling
to a canary in the open window. In the affairs of men there is an irony
constant and deep, mingled with the very springs of life. The
expectations of Mrs. Pendyce, those timid apprehensions of this meeting
which had racked her all the way, were lamentably unfulfilled. She had
rehearsed the scene ever since it came into her head; the reality seemed
unfamiliar. She felt no nervousness and no hostility, only a sort of
painful interest and admiration. And how could this or any other woman
help falling in love with George?
The first uncertain minute over, Mrs. Bellew's eyes were as friendly as
if she had been quite within her rights in all she had done; and Mrs.
Pendyce could not help meeting friendliness halfway.
"Don't be angry with me for coming. George doesn't know. I felt I must
come to see you. Do you think that you two quite know all you're doing?
It seems so dreadful, and it's not only yourselves, is it?"
Mrs. Bellew's smile vanished.
"Please don't say 'you two,'" she said.
Mrs. Pendyce stammered:
"I don't understand."
Mrs. Bellew looked her in the face and smiled; and as she smiled she
seemed to become a little coarser.
"Well, I think it's quite time you did! I don't love your son. I did
once, but I don't now. I told him so yesterday, once for all."
Mrs. Pendyce heard those words, which made so vast, so wonderful a
difference--words which should have been like water in a wilderness
--with a sort of horror, and all her spirit flamed up into her eyes.
"You don't love him?" she cried.
She felt only a blind sense of insult and affront.
This woman tire of George? Tire of her son? She looked at Mrs. Bellew,
on whose face was a kind of inquisitive compassion, with eyes that had
never before held hatred.
"You have tired of him? You have given him up? Then the sooner I go to
him the better! Give me the address of his rooms, please."
Helen Bellew knelt down at the bureau and wrote on an envelope, and the
grace of the woman pierced Mrs. Pendyce to the heart.
She took the paper. She had never learned the art of abuse, and no words
could express what was in her heart, so she turned and went out.
Mrs. Bellew's voice sounded quick and fierce behind her.
"How could I help getting tired? I am not you. Now go!"
Mrs. Pendyce wrenched open the outer door. Descending the stairs, she
felt for the bannister. She had that awful sense of physical soreness
and shrinking which violence, whether their own or others', brings to
gentle souls.
CHAPTER V
THE MOTHER AND THE SON
To Mrs. Pendyce, Chelsea was an unknown land, and to find her way to
George's rooms would have taken her long had she been by nature what she
was by name, for Pendyces never asked their way to anything, or believed
what they were told, but found out for themselves with much unnecessary
trouble, of which they afterwards complained.
A policeman first, and then a young man with a beard, resembling an
artist, guided her footsteps. The latter, who was leaning by a gate,
opened it.
"In here," he said; "the door in the corner on the right."
Mrs. Pendyce walked down the little path, past the ruined fountain with
its three stone frogs, and stood by the first green door and waited. And
while she waited she struggled between fear and joy; for now that she was
away from Mrs. Bellew she no longer felt a sense of insult. It was the
actual sight of her that had aroused it, so personal is even the most
gentle heart.
She found the rusty handle of a bell amongst the creeper-leaves, and
pulled it. A cracked metallic tinkle answered her, but no one came; only
a faint sound as of someone pacing to and fro. Then in the street beyond
the outer gate a coster began calling to the sky, and in the music of his
prayers the sound was lost. The young man with a beard, resembling an
artist, came down the path.
"Perhaps you could tell me, sir, if my son is out?"
"I've not seen him go out; and I've been painting here all the morning."
Mrs. Pendyce looked with wonder at an easel which stood outside another
door a little further on. It seemed to her strange that her son should
live in such a place.
"Shall I knock for you?" said the artist. "All these knockers are
stiff."
"If you would be so kind!"
The artist knocked.
"He must be in," he said. "I haven't taken my eyes off his door, because
I've been painting it."
Mrs. Pendyce gazed at the door.
"I can't get it," said the artist. "It's worrying me to death."
Mrs. Pendyce looked at him doubtfully.
"Has he no servant?" she said.
"Oh no," said the artist; "it's a studio. The light's all wrong. I
wonder if you would mind standing just as you are for one second; it
would help me a lot!"
He moved back and curved his hand over his eyes, and through Mrs. Pendyce
there passed a shiver.
'Why doesn't George open the door?' she thought. 'What--what is this man
doing?'
The artist dropped his hand.
"Thanks so much!" he said. "I'll knock again. There! that would raise
the dead!"
And he laughed.
An unreasoning terror seized on Mrs. Pendyce.
"Oh," she stammered, "I must get in--I must get in!"
She took the knocker herself, and fluttered it against the door.
"You see," said the artist, "they're all alike; these knockers are as
stiff' as pokers."
He again curved his hand over his eyes. Mrs. Pendyce leaned against the
door; her knees were trembling violently.
'What is happening?' she thought. 'Perhaps he's only asleep,
perhaps----Oh God!'
She beat the knocker with all her force. The door yielded, and in the
space stood George. Choking back a sob, Mrs. Pendyce went in. He banged
the door behind her.
For a full minute she did not speak, possessed still by that strange
terror and by a sort of shame. She did not even look at her son, but
cast timid glances round his room. She saw a gallery at the far end, and
a conical roof half made of glass. She saw curtains hanging all the
gallery length, a table with tea-things and decanters, a round iron
stove, rugs on the floor, and a large full-length mirror in the centre of
the wall. A silver cup of flowers was reflected in that mirror. Mrs.
Pendyce saw that they were dead, and the sense of their vague and
nauseating odour was her first definite sensation.
"Your flowers are dead, my darling," she said. "I must get you some
fresh!"
Not till then did she look at George. There were circles under his eyes;
his face was yellow; it seemed to her that it had shrunk. This terrified
her, and she thought:
'I must show nothing; I must keep my head!'
She was afraid--afraid of something desperate in his face, of something
desperate and headlong, and she was afraid of his stubbornness, the dumb,
unthinking stubbornness that holds to what has been because it has been,
that holds to its own when its own is dead. She had so little of this
quality herself that she could not divine where it might lead him; but
she had lived in the midst of it all her married life, and it seemed
natural that her son should be in danger from it now.
Her terror called up her self-possession. She drew George down on the
sofa by her side, and the thought flashed through her: 'How many times
has he not sat here with that woman in his arms!'
"You didn't come for me last night, dear! I got the tickets, such good
ones!"
George smiled.
"No," he said; "I had something else to see to!"
At sight of that smile Margery Pendyce's heart beat till she felt sick,
but she, too, smiled.
"What a nice place you have here, darling!"
"There's room to walk about."
Mrs. Pendyce remembered the sound she had heard of pacing to and fro.
From his not asking her how she had found out where he lived she knew
that he must have guessed where she had been, that there was nothing for
either of them to tell the other. And though this was a relief, it added
to her terror--the terror of that which is desperate. All sorts of
images passed through her mind. She saw George back in her bedroom after
his first run with the hounds, his chubby cheek scratched from forehead
to jaw, and the bloodstained pad of a cub fox in his little gloved hand.
She saw him sauntering into her room the last day of the 1880 match at
Lord's, with a battered top-hat, a blackened eye, and a cane with a
light-blue tassel. She saw him deadly pale with tightened lips that
afternoon after he had escaped from her, half cured of laryngitis, and
stolen out shooting by himself, and she remembered his words: "Well,
Mother, I couldn't stand it any longer; it was too beastly slow!"
Suppose he could not stand it now! Suppose he should do something rash!
She took out her handkerchief.
"It's very hot in here, dear; your forehead is quite wet!"
She saw his eyes turn on her suspiciously, and all her woman's wit stole
into her own eyes, so that they did not flicker, but looked at him with
matter-of-fact concern.
"That skylight is what does it," he said. "The sun gets full on there."
Mrs. Pendyce looked at the skylight.
"It seems odd to see you here, dear, but it's very nice--so
unconventional. You must let me put away those poor flowers!" She went
to the silver cup and bent over them. "My dear boy, they're quite nasty!
Do throw them outside somewhere; it's so dreadful, the smell of old
flowers!"
She held the cup out, covering her nose with her handkerchief.
George took the cup, and like a cat spying a mouse, Mrs. Pendyce watched
him take it out into the garden. As the door closed, quicker, more
noiseless than a cat, she slipped behind the curtains.
'I know he has a pistol,' she thought.
She was back in an instant, gliding round the room, hunting with her eyes
and hands, but she saw nothing, and her heart lightened, for she was
terrified of all such things.
'It's only these terrible first hours,' she thought.
When George came back she was standing where he had left her. They sat
down in silence, and in that silence, the longest of her life, she seemed
to feel all that was in his heart, all the blackness and bitter aching,
the rage of defeat and starved possession, the lost delight, the
sensation of ashes and disgust; and yet her heart was full enough already
of relief and shame, compassion, jealousy, love, and deep longing. Only
twice was the silence broken. Once when he asked her whether she had
lunched, and she who had eaten nothing all day answered:
"Yes, dear--yes."
Once when he said:
"You shouldn't have come here, Mother; I'm a bit out of sorts!"
She watched his face, dearest to her in all the world, bent towards the
floor, and she so yearned to hold it to her breast that, since she dared
not, the tears stole up, and silently rolled down her cheeks. The
stillness in that room, chosen for remoteness, was like the stillness of
a tomb, and, as in a tomb, there was no outlook on the world, for the
glass of the skylight was opaque.
That deathly stillness settled round her heart; her eyes fixed themselves
on the skylight, as though beseeching it to break and let in sound. A
cat, making a pilgrimage from roof to roof, the four dark moving spots of
its paws, the faint blur of its body, was all she saw. And suddenly,
unable to bear it any longer, she cried:
"Oh, George, speak to me! Don't put me away from you like this!"
George answered:
"What do you want me to say, Mother?"
"Nothing--only----"
And falling on her knees beside her son, she pulled his head down against
her breast, and stayed rocking herself to and fro, silently shifting
closer till she could feel his head lie comfortably; so, she had his face
against her heart, and she could not bear to let it go. Her knees hurt
her on the boarded floor, her back and all her body ached; but not for
worlds would she relax an inch, believing that she could comfort him with
her pain, and her tears fell on his neck. When at last he drew his face
away she sank down on the floor, and could not rise, but her fingers felt
that the bosom of her dress was wet. He said hoarsely:
"It's all right, Mother; you needn't worry!"
For no reward would she have looked at him just then, but with a deeper
certainty than reason she knew that he was safe.
Stealthily on the sloping skylight the cat retraced her steps, its four
paws dark moving spots, its body a faint blur.
Mrs. Pendyce rose.
"I won't stay now, darling. May I use your glass?"
Standing before that mirror, smoothing back her hair, passing her
handkerchief over her cheeks and eyes and lips, she thought:
'That woman has stood here! That woman has smoothed her hair, looking in
this glass, and wiped his kisses from her cheeks! May God give to her
the pain that she has given to my son!'
But when she had wished that wish she shivered.
She turned to George at the door with a smile that seemed to say:
'It's no good to weep, or try and tell you what is in my heart, and so,
you see, I'm smiling. Please smile, too, so as to comfort me a little.'
George put a small paper parcel in her hand and tried to smile.
Mrs. Pendyce went quickly out. Bewildered by the sunlight, she did not
look at this parcel till she was beyond the outer gate. It contained an
amethyst necklace, an emerald pendant, and a diamond ring. In the little
grey street that led to this garden with its poplars, old fountain, and
green gate, the jewels glowed and sparkled as though all light and life
had settled there. Mrs. Pendyce, who loved colour and glowing things,
saw that they were beautiful.
That woman had taken them, used their light and colour, and then flung
them back! She wrapped them again in the paper, tied the string, and
went towards the river. She did not hurry, but walked with her eyes
steadily before her. She crossed the Embankment, and stood leaning on
the parapet with her hands over the grey water. Her thumb and fingers
unclosed; the white parcel dropped, floated a second, and then
disappeared.
Mrs. Pendyce looked round her with a start.
A young man with a beard, whose face was familiar, was raising his hat.
"So your son was in," he said. "I'm very glad. I must thank you again
for standing to me just that minute; it made all the difference. It was
the relation between the figure and the door that I wanted to get.
Good-morning!"
Mrs. Pendyce murmured "Good-morning," following him with startled eyes,
as though he had caught her in the commission of a crime. She had a
vision of those jewels, buried, poor things! in the grey slime, a prey to
gloom, and robbed for ever of their light and colour. And, as though she
had sinned, wronged the gentle essence of her nature, she hurried away.
CHAPTER VI
GREGORY LOOKS AT THE SKY
Gregory Vigil called Mr. Paramor a pessimist it was because, like other
people, he did not know the meaning of, the term; for with a confusion
common to the minds of many persons who have been conceived in misty
moments, he thought that, to see things as they were, meant, to try and
make them worse. Gregory had his own way of seeing things that was very
dear to him--so dear that he would shut his eyes sooner than see them any
other way. And since things to him were not the same as things to Mr.
Paramor, it cannot, after all, be said that he did not see things as they
were. But dirt upon a face that he wished to be clean he could not
see--a fluid in his blue eyes dissolved that dirt while the image of the
face was passing on to their retinae. The process was unconscious, and
has been called idealism. This was why the longer he reflected the more
agonisedly certain he became that his ward was right to be faithful to
the man she loved, right to join her life to his. And he went about
pressing the blade of this thought into his soul.
About four o'clock on the day of Mrs. Pendyce's visit to the studio a
letter was brought him by a page-boy.
"GREEN'S HOTEL,
"Thursday.
"DEAR GRIG,
"I have seen Helen Bellew, and have just come from George. We have all
been living in a bad dream. She does not love him--perhaps has never
loved him. I do not know; I do not wish to judge. She has given him up.
I will not trust myself to say anything about that. From beginning to end
it all seems so unnecessary, such a needless, cross-grained muddle. I
write this line to tell you how things really are, and to beg you, if you
have a moment to spare, to look in at George's club this evening and let
me know if he is there and how he seems. There is no one else that I
could possibly ask to do this for me. Forgive me if this letter pains
you.
"Your affectionate cousin,
"MARGERY PENDYCE."
To those with the single eye, the narrow personal view of all things
human, by whom the irony underlying the affairs of men is unseen and
unenjoyed, whose simple hearts afford that irony its most precious
smiles, who; vanquished by that irony, remain invincible--to these no
blow of Fate, no reversal of their ideas, can long retain importance. The
darts stick, quaver, and fall off, like arrows from chain-armour, and the
last dart, slipping upwards under the harness, quivers into the heart to
the cry of "What--you! No, no; I don't believe you're here!"
Such as these have done much of what has had to be done in this old
world, and perhaps still more of what has had to be undone.
When Gregory received this letter he was working on the case of a woman
with the morphia habit. He put it into his pocket and went on working.
It was all he was capable of doing.
"Here is the memorandum, Mrs. Shortman. Let them take her for six weeks.
She will come out a different woman."
Mrs. Shortman, supporting her thin face in her thin hand, rested her
glowing eyes on Gregory.
"I'm afraid she has lost all moral sense," she said. "Do you know, Mr.
Vigil, I'm almost afraid she never had any!"
"What do you mean?"
Mrs. Shortman turned her eyes away.
"I'm sometimes tempted to think," she said, "that there are such people.
I wonder whether we allow enough for that. When I was a girl in the
country I remember the daughter of our vicar, a very pretty creature.
There were dreadful stories about her, even before she was married, and
then we heard she was divorced. She came up to London and earned her own
living by playing the piano until she married again. I won't tell you
her name, but she is very well known, and nobody has ever seen her show
the slightest signs of being ashamed. If there is one woman like that
there may be dozens, and I sometimes think we waste----"
Gregory said dryly:
"I have heard you say that before."
Mrs. Shortman bit her lips.
"I don't think," she said, "that I grudge my efforts or my time."
Gregory went quickly up, and took her hand.
"I know that--oh, I know that," he said with feeling.
The sound of Miss Mallow furiously typing rose suddenly from the corner.
Gregory removed his hat from the peg on which it hung.
"I must go now," he said. "Good-night."
Without warning, as is the way with hearts, his heart had begun to bleed,
and he felt that he must be in the open air. He took no omnibus or cab,
but strode along with all his might, trying to think, trying to
understand. But he could only feel-confused and battered feelings, with
now and then odd throbs of pleasure of which he was ashamed. Whether he
knew it or not, he was making his way to Chelsea, for though a man's eyes
may be fixed on the stars, his feet cannot take him there, and Chelsea
seemed to them the best alternative. He was not alone upon this journey,
for many another man was going there, and many a man had been and was
coming now away, and the streets were the one long streaming crowd of the
summer afternoon. And the men he met looked at Gregory, and Gregory
looked at them, and neither saw the other, for so it is written of men,
lest they pay attention to cares that are not their own. The sun that
scorched his face fell on their backs, the breeze that cooled his back
blew on their cheeks. For the careless world, too, was on its way, along
the pavement of the universe, one of millions going to Chelsea, meeting
millions coming away....
"Mrs. Bellew at home?"
He went into a room fifteen feet square and perhaps ten high, with a
sulky canary in a small gilt cage, an upright piano with an open operatic
score, a sofa with piled-up cushions, and on it a woman with a flushed
and sullen face, whose elbows were resting on her knees, whose chin was
resting on her hand, whose gaze was fixed on nothing. It was a room of
that size, with all these things, but Gregory took into it with him some
thing that made it all seem different to Gregory. He sat down by the
window with his eyes care fully averted, and spoke in soft tones broken
by something that sounded like emotion. He began by telling her of his
woman with the morphia habit, and then he told her that he knew every
thing. When he had said this he looked out of the window, where builders
had left by inadvertence a narrow strip of sky. And thus he avoided
seeing the look on her face, contemptuous, impatient, as though she were
thinking: 'You are a good fellow, Gregory, but for Heaven's sake do see
things for once as they are! I have had enough of it.' And he avoided
seeing her stretch her arms out and spread the fingers, as an angry cat
will stretch and spread its toes. He told her that he did not want to
worry her, but that when she wanted him for anything she must send for
him--he was always there; and he looked at her feet, so that he did not
see her lip curl. He told her that she would always be the same to him,
and he asked her to believe that. He did not see the smile which never
left her lips again while he was there--the smile he could not read,
because it was the smile of life, and of a woman that he did not
understand. But he did see on that sofa a beautiful creature for whom he
had longed for years, and so he went away, and left her standing at the
door with her teeth fastened on her lip: And since with him Gregory took
his eyes, he did not see her reseated on the sofa, just as she had been
before he came in, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hand, her
moody eyes like those of a gambler staring into the distance....
In the streets of tall houses leading away from Chelsea were many men,
some, like Gregory, hungry for love, and some hungry for bread--men in
twos and threes, in crowds, or by themselves, some with their eyes on the
ground, some with their eyes level, some with their eyes on the sky, but
all with courage and loyalty of one poor kind or another in their hearts.
For by courage and loyalty alone it is written that man shall live,
whether he goes to Chelsea or whether he comes away. Of all these men,
not one but would have smiled to hear Gregory saying to himself: "She
will always be the same to me! She will always be the same to me!" And
not one that would have grinned....
It was getting on for the Stoics' dinner hour when Gregory found himself
in Piccadilly, and, Stoic after Stoic, they were getting out of cabs and
passing the club doors. The poor fellows had been working hard all day
on the racecourse, the cricket-ground, at Hurlingham, or in the Park;
some had been to the Royal Academy, and on their faces was a pleasant
look: "Ah, God is good--we can rest at last!" And many of them had had
no lunch, hoping to keep their weights down, and many who had lunched had
not done themselves as well as might be hoped, and some had done
themselves too well; but in all their hearts the trust burned bright that
they might do themselves better at dinner, for their God was good, and
dwelt between the kitchen and the cellar of the Stoics' Club. And
all--for all had poetry in their souls--looked forward to those hours in
paradise when, with cigars between their lips, good wine below, they
might dream the daily dream that comes to all true Stoics for about
fifteen shillings or even less, all told.
From a little back slum, within two stones' throw of the god of the
Stoics' Club, there had come out two seamstresses to take the air; one
was in consumption, having neglected to earn enough to feed herself
properly for some years past, and the other looked as if she would be in
consumption shortly, for the same reason. They stood on the pavement,
watching the cabs drive up. Some of the Stoics saw them and thought:
'Poor girls! they look awfully bad.' Three or four said to themselves:
"It oughtn't to be allowed. I mean, it's so painful to see; and it's not
as if one could do anything. They're not beggars, don't you know, and so
what can one do?"
But most of the Stoics did not look at them at all, feeling that their
soft hearts could not stand these painful sights, and anxious not to
spoil their dinners. Gregory did not see them either, for it so happened
that he was looking at the sky, and just then the two girls crossed the
road and were lost among the passers-by, for they were not dogs, who
could smell out the kind of man he was.
"Mr. Pendyce is in the club; I will send your name up, sir." And rolling
a little, as though Gregory's name were heavy, the porter gave it to the
boy, who went away with it.
Gregory stood by the empty hearth and waited, and while he waited,
nothing struck him at all, for the Stoics seemed very natural, just mere
men like himself, except that their clothes were better, which made him
think: 'I shouldn't care to belong here and have to dress for dinner
every night.'
"Mr. Pendyce is very sorry, sir, but he's engaged."
Gregory bit his lip, said "Thank you," and went away.
'That's all Margery wants,' he thought; 'the rest is nothing to me,' and,
getting on a bus, he fixed his eyes once more on the sky.
But George was not engaged. Like a wounded animal taking its hurt for
refuge to its lair, he sat in his favourite window overlooking
Piccadilly. He sat there as though youth had left him, unmoving, never
lifting his eyes. In his stubborn mind a wheel seemed turning, grinding
out his memories to the last grain. And Stoics, who could not bear to
see a man sit thus throughout that sacred hour, came up from time to
time.
"Aren't you going to dine, Pendyce?"
Dumb brutes tell no one of their pains; the law is silence. So with
George. And as each Stoic came up, he only set his teeth and said:
"Presently, old chap."
CHAPTER VII
TOUR WITH THE SPANIEL JOHN
Now the spaniel John--whose habit was to smell of heather and baked
biscuits when he rose from a night's sleep--was in disgrace that
Thursday. Into his long and narrow head it took time for any new idea to
enter, and not till forty hours after Mrs. Pendyce had gone did he
recognise fully that something definite had happened to his master.
During the agitated minutes that this conviction took in forming, he
worked hard. Taking two and a half brace of his master's shoes and
slippers, and placing them in unaccustomed spots, he lay on them one by
one till they were warm, then left them for some bird or other to hatch
out, and returned to Mr. Pendyce's door. It was for all this that the
Squire said, "John!" several times, and threatened him with a razorstrop.
And partly because he could not bear to leave his master for a single
second--the scolding had made him love him so--and partly because of
that new idea, which let him have no peace, he lay in the hall waiting.
Having once in his hot youth inadvertently followed the Squire's horse,
he could never be induced to follow it again. He both personally
disliked this needlessly large and swift form of animal, and suspected it
of designs upon his master; for when the creature had taken his master
up, there was not a smell of him left anywhere--not a whiff of that
pleasant scent that so endeared him to the heart. As soon, therefore, as
the horse appeared, the spaniel John would. lie down on his stomach with
his forepaws close to his nose, and his nose close to the ground; nor
until the animal vanished could he be induced to abandon an attitude in
which he resembled a couching Sphinx.
But this afternoon, with his tail down, his lips pouting, his shoulders
making heavy work of it, his nose lifted in deprecation of that
ridiculous and unnecessary plane on which his master sat, he followed at
a measured distance. In such-wise, aforetime, the village had followed
the Squire and Mr. Barter when they introduced into it its one and only
drain.
Mr. Pendyce rode slowly; his feet, in their well-blacked boots, his
nervous legs in Bedford cord and mahogany-coloured leggings, moved in
rhyme to the horse's trot. A long-tailed coat fell clean and full over
his thighs; his back and shoulders were a wee bit bent to lessen motion,
and above his neat white stock under a grey bowler hat his lean,
grey-whiskered and moustachioed face, with harassed eyes, was preoccupied
and sad. His horse, a brown blood mare, ambled lazily, head raking
forward, and bang tail floating outward from her hocks. And so, in the
June sunshine, they went, all three, along the leafy lane to Worsted
Scotton....
On Tuesday, the day that Mrs. Pendyce had left, the Squire had come in
later than usual, for he felt that after their difference of the night
before, a little coolness would do her no harm. The first hour of
discovery had been as one confused and angry minute, ending in a burst of
nerves and the telegram to General Pendyce. He took the telegram
himself, returning from the village with his head down, a sudden prey to
a feeling of shame--an odd and terrible feeling that he never remembered
to have felt before, a sort of fear of his fellow-creatures. He would
have chosen a secret way, but there was none, only the highroad, or the
path across the village green, and through the churchyard to his
paddocks. An old cottager was standing at the turnstile, and the Squire
made for him with his head down, as a bull makes for a fence. He had
meant to pass in silence, but between him and this old broken husbandman
there was a bond forged by the ages. Had it meant death, Mr. Pendyce
could not have passed one whose fathers had toiled for his fathers, eaten
his fathers' bread, died with his fathers, without a word and a movement
of his hand.
"Evenin', Squire; nice evenin'. Faine weather fur th' hay!"
The voice was warped and wavery.
'This is my Squire,' it seemed to say, 'whatever ther' be agin him!'
Mr. Pendyce's hand went up to his hat.
"Evenin', Hermon. Aye, fine weather for the hay! Mrs. Pendyce has gone
up to London. We young bachelors, ha!"
He passed on.
Not until he had gone some way did he perceive why he had made that
announcement. It was simply because he must tell everyone, everyone;
then no one could be astonished.
He hurried on to the house to dress in time for dinner, and show all that
nothing was amiss. Seven courses would have been served him had the sky
fallen; but he ate little, and drank more claret than was his wont.
After dinner he sat in his study with the windows open, and in the
mingled day and lamp light read his wife's letter over again. As it was
with the spaniel John, so with his master--a new idea penetrated but
slowly into his long and narrow head.
She was cracked about George; she did not know what she was doing; would
soon come to her senses. It was not for him to take any steps. What
steps, indeed, could he take without confessing that Horace Pendyce had
gone too far, that Horace Pendyce was in the wrong? That had never been
his habit, and he could not alter now. If she and George chose to be
stubborn, they must take the consequences, and fend for themselves.
In the silence and the lamplight, growing mellower each minute under the
green silk shade, he sat confusedly thinking of the past. And in that
dumb reverie, as though of fixed malice, there came to him no memories
that were not pleasant, no images that were not fair. He tried to think
of her unkindly, he tried to paint her black; but with the perversity
born into the world when he was born, to die when he was dead, she came
to him softly, like the ghost of gentleness, to haunt his fancy. She
came to him smelling of sweet scents, with a slight rustling of silk, and
the sound of her expectant voice, saying, "Yes, dear?" as though she were
not bored. He remembered when he brought her first to Worsted Skeynes
thirty-four years ago, "That timid, and like a rose, but a lady every
hinch, the love!" as his old nurse had said.
He remembered her when George was born, like wax for whiteness and
transparency, with eyes that were all pupils, and a hovering smile. So
many other times he remembered her throughout those years, but never as a
woman faded, old; never as a woman of the past. Now that he had not got
her, for the first time Mr. Pendyce realised that she had not grown old,
that she was still to him "timid, and like a rose, but a lady every
hinch, the love!" And he could not bear this thought; it made him feel
so miserable and lonely in the lamplight, with the grey moths hovering
round, and the spaniel John asleep upon his foot.
So, taking his candle, he went up to bed. The doors that barred away the
servants' wing were closed. In all that great remaining space of house
his was the only candle, the only sounding footstep. Slowly he mounted
as he had mounted many thousand times, but never once like this, and
behind him, like a shadow, mounted the spaniel John.
And She that knows the hearts of men and dogs, the Mother from whom all
things come, to whom they all go home, was watching, and presently, when
they were laid, the one in his deserted bed, the other on blue linen,
propped against the door, She gathered them to sleep.
But Wednesday came, and with it Wednesday duties. They who have passed
the windows of the Stoics' Club and seen the Stoics sitting there have
haunting visions of the idle landed classes. These visions will not let
them sleep, will not let their tongues to cease from bitterness, for they
so long to lead that "idle" life themselves. But though in a misty land
illusions be our cherished lot, that we may all think falsely of our
neighbours and enjoy ourselves, the word "idle" is not at all the word.
Many and heavy tasks weighed on the Squire at Worsted Skeynes. There was
the visit to the stables to decide as to firing Beldame's hock, or
selling the new bay horse because he did not draw men fast enough, and
the vexed question of Bruggan's oats or Beal's, talked out with Benson,
in a leather belt and flannel shirt-sleeves, like a corpulent,
white-whiskered boy. Then the long sitting in the study with memorandums
and accounts, all needing care, lest So-and-so should give too little for
too little, or too little for too much; and the smart walk across to
Jarvis, the head keeper, to ask after the health of the new Hungarian
bird, or discuss a scheme whereby in the last drive so many of those
creatures he had nurtured from their youth up might be deterred from
flying over to his friend Lord Quarryman. And this took long, for
Jarvis's feelings forced him to say six times, "Well, Mr. Pendyce, sir,
what I say is we didn't oughter lose s'many birds in that last drive;"
and Mr. Pendyce to answer: "No, Jarvis, certainly not. Well, what do you
suggest?" And that other grievous question--how to get plenty of
pheasants and plenty of foxes to dwell together in perfect
harmony--discussed with endless sympathy, for, as the Squire would say,
"Jarvis is quite safe with foxes." He could not bear his covers to be
drawn blank.
Then back to a sparing lunch, or perhaps no lunch at all, that he might
keep fit and hard; and out again at once on horseback or on foot to the
home farm or further, as need might take him, and a long afternoon, with
eyes fixed on the ribs of bullocks, the colour of swedes, the surfaces of
walls or gates or fences.
Then home again to tea and to the Times, which had as yet received. but
fleeting glances, with close attention to all those Parliamentary
measures threatening, remotely, the existing state of things, except, of
course, that future tax on wheat so needful to the betterment of Worsted
Skeynes. There were occasions, too, when they brought him tramps to deal
with, to whom his one remark would be, "Hold out your hands, my man,"
which, being found unwarped by honest toil, were promptly sent to gaol.
When found so warped, Mr. Pendyce was at a loss, and would walk up and
down, earnestly trying to discover what his duty was to them. There were
days, too, almost entirely occupied by sessions, when many classes of
offenders came before him, to whom he meted justice according to the
heinousness of the offence, from poaching at the top down and down to
wife-beating at the bottom; for, though a humane man, tradition did not
suffer him to look on this form of sport as really criminal--at any rate,
not in the country.
It was true that all these matters could have been settled in a fraction
of the time by a young and trained intelligence, but this would have
wronged tradition, disturbed the Squire's settled conviction that he was
doing his duty, and given cause for slanderous tongues to hint at
idleness. And though, further, it was true that all this daily labour
was devoted directly or indirectly to interests of his own, what was that
but doing his duty to the country and asserting the prerogative of every
Englishman at all costs to be provincial?
But on this Wednesday the flavour of the dish was gone. To be alone
amongst his acres, quite alone--to have no one to care whether he did
anything at all, no one to whom he might confide that Beldame's hock was
to be fired, that Peacock was asking for more gates, was almost more than
he could bear. He would have wired to the girls to come home, but he
could not bring him self to face their questions. Gerald was at Gib!
George--George was no son of his!--and his pride forbade him to write to
her who had left him thus to solitude and shame. For deep down below his
stubborn anger it was shame that the Squire felt--shame that he should
have to shun his neighbours, lest they should ask him questions which,
for his own good name and his own pride, he must answer with a lie; shame
that he should not be master in his own house--still more, shame that
anyone should see that he was not. To be sure, he did not know that he
felt shame, being unused to introspection, having always kept it at arm's
length. For he always meditated concretely, as, for instance, when he
looked up and did not see his wife at breakfast, but saw Bester making
coffee, he thought, 'That fellow knows all about it, I shouldn't wonder!'
and he felt angry for thinking that. When he saw Mr. Barter coming down
the drive he thought, 'Confound it! I can't meet him,' and slipped out,
and felt angry that he had thus avoided him. When in the Scotch garden
he came on Jackman syringing the rose-trees, he said to him, "Your
mistress has gone to London," and abruptly turned away, angry that he had
been obliged by a mysterious impulse to tell him that:
So it was, all through that long, sad day, and the only thing that gave
him comfort was to score through, in the draft of his will, bequests to
his eldest son, and busy himself over drafting a clause to take their
place:
"Forasmuch as my eldest son, George Hubert, has by conduct unbecoming to
a gentleman and a Pendyce, proved himself unworthy of my confidence, and
forasmuch as to my regret I am unable to cut the entail of my estate, I
hereby declare that he shall in no way participate in any division of my
other property or of my personal effects, conscientiously believing that
it is my duty so to do in the interests of my family and of the country,
and I make this declaration without anger."
For, all the anger that he was balked of feeling against his wife,
because he missed her so, was added to that already felt against his son.
By the last post came a letter from General Pendyce. He opened it with
fingers as shaky as his brother's writing.
"ARMY AND NAVY CLUB.
"DEAR HORACE,
"What the deuce and all made you send that telegram? It spoiled my
breakfast, and sent me off in a tearing hurry, to find Margery perfectly
well. If she'd been seedy or anything I should have been delighted, but
there she was, busy about her dresses and what not, and I dare say she
thought me a lunatic for coming at that time in the morning. You
shouldn't get into the habit of sending telegrams. A telegram is a thing
that means something--at least, I've always thought so. I met George
coming away from her in a deuce of a hurry. I can't write any more now.
I'm just going to have my lunch.
"Your affectionate brother,
"CHARLES PENDYCE."
She was well. She had been seeing George. With a hardened heart the
Squire went up to bed.
And Wednesday came to an end....
And so on the Thursday afternoon the brown blood mare carried Mr. Pendyce
along the lane, followed by the spaniel John. They passed the Firs,
where Bellew lived, and, bending sharply to the right, began to mount
towards the Common; and with them mounted the image of that fellow who
was at the bottom of it all--an image that ever haunted the Squire's mind
nowadays; a ghost, high-shouldered, with little burning eyes, clipped red
moustaches, thin bowed legs. A plague spot on that system which he
loved, a whipping-post to heredity, a scourge like Attila the Hun; a sort
of damnable caricature of all that a country gentleman should be--of his
love of sport and open air, of his "hardness" and his pluck; of his
powers of knowing his own mind, and taking his liquor like a man; of his
creed, now out of date, of gallantry. Yes--a kind of cursed bogey of a
man, a spectral follower of the hounds, a desperate character--a man that
in old days someone would have shot; a drinking, white-faced devil who
despised Horace Pendyce, whom Horace Pendyce hated, yet could not quite
despise. "Always one like that in a hunting country!" A black dog on
the shoulders of his order. 'Post equitem sedet' Jaspar Bellew!
The Squire came out on the top of the rise, and all Worsted Scotton was
in sight. It was a sandy stretch of broom and gorse and heather, with a
few Scotch firs; it had no value at all, and he longed for it, as a boy
might long for the bite someone else had snatched out of his apple. It
distressed him lying there, his and yet not his, like a wife who was no
wife--as though Fortune were enjoying her at his expense. Thus was he
deprived of the fulness of his mental image; for as with all men, so with
the Squire, that which he loved and owned took definite form--a some
thing that he saw. Whenever the words "Worsted Skeynes" were in his
mind--and that was almost always--there rose before him an image defined
and concrete, however indescribable; and what ever this image was, he
knew that Worsted Scot ton spoiled it. It was true that he could not
think of any use to which to put the Common, but he felt deeply that it
was pure dog-in-the-mangerism of the cottagers, and this he could not
stand. Not one beast in two years had fattened on its barrenness. Three
old donkeys alone eked out the remnants of their days. A bundle of
firewood or old bracken, a few peat sods from one especial corner, were
all the selfish peasants gathered. But the cottagers were no great
matter--he could soon have settled them; it was that fellow Peacock whom
he could not settle, just because he happened to abut on the Common, and
his fathers had been nasty before him. Mr. Pendyce rode round looking at
the fence his father had put up, until he came to the portion that
Peacock's father had pulled down; and here, by a strange fatality--such
as will happen even in printed records--he came on Peacock himself
standing in the gap, as though he had foreseen this visit of the
Squire's. The mare stopped of her own accord, the spaniel John at a
measured distance lay down to think, and all those yards away he could be
heard doing it, and now and then swallowing his tongue.
Peacock stood with his hands in his breeches' pockets. An old straw hat
was on his head, his little eyes were turned towards the ground; and his
cob, which he had tied to what his father had left standing of the fence,
had his eyes, too, turned towards the ground, for he was eating grass.
Mr. Pendyce's fight with his burning stable had stuck in the farmer's
"gizzard" ever since. He felt that he was forgetting it day by
day--would soon forget it altogether. He felt the old sacred doubts
inherited from his fathers rising every hour within him. And so he had
come up to see what looking at the gap would do for his sense of
gratitude. At sight of the Squire his little eyes turned here and there,
as a pig's eyes turn when it receives a blow behind. That Mr. Pendyce
should have chosen this moment to come up was as though Providence, that
knoweth all things, knew the natural thing for Mr. Pendyce to do.
"Afternoon, Squire. Dry weather; rain's badly wanted. I'll get no feed
if this goes on."
Mr. Pendyce answered:
"Afternoon, Peacock. Why, your fields are first-rate for grass."
They hastily turned their eyes away, for at that moment they could not
bear to see each other.
There was a silence; then Peacock said:
"What about those gates of mine, Squire?" and his voice quavered, as
though gratitude might yet get the better of him.
The Squire's irritable glance swept over the unfenced space to right and
left, and the thought flashed through his mind:
'Suppose I were to give the beggar those gates, would he--would he let me
enclose the Scotton again?'
He looked at that square, bearded man, and the infallible instinct,
christened so wickedly by Mr. Paramor, guided him.
"What's wrong with your gates, man, I should like to know?"
Peacock looked at him full this time; there was no longer any quaver in
his voice, but a sort of rough good-humour.
"Wy, the 'arf o' them's as rotten as matchwood!" he said; and he took a
breath of relief, for he knew that gratitude was dead within his soul.
"Well, I wish mine at the home farm were half as good. Come, John!" and,
touching the mare with his heel, Mr. Pendyce turned; but before he had
gone a dozen paces he was back.
"Mrs. Peacock well, I hope? Mrs. Pendyce has gone up to London."
And touching his hat, without waiting for Peacock's answer, he rode away.
He took the lane past Peacock's farm across the home paddocks, emerging
on the cricket-ground, a field of his own which he had caused to be
converted.
The return match with Coldingham was going on, and, motionless on his
horse, the Squire stopped to watch. A tall figure in the "long field"
came leisurely towards him. It was the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow. Mr. Pendyce
subdued an impulse to turn the mare and ride away.
"We're going to give you a licking, Squire! How's Mrs. Pendyce? My wife
sent her love."
On the Squire's face in the full sun was more than the sun's flush.
"Thanks," he said, "she's very well. She's gone up to London."
"And aren't you going up yourself this season?"
The Squire crossed those leisurely eyes with his own.
"I don't think so," he said slowly.
The Hon. Geoffrey returned to his duties.
"We got poor old Barter for a 'blob'!" he said over his shoulder.
The Squire became aware that Mr. Barter was approaching from behind.
"You see that left-hand fellow?" he said, pouting. "Just watch his foot.
D'you mean to say that wasn't a no-ball? He bowled me with a no-ball.
He's a rank no-batter. That fellow Locke's no more an umpire than----"
He stopped and looked earnestly at the bowler.
The Squire 'did not answer, sitting on his mare as though carved in
stone. Suddenly his throat clicked.
"How's your wife?" he said. "Margery would have come to see her,
but--but she's gone up to London."
The Rector did not turn his head.
"My wife? Oh, going on first-rate. There's another! I say, Winlow,
this is too bad!"
The Hon. Geoffrey's pleasant voice was heard:
"Please not to speak to the man at the wheel!"
The Squire turned the mare and rode away; and the spaniel John, who had
been watching from a measured distance, followed after, his tongue
lolling from his mouth.
The Squire turned through a gate down the main aisle of the home covert,
and the nose and the tail of the spaniel John, who scented creatures to
the left and right, were in perpetual motion. It was cool in there. The
June foliage made one long colonnade, broken by a winding river of sky.
Among the oaks and hazels; the beeches and the elms, the ghostly body of
a birch-tree shone here and there, captured by those grosser trees which
seemed to cluster round her, proud of their prisoner, loth to let her go,
that subtle spirit of their wood. They knew that, were she gone, their
forest lady, wilder and yet gentler than themselves--they would lose
credit, lose the grace and essence of their corporate being.
The Squire dismounted, tethered his horse, and sat under one of those
birch-trees, on the fallen body of an elm. The spaniel John also sat and
loved him with his eyes. And sitting there they thought their thoughts,
but their thoughts were different.
For under this birch-tree Horace Pendyce had stood and kissed his wife
the very day he brought her home to Worsted Skeynes, and though he did
not see the parallel between her and the birch-tree that some poor
imaginative creature might have drawn, yet was he thinking of that long
past afternoon. But the spaniel John was not thinking of it; his
recollection was too dim, for he had been at that time twenty-eight years
short of being born.
Mr. Pendyce sat there long with his horse and with his dog, and from out
the blackness of the spaniel John, who was more than less asleep, there
shone at times an eye turned on his master like some devoted star. The
sun, shining too, gilded the stem of the birch-tree. The birds and
beasts began their evening stir all through the undergrowth, and rabbits,
popping out into the ride, looked with surprise at the spaniel John, and
popped in back again. They knew that men with horses had no guns, but
could not bring themselves to trust that black and hairy thing whose nose
so twitched whenever they appeared. The gnats came out to dance, and at
their dancing, every sound and scent and shape became the sounds and
scents and shapes of evening; and there was evening in the Squire's
heart.
Slowly and stiffly he got up from the log and mounted to ride home. It
would be just as lonely when he got there, but a house is better than a
wood, where the gnats dance, the birds and creatures stir and stir, and
shadows lengthen; where the sun steals upwards on the tree-stems, and all
is careless of its owner, Man.
It was past seven o'clock when he went to his study. There was a lady
standing at the window, and Mr. Pendyce said:
"I beg your pardon?"
The lady turned; it was his wife. The Squire stopped with a hoarse
sound, and stood silent, covering his eyes with his hand.
CHAPTER VIII
ACUTE ATTACK OF 'PENDYCITIS'
Mrs. Pendyce felt very faint when she hurried away from Chelsea. She had
passed through hours of great emotion, and eaten nothing.
Like sunset clouds or the colours in mother-o'-pearl, so, it is written,
shall be the moods of men--interwoven as the threads of an embroidery,
less certain than an April day, yet with a rhythm of their own that never
fails, and no one can quite scan.
A single cup of tea on her way home, and her spirit revived. It seemed
suddenly as if there had been a great ado about nothing! As if someone
had known how stupid men could be, and been playing a fantasia on that
stupidity. But this gaiety of spirit soon died away, confronted by the
problem of what she should do next.
She reached her hotel without making a decision. She sat down in the
reading-room to write to Gregory, and while she sat there with her pen in
her hand a dreadful temptation came over her to say bitter things to him,
because by not seeing people as they were he had brought all this upon
them. But she had so little practice in saying bitter things that she
could not think of any that were nice enough, and in the end she was
obliged to leave them out. After finishing and sending off the note she
felt better. And it came to her suddenly that, if she packed at once,
there was just time to catch the 5.55 to Worsted Skeynes.
As in leaving her home, so in returning, she followed her instinct, and
her instinct told her to avoid unnecessary fuss and suffering.
The decrepit station fly, mouldy and smelling of stables, bore her almost
lovingly towards the Hall. Its old driver, clean-faced, cheery, somewhat
like a bird, drove her almost furiously, for, though he knew nothing, he
felt that two whole days and half a day were quite long enough for her to
be away. At the lodge gate old Roy, the Skye, was seated on his
haunches, and the sight of him set Mrs. Pendyce trembling as though till
then she had not realised that she was coming home.
Home! The long narrow lane without a turning, the mists and stillness,
the driving rain and hot bright afternoons; the scents of wood smoke and
hay and the scent of her flowers; the Squire's voice, the dry rattle of
grass-cutters, the barking of dogs, and distant hum of threshing; and
Sunday sounds--church bells and rooks, and Mr. Barter's preaching; the
tastes, too, of the very dishes! And all these scents and sounds and
tastes, and the feel of the air to her cheeks, seemed to have been for
ever in the past, and to be going on for ever in the time to come.
She turned red and white by turns, and felt neither joy nor sadness, for
in a wave the old life came over her. She went at once to the study to
wait for her husband to come in. At the hoarse sound he made, her heart
beat fast, while old Roy and the spaniel John growled gently at each
other.
"John," she murmured, "aren't you glad to see me, dear?"
The spaniel John, without moving, beat his tail against his master's
foot.
The Squire raised his head at last.
"Well, Margery?" was all he said.
It shot through her mind that he looked older, and very tired!
The dinner-gong began to sound, and as though attracted by its long
monotonous beating, a swallow flew in at one of the narrow windows and
fluttered round the room. Mrs. Pendyce's eyes followed its flight.
The Squire stepped forward suddenly and took her hand.
"Don't run away from me again, Margery!" he said; and stooping down, he
kissed it.
At this action, so unlike her husband, Mrs. Pendyce blushed like a girl.
Her eyes above his grey and close-cropped head seemed grateful that he
did not reproach her, glad of that caress.
"I have some news to tell you, Horace. Helen Bellew has given George
up!"
The Squire dropped her hand.
"And quite time too," he said. "I dare say George has refused to take
his dismissal. He's as obstinate as a mule."
"I found him in a dreadful state."
Mr. Pendyce asked uneasily:
"What? What's that?"
"He looked so desperate."
"Desperate?" said the Squire, with a sort of startled anger.
Mrs. Pendyce went on:
"It was dreadful to see his face. I was with him this afternoon-"
The Squire said suddenly:
"He's not ill, is he?"
"No, not ill. Oh, Horace, don't you understand? I was afraid he might
do something rash. He was so--miserable."
The Squire began to walk up and down.
"Is he is he safe now?" he burst out.
Mrs. Pendyce sat down rather suddenly in the nearest chair.
"Yes," she said with difficulty, "I--I think so."
"Think! What's the good of that? What----Are you feeling faint,
Margery?"
Mrs. Pendyce, who had closed her eyes, said:
"No dear, it's all right."
Mr. Pendyce came close, and since air and quiet were essential to her at
that moment, he bent over and tried by every means in his power to rouse
her; and she, who longed to be let alone, sympathised with him, for she
knew that it was natural that he should do this. In spite of his efforts
the feeling of faintness passed, and, taking his hand, she stroked it
gratefully.
"What is to be done now, Horace?"
"Done!" cried the Squire. "Good God! how should I know? Here you are
in this state, all because of that d---d fellow Bellew and his d---d
wife! What you want is some dinner."
So saying, he put his arm around her, and half leading, half carrying,
took her to her room.
They did not talk much at dinner, and of indifferent things, of Mrs.
Barter, Peacock, the roses, and Beldame's hock. Only once they came too
near to that which instinct told them to avoid, for the Squire said
suddenly:
"I suppose you saw that woman?"
And Mrs. Pendyce murmured:
"Yes."
She soon went to her room, and had barely got into bed when he appeared,
saying as though ashamed:
"I'm very early."
She lay awake, and every now and then the Squire would ask her, "Are you
asleep, Margery?" hoping that she might have dropped off, for he himself
could not sleep. And she knew that he meant to be nice to her, and she
knew, too, that as he lay awake, turning from side to side, he was
thinking like herself: 'What's to be done next?' And that his fancy,
too, was haunted by a ghost, high-shouldered, with little burning eyes,
red hair, and white freckled face. For, save that George was miserable,
nothing was altered, and the cloud of vengeance still hung over Worsted
Skeynes. Like some weary lesson she rehearsed her thoughts: 'Now Horace
can answer that letter of Captain Bellow's, can tell him that George will
not--indeed, cannot--see her again. He must answer it. But will he?'
She groped after the secret springs of her husband's character, turning
and turning and trying to understand, that she might know the best way of
approaching him. And she could not feel sure, for behind all the little
outside points of his nature, that she thought so "funny," yet could
comprehend, there was something which seemed to her as unknown, as
impenetrable as the dark, a sort of thickness of soul, a sort of
hardness, a sort of barbaric-what? And as when in working at her
embroidery the point of her needle would often come to a stop against
stiff buckram, so now was the point of her soul brought to a stop against
the soul of her husband. 'Perhaps,' she thought, 'Horace feels like that
with me.' She need not so have thought, for the Squire never worked
embroideries, nor did the needle of his soul make voyages of discovery.
By lunch-time the next day she had not dared to say a word. 'If I say
nothing,' she thought, 'he may write it of his own accord.'
Without attracting his attention, therefore, she watched every movement
of his morning. She saw him sitting at his bureau with a creased and
crumpled letter, and knew it was Bellew's; and she hovered about, coming
softly in and out, doing little things here and there and in the hall,
outside. But the Squire gave no sign, motionless as the spaniel John
couched along the ground with his nose between his paws.
After lunch she could bear it no longer.
"What do you think ought to be done now, Horace?"
The Squire looked at her fixedly.
"If you imagine," he said at last, "that I'll have anything to do with
that fellow Bellew, you're very much mistaken."
Mrs. Pendyce was arranging a vase of flowers, and her hand shook so that
some of the water was spilled over the cloth. She took out her
handkerchief and dabbed it up.
"You never answered his letter, dear," she said.
The Squire put his back against the sideboard; his stiff figure, with
lean neck and angry eyes, whose pupils were mere pin-points, had a
certain dignity.
"Nothing shall induce me!" he said, and his voice was harsh and strong,
as though he spoke for something bigger than himself. "I've thought it
over all the morning, and I'm d---d if I do! The man is a ruffian. I
won't knuckle under to him!"
Mrs. Pendyce clasped her hands.
"Oh, Horace," she said; "but for the sake of us all! Only just give him
that assurance."
"And let him crow over me!" cried the Squire. "By Jove, no!"
"But, Horace, I thought that was what you wanted George to do. You wrote
to him and asked him to promise."
The Squire answered:
"You know nothing about it, Margery; you know nothing about me. D'you
think I'm going to tell him that his wife has thrown my son over--let him
keep me gasping like a fish all this time, and then get the best of it in
the end? Not if I have to leave the county--not if I----"
But, as though he had imagined the most bitter fate of all, he stopped.
Mrs. Pendyce, putting her hands on the lapels of his coat, stood with her
head bent. The colour had gushed into her cheeks, her eyes were bright
with tears. And there came from her in her emotion a warmth and
fragrance, a charm, as though she were again young, like the portrait
under which they stood.
"Not if I ask you, Horace?"
The Squire's face was suffused with dusky colour; he clenched his hands
and seemed to sway and hesitate.
"No, Margery," he said hoarsely; "it's--it's--I can't!"
And, breaking away from her, he left the room.
Mrs. Pendyce looked after him; her fingers, from which he had torn his
coat, began twining the one with the other.
CHAPTER IX
BELLEW BOWS TO A LADY
There was silence at the Firs, and in that silent house, where only five
rooms were used, an old manservant sat in his pantry on a wooden chair,
reading from an article out of Rural Life. There was no one to disturb
him, for the master was asleep, and the housekeeper had not yet come to
cook the dinner. He read slowly, through spectacles, engraving the words
for ever on the tablets of his mind. He read about the construction and
habits of the owl: "In the tawny, or brown, owl there is a manubrial
process; the furcula, far from being joined to the keel of the sternum,
consists of two stylets, which do not even meet; while the posterior
margin of the sternum presents two pairs of projections, with
corresponding fissures between." The old manservant paused, resting his
blinking eyes on the pale sunlight through the bars of his narrow window,
so that a little bird on the window-sill looked at him and instantly flew
away.
The old manservant read on again: "The pterylological characters of
Photodilus seem not to have been investigated, but it has been found to
want the tarsal loop, as well as the manubrial process, while its
clavicles are not joined in a furcula, nor do they meet the keel, and the
posterior margin of the sternum has processes and fissures like the tawny
section." Again he paused, and his gaze was satisfied and bland.
Up in the little smoking-room in a leather chair his master sat asleep.
In front of him were stretched his legs in dusty riding-boots. His lips
were closed, but through a little hole at one corner came a tiny puffing
sound. On the floor by his side was an empty glass, between his feet a
Spanish bulldog. On a shelf above his head reposed some frayed and
yellow novels with sporting titles, written by persons in their
inattentive moments. Over the chimneypiece presided the portrait of Mr.
Jorrocks persuading his horse to cross a stream.
And the face of Jaspar Bellew asleep was the face of a man who has ridden
far, to get away from himself, and to-morrow will have to ride far again.
His sandy eyebrows twitched with his dreams against the dead-white,
freckled skin above high cheekbones, and two hard ridges were fixed
between his brows; now and then over the sleeping face came the look of
one riding at a gate.
In the stables behind the house she who had carried him on his ride,
having rummaged out her last grains of corn, lifted her nose and poked it
through the bars of her loosebox to see what he was doing who had not
carried her master that sweltering afternoon, and seeing that he was
awake, she snorted lightly, to tell him there was thunder in the air.
All else in the stables was deadly quiet; the shrubberies around were
still; and in the hushed house the master slept.
But on the edge of his wooden chair in the silence of his pantry the old
manservant read, "This bird is a voracious feeder," and he paused,
blinking his eyes and nervously puckering his lips, for he had partially
understood....
Mrs. Pendyce was crossing the fields. She had on her prettiest frock, of
smoky-grey crepe, and she looked a little anxiously at the sky. Gathered
in the west a coming storm was chasing the whitened sunlight. Against
its purple the trees stood blackish-green. Everything was very still, not
even the poplars stirred, yet the purple grew with sinister, unmoving
speed. Mrs. Pendyce hurried, grasping her skirts in both her hands, and
she noticed that the cattle were all grouped under the hedge.
'What dreadful-looking clouds!' she thought. 'I wonder if I shall get to
the Firs before it comes?' But though her frock made her hasten, her
heart made her stand still, it fluttered so, and was so full. Suppose he
were not sober! She remembered those little burning eyes, which had
frightened her so the night he dined at Worsted Skeynes and fell out of
his dogcart afterwards. A kind of legendary malevolence clung about his
image.
'Suppose he is horrid to me!' she thought.
She could not go back now; but she wished--how she wished!--that it were
over. A heat-drop splashed her glove. She crossed the lane and opened
the Firs gate. Throwing frightened glances at the sky, she hastened down
the drive. The purple was couched like a pall on the treetops, and these
had begun to sway and moan as though struggling and weeping at their
fate. Some splashes of warm rain were falling. A streak of lightning
tore the firmament. Mrs. Pendyce rushed into the porch covering her ears
with her hands.
'How long will it last?' she thought. 'I'm so frightened!'...
A very old manservant, whose face was all puckers, opened the door
suddenly to peer out at the storm, but seeing Mrs. Pendyce, he peered at
her instead.
"Is Captain Bellew at home?"
"Yes, ma'am. The Captain's in the study. We don't use the drawing-room
now. Nasty storm coming on, ma'am--nasty storm. Will you please to sit
down a minute, while I let the Captain know?"
The hall was low and dark; the whole house was low and dark, and smelled
a little of woodrot. Mrs. Pendyce did not sit down, but stood under an
arrangement of three foxes' heads, supporting two hunting-crops, with
their lashes hanging down. And the heads of those animals suggested to
her the thought: 'Poor man! He must be very lonely here.'
She started. Something was rubbing against her knees: it was only an
enormous bulldog. She stooped down to pat it, and having once begun,
found it impossible to leave off, for when she took her hand away the
creature pressed against her, and she was afraid for her frock.
"Poor old boy--poor old boy!" she kept on murmuring. "Did he want a
little attention?"
A voice behind her said:
"Get out, Sam! Sorry to have kept you waiting. Won't you come in here?"
Mrs. Pendyce, blushing and turning pale by turns, passed into a low,
small, panelled room, smelling of cigars and spirits. Through the
window, which was cut up into little panes, she could see the rain
driving past, the shrubs bent and dripping from the downpour.
"Won't you sit down?"
Mrs. Pendyce sat down. She had clasped her hands together; she now
raised her eyes and looked timidly at her host.
She saw a thin, high-shouldered figure, with bowed legs a little apart,
rumpled sandy hair, a pale, freckled face, and little dark blinking eyes.
"Sorry the room's in such a mess. Don't often have the pleasure of
seeing a lady. I was asleep; generally am at this time of year!"
The bristly red moustache was contorted as though his lips were smiling.
Mrs. Pendyce murmured vaguely.
It seemed to her that nothing of this was real, but all some horrid
dream. A clap of thunder made her cover her ears.
Bellew walked to the window, glanced at the sky, and came back to the
hearth. His little burning eyes seemed to look her through and through.
'If I don't speak at once,' she thought, 'I never shall speak at all.'
"I've come," she began, and with those words she lost her fright; her
voice, that had been so uncertain hitherto, regained its trick of speech;
her eyes, all pupil, stared dark and gentle at this man who had them all
in his power--"I've come to tell you something, Captain Bellew!"
The figure by the hearth bowed, and her fright, like some evil bird, came
guttering down on her again. It was dreadful, it was barbarous that she,
that anyone, should have to speak of such things; it was barbarous that
men and women should so misunderstand each other, and have so little
sympathy and consideration; it was barbarous that she, Margery Pendyce,
should have to talk on this subject that must give them both such pain.
It was all so mean and gross and common! She took out her handkerchief
and passed it over her lips.
"Please forgive me for speaking. Your wife has given my son up, Captain
Bellew!"
Bellew did not move.
"She does not love him; she told me so herself! He will never see her
again!"
How hateful, how horrible, how odious!
And still Bellew did not speak, but stood devouring her with his little
eyes; and how long this went on she could not tell.
He turned his back suddenly, and leaned against the mantelpiece.
Mrs. Pendyce passed her hand over her brow to get rid of a feeling of
unreality.
"That is all," she said.
Her voice sounded to herself unlike her own.
'If that is really all,' she thought, 'I suppose I must get up and go!'
And it flashed through her mind: 'My poor dress will be ruined!'
Bellew turned round.
"Will you have some tea?"
Mrs. Pendyce smiled a pale little smile.
"No, thank you; I don't think I could drink any tea."
"I wrote a letter to your husband."
"Yes."
"He didn't answer it."
"No."
Mrs. Pendyce saw him staring at her, and a desperate struggle began
within her. Should she not ask him to keep his promise, now that
George----? Was not that what she had come for? Ought she not--ought
she not for all their sakes?
Bellew went up to the table, poured out some whisky, and drank it off.
"You don't ask me to stop the proceedings," he said.
Mrs. Pendyce's lips were parted, but nothing came through those parted
lips. Her eyes, black as sloes in her white face, never moved from his;
she made no sound.
Bellew dashed his hand across his brow.
"Well, I will!" he said, "for your sake. There's my hand on it. You're
the only lady I know!"
He gripped her gloved fingers, brushed past her, and she saw that she was
alone.
She found her own way out, with the tears running down her face. Very
gently she shut the hall door.
'My poor dress!' she thought. 'I wonder if I might stand here a little?
The rain looks nearly over!'
The purple cloud had passed, and sunk behind the house, and a bright
white sky was pouring down a sparkling rain; a patch of deep blue showed
behind the fir-trees in the drive. The thrushes were out already after
worms. A squirrel scampering along a branch stopped and looked at Mrs.
Pendyce, and Mrs. Pendyce looked absently at the squirrel from behind the
little handkerchief with which she was drying her eyes.
'That poor man!' she thought 'poor solitary creature! There's the sun!'
And it seemed to her that it was the first time the sun had shone all
this fine hot year. Gathering her dress in both hands, she stepped into
the drive, and soon was back again in the fields.
Every green thing glittered, and the air was so rain-sweet that all the
summer scents were gone, before the crystal scent of nothing. Mrs.
Pendyce's shoes were soon wet through.
'How happy I am!' she thought 'how glad and happy I am!'
And the feeling, which was not as definite as this, possessed her to the
exclusion of all other feelings in the rain-soaked fields.
The cloud that had hung over Worsted Skeynes so long had spent itself and
gone. Every sound seemed to be music, every moving thing danced. She
longed to get to her early roses, and see how the rain had treated them.
She had a stile to cross, and when she was safely over she paused a
minute to gather her skirts more firmly. It was a home-field she was in
now, and right before her lay the country house. Long and low and white
it stood in the glamourous evening haze, with two bright panes, where the
sunlight fell, watching, like eyes, the confines of its acres; and behind
it, to the left, broad, square, and grey among its elms, the village
church. Around, above, beyond, was peace--the sleepy, misty peace of the
English afternoon.
Mrs. Pendyce walked towards her garden. When she was near it, away to
the right, she saw the Squire and Mr. Barter. They were standing
together looking at a tree and--symbol of a subservient under-world--the
spaniel John was seated on his tail, and he, too, was looking at the
tree. The faces of the Rector and Mr. Pendyce were turned up at the same
angle, and different as those faces and figures were in their eternal
rivalry of type, a sort of essential likeness struck her with a feeling
of surprise. It was as though a single spirit seeking for a body had met
with these two shapes, and becoming confused, decided to inhabit both.
Mrs. Pendyce did not wave to them, but passed quickly, between the
yew-trees, through the wicket-gate....
In her garden bright drops were falling one by one from every rose-leaf,
and in the petals of each rose were jewels of water. A little down the
path a weed caught her eye; she looked closer, and saw that there were
several.
'Oh,' she thought, 'how dreadfully they've let the weeds I must really
speak to Jackman!'
A rose-tree, that she herself had planted, rustled close by, letting fall
a shower of drops.
Mrs. Pendyce bent down, and took a white rose in her fingers. With her
smiling lips she kissed its face.
1907.
THE END.
FRATERNITY
By John Galsworthy
CHAPTER I
THE SHADOW
In the afternoon of the last day of April, 190-, a billowy sea of little
broken clouds crowned the thin air above High Street, Kensington. This
soft tumult of vapours, covering nearly all the firmament, was in
onslaught round a patch of blue sky, shaped somewhat like a star, which
still gleamed--a single gentian flower amongst innumerable grass. Each
of these small clouds seemed fitted with a pair of unseen wings, and, as
insects flight on their too constant journeys, they were setting forth
all ways round this starry blossom which burned so clear with the colour
of its far fixity. On one side they were massed in fleecy congeries, so
crowding each other that no edge or outline was preserved; on the other,
higher, stronger, emergent from their fellow-clouds, they seemed leading
the attack on that surviving gleam of the ineffable. Infinite was the
variety of those million separate vapours, infinite the unchanging unity
of that fixed blue star.
Down in the street beneath this eternal warring of the various
soft-winged clouds on the unmisted ether, men, women, children, and their
familiars--horses, dogs, and cats--were pursuing their occupations with
the sweet zest of the Spring. They streamed along, and the noise of
their frequenting rose in an unbroken roar: "I, I--I, I!"
The crowd was perhaps thickest outside the premises of Messrs. Rose and
Thorn. Every kind of being, from the highest to the lowest, passed in
front of the hundred doors of this establishment; and before the costume
window a rather tall, slight, graceful woman stood thinking: "It really
is gentian blue! But I don't know whether I ought to buy it, with all
this distress about!"
Her eyes, which were greenish-grey, and often ironical lest they should
reveal her soul, seemed probing a blue gown displayed in that window, to
the very heart of its desirability.
"And suppose Stephen doesn't like me in it!" This doubt set her gloved
fingers pleating the bosom of her frock. Into that little pleat she
folded the essence of herself, the wish to have and the fear of having,
the wish to be and the fear of being, and her veil, falling from the edge
of her hat, three inches from her face, shrouded with its tissue her
half-decided little features, her rather too high cheek-bones, her cheeks
which were slightly hollowed, as though Time had kissed them just too
much.
The old man, with a long face, eyes rimmed like a parrot's, and
discoloured nose, who, so long as he did not sit down, was permitted to
frequent the pavement just there and sell the 'Westminster Gazette',
marked her, and took his empty pipe out of his mouth.
It was his business to know all the passers-by, and his pleasure too; his
mind was thus distracted from the condition of his feet. He knew this
particular lady with the delicate face, and found her puzzling; she
sometimes bought the paper which Fate condemned him, against his
politics, to sell. The Tory journals were undoubtedly those which her
class of person ought to purchase. He knew a lady when he saw one. In
fact, before Life threw him into the streets, by giving him a disease in
curing which his savings had disappeared, he had been a butler, and for
the gentry had a respect as incurable as was his distrust of "all that
class of people" who bought their things at "these 'ere large
establishments," and attended "these 'ere subscription dances at the Town
'All over there." He watched her with special interest, not, indeed,
attempting to attract attention, though conscious in every fibre that he
had only sold five copies of his early issues. And he was sorry and
surprised when she passed from his sight through one of the hundred
doors.
The thought which spurred her into Messrs. Rose and Thorn's was this: "I
am thirty-eight; I have a daughter of seventeen. I cannot afford to lose
my husband's admiration. The time is on me when I really must make
myself look nice!"
Before a long mirror, in whose bright pool there yearly bathed hundreds
of women's bodies, divested of skirts and bodices, whose unruffled
surface reflected daily a dozen women's souls divested of everything, her
eyes became as bright as steel; but having ascertained the need of taking
two inches off the chest of the gentian frock, one off its waist, three
off its hips, and of adding one to its skirt, they clouded again with
doubt, as though prepared to fly from the decision she had come to.
Resuming her bodice, she asked:
"When could you let me have it?"
"At the end of the week, madam."
"Not till then?"
"We are very pressed, madam."
"Oh, but you must let me have it by Thursday at the latest, please."
The fitter sighed: "I will do my best."
"I shall rely on you. Mrs. Stephen Dallison, 76, The Old Square."
Going downstairs she thought: "That poor girl looked very tired; it's a
shame they give them such long hours!" and she passed into the street.
A voice said timidly behind her: "Westminister, marm?"
"That's the poor old creature," thought Cecilia Dallison, "whose nose is
so unpleasant. I don't really think I--" and she felt for a penny in her
little bag. Standing beside the "poor old creature" was a woman clothed
in worn but neat black clothes, and an ancient toque which had once known
a better head. The wan remains of a little bit of fur lay round her
throat. She had a thin face, not without refinement, mild, very clear
brown eyes, and a twist of smooth black hair. Beside her was a skimpy
little boy, and in her arms a baby. Mrs. Dallison held out two-pence for
the paper, but it was at the woman that she looked.
"Oh, Mrs. Hughs," she said, "we've been expecting you to hem the
curtains!"
The woman slightly pressed the baby.
"I am very sorry, ma'am. I knew I was expected, but I've had such
trouble."
Cecilia winced. "Oh, really?"
"Yes, m'm; it's my husband."
"Oh, dear!" Cecilia murmured. "But why didn't you come to us?"
"I didn't feel up to it, ma'am; I didn't really--"
A tear ran down her cheek, and was caught in a furrow near the mouth.
Mrs. Dallison said hurriedly: "Yes, yes; I'm very sorry."
"This old gentleman, Mr. Creed, lives in the same house with us, and he
is going to speak to my husband."
The old man wagged his head on its lean stalk of neck.
"He ought to know better than be'ave 'imself so disrespectable," he said.
Cecilia looked at him, and murmured: "I hope he won't turn on you!"
The old man shuffled his feet.
"I likes to live at peace with everybody. I shall have the police to 'im
if he misdemeans hisself with me!... Westminister, sir?" And, screening
his mouth from Mrs. Dallison, he added in a loud whisper: "Execution of
the Shoreditch murderer!"
Cecilia felt suddenly as though the world were listening to her
conversation with these two rather seedy persons.
"I don't really know what I can do for you, Mrs. Hughs. I'll speak to
Mr. Dallison, and to Mr. Hilary too."
"Yes, ma'am; thank you, ma'am."
With a smile which seemed to deprecate its own appearance, Cecilia
grasped her skirts and crossed the road. "I hope I wasn't
unsympathetic," she thought, looking back at the three figures on the
edge of the pavement--the old man with his papers, and his discoloured
nose thrust upwards under iron-rimmed spectacles; the seamstress in her
black dress; the skimpy little boy. Neither speaking nor moving, they
were looking out before them at the traffic; and something in Cecilia
revolted at this sight. It was lifeless, hopeless, unaesthetic.
"What can one do," she thought, "for women like Mrs. Hughs, who always
look like that? And that poor old man! I suppose I oughtn't to have
bought that dress, but Stephen is tired of this."
She turned out of the main street into a road preserved from commoner
forms of traffic, and stopped at a long low house half hidden behind the
trees of its front garden.
It was the residence of Hilary Dallison, her husband's brother, and
himself the husband of Bianca, her own sister.
The queer conceit came to Cecilia that it resembled Hilary. Its look was
kindly and uncertain; its colour a palish tan; the eyebrows of its
windows rather straight than arched, and those deep-set eyes, the
windows, twinkled hospitably; it had, as it were, a sparse moustache and
beard of creepers, and dark marks here and there, like the lines and
shadows on the faces of those who think too much. Beside it, and apart,
though connected by a passage, a studio stood, and about that studio--of
white rough-cast, with a black oak door, and peacock-blue paint--was
something a little hard and fugitive, well suited to Bianca, who used it,
indeed, to paint in. It seemed to stand, with its eyes on the house,
shrinking defiantly from too close company, as though it could not
entirely give itself to anything. Cecilia, who often worried over the
relations between her sister and her brother-in-law, suddenly felt how
fitting and symbolical this was.
But, mistrusting inspirations, which, experience told her, committed one
too much, she walked quickly up the stone-flagged pathway to the door.
Lying in the porch was a little moonlight-coloured lady bulldog, of toy
breed, who gazed up with eyes like agates, delicately waving her
bell-rope tail, as it was her habit to do towards everyone, for she had
been handed down clearer and paler with each generation, till she had at
last lost all the peculiar virtues of dogs that bait the bull.
Speaking the word "Miranda!" Mrs. Stephen Dallison tried to pat this
daughter of the house. The little bulldog withdrew from her caress,
being also unaccustomed to commit herself....
Mondays were Blanca's "days," and Cecilia made her way towards the
studio. It was a large high room, full of people.
Motionless, by himself, close to the door, stood an old man, very thin
and rather bent, with silvery hair, and a thin silvery beard grasped in
his transparent fingers. He was dressed in a suit of smoke-grey cottage
tweed, which smelt of peat, and an Oxford shirt, whose collar, ceasing
prematurely, exposed a lean brown neck; his trousers, too, ended very
soon, and showed light socks. In his attitude there was something
suggestive of the patience and determination of a mule. At Cecilia's
approach he raised his eyes. It was at once apparent why, in so full a
room, he was standing alone. Those blue eyes looked as if he were about
to utter a prophetic statement.
"They have been speaking to me of an execution," he said.
Cecilia made a nervous movement.
"Yes, Father?"
"To take life," went on the old man in a voice which, though charged with
strong emotion, seemed to be speaking to itself, "was the chief mark of
the insensate barbarism still prevailing in those days. It sprang from
that most irreligious fetish, the belief in the permanence of the
individual ego after death. From the worship of that fetish had come all
the sorrows of the human race."
Cecilia, with an involuntary quiver of her little bag, said:
"Father, how can you?"
"They did not stop to love each other in this life; they were so sure
they had all eternity to do it in. The doctrine was an invention to
enable men to act like dogs with clear consciences. Love could never
come to full fruition till it was destroyed."
Cecilia looked hastily round; no one had heard. She moved a little
sideways, and became merged in another group. Her father's lips
continued moving. He had resumed the patient attitude which so slightly
suggested mules. A voice behind her said: "I do think your father is
such an interesting man, Mrs. Dallison."
Cecilia turned and saw a woman of middle height, with her hair done in
the early Italian fashion, and very small, dark, lively eyes, which
looked as though her love of living would keep her busy each minute of
her day and all the minutes that she could occupy of everybody else's
days.
"Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace? Oh! how do you do? I've been meaning to come
and see you for quite a long time, but I know you're always so busy."
With doubting eyes, half friendly and half defensive, as though chaffing
to prevent herself from being chaffed, Cecilia looked at Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace, whom she had met several times at Bianca's house. The widow
of a somewhat famous connoisseur, she was now secretary of the League for
Educating Orphans who have Lost both Parents, vice-president of the
Forlorn Hope for Maids in Peril, and treasurer to Thursday Hops for
Working Girls. She seemed to know every man and woman who was worth
knowing, and some besides; to see all picture-shows; to hear every new
musician; and attend the opening performance of every play. With regard
to literature, she would say that authors bored her; but she was always
doing them good turns, inviting them to meet their critics or editors,
and sometimes--though this was not generally known--pulling them out of
the holes they were prone to get into, by lending them a sum of
money--after which, as she would plaintively remark; she rarely saw them
more.
She had a peculiar spiritual significance to Mrs. Stephen Dallison, being
just on the borderline between those of Bianca's friends whom Cecilia did
not wish and those whom she did wish to come to her own house, for
Stephen, a barrister in an official position, had a keen sense of the
ridiculous. Since Hilary wrote books and was a poet, and Bianca painted,
their friends would naturally be either interesting or queer; and though
for Stephen's sake it was important to establish which was which, they
were so very often both. Such people stimulated, taken in small doses,
but neither on her husband's account nor on her daughter's did Cecilia
desire that they should come to her in swarms. Her attitude of mind
towards them was, in fact, similar-a sort of pleasurable dread-to that in
which she purchased the Westminster Gazette to feel the pulse of social
progress.
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's dark little eyes twinkled.
"I hear that Mr. Stone--that is your father's name, I think--is writing a
book which will create quite a sensation when it comes out."
Cecilia bit her lips. "I hope it never will come out," she was on the
point of saying.
"What will it be called?" asked Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace. "I gather
that it's a book of Universal Brotherhood. That's so nice!"
Cecilia made a movement of annoyance. "Who told you?"
"Ah!" said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, "I do think your sister gets such
attractive people at her At Homes. They all take such interest in
things."
A little surprised at herself, Cecilia answered "Too much for me!"
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace smiled. "I mean in art and social questions.
Surely one can't be too interested in them?"
Cecilia said rather hastily:
"Oh no, of course not." And both ladies looked around them. A buzz of
conversation fell on Cecilia's ears.
"Have you seen the 'Aftermath'? It's really quite wonderful!"
"Poor old chap! he's so rococo...."
"There's a new man.
"She's very sympathetic.
"But the condition of the poor....
"Is that Mr. Balladyce? Oh, really.
"It gives you such a feeling of life.
"Bourgeois!..."
The voice of Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace broke through: "But do please tell
me who is that young girl with the young man looking at the picture over
there. She's quite charming!"
Cecilia's cheeks went a very pretty pink.
"Oh, that's my little daughter."
"Really! Have you a daughter as big as that? Why, she must be
seventeen!"
"Nearly eighteen!"
"What is her name?"
"Thyme," said Cecilia, with a little smile. She felt that Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace was about to say: 'How charming!'
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace saw her smile and paused. "Who is the young man
with her?"
"My nephew, Martin Stone."
"The son of your brother who was killed with his wife in that dreadful
Alpine accident? He looks a very decided sort of young man. He's got
that new look. What is he?"
"He's very nearly a doctor. I never know whether he's quite finished or
not."
"I thought perhaps he might have something to do with Art."
"Oh no, he despises Art."
"And does your daughter despise it, too?"
"No; she's studying it."
"Oh, really! How interesting! I do think the rising generation amusing,
don't you? They're so independent."
Cecilia looked uneasily at the rising generation. They were standing
side by side before the picture, curiously observant and detached,
exchanging short remarks and glances. They seemed to watch all these
circling, chatting, bending, smiling people with a sort of youthful,
matter-of-fact, half-hostile curiosity. The young man had a pale face,
clean-shaven, with a strong jaw, a long, straight nose, a rather bumpy
forehead which did not recede, and clear grey eyes. His sarcastic lips
were firm and quick, and he looked at people with disconcerting
straightness. The young girl wore a blue-green frock. Her face was
charming, with eager, hazel-grey eyes, a bright colour, and fluffy hair
the colour of ripe nuts.
"That's your sister's picture, 'The Shadow,' they're looking at, isn't
it?" asked Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace. "I remember seeing it on Christmas
Day, and the little model who was sitting for it--an attractive type!
Your brother-in-law told me how interested you all were in her. Quite a
romantic story, wasn't it, about her fainting from want of food when she
first came to sit?"
Cecilia murmured something. Her hands were moving nervously; she looked
ill at ease.
These signs passed unperceived by Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whose eyes
were busy.
"In the F.H.M.P., of course, I see a lot of young girls placed in
delicate positions, just on the borders, don't you know? You should
really join the F.H.M.P., Mrs. Dallison. It's a first-rate thing--most
absorbing work."
The doubting deepened in Cecilia's eyes.
"Oh, it must be!" she said. "I've so little time."
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace went on at once.
"Don't you think that we live in the most interesting days? There are
such a lot of movements going on. It's quite exciting. We all feel that
we can't shut our eyes any longer to social questions. I mean the
condition of the people alone is enough to give one nightmare!"
"Yes, yes," said Cecilia; "it is dreadful, of course.
"Politicians and officials are so hopeless, one can't look for anything
from them."
Cecilia drew herself up. "Oh, do you think so?" she said.
"I was just talking to Mr. Balladyce. He says that Art and Literature
must be put on a new basis altogether."
"Yes," said Cecilia; "really? Is he that funny little man?"
"I think he's so monstrously clever."
Cecilia answered quickly: "I know--I know. Of course, something must be
done."
"Yes," said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace absently, "I think we all feel that.
Oh, do tell me! I've been talking to such a delightful person--just the
type you see when you go into the City--thousands of them, all in such
good black coats. It's so unusual to really meet one nowadays; and
they're so refreshing, they have such nice simple views. There he is,
standing just behind your sister."
Cecilia by a nervous gesture indicated that she recognized the
personality alluded to. "Oh, yes," she said; "Mr. Purcey. I don't know
why he comes to see us."
"I think he's so delicious!" said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace dreamily. Her
little dark eyes, like bees, had flown to sip honey from the flower in
question--a man of broad build and medium height, dressed. with accuracy,
who seemed just a little out of his proper bed. His mustachioed mouth
wore a set smile; his cheerful face was rather red, with a forehead of no
extravagant height or breadth, and a conspicuous jaw; his hair was thick
and light in colour, and his eyes were small, grey, and shrewd. He was
looking at a picture.
"He's so delightfully unconscious," murmured Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace.
"He didn't even seem to know that there was a problem of the lower
classes."
"Did he tell you that he had a picture?" asked Cecilia gloomily.
"Oh yes, by Harpignies, with the accent on the 'pig.' It's worth three
times what he gave for it. It's so nice to be made to feel that there is
still all that mass of people just simply measuring everything by what
they gave for it."
"And did he tell you my grandfather Carfax's dictum in the Banstock
case?" muttered Cecilia.
"Oh yes: 'The man who does not know his own mind should be made an
Irishman by Act of Parliament.' He said it was so awfully good."
"He would," replied Cecilia.
"He seems to depress you, rather!"
"Oh no; I believe he's quite a nice sort of person. One can't be rude to
him; he really did what he thought a very kind thing to my father.
That's how we came to know him. Only it's rather trying when he will
come to call regularly. He gets a little on one's nerves."
"Ah, that's just what I feel is so jolly about him; no one would ever get
on his nerves. I do think we've got too many nerves, don't you? Here's
your brother-in-law. He's such an uncommon-looking man; I want to have a
talk with him about that little model. A country girl, wasn't she?"
She had turned her head towards a tall man with a very slight stoop and a
brown, thin, bearded face, who was approaching from the door. She did not
see that Cecilia had flushed, and was looking at her almost angrily. The
tall thin man put his hand on Cecilia's arm, saying gently: "Hallo Cis!
Stephen here yet?"
Cecilia shook her head.
"You know Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, Hilary?"
The tall man bowed. His hazel-coloured eyes were shy, gentle, and
deep-set; his eyebrows, hardly ever still, gave him a look of austere
whimsicality. His dark brown hair was very lightly touched with grey,
and a frequent kindly smile played on his lips. His unmannerismed manner
was quiet to the point of extinction. He had long, thin, brown hands,
and nothing peculiar about his dress.
"I'll leave you to talk to Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace," Cecilia said.
A knot of people round Mr. Balladyce prevented her from moving far,
however, and the voice of Mrs. Smallpeace travelled to her ears.
"I was talking about that little model. It was so good of you to take
such interest in the girl. I wondered whether we could do anything for
her."
Cecilia's hearing was too excellent to miss the tone of Hilary's reply:
"Oh, thank you; I don't think so."
"I fancied perhaps you might feel that our Society---hers is an
unsatisfactory profession for young girls!"
Cecilia saw the back of Hilary's neck grow red. She turned her head
away.
"Of course, there are many very nice models indeed," said the voice of
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace. "I don't mean that they are necessarily at
all--if they're girls of strong character; and especially if they don't
sit for the--the altogether."
Hilary's dry, staccato answer came to Cecilia's ears: "Thank you; it's
very kind of you."
"Oh, of course, if it's not necessary. Your wife's picture was so
clever, Mr. Dallison--such an interesting type."
Without intention Cecilia found herself before that picture. It stood
with its face a little turned towards the wall, as though somewhat in
disgrace, portraying the full-length figure of a girl standing in deep
shadow, with her arms half outstretched, as if asking for something. Her
eyes were fixed on Cecilia, and through her parted lips breath almost
seemed to come. The only colour in the picture was the pale blue of
those eyes, the pallid red of those parted lips, the still paler brown of
the hair; the rest was shadow. In the foreground light was falling as
though from a street-lamp.
Cecilia thought: "That girl's eyes and mouth haunt me. Whatever made
Blanca choose such a subject? It is clever, of course--for her."
CHAPTER II
A FAMILY DISCUSSION
The marriage of Sylvanus Stone, Professor of the Natural Sciences, to
Anne, daughter of Mr. Justice Carfax, of the well-known county
family--the Carfaxes of Spring Deans, Hants--was recorded in the sixties.
The baptisms of Martin, Cecilia, and Bianca, son and daughters of
Sylvanus and Anne Stone, were to be discovered registered in Kensington
in the three consecutive years following, as though some single-minded
person had been connected with their births. After this the baptisms of
no more offspring were to be found anywhere, as if that single mind had
encountered opposition. But in the eighties there was noted in the
register of the same church the burial of "Anne, nee Carfax, wife of
Sylvanus Stone." In that "nee Carfax" there was, to those who knew,
something more than met the eye. It summed up the mother of Cecilia and
Bianca, and, in more subtle fashion, Cecilia and Bianca, too. It summed
up that fugitive, barricading look in their bright eyes, which, though
spoken of in the family as "the Carfax eyes," were in reality far from
coming from old Mr. Justice Carfax. They had been his wife's in turn,
and had much annoyed a man of his decided character. He himself had
always known his mind, and had let others know it, too; reminding his
wife that she was an impracticable woman, who knew not her own mind; and
devoting his lawful gains to securing the future of his progeny. It
would have disturbed him if he had lived to see his grand-daughters and
their times. Like so many able men of his generation, far-seeing enough
in practical affairs, he had never considered the possibility that the
descendants of those who, like himself, had laid up treasure for their
children's children might acquire the quality of taking time, balancing
pros and cons, looking ahead, and not putting one foot down before
picking the other up. He had not foreseen, in deed, that to wobble might
become an art, in order that, before anything was done, people might know
the full necessity for doing some thing, and how impossible it would be
to do indeed, foolish to attempt to do--that which would fully meet the
case. He, who had been a man of action all his life, had not perceived
how it would grow to be matter of common instinct that to act was to
commit oneself, and that, while what one had was not precisely what one
wanted, what one had not (if one had it) would be as bad. He had never
been self-conscious--it was not the custom of his generation--and, having
but little imagination, had never suspected that he was laying up that
quality for his descendants, together with a competence which secured
them a comfortable leisure.
Of all the persons in his grand-daughter's studio that afternoon, that
stray sheep Mr. Purcey would have been, perhaps, the only one whose
judgments he would have considered sound. No one had laid up a
competence for Mr. Purcey, who had been in business from the age of
twenty.
It is uncertain whether the mere fact that he was not in his own fold
kept this visitor lingering in the studio when all other guests were
gone; or whether it was simply the feeling that the longer he stayed in
contact with really artistic people the more distinguished he was
becoming. Probably the latter, for the possession of that Harpignies, a
good specimen, which he had bought by accident, and subsequently by
accident discovered to have a peculiar value, had become a factor in his
life, marking him out from all his friends, who went in more for a neat
type of Royal Academy landscape, together with reproductions of young
ladies in eighteenth-century costumes seated on horseback, or in Scotch
gardens. A junior partner in a banking-house of some importance, he
lived at Wimbledon, whence he passed up and down daily in his car. To
this he owed his acquaintance with the family of Dallison. For one day,
after telling his chauffeur to meet him at the Albert Gate, he had set
out to stroll down Rotten Row, as he often did on the way home, designing
to nod to anybody that he knew. It had turned out a somewhat barren
expedition. No one of any consequence had met his eye; and it was with a
certain almost fretful longing for distraction that in Kensington Gardens
he came on an old man feeding birds out of a paper bag. The birds having
flown away on seeing him, he approached the feeder to apologize.
"I'm afraid I frightened your birds, sir," he began.
This old man, who was dressed in smoke-grey tweeds which exhaled a
poignant scent of peat, looked at him without answering.
"I'm afraid your birds saw me coming," Mr. Purcey said again.
"In those days," said the aged stranger, "birds were afraid of men."
Mr. Purcey's shrewd grey eyes perceived at once that he had a character
to deal with.
"Ah, yes!" he said; "I see--you allude to the present time. That's very
nice. Ha, ha!"
The old man answered: "The emotion of fear is inseparably connected with
a primitive state of fratricidal rivalry."
This sentence put Mr. Purcey on his guard.
'The old chap,' he thought, 'is touched. He evidently oughtn't to be out
here by himself.' He debated, therefore, whether he should hasten away
toward his car, or stand by in case his assistance should be needed.
Being a kind-hearted man, who believed in his capacity for putting things
to rights, and noticing a certain delicacy--a "sort of something rather
distinguished," as he phrased it afterwards--in the old fellow's face and
figure, he decided to see if he could be of any service. They walked
along together, Mr. Purcey watching his new friend askance, and directing
the march to where he had ordered his chauffeur to await him.
"You are very fond of birds, I suppose," he said cautiously.
"The birds are our brothers."
The answer was of a nature to determine Mr. Purcey in his diagnosis of
the case.
"I've got my car here," he said. "Let me give you a lift home."
This new but aged acquaintance did not seem to hear; his lips moved as
though he were following out some thought.
"In those days," Mr. Purcey heard him say, "the congeries of men were
known as rookeries. The expression was hardly just towards that handsome
bird."
Mr. Purcey touched him hastily on the arm.
"I've got my car here, sir," he said. "Do let me put you down!"
Telling the story afterwards, he had spoken thus:
"The old chap knew where he lived right enough; but dash me if I believe
he noticed that I was taking him there in my car--I had the A.i. Damyer
out. That's how I came to make the acquaintance of these Dallisons.
He's the writer, you know, and she paints--rather the new school--she
admires Harpignies. Well, when I got there in the car I found Dallison
in the garden. Of course I was careful not to put my foot into it. I
told him: 'I found this old gentleman wandering about. I've just brought
him back in my car.' Who should the old chap turn out to be but her
father! They were awfully obliged to me. Charmin' people, but very what
d'you call it 'fin de siecle'--like all these professors, these artistic
pigs--seem to know rather a queer set, advanced people, and all that sort
of cuckoo, always talkin' about the poor, and societies, and new
religions, and that kind of thing."
Though he had since been to see them several times, the Dallisons had
never robbed him of the virtuous feeling of that good action--they had
never let him know that he had brought home, not, as he imagined, a
lunatic, but merely a philosopher.
It had been somewhat of a quiet shock to him to find Mr. Stone close to
the doorway when he entered Bianca's studio that afternoon; for though he
had seen him since the encounter in Kensington Gardens, and knew that he
was writing a book, he still felt that he was not quite the sort of old
man that one ought to meet about. He had at once begun to tell him of
the hanging of the Shoreditch murderer, as recorded in the evening
papers. Mr. Stone's reception of that news had still further confirmed
his original views. When all the guests were gone--with the exception of
Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Dallison and Miss Dallison, "that awfully pretty
girl," and the young man "who was always hangin' about her"--he had
approached his hostess for some quiet talk. She stood listening to him,
very well bred, with just that habitual spice of mockery in her smile,
which to Mr. Purcey's eyes made her "a very strikin'-lookin' woman, but
rather---" There he would stop, for it required a greater psychologist
than he to describe a secret disharmony which a little marred her beauty.
Due to some too violent cross of blood, to an environment too unsuited,
to what not--it was branded on her. Those who knew Bianca Dallison
better than Mr. Purcey were but too well aware of this fugitive, proud
spirit permeating one whose beauty would otherwise have passed
unquestioned.
She was a little taller than Cecilia, her figure rather fuller and more
graceful, her hair darker, her eyes, too, darker and more deeply set, her
cheek-bones higher, her colouring richer. That spirit of the age,
Disharmony, must have presided when a child so vivid and dark-coloured
was christened Bianca.
Mr. Purcey, however, was not a man who allowed the finest shades of
feeling to interfere with his enjoyments. She was a "strikin'-lookin'
woman," and there was, thanks to Harpignies, a link between them.
"Your father and I, Mrs. Dallison, can't quite understand each other," he
began. "Our views of life don't seem to hit it off exactly."
"Really," murmured Bianca; "I should have thought that you'd have got on
so well."
"He's a little bit too--er--scriptural for me, perhaps," said Mr. Purcey,
with some delicacy.
"Did we never tell you," Bianca answered softly, "that my father was a
rather well--known man of science before his illness?"
"Ah!" replied Mr. Purcey, a little puzzled; "that, of course. D'you
know, of all your pictures, Mrs. Dallison, I think that one you call 'The
Shadow' is the most rippin'. There's a something about it that gets hold
of you. That was the original, wasn't it, at your Christmas
party--attractive girl--it's an awf'ly good likeness."
Bianca's face had changed, but Mr. Purcey was not a man to notice a
little thing like that.
"If ever you want to part with it," he said, "I hope you'll give me a
chance. I mean it'd be a pleasure to me to have it. I think it'll be
worth a lot of money some day."
Bianca did not answer, and Mr. Purcey, feeling suddenly a little awkward,
said: "I've got my car waiting. I must be off--really." Shaking hands
with all of them, he went away.
When the door had closed behind his back, a universal sigh went up. It
was followed by a silence, which Hilary broke.
"We'll smoke, Stevie, if Cis doesn't mind."
Stephen Dallison placed a cigarette between his moustacheless lips,
always rather screwed up, and ready to nip with a smile anything that
might make him feel ridiculous.
"Phew!" he said. "Our friend Purcey becomes a little tedious. He seems
to take the whole of Philistia about with him."
"He's a very decent fellow," murmured Hilary.
"A bit heavy, surely!" Stephen Dallison's face, though also long and
narrow, was not much like his brother's. His eyes, though not unkind,
were far more scrutinising, inquisitive, and practical; his hair darker,
smoother.
Letting a puff of smoke escape, he added:
"Now, that's the sort of man to give you a good sound opinion. You
should have asked him, Cis."
Cecilia answered with a frown:
"Don't chaff, Stephen; I'm perfectly serious about Mrs. Hughs."
"Well, I don't see what I can do for the good woman, my dear. One can't
interfere in these domestic matters."
"But it seems dreadful that we who employ her should be able to do
nothing for her. Don't you think so, B.?"
"I suppose we could do something for her if we wanted to badly enough."
Bianca's voice, which had the self-distrustful ring of modern music,
suited her personality.
A glance passed between Stephen and his wife.
"That's B. all over!" it seemed to say....
"Hound Street, where they live, is a horrid place."
It was Thyme who spoke, and everybody looked round at her.
"How do you know that?" asked Cecilia.
"I went to see."
"With whom?"
"Martin."
The lips of the young man whose name she mentioned curled sarcastically.
Hilary asked gently:
"Well, my dear, what did you see?"
"Most of the doors are open---"
Bianca murmured: "That doesn't tell us much."
"On the contrary," said Martin suddenly, in a deep bass voice, "it tells
you everything. Go on."
"The Hughs live on the top floor at No. 1. It's the best house in the
street. On the ground-floor are some people called Budgen; he's a
labourer, and she's lame. They've got one son. The Hughs have let off
the first-floor front-room to an old man named Creed---"
"Yes, I know," Cecilia muttered.
"He makes about one and tenpence a day by selling papers. The back-room
on that floor they let, of course, to your little model, Aunt B."
"She is not my model now."
There was a silence such as falls when no one knows how far the matter
mentioned is safe to, touch on. Thyme proceeded with her report.
"Her room's much the best in the house; it's airy, and it looks out over
someone's garden. I suppose she stays there because it's so cheap. The
Hughs' rooms are---" She stopped, wrinkling her straight nose.
"So that's the household," said Hilary. "Two married couples, one young
man, one young girl"--his eyes travelled from one to another of the two
married couples, the young man, and the young girl, collected in this
room--"and one old man," he added softly.
"Not quite the sort of place for you to go poking about in, Thyme,"
Stephen said ironically. "Do you think so, Martin?"
"Why not?"
Stephen raised his brows, and glanced towards his wife. Her face was
dubious, a little scared. There was a silence. Then Bianca spoke:
"Well?" That word, like nearly all her speeches, seemed rather to
disconcert her hearers.
"So Hughs ill-treats her?" said Hilary.
"She says so," replied Cecilia--"at least, that's what I understood. Of
course, I don't know any details."
"She had better get rid of him, I should think," Bianca murmured.
Out of the silence that followed Thyme's clear voice was heard saying:
"She can't get a divorce; she could get a separation."
Cecilia rose uneasily. These words concreted suddenly a wealth of
half-acknowledged doubts about her little daughter. This came of letting
her hear people talk, and go about with Martin! She might even have been
listening to her grandfather--such a thought was most disturbing. And,
afraid, on the one hand, of gainsaying the liberty of speech, and, on the
other, of seeming to approve her daughter's knowledge of the world, she
looked at her husband.
But Stephen did not speak, feeling, no doubt, that to pursue the subject
would be either to court an ethical, even an abstract, disquisition, and
this one did not do in anybody's presence, much less one's wife's or
daughter's; or to touch on sordid facts of doubtful character, which was
equally distasteful in the circumstances. He, too, however, was uneasy
that Thyme should know so much.
The dusk was gathering outside; the fire threw a flickering light,
fitfully outlining their figures, making those faces, so familiar to each
other, a little mysterious.
At last Stephen broke the silence. "Of course, I'm very sorry for her,
but you'd better let it alone--you can't tell with that sort of people;
you never can make out what they want--it's safer not to meddle. At all
events, it's a matter for a Society to look into first!"
Cecilia answered: "But she's, on my conscience, Stephen."
"They're all on my conscience," muttered Hilary.
Bianca looked at him for the first time; then, turning to her nephew,
said: "What do you say, Martin?"
The young man, whose face was stained by the firelight the colour of pale
cheese, made no answer.
But suddenly through the stillness came a voice:
"I have thought of something."
Everyone turned round. Mr. Stone was seen emerging from behind "The
Shadow"; his frail figure, in its grey tweeds, his silvery hair and
beard, were outlined sharply against the wall.
"Why, Father," Cecilia said, "we didn't know that you were here!"
Mr. Stone looked round bewildered; it seemed as if he, too, had been
ignorant of that fact.
"What is it that you've thought of?"
The firelight leaped suddenly on to Mr. Stone's thin yellow hand.
"Each of us," he said, "has a shadow in those places--in those streets."
There was a vague rustling, as of people not taking a remark too
seriously, and the sound of a closing door.
CHAPTER III
HILARY'S BROWN STUDY
"What do you really think, Uncle Hilary?"
Turning at his writing-table to look at the face of his young niece,
Hilary Dallison answered:
"My dear, we have had the same state of affairs since the beginning of
the world. There is no chemical process; so far as my knowledge goes,
that does not make waste products. What your grandfather calls our
'shadows' are the waste products of the social process. That there is a
submerged tenth is as certain as that there is an emerged fiftieth like
ourselves; exactly who they are and how they come, whether they can ever
be improved away, is, I think, as uncertain as anything can be."
The figure of the girl seated in the big armchair did not stir. Her lips
pouted contemptuously, a frown wrinkled her forehead.
"Martin says that a thing is only impossible when we think it so."
"Faith and the mountain, I'm afraid."
Thyme's foot shot forth; it nearly came into contact with Miranda, the
little bulldog.
"Oh, duckie!"
But the little moonlight bulldog backed away.
"I hate these slums, uncle; they're so disgusting!"
Hilary leaned his face on his thin hand; it was his characteristic
attitude.
"They are hateful, disgusting, and heartrending. That does not make the
problem any the less difficult, does it?"
"I believe we simply make the difficulties ourselves by seeing them."
Hilary smiled. "Does Martin say that too?"
"Of course he does."
"Speaking broadly," murmured Hilary, "I see only one difficulty--human
nature."
Thyme rose. "I think it horrible to have a low opinion of human nature."
"My dear," said Hilary, "don't you think perhaps that people who have
what is called a low opinion of human nature are really more tolerant of
it, more in love with it, in fact, than those who, looking to what human
nature might be, are bound to hate what human nature is."
The look which Thyme directed at her uncle's amiable, attractive face,
with its pointed beard, high forehead, and special little smile, seemed
to alarm Hilary.
"I don't want you to have an unnecessarily low opinion of me, my dear.
I'm not one of those people who tell you that everything's all right
because the rich have their troubles as well as the poor. A certain
modicum of decency and comfort is obviously necessary to man before we
can begin to do anything but pity him; but that doesn't make it any
easier to know how you're going to insure him that modicum of decency and
comfort, does it?"
"We've got to do it," said Thyme; "it won't wait any longer."
"My dear," said Hilary, "think of Mr. Purcey! What proportion of the
upper classes do you imagine is even conscious of that necessity? We, who
have got what I call the social conscience, rise from the platform of Mr.
Purcey; we're just a gang of a few thousands to Mr. Purcey's tens of
thousands, and how many even of us are prepared, or, for the matter of
that, fitted, to act on our consciousness? In spite of your
grandfather's ideas, I'm afraid we're all too much divided into classes;
man acts, and always has acted, in classes."
"Oh--classes!" answered Thyme--"that's the old superstition, uncle."
"Is it? I thought one's class, perhaps, was only oneself
exaggerated--not to be shaken off. For instance, what are you and I,
with our particular prejudices, going to do?"
Thyme gave him the cruel look of youth, which seemed to say: 'You are my
very good uncle, and a dear; but you are more than twice my age. That, I
think, is conclusive!'
"Has something been settled about Mrs. Hughs?" she asked abruptly.
"What does your father say this morning?"
Thyme picked up her portfolio of drawings, and moved towards the door.
"Father's hopeless. He hasn't an idea beyond referring her to the
S.P.B."
She was gone; and Hilary, with a sigh, took his pen up, but he wrote
nothing down ....
Hilary and Stephen Dallison were grandsons of that Canon Dallison, well
known as friend, and sometime adviser, of a certain Victorian novelist.
The Canon, who came of an old Oxfordshire family, which for three hundred
years at least had served the Church or State, was himself the author of
two volumes of "Socratic Dialogues." He had bequeathed to his son--a
permanent official in the Foreign Office--if not his literary talent, the
tradition at all events of culture. This tradition had in turn been
handed on to Hilary and Stephen.
Educated at a public school and Cambridge, blessed with competent, though
not large, independent incomes, and brought up never to allude to money
if it could possibly be helped, the two young men had been turned out of
the mint with something of the same outward stamp on them. Both were
kindly, both fond of open-air pursuits, and neither of them lazy. Both,
too, were very civilised, with that bone-deep decency, that dislike of
violence, nowhere so prevalent as in the upper classes of a country whose
settled institutions are as old as its roads, or the walls which insulate
its parks. But as time went on, the one great quality which heredity and
education, environment and means, had bred in both of
them--self-consciousness--acted in these two brothers very differently.
To Stephen it was preservative, keeping him, as it were, in ice
throughout hot-weather seasons, enabling him to know exactly when he was
in danger of decomposition, so that he might nip the process in the bud;
it was with him a healthy, perhaps slightly chemical, ingredient, binding
his component parts, causing them to work together safely, homogeneously.
In Hilary the effect seemed to have been otherwise; like some slow and
subtle poison, this great quality, self-consciousness, had soaked his
system through and through; permeated every cranny of his spirit, so that
to think a definite thought, or do a definite deed, was obviously
becoming difficult to him. It took in the main the form of a sort of
gentle desiccating humour.
"It's a remarkable thing," he had one day said to Stephen, "that by the
process of assimilating little bits of chopped-up cattle one should be
able to form the speculation of how remarkable a thing it is."
Stephen had paused a second before answering--they were lunching off
roast beef in the Law Courts--he had then said:
"You're surely not going to eschew the higher mammals, like our respected
father-in-law?"
"On the contrary," said Hilary, "to chew them; but it is remarkable, for
all that; you missed my point."
It was clear that a man who could see anything remarkable in such a thing
was far gone, and Stephen had murmured:
"My dear old chap, you're getting too introspective."
Hilary, having given his brother the special retiring smile, which seemed
not only to say; "Don't let me bore you," but also, "Well, perhaps you
had better wait outside," the conversation closed.
That smile of Hilary's, which jibbed away from things, though
disconcerting and apt to put an end to intercourse, was natural enough.
A sensitive man, who had passed his life amongst cultivated people in the
making of books, guarded from real wants by modest, not vulgar,
affluence, had not reached the age of forty-two without finding his
delicacy sharpened to the point of fastidiousness. Even his dog could
see the sort of man he was. She knew that he would take no liberties,
either with her ears or with her tail. She knew that he would never hold
her mouth ajar, and watch her teeth, as some men do; that when she was
lying on her back he would gently rub her chest without giving her the
feeling that she was doing wrong, as women will; and if she sat, as she
was sitting now, with her eyes fixed on his study fire, he would never,
she knew, even from afar, prevent her thinking of the nothing she loved
to think on.
In his study, which smelt of a particular mild tobacco warranted to suit
the nerves of any literary man, there was a bust of Socrates, which
always seemed to have a strange attraction for its owner. He had once
described to a fellow-writer the impression produced on him by that
plaster face, so capaciously ugly, as though comprehending the whole of
human life, sharing all man's gluttony and lust, his violence and
rapacity, but sharing also his strivings toward love and reason and
serenity.
"He's telling us," said Hilary, "to drink deep, to dive down and live
with mermaids, to lie out on the hills under the sun, to sweat with
helots, to know all things and all men. No seat, he says, among the
Wise, unless we've been through it all before we climb! That's how he
strikes me--not too cheering for people of our sort!"
Under the shadow of this bust Hilary rested his forehead on his hand. In
front of him were three open books and a pile of manuscript, and pushed
to one side a little sheaf of pieces of green-white paper, press-cuttings
of his latest book.
The exact position occupied by his work in the life of such a man is not
too easy to define. He earned an income by it, but he was not dependent
on that income. As poet, critic, writer of essays, he had made himself a
certain name--not a great name, but enough to swear by. Whether his
fastidiousness could have stood the conditions of literary existence
without private means was now and then debated by his friends; it could
probably have done so better than was supposed, for he sometimes startled
those who set him down as a dilettante by a horny way of retiring into
his shell for the finish of a piece of work.
Try as he would that morning to keep his thoughts concentrated on his
literary labour, they wandered to his conversation with his niece and to
the discussion on Mrs. Hughs; the family seamstress, in his wife's studio
the day before. Stephen had lingered behind Cecilia and Thyme when they
went away after dinner, to deliver a last counsel to his brother at the
garden gate.
"Never meddle between man and wife--you know what the lower classes are!"
And across the dark garden he had looked back towards the house. One
room on the ground-floor alone was lighted. Through its open window the
head and shoulders of Mr. Stone could be seen close to a small green
reading-lamp. Stephen shook his head, murmuring:
"But, I say, our old friend, eh? 'In those places--in those streets!'
It's worse than simple crankiness--the poor old chap is getting
almost---"
And, touching his forehead lightly with two fingers, he had hurried off
with the ever-springy step of one whose regularity habitually controls
his imagination.
Pausing a minute amongst the bushes, Hilary too had looked at the lighted
window which broke the dark front of his house, and his little moonlight
bulldog, peering round his legs, had gazed up also. Mr. Stone was still
standing, pen in hand, presumably deep in thought. His silvered head and
beard moved slightly to the efforts of his brain. He came over to the
window, and, evidently not seeing his son-in-law, faced out into the
night.
In that darkness were all the shapes and lights and shadows of a London
night in spring: the trees in dark bloom; the wan yellow of the
gas-lamps, pale emblems of the self-consciousness of towns; the clustered
shades of the tiny leaves, spilled, purple, on the surface of the road,
like bunches of black grapes squeezed down into the earth by the feet of
the passers-by. There, too, were shapes of men and women hurrying home,
and the great blocked shapes of the houses where they lived. A halo
hovered above the City--a high haze of yellow light, dimming the stars.
The black, slow figure of a policeman moved noiselessly along the
railings opposite.
From then till eleven o'clock, when he would make himself some cocoa on a
little spirit-lamp, the writer of the "Book of Universal Brotherhood"
would alternate between his bent posture above his manuscript and his
blank consideration of the night....
With a jerk, Hilary came back to his reflections beneath the bust of
Socrates.
"Each of us has a shadow in those places--in those streets!"
There certainly was a virus in that notion. One must either take it as a
jest, like Stephen; or, what must one do? How far was it one's business
to identify oneself with other people, especially the helpless--how far
to preserve oneself intact--'integer vita'? Hilary was no young person,
like his niece or Martin, to whom everything seemed simple; nor was he an
old person like their grandfather, for whom life had lost its
complications.
And, very conscious of his natural disabilities for a decision on a like,
or indeed on any, subject except, perhaps, a point of literary technique,
he got up from his writing-table, and, taking his little bulldog, went
out. His intention was to visit Mrs. Hughs in Hound Street, and see with
his own eyes the state of things. But he had another reason, too, for
wishing to go there ....
CHAPTER IV
THE LITTLE MODEL
When in the preceding autumn Bianca began her picture called "The
Shadow," nobody was more surprised than Hilary that she asked him to find
her a model for the figure. Not knowing the nature of the picture, nor
having been for many years--perhaps never--admitted into the workings of
his wife's spirit, he said:
"Why don't you ask Thyme to sit for you?"
Blanca answered: "She's not the type at all--too matter-of-fact. Besides,
I don't want a lady; the figure's to be half draped."
Hilary smiled.
Blanca knew quite well that he was smiling at this distinction between
ladies and other women, and understood that he was smiling, not so much
at her, but at himself, for secretly agreeing with the distinction she
had made.
And suddenly she smiled too.
There was the whole history of their married life in those two smiles.
They meant so much: so many thousand hours of suppressed irritation, so
many baffled longings and earnest efforts to bring their natures
together. They were the supreme, quiet evidence of the divergence of two
lives--that slow divergence which had been far from being wilful, and was
the more hopeless in that it had been so gradual and so gentle. They had
never really had a quarrel, having enlightened views of marriage; but
they had smiled. They had smiled so often through so many years that no
two people in the world could very well be further from each other.
Their smiles had banned the revelation even to themselves of the tragedy
of their wedded state. It is certain that neither could help those
smiles, which were not intended to wound, but came on their faces as
naturally as moonlight falls on water, out of their inimically
constituted souls.
Hilary spent two afternoons among his artist friends, trying, by means of
the indications he had gathered, to find a model for "The Shadow." He
had found one at last. Her name, Barton, and address had been given him
by a painter of still life, called French.
"She's never sat to me," he said; "my sister discovered her in the West
Country somewhere. She's got a story of some sort. I don't know what.
She came up about three months ago, I think."
"She's not sitting to your sister now?" Hilary asked.
"No," said the painter of still life; "my sister's married and gone out
to India. I don't know whether she'd sit for the half-draped, but I
should think so. She'll have to, sooner or later; she may as well begin,
especially to a woman. There's a something about her that's
attractive--you might try her!" And with these words he resumed the
painting of still life which he had broken off to talk to Hilary.
Hilary had written to this girl to come and see him. She had come just
before dinner the same day.
He found her standing in the middle of his study, not daring, as it
seemed, to go near the furniture, and as there was very little light, he
could hardly see her face. She was resting a foot, very patient, very
still, in an old brown skirt, an ill-shaped blouse, and a blue-green
tam-o'-shanter cap. Hilary turned up the light. He saw a round little
face with broad cheekbones, flower-blue eyes, short lamp-black lashes,
and slightly parted lips. It was difficult to judge of her figure in
those old clothes, but she was neither short nor tall; her neck was white
and well set on, her hair pale brown and abundant. Hilary noted that her
chin, though not receding, was too soft and small; but what he noted
chiefly was her look of patient expectancy, as though beyond the present
she were seeing something, not necessarily pleasant, which had to come.
If he had not known from the painter of still life that she was from the
country, he would have thought her a town-bred girl, she looked so pale.
Her appearance, at all events, was not "too matter-of-fact." Her speech,
however, with its slight West-Country burr, was matter-of-fact enough,
concerned entirely with how long she would have to sit, and the pay she
was to get for it. In the middle of their conversation she sank down on
the floor, and Hilary was driven to restore her with biscuits and
liqueur, which in his haste he took for brandy. It seemed she had not
eaten since her breakfast the day before, which had consisted of a cup of
tea. In answer to his remonstrance, she made this matter-of-fact remark:
"If you haven't money, you can't buy things.... There's no one I can ask
up here; I'm a stranger."
"Then you haven't been getting work?"
"No," the little model answered sullenly; "I don't want to sit as most of
them want me to till I'm obliged." The blood rushed up in her face with
startling vividness, then left it white again.
'Ah!' thought Hilary, 'she has had experience already.'
Both he and his wife were accessible to cases of distress, but the nature
of their charity was different. Hilary was constitutionally unable to
refuse his aid to anything that held out a hand for it. Bianca (whose
sociology was sounder), while affirming that charity was wrong, since in
a properly constituted State no one should need help, referred her cases,
like Stephen, to the "Society for the Prevention of Begging," which took
much time and many pains to ascertain the worst.
But in this case what was of importance was that the poor girl should
have a meal, and after that to find out if she were living in a decent
house; and since she appeared not to be, to recommend her somewhere
better. And as in charity it is always well to kill two birds with one
expenditure of force, it was found that Mrs. Hughs, the seamstress, had a
single room to let unfurnished, and would be more than glad of four
shillings, or even three and six, a week for it. Furniture was also
found for her: a bed that creaked, a washstand, table, and chest of
drawers; a carpet, two chairs, and certain things to cook with; some of
those old photographs and prints that hide in cupboards, and a peculiar
little clock, which frequently forgot the time of day. All these and
some elementary articles of dress were sent round in a little van, with
three ferns whose time had nearly come, and a piece of the plant called
"honesty." Soon after this she came to "sit." She was a very quiet and
passive little model, and was not required to pose half-draped, Bianca
having decided that, after all, "The Shadow" was better represented fully
clothed; for, though she discussed the nude, and looked on it with
freedom, when it came to painting unclothed people, she felt a sort of
physical aversion.
Hilary, who was curious, as a man naturally would be, about anyone who
had fainted from hunger at his feet, came every now and then to see, and
would sit watching this little half-starved girl with kindly and
screwed-up eyes. About his personality there was all the evidence of
that saying current among those who knew him: "Hilary would walk a mile
sooner than tread on an ant." The little model, from the moment when he
poured liqueur between her teeth, seemed to feel he had a claim on her,
for she reserved her small, matter-of-fact confessions for his ears. She
made them in the garden, coming in or going out; or outside, and, now and
then, inside his study, like a child who comes and shows you a sore
finger. Thus, quite suddenly:
"I've four shillings left over this week, Mr. Dallison," or, "Old Mr.
Creed's gone to the hospital to-day, Mr. Dallison."
Her face soon became less bloodless than on that first evening, but it
was still pale, inclined to colour in wrong places on cold days, with
little blue veins about the temples and shadows under the eyes. The lips
were still always a trifle parted, and she still seemed to be looking out
for what was coming, like a little Madonna, or Venus, in a Botticelli
picture. This look of hers, coupled with the matter-of-factness of her
speech, gave its flavour to her personality....
On Christmas Day the picture was on view to Mr. Purcey, who had chanced
to "give his car a run," and to other connoisseurs. Bianca had invited
her model to be present at this function, intending to get her work.
But, slipping at once into a corner, the girl had stood as far as
possible behind a canvas. People, seeing her standing there, and noting
her likeness to the picture, looked at her with curiosity, and passed on,
murmuring that she was an interesting type. They did not talk to her,
either because they were afraid she could not talk of the things they
could talk of, or that they could not talk of the things she could talk
of, or because they were anxious not to seem to patronize her. She
talked to one, therefore. This occasioned Hilary some distress. He kept
coming up and smiling at her, or making tentative remarks or jests, to
which she would reply, "Yes, Mr. Dallison," or "No, Mr. Dallison," as the
case might be.
Seeing him return from one of these little visits, an Art Critic standing
before the picture had smiled, and his round, clean-shaven, sensual face
had assumed a greenish tint in eyes and cheeks, as of the fat in turtle
soup.
The only two other people who had noticed her particularly were those old
acquaintances, Mr. Purcey and Mr. Stone. Mr. Purcey had thought, 'Rather
a good-lookin' girl,' and his eyes strayed somewhat continually in her
direction. There was something piquant and, as it were, unlawfully
enticing to him in the fact that she was a real artist's model.
Mr. Stone's way of noticing her had been different. He had approached in
his slightly inconvenient way, as though seeing but one thing in the
whole world.
"You are living by yourself?" he had said. "I shall come and see you."
Made by the Art Critic or by Mr. Purcey, that somewhat strange remark
would have had one meaning; made by Mr. Stone it obviously had another.
Having finished what he had to say, the author of the book of "Universal
Brotherhood" had bowed and turned to go. Perceiving that he saw before
him the door and nothing else, everybody made way for him at once. The
remarks that usually arose behind his back began to be
heard--"Extraordinary old man!" "You know, he bathes in the Serpentine
all the year round?" "And he cooks his food himself, and does his own
room, they say; and all the rest of his time he writes a book!" "A
perfect crank!"
CHAPTER V
THE COMEDY BEGINS
The Art Critic who had smiled was--like all men--a subject for pity
rather than for blame. An Irishman of real ability, he had started life
with high ideals and a belief that he could live with them. He had hoped
to serve Art, to keep his service pure; but, having one day let his acid
temperament out of hand to revel in an orgy of personal retaliation, he
had since never known when she would slip her chain and come home
smothered in mire. Moreover, he no longer chastised her when she came.
His ideals had left him, one by one; he now lived alone, immune from
dignity and shame, soothing himself with whisky. A man of rancour, meet
for pity, and, in his cups, contented. He had lunched freely before
coming to Blanca's Christmas function, but by four o'clock, the gases
which had made him feel the world a pleasant place had nearly all
evaporated, and he was suffering from a wish to drink again. Or it may
have been that this girl, with her soft look, gave him the feeling that
she ought to have belonged to him; and as she did not, he felt, perhaps,
a natural irritation that she belonged, or might belong, to somebody
else. Or, again, it was possibly his natural male distaste for the works
of women painters which induced an awkward frame of mind.
Two days later in a daily paper over no signature, appeared this little
paragraph: "We learn that 'The Shadow,' painted by Bianca Stone, who is
not generally known to be the wife of the writer, Mr. Hilary Dallison,
will soon be exhibited at the Bencox Gallery. This very 'fin-de-siecle'
creation, with its unpleasant subject, representing a woman (presumably
of the streets) standing beneath a gas-lamp, is a somewhat anaemic piece
of painting. If Mr. Dallison, who finds the type an interesting one,
embodies her in one of his very charming poems, we trust the result will
be less bloodless."
The little piece of green-white paper containing this information was
handed to Hilary by his wife at breakfast. The blood mounted slowly in
his cheeks. Bianca's eyes fastened themselves on that flush. Whether or
no--as philosophers say--little things are all big with the past, of
whose chain they are the latest links, they frequently produce what
apparently are great results.
The marital relations of Hilary and his wife, which till then had been
those of, at all events, formal conjugality, changed from that moment.
After ten o'clock at night their lives became as separate as though they
lived in different houses. And this change came about without
expostulations, reproach, or explanation, just by the turning of a key;
and even this was the merest symbol, employed once only, to save the
ungracefulness of words. Such a hint was quite enough for a man like
Hilary, whose delicacy, sense of the ridiculous, and peculiar faculty of
starting back and retiring into himself, put the need of anything further
out of the question. Both must have felt, too, that there was nothing
that could be explained. An anonymous double entendre was not precisely
evidence on which to found a rupture of the marital tie. The trouble was
so much deeper than that--the throbbing of a woman's wounded self-esteem,
of the feeling that she was no longer loved, which had long cried out for
revenge.
One morning in the middle of the week after this incident the innocent
author of it presented herself in Hilary's study, and, standing in her
peculiar patient attitude, made her little statements. As usual, they
were very little ones; as usual, she seemed helpless, and suggested a
child with a sore finger. She had no other work; she owed the week's
rent; she did not know what would happen to her; Mrs. Dallison did not
want her any more; she could not tell what she had done! The picture was
finished, she knew, but Mrs. Dallison had said she was going to paint her
again in another picture....
Hilary did not reply.
"....That old gentleman, Mr.--Mr. Stone, had been to see her. He wanted
her to come and copy out his book for two hours a day, from four to six,
at a shilling an hour. Ought she to come, please? He said his book
would take him years."
Before answering her Hilary stood for a full minute staring at the fire.
The little model stole a look at him. He suddenly turned and faced her.
His glance was evidently disconcerting to the girl. It was, indeed, a
critical and dubious look, such as he might have bent on a folio of
doubtful origin.
"Don't you think," he said at last, "that it would be much better for you
to go back into the country?"
The little model shook her head vehemently.
"Oh no!"
"Well, but why not? This is a most unsatisfactory sort of life."
The girl stole another look at him, then said sullenly:
"I can't go back there."
"What is it? Aren't your people nice to you?"
She grew red.
"No; and I don't want to go"; then, evidently seeing from Hilary's face
that his delicacy forbade his questioning her further, she brightened up,
and murmured: "The old gentleman said it would make me independent."
"Well," replied Hilary, with a shrug, "you'd better take his offer."
She kept turning her face back as she went down the path, as though to
show her gratitude. And presently, looking up from his manuscript, he
saw her face still at the railings, peering through a lilac bush.
Suddenly she skipped, like a child let out of school. Hilary got up,
perturbed. The sight of that skipping was like the rays of a lantern
turned on the dark street of another human being's life. It revealed, as
in a flash, the loneliness of this child, without money and without
friends, in the midst of this great town.
The months of January, February, March passed, and the little model came
daily to copy the "Book of Universal Brotherhood."
Mr. Stone's room, for which he insisted on paying rent, was never entered
by a servant. It was on the ground-floor, and anyone passing the door
between the hours of four and six could hear him dictating slowly,
pausing now and then to spell a word. In these two hours it appeared to
be his custom to read out, for fair copying, the labours of the other
seven.
At five o'clock there was invariably a sound of plates and cups, and out
of it the little model's voice would rise, matter-of-fact, soft,
monotoned, making little statements; and in turn Mr. Stone's, also making
statements which clearly lacked cohesion with those of his young friend.
On one occasion, the door being open, Hilary heard distinctly the
following conversation:
The LITTLE MODEL: "Mr. Creed says he was a butler. He's got an ugly
nose." (A pause.)
Mr. STONE: "In those days men were absorbed in thinking of their
individualities. Their occupations seemed to them important---"
The LITTLE MODEL: "Mr. Creed says his savings were all swallowed up by
illness."
Mr. STONE: "---it was not so."
The LITTLE MODEL: "Mr. Creed says he was always brought up to go to
church."
Mr. STONE (suddenly): "There has been no church worth going to since A.
D. 700."
The LITTLE MODEL: "But he doesn't go."
And with a flying glance through the just open door Hilary saw her
holding bread-and-butter with inky fingers, her lips a little parted,
expecting the next bite, and her eyes fixed curiously on Mr. Stone, whose
transparent hand held a teacup, and whose eyes were immovably fixed on
distance.
It was one day in April that Mr. Stone, heralded by the scent of Harris
tweed and baked potatoes which habitually encircled him, appeared at five
o'clock in Hilary's study doorway.
"She has not come," he said.
Hilary laid down his pen. It was the first real Spring day.
"Will you come for a walk with me, sir, instead?" he asked.
"Yes," said Mr. Stone.
They walked out into Kensington Gardens, Hilary with his head rather bent
towards the ground, and Mr. Stone, with eyes fixed on his far thoughts,
slightly poking forward his silver beard.
In their favourite firmaments the stars of crocuses and daffodils were
shining. Almost every tree had its pigeon cooing, every bush its
blackbird in full song. And on the paths were babies in perambulators.
These were their happy hunting-grounds, and here they came each day to
watch from a safe distance the little dirty girls sitting on the grass
nursing little dirty boys, to listen to the ceaseless chatter of these
common urchins, and learn to deal with the great problem of the lowest
classes. And babies sat in their perambulators, thinking and sucking
india-rubber tubes. Dogs went before them, and nursemaids followed
after.
The spirit of colour was flying in the distant trees, swathing them with
brownish-purple haze; the sky was saffroned by dying sunlight. It was
such a day as brings a longing to the heart, like that which the moon
brings to the hearts of children.
Mr. Stone and Hilary sat down in the Broad Walk.
"Elm-trees!" said Mr. Stone. "It is not known when they assumed their
present shape. They have one universal soul. It is the same with man."
He ceased, and Hilary looked round uneasily. They were alone on the
bench.
Mr. Stone's voice rose again. "Their form and balance is their single
soul; they have preserved it from century to century. This is all they
live for. In those days"--his voice sank; he had plainly forgotten that
he was not alone--"when men had no universal conceptions, they would have
done well to look at the trees. Instead of fostering a number of little
souls on the pabulum of varying theories of future life, they should have
been concerned to improve their present shapes, and thus to dignify man's
single soul"
"Elms were always considered dangerous trees, I believe," said Hilary.
Mr. Stone turned, and, seeing his son-in-law beside him, asked:
"You spoke to me, I think?"
"Yes, sir."
Mr. Stone said wistfully:
"Shall we walk?"
They rose from the bench and walked on....
The explanation of the little model's absence was thus stated by herself
to Hilary: "I had an appointment."
"More work?"
"A friend of Mr. French."
"Yes--who?"
"Mr. Lennard. He's a sculptor; he's got a studio in Chelsea. He wants
me to pose to him."
"Ah!"
She stole a glance at Hilary, and hung her head.
Hilary turned to the window. "You know what posing to a sculptor means,
of course?"
The little model's voice sounded behind him, matter-of-fact as ever: "He
said I was just the figure he was looking for."
Hilary continued to stare through the window. "I thought you didn't mean
to begin standing for the nude."
"I don't want to stay poor always."
Hilary turned round at the strange tone of these unexpected words.
The girl was in a streak of sunlight; her pale cheeks flushed; her pale,
half-opened lips red; her eyes, in their setting of short black lashes,
wide and mutinous; her young round bosom heaving as if she had been
running.
"I don't want to go on copying books all my life."
"Oh, very well."
"Mr. Dallison! I didn't mean that--I didn't really! I want to do what
you tell me to do--I do!"
Hilary stood contemplating her with the dubious, critical look, as though
asking: "What is there behind you? Are you really a genuine edition, or
what?" which had so disconcerted her before. At last he said: "You must
do just as you like. I never advise anybody."
"But you don't want me to--I know you don't. Of course, if you don't
want me to, then it'll be a pleasure not to!"
Hilary smiled.
"Don't you like copying for Mr. Stone?"
The little model made a face. "I like Mr. Stone--he's such a funny old
gentleman."
"That is the general opinion," answered Hilary. "But Mr. Stone, you
know, thinks that we are funny."
The little model smiled faintly, too; the streak of sunlight had slanted
past her, and, standing there behind its glamour and million floating
specks of gold-dust, she looked for the moment like the young Shade of
Spring, watching with expectancy for what the year would bring her.
With the words "I am ready," spoken from the doorway, Mr. Stone
interrupted further colloquy....
But though the girl's position in the household had, to all seeming,
become established, now and then some little incident--straws blowing
down the wind--showed feelings at work beneath the family's apparent
friendliness, beneath that tentative and almost apologetic manner towards
the poor or helpless, which marks out those who own what Hilary had
called the "social conscience." Only three days, indeed, before he sat
in his brown study, meditating beneath the bust of Socrates, Cecilia,
coming to lunch, had let fall this remark:
"Of course, I know nobody can read his handwriting; but I can't think why
father doesn't dictate to a typist, instead of to that little girl. She
could go twice the pace!"
Blanca's answer, deferred for a few seconds, was:
"Hilary perhaps knows."
"Do you dislike her coming here?" asked Hilary.
"Not particularly. Why?"
"I thought from your tone you did."
"I don't dislike her coming here for that purpose."
"Does she come for any other?"
Cecilia, dropping her quick glance to her fork, said just a little
hastily: "Father is extraordinary, of course."
But the next three days Hilary was out in the afternoon when the little
model came.
This, then, was the other reason, on the morning of the first of May,
which made him not averse to go and visit Mrs. Hughs in Hound Street,
Kensington.
CHAPTER VI
FIRST PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET
Hilary and his little bulldog entered Hound Street from its eastern end.
It was a grey street of three-storied houses, all in one style of
architecture. Nearly all their doors were open, and on the doorsteps
babes and children were enjoying Easter holidays. They sat in apathy,
varied by sudden little slaps and bursts of noise. Nearly all were
dirty; some had whole boots, some half boots, and two or three had none.
In the gutters more children were at play; their shrill tongues and
febrile movements gave Hilary the feeling that their "caste" exacted of
them a profession of this faith: "To-day we live; to-morrow--if there be
one--will be like to-day."
He had unconsciously chosen the very centre of the street to walk in, and
Miranda, who had never in her life demeaned herself to this extent, ran
at his heels, turning up her eyes, as though to say: 'One thing I make a
point of--no dog must speak to me!'
Fortunately, there were no dogs; but there were many cats, and these cats
were thin.
Through the upper windows of the houses Hilary had glimpses of women in
poor habiliments doing various kinds of work, but stopping now and then
to gaze into the street. He walked to the end, where a wall stopped him,
and, still in the centre of the road, he walked the whole length back.
The children stared at his tall figure with indifference; they evidently
felt that he was not of those who, like themselves, had no to-morrow.
No. 1, Hound Street, abutting on the garden of a house of better class,
was distinctly the show building of the street. The door, however, was
not closed, and pulling the remnant of a bell, Hilary walked in.
The first thing that he noticed was a smell; it was not precisely bad,
but it might have been better. It was a smell of walls and washing,
varied rather vaguely by red herrings. The second thing he noticed was
his moonlight bulldog, who stood on the doorstep eyeing a tiny sandy cat.
This very little cat, whose back was arched with fury, he was obliged to
chase away before his bulldog would come in. The third thing he noticed
was a lame woman of short stature, standing in the doorway of a room.
Her face, with big cheek-bones, and wide-open, light grey, dark-lashed
eyes, was broad and patient; she rested her lame leg by holding to the
handle of the door.
"I dunno if you'll find anyone upstairs. I'd go and ask, but my leg's
lame."
"So I see," said Hilary; "I'm sorry."
The woman sighed: "Been like that these five years"; and turned back into
her room.
"Is there nothing to be done for it?"
"Well, I did think so once," replied the woman, "but they say the bone's
diseased; I neglected it at the start."
"Oh dear!"
"We hadn't the time to give to it," the woman said defensively, retiring
into a room so full of china cups, photographs, coloured prints, waxwork
fruits, and other ornaments, that there seemed no room for the enormous
bed.
Wishing her good-morning, Hilary began to mount the stairs. On the first
floor he paused. Here, in the back room, the little model lived.
He looked around him. The paper on the passage walls was of a dingy
orange colour, the blind of the window torn, and still pursuing him,
pervading everything, was the scent of walls and washing and red
herrings. There came on him a sickness, a sort of spiritual revolt. To
live here, to pass up these stairs, between these dingy, bilious walls,
on this dirty carpet, with this--ugh! every day; twice, four times, six
times, who knew how many times a day! And that sense, the first to be
attracted or revolted, the first to become fastidious with the culture of
the body, the last to be expelled from the temple of the pure-spirit;
that sense to whose refinement all breeding and all education is devoted;
that sense which, ever an inch at least in front of man, is able to
retard the development of nations, and paralyse all social schemes--this
Sense of Smell awakened within him the centuries of his gentility, the
ghosts of all those Dallisons who, for three hundred years and more, had
served Church or State. It revived the souls of scents he was accustomed
to, and with them, subtly mingled, the whole live fabric of aestheticism,
woven in fresh air and laid in lavender. It roused the simple,
non-extravagant demand of perfect cleanliness. And though he knew that
chemists would have certified the composition of his blood to be the same
as that of the dwellers in this house, and that this smell, composed of
walls and washing and red herrings, was really rather healthy, he stood
frowning fixedly at the girl's door, and the memory of his young niece's
delicately wrinkled nose as she described the house rose before him. He
went on upstairs, followed by his moonlight bulldog.
Hilary's tall thin figure appearing in the open doorway of the top-floor
front, his kind and worried face, and the pale agate eyes of the little
bulldog peeping through his legs, were witnessed by nothing but a baby,
who was sitting in a wooden box in the centre of the room. This baby,
who was very like a piece of putty to which Nature had by some accident
fitted two movable black eyes, was clothed in a woman's knitted
undervest, spreading beyond his feet and hands, so that nothing but his
head was visible. This vest divided him from the wooden shavings on
which he sat, and, since he had not yet attained the art of rising to his
feet, the box divided him from contacts of all other kinds. As
completely isolated from his kingdom as a Czar of all the Russias, he was
doing nothing. In this realm there was a dingy bed, two chairs, and a
washstand, with one lame leg, supported by an aged footstool. Clothes
and garments were hanging on nails, pans lay about the hearth, a
sewing-machine stood on a bare deal table. Over the bed was hung an
oleograph, from a Christmas supplement, of the birth of Jesus, and above
it a bayonet, under which was printed in an illiterate hand on a rough
scroll of paper: "Gave three of em what for at Elandslaagte. S. Hughs."
Some photographs adorned the walls, and two drooping ferns stood on the
window-ledge. The room withal had a sort of desperate tidiness; in a
large cupboard, slightly open, could be seen stowed all that must not see
the light of day. The window of the baby's kingdom was tightly closed;
the scent was the scent of walls and washing and red herrings, and--of
other things.
Hilary looked at the baby, and the baby looked at him. The eyes of that
tiny scrap of grey humanity seemed saying:
'You are not my mother, I believe?'
He stooped down and touched its cheek. The baby blinked its black eyes
once.
'No,' it seemed, to say again, 'you are not my mother.'
A lump rose in Hilary's throat; he turned and went downstairs. Pausing
outside the little model's door, he knocked, and, receiving no answer,
turned the handle. The little square room was empty; it was neat and
clean enough, with a pink-flowered paper of comparatively modern date.
Through its open window could be seen a pear-tree in full bloom. Hilary
shut the door again with care, ashamed of having opened it.
On the half-landing, staring up at him with black eyes like the baby's,
was a man of medium height and active build, whose short face, with broad
cheekbones, cropped dark hair, straight nose, and little black moustache,
was burnt a dark dun colour. He was dressed in the uniform of those who
sweep the streets--a loose blue blouse, and trousers tucked into boots
reaching half-way up his calves; he held a peaked cap in his hand.
After some seconds of mutual admiration, Hilary said:
"Mr. Hughs, I believe?" Yes.
"I've been up to see your wife."
"Have you?"
"You know me, I suppose?"
"Yes, I know you."
"Unfortunately, there's only your baby at home."
Hughs motioned with his cap towards the little model's room. "I thought
perhaps you'd been to see her," he said. His black eyes smouldered;
there was more than class resentment in the expression of his face.
Flushing slightly and giving him a keen look, Hilary passed down the
stairs without replying. But Miranda had not followed. She stood, with
one paw delicately held up above the topmost step.
'I don't know this man,' she seemed to say, 'and I don't like his looks.'
Hughs grinned. "I never hurt a dumb animal," he said; "come on, tykie!"
Stimulated by a word she had never thought to hear, Miranda descended
rapidly.
'He meant that for impudence,' thought Hilary as he walked away.
"Westminister, sir? Oh dear!"
A skinny trembling hand was offering him a greenish newspaper.
"Terrible cold wind for the time o' year!"
A very aged man in black-rimmed spectacles, with a distended nose and
long upper lip and chin, was tentatively fumbling out change for
sixpence.
"I seem to know your face," said Hilary.
"Oh dear, yes. You deals with this 'ere shop--the tobacco department.
I've often seen you when you've a-been agoin' in. Sometimes you has the
Pell Mell off o' this man here." He jerked his head a trifle to the
left, where a younger man was standing armed with a sheaf of whiter
papers. In that gesture were years of envy, heart-burning, and sense of
wrong. 'That's my paper,' it seemed to say, 'by all the rights of man;
and that low-class fellow sellin' it, takin' away my profits!'
"I sells this 'ere Westminister. I reads it on Sundays--it's a
gentleman's paper, 'igh-class paper--notwithstandin' of its politics.
But, Lor', sir, with this 'ere man a-sellin' the Pell Mell"--lowering his
voice, he invited Hilary to confidence--"so many o' the gentry takes
that; an' there ain't too many o' the gentry about 'ere--I mean, not o'
the real gentry--that I can afford to 'ave 'em took away from me."
Hilary, who had stopped to listen out of delicacy, had a flash of
recollection. "You live in Hound Street?"
The old man answered eagerly: "Oh dear! Yes, sir--No. 1, name of Creed.
You're the gentleman where the young person goes for to copy of a book!"
"It's not my book she copies."
"Oh no; it's an old gentleman; I know 'im. He come an' see me once. He
come in one Sunday morning. 'Here's a pound o' tobacca for you!' 'e
says. 'You was a butler,' 'e says. 'Butlers!' 'e says, 'there'll be no
butlers in fifty years.' An' out 'e goes. Not quite"--he put a shaky
hand up to his head--"not quite--oh dear!"
"Some people called Hughs live in your house, I think?"
"I rents my room off o' them. A lady was a-speakin' to me yesterday
about 'em; that's not your lady, I suppose, sir?"
His eyes seemed to apostrophise Hilary's hat, which was of soft felt:
'Yes, yes--I've seen your sort a-stayin' about in the best houses. They
has you down because of your learnin'; and quite the manners of a
gentleman you've got.'
"My wife's sister, I expect."
"Oh dear! She often has a paper off o' me. A real lady--not one o'
these"--again he invited Hilary to confidence--"you know what I mean,
sir--that buys their things a' ready-made at these 'ere large
establishments. Oh, I know her well."
"The old gentleman who visited you is her father."
"Is he? Oh dear!" The old butler was silent, evidently puzzled.
Hilary's eyebrows began to execute those intricate manoeuvres which
always indicated that he was about to tax his delicacy.
"How-how does Hughs treat the little girl who lives in the next room to
you?"
The old butler replied in a rather gloomy tone:
"She takes my advice, and don't 'ave nothin' to say to 'im. Dreadful
foreign-lookin' man 'e is. Wherever 'e was brought up I can't think!"
"A soldier, wasn't he?"
"So he says. He's one o' these that works for the Vestry; an' then 'e'll
go an' get upon the drink, an' when that sets 'im off, it seems as if
there wasn't no respect for nothing in 'im; he goes on against the
gentry, and the Church, and every sort of institution. I never met no
soldiers like him. Dreadful foreign--Welsh, they tell me."
"What do you think of the street you're living in?"
"I keeps myself to myself; low class o' street it is; dreadful low class
o' person there--no self-respect about 'em."
"Ah!" said Hilary.
"These little 'ouses, they get into the hands o' little men, and they
don't care so long as they makes their rent out o' them. They can't help
themselves--low class o' man like that; 'e's got to do the best 'e can
for 'imself. They say there's thousands o' these 'ouses all over London.
There's some that's for pullin' of 'em down, but that's talkin' rubbish;
where are you goin' to get the money for to do it? These 'ere little men,
they can't afford not even to put a paper on the walls, and the big
ground landlords-you can't expect them to know what's happenin' behind
their backs. There's some ignorant fellers like this Hughs talks a lot
o' wild nonsense about the duty o' ground landlords; but you can't expect
the real gentry to look into these sort o' things. They've got their
estates down in the country. I've lived with them, and of course I
know."
The little bulldog, incommoded by the passers-by, now took the
opportunity of beating with her tail against the old butler's legs.
"Oh dear! what's this? He don't bite, do 'e? Good Sambo!"
Miranda sought her master's eye at once. 'You see what happens to her if
a lady loiters in the streets,' she seemed to say.
"It must be hard standing about here all day, after the life you've led,"
said Hilary.
"I mustn't complain; it's been the salvation o' me."
"Do you get shelter?"
Again the old butler seemed to take him into confidence.
"Sometimes of a wet night they lets me stand up in the archway there;
they know I'm respectable. 'T wouldn't never do for that man"--he nodded
at his rival--"or any of them boys to get standin' there, obstructin' of
the traffic."
"I wanted to ask you, Mr. Creed, is there anything to be done for Mrs.
Hughs?"
The frail old body quivered with the vindictive force of his answer.
"Accordin' to what she says, if I'm a-to believe 'er, I'd have him up
before the magistrate, sure as my name's Creed, an' get a separation, an'
I wouldn't never live with 'im again: that's what she ought to do. An'
if he come to go for her after that, I'd have 'im in prison, if 'e killed
me first! I've no patience with a low class o' man like that! He
insulted of me this morning."
"Prison's a dreadful remedy," murmured Hilary.
The old butler answered stoutly: "There ain't but one way o' treatin'
them low fellers--ketch hold o' them until they holler!"
Hilary was about to reply when he found himself alone. At the edge of
the pavement some yards away, Creed, his face upraised to heaven, was
embracing with all his force the second edition of the Westminster
Gazette, which had been thrown him from a cart.
'Well,' thought Hilary, walking on, 'you know your own mind, anyway!'
And trotting by his side, with her jaw set very firm, his little bulldog
looked up above her eyes, and seemed to say: 'It was time we left that
man of action!'
CHAPTER VII
CECILIA'S SCATTERED THOUGHTS
In her morning room Mrs. Stephen Dallison sat at an old oak bureau
collecting her scattered thoughts. They lay about on pieces of stamped
notepaper, beginning "Dear Cecilia," or "Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace
requests," or on bits of pasteboard headed by the names of theatres,
galleries, or concert-halls; or, again, on paper of not quite so good a
quality, commencing, "Dear Friend," and ending with a single well-known
name like "Wessex," so that no suspicion should attach to the appeal
contained between the two. She had before her also sheets of her own
writing-paper, headed "76, The Old Square, Kensington," and two little
books. One of these was bound in marbleised paper, and on it written:
"Please keep this book in safety"; across the other, cased in the skin of
some small animal deceased, was inscribed the solitary word
"Engagements."
Cecilia had on a Persian-green silk blouse with sleeves that would have
hidden her slim hands, but for silver buttons made in the likeness of
little roses at her wrists; on her brow was a faint frown, as though she
were wondering what her thoughts were all about. She sat there every
morning catching those thoughts, and placing them in one or other of her
little books. Only by thus working hard could she keep herself, her
husband, and daughter, in due touch with all the different movements
going on. And that the touch might be as due as possible, she had a
little headache nearly every day. For the dread of letting slip one
movement, or of being too much taken with another, was very real to her;
there were so many people who were interesting, so many sympathies of
hers and Stephen's which she desired to cultivate, that it was a matter
of the utmost import not to cultivate any single one too much. Then,
too, the duty of remaining feminine with all this going forward taxed her
constitution. She sometimes thought enviously of the splendid isolation
now enjoyed by Blanca, of which some subtle instinct, rather than
definite knowledge, had informed her; but not often, for she was a loyal
little person, to whom Stephen and his comforts were of the first moment.
And though she worried somewhat because her thoughts WOULD come by every
post, she did not worry very much--hardly more than the Persian kitten
on her lap, who also sat for hours trying to catch her tail, with a line
between her eyes, and two small hollows in her cheeks.
When she had at last decided what concerts she would be obliged to miss,
paid her subscription to the League for the Suppression of Tinned Milk,
and accepted an invitation to watch a man fall from a balloon, she
paused. Then, dipping her pen in ink, she wrote as follows:
"Mrs. Stephen Dallison would be glad to have the blue dress ordered by
her yesterday sent home at once without alteration.--Messrs. Rose and
Thorn, High Street, Kensington."
Ringing the bell, she thought: 'It will be a job for Mrs. Hughs, poor
thing. I believe she'll do it quite as well as Rose and Thorn.'--"Would
you please ask Mrs. Hughs to come to me?--Oh, is that you, Mrs. Hughs?
Come in."
The seamstress, who had advanced into the middle of the room, stood with
her worn hands against her sides, and no sign of life but the liquid
patience in her large brown eyes. She was an enigmatic figure. Her
presence always roused a sort of irritation in Cecilia, as if she had
been suddenly confronted with what might possibly have been herself if
certain little accidents had omitted to occur. She was so conscious that
she ought to sympathise, so anxious to show that there was no barrier
between them, so eager to be all she ought to be, that her voice almost
purred.
"Are you Getting on with the curtains, Mrs. Hughs?"
"Yes, m'm, thank you, m'm."
"I shall have another job for you to-morrow--altering a dress. Can you
come?"
"Yes, m'm, thank you, m'm."
"Is the baby well?"
"Yes, m'm, thank you, m'm."
There was a silence.
'It's no good talking of her domestic matters,' thought Cecilia; 'not
that I don't care!' But the silence getting on her nerves, she said
quickly: "Is your husband behaving himself better?"
There was no answer; Cecilia saw a tear trickle slowly down the woman's
cheek.
'Oh dear, oh dear,' she thought; 'poor thing! I'm in for it!'
Mrs. Hughs' whispering voice began: "He's behaving himself dreadful, m'm.
I was going to speak to you. It's ever since that young girl"--her face
hardened--"come to live down in my room there; he seem to--he seem
to--just do nothing but neglect me."
Cecilia's heart gave the little pleasurable flutter which the heart must
feel at the love dramas of other people, however painful.
"You mean the little model?" she said.
The seamstress answered in an agitated voice: "I don't want to speak
against her, but she's put a spell on him, that's what she has; he don't
seem able to do nothing but talk of her, and hang about her room. It was
that troubling me when I saw you the other day. And ever since yesterday
midday, when Mr. Hilary came--he's been talking that wild--and he pushed
me--and--and---" Her lips ceased to form articulate words, but, since it
was not etiquette to cry before her superiors, she used them to swallow
down her tears, and something in her lean throat moved up and down.
At the mention of Hilary's name the pleasurable sensation in Cecilia had
undergone a change. She felt curiosity, fear, offence.
"I don't quite understand you," she said.
The seamstress plaited at her frock. "Of course, I can't help the way he
talks, m'm. I'm sure I don't like to repeat the wicked things he says
about Mr. Hilary. It seems as if he were out of his mind when he gets
talkin' about that young girl."
The tone of those last three words was almost fierce.
Cecilia was on the point of saying: 'That will do, please; I want to hear
no more.' But her curiosity and queer subtle fear forced her instead to
repeat: "I don't understand. Do you mean he insinuates that Mr. Hilary
has anything to do with--with this girl, or what?" And she thought: 'I'll
stop that, at any rate.'
The seamstress's face was distorted by her efforts to control her voice.
"I tell him he's wicked to say such things, m'm, and Mr. Hilary such a
kind gentleman. And what business is it of his, I say, that's got a wife
and children of his own? I've seen him in the street, I've watched him
hanging about Mrs. Hilary's house when I've been working there waiting
for that girl, and following her--home---" Again her lips refused to do
service, except in the swallowing of her tears.
Cecilia thought: 'I must tell Stephen at once. That man is dangerous.'
A spasm gripped her heart, usually so warm and snug; vague feelings she
had already entertained presented themselves now with startling force;
she seemed to see the face of sordid life staring at the family of
Dallison. Mrs. Hughs' voice, which did not dare to break, resumed:
"I've said to him: 'Whatever are you thinking of? And after Mrs.
Hilary's been so kind to me! But he's like a madman when he's in liquor,
and he says he'll go to Mrs. Hilary---"
"Go to my sister? What about? The ruffian!"
At hearing her husband called a ruffian by another woman the shadow of
resentment passed across Mrs. Hughs' face, leaving it quivering and red.
The conversation had already made a strange difference in the manner of
these two women to each other. It was as though each now knew exactly
how much sympathy and confidence could be expected of the other, as
though life had suddenly sucked up the mist, and shown them standing one
on either side of a deep trench. In Mrs. Hughs' eyes there was the look
of those who have long discovered that they must not answer back for fear
of losing what little ground they have to stand on; and Cecilia's eyes
were cold and watchful. 'I sympathise,' they seemed to say, 'I
sympathise; but you must please understand that you cannot expect
sympathy if your affairs compromise the members of my family.' Her,
chief thought now was to be relieved of the company of this woman, who
had been betrayed into showing what lay beneath her dumb, stubborn
patience. It was not callousness, but the natural result of being
fluttered. Her heart was like a bird agitated in its gilt-wire cage by
the contemplation of a distant cat. She did not, however, lose her sense
of what was practical, but said calmly: "Your husband was wounded in
South Africa, you told me? It looks as if he wasn't quite.... I think
you should have a doctor!"
The seamstress's answer, slow and matter-of-fact, was worse than her
emotion.
"No, m'm, he isn't mad."
Crossing to the hearth-whose Persian-blue tiling had taken her so long to
find--Cecilia stood beneath a reproduction of Botticelli's "Primavera,"
and looked doubtfully at Mrs. Hughs. The Persian kitten, sleepy and
disturbed on the bosom of her blouse, gazed up into her face. 'Consider
me,' it seemed to say; 'I am worth consideration; I am of a piece with
you, and everything round you. We are both elegant and rather slender; we
both love warmth and kittens; we both dislike interference with our fur.
You took a long time to buy me, so as to get me perfect. You see that
woman over there! I sat on her lap this morning while she was sewing
your curtains. She has no right in here; she's not what she seems; she
can bite and scratch, I know; her lap is skinny; she drops water from her
eyes. She made me wet all down my back. Be careful what you're doing,
or she'll make you wet down yours!'
All that was like the little Persian kitten within Cecilia--cosiness and
love of pretty things, attachment to her own abode with its high-art
lining, love for her mate and her own kitten, Thyme, dread of
disturbance--all made her long to push this woman from the room; this
woman with the skimpy figure, and eyes that, for all their patience, had
in them something virago-like; this woman who carried about with her an
atmosphere of sordid grief, of squalid menaces, and scandal. She longed
all the more because it could well be seen from the seamstress's helpless
attitude that she too would have liked an easy life. To dwell on things
like this was to feel more than thirty-eight!
Cecilia had no pocket, Providence having removed it now for some time
past, but from her little bag she drew forth the two essentials of
gentility. Taking her nose, which she feared was shining, gently within
one, she fumbled in the other. And again she looked doubtfully at Mrs.
Hughs. Her heart said: 'Give the poor woman half a sovereign; it might
comfort her!' But her brain said: 'I owe her four-and-six; after what
she's just been saying about her husband and that girl and Hilary, it
mayn't be safe to give her more.' She held out two half-crowns, and had
an inspiration: "I shall mention to my sister what you've said; you can
tell your husband that!"
No sooner had she said this, however, than she saw, from a little smile
devoid of merriment and quickly extinguished, that Mrs. Hughs did not
believe she would do anything of the kind; from which she concluded that
the seamstress was convinced of Hilary's interest in the little model.
She said hastily:
"You can go now, Mrs. Hughs."
Mrs. Hughs went, making no noise or sign of any sort.
Cecilia returned to her scattered thoughts. They lay there still, with a
gleam of sun from the low window smearing their importance; she felt
somehow that it did not now matter very much whether she and Stephen, in
the interests of science, saw that man fall from his balloon, or, in the
interests of art, heard Herr von Kraaffe sing his Polish songs; she
experienced, too, almost a revulsion in favour of tinned milk. After
meditatively tearing up her note to Messrs. Rose and Thorn, she lowered
the bureau lid and left the room.
Mounting the stairs, whose old oak banisters on either side were a real
joy, she felt she was stupid to let vague, sordid rumours, which, after
all, affected her but indirectly, disturb her morning's work. And
entering Stephen's dressing-room she stood looking at his boots.
Inside each one of them was a wooden soul; none had any creases, none had
any holes. The moment they wore out, their wooden souls were taken from
them and their bodies given to the poor, whilst--in accordance with that
theory, to hear a course of lectures on which a scattered thought was
even now inviting her--the wooden souls migrated instantly to other
leathern bodies.
Looking at that polished row of boots, Cecilia felt lonely and
unsatisfied. Stephen worked in the Law Courts, Thyme worked at Art; both
were doing something definite. She alone, it seemed, had to wait at
home, and order dinner, answer letters, shop, pay calls, and do a dozen
things that failed to stop her thoughts from dwelling on that woman's
tale. She was not often conscious of the nature of her life, so like the
lives of many hundred women in this London, which she said she could not
stand, but which she stood very well. As a rule, with practical good
sense, she kept her doubting eyes fixed friendlily on every little phase
in turn, enjoying well enough fitting the Chinese puzzle of her scattered
thoughts, setting out on each small adventure with a certain cautious
zest, and taking Stephen with her as far as he allowed. This last year
or so, now that Thyme was a grown girl, she had felt at once a loss of
purpose and a gain of liberty. She hardly knew whether to be glad or
sorry. It freed her for the tasting of more things, more people, and
more Stephen; but it left a little void in her heart, a little soreness
round it. What would Thyme think if she heard this story about her uncle?
The thought started a whole train of doubts that had of late beset her.
Was her little daughter going to turn out like herself? If not, why not?
Stephen joked about his daughter's skirts, her hockey, her friendship
with young men. He joked about the way Thyme refused to let him joke
about her art or about her interest in "the people." His joking was a
source of irritation to Cecilia. For, by woman's instinct rather than by
any reasoning process, she was conscious of a disconcerting change.
Amongst the people she knew, young men were not now attracted by girls as
they had been in her young days. There was a kind of cool and friendly
matter-of-factness in the way they treated them, a sort of almost
scientific playfulness. And Cecilia felt uneasy as to how far this was
to go. She seemed left behind. If young people were really becoming
serious, if youths no longer cared about the colour of Thyme's eyes, or
dress, or hair, what would there be left to care for--that is, up to the
point of definite relationship? Not that she wanted her daughter to be
married. It would be time enough to think of that when she was
twenty-five. But her own experiences had been so different. She had
spent so many youthful hours in wondering about men, had seen so many men
cast furtive looks at her; and now there did not seem in men or girls
anything left worth the other's while to wonder or look furtive about.
She was not of a philosophic turn of mind, and had attached no deep
meaning to Stephen's jest--"If young people will reveal their ankles,
they'll soon have no ankles to reveal."
To Cecilia the extinction of the race seemed threatened; in reality her
species of the race alone was vanishing, which to her, of course, was
very much the same disaster. With her eyes on Stephen's boots she
thought: 'How shall I prevent what I've heard from coming to Bianca's
ears? I know how she would take it! How shall I prevent Thyme's
hearing? I'm sure I don't know what the effect would be on her! I must
speak to Stephen. He's so fond of Hilary.'
And, turning away from Stephen's boots, she mused: 'Of course it's
nonsense. Hilary's much too--too nice, too fastidious, to be more than
just interested; but he's so kind he might easily put himself in a false
position. And--it's ugly nonsense! B. can be so disagreeable; even now
she's not--on terms with him!' And suddenly the thought of Mr. Purcey
leaped into her mind--Mr. Purcey, who, as Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace had
declared, was not even conscious that there was a problem of the poor.
To think of him seemed somehow at that moment comforting, like rolling
oneself in a blanket against a draught. Passing into her room, she
opened her wardrobe door.
'Bother the woman!' she thought. 'I do want that gentian dress got
ready, but now I simply can't give it to her to do.'
CHAPTER VIII
THE SINGLE MIND OF MR. STONE
Since in the flutter of her spirit caused by the words of Mrs. Hughs,
Cecilia felt she must do something, she decided to change her dress.
The furniture of the pretty room she shared with Stephen had not been
hastily assembled. Conscious, even fifteen years ago, when they moved
into this house, of the grave Philistinism of the upper classes, she and
Stephen had ever kept their duty to aestheticism green; and, in the
matter of their bed, had lain for two years on two little white affairs,
comfortable, but purely temporary, that they might give themselves a
chance. The chance had come at last--a bed in real keeping with the
period they had settled on, and going for twelve pounds. They had not
let it go, and now slept in it--not quite so comfortable, perhaps, but
comfortable enough, and conscious of duty done.
For fifteen years Cecilia had been furnishing her house; the process
approached completion. The only things remaining on her mind--apart,
that is, from Thyme's development and the condition of the people--were:
item, a copper lantern that would allow some light to pass its framework;
item, an old oak washstand not going back to Cromwell's time. And now
this third anxiety had come!
She was rather touching, as she stood before the wardrobe glass divested
of her bodice, with dimples of exertion in her thin white arms while she
hooked her skirt behind, and her greenish eyes troubled, so anxious to do
their best for everyone, and save risk of any sort. Having put on a
bramble-coloured frock, which laced across her breast with silver
lattice-work, and a hat (without feathers, so as to encourage birds)
fastened to her head with pins (bought to aid a novel school of
metal-work), she went to see what sort of day it was.
The window looked out at the back over some dreary streets, where the
wind was flinging light drifts of smoke athwart the sunlight. They had
chosen this room, not indeed for its view over the condition of the
people, but because of the sky effects at sunset, which were extremely
fine. For the first time, perhaps, Cecilia was conscious that a sample
of the class she was so interested in was exposed to view beneath her
nose. 'The Hughs live somewhere there,' she thought. 'After all I think
B. ought to know about that man. She might speak to father, and get him
to give up having the girl to copy for him--the whole thing's so
worrying.'
In pursuance of this thought, she lunched hastily, and went out, making
her way to Hilary's. With every step she became more uncertain. The
fear of meddling too much, of not meddling enough, of seeming meddlesome;
timidity at touching anything so awkward; distrust, even ignorance, of
her sister's character, which was like, yet so very unlike, her own; a
real itch to get the matter settled, so that nothing whatever should come
of it--all this she felt. She hurried, dawdled, finished the adventure
almost at a run, then told the servant not to announce her. The vision
of Bianca's eyes, while she listened to this tale, was suddenly too much
for Cecilia. She decided to pay a visit to her father first.
Mr. Stone was writing, attired in his working dress--a thick brown
woollen gown, revealing his thin neck above the line of a blue shirt, and
tightly gathered round the waist with tasselled cord; the lower portions
of grey trousers were visible above woollen-slippered feet. His hair
straggled over his thin long ears. The window, wide open, admitted an
east wind; there was no fire. Cecilia shivered.
"Come in quickly," said Mr. Stone. Turning to a big high desk of stained
deal which occupied the middle of one wall, he began methodically to
place the inkstand, a heavy paper-knife, a book, and stones of several
sizes, on his guttering sheets of manuscript.
Cecilia looked about her; she had not been inside her father's room for
several months. There was nothing in it but that desk, a camp bed in the
far corner (with blankets, but no sheets), a folding washstand, and a
narrow bookcase, the books in which Cecilia unconsciously told off on the
fingers of her memory. They never varied. On the top shelf the Bible
and the works of Plautus and Diderot; on the second from the top the
plays of Shakespeare in a blue edition; on the third from the bottom Don
Quixote, in four volumes, covered with brown paper; a green Milton; the
"Comedies of Aristophanes"; a leather book, partially burned, comparing
the philosophy of Epicurus with the philosophy of Spinoza; and in a
yellow binding Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn." On the second from the
bottom was lighter literature: "The Iliad"; a "Life of Francis of
Assisi"; Speke's "Discovery of the Sources of the Nile"; the "Pickwick
Papers"; "Mr. Midshipman Easy"; The Verses of Theocritus, in a very old
translation; Renan's "Life of Christ"; and the "Autobiography of
Benvenuto Cellini." The bottom shelf of all was full of books on natural
science.
The walls were whitewashed, and, as Cecilia knew, came off on anybody who
leaned against them. The floor was stained, and had no carpet. There was
a little gas cooking-stove, with cooking things ranged on it; a small
bare table; and one large cupboard. No draperies, no pictures, no
ornaments of any kind; but by the window an ancient golden leather chair.
Cecilia could never bear to sit in that oasis; its colour in this
wilderness was too precious to her spirit.
"It's an east wind, father; aren't you terribly cold without a fire?"
Mr. Stone came from his writing-desk, and stood so that light might fall
on a sheet of paper in his hand. Cecilia noted the scent that went about
with him of peat and baked potatoes. He spoke:
"Listen to this: 'In the condition of society, dignified in those days
with the name of civilisation, the only source of hope was the
persistence of the quality called courage. Amongst a thousand
nerve-destroying habits, amongst the dramshops, patent medicines, the
undigested chaos of inventions and discoveries, while hundreds were
prating in their pulpits of things believed in by a negligible fraction
of the population, and thousands writing down today what nobody would
want to read in two days' time; while men shut animals in cages, and made
bears jig to please their children, and all were striving one against the
other; while, in a word, like gnats above a stagnant pool on a summer's
evening, man danced up and down without the faintest notion why--in this
condition of affairs the quality of courage was alive. It was the only
fire within that gloomy valley.'" He stopped, though evidently anxious to
go on, because he had read the last word on that sheet of paper. He
moved towards the writing-desk. Cecilia said hastily:
"Do you mind if I shut the window, father?"
Mr. Stone made a movement of his head, and Cecilia saw that he held a
second sheet of paper in his hand. She rose, and, going towards him,
said:
"I want to talk to you, Dad!" Taking up the cord of his dressing-gown,
she pulled it by its tassel.
"Don't!" said Mr. Stone; "it secures my trousers."
Cecilia dropped the cord. 'Father is really terrible!' she thought.
Mr. Stone, lifting the second sheet of paper, began again:
"'The reason, however, was not far to seek---"
Cecilia said desperately:
"It's about that girl who comes to copy for you."
Mr. Stone lowered the sheet of paper, and stood, slightly curved from
head to foot; his ears moved as though he were about to lay them back;
his blue eyes, with little white spots of light alongside the tiny black
pupils, stared at his daughter.
Cecilia thought: 'He's listening now.'
She made haste. "Must you have her here? Can't you do without her?"
"Without whom?" said Mr. Stone.
"Without the girl who comes to copy for you."
"Why?"
"For this very good reason---"
Mr. Stone dropped his eyes, and Cecilia saw that he had moved the sheet
of paper up as far as his waist.
"Does she copy better than any other girl could?" she asked hastily.
"No," said Mr. Stone.
"Then, Father, I do wish, to please me, you'd get someone else. I know
what I'm talking about, and I---" Cecilia stopped; her father's lips and
eyes were moving; he was obviously reading to himself.
'I've no patience with him,' she thought; 'he thinks of nothing but his
wretched book.'
Aware of his daughter's silence, Mr. Stone let the sheet of paper sink,
and waited patiently again.
"What do you want, my dear?" he said.
"Oh, Father, do listen just a minute!"
"Yes, Yes."
"It's about that girl who comes to copy for you. Is there any reason why
she should come instead of any other girl?"
"Yes," said Mr. Stone.
"What reason?"
"Because she has no friends."
So awkward a reply was not expected by Cecilia; she looked at the floor,
forced to search within her soul. Silence lasted several seconds; then
Mr. Stone's voice rose above a whisper:
"'The reason was not far to seek. Man, differentiated from the other
apes by his desire to know, was from the first obliged to steel himself
against the penalties of knowledge. Like animals subjected to the
rigours of an Arctic climate, and putting forth more fur with each
reduction in the temperature, man's hide of courage thickened
automatically to resist the spear-thrusts dealt him by his own insatiate
curiosity. In those days of which we speak, when undigested knowledge,
in a great invading horde, had swarmed all his defences, man, suffering
from a foul dyspepsia, with a nervous system in the latest stages of
exhaustion, and a reeling brain, survived by reason of his power to go on
making courage. Little heroic as (in the then general state of petty
competition) his deeds appeared to be, there never had yet been a time
when man in bulk was more courageous, for there never had yet been a time
when he had more need to be. Signs were not wanting that this desperate
state of things had caught the eyes of the community. A little sect---'"
Mr. Stone stopped; his eyes had again tumbled over the bottom edge; he
moved hurriedly towards the desk. Just as his hand removed a stone and
took up a third sheet, Cecilia cried out:
"Father!"
Mr. Stone stopped, and turned towards her. His daughter saw that he had
gone quite pink; her annoyance vanished.
"Father! About that girl---"
Mr. Stone seemed to reflect. "Yes, yes," he said.
"I don't think Bianca likes her coming here."
Mr. Stone passed his hand across his brow.
"Forgive me for reading to you, my dear," he said; "it's a great relief
to me at times."
Cecilia went close to him, and refrained with difficulty from taking up
the tasselled cord.
"Of course, dear," she said: "I quite understand that."
Mr. Stone looked full in her face, and before a gaze which seemed to go
through her and see things the other side, Cecilia dropped her eyes.
"It is strange," he said, "how you came to be my daughter!"
To Cecilia, too, this had often seemed a problem.
"There is a great deal in atavism," said Mr. Stone, "that we know nothing
of at present."
Cecilia cried with heat, "I do wish you would attend a minute, Father;
it's really an important matter," and she turned towards the window,
tears being very near her eyes.
The voice of Mr. Stone said humbly: "I will try, my dear."
But Cecilia thought: 'I must give him a good lesson. He really is too
self-absorbed'; and she did not move, conveying by the posture of her
shoulders how gravely she was vexed.
She could see nursemaids wheeling babies towards the Gardens, and noted
their faces gazing, not at the babies, but, uppishly, at other
nursemaids, or, with a sort of cautious longing, at men who passed. How
selfish they looked! She felt a little glow of satisfaction that she was
making this thin and bent old man behind her conscious of his egoism.
'He will know better another time,' she thought. Suddenly she heard a
whistling, squeaking sound--it was Mr. Stone whispering the third page of
his manuscript:
"'---animated by some admirable sentiments, but whose doctrines--riddled
by the fact that life is but the change of form to form--were too
constricted for the evils they designed to remedy; this little sect, who
had as yet to learn the meaning of universal love, were making the most
strenuous efforts, in advance of the community at large, to understand
themselves. The necessary, movement which they voiced--reaction against
the high-tide of the fratricidal system then prevailing--was young, and
had the freshness and honesty of youth....'"
Without a word Cecilia turned round and hurried to the door. She saw her
father drop the sheet of paper; she saw his face, all pink and silver,
stooping after it; and remorse visited her anger.
In the corridor outside she was arrested by a noise. The uncertain light
of London halls fell there; on close inspection the sufferer was seen to
be Miranda, who, unable to decide whether she wanted to be in the garden
or the house, was seated beneath the hatrack snuffling to herself. On
seeing Cecilia she came out.
"What do you want, you little beast?"
Peering at her over the tops of her eyes, Miranda vaguely lifted a white
foot. 'Why ask me that?' she seemed to say. 'How am I to know? Are we
not all like this?'
Her conduct, coming at that moment, over-tried Cecilia's nerves. She
threw open Hilary's study-door, saying sharply: "Go in and find your
master!"
Miranda did not move, but Hilary came out instead. He had been
correcting proofs to catch the post, and wore the look of a man
abstracted, faintly contemptuous of other forms of life.
Cecilia, once more saved from the necessity of approaching her sister,
the mistress of the house, so fugitive, haunting, and unseen, yet so much
the centre of this situation, said:
"Can I speak to you a minute, Hilary?"
They went into his study, and Miranda came creeping in behind.
To Cecilia her brother-in-law always seemed an amiable and more or less
pathetic figure. In his literary preoccupations he allowed people to
impose on him. He looked unsubstantial beside the bust of Socrates,
which moved Cecilia strangely--it was so very massive and so very ugly!
She decided not to beat about the bush.
"I've been hearing some odd things from Mrs. Hughs about that little
model, Hilary."
Hilary's smile faded from his eyes, but remained clinging to his lips.
"Indeed!"
Cecilia went on nervously: "Mrs. Hughs says it's because of her that
Hughs behaves so badly. I don't want to say anything against the girl,
but she seems--she seems to have---"
"Yes?" said Hilary.
"To have cast a spell on Hughs, as the woman puts it."
"On Hughs!" repeated Hilary.
Cecilia found her eyes resting on the bust of Socrates, and hastily
proceeded:
"She says he follows her about, and comes down here to lie in wait for
her. It's a most strange business altogether. You went to see them,
didn't you?"
Hilary nodded.
"I've been speaking to Father," Cecilia murmured; "but he's hopeless--I,
couldn't get him to pay the least attention."
Hilary seemed thinking deeply.
"I wanted him," she went on, "to get some other girl instead to come and
copy for him."
"Why?"
Under the seeming impossibility of ever getting any farther, without
saying what she had come to say, Cecilia blurted out:
"Mrs. Hughs says that Hughs has threatened you."
Hilary's face became ironical.
"Really!" he said. "That's good of him! What for?"
The frightful indelicacy of her situation at this moment, the feeling of
unfairness that she should be placed in it, almost overwhelmed Cecilia.
"Goodness knows I don't want to meddle. I never meddle in anything-it's
horrible!"
Hilary took her hand.
"My dear Cis," he said, "of course! But we'd better have this out!"
Grateful for the pressure of his hand, she gave it a convulsive squeeze.
"It's so sordid, Hilary!"
"Sordid! H'm! Let's get it over, then."
Cecilia had grown crimson. "Do you want me to tell you everything?"
"Certainly."
"Well, Hughs evidently thinks you're interested in the girl. You can't
keep anything from servants and people who work about your house; they
always think the worst of everything--and, of course, they know that you
and B. don't--aren't---"
Hilary nodded.
"Mrs. Hughs actually said the man meant to go to B.!"
Again the vision of her sister seemed to float into the room, and she
went on desperately: "And, Hilary, I can see Mrs. Hughs really thinks you
are interested. Of course, she wants to, for if you were, it would mean
that a man like her husband could have no chance."
Astonished at this flash of cynical inspiration, and ashamed of such
plain speaking, she checked herself. Hilary had turned away.
Cecilia touched his arm. "Hilary, dear," she said, "isn't there any
chance of you and B---"
Hilary's lips twitched. "I should say not."
Cecilia looked sadly at the floor. Not since Stephen was bad with
pleurisy had she felt so worried. The sight of Hilary's face brought
back her doubts with all their force. It might, of course, be only anger
at the man's impudence, but it might be--she hardly liked to frame her
thought--a more personal feeling.
"Don't you think," she said, "that, anyway, she had better not come here
again?"
Hilary paced the room.
"It's her only safe and certain piece of work; it keeps her independent.
It's much more satisfactory than this sitting. I can't have any hand in
taking it away from her."
Cecilia had never seen him moved like this. Was it possible that he was
not incorrigibly gentle, but had in him some of that animality which she,
in a sense, admired? This uncertainty terribly increased the
difficulties of the situation.
"But, Hilary," she said at last, "are you satisfied about the girl--I
mean, are you satisfied that she really is worth helping?"
"I don't understand."
"I mean," murmured Cecilia, "that we don't know anything about her past."
And, seeing from the movement of his eyebrows that she was touching on
what had evidently been a doubt with him, she went on with great courage:
"Where are her friends and relations? I mean, she may have had
a--adventures."
Hilary withdrew into himself.
"You can hardly expect me," he said, "to go into that with her."
His reply made Cecilia feel ridiculous.
"Well," she said in a hard little voice, "if this is what comes of
helping the poor, I don't see the use of it."
The outburst evoked no reply from Hilary; she felt more tremulous than
ever. The whole thing was so confused, so unnatural. What with the
dark, malignant Hughs and that haunting vision of Bianca, the matter
seemed almost Italian. That a man of Hughs' class might be affected by
the passion of love had somehow never come into her head. She thought of
the back streets she had looked out on from her bedroom window. Could
anything like passion spring up in those dismal alleys? The people who
lived there, poor downtrodden things, had enough to do to keep themselves
alive. She knew all about them; they were in the air; their condition
was deplorable! Could a person whose condition was deplorable find time
or strength for any sort of lurid exhibition such as this? It was
incredible.
She became aware that Hilary was speaking.
"I daresay the man is dangerous!"
Hearing her fears confirmed, and in accordance with the secret vein of
hardness which kept her living, amid all her sympathies and hesitations,
Cecilia felt suddenly that she had gone as far as it was in her to go.
"I shall have no more to do with them," she said; "I've tried my best for
Mrs. Hughs. I know quite as good a needlewoman, who'll be only too glad
to come instead. Any other girl will do as well to copy father's book.
If you take my advice, Hilary, you'll give up trying to help them too."
Hilary's smile puzzled and annoyed her. If she had known, this was the
smile that stood between him and her sister.
"You may be right," he said, and shrugged his shoulders:
"Very well," said Cecilia, "I've done all I can. I must go now.
Good-bye."
During her progress to the door she gave one look behind. Hilary was
standing by the bust of Socrates. Her heart smote her to leave him thus
embarrassed. But again the vision of Bianca--fugitive in her own house,
and with something tragic in her mocking immobility--came to her, and she
hastened away.
A voice said: "How are you, Mrs. Dallison? Your sister at home?"
Cecilia saw before her Mr. Purcey, rising and falling a little with the
oscillation of his A.i. Damyer.
A sense as of having just left a house visited by sickness or misfortune
made Cecilia murmur:
"I'm afraid she's not."
"Bad luck!" said Mr. Purcey. His face fell as far as so red and square a
face could fall. "I was hoping perhaps I might be allowed to take them
for a run. She's wanting exercise." Mr. Purcey laid his hand on the
flank of his palpitating car. "Know these A.i. Damyers, Mrs. Dallison?
Best value you can get, simply rippin' little cars. Wish you'd try her."
The A.i. Damyer, diffusing an aroma of the finest petrol, leaped and
trembled, as though conscious of her master's praise. Cecilia looked at
her.
"Yes," she said, "she's very sweet."
"Now do!" said Mr. Purcey. "Let me give you a run--Just to please me, I
mean. I'm sure you'll like her."
A little compunction, a little curiosity, a sudden revolt against all the
discomfiture and sordid doubts she had been suffering from, made Cecilia
glance softly at Mr. Purcey's figure; almost before she knew it, she was
seated in the A.i. Damyer. It trembled, emitted two small sounds, one
large scent, and glided forward. Mr. Purcey said:
"That's rippin' of you!"
A postman, dog, and baker's cart, all hurrying at top speed, seemed to
stand still; Cecilia felt the wind beating her cheeks. She gave a little
laugh.
"You must just take me home, please."
Mr. Purcey touched the chauffeur's elbow.
"Round the park," he said. "Let her have it."
The A.i. Damyer uttered a tiny shriek. Cecilia, leaning back in her
padded corner, glanced askance at Mr. Purcey leaning back in his; an
unholy, astonished little smile played on her lips.
'What am I doing?' it seemed to say. 'The way he got me here--really!
And now I am here I'm just going to enjoy it!'
There were no Hughs, no little model--all that sordid life had vanished;
there was nothing but the wind beating her cheeks and the A.i. Damyer
leaping under her.
Mr. Purcey said: "It just makes all the difference to me; keeps my nerves
in order."
"Oh," Cecilia murmured, "have you got nerves."
Mr. Purcey smiled. When he smiled his cheeks formed two hard red blocks,
his trim moustache stood out, and many little wrinkles ran from his light
eyes.
"Chock full of them," he said; "least thing upsets me. Can't bear to see
a hungry-lookin' child, or anything."
A strange feeling of admiration for this man had come upon Cecilia. Why
could not she, and Thyme, and Hilary, and Stephen, and all the people
they knew and mixed with, be like him, so sound and healthy, so unravaged
by disturbing sympathies, so innocent of "social conscience," so content?
As though jealous of these thoughts about her master, the A.i. Damyer
stopped of her own accord.
"Hallo," said Mr. Purcey, "hallo, I say! Don't you get out; she'll be
all right directly."
"Oh," said Cecilia, "thanks; but I must go in here, anyhow; I think I'll
say good-bye. Thank you so much. I have enjoyed it."
From the threshold of a shop she looked back. Mr. Purcey, on foot, was
leaning forward from the waist, staring at his A.i. Damyer with profound
concentration.
CHAPTER IX
HILARY GIVES CHASE
The ethics of a man like Hilary were not those of the million pure bred
Purceys of this life, founded on a sense of property in this world and
the next; nor were they precisely the morals and religion of the
aristocracy, who, though aestheticised in parts, quietly used, in bulk,
their fortified position to graft on Mr. Purcey's ethics the principle of
'You be damned!' In the eyes of the majority he was probably an immoral
and irreligious man; but in fact his morals and religion were those of
his special section of society--the cultivated classes, "the professors,
the artistic pigs, advanced people, and all that sort of cuckoo," as Mr.
Purcey called them--a section of society supplemented by persons, placed
beyond the realms of want, who speculated in ideas.
Had he been required to make confession of his creed he would probably
have framed it in some such way as this: "I disbelieve in all Church
dogmas, and do not go to church; I have no definite ideas about a future
state, and do not want to have; but in a private way I try to identify
myself as much as possible with what I see about me, feeling that if I
could ever really be at one with the world I live in I should be happy.
I think it foolish not to trust my senses and my reason; as for what my
senses and my reason will not tell me, I assume that all is as it had to
be, for if one could get to know the why of everything in one would be
the Universe. I do not believe that chastity is a virtue in itself, but
only so far as it ministers to the health and happiness of the community.
I do not believe that marriage confers the rights of ownership, and I
loathe all public wrangling on such matters; but I am temperamentally
averse to the harming of my neighbours, if in reason it can be avoided.
As to manners, I think that to repeat a bit of scandal, and circulate
backbiting stories, are worse offences than the actions that gave rise to
them. If I mentally condemn a person, I feel guilty of moral lapse. I
hate self-assertion; I am ashamed of self-advertisement. I dislike
loudness of any kind. Probably I have too much tendency to negation of
all sorts. Small-talk bores me to extinction, but I will discuss a point
of ethics or psychology half the night. To make capital out of a
person's weakness is repugnant to me. I want to be a decent man, but--I
really can't take myself too seriously."
Though he had preserved his politeness towards Cecilia, he was in truth
angry, and grew angrier every minute. He was angry with her, himself,
and the man Hughs; and suffered from this anger as only they can who are
not accustomed to the rough-and-tumble of things.
Such a retiring man as Hilary was seldom given the opportunity for an
obvious display of chivalry. The tenor of his life removed him from
those situations. Such chivalry as he displayed was of a negative order.
And confronted suddenly with the conduct of Hughs, who, it seemed,
knocked his wife about, and dogged the footsteps of a helpless girl, he
took it seriously to heart.
When the little model came walking up the garden on her usual visit, he
fancied her face looked scared. Quieting the growling of Miranda, who
from the first had stubbornly refused to know this girl, he sat down with
a book to wait for her to go away. After sitting an hour or more,
turning over pages, and knowing little of their sense, he saw a man peer
over his garden gate. He was there for half a minute, then lounged
across the road, and stood hidden by some railings.
'So?' thought Hilary. 'Shall I go out and warn the fellow to clear off,
or shall I wait to see what happens when she goes away?'
He determined on the latter course. Presently she came out, walking with
her peculiar gait, youthful and pretty, but too matter-of-fact, and yet,
as it were, too purposeless to be a lady's. She looked back at Hilary's
window, and turned uphill.
Hilary took his hat and stick and waited. In half a minute Hughs came
out from under cover of the railings and followed. Then Hilary, too, set
forth.
There is left in every man something of the primeval love of stalking.
The delicate Hilary, in cooler blood, would have revolted at the notion
of dogging people's footsteps. He now experienced the holy pleasures of
the chase. Certain that Hughs was really following the girl, he had but
to keep him in sight and remain unseen. This was not hard for a man
given to mountain-climbing, almost the only sport left to one who thought
it immoral to hurt anybody but himself.
Taking advantage of shop-windows, omnibuses, passers-by, and other bits
of cover, he prosecuted the chase up the steepy heights of Campden Hill.
But soon a nearly fatal check occurred; for, chancing to take his eyes
off Hughs, he saw the little model returning on her tracks. Ready enough
in physical emergencies, Hilary sprang into a passing omnibus. He saw
her stopping before the window of a picture-shop. From the expression of
her face and figure, she evidently had no idea that she was being
followed, but stood with a sort of slack-lipped wonder, lost in
admiration of a well-known print. Hilary had often wondered who could
possibly admire that picture--he now knew. It was obvious that the girl's
aesthetic sense was deeply touched.
While this was passing through his mind, he caught sight of Hughs lurking
outside a public-house. The dark man's face was sullen and dejected, and
looked as if he suffered. Hilary felt a sort of pity for him.
The omnibus leaped forward, and he sat down smartly almost on a lady's
lap. This was the lap of Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, who greeted him with
a warm, quiet smile, and made a little room.
"Your sister-in-law has just been to see me, Mr. Dallison. She's such a
dear-so interested in everything. I tried to get her to come on to my
meeting with me."
Raising his hat, Hilary frowned. For once his delicacy was at fault. He
said:
"Ah, yes! Excuse me!" and got out.
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace looked after him, and then glanced round the
omnibus. His conduct was very like the conduct of a man who had got in
to keep an assignation with a lady, and found that lady sitting next his
aunt. She was unable to see a soul who seemed to foster this view, and
sat thinking that he was "rather attractive." Suddenly her dark busy eyes
lighted on the figure of the little model strolling along again.
'Oh!' she thought. 'Ah! Yes, really! How very interesting!'
Hilary, to avoid meeting the girl point-blank, had turned up a by-street,
and, finding a convenient corner, waited. He was puzzled. If this man
were persecuting her with his attentions, why had he not gone across when
she was standing at the picture-shop?
She passed across the opening of the by-street, still walking in the
slack way of one who takes the pleasures of the streets. She passed from
view; Hilary strained his eyes to see if Hughs were following. He waited
several minutes. The man did not appear. The chase was over! And
suddenly it flashed across him that Hughs had merely dogged her to see
that she had no assignation with anybody. They had both been playing the
same game! He flushed up in that shady little street, in which he was
the only person to be seen. Cecilia was right! It was a sordid
business. A man more in touch with facts than Hilary would have had some
mental pigeonhole into which to put an incident like this; but, being by
profession concerned mainly with ideas and thoughts, he did not quite
know where he was. The habit of his mind precluded him from thinking
very definitely on any subject except his literary work--precluded him
especially in a matter of this sort, so inextricably entwined with that
delicate, dim question, the impact of class on class.
Pondering deeply, he ascended the leafy lane that leads between high
railings from Notting Hill to Kensington.
It was so far from traffic that every tree on either side was loud with
the Spring songs of birds; the scent of running sap came forth shyly as
the sun sank low. Strange peace, strange feeling of old Mother Earth up
there above the town; wild tunes, and the quiet sight of clouds. Man in
this lane might rest his troubled thoughts, and for a while trust the
goodness of the Scheme that gave him birth, the beauty of each day, that
laughs or broods itself into night. Some budding lilacs exhaled a scent
of lemons; a sandy cat on the coping of a garden wall was basking in the
setting sun.
In the centre of the lane a row of elm-trees displayed their gnarled,
knotted roots. Human beings were seated there, whose matted hair clung
round their tired faces. Their gaunt limbs were clothed in rags; each
had a stick, and some sort of dirty bundle tied to it. They were asleep.
On a bench beyond, two toothless old women sat, moving their eyes from
side to side, and a crimson-faced woman was snoring. Under the next tree
a Cockney youth and his girl were sitting side by side-pale young things,
with loose mouths, and hollow cheeks, and restless eyes. Their arms were
enlaced; they were silent. A little farther on two young men in working
clothes were looking straight before them, with desperately tired faces.
They, too, were silent.
On the last bench of all Hilary came on the little model, seated slackly
by herself.
CHAPTER X
THE TROUSSEAU
This the first time these two had each other at large, was clearly not a
comfortable event for either of them. The girl blushed, and hastily got
off her seat. Hilary, who raised his hat and frowned, sat down on it.
"Don't get up," he said; "I want to talk to you."
The little model obediently resumed her seat. A silence followed. She
had on the old brown skirt and knitted jersey, the old blue-green
tam-o'-shanter cap, and there were marks of weariness beneath her eyes.
At last Hilary remarked: "How are you getting on?"
The little model looked at her feet.
"Pretty well, thank you, Mr. Dallison."
"I came to see you yesterday."
She slid a look at him which might have meant nothing or meant much, so
perfect its shy stolidity.
"I was out," she said, "sitting to Miss Boyle."
"So you have some work?"
"It's finished now."
"Then you're only getting the two shillings a day from Mr. Stone?"
She nodded.
"H'm!"
The unexpected fervour of this grunt seemed to animate the little model.
"Three and sixpence for my rent, and breakfast costs threepence
nearly--only bread-and-butter--that's five and two; and washing's always
at least tenpence--that's six; and little things last week was a
shilling--even when I don't take buses--seven; that leaves five shillings
for my dinners. Mr. Stone always gives me tea. It's my clothes worries
me." She tucked her feet farther beneath the seat, and Hilary refrained
from looking down. "My hat is awful, and I do want some---" She looked
Hilary in the face for the first time. "I do wish I was rich."
"I don't wonder."
The little model gritted her teeth, and, twisting at her dirty gloves,
said: "Mr. Dallison, d'you know the first thing I'd buy if I was rich?"
"No."
"I'd buy everything new on me from top to toe, and I wouldn't ever wear
any of these old things again."
Hilary got up: "Come with me now, and buy everything new from top to
toe."
"Oh!"
Hilary had already perceived that he had made an awkward, even dangerous,
proposal; short, however, of giving her money, the idea of which offended
his sense of delicacy, there was no way out of it. He said brusquely:
"Come along!"
The little model rose obediently. Hilary noticed that her boots were
split, and this--as though he had seen someone strike a child--so moved
his indignation that he felt no more qualms, but rather a sort of
pleasant glow, such as will come to the most studious man when he levels
a blow at the conventions.
He looked down at his companion--her eyes were lowered; he could not tell
at all what she was thinking of.
"This is what I was going to speak to you about," he said: "I don't like
that house you're in; I think you ought to be somewhere else. What do you
say?"
"Yes, Mr. Dallison."
"You'd better make a change, I think; you could find another room,
couldn't you?"
The little model answered as before: "Yes, Mr. Dallison."
"I'm afraid that Hughs is-a dangerous sort of fellow."
"He's a funny man."
"Does he annoy you?"
Her expression baffled Hilary; there seemed a sort of slow enjoyment in
it. She looked up knowingly.
"I don't mind him--he won't hurt me. Mr. Dallison, do you think blue or
green?"
Hilary answered shortly: "Bluey-green."
She clasped her hands, changed her feet with a hop, and went on walking
as before.
"Listen to me," said Hilary; "has Mrs. Hughs been talking to you about
her husband?"
The little model smiled again.
"She goes on," she said.
Hilary bit his lips.
"Mr. Dallison, please--about my hat?"
"What about your hat?"
"Would you like me to get a large one or a small one?"
"For God's sake," answered Hilary, "a small one--no feathers."
"Oh!"
"Can you attend to me a minute? Have either Hughs or Mrs. Hughs spoken
to you about--coming to my house, about--me?"
The little model's face remained impassive, but by the movement of her
fingers Hilary saw that she was attending now.
"I don't care what they say."
Hilary looked away; an angry flush slowly mounted in his face.
With surprising suddenness the little model said:
"Of course, if I was a lady, I might mind!"
"Don't talk like that!" said Hilary; "every woman is a lady."
The stolidity of the girl's face, more mocking far than any smile, warned
him of the cheapness of this verbiage.
"If I was a lady," she repeated simply, "I shouldn't be livin' there,
should I?"
"No," said Hilary; "and you had better not go on living there, anyway."
The little model making no answer, Hilary did not quite know what to say.
It was becoming apparent to him that she viewed the situation with a very
different outlook from himself, and that he did not understand that
outlook.
He felt thoroughly at sea, conscious that this girl's life contained a
thousand things he did not know, a thousand points of view he did not
share.
Their two figures attracted some attention in the crowded street, for
Hilary-tall and slight, with his thin, bearded face and soft felt
hat--was what is known as "a distinguished-looking man"; and the little
model, though not "distinguished-looking" in her old brown skirt and
tam-o'shanter cap, had the sort of face which made men and even women
turn to look at her. To men she was a little bit of strangely
interesting, not too usual, flesh and blood; to women, she was that which
made men turn to look at her. Yet now and again there would rise in some
passer-by a feeling more impersonal, as though the God of Pity had shaken
wings overhead, and dropped a tiny feather.
So walking, and exciting vague interest, they reached the first of the
hundred doors of Messrs. Rose and Thorn.
Hilary had determined on this end door, for, as the adventure grew
warmer, he was more alive to its dangers. To take this child into the
very shop frequented by his wife and friends seemed a little mad; but
that same reason which caused them to frequent it--the fact that there
was no other shop of the sort half so handy--was the reason which caused
Hilary to go there now. He had acted on impulse; he knew that if he let
his impulse cool he would not act at all. The bold course was the wise
one; this was why he chose the end door round the corner. Standing aside
for her to go in first, he noticed the girl's brightened eyes and cheeks;
she had never looked so pretty. He glanced hastily round; the department
was barren for their purposes, filled entirely with pyjamas. He felt a
touch on his arm. The little model, rather pink, was looking up at him.
"Mr. Dallison, am I to get more than one set of--underthings?"
"Three-three," muttered Hilary; and suddenly he saw that they were on the
threshold of that sanctuary. "Buy them," he said, "and bring me the
bill."
He waited close beside a man with a pink face, a moustache, and an almost
perfect figure, who was standing very still, dressed from head to foot in
blue-and-white stripes. He seemed the apotheosis of what a man should
be, his face composed in a deathless simper: "Long, long have been the
struggles of man, but civilization has produced me at last. Further than
this it cannot go. Nothing shall make me continue my line. In me the
end is reached. See my back: 'The Amateur. This perfect style, 8s. 11d.
Great reduction.'"
He would not talk to Hilary, and the latter was compelled to watch the
shopmen. It was but half an hour to closing time; the youths were moving
languidly, bickering a little, in the absence of their customers--like
flies on a pane unable to get out into the sun. Two of them came and
asked him what they might serve him with; they were so refined and
pleasant that Hilary was on the point of buying what he did not want.
The reappearance of the little model saved him.
"It's thirty shillings; five and eleven was the cheapest, and stockings,
and I bought some sta---"
Hilary produced the money hastily.
"This is a very dear shop," she said.
When she had paid the bill, and Hilary had taken from her a large
brown-paper parcel, they journeyed on together. He had armoured his face
now in a slightly startled quizzicality, as though, himself detached, he
were watching the adventure from a distance.
On the central velvet seat of the boot and shoe department, a lady, with
an egret in her hat, was stretching out a slim silk-stockinged foot,
waiting for a boot. She looked with negligent amusement at this common
little girl and her singular companion. This look of hers seemed to
affect the women serving, for none came near the little model. Hilary
saw them eyeing her boots, and, suddenly forgetting his role of
looker-on, he became very angry. Taking out his watch, he went up to the
eldest woman.
"If somebody," he said, "does not attend this young lady within a minute,
I shall make a personal complaint to Mr. Thorn."
The hand of the watch, however, had not completed its round before a
woman was at the little model's side. Hilary saw her taking off her
boot, and by a sudden impulse he placed himself between her and the lady.
In doing this, he so far forgot his delicacy as to fix his eyes on the
little model's foot. The sense of physical discomfort which first
attacked him became a sort of aching in his heart. That brown, dingy
stocking was darned till no stocking, only darning, and one toe and two
little white bits of foot were seen, where the threads refused to hold
together any longer.
The little model wagged the toe uneasily--she had hoped, no doubt, that
it would not protrude, then concealed it with her skirt. Hilary moved
hastily away; when he looked again, it was not at her, but at the lady.
Her face had changed; it was no longer amused and negligent, but stamped
with an expression of offence. 'Intolerable,' it seemed to say, 'to
bring a girl like that into a shop like this! I shall never come here
again!' The expression was but the outward sign of that inner physical
discomfort Hilary himself had felt when he first saw the little model's
stocking. This naturally did not serve to lessen his anger, especially
as he saw her animus mechanically reproduced on the faces of the serving
women.
He went back to the little model, and sat down by her side.
"Does it fit? You'd better walk in it and see."
The little model walked.
"It squeezes me," she said.
"Try another, then," said Hilary.
The lady rose, stood for a second with her eyebrows raised and her
nostrils slightly distended, then went away, and left a peculiarly
pleasant scent of violets behind.
The second pair of boots not "squeezing" her, the little model was soon
ready to go down. She had all her trousseau now, except the
dress--selected and, indeed, paid for, but which, as she told Hilary, she
was coming back to try on tomorrow, when--when---. She had obviously
meant to say when she was all new underneath. She was laden with one
large and two small parcels, and in her eyes there was a holy look.
Outside the shop she gazed up in his face.
"Well, you are happy now?" asked Hilary.
Between the short black lashes were seen two very bright, wet shining
eyes; her parted lips began to quiver.
"Good-night, then," he said abruptly, and walked away.
But looking round, he saw her still standing there, half buried in
parcels, gazing after him. Raising his hat, he turned into the High
Street towards home....
The old man, known to that low class of fellow with whom he was now
condemned to associate as "Westminister," was taking a whiff or two out
of his old clay pipe, and trying to forget his feet. He saw Hilary
coming, and carefully extended a copy of the last edition.
"Good-evenin', sir! Quite seasonable to-day for the time of year! Ho,
yes! 'Westminister!'"
His eyes followed Hilary's retreat. He thought:
"Oh dear! He's a-given me an 'arf-a-crown. He does look well--I like to
see 'im look as well as that--quite young! Oh dear!"
The sun-that smoky, faring ball, which in its time had seen so many last
editions of the Westminster Gazette--was dropping down to pass the night
in Shepherd's Bush. It made the old butler's eyelids blink when he
turned to see if the coin really was a half-crown, or too good to be
true.
And all the spires and house-roofs, and the spaces up above and
underneath them, glittered and swam, and men and horses looked as if they
had been powdered with golden dust.
CHAPTER XI
PEAR BLOSSOM
Weighed down by her three parcels, the little model pursued her way to
Hound Street. At the door of No. 1 the son of the lame woman, a tall
weedy youth with a white face, was resting his legs alternately, and
smoking a cigarette. Closing one eye, he addressed her thus:
"'Allo, miss! Kerry your parcels for you?"
The little model gave him a look. 'Mind your own business!' it said; but
there was that in the flicker of her eyelashes which more than nullified
this snub.
Entering her room, she deposited the parcels on her bed, and untied the
strings with quick, pink fingers. When she had freed the garments from
wrappings and spread them out, she knelt down, and began to touch them,
putting her nose down once or twice to sniff the linen and feel its
texture. There were little frills attached here and there, and to these
she paid particular attention, ruffling their edges with the palms of her
hands, while the holy look came back to her face. Rising at length, she
locked the door, drew down the blind, undressed from head to foot, and
put on the new garments. Letting her hair down, she turned herself
luxuriously round and round before the too-small looking-glass. There
was utter satisfaction in each gesture of that whole operation, as if her
spirit, long starved, were having a good meal. In this rapt
contemplation of herself, all childish vanity and expectancy, and all
that wonderful quality found in simple unspiritual natures of delighting
in the present moment, were perfectly displayed. So, motionless, with
her hair loose on her neck, she was like one of those half-hours of
Spring that have lost their restlessness and are content just to be.
Presently, however, as though suddenly remembering that her happiness was
not utterly complete, she went to a drawer, took out a packet of
pear-drops, and put one in her mouth.
The sun, near to setting, had found its way through a hole in the blind,
and touched her neck. She turned as though she had received a kiss, and,
raising a corner of the blind, peered out. The pear-tree, which, to the
annoyance of its proprietor, was placed so close to the back court of
this low-class house as almost to seem to belong to it, was bathed in
slanting sunlight. No tree in all the world could have looked more fair
than it did just then in its garb of gilded bloom. With her hand up to
her bare neck, and her cheeks indrawn from sucking the sweet, the little
model fixed her eyes on the tree. Her expression did not change; she
showed no signs of admiration. Her gaze passed on to the back windows of
the house that really owned the pear-tree, spying out whether anyone
could see her--hoping, perhaps, someone would see her while she was
feeling so nice and new. Then, dropping the blind, she went back to the
glass and began to pin her hair up. When this was done she stood for a
long minute looking at her old brown skirt and blouse, hesitating to
defile her new-found purity. At last she put them on and drew up the
blind. The sunlight had passed off the pear-tree; its bloom was now
white, and almost as still as snow. The little model put another sweet
into her mouth, and producing from her pocket an ancient leather purse,
counted out her money. Evidently discovering that it was no more than
she expected, she sighed, and rummaged out of a top drawer an old
illustrated magazine.
She sat down on the bed, and, turning the leaves rapidly till she reached
a certain page, rested the paper in her lap. Her eyes were fixed on a
photograph in the left-hand corner-one of those effigies of writers that
appear occasionally in the public press. Under it were printed the
words: "Mr. Hilary Dallison." And suddenly she heaved a sigh.
The room grew darker; the wind, getting up as the sun went down, blew a
few dropped petals of the pear-tree against the window-pane.
CHAPTER XII
SHIPS IN SAIL
In due accord with the old butler's comment on his looks, Hilary had felt
so young that, instead of going home, he mounted an omnibus, and went
down to his club--the "Pen and Ink," so called because the man who
founded it could not think at the moment of any other words. This
literary person had left the club soon after its initiation, having
conceived for it a sudden dislike. It had indeed a certain reputation
for bad cooking, and all its members complained bitterly at times that
you never could go in without meeting someone you knew. It stood in Dover
Street. Unlike other clubs, it was mainly used to talk in, and had
special arrangements for the safety of umbrellas and such books as had
not yet vanished from the library; not, of course, owing to any
peculative tendency among its members, but because, after interchanging
their ideas, those members would depart, in a long row, each grasping
some material object in his hand. Its. maroon-coloured curtains, too,
were never drawn, because, in the heat of their discussions, the members
were always drawing them. On the whole, those members did not like each
other much; wondering a little, one by one, why the others wrote; and
when the printed reasons were detailed to them, reading them with
irritation. If really compelled to hazard an opinion about each other's
merits, they used to say that, no doubt "So-and-so" was "very good," but
they had never read him! For it had early been established as the
principle underlying membership not to read the writings of another man,
unless you could be certain he was dead, lest you might have to tell him
to his face that you disliked his work. For they were very jealous of
the purity of their literary consciences. Exception was made, however,
in the case of those who lived by written criticism, the opinions of such
persons being read by all, with a varying smile, and a certain cerebral
excitement. Now and then, however, some member, violating every sense of
decency, would take a violent liking for another member's books. This he
would express in words, to the discomfort of his fellows, who, with a
sudden chilly feeling in the stomach, would wonder why it was not their
books that he was praising.
Almost every year, and generally in March, certain aspirations would pass
into the club; members would ask each other why there was no Academy of
British Letters; why there was no concerted movement to limit the
production of other authors' books; why there was no prize given for the
best work of the year. For a little time it almost seemed as if their
individualism were in danger; but, the windows having been opened wider
than usual some morning, the aspirations would pass out, and all would
feel secretly as a man feels when he has swallowed the mosquito that has
been worrying him all night--relieved, but just a little bit
embarrassed. Socially sympathetic in their dealings with each
other--they were mostly quite nice fellows--each kept a little
fame-machine, on which he might be seen sitting every morning about the
time the papers and his correspondence came, wondering if his fame were
going up.
Hilary stayed in the club till half-past nine; then, avoiding a
discussion which was just setting in, he took his own umbrella, and bent
his steps towards home.
It was the moment of suspense in Piccadilly; the tide had flowed up to
the theatres, and had not yet begun to ebb. The tranquil trees, still
feathery, draped their branches along the farther bank of that broad
river, resting from their watch over the tragi-comedies played on its
surface by men, their small companions. The gentle sighs which distilled
from their plume-like boughs seemed utterances of the softest wisdom.
Not far beyond their trunks it was all dark velvet, into which separate
shapes, adventuring, were lost, as wild birds vanishing in space, or the
souls of men received into their Mother's heart.
Hilary walked, hearing no sighs of wisdom, noting no smooth darkness,
wrapped in thought. The mere fact of having given pleasure was enough to
produce a warm sensation in a man so naturally kind. But, as with all
self-conscious, self-distrustful, natures, that sensation had not lasted.
He was left with a feeling of emptiness and disillusionment, as of
having given himself a good mark without reason.
While walking, he was a target for the eyes of many women, who passed him
rapidly, like ships in sail. The special fastidious shyness of his face
attracted those accustomed to another kind of face. And though he did
not precisely look at them, they in turn inspired in him the
compassionate, morbid curiosity which persons who live desperate lives
necessarily inspire in the leisured, speculative mind. One of them
deliberately approached him from a side-street. Though taller and fuller,
with heightened colour, frizzy hair, and a hat with feathers; she was the
image of the little model--the same shape of face, broad cheek-bones,
mouth a little open; the same flower-coloured eyes and short black
lashes, all coarsened and accentuated as Art coarsens and accentuates the
lines of life. Looking boldly into Hilary's startled face, she laughed.
Hilary winced and walked on quickly.
He reached home at half-past ten. The lamp was burning in Mr. Stone's
room, and his window was, as usual, open; that which was not usual,
however, was a light in Hilary's own bedroom. He went gently up.
Through the door-ajar-he saw, to his surprise, the figure of his wife.
She was reclining in a chair, her elbows on its arms, the tips of her
fingers pressed together. Her face, with its dark hair, vivid colouring,
and sharp lines, was touched with shadows, her head turned as though
towards somebody beside her; her neck gleamed white. So--motionless,
dimly seen--she was like a woman sitting alongside her own life,
scrutinising, criticising, watching it live, taking no part in it.
Hilary wondered whether to go in or slip away from his strange visitor.
"Ah! it's you," she said.
Hilary approached her. For all her mocking of her own charms, this wife
of his was strangely graceful. After nineteen years in which to learn
every line of her face and body, every secret of her nature, she still
eluded him; that elusiveness, which had begun by being such a charm, had
got on his nerves, and extinguished the flame it had once lighted. He
had so often tried to see, and never seen, the essence of her soul. Why
was she made like this? Why was she for ever mocking herself, himself,
and every other thing? Why was she so hard to her own life, so bitter a
foe to her own happiness? Leonardo da Vinci might have painted her, less
sensual and cruel than his women, more restless and disharmonic, but
physically, spiritually enticing, and, by her refusals to surrender
either to her spirit or her senses, baffling her own enticements.
"I don't know why I came," she said.
Hilary found no better answer than: "I am sorry I was out to dinner."
"Has the wind gone round? My room is cold."
"Yes, north-east. Stay here."
Her hand touched his; that warm and restless clasp was agitating.
"It's good of you to ask me; but we'd better not begin what we can't keep
up."
"Stay here," said Hilary again, kneeling down beside her chair.
And suddenly he began to kiss her face and neck. He felt her answering
kisses; for a moment they were clasped together in a fierce embrace.
Then, as though by mutual consent, their arms relaxed; their eyes grew
furtive, like the eyes of children who have egged each other on to steal;
and on their lips appeared the faintest of faint smiles. It was as
though those lips were saying: "Yes, but we are not quite animals!"
Hilary got up and sat down on his bed. Blanca stayed in the chair,
looking straight before her, utterly inert, her head thrown back, her
white throat gleaming, on her lips and in her eyes that flickering smile.
Not a word more, nor a look, passed between them.
Then rising, without noise, she passed behind him and went out.
Hilary had a feeling in his mouth as though he had been chewing ashes.
And a phrase--as phrases sometimes fill the spirit of a man without rhyme
or reason--kept forming on his lips: "The house of harmony!"
Presently he went to her door, and stood there listening. He could hear
no sound whatever. If she had been crying if she had been laughing--it
would have been better than this silence. He put his hands up to his
ears and ran down-stairs.
CHAPTER XIII
SOUND IN THE NIGHT
He passed his study door, and halted at Mr. Stone's; the thought of the
old man, so steady and absorbed in the face of all external things,
refreshed him.
Still in his brown woollen gown, Mr. Stone was sitting with his eyes
fixed on something in the corner, whence a little perfumed steam was
rising.
"Shut the door," he said; "I am making cocoa; will you have a cup?"
"Am I disturbing you?" asked Hilary.
Mr. Stone looked at him steadily before answering:
"If I work after cocoa, I find it clogs the liver."
"Then, if you'll let me, sir, I'll stay a little."
"It is boiling," said Mr. Stone. He took the saucepan off the flame,
and, distending his frail cheeks, blew. Then, while the steam mingled
with his frosty beard, he brought two cups from a cupboard, filled one of
them, and looked at Hilary.
"I should like you," he said, "to hear three or four pages I have just
completed; you may perhaps be able to suggest a word or two."
He placed the saucepan back on the stove, and grasped the cup he had
filled.
"I will drink my cocoa, and read them to you."
Going to the desk, he stood, blowing at the cup.
Hilary turned up the collar of his coat against the night wind which was
visiting the room, and glanced at the empty cup, for he was rather
hungry. He heard a curious sound: Mr. Stone was blowing his own tongue.
In his haste to read, he had drunk too soon and deeply of the cocoa.
"I have burnt my mouth," he said.
Hilary moved hastily towards him: "Badly? Try cold milk, sir."
Mr. Stone lifted the cup.
"There is none," he said, and drank again.
'What would I not give,' thought Hilary, 'to have his singleness of
heart!'
There was the sharp sound of a cup set down. Then, out of a rustling of
papers, a sort of droning rose:
"'The Proletariat--with a cynicism natural to those who really are in
want, and even amongst their leaders only veiled when these attained a
certain position in the public eye--desired indeed the wealth and leisure
of their richer neighbours, but in their long night of struggle with
existence they had only found the energy to formulate their pressing
needs from day to day. They were a heaving, surging sea of creatures,
slowly, without consciousness or real guidance, rising in long tidal
movements to set the limits of the shore a little farther back, and cast
afresh the form of social life; and on its pea-green bosom '" Mr. Stone
paused. "She has copied it wrong," he said; "the word is 'seagreen.'
'And on its sea-green bosom sailed a fleet of silver cockle-shells,
wafted by the breath of those not in themselves driven by the wind of
need. The voyage of these silver cockle-shells, all heading across each
other's bows, was, in fact, the advanced movement of that time. In the
stern of each of these little craft, blowing at the sails, was seated a
by-product of the accepted system. These by-products we should now
examine."
Mr. Stone paused, and looked into his cup. There were some grounds in
it. He drank them, and went on:
"'The fratricidal principle of the survival of the fittest, which in
those days was England's moral teaching, had made the country one huge
butcher's shop. Amongst the carcasses of countless victims there had
fattened and grown purple many butchers, physically strengthened by the
smell of blood and sawdust. These had begotten many children. Following
out the laws of Nature providing against surfeit, a proportion of these
children were born with a feeling of distaste for blood and sawdust; many
of them, compelled for the purpose of making money to follow in their
fathers' practices, did so unwillingly; some, thanks to their fathers'
butchery, were in a position to abstain from practising; but whether in
practice or at leisure, distaste for the scent of blood and sawdust was
the common feature that distinguished them. Qualities hitherto but
little known, and generally despised--not, as we shall see, without some
reason--were developed in them. Self-consciousness, aestheticism, a
dislike for waste, a hatred of injustice; these--or some one of these,
when coupled with that desire natural to men throughout all ages to
accomplish something--constituted the motive forces which enabled them to
work their bellows. In practical affairs those who were under the
necessity of labouring were driven, under the then machinery of social
life, to the humaner and less exacting kinds of butchery, such as the
Arts, Education, the practice of Religions and Medicine, and the paid
representation of their fellow-creatures. Those not so driven occupied
themselves in observing and complaining of the existing state of thing.
Each year saw more of their silver cockleshells putting out from port,
and the cheeks of those who blew the sails more violently distended.
Looking back on that pretty voyage, we see the reason why those ships
were doomed never to move, but, seated on the sea-green bosom of that
sea, to heave up and down, heading across each other's bows in the
self-same place for ever. That reason, in few words, was this: 'The man
who blew should have been in the sea, not on the ship.'"
The droning ceased. Hilary saw that Mr. Stone was staring fixedly at his
sheet of paper, as though the merits of this last sentence were
surprising him. The droning instantly began again: "'In social effort,
as in the physical processes of Nature, there had ever been a single
fertilising agent--the mysterious and wonderful attraction known as Love.
To this--that merging of one being in another--had been due all the
progressive variance of form, known by man under the name of Life. It
was this merger, this mysterious, unconscious Love, which was lacking to
the windy efforts of those who tried to sail that fleet. They were full
of reason, conscience, horror, full of impatience, contempt, revolt; but
they did not love the masses of their fellow-men. They could not fling
themselves into the sea. Their hearts were glowing; but the wind which
made them glow was not the salt and universal zephyr: it was the desert
wind of scorn. As with the flowering of the aloe-tree--so long awaited,
so strange and swift when once it comes--man had yet to wait for his
delirious impulse to Universal Brotherhood, and the forgetfulness of
Self.'"
Mr. Stone had finished, and stood gazing at his visitor with eyes that
clearly saw beyond him. Hilary could not meet those eyes; he kept his
own fixed on the empty cocoa cup. It was not, in fact, usual for those
who heard Mr. Stone read his manuscript to look him in the face. He
stood thus absorbed so long that Hilary rose at last, and glanced into
the saucepan. There was no cocoa in it. Mr. Stone had only made enough
for one. He had meant it for his visitor, but self-forgetfulness had
supervened.
"You know what happens to the aloe, sir, when it has flowered?" asked
Hilary with malice.
Mr. Stone moved, but did not answer.
"It dies," said Hilary.
"No," said Mr. Stone; "it is at peace."
"When is self at peace, sir? The individual is surely as immortal as the
universal. That is the eternal comedy of life."
"What is?" said Mr. Stone.
"The fight or game between the two."
Mr. Stone stood a moment looking wistfully at his son-in-law. He laid
down the sheet of manuscript. "It is time for me to do my exercises."
So saying, he undid the tasselled cord tied round the middle of his gown.
Hilary hastened to the door. From that point of vantage he looked back.
Divested of his gown and turned towards the window, Mr. Stone was already
rising on his toes, his arms were extended, his palms pressed hard
together in the attitude of prayer, his trousers slowly slipping down.
"One, two, three, four, five!" There was a sudden sound of breath
escaping....
In the corridor upstairs, flooded with moonlight from a window at the
end, Hilary stood listening again. The only sound that came to him was
the light snoring of Miranda, who slept in the bathroom, not caring to
lie too near to anyone. He went to his room, and for a long time sat
buried in thought; then, opening the side window, he leaned out. On the
trees of the next garden, and the sloping roofs of stables and outhouses,
the moonlight had come down like a flight of milk-white pigeons; with
outspread wings, vibrating faintly as though yet in motion, they covered
everything. Nothing stirred. A clock was striking two. Past that
flight of milk-white pigeons were black walls as yet unvisited. Then, in
the stillness, Hilary seemed to hear, deep and very faint, the sound as
of some monster breathing, or the far beating of muffed drums. From
every side of the pale sleeping town it seemed to come, under the moon's
cold glamour. It rose, and fell, and rose, with a weird, creepy rhythm,
like a groaning of the hopeless and hungry. A hansom cab rattled down
the High Street; Hilary strained his ears after the failing clatter of
hoofs and bell. They died; there was silence. Creeping nearer,
drumming, throbbing, he heard again the beating of that vast heart. It
grew and grew. His own heart began thumping. Then, emerging from that
sinister dumb groan, he distinguished a crunching sound, and knew that it
was no muttering echo of men's struggles, but only the waggons journeying
to Covent Garden Market.
CHAPTER XIV
A WALK ABROAD
Thyme Dallison, in the midst of her busy life, found leisure to record
her recollections and ideas in the pages of old school notebooks. She
had no definite purpose in so doing, nor did she desire the solace of
luxuriating in her private feelings--this she would have scorned as out
of date and silly. It was done from the fulness of youthful energy, and
from the desire to express oneself that was "in the air." It was
everywhere, that desire: among her fellow-students, among her young men
friends, in her mother's drawing-room, and her aunt's studio. Like
sentiment and marriage to the Victorian miss, so was this duty to express
herself to Thyme; and, going hand-in-hand with it, the duty to have a
good and jolly youth. She never read again the thoughts which she
recorded, she took no care to lock them up, knowing that her liberty,
development, and pleasure were sacred things which no one would dream of
touching--she kept them stuffed down in a drawer among her handkerchiefs
and ties and blouses, together with the indelible fragment of a pencil.
This journal, naive and slipshod, recorded without order the current
impression of things on her mind.
In the early morning of the 4th of May she sat, night-gowned, on the foot
of her white bed, with chestnut hair all fluffy about her neck, eyes
bright and cheeks still rosy with sleep, scribbling away and rubbing one
bare foot against the other in the ecstasy of self-expression. Now and
then, in the middle of a sentence, she would stop and look out of the
window, or stretch herself deliciously, as though life were too full of
joy for her to finish anything.
"I went into grandfather's room yesterday, and stayed while he was
dictating to the little model. I do think grandfather's so splendid.
Martin says an enthusiast is worse than useless; people, he says, can't
afford to dabble in ideas or dreams. He calls grandfather's idea
paleolithic. I hate him to be laughed at. Martin's so cocksure. I
don't think he'd find many men of eighty who'd bathe in the Serpentine
all the year round, and do his own room, cook his own food, and live on
about ninety pounds a year out of his pension of three hundred, and give
all the rest away. Martin says that's unsound, and the 'Book of
Universal Brotherhood' rot. I don't care if it is; it's fine to go on
writing it as he does all day. Martin admits that. That's the worst of
him: he's so cool, you can't score him off; he seems to be always
criticising you; it makes me wild.... That little model is a hopeless
duffer. I could have taken it all down in half the time. She kept
stopping and looking up with that mouth of hers half open, as if she had
all day before her. Grandfather's so absorbed he doesn't notice; he likes
to read the thing over and over, to hear how the words sound. That girl
would be no good at any sort of work, except 'sitting,' I suppose. Aunt
B. used to say she sat well. There's something queer about her face; it
reminds me a little of that Botticelli Madonna in the National Gallery,
the full-face one; not so much in the shape as in the expression--almost
stupid, and yet as if things were going to happen to her. Her hands and
arms are pretty, and her feet are smaller than mine. She's two years
older than me. I asked her why she went in for being a model, which is
beastly work. She said she was glad to get anything! I asked her why
she didn't go into a shop or into service. She didn't answer at once,
and then said she hadn't had any recommendations--didn't know where to
try; then, all of a sudden, she grew quite sulky, and said she didn't
want to...."
Thyme paused to pencil in a sketch of the little model's profile....
"She had on a really pretty frock, quite simple and well made--it must
have cost three or four pounds. She can't be so very badly off, or
somebody gave it her...."
And again Thyme paused.
"She looked ever so much prettier in it than she used to in her old brown
skirt, I thought .... Uncle Hilary came to dinner last night. We talked
of social questions; we always discuss things when he comes. I can't
help liking Uncle Hilary; he has such kind eyes, and he's so gentle that
you never lose your temper with him. Martin calls him weak and
unsatisfactory because he's not in touch with life. I should say it was
more as if he couldn't bear to force anyone to do anything; he seems to
see both sides of every question, and he's not good at making up his
mind, of course. He's rather like Hamlet might have been, only nobody
seems to know now what Hamlet was really like. I told him what I thought
about the lower classes. One can talk to him. I hate father's way of
making feeble little jokes, as if nothing were serious. I said I didn't
think it was any use to dabble; we ought to go to the root of everything.
I said that money and class distinctions are two bogeys we have got to
lay. Martin says, when it comes to real dealing with social questions
and the poor, all the people we know are amateurs. He says that we have
got to shake ourselves free of all the old sentimental notions, and just
work at putting everything to the test of Health. Father calls Martin a
'Sanitist'; and Uncle Hilary says that if you wash people by law they'll
all be as dirty again tomorrow...."
Thyme paused again. A blackbird in the garden of the Square was uttering
a long, low, chuckling trill. She ran to the window and peeped out. The
bird was on a plane-tree, and, with throat uplifted, was letting through
his yellow beak that delicious piece of self-expression. All things he
seemed to praise--the sky, the sun, the trees, the dewy grass, himself:
'You darling!' thought Thyme. With a shudder of delight she dropped her
notebook back into the drawer, flung off her nightgown, and flew into her
bath.
That same morning she slipped out quietly at ten o'clock. Her Saturdays
were free of classes, but she had to run the gauntlet of her mother's
liking for her company and her father's wish for her to go with him to
Richmond and play golf.
For on Saturdays Stephen almost always left the precincts of the Courts
before three o'clock. Then, if he could induce his wife or daughter to
accompany him, he liked to get a round or two in preparation for Sunday,
when he always started off at half-past ten and played all day. If
Cecilia and Thyme failed him, he would go to his club, and keep himself
in touch with every kind of social movement by reading the reviews.
Thyme walked along with her head up and a wrinkle in her brow, as though
she were absorbed in serious reflection; if admiring glances were flung
at her, she did not seem aware of them. Passing not far from Hilary's,
she entered the Broad Walk, and crossed it to the farther end.
On a railing, stretching out his long legs and observing the passers-by,
sat her cousin, Martin Stone. He got down as she came up.
"Late again," he said. "Come on!"
"Where are we going first?" Thyme asked.
"The Notting Hill district's all we can do to-day if we're to go again to
Mrs. Hughs'. I must be down at the hospital this afternoon."
Thyme frowned. "I do envy you living by yourself, Martin. It's silly
having to live at home."
Martin did not answer, but one nostril of his long nose was seen to
curve, and Thyme acquiesced in this without remark. They walked for some
minutes between tall houses, looking about them calmly. Then Martin
said: "All Purceys round here."
Thyme nodded. Again there was silence; but in these pauses there was no
embarrassment, no consciousness apparently that it was silence, and their
eyes--those young, impatient, interested eyes--were for ever busy
observing.
"Boundary line. We shall be in a patch directly."
"Black?" asked Thyme.
"Dark blue--black farther on."
They were passing down a long, grey, curving road, whose narrow houses,
hopelessly unpainted, showed marks of grinding poverty. The Spring wind
was ruffling straw and little bits of paper in the gutters; under the
bright sunlight a bleak and bitter struggle seemed raging. Thyme said:
"This street gives me a hollow feeling."
Martin nodded. "Worse than the real article. There's half a mile of
this. Here it's all grim fighting. Farther on they've given it up."
And still they went on up the curving street, with its few pinched shops
and its unending narrow grimness.
At the corner of a by-street Martin said: "We'll go down here."
Thyme stood still, wrinkling her nose. Martin eyed her.
"Don't funk!"
"I'm not funking, Martin, only I can't stand the smells."
"You'll have to get used to them."
"Yes, I know; but--but I forgot my eucalyptus."
The young man took out a handkerchief which had not yet been unfolded.
"Here, take mine."
"They do make me feel so--it's a shame to take yours," and she took the
handkerchief.
"That's all right," said Martin. "Come on!"
The houses of this narrow street, inside and out, seemed full of women.
Many of them had babies in their arms; they were working or looking out
of windows or gossiping on doorsteps. And all stopped to stare as the
young couple passed. Thyme stole a look at her companion. His long
stride had not varied; there was the usual pale, observant, sarcastic
expression on his face. Clenching the handkerchief in readiness, and
trying to imitate his callous air, she looked at a group of five women on
the nearest doorstep.
Three were seated and two were standing. One of these, a young woman
with a round, open face, was clearly very soon to have a child; the
other, with a short, dark face and iron-grey, straggling hair, was
smoking a clay pipe. Of the three seated, one, quite young, had a face
as grey white as a dirty sheet, and a blackened eye; the second, with her
ragged dress disarranged, was nursing a baby; the third, in the centre,
on the top step, with red arms akimbo, her face scored with drink, was
shouting friendly obscenities to a neighbour in the window opposite. In
Thyme's heart rose the passionate feeling, 'How disgusting! how
disgusting!' and since she did not dare to give expression to it, she bit
her lips and turned her head from them, resenting, with all a young
girl's horror, that her sex had given her away. The women stared at her,
and in those faces, according to their different temperaments, could be
seen first the same vague, hard interest that had been Thyme's when she
first looked at them, then the same secret hostility and criticism, as
though they too felt that by this young girl's untouched modesty, by her
gushed cheeks and unsoiled clothes, their sex had given them away. With
contemptuous movements of their lips and bodies, on that doorstep they
proclaimed their emphatic belief in the virtue and reality of their own
existences and in the vice and unreality of her intruding presence.
"Give the doll to Bill; 'e'd make 'er work for once, the---" In a burst
of laughter the epithet was lost.
Martin's lips curled.
"Purple just here," he said.
Thyme's cheeks were crimson.
At the end of the little street he stopped before a shop.
"Come on," he said, "you'll see the sort of place where they buy their
grub."
In the doorway were standing a thin brown spaniel, a small fair woman
with a high, bald forehead, from which the hair was gleaned into
curlpapers, and a little girl with some affection of the skin.
Nodding coolly, Martin motioned them aside. The shop was ten feet
square; its counters, running parallel to two of the walls, were covered
with plates of cake, sausages, old ham-bones, peppermint sweets, and
household soap; there was also bread, margarine, suet in bowls, sugar,
bloaters--many bloaters--Captain's biscuits, and other things besides.
Two or three dead rabbits hung against the wall. All was uncovered, so
that what flies there were sat feeding socialistically. Behind the
counter a girl of seventeen was serving a thin-faced woman with portions
of a cheese which she was holding down with her strong, dirty hand, while
she sawed it with a knife. On the counter, next the cheese, sat a
quiet-looking cat.
They all glanced round at the two young people, who stood and waited.
"Finish what you're at," said Martin, "then give me three pennyworth of
bull's-eyes."
The girl, with a violent effort, finished severing the cheese. The
thin-faced woman took it, and, coughing above it, went away. The girl,
who could not take her eyes off Thyme, now served them with three
pennyworth of bull's-eyes, which she took out with her fingers, for they
had stuck. Putting them in a screw of newspaper, she handed them to
Martin. The young man, who had been observing negligently, touched
Thyme's elbow. She, who had stood with eyes cast down, now turned. They
went out, Martin handing the bull's-eyes to the little girl with an
affection of the skin.
The street now ended in a wide road formed of little low houses.
"Black," said Martin, "here; all down this road-casual labour, criminals,
loafers, drunkards, consumps. Look at the faces!"
Thyme raised her eyes obediently. In this main thoroughfare it was not
as in the by-street, and only dull or sullen glances, or none at all,
were bent on her. Some of the houses had ragged plants on the
window-sills; in one window a canary was singing. Then, at a bend, they
came into a blacker reach of human river. Here were outbuildings, houses
with broken windows, houses with windows boarded up, fried-fish shops,
low public-houses, houses without doors. There were more men here than
women, and those men were wheeling barrows full of rags and bottles, or
not even full of rags and bottles; or they were standing by the
public-houses gossiping or quarrelling in groups of three or four; or
very slowly walking in the gutters, or on the pavements, as though trying
to remember if they were alive. Then suddenly some young man with gaunt
violence in his face would pass, pushing his barrow desperately, striding
fiercely by. And every now and then, from a fried-fish or hardware shop,
would come out a man in a dirty apron to take the sun and contemplate the
scene, not finding in it, seemingly, anything that in any way depressed
his spirit. Amongst the constant, crawling, shifting stream of passengers
were seen women carrying food wrapped up in newspaper, or with bundles
beneath their shawls. The faces of these women were generally either
very red and coarse or of a sort of bluish-white; they wore the
expression of such as know themselves to be existing in the way that
Providence has arranged they should exist. No surprise, revolt, dismay,
or shame was ever to be seen on those faces; in place of these emotions a
drab and brutish acquiescence or mechanical coarse jocularity. To pass
like this about their business was their occupation each morning of the
year; it was needful to accept it. Not having any hope of ever, being
different, not being able to imagine any other life, they were not so
wasteful of their strength as to attempt either to hope or to imagine.
Here and there, too, very slowly passed old men and women, crawling
along, like winter bees who, in some strange and evil moment, had
forgotten to die in the sunlight of their toil, and, too old to be of
use, had been chivied forth from their hive to perish slowly in the cold
twilight of their days.
Down the centre of the street Thyme saw a brewer's dray creeping its way
due south under the sun. Three horses drew it, with braided tails and
beribboned manes, the brass glittering on their harness. High up, like a
god, sat the drayman, his little slits of eyes above huge red cheeks
fixed immovably on his horses' crests. Behind him, with slow, unceasing
crunch, the dray rolled, piled up with hogsheads, whereon the drayman's
mate lay sleeping. Like the slumbrous image of some mighty unrelenting
Power, it passed, proud that its monstrous bulk contained all the joy and
blessing those shadows on the pavement had ever known.
The two young people emerged on to the high road running east and west.
"Cross here," said Martin, "and cut down into Kensington. Nothing more
of interest now till we get to Hound Street. Purceys and Purceys all
round about this part."
Thyme shook herself.
"O Martin, let's go down a road where there's some air. I feel so
dirty." She put her hand up to her chest.
"There's one here," said Martin.
They turned to the left into a road that had many trees. Now that she
could breathe and look about her, Thyme once more held her head erect and
began to swing her arms.
"Martin, something must be done!"
The young doctor did not reply; his face still wore its pale, sarcastic,
observant look. He gave her arm a squeeze with a half-contemptuous
smile.
CHAPTER XV
SECOND PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET
Arriving in Hound Street, Martin Stone and his companion went straight up
to Mrs. Hughs' front room. They found her doing the week's washing, and
hanging out before a scanty fire part of the little that the week had
been suffered to soil. Her arms were bare, her face and eyes red; the
steam of soapsuds had congealed on them.
Attached to the bolster by a towel, under his father's bayonet and the
oleograph depicting the Nativity, sat the baby. In the air there was the
scent of him, of walls, and washing, and red herrings. The two young
people took their seat on the window-sill.
"May we open the window, Mrs. Hughs?" said Thyme. "Or will it hurt the
baby?"
"No, miss."
"What's the matter with your wrists?" asked Martin.
The seamstress, muffing her arms with the garment she was dipping in
soapy water, did not answer.
"Don't do that. Let me have a look."
Mrs. Hughs held out her arms; the wrists were swollen and discoloured.
"The brute!" cried Thyme.
The young doctor muttered: "Done last night. Got any arnica?"
"No, Sir."
"Of course not." He laid a sixpence on the sill. "Get some and rub it
in. Mind you don't break the skin."
Thyme suddenly burst out: "Why don't you leave him, Mrs. Hughs? Why do
you live with a brute like that?"
Martin frowned.
"Any particular row," he said, "or only just the ordinary?"
Mrs. Hughs turned her face to the scanty fire. Her shoulders heaved
spasmodically.
Thus passed three minutes, then she again began rubbing the soapy
garment.
"If you don't mind, I'll smoke," said Martin. "What's your baby's name?
Bill? Here, Bill!" He placed his little finger in the baby's hand.
"Feeding him yourself?"
"Yes, sir."
"What's his number?"
"I've lost three, sir; there's only his brother Stanley now."
"One a year?"
"No, Sir. I missed two years in the war, of course."
"Hughs wounded out there?"
"Yes, sir--in the head."
"Ah! And fever?"
"Yes, Sir."
Martin tapped his pipe against his forehead. "Least drop of liquor goes
to it, I suppose?"
Mrs. Hughs paused in the dipping of a cloth; her tear-stained face
expressed resentment, as though she had detected an attempt to find
excuses for her husband.
"He didn't ought to treat me as he does," she said.
All three now stood round the bed, over which the baby presided with
solemn gaze.
Thyme said: "I wouldn't care what he did, Mrs. Hughs; I wouldn't stay
another day if I were you. It's your duty as a woman."
To hear her duty as a woman Mrs. Hughs turned; slow vindictiveness
gathered on her thin face.
"Yes, miss?" she said. "I don't know what to do.
"Take the children and go. What's the good of waiting? We'll give you
money if you haven't got enough."
But Mrs. Hughs did not answer.
"Well?" said Martin, blowing out a cloud of smoke.
Thyme burst out again: "Just go, the very minute your little boy comes
back from school. Hughs 'll never find you. It 'll serve him right. No
woman ought to put up with what you have; it's simply weakness, Mrs.
Hughs."
As though that word had forced its way into her very heart and set the
blood free suddenly, Mrs. Hughs' face turned the colour of tomatoes. She
poured forth words:
"And leave him to that young girl--and leave him to his wickedness! After
I've been his wife eight years and borne him five! after I've done what I
have for him! I never want no better husband than what he used to be,
till she came with her pale face and her prinky manners, and--and her
mouth that you can tell she's bad by. Let her keep to her
profession--sitting naked's what she's fit for--coming here to decent
folk---" And holding out her wrists to Thyme, who had shrunk back, she
cried: "He's never struck me before. I got these all because of her new
clothes!"
Hearing his mother speak with such strange passion, the baby howled. Mrs.
Hughs stopped, and took him up. Pressing him close to her thin bosom,
she looked above his little dingy head at the two young people.
"I got my wrists like this last night, wrestling with him. He swore he'd
go and leave me, but I held him, I did. And don't you ever think that
I'll let him go to that young girl--not if he kills me first!"
With those words the passion in her face died down. She was again a
meek, mute woman.
During this outbreak, Thyme, shrinking, stood by the doorway with lowered
eyes. She now looked up at Martin, clearly asking him to come away. The
latter had kept his gaze fixed on Mrs. Hughs, smoking silently. He took
his pipe out of his mouth, and pointed with it at the baby.
"This gentleman," he said, "can't stand too much of that."
In silence all three bent their eyes on the baby. His little fists, and
nose, and forehead, even his little naked, crinkled feet, were thrust
with all his feeble strength against his mother's bosom, as though he
were striving to creep into some hole away from life. There was a sort of
dumb despair in that tiny pushing of his way back to the place whence he
had come. His head, covered with dingy down, quivered with his effort to
escape. He had been alive so little; that little had sufficed. Martin
put his pipe back into his mouth.
"This won't do, you know," he said. "He can't stand it. And look here!
If you stop feeding him, I wouldn't give that for him tomorrow!" He held
up the circle of his thumb and finger. "You're the best judge of what
sort of chance you've got of going on in your present state of mind!"
Then, motioning to Thyme, he went down the stairs.
CHAPTER XVI
BENEATH THE ELMS
Spring was in the hearts of men, and their tall companions, trees. Their
troubles, the stiflings of each other's growth, and all such things,
seemed of little moment. Spring had them by the throat. It turned old
men round, and made them stare at women younger than themselves. It made
young men and women walking side by side touch each other, and every bird
on the branches tune his pipe. Flying sunlight speckled the fluttered
leaves, and gushed the cheeks of crippled boys who limped into the
Gardens, till their pale Cockney faces shone with a strange glow.
In the Broad Walk, beneath those dangerous trees, the elms, people sat
and took the sun--cheek by jowl, generals and nursemaids, parsons and the
unemployed. Above, in that Spring wind, the elm-tree boughs were
swaying, rustling, creaking ever so gently, carrying on the innumerable
talk of trees--their sapient, wordless conversation over the affairs of
men. It was pleasant, too, to see and hear the myriad movement of the
million little separate leaves, each shaped differently, flighting never
twice alike, yet all obedient to the single spirit of their tree.
Thyme and Martin were sitting on a seat beneath the largest of all the
elms. Their manner lacked the unconcern and dignity of the moment, when,
two hours before, they had started forth on their discovery from the
other end of the Broad Walk. Martin spoke:
"It's given you the hump! First sight of blood, and you're like all the
rest of them!"
"I'm not, Martin. How perfectly beastly of you!"
"Oh yes, you are. There's plenty of aestheticism about you and your
people--plenty of good intentions--but not an ounce of real business!"
"Don't abuse my people; they're just as kind as you!"
"Oh, they're kind enough, and they can see what's wrong. It's not that
which stops them. But your dad's a regular official. He's got so much
sense of what he ought not to do that he never does anything; Just as
Hilary's got so much consciousness of what he ought to do that he never
does anything. You went to that woman's this morning with your ideas of
helping her all cut and dried, and now that you find the facts aren't
what you thought, you're stumped!"
"One can't believe anything they say. That's what I hate. I thought
Hughs simply knocked her about. I didn't know it was her jealousy--"
"Of course you didn't. Do you imagine those people give anything away to
our sort unless they're forced? They know better."
"Well, I hate the whole thing--it's all so sordid!"
"O Lord!"
"Well, it is! I don't feel that I want to help a woman who can say and
feel such horrid things, or the girl, or any of them."
"Who cares what they say or feel? that's not the point. It's simply a
case of common sense: Your people put that girl there, and they must get
her to clear out again sharp. It's just a question of what's healthy."
"Well, I know it's not healthy for me to have anything to do with, and I
won't! I don't believe you can help people unless they want to be
helped."
Martin whistled.
"You're rather a brute, I think," said Thyme.
"A brute, not rather a brute. That's all the difference."
"For the worse!"
"I don't think so, Thyme!"
There was no answer.
"Look at me."
Very slowly Thyme turned her eyes.
"Well?"
"Are you one of us, or are you not?"
"Of course I am."
"You're not!"
"I am."
"Well, don't let's fight about it. Give me your hand."
He dropped his hand on hers. Her face had flushed rose colour. Suddenly
she freed herself. "Here's Uncle Hilary!"
It was indeed Hilary, with Miranda, trotting in advance. His hands were
crossed behind him, his face bent towards the ground. The two young
people on the bench sat looking at him.
"Buried in self-contemplation," murmured Martin; "that's the way he
always walks. I shall tell him about this!"
The colour of Thyme's face deepened from rose to crimson.
"No!"
"Why not?"
"Well--those new---" She could not bring out that word "clothes." It
would have given her thoughts away.
Hilary seemed making for their seat, but Miranda, aware of Martin,
stopped. "A man of action!" she appeared to say. "The one who pulls my
ears." And turning, as though unconscious, she endeavoured to lead
Hilary away. Her master, however, had already seen his niece. He came
and sat down on the bench beside her.
"We wanted you!" said Martin, eyeing him slowly, as a young dog will eye
another of a different age and breed. "Thyme and I have been to see the
Hughs in Hound Street. Things are blowing up for a mess. You, or whoever
put the girl there, ought to get her away again as quick as possible."
Hilary seemed at once to withdraw into himself.
"Well," he said, "let us hear all about it."
"The woman's jealous of her: that's all the trouble!"
"Oh!" said Hilary; "that's all the trouble?"
Thyme murmured: "I don't see a bit why Uncle Hilary should bother. If
they will be so horrid--I didn't think the poor were like that. I didn't
think they had it in them. I'm sure the girl isn't worth it, or the
woman either!"
"I didn't say they were," growled Martin. "It's a question of what's
healthy."
Hilary looked from one of his young companions to the other.
"I see," he said. "I thought perhaps the matter was more delicate."
Martin's lip curled.'
"Ah, your precious delicacy! What's the good of that? What did it ever
do? It's the curse that you're all suffering from. Why don't you act?
You could think about it afterwards."
A flush came into Hilary's sallow cheeks.
"Do you never think before you act, Martin?"
Martin got up and stood looking down on Hilary.
"Look here!" he said; "I don't go in for your subtleties. I use my eyes
and nose. I can see that the woman will never be able to go on feeding
the baby in the neurotic state she's in. It's a matter of health for
both of them."
"Is everything a matter of health with you?"
"It is. Take any subject that you like. Take the poor themselves
--what's wanted? Health. Nothing on earth but health! The discoveries
and inventions of the last century have knocked the floor out of the old
order; we've got to put a new one in, and we're going to put it in,
too--the floor of health. The crowd doesn't yet see what it wants, but
they're looking for it, and when we show it them they'll catch on fast
enough."
"But who are 'you'?" murmured Hilary.
"Who are we? I'll tell you one thing. While all the reformers are
pecking at each other we shall quietly come along and swallow up the lot.
We've simply grasped this elementary fact, that theories are no basis for
reform. We go on the evidence of our eyes and noses; what we see and
smell is wrong we correct by practical and scientific means."
"Will you apply that to human nature?"
"It's human nature to want health."
"I wonder! It doesn't look much like it at present."
"Take the case of this woman."
"Yes," said Hilary, "take her case. You can't make this too clear to me,
Martin."
"She's no use--poor sort altogether. The man's no use. A man who's been
wounded in the head, and isn't a teetotaller, is done for. The girl's no
use--regular pleasure-loving type!"
Thyme flushed crimson, and, seeing that flood of colour in his niece's
face, Hilary bit his lips.
"The only things worth considering are the children. There's this
baby-well, as I said, the important thing is that the mother should be
able to look after it properly. Get hold of that, and let the other
facts go hang."
"Forgive me, but my difficulty is to isolate this question of the baby's
health from all the other circumstances of the case."
Martin grinned.
"And you'll make that an excuse, I'm certain, for doing nothing."
Thyme slipped her hand into Hilary's.
"You are a brute, Martin," she-murmured.
The young man turned on her a look that said: 'It's no use calling me a
brute; I'm proud of being one. Besides, you know you don't dislike it.'
"It's better to be a brute than an amateur," he said.
Thyme, pressing close to Hilary, as though he needed her protection,
cried out:
"Martin, you really are a Goth!"
Hilary was still smiling, but his face quivered.
"Not at all," he said. "Martin's powers of diagnosis do him credit."
And, raising his hat, he walked away.
The two young people, both on their feet now, looked after him. Martin's
face was a queer study of contemptuous compunction; Thyme's was startled,
softened, almost tearful.
"It won't do him any harm," muttered the young man. "It'll shake him
up."
Thyme flashed a vicious look at him.
"I hate you sometimes," she said. "You're so coarse-grained--your skin's
just like leather."
Martin's hand descended on her wrist.
"And yours," he said, "is tissue-paper. You're all the same, you
amateurs."
"I'd rather be an amateur than a--than a bounder!"
Martin made a queer movement of his jaw, then smiled. That smile seemed
to madden Thyme. She wrenched her wrist away and darted after Hilary.
Martin impassively looked after her. Taking out his pipe, he filled it
with tobacco, slowly pressing the golden threads down into the bowl with
his little finger.
CHAPTER XVII
TWO BROTHERS
If has been said that Stephen Dallison, when unable to get his golf on
Saturdays, went to his club, and read reviews. The two forms of
exercise, in fact, were very similar: in playing golf you went round and
round; in reading reviews you did the same, for in course of time you
were assured of coming to articles that, nullified articles already read.
In both forms of sport the balance was preserved which keeps a man both
sound and young.
And to be both sound and young was to Stephen an everyday necessity. He
was essentially a Cambridge man, springy and undemonstrative, with just
that air of taking a continual pinch of really perfect snuff. Underneath
this manner he was a good worker, a good husband, a good father, and
nothing could be urged against him except his regularity and the fact
that he was never in the wrong. Where he worked, and indeed in other
places, many men were like him. In one respect he resembled them,
perhaps, too much--he disliked leaving the ground unless he knew
precisely where he was coming down again.
He and Cecilia had "got on" from the first. They had both desired to
have one child--no more; they had both desired to keep up with the
times--no more; they now both considered Hilary's position awkward--no
more; and when Cecilia, in the special Jacobean bed, and taking care to
let him have his sleep out first, had told him of this matter of the
Hughs, they had both turned it over very carefully, lying on their backs,
and speaking in grave tones. Stephen was of opinion that poor old Hilary
must look out what he was doing. Beyond this he did not go, keeping even
from his wife the more unpleasant of what seemed to him the
possibilities.
Then, in the words she had used to Hilary, Cecilia spoke:
"It's so sordid, Stephen."
He looked at her, and almost with one accord they both said:
"But it's all nonsense!"
These speeches, so simultaneous, stimulated them to a robuster view. What
was this affair, if real, but the sort of episode that they read of in
their papers? What was it, if true, but a duplicate of some bit of
fiction or drama which they daily saw described by that word "sordid"?
Cecilia, indeed, had used this word instinctively. It had come into her
mind at once. The whole affair disturbed her ideals of virtue and good
taste--that particular mental atmosphere mysteriously, inevitably woven
round the soul by the conditions of special breeding and special life.
If, then, this affair were real it was sordid, and if it were sordid it
was repellent to suppose that her family could be mixed up in it; but her
people were mixed up in it, therefore it must be--nonsense!
So the matter rested until Thyme came back from her visit to her
grandfather, and told them of the little model's new and pretty clothes.
When she detailed this news they were all sitting at dinner, over the
ordering of which Cecilia's loyalty had been taxed till her little
headache came, so that there might be nothing too conventional to
over-nourish Stephen or so essentially aesthetic as not to nourish him at
all. The man servant being in the room, they neither of them raised
their eyes. But when he was gone to fetch the bird, each found the other
looking furtively across the table. By some queer misfortune the word
"sordid" had leaped into their minds again. Who had given her those
clothes? But feeling that it was sordid to pursue this thought, they
looked away, and, eating hastily, began pursuing it. Being man and
woman, they naturally took a different line of chase, Cecilia hunting in
one grove and Stephen in another.
Thus ran Stephen's pack of meditations:
'If old Hilary has been giving her money and clothes and that sort of
thing, he's either a greater duffer than I took him for, or there's
something in it. B.'s got herself to thank, but that won't help to keep
Hughs quiet. He wants money, I expect. Oh, damn!'
Cecilia's pack ran other ways:
'I know the girl can't have bought those things out of her proper
earnings. I believe she's a really bad lot. I don't like to think it,
but it must be so. Hilary can't have been so stupid after what I said to
him. If she really is bad, it simplifies things very much; but Hilary is
just the sort of man who will never believe it. Oh dear!'
It was, to be quite fair, immensely difficult for Stephen and his
wife--or any of their class and circle--in spite of genuinely good
intentions, to really feel the existence of their "shadows," except in so
far as they saw them on the pavements. They knew that these people
lived, because they saw them, but they did not feel it--with such
extraordinary care had the web of social life been spun. They were, and
were bound to be, as utterly divorced from understanding of, or faith in,
all that shadowy life, as those "shadows" in their by-streets were from
knowledge or belief that gentlefolk really existed except in so far as
they had money from them.
Stephen and Cecilia, and their thousands, knew these "shadows" as "the
people," knew them as slums, as districts, as sweated industries, of
different sorts of workers, knew them in the capacity of persons
performing odd jobs for them; but as human beings possessing the same
faculties and passions with themselves, they did not, could not, know
them. The reason, the long reason, extending back through generations,
was so plain, so very simple, that it was never mentioned--in their heart
of hearts, where there was no room for cant, they knew it to be just a
little matter of the senses. They knew that, whatever they might say,
whatever money they might give, or time devote, their hearts could never
open, unless--unless they closed their ears, and eyes, and noses. This
little fact, more potent than all the teaching of philosophers, than
every Act of Parliament, and all the sermons ever preached, reigned
paramount, supreme. It divided class from class, man from his shadow--as
the Great Underlying Law had set dark apart from light.
On this little fact, too gross to mention, they and their kind had in
secret built and built, till it was not too much to say that laws,
worship, trade, and every art were based on it, if not in theory, then in
fact. For it must not be thought that those eyes were dull or that nose
plain--no, no, those eyes could put two and two together; that nose, of
myriad fancy, could imagine countless things unsmelled which must lie
behind a state of life not quite its own. It could create, as from the
scent of an old slipper dogs create their masters.
So Stephen and Cecilia sat, and their butler brought in the bird. It was
a nice one, nourished down in Surrey, and as he cut it into portions the
butler's soul turned sick within him--not because he wanted some himself,
or was a vegetarian, or for any sort of principle, but because he was by
natural gifts an engineer, and deadly tired of cutting up and handing
birds to other people and watching while they ate them. Without a
glimmer of expression on his face he put the portions down before the
persons who, having paid him to do so, could not tell his thoughts.
That same night, after working at a Report on the present Laws of
Bankruptcy, which he was then drawing up, Stephen entered the joint
apartment with excessive caution, having first made all his dispositions,
and, stealing to the bed, slipped into it. He lay there, offering
himself congratulations that he had not awakened Cecilia, and Cecilia,
who was wide awake, knew by his unwonted carefulness that he had come to
some conclusion which he did not wish to impart to her. Devoured,
therefore, by disquiet, she lay sleepless till the clock struck two.
The conclusion to which Stephen had come was this: Having twice gone
through the facts--Hilary's corporeal separation from Bianca
(communicated to him by Cecilia), cause unknowable; Hilary's interest in
the little model, cause unknown; her known poverty; her employment by Mr.
Stone; her tenancy of Mrs. Hughs' room; the latter's outburst to Cecilia;
Hughs' threat; and, finally, the girl's pretty clothes--he had summed it
up as just a common "plant," to which his brother's possibly innocent,
but in any case imprudent, conduct had laid him open. It was a man's
affair. He resolutely tried to look on the whole thing as unworthy of
attention, to feel that nothing would occur. He failed dismally, for
three reasons. First, his inherent love of regularity, of having
everything in proper order; secondly, his ingrained mistrust of and
aversion from Bianca; thirdly, his unavowed conviction, for all his wish
to be sympathetic to them, that the lower classes always wanted something
out of you. It was a question of how much they would want, and whether
it were wise to give them anything. He decided that it would not be wise
at all. What then? Impossible to say. It worried him. He had a natural
horror of any sort of scandal, and he was very fond of Hilary. If only
he knew the attitude Bianca would take up! He could not even guess it.
Thus, on that Saturday afternoon, the 4th of May, he felt for once such a
positive aversion from the reading of reviews, as men will feel from
their usual occupations when their nerves have been disturbed. He stayed
late at Chambers, and came straight home outside an omnibus.
The tide of life was flowing in the town. The streets were awash with
wave on wave of humanity, sucked into a thousand crossing currents. Here
men and women were streaming out from the meeting of a religious
congress, there streaming in at the gates of some social function; like
bright water confined within long shelves of rock and dyed with myriad
scales of shifting colour, they thronged Rotten Row, and along the closed
shop-fronts were woven into an inextricable network of little human
runlets. And everywhere amongst this sea of men and women could be seen
their shadows, meandering like streaks of grey slime stirred up from the
lower depths by some huge, never-ceasing finger. The innumerable roar of
that human sea climbed out above the roofs and trees, and somewhere in
illimitable space blended, and slowly reached the meeting-point of sound
and silence--that Heart where Life, leaving its little forms and
barriers, clasps Death, and from that clasp springs forth new-formed,
within new barriers.
Above this crowd of his fellow-creatures, Stephen drove, and the same
Spring wind which had made the elm-trees talk, whispered to him, and
tried to tell him of the million flowers it had fertilised, the million
leaves uncurled, the million ripples it had awakened on the sea, of the
million flying shadows flung by it across the Downs, and how into men's
hearts its scent had driven a million longings and sweet pains.
It was but moderately successful, for Stephen, like all men of culture
and neat habits, took Nature only at those moments when he had gone out
to take her, and of her wild heart he had a secret fear.
On his own doorstep he encountered Hilary coming out.
"I ran across Thyme and Martin in the Gardens," the latter said. "Thyme
brought me back to lunch, and here I've been ever since."
"Did she bring our young Sanitist in too?" asked Stephen dubiously.
"No," said Hilary.
"Good! That young man gets on my nerves." Taking his elder brother by
the arm, he added: "Will you come in again, old boy, or shall we go for a
stroll?"
"A stroll," said Hilary.
Though different enough, perhaps because they were so different, these
two brothers had the real affection for each other which depends on
something deeper and more elementary than a similarity of sentiments, and
is permanent because unconnected with the reasoning powers.
It depended on the countless times they had kissed and wrestled as tiny
boys, slept in small beds alongside, refused-to "tell" about each other,
and even now and then taken up the burden of each other's peccadilloes.
They might get irritated or tired of being in each other's company, but
it would have been impossible for either to have been disloyal to the
other in any circumstances, because of that traditional loyalty which
went back to their cribs.
Preceded by Miranda, they walked along the flower walk towards the Park,
talking of indifferent things, though in his heart each knew well enough
what was in the other's.
Stephen broke through the hedge.
"Cis has been telling me," he said, "that this man Hughs is making
trouble of some sort."
Hilary nodded.
Stephen glanced a little anxiously at his brother's face; it struck him
as looking different, neither so gentle nor so impersonal as usual.
"He's a ruffian, isn't he?"
"I can't tell you," Hilary answered. "Probably not."
"He must be, old chap," murmured Stephen. Then, with a friendly pressure
of his brother's arm, he added: "Look here, old boy, can I be of any
use?"
"In what?" asked Hilary.
Stephen took a hasty mental view of his position; he had been in danger
of letting Hilary see that he suspected him. Frowning slightly, and with
some colour in his clean-shaven face, he said:
"Of course, there's nothing in it."
"In what?" said Hilary again.
"In what this ruffian says."
"No," said Hilary, "there's nothing in it, though what there may be if
people give me credit for what there isn't, is another thing."
Stephen digested this remark, which hurt him. He saw that his suspicions
had been fathomed, and this injured his opinion of his own diplomacy.
"You mustn't lose your head, old man," he said at last.
They were crossing the bridge over the Serpentine. On the bright waters,
below, young clerks were sculling their inamoratas up and down; the
ripples set free by their oars gleamed beneath the sun, and ducks swam
lazily along the banks. Hilary leaned over.
"Look here, Stephen, I take an interest in this child--she's a helpless
sort of little creature, and she seems to have put herself under my
protection. I can't help that. But that's all. Do you understand?"
This speech produced a queer turmoil in Stephen, as though his brother
had accused him of a petty view of things. Feeling that he must justify
himself somehow, he began:
"Oh, of course I understand, old boy! But don't think, anyway, that I
should care a damn--I mean as far as I'm concerned--even if you had gone
as far as ever you liked, considering what you have to put up with. What
I'm thinking of is the general situation."
By this clear statement of his point of view Stephen felt he had put
things back on a broad basis, and recovered his position as a man of
liberal thought. He too leaned over, looking at the ducks. There was a
silence. Then Hilary said:
"If Bianca won't get that child into some fresh place, I shall."
Stephen looked at his brother in surprise, amounting almost to dismay; he
had spoken with such unwonted resolution.
"My dear old chap," he said, "I wouldn't go to B. Women are so funny."
Hilary smiled. Stephen took this for a sign of restored impersonality.
"I'll tell you exactly how the thing appeals to me. It'll be much better
for you to chuck it altogether. Let Cis see to it!"
Hilary's eyes became bright with angry humour.
"Many thanks," he said, "but this is entirely our affair."
Stephen answered hastily:
"That's exactly what makes it difficult for you to look at it all round.
That fellow Hughs could make himself quite nasty. I wouldn't give him
any sort of chance. I mean to say--giving the girl clothes and that kind
of thing---"
"I see," said Hilary.
"You know, old man," Stephen went on hastily, "I don't think you'll get
Bianca to look at things in your light. If you were on--on terms, of
course it would be different. I mean the girl, you know, is rather
attractive in her way."
Hilary roused himself from contemplation of the ducks, and they moved on
towards the Powder Magazine. Stephen carefully abstained from looking at
his brother; the respect he had for Hilary--result, perhaps, of the
latter's seniority, perhaps of the feeling that Hilary knew more of him
than he of Hilary--was beginning to assert itself in a way he did not
like. With every word, too, of this talk, the ground, instead of growing
firmer, felt less and less secure. Hilary spoke:
"You mistrust my powers of action?"
"No, no," said Stephen. "I don't want you to act at all."
Hilary laughed. Hearing that rather bitter laugh, Stephen felt a little
ache about his heart.
"Come, old boy," he said, "we can trust each other, anyway."
Hilary gave his brother's arm a squeeze.
Moved by that pressure, Stephen spoke:
"I hate you to be worried over such a rotten business."
The whizz of a motor-car rapidly approaching them became a sort of roar,
and out of it a voice shouted: "How are you?" A hand was seen to rise in
salute. It was Mr. Purcey driving his A.i. Damyer back to Wimbledon.
Before him in the sunlight a little shadow fled; behind him the reek of
petrol seemed to darken the road.
"There's a symbol for you," muttered Hilary.
"How do you mean?" said Stephen dryly. The word "symbol" was
distasteful to him.
"The machine in the middle moving on its business; shadows like you and
me skipping in front; oil and used-up stuff dropping behind.
Society-body, beak, and bones."
Stephen took time to answer. "That's rather far-fetched," he said. "You
mean these Hughs and people are the droppings?"
"Quite so," was Hilary's sardonic answer. "There's the body of that
fellow and his car between our sort and them--and no getting over it,
Stevie."
"Well, who wants to? If you're thinking of our old friend's Fraternity,
I'm not taking any." And Stephen suddenly added: "Look here, I believe
this affair is all 'a plant.'"
"You see that Powder Magazine?" said Hilary. "Well, this business that
you call a 'plant' is more like that. I don't want to alarm you, but I
think you as well as our young friend Martin, are inclined to underrate
the emotional capacity of human nature."
Disquietude broke up the customary mask on Stephen's face: "I don't
understand," he stammered.
"Well, we're none of us machines, not even amateurs like me--not even
under-dogs like Hughs. I fancy you may find a certain warmth, not to say
violence, about this business. I tell you frankly that I don't live in
married celibacy quite with impunity. I can't answer for anything, in
fact. You had better stand clear, Stephen--that's all."
Stephen marked his thin hands quivering, and this alarmed him as nothing
else had done.
They walked on beside the water. Stephen spoke quietly, looking at the
ground. "How can I stand clear, old man, if you are going to get into a
mess? That's impossible."
He saw at once that this shot, which indeed was from his heart, had gone
right home to Hilary's. He sought within him how to deepen the
impression.
"You mean a lot to us," he said. "Cis and Thyme would feel it awfully if
you and B.---" He stopped.
Hilary was looking at him; that faintly smiling glance, searching him
through and through, suddenly made Stephen feel inferior. He had been
detected trying to extract capital from the effect of his little piece of
brotherly love. He was irritated at his brother's insight.
"I have no right to give advice, I suppose," he said; "but in my opinion
you should drop it--drop it dead. The girl is not worth your looking
after. Turn her over to that Society--Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's thing
whatever it's called."
At a sound as of mirth Stephen, who was not accustomed to hear his
brother laugh, looked round.
"Martin," said Hilary, "also wants the case to be treated on strictly
hygienic grounds."
Nettled by this, Stephen answered:
"Don't confound me with our young Sanitist, please; I simply think there
are probably a hundred things you don't know about the girl which ought
to be cleared up."
"And then?"
"Then," said Stephen, "they could--er--deal with her accordingly."
Hilary shrank so palpably at this remark that he added rather hastily:
"You call that cold-blooded, I suppose; but I think, you know, old chap,
that you're too sensitive."
Hilary stopped rather abruptly.
"If you don't mind, Stevie," he said, "we'll part here. I want to think
it over." So saying, he turned back, and sat down on a seat that faced
the sun.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PERFECT DOG
Hilary sat long in the sun, watching the pale bright waters and many
well-bred ducks circling about the shrubs, searching with their round,
bright eyes for worms. Between the bench where he was sitting and the
spiked iron railings people passed continually--men, women, children of
all kinds. Every now and then a duck would stop and cast her knowing
glance at these creatures, as though comparing the condition of their
forms and plumage with her own. 'If I had had the breeding of you,' she
seemed to say, 'I could have made a better fist of it than that. A
worse-looking lot of ducks, take you all round. I never wish to see!' And
with a quick but heavy movement of her shoulders, she would turn away and
join her fellows.
Hilary, however, got small distraction from the ducks. The situation
gradually developing was something of a dilemma to a man better
acquainted with ideas than facts, with the trimming of words than with
the shaping of events. He turned a queer, perplexed, almost quizzical
eye on it. Stephen had irritated him profoundly. He had such a way of
pettifying things! Yet, in truth, the affair would seem ridiculous
enough to an ordinary observer. What would a man of sound common sense,
like Mr. Purcey, think of it? Why not, as Stephen had suggested, drop
it? Here, however, Hilary approached the marshy ground of feeling.
To give up befriending a helpless girl the moment he found himself
personally menaced was exceedingly distasteful. But would she be
friendless? Were there not, in Stephen's words, a hundred things he did
not know about her? Had she not other resources? Had she not a story?
But here, too, he was hampered by his delicacy: one did not pry into the
private lives of others!
The matter, too, was hopelessly complicated by the domestic troubles of
the Hughs family. No conscientious man--and whatever Hilary lacked, no
one ever accused him of a lack of conscience--could put aside that aspect
of the case.
Wandering among these reflections were his thoughts about Bianca. She was
his wife. However he might feel towards her now, whatever their
relations, he must not put her in a false position. Far from wishing to
hurt her, he desired to preserve her, and everyone, from trouble and
annoyance. He had told Stephen that his interest in the girl was purely
protective. But since the night when, leaning out into the moonlight, he
heard the waggons coming in to Covent Garden Market, a strange feeling
had possessed him--the sensation of a man who lies, with a touch of fever
on him, listening to the thrum of distant music--sensuous, not
unpleasurable.
Those who saw him sitting there so quietly, with his face resting on his
hand, imagined, no doubt, that he was wrestling with some deep, abstract
proposition, some great thought to be given to mankind; for there was
that about Hilary which forced everyone to connect him instantly with the
humaner arts.
The sun began to leave the long pale waters.
A nursemaid and two children came and sat down beside him. Then it was
that, underneath his seat, Miranda found what she had been looking for
all her life. It had no smell, made no movement, was pale-grey in
colour, like herself. It had no hair that she could find; its tail was
like her own; it took no liberties, was silent, had no passions,
committed her to nothing. Standing a few inches from its head, closer
than she had ever been of her free will to any dog, she smelt its
smellessness with a long, delicious snuffling, wrinkling up the skin on
her forehead, and through her upturned eyes her little moonlight soul
looked forth. 'How unlike you are,' she seemed to say, 'to all the other
dogs I know! I would love to live with you. Shall I ever find a dog
like you again? "The latest-sterilised cloth--see white label
underneath: 4s. 3d.!"' Suddenly she slithered out her slender grey-pink
tongue and licked its nose. The creature moved a little way and stopped.
Miranda saw that it had wheels. She lay down close to it, for she knew
it was the perfect dog.
Hilary watched the little moonlight lady lying vigilant, affectionate,
beside this perfect dog, who could not hurt her. She panted slightly,
and her tongue showed between her lips. Presently behind his seat he saw
another idyll. A thin white spaniel had come running up. She lay down
in the grass quite close, and three other dogs who followed, sat and
looked at her. A poor, dirty little thing she was, who seemed as if she
had not seen a home for days. Her tongue lolled out, she panted
piteously, and had no collar. Every now and then she turned her eyes,
but though they were so tired and desperate, there was a gleam in them.
'For all its thirst and hunger and exhaustion, this is life!' they seemed
to say. The three dogs, panting too, and watching till it should be her
pleasure to begin to run again, seemed with their moist, loving eyes to
echo: 'This is life!'
Because of this idyll, people near were moving on.
And suddenly the thin white spaniel rose, and, like a little harried
ghost, slipped on amongst the trees, and the three dogs followed her.
CHAPTER XIX
BIANCA
In her studio that afternoon Blanca stood before her picture of the
little model--the figure with parted pale-red lips and haunting,
pale-blue eyes, gazing out of shadow into lamplight.
She was frowning, as though resentful of a piece of work which had the
power to kill her other pictures. What force had moved her to paint like
that? What had she felt while the girl was standing before her, still as
some pale flower placed in a cup of water? Not love--there was no love
in the presentment of that twilight figure; not hate--there was no hate
in the painting of her dim appeal. Yet in the picture of this shadow
girl, between the gloom and glimmer, was visible a spirit, driving the
artist on to create that which had the power to haunt the mind.
Blanca turned away and went up to a portrait of her husband, painted ten
years before. She looked from one picture to the other, with eyes as
hard and stabbing as the points of daggers.
In the more poignant relationships of human life there is a point beyond
which men and women do not quite truthfully analyse their feelings--they
feel too much. It was Blanca's fortune, too, to be endowed to excess
with that quality which, of all others, most obscures the real
significance of human issues. Her pride had kept her back from Hilary,
till she had felt herself a failure. Her pride had so revolted at that
failure that she had led the way to utter estrangement. Her pride had
forced her to the attitude of one who says "Live your own life; I should
be ashamed to let you see that I care what happens between us." Her
pride had concealed from her the fact that beneath her veil of mocking
liberality there was an essential woman tenacious of her dues, avid of
affection and esteem. Her pride prevented the world from guessing that
there was anything amiss. Her pride even prevented Hilary from really
knowing what had spoiled his married life--this ungovernable itch to be
appreciated, governed by ungovernable pride. Hundreds of times he had
been baffled by the hedge round that disharmonic nature. With each
failure something had shrivelled in him, till the very roots of his
affection had dried up. She had worn out a man who, to judge from his
actions and appearance, was naturally long-suffering to a fault. Beneath
all manner of kindness and consideration for each other--for their good
taste, at all events, had never given way--this tragedy of a woman, who
wanted to be loved, slowly killing the power of loving her in the man,
had gone on year after year. It had ceased to be tragedy, as far as
Hilary was concerned; the nerve of his love for her was quite dead,
slowly frozen out of him. It was still active tragedy with Bianca, the
nerve of whose jealous desire for his appreciation was not dead. Her
instinct, too, ironically informed her that, had he been a man with some
brutality, a man who had set himself to ride and master her, instead of
one too delicate, he might have trampled down the hedge. This gave her a
secret grudge against him, a feeling that it was not she who was to
blame.
Pride was Bianca's fate, her flavour, and her charm. Like a shadowy
hill-side behind glamorous bars of waning sunlight, she was enveloped in
smiling pride--mysterious; one thinks, even to herself. This pride of
hers took part even in her many generous impulses, kind actions which she
did rather secretly and scoffed at herself for doing. She scoffed at
herself continually, even for putting on dresses of colours which Hilary
was fond of. She would not admit her longing to attract him.
Standing between those two pictures, pressing her mahl-stick against her
bosom, she suggested somewhat the image of an Italian saint forcing the
dagger of martyrdom into her heart.
That other person, who had once brought the thought of Italy into
Cecilia's mind--the man Hughs--had been for the last eight hours or so
walking the streets, placing in a cart the refuses of Life; nor had he at
all suggested the aspect of one tortured by the passions of love and
hate: For the first two hours he had led the horse without expression of
any sort on his dark face, his neat soldier's figure garbed in the
costume which had made "Westminister" describe him as a "dreadful
foreign-lookin' man." Now and then he had spoken to the horse; save for
those speeches, of no great importance, he had been silent. For the next
two hours, following the cart, he had used a shovel, and still his
square, short face, with little black moustache and still blacker eyes,
had given no sign of conflict in his breast. So he had passed the day.
Apart from the fact, indeed, that men of any kind are not too given to
expose private passions to public gaze, the circumstances of a life
devoted from the age of twenty onwards to the service of his country,
first as a soldier, now in the more defensive part of Vestry scavenger,
had given him a kind of gravity. Life had cloaked him with passivity--the
normal look of men whose bread and cheese depends on their not caring
much for anything. Had Hughs allowed his inclinations play, or sought to
express himself, he could hardly have been a private soldier; still less,
on his retirement from that office with an honourable wound, would he
have been selected out of many others as a Vestry scavenger. For such an
occupation as the lifting from the streets of the refuses of Life--a
calling greatly sought after, and, indeed, one of the few open to a man
who had served his country--charm of manner, individuality, or the
engaging quality of self-expression, were perhaps out of place.
He had never been trained in the voicing of his thoughts, and, ever since
he had been wounded, felt at times a kind of desperate looseness in his
head. It was not, therefore, remarkable that he should be liable to
misconstruction, more especially by those who had nothing in common with
him, except that somewhat negligible factor, common humanity. The
Dallisons had misconstrued him as much as, but no more than, he had
misconstrued them when, as "Westminister" had informed Hilary, he "went
on against the gentry." He was, in fact, a ragged screen, a broken
vessel, that let light through its holes. A glass or two of beer, the
fumes of which his wounded head no longer dominated, and he at once
became "dreadful foreign." Unfortunately, it was his custom, on
finishing his work, to call at the "Green Glory." On this particular
afternoon the glass had become three, and in sallying forth he had felt a
confused sense of duty urging him to visit the house where this girl for
whom he had conceived his strange infatuation "carried on her games."
The "no-tale-bearing" tradition of a soldier fought hard with this sense
of duty; his feelings were mixed when he rang the bell and asked for Mrs.
Dallison. Habit, however, masked his face, and he stood before her at
"attention," his black eyes lowered, clutching his peaked cap.
Blanca noted curiously the scar on the left side of his cropped black
head.
Whatever Hughs had to say was not said easily.
"I've come," he began at last in a dogged voice, "to let you know. I
never wanted to come into this house. I never wanted to see no one."
Blanca could see his lips and eyelids quivering in a way strangely out of
keeping with his general stolidity.
"My wife has told you tales of me, I suppose. She's told you I knock her
about, I daresay. I don't care what she tells you or any o' the people
that she works for. But this I'll say: I never touched her but she
touched me first. Look here! that's marks of hers!" and, drawing up his
sleeve he showed a scratch on his sinewy tattooed forearm. "I've not
come here about her; that's no business of anyone's."
Bianca turned towards her pictures. "Well?" she said, "but what have
you come about, please? You see I'm busy."
Hughs' face changed. Its stolidity vanished, the eyes became as quick,
passionate, and leaping as a dark torrent. He was more violently alive
than she had ever seen a man. Had it been a woman she would have
felt--as Cecilia had felt with Mrs. Hughs--the indecency, the impudence
of this exhibition; but from that male violence the feminine in her
derived a certain satisfaction. So in Spring, when all seems lowering
and grey, the hedges and trees suddenly flare out against the purple
clouds, their twigs all in flame. The next moment that white glare is
gone, the clouds are no longer purple, fiery light no longer quivers and
leaps along the hedgerows. The passion in Hughs' face was gone as soon.
Bianca felt a sense of disappointment, as though she could have wished
her life held a little more of that. He stole a glance at her out of his
dark eyes, which, when narrowed, had a velvety look, like the body of a
wild bee, then jerked his thumb at the picture of the little model.
"It's about her I come to speak."
Blanca faced him frigidly.
"I have not the slightest wish to hear."
Hughs looked round, as though to find something that would help him to
proceed; his eyes lighted on Hilary's portrait.
"Ah! I'd put the two together if I was you," he said.
Blanca walked past him to the door.
"Either you or I must leave the room."
The man's face was neither sullen now nor passionate, but simply
miserable.
"Look here, lady," he said, "don't take it hard o' me coming here. I'm
not out to do you a harm. I've got a wife of my own, and Gawd knows I've
enough to put up with from her about this girl. I'll be going in the
water one of these days. It's him giving her them clothes that set me
coming here."
Blanca opened the door. "Please go," she said.
"I'll go quiet enough," he muttered, and, hanging his head, walked out.
Having seen him through the side door out into the street, Blanca went
back to where she had been standing before he came. She found some
difficulty in swallowing; for once there was no armour on her face. She
stood there a long time without moving, then put the pictures back into
their places and went down the little passage to the house. Listening
outside her father's door, she turned the handle quietly and went in.
Mr. Stone, holding some sheets of paper out before him, was dictating to
the little model, who was writing laboriously with her face close above
her arm. She stopped at Blanca's entrance. Mr. Stone did not stop, but,
holding up his other hand, said:
"I will take you through the last three pages again. Follow!"
Blanca sat down at the window.
Her father's voice, so thin and slow, with each syllable disjointed from
the other, rose like monotony itself.
"'There were tra-cea-able indeed, in those days, certain rudi-men-tary
at-tempts to f-u-s-e the classes....'"
It went on unwavering, neither rising high nor falling low, as though the
reader knew he had yet far to go, like a runner that brings great news
across mountains, plains, and rivers.
To Blanca that thin voice might have been the customary sighing of the
wind, her attention was so fast fixed on the girl, who sat following the
words down the pages with her pen's point.
Mr. Stone paused.
"Have you got the word 'insane'?" he asked.
The little model raised her face. "Yes, Mr. Stone."
"Strike it out."
With his eyes fixed on the trees he stood breathing audibly. The little
model moved her fingers, freeing them from cramp. Blanca's curious,
smiling scrutiny never left her, as though trying to fix an indelible
image on her mind. There was something terrifying in that stare, cruel
to herself, cruel to the girl.
"The precise word," said Mr. Stone, "eludes me. Leave a blank.
Follow!... 'Neither that sweet fraternal interest of man in man, nor a
curiosity in phenomena merely as phenomena....'" His voice pursued its
tenuous path through spaces, frozen by the calm eternal presence of his
beloved idea, which, like a golden moon, far and cold, presided
glamorously above the thin track of words. And still the girl's
pen-point traced his utterance across the pages: Mr. Stone paused again,
and looking at his daughter as though surprised to see her sitting there,
asked:
"Do you wish to speak to me, my dear?"
Blanca shook her head.
"Follow!" said Mr. Stone.
But the little model's glance had stolen round to meet the scrutiny fixed
on her.
A look passed across her face which seemed to say: 'What have I done to
you, that you should stare at me like this?'
Furtive and fascinated, her eyes remained fixed on Bianca, while her hand
moved, mechanically ticking the paragraphs. That silent duel of eyes
went on--the woman's fixed, cruel, smiling; the girl's uncertain,
resentful. Neither of them heard a word that Mr. Stone was reading.
They treated it as, from the beginning, Life has treated Philosophy--and
to the end will treat it.
Mr. Stone paused again, seeming to weigh his last sentences.
"That, I think," he murmured to himself, "is true." And suddenly he
addressed his daughter. "Do you agree with me, my dear?"
He was evidently waiting with anxiety for her answer, and the little
silver hairs that straggled on his lean throat beneath his beard were
clearly visible.
"Yes, Father, I agree."
"Ah!" said Mr. Stone, "I am glad that you confirm me. I was anxious.
Follow!"
Bianca rose. Burning spots of colour had settled in her cheeks. She
went towards the door, and the little model pursued her figure with a
long look, cringing, mutinous, and wistful.
CHAPTER XX
THE HUSBAND AND THE WIFE
It was past six o'clock when Hilary at length reached home, preceded a
little by Miranda, who almost felt within her the desire to eat. The
lilac bushes, not yet in flower, were giving forth spicy fragrance. The
sun still netted their top boughs, as with golden silk, and a blackbird,
seated on a low branch of the acacia-tree, was summoning the evening.
Mr. Stone, accompanied by the little model, dressed in her new clothes,
was coming down the path. They were evidently going for a walk, for Mr.
Stone wore his hat, old and soft and black, with a strong green tinge,
and carried a paper parcel, which leaked crumbs of bread at every step.
The girl grew very red. She held her head down, as though afraid of
Hilary's inspection of her new clothes. At the gate she suddenly looked
up. His face said: 'Yes, you look very nice!' And into her eyes a look
leaped such as one may see in dogs' eyes lifted in adoration to their
masters' faces. Manifestly disconcerted, Hilary turned to Mr. Stone.
The old man was standing very still; a thought had evidently struck him.
"I have not, I think," he said, "given enough consideration to the
question whether force is absolutely, or only relatively, evil. If I saw
a man ill-treat a cat, should I be justified in striking him?"
Accustomed to such divagations, Hilary answered: "I don't know whether
you would be justifed, but I believe that you would strike him."
"I am not sure," said Mr. Stone. "We are going to feed the birds."
The little model took the paper bag. "It's all dropping out," she said.
From across the road she turned her head....'Won't you come, too?' she
seemed to say.
But Hilary passed rather hastily into the garden and shut the gate behind
him. He sat in his study, with Miranda near him, for fully an hour,
without doing anything whatever, sunk in a strange, half-pleasurable
torpor. At this hour he should have been working at his book; and the
fact that his idleness did not trouble him might well have given him
uneasiness. Many thoughts passed through his mind, imaginings of things
he had thought left behind forever--sensations and longings which to the
normal eye of middle age are but dried forms hung in the museum of
memory. They started up at the whip of the still-living youth, the lost
wildness at the heart of every man. Like the reviving flame of half-spent
fires, longing for discovery leaped and flickered in Hilary--to find out
once again what things were like before he went down the hill of age.
No trivial ghost was beckoning him; it was the ghost, with unseen face
and rosy finger, which comes to men when youth has gone.
Miranda, hearing him so silent, rose. At this hour it was her master's
habit to scratch paper. She, who seldom scratched anything, because it
was not delicate, felt dimly that this was what he should be doing. She
held up a slim foot and touched his knee. Receiving no discouragement,
she delicately sprang into his lap, and, forgetting for once her modesty,
placed her arms on his chest, and licked his face all over.
It was while receiving this embrace that Hilary saw Mr. Stone and the
little model returning across the garden. The old man was walking very
rapidly, holding out the fragment of a broken stick. He was extremely
pink.
Hilary went to meet them.
"What's the matter, sir?" he said.
"I cut him over the legs," said Mr. Stone. "I do not regret it"; and he
walked on to his room.
Hilary turned to the little model.
"It was a little dog. The man kicked it, and Mr. Stone hit him. He
broke his stick. There were several men; they threatened us." She
looked up at Hilary. "I-I was frightened. Oh! Mr. Dallison, isn't he
funny?"
"All heroes are funny," murmured Hilary.
"He wanted to hit them again, after his stick was broken. Then a
policeman came, and they all ran away."
"That was quite as it should be," said Hilary. "And what did you do?"
Perceiving that she had not as yet made much effect, the little model
cast down her eyes.
"I shouldn't have been frightened if you had been there!"
"Heavens!" muttered Hilary. "Mr. Stone is far more valiant than I."
"I don't think he is," she replied stubbornly, and again looked up at
him.
"Well, good-night!" said Hilary hastily. "You must run off...."
That same evening, driving with his wife back from a long, dull dinner,
Hilary began:
"I've something to say to you."
An ironic "Yes?" came from the other corner of the cab.
"There is some trouble with the little model."
"Really!"
"This man Hughs has become infatuated with her. He has even said, I
believe, that he was coming to see you."
"What about?"
"Me."
"And what is he going to say about you?"
"I don't know; some vulgar gossip--nothing true."
There was a silence, and in the darkness Hilary moistened his dry lips.
Bianca spoke: "May I ask how you knew of this?"
"Cecilia told me."
A curious noise, like a little strangled laugh, fell on Hilary's ears.
"I am very sorry," he muttered.
Presently Bianca said:
"It was good of you to tell me, considering that we go our own ways. What
made you?"
"I thought it right."
"And--of course, the man might have come to me!"
"That you need not have said."
"One does not always say what one ought."
"I have made the child a present of some clothes which she badly needed.
So far as I know, that's all I've done!"
"Of course!"
This wonderful "of course" acted on Hilary like a tonic. He said dryly:
"What do you wish me to do?"
"I?" No gust of the east wind, making the young leaves curl and shiver,
the gas jets flare and die down in their lamps, could so have nipped the
flower of amity. Through Hilary's mind flashed Stephen's almost
imploring words: "Oh, I wouldn't go to her! Women are so funny!"
He looked round. A blue gauze scarf was wrapped over his wife's dark
head. There, in her corner, as far away from him as she could get, she
was smiling. For a moment Hilary had the sensation of being stiffed by
fold on fold of that blue gauze scarf, as if he were doomed to drive for
ever, suffocated, by the side of this woman who had killed his love for
her.
"You will do what you like, of course," she said suddenly.
A desire to laugh seized Hilary. "What do you wish me to do?" "You will
do what you like, of course!" Could civilised restraint and tolerance go
further?
"B." he said, with an effort, "the wife is jealous. We put the girl into
that house--we ought to get her out."
Blanca's reply came slowly.
"From the first," she said, "the girl has been your property; do what you
like with her. I shall not meddle."
"I am not in the habit of regarding people as my property."
"No need to tell me that--I have known you twenty years."
Doors sometimes slam in the minds of the mildest and most restrained of
men.
"Oh, very well! I have told you; you can see Hughs when he comes--or
not, as you like."
"I have seen him."
Hilary smiled.
"Well, was his story very terrible?"
"He told me no story."
"How was that?"
Blanca suddenly sat forward, and threw back the blue scarf, as though
she, too, were stifling. In her flushed face her eyes were bright as
stars; her lips quivered.
"Is it likely," she said, "that I should listen? That's enough, please,
of these people."
Hilary bowed. The cab, bearing them fast home, turned into the last
short cut. This narrow street was full of men and women circling round
barrows and lighted booths. The sound of coarse talk and laughter
floated out into air thick with the reek of paraffin and the scent of
frying fish. In every couple of those men and women Hilary seemed to see
the Hughs, that other married couple, going home to wedded happiness
above the little model's head. The cab turned out of the gay alley.
"Enough, please, of these people!"
That same night, past one o'clock, he was roused from sleep by hearing
bolts drawn back. He got up, hastened to the window, and looked out. At
first he could distinguish nothing. The moonless night; like a dark
bird, had nested in the garden; the sighing of the lilac bushes was the
only sound. Then, dimly, just below him, on the steps of the front door,
he saw a figure standing.
"Who is that?" he called.
The figure did not move.
"Who are you?" said Hilary again.
The figure raised its face, and by the gleam of his white beard Hilary
knew that it was Mr. Stone.
"What is it, sir?" he said. "Can I do anything?"
"No," answered Mr. Stone. "I am listening to the wind. It has visited
everyone to-night." And lifting his hand, he pointed out into the
darkness.
CHAPTER XXI
A DAY OF REST
Cecilia's house in the Old Square was steeped from roof to basement in
the peculiar atmosphere brought by Sunday to houses whose inmates have no
need of religion or of rest.
Neither she nor Stephen had been to church since Thyme was christened;
they did not expect to go again till she was married, and they felt that
even to go on these occasions was against their principles; but for the
sake of other people's feelings they had made the sacrifice, and they
meant to make it once more, when the time came. Each Sunday, therefore,
everything tried to happen exactly as it happened on every other day,
with indifferent success. This was because, for all Cecilia's
resolutions, a joint of beef and Yorkshire pudding would appear on the
luncheon-table, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Stone--who came when he
remembered that it was Sunday--did not devour the higher mammals. Every
week, when it appeared, Cecilia, who for some reason carved on Sundays,
regarded it with a frown. Next week she would really discontinue it; but
when next week came, there it was, with its complexion that reminded her
so uncomfortably of cabmen. And she would partake of it with unexpected
heartiness. Something very old and deep, some horrible whole-hearted
appetite, derived, no doubt, from Mr. Justice Carfax, rose at that hour
precisely every week to master her. Having given Thyme the second
helping which she invariably took, Cecilia, who detested carving, would
look over the fearful joint at a piece of glass procured by her in
Venice, and at the daffodils standing upright in it, apparently without
support. Had it not been for this joint of beef, which had made itself
smelt all the morning, and would make itself felt all the afternoon, it
need never have come into her mind at all that it was Sunday--and she
would cut herself another slice.
To have told Cecilia that there was still a strain of the Puritan in her
would have been to occasion her some uneasiness, and provoked a strenuous
denial; yet her way of observing Sunday furnished indubitable evidence of
this singular fact. She did more that day than any other. For, in the
morning she invariably "cleared off" her correspondence; at lunch she
carved the beef; after lunch she cleared off the novel or book on social
questions she was reading; went to a concert, clearing off a call on the
way back; and on first Sundays--a great bore--stayed at home to clear off
the friends who came to visit her. In the evening she went to some play
or other, produced by Societies for the benefit of persons compelled,
like her, to keep a Sunday with which they felt no sympathy.
On this particular "first Sunday," having made the circuit of her
drawing-room, which extended the whole breadth of her house, and through
long, low windows cut into leaded panes, looked out both back and front,
she took up Mr. Balladyce's latest book. She sat, with her paper-knife
pressed against the tiny hollow in her flushed cheek, and pretty little
bits of lace and real old jewellery nestling close to her. And while she
turned the pages of Mr. Balladyce's book Thyme sat opposite in a bright
blue frock, and turned the pages of Darwin's work on earthworms.
Regarding her "little daughter," who was so much more solid than herself,
Cecilia's face wore a very sweet, faintly surprised expression.
'My kitten is a bonny thing,' it seemed to say. 'It is queer that I
should have a thing so large.'
Outside in the Square Gardens a shower, the sunlight, and blossoms, were
entangled. It was the time of year when all the world had kittens; young
things were everywhere--soft, sweet, uncouth. Cecilia felt this in her
heart. It brought depth into her bright, quick eyes. What a secret
satisfaction it was that she had once so far committed herself as to have
borne a child! What a queer vague feeling she sometimes experienced in
the Spring--almost amounting to a desire to bear another! So one may
mark the warm eye of a staid mare, following with her gaze the first
strayings of her foal. 'I must get used to it,' she seems to say. 'I
certainly do miss the little creature, though I used to threaten her with
my hoofs, to show I couldn't be bullied by anything of that age. And
there she goes! Ah, well!'
Remembering suddenly, however, that she was sitting there to clear off
Mr. Balladyce, because it was so necessary to keep up with what he wrote,
Cecilia dropped her gaze to the page before her; and instantly, by
uncomfortable chance, not the choice pastures of Mr. Balladyce appeared,
where women might browse at leisure, but a vision of the little model.
She had not thought of her for quite an hour; she had tired herself out
with thinking-not, indeed, of her, but of all that hinged on her, ever
since Stephen had spoken of his talk with Hilary. Things Hilary had said
seemed to Cecilia's delicate and rather timid soul so ominous, so unlike
himself. Was there really going to be complete disruption between him
and Bianca--worse, an ugly scandal? She, who knew her sister better,
perhaps, than anyone, remembered from schoolroom days Bianca's moody
violence when anything had occurred to wound her--remembered, too, the
long fits of brooding that followed. This affair, which she had tried to
persuade herself was exaggerated, loomed up larger than ever. It was not
an isolated squib; it was a lighted match held to a train of gunpowder.
This girl of the people, coming from who knew where, destined for who
knew what--this young, not very beautiful, not even clever child, with
nothing but a sort of queer haunting naivete' to give her charm--might
even be a finger used by Fate! Cecilia sat very still before that sudden
vision of the girl. There was no staid mare to guard that foal with the
dark devotion of her eye. There was no wise whinnying to answer back
those tiny whinnies; no long look round to watch the little creature
nodding to sleep on its thin trembling legs in the hot sunlight; no ears
to prick up and hoofs to stamp at the approach of other living things.
These thoughts passed through Cecilia's mind and were gone, being too far
and pale to stay. Turning the page which she had not been reading, she
heaved a sigh. Thyme sighed also.
"These worms are fearfully interesting," she said. "Is anybody coming in
this afternoon?"
"Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was going to bring a young man in, a Signor
Pozzi-Egregio Pozzi, or some such name. She says he is the coming
pianist." Cecilia's face was spiced with faint amusement. Some strain
of her breeding (the Carfax strain, no doubt) still heard such names and
greeted such proclivities with an inclination to derision.
Thyme snatched up her book. "Well," she said, "I shall be in the attic.
If anyone interesting comes you might send up to me."
She stood, luxuriously stretching, and turning slowly round in a streak
of sunlight so as to bathe her body in it. Then, with a long soft yawn,
she flung up her chin till the sun streamed on her face. Her eyelashes
rested on cheeks already faintly browned; her lips were parted; little
shivers of delight ran down her; her chestnut hair glowed, burnished by
the kisses of the sun.
'Ah!' Cecilia thought, 'if that other girl were like this, now, I could
understand well enough!'
"Oh, Lord!" said Thyme, "there they are!" She flew towards the door.
"My dear," murmured Cecilia, "if you must go, do please tell Father."
A minute later Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace came in, followed by a young man
with an interesting, pale face and a crop of dusky hair.
Let us consider for a minute the not infrequent case of a youth cursed
with an Italian mother and a father of the name of Potts, who had
baptised him William. Had he emanated from the lower classes, he might
with impunity have ground an organ under the name of Bill; but springing
from the bourgeoisie, and playing Chopin at the age of four, his friends
had been confronted with a problem of no mean difficulty. Heaven, on the
threshold of his career, had intervened to solve it. Hovering, as it
were, with one leg raised before the gladiatorial arena of musical
London, where all were waiting to turn their thumbs down on the figure of
the native Potts, he had received a letter from his mother's birthplace.
It was inscribed: "Egregio Signor Pozzi." He was saved. By the simple
inversion of the first two words, the substitution of z's for t's,
without so fortunately making any difference in the sound, and the
retention of that i, all London knew him now to be the rising pianist.
He was a quiet, well-mannered youth, invaluable just then to Mrs.
Tallents Smallpeace, a woman never happy unless slightly leading a genius
in strings.
Cecilia, while engaging them to right and left in her half-sympathetic,
faintly mocking way--as if doubting whether they really wanted to see her
or she them--heard a word of fear.
"Mr. Purcey."
'Oh Heaven!' she thought.
Mr. Purcey, whose A.i. Damyer could be heard outside, advanced in his
direct and simple way.
"I thought I'd give my car a run," he said. "How's your sister?" And
seeing Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, he added: "How do you do? We met the
other day."
"We did," said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whose little eyes were
sparkling. "We talked about the poor, do you remember?"
Mr. Purcey, a sensitive man if you could get through his skin, gave her a
shrewd look. 'I don't quite cotton to this woman,' he seemed saying;
'there's a laugh about her I don't like.'
"Ah! yes--you were tellin' me about them."
"Oh, Mr. Purcey, but you had heard of them, you remember!"
Mr. Purcey made a movement of his face which caused it to seem all jaw.
It was a sort of unconscious declaration of a somewhat formidable
character. So one may see bulldogs, those amiable animals, suddenly
disclose their tenacity.
"It's rather a blue subject," he said bluntly.
Something in Cecilia fluttered at those words. It was like the saying of
a healthy man looking at a box of pills which he did not mean to open.
Why could not she and Stephen keep that lid on, too? And at this moment,
to her deep astonishment, Stephen entered. She had sent for him, it is
true, but had never expected he would come.
His entrance, indeed, requires explanation.
Feeling, as he said, a little "off colour," Stephen had not gone to
Richmond to play golf. He had spent the day instead in the company of
his pipe and those ancient coins, of which he had the best collection of
any man he had ever met. His thoughts had wandered from them, more than
he thought proper, to Hilary and that girl. He had felt from the
beginning that he was so much more the man to deal with an affair like
this than poor old Hilary. When, therefore, Thyme put her head into his
study and said, "Father, Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace!" he had first thought,
'That busybody!' and then, 'I wonder--perhaps I'd better go and see if I
can get anything out of her.'
In considering Stephen's attitude towards a woman so firmly embedded in
the various social movements of the day, it must be remembered that he
represented that large class of men who, unhappily too cultivated to put
aside, like Mr. Purcey, all blue subjects, or deny the need for movements
to make them less blue, still could not move, for fear of being out of
order. He was also temperamentally distrustful of anything too feminine;
and Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was undoubtedly extremely feminine. Her
merit, in his eyes, consisted of her attachment to Societies. So long as
mankind worked through Societies, Stephen, who knew the power of rules
and minute books, did not despair of too little progress being made. He
sat down beside her, and turned the conversation on her chief work--"the
Maids in Peril."
Searching his face with those eyes so like little black bees sipping
honey from all the flowers that grew, Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace said:
"Why don't you get your wife to take an interest in our work?"
To Stephen this question was naturally both unexpected and annoying,
one's wife being the last person he wished to interest in other people's
movements. He kept his head.
"Ah well!" he said, "we haven't all got a talent for that sort of thing."
The voice of Mr. Purcey travelled suddenly across the room.
"Do tell me! How do you go to work to worm things out of them?"
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, prone to laughter, bubbled.
"Oh, that is such a delicious expression, Mr. Purcey! I almost think we
ought to use it in our Report. Thank you!"
Mr. Purcey bowed. "Not at all!" he said.
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace turned again to Stephen.
"We have our trained inquirers. That is the advantage of Societies such
as ours; so that we don't personally have the unpleasantness. Some cases
do baffle everybody. It's such very delicate work."
"You sometimes find you let in a rotter?" said Mr. Purcey, "or, I should
say, a rotter lets you in! Ha, ha!"
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's eyes flew deliciously down his figure.
"Not often," she said; and turning rather markedly once more to Stephen:
"Have you any special case that you are interested in, Mr. Dallison?"
Stephen consulted Cecilia with one of those masculine half-glances so
discreet that Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace intercepted it without looking up.
She found it rather harder to catch Cecilia's reply, but she caught it
before Stephen did. It was, 'You'd better wait, perhaps,' conveyed by a
tiny raising of the left eyebrow and a slight movement to the right of
the lower lip. Putting two and two together, she felt within her bones
that they were thinking of the little model. And she remembered the
interesting moment in the omnibus when that attractive-looking man had
got out so hastily.
There was no danger whatever from Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace feeling
anything. The circle in which she moved did not now talk scandal, or,
indeed, allude to matters of that sort without deep sympathy; and in the
second place she was really far too good a fellow, with far too dear a
love of life, to interfere with anybody else's love of it. At the same
time it was interesting.
"That little model, now," she said, "what about her?"
"Is that the girl I saw?" broke in Mr. Purcey, with his accustomed
shrewdness.
Stephen gave him the look with which he was accustomed to curdle the
blood of persons who gave evidence before Commissions.
'This fellow is impossible,' he thought.
The little black bees flying below Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's dark hair,
done in the Early Italian fashion, tranquilly sucked honey from Stephen's
face.
"She seemed to me," she answered, "such a very likely type."
"Ah!" murmured Stephen, "there would be, I suppose, a danger---" And he
looked angrily at Cecilia.
Without ceasing to converse with Mr. Purcey and Signor Egregio Pozzi, she
moved her left eye upwards. Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace understood this to
mean: 'Be frank, and guarded!' Stephen, however, interpreted it
otherwise. To him it signified: 'What the deuce do you look at me for?'
And he felt justly hurt. He therefore said abruptly:
"What would you do in a case like that?"
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, sliding her face sideways, with a really
charming little smile, asked softly:
"In a case like what?"
And her little eyes fled to Thyme, who had slipped into the room, and was
whispering to her mother.
Cecilia rose.
"You know my daughter," she said. "Will you excuse me just a minute? I'm
so very sorry." She glided towards the door, and threw a flying look
back. It was one of those social moments precious to those who are
escaping them.
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was smiling, Stephen frowning at his boots; Mr.
Purcey stared admiringly at Thyme, and Thyme, sitting very upright, was
calmly regarding the unfortunate Egregio Pozzi, who apparently could not
bring himself to speak.
When Cecilia found herself outside, she stood still a moment to compose
her nerves. Thyme had told her that Hilary was in the dining-room, and
wanted specially to see her.
As in most women of her class and bringing-up, Cecilia's qualities of
reticence and subtlety, the delicate treading of her spirit, were seen to
advantage in a situation such as this. Unlike Stephen, who had shown at
once that he had something on his mind, she received Hilary with that
exact shade of friendly, intimate, yet cool affection long established by
her as the proper manner towards her husband's brother. It was not quite
sisterly, but it was very nearly so. It seemed to say: 'We understand
each other as far as it is right and fitting that we should; we even
sympathise with the difficulties we have each of us experienced in
marrying the other's sister or brother, as the case may be. We know the
worst. And we like to see each other, too, because there are bars
between us, which make it almost piquant.'
Giving him her soft little hand, she began at once to talk of things
farthest from her heart. She saw that she was deceiving Hilary, and this
feather in the cap of her subtlety gave her pleasure. But her nerves
fluttered at once when he said: "I want to speak to you, Cis. You know
that Stephen and I had a talk yesterday, I suppose?"
Cecilia nodded.
"I have spoken to B.!"
"Oh!" Cecilia murmured. She longed to ask what Bianca had said, but did
not dare, for Hilary had his armour on, the retired, ironical look he
always wore when any subject was broached for which he was too sensitive.
She waited.
"The whole thing is distasteful to me," he said; "but I must do something
for this child. I can't leave her completely in the lurch."
Cecilia had an inspiration.
"Hilary," she said softly, "Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace is in the
drawing-room. She was just speaking of the girl to Stephen. Won't you
come in, and arrange with her quietly?"
Hilary looked at his sister-in-law for a moment without speaking, then
said:
"I draw the line there. No, thank you. I'll see this through myself."
Cecilia fluttered out:
"Oh, but, Hilary, what do you mean?"
"I am going to put an end to it."
It needed all Cecilia's subtlety to hide her consternation. End to what?
Did he mean that he and B. were going to separate?
"I won't have all this vulgar gossip about the poor girl. I shall go and
find another room for her."
Cecilia sighed with relief.
"Would you-would you like me to come too, Hilary?"
"It's very good of you," said Hilary dryly. "My actions appear to rouse
suspicions."
Cecilia blushed.
"Oh, that's absurd! Still, no one could think anything if I come with
you. Hilary, have you thought that if she continues coming to Father---"
"I shall tell her that she mustn't!"
Cecilia's heart gave two thumps, the first with pleasure, the second with
sympathy.
"It will be horrid for you," she said. "You hate doing anything of that
sort."
Hilary nodded.
"But I'm afraid it's the only way," went on Cecilia, rather hastily.
"And, of course, it will be no good saying anything to Father; one must
simply let him suppose that she has got tired of it."
Again Hilary nodded.
"He will think it very funny,", murmured Cecilia pensively. "Oh, and
have you thought that taking her away from where she is will only make
those people talk the more?"
Hilary shrugged his shoulders.
"It may make that man furious," Cecilia added.
"It will."
"Oh, but then, of course, if you don't see her afterwards, they will have
no--no excuse at all."
"I shall not see her afterwards," said Hilary, "if I can avoid it."
Cecilia looked at him.
"It's very sweet of you, Hilary."
"What is sweet?" asked Hilary stonily.
"Why, to take all this trouble. Is it really necessary for you to do
anything?" But looking in his face, she went on hastily: "Yes, yes, it's
best. Let's go at once. Oh, those people in the drawing-room! Do wait
ten minutes."
A little later, running up to put her hat on, she wondered why it was
that Hilary always made her want to comfort him. Stephen never affected
her like this.
Having little or no notion where to go, they walked in the direction of
Bayswater. To place the Park between Hound Street and the little model
was the first essential. On arriving at the other side of the Broad
Walk, they made instinctively away from every sight of green. In a long,
grey street of dismally respectable appearance they found what they were
looking for, a bed-sitting room furnished, advertised on a card in the
window. The door was opened by the landlady, a tall woman of narrow
build, with a West-Country accent, and a rather hungry sweetness running
through her hardness. They stood talking with her in a passage, whose
oilcloth of variegated pattern emitted a faint odour. The staircase
could be seen climbing steeply up past walls covered with a shining paper
cut by narrow red lines into small yellow squares. An almanack, of so
floral a design that nobody would surely want to steal it, hung on the
wall; below it was an umbrella stand without umbrellas. The dim little
passage led past two grimly closed doors painted rusty red to two
half-open doors with dull glass in their panels. Outside, in the street
from which they had mounted by stone steps, a shower of sleet had begun
to fall. Hilary shut the door, but the cold spirit of that shower had
already slipped into the bleak, narrow house.
"This is the apartment, m'm," said the landlady, opening the first of the
rusty-coloured doors. The room, which had a paper of blue roses on a
yellow ground, was separated from another room by double doors.
"I let the rooms together sometimes, but just now that room's taken--a
young gentleman in the City; that's why I'm able to let this cheap."
Cecilia looked at Hilary. "I hardly think---"
The landlady quickly turned the handles of the doors, showing that they
would not open.
"I keep the key," she said. "There's a bolt on both sides."
Reassured, Cecilia walked round the room as far as this was possible, for
it was practically all furniture. There was the same little wrinkle
across her nose as across Thyme's nose when she spoke of Hound Street.
Suddenly she caught sight of Hilary. He was standing with his back
against the door. On his face was a strange and bitter look, such as a
man might have on seeing the face of Ugliness herself, feeling that she
was not only without him, but within--a universal spirit; the look of a
man who had thought that he was chivalrous, and found that he was not; of
a leader about to give an order that he would not himself have executed.
Seeing that look, Cecilia said with some haste:
"It's all very nice and clean; it will do very well, I think. Seven
shillings a week, I believe you said. We will take it for a fortnight,
at all events."
The first glimmer of a smile appeared on the landlady's grim face, with
its hungry eyes, sweetened by patience.
"When would she be coming in?" she asked.
"When do you think, Hilary?"
"I don't know," muttered Hilary. "The sooner the better--if it must be.
To-morrow, or the day after."
And with one look at the bed, covered by a piece of cheap red-and-yellow
tasselled tapestry, he went out into the street. The shower was over,
but the house faced north, and no sun was shining on it.
CHAPTER XXII
HILARY PUTS AN END TO IT
Like flies caught among the impalpable and smoky threads of cobwebs, so
men struggle in the webs of their own natures, giving here a start, there
a pitiful small jerking, long sustained, and failing into stillness.
Enmeshed they were born, enmeshed they die, fighting according to their
strength to the end; to fight in the hope of freedom, their joy; to die,
not knowing they are beaten, their reward. Nothing, too, is more to be
remarked than the manner in which Life devises for each man the
particular dilemmas most suited to his nature; that which to the man of
gross, decided, or fanatic turn of mind appears a simple sum, to the man
of delicate and speculative temper seems to have no answer.
So it was with Hilary in that special web wherein his spirit struggled,
sunrise unto sunset, and by moonlight afterward. Inclination, and the
circumstances of a life which had never forced him to grips with either
men or women, had detached him from the necessity for giving or taking
orders. He had almost lost the faculty. Life had been a picture with
blurred outlines melting into a softly shaded whole. Not for years had
anything seemed to him quite a case for "Yes" or "No." It had been his
creed, his delight, his business, too, to try and put himself in
everybody's place, so that now there were but few places where he did
not, speculatively speaking, feel at home.
Putting himself into the little model's place gave him but small delight.
Making due allowance for the sentiment men naturally import into their
appreciation of the lives of women, his conception of her place was
doubtless not so very wrong.
Here was a child, barely twenty years of age, country bred, neither a
lady nor quite a working-girl, without a home or relatives, according to
her own account--at all events, without those who were disposed to help
her--without apparently any sort of friend; helpless by nature, and whose
profession required a more than common wariness--this girl he was
proposing to set quite adrift again by cutting through the single slender
rope which tethered her. It was like digging up a little rose-tree
planted with one's own hands in some poor shelter, just when it had taken
root, and setting it where the full winds would beat against it. To do
so brusque and, as it seemed to Hilary, so inhumane a thing was foreign
to his nature. There was also the little matter of that touch of
fever--the distant music he had been hearing since the waggons came in to
Covent Garden.
With a feeling that was almost misery, therefore, he waited for her on
Monday afternoon, walking to and fro in his study, where all the walls
were white, and all the woodwork coloured like the leaf of a cigar; where
the books were that colour too, in Hilary's special deerskin binding;
where there were no flowers nor any sunlight coming through the windows,
but plenty of sheets of paper--a room which youth seemed to have left for
ever, the room of middle age!
He called her in with the intention of at once saying what he had to say,
and getting it over in the fewest words. But he had not reckoned fully
either with his own nature or with woman's instinct. Nor had he
allowed--being, for all his learning, perhaps because of it, singularly
unable to gauge the effects of simple actions--for the proprietary
relations he had established in the girl's mind by giving her those
clothes.
As a dog whose master has it in his mind to go away from him, stands
gazing up with tragic inquiry in his eyes, scenting to his soul that
coming cruelty--as a dog thus soon to be bereaved, so stood the little
model.
By the pose of every limb, and a fixed gaze bright as if tears were
behind it, and by a sort of trembling, she seemed to say: 'I know why you
have sent for me.'
When Hilary saw her stand like that he felt as a man might when told to
flog his fellow-creature. To gain time he asked her what she did with
herself all day. The little model evidently tried to tell herself that
her foreboding had been needless.
Now that the mornings were nice--she said with some animation--she got up
much earlier, and did her needlework first thing; she then "did out" the
room. There were mouse-holes in her room, and she had bought a trap.
She had caught a mouse last night. She hadn't liked to kill it; she had
put it in a tin box, and let it go when she went out. Quick to see that
Hilary was interested in this, as well he might be, she told him that she
could not bear to see cats hungry or lost dogs, especially lost dogs, and
she described to him one that she had seen. She had not liked to tell a
policeman; they stared so hard. Those words were of strange omen, and
Hilary turned his head away. The little model, perceiving that she had
made an effect of some sort, tried to deepen it. She had heard they did
all sorts of things to people--but, seeing at once from Hilary's face
that she was not improving her effect, she broke off suddenly, and
hastily began to tell him of her breakfast, of how comfortable she was
now she had got her clothes; how she liked her room; how old Mr. Creed
was very funny, never taking any notice of her when he met her in the
morning. Then followed a minute account of where she had been trying to
get work; of an engagement promised; Mr. Lennard, too, still wanted her
to pose to him. At this she gashed a look at Hilary, then cast down her
eyes. She could get plenty of work if she began that way. But she
hadn't, because he had told her not, and, of course, she didn't want to;
she liked coming to Mr. Stone so much. And she got on very well, and she
liked London, and she liked the shops. She mentioned neither Hughs nor
Mrs. Hughs. In all this rigmarole, told with such obvious purpose,
stolidity was strangely mingled with almost cunning quickness to see the
effect made; but the dog-like devotion was never quite out of her eyes
when they were fixed on Hilary.
This look got through the weakest places in what little armour Nature had
bestowed on him. It touched one of the least conceited and most amiable
of men profoundly. He felt it an honour that anything so young as this
should regard him in that way. He had always tried to keep out of his
mind that which might have given him the key to her special feeling for
himself--those words of the painter of still life: "She's got a story of
some sort." But it flashed across him suddenly like an inspiration: If
her story were the simplest of all stories--the direct, rather brutal,
love affair of a village boy and girl--would not she, naturally given to
surrender, be forced this time to the very antithesis of that young
animal amour which had brought on her such, sharp consequences?
But, wherever her devotion came from, it seemed to Hilary the grossest
violation of the feelings of a gentleman to treat it ungratefully. Yet
it was as if for the purpose of saying, "You are a nuisance to me, or
worse!" that he had asked her to his study. Her presence had hitherto
chiefly roused in him the half-amused, half-tender feelings of one who
strokes a foal or calf, watching its soft uncouthness; now, about to say
good-bye to her, there was the question of whether that was the only
feeling.
Miranda, stealing out between her master and his visitor, growled.
The little model, who was stroking a china ash-tray with her ungloved,
inky fingers, muttered, with a smile, half pathetic, half cynical: "She
doesn't like me! She knows I don't belong here. She hates me to come.
She's jealous!"
Hilary said abruptly:
"Tell me! Have you made any friends since you've been in London?"
The girl flashed a look at him that said:
'Could I make you jealous?'
Then, as though guilty of afar too daring thought, drooped her head, and
answered:
"No."
"Not one?"
The little model repeated almost passionately: "No. I don't want any
friends; I only want to be let alone."
Hilary began speaking rapidly.
"But these Hughs have not left you alone. I told you, I thought you
ought to move; I've taken another room for you quite away from them.
Leave your furniture with a week's rent, and take your trunk quietly away
to-morrow in a cab without saying a word to anyone. This is the new
address, and here's the money for your expenses. They're dangerous for
you, those people."
The little model muttered desperately: "But I don't care what they do!"
Hilary went on: "Listen! You mustn't come here again, or the man will
trace you. We will take care you have what's necessary till you can get
other work."
The little model looked up at him without a word. Now that the thin link
which bound her to some sort of household gods had snapped, all the
patience and submission bred in her by village life, by the hard facts of
her story, and by these last months in London, served her well enough.
She made no fuss. Hilary saw a tear roll down her cheek.
He turned his head away, and said: "Don't cry, my child!"
Quite obediently the little model swallowed the tear. A thought seemed
to strike her:
"But I could see you, Mr. Dallison, couldn't I, sometimes?"
Seeing from his face that this was not in the programme, she stood silent
again, looking up at him.
It was a little difficult for Hilary to say: "I can't see you because my
wife is jealous!" It was cruel to tell her: "I don't want to see you!"
besides, it was not true.
"You'll soon be making friends," he said at last, "and you can always
write to me"; and with a queer smile he added: "You're only just
beginning life; you mustn't take these things to heart; you'll find
plenty of people better able to advise and help you than ever I shall
be!"
The little model answered this by seizing his hand with both of hers. She
dropped it again at once, as if guilty of presumption, and stood with her
head bent. Hilary, looking down on the little hat which, by his special
wish, contained no feathers, felt a lump rise in his throat.
"It's funny," he said; "I don't know your Christian name."
"Ivy," muttered the little model.
"Ivy! Well, I'll write to you. But you must promise me to do exactly as
I said."
The girl looked up; her face was almost ugly--like a child's in whom a
storm of feeling is repressed.
"Promise!" repeated Hilary.
With a bitter droop of her lower lip, she nodded, and suddenly put her
hand to her heart. That action, of which she was clearly unconscious, so
naively, so almost automatically was it done, nearly put an end to
Hilary's determination.
"Now you must go," he said.
The little model choked, grew very red, and then quite white.
"Aren't I even to say good-bye to Mr. Stone?"
Hilary shook his head.
"He'll miss me," she said desperately. "He will. I know he will!"
"So shall I," said Hilary. "We can't help that."
The little model drew herself up to her full height; her breast heaved
beneath the clothes which had made her Hilary's. She was very like "The
Shadow" at that moment, as though whatever Hilary might do there she
would be--a little ghost, the spirit of the helpless submerged world, for
ever haunting with its dumb appeal the minds of men.
"Give me your hand," said Hilary.
The little model put out her not too white, small hand. It was soft,
clinging: and as hot as fire.
"Good-bye, my dear, and bless you!"
The little model gave him a look with who-knows-what of reproach in it,
and, faithful to her training, went submissively away.
Hilary did not look after her, but, standing by the lofty mantelpiece
above the ashes of the fire, rested his forehead on his arm. Not even a
fly's buzzing broke the stillness. There was sound for all that-not of
distant music, but of blood beating in his ears and temples.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE "BOOK OF UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD"
It is fitting that a few words should be said about the writer of the
"Book of Universal Brotherhood."
Sylvanus Stone, having graduated very highly at the London University,
had been appointed at an early age lecturer to more than one Public
Institution. He had soon received the professorial robes due to a man of
his profound learning in the natural sciences, and from that time till he
was seventy his life had flowed on in one continual round of lectures,
addresses, disquisitions, and arguments on the subjects in which he was a
specialist. At the age of seventy, long after his wife's death and the
marriages of his three children, he had for some time been living by
himself, when a very serious illness--the result of liberties taken with
an iron constitution by a single mind--prostrated him.
During the long convalescence following this illness the power of
contemplation, which the Professor had up to then given to natural
science, began to fix itself on life at large. But the mind which had
made of natural science an idea, a passion, was not content with vague
reflections on life. Slowly, subtly, with irresistible centrifugal
force--with a force which perhaps it would not have acquired but for that
illness--the idea, the passion of Universal Brotherhood had sucked into
itself all his errant wonderings on the riddle of existence. The single
mind of this old man, divorced by illness from his previous existence,
pensioned and permanently shelved, began to worship a new star, that with
every week and month and year grew brighter, till all other stars had
lost their glimmer and died out.
At the age of seventy-four he had begun his book. Under the spell of his
subject and of advancing age, his extreme inattention to passing matters
became rapidly accentuated. His figure had become almost too publicly
conspicuous before Bianca, finding him one day seated on the roof of his
lonely little top-story flat, the better to contemplate his darling
Universe, had inveigled him home with her, and installed him in a room in
her own house. After the first day or two he had not noticed any change
to speak of.
His habits in his new home were soon formed, and once formed, they varied
not at all; for he admitted into his life nothing which took him from the
writing of his book.
On the afternoon following Hilary's dismissal of the little model, being
disappointed of his amanuensis, Mr. Stone had waited for an hour, reading
his pages over and over to himself. He had then done his exercises. At
the usual time for tea he had sat down, and, with his cup and brown
bread-and-butter alternately at his lips, had looked long and fixedly at
the place where the girl was wont to sit. Having finished, he left the
room and went about the house. He found no one but Miranda, who, seated
in the passage leading to the studio, was trying to keep one eye on the
absence of her master and the other on the absence of her mistress. She
joined Mr. Stone, maintaining a respect-compelling interval behind him
when he went before, and before him when he went behind. When they had
finished hunting, Mr. Stone went down to the garden gate. Here Bianca
found him presently motionless, without a hat, in the full sun, craning
his white head in the direction from which he knew the little model
habitually came. The mistress of the house was herself returning from her
annual visit to the Royal Academy, where she still went, as dogs, from
some perverted sense, will go and sniff round other dogs to whom they
have long taken a dislike. A loose-hanging veil depended from her
mushroom-shaped and coloured hat. Her eyes were brightened by her visit.
Mr. Stone soon seemed to take in who she was, and stood regarding her a
minute without speaking. His attitude towards his daughters was rather
like that of an old drake towards two swans whom he has inadvertently
begotten--there was inquiry in it, disapproval, admiration, and faint
surprise.
"Why has she not come?" he said.
Bianca winced behind her veil. "Have you asked Hilary?"
"I cannot find him," answered Mr. Stone. Something about his patient
stooping figure and white head, on which the sunlight was falling, made
Bianca slip her hand through his arm.
"Come in, Dad. I'll do your copying."
Mr. Stone looked at her intently, and shook his head.
"It would be against my principles; I cannot take an unpaid service. But
if you would come, my dear, I should like to read to you. It is
stimulating."
At that request Bianca's eyes grew dim. Pressing Mr. Stone's shaggy arm
against her breast, she moved with him towards the house.
"I think I may have written something that will interest you," Mr. Stone
said, as they went along.
"I am sure you have," Bianca murmured.
"It is universal," said Mr. Stone; "it concerns birth. Sit at the table.
I will begin, as usual, where I left off yesterday."
Bianca took the little model's seat, resting her chin on her hand, as
motionless as any of the statues she had just been viewing. It almost
seemed as if Mr. Stone were feeling nervous. He twice arranged his
papers; cleared his throat; then, lifting a sheet suddenly, took three
steps, turned his back on her, and began to read.
"'In that slow, incessant change of form to form, called Life, men, made
spasmodic by perpetual action, had seized on a certain moment, no more
intrinsically notable than any other moment, and had called it Birth.
This habit of honouring one single instant of the universal process to
the disadvantage of all the other instants had done more, perhaps, than
anything to obfuscate the crystal clearness of the fundamental flux. As
well might such as watch the process of the green, unfolding earth,
emerging from the brumous arms of winter, isolate a single day and call
it Spring. In the tides of rhythm by which the change of form to form
was governed'"--Mr. Stone's voice, which had till then been but a thin,
husky murmur, gradually grew louder and louder, as though he were
addressing a great concourse--"'the golden universal haze in which men
should have flown like bright wing-beats round the sun gave place to the
parasitic halo which every man derived from the glorifying of his own
nativity. To this primary mistake could be traced his intensely personal
philosophy. Slowly but surely there had dried up in his heart the wish
to be his brother.'"
He stopped reading suddenly.
"I see him coming in," he said.
The next minute the door opened, and Hilary entered.
"She has not come," said Mr. Stone; and Bianca murmured:
"We miss her!"
"Her eyes," said Mr. Stone, "have a peculiar look; they help me to see
into the future. I have noticed the same look in the eyes of female
dogs."
With a little laugh, Bianca murmured again:
"That is good!"
"There is one virtue in dogs," said Hilary, "which human beings lack
--they are incapable of mockery."
But Bianca's lips, parted, indrawn, seemed saying: 'You ask too much! I
no longer attract you. Am I to sympathise in the attraction this common
little girl has for you?'
Mr. Stone's gaze was fixed intently on the wall.
"The dog," he said, "has lost much of its primordial character."
And, moving to his desk, he took up his quill pen.
Hilary and Bianca made no sound, nor did they look at one another; and in
this silence, so much more full of meaning than any talk, the scratching
of the quill went on. Mr. Stone put it down at last, and, seeing two
persons in the room, read:
"'Looking back at those days when the doctrine of evolution had reached
its pinnacle, one sees how the human mind, by its habit of continual
crystallisations, had destroyed all the meaning of the process. Witness,
for example, that sterile phenomenon, the pagoda of 'caste'! Like this
Chinese building, so was Society then formed. Men were living there in
layers, as divided from each other, class from class---'" He took up the
quill, and again began to write.
"You understand, I suppose," said Hilary in a low voice, "that she has
been told not to come?"
Bianca moved her shoulders.
With a most unwonted look of anger, he added:
"Is it within the scope of your generosity to credit me with the desire
to meet your wishes?"
Bianca's answer was a laugh so strangely hard, so cruelly bitter, that
Hilary involuntarily turned, as though to retrieve the sound before it
reached the old man's ears.
Mr. Stone had laid down his pen. "I shall write no more to-day," he
said; "I have lost my feeling--I am not myself." He spoke in a voice
unlike his own.
Very tired and worn his old figure looked; as some lean horse, whose sun
has set, stands with drooped head, the hollows in his neck showing under
his straggling mane. And suddenly, evidently quite oblivious that he had
any audience, he spoke:
"O Great Universe, I am an old man of a faint spirit, with no singleness
of purpose. Help me to write on--help me to write a book such as the
world has never seen!"
A dead silence followed that strange prayer; then Bianca, with tears
rolling down her face, got up and rushed out of the room.
Mr. Stone came to himself. His mute, white face had suddenly grown
scared and pink. He looked at Hilary.
"I fear that I forgot myself. Have I said anything peculiar?"
Not feeling certain of his voice, Hilary shook his head, and he, too,
moved towards the door.
CHAPTER XXIV
SHADOWLAND
"Each of us has a shadow in those places--in those streets."
That saying of Mr. Stone's, which--like so many of his sayings--had
travelled forth to beat the air, might have seemed, even "in those days,"
not altogether without meaning to anyone who looked into the room of Mr.
Joshua Creed in Hound Street.
This aged butler lay in bed waiting for the inevitable striking of a
small alarum clock placed in the very centre of his mantelpiece. Flanking
that round and ruthless arbiter, which drove him day by day to stand up
on feet whose time had come to rest, were the effigies of his past
triumphs. On the one hand, in a papier-mache frame, slightly tinged with
smuts, stood a portrait of the "Honorable Bateson," in the uniform of his
Yeomanry. Creed's former master's face wore that dare-devil look with
which he had been wont to say: "D---n it, Creed! lend me a pound. I've
got no money!" On the other hand, in a green frame which had once been
plush, and covered by a glass with a crack in the left-hand corner, was a
portrait of the Dowager Countess of Glengower, as this former mistress of
his appeared, conceived by the local photographer, laying the
foundation-stone of the local almshouse. During the wreck of Creed's
career, which, following on a lengthy illness, had preceded his salvation
by the Westminster Gazette, these two household gods had lain at the
bottom of an old tin trunk, in the possession of the keeper of a
lodging-house, waiting to be bailed out. The "Honorable Bateson" was now
dead, nor had he paid as yet the pounds he had borrowed. Lady Glengower,
too, was in heaven, remembering that she had forgotten all her servants
in her will. He who had served them was still alive, and his first
thought, when he had secured his post on the "Westminister," was to save
enough to rescue them from a dishonourable confinement. It had taken him
six months. He had found them keeping company with three pairs of
woollen drawers; an old but respectable black tail-coat; a plaid cravat;
a Bible; four socks, two of which had toes and two of which had heels;
some darning-cotton and a needle; a pair of elastic-sided boots; a comb
and a sprig of white heather, wrapped up with a little piece of
shaving-soap and two pipe-cleaners in a bit of the Globe newspaper; also
two collars, whose lofty points, separated by gaps of quite two inches,
had been wont to reach their master's gills; the small alarum clock
aforesaid; and a tiepin formed in the likeness of Queen Victoria at the
date of her first Jubilee. How many times had he not gone in thought
over those stores of treasure while he was parted from them! How many
times since they had come back to him had he not pondered with a slow but
deathless anger on the absence of a certain shirt, which he could have
sworn had been amongst them.
But now he lay in bed waiting to hear the clock go off, with his old
bristly chin beneath the bedclothes, and his old discoloured nose above.
He was thinking the thoughts which usually came into his mind about this
hour--that Mrs. Hughs ought not to scrape the butter off his bread for
breakfast in the way she did; that she ought to take that sixpence off
his rent; that the man who brought his late editions in the cart ought to
be earlier, letting 'that man' get his Pell Mells off before him, when he
himself would be having the one chance of his day; that, sooner than pay
the ninepence which the bootmaker had proposed to charge for resoling
him, he would wait until the summer came 'low class o' feller' as he was,
he'd be glad enough to sole him then for sixpence.
And the high-souled critic, finding these reflections sordid, would have
thought otherwise, perhaps, had he been standing on those feet (now
twitching all by themselves beneath the bedclothes) up to eleven o'clock
the night before, because there were still twelve numbers of the late
edition that nobody would buy. No one knew more surely than Joshua Creed
himself that, if he suffered himself to entertain any large and lofty
views of life, he would infallibly find himself in that building to keep
out of which he was in the habit of addressing to God his only prayer to
speak of. Fortunately, from a boy up, together with a lengthy, oblong,
square-jawed face, he had been given by Nature a single-minded view of
life. In fact, the mysterious, stout tenacity of a soul born in the
neighbourhood of Newmarket could not have been done justice to had he
constitutionally seen--any more than Mr. Stone himself--two things at a
time. The one thing he had seen, for the five years that he had now
stood outside Messrs. Rose and Thorn's, was the workhouse; and, as he
was not going there so long as he was living, he attended carefully to
all little matters of expense in this somewhat sordid way.
While attending thus, he heard a scream. Having by temperament
considerable caution, but little fear, he waited till he heard another,
and then got out of bed. Taking the poker in his hand, and putting on
his spectacles, he hurried to the door. Many a time and oft in old days
had he risen in this fashion to defend the plate of the "Honorable
Bateson" and the Dowager Countess of Glengower from the periodical
attacks of his imagination. He stood with his ancient nightgown flapping
round his still more ancient legs, slightly shivering; then, pulling the
door open, he looked forth. On the stairs just above him Mrs. Hughs,
clasping her baby with one arm, was holding the other out at full length
between herself and Hughs. He heard the latter say: "You've drove me to
it; I'll do a swing for you!" Mrs. Hughs' thin body brushed past into
his room; blood was dripping from her wrist. Creed saw that Hughs had
his bayonet in his hand. With all his might he called out: "Ye ought to
be ashamed of yourself!" raising the poker to a position of defence. At
this moment--more really dangerous than any he had ever known--it was
remarkable that he instinctively opposed to it his most ordinary turns of
speech. It was as though the extravagance of this un-English violence
had roused in him the full measure of a native moderation. The sight of
the naked steel deeply disgusted him; he uttered a long sentence. What
did Hughs call this--disgracin' of the house at this time in the mornin'?
Where was he brought up? Call 'imself a soldier, attackin' of old men
and women in this way? He ought to be ashamed!
While these words were issuing between the yellow stumps of teeth in that
withered mouth, Hughs stood silent, the back of his arm covering his
eyes. Voices and a heavy tread were heard. Distinguishing in that tread
the advancing footsteps of the Law, Creed said: "You attack me if you
dare!"
Hughs dropped his arm. His short, dark face had a desperate look, as of
a caged rat; his eyes were everywhere at once.
"All right, daddy," he said; "I won't hurt you. She's drove my head all
wrong again. Catch hold o' this; I can't trust myself." He held out the
bayonet.
"Westminister" took it gingerly in his shaking hand.
"To use a thing like that!" he said. "An' call yourself an Englishman!
I'll ketch me death standin' here, I will."
Hughs made no answer leaning against the wall. The old butler regarded
him severely. He did not take a wide or philosophic view of him, as a
tortured human being, driven by the whips of passion in his dark blood; a
creature whose moral nature was the warped, stunted tree his life had
made it; a poor devil half destroyed by drink and by his wound. The old
butler took a more single-minded and old-fashioned line. 'Ketch 'old of
'im!' he thought. 'With these low fellers there's nothin' else to be
done. Ketch 'old of 'im until he squeals.'
Nodding his ancient head, he said:
"Here's an orficer. I shan't speak for yer; you deserves all you'll get,
and more."
Later, dressed in an old Newmarket coat, given him by some client, and
walking towards the police-station alongside Mrs. Hughs, he was
particularly silent, presenting a front of some austerity, as became a
man mixed up in a low class of incident like this. And the seamstress,
very thin and scared, with her wounded wrist slung in a muffler of her
husband's, and carrying the baby on her other arm, because the morning's
incident had upset the little thing, slipped along beside him, glancing
now and then into his face.
Only once did he speak, and to himself:
"I don't know what they'll say to me down at the orffice, when I go
again-missin' my day like this! Oh dear, what a misfortune! What put it
into him to go on like that?"
At this, which was far from being intended as encouragement, the waters
of speech broke up and flowed from Mrs. Hughs. She had only told Hughs
how that young girl had gone, and left a week's rent, with a bit of
writing to say she wasn't coming back; it wasn't her fault that she was
gone--that ought never to have come there at all, a creature that knew no
better than to come between husband and wife. She couldn't tell no more
than he could where that young girl had gone!
The tears, stealing forth, chased each other down the seamstress's thin
cheeks. Her face had now but little likeness to the face with which she
had stood confronting Hughs when she informed him of the little model's
flight. None of the triumph which had leaped out of her bruised heart,
none of the strident malice with which her voice, whether she would or
no, strove to avenge her wounded sense of property; none of that
unconscious abnegation, so very near to heroism, with which she had
rushed and caught up her baby from beneath the bayonet, when, goaded by
her malice and triumph, Hughs had rushed to seize that weapon. None of
all that, but, instead, a pitiable terror of the ordeal before her--a
pitiful, mute, quivering distress, that this man, against whom, two hours
before, she had felt such a store of bitter rancour, whose almost
murderous assault she had so narrowly escaped, should now be in this
plight.
The sight of her emotion penetrated through his spectacles to something
lying deep in the old butler.
"Don't you take on," he said; "I'll stand by yer. He shan't treat yer
with impuniness."
To his uncomplicated nature the affair was still one of tit for tat. Mrs.
Hughs became mute again. Her torn heart yearned to cancel the penalty
that would fall on all of them, to deliver Hughs from the common
enemy--the Law; but a queer feeling of pride and bewilderment, and a
knowledge, that, to demand an eye for an eye was expected of all
self-respecting persons, kept her silent.
Thus, then, they reached the great consoler, the grey resolver of all
human tangles, haven of men and angels, the police court. It was
situated in a back street. Like trails of ooze, when the tide, neither
ebb nor flow, is leaving and making for some estuary, trails of human
beings were moving to and from it. The faces of these shuffling
"shadows" wore a look as though masked with some hard but threadbare
stuff-the look of those whom Life has squeezed into a last resort.
Within the porches lay a stagnant marsh of suppliants, through whose
centre trickled to and fro that stream of ooze. An old policeman, too,
like some grey lighthouse, marked the entrance to the port of refuge.
Close to that lighthouse the old butler edged his way. The love of
regularity, and of an established order of affairs, born in him and
fostered by a life passed in the service of the "Honorable Bateson" and
the other gentry, made him cling instinctively to the only person in this
crowd whom he could tell for certain to be on the side of law and order.
Something in his oblong face and lank, scanty hair parted precisely in
the middle, something in that high collar supporting his lean gills, not
subservient exactly, but as it were suggesting that he was in league
against all this low-class of fellow, made the policeman say to him:
"What's your business, daddy?"
"Oh!" the old butler answered. "This poor woman. I'm a witness to her
battery."
The policeman cast his not unkindly look over the figure of the
seamstress. "You stand here," he said; "I'll pass you in directly."
And soon by his offices the two were passed into the port of refuge.
They sat down side by side on the edge of a long, hard, wooden bench;
Creed fixing his eyes, whose colour had run into a brownish rim round
their centres, on the magistrate, as in old days sun-worshippers would
sit blinking devoutly at the sun; and Mrs. Hughs fixing her eyes on her
lap, while tears of agony trickled down her face. On her unwounded arm
the baby slept. In front of them, and unregarded, filed one by one those
shadows who had drunk the day before too deeply of the waters of
forgetfulness. To-day, instead, they were to drink the water of
remembrance, poured out for them with no uncertain hand. And somewhere
very far away, it may have been that Justice sat with her ironic smile
watching men judge their shadows. She had watched them so long about
that business. With her elementary idea that hares and tortoises should
not be made to start from the same mark she had a little given up
expecting to be asked to come and lend a hand; they had gone so far
beyond her. Perhaps she knew, too, that men no longer punished, but now
only reformed, their erring brothers, and this made her heart as light as
the hearts of those who had been in the prisons where they were no longer
punished.
The old butler, however, was not thinking of her; he had thoughts of a
simpler order in his mind. He was reflecting that he had once valeted
the nephew of the late Lord Justice Hawthorn, and in the midst of this
low-class business the reminiscence brought him refreshment. Over and
over to himself he conned these words: "I interpylated in between them,
and I says, 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself; call yourself an
Englishman, I says, attackin' of old men and women with cold steel, I
says!'" And suddenly he saw that Hughs was in the dock.
The dark man stood with his hands pressed to his sides, as though at
attention on parade. A pale profile, broken by a line of black
moustache, was all "Westminister" could see of that impassive face, whose
eyes, fixed on the magistrate, alone betrayed the fires within. The
violent trembling of the seamstress roused in Joshua Creed a certain
irritation, and seeing the baby open his black eyes, he nudged her,
whispering: "Ye've woke the baby!"
Responding to words, which alone perhaps could have moved her at such a
moment, Mrs. Hughs rocked this dumb spectator of the drama. Again the
old butler nudged her.
"They want yer in the box," he said.
Mrs. Hughs rose, and took her place.
He who wished to read the hearts of this husband and wife who stood at
right angles, to have their wounds healed by Law, would have needed to
have watched the hundred thousand hours of their wedded life, known and
heard the million thoughts and words which had passed in the dim spaces
of their world, to have been cognisant of the million reasons why they
neither of them felt that they could have done other than they had done.
Reading their hearts by the light of knowledge such as this, he would not
have been surprised that, brought into this place of remedy, they seemed
to enter into a sudden league. A look passed between them. It was not
friendly, it had no appeal; but it sufficed. There seemed to be
expressed in it the knowledge bred by immemorial experience and
immemorial time: This law before which we stand was not made by us! As
dogs, when they hear the crack of a far whip, will shrink, and in their
whole bearing show wary quietude, so Hughs and Mrs. Hughs, confronted by
the questionings of Law, made only such answers as could be dragged from
them. In a voice hardly above a whisper Mrs. Hughs told her tale. They
had fallen out. What about? She did not know. Had he attacked her? He
had had it in his hand. What then? She had slipped, and hurt her wrist
against the point. At this statement Hughs turned his eyes on her, and
seemed to say: "You drove me to it; I've got to suffer, for all your
trying to get me out of what I've done. I gave you one, and I don't want
your help. But I'm glad you stick to me against this Law!" Then,
lowering his eyes, he stood motionless during her breathless little
outburst. He was her husband; she had borne him five; he had been
wounded in the war. She had never wanted him brought here.
No mention of the little model....
The old butler dwelt on this reticence of Mrs. Hughs, when, two hours
afterwards, in pursuance of his instinctive reliance on the gentry, he
called on Hilary.
The latter, surrounded by books and papers--for, since his dismissal of
the girl, he had worked with great activity--was partaking of lunch,
served to him in his study on a tray.
"There's an old gentleman to see you, sir; he says you know him; his name
is Creed."
"Show him in," said Hilary.
Appearing suddenly from behind the servant in the doorway, the old butler
came in at a stealthy amble; he looked round, and, seeing a chair, placed
his hat beneath it, then advanced, with nose and spectacles upturned, to
Hilary. Catching sight of the tray, he stopped, checked in an evident
desire to communicate his soul.
"Oh dear," he said, "I'm intrudin' on your luncheon. I can wait; I'll go
and sit in the passage."
Hilary, however, shook his hand, faded now to skin and bone, and motioned
him to a chair.
He sat down on the edge of it, and again said:
"I'm intrudin' on yer."
"Not at all. Is there anything I can do?"
Creed took off his spectacles, wiped them to help himself to see more
clearly what he had to say, and put them on again.
"It's a-concerning of these domestic matters," he said. "I come up to
tell yer, knowing as you're interested in this family."
"Well," said Hilary. "What has happened?"
"It's along of the young girl's having left them, as you may know."
"Ah!"
"It's brought things to a crisax," explained Creed.
"Indeed, how's that?"
The old butler related the facts of the assault. "I took 'is bayonet
away from him," he ended; "he didn't frighten me."
"Is he out of his mind?" asked Hilary.
"I've no conscience of it," replied Creed. "His wife, she's gone the
wrong way to work with him, in my opinion, but that's particular to
women. She's a-goaded of him respecting a certain party. I don't say
but what that young girl's no better than what she ought to be; look at
her profession, and her a country girl, too! She must be what she
oughtn't to. But he ain't the sort o' man you can treat like that. You
can't get thorns from figs; you can't expect it from the lower orders.
They only give him a month, considerin' of him bein' wounded in the war.
It'd been more if they'd a-known he was a-hankerin' after that young
girl--a married man like him; don't ye think so, sir?"
Hilary's face had assumed its retired expression. 'I cannot go into that
with you,' it seemed to say.
Quick to see the change, Creed rose. "But I'm intrudin' on your dinner,"
he said--"your luncheon, I should say. The woman goes on irritatin' of
him, but he must expect of that, she bein' his wife. But what a
misfortune! He'll be back again in no time, and what'll happen then? It
won't improve him, shut up in one of them low prisons!" Then, raising
his old face to Hilary: "Oh dear! It's like awalkin' on a black night,
when ye can't see your 'and before yer."
Hilary was unable to find a suitable answer to this simile.
The impression made on him by the old butler's recital was queerly
twofold; his more fastidious side felt distinct relief that he had
severed connection with an episode capable of developments so sordid and
conspicuous. But all the side of him--and Hilary was a complicated
product--which felt compassion for the helpless, his suppressed chivalry,
in fact, had also received its fillip. The old butler's references to
the girl showed clearly how the hands of all men and women were against
her. She was that pariah, a young girl without property or friends,
spiritually soft, physically alluring.
To recompense "Westminister" for the loss of his day's work, to make a
dubious statement that nights were never so black as they appeared to be,
was all that he could venture to do. Creed hesitated in the doorway.
"Oh dear," he said, "there's a-one thing that the woman was a-saying that
I've forgot to tell you. It's a-concernin' of what this 'ere man was
boastin' in his rage. 'Let them,' he says, 'as is responsive for the
movin' of her look out,' he says; 'I ain't done with them!' That's
conspiracy, I should think!"
Smiling away this diagnosis of Hughs' words, Hilary shook the old man's
withered hand, and closed the door. Sitting down again at his
writing-table, he buried himself almost angrily in his work. But the
queer, half-pleasurable, fevered feeling, which had been his, since the
night he walked down Piccadilly, and met the image of the little model,
was unfavourable to the austere process of his thoughts.
CHAPTER XXV
MR. STONE IN WAITING
That same afternoon, while Mr. Stone was writing, he heard a voice
saying:
"Dad, stop writing just a minute, and talk to me."
Recognition came into his eyes. It was his younger daughter.
"My dear," he said, "are you unwell?"
Keeping his hand, fragile and veined and chill, under her own warm grasp,
Bianca answered: "Lonely."
Mr. Stone looked straight before him.
"Loneliness," he said, "is man's chief fault"; and seeing his pen lying
on the desk, he tried to lift his hand. Bianca held it down. At that hot
clasp something seemed to stir in Mr. Stone. His cheeks grew pink.
"Kiss me, Dad."
Mr. Stone hesitated. Then his lips resolutely touched her eye. "It is
wet," he said. He seemed for a moment struggling to grasp the meaning of
moisture in connection with the human eye. Soon his face again became
serene. "The heart," he said, "is a dark well; its depth unknown. I
have lived eighty years. I am still drawing water."
"Draw a little for me, Dad."
This time Mr. Stone looked at his daughter anxiously, and suddenly spoke,
as if afraid that if he waited he might forget.
"You are unhappy!"
Bianca put her face down to his tweed sleeve. "How nice your coat
smells!" she murmured.
"You are unhappy," repeated Mr. Stone.
Bianca dropped his hand, and moved away.
Mr. Stone followed her. "Why?" he said. Then, grasping his brow, he
added: "If it would do you any good, my dear, to hear a page or two, I
could read to you."
Bianca shook her head.
"No; talk to me!"
Mr. Stone answered simply: "I have forgotten."
"You talk to that little girl," murmured Bianca.
Mr. Stone seemed to lose himself in reverie.
"If that is true," he said, following out his thoughts, "it must be due
to the sex instinct not yet quite extinct. It is stated that the
blackcock will dance before his females to a great age, though I have
never seen it."
"If you dance before her," said Bianca, with her face averted, "can't you
even talk to me?"
"I do not dance, my dear," said Mr. Stone; "I will do my best to talk to
you."
There was a silence, and he began to pace the room. Bianca, by the empty
fireplace, watched a shower of rain driving past the open window.
"This is the time of year," said Mr. Stone suddenly; "when lambs leap off
the ground with all four legs at a time." He paused as though for an
answer; then, out of the silence, his voice rose again--it sounded
different: "There is nothing in Nature more symptomatic of that principle
which should underlie all life. Live in the future; regret nothing;
leap! A lamb which has left earth with all four legs at once is the
symbol of true life. That she must come down again is but an inevitable
accident. 'In those days men were living on their pasts. They leaped
with one, or, at the most, two legs at a time; they never left the
ground, or in leaving, they wished to know the reason why. It was this
paralysis'"--Mr. Stone did not pause, but, finding himself close beside
his desk, took up his pen--"'it was this paralysis of the leaping nerve
which undermined their progress. Instead of millions of leaping lambs,
ignorant of why they leaped, they were a flock of sheep lifting up one
leg and asking whether it was or was not worth their while to lift
another.'"
The words were followed by a silence, broken only by the scratching of
the quill with which Mr. Stone was writing.
Having finished, he again began to pace the room, and coming suddenly on
his daughter, stopped short. Touching her shoulder timidly, he said: "I
was talking to you, I think, my dear; where were we?"
Bianca rubbed her cheek against his hand.
"In the air, I think."
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Stone, "I remember. You must not let me wander from
the point again."
"No, dear."
"Lambs," said Mr. Stone, "remind me at times of that young girl who comes
to copy for me. I make her skip to promote her circulation before tea.
I myself do this exercise." Leaning against the wall, with his feet
twelve inches from it, he rose slowly on his toes. "Do you know that
exercise? It is excellent for the calves of the legs, and for the lumbar
regions." So saying, Mr. Stone left the wall, and began again to pace
the room; the whitewash had also left the wall, and clung in a large
square patch on his shaggy coat. "I have seen sheep in Spring," he said,
"actually imitate their lambs in rising from the ground with all four
legs at once." He stood still. A thought had evidently struck him.
"If Life is not all Spring, it is of no value whatsoever; better to die,
and to begin again. Life is a tree putting on a new green gown; it is a
young moon rising--no, that is not so, we do not see the young moon
rising--it is a young moon setting, never younger than when we are about
to die--"
Bianca cried out sharply: "Don't, Father! Don't talk like that; it's so
untrue! Life is all autumn, it seems to me!"
Mr. Stone's eyes grew very blue.
"That is a foul heresy," he stammered; "I cannot listen to it. Life is
the cuckoo's song; it is a hill-side bursting into leaf; it is the wind;
I feel it in me every day!"
He was trembling like a leaf in the wind he spoke of, and Bianca moved
hastily towards him, holding out her arms. Suddenly his lips began to
move; she heard him mutter: "I have lost force; I will boil some milk. I
must be ready when she comes." And at those words her heart felt like a
lump of ice.
Always that girl! And without again attracting his attention she went
away. As she passed out through the garden she saw him at the window
holding a cup of milk, from which the steam was rising.
CHAPTER XXVI
THIRD PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET
Like water, human character will find its level; and Nature, with her way
of fitting men to their environment, had made young Martin Stone what
Stephen called a "Sanitist." There had been nothing else for her to do
with him.
This young man had come into the social scheme at a moment when the
conception of existence as a present life corrected by a life to come,
was tottering; and the conception of the world as an upper-class preserve
somewhat seriously disturbed.
Losing his father and mother at an early age, and brought up till he was
fourteen by Mr. Stone, he had formed the habit of thinking for himself.
This had rendered him unpopular, and added force to the essential
single-heartedness transmitted to him through his grandfather. A
particular aversion to the sights and scenes of suffering, which had
caused him as a child to object to killing flies, and to watching rabbits
caught in traps, had been regulated by his training as a doctor. His
fleshly horror of pain and ugliness was now disciplined, his spiritual
dislike of them forced into a philosophy. The peculiar chaos surrounding
all young men who live in large towns and think at all, had made him
gradually reject all abstract speculation; but a certain fire of
aspiration coming, we may suppose, through Mr. Stone, had nevertheless
impelled him to embrace something with all his might. He had therefore
embraced health. And living, as he did, in the Euston Road, to be in
touch with things, he had every need of the health which he embraced.
Late in the afternoon of the day when Hughs had committed his assault,
having three hours of respite from his hospital, Martin dipped his face
and head into cold water, rubbed them with a corrugated towel, put on a
hard bowler hat, took a thick stick in his hand, and went by Underground
to Kensington.
With his usual cool, high-handed air he entered his aunt's house, and
asked for Thyme. Faithful to his definite, if somewhat crude theory,
that Stephen and Cecilia and all their sort were amateurs, he never
inquired for them, though not unfrequently he would, while waiting,
stroll into Cecilia's drawing-room, and let his sarcastic glance sweep
over the pretty things she had collected, or, lounging in some luxurious
chair, cross his long legs, and fix his eyes on the ceiling.
Thyme soon came down. She wore a blouse of some blue stuff bought by
Cecilia for the relief of people in the Balkan States, a skirt of
purplish tweed woven by Irish gentlewomen in distress, and held in her
hand an open envelope addressed in Cecilia's writing to Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace.
"Hallo!" she said.
Martin answered by a look that took her in from head to foot.
"Get on a hat! I haven't got much time. That blue thing's new."
"It's pure flax. Mother bought it."
"It's rather decent. Hurry up!"
Thyme raised her chin; that lazy movement showed her round, creamy neck
in all its beauty.
"I feel rather slack," she said; "besides, I must get back to dinner,
Martin."
"Dinner!"
Thyme turned quickly to the door. "Oh, well, I'll come," and ran
upstairs.
When they had purchased a postal order for ten shillings, placed it in
the envelope addressed to Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, and passed the
hundred doors of Messrs. Rose and Thorn, Martin said: "I'm going to see
what that precious amateur has done about the baby. If he hasn't moved
the girl, I expect to find things in a pretty mess."
Thyme's face changed at once.
"Just remember," she said, "that I don't want to go there. I don't see
the good, when there's such a tremendous lot waiting to be done."
"Every other case, except the one in hand!"
"It's not my case. You're so disgustingly unfair, Martin. I don't like
those people."
"Oh, you amateur!"
Thyme flushed crimson. "Look here!" she said, speaking with dignity, "I
don't care what you call me, but I won't have you call Uncle Hilary an
amateur."
"What is he, then?"
"I like him."
"That's conclusive."
"Yes, it is."
Martin did not reply, looking sideways at Thyme with his queer,
protective smile. They were passing through a street superior to Hound
Street in its pretensions to be called a slum.
"Look here!" he said suddenly; "a man like Hilary's interest in all this
sort of thing is simply sentimental. It's on his nerves. He takes
philanthropy just as he'd take sulphonal for sleeplessness."
Thyme looked shrewdly up at him.
"Well," she said, "it's just as much on your nerves. You see it from the
point of view of health; he sees it from the point of view of sentiment,
that's all."
"Oh! you think so?"
"You just treat all these people as if they were in hospital."
The young man's nostrils quivered. "Well, and how should they be
treated?"
"How would you like to be looked at as a 'case'?" muttered Thyme.
Martin moved his hand in a slow half-circle.
"These houses and these people," he said, "are in the way--in the way of
you and me, and everyone."
Thyme's eyes followed that slow, sweeping movement of her cousin's hand.
It seemed to fascinate her.
"Yes, of course; I know," she murmured. "Something must be done!"
And she reared her head up, looking from side to side, as if to show him
that she, too, could sweep away things. Very straight, and solid, fair,
and fresh, she looked just then.
Thus, in the hypnotic silence of high thoughts, the two young "Sanitists"
arrived in Hound Street.
In the doorway of No. 1 the son of the lame woman, Mrs. Budgen--the thin,
white youth as tall as Martin, but not so broad-stood, smoking a
dubious-looking cigarette. He turned his lack-lustre, jeering gaze on
the visitors.
"Who d'you want?" he said. "If it's the girl, she's gone away, and left
no address."
"I want Mrs. Hughs," said Martin.
The young man coughed. "Right-o! You'll find her; but for him, apply
Wormwood Scrubs."
"Prison! What for?"
"Stickin' her through the wrist with his bayonet;" and the young man let
a long, luxurious fume of smoke trickle through his nose.
"How horrible!" said Thyme.
Martin regarded the young man, unmoved. "That stuff' you're smoking's
rank," he said. "Have some of mine; I'll show you how to make them.
It'll save you one and three per pound of baccy, and won't rot your
lungs."
Taking out his pouch, he rolled a cigarette. The white young man bent
his dull wink on Thyme, who, wrinkling her nose, was pretending to be far
away.
Mounting the narrow stairs that smelt of walls and washing and red
herrings, Thyme spoke: "Now, you see, it wasn't so simple as you thought.
I don't want to go up; I don't want to see her. I shall wait for you
here." She took her stand in the open doorway of the little model's
empty room. Martin ascended to the second floor.
There, in the front room, Mrs. Hughs was seen standing with the baby in
her arms beside the bed. She had a frightened and uncertain air. After
examining her wrist, and pronouncing it a scratch, Martin looked long at
the baby. The little creature's toes were stiffened against its mother's
waist, its eyes closed, its tiny fingers crisped against her breast.
While Mrs. Hughs poured forth her tale, Martin stood with his eyes still
fixed on the baby. It could not be gathered from his face what he was
thinking, but now and then he moved his jaw, as though he were suffering
from toothache. In truth, by the look of Mrs. Hughs and her baby, his
recipe did not seem to have achieved conspicuous success. He turned away
at last from the trembling, nerveless figure of the seamstress, and went
to the window. Two pale hyacinth plants stood on the inner edge; their
perfume penetrated through the other savours of the room--and very
strange they looked, those twin, starved children of the light and air.
"These are new," he said.
"Yes, sir," murmured Mrs. Hughs. "I brought them upstairs. I didn't
like to see the poor things left to die."
From the bitter accent of these words Martin understood that they had
been the little model's.
"Put them outside," he said; "they'll never live in here. They want
watering, too. Where are your saucers?"
Mrs. Hughs laid the baby down, and, going to the cupboard where all the
household gods were kept, brought out two old, dirty saucers. Martin
raised the plants, and as he held them, from one close, yellow petal
there rose up a tiny caterpillar. It reared a green, transparent body,
feeling its way to a new resting-place. The little writhing shape
seemed, like the wonder and the mystery of life, to mock the young
doctor, who watched it with eyebrows raised, having no hand at liberty to
remove it from the plant.
"She came from the country. There's plenty of men there for her!"
Martin put the plants down, and turned round to the seamstress.
"Look here!" he said, "it's no good crying over spilt milk. What you've
got to do is to set to and get some work."
"Yes, sir."
"Don't say it in that sort of way," said Martin; "you must rise to the
occasion."
"Yes, sir."
"You want a tonic. Take this half-crown, and get in a dozen pints of
stout, and drink one every day."
And again Mrs. Hughs said, "Yes, sir."
"And about that baby."
Motionless, where it had been placed against the footrail of the bed, the
baby sat with its black eyes closed. The small grey face was curled down
on the bundle of its garments.
"It's a silent gentleman," Martin muttered.
"It never was a one to cry," said Mrs. Hughs.
"That's lucky, anyway. When did you feed it last?"
Mrs. Hughs did not reply at first. "About half-past six last evening,
sir."
"What?"
"It slept all night; but to-day, of course, I've been all torn to pieces;
my milk's gone. I've tried it with the bottle, but it wouldn't take it."
Martin bent down to the baby's face, and put his finger on its chin;
bending lower yet, he raised the eyelid of the tiny eye....
"It's dead," he said.
At the word "dead" Mrs. Hughs, stooping behind him, snatched the baby to
her throat. With its drooping head close to her she, she clutched and
rocked it without sound. Full five minutes this desperate mute struggle
with eternal silence lasted--the feeling, and warming, and breathing on
the little limbs. Then, sitting down, bent almost double over her baby,
she moaned. That single sound was followed by utter silence. The tread
of footsteps on the creaking stairs broke it. Martin, rising from his
crouching posture by the bed, went towards the door.
His grandfather was standing there, with Thyme behind him.
"She has left her room," said Mr. Stone. "Where has she gone?"
Martin, understanding that he meant the little model, put his finger to
his lips, and, pointing to Mrs. Hughs, whispered:
"This woman's baby has just died."
Mr. Stone's face underwent the queer discoloration which marked the
sudden summoning of his far thoughts. He stepped past Martin, and went
up to Mrs. Hughs.
He stood there a long time gazing at the baby, and at the dark head
bending over it with such despair. At last he spoke:
"Poor woman! He is at peace."
Mrs. Hughs looked up, and, seeing that old face, with its hollows and
thin silver hair, she spoke:
"He's dead, sir."
Mr. Stone put out his veined and fragile hand, and touched the baby's
toes. "He is flying; he is everywhere; he is close to the sun--Little
brother!" And turning on his heel, he went out.
Thyme followed him as he walked on tiptoe down stairs which seemed to
creak the louder for his caution. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.
Martin sat on, with the mother and her baby, in the close, still room,
where, like strange visiting spirits, came stealing whiffs of the perfume
of hyacinths.
CHAPTER XXVII
STEPHEN'S PRIVATE LIFE
Mr. Stone and Thyme, going out, again passed the tall, white young man.
He had thrown away the hand-made cigarette, finding that it had not
enough saltpetre to make it draw, and was smoking one more suited to the
action of his lungs. He directed towards them the same lack-lustre,
jeering stare.
Unconscious, seemingly, of where he went, Mr. Stone walked with his eyes
fixed on space. His head jerked now and then, as a dried flower will
shiver in a draught.
Scared at these movements, Thyme took his arm. The touch of that soft
young arm squeezing his own brought speech back to Mr. Stone.
"In those places...." he said, "in those streets! ...I shall not see the
flowering of the aloe--I shall not see the living peace! 'As with dogs,
each couched over his proper bone, so men were living then!'" Thyme,
watching him askance, pressed still closer to his side, as though to try
and warm him back to every day.
'Oh!' went her guttered thoughts. 'I do wish grandfather would say
something one could understand. I wish he would lose that dreadful
stare.'
Mr. Stone spoke in answer to his granddaughter's thoughts.
"I have seen a vision of fraternity. A barren hillside in the sun, and
on it a man of stone talking to the wind. I have heard an owl hooting in
the daytime; a cuckoo singing in the night."
"Grandfather, grandfather!"
To that appeal Mr. Stone responded: "Yes, what is it?"
But Thyme, thus challenged, knew not what to say, having spoken out of
terror.
"If the poor baby had lived," she stammered out, "it would have grown
up.... It's all for the best, isn't it?"
"Everything is for the best," said Mr. Stone. "'In those days men,
possessed by thoughts of individual life, made moan at death, careless of
the great truth that the world was one unending song.'"
Thyme thought: 'I have never seen him as bad as this!' She drew him on
more quickly. With deep relief she saw her father, latchkey in hand,
turning into the Old Square.
Stephen, who was still walking with his springy step, though he had come
on foot the whole way from the Temple, hailed them with his hat. It was
tall and black, and very shiny, neither quite oval nor positively round,
and had a little curly brim. In this and his black coat, cut so as to
show the front of him and cover the behind, he looked his best. The
costume suited his long, rather narrow face, corrugated by two short
parallel lines slanting downwards from his eyes and nostrils on either
cheek; suited his neat, thin figure and the close-lipped corners of his
mouth. His permanent appointment in the world of Law had ousted from his
life (together with all uncertainty of income) the need for putting on a
wig and taking his moustache off; but he still preferred to go
clean-shaved.
"Where have you two sprung from?" he inquired, admitting them into the
hall.
Mr. Stone gave him no answer, but passed into the drawing-room, and sat
down on the verge of the first chair he came across, leaning forward with
his hands between his knees.
Stephen, after one dry glance at him, turned to his daughter.
"My child," he said softly, "what have you brought the old boy here for?
If there happens to be anything of the high mammalian order for dinner,
your mother will have a fit."
Thyme answered: "Don't chaff, Father!"
Stephen, who was very fond of her, saw that for some reason she was not
herself. He examined her with unwonted gravity. Thyme turned away from
him. He heard, to his alarm, a little gulping sound.
"My dear!" he said.
Conscious of her sentimental weakness, Thyme made a violent effort.
"I've seen a baby dead," she cried in a quick, hard voice; and, without
another word, she ran upstairs.
In Stephen there was a horror of emotion amounting almost to disease. It
would have been difficult to say when he had last shown emotion; perhaps
not since Thyme was born, and even then not to anyone except himself,
having first locked the door, and then walked up and down, with his teeth
almost meeting in the mouthpiece of his favourite pipe. He was
unaccustomed, too, to witness this weakness on the part of other people.
His looks and speech unconsciously discouraged it, so that if Cecilia had
been at all that way inclined, she must long ago have been healed.
Fortunately, she never had been, having too much distrust of her own
feelings to give way to them completely. And Thyme, that healthy product
of them both, at once younger for her age, and older, than they had ever
been, with her incapacity for nonsense, her love for open air and
facts--that fresh, rising plant, so elastic and so sane--she had never
given them a single moment of uneasiness.
Stephen, close to his hat-rack, felt soreness in his heart. Such blows
as Fortune had dealt, and meant to deal him, he had borne, and he could
bear, so long as there was nothing in his own manner, or in that of
others, to show him they were blows.
Hurriedly depositing his hat, he ran to Cecilia. He still preserved the
habit of knocking on her door before he entered, though she had never, so
far, answered, "Don't come in!" because she knew his knock. The custom
gave, in fact, the measure of his idealism. What he feared, or what he
thought he feared, after nineteen years of unchecked entrance, could
never have been ascertained; but there it was, that flower of something
formal and precise, of something reticent, within his soul.
This time, for once, he did not knock, and found Cecilia hooking up her
tea-gown and looking very sweet. She glanced at him with mild surprise.
"What's this, Cis," he said, "about a baby dead? Thyme's quite upset
about it; and your dad's in the drawing-room!"
With the quick instinct that was woven into all her gentle treading,
Cecilia's thoughts flew--she could not have told why--first to the little
model, then to Mrs. Hughs.
"Dead?" she said. "Oh, poor woman!"
"What woman?" Stephen asked.
"It must be Mrs. Hughs."
The thought passed darkly through Stephen's mind: 'Those people again!
What now?' He did not express it, being neither brutal nor lacking in
good taste.
A short silence followed, then Cecilia said suddenly: "Did you say that
father was in the drawing-room? There's fillet of beef, Stephen!"
Stephen turned away. "Go and see Thyme!" he said.
Outside Thyme's door Cecilia paused, and, hearing no sound, tapped
gently. Her knock not being answered, she slipped in. On the bed of
that white room, with her face pressed into the pillow, her little
daughter lay. Cecilia stood aghast. Thyme's whole body was quivering
with suppressed sobs.
"My darling!" said Cecilia, "what is it?"
Thyme's answer was inarticulate.
Cecilia sat down on the bed and waited, drawing her fingers through the
girl's hair, which had fallen loose; and while she sat there she
experienced all that sore, strange feeling--as of being skinned--which
comes to one who watches the emotion of someone near and dear without
knowing the exact cause.
'This is dreadful,' she thought. 'What am I to do?'
To see one's child cry was bad enough, but to see her cry when that
child's whole creed of honour and conduct for years past had precluded
this relief as unfeminine, was worse than disconcerting.
Thyme raised herself on her elbow, turning her face carefully away.
"I don't know what's the matter with me," she said, choking. "It's
--it's purely physical"
"Yes, darling," murmured Cecilia; "I know."
"Oh, Mother!" said Thyme suddenly, "it looked so tiny."
"Yes, yes, my sweet."
Thyme faced round; there was a sort of passion in her darkened eyes,
rimmed pink with grief, and in all her gushed, wet face.
"Why should it have been choked out like that? It's--it's so brutal!"
Cecilia slid an arm round her.
"I'm so distressed you saw it, dear," she said.
"And grandfather was so--" A long sobbing quiver choked her utterance.
"Yes, yes," said Cecilia; "I'm sure he was."
Clasping her hands together in her lap, Thyme muttered: "He called him
'Little brother.'"
A tear trickled down Cecilia's cheek, and dropped on her daughter's
wrist. Feeling that it was not her own tear, Thyme started up.
"It's weak and ridiculous," she said. "I won't!"
"Oh, go away, Mother, please. I'm only making you feel bad, too. You'd
better go and see to grandfather."
Cecilia saw that she would cry no more, and since it was the sight of
tears which had so disturbed her, she gave the girl a little hesitating
stroke, and went away. Outside she thought: 'How dreadfully unlucky and
pathetic; and there's father in the drawing-room!' Then she hurried down
to Mr. Stone.
He was sitting where he had first placed himself, motionless. It struck
her suddenly how frail and white he looked. In the shadowy light of her
drawing-room, he was almost like a spirit sitting there in his grey
tweed--silvery from head to foot. Her conscience smote her. It is
written of the very old that they shall pass, by virtue of their long
travel, out of the country of the understanding of the young, till the
natural affections are blurred by creeping mists such as steal across the
moors when the sun is going down.
Cecilia's heart ached with a little ache for all the times she had
thought: 'If father were only not quite so---'; for all the times she had
shunned asking him to come to them, because he was so---; for all the
silences she and Stephen had maintained after he had spoken; for all the
little smiles she had smiled. She longed to go and kiss his brow, and
make him feel that she was aching. But she did not dare; he seemed so
far away; it would be ridiculous.
Coming down the room, and putting her slim foot on the fender with a
noise, so that if possible he might both see and hear her, she turned her
anxious face towards him, and said: "Father!"
Mr. Stone looked up, and seeing somebody who seemed to be his elder
daughter, answered "Yes, my dear?"
"Are you sure you're feeling quite the thing? Thyme said she thought
seeing that poor baby had upset you."
Mr. Stone felt his body with his hand.
"I am not conscious of any pain," he said.
"Then you'll stay to dinner, dear, won't you?"
Mr. Stone's brow contracted as though he were trying to recall his past.
"I have had no tea," he said. Then, with a sudden, anxious look at his
daughter: "The little girl has not come to me. I miss her. Where is
she?"
The ache within Cecilia became more poignant.
"It is now two days," said Mr. Stone, "and she has left her room in that
house--in that street."
Cecilia, at her wits' end, answered: "Do you really miss her, Father?"
"Yes," said Mr. Stone. "She is like--" His eyes wandered round the room
as though seeking something which would help him to express himself.
They fixed themselves on the far wall. Cecilia, following their gaze,
saw a little solitary patch of sunlight dancing and trembling there. It
had escaped the screen of trees and houses, and, creeping through some
chink, had quivered in. "She is like that," said Mr. Stone, pointing
with his finger. "It is gone!" His finger dropped; he uttered a deep
sigh.
'How dreadful this is!' Cecilia thought. 'I never expected him to feel
it, and yet I can do nothing!' Hastily she asked: "Would it do if you
had Thyme to copy for you? I'm sure she'd love to come."
"She is my grand-daughter," Mr. Stone said simply. "It would not be the
same."
Cecilia could think of nothing now to say but: "Would you like to wash
your hands, dear?"
"Yes," said Mr. Stone.
"Then will you go up to Stephen's dressing-room for hot water, or will
you wash them in the lavatory?"
"In the lavatory," said Mr. Stone. "I shall be freer there."
When he had gone Cecilia thought: 'Oh dear, how shall I get through the
evening? Poor darling, he is so single-minded!'
At the sounding of the dinner-gong they all assembled--Thyme from her
bedroom with cheeks and eyes still pink, Stephen with veiled inquiry in
his glance, Mr. Stone from freedom in the lavatory--and sat down,
screened, but so very little, from each other by sprays of white lilac.
Looking round her table, Cecilia felt rather like one watching a
dew-belled cobweb, most delicate of all things in the world, menaced by
the tongue of a browsing cow.
Both soup and fish had been achieved, however, before a word was spoken.
It was Stephen who, after taking a mouthful of dry sherry, broke the
silence.
"How are you getting on with your book, sir?"
Cecilia heard that question with something like dismay. It was so bald;
for, however inconvenient Mr. Stone's absorption in his manuscript might
be, her delicacy told her how precious beyond life itself that book was
to him. To her relief, however, her father was eating spinach.
"You must be getting near the end, I should think," proceeded Stephen.
Cecilia spoke hastily: "Isn't this white lilac lovely, Dad?"
Mr. Stone looked up.
"It is not white; it is really pink. The test is simple." He paused
with his eyes fixed on the lilac.
'Ah!' thought Cecilia, 'now, if I can only keep him on natural science he
used to be so interesting.'
"All flowers are one!" said Mr. Stone. His voice had changed.
'Oh!' thought Cecilia, 'he is gone!'
"They have but a single soul. In those days men divided, and subdivided
them, oblivious of the one pale spirit which underlay those seemingly
separate forms."
Cecilia's glance passed swiftly from the manservant to Stephen.
She saw one of her husband's eyes rise visibly. Stephen did so hate one
thing to be confounded with another.
"Oh, come, sir," she heard him say; "you don't surely tell us that
dandelions and roses have the same pale spirit!"
Mr. Stone looked at him wistfully.
"Did I say that?" he said. "I had no wish to be dogmatic."
"Not at all, sir, not at all," murmured Stephen.
Thyme, leaning over to her mother, whispered "Oh, Mother, don't let
grandfather be queer; I can't bear it to-night!"
Cecilia, at her wits' end, said hurriedly:
"Dad, will you tell us what sort of character you think that little girl
who comes to you has?"
Mr. Stone paused in the act of drinking water; his attention had
evidently been riveted; he did not, however, speak. And Cecilia, seeing
that the butler, out of the perversity which she found so conspicuous in
her servants, was about to hand him beef, made a desperate movement with
her lips. "No, Charles, not there, not there!"
The butler, tightening his lips, passed on. Mr. Stone spoke:
"I had not considered that. She is rather of a Celtic than an
Anglo-Saxon type; the cheekbones are prominent; the jaw is not massive;
the head is broad--if I can remember I will measure it; the eyes are of a
peculiar blue, resembling chicory flowers; the mouth---," Mr. Stone
paused.
Cecilia thought: 'What a lucky find! Now perhaps he will go on all
right!'
"I do not know," Mr. Stone resumed, speaking in a far-off voice, "whether
she would be virtuous."
Cecilia heard Stephen drinking sherry; Thyme, too, was drinking
something; she herself drank nothing, but, pink and quiet, for she was a
well-bred woman, said:
"You have no new potatoes, dear. Charles, give Mr. Stone some new
potatoes."
By the almost vindictive expression on Stephen's face she saw, however,
that her failure had decided him to resume command of the situation.
"Talking of brotherhood, sir," he said dryly, "would you go so far as to
say that a new potato is the brother of a bean?"
Mr. Stone, on whose plate these two vegetables reposed, looked almost
painfully confused.
"I do not perceive," he stammered, "any difference between them."
"It's true," said Stephen; "the same pale spirit can be extracted from
them both."
Mr. Stone looked up at him.
"You laugh at me," he said. "I cannot help it; but you must not laugh at
life--that is blasphemy."
Before the piercing wistfulness of that sudden gaze Stephen was abashed.
Cecilia saw him bite his lower lip.
"We're talking too much," he said; "we really must let your father eat!"
And the rest of the dinner was achieved in silence.
When Mr. Stone, refusing to be accompanied, had taken his departure, and
Thyme had gone to bed, Stephen withdrew to his study. This room, which
had a different air from any other portion of the house, was sacred to
his private life. Here, in specially designed compartments, he kept his
golf clubs, pipes, and papers. Nothing was touched by anyone except
himself, and twice a week by one particular housemaid. Here was no bust
of Socrates, no books in deerskin bindings, but a bookcase filled with
treatises on law, Blue Books, reviews, and the novels of Sir Walter
Scott; two black oak cabinets stood side by side against the wall filled
with small drawers. When these cabinets were opened and the drawers
drawn forward there emerged a scent of metal polish. If the green-baize
covers of the drawers were lifted, there were seen coins, carefully
arranged with labels--as one may see plants growing in rows, each with
its little name tied on. To these tidy rows of shining metal discs
Stephen turned in moments when his spirit was fatigued. To add to them,
touch them, read their names, gave him the sweet, secret feeling which
comes to a man who rubs one hand against the other. Like a dram-drinker,
Stephen drank--in little doses--of the feeling these coins gave him.
They were his creative work, his history of the world. To them he gave
that side of him which refused to find its full expression in summarising
law, playing golf, or reading the reviews; that side of a man which
aches, he knows not wherefore, to construct something ere he die. From
Rameses to George IV. the coins lay within those drawers--links of the
long unbroken chain of authority.
Putting on an old black velvet jacket laid out for him across a chair,
and lighting the pipe that he could never bring himself to smoke in his
formal dinner clothes, he went to the right-hand cabinet, and opened it.
He stood with a smile, taking up coins one by one. In this particular
drawer they were of the best Byzantine dynasty, very rare. He did not
see that Cecilia had stolen in, and was silently regarding him. Her eyes
seemed doubting at that moment whether or no she loved him who stood
there touching that other mistress of his thoughts--that other mistress
with whom he spent so many evening hours. The little green-baize cover
fell. Cecilia said suddenly:
"Stephen, I feel as if I must tell Father where that girl is!"
Stephen turned.
"My dear child," he answered in his special voice, which, like champagne,
seemed to have been dried by artifice, "you don't want to reopen the
whole thing?"
"But I can see he really is upset about it; he's looking so awfully white
and thin."
"He ought to give up that bathing in the Serpentine. At his age it's
monstrous. And surely any other girl will do just as well?"
"He seems to set store by reading to her specially."
Stephen shrugged his shoulders. It had happened to him on one occasion
to be present when Mr. Stone was declaiming some pages of his manuscript.
He had never forgotten the discomfort of the experience. "That crazy
stuff," as he had called it to Cecilia afterwards, had remained on his
mind, heavy and damp, like a cold linseed poultice. His wife's father
was a crank, and perhaps even a little more than a crank, a wee bit
"touched"--that she couldn't help, poor girl; but any allusion to his
cranky produce gave Stephen pain. Nor had he forgotten his experience at
dinner.
"He seems to have grown fond of her," murmured Cecilia.
"But it's absurd at his time of life!"
"Perhaps that makes him feel it more; people do miss things when they are
old!"
Stephen slid the drawer back into its socket. There was dry decision in
that gesture.
"Look here! Let's exercise a little common sense; it's been sacrificed
to sentiment all through this wretched business. One wants to be kind,
of course; but one's got to draw the line."
"Ah!" said Cecilia; "where?"
"The thing," went on Stephen, "has been a mistake from first to last.
It's all very well up to a certain point, but after that it becomes
destructive of all comfort. It doesn't do to let these people come into
personal contact with you. There are the proper channels for that sort
of thing."
Cecilia's eyes were lowered, as though she did not dare to let him see
her thoughts.
"It seems so horrid," she said; "and father is not like other people."
"He is not," said Stephen dryly; "we had a pretty good instance of that
this evening. But Hilary and your sister are. There's something most
distasteful to me, too, about Thyme's going about slumming. You see what
she's been let in for this afternoon. The notion of that baby being
killed through the man's treatment of his wife, and that, no doubt,
arising from the girl's leaving them, is most repulsive!"
To these words Cecilia answered with a sound almost like a gasp. "I
hadn't thought of that. Then we're responsible; it was we who advised
Hilary to make her change her lodging."
Stephen stared; he regretted sincerely that his legal habit of mind had
made him put the case so clearly.
"I can't imagine," he said, almost violently, "what possesses everybody!
We--responsible! Good gracious! Because we gave Hilary some sound
advice! What next?"
Cecilia turned to the empty hearth.
"Thyme has been telling me about that poor little thing. It seems so
dreadful, and I can't get rid of the feeling that we're--we're all mixed
up with it!"
"Mixed up with what?"
"I don't know; it's just a feeling like--like being haunted."
Stephen took her quietly by the arm.
"My dear old girl," he said, "I'd no idea that you were run down like
this. To-morrow's Thursday, and I can get away at three. We'll motor
down to Richmond, and have a round or two!"
Cecilia quivered; for a moment it seemed that she was about to burst out
crying. Stephen stroked her shoulder steadily. Cecilia must have felt
his dread; she struggled loyally with her emotion.
"That will be very jolly," she said at last.
Stephen drew a deep breath.
"And don't you worry, dear," he said, "about your dad; he'll have
forgotten the whole thing in a day or two; he's far too wrapped up in his
book. Now trot along to bed; I'll be up directly."
Before going out Cecilia looked back at him. How wonderful was that
look, which Stephen did not--perhaps intentionally--see. Mocking, almost
hating, and yet thanking him for having refused to let her be emotional
and yield herself up for once to what she felt, showing him too how
clearly she saw through his own masculine refusal to be made to feel, and
how she half-admired it--all this was in that look, and more. Then she
went out.
Stephen glanced quickly at the door, and, pursing up his lips, frowned.
He threw the window open, and inhaled the night air.
'If I don't look out,' he thought, 'I shall be having her mixed up with
this. I was an ass ever to have spoken to old Hilary. I ought to have
ignored the matter altogether. It's a lesson not to meddle with people
in those places. I hope to God she'll be herself tomorrow!'
Outside, under the soft black foliage of the Square, beneath the slim
sickle of the moon, two cats were hunting after happiness; their savage
cries of passion rang in the blossom-scented air like a cry of dark
humanity in the jungle of dim streets. Stephen, with a shiver of
disgust, for his nerves were on edge, shut the window with a slam.
CHAPTER XXVIII
HILARY HEARS THE CUCKOO SING
It was not left to Cecilia alone to remark how very white Mr. Stone
looked in these days.
The wild force which every year visits the world, driving with its soft
violence snowy clouds and their dark shadows, breaking through all crusts
and sheaths, covering the earth in a fierce embrace; the wild force which
turns form to form, and with its million leapings, swift as the flight of
swallows and the arrow-darts of the rain, hurries everything on to sweet
mingling--this great, wild force of universal life, so-called the Spring,
had come to Mr. Stone, like new wine to some old bottle. And Hilary, to
whom it had come, too, watching him every morning setting forth with a
rough towel across his arm, wondered whether the old man would not this
time leave his spirit swimming in the chill waters of the Serpentine--so
near that spirit seemed to breaking through its fragile shell.
Four days had gone by since the interview at which he had sent away the
little model, and life in his household--that quiet backwater choked with
lilies--seemed to have resumed the tranquillity enjoyed before this
intrusion of rude life. The paper whiteness of Mr. Stone was the only
patent evidence that anything disturbing had occurred--that and certain
feelings about which the strictest silence was preserved.
On the morning of the fifth day, seeing the old man stumble on the level
flagstones of the garden, Hilary finished dressing hastily, and followed.
He overtook him walking forward feebly beneath the candelabra of
flowering chestnut-trees, with a hail-shower striking white on his high
shoulders; and, placing himself alongside, without greeting--for forms
were all one to Mr. Stone--he said:
"Surely you don't mean to bathe during a hail storm, sir! Make an
exception this once. You're not looking quite yourself."
Mr. Stone shook his head; then, evidently following out a thought which
Hilary had interrupted, he remarked:
"The sentiment that men call honour is of doubtful value. I have not as
yet succeeded in relating it to universal brotherhood."
"How is that, sir?"
"In so far," said Mr. Stone, "as it consists in fidelity to principle,
one might assume it worthy of conjunction. The difficulty arises when we
consider the nature of the principle .... There is a family of young
thrushes in the garden. If one of them finds a worm, I notice that his
devotion to that principle of self-preservation which prevails in all low
forms of life forbids his sharing it with any of the other little
thrushes."
Mr. Stone had fixed his eyes on distance.
"So it is, I fear," he said, "with 'honour.' In those days men looked on
women as thrushes look on worms."
He paused, evidently searching for a word; and Hilary, with a faint
smile, said:
"And how did women look on men, sir?"
Mr. Stone observed him with surprise. "I did not perceive that it was
you," he said. "I have to avoid brain action before bathing."
They had crossed the road dividing the Gardens from the Park, and, seeing
that Mr. Stone had already seen the water where he was about to bathe,
and would now see nothing else, Hilary stopped beside a little lonely
birch-tree. This wild, small, graceful visitor, who had long bathed in
winter, was already draping her bare limbs in a scarf of green. Hilary
leaned against her cool, pearly body. Below were the chilly waters, now
grey, now starch-blue, and the pale forms of fifteen or twenty bathers.
While he stood shivering in the frozen wind, the sun, bursting through
the hail-cloud, burned his cheeks and hands. And suddenly he heard,
clear, but far off, the sound which, of all others, stirs the hearts of
men: "Cuckoo, cuckoo!"
Four times over came the unexpected call. Whence had that ill-advised,
indelicate grey bird flown into this great haunt of men and shadows? Why
had it come with its arrowy flight and mocking cry to pierce the heart
and set it aching? There were trees enough outside the town, cloud-swept
hollows, tangled brakes of furze just coming into bloom, where it could
preside over the process of Spring. What solemn freak was this which
made it come and sing to one who had no longer any business with the
Spring?
With a real spasm in his heart Hilary turned away from that distant bird,
and went down to the water's edge. Mr. Stone was swimming, slower than
man had ever swum before. His silver head and lean arms alone were
visible, parting the water feebly; suddenly he disappeared. He was but a
dozen yards from the shore; and Hilary, alarmed at not seeing him
reappear, ran in. The water was not deep. Mr. Stone, seated at the
bottom, was doing all he could to rise. Hilary took him by his
bathing-dress, raised him to the surface, and supported him towards the
land. By the time they reached the shore he could just stand on his
legs. With the assistance of a policeman, Hilary enveloped him in
garments and got him to a cab. He had regained some of his vitality, but
did not seem aware of what had happened.
"I was not in as long as usual," he mused, as they passed out into the
high road.
"Oh, I think so, sir."
Mr. Stone looked troubled.
"It is odd," he said. "I do not recollect leaving the water."
He did not speak again till he was being assisted from the cab.
"I wish to recompense the man. I have half a crown indoors."
"I will get it, sir," said Hilary.
Mr. Stone, who shivered violently now that he was on his feet, turned his
face up to the cabman.
"Nothing is nobler than the horse," he said; "take care of him."
The cabman removed his hat. "I will, sir," he answered.
Walking by himself, but closely watched by Hilary, Mr. Stone reached his
room. He groped about him as though not distinguishing objects too well
through the crystal clearness of the fundamental flux.
"If I might advise you," said Hilary, "I would get back into bed for a
few minutes. You seem a little chilly."
Mr. Stone, who was indeed shaking so that he could hardly stand, allowed
Hilary to assist him into bed and tuck the blankets round him.
"I must be at work by ten o'clock," he said.
Hilary, who was also shivering, hastened to Bianca's room. She was just
coming down, and exclaimed at seeing him all wet. When he had told her
of the episode she touched his shoulder.
"What about you?"
"A hot bath and drink will set me right. You'd better go to him."
He turned towards the bathroom, where Miranda stood, lifting a white
foot. Compressing her lips, Bianca ran downstairs. Startled by his
tale, she would have taken his wet body in her arms; if the ghosts of
innumerable moments had not stood between. So this moment passed too,
and itself became a ghost.
Mr. Stone, greatly to his disgust, had not succeeded in resuming work at
ten o'clock. Failing simply because he could not stand on his legs, he
had announced his intention of waiting until half-past three, when he
should get up, in preparation for the coming of the little girl. Having
refused to see a doctor, or have his temperature taken, it was impossible
to tell precisely what degree of fever he was in. In his cheeks, just
visible over the blankets, there was more colour than there should have
been; and his eyes, fixed on the ceiling, shone with suspicious
brilliancy. To the dismay of Bianca--who sat as far out of sight as
possible, lest he should see her, and fancy that she was doing him a
service--he pursued his thoughts aloud:
"Words--words--they have taken away brotherhood!" Bianca shuddered,
listening to that uncanny sound. "'In those days of words they called it
death--pale death--mors pallida. They saw that word like a gigantic
granite block suspended over them, and slowly coming down. Some, turning
up their faces at the sight, trembled painfully, awaiting their
obliteration. Others, unable, while they still lived, to face the
thought of nothingness, inflated by some spiritual wind, and thinking
always of their individual forms, called out unceasingly that those
selves of theirs would and must survive this word--that in some fashion,
which no man could understand, each self-conscious entity reaccumulated
after distribution. Drunk with this thought, these, too, passed away.
Some waited for it with grim, dry eyes, remarking that the process was
molecular, and thus they also met their so-called death.'"
His voice ceased, and in place of it rose the sound of his tongue
moistening his palate. Bianca, from behind, placed a glass of
barley-water to his lips. He drank it with a slow, clucking noise; then,
seeing that a hand held the glass, said: "Is that you? Are you ready for
me? Follow. 'In those days no one leaped up to meet pale riding Death;
no one saw in her face that she was brotherhood incarnate; no one with a
heart as light as gossamer kissed her feet, and, smiling, passed into the
Universe.'" His voice died away, and when next he spoke it was in a
quick, husky whisper: "I must--I must--I must---" There was silence;
then he added: "Give me my trousers."
Bianca placed them by his bed. The sight seemed to reassure him. He was
once more silent.
For more than an hour after this he was so absolutely still that Bianca
rose continually to look at him. Each time, his eyes, wide open, were
fixed on a little dark mark across the ceiling; his face had a look of
the most singular determination, as though his spirit were slowly,
relentlessly, regaining mastery over his fevered body. He spoke suddenly:
"Who is there?"
"Bianca."
"Help me out of bed!"
The flush had left his face, the brilliance had faded from his eyes; he
looked just like a ghost. With a sort of terror Bianca helped him out of
bed. This weird display of mute white will-power was unearthly.
When he was dressed in his woollen gown and seated before the fire, she
gave him a cup of strong beef-tea, with brandy. He swallowed it with
great avidity.
"I should like some more of that," he said, and fell asleep.
While he was asleep Cecilia came, and the two sisters watched his
slumber, and, watching it, felt nearer to each other than they had for
many years. Before she went away Cecilia whispered--
"B. if he seems to want that little girl while he's like this, don't you
think she ought to come?"
Bianca answered: "I don't know where she is."
"I do."
"Ah!" said Bianca; "of course!" And she turned her head away.
Disconcerted by that sarcastic little speech, Cecilia was silent; then,
summoning all her courage, she said:
"Here's the address, B. I've written it down for you;" and, with puckers
of anxiety in her face, she left the room.
Bianca sat on in the old golden chair, watching the deep hollows beneath
the sleeper's temples, the puffs of breath stirring the silver round his
mouth. Her ears burned crimson. Carried out of herself by the sight of
that old form, dearer to her than she had thought, fighting its great
battle for the sake of its idea, her spirit grew all tremulous and soft
within her. With eagerness she embraced the thought of self-effacement.
It did not seem to matter whether she were first with Hilary. Her spirit
should so manifest its capacity for sacrifice that she would be first
with him through sheer nobility. At this moment she could almost have
taken that common little girl into her arms and kissed her. So would all
disquiet end! Some harmonious messenger had fluttered to her for a
second--the gold-winged bird of peace. In this sensuous exaltation her
nerves vibrated like the strings of a violin.
When Mr. Stone woke it was past three o'clock and Bianca at once handed
him another cup of strong beef-tea.
He swallowed it, and said: "What is this?"
"Beef-tea."
Mr. Stone looked at the empty cup.
"I must not drink it. The cow and the sheep are on the same plane as
man."
"But how do you feel, dear?"
"I feel," said Mr. Stone, "able to dictate what I have already
written--not more. Has she come?"
"Not yet; but I will go and find her if you like."
Mr. Stone looked at his daughter wistfully.
"That will be taking up your time," he said.
Bianca answered: "My time is of no consequence."
Mr. Stone stretched his hands out to the fire.
"I will not consent," he said, evidently to himself, "to be a drag on
anyone. If that has come, then I must go!"
Bianca, placing herself beside him on her knees, pressed her hot cheek
against his temple.
"But it has not come, Dad."
"I hope not," said Mr. Stone. "I wish to end my book first."
The sudden grim coherence of his last two sayings terrified Bianca more
than all his feverish, utterances.
"I rely on your sitting quite still," she said, "while I go and find
her." And with a feeling in her heart as though two hands had seized and
were pulling it asunder, she went out.
Some half-hour later Hilary slipped quietly in, and stood watching at the
door. Mr. Stone, seated on the very verge of his armchair, with his
hands on its arms, was slowly rising to his feet, and slowly falling back
again, not once, but many times, practising a standing posture. As
Hilary came into his line of sight, he said:
"I have succeeded twice."
"I am very glad," said Hilary. "Won't you rest now, sir?"
"It is my knees," said Mr. Stone. "She has gone to find her."
Hilary heard those words with bewilderment, and, sitting down on the
other chair, waited.
"I have fancied," said Mr. Stone, looking at him wistfully, "that when we
pass away from life we may become the wind. Is that your opinion?"
"It is a new thought to me," said Hilary.
"It is not tenable," said Mr. Stone. "But it is restful. The wind is
everywhere and nowhere, and nothing can be hidden from it. When I have
missed that little girl, I have tried, in a sense, to become the wind;
but I have found it difficult."
His eyes left Hilary's face, whose mournful smile he had not noticed, and
fixed themselves on the bright fire. "'In those days,"' he said, "'men's
relation to the eternal airs was the relation of a billion little
separate draughts blowing against the south-west wind. They did not wish
to merge themselves in that soft, moon-uttered sigh, but blew in its face
through crevices, and cracks, and keyholes, and were borne away on the
pellucid journey, whistling out their protests.'"
He again tried to stand, evidently wishing to get to his desk to record
this thought, but, failing, looked painfully at Hilary. He seemed about
to ask for something, but checked himself.
"If I practise hard," he murmured, "I shall master it."
Hilary rose and brought him paper and a pencil. In bending, he saw that
Mr. Stone's eyes were dim with moisture. This sight affected him so that
he was glad to turn away and fetch a book to form a writing-pad.
When Mr. Stone had finished, he sat back in his chair with closed eyes.
A supreme silence reigned in the bare room above those two men of
different generations and of such strange dissimilarity of character.
Hilary broke that silence.
"I heard the cuckoo sing to-day," he said, almost in a whisper, lest Mr.
Stone should be asleep.
"The cuckoo," replied Mr. Stone, "has no sense of brotherhood."
"I forgive him-for his song," murmured Hilary.
"His song," said Mr. Stone, "is alluring; it excites the sexual
instinct."
Then to himself he added:
"She has not come, as yet!"
Even as he spoke there was heard by Hilary a faint tapping on the door.
He rose and opened it. The little model stood outside.
CHAPTER XXIX
RETURN OF THE LITTLE MODEL
That same afternoon in High Street, Kensington, "Westminister," with his
coat-collar raised against the inclement wind, his old hat spotted with
rain, was drawing at a clay pipe and fixing his iron-rimmed gaze on those
who passed him by. It had been a day when singularly few as yet had
bought from him his faintly green-tinged journal, and the low class of
fellow who sold the other evening prints had especially exasperated him.
His single mind, always torn to some extent between an ingrained loyalty
to his employers and those politics of his which differed from his
paper's, had vented itself twice since coming on his stand; once in these
words to the seller of "Pell Mells": "I stupulated with you not to come
beyond the lamp-post. Don't you never speak to me again--a-crowdin' of
me off my stand"; and once to the younger vendors of the less expensive
journals, thus: "Oh, you boys! I'll make you regret of it--a-snappin'
up my customers under my very nose! Wait until ye're old!" To which the
boys had answered: "All right, daddy; don't you have a fit. You'll be a
deader soon enough without that, y'know!"
It was now his time for tea, but "Pell Mell" having gone to partake of
this refreshment, he waited on, hoping against hope to get a customer or
two of that low fellow's. And while in black insulation he stood there a
timid voice said at his elbow--
"Mr. Creed!"
The aged butler turned, and saw the little model.
"Oh," he said dryly, "it's you, is it?" His mind, with its incessant
love of rank, knowing that she earned her living as a handmaid to that
disorderly establishment, the House of Art, had from the first classed
her as lower than a lady's-maid. Recent events had made him think of her
unkindly. Her new clothes, which he had not been privileged to see
before, while giving him a sense of Sunday, deepened his moral doubts.
"And where are you living now?" he said in tones incorporating these
feelings.
"I'm not to tell you."
"Oh, very well. Keep yourself to yourself."
The little model's lower lip drooped more than ever. There were dark
marks beneath her eyes; her face was altogether rather pinched and
pitiful.
"Won't you tell me any news?" she said in her matter-of-fact voice.
The old butler gave a strange grunt.
"Ho!" he said. "The baby's dead, and buried to-morrer."
"Dead!" repeated the little model.
"I'm a-goin' to the funeral--Brompton Cemetery. Half-past nine I leave
the door. And that's a-beginnin' at the end. The man's in prison, and
the woman's gone a shadder of herself."
The little model rubbed her hands against her skirt.
"What did he go to prison for?"
"For assaultin' of her; I was witness to his battery."
"Why did he assault her?"
Creed looked at her, and, wagging his head, answered:
"That's best known to them as caused of it."
The little model's face went the colour of carnations.
"I can't help what he does," she said. "What should I want him for--a
man like that? It wouldn't be him I'd want!" The genuine contempt in
that sharp burst of anger impressed the aged butler.
"I'm not a-sayin' anything," he said; "it's all a-one to me. I never
mixes up with no other people's business. But it's very ill-convenient.
I don't get my proper breakfast. That poor woman--she's half off her
head. When the baby's buried I'll have to go and look out for another
room before he gets a-comin' out."
"I hope they'll keep him there," muttered the little model suddenly.
"They give him a month," said Creed.
"Only a month!"
The old butler looked at her. 'There's more stuff' in you,' he seemed to
say, 'than ever I had thought.'
"Because of his servin' of his country," he remarked aloud.
"I'm sorry about the poor little baby," said the little model in her
stolid voice.
"Westminister" shook his head. "I never suspected him of goin' to live,"
he said.
The girl, biting the finger-tip of her white cotton glove, was staring
out at the traffic. Like a pale ray of light entering the now dim cavern
of the old man's mind, the thought came to Creed that he did not quite
understand her. He had in his time had occasion to class many young
persons, and the feeling that he did not quite know her class of person
was like the sensation a bat might have, surprised by daylight.
Suddenly, without saying good-bye to him, she walked away.
'Well,' he thought, looking after her, 'your manners ain't improved by
where you're living, nor your appearance neither, for all your new
clothes.' And for some time he stood thinking of the stare in her eyes
and that abrupt departure.
Through the crystal clearness of the fundamental flux the mind could see
at that same moment Bianca leaving her front gate.
Her sensuous exaltation, her tremulous longing after harmony, had passed
away; in her heart, strangely mingled, were these two thoughts: 'If only
she were a lady!' and, 'I am glad she is not a lady!'
Of all the dark and tortuous places of this life, the human heart is the
most dark and tortuous; and of all human hearts none are less clear, more
intricate than the hearts of all that class of people among whom Bianca
had her being. Pride was a simple quality when joined with a simple view
of life, based on the plain philosophy of property; pride was no simple
quality when the hundred paralysing doubts and aspirations of a social
conscience also hedged it round. In thus going forth with the full
intention of restoring the little model to her position in the household,
her pride fought against her pride, and her woman's sense of ownership in
the man whom she had married wrestled with the acquired sentiments of
freedom, liberality, equality, good taste. With her spirit thus
confused, and her mind so at variance with itself, she was really acting
on the simple instinct of compassion.
She had run upstairs from Mr. Stone's room, and now walked fast, lest
that instinct, the most physical, perhaps, of all--awakened by sights and
sounds, and requiring constant nourishment--should lose its force.
Rapidly, then, she made her way to the grey street in Bayswater where
Cecilia had told her that the girl now lived.
The tall, gaunt landlady admitted her.
"Have you a Miss Barton lodging here?" Bianca asked.
"Yes," said the landlady, "but I think she's out."
She looked into the little model's room.
"Yes," she said; "she's out; but if you'd like to leave a note you could
write in here. If you're looking for a model, she wants work, I
believe."
That modern faculty of pressing on an aching nerve was assuredly not
lacking to Bianca. To enter the girl's room was jabbing at the nerve
indeed.
She looked round her. The mental vacuity of that little room! There was
not one single thing--with the exception of a torn copy of
Tit-Bits--which suggested that a mind of any sort lived there. For all
that, perhaps because of that, it was neat enough.
"Yes," said the landlady, "she keeps her room tidy. Of course, she's a
country girl--comes from down my way." She said this with a dry twist of
her grim, but not unkindly, features. "If it weren't for that," she went
on, "I don't think I should care to let to one of her profession."
Her hungry eyes, gazing at Bianca, had in them the aspirations of all
Nonconformity.
Bianca pencilled on her card:
"If you can come to my father to-day or tomorrow, please do."
"Will you give her this, please? It will be quite enough."
"I'll give it her," the landlady said; "she'll be glad of it, I daresay.
I see her sitting here. Girls like that, if they've got nothing to
do--see, she's been moping on her bed...."
The impress of a form was, indeed, clearly visible on the red and yellow
tasselled tapestry of the bed.
Bianca cast a look at it.
"Thank you," she said; "good day."
With the jabbed nerve aching badly she came slowly homewards.
Before the garden gate the little model herself was gazing at the house,
as if she had been there some time. Approaching from across the road,
Bianca had an admirable view of that young figure, now very trim and
neat, yet with something in its lines--more supple, perhaps, but less
refined--which proclaimed her not a lady; a something fundamentally
undisciplined or disciplined by the material facts of life alone, rather
than by a secret creed of voluntary rules. It showed here and there in
ways women alone could understand; above all, in the way her eyes looked
out on that house which she was clearly longing to enter. Not 'Shall I
go in?' was in that look, but 'Dare I go in?'
Suddenly she saw Bianca. The meeting of these two was very like the
ordinary meeting of a mistress and her maid. Bianca's face had no
expression, except the faint, distant curiosity which seems to say: 'You
are a sealed book to me; I have always found you so. What you really
think and do I shall never know.'
The little model's face wore a half-caught-out, half-stolid look.
"Please go in," Bianca said; "my father will be glad to see you."
She held the garden gate open for the girl to pass through. Her feeling
at that moment was one of slight amusement at the futility of her
journey. Not even this small piece of generosity was permitted her, it
seemed.
"How are you getting on?"
The little model made an impulsive movement at such an unexpected
question. Checking it at once, she answered:
"Very well, thank you; that is, not very---"
"You will find my father tired to-day; he has caught a chill. Don't let
him read too much, please."
The little model seemed to try and nerve herself to make some statement,
but, failing, passed into the house.
Bianca did not follow, but stole back into the garden, where the sun was
still falling on a bed of wallflowers at the far end. She bent down over
these flowers till her veil touched them. Two wild bees were busy there,
buzzing with smoky wings, clutching with their black, tiny legs at the
orange petals, plunging their black, tiny tongues far down into the
honeyed centres. The flowers quivered beneath the weight of their small
dark bodies. Bianca's face quivered too, bending close to them, nor
making the slightest difference to their hunt.
Hilary, who, it has been seen, lived in thoughts about events rather than
in events themselves, and to whom crude acts and words had little meaning
save in relation to what philosophy could make of them, greeted with a
startled movement the girl's appearance in the corridor outside Mr.
Stone's apartment. But the little model, who mentally lived very much
from hand to mouth, and had only the philosophy of wants, acted
differently. She knew that for the last five days, like a spaniel dog
shut away from where it feels it ought to be, she had wanted to be where
she was now standing; she knew that, in her new room with its rust-red
doors, she had bitten her lips and fingers till blood came, and, as newly
caged birds will flutter, had beaten her wings against those walls with
blue roses on a yellow ground. She remembered how she had lain,
brooding, on that piece of red and yellow tapestry, twisting its tassels,
staring through half-closed eyes at nothing.
There was something different in her look at Hilary. It had lost some of
its childish devotion; it was bolder, as if she had lived and felt, and
brushed a good deal more down off her wings during those few days.
"Mrs. Dallison told me to come," she said. "I thought I might. Mr.
Creed told me about him being in prison."
Hilary made way for her, and, following her into Mr. Stone's presence,
shut the door.
"The truant has returned," he said.
Hearing herself called so unjustly by that name, the little model gushed
deeply, and tried to speak. She stopped at the smile on Hilary's face,
and gazed from him to Mr. Stone and back again, the victim of mingled
feelings.
Mr. Stone was seen to have risen to his feet, and to be very slowly
moving towards his desk. He leaned both arms on his papers for support,
and, seeming to gather strength, began sorting out his manuscript.
Through the open window the distant music of a barrel-organ came drifting
in. Faint, and much too slow, was the sound of the waltz it played, but
there was invitation, allurement, in that tune. The little model turned
towards it, and Hilary looked hard at her. The girl and that sound
together-there, quite plain, was the music he had heard for many days,
like a man lying with the touch of fever on him.
"Are you ready?" said Mr. Stone.
The little model dipped her pen in ink. Her eyes crept towards the door,
where Hilary was still standing with the same expression on his face. He
avoided her eyes, and went up to Mr. Stone.
"Must you read to-day, sir?"
Mr. Stone looked at him with anger.
"Why not?" he said.
"You are hardly strong enough."
Mr. Stone raised his manuscript.
"We are three days behind;" and very slowly he began dictating:
"'Bar-ba-rous ha-bits in those days, such as the custom known as War
---'" His voice died away; it was apparent that his elbows, leaning on
the desk, alone prevented his collapse.
Hilary moved the chair, and, taking him beneath the arms, lowered him
gently into it.
Noticing that he was seated, Mr. Stone raised his manuscript and read on:
"'---were pursued regardless of fraternity. It was as though a herd of
horn-ed cattle driven through green pastures to that Gate, where they
must meet with certain dissolution, had set about to prematurely gore and
disembowel each other, out of a passionate devotion to those individual
shapes which they were so soon to lose. So men--tribe against tribe, and
country against country--glared across the valleys with their ensanguined
eyes; they could not see the moonlit wings, or feel the embalming airs of
brotherhood.'"
Slower and slower came his sentences, and as the last word died away he
was heard to be asleep, breathing through a tiny hole left beneath the
eave of his moustache. Hilary, who had waited for that moment, gently
put the manuscript on the desk, and beckoned to the girl. He did not ask
her to his study, but spoke to her in the hall.
"While Mr. Stone is like this he misses you. You will come, then, at
present, please, so long as Hughs is in prison. How do you like your
room?"
The little model answered simply: "Not very much."
"Why not?"
"It's lonely there. I shan't mind, now I'm coming here again."
"Only for the present," was all Hilary could find to say.
The little model's eyes were lowered.
"Mrs. Hughs' baby's to be buried to-morrow," she said suddenly.
"Where?"
"In Brompton Cemetery. Mr. Creed's going."
"What time is the funeral?"
The girl looked up stealthily.
"Mr. Creed's going to start at half-past nine."
"I should like to go myself," said Hilary.
A gleam of pleasure passing across her face was instantly obscured behind
the cloud of her stolidity. Then, as she saw Hilary move nearer to the
door, her lip began to droop.
"Well, good-bye," he said.
The little model flushed and quivered. 'You don't even look at me,' she
seemed to say; 'you haven't spoken kindly to me once.' And suddenly she
said in a hard voice:
"Now I shan't go to Mr. Lennard's any more."
"Oh, then you have been to him!"
Triumph at attracting his attention, fear of what she had admitted,
supplication, and a half-defiant shame--all this was in her face.
"Yes," she said.
Hilary did not speak.
"I didn't care any more when you told me I wasn't to come here."
Still Hilary did not speak.
"I haven't done anything wrong," she said, with tears in her voice.
"No, no," said Hilary; "of course not!"
The little model choked.
"It's my profession."
"Yes, yes," said Hilary; "it's all right."
"I don't care what he thinks; I won't go again so long as I can come
here."
Hilary touched her shoulder.
"Well, well," he said, and opened the front door.
The little model, tremulous, like' a flower kissed by the sun after rain,
went out with a light in her eyes.
The master of the house returned to Mr. Stone. Long he sat looking at
the old man's slumber. "A thinker meditating upon action!" So might
Hilary's figure, with its thin face resting on its hand, a furrow between
the brows, and that painful smile, have been entitled in any catalogue of
statues.
CHAPTER XXX
FUNERAL OF A BABY
Following out the instinct planted so deeply in human nature for treating
with the utmost care and at great expense when dead those, who, when
alive, have been served with careless parsimony, there started from the
door of No. 1 in Hound Street a funeral procession of three four-wheeled
cabs. The first bore the little coffin, on which lay a great white wreath
(gift of Cecilia and Thyme). The second bore Mrs. Hughs, her son
Stanley, and Joshua Creed. The third bore Martin Stone. In the first
cab Silence was presiding with the scent of lilies over him who in his
short life had made so little noise, the small grey shadow which had
crept so quietly into being, and, taking his chance when he was not
noticed, had crept so quietly out again. Never had he felt so restful,
so much at home, as in that little common coffin, washed as he was to an
unnatural whiteness, and wrapped in his mother's only spare sheet. Away
from all the strife of men he was Journeying to a greater peace. His
little aloe-plant had flowered; and, between the open windows of the only
carriage he had ever been inside, the wind--which, who knows? he had
perhaps become--stirred the fronds of fern and the flowers of his funeral
wreath. Thus he was going from that world where all men were his
brothers.
From the second cab the same wind was rigidly excluded, and there was
silence, broken by the aged butler's breathing. Dressed in his Newmarket
coat, he was recalling with a certain sense of luxury past, journeys in
four-wheeled cabs--occasions when, seated beside a box corded and secured
with sealing-wax, he had taken his master's plate for safety to the bank;
occasions when, under a roof piled up with guns and boxes, he had sat
holding the "Honorable Bateson's" dog; occasions when, with some young
person by his side, he had driven at the tail of a baptismal, nuptial, or
funeral cortege. These memories of past grandeur came back to him with
curious poignancy, and for some reason the words kept rising in his mind:
'For richer or poorer, for better or worser, in health and in sick
places, till death do us part.' But in the midst of the exaltation of
these recollections the old heart beneath his old red flannel
chest-protector--that companion of his exile--twittering faintly at short
intervals, made him look at the woman by his side. He longed to convey
to her some little of the satisfaction he felt in the fact that this was
by no means the low class of funeral it might have been. He doubted
whether, with her woman's mind, she was getting all the comfort she could
out of three four-wheeled cabs and a wreath of lilies. The seamstress's
thin face, with its pinched, passive look, was indeed thinner, quieter,
than ever. What she was thinking of he could not tell. There were so
many things she might be thinking of. She, too, no doubt, had seen her
grandeur, if but in the solitary drive away from the church where, eight
years ago, she and Hughs had listened to the words now haunting Creed.
Was she thinking of that; of her lost youth and comeliness, and her man's
dead love; of the long descent to shadowland; of the other children she
had buried; of Hughs in prison; of the girl that had "put a spell on
him"; or only of the last precious tugs the tiny lips at rest in the
first four-wheeled cab had given at her breast? Or was she, with a nicer
feeling for proportion, reflecting that, had not people been so kind, she
might have had to walk behind a funeral provided by the parish?
The old butler could not tell, but he--whose one desire now, coupled with
the wish to die outside a workhouse, was to save enough to bury his own
body without the interference of other people--was inclined to think she
must be dwelling on the brighter side of things; and, designing to
encourage her, he said: "Wonderful improvement in these 'ere four-wheel
cabs! Oh dear, yes! I remember of them when they were the shadders of
what they are at the present time of speakin'."
The seamstress answered in her quiet voice: "Very comfortable this is.
Sit still, Stanley!" Her little son, whose feet did not reach the floor,
was drumming his heels against the seat. He stopped and looked at her,
and the old butler addressed him.
"You'll a-remember of this occasion," he said, "when you gets older."
The little boy turned his black eyes from his mother to him who had
spoken last.
"It's a beautiful wreath," continued Creed. "I could smell of it all the
way up the stairs. There's been no expense spared; there's white laylock
in it--that's a class of flower that's very extravagant."
A train of thought having been roused too strong for his discretion, he
added: "I saw that young girl yesterday. She came interrogatin' of me in
the street."
On Mrs. Hughs' face, where till now expression had been buried, came such
a look as one may see on the face of an owl-hard, watchful, cruel;
harder, more cruel, for the softness of the big dark eyes.
"She'd show a better feeling," she said, "to keep a quiet tongue. Sit
still, Stanley!"
Once more the little boy stopped drumming his heels, and shifted his
stare from the old butler back to her who spoke. The cab, which had
seemed to hesitate and start, as though jibbing at something in the road,
resumed its ambling pace. Creed looked through the well-closed window.
There before him, so long that it seemed to have no end, like a building
in a nightmare, stretched that place where he did not mean to end his
days. He faced towards the horse again. The colour had deepened in his
nose. He spoke:
"If they'd a-give me my last edition earlier, 'stead of sending of it
down after that low-class feller's taken all my customers, that'd make a
difference to me o' two shillin's at the utmost in the week, and all
clear savin's." To these words, dark with hidden meaning, he received no
answer save the drumming of the small boy's heels; and, reverting to the
subject he had been distracted from, he murmured: "She was a-wearin' of
new clothes."
He was startled by the fierce tone of a voice he hardly knew. "I don't
want to hear about her; she's not for decent folk to talk of."
The old butler looked round askance. The seamstress was trembling
violently. Her fierceness at such a moment shocked him. "'Dust to
dust,'" he thought.
"Don't you be considerate of it," he said at last, summoning all his
knowledge of the world; "she'll come to her own place." And at the sight
of a slow tear trickling over her burning cheek, he added hurriedly:
"Think of your baby--I'll see yer through. Sit still, little boy--sit
still! Ye're disturbin' of your mother."
Once more the little boy stayed the drumming of his heels to look at him
who spoke; and the closed cab rolled on with its slow, jingling sound.
In the third four-wheeled cab, where the windows again were wide open,
Martin Stone, with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his coat,
and his long legs crossed, sat staring at the roof, with a sort of
twisted scorn on his pale face.
Just inside the gate, through which had passed in their time so many dead
and living shadows, Hilary stood waiting. He could probably not have
explained why he had come to see this tiny shade committed to the
earth--in memory, perhaps, of those two minutes when the baby's eyes had
held parley with his own, or in the wish to pay a mute respect to her on
whom life had weighed so hard of late. For whatever reason he had come,
he was keeping quietly to one side. And unobserved, he, too, had his
watcher--the little model, sheltering behind a tall grave.
Two men in rusty black bore the little coffin; then came the white-robed
chaplain; then Mrs. Hughs and her little son; close behind, his head
thrust forward with trembling movements from side to side, old Creed;
and, last of all, young Martin Stone. Hilary joined the young doctor.
So the five mourners walked.
Before a small dark hole in a corner of the cemetery they stopped. On
this forest of unflowered graves the sun was falling; the east wind, with
its faint reek, touched the old butler's plastered hair, and brought
moisture to the corners of his eyes, fixed with absorption on the
chaplain. Words and thoughts hunted in his mind.
'He's gettin' Christian burial. Who gives this woman away? I do. Ashes
to ashes. I never suspected him of livin'.' The conning of the burial
service, shortened to fit the passing of that tiny shade, gave him
pleasurable sensation; films came down on his eyes; he listened like some
old parrot on its perch, his head a little to one side.
'Them as dies young,' he thought, 'goes straight to heaven. We trusts in
God--all mortal men; his godfathers and his godmothers in his baptism.
Well, so it is! I'm not afeared o' death!'
Seeing the little coffin tremble above the hole, he craned his head still
further forward. It sank; a smothered sobbing rose. The old butler
touched the arm in front of him with shaking fingers.
"Don't 'e," he whispered; "he's a-gone to glory."
But, hearing the dry rattle of the earth, he took out his own
handkerchief and put it to his nose.
'Yes, he's a-gone,' he thought; 'another little baby. Old men an'
maidens, young men an' little children; it's a-goin' on all the time.
Where 'e is now there'll be no marryin', no, nor givin' out in marriage;
till death do us part.'
The wind, sweeping across the filled-in hole, carried the rustle of his
husky breathing, the dry, smothered sobbing of the seamstress, out across
the shadows' graves, to those places, to those streets....
From the baby's funeral Hilary and Martin walked away together, and far
behind them, across the road, the little model followed. For some time
neither spoke; then Hilary, stretching out his hand towards a squalid
alley, said:
"They haunt us and drag us down. A long, dark passage. Is there a light
at the far end, Martin?"
"Yes," said Martin gruffly.
"I don't see it."
Martin looked at him.
"Hamlet!"
Hilary did not reply.
The young man watched him sideways. "It's a disease to smile like that!"
Hilary ceased to smile. "Cure me, then," he said, with sudden anger,
"you man of health!"
The young "Sanitist's" sallow cheeks flushed. "Atrophy of the nerve of
action," he muttered; "there's no cure for that!"
"Ah!" said Hilary: "All kinds of us want social progress in our different
ways. You, your grandfather, my brother, myself; there are four types
for you. Will you tell me any one of us is the right man for the job?
For instance, action's not natural to me."
"Any act," answered Martin, "is better than no act."
"And myopia is natural to you, Martin. Your prescription in this case
has not been too successful, has it?"
"I can't help it if people will be d---d fools."
"There you hit it. But answer me this question: Isn't a social
conscience, broadly speaking, the result of comfort and security?"
Martin shrugged his shoulders.
"And doesn't comfort also destroy the power of action?"
Again Martin shrugged.
"Then, if those who have the social conscience and can see what is wrong
have lost their power of action, how can you say there is any light at
the end of this dark passage?"
Martin took his pipe out, filled it, and pressed the filling with his
thumb.
"There is light," he said at last, "in spite of all invertebrates.
Good-bye! I've wasted enough time," and he abruptly strode away.
"And in spite of myopia?" muttered Hilary.
A few minutes later, coming out from Messrs. Rose and Thorn's, where he
had gone to buy tobacco, he came suddenly on the little model, evidently
waiting.
"I was at the funeral," she, said; and her face added plainly: 'I've
followed you.' Uninvited, she walked on at his side.
'This is not the same girl,' he thought, 'that I sent away five days ago.
She has lost something, gained something. I don't know her.'
There seemed such a stubborn purpose in her face and manner. It was like
the look in a dog's eyes that says: 'Master, you thought to shut me up
away from you; I know now what that is like. Do what you will, I mean in
future to be near you.'
This look, by its simplicity, frightened one to whom the primitive was
strange. Desiring to free himself of his companion, yet not knowing how,
Hilary sat down in Kensington Gardens on the first bench they came to.
The little model sat down beside him. The quiet siege laid to him by
this girl was quite uncanny. It was as though someone were binding him
with toy threads, swelling slowly into rope before his eyes. In this
fear of Hilary's there was at first much irritation. His fastidiousness
and sense of the ridiculous were roused. What did this little creature
with whom he had no thoughts and no ideas in common, whose spirit and his
could never hope to meet, think that she could get from him? Was she
trying to weave a spell over him too, with her mute, stubborn adoration?
Was she trying to change his protective weakness for her to another sort
of weakness? He turned and looked; she dropped her eyes at once, and sat
still as a stone figure.
As in her spirit, so in her body, she was different; her limbs looked
freer, rounder; her breath seemed stirring her more deeply; like a flower
of early June she was opening before his very eyes. This, though it gave
him pleasure, also added to his fear. The strange silence, in its utter
naturalness--for what could he talk about with her?--brought home to him
more vividly than anything before, the barriers of class. All he thought
of was how not to be ridiculous! She was inviting him in some strange,
unconscious, subtle way to treat her as a woman, as though in spirit she
had linked her round young arms about his neck, and through her
half-closed lips were whispering the eternal call of sex to sex. And he,
a middle-aged and cultivated man, conscious of everything, could not even
speak for fear of breaking through his shell of delicacy. He hardly
breathed, disturbed to his very depths by the young figure sitting by his
side, and by the dread of showing that disturbance.
Beside the cultivated plant the self-sown poppy rears itself; round the
stem of a smooth tree the honeysuckle twines; to a trim wall the ivy
clings.
In her new-found form and purpose this girl had gained a strange, still
power; she no longer felt it mattered whether he spoke or looked at her;
her instinct, piercing through his shell, was certain of the throbbing of
his pulses, the sweet poison in his blood.
The perception of this still power, more than all else, brought fear to
Hilary. He need not speak; she would not care! He need not even look at
her; she had but to sit there silent, motionless, with the breath of
youth coming through her parted lips, and the light of youth stealing
through her half-closed eyes.
And abruptly he got up and walked away.
CHAPTER XXXI
SWAN SONG
The new wine, if it does not break the old bottle, after fierce
effervescence seethes and bubbles quietly.
It was so in Mr. Stone's old bottle, hour by hour and day by day,
throughout the month. A pinker, robuster look came back to his cheeks;
his blue eyes, fixed on distance, had in them more light; his knees
regained their powers; he bathed, and, all unknown to him, for he only
saw the waters he cleaved with his ineffably slow stroke, Hilary and
Martin, on alternate weeks, and keeping at a proper distance, for fear he
should see them doing him a service, attended at that function in case
Mr. Stone should again remain too long seated at the bottom of the
Serpentine. Each morning after his cocoa and porridge he could be heard
sweeping out his room with extraordinary vigour, and as ten o'clock came
near anyone who listened would remark a sound of air escaping, as he
moved up and down on his toes in preparation for the labours of the day.
No letters, of course, nor any newspapers disturbed the supreme and
perfect self-containment of this life devoted to Fraternity--no letters,
partly because he lacked a known address, partly because for years he had
not answered them; and with regard to newspapers, once a month he went to
a Public Library, and could be seen with the last four numbers of two
weekly reviews before him, making himself acquainted with the habits of
those days, and moving his lips as though in prayer. At ten each morning
anyone in the corridor outside his room was startled by the whirr of an
alarum clock; perfect silence followed; then rose a sound of shuffling,
whistling, rustling, broken by sharply muttered words; soon from this
turbid lake of sound the articulate, thin fluting of an old man's voice
streamed forth. This, alternating with the squeak of a quill pen, went
on till the alarum clock once more went off. Then he who stood outside
could smell that Mr. Stone would shortly eat; if, stimulated by that
scent, he entered; he might see the author of the "Book of Universal
Brotherhood" with a baked potato in one hand and a cup of hot milk in the
other; on the table, too, the ruined forms of eggs, tomatoes, oranges,
bananas, figs, prunes, cheese, and honeycomb, which had passed into other
forms already, together with a loaf of wholemeal bread. Mr. Stone would
presently emerge in his cottage-woven tweeds, and old hat of green-black
felt; or, if wet, in a long coat of yellow gaberdine, and sou'wester cap
of the same material; but always with a little osier fruit-bag in his
hand. Thus equipped, he walked down to Rose and Thorn's, entered, and to
the first man he saw handed the osier fruit-bag, some coins, and a little
book containing seven leaves, headed "Food: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,"
and so forth. He then stood looking through the pickles in some jar or
other at things beyond, with one hand held out, fingers upwards, awaiting
the return of his little osier fruit-bag. Feeling. presently that it had
been restored to him, he would turn and walk out of the shop. Behind his
back, on the face of the department, the same protecting smile always
rose. Long habit had perfected it. All now felt that, though so very
different from themselves, this aged customer was dependent on them. By
not one single farthing or one pale slip of cheese would they have
defrauded him for all the treasures of the moon, and any new salesman who
laughed at that old client was promptly told to "shut his head."
Mr. Stone's frail form, bent somewhat to one side by the increased
gravamen of the osier bag, was now seen moving homewards. He arrived
perhaps ten minutes before the three o'clock alarum, and soon passing
through preliminary chaos, the articulate, thin fluting of his voice
streamed forth again, broken by the squeaking and spluttering of his
quill.
But towards four o'clock signs of cerebral excitement became visible; his
lips would cease to utter sounds, his pen to squeak. His face, with a
flushed forehead, would appear at the open window. As soon as the little
model came in sight--her eyes fixed, not on his window, but on
Hilary's--he turned his back, evidently waiting for her to enter by the
door. His first words were uttered in a tranquil voice: "I have several
pages. I have placed your chair. Are you ready? Follow!"
Except for that strange tranquillity of voice and the disappearance of
the flush on his brow, there was no sign of the rejuvenescence that she
brought, of such refreshment as steals on the traveller who sits down
beneath a lime-tree toward the end of along day's journey; no sign of the
mysterious comfort distilled into his veins by the sight of her moody
young face, her young, soft limbs. So from some stimulant men very near
their end will draw energy, watching, as it were, a shape beckoning them
forward, till suddenly it disappears in darkness.
In the quarter of an hour sacred to their tea and conversation he never
noticed that she was always listening for sounds beyond; it was enough
that in her presence he felt singleness of purpose strong within him.
When she had gone, moving languidly, moodily away, her eyes darting about
for signs of Hilary, Mr. Stone would sit down rather suddenly and fall
asleep, to dream, perhaps, of Youth--Youth with its scent of sap, its
close beckonings; Youth with its hopes and fears; Youth that hovers round
us so long after it is dead! His spirit would smile behind its
covering--that thin china of his face; and, as dogs hunting in their
sleep work their feet, so he worked the fingers resting on his woollen
knees.
The seven o'clock alarum woke him to the preparation of the evening meal.
This eaten, he began once more to pace up and down, to pour words out
into the silence, and to drive his squeaking quill.
So was being written a book such as the world had never seen!
But the girl who came so moodily to bring him refreshment, and went so
moodily away, never in these days caught a glimpse of that which she was
seeking.
Since the morning when he had left her abruptly, Hilary had made a point
of being out in the afternoons and not returning till past six o'clock.
By this device he put off facing her and himself, for he could no longer
refuse to see that he had himself to face. In the few minutes of utter
silence when the girl sat beside him, magnetic, quivering with awakening
force, he had found that the male in him was far from dead. It was no
longer vague, sensuous feeling; it was warm, definite desire. The more
she was in his thoughts, the less spiritual his feeling for this girl of
the people had become.
In those days he seemed much changed to such as knew him well. Instead of
the delicate, detached, slightly humorous suavity which he had accustomed
people to expect from him, the dry kindliness which seemed at once to
check confidence and yet to say, 'If you choose to tell me anything, I
should never think of passing judgment on you, whatever you have
done'--instead of that rather abstracted, faintly quizzical air, his
manner had become absorbed and gloomy. He seemed to jib away from his
friends. His manner at the "Pen and Ink" was wholly unsatisfying to men
who liked to talk. He was known to be writing a new book; they suspected
him of having "got into a hat"--this Victorian expression, found by Mr.
Balladyce in some chronicle of post-Thackerayan manners, and revived by
him in his incomparable way, as who should say, 'What delicious
expressions those good bourgeois had!' now flourished in second
childhood.
In truth, Hilary's difficulty with his new book was merely the one of not
being able to work at it at all. Even the housemaid who "did" his study
noticed that day after day she was confronted by Chapter XXIV., in spite
of her employer's staying in, as usual, every morning.
The change in his manner and face, which had grown strained and harassed,
had been noticed by Bianca, though she would have died sooner than admit
she had noticed anything about him. It was one of those periods in the
lives of households like an hour of a late summer's day--brooding,
electric, as yet quiescent, but charged with the currents of coming
storms.
Twice only in those weeks while Hughs was in prison did Hilary see the
girl. Once he met her when he was driving home; she blushed crimson and
her eyes lighted up. And one morning, too, he passed her on the bench
where they had sat together. She was staring straight before her, the
corners of her mouth drooping discontentedly. She did not see him.
To a man like Hilary-for whom running after women had been about the last
occupation in the world, who had, in fact, always fought shy of them and
imagined that they would always fight shy of him--there was an unusual
enticement and dismay in the feeling that a young girl really was
pursuing him. It was at once too good, too unlikely, and too
embarrassing to be true. His sudden feeling for her was the painful
sensation of one who sees a ripe nectarine hanging within reach. He
dreamed continually of stretching out his hand, and so he did not dare,
or thought he did not dare, to pass that way. All this did not favour
the tenor of a studious, introspective life; it also brought a sense of
unreality which made him avoid his best friends. This, partly, was why
Stephen came to see him one Sunday, his other reason for the visit being
the calculation that Hughs would be released on the following Wednesday.
'This girl,' he thought, 'is going to the house still, and Hilary will
let things drift till he can't stop them, and there'll be a real mess.'
The fact of the man's having been in prison gave a sinister turn to an
affair regarded hitherto as merely sordid by Stephen's orderly and
careful mind.
Crossing the garden, he heard Mr. Stone's voice issuing through the open
window.
'Can't the old crank stop even on Sundays?' he thought.
He found Hilary in his study, reading a book on the civilisation of the
Maccabees, in preparation for a review. He gave Stephen but a dubious
welcome.
Stephen broke ground gently.
"We haven't seen you for an age. I hear our old friend at it. Is he
working double tides to finish his magnum opus? I thought he observed
the day of rest."
"He does as a rule," said Hilary.
"Well, he's got the girl there now dictating."
Hilary winced. Stephen continued with greater circumspection "You
couldn't get the old boy to finish by Wednesday, I suppose? He must be
quite near the end by now."
The notion of Mr. Stone's finishing his book by Wednesday procured a pale
smile from Hilary.
"Could you get your Law Courts," he said, "to settle up the affairs of
mankind for good and all by Wednesday?"
"By Jove! Is it as bad as that? I thought, at any rate, he must be
meaning to finish some day."
"When men are brothers," said Hilary, "he will finish."
Stephen whistled.
"Look here, dear boy!" he said, "that ruffian comes out on Wednesday. The
whole thing will begin over again."
Hilary rose and paced the room. "I refuse," he said, "to consider Hughs
a ruffian. What do we know about him, or any of them?"
"Precisely! What do we know of this girl?"
"I am not going to discuss that," Hilary said shortly.
For a moment the faces of the two brothers wore a hard, hostile look, as
though the deep difference between their characters had at last got the
better of their loyalty. They both seemed to recognise this, for they
turned their heads away.
"I just wanted to remind you," Stephen said, "though you know your own
business best, of course." And at Hilary's nod he thought:
'That's just exactly what he doesn't!'
He soon left, conscious of an unwonted awkwardness in his brother's
presence. Hilary watched him out through the wicket gate, then sat down
on the solitary garden bench.
Stephen's visit had merely awakened perverse desires in him. Strong
sunlight was falling on that little London garden, disclosing its native
shadowiness; streaks, and smudges such as Life smears over the faces of
those who live too consciously. Hilary, beneath the acacia-tree not yet
in bloom, marked an early butterfly flitting over the geraniums
blossoming round an old sundial. Blackbirds were holding evensong; the
late perfume of the lilac came stealing forth into air faintly smeeched
with chimney smoke. There was brightness, but no glory, in that little
garden; scent, but no strong air blown across golden lakes of buttercups,
from seas of springing clover, or the wind-silver of young wheat; music,
but no full choir of sound, no hum. Like the face and figure of its
master, so was this little garden, whose sundial the sun seldom
reached-refined, self-conscious, introspective, obviously a creature of
the town. At that moment, however, Hilary was not looking quite himself;
his face was flushed, his eyes angry, almost as if he had been a man of
action.
The voice of Mr. Stone was still audible, fitfully quavering out into the
air, and the old man himself could now and then be seen holding up his
manuscript, his profile clear-cut against the darkness of the room. A
sentence travelled out across the garden:
"'Amidst the tur-bu-lent dis-cov-eries of those days, which, like
cross-currented and multibillowed seas, lapped and hollowed every rock '"
A motor-car dashing past drowned the rest, and when the voice rose again
it was evidently dictating another paragraph.
"'In those places, in those streets, the shadows swarmed, whispering and
droning like a hive of dying bees, who, their honey eaten, wander through
the winter day seeking flowers that are frozen and dead."'
A great bee which had been busy with the lilac began to circle, booming,
round his hair. Suddenly Hilary saw Mr. Stone raise both his arms.
"'In huge congeries, crowded, devoid of light and air, they were
assembled, these bloodless imprints from forms of higher caste. They
lay, like the reflection of leaves which, fluttering free in the sweet
winds, let fall to the earth wan resemblances. Imponderous, dark ghosts,
wandering ones chained to the ground, they had no hope of any Lovely
City, nor knew whence they had come. Men cast them on the pavements and
marched on. They did not in Universal Brotherhood clasp their shadows to
sleep within their hearts--for the sun was not then at noon, when no man
has a shadow.'"
As those words of swan song died away he swayed and trembled, and
suddenly disappeared below the sight-line, as if he had sat down. The
little model took his place in the open window. She started at seeing
Hilary; then, motionless, stood gazing at him. Out of the gloom of the
opening her eyes were all pupil, two spots of the surrounding darkness
imprisoned in a face as pale as any flower. Rigid as the girl herself,
Hilary looked up at her.
A voice behind him said: "How are you? I thought I'd give my car a run."
Mr. Purcey was coming from the gate, his eyes fixed on the window where
the girl stood. "How is your wife?" he added.
The bathos of this visit roused an acid fury in Hilary. He surveyed Mr.
Purcey's figure from his cloth-topped boots to his tall hat, and said:
"Shall we go in and find her?"
As they went along Mr. Purcey said: "That's the young--the--er--model I
met in your wife's studio, isn't it? Pretty girl!"
Hilary compressed his lips.
"Now, what sort of living do those girls make?" pursued Mr. Purcey. "I
suppose they've most of them other resources. Eh, what?"
"They make the living God will let them, I suppose, as other people do."
Mr. Purcey gave him a sharp look. It was almost as if Dallison had meant
to snub him.
"Oh, exactly! I should think this girl would have no difficulty." And
suddenly he saw a curious change come over "that writing fellow," as he
always afterwards described Hilary. Instead of a mild, pleasant-looking
chap enough, he had become a regular cold devil.
"My wife appears to be out," Hilary said. "I also have an engagement."
In his surprise and anger Mr. Purcey said with great simplicity, "Sorry
I'm 'de trop'!" and soon his car could be heard bearing him away with
some unnecessary noise.
CHAPTER XXXII
BEHIND BIANCA'S VEIL
But Bianca was not out. She had been a witness of Hilary's long look at
the little model. Coming from her studio through the glass passage to
the house, she could not, of course, see what he was gazing at, but she
knew as well as if the girl had stood before her in the dark opening of
the window. Hating herself for having seen, she went to her room, and
lay on her bed with her hands pressed to her eyes. She was used to
loneliness--that necessary lot of natures such as hers; but the bitter
isolation of this hour was such as to drive even her lonely nature to
despair.
She rose at last, and repaired the ravages made in her face and dress,
lest anyone should see that she was suffering. Then, first making sure
that Hilary had left the garden, she stole out.
She wandered towards Hyde Park. It was Whitsuntide, a time of fear to
the cultivated Londoner. The town seemed all arid jollity and paper bags
whirled on a dusty wind. People swarmed everywhere in clothes which did
not suit them; desultory, dead-tired creatures who, in these few green
hours of leisure out of the sandy eternity of their toil, were not
suffered to rest, but were whipped on by starved instincts to hunt
pleasures which they longed for too dreadfully to overtake.
Bianca passed an old tramp asleep beneath a tree. His clothes had clung
to him so long and lovingly that they were falling off, but his face was
calm as though masked with the finest wax. Forgotten were his sores and
sorrows; he was in the blessed fields of sleep.
Bianca hastened away from the sight of such utter peace. She wandered
into a grove of trees which had almost eluded the notice of the crowd.
They were limes, guarding still within them their honey bloom. Their
branches of light, broad leaves, near heart-shaped, were spread out like
wide skirts. The tallest of these trees, a beautiful, gay creature,
stood tremulous, like a mistress waiting for her tardy lover. What joy
she seemed to promise, what delicate enticement, with every veined
quivering leaf! And suddenly the sun caught hold of her, raised her up
to him, kissed her all over; she gave forth a sigh of happiness, as
though her very spirit had travelled through her lips up to her lover's
heart.
A woman in a lilac frock came stealing through the trees towards Bianca,
and sitting down not far off, kept looking quickly round under her
sunshade.
Presently Bianca saw what she was looking for. A young man in black coat
and shining hat came swiftly up and touched her shoulder. Half hidden by
the foliage they sat, leaning forward, prodding gently at the ground with
stick and parasol; the stealthy murmur of their talk, so soft and
intimate that no word was audible, stole across the grass; and secretly
he touched her hand and arm. They were not of the holiday crowd, and had
evidently chosen out this vulgar afternoon for a stolen meeting.
Bianca rose and hurried on amongst the trees. She left the Park. In the
streets many couples, not so careful to conceal their intimacy, were
parading arm-in-arm. The sight of them did not sting her like the sight
of those lovers in the Park; they were not of her own order. But
presently she saw a little boy and girl asleep on the doorstep of a
mansion, with their cheeks pressed close together and their arms round
each other, and again she hurried on. In the course of that long
wandering she passed the building which "Westminister" was so anxious to
avoid. In its gateway an old couple were just about to separate, one to
the men's, the other to the women's quarters. Their toothless mouths
were close together. "Well, goodnight, Mother!" "Good-night, Father,
good-night-take care o' yourself!"
Once more Bianca hurried on.
It was past nine when she turned into the Old Square, and rang the bell
of her sister's house with the sheer physical desire to rest--somewhere
that was not her home.
At one end of the long, low drawing-room Stephen, in evening dress, was
reading aloud from a review. Cecilia was looking dubiously at his sock,
where she seemed to see a tiny speck of white that might be Stephen. In
the window at the far end Thyme and Martin were exchanging speeches at
short intervals; they made no move at Bianca's entrance; and their faces
said: "We have no use for that handshaking nonsense!"
Receiving Cecilia's little, warm, doubting kiss and Stephen's polite, dry
handshake, Bianca motioned to him not to stop reading. He resumed.
Cecilia, too, resumed her scrutiny of Stephen's sock.
'Oh dear!' she thought. 'I know B.'s come here because she's unhappy.
Poor thing! Poor Hilary! It's that wretched business again, I suppose.'
Skilled in every tone of Stephen's voice, she knew that Bianca's entry
had provoked the same train of thought in him; to her he seemed reading
out these words: 'I disapprove--I disapprove. She's Cis's sister. But
if it wasn't for old Hilary I wouldn't have the subject in the house!'
Bianca, whose subtlety recorded every shade of feeling, could see that
she was not welcome. Leaning back with veil raised, she seemed listening
to Stephen's reading, but in fact she was quivering at the sight of those
two couples.
Couples, couples--for all but her! What crime had she committed? Why was
the china of her cup flawed so that no one could drink from it? Why had
she been made so that nobody could love her? This, the most bitter of
all thoughts, the most tragic of all questionings, haunted her.
The article which Stephen read--explaining exactly how to deal with
people so that from one sort of human being they might become another,
and going on to prove that if, after this conversion, they showed signs
of a reversion, it would then be necessary to know the reason why--fell
dryly on ears listening to that eternal question: Why is it with me as it
is? It is not fair!--listening to the constant murmuring of her pride: I
am not wanted here or anywhere. Better to efface myself!
From their end of the room Thyme and Martin scarcely looked at her. To
them she was Aunt B., an amateur, the mockery of whose eyes sometimes
penetrated their youthful armour; they were besides too interested in
their conversation to perceive that she was suffering. The skirmish of
that conversation had lasted now for many days--ever since the death of
the Hughs' baby.
"Well," Martin was saying, "what are you going to do? It's no good to
base it on the baby; you must know your own mind all round. You can't go
rushing into real work on mere sentiment."
"You went to the funeral, Martin. It's bosh to say you didn't feel it
too!"
Martin deigned no answer to this insinuation.
"We've gone past the need for sentiment," he said: "it's exploded; so is
Justice, administered by an upper class with a patch over one eye and a
squint in the other. When you see a dying donkey in a field, you don't
want to refer the case to a society, as your dad would; you don't want an
essay of Hilary's, full of sympathy with everybody, on 'Walking in a
field: with reflections on the end of donkeys'--you want to put a bullet
in the donkey."
"You're always down on Uncle Hilary," said Thyme.
"I don't mind Hilary himself; I object to his type."
"Well, he objects to yours," said Thyme.
"I'm not so sure of that," said Martin slowly; "he hasn't got character
enough."
Thyme raised her chin, and, looking at him through half-closed eyes,
said: "Well, I do think, of all the conceited persons I ever met you're
the worst."
Martin's nostril curled.
"Are you prepared," he said, "to put a bullet in the donkey, or are you
not?"
"I only see one donkey, and not a dying one!"
Martin stretched out his hand and gripped her arm below the elbow.
Retaining it luxuriously, he said: "Don't wander!"
Thyme tried to free her arm. "Let go!"
Martin was looking straight into her eyes. A flush had risen in his
cheeks.
Thyme, too, went the colour of the old-rose curtain behind which she sat.
"Let go!"
"I won't! I'll make you know your mind. What do you mean to do? Are you
coming in a fit of sentiment, or do you mean business?"
Suddenly, half-hypnotised, the young girl ceased to struggle. Her face
had the strangest expression of submission and defiance--a sort of pain,
a sort of delight. So they sat full half a minute staring at each
other's eyes. Hearing a rustling sound, they looked, and saw Bianca
moving to the door. Cecilia, too, had risen.
"What is it, B.?"
Bianca, opening the door, went out. Cecilia followed swiftly, too late
to catch even a glimpse of her sister's face behind the veil...
In Mr. Stone's room the green lamp burned dimly, and he who worked by it
was sitting on the edge of his campbed, attired in his old brown woollen
gown and slippers.
And suddenly it seemed to him that he was not alone.
"I have finished for to-night," he said. "I am waiting for the moon to
rise. She is nearly full; I shall see her face from here."
A form sat down by him on the bed, and a voice said softly:
"Like a woman's."
Mr. Stone saw his younger daughter. "You have your hat on. Are you
going out, my dear?"
"I saw your light as I came in."
"The moon," said Mr. Stone, "is an arid desert. Love is unknown there."
"How can you bear to look at her, then?" Bianca whispered.
Mr. Stone raised his finger. "She has risen."
The wan moon had slipped out into the darkness. Her light stole across
the garden and through the open window to the bed where they were
sitting.
"Where there is no love, Dad," Bianca said, "there can be no life, can
there?"
Mr. Stone's eyes seemed to drink the moonlight.
"That," he said, "is the great truth. The bed is shaking!"
With her arms pressed tight across her breast, Bianca was struggling with
violent, noiseless sobbing. That desperate struggle seemed to be tearing
her to death before his eyes, and Mr. Stone sat silent, trembling. He
knew not what to do. From his frosted heart years of Universal
Brotherhood had taken all knowledge of how to help his daughter. He
could only sit touching her tremulously with thin fingers.
The form beside him, whose warmth he felt against his arm, grew stiller,
as though, in spite of its own loneliness, his helplessness had made it
feel that he, too; was lonely. It pressed a little closer to him. The
moonlight, gaining pale mastery over the flickering lamp, filled the
whole room.
Mr. Stone said: "I want her mother!"
The form beside him ceased to struggle.
Finding out an old, forgotten way, Mr. Stone's arm slid round that
quivering body.
"I do not know what to say to her," he muttered, and slowly he began to
rock himself.
"Motion," he said, "is soothing."
The moon passed on. The form beside him sat so still that Mr. Stone
ceased moving. His daughter was no longer sobbing. Suddenly her lips
seared his forehead.
Trembling from that desperate caress, he raised his fingers to the spot
and looked round.
She was gone.
CHAPTER XXXIII
HILARY DEALS WITH THE SITUATION
To understand the conduct of Hilary and Bianca at what "Westminister"
would have called this "crisax," not only their feelings as sentient
human beings, but their matrimonial philosophy, must be taken into
account. By education and environment they belonged to a section of
society which had "in those days" abandoned the more old-fashioned views
of marriage. Such as composed this section, finding themselves in
opposition, not only to the orthodox proprietary creed, but even to their
own legal rights, had been driven to an attitude of almost blatant
freedom. Like all folk in opposition, they were bound, as a simple
matter of principle, to disagree with those in power, to view with a
contemptuous resentment that majority which said, "I believe the thing is
mine, and mine it shall remain"--a majority which by force of numbers
made this creed the law. Unable legally to, be other than the
proprietors of wife or husband, as the case might be, they were obliged,
even in the most happy unions, to be very careful not to become disgusted
with their own position. Their legal status was, as it were, a goad,
spurring them on to show their horror of it. They were like children sent
to school with trousers that barely reached their knees, aware that they
could neither reduce their stature to the proportions of their breeches
nor make their breeches grow. They were furnishing an instance of that
immemorial "change of form to form" to which Mr. Stone had given the name
of Life. In a past age thinkers and dreamers and "artistic pigs"
rejecting the forms they found, had given unconscious shape to this
marriage law, which, after they had become the wind, had formed itself
out of their exiled pictures and thoughts and dreams. And now this
particular law in turn was the dried rind, devoid of pips or speculation;
and the thinkers and dreamers and "artistic pigs" were again rejecting
it, and again themselves in exile.
This exiled faith, this honour amongst thieves, animated a little
conversation between Hilary and Bianca on the Tuesday following the night
when Mr. Stone sat on his bed to watch the rising moon.
Quietly Bianca said: "I think I shall be going away for a time."
"Wouldn't you rather that I went instead?" "You are wanted; I am not."
That ice-cold, ice-clear remark contained the pith of the whole matter;
and Hilary said:
"You are not going at once?"
"At the end of the week, I think."
Noting his eyes fixed on her, she added:
"Yes; we're neither of us looking quite our best."
"I am sorry."
"I know you are."
This had been all. It had been sufficient to bring Hilary once more face
to face with the situation.
Its constituent elements remained the same; relative values had much
changed. The temptations of St. Anthony were becoming more poignant
every hour. He had no "principles" to pit against them: he had merely
the inveterate distaste for hurting anybody, and a feeling that if he
yielded to his inclination he would be faced ultimately with a worse
situation than ever. It was not possible for him to look at the position
as Mr. Purcey might have done, if his wife had withdrawn from him and a
girl had put herself in his way. Neither hesitation because of the
defenceless position of the girl, nor hesitation because of his own
future with her, would have troubled Mr. Purcey. He--good man--in his
straightforward way, would have only thought about the present--not,
indeed, intending to have a future with a young person of that class.
Consideration for a wife who had withdrawn from the society of Mr. Purcey
would also naturally have been absent from the equation. That Hilary
worried over all these questions was the mark of his 'fin de sieclism.'
And in the meantime the facts demanded a decision.
He had not spoken to this girl since the day of the baby's funeral, but
in that long look from the garden he had in effect said: 'You are drawing
me to the only sort of union possible to us!' And she in effect had
answered: 'Do what you like with me!'
There were other facts, too, to be reckoned with. Hughs would be
released to-morrow; the little model would not stop her visits unless
forced to; Mr. Stone could not well do without her; Bianca had in effect
declared that she was being driven out of her own house. It was this
situation which Hilary, seated beneath the bust of Socrates, turned over
and over in his mind. Long and painful reflection brought him back
continually to the thought that he himself, and not Bianca, had better go
away. He was extremely bitter and contemptuous towards himself that he
had not done so long ago. He made use of the names Martin had given him.
"Hamlet," "Amateur," "Invertebrate." They gave him, unfortunately, little
comfort.
In the afternoon he received a visit. Mr. Stone came in with his osier
fruit-bag in his hand. He remained standing, and spoke at once.
"Is my daughter happy?"
At this unexpected question Hilary walked over to the fireplace.
"No," he said at last; "I am afraid she is not."
"Why?"
Hilary was silent; then, facing the old man, he said:
"I think she will be glad, for certain reasons, if I go away for a time."
"When are you going?" asked Mr. Stone.
"As soon as I can."
Mr. Stone's eyes, wistfully bright, seemed trying to see through heavy
fog.
"She came to me, I think," he said; "I seem to recollect her crying. You
are good to her?"
"I have tried to be," said Hilary.
Mr. Stone's face was discoloured by a flush. "You have no children," he
said painfully; "do you live together?"
Hilary shook his head.
"You are estranged?" said Mr. Stone.
Hilary bowed. There was a long silence. Mr. Stone's eyes had travelled
to the window.
"Without love there cannot be life," he said at last; and fixing his
wistful gaze on Hilary, asked: "Does she love another?"
Again Hilary shook his head.
When Mr. Stone next spoke it was clearly to himself.
"I do not know why I am glad. Do you love another?"
At this question Hilary's eyebrows settled in a frown. "What do you mean
by love?" he said.
Mr. Stone did not reply; it was evident that he was reflecting deeply.
His lips began to move: "By love I mean the forgetfulness of self.
Unions are frequent in which only the sexual instincts, or the
remembrance of self, are roused---"
"That is true," muttered Hilary.
Mr. Stone looked up; painful traces of confusion showed in his face.
"We were discussing something."
"I was telling you," said Hilary, "that it would be better for your
daughter--if I go away for a time."
"Yes," said Mr. Stone; "you are estranged."
Hilary went back to his stand before the empty fireplace.
"There is one thing, sir," he said, "on my conscience to say before I go,
and I must leave it to you to decide. The little girl who comes to you
no longer lives where she used to live."
"In that street...." said Mr. Stone.
Hilary went on quickly. "She was obliged to leave because the husband of
the woman with whom she used to lodge became infatuated with her. He has
been in prison, and comes out tomorrow. If she continues to come here he
will, of course, be able to find her. I'm afraid he will pursue her
again. Have I made it clear to you?"
"No," said Mr. Stone.
"The man," resumed Hilary patiently, "is a poor, violent creature, who
has been wounded in the head; he is not quite responsible. He may do the
girl an injury."
"What injury?"
"He has stabbed his wife already."
"I will speak to him," said Mr. Stone.
Hilary smiled. "I am afraid that words will hardly meet the case. She
ought to disappear."
There was silence.
"My book!" said Mr. Stone.
It smote Hilary to see how white his face had become. 'It's better,' he
thought, 'to bring his will-power into play; she will never come here,
anyway, after I'm gone.'
But, unable to bear the tragedy in the old man's eyes, he touched him on
the arm.
"Perhaps she will take the risk, sir, if you ask her."
Mr. Stone did not answer, and, not knowing what more to say, Hilary went
back to the window. Miranda was slumbering lightly out there in the
speckled shade, where it was not too warm and not too cold, her cheek
resting on her paw and white teeth showing.
Mr. Stone's voice rose again. "You are right; I cannot ask her to run a
risk like that!"
"She is just coming up the garden," Hilary said huskily. "Shall I tell
her to come in?"
"Yes," said Mr. Stone.
Hilary beckoned.
The girl came in, carrying a tiny bunch of lilies of the valley; her face
fell at sight of Mr. Stone; she stood still, raising the lilies to her
breast. Nothing could have been more striking than the change from her
look of guttered expectancy to a sort of hard dismay. A spot of red came
into both her cheeks. She gazed from Mr. Stone to Hilary and back again.
Both were staring at her. No one spoke. The little model's bosom began
heaving as though she had been running; she said faintly: "Look; I
brought you this, Mr. Stone!" and held out to him the bunch of lilies.
But Mr. Stone made no sign. "Don't you like them?"
Mr. Stone's eyes remained fastened on her face.
To Hilary this suspense was, evidently, most distressing. "Come, will
you tell her, sir," he said, "or shall I?"
Mr. Stone spoke.
"I shall try and write my book without you. You must not run this risk.
I cannot allow it."
The little model turned her eyes from side to side. "But I like to copy
out your book," she said.
"The man will injure you," said Mr. Stone.
The little model looked at Hilary.
"I don't care if he does; I'm not afraid of him. I can look after
myself; I'm used to it."
"I am going away," said Hilary quietly.
After a desperate look, that seemed to ask, 'Am I going, too?' the little
model stood as though frozen.
Wishing to end the painful scene, Hilary went up to Mr. Stone.
"Do you want to dictate to her this afternoon, sir?"
"No," said Mr. Stone.
"Nor to-morrow?"
"Will you come a little walk with me?"
Mr. Stone bowed.
Hilary turned to the little model. "It is goodbye, then," he said.
She did not take his hand. Her eyes, turned sideways, glinted; her teeth
were fastened on her lower lip. She dropped the lilies, suddenly looked
up at him, gulped, and slunk away. In passing she had smeared the lilies
with her foot.
Hilary picked up the fragments of the flowers, and dropped them into the
grate. The fragrance of the bruised blossoms remained clinging to the
air.
"Shall we get ready for our walk?" he said.
Mr. Stone moved feebly to the door, and very soon they were walking
silently towards the Gardens.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THYME'S ADVENTURE
This same afternoon Thyme, wheeling a bicycle and carrying a light
valise, was slipping into a back street out of the Old Square. Putting
her burden down at the pavement's edge, she blew a whistle. A hansom-cab
appeared, and a man in ragged clothes, who seemed to spring out of the
pavement, took hold of her valise. His lean, unshaven face was full of
wolfish misery.
"Get off with you!" the cabman said.
"Let him do it!" murmured Thyme.
The cab-runner hoisted up the trunk, then waited motionless beside the
cab.
Thyme handed him two coppers. He looked at them in silence, and went
away.
'Poor man,' she thought; 'that's one of the things we've got to do away
with!'
The cab now proceeded in the direction of the Park, Thyme following on
her bicycle, and trying to stare about her calmly.
'This,' she thought, 'is the end of the old life. I won't be romantic,
and imagine I'm doing anything special; I must take it all as a matter of
course.' She thought of Mr. Purcey's face--'that person!'--if he could
have seen her at this moment turning her back on comfort. 'The moment I
get there,' she mused, 'I shall let mother know; she can come out
to-morrow, and see for herself. I can't have hysterics about my
disappearance, and all that. They must get used to the idea that I mean
to be in touch with things. I can't be stopped by what anybody thinks!'
An approaching motor-car brought a startled frown across her brow. Was it
'that person'? But though it was not Mr. Purcey and his A.i. Damyer, it
was somebody so like him as made no difference. Thyme uttered a little
laugh.
In the Park a cool light danced and glittered on the trees and water, and
the same cool, dancing glitter seemed lighting the girl's eyes.
The cabman, unseen, took an admiring look at her. 'Nice little bit,
this!' it said.
'Grandfather bathes here,' thought Thyme. 'Poor darling! I pity
everyone that's old.'
The cab passed on under the shade of trees out into the road.
'I wonder if we have only one self in us,' thought Thyme. 'I sometimes
feel that I have two--Uncle Hilary would understand what I mean. The
pavements are beginning to smell horrid already, and it's only June
to-morrow. Will mother feel my going very much? How glorious if one
didn't feel!'
The cab turned into a narrow street of little shops.
'It must be dreadful to have to serve in a small shop. What millions of
people there are in the world! Can anything be of any use? Martin says
what matters is to do one's job; but what is one's job?'
The cab emerged into a broad, quiet square.
'But I'm not going to think of anything,' thought Thyme; 'that's fatal.
Suppose father stops my allowance; I should have to earn my living as a
typist, or something of that sort; but he won't, when he sees I mean it.
Besides, mother wouldn't let him.'
The cab entered the Euston Road, and again the cabman's broad face was
turned towards Thyme with an inquiring stare.
'What a hateful road!' Thyme thought. 'What dull, ugly, common-looking
faces all the people seem to have in London! as if they didn't care for
anything but just to get through their day somehow. I've only seen two
really pretty faces!'
The cab stopped before a small tobacconist's on the south side of the
road.
'Have I got to live here?' thought Thyme.
Through the open door a narrow passage led to a narrow staircase covered
with oilcloth. She raised her bicycle and wheeled it in. A
Jewish-looking youth emerging from the shop accosted her.
"Your gentleman friend says you are to stay in your rooms, please, until
he comes."
His warm red-brown eyes dwelt on her lovingly. "Shall I take your
luggage up, miss?"
"Thank you; I can manage."
"It's the first floor," said the young man.
The little rooms which Thyme entered were stuffy, clean, and neat.
Putting her trunk down in her bedroom, which looked out on a bare yard,
she went into the sitting-room and threw the window up. Down below the
cabman and tobacconist were engaged in conversation. Thyme caught the
expression on their faces--a sort of leering curiosity.
'How disgusting and horrible men are!' she thought, moodily staring at
the traffic. All seemed so grim, so inextricable, and vast, out there in
the grey heat and hurry, as though some monstrous devil were sporting
with a monstrous ant-heap. The reek of petrol and of dung rose to her
nostrils. It was so terribly big and hopeless; it was so ugly! 'I shall
never do anything,' thought Thyme-'never--never! Why doesn't Martin
come?'
She went into her bedroom and opened her valise. With the scent of
lavender that came from it, there sprang up a vision of her white bedroom
at home, and the trees of the green garden and the blackbirds on the
grass.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs brought her back into the
sitting-room. Martin was standing in the doorway.
Thyme ran towards him, but stopped abruptly. "I've come, you see. What
made you choose this place?"
"I'm next door but two; and there's a girl here--one of us. She'll show
you the ropes."
"Is she a lady?"
Martin raised his shoulders. "She is what is called a lady," he said;
"but she's the right sort, all the same. Nothing will stop her."
At this proclamation of supreme virtue, the look on Thyme's face was very
queer. 'You don't trust me,' it seemed to say, 'and you trust that girl.
You put me here for her to watch over me!...'
"I 'want to send this telegram," she said
Martin read the telegram. "You oughtn't to have funked telling your
mother what you meant to do."
Thyme crimsoned. "I'm not cold-blooded, like you."
"This is a big matter," said Martin. "I told you that you had no
business to come at all if you couldn't look it squarely in the face."
"If you want me to stay you had better be more decent to me, Martin."
"It must be your own affair," said Martin.
Thyme stood at the window, biting her lips to keep the tears back from
her eyes. A very pleasant voice behind her said: "I do think it's so
splendid of you to come!"
A girl in grey was standing there--thin, delicate, rather plain, with a
nose ever so little to one side, lips faintly smiling, and large,
shining, greenish eyes.
"I am Mary Daunt. I live above you. Have you had some tea?"
In the gentle question of this girl with the faintly smiling lips and
shining eyes Thyme fancied that she detected mockery.
"Yes, thanks. I want to be shown what my work's to be, at once, please."
The grey girl looked at Martin.
"Oh! Won't to-morrow do for all that sort of thing? I'm sure you must
be tired. Mr. Stone, do make her rest!"
Martin's glance seemed to say: 'Please leave your femininities!'
"If you mean business, your work will be the same as hers," he said;
"you're not qualified. All you can do will be visiting, noting the state
of the houses and the condition of the children."
The girl in grey said gently: "You see, we only deal with sanitation and
the children. It seems hard on the grown people and the old to leave
them out; but there's sure to be so much less money than we want, so that
it must all go towards the future."
There was a silence. The girl with the shining eyes added softly:
"1950!"
"1950!" repeated Martin. It seemed to be some formula of faith.
"I must send this telegram!" muttered Thyme.
Martin took it from her and went out.
Left alone in the little room, the two girls did not at first speak. The
girl in grey was watching Thyme half timidly, as if she could not tell
what to make of this young creature who looked so charming, and kept
shooting such distrustful glances.
"I think it's so awfully sweet of you to come," she said at last. "I know
what a good time you have at home; your cousin's often told me. Don't
you think he's splendid?"
To that question Thyme made no answer.
"Isn't this work horrid," she said--"prying into people's houses?"
The grey girl smiled. "It is rather awful sometimes. I've been at it
six months now. You get used to it. I've had all the worst things said
to me by now, I should think."
Thyme shuddered.
"You see," said the grey girl's faintly smiling lips, "you soon get the
feeling of having to go through with it. We all realise it's got to be
done, of course. Your cousin's one of the best of us; nothing seems to
put him out. He has such a nice sort of scornful kindness. I'd rather
work with him than anyone."
She looked past her new associate into that world outside, where the sky
seemed all wires and yellow heat-dust. She did not notice Thyme
appraising her from head to foot, with a stare hostile and jealous, but
pathetic, too, as though confessing that this girl was her superior.
"I'm sure I can't do that work!" she said suddenly.
The grey girl smiled. "Oh, I thought that at first." Then, with an
admiring look: "But I do think it's rather a shame for you, you're so
pretty. Perhaps they'd put you on to tabulation work, though that's
awfully dull. We'll ask your cousin."
"No; I'll do the whole or nothing."
"Well," said the grey girl, "I've got one house left to-day. Would you
like to come and see the sort of thing?"
She took a small notebook from a side pocket in her skirt.
"I can't get on without a pocket. You must have something that you can't
leave behind. I left four little bags and two dozen handkerchiefs in
five weeks before I came back to pockets. It's rather a horrid house,
I'm afraid!"
"I shall be all right," said Thyme shortly.
In the shop doorway the young tobacconist was taking the evening air. He
greeted them with his polite but constitutionally leering smile.
"Good-evening, mith," he said; "nithe evening!"
"He's rather an awful little man," the grey girl said when they had
achieved the crossing of the street; "but he's got quite a nice sense of
humour."
"Ah!" said Thyme.
They had turned into a by-street, and stopped before a house which had
obviously seen better days. Its windows were cracked, its doors
unpainted, and down in the basement could be seen a pile of rags, an
evil-looking man seated by it, and a blazing fire. Thyme felt a little
gulping sensation. There was a putrid scent as of burning refuse. She
looked at her companion. The grey girl was consulting her notebook, with
a faint smile on her lips. And in Thyme's heart rose a feeling almost of
hatred for this girl, who was so business-like in the presence of such
sights and scents.
The door was opened by a young red-faced woman, who looked as if she had
been asleep.
The grey girl screwed up her shining eyes. "Oh, do you mind if we come
in a minute?" she said. "It would be so good of you. We're making a
report."
"There's nothing to report here," the young woman answered. But the grey
girl had slipped as gently past as though she had been the very spirit of
adventure.
"Of course, I see that, but just as a matter of form, you know."
"I've parted with most of my things," the young woman said defensively,
"since my husband died. It's a hard life."
"Yes, yes, but not worse than mine--always poking my nose into other
people's houses."
The young woman was silent, evidently surprised.
"The landlord ought to keep you in better repair," said the grey girl.
"He owns next door, too, doesn't he?"
The young woman nodded. "He's a bad landlord. All down the street 'ere
it's the same. Can't get nothing done."
The grey girl had gone over to a dirty bassinette where a half-naked
child sprawled. An ugly little girl with fat red cheeks was sitting on a
stool beside it, close to an open locker wherein could be seen a number
of old meat bones.'
"Your chickabiddies?" said the grey girl. "Aren't they sweet?"
The young woman's face became illumined by a smile.
"They're healthy," she said.
"That's more than can be said for all the children in the house, I
expect," murmured the grey girl.
The young woman replied emphatically, as though voicing an old grievance:
"The three on the first floor's not so bad, but I don't let 'em 'ave
anything to do with that lot at the top."
Thyme saw her new friend's hand hover over the child's head like some
pale dove. In answer to that gesture, the mother nodded. "Just that;
you've got to clean 'em every time they go near them children at the
top."
The grey girl looked at Thyme. 'That's where we've got to go,
evidently,' she seemed to say.
"A dirty lot!" muttered the young woman.
"It's very hard on you."
"It is. I'm workin' at the laundry all day when I can get it. I can't
look after the children--they get everywhere."
"Very hard," murmured the grey girl. "I'll make a note of that."
Together with the little book, in which she was writing furiously, she
had pulled out her handkerchief, and the sight of this handkerchief
reposing on the floor gave Thyme a queer satisfaction, such as comes when
one remarks in superior people the absence of a virtue existing in
oneself.
"Well, we mustn't keep you, Mrs.--Mrs.--?"
"Cleary."
"Cleary. How old's this little one? Four? And the other? Two? They
are ducks. Good-bye!"
In the corridor outside the grey girl whispered: "I do like the way we
all pride ourselves on being better than someone else. I think it's so
hopeful and jolly. Shall we go up and see the abyss at the top?"
CHAPTER XXXV
A YOUNG GIRL'S MIND
A young girl's mind is like a wood in Spring--now a rising mist of
bluebells and flakes of dappled sunlight; now a world of still, wan,
tender saplings, weeping they know not why. Through the curling twigs of
boughs just green, its wings fly towards the stars; but the next moment
they have drooped to mope beneath the damp bushes. It is ever yearning
for and trembling at the future; in its secret places all the countless
shapes of things that are to be are taking stealthy counsel of how to
grow up without letting their gown of mystery fall. They rustle, whisper,
shriek suddenly, and as suddenly fall into a delicious silence. From the
first hazel-bush to the last may-tree it is an unending meeting-place of
young solemn things eager to find out what they are, eager to rush forth
to greet the kisses of the wind and sun, and for ever trembling back and
hiding their faces. The spirit of that wood seems to lie with her ear
close to the ground, a pale petal of a hand curved like a shell behind
it, listening for the whisper of her own life. There she lies, white and
supple, with dewy, wistful eyes, sighing: 'What is my meaning? Ah, I am
everything! Is there in all the world a thing so wonderful as I?... Oh,
I am nothing--my wings are heavy; I faint, I die!'
When Thyme, attended by the grey girl, emerged from the abyss at the top,
her cheeks were flushed and her hands clenched. She said nothing. The
grey girl, too, was silent, with a look such as a spirit divested of its
body by long bathing in the river of reality might bend on one who has
just come to dip her head. Thyme's quick eyes saw that look, and her
colour deepened. She saw, too, the glance of the Jewish youth when
Martin joined them in the doorway.
'Two girls now,' he seemed to say. 'He goes it, this young man!'
Supper was laid in her new friend's room--pressed beef, potato salad,
stewed prunes, and ginger ale. Martin and the grey girl talked. Thyme
ate in silence, but though her eyes seemed fastened on her plate, she saw
every glance that passed between them, heard every word they said. Those
glances were not remarkable, nor were those words particularly important,
but they were spoken in tones that seemed important to Thyme. 'He never
talks to me like that,' she thought.
When supper was over they went out into the streets to walk, but at the
door the grey girl gave Thyme's arm a squeeze, her cheek a swift kiss,
and turned back up the stairs.
"Aren't you coming?" shouted Martin.
Her voice was heard answering from above: "No, not tonight."
With the back of her hand Thyme rubbed off the kiss. The two cousins
walked out amongst the traffic.
The evening was very warm and close; no breeze fanned the reeking town.
Speaking little, they wandered among endless darkening streets, whence to
return to the light and traffic of the Euston Road seemed like coming
back to Heaven. At last, close again to her new home, Thyme said: "Why
should one bother? It's all a horrible great machine, trying to blot us
out; people are like insects when you put your thumb on them and smear
them on a book. I hate--I loathe it!"
"They might as well be healthy insects while they last," answered Martin.
Thyme faced round at him. "I shan't sleep tonight, Martin; get out my
bicycle for me."
Martin scrutinised her by the light of the street lamp. "All right," he
said; "I'll come too."
There are, say moralists, roads that lead to Hell, but it was on a road
that leads to Hampstead that the two young cyclists set forth towards
eleven o'clock. The difference between the character of the two
destinations was soon apparent, for whereas man taken in bulk had perhaps
made Hell, Hampstead had obviously been made by the upper classes. There
were trees and gardens, and instead of dark canals of sky banked by the
roofs of houses and hazed with the yellow scum of London lights, the
heavens spread out in a wide trembling pool. From that rampart of the
town, the Spaniard's Road, two plains lay exposed to left and right; the
scent of may-tree blossom had stolen up the hill; the rising moon clung
to a fir-tree bough. Over the country the far stars presided, and
sleep's dark wings were spread above the fields--silent, scarce
breathing, lay the body of the land. But to the south, where the town,
that restless head, was lying, the stars seemed to have fallen and were
sown in the thousand furrows of its great grey marsh, and from the dark
miasma of those streets there travelled up a rustle, a whisper, the far
allurement of some deathless dancer, dragging men to watch the swirl of
her black, spangled drapery, the gleam of her writhing limbs. Like the
song of the sea in a shell was the murmur of that witch of motion,
clasping to her the souls of men, drawing them down into a soul whom none
had ever known to rest.
Above the two young cousins, scudding along that ridge between the
country and the town, three thin white clouds trailed slowly towards the
west-like tired seabirds drifting exhausted far out from land on a sea
blue to blackness with unfathomable depth.
For an hour those two rode silently into the country.
"Have we come far enough?" Martin said at last.
Thyme shook her head. A long, steep hill beyond a little sleeping
village had brought them to a standstill. Across the shadowy fields a
pale sheet of water gleamed out in moonlight. Thyme turned down towards
it.
"I'm hot," she said; "I want to bathe my face. Stay here. Don't come
with me."
She left her bicycle, and, passing through a gate, vanished among the
trees.
Martin stayed leaning against the gate. The village clock struck one.
The distant call of a hunting owl, "Qu-wheek, qu-wheek!" sounded through
the grave stillness of this last night of May. The moon at her curve's
summit floated at peace on the blue surface of the sky, a great closed
water-lily. And Martin saw through the trees scimitar-shaped reeds
clustering black along the pool's shore. All about him the may-flowers
were alight. It was such a night as makes dreams real and turns reality
to dreams.
'All moonlit nonsense!' thought the young man, for the night had
disturbed his heart.
But Thyme did not come back. He called to her, and in the death-like
silence following his shouts he could hear his own heart beat. He passed
in through the gate. She was nowhere to be seen. Why was she playing
him this trick?
He turned up from the water among the trees, where the incense of the
may-flowers hung heavy in the air.
'Never look for a thing!' he thought, and stopped to listen. It was so
breathless that the leaves of a low bough against his cheek did not stir
while he stood there. Presently he heard faint sounds, and stole towards
them. Under a beech-tree he almost stumbled over Thyme, lying with her
face pressed to the ground. The young doctor's heart gave a sickening
leap; he quickly knelt down beside her. The girl's body, pressed close
to the dry beech-mat, was being shaken by long sobs. From head to foot
it quivered; her hat had been torn off, and the fragrance of her hair
mingled with the fragrance of the night. In Martin's heart something
seemed to turn over and over, as when a boy he had watched a rabbit
caught in a snare. He touched her. She sat up, and, dashing her hand
across her eyes, cried: "Go away! Oh, go away!"
He put his arm round her and waited. Five minutes passed. The air was
trembling with a sort of pale vibration, for the moonlight had found a
hole in the dark foliage and flooded on to the ground beside them,
whitening the black beech-husks. Some tiny bird, disturbed by these
unwonted visitors, began chirruping and fluttering, but was soon still
again. To Martin, so strangely close to this young creature in the
night, there came a sense of utter disturbance.
'Poor little thing!' he thought; 'be careful of her, comfort her!'
Hardness seemed so broken out of her, and the night so wonderful! And
there came into the young man's heart a throb of the knowledge--very
rare with him, for he was not, like Hilary, a philosophising person--that
she was as real as himself--suffering, hoping, feeling, not his hopes and
feelings, but her own. His fingers kept pressing her shoulder through
her thin blouse. And the touch of those fingers was worth more than any
words, as this night, all moonlit dreams, was worth more than a thousand
nights of sane reality.
Thyme twisted herself away from him at last. "I can't," she sobbed. "I'm
not what you thought me--I'm not made for it!"
A scornful little smile curled Martin's lip. So that was it! But the
smile soon died away. One did not hit what was already down!
Thyme's voice wailed through the silence. "I thought I could--but I want
beautiful things. I can't bear it all so grey and horrible. I'm not like
that girl. I'm-an-amateur!"
'If I kissed her---' Martin thought.
She sank down again, burying her face in the dark beech-mat. The
moonlight had passed on. Her voice came faint and stiffed, as out of the
tomb of faith. "I'm no good. I never shall be. I'm as bad as mother!"
But to Martin there was only the scent of her hair.
"No," murmured Thyme's voice, "I'm only fit for miserable Art.... I'm
only fit for--nothing!"
They were so close together on the dark beech mat that their bodies
touched, and a longing to clasp her in his arms came over him.
"I'm a selfish beast!" moaned the smothered voice. "I don't really care
for all these people--I only care because they're ugly for me to see!"
Martin reached his hand out to her hair. If she had shrunk away he would
have seized her, but as though by instinct she let it rest there. And at
her sudden stillness, strange and touching, Martin's quick passion left
him. He slipped his arm round her and raised her up, as if she had been
a child, and for a long time sat listening with a queer twisted smile to
the moanings of her lost illusions.
The dawn found them still sitting there against the bole of the
beech-tree. Her lips were parted; the tears had dried on her sleeping
face, pillowed against his shoulder, while he still watched her sideways
with the ghost of that twisted smile.
And beyond the grey water, like some tired wanton, the moon in an orange
hood was stealing down to her rest between the trees.
CHAPTER XXXVI
STEPHEN SIGNS CHEQUES
Cecilia received the mystic document containing these words "Am quite all
right. Address, 598, Euston Road, three doors off Martin. Letter follows
explaining. Thyme," she had not even realised her little daughter's
departure. She went up to Thyme's room at once, and opening all the
drawers and cupboards, stared into them one by one. The many things she
saw there allayed the first pangs of her disquiet.
'She has only taken one little trunk,' she thought, 'and left all her
evening frocks.'
This act of independence alarmed rather than surprised her, such had been
her sense of the unrest in the domestic atmosphere during the last month.
Since the evening when she had found Thyme in foods of tears because of
the Hughs' baby, her maternal eyes had not failed to notice something new
in the child's demeanour--a moodiness, an air almost of conspiracy,
together with an emphatic increase of youthful sarcasm: Fearful of
probing deep, she had sought no confidence, nor had she divulged her
doubts to Stephen.
Amongst the blouses a sheet of blue ruled paper, which had evidently
escaped from a notebook, caught her eye. Sentences were scrawled on it
in pencil. Cecilia read: "That poor little dead thing was so grey and
pinched, and I seemed to realise all of a sudden how awful it is for
them. I must--I must--I will do something!"
Cecilia dropped the sheet of paper; her hand was trembling. There was no
mystery in that departure now, and Stephen's words came into her mind:
"It's all very well up to a certain point, and nobody sympathises with
them more than I do; but after that it becomes destructive of all
comfort, and that does no good to anyone."
The sound sense of those words had made her feel queer when they were
spoken; they were even more sensible than she had thought. Did her
little daughter, so young and pretty, seriously mean to plunge into the
rescue work of dismal slums, to cut herself adrift from sweet sounds and
scents and colours, from music and art, from dancing, flowers, and all
that made life beautiful? The secret forces of fastidiousness, an inborn
dread of the fanatical, and all her real ignorance of what such a life
was like, rose in Cecilia with a force which made her feel quite sick.
Better that she herself should do this thing than that her own child
should be deprived of air and light and all the just environment of her
youth and beauty. 'She must come back--she must listen to me!' she
thought. 'We will begin together; we will start a nice little creche of
our own, or--perhaps Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace could find us some regular
work on one of her committees.'
Then suddenly she conceived a thought which made her blood run positively
cold. What if it were a matter of heredity? What if Thyme had inherited
her grandfather's single-mindedness? Martin was giving proof of it.
Things, she knew, often skipped a generation and then set in again.
Surely, surely, it could not have done that! With longing, yet with
dread, she waited for the sound of Stephen's latchkey. It came at its
appointed time.
Even in her agitation Cecilia did not forget to spare him, all she could.
She began by giving him a kiss, and then said casually: "Thyme has got a
whim into her head."
"What whim?"
"It's rather what you might expect," faltered Cecilia, "from her going
about so much with Martin."
Stephen's face assumed at once an air of dry derision; there was no love
lost between him and his young nephew-in-law.
"The Sanitist?" he said; "ah! Well?"
"She has gone off to do work-some place in the Euston Road. I've had a
telegram. Oh, and I found this, Stephen."
She held out to him half-heartedly the two bits of paper, one
pinkish-brown, the other blue. Stephen saw that she was trembling. He
took them from her, read them, and looked at her again. He had a real
affection for his wife, and the tradition of consideration for other
people's feelings was bred in him, so that at this moment, so vitally
disturbing, the first thing he did was to put his hand on her shoulder
and give it a reassuring squeeze. But there was also in Stephen a
certain primitive virility, pickled, it is true, at Cambridge, and in the
Law Courts dried, but still preserving something of its possessive and
assertive quality, and the second thing he did was to say, "No, I'm
damned!"
In that little sentence lay the whole psychology of his attitude towards
this situation and all the difference between two classes of the
population. Mr. Purcey would undoubtedly have said: "Well, I'm damned!"
Stephen, by saying "No, I'm damned!" betrayed that before he could be
damned he had been obliged to wrestle and contend with something, and
Cecilia, who was always wrestling too, knew this something to be that
queer new thing, a Social Conscience, the dim bogey stalking pale about
the houses of those who, through the accidents of leisure or of culture,
had once left the door open to the suspicion: Is it possible that there
is a class of people besides my own, or am I dreaming? Happy the
millions, poor or rich, not yet condemned to watch the wistful visiting
or hear the husky mutter of that ghost, happy in their homes, blessed by
a less disquieting god. Such were Cecilia's inner feelings.
Even now she did not quite plumb the depths of Stephen's; she felt his
struggle with the ghost; she felt and admired his victory. What she did
not, could not, perhaps, realise, was the precise nature of the outrage
inflicted on him by Thyme's action. With her--being a woman--the matter
was more practical; she did not grasp, had never grasped, the
architectural nature of Stephen's mind--how really hurt he was by what
did not seem to him in due and proper order.
He spoke: "Why on earth, if she felt like that, couldn't she have gone to
work in the ordinary way? She could have put herself in connection with
some proper charitable society--I should never have objected to that.
It's all that young Sanitary idiot!"
"I believe," Cecilia faltered, "that Martin's is a society. It's a kind
of medical Socialism, or something of that sort. He has tremendous faith
in it."
Stephen's lip curled.
"He may have as much faith as he likes," he said, with the restraint that
was one of his best qualities, "so long as he doesn't infect my daughter
with it."
Cecilia said suddenly: "Oh! what are we to do, Stephen? Shall I go over
there to-night?"
As one may see a shadow pass down on a cornfield, so came the cloud on
Stephen's face. It was as though he had not realised till then the full
extent of what this meant. For a minute he was silent. "Better wait for
her letter," he said at last. "He's her cousin, after all, and Mrs.
Grundy's dead--in the Euston Road, at all events."
So, trying to spare each other all they could of anxiety, and careful to
abstain from any hint of trouble before the servants, they dined and went
to bed.
At that hour between the night and morning, when man's vitality is
lowest, and the tremors of his spirit, like birds of ill omen, fly round
and round him, beating their long plumes against his cheeks, Stephen
woke.
It was very still. A bar of pearly-grey dawn showed between the filmy
curtains, which stirred with a regular, faint movement, like the puffing
of a sleeper's lips. The tide of the wind, woven in Mr. Stone's fancy of
the souls of men, was at low ebb. Feebly it fanned the houses and hovels
where the myriad forms of men lay sleeping, unconscious of its breath; so
faint life's pulse, that men and shadows seemed for that brief moment
mingled in the town's sleep. Over the million varied roofs, over the
hundred million little different shapes of men and things, the wind's
quiet, visiting wand had stilled all into the wonder state of
nothingness, when life is passing into death, death into new life, and
self is at its feeblest.
And Stephen's self, feeling the magnetic currents of that ebb-tide
drawing it down into murmurous slumber, out beyond the sand-bars of
individuality and class, threw up its little hands and began to cry for
help. The purple sea of self-forgetfulness, under the dim, impersonal
sky, seemed to him so cold and terrible. It had no limit that he could
see, no rules but such as hung too far away, written in the hieroglyphics
of paling stars. He could feel no order in the lift and lap of the wan
waters round his limbs. Where would those waters carry him? To what
depth of still green silence? Was his own little daughter to go down
into this sea that knew no creed but that of self-forgetfulness, that
respected neither class nor person--this sea where a few wandering
streaks seemed all the evidence of the precious differences between
mankind? God forbid it!
And, turning on his elbow, he looked at her who had given him this
daughter. In the mystery of his wife's sleeping face--the face of her
most near and dear to him--he tried hard not to see a likeness to Mr.
Stone. He fell back somewhat comforted with the thought: 'That old chap
has his one idea--his Universal Brotherhood. He's absolutely absorbed in
it. I don't see it in Cis's face a bit. Quite the contrary.'
But suddenly a flash of clear, hard cynicism amounting to inspiration
utterly disturbed him: The old chap, indeed, was so wrapped up in himself
and his precious book as to be quite unconscious that anyone else was
alive. Could one be everybody's brother if one were blind to their
existence? But this freak of Thyme's was an actual try to be everybody's
sister. For that, he supposed, one must forget oneself. Why, it was
really even a worse case than that of Mr. Stone! And to Stephen there
was something awful in this thought.
The first small bird of morning, close to the open window, uttered a
feeble chirrup. Into Stephen's mind there leaped without reason
recollection of the morning after his first term at school, when,
awakened by the birds, he had started up and fished out from under his
pillow his catapult and the box of shot he had brought home and taken to
sleep with him. He seemed to see again those leaden shot with their
bluish sheen, and to feel them, round, and soft, and heavy, rolling about
his palm. He seemed to hear Hilary's surprised voice saying: "Hallo,
Stevie! you awake?"
No one had ever had a better brother than old Hilary. His only fault was
that he had always been too kind. It was his kindness that had done for
him, and made his married life a failure. He had never asserted himself
enough with that woman, his wife. Stephen turned over on his other side.
'All this confounded business,' he thought, 'comes from
over-sympathising. That's what's the matter with Thyme, too.' Long he
lay thus, while the light grew stronger, listening to Cecilia's gentle
breathing, disturbed to his very marrow by these thoughts.
The first post brought no letter from Thyme, and the announcement soon
after, that Mr. Hilary had come to breakfast, was received by both
Stephen and Cecilia with a welcome such as the anxious give to anything
which shows promise of distracting them.
Stephen made haste down. Hilary, with a very grave and harassed face,
was in the dining-room. It was he, however, who, after one look at
Stephen, said:
"What's the matter, Stevie?"
Stephen took up the Standard. In spite of his self-control, his hand
shook a little.
"It's a ridiculous business," he said. "That precious young Sanitist has
so worked his confounded theories into Thyme that she has gone off to the
Euston Road to put them into practice, of all things!"
At the half-concerned amusement on Hilary's face his quick and rather
narrow eyes glinted.
"It's not exactly for you to laugh, Hilary," he said. "It's all of a
piece with your cursed sentimentality about those Hughs, and that girl.
I knew it would end in a mess."
Hilary answered this unjust and unexpected outburst by a look, and
Stephen, with the strange feeling of inferiority which would come to him
in Hilary's presence against his better judgment, lowered his own glance.
"My dear boy," said Hilary, "if any bit of my character has crept into
Thyme, I'm truly sorry."
Stephen took his brother's hand and gave it a good grip; and, Cecilia
coming in, they all sat down.
Cecilia at once noted what Stephen in his preoccupation had not--that
Hilary had come to tell them something. But she did not like to ask him
what it was, though she knew that in the presence of their trouble Hilary
was too delicate to obtrude his own. She did not like, either, to talk
of her trouble in the presence of his. They all talked, therefore, of
indifferent things--what music they had heard, what plays they had
seen--eating but little, and drinking tea. In the middle of a remark
about the opera, Stephen, looking up, saw Martin himself standing in the
doorway. The young Sanitist looked pale, dusty, and dishevelled. He
advanced towards Cecilia, and said with his usual cool determination:
"I've brought her back, Aunt Cis."
At that moment, fraught with such relief, such pure joy, such desire to
say a thousand things, Cecilia could only murmur: "Oh, Martin!"
Stephen, who had jumped up, asked: "Where is she?"
"Gone to her room."
"Then perhaps," said Stephen, regaining at once his dry composure, "you
will give us some explanation of this folly."
"She's no use to us at present."
"Indeed!"
"None."
"Then," said Stephen, "kindly understand that we have no use for you in
future, or any of your sort."
Martin looked round the table, resting his eyes on each in turn.
"You're right," he said. "Good-bye!"
Hilary and Cecilia had risen, too. There was silence. Stephen crossed
to the door.
"You seem to me," he said suddenly, in his driest voice, "with your new
manners and ideas, quite a pernicious youth."
Cecilia stretched her hands out towards Martin, and there was a faint
tinkling as of chains.
"You must know, dear," she said, "how anxious we've all been. Of course,
your uncle doesn't mean that."
The same scornful tenderness with which he was wont to look at Thyme
passed into Martin's face.
"All right, Aunt Cis," he said; "if Stephen doesn't mean it, he ought to.
To mean things is what matters." He stooped and kissed her forehead.
"Give that to Thyme for me," he said. "I shan't see her for a bit."
"You'll never see her, sir," said Stephen dryly, "if I can help it! The
liquor of your Sanitism is too bright and effervescent."
Martin's smile broadened. "For old bottles," he said, and with another
slow look round went out.
Stephen's mouth assumed its driest twist. "Bumptious young devil!" he
said. "If that is the new young man, defend us!"
Over the cool dining-room, with its faint scent of pinks, of melon, and
of ham, came silence. Suddenly Cecilia glided from the room. Her light
footsteps were heard hurrying, now that she was not visible, up to Thyme.
Hilary, too, had moved towards the door. In spite of his preoccupation,
Stephen could not help noticing how very worn his brother looked.
"You look quite seedy, old boy," he said. "Will you have some brandy?"
Hilary shook his head.
"Now that you've got Thyme back," he said, "I'd better let you know my
news. I'm going abroad to-morrow. I don't know whether I shall come
back again to live with B."
Stephen gave a low whistle; then, pressing Hilary's arm, he said:
"Anything you decide, old man, I'll always back you in, but--"
"I'm going alone."
In his relief Stephen violated the laws of reticence.
"Thank Heaven for that! I was afraid you were beginning to lose your
head about that girl"
"I'm not quite fool enough," said Hilary, "to imagine that such a liaison
would be anything but misery in the long-run. If I took the child I
should have to stick to her; but I'm not proud of leaving her in the
lurch, Stevie."
The tone of his voice was so bitter that Stephen seized his hand.
"My dear old man, you're too kind. Why, she's no hold on you--not the
smallest in the world!"
"Except the hold of this devotion I've roused in her, God knows how, and
her destitution."
"You let these people haunt you," said Stephen. "It's quite a
mistake--it really is."
"I had forgotten to mention that I am not an iceberg," muttered Hilary.
Stephen looked into his face without speaking, then with the utmost
earnestness he said:
"However much you may be attracted, it's simply unthinkable for a man
like you to go outside his class."
"Class! Yes!" muttered Hilary: "Good-bye!"
And with a long grip of his brother's hand he went away.
Stephen turned to the window. For all the care and contrivance bestowed
on the view, far away to the left the back courts of an alley could be
seen; and as though some gadfly had planted in him its small poisonous
sting, he moved back from the sight at once. 'Confusion!' he thought.
'Are we never to get rid of these infernal people?'
His eyes lighted on the melon. A single slice lay by itself on a
blue-green dish. Leaning over a plate, with a desperation quite unlike
himself, he took an enormous bite. Again and again he bit the slice,
then almost threw it from him, and dipped his fingers in a bowl.
'Thank God!' he thought, 'that's over! What an escape!'
Whether he meant Hilary's escape or Thyme's was doubtful, but there came
on him a longing to rush up to his little daughter's room, and hug her.
He suppressed it, and sat down at the bureau; he was suddenly
experiencing a sensation such as he had sometimes felt on a perfect day,
or after physical danger, of too much benefit, of something that he would
like to return thanks for, yet knew not how. His hand stole to the inner
pocket of his black coat. It stole out again; there was a cheque-book in
it. Before his mind's eye, starting up one after the other, he saw the
names of the societies he supported, or meant sometime, if he could
afford it, to support. He reached his hand out for a pen. The still,
small noise of the nib travelling across the cheques mingled with the
buzzing of a single fly.
These sounds Cecilia heard, when, from the open door, she saw the thin
back of her husband's neck, with its softly graduated hair, bent forward
above the bureau. She stole over to him, and pressed herself against his
arm.
Stephen, staying the progress of his pen, looked up at her. Their eyes
met, and, bending down, Cecilia put her cheek to his.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE FLOWERING OF THE ALOE
This same day, returning through Kensington Gardens, from his
preparations for departure, Hilary came suddenly on Bianca standing by
the shores of the Round Pond.
To the eyes of the frequenters of these Elysian fields, where so many men
and shadows daily steal recreation, to the eyes of all drinking in those
green gardens their honeyed draught of peace, this husband and wife
appeared merely a distinguished-looking couple, animated by a leisured
harmony. For the time was not yet when men were one, and could tell by
instinct what was passing in each other's hearts.
In truth, there were not too many people in London who, in their
situation, would have behaved with such seemliness--not too many so
civilised as they!
Estranged, and soon to part, they retained the manner of accord up to the
last. Not for them the matrimonial brawl, the solemn accusation and
recrimination, the pathetic protestations of proprietary rights. For them
no sacred view that at all costs they must make each other miserable--not
even the belief that they had the right to do so. No, there was no
relief for their sore hearts. They walked side by side, treating each
other's feelings with respect, as if there had been no terrible
heart-turnings throughout the eighteen years in which they had first
loved, then, through mysterious disharmony, drifted apart; as if there
were now between them no question of this girl.
Presently Hilary said:
"I've been into town and made my preparations; I'm starting tomorrow for
the mountains. There will be no necessity for you to leave your father."
"Are you taking her?"
It was beautifully uttered, without a trace of bias or curiosity, with an
unforced accent, neither indifferent nor too interested--no one could
have told whether it was meant for generosity or malice. Hilary took it
for the former.
"Thank you," he said; "but that comedy is finished."
Close to the edge of the Round Pond a swanlike cutter was putting out to
sea; in the wake of this fair creature a tiny scooped-out bit of wood,
with three feathers for masts, bobbed and trembled; and the two small
ragged boys who owned that little galley were stretching bits of branch
out towards her over the bright waters.
Bianca looked, without seeing, at this proof of man's pride in his own
property. A thin gold chain hung round her neck; suddenly she thrust it
into the bosom of her dress. It had broken into two, between her
fingers.
They reached home without another word.
At the door of Hilary's study sat Miranda. The little person answered
his caress by a shiver of her sleek skin, then curled herself down again
on the spot she had already warmed.
"Aren't you coming in with me?" he said.
Miranda did not move.
The reason for her refusal was apparent when Hilary had entered. Close to
the long bookcase, behind the bust of Socrates, stood the little model.
Very still, as if fearing to betray itself by sound or movement, was her
figure in its blue-green frock, and a brimless toque of brown straw, with
two purplish roses squashed together into a band of darker velvet.
Beside those roses a tiny peacock's feather had been slipped in--unholy
little visitor, slanting backward, trying, as it were, to draw all eyes,
yet to escape notice. And, wedged between the grim white bust and the
dark bookcase, the girl herself was like some unlawful spirit which had
slid in there, and stood trembling and vibrating, ready to be shuttered
out.
Before this apparition Hilary recoiled towards the door, hesitated, and
returned.
"You should not have come here," he muttered, "after what we said to you
yesterday."
The little model answered quickly: "But I've seen Hughs, Mr. Dallison.
He's found out where I live. Oh, he does look dreadful; he frightens me.
I can't ever stay there now."
She had come a little out of her hiding-place, and stood fidgeting her
hands and looking down.
'She's not speaking the truth,' thought Hilary.
The little model gave him a furtive glance. "I did see him," she said.
"I must go right away now; it wouldn't be safe, would it?" Again she gave
him that swift look.
Hilary thought suddenly: 'She is using my own weapon against me. If she
has seen the man, he didn't frighten her. It serves me right!' With a
dry laugh, he turned his back.
There was a rustling round. The little model had moved out of her
retreat, and stood between him and the door. At this stealthy action,
Hilary felt once more the tremor which had come over him when he sat
beside her in the Broad Walk after the baby's funeral. Outside in the
garden a pigeon was pouring forth a continuous love song; Hilary heard
nothing of it, conscious only of the figure of the girl behind him--that
young figure which had twined itself about his senses.
"Well, what is it you want?" he said at last.
The little model answered by another question.
'Are you really going away, Mr. Dallison?"
"I am."
She raised her hands to the level of her breast, as though she meant to
clasp them together; without doing so, however, she dropped them to her
sides. They were cased in very worn suede gloves, and in this dire
moment of embarrassment Hilary's eyes fastened themselves on those slim
hands moving against her skirt.
The little model tried at once to slip them away behind her. Suddenly she
said in her matter-of-fact voice: "I only wanted to ask--Can't I come
too?"
At this question, whose simplicity might have made an angel smile, Hilary
experienced a sensation as if his bones had been turned to water. It was
strange--delicious--as though he had been suddenly offered all that he
wanted of her, without all those things that he did not want. He stood
regarding her silently. Her cheeks and neck were red; there was a red
tinge, too, in her eyelids, deepening the "chicory-flower" colour of her
eyes. She began to speak, repeating a lesson evidently learned by heart.
"I wouldn't be in your way. I wouldn't cost much. I could do everything
you wanted. I could learn typewriting. I needn't live too near, or
that; if you didn't want me, because of people talking; I'm used to being
alone. Oh, Mr. Dallison, I could do everything for you. I wouldn't mind
anything, and I'm not like some girls; I do know what I'm talking about."
"Do you?"
The little model put her hands up, and, covering her face, said:
"If you'd try and see!"
Hilary's sensuous feeling almost vanished; a lump rose in his throat
instead.
"My child," he said, "you are too generous!"
The little model seemed to know instinctively that by touching his spirit
she had lost ground. Uncovering her face, she spoke breathlessly,
growing very pale:
"Oh no, I'm not. I want to be let come; I don't want to stay here. I
know I'll get into mischief if you don't take me--oh, I know I will!"
"If I were to let you come with me," said Hilary, "what then? What sort
of companion should I be to you, or you to me? You know very well. Only
one sort. It's no use pretending, child, that we've any interests in
common."
The little model came closer.
"I know what I am," she said, "and I don't want to be anything else. I
can do what you tell me to, and I shan't ever complain. I'm not worth
any more!"
"You're worth more," muttered Hilary, "than I can ever give you, and I'm
worth more than you can ever give me."
The little model tried to answer, but her words would not pass her
throat; she threw her head back trying to free them, and stood, swaying.
Seeing her like this before him, white as a sheet, with her eyes closed
and her lips parted, as though about to faint, Hilary seized her by the
shoulders. At the touch of those soft shoulders, his face became
suffused with blood, his lips trembled. Suddenly her eyes opened ever so
little between their lids, and looked at him. And the perception that she
was not really going to faint, that it was a little desperate wile of
this child Delilah, made him wrench away his hands. The moment she felt
that grasp relax she sank down and clasped his knees, pressing them to
her bosom so that he could not stir. Closer and closer she pressed them
to her, till it seemed as though she must be bruising her flesh. Her
breath came in sobs; her eyes were closed; her lips quivered upwards. In
the clutch of her clinging body there seemed suddenly the whole of
woman's power of self-abandonment. It was just that, which, at this
moment, so horribly painful to him, prevented Hilary from seizing her in
his arms just that queer seeming self-effacement, as though she were lost
to knowledge of what she did. It seemed too brutal, too like taking
advantage of a child.
From calm is born the wind, the ripple from the still pool, self out of
nothingness--so all passes imperceptibly, no man knows how. The little
model's moment of self-oblivion passed, and into her wet eyes her plain,
twisting spirit suddenly writhed up again, for all the world as if she
had said: 'I won't let you go; I'll keep you--I'll keep you.'
Hilary broke away from her, and she fell forward on her face.
"Get up, child," he said--"get up; for God's sake, don't lie there!"
She rose obediently, choking down her sobs, mopping her face with a
small, dirty handkerchief. Suddenly, taking a step towards him, she
clenched both her hands and struck them downwards.
"I'll go to the bad," she said---"I will--if you don't take me!" And, her
breast heaving, her hair all loose, she stared straight into his face
with her red-rimmed eyes. Hilary turned suddenly, took a book up from
the writing-table, and opened it. His face was again suffused with
blood; his hands and lips trembled; his eyes had a queer fixed stare.
"Not now, not now," he muttered; "go away now. I'll come to you
to-morrow."
The little model gave him the look a dog gives you when it asks if you
are deceiving him. She made a sign on her breast, as a Catholic might
make the sign of his religion, drawing her fingers together, and
clutching at herself with them, then passed her little dirty handkerchief
once more over her eyes, and, turning round, went out.
Hilary remained standing where he was, reading the open book without
apprehending what it was.
There was a wistful sound, as of breath escaping hurriedly. Mr. Stone
was standing in the open doorway.
"She has been here," he said. "I saw her go away."
Hilary dropped the book; his nerves were utterly unstrung. Then,
pointing to a chair, he said: "Won't you sit down, sir?"
Mr. Stone came close up to his son-in-law.
"Is she in trouble?"
"Yes," murmured Hilary.
"She is too young to be in trouble. Did you tell her that?"
Hilary shook his head.
"Has the man hurt her?"
Again Hilary shook his head.
"What is her trouble, then?" said Mr. Stone. The closeness of this
catechism, the intent stare of the old man's eyes, were more than Hilary
could bear. He turned away.
"You ask me something that I cannot answer.
"Why?"
"It is a private matter."
With the blood still beating in his temples, his lips still quivering,
and the feeling of the girl's clasp round his knees, he almost hated this
old man who stood there putting such blind questions.
Then suddenly in Mr. Stone's eyes he saw a startling change, as in the
face of a man who regains consciousness after days of vacancy. His whole
countenance had become alive with a sort of jealous understanding. The
warmth which the little model brought to his old spirit had licked up the
fog of his Idea, and made him see what was going on before his eyes.
At that look Hilary braced himself against the wall.
A flush spread slowly over Mr. Stone's face. He spoke with rare
hesitation. In this sudden coming back to the world of men and things he
seemed astray.
"I am not going," he stammered, "to ask you any more. I could not pry
into a private matter. That would not be---" His voice failed; he
looked down.
Hilary bowed, touched to the quick by the return to life of this old man,
so long lost to facts, and by the delicacy in that old face.
"I will not intrude further on your trouble," said Mr. Stone, "whatever
it may be. I am sorry that you are unhappy, too."
Very slowly, and without again looking up at his son-in-law, he went out.
Hilary remained standing where he had been left against the wall.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE HOME-COMING OF HUGHS
Hilary had evidently been right in thinking the little model was not
speaking the truth when she said she had seen Hughs, for it was not until
early on the following morning that three persons traversed the long
winding road leading from Wormwood Scrubs to Kensington. They preserved
silence, not because there was nothing in their hearts to be expressed,
but because there was too much; and they walked in the giraffe-like
formation peculiar to the lower classes--Hughs in front; Mrs. Hughs to
the left, a foot or two behind; and a yard behind her, to the left again,
her son Stanley. They made no sign of noticing anyone in the road
besides themselves, and no one in the road gave sign of noticing that
they were there; but in their three minds, so differently fashioned, a
verb was dumbly, and with varying emotion, being conjugated:
"I've been in prison." "You've been in prison. He's been in prison."
Beneath the seeming acquiescence of a man subject to domination from his
birth up, those four words covered in Hughs such a whirlpool of surging
sensation, such ferocity of bitterness, and madness, and defiance, that
no outpouring could have appreciably relieved its course. The same four
words summed up in Mrs. Hughs so strange a mingling of fear,
commiseration, loyalty, shame, and trembling curiosity at the new factor
which had come into the life of all this little family walking
giraffe-like back to Kensington that to have gone beyond them would have
been like plunging into a wintry river. To their son the four words were
as a legend of romance, conjuring up no definite image, lighting merely
the glow of wonder.
"Don't lag, Stanley. Keep up with your father."
The little boy took three steps at an increased pace, then fell behind
again. His black eyes seemed to answer: 'You say that because you don't
know what else to say.' And without alteration in their giraffe-like
formation, but again in silence, the three proceeded.
In the heart of the seamstress doubt and fear were being slowly knit into
dread of the first sound to pass her husband's lips. What would he ask?
How should she answer? Would he talk wild, or would he talk sensible?
Would he have forgotten that young girl, or had he nursed and nourished
his wicked fancy in the house of grief and silence? Would he ask where
the baby was? Would he speak a kind word to her? But alongside her dread
there was guttering within her the undying resolution not to 'let him go
from her, if it were ever so, to that young girl'
"Don't lag, Stanley!"
At the reiteration of those words Hughs spoke.
"Let the boy alone! You'll be nagging at the baby next!"
Hoarse and grating, like sounds issuing from a damp vault, was this first
speech.
The seamstress's eyes brimmed over.
"I won't get the chance," she stammered out. "He's gone!"
Hughs' teeth gleamed like those of a dog at bay.
"Who's taken him? You let me know the name."
Tears rolled down the seamstress's cheeks; she could not answer. Her
little son's thin voice rose instead:
"Baby's dead. We buried him in the ground. I saw it. Mr. Creed came in
the cab with me."
White flecks appeared suddenly at the corners of Hughs' lips. He wiped
the back of his hand across his mouth, and once more, giraffe-like, the
little family marched on....
"Westminister," in his threadbare summer jacket--for the day was
warm--had been standing for some little time in Mrs. Budgen's doorway on
the ground floor at Hound Street. Knowing that Hughs was to be released
that morning early, he had, with the circumspection and foresight of his
character, reasoned thus: 'I shan't lie easy in my bed, I shan't hev no
peace until I know that low feller's not a-goin' to misdemean himself
with me. It's no good to go a-puttin' of it off. I don't want him
comin' to my room attackin' of old men. I'll be previous with him in the
passage. The lame woman 'll let me. I shan't trouble her. She'll be
palliable between me and him, in case he goes for to attack me. I ain't
afraid of him.'
But, as the minutes of waiting went by, his old tongue, like that of a
dog expecting chastisement, appeared ever more frequently to moisten his
twisted, discoloured lips. 'This comes of mixin' up with soldiers,' he
thought, 'and a lowclass o' man like that. I ought to ha' changed my
lodgin's. He'll be askin' me where that young girl is, I shouldn't
wonder, an' him lost his character and his job, and everything, and all
because o' women!'
He watched the broad-faced woman, Mrs. Budgen, in whose grey eyes the
fighting light so fortunately never died, painfully doing out her rooms,
and propping herself against the chest of drawers whereon clustered china
cups and dogs as thick as toadstools on a bank.
"I've told my Charlie," she said, "to keep clear of Hughs a bit. They
comes out as prickly as hedgehogs. Pick a quarrel as soon as look at
you, they will."
'Oh dear,' thought Creed, 'she's full o' cold comfort.' But, careful of
his dignity, he answered, "I'm a-waitin' here to engage the situation.
You don't think he'll attack of me with definition at this time in the
mornin'?"
The lame woman shrugged her shoulders. "He'll have had a drop of
something," she said, "before he comes home. They gets a cold feelin' in
the stomach in them places, poor creatures!"
The old butler's heart quavered up into his mouth. He lifted his shaking
hand, and put it to his lips, as though to readjust himself.
"Oh yes," he said; "I ought to ha' given notice, and took my things away;
but there, poor woman, it seemed a-hittin' of her when she was down. And
I don't want to make no move. I ain't got no one else that's interested
in me. This woman's very good about mendin' of my clothes. Oh dear, yes;
she don't grudge a little thing like that!"
The lame woman hobbled from her post of rest, and began to make the bed
with the frown that always accompanied a task which strained the
contracted muscles of her leg. "If you don't help your neighbour, your
neighbour don't help you," she said sententiously.
Creed fixed his iron-rimmed gaze on her in silence. He was considering
perhaps how he stood with regard to Hughs in the light of that remark.
"I attended of his baby's funeral," he said. "Oh dear, he's here
a'ready!"
The family of Hughs, indeed, stood in the doorway. The spiritual process
by which "Westminister" had gone through life was displayed completely in
the next few seconds. 'It's so important for me to keep alive and well,'
his eyes seemed saying. 'I know the class of man you are, but now you're
here it's not a bit o' use my bein' frightened. I'm bound to get
up-sides with you. Ho! yes; keep yourself to yourself, and don't you let
me hev any o' your nonsense, 'cause I won't stand it. Oh dear, no!'
Beads of perspiration stood thick on his patchily coloured forehead; with
lips stiffening, and intently staring eyes, he waited for what the
released prisoner would say.
Hughs, whose face had blanched in the prison to a sallow grey-white hue,
and whose black eyes seemed to have sunk back into his head, slowly
looked the old man up and down. At last he took his cap off, showing his
cropped hair.
"You got me that, daddy," he said, "but I don't bear you malice. Come up
and have a cup o' tea with us."
And, turning on his heel, he began to mount the stairs, followed by his
wife and child. Breathing hard, the old butler mounted too.
In the room on the second floor, where the baby no longer lived, a
haddock on the table was endeavouring to be fresh; round it were slices
of bread on plates, a piece of butter in a pie-dish, a teapot, brown
sugar in a basin, and, side by side a little jug of cold blue milk and a
half-empty bottle of red vinegar. Close to one plate a bunch of stocks
and gilly flowers reposed on the dirty tablecloth, as though dropped and
forgotten by the God of Love. Their faint perfume stole through the
other odours. The old butler fixed his eyes on it.
'The poor woman bought that,' he thought, 'hopin' for to remind him of
old days. "She had them flowers on her weddin'-day, I shouldn't wonder!"
This poetical conception surprising him, he turned towards the little
boy, and said "This 'll be a memorial to you, as you gets older." And
without another word all sat down. They ate in silence, and the old
butler thought 'That 'addick ain't what it was; but a beautiful cup o'
tea. He don't eat nothing; he's more ameniable to reason than I
expected. There's no one won't be too pleased to see him now!'
His eyes, travelling to the spot from which the bayonet had been removed,
rested on the print of the Nativity. "'Suffer little children to come
unto Me,'" he thought, "'and forbid them not." He'll be glad to hear
there was two carriages followed him home.'
And, taking his time, he cleared his throat in preparation for speech.
But before the singular muteness of this family sounds would not come.
Finishing his tea, he tremblingly arose. Things that he might have said
jostled in his mind. 'Very pleased to 'a seen you. Hope you're in good
health at the present time of speaking. Don't let me intrude on you.
We've all a-got to die some time or other!' They remained unuttered.
Making a vague movement of his skinny hand, he walked feebly but quickly
to the door. When he stood but half-way within the room, he made his
final effort.
"I'm not a-goin' to say nothing," he said; "that'd be superlative! I
wish you a good-morning."
Outside he waited a second, then grasped the banister.
'For all he sets so quiet, they've done him no good in that place,' he
thought. 'Them eyes of his!' And slowly he descended, full of a sort of
very deep surprise. 'I misjudged of him,' he was thinking; 'he never was
nothing but a 'armless human being. We all has our predijuices--I
misjudged of him. They've broke his 'eart between 'em--that they have.'
The silence in the room continued after his departure. But when the
little boy had gone to school, Hughs rose and lay down on the bed. He
rested there, unmoving, with his face towards the wall, his arms clasped
round his head to comfort it. The seamstress, stealing about her
avocations, paused now and then to look at him. If he had raged at her,
if he had raged at everything, it would not have been so terrifying as
this utter silence, which passed her comprehension--this silence as of a
man flung by the sea against a rock, and pinned there with the life
crushed out of him. All her inarticulate longing, now that her baby was
gone, to be close to something in her grey life, to pass the
unfranchisable barrier dividing her from the world, seemed to well up, to
flow against this wall of silence and to recoil.
Twice or three times she addressed him timidly by name, or made some
trivial remark. He did not answer, as though in very truth he had been
the shadow of a man lying there. And the injustice of this silence
seemed to her so terrible. Was she not his wife? Had she not borne him
five, and toiled to keep him from that girl? Was it her fault if she had
made his life a hell with her jealousy, as he had cried out that morning
before he went for her, and was "put away"? He was her "man." It had
been her right--nay, more, her duty!
And still he lay there silent. From the narrow street where no traffic
passed, the cries of a coster and distant whistlings mounted through the
unwholesome air. Some sparrows in the eave were chirruping incessantly.
The little sandy house-cat had stolen in, and, crouched against the
doorpost, was fastening her eyes on the plate which, held the remnants of
the fish. The seamstress bowed her forehead to the flowers on the table;
unable any longer to bear the mystery of this silence, she wept. But the
dark figure on the bed only pressed his arms closer round his head, as
though there were within him a living death passing the speech of men.
The little sandy cat, creeping across the floor, fixed its claws in the
backbone of the fish, and drew it beneath the bed.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE DUEL
Bianca did not see her husband after their return together from the Round
Pond. She dined out that evening, and in the morning avoided any
interview. When Hilary's luggage was brought down and the cab summoned,
she slipped up to take shelter in her room. Presently the sound of his
footsteps coming along the passage stopped outside her door. He tapped.
She did not answer.
Good-bye would be a mockery! Let him go with the words unsaid! And as
though the thought had found its way through the closed door, she heard
his footsteps recede again. She saw him presently go out to the cab with
his head bent down, saw him stoop and pat Miranda. Hot tears sprang into
her eyes. She heard the cab-wheels roll away.
The heart is like the face of an Eastern woman--warm and glowing, behind
swathe on swathe of fabric. At each fresh touch from the fingers of
Life, some new corner, some hidden curve or angle, comes into view, to be
seen last of all perhaps never to be seen by the one who owns them.
When the cab had driven away there came into Bianca's heart a sense of
the irreparable, and, mysteriously entwined with that arid ache, a sort
of bitter pity: What would happen to this wretched girl now that he was
gone? Would she go completely to the bad--till she became one of those
poor creatures like the figure in "The Shadow," who stood beneath
lampposts in the streets? Out of this speculation, which was bitter as
the taste of aloes, there came to her a craving for some palliative, some
sweetness, some expression of that instinct of fellow-feeling deep in
each human breast, however disharmonic. But even with that craving was
mingled the itch to justify herself, and prove that she could rise above
jealousy.
She made her way to the little model's lodging.
A child admitted her into the bleak passage that served for hall. The
strange medley of emotions passing through Bianca's breast while she
stood outside the girl's door did not show in her face, which wore its
customary restrained, half-mocking look.
The little model's voice faintly said: "Come in."
The room was in disorder, as though soon to be deserted. A closed and
corded trunk stood in the centre of the floor; the bed, stripped of
clothing, lay disclosed in all the barrenness of discoloured ticking.
The china utensils of the washstand were turned head downwards. Beside
that washstand the little model, with her hat on--the hat with the
purplish-pink roses and the little peacock's feather-stood in the struck,
shrinking attitude of one who, coming forward in the expectation of a
kiss, has received a blow.
"You are leaving here, then?" Bianca said quietly.
"Yes," the girl murmured.
"Don't you like this part? Is it too far from your work?"
Again the little model whispered: "Yes."
Bianca's eyes travelled slowly over the blue beflowered walls and
rust-red doors; through the dusty closeness of this dismantled room a
rank scent of musk and violets rose, as though a cheap essence had been
scattered as libation. A small empty scent-bottle stood on the shabby
looking-glass.
"Have you found new lodgings?"
The little model edged closer to the window. A stealthy watchfulness was
creeping into her shrinking, dazed face.
She shook her head.
"I don't know where I'm going."
Obeying a sudden impulse to see more clearly, Bianca lifted her veil. "I
came to tell you," she said, "that I shall always be ready to help you."
The girl did not answer, but suddenly through her black lashes she stole
a look upward at her visitor. 'Can you,' it seemed to say, 'you--help
me? Oh no; I think not!' And, as though she had been stung by that
glance, Bianca said with deadly slowness:
"It is my business, of course, entirely, now that Mr. Dallison has gone
abroad."
The little model received this saying with a quivering jerk. It might
have been an arrow transfixing her white throat. For a moment she seemed
almost about to fall, but, gripping the window-sill, held herself erect.
Her eyes, like an animal's in pain, darted here, there, everywhere, then
rested on her visitor's breast, quite motionless. This stare, which
seemed to see nothing, but to be doing, as it were, some fateful
calculation, was uncanny. Colour came gradually back into her lips and
eyes and cheeks; she seemed to have succeeded in her calculation, to be
reviving from that stab.
And suddenly Bianca understood. This was the meaning of the packed
trunk, the dismantled room. He was going to take her, after all!
In the turmoil of this discovery two words alone escaped her:
"I see!"
They were enough. The girl's face at once lost all trace of its look of
desperate calculation, brightened, became guilty, and from guilty sullen.
The antagonism of all the long past months was now declared between these
two--Bianca's pride could no longer conceal, the girl's submissiveness no
longer obscure it. They stood like duellists, one on each side of the
trunk--that common, brown-Japanned, tin trunk, corded with rope. Bianca
looked at it.
"You," she said, "and he? Ha, ha; ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!"
Against that cruel laughter--more poignant than a hundred homilies on
caste, a thousand scornful words--the little model literally could not
stand; she sat down in the low chair where she had evidently been sitting
to watch the street. But as a taste of blood will infuriate a hound, so
her own laughter seemed to bereave Bianca of all restraint.
"What do you imagine he's taking you for, girl? Only out of pity! It's
not exactly the emotion to live on in exile. In exile--but that you do
not understand!"
The little model staggered to her feet again. Her face had grown
painfully red.
"He wants me!" she said.
"Wants you? As he wants his dinner. And when he's eaten it--what then?
No, of course he'll never abandon you; his conscience is too tender. But
you'll be round his neck--like this!" Bianca raised her arms, looped,
and dragged them slowly down, as a mermaid's arms drag at a drowning
sailor.
The little model stammered: "I'll do what he tells me! I'll do what he
tells me!"
Bianca stood silent, looking at the girl, whose heaving breast and little
peacock's feather, whose small round hands twisting in front of her, and
scent about her clothes, all seemed an offence.
"And do you suppose that he'll tell you what he wants? Do you imagine
he'll have the necessary brutality to get rid of you? He'll think
himself bound to keep you till you leave him, as I suppose you will some
day!"
The girl dropped her hands. "I'll never leave him--never!" she cried out
passionately.
"Then Heaven help him!" said Bianca.
The little model's eyes seemed to lose all pupil, like two chicory
flowers that have no dark centres. Through them, all that she was
feeling struggled to find an outlet; but, too deep for words, those
feelings would not pass her lips, utterly unused to express emotion. She
could only stammer:
"I'm not--I'm not--I will---" and press her hands again to her breast.
Bianca's lip curled.
"I see; you imagine yourself capable of sacrifice. Well, you have your
chance. Take it!" She pointed to the corded trunk. "Now's your time;
you have only to disappear!"
The little model shrank back against the windowsill. "He wants me!" she
muttered. "I know he wants me."
Bianca bit her lips till the blood came.
"Your idea of sacrifice," she said, "is perfect! If you went now, in a
month's time he'd never think of you again."
The girl gulped. There was something so pitiful in the movements of her
hands that Bianca turned away. She stood for several seconds staring at
the door, then, turning round again, said:
"Well?"
But the girl's whole face had changed. All tear-stained, indeed, she had
already masked it with a sort of immovable stolidity.
Bianca went swiftly up to the trunk.
"You shall!" she said. "Take that thing and go."
The little model did not move.
"So you won't?"
The girl trembled violently all over. She moistened her lips, tried to
speak, failed, again moistened them, and this time murmured; "I'll
only--I'll only--if he tells me!"
"So you still imagine he will tell you!"
The little model merely repeated: "I won't--won't do anything without he
tells me!"
Bianca laughed. "Why, it's like a dog!" she said.
But the girl had turned abruptly to the window. Her lips were parted.
She was shrinking, fluttering, trembling at what she saw. She was indeed
like a spaniel dog who sees her master coming. Bianca had no need of
being told that Hilary was outside. She went into the passage and opened
the front door.
He was coming up the steps, his face worn like that of a man in fever,
and at the sight of his wife he stood quite still, looking into her face.
Without the quiver of an eyelid, without the faintest trace of emotion,
or the slightest sign that she knew him to be there, Bianca passed and
slowly walked away.
CHAPTER XL
FINISH OF THE COMEDY
Those who may have seen Hilary driving towards the little model's
lodgings saw one who, by a fixed red spot on either cheek, and the
over-compression of his quivering lips, betrayed the presence of that
animality which underlies even the most cultivated men.
After eighteen hours of the purgatory of indecision, he had not so much
decided to pay that promised visit on which hung the future of two lives,
as allowed himself to be borne towards the girl.
There was no one in the passage to see him after he had passed Bianca in
the doorway, but it was with a face darkened by the peculiar stabbing
look of wounded egoism that he entered the little model's room.
The sight of it coming so closely on the struggle she had just been
through was too much for the girl's self-control.
Instead of going up to him, she sat down on the corded trunk and began to
sob. It was the sobbing of a child whose school-treat has been
cancelled, of a girl whose ball-dress has not come home in time. It only
irritated Hilary, whose nerves had already borne all they could bear. He
stood literally trembling, as though each one of these common little sobs
were a blow falling on the drum-skin of his spirit; and through every
fibre he took in the features of the dusty, scent-besprinkled room--the
brown tin trunk, the dismantled bed, the rust-red doors.
And he realised that she had burned her boats to make it impossible for a
man of sensibility to disappoint her!
The little model raised her face and looked at him. What she saw must
have been less reassuring even than the first sight had been, for it
stopped her sobbing. She rose and turned to the window, evidently trying
with handkerchief and powder-puff to repair the ravages caused by her
tears; and when she had finished she still stood there with her back to
him. Her deep breathing made her young form quiver from her waist up to
the little peacock's feather in her hat; and with each supple movement it
seemed offering itself to Hilary.
In the street a barrel-organ had begun to play the very waltz it had
played the afternoon when Mr. Stone had been so ill. Those two were
neither of them conscious of that tune, too absorbed in their emotions;
and yet, quietly, it was bringing something to the girl's figure like the
dowering of scent that the sun brings to a flower. It was bringing the
compression back to Hilary's lips, the flush to his ears and cheeks, as a
draught of wind will blow to redness a fire that has been choked.
Without knowing it, without sound, inch by inch he moved nearer to her;
and as though, for all there was no sign of his advance, she knew of it,
she stayed utterly unmoving except for the deep breathing that so stirred
the warm youth in her. In that stealthy progress was the history of life
and the mystery of sex. Inch by inch he neared her; and she swayed,
mesmerising his arms to fold round her thus poised, as if she must fall
backward; mesmerising him to forget that there was anything there,
anything in all the world, but just her young form waiting for
him--nothing but that!
The barrel-organ stopped; the spell had broken! She turned round to him.
As a wind obscures with grey wrinkles the still green waters of
enchantment into which some mortal has been gazing, so Hilary's reason
suddenly swept across the situation, and showed it once more as it was.
Quick to mark every shade that passed across his face, the girl made as
though she would again burst into tears; then, since tears had been so
useless, she pressed her hand over her eyes.
Hilary looked at that round, not too cleanly hand. He could see her
watching him between her fingers. It was uncanny, almost horrible, like
the sight of a cat watching a bird; and he stood appalled at the terrible
reality of his position, at the sight of his own future with this girl,
with her traditions, customs, life, the thousand and one things that he
did not know about her, that he would have to live with if he once took
her. A minute passed, which seemed eternity, for into it was condensed
every force of her long pursuit, her instinctive clutching at something
that she felt to be security, her reaching upwards, her twining round
him.
Conscious of all this, held back by that vision of his future, yet
whipped towards her by his senses, Hilary swayed like a drunken man. And
suddenly she sprang at him, wreathed her arms round his neck, and
fastened her mouth to his. The touch of her lips was moist and hot. The
scent of stale violet powder came from her, warmed by her humanity. It
penetrated to Hilary's heart. He started back in sheer physical revolt.
Thus repulsed, the girl stood rigid, her breast heaving, her eyes
unnaturally dilated, her mouth still loosened by the kiss. Snatching
from his pocket a roll of notes, Hilary flung them on the bed.
"I can't take you!" he almost groaned. "It's madness! It's impossible!"
And he went out into the passage. He ran down the steps and got into his
cab. An immense time seemed to pass before it began to move. It started
at last, and Hilary sat back in it, his hands clenched, still as a dead
man.
His mortified face was recognised by the landlady, returning from her
morning's visit to the shops. The gentleman looked, she thought, as if
he had received bad news! She not unnaturally connected his appearance
with her lodger. Tapping on the girl's door, and receiving no answer,
she went in.
The little model was lying on the dismantled bed, pressing her face into
the blue and white ticking of the bolster. Her shoulders shook, and a
sound of smothered sobbing came from her. The landlady stood staring
silently.
Coming of Cornish chapel-going stock, she had never liked this girl, her
instinct telling her that she was one for whom life had already been too
much. Those for whom life had so early been too much, she knew, were
always "ones for pleasure!" Her experience of village life had enabled
her to construct the little model's story--that very simple, very
frequent little story. Sometimes, indeed, trouble of that sort was soon
over and forgotten; but sometimes, if the young man didn't do the right
thing by her, and the girl's folk took it hardly, well, then---! So had
run the reasoning of this good woman. Being of the same class, she had
looked at her lodger from the first without obliquity of vision.
But seeing her now apparently so overwhelmed, and having something soft
and warm down beneath her granitic face and hungry eyes, she touched her
on the back.
"Come, now!" she said; "you mustn't take on! What is it?"
The little model shook off the hand as a passionate child shakes itself
free of consolation. "Let me alone!" she muttered.
The landlady drew back. "Has anyone done you a harm?" she said.
The little model shook her head.
Baffled by this dumb grief, the landlady was silent; then, with the
stolidity of those whose lives are one long wrestling with fortune, she
muttered:
"I don't like to see anyone cry like that!"
And finding that the girl remained obstinately withdrawn from sight or
sympathy, she moved towards the door.
"Well," she said, with ironical compassion, "if you want me, I'll be in
the kitchen."
The little model remained lying on her bed. Every now and then she
gulped, like a child flung down on the grass apart from its comrades,
trying to swallow down its rage, trying to bury in the earth its little
black moment of despair. Slowly those gulps grew fewer, feebler, and at
last died away. She sat up, sweeping Hilary's bundle of notes, on which
she had been lying, to the floor.
At sight of that bundle she broke out afresh, flinging herself down
sideways with her cheek on the wet bolster; and, for some time after her
sobs had ceased again, still lay there. At last she rose and dragged
herself over to the looking-glass, scrutinising her streaked, discoloured
face, the stains in the cheeks, the swollen eyelids, the marks beneath
her eyes; and listlessly she tidied herself. Then, sitting down on the
brown tin trunk, she picked the bundle of notes off the floor. They gave
forth a dry peculiar crackle. Fifteen ten-pound notes--all Hilary's
travelling money. Her eyes opened wider and wider as she counted; and
tears, quite suddenly, rolled down on to those thin slips of paper.
Then slowly she undid her dress, and forced them down till they rested,
with nothing but her vest between them and the quivering warm flesh which
hid her heart.
CHAPTER XLI
THE HOUSE OF HARMONY
At half-past ten that evening Stephen walked up the stone-flagged pathway
of his brother's house.
"Can I see Mrs. Hilary?"
"Mr. Hilary went abroad this morning, sir, and Mrs. Hilary has not yet
come in."
"Will you give her this letter? No, I'll wait. I suppose I can wait for
her in the garden?"
"Oh yes, sit!"
"Very well."
"I'll leave the door open, sir, in case you want to come in."
Stephen walked across to the rustic bench and sat down. He stared
gloomily through the dusk at his patent-leather boots, and every now and
then he flicked his evening trousers with the letter. Across the dark
garden, where the boughs hung soft, unmoved by wind, the light from Mr.
Stone's open window flowed out in a pale river; moths, born of the sudden
heat, were fluttering up this river to its source.
Stephen looked irritably at the figure of Mr. Stone, which could be seen,
bowed, and utterly still, beside his desk; so, by lifting the spy-hole
thatch, one may see a convict in his cell stand gazing at his work,
without movement, numb with solitude.
'He's getting awfully broken up,' thought Stephen. 'Poor old chap! His
ideas are killing him. They're not human nature, never will be.' Again
he flicked his trousers with the letter, as though that document
emphasised the fact. 'I can't help being sorry for the sublime old
idiot!'
He rose, the better to see his father-in-law's unconscious figure. It
looked as lifeless and as cold as though Mr. Stone had followed some
thought below the ground, and left his body standing there to await his
return. Its appearance oppressed Stephen.
'You might set the house on fire,' he thought; 'he'd never notice.'
Mr. Stone's figure moved; the sound of along sigh came out to Stephen in
the windless garden. He turned his eyes away, with the sudden feeling
that it was not the thing to watch the old chap like this; then, getting
up, he went indoors. In his brother's study he stood turning over the
knick-knacks on the writing-table.
'I warned Hilary that he was burning his fingers,' he thought.
At the sound of the latch-key he went back to the hall.
However much he had secretly disapproved of her from the beginning,
because she had always seemed to him such an uncomfortable and
tantalising person, Stephen was impressed that night by the haunting
unhappiness of Bianca's face; as if it had been suddenly disclosed to him
that she could not help herself. This was disconcerting, being, in a
sense, a disorderly way of seeing things.
"You look tired, B.," he said. "I'm sorry, but I thought it better to
bring this round tonight."
Bianca glanced at the letter.
"It is to you," she said. "I don't wish to read it, thank you."
Stephen compressed his lips.
"But I wish you to hear it, please," he said. "I'll read it out, if
you'll allow me.
"'CHARING CROSS STATION.
"'DEAR STEVIE,
"'I told you yesterday morning that I was going abroad alone. Afterwards
I changed my mind--I meant to take her. I went to her lodgings for the
purpose. I have lived too long amongst sentiments for such a piece of
reality as that. Class has saved me; it has triumphed over my most
primitive instincts.
"'I am going alone--back to my sentiments. No slight has been placed on
Bianca--but my married life having become a mockery, I shall not return
to it. The following address will find me, and I shall ask you presently
to send on my household gods.
"'Please let Bianca know the substance of this letter.
"'Ever your affectionate brother,
"'HILARY DALLISON."'
With a frown Stephen folded up the letter, and restored it to his breast
pocket.
'It's more bitter than I thought,' he reflected; 'and yet he's done the
only possible thing!'
Bianca was leaning her elbow on the mantelpiece with her face turned to
the wall. Her silence irritated Stephen, whose loyalty to his brother
longed to fend a vent.
"I'm very much relieved, of course," he said at last. "It would have
been fatal"
She did not move, and Stephen became increasingly aware that this was a
most awkward matter to touch on.
"Of course," he began again. "But, B., I do think you--rather--I
mean---" And again he stopped before her utter silence, her utter
immobility. Then, unable to go away without having in some sort
expressed his loyalty to Hilary, he tried once more: "Hilary is the
kindest man I know. It's not his fault if he's out of touch with
life--if he's not fit to deal with things. He's negative!"
And having thus in a single word, somewhat to his own astonishment,
described his brother, he held out his hand.
The hand which Bianca placed in it was feverishly hot. Stephen felt
suddenly compunctious.
"I'm awfully sorry," he stammered, "about the whole thing. I'm awfully
sorry for you---"
Bianca drew back her hand.
With a little shrug Stephen turned away.
'What are you to do with women like that?' was his thought, and saying
dryly, "Good-night, B.," he went.
For some time Bianca sat in Hilary's chair. Then, by the faint glimmer
coming through the half-open door, she began to wander round the room,
touching the walls, the books, the prints, all the familiar things among
which he had lived so many years....
In that dim continual journey she was like a disharmonic spirit
traversing the air above where its body lies.
The door creaked behind her. A voice said sharply:
"What are you doing in this house?"
Mr. Stone was standing beside the bust of Socrates. Bianca went up to
him.
"Father!"
Mr. Stone stared. "It is you! I thought it was a thief! Where is
Hilary?"
"Gone away."
"Alone?"
Bianca bowed her head. "It is very late, Dad," she whispered.
Mr. Stone's hand moved as though he would have stroked her.
"The human heart," he murmured, "is the tomb of many feelings."
Bianca put her arm round him.
"You must go to bed, Dad," she said, trying to get him to the door, for
in her heart something seemed giving way.
Mr. Stone stumbled; the door swung to; the room was plunged in darkness.
A hand, cold as ice, brushed her cheek. With all her force she stiffed a
scream.
"I am here," Mr. Stone said.
His hand, wandering downwards, touched her shoulder, and she seized it
with her own burning hand. Thus linked, they groped their way out into
the passage towards his room.
"Good-night, dear," Bianca murmured.
By the light of his now open door Mr. Stone seemed to try and see her
face, but she would not show it him. Closing the door gently, she stole
upstairs.
Sitting down in her bedroom by the open window, it seemed to her that the
room was full of people--her nerves were so unstrung. It was as if walls
had not the power this night to exclude human presences. Moving, or
motionless, now distinct, then covered suddenly by the thick veil of some
material object, they circled round her quiet figure, lying back in the
chair with shut eyes. These disharmonic shadows flitting in the room
made a stir like the rubbing of dry straw or the hum of bees among clover
stalks. When she sat up they vanished, and the sounds became the distant
din of homing traffic; but the moment she closed her eyes, her visitors
again began to steal round her with that dry, mysterious hum.
She fell asleep presently, and woke with a start. There, in a glimmer of
pale light, stood the little model, as in the fatal picture Bianca had
painted of her. Her face was powder white, with shadows beneath the
eyes. Breath seemed coming through her parted lips, just touched with
colour. In her hat lay the tiny peacock's feather beside the two
purplish-pink roses. A scent came from her, too--but faint, as ever was
the scent of chicory flower. How long had she been standing there?
Bianca started to her feet, and as she rose the vision vanished.
She went towards the spot. There was nothing in that corner but
moonlight; the scent she had perceived was merely that of the trees
drifting in.
But so vivid had that vision been that she stood at the window, panting
for air, passing her hand again and again across her eyes.
Outside, over the dark gardens, the moon hung full and almost golden. Its
honey-pale light filtered down on every little shape of tree, and leaf,
and sleeping flower. That soft, vibrating radiance seemed to have woven
all into one mysterious whole, stilling disharmony, so that each little
separate shape had no meaning to itself.
Bianca looked long at the rain of moonlight falling on the earth's
carpet, like a covering shower of blossom which bees have sucked and
spilled. Then, below her, out through candescent space, she saw a shadow
dart forth along the grass, and to her fright a voice rose, tremulous and
clear, seeming to seek enfranchisement beyond the barrier of the dark
trees: "My brain is clouded. Great Universe! I cannot write! I can no
longer discover to my brothers that they are one. I am not worthy to
stay here. Let me pass into You, and die!"
Bianca saw her father's fragile arms stretch out into the night through
the sleeves of his white garment, as though expecting to be received at
once into the Universal Brotherhood of the thin air.
There ensued a moment, when, by magic, every little dissonance in all the
town seemed blended into a harmony of silence, as it might be the very
death of self upon the earth.
Then, breaking that trance, Mr. Stone's voice rose again, trembling out
into the night, as though blown through a reed.
"Brothers!" he said.
Behind the screen of lilac bushes at the gate Bianca saw the dark helmet
of a policeman. He stood there staring steadily in the direction of that
voice. Raising his lantern, he flashed it into every corner of the
garden, searching for those who had been addressed. Satisfied,
apparently, that no one was there, he moved it to right and left, lowered
it to the level of his breast, and walked slowly on.
THE END.
THE PATRICIAN
By John Galsworthy
CHAPTER I
Light, entering the vast room--a room so high that its carved ceiling
refused itself to exact scrutiny--travelled, with the wistful, cold
curiosity of the dawn, over a fantastic storehouse of Time. Light,
unaccompanied by the prejudice of human eyes, made strange revelation of
incongruities, as though illuminating the dispassionate march of history.
For in this dining hall--one of the finest in England--the Caradoc family
had for centuries assembled the trophies and records of their existence.
Round about this dining hall they had built and pulled down and restored,
until the rest of Monkland Court presented some aspect of homogeneity.
Here alone they had left virgin the work of the old quasi-monastic
builders, and within it unconsciously deposited their souls. For there
were here, meeting the eyes of light, all those rather touching evidences
of man's desire to persist for ever, those shells of his former bodies,
the fetishes and queer proofs of his faiths, together with the
remorseless demonstration of their treatment at the hands of Time.
The annalist might here have found all his needed confirmations; the
analyst from this material formed the due equation of high birth; the
philosopher traced the course of aristocracy, from its primeval rise in
crude strength or subtlety, through centuries of power, to picturesque
decadence, and the beginnings of its last stand. Even the artist might
here, perchance, have seized on the dry ineffable pervading spirit, as
one visiting an old cathedral seems to scent out the constriction of its
heart.
From the legendary sword of that Welsh chieftain who by an act of high,
rewarded treachery had passed into the favour of the conquering William,
and received, with the widow of a Norman, many lands in Devonshire, to
the Cup purchased for Geoffrey Caradoc; present Earl of Valleys, by
subscription of his Devonshire tenants on the occasion of his marriage
with the Lady Gertrude Semmering--no insignia were absent, save the
family portraits in the gallery of Valleys House in London. There was
even an ancient duplicate of that yellow tattered scroll royally,
reconfirming lands and title to John, the most distinguished of all the
Caradocs, who had unfortunately neglected to be born in wedlock, by one
of those humorous omissions to be found in the genealogies of most old
families. Yes, it was there, almost cynically hung in a corner; for this
incident, though no doubt a burning question in the fifteenth century,
was now but staple for an ironical little tale, in view of the fact that
descendants of John's 'own' brother Edmund were undoubtedly to be found
among the cottagers of a parish not far distant.
Light, glancing from the suits of armour to the tiger skins beneath them,
brought from India but a year ago by Bertie Caradoc, the younger son,
seemed recording, how those, who had once been foremost by virtue of that
simple law of Nature which crowns the adventuring and strong, now being
almost washed aside out of the main stream of national life, were
compelled to devise adventure, lest they should lose belief in their own
strength.
The unsparing light of that first half-hour of summer morning recorded
many other changes, wandering from austere tapestries to the velvety
carpets, and dragging from the contrast sure proof of a common sense
which denied to the present Earl and Countess the asceticisms of the
past. And then it seemed to lose interest in this critical journey, as
though longing to clothe all in witchery. For the sun had risen, and
through the Eastern windows came pouring its level and mysterious joy.
And with it, passing in at an open lattice, came a wild bee to settle
among the flowers on the table athwart the Eastern end, used when there
was only a small party in the house. The hours fled on silent, till the
sun was high, and the first visitors came--three maids, rosy, not silent,
bringing brushes. They passed, and were followed by two footmen--scouts
of the breakfast brigade, who stood for a moment professionally doing
nothing, then soberly commenced to set the table. Then came a little
girl of six, to see if there were anything exciting--little Ann Shropton,
child of Sir William Shropton by his marriage with Lady Agatha, and
eldest daughter of the house, the only one of the four young Caradocs as
yet wedded. She came on tiptoe, thinking to surprise whatever was there.
She had a broad little face, and wide frank hazel eyes over a little nose
that came out straight and sudden. Encircled by a loose belt placed far
below the waist of her holland frock, as if to symbolize freedom, she
seemed to think everything in life good fun. And soon she found the
exciting thing.
"Here's a bumble bee, William. Do you think I could tame it in my little
glass bog?"
"No, I don't, Miss Ann; and look out, you'll be stung!"
"It wouldn't sting me."
"Why not?"
"Because it wouldn't."
"Of course--if you say so----"
"What time is the motor ordered?"
"Nine o'clock."
"I'm going with Grandpapa as far as the gate."
"Suppose he says you're not?"
"Well, then I shall go all the same."
"I see."
"I might go all the way with him to London! Is Auntie Babs going?"
"No, I don't think anybody is going with his lordship."
"I would, if she were. William!"
"Yes."
"Is Uncle Eustace sure to be elected?"
"Of course he is."
"Do you think he'll be a good Member of Parliament?"
"Lord Miltoun is very clever, Miss Ann."
"Is he?"
"Well, don't you think so?"
"Does Charles think so?"
"Ask him."
"William!"
"Yes."
"I don't like London. I like here, and I like Cotton, and I like home
pretty well, and I love Pendridny--and--I like Ravensham."
"His lordship is going to Ravensham to-day on his way up, I heard say."
"Oh! then he'll see great-granny. William----"
"Here's Miss Wallace."
From the doorway a lady with a broad pale patient face said:
"Come, Ann."
"All right! Hallo, Simmons!"
The entering butler replied:
"Hallo, Miss Ann!"
"I've got to go."
"I'm sure we're very sorry."
"Yes."
The door banged faintly, and in the great room rose the busy silence of
those minutes which precede repasts. Suddenly the four men by the
breakfast fable stood back. Lord Valleys had come in.
He approached slowly, reading a blue paper, with his level grey eyes
divided by a little uncharacteristic frown. He had a tanned yet ruddy,
decisively shaped face, with crisp hair and moustache beginning to go
iron-grey--the face of a man who knows his own mind and is contented with
that knowledge. His figure too, well-braced and upright, with the back
of the head carried like a soldier's, confirmed the impression, not so
much of self-sufficiency, as of the sufficiency of his habits of life and
thought. And there was apparent about all his movements that peculiar
unconsciousness of his surroundings which comes to those who live a great
deal in the public eye, have the material machinery of existence placed
exactly to their hands, and never need to consider what others think of
them. Taking his seat, and still perusing the paper, he at once began to
eat what was put before him; then noticing that his eldest daughter had
come in and was sitting down beside him, he said:
"Bore having to go up in such weather!"
"Is it a Cabinet meeting?"
"Yes. This confounded business of the balloons." But the rather
anxious dark eyes of Agatha's delicate narrow face were taking in the
details of a tray for keeping dishes warm on a sideboard, and she was
thinking: "I believe that would be better than the ones I've got, after
all. If William would only say whether he really likes these large trays
better than single hot-water dishes!" She contrived how-ever to ask in
her gentle voice--for all her words and movements were gentle, even a
little timid, till anything appeared to threaten the welfare of her
husband or children:
"Do you think this war scare good for Eustace's prospects, Father?"
But her father did not answer; he was greeting a new-comer, a tall,
fine-looking young man, with dark hair and a fair moustache, between whom
and himself there was no relationship, yet a certain negative
resemblance. Claud Fresnay, Viscount Harbinger, was indeed also a little
of what is called the 'Norman' type--having a certain firm regularity of
feature, and a slight aquilinity of nose high up on the bridge--but that
which in the elder man seemed to indicate only an unconscious acceptance
of self as a standard, in the younger man gave an impression at once more
assertive and more uneasy, as though he were a little afraid of not
chaffing something all the time.
Behind him had come in a tall woman, of full figure and fine presence,
with hair still brown--Lady Valleys herself. Though her eldest son was
thirty, she was, herself, still little more than fifty. From her voice,
manner, and whole personality, one might suspect that she had been an
acknowledged beauty; but there was now more than a suspicion of maturity
about her almost jovial face, with its full grey-blue eyes; and coarsened
complexion. Good comrade, and essentially 'woman of the world,' was
written on every line of her, and in every tone of her voice. She was
indeed a figure suggestive of open air and generous living, endowed with
abundant energy, and not devoid of humour. It was she who answered
Agatha's remark.
"Of course, my dear, the very best thing possible."
Lord Harbinger chimed in:
"By the way, Brabrook's going to speak on it. Did you ever hear him,
Lady Agatha? 'Mr. Speaker, Sir, I rise--and with me rises the democratic
principle----'"
But Agatha only smiled, for she was thinking:
"If I let Ann go as far as the gate, she'll only make it a stepping-stone
to something else to-morrow." Taking no interest in public affairs, her
inherited craving for command had resorted for expression to a meticulous
ordering of household matters. It was indeed a cult with her, a
passion--as though she felt herself a sort of figurehead to national
domesticity; the leader of a patriotic movement.
Lord Valleys, having finished what seemed necessary, arose.
"Any message to your mother, Gertrude?"
"No, I wrote last night."
"Tell Miltoun to keep--an eye on that Mr. Courtier. I heard him speak
one day--he's rather good."
Lady Valleys, who had not yet sat down, accompanied her husband to the
door.
"By the way, I've told Mother about this woman, Geoff."
"Was it necessary?"
"Well, I think so; I'm uneasy--after all, Mother has some influence with
Miltoun."
Lord Valleys shrugged his shoulders, and slightly squeezing his wife's
arm, went out.
Though himself vaguely uneasy on that very subject, he was a man who did
not go to meet disturbance. He had the nerves which seem to be no nerves
at all--especially found in those of his class who have much to do with
horses. He temperamentally regarded the evil of the day as quite
sufficient to it. Moreover, his eldest son was a riddle that he had long
given up, so far as women were concerned.
Emerging into the outer hall, he lingered a moment, remembering that he
had not seen his younger and favourite daughter.
"Lady Barbara down yet?" Hearing that she was not, he slipped into the
motor coat held for him by Simmons, and stepped out under the white
portico, decorated by the Caradoc hawks in stone.
The voice of little Ann reached him, clear and high above the smothered
whirring of the car.
"Come on, Grandpapa!"
Lord Valleys grimaced beneath his crisp moustache--the word grandpapa
always fell queerly on the ears of one who was but fifty-six, and by no
means felt it--and jerking his gloved hand towards Ann, he said:
"Send down to the lodge gate for this."
The voice of little Ann answered loudly:
"No; I'm coming back by myself."
The car starting, drowned discussion.
Lord Valleys, motoring, somewhat pathetically illustrated the invasion of
institutions by their destroyer, Science. A supporter of the turf, and
not long since Master of Foxhounds, most of whose soul (outside politics)
was in horses, he had been, as it were, compelled by common sense, not
only to tolerate, but to take up and even press forward the cause of
their supplanters. His instinct of self-preservation was secretly at
work, hurrying him to his own destruction; forcing him to persuade
himself that science and her successive victories over brute nature could
be wooed into the service of a prestige which rested on a crystallized
and stationary base. All this keeping pace with the times, this
immersion in the results of modern discoveries, this speeding-up of
existence so that it was all surface and little root--the increasing
volatility, cosmopolitanism, and even commercialism of his life, on which
he rather prided himself as a man of the world--was, with a secrecy too
deep for his perception, cutting at the aloofness logically demanded of
one in his position. Stubborn, and not spiritually subtle, though by no
means dull in practical matters, he was resolutely letting the waters
bear him on, holding the tiller firmly, without perceiving that he was in
the vortex of a whirlpool. Indeed, his common sense continually impelled
him, against the sort of reactionaryism of which his son Miltoun had so
much, to that easier reactionaryism, which, living on its spiritual
capital, makes what material capital it can out of its enemy, Progress.
He drove the car himself, shrewd and self-contained, sitting easily, with
his cap well drawn over those steady eyes; and though this unexpected
meeting of the Cabinet in the Whitsuntide recess was not only a nuisance,
but gave food for anxiety, he was fully able to enjoy the swift smooth
movement through the summer air, which met him with such friendly
sweetness under the great trees of the long avenue. Beside him, little
Ann was silent, with her legs stuck out rather wide apart. Motoring was
a new excitement, for at home it was forbidden; and a meditative rapture
shone in her wide eyes above her sudden little nose. Only once she
spoke, when close to the lodge the car slowed down, and they passed the
lodge-keeper's little daughter.
"Hallo, Susie!"
There was no answer, but the look on Susie's small pale face was so
humble and adoring that Lord Valleys, not a very observant man, noticed
it with a sort of satisfaction. "Yes," he thought, somewhat
irrelevantly, "the country is sound at heart!"
CHAPTER II
At Ravensham House on the borders of Richmond Park, suburban seat of the
Casterley family, ever since it became usual to have a residence within
easy driving distance of Westminster--in a large conservatory adjoining
the hall, Lady Casterley stood in front of some Japanese lilies. She was
a slender, short old woman, with an ivory-coloured face, a thin nose, and
keen eyes half-veiled by delicate wrinkled lids. Very still, in her grey
dress, and with grey hair, she gave the impression of a little figure
carved out of fine, worn steel. Her firm, spidery hand held a letter
written in free somewhat sprawling style:
MONKLAND COURT,
"DEVON.
"MY DEAR, MOTHER,
"Geoffrey is motoring up to-morrow. He'll look in on you on the way if
he can. This new war scare has taken him up. I shan't be in Town myself
till Miltoun's election is over. The fact is, I daren't leave him down
here alone. He sees his 'Anonyma' every day. That Mr. Courtier, who
wrote the book against War--rather cool for a man who's been a soldier of
fortune, don't you think?--is staying at the inn, working for the
Radical. He knows her, too--and, one can only hope, for Miltoun's sake,
too well--an attractive person, with red moustaches, rather nice and mad.
Bertie has just come down; I must get him to have a talk with Miltoun,
and see if he cant find out how the land lies. One can trust
Bertie--he's really very astute. I must say, that she's quite a
sweet-looking woman; but absolutely nothing's known of her here except
that she divorced her husband. How does one find out about people?
Miltoun's being so extraordinarily strait-laced makes it all the more
awkward. The earnestness of this rising generation is most remarkable.
I don't remember taking such a serious view of life in my youth."
Lady Casterley lowered the coronetted sheet of paper. The ghost of a
grimace haunted her face--she had not forgotten her daughter's youth.
Raising the letter again, she read on:
"I'm sure Geoffrey and I feel years younger than either Miltoun or
Agatha, though we did produce them. One doesn't feel it with Bertie or
Babs, luckily. The war scare is having an excellent effect on Miltoun's
candidature. Claud Harbinger is with us, too, working for Miltoun; but,
as a matter of fact, I think he's after Babs. It's rather melancholy,
when you think that Babs isn't quite twenty--still, one can't expect
anything else, I suppose, with her looks; and Claud is rather a fine
specimen. They talk of him a lot now; he's quite coming to the fore
among the young Tories."
Lady Casterley again lowered the letter, and stood listening. A
prolonged, muffled sound as of distant cheering and groans had penetrated
the great conservatory, vibrating among the pale petals of the lilies and
setting free their scent in short waves of perfume. She passed into the
hall; where, stood an old man with sallow face and long white whiskers.
"What was that noise, Clifton?"
"A posse of Socialists, my lady, on their way to Putney to hold a
demonstration; the people are hooting them. They've got blocked just
outside the gates."
"Are they making speeches?"
"They are talking some kind of rant, my lady."
"I'll go and hear them. Give me my black stick."
Above the velvet-dark, flat-toughed cedar trees, which rose like pagodas
of ebony on either side of the drive, the sky hung lowering in one great
purple cloud, endowed with sinister life by a single white beam striking
up into it from the horizon. Beneath this canopy of cloud a small
phalanx of dusty, dishevelled-looking men and women were drawn up in the
road, guarding, and encouraging with cheers, a tall, black-coated orator.
Before and behind this phalanx, a little mob of men and boys kept up an
accompaniment of groans and jeering.
Lady Casterley and her 'major-domo' stood six paces inside the scrolled
iron gates, and watched. The slight, steel-coloured figure with
steel-coloured hair, was more arresting in its immobility than all the
vociferations and gestures of the mob. Her eyes alone moved under their
half-drooped lids; her right hand clutched tightly the handle of her
stick. The speaker's voice rose in shrill protest against the
exploitation of 'the people'; it sank in ironical comment on
Christianity; it demanded passionately to be free from the continuous
burden of 'this insensate militarist taxation'; it threatened that the
people would take things info their own hands.
Lady Casterley turned her head:
"He is talking nonsense, Clifton. It is going to rain. I shall go in."
Under the stone porch she paused. The purple cloud had broken; a blind
fury of rain was deluging the fast-scattering crowd. A faint smile came
on Lady Casterley's lips.
"It will do them good to have their ardour damped a little. You will get
wet, Clifton--hurry! I expect Lord Valleys to dinner. Have a room got
ready for him to dress. He's motoring from Monkland."
CHAPTER III
In a very high, white-panelled room, with but little furniture, Lord
Valleys greeted his mother-in-law respectfully.
"Motored up in nine hours, Ma'am--not bad going."
"I am glad you came. When is Miltoun's election?"
"On the twenty-ninth."
"Pity! He should be away from Monkland, with that--anonymous woman
living there."
"Ah! yes; you've heard of her!"
Lady Casterley replied sharply:
"You're too easy-going, Geoffrey."
Lord Valleys smiled.
"These war scares," he said, "are getting a bore. Can't quite make out
what the feeling of the country is about them."
Lady Casterley rose:
"It has none. When war comes, the feeling will be all right. It always
is. Give me your arm. Are you hungry?"...
When Lord Valleys spoke of war, he spoke as one who, since he arrived at
years of discretion, had lived within the circle of those who direct the
destinies of States. It was for him--as for the lilies in the great
glass house--impossible to see with the eyes, or feel with the feelings
of a flower of the garden outside. Soaked in the best prejudices and
manners of his class, he lived a life no more shut off from the general
than was to be expected. Indeed, in some sort, as a man of facts and
common sense, he was fairly in touch with the opinion of the average
citizen. He was quite genuine when he said that he believed he knew what
the people wanted better than those who prated on the subject; and no
doubt he was right, for temperamentally he was nearer to them than their
own leaders, though he would not perhaps have liked to be told so. His
man-of-the-world, political shrewdness had been superimposed by life on a
nature whose prime strength was its practicality and lack of imagination.
It was his business to be efficient, but not strenuous, or desirous of
pushing ideas to their logical conclusions; to be neither narrow nor
puritanical, so long as the shell of 'good form' was preserved intact; to
be a liberal landlord up to the point of not seriously damaging his
interests; to be well-disposed towards the arts until those arts revealed
that which he had not before perceived; it was his business to have light
hands, steady eyes, iron nerves, and those excellent manners that have no
mannerisms. It was his nature to be easy-going as a husband; indulgent
as a father; careful and straightforward as a politician; and as a man,
addicted to pleasure, to work, and to fresh air. He admired, and was
fond of his wife, and had never regretted his marriage. He had never
perhaps regretted anything, unless it were that he had not yet won the
Derby, or quite succeeded in getting his special strain of blue-ticked
pointers to breed absolutely true to type. His mother-in-law he
respected, as one might respect a principle.
There was indeed in the personality of that little old lady the
tremendous force of accumulated decision--the inherited assurance of one
whose prestige had never been questioned; who, from long immunity, and a
certain clear-cut matter-of-factness, bred by the habit of command, had
indeed lost the power of perceiving that her prestige ever could be
questioned. Her knowledge of her own mind was no ordinary piece of
learning, had not, in fact, been learned at all, but sprang full-fledged
from an active dominating temperament. Fortified by the necessity, common
to her class, of knowing thoroughly the more patent side of public
affairs; armoured by the tradition of a culture demanded by leadership;
inspired by ideas, but always the same ideas; owning no master, but in
servitude to her own custom of leading, she had a mind, formidable as the
two-edged swords wielded by her ancestors the Fitz-Harolds, at Agincourt
or Poitiers--a mind which had ever instinctively rejected that inner
knowledge of herself or of the selves of others; produced by those
foolish practices of introspection, contemplation, and understanding, so
deleterious to authority. If Lord Valleys was the body of the
aristocratic machine, Lady Casterley was the steel spring inside it. All
her life studiously unaffected and simple in attire; of plain and frugal
habit; an early riser; working at something or other from morning till
night, and as little worn-out at seventy-eight as most women of fifty,
she had only one weak spot--and that was her strength--blindness as to
the nature and size of her place in the scheme of things. She was a
type, a force.
Wonderfully well she went with the room in which they were dining, whose
grey walls, surmounted by a deep frieze painted somewhat in the style of
Fragonard, contained many nymphs and roses now rather dim; with the
furniture, too, which had a look of having survived into times not its
own. On the tables were no flowers, save five lilies in an old silver
chalice; and on the wall over the great sideboard a portrait of the late
Lord Casterley.
She spoke:
"I hope Miltoun is taking his own line?"
"That's the trouble. He suffers from swollen principles--only wish he
could keep them out of his speeches."
"Let him be; and get him away from that woman as soon as his election's
over. What is her real name?"
"Mrs. something Lees Noel."
"How long has she been there?"
"About a year, I think."
"And you don't know anything about her?"
Lord Valleys raised his shoulders.
"Ah!" said Lady Casterley; "exactly! You're letting the thing drift. I
shall go down myself. I suppose Gertrude can have me? What has that Mr.
Courtier to do with this good lady?"
Lord Valleys smiled. In this smile was the whole of his polite and
easy-going philosophy. "I am no meddler," it seemed to say; and at sight
of that smile Lady Casterley tightened her lips.
"He is a firebrand," she said. "I read that book of his against
War--most inflammatory. Aimed at Grant-and Rosenstern, chiefly. I've
just seen, one of the results, outside my own gates. A mob of anti-War
agitators."
Lord Valleys controlled a yawn.
"Really? I'd no idea Courtier had any influence."
"He is dangerous. Most idealists are negligible-his book was clever."
"I wish to goodness we could see the last of these scares, they only make
both countries look foolish," muttered Lord Valleys.
Lady Casterley raised her glass, full of a bloody red wine. "The war
would save us," she said.
"War is no joke."
"It would be the beginning of a better state of things."
"You think so?"
"We should get the lead again as a nation, and Democracy would be put
back fifty years."
Lord Valleys made three little heaps of salt, and paused to count them;
then, with a slight uplifting of his eyebrows, which seemed to doubt what
he was going to say, he murmured: "I should have said that we were all
democrats nowadays.... What is it, Clifton?"
"Your chauffeur would like to know, what time you will have the car?"
"Directly after dinner."
Twenty minutes later, he was turning through the scrolled iron gates into
the road for London. It was falling dark; and in the tremulous sky
clouds were piled up, and drifted here and there with a sort of endless
lack of purpose. No direction seemed to have been decreed unto their
wings. They had met together in the firmament like a flock of giant
magpies crossing and re-crossing each others' flight. The smell of rain
was in the air. The car raised no dust, but bored swiftly on, searching
out the road with its lamps. On Putney Bridge its march was stayed by a
string of waggons. Lord Valleys looked to right and left. The river
reflected the thousand lights of buildings piled along her sides, lamps
of the embankments, lanterns of moored barges. The sinuous pallid body
of this great Creature, for ever gliding down to the sea, roused in his
mind no symbolic image. He had had to do with her, years back, at the
Board of Trade, and knew her for what she was, extremely dirty, and
getting abominably thin just where he would have liked her plump. Yet,
as he lighted a cigar, there came to him a queer feeling--as if he were
in the presence of a woman he was fond of.
"I hope to God," he thought, "nothing'll come of these scares!" The car
glided on into the long road, swarming with traffic, towards the
fashionable heart of London. Outside stationers' shops, however, the
posters of evening papers were of no reassuring order.
'THE PLOT THICKENS.'
'MORE REVELATIONS.'
'GRAVE SITUATION THREATENED.'
And before each poster could be seen a little eddy in the stream of the
passers-by--formed by persons glancing at the news, and disengaging
themselves, to press on again. The Earl of Valleys caught himself
wondering what they thought of it! What was passing behind those pale
rounds of flesh turned towards the posters?
Did they think at all, these men and women in the street? What was their
attitude towards this vaguely threatened cataclysm? Face after face,
stolid and apathetic, expressed nothing, no active desire, certainly no
enthusiasm, hardly any dread. Poor devils! The thing, after all, was no
more within their control than it was within the power of ants to stop
the ruination of their ant-heap by some passing boy! It was no doubt
quite true, that the people had never had much voice in the making of
war. And the words of a Radical weekly, which as an impartial man he
always forced himself to read, recurred to him. "Ignorant of the facts,
hypnotized by the words 'Country' and 'Patriotism'; in the grip of
mob-instinct and inborn prejudice against the foreigner; helpless by
reason of his patience, stoicism, good faith, and confidence in those
above him; helpless by reason of his snobbery, mutual distrust,
carelessness for the morrow, and lack of public spirit-in the face of War
how impotent and to be pitied is the man in the street!" That paper,
though clever, always seemed to him intolerably hifalutin'!
It was doubtful whether he would get to Ascot this year. And his mind
flew for a moment to his promising two-year-old Casetta; then dashed
almost violently, as though in shame, to the Admiralty and the doubt
whether they were fully alive to possibilities. He himself occupied a
softer spot of Government, one of those almost nominal offices necessary
to qualify into the Cabinet certain tried minds, for whom no more
strenuous post can for the moment be found. From the Admiralty again his
thoughts leaped to his mother-in-law. Wonderful old woman! What a
statesman she would have made! Too reactionary! Deuce of a straight
line she had taken about Mrs. Lees Noel! And with a connoisseur's twinge
of pleasure he recollected that lady's face and figure seen that morning
as he passed her cottage. Mysterious or not, the woman was certainly
attractive! Very graceful head with its dark hair waved back from the
middle over either temple--very charming figure, no lumber of any sort!
Bouquet about her! Some story or other, no doubt--no affair of his!
Always sorry for that sort of woman!
A regiment of Territorials returning from a march stayed the progress of
his car. He leaned forward watching them with much the same contained,
shrewd, critical look he would have bent on a pack of hounds. All the
mistiness and speculation in his mind was gone now. Good stamp of man,
would give a capital account of themselves! Their faces, flushed by a
day in the open, were masked with passivity, or, with a half-aggressive,
half-jocular self-consciousness; they were clearly not troubled by
abstract doubts, or any visions of the horrors of war.
Someone raised a cheer 'for the Terriers!' Lord Valleys saw round him a
little sea of hats, rising and falling, and heard a sound, rather shrill
and tentative, swell into hoarse, high clamour, and suddenly die out.
"Seem keen enough!" he thought. "Very little does it! Plenty of fighting
spirit in the country." And again a thrill of pleasure shot through
him.
Then, as the last soldier passed, his car slowly forged its way through
the straggling crowd, pressing on behind the regiment--men of all ages,
youths, a few women, young girls, who turned their eyes on him with a
negligent stare as if their lives were too remote to permit them to take
interest in this passing man at ease.
CHAPTER IV
At Monkland, that same hour, in the little whitewashed 'withdrawing-room'
of a thatched, whitewashed cottage, two men sat talking, one on either
side of the hearth; and in a low chair between them a dark-eyed woman
leaned back, watching, the tips of her delicate thin fingers pressed
together, or held out transparent towards the fire. A log, dropping now
and then, turned up its glowing underside; and the firelight and the
lamplight seemed so to have soaked into the white walls that a wan warmth
exuded. Silvery dun moths, fluttering in from the dark garden, kept
vibrating, like spun shillings, over a jade-green bowl of crimson roses;
and there was a scent, as ever in that old thatched cottage, of
woodsmoke, flowers, and sweetbriar.
The man on the left was perhaps forty, rather above middle height,
vigorous, active, straight, with blue eyes and a sanguine face that
glowed on small provocation. His hair was very bright, almost red, and
his fiery moustaches which descended to the level of his chin, like Don
Quixote's seemed bristling and charging.
The man on the right was nearer thirty, evidently tall, wiry, and very
thin. He sat rather crumpled, in his low armchair, with hands clasped
round a knee; and a little crucified smile haunted the lips of his lean
face, which, with its parchmenty, tanned, shaven cheeks, and deep-set,
very living eyes, had a certain beauty.
These two men, so extravagantly unlike, looked at each other like
neighbouring dogs, who, having long decided that they are better apart,
suddenly find that they have met at some spot where they cannot possibly
have a fight. And the woman watched; the owner, as it were, of one, but
who, from sheer love of dogs, had always stroked and patted the other.
"So, Mr. Courtier," said the younger man, whose dry, ironic voice, like
his smile, seemed defending the fervid spirit in his eyes; "all you say
only amounts, you see, to a defence of the so-called Liberal spirit; and,
forgive my candour, that spirit, being an importation from the realms of
philosophy and art, withers the moment it touches practical affairs."
The man with the red moustaches laughed; the sound was queer--at once so
genial and so sardonic.
"Well put!" he said: "And far be it from me to gainsay. But since
compromise is the very essence of politics, high-priests of caste and
authority, like you, Lord Miltoun, are every bit as much out of it as any
Liberal professor."
"I don't agree!"
"Agree or not, your position towards public affairs is very like the
Church's attitude towards marriage and divorce; as remote from the
realities of life as the attitude of the believer in Free Love, and not
more likely to catch on. The death of your point of view lies in
itself--it's too dried-up and far from things ever to understand them.
If you don't understand you can never rule. You might just as well keep
your hands in your pockets, as go into politics with your notions!"
"I fear we must continue to agree to differ."
"Well; perhaps I do pay you too high a compliment. After all, you are a
patrician."
"You speak in riddles, Mr. Courtier."
The dark-eyed woman stirred; her hands gave a sort of flutter, as though
in deprecation of acerbity.
Rising at once, and speaking in a deferential voice, the elder man said:
"We're tiring Mrs. Noel. Good-night, Audrey, It's high time I was off."
Against the darkness of the open French window, he turned round to fire a
parting shot.
"What I meant, Lord Miltoun, was that your class is the driest and most
practical in the State--it's odd if it doesn't save you from a poet's
dreams. Good-night!" He passed out on to the lawn, and vanished.
The young man sat unmoving; the glow of the fire had caught his face, so
that a spirit seemed clinging round his lips, gleaming out of his eyes.
Suddenly he said:
"Do you believe that, Mrs. Noel?"
For answer Audrey Noel smiled, then rose and went over to the window.
"Look at my dear toad! It comes here every evening!" On a flagstone of
the verandah, in the centre of the stream of lamplight, sat a little
golden toad. As Miltoun came to look, it waddled to one side, and
vanished.
"How peaceful your garden is!" he said; then taking her hand, he very
gently raised it to his lips, and followed his opponent out into the
darkness.
Truly peace brooded over that garden. The Night seemed listening--all
lights out, all hearts at rest. It watched, with a little white star for
every tree, and roof, and slumbering tired flower, as a mother watches
her sleeping child, leaning above him and counting with her love every
hair of his head, and all his tiny tremors.
Argument seemed child's babble indeed under the smile of Night. And the
face of the woman, left alone at her window, was a little like the face
of this warm, sweet night. It was sensitive, harmonious; and its harmony
was not, as in some faces, cold--but seemed to tremble and glow and
flutter, as though it were a spirit which had found its place of resting.
In her garden,--all velvety grey, with black shadows beneath the
yew-trees, the white flowers alone seemed to be awake, and to look at her
wistfully. The trees stood dark and still. Not even the night birds
stirred. Alone, the little stream down in the bottom raised its voice,
privileged when day voices were hushed.
It was not in Audrey Noel to deny herself to any spirit that was abroad;
to repel was an art she did not practise. But this night, though the
Spirit of Peace hovered so near, she did not seem to know it. Her hands
trembled, her cheeks were burning; her breast heaved, and sighs fluttered
from her lips, just parted.
CHAPTER V
Eustace Cardoc, Viscount Miltoun, had lived a very lonely life, since he
first began to understand the peculiarities of existence. With the
exception of Clifton, his grandmother's 'majordomo,' he made, as a small
child, no intimate friend. His nurses, governesses, tutors, by their own
confession did not understand him, finding that he took himself with
unnecessary seriousness; a little afraid, too, of one whom they
discovered to be capable of pushing things to the point of enduring pain
in silence. Much of that early time was passed at Ravensham, for he had
always been Lady Casterley's favourite grandchild. She recognized in him
the purposeful austerity which had somehow been omitted from the
composition of her daughter. But only to Clifton, then a man of fifty
with a great gravity and long black whiskers, did Eustace relieve his
soul. "I tell you this, Clifton," he would say, sitting on the
sideboard, or the arm of the big chair in Clifton's room, or wandering
amongst the raspberries, "because you are my friend."
And Clifton, with his head a little on one side, and a sort of wise
concern at his 'friend's' confidences, which were sometimes of an
embarrassing description, would answer now and then: "Of course, my
lord," but more often: "Of course, my dear."
There was in this friendship something fine and suitable, neither of
these 'friends' taking or suffering liberties, and both being interested
in pigeons, which they would stand watching with a remarkable attention.
In course of time, following the tradition of his family, Eustace went to
Harrow. He was there five years--always one of those boys a little out
at wrists and ankles, who may be seen slouching, solitary, along the
pavement to their own haunts, rather dusty, and with one shoulder
slightly raised above the other, from the habit of carrying something
beneath one arm. Saved from being thought a 'smug,' by his title, his
lack of any conspicuous scholastic ability, his obvious independence of
what was thought of him, and a sarcastic tongue, which no one was eager
to encounter, he remained the ugly duckling who refused to paddle
properly in the green ponds of Public School tradition. He played games
so badly that in sheer self-defence his fellows permitted him to play
without them. Of 'fives' they made an exception, for in this he attained
much proficiency, owing to a certain windmill-like quality of limb. He
was noted too for daring chemical experiments, of which he usually had
one or two brewing, surreptitiously at first, and afterwards by special
permission of his house-master, on the principle that if a room must
smell, it had better smell openly. He made few friendships, but these
were lasting.
His Latin was so poor, and his Greek verse so vile, that all had been
surprised when towards the finish of his career he showed a very
considerable power of writing and speaking his own language. He left
school without a pang. But when in the train he saw the old Hill and the
old spire on the top of it fading away from him, a lump rose in his
throat, he swallowed violently two or three times, and, thrusting himself
far back into the carriage corner, appeared to sleep.
At Oxford, he was happier, but still comparatively lonely; remaining, so
long as custom permitted, in lodgings outside his College, and clinging
thereafter to remote, panelled rooms high up, overlooking the gardens and
a portion of the city wall. It was at Oxford that he first developed
that passion for self-discipline which afterwards distinguished him. He
took up rowing; and, though thoroughly unsuited by nature to this
pastime, secured himself a place in his College 'torpid.' At the end of
a race he was usually supported from his stretcher in a state of extreme
extenuation, due to having pulled the last quarter of the course entirely
with his spirit. The same craving for self-discipline guided him in the
choice of Schools; he went out in 'Greats,' for which, owing to his
indifferent mastery of Greek and Latin, he was the least fitted. With
enormous labour he took a very good degree. He carried off besides, the
highest distinctions of the University for English Essays. The ordinary
circles of College life knew nothing of him. Not once in the whole
course of his University career, was he the better for wine. He, did not
hunt; he never talked of women, and none talked of women in his presence.
But now and then he was visited by those gusts which come to the ascetic,
when all life seemed suddenly caught up and devoured by a flame burning
night and day, and going out mercifully, he knew not why, like a blown
candle. However unsocial in the proper sense of the word, he by no means
lacked company in these Oxford days. He knew many, both dons and
undergraduates. His long stride, and determined absence of direction,
had severely tried all those who could stomach so slow a pastime as
walking for the sake of talking. The country knew him--though he never
knew the country--from Abingdon to Bablock Hythe. His name stood high,
too, at the Union, where he made his mark during his first term in a
debate on a 'Censorship of Literature' which he advocated with gloom,
pertinacity, and a certain youthful brilliance that might well have
carried the day, had not an Irishman got up and pointed out the danger
hanging over the Old Testament. To that he had retorted: "Better, sir,
it should run a risk than have no risk to run." From which moment he was
notable.
He stayed up four years, and went down with a sense of bewilderment and
loss. The matured verdict of Oxford on this child of hers, was "Eustace
Miltoun! Ah! Queer bird! Will make his mark!"
He had about this time an interview with his father which confirmed the
impression each had formed of the other. It took place in the library at
Monkland Court, on a late November afternoon.
The light of eight candles in thin silver candlesticks, four on either
side of the carved stone hearth, illumined that room. Their gentle
radiance penetrated but a little way into the great dark space lined with
books, panelled and floored with black oak, where the acrid fragrance of
leather and dried roseleaves seemed to drench the, very soul with the
aroma of the past. Above the huge fireplace, with light falling on one
side of his shaven face, hung a portrait--painter unknown--of that
Cardinal Caradoc who suffered for his faith in the sixteenth century.
Ascetic, crucified, with a little smile clinging to the lips and deep-set
eyes, he presided, above the bluefish flames of a log fire.
Father and son found some difficulty in beginning.
Each of those two felt as though he were in the presence of someone
else's very near relation. They had, in fact, seen extremely little of
each other, and not seen that little long.
Lord Valleys uttered the first remark:
"Well, my dear fellow, what are you going to do now? I think we can make
certain of this seat down here, if you like to stand."
Miltoun had answered: "Thanks, very much; I don't think so at present."
Through the thin fume of his cigar Lord Valleys watched that long figure
sunk deep in the chair opposite.
"Why not?" he said. "You can't begin too soon; unless you think you
ought to go round the world."
"Before I can become a man of it?"
Lord Valleys gave a rather disconcerted laugh.
"There's nothing in politics you can't pick up as you go along," he said.
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-four."
"You look older." A faint line, as of contemplation, rose between his
eyes. Was it fancy that a little smile was hovering about Miltoun's
lips?
"I've got a foolish theory," came from those lips, "that one must know
the conditions first. I want to give at least five years to that."
Lord Valleys raised his eyebrows. "Waste of time," he said. "You'd know
more at the end of it, if you went into the House at once. You take the
matter too seriously."
"No doubt."
For fully a minute Lord Valleys made no answer; he felt almost ruffled.
Waiting till the sensation had passed, he said: "Well, my dear fellow, as
you please."
Miltoun's apprenticeship to the profession of politics was served in a
slum settlement; on his father's estates; in Chambers at the Temple; in
expeditions to Germany, America, and the British Colonies; in work at
elections; and in two forlorn hopes to capture a constituency which could
be trusted not to change its principles. He read much, slowly, but with
conscientious tenacity, poetry, history, and works on philosophy,
religion, and social matters.
Fiction, and especially foreign fiction, he did not care for. With the
utmost desire to be wide and impartial, he sucked in what ministered to
the wants of his nature, rejecting unconsciously all that by its
unsuitability endangered the flame of his private spirit. What he read,
in fact, served only to strengthen those profounder convictions which
arose from his temperament. With a contempt of the vulgar gewgaws of
wealth and rank he combined a humble but intense and growing conviction
of his capacity for leadership, of a spiritual superiority to those whom
he desired to benefit. There was no trace, indeed, of the common
Pharisee in Miltoun, he was simple and direct; but his eyes, his
gestures, the whole man, proclaimed the presence of some secret spring of
certainty, some fundamental well into which no disturbing glimmers
penetrated. He was not devoid of wit, but he was devoid of that kind of
wit which turns its eyes inward, and sees something of the fun that lies
in being what you are. Miltoun saw the world and all the things thereof
shaped like spires--even when they were circles. He seemed to have no
sense that the Universe was equally compounded of those two symbols,
whose point of reconciliation had not yet been discovered.
Such was he, then, when the Member for his native division was made a
peer.
He had reached the age of thirty without ever having been in love,
leading a life of almost savage purity, with one solitary breakdown.
Women were afraid of him. And he was perhaps a little afraid of woman.
She was in theory too lovely and desirable--the half-moon in a summer
sky; in practice too cloying, or too harsh. He had an affection for
Barbara, his younger sister; but to his mother, his grandmother, or his
elder sister Agatha, he had never felt close. It was indeed amusing to
see Lady Valleys with her first-born. Her fine figure, the blown roses
of her face, her grey-blue eyes which had a slight tendency to roll, as
though amusement just touched with naughtiness bubbled behind them; were
reduced to a queer, satirical decorum in Miltoun's presence. Thoughts
and sayings verging on the risky were characteristic of her robust
physique, of her soul which could afford to express almost all that
occurred to it. Miltoun had never, not even as a child, given her his
confidence. She bore him no resentment, being of that large, generous
build in body and mind, rarely--never in her class--associated with the
capacity for feeling aggrieved or lowered in any estimation, even its
own. He was, and always had been, an odd boy, and there was an end of
it! Nothing had perhaps so disconcerted Lady Valleys as his want of
behaviour in regard to women. She felt it abnormal, just as she
recognized the essential if duly veiled normality of her husband and
younger son. It was this feeling which made her realize almost more
vividly than she had time for, in the whirl of politics and fashion, the
danger of his friendship with this lady to whom she alluded so discreetly
as 'Anonyma.'
Pure chance had been responsible for the inception of that friendship.
Going one December afternoon to the farmhouse of a tenant, just killed by
a fall from his horse, Miltoun had found the widow in a state of
bewildered grief, thinly cloaked in the manner of one who had almost lost
the power to express her feelings, and quite lost it in presence of 'the
gentry.' Having assured the poor soul that she need have no fear about
her tenancy, he was just leaving, when he met, in the stone-flagged
entrance, a lady in a fur cap and jacket, carrying in her arms a little
crying boy, bleeding from a cut on the forehead. Taking him from her and
placing him on a table in the parlour, Miltoun looked at this lady, and
saw that she was extremely grave, and soft, and charming. He inquired of
her whether the mother should be told.
She shook her head.
"Poor thing, not just now: let's wash it, and bind it up first."
Together therefore they washed and bound up the cut. Having finished,
she looked at Miltoun, and seemed to say: "You would do the telling so
much better than I."
He, therefore, told the mother and was rewarded by a little smile from
the grave lady.
From that meeting he took away the knowledge of her name, Audrey Lees
Noel, and the remembrance of a face, whose beauty, under a cap of
squirrel's fur, pursued him. Some days later passing by the village
green, he saw her entering a garden gate. On this occasion he had asked
her whether she would like her cottage re-thatched; an inspection of the
roof had followed; he had stayed talking a long time. Accustomed to
women--over the best of whom, for all their grace and lack of
affectation, high-caste life had wrapped the manner which seems to take
all things for granted--there was a peculiar charm for Miltoun in this
soft, dark-eyed lady who evidently lived quite out of the world, and had
so poignant, and shy, a flavour. Thus from a chance seed had blossomed
swiftly one of those rare friendships between lonely people, which can in
short time fill great spaces of two lives.
One day she asked him: "You know about me, I suppose?" Miltoun made a
motion of his head, signifying that he did. His informant had been the
vicar.
"Yes, I am told, her story is a sad one--a divorce."
"Do you mean that she has been divorced, or----"
For the fraction of a second the vicar perhaps had hesitated.
"Oh! no--no. Sinned against, I am sure. A nice woman, so far as I have
seen; though I'm afraid not one of my congregation."
With this, Miltoun, in whom chivalry had already been awakened, was
content. When she asked if he knew her story, he would not for the world
have had her rake up what was painful. Whatever that story, she could
not have been to blame. She had begun already to be shaped by his own
spirit; had become not a human being as it was, but an expression of his
aspiration....
On the third evening after his passage of arms with Courtier, he was
again at her little white cottage sheltering within its high garden
walls. Smothered in roses, and with a black-brown thatch overhanging the
old-fashioned leaded panes of the upper windows, it had an air of hiding
from the world. Behind, as though on guard, two pine trees spread their
dark boughs over the outhouses, and in any south-west wind could be heard
speaking gravely about the weather. Tall lilac bushes flanked the
garden, and a huge lime-tree in the adjoining field sighed and rustled,
or on still days let forth the drowsy hum of countless small dusky bees
who frequented that green hostelry.
He found her altering a dress, sitting over it in her peculiar delicate
fashion--as if all objects whatsoever, dresses, flowers, books, music,
required from her the same sympathy.
He had come from a long day's electioneering, had been heckled at two
meetings, and was still sore from the experience. To watch her, to be
soothed, and ministered to by her had never been so restful; and
stretched out in a long chair he listened to her playing.
Over the hill a Pierrot moon was slowly moving up in a sky the colour of
grey irises. And in a sort of trance Miltoun stared at the burnt-out
star, travelling in bright pallor.
Across the moor a sea of shallow mist was rolling; and the trees in the
valley, like browsing cattle, stood knee-deep in whiteness, with all the
air above them wan from an innumerable rain as of moondust, falling into
that white sea. Then the moon passed behind the lime-tree, so that a
great lighted Chinese lantern seemed to hang blue-black from the sky.
Suddenly, jarring and shivering the music, came a sound of hooting. It
swelled, died away, and swelled again.
Miltoun rose.
"That has spoiled my vision," he said. "Mrs. Noel, I have something I
want to say." But looking down at her, sitting so still, with her hands
resting on the keys, he was silent in sheer adoration.
A voice from the door ejaculated:
"Oh! ma'am--oh! my lord! They're devilling a gentleman on the green!"
CHAPTER VI
When the immortal Don set out to ring all the bells of merriment, he was
followed by one clown. Charles Courtier on the other hand had always
been accompanied by thousands, who really could not understand the
conduct of this man with no commercial sense. But though he puzzled his
contemporaries, they did not exactly laugh at him, because it was
reported that he had really killed some men, and loved some women. They
found such a combination irresistible, when coupled with an appearance
both vigorous and gallant. The son of an Oxfordshire clergyman, and
mounted on a lost cause, he had been riding through the world ever since
he was eighteen, without once getting out of the saddle. The secret of
this endurance lay perhaps in his unconsciousness that he was in the
saddle at all. It was as much his natural seat as office stools to other
mortals. He made no capital out of errantry, his temperament being far
too like his red-gold hair, which people compared to flames, consuming
all before them. His vices were patent; too incurable an optimism; an
admiration for beauty such as must sometimes have caused him to forget
which woman he was most in love with; too thin a skin; too hot a heart;
hatred of humbug, and habitual neglect of his own interest. Unmarried,
and with many friends, and many enemies, he kept his body like a
sword-blade, and his soul always at white heat.
That one who admitted to having taken part in five wars should be mixing
in a by-election in the cause of Peace, was not so inconsistent as might
be supposed; for he had always fought on the losing side, and there
seemed to him at the moment no side so losing as that of Peace. No great
politician, he was not an orator, nor even a glib talker; yet a quiet
mordancy of tongue, and the white-hot look in his eyes, never failed to
make an impression of some kind on an audience.
There was, however, hardly a corner of England where orations on behalf
of Peace had a poorer chance than the Bucklandbury division. To say that
Courtier had made himself unpopular with its matter-of-fact, independent,
stolid, yet quick-tempered population, would be inadequate. He had
outraged their beliefs, and roused the most profound suspicions. They
could not, for the life of them, make out what he was at. Though by his
adventures and his book, "Peace-a lost Cause," he was, in London, a
conspicuous figure, they had naturally never heard of him; and his
adventure to these parts seemed to them an almost ludicrous example of
pure idea poking its nose into plain facts--the idea that nations ought
to, and could live in peace being so very pure; and the fact that they
never had, so very plain!
At Monkland, which was all Court estate, there were naturally but few
supporters of Miltoun's opponent, Mr. Humphrey Chilcox, and the reception
accorded to the champion of Peace soon passed from curiosity to derision,
from derision to menace, till Courtier's attitude became so defiant, and
his sentences so heated that he was only saved from a rough handling by
the influential interposition of the vicar.
Yet when he began to address them he had felt irresistibly attracted.
They looked such capital, independent fellows. Waiting for his turn to
speak, he had marked them down as men after his own heart. For though
Courtier knew that against an unpopular idea there must always be a
majority, he never thought so ill of any individual as to suppose him
capable of belonging to that ill-omened body.
Surely these fine, independent fellows were not to be hoodwinked by the
jingoes! It had been one more disillusion. He had not taken it lying
down; neither had his audience. They dispersed without forgiving; they
came together again without having forgotten.
The village Inn, a little white building whose small windows were
overgrown with creepers, had a single guest's bedroom on the upper floor,
and a little sitting-room where Courtier took his meals. The rest of the
house was but stone-floored bar with a long wooden bench against the back
wall, whence nightly a stream of talk would issue, all harsh a's, and
sudden soft u's; whence too a figure, a little unsteady, would now and
again emerge, to a chorus of 'Gude naights,' stand still under the
ash-trees to light his pipe, then move slowly home.
But on that evening, when the trees, like cattle, stood knee-deep in the
moon-dust, those who came out from the bar-room did not go away; they
hung about in the shadows, and were joined by other figures creeping
furtively through the bright moonlight, from behind the Inn. Presently
more figures moved up from the lanes and the churchyard path, till thirty
or more were huddled there, and their stealthy murmur of talk distilled a
rare savour of illicit joy. Unholy hilarity, indeed, seemed lurking in
the deep tree-shadow, before the wan Inn, whence from a single lighted
window came forth the half-chanting sound of a man's voice reading out
loud. Laughter was smothered, talk whispered.
"He'm a-practisin' his spaches." "Smoke the cunnin' old vox out!" "Red
pepper's the proper stuff." "See men sneeze! We've a-screed up the
door."
Then, as a face showed at the lighted window, a burst of harsh laughter
broke the hush.
He at the window was seen struggling violently to wrench away a bar. The
laughter swelled to hooting. The prisoner forced his way through,
dropped to the ground, rose, staggered, and fell.
A voice said sharply:
"What's this?"
Out of the sounds of scuffling and scattering came the whisper: "His
lordship!" And the shade under the ash-trees became deserted, save by
the tall dark figure of a man, and a woman's white shape.
"Is that you, Mr. Courtier? Are you hurt?"
A chuckle rose from the recumbent figure.
"Only my knee. The beggars! They precious nearly choked me, though."
CHAPTER VII
Bertie Caradoc, leaving the smoking-room at Monkland Court that same
evening,--on his way to bed, went to the Georgian corridor, where his pet
barometer was hanging. To look at the glass had become the nightly habit
of one who gave all the time he could spare from his profession to
hunting in the winter and to racing in the summer.'
The Hon. Hubert Caradoc, an apprentice to the calling of diplomacy, more
completely than any living Caradoc embodied the characteristic strength
and weaknesses of that family. He was of fair height, and wiry build.
His weathered face, under sleek, dark hair, had regular, rather small
features, and wore an expression of alert resolution, masked by
impassivity. Over his inquiring, hazel-grey eyes the lids were almost
religiously kept half drawn. He had been born reticent, and great,
indeed, was the emotion under which he suffered when the whole of his
eyes were visible. His nose was finely chiselled, and had little flesh.
His lips, covered by a small, dark moustache, scarcely opened to emit his
speeches, which were uttered in a voice singularly muffled, yet
unexpectedly quick. The whole personality was that of a man practical,
spirited, guarded, resourceful, with great power of self-control, who
looked at life as if she were a horse under him, to whom he must give way
just so far as was necessary to keep mastery of her. A man to whom ideas
were of no value, except when wedded to immediate action; essentially
neat; demanding to be 'done well,' but capable of stoicism if necessary;
urbane, yet always in readiness to thrust; able only to condone the
failings and to compassionate the kinds of distress which his own
experience had taught him to understand. Such was Miltoun's younger
brother at the age of twenty-six.
Having noted that the glass was steady, he was about to seek the
stairway, when he saw at the farther end of the entrance-hall three
figures advancing arm-in-arm. Habitually both curious and wary, he
waited till they came within the radius of a lamp; then, seeing them to
be those of Miltoun and a footman, supporting between them a lame man, he
at once hastened forward.
"Have you put your knee out, sir? Hold on a minute! Get a chair,
Charles."
Seating the stranger in this chair, Bertie rolled up the trouser, and
passed his fingers round the knee. There was a sort, of loving-kindness
in that movement, as of a hand which had in its time felt the joints and
sinews of innumerable horses.
"H'm!" he said; "can you stand a bit of a jerk? Catch hold of him
behind, Eustace. Sit down on the floor, Charles, and hold the legs of
the chair. Now then!" And taking up the foot, he pulled. There was a
click, a little noise of teeth ground together; and Bertie said: "Good
man--shan't have to have the vet. to you, this time."
Having conducted their lame guest to a room in the Georgian corridor
hastily converted to a bedroom, the two brothers presently left him to
the attentions of the footman.
"Well, old man," said Bertie, as they sought their rooms; "that's put
paid to his name--won't do you any more harm this journey. Good plucked
one, though!"
The report that Courtier was harboured beneath their roof went the round
of the family before breakfast, through the agency of one whose practice
it was to know all things, and to see that others partook of that
knowledge, Little Ann, paying her customary morning visit to her mother's
room, took her stand with face turned up and hands clasping her belt, and
began at once.
"Uncle Eustace brought a man last night with a wounded leg, and Uncle
Bertie pulled it out straight. William says that Charles says he only
made a noise like this"--there was a faint sound of small chumping teeth:
"And he's the man that's staying at the Inn, and the stairs were too
narrow to carry him up, William says; and if his knee was put out he
won't be able to walk without a stick for a long time. Can I go to
Father?"
Agatha, who was having her hair brushed, thought:
"I'm not sure whether belts so low as that are wholesome," murmured:
"Wait a minute!"
But little Ann was gone; and her voice could be heard in the
dressing-room climbing up towards Sir William, who from the sound of his
replies, was manifestly shaving. When Agatha, who never could resist a
legitimate opportunity of approaching her husband, looked in, he was
alone, and rather thoughtful--a tall man with a solid, steady face and
cautious eyes, not in truth remarkable except to his own wife.
"That fellow Courtier's caught by the leg," he said. "Don't know what
your Mother will say to an enemy in the camp."
"Isn't he a freethinker, and rather----"
Sir William, following his own thoughts, interrupted:
"Just as well, of course, so far as Miltoun's concerned, to have got him
here."
Agatha sighed: "Well, I suppose we shall have to be nice to him. I'll
tell Mother."
Sir William smiled.
"Ann will see to that," he said.
Ann was seeing to that.
Seated in the embrasure of the window behind the looking-glass, where
Lady Valleys was still occupied, she was saying:
"He fell out of the window because of the red pepper. Miss Wallace says
he is a hostage--what does hostage mean, Granny?"
When six years ago that word had first fallen on Lady Valleys' ears, she
had thought: "Oh! dear! Am I really Granny?" It had been a shock, had
seemed the end of so much; but the matter-of-fact heroism of women, so
much quicker to accept the inevitable than men, had soon come to her aid,
and now, unlike her husband, she did not care a bit. For all that she
answered nothing, partly because it was not necessary to speak in order
to sustain a conversation with little Ann, and partly because she was
deep in thought.
The man was injured! Hospitality, of course--especially since their own
tenants had committed the outrage! Still, to welcome a man who had gone
out of his way to come down here and stump the country against her own
son, was rather a tall order. It might have been worse, no doubt. If;
for instance, he had been some 'impossible' Nonconformist Radical! This
Mr. Courtier was a free lance--rather a well-known man, an interesting
creature. She must see that he felt 'at home' and comfortable. If he
were pumped judiciously, no doubt one could find out about this woman.
Moreover, the acceptance of their 'salt' would silence him politically if
she knew anything of that type of man, who always had something in him of
the Arab's creed. Her mind, that of a capable administrator, took in all
the practical significance of this incident, which, although untoward,
was not without its comic side to one disposed to find zest and humour in
everything that did not absolutely run counter to her interests and
philosophy.
The voice of little Ann broke in on her reflections.
"I'm going to Auntie Babs now."
"Very well; give me a kiss first."
Little Ann thrust up her face, so that its sudden little nose penetrated
Lady Valleys' soft curving lips....
When early that same afternoon Courtier, leaning on a stick, passed from
his room out on to the terrace, he was confronted by three sunlit
peacocks marching slowly across a lawn towards a statue of Diana. With
incredible dignity those birds moved, as if never in their lives had they
been hurried. They seemed indeed to know that when they got there, there
would be nothing for them to do but to come back again. Beyond them,
through the tall trees, over some wooded foot-hills of the moorland and a
promised land of pinkish fields, pasture, and orchards, the prospect
stretched to the far sea. Heat clothed this view with a kind of
opalescence, a fairy garment, transmuting all values, so that the four
square walls and tall chimneys of the pottery-works a few miles down the
valley seemed to Courtier like a vision of some old fortified Italian
town. His sensations, finding himself in this galley, were peculiar.
For his feeling towards Miltoun, whom he had twice met at Mrs. Noel's,
was, in spite of disagreements, by no means unfriendly; while his feeling
towards Miltoun's family was not yet in existence. Having lived from
hand to mouth, and in many countries, since he left Westminster School,
he had now practically no class feelings. An attitude of hostility to
aristocracy because it was aristocracy, was as incomprehensible to him as
an attitude of deference.
His sensations habitually shaped themselves in accordance with those two
permanent requirements of his nature, liking for adventure, and hatred of
tyranny. The labourer who beat his wife, the shopman who sweated his
'hands,' the parson who consigned his parishioners to hell, the peer who
rode roughshod--all were equally odious to him. He thought of people as
individuals, and it was, as it were, by accident that he had conceived
the class generalization which he had fired back at Miltoun from Mrs.
Noel's window. Sanguine, accustomed to queer environments, and always
catching at the moment as it flew, he had not to fight with the
timidities and irritations of a nervous temperament. His cheery courtesy
was only disturbed when he became conscious of some sentiment which
appeared to him mean or cowardly. On such occasions, not perhaps
infrequent, his face looked as if his heart were physically fuming, and
since his shell of stoicism was never quite melted by this heat, a very
peculiar expression was the result, a sort of calm, sardonic, desperate,
jolly look.
His chief feeling, then, at the outrage which had laid him captive in the
enemy's camp, was one of vague amusement, and curiosity. People round
about spoke fairly well of this Caradoc family. There did not seem to be
any lack of kindly feeling between them and their tenants; there was said
to be no griping destitution, nor any particular ill-housing on their
estate. And if the inhabitants were not encouraged to improve
themselves, they were at all events maintained at a certain level, by
steady and not ungenerous supervision. When a roof required thatching it
was thatched; when a man became too old to work, he was not suffered to
lapse into the Workhouse. In bad years for wool, or beasts, or crops,
the farmers received a graduated remission of rent. The pottery-works
were run on a liberal if autocratic basis. It was true that though Lord
Valleys was said to be a staunch supporter of a 'back to the land'
policy, no disposition was shown to encourage people to settle on these
particular lands, no doubt from a feeling that such settlers would not do
them so much justice as their present owner. Indeed so firmly did this
conviction seemingly obtain, that Lord Valleys' agent was not
unfrequently observed to be buying a little bit more.
But, since in this life one notices only what interests him, all this
gossip, half complimentary, half not, had fallen but lightly on the ears
of the champion of Peace during his campaign, for he was, as has, been
said, but a poor politician, and rode his own horse very much his own
way.
While he stood there enjoying the view, he heard a small high voice, and
became conscious of a little girl in a very shady hat so far back on her
brown hair that it did not shade her; and of a small hand put out in
front. He took the hand, and answered:
"Thank you, I am well--and you?" perceiving the while that a pair of wide
frank eyes were examining his leg.
"Does it hurt?"
"Not to speak of."
"My pony's leg was blistered. Granny is coming to look at it."
"I see."
"I have to go now. I hope you'll soon be better. Good-bye!"
Then, instead of the little girl, Courtier saw a tall and rather florid
woman regarding him with a sort of quizzical dignity. She wore a
stiffish fawn-coloured dress that seemed to be cut a little too tight
round her substantial hips, for it quite neglected to embrace her knees.
She had on no hat, no gloves, no ornaments, except the rings on her
fingers, and a little jewelled watch in a leather bracelet on her wrist.
There was, indeed, about her whole figure an air of almost professional
escape from finery.
Stretching out a well-shaped but not small hand, she said:
"I most heartily apologize to you, Mr. Courtier."
"Not at all."
"I do hope you're comfortable. Have they given you everything you want?"
"More than everything."
"It really was disgraceful! However it's brought us the pleasure of
making your acquaintance. I've read your book, of course."
To Courtier it seemed that on this lady's face had come a look which
seemed to say: Yes, very clever and amusing, quite enjoyable! But the
ideas----What? You know very well they won't do--in fact they mustn't
do!
"That's very nice of you."
But into Lady Valleys' answer, "I don't agree with it a bit, you know!"
there had crept a touch of asperity, as though she knew that he had
smiled inside. "What we want preached in these days are the warlike
virtues--especially by a warrior."
"Believe me, Lady Valleys, the warlike virtues are best left to men of
more virgin imagination."
He received a quick look, and the words: "Anyway, I'm sure you don't care
a rap for politics. You know Mrs. Lees Noel, don't you? What a pretty
woman she is!"
But as she spoke Courtier saw a young girl coming along the terrace. She
had evidently been riding, for she wore high boots and a skirt which had
enabled her to sit astride. Her eyes were blue, and her hair--the colour
of beech-leaves in autumn with the sun shining through--was coiled up
tight under a small soft hat. She was tall, and moved towards them like
one endowed with great length from the hip joint to the knee. Joy of
life, serene, unconscious vigour, seemed to radiate from her whole face
and figure.
At Lady Valleys' words:
"Ah, Babs! My daughter Barbara--Mr. Courtier," he put out his hand,
received within it some gauntleted fingers held out with a smile, and
heard her say:
"Miltoun's gone up to Town, Mother; I was going to motor in to
Bucklandbury with a message he gave me; so I can fetch Granny out from
the station:"
"You had better take Ann, or she'll make our lives a burden; and perhaps
Mr. Courtier would like an airing. Is your knee fit, do you think?"
Glancing at the apparition, Courtier replied:
"It is."
Never since the age of seven had he been able to look on feminine beauty
without a sense of warmth and faint excitement; and seeing now perhaps
the most beautiful girl he had ever beheld, he desired to be with her
wherever she might be going. There was too something very fascinating in
the way she smiled, as if she had a little seen through his sentiments.
"Well then," she said, "we'd better look for Ann."
After short but vigorous search little Ann was found--in the car,
instinct having told her of a forward movement in which it was her duty
to take part. And soon they had started, Ann between them in that
peculiar state of silence to which she became liable when really
interested.
From the Monkland estate, flowered, lawned, and timbered, to the open
moor, was like passing to another world; for no sooner was the last lodge
of the Western drive left behind, than there came into sudden view the
most pagan bit of landscape in all England. In this wild
parliament-house, clouds, rocks, sun, and winds met and consulted. The
'old' men, too, had left their spirits among the great stones, which lay
couched like lions on the hill-tops, under the white clouds, and their
brethren, the hunting buzzard hawks. Here the very rocks were restless,
changing form, and sense, and colour from day to day, as though
worshipping the unexpected, and refusing themselves to law. The winds
too in their passage revolted against their courses, and came tearing
down wherever there were combes or crannies, so that men in their
shelters might still learn the power of the wild gods.
The wonders of this prospect were entirely lost on little Ann, and
somewhat so on Courtier, deeply engaged in reconciling those two alien
principles, courtesy, and the love of looking at a pretty face. He was
wondering too what this girl of twenty, who had the self-possession of a
woman of forty, might be thinking. It was little Ann who broke the
silence.
"Auntie Babs, it wasn't a very strong house, was it?"
Courtier looked in the direction of her small finger. There was the
wreck of a little house, which stood close to a stone man who had
obviously possessed that hill before there were men of flesh. Over one
corner of the sorry ruin, a single patch of roof still clung, but the
rest was open.
"He was a silly man to build it, wasn't he, Ann? That's why they call it
Ashman's Folly."
"Is he alive?"
"Not quite--it's just a hundred years ago."
"What made him build it here?"
"He hated women, and--the roof fell in on him."
"Why did he hate women?"
"He was a crank."
"What is a crank?"
"Ask Mr. Courtier."
Under this girl's calm quizzical glance, Courtier endeavoured to find an
answer to that question.
"A crank," he said slowly, "is a man like me."
He heard a little laugh, and became acutely conscious of Ann's
dispassionate examining eyes.
"Is Uncle Eustace a crank?"
"You know now, Mr. Courtier, what Ann thinks of you. You think a good
deal of Uncle Eustace, don't you, Ann?"
"Yes," said Ann, and fixed her eyes before her. But Courtier gazed
sideways--over her hatless head.
His exhilaration was increasing every moment. This girl reminded him of
a two-year-old filly he had once seen, stepping out of Ascot paddock for
her first race, with the sun glistening on her satin chestnut skin, her
neck held high, her eyes all fire--as sure to win, as that grass was
green. It was difficult to believe her Miltoun's sister. It was
difficult to believe any of those four young Caradocs related. The grave
ascetic Miltoun, wrapped in the garment of his spirit; mild, domestic,
strait-laced Agatha; Bertie, muffled, shrewd, and steely; and this frank,
joyful conquering Barbara--the range was wide.
But the car had left the moor, and, down a steep hill, was passing the
small villas and little grey workmen's houses outside the town of
Bucklandbury.
"Ann and I have to go on to Miltoun's headquarters. Shall I drop you at
the enemy's, Mr. Courtier? Stop, please, Frith."
And before Courtier could assent, they had pulled up at a house on which
was inscribed with extraordinary vigour: "Chilcox for Bucklandbury."
Hobbling into the Committee-room of Mr. Humphrey Chilcox, which smelled
of paint, Courtier took with him the scented memory of youth, and
ambergris, and Harris tweed.
In that room three men were assembled round a table; the eldest of whom,
endowed with little grey eyes, a stubbly beard, and that mysterious
something only found in those who have been mayors, rose at once and came
towards him.
"Mr. Courtier, I believe," he said bluffly. "Glad to see you, sir. Most
distressed to hear of this outrage. Though in a way, it's done us good.
Yes, really. Grossly against fair play. Shouldn't be surprised if it
turned a couple of hundred votes. You carry the effects of it about with
you, I see."
A thin, refined man, with wiry hair, also came up, holding a newspaper in
his hand.
"It has had one rather embarrassing effect," he said. "Read this
"'OUTRAGE ON A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR.
"'LORD MILTOUN'S EVENING ADVENTURE.'"
Courtier read a paragraph.
The man with the little eyes broke the ominous silence which ensued.
"One of our side must have seen the whole thing, jumped on his bicycle
and brought in the account before they went to press. They make no
imputation on the lady--simply state the facts. Quite enough," he added
with impersonal grimness; "I think he's done for himself, sir."
The man with the refined face added nervously:
"We couldn't help it, Mr. Courtier; I really don't know what we can do.
I don't like it a bit."
"Has your candidate seen this?" Courtier asked.
"Can't have," struck in the third Committee-man; "we hadn't seen it
ourselves until an hour ago."
"I should never have permitted it," said the man with the refined face;
"I blame the editor greatly."
"Come to that----" said the little-eyed man, "it's a plain piece of news.
If it makes a stir, that's not our fault. The paper imputes nothing, it
states. Position of the lady happens to do the rest. Can't help it, and
moreover, sir, speaking for self, don't want to. We'll have no loose
morals in public life down here, please God!" There was real feeling in
his words; then, catching sight of Courtier's face, he added: "Do you
know this lady?"
"Ever since she was a child. Anyone who speaks evil of her, has to
reckon with me."
The man with the refined face said earnestly:
"Believe me, Mr. Courtier, I entirely sympathize. We had nothing to do
with the paragraph. It's one of those incidents where one benefits
against one's will. Most unfortunate that she came out on to the green
with Lord Miltoun; you know what people are."
"It's the head-line that does it;" said the third Committee-man; "they've
put what will attract the public."
"I don't know, I don't know," said the little-eyed man stubbornly; "if
Lord Miltoun will spend his evenings with lonely ladies, he can't blame
anybody but himself."
Courtier looked from face to face.
"This closes my connection with the campaign," he said: "What's the
address of this paper?" And without waiting for an answer, he took up
the journal and hobbled from the room. He stood a minute outside finding
the address, then made his way down the street.
CHAPTER VIII
By the side of little Ann, Barbara sat leaning back amongst the cushions
of the car. In spite of being already launched into high-caste life
which brings with it an early knowledge of the world, she had still some
of the eagerness in her face which makes children lovable. Yet she
looked negligently enough at the citizens of Bucklandbury, being already
a little conscious of the strange mixture of sentiment peculiar to her
countrymen in presence of herself--that curious expression on their faces
resulting from the continual attempt to look down their noses while
slanting their eyes upwards. Yes, she was already alive to that
mysterious glance which had built the national house and insured it
afterwards--foe to cynicism, pessimism, and anything French or Russian;
parent of all the national virtues, and all the national vices; of
idealism and muddle-headedness, of independence and servility; fosterer
of conduct, murderer of speculation; looking up, and looking down, but
never straight at anything; most high, most deep, most queer; and ever
bubbling-up from the essential Well of Emulation.
Surrounded by that glance, waiting for Courtier, Barbara, not less
British than her neighbours, was secretly slanting her own eyes up and
down over the absent figure of her new acquaintance. She too wanted
something she could look up to, and at the same time see damned first.
And in this knight-errant it seemed to her that she had got it.
He was a creature from another world. She had met many men, but not as
yet one quite of this sort. It was rather nice to be with a clever man,
who had none the less done so many outdoor things, been through so many
bodily adventures. The mere writers, or even the 'Bohemians,' whom she
occasionally met, were after all only 'chaplains to the Court,' necessary
to keep aristocracy in touch with the latest developments of literature
and art. But this Mr. Courtier was a man of action; he could not be
looked on with the amused, admiring toleration suited to men remarkable
only for ideas, and the way they put them into paint or ink. He had
used, and could use, the sword, even in the cause of Peace. He could
love, had loved, or so they said: If Barbara had been a girl of twenty in
another class, she would probably never have heard of this, and if she
had heard, it might very well have dismayed or shocked her. But she had
heard, and without shock, because she had already learned that men were
like that, and women too sometimes.
It was with quite a little pang of concern that she saw him hobbling down
the street towards her; and when he was once more seated, she told the
chauffeur: "To the station, Frith. Quick, please!" and began:
"You are not to be trusted a bit. What were you doing?"
But Courtier smiled grimly over the head of Ann, in silence.
At this, almost the first time she had ever yet encountered a distinct
rebuff, Barbara quivered, as though she had been touched lightly with a
whip. Her lips closed firmly, her eyes began to dance. "Very well, my
dear," she thought. But presently stealing a look at him, she became
aware of such a queer expression on his face, that she forgot she was
offended.
"Is anything wrong, Mr. Courtier?"
"Yes, Lady Barbara, something is very wrong--that miserable mean thing,
the human tongue."
Barbara had an intuitive knowledge of how to handle things, a kind of
moral sangfroid, drawn in from the faces she had watched, the talk she
had heard, from her youth up. She trusted those intuitions, and letting
her eyes conspire with his over Ann's brown hair, she said:
"Anything to do with Mrs. N-----?" Seeing "Yes" in his eyes, she added
quickly: "And M-----?"
Courtier nodded.
"I thought that was coming. Let them babble! Who cares?"
She caught an approving glance, and the word, "Good!"
But the car had drawn up at Bucklandbury Station.
The little grey figure of Lady Casterley, coming out of the station
doorway, showed but slight sign of her long travel. She stopped to take
the car in, from chauffeur to Courtier.
"Well, Frith!--Mr. Courtier, is it? I know your book, and I don't
approve of you; you're a dangerous man--How do you do? I must have those
two bags. The cart can bring the rest.... Randle, get up in front, and
don't get dusty. Ann!" But Ann was already beside the chauffeur, having
long planned this improvement. "H'm! So you've hurt your leg, sir?
Keep still! We can sit three.... Now, my dear, I can kiss you! You've
grown!"
Lady Casterley's kiss, once received, was never forgotten; neither
perhaps was Barbara's. Yet they were different. For, in the case of
Lady Casterley, the old eyes, bright and investigating, could be seen
deciding the exact spot for the lips to touch; then the face with its
firm chin was darted forward; the lips paused a second, as though to make
quite certain, then suddenly dug hard and dry into the middle of the
cheek, quavered for the fraction of a second as if trying to remember to
be soft, and were relaxed like the elastic of a catapult. And in the case
of Barbara, first a sort of light came into her eyes, then her chin
tilted a little, then her lips pouted a little, her body quivered, as if
it were getting a size larger, her hair breathed, there was a small sweet
sound; it was over.
Thus kissing her grandmother, Barbara resumed her seat, and looked at
Courtier. 'Sitting three' as they were, he was touching her, and it
seemed to her somehow that he did not mind.
The wind had risen, blowing from the West, and sunshine was flying on it.
The call of the cuckoos--a little sharpened--followed the
swift-travelling car. And that essential sweetness of the moor, born of
the heather roots and the South-West wind, was stealing out from under
the young ferns.
With her thin nostrils distended to this scent, Lady Casterley bore a
distinct resemblance to a small, fine game-bird.
"You smell nice down here," she said. "Now, Mr. Courtier, before I
forget--who is this Mrs. Lees Noel that I hear so much of?"
At that question, Barbara could not help sliding her eyes round. How
would he stand up to Granny? It was the moment to see what he was made
of. Granny was terrific!
"A very charming woman, Lady Casterley."
"No doubt; but I am tired of hearing that. What is her story?"
"Has she one?"
"Ha!" said Lady Casterley.
Ever so slightly Barbara let her arm press against Courtiers. It was so
delicious to hear Granny getting no forwarder.
"I may take it she has a past, then?"
"Not from me, Lady Casterley."
Again Barbara gave him that imperceptible and flattering touch.
"Well, this is all very mysterious. I shall find out for myself. You
know her, my dear. You must take me to see her."
"Dear Granny! If people hadn't pasts, they wouldn't have futures."
Lady Casterley let her little claw-like hand descend on her
grand-daughter's thigh.
"Don't talk nonsense, and don't stretch like that!" she said; "you're too
large already...."
At dinner that night they were all in possession of the news. Sir
William had been informed by the local agent at Staverton, where Lord
Harbinger's speech had suffered from some rude interruptions. The Hon.
Geoffrey Winlow; having sent his wife on, had flown over in his biplane
from Winkleigh, and brought a copy of 'the rag' with him. The one member
of the small house-party who had not heard the report before dinner was
Lord Dennis Fitz-Harold, Lady Casterley's brother.
Little, of course, was said. But after the ladies had withdrawn,
Harbinger, with that plain-spoken spontaneity which was so unexpected,
perhaps a little intentionally so, in connection with his almost
classically formed face, uttered words to the effect that, if they did
not fundamentally kick that rumour, it was all up with Miltoun. Really
this was serious! And the beggars knew it, and they were going to work
it. And Miltoun had gone up to Town, no one knew what for. It was the
devil of a mess!
In all the conversation of this young man there was that peculiar brand
of voice, which seems ever rebutting an accusation of being serious--a
brand of voice and manner warranted against anything save ridicule; and
in the face of ridicule apt to disappear. The words, just a little
satirically spoken: "What is, my dear young man?" stopped him at once.
Looking for the complement and counterpart of Lady Casterley, one would
perhaps have singled out her brother. All her abrupt decision was
negated in his profound, ironical urbanity. His voice and look and
manner were like his velvet coat, which had here and there a whitish
sheen, as if it had been touched by moonlight. His hair too had that
sheen. His very delicate features were framed in a white beard and
moustache of Elizabethan shape. His eyes, hazel and still clear, looked
out very straight, with a certain dry kindliness. His face, though
unweathered and unseamed, and much too fine and thin in texture, had a
curious affinity to the faces of old sailors or fishermen who have lived
a simple, practical life in the light of an overmastering tradition. It
was the face of a man with a very set creed, and inclined to be satiric
towards innovations, examined by him and rejected full fifty years ago.
One felt that a brain not devoid either of subtlety or aesthetic quality
had long given up all attempts to interfere with conduct; that all
shrewdness of speculation had given place to shrewdness of practical
judgment based on very definite experience. Owing to lack of advertising
power, natural to one so conscious of his dignity as to have lost all
care for it, and to his devotion to a certain lady, only closed by death,
his life had been lived, as it were, in shadow. Still, he possessed a
peculiar influence in Society, because it was known to be impossible to
get him to look at things in a complicated way. He was regarded rather
as a last resort, however. "Bad as that? Well, there's old Fitz-Harold!
Try him! He won't advise you, but he'll say something."
And in the heart of that irreverent young man, Harbinger, there stirred a
sort of misgiving. Had he expressed himself too freely? Had he said
anything too thick? He had forgotten the old boy! Stirring Bertie up
with his foot, he murmured "Forgot you didn't know, sir. Bertie will
explain."
Thus called on, Bertie, opening his lips a very little way, and fixing
his half-closed eyes on his great-uncle, explained. There was a lady at
the cottage--a nice woman--Mr. Courtier knew her--old Miltoun went there
sometimes--rather late the other evening--these devils were making the
most of it--suggesting--lose him the election, if they didn't look out.
Perfect rot, of course!
In his opinion, old Miltoun, though as steady as Time, had been a flat to
let the woman come out with him on to the Green, showing clearly where he
had been, when he ran to Courtier's rescue. You couldn't play about with
women who had no form that anyone knew anything of, however promising
they might look.
Then, out of a silence Winlow asked: What was to be done? Should Miltoun
be wired for? A thing like this spread like wildfire! Sir William--a
man not accustomed to underrate difficulties--was afraid it was going to
be troublesome. Harbinger expressed the opinion that the editor ought to
be kicked. Did anybody know what Courtier had done when he heard of it.
Where was he--dining in his room? Bertie suggested that if Miltoun was
at Valleys House, it mightn't be too late to wire to him. The thing
ought to be stemmed at once! And in all this concern about the situation
there kept cropping out quaint little outbursts of desire to disregard
the whole thing as infernal insolence, and metaphorically to punch the
beggars' heads, natural to young men of breeding.
Then, out of another silence came the voice of Lord Dennis:
"I am thinking of this poor lady."
Turning a little abruptly towards that dry suave voice, and recovering
the self-possession which seldom deserted him, Harbinger murmured:
"Quite so, sir; of course!"
CHAPTER IX
In the lesser withdrawing room, used when there was so small a party,
Mrs. Winlow had gone to the piano and was playing to herself, for Lady
Casterley, Lady Valleys, and her two daughters had drawn together as
though united to face this invading rumour.
It was curious testimony to Miltoun's character that, no more here than
in the dining-hall, was there any doubt of the integrity of his relations
with Mrs. Noel. But whereas, there the matter was confined to its
electioneering aspect, here that aspect was already perceived to be only
the fringe of its importance. Those feminine minds, going with intuitive
swiftness to the core of anything which affected their own males, had
already grasped the fact that the rumour would, as it were, chain a man
of Miltoun's temper to this woman.
But they were walking on such a thin crust of facts, and there was so
deep a quagmire of supposition beneath, that talk was almost painfully
difficult. Never before perhaps had each of these four women realized so
clearly how much Miltoun--that rather strange and unknown grandson, son,
and brother--counted in the scheme of existence. Their suppressed
agitation was manifested in very different ways. Lady Casterley, upright
in her chair, showed it only by an added decision of speech, a continual
restless movement of one hand, a thin line between her usually smooth
brows. Lady Valleys wore a puzzled look, as if a little surprised that
she felt serious. Agatha looked frankly anxious. She was in her quiet
way a woman of much character, endowed with that natural piety, which
accepts without questioning the established order in life and religion.
The world to her being home and family, she had a real, if gently
expressed, horror of all that she instinctively felt to be subversive of
this ideal. People judged her a little quiet, dull, and narrow; they
compared her to a hen for ever clucking round her chicks. The streak of
heroism that lay in her nature was not perhaps of patent order. Her
feeling about her brother's situation however was sincere and not to be
changed or comforted. She saw him in danger of being damaged in the only
sense in which she could conceive of a man--as a husband and a father.
It was this that went to her heart, though her piety proclaimed to her
also the peril of his soul; for she shared the High Church view of the
indissolubility of marriage.
As to Barbara, she stood by the hearth, leaning her white shoulders
against the carved marble, her hands behind her, looking down. Now and
then her lips curled, her level brows twitched, a faint sigh came from
her; then a little smile would break out, and be instantly suppressed.
She alone was silent--Youth criticizing Life; her judgment voiced itself
only in the untroubled rise and fall of her young bosom, the impatience
of her brows, the downward look of her blue eyes, full of a lazy,
inextinguishable light:
Lady Valleys sighed.
"If only he weren't such a queer boy! He's quite capable of marrying her
from sheer perversity."
"What!" said Lady Casterley.
"You haven't seen her, my dear. A most unfortunately attractive
creature--quite a charming face."
Agatha said quietly:
"Mother, if she was divorced, I don't think Eustace would."
"There's that, certainly," murmured Lady Valleys; "hope for the best!"
"Don't you even know which way it was?" said Lady Casterley.
"Well, the vicar says she did the divorcing. But he's very charitable;
it may be as Agatha hopes."
"I detest vagueness. Why doesn't someone ask the woman?"
"You shall come with me, Granny dear, and ask her yourself; you will do
it so nicely."
Lady Casterley looked up.
"We shall see," she said. Something struggled with the autocratic
criticism in her eyes. No more than the rest of the world could she help
indulging Barbara. As one who believed in the divinity of her order, she
liked this splendid child. She even admired--though admiration was not
what she excelled in--that warm joy in life, as of some great nymph,
parting the waves with bare limbs, tossing from her the foam of breakers.
She felt that in this granddaughter, rather than in the good Agatha, the
patrician spirit was housed. There were points to Agatha, earnestness
and high principle; but something morally narrow and over-Anglican
slightly offended the practical, this-worldly temper of Lady Casterley.
It was a weakness, and she disliked weakness. Barbara would never be
squeamish over moral questions or matters such as were not really,
essential to aristocracy. She might, indeed, err too much the other way
from sheer high spirits. As the impudent child had said: "If people had
no pasts, they would have no futures." And Lady Casterley could not bear
people without futures. She was ambitious; not with the low ambition of
one who had risen from nothing, but with the high passion of one on the
top, who meant to stay there.
"And where have you been meeting this--er--anonymous creature?" she
asked.
Barbara came from the hearth, and bending down beside Lady Casterley's
chair, seemed to envelop her completely.
"I'm all right, Granny; she couldn't corrupt me."
Lady Casterley's face peered out doubtfully from that warmth, wearing a
look of disapproving pleasure.
"I know your wiles!" she said. "Come, now!"
"I see her about. She's nice to look at. We talk."
Again with that hurried quietness Agatha said:
"My dear Babs, I do think you ought to wait."
"My dear Angel, why? What is it to me if she's had four husbands?"
Agatha bit her lips, and Lady Valleys murmured with a laugh:
"You really are a terror, Babs."
But the sound of Mrs. Winlow's music had ceased--the men had come in. And
the faces of the four women hardened, as if they had slipped on masks;
for though this was almost or quite a family party, the Winlows being
second cousins, still the subject was one which each of these four in
their very different ways felt to be beyond general discussion. Talk,
now, began glancing from the war scare--Winlow had it very specially that
this would be over in a week--to Brabrook's speech, in progress at that
very moment, of which Harbinger provided an imitation. It sped to
Winlow's flight--to Andrew Grant's articles in the 'Parthenon'--to the
caricature of Harbinger in the 'Cackler', inscribed 'The New Tory. Lord
H-rb-ng-r brings Social Reform beneath the notice of his friends,' which
depicted him introducing a naked baby to a number of coroneted old
ladies. Thence to a dancer. Thence to the Bill for Universal Assurance.
Then back to the war scare; to the last book of a great French writer;
and once more to Winlow's flight. It was all straightforward and
outspoken, each seeming to say exactly what came into the head. For all
that, there was a curious avoidance of the spiritual significances of
these things; or was it perhaps that such significances were not seen?
Lord Dennis, at the far end of the room, studying a portfolio of
engravings, felt a touch on his cheek; and conscious of a certain
fragrance, said without turning his head:
"Nice things, these, Babs!"
Receiving no answer he looked up.
There indeed stood Barbara.
"I do hate sneering behind people's backs!"
There had always been good comradeship between these two, since the days
when Barbara, a golden-haired child, astride of a grey pony, had been his
morning companion in the Row all through the season. His riding days
were past; he had now no outdoor pursuit save fishing, which he followed
with the ironic persistence of a self-contained, high-spirited nature,
which refuses to admit that the mysterious finger of old age is laid
across it. But though she was no longer his companion, he still had a
habit of expecting her confidences; and he looked after her, moving away
from him to a window, with surprised concern.
It was one of those nights, dark yet gleaming, when there seems a flying
malice in the heavens; when the stars, from under and above the black
clouds, are like eyes frowning and flashing down at men with purposed
malevolence. The great sighing trees even had caught this spirit, save
one, a dark, spire-like cypress, planted three hundred and fifty years
before, whose tall form incarnated the very spirit of tradition, and
neither swayed nor soughed like the others. From her, too close-fibred,
too resisting, to admit the breath of Nature, only a dry rustle came.
Still almost exotic, in spite of her centuries of sojourn, and now
brought to life by the eyes of night, she seemed almost terrifying, in
her narrow, spear-like austerity, as though something had dried and died
within her soul. Barbara came back from the window.
"We can't do anything in our lives, it seems to me," she said, "but play
at taking risks!"
Lord Dennis replied dryly:
"I don't think I understand, my dear."
"Look at Mr. Courtier!" muttered Barbara. "His life's so much more risky
altogether than any of our men folk lead. And yet they sneer at him."
"Let's see, what has he done?"
"Oh! I dare say not very much; but it's all neck or nothing. But what
does anything matter to Harbinger, for instance? If his Social Reform
comes to nothing, he'll still be Harbinger, with fifty thousand a year."
Lord Dennis looked up a little queerly.
"What! Is it possible you don't take the young man seriously, Babs?"
Barbara shrugged; a strap slipped a little off one white shoulder.
"It's all play really; and he knows it--you can tell that from his voice.
He can't help its not mattering, of course; and he knows that too."
"I have heard that he's after you, Babs; is that true?"
"He hasn't caught me yet."
"Will he?"
Barbara's answer was another shrug; and, for all their statuesque beauty,
the movement of her shoulders was like the shrug of a little girl in her
pinafore.
"And this Mr. Courtier," said Lord Dennis dryly: "Are you after him?"
"I'm after everything; didn't you know that, dear?"
"In reason, my child."
"In reason, of course--like poor Eusty!" She stopped. Harbinger himself
was standing there close by, with an air as nearly approaching reverence
as was ever to be seen on him. In truth, the way in which he was looking
at her was almost timorous.
"Will you sing that song I like so much, Lady Babs?"
They moved away together; and Lord Dennis, gazing after that magnificent
young couple, stroked his beard gravely.
CHAPTER X
Miltoun's sudden journey to London had been undertaken in pursuance of a
resolve slowly forming from the moment he met Mrs. Noel in the stone
flagged passage of Burracombe Farm. If she would have him and since last
evening he believed she would--he intended to marry her.
It has been said that except for one lapse his life had been austere, but
this is not to assert that he had no capacity for passion. The contrary
was the case. That flame which had been so jealously guarded smouldered
deep within him--a smothered fire with but little air to feed on. The
moment his spirit was touched by the spirit of this woman, it had flared
up. She was the incarnation of all that he desired. Her hair, her eyes,
her form; the tiny tuck or dimple at the corner of her mouth just where a
child places its finger; her way of moving, a sort of unconscious swaying
or yielding to the air; the tone in her voice, which seemed to come not
so much from happiness of her own as from an innate wish to make others
happy; and that natural, if not robust, intelligence, which belongs to
the very sympathetic, and is rarely found in women of great ambitions or
enthusiasms--all these things had twined themselves round his heart. He
not only dreamed of her, and wanted her; he believed in her. She filled
his thoughts as one who could never do wrong; as one who, though a wife
would remain a mistress, and though a mistress, would always be the
companion of his spirit.
It has been said that no one spoke or gossiped about women in Miltoun's
presence, and the tale of her divorce was present to his mind simply in
the form of a conviction that she was an injured woman. After his
interview with the vicar, he had only once again alluded to it, and that
in answer to the speech of a lady staying at the Court: "Oh! yes, I
remember her case perfectly. She was the poor woman who----" "Did not,
I am certain, Lady Bonington." The tone of his voice had made someone
laugh uneasily; the subject was changed.
All divorce was against his convictions, but in a blurred way he admitted
that there were cases where release was unavoidable. He was not a man to
ask for confidences, or expect them to be given him. He himself had
never confided his spiritual struggles to any living creature; and the
unspiritual struggle had little interest for Miltoun. He was ready at
any moment to stake his life on the perfection of the idol he had set up
within his soul, as simply and straightforwardly as he would have placed
his body in front of her to shield her from harm.
The same fanaticism, which looked on his passion as a flower by itself,
entirely apart from its suitability to the social garden, was also the
driving force which sent him up to London to declare his intention to his
father before he spoke to Mrs. Noel. The thing should be done simply,
and in right order. For he had the kind of moral courage found in those
who live retired within the shell of their own aspirations. Yet it was
not perhaps so much active moral courage as indifference to what others
thought or did, coming from his inbred resistance to the appreciation of
what they felt.
That peculiar smile of the old Tudor Cardinal--which had in it invincible
self-reliance, and a sort of spiritual sneer--played over his face when
he speculated on his father's reception of the coming news; and very soon
he ceased to think of it at all, burying himself in the work he had
brought with him for the journey. For he had in high degree the faculty,
so essential to public life, of switching off his whole attention from
one subject to another.
On arriving at Paddington he drove straight to Valleys House.
This large dwelling with its pillared portico, seemed to wear an air of
faint surprise that, at the height of the season, it was not more
inhabited. Three servants relieved Miltoun of his little luggage; and
having washed, and learned that his father would be dining in, he went
for a walk, taking his way towards his rooms in the Temple. His long
figure, somewhat carelessly garbed, attracted the usual attention, of
which he was as usual unaware. Strolling along, he meditated deeply on a
London, an England, different from this flatulent hurly-burly, this
'omniuin gatherum', this great discordant symphony of sharps and flats.
A London, an England, kempt and self-respecting; swept and garnished of
slums, and plutocrats, advertisement, and jerry-building, of
sensationalism, vulgarity, vice, and unemployment. An England where each
man should know his place, and never change it, but serve in it loyally
in his own caste. Where every man, from nobleman to labourer, should be
an oligarch by faith, and a gentleman by practice. An England so
steel-bright and efficient that the very sight should suffice to impose
peace. An England whose soul should be stoical and fine with the
stoicism and fineness of each soul amongst her many million souls; where
the town should have its creed and the country its creed, and there
should be contentment and no complaining in her streets.
And as he walked down the Strand, a little ragged boy cheeped out between
his legs:
"Bloodee discoveree in a Bank--Grite sensytion! Pi-er!"
Miltoun paid no heed to that saying; yet, with it, the wind that blows
where man lives, the careless, wonderful, unordered wind, had dispersed
his austere and formal vision. Great was that wind--the myriad
aspiration of men and women, the praying of the uncounted multitude to
the goddess of Sensation--of Chance, and Change. A flowing from heart to
heart, from lip to lip, as in Spring the wistful air wanders through a
wood, imparting to every bush and tree the secrets of fresh life, the
passionate resolve to grow, and become--no matter what! A sighing, as
eternal as the old murmuring of the sea, as little to be hushed, as prone
to swell into sudden roaring!
Miltoun held on through the traffic, not looking overmuch at the present
forms of the thousands he passed, but seeing with the eyes of faith the
forms he desired to see. Near St. Paul's he stopped in front of an old
book-shop. His grave, pallid, not unhandsome face, was well-known to
William Rimall, its small proprietor, who at once brought out his latest
acquisition--a Mores 'Utopia.' That particular edition (he assured
Miltoun) was quite unprocurable--he had never sold but one other copy,
which had been literally, crumbling away. This copy was in even better
condition. It could hardly last another twenty years--a genuine book, a
bargain. There wasn't so much movement in More as there had been a
little time back.
Miltoun opened the tome, and a small book-louse who had been sleeping on
the word 'Tranibore,' began to make its way slowly towards the very
centre of the volume.
"I see it's genuine," said Miltoun.
"It's not to read, my lord," the little man warned him: "Hardly safe to
turn the pages. As I was saying--I've not had a better piece this year.
I haven't really!"
"Shrewd old dreamer," muttered Miltoun; "the Socialists haven't got
beyond him, even now."
The little man's eyes blinked, as though apologizing for the views of
Thomas More.
"Well," he said, "I suppose he was one of them. I forget if your
lordship's very strong on politics?"
Miltoun smiled.
"I want to see an England, Rimall, something like the England of Mores
dream. But my machinery will be different. I shall begin at the top."
The little man nodded.
"Quite so, quite so," he said; "we shall come to that, I dare say."
"We must, Rimall." And Miltoun turned the page.
The little man's face quivered.
"I don't think," he said, "that book's quite strong enough for you, my
lord, with your taste for reading. Now I've a most curious old volume
here--on Chinese temples. It's rare--but not too old. You can peruse it
thoroughly. It's what I call a book to browse on just suit your palate.
Funny principle they built those things on," he added, opening the volume
at an engraving, "in layers. We don't build like that in England."
Miltoun looked up sharply; the little man's face wore no signs of
understanding.
"Unfortunately we don't, Rimall," he said; "we ought to, and we shall.
I'll take this book."
Placing his finger on the print of the pagoda, he added: "A good symbol."
The little bookseller's eye strayed down the temple to the secret price
mark.
"Exactly, my lord," he said; "I thought it'd be your fancy. The price to
you will be twenty-seven and six."
Miltoun, pocketing the bargain, walked out. He made his way into the
Temple, left the book at his Chambers, and passed on down to the bank of
Mother Thames. The Sun was loving her passionately that afternoon; he
had kissed her into warmth and light and colour. And all the buildings
along her banks, as far as the towers at Westminster, seemed to be
smiling. It was a great sight for the eyes of a lover. And another
vision came haunting Miltoun, of a soft-eyed woman with a low voice,
bending amongst her flowers. Nothing would be complete without her; no
work bear fruit; no scheme could have full meaning.
Lord Valleys greeted his son at dinner with good fellowship and a faint
surprise.
"Day off, my dear fellow? Or have you come up to hear Brabrook pitch
into us? He's rather late this time--we've got rid of that balloon
business no trouble after all."
And he eyed Miltoun with that clear grey stare of his, so cool, level,
and curious. Now, what sort of bird is this? it seemed saying.
Certainly not the partridge I should have expected from its breeding!
Miltoun's answer: "I came up to tell you some thing, sir," riveted his
father's stare for a second longer than was quite urbane.
It would not be true to say that Lord Valleys was afraid of his son. Fear
was not one of his emotions, but he certainly regarded him with a
respectful curiosity that bordered on uneasiness. The oligarchic temper
of Miltoun's mind and political convictions almost shocked one who knew
both by temperament and experience how to wait in front. This instruction
he had frequently had occasion to give his jockeys when he believed his
horses could best get home first in that way. And it was an instruction
he now longed to give his son. He himself had 'waited in front' for over
fifty years, and he knew it to be the finest way of insuring that he
would never be compelled to alter this desirable policy--for something in
Lord Valleys' character made him fear that, in real emergency, he would
exert himself to the point of the gravest discomfort sooner than be left
to wait behind. A fellow like young Harbinger, of course, he
understood--versatile, 'full of beans,' as he expressed it to himself in
his more confidential moments, who had imbibed the new wine (very
intoxicating it was) of desire for social reform. He would have to be
given his head a little--but there would be no difficulty with him, he
would never 'run out'--light handy build of horse that only required
steadying at the corners. He would want to hear himself talk, and be let
feel that he was doing something. All very well, and quite intelligible.
But with Miltoun (and Lord Valleys felt this to be no, mere parental
fancy) it was a very different business. His son had a way of forcing
things to their conclusions which was dangerous, and reminded him of his
mother-in-law. He was a baby in public affairs, of course, as yet; but
as soon as he once got going, the intensity of his convictions, together
with his position, and real gift--not of the gab, like Harbinger's--but
of restrained, biting oratory, was sure to bring him to the front with a
bound in the present state of parties. And what were those convictions?
Lord Valleys had tried to understand them, but up to the present he had
failed. And this did not surprise him exactly, since, as he often said,
political convictions were not, as they appeared on the surface, the
outcome of reason, but merely symptoms of temperament. And he could not
comprehend, because he could not sympathize with, any attitude towards
public affairs that was not essentially level, attached to the plain,
common-sense factors of the case as they appeared to himself. Not that
he could fairly be called a temporizer, for deep down in him there was
undoubtedly a vein of obstinate, fundamental loyalty to the traditions of
a caste which prized high spirit beyond all things. Still he did feel
that Miltoun was altogether too much the 'pukka' aristocrat--no better
than a Socialist, with his confounded way of seeing things all cut and
dried; his ideas of forcing reforms down people's throats and holding
them there with the iron hand! With his way too of acting on his
principles! Why! He even admitted that he acted on his principles!
This thought always struck a very discordant note in Lord Valleys'
breast. It was almost indecent; worse-ridiculous! The fact was, the
dear fellow had unfortunately a deeper habit of thought than was wanted
in politics--dangerous--very! Experience might do something for him!
And out of his own long experience the Earl of Valleys tried hard to
recollect any politician whom the practice of politics had left where he
was when he started. He could not think of one. But this gave him
little comfort; and, above a piece of late asparagus his steady eyes
sought his son's. What had he come up to tell him?
The phrase had been ominous; he could not recollect Miltoun's ever having
told him anything. For though a really kind and indulgent father, he
had--like so many men occupied with public and other lives--a little
acquired towards his offspring the look and manner: Is this mine? Of his
four children, Barbara alone he claimed with conviction. He admired her;
and, being a man who savoured life, he was unable to love much except
where he admired. But, the last person in the world to hustle any man or
force a confidence, he waited to hear his son's news, betraying no
uneasiness.
Miltoun seemed in no hurry. He described Courtier's adventure, which
tickled Lord Valleys a good deal.
"Ordeal by red pepper! Shouldn't have thought them equal to that," he
said. "So you've got him at Monkland now. Harbinger still with you?"
"Yes. I don't think Harbinger has much stamina.
"Politically?"
Miltoun nodded.
"I rather resent his being on our side--I don't think he does us any
good. You've seen that cartoon, I suppose; it cuts pretty deep. I
couldn't recognize you amongst the old women, sir."
Lord Valleys smiled impersonally.
"Very clever thing. By the way; I shall win the Eclipse, I think."
And thus, spasmodically, the conversation ran till the last servant had
left the room.
Then Miltoun, without preparation, looked straight at his father and
said:
"I want to marry Mrs. Noel, sir."
Lord Valleys received the shot with exactly the same expression as that
with which he was accustomed to watch his horses beaten. Then he raised
his wineglass to his lips; and set it down again untouched. This was the
only sign he gave of interest or discomfiture.
"Isn't this rather sudden?"
Miltoun answered: "I've wanted to from the moment I first saw her."
Lord Valleys, almost as good a judge of a man and a situation as of a
horse or a pointer dog, leaned back in his chair, and said with faint
sarcasm:
"My dear fellow, it's good of you to have told me this; though, to be
quite frank, it's a piece of news I would rather not have heard."
A dusky flush burned slowly up in Miltoun's cheeks. He had underrated
his father; the man had coolness and courage in a crisis.
"What is your objection, sir?" And suddenly he noticed that a wafer in
Lord Valleys' hand was quivering. This brought into his eyes no look of
compunction, but such a smouldering gaze as the old Tudor Churchman might
have bent on an adversary who showed a sign of weakness. Lord Valleys,
too, noticed the quivering of that wafer, and ate it.
"We are men of the world," he said.
Miltoun answered: "I am not."
Showing his first real symptom of impatience Lord Valleys rapped out:
"So be it! I am."
"Yes?", said Miltoun.
"Eustace!"
Nursing one knee, Miltoun faced that appeal without the faintest
movement. His eyes continued to burn into his father's face. A tremor
passed over Lord Valleys' heart. What intensity of feeling there was in
the fellow, that he could look like this at the first breath of
opposition!
He reached out and took up the cigar-box; held it absently towards his
son, and drew it quickly back.
"I forgot," he said; "you don't."
And lighting a cigar, he smoked gravely, looking straight before him, a
furrow between his brows. He spoke at last:
"She looks like a lady. I know nothing else about her."
The smile deepened round Miltoun's mouth.
"Why should you want to know anything else?"
Lord Valleys shrugged. His philosophy had hardened.
"I understand for one thing," he said coldly; "that there is a matter of
a divorce. I thought you took the Church's view on that subject."
"She has not done wrong."
"You know her story, then?"
"No."
Lord Valleys raised his brows, in irony and a sort of admiration.
"Chivalry the better part of discretion?"
Miltoun answered:
"You don't, I think, understand the kind of feeling I have for Mrs. Noel.
It does not come into your scheme of things. It is the only feeling,
however, with which I should care to marry, and I am not likely to feel
it for anyone again."
Lord Valleys felt once more that uncanny sense of insecurity. Was this
true? And suddenly he felt Yes, it is true! The face before him was the
face of one who would burn in his own fire sooner than depart from his
standards. And a sudden sense of the utter seriousness of this dilemma
dumbed him.
"I can say no more at the moment," he muttered and got up from the table.
CHAPTER XI
Lady Casterley was that inconvenient thing--an early riser. No woman in
the kingdom was a better judge of a dew carpet. Nature had in her time
displayed before her thousands of those pretty fabrics, where all the
stars of the past night, dropped to the dark earth, were waiting to glide
up to heaven again on the rays of the sun. At Ravensham she walked
regularly in her gardens between half-past seven and eight, and when she
paid a visit, was careful to subordinate whatever might be the local
custom to this habit.
When therefore her maid Randle came to Barbara's maid at seven o'clock,
and said: "My old lady wants Lady Babs to get up," there was no
particular pain in the breast of Barbara's maid, who was doing up her
corsets. She merely answered "I'll see to it. Lady Babs won't be too
pleased!" And ten minutes later she entered that white-walled room which
smelled of pinks-a temple of drowsy sweetness, where the summer light was
vaguely stealing through flowered chintz curtains.
Barbara was sleeping with her cheek on her hand, and her tawny hair,
gathered back, streaming over the pillow. Her lips were parted; and the
maid thought: "I'd like to have hair and a mouth like that!" She could
not help smiling to herself with pleasure; Lady Babs looked so
pretty--prettier asleep even than awake! And at sight of that beautiful
creature, sleeping and smiling in her sleep, the earthy, hothouse fumes
steeping the mind of one perpetually serving in an atmosphere unsuited to
her natural growth, dispersed. Beauty, with its queer touching power of
freeing the spirit from all barriers and thoughts of self, sweetened the
maid's eyes, and kept her standing, holding her breath. For Barbara
asleep was a symbol of that Golden Age in which she so desperately
believed. She opened her eyes, and seeing the maid, said:
"Is it eight o'clock, Stacey?"
"No, but Lady Casterley wants you to walk with her."
"Oh! bother! I was having such a dream!"
"Yes; you were smiling."
"I was dreaming that I could fly."
"Fancy!"
"I could see everything spread out below me, as close as I see you; I was
hovering like a buzzard hawk. I felt that I could come down exactly
where I wanted. It was fascinating. I had perfect power, Stacey."
And throwing her neck back, she closed her eyes again. The sunlight
streamed in on her between the half-drawn curtains.
The queerest impulse to put out a hand and stroke that full white throat
shot through the maid's mind.
"These flying machines are stupid," murmured Barbara; "the pleasure's in
one's body---wings!"
"I can see Lady Casterley in the garden."
Barbara sprang out of bed. Close by the statue of Diana Lady Casterley
was standing, gazing down at some flowers, a tiny, grey figure. Barbara
sighed. With her, in her dream, had been another buzzard hawk, and she
was filled with a sort of surprise, and queer pleasure that ran down her
in little shivers while she bathed and dressed.
In her haste she took no hat; and still busy with the fastening of her
linen frock, hurried down the stairs and Georgian corridor, towards the
garden. At the end of it she almost ran into the arms of Courtier.
Awakening early this morning, he had begun first thinking of Audrey Noel,
threatened by scandal; then of his yesterday's companion, that glorious
young creature, whose image had so gripped and taken possession of him.
In the pleasure of this memory he had steeped himself. She was youth
itself! That perfect thing, a young girl without callowness.
And his words, when she nearly ran into him, were: "The Winged Victory!"
Barbara's answer was equally symbolic: "A buzzard hawk! Do you know, I
dreamed we were flying, Mr. Courtier."
Courtier gravely answered
"If the gods give me that dream----"
From the garden door Barbara turned her head, smiled, and passed through.
Lady Casterley, in the company of little Ann, who had perceived that it
was novel to be in the garden at this hour, had been scrutinizing some
newly founded colonies of a flower with which she was not familiar. On
seeing her granddaughter approach, she said at once:
"What is this thing?"
"Nemesia."
"Never heard of it."
"It's rather the fashion, Granny."
"Nemesia?" repeated Lady Casterley. "What has Nemesis to do with
flowers? I have no patience with gardeners, and these idiotic names.
Where is your hat? I like that duck's egg colour in your frock. There's
a button undone." And reaching up her little spidery hand, wonderfully
steady considering its age, she buttoned the top button but one of
Barbara's bodice.
"You look very blooming, my dear," she said. "How far is it to this
woman's cottage? We'll go there now."
"She wouldn't be up."
Lady Casterley's eyes gleamed maliciously.
"You tell me she's so nice," she said. "No nice unencumbered woman lies
in bed after half-past seven. Which is the very shortest way? No, Ann,
we can't take you."
Little Ann, after regarding her great-grandmother rather too intently,
replied:
"Well, I can't come, you see, because I've got to go."
"Very well," said Lady Casterley, "then trot along."
Little Ann, tightening her lips, walked to the next colony of Nemesia,
and bent over the colonists with concentration, showing clearly that she
had found something more interesting than had yet been encountered.
"Ha!" said Lady Casterley, and led on at her brisk pace towards the
avenue.
All the way down the drive she discoursed on woodcraft, glancing sharply
at the trees. Forestry--she said-like building, and all other pursuits
which required, faith and patient industry, was a lost art in this
second-hand age. She had made Barbara's grandfather practise it, so that
at Catton (her country place) and even at Ravensham, the trees were worth
looking at. Here, at Monkland, they were monstrously neglected. To have
the finest Italian cypress in the country, for example, and not take more
care of it, was a downright scandal!
Barbara listened, smiling lazily. Granny was so amusing in her energy
and precision, and her turns of speech, so deliberately homespun, as if
she--than whom none could better use a stiff and polished phrase, or the
refinements of the French language--were determined to take what
liberties she liked. To the girl, haunted still by the feeling that she
could fly, almost drunk on the sweetness of the air that summer morning,
it seemed funny that anyone should be like that. Then for a second she
saw her grandmother's face in repose, off guard, grim with anxious
purpose, as if questioning its hold on life; and in one of those flashes
of intuition which come to women--even when young and conquering like
Barbara--she felt suddenly sorry, as though she had caught sight of the
pale spectre never yet seen by her. "Poor old dear," she thought; "what
a pity to be old!"
But they had entered the footpath crossing three long meadows which
climbed up towards Mrs. Noel's. It was so golden-sweet here amongst the
million tiny saffron cups frosted with lingering dewshine; there was such
flying glory in the limes and ash-trees; so delicate a scent from the
late whins and may-flower; and, on every tree a greybird calling to be
sorry was not possible!
In the far corner of the first field a chestnut mare was standing, with
ears pricked at some distant sound whose charm she alone perceived. On
viewing the intruders, she laid those ears back, and a little vicious
star gleamed out at the corner of her eye. They passed her and entered
the second field. Half way across, Barbara said quietly:
"Granny, that's a bull!"
It was indeed an enormous bull, who had been standing behind a clump of
bushes. He was moving slowly towards them, still distant about two
hundred yards; a great red beast, with the huge development of neck and
front which makes the bull, of all living creatures, the symbol of brute
force.
Lady Casterley envisaged him severely.
"I dislike bulls," she said; "I think I must walk backward."
"You can't; it's too uphill."
"I am not going to turn back," said Lady Casterley. "The bull ought not
to be here. Whose fault is it? I shall speak to someone. Stand still
and look at him. We must prevent his coming nearer."
They stood still and looked at the bull, who continued to approach.
"It doesn't stop him," said Lady Casterley. "We must take no notice.
Give me your arm, my dear; my legs feel rather funny."
Barbara put her arm round the little figure. They walked on.
"I have not been used to bulls lately," said Lady Casterley. The bull
came nearer.
"Granny," said Barbara, "you must go quietly on to the stile. When
you're over I'll come too."
"Certainly not," said Lady Casterley, "we will go together. Take no
notice of him; I have great faith in that."
"Granny darling, you must do as I say, please; I remember this bull, he
is one of ours."
At those rather ominous words Lady Casterley gave her a sharp glance.
"I shall not go," she said. "My legs feel quite strong now. We can run,
if necessary."
"So can the bull," said Barbara.
"I'm not going to leave you," muttered Lady Casterley. "If he turns
vicious I shall talk to him. He won't touch me. You can run faster than
I; so that's settled."
"Don't be absurd, dear," answered Barbara; "I am not afraid of bulls."
Lady Casterley flashed a look at her which had a gleam of amusement.
"I can feel you," she said; "you're just as trembly as I am."
The bull was now distant some eighty yards, and they were still quite a
hundred from the stile.
"Granny," said Barbara, "if you don't go on as I tell you, I shall just
leave you, and go and meet him! You mustn't be obstinate!"
Lady Casterley's answer was to grip her granddaughter round the waist;
the nervous force of that thin arm was surprising.
"You will do nothing of the sort," she said. "I refuse to have anything
more to do with this bull; I shall simply pay no attention."
The bull now began very slowly ambling towards them.
"Take no notice," said Lady Casterley, who was walking faster than she
had ever walked before.
"The ground is level now," said Barbara; "can you run?"
"I think so," gasped Lady Casterley; and suddenly she found herself
half-lifted from the ground, and, as it were, flying towards the stile.
She heard a noise behind; then Barbara's voice:
"We must stop. He's on us. Get behind me."
She felt herself caught and pinioned by two arms that seemed set on the
wrong way. Instinct, and a general softness told her that she was back
to back with her granddaughter.
"Let me go!" she gasped; "let me go!"
And suddenly she felt herself being propelled by that softness forward
towards the stile.
"Shoo!" she said; "shoo!"
"Granny," Barbara's voice came, calm and breathless, "don't! You only
excite him! Are we near the stile?"
"Ten yards," panted Lady Casterley.
"Look out, then!" There was a sort of warm flurry round her, a rush, a
heave, a scramble; she was beyond the stile. The bull and Barbara, a
yard or two apart, were just the other side. Lady Casterley raised her
handkerchief and fluttered it. The bull looked up; Barbara, all legs and
arms, came slipping down beside her.
Without wasting a moment Lady Casterley leaned forward and addressed the
bull:
"You awful brute!" she said; "I will have you well flogged."
Gently pawing the ground, the bull snuffled.
"Are you any the worse, child?"
"Not a scrap," said Barbara's serene, still breathless voice.
Lady Casterley put up her hands, and took the girl's face between them.
"What legs you have!" she said. "Give me a kiss!"
Having received a hot, rather quivering kiss, she walked on, holding
somewhat firmly to Barbara's arm.
"As for that bull," she murmured, "the brute--to attack women!"
Barbara looked down at her.
"Granny," she said, "are you sure you're not shaken?"
Lady Casterley, whose lips were quivering, pressed them together very
hard.
"Not a b-b-bit."
"Don't you think," said Barbara, "that we had better go back, at
once--the other way?"
"Certainly not. There are no more bulls, I suppose, between us and this
woman?"
"But are you fit to see her?"
Lady Casterley passed her handkerchief over her lips, to remove their
quivering.
"Perfectly," she answered.
"Then, dear," said Barbara, "stand still a minute, while I dust you
behind."
This having been accomplished, they proceeded in the direction of Mrs.
Noel's cottage.
At sight of it, Lady Casterley said:
"I shall put my foot down. It's out of the question for a man of
Miltoun's prospects. I look forward to seeing him Prime Minister some
day." Hearing Barbara's voice murmuring above her, she paused: "What's
that you say?"
"I said: What is the use of our being what we are, if we can't love whom
we like?"
"Love!" said Lady Casterley; "I was talking of marriage."
"I am glad you admit the distinction, Granny dear."
"You are pleased to be sarcastic," said Lady Casterley. "Listen to me!
It's the greatest nonsense to suppose that people in our caste are free
to do as they please. The sooner you realize that, the better, Babs. I
am talking to you seriously. The preservation of our position as a class
depends on our observing certain decencies. What do you imagine would
happen to the Royal Family if they were allowed to marry as they liked?
All this marrying with Gaiety girls, and American money, and people with
pasts, and writers, and so forth, is most damaging. There's far too much
of it, and it ought to be stopped. It may be tolerated for a few cranks,
or silly young men, and these new women, but for Eustace--" Lady
Casterley paused again, and her fingers pinched Barbara's arm, "or for
you--there's only one sort of marriage possible. As for Eustace, I shall
speak to this good lady, and see that he doesn't get entangled further."
Absorbed in the intensity of her purpose, she did not observe a peculiar
little smile playing round Barbara's lips.
"You had better speak to Nature, too, Granny!"
Lady Casterley stopped short, and looked up in her granddaughter's face.
"Now what do you mean by that?" she said "Tell me!"
But noticing that Barbara's lips had closed tightly, she gave her arm a
hard--if unintentional-pinch, and walked on.
CHAPTER XII
Lady Casterley's rather malicious diagnosis of Audrey Noel was correct.
The unencumbered woman was up and in her garden when Barbara and her
grandmother appeared at the Wicket gate; but being near the lime-tree at
the far end she did not hear the rapid colloquy which passed between
them.
"You are going to be good, Granny?"
"As to that--it will depend."
"You promised."
"H'm!"
Lady Casterley could not possibly have provided herself with a better
introduction than Barbara, whom Mrs. Noel never met without the sheer
pleasure felt by a sympathetic woman when she sees embodied in someone
else that 'joy in life' which Fate has not permitted to herself.
She came forward with her head a little on one side, a trick of hers not
at all affected, and stood waiting.
The unembarrassed Barbara began at once:
"We've just had an encounter with a bull. This is my grandmother, Lady
Casterley."
The little old lady's demeanour, confronted with this very pretty face
and figure was a thought less autocratic and abrupt than usual. Her
shrewd eyes saw at once that she had no common adventuress to deal with.
She was woman of the world enough, too, to know that 'birth' was not what
it had been in her young days, that even money was rather rococo, and
that good looks, manners, and a knowledge of literature, art, and music
(and this woman looked like one of that sort), were often considered
socially more valuable. She was therefore both wary and affable.
"How do you do?" she said. "I have heard of you. May we sit down for a
minute in your garden? The bull was a wretch!"
But even in speaking, she was uneasily conscious that Mrs. Noel's clear
eyes were seeing very well what she had come for. The look in them
indeed was almost cynical; and in spite of her sympathetic murmurs, she
did not somehow seem to believe in the bull. This was disconcerting.
Why had Barbara condescended to mention the wretched brute? And she
decided to take him by the horns.
"Babs," she said, "go to the Inn and order me a 'fly.' I shall drive
back, I feel very shaky," and, as Mrs. Noel offered to send her maid, she
added:
"No, no, my granddaughter will go."
Barbara having departed with a quizzical look, Lady Casterley patted the
rustic seat, and said:
"Do come and sit down, I want to talk to you:"
Mrs. Noel obeyed. And at once Lady Casterley perceived that "she had a
most difficult task before her. She had not expected a woman with whom
one could take no liberties. Those clear dark eyes, and that soft,
perfectly graceful manner--to a person so 'sympathetic' one should be
able to say anything, and--one couldn't! It was awkward. And suddenly
she noticed that Mrs. Noel was sitting perfectly upright, as
upright--more upright, than she was herself. A bad, sign--a very bad
sign! Taking out her handkerchief, she put it to her lips.
"I suppose you think," she said, "that we were not chased by a bull."
"I am sure you were."
"Indeed! Ah! But I've something else to talk to you about."
Mrs. Noel's face quivered back, as a flower might when it was going to be
plucked; and again Lady Casterley put her handkerchief to her lips. This
time she rubbed them hard. There was nothing to come off; to do so,
therefore, was a satisfaction.
"I am an old woman," she said, "and you mustn't mind what I say."
Mrs. Noel did not answer, but looked straight at her visitor; to whom it
seemed suddenly that this was another person. What was it about that
face, staring at her! In a weird way it reminded her of a child that one
had hurt--with those great eyes and that soft hair, and the mouth thin,
in a line, all of a sudden. And as if it had been jerked out of her, she
said:
"I don't want to hurt you, my dear. It's about my grandson, of course."
But Mrs. Noel made neither sign nor motion; and the feeling of irritation
which so rapidly attacks the old when confronted by the unexpected, came
to Lady Casterley's aid.
"His name," she said, "is being coupled with yours in a way that's doing
him a great deal of harm. You don't wish to injure him, I'm sure."
Mrs. Noel shook her head, and Lady Casterley went on:
"I don't know what they're not saying since the evening your friend Mr.
Courtier hurt his knee. Miltoun has been most unwise. You had not
perhaps realized that."
Mrs. Noel's answer was bitterly distinct:
"I didn't know anyone was sufficiently interested in my doings."
Lady Casterley suffered a gesture of exasperation to escape her.
"Good heavens!" she said; "every common person is interested in a woman
whose position is anomalous. Living alone as you do, and not a widow,
you're fair game for everybody, especially in the country."
Mrs. Noel's sidelong glance, very clear and cynical, seemed to say: "Even
for you."
"I am not entitled to ask your story," Lady Casterley went on, "but if
you make mysteries you must expect the worst interpretation put on them.
My grandson is a man of the highest principle; he does not see things
with the eyes of the world, and that should have made you doubly careful
not to compromise him, especially at a time like this."
Mrs. Noel smiled. This smile startled Lady Casterley; it seemed, by
concealing everything, to reveal depths of strength and subtlety. Would
the woman never show her hand? And she said abruptly:
"Anything serious, of course, is out of the question."
"Quite."
That word, which of all others seemed the right one, was spoken so that
Lady Casterley did not know in the least what it meant. Though
occasionally employing irony, she detested it in others. No woman should
be allowed to use it as a weapon! But in these days, when they were so
foolish as to want votes, one never knew what women would be at. This
particular woman, however, did not look like one of that sort. She was
feminine--very feminine--the sort of creature that spoiled men by being
too nice to them. And though she had come determined to find out all
about everything and put an end to it, she saw Barbara re-entering the
wicket gate with considerable relief.
"I am ready to walk home now," she said. And getting up from the rustic
seat, she made Mrs. Noel a satirical little bow.
"Thank you for letting me rest. Give me your arm, child."
Barbara gave her arm, and over her shoulder threw a swift smile at Mrs.
Noel, who did not answer it, but stood looking quietly after them, her
eyes immensely dark and large.
Out in the lane Lady Casterley walked on, very silent, digesting her
emotions.
"What about the 'fly,' Granny?"
"What 'fly'?"
"The one you told me to order."
"You don't mean to say that you took me seriously?"
"No," said Barbara.
"Ha!"
They proceeded some little way farther before Lady Casterley said
suddenly:
"She is deep."
"And dark," said Barbara. "I am afraid you were not good!"
Lady Casterley glanced upwards.
"I detest this habit," she said, "amongst you young people, of taking
nothing seriously. Not even bulls," she added, with a grim smile.
Barbara threw back her head and sighed.
"Nor 'flys,'" she said.
Lady Casterley saw that she had closed her eyes and opened her lips. And
she thought:
"She's a very beautiful girl. I had no idea she was so beautiful--but
too big!" And she added aloud:
"Shut your mouth! You will get one down!"
They spoke no more till they had entered the avenue; then Lady Casterley
said sharply:
"Who is this coming down the drive?"
"Mr. Courtier, I think."
"What does he mean by it, with that leg?"
"He is coming to talk to you, Granny."
Lady Casterley stopped short.
"You are a cat," she said; "a sly cat. Now mind, Babs, I won't have it!"
"No, darling," murmured Barbara; "you shan't have it--I'll take him off
your hands."
"What does your mother mean," stammered Lady Casterley, "letting you grow
up like this! You're as bad as she was at your age!"
"Worse!" said Barbara. "I dreamed last night that I could fly!"
"If you try that," said Lady Casterley grimly, "you'll soon come to
grief. Good-morning, sir; you ought to be in bed!"
Courtier raised his hat.
"Surely it is not for me to be where you are not!" And he added gloomily:
"The war scare's dead!"
"Ah!" said Lady Casterley: "your occupation's gone then. You'll go back
to London now, I suppose." Looking suddenly at Barbara she saw that the
girl's eyes were half-closed, and that she was smiling; it seemed to Lady
Casterley too or was it fancy?--that she shook her head.
CHAPTER XIII
Thanks to Lady Valleys, a patroness of birds, no owl was ever shot on the
Monkland Court estate, and those soft-flying spirits of the dusk hooted
and hunted, to the great benefit of all except the creeping voles. By
every farm, cottage, and field, they passed invisible, quartering the
dark air. Their voyages of discovery stretched up on to the moor as far
as the wild stone man, whose origin their wisdom perhaps knew. Round
Audrey Noel's cottage they were as thick as thieves, for they had just
there two habitations in a long, old, holly-grown wall, and almost seemed
to be guarding the mistress of that thatched dwelling--so numerous were
their fluttering rushes, so tenderly prolonged their soft sentinel
callings. Now that the weather was really warm, so that joy of life was
in the voles, they found those succulent creatures of an extraordinarily
pleasant flavour, and on them each pair was bringing up a family of
exceptionally fine little owls, very solemn, with big heads, bright large
eyes, and wings as yet only able to fly downwards. There was scarcely
any hour from noon of the day (for some of them had horns) to the small
sweet hours when no one heard them, that they forgot to salute the very
large, quiet, wingless owl whom they could espy moving about by day above
their mouse-runs, or preening her white and sometimes blue and sometimes
grey feathers morning and evening in a large square hole high up in the
front wall. And they could not understand at all why no swift
depredating graces nor any habit of long soft hooting belonged to that
lady-bird.
On the evening of the day when she received that early morning call, as
soon as dusk had fallen, wrapped in a long thin cloak, with black lace
over her dark hair, Audrey Noel herself fluttered out into the lanes, as
if to join the grave winged hunters of the invisible night. Those far,
continual sounds, not stilled in the country till long after the sun
dies, had but just ceased from haunting the air, where the late May-scent
clung as close as fragrance clings to a woman's robe. There was just the
barking of a dog, the boom of migrating chafers, the song of the stream,
and of the owls, to proclaim the beating in the heart of this sweet
Night. Nor was there any light by which Night's face could be seen; it
was hidden, anonymous; so that when a lamp in a cottage threw a blink
over the opposite bank, it was as if some wandering painter had wrought a
picture of stones and leaves on the black air, framed it in purple, and
left it hanging. Yet, if it could only have been come at, the Night was
as full of emotion as this woman who wandered, shrinking away against the
banks if anyone passed, stopping to cool her hot face with the dew on the
ferns, walking swiftly to console her warm heart. Anonymous Night
seeking for a symbol could have found none better than this errant
figure, to express its hidden longings, the fluttering, unseen rushes of
its dark wings, and all its secret passion of revolt against its own
anonymity....
At Monkland Court, save for little Ann, the morning passed but dumbly,
everyone feeling that something must be done, and no one knowing what.
At lunch, the only allusion to the situation had been Harbinger's
inquiry:
"When does Miltoun return?"
He had wired, it seemed, to say that he was motoring down that night.
"The sooner the better," Sir William murmured: "we've still a fortnight."
But all had felt from the tone in which he spoke these words, how serious
was the position in the eyes of that experienced campaigner.
What with the collapse of the war scare, and this canard about Mrs. Noel,
there was indeed cause for alarm.
The afternoon post brought a letter from Lord Valleys marked Express.
Lady Valleys opened it with a slight grimace, which deepened as she read.
Her handsome, florid face wore an expression of sadness seldom seen
there. There was, in fact, more than a touch of dignity in her reception
of the unpalatable news.
"Eustace declares his intention of marrying this Mrs. Noel"--so ran her
husband's letter--"I know, unfortunately, of no way in which I can
prevent him. If you can discover legitimate means of dissuasion, it
would be well to use them. My dear, it's the very devil."
It was the very devil! For, if Miltoun had already made up his mind to
marry her, without knowledge of the malicious rumour, what would not be
his determination now? And the woman of the world rose up in Lady
Valleys. This marriage must not come off. It was contrary to almost
every instinct of one who was practical not only by character, but by
habit of life and training. Her warm and full-blooded nature had a
sneaking sympathy with love and pleasure, and had she not been practical,
she might have found this side of her a serious drawback to the main
tenor of a life so much in view of the public eye. Her consciousness of
this danger in her own case made her extremely alive to the risks of an
undesirable connection--especially if it were a marriage--to any public
man. At the same time the mother-heart in her was stirred. Eustace had
never been so deep in her affection as Bertie, still he was her
first-born; and in face of news which meant that he was lost to her--for
this must indeed be 'the marriage of two minds' (or whatever that
quotation was)--she felt strangely jealous of a woman, who had won her
son's love, when she herself had never won it. The aching of this
jealousy gave her face for a moment almost a spiritual expression, then
passed away into impatience. Why should he marry her? Things could be
arranged. People spoke of it already as an illicit relationship; well
then, let people have what they had invented. If the worst came to the
worst, this was not the only constituency in England; and a dissolution
could not be far off. Better anything than a marriage which would
handicap him all his life! But would it be so great a handicap? After
all, beauty counted for much! If only her story were not too
conspicuous! But what was her story? Not to know it was absurd! That
was the worst of people who were not in Society, it was so difficult to
find out! And there rose in her that almost brutal resentment, which
ferments very rapidly in those who from their youth up have been hedged
round with the belief that they and they alone are the whole of the
world. In this mood Lady Valleys passed the letter to her daughters.
They read, and in turn handed it to Bertie, who in silence returned it to
his mother.
But that evening, in the billiard-room, having manoeuvred to get him to
herself, Barbara said to Courtier:
"I wonder if you will answer me a question, Mr. Courtier?"
"If I may, and can."
Her low-cut dress was of yew-green, with, little threads of flame-colour,
matching her hair, so that there was about her a splendour of darkness
and whiteness and gold, almost dazzling; and she stood very still,
leaning back against the lighter green of the billiard-table, grasping
its edge so tightly that the smooth strong backs of her hands quivered.
"We have just heard that Miltoun is going to ask Mrs. Noel to marry him.
People are never mysterious, are they, without good reason? I wanted you
to tell me--who is she?"
"I don't think I quite grasp the situation," murmured Courtier. "You
said--to marry him?"
Seeing that she had put out her hand, as if begging for the truth, he
added: "How can your brother marry her--she's married!"
"Oh!"
"I'd no idea you didn't know that much."
"We thought there was a divorce."
The expression of which mention has been made--that peculiar white-hot
sardonically jolly look--visited Courtier's face at once. "Hoist with
their own petard! The usual thing. Let a pretty woman live alone--the
tongues of men will do the rest."
"It was not so bad as that," said Barbara dryly; "they said she had
divorced her husband."
Caught out thus characteristically riding past the hounds Courtier bit
his lips.
"You had better hear the story now. Her father was a country parson, and
a friend of my father's; so that I've known her from a child. Stephen
Lees Noel was his curate. It was a 'snap' marriage--she was only twenty,
and had met hardly any men. Her father was ill and wanted to see her
settled before he died. Well, she found out almost directly, like a good
many other people, that she'd made an utter mistake."
Barbara came a little closer.
"What was the man like?"
"Not bad in his way, but one of those narrow, conscientious pig-headed
fellows who make the most trying kind of husband--bone egoistic. A
parson of that type has no chance at all. Every mortal thing he has to
do or say helps him to develop his worst points. The wife of a man like
that's no better than a slave. She began to show the strain of it at
last; though she's the sort who goes on till she snaps. It took him four
years to realize. Then, the question was, what were they to do? He's a
very High Churchman, with all their feeling about marriage; but luckily
his pride was wounded. Anyway, they separated two years ago; and there
she is, left high and dry. People say it was her fault. She ought to
have known her own mind--at twenty! She ought to have held on and hidden
it up somehow. Confound their thick-skinned charitable souls, what do
they know of how a sensitive woman suffers? Forgive me, Lady Barbara--I
get hot over this." He was silent; then seeing her eyes fixed on him,
went on: "Her mother died when she was born, her father soon after her
marriage. She's enough money of her own, luckily, to live on quietly.
As for him, he changed his parish and runs one somewhere in the Midlands.
One's sorry for the poor devil, too, of course! They never see each
other; and, so far as I know, they don't correspond. That, Lady Barbara,
is the simple history."
Barbara, said, "Thank you," and turned away; and he heard her mutter:
"What a shame!"
But he could not tell whether it was Mrs. Noel's fate, or the husband's
fate, or the thought of Miltoun that had moved her to those words.
She puzzled him by her self-possession, so almost hard, her way of
refusing to show feeling.' Yet what a woman she would make if the drying
curse of high-caste life were not allowed to stereotype and shrivel her!
If enthusiasm were suffered to penetrate and fertilize her soul! She
reminded him of a great tawny lily. He had a vision of her, as that
flower, floating, freed of roots and the mould of its cultivated soil, in
the liberty of the impartial air. What a passionate and noble thing she
might become! What radiance and perfume she would exhale! A spirit
Fleur-de-Lys! Sister to all the noble flowers of light that inhabited
the wind!
Leaning in the deep embrasure of his window, he looked at anonymous
Night. He could hear the owls hoot, and feel a heart beating out there
somewhere in the darkness, but there came no answer to his wondering.
Would she--this great tawny lily of a girl--ever become unconscious of
her environment, not in manner merely, but in the very soul, so that she
might be just a woman, breathing, suffering, loving, and rejoicing with
the poet soul of all mankind? Would she ever be capable of riding out
with the little company of big hearts, naked of advantage? Courtier had
not been inside a church for twenty years, having long felt that he must
not enter the mosques of his country without putting off the shoes of
freedom, but he read the Bible, considering it a very great poem. And
the old words came haunting him: 'Verily I say unto you, It is harder for
a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
the kingdom of Heaven.' And now, looking into the Night, whose darkness
seemed to hold the answer to all secrets, he tried to read the riddle of
this girl's future, with which there seemed so interwoven that larger
enigma, how far the spirit can free itself, in this life, from the matter
that encompasseth.
The Night whispered suddenly, and low down, as if rising from the sea,
came the moon, dropping a wan robe of light till she gleamed out nude
against the sky-curtain. Night was no longer anonymous. There in the
dusky garden the statue of Diana formed slowly before his eyes, and
behind her--as it were, her temple--rose the tall spire of the cypress
tree.
CHAPTER XIV
A copy of the Bucklandbury News, containing an account of his evening
adventure, did not reach Miltoun till he was just starting on his return
journey. It came marked with blue pencil together with a note.
"MY DEAR EUSTACE,
"The enclosed--however unwarranted and impudent--requires attention. But
we shall do nothing till you come back.
"Yours ever,
"WILLIAM SHROPTON."
The effect on Miltoun might perhaps have been different had he not been
so conscious of his intention to ask Audrey Noel to be his wife; but in
any circumstances it is doubtful whether he would have done more than
smile, and tear the paper up. Truly that sort of thing had so little
power to hurt or disturb him personally, that he was incapable of seeing
how it could hurt or disturb others. If those who read it were affected,
so much the worse for them. He had a real, if unobtrusive, contempt for
groundlings, of whatever class; and it never entered his head to step an
inch out of his course in deference to their vagaries. Nor did it come
home to him that Mrs. Noel, wrapped in the glamour which he cast about
her, could possibly suffer from the meanness of vulgar minds. Shropton's
note, indeed, caused him the more annoyance of those two documents. It
was like his brother-in-law to make much of little!
He hardly dozed at all during his swift journey through the sleeping
country; nor when he reached his room at Monkland did he go to bed. He
had the wonderful, upborne feeling of man on the verge of achievement.
His spirit and senses were both on fire--for that was the quality of this
woman, she suffered no part of him to sleep, and he was glad of her
exactions.
He drank some tea; went out, and took a path up to the moor. It was not
yet eight o'clock when he reached the top of the nearest tor. And there,
below him, around, and above, was a land and sky transcending even his
exaltation. It was like a symphony of great music; or the nobility of a
stupendous mind laid bare; it was God up there, in His many moods.
Serenity was spread in the middle heavens, blue, illimitable, and along
to the East, three huge clouds, like thoughts brooding over the destinies
below, moved slowly toward the sea, so that great shadows filled the
valleys. And the land that lay under all the other sky was gleaming, and
quivering with every colour, as it were, clothed with the divine smile.
The wind, from the North, whereon floated the white birds of the smaller
clouds, had no voice, for it was above barriers, utterly free. Before
Miltoun, turning to this wind, lay the maze of the lower lands, the misty
greens, rose pinks, and browns of the fields, and white and grey dots and
strokes of cottages and church towers, fading into the blue veil of
distance, confined by a far range of hills. Behind him there was nothing
but the restless surface of the moor, coloured purplish-brown. On that
untamed sea of graven wildness could be seen no ship of man, save one, on
the far horizon--the grim hulk, Dartmoor Prison. There was no sound, no
scent, and it seemed to Miltoun as if his spirit had left his body, and
become part of the solemnity of God. Yet, as he stood there, with his
head bared, that strange smile which haunted him in moments of deep
feeling, showed that he had not surrendered to the Universal, that his
own spirit was but being fortified, and that this was the true and secret
source of his delight. He lay down in a scoop of the stones. The sun
entered there, but no wind, so that a dry sweet scent exuded from the
young shoots of heather. That warmth and perfume crept through the
shield of his spirit, and stole into his blood; ardent images rose before
him, the vision of an unending embrace. Out of an embrace sprang Life,
out of that the World was made, this World, with its innumerable forms,
and natures--no two alike! And from him and her would spring forms to
take their place in the great pattern. This seemed wonderful, and
right-for they would be worthy forms, who would hand on those traditions
which seemed to him so necessary and great. And then there broke on him
one of those delirious waves of natural desire, against which he had so
often fought, so often with great pain conquered. He got up, and ran
downhill, leaping over the stones, and the thicker clumps of heather.
Audrey Noel, too, had been early astir, though she had gone late enough
to bed. She dressed languidly, but very carefully, being one of those
women who put on armour against Fate, because they are proud, and dislike
the thought that their sufferings should make others suffer; because,
too, their bodies are to them as it were sacred, having been given them
in trust, to cause delight. When she had finished, she looked at herself
in the glass rather more distrustfully than usual. She felt that her
sort of woman was at a discount in these days, and being sensitive, she
was never content either with her appearance, or her habits. But, for
all that, she went on behaving in unsatisfactory ways, because she
incorrigibly loved to look as charming as she could; and even if no one
were going to see her, she never felt that she looked charming enough.
She was--as Lady Casterley had shrewdly guessed--the kind of woman who
spoils men by being too nice to them; of no use to those who wish women
to assert themselves; yet having a certain passive stoicism, very
disconcerting. With little or no power of initiative, she would do what
she was set to do with a thoroughness that would shame an initiator;
temperamentally unable to beg anything of anybody, she required love as a
plant requires water; she could give herself completely, yet remain oddly
incorruptible; in a word, hopeless, and usually beloved of those who
thought her so.
With all this, however, she was not quite what is called a 'sweet
woman--a phrase she detested--for there was in her a queer vein of gentle
cynicism. She 'saw' with extraordinary clearness, as if she had been
born in Italy and still carried that clear dry atmosphere about her soul.
She loved glow and warmth and colour; such mysticism as she felt was
pagan; and she had few aspirations--sufficient to her were things as they
showed themselves to be.
This morning, when she had made herself smell of geraniums, and fastened
all the small contrivances that hold even the best of women together, she
went downstairs to her little dining-room, set the spirit lamp going, and
taking up her newspaper, stood waiting to make tea.
It was the hour of the day most dear to her. If the dew had been brushed
off her life, it was still out there every morning on the face of Nature,
and on the faces of her flowers; there was before her all the pleasure of
seeing how each of those little creatures in the garden had slept; how
many children had been born since the Dawn; who was ailing, and needed
attention. There was also the feeling, which renews itself every morning
in people who live lonely lives, that they are not lonely, until, the day
wearing on, assures them of the fact. Not that she was idle, for she had
obtained through Courtier the work of reviewing music in a woman's paper,
for which she was intuitively fitted. This, her flowers, her own music,
and the affairs of certain families of cottagers, filled nearly all her
time. And she asked no better fate than to have every minute occupied,
having that passion for work requiring no initiation, which is natural to
the owners of lazy minds.
Suddenly she dropped her newspaper, went to the bowl of flowers on the
breakfast-table, and plucked forth two stalks of lavender; holding them
away from her, she went out into the garden, and flung them over the
wall.
This strange immolation of those two poor sprigs, born so early, gathered
and placed before her with such kind intention by her maid, seemed of all
acts the least to be expected of one who hated to hurt people's feelings,
and whose eyes always shone at the sight of flowers. But in truth the
smell of lavender--that scent carried on her husband's handkerchief and
clothes--still affected her so strongly that she could not bear to be in
a room with it. As nothing else did, it brought before her one, to live
with whom had slowly become torture. And freed by that scent, the whole
flood of memory broke in on her. The memory of three years when her
teeth had been set doggedly, on her discovery that she was chained to
unhappiness for life; the memory of the abrupt end, and of her creeping
away to let her scorched nerves recover. Of how during the first year of
this release which was not freedom, she had twice changed her abode, to
get away from her own story--not because she was ashamed of it, but
because it reminded her of wretchedness. Of how she had then come to
Monkland, where the quiet life had slowly given her elasticity again.
And then of her meeting with Miltoun; the unexpected delight of that
companionship; the frank enjoyment of the first four months. And she
remembered all her secret rejoicing, her silent identification of another
life with her own, before she acknowledged or even suspected love. And
just three weeks ago now, helping to tie up her roses, he had touched
her, and she had known. But even then, until the night of Courtier's
accident, she had not dared to realize. More concerned now for him than
for herself, she asked herself a thousand times if she had been to blame.
She had let him grow fond of her, a woman out of court, a dead woman! An
unpardonable sin! Yet surely that depended on what she was prepared to
give! And she was frankly ready to give everything, and ask for nothing.
He knew her position, he had told her that he knew. In her love for him
she gloried, would continue to glory; would suffer for it without regret.
Miltoun was right in believing that newspaper gossip was incapable of
hurting her, though her reasons for being so impervious were not what he
supposed. She was not, like him, secured from pain because such
insinuations about the private affairs of others were mean and vulgar and
beneath notice; it had not as yet occurred to her to look at the matter
in so lofty and general a light; she simply was not hurt, because she was
already so deeply Miltoun's property in spirit, that she was almost glad
that they should assign him all the rest of her. But for Miltoun's sake
she was disturbed to the soul. She had tarnished his shield in the eyes
of men; and (for she was oddly practical, and saw things in very clear
proportion) perhaps put back his career, who knew how many years!
She sat down to drink her tea. Not being a crying woman, she suffered
quietly. She felt that Miltoun would be coming to her. She did not know
at all what she should say when he did come. He could not care for her
so much as she cared for him! He was a man; men soon forget! Ah! but he
was not like most men. One could not look at his eyes without feeling
that he could suffer terribly! In all this her own reputation concerned
her not at all. Life, and her clear way of looking at things, had rooted
in her the conviction that to a woman the preciousness of her reputation
was a fiction invented by men entirely for man's benefit; a second-hand
fetish insidiously, inevitably set-up by men for worship, in novels,
plays, and law-courts. Her instinct told her that men could not feel
secure in the possession of their women unless they could believe that
women set tremendous store by sexual reputation. What they wanted to
believe, that they did believe! But she knew otherwise. Such
great-minded women as she had met or read of had always left on her the
impression that reputation for them was a matter of the spirit, having
little to do with sex. From her own feelings she knew that reputation,
for a simple woman, meant to stand well in the eyes of him or her whom
she loved best. For worldly women--and there were so many kinds of
those, besides the merely fashionable--she had always noted that its
value was not intrinsic, but commercial; not a crown of dignity, but just
a marketable asset. She did not dread in the least what people might say
of her friendship with Miltoun; nor did she feel at all that her
indissoluble marriage forbade her loving him. She had secretly felt free
as soon as she had discovered that she had never really loved her
husband; she had only gone on dutifully until the separation, from sheer
passivity, and because it was against her nature to cause pain to anyone.
The man who was still her husband was now as dead to her as if he had
never been born. She could not marry again, it was true; but she could
and did love. If that love was to be starved and die away, it would not
be because of any moral scruples.
She opened her paper languidly; and almost the first words she read,
under the heading of Election News, were these:
'Apropos of the outrage on Mr. Courtier, we are requested to state that
the lady who accompanied Lord Miltoun to the rescue of that gentleman was
Mrs. Lees Noel, wife of the Rev. Stephen Lees Noel, vicar of Clathampton,
Warwickshire.'
This dubious little daub of whitewash only brought a rather sad smile to
her lips. She left her tea, and went out into the air. There at the
gate was Miltoun coming in. Her heart leaped. But she went forward
quietly, and greeted him with cast-down eyes, as if nothing were out of
the ordinary.
CHAPTER XV
Exaltation had not left Miltoun. His sallow face was flushed, his eyes
glowed with a sort of beauty; and Audrey Noel who, better than most
women, could read what was passing behind a face, saw those eyes with the
delight of a moth fluttering towards a lamp. But in a very unemotional
voice she said:
"So you have come to breakfast. How nice of you!"
It was not in Miltoun to observe the formalities of attack. Had he been
going to fight a duel there would have been no preliminary, just a look,
a bow, and the swords crossed. So in this first engagement of his with
the soul of a woman!
He neither sat down nor suffered her to sit, but stood looking intently
into her face, and said:
"I love you."
Now that it had come, with this disconcerting swiftness, she was
strangely calm, and unashamed. The elation of knowing for sure that she
was loved was like a wand waving away all tremors, stilling them to
sweetness. Since nothing could take away that knowledge, it seemed that
she could never again be utterly unhappy. Then, too, in her nature, so
deeply, unreasoningly incapable of perceiving the importance of any
principle but love, there was a secret feeling of assurance, of triumph.
He did love her! And she, him! Well! And suddenly panic-stricken, lest
he should take back those words, she put her hand up to his breast, and
said:
"And I love you."
The feel of his arms round her, the strength and passion of that moment,
were so terribly sweet, that she died to thought, just looking up at him,
with lips parted and eyes darker with the depth of her love than he had
ever dreamed that eyes could be. The madness of his own feeling kept him
silent. And they stood there, so merged in one another that they knew
and cared nothing for any other mortal thing. It was very still in the
room; the roses and carnations in the lustre bowl, seeming to know that
their mistress was caught up into heaven, had let their perfume steal
forth and occupy every cranny of the abandoned air; a hovering bee, too,
circled round the lovers' heads, scenting, it seemed, the honey in their
hearts.
It has been said that Miltoun's face was not unhandsome; for Audrey Noel
at this moment when his eyes were so near hers, and his lips touching
her, he was transfigured, and had become the spirit of all beauty. And
she, with heart beating fast against him, her eyes, half closing from
delight, and her hair asking to be praised with its fragrance, her cheeks
fainting pale with emotion, and her arms too languid with happiness to
embrace him--she, to him, was the incarnation of the woman that visits
dreams.
So passed that moment.
The bee ended it; who, impatient with flowers that hid their honey so
deep, had entangled himself in Audrey's hair. And then, seeing that
words, those dreaded things, were on his lips, she tried to kiss them
back. But they came:
"When will you marry me?"
It all swayed a little. And with marvellous rapidity the whole position
started up before her. She saw, with preternatural insight, into its
nooks and corners. Something he had said one day, when they were talking
of the Church view of marriage and divorce, lighted all up. So he had
really never known about her! At this moment of utter sickness, she was
saved from fainting by her sense of humour--her cynicism. Not content to
let her be, people's tongues had divorced her; he had believed them! And
the crown of irony was that he should want to marry her, when she felt so
utterly, so sacredly his, to do what he liked with sans forms or
ceremonies. A surge of bitter feeling against the man who stood between
her and Miltoun almost made her cry out. That man had captured her
before she knew the world or her own soul, and she was tied to him, till
by some beneficent chance he drew his last breath when her hair was grey,
and her eyes had no love light, and her cheeks no longer grew pale when
they were kissed; when twilight had fallen, and the flowers, and bees no
longer cared for her.
It was that feeling, the sudden revolt of the desperate prisoner, which
steeled her to put out her hand, take up the paper, and give it to
Miltoun.
When he had read the little paragraph, there followed one of those
eternities which last perhaps two minutes.
He said, then:
"It's true, I suppose?" And, at her silence, added: "I am sorry."
This queer dry saying was so much more terrible than any outcry, that she
remained, deprived even of the power of breathing, with her eyes still
fixed on Miltoun's face.
The smile of the old Cardinal had come up there, and was to her like a
living accusation. It seemed strange that the hum of the bees and flies
and the gentle swishing of the limetree should still go on outside,
insisting that there was a world moving and breathing apart from her, and
careless of her misery. Then some of her courage came back, and with it
her woman's mute power. It came haunting about her face, perfectly
still, about her lips, sensitive and drawn, about her eyes, dark, almost
mutinous under their arched brows. She stood, drawing him with silence
and beauty.
At last he spoke:
"I have made a foolish mistake, it seems. I believed you were free."
Her lips just moved for the words to pass: "I thought you knew. I never,
dreamed you would want to marry me."
It seemed to her natural that he should be thinking only of himself, but
with the subtlest defensive instinct, she put forward her own tragedy:
"I suppose I had got too used to knowing I was dead."
"Is there no release?"
"None. We have neither of us done wrong; besides with him, marriage
is--for ever."
"My God!"
She had broken his smile, which had been cruel without meaning to be
cruel; and with a smile of her own that was cruel too, she said:
"I didn't know that you believed in release either."
Then, as though she had stabbed herself in stabbing him, her face
quivered.
He looked at her now, conscious at last that she was suffering. And she
felt that he was holding himself in with all his might from taking her
again into his arms. Seeing this, the warmth crept back to her lips, and
a little light into her eyes, which she kept hidden from him. Though she
stood so proudly still, some wistful force was coming from her, as from a
magnet, and Miltoun's hands and arms and face twitched as though palsied.
This struggle, dumb and pitiful, seemed never to be coming to an end in
the little white room, darkened by the thatch of the verandah, and sweet
with the scent of pinks and of a wood fire just lighted somewhere out at
the back. Then, without a word, he turned and went out. She heard the
wicket gate swing to. He was gone.
CHAPTER XVI
Lord Denis was fly-fishing--the weather just too bright to allow the
little trout of that shallow, never silent stream to embrace with avidity
the small enticements which he threw in their direction. Nevertheless he
continued to invite them, exploring every nook of their watery pathway
with his soft-swishing line. In a rough suit and battered hat adorned
with those artificial and other flies, which infest Harris tweed, he
crept along among the hazel bushes and thorn-trees, perfectly happy.
Like an old spaniel, who has once gloried in the fetching of hares,
rabbits, and all manner of fowl, and is now glad if you will but throw a
stick for him, so one, who had been a famous fisher before the Lord, who
had harried the waters of Scotland and Norway, Florida and Iceland, now
pursued trout no bigger than sardines. The glamour of a thousand
memories hallowed the hours he thus spent by that brown water. He fished
unhasting, religious, like some good Catholic adding one more to the row
of beads already told, as though he would fish himself, gravely, without
complaint, into the other world. With each fish caught he experienced a
solemn satisfaction.
Though he would have liked Barbara with him that morning, he had only
looked at her once after breakfast in such a way that she could not see
him, and with a dry smile gone off by himself. Down by the stream it was
dappled, both cool and warm, windless; the trees met over the river, and
there were many stones, forming little basins which held up the ripple,
so that the casting of a fly required much cunning. This long dingle ran
for miles through the foot-growth of folding hills. It was beloved of
jays; but of human beings there were none, except a chicken-farmer's
widow, who lived in a house thatched almost to the ground, and made her
livelihood by directing tourists, with such cunning that they soon came
back to her for tea.
It was while throwing a rather longer line than usual to reach a little
dark piece of crisp water that Lord Dennis heard the swishing and
crackling of someone advancing at full speed. He frowned slightly,
feeling for the nerves of his fishes, whom he did not wish startled. The
invader was Miltoun, hot, pale, dishevelled, with a queer, hunted look on
his face. He stopped on seeing his great-uncle, and instantly assumed
the mask of his smile.
Lord Dennis was not the man to see what was not intended for him, and he
merely said:
"Well, Eustace!" as he might have spoken, meeting his nephew in the hall
of one of his London Clubs.
Miltoun, no less polite, murmured:
"Hope I haven't lost you anything."
Lord Dennis shook his head, and laying his rod on the bank, said:
"Sit down and have a chat, old fellow. You don't fish, I think?"
He had not, in the least, missed the suffering behind Miltoun's mask; his
eyes were still good, and there was a little matter of some twenty years'
suffering of his own on account of a woman--ancient history now--which
had left him quaintly sensitive, for an old man, to signs of suffering in
others.
Miltoun would not have obeyed that invitation from anyone else, but there
was something about Lord Dennis which people did not resist; his power
lay in a dry ironic suavity which could not but persuade people that
impoliteness was altogether too new and raw a thing to be indulged in.
The two sat side by side on the roots of trees. At first they talked a
little of birds, and then were dumb, so dumb that the invisible creatures
of the woods consulted together audibly. Lord Dennis broke that silence.
"This place," he said, "always reminds me of Mark Twain's writings--can't
tell why, unless it's the ever-greenness. I like the evergreen
philosophers, Twain and Meredith. There's no salvation except through
courage, though I never could stomach the 'strong man'--captain of his
soul, Henley and Nietzsche and that sort--goes against the grain with me.
What do you say, Eustace?"
"They meant well," answered Miltoun, "but they protested too much."
Lord Dennis moved his head in assent.
"To be captain of your soul!" continued Miltoun in a bitter voice; "it's
a pretty phrase!"
"Pretty enough," murmured Lord Dennis.
Miltoun looked at him.
"And suitable to you," he said.
"No, my dear," Lord Dennis answered dryly, "a long way off that, thank
God!"
His eyes were fixed intently on the place where a large trout had risen
in the stillest toffee-coloured pool. He knew that fellow, a
half-pounder at least, and his thoughts began flighting round the top of
his head, hovering over the various merits of the flies. His fingers
itched too, but he made no movement, and the ash-tree under which he sat
let its leaves tremble, as though in sympathy.
"See that hawk?" said Miltoun.
At a height more than level with the tops of the hills a buzzard hawk was
stationary in the blue directly over them. Inspired by curiosity at
their stillness, he was looking down to see whether they were edible; the
upcurved ends of his great wings flirted just once to show that he was
part of the living glory of the air--a symbol of freedom to men and
fishes.
Lord Dennis looked at his great-nephew. The boy--for what else was
thirty to seventy-six?--was taking it hard, whatever it might be, taking
it very hard! He was that sort--ran till he dropped. The worst kind to
help--the sort that made for trouble--that let things gnaw at them! And
there flashed before the old man's mind the image of Prometheus devoured
by the eagle. It was his favourite tragedy, which he still read
periodically, in the Greek, helping himself now and then out of his old
lexicon to the meaning of some word which had flown to Erebus. Yes,
Eustace was a fellow for the heights and depths!
He said quietly:
"You don't care to talk about it, I suppose?"
Miltoun shook his head, and again there was silence.
The buzzard hawk having seen them move, quivered his wings like a moth's,
and deserted that plane of air. A robin from the dappled warmth of a
mossy stone, was regarding them instead. There was another splash in the
pool.
Lord Dennis said gently:
"That fellow's risen twice; I believe he'd take a 'Wistman's treasure.'"
Extracting from his hat its latest fly, and binding it on, he began
softly to swish his line.
"I shall have him yet!" he muttered. But Miltoun had stolen away....
The further piece of information about Mrs. Noel, already known by
Barbara, and diffused by the 'Bucklandbury News', had not become common
knowledge at the Court till after Lord Dennis had started out to fish.
In combination with the report that Miltoun had arrived and gone out
without breakfast, it had been received with mingled feelings. Bertie,
Harbinger, and Shropton, in a short conclave, after agreeing that from
the point of view of the election it was perhaps better than if she had
been a divorcee, were still inclined to the belief that no time was to be
lost--in doing what, however, they were unable to determine. Apart from
the impossibility of knowing how a fellow like Miltoun would take the
matter, they were faced with the devilish subtlety of all situations to
which the proverb 'Least said, soonest mended' applies. They were in the
presence of that awe-inspiring thing, the power of scandal. Simple
statements of simple facts, without moral drawn (to which no legal
exception could be taken) laid before the public as pieces of interesting
information, or at the worst exposed in perfect good faith, lest the
public should blindly elect as their representative one whose private
life might not stand the inspection of daylight--what could be more
justifiable! And yet Miltoun's supporters knew that this simple
statement of where he spent his evenings had a poisonous potency, through
its power of stimulating that side of the human imagination the most
easily excited. They recognized only too well, how strong was a certain
primitive desire, especially in rural districts, by yielding to which the
world was made to go, and how remarkably hard it, was not to yield to it,
and how interesting and exciting to see or hear of others yielding to it,
and how (though here, of course, men might differ secretly) reprehensible
of them to do so! They recognized, too well, how a certain kind of
conscience would appreciate this rumour; and how the puritans would lick
their lengthened chops. They knew, too, how irresistible to people of
any imagination at all, was the mere combination of a member of a class,
traditionally supposed to be inclined to having what it wanted, with a
lady who lived alone! As Harbinger said: It was really devilish awkward!
For, to take any notice of it would be to make more people than ever
believe it true. And yet, that it was working mischief, they felt by the
secret voice in their own souls, telling them that they would have
believed it if they had not known better. They hung about, waiting for
Miltoun to come in.
The news was received by Lady Valleys with a sigh of intense relief, and
the remark that it was probably another lie. When Barbara confirmed it,
she only said: "Poor Eustace!" and at once wrote off to her husband to
say that 'Anonyma' was still married, so that the worst fortunately could
not happen.
Miltoun came in to lunch, but from his face and manner nothing could be
guessed. He was a thought more talkative than usual, and spoke of
Brabrook's speech--some of which he had heard. He looked at Courtier
meaningly, and after lunch said to him:
"Will you come round to my den?"
In that room, the old withdrawing-room of the Elizabethan wing--where
once had been the embroideries, tapestries, and missals of beruffled
dames were now books, pamphlets, oak-panels, pipes, fencing gear, and
along one wall a collection of Red Indian weapons and ornaments brought
back by Miltoun from the United States. High on the wall above these
reigned the bronze death-mask of a famous Apache Chief, cast from a
plaster taken of the face by a professor of Yale College, who had
declared it to be a perfect specimen of the vanishing race. That visage,
which had a certain weird resemblance to Dante's, presided over the room
with cruel, tragic stoicism. No one could look on it without feeling
that, there, the human will had been pushed to its farthest limits of
endurance.
Seeing it for the first time, Courtier said:
"Fine thing--that! Only wants a soul."
Miltoun nodded:
"Sit down," he said.
Courtier sat down.
There followed one of those silences in which men whose spirits, though
different, have a certain bigness in common--can say so much to one
another:
At last Miltoun spoke:
"I have been living in the clouds, it seems. You are her oldest friend.
The immediate question is how to make it easiest for her in face of this
miserable rumour!"
Not even Courtier himself could have put such whip-lash sting into the
word 'miserable.'
He answered:
"Oh! take no notice of that. Let them stew in their own juice. She
won't care."
Miltoun listened, not moving a muscle of his face.
"Your friends here," went on Courtier with a touch of contempt, "seem in
a flutter. Don't let them do anything, don't let them say a word. Treat
the thing as it deserves to be treated. It'll die."
Miltoun, however, smiled.
"I'm not sure," he said, "that the consequences will be as you think, but
I shall do as you say."
"As for your candidature, any man with a spark of generosity in his soul
will rally to you because of it."
"Possibly," said Miltoun. "It will lose me the election, for all that."
Then, dimly conscious that their last words had revealed the difference
of their temperaments and creeds, they stared at one another.
"No," said Courtier, "I never will believe that people can be so mean!"
"Until they are."
"Anyway, though we get at it in different ways, we agree."
Miltoun leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece, and shading his face with
his hand, said:
"You know her story. Is there any way out of that, for her?"
On Courtier's face was the look which so often came when he was speaking
for one of his lost causes--as if the fumes from a fire in his heart had
mounted to his head.
"Only the way," he answered calmly, "that I should take if I were you."
"And that?"
"The law into your own hands."
Miltoun unshaded his face. His gaze seemed to have to travel from an
immense distance before it reached Courtier. He answered:
"Yes, I thought you would say that."
CHAPTER XVII
When everything, that night, was quiet, Barbara, her hair hanging loose
outside her dressing gown, slipped from her room into the dim corridor.
With bare feet thrust into fur-crowned slippers which made no noise, she
stole along looking at door after door. Through a long Gothic window,
uncurtained, the mild moonlight was coming. She stopped just where that
moonlight fell, and tapped. There came no answer. She opened the door a
little way, and said:
"Are you asleep, Eusty?"
There still came no answer, and she went in.
The curtains were drawn, but a chink of moonlight peering through fell on
the bed. This was empty. Barbara stood uncertain, listening. In the
heart of that darkness there seemed to be, not sound, but, as it were,
the muffled soul of sound, a sort of strange vibration, like that of a
flame noiselessly licking the air. She put her hand to her heart, which
beat as though it would leap through the thin silk covering. From what
corner of the room was that mute tremor coming? Stealing to the window,
she parted the curtains, and stared back into the shadows. There, on the
far side, lying on the floor with his arms pressed tightly round his head
and his face to the wall, was Miltoun. Barbara let fall the curtains,
and stood breathless, with such a queer sensation in her breast as she
had never felt; a sense of something outraged-of scarred pride. It was
gone at once, in a rush of pity. She stepped forward quickly in the
darkness, was visited by fear, and stopped. He had seemed absolutely
himself all the evening. A little more talkative, perhaps, a little more
caustic than usual. And now to find him like this! There was no great
share of reverence in Barbara, but what little she possessed had always
been kept for her eldest brother. He had impressed her, from a child,
with his aloofness, and she had been proud of kissing him because he
never seemed to let anybody else do so. Those caresses, no doubt, had
the savour of conquest; his face had been the undiscovered land for her
lips. She loved him as one loves that which ministers to one's pride;
had for him, too, a touch of motherly protection, as for a doll that does
not get on too well with the other dolls; and withal a little
unaccustomed awe.
Dared she now plunge in on this private agony? Could she have borne that
anyone should see herself thus prostrate? He had not heard her, and she
tried to regain the door. But a board creaked; she heard him move, and
flinging away her fears, said: "It's me! Babs!" and dropped on her knees
beside him. If it had not been so pitch dark she could never have done
that. She tried at once to take his head into her arms, but could not
see it, and succeeded indifferently. She could but stroke his arm
continually, wondering whether he would hate her ever afterwards, and
blessing the darkness, which made it all seem as though it were not
happening, yet so much more poignant than if it had happened. Suddenly
she felt him slip away from her, and getting up, stole out. After the
darkness of that room, the corridor seemed full of grey filmy light, as
though dream-spiders had joined the walls with their cobwebs, in which
innumerable white moths, so tiny that they could not be seen, were
struggling. Small eerie noises crept about. A sudden frightened longing
for warmth, and light, and colour came to Barbara. She fled back to her
room. But she could not sleep. That terrible mute unseen vibration in
the unlighted room-like the noiseless licking of a flame at bland air;
the touch of Miltoun's hand, hot as fire against her cheek and neck; the
whole tremulous dark episode, possessed her through and through. Thus
had the wayward force of Love chosen to manifest itself to her in all its
wistful violence. At this fiat sight of the red flower of passion her
cheeks burned; up and down her, between the cool sheets, little hot cruel
shivers ran; she lay, wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling. She thought, of
the woman whom he so loved, and wondered if she too were lying sleepless,
flung down on a bare floor, trying to cool her forehead and lips against
a cold wall.
Not for hours did she fall asleep, and then dreamed of running
desperately through fields full of tall spiky asphodel-like flowers, and
behind her was running herself.
In the morning she dreaded to go down. Could she meet Miltoun now that
she knew of the passion in him, and he knew that she knew it? She had her
breakfast brought upstairs. Before she had finished Miltoun himself came
in. He looked more than usually self-contained, not to say ironic, and
only remarked: "If you're going to ride you might take this note for me
over to old Haliday at Wippincott." By his coming she knew that he was
saying all he ever meant to say about that dark incident. And
sympathizing completely with a reticence which she herself felt to be the
only possible way out for both of them, Barbara looked at him gratefully,
took the note and said: "All right!"
Then, after glancing once or twice round the room, Miltoun went away.
He left her restless, divested of the cloak 'of course,' in a strange
mood of questioning, ready as it were for the sight of the magpie wings
of Life, and to hear their quick flutterings. Talk jarred on her that
morning, with its sameness and attachment to the facts of the present and
the future, its essential concern with the world as it was-she avoided
all companionship on her ride. She wanted to be told of things that were
not, yet might be, to peep behind the curtain, and see the very spirit of
mortal happenings escaped from prison. And this was all so unusual with
Barbara, whose body was too perfect, too sanely governed by the flow of
her blood not to revel in the moment and the things thereof. She knew it
was unusual. After her ride she avoided lunch, and walked out into the
lanes. But about two o'clock, feeling very hungry, she went into a
farmhouse, and asked for milk. There, in the kitchen, like young
jackdaws in a row with their mouths a little open, were the three farm
boys, seated on a bench gripped to the alcove of the great fire-way,
munching bread and cheese. Above their heads a gun was hung, trigger
upwards, and two hams were mellowing in the smoke. At the feet of a
black-haired girl, who was slicing onions, lay a sheep dog of tremendous
age, with nose stretched out on paws, and in his little blue eyes a gleam
of approaching immortality. They all stared at, Barbara. And one of the
boys, whose face had the delightful look of him who loses all sense of
other things in what he is seeing at the moment, smiled, and continued
smiling, with sheer pleasure. Barbara drank her milk, and wandered out
again; passing through a gate at the bottom of a steep, rocky tor, she
sat down on a sun-warmed stone. The sunlight fell greedily on her here,
like an invisible swift hand touching her all over, and specially
caressing her throat and face. A very gentle wind, which dived over the
tor tops into the young fern; stole down at her, spiced with the fern
sap. All was warmth and peace, and only the cuckoos on the far thorn
trees--as though stationed by the Wistful Master himself--were there to
disturb her heart: But all the sweetness and piping of the day did not
soothe her. In truth, she could not have said what was the matter,
except that she felt so discontented, and as it were empty of all but a
sort of aching impatience with--what exactly she could not say. She had
that rather dreadful feeling of something slipping by which she could not
catch. It was so new to her to feel like that--for no girl was less given
to moods and repinings. And all the time a sort of contempt for this
soft and almost sentimental feeling made her tighten her lips and frown.
She felt distrustful and sarcastic towards a mood so utterly subversive
of that fetich 'Hardness,' to the unconscious worship of which she had
been brought up. To stand no sentiment or nonsense either in herself or
others was the first article of faith; not to slop-over anywhere. So
that to feel as she did was almost horrible to Barbara. Yet she could
not get rid of the sensation. With sudden recklessness she tried giving
herself up to it entirely. Undoing the scarf at her throat, she let the
air play on her bared neck, and stretched out her arms as if to hug the
wind to her; then, with a sigh, she got up, and walked on. And now she
began thinking of 'Anonyma'; turning her position over and over. The
idea that anyone young and beautiful should thus be clipped off in her
life, roused her impatient indignation. Let them try it with her! They
would soon see! For all her cultivated 'hardness,' Barbara really hated
anything to suffer. It seemed to her unnatural. She never went to that
hospital where Lady Valleys had a ward, nor to their summer camp for
crippled children, nor to help in their annual concert for sweated
workers, without a feeling of such vehement pity that it was like being
seized by the throat: Once, when she had been singing to them, the rows
of wan, pinched faces below had been too much for her; she had broken
down, forgotten her words, lost memory of the tune, and just ended her
performance with a smile, worth more perhaps to her audience than those
lost verses. She never came away from such sights and places without a
feeling of revolt amounting almost to rage; and she only continued to go
because she dimly knew that it was expected of her not to turn her back
on such things, in her section of Society.
But it was not this feeling which made her stop before Mrs. Noel's
cottage; nor was it curiosity. It was a quite simple desire to squeeze
her hand.
'Anonyma' seemed taking her trouble as only those women who are no good
at self-assertion can take things--doing exactly as she would have done
if nothing had happened; a little paler than usual, with lips pressed
rather tightly together.
They neither of them spoke at first, but stood looking, not at each
other's faces, but at each other's breasts. At last Barbara stepped
forward impulsively and kissed her.
After that, like two children who kiss first, and then make acquaintance,
they stood apart, silent, faintly smiling. It had been given and
returned in real sweetness and comradeship, that kiss, for a sign of
womanhood making face against the world; but now that it was over, both
felt a little awkward. Would that kiss have been given if Fate had been
auspicious? Was it not proof of misery? So Mrs. Noel's smile seemed
saying, and Barbara's smile unwillingly admitted. Perceiving that if
they talked it could only be about the most ordinary things, they began
speaking of music, flowers, and the queerness of bees' legs. But all the
time, Barbara, though seemingly unconscious, was noting with her smiling
eyes, the tiny movement's, by which one woman can tell what is passing in
another. She saw a little quiver tighten the corner of the lips, the
eyes suddenly grow large and dark, the thin blouse desperately rise and
fall. And her fancy, quickened by last night's memory, saw this woman
giving herself up to the memory of love in her thoughts. At this sight
she felt a little of that impatience which the conquering feel for the
passive, and perhaps just a touch of jealousy.
Whatever Miltoun decided, that would this woman accept! Such
resignation, while it simplified things, offended the part of Barbara
which rebelled against all inaction, all dictation, even from her
favourite brother. She said suddenly:
"Are you going to do nothing? Aren't you going to try and free yourself?
If I were in your position, I would never rest till I'd made them free
me."
But Mrs. Noel did not answer; and sweeping her glance from that crown of
soft dark hair, down the soft white figure, to the very feet, Barbara
cried:
"I believe you are a fatalist."
Soon after that, not knowing what more to say, she went away. But
walking home across the fields, where full summer was swinging on the
delicious air and there was now no bull but only red cows to crop short
the 'milk-maids' and buttercups, she suffered from this strange
revelation of the strength of softness and passivity--as though she had
seen in the white figure of 'Anonyma,' and heard in her voice something
from beyond, symbolic, inconceivable, yet real.
CHAPTER XVIII
Lord Valleys, relieved from official pressure by subsidence of the war
scare, had returned for a long week-end. To say that he had been
intensely relieved by the news that Mrs. Noel was not free, would be to
put it mildly. Though not old-fashioned, like his mother-in-law, in
regard to the mixing of the castes, prepared to admit that exclusiveness
was out of date, to pass over with a shrug and a laugh those numerous
alliances by which his order were renewing the sinews of war, and indeed
in his capacity of an expert, often pointing out the dangers of too much
in-breeding--yet he had a peculiar personal feeling about his own family,
and was perhaps a little extra sensitive because of Agatha; for Shropton,
though a good fellow, and extremely wealthy, was only a third baronet,
and had originally been made of iron. It was inadvisable to go outside
the inner circle where there was no material necessity for so doing. He
had not done it himself. Moreover there was a sentiment about these
things!
On the morning after his arrival, visiting the kennels before breakfast,
he stood chatting with his head man, and caressing the wet noses of his
two favourite pointers,--with something of the feeling of a boy let out
of school. Those pleasant creatures, cowering and quivering with pride
against his legs, and turning up at him their yellow Chinese eyes, gave
him that sense of warmth and comfort which visits men in the presence of
their hobbies. With this particular pair, inbred to the uttermost, he
had successfully surmounted a great risk. It was now touch and go
whether he dared venture on one more cross to the original strain, in the
hope of eliminating the last clinging of liver colour. It was a
gamble--and it was just that which rendered it so vastly interesting.
A small voice diverted his attention; he looked round and saw little Ann.
She had been in bed when he arrived the night before, and he was
therefore the newest thing about.
She carried in her arms a guinea-pig, and began at once:
"Grandpapa, Granny wants you. She's on the terrace; she's talking to Mr.
Courtier. I like him--he's a kind man. If I put my guinea-pig down,
will they bite it? Poor darling--they shan't! Isn't it a darling!"
Lord Valleys, twirling his moustache, regarded the guinea-pig without
favour; he had rather a dislike for all senseless kinds of beasts.
Pressing the guinea-pig between her hands, as it might be a concertina,
little Ann jigged it gently above the pointers, who, wrinkling horribly
their long noses, gazed upwards, fascinated.
"Poor darlings, they want it--don't they? Grandpapa"
"Yes."
"Do you think the next puppies will be spotted quite all over?"
Continuing to twirl his moustache, Lord Valleys answered:
"I think it is not improbable, Ann."
"Why do you like them spotted like that? Oh! they're kissing Sambo--I
must go!"
Lord Valleys followed her, his eyebrows a little raised.
As he approached the terrace his wife came, towards him. Her colour was,
deeper than usual, and she had the look, higher and more resolute,
peculiar to her when she had been opposed. In truth she had just been
through a passage of arms with Courtier, who, as the first revealer of
Mrs. Noel's situation, had become entitled to a certain confidence on
this subject. It had arisen from what she had intended as a perfectly
natural and not unkind remark, to the effect that all the trouble had
come from Mrs. Noel not having made her position clear to Miltoun from
the first.
He had at once grown very red.
"It's easy, Lady Valleys, for those who have never been in the position
of a lonely woman, to blame her."
Unaccustomed to be withstood, she had looked at him intently:
"I am the last person to be hard on a woman for conventional reasons.
But I think it showed lack of character."
Courtier's reply had been almost rude.
"Plants are not equally robust, Lady Valleys. Some, as we know, are
actually sensitive."
She had retorted with decision
"If you like to so dignify the simpler word 'weak'"
He had become very rigid at that, biting deeply into his moustache.
"What crimes are not committed under the sanctity of that creed 'survival
of the fittest,' which suits the book of all you fortunate people so
well!"
Priding herself on her restraint, Lady Valleys answered:
"Ah! we must talk that out. On the face of them your words sound a
little unphilosophic, don't they?"
He had looked straight at her with a queer, unpleasant smile; and she had
felt at once disturbed and angry. It was all very well to pet and even
to admire these original sort of men, but there were limits. Remembering,
however, that he was her guest, she had only said:
"Perhaps after all we had better not talk it out;" and moving away, she
heard him answer: "In any case, I'm certain Audrey Noel never wilfully
kept your son in the dark; she's much too proud."
Though rude, she could not help liking the way he stuck up for this
woman; and she threw back at him the words:
"You and I, Mr. Courtier, must have a good fight some day!"
She went towards her husband conscious of the rather pleasurable
sensation which combat always roused in her.
These two were very good comrades. Theirs had been a love match, and
making due allowance for human nature beset by opportunity, had remained,
throughout, a solid and efficient alliance. Taking, as they both did,
such prominent parts in public and social matters, the time they spent
together was limited, but productive of mutual benefit and reinforcement.
They had not yet had an opportunity of discussing their son's affair;
and, slipping her hand through his arm, Lady Valleys drew him away from
the house.
"I want to talk to you about Miltoun, Geoff."
"H'm!" said Lord Valleys; "yes. The boy's looking worn. Good thing when
this election's over."
"If he's beaten and hasn't something new and serious to concentrate
himself on, he'll fret his heart out over that woman."
Lord Valleys meditated a little before replying.
"I don't think that, Gertrude. He's got plenty of spirit."
"Of course! But it's a real passion. And, you know, he's not like most
boys, who'll take what they can."
She said this rather wistfully.
"I'm sorry for the woman," mused Lord Valleys; "I really am."
"They say this rumour's done a lot of harm."
"Our influence is strong enough to survive that."
"It'll be a squeak; I wish I knew what he was going to do. Will you ask
him?"
"You're clearly the person to speak to him," replied Lord Valleys. "I'm
no hand at that sort of thing."
But Lady Valleys, with genuine discomfort, murmured:
"My dear, I'm so nervous with Eustace. When he puts on that smile of his
I'm done for, at once."
"This is obviously a woman's business; nobody like a mother."
"If it were only one of the others," muttered Lady Valleys: "Eustace has
that queer way of making you feel lumpy."
Lord Valleys looked at her askance. He had that kind of critical
fastidiousness which a word will rouse into activity. Was she lumpy? The
idea had never struck him.
"Well, I'll do it, if I must," sighed Lady Valleys.
When after breakfast she entered Miltoun's 'den,' he was buckling on his
spurs preparatory, to riding out to some of the remoter villages. Under
the mask of the Apache chief, Bertie was standing, more inscrutable and
neat than ever, in a perfectly tied cravatte, perfectly cut riding
breeches, and boots worn and polished till a sooty glow shone through
their natural russet. Not specially dandified in his usual dress, Bertie
Caradoc would almost sooner have died than disgrace a horse. His eyes,
the sharper because they had only half the space of the ordinary eye to
glance from, at once took in the fact that his mother wished to be alone
with 'old Miltoun,' and he discreetly left the room.
That which disconcerted all who had dealings with Miltoun was the
discovery made soon or late, that they could not be sure how anything
would strike him. In his mind, as in his face, there was a certain
regularity, and then--impossible to say exactly where--it would, shoot
off and twist round a corner. This was the legacy no doubt of the
hard-bitten individuality, which had brought to the front so many of his
ancestors; for in Miltoun was the blood not only of the Caradocs and
Fitz-Harolds, but of most other prominent families in the kingdom, all of
whom, in those ages before money made the man, must have had a forbear
conspicuous by reason of qualities, not always fine, but always poignant.
And now, though Lady Valleys had the audacity of her physique, and was
not customarily abashed, she began by speaking of politics, hoping her
son would give her an opening. But he gave her none, and she grew
nervous. At last, summoning all her coolness, she said:
"I'm dreadfully sorry about this affair, dear boy. Your father told me
of your talk with him. Try not to take it too hard."
Miltoun did not answer, and silence being that which Lady Valleys
habitually most dreaded, she took refuge in further speech, outlining for
her son the whole episode as she saw it from her point of view, and
ending with these words:
"Surely it's not worth it."
Miltoun heard her with his peculiar look, as of a man peering through a
vizor. Then smiling, he said:
"Thank you;" and opened the door.
Lady Valleys, without quite knowing whether he intended her to do so,
indeed without quite knowing anything at the moment, passed out, and
Miltoun closed the door behind her.
Ten minutes later he and Bertie were seen riding down the drive.
CHAPTER XIX
That afternoon the wind, which had been rising steadily, brought a flurry
of clouds up from the South-West. Formed out on the heart of the
Atlantic, they sailed forward, swift and fleecy at first, like the
skirmishing white shallops of a great fleet; then, in serried masses,
darkened the sun. About four o'clock they broke in rain, which the wind
drove horizontally with a cold whiffling murmur. As youth and glamour
die in a face before the cold rains of life, so glory died on the moor.
The tors, from being uplifted wild castles, became mere grey
excrescences. Distance failed. The cuckoos were silent. There was none
of the beauty that there is in death, no tragic greatness--all was
moaning and monotony. But about seven the sun tore its way back through
the swathe, and flared out. Like some huge star, whose rays were
stretching down to the horizon, and up to the very top of the hill of
air, it shone with an amazing murky glamour; the clouds splintered by its
shafts, and tinged saffron, piled themselves up as if in wonder. Under
the sultry warmth of this new great star, the heather began to steam a
little, and the glitter of its wet unopened bells was like that of
innumerable tiny smoking fires. The two brothers were drenched as they
cantered silently home. Good friends always, they had never much to say
to one another. For Miltoun was conscious that he thought on a different
plane from Bertie; and Bertie grudged even to his brother any inkling of
what was passing in his spirit, just as he grudged parting with
diplomatic knowledge, or stable secrets, or indeed anything that might
leave him less in command of life. He grudged it, because in a private
sort of way it lowered his estimation of his own stoical
self-sufficiency; it hurt something proud in the withdrawing-room of his
soul. But though he talked little, he had the power of
contemplation--often found in men of decided character, with a tendency
to liver. Once in Nepal, where he had gone to shoot, he had passed a
month quite happily with only a Ghoorka servant who could speak no
English. To those who asked him if he had not been horribly bored, he
had always answered: "Not a bit; did a lot of thinking."
With Miltoun's trouble he had the professional sympathy of a brother and
the natural intolerance of a confirmed bachelor. Women were to him very
kittle-cattle. He distrusted from the bottom of his soul those who had
such manifest power to draw things from you. He was one of those men in
whom some day a woman might awaken a really fine affection; but who,
until that time, would maintain the perfectly male attitude to the entire
sex, and, after it, to all the sex but one. Women were, like Life
itself, creatures to be watched, carefully used, and kept duly
subservient. The only allusion therefore that he made to Miltoun's
trouble was very sudden.
"Old man, I hope you're going to cut your losses."
The words were followed by undisturbed silence: But passing Mrs. Noel's
cottage Miltoun said:
"Take my horse on; I want to go in here."....
She was sitting at her piano with her hands idle, looking at a line of
music.... She had been sitting thus for many minutes, but had not yet
taken in the notes.
When Miltoun's shadow blotted the light by which she was seeing so
little, she gave a slight start, and got up. But she neither went
towards him, nor spoke. And he, without a word, came in and stood by the
hearth, looking down at the empty grate. A tortoise-shell cat which had
been watching swallows, disturbed by his entrance, withdrew from the
window beneath a chair.
This silence, in which the question of their future lives was to be
decided, seemed to both interminable; yet, neither could end it.
At last, touching his sleeve, she said: "You're wet!"
Miltoun shivered at that timid sign of possession. And they again stood
in silence broken only by the sound of the cat licking its paws.
But her faculty for dumbness was stronger than his, and--he had to speak
first.
"Forgive me for coming; something must be settled. This--rumour----"
"Oh! that!" she said. "Is there anything I can do to stop the harm to
you?"
It was the turn of Miltoun's lips to curl. "God! no; let them talk!"
Their eyes had come together now, and, once together, seemed unable to
part.
Mrs. Noel said at last:
"Will you ever forgive me?"
"What for--it was my fault."
"No; I should have known you better."
The depth of meaning in those words--the tremendous and subtle admission
they contained of all that she had been ready to do, the despairing
knowledge in them that he was not, and never had been, ready to 'bear it
out even to the edge of doom'--made Miltoun wince away.
"It is not from fear--believe that, anyway."
"I do."
There followed another long, long silence! But though so close that they
were almost touching, they no longer looked at one another. Then Miltoun
said:
"There is only to say good-bye, then."
At those clear words spoken by lips which, though just smiling, failed so
utterly to hide his misery, Mrs. Noel's face became colourless as her
white gown. But her eyes, which had grown immense, seemed from the sheer
lack of all other colour, to have drawn into them the whole of her
vitality; to be pouring forth a proud and mournful reproach.
Shivering, and crushing himself together with his arms, Miltoun walked
towards the window. There was not the faintest sound from her, and he
looked back. She was following him with her eyes. He threw his hand up
over his face, and went quickly out. Mrs. Noel stood for a little while
where he had left her; then, sitting down once more at the piano, began
again to con over the line of music. And the cat stole back to the window
to watch the swallows. The sunlight was dying slowly on the top branches
of the lime-tree; a, drizzling rain began to fall.
CHAPTER XX
Claud Fresnay, Viscount Harbinger was, at the age of thirty-one, perhaps
the least encumbered peer in the United Kingdom. Thanks to an ancestor
who had acquired land, and departed this life one hundred and thirty
years before the town of Nettlefold was built on a small portion of it,
and to a father who had died in his son's infancy, after judiciously
selling the said town, he possessed a very large income independently of
his landed interests. Tall and well-built, with handsome,
strongly-marked features, he gave at first sight an impression of
strength--which faded somewhat when he began to talk. It was not so much
the manner of his speech--with its rapid slang, and its way of turning
everything to a jest--as the feeling it produced, that the brain behind
it took naturally the path of least resistance. He was in fact one of
those personalities who are often enough prominent in politics and social
life, by reason of their appearance, position, assurance, and of a
certain energy, half genuine, and half mere inherent predilection for
short cuts. Certainly he was not idle, had written a book, travelled, was
a Captain of Yeomanry, a Justice of the Peace, a good cricketer, and a
constant and glib speaker. It would have been unfair to call his
enthusiasm for social reform spurious. It was real enough in its way,
and did certainly testify that he was not altogether lacking either in
imagination or good-heartedness. But it was over and overlaid with the
public-school habit--that peculiar, extraordinarily English habit, so
powerful and beguiling that it becomes a second nature stronger than the
first--of relating everything in the Universe to the standards and
prejudices of a single class. Since practically all his intimate
associates were immersed in it, he was naturally not in the least
conscious of this habit; indeed there was nothing he deprecated so much
in politics as the narrow and prejudiced outlook, such as he had observed
in the Nonconformist, or labour politician. He would never have admitted
for a moment that certain doors had been banged-to at his birth, bolted
when he went to Eton, and padlocked at Cambridge. No one would have
denied that there was much that was valuable in his standards--a high
level of honesty, candour, sportsmanship, personal cleanliness, and
self-reliance, together with a dislike of such cruelty as had been
officially (so to speak) recognized as cruelty, and a sense of public
service to a State run by and for the public schools; but it would have
required far more originality than he possessed ever to look at Life from
any other point of view than that from which he had been born and bred to
watch Her. To fully understand harbinger, one must, and with
unprejudiced eyes and brain, have attended one of those great cricket
matches in which he had figured conspicuously as a boy, and looking down
from some high impartial spot have watched the ground at lunch time
covered from rope to rope and stand to stand with a marvellous swarm, all
walking in precisely the same manner, with precisely the same expression
on their faces, under precisely the same hats--a swarm enshrining the
greatest identity of, creed and habit ever known since the world began.
No, his environment had not been favourable to originality. Moreover he
was naturally rapid rather than deep, and life hardly ever left him alone
or left him silent. Brought into contact day and night with people to
whom politics were more or less a game; run after everywhere; subjected
to no form of discipline--it was a wonder that he was as serious as he
was. Nor had he ever been in love, until, last year, during her first
season, Barbara had, as he might have expressed it--in the case of
another 'bowled him middle stump. Though so deeply smitten, he had not
yet asked her to marry him--had not, as it were, had time, nor perhaps
quite the courage, or conviction. When he was near her, it seemed
impossible that he could go on longer without knowing his fate; when he
was away from her it was almost a relief, because there were so many
things to be done and said, and so little time to do or say them in. But
now, during this fortnight, which, for her sake, he had devoted to
Miltoun's cause, his feeling had advanced beyond the point of comfort.
He did not admit that the reason of this uneasiness was Courtier, for,
after all, Courtier was, in a sense, nobody, and 'an extremist' into the
bargain, and an extremist always affected the centre of Harbinger's
anatomy, causing it to give off a peculiar smile and tone of voice.
Nevertheless, his eyes, whenever they fell on that sanguine, steady,
ironic face, shone with a sort of cold inquiry, or were even darkened by
the shade of fear. They met seldom, it is true, for most of his day was
spent in motoring and speaking, and most of Courtier's in writing and
riding, his leg being still too weak for walking. But once or twice in
the smoking room late at night, he had embarked on some bantering
discussion with the champion of lost causes; and very soon an
ill-concealed impatience had crept into his voice. Why a man should
waste his time, flogging dead horses on a journey to the moon, was
incomprehensible! Facts were facts, human nature would never be anything
but human nature! And it was peculiarly galling to see in Courtier's eye
a gleam, to catch in his voice a tone, as if he were thinking: "My young
friend, your soup is cold!"
On a morning after one of these encounters, seeing Barbara sally forth in
riding clothes, he asked if he too might go round the stables, and
started forth beside her, unwontedly silent, with an odd feeling about
his heart, and his throat unaccountably dry.
The stables at Monkland Court were as large as many country houses.
Accommodating thirty horses, they were at present occupied by twenty-one,
including the pony of little Ann. For height, perfection of lighting,
gloss, shine, and purity of atmosphere they were unequalled in the
county. It seemed indeed impossible that any horse could ever so far
forget himself in such a place as to remember that he was a horse. Every
morning a little bin of carrots, apples, and lumps of sugar, was set
close to the main entrance, ready for those who might desire to feed the
dear inhabitants.
Reined up to a brass ring on either side of their stalls with their noses
towards the doors, they were always on view from nine to ten, and would
stand with their necks arched, ears pricked, and coats gleaming,
wondering about things, soothed by the faint hissing of the still busy
grooms, and ready to move their noses up and down the moment they saw
someone enter.
In a large loose-box at the end of the north wing Barbara's favourite
chestnut hunter, all but one saving sixteenth of whom had been entered in
the stud book, having heard her footstep, was standing quite still with
his neck turned. He had been crumping up an apple placed amongst his
feed, and his senses struggled between the lingering flavour of that
delicacy,--and the perception of a sound with which he connected carrots.
When she unlatched his door, and said "Hal," he at once went towards his
manger, to show his independence, but when she said: "Oh! very well!" he
turned round and came towards her. His eyes, which were full and of a
soft brilliance, under thick chestnut lashes, explored her all over.
Perceiving that her carrots were not in front, he elongated his neck, let
his nose stray round her waist, and gave her gauntletted hand a nip with
his lips. Not tasting carrot, he withdrew his nose, and snuffled. Then
stepping carefully so as not to tread on her foot, he bunted her gently
with his shoulder, till with a quick manoeuvre he got behind her and
breathed low and long on her neck. Even this did not smell of carrots,
and putting his muzzle over her shoulder against her cheek, he slobbered
a very little. A carrot appeared about the level of her waist, and
hanging his head over, he tried to reach it. Feeling it all firm and
soft under his chin, he snuffled again, and gave her a gentle dig with
his knee. But still unable to reach the carrot, he threw his head up,
withdrew, and pretended not to see her. And suddenly he felt two long
substances round his neck, and something soft against his nose. He
suffered this in silence, laying his ears back. The softness began
puffing on his muzzle. Pricking his ears again, he puffed back a little
harder, with more curiosity, and the softness was withdrawn. He
perceived suddenly that he had a carrot in his mouth.
Harbinger had witnessed this episode, oddly pale, leaning against the
loose-box wall. He spoke, as it came to an end:
"Lady Babs!"
The tone of his voice must have been as strange as it sounded to himself,
for Barbara spun round.
"Yes?"
"How long am I going on like this?"
Neither changing colour nor dropping her eyes, she regarded him with a
faintly inquisitive interest. It was not a cruel look, had not a trace
of mischief, or sex malice, and yet it frightened him by its serene
inscrutability. Impossible to tell what was going on behind it. He took
her hand, bent over it, and said in a low voice:
"You know what I feel; don't be cruel to me!"
She did not pull away her hand; it was as if she had not thought of it.
"I am not a bit cruel."
Looking up, he saw her smiling.
"Then--Babs!"
His face was close to hers, but Barbara did not shrink back. She just
shook her head; and Harbinger flushed up.
"Why?" he asked; and as though the enormous injustice of that rejecting
gesture had suddenly struck him, he dropped her hand.
"Why?" he said again, sharply.
But the silence was only broken by the cheeping of sparrows outside the
round window, and the sound of the horse, Hal, munching the last morsel
of his carrot. Harbinger was aware in his every nerve of the sweetish,
slightly acrid, husky odour of the loosebox, mingling with the scent of
Barbara's hair and clothes. And rather miserably, he said for the third
time:
"Why?"
But folding her hands away behind her back she answered gently:
"My dear, how should I know why?"
She was calmly exposed to his embrace if he had only dared; but he did
not dare, and went back to the loose-box wall. Biting his finger, he
stared at her gloomily. She was stroking the muzzle of her horse; and a
sort of dry rage began whisking and rustling in his heart. She had
refused him--Harbinger! He had not known, had not suspected how much he
wanted her. How could there be anybody else for him, while that young,
calm, sweet-scented, smiling thing lived, to make his head go round, his
senses ache, and to fill his heart with longing! He seemed to himself at
that moment the most unhappy of all men.
"I shall not give you up," he muttered.
Barbara's answer was a smile, faintly curious, compassionate, yet almost
grateful, as if she had said:
"Thank you--who knows?"
And rather quickly, a yard or so apart, and talking of horses, they
returned to the house.
It was about noon, when, accompanied by Courtier, she rode forth.
The Sou-Westerly spell--a matter of three days--had given way before
radiant stillness; and merely to be alive was to feel emotion. At a
little stream running beside the moor under the wild stone man, the
riders stopped their horses, just to listen, and, inhale the day. The far
sweet chorus of life was tuned to a most delicate rhythm; not one of
those small mingled pipings of streams and the lazy air, of beasts, men;
birds, and bees, jarred out too harshly through the garment of sound
enwrapping the earth. It was noon--the still moment--but this hymn to
the sun, after his too long absence, never for a moment ceased to be
murmured. And the earth wore an under-robe of scent, delicious, very
finely woven of the young fern sap, heather buds; larch-trees not yet
odourless, gorse just going brown, drifted woodsmoke, and the breath of
hawthorn. Above Earth's twin vestments of sound and scent, the blue
enwrapping scarf of air, that wistful wide champaign, was spanned only by
the wings of Freedom.
After that long drink of the day, the riders mounted almost in silence to
the very top of the moor. There again they sat quite still on their
horses, examining the prospect. Far away to South and East lay the sea,
plainly visible. Two small groups of wild ponies were slowly grazing
towards each other on the hillside below.
Courtier said in a low voice:
"'Thus will I sit and sing, with love in my arms; watching our two herds
mingle together, and below us the far, divine, cerulean sea.'"
And, after another silence, looking steadily in Barbara's face, he added:
"Lady Barbara, I am afraid this is the last time we shall be alone
together. While I have the chance, therefore, I must do homage.... You
will always be the fixed star for my worship. But your rays are too
bright; I shall worship from afar. From your seventh Heaven, therefore,
look down on me with kindly eyes, and do not quite forget me:"
Under that speech, so strangely compounded of irony and fervour, Barbara
sat very still, with glowing cheeks.
"Yes," said Courtier, "only an immortal must embrace a goddess. Outside
the purlieus of Authority I shall sit cross-legged, and prostrate myself
three times a day."
But Barbara answered nothing.
"In the early morning," went on Courtier, "leaving the dark and dismal
homes of Freedom I shall look towards the Temples of the Great; there
with the eye of faith I shall see you."
He stopped, for Barbara's lips were moving.
"Don't hurt me, please."
Courtier leaned over, took her hand, and put it to his lips. "We will
now ride on...."
That night at dinner Lord Dennis, seated opposite his great-niece, was
struck by her appearance.
"A very beautiful child," he thought, "a most lovely young creature!"
She was placed between Courtier and Harbinger. And the old man's still
keen eyes carefully watched those two. Though attentive to their
neighbours on the other side, they were both of them keeping the corner
of an eye on Barbara and on each other. The thing was transparent to
Lord Dennis, and a smile settled in that nest of gravity between his
white peaked beard and moustaches. But he waited, the instinct of a
fisherman bidding him to neglect no piece of water, till he saw the child
silent and in repose, and watched carefully to see what would rise.
Although she was so calmly, so healthily eating, her eyes stole round at
Courtier. This quick look seemed to Lord Dennis perturbed, as if
something were exciting her. Then Harbinger spoke, and she turned to
answer him. Her face was calm now, faintly smiling, a little eager,
provocative in its joy of life. It made Lord Dennis think of his own
youth. What a splendid couple! If Babs married young Harbinger there
would not be a finer pair in all England. His eyes travelled back to
Courtier. Manly enough! They called him dangerous! There was a look of
effervescence, carefully corked down--might perhaps be attractive to a
girl! To his essentially practical and sober mind, a type like Courtier
was puzzling. He liked the look of him, but distrusted his ironic
expression, and that appearance of blood to the head. Fellow--no
doubt--that would ride off on his ideas, humanitarian! To Lord Dennis
there was something queer about humanitarians. They offended perhaps his
dry and precise sense of form. They were always looking out for cruelty
or injustice; seemed delighted when they found it--swelled up, as it
were, when they scented it, and as there was a good deal about, were
never quite of normal size. Men who lived for ideas were, in fact, to
one for whom facts sufficed always a little worrying! A movement from
Barbara brought him back to actuality. Was the possessor of that crown of
hair and those divine young shoulders the little Babs who had ridden with
him in the Row? Time was certainly the Devil! Her eyes were searching
for something; and following the direction of that glance, Lord Dennis
found himself observing Miltoun. What a difference between those two!
Both no doubt in the great trouble of youth; which sometimes, as he knew
too well, lasted on almost to old age. It was a curious look the child
was giving her brother, as if asking him to help her. Lord Dennis had
seen in his day many young creatures leave the shelter of their freedom
and enter the house of the great lottery; many, who had drawn a prize and
thereat lost forever the coldness of life; many too, the light of whose
eyes had faded behind the shutters of that house, having drawn a blank.
The thought of 'little' Babs on the threshold of that inexorable saloon,
filled him with an eager sadness; and the sight of the two men watching
for her, waiting for her, like hunters, was to him distasteful. In any
case, let her not, for Heaven's sake, go ranging as far as that red
fellow of middle age, who might have ideas, but had no pedigree; let her
stick to youth and her own order, and marry the--young man, confound him,
who looked like a Greek god, of the wrong period, having grown a
moustache. He remembered her words the other evening about these two and
the different lives they lived. Some romantic notion or other was
working in her! And again he looked at Courtier. A Quixotic type--the
sort that rode slap-bang at everything! All very well--but not for Babs!
She was not like the glorious Garibaldi's glorious Anita! It was truly
characteristic of Lord Dennis--and indeed of other people--that to him
champions of Liberty when dead were far dearer than champions of Liberty
when living. Yes, Babs would want more, or was it less, than just a life
of sleeping under the stars for the man she loved, and the cause he
fought for. She would want pleasure, and, not too much effort, and
presently a little power; not the uncomfortable after-fame of a woman who
went through fire, but the fame and power of beauty, and Society
prestige. This, fancy of hers, if it were a fancy, could be nothing but
the romanticism of a young girl. For the sake of a passing shadow, to
give up substance? It wouldn't do! And again Lord Dennis fixed his
shrewd glance on his great-niece. Those eyes, that smile! Yes! She
would grow out of this. And take the Greek god, the dying
Gaul--whichever that young man was!
CHAPTER XXI
It was not till the morning of polling day itself that Courtier left
Monkland Court. He had already suffered for some time from bad
conscience. For his knee was practically cured, and he knew well that it
was Barbara, and Barbara alone, who kept him staying there. The
atmosphere of that big house with its army of servants, the impossibility
of doing anything for himself, and the feeling of hopeless insulation
from the vivid and necessitous sides of life, galled him greatly. He
felt a very genuine pity for these people who seemed to lead an existence
as it were smothered under their own social importance. It was not their
fault. He recognized that they did their best. They were good specimens
of their kind; neither soft nor luxurious, as things went in a degenerate
and extravagant age; they evidently tried to be simple--and this seemed
to him to heighten the pathos of their situation. Fate had been too much
for them. What human spirit could emerge untrammelled and unshrunken from
that great encompassing host of material advantage? To a Bedouin like
Courtier, it was as though a subtle, but very terrible tragedy was all
the time being played before his eyes; and in, the very centre of this
tragedy was the girl who so greatly attracted him. Every night when he
retired to that lofty room, which smelt so good, and where, without
ostentation, everything was so perfectly ordered for his comfort, he
thought:
"My God, to-morrow I'll be off!"
But every morning when he met her at breakfast his thought was precisely
the same, and there were moments when he caught himself wondering: "Am I
falling under the spell of this existence--am I getting soft?" He
recognized as never before that the peculiar artificial 'hardness' of the
patrician was a brine or pickle, in which, with the instinct of
self-preservation they deliberately soaked themselves, to prevent the
decay of their overprotected fibre. He perceived it even in Barbara--a
sort of sentiment-proof overall, a species of mistrust of the emotional
or lyrical, a kind of contempt of sympathy and feeling. And every day he
was more and more tempted to lay rude hands on this garment; to see
whether he could not make her catch fire, and flare up with some emotion
or idea. In spite of her tantalizing, youthful self-possession, he saw
that she felt this longing in him, and now and then he caught a glimpse
of a streak of recklessness in her which lured him on:
And yet, when at last he was saying good-bye on the night before polling
day, he could not flatter himself that he had really struck any spark
from her. Certainly she gave him no chance, at that final interview, but
stood amongst the other women, calm and smiling, as if determined that he
should not again mock her with his ironical devotion.
He got up very early the next morning, intending to pass away unseen. In
the car put at his disposal; he found a small figure in a holland-frock,
leaning back against the cushions so that some sandalled toes pointed up
at the chauffeur's back. They belonged to little Ann, who in the course
of business had discovered the vehicle before the door. Her sudden little
voice under her sudden little nose, friendly but not too friendly, was
comforting to Courtier.
"Are you going? I can come as, far as the gate." "That is lucky."
"Yes. Is that all your luggage?"
"I'm afraid it is."
"Oh! It's quite a lot, really, isn't it?"
"As much as I deserve."
"Of course you don't have to take guinea-pigs about with you?"
"Not as a rule."
"I always do. There's great-Granny!"
There certainly was Lady Casterley, standing a little back from the
drive, and directing a tall gardener how to deal with an old oak-tree.
Courtier alighted, and went towards her to say good-bye. She greeted him
with a certain grim cordiality.
"So you are going! I am glad of that, though you quite understand that I
like you personally."
"Quite!"
Her eyes gleamed maliciously.
"Men who laugh like you are dangerous, as I've told you before!"
Then, with great gravity; she added
"My granddaughter will marry Lord Harbinger. I mention that, Mr.
Courtier, for your peace of mind. You are a man of honour; it will go no
further."
Courtier, bowing over her hand, answered:
"He will be lucky."
The little old lady regarded him unflinchingly.
"He will, sir. Good-bye!"
Courtier smilingly raised his hat. His cheeks were burning. Regaining
the car, he looked round. Lady Casterley was busy once more exhorting
the tall gardener. The voice of little Ann broke in on his thoughts:
"I hope you'll come again. Because I expect I shall be here at
Christmas; and my brothers will be here then, that is, Jock and Tiddy,
not Christopher because he's young. I must go now. Good-bye! Hallo,
Susie!"
Courtier saw her slide away, and join the little pale adoring figure of
the lodge-keeper's daughter.
The car passed out into the lane.
If Lady Casterley had planned this disclosure, which indeed she had not,
for the impulse had only come over her at the sound of Courtier's laugh,
she could not have, devised one more effectual, for there was deep down
in him all a wanderer's very real distrust, amounting almost to contempt,
of people so settled and done for; as aristocrats or bourgeois, and all a
man of action's horror of what he called puking and muling. The pursuit
of Barbara with any other object but that of marriage had naturally not
occurred to one who had little sense of conventional morality, but much
self-respect; and a secret endeavour to cut out Harbinger, ending in a
marriage whereat he would figure as a sort of pirate, was quite as little
to the taste of a man not unaccustomed to think himself as good as other
people.
He caused the car to deviate up the lane that led to Audrey Noel's,
hating to go away without a hail of cheer to that ship in distress.
She came out to him on the verandah. From the clasp of her hand, thin
and faintly browned--the hand of a woman never quite idle--he felt that
she relied on him to understand and sympathize; and nothing so awakened
the best in Courtier as such mute appeals to his protection. He said
gently:
"Don't let them think you're down;" and, squeezing her hand hard: "Why
should you be wasted like this? It's a sin and shame!"
But he stopped in what he felt to be an unlucky speech at sight of her
face, which without movement expressed so much more than his words. He
was protesting as a civilized man; her face was the protest of Nature,
the soundless declaration of beauty wasted against its will, beauty that
was life's invitation to the embrace which gave life birth.
"I'm clearing out, myself," he said: "You and I, you know, are not good
for these people. No birds of freedom allowed!"
Pressing his hand, she turned away into the house, leaving Courtier
gazing at the patch of air where her white figure had stood. He had
always had a special protective feeling for Audrey Noel, a feeling which
with but little encouragement might have become something warmer. But
since she had been placed in her anomalous position, he would not for the
world have brushed the dew off her belief that she could trust him. And,
now that he had fixed his own gaze elsewhere, and she was in this bitter
trouble, he felt on her account the rancour that a brother feels when
Justice and Pity have conspired to flout his sister. The voice of Frith
the chauffeur roused him from gloomy reverie.
"Lady Barbara, sir!"
Following the man's eyes, Courtier saw against the sky-line on the for
above Ashman's Folly, an equestrian statue. He stopped the car at once,
and got out.
He reached her at the ruin, screened from the road, by that divine chance
which attends on men who take care that it shall. He could not tell
whether she knew of his approach, and he would have given all he had,
which was not much, to have seen through the stiff grey of her coat, and
the soft cream of her body, into that mysterious cave, her heart. To
have been for a moment, like Ashman, done for good and all with material
things, and living the white life where are no barriers between man and
woman. The smile on her lips so baffled him, puffed there by her spirit,
as a first flower is puffed through the sur face of earth to mock at the
spring winds. How tell what it signified! Yet he rather prided himself
on his knowledge of women, of whom he had seen something. But all he
found to say was:
"I'm glad of this chance."
Then suddenly looking up, he found her strangely pale and quivering.
"I shall see you in London!" she said; and, touching her horse with her
whip, without looking back, she rode away over the hill.
Courtier returned to the moor road, and getting into the car, muttered:
"Faster, please, Frith!"....
CHAPTER XXII
Polling was already in brisk progress when Courtier arrived in
Bucklandbury; and partly from a not unnatural interest in the result,
partly from a half-unconscious clinging to the chance of catching another
glimpse of Barbara, he took his bag to the hotel, determined to stay for
the announcement of the poll. Strolling out into the High Street he
began observing the humours of the day. The bloom of political belief
had long been brushed off the wings of one who had so flown the world's
winds. He had seen too much of more vivid colours to be capable now of
venerating greatly the dull and dubious tints of blue and yellow. They
left him feeling extremely philosophic. Yet it was impossible to get
away from them, for the very world that day seemed blue and yellow, nor
did the third colour of red adopted by both sides afford any clear
assurance that either could see virtue in the other; rather, it seemed to
symbolize the desire of each to have his enemy's blood. But Courtier
soon observed by the looks cast at his own detached, and perhaps
sarcastic, face, that even more hateful to either side than its
antagonist, was the philosophic eye. Unanimous was the longing to heave
half a brick at it whenever it showed itself. With its d---d
impartiality, its habit of looking through the integument of things to
see if there might be anything inside, he felt that they regarded it as
the real adversary--the eternal foe to all the little fat 'facts,' who,
dressed up in blue and yellow, were swaggering and staggering, calling
each other names, wiping each other's eyes, blooding each other's noses.
To these little solemn delicious creatures, all front and no behind, the
philosophic eye, with its habit of looking round the corner, was clearly
detestable. The very yellow and very blue bodies of these roistering
small warriors with their hands on their tin swords and their lips on
their tin trumpets, started up in every window and on every wall
confronting each citizen in turn, persuading him that they and they alone
were taking him to Westminster. Nor had they apparently for the most
part much trouble with electors, who, finding uncertainty distasteful,
passionately desired to be assured that the country could at once be
saved by little yellow facts or little blue facts, as the case might be;
who had, no doubt, a dozen other good reasons for being on the one side
or the other; as, for instance, that their father had been so before
them; that their bread was buttered yellow or buttered blue; that they
had been on the other side last time; that they had thought it over and
made up their minds; that they had innocent blue or naive yellow beer
within; that his lordship was the man; or that the words proper to their
mouths were 'Chilcox for Bucklandbury'; and, above all, the one really
creditable reason, that, so far as they could tell with the best of their
intellect and feelings, the truth at the moment was either blue or
yellow.
The narrow high street was thronged with voters. Tall policemen
stationed there had nothing to do. The certainty of all, that they were
going to win, seemed to keep everyone in good humour. There was as yet
no need to break anyone's head, for though the sharpest lookout was kept
for any signs of the philosophic eye, it was only to be found--outside
Courtier--in the perambulators of babies, in one old man who rode a
bicycle waveringly along the street and stopped to ask a policeman what
was the matter in the town, and in two rather green-faced fellows who
trundled barrows full of favours both blue and yellow.
But though Courtier eyed the 'facts' with such suspicion, the keenness of
everyone about the business struck him as really splendid. They went at
it with a will. Having looked forward to it for months, they were going
to look back on it for months. It was evidently a religious ceremony,
summing up most high feelings; and this seemed to one who was himself a
man of action, natural, perhaps pathetic, but certainly no matter for
scorn.
It was already late in the afternoon when there came debouching into the
high street a long string of sandwichmen, each bearing before and behind
him a poster containing these words beautifully situated in large dark
blue letters against a pale blue ground:
"NEW COMPLICATIONS.
DANGER NOT PAST.
VOTE FOR MILTOUN AND THE GOVERNMENT,
AND SAVE THE EMPIRE."
Courtier stopped to look at them with peculiar indignation. Not only did
this poster tramp in again on his cherished convictions about Peace, but
he saw in it something more than met the unphilosophic eye. It
symbolized for him all that was catch-penny in the national life-an
epitaph on the grave of generosity, unutterably sad. Yet from a Party
point of view what could be more justifiable? Was it not desperately
important that every blue nerve should be strained that day to turn
yellow nerves, if not blue, at all events green, before night fell? Was
it not perfectly true that the Empire could only be saved by voting blue?
Could they help a blue paper printing the words, 'New complications,'
which he had read that morning? No more than the yellows could help a
yellow journal printing the words 'Lord Miltoun's Evening Adventure.'
Their only business was to win, ever fighting fair. The yellows had not
fought fair, they never did, and one of their most unfair tactics was the
way they had of always accusing the blues of unfair fighting, an
accusation truly ludicrous! As for truth! That which helped the world to
be blue, was obviously true; that which didn't, as obviously not. There
was no middle policy! The man who saw things neither was a softy, and no
proper citizen. And as for giving the yellows credit for sincerity--the
yellows never gave them credit! But though Courtier knew all that, this
poster seemed to him particularly damnable, and he could not for the life
of him resist striking one of the sandwich-boards with his cane. The
resounding thwack startled a butcher's pony standing by the pavement. It
reared, and bolted forward, with Courtier, who had naturally seized the
rein, hanging on. A dog dashed past. Courtier tripped and fell. The
pony, passing over, struck him on the head with a hoof. For a moment he
lost consciousness; then coming to himself, refused assistance, and went
to his hotel. He felt very giddy, and, after bandaging a nasty cut, lay
down on his bed.
Miltoun, returning from that necessary exhibition of himself, the
crowning fact, at every polling centre, found time to go and see him.
"That last poster of yours!" Courtier began, at once.
"I'm having it withdrawn."
"It's done the trick--congratulations--you'll get in!"
"I knew nothing of it."
"My dear fellow, I didn't suppose you did."
"When there is a desert, Courtier, between a man and the sacred city, he
doesn't renounce his journey because he has to wash in dirty water on the
way: The mob--how I loathe it!"
There was such pent-up fury in those words as to astonish even one whose
life had been passed in conflict with majorities.
"I hate its mean stupidities, I hate the sound of its voice, and the look
on its face--it's so ugly, it's so little. Courtier, I suffer purgatory
from the thought that I shall scrape in by the votes of the mob. There
is sin in using this creature and I am expiating it."
To this strange outburst, Courtier at first made no reply.
"You've been working too hard," he said at last, "you're off your
balance. After all, the mob's made up of men like you and me."
"No, Courtier, the mob is not made up of men like you and me. If it were
it would not be the mob."
"It looks," Courtier answered gravely, "as if you had no business in this
galley. I've always steered clear of it myself."
"You follow your feelings. I have not that happiness."
So saying, Miltoun turned to the door.
Courtier's voice pursued him earnestly.
"Drop your politics--if you feel like this about them; don't waste your
life following whatever it is you follow; don't waste hers!"
But Miltoun did not answer.
It was a wondrous still night, when, a few minutes before twelve, with
his forehead bandaged under his hat, the champion of lost causes left the
hotel and made his way towards the Grammar School for the declaration of
the poll. A sound as of some monster breathing guided him, till, from a
steep empty street he came in sight of a surging crowd, spread over the
town square, like a dark carpet patterned by splashes of lamplight. High
up above that crowd, on the little peaked tower of the Grammar School, a
brightly lighted clock face presided; and over the passionate hopes in
those thousands of hearts knit together by suspense the sky had lifted;
and showed no cloud between them and the purple fields of air. To
Courtier descending towards the square, the swaying white faces, turned
all one way, seemed like the heads of giant wild flowers in a dark field,
shivered by wind. The night had charmed away the blue and yellow facts,
and breathed down into that throng the spirit of emotion. And he
realized all at once the beauty and meaning of this scene--expression of
the quivering forces, whose perpetual flux, controlled by the Spirit of
Balance, was the soul of the world. Thousands of hearts with the thought
of self lost in one over-mastering excitement!
An old man with a long grey beard, standing close to his elbow, murmured:
"'Tis anxious work--I wouldn't ha' missed this for anything in the
world."
"Fine, eh?" answered Courtier.
"Aye," said the old man, "'tis fine. I've not seen the like o' this
since the great year--forty-eight. There they are--the aristocrats!"
Following the direction of that skinny hand Courtier saw on a balcony
Lord and Lady Valleys, side by side, looking steadily down at the crowd.
There too, leaning against a window and talking to someone behind, was
Barbara. The old man went on muttering, and Courtier could see that his
eyes had grown very bright, his whole face transfigured by intense
hostility; he felt drawn to this old creature, thus moved to the very
soul. Then he saw Barbara looking down at him, with her hand raised to
her temple to show that she saw his bandaged head. He had the presence
of mind not to lift his hat.
The old man spoke again.
"You wouldn't remember forty-eight, I suppose. There was a feeling in
the people then--we would ha' died for things in those days. I'm
eighty-four," and he held his shaking hand up to his breast, "but the
spirit's alive here yet! God send the Radical gets in!" There was
wafted from him a scent as of potatoes.
Far behind, at the very edge of the vast dark throng, some voices began
singing: "Way down upon the Swanee ribber." The tune floated forth,
ceased, spurted up once more, and died.
Then, in the very centre of the square a stentorian baritone roared
forth: "Should auld acquaintance be forgot!"
The song swelled, till every kind of voice, from treble to the old
Chartist's quavering bass, was chanting it; here and there the crowd
heaved with the movement of linked arms. Courtier found the soft fingers
of a young woman in his right hand, the old Chartist's dry trembling paw
in his left. He himself sang loudly. The grave and fearful music sprang
straight up into they air, rolled out right and left, and was lost among
the hills. But it had no sooner died away than the same huge baritone
yelled "God save our gracious King!" The stature of the crowd seemed at
once to leap up two feet, and from under that platform of raised hats
rose a stupendous shouting.
"This," thought Courtier, "is religion!"
They were singing even on the balconies; by the lamplight he could see
Lord Valleys mouth not opened quite enough, as though his voice were just
a little ashamed of coming out, and Barbara with her head flung back
against the pillar, pouring out her heart. No mouth in all the crowd was
silent. It was as though the soul of the English people were escaping
from its dungeon of reserve, on the pinions of that chant.
But suddenly, like a shot bird closing wings, the song fell silent and
dived headlong back to earth. Out from under the clock-face had moved a
thin dark figure. More figures came behind. Courtier could see Miltoun.
A voice far away cried: "Up; Chilcox!" A huge: "Husill" followed; then
such a silence, that the sound of an engine shunting a mile away could be
heard plainly.
The dark figure moved forward, and a tiny square of paper gleamed out
white against the black of his frock-coat.
"Ladies and gentlemen. Result of the Poll:
"Miltoun Four thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight. Chilcox Four
thousand eight hundred and two."
The silence seemed to fall to earth, and break into a thousand pieces.
Through the pandemonium of cheers and groaning, Courtier with all his
strength forced himself towards the balcony. He could see Lord Valleys
leaning forward with a broad smile; Lady Valleys passing her hand across
her eyes; Barbara with her hand in Harbinger's, looking straight into his
face. He stopped. The old Chartist was still beside him, tears rolling
down his cheeks into his beard.
Courtier saw Miltoun come forward, and stand, unsmiling, deathly pale.
PART II
CHAPTER I
At three o'clock in the afternoon of the nineteenth of July little Ann
Shropton commenced the ascent of the main staircase of Valleys House,
London. She climbed slowly, in the very middle, an extremely small white
figure on those wide and shining stairs, counting them aloud. Their
number was never alike two days running, which made them attractive to
one for whom novelty was the salt of life.
Coming to that spot where they branched, she paused to consider which of
the two flights she had used last, and unable to remember, sat down. She
was the bearer of a message. It had been new when she started, but was
already comparatively old, and likely to become older, in view of a
design now conceived by her of travelling the whole length of the picture
gallery. And while she sat maturing this plan, sunlight flooding through
a large window drove a white refulgence down into the heart of the wide
polished space of wood and marble, whence she had come. The nature of
little Ann habitually rejected fairies and all fantastic things, finding
them quite too much in the air, and devoid of sufficient reality and
'go'; and this refulgence, almost unearthly in its travelling glory,
passed over her small head and played strangely with the pillars in the
hall, without exciting in her any fancies or any sentiment. The
intention of discovering what was at the end of the picture gallery
absorbed the whole of her essentially practical and active mind.
Deciding on the left-hand flight of stairs, she entered that immensely
long, narrow, and--with blinds drawn--rather dark saloon. She walked
carefully, because the floor was very slippery here, and with a kind of
seriousness due partly to the darkness and partly to the pictures. They
were indeed, in this light, rather formidable, those old Caradocs black,
armoured creatures, some of them, who seemed to eye with a sort of
burning, grim, defensive greed the small white figure of their descendant
passing along between them. But little Ann, who knew they were only
pictures, maintained her course steadily, and every now and then, as she
passed one who seemed to her rather uglier than the others, wrinkled her
sudden little nose. At the end, as she had thought; appeared a door.
She opened it, and passed on to a landing. There was a stone staircase
in the corner, and there were two doors. It would be nice to go up the
staircase, but it would also be nice to open the doors. Going towards
the first door, with a little thrill, she turned the handle. It was one
of those rooms, necessary in houses, for which she had no great liking;
and closing this door rather loudly she opened the other one, finding
herself in a chamber not resembling the rooms downstairs, which were all
high and nicely gilded, but more like where she had lessons, low, and
filled with books and leather chairs. From the end of the room which she
could not see, she heard a sound as of someone kissing something, and
instinct had almost made her turn to go away when the word: "Hallo!"
suddenly opened her lips. And almost directly she saw that Granny and
Grandpapa were standing by the fireplace. Not knowing quite whether they
were glad to see her, she went forward and began at once:
"Is this where you sit, Grandpapa?"
"It is."
"It's nice, isn't it, Granny? Where does the stone staircase go to?"
"To the roof of the tower, Ann."
"Oh! I have to give a message, so I must go now."
"Sorry to lose you."
"Yes; good-bye!"
Hearing the door shut behind her, Lord and Lady Valleys looked at each
other with a dubious smile.
The little interview which she had interrupted, had arisen in this way.
Accustomed to retire to this quiet and homely room, which was not his
official study where he was always liable to the attacks of secretaries,
Lord Valleys had come up here after lunch to smoke and chew the cud of a
worry.
The matter was one in connection with his Pendridny estate, in Cornwall.
It had long agitated both his agent and himself, and had now come to him
for final decision. The question affected two villages to the north of
the property, whose inhabitants were solely dependent on the working of a
large quarry, which had for some time been losing money.
A kindly man, he was extremely averse to any measure which would plunge
his tenants into distress, and especially in cases where there had been
no question of opposition between himself and them. But, reduced to its
essentials, the matter stood thus: Apart from that particular quarry the
Pendridny estate was not only a going, but even a profitable concern,
supporting itself and supplying some of the sinews of war towards Valleys
House and the racing establishment at Newmarket and other general
expenses; with this quarry still running, allowing for the upkeep of
Pendridny, and the provision of pensions to superannuated servants, it
was rather the other way.
Sitting there, that afternoon, smoking his favourite pipe, he had at last
come to the conclusion that there was nothing for it but to close down.
He had not made this resolution lightly; though, to do him justice, the
knowledge that the decision would be bound to cause an outcry in the
local, and perhaps the National Press, had secretly rather spurred him on
to the resolve than deterred him from it. He felt as if he were being
dictated to in advance, and he did not like dictation. To have to
deprive these poor people of their immediate living was, he knew, a good
deal more irksome to him than to those who would certainly make a fuss
about it, his conscience was clear, and he could discount that future
outcry as mere Party spite. He had very honestly tried to examine the
thing all round; and had reasoned thus: If I keep this quarry open, I am
really admitting the principle of pauperization, since I naturally look
to each of my estates to support its own house, grounds, shooting, and to
contribute towards the support of this house, and my family, and racing
stable, and all the people employed about them both.
To allow any business to be run on my estates which does not contribute
to the general upkeep, is to protect and really pauperize a portion of my
tenants at the expense of the rest; it must therefore be false economics
and a secret sort of socialism. Further, if logically followed out, it
might end in my ruin, and to allow that, though I might not personally
object, would be to imply that I do not believe that I am by virtue of my
traditions and training, the best machinery through which the State can
work to secure the welfare of the people....
When he had reached that point in his consideration of the question, his
mind, or rather perhaps, his essential self, had not unnaturally risen up
and said: Which is absurd!
Impersonality was in fashion, and as a rule he believed in thinking
impersonally. There was a point, however, where the possibility of doing
so ceased, without treachery to oneself, one's order, and the country.
And to the argument which he was quite shrewd enough to put to himself,
sooner than have it put by anyone else, that it was disproportionate for
a single man by a stroke of the pen to be able to dispose of the
livelihood of hundreds whose senses and feelings were similar to his
own--he had answered: "If I didn't, some plutocrat or company would--or,
worse still, the State!" Cooperative enterprise being, in his opinion,
foreign to the spirit of the country, there was, so far as he could see,
no other alternative. Facts were facts and not to be got over!
Notwithstanding all this, the necessity for the decision made him sorry,
for if he had no great sense of proportion, he was at least humane.
He was still smoking his pipe and staring at a sheet of paper covered
with small figures when his wife entered. Though she had come to ask his
advice on a very different subject, she saw at once that he was vexed,
and said:
"What's the matter, Geoff?"
Lord Valleys rose, went to the hearth, deliberately tapped out his pipe,
then held out to her the sheet of paper.
"That quarry! Nothing for it--must go!"
Lady Valleys' face changed.
"Oh, no! It will mean such dreadful distress."
Lord Valleys stared at his nails. "It's putting a drag on the whole
estate," he said.
"I know, but how could we face the people--I should never be able to go
down there. And most of them have such enormous families."
Since Lord Valleys continued to bend on his nails that slow,
thought-forming stare, she went on earnestly:
"Rather than that I'd make sacrifices. I'd sooner Pendridny were let
than throw all those people out of work. I suppose it would let."
"Let? Best woodcock shooting in the world."
Lady Valleys, pursuing her thoughts, went on:
"In time we might get the people drafted into other things. Have you
consulted Miltoun?"
"No," said Lord Valleys shortly, "and don't mean to--he's too
unpractical."
"He always seems to know what he wants very well."
"I tell you," repeated Lord Valleys, "Miltoun's no good in a matter of
this sort--he and his ideas throw back to the Middle Ages."
Lady Valleys went closer, and took him by the lapels of his collar.
"Geoff-really, to please me; some other way!"
Lord Valleys frowned, staring at her for some time; and at last answered:
"To please you--I'll leave it over another year."
"You think that's better than letting?"
"I don't like the thought of some outsider there. Time enough to come to
that if we must. Take it as my Christmas present."
Lady Valleys, rather flushed, bent forward and kissed his ear.
It was at this moment that little Ann had entered.
When she was gone, and they had exchanged that dubious look, Lady Valleys
said:
"I came about Babs. I don't know what to make of her since we came up.
She's not putting her heart into things."
Lord Valleys answered almost sulkily:
"It's the heat probably--or Claud Harbinger." In spite of his easy-going
parentalism, he disliked the thought of losing the child whom he so
affectionately admired.
"Ah!" said Lady Valleys slowly, "I'm not so sure."
"How do you mean?"
"There's something queer about her. I'm by no means certain she hasn't
got some sort of feeling for that Mr. Courtier."
"What!" said Lord Valleys, growing most unphilosophically red.
"Exactly!"
"Confound it, Gertrude, Miltoun's business was quite enough for one
year."
"For twenty," murmured Lady Valleys. "I'm watching her. He's going to
Persia, they say."
"And leaving his bones there, I hope," muttered Lord Valleys. "Really,
it's too much. I should think you're all wrong, though."
Lady Valleys raised her eyebrows. Men were very queer about such things!
Very queer and worse than helpless!
"Well," she said, "I must go to my meeting. I'll take her, and see if I
can get at something," and she went away.
It was the inaugural meeting of the Society for the Promotion of the
Birth Rate, over which she had promised to preside. The scheme was one
in which she had been prominent from the start, appealing as it did to
her large and full-blooded nature. Many movements, to which she found it
impossible to refuse her name, had in themselves but small attraction;
and it was a real comfort to feel something approaching enthusiasm for
one branch of her public work. Not that there was any academic
consistency about her in the matter, for in private life amongst her
friends she was not narrowly dogmatic on the duty of wives to multiply
exceedingly. She thought imperially on the subject, without bigotry.
Large, healthy families, in all cases save individual ones! The prime
idea at the back of her mind was--National Expansion! Her motto, and she
intended if possible to make it the motto of the League, was: 'De
l'audace, et encore de l'audace!' It was a question of the full
realization of the nation. She had a true, and in a sense touching belief
in 'the flag,' apart from what it might cover. It was her idealism.
"You may talk," she would say, "as much as you like about directing
national life in accordance with social justice! What does the nation
care about social justice? The thing is much bigger than that. It's a
matter of sentiment. We must expand!"
On the way to the meeting, occupied with her speech, she made no attempt
to draw Barbara into conversation. That must wait. The child, though
languid, and pale, was looking so beautiful that it was a pleasure to
have her support in such a movement.
In a little dark room behind the hall the Committee were already
assembled, and they went at once on to the platform.
CHAPTER II
Unmoved by the stares of the audience, Barbara sat absorbed in moody
thoughts.
Into the three weeks since Miltoun's election there had been crowded such
a multitude of functions that she had found, as it were, no time, no
energy to know where she stood with herself. Since that morning in the
stable, when he had watched her with the horse Hal, Harbinger had seemed
to live only to be close to her. And the consciousness of his passion
gave her a tingling sense of pleasure. She had been riding and dancing
with him, and sometimes this had been almost blissful. But there were
times too, when she felt--though always with a certain contempt of
herself, as when she sat on that sunwarmed stone below the tor--a queer
dissatisfaction, a longing for something outside a world where she had to
invent her own starvations and simplicities, to make-believe in
earnestness.
She had seen Courtier three times. Once he had come to dine, in response
to an invitation from Lady Valleys worded in that charming, almost
wistful style, which she had taught herself to use to those below her in
social rank, especially if they were intelligent; once to the Valleys
House garden party; and next day, having told him what time she would be
riding, she had found him in the Row, not mounted, but standing by the
rail just where she must pass, with that look on his face of mingled
deference and ironic self-containment, of which he was a master. It
appeared that he was leaving England; and to her questions why, and
where, he had only shrugged his shoulders. Up on this dusty platform, in
the hot bare hall, facing all those people, listening to speeches whose
sense she was too languid and preoccupied to take in, the whole medley of
thoughts, and faces round her, and the sound of the speakers' voices,
formed a kind of nightmare, out of which she noted with extreme
exactitude the colour of her mother's neck beneath a large black hat, and
the expression on the face of a Committee man to the right, who was
biting his fingers under cover of a blue paper. She realized that
someone was speaking amongst the audience, casting forth, as it were,
small bunches of words. She could see him--a little man in a black coat,
with a white face which kept jerking up and down.
"I feel that this is terrible," she heard him say; "I feel that this is
blasphemy. That we should try to tamper with the greatest force, the
greatest and the most sacred and secret-force, that--that moves in the
world, is to me horrible. I cannot bear to listen; it seems to make
everything so small!" She saw him sit down, and her mother rising to
answer.
"We must all sympathize with the sincerity and to a certain extent with
the intention of our friend in the body of the hall. But we must ask
ourselves:
"Have we the right to allow ourselves the luxury, of private feelings in
a matter which concerns the national expansion. We must not give way to
sentiment. Our friend in the body of the hall spoke--he will forgive me
for saying so--like a poet, rather than a serious reformer. I am afraid
that if we let ourselves drop into poetry, the birth rate of this country
will very soon drop into poetry too. And that I think it is impossible
for us to contemplate with folded hands. The resolution I was about to
propose when our friend in the body of the hall----"
But Barbara's attention, had wandered off again into that queer medley of
thoughts, and feelings, out of which the little man had so abruptly
roused her. Then she realized that the meeting was breaking up, and her
mother saying:
"Now, my dear, it's hospital day. We've just time."
When they were once more in the car, she leaned back very silent,
watching the traffic.
Lady Valleys eyed her sidelong.
"What a little bombshell," she said, "from that small person! He must
have got in by mistake. I hear Mr. Courtier has a card for Helen
Gloucester's ball to-night, Babs."
"Poor man!"
"You will be there," said Lady Valleys dryly.
Barbara drew back into her corner.
"Don't tease me, Mother!"
An expression of compunction crossed Lady Valleys' face; she tried to
possess herself of Barbara's hand. But that languid hand did not return
her squeeze.
"I know the mood you're in, dear. It wants all one's pluck to shake it
off; don't let it grow on you. You'd better go down to Uncle Dennis
to-morrow. You've been overdoing it."
Barbara sighed.
"I wish it were to-morrow."
The car had stopped, and Lady Valleys said:
"Will you come in, or are you too tired? It always does them good to see
you."
"You're twice as tired as me," Barbara answered; "of course I'll come."
At the entrance of the two ladies, there rose at once a faint buzz and
murmur. Lady Valleys, whose ample presence radiated suddenly a
businesslike and cheery confidence, went to a bedside and sat down. But
Barbara stood in a thin streak of the July sunlight, uncertain where to
begin, amongst the faces turned towards her. The poor dears looked so
humble, and so wistful, and so tired. There was one lying quite flat,
who had not even raised her head to see who had come in. That slumbering,
pale, high cheek-boned face had a frailty as if a touch, a breath, would
shatter it; a wisp of the blackest hair, finer than silk, lay across the
forehead; the closed eyes were deep sunk; one hand, scarred almost to the
bone with work, rested above her breast. She breathed between lips which
had no colour. About her, sleeping, was a kind of beauty. And there
came over the girl a queer rush of emotion. The sleeper seemed so apart
from everything there, from all the formality and stiffness of the ward.
To look at her swept away the languid, hollow feeling with which she had
come in; it made her think of the tors at home, when the wind was
blowing, and all was bare, and grand, and sometimes terrible. There was
something elemental in that still sleep. And the old lady in the next
led, with a brown wrinkled face and bright black eyes brimful of life,
seemed almost vulgar beside such remote tranquillity, while she was
telling Barbara that a little bunch of heather in the better half of a
soap-dish on the window-sill had come from Wales, because, as she
explained: "My mother was born in Stirling, dearie; so I likes a bit of
heather, though I never been out o' Bethnal Green meself."
But when Barbara again passed, the sleeping woman was sitting up, and
looked but a poor ordinary thing--her strange fragile beauty all
withdrawn.
It was a relief when Lady Valleys said:
"My dear, my Naval Bazaar at five-thirty; and while I'm there you must go
home and have a rest, and freshen yourself up for the evening. We dine
at Plassey House."
The Duchess of Gloucester's Ball, a function which no one could very well
miss, had been fixed for this late date owing to the Duchess's announced
desire to prolong the season and so help the hackney cabmen; and though
everybody sympathized, it had been felt by most that it would be simpler
to go away, motor up on the day of the Ball, and motor down again on the
following morning. And throughout the week by which the season was thus
prolonged, in long rows at the railway stations, and on their stands, the
hackney cabmen, unconscious of what was being done for them, waited,
patient as their horses. But since everybody was making this special
effort, an exceptionally large, exclusive, and brilliant company
reassembled at Gloucester House.
In the vast ballroom over the medley of entwined revolving couples,
punkahs had been fixed, to clear and freshen the languid air, and these
huge fans, moving with incredible slowness, drove a faint refreshing
draught down over the sea of white shirt-fronts and bare necks, and freed
the scent from innumerable flowers.
Late in the evening, close by one of the great clumps of bloom, a very
pretty woman stood talking to Bertie Caradoc. She was his cousin, Lily
Malvezin, sister of Geoffrey Winlow, and wife of a Liberal peer, a
charming creature, whose pink cheeks, bright eyes, quick lips, and
rounded figure, endowed her with the prettiest air of animation. And
while she spoke she kept stealing sly glances at her partner, trying as
it were to pierce the armour of that self-contained young man.
"No, my dear," she said in her mocking voice, "you'll never persuade me
that Miltoun is going to catch on. 'Il est trop intransigeant'. Ah!
there's Babs!"
For the girl had come gliding by, her eyes wandering lazily, her lips
just parted; her neck, hardly less pale than her white frock; her face
pale, and marked with languor, under the heavy coil of her tawny hair;
and her swaying body seeming with each turn of the waltz to be caught by
the arms of her partner from out of a swoon.
With that immobility of lips, learned by all imprisoned in Society, Lily
Malvezin murmured:
"Who's that she's dancing with? Is it the dark horse, Bertie?"
Through lips no less immobile Bertie answered:
"Forty to one, no takers."
But those inquisitive bright eyes still followed Barbara, drifting in the
dance, like a great waterlily caught in the swirl of a mill pool; and the
thought passed through that pretty head:
"She's hooked him. It's naughty of Babs, really!" And then she saw
leaning against a pillar another whose eyes also were following those
two; and she thought: "H'm! Poor Claud--no wonder he's looking like
that. Oh! Babs!"
By one of the statues on the terrace Barbara and her partner stood, where
trees, disfigured by no gaudy lanterns, offered the refreshment of their
darkness and serenity.
Wrapped in her new pale languor, still breathing deeply from the waltz,
she seemed to Courtier too utterly moulded out of loveliness. To what end
should a man frame speeches to a vision! She was but an incarnation of
beauty imprinted on the air, and would fade out at a touch-like the
sudden ghosts of enchantment that came to one under the blue, and the
starlit snow of a mountain night, or in a birch wood all wistful golden!
Speech seemed but desecration! Besides, what of interest was there for
him to say in this world of hers, so bewildering and of such glib
assurance--this world that was like a building, whose every window was
shut and had a blind drawn down. A building that admitted none who had
not sworn, as it were, to believe it the world, the whole world, and
nothing but the world, outside which were only the nibbled remains of
what had built it. This, world of Society, in which he felt like one
travelling through a desert, longing to meet a fellow-creature.
The voice of Harbinger behind them said:
"Lady-Babs!"
Long did the punkahs waft their breeze over that brave-hued wheel of
pleasure, and the sound of the violins quaver and wail out into the
morning. Then quickly, as the spangles of dew vanish off grass when the
sun rises, all melted away; and in the great rooms were none but flunkeys
presiding over the polished surfaces like flamingoes by some lakeside at
dawn.
CHAPTER III
A brick dower-house of the Fitz-Harolds, just outside the little
seaside town of Nettlefold, sheltered the tranquil days of Lord
Dennis. In that south-coast air, sanest and most healing in all
England, he raged very slowly, taking little thought of death, and
much quiet pleasure in his life. Like the tall old house with its
high windows and squat chimneys, he was marvellously self-contained.
His books, for he somewhat passionately examined old civilizations,
and described their habits from time to time with a dry and not too
poignant pen in a certain old-fashioned magazine; his microscope, for
he studied infusoria; and the fishing boat of his friend John Bogle,
who had long perceived that Lord Dennis was the biggest fish he ever
caught; all these, with occasional visitors, and little runs to
London, to Monkland, and other country houses, made up the sum of a
life which, if not desperately beneficial, was uniformly kind and
harmless, and, by its notorious simplicity, had a certain negative
influence not only on his own class but on the relations of that
class with the country at large. It was commonly said in Nettlefold,
that he was a gentleman; if they were all like him there wasn't much
in all this talk against the Lords. The shop people and lodging-house
keepers felt that the interests of the country were safer in
his hands: than in the hands of people who wanted to meddle with
everything for the good of those who were only anxious to be let
alone. A man too who could so completely forget he was the son of a
Duke, that other people never forgot it, was the man for their money.
It was true that he had never had a say in public affairs; but this
was overlooked, because he could have had it if he liked, and the
fact that he did not like, only showed once more that he was a
gentleman.
Just as he was the one personality of the little town against whom
practically nothing was ever, said, so was his house the one house which
defied criticism. Time had made it utterly suitable. The ivied walls,
and purplish roof lichened yellow in places, the quiet meadows harbouring
ponies and kine, reaching from it to the sea--all was mellow. In truth
it made all the other houses of the town seem shoddy--standing alone
beyond them, like its, master, if anything a little too esthetically
remote from common wants.
He had practically no near neighbours of whom he saw anything, except
once in a way young Harbinger three miles distant at Whitewater. But
since he had the faculty of not being bored with his own society, this
did not worry him. Of local charity, especially to the fishers of the
town, whose winter months were nowadays very bare of profit, he was
prodigal to the verge of extravagance, for his income was not great. But
in politics, beyond acting as the figure-head of certain municipal
efforts, he took little or no part. His Toryism indeed was of the mild
order, that had little belief in the regeneration of the country by any
means but those of kindly feeling between the classes. When asked how
that was to be brought about, he would answer with his dry, slightly
malicious, suavity, that if you stirred hornets' nests with sticks the
hornets would come forth. Having no land, he was shy of expressing
himself on that vexed question; but if resolutely attacked would give
utterance to some such sentiment as this: "The land's best in our hands
on the whole, but we want fewer dogs-in-the-manger among us."
He had, as became one of his race, a feeling for land, tender and
protective, and could not bear to think of its being put out to farm with
that cold Mother, the State. He was ironical over the views of Radicals
or Socialists, but disliked to hear such people personally abused behind
their backs. It must be confessed, however, that if contradicted he
increased considerably the ironical decision of his sentiments.
Withdrawn from all chance in public life of enforcing his views on
others, the natural aristocrat within him was forced to find some
expression.
Each year, towards the end of July, he placed his house at the service of
Lord Valleys, who found it a convenient centre for attending Goodwood.
It was on the morning after the Duchess of Gloucester's Ball, that he
received this note:
"VALLEYS HOUSE.
"DEAREST UNCLE DENNIS,
"May I come down to you a little before time and rest? London is so
terribly hot. Mother has three functions still to stay for, and I shall
have to come back again for our last evening, the political one--so I
don't want to go all the way to Monkland; and anywhere else, except with
you, would be rackety. Eustace looks so seedy. I'll try and bring him,
if I may. Granny is terribly well.
"Best love, dear, from your.
"BABS."
The same afternoon she came, but without Miltoun, driving up from the
station in a fly. Lord Dennis met her at the gate; and, having kissed
her, looked at her somewhat anxiously, caressing his white peaked beard.
He had never yet known Babs sick of anything, except when he took her out
in John Bogle's boat. She was certainly looking pale, and her hair was
done differently--a fact disturbing to one who did not discover it.
Slipping his arm through hers he led her out into a meadow still full of
buttercups, where an old white pony, who had carried her in the Row
twelve years ago, came up to them and rubbed his muzzle against her
waist. And suddenly there rose in Lord Dennis the thoroughly
discomforting and strange suspicion that, though the child was not going
to cry, she wanted time to get over the feeling that she was. Without
appearing to separate himself from her, he walked to the wall at the end
of the field, and stood looking at the sea.
The tide was nearly up; the South wind driving over it brought him the
scent of the sea-flowers, and the crisp rustle of little waves swimming
almost to his feet. Far out, where the sunlight fell, the smiling waters
lay white and mysterious in July haze, giving him a queer feeling. But
Lord Dennis, though he had his moments of poetic sentiment, was on the
whole quite able to keep the sea in its proper place--for after all it
was the English Channel; and like a good Englishman he recognized that if
you once let things get away from their names, they ceased to be facts,
and if they ceased to be facts, they became--the devil! In truth he was
not thinking much of the sea, but of Barbara. It was plain that she was
in trouble of some kind. And the notion that Babs could find trouble in
life was extraordinarily queer; for he felt, subconsciously, what a great
driving force of disturbance was necessary to penetrate the hundred folds
of the luxurious cloak enwrapping one so young and fortunate. It was not
Death; therefore it must be Love; and he thought at once of that fellow
with the red moustaches. Ideas were all very well--no one would object
to as many as you liked, in their proper place--the dinner-table, for
example. But to fall in love, if indeed it were so, with a man who not
only had ideas, but an inclination to live up to them, and on them, and
on nothing else, seemed to Lord Dennis 'outre'.
She had followed him to the wall, and he looked--at her dubiously.
"To rest in the waters of Lethe, Babs? By the way, seen anything of our
friend Mr. Courtier? Very picturesque--that Quixotic theory of life!"
And in saying that, his voice (like so many refined voices which have
turned their backs on speculation) was triple-toned-mocking at ideas,
mocking at itself for mocking at ideas, yet showing plainly that at
bottom it only mocked at itself for mocking at ideas, because it would
be, as it were, crude not to do so.
But Barbara did not answer his question, and began to speak of other
things. And all that afternoon and evening she talked away so lightly
that Lord Dennis, but for his instinct, would have been deceived.
That wonderful smiling mask--the inscrutability of Youth--was laid aside
by her at night. Sitting at her window, under the moon, 'a gold-bright
moth slow-spinning up the sky,' she watched the darkness hungrily, as
though it were a great thought into whose heart she was trying to see.
Now and then she stroked herself, getting strange comfort out of the
presence of her body. She had that old unhappy feeling of having two
selves within her. And this soft night full of the quiet stir of the
sea, and of dark immensity, woke in her a terrible longing to be at one
with something, somebody, outside herself. At the Ball last night the
'flying feeling' had seized on her again; and was still there--a queer
manifestation of her streak of recklessness. And this result of her
contacts with Courtier, this 'cacoethes volandi', and feeling of clipped
wings, hurt her--as being forbidden hurts a child.
She remembered how in the housekeeper's room at Monkland there lived a
magpie who had once sought shelter in an orchid-house from some pursuer.
As soon as they thought him wedded to civilization, they had let him go,
to see whether he would come back. For hours he had sat up in a high
tree, and at last come down again to his cage; whereupon, fearing lest
the rooks should attack him when he next took this voyage of discovery,
they clipped one of his wings. After that the twilight bird, though he
lived happily enough, hopping about his cage and the terrace which served
him for exercise yard, would seem at times restive and frightened, moving
his wings as if flying in spirit, and sad that he must stay on earth.
So, too, at her window Barbara fluttered her wings; then, getting into
bed, lay sighing and tossing. A clock struck three; and seized by an
intolerable impatience at her own discomfort, she slipped a motor coat
over her night-gown, put on slippers, and stole out into the passage.
The house was very still. She crept downstairs, smothering her
footsteps. Groping her way through the hall, inhabited by the thin
ghosts of would-be light, she slid back the chain of the door, and fled
towards the sea. She made no more noise running in the dew, than a bird
following the paths of air; and the two ponies, who felt her figure pass
in the darkness, snuffled, sending out soft sighs of alarm amongst the
closed buttercups. She climbed the wall over to the beach. While she
was running, she had fully meant to dash into the sea and cool herself,
but it was so black, with just a thin edging scarf of white, and the sky
was black, bereft of lights, waiting for the day!
She stood, and looked. And all the leapings and pulsings of flesh and
spirit slowly died in that wide dark loneliness, where the only sound was
the wistful breaking of small waves. She was well used to these dead
hours--only last night, at this very time, Harbinger's arm had been round
her in a last waltz! But here the dead hours had such different faces,
wide-eyed, solemn, and there came to Barbara, staring out at them, a
sense that the darkness saw her very soul, so that it felt little and
timid within her. She shivered in her fur-lined coat, as if almost
frightened at finding herself so marvellously nothing before that black
sky and dark sea, which seemed all one, relentlessly great.... And
crouching down, she waited for the dawn to break.
It came from over the Downs, sweeping a rush of cold air on its wings,
flighting towards the sea. With it the daring soon crept back into her
blood. She stripped, and ran down into the dark water, fast growing
pale. It covered her jealously, and she set to work to swim. The water
was warmer than the air. She lay on her back and splashed, watching the
sky flush. To bathe like this in the half-dark, with her hair floating
out, and no wet clothes clinging to her limbs, gave her the joy of a
child doing a naughty thing. She swam out of her depth, then scared at
her own adventure, swam in again as the sun rose.
She dashed into her two garments, climbed the wall, and scurried back to
the house. All her dejection, and feverish uncertainty were gone; she
felt keen, fresh, terribly hungry, and stealing into the dark
dining-room, began rummaging for food. She found biscuits, and was still
munching, when in the open doorway she saw Lord Dennis, a pistol in one
hand and a lighted candle in the other. With his carved features and
white beard above an old blue dressing-gown, he looked impressive, having
at the moment a distinct resemblance to Lady Casterley, as though danger
had armoured him in steel.
"You call this resting!" he said, dryly; then, looking at her drowned
hair, added: "I see you have already entrusted your trouble to the waters
of Lethe."
But without answer Barbara vanished into the dim hall and up the stairs.
CHAPTER IV
While Barbara was swimming to meet the dawn, Miltoun was bathing in those
waters of mansuetude and truth which roll from wall to wall in the
British House of Commons.
In that long debate on the Land question, for which he had waited to make
his first speech, he had already risen nine times without catching the
Speaker's eye, and slowly a sense of unreality was creeping over him.
Surely this great Chamber, where without end rose the small sound of a
single human voice, and queer mechanical bursts of approbation and
resentment, did not exist at all but as a gigantic fancy of his own! And
all these figures were figments of his brain! And when he at last spoke,
it would be himself alone that he addressed! The torpid air tainted with
human breath, the unwinking stare of the countless lights, the long rows
of seats, the queer distant rounds of pale listening flesh perched up so
high, they were all emanations of himself! Even the coming and going in
the gangway was but the coming and going of little wilful parts of him!
And rustling deep down in this Titanic creature of his fancy was 'the
murmuration' of his own unspoken speech, sweeping away the puff balls of
words flung up by that far-away, small, varying voice.
Then, suddenly all that dream creature had vanished; he was on his feet,
with a thumping heart, speaking.
Soon he had no tremors, only a dim consciousness that his words sounded
strange, and a queer icy pleasure in flinging them out into the silence.
Round him there seemed no longer men, only mouths and eyes. And he had
enjoyment in the feeling that with these words of his he was holding
those hungry mouths and eyes dumb and unmoving. Then he knew that he had
reached the end of what he had to say, and sat down, remaining motionless
in the centre of a various sound; staring at the back of the head in
front of him, with his hands clasped round his knee. And soon, when that
little faraway voice was once more speaking, he took his hat, and
glancing neither to right nor left, went out.
Instead of the sensation of relief and wild elation which fills the heart
of those who have taken the first plunge, Miltoun had nothing in his deep
dark well but the waters of bitterness. In truth, with the delivery of
that speech he had but parted with what had been a sort of anodyne to
suffering. He had only put the fine point on his conviction, of how vain
was his career now that he could not share it with Audrey Noel. He
walked slowly towards the Temple, along the riverside, where the lamps
were paling into nothingness before that daily celebration of Divinity,
the meeting of dark and light.
For Miltoun was not one of those who take things lying down; he took
things desperately, deeply, and with revolt. He took them like a rider
riding himself, plunging at the dig of his own spurs, chafing and wincing
at the cruel tugs of his own bitt; bearing in his friendless, proud heart
all the burden of struggles which shallower or more genial natures shared
with others.
He looked hardly less haggard, walking home, than some of those homeless
ones who slept nightly by the river, as though they knew that to lie near
one who could so readily grant oblivion, alone could save them from
seeking that consolation. He was perhaps unhappier than they, whose
spirits, at all events, had long ceased to worry them, having oozed out
from their bodies under the foot of Life:
Now that Audrey Noel was lost to him, her loveliness and that
indescribable quality which made her lovable, floated before him, the
very torture-flowers of a beauty never to be grasped--yet, that he could
grasp, 'if he only would! That was the heart and fervour of his
suffering. To be grasped if he only would! He was suffering, too,
physically from a kind of slow fever, the result of his wetting on the
day when he last saw her. And through that latent fever, things and
feelings, like his sensations in the House before his speech, were all as
it were muffled in a horrible way, as if they all came to him wrapped in
a sort of flannel coating, through which he could not cut. And all the
time there seemed to be within him two men at mortal grips with one
another; the man of faith in divine sanction and authority, on which all
his beliefs had hitherto hinged, and a desperate warm-blooded hungry
creature. He was very miserable, craving strangely for the society of
someone who could understand what he was feeling, .and, from long habit
of making no confidants, not knowing how to satisfy that craving.
It was dawn when he reached his rooms; and, sure that he would not sleep,
he did not even go to bed, but changed his clothes, made himself some
coffee, and sat down at the window which overlooked the flowered
courtyard.
In Middle Temple Hall a Ball was still in progress, though the glamour
from its Chinese lanterns was already darkened and gone. Miltoun saw a
man and a girl, sheltered by an old fountain, sitting out their last
dance. Her head had sunk on her partner's shoulder; their lips were
joined. And there floated up to the window the scent of heliotrope, with
the tune of the waltz that those two should have been dancing. This
couple so stealthily enlaced, the gleam of their furtively turned eyes,
the whispering of their lips, that stony niche below the twittering
sparrows, so cunningly sought out--it was the world he had abjured! When
he looked again, they--like a vision seen--had stolen away and gone; the
music too had ceased, there was no scent of heliotrope. In the stony
niche crouched a stray cat watching the twittering sparrows.
Miltoun went out, and, turning into the empty Strand, walked on--without
heeding where, till towards five o'clock he found himself on Putney
Bridge.
He rested there, leaning over the parapet, looking down at the grey
water. The sun was just breaking through the heat haze; early waggons
were passing, and already men were coming in to work. To what end did
the river wander up and down; and a human river flow across it twice
every day? To what end were men and women suffering? Of the full current
of this life Miltoun could no more see the aim, than that of the wheeling
gulls in the early sunlight.
Leaving the bridge he made towards Barnes Common. The night was still
ensnared there on the gorse bushes grey with cobwebs and starry dewdrops.
He passed a tramp family still sleeping, huddled all together. Even the
homeless lay in each other's arms!
From the Common he emerged on the road near the gates of Ravensham;
turning in there, he found his way to the kitchen garden, and sat down on
a bench close to the raspberry bushes. They were protected from thieves,
but at Miltoun's approach two blackbirds flustered out through the
netting and flew away.
His long figure resting so motionless impressed itself on the eyes of a
gardener, who caused a report to be circulated that his young lordship
was in the fruit garden. It reached the ears of Clifton, who himself
came out to see what this might mean. The old man took his stand in
front of Miltoun very quietly.
"You have come to breakfast, my lord?"
"If my grandmother will have me, Clifton."
"I understood your lordship was speaking last night."
"I was."
"You find the House of Commons satisfactory, I hope."
"Fairly, thank you, Clifton."
"They are not what they were in the great days of your grandfather, I
believe. He had a very good opinion of them. They vary, no doubt."
"Tempora mutantur."
"That is so. I find quite anew spirit towards public affairs. The
ha'penny Press; one takes it in, but one hardly approves. I shall be
anxious to read your speech. They say a first speech is a great strain."
"It is rather."
"But you had no reason to be anxious. I'm sure it was beautiful."
Miltoun saw that the old man's thin sallow cheeks had flushed to a deep
orange between his snow-white whiskers.
"I have looked forward to this day," he stammered, "ever since I knew
your lordship--twenty-eight years. It is the beginning."
"Or the end, Clifton."
The old man's face fell in a look of deep and concerned astonishment.
"No, no," he said; "with your antecedents, never."
Miltoun took his hand.
"Sorry, Clifton--didn't mean to shock you."
And for a minute neither spoke, looking at their clasped hands as if
surprised.
"Would your lordship like a bath--breakfast is still at eight. I can
procure you a razor."
When Miltoun entered the breakfast room, his grandmother, with a copy of
the Times in her hands, was seated before a grape fruit, which, with a
shredded wheat biscuit, constituted her first meal. Her appearance
hardly warranted Barbara's description of 'terribly well'; in truth she
looked a little white, as if she had been feeling the heat. But there
was no lack of animation in her little steel-grey eyes, nor of decision
in her manner.
"I see," she said, "that you've taken a line of your own, Eustace. I've
nothing to say against that; in fact, quite the contrary. But remember
this, my dear, however you may change you mustn't wobble. Only one thing
counts in that place, hitting the same nail on the head with the same
hammer all the time. You aren't looking at all well."
Miltoun, bending to kiss her, murmured:
"Thanks, I'm all right."
"Nonsense," replied Lady Casterley. "They don't look after you. Was
your mother in the House?"
"I don't think so."
"Exactly. And what is Barbara about? She ought to be seeing to you."
"Barbara is down with Uncle Dennis."
Lady Casterley set her jaw; then looking her grandson through and
through, said:
"I shall take you down there this very day. I shall have the sea to you.
What do you say, Clifton?"
"His lordship does look pale."
"Have the carriage, and we'll go from Clapham Junction. Thomas can go in
and fetch you some clothes. Or, better, though I dislike them, we can
telephone to your mother for a car. It's very hot for trains. Arrange
that, please, Clifton!"
To this project Miltoun raised no objection. And all through the drive
he remained sunk in an indifference and lassitude which to Lady Casterley
seemed in the highest degree ominous. For lassitude, to her, was the
strange, the unpardonable, state. The little great lady--casket of the
aristocratic principle--was permeated to the very backbone with the
instinct of artificial energy, of that alert vigour which those who have
nothing socially to hope for are forced to develop, lest they should
decay and be again obliged to hope. To speak honest truth, she could not
forbear an itch to run some sharp and foreign substance into her
grandson, to rouse him somehow, for she knew the reason of his state, and
was temperamentally out of patience with such a cause for backsliding.
Had it been any other of her grandchildren she would not have hesitated,
but there was that in Miltoun which held even Lady Casterley in check,
and only once during the four hours of travel did she attempt to break
down his reserve. She did it in a manner very soft for her--was he not of
all living things the hope and pride of her heart? Tucking her little
thin sharp hand under his arm, she said quietly:
"My dear, don't brood over it. That will never do."
But Miltoun removed her hand gently, and laid it back on the dust rug,
nor did he answer, or show other sign of having heard.
And Lady Casterley, deeply wounded, pressed her faded lips together, and
said sharply:
"Slower, please, Frith!"
CHAPTER V
It was to Barbara that Miltoun unfolded, if but little, the trouble of
his spirit, lying that same afternoon under a ragged tamarisk hedge with
the tide far out. He could never have done this if there had not been
between them the accidental revelation of that night at Monkland; nor
even then perhaps had he not felt in this young sister of his the warmth
of life for which he was yearning. In such a matter as love Barbara was
the elder of these two. For, besides the motherly knowledge of the heart
peculiar to most women, she had the inherent woman-of-the-worldliness to
be expected of a daughter of Lord and Lady Valleys. If she herself were
in doubt as to the state of her affections, it was not as with Miltoun,
on the score of the senses and the heart, but on the score of her spirit
and curiosity, which Courtier had awakened and caused to flap their wings
a little. She worried over Miltoun's forlorn case; it hurt her too to
think of Mrs. Noel eating her heart out in that lonely cottage. A sister
so--good and earnest as Agatha had ever inclined Barbara to a rebellious
view of morals, and disinclined her altogether to religion. And so, she
felt that if those two could not be happy apart, they should be happy
together, in the name of all the joy there was in life!
And while her brother lay face to the sky under the tamarisks, she kept
trying to think of how to console him, conscious that she did not in the
least understand the way he thought about things. Over the fields
behind, the larks were hymning the promise of the unripe corn; the
foreshore was painted all colours, from vivid green to mushroom pink; by
the edge of the blue sea little black figures stooped, gathering
sapphire. The air smelled sweet in the shade of the tamarisk; there was
ineffable peace. And Barbara, covered by the network of sunlight, could
not help impatience with a suffering which seemed to her so corrigible by
action. At last she ventured:
"Life is short, Eusty!"
Miltoun's answer, given without movement, startled her:
"Persuade me that it is, Babs, and I'll bless you. If the singing of
these larks means nothing, if that blue up there is a morass of our
invention, if we are pettily, creeping on furthering nothing, if there's
no purpose in our lives, persuade me of it, for God's sake!"
Carried suddenly beyond her depth, Barbara could only put out her hand,
and say: "Oh! don't take things so hard!"
"Since you say that life is short," Miltoun muttered, with his smile,
"you shouldn't spoil it by feeling pity! In old days we went to the
Tower for our convictions. We can stand a little private roasting, I
hope; or has the sand run out of us altogether?"
Stung by his tone, Barbara answered in rather a hard voice:
"What we must bear, we must, I suppose. But why should we make trouble?
That's what I can't stand!"
"O profound wisdom!"
Barbara flushed.
"I love Life!" she said.
The galleons of the westering sun were already sailing in a broad gold
fleet straight for that foreshore where the little black stooping figures
had not yet finished their toil, the larks still sang over the unripe
corn--when Harbinger, galloping along the sands from Whitewater to Sea
House, came on that silent couple walking home to dinner.
It would not be safe to say of this young man that he readily diagnosed a
spiritual atmosphere, but this was the less his demerit, since everything
from his cradle up had conspired to keep the spiritual thermometer of his
surroundings at 60 in the shade. And the fact that his own spiritual
thermometer had now run up so that it threatened to burst the bulb,
rendered him less likely than ever to see what was happening with other
people's. Yet, he did notice that Barbara was looking pale, and--it
seemed--sweeter than ever.... With her eldest brother he always somehow
felt ill at ease. He could not exactly afford to despise an
uncompromising spirit in one of his own order, but he was no more
impervious than others to Miltoun's caustic, thinly-veiled contempt for
the commonplace; and having a full-blooded belief in himself---usual with
men of fine physique, whose lots are so cast that this belief can never
or almost never be really shaken--he greatly disliked the feeling of
being a little looked down on. It was an intense relief, when, saying
that he wanted a certain magazine, Miltoun strode off into the town.
To Harbinger, no less than to Miltoun and Barbara, last night had been
bitter and restless. The sight of that pale swaying figure, with the
parted lips, whirling round in Courtier's arms, had clung to his vision
ever since, the Ball. During his own last dance with her he had been
almost savagely silent; only by a great effort restraining his tongue
from mordant allusions to that 'prancing, red-haired fellow,' as he
secretly called the champion of lost causes. In fact, his sensations
there and since had been a revelation, or would have teen if he could
have stood apart to see them. True, he had gone about next day with his
usual cool, off-hand manner, because one naturally did not let people
see, but it was with such an inner aching and rage of want and jealousy
as to really merit pity. Men of his physically big, rather rushing,
type, are the last to possess their souls in patience. Walking home
after the Ball he had determined to follow her down to the sea, where she
had said, so maliciously; that she was going. After a second almost
sleepless night he had no longer any hesitation. He must see her! After
all, a man might go to his own 'place' with impunity; he did not care if
it were a pointed thing to do.... Pointed! The more pointed the better!
There was beginning to be roused in him an ugly stubbornness of male
determination. She should not escape him!
But now that he was walking at her side, all that determination and
assurance melted to perplexed humility. He marched along by his horse
with his head down, just feeling the ache of being so close to her and
yet so far; angry with his own silence and awkwardness, almost angry with
her for her loveliness, and the pain it made him suffer. When they
reached the house, and she left him at the stable-yard, saying she was
going to get some flowers, he jerked the beast's bridle and swore at it
for its slowness in entering the stable. He, was terrified that she
would be gone before he could get into the garden; yet half afraid of
finding her there. But she was still plucking carnations by the box
hedge which led to the conservatories. And as she rose from gathering
those blossoms, before he knew what he was doing, Harbinger had thrown
his arm around her, held her as in a vice, kissed her unmercifully.
She seemed to offer no resistance, her smooth cheeks growing warmer and
warmer, even her lips passive; but suddenly he recoiled, and his heart
stood still at his own outrageous daring. What had he done? He saw her
leaning back almost buried in the clipped box hedge, and heard her say
with a sort of faint mockery: "Well!"
He would have flung himself down on his knees to ask for pardon but for
the thought that someone might come. He muttered hoarsely: "By God, I
was mad!" and stood glowering in sullen suspense between hardihood and
fear. He heard her say, quietly:
"Yes, you were-rather."
Then seeing her put her hand up to her lips as if he had hurt them, he
muttered brokenly:
"Forgive me, Babs!"
There was a full minute's silence while he stood there, no longer daring
to look at her, beaten all over by his emotions. Then, with
bewilderment, he heard her say:
"I didn't mind it--for once!"
He looked up at that. How could she love him, and speak so coolly! How
could she not mind, if she did not love him! She was passing her hands
over her face and neck and hair, repairing the damage of his kisses.
"Now shall we go in?" she said.
Harbinger took a step forward.
"I love you so," he said; "I will put my life in your hands, and you
shall throw it away."
At those words, of whose exact nature he had very little knowledge, he
saw her smile.
"If I let you come within three yards, will you be good?"
He bowed; and, in silence, they walked towards the house.
Dinner that evening was a strange, uncomfortable meal. But its comedy,
too subtly played for Miltoun and Lord Dennis, seemed transparent to the
eyes of Lady Casterley; for, when Harbinger had sallied forth to ride
back along the sands, she took her candle and invited Barbara to retire.
Then, having admitted her granddaughter to the apartment always reserved
for herself, and specially furnished with practically nothing, she sat
down opposite that tall, young, solid figure, as it were taking stock of
it, and said:
"So you are coming to your senses, at all events. Kiss me!"
Barbara, stooping to perform this rite, saw a tear stealing down the
carved fine nose. Knowing that to notice it would be too dreadful, she
raised herself, and went to the window. There, staring out over the dark
fields and dark sea, by the side of which Harbinger was riding home, she
put her hand up to her, lips, and thought for the hundredth time:
"So that's what it's like!"
CHAPTER VI
Three days after his first, and as he promised himself, his last Society
Ball, Courtier received a note from Audrey Noel, saying that she had left
Monkland for the present, and come up to a little flat--on the riverside
not far from Westminster.
When he made his way there that same July day, the Houses of Parliament
were bright under a sun which warmed all the grave air emanating from
their counsels of perfection: Courtier passed by dubiously. His feelings
in the presence of those towers were always a little mixed. There was
not so much of the poet in him as to cause him to see nothing there at
all save only same lines against the sky, but there was enough of the
poet to make him long to kick something; and in this mood he wended his
way to the riverside.
Mrs. Noel was not at home, but since the maid informed him that she would
be in directly, he sat down to wait. Her flat, which was on--the first
floor, overlooked the river and had evidently been taken furnished, for
there were visible marks of a recent struggle with an Edwardian taste
which, flushed from triumph over Victorianism, had filled the rooms with
early Georgian remains. On the only definite victory, a rose-coloured
window seat of great comfort and little age, Courtier sat down, and
resigned himself to doing nothing with the ease of an old soldier.
To the protective feeling he had once had for a very graceful,
dark-haired child, he joined not only the championing pity of a man of
warm heart watching a woman in distress, but the impatience of one, who,
though temperamentally incapable of feeling oppressed himself, rebelled
at sight of all forms of tyranny affecting others.
The sight of the grey towers, still just visible, under which Miltoun and
his father sat, annoyed him deeply; symbolizing to him, Authority--foe to
his deathless mistress, the sweet, invincible lost cause of Liberty. But
presently the river; bringing up in flood the unbound water that had
bathed every shore, touched all sands, and seen the rising and falling of
each mortal star, so soothed him with its soundless hymn to Freedom, that
Audrey Noel coming in with her hands full of flowers, found him sleeping
firmly, with his mouth shut.
Noiselessly putting down the flowers, she waited for his awakening. That
sanguine visage, with its prominent chin, flaring moustaches, and
eyebrows raised rather V-shaped above his closed eyes, wore an expression
of cheery defiance even in sleep; and perhaps no face in all London was
so utterly its obverse, as that of this dark, soft-haired woman,
delicate, passive, and tremulous with pleasure at sight of the only
person in the world from whom she felt she might learn of Miltoun,
without losing her self-respect.
He woke at last, and manifesting no discomfiture, said:
"It was like you not to wake me."
They sat for a long while talking, the riverside traffic drowsily
accompanying their voices, the flowers drowsily filling the room with
scent; and when Courtier left, his heart was sore. She had not spoken of
herself at all, but had talked nearly all the time of Barbara, praising
her beauty and high spirit; growing pale once or twice, and evidently
drinking in with secret avidity every allusion to Miltoun. Clearly, her
feelings had not changed, though she would not show them! Courtier's
pity for her became well-nigh violent.
It was in such a mood, mingled with very different feelings, that he
donned evening clothes and set out to attend the last gathering of the
season at Valleys House, a function which, held so late in July, was
perforce almost perfectly political.
Mounting the wide and shining staircase, that had so often baffled the
arithmetic of little Ann, he was reminded of a picture entitled 'The
Steps to Heaven' in his nursery four-and-thirty years before. At the top
of this staircase, and surrounded by acquaintances, he came on Harbinger,
who nodded curtly. The young man's handsome face and figure appeared to
Courtier's jaundiced eye more obviously successful and complacent than
ever; so that he passed him by sardonically, and manoeuvred his way
towards Lady Valleys, whom he could perceive stationed, like a general,
in a little cleared space, where to and fro flowed constant streams of
people, like the rays of a star. She was looking her very best, going
well with great and highly-polished spaces; and she greeted Courtier with
a special cordiality of tone, which had in it, besides kindness towards
one who must be feeling a strange bird, a certain diplomatic quality,
compounded of desire, as it were, to 'warn him off,' and fear of saying
something that might irritate and make him more dangerous. She had heard,
she said, that he was bound for Persia; she hoped he was not going to try
and make things more difficult there; then with the words: "So good of
you to have come!" she became once more the centre of her battlefield.
Perceiving that he was finished with, Courtier stood back against a wall
and watched. Thus isolated, he was like a solitary cuckoo contemplating
the gyrations of a flock of rooks. Their motions seemed a little
meaningless to one so far removed from all the fetishes and shibboleths
of Westminster. He heard them discussing Miltoun's speech, the real
significance of which apparently had only just been grasped. The words
'doctrinaire,' 'extremist,' came to his ears, together with the saying 'a
new force.' People were evidently puzzled, disturbed, not pleased--as if
some star not hitherto accounted for had suddenly appeared amongst the
proper constellations.
Searching this crowd for Barbara, Courtier had all the time an uneasy
sense of shame. What business had he to come amongst these people so
strange to him, just for the sake of seeing her! What business had he to
be hankering after this girl at all, knowing in his heart that he could
not stand the atmosphere she lived in for a week, and that she was
utterly unsuited for any atmosphere that he could give her; to say
nothing of the unlikelihood that he could flutter the pulses of one half
his age!
A voice, behind him said: "Mr. Courtier!"
He turned, and there was Barbara.
"I want to talk to you about something serious: Will you come into the
picture gallery?"
When at last they were close to a family group of Georgian Caradocs, and
could as it were shut out the throng sufficiently for private speech, she
began:
"Miltoun's so horribly unhappy; I don't know what to do for him: He's
making himself ill!"
And she suddenly looked up, in Courtier's face. She seemed to him very
young, and touching, at that moment. Her eyes had a gleam of faith in
them, like a child's eyes; as if she relied on him to straighten out this
tangle, to tell her not only about Miltoun's trouble, but about all life,
its meaning, and the secret of its happiness: And he said gently:
"What can I do? Mrs. Noel is in Town. But that's no good, unless--" Not
knowing how to finish this sentence; he was silent.
"I wish I were Miltoun," she muttered.
At that quaint saying, Courtier was hard put to it not to take hold of
the hands so close to him. This flash of rebellion in her had quickened
all his blood. But she seemed to have seen what had passed in him, for
her next speech was chilly.
"It's no good; stupid of me to be worrying you."
"It is quite impossible for you to worry me."
Her eyes lifted suddenly from her glove, and looked straight into his.
"Are you really going to Persia?"
"Yes."
"But I don't want you to, not yet!" and turning suddenly, she left him.
Strangely disturbed, Courtier remained motionless, consulting the grave
stare of the group of Georgian Caradocs.
A voice said:
"Good painting, isn't it?"
Behind him was Lord Harbinger. And once more the memory of Lady
Casterley's words; the memory of the two figures with joined hands on the
balcony above the election crowd; all his latent jealousy of this
handsome young Colossus, his animus against one whom he could, as it
were, smell out to be always fighting on the winning side; all his
consciousness too of what a lost cause his own was, his doubt whether he
were honourable to look on it as a cause at all, flared up in Courtier,
so that his answer was a stare. On Harbinger's face, too, there had come
a look of stubborn violence slowly working up towards the surface.
"I said: 'Good, isn't it?' Mr. Courtier."
"I heard you."
"And you were pleased to answer?"
"Nothing."
"With the civility which might be expected of your habits."
Coldly disdainful, Courtier answered:
"If you want to say that sort of thing, please choose a place where I can
reply to you," and turned abruptly on his heel.
But he ground his teeth as he made his way out into the street.
In Hyde Park the grass was parched and dewless under a sky whose stars
were veiled by the heat and dust haze. Never had Courtier so bitterly
wanted the sky's consolation--the blessed sense of insignificance in the
face of the night's dark beauty, which, dwarfing all petty rage and
hunger, made men part of its majesty, exalted them to a sense of
greatness.
CHAPTER VII
It was past four o'clock the following day when Barbara issued from
Valleys House on foot; clad in a pale buff frock, chosen for quietness,
she attracted every eye. Very soon entering a taxi-cab, she drove to the
Temple, stopped at the Strand entrance, and walked down the little narrow
lane into the heart of the Law. Its votaries were hurrying back from the
Courts, streaming up from their Chambers for tea, or escaping desperately
to Lord's or the Park--young votaries, unbound as yet by the fascination
of fame or fees. And each, as he passed, looked at Barbara, with his
fingers itching to remove his hat, and a feeling that this was She.
After a day spent amongst precedents and practice, after six hours at
least of trying to discover what chance A had of standing on his rights,
or B had of preventing him, it was difficult to feel otherwise about that
calm apparition--like a golden slim tree walking. One of them, asked by
her the way to Miltoun's staircase, preceded her with shy ceremony, and
when she had vanished up those dusty stairs, lingered on, hoping that she
might find her visitee out, and be obliged to return and ask him the way
back. But she did not come, and he went sadly away, disturbed to the
very bottom of all that he owned in fee simple.
In fact, no one answered Barbara's knock, and discovering that the door
yielded, she walked through the lobby past the clerk's den, converted to
a kitchen, into the sitting-room. It was empty. She had never been to
Miltoun's rooms before, and she stared about her curiously. Since he did
not practise, much of the proper gear was absent. The room indeed had a
worn carpet, a few old chairs, and was lined from floor to ceiling with
books. But the wall space between the windows was occupied by an
enormous map of England, scored all over with figures and crosses; and
before this map stood an immense desk, on which were piles of double
foolscap covered with Miltoun's neat and rather pointed writing. Barbara
examined them, puckering up her forehead; she knew that he was working at
a book on the land question; but she had never realized that the making
of a book requited so much writing. Papers, too, and Blue Books littered
a large bureau on which stood bronze busts of AEschylus and Dante.
"What an uncomfortable place!" she thought. The room, indeed, had an
atmosphere, a spirit, which depressed her horribly. Seeing a few flowers
down in the court below, she had a longing to get out to them. Then
behind her she heard the sound of someone talking. But there was no one
in the room; and the effect of this disrupted soliloquy, which came from
nowhere, was so uncanny, that she retreated to the door. The sound, as
of two spirits speaking in one voice, grew louder, and involuntarily she
glanced at the busts. They seemed quite blameless. Though the sound had
been behind her when she was at the window, it was again behind her now
that she was at the door; and she suddenly realized that it was issuing
from a bookcase in the centre of the wall. Barbara had her father's
nerve, and walking up to the bookcase she perceived that it had been
affixed to, and covered, a door that was not quite closed. She pulled it
towards her, and passed through. Across the centre of an unkempt bedroom
Miltoun was striding, dressed only in his shirt and trousers. His feet
were bare, and his head and hair dripping wet; the look on his thin dark
face went to Barbara's heart. She ran forward, and took his hand. This
was burning hot, but the sight of her seemed to have frozen his tongue
and eyes. And the contrast of his burning hand with this frozen silence,
frightened Barbara horribly. She could think of nothing but to put her
other hand to his forehead. That too was burning hot!
"What brought you here?" he said.
She could only murmur:
"Oh! Eusty! Are you ill?"
Miltoun took hold of her wrists.
"It's all right, I've been working too hard; got a touch of fever."
"So I can feel," murmured Barbara. "You ought to be in bed. Come home
with me."
Miltoun smiled. "It's not a case for leeches."
The look of his smile, the sound of his voice, sent a shudder through
her.
"I'm not going to leave you here alone."
But Miltoun's grasp tightened on her wrists.
"My dear Babs, you will do what I tell you. Go home, hold your tongue,
and leave me to burn out in peace."
Barbara sustained that painful grip without wincing; she had regained her
calmness.
"You must come! You haven't anything here, not even a cool drink."
"My God! Barley water!"
The scorn he put into those two words was more withering than a whole
philippic against redemption by creature comforts. And feeling it dart
into her, Barbara closed her lips tight. He had dropped her wrists, and
again, begun pacing up and down; suddenly he stopped:
"'The stars, sun, moon all shrink away,
A desert vast, without a bound,
And nothing left to eat or drink,
"And a dark desert all around.'
"You should read your Blake, Audrey."
Barbara turned quickly, and went out frightened. She passed through the
sitting-room and corridor on to the staircase. He was ill-raving! The
fever in Miltoun's veins seemed to have stolen through the clutch of his
hands into her own veins. Her face was burning, she thought confusedly,
breathed unevenly. She felt sore, and at the same time terribly sorry;
and withal there kept rising in her the gusty memory of Harbingers kiss.
She hurried down the stairs, turned by instinct down-hill and found
herself on the Embankment. And suddenly, with her inherent power of
swift decision, she hailed a cab, and drove to the nearest telephone
office.
CHAPTER VIII
To a woman like Audrey Noel, born to be the counterpart and complement of
another,--whose occupations and effort were inherently divorced from the
continuity of any stiff and strenuous purpose of her own, the uprooting
she had voluntarily undergone was a serious matter.
Bereaved of the faces of her flowers, the friendly sighing of her
lime-tree, the wants of her cottagers; bereaved of that busy monotony of
little home things which is the stay and solace of lonely women, she was
extraordinarily lost. Even music for review seemed to have failed her.
She had never lived in London, so that she had not the refuge of old
haunts and habits, but had to make her own--and to make habits and haunts
required a heart that could at least stretch out feelers and lay hold of
things, and her heart was not now able. When she had struggled with her
Edwardian flat, and laid down her simple routine of meals, she was as
stranded as ever was, convict let out of prison. She had not even that
great support, the necessity of hiding her feelings for fear of
disturbing others. She was planted there, with her longing and grief,
and nothing, nobody, to take her out of herself. Having wilfully
embraced this position, she tried to make the best of it, feeling it less
intolerable, at all events, than staying on at Monkland, where she had
made that grievous, and unpardonable error--falling in love.
This offence, on the part of one who felt within herself a great capacity
to enjoy and to confer happiness, had arisen--like the other grievous and
unpardonable offence, her marriage--from too much disposition to yield
herself to the personality of another. But it was cold comfort to know
that the desire to give and to receive love had twice over left her--a
dead woman. Whatever the nature of those immature sensations with which,
as a girl of twenty, she had accepted her husband, in her feeling towards
Miltoun there was not only abandonment, but the higher flame of
self-renunciation. She wanted to do the best for him, and had not even
the consolation of the knowledge that she had sacrificed herself for his
advantage. All had been taken out of her hands! Yet with characteristic
fatalism she did not feel rebellious. If it were ordained that she
should, for fifty, perhaps sixty years, repent in sterility and ashes
that first error of her girlhood, rebellion was, none the less, too
far-fetched. If she rebelled, it would not be in spirit, but in action.
General principles were nothing to her; she lost no force brooding over
the justice or injustice of her situation, but merely tried to digest its
facts.
The whole day, succeeding Courtier's visit, was spent by her in the
National Gallery, whose roof, alone of all in London, seemed to offer her
protection. She had found one painting, by an Italian master, the
subject of which reminded her of Miltoun; and before this she sat for a
very long time, attracting at last the gouty stare of an official. The
still figure of this lady, with the oval face and grave beauty, both
piqued his curiosity, and stimulated certain moral qualms. She, was
undoubtedly waiting for her lover. No woman, in his experience, had ever
sat so long before a picture without ulterior motive; and he kept his
eyes well opened to see what this motive would be like. It gave him,
therefore, a sensation almost amounting to chagrin when coming round once
more, he found they had eluded him and gone off together without coming
under his inspection. Feeling his feet a good deal, for he had been on
them all day, he sat down in the hollow which she had left behind her;
and against his will found himself also looking at the picture. It was
painted in a style he did not care for; the face of the subject, too,
gave him the queer feeling that the gentleman was being roasted inside.
He had not been sitting there long, however, before he perceived the lady
standing by the picture, and the lips of the gentleman in the picture
moving. It seemed to him against the rules, and he got up at once, and
went towards it; but as he did so, he found that his eyes were shut, and
opened them hastily. There was no one there.
From the National Gallery, Audrey had gone into an A.B.C. for tea, and
then home. Before the Mansions was a taxi-cab, and the maid met her with
the news that 'Lady Caradoc' was in the sitting-room.
Barbara was indeed standing in the middle of the room with a look on her
face such as her father wore sometimes on the racecourse, in the hunting
field, or at stormy Cabinet Meetings, a look both resolute and sharp.
She spoke at once:
"I got your address from Mr. Courtier. My brother is ill. I'm afraid
it'll be brain fever, I think you had better go and see him at his rooms
in the Temple; there's no time to be lost."
To Audrey everything in the room seemed to go round; yet all her senses
were preternaturally acute, so that she could distinctly smell the mud of
the river at low tide. She said, with a shudder:
"Oh! I will go; yes, I will go at once."
"He's quite alone. He hasn't asked for you; but I think your going is
the only chance. He took me for you. You told me once you were a good
nurse."
"Yes."
The room was steady enough now, but she had lost the preternatural
acuteness of her senses, and felt confused. She heard Barbara say: "I
can take you to the door in my cab," and murmuring: "I will get ready,"
went into her bedroom. For a moment she was so utterly bewildered that
she did nothing. Then every other thought was lost in a strange, soft,
almost painful delight, as if some new instinct were being born in her;
and quickly, but without confusion or hurry, she began packing. She put
into a valise her own toilet things; then flannel, cotton-wool, eau de
Cologne, hot-water bottle, Etna, shawls, thermometer, everything she had
which could serve in illness. Changing to a plain dress, she took up the
valise and returned to Barbara. They went out together to the cab. The
moment it began to bear her to this ordeal at once so longed-for and so
terrible, fear came over her again, so that she screwed herself into the
corner, very white and still. She was aware of Barbara calling to the
driver: "Go by the Strand, and stop at a poulterer's for ice!" And, when
the bag of ice had been handed in, heard her saying: "I will bring you
all you want--if he is really going to be ill."
Then, as the cab stopped, and the open doorway of the staircase was
before her, all her courage came back.
She felt the girl's warm hand against her own, and grasping her valise
and the bag of ice, got out, and hurried up the steps.
CHAPTER IX
On leaving Nettlefold, Miltoun had gone straight back to his rooms, and
begun at once to work at his book on the land question. He worked all
through that night--his third night without sleep, and all the following
day. In the evening, feeling queer in the head, he went out and walked
up and down the Embankment. Then, fearing to go to bed and lie
sleepless, he sat down in his arm-chair. Falling asleep there, he had
fearful dreams, and awoke unrefreshed. After his bath, he drank coffee,
and again forced himself to work. By the middle of the day he felt dizzy
and exhausted, but utterly disinclined to eat. He went out into the hot
Strand, bought himself a necessary book, and after drinking more coffee,
came back and again began to work. At four o'clock he found that he was
not taking in the words. His head was burning hot, and he went into his
bedroom to bathe it. Then somehow he began walking up and down, talking
to himself, as Barbara had found him.
She had no sooner gone, than he felt utterly exhausted. A small crucifix
hung over his bed, and throwing himself down before it, he remained
motionless with his face buried in the coverlet, and his arms stretched
out towards the wall. He did not pray, but merely sought rest from
sensation. Across his half-hypnotized consciousness little threads of
burning fancy kept shooting. Then he could feel nothing but utter
physical sickness, and against this his will revolted. He resolved that
he would not be ill, a ridiculous log for women to hang over. But the
moments of sickness grew longer and more frequent; and to drive them away
he rose from his knees, and for some time again walked up and down; then,
seized with vertigo, he was obliged to sit on the bed to save himself
from falling. From being burning hot he had become deadly cold, glad to
cover himself with the bedclothes. The heat soon flamed up in him again;
but with a sick man's instinct he did not throw off the clothes, and
stayed quite still. The room seemed to have turned to a thick white
substance like a cloud, in which he lay enwrapped, unable to move hand or
foot. His sense of smell and hearing had become unnaturally acute; he
smelled the distant streets, flowers, dust, and the leather of his books,
even the scent left by Barbara's clothes, and a curious odour of river
mud. A clock struck six, he counted each stroke; and instantly the whole
world seemed full of striking clocks, the sound of horses' hoofs, bicycle
bells, people's footfalls. His sense of vision, on the contrary, was
absorbed in consciousness of this white blanket of cloud wherein he was
lifted above the earth, in the midst of a dull incessant hammering. On
the surface of the cloud there seemed to be forming a number of little
golden spots; these spots were moving, and he saw that they were toads.
Then, beyond them, a huge face shaped itself, very dark, as if of bronze,
with eyes burning into his brain. The more he struggled to get away from
these eyes, the more they bored and burned into him. His voice was gone,
so that he was unable to cry out, and suddenly the face marched over him.
When he recovered consciousness his head was damp with moisture trickling
from something held to his forehead by a figure leaning above him.
Lifting his hand he touched a cheek; and hearing a sob instantly
suppressed, he sighed. His hand was gently taken; he felt kisses on it.
The room was so dark, that he could scarcely see her face--his sight too
was dim; but he could hear her breathing and the least sound of her dress
and movements--the scent too of her hands and hair seemed to envelop him,
and in the midst of all the acute discomfort of his fever, he felt the
band round his brain relax. He did not ask how long she had been there,
but lay quite still, trying to keep his eyes on her, for fear of that
face, which seemed lurking behind the air, ready to march on him again.
Then feeling suddenly that he could not hold it back, he beckoned, and
clutched at her, trying to cover himself with the protection of her
breast. This time his swoon was not so deep; it gave way to delirium,
with intervals when he knew that she was there, and by the shaded candle
light could see her in a white garment, floating close to him, or sitting
still with her hand on his; he could even feel the faint comfort of the
ice cap, and of the scent of eau de Cologne. Then he would lose all
consciousness of her presence, and pass through into the incoherent
world, where the crucifix above his bed seemed to bulge and hang out, as
if it must fall on him. He conceived a violent longing to tear it down,
which grew till he had struggled up in bed and wrenched it from off the
wall. Yet a mysterious consciousness of her presence permeated even his
darkest journeys into the strange land; and once she seemed to be with
him, where a strange light showed them fields and trees, a dark line of
moor, and a bright sea, all whitened, and flashing with sweet violence.
Soon after dawn he had a long interval of consciousness, and took in with
a sort of wonder her presence in the low chair by his bed. So still she
sat in a white loose gown, pale with watching, her eyes immovably fixed
on him, her lips pressed together, and quivering at his faintest motion.
He drank in desperately the sweetness of her face, which had so lost
remembrance of self.
CHAPTER X
Barbara gave the news of her brother's illness to no one else, common
sense telling her to run no risk of disturbance. Of her own initiative,
she brought a doctor, and went down twice a day to hear reports of
Miltoun's progress.
As a fact, her father and mother had gone to Lord Dennis, for Goodwood,
and the chief difficulty had been to excuse her own neglect of that
favourite Meeting. She had fallen back on the half-truth that Eustace
wanted her in Town; and, since Lord and Lady Valleys had neither of them
shaken off a certain uneasiness about their son, the pretext sufficed:
It was not until the sixth day, when the crisis was well past and Miltoun
quite free from fever, that she again went down to Nettlefold.
On arriving she at once sought out her mother, whom she found in her
bedroom, resting. It had been very hot at Goodwood.
Barbara was not afraid of her--she was not, indeed, afraid of anyone,
except Miltoun, and in some strange way, a little perhaps of Courtier;
yet, when the maid had gone, she did not at once begin her tale. Lady
Valleys, who at Goodwood had just heard details of a Society scandal,
began a carefully expurgated account of it suitable to her daughter's
ears--for some account she felt she must give to somebody.
"Mother," said Barbara suddenly, "Eustace has been ill. He's out of
danger now, and going on all right." Then, looking hard at the
bewildered lady, she added: "Mrs. Noel is nursing him."
The past tense in which illness had been mentioned, checking at the first
moment any rush of panic in Lady Valleys, left her confused by the
situation conjured up in Barbara's last words. Instead of feeding that
part of man which loves a scandal, she was being fed, always an
unenviable sensation. A woman did not nurse a man under such
circumstances without being everything to him, in the world's eyes. Her
daughter went on:
"I took her to him. It seemed the only thing to do--since it's all
through fretting for her. Nobody knows, of course, except the doctor,
and--Stacey."
"Heavens!" muttered Lady Valleys.
"It has saved him."
The mother instinct in Lady Valleys took sudden fright. "Are you telling
me the truth, Babs? Is he really out of danger? How wrong of you not to
let me know before?"
But Barbara did not flinch; and her mother relapsed into rumination.
"Stacey is a cat!" she said suddenly. The expurgated details of the
scandal she had been retailing to her daughter had included the usual
maid. She could not find it in her to enjoy the irony of this
coincidence. Then, seeing Barbara smile, she said tartly:
"I fail to see the joke."
"Only that I thought you'd enjoy my throwing Stacey in, dear."
"What! You mean she doesn't know?"
"Not a word."
Lady Valleys smiled.
"What a little wretch you are, Babs!" Maliciously she added: "Claud and
his mother are coming over from Whitewater, with Bertie and Lily
Malvezin, you'd better go and dress;" and her eyes searched her
daughter's so shrewdly, that a flush rose to the girl's cheeks.
When she had gone, Lady Valleys rang for her maid again, and relapsed
into meditation. Her first thought was to consult her husband; her
second that secrecy was strength. Since no one knew but Barbara, no one
had better know.
Her astuteness and experience comprehended the far-reaching probabilities
of this affair. It would not do to take a single false step. If she had
no one's action to control but her own and Barbara's, so much the less
chance of a slip. Her mind was a strange medley of thoughts and
feelings, almost comic, well-nigh tragic; of worldly prudence, and
motherly instinct; of warm-blooded sympathy with all love-affairs, and
cool-blooded concern for her son's career. It was not yet too late
perhaps to prevent real mischief; especially since it was agreed by
everyone that the woman was no adventuress. Whatever was done, they must
not forget that she had nursed him--saved him, Barbara had said! She
must be treated with all kindness and consideration.
Hastening her toilette, she in turn went to her daughter's room.
Barbara was already dressed, leaning out of her window towards the sea.
Lady Valleys began almost timidly:
"My dear, is Eustace out of bed yet?"
"He was to get up to-day for an hour or two."
"I see. Now, would there be any danger if you and I went up and took
charge over from Mrs. Noel?"
"Poor Eusty!"
"Yes, yes! But, exercise your judgment. Would it harm him?"
Barbara was silent. "No," she said at last, "I don't suppose it would,
now; but it's for the doctor to say."
Lady Valleys exhibited a manifest relief.
"We'll see him first, of course. Eustace will have to have an ordinary
nurse, I suppose, for a bit."
Looking stealthily at Barbara, she added:
"I mean to be very nice to her; but one mustn't be romantic, you know,
Babs."
From the little smile on Barbara's lips she derived no sense of
certainty; indeed she was visited by all her late disquietude about her
young daughter, by all the feeling that she, as well as Miltoun, was
hovering on the verge of some folly.
"Well, my dear," she said, "I am going down."
But Barbara lingered a little longer in that bedroom where ten nights ago
she had lain tossing, till in despair she went and cooled herself in the
dark sea.
Her last little interview with Courtier stood between her and a fresh
meeting with Harbinger, whom at the Valleys House gathering she had not
suffered to be alone with her. She came down late.
That same evening, out on the beach road, under a sky swarming with
stars, the people were strolling--folk from the towns, down for their
fortnight's holiday. In twos and threes, in parties of six or eight,
they passed the wall at the end of Lord Dennis's little domain; and the
sound of their sparse talk and laughter, together with the sighing of the
young waves, was blown over the wall to the ears of Harbinger, Bertie,
Barbara, and Lily Malvezin, when they strolled out after dinner to sniff
the sea. The holiday-makers stared dully at the four figures in evening
dress looking out above their heads; they had other things than these to
think of, becoming more and more silent as the night grew dark. The four
young people too were rather silent. There was something in this warm
night, with its sighing, and its darkness, and its stars, that was not
favourable to talk, so that presently they split into couples, drifting a
little apart.
Standing there, gripping the wall, it seemed to Harbinger that there were
no words left in the world. Not even his worst enemy could have called
this young man romantic; yet that figure beside him, the gleam of her
neck and her pale cheek in the dark, gave him perhaps the most poignant
glimpse of mystery that he had ever had. His mind, essentially that of a
man of affairs, by nature and by habit at home amongst the material
aspects of things, was but gropingly conscious that here, in this dark
night, and the dark sea, and the pale figure of this girl whose heart was
dark to him and secret, there was perhaps something--yes,
something--which surpassed the confines of his philosophy, something
beckoning him on out of his snug compound into the desert of divinity.
If so, it was soon gone in the aching of his senses at the scent of her
hair, and the longing to escape from this weird silence.
"Babs," he said; "have you forgiven me?"
Her answer came, without turn of head, natural, indifferent:
"Yes--I told you so."
"Is that all you have to say to a fellow?"
"What shall we talk about--the running of Casetta?"
Deep down within him Harbinger uttered a noiseless oath. Something
sinister was making her behave like this to him! It was that
fellow--that fellow! And suddenly he said:
"Tell me this----" then speech seemed to stick in his throat. No! If
there were anything in that, he preferred not to hear it. There was a
limit!
Down below, a pair of lovers passed, very silent, their arms round each
other's waists.
Barbara turned and walked away towards the house.
CHAPTER XI
The days when Miltoun was first allowed out of bed were a time of mingled
joy and sorrow to her who had nursed him. To see him sitting up, amazed
at his own weakness, was happiness, yet to think that he would be no more
wholly dependent, no more that sacred thing, a helpless creature, brought
her the sadness of a mother whose child no longer needs her. With every
hour he would now get farther from her, back into the fastnesses of his
own spirit. With every hour she would be less his nurse and comforter,
more the woman he loved. And though that thought shone out in the
obscure future like a glamorous flower, it brought too much wistful
uncertainty to the present. She was very tired, too, now that all
excitement was over--so tired that she hardly knew what she did or where
she moved. But a smile had become so faithful to her eyes that it clung
there above the shadows of fatigue, and kept taking her lips prisoner.
Between the two bronze busts she had placed a bowl of lilies of the
valley; and every free niche in that room of books had a little vase of
roses to welcome Miltoun's return.
He was lying back in his big leather chair, wrapped in a Turkish gown of
Lord Valleys'--on which Barbara had laid hands, having failed to find
anything resembling a dressing-gown amongst her brother's austere
clothing. The perfume of lilies had overcome the scent of books, and a
bee, dusky, adventurer, filled the room with his pleasant humming.
They did not speak, but smiled faintly, looking at one another. In this
still moment, before passion had returned to claim its own, their spirits
passed through the sleepy air, and became entwined, so that neither could
withdraw that soft, slow, encountering glance. In mutual contentment,
each to each, close as music to the strings of a violin, their spirits
clung--so lost, the one in the other, that neither for that brief time
seemed to know which was self.
In fulfilment of her resolution, Lady Valleys, who had returned to Town
by a morning train, started with Barbara for the Temple about three in
the after noon, and stopped at the doctor's on the way. The whole thing
would be much simpler if Eustace were fit to be moved at once to Valleys
House; and with much relief she found that the doctor saw no danger in
this course. The recovery had been remarkable--touch and go for bad
brain fever just avoided! Lord Miltoun's constitution was extremely
sound. Yes, he would certainly favour a removal. His rooms were too
confined in this weather. Well nursed--(decidedly) Oh; yes! Quite! And
the doctor's eyes became perhaps a trifle more intense. Not a
professional, he understood. It might be as well to have another nurse,
if they were making the change. They would have this lady knocking up.
Just so! Yes, he would see to that. An ambulance carriage he thought
advisable. That could all be arranged for this afternoon--at once--he
himself would look to it. They might take Lord Miltoun off just as he
was; the men would know what to do. And when they had him at Valleys
House, the moment he showed interest in his food, down to the sea-down to
the sea! At this time of year nothing like it! Then with regard to
nourishment, he would be inclined already to shove in a leetle stimulant,
a thimbleful perhaps four times a day with food--not without--mixed with
an egg, with arrowroot, with custard. A week would see him on his legs,
a fortnight at the sea make him as good a man as ever. Overwork--burning
the candle--a leetlemore would have seen a very different state of
things! Quite so! quite so! Would come round himself before dinner, and
make sure. His patient might feel it just at first! He bowed Lady
Valleys out; and when she had gone, sat down at his telephone with a
smile flickering on his clean-cut lips,
Greatly fortified by this interview, Lady Valleys rejoined her daughter
in the ear; but while it slid on amongst the multitudinous traffic, signs
of unwonted nervousness began to start out through the placidity of her
face.
"I wish, my dear," she said suddenly, "that someone else had to do this.
Suppose Eustace refuses!"
"He won't," Barbara answered; "she looks so tired, poor dear.
Besides----"
Lady Valleys gazed with curiosity at that young face, which had flushed
pink. Yes, this daughter of hers was a woman already, with all a woman's
intuitions. She said gravely:
"It was a rash stroke of yours, Babs; let's hope it won't lead to
disaster."
Barbara bit her lips.
"If you'd seen him as I saw him! And, what disaster? Mayn't they love
each other, if they want?"
Lady Valleys swallowed a grimace. It was so exactly her own point of
view. And yet----!
"That's only the beginning," she said; "you forget the sort of boy
Eustace is."
"Why can't the poor thing be let out of her cage?" cried Barbara. "What
good does it do to anyone? Mother, if ever, when I am married, I want to
get free, I will!"
The tone of her voice was so quivering, and unlike the happy voice of
Barbara, that Lady Valleys involuntarily caught hold of her hand and
squeezed it hard.
"My dear sweet," she said, "don't let's talk of such gloomy things."
"I mean it. Nothing shall stop me."
But Lady Valleys' face had suddenly become rather grim.
"So we think, child; it's not so simple."
"It can't be worse, anyway," muttered Barbara, "than being buried alive
as that wretched woman is."
For answer Lady Valleys only murmured:
"The doctor promised that ambulance carriage at four o'clock. What am I
going to say?"
"She'll understand when you look at her. She's that sort."
The door was opened to them by Mrs. Noel herself.
It was the first time Lady Valleys had seen her in a house, and there was
real curiosity mixed with the assurance which masked her nervousness. A
pretty creature, even lovely! But the quite genuine sympathy in her
words: "I am truly grateful. You must be quite worn out," did not
prevent her adding hastily: "The doctor says he must be got home out of
these hot rooms. We'll wait here while you tell him."
And then she saw that it was true; this woman was the sort who
understood.
Left in the dark passage, she peered round at Barbara.
The girl was standing against the wall with her head thrown back. Lady
Valleys could not see her face; but she felt all of a sudden exceedingly
uncomfortable, and whispered:
"Two murders and a theft, Babs; wasn't it 'Our Mutual Friend'?"
"Mother!"
"What?"
"Her face! When you're going to throw away a flower, it looks at you!"
"My dear!" murmured Lady Valleys, thoroughly distressed, "what things
you're saying to-day!"
This lurking in a dark passage, this whispering girl--it was all queer,
unlike an experience in proper life.
And then through the reopened door she saw Miltoun, stretched out in a
chair, very pale, but still with that look about his eyes and lips, which
of all things in the world had a chastening effect on Lady Valleys,
making her feel somehow incurably mundane.
She said rather timidly:
"I'm so glad you're better, dear. What a time you must have had! It's
too bad that I knew nothing till yesterday!"
But Miltoun's answer was, as usual, thoroughly disconcerting.
"Thanks, yes! I have had a perfect time--and have now to pay for it, I
suppose."
Held back by his smile from bending to kiss him, poor Lady Valleys
fidgeted from head to foot. A sudden impulse of sheer womanliness caused
a tear to fall on his hand.
When Miltoun perceived that moisture, he said:
"It's all right, mother. I'm quite willing to come."
Still wounded by his voice, Lady Valleys hardened instantly. And while
preparing for departure she watched the two furtively. They hardly
looked at one another, and when they did, their eyes baffled her. The
expression was outside her experience, belonging as it were to a
different world, with its faintly smiling, almost shining, gravity.
Vastly relieved when Miltoun, covered with a fur, had been taken down to
the carriage, she lingered to speak to Mrs. Noel.
"We owe you a great debt. It might have been so much worse. You mustn't
be disconsolate. Go to bed and have a good long rest." And from the
door, she murmured again: "He will come and thank you, when he's well."
Descending the stone stairs, she thought: "'Anonyma'--'Anonyma'--yes, it
was quite the name." And suddenly she saw Barbara come running up again.
"What is it, Babs?"
Barbara answered:
"Eustace would like some of those lilies." And, passing Lady Valleys,
she went on up to Miltoun's chambers.
Mrs. Noel was not in the sitting-room, and going to the bedroom door, the
girl looked in.
She was standing by the bed, drawing her hand over and over the white
surface of the pillow. Stealing noiselessly back, Barbara caught up the
bunch of lilies, and fled.
CHAPTER XII
Miltoun, whose constitution, had the steel-like quality of Lady
Casterley's, had a very rapid convalescence. And, having begun to take
an interest in his food, he was allowed to travel on the seventh day to
Sea House in charge of Barbara.
The two spent their time in a little summer-house close to the sea; lying
out on the beach under the groynes; and, as Miltoun grew stronger,
motoring and walking on the Downs.
To Barbara, keeping a close watch, he seemed tranquilly enough drinking
in from Nature what was necessary to restore balance after the struggle,
and breakdown of the past weeks. Yet she could never get rid of a queer
feeling that he was not really there at all; to look at him was like
watching an uninhabited house that was waiting for someone to enter.
During a whole fortnight he did not make a single allusion to Mrs. Noel,
till, on the very last morning, as they were watching the sea, he said
with his queer smile:
"It almost makes one believe her theory, that the old gods are not dead.
Do you ever see them, Babs; or are you, like me, obtuse?"
Certainly about those lithe invasions of the sea-nymph waves, with ashy,
streaming hair, flinging themselves into the arms of the land, there was
the old pagan rapture, an inexhaustible delight, a passionate soft
acceptance of eternal fate, a wonderful acquiescence in the untiring
mystery of life.
But Barbara, ever disconcerted by that tone in his voice, and by this
quick dive into the waters of unaccustomed thought, failed to find an
answer.
Miltoun went on:
"She says, too, we can hear Apollo singing. Shall we try."
But all that came was the sigh of the sea, and of the wind in the
tamarisk.
"No," muttered Miltoun at last, "she alone can hear it."
And Barbara saw, once more on his face that look, neither sad nor
impatient, but as of one uninhabited and waiting.
She left Sea House next day to rejoin her mother, who, having been to
Cowes, and to the Duchess of Gloucester's, was back in Town waiting for
Parliament to rise, before going off to Scotland. And that same
afternoon the girl made her way to Mrs. Noel's flat. In paying this
visit she was moved not so much by compassion, as by uneasiness, and a
strange curiosity. Now that Miltoun was well again, she was seriously
disturbed in mind. Had she made a mistake in summoning Mrs. Noel to
nurse him?
When she went into the little drawing-room Audrey was sitting in the
deep-cushioned window-seat with a book on her knee; and by the fact that
it was open at the index, Barbara judged that she had not been reading
too attentively. She showed no signs of agitation at the sight of her
visitor, nor any eagerness to hear news of Miltoun. But the girl had not
been five minutes in the room before the thought came to her: "Why! She
has the same look as Eustace!" She, too, was like an empty tenement;
without impatience, discontent, or grief--waiting! Barbara had scarcely
realized this with a curious sense of discomposure, when Courtier was
announced. Whether there was in this an absolute coincidence or just
that amount of calculation which might follow on his part from receipt of
a note written from Sea House--saying that Miltoun was well again, that
she was coming up and meant to go and thank Mrs. Noel--was not clear, nor
were her own sensations; and she drew over her face that armoured look
which she perhaps knew Courtier could not bear to see. His face, at all
events, was very red when he shook hands. He had come, he told Mrs.
Noel, to say good-bye. He was definitely off next week. Fighting had
broken out; the revolutionaries were greatly outnumbered. Indeed he
ought to have been there long before!
Barbara had gone over to the window; she turned suddenly, and said:
"You were preaching peace two months ago!"
Courtier bowed.
"We are not all perfectly consistent, Lady Barbara. These poor devils
have a holy cause."
Barbara held out her hand to Mrs. Noel.
"You only think their cause holy because they happen to be weak.
Good-bye, Mrs. Noel; the world is meant for the strong, isn't it!"
She intended that to hurt him; and from the tone of his voice, she knew
it had.
"Don't, Lady Barbara; from your mother, yes; not from you!"
"It's what I believe. Good-bye!" And she went out.
She had told him that she did not want him to go--not yet; and he was
going!
But no sooner had she got outside, after that strange outburst, than she
bit her lips to keep back an angry, miserable feeling. He had been rude
to her, she had been rude to him; that was the way they had said
good-bye! Then, as she emerged into the sunlight, she thought: "Oh!
well; he doesn't care, and I'm sure I don't!"
She heard a voice behind her.
"May I get you a cab?" and at once the sore feeling began to die away;
but she did not look round, only smiled, and shook her head, and made a
little room for him on the pavement.
But though they walked, they did not at first talk. There was rising
within Barbara a tantalizing devil of desire to know the feelings that
really lay behind that deferential gravity, to make him show her how much
he really cared. She kept her eyes demurely lowered, but she let the
glimmer of a smile flicker about her lips; she knew too that her cheeks
were glowing, and for that she was not sorry. Was she not to have
any--any--was he calmly to go away--without----And she thought: "He shall
say something! He shall show me, without that horrible irony of his!"
She said suddenly:
"Those two are just waiting--something will happen!"
"It is probable," was his grave answer.
She looked at him then--it pleased her to see him quiver as if that
glance had gone right into him; and she said softly:
"And I think they will be quite right."
She knew those were reckless words, nor cared very much what they meant;
but she knew the revolt in them would move him. She saw from his face
that it had; and after a little pause, said:
"Happiness is the great thing," and with soft, wicked slowness: "Isn't
it, Mr. Courtier?"
But all the cheeriness had gone out of his face, which had grown almost
pale. He lifted his hand, and let it drop. Then she felt sorry. It was
just as if he had asked her to spare him.
"As to that," he said: "The rough, unfortunately, has to be taken with
the smooth. But life's frightfully jolly sometimes."
"As now?"
He looked at her with firm gravity, and answered
"As now."
A sense of utter mortification seized on Barbara. He was too strong for
her--he was quixotic--he was hateful! And, determined not to show a
sign, to be at least as strong as he, she said calmly:
"Now I think I'll have that cab!"
When she was in the cab, and he was standing with his hat lifted, she
looked at him in the way that women can, so that he did not realize that
she had looked.
CHAPTER XIII
When Miltoun came to thank her, Audrey Noel was waiting in the middle of
the room, dressed in white, her lips smiling, her dark eyes smiling,
still as a flower on a windless day.
In that first look passing between them, they forgot everything but
happiness. Swallows, on the first day of summer, in their discovery of
the bland air, can neither remember that cold winds blow, nor imagine the
death of sunlight on their feathers, and, flitting hour after hour over
the golden fields, seem no longer birds, but just the breathing of a new
season--swallows were no more forgetful of misfortune than were those
two. His gaze was as still as her very self; her look at him had in at
the quietude of all emotion.
When they' sat down to talk it was as if they had gone back to those days
at Monkland, when he had come to her so often to discuss everything in
heaven and earth. And yet, over that tranquil eager drinking--in of each
other's presence, hovered a sort of awe. It was the mood of morning
before the sun has soared. The dew-grey cobwebs enwrapped the flowers of
their hearts--yet every prisoned flower could be seen. And he and she
seemed looking through that web at the colour and the deep-down forms
enshrouded so jealously; each feared too much to unveil the other's
heart. They were like lovers who, rambling in a shy wood, never dare
stay their babbling talk of the trees and birds and lost bluebells, lest
in the deep waters of a kiss their star of all that is to come should
fall and be drowned. To each hour its familiar--and the spirit of that
hour was the spirit of the white flowers in the bowl on the window-sill
above her head.
They spoke of Monk-land, and Miltoun's illness; of his first speech, his
impressions of the House of Commons; of music, Barbara, Courtier, the
river. He told her of his health, and described his days down by the
sea. She, as ever, spoke little of herself, persuaded that it could not
interest even him; but she described a visit to the opera; and how she
had found a picture in the National Gallery which reminded her of him.
To all these trivial things and countless others, the tone of their
voices--soft, almost murmuring, with a sort of delighted gentleness--gave
a high, sweet importance, a halo that neither for the world would have
dislodged from where it hovered.
It was past six when he got up to go, and there had not been a moment to
break the calm of that sacred feeling in both their hearts. They parted
with another tranquil look, which seemed to say: 'It is well with us--we
have drunk of happiness.'
And in this same amazing calm Miltoun remained after he had gone away,
till about half-past nine in the evening, he started forth, to walk down
to the House. It was now that sort of warm, clear night, which in the
country has firefly magic, and even over the Town spreads a dark glamour.
And for Miltoun, in the delight of his new health and well-being, with
every sense alive and clean, to walk through the warmth and beauty of
this night was sheer pleasure. He passed by way of St. James's Park,
treading down the purple shadows of plane-tree leaves into the pools of
lamplight, almost with remorse--so beautiful, and as if alive, were they.
There were moths abroad, and gnats, born on the water, and scent of
new-mown grass drifted up from the lawns. His heart felt light as a
swallow he had seen that morning; swooping at a grey feather, carrying it
along, letting it flutter away, then diving to seize it again. Such was
his elation, this beautiful night! Nearing the House of Commons, he
thought he would walk a little longer, and turned westward to the river:
On that warm evening the water, without movement at turn of tide, was
like the black, snake-smooth hair of Nature streaming out on her couch of
Earth, waiting for the caress of a divine hand. Far away on the further;
bank throbbed some huge machine, not stilled as yet. A few stars were
out in the dark sky, but no moon to invest with pallor the gleam of the
lamps. Scarcely anyone passed. Miltoun strolled along the river wall,
then crossed, and came back in front of the Mansions where she lived. By
the railing he stood still. In the sitting-room of her little flat there
was no light, but the casement window was wide open, and the crown of
white flowers in the bowl on the window-sill still gleamed out in the
darkness like a crescent moon lying on its face. Suddenly, he saw two
pale hands rise--one on either side of that bowl, lift it, and draw it
in. And he quivered, as though they had touched him. Again those two
hands came floating up; they were parted now by darkness; the moon of
flowers was gone, in its place had been set handfuls of purple or crimson
blossoms. And a puff of warm air rising quickly out of the night drifted
their scent of cloves into his face, so that he held his breath for fear
of calling out her name.
Again the hands had vanished--through the open window there was nothing
to be seen but darkness; and such a rush of longing seized on Miltoun as
stole from him all power of movement. He could hear her playing, now.
The murmurous current of that melody was like the night itself, sighing,
throbbing, languorously soft. It seemed that in this music she was
calling him, telling him that she, too, was longing; her heart, too,
empty. It died away; and at the window her white figure appeared. From
that vision he could not, nor did he try to shrink, but moved out into
the, lamplight. And he saw her suddenly stretch out her hands to him,
and withdraw them to her breast. Then all save the madness of his
longing deserted Miltoun. He ran down the little garden, across the hall,
up the stairs.
The door was open. He passed through. There, in the sitting-room, where
the red flowers in the window scented all the air, it was dark, and he
could not at first see her, till against the piano he caught the glimmer
of her white dress. She was sitting with hands resting on the pale
notes. And falling on his knees, he buried his face against her. Then,
without looking up, he raised his hands. Her tears fell on them covering
her heart, that throbbed as if the passionate night itself were breathing
in there, and all but the night and her love had stolen forth.
CHAPTER XIV
On a spur of the Sussex Downs, inland from Nettle-Cold, there stands a
beech-grove. The traveller who enters it out of the heat and brightness,
takes off the shoes of his spirit before its, sanctity; and, reaching the
centre, across the clean beech-mat, he sits refreshing his brow with air,
and silence. For the flowers of sunlight on the ground under those
branches are pale and rare, no insects hum, the birds are almost mute.
And close to the border trees are the quiet, milk-white sheep, in
congregation, escaping from noon heat. Here, above fields and dwellings,
above the ceaseless network of men's doings, and the vapour of their
talk, the traveller feels solemnity. All seems conveying divinity--the
great white clouds moving their wings above him, the faint longing murmur
of the boughs, and in far distance, the sea.... And for a space his
restlessness and fear know the peace of God.
So it was with Miltoun when he reached this temple, three days after that
passionate night, having walked for hours, alone and full of conflict.
During those three days he had been borne forward on the flood tide; and
now, tearing himself out of London, where to think was impossible, he had
come to the solitude of the Downs to walk, and face his new position.
For that position he saw to be very serious. In the flush of full
realization, there was for him no question of renunciation. She was his,
he hers; that was determined. But what, then, was he to do? There was no
chance of her getting free. In her husband's view, it seemed, under no
circumstances was marriage dissoluble. Nor, indeed, to Miltoun would
divorce have made things easier, believing as he did that he and she were
guilty, and that for the guilty there could be no marriage. She, it was
true, asked nothing but just to be his in secret; and that was the course
he knew most men would take, without further thought. There was no
material reason in the world why he should not so act, and maintain
unchanged every other current of his life. It would be easy, usual.
And, with her faculty for self-effacement, he knew she would not be
unhappy. But conscience, in Miltoun, was a terrible and fierce thing.
In the delirium of his illness it had become that Great Face which had
marched over him. And, though during the weeks of his recuperation,
struggle of all kind had ceased, now that he had yielded to his passion,
conscience, in a new and dismal shape, had crept up again to sit above
his heart: He must and would let this man, her husband, know; but even if
that caused no open scandal, could he go on deceiving those who, if they
knew of an illicit love, would no longer allow him to be their
representative? If it were known that she was his mistress, he could no
longer maintain his position in public life--was he not therefore in
honour bound; of his own accord, to resign it? Night and day he was
haunted by the thought: How can I, living in defiance of authority,
pretend to authority over my fellows? How can I remain in public life?
But if he did not remain in public life, what was he to do? That way of
life was in his blood; he had been bred and born into it; had thought of
nothing else since he was a boy. There was no other occupation or
interest that could hold him for a moment--he saw very plainly that he
would be cast away on the waters of existence.
So the battle raged in his proud and twisted spirit, which took
everything so hard--his nature imperatively commanding him to keep his
work and his power for usefulness; his conscience telling him as urgently
that if he sought to wield authority, he must obey it.
He entered the beech-grove at the height of this misery, flaming with
rebellion against the dilemma which Fate had placed before him; visited
by gusts of resentment against a passion, which forced him to pay the
price, either of his career, or of his self-respect; gusts, followed by
remorse that he could so for one moment regret his love for that tender
creature. The face of Lucifer was not more dark, more tortured, than
Miltoun's face in the twilight of the grove, above those kingdoms of the
world, for which his ambition and his conscience fought. He threw
himself down among the trees; and stretching out his arms, by chance
touched a beetle trying to crawl over the grassless soil. Some bird had
maimed it. He took the little creature up. The beetle truly could no
longer work, but it was spared the fate lying before himself. The beetle
was not, as he would be, when his power of movement was destroyed,
conscious of his own wasted life. The world would not roll away down
there. He would still see himself cumbering the ground, when his powers
were taken, from him. This thought was torture. Why had he been
suffered to meet her, to love her, and to be loved by her? What had made
him so certain from the first moment, if she were not meant for him? If
he lived to be a hundred, he would never meet another. Why, because of
his love, must he bury the will and force of a man? If there were no
more coherence in God's scheme than this, let him too be incoherent! Let
him hold authority, and live outside authority! Why stifle his powers
for the sake of a coherence which did not exist! That would indeed be
madness greater than that of a mad world!
There was no answer to his thoughts in the stillness of the grove, unless
it were the cooing of a dove, or the faint thudding of the sheep issuing
again into sunlight. But slowly that stillness stole into Miltoun's
spirit. "Is it like this in the grave?" he thought. "Are the boughs of
those trees the dark earth over me? And the sound in them the sound the
dead hear when flowers are growing, and the wind passing through them?
And is the feel of this earth how it feels to lie looking up for ever at
nothing? Is life anything but a nightmare, a dream; and is not this the
reality? And why my fury, my insignificant flame, blowing here and
there, when there is really no wind, only a shroud of still air, and
these flowers of sunlight that have been dropped on me! Why not let my
spirit sleep, instead of eating itself away with rage; why not resign
myself at once to wait for the substance, of which this is but the
shadow!"
And he lay scarcely breathing, looking up at the unmoving branches
setting with their darkness the pearls of the sky.
"Is not peace enough?" he thought. "Is not love enough? Can I not be
reconciled, like a woman? Is not that salvation, and happiness? What is
all the rest, but 'sound and fury, signifying nothing?"
And as though afraid to lose his hold of that thought, he got up and
hurried from the grove.
The whole wide landscape of field and wood, cut by the pale roads, was
glimmering under the afternoon sun, Here was no wild, wind-swept land,
gleaming red and purple, and guarded by the grey rocks; no home of the
winds, and the wild gods. It was all serene and silver-golden. In place
of the shrill wailing pipe of the hunting buzzard-hawks half lost up in
the wind, invisible larks were letting fall hymns to tranquillity; and
even the sea--no adventuring spirit sweeping the shore with its
wing--seemed to lie resting by the side of the land.
CHAPTER XV
When on the afternoon of that same day Miltoun did not come, all the
chilly doubts which his presence alone kept away, crowded thick and fast
into the mind of one only too prone to distrust her own happiness. It
could not last--how could it?
His nature and her own were so far apart! Even in that giving of herself
which had been such happiness, she had yet doubted; for there was so much
in him that was to her mysterious. All that he loved in poetry and
nature, had in it something craggy and culminating. The soft and fiery,
the subtle and harmonious, seemed to leave him cold. He had no particular
love for all those simple natural things, birds, bees, animals, trees,
and flowers, that seemed to her precious and divine.
Though it was not yet four o'clock she was already beginning to droop
like a flower that wants water. But she sat down to her piano,
resolutely, till tea came; playing on and on with a spirit only half
present, the other half of her wandering in the Town, seeking for
Miltoun. After tea she tried first to read, then to sew, and once more
came back to her piano. The clock struck six; and as if its last stroke
had broken the armour of her mind, she felt suddenly sick with anxiety.
Why was he so long? But she kept on playing, turning the pages without
taking in the notes, haunted by the idea that he might again have fallen
ill. Should she telegraph? What good, when she could not tell in the
least where he might be? And all the unreasoning terror of not knowing
where the loved one is, beset her so that her hands, in sheer numbness,
dropped from the keys. Unable to keep still, now, she wandered from
window to door, out into the little hall, and back hastily to the window.
Over her anxiety brooded a darkness, compounded of vague growing fears.
What if it were the end? What if he had chosen this as the most merciful
way of leaving her? But surely he would never be so cruel! Close on the
heels of this too painful thought came reaction; and she told herself
that she was a fool. He was at the House; something quite ordinary was
keeping him. It was absurd to be anxious! She would have to get used to
this now. To be a drag on him would be dreadful. Sooner than that she
would rather--yes--rather he never came back! And she took up her book,
determined to read quietly till he came. But the moment she sat down her
fears returned with redoubled force-the cold sickly horrible feeling of
uncertainty, of the knowledge that she could do nothing but wait till she
was relieved by something over which she had no control. And in the
superstition that to stay there in the window where she could see him
come, was keeping him from her, she went into her bedroom. From there
she could watch the sunset clouds wine-dark over the river. A little
talking wind shivered along the houses; the dusk began creeping in. She
would not turn on the light, unwilling to admit that it was really
getting late, but began to change her dress, lingering desperately over
every little detail of her toilette, deriving therefrom a faint,
mysterious comfort, trying to make herself feel beautiful. From sheer
dread of going back before he came, she let her hair fall, though it was
quite smooth and tidy, and began brushing it. Suddenly she thought with
horror of her efforts at adornment--by specially preparing for him, she
must seem presumptuous to Fate. At any little sound she stopped and
stood listening--save for her hair and eyes, as white from head to foot
as a double narcissus flower in the dusk, bending towards some faint tune
played to it somewhere oft in the fields. But all those little sounds
ceased, one after another--they had meant nothing; and each time, her
spirit returning--within the pale walls of the room, began once more to
inhabit her lingering fingers. During that hour in her bedroom she lived
through years. It was dark when she left it.
CHAPTER XVI
When Miltoun at last came it was past nine o'clock.
Silent, but quivering all over; she clung to him in the hall; and this
passion of emotion, without sound to give it substance, affected him
profoundly. How terribly sensitive and tender she was! She seemed to
have no armour. But though so stirred by her emotion, he was none the
less exasperated. She incarnated at that moment the life to which he
must now resign himself--a life of unending tenderness, consideration,
and passivity.
For a long time he could not bring himself to speak of his decision.
Every look of her eyes, every movement of her body, seemed pleading with
him to keep silence. But in Miltoun's character there was an element of
rigidity, which never suffered him to diverge from an objective once
determined.
When he had finished telling her, she only said:
"Why can't we go on in secret?"
And he felt with a sort of horror that he must begin his struggle over
again. He got up, and threw open the window. The sky was dark above the
river; the wind had risen. That restless murmuration, and the width of
the night with its scattered stars, seemed to come rushing at his face.
He withdrew from it, and leaning on the sill looked down at her. What
flower-like delicacy she had! There flashed across him the memory of a
drooping blossom, which, in the Spring, he had seen her throw into the
flames; with the words: "I can't bear flowers to fade, I always want to
burn them." He could see again those waxen petals yield to the fierce
clutch of the little red creeping sparks, and the slender stalk
quivering, and glowing, and writhing to blackness like a live thing.
And, distraught, he began:
"I can't live a lie. What right have I to lead, if I can't follow? I'm
not like our friend Courtier who believes in Liberty. I never have, I
never shall. Liberty? What is Liberty? But only those who conform to
authority have the right to wield authority. A man is a churl who
enforces laws, when he himself has not the strength to observe them. I
will not be one of whom it can be said: 'He can rule others,
himself----!"
"No one will know."
Miltoun turned away.
"I shall know," he said; but he saw clearly that she did not understand
him. Her face had a strange, brooding, shut-away look, as though he had
frightened her. And the thought that she could not understand, angered
him.
He said, stubbornly: "No, I can't remain in public life."
"But what has it to do with politics? It's such a little thing."
"If it had been a little thing to me, should I have left you at Monkland,
and spent those five weeks in purgatory before my illness? A little
thing!"
She exclaimed with sudden fire:
"Circumstances aye the little thing; it's love that's the great thing."
Miltoun stared at her, for the first time understanding that she had a
philosophy as deep and stubborn as his own. But he answered cruelly:
"Well! the great thing has conquered me!"
And then he saw her looking at him, as if, seeing into the recesses of
his soul, she had made some ghastly discovery. The look was so mournful,
so uncannily intent that he turned away from it.
"Perhaps it is a little thing," he muttered; "I don't know. I can't see
my way. I've lost my bearings; I must find them again before I can do
anything."
But as if she had not heard, or not taken in the sense of his words, she
said again:
"Oh! don't let us alter anything; I won't ever want what you can't give."
And this stubbornness, when he was doing the very thing that would give
him to her utterly, seemed to him unreasonable.
"I've had it out with myself," he said. "Don't let's talk about it any
more."
Again, with a sort of dry anguish, she murmured:
"No, no! Let us go on as we are!"
Feeling that he had borne all he could, Miltoun put his hands on her
shoulders, and said: "That's enough!"
Then, in sudden remorse, he lifted her, and clasped her to him.
But she stood inert in his arms, her eyes closed, not returning his
kisses.
CHAPTER XVII
On the last day before Parliament rose, Lord Valleys, with a light heart,
mounted his horse for a gallop in the Row. Though she was a blood mare
he rode her with a plain snaffle, having the horsemanship of one who has
hunted from the age of seven, and been for twenty years a Colonel of
Yeomanry. Greeting affably everyone he knew, he maintained a frank
demeanour on all subjects, especially of Government policy, secretly
enjoying the surmises and prognostications, so pleasantly wide of the
mark, and the way questions and hints perished before his sphinx-like
candour. He spoke cheerily too of Miltoun, who was 'all right again,'
and 'burning for the fray' when the House met again in the autumn. And
he chaffed Lord Malvezin about his wife. If anything--he said--could
make Bertie take an interest in politics, it would be she. He had two
capital gallops, being well known to the police: The day was bright, and
he was sorry to turn home. Falling in with Harbinger, he asked him to
come back to lunch. There had seemed something different lately, an
almost morose look, about young Harbinger; and his wife's disquieting
words about Barbara came back to Lord Valleys with a shock. He had seen
little of the child lately, and in the general clearing up of this time
of year had forgotten all about the matter.
Agatha, who was still staying at Valleys House with little Ann, waiting
to travel up to Scotland with her mother, was out, and there was no one
at lunch except Lady Valleys and Barbara herself. Conversation flagged;
for the young people were extremely silent, Lady Valleys was considering
the draft of a report which had to be settled before she left, and Lord
Valleys himself was rather carefully watching his daughter. The news
that Lord Miltoun was in the study came as a surprise, and somewhat of a
relief to all. To an exhortation to luring him in to lunch; the servant
replied that Lord Miltoun had lunched, and would wait.
"Does he know there's no one here?"
"Yes, my lady."
Lady Valleys pushed back her plate, and rose:
"Oh, well!" she said, "I've finished."
Lord Valleys also got up, and they went out together, leaving Barbara,
who had risen, looking doubtfully at the door.
Lord Valleys had recently been told of the nursing episode, and had
received the news with the dubious air of one hearing something about an
eccentric person, which, heard about anyone else, could have had but one
significance. If Eustace had been a normal young man his father would
have shrugged his shoulder's, and thought: "Oh, well! There it is!" As
it was, he had literally not known what to think.
And now, crossing the saloon which intervened between the dining-room and
the study, he said to his wife uneasily:
"Is it this woman again, Gertrude--or what?"
Lady Valleys answered with a shrug:
"Goodness knows, my dear."
Miltoun was standing in the embrasure of a window above the terrace. He
looked well, and his greeting was the same as usual.
"Well, my dear fellow," said Lord Valleys, "you're all right again
evidently--what's the news?"
"Only that I've decided to resign my seat."
Lord Valleys stared.
"What on earth for?"
But Lady Valleys, with the greater quickness of women, divining already
something of the reason, had flushed a deep pink.
"Nonsense, my dear," she said; "it can't possibly be necessary, even
if----" Recovering herself, she added dryly:
"Give us some reason."
"The reason is simply that I've joined my life to Mrs. Noel's, and I
can't go on as I am, living a lie. If it were known I should obviously
have to resign at once."
"Good God!" exclaimed Lord Valleys.
Lady Valleys made a rapid movement. In the face of what she felt to be a
really serious crisis between these two utterly different creatures of
the other sex, her husband and her son, she had dropped her mask and
become a genuine woman. Unconsciously both men felt this change, and in
speaking, turned towards her.
"I can't argue it," said Miltoun; "I consider myself bound in honour."
"And then?" she asked.
Lord Valleys, with a note of real feeling, interjected:
"By Heaven! I did think you put your country above your private
affairs."
"Geoff!" said Lady Valleys.
But Lord Valleys went on:
"No, Eustace, I'm out of touch with your view of things altogether. I
don't even begin to understand it."
"That is true," said Miltoun.
"Listen to me, both of you!" said Lady Valleys: "You two are altogether
different; and you must not quarrel. I won't have that. Now, Eustace,
you are our son, and you have got to be kind and considerate. Sit down,
and let's talk it over."
And motioning her husband to a chair, she sat down in the embrasure of a
window. Miltoun remained standing. Visited by a sudden dread, Lady
Valleys said:
"Is it--you've not--there isn't going to be a scandal?"
Miltoun smiled grimly.
"I shall tell this man, of course, but you may make your minds easy, I
imagine; I understand that his view of marriage does not permit of
divorce in any case whatever."
Lady Valleys sighed with an utter and undisguised relief.
"Well, then, my dear boy," she began, "even if you do feel you must tell
him, there is surely no reason why it should not otherwise be kept
secret."
Lord Valleys interrupted her:
"I should be glad if you would point out the connection between your
honour and the resignation of your seat," he said stiffly.
Miltoun shook his head.
"If you don't see already, it would be useless."
"I do not see. The whole matter is--is unfortunate, but to give up your
work, so long as there is no absolute necessity, seems to me far-fetched
and absurd. How many men are, there into whose lives there has not
entered some such relation at one time or another? This idea would
disqualify half the nation." His eyes seemed in that crisis both to
consult and to avoid his wife's, as though he were at once asking her
endorsement of his point of view, and observing the proprieties. And for
a moment in the midst of her anxiety, her sense of humour got the better
of Lady Valleys. It was so funny that Geoff should have to give himself
away; she could not for the life of her help fixing him with her eyes.
"My dear," she murmured, "you underestimate three-quarters, at the very
least!"
But Lord Valleys, confronted with danger, was growing steadier.
"It passes my comprehension;" he said, "why you should want to mix up sex
and politics at all."
Miltoun's answer came very slowly, as if the confession were hurting his
lips:
"There is--forgive me for using the word--such a thing as one's religion.
I don't happen to regard life as divided into public and private
departments. My vision is gone--broken--I can see no object before me
now in public life--no goal--no certainty."
Lady Valleys caught his hand:
"Oh! my dear," she said, "that's too dreadfully puritanical!" But at
Miltoun's queer smile, she added hastily: "Logical--I mean."
"Consult your common sense, Eustace, for goodness' sake," broke in Lord
Valleys. "Isn't it your simple duty to put your scruples in your pocket,
and do the best you can for your country with the powers that have been
given you?"
"I have no common sense."
"In that case, of course, it may be just as well that you should leave
public life."
Miltoun bowed.
"Nonsense!" cried Lady Valleys. "You don't understand, Geoffrey. I ask
you again, Eustace, what will you do afterwards?"
"I don't know."
"You will eat your heart out."
"Quite possibly."
"If you can't come to a reasonable arrangement with your conscience,"
again broke in Lord Valleys, "for Heaven's sake give her up, like a man,
and cut all these knots."
"I beg your pardon, sir!" said Miltoun icily.
Lady Valleys laid her hand on his arm. "You must allow us a little logic
too, my dear. You don't seriously imagine that she would wish you to
throw away your life for her? I'm not such a bad judge of character as
that."
She stopped before the expression on Miltoun's face.
"You go too fast," he said; "I may become a free spirit yet."
To this saying, which seemed to her cryptic and sinister, Lady Valleys
did not know what to answer.
"If you feel, as you say," Lord Valleys began once more, "that the bottom
has been knocked out of things for you by this--this affair, don't, for
goodness' sake, do anything in a hurry. Wait! Go abroad! Get your
balance back! You'll find the thing settle itself in a few months.
Don't precipitate matters; you can make your health an excuse to miss the
Autumn session."
Lady Valleys chimed in eagerly
"You really are seeing the thing out of all proportion. What is a
love-affair. My dear boy, do you suppose for a moment anyone would think
the worse of you, even if they knew? And really not a soul need know."
"It has not occurred to me to consider what they would think."
"Then," cried Lady Valleys, nettled, "it's simply your own pride."
"You have said."
Lord Valleys, who had turned away, spoke in an almost tragic voice
"I did not think that on a point of honour I should differ from my son."
Catching at the word honour, Lady Valleys cried suddenly:
"Eustace, promise me, before you do anything, to consult your Uncle
Dennis."
Miltoun smiled.
"This becomes comic," he said.
At that word, which indeed seemed to them quite wanton, Lord and Lady
Valleys turned on their son, and the three stood staring, perfectly
silent. A little noise from the doorway interrupted them.
CHAPTER XVIII
Left by her father and mother to the further entertainment of Harbinger,
Barbara had said:
"Let's have coffee in here," and passed into the withdrawing room.
Except for that one evening, when together by the sea wall they stood
contemplating the populace, she had not been alone with him since he
kissed her under the shelter of the box hedge. And now, after the first
moment, she looked at him calmly, though in her breast there was a
fluttering, as if an imprisoned bird were struggling ever so feebly
against that soft and solid cage. Her last jangled talk with Courtier
had left an ache in her heart. Besides, did she not know all that
Harbinger could give her?
Like a nymph pursued by a faun who held dominion over the groves, she,
fugitive, kept looking back. There was nothing in that fair wood of his
with which she was not familiar, no thicket she had not travelled, no
stream she had not crossed, no kiss she could not return. His was a
discovered land, in which, as of right, she would reign. She had nothing
to hope from him but power, and solid pleasure. Her eyes said: How am I
to know whether I shall not want more than you; feel suffocated in your
arms; be surfeited by all that you will bring me? Have I not already got
all that?
She knew, from his downcast gloomy face, how cruel she seemed, and was
sorry. She wanted to be good to him, and said almost shyly:
"Are you angry with me, Claud?"
Harbinger looked up.
"What makes you so cruel?"
"I am not cruel."
"You are. Where is your heart?"
"Here!" said Barbara, touching her breast.
"Ah!" muttered Harbinger; "I'm not joking."
She said gently:'
"Is it as bad as that, my dear?"
But the softness of her voice seemed to fan the smouldering fires in him.
"There's something behind all this," he stammered, "you've no right to
make a fool of me!"
"And what is the something, please?"
"That's for you to say. But I'm not blind. What about this fellow
Courtier?"
At that moment there was revealed to Barbara a new acquaintance--the male
proper. No, to live with him would not be quite lacking in adventure!
His face had darkened; his eyes were dilated, his whole figure seemed to
have grown. She suddenly noticed the hair which covered his clenched
fists. All his suavity had left him. He came very close.
How long that look between them lasted, and of all there was in it, she
had no clear knowledge; thought after thought, wave after wave of
feeling, rushed through her. Revolt and attraction, contempt and
admiration, queer sensations of disgust and pleasure, all mingled--as on
a May day one may see the hail fall, and the sun suddenly burn through
and steam from the grass.
Then he said hoarsely:
"Oh! Babs, you madden me so!"
Smoothing her lips, as if to regain control of them, she answered:
"Yes, I think I have had enough," and went out into her father's study.
The sight of Lord and Lady Valleys so intently staring at Miltoun
restored hex self-possession.
It struck her as slightly comic, not knowing that the little scene was
the outcome of that word. In truth, the contrast between Miltoun and his
parents at this moment was almost ludicrous.
Lady Valleys was the first to speak.
"Better comic than romantic. I suppose Barbara may know, considering her
contribution to this matter. Your brother is resigning his seat, my
dear; his conscience will not permit him to retain it, under certain
circumstances that have arisen."
"Oh!" cried Barbara: "but surely----"
"The matter has been argued, Babs," Lord Valleys said shortly; "unless
you have some better reason to advance than those of ordinary common
sense, public spirit, and consideration for one's family, it will hardly
be worth your while to reopen the discussion."
Barbara looked up at Miltoun, whose face, all but the eyes, was like a
mask.
"Oh, Eusty!" she said, "you're not going to spoil your life like this!
Just think how I shall feel."
Miltoun answered stonily:
"You did what you thought right; as I am doing."
"Does she want you to?"
"No."
"There is, I should imagine," put in Lord Valleys, "not a solitary
creature in the whole world except your brother himself who would wish
for this consummation. But with him such a consideration does not
weigh!"
"Oh!" sighed Barbara; "think of Granny!"
"I prefer not to think of her," murmured Lady Valleys.
"She's so wrapped up in you, Eusty. She always has believed in you
intensely."
Miltoun sighed. And, encouraged by that sound, Barbara went closer.
It was plain enough that, behind his impassivity, a desperate struggle
was going on in Miltoun. He spoke at last:
"If I have not already yielded to one who is naturally more to me than
anything, when she begged and entreated, it is because I feel this in a
way you don't realize. I apologize for using the word comic just now, I
should have said tragic. I'll enlighten Uncle Dennis, if that will
comfort you; but this is not exactly a matter for anyone, except myself."
And, without another look or word, he went out.
As the door closed, Barbara ran towards it; and, with a motion strangely
like the wringing of hands, said:
"Oh, dear! Oh! dear!" Then, turning away to a bookcase, she began to
cry.
This ebullition of feeling, surpassing even their own, came as a real
shock to Lady and Lord Valleys, ignorant of how strung-up she had been
before she entered the room. They had not seen Barbara cry since she was
a tiny girl. And in face of her emotion any animus they might have shown
her for having thrown Miltoun into Mrs. Noel's arms, now melted away.
Lord Valleys, especially moved, went up to his daughter, and stood with
her in that dark corner, saying nothing, but gently stroking her hand.
Lady Valleys, who herself felt very much inclined to cry, went out of
sight into the embrasure of the window.
Barbara's sobbing was soon subdued.
"It's his face," she said: "And why? Why? It's so unnecessary!"
Lord Valleys, continually twisting his moustache, muttered:
"Exactly! He makes things for himself!"
"Yes," murmured Lady Valleys from the window, "he was always
uncomfortable, like that. I remember him as a baby. Bertie never was."
And then the silence was only broken by the little angry sounds of
Barbara blowing her nose.
"I shall go and see mother," said Lady Valleys, suddenly: "The boy's
whole life may be ruined if we can't stop this. Are you coming, child?"
But Barbara refused.
She went to her room, instead. This crisis in Miltoun's life had
strangely shaken her. It was as if Fate had suddenly revealed all that
any step out of the beaten path might lead to, had brought her sharply up
against herself. To wing out into the blue! See what it meant! If
Miltoun kept to his resolve, and gave up public life, he was lost! And
she herself! The fascination of Courtier's chivalrous manner, of a sort
of innate gallantry, suggesting the quest of everlasting danger--was it
not rather absurd? And--was she fascinated? Was it not simply that she
liked the feeling of fascinating him? Through the maze of these
thoughts, darted the memory of Harbinger's face close to her own, his
clenched hands, the swift revelation of his dangerous masculinity. It
was all a nightmare of scaring queer sensations, of things that could
never be settled. She was stirred for once out of all her normal
conquering philosophy. Her thoughts flew back to Miltoun. That which
she had seen in their faces, then, had come to pass! And picturing
Agatha's horror, when she came to hear of it, Barbara could not help a
smile. Poor Eustace! Why did he take things so hardly? If he really
carried out his resolve--and he never changed his mind--it would be
tragic! It would mean the end of everything for him!
Perhaps now he would get tired of Mrs. Noel. But she was not the sort of
woman a man would get tired of. Even Barbara in her inexperience felt
that. She would always be too delicately careful never to cloy him,
never to exact anything from him, or let him feel that he was bound to
her by so much as a hair. Ah! why couldn't they go on as if nothing had
happened? Could nobody persuade him? She thought again of Courtier. If
he, who knew them both, and was so fond of Mrs. Noel, would talk to
Miltoun, about the right to be happy, the right to revolt? Eustace ought
to revolt! It was his duty. She sat down to write; then, putting on her
hat, took the note and slipped downstairs.
CHAPTER XIX
The flowers of summer in the great glass house at Ravensham were keeping
the last afternoon-watch when Clifton summoned Lady Casterley with the
words:
"Lady Valleys in the white room."
Since the news of Miltoun's illness, and of Mrs. Noel's nursing, the
little old lady had possessed her soul in patience; often, it is true,
afflicted with poignant misgivings as to this new influence in the life
of her favourite, affected too by a sort of jealousy, not to be admitted,
even in her prayers, which, though regular enough, were perhaps somewhat
formal. Having small liking now for leaving home, even for Catton, her
country place, she was still at Ravensham, where Lord Dennis had come up
to stay with her as soon as Miltoun had left Sea House. But Lady
Casterley was never very dependent on company. She retained unimpaired
her intense interest in politics, and still corresponded freely with
prominent men. Of late, too, a slight revival of the June war scare had
made its mark on her in a certain rejuvenescence, which always
accompanied her contemplation of national crises, even when such were a
little in the air. At blast of trumpet her spirit still leaped forward,
unsheathed its sword, and stood at the salute. At such times, she rose
earlier, went to bed later, was far less susceptible to draughts, and
refused with asperity any food between meals. She wrote too with her own
hand letters which she would otherwise have dictated to her secretary.
Unfortunately the scare had died down again almost at once; and the
passing of danger always left her rather irritable. Lady Valleys' visit
came as a timely consolation.
She kissed her daughter critically; for there was that about her manner
which she did not like.
"Yes, of course I am well!" she said. "Why didn't you bring Barbara?"
"She was tired!"
"H'm! Afraid of meeting me, since she committed that piece of folly over
Eustace. You must be careful of that child, Gertrude, or she will be
doing something silly herself. I don't like the way she keeps Claud
Harbinger hanging in the wind."
Her daughter cut her short:
"There is bad news about Eustace."
Lady Casterley lost the little colour in her cheeks; lost, too, all her
superfluity of irritable energy.
"Tell me, at once!"
Having heard, she said nothing; but Lady Valleys noticed with alarm that
over her eyes had come suddenly the peculiar filminess of age.
"Well, what do you advise?" she asked.
Herself tired, and troubled, she was conscious of a quite unwonted
feeling of discouragement before this silent little figure, in the silent
white room. She had never before seen her mother look as if she heard
Defeat passing on its dark wings. And moved by sudden tenderness for the
little frail body that had borne her so long ago, she murmured almost
with surprise:
"Mother, dear!"
"Yes," said Lady Casterley, as if speaking to herself, "the boy saves
things up; he stores his feelings--they burst and sweep him away. First
his passion; now his conscience. There are two men in him; but this will
be the death of one of them." And suddenly turning on her daughter, she
said:
"Did you ever hear about him at Oxford, Gertrude? He broke out once, and
ate husks with the Gadarenes. You never knew. Of course--you never have
known anything of him."
Resentment rose in Lady Valleys, that anyone should knew her son better
than herself; but she lost it again looking at the little figure, and
said, sighing:
"Well?"
Lady Casterley murmured:
"Go away, child; I must think. You say he's to consult' Dennis? Do you
know her address? Ask Barbara when you get back and telephone it to me.
And at her daughter's kiss, she added grimly:
"I shall live to see him in the saddle yet, though I am seventy-eight."
When the sound of her daughter's car had died away, she rang the bell.
"If Lady Valleys rings up, Clifton, don't take the message, but call me."
And seeing that Clifton did not move she added sharply: "Well?"
"There is no bad news of his young lordship's health, I hope?"
"No."
"Forgive me, my lady, but I have had it on my mind for some time to ask
you something."
And the old man raised his hand with a peculiar dignity, seeming to say:
You will excuse me that for the moment I am a human being speaking to a
human being.
"The matter of his attachment," he went on, "is known to me; it has given
me acute anxiety, knowing his lordship as I do, and having heard him say
something singular when he was here in July. I should be grateful if you
would assure--me that there is to be no hitch in his career, my lady."
The expression on Lady Casterley's face was strangely compounded of
surprise, kindliness, defence, and impatience as with a child.
"Not if I can prevent it, Clifton," she said shortly; "in fact, you need
not concern yourself."
Clifton bowed.
"Excuse me mentioning it, my lady;" a quiver ran over his face between
its long white whiskers, "but his young lordship's career is more to me
than my own."
When he had left her, Lady Casterley sat down in a little low chair--long
she sat there by the empty hearth, till the daylight, was all gone.
CHAPTER XX
Not far from the dark-haloed indeterminate limbo where dwelt that bugbear
of Charles Courtier, the great Half-Truth Authority, he himself had a
couple of rooms at fifteen shillings a week. Their chief attraction was
that the great Half-Truth Liberty had recommended them. They tied him to
nothing, and were ever at his disposal when he was in London; for his
landlady, though not bound by agreement so to do, let them in such a way,
that she could turn anyone else out at a week's notice. She was a gentle
soul, married to a socialistic plumber twenty years her senior. The
worthy man had given her two little boys, and the three of them kept her
in such permanent order that to be in the presence of Courtier was the
greatest pleasure she knew. When he disappeared on one of his nomadic
missions, explorations, or adventures, she enclosed the whole of his
belongings in two tin trunks and placed them in a cupboard which smelled
a little of mice. When he reappeared the trunks were reopened, and a
powerful scent of dried rose-leaves would escape. For, recognizing the
mortality of things human, she procured every summer from her sister, the
wife of a market gardener, a consignment of this commodity, which she
passionately sewed up in bags, and continued to deposit year by year, in
Courtier's trunks.
This, and the way she made his toast--very crisp--and aired his
linen--very dry, were practically the only things she could do for a man
naturally inclined to independence, and accustomed from his manner of
life to fend for himself.
At first signs of his departure she would go into some closet or other,
away from the plumber and the two marks of his affection, and cry
quietly; but never in Courtier's presence did she dream of manifesting
grief--as soon weep in the presence of death or birth, or any other
fundamental tragedy or joy. In face of the realities of life she had
known from her youth up the value of the simple verb 'sto--stare-to stand
fast.'
And to her Courtier was a reality, the chief reality of life, the focus
of her aspiration, the morning and the evening star.
The request, then five days after his farewell visit to Mrs. Noel--for
the elephant-hide trunk which accompanied his rovings, produced her
habitual period of seclusion, followed by her habitual appearance in his
sitting-room bearing a note, and some bags of dried rose--leaves on a
tray. She found him in his shirt sleeves, packing.
"Well, Mrs. Benton; off again!"
Mrs. Benton, plaiting her hands, for she had not yet lost something of
the look and manner of a little girl, answered in her flat, but serene
voice:
"Yes, sir; and I hope you're not going anywhere very dangerous this time.
I always think you go to such dangerous places."
"To Persia, Mrs. Benton, where the carpets come from."
"Oh! yes, sir. Your washing's just come home."
Her, apparently cast-down, eyes stored up a wealth of little details; the
way his hair grew, the set of his back, the colour of his braces. But
suddenly she said in a surprising voice:
"You haven't a photograph you could spare, sir, to leave behind? Mr.
Benton was only saying to me yesterday, we've nothing to remember him by,
in case he shouldn't come back."
"Here's an old one."
Mrs. Benton took the photograph.
"Oh!" she said; "you can see who it is." And holding it perhaps too
tightly, for her fingers trembled, she added:
"A note, please, sir; and the messenger boy is waiting for--an answer."
While he read the note she noticed with concern how packing had brought
the blood into his head....
When, in response to that note, Courtier entered the well-known
confectioner's called Gustard's, it was still not quite tea-time, and
there seemed to him at first no one in the room save three middle-aged
women packing sweets; then in the corner he saw Barbara. The blood was
no longer in his head; he was pale, walking down that mahogany-coloured
room impregnated with the scent of wedding-cake. Barbara, too, was pale.
So close to her that he could count her every eyelash, and inhale the
scent of her hair and clothes to listen to her story of Miltoun, so
hesitatingly, so wistfully told, seemed very like being kept waiting with
the rope already round his neck, to hear about another person's
toothache. He felt this to have been unnecessary on the part of Fate!
And there came to him perversely the memory of that ride over the
sun-warmed heather, when he had paraphrased the old Sicilian song: 'Here
will I sit and sing.' He was a long way from singing now; nor was there
love in his arms. There was instead a cup of tea; and in his nostrils
the scent of cake, with now and then a whiff of orange-flower water.
"I see," he said, when she had finished telling him: "'Liberty's a
glorious feast!' You want me to go to your brother, and quote Bums? You
know, of course, that he regards me as dangerous."
"Yes; but he respects and likes you."
"And I respect and like him," answered Courtier.
One of the middle-aged females passed, carrying a large white card-board
box; and the creaking of her stays broke the hush.
"You have been very sweet to me," said Barbara, suddenly.
Courtier's heart stirred, as if it were turning over within him; and
gazing into his teacup, he answered--
"All men are decent to the evening star. I will go at once and find your
brother. When shall I bring you news?"
"To-morrow at five I'll be at home."
And repeating, "To-morrow at five," he rose.
Looking back from the door, he saw her face puzzled, rather reproachful,
and went out gloomily. The scent of cake, and orange-flower water, the
creaking of the female's stays, the colour of mahogany, still clung to
his nose and ears, and eyes; but within him it was all dull baffled rage.
Why had he not made the most of this unexpected chance; why had he not
made desperate love to her? A conscientious ass! And yet--the whole
thing was absurd! She was so young! God knew he would be glad to be out
of it. If he stayed he was afraid that he would play the fool. But the
memory of her words: "You have been very sweet to me!" would not leave
him; nor the memory of her face, so puzzled, and reproachful. Yes, if he
stayed he would play the fool! He would be asking her to marry a man
double her age, of no position but that which he had carved for himself,
and without a rap. And he would be asking her in such a way that she
might possibly have some little difficulty in refusing. He would be
letting himself go. And she was only twenty--for all her
woman-of-the-world air, a child! No! He would be useful to her, if
possible, this once, and then clear out!
CHAPTER XXI
When Miltoun left Valleys House he walked in the direction of
Westminster. During the five days that he had been back in London he had
not yet entered the House of Commons. After the seclusion of his
illness, he still felt a yearning, almost painful, towards the movement
and stir of the town. Everything he heard and saw made an intensely
vivid impression. The lions in Trafalgar Square, the great buildings of
Whitehall, filled him with a sort of exultation. He was like a man, who,
after a long sea voyage, first catches sight of land, and stands
straining his eyes, hardly breathing, taking in one by one the lost
features of that face. He walked on to Westminster Bridge, and going to
an embrasure in the very centre, looked back towards the towers.
It was said that the love of those towers passed into the blood. It was
said that he who had sat beneath them could never again be quite the
same. Miltoun knew that it was true--desperately true, of himself. In
person he had sat there but three weeks, but in soul he seemed to have
been sitting there hundreds of years. And now he would sit there no
more! An almost frantic desire to free himself from this coil rose up
within him. To be held a prisoner by that most secret of all his
instincts, the instinct for authority! To be unable to wield authority
because to wield authority was to insult authority. God! It was hard!
He turned his back on the towers; and sought distraction in the faces of
the passers-by.
Each of these, he knew, had his struggle to keep self-respect! Or was it
that they were unconscious of struggle or of self-respect, and just let
things drift? They looked like that, most of them! And all his inherent
contempt for the average or common welled up as he watched them. Yes,
they looked like that! Ironically, the sight of those from whom he had
desired the comfort of compromise, served instead to stimulate that part
of him which refused to let him compromise. They looked soft, soggy,
without pride or will, as though they knew that life was too much for
them, and had shamefully accepted the fact. They so obviously needed to
be told what they might do, and which way they should, go; they would
accept orders as they accepted their work, or pleasures: And the thought
that he was now debarred from the right to give them orders, rankled in
him furiously. They, in their turn, glanced casually at his tall figure
leaning against the parapet, not knowing how their fate was trembling in
the balance. His thin, sallow face, and hungry eyes gave one or two of
them perhaps a feeling of interest or discomfort; but to most he was
assuredly no more than any other man or woman in the hurly-burly. That
dark figure of conscious power struggling in the fetters of its own
belief in power, was a piece of sculpture they had neither time nor wish
to understand, having no taste for tragedy--for witnessing the human
spirit driven to the wall.
It was five o'clock before Miltoun left the Bridge, and passed, like an
exile, before the gates of Church and State, on his way to his uncle's
Club. He stopped to telegraph to Audrey the time he would be coming
to-morrow afternoon; and on leaving the Post-Office, noticed in the
window of the adjoining shop some reproductions of old Italian
masterpieces, amongst them one of Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus.' He had
never seen that picture; and, remembering that she had told him it was
her favourite, he stopped to look at it. Averagely well versed in such
matters, as became one of his caste, Miltoun had not the power of letting
a work of art insidiously steal the private self from his soul, and
replace it with the self of all the world; and he examined this far-famed
presentment of the heathen goddess with aloofness, even irritation. The
drawing of the body seemed to him crude, the whole picture a little flat
and Early; he did not like the figure of the Flora. The golden serenity,
and tenderness, of which she had spoken, left him cold. Then he found
himself looking at the face, and slowly, but with uncanny certainty,
began to feel that he was looking at the face of Audrey herself. The
hair was golden and different, the eyes grey and different, the mouth a
little fuller; yet--it was her face; the same oval shape, the same
far-apart, arched brows, the same strangely tender, elusive spirit. And,
as though offended, he turned and walked on. In the window of that
little shop was the effigy of her for whom he had bartered away his
life--the incarnation of passive and entwining love, that gentle
creature, who had given herself to him so utterly, for whom love, and the
flowers, and trees, and birds, music, the sky, and the quick-flowing
streams, were all-sufficing; and who, like the goddess in the picture,
seemed wondering at her own existence. He had a sudden glimpse of
understanding, strange indeed in one who had so little power of seeing
into others' hearts: Ought she ever to have been born into a world like
this? But the flash of insight yielded quickly to that sickening
consciousness of his own position, which never left him now. Whatever
else he did, he must get rid of that malaise! But what could he do in
that coming life? Write books? What sort of books could he write? Only
such as expressed his views of citizenship, his political and social
beliefs. As well remain sitting and speaking beneath those towers! He
could never join the happy band of artists, those soft and indeterminate
spirits, for whom barriers had no meaning, content-to understand,
interpret, and create. What should he be doing in that galley? The
thought was inconceivable. A career at the Bar--yes, he might take that
up; but to what end? To become a judge! As well continue to sit beneath
those towers! Too late for diplomacy. Too late for the Army; besides,
he had not the faintest taste for military glory. Bury himself in the
country like Uncle Dennis, and administer one of his father's estates?
It would be death. Go amongst the poor? For a moment he thought he had
found a new vocation. But in what capacity--to order their lives, when
he himself could not order his own; or, as a mere conduit pipe for money,
when he believed that charity was rotting the nation to its core? At the
head of every avenue stood an angel or devil with drawn sword. And then
there came to him another thought. Since he was being cast forth from
Church and State, could he not play the fallen spirit like a man--be
Lucifer, and destroy! And instinctively he at once saw himself returning
to those towers, and beneath them crossing the floor; joining the
revolutionaries, the Radicals, the freethinkers, scourging his present
Party, the party of authority and institutions. The idea struck him as
supremely comic, and he laughed out loud in the street....
The Club which Lord Dennis frequented was in St. James's untouched by the
tides of the waters of fashion--steadily swinging to its moorings in a
quiet backwater, and Miltoun found his uncle in the library. He was
reading a volume of Burton's travels, and drinking tea.
"Nobody comes here," he said, "so, in spite of that word on the door, we
shall talk. Waiter, bring some more tea, please."
Impatiently, but with a sort of pity, Miltoun watched Lord Dennis's
urbane movements, wherein old age was, pathetically, trying to make each
little thing seem important, if only to the doer. Nothing his
great-uncle could say would outweigh the warning of his picturesque old
figure! To be a bystander; to see it all go past you; to let your sword
rust in its sheath, as this poor old fellow had done! The notion of
explaining what he had come about was particularly hateful to Miltoun;
but since he had given his word, he nerved himself with secret anger, and
began:
"I promised my mother to ask you a question, Uncle Dennis. You know of
my attachment, I believe?"
Lord Dennis nodded.
"Well, I have joined my life to this lady's. There will be no scandal,
but I consider it my duty to resign my seat, and leave public life alone.
Is that right or wrong according to, your view?"
Lord Dennis looked at his nephew in silence. A faint flush coloured his
brown cheeks. He had the appearance of one travelling in mind over the
past.
"Wrong, I think," he said, at last.
"Why, if I may ask?"
"I have not the pleasure of knowing this lady, and am therefore somewhat
in the dark; but it appears to me that your decision is not fair to her."
"That is beyond me," said Miltoun.
Lord Dennis answered firmly:
"You have asked me a frank question, expecting a frank answer, I
suppose?"
Miltoun nodded.
"Then, my dear, don't blame me if what I say is unpalatable."
"I shall not."
"Good! You say you are going to give up public life for the sake of your
conscience. I should have no criticism to make if it stopped there."
He paused, and for quite a minute remained silent, evidently searching
for words to express some intricate thread of thought.
"But it won't, Eustace; the public man in you is far stronger than the
other. You want leadership more than you want love. Your sacrifice will
kill your affection; what you imagine is your loss and hurt, will prove
to be this lady's in the end."
Miltoun smiled.
Lord Dennis continued very dryly and with a touch of malice:
"You are not listening to me; but I can see very well that the process
has begun already underneath. There's a curious streak of the Jesuit in
you, Eustace. What you don't want to see, you won't look at."
"You advise me, then, to compromise?"
"On the contrary, I point out that you will be compromising if you try to
keep both your conscience and your love. You will be seeking to have, it
both ways."
"That is interesting."
"And you will find yourself having it neither," said Lord Dennis sharply.
Miltoun rose. "In other words, you, like the others, recommend me to
desert this lady who loves me, and whom I love. And yet, Uncle, they say
that in your own case----"
But Lord Dennis had risen, too, having lost all the appanage and manner
of old age.
"Of my own case," he said bluntly, "we won't talk. I don't advise you to
desert anyone; you quite mistake me. I advise you to know yourself. And
I tell you my opinion of you--you were cut out by Nature for a statesman,
not a lover! There's something dried-up in you, Eustace; I'm not sure
there isn't something dried-up in all our caste. We've had to do with
forms and ceremonies too long. We're not good at taking the lyrical
point of view."
"Unfortunately," said Miltoun, "I cannot, to fit in with a theory of
yours, commit a baseness."
Lord Dennis began pacing up and down. He was keeping his lips closed
very tight.
"A man who gives advice," he said at last, "is always something of a
fool. For all that, you have mistaken mine. I am not so presumptuous as
to attempt to enter the inner chamber of your spirit. I have merely told
you that, in my opinion, it would be more honest to yourself, and fairer
to this lady, to compound with your conscience, and keep both your love
and your public life, than to pretend that you were capable of
sacrificing what I know is the stronger element in you for the sake of
the weaker. You remember the saying, Democritus I think: 'each man's
nature or character is his fate or God'. I recommend it to you."
For a full minute Miltoun stood without replying, then said:
"I am sorry to have troubled you, Uncle Dennis. A middle policy is no
use to me. Good-bye!" And without shaking hands, he went out.
CHAPTER XXII
In the hall someone rose from a sofa, and came towards him. It was
Courtier.
"Run you to earth at last," he said; "I wish you'd come and dine with me.
I'm leaving England to-morrow night, and there are things I want to say."
There passed through Miltoun's mind the rapid thought: 'Does he know?'
He assented, however, and they went out together.
"It's difficult to find a quiet place," said Courtier; "but this might
do."
The place chosen was a little hostel, frequented by racing men, and famed
for the excellence of its steaks. And as they sat down opposite each
other in the almost empty room, Miltoun thought: Yes, he does know! Can
I stand any more of this? He waited almost savagely for the attack he
felt was coming.
"So you are going to give up your seat?" said Courtier.
Miltoun looked at him for some seconds, before replying.
"From what town-crier did you hear that?"
But there was that in Courtier's face which checked his anger; its
friendliness was transparent.
"I am about her only friend," Courtier proceeded earnestly; "and this is
my last chance--to say nothing of my feeling towards you, which, believe
me, is very cordial."
"Go on, then," Miltoun muttered.
"Forgive me for putting it bluntly. Have you considered what her
position was before she met you?"
Miltoun felt the blood rushing to his face, but he sat still, clenching
his nails into the palms of his hands.
"Yes, yes," said Courtier, "but that attitude of mind--you used to have
it yourself--which decrees either living death, or spiritual adultery to
women, makes my blood boil. You can't deny that those were the
alternatives, and I say you had the right fundamentally to protest
against them, not only in words but deeds. You did protest, I know; but
this present decision of yours is a climb down, as much as to say that
your protest was wrong."
Miltoun rose from his seat. "I cannot discuss this," he said; "I
cannot."
"For her sake, you must. If you give up your public work, you'll spoil
her life a second time."
Miltoun again sat down. At the word 'must' a steely feeling had come to
his aid; his eyes began to resemble the old Cardinal's. "Your nature and
mine, Courtier," he said, "are too far apart; we shall never understand
each other."
"Never mind that," answered Courtier. "Admitting those two alternatives
to be horrible, which you never would have done unless the facts had been
brought home to you personally--"
"That," said Miltoun icily, "I deny your right to say."
"Anyway, you do admit them--if you believe you had not the right to
rescue her, on what principle do you base that belief?"
Miltoun placed his elbow on the table, and leaning his chin on his hand,
regarded the champion of lost causes without speaking. There was such a
turmoil going on within him that with difficulty he could force his lips
to obey him.
"By what right do you ask me that?" he said at last. He saw Courtier's
face grow scarlet, and his fingers twisting furiously at those flame-like
moustaches; but his answer was as steadily ironical as usual.
"Well, I can hardly sit still, my last evening in England, without
lifting a finger, while you immolate a woman to whom I feel like a
brother. I'll tell you what your principle is: Authority, unjust or
just, desirable or undesirable, must be implicitly obeyed. To break a
law, no matter on what provocation, or for whose sake, is to break the
commandment"
"Don't hesitate--say, of God."
"Of an infallible fixed Power. Is that a true definition of your
principle?"
"Yes," said Miltoun, between his teeth, "I think so."
"Exceptions prove the rule."
"Hard cases make bad law."
Courtier smiled: "I knew you were coming out with that. I deny that they
do with this law, which is altogether behind the times. You had the
right to rescue this woman."
"No, Courtier, if we must fight, let us fight on the naked facts. I have
not rescued anyone. I have merely stolen sooner than starve. That is why
I cannot go on pretending to be a pattern. If it were known, I could not
retain my seat an hour; I can't take advantage of an accidental secrecy.
Could you?"
Courtier was silent; and with his eyes Miltoun pressed on him, as though
he would despatch him with that glance.
"I could," said Courtier at last. "When this law, by enforcing spiritual
adultery on those who have come to hate their mates, destroys the
sanctity of the married state--the very sanctity it professes to uphold,
you must expect to have it broken by reasoning men and women without
their feeling shame, or losing self-respect."
In Miltoun there was rising that vast and subtle passion for dialectic
combat, which was of his very fibre. He had almost lost the feeling that
this was his own future being discussed. He saw before him in this
sanguine man, whose voice and eyes had such a white-hot sound and look,
the incarnation of all that he temperamentally opposed.
"That," he said, "is devil's advocacy. I admit no individual as judge in
his own case."
"Ah! Now we're coming to it. By the way, shall we get out of this
heat?"
They were no sooner in the cooler street, than the voice of Courtier
began again:
"Distrust of human nature, fear--it's the whole basis of action for men
of your stamp. You deny the right of the individual to judge, because
you've no faith in the essential goodness of men; at heart you believe
them bad. You give them no freedom, you allow them no consent, because
you believe that their decisions would move downwards, and not upwards.
Well, it's the whole difference between the aristocratic and the
democratic view of life. As you once told me, you hate and fear the
crowd."
Miltoun eyed that steady sanguine face askance:
"Yes," he said, "I do believe that men are raised in spite of
themselves."
"You're honest. By whom?"
Again Miltoun felt rising within him a sort of fury. Once for all he
would slay this red-haired rebel; he answered with almost savage irony:
"Strangely enough, by that Being to mention whom you object--working
through the medium of the best."
"High-Priest! Look at that girl slinking along there, with her eye on
us; suppose, instead of withdrawing your garment, you went over and
talked to her, got her to tell you what she really felt and thought,
you'd find things that would astonish you. At bottom, mankind is
splendid. And they're raised, sir, by the aspiration that's in all of
them. Haven't you ever noticed that public sentiment is always in
advance of the Law?"
"And you," said Miltoun, "are the man who is never on the side of the
majority?"
The champion of lost causes uttered a short laugh.
"Not so logical as all that," he answered; "the wind still blows; and
Life's not a set of rules hung up in an office. Let's see, where are
we?" They had been brought to a stand-still by a group on the pavement
in front of the Queen's Hall: "Shall we go in, and hear some music, and
cool our tongues?"
Miltoun nodded, and they went in.
The great lighted hall, filled with the faint bluefish vapour from
hundreds of little rolls of tobacco leaf, was crowded from floor to
ceiling.
Taking his stand among the straw-hatted throng, Miltoun heard that steady
ironical voice behind him:
"Profanum vulgus! Come to listen to the finest piece of music ever
written! Folk whom you wouldn't trust a yard to know what was good for
them! Deplorable sight, isn't it?"
He made no answer. The first slow notes of the seventh Symphony of
Beethoven had begun to steal forth across the bank of flowers; and, save
for the steady rising of that bluefish vapour, as it were incense burnt
to the god of melody, the crowd had become deathly still, as though one
mind, one spirit, possessed each pale face inclined towards that music
rising and falling like the sighing of the winds, that welcome from death
the freed spirits of the beautiful.
When the last notes had died away, he turned and walked out.
"Well," said the voice behind him, "hasn't that shown you how things
swell and grow; how splendid the world is?"
Miltoun smiled.
"It has shown me how beautiful the world can be made by a great man."
And suddenly, as if the music had loosened some band within him, he began
to pour forth words:
"Look at the crowd in this street, Courtier, which of all crowds in the
whole world can best afford to be left to itself; secure from pestilence,
earthquake, cyclone, drought, from extremes of heat and cold, in the
heart of the greatest and safest city in the world; and yet-see the
figure of that policeman! Running through all the good behaviour of this
crowd, however safe and free it looks, there is, there always must be, a
central force holding it together. Where does that central force come
from? From the crowd itself, you say. I answer: No. Look back at the
origin of human States. From the beginnings of things, the best man has
been the unconscious medium of authority, of the controlling principle,
of the divine force; he felt that power within him--physical, at
first--he used it to take the lead, he has held the lead ever since, he
must always hold it. All your processes of election, your so-called
democratic apparatus, are only a blind to the inquiring, a sop to the
hungry, a salve to the pride of the rebellious. They are merely surface
machinery; they cannot prevent the best man from coming to the top; for
the best man stands nearest to the Deity, and is the first to receive the
waves that come from Him. I'm not speaking of heredity. The best man is
not necessarily born in my class, and I, at all events, do not believe he
is any more frequent there than in other classes."
He stopped as suddenly as he had begun.
"You needn't be afraid," answered Courtier, "that I take you for an
average specimen. You're at one end, and I at the other, and we probably
both miss the golden mark. But the world is not ruled by power, and the
fear which power produces, as you think, it's ruled by love. Society is
held together by the natural decency in man, by fellow-feeling. The
democratic principle, which you despise, at root means nothing at all but
that. Man left to himself is on the upward lay. If it weren't so, do
you imagine for a moment your 'boys in blue' could keep order? A man
knows unconsciously what he can and what he can't do, without losing his
self-respect. He sucks that knowledge in with every breath. Laws and
authority are not the be-all and end-all, they are conveniences,
machinery, conduit pipes, main roads. They're not of the structure of
the building--they're only scaffolding."
Miltoun lunged out with the retort
"Without which no building could be built."
Courtier parried.
"That's rather different, my friend, from identifying them with the
building. They are things to be taken down as fast as ever they can be
cleared away, to make room for an edifice that begins on earth, not in
the sky. All the scaffolding of law is merely there to save time, to
prevent the temple, as it mounts, from losing its way, and straying out
of form."
"No," said Miltoun, "no! The scaffolding, as you call it, is the
material projection of the architect's conception, without which the
temple does not and cannot rise; and the architect is God, working
through the minds and spirits most akin to Himself."
"We are now at the bed-rock," cried Courtier, "your God is outside this
world. Mine within it."
"And never the twain shall meet!"
In the silence that followed Miltoun saw that they were in Leicester
Square, all quiet as yet before the theatres had disgorged; quiet yet
waiting, with the lights, like yellow stars low-driven from the dark
heavens, clinging to the white shapes of music-halls and cafes, and a
sort of flying glamour blanching the still foliage of the plane trees.
"A 'whitely wanton'--this Square!" said Courtier: "Alive as a face; no
end to its queer beauty! And, by Jove, if you went deep enough, you'd
find goodness even here."
"And you'd ignore the vice," Miltoun answered.
He felt weary all of a sudden, anxious to get to his rooms, unwilling to
continue this battle of words, that brought him no nearer to relief. It
was with strange lassitude that he heard the voice still speaking:
"We must make a night of it, since to-morrow we die.... You would curb
licence from without--I from within. When I get up and when I go to bed,
when I draw a breath, see a face, or a flower, or a tree--if I didn't
feel that I was looking on the Deity, I believe I should quit this palace
of varieties, from sheer boredom. You, I understand, can't look on your
God, unless you withdraw into some high place. Isn't it a bit lonely
there?"
"There are worse things than loneliness." And they walked on, in
silence; till suddenly Miltoun broke out:
"You talk of tyranny! What tyranny could equal this tyranny of your
freedom? What tyranny in the world like that of this 'free' vulgar,
narrow street, with its hundred journals teeming like ants' nests, to
produce-what? In the entrails of that creature of your freedom,
Courtier, there is room neither for exaltation, discipline, nor
sacrifice; there is room only for commerce, and licence."
There was no answer for a moment; and from those tall houses, whose
lighted windows he had apostrophized, Miltoun turned away towards the
river. "No," said the voice beside him, "for all its faults, the wind
blows in that street, and there's a chance for everything. By God, I
would rather see a few stars struggle out in a black sky than any of your
perfect artificial lighting."
And suddenly it seemed to Miltoun that he could never free himself from
the echoes of that voice--it was not worth while to try. "We are
repeating ourselves," he said, dryly.
The river's black water was making stilly, slow recessional under a
half-moon. Beneath the cloak of night the chaos on the far bank, the
forms of cranes, high buildings, jetties, the bodies of the sleeping
barges, a--million queer dark shapes, were invested with emotion. All was
religious out there, all beautiful, all strange. And over this great
quiet friend of man, lamps--those humble flowers of night, were throwing
down the faint continual glamour of fallen petals; and a sweet-scented
wind stole along from the West, very slow as yet, bringing in advance the
tremor and perfume of the innumerable trees and fields which the river
had loved as she came by.
A murmur that was no true sound, but like the whisper of a heart to a
heart, accompanied this voyage of the dark water.
Then a small blunt skiff--manned by two rowers came by under the wall,
with the thudding and the creak of oars.
"So 'To-morrow we die'?" said Miltoun: "You mean, I suppose, that 'public
life' is the breath of my nostrils, and I must die, because I give it
up?"
Courtier nodded.
"Am I right in thinking that it was my young sister who sent you on this
crusade?"
Courtier did not answer.
"And so," Miltoun went on, looking him through and through; "to-morrow is
to be your last day, too? Well, you're right to go. She is not an ugly
duckling, who can live out of the social pond; she'll always want her
native element. And now, we'll say goodbye! Whatever happens to us both,
I shall remember this evening." Smiling, he put out his hand 'Moriturus
te saluto.'
CHAPTER XXIII
Courtier sat in Hyde Park waiting for five o'clock. The day had
recovered somewhat from a grey morning, as though the glow of that long
hot summer were too burnt-in on the air to yield to the first assault.
The sun, piercing the crisped clouds, those breast feathers of heavenly
doves, darted its beams at the mellowed leaves, and showered to the
ground their delicate shadow stains. The first, too early, scent from
leaves about to fall, penetrated to the heart. And sorrowful sweet birds
were tuning their little autumn pipes, blowing into them fragments of
Spring odes to Liberty.
Courtier thought of Miltoun and his mistress. By what a strange fate had
those two been thrown together; to what end was their love coming? The
seeds of grief were already sown, what flowers of darkness, or of tumult
would come up? He saw her again as a little, grave, considering child,
with her soft eyes, set wide apart under the dark arched brows, and the
little tuck at the corner of her mouth that used to come when he teased
her. And to that gentle creature who would sooner die than force anyone
to anything, had been given this queer lover; this aristocrat by birth
and nature, with the dried fervent soul, whose every fibre had been bred
and trained in and to the service of Authority; this rejecter of the
Unity of Life; this worshipper of an old God! A God that stood, whip in
hand, driving men to obedience. A God that even now Courtier could
conjure up staring at him from the walls of his nursery. The God his own
father had believed in. A God of the Old Testament, knowing neither
sympathy nor understanding. Strange that He should be alive still; that
there should still be thousands who worshipped Him. Yet, not so very
strange, if, as they said, man made God in his own image! Here indeed
was a curious mating of what the philosophers would call the will to
Love, and the will to Power!
A soldier and his girl came and sat down on a bench close by. They
looked askance at this trim and upright figure with the fighting face;
then, some subtle thing informing them that he was not of the disturbing
breed called officer, they ceased to regard him, abandoning themselves to
dumb and inexpressive felicity. Arm in arm, touching each other, they
seemed to Courtier very jolly, having that look of living entirely in the
moment, which always especially appealed to one whose blood ran too fast
to allow him to speculate much upon the future or brood much over the
past.
A leaf from the bough above him, loosened by the sun's kisses, dropped,
and fell yellow at his feet. The leaves were turning very soon?
It was characteristic of this man, who could be so hot over the lost
causes of others, that, sitting there within half an hour of the final
loss of his own cause, he could be so calm, so almost apathetic. This
apathy was partly due to the hopelessness, which Nature had long
perceived, of trying to make him feel oppressed, but also to the habits
of a man incurably accustomed to carrying his fortunes in his hand, and
that hand open. It did not seem real to him that he was actually going
to suffer a defeat, to have to confess that he had hankered after this
girl all these past weeks, and that to-morrow all would be wasted, and
she as dead to him as if he had never seen her. No, it was not exactly
resignation, it was rather sheer lack of commercial instinct. If only
this had been the lost cause of another person. How gallantly he would
have rushed to the assault, and taken her by storm! If only he himself
could have been that other person, how easily, how passionately could he
not have pleaded, letting forth from him all those words which had
knocked at his teeth ever since he knew her, and which would have seemed
so ridiculous and so unworthy, spoken on his own behalf. Yes, for that
other person he could have cut her out from under the guns of the enemy;
he could have taken her, that fairest prize. And in queer, cheery-looking
apathy--not far removed perhaps from despair--he sat, watching the leaves
turn over and fall, and now and then cutting with his stick at the air,
where autumn was already riding. And, if in imagination he saw himself
carrying her away into the wilderness, and with his devotion making her
happiness to grow, it was so far a flight, that a smile crept about his
lips, and once or twice he snapped his jaws.
The soldier and his girl rose, passing in front of him down the Row. He
watched their scarlet and blue figures, moving slowly towards the sun,
and another couple close to the rails, crossing those receding forms.
Very straight and tall, there was something exhilarating in the way this
new couple swung along, holding their heads up, turning towards each
other, to exchange words or smiles. Even at that distance they could be
seen to be of high fashion; in their gait was the almost insolent poise
of those who are above doubts and cares, certain of the world and of
themselves. The girl's dress was tawny brown, her hair and hat too of
the same hue, and the pursuing sunlight endowed her with a hazy
splendour. Then, Courtier saw who they were--that couple!
Except for an unconscious grinding of his teeth, he made no sound or
movement, so that they went by without seeing him. Her voice, though not
the words, came to him distinctly. He saw her hand slip up under
Harbinger's arm and swiftly down again. A smile, of whose existence he
was unaware, settled on his lips. He got up, shook himself, as a dog
shakes off a beating, and walked away, with his mouth set very firm.
CHAPTER XXIV
Left alone among the little mahogany tables of Gustard's, where the scent
of cake and of orange-flower water made happy all the air, Barbara had
sat for some minutes, her eyes cast down--as a child from whom a toy has
been taken contemplates the ground, not knowing precisely what she is
feeling. Then, paying one of the middle-aged females, she went out into
the Square. There a German band was playing Delibes' Coppelia; and the
murdered tune came haunting her, a very ghost of incongruity.
She went straight back to Valleys House. In the room where three hours
ago she had been left alone after lunch with Harbinger, her sister was
seated in the window, looking decidedly upset. In fact, Agatha had just
spent an awkward hour. Chancing, with little Ann, into that
confectioner's where she could best obtain a particularly gummy sweet
which she believed wholesome for her children, she had been engaged in
purchasing a pound, when looking down, she perceived Ann standing
stock-still, with her sudden little nose pointed down the shop, and her
mouth opening; glancing in the direction of those frank, enquiring eyes,
Agatha saw to her amazement her sister, and a man whom she recognized as
Courtier. With a readiness which did her complete credit, she placed a
sweet in Ann's mouth, and saying to the middle-aged female: "Then you'll
send those, please. Come, Ann!" went out. Shocks never coming singly,
she had no sooner reached home, than from her father she learned of the
development of Miltoun's love affair. When Barbara returned, she was
sitting, unfeignedly disturbed and grieved; unable to decide whether or
no she ought to divulge what she herself had seen, but withal buoyed-up
by that peculiar indignation of the essentially domestic woman, whose
ideals have been outraged.
Judging at once from the expression of her face that she must have heard
the news of Miltoun, Barbara said:
"Well, my dear Angel, any lecture for me?"
Agatha answered coldly:
"I think you were quite mad to take Mrs. Noel to him."
"The whole duty of woman," murmured Barbara, "includes a little madness."
Agatha looked at her in silence.
"I can't make you out," she said at last; "you're not a fool!"
"Only a knave."
"You may think it right to joke over the ruin of Miltoun's life,"
murmured Agatha; "I don't."
Barbara's eyes grew bright; and in a hard voice she answered:
"The world is not your nursery, Angel!"
Agatha closed her lips very tightly, as who should imply: "Then it ought
to be!" But she only answered:
"I don't think you know that I saw you just now in Gustard's."
Barbara eyed her for a moment in amazement, and began to laugh.
"I see," she said; "monstrous depravity--poor old Gustard's!" And still
laughing that dangerous laugh, she turned on her heel and went out.
At dinner and afterwards that evening she was very silent, having on her
face the same look that she wore out hunting, especially when in
difficulties of any kind, or if advised to 'take a pull.' When she got
away to her own room she had a longing to relieve herself by some kind of
action that would hurt someone, if only herself. To go to bed and toss
about in a fever--for she knew herself in these thwarted moods--was of no
use! For a moment she thought of going out. That would be fun, and hurt
them, too; but it was difficult. She did not want to be seen, and have
the humiliation of an open row. Then there came into her head the memory
of the roof of the tower, where she had once been as a little girl. She
would be in the air there, she would be able to breathe, to get rid of
this feverishness. With the unhappy pleasure of a spoiled child taking
its revenge, she took care to leave her bedroom door open, so that her
maid would wonder where she was, and perhaps be anxious, and make them
anxious. Slipping through the moonlit picture gallery on to the landing,
outside her father's sanctum, whence rose the stone staircase leading to
the roof, she began to mount. She was breathless when, after that
unending flight of stairs she emerged on to the roof at the extreme
northern end of the big house, where, below her, was a sheer drop of a
hundred feet. At first she stood, a little giddy, grasping the rail that
ran round that garden of lead, still absorbed in her brooding, rebellious
thoughts. Gradually she lost consciousness of everything save the scene
before her. High above all neighbouring houses, she was almost appalled
by the majesty of what she saw. This night-clothed city, so remote and
dark, so white-gleaming and alive, on whose purple hills and valleys grew
such myriad golden flowers of light, from whose heart came this deep
incessant murmur--could it possibly be the same city through which she
had been walking that very day! From its sleeping body the supreme
wistful spirit had emerged in dark loveliness, and was low-flying down
there, tempting her. Barbara turned round, to take in all that amazing
prospect, from the black glades of Hyde Park, in front, to the powdery
white ghost of a church tower, away to the East. How marvellous was this
city of night! And as, in presence of that wide darkness of the sea
before dawn, her spirit had felt little and timid within her--so it felt
now, in face of this great, brooding, beautiful creature, whom man had
made. She singled out the shapes of the Piccadilly hotels, and beyond
them the palaces and towers of Westminster and Whitehall; and everywhere
the inextricable loveliness of dim blue forms and sinuous pallid lines of
light, under an indigo-dark sky. Near at hand, she could see plainly the
still-lighted windows, the motorcars gliding by far down, even the tiny
shapes of people walking; and the thought that each of them meant someone
like herself, seemed strange.
Drinking of this wonder-cup, she began to experience a queer
intoxication, and lost the sense of being little; rather she had the
feeling of power, as in her dream at Monkland. She too, as well as this
great thing below her, seemed to have shed her body, to be emancipated
from every barrier-floating deliciously identified with air. She seemed
to be one with the enfranchised spirit of the city, drowned in perception
of its beauty. Then all that feeling went, and left her frowning,
shivering, though the wind from the West was warm. Her whole adventure of
coming up here seemed bizarre, ridiculous. Very stealthily she crept
down, and had reached once more the door into 'the picture gallery, when
she heard her mother's voice say in amazement: "That you, Babs?" And
turning, saw her coming from the doorway of the sanctum.
Of a sudden very cool, with all her faculties about her, Barbara smiled,
and stood looking at Lady Valleys, who said with hesitation:
"Come in here, dear, a minute, will you?"
In that room resorted to for comfort, Lord Valleys was standing with his
back to the hearth, and an expression on his face that wavered between
vexation and decision. The doubt in Agatha's mind whether she should
tell or no, had been terribly resolved by little Ann, who in a pause of
conversation had announced: "We saw Auntie Babs and Mr. Courtier in
Gustard's, but we didn't speak to them."
Upset by the events of the afternoon, Lady Valleys had not shown her
usual 'savoir faire'. She had told her husband. A meeting of this sort
in a shop celebrated for little save its wedding cakes was in a sense of
no importance; but, being disturbed already by the news of Miltoun, it
seemed to them both nothing less than sinister, as though the heavens
were in league for the demolition of their house. To Lord Valleys it was
peculiarly mortifying, because of his real admiration for his daughter,
and because he had paid so little attention to his wife's warning of some
weeks back. In consultation, however, they had only succeeded in
deciding that Lady Valleys should talk with her. Though without much
spiritual insight, they had, each of them, a certain cool judgment; and
were fully alive to the danger of thwarting Barbara. This had not
prevented Lord Valleys from expressing himself strongly on the
'confounded unscrupulousness of that fellow,' and secretly forming his
own plan for dealing with this matter. Lady Valleys, more deeply
conversant with her daughter's nature, and by reason of femininity more
lenient towards the other sex, had not tried to excuse Courtier, but had
thought privately: 'Babs is rather a flirt.' For she could not
altogether help remembering herself at the same age.
Summoned thus unexpectedly, Barbara, her lips very firmly pressed
together, took her stand, coolly enough, by her father's writing-table.
Seeing her suddenly appear, Lord Valleys instinctively relaxed his frown;
his experience of men and things, his thousands of diplomatic hours,
served to give him an air of coolness and detachment which he was very
far from feeling. In truth he would rather have faced a hostile mob than
his favourite daughter in such circumstances. His tanned face with its
crisp grey moustache, his whole head indeed, took on, unconsciously, a
more than ordinarily soldier-like appearance. His eyelids drooped a
little, his brows rose slightly.
She was wearing a blue wrap over her evening frock, and he seized
instinctively on that indifferent trifle to begin this talk.
"Ah! Babs, have you been out?"
Alive to her very finger-nails, with every nerve tingling, but showing no
sign, Barbara answered:
"No; on the roof of the tower."
It gave her a real malicious pleasure to feel the perplexity beneath her
father's dignified exterior. And detecting that covert mockery, Lord
Valleys said dryly:
"Star-gazing?"
Then, with that sudden resolution peculiar to him, as though he were
bored with having to delay and temporize, he added:
"Do you know, I doubt whether it's wise to make appointments in
confectioner's shops when Ann is in London."
The dangerous little gleam in Barbara's eyes escaped his vision but not
that of Lady Valleys, who said at once:
"No doubt you had the best of reasons, my dear."
Barbara curled her lip. Had it not been for the scene they had been
through that day with Miltoun, and for their very real anxiety, both
would have seen, then, that while their daughter was in this mood, least
said was soonest mended. But their nerves were not quite within control;
and with more than a touch of impatience Lord Valleys ejaculated:
"It doesn't appear to you, I suppose, to require any explanation?"
Barbara answered:
"No."
"Ah!" said Lord Valleys: "I see. An explanation can be had no doubt from
the gentleman whose sense of proportion was such as to cause him to
suggest such a thing."
"He did not suggest it. I did."
Lord Valleys' eyebrows rose still higher.
"Indeed!" he said.
"Geoffrey!" murmured Lady Valleys, "I thought I was to talk to Babs."
"It would no doubt be wiser."
In Barbara, thus for the first time in her life seriously reprimanded,
there was at work the most peculiar sensation she had ever felt, as if
something were scraping her very skin--a sick, and at the same time
devilish, feeling. At that moment she could have struck her father dead.
But she showed nothing, having lowered the lids of her eyes.
"Anything else?" she said.
Lord Valleys' jaw had become suddenly more prominent.
"As a sequel to your share in Miltoun's business, it is peculiarly
entrancing."
"My dear," broke in Lady Valleys very suddenly, "Babs will tell me. It's
nothing, of course."
Barbara's calm voice said again:
"Anything else?"
The repetition of this phrase in that maddening, cool voice almost broke
down her father's sorely tried control.
"Nothing from you," he said with deadly coldness. "I shall have the
honour of telling this gentleman what I think of him."
At those words Barbara drew herself together, and turned her eyes from
one face to the other.
Under that gaze, which for all its cool hardness, was so furiously alive,
neither Lord nor Lady Valleys could keep quite still. It was as if she
had stripped from them the well-bred mask of those whose spirits, by long
unquestioning acceptance of themselves, have become inelastic,
inexpansive, commoner than they knew. In fact a rather awful moment!
Then Barbara said:
"If there's nothing else, I'm going to bed. Goodnight!"
And as calmly as she had come in, she went out.
When she had regained her room, she locked the door, threw off her cloak,
and looked at herself in the glass. With pleasure she saw how firmly her
teeth were clenched, how her breast was heaving, and how her eyes seemed
to be stabbing herself. And all the time she thought:
"Very well! My dears! Very well!"
CHAPTER XXV
In that mood of rebellious mortification she fell asleep. And, curiously
enough, dreamed not of him whom she had in mind been so furiously
defending, but of Harbinger. She fancied herself in prison, lying in a
cell fashioned like the drawing-room at Sea house; and in the next cell,
into which she could somehow look, Harbinger was digging at the wall with
his nails. She could distinctly see the hair on the back of his hands,
and hear him breathing. The hole he was making grew larger and larger.
Her heart began to beat furiously; she awoke.
She rose with a new and malicious resolution to show no sign of
rebellion, to go through the day as if nothing had happened, to deceive
them all, and then--! Exactly what 'and then' meant, she did not explain
even to herself.
In accordance with this plan of action she presented an untroubled front
at breakfast, went out riding with little Ann, and shopping with her
mother afterwards. Owing to this news of Miltoun the journey to Scotland
had been postponed. She parried with cool ingenuity each attempt made by
Lady Valleys to draw her into conversation on the subject of that meeting
at Gustard's, nor would she talk of her brother; in every other way she
was her usual self. In the afternoon she even volunteered to accompany
her mother to old Lady Harbinger's in the neighbourhood of Prince's Gate.
She knew that Harbinger would be there, and with the thought of meeting
that other at 'five o'clock,' had a cynical pleasure in thus encountering
him. It was so complete a blind to them all! Then, feeling that she was
accomplishing a masterstroke; she even told him, in her mother's hearing,
that she would walk home, and he might come if he cared. He did care.
But when once she had begun to swing along in the mellow afternoon, under
the mellow trees, where the air was sweetened by the South-West wind, all
that mutinous, reckless mood of hers vanished, she felt suddenly happy
and kind, glad to be walking with him. To-day too he was cheerful, as if
determined not to spoil her gaiety; and she was grateful for this. Once
or twice she even put her hand up and touched his sleeve, calling his
attention to birds or trees, friendly, and glad, after all those hours of
bitter feelings, to be giving happiness. When they parted at the door of
Valleys House, she looked back at him with a queer, half-rueful smile.
For, now the hour had come!
In a little unfrequented ante-room, all white panels and polish, she sat
down to wait. The entrance drive was visible from here; and she meant to
encounter Courtier casually in the hall. She was excited, and a little
scornful of her own excitement. She had expected him to be punctual, but
it was already past five; and soon she began to feel uneasy, almost
ridiculous, sitting in this room where no one ever came. Going to the
window, she looked out.
A sudden voice behind her, said:
"Auntie Babs!".
Turning, she saw little Ann regarding her with those wide, frank, hazel
eyes. A shiver of nerves passed through Barbara.
"Is this your room? It's a nice room, isn't it?"
She answered:
"Quite a nice room, Ann."
"Yes. I've never been in here before. There's somebody just come, so I
must go now."
Barbara involuntarily put her hands up to her cheeks, and quickly passed
with her niece into the hall. At the very door the footman William
handed her a note. She looked at the superscription. It was from
Courtier. She went back into the room. Through its half-closed door the
figure of little Ann could be seen, with her legs rather wide apart, and
her hands clasped on her low-down belt, pointing up at William her sudden
little nose. Barbara shut the door abruptly, broke the seal, and read:
"DEAR LADY BARBARA,
"I am sorry to say my interview with your brother was fruitless.
"I happened to be sitting in the Park just now, and I want to wish
you every happiness before I go. It has been the greatest pleasure
to know you. I shall never have a thought of you that will not be my
pride; nor a memory that will not help me to believe that life is
good. If I am tempted to feel that things are dark, I shall remember
that you are breathing this same mortal air. And to beauty and joy'
I shall take off my hat with the greater reverence, that once I was
permitted to walk and talk, with you. And so, good-bye, and God
bless you.
"Your faithful servant,
"CHARLES COURTIER."
Her cheeks burned, quick sighs escaped her lips; she read the letter
again, but before getting to the end could not see the words for mist.
If in that letter there had been a word of complaint or even of regret!
She could not let him go like this, without good-bye, without any
explanation at all. He should not think of her as a cold, stony flirt,
who had been merely stealing a few weeks' amusement out of him. She
would explain to him at all events that it had not been that. She would
make him understand that it was not what he thought--that something in
her wanted--wanted----! Her mind was all confused. "What was it?" she
thought: "What did I do?" And sore with anger at herself, she screwed the
letter up in her glove, and ran out. She walked swiftly down to
Piccadilly, and crossed into the Green Park. There she passed Lord
Malvezin and a friend strolling up towards Hyde Park Corner, and gave
them a very faint bow. The composure of those two precise and
well-groomed figures sickened her just then. She wanted to run, to fly
to this meeting that should remove from him the odious feelings he must
have, that she, Barbara Caradoc, was a vulgar enchantress, a common
traitress and coquette! And his letter--without a syllable of reproach!
Her cheeks burned so, that she could not help trying to hide them from
people who passed.
As she drew nearer to his rooms she walked slower, forcing herself to
think what she should do, what she should let him do! But she continued
resolutely forward. She would not shrink now--whatever came of it! Her
heart fluttered, seemed to stop beating, fluttered again. She set her
teeth; a sort of desperate hilarity rose in her. It was an adventure!
Then she was gripped by the feeling that had come to her on the roof.
The whole thing was bizarre, ridiculous! She stopped, and drew the letter
from her glove. It might be ridiculous, but it was due from her; and
closing her lips very tight, she walked on. In thought she was already
standing close to him, her eyes shut, waiting, with her heart beating
wildly, to know what she would feel when his lips had spoken, perhaps
touched her face or hand. And she had a sort of mirage vision of
herself, with eyelashes resting on her cheeks, lips a little parted, arms
helpless at her sides. Yet, incomprehensibly, his figure was invisible.
She discovered then that she was standing before his door.
She rang the bell calmly, but instead of dropping her hand, pressed the
little bare patch of palm left open by the glove to her face, to see
whether it was indeed her own cheek flaming so.
The door had been opened by some unseen agency, disclosing a passage and
flight of stairs covered by a red carpet, at the foot of which lay an
old, tangled, brown-white dog full of fleas and sorrow. Unreasoning
terror seized on Barbara; her body remained rigid, but her spirit began
flying back across the Green Park, to the very hall of Valleys House.
Then she saw coming towards her a youngish woman in a blue apron, with
mild, reddened eyes.
"Is this where Mr. Courtier lives?"
"Yes, miss." The teeth of the young woman were few in number and rather
black; and Barbara could only stand there saying nothing, as if her body
had been deserted between the sunlight and this dim red passage, which
led to-what?
The woman spoke again:
"I'm sorry if you was wanting him, miss, he's just gone away."
Barbara felt a movement in her heart, like the twang and quiver of an
elastic band, suddenly relaxed. She bent to stroke the head of the old
dog, who was smelling her shoes. The woman said:
"And, of course, I can't give you his address, because he's gone to
foreign parts."
With a murmur, of whose sense she knew nothing, Barbara hurried out into
the sunshine. Was she glad? Was she sorry? At the corner of the street
she turned and looked back; the two heads, of the woman and the dog, were
there still, poked out through the doorway.
A horrible inclination to laugh seized her, followed by as horrible a
desire to cry.
CHAPTER XXVI
By the river the West wind, whose murmuring had visited Courtier and
Miltoun the night before, was bringing up the first sky of autumn.
Slow-creeping and fleecy grey, the clouds seemed trying to overpower a
sun that shone but fitfully even thus early in the day. While Audrey
Noel was dressing sunbeams danced desperately on the white wall, like
little lost souls with no to-morrow, or gnats that wheel and wheel in
brief joy, leaving no footmarks on the air. Through the chinks of a side
window covered by a dark blind some smoky filaments of light were
tethered to the back of her mirror. Compounded of trembling grey
spirals, so thick to the eye that her hand felt astonishment when it
failed to grasp them, and so jealous as ghosts of the space they
occupied, they brought a moment's distraction to a heart not happy. For
how could she be happy, her lover away from her now thirty hours, without
having overcome with his last kisses the feeling of disaster which had
settled on her when he told her of his resolve. Her eyes had seen deeper
than his; her instinct had received a message from Fate.
To be the dragger-down, the destroyer of his usefulness; to be not the
helpmate, but the clog; not the inspiring sky, but the cloud! And because
of a scruple which she could not understand! She had no anger with that
unintelligible scruple; but her fatalism, and her sympathy had followed
it out into his future. Things being so, it could not be long before he
felt that her love was maiming him; even if he went on desiring her, it
would be only with his body. And if, for this scruple, he were capable
of giving up his public life, he would be capable of living on with her
after his love was dead! This thought she could not bear. It stung to
the very marrow of her nerves. And yet surely Life could not be so cruel
as to have given her such happiness meaning to take it from her! Surely
her love was not to be only one summer's day; his love but an embrace,
and then--for ever nothing!
This morning, fortified by despair, she admitted her own beauty. He
would, he must want her more than that other life, at the very thought of
which her face darkened. That other life so hard, and far from her! So
loveless, formal, and yet--to him so real, so desperately, accursedly
real! If he must indeed give up his career, then surely the life they
could live together would make up to him--a life among simple and sweet
things, all over the world, with music and pictures, and the flowers and
all Nature, and friends who sought them for themselves, and in being kind
to everyone, and helping the poor and the unfortunate, and loving each
other! But he did not want that sort of life! What was the good of
pretending that he did? It was right and natural he should want, to use
his powers! To lead and serve! She would not have him otherwise: With
these thoughts hovering and darting within her, she went on twisting and
coiling her dark hair, and burying her heart beneath its lace defences.
She noted too, with her usual care, two fading blossoms in the bowl of
flowers on her dressing-table, and, removing their, emptied out the water
and refilled the bowl.
Before she left her bedroom the sunbeams had already ceased to dance, the
grey filaments of light were gone. Autumn sky had come into its own.
Passing the mirror in the hall which was always rough with her, she had
not courage to glance at it. Then suddenly a woman's belief in the power
of her charm came to her aid; she felt almost happy--surely he must love
her better than his conscience! But that confidence was very tremulous,
ready to yield to the first rebuff. Even the friendly fresh--cheeked maid
seemed that morning to be regarding her with compassion; and all the
innate sense, not of 'good form,' but of form, which made her shrink from
anything that should disturb or hurt another, or make anyone think she
was to be pitied, rose up at once within her; she became more than ever
careful to show nothing even to herself. So she passed the morning,
mechanically doing the little usual things. An overpowering longing was
with her all the time, to get him away with her from England, and see
whether the thousand beauties she could show him would not fire him with
love of the things she loved. As a girl she had spent nearly three years
abroad. And Eustace had never been to Italy, nor to her beloved mountain
valleys! Then, the remembrance of his rooms at the Temple broke in on
that vision, and shattered it. No Titian's feast of gentian, tawny
brown, and alpen-rose could intoxicate the lover of those books, those
papers, that great map. And the scent of leather came to her now as
poignantly as if she were once more flitting about noiselessly on her
business of nursing. Then there rushed through her again the warm
wonderful sense that had been with her all those precious days--of love
that knew secretly of its approaching triumph and fulfilment; the
delicious sense of giving every minute of her time, every thought, and
movement; and all the sweet unconscious waiting for the divine,
irrevocable moment when at last she would give herself and be his. The
remembrance too of how tired, how sacredly tired she had been, and of how
she had smiled all the time with her inner joy of being tired for him.
The sound of the bell startled her. His telegram had said, the
afternoon! She determined to show nothing of the trouble darkening the
whole world for her, and drew a deep breath, waiting for his kiss.
It was not Miltoun, but Lady Casterley.
The shock sent the blood buzzing into her temples. Then she noticed that
the little figure before her was also trembling; drawing up a chair, she
said: "Won't you sit down?"
The tone of that old voice, thanking her, brought back sharply the memory
of her garden, at Monkland, bathed in the sweetness and shimmer of
summer, and of Barbara standing at her gate towering above this little
figure, which now sat there so silent, with very white face. Those
carved features, those keen, yet veiled eyes, had too often haunted her
thoughts; they were like a bad dream come true.
"My grandson is not here, is he?"
Audrey shook her head.
"We have heard of his decision. I will not beat about the bush with you.
It is a disaster for me a calamity. I have known and loved him since he
was born, and I have been foolish enough to dream, dreams about him. I
wondered perhaps whether you knew how much we counted on him. You must
forgive an old woman's coming here like this. At my age there are few
things that matter, but they matter very much."
And Audrey thought: "And at my age there is but one thing that matters,
and that matters worse than death." But she did not speak. To whom, to
what should she speak? To this hard old woman, who personified the
world? Of what use, words?
"I can say to you," went on the voice of the little figure, that seemed
so to fill the room with its grey presence, "what I could not bring
myself to say to others; for you are not hard-hearted."
A quiver passed up from the heart so praised to the still lips. No, she
was not hard-hearted! She could even feel for this old woman from whose
voice anxiety had stolen its despotism.
"Eustace cannot live without his career. His career is himself, he must
be doing, and leading, and spending his powers. What he has given you is
not his true self. I don't want to hurt you, but the truth is the truth,
and we must all bow before it. I may be hard, but I can respect sorrow."
To respect sorrow! Yes, this grey visitor could do that, as the wind
passing over the sea respects its surface, as the air respects the
surface of a rose, but to penetrate to the heart, to understand her
sorrow, that old age could not do for youth! As well try to track out
the secret of the twistings in the flight of those swallows out there
above the river, or to follow to its source the faint scent of the lilies
in that bowl! How should she know what was passing in here--this little
old woman whose blood was cold? And Audrey had the sensation of watching
someone pelt her with the rind and husks of what her own spirit had long
devoured. She had a longing to get up, and take the hand, the chill,
spidery hand of age, and thrust it into her breast, and say: "Feel that,
and cease!"
But, withal, she never lost her queer dull compassion for the owner of
that white carved face. It was not her visitor's fault that she had
come! Again Lady Casterley was speaking.
"It is early days. If you do not end it now, at once, it will only come
harder on you presently. You know how determined he is. He will not
change his mind. If you cut him off from his work in life, it will but
recoil on you. I can only expect your hatred, for talking like this, but
believe me, it's for your good, as well as his, in the long run."
A tumultuous heart-beating of ironical rage seized on the listener to
that speech. Her good! The good of a corse that the breath is just
abandoning; the good of a flower beneath a heel; the good of an old dog
whose master leaves it for the last time! Slowly a weight like lead
stopped all that fluttering of her heart. If she did not end it at once!
The words had now been spoken that for so many hours, she knew, had lain
unspoken within her own breast. Yes, if she did not, she could never
know a moment's peace, feeling that she was forcing him to a death in
life, desecrating her own love and pride! And the spur had been given by
another! The thought that someone--this hard old woman of the hard
world--should have shaped in words the hauntings of her love and pride
through all those ages since Miltoun spoke to her of his resolve; that
someone else should have had to tell her what her heart had so long known
it must do--this stabbed her like a knife! This, at all events, she
could not bear!
She stood up, and said:
"Please leave me now! I have a great many things to do, before I go."
With a sort of pleasure she saw a look of bewilderment cover that old
face; with a sort of pleasure she marked the trembling of the hands
raising their owner from the chair; and heard the stammering in the
voice: "You are going? Before-before he comes? You-you won't be seeing
him again?" With a sort of pleasure she marked the hesitation, which did
not know whether to thank, or bless, or just say nothing and creep away.
With a sort of pleasure she watched the flush mount in the faded cheeks,
the faded lips pressed together. Then, at the scarcely whispered words:
"Thank you, my dear!" she turned, unable to bear further sight or sound.
She went to the window and pressed her forehead against the glass, trying
to think of nothing. She heard the sound of wheels-Lady Casterley had
gone. And then, of all the awful feelings man or woman can know, she
experienced the worst: She could not cry!
At this most bitter and deserted moment of her life, she felt strangely
calm, foreseeing clearly, exactly; what she must do, and where go.
Quickly it must be done, or it would never be done! Quickly! And without
fuss! She put some things together, sent the maid out for a cab, and sat
down to write.
She must do and say nothing that could excite him, and bring back his
illness. Let it all be sober, reasonable! It would be easy to let him
know where she was going, to write a letter that would bring him flying
after her. But to write the calm, reasonable words that would keep him
waiting and thinking, till he never again came to her, broke her heart.
When she had finished and sealed the letter, she sat motionless with a
numb feeling in hands and brain, trying to realize what she had next to
do. To go, and that was all!
Her trunks had been taken down already. She chose the little hat that he
liked her best in, and over it fastened her thickest veil. Then, putting
on her travelling coat and gloves, she looked in the long mirror, and
seeing that there was nothing more to keep her, lifted her dressing bag,
and went down.
Over on the embankment a child was crying; and the passionate screaming
sound, broken by the gulping of tears, made her cover her lips, as though
she had heard her own escaped soul wailing out there.
She leaned out of the cab to say to the maid:
"Go and comfort that crying, Ella."
Only when she was alone in the train, secure from all eyes, did she give
way to desperate weeping. The white smoke rolling past the windows was
not more evanescent than her joy had been. For she had no illusions--it
was over! From first to last--not quite a year! But even at this moment,
not for all the world would she have been without her love, gone to its
grave, like a dead child that evermore would be touching her breast with
its wistful fingers.
CHAPTER XXVII
Barbara returning from her visit to Courtier's deserted rooms, was met at
Valleys House with the message: Would she please go at once to Lady
Casterley?
When, in obedience, she reached Ravensham, she found her grandmother and
Lord-Dennis in the white room. They were standing by one of the tall
windows, apparently contemplating the view. They turned indeed at sound
of Barbara's approach, but neither of them spoke or nodded. Not having
seen her grandfather since before Miltoun's illness, Barbara found it
strange to be so treated; she too took her stand silently before the
window. A very large wasp was crawling up the pane, then slipping down
with a faint buzz.
Suddenly Lady Casterley spoke.
"Kill that thing!"
Lord Dennis drew forth his handkerchief.
"Not with that, Dennis. It will make a mess. Take a paper knife."
"I was going to put it out," murmured Lord Dennis.
"Let Barbara with her gloves."
Barbara moved towards the pane.
"It's a hornet, I think," she said.
"So he is!" said Lord Dennis, dreamily:
"Nonsense," murmured Lady Casterley, "it's a common wasp."
"I know it's a hornet, Granny. The rings are darker."
Lady Casterley bent down; when she raised herself she had a slipper in
her hand.
"Don't irritate him!" cried Barbara, catching her wrist. But Lady
Casterley freed her hand.
"I will," she said, and brought the sole of the slipper down on the
insect, so that it dropped on the floor, dead. "He has no business in
here."
And, as if that little incident had happened to three other people, they
again stood silently looking through the window.
Then Lady Casterley turned to Barbara.
"Well, have you realized the mischief that you've done?"
"Ann!" murmured Lord Dennis.
"Yes, yes; she is your favourite, but that won't save her. This
woman--to her great credit--I say to her great credit--has gone away, so
as to put herself out of Eustace's reach, until he has recovered his
senses."
With a sharp-drawn breath Barbara said:
"Oh! poor thing!"
But on Lady Casterley's face had come an almost cruel look.
"Ah!" she said: "Exactly. But, curiously enough, I am thinking of
Eustace." Her little figure was quivering from head to foot: "This will
be a lesson to you not to play with fire!"
"Ann!" murmured Lord Dennis again, slipping his arm through Barbara's.
"The world," went on Lady Casterley, "is a place of facts, not of
romantic fancies. You have done more harm than can possibly be repaired.
I went to her myself. I was very much moved.' If it hadn't been for your
foolish conduct----"
"Ann!" said Lord Dennis once more.
Lady Casterley paused, tapping the floor with her little foot. Barbara's
eyes were gleaming.
"Is there anything else you would like to squash, dear?"
"Babs!" murmured Lord Dennis; but, unconsciously pressing his hand
against her heart, the girl went on.
"You are lucky to be abusing me to-day--if it had been yesterday----"
At these dark words Lady Casterley turned away, her shoes leaving little
dull stains on the polished floor.
Barbara raised to her cheek the fingers which she had been so
convulsively embracing. "Don't let her go on, uncle," she whispered,
"not just now!"
"No, no, my dear," Lord Dennis murmured, "certainly not--it is enough."
"It has been your sentimental folly," came Lady Casterley's voice from a
far corner, "which has brought this on the boy."
Responding to the pressure of the hand, back now at her waist, Barbara
did not answer; and the sound of the little feet retracing their steps
rose in the stillness. Neither of those two at the window turned their
heads; once more the feet receded, and again began coming back.
Suddenly Barbara, pointing to the floor, cried:
"Oh! Granny, for Heaven's sake, stand still; haven't you squashed the
hornet enough, even if he did come in where he hadn't any business?"
Lady Casterley looked down at the debris of the insect.
"Disgusting!" she said; but when she next spoke it was in a less hard,
more querulous voice.
"That man--what was his name--have you got rid of him?"
Barbara went crimson.
"Abuse my friends, and I will go straight home and never speak to you
again."
For a moment Lady Casterley looked almost as if she might strike her
granddaughter; then a little sardonic smile broke out on her face.
"A creditable sentiment!" she said.
Letting fall her uncle's hand, Barbara cried:
"In any case, I'd better go. I don't know why you sent for me."
Lady Casterley answered coldly:
"To let you and your mother know of this woman's most unselfish
behaviour; to put you on the 'qui vive' for what Eustace may do now; to
give you a chance to make up for your folly. Moreover to warn you
against----" she paused.
"Yes?"
"Let me----" interrupted Lord Dennis.
"No, Uncle Dennis, let Granny take her shoe!"
She had withdrawn against the wall, tall, and as it were, formidable,
with her head up. Lady Casterley remained silent.
"Have you got it ready?" cried Barbara: "Unfortunately he's flown!"
A voice said:
"Lord Miltoun."
He had come in quietly and quickly, preceding the announcement, and stood
almost touching that little group at the window before they caught sight
of him. His face had the rather ghastly look of sunburnt faces from
which emotion has driven the blood; and his eyes, always so much the most
living part of him, were full of such stabbing anger, that involuntarily
they all looked down.
"I want to speak to you alone," he said to Lady Casterley.
Visibly, for perhaps the first time in her life, that indomitable little
figure flinched. Lord Dennis drew Barbara away, but at the door he
whispered:
"Stay here quietly, Babs; I don't like the look of this."
Unnoticed, Barbara remained hovering.
The two voices, low, and so far off in the long white room, were
uncannily distinct, emotion charging each word with preternatural power
of penetration; and every movement of the speakers had to the girl's
excited eyes a weird precision, as of little figures she had once seen at
a Paris puppet show. She could hear Miltoun reproaching his grandmother
in words terribly dry and bitter. She edged nearer and nearer, till,
seeing that they paid no more heed to her than if she were an attendant
statue, she had regained her position by the window.
Lady Casterley was speaking.
"I was not going to see you ruined before my eyes, Eustace. I did what I
did at very great cost. I did my best for you."
Barbara saw Miltoun's face transfigured by a dreadful smile--the smile of
one defying his torturer with hate. Lady Casterley went on:
"Yes, you stand there looking like a devil. Hate me if you like--but
don't betray us, moaning and moping because you can't have the moon. Put
on your armour, and go down into the battle. Don't play the coward,
boy!"
Miltoun's answer cut like the lash of a whip.
"By God! Be silent!"
And weirdly, there was silence. It was not the brutality of the words,
but the sight of force suddenly naked of all disguise--like a fierce dog
let for a moment off its chain--which made Barbara utter a little
dismayed sound. Lady Casterley had dropped into a chair, trembling. And
without a look Miltoun passed her. If their grandmother had fallen dead,
Barbara knew he would not have stopped to see. She ran forward, but the
old woman waved her away.
"Go after him," she said, "don't let him go alone."
And infected by the fear in that wizened voice, Barbara flew.
She caught her brother as he was entering the taxi-cab in which he had
come, and without a word slipped in beside him. The driver's face
appeared at the window, but Miltoun only motioned with his head, as if to
say: Anywhere, away from here!
The thought flashed through Barbara: "If only I can keep him in here with
me!"
She leaned out, and said quietly:
"To Nettlefold, in Sussex--never mind your petrol--get more on the road.
You can have what fare you like. Quick!"
The man hesitated, looked in her face, and said:
"Very well; miss. By Dorking, ain't it?"
Barbara nodded.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The clock over the stables was chiming seven when Miltoun and Barbara
passed out of the tall iron gates, in their swift-moving small world,
that smelled faintly of petrol. Though the cab was closed, light spurts
of rain drifted in through the open windows, refreshing the girl's hot
face, relieving a little her dread of this drive. For, now that Fate had
been really cruel, now that it no longer lay in Miltoun's hands to save
himself from suffering, her heart bled for him; and she remembered to
forget herself. The immobility with which he had received her intrusion,
was ominous. And though silent in her corner, she was desperately
working all her woman's wits to discover a way of breaking into the house
of his secret mood. He appeared not even to have noticed that they had
turned their backs on London, and passed into Richmond Park.
Here the trees, made dark by rain, seemed to watch gloomily the progress
of this whirring-wheeled red box, unreconciled even yet to such harsh
intruders on their wind-scented tranquillity. And the deer, pursuing
happiness on the sweet grasses, raised disquieted noses, as who should
say: Poisoners of the fern, defilers of the trails of air!
Barbara vaguely felt the serenity out there in the clouds, and the trees,
and wind. If it would but creep into this dim, travelling prison, and
help her; if it would but come, like sleep, and steal away dark sorrow,
and in one moment make grief-joy. But it stayed outside on its wistful
wings; and that grand chasm which yawns between soul and soul remained
unbridged. For what could she say? How make him speak of what he was
going to do? What alternatives indeed were now before him? Would he
sullenly resign his seat, and wait till he could find Audrey Noel again?
But even if he did find her, they would only be where they were. She had
gone, in order not to be a drag on him--it would only be the same thing
all over again! Would he then, as Granny had urged him, put on his
armour, and go down into the fight? But that indeed would mean the end,
for if she had had the strength to go away now, she would surely never
come back and break in on his life a second time. And a grim thought
swooped down on Barbara. What if he resigned everything! Went out into
the dark! Men did sometimes--she knew--caught like this in the full
flush of passion. But surely not Miltoun, with his faith! 'If the
lark's song means nothing--if that sky is a morass of our invention--if
we are pettily creeping on, furthering nothing--persuade me of it, Babs,
and I'll bless you.' But had he still that anchorage, to prevent him
slipping out to sea? This sudden thought of death to one for whom life
was joy, who had never even seen the Great Stillness, was very
terrifying. She fixed her eyes on the back of the chauffeur, in his drab
coat with the red collar, finding some comfort in its solidity. They
were in a taxi-cab, in Richmond Park! Death--incongruous, incredible
death! It was stupid to be frightened! She forced herself to look at
Miltoun. He seemed to be asleep; his eyes were closed, his arms
folded--only a quivering of his eyelids betrayed him. Impossible to tell
what was going on in that grim waking sleep, which made her feel that she
was not there at all, so utterly did he seem withdrawn into himself!
He opened his eyes, and said suddenly:
"So you think I'm going to lay hands on myself, Babs?"
Horribly startled by this reading of her thoughts, Barbara could only
edge away and stammer:
"No; oh, no!"
"Where are we going in this thing?"
"Nettlefold. Would you like him stopped?"
"It will do as well as anywhere."
Terrified lest he should relapse into that grim silence, she timidly
possessed herself of his hand.
It was fast growing dark; the cab, having left the villas of Surbiton
behind, was flying along at great speed among pine-trees and stretches of
heather gloomy with faded daylight.
Miltoun said presently, in a queer, slow voice "If I want, I have only to
open that door and jump. You who believe that 'to-morrow we die'--give
me the faith to feel that I can free myself by that jump, and out I go!"
Then, seeming to pity her terrified squeeze of his hand, he added: "It's
all right, Babs; we, shall sleep comfortably enough in our beds tonight."
But, so desolate to the girl was his voice, that she hoped now for
silence.
"Let us be skinned quietly," muttered Miltoun, "if nothing else. Sorry to
have disturbed you."
Pressing close up to him, Barbara murmured:
"If only----Talk to me!".
But Miltoun, though he stroked her hand, was silent.
The cab, moving at unaccustomed speed along these deserted roads, moaned
dismally; and Barbara was possessed now by a desire which she dared not
put in practice, to pull his head down, and rock it against her. Her
heart felt empty, and timid; to have something warm resting on it would
have made all the difference. Everything real, substantial, comforting,
seemed to have slipped away. Among these flying dark ghosts of
pine-trees--as it were the unfrequented borderland between two
worlds--the feeling of a cheek against her breast alone could help muffle
the deep disquiet in her, lost like a child in a wood.
The cab slackened speed, the driver was lighting his lamps; and his red
face appeared at the window.
"We'll 'ave to stop here, miss; I'm out of petrol. Will you get some
dinner, or go through?"
"Through," answered Barbara:
While they were passing the little their, buying then petrol, asking the
way, she felt less miserable, and even looked about her with a sort of
eagerness. Then when they had started again, she thought: If I could get
him to sleep--the sea will comfort him! But his eyes were staring,
wide-open. She feigned sleep herself; letting her head slip a little to
one side, causing small sounds of breathing to escape. The whirring of
the wheels, the moaning of the cab joints, the dark trees slipping by,
the scent of the wet fern drifting in, all these must surely help! And
presently she felt that he was indeed slipping into darkness--and
then-she felt nothing.
When she awoke from the sleep into which she had seen Miltoun fall, the
cab was slowly mounting a steep hill, above which the moon had risen.
The air smelled strong and sweet, as though it had passed over leagues of
grass.
"The Downs!" she thought; "I must have been asleep!"
In sudden terror, she looked round for Miltoun. But he was still there,
exactly as before, leaning back rigid in his corner of the cab, with
staring eyes, and no other signs of life. And still only half awake,
like a great warm sleepy child startled out of too deep slumber, she
clutched, and clung to him. The thought that he had been sitting like
that, with his spirit far away, all the time that she had been betraying
her watch in sleep, was dreadful. But to her embrace there was no
response, and awake indeed now, ashamed, sore, Barbara released him, and
turned her face to the air.
Out there, two thin, dense-black, long clouds, shaped like the wings of a
hawk, had joined themselves together, so that nothing of the moon showed
but a living brightness imprisoned, like the eyes and life of a bird,
between those swift sweeps of darkness. This great uncanny spirit,
brooding malevolent over the high leagues of moon-wan grass, seemed
waiting to swoop, and pluck up in its talons, and devour, all that
intruded on the wild loneness of these far-up plains of freedom. Barbara
almost expected to hear coming from it the lost whistle of the buzzard
hawks. And her dream came back to her. Where were her wings-the wings
that in sleep had borne her to the stars; the wings that would never lift
her--waking--from the ground? Where too were Miltoun's wings? She
crouched back into her corner; a tear stole up and trickled out between
her closed lids-another and another followed. Faster and faster they
came. Then she felt Miltoun's arm round her, and heard him say: "Don't
cry, Babs!" Instinct telling her what to do, she laid her head against
his chest, and sobbed bitterly. Struggling with those sobs, she grew
less and less unhappy--knowing that he could never again feel quite so
desolate, as before he tried to give her comfort. It was all a bad
dream, and they would soon wake from it! And they would be happy; as
happy as they had been before--before these last months! And she
whispered:
"Only a little while, Eusty!"
CHAPTER XXIX
Old Lady Harbinger dying in the early February of the following year, the
marriage of Barbara with her son was postponed till June.
Much of the wild sweetness of Spring still clung to the high moor borders
of Monkland on the early morning of the wedding day.
Barbara was already up and dressed for riding when her maid came to call
her; and noting Stacey's astonished eyes fix themselves on her boots, she
said:
"Well, Stacey?"
"It'll tire you."
"Nonsense; I'm not going to be hung."
Refusing the company of a groom, she made her way towards the stretch of
high moor where she had ridden with Courtier a year ago. Here over the
short, as yet unflowering, heather, there was a mile or more of level
galloping ground. She mounted steadily, and her spirit rode, as it were,
before her, longing to get up there among the peewits and curlew, to feel
the crisp, peaty earth slip away under her, and the wind drive in her
face, under that deep blue sky. Carried by this warm-blooded sweetheart
of hers, ready to jump out of his smooth hide with pleasure, snuffling
and sneezing in sheer joy, whose eye she could see straying round to
catch a glimpse of her intentions, from whose lips she could hear issuing
the sweet bitt-music, whose vagaries even seemed designed to startle from
her a closer embracing--she was filled with a sort of delicious
impatience with everything that was not this perfect communing with
vigour.
Reaching the top, she put him into a gallop. With the wind furiously
assailing her face and throat, every muscle crisped; and all her blood
tingling--this was a very ecstasy of motion!
She reined in at the cairn whence she and Courtier had looked down at the
herds of ponies. It was the merest memory now, vague and a little sweet,
like the remembrance of some exceptional Spring day, when trees seem to
flower before your eyes, and in sheer wantonness exhale a scent of
lemons. The ponies were there still, and in distance the shining sea.
She sat thinking of nothing, but how good it was to be alive. The
fullness and sweetness of it all, the freedom and strength! Away to the
West over a lonely farm she could see two buzzard hawks hunting in wide
circles. She did not envy them--so happy was she, as happy as the
morning. And there came to her suddenly the true, the overmastering
longing of mountain tops.
"I must," she thought; "I simply must!"
Slipping off her horse she lay down on her back, and at once everything
was lost except the sky. Over her body, supported above solid earth by
the warm, soft heather, the wind skimmed without sound or touch. Her
spirit became one with that calm unimaginable freedom. Transported beyond
her own contentment, she no longer even knew whether she was joyful.
The horse Hal, attempting to eat her sleeve, aroused her. She mounted
him, and rode down. Near home she took a short cut across a meadow,
through which flowed two thin bright streams, forming a delta full of
lingering 'milkmaids,' mauve marsh orchis, and yellow flags. From end to
end of this long meadow, so varied, so pied with trees and stones, and
flowers, and water, the last of the Spring was passing.
Some ponies, shyly curious of Barbara and her horse, stole up, and stood
at a safe distance, with their noses dubiously stretched out, swishing
their lean tails. And suddenly, far up, following their own music, two
cuckoos flew across, seeking the thorn-trees out on the moor. While she
was watching the arrowy birds, she caught sight of someone coming towards
her from a clump of beech-trees, and suddenly saw that it was Mrs. Noel!
She rode forward, flushing. What dared she say? Could she speak of her
wedding, and betray Miltoun's presence? Could she open her mouth at all
without rousing painful feeling of some sort? Then, impatient of
indecision, she began:
"I'm so glad to see you again. I didn't know you were still down here."
"I only came back to England yesterday, and I'm just here to see to the
packing of my things."
"Oh!" murmured Barbara. "You know what's happening to me, I suppose?"
Mrs. Noel smiled, looked up, and said: "I heard last night. All joy to
you!"
A lump rose in Barbara's throat.
"I'm so glad to have seen you," she murmured once more; "I expect I ought
to be getting on," and with the word "Good-bye," gently echoed, she rode
away.
But her mood of delight was gone; even the horse Hal seemed to tread
unevenly, for all that he was going back to that stable which ever
appeared to him desirable ten minutes after he had left it.
Except that her eyes seemed darker, Mrs. Noel had not changed. If she
had shown the faintest sign of self-pity, the girl would never have felt,
as she did now, so sorry and upset.
Leaving the stables, she saw that the wind was driving up a huge, white,
shining cloud. "Isn't it going to be fine after all!" she thought.
Re-entering the house by an old and so-called secret stairway that led
straight to the library, she had to traverse that great dark room.
There, buried in an armchair in front of the hearth she saw Miltoun with
a book on his knee, not reading, but looking up at the picture of the old
Cardinal. She hurried on, tiptoeing over the soft carpet, holding her
breath, fearful of disturbing the queer interview, feeling guilty, too,
of her new knowledge, which she did not mean to impart. She had burnt
her fingers once at the flame between them; she would not do so a second
time!
Through the window at the far end she saw that the cloud had burst; it
was raining furiously. She regained her bedroom unseen. In spite of her
joy out there on the moor, this last adventure of her girlhood had not
been all success; she had again the old sensations, the old doubts, the
dissatisfaction which she had thought dead. Those two! To shut one's
eyes, and be happy--was it possible! A great rainbow, the nearest she
had ever seen, had sprung up in the park, and was come to earth again in
some fields close by. The sun was shining out already through the
wind-driven bright rain. Jewels of blue had begun to star the black and
white and golden clouds. A strange white light-ghost of Spring passing
in this last violent outburst-painted the leaves of every tree; and a
hundred savage hues had come down like a motley of bright birds on moor
and fields.
The moment of desperate beauty caught Barbara by the throat. Its spirit
of galloping wildness flew straight into her heart. She clasped her
hands across her breast to try and keep that moment. Far out, a cuckoo
hooted-and the immortal call passed on the wind. In that call all the
beauty, and colour, and rapture of life seemed to be flying by. If she
could only seize and evermore have it in her heart, as the buttercups out
there imprisoned the sun, or the fallen raindrops on the sweetbriars
round the windows enclosed all changing light! If only there were no
chains, no walls, and finality were dead!
Her clock struck ten. At this time to-morrow! Her cheeks turned hot; in
a mirror she could see them burning, her lips scornfully curved, her eyes
strange. Standing there, she looked long at herself, till, little by
little, her face lost every vestige of that disturbance, became solid and
resolute again. She ceased to have the galloping wild feeling in her
heart, and instead felt cold. Detached from herself she watched, with
contentment, her own calm and radiant beauty resume the armour it had for
that moment put off.
After dinner that night, when the men left the dining-hall, Miltoun
slipped away to his den. Of all those present in the little church he
had seemed most unemotional, and had been most moved. Though it had been
so quiet and private a wedding, he had resented all cheap festivity
accompanying the passing of his young sister. He would have had that
ceremony in the little dark disused chapel at the Court; those two, and
the priest alone. Here, in this half-pagan little country church
smothered hastily in flowers, with the raw singing of the half-pagan
choir, and all the village curiosity and homage-everything had jarred,
and the stale aftermath sickened him. Changing his swallow-tail to an old
smoking jacket, he went out on to the lawn. In the wide darkness he
could rid himself of his exasperation.
Since the day of his election he had not once been at Monkland; since
Mrs. Noel's flight he had never left London. In London and work he had
buried himself; by London and work he had saved himself! He had gone
down into the battle.
Dew had not yet fallen, and he took the path across the fields. There was
no moon, no stars, no wind; the cattle were noiseless under the trees;
there were no owls calling, no night-jars churring, the fly-by-night
chafers were not abroad. The stream alone was alive in the quiet
darkness. And as Miltoun followed the wispy line of grey path cleaving
the dim glamour of daisies and buttercups, there came to him the feeling
that he was in the presence, not of sleep, but of eternal waiting. The
sound of his footfalls seemed desecration. So devotional was that hush,
burning the spicy incense of millions of leaves and blades of grass.
Crossing the last stile he came out, close to her deserted cottage, under
her lime-tree, which on the night of Courtier's adventure had hung
blue-black round the moon. On that side, only a rail, and a few shrubs
confined her garden.
The house was all dark, but the many tall white flowers, like a bright
vapour rising from earth, clung to the air above the beds. Leaning
against the tree Miltoun gave himself to memory.
From the silent boughs which drooped round his dark figure, a little
sleepy bird uttered a faint cheep; a hedgehog, or some small beast of
night, rustled away in the grass close by; a moth flew past, seeking its
candle flame. And something in Miltoun's heart took wings after it,
searching for the warmth and light of his blown candle of love. Then, in
the hush he heard a sound as of a branch ceaselessly trailed through long
grass, fainter and fainter, more and more distinct; again fainter; but
nothing could he see that should make that homeless sound. And the sense
of some near but unseen presence crept on him, till the hair moved on his
scalp. If God would light the moon or stars, and let him see! If God
would end the expectation of this night, let one wan glimmer down into
her garden, and one wan glimmer into his breast! But it stayed dark, and
the homeless noise never ceased. The weird thought came to Miltoun that
it was made by his own heart, wandering out there, trying to feel warm
again. He closed his eyes and at once knew that it was not his heart,
but indeed some external presence, unconsoled. And stretching his hands
out he moved forward to arrest that sound. As he reached the railing, it
ceased. And he saw a flame leap up, a pale broad pathway of light
blanching the grass.
And, realizing that she was there, within, he gasped. His fingernails
bent and broke against the iron railing without his knowing. It was not
as on that night when the red flowers on her windowsill had wafted their
scent to him; it was no sheer overpowering rush of passion. Profounder,
more terrible, was this rising up within him of yearning for love--as if,
now defeated, it would nevermore stir, but lie dead on that dark grass
beneath those dark boughs. And if victorious--what then? He stole back
under the tree.
He could see little white moths travelling down that path of lamplight;
he could see the white flowers quite plainly now, a pale watch of
blossoms guarding the dark sleepy ones; and he stood, not reasoning,
hardly any longer feeling; stunned, battered by struggle. His face and
hands were sticky with the honey-dew, slowly, invisibly distilling from
the lime-tree. He bent down and felt the grass. And suddenly there came
over him the certainty of her presence. Yes, she was there--out on the
verandah! He could see her white figure from head to foot; and, not
realizing that she could not see him, he expected her to utter some cry.
But no sound came from her, no gesture; she turned back into the house.
Miltoun ran forward to the railing. But there, once more, he
stopped--unable to think, unable to feel; as it were abandoned by
himself. And he suddenly found his hand up at his mouth, as though there
were blood there to be staunched that had escaped from his heart.
Still holding that hand before his mouth, and smothering the sound of his
feet in the long grass, he crept away.
CHAPTER XXX
In the great glass house at Ravensham, Lady Casterley stood close to some
Japanese lilies, with a letter in her hand. Her face was very white, for
it was the first day she had been allowed down after an attack of
influenza; nor had the hand in which she held the letter its usual
steadiness. She read:
"MONKLAND COURT.
"Just a line, dear, before the post goes, to tell you that Babs has gone
off happily. The child looked beautiful. She sent you her love, and
some absurd message--that you would be glad to hear, she was perfectly
safe, with both feet firmly on the ground."
A grim little smile played on Lady Casterley's pale lips:--Yes, indeed,
and time too! The child had been very near the edge of the cliffs! Very
near committing a piece of romantic folly! That was well over! And
raising the letter again, she read on:
"We were all down for it, of course, and come back tomorrow. Geoffrey is
quite cut up. Things can't be what they were without our Babs. I've
watched Eustace very carefully, and I really believe he's safely over
that affair at last. He is doing extraordinarily well in the House just
now. Geoffrey says his speech on the Poor Law was head and shoulders the
best made."
Lady Casterley let fall the hand which held the letter. Safe? Yes, he
was safe! He had done the right--the natural thing! And in time he
would be happy! He would rise now to that pinnacle of desired authority
which she had dreamed of for him, ever since he was a tiny thing, ever
since his little thin brown hand had clasped hers in their wanderings
amongst the flowers, and the furniture of tall rooms. But, as she
stood--crumpling the letter, grey-white as some small resolute ghost,
among her tall lilies that filled with their scent the great glass
house-shadows flitted across her face. Was it the fugitive noon
sunshine? Or was it some glimmering perception of the old Greek
saying--'Character is Fate;' some sudden sense of the universal truth
that all are in bond to their own natures, and what a man has most
desired shall in the end enslave him?
THE END.
THE BURNING SPEAR
by John Galsworthy
Being the Experiences of Mr. John Lavender in the Time of War
Recorded by: A. R. P--M [John Galsworthy]
[NOTE: John Galsworthy said of this work: "'The Burning Spear' was
revenge of the nerves. It was bad enough to have to bear the dreads and
strains and griefs of war." Several years after its first publication he
admitted authorship and it was included in the collected edition of his
works. D.W.]
"With a heart of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air
In the wilderness I wander;
With a night of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end
For me it is no journey."
TOM O'BEDLAM
THE BURNING SPEAR
I
THE HERO
In the year ---- there dwelt on Hampstead Heath a small thin gentleman of
fifty-eight, gentle disposition, and independent means, whose wits had
become somewhat addled from reading the writings and speeches of public
men. The castle which, like every Englishman, he inhabited was embedded
in lilac bushes and laburnums, and was attached to another castle,
embedded, in deference to our national dislike of uniformity, in acacias
and laurustinus. Our gentleman, whose name was John Lavender, had until
the days of the Great War passed one of those curious existences are
sometimes to be met with, in doing harm to nobody. He had been brought
up to the Bar, but like most barristers had never practised, and had
spent his time among animals and the wisdom of the past. At the period
in which this record opens he owned a young female sheep-dog called
Blink, with beautiful eyes obscured by hair; and was attended to by a
thin and energetic housekeeper, in his estimation above all weakness,
whose name was Marian Petty, and by her husband, his chauffeur, whose
name was Joe.
It was the ambition of our hero to be, like all public men, without fear
and without reproach. He drank not, abstained from fleshly intercourse,
and habitually spoke the truth. His face was thin, high cheek-boned, and
not unpleasing, with one loose eyebrow over which he had no control; his
eyes, bright and of hazel hue, looked his fellows in the face without
seeing what was in it. Though his moustache was still dark, his thick
waving hair was permanently white, for his study was lined from floor to
ceiling with books, pamphlets, journals, and the recorded utterances of
great mouths. He was of a frugal habit, ate what was put before him
without question, and if asked what he would have, invariably answered:
"What is there?" without listening to the reply. For at mealtimes it was
his custom to read the writings of great men.
"Joe," he would say to his chauffeur, who had a slight limp, a green
wandering eye, and a red face, with a rather curved and rather redder
nose, "You must read this."
And Joe would answer:
"Which one is that, sir?"
"Hummingtop; a great man, I think, Joe."
"A brainy chap, right enough, sir."
"He has done wonders for the country. Listen to this." And Mr.
Lavender would read as follows: "If I had fifty sons I would give them
all. If I had forty daughters they should nurse and scrub and weed and
fill shells; if I had thirty country-houses they should all be hospitals;
if I had twenty pens I would use them all day long; if had ten voices
they should never cease to inspire and aid my country."
"If 'e had nine lives," interrupted Joe, with a certain suddenness, "'e'd
save the lot."
Mr. Lavender lowered the paper.
"I cannot bear cynicism, Joe; there is no quality so unbecoming to a
gentleman."
"Me and 'im don't put in for that, sir."
"Joe, Mr. Lavender would say you are, incorrigible...."
Our gentleman, in common with all worthy of the name, had a bank-book,
which, in hopes that it would disclose an unsuspected balance, he would
have "made up" every time he read an utterance exhorting people to invest
and save their country.
One morning at the end of May, finding there was none, he called in his
housekeeper and said:
"Mrs. Petty, we are spending too much; we have again been exhorted to
save. Listen! 'Every penny diverted from prosecution of the war is one
more spent in the interests of the enemies of mankind. No patriotic
person, I am confident; will spend upon him or herself a stiver which
could be devoted to the noble ends so near to all our hearts. Let us
make every spare copper into bullets to strengthen the sinews of war!'
A great speech. What can we do without?"
"The newspapers, sir."
"Don't be foolish, Mrs. Petty. From what else could we draw our
inspiration and comfort in these terrible days?"
Mrs. Petty sniffed. "Well, you can't eat less than you do," she said;
"but you might stop feedin' Blink out of your rations--that I do think."
"I have not found that forbidden as yet in any public utterance,"
returned Mr. Lavender; "but when the Earl of Betternot tells us to stop,
I shall follow his example, you may depend on that. The country comes
before everything." Mrs. Petty tossed her head and murmured darkly--
"Do you suppose he's got an example, Sir?"
"Mrs. Petty," replied Mr. Lavender, "that is quite unworthy of you. But,
tell me, what can we do without?"
"I could do without Joe," responded Mrs. Petty, "now that you're not
using him as chauffeur."
"Please be serious. Joe is an institution; besides, I am thinking of
offering myself to the Government as a speaker now that we may use gas."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Petty.
"I am going down about it to-morrow."
"Indeed, sir!"
"I feel my energies are not fully employed."
"No, sir?"
"By the way, there was a wonderful leader on potatoes yesterday. We must
dig up the garden. Do you know what the subsoil is?"
"Brickbats and dead cats, I expect, sir."
"Ah! We shall soon improve that. Every inch of land reclaimed is a nail
in the coffin of our common enemies."
And going over to a bookcase, Mr. Lavender took out the third from the
top of a pile of newspapers. "Listen!" he said. "'The problem before us
is the extraction of every potential ounce of food. No half measures
must content us. Potatoes! Potatoes! No matter how, where, when the
prime national necessity is now the growth of potatoes. All Britons
should join in raising a plant which may be our very salvation.
"Fudge!" murmured Mrs. Petty.
Mr. Lavender read on, and his eyes glowed.
"Ah!" he thought, "I, too, can do my bit to save England.... It needs but
the spark to burn away the dross of this terrible horse-sense which keeps
the country back.
"Mrs. Petty!" But Mrs. Petty was already not.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The grass never grew under the feet of Mr. Lavender, No sooner had he
formed his sudden resolve than he wrote to what he conceived to be the
proper quarter, and receiving no reply, went down to the centre of the
official world. It was at time of change and no small national
excitement; brooms were sweeping clean, and new offices had arisen
everywhere. Mr. Lavender passed bewildered among large stone buildings
and small wooden buildings, not knowing where to go. He had bought no
clothes since the beginning of the war, except the various Volunteer
uniforms which the exigencies of a shifting situation had forced the
authorities to withdraw from time to time; and his, small shrunken figure
struck somewhat vividly on the eye, with elbows and knees shining in the
summer sunlight. Stopping at last before the only object which seemed
unchanged, he said:
"Can you tell me where the Ministry is?"
The officer looked down at him.
"What for?"
"For speaking about the country."
"Ministry of Propagation? First on the right, second door on the left."
"Thank you. The Police are wonderful."
"None of that," said the officer coldly.
"I only said you were wonderful."
"I 'eard you."
"But you are. I don't know what the country would do without you. Your
solid qualities, your imperturbable bonhomie, your truly British
tenderness towards----"
"Pass away!" said the officer.
"I am only repeating what we all say of you," rejoined Mr. Lavender
reproachfully.
"Did you 'ear me say 'Move on,'" said the officer; "or must I make you an
example?"
"YOU are the example," said Mr. Lavender warmly.
"Any more names," returned the officer, "and I take you to the station."
And he moved out into the traffic. Puzzled by his unfriendliness Mr.
Lavender resumed his search, and, arriving at the door indicated, went
in. A dark, dusty, deserted corridor led him nowhere, till he came on a
little girl in a brown frock, with her hair down her back.
"Can you tell me, little one----" he said, laying his hand on her head.
"Chuck it!" said the little girl.
"No, no!" responded Mr. Lavender, deeply hurt. "Can you tell me where I
can find the Minister?"
"'Ave you an appointment?
"No; but I wrote to him. He should expect me."
"Wot nyme?"
"John Lavender. Here is my card."
"I'll tyke it in. Wyte 'ere!"
"Wonderful!" mused Mr. Lavender; "the patriotic impulse already stirring
in these little hearts! What was the stanza of that patriotic poet?
"'Lives not a babe who shall not feel the pulse
Of Britain's need beat wild in Britain's wrist.
And, sacrificial, in the world's convulse
Put up its lips to be by Britain kissed.'
"So young to bring their lives to the service of the country!"
"Come on," said the little girl, reappearing suddenly; "e'll see you."
Mr. Lavender entered a room which had a considerable resemblance to the
office of a lawyer save for the absence of tomes. It seemed furnished
almost exclusively by the Minister, who sat with knees crossed, in a pair
of large round tortoiseshell spectacles, which did not, however, veil the
keenness of his eyes. He was a man with close cropped grey hair, a
broad, yellow, clean-shaven face, and thrusting grey eyes.
"Mr. Lavender," he said, in a raw, forcible voice; "sit down, will you?"
"I wrote to you," began our hero, "expressing the wish to offer myself as
a speaker."
"Ah!" said the Minister. "Let's see--Lavender, Lavender. Here's your
letter." And extracting a letter from a file he read it, avoiding with
difficulty his tortoise-shell spectacles. "You want to stump the
country? M.A., Barrister, and Fellow of the Zoological. Are you a good
speaker?"
"If zeal---" began Mr. Lavender.
"That's it; spark! We're out to win this war, sir."
"Quite so," began Mr. Lavender. "If devotion----"
"You'll have to use gas," said the Minister; and we don't pay."
"Pay!" cried Mr. Lavender with horror; "no, indeed!"
The Minister bent on him a shrewd glance.
"What's your line? Anything particular, or just general patriotism? I
recommend that; but you'll have to put some punch into it, you know."
"I have studied all the great orators of the war, sir," said Mr.
Lavender, "and am familiar with all the great writers on, it. I should
form myself on them; and if enthusiasm----"
"Quite!" said the Minister. "If you want any atrocities we can give you
them. No facts and no figures; just general pat."
"I shall endeavour----" began Mr. Lavender.
"Well, good-bye," said the Minister, rising. "When do you start?"
Mr. Lavender rose too. "To-morrow," he said, "if I can get inflated."
The Minister rang a bell.
"You're on your own, mind," he said. "No facts; what they want is
ginger. Yes, Mr. Japes?"
And seeing that the Minister was looking over his tortoiseshell.
spectacles at somebody behind him, Mr. Lavender turned and went out. In
the corridor he thought, "What terseness! How different from the days
when Dickens wrote his 'Circumlocution Office'! Punch!" And opening the
wrong door, he found himself in the presence of six little girls in brown
frocks, sitting against the walls with their thumbs in their mouths.
"Oh!" he said, "I'm afraid I've lost my way."
The eldest of the little girls withdrew a thumb.
"What d'yer want?"
"The door," said Mr. Lavender.
"Second on the right."
"Goodbye," said Mr. Lavender.
The little girls did not answer. And he went out thinking, "These
children are really wonderful! What devotion one sees! And yet the
country is not yet fully roused!"
II
THE VALET
Joe Petty stood contemplating the car which, purchased some fifteen years
before had not been used since the war began. Birds had nested in its
hair. It smelled of mould inside; it creaked from rust. "The Guv'nor
must be cracked," he thought, "to think we can get anywhere in this old
geyser. Well, well, it's summer; if we break down it won't break my
'eart. Government job--better than diggin' or drillin'. Good old Guv!"
So musing, he lit his pipe and examined the recesses beneath the driver's
seat. "A bottle or three," he thought, "in case our patriotism should
get us stuck a bit off the beaten; a loaf or two, some 'oney in a pot,
and a good old 'am.
"A life on the rollin' road----' 'Ow they can give 'im the job I can't
think!" His soliloquy was here interrupted by the approach of his wife,
bearing a valise.
"Don't you wish you was comin', old girl?" he remarked to her lightly.
"I do not; I'm glad to be shut of you. Keep his feet dry. What have you
got under there?"
Joe Petty winked.
"What a lumbering great thing it looks!" said Mrs. Petty, gazing upwards.
"Ah!" returned her husband thoughtfully, we'll 'ave the population round
us without advertisement. And taking the heads of two small boys who had
come up, he knocked them together in an absent-minded fashion.
"Well," said Mrs. Petty, "I can't waste time. Here's his extra set of
teeth. Don't lose them. Have you got your own toothbrush? Use it, and
behave yourself. Let me have a line. And don't let him get excited."
She tapped her forehead.
"Go away, you boys; shoo!"
The boys, now six in number, raised a slight cheer; for at that moment
Mr. Lavender, in a broad-brimmed grey felt hat and a holland dust-coat,
came out through his garden-gate carrying a pile of newspapers and
pamphlets so large that his feet, legs, and hat alone were visible.
"Open the door, Joe!" he said, and stumbled into the body of the vehicle.
A shrill cheer rose from the eight boys, who could see him through the
further window. Taking this for an augury Of success, Mr. Lavender
removed his hat, and putting his head through the window, thus addressed
the ten boys:
"I thank you. The occasion is one which I shall ever remember. The
Government has charged me with the great task of rousing our country in
days which demand of each of us the utmost exertions. I am proud to feel
that I have here, on the very threshold of my task, an audience of bright
young spirits, each one of whom in this democratic country has in him
perhaps the makings of a General or even of a Prime Minister. Let it be
your earnest endeavour, boys----"
At this moment a piece of indiarubber rebounded from Mr. Lavender's
forehead, and he recoiled into the body of the car.
"Are you right, sir?" said Joe, looking in; and without waiting for reply
he started the engine. The car moved out amid a volley of stones, balls,
cheers, and other missiles from the fifteen boys who pursued it with
frenzy. Swaying slightly from side to side, with billowing bag, it
gathered speed, and, turning a corner, took road for the country. Mr.
Lavender, somewhat dazed, for the indiarubber had been hard, sat gazing
through the little back window at the great city he was leaving. His
lips moved, expressing unconsciously the sentiments of innumerable Lord
Mayors: "Greatest City in the world, Queen of Commerce, whose full heart
I can still hear beating behind me, in mingled pride and regret I leave
you. With the most sacred gratitude I lay down my office. I go to other
work, whose----Joe!"
"Sir?"
"Do you see that?"
"I see your 'ead, that's all, sir."
"We seem to be followed by a little column of dust, which keeps ever at
the same distance in the middle of the road. Do you think it can be an
augury."
"No; I should think it's a dog."
"In that case, hold hard!" said Mr. Lavender, who had a weakness for
dog's. Joe slackened the car's pace, and leaned his head round the
corner. The column of dust approached rapidly.
"It is a dog," said Mr. Lavender, "it's Blink."
The female sheep-dog, almost flat with the ground from speed, emerged
from the dust, wild with hair and anxiety, white on the cheeks and chest
and top of the head, and grey in the body and the very little tail, and
passed them like a streak of lightning.
"Get on!" cried Mr. Lavender, excited; "follow her she's trying to catch
us up!"
Joe urged on the car, which responded gallantly, swaying from side to
side, while the gas-bag bellied and shook; but the faster it went the
faster the sheep-dog flew in front of it.
"This is dreadful!" said Mr. Lavender in anguish, leaning far out.
"Blink! Blink!"
His cries were drowned in the roar of the car.
"Damn the brute!" muttered Joe at this rate she'll be over the edge in
'alf a mo'. Wherever does she think we are?"
"Blink! Blink!" wailed Mr. Lavender. "Get on, Joe, get on! She's
gaining on us!"
"Well I never see anything like this," said Joe, "chasin' wot's chasing
you! Hi! Hi!"
Urged on by their shouts and the noise of the pursuing car, the poor dog
redoubled her efforts to rejoin her master, and Mr. Lavender, Joe, and
the car, which had begun to emit the most lamentable creaks and odours,
redoubled theirs.
"I shall bust her up," said Joe.
"I care not!" cried Mr. Lavender. "I must recover the dog."
They flashed through the outskirts of the Garden City. "Stop her, stop
her!" called Mr. Lavender to such of the astonished inhabitants as they
had already left behind. "This is a nightmare, Joe!"
"'It's a blinkin' day-dream," returned Joe, forcing the car to an
expiring spurt.
"If she gets to that 'ill before we ketch 'er, we're done; the old geyser
can't 'alf crawl up 'ills."
"We're gaining," shrieked Mr. Lavender; "I can see her tongue."
As though it heard his voice, the car leaped forward and stopped with a
sudden and most formidable jerk; the door burst open, and Mr. Lavender
fell out upon his sheep-dog.
Fortunately they were in the only bed of nettles in that part of the
world, and its softness and that of Blink assuaged the severity of his
fall, yet it was some minutes before he regained the full measure of his
faculties. He came to himself sitting on a milestone, with his dog on
her hind legs between his knees, licking his face clean, and panting down
his throat.
"Joe," he said; "where are you"?
The voice of Joe replied from underneath the car: "Here sir. She's
popped."
"Do you mean that our journey is arrested?"
"Ah! We're in irons. You may as well walk 'ome, sir. It ain't two
miles.
"No! no!" said Mr. Lavender. "We passed the Garden City a little way
back; I could go and hold a meeting. How long will you be?"
"A day or two," said Joe.
Mr. Lavender sighed, and at this manifestation of his grief his sheep-dog
redoubled her efforts to comfort him. "Nothing becomes one more than the
practice of philosophy," he thought. "I always admired those great
public men who in moments of national peril can still dine with a good
appetite. We will sit in the car a little, for I have rather a pain, and
think over a speech." So musing he mounted the car, followed by his dog,
and sat down in considerable discomfort.
"What subject can I choose for a Garden City?" he thought, and
remembering that he had with him the speech of a bishop on the subject of
babies, he dived into his bundle of literature, and extracting a pamphlet
began to con its periods. A sharp blow from a hammer on the bottom of
the car just below where Blink was sitting caused him to pause and the
dog to rise and examine her tiny tail.
"Curious," thought Mr. Lavender dreamily, "how Joe always does the right
thing in the wrong place. He is very English." The hammering continued,
and the dog, who traced it to the omnipotence of her master, got up on
the seat where she could lick his face. Mr. Lavender was compelled to
stop.
"Joe," he said, leaning out and down; "must you?"
The face of Joe, very red, leaned out and up. "What's the matter now,
sir?"
"I am preparing a speech; must you hammer?"
"No," returned Joe, "I needn't."
"I don't wish you to waste your time," said Mr Lavender.
"Don't worry about that, sir," replied Joe; "there's plenty to do."
"In that case I shall be glad to finish my speech."
Mr. Lavender resumed his seat and Blink her position on the floor, with
her head on his feet. The sound of his voice soon rose again in the car
like the buzzing of large flies. "'If we are to win this war we must
have an ever-increasing population. In town and countryside, in the
palace and the slum, above all in the Garden City, we must have babies.'"
Here Blink, who had been regarding him with lustrous eyes, leaped on to
his knees and licked his mouth. Again Mr. Lavender was compelled to
stop.
"Down, Blink, down! I am not speaking to you. 'The future of our
country depends on the little citizens born now. I especially appeal to
women. It is to them we must look----'"
"Will you 'ave a glass, sir?"
Mr. Lavender saw before him a tumbler containing a yellow fluid.
"Joe," he said sadly, "you know my rule----"
"'Ere's the exception, sir."
Mr. Lavender sighed. "No, no; I must practise what I preach. I shall
soon be rousing the people on the liquor question, too."
"Well, 'ere's luck," said Joe, draining the glass. "Will you 'ave a
slice of 'am?"
"That would not be amiss," said Mr. Lavender, taking Joe's knife with the
slice of ham upon its point. "'It is to them that we must look,'" he
resumed, "'to rejuvenate the Empire and make good the losses in the
firing-line.'" And he raised the knife to his mouth. No result
followed, while Blink wriggled on her base and licked her lips.
"Blink!" said Mr. Lavender reproachfully. "Joe!"
"Sir!"
"When you've finished your lunch and repaired the car you will find me in
the Town Hall or market-place. Take care of Blink. I'll tie her up.
Have you some string?"
Having secured his dog to the handle of the door and disregarded the
intensity of her gaze, Mr. Lavender walked back towards the Garden City
with a pamphlet in one hand and a crutch-handled stick in the other.
Restoring the ham to its nest behind his feet, Joe finished the bottle of
Bass. "This is a bit of all right!" he thought dreamily. "Lie down, you
bitch! Quiet! How can I get my nap while you make that row? Lie down!
That's better."
Blink was silent, gnawing at her string. The smile deepened on Joe's
face, his head fell a little one side his mouth fell open a fly flew into
it.
"Ah!" he thought, spitting it out; "dog's quiet now." He slept.
III
MR. LAVENDER ADDRESSES A CROWD OF HUNS
"'Give them ginger!'" thought Mr. Lavender, approaching the first houses.
"My first task, however, will be to collect them."
"Can you tell me," he said to a dustman, "where the market-place is?"
"Ain't none."
"The Town Hall, then?"
"Likewise."
"What place is there, then," said Mr. Lavender, "where people
congregate?"
"They don't."
"Do they never hold public meetings here?"
"Ah!" said the dustman mysteriously.
"I wish to address them on the subject of babies."
"Bill! Gent abaht babies. Where'd he better go?"
The man addressed, however, who carried a bag of tools, did not stop.
"You,'ear?" said the dustman, and urging his horse, passed on.
"How rude!" thought Mr. Lavender. Something cold and wet was pressed
against his hand, he felt a turmoil, and saw Blink moving round and round
him, curved like a horseshoe, with a bit of string dangling from her
white neck. At that moment of discouragement the sight of one who
believed in him gave Mr. Lavender nothing but pleasure. "How wonderful
dogs are!" he murmured. The sheep-dog responded by bounds and
ear-splitting barks, so that two boys and a little girl wheeling a
perambulator stopped to look and listen.
"She is like Mercury," thought Mr. Lavender; and taking advantage of her
interest in his hat, which she had knocked off in her effusions, he
placed his hand on her head and crumpled her ear. The dog passed into an
hypnotic trance, broken by soft grumblings of pleasure. "The most
beautiful eyes in the world!" thought Mr. Lavender, replacing his hat;
"the innocence and goodness of her face are entrancing."
In his long holland coat, with his wide-brimmed felt hat all dusty, and
the crutch-handled stick in his hand, he had already arrested the
attention of five boys, the little girl with the perambulator, a postman,
a maid-servant, and three old ladies.
"What a beautiful dog yours is!" said one of the old ladies; "dear
creature! Are you a shepherd?"
Mr. Lavender removed his hat.
"No, madam," he said; "a public speaker."
"How foolish of me!" replied the old lady.
"Not at all, madam; the folly is mine." And Mr. Lavender bowed. "I have
come here to give an address on babies."
The old lady looked at him shrewdly, and, saying something in a low voice
to her companions, passed on, to halt again a little way off.
In the meantime the rumour that there was a horse down in the Clemenceau
Road had spread rapidly, and more boys, several little girls, and three
soldiers in blue, with red ties, had joined the group round Mr. Lavender,
to whom there seemed something more than providential in this rapid
assemblage. Looking round him for a platform from which to address them,
he saw nothing but the low wall of the little villa garden outside which
he was standing. Mounting on this, therefore, and firmly grasping the
branch of a young acacia tree to steady himself, he stood upright, while
Blink, on her hind legs, scratched at the wall, whining and sniffing his
feet.
Encouraged by the low murmur of astonishment, which swelled idly into a
shrill cheer, Mr. Lavender removed his hat, and spoke as follows:
"Fellow Britons, at this crisis in the history of our country I make no
apology for addressing myself to the gathering I see around me. Here, in
the cradle of patriotism and the very heart of Movements, I may safely
assume that you are aware of the importance of Man-power. At a moment
when every man of a certain age and over is wanted at the front, and
every woman of marrigeable years is needed in hospitals, in factories, on
the land, or where not, we see as never before the paramount necessity of
mobilizing the forces racial progress and increasing the numbers of our
population. Not a man, not a woman can be spared from the great task in
which they are now engaged, of defeating the common enemy. Side by side
with our American cousins, with la belle France, and the Queen of the
Adriatic, we are fighting to avert the greatest menace which ever
threatened civilization. Our cruel enemies are strong and ruthless.
While I have any say in this matter, no man or woman shall be withdrawn
from the sacred cause of victory; better they should die to the last unit
than that we should take our hands from the plough. But, ladies and
gentlemen, we must never forget that in the place of every one who dies
we must put two. Do not be content with ordinary measures; these are no
piping times of peace. Never was there in the history of this country
such a crying need for--for twins, if I may put it picturesquely. In
each family, in each home where there are no families, let there be two
babies where there was one, for thus only can we triumph over the
devastation of this war." At this moment the now considerable audience,
which had hitherto been silent, broke into a shrill "'Ear, 'ear!" and Mr.
Lavender, taking his hand from the acacia branch to silence them, fell
off the wall into the garden. Seeing her master thus vanish, Blink, who
had never ceased to whine and sniff his toes, leaped over and landed on
his chest. Rising with difficulty, Mr. Lavender found himself in front
of an elderly man with a commercial cast of countenance, who said:
"You're trespassing!"
"I am aware of it," returned Mr. Lavender and I beg your pardon. It was
quite inadvertent, however.
"Rubbish!" said the man.
"I fell off the wall."
"Whose wall do you think it is?" said the man.
"How should I know?" said Mr. Lavender; "I am a stranger."
"Out you go," said the man, applying his boot to Blink.
Mr. Lavender's eyes blazed. "You may insult me," he said, "but you must
not kick my dog, or I shall do you an injury."
"Try!" said the man.
"I will," responded Mr. Lavender, taking off his holland coat.
To what extremities he would have proceeded cannot be told, for at this
moment the old lady who had taken him for a shepherd appeared on the
path, tapping her forehead with finger.
"All right!" said the owner of the garden, "take him away."
The old lady laced her hand within Mr. Lavender's arm. "Come with me,
sir," she said, "and your nice doggie."
Mr. Lavender, whose politeness to ladies was invariable, bowed, and
resuming his coat accompanied her through the 'garden gate. "He kicked
my dog," he said; "no action could be more despicable."
"Yes, yes," said the old lady soothingly. "Poor doggie!"
The crowd, who had hoped for better things, here gave vent to a prolonged
jeer.
"Stop!" said Mr. Lavender; "I am going to take a collection.
"There, there!" said the old lady. "Poor man!"
"I don't know what you mean by that, madam," said Mr. Lavender, whose
spirit was roused; "I shall certainly take a collection, in the interests
of our population." So saying he removed his hat, and disengaging his
arm from the old lady's hand, moved out into the throng, extending the
hat. A boy took it from him at once, and placing it on his head, ran
off, pursued by Blink, who, by barking and jumping up increased the boy's
speed to one of which he could never have thought himself capable. Mr.
Lavender followed, calling out "Blink!" at the top of his voice. The
crowd followed Mr. Lavender, and the old lady followed crowd. Thus they
proceeded until the boy, arriving at a small piece of communal water,
flung the hat into the middle of it, and, scaling the wall, made a
strategic detour and became a disinterested spectator among the crowd.
The hat, after skimming the surface of the pond, settled like a
water-lily, crown downwards, while Blink, perceiving in all this the hand
of her master, stood barking at it wildly. Mr. Lavender arrived at the
edge of the pond slightly in advance of the crowd.
"Good Blink!" he said. "Fetch it! Good Blink!"
Blink looked up into his face, and, with the acumen for which her breed
is noted, perceiving he desired her to enter the water backed away from
it.
"She is not a water dog," explained Mr. Lavender to the three soldiers in
blue clothes.
"Good dog; fetch it!" Blink backed into the soldiers, who, bending down,
took her by head tail, threw her into the pond, and encouraged her on
with small stones pitched at the hat. Having taken the plunge, the
intelligent animal waded boldly to the hat, and endeavoured by barking
and making little rushes at it with her nose, to induce it to return to
shore.
"She thinks it's a sheep," said Mr. Lavender; "a striking instance of
hereditary instinct."
Blink, unable to persuade the hat, mounted it with her fore-paws and trod
it under.
"Ooray!" shouted the crowd.
"Give us a shilling, guv'nor, an' I'll get it for yer?"
"Thank you, my boy," said Mr. Lavender, producing a shilling.
The boy--the same boy who had thrown it in--stepped into the water and
waded towards the hat. But as he approached, Blink interposed between
him and the hat, growling and showing her teeth.
"Does she bite?" yelled the boy.
"Only strangers," cried Mr. Lavender.
Excited by her master's appeal, Blink seized the jacket of the boy, who
made for the shore, while the hat rested in the centre of the pond, the
cynosure of the stones with which the soldiers were endeavouring to drive
it towards the bank. By this, time the old lady had rejoined Mr.
Lavender.
"Your nice hat she murmured.
"I thank you for your sympathy, madam," Lavender, running his hand
through his hair; "in moments like these one realizes the deep humanity
of the British people. I really believe that in no other race could you
find such universal interest and anxiety to recover a hat. Say what you
will, we are a great nation, who only, need rousing to show our best
qualities. Do you remember the words of the editor: 'In the spavined and
spatch-cocked ruin to which our inhuman enemies have reduced
civilization, we of the island shine with undimmed effulgence in all
those qualities which mark man out from the ravening beast'?"
"But how are you going to get your hat?" asked the old lady.
"I know not," returned Mr. Lavender, still under the influence of the
sentiment he had quoted; "but if I had fifteen hats I would take them all
off to the virtues which have been ascribed to the British people by all
those great men who have written and spoken since the war began."
"Yes," said the old lady soothingly. "But, I think you had better come
under my sunshade. The sun is very strong."
"Madam," said Mr. Lavender, "you are very good, but your sunshade is too
small. To deprive you of even an inch of its shade would be unworthy of
anyone in public life." So saying, he recoiled from the proffered
sunshade into the pond, which he had forgotten was behind him.
"Oh, dear!" said the old lady; "now you've got your feet wet!"
"It is nothing," responded Mr. Lavender gallantly. And seeing that he
was already wet, he rolled up his trousers, and holding up the tails of
his holland coat, turned round and proceeded towards his hat, to the
frantic delight of the crowd.
"The war is a lesson to us to make little of little things," he thought,
securing the hat and wringing it out. "My feet are wet, but--how much
wetter they would be in the trenches, if feet can be wetter than wet
through," he mused with some exactitude. "Down, Blink, down!" For Blink
was plastering him with the water-marks of joy and anxiety. "Nothing is
quite so beautiful as the devotion of one's own dog," thought Mr.
Lavender, resuming the hat, and returning towards the shore. The
by-now-considerable throng were watching him with every mark of acute
enjoyment; and the moment appeared to Mr. Lavender auspicious for
addressing them. Without, therefore, emerging from the pond, which he
took for his, platform, he spoke as follows:
"Circumstances over which I have no control have given me the advantage
of your presence in numbers which do credit to the heart of the nation to
which we all belong. In the midst of the greatest war which ever
threatened the principle of Liberty, I rejoice to see so many people able
to follow the free and spontaneous impulses of their inmost beings. For,
while we must remember that our every hour is at the disposal of our
country, we must not forget the maxim of our fathers: 'Britons never will
be slaves.' Only by preserving the freedom of individual conscience, and
at the same time surrendering it whole-heartedly to every which the State
makes on us, can we hope defeat the machinations of the arch enemies of
mankind."
At this moment a little stone hit him sharply on the hand.
"Who threw that stone?" said Mr. Lavender. "Let him stand out."
The culprit, no other indeed than he who had thrown the hat in, and not
fetched it out for a shilling, thus menaced with discovery made use of a
masterly device, and called out loudly:
"Pro-German!"
Such was the instinctive patriotism of the crowd that the cry was taken
up in several quarters; and for the moment Mr. Lavender remained
speechless from astonishment. The cries of "Pro-German!" increased in
volume, and a stone hitting her on the nose caused Blink to utter a yelp;
Mr. Lavender's eyes blazed.
"Huns!" he cried; "Huns! I am coming out."
With this prodigious threat he emerged from the pond at the very moment
that a car scattered the throng, and a well-known voice said:
"Well, sir, you 'ave been goin' it!"
"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, "don't speak to me!"
"Get in."
"Never!"
"Pro-Germans!" yelled the crowd.
"Get in!" repeated Joe.
And seizing Mr. Lavender as if collaring him at football, he knocked off
his hat, propelled him into the car, banged the door, mounted, and
started at full speed, with Blink leaping and barking in front of them.
Debouching from Piave Parade into Bottomley Lane he drove up it till the
crowd was but a memory before he stopped to examine the condition his
master. Mr. Lavender was hanging out of window, looking back, and
shivering violently.
"Well, sir," said Joe. "I don't think!"
"Joe," said Mr. Lavender that crowd ought not to be at large. They were
manifestly Huns.
"The speakin's been a bit too much for you, sir," said Joe. "But you've
got it off your chest, anyway."
Mr. Lavender regarded him for a moment in silence; then putting his hand
to his throat, said hoarsely:
"No, on my chest, I think, Joe. All public speakers do. It is
inseparable from that great calling."
"'Alf a mo'!" grunted Joe, diving into the recesses beneath the
driving-seat. "'Ere, swig that off, sir."
Mr. Lavender raised the tumbler of fluid to his mouth, and drank it off;
only from the dregs left on his moustache did he perceive that it smelled
of rum and honey.
"Joe," he said reproachfully, "you have made me break my pledge."
Joe smiled. "Well, what are they for, sir? You'll sleep at 'ome
to-night."
"Never," said Mr. Lavender. "I shall sleep at High Barnet; I must
address them there tomorrow on abstinence during the war."
"As you please, sir. But try and 'ave a nap while we go along." And
lifting Blink into the car, where she lay drenched and exhausted by
excitement, with the petal of a purple flower clinging to her black nose,
he mounted to his seat and drove off. Mr. Lavender, for years
unaccustomed to spirituous liquor, of which he had swallowed nearly half
a pint neat, passed rapidly into a state of coma. Nor did he fully
regain consciousness till he awoke in bed the next morning.
IV
INTO THE DANGERS OF A PUBLIC LIFE
"At what time is my meeting?" thought Mr. Lavender vaguely, gazing at the
light filtering through the Venetian blind. "Blink!"
His dog, who was lying beside his bed gnawing a bone which with some
presence of mind she had brought in, raised herself and regarded him with
the innocence of her species. "She has an air of divine madness,"
thought Mr. Lavender, "which is very pleasing to me. I have a terrible
headache." And seeing a bellrope near his hand he pulled it.
A voice said: "Yes, sir."
"I wish to see my, servant, Joe Petty," said Lavender. "I shall not
require any breakfast thank you. What is the population of High Barnet?"
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, sir," answered the
voice, which seemed to be that of his housekeeper; "but you can't see
Joe; he's gone out with a flea in his ear. The idea of his letting you
get your feet wet like that!
"How is this?" said Mr. Lavender. "I thought you were the chambermaid of
the inn at High Barnet?"
"No, indeed," said Mrs. Petty soothingly, placing a thermometer in his
mouth. "Smoke that a minute, sir. Oh! look at what this dog's brought
in! Fie!" And taking the bone between thumb and finger she cast it out
of the window; while Blink, aware that she was considered in the wrong,
and convinced that she was in the right, spread out her left paw, laid
her head on her right paw, and pressed her chin hard against it. Mrs.
Petty, returning from the window, stood above her master, who lay gazing
up with the thermometer jutting out through the middle of his moustache.
"I thought so!" she said, removing it; "a hundred and one. No getting up
for you, sir! That Joe!"
"Mrs. Petty," said Mr. Lavender rather feebly, for his head pained him
excessively, "bring me the morning papers."
"No, sir. The thermometer bursts at an an' ten. I'll bring you the
doctor."
Mr. Lavender was about to utter a protest when he reflected that all
public men had doctors.
"About the bulletin?" he said faintly.
"What?" ejaculated Mrs. Petty, whose face seemed to Mr. Lavender to have
become all cheekbones, eyes, and shadows. Joe never said a about a
bullet. Where? and however did you get it in?
"I did not say 'bullet in'," murmured Mr. Lavender closing his eyes! "I
said bulletin. They have it."
At this mysterious sentence Mrs. Petty lifted her hands, and muttering
the word "Ravin'!" hastened from the room. No sooner had she gone,
however, than Blink, whose memory was perfect, rose, and going to the
window placed her forepaws on the sill. Seeing her bone shining on the
lawn below, with that disregard of worldly consequence which she shared
with all fine characters, she leaped through. The rattle of the Venetian
blind disturbed Mr. Lavender from the lethargy to which he had reverted.
"Mr. John Lavender passed a good night," he thought, "but his condition
is still critical." And in his disordered imagination he seemed to see
people outside Tube stations, standing stock-still in the middle of the
traffic, reading that bulletin in the evening papers. "Let me see," he
mused, "how will they run?" To-morrow I shall be better, but not yet
able to leave my bed; the day after to-morrow I shall have a slight
relapse, and my condition will still give cause for anxiety; on the day
following--What is that noise. For a sound like the whiffling of a wind
through dry sticks combined with the creaking of a saw had, impinged on
his senses. It was succeeded by scratching. "Blink!" said Mr. Lavender.
A heartrending whine came from outside the door. Mr. Lavender rose and
opened it. His dog came in carrying her bone, and putting it down by the
bed divided her attention between it and her master's legs, revealed by
the nightshirt which, in deference to the great Disraeli, he had never
abandoned in favour of pyjamas. Having achieved so erect a posture Mr.
Lavender, whose heated imagination had now carried him to the
convalescent stage of his indisposition, felt that a change of air would
do him good, and going to the window, leaned out above a lilac-tree.
"Mr. John Lavender," he murmured, "has gone to his seat to recuperate
before resuming his public duties."
While he stood there his attention was distracted by a tall young lady of
fine build and joyous colour, who was watering some sweet-peas in the
garden of the adjoining castle: Naturally delicate, Mr. Lavender at once
sought a jacket, and, having put it on, resumed his position at the
window. He had not watched her more than two minutes before he saw that
she was cultivating soil, and, filled with admiration, he leaned still
further out, and said:
"My dear young madam, you are doing a great work."
Thus addressed, the young lady, who had those roving grey eyes which see
everything and betoken a large nature not devoid of merry genius, looked
up and smiled.
"Believe me," continued Mr. Lavender, "no task in these days is so
important as the cultivation of the soil; now that we are fighting to the
last man and the last dollar every woman and child in the islands should
put their hands to the plough. And at that word his vision became
feverishly enlarged, so that he seemed to see not merely the young lady,
but quantities of young ladies, filling the whole garden.
"This," he went on, raising his voice, "is the psychological moment, the
turning-point in the history of these islands. The defeat of our common
enemies imposes on us the sacred duty of feeding ourselves once more.
'There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on
to----Oh!" For in his desire to stir his audience, Mr. Lavender had
reached out too far, and losing foothold on his polished bedroom floor,
was slipping down into the lilac-bush. He was arrested by a jerk from
behind; where Blink, moved by this sudden elopement of her master, had
seized him by the nightshirt tails, and was staying his descent.
"Is anything up?" said the young lady.
"I have lost my balance," thickly answered Mr. Lavender, whose blood was
running to his head, which was now lower than his feet. "Fortunately, my
dog seems to be holding me from behind. But if someone could assist her
it would be an advantage, for I fear that I am slipping."
"Hold on!" cried the young lady. And breaking through the low privet
hedge which separated the domains, she vanished beneath him with a low
gurgling sound.
Mr. Lavender, who dared not speak again for fear that Blink, hearing his
voice, might let go to answer, remained suspended, torn with anxiety
about his costume. "If she comes in," he thought, "I shall die from
shame. And if she doesn't, I shall die from a broken neck. What a
dreadful alternative!" And he firmly grasped the most substantial
lilac-boughs within, his reach, listening with the ears of a hare for any
sound within the room, in which he no longer was to any appreciable
extent. Then the thought of what a public man should feel in his position
came to his rescue. "We die but once," he mused; "rather than shock that
charming lady let me seek oblivion." And the words of his obituary
notice at once began to dance before his eyes. "This great public
servant honoured his country no less in his death than in his life."
Then striking out vigorously with his feet he launched his body forward.
The words "My goodness!" resounded above him, as all restraining
influence was suddenly relaxed; Mr. Lavender slid into the lilac-bush,
turned heels over head, and fell bump on the ground. He lay there at
full, length, conscious of everything, and especially of the faces of
Blink and the young lady looking down on him from the window.
"Are you hurt?" she called.
"No," said Mr. Lavender, "that is--er--yes," he added, ever scrupulously
exact.
"I'm coming down," said the young lady.
"Don't move!"
With a great effort Mr. Lavender arranged his costume, and closed his
eyes. "How many lie like this, staring at the blue heavens!" he thought.
"Where has it got you?" said a voice; and he saw the young lady bending
over him.
"'In the dorsal region, I think," said Mr. Lavender. "But I suffer more
from the thought that I--that you--"
"That's all right," said the young lady; "I'm a V.A.D. It WAS a bump!
Let's see if you can----" and taking his hands she raised him to a
sitting posture. "Does it work?"
"Yes," said Mr. Lavender rather faintly.
"Try and stand," said the young lady, pulling.
Mr. Lavender tried, and stood; but no, sooner was he on his feet than
she turned her face away. Great tears rolled down her cheeks; and she
writhed and shook all over.
"Don't!" cried Mr. Lavender, much concerned. "I beg you not to cry. It's
nothing, I assure you--nothing!" The young lady with an effort
controlled her emotion, and turned her large grey eyes on him.
"The angelic devotion of nurses!" murmured Mr. Lavender, leaning against
the wall of the house with his hand to his back. "Nothing like it has
been seen since the world began."
"I shall never forget the sight!" said the young lady, choking.
Mr. Lavender, who took the noises she made for sobbing, was unutterably
disturbed.
"I can't bear to see you distressed on my account," he said. "I am quite
well, I assure you; look--I can walk!" And he started forth up the
garden in his nightshirt and Norfolk jacket. When he turned round she
was no longer there, sounds of uncontrollable emotion were audible from
the adjoining garden. Going to the privet hedge, he looked aver. She
was lying gracefully on the grass, with her face smothered in her hands,
and her whole body shaking. "Poor thing!" thought Mr. Lavender. "No
doubt she is one of those whose nerves have been destroyed by the
terrible sights she has seen!" But at that moment the young lady rose
and ran as if demented into her castle. Mr. Lavender stayed transfixed.
"Who would not be ill for the pleasure of drinking from a cup held by her
hand?" he thought. "I am fortunate to have received injuries in trying
to save her from confusion. Down, Blink, down!"
For his dog, who had once more leaped from the window, was frantically
endeavouring to lick his face. Soothing her, and feeling his anatomy,
Mr. Lavender became conscious that he was not alone. An old lady was
standing on the gardenpath which led to the front gate, holding in her
hand a hat. Mr. Lavender sat down at once, and gathering his nightshirt
under him, spoke as follows:
"There are circumstances, madam, which even the greatest public servants
cannot foresee, and I, who am the humblest of them, ask you to forgive me
for receiving you in this costume."
"I have brought your hat back," said the old lady with a kindling eye;
"they told me you lived here and I was anxious to know that you and your
dear dog were none the worse."
"Madam," replied Mr. Lavender, "I am infinitely obliged to you. Would
you very kindly hang my, hat up on the--er--weeping willow tree?"
At this moment a little white dog, who accompanied the old lady, began
sniffing round Mr. Lavender, and Blink, wounded in her proprietary
instincts, placed her paws at once on her master's shoulders, so that he
fell prone. When he recovered a sitting posture neither the old lady nor
the little dog were in sight, but his hat was hanging on a laurel bush.
"There seems to be something fateful about this morning," he mused; "I
had better go in before the rest of the female population----" and
recovering his feet with difficulty, he took his hat, and was about to
enter the house when he saw the young lady watching him from an upper
window of the adjoining castle. Thinking to relieve her anxiety, he said
at once:
"My dear young lady, I earnestly beg you to believe that such a thing
never happens to me, as a rule."
Her face was instantly withdrawn, and, sighing deeply, Mr. Lavender
entered the house and made his way upstairs. "Ah!" he thought, painfully
recumbent in his bed once more, "though my bones ache and my head burns I
have performed an action not unworthy of the traditions of public life.
There is nothing more uplifting than to serve Youth and Beauty at the
peril of one's existence. Humanity and Chivalry have ever been the
leading characteristics of the British race;" and, really half-delirious
now, he cried aloud: "This incident will for ever inspire those who have
any sense of beauty to the fulfilment of our common task. Believe me, we
shall never sheathe the sword until the cause of humanity and chivalry is
safe once more."
Blink, ever uneasy about sounds which seemed to her to have no meaning,
stood up on her hind legs and endeavoured to stay them by licking his
face; and Mr. Lavender, who had become so stiff that he could not stir
without great pain, had to content himself by moving his head feebly from
side to side until his dog, having taken her fill, resumed the
examination of her bone. Perceiving presently that whenever he began
to-talk she began to lick his face, he remained silent, with his mouth
open and his eyes shut, in an almost unconscious condition, from which he
was roused by a voice saying:
"He is suffering from alcoholic poisoning."
The monstrous injustice of these words restored his faculties, and seeing
before him what he took to be a large concourse of people--composed in
reality of Joe Petty, Mrs. Petty, and the doctor--he thus addressed them
in a faint, feverish voice:
"The pressure of these times, ladies and gentlemen, brings to the fore
the most pushing and obstreperous blackguards. We have amongst us
persons who, under the thin disguise of patriotism, do not scruple to
bring hideous charges against public men. Such but serve the
blood-stained cause of our common enemies. Conscious of the purity of
our private lives, we do not care what is said of us so long as we can
fulfil our duty to our country. Abstinence from every form of spirituous
liquor has been the watchword of all public men since this land was first
threatened by the most stupendous cataclysm which ever hung over the
heads of a great democracy. We have never ceased to preach the need for
it, and those who say the contrary are largely Germans or persons lost to
a sense of decency." So saying, he threw off all the bedclothes, and
fell back with a groan.
"Easy, easy, my dear sir!" said the voice.
"Have you a pain in your back?"
"I shall not submit," returned our hero, "to the ministrations of a Hun;
sooner will I breathe my last."
"Turn him over," said the voice. And Mr. Lavender found himself on his
face.
"Do you feel that?" said the voice.
Mr. Lavender answered faintly into his pillow:
"It is useless for you to torture me. No German hand shall wring from me
a groan."
"Is there mania in his family?" asked the voice. At this cruel insult
Mr. Lavender, who was nearly smothered, made a great effort, and clearing
his mouth of the pillow, said:
"Since we have no God nowadays, I call the God of my fathers to witness
that there is no saner public man than I."
It was, however, his last effort, for the wriggle he had given to his
spine brought on a kind of vertigo, and he relapsed into unconsciousness.
V
IS CONVICTED OF A NEW DISEASE
Those who were assembled round the bed of Mr. Lavender remained for a
moment staring at him with their mouths open, while Blink growled faintly
from underneath.
"Put your hand here," said the doctor at last.
"There is a considerable swelling, an appearance of inflammation, and the
legs are a curious colour. You gave him three-quarters of a tumbler of
rum--how much honey?"
Thus addressed, Joe Petty, leaning his head a little to one side,
answered:
"Not 'alf a pot, sir."
"Um! There are all the signs here of something quite new. He's not had
a fall, has he?"
"Has he?" said Mrs. Petty severely to her husband.
"No," replied Joe.
"Singular!" said the doctor. Turn him back again; I want to feel his
head. Swollen; it may account for his curious way of talking. Well,
shove in quinine, and keep him quiet, with hot bottles to his feet. I
think we have come on a new war disease. I'll send you the quinine. Good
morning.
"Wot oh!" said Joe to his wife, when they were left alone with the
unconscious body of their master. "Poor old Guv! Watch and pray!"
"However could you have given him such a thing?"
"Wet outside, wet your inside," muttered Joe sulkily, "'as always been my
motto. Sorry I give 'im the honey. Who'd ha' thought the product of an
'armless insect could 'a done 'im in like this?"
Fiddle said Mrs. Petty. "In my belief it's come on through reading those
newspapers. If I had my way I'd bum the lot. Can I trust you to watch
him while I go and get the bottles filled?"
Joe drooped his lids over his greenish eyes, and, with a whisk of her
head, his wife left the room.
"Gawd 'elp us!" thought Joe, gazing at his unconscious master, and
fingering his pipe; "'ow funny women are! If I was to smoke in 'ere
she'd have a fit. I'll just 'ave a whiff in the window, though!" And,
leaning out, he drew the curtains to behind him and lighted his pipe.
The sound of Blink gnawing her bone beneath the bed alone broke the
silence.
"I could do with a pint o' bitter," thought Joe; and, noticing the form
of the weekly gardener down below, he said softly:
"'Ello, Bob!"
"'Ello?" replied the gardener. "'Ow's yours?"
"Nicely."
"Goin' to 'ave some rain?"
"Ah!"
"What's the, matter with that?"
"Good for the crops."
"Missis well?"
"So, so."
"Wish mine was."
"Wot's the matter with her?"
"Busy!" replied Joe, sinking his voice. Never 'ave a woman permanent;
that's my experience.
The gardener did not reply, but stood staring at the lilac-bush below Joe
Petty's face. He was a thin man, rather like an old horse.
"Do you think we can win this war?" resumed Joe.
"Dunno," replied the gardener apathetically.
"We seem to be goin' back nicely all the time."
Joe wagged his head. "You've 'it it," he said. And, jerking his head
back towards the room behind him, "Guv'nor's got it now."
"What?"
"The new disease."
"What new disease?"
"Wy, the Run-abaht-an-tell-'em-'ow-to-do-it."
"Ah!"
"'E's copped it fair. In bed."
"You don't say!"
"Not 'alf!" Joe sank his voice still lower. "Wot'll you bet me I don't
ketch it soon?"
The gardener uttered a low gurgle.
"The cats 'ave been in that laylock," he replied, twisting off a broken
branch. "I'll knock off now for a bit o' lunch."
But at that moment the sound of a voice speaking as it might be from a
cavern, caused him and Joe Petty to stare at each other as if petrified.
"Wot is it?" whispered Joe at last.
The gardener jerked his head towards a window on the ground floor.
"Someone in pain," he said.
"Sounds like the Guv'nor's voice."
"Ah!" said the gardener.
"Alf a mo'!" And, drawing in his head, Joe peered through the curtains.
The bed was empty and the door open.
"Watch it! 'E's loose!" he called to the gardener, and descended the
stairs at a run.
In fact, Mr. Lavender had come out of his coma at the words, "D'you think
we can win this war?" And, at once conscious that he had not read the
morning papers, had got out of bed. Sallying forth just as he was he had
made his way downstairs, followed by Blink. Seeing the journals lying on
the chest in the hall, he took all five to where he usually went at this
time of the morning, and sat down to read. Once there, the pain he was
in, added to the disorder occasioned in his brain by the five leaders,
caused him to give forth a summary of their contents, while Blink pressed
his knees with her chin whenever the rising of his voice betokened too
great absorption, as was her wont when she wanted him to feed her. Joe
Petty joined the gardener in considerable embarrassment.
"Shan't I not 'alf cop it from the Missis?" he murmured. "The door's
locked."
The voice of Mr. Lavender maintained its steady flow, rising and falling
with the tides of his pain and his feelings. "What, then, is our duty?
Is it not plain and simple? We require every man in the Army, for that
is the 'sine qua non' of victory. We must greatly reinforce the ranks of
labour in our shipyards--ships, ships, ships, always more ships; for
without them we shall infallibly be defeated. We cannot too often repeat
that we must see the great drama that is being played before our eyes
steadily, and we must see it whole.... Not a man must be taken from the
cultivation of our soil, for on that depends our very existence as a
nation. Without abundant labour of the right sort on the land we cannot
hope to cope with the menace of the pirate submarine. We must have the
long vision, and not be scuppered by the fears of those who would deplete
our most vital industry . . . . In munition works," wailed Mr.
Lavender's voice, as he reached the fourth leader, "we still require the
maximum of effort, and a considerable reinforcement of manpower will in
that direction be necessary to enable us to establish the overwhelming
superiority in the air and in guns which alone can ensure the defeat of
our enemies".... He reached the fifth in what was almost a scream.
"Every man up to sixty must be mobilized but here we would utter the most
emphatic caveat. In the end this war will be won by the country whose
financial position stands the strain best. The last copper bullet will
be the deciding factor. Our economic strength must on no account be
diminished. We cannot at this time of day afford to deplete the ranks of
trade and let out the very life-blood in our veins." "We must see,"
groaned Mr. Lavender, "the problem steadily, and see it whole."
"Poor old geyser!" said the gardener; "'e do seem bad."
"Old me!" said Joe.
"I'll get on the sill and see what I can do through the top o' the
window."
He got up, and, held by the gardener, put his arm through. There was the
sound of considerable disturbance, and through the barking of Blink, Mr.
Lavender's voice was heard again: "Stanch in the middle of the cataclysm,
unruffled by the waters of heaven and hell, let us be captains of our
souls. Down, Blink, down!"
"He's out!" said Joe, rejoining the gardener. "Now for it, before my
missis comes!" and he ran into the house.
Mr. Lavender was walking dazedly in the hall with the journals held out
before him.
"Joe," he said, catching sight of his servant, "get the car ready. I must
be in five places at once, for only thus can we defeat the greatest
danger which ever threatened the future of civilization."
"Right-o, sir," replied Joe; and, waiting till his master turned round,
he seized him round the legs, and lifting that thin little body ascended
the stairs, while Mr. Lavender, with the journals waving fanlike in his
hands, his white hair on end, and his legs kicking, endeavoured to turn
his head to see what agency was moving him.
At the top of the stairs they came on Mrs. Petty, who, having Scotch
blood in her veins, stood against the wall to let them pass, with a hot
bottle in either hand. Having placed Mr. Lavender in his bed and drawn
the clothes up to his eyes, Joe Petty passed the back of his hand across
his brow, and wrung it out.
"Phew!" he gasped; "he's artful!"
His wife, who had followed them in, was already fastening her eyes on the
carpet.
"What's that?" she said, sniffing.
"That?" repeated Joe, picking up his pipe; "why, I had to run to ketch
'im, and it fell out o' me pocket."
"And lighted itself," said Mrs. Petty, darting, at the floor and taking
up a glowing quid which had burned a little round hole in the carpet.
"You're a pretty one!"
"You can't foresee those sort o' things," said Joe.
"You can't foresee anything," replied his wife; "you might be a
Government. Here! hold the clothes while I get the bottles to his feet.
Well I never! If he hasn't got----" And from various parts of Mr.
Lavender's body she recovered the five journals. "For putting things in
the wrong place, Joe Petty, I've never seen your like!"
"They'll keep 'im warm," said Joe.
Mr. Lavender who, on finding himself in bed, had once more fallen into a
comatose condition, stirred, and some words fell from his lips. "Five in
one, and one in five."
"What does he say?" said Mrs. Petty, tucking him up.
"It's the odds against Candelabra for the Derby."
"Only faith," cried Mr. Lavender, "can multiply exceedingly."
"Here, take them away!" muttered Mrs. Petty, and dealing the journals a
smart slap, she handed them to Joe.
"Faith!" repeated Mr. Lavender, and fell into a doze.
"About this new disease," said Joe. "D'you think it's ketchin'? I feel
rather funny meself."
"Stuff!" returned his wife. "Clear away those papers and that bone, and
go and take Blink out, and sit on a seat; it's all you're fit for. Of
all the happy-go-luckys you're the worst."
"Well, I never could worry," said Joe from the doorway; "'tisn't in me.
So long!"
And, dragging Blink by the collar, he withdrew.
Alone with her patient, Mrs. Petty, an enthusiast for cleanliness and
fresh air, went on her knees, and, having plucked out the charred ring of
the little hole in the carpet, opened the window wider to rid the room of
the smell of burning. "If it wasn't for me," she thought, leaning out
into the air, "I don't know what'd become of them."
A voice from a few feet away said:
"I hope he's none the worse. What does the doctor say?"
Looking round in astonishment, Mrs. Petty saw a young lady leaning out of
a window on her right.
"We can't tell at present," she said, with a certain reserve he is going
on satisfactory.
"It's not hydrophobia, is it?" asked the young lady. "You know he fell
out of the window?
"What!" ejaculated Mrs. Petty.
"Where the lilac's broken. If I can give you a hand I shall be very
glad. I'm a V.A.D."
"Thank you, I'm sure," said Mrs. Petty stiffly, for the passion of
jealousy, to which she was somewhat prone, was rising in her, "there is
no call." And she thought, "V.A. indeed! I know them."
Poor dear said the young lady. "He did come a bump. It was awfully
funny! Is he--er----?" And she touched her forehead, where tendrils of
fair hair were blowing in the breeze.
Inexpressibly outraged by such a question concerning one for whom she had
a proprietary reverence, Mrs. Petty answered acidly:
"Oh dear no! He is much wiser than some people!"
"It was only that he mentioned the last man and the last dollar, you
know," said the young lady, as if to herself, "but, of course, that's no
real sign." And she uttered a sudden silvery laugh.
Mrs. Petty became aware of something tickling her left ear, and turning
round, found her master leaning out beside her, in his dressing-gown.
"Leave me, Mrs. Petty," he said with such dignity that she instinctively
recoiled. "It may seem to you," continued Mr. Lavender, addressing the
young lady, "indelicate on my part to resume my justification, but as a
public man, I suffer, knowing that I have committed a breach of decorum."
"Don't you think you ought to keep quiet in bed?" Mrs. Petty heard the
young lady ask.
"My dear young lady," Mr. Lavender replied, "the thought of bed is
abhorrent to me at a time like this. What more ignoble fate than to die
in, one's bed?"
"I'm only asking you to live in it," said the young lady, while Mrs.
Petty grasped her master by the skirts of his gown.
"Down, Blink, down!" said Mr. Lavender, leaning still further out.
"For pity's sake," wailed the young lady, "don't fall out again, or I
shall burst."
"Ah, believe me," said Mr. Lavender in a receding voice, "I would not
pain you further for the world----"
Mrs. Petty, exerting all her strength, had hauled him in.
"Aren't you ashamed of yourself, sir," she said severely, "talking to a
young lady like that in your dressing-gown?
"Mrs. Petty," said Mr Lavender mysteriously, "it might have been
worse.... I should like some tea with a little lemon in it."
Taking this for a sign of returning reason Mrs. Petty drew him gently
towards the bed, and, having seen him get in, tucked him up and said:
"Now, sir, you never break your word, do you?"
"No public man----" began Mr. Lavender.
"Oh, bother! Now, promise me to stay quiet in bed while I get you that
tea."
"I certainly shall," replied our hero, "for I feel rather faint."
"That's right," said Mrs. Petty. "I trust you." And, bolting the
window, she whisked out of the room and locked the door behind her.
Mr. Lavender lay with his eyes fixed on the, ceiling, clucking his
parched tongue. "God," he thought, "for one must use that word when the
country is in danger--God be thanked for Beauty! But I must not allow it
to unsteel my soul. Only when the cause of humanity has triumphed, and
with the avenging sword and shell we have exterminated that criminal
nation, only then shall I be entitled to let its gentle influence creep
about my being." And drinking off the tumbler of tea which Mrs. Petty
was holding to his lips, he sank almost immediately into a deep slumber.
VI
MAKES A MISTAKE, AND MEETS A MOON-CAT
The old lady, whose name was Sinkin, and whose interest in Mr. Lavender
had become so deep, lived in a castle in Frognal; and with her lived her
young nephew, a boy of forty-five, indissolubly connected with the Board
of Guardians. It was entirely due to her representations that he
presented himself at Mr. Lavender's on the following day, and, sending in
his card, was admitted to our hero's presence.
Mr. Lavender, pale and stiff, was sitting in his study, with Blink on his
feet, reading a speech.
"Excuse my getting up, sir," he said; "and pray be seated."
The nephew, who had a sleepy, hairless face and little Chinese eyes,
bowed, and sitting down, stared at Mr. Lavender with a certain
embarrassment.
"I have come," he said at last, "to ask you a few questions on behalf
of--"
"By all means," said Mr. Lavender, perceiving at once that he was being
interviewed. "I shall be most happy to give you my views. Please take a
cigarette, for I believe that is usual. I myself do not smoke. If it is
the human touch you want, you may like to know that I gave it up when
that appeal in your contemporary flooded the trenches with cigarettes and
undermined the nerves of our heroes. By setting an example of
abstinence, and at the same time releasing more tobacco for our men, I
felt that I was but doing my duty. Please don't mention that, though.
And while we are on the personal note, which I sincerely deprecate, you
might like to stroll round the room and look at the portrait of my
father, behind the door, and of my mother, over the fireplace. Forgive
my not accompanying you. The fact is--this is an interesting touch--I
have always been rather subject to lumbago." And seeing the nephew
Sinkin, who had risen to his suggestion, standing somewhat irresolutely
in front of him, he added: "Perhaps you would like to look a little more
closely at my eyes. Every now and then they flash with an almost uncanny
insight." For by now he had quite forgotten his modesty in the
identification he felt with the journal which was interviewing him. "I am
fifty-eight," he added quickly; "but I do not look my years, though my
hair, still thick and full of vigour, is prematurely white--so often the
case with men whose brains are continually on the stretch. The little
home, far from grandiose, which forms the background to this most
interesting personality is embowered in trees. Cats have made their mark
on its lawns, and its owner's love of animals was sharply illustrated by
the sheep-dog which lay on his feet clad in Turkish slippers. Get up,
Blink!"
Blink, disturbed by the motion of her master's feet, rose and gazed long
into his face.
"Look!" said Mr. Lavender, "she has the most beautiful eyes in the
world."
At this remark, which appeared to him no saner than the others he had
heard--so utterly did he misjudge Mr. Lavender's character--the nephew
put down the notebook he had taken out of his pocket, and said:
"Has there ever been anything--er--remarkable about your family?"
"Indeed, yes," said Mr. Lavender. Born of poor but lofty parentage in
the city of Rochester, my father made his living as a publisher; my
mother was a true daughter of the bards, the scion of a stock tracing its
decent from the Druids; her name was originally Jones."
"Ah!" said the nephew Sinkin, writing.
"She has often told me at her knee," continued Mr. Lavender, "that there
was a strong vein of patriotism in her family."
"She did not die--in--in----"
"No, indeed," interrupted Mr. Lavender; she is still living there."
"Ah!" said the nephew. "And your brothers and sisters?"
"One of my brothers," replied Mr. Lavender, with pardonable pride, "is
the editor of Cud Bits. The other is a clergyman."
"Eccentric," murmured the nephew absently. "Tell me, Mr. Lavender, do
you find your work a great strain? Does it----" and he touched the top
of his head, covered with moist black hair.
Mr. Lavender sighed. "At a time like this," he said, "we must all be
prepared to sacrifice our health. No public man, as you know, can call
his head his own for a moment. I should count myself singularly lacking
if I stopped to consider--er--such a consideration."
"Consider--er--such a consideration," repeated the nephew, jotting it
down.
"He carries on," murmured Mr. Lavender, once more identifying himself
with the journal, "grappling with the intricacies of this enormous
problem; happy in the thought that nothing--not even reason itself--is
too precious to sacrifice on the altar of his duty to his country. The
public may rest confident in the knowledge that he will so carry on till
they carry him out on his shield." And aware subconsciously that the
interview could go no further than that phrase, Mr. Lavender was silent,
gazing up with rather startled eyes.
"I see," said the nephew; "I am very much obliged to you. Is your dog
safe?" For Blink had begun to growl in a low and uneasy manner.
"The gentlest creature in the world," replied Lavender, "and the most
sociable. I sometimes think," he went on in a changed voice, "that we
have all gone mad, and that animals alone retain the sweet reasonableness
which used to be esteemed a virtue in human society. Don't take that
down," he added quickly, "we are all subject to moments of weakness. It
was just an 'obiter dictum'."
"Make your mind easy," said the nephew, rising, "it does not serve my
purpose. Just one thing, Mr. Lavender."
At this moment Blink, whose instinct had long been aware of some sinister
purpose in this tall and heavy man, whose trousers did not smell of dogs,
seeing him approach too near, bit him gently in the calf.
The nephew started back. "She's bitten me!" he said, in a hushed voice.
"My God!" ejaculated Mr. Lavender and falling back again, so stiff was
he. "Is it possible? There must be some good reason. Blink!"
Blink wagged her little tail, thrust her nose into his hand, removed it,
and growled again.
"She is quite well, I assure you," Mr. Lavender added hastily, "her nose
is icy."
"She's bitten me," repeated the nephew, pulling up his trouser leg.
"There's no mark, but she distinctly bit me."
"Treasure!" said Mr. Lavender, endeavouring to interest him in the dog.
"Do you notice how dark the rims of her eyes are, and how clear the
whites? Extraordinarily well bred. Blink!"
Aware that she was being talked of Blink continued to be torn between the
desire to wag her tail and to growl. Unable to make up her mind, she
sighed heavily and fell on her side against her side against her master's
legs.
"Wonderful with sheep, too," said Mr. Lavender; "at least, she would be
if they would let her.... You should see her with them on the Heath.
They simply can't bear her."
"You will hear from me again," said the nephew sourly.
"Thank you," said Mr. Lavender. "I shall be glad of a proof; it is
always safer, I believe."
"Good morning," said the nephew.
Blink, who alone perceived the dark meaning in these words, seeing him
move towards the door began to bark and run from side to side behind him,
for all the world as if he had been a flock of sheep.
"Keep her off!" said the nephew anxiously. "Keep her off. I refuse to
be bitten again."
"Blink!" called Mr. Lavender in some agony. Blink, whose obedience was
excessive, came back to him at once, and stood growling from under her
master's hand, laid on the white hair which flowed back from her collar,
till the nephew's footsteps had died away. "I cannot imagine," thought
Mr. Lavender, "why she should have taken exception to that excellent
journalist. Perhaps he did not smell quite right? One never knows."
And with her moustachioed muzzle pressed to his chin Mr. Lavender sought
for explanation in the innocent and living darkness of his dog's eyes....
On leaving Mr. Lavender's the nephew forthwith returned to the castle in
Frognal, and sought his aunt.
"Mad as a March hare, Aunt Rosie; and his dog bit me."
"That dear doggie?"
"They're dangerous."
"You were always funny about dogs, dear," said his aunt soothingly. "Why,
even Sealey doesn't really like you." And calling to the little low
white dog she quite failed to attract his attention. "Did you notice his
dress. The first time I took him for a shepherd, and the second time---!
What do you think ought to be done?"
"He'll have to be watched," said the nephew. "We can't have lunatics at
large in Hampstead."
"But, Wilfred," said the old lady, "will our man-power stand it? Couldn't
they watch each other? Or, if it would be any help, I could watch him
myself. I took such a fancy to his dear dog."
"I shall take steps," said the nephew.
"No, don't do that. I'll go and call on the people, next door. Their
name is Scarlet. They'll know about him, no doubt. We mustn't do
anything inconsiderate."
The nephew, muttering and feeling his calf, withdrew to his study. And
the old lady, having put on her bonnet, set forth placidly, unaccompanied
by her little white dog.
On arriving at the castle embedded in acacias and laurustinus she asked
of the maid who opened:
"Can I see Mrs. Scarlet?"
"No," replied the girl dispassionately; "she's dead."
"Mr. Scarlet, then?"
"No," replied the girl he's a major."
"Oh, dear!" said the old lady.
"Miss Isabel's at home," said the girl, who appeared, like so many people
in time of war, to be of a simple, plain-spoken nature; "you'll find her
in the garden." And she let the old lady out through a French window.
At the far end, under an acacia, Mrs. Sinkin could see the form of a
young lady in a blue dress, lying in a hammock, with a cigarette between
her lips and a yellow book in her hands. She approached her thinking,
"Dear me! how comfortable, in these days!" And, putting her head a
little on one side, she said with a smile: "My name is Sinkin. I hope
I'm not disturbing you."
The young lady rose with a vigorous gesture.
"Oh, no! Not a bit."
"I do admire some people," said the old lady; "they seem to find time for
everything."
The young lady stretched herself joyously.
"I'm taking it out before going to my new hospital. Try it," she said
touching the hammock; "it's not bad. Will you have a cigarette?"
"I'm afraid I'm too old for both," said the old lady, "though I've often
thought they must be delightfully soothing. I wanted to speak to you
about your neighbour."
The young lady rolled her large grey eyes. "Ah!" she said, "he's
perfectly sweet."
"I know," said the old lady, "and has such a dear dog. My nephew's very
interested in them. You may have heard of him--Wilfred Sinkin--a very
clever man; on so many Committees."
"Not really?" said the young lady.
"Oh, yes! He has one of those heads which nothing can disturb; so
valuable in these days."
"And what sort of a heart?" asked the young lady, emitting a ring of
smoke.
"Just as serene. I oughtn't to say so, but I think he's rather a
wonderful machine."
"So long as he's not a doctor! You can't think how they get on your
nerves when they're, like that. I've bumped up against so many of them.
They fired me at last!"
"Really? Where? I thought they only did that to the dear horses. Oh,
what a pretty laugh you have! It's so pleasant to hear anyone laugh, in
these days."
"I thought no one did anything else! I mean, what else can you do,
except die, don't you know?"
"I think that's rather a gloomy view," said the old lady placidly. But
about your neighbour. What is his name?"
"Lavender. But I call him Don Pickwixote."
"Dear me, do you indeed? Have you noticed anything very eccentric about
him?"
"That depends on what you call eccentric. Wearing a nightshirt, for
instance? I don't know what your standard is, you see."
The old lady was about to reply when a voice from the adjoining garden
was heard saying:
"Blink! Don't touch that charming mooncat!"
"Hush!" murmured the young lady; and seizing her visitor's arm, she drew
her vigorously beneath the acacia tree. Sheltered from observation by
those thick and delicate branches, they stooped, and applying their eyes
to holes in the privet hedge, could see a very little cat, silvery-fawn
in colour and far advanced in kittens, holding up its paw exactly like a
dog, and gazing with sherry-coloured eyes at Mr. Lavender, who stood in
the middle of his lawn, with Blink behind him.
"If you see me going to laugh," whispered the young lady, "pinch me
hard."
"Moon-cat," repeated Mr. Lavender, "where have you come from? And what
do you want, holding up your paw like that? What curious little noises
you make, duckie!" The cat, indeed, was uttering sounds rather like a
duck. It came closer to Mr. Lavender, circled his legs, drubbed itself
against Blink's chest, while its tapered tail, barred with silver,
brushed her mouth.
"This is extraordinary," they heard Mr. Lavender say; "I would stroke it
if I wasn't so stiff. How nice of you little moon-cat to be friendly to
my play-girl! For what is there in all the world so pleasant to see as
friendliness between a dog and cat!"
At those words the old lady, who was a great lover of animals, was so
affected that she pinched the young lady by mistake.
"Not yet!" whispered the latter in some agony. "Listen!"
"Moon-cat," Mr. Lavender was saying, "Arcadia is in your golden eyes. You
have come, no doubt, to show us how far we have strayed away from it."
And too stiff to reach the cat by bending, Mr. Lavender let himself
slowly down till he could sit. "Pan is dead," he said, as he arrived on
the grass and crossed his feet, "and Christ is not alive. Moon-cat!"
The little cat had put its head into his hand, while Blink was thrusting
her nose into his mouth.
"I'm going to sneeze!" whispered the old lady, strangely affected.
"Pull your upper lip down hard, like the German Empress, and count nine!"
murmured the young.
While the old lady was doing this Mr. Lavender had again begun to speak.
"Life is now nothing but explosions. Gentleness has vanished, and beauty
is a dream. When you have your kittens, moon-cat, bring them up in
amity, to love milk, dogs, and the sun."
The moon-cat, who had now reached his shoulder, brushed the tip of her
tail across his loose right eyebrow, while Blink's jealous tongue avidly
licked his high left cheekbone. With one hand Mr. Lavender was cuddling
the cat's head, with the other twiddling Blink's forelock, and the
watchers could see his eyes shining, and his white hair standing up all
ruffled.
"Isn't it sweet?" murmured the old lady.
"Ah! moon-cat," went on Mr. Lavender, "come and live with us. You shall
have your kittens in the bathroom, and forget this age of blood and
iron."
Both the old lady and the young were removing moisture from their eyes
when, the voice of Mr. Lavender, very changed, recalled them to their
vigil. His face had become strained and troubled.
"Never," he was saying, "will we admit that doctrine of our common
enemies. Might is not right gentlemen those who take the sword shall
perish by the sword. With blood and iron we will ourselves stamp out
this noxious breed. No stone shall be left standing, and no babe
sleeping in that abandoned country. We will restore the tide of
humanity, if we have to wade through rivers of blood across mountains of
iron."
"Whom is he calling gentlemen?" whispered the old lady.
But Blink, by anxiously licking Mr. Lavender's lips, had produced a
silence in which the young-lady did not dare reply. The sound of the
little cat's purring broke the hush.
"Down, Blink, down!" said Mr. Lavender.
"Watch this little moon-cat and her perfect manners! We may all learn
from her how not to be crude. See the light shining through her pretty
ears!"
The little cat, who had seen a bird, had left Mr. Lavender's shoulder,
and was now crouching and moving the tip of its tail from side to side.
"She would like a bird inside her; but let us rather go and find her some
milk instead," said Mr. Lavender, and he began to rise.
"Do you know, I think he's quite sane," whispered the old lady, "except,
perhaps, at intervals. What do you?"
"Glorious print!" cried Mr. Lavender suddenly, for a journal had fallen
from his pocket, and the sight of it lying there, out of his reach,
excited him. "Glorious print! I can read you even from here. When the
enemy of mankind uses the word God he commits blasphemy! How different
from us!" And raising his eyes from the journal Mr. Lavender fastened
them, as it seemed to his anxious listeners, on the tree which sheltered
them. "Yes! Those unseen presences, who search out the workings of our
heart, know that even the most Jingo among us can say, 'I am not as they
are!' Come, mooncat!"
So murmuring, he turned and moved towards the house, clucking with his
tongue, and followed by Blink.
"Did he mean us?" said the old lady nervously.
"No; that was one of his intervals. He's not mad; he's just crazy."
"Is there any difference, my dear?"
"Why, we're all crazy about something, you know; it's only a question of
what."
"But what is his what?"
"He's got a message. They're in the air, you know."
"I haven't come across them," said the old lady. "I fear I live a very
quiet life--except for picking over sphagnum moss."
"Oh, well! There's no hurry."
"Well, I shall tell my nephew what I've seen," said the old lady.
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye," responded the young; and, picking up her yellow book, she got
back into the hammock and relighted her cigarette.
VII
SEES AND EDITOR, AND FINDS A FARMER
Not for some days after his fall from the window did Mr. Lavender begin
to regain the elasticity of body necessary to the resumption of public
life. He spent the hours profitably, however, in digesting the
newspapers and storing ardour. On Tuesday morning, remembering that no
proof of his interview had yet been sent him, and feeling that he ought
not to neglect so important a matter, he set forth to the office of the
great journal from which, in the occult fashion of the faithful, he was
convinced the reporter had come. While he was asking for the editor in
the stony entrance, a young man who was passing looked at him attentively
and said: "Ah, sir, here you are! He's waiting for you. Come up, will
you?"
Mr. Lavender followed up some stairs, greatly gratified at the thought
that he was expected. The young man led him through one or two swing
doors into an outer office, where a young woman was typing.
Mr. Lavender shook his head, and sat down on the edge of a green leather
chair. The editor, resuming his seat, crossed his legs deferentially,
and sinking his chin again on his chest, began:
"About your article. My only trouble, of course, is that I'm running
that stunt on British prisoners--great success! You've seen it, I
suppose?"
"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Lavender; I read you every day.
The editor made a little movement which showed that he was flattered, and
sinking his chin still further into his chest, resumed:
"It might run another week, or it might fall down to-morrow--you never
can tell. But I'm getting lots of letters. Tremendous public interest."
"Yes, yes," assented Mr. Lavender, "it's most important."
"Of course, we might run yours with it," said the editor. "But I don't
know; I think it'd kill the other. Still----"
"I shouldn't like----" began Mr. Lavender.
"I don't believe in giving them more than they want, you know," resumed
the editor. "I think I'll have my news editor in," and he blew into a
tube. "Send me Mr. Crackamup. This thing of yours is very important,
sir. Suppose we began to run it on Thursday. Yes, I should think
they'll be tired of British prisoners by then."
"Don't let me," began Mr. Lavender.
The editor's eye became unveiled for the Moment. "You'll be wanting to
take it somewhere else if we----Quite! Well, I think we could run them
together. See here, Mr. Crackamup"--Mr. Lavender saw a small man like
Beethoven frowning from behind spectacles--"could we run this German
prisoner stunt alongside the British, or d'you think it would kill it?"
Mr. Lavender almost rose from his chair in surprise. "Are you----" he
said; "is it----"
The small man hiccoughed, and said in a raw voice:
"The letters are falling off."
"Ah!" murmured the editor, "I thought we should be through by Thursday.
We'll start this new stunt Thursday. Give it all prominence, Crackamup.
It'll focus fury. All to the good--all to the good. Opinion's ripe."
Then for a moment he seemed to hesitate, and his chin sank back on his
chest. "I don't know," he murmured of course it may----"
"Please," began Mr. Lavender, rising, while the small man hiccoughed
again. The two motions seemed to determine the editor.
"That's all right, sir," he said, rising also; "that's quite all right.
We'll say Thursday, and risk it. Thursday, Crackamup." And he held out
his hand to Mr. Lavender. "Good morning, sir, good morning. Delighted
to have seen you. You wouldn't put your name to it? Well, well, it
doesn't matter; only you could have written it. The turn of phrase
--immense! They'll tumble all right!" And Mr. Lavender found himself,
with Mr. Crackamup, in the lobby. "It's bewildering," he thought, "how
quickly he settled that. And yet he had such repose. But is there some
mistake?" He was about to ask his companion, but with a distant hiccough
the small man had vanished. Thus deserted, Mr. Lavender was in two minds
whether to ask to be readmitted, when the four gentlemen with notebooks
repassed him in single file into the editor's room.
"My name is Lavender," he said resolutely to the young woman. "Is that
all right?"
"Quite," she answered, without looking up.
Mr. Lavender went out slowly, thinking, "I may perhaps have said more in
that interview than I remember. Next time I really will insist on having
a proof. Or have they taken me for some other public man?" This notion
was so disagreeable, however, that he dismissed it, and passed into the
street.
On Thursday, the day fixed for his fresh tour of public speaking, he
opened the great journal eagerly. Above the third column was the
headline: OUR VITAL DUTY: BY A GREAT PUBLIC MAN. "That must be it," he
thought. The article, which occupied just a column of precious space,
began with an appeal so moving that before he had read twenty lines Mr.
Lavender had identified himself completely with the writer; and if anyone
had told him that he had not uttered these sentiments, he would have
given him the lie direct. Working from heat to heat the article finished
in a glorious outburst with a passionate appeal to the country to starve
all German prisoners.
Mr. Lavender put it down in a glow of exultation. "I shall translate
words into action," he thought; "I shall at once visit a rural district
where German prisoners are working on the land, and see that the farmers
do their duty." And, forgetting in his excitement to eat his breakfast,
he put the journal in his pocket, wrapped himself in his dust-coat and
broad-brimmed hat, and went out to his car, which was drawn up, with
Blink, who had not forgotten her last experience, inside.
"We will go to a rural district, Joe," he said, getting in.
"Very good, sir," answered Joe; and, unnoticed by the population, they
glided into the hazy heat of the June morning.
"Well, what abaht it, sir?" said Joe, after they had proceeded for some
three hours. "Here we are."
Mr. Lavender, who had been lost in the beauty of the scenes through which
he was passing, awoke from reverie, and said:
"I am looking for German prisoners, Joe; if you see a farmer, you might
stop."
"Any sort of farmer?" asked Joe.
"Is there more than one sort?" returned Mr. Lavender, smiling.
Joe cocked his eye. "Ain't you never lived in the country, sir?"
"Not for more than a few weeks at a time, Joe, unless Rochester counts.
Of course, I know Eastbourne very well."
"I know Eastbourne from the inside," said Joe discursively. "I was a
waiter there once."
"An interesting life, a waiter's, Joe, I should think."
"Ah! Everything comes to 'im who waits, they say. But abaht farmers
--you've got a lot to learn, sir."
"I am always conscious of that, Joe; the ramifications of public life are
innumerable."
"I could give you some rummikins abaht farmers. I once travelled in
breeches."
"You seem to have done a great many things Joe."
"That's right, sir. I've been a sailor, a 'traveller,' a waiter, a
scene-shifter, and a shover, and I don't know which was the cushiest job.
But, talking of farmers: there's the old English type that wears
Bedfords--don't you go near 'im, 'e bites. There's the modern scientific
farmer, but it'll take us a week to find 'im. And there's the
small-'older, wearin' trahsers, likely as not; I don't think 'e'd be any
use to you.
"What am I to do then?" asked Mr Lavender.
"Ah!" said Joe, "'ave lunch."
Mr. Lavender sighed, his hunger quarelling with his sense of duty. "I
should like to have found a farmer first," he said.
"Well, sir, I'll drive up to that clump o'beeches, and you can have a
look round for one while I get lunch ready.
"That will do admirably."
"There's just one thing, sir," said Joe, when his master was about to
start; "don't you take any house you come across for a farm. They're
mostly cottages o' gentility nowadays, in'abited by lunatics."
"I shall be very careful," said Mr. Lavender.
"This glorious land!" he thought, walking away from the beech clump, with
Blink at his heels; "how wonderful to see it being restored to its former
fertility under pressure of the war! The farmer must be a happy man,
indeed, working so nobly for his country, without thought of his own
prosperity. How flowery those beans look already!" he mused, glancing
at a field of potatoes. "Now that I am here I shall be able to combine
my work on German prisoners with an effort to stimulate food production.
Blink!" For Blink was lingering in a gateway. Moving back to her, Mr.
Lavender saw that the sagacious animal was staring through the gate at a
farmer who was standing in a field perfectly still, with his back turned,
about thirty yards away.
"Have you----" Mr. Lavender began eagerly; "is it--are you employing any
German prisoners, sir?"
The farmer did not seem to hear. "He must," thought Mr. Lavender, "be of
the old stolid English variety."
The farmer, who was indeed attired in a bowler hat and Bedford cords,
continued to gaze over his land, unconscious of Mr. Lavender's presence.
"I am asking you a question, sir," resumed the latter in a louder voice."
And however patriotically absorbed you may be in cultivating your soil,
there is no necessity for rudeness."
The farmer did not move a muscle.
"Sir," began Mr. Lavender again, very patiently, "though I have always
heard that the British farmer is of all men least amenable to influence
and new ideas, I have never believed it, and I am persuaded that if you
will but listen I shall be able to alter your whole outlook about the
agricultural future of this country." For it had suddenly occurred to
him that it might be a long time before he had again such an opportunity
of addressing a rural audience on the growth of food, and he was loth to
throw away the chance. The farmer, however, continued to stand with his
hack to the speaker, paying no more heed to his voice than to the buzzing
of a fly.
"You SHALL hear me," cried Mr. Lavender, unconsciously miming a voice
from the past, and catching, as he thought, the sound of a titter, he
flung his hand out, and exclaimed:
"Grass, gentlemen, grass is the hub of the matter. We have put our hand
to the plough"--and, his imagination taking flight at those words, he
went on in a voice calculated to reach the great assembly of farmers
which he now saw before him with their backs turned--"and never shall we
take it away till we have reduced every acre in the country to an arable
condition. In the future not only must we feed ourselves, but our dogs,
our horses, and our children, and restore the land to its pristine glory
in the front rank of the world's premier industry. But me no buts," he
went on with a winning smile, remembering that geniality is essential in
addressing a country audience, "and butter me no butter, for in future we
shall require to grow our margarine as well. Let us, in a word, put
behind us all prejudice and pusillanimity till we see this country of
ours once more blooming like one great cornfield, covered with cows.
Sirs, I am no iconoclast; let us do all this without departing in any way
from those great principles of Free Trade, Industrialism, and Individual
Liberty which have made our towns the largest, most crowded, and
wealthiest under that sun which never sets over the British Empire. We
do but need to see this great problem steadily and to see it whole, and
we shall achieve this revolution in our national life without the
sacrifice of a single principle or a single penny. Believe me,
gentlemen, we shall yet eat our cake and have it."
Mr. Lavender paused for breath, the headlines of his great speech in
tomorrow's paper dancing before his eyes: "THE CLIMACTERIC--EATS CAKE AND
HAS IT--A GREAT CONCLUSION." The wind, which had risen somewhat during
Mr. Lavender's speech, fluttered the farmer's garments at this moment, so
that they emitted a sound like the stir which runs through an audience at
a moment of strong emotion.
"Ah!" cried Mr. Lavender, "I see that I move you, gentlemen. Those have
traduced you who call you unimpressionable. After all, are you not the
backbone of this country up which runs the marrow which feeds the brain;
and shall you not respond to an appeal at once so simple and so
fundamental? I assure you, gentlemen, it needs no thought; indeed, the
less you think about it the better, for to do so will but weaken your
purpose and distract your attention. Your duty is to go forward with
stout hearts, firm steps, and kindling eyes; in this way alone shall we
defeat our common enemies. And at those words, which he had uttered at
the top of his voice, Mr. Lavender stood like a clock which has run down,
rubbing his eyes. For Blink, roaming the field during the speech, and
encountering quadruped called rabbit, which she had never seen before,
had backed away from it in dismay, brushed against the farmer's legs and
caused his breeches to fall down, revealing the sticks on which they had
been draped. When Mr. Lavender saw this he called out in a loud voice
Sir, you have deceived me. I took you for a human being. I now perceive
that you are but a selfish automaton, rooted to your own business,
without a particle of patriotic sense. Farewell!"
VIII
STARVES SOME GERMANS
After parting with the scarecrow Mr. Lavender who felt uncommonly hungry'
was about to despair of finding any German prisoners when he saw before
him a gravel-pit, and three men working therein. Clad in dungaree, and
very dusty, they had a cast of countenance so unmistakably Teutonic that
Mr. Lavender stood still. They paid little or no attention to him,
however, but went on sadly and silently with their work, which was that
of sifting gravel. Mr. Lavender sat down on a milestone opposite, and
his heart contracted within him. "They look very thin and sad," he
thought, "I should not like to be a prisoner myself far from my country,
in the midst of a hostile population, without a woman or a dog to throw
me a wag of the tail. Poor men! For though it is necessary to hate the
Germans, it seems impossible to forget that we are all human beings. This
is weakness," he added to himself, "which no editor would tolerate for a
moment. I must fight against it if I am to fulfil my duty of rousing the
population to the task of starving them. How hungry they look already
--their checks are hollow! I must be firm. Perhaps they have wives and
families at home, thinking of them at this moment. But, after all, they
are Huns. What did the great writer say? 'Vermin--creatures no more
worthy of pity than the tiger or the rat.' How true! And yet--Blink!"
For his dog, seated on her haunches, was looking at him with that
peculiarly steady gaze which betokened in her the desire for food.
"Yes," mused Mr. Lavender, "pity is the mark of the weak man. It is a
vice which was at one time rampant in this country; the war has made one
beneficial change at least--we are moving more and more towards the manly
and unforgiving vigour of the tiger and the rat. To be brutal! This is
the one lesson that the Germans can teach us, for we had almost forgotten
the art. What danger we were in! Thank God, we have past masters again
among us now!" A frown became fixed between his brows. "Yes, indeed,
past masters. How I venerate those good journalists and all the great
crowd of witnesses who have dominated the mortal weakness, pity. 'The
Hun must and shall be destroyed--root and branch--hip and thigh--bag and
baggage man, woman, and babe--this is the sole duty of the great and
humane British people. Roll up, ladies and gentlemen, roll up! Great
thought--great language! And yet----"
Here Mr. Lavender broke into a gentle sweat, while the Germans went on
sifting gravel in front of him, and Blink continued to look up into his
face with her fixed, lustrous eyes. "What an awful thing," he thought,
"to be a man. If only I were just a public man and could, as they do,
leave out the human and individual side of everything, how simple it
would be! It is the being a man as well which is so troublesome. A man
has feelings; it is wrong--wrong! There should be no connection whatever
between public duty and the feelings of a man. One ought to be able to
starve one's enemy without a quiver, to watch him drown without a wink.
In fact, one ought to be a German. We ought all to be Germans. Blink,
we ought all to be Germans, dear! I must steel myself!" And Mr.
Lavender wiped his forehead, for, though a great idea had come to him, he
still lacked the heroic savagery to put it into execution. "It is my
duty," he thought, "to cause those hungry, sad-looking men to follow me
and watch me eat my lunch. It is my duty. God give me strength! For
unless I make this sacrifice of my gentler nature I shall be unworthy to
call myself a public man, or to be reported in the newspapers. 'En
avant, de Bracy!'" So musing, he rose, and Blink with him. Crossing the
road, he clenched his fists, and said in a voice which anguish made
somewhat shrill:
"Are you hungry, my friends?"
The Germans stopped sifting gravel, looked up at him, and one of them
nodded.
"And thirsty?"
This time they all three nodded.
"Come on, then," said Mr. Lavender.
And he led the way back along the road, followed by Blink and the three
Germans. Arriving at the beech clump whose great trees were already
throwing shadows, denoting that it was long past noon, Mr. Lavender saw
that Joe had spread food on the smooth ground, and was, indeed, just
finishing his own repast.
"What is there to eat?" thought Mr. Lavender, with a soft of horror. "For
I feel as if I were about to devour a meal of human flesh." And he
looked round at the three Germans slouching up shamefacedly behind him.
"Sit down, please," he said. The three men sat down.
"Joe," said Mr. Lavender to his surprised chauffeur, "serve my lunch.
Give me a large helping, and a glass of ale." And, paler than his
holland dust-coat, he sat resolutely down on the bole of a beech, with
Blink on her haunches beside him. While Joe was filling a plate with
pigeon-pie and pouring out a glass of foaming Bass, Mr. Lavender stared
at the three Germans and suffered the tortures of the damned. "I will
not flinch," he thought; "God helping me, I certainly will not flinch.
Nothing shall prevent my going through with it." And his eyes, more
prominent than a hunted rabbit's, watched the approach of Joe with the
plate and glass. The three men also followed the movements of the
chauffeur, and it seemed to Mr. Lavender that their eyes were watering.
"Courage!" he murmured to himself, transfixing a succulent morsel with
his fork and conveying it to his lips. For fully a minute he revolved
the tasty mouthful, which he could not swallow, while the three men's
eyes watched him with a sort of lugubrious surprise. "If," he thought
with anguish, "if I were a prisoner in Germany! Come, come! One effort,
it's only the first mouthful!" and with a superhuman effort, he
swallowed. "Look at me!" he cried to the three Germans, "look at me!
I--I--I'm going to be sick!" and putting down his plate, he rose and
staggered forward. "Joe," he said in a dying voice, "feed these poor
men, feed them; make them drink; feed them!" And rushing headlong to the
edge of the grove, he returned what he had swallowed--to the great
interest of Brink. Then, waving away the approach of Joe, and consumed
with shame and remorse at his lack of heroism, he ran and hid himself in
a clump of hazel bushes, trying to slink into the earth. "No," he
thought; "no; I am not for public life. I have failed at the first test.
Was ever so squeamish an exhibition? I have betrayed my country and the
honour of public life. These Germans are now full of beer and
pigeon-pie. What am I but a poltroon, unworthy to lace the shoes of the
great leaders of my land? The sun has witnessed my disgrace."
How long he stayed there lying on his face he did not know before he
heard the voice of Joe saying, "Wot oh, sir!"
"Joe," replied Mr. Lavender faintly, "my body is here, but my spirit has
departed."
"Ah!" said Joe, "a rum upset--that there. Swig this down, sir!" and he
held out to his master, a flask-cup filled with brandy. Mr. Lavender
swallowed it.
"Have they gone?" he said, gasping.
"They 'ave, sir," replied Joe, "and not 'alf full neither. Where did you
pick 'em up?"
"In a gravel-pit," said Mr. Lavender. "I can never forgive myself for
this betrayal of my King and country. I have fed three Germans. Leave
me, for I am not fit to mingle with my fellows."
"Well, I don't think," said Joe. "Germans?"
Gazing up into his face Mr. Lavender read the unmistakable signs of
uncontrolled surprise.
"Why do you look at me like that?" he said.
"Germans?" repeated Joe; "what Germans? Three blighters workin' on the
road, as English as you or me. Wot are you talkin' about, sir?"
"What!" cried Mr. Lavender do you tell me they were not Germans?"
"Well, their names was Tompkins, 'Obson, and Brown, and they 'adn't an
'aitch in their 'eads."
"God be praised!" said Mr. Lavender. "I am, then, still an English
gentleman. Joe, I am very hungry; is there nothing left?"
"Nothin' whatever, sir," replied Joe.
"Then take me home," said Mr. Lavender; "I care not, for my spirit has
come back to me."
So saying, he rose, and supported by Joe, made his way towards the car,
praising God in his heart that he had not disgraced his country.
IX
CONVERSES WITH A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR
"Yes," said Mr. Lavender, when they had proceeded some twenty miles along
the road for home, "my hunger is excessive. If we come across an hotel,
Joe, pull up."
"Right-o, sir," returned Joe. "'Otels, ain't what they were, but we'll
find something. I've got your coupons."
Mr. Lavender, who was seated beside his chauffeur on the driving-seat,
while Blink occupied in solitude the body of the car, was silent for a
minute, revolving a philosophic thought.
"Do you find," he said suddenly, "that compulsory sacrifice is doing you
good, Joe?"
"It's good for my thirst, sir," replied Joe. "Never was so powerful
thirsty in me life as I've been since they watered beer. There's just
'enough in it to tickle you. That bottle o' Bass you would 'ave 'ad at
lunch is the last of the old stock at 'ome, sir; an' the sight of it fair
gave me the wind up. To think those blighters 'ad it! Wish I'd known
they was Germans--I wouldn't 'ave weakened on it."
"Do not, I beg," said Mr. Lavender, "remind me of that episode. I
sometimes think," he went on as dreamily as his hunger would permit,
"that being forced to deprive oneself awakens one's worst passions; that
is, of course, speaking rather as a man than a public man. What do you
think will happen, Joe, when we are no longer obliged to sacrifice
ourselves?
"Do wot we've been doin all along--sacrifice someone else," said Joe
lightly.
"Be serious, Joe," said Mr. Lavender.
"Well," returned Joe, "I don't know what'll 'appen to you, sir, but I
shall go on the bust permanent."
Mr. Lavender sighed. "I do so wonder whether I shall, too," he said.
Joe looked round at him, and a gleam of compassion twinkled in his
greenish eyes. "Don't you worry, sir," he said; "it's a question of
constitootion. A week'd sew you up."
"A week!" said Mr. Lavender with watering lips, "I trust I may not forget
myself so long as that. Public men do not go 'on the bust,' Joe, as you
put it."
"Be careful, sir! I can't drive with one eye."
"How can they, indeed?" went on Mr. Lavender; "they are like athletes,
ever in training for their unending conflict with the national life."
"Well," answered Joe indulgently, "they 'as their own kind of
intoxication, too--that's true; and the fumes is permanent; they're
gassed all the time, and chloroformed the rest.
"I don't know to what you allude, Joe," said Mr. Lavender severely.
"'Aven't you never noticed, sir, that there's two worlds--the world as it
is, and the world as it seems to the public man?"
"That may be," said Mr. Lavender with some excitement. "But which is the
greater, which is the nobler, Joe? And what does the other matter?
Surely that which flourishes in great minds, and by their utterances is
made plain. Is it not better to live in a world where nobody shrinks
from being starved or killed so long as they can die for their kings and
countries, rather than in a world where people merely wish to live?"
"Ah!" said Joe, "we're all ready to die for our countries if we've got
to. But we don't look on it, like the public speakers, as a picnic.
They're a bit too light-'earted."
"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, covering his ears, and instantly uncovering
them again, "this is the most horrible blasphemy I have ever listened
to."
"I can do better than that, sir," answered Joe. "Shall I get on with
it?"
"Yes," said Mr. Lavender, clenching his hands, "a public man shrinks from
nothing--not even from the gibes of his enemies."
"Well, wot abaht it, sir? Look at the things they say, and at what
really is. Mind you, I'm not speakin' particular of the public men in
this country--or any other country; I'm speakin' of the lot of 'em in
every country. They're a sort of secret society, brought up on gas. And
every now and then someone sets a match to it, and we get it in the neck.
Look 'ere, sir. Dahn squats one on his backside an' writes something in
'igh words. Up pops another and says something in 'igher; an' so they go
on poppin' up an' squattin' dahn till you get an atmosphere where you
can't breathe; and all the time all we want is to be let alone, and 'uman
kindness do the rest. All these fellers 'ave got two weaknesses--one's
ideas, and the other's their own importance. They've got to be
conspicuous, and without ideas they can't, so it's a vicious circle. When
I see a man bein' conspicuous, I says to meself: 'Gawd 'elp us, we shall
want it!' And sooner or later we always do. I'll tell you what's the
curse of the world, sir; it's the gift of expressin' what ain't your real
feeling. And--Lord! what a lot of us 'ave got it!"
"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, whose eyes were almost starting from his head,
"your words are the knell of poetry, philosophy, and prose--especially of
prose. They are the grave of history, which, as you know, is made up of
the wars and intrigues which have originated in the brains of public men.
If your sordid views were true, how do you suppose for one minute that in
this great epic struggle we could be consoled by the thought that we are
'making history'? Has there been a single utterance of any note which
has not poured the balm of those words into our ears? Think how they
have sustained the widow and the orphan, and the wounded lying out in
agony under the stars. 'To make history,' 'to act out the great drama'
--that thought, ever kept before us, has been our comfort and their stay.
And you would take it from us? Shame--shame!" repeated Mr. Lavender. You
would destroy all glamour, and be the death of every principle."
"Give me facts," said Joe stubbornly, "an' you may 'ave my principles. As
to the other thing, I don't know what it is, but you may 'ave it, too.
And 'ere's another thing, sir: haven't you never noticed that when a
public man blows off and says something, it does 'im in? No matter what
'appens afterwards, he's got to stick to it or look a fool."
"I certainly have not," said Mr. Lavender. I have never, or very seldom,
noticed that narrowness in public men, nor have I ever seen them 'looking
fools' as you rudely put it."
"Where are your eyes, sir?" answered Joe; "where are your eyes? I give
you my word it's one or the other, though I admit they've brought
camouflage to an 'igh art. But, speaking soberly, sir, if that's
possible, public men are a good thing' and you can 'ave too much of it.
But you began it, sir," he added soothingly, "and 'ere's your hotel.
You'll feel better with something inside you."
So saying, he brought the car to a standstill before a sign which bore
the words, "Royal Goat."
Mr. Lavender, deep sunk in the whirlpool of feeling which had been
stirred in him by his chauffeur's cynicism, gazed at the square redbrick
building with bewildered eyes.
"It's quite O. K.," said Joe; "I used to call here regular when I was
travellin' in breeches. Where the commercials are gathered together the
tap is good," he added, laying a finger against the side of his nose.
"And they've a fine brand of pickles. Here's your coupon."
Thus encouraged, Mr. Lavender descended from the car, and, accompanied by
Blink, entered the hotel and sought the coffee-room.
A maid of robust and comely appearance, with a fine free eye, divested
him of his overcoat and the coupon, and pointed to a table and a pale and
intellectual-looking young man in spectacles who was eating.
"Have you any more beef?" said the latter without looking up.
"No, sir," replied the maid.
"Then bring me the ham and eggs," he added.
"Here's another coupon--and anything else you've got."
Mr. Lavender, whose pangs had leaped in him at the word "beef," gazed at
the bare bone of the beef-joint, and sighed.
"I, too, will have some ham and a couple of poached eggs," he said.
"You can have ham, sir," replied the maid, "but there are only eggs
enough for one."
"And I am the one," said the young man, looking up for the first time.
Mr. Lavender at once conceived an aversion from him; his appearance was
unhealthy, and his eyes ravened from behind the spectacles beneath his
high forehead.
"I have no wish to deprive you of your eggs, sir," he said, "though I
have had nothing to eat all day."
"I have had nothing to eat to speak of for six months," replied the young
man, "and in a fortnight's time I shall have nothing to eat again for two
years."
Mr. Lavender, who habitually spoke, the truth, looked at him with a sort
of horror. But the young man had again concentrated his attention on his
plate. "How deceptive are appearances," thought Mr. Lavender; "one would
say an intellectual, not to say a spiritual type, and yet he eats like a
savage, and lies like a trooper!" And the pinchings of his hunger again
attacking him, he said rather acidly:
May I ask you, sir, whether you consider it amusing to tell such untruths
to a stranger?
The young man, who had finished what was on his plate, paused, and with a
faint smile said:
"I spoke figuratively. You, sir, I expect, have never been in prison."
At the word 'prison' Mr. Lavender's natural kindliness reasserted itself
at once. "Forgive me," he said gently; "please eat all the ham. I can
easily do with bread and cheese. I am extremely sorry you have had that
misfortune, and would on no account do anything which might encourage you
to incur it again. If it is a question of money or anything of that
sort," he went on timidly, "please command me. I abhor prisons; I
consider them inhuman; people should only be confined upon their
honours."
The young man's eyes kindled behind his spectacles.
"I have been confined," he said, "not upon my honour, but because of my
honour; to break it in."
"How is that?" cried Mr. Lavender, aghast, "to break it in?"
"Yes," said the young man, cutting a large slice of bread, "there's no
other way of putting it with truth. They want me to go back on my word
to go back on my faith, and I won't. In a fortnight's time they'll gaol
me again, so I MUST eat--excuse me. I shall want all my strength." And
he filled his mouth too full to go on speaking.
Mr. Lavender stared at him, greatly perturbed.
"How unjustly I judged him," he thought; and seeing that the maid had
placed the end of a ham before him he began carving off what little there
was left on it, and, filling a plate, placed it before the young man. The
latter thanked him, and without looking up ate rapidly on. Mr. Lavender
watched him with beaming eyes. "It's lovely to see him!" he thought;
"poor fellow!"
"Where are the eggs?" said the young man suddenly.
Mr. Lavender got up and rang the bell.
"Please bring those eggs for him," he said.
"Yes, sir," said the maid. "And what are you going to have? There's
nothing in the house now."
"Oh!" said Mr. Lavender, startled. "A cup of coffee and a slice of
bread, thank you. I can always eat at any time."
The maid went away muttering to herself, and bringing the eggs, plumped
them down before the young man, who ate them more hastily than words
could tell.
"I mean," he said, "to do all I can in this fort-night to build up my
strength. I shall eat almost continuously. They shall never break me."
And, reaching out, he took the remainder of the loaf.
Mr. Lavender watched it disappear with a certain irritation which he
subdued at once. "How selfish of me," he thought, "even to think of
eating while this young hero is still hungry."
"Are you, then," he said, "the victim of some religious or political
plot?"
"Both," replied the young man, leaning back with a sigh of repletion, and
wiping his mouth. "I was released to-day, and, as I said, I shall be
court-martialled again to-day fortnight. It'll be two years this time.
But they can't break me."
Mr. Lavender gasped, for at the word "courtmartialled" a dreadful doubt
had assailed him.
"Are you," he stammered--"you are not--you cannot be a Conscientious
Objector?"
"I can," said the young man.
Mr. Lavender half rose in horror.
"I don't approve," he ejaculated; "I do not approve of you."
"Of course not," said the young man with a little smile at once proud and
sad, "who does? If you did I shouldn't have to eat like this, nor should
I have the consciousness of spiritual loneliness to sustain me. You look
on me as a moral outcast, as a leper. That is my comfort and my
strength. For though I have a genuine abhorrence of war, I know full
well that I could not stick this if it were not for the feeling that I
must not and will not lower myself to the level of mere opportunists like
you, and sink myself in the herd of men in the street."
At hearing himself thus described Mr. Lavender flushed.
"I yield to no one," he said, "in my admiration of principle. It is
because of my principles that I regard you as a----"
"Shirker," put in the young man calmly. "Go on; don't mince words; we're
used to them."
"Yes," said Mr. Lavender, kindling, "a shirker. Excuse me! A renegade
from the camp of Liberty, a deserter from the ranks of Humanity, if you
will pardon me."
"Say a Christian, and have done with it," said the young man.
"No," said Mr. Lavender, who had risen to his feet, "I will not go so far
as that. You are not a Christian, you are a Pharisee. I abhor you."
"And I abhor you," said the young man suddenly. "I am a Christian
Socialist, but I refuse to consider you my brother. And I can tell you
this: Some day when through our struggle the triumph of Christian
Socialism and of Peace is assured, we shall see that you firebrands and
jingoes get no chance to put up your noxious heads and disturb the
brotherhood of the world. We shall stamp you out. We shall do you in.
We who believe in love will take jolly good care that you apostles of
hate get all we've had and more--if you provoke us enough that is."
He stopped, for Mr. Lavender's figure had rigidified on the other side of
the table into the semblance of one who is about to address the House of
Lords.
"I can find here," he cried, "no analogy with religious persecution. This
is a simple matter. The burden of defending his country falls equally on
every citizen. I know not, and I care not, what promises were made to
you, or in what spirit the laws of compulsory service were passed. You
will either serve or go to prison till you do. I am a plain Englishman,
expressing the view of my plain countrymen."
The young man, tilting back in his chair, rapped on the table with the
handle of his dinner-knife.
"Hear, hear!" he murmured.
"And let me tell you this," continued Mr. Lavender, "you have no right to
put a mouthful of food between your lips so long as you are not prepared
to die for it. And if the Huns came here tomorrow I would not lift a
finger to save you from the fate you would undoubtedly receive."
During this colloquy their voices had grown so loud that the maid,
entering in dismay, had gone into the bar and informed the company that a
Conscientious Objector had eaten all the food and was "carrying on
outrageous" in the coffee-room. On hearing this report those who were
assembled--being four commercial travellers far gone in liquor--taking up
the weapons which came nearest to hand--to wit, four syphons--formed
themselves two deep and marched into the coffee-room. Aware at once from
Mr. Lavender's white hair and words that he was not the Objector in
question, they advanced upon the young man, who was still seated, and
taking up the four points of the compass, began squirting him
unmercifully with soda-water. Blinded and dripping, the unfortunate
young fellow tried desperately to elude the cordon of his persecutors,
only to receive a fresh stream in his face at each attempt. Seeing him
thus tormented, amid the coarse laughter of these half-drunken
"travellers," Mr. Lavender suffered a moment of the most poignant
struggle between his principles and his chivalry. Then, almost
unconsciously grasping the ham-bone, he advanced and called out loudly:
"Stop! Do not persecute that young man. You are four and he is one.
Drop it, I tell you--Huns that you are!"
The commercial fellows, however, laughed; and this infuriating Mr.
Lavender, he dealt one of them a blow with the ham-bone, which, lighting
on the funny point of his elbow, caused him to howl and spin round the
room. One of the others promptly avenged him with a squirt of syphon in
Mr. Lavender's left eye; whereon he incontinently attacked them all,
whirling the ham-bone round his head like a shillelagh. And had it not
been that Blink and the maid seized his coat-tails he would have done
them severe injury. It was at this moment that Joe Petty, attracted by
the hullabaloo, arrived in the doorway, and running up to his master,
lifted him from behind and carried him from the room, still brandishing
the ham-bone and kicking out with his legs. Dumping him into the car,
Joe mounted hastily and drove off. Mr. Lavender sat for two or three
minutes coming to his senses before full realization of what he had done
dawned on him. Then, flinging the ham-bone from him, he sank back among
the cushions, with his chin buried on his chest. "What have I done?" he
thought over and over again. "What have I done? Taken up the bone for a
Conscientious Objector--defended a renegade against great odds! My God!
I am indeed less than a public man!"
And in this state of utter dejection, inanition, and collapse, with Blink
asleep on his feet, he was driven back to Hampstead.
X
DREAMS A DREAM AND SEES A VISION
Though habitually abstemious, Mr. Lavender was so very hungry that
evening when he sat down to supper that he was unable to leave the
lobster which Mrs. Petty had provided until it was reduced to mere
integument. Since his principles prevented his lightening it with
anything but ginger-beer he went to bed in some discomfort, and, tired
out with the emotions of the day, soon fell into a heavy slumber, which
at dawn became troubled by a dream of an extremely vivid character. He
fancied himself, indeed, dressed in khaki, with a breastplate composed of
newspapers containing reports of speeches which he had been charged to
deliver to soldiers at the front. He was passing in a winged tank along
those scenes of desolation of which he had so often read in his daily
papers, and which his swollen fancy now coloured even more vividly than
had those striking phrases of the past, when presently the tank turned a
somersault, and shot him out into a morass lighted up by countless
star-shells whizzing round and above. In this morass were hundreds and
thousands of figures sunk like himself up to the waist, and waving their
arms above their heads. "These," thought Mr. Lavender, "must be the
soldiers I have come to speak to," and he tore a sheet off his
breastplate; but before he could speak from its columns it became thin
air in his hand; and he went on tearing off sheet after sheet, hoping to
find a speech which would stay solid long enough for him to deliver it.
At last a little corner stayed substantial in his hand, and he called out
in a loud voice: "Heroes!"
But at the word the figures vanished with a wail, sinking into the mud,
which was left covered with bubbles iridescent in the light of the
star-shells. At this moment one of these, bursting over his head, turned
into a large bright moon; and Mr. Lavender saw to his amazement that the
bubbles were really butterflies, perched on the liquid moonlit mud,
fluttering their crimson wings, and peering up at him with tiny human
faces. "Who are you?" he cried; "oh! who are you?" The butterflies
closed their wings; and on each of their little faces came a look so sad
and questioning that Mr. Lavender's tears rolled down into his
breastplate of speeches. A whisper rose from them. "We are the dead."
And they flew up suddenly in swarms, and beat his face with their wings.
Mr. Lavender woke up sitting in the middle of the floor, with light
shining in on him through a hole in the curtain, and Blink licking off
the tears which were streaming down his face.
"Blink," he said, "I have had a horrible dream." And still conscious of
that weight on his chest, as of many undelivered speeches, he was afraid
to go back to bed; so, putting on some clothes, he went carefully
downstairs and out of doors into the morning. He walked with his dog
towards the risen sun, alone in the silvery light of Hampstead,
meditating deeply on his dream. "I have evidently," he thought, "not yet
acquired that felicitous insensibility which is needful for successful
public speaking. This is undoubtedly the secret of my dream. For the
sub-conscious knowledge of my deficiency explains the weight on my chest
and the futile tearing of sheet after sheet, which vanished as I tore
them away. I lack the self-complacency necessary to the orator in any
surroundings, and that golden certainty which has enchanted me in the
outpourings of great men, whether in ink or speech. This is, however, a
matter which I can rectify with practice." And coming to a little
may-tree in full blossom, he thus addressed it:
"Little tree, be my audience, for I see in you, tipped with the sunlight,
a vision of the tranquil and beautiful world, which, according to every
authority, will emerge out of this carnival of blood and iron."
And the little tree lifted up its voice and answered him with the song of
a blackbird.
Mr. Lavender's heart, deeply responsive to the voice of Nature, melted
within him.
"What are the realms of this earth, the dreams of statesmen, and all
plots and policies," he said, "compared with the beauty of this little
tree? She--or is it a he?--breathes, in her wild and simple dress, just
to be lovely and loved. He harbours the blackbird, and shakes fragrance
into the morning; and with her blossom catches the rain and the sun drops
of heaven. I see in him the witchery of God; and of her prettiness would
I make a song of redemption."
So saying he knelt down before the little tree, while Blink on her
haunches, very quiet beside him, looked wiser than many dogs.
A familiar gurgling sound roused him from his devotions, and turning his
head he saw his young neighbour in the garb of a nurse, standing on the
path behind him. "She has dropped from heaven," he thought for all
nurses are angels.
And, taking off his hat, he said:
"You surprised me at a moment of which I am not ashamed; I was communing
with Beauty. And behold! Aurora is with me."
"Say, rather, Borealis," said the young lady. "I was so fed-up with
hospital that I had to have a scamper before turning in. If you're going
home we might go together?"
"It would, indeed, be a joy," said Mr. Lavender. "The garb of mercy
becomes you."
"Do you think so?" replied the young lady, in whose cheeks a lovely flush
had not deepened. "I call it hideous. Do you always come out and pray
to that tree?"
"I am ashamed to say," returned Mr. Lavender, "that I do not. But I
intend to do so in future, since it has brought me such a vision."
And he looked with such deferential and shining eyes at his companion
that she placed the back of her hand before her mouth, and her breast
rose.
"I'm most fearfully sleepy," she said. "Have you had any adventures
lately--you and Samjoe?
"Samjoe?" repeated Mr. Lavender.
"Your chauffeur--I call him that. He's very like Sam Weller and Sancho
Panza, don't you think, Don Pickwixote?
"Ah!" said Mr. Lavender, bewildered; "Joe, you mean. A good fellow. He
has in him the sort of heroism which I admire more than any other."
"Which is that?" asked the young lady.
"That imperturbable humour in the face of adverse circumstances for which
our soldiers are renowned."
"You are a great believer in heroics, Don Pickwixote," said the young
lady.
"What would life be without them?" returned Mr. Lavender. "The war could
not go on for a minute."
"You're right there," said the young lady bitterly.
"You surely," said Mr. Lavender, aghast, cannot wish it to stop until we
have destroyed our common enemies?"
"Well," said the young lady, "I'm not a Pacifist; but when you see as
many people without arms and legs as I do, heroics get a bit off, don't
you know." And she increased her pace until Mr. Lavender, who was not
within four inches of her stature, was almost compelled to trot. "If I
were a Tommy," she added, "I should want to shoot every man who uttered a
phrase. Really, at this time of day, they are the limit."
"Aurora," said Mr. Lavender, "if you will permit me, who am old enough
--alas!--to be your father, to call you that, you must surely be aware
that phrases are the very munitions of war, and certainly not less
important than mere material explosives. Take the word 'Liberty,' for
instance; would you deprive us of it?"
The young lady fixed on him those large grey eyes which had in them the
roll of genius. "Dear Don Pickwixote," she said, "I would merely take it
from the mouths of those who don't know what it means; and how much do
you think would be left? Not enough to butter the parsnips of a Borough
Council, or fill one leader in a month of Sundays. Have you not
discovered, Don Pickwixote, that Liberty means the special form of
tyranny which one happens to serve under; and that our form of tyranny is
GAS."
"High heaven!" cried Mr. Lavender, "that I should hear such words from so
red lips!"
"I've not been a Pacifist, so far," continued the young lady, stifling a
yawn, "because I hate cruelty, I hate it enough to want to be cruel to
it. I want the Huns to lap their own sauce. I don't want to be
revengeful, but I just can't help it."
"My dear young lady," said Mr. Lavender soothingly, "you are not--you
cannot be revengeful; for every great writer and speaker tells us that
revengefulness is an emotion alien to the Allies, who are merely just.
"Rats!"
At this familiar word, Blink who had been following their conversation
quietly, threw up her nose and licked the young lady's hand so
unexpectedly that she started and added:
"Darling!"
Mr. Lavender, who took the expression as meant for himself, coloured
furiously.
"Aurora," he said in a faint voice, "the rapture in my heart prevents my
taking advantage of your sweet words. Forgive me, and let us go quietly
in, with the vision I have seen, for I know my place."
The young lady's composure seemed to tremble in the balance, and her lips
twitched; then holding out her hand she took Mr. Lavender's and gave it a
good squeeze.
"You really are a dear," she said. "I think you ought to be in bed. My
name's Isabel, you know."
"Not to me," said Mr. Lavender. You are the Dawn; nothing shall persuade
me to the contrary. And from henceforth I swear to rise with you every
morning."
"Oh, no!" cried the young lady please don't imagine that I sniff the
matutinal as a rule. I just happened to be in a night shift."
"No matter," said Mr. Lavender; "I shall see you with the eye of faith,
in your night shifts, and draw from the vision strength to continue my
public work beckoned by the fingers of the roseate future."
"Well," murmured the young lady, "so long for now; and do go back to bed.
It's only about five." And waving the tips of those fingers, she ran
lightly up the garden-path and disappeared into her house.
Mr. Lavender remained for a moment as if transfigured; then entering his
garden, he stood gazing up at her window, until the thought that she
might appear there was too much for him, and he went in.
XI
BREAKS UP A PEACE MEETING
While seated at breakfast on the morning after he had seen this vision,
Mr. Lavender, who read his papers as though they had been Holy Writ, came
on an announcement that a meeting would be held that evening at a chapel
in Holloway under the auspices of the "Free Speakers' League," an
association which his journals had often branded with a reputation, for
desiring Peace. On reading the names of the speakers Mr. Lavender felt
at once that it would be his duty to attend. "There will," he thought,
"very likely be no one there to register a protest. For in this country
we have pushed the doctrine of free speech to a limit which threatens the
noble virtue of patriotism. This is no doubt a recrudescence of that
terrible horse-sense in the British people which used to permit everybody
to have his say, no matter what he said. Yet I would rather stay at
home," he mused "for they will do me violence, I expect; cowardice,
however, would not become me, and I must go."
He was in a state of flurry all day, thinking of his unpleasant duty
towards those violent persons, and garbishing up his memory by reading
such past leaders in his five journals as bore on the subject. He spoke
no word of his intentions, convinced that he ran a considerable risk at
the hands of the Pacifists, but too sensible of his honour to assist
anyone to put that spoke in his wheel which he could not help longing
for.
At six o'clock he locked Blink into his study, and arming himself with
three leaders, set forth on his perilous adventure. Seven o'clock saw
him hurrying along the dismal road to the chapel, at whose door he met
with an unexpected check.
"Where is your ticket?" said a large man.
"I have none," replied Mr. Lavender, disconcerted; "for this is a meeting
of the Free Speakers' League, and it is for that reason that I have
come."
The large man looked at him attentively. "No admittance without ticket,"
he said.
"I protest," said Mr. Lavender. "How can you call yourselves by that
name and not let me in?"
The large man smiled.
"Well, he said, you haven't the strength of--of a rabbit--in you go!"
Mr. Lavender found himself inside and some indignation.
The meeting had begun, and a tall man at the pulpit end, with the face of
a sorrowful bull, was addressing an audience composed almost entirely of
women and old men, while his confederates sat behind him trying to look
as if they were not present. At the end of a row, about half-way up the
chapel, Mr. Lavender composed himself to listen, thinking, "However eager
I may be to fulfil my duty and break up this meeting, it behoves me as a
fair-minded man to ascertain first what manner of meeting it is that I am
breaking up." But as the speaker progressed, in periods punctuated by
applause from what, by his experience at the door, Mr. Lavender knew to
be a packed audience, he grew more and more uneasy. It cannot be said
that he took in what the speaker was saying, obsessed as he was by the
necessity of formulating a reply, and of revolving, to the exclusion of
all else, the flowers and phrases of the leaders which during the day he
had almost learned by heart. But by nature polite he waited till the
orator was sitting down before he rose, and, with the three leaders
firmly grasped in his hand, walked deliberately up to the seated
speakers. Turning his back on them, he said, in a voice to which
nervousness and emotion lent shrillness:
"Ladies and gentlemen, it is now your turn, in accordance with the
tradition of your society, to listen to me. Let us not mince matters
with mealy mouths. There are in our midst certain viperous persons, like
that notorious gentleman who had the sulphurous impudence to have a
French father--French! gentlemen; not German, ladies-mark the cunning and
audacity of the fellow; like that renegade Labour leader, who has never
led anything, yet, if he had his will, would lead us all into the pit of
destruction; like those other high-brow emasculates who mistake their
pettifogging pedantry for pearls of price, and plaster the plain issue
before us with perfidious and Pacifistic platitudes. We say at once, and
let them note it, we will have none of them; we will have----" Here his
words were drowned by an interruption greater even than that; which was
fast gathering among the row of speakers behind him, and the surprised
audience in front; and he could see the large man being forced from the
door and up the aisle by a posse of noisy youths, till he stood with arms
pinioned, struggling to turn round, just in front of Mr. Lavender. Seeing
his speech thus endangered, the latter cried out at the top of his voice:
"Free speech, gentlemen, free speech; I have come here expressly to see
that we have nothing of the sort." At this the young men, who now filled
the aisle, raised a mighty booing.
"Gentlemen," shouted Mr. Lavender, waving his leaders, "gentlemen---" But
at this moment the large man was hurled into contact with what served Mr.
Lavender for stomach, and the two fell in confusion. An uproar ensued of
which Mr. Lavender was more than vaguely conscious, for many feet went
over him. He managed, however, to creep into a corner, and, getting up,
surveyed the scene. The young men who had invaded the meeting, much
superior in numbers and strength to the speakers, to the large man, and
the three or four other able-bodied persons who had rallied to them from
among the audience, were taking every advantage of their superiority; and
it went to Mr. Lavender's heart to see how they thumped and maltreated
their opponents. The sight of their brutality, indeed, rendered him so
furious that, forgetting all his principles and his purpose in coming to
the meeting, he climbed on to a form, and folding his arms tightly on his
breast, called out at the top of his voice:
"Cads! Do not thus take advantage of your numbers. Cads!" Having thus
defended what in his calmer moments he would have known to be the wrong,
he awaited his own fate calmly. But in the hubbub his words had passed
unnoticed. "It is in moments like these," he thought, "that the great
speaker asserts his supremacy, quells the storm, and secures himself a
hearing." And he began to rack his brains to remember how they did it.
"It must require the voice of an ox," he thought, "and the skin of an
alligator. Alas! How deficient I am in public qualities!" But his
self-depreciation was here cut off with the electric light. At this
sheer intervention of Providence Mr. Lavender, listening to the
disentangling sounds which rose in the black room, became aware that he
had a chance such as he had not yet had of being heard.
"Stay, my friends!" he said; "here in darkness we can see better the true
proportions of this great question of free speech. There are some who
contend that in a democracy every opinion should be heard; that, just
because the good sense of the majority will ever lead the country into
the right paths, the minority should be accorded full and fair
expression, for they cannot deflect the country's course, and because
such expression acts as a healthful safety-valve. Moreover, they say
there is no way of preventing the minority from speaking save that of
force, which is unworthy of a majority, and the negation of what we are
fighting for in this war. But I say, following the great leader-writers,
that in a time of national danger nobody ought to say anything except
what is in accord with the opinions of the majority; for only in this way
can we present a front which will seem to be united to our common
enemies. I say, and since I am the majority I must be in the right, that
no one who disagrees with me must say anything if we are to save the
cause of freedom and humanity. I deprecate violence, but I am thoroughly
determined to stand no nonsense, and shall not hesitate to suppress by
every means in the power of the majority--including, if need be, Prussian
measures--any whisper from those misguided and unpatriotic persons whose
so-called principles induce them to assert their right to have opinions
of their own. This has ever been a free country, and they shall not
imperil its freedom by their volubility and self-conceit." Here Mr.
Lavender paused for breath, and in the darkness a faint noise, as of a
mouse scrattling at a wainscot, attracted his attention. "Wonderful," he
thought, elated by the silence, "that I should so have succeeded in
riveting their attention as to be able to hear a mouse gnawing. I must
have made a considerable impression." And, fearing to spoil it by further
speech, he set to work to grope his way round the chapel wall in the hope
of coming to the door. He had gone but a little way when his
outstretched hand came into contact with something warm, which shrank
away with a squeal.
"Oh!" cried Mr. Lavender, while a shiver went down his spine, "what is
that?"
"Me," said a stifled voice. "Who are you?"
"A public speaker, madam," answered Mr. Lavender, unutterably relieved.
Don't be alarmed.
"Ouch!" whispered the voice. That madman!
"I assure you, madam," replied Mr. Lavender, striving to regain contact,
"I wouldn't harm you for the world. Can you tell me in what portion of
the hall we are?" And crouching down he stretched out his arms and felt
about him. No answer came; but he could tell that he was between two
rows of chairs, and, holding to the top of one, he began to sidle along,
crouching, so as not to lose touch with the chairs behind him. He had
not proceeded the length of six chairs in the pitchy darkness when the
light was suddenly turned up, and he found himself glaring over the backs
of the chairs in front into the eyes of a young woman, who was crouching
and glaring back over the same chairs.
"Dear me," said Mr. Lavender, as with a certain dignity they both rose to
their full height, "I had no conception----"
Without a word, the young woman put her hand up to her back hair, sidled
swiftly down the row of chairs, ran down the aisle, and vanished. There
was no one else in the chapel. Mr. Lavender, after surveying the
considerable wreckage, made his way to the door and passed out into the
night. "Like a dream," he thought; "but I have done my duty, for no
meeting was ever more completely broken up. With a clear conscience and
a good appetite I can how go home."
XII
SPEEDS UP TRANSPORT, AND SEES A DOCTOR
Greatly cheered by his success at the Peace meeting, Mr. Lavender
searched his papers next morning to find a new field for his activities;
nor had he to read far before he came on this paragraph:
"Everything is dependent on transport, and we cannot sufficiently
urge that this should be speeded up by
every means in our power."
"How true!" he thought. And, finishing his breakfast hastily, he went
out with Blink to think over what he could do to help. "I can exhort,"
he mused, "anyone engaged in transport who is not exerting himself to the
utmost. It will not be pleasant to do so, for it will certainly provoke
much ill-feeling. I must not, however, be deterred by that, for it is
the daily concomitant of public life, and hard words break no bones, as
they say, but rather serve to thicken the skins and sharpen the tongues
of us public men, so that, we are able to meet our opponents with their
own weapons. I perceive before me, indeed, a liberal education in just
those public qualities wherein I am conscious of being as yet deficient."
And his heart sank within him, thinking of the carts on the hills of
Hampstead and the boys who drove them. "What is lacking to them," he
mused, "is the power of seeing this problem steadily and seeing it whole.
Let me endeavour to impart this habit to all who have any connection with
transport."
He had just completed this reflection when, turning a corner, he came on
a large van standing stockstill at the top of an incline. The driver was
leaning idly against the hind wheel filling a pipe. Mr. Lavender glanced
at the near horse, and seeing that he was not distressed, he thus
addressed the man:
"Do you not know, my friend, that every minute is of importance in this
national crisis? If I could get you to see the question of transport
steadily, and to see it whole, I feel convinced that you would not be
standing there lighting your pipe when perhaps this half-hour's delay in
the delivery of your goods may mean the death of one of your comrades at
the front."
The man, who was wizened, weathered, and old, with but few teeth, looked
up at him from above the curved hands with which he was coaxing the flame
of a match into the bowl of his pipe. His brow was wrinkled, and
moisture stood at the comers of his eyes.
"I assure you," went on Mr. Lavender, "that we have none of us the right
in these days to delay for a single minute the delivery of anything--not
even of speeches. When I am tempted to do so, I think of our sons and
brothers in the trenches, and how every shell and every word saves their
lives, and I deliver----"
The old man, who had finished lighting his pipe, took a long pull at it,
and said hoarsely:
"Go on!"
"I will," said Mr. Lavender, "for I perceive that I can effect a
revolution in your outlook, so that instead of wasting the country's time
by leaning against that wheel you will drive on zealously and help to win
the war."
The old man looked at him, and one side of his face became drawn up in a
smile, which seemed to Mr. Lavender so horrible that he said: "Why do you
look at me like that?"
"Cawn't 'elp it," said the man.
"What makes you," continued Mr. Lavender, "pause here with your job half
finished? It is not the hill which keeps you back, for you are at the
top, and your horses seem rested."
"Yes," said the old man, with another contortion of his face, "they're
rested--leastways, one of 'em."
"Then what delays you--if not that British sluggishness which we in
public life find such a terrible handicap to our efforts in conducting
the war?"
"Ah!" said the old man. "But out of one you don't make two, guv'nor. Git
on the offside and you'll see it a bit steadier and a bit 'oler than you
'ave 'itherto."
Struck by his words, which were accompanied by a painful puckering of the
checks, Mr. Lavender moved round the van looking for some defect in its
machinery, and suddenly became aware that the off horse was lying on the
ground, with the traces cut. It lay on its side, and did not move.
"Oh!" cried Mr. Lavender; "oh!" And going up to the horse's head he
knelt down. The animal's eye was glazing.
"Oh!" he cried again, "poor horse! Don't die!" And tears dropped out of
his eyes on to the horse's cheek. The eye seemed to give him a look, and
became quite glazed.
"Dead!" said Mr Lavender in an awed whisper. "This is horrible! What a
thin horse--nothing but bones!" And his gaze haunted the ridge and
furrow of the horse's carcase, while the living horse looked round and
down at its dead fellow, from whose hollow face a ragged forelock drooped
in the dust.
"I must go and apologize to that old man," said Mr. Lavender aloud, "for
no doubt he is even more distressed than I am."
"Not 'e, guv'nor," said a voice, and looking beside him he saw the aged
driver standing beside him; "not 'e; for of all the crool jobs I ever
'ad--drivin' that 'orse these last three months 'as been the croolest.
There 'e lies and 'es aht of it; and that's where they'd all like to be.
Speed, done 'im in, savin' 'is country's 'time an' 'is country's oats;
that done 'im in. A good old 'orse, a willin' old 'orse, 'as broke 'is
'eart tryin' to do 'is bit on 'alf rations. There 'e lies; and I'm glad
'e does." And with the back of his hand the old fellow removed some
brown moisture which was trembling on his jaw. Mr. Lavender rose from
his knees.
"Dreadful!--monstrous!" he cried; "poor horse! Who is responsible for
this?"
"Why," said the old driver, "the gents as sees it steady and sees it 'ole
from one side o' the van, same as you."
So smitten to the heart was Mr. Lavender by those words that he covered
his ears with his hands and almost ran from the scene, nor did he stop
till he had reached the shelter of his study, and was sitting in his
arm-chair with Blink upon his feet. "I will buy a go-cart," he thought,
"Blink and I will pull our weight and save the poor horses. We can at
least deliver our own milk and vegetables."
He had not been sitting there for half-an-hour revolving the painful
complexities of national life before the voice of Mrs. Petty recalled him
from that sad reverie.
"Dr. Gobang to see you, sir."
At sight of the doctor who had attended him for alcoholic poisoning Mr.
Lavender experienced one or those vaguely disagreeable sensations which
follow on half-realized insults.
"Good-morning, sir," said the doctor; thought I'd just look in and make
my mind easy about you. That was a nasty attack. Do you still feel your
back?"
"No," said Mr. Lavender rather coldly, while Blink growled.
"Nor your head?"
"I have never felt my head," replied Mr. Lavender, still more coldly.
"I seem to remember----" began the doctor.
"Doctor," said Mr. Lavender with dignity, "surely you know that public
men--do not feel--their heads--it would not do. They sometimes suffer
from their throats, but otherwise they have perfect health, fortunately."
The doctor smiled.
"Well, what do you think of the war?" he asked chattily.
"Be quiet, Blink," said Mr. Lavender. Then, in a far-away voice, he
added: "Whatever the clouds which have gathered above our heads for the
moment, and whatever the blows which Fate may have in store for us, we
shall not relax our efforts till we have attained our aims and hurled our
enemies back. Nor shall we stop there," he went on, warming at his own
words. "It is but a weak-kneed patriotism which would be content with
securing the objects for which we began to fight. We shall not hesitate
to sacrifice the last of our men, the last of our money, in the sacred
task of achieving the complete ruin of the fiendish Power which has
brought this great calamity on the world. Even if our enemies surrender
we will fight on till we have dictated terms on the doorsteps of
Potsdam."
The doctor, who, since Mr. Lavender began to speak, had been looking at
him with strange intensity, dropped his eyes.
"Quite so," he said heartily, "quite so. Well, good-morning. I only
just ran in!" And leaving Mr. Lavender to the exultation he was
evidently feeling, this singular visitor went out and closed the door.
Outside the garden-gate he rejoined the nephew Sinkin.
"Well?" asked the latter.
"Sane as you or me," said the doctor. "A little pedantic in his way of
expressing himself, but quite all there, really."
"Did his dog bite you?" muttered the nephew. "No," said the doctor
absently. "I wish to heaven everyone held his views. So long. I must
be getting on." And they parted.
But Mr. Lavender, after pacing the room six times, had sat down again in
his chair, with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, such as other
men feel on mornings after a debauch.
XIII
ADDRESSES SOME SOLDIERS ON THEIR FUTURE
On pleasant afternoons Mr. Lavender would often take his seat on one of
the benches which adorned the Spaniard's Road to enjoy the beams of the
sun and the towers of the City confused in smoky distance. And strolling
forth with Blink on the afternoon of the day on which the doctor had come
to see him he sat down to read a periodical, which enjoined on everyone
the necessity of taking the utmost interest in soldiers disabled by the
war. "Yes," he thought, "it is indeed our duty to force them, no matter
what their disablements, to continue and surpass the heroism they
displayed out there, and become superior to what they once were." And it
seemed to him a distinct dispensation of Providence when the rest of his
bench was suddenly occupied by three soldiers in the blue garments and
red ties of hospital life. They had been sitting there for some minutes,
divided by the iron bars necessary to the morals of the neighbourhood,
while Mr. Lavender cudgelled his brains for an easy and natural method of
approach, before Blink supplied the necessary avenue by taking her stand
before a soldier and looking up into his eye.
"Lord!" said the one thus accosted, "what a fyce! Look at her moustache!
Well, cocky, 'oo are you starin' at?"
"My dog," said Mr. Lavender, perceiving his chance, "has an eye for the
strange and beautiful.
"Wow said the soldier, whose face was bandaged, she'll get it 'ere, won't
she?"
Encouraged by the smiles of the soldier and his comrades, Mr. Lavender
went on in the most natural voice he could assume.
"I'm sure you appreciate, my friends, the enormous importance of your own
futures?"
The three soldiers, whose faces were all bandaged, looked as surprised as
they could between them, and did not answer. Mr. Lavender went on,
dropping unconsciously into the diction of the article he had been
reading: "We are now at the turning-point of the ways, and not a moment
is to be lost in impressing on the disabled man the paramount necessity
of becoming again the captain of his soul. He who was a hero in the
field must again lead us in those qualities of enterprise and endurance
which have made him the admiration of the world."
The three soldiers had turned what was visible of their faces towards Mr.
Lavender, and, seeing that he had riveted their attention, he proceeded:
"The apathy which hospital produces, together with the present scarcity
of labour, is largely responsible for the dangerous position in which the
disabled man now finds himself. Only we who have not to face his future
can appreciate what that future is likely to be if he does not make the
most strenuous efforts to overcome it. Boys," he added earnestly,
remembering suddenly that this was the word which those who had the
personal touch ever employed, "are you making those efforts? Are you
equipping your minds? Are you taking advantage of your enforced leisure
to place yourselves upon some path of life in which you can largely hold
your own against all comers?"
He paused for a reply.
The soldiers, silent for a moment, in what seemed to Mr. Lavender to be
sheer astonishment, began to fidget; then the one next him turned to his
neighbour, and said:
"Are we, Alf? Are we doin' what the gentleman says?"
"I can answer that for you," returned Mr. Lavender brightly; "for I can
tell by your hospitalized faces that you are living in the present; a
habit which, according to our best writers, is peculiar to the British. I
assure you," he went on with a winning look, "there is no future in that.
If you do not at once begin to carve fresh niches for yourselves in the
temple of industrialism you will be engulfed by the returning flood, and
left high and dry upon the beach of fortune."
During these last few words the half of an irritated look on the faces of
the soldiers changed to fragments of an indulgent and protective
expression.
"Right you are, guv'nor," said the one in the middle. Don't you worry,
we'll see you home all right.
"It is you," said Mr. Lavender, "that I must see home. For that is
largely the duty of us who have not had the great privilege of fighting
for our country."
These words, which completed the soldiers' conviction that Mr. Lavender
was not quite all there, caused them to rise.
"Come on, then," said one; we'll see each other home. We've got to be in
by five. You don't have a string to your dog, I see."
"Oh no!" said Mr. Lavender puzzled "I am not blind."
"Balmy," said the soldier soothingly. "Come on, sir, an' we can talk
abaht it on the way."
Mr. Lavender, delighted at the impression he had made, rose and walked
beside them, taking insensibly the direction for home.
"What do you advise us to do, then, guv'nor?" said one of the soldiers.
"Throw away all thought of the present," returned Mr. Lavender, with
intense earnestness; "forget the past entirely, wrap yourselves wholly in
the future. Do nothing which will give you immediate satisfaction. Do
not consider your families, or any of those transient considerations such
as pleasure, your homes, your condition of health, or your economic
position; but place yourselves unreservedly in the hands of those who by
hard thinking on this subject are alone in the condition to appreciate
the individual circumstances of each of you. For only by becoming a
flock of sheep can you be conducted into those new pastures where the
grass of your future will be sweet and plentiful. Above all, continue to
be the heroes which you were under the spur of your country's call, for
you must remember that your country is still calling you."
"That's right," said the soldier on Mr. Lavender's left. "Puss, puss!
Does your dog swot cats?"
At so irrelevant a remark Mr. Lavender looked suspiciously from left to
right, but what there was of the soldiers' faces told him nothing.
"Which is your hospital?" he asked.
"Down the 'ill, on the right," returned the soldier. "Which is yours?"
"Alas! it is not in a hospital that I----"
"I know," said the soldier delicately, "don't give it a name; no need.
We're all friends 'ere. Do you get out much?"
"I always take an afternoon stroll," said Mr. Lavender, "when my public
life permits. If you think your comrades would like me to come and
lecture to them on their future I should be only too happy."
"D'you 'ear, Alf?" said the soldier. "D'you think they would?"
The soldier, addressed put a finger to the sound side of his mouth and
uttered a catcall.
"I might effect a radical change in their views," continued Mr. Lavender,
a little puzzled. "Let me leave you this periodical. Read it, and you
will see how extremely vital all that I have been saying is. And then,
perhaps, if you would send me a round robin, such as is usual in a
democratic country, I could pop over almost any day after five. I
sometimes feel"--and here Mr. Lavender stopped in the middle of the road,
overcome by sudden emotion--"that I have really no right to be alive when
I see what you have suffered for me."
"That's all right, old bean,", said the soldier on his left; "you'd 'a
done the same for us but for your disabilities. We don't grudge it you."
"Boys," said Mr. Lavender, "you are men. I cannot tell you how much I
admire and love you."
"Well, give it a rest, then; t'ain't good for yer. And, look 'ere! Any
time they don't treat you fair in there, tip us the wink, and we'll come
over and do in your 'ousekeeper."
Mr. Lavender smiled.
"My poor housekeeper!" he said. "I thank you all the same for your
charming goodwill. This is where I live," he added, stopping at the gate
of the little house smothered in lilac and laburnum. "Can I offer you
some tea?"
The three soldiers looked at each other, and Mr. Lavender, noticing their
surprise, attributed it to the word tea.
"I regret exceedingly that I am a total abstainer," he said.
The remark, completing the soldiers' judgment of his case, increased
their surprise at the nature of his residence; it remained unanswered,
save by a shuffling of the feet.
Mr. Lavender took off his hat.
"I consider it a great privilege," he said, "to have been allowed to
converse with you. Goodbye, and God bless you!"
So saying, he opened the gate and entered his little garden carrying his
hat in his hand, and followed by Blink.
The soldiers watched him disappear within, then continued on their way
down the hill in silence.
"Blimy," said one suddenly, "some of these old civilians 'ave come it
balmy on the crumpet since the war began. Give me the trenches!"
XIV
ENDEAVOURS TO INTERN A GERMAN
Aglow with satisfaction at what he had been able to do for the wounded
soldiers, Mr. Lavender sat down in his study to drink the tea which he
found there. "There is nothing in life," he thought, "which gives one
such satisfaction as friendliness and being able to do something for
others. Moon-cat!"
The moon-cat, who, since Mr. Lavender had given her milk, abode in his
castle, awaiting her confinement, purred loudly, regarding him with
burning eyes, as was her fashion when she wanted milk, Mr. Lavender put
down the saucer and continued his meditations. "Everything is vain; the
world is full of ghosts and shadows; but in friendliness and the purring
of a little cat there is solidity."
"A lady has called, sir."
Looking up, Mr. Lavender became aware of Mrs. Petty.
"How very agreeable!
"I don't know, sir," returned his housekeeper in her decisive voice; "but
she wants to see you. Name of Pullbody."
"Pullbody," repeated Mr. Lavender dreamily; "I don't seem----Ask her in,
Mrs. Petty, ask her in."
"It's on your head, sir," said Mrs. Petty, and went out.
Mr. Lavender was immediately conscious of a presence in dark green silk,
with a long upper lip, a loose lower lip, and a fixed and faintly raddled
air, moving stealthily towards him.
"Sit down, madam, I beg. Will you have some tea?"
The lady sat down. "Thank you, I have had tea. It was on the
recommendation of your next-door neighbour, Miss Isabel Scarlet----"
"Indeed," replied Mr. Lavender, whose heart began to beat; "command me,
for I am entirely at her service."
"I have come to see you," began the lady with a peculiar sinuous smile,
"as a public man and a patriot."
Mr. Lavender bowed, and the lady went on: I am in very great trouble. The
fact is, my sister's husband's sister is married to a German."
"Is it possible, madam?" murmured Mr. Lavender, crossing his knees, and
joining the tips of his fingers.
"Yes," resumed the lady, "and what's more, he is still at large."
Mr. Lavender, into whose mind there had instantly rushed a flood of
public utterances, stood gazing at her haggard face in silent sympathy.
"You may imagine my distress, sir, and the condition of my conscience,"
pursued the lady, "when I tell you that my sister's husband's sister is a
very old friend of mine--and, indeed, so was this German. The two are a
very attached young couple, and, being childless, are quite wrapped up in
each other. I have come to you, feeling it my duty to secure his
internment."
Mr. Lavender, moved by the human element in her words, was about to say,
"But why, madam?" when the lady continued:
"I have not myself precisely heard him speak well of his country. But
the sister of a friend of mine who was having tea in their house
distinctly heard him say that there were two sides to every question, and
that he could not believe all that was said in the English papers.
"Dear me!" said Mr. Lavender, troubled; "that is serious."
"Yes," went on the lady; "and on another occasion my sister's husband
himself heard him remark that a man could not help loving his country and
hoping that it would win."
"But that is natural," began Mr. Lavender.
"What!" said the lady, nearly rising, "when that country is Germany?"
The word revived Mr. Lavender's sense of proportion.
"True," he said, "true. I was forgetting for the moment. It is
extraordinary how irresponsible one's thoughts are sometimes. Have you
reason to suppose that he is dangerous?"
"I should have thought that what I have said might have convinced you,"
replied the lady reproachfully; "but I don't wish you to act without
satisfying yourself. It is not as if you knew him, of course. I have
easily been able to get up an agitation among his friends, but I should
not expect an outsider--so I thought if I gave you his address you could
form your own opinion."
"Yes," murmured Mr. Lavender, "yes. It is in the last degree undesirable
that any man of German origin should remain free to work possible harm to
our country. There is no question in this of hatred or of mere rabid
patriotism," he went on, in a voice growing more and more far-away; it is
largely the A. B. C. of common prudence."
"I ought to say," interrupted his visitor, "that we all thought him, of
course, an honourable man until this war, or we should not have been his
friends. He is a dentist," she added, "and, I suppose, may be said to be
doing useful work, which makes it difficult. I suggest that you go to
him to have a tooth out."
Mr. Lavender quivered, and insensibly felt his teeth.
"Thank you," he said I will see if I can find one. It is certainly a
matter which cannot be left to chance. We public men, madam, often have
to do very hard and even inhumane things for no apparent reason. Our
consciences alone support us. An impression, I am told, sometimes gets
abroad that we yield to clamour. Those alone who know us realize how
unfounded that aspersion is."
"This is his address," said the lady, rising, and handing him an
envelope. "I shall not feel at rest until he is safely interned. You
will not mention my name, of course. It is tragic to be obliged to work
against one's friends in the dark. Your young neighbour spoke in
enthusiastic terms of your zeal, and I am sure that in choosing you for
my public man she was not pulling--er--was not making a mistake."
Mr. Lavender bowed.
"I hope not, madam, he said humbly I try to do my duty."
The lady smiled her sinuous smile and moved towards the door, leaving on
the air a faint odour of vinegar and sandalwood.
When she was gone Mr. Lavender sat down on the edge of his chair before
the tea-tray and extracted his teeth while Blink, taking them for a bone,
gazed at them lustrously, and the moon-cat between his feet purred from
repletion. "There is reason in all things," he thought, running his
finger over what was left in his mouth, "but not in patriotism, for that
would prevent us from consummating the destruction of our common enemies.
It behoves us public men ever to set an extreme example. Which one can I
spare, I wonder?" And he fixed upon a large rambling tooth on the left
wing of his lower jaw. "It will hurt horribly, I'm afraid; and if I have
an anaesthetic there will be someone else present; and not improbably I
shall feel ill afterwards, and be unable to form a clear judgment. I
must steel myself. Blink!"
For Blink was making tremulous advances to the teeth. "How pleasant to
be a dog!" thought Mr. Lavender, "and know nothing of Germans and teeth.
I shall be very unhappy till this is out; but Aurora recommended me, and
I must not complain, but rather consider myself the most fortunate of
public men." And, ruffling his hair till it stood up all over his head,
while his loose eyebrow worked up and down, he gazed at the moon-cat.
"Moon-cat," he said suddenly, "we are but creatures of chance, unable to
tell from one day to another what Fate has in store for us. My tooth is
beginning to ache already. That is, perhaps, as it should be, for I
shall not forget which one it is." So musing he resumed his teeth; and,
going to his bookcase, sought fortitude and inspiration in the records of
a Parliamentary debate on enemy aliens.
It was not without considerable trepidation, however, on the following
afternoon that he made his way up Welkin Street, and rang at the number
on the envelope in his hand.
"Yes sir, doctor is at home," said the maid.
Mr. Lavender's heart was about to fail him when, conjuring up the vision
of Aurora, he said in a faint voice: "I wish to see him professionally."
And, while the maid departed up the stairs, he waited in the narrow hall,
alternately taking his hat off and putting it on again, so great was his
spiritual confusion.
"Doctor will see you at once, sir."
Putting his hat on hastily, Mr. Lavender followed her upstairs, feeling
at his tooth to make quite sure that he remembered which it was. His
courage mounted as he came nearer to his fate, and he marched into the
room behind the maid holding his hat on firmly with one hand and his
tooth in firmly with the other. There, beside a red velvet dentist's
chair, he saw a youngish man dressed in a white coat, with round eyes and
a domestic face, who said in good English:
"What can I do for you, my dear sir? I fear you are in bain."
"In great pain," replied Mr. Lavender faintly, "in great pain." And,
indeed, he was; for the nervous crisis from which he was suffering had
settled in the tooth, on which he still pressed a finger through his
cheek.
"Sit down, sir, sit down," said the young man, "and perhaps it would be
better if you should remove your hat. We shall not hurd you--no, no, we
shall not hurd you."
At those words, which seemed to cast doubt on his courage, Mr. Lavender
recovered all his presence of mind. He took off his hat, advanced
resolutely to the chair, sat down in it, and, looking up, said:
"Do to me what you will; I shall not flinch, nor depart in any way from
the behaviour of those whose duty it is to set an example to others."
So saying, he removed his teeth, and placing them in a bowl on the little
swinging table which he perceived on his left hand, he closed his eyes,
put his finger in his mouth, and articulated:
"'Ith one."
"Excuse me, sir," said the young German, "but do you wish a dooth oud?"
"'At ish my deshire," said Mr. Lavender, keeping his finger on his tooth,
and his eyes closed. "'At one."
"I cannot give you gas without my anaesthedist."
"I dow," said Mr. Lavender; "be wick."
And, feeling the little cold spy-glass begin to touch his gums, he
clenched his hands and thought: "This is the moment to prove that I, too,
can die for a good cause. If I am not man enough to bear for my country
so small a woe I can never again look Aurora in the face."
The voice of the young dentist dragged him rudely from the depth of his
resignation.
"Excuse me, but which dooth did you say?"
Mr. Lavender again inserted his finger, and opened his eyes.
The dentist shook his head. "Imbossible," he said; "that dooth is
perfectly sound. The other two are rotten. But they do not ache?"
Mr. Lavender shook his head and repeated:
"At one."
"You are my first client this week, sir," said the young German calmly,
"but I cannot that dooth dake out."
At those words Mr. Lavender experienced a sensation as if his soul were
creeping back up his legs; he spoke as it reached his stomach.
"Noc?" he said.
"No," replied the young German. It is nod the dooth which causes you the
bain.
Mr. Lavender, suddenly conscious that he had no pain, took his finger
out.
"Sir," he said, "I perceive that you are an honourable man. There is
something sublime in your abnegation if, indeed, you have had no other
client this week.
"No fear," said the young German. "Haf I, Cicely?"
Mr. Lavender became conscious for the first time of a young woman leaning
up against the wall, with a pair of tweezers in her hand.
"Take it out, Otto," she said in a low voice, "if he wants it."
"No no," said Mr. Lavender sharply, resuming his teeth; "I would not for
the world burden your conscience."
"My clients are all batriots," said the young dentist, "and my bractice
is Kaput. We are in a bad way, sir," he added, with a smile, "but we try
to do the correct ting."
Mr. Lavender saw the young woman move the tweezers in a manner which
caused his blood to run a little cold.
"We must live," he heard her say.
"Young madam," he said, "I honour the impulse which makes you desire to
extend your husband's practice. Indeed, I perceive you both to be so
honourable that I cannot but make you a confession. My tooth is indeed
sound, though, since I have been pretending that it isn't, it has caused
me much discomfort. I came here largely to form an opinion of your
husband's character, with a view to securing his internment."
At that word the two young people shrank together till they were standing
side by side, staring at Mr Lavender with eyes full of anxiety and
wonder. Their hands, which still held the implements of dentistry,
insensibly sought each other.
"Be under no apprehension," cried Mr. Lavender, much moved; "I can see
that you are greatly attached, and even though your husband is a German,
he is still a man, and I could never bring myself to separate him from
you."
"Who are you?" said the young woman in a frightened voice, putting her
arm round her husband's waist.
"Just a public man," answered Mr. Lavender.
"I came here from a sense of duty; nothing more, assure you."
"Who put you up to it?"
"That," said Mr. Lavender, bowing as best he could from the angle he was
in, "I am not at liberty to disclose. But, believe me, you have nothing
to fear from this visit; I shall never do anything to distress a woman.
And please charge me as if the tooth had been extracted."
The young German smiled, and shook his head.
"Sir," he said, "I am grateful to you for coming, for it shows us what
danger we are in. The hardest ting to bear has been the uncertainty of
our bosition, and the feeling that our friends were working behind our
backs. Now we know that this is so we shall vordify our souls to bear
the worst. But, tell me," he went on, "when you came here, surely you
must have subbosed that to tear me away from my wife would be very
bainful to her and to myself. You say now you never could do that, how
was it, then, you came?"
"Ah, sir!" cried Mr. Lavender, running his hands through his hair and
staring at the ceiling, "I feared this might seem inconsistent to your
logical German mind. But there are many things we public men would never
do if we could see them being done. Fortunately, as a rule we cannot.
Believe me, when I leave you I shall do my best to save you from a fate
which I perceive to be unnecessary."
So saying, he rose from the chair, and, picking up his hat, backed
towards the door.
"I will not offer you my hand," he said, "for I am acutely conscious that
my position is neither dignified nor decent. I owe you a tooth that I
shall not readily forget. Good-bye!"
XV.
And backing through the doorway he made his way down the stairs and out
into the street, still emotionalized by the picture of the two young
people holding each other by the waist. He had not, however, gone far
before reason resumed its sway, and he began to see that the red velvet
chair in which he had been sitting was in reality a wireless apparatus
reaching to Berlin, or at least concealed a charge of dynamite to blow up
some King or Prime Minister; and that the looking-glasses, of which he
had noticed two at least, were surely used for signalling to Gothas or
Zeppelins. This plunged him into a confusion so poignant that, rather by
accident than design, he found himself again at Hampstead instead of at
Scotland Yard. "In the society of Aurora alone," he thought, "can I free
myself from the goadings of conscience, for it was she who sent me on
that errand." And, instead of going in, he took up a position on his
lawn whence he could attract her attention by waving his arms. He had
been doing this for some time, to the delight of Blink, who thought it a
new game, before he saw her in her nurse's dress coming out of a
French-window with her yellow book in her hand. Redoubling his efforts
till he had arrested her attention, he went up to the privet hedge, and
said, in a deep and melancholy voice:
"Aurora, I have failed in my duty, and the errand on which you sent me is
unfulfilled. Mrs. Pullbody's sister's husband's sister's husband is
still, largely speaking, at large."
"I knew he would be," replied the young lady, with her joyous smile,
"that's why I put her on to you--the cat!"
At a loss to understand her meaning, Mr. Lavender, who had bent forward
above the hedge in his eagerness to explain, lost his balance, and,
endeavouring to save the hedge, fell over into some geranium pots.
"Dear Don Pickwixote," cried the young lady, assisting him to rise, "have
you hurt your nose?"
"It is not that," said Mr. Lavender, removing some mould from his hair,
and stifling the attentions of Blink; "but rather my honour, for I have
allowed my duty to my country to be overridden by the common emotion of
pity."
"Hurrah!" cried the young lady. "It'll do you ever so much good."
"Aurora!" cried Mr. Lavender aghast, walking at her side. But the young
lady only uttered her enchanting laugh.
"Come and lie down in the hammock!" she said you're looking like a ghost.
I'll cover you up with a rug, and smoke a cigarette to keep the midges
off you. Tuck up your legs; that's right!"
"No!" said Mr. Lavender from the recesses of the hammock, feeling his
nose, "let the bidges bide me. I deserve they should devour me alive.
"All right," said the young lady. "But have a nap, anyway!" And sitting
down in a low chair, she opened her book and lit a cigarette.
Mr. Lavender remained silent, watching her with the eyes of an acolyte,
and wondering whether he was in his senses to have alighted on so rare a
fortune. Nor was it long before he fell into a hypnotic doze.
How long Mr. Lavender had been asleep he could not of course tell before
he dreamed that he was caught in a net, the meshes of which were formed
of the cries of newspaper boys announcing atrocities by land and sea. He
awoke looking into the eyes of Aurora, who, to still his struggles, had
taken hold of his ankles.
"My goodness! You are thin!" were the first words he heard. "No wonder
you're lightheaded."
Mr. Lavender, whose returning chivalry struggled with unconscious
delight, murmured with difficulty:
"Let me go, let me go; it is too heavenly!
"Well, have you finished kicking?" asked the young lady.
"Yes," returned Mr. Lavender in a fainting voice----"alas!"
The young lady let go of his ankles, and, aiding him to rise from the
hammock, said: "I know what's the matter with you now--you're starving
yourself. You ought to be kept on your back for three months at least,
and fed on butter."
Mr. Lavender, soothing the feelings of Blink, who, at his struggles, had
begun to pant deeply, answered with watering lips:
"Everyone in these days must do twice as much as he ought, and I eat
half, for only in this way can we compass the defeat of our common
enemies." The young lady's answer, which sounded like "Bosh!" was lost
in Mr. Lavender's admiration of her magnificent proportions as she bent
to pick up her yellow book.
"Aurora," he said, "I know not what secret you share with the goddesses;
suffer me to go in and give thanks for this hour spent in your company."
And he was about to recross the privet hedge when she caught him by the
coat-tag, saying:
"No, Don Pickwixote, you must dine with us. I want you to meet my
father. Come along!" And, linking her arm in his, she led him towards
her castle. Mr. Lavender, who had indeed no, option but to obey, such
was the vigour of her arm, went with a sense of joy not unmingled with
consternation lest the personage she spoke of should have viewed him in
the recent extravagance of his dreaming moments.
"I don't believe," said the young lady, gazing down at him, "that you
weigh an ounce more than seven stone. It's appalling!
"Not," returned Mr. Lavender, "by physical weight and force shall we win
this war, for it is at bottom a question of morale. Right is, ever
victorious in the end, and though we have infinitely greater material
resources than our foes, we should still triumph were we reduced to the
last ounce, because of the inherent nobility of our cause."
"You'll be reduced to the last ounce if we don't feed, you up somehow,"
said the young lady.
"Would you like to wash your hands?"
Mr. Lavender having signified his assent, she left him alone in a place
covered with linoleum. When, at length, followed by Blink, he emerged
from dreamy ablutions, Mr. Lavender, saw that she had changed her dress
to a flowing blue garment of diaphanous character, which made her appear,
like an emanation of the sky. He was about to say so when he noticed a
gentleman in khaki scrutinizing him with lively eyes slightly injected
with blood.
"Don Pickwixote," said the young lady; "my father, Major Scarlet."
Mr. Lavender's hand was grasped by one which seemed to him made of iron.
"I am honoured, sir," he said painfully, "to meet the father of my
charming young neighbour."
The Major answered in a voice as clipped as his grey bottle-brush
moustache, "Delighted! Dinner's ready. Come along!"
Mr. Lavender saw that he had a mouth which seemed to have a bitt in it;
several hairs on a finely rounded head; and an air of efficient and
truculent bonhomie tanned and wrinkled by the weather.
The table at which they became seated seemed to one accustomed to
frugality to groan with flowers and china and glass; and Mr. Lavender had
hardly supped his rich and steaming soup before his fancy took fire; nor
did he notice that he was drinking from a green glass in which was a
yellow fluid.
"I get Army rations," said the Major, holding a morsel of fillet of beef
towards Blink. "Nice dog, Mr. Lavender."
"Yes," replied Mr. Lavender, ever delighted that his favourite should
receive attention, "she is an angel."
"Too light," said the Major, "and a bit too narrow in front; but a nice
dog. What's your view of the war?"
Before Mr. Lavender could reply he felt Aurora's foot pressing his, and
heard her say:
"Don Pickwixote's views are after your own heart, Dad; he's for the
complete destruction of the Hun."
"Indeed, yes," cried Mr. Lavender with shining eyes. "Right and justice
demand it. We seek to gain nothing!"
"But we'll take all we can get," said the Major.
"They'll never get their Colonies back. We'll stick to them fast
enough."
Mr. Lavender stared at him for a moment, then, remembering what he had so
often read, he murmured:
"Aggrandizement is not our object; but we can never forget that so long
as any territory remains in the hands of our treacherous foe the arteries
of our far-flung Empire are menaced at the roots."
"Right-o," said the Major, "we've got the chance of our lives, and we're
going to take it."
Mr. Lavender sat forward a little on his chair. "I shall never admit,"
he said, "that we are going to take anything, for that would be contrary
to the principles which we are pledged to support, and to our avowed
intention of seeking only the benefit of the human race; but our inhuman
foes have compelled us to deprive them of the power to injure others."
"Yes," said the Major, "we must just go on killing Germans and collaring
every bit of their property we can."
Mr. Lavender sat a little further forward on his chair, and the trouble
in his eyes grew.
"After all's said and done," continued the Major; "it's a simple war--us
or them! And in the long run it's bound to be us. We've got the cards."
Mr. Lavender started, and said in a weak and wavering voice:
"We shall never sheathe the sword until----"
"The whole bag of tricks is in our hands. Might isn't Right, but Right's
Might, Mr. Lavender; ha, ha!"
Mr. Lavender's eyes lighted on his glass, and he emptied it in his
confusion. When he looked up again he could not see the Major very well,
but could distinctly hear the truculent bonhomie of his voice.
"Every German ought to be interned; all their property ought to be
confiscated; all their submarines' and Zeppelins' crews ought to be hung;
all German prisoners ought to be treated as they treat our men. We ought
to give 'em no quarter. We ought to bomb their towns out of existence. I
draw the line at their women. Short of that there's nothing too bad for
them. I'd treat 'em like rabbits. Vermin they were, and vermin they
remain."
During this speech the most astounding experience befell Mr. Lavender, so
that his eyes nearly started from his head. It seemed to him, indeed,
that he was seated at dinner with a Prussian, and the Major's voice had
no sooner ceased its genial rasping than with a bound forward on his
chair, he ejaculated:
"Behold the man--the Prussian in his jack-boot!" And, utterly oblivious
of the fact that he was addressing Aurora's father, he went on with
almost terrible incoherence: "Although you have conquered this country,
sir, never shall you subdue in my breast the sentiments of liberty and
generosity which make me an Englishman. I abhor you--invader of the
world--trampler underfoot of the humanities--enemy of mankind--apostle of
force! You have blown out the sparks of love and kindliness, and have
for ever robbed the Universe. Prussian!"
The emphasis with which he spoke that word caused his chair, on the edge
of which he was sitting, to tilt up under him so that he slid under the
table, losing the vision of that figure in helmet and field-grey which he
had been apostrophizing.
"Hold up!" said a voice, while Blink joined him nervously beneath the
board.
"Never!" cried Mr. Lavender. "Imprison, maltreat me do what you will.
You have subdued her body, but never will I admit that you have conquered
the honour of Britain and trodden her gentle culture into the mud."
And, convinced that he would now be dragged away to be confined in some
dungeon on bread and water, he clasped the leg of the dining-table with
all his might, while Blink, sagaciously aware that something peculiar was
occurring to her master, licked the back of his neck. He had been
sitting there perhaps half a minute, with his ears stretched to catch the
half-whispered sounds above, when he saw a shining object appear under
the table, the head, indeed, of the Prussian squatting there to look at
him.
"Go up, thou bald-head," he called out at once; "I will make no terms
with the destroyer of justice and humanity."
"All right, my dear sir," replied the head.
"Will you let my daughter speak to you?"
"Prussian blasphemer," responded Mr. Lavender, shifting his position so
as to be further away, and clasping instead of the table leg some soft
silken objects, which he was too excited to associate with Aurora, "you
have no daughter, for no woman would own one whose hated presence poisons
this country."
"Well, well," said the Major. "How shall we get him out?"
Hearing these words, and believing them addressed to a Prussian guard,
Mr. Lavender clung closer to the objects, but finding them wriggle in his
clasp let go, and, bolting forward like a rabbit on his hands and knees,
came into contact with the Major's head. The sound of the concussion,
the Major's oaths, Mr. Lavender's moans, Blink's barking, and the peals
of laughter from Aurora made up a noise which might have been heard in
Portugal. The situation was not eased until Mr. Lavender crawled out,
and taking up a dinner-knife, rolled his napkin round his arm, and
prepared to defend himself against the German Army.
"Well, I'm damned," said the Major when he saw these preparations; "I am
damned."
Aurora, who had been leaning against the wall from laughter, here came
forward, gasping:
"Go away, Dad, and leave him to me."
"To you!" cried the Major. "He's not safe!"
"Oh yes, he is; it's only you that are exciting him. Come along!"
And taking her father by the arm she conducted him from the room. Closing
the door behind him, and putting her back against it, she said, gently:
"Dear Don Pickwixote, all danger is past. The enemy has been repulsed,
and we are alone in safety. Ha, ha, ha!"
Her voice recalled. Mr. Lavender from his strange hallucination. "What?"
he said weakly.
"Why? Who? Where? When?"
"You have been dreaming again. Let me take you home, and tuck you into
bed." And taking from him the knife and napkin, she opened the
French-window, and passed out on to the lawn.
Lavender, who now that his reason had come back, would have followed her
to the death, passed out also, accompanied by Blink, and watched by the
Major, who had put his head in again at the door. Unfortunately, the
spirit moved Mr. Lavender to turn round at this moment, and seeing the
head he cried out in a loud voice:
"He is there! He is there! Arch enemy of mankind! Let me go and die
under his jackboot, for never over my living body shall he rule this
land." And the infatuated gentleman would certainly have rushed at his
host had not Aurora stayed him by the slack of his nether garments. The
Major withdrawing his head, Mr. Lavender's excitement again passed from
him, and he suffered himself to be led dazedly away and committed to the
charge of Mrs. Petty and Joe, who did not leave him till he was in bed
with a strong bromide to keep him company.
XVI
FIGHTS THE FIGHT OF FAITH
The strenuous experiences through which Mr. Lavender had passed resulted
in what Joe Petty called "a fair knock-out," and he was forced to spend
three days in the seclusion of his bed, deprived of his newspapers. He
instructed Mrs. Petty, however, on no account to destroy or mislay any
journal, but to keep them in a pile in his study. This she did, for
though her first impulse was to light the kitchen fire with the five of
them every morning, deliberate reflection convinced her that twenty
journals read at one sitting would produce on him a more soporific effect
than if he came down to a mere five.
Mr. Lavender passed his three days, therefore, in perfect repose, feeding
Blink, staring at the ceiling, and conversing with Joe. An uneasy sense
that he had been lacking in restraint caused his mind to dwell on life as
seen by the monthly rather than the daily papers, and to hold with his
chauffeur discussions of a somewhat philosophical character.
"As regards the government of this country, Joe," he said, on the last
evening of his retirement, "who do you consider really rules? For it is
largely on this that our future must depend."
"Can't say, sir," answered Joe, "unless it's Botty."
"I do not know whom or what you signify by that word," replied Mr.
Lavender; "I am wondering if it is the People who rule."
"The People!" replied Joe; "the People's like a gent in a lunatic asylum,
allowed to 'ave instinks but not to express 'em. One day it'll get aht,
and we shall all step lively."
"It is, perhaps, Public Opinion," continued Mr. Lavender to himself, "as
expressed in the Press."
"Not it," said Joe the nearest opinion the Press gets to expressin' is
that of Mayors. 'Ave you never noticed, sir, that when the Press is 'ard
up for support of an opinion that the public don't 'old, they go to the
Mayors, and get 'em in two columns?"
"Mayors are most valuable public men," said Mr. Lavender.
"I've nothin' against 'em," replied Joe; "very average lot in their walk
of life; but they ain't the People."
Mr. Lavender sighed. "What, then, is the People, Joe?"
"I am," replied Joe; "I've got no opinions on anything except that I want
to live a quiet life--just enough beer and 'baccy, short hours, and no
worry."
"'If you compare that with the aspirations of Mayors you will see how
sordid such a standard is," said Mr. Lavender, gravely.
"Sordid it may be, sir," replied Joe; "but there's, a thing abaht it you
'aven't noticed. I don't want to sacrifice nobody to satisfy my
aspirations. Why? Because I've got none. That's priceless. Take the
Press, take Parlyment, take Mayors--all mad on aspirations. Now it's
Free Trade, now it's Imperialism; now it's Liberty in Europe; now it's
Slavery in Ireland; now it's sacrifice of the last man an' the last
dollar. You never can tell what aspiration'll get 'em next. And the
'ole point of an aspiration is the sacrifice of someone else. Don't you
make a mistake, sir. I defy you to make a public speech which 'asn't got
that at the bottom of it."
"We are wandering from the point, Joe," returned Mr. Lavender. "Who is
it that governs, the country?"
"A Unseen Power," replied Joe promptly.
"How?"
"Well, sir, we're a democratic country, ain't we? Parlyment's elected by
the People, and Gover'ment's elected by Parlyment. All right so far; but
what 'appens? Gover'ment says 'I'm going to do this.' So long as it
meets with the approval of the Unseen Power, well an' good. But what if
it don't? The U.P. gets busy; in an 'undred papers there begins to
appear what the U.P. calls Public Opinion, that's to say the opinion of
the people that agree with the U.P. There you 'ave it, sir, only them
--and it appears strong. Attacks on the Gover'ment policy, nasty things
said abaht members of it that's indiscreet enough to speak aht what, they
think--German fathers, and other secret vices; an' what's more than all,
not a peep at any opinion that supports the Gover'ment. Well, that goes
on day after day, playin' on the mind of Parlyment, if they've got any,
and gittin' on the Gover'ment's nerves, which they've got weak, till they
says: 'Look 'ere, it's no go; Public Opinion won't stand it. We shall be
outed; and that'll never do, because there's no other set of fellows that
can save this country.' Then they 'ave a meetin' and change their
policy. And what they've never seen is that they've never seen Public
Opinion at all. All they've seen is what the U.P. let 'em. Now if I
was the Gover'ment, I'd 'ave it out once for all with the U. P."
"Ah!" cried Mr. Lavender, whose eyes were starting from his, head, so
profoundly was he agitated by what was to him a new thought.
"Yes," continued Joe, "if I was the Gover'ment, next time it 'appened,
I'd say: 'All right, old cock, do your damnedest. I ain't responsible to
you. Attack, suppress, and all the rest of it. We're goin' to do what
we say, all the same!' And then I'd do it. And what'd come of it?
Either the U.P. would go beyond the limits of the Law--and then I'd jump
on it, suppress its papers, and clap it into quod--or it'd take it lyin'
down. Whichever 'appened it'd be all up with the U. P. I'd a broke its
chain off my neck for good. But I ain't the Gover'ment, an Gover'ment's
got tender feet. I ask you, sir, wot's the good of havin' a
Constitooshion, and a the bother of electing these fellows, if they can't
act according to their judgment for the short term of their natural
lives? The U.P. may be patriotic and estimable, and 'ave the best
intentions and all that, but its outside the Constitooshion; and what's
more, I'm not goin' to spend my last blood an' my last money in a
democratic country to suit the tastes of any single man, or triumpherate,
or wotever it may be made of. If the Government's uncertain wot the
country wants they can always ask it in the proper way, but they never
ought to take it on 'earsay from the papers. That's wot I think."
While he was speaking Mr. Lavender had become excited to the point of
fever, for, without intending it, Joe had laid bare to him a yawning
chasm between his worship of public men and his devotion to the Press.
And no sooner had his chauffeur finished than he cried: "Leave me, Joe,
for I must think this out."
"Right, sir," answered Joe with his smile, and taking the tea-tray from
off his master, he set it where it must infallibly be knocked over, and
went out.
"Can it be possible," thought Mr. Lavender, when he was alone, "that I am
serving God and Mammon? And which is God and which is Mammon?" he added,
letting his thoughts play over the countless speeches and leading
articles which had formed his spiritual diet since the war began. "Or,
indeed, are they not both God or both Mammon? If what Joe says is true,
and nothing is recorded save what seems good to this Unseen Power, have I
not been listening to ghosts and shadows; and am I, indeed, myself
anything but the unsubstantial image of a public man? For it is true
that I have no knowledge of anything save what is recorded in the
papers." And perceiving that the very basis of his faith was endangered,
he threw off the bedclothes, and began to pace the room. "Are we, then,
all," he thought, "being bounded like india-rubber balls by an unseen
hand; and is there no one of us strong enough to bounce into the eye of
our bounder and overthrow him? My God, I am unhappy; for it is a
terrible thing not to know which my God is, and whether I am a public man
or an india-rubber ball." And the more he thought the more dreadful it
seemed to him, now that he perceived that all those journals, pamphlets,
and reports with which his study walls were lined might not be the truth,
but merely authorized versions of it.
"This," he said aloud, "is a nightmare from which I must awaken or lose
all my power of action and my ability to help my country in its peril."
And sudden sweat broke out on his brow, for he perceived that he had now
no means of telling even whether there was a peril, so strangely had
Joe's words affected his powers of credulity.
"But surely," he thought, steadying himself by gripping his washstand,
"there was, at least, a peril once. And yet, how do I know even that,
for I have only been told so; and the tellers themselves were only told
so by this Unseen Power; and suppose it has made a mistake or has some
private ends to serve! Oh! it is terrible, and there is no end to it."
And he shook the crockery in the spasms which followed the first
awakenings of these religious doubts. "Where, then, am I to go," he
cried, "for knowledge of the truth? For even books would seem dependent
on the good opinion of this Unseen Power, and would not reach my eyes
unless they were well spoken of by it."
And the more he thought the more it seemed to him that nothing could help
him but to look into the eyes of this Unseen Power, so that he might see
for himself whether it was the Angel of Truth or some Demon jumping on
the earth. No sooner had this conviction entered his brain than he
perceived how in carrying out such an enterprise he would not only be
setting his own mind at rest, and re-establishing or abolishing his
faith, but would be doing the greatest service which he could render to
his country and to all public men. "Thus," he thought, "shall I
cannonize my tourney, and serve Aurora, who is the dawn of truth and
beauty in the world. I am not yet worthy, however, of this adventure,
which will, indeed, be far more arduous and distressing to accomplish
than any which I have yet undertaken. What can I do to brighten and
equip my mind and divest it of all those prejudices in which it may
unconsciously have become steeped? If I could leave the earth a short
space and commune with the clouds it might be best. I will go to Hendon
and see if someone will take me up for a consideration; for on earth I
can no longer be sure of anything."
And having rounded off his purpose with this lofty design, he went back
to bed with his head lighter than a puff-ball.
XVII
ADDRESSES THE CLOUDS
On the morning following his resurrection Mr. Lavender set out very early
for the celebrated flying ground without speaking of his intention to
anyone. At the bottom of the hill he found to his annoyance that Blink
had divined his purpose and was following. This, which compelled him to
walk, greatly delayed his arrival. But chance now favoured him, for he
found he was expected, and at once conducted to a machine which was about
to rise. A taciturn young man, with a long jaw, and wings on his breast,
was standing there gazing at it with an introspective eye.
"Ready, sir?" he said.
"Yes," replied Mr. Lavender, enveloped to the eyes in a garment of fur
and leather. "Will you kindly hold my dog?" he added, stroking Blink
with the feeling that he was parting for ever with all that was most dear
to him.
An attendant having taken hold of her by the collar, Mr. Lavender was
heaved into the machine, where the young airman was already seated in
front of him.
"Shall I feel sick?" asked Mr. Lavender.
"Probably," said the young airman.
"That will not deter me, for the less material I become the better it
will be."
The young airman turned his head, and Mr. Lavender caught the surprised
yellow of his eye.
"Hold on," said the airman, "I'm going to touch her off."
Mr. Lavender held on, and the machine moved but at this moment Blink,
uttering a dismal howl, leapt forward, and, breaking from the attendant's
grasp, landed in the machine against Mr. Lavender's chest.
"Stop! stop he cried!" my dog.
"Stuff her down," said the unmoved airman, "between your legs. She's not
the first to go up and won't be the last to come down."
Mr. Lavender stuffed her down as best he could. "If we are to be
killed," he thought, "it will be together. Blink!" The faithful
creature, who bitterly regretted her position now that the motion had
begun, looked up with a darkened eye at Mr. Lavender, who was stopping
his ears against the horrible noises which had now begun. He too, had
become aware of the pit of his stomach; but this sensation soon passed
away in the excitement he felt at getting away from the earth, for they
were already at the height of a house, and rising rapidly.
"It is not at all like a little bird," he thought, "but rather resembles
a slow train on the surface of the sea, or a horse on a switchback
merry-go-round. I feel, however, that my spirit will soon be free, for
the earth is becoming like a board whereon a game is played by an unseen
hand, and I am leaving it." And craning his head out a little too far he
felt his chin knock against his spine. Drawing it in with difficulty he
concentrated his attention upon that purification of his spirit which was
the object of his journey.
"I am now," he thought, "in the transcendent ether. It should give me an
amazing power of expression such as only the greatest writers and orators
attain; and, divorced as I am rapidly becoming from all sordid reality,
truth will appear to me like one of those stars towards which I am
undoubtedly flying though I cannot as yet see it."
Blink, who between his legs had hitherto been unconscious of their
departure from the earth, now squirmed irresistibly up till her forepaws
were on her master's chest, and gazed lugubriously at the fearful
prospect. Mr. Lavender clasped her convulsively. They were by now
rapidly nearing a flock of heavenly sheep, which as they approached
became ever more gigantic till they were transformed into monstrous
snow-fleeces intersected by wide drifts of blue.
"Can it be that we are to adventure above them?" thought Mr. Lavender. "I
hope not, for they seem to me fearful." His alarm was soon appeased, for
the machine began to take a level course a thousand feet, perhaps, below
the clouds, whence little wraiths wandering out now and again dimmed Mr.
Lavender's vision and moistened his brow.
Blink having retired again between her master's legs, a sense of security
and exaltation was succeeding to the natural trepidation of Mr.
Lavender's mood. "I am now," he thought, "lifted above all petty plots
and passions on the wings of the morning. Soon will great thoughts begin
to jostle in my head, and I shall see the truth of all things made clear
at last."
But the thoughts did not jostle, a curious lethargy began stealing over
him instead, so that his head fell back, and his mouth fell open. This
might have endured until he returned to earth had not the airman stopped
the engines so that they drifted ruminantly in space below the clouds.
With the cessation of the noise Mr. Lavender's brain regained its
activity, and he was enchanted to hear the voice of his pilot saying:
"How are you getting on, sir?"
"As regards the sensation," Mr. Lavender replied, "it is marvellous, for
after the first minute or two, during which the unwonted motion causes a
certain inconvenience, one grasps at once the exhilaration and joy of
this great adventure. To be in motion towards the spheres, and see the
earth laid out like a chess-board below you; to feel the lithe creature
beneath your body responding so freely to every call of its gallant young
pilot; to be filled with the scream of the engines, as of an eagle at
sport; to know that at the least aberration of the intrepid airman we
should be dashed into a million pieces; all this is largely to experience
an experience so unforgettable that one will never--er--er--forget it."
"Gosh!" said the young airman.
"Yes," pursued Mr. Lavender, who was now unconsciously reading himself in
his morning's paper, "one can only compare the emotion to that which the
disembodied spirit might feel passing straight from earth to heaven. We
saw at a great depth below us on a narrow white riband of road two
crawling black specks, and knew that they were human beings, the same and
no more than we had been before we left that great common place called
Earth."
"Gum!" said the young airman, as Lavender paused, "you're getting it
fine, sir! Where will it appear?"
"Those great fleecy beings the clouds," went on Mr. Lavender, without
taking on the interruption, "seemed to await our coming in the morning
glory of their piled-up snows; and we, with the rarefied air in our
lungs, felt that we must shout to them." And so carried away was Mr.
Lavender by his own style that he really did begin to address the clouds:
"Ghosts of the sky, who creep cold about this wide blue air, we small
adventuring mortals great-hearted salute you. Humbly proud of our daring
have we come to sport with you and the winds of Ouranos, and, in the
rapturous corridors between you, play hide-and seek, avoiding your
glorious moisture with the dips and curves and skimming of our swallow
flights--we, the little unconquerable Spirits of the Squirth!"
The surprise which Mr. Lavender felt at having uttered so peculiar a
word, in the middle of such a flow of poetry reduced him to sudden
silence.
"Golly!" said the airman with sudden alarm in his voice. "Hold tight!"
And they began to shoot towards earth faster than they had risen. They
came down, by what seemed a miracle to Mr. Lavender, who was still
contemplative, precisely where they had gone up. A little group was
collected there, and as they stepped out a voice said, "I beg your
pardon," in a tone so dry that it pierced even the fogged condition in
which Mr. Lavender alighted. The gentleman who spoke had a dark
moustache and thick white hair, and, except that he wore a monocle, and
was perhaps three inches taller, bore a striking resemblance to himself.
"Thank you," he replied, "certainly."
"No," said the gentleman, "not at all--on the contrary, Who the hell are
you?"
"A public man," said Mr. Lavender, surprised; "at least," he added
conscientiously, "I am not quite certain."
"Well," said the gentleman, "you've jolly well stolen my stunt."
"Who, then, are you?" asked Mr. Lavender.
"I?" replied the gentleman, evidently intensely surprised that he was not
known; "I--my name----"
But at this moment Mr. Lavender's attention was diverted by the sight of
Blink making for the horizon, and crying out in a loud voice: "My dog!"
he dropped the coat in which he was still enveloped and set off running
after her at full speed, without having taken in the identity of the
gentleman or disclosed his own. Blink, indeed, scenting another flight
in the air, had made straight for the entrance of the enclosure, and
finding a motor cab there with the door open had bolted into it, taking
it for her master's car. Mr. Lavender sprang in after her. At the shake
which this imparted to the cab, the driver, who had been dozing, turned
his head.
"Want to go back, sir?" he said.
"Yes," replied Mr. Lavender, breathless; "London."
XVIII
SEES TRUTH FACE TO FACE
"I fear," thought Mr. Lavender, as they sped towards Town, "that I have
inadvertently taken a joy-ride which belonged to that distinguished
person with the eyeglass. No matter, my spirit is now bright for the
adventure I have in hand. If only I knew where I could find the Unseen
Power--but possibly its movements may be recorded in these journals." And
taking from his pocket his morning papers, which he had not yet had time
to peruse, he buried himself in their contents. He was still deeply
absorbed when the cab stopped and the driver knocked on the window. Mr.
Lavender got out, followed by Blink, and was feeling in his pocket for
the fare when an exclamation broke from the driver:
"Gorblimy! I've brought the wrong baby!"
And before Mr. Lavender had recovered from his surprise, he had whipped
the car round and was speeding back towards the flying ground.
"How awkward!" thought Mr. Lavender, who was extremely nice in money
matters; "what shall I do now?" And he looked around him. There, as it
were by a miracle, was the office of a great journal, whence obviously
his distinguished colleague had set forth to the flying grounds, and to
which he had been returned in error by the faithful driver.
Perceiving in all this the finger of Providence, Mr. Lavender walked in.
Those who have followed his experiences so far will readily understand
how no one could look on Mr. Lavender without perceiving him to be a man
of extreme mark, and no surprise need be felt when he was informed that
the Personage he sought was on the point of visiting Brighton to open a
hospital, and might yet be overtaken at Victoria Station.
With a beating heart he took up the trail in another taxi-cab, and,
arriving at Victoria, purchased tickets for himself and Blink, and
inquired for the Brighton train.
"Hurry up!" replied the official. Mr. Lavender ran, searching the
carriage windows for any indication of his objective. The whistle had
been blown, and he was in despair, when his eye caught the label
"Reserved" on a first-class window, and looking in he saw a single person
evidently of the highest consequence smoking a cigar, surrounded by
papers. Without a moment's hesitation he opened the door, and, preceded
by Blink, leaped in. "This carriage is reserved, sir," said the
Personage, as the train moved out.
"I know," said Mr. Lavender, who had fallen on to the edge of the seat
opposite; "and only the urgency of my business would have caused me to
violate the sanctity of your retreat, for, believe me, I have the
instincts if not the habits of a gentleman."
The Personage, who had made a move of his hand as if to bring the train
to a standstill, abandoning his design, replaced his cigar, and
contemplated Mr. Lavender from above it.
The latter remained silent, returning that remarkable stare, while Blink
withdrew beneath the seat and pressed her chin to the ground, savouring
the sensation of a new motion.
"Yes," he thought, "those eyes have an almost superhuman force and
cunning. They are the eyes of a spider in the centre of a great web.
They seem to draw me."
"You are undoubtedly the Unseen Power, sir," he said suddenly, "and I
have reached the heart of the mystery. From your own lips I shall soon
know whether I am a puppet or a public man."
The Personage, who by his movements was clearly under the impression that
he had to do with a lunatic, sat forward with his hands on his knees
ready to rise at a moment's notice; he kept his cigar in his mouth,
however, and an enforced smile on the folds of his face.
"What can I do for you, sir?" he said.
"Will you have a cigar?"
"No, thank you," replied Mr. Lavender, "I must keep the eyes of my spirit
clear, and come to the point. Do you rule this country or do you not?
For it is largely on the answer to this that my future depends. In
telling others what to do am I speaking as my conscience or as your
conscience dictates; and, further, if indeed I am speaking as your
conscience dictates, have you a conscience?"
The Personage, who had evidently made up his mind to humour the intruder,
flipped the ash off his cigar.
Well, sir, he said, I don't know who the devil you may be, but my
conscience is certainly as good as yours."
"That," returned Mr: Lavender with a sigh, is a great relief, for whether
you rule the country or not, you are undoubtedly the source from which I,
together with the majority of my countrymen, derive our inspirations. You
are the fountainhead at which we draw and drink. And to know that your
waters are pure, unstained by taint of personal prejudice and the love of
power, will fortify us considerably. Am I to assume, then, that above
all passion and pettiness, you are an impersonal force whose innumerable
daily editions reflect nothing but abstract truth, and are in no way the
servants of a preconceived and personal view of the situation?"
"You want to know too much, don't you think?" said the Personage with a
smile.
"How can that be, sir?" asked Mr. Lavender: If you are indeed the
invisible king swaying the currents of national life, and turning its
tides at will, it is essential that we should believe in you; and before
we can believe in you must we not know all about you?"
"By Jove, sir," replied the Personage, "that strikes me as being contrary
to all the rules of religion. I thought faith was the ticket."
By this answer Mr. Lavender was so impressed that he sat for a moment in
silence, with his eyebrow working up and down.
"Sir," he said at last, "you have given me a new thought. If you are
right, to disbelieve in you and the acts which you perform, or rather the
editions which you issue, is blasphemy."
"I should think so," said the Personage, emitting a long whiff of smoke.
Hadn't that ever occurred to you before?"
"No," replied Mr. Lavender, naively, "for I have never yet disbelieved
anything in those journals."
The Personage coughed heartily.
"I have always regarded them," went on Mr. Lavender, "as I myself should
wish to be regarded, 'without fear and without reproach.' For that is,
as I understand it, the principle on which a gentleman must live, ever
believing of others what he would wish believed of himself. With the
exception of Germans," he added hastily.
"Naturally," returned the Personage. "And I'll defy you to find anything
in them which disagrees with that formula. Everything they print refers
to Germans if not directly then obliquely. Germans are the 'idee fixe',
and without an 'idee fixe', as you know, there's no such thing as
religion. Do you get me?"
"Yes, indeed," cried Mr. Lavender, enthused, for the whole matter now
seemed to him to fall into coherence, and, what was more, to coincide
with his preconceptions, so that he had no longer any doubts. "You, sir
--the Unseen Power--are but the crystallized embodiment of the national
sentiment in time of war; in serving you, and fulfilling the ideas which
you concrete in your journals, we public men are servants of the general
animus, which in its turn serves the blind and burning instinct of
justice. This is eminently satisfactory to me, who would wish no better
fate than to be a humble lackey in that house." He had no sooner,
however, spoken those words than Joe Petty's remarks about Public Opinion
came back to him, and he added: "But are you really the general animus,
or are you only the animus of Mayors, that is the question?"
The personage seemed to follow this thought with difficulty. "What's
that?" he said.
Mr. Lavender ran his hands through his hair.
"And turns," he said, "on what is the unit of national feeling and
intelligence? Is it or is it not a Mayor?"
The Personage smiled. "Well, what do you think?" he said. "Haven't you
ever heard them after dinner? There's no question about it. Make your
mind easy if that's your only trouble."
Mr. Lavender, greatly cheered by the genial certainty in this answer,
said: "I thank you, sir. I shall go back and refute that common scoffer,
that caster of doubts. I have seen the Truth face, to face, and am
greatly encouraged to further public effort. With many apologies I can
now get out," he added, as the train stopped at South Croydon. "Blink!"
And, followed by his dog, he stepped from the train.
The Personage, who was indeed no other than the private secretary of the
private secretary of It whom Mr. Lavender had designated as the Truth
watched him from the window.
"Well, that WAS a treat, dear papa!" he murmured to himself, emitting a
sigh of smoke after his retreating interlocutor.
XIX
IS IN PERIL OF THE STREET
On the Sunday following this interview with the Truth Mr. Lavender, who
ever found the day of rest irksome to his strenuous spirit, left his
house after an early supper. It, had been raining all day, but the
sinking sun had now emerged and struck its level light into the tree tops
from a still cloudy distance. Followed by Blink, he threaded the puddled
waste which lies to the west of the Spaniard's Road, nor was it long
before the wild beauty of the scene infected his spirit, and he stood
still to admire the world spread out. The smoke rack of misted rain was
still drifting above the sunset radiance in an apple-green sky; and
behind Mr. Lavender, as he gazed at those clouds symbolical of the
world's unrest, a group of tall, dark pine-trees, wild and witch-like,
had collected as if in audience of his cosmic mood. He formed a striking
group for a painter, with the west wind flinging back his white hair, and
fluttering his dark moustache along his cheeks, while Blink, a little in
front of him, pointed at the prospect and emitted barks whose vigour
tossed her charming head now to this side now to that.
"How beautiful is this earth!" thought Mr. Lavender, "and how simple to
be good and happy thereon. Yet must we journey ten leagues beyond the
wide world's end to find justice and liberty. There are dark powers like
lions ever in the path. Yes," he continued, turning round to the
pinetrees, who were creaking slightly in the wind, "hate and oppression,
greed, lust, and ambition! There you stand malevolently regarding me.
Out upon you, dark witches of evil! If I had but an axe I would lay you
lower than the dust." But the poor pine-trees paid no attention save to
creak a little louder. And so incensed was Mr. Lavender by this
insensibility on the part of those which his own words had made him
perceive were the powers of darkness that he would very likely have
barked his knuckles on them if Blink by her impatience had not induced
him to resume his walk and mount on to the noble rampart of the
Spaniard's Road.
Along this he wandered and down the hill with the countless ghosts and
shadows of his brain, liberating the world in fancy from all the
hindrances which beset the paths of public men, till dark fell, and he
was compelled to turn towards home. Closely attended by the now sobered
Blink he had reached the Tube Station when he perceived in the inky
war-time dusk that a woman was following him. Dimly aware that she was
tall and graceful he hurried to avoid her, but before long could but note
that she was walking parallel and turning her face towards him. Her
gloved hand seemed to make a beckoning movement, and perceiving at once
that he was the object of that predatory instinct which he knew from the
many letters and protests in his journals to be one of the most
distressing features of the War, he would have broken into a run if he
had not been travelling up-hill; being deprived of this means of escape,
his public nature prevailed, and he saw that it was his duty to confront
the woman, and strike a blow at, the national evil stalking beside him.
But he was in a difficulty, for his natural delicacy towards women seemed
to preclude him from treating her as if she were what she evidently was,
while his sense of duty--urged him with equal force to do so.
A whiff of delicious scent determined him. "Madam," he said, without
looking in her face, which, indeed, was not visible--so great was the
darkness, "it is useless to pursue one who not only has the greatest
veneration for women but regards you as a public danger at a time when
all the energies of the country should be devoted to the defeat of our
common enemies."
The woman, uttering a sound like a laugh, edged towards him, and Mr.
Lavender edged away, so that they proceeded up the street crabwise, with
Blink adhering jealously to her master's heels.
"Do you know," said Mr. Lavender, with all the delicacy in his power,
"how terribly subversive of the national effort it is to employ your
beauty and your grace to snare and slacken the sinews of our glorious
youth? The mystery of a woman's glance in times like these should be
used solely to beckon our heroes on to death in the field. But you,
madam, than whom no one indeed has a more mysterious glance, have turned
it to ends which, in the words of a great public man, profane the temple
of our--our----"
Mr. Lavender stopped, for his delicacy would not allow him even in so
vital a cause to call bodies bodies. The woman here edged so close that
he bolted across her in affright, and began to slant back towards the
opposite side of the street.
"Madam," he said, "you must have perceived by now that I am, alas! not
privileged by age to be one of the defenders of my country; and though I
am prepared to yield to you, if by so doing I can save some young hero
from his fate, I wish you to clearly understand that only my sense of
duty as a public man would induce me to do any such thing." At this he
turned his eyes dreadfully upon her graceful form still sidling towards
him, and, conscious again of that delightful scent, felt a swooning
sensation which made him lean against a lamp-post. "Spare me, madam," he
said in a faint voice, "for my country's sake I am ready to do anything,
but I must tell you that I worship another of your sex from afar, and if
you are a woman you will not seek to make me besmirch that adoration or
imperil my chivalry."
So saying, he threw his arms round the lamppost and closed his eyes,
expecting every moment to be drawn away against his will into a life of
vice.
A well-known voice, strangled to the pitch almost of inaudibility, said
in his ear:
"Oh, Don Pickwixote, Don Pickwixote, you will be the death of me!"
Electrified, Mr. Lavender opened his eyes, and in the dull orange rays of
the heavily shaded lamp he saw beside him no other than the writhing,
choking figure of Aurora herself. Shocked beyond measure by the mistake
he had made, Mr. Lavender threw up his hands and bolted past her through
the gateway of his garden; nor did he cease running till he had reached
his bedroom and got under the bed, so terribly was he upset. There, in
the company of Blink, he spent perhaps the most shame-stricken hours of
his existence, cursing the memory of all those bishops and novelists who
had caused him to believe that every woman in a dark street was a danger
to the State; nor could the persuasion of Mrs. Petty or Joe induce him to
come out, so that in despair they were compelled to leave him to pass the
night in this penitential position, which he did without even taking out
his teeth.
XX
RECEIVES A REVELATION
Fully a week elapsed before Mr. Lavender recovered from the effects of
the night which he had spent under his bed and again took his normal
interest in the course of national affairs. That which at length tore
him from his torpid condition and refixed his imagination was an article
in one of, his journals on the League of Nations, which caused him
suddenly to perceive that this was the most important subject of the day.
Carefully extracting the address of the society who had the matter in
hand, he determined to go down forthwith and learn from their own lips
how he could best induce everybody to join them in their noble
undertaking. Shutting every window, therefore and locking Blink
carefully into his study, he set forth and took the Tube to Charing
Cross.
Arriving at the premises indicated he made his way in lifts and corridors
till he came to the name of this great world undertaking upon the door of
Room 443, and paused for a moment to recover from the astonishment he
felt that the whole building at least was not occupied by the energies of
such a prodigious association.
"Appearances, however, are deceptive," he thought; "and from a single
grain of mustard-seed whole fields will flower." He knocked on the door,
therefore, and receiving the reply, "Cub id," in a female voice, he
entered a room where two young ladies with bad colds were feebly tapping
type-writers.
"Can I see the President?" asked Mr. Lavender.
"Dot at the bobent," said one of the young ladies. "Will the Secretary
do?"
"Yes," replied Mr. Lavender "for I seek information."
The young ladies indulged in secret confabulation, from which the
perpetual word "He" alone escaped to Mr. Lavender's ears.
Then one of them slipped into an inner room, leaving behind her a
powerful trail of eucalyptus. She came back almost directly, saying, "Go
id."
The room which Mr Lavender entered contained two persons, one seated at a
bureau and the other pacing up and down and talking in a powerful bass
voice. He paused, looked at Mr. Lavender from under bushy brows, and at
once went on walking and talking, with a sort of added zest.
"This must be He," thought Mr. Lavender, sitting down to listen, for
there was something about the gentleman which impressed him at once. He
had very large red ears, and hardly a hair on his head, while his full,
bearded face and prominent eyes were full of force and genius.
"It won't do a little bit, Titmarsh," he was saying, "to allow the
politicians to meddle in this racket. We want men of genius, whose
imaginations carry them beyond the facts of the moment. This is too big
a thing for those blasted politicians. They haven't shown a sign so far
of paying attention to what I've been telling them all this time. We
must keep them out, Titmarsh. Machinery without mechanism, and a change
of heart in the world. It's very simple. A single man of genius from
each country, no pettifogging opposition, no petty prejudices."
The other gentleman, whom Mr. Lavender took for the Secretary, and who
was leaning his head rather wearily on his hand, interjected: "Quite so!
And whom would you choose besides yourself? In France, for instance?"
He who was walking stopped a moment, again looked at Mr. Lavender
intently, and again began to speak as if he were not there.
"France?" he said. "There isn't anybody--Anatole's too old--there isn't
anybody."
"America, then?" hazarded the Secretary.
"America!" replied the other; "they haven't got even half a man. There's
that fellow in Germany that I used to influence; but I don't know--no, I
don't think he'd be any good."
"D'Annunzio, surely----" began the Secretary.
"D'Annunzio? My God! D'Annunzio! No! There's nobody in Italy or
Holland--she's as bankrupt as Spain; and there's not a cat in Austria.
Russia might, perhaps, give us someone, but I can't at the moment think
of him. No, Titmarsh, it's difficult."
Mr. Lavender had been growing more and more excited at each word he
overheard, for a scheme of really stupendous proportions was shaping
itself within him. He suddenly rose, and said: "I have an idea."
The Secretary sat up as if he had received a Faradic shock, and he who
was walking up and down stood still. "The deuce you have, sir," he said.
"Yes," cried Mr. Lavender and in concentration and marvellous simplicity,
"it has, I am sure, never been surpassed. It is clear to me, sir, that
you, and you alone, must be this League of Nations. For if it is
entirely in your hands there will be no delay. The plan will spring full
fledged from the head of Jove, and this great and beneficial change in
the lot of mankind will at once become an accomplished fact. There will
be no need for keeping in touch with human nature, no call for patience
and all that laborious upbuilding stone by stone which is so apt to
discourage mankind and imperil the fruition of great reforms. No, sir;
you--you must be this League, and we will all work to the end that
tomorrow at latest there may be perfected this crowning achievement of
the human species."
The gentleman, who had commenced to walk again, looked furtively from Mr.
Lavender to the Secretary, and said:
"By Jingo! some idea!"
"Yes," cried Mr. Lavender, entranced that his grand notion should be at
once accepted; "for it is only men like you who can both soaringly
conceive and immediately concrete in action; and, what is more, there
will be no fear of your tiring of this job and taking up another, for you
will be IT; and one cannot change oneself."
The gentleman looked at Mr. Lavender very suddenly at the words "tiring
of this job," and transferred his gaze to the Secretary, who had bent his
face down to his papers, and was smothering a snigger with his hand.
"Who are you, sir?" he said sharply.
"Merely one," returned Mr. Lavender, "who wishes to do all in his power
to forward a project so fraught with beneficence to all mankind. I count
myself fortunate beyond measure to have come here this morning and found
the very Heart of the matter, the grain of mustard-seed."
The gentleman, who had begun to walk again, here muttered words which
would have sounded like "Damned impudence" if Mr. Lavender had not been
too utterly carried away by his idea to hear them.
"I shall go forth at once," he said, "and make known the good tidings
that the fields are sown, the League formed. Henceforth there are no
barriers between nations, and the reign of perpetual Peace is assured. It
is colossal."
The gentleman abruptly raised his boot, but, seeming to think better of
it, lowered it again, and turned away to the window.
Mr. Lavender, having bowed to his back, went out, and, urged on by his
enthusiasm, directed his steps at once towards Trafalgar Square.
Arriving at this hub of the universe he saw that Chance was on his side,
for a meeting was already in progress, and a crowd of some forty persons
assembled round one of the lions. Owing to his appearance Mr. Lavender
was able without opposition to climb up on the plinth and join the
speaker, a woman of uncertain years. He stood there awaiting his turn
and preparing his oration, while she continued her discourse, which
seemed to be a protest against any interference with British control of
the freedom of the seas. A Union Jack happened to be leaning against the
monument, and when she had at last finished, Mr. Lavender seized it and
came forward to the edge.
"Great tidings!" he said at once, waving the flag, and without more ado
plunged into an oration, which, so far as it went, must certainly be
ranked among his masterpieces. "Great tidings, Friends! I have planted
the grain of mustard seed or, in common parlance, have just come from the
meeting which has incepted the League of Nations; and it will be my task
this morning briefly to make known to you the principles which in future
must dominate the policy of the world. Since it is for the closer
brotherhood of man and the reign of perpetual peace that we are
struggling, we must first secure the annihilation of our common enemies.
Those members of the human race whose infamies have largely placed them
beyond the pale must be eliminated once for all."
Loud cheers greeted this utterance, and stimulated by the sound Mr.
Lavender proceeded: "What, however, must the civilized nations do when at
last they have clean sheets? In the first place, all petty prejudices
and provincial aspirations must be set aside; and though the world must
be firmly founded upon the principle of nationality it must also act as
one great people. This, my fellow-countrymen, is no mere contradiction
in terms, for though in their new solidarities each nation will be
prouder of itself, and more jealous of its good name and independence
than ever, that will not prevent its' sacrificing its inalienable rights
for the good of the whole human nation of which it is a member. Friends,
let me give you a simple illustration, which in a nutshell will make the
whole thing clear. We, here in Britain, are justly proud and tenacious
of our sea power--in the words of the poet, 'We hold all the gates of the
water.' Now it is abundantly and convincingly plain that this reinforced
principle of nationality bids us to retain and increase them, while
internationalism bids us give--them up."
His audience--which had hitherto listened with open mouths, here closed
them, and a strident voice exclaimed:
"Give it a name, gov'nor. D'you say we ought to give up Gib?"
This word pierced Mr. Lavender, standing where he was, to the very
marrow, and he fell into such confusion of spirit that his words became
inaudible.
"My God!" he thought, appalled; "is it possible that I have not got to
the bottom of this question?" And, turning his back on the audience, he
gazed in a sort of agony at the figure of Nelson towering into the sky
above him. He was about to cry out piteously: "Countrymen, I know not
what I think. Oh! I am unhappy!" when he inadvertently stepped back
over the edge of the plinth, and, still entangled in the flag, was picked
up by two policemen and placed in a dazed condition and a deserted spot
opposite the National Gallery.
It was while he was standing there, encircled by, pigeons and forgotten
by his fellow man, that there came to him a spiritual revelation.
"Strange!" he thought; "I notice a certain inconsistency in myself, and
even in my utterances. I am two men, one of whom is me and one not me;
and the one which is not me is the one which causes me to fall into the
arms of policemen and other troubles. The one which is me loves these
pigeons, and desires to live quietly with my dog, not considering public
affairs, which, indeed, seem to be suited to persons of another sort.
Whence, then, comes the one which is not me? Can it be that it is
derived from the sayings and writings of others, and is but a spurious
spirit only meet to be outcast? Do I, to speak in the vernacular, care
any buttons whether we stick to Gibraltar or not so long as men do but
live in kindness? And if that is so, have I the right to say I do? Ought
I not, rather, to be true to my private self and leave the course of
public affairs to those who have louder voices and no private selves?"
The thought was extremely painful, for it seemed to disclose to him grave
inconsistency in the recent management of his life. And, thoroughly
mortified, he turned round with a view of entering the National Gallery
and soothing his spirit with art, when he was arrested by the placard
which covered it announcing which town had taken which sum of bonds. This
lighted up such a new vista of public utility that his brain would
certainly have caught fire again if one of the policemen who had
conducted him across the Square had not touched him on the arm, and said:
"How are you now, sir?"
"I am pretty well, thank you, policeman," replied Mr. Lavender, "and
sorry that I occasioned so much disturbance."
"Don't mention it, sir," answered the policeman; "you came a nasty
crump."
"Tell me," said Mr. Lavender, suddenly looking up into his face, "do you
consider that a man is justified in living a private life? For, as
regards my future, it is largely on your opinion that I shall act."
The policeman, whose solid face showed traces of astonishment, answered
slowly: "As a general thing, a man's private life don't bear lookin'
into, as you know, sir."
"I have not lived one for some time," said Mr. Lavender.
"Well," remarked the policeman, "if you take my advice you won't try it
a-gain. I should say you 'adn't the constitution."
"I fear you do not catch my meaning," returned Mr. Lavender, whose whole
body was aching from his fall; "it is my public life which tries me."
"Well, then, I should chuck it," said the policeman.
"Really?" murmured Mr. Lavender eagerly, "would you?"
"Why not?" said the policeman.
So excited was Mr. Lavender by this independent confirmation of his
sudden longing that he took out half a crown.
"You will oblige me greatly," he said, "by accepting this as a token of
my gratitude."
"Well, sir, I'll humour you," answered the policeman; "though it was no
trouble, I'm sure; you're as light as a feather. Goin' anywhere in
particular?" he added.
"Yes," said Mr. Lavender, rather faintly, "the Tube Station."
"Come along with me, then."
Mr. Lavender went along, not sorry to have the protection of that
stalwart form, for his nerve was shaken, not so much by physical
suffering as by the revelation he had received.
"If you'll take my tip, sir," said the policeman, parting from him, "you
won't try no private life again; you don't look strong."
"Thank you, policeman," said Mr. Lavender musingly; "it is kind of you to
take an interest in me. Good-bye!"
Safely seated in the Tube for Hampstead he continued the painful struggle
of his meditations. "If, indeed," he thought, "as a public man I do more
harm than good, I am prepared to sacrifice all for my country's sake and
retire into private life. But the policeman said that would be dangerous
for me. What, then, is left? To live neither a public nor a private
life!"
This thought, at once painful and heroic, began to take such hold of him
that he arrived at his house in a high fever of the brain.
XXI
AND ASCENDS TO PARADISE
Now when Mr. Lavender once slept over an idea it became so strong that no
power on earth could prevent his putting it into execution, and all night
long he kept Blink awake by tramping up and down his bedroom and planning
the details of such a retirement as would meet his unfortunate case. For
at once he perceived that to retire from both his lives without making
the whole world know of it would be tantamount to not retiring. "Only by
a public act," he thought, "of so striking a character that nobody can
miss it can I bring the moral home to all public and private men." And a
hundred schemes swarmed like ants in his brain. Nor was it till the cock
crew that one adequate to this final occasion occurred to him.
"It will want very careful handling," he thought, "for otherwise I shall
be prevented, and perhaps even arrested in the middle, which will be both
painful and ridiculous. So sublime, however, was his idea that he shed
many tears over it, and often paused in his tramping to regard the
unconscious Blink with streaming eyes. All the next day he went about
the house and heath taking a last look at objects which had been dear,
and at mealtimes ate and drank even less than usual, absorbed by the
pathos of his coming renunciation. He determined to make his
preparations for the final act during the night, when Mrs. Petty would be
prevented by Joe's snoring from hearing the necessary sounds; and at
supper he undertook the delicate and harrowing task of saying good-bye
to, his devoted housekeeper without letting her know that he, was doing
it.
"Mrs--Petty," he said, trifling with a morsel of cheese, "it is useless
to disguise, from you that I may be going a journey, and I feel that I
shall not be able to part from all the care you have, bestowed on me
without recording in words my heartfelt appreciation of your devotion. I
shall miss it, I shall miss it terribly, if, that is, I am permitted to
miss anything."
Mrs. Petty, whose mind instantly ran to his bed socks, answered: "Don't
you worry, sir; I won't forget them. But wherever are you going now?"
"Ah!" said Mr. Lavender subtly, "it is all in the air at present; but now
that the lime-trees are beginning to smell a certain restlessness is upon
me, and you may see some change in my proceedings. Whatever happens to
me, however, I commit my dear Blink to your care; feed her as if she were
myself, and love her as if she were Joe, for it is largely on food and
affection that dogs depend for happiness.
"Why, good gracious, sir," said Mrs. Petty, "you talk as if you were
going for a month of Sundays. Are you thinking of Eastbourne?"
Mr. Lavender sighed deeply at that word, for the memory of a town where
he had spent many happy days added to the gentle melancholy of his
feelings on this last evening.
"As regards that I shall not inform you at present; for, indeed, I am by
no means certain what my destination will be. Largely speaking, no pub
--public man," he stammered, doubtful whether he was any longer that,
"knows where he will be going to-morrow. Sufficient unto the day are the
intentions in his head.
"Well, sir," said Mrs. Petty frankly, "you can't go anywhere without Joe
or me, that's flat."
Mr. Lavender smiled.
"Dear Mrs. Petty," he murmured, "there are sacrifices one cannot demand
even of the most faithful friends. But," he went on with calculated
playfulness, "we need not consider that point until the day after
to-morrow at least, for I have much to do in the meantime."
Reassured by those words and the knowledge that Mr. Lavender's plans
seldom remained the same for more than two days, Mrs. Petty tossed her
head slightly and went to the door. "Well, it is a mystery, I'm sure,"
she said.
"I should like to see Joe," said Mr. Lavender, with a lingering look at
his devoted housekeeper.
"The beauty!" muttered Mrs. Petty; "I'll send him," and withdrew.
Giving the morsel of cheese to Blink, who, indeed, had eaten practically
the whole of this last meal, Mr. Lavender took the moon-cat on his
shoulder, and abandoned himself for a moment to the caresses of his two
favourites.
"Blink," he said in a voice which trembled slightly, "be good to this
moon-cat while I am away; and if I am longer than you expect, darling, do
not be unhappy. Perhaps some day you will rejoin me; and even if we are
not destined to meet again, I would not, in the fashion of cruel men,
wish to hinder your second marriage, or to stand in the way of your happy
forgetfulness of me. Be as light-hearted as you can, my dear, and wear
no mourning for your master."
So saying, he flung his arms round her, and embraced her warmly, inhaling
with the most poignant emotion her sheep-like odour. He was still
engaged with her when the door was opened, and Joe came in.
"Joe," said Mr. Lavender resolutely, "sit down and light your pipe. You
will find a bottle of pre-war port in the sideboard. Open it, and, drink
my health; indeed, I myself will drink it too, for it may give me
courage. We have been good friends, Joe," he went on while Joe was
drawing the cork, "and have participated in pleasant and sharp
adventures. I have called you in at this moment, which may some day seem
to you rather solemn, partly to shake your hand and partly to resume the
discussion on public men which we held some days ago, if you remember."
"Ah!" said Joe, with his habitual insouciance, "when I told you that they
give me the 'ump."
"Yes, what abaht it, sir? 'Ave they been sayin' anything particular
vicious?" His face flying up just then with the cork which he was
extracting encountered the expression on Mr. Lavender's visage, and he
added: "Don't take wot I say to 'eart, sir; try as you like you'll never
be a public man."
Those words, which seemed to Mr. Lavender to seal his doom, caused a
faint pink flush to invade his cheeks.
"No," continued Joe, pouring out the wine; you 'aven't got the brass in
times like these. I dare say you've noticed, sir, that the times is
favourable for bringing out the spots on the body politic. 'Ere's
'ealth!"
"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, raising the glass to his lips with solemnity,
"I wish you a most happy and prosperous life. Let us drink to all those
qualities which make you par excellence one of that great race, the best
hearted in the world, which never thinks of to-morrow, never knows when
it is beaten, and seldom loses its sense of humour.
"Ah!" returned Joe enigmatically, half-closing one of his greenish eyes,
and laying the glass to one side of his reddish nose. Then, with a quick
movement, he swallowed its contents and refilled it before Mr. Lavender
had succeeded in absorbing more than a drop.
"I don't say," he continued, "but what there's a class o' public man
that's got its uses, like the little 'un that keeps us all alive, or the
perfect English gentleman what did his job, and told nobody nothin' abaht
it. You can 'ave confidence in a man like that----that's why 'e's gone
an' retired; 'e's civilized, you see, the finished article; but all this
raw material, this 'get-on' or 'get-out' lot, that's come from 'oo knows
where, well, I wish they'd stayed there with their tell-you-how-to-do-it
and their 'ymns of 'ate."
"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, "are you certain that therein does not speak
the snob inherent in the national bosom? Are you not unconsciously
paying deference to the word gentleman?"
"Why not, sir?" replied Joe, tossing off his second glass. "It'd be a
fine thing for the country if we was all gentlemen--straight, an' a
little bit stupid, and 'ad 'alf a thought for others." And he refilled
his master's glass. "I don't measure a gentleman by 'is money, or 'is
title, not even by 'is clothes--I measure 'im by whether he can stand
'avin' power in 'is 'ands without gettin' unscrupled or swollen 'eaded,
an' whether 'e can do what he thinks right without payin' attention, to
clamour. But, mind you, 'e's got to 'ave right thoughts too, and a
feelin' 'eart. 'Ere's luck, sir."
Mr. Lavender, who, absorbed in his chauffeur's sentiments, had now drunk
two glasses, rose from his, chair, and clutching his hair said: "I will
not conceal from you, Joe, that I have always assumed every public man
came up to that standard, at least."
"Crikey said Joe. 'Ave you really, sir? My Gawd! Got any use for the
rest of this bottle?"
"No, Joe, no. I shall never have use for a bottle again."
"In that case I might as well," said Joe, pouring what remained into a
tumbler and drinking it off. "Is there any other topic you'd like to
mention? If I can 'ave any influence on you, I shall be very glad."
"Thank you, Joe," returned Mr. Lavender, "what I have most need of at
this moment is solitude and your good wishes. And will you kindly take
Blink away, and when she has had her run, place her in my bedroom, with
the window closed. Good-night, Joe. Call me late tomorrow morning.
"Certainly, sir. Good-night, sir."
"Good-night, Joe. Shake hands."
When Joe was gone, accompanied by the unwilling Blink, turning her
beautiful dark eyes back to the last, Mr. Lavender sat down at his
bureau, and drawing a sheet of paper to him, wrote at the top of it.
"My last Will and Testament."
It was a long time before he got further, and then entirely omitted to
leave anything in it, completely preoccupied by the preamble, which
gradually ran as follows:
"I, John Lavender, make known to all men by these presents that the
act which I contemplate is symbolical, and must in no sense be taken
as implying either weariness of life or that surrender to misfortune
which is unbecoming to an English public gentleman." (Over this
description of himself Mr. Lavender was obliged to pause some time
hovering between the two designations, and finally combining them as
the only way out of his difficulty.) "Long and painful experience
has convinced me that only by retiring from the former can I retain
the latter character, and only by retiring from both can I point the
moral ever demanded by my countrymen. Conscious, indeed, that a
mere act of private resignation would have no significance to the
body politic, nor any deflecting influence on the national life, I
have chosen rather to disappear in blue flame, so that every
Englishman may take to heart my lesson, and learn from my strange
fate how to be himself uninfluenced by the verbiage of others. At
the same time, with the utmost generosity, I wish to acknowledge in
full my debt towards all those great writers and speakers on the war
who have exercised so intoxicating an influence on my mind." (Here
followed an alphabetical list of names beginning with B and ending
with S.)
"I wish to be dissociated firmly from the views of my chauffeur Joe
Petty, and to go to my last account with an emphatic assertion that
my failure to become a perfect public gentleman is due to private
idiosyncrasies rather than to any conviction that it is impossible,
or to anything but admiration of the great men I have mentioned. If
anybody should wish to paint me after I am dead, I desire that I may
be represented with my face turned towards the Dawn; for it is at
that moment so symptomatic of a deep adoration--which I would scorn
to make the common property of gossiping tongues--that I intend to
depart. If there should be anything left of me--which is less than
probable considering the inflammatory character of the material I
design for my pyre--I would be obliged if, without giving anybody
any trouble, it could be buried in my garden, with the usual
Hampstead tablet.
"'JOHN LAVENDER,
THE PUBLIC MAN, WHO DIED FOR HIS
COUNTRY'S GOOD, LIVED HERE.'
"In conclusion, I would say a word to that land I have loved and
served: 'Be not extreme! Distrust the words, of others. To
yourself be true! As you are strong be gentle, as you are brave be
modest! Beloved country, farewell!'"
Having written that final sentence he struggled long with himself before
he could lay down the pen. But by this time the port he had drunk had
begun to have its usual effect, and he fell into a doze, from which he
was awakened five hours later by the beams of a full moon striking in on
him.
"The hour has come," he thought, and, opening the French-window, he went
out on to the lawn, where the dew lay white. The freshness in the air,
the glamour of the moonlight, and the fumes of the port combined to make
him feel strangely rhumantic, and if he had possessed a musical
instrument he would very likely have begun to play on it. He spent some
moments tracking to and fro in the dew before he settled on the centre of
the lawn as the most suitable spot for the act which he contemplated, for
thence he would be able to turn his last looks towards Aurora's
bedroom-window without interference from foliage. Having drawn a
twelve-foot circle in the dew with his toe he proceeded in the bright
moonlight to the necessary accumulation of his funeral pile, conveying
from his study, book by book, journal by journal, pamphlet by pamphlet,
the hoarded treasures of the last four years; and as he carefully placed
each one, building up at once a firm and cunning structure, he gave a
little groan, thinking of the intoxications of the past, and all the
glorious thoughts embodied in that literature. Underneath, in the heart
of the pile, he reserved a space for the most inflammable material, which
he selected from a special file of a special journal, and round the
circumference of the lofty and tapering mound he carefully deposited the
two hundred and four war numbers of a certain weekly, so that a ring of
flame might lick well up the sides and permeate the more solid matter on
which he would be sitting. For two hours he worked in the waning
moonlight till he had completed this weird and heroic erection; and just
before the dawn, sat down by the light of the candle with which he meant
to apply the finishing touch, to compose that interview with himself
whereby he intended to convey to the world the message of his act.
"I found him," he began, in the words of the interviewer, "sitting upon a
journalistic pile of lovely leaves of thought, which in the dawning of a
new day glowed with a certain restrained flamboyance, as though the
passion stored within those exotic pages gave itself willingly to the
'eclaircissement' of the situation, and of his lineaments on which
suffering had already set their stamp.
"'I should like you,' I said, approaching as near as I could, for the
sparks, like little fireflies on a Riviera evening, were playing
profoundly round my trousers, 'I should like to hear from your own lips
the reasons which have caused you to resign.'
"'Certainly,' he replied, with the courtesy which I have always found
characteristic of him in moments which would try the suavity of more
ordinary men; and with the utmost calm and clarity he began to tell me
the inner workings of his mind, while the growing dawn-light irradiated
his wasted and expressive features, and the flames slowly roasted his
left boot.
"'Yes,' he said quietly, and his eyes turned inwards, 'I have at last
seen the problem clearly, and seen it whole. It is largely because of
this that I have elected to seek the seclusion of another world. What
that world contains for me I know not, though so many public men have
tried to tell me; but it has never been my way to recoil from the
Unknown, and I am ready for my journey beyond the wide world's end.'
"I was greatly struck by the large-hearted way in which he spoke those
words, and I interrupted him to ask whether he did not think that there
was something fundamental in the British character which would leap as
one man at such an act of daring sacrifice and great adventure.
"'As regards that,' he replied fearlessly, while in the light of the
ever-brightening dawn I could, see the suspender on his right leg
gradually charring, so that he must already have been in great pain, 'as
regards that, it is largely the proneness of the modern British to leap
to verbal extremity which is inducing me to afford them this
object-lesson in restraint and commonsense. Ouch!'
"This momentary ejaculation seemed to escape him in spite of all his iron
control; and the smell of burning flesh brought home to me as nothing
else, perhaps, could have done the tortures he must have been suffering.
"'I feel,' he went on very gravely, 'that extravagance of word and
conduct is fatal to my country, and having so profoundly experienced its
effects upon myself, I am now endeavouring by a shining example to supply
a remedy for a disease which is corroding the vitals and impairing the
sanity of my countrymen and making them a race of second-hand spiritual
drunkards. Ouch!'
"I confess that at this moment the tears started to my eyes, for a more
sublime show than the spectacle of this devoted man slowly roasting
himself to death before my eyes for the good of his country I had seldom
seen. It had a strange, an appalling interest, and for nothing on earth
could I have torn my gaze away. I now realized to the full for the first
time the will-power and heroism of the human species, and I rejoiced with
a glorious new feeling that I was of the same breed as this man, made of
such stern stuff that not even a tear rolled down his cheeks to quench
the flames that leaped around him ever higher and higher. And the dawn
came up in the eastern sky; and I knew that a great day was preparing for
mankind; and with my eyes fixed upon him as he turned blacker and blacker
I let my heart loose in a great thanksgiving that I had lived to see this
moment. It was then that he cried out in a loud voice:
"'I call Aurora to witness that I have died without a falter, grasping a
burning spear, to tilt at the malpractice which has sent me mad!' And I
saw that he held in his fast-consuming hand a long roll of journals
sharpened to a point of burning flame.
"'Aurora!' he cried again, and with that enigmatic word on his lips was
incinerated in the vast and towering belch of the devouring element.
"It was among the most inspiring sights I have ever witnessed."
When Mr. Lavender had completed that record, whose actuality and wealth
of moving detail had greatly affected him, and marked it "For the
Press-Immediate," he felt very cold. It was, in fact, that hour of dawn
when a shiver goes through the world; and, almost with pleasurable
anticipation he took up his lighted candle and stole shivering out to his
pile, rising ghostly to the height of some five feet in the middle of the
dim lawn whereon a faint green tinge was coming with the return of
daylight. Having reached it, he walked round it twice, and readjusted
four volumes of the history of the war as stepping-stones to the top;
then lowering the candle, whose flame burned steadily in the stillness,
he knelt down in the grey dew and set fire to an article in a Sunday
paper. Then, sighing deeply, he returned to his little ladder and, with
some difficulty preserving his balance, mounted to the top, and sat down
with his legs towards the house and his eyes fixed on Aurora's
bedroom-window. He had been there perhaps ten minutes before he realized
that nothing was happening below him, and, climbing down again, proceeded
to the aperture where he had inserted the burning print. There, by the
now considerable daylight, he saw that the flame had gone out at the
words "The Stage is now set for the last act of this colossal world
drama." And convinced that Providence had intended that heartening
sentence to revive his somewhat drooping courage, he thought, "I, too,
shall be making history this morning," and relighting the journal, went
on his hands and knees and began manfully to blow the flames. . . . . .
Now the young lady in the adjoining castle, who had got out of bed,
happened, as she sometimes did, to go to the window for a look at the sun
rising over Parliament Hill. Attracted by the smell of burning paper she
saw Mr. Lavender in this act of blowing up the flames.
"What on earth is the poor dear doing now?" she thought. "This is
really the limit!" And slipping on her slippers and blue dressing-gown
she ensconced herself behind the curtain to await developments.
Mr. Lavender had now backed away from the flames at which he had been
blowing, and remained on his hands and knees, apparently assuring himself
that they had really obtained hold. He then rose, and to her intense
surprise began climbing up on to the pile. She watched him at first with
an amused astonishment, so ludicrous was his light little figure, crowned
by stivered-up white hair, and the expression of eager melancholy on his
thin, high-cheekboned face upturned towards her window. Then, to her
dismay, she saw that the flame had really caught, and, suddenly persuaded
that he had some crazy intention of injuring himself with the view,
perhaps, of attracting her attention, she ran out of her room and down
the stairs, and emerging from the back door just as she was, circled her
garden, so that she might enter Mr. Lavender's garden from behind him,
ready for any eventuality. She arrived within arm's reach of him without
his having heard her, for Blink, whose anxious face as she watched her
master wasting, could be discerned at the bedroom-window, was whining,
and Mr. Lavender himself had now broken into a strange and lamentable
chantey, which, in combination with the creeping flutter of the flames in
the weekly journals encircling the base of the funeral pyre, well-nigh
made her blood curdle.
"Aurora," sang Mr. Lavender, in that most dolorous voice,
"Aurora, my heart I bring,
For I know well it will not burn,
Oh! when the leaves puff out in Spring
And when the leaves in Autumn turn
Think, think of me!
Aurora, I pass away!
Upon my horse of air I ride;
Here let my grizzled ashes stay,
But take, ah! take my heart inside!
Aurora! Aurora!"
At this moment, just as a fit of the most uncontrollable laughter was
about to seize her, she saw a flame which had just consumed the word
Horatio reach Mr. Lavender's right calf.
"Oh!" he cried out in desperate tones, stretching up his arms to the sky.
"Now is my hour come! Sweet-sky, open and let me see her face! Behold!
behold her with the eyes of faith. It is enough. Courage, brother; let
me now consume in silence!" So saying, he folded his arm tightly across
his breast and closed his lips. The flame rising to the bottom of the
weekly which had indeed been upside down, here nipped him vigorously, so
that with a wholly unconscious movement he threw up his little legs, and,
losing his balance, fell backwards into the arms of Aurora, watchfully
outstretched to receive him. Uplifted there, close to that soft blue
bosom away from the reek of the flame, he conceived that he was consumed
and had passed already from his night of ghosts and shadows into the arms
of the morning, and through his swooning lips came forth the words:
"I am in Paradise."
THE END.
FIVE TALES
by John Galsworthy
"Life calls the tune, we dance."
CONTENTS:
THE FIRST AND LAST THE FIRST AND LAST
A STOIC A STOIC
THE APPLE TREE THE APPLE TREE
THE JURYMAN THE JURYMAN
INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE [Also posted as Etext #2594]
[In this 1919 edition of "Five Tales" the fifth tale was "Indian
Summer of a Forsyte;" in later collections, "Indian Summer..." became
the first section of the second volume of The Forsyte Saga]
THE FIRST AND LAST
"So the last shall be first, and the first last."--HOLY WRIT.
It was a dark room at that hour of six in the evening, when just the
single oil reading-lamp under its green shade let fall a dapple of light
over the Turkey carpet; over the covers of books taken out of the
bookshelves, and the open pages of the one selected; over the deep blue
and gold of the coffee service on the little old stool with its Oriental
embroidery. Very dark in the winter, with drawn curtains, many rows of
leather-bound volumes, oak-panelled walls and ceiling. So large, too,
that the lighted spot before the fire where he sat was just an oasis.
But that was what Keith Darrant liked, after his day's work--the hard
early morning study of his "cases," the fret and strain of the day in
court; it was his rest, these two hours before dinner, with books,
coffee, a pipe, and sometimes a nap. In red Turkish slippers and his old
brown velvet coat, he was well suited to that framing of glow and
darkness. A painter would have seized avidly on his clear-cut, yellowish
face, with its black eyebrows twisting up over eyes--grey or brown, one
could hardly tell, and its dark grizzling hair still plentiful, in spite
of those daily hours of wig. He seldom thought of his work while he sat
there, throwing off with practised ease the strain of that long attention
to the multiple threads of argument and evidence to be disentangled--work
profoundly interesting, as a rule, to his clear intellect, trained to
almost instinctive rejection of all but the essential, to selection of
what was legally vital out of the mass of confused tactical and human
detail presented to his scrutiny; yet sometimes tedious and wearing. As
for instance to-day, when he had suspected his client of perjury, and was
almost convinced that he must throw up his brief. He had disliked the
weak-looking, white-faced fellow from the first, and his nervous, shifty
answers, his prominent startled eyes--a type too common in these days of
canting tolerations and weak humanitarianism; no good, no good!
Of the three books he had taken down, a Volume of Voltaire--curious
fascination that Frenchman had, for all his destructive irony!--a volume
of Burton's travels, and Stevenson's "New Arabian Nights," he had pitched
upon the last. He felt, that evening, the want of something sedative, a
desire to rest from thought of any kind. The court had been crowded,
stuffy; the air, as he walked home, soft, sou'-westerly, charged with
coming moisture, no quality of vigour in it; he felt relaxed, tired, even
nervy, and for once the loneliness of his house seemed strange and
comfortless.
Lowering the lamp, he turned his face towards the fire. Perhaps he would
get a sleep before that boring dinner at the Tellasson's. He wished it
were vacation, and Maisie back from school. A widower for many years, he
had lost the habit of a woman about him; yet to-night he had a positive
yearning for the society of his young daughter, with her quick ways, and
bright, dark eyes. Curious what perpetual need of a woman some men had!
His brother Laurence--wasted--all through women--atrophy of willpower! A
man on the edge of things; living from hand to mouth; his gifts all down
at heel! One would have thought the Scottish strain might have saved
him; and yet, when a Scotsman did begin to go downhill, who could go
faster? Curious that their mother's blood should have worked so
differently in her two sons. He himself had always felt he owed all his
success to it.
His thoughts went off at a tangent to a certain issue troubling his legal
conscience. He had not wavered in the usual assumption of omniscience,
but he was by no means sure that he had given right advice. Well!
Without that power to decide and hold to decision in spite of misgiving,
one would never have been fit for one's position at the Bar, never have
been fit for anything. The longer he lived, the more certain he became
of the prime necessity of virile and decisive action in all the affairs
of life. A word and a blow--and the blow first! Doubts, hesitations,
sentiment the muling and puking of this twilight age--! And there welled
up on his handsome face a smile that was almost devilish--the tricks of
firelight are so many! It faded again in sheer drowsiness; he slept....
He woke with a start, having a feeling of something out beyond the light,
and without turning his head said: "What's that?" There came a sound as
if somebody had caught his breath. He turned up the lamp.
"Who's there?"
A voice over by the door answered:
"Only I--Larry."
Something in the tone, or perhaps just being startled out of sleep like
this, made him shiver. He said:
"I was asleep. Come in!"
It was noticeable that he did not get up, or even turn his head, now that
he knew who it was, but waited, his half-closed eyes fixed on the fire,
for his brother to come forward. A visit from Laurence was not an
unmixed blessing. He could hear him breathing, and became conscious of a
scent of whisky. Why could not the fellow at least abstain when he was
coming here! It was so childish, so lacking in any sense of proportion
or of decency! And he said sharply:
"Well, Larry, what is it?"
It was always something. He often wondered at the strength of that sense
of trusteeship, which kept him still tolerant of the troubles, amenable
to the petitions of this brother of his; or was it just "blood" feeling,
a Highland sense of loyalty to kith and kin; an old-time quality which
judgment and half his instincts told him was weakness but which, in spite
of all, bound him to the distressful fellow? Was he drunk now, that he
kept lurking out there by the door? And he said less sharply:
"Why don't you come and sit down?"
He was coming now, avoiding the light, skirting along the walls just
beyond the radiance of the lamp, his feet and legs to the waist brightly
lighted, but his face disintegrated in shadow, like the face of a dark
ghost.
"Are you ill, man?"
Still no answer, save a shake of that head, and the passing up of a hand,
out of the light, to the ghostly forehead under the dishevelled hair.
The scent of whisky was stronger now; and Keith thought:
'He really is drunk. Nice thing for the new butler to see! If he can't
behave--'
The figure against the wall heaved a sigh--so truly from an overburdened
heart that Keith was conscious with a certain dismay of not having yet
fathomed the cause of this uncanny silence. He got up, and, back to the
fire, said with a brutality born of nerves rather than design:
"What is it, man? Have you committed a murder, that you stand there dumb
as a fish?"
For a second no answer at all, not even of breathing; then, just the
whisper:
"Yes."
The sense of unreality which so helps one at moments of disaster enabled
Keith to say vigorously:
"By Jove! You have been drinking!"
But it passed at once into deadly apprehension.
"What do you mean? Come here, where I can see you. What's the matter
with you, Larry?"
With a sudden lurch and dive, his brother left the shelter of the shadow,
and sank into a chair in the circle of light. And another long, broken
sigh escaped him.
"There's nothing the matter with me, Keith! It's true!"
Keith stepped quickly forward, and stared down into his brother's face;
and instantly he saw that it was true. No one could have simulated the
look in those eyes--of horrified wonder, as if they would never again get
on terms with the face to which they belonged. To see them squeezed the
heart-only real misery could look like that. Then that sudden pity became
angry bewilderment.
"What in God's name is this nonsense?"
But it was significant that he lowered his voice; went over to the door,
too, to see if it were shut. Laurence had drawn his chair forward,
huddling over the fire--a thin figure, a worn, high-cheekboned face with
deep-sunk blue eyes, and wavy hair all ruffled, a face that still had a
certain beauty. Putting a hand on that lean shoulder, Keith said:
"Come, Larry! Pull yourself together, and drop exaggeration."
"It's true; I tell you; I've killed a man."
The noisy violence of that outburst acted like a douche. What was the
fellow about--shouting out such words! But suddenly Laurence lifted his
hands and wrung them. The gesture was so utterly painful that it drew a
quiver from Keith's face.
"Why did you come here," he said, "and tell me this?"
Larry's face was really unearthly sometimes, such strange gleams passed
up on to it!
"Whom else should I tell? I came to know what I'm to do, Keith? Give
myself up, or what?"
At that sudden introduction of the practical Keith felt his heart twitch.
Was it then as real as all that? But he said, very quietly:
"Just tell me--How did it come about, this--affair?"
That question linked the dark, gruesome, fantastic nightmare on to
actuality.
"When did it happen?"
"Last night."
In Larry's face there was--there had always been--something childishly
truthful. He would never stand a chance in court! And Keith said:
"How? Where? You'd better tell me quietly from the beginning. Drink
this coffee; it'll clear your head."
Laurence took the little blue cup and drained it.
"Yes," he said. "It's like this, Keith. There's a girl I've known for
some months now--"
Women! And Keith said between his teeth: "Well?"
"Her father was a Pole who died over here when she was sixteen, and left
her all alone. A man called Walenn, a mongrel American, living in the
same house, married her, or pretended to--she's very pretty, Keith--he
left her with a baby six months old, and another coming. That one died,
and she did nearly. Then she starved till another fellow took her on.
She lived with him two years; then Walenn turned up again, and made her
go back to him. The brute used to beat her black and blue, all for
nothing. Then he left her again. When I met her she'd lost her elder
child, too, and was taking anybody who came along."
He suddenly looked up into Keith's face.
"But I've never met a sweeter woman, nor a truer, that I swear. Woman!
She's only twenty now! When I went to her last night, that brute--that
Walenn--had found her out again; and when he came for me, swaggering and
bullying--Look!"--he touched a dark mark on his forehead--"I took his
throat in my hands, and when I let go--"
"Yes?"
"Dead. I never knew till afterwards that she was hanging on to him
behind."
Again he made that gesture-wringing his hands.
In a hard voice Keith said:
"What did you do then?"
"We sat by it a long time. Then I carried it on my back down the street,
round a corner to an archway."
"How far?"
"About fifty yards."
"Was anyone--did anyone see?"
"No."
"What time?"
"Three."
"And then?"
"Went back to her."
"Why--in Heaven's name?"
"She was lonely and afraid; so was I, Keith."
"Where is this place?"
"Forty-two, Borrow Street, Soho."
"And the archway?"
"Corner of Glove Lane."
"Good God! Why--I saw it in the paper!"
And seizing the journal that lay on his bureau, Keith read again that
paragraph: "The body of a man was found this morning under an archway in
Glove Lane, Soho. From marks about the throat grave suspicions of foul
play are entertained. The body had apparently been robbed, and nothing
was discovered leading to identification."
It was real earnest, then. Murder! His own brother! He faced round and
said:
"You saw this in the paper, and dreamed it. Understand--you dreamed it!"
The wistful answer came:
"If only I had, Keith--if only I had!"
In his turn, Keith very nearly wrung his hands.
"Did you take anything from the--body?"
"This dropped while we were struggling.",
It was an empty envelope with a South American post-mark addressed:
"Patrick Walenn, Simon's Hotel, Farrier Street, London." Again with that
twitching in his heart, Keith said:
"Put it in the fire."
Then suddenly he stooped to pluck it out. By that command--he
had--identified himself with this--this--But he did not pluck it out. It
blackened, writhed, and vanished. And once more he said:
"What in God's name made you come here and tell me?"
"You know about these things. I didn't mean to kill him. I love the
girl. What shall I do, Keith?
"Simple! How simple! To ask what he was to do! It was like Larry! And
he said:
"You were not seen, you think?" "It's a dark street. There was no one
about."
"When did you leave this girl the second time?"
"About seven o'clock."
"Where did you go?"
"To my rooms."
"In Fitzroy Street?"
"Yes."
"Did anyone see you come in?"
"No."
"What have you done since?"
"Sat there."
"Not been out?"
"No."
"Not seen the girl?"
"No."
"You don't know, then, what she's done since?"
"No."
"Would she give you away?"
"Never."
"Would she give herself away--hysteria?"
"No."
"Who knows of your relations with her?"
"No one."
"No one?"
"I don't know who should, Keith."
"Did anyone see you going in last night, when you first went to her?"
"No. She lives on the ground floor. I've got keys."
"Give them to me. What else have you that connects you with her?"
"Nothing."
"In your rooms?"
"No."
"No photographs. No letters?"
"No."
"Be careful."
"Nothing."
"No one saw you going back to her the second time?"
"No."
"No one saw you leave her in the morning?"
"No."
"You were fortunate. Sit down again, man. I must think."
Think! Think out this accursed thing--so beyond all thought, and all
belief. But he could not think. Not a coherent thought would come. And
he began again:
"Was it his first reappearance with her?"
"Yes."
"She told you so?"
"Yes."
"How did he find out where she was?"
"I don't know."
"How drunk were you?"
"I was not drunk."
"How much had you drunk?"
"About two bottles of claret--nothing."
"You say you didn't mean to kill him?"
"No-God knows!"
"That's something."
What made you choose the arch?"
"It was the first dark place."
"Did his face look as if he had been strangled?"
"Don't!"
"Did it?"
"Yes."
"Very disfigured?"
"Yes."
"Did you look to see if his clothes were marked?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Why not? My God! If you had done it!"
"You say he was disfigured. Would he be recognisable?"
"I don't know."
"When she lived with him last--where was that?"
"I don't know for certain. Pimlico, I think."
"Not Soho?"
"No."
"How long has she been at the Soho place?"
"Nearly a year."
"Always the same rooms?"
"Yes."
"Is there anyone living in that house or street who would be likely to
know her as his wife?"
"I don't think so."
"What was he?"
"I should think he was a professional 'bully.'"
"I see. Spending most of his time abroad, then?"
"Yes."
"Do you know if he was known to the police?"
"I haven't heard of it."
"Now, listen, Larry. When you leave here go straight home, and don't go
out till I come to you, to-morrow morning. Promise that!"
"I promise."
"I've got a dinner engagement. I'll think this out. Don't drink. Don't
talk! Pull yourself together."
"Don't keep me longer than you can help, Keith!"
That white face, those eyes, that shaking hand! With a twinge of pity in
the midst of all the turbulence of his revolt, and fear, and disgust
Keith put his hand on his brother's shoulder, and said:
"Courage!"
And suddenly he thought: 'My God! Courage! I shall want it all myself!'
II
Laurence Darrant, leaving his brother's house in the Adelphi, walked
northwards, rapidly, slowly, rapidly again. For, if there are men who by
force of will do one thing only at a time, there are men who from lack of
will do now one thing, now another; with equal intensity. To such
natures, to be gripped by the Nemesis which attends the lack of
self-control is no reason for being more self-controlled. Rather does it
foster their pet feeling: "What matter? To-morrow we die!" The effort of
will required to go to Keith had relieved, exhausted and exasperated him.
In accordance with those three feelings was the progress of his walk. He
started from the door with the fixed resolve to go home and stay there
quietly till Keith came. He was in Keith's hands, Keith would know what
was to be done. But he had not gone three hundred yards before he felt
so utterly weary, body and soul, that if he had but had a pistol in his
pocket he would have shot himself in the street. Not even the thought of
the girl--this young unfortunate with her strange devotion, who had kept
him straight these last five months, who had roused in him a depth of
feeling he had never known before--would have availed against that sudden
black defection. Why go on--a waif at the mercy of his own nature, a
straw blown here and there by every gust which rose in him? Why not have
done with it for ever, and take it out in sleep?
He was approaching the fatal street, where he and the girl, that early
morning, had spent the hours clutched together, trying in the refuge of
love to forget for a moment their horror and fear. Should he go in? He
had promised Keith not to. Why had he promised? He caught sight of
himself in a chemist's lighted window. Miserable, shadowy brute! And he
remembered suddenly a dog he had picked up once in the streets of Pera, a
black-and-white creature--different from the other dogs, not one of their
breed, a pariah of pariahs, who had strayed there somehow. He had taken
it home to the house where he was staying, contrary to all custom of the
country; had got fond of it; had shot it himself, sooner than leave it
behind again to the mercies of its own kind in the streets. Twelve years
ago! And those sleevelinks made of little Turkish coins he had brought
back for the girl at the hairdresser's in Chancery Lane where he used to
get shaved--pretty creature, like a wild rose. He had asked of her a
kiss for payment. What queer emotion when she put her face forward to
his lips--a sort of passionate tenderness and shame, at the softness and
warmth of that flushed cheek, at her beauty and trustful gratitude. She
would soon have given herself to him--that one! He had never gone there
again! And to this day he did not know why he had abstained; to this day
he did not know whether he were glad or sorry not to have plucked that
rose. He must surely have been very different then! Queer business,
life--queer, queer business!--to go through it never knowing what you
would do next. Ah! to be like Keith, steady, buttoned-up in success; a
brass pot, a pillar of society! Once, as a boy, he had been within an
ace of killing Keith, for sneering at him. Once in Southern Italy he had
been near killing a driver who was flogging his horse. And now, that
dark-faced, swinish bully who had ruined the girl he had grown to
love--he had done it! Killed him! Killed a man!
He who did not want to hurt a fly. The chemist's window comforted him
with the sudden thought that he had at home that which made him safe, in
case they should arrest him. He would never again go out without some of
those little white tablets sewn into the lining of his coat. Restful,
even exhilarating thought! They said a man should not take his own life.
Let them taste horror--those glib citizens! Let them live as that girl
had lived, as millions lived all the world over, under their canting
dogmas! A man might rather even take his life than watch their cursed
inhumanities.
He went into the chemist's for a bromide; and, while the man was mixing
it, stood resting one foot like a tired horse. The "life" he had
squeezed out of that fellow! After all, a billion living creatures gave
up life each day, had it squeezed out of them, mostly. And perhaps not
one a day deserved death so much as that loathly fellow. Life! a
breath--aflame! Nothing! Why, then, this icy clutching at his heart?
The chemist brought the draught.
"Not sleeping, sir?"
"No."
The man's eyes seemed to say: 'Yes! Burning the candle at both ends--I
know!' Odd life, a chemist's; pills and powders all day long, to hold the
machinery of men together! Devilish odd trade!
In going out he caught the reflection of his face in a mirror; it seemed
too good altogether for a man who had committed murder. There was a sort
of brightness underneath, an amiability lurking about its shadows;
how--how could it be the face of a man who had done what he had done?
His head felt lighter now, his feet lighter; he walked rapidly again.
Curious feeling of relief and oppression all at once! Frightful--to long
for company, for talk, for distraction; and--to be afraid of it! The
girl--the girl and Keith were now the only persons who would not give him
that feeling of dread. And, of those two--Keith was not...! Who could
consort with one who was never wrong, a successful, righteous fellow; a
chap built so that he knew nothing about himself, wanted to know nothing,
a chap all solid actions? To be a quicksand swallowing up one's own
resolutions was bad enough! But to be like Keith--all willpower,
marching along, treading down his own feelings and weaknesses! No! One
could not make a comrade of a man like Keith, even if he were one's
brother? The only creature in all the world was the girl. She alone
knew and felt what he was feeling; would put up with him and love him
whatever he did, or was done to him. He stopped and took shelter in a
doorway, to light a cigarette. He had suddenly a fearful wish to pass the
archway where he had placed the body; a fearful wish that had no sense,
no end in view, no anything; just an insensate craving to see the dark
place again. He crossed Borrow Street to the little lane. There was
only one person visible, a man on the far side with his shoulders hunched
against the wind; a short, dark figure which crossed and came towards him
in the flickering lamplight. What a face! Yellow, ravaged, clothed
almost to the eyes in a stubbly greyish growth of beard, with blackish
teeth, and haunting bloodshot eyes. And what a figure of rags--one
shoulder higher than the other, one leg a little lame, and thin! A surge
of feeling came up in Laurence for this creature, more unfortunate than
himself. There were lower depths than his!
"Well, brother," he said, "you don't look too prosperous!"
The smile which gleamed out on the man's face seemed as unlikely as a
smile on a scarecrow.
"Prosperity doesn't come my way," he said in a rusty voice. "I'm a
failure--always been a failure. And yet you wouldn't think it, would
you?--I was a minister of religion once."
Laurence held out a shilling. But the man shook his head.
"Keep your money," he said. "I've got more than you to-day, I daresay.
But thank you for taking a little interest. That's worth more than money
to a man that's down."
"You're right."
"Yes," the rusty voice went on; "I'd as soon die as go on living as I do.
And now I've lost my self-respect. Often wondered how long a starving
man could go without losing his self-respect. Not so very long. You
take my word for that." And without the slightest change in the monotony
of that creaking voice he added:
"Did you read of the murder? Just here. I've been looking at the
place."
The words: 'So have I!' leaped up to Laurence's lips; he choked them down
with a sort of terror.
"I wish you better luck," he said. "Goodnight!" and hurried away. A
sort of ghastly laughter was forcing its way up in his throat. Was
everyone talking of the murder he had committed? Even the very
scarecrows?
III
There are some natures so constituted that, due to be hung at ten
o'clock, they will play chess at eight. Such men invariably rise. They
make especially good bishops, editors, judges, impresarios, Prime
ministers, money-lenders, and generals; in fact, fill with exceptional
credit any position of power over their fellow-men. They have spiritual
cold storage, in which are preserved their nervous systems. In such men
there is little or none of that fluid sense and continuity of feeling
known under those vague terms, speculation, poetry, philosophy. Men of
facts and of decision switching imagination on and off at will,
subordinating sentiment to reason... one does not think of them when
watching wind ripple over cornfields, or swallows flying.
Keith Darrant had need for being of that breed during his dinner at the
Tellassons. It was just eleven when he issued from the big house in
Portland Place and refrained from taking a cab. He wanted to walk that
he might better think. What crude and wanton irony there was in his
situation! To have been made father-confessor to a murderer, he--well on
towards a judgeship! With his contempt for the kind of weakness which
landed men in such abysses, he felt it all so sordid, so "impossible,"
that he could hardly bring his mind to bear on it at all. And yet he
must, because of two powerful instincts--self-preservation and
blood-loyalty.
The wind had still the sapping softness of the afternoon, but rain had
held off so far. It was warm, and he unbuttoned his fur overcoat. The
nature of his thoughts deepened the dark austerity of his face, whose
thin, well-cut lips were always pressing together, as if, by meeting, to
dispose of each thought as it came up. He moved along the crowded
pavements glumly. That air of festive conspiracy which drops with the
darkness on to lighted streets, galled him. He turned off on a darker
route.
This ghastly business! Convinced of its reality, he yet could not see
it. The thing existed in his mind, not as a picture, but as a piece of
irrefutable evidence. Larry had not meant to do it, of course. But it
was murder, all the same. Men like Larry--weak, impulsive, sentimental,
introspective creatures--did they ever mean what they did? This man,
this Walenn, was, by all accounts, better dead than alive; no need to
waste a thought on him! But, crime--the ugliness--Justice unsatisfied!
Crime concealed--and his own share in the concealment! And yet--brother
to brother! Surely no one could demand action from him! It was only a
question of what he was going to advise Larry to do. To keep silent, and
disappear? Had that a chance of success? Perhaps if the answers to his
questions had been correct. But this girl! Suppose the dead man's
relationship to her were ferreted out, could she be relied on not to
endanger Larry? These women were all the same, unstable as water,
emotional, shiftless pests of society. Then, too, a crime untracked,
dogging all his brother's after life; a secret following him wherever he
might vanish to; hanging over him, watching for some drunken moment, to
slip out of his lips. It was bad to think of. A clean breast of it?
But his heart twitched within him. "Brother of Mr. Keith Darrant, the
well-known King's Counsel"--visiting a woman of the town, strangling with
his bare hands the woman's husband! No intention to murder, but--a dead
man! A dead man carried out of the house, laid under a dark archway!
Provocation! Recommended to mercy--penal servitude for life! Was that
the advice he was going to give Larry to-morrow morning?
And he had a sudden vision of shaven men with clay-coloured features,
run, as it were, to seed, as he had seen them once in Pentonville, when
he had gone there to visit a prisoner. Larry! Whom, as a baby creature,
he had watched straddling; whom, as a little fellow, he had fagged; whom
he had seen through scrapes at college; to whom he had lent money time
and again, and time and again admonished in his courses. Larry! Five
years younger than himself; and committed to his charge by their mother
when she died. To become for life one of those men with faces like
diseased plants; with no hair but a bushy stubble; with arrows marked on
their yellow clothes! Larry! One of those men herded like sheep; at the
beck and call of common men! A gentleman, his own brother, to live that
slave's life, to be ordered here and there, year after year, day in, day
out. Something snapped within him. He could not give that advice.
Impossible! But if not, he must make sure of his ground, must verify,
must know. This Glove Lane--this arch way? It would not be far from
where he was that very moment. He looked for someone of whom to make
enquiry. A policeman was standing at the corner, his stolid face
illumined by a lamp; capable and watchful--an excellent officer, no
doubt; but, turning his head away, Keith passed him without a word.
Strange to feel that cold, uneasy feeling in presence of the law! A grim
little driving home of what it all meant! Then, suddenly, he saw that
the turning to his left was Borrow Street itself. He walked up one side,
crossed over, and returned. He passed Number Forty-two, a small house
with business names printed on the lifeless windows of the first and
second floors; with dark curtained windows on the ground floor, or was
there just a slink of light in one corner? Which way had Larry turned?
Which way under that grisly burden? Fifty paces of this squalid
street-narrow, and dark, and empty, thank heaven! Glove Lane! Here it
was! A tiny runlet of a street. And here--! He had run right on to the
arch, a brick bridge connecting two portions of a warehouse, and dark
indeed.
"That's right, gov'nor! That's the place!" He needed all his
self-control to turn leisurely to the speaker. "'Ere's where they found
the body--very spot leanin' up 'ere. They ain't got 'im yet. Lytest--me
lord!"
It was a ragged boy holding out a tattered yellowish journal. His lynx
eyes peered up from under lanky wisps of hair, and his voice had the
proprietary note of one making "a corner" in his news. Keith took the
paper and gave him twopence. He even found a sort of comfort in the
young ghoul's hanging about there; it meant that others besides himself
had come morbidly to look. By the dim lamplight he read: "Glove Lane
garrotting mystery. Nothing has yet been discovered of the murdered
man's identity; from the cut of his clothes he is supposed to be a
foreigner." The boy had vanished, and Keith saw the figure of a
policeman coming slowly down this gutter of a street. A second's
hesitation, and he stood firm. Nothing obviously could have brought him
here save this "mystery," and he stayed quietly staring at the arch. The
policeman moved up abreast. Keith saw that he was the one whom he had
passed just now. He noted the cold offensive question die out of the
man's eyes when they caught the gleam of white shirt-front under the
opened fur collar. And holding up the paper, he said:
"Is this where the man was found?"
"Yes, sir."
"Still a mystery, I see?"
"Well, we can't always go by the papers. But I don't fancy they do know
much about it, yet."
"Dark spot. Do fellows sleep under here?"
The policeman nodded. "There's not an arch in London where we don't get
'em sometimes."
"Nothing found on him--I think I read?"
"Not a copper. Pockets inside out. There's some funny characters about
this quarter. Greeks, Hitalians--all sorts."
Queer sensation this, of being glad of a policeman's confidential tone!
"Well, good-night!"
"Good-night, sir. Good-night!"
He looked back from Borrow Street. The policeman was still standing
there holding up his lantern, so that its light fell into the archway, as
if trying to read its secret.
Now that he had seen this dark, deserted spot, the chances seemed to him
much better. "Pockets inside out!" Either Larry had had presence of
mind to do a very clever thing, or someone had been at the body before
the police found it. That was the more likely. A dead backwater of a
place. At three o'clock--loneliest of all hours--Larry's five minutes'
grim excursion to and fro might well have passed unseen! Now, it all
depended on the girl; on whether Laurence had been seen coming to her or
going away; on whether, if the man's relationship to her were discovered,
she could be relied on to say nothing. There was not a soul in Borrow
Street now; hardly even a lighted window; and he took one of those rather
desperate decisions only possible to men daily accustomed to the instant
taking of responsibility. He would go to her, and see for himself. He
came to the door of Forty-two, obviously one of those which are only shut
at night, and tried the larger key. It fitted, and he was in a
gas-lighted passage, with an oil-clothed floor, and a single door to his
left. He stood there undecided. She must be made to understand that he
knew everything. She must not be told more than that he was a friend of
Larry's. She must not be frightened, yet must be forced to give her very
soul away. A hostile witness--not to be treated as hostile--a matter for
delicate handling! But his knock was not answered.
Should he give up this nerve-racking, bizarre effort to come at a basis
of judgment; go away, and just tell Laurence that he could not advise
him? And then--what? Something must be done. He knocked again. Still
no answer. And with that impatience of being thwarted, natural to him,
and fostered to the full by the conditions of his life, he tried the
other key. It worked, and he opened the door. Inside all was dark, but a
voice from some way off, with a sort of breathless relief in its foreign
tones, said:
"Oh! then it's you, Larry! Why did you knock? I was so frightened. Turn
up the light, dear. Come in!"
Feeling by the door for a switch in the pitch blackness he was conscious
of arms round his neck, a warm thinly clad body pressed to his own; then
withdrawn as quickly, with a gasp, and the most awful terror-stricken
whisper:
"Oh! Who is it?"
With a glacial shiver down his own spine, Keith answered
"A friend of Laurence. Don't be frightened!"
There was such silence that he could hear a clock ticking, and the sound
of his own hand passing over the surface of the wall, trying to find the
switch. He found it, and in the light which leaped up he saw, stiffened
against a dark curtain evidently screening off a bedroom, a girl
standing, holding a long black coat together at her throat, so that her
face with its pale brown hair, short and square-cut and curling up
underneath, had an uncanny look of being detached from any body. Her
face was so alabaster pale that the staring, startled eyes, dark blue or
brown, and the faint rose of the parted lips, were like colour stainings
on a white mask; and it had a strange delicacy, truth, and pathos, such
as only suffering brings. Though not susceptible to aesthetic emotion,
Keith was curiously affected. He said gently:
"You needn't be afraid. I haven't come to do you harm--quite the
contrary. May I sit down and talk?" And, holding up the keys, he added:
"Laurence wouldn't have given me these, would he, if he hadn't trusted
me?"
Still she did not move, and he had the impression that he was looking at
a spirit--a spirit startled out of its flesh. Nor at the moment did it
seem in the least strange that he should conceive such an odd thought.
He stared round the room--clean and tawdry, with its tarnished gilt
mirror, marble-topped side-table, and plush-covered sofa. Twenty years
and more since he had been in such a place. And he said:
"Won't you sit down? I'm sorry to have startled you."
But still she did not move, whispering:
"Who are you, please?"
And, moved suddenly beyond the realm of caution by the terror in that
whisper, he answered:
"Larry's brother."
She uttered a little sigh of relief which went to Keith's heart, and,
still holding the dark coat together at her throat, came forward and sat
down on the sofa. He could see that her feet, thrust into slippers, were
bare; with her short hair, and those candid startled eyes, she looked
like a tall child. He drew up a chair and said:
"You must forgive me coming at such an hour; he's told me, you see." He
expected her to flinch and gasp; but she only clasped her hands together
on her knees, and said:
"Yes?"
Then horror and discomfort rose up in him, afresh.
"An awful business!"
Her whisper echoed him:
"Yes, oh! yes! Awful--it is awful!"
And suddenly realising that the man must have fallen dead just where he
was sitting, Keith became stock silent, staring at the floor.
"Yes," she whispered; "Just there. I see him now always falling!"
How she said that! With what a strange gentle despair! In this girl of
evil life, who had brought on them this tragedy, what was it which moved
him to a sort of unwilling compassion?
"You look very young," he said.
"I am twenty."
"And you are fond of--my brother?"
"I would die for him."
Impossible to mistake the tone of her voice, or the look in her eyes,
true deep Slav eyes; dark brown, not blue as he had thought at first. It
was a very pretty face--either her life had not eaten into it yet, or the
suffering of these last hours had purged away those marks; or perhaps
this devotion of hers to Larry. He felt strangely at sea, sitting there
with this child of twenty; he, over forty, a man of the world,
professionally used to every side of human nature. But he said,
stammering a little:
"I--I have come to see how far you can save him. Listen, and just answer
the questions I put to you."
She raised her hands, squeezed them together, and murmured:
"Oh! I will answer anything."
"This man, then--your--your husband--was he a bad man?"
"A dreadful man."
"Before he came here last night, how long since you saw him?"
"Eighteen months."
"Where did you live when you saw him last?"
"In Pimlico."
"Does anybody about here know you as Mrs. Walenn?"
"No. When I came here, after my little girl died, I came to live a bad
life. Nobody knows me at all. I am quite alone."
"If they discover who he was, they will look for his wife?"
"I do not know. He did not let people think I was married to him. I was
very young; he treated many, I think, like me."
"Do you think he was known to the police?"
She shook her head. "He was very clever."
"What is your name now?"
"Wanda Livinska."
"Were you known by that name before you were married?"
"Wanda is my Christian name. Livinska--I just call myself."
"I see; since you came here."
"Yes."
"Did my brother ever see this man before last night?"
"Never."
"You had told him about his treatment of you?"
"Yes. And that man first went for him."
"I saw the mark. Do you think anyone saw my brother come to you?"
"I do not know. He says not."
"Can you tell if anyone saw him carrying the--the thing away?"
"No one in this street--I was looking."
"Nor coming back?"
"No one."
"Nor going out in the morning?"
"I do not think it."
"Have you a servant?"
"Only a woman who comes at nine in the morning for an hour."
"Does she know Larry?"
"No."
"Friends, acquaintances?"
"No; I am very quiet. And since I knew your brother, I see no one.
Nobody comes here but him for a long time now."
"How long?"
"Five months."
"Have you been out to-day?"
"No."
"What have you been doing?"
"Crying."
It was said with a certain dreadful simplicity, and pressing her hands
together, she went on:
"He is in danger, because of me. I am so afraid for him." Holding up his
hand to check that emotion, he said:
"Look at me!"
She fixed those dark eyes on him, and in her bare throat, from which the
coat had fallen back, he could see her resolutely swallowing down her
agitation.
"If the worst comes to the worst, and this man is traced to you, can you
trust yourself not to give my brother away?"
Her eyes shone. She got up and went to the fireplace:
"Look! I have burned all the things he has given me--even his picture.
Now I have nothing from him."
Keith, too, got up.
"Good! One more question: Do the police know you, because--because of
your life?"
She shook her head, looking at him intently, with those mournfully true
eyes. And he felt a sort of shame.
"I was obliged to ask. Do you know where he lives?"
"Yes."
"You must not go there. And he must not come to you, here."
Her lips quivered; but she bowed her head. Suddenly he found her quite
close to him, speaking almost in a whisper:
"Please do not take him from me altogether. I will be so careful. I
will not do anything to hurt him; but if I cannot see him sometimes, I
shall die. Please do not take him from me." And catching his hand
between her own, she pressed it desperately. It was several seconds
before Keith said:
"Leave that to me. I will see him. I shall arrange. You must leave
that to me."
"But you will be kind?"
He felt her lips kissing his hand. And the soft moist touch sent a queer
feeling through him, protective, yet just a little brutal, having in it a
shiver of sensuality. He withdrew his hand. And as if warned that she
had been too pressing, she recoiled humbly. But suddenly she turned, and
stood absolutely rigid; then almost inaudibly whispered: "Listen!
Someone out--out there!" And darting past him she turned out the light.
Almost at once came a knock on the door. He could feel--actually feel
the terror of this girl beside him in the dark. And he, too, felt
terror. Who could it be? No one came but Larry, she had said. Who else
then could it be? Again came the knock, louder! He felt the breath of
her whisper on his cheek: "If it is Larry! I must open." He shrank back
against the wall; heard her open the door and say faintly: "Yes. Please!
Who?"
Light painted a thin moving line on the wall opposite, and a voice which
Keith recognised answered:
"All right, miss. Your outer door's open here. You ought to keep it
shut after dark."
God! That policeman! And it had been his own doing, not shutting the
outer door behind him when he came in. He heard her say timidly in her
foreign voice: "Thank you, sir!" the policeman's retreating steps, the
outer door being shut, and felt her close to him again. That something in
her youth and strange prettiness which had touched and kept him gentle,
no longer blunted the edge of his exasperation, now that he could not see
her. They were all the same, these women; could not speak the truth!
And he said brusquely:
"You told me they didn't know you!"
Her voice answered like a sigh:
"I did not think they did, sir. It is so long I was not out in the town,
not since I had Larry."
The repulsion which all the time seethed deep in Keith welled up at those
words. His brother--son of his mother, a gentleman--the property of this
girl, bound to her, body and soul, by this unspeakable event! But she
had turned up the light. Had she some intuition that darkness was
against her? Yes, she was pretty with that soft face, colourless save
for its lips and dark eyes, with that face somehow so touchingly, so
unaccountably good, and like a child's.
"I am going now," he said. "Remember! He mustn't come here; you mustn't
go to him. I shall see him to-morrow. If you are as fond of him as you
say--take care, take care!"
She sighed out, "Yes! oh, yes!" and Keith went to the door. She was
standing with her back to the wall, and to follow him she only moved her
head--that dove-like face with all its life in eyes which seemed saying:
'Look into us; nothing we hide; all--all is there!'
And he went out.
In the passage he paused before opening the outer door. He did not want
to meet that policeman again; the fellow's round should have taken him
well out of the street by now, and turning the handle cautiously, he
looked out. No one in sight. He stood a moment, wondering if he should
turn to right or left, then briskly crossed the street. A voice to his
right hand said:
"Good-night, sir."
There in the shadow of a doorway the policeman was standing. The fellow
must have seen him coming out! Utterly unable to restrain a start, and
muttering "Goodnight!" Keith walked on rapidly:
He went full quarter of a mile before he lost that startled and uneasy
feeling in sardonic exasperation that he, Keith Darrant, had been taken
for a frequenter of a lady of the town. The whole thing--the whole
thing!--a vile and disgusting business! His very mind felt dirty and
breathless; his spirit, drawn out of sheath, had slowly to slide back
before he could at all focus and readjust his reasoning faculty.
Certainly, he had got the knowledge he wanted. There was less danger
than he thought. That girl's eyes! No mistaking her devotion. She
would not give Larry away. Yes! Larry must clear out--South
America--the East--it did not matter. But he felt no relief. The cheap,
tawdry room had wrapped itself round his fancy with its atmosphere of
murky love, with the feeling it inspired, of emotion caged within those
yellowish walls and the red stuff of its furniture. That girl's face!
Devotion; truth, too, and beauty, rare and moving, in its setting of
darkness and horror, in that nest of vice and of disorder!... The dark
archway; the street arab, with his gleeful: "They 'ain't got 'im yet!";
the feel of those bare arms round his neck; that whisper of horror in the
darkness; above all, again, her child face looking into his, so truthful!
And suddenly he stood quite still in the street. What in God's name was
he about? What grotesque juggling amongst shadows, what strange and
ghastly eccentricity was all this? The forces of order and routine, all
the actualities of his daily life, marched on him at that moment, and
swept everything before them. It was a dream, a nightmare not real! It
was ridiculous! That he--he should thus be bound up with things so black
and bizarre!
He had come by now to the Strand, that street down which every day he
moved to the Law Courts, to his daily work; his work so dignified and
regular, so irreproachable, and solid. No! The thing was all a
monstrous nightmare! It would go, if he fixed his mind on the familiar
objects around, read the names on the shops, looked at the faces passing.
Far down the thoroughfare he caught the outline of the old church, and
beyond, the loom of the Law Courts themselves. The bell of a fire-engine
sounded, and the horses came galloping by, with the shining metal, rattle
of hoofs and hoarse shouting. Here was a sensation, real and harmless,
dignified and customary! A woman flaunting round the corner looked up at
him, and leered out: "Good-night!" Even that was customary, tolerable.
Two policemen passed, supporting between them a man the worse for liquor,
full of fight and expletives; the sight was soothing, an ordinary thing
which brought passing annoyance, interest, disgust. It had begun to
rain; he felt it on his face with pleasure--an actual thing, not
eccentric, a thing which happened every day!
He began to cross the street. Cabs were going at furious speed now that
the last omnibus had ceased to run; it distracted him to take this
actual, ordinary risk run so often every day. During that crossing of
the Strand, with the rain in his face and the cabs shooting past, he
regained for the first time his assurance, shook off this unreal sense of
being in the grip of something, and walked resolutely to the corner of
his home turning. But passing into that darker stretch, he again stood
still. A policeman had also turned into that street on the other side.
Not--surely not! Absurd! They were all alike to look at--those fellows!
Absurd! He walked on sharply, and let himself into his house. But on
his way upstairs he could not for the life of him help raising a corner
of a curtain and looking from the staircase window. The policeman was
marching solemnly, about twenty-five yards away, paying apparently no
attention to anything whatever.
IV
Keith woke at five o'clock, his usual hour, without remembrance. But the
grisly shadow started up when he entered his study, where the lamp
burned, and the fire shone, and the coffee was set ready, just as when
yesterday afternoon Larry had stood out there against the wall. For a
moment he fought against realisation; then, drinking off his coffee, sat
down sullenly at the bureau to his customary three hours' study of the
day's cases.
Not one word of his brief could he take in. It was all jumbled with
murky images and apprehensions, and for full half an hour he suffered
mental paralysis. Then the sheer necessity of knowing something of the
case which he had to open at half-past ten that morning forced him to a
concentration which never quite subdued the malaise at the bottom of his
heart. Nevertheless, when he rose at half-past eight and went into the
bathroom, he had earned his grim satisfaction in this victory of
will-power. By half-past nine he must be at Larry's. A boat left London
for the Argentine to-morrow. If Larry was to get away at once, money
must be arranged for. And then at breakfast he came on this paragraph in
the paper:
"SOHO MURDER.
"Enquiry late last night established the fact that the Police have
discovered the identity of the man found strangled yesterday morning
under an archway in Glove Lane. An arrest has been made."
By good fortune he had finished eating, for the words made him feel
physically sick. At this very minute Larry might be locked up, waiting
to be charged-might even have been arrested before his own visit to the
girl last night. If Larry were arrested, she must be implicated. What,
then, would be his own position? Idiot to go and look at that archway,
to go and see the girl! Had that policeman really followed him home?
Accessory after the fact! Keith Darrant, King's Counsel, man of mark!
He forced himself by an effort, which had something of the heroic, to
drop this panicky feeling. Panic never did good. He must face it, and
see. He refused even to hurry, calmly collected the papers wanted for
the day, and attended to a letter or two, before he set out in a taxi-cab
to Fitzroy Street.
Waiting outside there in the grey morning for his ring to be answered, he
looked the very picture of a man who knew his mind, a man of resolution.
But it needed all his will-power to ask without tremor: "Mr. Darrant in?"
to hear without sign of any kind the answer: "He's not up yet, sir."
"Never mind; I'll go in and see him. Mr. Keith Darrant."
On his way to Laurence's bedroom, in the midst of utter relief, he had
the self-possession to think: 'This arrest is the best thing that could
have happened. It'll keep their noses on a wrong scent till Larry's got
away. The girl must be sent off too, but not with him.' Panic had ended
in quite hardening his resolution. He entered the bedroom with a feeling
of disgust. The fellow was lying there, his bare arms crossed behind his
tousled head, staring at the ceiling, and smoking one of many cigarettes
whose ends littered a chair beside him, whose sickly reek tainted the
air. That pale face, with its jutting cheek-bones and chin, its hollow
cheeks and blue eyes far sunk back--what a wreck of goodness!
He looked up at Keith through the haze of smoke and said quietly: "Well,
brother, what's the sentence? 'Transportation for life, and then to be
fined forty pounds?'"
The flippancy revolted Keith. It was Larry all over! Last night
horrified and humble, this morning, "Don't care" and feather-headed. He
said sourly:
"Oh! You can joke about it now?"
Laurence turned his face to the wall.
"Must."
Fatalism! How detestable were natures like that!
"I've been to see her," he said.
"You?"
"Last night. She can be trusted."
Laurence laughed.
"That I told you."
"I had to see for myself. You must clear out at once, Larry. She can
come out to you by the next boat; but you can't go together. Have you any
money?"
"No."
"I can foot your expenses, and lend you a year's income in advance. But
it must be a clean cut; after you get out there your whereabouts must
only be known to me."
A long sigh answered him.
"You're very good to me, Keith; you've always been very good. I don't
know why."
Keith answered drily
"Nor I. There's a boat to the Argentine tomorrow. You're in luck;
they've made an arrest. It's in the paper."
"What?"
The cigarette end dropped, the thin pyjama'd figure writhed up and stood
clutching at the bedrail.
"What?"
The disturbing thought flitted through Keith's brain: 'I was a fool. He
takes it queerly; what now?'
Laurence passed his hand over his forehead, and sat down on the bed.
"I hadn't thought of that," he said; "It does me!"
Keith stared. In his relief that the arrested man was not Laurence, this
had not occurred to him. What folly!
"Why?" he said quickly; "an innocent man's in no danger. They always
get the wrong man first. It's a piece of luck, that's all. It gives us
time."
How often had he not seen that expression on Larry's face, wistful,
questioning, as if trying to see the thing with his--Keith's-eyes, trying
to submit to better judgment? And he said, almost gently--
"Now, look here, Larry; this is too serious to trifle with. Don't worry
about that. Leave it to me. Just get ready to be off'. I'll take your
berth and make arrangements. Here's some money for kit. I can come
round between five and six, and let you know. Pull yourself together,
man. As soon as the girl's joined you out there, you'd better get across
to Chile, the further the better. You must simply lose yourself: I must
go now, if I'm to get to the Bank before I go down to the courts." And
looking very steadily at his brother, he added:
"Come! You've got to think of me in this matter as well as of yourself.
No playing fast and loose with the arrangements. Understand?"
But still Larry gazed up at him with that wistful questioning, and not
till he had repeated, "Understand?" did he receive "Yes" for answer.
Driving away, he thought: 'Queer fellow! I don't know him, shall never
know him!' and at once began to concentrate on the practical
arrangements. At his bank he drew out L400; but waiting for the notes to
be counted he suffered qualms. A clumsy way of doing things! If there
had been more time! The thought: 'Accessory after the fact!' now
infected everything. Notes were traceable. No other way of getting him
away at once, though. One must take lesser risks to avoid greater. From
the bank he drove to the office of the steamship line. He had told Larry
he would book his passage. But that would not do! He must only ask
anonymously if there were accommodation. Having discovered that there
were vacant berths, he drove on to the Law Courts. If he could have
taken a morning off, he would have gone down to the police court and seen
them charge this man. But even that was not too safe, with a face so
well known as his. What would come of this arrest? Nothing, surely!
The police always took somebody up, to keep the public quiet. Then,
suddenly, he had again the feeling that it was all a nightmare; Larry had
never done it; the police had got the right man! But instantly the
memory of the girl's awe-stricken face, her figure huddling on the sofa,
her words "I see him always falling!" came back. God! What a business!
He felt he had never been more clear-headed and forcible than that
morning in court. When he came out for lunch he bought the most
sensational of the evening papers. But it was yet too early for news,
and he had to go back into court no whit wiser concerning the arrest.
When at last he threw off wig and gown, and had got through a conference
and other necessary work, he went out to Chancery Lane, buying a paper on
the way. Then he hailed a cab, and drove once more to Fitzroy Street.
V
Laurence had remained sitting on his bed for many minutes. An innocent
man in no danger! Keith had said it--the celebrated lawyer! Could he
rely on that? Go out 8,000 miles, he and the girl, and leave a
fellow-creature perhaps in mortal peril for an act committed by himself?
In the past night he had touched bottom, as he thought: become ready to
face anything. When Keith came in he would without murmur have accepted
the advice: "Give yourself up!" He was prepared to pitch away the end of
his life as he pitched from him the fag-ends of his cigarettes. And the
long sigh he had heaved, hearing of reprieve, had been only half relief.
Then, with incredible swiftness there had rushed through him a feeling of
unutterable joy and hope. Clean away--into a new country, a new life!
The girl and he! Out there he wouldn't care, would rejoice even to have
squashed the life out of such a noisome beetle of a man. Out there!
Under a new sun, where blood ran quicker than in this foggy land, and
people took justice into their own hands. For it had been justice on
that brute even though he had not meant to kill him. And then to hear of
this arrest! They would be charging the man to-day. He could go and see
the poor creature accused of the murder he himself had committed! And he
laughed. Go and see how likely it was that they might hang a fellow-man
in place of himself? He dressed, but too shaky to shave himself, went
out to a barber's shop. While there he read the news which Keith had
seen. In this paper the name of the arrested man was given: "John Evan,
no address." To be brought up on the charge at Bow Street. Yes! He
must go. Once, twice, three times he walked past the entrance of the
court before at last he entered and screwed himself away among the tag
and bobtail.
The court was crowded; and from the murmurs round he could tell that it
was his particular case which had brought so many there. In a dazed way
he watched charge after charge disposed of with lightning quickness. But
were they never going to reach his business? And then suddenly he saw
the little scarecrow man of last night advancing to the dock between two
policemen, more ragged and miserable than ever by light of day, like some
shaggy, wan, grey animal, surrounded by sleek hounds.
A sort of satisfied purr was rising all round; and with horror Laurence
perceived that this--this was the man accused of what he himself had
done--this queer, battered unfortunate to whom he had shown a passing
friendliness. Then all feeling merged in the appalling interest of
listening. The evidence was very short. Testimony of the hotel-keeper
where Walenn had been staying, the identification of his body, and of a
snake-shaped ring he had been wearing at dinner that evening. Testimony
of a pawnbroker, that this same ring was pawned with him the first thing
yesterday morning by the prisoner. Testimony of a policeman that he had
noticed the man Evan several times in Glove Lane, and twice moved him on
from sleeping under that arch. Testimony of another policeman that, when
arrested at midnight, Evan had said: "Yes; I took the ring off his
finger. I found him there dead .... I know I oughtn't to have done
it.... I'm an educated man; it was stupid to pawn the ring. I found him
with his pockets turned inside out."
Fascinating and terrible to sit staring at the man in whose place he
should have been; to wonder when those small bright-grey bloodshot eyes
would spy him out, and how he would meet that glance. Like a baited
raccoon the little man stood, screwed back into a corner, mournful,
cynical, fierce, with his ridged, obtuse yellow face, and his stubbly
grey beard and hair, and his eyes wandering now and again amongst the
crowd. But with all his might Laurence kept his face unmoved. Then came
the word "Remanded"; and, more like a baited beast than ever, the man was
led away.
Laurence sat on, a cold perspiration thick on his forehead. Someone
else, then, had come on the body and turned the pockets inside out before
John Evan took the ring. A man such as Walenn would not be out at night
without money. Besides, if Evan had found money on the body he would
never have run the risk of taking that ring. Yes, someone else had come
on the body first. It was for that one to come forward, and prove that
the ring was still on the dead man's finger when he left him, and thus
clear Evan. He clung to that thought; it seemed to make him less
responsible for the little man's position; to remove him and his own deed
one step further back. If they found the person who had taken the money,
it would prove Evan's innocence. He came out of the court in a sort of
trance. And a craving to get drunk attacked him. One could not go on
like this without the relief of some oblivion. If he could only get
drunk, keep drunk till this business was decided and he knew whether he
must give himself up or no. He had now no fear at all of people
suspecting him; only fear of himself--fear that he might go and give
himself up. Now he could see the girl; the danger from that was as
nothing compared with the danger from his own conscience. He had
promised Keith not to see her. Keith had been decent and loyal to
him--good old Keith! But he would never understand that this girl was
now all he cared about in life; that he would rather be cut off from life
itself than be cut off from her. Instead of becoming less and less, she
was becoming more and more to him--experience strange and thrilling! Out
of deep misery she had grown happy--through him; out of a sordid,
shifting life recovered coherence and bloom, through devotion to him him,
of all people in the world! It was a miracle. She demanded nothing of
him, adored him, as no other woman ever had--it was this which had
anchored his drifting barque; this--and her truthful mild intelligence,
and that burning warmth of a woman, who, long treated by men as but a
sack of sex, now loves at last.
And suddenly, mastering his craving to get drunk, he made towards Soho.
He had been a fool to give those keys to Keith. She must have been
frightened by his visit; and, perhaps, doubly miserable since, knowing
nothing, imagining everything! Keith was sure to have terrified her.
Poor little thing!
Down the street where he had stolen in the dark with the dead body on his
back, he almost ran for the cover of her house. The door was opened to
him before he knocked, her arms were round his neck, her lips pressed to
his. The fire was out, as if she had been unable to remember to keep
warm. A stool had been drawn to the window, and there she had evidently
been sitting, like a bird in a cage, looking out into the grey street.
Though she had been told that he was not to come, instinct had kept her
there; or the pathetic, aching hope against hope which lovers never part
with.
Now that he was there, her first thoughts were for his comfort. The fire
was lighted. He must eat, drink, smoke. There was never in her doings
any of the "I am doing this for you, but you ought to be doing that for
me" which belongs to so many marriages, and liaisons. She was like a
devoted slave, so in love with the chains that she never knew she wore
them. And to Laurence, who had so little sense of property, this only
served to deepen tenderness, and the hold she had on him. He had
resolved not to tell her of the new danger he ran from his own
conscience. But resolutions with him were but the opposites of what was
sure to come; and at last the words:
"They've arrested someone," escaped him.
From her face he knew she had grasped the danger at once; had divined it,
perhaps, before he spoke. But she only twined her arms round him and
kissed his lips. And he knew that she was begging him to put his love
for her above his conscience. Who would ever have thought that he could
feel as he did to this girl who had been in the arms of many! The
stained and suffering past of a loved woman awakens in some men only
chivalry; in others, more respectable, it rouses a tigerish itch, a
rancorous jealousy of what in the past was given to others. Sometimes it
will do both. When he had her in his arms he felt no remorse for killing
the coarse, handsome brute who had ruined her. He savagely rejoiced in
it. But when she laid her head in the hollow of his shoulder, turning to
him her white face with the faint colour-staining on the parted lips, the
cheeks, the eyelids; when her dark, wide-apart, brown eyes gazed up in
the happiness of her abandonment--he felt only tenderness and protection.
He left her at five o'clock, and had not gone two streets' length before
the memory of the little grey vagabond, screwed back in the far corner of
the dock like a baited raccoon, of his dreary, creaking voice, took
possession of him again; and a kind of savagery mounted in his brain
against a world where one could be so tortured without having meant harm
to anyone.
At the door of his lodgings Keith was getting out of a cab. They went in
together, but neither of them sat down; Keith standing with his back to
the carefully shut door, Laurence with his back to the table, as if they
knew there was a tug coming. And Keith said: "There's room on that boat.
Go down and book your berth before they shut. Here's the money!"
"I'm going to stick it, Keith."
Keith stepped forward, and put a roll of notes on the table.
"Now look here, Larry. I've read the police court proceedings. There's
nothing in that. Out of prison, or in prison for a few weeks, it's all
the same to a night-bird of that sort. Dismiss it from your
mind--there's not nearly enough evidence to convict. This gives you your
chance. Take it like a man, and make a new life for yourself."
Laurence smiled; but the smile had a touch of madness and a touch of
malice. He took up the notes.
"Clear out, and save the honour of brother Keith. Put them back in your
pocket, Keith, or I'll put them in the fire. Come, take them!" And,
crossing to the fire, he held them to the bars. "Take them, or in they
go!"
Keith took back the notes.
"I've still got some kind of honour, Keith; if I clear out I shall have
none, not the rag of any, left. It may be worth more to me than that--I
can't tell yet--I can't tell." There was a long silence before Keith
answered. "I tell you you're mistaken; no jury will convict. If they
did, a judge would never hang on it. A ghoul who can rob a dead body
ought to be in prison. What he did is worse than what you did, if you
come to that!" Laurence lifted his face. "Judge not, brother," he said;
"the heart is a dark well." Keith's yellowish face grew red and swollen,
as though he were mastering the tickle of a bronchial cough. "What are
you going to do, then? I suppose I may ask you not to be entirely
oblivious of our name; or is such a consideration unworthy of your
honour?" Laurence bent his head. The gesture said more clearly than
words: 'Don't kick a man when he's down!'
"I don't know what I'm going to do--nothing at present. I'm awfully
sorry, Keith; awfully sorry."
Keith looked at him, and without another word went out.
VI
To any, save philosophers, reputation may be threatened almost as much by
disgrace to name and family as by the disgrace of self. Keith's instinct
was always to deal actively with danger. But this blow, whether it fell
on him by discovery or by confession, could not be countered. As blight
falls on a rose from who knows where, the scandalous murk would light on
him. No repulse possible! Not even a wriggling from under! Brother of
a murderer hung or sent to penal servitude! His daughter niece to a
murderer! His dead mother-a murderer's mother! And to wait day after
day, week after week, not knowing whether the blow would fall, was an
extraordinarily atrocious penance, the injustice of which, to a man of
rectitude, seemed daily the more monstrous.
The remand had produced evidence that the murdered man had been drinking
heavily on the night of his death, and further evidence of the accused's
professional vagabondage and destitution; it was shown, too, that for
some time the archway in Glove Lane had been his favourite night haunt.
He had been committed for trial in January. This time, despite
misgivings, Keith had attended the police court. To his great relief
Larry was not there. But the policeman who had come up while he was
looking at the archway, and given him afterwards that scare in the girl's
rooms, was chief witness to the way the accused man haunted Glove Lane.
Though Keith held his silk hat high, he still had the uncomfortable
feeling that the man had recognised him.
His conscience suffered few, if any, twinges for letting this man rest
under the shadow of the murder. He genuinely believed that there was not
evidence enough to convict; nor was it in him to appreciate the tortures
of a vagabond shut up. The scamp deserved what he had got, for robbing a
dead body; and in any case such a scarecrow was better off in prison than
sleeping out under archways in December. Sentiment was foreign to
Keith's character, and his justice that of those who subordinate the
fates of the weak and shiftless to the needful paramountcy of the strong
and well established.
His daughter came back from school for the Christmas holidays. It was
hard to look up from her bright eyes and rosy cheeks and see this shadow
hanging above his calm and ordered life, as in a glowing room one's eye
may catch an impending patch of darkness drawn like a spider's web across
a corner of the ceiling.
On the afternoon of Christmas Eve they went, by her desire, to a church
in Soho, where the Christmas Oratorio was being given; and coming away
passed, by chance of a wrong turning, down Borrow Street. Ugh! How that
startled moment, when the girl had pressed herself against him in the
dark, and her terror-stricken whisper: "Oh! Who is it?" leaped out
before him! Always that business--that ghastly business! After the
trial he would have another try to get them both away. And he thrust his
arm within his young daughter's, hurrying her on, out of this street
where shadows filled all the winter air.
But that evening when she had gone to bed he felt uncontrollably
restless. He had not seen Larry for weeks. What was he about? What
desperations were hatching in his disorderly brain? Was he very
miserable; had he perhaps sunk into a stupor of debauchery? And the old
feeling of protectiveness rose up in him; a warmth born of long ago
Christmas Eves, when they had stockings hung out in the night stuffed by
a Santa Claus, whose hand never failed to tuck them up, whose kiss was
their nightly waft into sleep.
Stars were sparkling out there over the river; the sky frosty-clear, and
black. Bells had not begun to ring as yet. And obeying an obscure, deep
impulse, Keith wrapped himself once more into his fur coat, pulled a
motoring cap over his eyes, and sallied forth. In the Strand he took a
cab to Fitzroy Street. There was no light in Larry's windows, and on a
card he saw the words "To Let." Gone! Had he after all cleared out for
good? But how-without money? And the girl? Bells were ringing now in
the silent frostiness. Christmas Eve! And Keith thought: 'If only this
wretched business were off my mind! Monstrous that one should suffer for
the faults of others!' He took a route which led him past Borrow Street.
Solitude brooded there, and he walked resolutely down on the far side,
looking hard at the girl's window. There was a light. The curtains just
failed to meet, so that a thin gleam shone through. He crossed; and
after glancing swiftly up and down, deliberately peered in.
He only stood there perhaps twenty seconds, but visual records gleaned in
a moment sometimes outlast the visions of hours and days. The electric
light was not burning; but, in the centre of the room the girl was
kneeling in her nightgown before a little table on which were four
lighted candles. Her arms were crossed on her breast; the candle-light
shone on her fair cropped hair, on the profile of cheek and chin, on her
bowed white neck. For a moment he thought her alone; then behind her saw
his brother in a sleeping suit, leaning against the wall, with arms
crossed, watching. It was the expression on his face which burned the
whole thing in, so that always afterwards he was able to see that little
scene--such an expression as could never have been on the face of one
even faintly conscious that he was watched by any living thing on earth.
The whole of Larry's heart and feeling seemed to have come up out of him.
Yearning, mockery, love, despair! The depth of his feeling for this
girl, his stress of mind, fears, hopes; the flotsam good and evil of his
soul, all transfigured there, exposed and unforgettable. The
candle-light shone upward on to his face, twisted by the strangest smile;
his eyes, darker and more wistful than mortal eyes should be, seemed to
beseech and mock the white-clad girl, who, all unconscious, knelt without
movement, like a carved figure of devotion. The words seemed coming from
his lips: "Pray for us! Bravo! Yes! Pray for us!" And suddenly Keith
saw her stretch out her arms, and lift her face with a look of ecstasy,
and Laurence starting forward. What had she seen beyond the candle
flames? It is the unexpected which invests visions with poignancy.
Nothing more strange could Keith have seen in this nest of the murky and
illicit. But in sheer panic lest he might be caught thus spying he drew
back and hurried on. So Larry was living there with her! When the moment
came he could still find him.
Before going in, he stood full five minutes leaning on the terrace
parapet before his house, gazing at the star-frosted sky, and the river
cut by the trees into black pools, oiled over by gleams from the
Embankment lamps. And, deep down, behind his mere thoughts, he
ached-somehow, somewhere ached. Beyond the cage of all that he saw and
heard and thought, he had perceived something he could not reach. But the
night was cold, the bells silent, for it had struck twelve. Entering his
house, he stole upstairs.
VII
If for Keith those six weeks before the Glove Lane murder trial came on
were fraught with uneasiness and gloom, they were for Laurence almost the
happiest since his youth. From the moment when he left his rooms and
went to the girl's to live, a kind of peace and exaltation took
possession of him. Not by any effort of will did he throw off the
nightmare hanging over him. Nor was he drugged by love. He was in a
sort of spiritual catalepsy. In face of fate too powerful for his will,
his turmoil, anxiety, and even restlessness had ceased; his life floated
in the ether of "what must come, will." Out of this catalepsy, his spirit
sometimes fell headlong into black waters. In one such whirlpool he was
struggling on the night of Christmas Eve. When the girl rose from her
knees he asked her:
"What did you see?"
Pressing close to him, she drew him down on to the floor before the fire;
and they sat, knees drawn up, hands clasped, like two children trying to
see over the edge of the world.
"It was the Virgin I saw. She stood against the wall and smiled. We
shall be happy soon."
"When we die, Wanda," he said, suddenly, "let it be together. We shall
keep each other warm, out there."
Huddling to him she whispered: "Yes, oh, yes! If you die, I could not go
on living."
It was this utter dependence on him, the feeling that he had rescued
something, which gave him sense of anchorage. That, and his buried life
in the retreat of these two rooms. Just for an hour in the morning, from
nine to ten, the charwoman would come, but not another soul all day.
They never went out together. He would stay in bed late, while Wanda
bought what they needed for the day's meals; lying on his back, hands
clasped behind his head, recalling her face, the movements of her slim,
rounded, supple figure, robing itself before his gaze; feeling again the
kiss she had left on his lips, the gleam of her soft eyes, so strangely
dark in so fair a face. In a sort of trance he would lie till she came
back. Then get up to breakfast about noon off things which she had
cooked, drinking coffee. In the afternoon he would go out alone and walk
for hours, any where, so long as it was East. To the East there was
always suffering to be seen, always that which soothed him with the
feeling that he and his troubles were only a tiny part of trouble; that
while so many other sorrowing and shadowy creatures lived he was not cut
off. To go West was to encourage dejection. In the West all was like
Keith, successful, immaculate, ordered, resolute. He would come back
tired out, and sit watching her cook their little dinner. The evenings
were given up to love. Queer trance of an existence, which both were
afraid to break. No sign from her of wanting those excitements which
girls who have lived her life, even for a few months, are supposed to
need. She never asked him to take her anywhere; never, in word, deed,
look, seemed anything but almost rapturously content. And yet he knew,
and she knew, that they were only waiting to see whether Fate would turn
her thumb down on them. In these days he did not drink. Out of his
quarter's money, when it came in, he had paid his debts--their expenses
were very small. He never went to see Keith, never wrote to him, hardly
thought of him. And from those dread apparitions--Walenn lying with the
breath choked out of him, and the little grey, driven animal in the
dock--he hid, as only a man can who must hide or be destroyed. But daily
he bought a newspaper, and feverishly, furtively scanned its columns.
VIII
Coming out of the Law Courts on the afternoon of January 28th, at the
triumphant end of a desperately fought will case, Keith saw on a poster
the words: "Glove Lane Murder: Trial and Verdict"; and with a rush of
dismay he thought: 'Good God! I never looked at the paper this morning!'
The elation which had filled him a second before, the absorption he had
felt for two days now in the case so hardly won, seemed suddenly quite
sickeningly trivial. What on earth had he been doing to forget that
horrible business even for an instant? He stood quite still on the
crowded pavement, unable, really unable, to buy a paper. But his face
was like a piece of iron when he did step forward and hold his penny out.
There it was in the Stop Press! "Glove Lane Murder. The jury returned a
verdict of Guilty. Sentence of death was passed."
His first sensation was simple irritation. How had they come to commit
such an imbecility? Monstrous! The evidence--! Then the futility of
even reading the report, of even considering how they had come to record
such a verdict struck him with savage suddenness. There it was, and
nothing he could do or say would alter it; no condemnation of this
idiotic verdict would help reverse it. The situation was desperate,
indeed! That five minutes' walk from the Law Courts to his chambers was
the longest he had ever taken.
Men of decided character little know beforehand what they will do in
certain contingencies. For the imaginations of decided people do not
endow mere contingencies with sufficient actuality. Keith had never
really settled what he was going to do if this man were condemned. Often
in those past weeks he had said to himself: "Of course, if they bring him
in guilty, that's another thing!" But, now that they had, he was beset
by exactly the same old arguments and feelings, the same instincts of
loyalty and protection towards Laurence and himself, intensified by the
fearful imminence of the danger. And yet, here was this man about to be
hung for a thing he had not done! Nothing could get over that! But then
he was such a worthless vagabond, a ghoul who had robbed a dead body. If
Larry were condemned in his stead, would there be any less miscarriage of
justice? To strangle a brute who had struck you, by the accident of
keeping your hands on his throat a few seconds too long, was there any
more guilt in that--was there even as much, as in deliberate theft from a
dead man? Reverence for order, for justice, and established fact, will,
often march shoulder to shoulder with Jesuitry in natures to whom success
is vital.
In the narrow stone passage leading to his staircase, a friend had called
out: "Bravo, Darrant! That was a squeak! Congratulations!" And with a
bitter little smile Keith thought: 'Congratulations! I!'
At the first possible moment the hurried back to the Strand, and hailing
a cab, he told the man to put him down at a turning near to Borrow
Street.
It was the girl who opened to his knock. Startled, clasping her hands,
she looked strange to Keith in her black skirt and blouse of some soft
velvety stuff the colour of faded roses. Her round, rather long throat
was bare; and Keith noticed fretfully that she wore gold earrings. Her
eyes, so pitch dark against her white face, and the short fair hair,
which curled into her neck, seemed both to search and to plead.
"My brother?"
"He is not in, sir, yet."
"Do you know where he is?"
"No."
"He is living with you here now?"
"Yes."
"Are you still as fond of him as ever, then?"
With a movement, as though she despaired of words, she clasped her hands
over her heart. And he said:
"I see."
He had the same strange feeling as on his first visit to her, and when
through the chink in the curtains he had watched her kneeling--of pity
mingled with some faint sexual emotion. And crossing to the fire he
asked:
"May I wait for him?"
"Oh! Please! Will you sit down?"
But Keith shook his head. And with a catch in her breath, she said:
"You will not take him from me. I should die."
He turned round on her sharply.
"I don't want him taken from you. I want to help you keep him. Are you
ready to go away, at any time?"
"Yes. Oh, yes!"
"And he?"
She answered almost in a whisper:
"Yes; but there is that poor man."
"That poor man is a graveyard thief; a hyena; a ghoul--not worth
consideration." And the rasp in his own voice surprised him.
"Ah!" she sighed. "But I am sorry for him. Perhaps he was hungry. I
have been hungry--you do things then that you would not. And perhaps he
has no one to love; if you have no one to love you can be very bad. I
think of him often--in prison."
Between his teeth Keith muttered: "And Laurence?"
"We do never speak of it, we are afraid."
"He's not told you, then, about the trial?"
Her eyes dilated.
"The trial! Oh! He was strange last night. This morning, too, he got
up early. Is it-is it over?"
"Yes."
"What has come?"
"Guilty."
For a moment Keith thought she was going to faint. She had closed her
eyes, and swayed so that he took a step, and put his hands on her arms.
"Listen!" he said. "Help me; don't let Laurence out of your sight. We
must have time. I must see what they intend to do. They can't be going
to hang this man. I must have time, I tell you. You must prevent his
giving himself up."
She stood, staring in his face, while he still held her arms, gripping
into her soft flesh through the velvety sleeves.
"Do you understand?"
"Yes-but if he has already!"
Keith felt the shiver which ran through her. And the thought rushed into
his mind: 'My God! Suppose the police come round while I'm here!' If
Larry had indeed gone to them! If that Policeman who had seen him here
the night after the murder should find him here again just after the
verdict! He said almost fiercely:
"Can I trust you not to let Larry out of your sight? Quick! Answer!"
Clasping her hands to her breast, she answered humbly:
"I will try."
"If he hasn't already done this, watch him like a lynx! Don't let him go
out without you. I'll come to-morrow morning early. You're a Catholic,
aren't you? Swear to me that you won't let him do anything till he's
seen me again."
She did not answer, looking past him at the door; and Keith heard a key
in the latch. There was Laurence himself, holding in his hand a great
bunch of pink lilies and white narcissi. His face was pale and haggard.
He said quietly:
"Hallo, Keith!"
The girl's eyes were fastened on Larry's face; and Keith, looking from
one to the other, knew that he had never had more need for wariness.
"Have you seen?" he said.
Laurence nodded. His expression, as a rule so tell-tale of his emotions,
baffled Keith utterly.
"Well?"
"I've been expecting it."
"The thing can't stand--that's certain. But I must have time to look
into the report. I must have time to see what I can do. D'you
understand me, Larry--I must have time." He knew he was talking at
random. The only thing was to get them away at once out of reach of
confession; but he dared not say so.
"Promise me that you'll do nothing, that you won't go out even till I've
seen you to-morrow morning."
Again Laurence nodded. And Keith looked at the girl. Would she see that
he did not break that promise? Her eyes were still fixed immovably on
Larry's face. And with the feeling that he could get no further, Keith
turned to go.
"Promise me," he said.
Laurence answered: "I promise."
He was smiling. Keith could make nothing of that smile, nor of the
expression in the girl's eyes. And saying: "I have your promise, I rely
on it!" he went.
IX
To keep from any woman who loves, knowledge of her lover's mood, is as
hard as to keep music from moving the heart. But when that woman has
lived in suffering, and for the first time knows the comfort of love,
then let the lover try as he may to disguise his heart--no use! Yet by
virtue of subtler abnegation she will often succeed in keeping it from
him that she knows.
When Keith was gone the girl made no outcry, asked no questions, managed
that Larry should not suspect her intuition; all that evening she acted
as if she knew of nothing preparing within him, and through him, within
herself.
His words, caresses, the very zest with which he helped her to prepare
the feast, the flowers he had brought, the wine he made her drink, the
avoidance of any word which could spoil their happiness, all--all told
her. He was too inexorably gay and loving. Not for her--to whom every
word and every kiss had uncannily the desperate value of a last word and
kiss--not for her to deprive herself of these by any sign or gesture
which might betray her prescience. Poor soul--she took all, and would
have taken more, a hundredfold. She did not want to drink the wine he
kept tilting into her glass, but, with the acceptance learned by women
who have lived her life, she did not refuse. She had never refused him
anything. So much had been required of her by the detestable, that
anything required by a loved one was but an honour.
Laurence drank deeply; but he had never felt clearer, never seen things
more clearly. The wine gave him what he wanted, an edge to these few
hours of pleasure, an exaltation of energy. It dulled his sense of pity,
too. It was pity he was afraid of--for himself, and for this girl. To
make even this tawdry room look beautiful, with firelight and
candlelight, dark amber wine in the glasses, tall pink lilies spilling
their saffron, exuding their hot perfume he and even himself must look
their best. And with a weight as of lead on her heart, she managed that
for him, letting him strew her with flowers and crush them together with
herself. Not even music was lacking to their feast. Someone was playing
a pianola across the street, and the sound, very faint, came stealing
when they were silent--swelling, sinking, festive, mournful; having a
far-off life of its own, like the flickering fire-flames before which
they lay embraced, or the lilies delicate between the candles. Listening
to that music, tracing with his finger the tiny veins on her breast, he
lay like one recovering from a swoon. No parting. None! But sleep, as
the firelight sleeps when flames die; as music sleeps on its deserted
strings.
And the girl watched him.
It was nearly ten when he bade her go to bed. And after she had gone
obedient into the bedroom, he brought ink and paper down by the fire. The
drifter, the unstable, the good-for-nothing--did not falter. He had
thought, when it came to the point, he would fail himself; but a sort of
rage bore him forward. If he lived on, and confessed, they would shut
him up, take from him the one thing he loved, cut him off from her; sand
up his only well in the desert. Curse them! And he wrote by firelight
which mellowed the white sheets of paper; while, against the dark
curtain, the girl, in her nightgown, unconscious of the cold, stood
watching.
Men, when they drown, remember their pasts. Like the lost poet he had
"gone with the wind." Now it was for him to be true in his fashion. A
man may falter for weeks and weeks, consciously, subconsciously, even in
his dreams, till there comes that moment when the only thing impossible
is to go on faltering. The black cap, the little driven grey man looking
up at it with a sort of wonder--faltering had ceased!
He had finished now, and was but staring into the fire.
"No more, no more, the moon is dead,
And all the people in it;
The poppy maidens strew the bed,
We'll come in half a minute."
Why did doggerel start up in the mind like that? Wanda! The weed-flower
become so rare he would not be parted from her! The fire, the candles,
and the fire--no more the flame and flicker!
And, by the dark curtain, the girl watched.
X
Keith went, not home, but to his club; and in the room devoted to the
reception of guests, empty at this hour, he sat down and read the report
of the trial. The fools had made out a case that looked black enough.
And for a long time, on the thick soft carpet which let out no sound of
footfall, he paced up and down, thinking. He might see the defending
counsel, might surely do that as an expert who thought there had been
miscarriage of justice. They must appeal; a petition too might be
started in the last event. The thing could--must be put right yet, if
only Larry and that girl did nothing!
He had no appetite, but the custom of dining is too strong. And while he
ate, he glanced with irritation at his fellow-members. They looked so at
their ease. Unjust--that this black cloud should hang over one blameless
as any of them! Friends, connoisseurs of such things--a judge among
them--came specially to his table to express their admiration of his
conduct of that will case. Tonight he had real excuse for pride, but he
felt none. Yet, in this well-warmed quietly glowing room, filled with
decorously eating, decorously talking men, he gained insensibly some
comfort. This surely was reality; that shadowy business out there only
the drear sound of a wind one must and did keep out--like the poverty and
grime which had no real existence for the secure and prosperous. He
drank champagne. It helped to fortify reality, to make shadows seem more
shadowy. And down in the smoking-room he sat before the fire, in one of
those chairs which embalm after-dinner dreams. He grew sleepy there, and
at eleven o'clock rose to go home. But when he had once passed down the
shallow marble steps, out through the revolving door which let in no
draughts, he was visited by fear, as if he had drawn it in with the
breath of the January wind. Larry's face; and the girl watching it! Why
had she watched like that? Larry's smile; and the flowers in his hand?
Buying flowers at such a moment! The girl was his slave-whatever he told
her, she would do. But she would never be able to stop him. At this
very moment he might be rushing to give himself up!
His hand, thrust deep into the pocket of his fur coat, came in contact
suddenly with something cold. The keys Larry had given him all that time
ago. There they had lain forgotten ever since. The chance touch decided
him. He turned off towards Borrow Street, walking at full speed. He
could but go again and see. He would sleep better if he knew that he had
left no stone unturned. At the corner of that dismal street he had to
wait for solitude before he made for the house which he now loathed with
a deadly loathing. He opened the outer door and shut it to behind him.
He knocked, but no one came. Perhaps they had gone to bed. Again and
again he knocked, then opened the door, stepped in, and closed it
carefully. Candles lighted, the fire burning; cushions thrown on the
floor in front of it and strewn with flowers! The table, too, covered
with flowers and with the remnants of a meal. Through the half-drawn
curtain he could see that the inner room was also lighted. Had they gone
out, leaving everything like this? Gone out! His heart beat. Bottles!
Larry had been drinking!
Had it really come? Must he go back home with this murk on him; knowing
that his brother was a confessed and branded murderer? He went quickly,
to the half-drawn curtains and looked in. Against the wall he saw a bed,
and those two in it. He recoiled in sheer amazement and relief. Asleep
with curtains undrawn, lights left on? Asleep through all his knocking!
They must both be drunk. The blood rushed up in his neck. Asleep! And
rushing forward again, he called out: "Larry!" Then, with a gasp he went
towards the bed. "Larry!" No answer! No movement! Seizing his
brother's shoulder, he shook it violently. It felt cold. They were
lying in each other's arms, breast to breast, lips to lips, their faces
white in the light shining above the dressing-table. And such a shudder
shook Keith that he had to grasp the brass rail above their heads. Then
he bent down, and wetting his finger, placed it close to their joined
lips. No two could ever swoon so utterly as that; not even a drunken
sleep could be so fast. His wet finger felt not the faintest stir of
air, nor was there any movement in the pulses of their hands. No breath!
No life! The eyes of the girl were closed. How strangely innocent she
looked! Larry's open eyes seemed to be gazing at her shut eyes; but
Keith saw that they were sightless. With a sort of sob he drew down the
lids. Then, by an impulse that he could never have explained, he laid a
hand on his brother's head, and a hand on the girl's fair hair. The
clothes had fallen down a little from her bare shoulder; he pulled them
up, as if to keep her warm, and caught the glint of metal; a tiny gilt
crucifix no longer than a thumbnail, on a thread of steel chain, had
slipped down from her breast into the hollow of the arm which lay round
Larry's neck. Keith buried it beneath the clothes and noticed an
envelope pinned to the coverlet; bending down, he read: "Please give this
at once to the police.--LAURENCE DARRANT." He thrust it into his pocket.
Like elastic stretched beyond its uttermost, his reason, will, faculties
of calculation and resolve snapped to within him. He thought with
incredible swiftness: 'I must know nothing of this. I must go!' And,
almost before he knew that he had moved, he was out again in the street.
He could never have told of what he thought while he was walking home.
He did not really come to himself till he was in his study. There, with a
trembling hand, he poured himself out whisky and drank it off. If he had
not chanced to go there, the charwoman would have found them when she
came in the morning, and given that envelope to the police! He took it
out. He had a right--a right to know what was in it! He broke it open.
"I, Laurence Darrant, about to die by my own hand, declare that this is a
solemn and true confession. I committed what is known as the Glove Lane
Murder on the night of November the 27th last in the following way"--on
and on to the last words--"We didn't want to die; but we could not bear
separation, and I couldn't face letting an innocent man be hung for me.
I do not see any other way. I beg that there may be no postmortem on our
bodies. The stuff we have taken is some of that which will be found on
the dressing-table. Please bury us together.
"LAURENCE DARRANT. "January the 28th, about ten o'clock p.m."
Full five minutes Keith stood with those sheets of paper in his hand,
while the clock ticked, the wind moaned a little in the trees outside,
the flames licked the logs with the quiet click and ruffle of their
intense far-away life down there on the hearth. Then he roused himself,
and sat down to read the whole again.
There it was, just as Larry had told it to him-nothing left out, very
clear; even to the addresses of people who could identify the girl as
having once been Walenn's wife or mistress. It would convince. Yes! It
would convince.
The sheets dropped from his hand. Very slowly he was grasping the
appalling fact that on the floor beside his chair lay the life or death
of yet another man; that by taking this confession he had taken into his
own hands the fate of the vagabond lying under sentence of death; that he
could not give him back his life without incurring the smirch of this
disgrace, without even endangering himself. If he let this confession
reach the authorities, he could never escape the gravest suspicion that
he had known of the whole affair during these two months. He would have
to attend the inquest, be recognised by that policeman as having come to
the archway to see where the body had lain, as having visited the girl
the very evening after the murder. Who would believe in the mere
coincidence of such visits on the part of the murderer's brother. But
apart from that suspicion, the fearful scandal which so sensational an
affair must make would mar his career, his life, his young daughter's
life! Larry's suicide with this girl would make sensation enough as it
was; but nothing to that other. Such a death had its romance; involved
him in no way save as a mourner, could perhaps even be hushed up! The
other--nothing could hush that up, nothing prevent its ringing to the
house-tops. He got up from his chair, and for many minutes roamed the
room unable to get his mind to bear on the issue. Images kept starting up
before him. The face of the man who handed him wig and gown each
morning, puffy and curious, with a leer on it he had never noticed
before; his young daughter's lifted eyebrows, mouth drooping, eyes
troubled; the tiny gilt crucifix glinting in the hollow of the dead
girl's arm; the sightless look in Larry's unclosed eyes; even his own
thumb and finger pulling the lids down. And then he saw a street and
endless people passing, turning to stare at him. And, stopping in his
tramp, he said aloud: "Let them go to hell! Seven days' wonder!" Was he
not trustee to that confession! Trustee! After all he had done nothing
to be ashamed of, even if he had kept knowledge dark. A brother! Who
could blame him? And he picked up those sheets of paper. But, like a
great murky hand, the scandal spread itself about him; its coarse
malignant voice seemed shouting: "Paiper!... Paiper!... Glove Lane
Murder!... Suicide and confession of brother of well-known K.C....
Well-known K.C.'s brother.... Murder and suicide.... Paiper!" Was he to
let loose that flood of foulness? Was he, who had done nothing, to smirch
his own little daughter's life; to smirch his dead brother, their dead
mother--himself, his own valuable, important future? And all for a sewer
rat! Let him hang, let the fellow hang if he must! And that was not
certain. Appeal! Petition! He might--he should be saved! To have got
thus far, and then, by his own action, topple himself down!
With a sudden darting movement he thrust the confession in among the
burning coals. And a smile licked at the folds in his dark face, like
those flames licking the sheets of paper, till they writhed and
blackened. With the toe of his boot he dispersed their scorched and
crumbling wafer. Stamp them in! Stamp in that man's life! Burnt! No
more doubts, no more of this gnawing fear! Burnt? A man--an
innocent-sewer rat! Recoiling from the fire he grasped his forehead. It
was burning hot and seemed to be going round.
Well, it was done! Only fools without will or purpose regretted. And
suddenly he laughed. So Larry had died for nothing! He had no will, no
purpose, and was dead! He and that girl might now have been living,
loving each other in the warm night, away at the other end of the world,
instead of lying dead in the cold night here! Fools and weaklings
regretted, suffered from conscience and remorse. A man trod firmly, held
to his purpose, no matter what!
He went to the window and drew back the curtain. What was that? A
gibbet in the air, a body hanging? Ah! Only the trees--the dark
trees--the winter skeleton trees! Recoiling, he returned to his armchair
and sat down before the fire. It had been shining like that, the lamp
turned low, his chair drawn up, when Larry came in that afternoon two
months ago. Bah! He had never come at all! It was a nightmare. He had
been asleep. How his head burned! And leaping up, he looked at the
calendar on his bureau. "January the 28th!" No dream! His face
hardened and darkened. On! Not like Larry! On!
1914.
A STOIC
I
1
"Aequam memento rebus in arduis
Servare mentem:"--Horace.
In the City of Liverpool, on a January day of 1905, the Board-room of
"The Island Navigation Company" rested, as it were, after the labours of
the afternoon. The long table was still littered with the ink, pens,
blotting-paper, and abandoned documents of six persons--a deserted
battlefield of the brain. And, lonely, in his chairman's seat at the top
end old Sylvanus Heythorp sat, with closed eyes, still and heavy as an
image. One puffy, feeble hand, whose fingers quivered, rested on the arm
of his chair; the thick white hair on his massive head glistened in the
light from a green-shaded lamp. He was not asleep, for every now and
then his sanguine cheeks filled, and a sound, half sigh, half grunt,
escaped his thick lips between a white moustache and the tiny tuft of
white hairs above his cleft chin. Sunk in the chair, that square thick
trunk of a body in short black-braided coat seemed divested of all neck.
Young Gilbert Farney, secretary of "The Island Navigation Company,"
entering his hushed Board-room, stepped briskly to the table, gathered
some papers, and stood looking at his chairman. Not more than
thirty-five, with the bright hues of the optimist in his hair, beard,
cheeks, and eyes, he had a nose and lips which curled ironically. For,
in his view, he was the Company; and its Board did but exist to chequer
his importance. Five days in the week for seven hours a day he wrote,
and thought, and wove the threads of its business, and this lot came down
once a week for two or three hours, and taught their grandmother to suck
eggs. But watching that red-cheeked, white-haired, somnolent figure, his
smile was not so contemptuous as might have been expected. For after
all, the chairman was a wonderful old boy. A man of go and insight could
not but respect him. Eighty! Half paralysed, over head and ears in
debt, having gone the pace all his life--or so they said!--till at last
that mine in Ecuador had done for him--before the secretary's day, of
course, but he had heard of it. The old chap had bought it up on
spec'--"de l'audace, toujours de l'audace," as he was so fond of
saying--paid for it half in cash and half in promises, and then--the
thing had turned out empty, and left him with L20,000 worth of the old
shares unredeemed. The old boy had weathered it out without a bankruptcy
so far. Indomitable old buffer; and never fussy like the rest of them!
Young Farney, though a secretary, was capable of attachment; and his eyes
expressed a pitying affection. The Board meeting had been long and
"snadgy"--a final settling of that Pillin business. Rum go the chairman
forcing it on them like this! And with quiet satisfaction the secretary
thought 'And he never would have got it through if I hadn't made up my
mind that it really is good business!' For to expand the company was to
expand himself. Still, to buy four ships with the freight market so
depressed was a bit startling, and there would be opposition at the
general meeting. Never mind! He and the chairman could put it
through--put it through. And suddenly he saw the old man looking at him.
Only from those eyes could one appreciate the strength of life yet
flowing underground in that well-nigh helpless carcase--deep-coloured
little blue wells, tiny, jovial, round windows.
A sigh travelled up through layers of flesh, and he said almost
inaudibly:
"Have they come, Mr. Farney?"
"Yes, sir. I've put them in the transfer office; said you'd be with them
in a minute; but I wasn't going to wake you."
"Haven't been asleep. Help me up."
Grasping the edge of the table with his trembling hands, the old man
pulled, and, with Farney heaving him behind, attained his feet. He stood
about five feet ten, and weighed fully fourteen stone; not corpulent, but
very thick all through; his round and massive head alone would have
outweighed a baby. With eyes shut, he seemed to be trying to get the
better of his own weight, then he moved with the slowness of a barnacle
towards the door. The secretary, watching him, thought: 'Marvellous old
chap! How he gets about by himself is a miracle! And he can't retire,
they say-lives on his fees!'
But the chairman was through the green baize door. At his tortoise gait
he traversed the inner office, where the youthful clerks suspended their
figuring--to grin behind his back--and entered the transfer office, where
eight gentlemen were sitting. Seven rose, and one did not. Old Heythorp
raised a saluting hand to the level of his chest and moving to an
arm-chair, lowered himself into it.
"Well, gentlemen?"
One of the eight gentlemen got up again.
"Mr. Heythorp, we've appointed Mr. Brownbee to voice our views. Mr.
Brownbee!" And down he sat.
Mr. Brownbee rose a stoutish man some seventy years of age, with little
grey side whiskers, and one of those utterly steady faces only to be seen
in England, faces which convey the sense of business from father to son
for generations; faces which make wars, and passion, and free thought
seem equally incredible; faces which inspire confidence, and awaken in
one a desire to get up and leave the room. Mr. Brownbee rose, and said in
a suave voice:
"Mr. Heythorp, we here represent about L14,000. When we had the pleasure
of meeting you last July, you will recollect that you held out a prospect
of some more satisfactory arrangement by Christmas. We are now in
January, and I am bound to say we none of us get younger."
From the depths of old Heythorp a preliminary rumble came travelling,
reached the surface, and materialised--
"Don't know about you--feel a boy, myself."
The eight gentlemen looked at him. Was he going to try and put them off
again? Mr. Brownbee said with unruffled calm:
"I'm sure we're very glad to hear it. But to come to the point. We have
felt, Mr. Heythorp, and I'm sure you won't think it unreasonable,
that--er--bankruptcy would be the most satisfactory solution. We have
waited a long time, and we want to know definitely where we stand; for,
to be quite frank, we don't see any prospect of improvement; indeed, we
fear the opposite."
"You think I'm going to join the majority."
This plumping out of what was at the back of their minds produced in Mr.
Brownbee and his colleagues a sort of chemical disturbance. They
coughed, moved their feet, and turned away their eyes, till the one who
had not risen, a solicitor named Ventnor, said bluffly:
"Well, put it that way if you like."
Old Heythorp's little deep eyes twinkled.
"My grandfather lived to be a hundred; my father ninety-six--both of them
rips. I'm only eighty, gentlemen; blameless life compared with theirs."
"Indeed," Mr. Brownbee said, "we hope you have many years of this life
before you."
"More of this than of another." And a silence fell, till old Heythorp
added: "You're getting a thousand a year out of my fees. Mistake to kill
the goose that lays the golden eggs. I'll make it twelve hundred. If
you force me to resign my directorships by bankruptcy, you won't get a
rap, you know."
Mr. Brownbee cleared his throat:
"We think, Mr. Heythorp, you should make it at least fifteen hundred. In
that case we might perhaps consider--"
Old Heythorp shook his head.
"We can hardly accept your assertion that we should get nothing in the
event of bankruptcy. We fancy you greatly underrate the possibilities.
Fifteen hundred a year is the least you can do for us."
"See you d---d first."
Another silence followed, then Ventnor, the solicitor, said irascibly:
"We know where we are, then."
Brownbee added almost nervously:
"Are we to understand that twelve hundred a year is your--your last
word?"
Old Heythorp nodded. "Come again this day month, and I'll see what I can
do for you;" and he shut his eyes.
Round Mr. Brownbee six of the gentlemen gathered, speaking in low voices;
Mr. Ventnor nursed a leg and glowered at old Heythorp, who sat with his
eyes closed. Mr. Brownbee went over and conferred with Mr. Ventnor, then
clearing his throat, he said:
"Well, sir, we have considered your proposal; we agree to accept it for
the moment. We will come again, as you suggest, in a month's time.
"We hope that you will by then have seen your way to something more
substantial, with a view to avoiding what we should all regret, but which
I fear will otherwise become inevitable."
Old Heythorp nodded. The eight gentlemen took their hats, and went out
one by one, Mr. Brownbee courteously bringing up the rear.
The old man, who could not get up without assistance, stayed musing in
his chair. He had diddled 'em for the moment into giving him another
month, and when that month was up-he would diddle 'em again! A month
ought to make the Pillin business safe, with all that hung on it. That
poor funkey chap Joe Pillin! A gurgling chuckle escaped his red lips.
What a shadow the fellow had looked, trotting in that evening just a
month ago, behind his valet's announcement: "Mr. Pillin, sir."
What a parchmenty, precise, thread-paper of a chap, with his bird's claw
of a hand, and his muffled-up throat, and his quavery:
"How do you do, Sylvanus? I'm afraid you're not--"
"First rate. Sit down. Have some port."
"Port! I never drink it. Poison to me! Poison!"
"Do you good!"
"Oh! I know, that's what you always say."
You've a monstrous constitution, Sylvanus. If I drank port and smoked
cigars and sat up till one o'clock, I should be in my grave to-morrow.
I'm not the man I was. The fact is, I've come to see if you can help me.
I'm getting old; I'm growing nervous...."
"You always were as chickeny as an old hen, Joe."
"Well, my nature's not like yours. To come to the point, I want to sell
my ships and retire. I need rest. Freights are very depressed. I've got
my family to think of."
"Crack on, and go broke; buck you up like anything!"
"I'm quite serious, Sylvanus."
"Never knew you anything else, Joe."
A quavering cough, and out it had come:
"Now--in a word--won't your 'Island Navigation Company' buy my ships?"
A pause, a twinkle, a puff of smoke. "Make it worth my while!" He had
said it in jest; and then, in a flash, the idea had come to him. Rosamund
and her youngsters! What a chance to put something between them and
destitution when he had joined the majority! And so he said: "We don't
want your silly ships."
That claw of a hand waved in deprecation. "They're very good
ships--doing quite well. It's only my wretched health. If I were a
strong man I shouldn't dream...."
"What d'you want for 'em?" Good Lord! how he jumped if you asked him a
plain question. The chap was as nervous as a guinea-fowl!
"Here are the figures--for the last four years. I think you'll agree
that I couldn't ask less than seventy thousand."
Through the smoke of his cigar old Heythorp had digested those figures
slowly, Joe Pillin feeling his teeth and sucking lozenges the while; then
he said:
"Sixty thousand! And out of that you pay me ten per cent., if I get it
through for you. Take it or leave it."
"My dear Sylvanus, that's almost-cynical."
"Too good a price--you'll never get it without me."
"But a--but a commission! You could never disclose it!"
"Arrange that all right. Think it over. Freights'll go lower yet. Have
some port."
"No, no! Thank you. No! So you think freights will go lower?"
"Sure of it."
"Well, I'll be going. I'm sure I don't know. It's--it's--I must think."
"Think your hardest."
"Yes, yes. Good-bye. I can't imagine how you still go on smoking those
things and drinking port.
"See you in your grave yet, Joe." What a feeble smile the poor fellow
had! Laugh-he couldn't! And, alone again, he had browsed, developing
the idea which had come to him.
Though, to dwell in the heart of shipping, Sylvanus Heythorp had lived at
Liverpool twenty years, he was from the Eastern Counties, of a family so
old that it professed to despise the Conquest. Each of its generations
occupied nearly twice as long as those of less tenacious men.
Traditionally of Danish origin, its men folk had as a rule bright
reddish-brown hair, red cheeks, large round heads, excellent teeth and
poor morals. They had done their best for the population of any county
in which they had settled; their offshoots swarmed. Born in the early
twenties of the nineteenth century, Sylvanus Heythorp, after an education
broken by escapades both at school and college, had fetched up in that
simple London of the late forties, where claret, opera, and eight per
cent. for your money ruled a cheery roost. Made partner in his shipping
firm well before he was thirty, he had sailed with a wet sheet and a
flowing tide; dancers, claret, Cliquot, and piquet; a cab with a tiger;
some travel--all that delicious early-Victorian consciousness of nothing
save a golden time. It was all so full and mellow that he was forty
before he had his only love affair of any depth--with the daughter of one
of his own clerks, a liaison so awkward as to necessitate a sedulous
concealment. The death of that girl, after three years, leaving him a,
natural son, had been the chief, perhaps the only real, sorrow of his
life. Five years later he married. What for? God only knew! as he was
in the habit of remarking. His wife had been a hard, worldly,
well-connected woman, who presented him with two unnatural children, a
girl and a boy, and grew harder, more worldly, less handsome, in the
process. The migration to Liverpool, which took place when he was sixty
and she forty-two, broke what she still had of heart, but she lingered on
twelve years, finding solace in bridge, and being haughty towards
Liverpool. Old Heythorp saw her to her rest without regret. He had felt
no love for her whatever, and practically none for her two children--they
were in his view colourless, pragmatical, very unexpected characters.
His son Ernest--in the Admiralty--he thought a poor, careful stick. His
daughter Adela, an excellent manager, delighting in spiritual
conversation and the society of tame men, rarely failed to show him that
she considered him a hopeless heathen. They saw as little as need be of
each other. She was provided for under that settlement he had made on
her mother fifteen years ago, well before the not altogether unexpected
crisis in his affairs. Very different was the feeling he had bestowed on
that son of his "under the rose." The boy, who had always gone by his
mother's name of Larne, had on her death been sent to some relations of
hers in Ireland, and there brought up. He had been called to the Dublin
bar, and married, young, a girl half Cornish and half Irish; presently,
having cost old Heythorp in all a pretty penny, he had died impecunious,
leaving his fair Rosamund at thirty with a girl of eight and a boy of
five. She had not spent six months of widowhood before coming over from
Dublin to claim the old man's guardianship. A remarkably pretty woman,
like a full-blown rose, with greenish hazel eyes, she had turned up one
morning at the offices of "The Island Navigation Company," accompanied by
her two children--for he had never divulged to them his private address.
And since then they had always been more or less on his hands, occupying
a small house in a suburb of Liverpool. He visited them there, but never
asked them to the house in Sefton Park, which was in fact his daughter's;
so that his proper family and friends were unaware of their existence.
Rosamund Larne was one of those precarious ladies who make uncertain
incomes by writing full-bodied storyettes. In the most dismal
circumstances she enjoyed a buoyancy bordering on the indecent; which
always amused old Heythorp's cynicism. But of his grandchildren Phyllis
and Jock (wild as colts) he had become fond. And this chance of getting
six thousand pounds settled on them at a stroke had seemed to him nothing
but heaven-sent. As things were, if he "went off"--and, of course, he
might at any moment, there wouldn't be a penny for them; for he would
"cut up" a good fifteen thousand to the bad. He was now giving them some
three hundred a year out of his fees; and dead directors unfortunately
earned no fees! Six thousand pounds at four and a half per cent.,
settled so that their mother couldn't "blue it," would give them a
certain two hundred and fifty pounds a year-better than beggary. And the
more he thought the better he liked it, if only that shaky chap, Joe
Pillin, didn't shy off when he'd bitten his nails short over it!
Four evenings later, the "shaky chap" had again appeared at his house in
Sefton Park.
"I've thought it over, Sylvanus. I don't like it.
"No; but you'll do it."
"It's a sacrifice. Fifty-four thousand for four ships--it means a
considerable reduction in my income."
"It means security, my boy."
"Well, there is that; but you know, I really can't be party to a secret
commission. If it came out, think of my name and goodness knows what."
"It won't come out."
"Yes, yes, so you say, but--"
"All you've got to do's to execute a settlement on some third parties
that I'll name. I'm not going to take a penny of it myself. Get your
own lawyer to draw it up and make him trustee. You can sign it when the
purchase has gone through. I'll trust you, Joe. What stock have you got
that gives four and a half per cent.?"
"Midland"
"That'll do. You needn't sell."
"Yes, but who are these people?"
"Woman and her children I want to do a good turn to." What a face the
fellow had made! "Afraid of being connected with a woman, Joe?"
"Yes, you may laugh--I am afraid of being connected with someone else's
woman. I don't like it--I don't like it at all. I've not led your life,
Sylvanus."
"Lucky for you; you'd have been dead long ago. Tell your lawyer it's an
old flame of yours--you old dog!"
"Yes, there it is at once, you see. I might be subject to blackmail."
"Tell him to keep it dark, and just pay over the income, quarterly."
"I don't like it, Sylvanus--I don't like it."
"Then leave it, and be hanged to you. Have a cigar?"
"You know I never smoke. Is there no other way?"
"Yes. Sell stock in London, bank the proceeds there, and bring me six
thousand pounds in notes. I'll hold 'em till after the general meeting.
If the thing doesn't go through, I'll hand 'em back to you."
"No; I like that even less."
"Rather I trusted you, eh!"
"No, not at all, Sylvanus, not at all. But it's all playing round the
law."
"There's no law to prevent you doing what you like with your money. What
I do's nothing to you. And mind you, I'm taking nothing from it--not a
mag. You assist the widowed and the fatherless--just your line, Joe!"
"What a fellow you are, Sylvanus; you don't seem capable of taking
anything seriously."
"Care killed the cat!"
Left alone after this second interview he had thought: 'The beggar'll
jump.'
And the beggar had. That settlement was drawn and only awaited
signature. The Board to-day had decided on the purchase; and all that
remained was to get it ratified at the general meeting. Let him but get
that over, and this provision for his grandchildren made, and he would
snap his fingers at Brownbee and his crew-the canting humbugs! "Hope you
have many years of this life before you!" As if they cared for anything
but his money--their money rather! And becoming conscious of the length
of his reverie, he grasped the arms of his chair, heaved at his own bulk,
in an effort to rise, growing redder and redder in face and neck. It was
one of the hundred things his doctor had told him not to do for fear of
apoplexy, the humbug! Why didn't Farney or one of those young fellows
come and help him up? To call out was undignified. But was he to sit
there all night? Three times he failed, and after each failure sat
motionless again, crimson and exhausted; the fourth time he succeeded,
and slowly made for the office. Passing through, he stopped and said in
his extinct voice:
"You young gentlemen had forgotten me."
"Mr. Farney said you didn't wish to be disturbed, sir."
"Very good of him. Give me my hat and coat."
"Yes, sir."
"Thank you. What time is it?"
"Six o'clock, sir."
"Tell Mr. Farney to come and see me tomorrow at noon, about my speech for
the general meeting."
"Yes, Sir."
"Good-night to you."
"Good-night, Sir."
At his tortoise gait he passed between the office stools to the door,
opened it feebly, and slowly vanished.
Shutting the door behind him, a clerk said:
"Poor old chairman! He's on his last!"
Another answered:
"Gosh! He's a tough old hulk. He'll go down fightin'."
2
Issuing from the offices of "The Island Navigation Company," Sylvanus
Heythorp moved towards the corner whence he always took tram to Sefton
Park. The crowded street had all that prosperous air of catching or
missing something which characterises the town where London and New York
and Dublin meet. Old Heythorp had to cross to the far side, and he
sallied forth without regard to traffic. That snail-like passage had in
it a touch of the sublime; the old man seemed saying: "Knock me down and
be d---d to you--I'm not going to hurry." His life was saved perhaps ten
times a day by the British character at large, compounded of phlegm and a
liking to take something under its protection. The tram conductors on
that line were especially used to him, never failing to catch him under
the arms and heave him like a sack of coals, while with trembling hands
he pulled hard at the rail and strap.
"All right, sir?"
"Thank you."
He moved into the body of the tram, where somebody would always get up
from kindness and the fear that he might sit down on them; and there he
stayed motionless, his little eyes tight closed. With his red face, tuft
of white hairs above his square cleft block of shaven chin, and his big
high-crowned bowler hat, which yet seemed too petty for his head with its
thick hair--he looked like some kind of an idol dug up and decked out in
gear a size too small.
One of those voices of young men from public schools and exchanges where
things are bought and sold, said:
"How de do, Mr. Heythorp?"
Old Heythorp opened his eyes. That sleek cub, Joe Pillin's son! What a
young pup-with his round eyes, and his round cheeks, and his little
moustache, his fur coat, his spats, his diamond pin!
"How's your father?" he said.
"Thanks, rather below par, worryin' about his ships. Suppose you haven't
any news for him, sir?"
Old Heythorp nodded. The young man was one of his pet abominations,
embodying all the complacent, little-headed mediocrity of this new
generation; natty fellows all turned out of the same mould, sippers and
tasters, chaps without drive or capacity, without even vices; and he did
not intend to gratify the cub's curiosity.
"Come to my house," he said; "I'll give you a note for him."
"Tha-anks; I'd like to cheer the old man up."
The old man! Cheeky brat! And closing his eyes he relapsed into
immobility. The tram wound and ground its upward way, and he mused. When
he was that cub's age--twenty-eight or whatever it might be--he had done
most things; been up Vesuvius, driven four-in-hand, lost his last penny
on the Derby and won it back on the Oaks, known all the dancers and
operatic stars of the day, fought a duel with a Yankee at Dieppe and
winged him for saying through his confounded nose that Old England was
played out; been a controlling voice already in his shipping firm; drunk
five other of the best men in London under the table; broken his neck
steeple-chasing; shot a burglar in the legs; been nearly drowned, for a
bet; killed snipe in Chelsea; been to Court for his sins; stared a ghost
out of countenance; and travelled with a lady of Spain. If this young
pup had done the last, it would be all he had; and yet, no doubt, he
would call himself a "spark."
The conductor touched his arm.
"'Ere you are, sir."
"Thank you."
He lowered himself to the ground, and moved in the bluish darkness
towards the gate of his daughter's house. Bob Pillin walked beside him,
thinking: 'Poor old josser, he is gettin' a back number!' And he said:
"I should have thought you ought to drive, sir. My old guv'nor would
knock up at once if he went about at night like this."
The answer rumbled out into the misty air:
"Your father's got no chest; never had."
Bob Pillin gave vent to one of those fat cackles which come so readily
from a certain type of man; and old Heythorp thought:
'Laughing at his father! Parrot!'
They had reached the porch.
A woman with dark hair and a thin, straight face and figure was arranging
some flowers in the hall. She turned and said:
"You really ought not to be so late, Father! It's wicked at this time of
year. Who is it--oh! Mr. Pillin, how do you do? Have you had tea?
Won't you come to the drawing-room; or do you want to see my father?"
"Tha-anks! I believe your father--" And he thought: 'By Jove! the old
chap is a caution!' For old Heythorp was crossing the hall without
having paid the faintest attention to his daughter. Murmuring again:
"Tha-anks awfully; he wants to give me something," he followed. Miss
Heythorp was not his style at all; he had a kind of dread of that thin
woman who looked as if she could never be unbuttoned. They said she was
a great churchgoer and all that sort of thing.
In his sanctum old Heythorp had moved to his writing-table, and was
evidently anxious to sit down.
"Shall I give you a hand, sir?"
Receiving a shake of the head, Bob Pillin stood by the fire and watched.
The old "sport" liked to paddle his own canoe. Fancy having to lower
yourself into a chair like that! When an old Johnny got to such a state
it was really a mercy when he snuffed out, and made way for younger men.
How his Companies could go on putting up with such a fossil for chairman
was a marvel! The fossil rumbled and said in that almost inaudible
voice:
"I suppose you're beginning to look forward to your father's shoes?"
Bob Pillin's mouth opened. The voice went on:
"Dibs and no responsibility. Tell him from me to drink port--add five
years to his life."
To this unwarranted attack Bob Pillin made no answer save a laugh; he
perceived that a manservant had entered the room.
"A Mrs. Larne, sir. Will you see her?"
At this announcement the old man seemed to try and start; then he nodded,
and held out the note he had written. Bob Pillin received it together
with the impression of a murmur which sounded like: "Scratch a poll,
Poll!" and passing the fine figure of a woman in a fur coat, who seemed
to warm the air as she went by, he was in the hall again before he
perceived that he had left his hat.
A young and pretty girl was standing on the bearskin before the fire,
looking at him with round-eyed innocence. He thought: 'This is better; I
mustn't disturb them for my hat'; and approaching the fire, said:
"Jolly cold, isn't it?"
The girl smiled: "Yes-jolly."
He noticed that she had a large bunch of violets at her breast, a lot of
fair hair, a short straight nose, and round blue-grey eyes very frank and
open. "Er" he said, "I've left my hat in there."
"What larks!" And at her little clear laugh something moved within Bob
Pillin.
"You know this house well?"
She shook her head. "But it's rather scrummy, isn't it?"
Bob Pillin, who had never yet thought so answered:
"Quite O.K."
The girl threw up her head to laugh again. "O.K.? What's that?"
Bob Pillin saw her white round throat, and thought: 'She is a ripper!'
And he said with a certain desperation:
"My name's Pillin. Yours is Larne, isn't it? Are you a relation here?"
"He's our Guardy. Isn't he a chook?"
That rumbling whisper like "Scratch a Poll, Poll!" recurring to Bob
Pillin, he said with reservation:
"You know him better than I do." "Oh! Aren't you his grandson, or
something?"
Bob Pillin did not cross himself.
"Lord! No! My dad's an old friend of his; that's all."
"Is your dad like him?"
"Not much."
"What a pity! It would have been lovely if they'd been Tweedles."
Bob Pillin thought: 'This bit is something new. I wonder what her
Christian name is.' And he said:
"What did your godfather and godmothers in your baptism---?"
The girl laughed; she seemed to laugh at everything.
"Phyllis."
Could he say: "Is my only joy"? Better keep it! But-for what? He
wouldn't see her again if he didn't look out! And he said:
"I live at the last house in the park-the red one. D'you know it? Where
do you?"
"Oh! a long way--23, Millicent Villas. It's a poky little house. I hate
it. We have awful larks, though."
"Who are we?"
"Mother, and myself, and Jock--he's an awful boy. You can't conceive
what an awful boy he is. He's got nearly red hair; I think he'll be just
like Guardy when he gets old. He's awful!"
Bob Pillin murmured:
"I should like to see him."
"Would you? I'll ask mother if you can. You won't want to again; he
goes off all the time like a squib." She threw back her head, and again
Bob Pillin felt a little giddy. He collected himself, and drawled:
"Are you going in to see your Guardy?"
"No. Mother's got something special to say. We've never been here
before, you see. Isn't he fun, though?"
"Fun!"
"I think he's the greatest lark; but he's awfully nice to me. Jock calls
him the last of the Stoic'uns."
A voice called from old Heythorp's den:
"Phyllis!" It had a particular ring, that voice, as if coming from
beautifully formed red lips, of which the lower one must curve the least
bit over; it had, too, a caressing vitality, and a kind of warm falsity.
The girl threw a laughing look back over her shoulder, and vanished
through the door into the room.
Bob Pillin remained with his back to the fire and his puppy round eyes
fixed on the air that her figure had last occupied. He was experiencing
a sensation never felt before. Those travels with a lady of Spain,
charitably conceded him by old Heythorp, had so far satisfied the
emotional side of this young man; they had stopped short at Brighton and
Scarborough, and been preserved from even the slightest intrusion of
love. A calculated and hygienic career had caused no anxiety either to
himself or his father; and this sudden swoop of something more than
admiration gave him an uncomfortable choky feeling just above his high
round collar, and in the temples a sort of buzzing--those first symptoms
of chivalry. A man of the world does not, however, succumb without a
struggle; and if his hat had not been out of reach, who knows whether he
would not have left the house hurriedly, saying to himself: "No, no, my
boy; Millicent Villas is hardly your form, when your intentions are
honourable"? For somehow that round and laughing face, bob of glistening
hair, those wide-opened grey eyes refused to awaken the beginnings of
other intentions--such is the effect of youth and innocence on even the
steadiest young men. With a kind of moral stammer, he was thinking: 'Can
I--dare I offer to see them to their tram? Couldn't I even nip out and
get the car round and send them home in it? No, I might miss
them--better stick it out here! What a jolly laugh! What a tipping
face--strawberries and cream, hay, and all that! Millicent Villas!' And
he wrote it on his cuff.
The door was opening; he heard that warm vibrating voice: "Come along,
Phyllis!"--the girl's laugh so high and fresh: "Right-o! Coming!" And
with, perhaps, the first real tremor he had ever known, he crossed to the
front door. All the more chivalrous to escort them to the tram without a
hat! And suddenly he heard: "I've got your hat, young man!" And her
mother's voice, warm, and simulating shock: "Phyllis, you awful gairl!
Did you ever see such an awful gairl; Mr.---"
"Pillin, Mother."
And then--he did not quite know how--insulated from the January air by
laughter and the scent of fur and violets, he was between them walking to
their tram. It was like an experience out of the "Arabian Nights," or
something of that sort, an intoxication which made one say one was going
their way, though one would have to come all the way back in the same
beastly tram. Nothing so warming had ever happened to him as sitting
between them on that drive, so that he forgot the note in his pocket, and
his desire to relieve the anxiety of the "old man," his father. At the
tram's terminus they all got out. There issued a purr of invitation to
come and see them some time; a clear: "Jock'll love to see you!" A low
laugh: "You awful gairl!" And a flash of cunning zigzagged across his
brain. Taking off his hat, he said:
"Thanks awfully; rather!" and put his foot back on the step of the tram.
Thus did he delicately expose the depths of his chivalry!
"Oh! you said you were going our way! What one-ers you do tell! Oh!"
The words were as music; the sight of those eyes growing rounder, the
most perfect he had ever seen; and Mrs. Larne's low laugh, so warm yet so
preoccupied, and the tips of the girl's fingers waving back above her
head. He heaved a sigh, and knew no more till he was seated at his club
before a bottle of champagne. Home! Not he! He wished to drink and
dream. "The old man" would get his news all right to-morrow!
3
The words: "A Mrs. Larne to see you, sir," had been of a nature to
astonish weaker nerves. What had brought her here? She knew she mustn't
come! Old Heythorp had watched her entrance with cynical amusement. The
way she whiffed herself at that young pup in passing, the way her eyes
slid round! He had a very just appreciation of his son's widow; and a
smile settled deep between his chin tuft and his moustache. She lifted
his hand, kissed it, pressed it to her splendid bust, and said:
"So here I am at last, you see. Aren't you surprised?"
Old Heythorp, shook his head.
"I really had to come and see you, Guardy; we haven't had a sight of you
for such an age. And in this awful weather! How are you, dear old
Guardy?"
"Never better." And, watching her green-grey eyes, he added:
"Haven't a penny for you!"
Her face did not fall; she gave her feather-laugh.
"How dreadful of you to think I came for that! But I am in an awful fix,
Guardy."
"Never knew you not to be."
"Just let me tell you, dear; it'll be some relief. I'm having the most
terrible time."
She sank into a low chair, disengaging an overpowering scent of violets,
while melancholy struggled to subdue her face and body.
"The most awful fix. I expect to be sold up any moment. We may be on
the streets to-morrow. I daren't tell the children; they're so happy,
poor darlings. I shall be obliged to take Jock away from school. And
Phyllis will have to stop her piano and dancing; it's an absolute crisis.
And all due to those Midland Syndicate people. I've been counting on at
least two hundred for my new story, and the wretches have refused it."
With a tiny handkerchief she removed one tear from the corner of one eye.
"It is hard, Guardy; I worked my brain silly over that story."
From old Heythorp came a mutter which sounded suspiciously like:
"Rats!"
Heaving a sigh, which conveyed nothing but the generosity of her
breathing apparatus, Mrs. Larne went on:
"You couldn't, I suppose, let me have just one hundred?"
"Not a bob."
She sighed again, her eyes slid round the room; then in her warm voice
she murmured:
"Guardy, you were my dear Philip's father, weren't you? I've never said
anything; but of course you were. He was so like you, and so is Jock."
Nothing moved in old Heythorp's face. No pagan image consulted with
flowers and song and sacrifice could have returned less answer. Her dear
Philip! She had led him the devil of a life, or he was a Dutchman! And
what the deuce made her suddenly trot out the skeleton like this? But
Mrs. Larne's eyes were still wandering.
"What a lovely house! You know, I think you ought to help me, Guardy.
Just imagine if your grandchildren were thrown out into the street!"
The old man grinned. He was not going to deny his relationship--it was
her look-out, not his. But neither was he going to let her rush him.
"And they will be; you couldn't look on and see it. Do come to my rescue
this once. You really might do something for them."
With a rumbling sigh he answered:
"Wait. Can't give you a penny now. Poor as a church mouse."
"Oh! Guardy
"Fact."
Mrs. Larne heaved one of her most buoyant sighs. She certainly did not
believe him.
"Well!" she said; "you'll be sorry when we come round one night and sing
for pennies under your window. Wouldn't you like to see Phyllis? I left
her in the hall. She's growing such a sweet gairl. Guardy just fifty!"
"Not a rap."
Mrs. Larne threw up her hands. "Well! You'll repent it. I'm at my last
gasp." She sighed profoundly, and the perfume of violets escaped in a
cloud; Then, getting up, she went to the door and called: "Phyllis!"
When the girl entered old Heythorp felt the nearest approach to a flutter
of the heart for many years. She had put her hair up! She was like a
spring day in January; such a relief from that scented humbug, her
mother. Pleasant the touch of her lips on his forehead, the sound of her
clear voice, the sight of her slim movements, the feeling that she did
him credit--clean-run stock, she and that young scamp Jock--better than
the holy woman, his daughter Adela, would produce if anyone were ever
fool enough to marry her, or that pragmatical fellow, his son Ernest.
And when they were gone he reflected with added zest on the six thousand
pounds he was getting for them out of Joe Pillin and his ships. He would
have to pitch it strong in his speech at the general meeting. With
freights so low, there was bound to be opposition. No dash nowadays;
nothing but gabby caution! They were a scrim-shanking lot on the
Board--he had had to pull them round one by one--the deuce of a tug
getting this thing through! And yet, the business was sound enough.
Those ships would earn money, properly handled-good money
His valet, coming in to prepare him for dinner, found him asleep. He had
for the old man as much admiration as may be felt for one who cannot put
his own trousers on. He would say to the housemaid Molly: "He's a game
old blighter--must have been a rare one in his day. Cocks his hat at you,
even now, I see!" To which the girl, Irish and pretty, would reply:
"Well, an' sure I don't mind, if it gives um a pleasure. 'Tis better
anyway than the sad eye I get from herself."
At dinner, old Heythorp always sat at one end of the rosewood table and
his daughter at the other. It was the eminent moment of the day. With
napkin tucked high into his waistcoat, he gave himself to the meal with
passion. His palate was undimmed, his digestion unimpaired. He could
still eat as much as two men, and drink more than one. And while he
savoured each mouthful he never spoke if he could help it. The holy
woman had nothing to say that he cared to hear, and he nothing to say
that she cared to listen to. She had a horror, too, of what she called
"the pleasures of the table"--those lusts of the flesh! She was always
longing to dock his grub, he knew. Would see her further first! What
other pleasures were there at his age? Let her wait till she was eighty.
But she never would be; too thin and holy!
This evening, however, with the advent of the partridge she did speak.
"Who were your visitors, Father?"
Trust her for nosing anything out! Fixing his little blue eyes on her,
he mumbled with a very full mouth: "Ladies."
"So I saw; what ladies?"
He had a longing to say: 'Part of one of my families under the rose.' As
a fact it was the best part of the only one, but the temptation to
multiply exceedingly was almost overpowering. He checked himself,
however, and went on eating partridge, his secret irritation crimsoning
his cheeks; and he watched her eyes, those cold precise and round grey
eyes, noting it, and knew she was thinking: 'He eats too much.'
She said: "Sorry I'm not considered fit to be told. You ought not to be
drinking hock."
Old Heythorp took up the long green glass, drained it, and repressing
fumes and emotion went on with his partridge. His daughter pursed her
lips, took a sip of water, and said:
"I know their name is Larne, but it conveyed nothing to me; perhaps it's
just as well."
The old man, mastering a spasm, said with a grin:
"My daughter-in-law and my granddaughter."
"What! Ernest married--Oh! nonsense!"
He chuckled, and shook his head.
"Then do you mean to say, Father, that you were married before you
married my mother?"
"No."
The expression on her face was as good as a play!
She said with a sort of disgust: "Not married! I see. I suppose those
people are hanging round your neck, then; no wonder you're always in
difficulties. Are there any more of them?"
Again the old man suppressed that spasm, and the veins in his neck and
forehead swelled alarmingly. If he had spoken he would infallibly have
choked. He ceased eating, and putting his hands on the table tried to
raise himself. He could not and subsiding in his chair sat glaring at
the stiff, quiet figure of his daughter.
"Don't be silly, Father, and make a scene before Meller. Finish your
dinner."
He did not answer. He was not going to sit there to be dragooned and
insulted! His helplessness had never so weighed on him before. It was
like a revelation. A log--that had to put up with anything! A log!
And, waiting for his valet to return, he cunningly took up his fork.
In that saintly voice of hers she said:
"I suppose you don't realise that it's a shock to me. I don't know what
Ernest will think--"
"Ernest be d---d."
"I do wish, Father, you wouldn't swear."
Old Heythorp's rage found vent in a sort of rumble. How the devil had he
gone on all these years in the same house with that woman, dining with
her day after day! But the servant had come back now, and putting down
his fork he said:
"Help me up!"
The man paused, thunderstruck, with the souffle balanced. To leave
dinner unfinished--it was a portent!
"Help me up!"
"Mr. Heythorp's not very well, Meller; take his other arm."
The old man shook off her hand.
"I'm very well. Help me up. Dine in my own room in future."
Raised to his feet, he walked slowly out; but in his sanctum he did not
sit down, obsessed by this first overwhelming realisation of his
helplessness. He stood swaying a little, holding on to the table, till
the servant, having finished serving dinner, brought in his port.
"Are you waiting to sit down, sir?"
He shook his head. Hang it, he could do that for himself, anyway. He
must think of something to fortify his position against that woman. And
he said:
"Send me Molly!"
"Yes, sir." The man put down the port and went.
Old Heythorp filled his glass, drank, and filled again. He took a cigar
from the box and lighted it. The girl came in, a grey-eyed, dark-haired
damsel, and stood with her hands folded, her head a little to one side,
her lips a little parted. The old man said:
"You're a human being."
"I would hope so, sirr."
"I'm going to ask you something as a human being--not a servant--see?"
"No, sirr; but I will be glad to do anything you like."
"Then put your nose in here every now and then, to see if I want
anything. Meller goes out sometimes. Don't say anything; Just put your
nose in."
"Oh! an' I will; 'tis a pleasure 'twill be to do ut."
He nodded, and when she had gone lowered himself into his chair with a
sense of appeasement. Pretty girl! Comfort to see a pretty face--not a
pale, peeky thing like Adela's. His anger burned up anew. So she
counted on his helplessness, had begun to count on that, had she? She
should see that there was life in the old dog yet! And his sacrifice of
the uneaten souffle, the still less eaten mushrooms, the peppermint sweet
with which he usually concluded dinner, seemed to consecrate that
purpose. They all thought he was a hulk, without a shot left in the
locker! He had seen a couple of them at the Board that afternoon
shrugging at each other, as though saying: 'Look at him!' And young
Farney pitying him. Pity, forsooth! And that coarse-grained solicitor
chap at the creditors' meeting curling his lip as much as to say: 'One
foot in the grave!' He had seen the clerks dowsing the glim of their
grins; and that young pup Bob Pillin screwing up his supercilious mug
over his dog-collar. He knew that scented humbug Rosamund was getting
scared that he'd drop off before she'd squeezed him dry. And his valet
was always looking him up and down queerly. As to that holy woman--!
Not quite so fast! Not quite so fast! And filling his glass for the
fourth time, he slowly sucked down the dark red fluid, with the "old
boots" flavour which his soul loved, and, drawing deep at his cigar,
closed his eyes.
II
1
The room in the hotel where the general meetings of "The Island
Navigation Company" were held was nearly full when the secretary came
through the door which as yet divided the shareholders from their
directors. Having surveyed their empty chairs, their ink and papers, and
nodded to a shareholder or two, he stood, watch in hand, contemplating
the congregation. A thicker attendance than he had ever seen! Due, no
doubt, to the lower dividend, and this Pillin business. And his tongue
curled. For if he had a natural contempt for his Board, with the
exception of the chairman, he had a still more natural contempt for his
shareholders. Amusing spectacle when you came to think of it, a general
meeting! Unique! Eighty or a hundred men, and five women, assembled
through sheer devotion to their money. Was any other function in the
world so single-hearted. Church was nothing to it--so many motives were
mingled there with devotion to one's soul. A well-educated young
man--reader of Anatole France, and other writers--he enjoyed ironic
speculation. What earthly good did they think they got by coming here?
Half-past two! He put his watch back into his pocket, and passed into the
Board-room.
There, the fumes of lunch and of a short preliminary meeting made cosy
the February atmosphere. By the fire four directors were conversing
rather restlessly; the fifth was combing his beard; the chairman sat with
eyes closed and red lips moving rhythmically in the sucking of a lozenge,
the slips of his speech ready in his hand. The secretary said in his
cheerful voice: "Time, sir."
Old Heythorp swallowed, lifted his arms, rose with help, and walked
through to his place at the centre of the table. The five directors
followed. And, standing at the chairman's right, the secretary read the
minutes, forming the words precisely with his curling tongue. Then,
assisting the chairman to his feet, he watched those rows of faces, and
thought: 'Mistake to let them see he can't get up without help. He ought
to have let me read his speech--I wrote it.'
The chairman began to speak:
"It is my duty and my pleasure,' ladies and gentlemen, for the nineteenth
consecutive year to present to you the directors' report and the accounts
for the past twelve months. You will all have had special notice of a
measure of policy on which your Board has decided, and to which you will
be asked to-day to give your adherence--to that I shall come at the end
of my remarks...."
"Excuse me, sir; we can't hear a word down here."
'Ah!' thought the secretary, 'I was expecting that.'
The chairman went on, undisturbed. But several shareholders now rose,
and the same speaker said testily: "We might as well go home. If the
chairman's got no voice, can't somebody read for him?"
The chairman took a sip of water, and resumed. Almost all in the last
six rows were now on their feet, and amid a hubbub of murmurs the
chairman held out to the secretary the slips of his speech, and fell
heavily back into his chair.
The secretary re-read from the beginning; and as each sentence fell from
his tongue, he thought: 'How good that is!' 'That's very clear!' 'A
neat touch!' 'This is getting them.' It seemed to him a pity they could
not know it was all his composition. When at last he came to the Pillin
sale he paused for a second.
"I come now to the measure of policy to which I made allusion at the
beginning of my speech. Your Board has decided to expand your enterprise
by purchasing the entire fleet of Pillin & Co., Ltd. By this transaction
we become the owners of the four steamships Smyrna, Damascus, Tyre, and
Sidon, vessels in prime condition with a total freight-carrying capacity
of fifteen thousand tons, at the low inclusive price of sixty thousand
pounds. Gentlemen, de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!"--it was the
chairman's phrase, his bit of the speech, and the secretary did it more
than justice. "Times are bad, but your Board is emphatically of the
opinion that they are touching bottom; and this, in their view, is the
psychological moment for a forward stroke. They confidently recommend
your adoption of their policy and the ratification of this purchase,
which they believe will, in the not far distant future, substantially
increase the profits of the Company." The secretary sat down with
reluctance. The speech should have continued with a number of appealing
sentences which he had carefully prepared, but the chairman had cut them
out with the simple comment: "They ought to be glad of the chance." It
was, in his view, an error.
The director who had combed his beard now rose--a man of presence, who
might be trusted to say nothing long and suavely. While he was speaking
the secretary was busy noting whence opposition was likely to come. The
majority were sitting owl-like-a good sign; but some dozen were studying
their copies of the report, and three at least were making
notes--Westgate, for, instance, who wanted to get on the Board, and was
sure to make himself unpleasant--the time-honoured method of vinegar; and
Batterson, who also desired to come on, and might be trusted to support
the Board--the time-honoured method of oil; while, if one knew anything
of human nature, the fellow who had complained that he might as well go
home would have something uncomfortable to say. The director finished
his remarks, combed his beard with his fingers, and sat down.
A momentary pause ensued. Then Messieurs Westgate and Batterson rose
together. Seeing the chairman nod towards the latter, the secretary
thought: 'Mistake! He should have humoured Westgate by giving him
precedence.' But that was the worst of the old man, he had no notion of
the suaviter in modo! Mr. Batterson thus unchained--would like, if he
might be so allowed, to congratulate the Board on having piloted their
ship so smoothly through the troublous waters of the past year. With
their worthy chairman still at the helm, he had no doubt that in spite of
the still low--he would not say falling--barometer, and
the-er-unseasonable climacteric, they might rely on weathering
the--er--he would not say storm. He would confess that the present
dividend of four per cent. was not one which satisfied every aspiration
(Hear, hear!), but speaking for himself, and he hoped for others--and
here Mr. Batterson looked round--he recognised that in all the
circumstances it was as much as they had the right--er--to expect. But
following the bold but to his mind prudent development which the Board
proposed to make, he thought that they might reasonably, if not
sanguinely, anticipate a more golden future. ("No, no!") A shareholder
said, 'No, no!' That might seem to indicate a certain lack of confidence
in the special proposal before the meeting. ("Yes!") From that lack of
confidence he would like at once to dissociate himself. Their chairman,
a man of foresight and acumen, and valour proved on many a field
and--er--sea, would not have committed himself to this policy without
good reason. In his opinion they were in safe hands, and he was glad to
register his support of the measure proposed. The chairman had well said
in his speech: 'de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!' Shareholders would
agree with him that there could be no better motto for Englishmen. Ahem!
Mr. Batterson sat down. And Mr. Westgate rose: He wanted--he said--to
know more, much more, about this proposition, which to his mind was of a
very dubious wisdom.... 'Ah!' thought the secretary, 'I told the old boy
he must tell them more'.... To whom, for instance, had the proposal
first been made? To him!--the chairman said. Good! But why were Pillins
selling, if freights were to go up, as they were told?
"Matter of opinion."
"Quite so; and in my opinion they are going lower, and Pillins were right
to sell. It follows that we are wrong to buy." ("Hear, hear!" "No,
no!") "Pillins are shrewd people. What does the chairman say? Nerves!
Does he mean to tell us that this sale was the result of nerves?"
The chairman nodded.
"That appears to me a somewhat fantastic theory; but I will leave that
and confine myself to asking the grounds on which the chairman bases his
confidence; in fact, what it is which is actuating the Board in pressing
on us at such a time what I have no hesitation in stigmatising as a rash
proposal. In a word, I want light as well as leading in this matter."
Mr. Westgate sat down.
What would the chairman do now? The situation was distinctly
awkward--seeing his helplessness and the lukewarmness of the Board behind
him. And the secretary felt more strongly than ever the absurdity of his
being an underling, he who in a few well-chosen words could so easily
have twisted the meeting round his thumb. Suddenly he heard the long,
rumbling sigh which preluded the chairman's speeches.
"Has any other gentleman anything to say before I move the adoption of
the report?"
Phew! That would put their backs up. Yes, sure enough it had brought
that fellow, who had said he might as well go home, to his feet! Now for
something nasty!
"Mr. Westgate requires answering. I don't like this business. I don't
impute anything to anybody; but it looks to me as if there were something
behind it which the shareholders ought to be told. Not only that; but,
to speak frankly, I'm not satisfied to be ridden over roughshod in this
fashion by one who, whatever he may have been in the past, is obviously
not now in the prime of his faculties."
With a gasp the secretary thought: 'I knew that was a plain-spoken man!'
He heard again the rumbling beside him. The chairman had gone crimson,
his mouth was pursed, his little eyes were very blue.
"Help me up," he said.
The secretary helped him, and waited, rather breathless.
The chairman took a sip of water, and his voice, unexpectedly loud, broke
an ominous hush:
"Never been so insulted in my life. My best services have been at your
disposal for nineteen years; you know what measure of success this
Company has attained. I am the oldest man here, and my experience of
shipping is, I hope, a little greater than that of the two gentlemen who
spoke last. I have done my best for you, ladies and gentlemen, and we
shall see whether you are going to endorse an indictment of my judgment
and of my honour, if I am to take the last speaker seriously. This
purchase is for your good. 'There is a tide in the affairs of men'--and
I for one am not content, never have been, to stagnate. If that is what
you want, however, by all means give your support to these gentlemen and
have done with it. I tell you freights will go up before the end of the
year; the purchase is a sound one, more than a sound one--I, at any rate,
stand or fall by it. Refuse to ratify it, if you like; if you do, I
shall resign."
He sank back into his seat. The secretary, stealing a glance, thought
with a sort of enthusiasm: 'Bravo! Who'd have thought he could rally his
voice like that? A good touch, too, that about his honour! I believe
he's knocked them.
It's still dicky, though, if that fellow at the back gets up again; the
old chap can't work that stop a second time. 'Ah! here was 'old
Apple-pie' on his hind legs. That was all right!
"I do not hesitate to say that I am an old friend of the chairman; we
are, many of us, old friends of the chairman, and it has been painful to
me, and I doubt not to others, to hear an attack made on him. If he is
old in body, he is young in mental vigour and courage. I wish we were
all as young. We ought to stand by him; I say, we ought to stand by
him." ("Hear, hear! Hear, hear!") And the secretary thought: 'That's
done it!' And he felt a sudden odd emotion, watching the chairman bobbing
his body, like a wooden toy, at old Appleby; and old Appleby bobbing
back. Then, seeing a shareholder close to the door get up, thought:
'Who's that? I know his face--Ah! yes; Ventnor, the solicitor--he's one
of the chairman's creditors that are coming again this afternoon. What
now?'
"I can't agree that we ought to let sentiment interfere with our judgment
in this matter. The question is simply: How are our pockets going to be
affected? I came here with some misgivings, but the attitude of the
chairman has been such as to remove them; and I shall support the
proposition." The secretary thought: 'That's all right--only, he said it
rather queerly--rather queerly.'
Then, after a long silence, the chairman, without rising, said:
"I move the adoption of the report and accounts."
"I second that."
"Those in favour signify the same in the usual way. Contrary? Carried."
The secretary noted the dissentients, six in number, and that Mr.
Westgate did not vote.
A quarter of an hour later he stood in the body of the emptying room
supplying names to one of the gentlemen of the Press. The passionless
fellow said: "Haythorp, with an 'a'; oh! an 'e'; he seems an old man.
Thank you. I may have the slips? Would you like to see a proof? With
an 'a' you said--oh! an 'e.' Good afternoon!" And the secretary thought:
'Those fellows, what does go on inside them? Fancy not knowing the old
chairman by now!'...
2
Back in the proper office of "The Island Navigation Company" old Heythorp
sat smoking a cigar and smiling like a purring cat. He was dreaming a
little of his triumph, sifting with his old brain, still subtle, the
wheat from the chaff of the demurrers: Westgate--nothing in
that--professional discontent till they silenced him with a place on the
board--but not while he held the reins! That chap at the back--an
ill-conditioned fellow! "Something behind!" Suspicious brute! There
was something--but--hang it! they might think themselves lucky to get
four ships at that price, and all due to him! It was on the last speaker
that his mind dwelt with a doubt. That fellow Ventnor, to whom he owed
money--there had been something just a little queer about his tone--as
much as to say, "I smell a rat." Well! one would see that at the
creditors' meeting in half an hour.
"Mr. Pillin, sir."
"Show him in!"
In a fur coat which seemed to extinguish his thin form, Joe Pillin
entered. It was snowing, and the cold had nipped and yellowed his meagre
face between its slight grey whiskering. He said thinly:
"How are you, Sylvanus? Aren't you perished in this cold?"
"Warm as a toast. Sit down. Take off your coat."
"Oh! I should be lost without it. You must have a fire inside you.
So-so it's gone through?"
Old Heythorp nodded; and Joe Pillin, wandering like a spirit, scrutinised
the shut door. He came back to the table, and said in a low voice:
"It's a great sacrifice."
Old Heythorp smiled.
"Have you signed the deed poll?"
Producing a parchment from his pocket Joe Pillin unfolded it with caution
to disclose his signature, and said:
"I don't like it--it's irrevocable."
A chuckle escaped old Heythorp.
"As death."
Joe Pillin's voice passed up into the treble clef.
"I can't bear irrevocable things. I consider you stampeded me, playing
on my nerves."
Examining the signatures old Heythorp murmured:
"Tell your lawyer to lock it up. He must think you a sad dog, Joe."
"Ah! Suppose on my death it comes to the knowledge of my wife!"
"She won't be able to make it hotter for you than you'll be already."
Joe Pillin replaced the deed within his coat, emitting a queer thin
noise. He simply could not bear joking on such subjects.
"Well," he said, "you've got your way; you always do. Who is this Mrs.
Larne? You oughtn't to keep me in the dark. It seems my boy met her at
your house. You told me she didn't come there."
Old Heythorp said with relish:
"Her husband was my son by a woman I was fond of before I married; her
children are my grandchildren. You've provided for them. Best thing you
ever did."
"I don't know--I don't know. I'm sorry you told me. It makes it all the
more doubtful. As soon as the transfer's complete, I shall get away
abroad. This cold's killing me. I wish you'd give me your recipe for
keeping warm."
"Get a new inside."
Joe Pillin regarded his old friend with a sort of yearning. "And yet,"
he said, "I suppose, with your full-blooded habit, your life hangs by a
thread, doesn't it?"
"A stout one, my boy"
"Well, good-bye, Sylvanus. You're a Job's comforter; I must be getting
home." He put on his hat, and, lost in his fur coat, passed out into the
corridor. On the stairs he met a man who said:
"How do you do, Mr. Pillin? I know your son. Been' seeing the chairman?
I see your sale's gone through all right. I hope that'll do us some
good, but I suppose you think the other way?"
Peering at him from under his hat, Joe Pillin said:
"Mr. Ventnor, I think? Thank you! It's very cold, isn't it?" And, with
that cautious remark, he passed on down.
Alone again, old Heythorp thought: 'By George! What a wavering,
quavering, thread paper of a fellow! What misery life must be to a chap
like that! He walks in fear--he wallows in it. Poor devil!' And a
curious feeling swelled his heart, of elation, of lightness such as he
had not known for years. Those two young things were safe now from
penury-safe! After dealing with those infernal creditors of his he would
go round and have a look at the children. With a hundred and twenty a
year the boy could go into the Army--best place for a young scamp like
that. The girl would go off like hot cakes, of course, but she needn't
take the first calf that came along. As for their mother, she must look
after herself; nothing under two thousand a year would keep her out of
debt. But trust her for wheedling and bluffing her way out of any
scrape! Watching his cigar-smoke curl and disperse he was conscious of
the strain he had been under these last six weeks, aware suddenly of how
greatly he had baulked at thought of to-day's general meeting. Yes! It
might have turned out nasty. He knew well enough the forces on the
Board, and off, who would be only too glad to shelve him. If he were
shelved here his other two Companies would be sure to follow suit, and
bang would go every penny of his income--he would be a pauper dependant
on that holy woman. Well! Safe now for another year if he could stave
off these sharks once more. It might be a harder job this time, but he
was in luck--in luck, and it must hold. And taking a luxurious pull at
his cigar, he rang the handbell.
"Bring 'em in here, Mr. Farney. And let me have a cup of China tea as
strong as you can make it."
"Yes, sir. Will you see the proof of the press report, or will you leave
it to me?"
"To you."
"Yes, sir. It was a good meeting, wasn't it?"
Old Heythorp nodded.
"Wonderful how your voice came back just at the right moment. I was
afraid things were going to be difficult. The insult did it, I think.
It was a monstrous thing to say. I could have punched his head."
Again old Heythorp nodded; and, looking into the secretary's fine blue
eyes, he repeated: "Bring 'em in."
The lonely minute before the entrance of his creditors passed in the
thought: 'So that's how it struck him! Short shrift I should get if it
came out.'
The gentlemen, who numbered ten this time, bowed to their debtor,
evidently wondering why the deuce they troubled to be polite to an old
man who kept them out of their money. Then, the secretary reappearing
with a cup of China tea, they watched while their debtor drank it. The
feat was tremulous. Would he get through without spilling it all down
his front, or choking? To those unaccustomed to his private life it was
slightly miraculous. He put the cup down empty, tremblingly removed some
yellow drops from the little white tuft below his lip, refit his cigar,
and said:
"No use beating about the bush, gentlemen; I can offer you fourteen
hundred a year so long as I live and hold my directorships, and not a
penny more. If you can't accept that, you must make me bankrupt and get
about sixpence in the pound. My qualifying shares will fetch a couple of
thousand at market price. I own nothing else. The house I live in, and
everything in it, barring my clothes, my wine, and my cigars, belong to
my daughter under a settlement fifteen years old. My solicitors and
bankers will give you every information. That's the position in a
nutshell."
In spite of business habits the surprise of the ten gentlemen was only
partially concealed. A man who owed them so much would naturally say he
owned nothing, but would he refer them to his solicitors and bankers
unless he were telling the truth? Then Mr. Ventnor said:
"Will you submit your pass books?"
"No, but I'll authorise my bankers to give you a full statement of my
receipts for the last five years--longer, if you like."
The strategic stroke of placing the ten gentlemen round the Board table
had made it impossible for them to consult freely without being
overheard, but the low-voiced transference of thought travelling round
was summed up at last by Mr. Brownbee.
"We think, Mr. Heythorp, that your fees and dividends should enable you
to set aside for us a larger sum. Sixteen hundred, in fact, is what we
think you should give us yearly. Representing, as we do, sixteen
thousand pounds, the prospect is not cheering, but we hope you have some
good years before you yet. We understand your income to be two thousand
pounds."
Old Heythorp shook his head. "Nineteen hundred and thirty pounds in a
good year. Must eat and drink; must have a man to look after me not as
active as I was. Can't do on less than five hundred pounds. Fourteen
hundred's all I can give you, gentlemen; it's an advance of two hundred
pounds. That's my last word."
The silence was broken by Mr. Ventnor.
"And it's my last word that I'm not satisfied. If these other gentlemen
accept your proposition I shall be forced to consider what I can do on my
own account."
The old man stared at him, and answered:
"Oh! you will, sir; we shall see."
The others had risen and were gathered in a knot at the end of the table;
old Heythorp and Mr. Ventnor alone remained seated. The old man's lower
lip projected till the white hairs below stood out like bristles. 'You
ugly dog,' he was thinking, 'you think you've got something up your
sleeve. Well, do your worst!' The "ugly dog" rose abruptly and joined
the others. And old Heythorp closed his eyes, sitting perfectly still,
with his cigar, which had gone out, sticking up between his teeth. Mr.
Brownbee turning to voice the decision come to, cleared his throat.
"Mr. Heythorp," he said, "if your bankers and solicitors bear out your
statements, we shall accept your offer faute de mieux, in consideration
of your--" but meeting the old man's eyes, which said so very plainly:
"Blow your consideration!" he ended with a stammer: "Perhaps you will
kindly furnish us with the authorisation you spoke of?"
Old Heythorp nodded, and Mr. Brownbee, with a little bow, clasped his hat
to his breast and moved towards the door. The nine gentlemen followed.
Mr. Ventnor, bringing up the rear, turned and looked back. But the old
man's eyes were already closed again.
The moment his creditors were gone, old Heythorp sounded the hand-bell.
"Help me up, Mr. Farney. That Ventnor--what's his holding?"
"Quite small. Only ten shares, I think."
"Ah! What time is it?"
"Quarter to four, sir."
"Get me a taxi."
After visiting his bank and his solicitors he struggled once more into
his cab and caused it to be driven towards Millicent Villas. A kind of
sleepy triumph permeated his whole being, bumped and shaken by the cab's
rapid progress. So! He was free of those sharks now so long as he could
hold on to his Companies; and he would still have a hundred a year or
more to spare for Rosamund and her youngsters. He could live on four
hundred, or even three-fifty, without losing his independence, for there
would be no standing life in that holy woman's house unless he could pay
his own scot! A good day's work! The best for many a long month!
The cab stopped before the villa.
3
There are rooms which refuse to give away their owners, and rooms which
seem to say: 'They really are like this.' Of such was Rosamund Larne's--a
sort of permanent confession, seeming to remark to anyone who entered:
'Her taste? Well, you can see--cheerful and exuberant; her habits--yes,
she sits here all the morning in a dressing-gown, smoking cigarettes and
dropping ink; kindly observe my carpet. Notice the piano--it has a look
of coming and going, according to the exchequer. This very
deep-cushioned sofa is permanent, however; the water-colours on the walls
are safe, too--they're by herself. Mark the scent of mimosa--she likes
flowers, and likes them strong. No clock, of course. Examine the
bureau--she is obviously always ringing for "the drumstick," and saying:
"Where's this, Ellen, and where's that? You naughty gairl, you've been
tidying." Cast an eye on that pile of manuscript--she has evidently a
genius for composition; it flows off her pen--like Shakespeare, she never
blots a line. See how she's had the electric light put in, instead of
that horrid gas; but try and turn either of them on--you can't; last
quarter isn't paid, of course; and she uses an oil lamp, you can tell
that by the ceiling: The dog over there, who will not answer to the name
of 'Carmen,' a Pekinese spaniel like a little Djin, all prominent eyes
rolling their blacks, and no nose between--yes, Carmen looks as if she
didn't know what was coming next; she's right--it's a pet-and-slap-again
life! Consider, too, the fittings of the tea-tray, rather soiled, though
not quite tin, but I say unto you that no millionaire's in all its glory
ever had a liqueur bottle on it.'
When old Heythorp entered this room, which extended from back to front of
the little house, preceded by the announcement "Mr. Aesop," it was
resonant with a very clatter-bodandigo of noises, from Phyllis playing
the Machiche; from the boy Jock on the hearthrug, emitting at short
intervals the most piercing notes from an ocarina; from Mrs. Larne on the
sofa, talking with her trailing volubility to Bob Pillin; from Bob Pillin
muttering: "Ye-es! Qui-ite! Ye-es!" and gazing at Phyllis over his
collar. And, on the window-sill, as far as she could get from all this
noise, the little dog Carmen was rolling her eyes. At sight of their
visitor Jock blew one rending screech, and bolting behind the sofa,
placed his chin on its top, so that nothing but his round pink unmoving
face was visible; and the dog Carmen tried to climb the blind cord.
Encircled from behind by the arms of Phyllis, and preceded by the
gracious perfumed bulk of Mrs. Larne, old Heythorp was escorted to the
sofa. It was low, and when he had plumped down into it, the boy Jock
emitted a hollow groan. Bob Pillin was the first to break the silence.
"How are you, sir? I hope it's gone through."
Old Heythorp nodded. His eyes were fixed on the liqueur, and Mrs. Larne
murmured:
"Guardy, you must try our new liqueur. Jock, you awful boy, get up and
bring Guardy a glass."
The boy Jock approached the tea-table, took up a glass, put it to his eye
and filled it rapidly.
"You horrible boy, you could see that glass has been used."
In a high round voice rather like an angel's, Jock answered:
"All right, Mother; I'll get rid of it," and rapidly swallowing the
yellow liquor, took up another glass.
Mrs. Larne laughed.
"What am I to do with him?"
A loud shriek prevented a response. Phyllis, who had taken her brother
by the ear to lead him to the door, let him go to clasp her injured self.
Bob Pillin went hastening towards her; and following the young man with
her chin, Mrs. Larne said, smiling:
"Aren't those children awful? He's such a nice fellow. We like him so
much, Guardy."
The old man grinned. So she was making up to that young pup! Rosamund
Larne, watching him, murmured:
"Oh! Guardy, you're as bad as Jock. He takes after you terribly. Look
at the shape of his head. Jock, come here!" The innocent boy
approached; with his girlish complexion, his flowery blue eyes, his
perfect mouth, he stood before his mother like a large cherub. And
suddenly he blew his ocarina in a dreadful manner. Mrs. Larne launched a
box at his ears, and receiving the wind of it he fell prone.
"That's the way he behaves. Be off with you, you awful boy. I want to
talk to Guardy."
The boy withdrew on his stomach, and sat against the wall cross-legged,
fixing his innocent round eyes on old Heythorp. Mrs. Larne sighed.
"Things are worse and worse, Guardy. I'm at my wits' end to tide over
this quarter. You wouldn't advance me a hundred on my new story? I'm
sure to get two for it in the end."
The old man shook his head.
"I've done something for you and the children," he said. "You'll get
notice of it in a day or two; ask no questions."
"Oh! Guardy! Oh! you dear!" And her gaze rested on Bob Pillin, leaning
over the piano, where Phyllis again sat.
Old Heythorp snorted. "What are you cultivating that young gaby for? She
mustn't be grabbed up by any fool who comes along."
Mrs. Larne murmured at once:
"Of course, the dear gairl is much too young. Phyllis, come and talk to
Guardy!"
When the girl was installed beside him on the sofa, and he had felt that
little thrill of warmth the proximity of youth can bring, he said:
"Been a good girl?"
She shook her head.
"Can't, when Jock's not at school. Mother can't pay for him this term."
Hearing his name, the boy Jock blew his ocarina till Mrs. Larne drove him
from the room, and Phyllis went on:
"He's more awful than anything you can think of. Was my dad at all like
him, Guardy? Mother's always so mysterious about him. I suppose you
knew him well."
Old Heythorp, incapable of confusion, answered stolidly:
"Not very."
"Who was his father? I don't believe even mother knows."
"Man about town in my day."
"Oh! your day must have been jolly. Did you wear peg-top trousers, and
dundreary's?"
Old Heythorp nodded.
"What larks! And I suppose you had lots of adventures with opera dancers
and gambling. The young men are all so good now." Her eyes rested on
Bob Pillin. "That young man's a perfect stick of goodness."
Old Heythorp grunted.
"You wouldn't know how good he was," Phyllis went on musingly, "unless
you'd sat next him in a tunnel. The other day he had his waist squeezed
and he simply sat still and did nothing. And then when the tunnel ended,
it was Jock after all, not me. His face was--Oh! ah! ha! ha! Ah! ha!"
She threw back her head, displaying all her white, round throat. Then
edging near, she whispered:
"He likes to pretend, of course, that he's fearfully lively. He's
promised to take mother and me to the theatre and supper afterwards.
Won't it be scrummy! Only, I haven't anything to go in."
Old Heythorp said: "What do you want? Irish poplin?"
Her mouth opened wide: "Oh! Guardy! Soft white satin!"
"How many yards'll go round you?"
"I should think about twelve. We could make it ourselves. You are a
chook!"
A scent of hair, like hay, enveloped him, her lips bobbed against his
nose,--and there came a feeling in his heart as when he rolled the first
sip of a special wine against his palate. This little house was a
rumty-too affair, her mother was a humbug, the boy a cheeky young rascal,
but there was a warmth here he never felt in that big house which had
been his wife's and was now his holy daughter's. And once more he
rejoiced at his day's work, and the success of his breach of trust, which
put some little ground beneath these young feet, in a hard and
unscrupulous world. Phyllis whispered in his ear:
"Guardy, do look; he will stare at me like that. Isn't it awful--like a
boiled rabbit?"
Bob Pillin, attentive to Mrs. Larne, was gazing with all his might over
her shoulder at the girl. The young man was moonstruck, that was clear!
There was something almost touching in the stare of those puppy dog's
eyes. And he thought 'Young beggar--wish I were his age!' The utter
injustice of having an old and helpless body, when your desire for
enjoyment was as great as ever! They said a man was as old as he felt!
Fools! A man was as old as his legs and arms, and not a day younger.
He heard the girl beside him utter a discomfortable sound, and saw her
face cloud as if tears were not far off; she jumped up, and going to the
window, lifted the little dog and buried her face in its brown and white
fur. Old Heythorp thought: 'She sees that her humbugging mother is using
her as a decoy.' But she had come back, and the little dog, rolling its
eyes horribly at the strange figure on the sofa, in a desperate effort to
escape succeeded in reaching her shoulder, where it stayed perched like a
cat, held by one paw and trying to back away into space. Old Heythorp
said abruptly:
"Are you very fond of your mother?"
"Of course I am, Guardy. I adore her."
"H'm! Listen to me. When you come of age or marry, you'll have a
hundred and twenty a year of your own that you can't get rid of. Don't
ever be persuaded into doing what you don't want. And remember: Your
mother's a sieve, no good giving her money; keep what you'll get for
yourself--it's only a pittance, and you'll want it all--every penny."
Phyllis's eyes had opened very wide; so that he wondered if she had taken
in his words.
"Oh! Isn't money horrible, Guardy?"
"The want of it."
"No, it's beastly altogether. If only we were like birds. Or if one
could put out a plate overnight, and have just enough in the morning to
use during the day."
Old Heythorp sighed.
"There's only one thing in life that matters--independence. Lose that,
and you lose everything. That's the value of money. Help me up."
Phyllis stretched out her hands, and the little dog, running down her
back, resumed its perch on the window-sill, close to the blind cord.
Once on his feet, old Heythorp said:
"Give me a kiss. You'll have your satin tomorrow."
Then looking at Bob Pillin, he remarked:
"Going my way? I'll give you a lift."
The young man, giving Phyllis one appealing look, answered dully:
"Tha-anks!" and they went out together to the taxi. In that draughtless
vehicle they sat, full of who knows what contempt of age for youth; and
youth for age; the old man resenting this young pup's aspiration to his
granddaughter; the young man annoyed that this old image had dragged him
away before he wished to go. Old Heythorp said at last:
"Well?"
Thus expected to say something, Bob Pillin muttered
"Glad your meetin' went off well, sir. You scored a triumph I should
think."
"Why?"
"Oh! I don't know. I thought you had a good bit of opposition to
contend with."
Old Heythorp looked at him.
"Your grandmother!" he said; then, with his habitual instinct of attack,
added: "You make the most of your opportunities, I see."
At this rude assault Bob Pillin's red-cheeked face assumed a certain
dignity. "I don't know what you mean, sir. Mrs. Larne is very kind to
me."
"No doubt. But don't try to pick the flowers."
Thoroughly upset, Bob Pillin preserved a dogged silence. This fortnight,
since he had first met Phyllis in old Heythorp's hall, had been the most
singular of his existence up to now. He would never have believed that a
fellow could be so quickly and completely bowled, could succumb without a
kick, without even wanting to kick. To one with his philosophy of having
a good time and never committing himself too far, it was in the nature of
"a fair knock-out," and yet so pleasurable, except for the wear and tear
about one's chances. If only he knew how far the old boy really counted
in the matter! To say: "My intentions are strictly honourable" would be
old-fashioned; besides--the old fellow might have no right to hear it.
They called him Guardy, but without knowing more he did not want to admit
the old curmudgeon's right to interfere.
"Are you a relation of theirs, sir?"
Old Heythorp nodded.
Bob Pillin went on with desperation:
"I should like to know what your objection to me is."
The old man turned his head so far as he was able; a grim smile bristled
the hairs about his lips, and twinkled in his eyes. What did he object
to? Why--everything! Object to! That sleek head, those puppy-dog eyes,
fattish red cheeks, high collars, pearl pin, spats, and drawl-pah! the
imbecility, the smugness of his mug; no go, no devil in any of his sort,
in any of these fish-veined, coddled-up young bloods, nothing but playing
for safety! And he wheezed out:
"Milk and water masquerading as port wine."
Bob Pillin frowned.
It was almost too much for the composure even of a man of the world. That
this paralytic old fellow should express contempt for his virility was
really the last thing in jests. Luckily he could not take it seriously.
But suddenly he thought: 'What if he really has the power to stop my
going there, and means to turn them against me!' And his heart quailed.
"Awfully sorry, sir," he said, "if you don't think I'm wild enough.
Anything I can do for you in that line--"
The old man grunted; and realising that he had been quite witty, Bob
Pillin went on:
"I know I'm not in debt, no entanglements, got a decent income, pretty
good expectations and all that; but I can soon put that all right if I'm
not fit without."
It was perhaps his first attempt at irony, and he could not help thinking
how good it was.
But old Heythorp preserved a deadly silence. He looked like a stuffed
man, a regular Aunt Sally sitting there, with the fixed red in his
cheeks, his stivered hair, square block of a body, and no neck that you
could see-only wanting the pipe in his mouth! Could there really be
danger from such an old idol? The idol spoke:
"I'll give you a word of advice. Don't hang round there, or you'll burn
your fingers. Remember me to your father. Good-night!"
The taxi had stopped before the house in Sefton Park. An insensate
impulse to remain seated and argue the point fought in Bob Pillin with an
impulse to leap out, shake his fist in at the window, and walk off. He
merely said, however:
"Thanks for the lift. Good-night!" And, getting out deliberately, he
walked off.
Old Heythorp, waiting for the driver to help him up, thought 'Fatter, but
no more guts than his father!'
In his sanctum he sank at once into his chair. It was wonderfully still
there every day at this hour; just the click of the coals, just the
faintest ruffle from the wind in the trees of the park. And it was
cosily warm, only the fire lightening the darkness. A drowsy beatitude
pervaded the old man. A good day's work! A triumph--that young pup had
said. Yes! Something of a triumph! He had held on, and won. And
dinner to look forward to, yet. A nap--a nap! And soon, rhythmic, soft,
sonorous, his breathing rose, with now and then that pathetic twitching
of the old who dream.
III
1
When Bob Pillin emerged from the little front garden of 23, Millicent
Villas ten days later, his sentiments were ravelled, and he could not get
hold of an end to pull straight the stuff of his mind.
He had found Mrs. Larne and Phyllis in the sitting-room, and Phyllis had
been crying; he was sure she had been crying; and that memory still
infected the sentiments evoked by later happenings. Old Heythorp had
said: "You'll burn your fingers." The process had begun. Having sent
her daughter away on a pretext really a bit too thin, Mrs. Larne had
installed him beside her scented bulk on the sofa, and poured into his
ear such a tale of monetary woe and entanglement, such a mass of present
difficulties and rosy prospects, that his brain still whirled, and only
one thing emerged clearly-that she wanted fifty pounds, which she would
repay him on quarter-day; for their Guardy had made a settlement by
which, until the dear children came of age, she would have sixty pounds
every quarter. It was only a question of a few weeks; he might ask
Messrs. Scriven and Coles; they would tell him the security was quite
safe. He certainly might ask Messrs. Scriven and Coles--they happened
to be his father's solicitors; but it hardly seemed to touch the point.
Bob Pillin had a certain shrewd caution, and the point was whether he was
going to begin to lend money to a woman who, he could see, might borrow
up to seventy times seven on the strength of his infatuation for her
daughter. That was rather too strong! Yet, if he didn't she might take
a sudden dislike to him, and where would he be then? Besides, would not a
loan make his position stronger? And then--such is the effect of love
even on the younger generation--that thought seemed to him unworthy. If
he lent at all, it should be from chivalry--ulterior motives might go
hang! And the memory of the tear-marks on Phyllis's pretty pale-pink
cheeks; and her petulantly mournful: "Oh! young man, isn't money
beastly!" scraped his heart, and ravished his judgment. All the same,
fifty pounds was fifty pounds, and goodness knew how much more; and what
did he know of Mrs. Larne, after all, except that she was a relative of
old Heythorp's and wrote stories--told them too, if he was not mistaken?
Perhaps it would be better to see Scrivens'. But again that absurd
nobility assaulted him. Phyllis! Phyllis! Besides, were not
settlements always drawn so that they refused to form security for
anything? Thus, hampered and troubled, he hailed a cab. He was dining
with the Ventnors on the Cheshire side, and would be late if he didn't
get home sharp to dress.
Driving, white-tied--and waist-coated, in his father's car, he thought
with a certain contumely of the younger Ventnor girl, whom he had been
wont to consider pretty before he knew Phyllis. And seated next her at
dinner, he quite enjoyed his new sense of superiority to her charms, and
the ease with which he could chaff and be agreeable. And all the time he
suffered from the suppressed longing which scarcely ever left him now, to
think and talk of Phyllis. Ventnor's fizz was good and plentiful, his
old Madeira absolutely first chop, and the only other man present a
teetotal curate, who withdrew with the ladies to talk his parish shop.
Favoured by these circumstances, and the perception that Ventnor was an
agreeable fellow, Bob Pillin yielded to his secret itch to get near the
subject of his affections.
"Do you happen," he said airily, "to know a Mrs. Larne--relative of old
Heythorp's--rather a handsome woman-she writes stories."
Mr. Ventnor shook his head. A closer scrutiny than Bob Pillin's would
have seen that he also moved his ears.
"Of old Heythorp's? Didn't know he had any, except his daughter, and
that son of his in the Admiralty."
Bob Pillin felt the glow of his secret hobby spreading within him.
"She is, though--lives rather out of town; got a son and daughter. I
thought you might know her stories--clever woman."
Mr. Ventnor smiled. "Ah!" he said enigmatically, "these lady novelists!
Does she make any money by them?"
Bob Pillin knew that to make money by writing meant success, but that not
to make money by writing was artistic, and implied that you had private
means, which perhaps was even more distinguished. And he said:
"Oh! she has private means, I know."
Mr. Ventnor reached for the Madeira.
"So she's a relative of old Heythorp's," he said. "He's a very old
friend of your father's. He ought to go bankrupt, you know."
To Bob Pillin, glowing with passion and Madeira, the idea of bankruptcy
seemed discreditable in connection with a relative of Phyllis. Besides,
the old boy was far from that! Had he not just made this settlement on
Mrs. Larne? And he said:
"I think you're mistaken. That's of the past."
Mr. Ventnor smiled.
"Will you bet?" he said.
Bob Pillin also smiled. "I should be bettin' on a certainty."
Mr. Ventnor passed his hand over his whiskered face. "Don't you believe
it; he hasn't a mag to his name. Fill your glass."
Bob Pillin said, with a certain resentment:
"Well, I happen to know he's just made a settlement of five or six
thousand pounds. Don't know if you call that being bankrupt."
"What! On this Mrs. Larne?"
Confused, uncertain whether he had said something derogatory or
indiscreet, or something which added distinction to Phyllis, Bob Pillin
hesitated, then gave a nod.
Mr. Ventnor rose and extended his short legs before the fire.
"No, my boy," he said. "No!"
Unaccustomed to flat contradiction, Bob Pillin reddened.
"I'll bet you a tenner. Ask Scrivens."
Mr. Ventnor ejaculated:
"Scrivens---but they're not--" then, staring rather hard, he added: "I
won't bet. You may be right. Scrivens are your father's solicitors too,
aren't they? Always been sorry he didn't come to me. Shall we join the
ladies?" And to the drawing-room he preceded a young man more uncertain
in his mind than on his feet....
Charles Ventnor was not one to let you see that more was going on within
than met the eye. But there was a good deal going on that evening, and
after his conversation with young Bob he had occasion more than once to
turn away and rub his hands together. When, after that second creditors'
meeting, he had walked down the stairway which led to the offices of "The
Island Navigation Company," he had been deep in thought. Short, squarely
built, rather stout, with moustache and large mutton-chop whiskers of a
red brown, and a faint floridity in face and dress, he impressed at first
sight only by a certain truly British vulgarity. One felt that here was
a hail-fellow--well-met man who liked lunch and dinner, went to
Scarborough for his summer holidays, sat on his wife, took his daughters
out in a boat and was never sick. One felt that he went to church every
Sunday morning, looked upwards as he moved through life, disliked the
unsuccessful, and expanded with his second glass of wine. But then a
clear look into his well-clothed face and red-brown eyes would give the
feeling: 'There's something fulvous here; he might be a bit too foxy.' A
third look brought the thought: 'He's certainly a bully.' He was not a
large creditor of old Heythorp. With interest on the original, he
calculated his claim at three hundred pounds--unredeemed shares in that
old Ecuador mine. But he had waited for his money eight years, and could
never imagine how it came about that he had been induced to wait so long.
There had been, of course, for one who liked "big pots," a certain
glamour about the personality of old Heythorp, still a bit of a swell in
shipping circles, and a bit of an aristocrat in Liverpool. But during
the last year Charles Ventnor had realised that the old chap's star had
definitely set--when that happens, of course, there is no more glamour,
and the time has come to get your money. Weakness in oneself and others
is despicable! Besides, he had food for thought, and descending the
stairs he chewed it: He smelt a rat--creatures for which both by nature
and profession he had a nose. Through Bob Pillin, on whom he sometimes
dwelt in connection with his younger daughter, he knew that old Pillin
and old Heythorp had been friends for thirty years and more. That, to an
astute mind, suggested something behind this sale. The thought had
already occurred to him when he read his copy of the report. A
commission would be a breach of trust, of course, but there were ways of
doing things; the old chap was devilish hard pressed, and human nature
was human nature! His lawyerish mind habitually put two and two
together. The old fellow had deliberately appointed to meet his
creditors again just after the general meeting which would decide the
purchase--had said he might do something for them then. Had that no
significance?
In these circumstances Charles Ventnor had come to the meeting with eyes
wide open and mouth tight closed. And he had watched. It was certainly
remarkable that such an old and feeble man, with no neck at all, who
looked indeed as if he might go off with apoplexy any moment, should
actually say that he "stood or fell" by this purchase, knowing that if he
fell he would be a beggar. Why should the old chap be so keen on getting
it through? It would do him personally no good, unless--Exactly! He had
left the meeting, therefore, secretly confident that old Heythorp had got
something out of this transaction which would enable him to make a
substantial proposal to his creditors. So that when the old man had
declared that he was going to make none, something had turned sour in his
heart, and he had said to himself: "All right, you old rascal! You don't
know C. V." The cavalier manner of that beggarly old rip, the defiant
look of his deep little eyes, had put a polish on the rancour of one who
prided himself on letting no man get the better of him. All that
evening, seated on one side of the fire, while Mrs. Ventnor sat on the
other, and the younger daughter played Gounod's Serenade on the
violin--he cogitated. And now and again he smiled, but not too much. He
did not see his way as yet, but had little doubt that before long he
would. It would not be hard to knock that chipped old idol off his
perch. There was already a healthy feeling among the shareholders that
he was past work and should be scrapped. The old chap should find that
Charles V. was not to be defied; that when he got his teeth into a thing,
he did not let it go. By hook or crook he would have the old man off his
Boards, or his debt out of him as the price of leaving him alone. His
life or his money--and the old fellow should determine which. With the
memory of that defiance fresh within him, he almost hoped it might come
to be the first, and turning to Mrs. Ventnor, he said abruptly:
"Have a little dinner Friday week, and ask young Pillin and the curate."
He specified the curate, a tee-totaller, because he had two daughters,
and males and females must be paired, but he intended to pack him off
after dinner to the drawing-room to discuss parish matters while he and
Bob Pillin sat over their wine. What he expected to get out of the young
man he did not as yet know.
On the day of the dinner, before departing for the office, he had gone to
his cellar. Would three bottles of Perrier Jouet do the trick, or must
he add one of the old Madeira? He decided to be on the safe side. A
bottle or so of champagne went very little way with him personally, and
young Pillin might be another.
The Madeira having done its work by turning the conversation into such an
admirable channel, he had cut it short for fear young Pillin might drink
the lot or get wind of the rat. And when his guests were gone, and his
family had retired, he stood staring into the fire, putting together the
pieces of the puzzle. Five or six thousand pounds--six would be ten per
cent. on sixty! Exactly! Scrivens--young Pillin had said! But Crow &
Donkin, not Scriven & Coles, were old Heythorp's solicitors. What could
that mean, save that the old man wanted to cover the tracks of a secret
commission, and had handled the matter through solicitors who did not
know the state of his affairs! But why Pillin's solicitors? With this
sale just going through, it must look deuced fishy to them too. Was it
all a mare's nest, after all? In such circumstances he himself would
have taken the matter to a London firm who knew nothing of anybody.
Puzzled, therefore, and rather disheartened, feeling too that touch of
liver which was wont to follow his old Madeira, he went up to bed and
woke his wife to ask her why the dickens they couldn't always have soup
like that!
Next day he continued to brood over his puzzle, and no fresh light came;
but having a matter on which his firm and Scrivens' were in touch, he
decided to go over in person, and see if he could surprise something out
of them. Feeling, from experience, that any really delicate matter would
only be entrusted to the most responsible member of the firm, he had
asked to see Scriven himself, and just as he had taken his hat to go, he
said casually:
"By the way, you do some business for old Mr. Heythorp, don't you?"
Scriven, raising his eyebrows a little, murmured: "Er--no," in exactly
the tone Mr. Ventnor himself used when he wished to imply that though he
didn't as a fact do business, he probably soon would. He knew therefore
that the answer was a true one. And non-plussed, he hazarded:
"Oh! I thought you did, in regard to a Mrs. Larne."
This time he had certainly drawn blood of sorts, for down came Scriven's
eyebrows, and he said:
"Mrs. Larne--we know a Mrs. Larne, but not in that connection. Why?"
"Oh! Young Pillin told me--"
"Young Pillin? Why, it's his---!" A little pause, and then: "Old Mr.
Heythorp's solicitors are Crow & Donkin, I believe."
Mr. Ventnor held out his hand. "Yes, yes," he said; "goodbye. Glad to
have got that matter settled up," and out he went, and down the street,
important, smiling. By George! He had got it! "It's his
father"--Scriven had been going to say. What a plant! Exactly! Oh!
neat! Old Pillin had made the settlement direct; and the solicitors were
in the dark; that disposed of his difficulty about them. No money had
passed between old Pillin and old Heythorp not a penny. Oh! neat! But
not neat enough for Charles Ventnor, who had that nose for rats. Then
his smile died, and with a little chill he perceived that it was all
based on supposition--not quite good enough to go on! What then?
Somehow he must see this Mrs. Larne, or better--old Pillin himself. The
point to ascertain was whether she had any connection of her own with
Pillin. Clearly young Pillin didn't know of it; for, according to him,
old Heythorp had made the settlement. By Jove! That old rascal was
deep--all the more satisfaction in proving that he was not as deep as C.
V. To unmask the old cheat was already beginning to seem in the nature
of a public service. But on what pretext could he visit Pillin? A
subscription to the Windeatt almshouses! That would make him talk in
self-defence and he would take care not to press the request to the
actual point of getting a subscription. He caused himself to be driven
to the Pillin residence in Sefton Park. Ushered into a room on the
ground floor, heated in American fashion, Mr. Ventnor unbuttoned his
coat. A man of sanguine constitution, he found this hot-house atmosphere
a little trying. And having sympathetically obtained Joe Pillin's
reluctant refusal--Quite so! One could not indefinitely extend one's
subscriptions even for the best of causes!--he said gently:
"By the way, you know Mrs. Larne, don't you?"
The effect of that simple shot surpassed his highest hopes. Joe Pillin's
face, never highly coloured, turned a sort of grey; he opened his thin
lips, shut them quickly, as birds do, and something seemed to pass with
difficulty down his scraggy throat. The hollows, which nerve exhaustion
delves in the cheeks of men whose cheekbones are not high, increased
alarmingly. For a moment he looked deathly; then, moistening his lips,
he said:
"Larne--Larne? No, I don't seem---"
Mr. Ventnor, who had taken care to be drawing on his gloves, murmured:
"Oh! I thought--your son knows her; a relation of old Heythorp's," and
he looked up.
Joe Pillin had his handkerchief to his mouth; he coughed feebly, then
with more and more vigour:
"I'm in very poor health," he said, at last. "I'm getting abroad at
once. This cold's killing me. What name did you say?" And he remained
with his handkerchief against his teeth.
Mr. Ventnor repeated:
"Larne. Writes stories."
Joe Pillin muttered into his handkerchief
"Ali! H'm! No--I--no! My son knows all sorts of people. I shall have
to try Mentone. Are you going? Good-bye! Good-bye! I'm sorry; ah! ha!
My cough--ah! ha h'h'm! Very distressing. Ye-hes! My cough-ah! ha
h'h'm! Most distressing. Ye-hes!"
Out in the drive Mr. Ventnor took a deep breath of the frosty air. Not
much doubt now! The two names had worked like charms. This weakly old
fellow would make a pretty witness, would simply crumple under
cross-examination. What a contrast to that hoary old sinner Heythorp,
whose brazenness nothing could affect. The rat was as large as life!
And the only point was how to make the best use of it. Then--for his
experience was wide--the possibility dawned on him, that after all, this
Mrs. Larne might only have been old Pillin's mistress--or be his natural
daughter, or have some other blackmailing hold on him. Any such
connection would account for his agitation, for his denying her, for his
son's ignorance. Only it wouldn't account for young Pillin's saying that
old Heythorp had made the settlement. He could only have got that from
the woman herself. Still, to make absolutely sure, he had better try and
see her. But how? It would never do to ask Bob Pillin for an
introduction, after this interview with his father. He would have to go
on his own and chance it. Wrote stories did she? Perhaps a newspaper
would know her address; or the Directory would give it--not a common
name! And, hot on the scent, he drove to a post office. Yes, there it
was, right enough! "Larne, Mrs. R., 23, Millicent Villas." And thinking
to himself: 'No time like the present,' he turned in that direction. The
job was delicate. He must be careful not to do anything which might
compromise his power of making public use of his knowledge. Yes-ticklish!
What he did now must have a proper legal bottom. Still, anyway you looked
at it, he had a right to investigate a fraud on himself as a shareholder
of "The Island Navigation Company," and a fraud on himself as a creditor
of old Heythorp. Quite! But suppose this Mrs. Larne was really
entangled with old Pillin, and the settlement a mere reward of virtue,
easy or otherwise. Well! in that case there'd be no secret commission to
make public, and he needn't go further. So that, in either event, he
would be all right. Only--how to introduce himself? He might pretend he
was a newspaper man wanting a story. No, that wouldn't do! He must not
represent that he was what he was not, in case he had afterwards to
justify his actions publicly, always a difficult thing, if you were not
careful! At that moment there came into his mind a question Bob Pillin
had asked the other night. "By the way, you can't borrow on a
settlement, can you? Isn't there generally some clause against it?" Had
this woman been trying to borrow from him on that settlement? But at this
moment he reached the house, and got out of his cab still undecided as to
how he was going to work the oracle. Impudence, constitutional and
professional, sustained him in saying to the little maid:
"Mrs. Larne at home? Say Mr. Charles Ventnor, will you?"
His quick brown eyes took in the apparel of the passage which served for
hall--the deep blue paper on the walls, lilac-patterned curtains over the
doors, the well-known print of a nude young woman looking over her
shoulder, and he thought: 'H'm! Distinctly tasty!' They noted, too, a
small brown-and-white dog cowering in terror at the very end of the
passage, and he murmured affably: "Fluffy! Come here, Fluffy!" till
Carmen's teeth chattered in her head.
"Will you come in, sir?"
Mr. Ventnor ran his hand over his whiskers, and, entering a room, was
impressed at once by its air of domesticity. On a sofa a handsome woman
and a pretty young girl were surrounded by sewing apparatus and some
white material. The girl looked up, but the elder lady rose.
Mr. Ventnor said easily
"You know my young friend, Mr. Robert Pillin, I think."
The lady, whose bulk and bloom struck him to the point of admiration,
murmured in a full, sweet drawl:
"Oh! Ye-es. Are you from Messrs. Scrivens?"
With the swift reflection: 'As I thought!' Mr. Ventnor answered:
"Er--not exactly. I am a solicitor though; came just to ask about a
certain settlement that Mr. Pillin tells me you're entitled under."
"Phyllis dear!"
Seeing the girl about to rise from underneath the white stuff, Mr.
Ventnor said quickly:
"Pray don't disturb yourself--just a formality!" It had struck him at
once that the lady would have to speak the truth in the presence of this
third party, and he went on: "Quite recent, I think. This'll be your
first interest-on six thousand pounds? Is that right?" And at the
limpid assent of that rich, sweet voice, he thought: 'Fine woman; what
eyes!'
"Thank you; that's quite enough. I can go to Scrivens for any detail.
Nice young fellow, Bob Pillin, isn't he?" He saw the girl's chin tilt,
and Mrs. Larne's full mouth curling in a smile.
"Delightful young man; we're very fond of him."
And he proceeded:
"I'm quite an old friend of his; have you known him long?"
"Oh! no. How long, Phyllis, since we met him at Guardy's? About a
month. But he's so unaffected--quite at home with us. A nice fellow."
Mr. Ventnor murmured:
"Very different from his father, isn't he?"
"Is he? We don't know his father; he's a shipowner, I think."
Mr. Ventnor rubbed his hands: "Ye-es," he said, "just giving up--a warm
man. Young Pillin's a lucky fellow--only son. So you met him at old Mr.
Heythorp's. I know him too--relation of yours, I believe."
"Our dear Guardy such a wonderful man."
Mr. Ventnor echoed: "Wonderful--regular old Roman."
"Oh! but he's so kind!" Mrs. Larne lifted the white stuff: "Look what
he's given this naughty gairl!"
Mr. Ventnor murmured: "Charming! Charming! Bob Pillin said, I think,
that Mr. Heythorp was your settlor."
One of those little clouds which visit the brows of women who have owed
money in their time passed swiftly athwart Mrs. Larne's eyes. For a
moment they seemed saying: 'Don't you want to know too much?' Then they
slid from under it.
"Won't you sit down?" she said. "You must forgive our being at work."
Mr. Ventnor, who had need of sorting his impressions, shook his head.
"Thank you; I must be getting on. Then Messrs. Scriven can--a mere
formality! Goodbye! Good-bye, Miss Larne. I'm sure the dress will be
most becoming."
And with memories of a too clear look from the girl's eyes, of a warm
firm pressure from the woman's hand, Mr. Ventnor backed towards the door
and passed away just in time to avoid hearing in two voices:
"What a nice lawyer!"
"What a horrid man!"
Back in his cab, he continued to rub his hands. No, she didn't know old
Pillin! That was certain; not from her words, but from her face. She
wanted to know him, or about him, anyway. She was trying to hook young
Bob for that sprig of a girl--it was clear as mud. H'm! it would
astonish his young friend to hear that he had called. Well, let it! And
a curious mixture of emotions beset Mr. Ventnor. He saw the whole thing
now so plainly, and really could not refrain from a certain admiration.
The law had been properly diddled! There was nothing to prevent a man
from settling money on a woman he had never seen; and so old Pillin's
settlement could probably not be upset. But old Heythorp could. It was
neat, though, oh! neat! And that was a fine woman--remarkably! He had a
sort of feeling that if only the settlement had been in danger, it might
have been worth while to have made a bargain--a woman like that could
have made it worth while! And he believed her quite capable of
entertaining the proposition! Her eye! Pity--quite a pity! Mrs.
Ventnor was not a wife who satisfied every aspiration. But alas! the
settlement was safe. This baulking of the sentiment of love, whipped up,
if anything, the longing for justice in Mr. Ventnor. That old chap
should feel his teeth now. As a piece of investigation it was not so
bad--not so bad at all! He had had a bit of luck, of course,--no, not
luck--just that knack of doing the right thing at the right moment which
marks a real genius for affairs.
But getting into his train to return to Mrs. Ventnor, he thought: 'A
woman like that would have been--!' And he sighed.
2
With a neatly written cheque for fifty pounds in his pocket Bob Pillin
turned in at 23, Millicent Villas on the afternoon after Mr. Ventnor's
visit. Chivalry had won the day. And he rang the bell with an elation
which astonished him, for he knew he was doing a soft thing.
"Mrs. Larne is out, sir; Miss Phyllis is at home."
His heart leaped.
"Oh-h! I'm sorry. I wonder if she'd see me?"
The little maid answered
"I think she's been washin' 'er'air, sir, but it may be dry be now. I'll
see."
Bob Pillin stood stock still beneath the young woman on the wall. He
could scarcely breathe. If her hair were not dry--how awful! Suddenly he
heard floating down a clear but smothered "Oh! Gefoozleme!" and other
words which he could not catch. The little maid came running down.
"Miss Phyllis says, sir, she'll be with you in a jiffy. And I was to
tell you that Master Jock is loose, sir."
Bob Pillin answered "Tha-anks," and passed into the drawing-room. He
went to the bureau, took an envelope, enclosed the cheque, and addressing
it: "Mrs. Larne," replaced it in his pocket. Then he crossed over to the
mirror. Never till this last month had he really doubted his own face;
but now he wanted for it things he had never wanted. It had too much
flesh and colour. It did not reflect his passion. This was a handicap.
With a narrow white piping round his waistcoat opening, and a buttonhole
of tuberoses, he had tried to repair its deficiencies. But do what he
would, he was never easy about himself nowadays, never up to that pitch
which could make him confident in her presence. And until this month to
lack confidence had never been his wont. A clear, high, mocking voice
said:
"Oh-h! Conceited young man!"
And spinning round he saw Phyllis in the doorway. Her light brown hair
was fluffed out on her shoulders, so that he felt a kind of
fainting-sweet sensation, and murmured inarticulately:
"Oh! I say--how jolly!"
"Lawks! It's awful! Have you come to see mother?"
Balanced between fear and daring, conscious of a scent of hay and verbena
and camomile, Bob Pillin stammered:
"Ye-es. I--I'm glad she's not in, though."
Her laugh seemed to him terribly unfeeling.
"Oh! oh! Don't be foolish. Sit down. Isn't washing one's head awful?"
Bob Pillin answered feebly:
"Of course, I haven't much experience."
Her mouth opened.
"Oh! You are--aren't you?"
And he thought desperately: 'Dare I--oughtn't I--couldn't I somehow take
her hand or put my arm round her, or something?' Instead, he sat very
rigid at his end of the sofa, while she sat lax and lissom at the other,
and one of those crises of paralysis which beset would-be lovers fixed
him to the soul.
Sometimes during this last month memories of a past existence, when chaff
and even kisses came readily to the lips, and girls were fair game, would
make him think: 'Is she really such an innocent? Doesn't she really want
me to kiss her?' Alas! such intrusions lasted but a moment before a
blast of awe and chivalry withered them, and a strange and tragic
delicacy--like nothing he had ever known--resumed its sway. And suddenly
he heard her say:
"Why do you know such awful men?"
"What? I don't know any awful men."
"Oh yes, you do; one came here yesterday; he had whiskers, and he was
awful."
"Whiskers?" His soul revolted in disclaimer. "I believe I only know one
man with whiskers--a lawyer."
"Yes--that was him; a perfectly horrid man. Mother didn't mind him, but
I thought he was a beast."
"Ventnor! Came here? How d'you mean?"
"He did; about some business of yours, too." Her face had clouded over.
Bob Pillin had of late been harassed by the still-born beginning of a
poem:
"I rode upon my way and saw
A maid who watched me from the door."
It never grew longer, and was prompted by the feeling that her face was
like an April day. The cloud which came on it now was like an April
cloud, as if a bright shower of rain must follow. Brushing aside the two
distressful lines, he said:
"Look here, Miss Larne--Phyllis--look here!"
"All right, I'm looking!"
"What does it mean--how did he come? What did he say?"
She shook her head, and her hair quivered; the scent of camomile,
verbena, hay was wafted; then looking at her lap, she muttered:
"I wish you wouldn't--I wish mother wouldn't--I hate it. Oh! Money!
Beastly--beastly!" and a tearful sigh shivered itself into Bob Pillin's
reddening ears.
"I say--don't! And do tell me, because--"
"Oh! you know."
"I don't--I don't know anything at all. I never---"
Phyllis looked up at him. "Don't tell fibs; you know mother's borrowing
money from you, and it's hateful!"
A desire to lie roundly, a sense of the cheque in his pocket, a feeling
of injustice, the emotion of pity, and a confused and black astonishment
about Ventnor, caused Bob Pillin to stammer:
"Well, I'm d---d!" and to miss the look which Phyllis gave him through
her lashes--a look saying:
"Ah! that's better!"
"I am d---d! Look here! D'you mean to say that Ventnor came here about
my lending money? I never said a word to him---"
"There you see--you are lending!"
He clutched his hair.
"We've got to have this out," he added.
"Not by the roots! Oh! you do look funny. I've never seen you with your
hair untidy. Oh! oh!"
Bob Pillin rose and paced the room. In the midst of his emotion he could
not help seeing himself sidelong in the mirror; and on pretext of holding
his head in both his hands, tried earnestly to restore his hair. Then
coming to a halt he said:
"Suppose I am lending money to your mother, what does it matter? It's
only till quarter-day. Anybody might want money."
Phyllis did not raise her face.
"Why are you lending it?"
"Because--because--why shouldn't I?" and diving suddenly, he seized her
hands.
She wrenched them free; and with the emotion of despair, Bob Pillin took
out the envelope.
"If you like," he said, "I'll tear this up. I don't want to lend it, if
you don't want me to; but I thought--I thought--" It was for her alone
he had been going to lend this money!
Phyllis murmured through her hair:
"Yes! You thought that I--that's what's so hateful!"
Apprehension pierced his mind.
"Oh! I never--I swear I never--"
"Yes, you did; you thought I wanted you to lend it."
She jumped up, and brushed past him into the window.
So she thought she was being used as a decoy! That was awful--especially
since it was true. He knew well enough that Mrs. Larne was working his
admiration for her daughter for all that it was worth. And he said with
simple fervour:
"What rot!" It produced no effect, and at his wits' end, he almost
shouted: "Look, Phyllis! If you don't want me to--here goes!" Phyllis
turned. Tearing the envelope across he threw the bits into the fire.
"There it is," he said.
Her eyes grew round; she said in an awed voice: "Oh!"
In a sort of agony of honesty he said:
"It was only a cheque. Now you've got your way."
Staring at the fire she answered slowly:
"I expect you'd better go before mother comes."
Bob Pillin's mouth fell afar; he secretly agreed, but the idea of
sacrificing a moment alone with her was intolerable, and he said hardily:
"No, I shall stick it!"
Phyllis sneezed.
"My hair isn't a bit dry," and she sat down on the fender with her back
to the fire.
A certain spirituality had come into Bob Pillin's face. If only he could
get that wheeze off: "Phyllis is my only joy!" or even: "Phyllis--do
you--won't you--mayn't I?" But nothing came--nothing.
And suddenly she said:
"Oh! don't breathe so loud; it's awful!"
"Breathe? I wasn't!"
"You were; just like Carmen when she's dreaming."
He had walked three steps towards the door, before he thought: 'What does
it matter? I can stand anything from her; and walked the three steps
back again.
She said softly:
"Poor young man!"
He answered gloomily:
"I suppose you realise that this may be the last time you'll see me?"
"Why? I thought you were going to take us to the theatre."
"I don't know whether your mother will--after---"
Phyllis gave a little clear laugh.
"You don't know mother. Nothing makes any difference to her."
And Bob Pillin muttered:
"I see." He did not, but it was of no consequence. Then the thought of
Ventnor again ousted all others. What on earth-how on earth! He
searched his mind for what he could possibly have said the other night.
Surely he had not asked him to do anything; certainly not given him their
address. There was something very odd about it that had jolly well got
to be cleared up! And he said:
"Are you sure the name of that Johnny who came here yesterday was
Ventnor?"
Phyllis nodded.
"And he was short, and had whiskers?"
"Yes; red, and red eyes."
He murmured reluctantly:
"It must be him. Jolly good cheek; I simply can't understand. I shall
go and see him. How on earth did he know your address?"
"I expect you gave it him."
"I did not. I won't have you thinking me a squirt."
Phyllis jumped up. "Oh! Lawks! Here's mother!" Mrs. Larne was coming
up the garden. Bob Pillin made for the door. "Good-bye," he said; "I'm
going." But Mrs. Larne was already in the hall. Enveloping him in fur
and her rich personality, she drew him with her into the drawing-room,
where the back window was open and Phyllis gone.
"I hope," she said, "those naughty children have been making you
comfortable. That nice lawyer of yours came yesterday. He seemed quite
satisfied."
Very red above his collar, Bob Pillin stammered:
"I never told him to; he isn't my lawyer. I don't know what it means."
Mrs. Larne smiled. "My dear boy, it's all right. You needn't be so
squeamish. I want it to be quite on a business footing."
Restraining a fearful inclination to blurt out: "It's not going to be on
any footing!" Bob Pillin mumbled: "I must go; I'm late."
"And when will you be able---?"
"Oh! I'll--I'll send--I'll write. Good-bye!" And suddenly he found
that Mrs. Larne had him by the lapel of his coat. The scent of violets
and fur was overpowering, and the thought flashed through him: 'I believe
she only wanted to take money off old Joseph in the Bible. I can't leave
my coat in her hands! What shall I do?'
Mrs. Larne was murmuring:
"It would be so sweet of you if you could manage it today"; and her hand
slid over his chest. "Oh! You have brought your cheque-book--what a
nice boy!"
Bob Pillin took it out in desperation, and, sitting down at the bureau,
wrote a cheque similar to that which he had torn and burned. A warm kiss
lighted on his eyebrow, his head was pressed for a moment to a furry
bosom; a hand took the cheque; a voice said: "How delightful!" and a
sigh immersed him in a bath of perfume. Backing to the door, he gasped:
"Don't mention it; and--and don't tell Phyllis, please. Good-bye!"
Once through the garden gate, he thought: 'By gum! I've done it now.
That Phyllis should know about it at all! That beast Ventnor!'
His face grew almost grim. He would go and see what that meant anyway!
3
Mr. Ventnor had not left his office when his young friend's card was
brought to him. Tempted for a moment to deny his own presence, he
thought: 'No! What's the good? Bound to see him some time!' If he had
not exactly courage, he had that peculiar blend of self-confidence and
insensibility which must needs distinguish those who follow the law; nor
did he ever forget that he was in the right.
"Show him in!" he said.
He would be quite bland, but young Pillin might whistle for an
explanation; he was still tormented, too, by the memory of rich curves
and moving lips, and the possibilities of better acquaintanceship.
While shaking the young man's hand his quick and fulvous eye detected at
once the discomposure behind that mask of cheek and collar, and relapsing
into one of those swivel chairs which give one an advantage over men more
statically seated, he said:
"You look pretty bobbish. Anything I can do for you?"
Bob Pillin, in the fixed chair of the consultor, nursed his bowler on his
knee.
"Well, yes, there is. I've just been to see Mrs. Larne."
Mr. Ventnor did not flinch.
"Ah! Nice woman; pretty daughter, too!" And into those words he put a
certain meaning. He never waited to be bullied. Bob Pillin felt the
pressure of his blood increasing.
"Look here, Ventnor," he said, "I want an explanation."
"What of?"
"Why, of your going there, and using my name, and God knows what."
Mr. Ventnor gave his chair two little twiddles before he said
"Well, you won't get it."
Bob Pillin remained for a moment taken aback; then he muttered
resolutely:
"It's not the conduct of a gentleman."
Every man has his illusions, and no man likes them disturbed. The
gingery tint underlying Mr. Ventnor's colouring overlaid it; even the
whites of his eyes grew red."
"Oh!" he said; "indeed! You mind your own business, will you?"
"It is my business--very much so. You made use of my name, and I don't
choose---"
"The devil you don't! Now, I tell you what---"
Mr. Ventnor leaned forward--"you'd better hold your tongue, and not
exasperate me. I'm a good-tempered man, but I won't stand your
impudence."
Clenching his bowler hat, and only kept in his seat by that sense of
something behind, Bob Pillin ejaculated:
"Impudence! That's good--after what you did! Look here, why did you?
It's so extraordinary!"
Mr. Ventnor answered:
"Oh! is it? You wait a bit, my friend!"
Still more moved by the mystery of this affair, Bob Pillin could only
mutter:
"I never gave you their address; we were only talking about old
Heythorp."
And at the smile which spread between Mr. Ventnor's whiskers, he jumped
up, crying:
"It's not the thing, and you're not going to put me off. I insist on an
explanation."
Mr. Ventnor leaned back, crossing his stout legs, joining the tips of his
thick fingers. In this attitude he was always self-possessed.
"You do--do you?"
"Yes. You must have had some reason."
Mr. Ventnor gazed up at him.
"I'll give you a piece of advice, young cock, and charge you nothing for
it, too: Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies. And here's
another: Go away before you forget yourself again."
The natural stolidity of Bob Pilings face was only just proof against
this speech. He said thickly:
"If you go there again and use my name, I'll Well, it's lucky for you
you're not my age. Anyway I'll relieve you of my acquaintanceship in
future. Good-evening!" and he went to the door. Mr. Ventnor had risen.
"Very well," he said loudly. "Good riddance! You wait and see which
boot the leg is on!"
But Bob Pillin was gone, leaving the lawyer with a very red face, a very
angry heart, and a vague sense of disorder in his speech. Not only Bob
Pillin, but his tender aspirations had all left him; he no longer dallied
with the memory of Mrs. Larne, but like a man and a Briton thought only
of how to get his own back, and punish evildoers. The atrocious words of
his young friend, "It's not the conduct of a gentleman," festered in the
heart of one who was made gentle not merely by nature but by Act of
Parliament, and he registered a solemn vow to wipe the insult out, if not
with blood, with verjuice. It was his duty, and they should d---d well
see him do it!
IV
Sylvanus Heythorp seldom went to bed before one or rose before eleven.
The latter habit alone kept his valet from handing in the resignation
which the former habit prompted almost every night.
Propped on his pillows in a crimson dressing-gown, and freshly shaved, he
looked more Roman than he ever did, except in his bath. Having disposed
of coffee, he was wont to read his letters, and The Morning Post, for he
had always been a Tory, and could not stomach paying a halfpenny for his
news. Not that there were many letters--when a man has reached the age
of eighty, who should write to him, except to ask for money?
It was Valentine's Day. Through his bedroom window he could see the
trees of the park, where the birds were in song, though he could not hear
them. He had never been interested in Nature--full-blooded men with
short necks seldom are.
This morning indeed there were two letters, and he opened that which
smelt of something. Inside was a thing like a Christmas card, save that
the naked babe had in his hands a bow and arrow, and words coming out of
his mouth: "To be your Valentine." There was also a little pink note
with one blue forget-me-not printed at the top. It ran:
"DEAREST GUARDY,--I'm sorry this is such a mangy little valentine; I
couldn't go out to get it because I've got a beastly cold, so I asked
Jock, and the pig bought this. The satin is simply scrumptious. If you
don't come and see me in it some time soon, I shall come and show it to
you. I wish I had a moustache, because my top lip feels just like a
matchbox, but it's rather ripping having breakfast in bed. Mr. Pillin's
taking us to the theatre the day after to-morrow evening. Isn't it
nummy! I'm going to have rum and honey for my cold.
"Good-bye, "Your PHYLLIS."
So this that quivered in his thick fingers, too insensitive to feel it,
was a valentine for him!
Forty years ago that young thing's grandmother had given him his last.
It made him out a very old chap! Forty years ago! Had that been himself
living then? And himself, who, as a youth came on the town in
'forty-five? Not a thought, not a feeling the same! They said you
changed your body every seven years. The mind with it, too, perhaps!
Well, he had come to the last of his bodies, now! And that holy woman
had been urging him to take it to Bath, with her face as long as a
tea-tray, and some gammon from that doctor of his. Too full a
habit--dock his port--no alcohol--might go off in a coma any night!
Knock off not he! Rather die any day than turn tee-totaller! When a man
had nothing left in life except his dinner, his bottle, his cigar, and
the dreams they gave him--these doctors forsooth must want to cut them
off! No, no! Carpe diem! while you lived, get something out of it. And
now that he had made all the provision he could for those youngsters, his
life was no good to any one but himself; and the sooner he went off the
better, if he ceased to enjoy what there was left, or lost the power to
say: "I'll do this and that, and you be jiggered!" Keep a stiff lip
until you crashed, and then go clean! He sounded the bell beside him
twice-for Molly, not his man. And when the girl came in, and stood,
pretty in her print frock, her fluffy over-fine dark hair escaping from
under her cap, he gazed at her in silence.
"Yes, sirr?"
"Want to look at you, that's all."
"Oh I an' I'm not tidy, sirr."
"Never mind. Had your valentine?"
"No, sirr; who would send me one, then?"
"Haven't you a young man?"
"Well, I might. But he's over in my country.
"What d'you think of this?"
He held out the little boy.
The girl took the card and scrutinised it reverently; she said in a
detached voice:
"Indeed, an' ut's pretty, too."
"Would you like it?"
"Oh I if 'tis not taking ut from you."
Old Heythorp shook his head, and pointed to the dressing-table.
"Over there--you'll find a sovereign. Little present for a good girl."
She uttered a deep sigh. "Oh! sirr, 'tis too much; 'tis kingly."
"Take it."
She took it, and came back, her hands clasping the sovereign and the
valentine, in an attitude as of prayer.
The old man's gaze rested on her with satisfaction.
"I like pretty faces--can't bear sour ones. Tell Meller to get my bath
ready."
When she had gone he took up the other letter--some lawyer's writing, and
opening it with the usual difficulty, read:
"February 13, 1905.
"SIR,--Certain facts having come to my knowledge, I deem it my duty to
call a special meeting of the shareholders of 'The Island Navigation
Coy.,' to consider circumstances in connection with the purchase of Mr.
Joseph Pillin's fleet. And I give you notice that at this meeting your
conduct will be called in question.
"I am, Sir, "Yours faithfully,
"CHARLES VENTNOR.
"SYLVANUS HEYTHORP, ESQ."
Having read this missive, old Heythorp remained some minutes without
stirring. Ventnor! That solicitor chap who had made himself unpleasant
at the creditors' meetings!
There are men whom a really bad bit of news at once stampedes out of all
power of coherent thought and action, and men who at first simply do not
take it in. Old Heythorp took it in fast enough; coming from a lawyer it
was about as nasty as it could be. But, at once, with stoic wariness his
old brain began casting round. What did this fellow really know? And
what exactly could he do? One thing was certain; even if he knew
everything, he couldn't upset that settlement. The youngsters were all
right. The old man grasped the fact that only his own position was at
stake. But this was enough in all conscience; a name which had been
before the public fifty odd years--income, independence, more perhaps.
It would take little, seeing his age and feebleness, to make his
Companies throw him over. But what had the fellow got hold of? How
decide whether or no to take notice; to let him do his worst, or try and
get into touch with him? And what was the fellow's motive? He held ten
shares! That would never make a man take all this trouble, and over a
purchase which was really first-rate business for the Company. Yes! His
conscience was quite clean. He had not betrayed his Company--on the
contrary, had done it a good turn, got them four sound ships at a low
price--against much opposition. That he might have done the Company a
better turn, and got the ships at fifty-four thousand, did not trouble
him--the six thousand was a deuced sight better employed; and he had not
pocketed a penny piece himself! But the fellow's motive? Spite? Looked
like it. Spite, because he had been disappointed of his money, and
defied into the bargain! H'm! If that were so, he might still be got to
blow cold again. His eyes lighted on the pink note with the blue
forget-me-not. It marked as it were the high water mark of what was left
to him of life; and this other letter in his hand-by Jove! Low water
mark! And with a deep and rumbling sigh he thought: 'No, I'm not going
to be beaten by this fellow.'
"Your bath is ready, sir."
Crumpling the two letters into the pocket of his dressing-gown, he said:
"Help me up; and telephone to Mr. Farney to be good enough to come
round." ....
An hour later, when the secretary entered, his chairman was sitting by
the fire perusing the articles of association. And, waiting for him to
look up, watching the articles shaking in that thick, feeble hand, the
secretary had one of those moments of philosophy not too frequent with
his kind. Some said the only happy time of life was when you had no
passions, nothing to hope and live for. But did you really ever reach
such a stage? The old chairman, for instance, still had his passion for
getting his own way, still had his prestige, and set a lot of store by
it! And he said:
"Good morning, sir; I hope you're all right in this east wind. The
purchase is completed."
"Best thing the company ever did. Have you heard from a shareholder
called Ventnor. You know the man I mean?"
"No, sir. I haven't."
"Well! You may get a letter that'll make you open your eyes. An
impudent scoundrel! Just write at my dictation."
"February 14th, 1905.
"CHARLES VENTNOR, Esq.
"SIR,--I have your letter of yesterday's date, the contents of which I am
at a loss to understand. My solicitors will be instructed to take the
necessary measures."
'Phew What's all this about?' the secretary thought.
"Yours truly...."
"I'll sign." And the shaky letters closed the page:
"SYLVANUS HEYTHORP."
"Post that as you go."
"Anything else I can do for you, sir?"
"Nothing, except to let me know if you hear from this fellow."
When the secretary had gone the old man thought: 'So! The ruffian hasn't
called the meeting yet. That'll bring him round here fast enough if it's
his money he wants-blackmailing scoundrel!'
"Mr. Pillin, sir; and will you wait lunch, or will you have it in the
dining-room?"
"In the dining-room."
At sight of that death's-head of a fellow, old Heythorp felt a sort of
pity. He looked bad enough already--and this news would make him look
worse. Joe Pillin glanced round at the two closed doors.
"How are you, Sylvanus? I'm very poorly." He came closer, and lowered
his voice: "Why did you get me to make that settlement? I must have been
mad. I've had a man called Ventnor--I didn't like his manner. He asked
me if I knew a Mrs. Larne."
"Ha! What did you say?"
"What could I say? I don't know her. But why did he ask?"
"Smells a rat."
Joe Pillin grasped the edge of the table with both hands.
"Oh!" he murmured. "Oh! don't say that!"
Old Heythorp held out to him the crumpled letter.
When he had read it Joe Pillin sat down abruptly before the fire.
"Pull yourself together, Joe; they can't touch you, and they can't upset
either the purchase or the settlement. They can upset me, that's all."
Joe Pillin answered, with trembling lips:
"How you can sit there, and look the same as ever! Are you sure they
can't touch me?"
Old Heyworth nodded grimly.
"They talk of an Act, but they haven't passed it yet. They might prove a
breach of trust against me. But I'll diddle them. Keep your pecker up,
and get off abroad."
"Yes, yes. I must. I'm very bad. I was going to-morrow. But I don't
know, I'm sure, with this hanging over me. My son knowing her makes it
worse. He picks up with everybody. He knows this man Ventnor too. And
I daren't say anything to Bob. What are you thinking of, Sylvanus? You
look very funny!"
Old Heythorp seemed to rouse himself from a sort of coma.
"I want my lunch," he said. "Will you stop and have some?"
Joe Pillin stammered out:
"Lunch! I don't know when I shall eat again. What are you going to do,
Sylvanus?"
"Bluff the beggar out of it."
"But suppose you can't?"
"Buy him off. He's one--of my creditors."
Joe Pillin stared at him afresh. "You always had such nerve," he said
yearningly. "Do you ever wake up between two and four? I do--and
everything's black."
"Put a good stiff nightcap on, my boy, before going to bed."
"Yes; I sometimes wish I was less temperate. But I couldn't stand it.
I'm told your doctor forbids you alcohol."
"He does. That's why I drink it."
Joe Pillin, brooding over the fire, said: "This meeting--d'you think they
mean to have it? D'you think this man really knows? If my name gets
into the newspapers--" but encountering his old friend's deep little
eyes, he stopped. "So you advise me to get off to-morrow, then?"
Old Heythorp nodded.
"Your lunch is served, sir."
Joe Pillin started violently, and rose.
"Well, good-bye, Sylvanus-good-bye! I don't suppose I shall be back till
the summer, if I ever come back!" He sank his voice: "I shall rely on
you. You won't let them, will you?"
Old Heythorp lifted his hand, and Joe Pillin put into that swollen
shaking paw his pale and spindly fingers. "I wish I had your pluck," he
said sadly. "Good-bye, Sylvanus," and turning, he passed out.
Old Heythorp thought: 'Poor shaky chap. All to pieces at the first
shot!' And, going to his lunch, ate more heavily than usual.
2
Mr. Ventnor, on reaching his office and opening his letters, found, as he
had anticipated, one from "that old rascal." Its contents excited in him
the need to know his own mind. Fortunately this was not complicated by a
sense of dignity--he only had to consider the position with an eye on not
being made to look a fool. The point was simply whether he set more
store by his money than by his desire for--er--Justice. If not, he had
merely to convene the special meeting, and lay before it the plain fact
that Mr. Joseph Pillin, selling his ships for sixty thousand pounds, had
just made a settlement of six thousand pounds on a lady whom he did not
know, a daughter, ward, or what-not--of the purchasing company's
chairman, who had said, moreover, at the general meeting, that he stood
or fell by the transaction; he had merely to do this, and demand that an
explanation be required from the old man of such a startling coincidence.
Convinced that no explanation would hold water, he felt sure that his
action would be at once followed by the collapse, if nothing more, of
that old image, and the infliction of a nasty slur on old Pillin and his
hopeful son. On the other hand, three hundred pounds was money; and, if
old Heythorp were to say to him: "What do you want to make this fuss
for--here's what I owe you!" could a man of business and the world let
his sense of justice--however he might itch to have it satisfied--stand
in the way of what was after all also his sense of Justice?--for this
money had been owing to him for the deuce of along time. In this
dilemma, the words:
"My solicitors will be instructed" were of notable service in helping him
to form a decision, for he had a certain dislike of other solicitors, and
an intimate knowledge of the law of libel and slander; if by any remote
chance there should be a slip between the cup and the lip, Charles
Ventnor might be in the soup--a position which he deprecated both by
nature and profession. High thinking, therefore, decided him at last to
answer thus:
"February 19th, 1905.
"SIR,--I have received your note. I think it may be fair, before taking
further steps in this matter, to ask you for a personal explanation of
the circumstances to which I alluded. I therefore propose with your
permission to call on you at your private residence at five o'clock
to-morrow afternoon.
"Yours faithfully,
"CHARLES VENTNOR.
"SYLVANUS HEYTHORP, Esq."
Having sent this missive, and arranged in his mind the damning, if
circumstantial, evidence he had accumulated, he awaited the hour with
confidence, for his nature was not lacking in the cock-surety of a
Briton. All the same, he dressed himself particularly well that morning,
putting on a blue and white striped waistcoat which, with a
cream-coloured tie, set off his fulvous whiskers and full blue eyes; and
he lunched, if anything, more fully than his wont, eating a stronger
cheese and taking a glass of special Club ale. He took care to be late,
too, to show the old fellow that his coming at all was in the nature of
an act of grace. A strong scent of hyacinths greeted him in the hall;
and Mr. Ventnor, who was an amateur of flowers, stopped to put his nose
into a fine bloom and think uncontrollably of Mrs. Larne. Pity! The
things one had to give up in life--fine women--one thing and another.
Pity! The thought inspired in him a timely anger; and he followed the
servant, intending to stand no nonsense from this paralytic old rascal.
The room he entered was lighted by a bright fire, and a single electric
lamp with an orange shade on a table covered by a black satin cloth.
There were heavily gleaming oil paintings on the walls, a heavy old brass
chandelier without candles, heavy dark red curtains, and an indefinable
scent of burnt acorns, coffee, cigars, and old man. He became conscious
of a candescent spot on the far side of the hearth, where the light fell
on old Heythorp's thick white hair.
"Mr. Ventnor, sir."
The candescent spot moved. A voice said: "Sit down."
Mr. Ventnor sat in an armchair on the opposite side of the fire; and,
finding a kind of somnolence creeping over him, pinched himself. He
wanted all his wits about him.
The old man was speaking in that extinct voice of his, and Mr. Ventnor
said rather pettishly:
"Beg pardon, I don't get you."
Old Heythorp's voice swelled with sudden force:
"Your letters are Greek to me."
"Oh! indeed, I think we can soon make them into plain English!"
"Sooner the better."
Mr. Ventnor passed through a moment of indecision. Should he lay his
cards on the table? It was not his habit, and the proceeding was
sometimes attended with risk. The knowledge, however, that he could
always take them up again, seeing there was no third person here to
testify that he had laid them down, decided him, and he said:
"Well, Mr. Heythorp, the long and short of the matter is this: Our friend
Mr. Pillin paid you a commission of ten per cent. on the sale of his
ships. Oh! yes. He settled the money, not on you, but on your relative
Mrs. Larne and her children. This, as you know, is a breach of trust on
your part."
The old man's voice: "Where did you get hold of that cock-and-bull
story?" brought him to his feet before the fire.
"It won't do, Mr. Heythorp. My witnesses are Mr. Pillin, Mrs. Larne, and
Mr. Scriven."
"What have you come here for, then--blackmail?"
Mr. Ventnor straightened his waistcoat; a rush of conscious virtue had
dyed his face.
"Oh! you take that tone," he said, "do you? You think you can ride
roughshod over everything? Well, you're very much mistaken. I advise
you to keep a civil tongue and consider your position, or I'll make a
beggar of you. I'm not sure this isn't a case for a prosecution!"
"Gammon!"
The choler in Charles Ventnor kept him silent for a moment; then he burst
out:
"Neither gammon nor spinach. You owe me three hundred pounds, you've
owed it me for years, and you have the impudence to take this attitude
with me, have you? Now, I never bluster; I say what I mean. You just
listen to me. Either you pay me what you owe me at once, or I call this
meeting and make what I know public. You'll very soon find out where you
are. And a good thing, too, for a more unscrupulous--unscrupulous---" he
paused for breath.
Occupied with his own emotion, he had not observed the change in old
Heythorp's face. The imperial on that lower lip was bristling, the
crimson of those cheeks had spread to the roots of his white hair. He
grasped the arms of his chair, trying to rise; his swollen hands
trembled; a little saliva escaped one corner of his lips. And the words
came out as if shaken by his teeth:
"So-so-you-you bully me!"
Conscious that the interview had suddenly passed from the phase of
negotiation, Mr. Ventnor looked hard at his opponent. He saw nothing but
a decrepit, passionate, crimson-faced old man at bay, and all the
instincts of one with everything on his side boiled up in him. The
miserable old turkey-cock--the apoplectic image! And he said:
"And you'll do no good for yourself by getting into a passion. At your
age, and in your condition, I recommend a little prudence. Now just take
my terms quietly, or you know what'll happen. I'm not to be intimidated
by any of your airs." And seeing that the old man's rage was such that
he simply could not speak, he took the opportunity of going on: "I don't
care two straws which you do--I'm out to show you who's master. If you
think in your dotage you can domineer any longer--well, you'll find two
can play at that game. Come, now, which are you going to do?"
The old man had sunk back in his chair, and only his little deep-blue
eyes seemed living. Then he moved one hand, and Mr. Ventnor saw that he
was fumbling to reach the button of an electric bell at the end of a
cord. 'I'll show him,' he thought, and stepping forward, he put it out
of reach.
Thus frustrated, the old man remained-motionless, staring up. The word
"blackmail" resumed its buzzing in Mr. Ventnor's ears. The impudence the
consummate impudence of it from this fraudulent old ruffian with one foot
in bankruptcy and one foot in the grave, if not in the dock.
"Yes," he said, "it's never too late to learn; and for once you've come
up against someone a leetle bit too much for you. Haven't you now?
You'd better cry 'Peccavi.'"
Then, in the deathly silence of the room, the moral force of his
position, and the collapse as it seemed of his opponent, awakening a
faint compunction, he took a turn over the Turkey carpet to readjust his
mind.
"You're an old man, and I don't want to be too hard on you. I'm only
showing you that you can't play fast and loose as if you were God
Almighty any longer. You've had your own way too many years. And now
you can't have it, see!" Then, as the old man again moved forward in his
chair, he added: "Now, don't get into a passion again; calm yourself,
because I warn you--this is your last chance. I'm a man of my word; and
what I say, I do."
By a violent and unsuspected effort the old man jerked himself up and
reached the bell. Mr. Ventnor heard it ring, and said sharply:
"Mind you, it's nothing to me which you do. I came for your own good.
Please yourself. Well?"
He was answered by the click of the door and the old man's husky voice:
"Show this hound out! And then come back!"
Mr. Ventnor had presence of mind enough not to shake his fist. Muttering:
"Very well, Mr. Heythorp! Ah! Very well!" he moved with dignity to the
door. The careful shepherding of the servant renewed the fire of his
anger. Hound! He had been called a hound!
3
After seeing Mr. Ventnor off the premises the man Meller returned to his
master, whose face looked very odd--"all patchy-like," as he put it in
the servants' hall, as though the blood driven to his head had mottled
for good the snowy whiteness of the forehead. He received the unexpected
order:
"Get me a hot bath ready, and put some pine stuff in it."
When the old man was seated there, the valet asked:
"How long shall I give you, sir?"
"Twenty minutes."
"Very good, sir."
Lying in that steaming brown fragrant liquid, old Heythorp heaved a
stertorous sigh. By losing his temper with that ill-conditioned cur he
had cooked his goose. It was done to a turn; and he was a ruined man.
If only--oh! if only he could have seized the fellow by the neck and
pitched him out of the room! To have lived to be so spoken to; to have
been unable to lift hand or foot, hardly even his voice--he would sooner
have been dead! Yes--sooner have been dead! A dumb and measureless
commotion was still at work in the recesses of that thick old body,
silver-brown in the dark water, whose steam he drew deep into his
wheezing lungs, as though for spiritual relief. To be beaten by a cur
like that! To have that common cad of a pettifogging lawyer drag him
down and kick him about; tumble a name which had stood high, in the dust!
The fellow had the power to make him a byword and a beggar! It was
incredible! But it was a fact. And to-morrow he would begin to do
it--perhaps had begun already. His tree had come down with a crash!
Eighty years-eighty good years! He regretted none of them-regretted
nothing; least of all this breach of trust which had provided for his
grandchildren--one of the best things he had ever done. The fellow was a
cowardly hound, too! The way he had snatched the bell-pull out of his
reach-despicable cur! And a chap like that was to put "paid" to the
account of Sylvanus Heythorp, to "scratch" him out of life--so near the
end of everything, the very end! His hand raised above the surface fell
back on his stomach through the dark water, and a bubble or two rose. Not
so fast--not so fast! He had but to slip down a foot, let the water
close over his head, and "Good-bye" to Master Ventnor's triumph Dead men
could not be kicked off the Boards of Companies. Dead men could not be
beggared, deprived of their independence. He smiled and stirred a little
in the bath till the water reached the white hairs on his lower lip. It
smelt nice! And he took a long sniff: He had had a good life, a good
life! And with the thought that he had it in his power at any moment to
put Master Ventnor's nose out of joint--to beat the beggar after all, a
sense of assuagement and well-being crept over him. His blood ran more
evenly again. He closed his eyes. They talked about an
after-life--people like that holy woman. Gammon! You went to sleep--a
long sleep; no dreams. A nap after dinner! Dinner! His tongue sought
his palate! Yes! he could eat a good dinner! That dog hadn't put him
off his stroke! The best dinner he had ever eaten was the one he gave to
Jack Herring, Chichester, Thornworthy, Nick Treffry and Jolyon Forsyte at
Pole's. Good Lord! In 'sixty--yes--'sixty-five? Just before he fell in
love with Alice Larne--ten years before he came to Liverpool. That was a
dinner! Cost twenty-four pounds for the six of them--and Forsyte an
absurdly moderate fellow. Only Nick Treff'ry and himself had been
three-bottle men! Dead! Every jack man of them. And suddenly he
thought: 'My name's a good one--I was never down before--never beaten!'
A voice above the steam said:
"The twenty minutes is up, sir."
"All right; I'll get out. Evening clothes."
And Meller, taking out dress suit and shirt, thought: 'Now, what does the
old bloomer want dressin' up again for; why can't he go to bed and have
his dinner there? When a man's like a baby, the cradle's the place for
him.'....
An hour later, at the scene of his encounter with Mr. Ventnor, where the
table was already laid for dinner, old Heythorp stood and gazed. The
curtains had been drawn back, the window thrown open to air the room, and
he could see out there the shapes of the dark trees and a sky
grape-coloured, in the mild, moist night. It smelt good. A sensuous
feeling stirred in him, warm from his bath, clothed from head to foot in
fresh garments. Deuce of a time since he had dined in full fig! He
would have liked a woman dining opposite--but not the holy woman; no, by
George!--would have liked to see light falling on a woman's shoulders
once again, and a pair of bright eyes! He crossed, snail-like, towards
the fire. There that bullying fellow had stood with his back to
it--confound his impudence!--as if the place belonged to him. And
suddenly he had a vision of his three secretaries' faces--especially
young Farney's as they would look, when the pack got him by the throat
and pulled him down. His co-directors, too! Old Heythorp! How are the
mighty fallen! And that hound jubilant!
His valet passed across the room to shut the window and draw the
curtains. This chap too! The day he could no longer pay his wages, and
had lost the power to say "Shan't want your services any more"--when he
could no longer even pay his doctor for doing his best to kill him off!
Power, interest, independence, all--gone! To be dressed and undressed,
given pap, like a baby in arms, served as they chose to serve him, and
wished out of the way--broken, dishonoured!
By money alone an old man had his being! Meat, drink, movement, breath!
When all his money was gone the holy woman would let him know it fast
enough. They would all let him know it; or if they didn't, it would be
out of pity! He had never been pitied yet--thank God! And he said:
"Get me up a bottle of Perrier Jouet. What's the menu?"
"Germane soup, sir; filly de sole; sweetbread; cutlet soubees, rum
souffly."
"Tell her to give me a hors d'oeuvre, and put on a savoury."
"Yes, sir."
When the man had gone, he thought: 'I should have liked an oyster--too
late now!' and going over to his bureau, he fumblingly pulled out the top
drawer. There was little in it--Just a few papers, business papers on
his Companies, and a schedule of his debts; not even a copy of his
will--he had not made one, nothing to leave! Letters he had never kept.
Half a dozen bills, a few receipts, and the little pink note with the
blue forget-me-not. That was the lot! An old tree gives up bearing
leaves, and its roots dry up, before it comes down in a wind; an old
man's world slowly falls away from him till he stands alone in the night.
Looking at the pink note, he thought: 'Suppose I'd married Alice--a man
never had a better mistress!' He fumbled the drawer to; but still he
strayed feebly about the room, with a curious shrinking from sitting
down, legacy from the quarter of an hour he had been compelled to sit
while that hound worried at his throat. He was opposite one of the
pictures now. It gleamed, dark and oily, limning a Scots Grey who had
mounted a wounded Russian on his horse, and was bringing him back
prisoner from the Balaclava charge. A very old friend--bought in
'fifty-nine. It had hung in his chambers in the Albany--hung with him
ever since. With whom would it hang when he was gone? For that holy
woman would scrap it, to a certainty, and stick up some Crucifixion or
other, some new-fangled high art thing! She could even do that now if
she liked--for she owned it, owned every mortal stick in the room, to the
very glass he would drink his champagne from; all made over under the
settlement fifteen years ago, before his last big gamble went wrong. "De
l'audace, toujours de l'audace!" The gamble which had brought him down
till his throat at last was at the mercy of a bullying hound. The pitcher
and the well! At the mercy---! The sound of a popping cork dragged him
from reverie. He moved to his seat, back to the window, and sat down to
his dinner. By George! They had got him an oyster! And he said:
"I've forgotten my teeth!"
While the man was gone for them, he swallowed the oysters, methodically
touching them one by one with cayenne, Chili vinegar, and lemon. Ummm!
Not quite what they used to be at Pimm's in the best days, but not
bad--not bad! Then seeing the little blue bowl lying before him, he
looked up and said:
"My compliments to cook on the oysters. Give me the champagne." And he
lifted his trembling teeth. Thank God, he could still put 'em in for
himself! The creaming goldenish fluid from the napkined bottle slowly
reached the brim of his glass, which had a hollow stem; raising it to his
lips, very red between the white hairs above and below, he drank with a
gurgling noise, and put the glass down-empty. Nectar! And just cold
enough!
"I frapped it the least bit, sir."
"Quite right. What's that smell of flowers?"
"It's from those 'yacinths on the sideboard, sir. They come from Mrs.
Larne, this afternoon."
"Put 'em on the table. Where's my daughter?"
"She's had dinner, sir; goin' to a ball, I think."
"A ball!"
"Charity ball, I fancy, sir."
"Ummm! Give me a touch of the old sherry with the soup."
"Yes, sir. I shall have to open a bottle:"
"Very well, then, do!"
On his way to the cellar the man confided to Molly, who was carrying the
soup:
"The Gov'nor's going it to-night! What he'll be like tomorrow I dunno."
The girl answered softly:
"Poor old man, let um have his pleasure." And, in the hall, with the
soup tureen against her bosom, she hummed above the steam, and thought of
the ribbons on her new chemises, bought out of the sovereign he had given
her.
And old Heythorp, digesting his osyters, snuffed the scent of the
hyacinths, and thought of the St. Germain, his favourite soup. It would
n't be first-rate, at this time of year--should be made with little young
home-grown peas. Paris was the place for it. Ah! The French were the
fellows for eating, and--looking things in the face! Not hypocrites--not
ashamed of their reason or their senses!
The soup came in. He sipped it, bending forward as far as he could, his
napkin tucked in over his shirt-front like a bib. He got the bouquet of
that sherry to a T--his sense of smell was very keen to-night; rare old
stuff it was--more than a year since he had tasted it--but no one drank
sherry nowadays, hadn't the constitution for it! The fish came up, and
went down; and with the sweetbread he took his second glass of champagne.
Always the best, that second glass--the stomach well warmed, and the
palate not yet dulled. Umm! So that fellow thought he had him beaten,
did he? And he said suddenly:
"The fur coat in the wardrobe, I've no use for it. You can take it away
to-night."
With tempered gratitude the valet answered:
"Thank you, sir; much obliged, I'm sure." So the old buffer had found
out there was moth in it!
"Have I worried you much?"
"No, sir; not at all, sir--that is, no more than reason."
"Afraid I have. Very sorry--can't help it. You'll find that, when you
get like me."
"Yes, sir; I've always admired your pluck, sir.
"Um! Very good of you to say so."
"Always think of you keepin' the flag flying', sir."
Old Heythorp bent his body from the waist.
"Much obliged to you."
"Not at all, sir. Cook's done a little spinach in cream with the
soubees."
"Ah! Tell her from me it's a capital dinner, so far."
"Thank you, sir."
Alone again, old Heythorp sat unmoving, his brain just narcotically
touched. "The flag flyin'--the flag flyin'!" He raised his glass and
sucked. He had an appetite now, and finished the three cutlets, and all
the sauce and spinach. Pity! he could have managed a snipe fresh shot!
A desire to delay, to lengthen dinner, was strong upon him; there were
but the souffle' and the savoury to come. He would have enjoyed, too,
someone to talk to. He had always been fond of good company--been good
company himself, or so they said--not that he had had a chance of late.
Even at the Boards they avoided talking to him, he had noticed for a long
time. Well! that wouldn't trouble him again--he had sat through his last
Board, no doubt. They shouldn't kick him off, though; he wouldn't give
them that pleasure--had seen the beggars hankering after his chairman's
shoes too long. The souffle was before him now, and lifting his glass, he
said:
"Fill up."
"These are the special glasses, sir; only four to the bottle."
"Fill up."
The servant filled, screwing up his mouth.
Old Heythorp drank, and put the glass down empty with a sigh. He had
been faithful to his principles, finished the bottle before touching the
sweet--a good bottle--of a good brand! And now for the souffle!
Delicious, flipped down with the old sherry! So that holy woman was
going to a ball, was she! How deuced funny! Who would dance with a dry
stick like that, all eaten up with a piety which was just sexual
disappointment? Ah! yes, lots of women like that--had often noticed
'em--pitied 'em too, until you had to do with them and they made you as
unhappy as themselves, and were tyrants into the bargain. And he asked:
"What's the savoury?"
"Cheese remmykin, sir."
His favourite.
"I'll have my port with it--the 'sixty-eight." The man stood gazing with
evident stupefaction. He had not expected this. The old man's face was
very flushed, but that might be the bath. He said feebly:
"Are you sure you ought, sir?"
"No, but I'm going to."
"Would you mind if I spoke to Miss Heythorp, Sir?"
"If you do, you can leave my service."
"Well, Sir, I don't accept the responsibility."
"Who asked you to?"
"No, Sir...."
"Well, get it, then; and don't be an ass."
"Yes, Sir." If the old man were not humoured he would have a fit,
perhaps!
And the old man sat quietly staring at the hyacinths. He felt happy, his
whole being lined and warmed and drowsed--and there was more to come!
What had the holy folk to give you compared with the comfort of a good
dinner? Could they make you dream, and see life rosy for a little? No,
they could only give you promissory notes which never would be cashed. A
man had nothing but his pluck--they only tried to undermine it, and make
him squeal for help. He could see his precious doctor throwing up his
hands: "Port after a bottle of champagne--you'll die of it!" And a very
good death too--none better. A sound broke the silence of the closed-up
room. Music? His daughter playing the piano overhead. Singing too!
What a trickle of a voice! Jenny Lind! The Swedish nightingale--he had
never missed the nights when she was singing--Jenny Lind!
"It's very hot, sir. Shall I take it out of the case?"
Ah! The ramequin!
"Touch of butter, and the cayenne!"
"Yes, sir."
He ate it slowly, savouring each mouthful; had never tasted a better.
With cheese--port! He drank one glass, and said:
"Help me to my chair."
And settled there before the fire with decanter and glass and hand-bell
on the little low table by his side, he murmured:
"Bring coffee, and my cigar, in twenty minutes."
To-night he would do justice to his wine, not smoking till he had
finished. As old Horace said:
"Aequam memento rebus in arduis Servare mentem."
And, raising his glass, he sipped slowly, spilling a drop or two,
shutting his eyes.
The faint silvery squealing of the holy woman in the room above, the
scent of hyacinths, the drowse of the fire, on which a cedar log had just
been laid, the feeling of the port soaking down into the crannies of his
being, made up a momentary Paradise. Then the music stopped; and no
sound rose but the tiny groans of the log trying to resist the fire.
Dreamily he thought: 'Life wears you out--wears you out. Logs on a
fire!' And he filled his glass again. That fellow had been careless;
there were dregs at the bottom of the decanter and he had got down to
them! Then, as the last drop from his tilted glass trickled into the
white hairs on his chin, he heard the coffee tray put down, and taking
his cigar he put it to his ear, rolling it in his thick fingers. In
prime condition! And drawing a first whiff, he said:
"Open that bottle of the old brandy in the sideboard."
"Brandy, sir? I really daren't, sir."
"Are you my servant or not?"
"Yes, sir, but---"
A minute of silence, then the man went hastily to the sideboard, took out
the bottle, and drew the cork. The tide of crimson in the old man's face
had frightened him.
"Leave it there."
The unfortunate valet placed the bottle on the little table. 'I'll have
to tell her,' he thought; 'but if I take away the port decanter and the
glass, it won't look so bad.' And, carrying them, he left the room.
Slowly the old man drank his coffee, and the liqueur of brandy. The
whole gamut! And watching his cigar-smoke wreathing blue in the orange
glow, he smiled. The last night to call his soul his own, the last night
of his independence. Send in his resignations to-morrow--not wait to be
kicked off! Not give that fellow a chance!
A voice which seemed to come from far off, said:
"Father! You're drinking brandy! How can you--you know it's simple
poison to you!" A figure in white, scarcely actual, loomed up close. He
took the bottle to fill up his liqueur glass, in defiance; but a hand in
a long white glove, with another dangling from its wrist, pulled it away,
shook it at him, and replaced it in the sideboard. And, just as when Mr.
Ventnor stood there accusing him, a swelling and churning in his throat
prevented him from speech; his lips moved, but only a little froth came
forth.
His daughter had approached again. She stood quite close, in white
satin, thin-faced, sallow, with eyebrows raised, and her dark hair
frizzed--yes! frizzed--the holy woman! With all his might he tried to
say: 'So you bully me, do you--you bully me to-night!' but only the word
"so" and a sort of whispering came forth. He heard her speaking. "It's
no good your getting angry, Father. After champagne--it's wicked!" Then
her form receded in a sort of rustling white mist; she was gone; and he
heard the sputtering and growling of her taxi, bearing her to the ball.
So! She tyrannised and bullied, even before she had him at her mercy,
did she? She should see! Anger had brightened his eyes; the room came
clear again. And slowly raising himself he sounded the bell twice, for
the girl, not for that fellow Meller, who was in the plot. As soon as
her pretty black and white-aproned figure stood before him, he said:
"Help me up."
Twice her soft pulling was not enough, and he sank back. The third time
he struggled to his feet.
"Thank you; that'll do." Then, waiting till she was gone, he crossed the
room, fumbled open the sideboard door, and took out the bottle. Reaching
over the polished oak, he grasped a sherry glass; and holding the bottle
with both hands, tipped the liquor into it, put it to his lips and
sucked. Drop by drop it passed over his palate mild, very old, old as
himself, coloured like sunlight, fragrant. To the last drop he drank it,
then hugging the bottle to his shirt-front, he moved snail-like to his
chair, and fell back into its depths. For some minutes he remained there
motionless, the bottle clasped to his chest, thinking: 'This is not the
attitude of a gentleman. I must put it down on the table-on the table;'
but a thick cloud was between him and everything. It was with his hands
he would have to put the bottle on the table! But he could not find his
hands, could not feel them. His mind see-sawed in strophe and
antistrophe: "You can't move!"--"I will move!" "You're beaten"--"I'm not
beat." "Give up"--"I won't." That struggle to find his hands seemed to
last for ever--he must find them! After that--go down--all
standing--after that! Everything round him was red. Then the red cloud
cleared just a little, and he could hear the clock--"tick-tick-tick"; a
faint sensation spread from his shoulders down to his wrists, down his
palms; and yes--he could feel the bottle! He redoubled his struggle to
get forward in his chair; to get forward and put the bottle down. It was
not dignified like this! One arm he could move now; but he could not
grip the bottle nearly tight enough to put it down. Working his whole
body forward, inch by inch, he shifted himself up in the chair till he
could lean sideways, and the bottle, slipping down his chest, dropped
slanting to the edge of the low stool-table. Then with all his might he
screwed his trunk and arms an inch further, and the bottle stood. He had
done it--done it! His lips twitched into a smile; his body sagged back
to its old position. He had done it! And he closed his eyes ....
At half-past eleven the girl Molly, opening the door, looked at him and
said softly: "Sirr! there's some ladies, and a gentleman!" But he did
not answer. And, still holding the door, she whispered out into the
hall:
"He's asleep, miss."
A voice whispered back:
"Oh! Just let me go in, I won't wake him unless he does. But I do want
to show him my dress."
The girl moved aside; and on tiptoe Phyllis passed in. She walked to
where, between the lamp-glow and the fire-glow, she was lighted up. White
satin--her first low-cut dress--the flush of her first supper party--a
gardenia at her breast, another in her fingers! Oh! what a pity he was
asleep! How red he looked! How funnily old men breathed! And
mysteriously, as a child might, she whispered:
"Guardy!"
No answer! And pouting, she stood twiddling the gardenia. Then suddenly
she thought: 'I'll put it in his buttonhole! When he wakes up and sees
it, how he'll jump!'
And stealing close, she bent and slipped it in. Two faces looked at her
from round the door; she heard Bob Pillin's smothered chuckle; her
mother's rich and feathery laugh. Oh! How red his forehead was! She
touched it with her lips; skipped back, twirled round, danced silently a
second, blew a kiss, and like quicksilver was gone.
And the whispering, the chuckling, and one little out-pealing laugh rose
in the hall.
But the old man slept. Nor until Meller came at his usual hour of
half-past twelve, was it known that he would never wake.
THE APPLE TREE
"The Apple-tree, the singing and the gold."
MURRAY'S "HIPPOLYTUS of EURIPIDES."
In their silver-wedding day Ashurst and his wife were motoring along the
outskirts of the moor, intending to crown the festival by stopping the
night at Torquay, where they had first met. This was the idea of Stella
Ashurst, whose character contained a streak of sentiment. If she had
long lost the blue-eyed, flower-like charm, the cool slim purity of face
and form, the apple-blossom colouring, which had so swiftly and so oddly
affected Ashurst twenty-six years ago, she was still at forty-three a
comely and faithful companion, whose cheeks were faintly mottled, and
whose grey-blue eyes had acquired a certain fullness.
It was she who had stopped the car where the common rose steeply to the
left, and a narrow strip of larch and beech, with here and there a pine,
stretched out towards the valley between the road and the first long high
hill of the full moor. She was looking for a place where they might
lunch, for Ashurst never looked for anything; and this, between the
golden furze and the feathery green larches smelling of lemons in the
last sun of April--this, with a view into the deep valley and up to the
long moor heights, seemed fitting to the decisive nature of one who
sketched in water-colours, and loved romantic spots. Grasping her paint
box, she got out.
"Won't this do, Frank?"
Ashurst, rather like a bearded Schiller, grey in the wings, tall,
long-legged, with large remote grey eyes which sometimes filled with
meaning and became almost beautiful, with nose a little to one side, and
bearded lips just open--Ashurst, forty-eight, and silent, grasped the
luncheon basket, and got out too.
"Oh! Look, Frank! A grave!"
By the side of the road, where the track from the top of the common
crossed it at right angles and ran through a gate past the narrow wood,
was a thin mound of turf, six feet by one, with a moorstone to the west,
and on it someone had thrown a blackthorn spray and a handful of
bluebells. Ashurst looked, and the poet in him moved. At cross-roads--a
suicide's grave! Poor mortals with their superstitions! Whoever lay
there, though, had the best of it, no clammy sepulchre among other
hideous graves carved with futilities--just a rough stone, the wide sky,
and wayside blessings! And, without comment, for he had learned not to
be a philosopher in the bosom of his family, he strode away up on to the
common, dropped the luncheon basket under a wall, spread a rug for his
wife to sit on--she would turn up from her sketching when she was
hungry--and took from his pocket Murray's translation of the
"Hippolytus." He had soon finished reading of "The Cyprian" and her
revenge, and looked at the sky instead. And watching the white clouds so
bright against the intense blue, Ashurst, on his silver-wedding day,
longed for--he knew not what. Maladjusted to life--man's organism!
One's mode of life might be high and scrupulous, but there was always an,
undercurrent of greediness, a hankering, and sense of waste. Did women
have it too? Who could tell? And yet, men who gave vent to their
appetites for novelty, their riotous longings for new adventures, new
risks, new pleasures, these suffered, no doubt, from the reverse side of
starvation, from surfeit. No getting out of it--a maladjusted animal,
civilised man! There could be no garden of his choosing, of "the
Apple-tree, the singing, and the gold," in the words of that lovely Greek
chorus, no achievable elysium in life, or lasting haven of happiness for
any man with a sense of beauty--nothing which could compare with the
captured loveliness in a work of art, set down for ever, so that to look
on it or read was always to have the same precious sense of exaltation
and restful inebriety. Life no doubt had moments with that quality of
beauty, of unbidden flying rapture, but the trouble was, they lasted no
longer than the span of a cloud's flight over the sun; impossible to keep
them with you, as Art caught beauty and held it fast. They were fleeting
as one of the glimmering or golden visions one had of the soul in nature,
glimpses of its remote and brooding spirit. Here, with the sun hot on
his face, a cuckoo calling from a thorn tree, and in the air the honey
savour of gorse--here among the little fronds of the young fern, the
starry blackthorn, while the bright clouds drifted by high above the
hills and dreamy valleys here and now was such a glimpse. But in a
moment it would pass--as the face of Pan, which looks round the corner of
a rock, vanishes at your stare. And suddenly he sat up. Surely there
was something familiar about this view, this bit of common, that ribbon
of road, the old wall behind him. While they were driving he had not
been taking notice--never did; thinking of far things or of nothing--but
now he saw! Twenty-six years ago, just at this time of year, from the
farmhouse within half a mile of this very spot he had started for that
day in Torquay whence it might be said he had never returned. And a
sudden ache beset his heart; he had stumbled on just one of those past
moments in his life, whose beauty and rapture he had failed to arrest,
whose wings had fluttered away into the unknown; he had stumbled on a
buried memory, a wild sweet time, swiftly choked and ended. And, turning
on his face, he rested his chin on his hands, and stared at the short
grass where the little blue milkwort was growing....
I
And this is what he remembered.
On the first of May, after their last year together at college, Frank
Ashurst and his friend Robert Garton were on a tramp. They had walked
that day from Brent, intending to make Chagford, but Ashurst's football
knee had given out, and according to their map they had still some seven
miles to go. They were sitting on a bank beside the-road, where a track
crossed alongside a wood, resting the knee and talking of the universe,
as young men will. Both were over six feet, and thin as rails; Ashurst
pale, idealistic, full of absence; Garton queer, round-the-corner,
knotted, curly, like some primeval beast. Both had a literary bent;
neither wore a hat.
Ashurst's hair was smooth, pale, wavy, and had a way of rising on either
side of his brow, as if always being flung back; Carton's was a kind of
dark unfathomed mop. They had not met a soul for miles.
"My dear fellow," Garton was saying, "pity's only an effect of
self-consciousness; it's a disease of the last five thousand years. The
world was happier without."
Ashurst, following the clouds with his eyes, answered:
"It's the pearl in the oyster, anyway."
"My dear chap, all our modern unhappiness comes from pity. Look at
animals, and Red Indians, limited to feeling their own occasional
misfortunes; then look at ourselves--never free from feeling the
toothaches of others. Let's get back to feeling for nobody, and have a
better time."
"You'll never practise that."
Garton pensively stirred the hotch-potch of his hair.
"To attain full growth, one mustn't be squeamish. To starve oneself
emotionally's a mistake. All emotion is to the good--enriches life."
"Yes, and when it runs up against chivalry?"
"Ah! That's so English! If you speak of emotion the English always
think you want something physical, and are shocked. They're afraid of
passion, but not of lust--oh, no!--so long as they can keep it secret."
Ashurst did not answer; he had plucked a blue floweret, and was twiddling
it against the sky. A cuckoo began calling from a thorn tree. The sky,
the flowers, the songs of birds! Robert was talking through his hat!
And he said:
"Well, let's go on, and find some farm where we can put up." In uttering
those words, he was conscious of a girl coming down from the common just
above them. She was outlined against the sky, carrying a basket, and you
could see that sky through the crook of her arm. And Ashurst, who saw
beauty without wondering how it could advantage him, thought: 'How
pretty!' The wind, blowing her dark frieze skirt against her legs,
lifted her battered peacock tam-o'-shanter; her greyish blouse was worn
and old, her shoes were split, her little hands rough and red, her neck
browned. Her dark hair waved untidy across her broad forehead, her face
was short, her upper lip short, showing a glint of teeth, her brows were
straight and dark, her lashes long and dark, her nose straight; but her
grey eyes were the wonder-dewy as if opened for the first time that day.
She looked at Ashurst--perhaps he struck her as strange, limping along
without a hat, with his large eyes on her, and his hair falling back. He
could not take off what was not on his head, but put up his hand in a
salute, and said:
"Can you tell us if there's a farm near here where we could stay the
night? I've gone lame."
"There's only our farm near, sir." She spoke without shyness, in a
pretty soft crisp voice.
"And where is that?"
"Down here, sir."
"Would you put us up?"
"Oh! I think we would."
"Will you show us the way?"
"Yes, Sir."
He limped on, silent, and Garton took up the catechism.
"Are you a Devonshire girl?"
"No, Sir."
"What then?"
"From Wales."
"Ah! I thought you were a Celt; so it's not your farm?"
"My aunt's, sir."
"And your uncle's?"
"He is dead."
"Who farms it, then?"
"My aunt, and my three cousins."
"But your uncle was a Devonshire man?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Have you lived here long?" "Seven years."
"And how d'you like it after Wales?" "I don't know, sir."
"I suppose you don't remember?" "Oh, yes! But it is different."
"I believe you!"
Ashurst broke in suddenly: "How old are you?"
"Seventeen, Sir."
"And what's your name?" "Megan David."
"This is Robert Garton, and I am Frank Ashurst. We wanted to get on to
Chagford."
"It is a pity your leg is hurting you."
Ashurst smiled, and when he smiled his face was rather beautiful.
Descending past the narrow wood, they came on the farm suddenly-a long,
low, stone-built dwelling with casement windows, in a farmyard where pigs
and fowls and an old mare were straying. A short steep-up grass hill
behind was crowned with a few Scotch firs, and in front, an old orchard
of apple trees, just breaking into flower, stretched down to a stream and
a long wild meadow. A little boy with oblique dark eyes was shepherding
a pig, and by the house door stood a woman, who came towards them. The
girl said:
"It is Mrs. Narracombe, my aunt."
"Mrs. Narracombe, my aunt," had a quick, dark eye, like a mother
wild-duck's, and something of the same snaky turn about her neck.
"We met your niece on the road," said Ashurst; "she thought you might
perhaps put us up for the night."
Mrs. Narracombe, taking them in from head to heel, answered:
"Well, I can, if you don't mind one room. Megan, get the spare room
ready, and a bowl of cream. You'll be wanting tea, I suppose."
Passing through a sort of porch made by two yew trees and some
flowering-currant bushes, the girl disappeared into the house, her
peacock tam-o'-shanter bright athwart that rosy-pink and the dark green
of the yews.
"Will you come into the parlour and rest your leg? You'll be from
college, perhaps?"
"We were, but we've gone down now."
Mrs. Narracombe nodded sagely.
The parlour, brick-floored, with bare table and shiny chairs and sofa
stuffed with horsehair, seemed never to have been used, it was so
terribly clean. Ashurst sat down at once on the sofa, holding his lame
knee between his hands, and Mrs. Narracombe gazed at him. He was the
only son of a late professor of chemistry, but people found a certain
lordliness in one who was often so sublimely unconscious of them.
"Is there a stream where we could bathe?"
"There's the strame at the bottom of the orchard, but sittin' down you'll
not be covered!"
"How deep?"
"Well, 'tis about a foot and a half, maybe."
"Oh! That'll do fine. Which way?"
"Down the lane, through the second gate on the right, an' the pool's by
the big apple tree that stands by itself. There's trout there, if you
can tickle them."
"They're more likely to tickle us!"
Mrs. Narracombe smiled. "There'll be the tea ready when you come back."
The pool, formed by the damming of a rock, had a sandy bottom; and the
big apple tree, lowest in the orchard, grew so close that its boughs
almost overhung the water; it was in leaf, and all but in flower-its
crimson buds just bursting. There was not room for more than one at a
time in that narrow bath, and Ashurst waited his turn, rubbing his knee
and gazing at the wild meadow, all rocks and thorn trees and feld
flowers, with a grove of beeches beyond, raised up on a flat mound.
Every bough was swinging in the wind, every spring bird calling, and a
slanting sunlight dappled the grass. He thought of Theocritus, and the
river Cherwell, of the moon, and the maiden with the dewy eyes; of so
many things that he seemed to think of nothing; and he felt absurdly
happy.
2
During a late and sumptuous tea with eggs to it, cream and jam, and thin,
fresh cakes touched with saffron, Garton descanted on the Celts. It was
about the period of the Celtic awakening, and the discovery that there
was Celtic blood about this family had excited one who believed that he
was a Celt himself. Sprawling on a horse hair chair, with a hand-made
cigarette dribbling from the corner of his curly lips, he had been
plunging his cold pin-points of eyes into Ashurst's and praising the
refinement of the Welsh. To come out of Wales into England was like the
change from china to earthenware! Frank, as a d---d Englishman, had not
of course perceived the exquisite refinement and emotional capacity of
that Welsh girl! And, delicately stirring in the dark mat of his still
wet hair, he explained how exactly she illustrated the writings of the
Welsh bard Morgan-ap-Something in the twelfth century.
Ashurst, full length on the horsehair sofa, and jutting far beyond its
end, smoked a deeply-coloured pipe, and did not listen, thinking of the
girl's face when she brought in a relay of cakes. It had been exactly
like looking at a flower, or some other pretty sight in Nature-till, with
a funny little shiver, she had lowered her glance and gone out, quiet as
a mouse.
"Let's go to the kitchen," said Garton, "and see some more of her."
The kitchen was a white-washed room with rafters, to which were attached
smoked hams; there were flower-pots on the window-sill, and guns hanging
on nails, queer mugs, china and pewter, and portraits of Queen Victoria.
A long, narrow table of plain wood was set with bowls and spoons, under a
string of high-hung onions; two sheep-dogs and three cats lay here and
there. On one side of the recessed fireplace sat two small boys, idle,
and good as gold; on the other sat a stout, light-eyed, red-faced youth
with hair and lashes the colour of the tow he was running through the
barrel of a gun; between them Mrs. Narracombe dreamily stirred some
savoury-scented stew in a large pot. Two other youths, oblique-eyed,
dark-haired, rather sly-faced, like the two little boys, were talking
together and lolling against the wall; and a short, elderly, clean-shaven
man in corduroys, seated in the window, was conning a battered journal.
The girl Megan seemed the only active creature-drawing cider and passing
with the jugs from cask to table. Seeing them thus about to eat, Garton
said:
"Ah! If you'll let us, we'll come back when supper's over," and without
waiting for an answer they withdrew again to the parlour. But the colour
in the kitchen, the warmth, the scents, and all those faces, heightened
the bleakness of their shiny room, and they resumed their seats moodily.
"Regular gipsy type, those boys. There was only one Saxon--the fellow
cleaning the gun. That girl is a very subtle study psychologically."
Ashurst's lips twitched. Garton seemed to him an ass just then. Subtle
study! She was a wild flower. A creature it did you good to look at.
Study!
Garton went on:
"Emotionally she would be wonderful. She wants awakening."
"Are you going to awaken her?"
Garton looked at him and smiled. 'How coarse and English you are!' that
curly smile seemed saying.
And Ashurst puffed his pipe. Awaken her! That fool had the best opinion
of himself! He threw up the window and leaned out. Dusk had gathered
thick. The farm buildings and the wheel-house were all dim and bluish,
the apple trees but a blurred wilderness; the air smelled of woodsmoke
from the kitchen fire. One bird going to bed later than the others was
uttering a half-hearted twitter, as though surprised at the darkness.
From the stable came the snuffle and stamp of a feeding horse. And away
over there was the loom of the moor, and away and away the shy stars
which had not as yet full light, pricking white through the deep blue
heavens. A quavering owl hooted. Ashurst drew a deep breath. What a
night to wander out in! A padding of unshod hoofs came up the lane, and
three dim, dark shapes passed--ponies on an evening march. Their heads,
black and fuzzy, showed above the gate. At the tap of his pipe, and a
shower of little sparks, they shied round and scampered. A bat went
fluttering past, uttering its almost inaudible "chip, chip." Ashurst
held out his hand; on the upturned palm he could feel the dew. Suddenly
from overhead he heard little burring boys' voices, little thumps of
boots thrown down, and another voice, crisp and soft--the girl's putting
them to bed, no doubt; and nine clear words "No, Rick, you can't have the
cat in bed"; then came a skirmish of giggles and gurgles, a soft slap, a
laugh so low and pretty that it made him shiver a little. A blowing
sound, and the glim of the candle which was fingering the dusk above,
went out; silence reigned. Ashurst withdrew into the room and sat down;
his knee pained him, and his soul felt gloomy.
"You go to the kitchen," he said; "I'm going to bed."
3
For Ashurst the wheel of slumber was wont to turn noiseless and slick and
swift, but though he seemed sunk in sleep when his companion came up, he
was really wide awake; and long after Carton, smothered in the other bed
of that low-roofed room, was worshipping darkness with his upturned nose,
he heard the owls. Barring the discomfort of his knee, it was not
unpleasant--the cares of life did not loom large in night watches for
this young man. In fact he had none; just enrolled a barrister, with
literary aspirations, the world before him, no father or mother, and four
hundred a year of his own. Did it matter where he went, what he did, or
when he did it? His bed, too, was hard, and this preserved him from
fever. He lay, sniffing the scent of the night which drifted into the
low room through the open casement close to his head. Except for a
definite irritation with his friend, natural when you have tramped with a
man for three days, Ashurst's memories and visions that sleepless night
were kindly and wistful and exciting. One vision, specially clear and
unreasonable, for he had not even been conscious of noting it, was the
face of the youth cleaning the gun; its intent, stolid, yet startled
uplook at the kitchen doorway, quickly shifted to the girl carrying the
cider jug. This red, blue-eyed, light-lashed, tow-haired face stuck as
firmly in his memory as the girl's own face, so dewy and simple. But at
last, in the square of darkness through the uncurtained casement, he saw
day coming, and heard one hoarse and sleepy caw. Then followed silence,
dead as ever, till the song of a blackbird, not properly awake,
adventured into the hush. And, from staring at the framed brightening
light, Ashurst fell asleep.
Next day his knee was badly swollen; the walking tour was obviously over.
Garton, due back in London on the morrow, departed at midday with an
ironical smile which left a scar of irritation--healed the moment his
loping figure vanished round the corner of the steep lane. All day
Ashurst rested his knee, in a green-painted wooden chair on the patch of
grass by the yew-tree porch, where the sunlight distilled the scent of
stocks and gillyflowers, and a ghost of scent from the flowering-currant
bushes. Beatifically he smoked, dreamed, watched.
A farm in spring is all birth-young things coming out of bud and shell,
and human beings watching over the process with faint excitement feeding
and tending what has been born. So still the young man sat, that a
mother-goose, with stately cross-footed waddle, brought her six
yellow-necked grey-backed goslings to strop their little beaks against
the grass blades at his feet. Now and again Mrs. Narracombe or the girl
Megan would come and ask if he wanted anything, and he would smile and
say: "Nothing, thanks. It's splendid here." Towards tea-time they came
out together, bearing a long poultice of some dark stuff in a bowl, and
after a long and solemn scrutiny of his swollen knee, bound it on. When
they were gone, he thought of the girl's soft "Oh!"--of her pitying eyes,
and the little wrinkle in her brow. And again he felt that unreasoning
irritation against his departed friend, who had talked such rot about
her. When she brought out his tea, he said:
"How did you like my friend, Megan?"
She forced down her upper lip, as if afraid that to smile was not polite.
"He was a funny gentleman; he made us laugh. I think he is very clever."
"What did he say to make you laugh?"
"He said I was a daughter of the bards. What are they?"
"Welsh poets, who lived hundreds of years ago."
"Why am I their daughter, please?"
"He meant that you were the sort of girl they sang about."
She wrinkled her brows. "I think he likes to joke. Am I?"
"Would you believe me, if I told you?"
"Oh, yes."
"Well, I think he was right."
She smiled.
And Ashurst thought: 'You are a pretty thing!'
"He said, too, that Joe was a Saxon type. What would that be?"
"Which is Joe? With the blue eyes and red face?"
"Yes. My uncle's nephew."
"Not your cousin, then?"
"No."
"Well, he meant that Joe was like the men who came over to England about
fourteen hundred years ago, and conquered it."
"Oh! I know about them; but is he?"
"Garton's crazy about that sort of thing; but I must say Joe does look a
bit Early Saxon."
"Yes."
That "Yes" tickled Ashurst. It was so crisp and graceful, so conclusive,
and politely acquiescent in what was evidently. Greek to her.
"He said that all the other boys were regular gipsies. He should not
have said that. My aunt laughed, but she didn't like it, of course, and
my cousins were angry. Uncle was a farmer--farmers are not gipsies. It
is wrong to hurt people."
Ashurst wanted to take her hand and give it a squeeze, but he only
answered:
"Quite right, Megan. By the way, I heard you putting the little ones to
bed last night."
She flushed a little. "Please to drink your tea--it is getting cold.
Shall I get you some fresh?"
"Do you ever have time to do anything for yourself?"
"Oh! Yes."
"I've been watching, but I haven't seen it yet."
She wrinkled her brows in a puzzled frown, and her colour deepened.
When she was gone, Ashurst thought: 'Did she think I was chaffing her? I
wouldn't for the world!' He was at that age when to some men "Beauty's a
flower," as the poet says, and inspires in them the thoughts of chivalry.
Never very conscious of his surroundings, it was some time before he was
aware that the youth whom Garton had called "a Saxon type" was standing
outside the stable door; and a fine bit of colour he made in his soiled
brown velvet-cords, muddy gaiters, and blue shirt; red-armed, red-faced,
the sun turning his hair from tow to flax; immovably stolid, persistent,
unsmiling he stood. Then, seeing Ashurst looking at him, he crossed the
yard at that gait of the young countryman always ashamed not to be slow
and heavy-dwelling on each leg, and disappeared round the end of the
house towards the kitchen entrance. A chill came over Ashurst's mood.
Clods? With all the good will in the world, how impossible to get on
terms with them! And yet--see that girl! Her shoes were split, her
hands rough; but--what was it? Was it really her Celtic blood, as Garton
had said?--she was a lady born, a jewel, though probably she could do no
more than just read and write!
The elderly, clean-shaven man he had seen last night in the kitchen had
come into the yard with a dog, driving the cows to their milking. Ashurst
saw that he was lame.
"You've got some good ones there!"
The lame man's face brightened. He had the upward look in his eyes which
prolonged suffering often brings.
"Yeas; they'm praaper buties; gude milkers tu."
"I bet they are."
"'Ope as yure leg's better, zurr."
"Thank you, it's getting on."
The lame man touched his own: "I know what 'tes, meself; 'tes a main
worritin' thing, the knee. I've a-'ad mine bad this ten year."
Ashurst made the sound of sympathy which comes so readily from those who
have an independent income, and the lame man smiled again.
"Mustn't complain, though--they mighty near 'ad it off."
"Ho!"
"Yeas; an' compared with what 'twas, 'tes almost so gude as nu."
"They've put a bandage of splendid stuff on mine."
"The maid she picks et. She'm a gude maid wi' the flowers. There's
folks zeem to know the healin' in things. My mother was a rare one for
that. 'Ope as yu'll zune be better, zurr. Goo ahn, therr!"
Ashurst smiled. "Wi' the flowers!" A flower herself!
That evening, after his supper of cold duck, junket, and cider, the girl
came in.
"Please, auntie says--will you try a piece of our Mayday cake?"
"If I may come to the kitchen for it."
"Oh, yes! You'll be missing your friend."
"Not I. But are you sure no one minds?"
"Who would mind? We shall be very pleased."
Ashurst rose too suddenly for his stiff knee, staggered, and subsided.
The girl gave a little gasp, and held out her hands. Ashurst took them,
small, rough, brown; checked his impulse to put them to his lips, and let
her pull him up. She came close beside him, offering her shoulder. And
leaning on her he walked across the room. That shoulder seemed quite the
pleasantest thing he had ever touched. But, he had presence of mind
enough to catch his stick out of the rack, and withdraw his hand before
arriving at the kitchen.
That night he slept like a top, and woke with his knee of almost normal
size. He again spent the morning in his chair on the grass patch,
scribbling down verses; but in the afternoon he wandered about with the
two little boys Nick and Rick. It was Saturday, so they were early home
from school; quick, shy, dark little rascals of seven and six, soon
talkative, for Ashurst had a way with children. By four o'clock they had
shown him all their methods of destroying life, except the tickling of
trout; and with breeches tucked up, lay on their stomachs over the trout
stream, pretending they had this accomplishment also. They tickled
nothing, of course, for their giggling and shouting scared every spotted
thing away. Ashurst, on a rock at the edge of the beech clump, watched
them, and listened to the cuckoos, till Nick, the elder and less
persevering, came up and stood beside him.
"The gipsy bogle zets on that stone," he said.
"What gipsy bogie?"
"Dunno; never zeen 'e. Megan zays 'e zets there; an' old Jim zeed 'e
once. 'E was zettin' there naight afore our pony kicked--in father's
'ead. 'E plays the viddle."
"What tune does he play?"
"Dunno."
"What's he like?"
"'E's black. Old Jim zays 'e's all over 'air. 'E's a praaper bogle. 'E
don' come only at naight." The little boy's oblique dark eyes slid
round. "D'yu think 'e might want to take me away? Megan's feared of
'e."
"Has she seen him?"
"No. She's not afeared o' yu."
"I should think not. Why should she be?"
"She zays a prayer for yu."
"How do you know that, you little rascal?"
"When I was asleep, she said: 'God bless us all, an' Mr. Ashes.' I yeard
'er whisperin'."
"You're a little ruffian to tell what you hear when you're not meant to
hear it!"
The little boy was silent. Then he said aggressively:
"I can skin rabbets. Megan, she can't bear skinnin' 'em. I like blood."
"Oh! you do; you little monster!"
"What's that?"
"A creature that likes hurting others."
The little boy scowled. "They'm only dead rabbets, what us eats."
"Quite right, Nick. I beg your pardon."
"I can skin frogs, tu."
But Ashurst had become absent. "God bless us all, and Mr. Ashes!" And
puzzled by that sudden inaccessibility, Nick ran back to the stream where
the giggling and shouts again uprose at once.
When Megan brought his tea, he said:
"What's the gipsy bogle, Megan?"
She looked up, startled.
"He brings bad things."
"Surely you don't believe in ghosts?"
"I hope I will never see him."
"Of course you won't. There aren't such things. What old Jim saw was a
pony."
"No! There are bogies in the rocks; they are the men who lived long
ago."
"They aren't gipsies, anyway; those old men were dead long before gipsies
came."
She said simply: "They are all bad."
"Why? If there are any, they're only wild, like the rabbits. The
flowers aren't bad for being wild; the thorn trees were never
planted--and you don't mind them. I shall go down at night and look for
your bogie, and have a talk with him."
"Oh, no! Oh, no!"
"Oh, yes! I shall go and sit on his rock."
She clasped her hands together: "Oh, please!"
"Why! What 'does it matter if anything happens to me?"
She did not answer; and in a sort of pet he added:
"Well, I daresay I shan't see him, because I suppose I must be off soon."
"Soon?"
"Your aunt won't want to keep me here."
"Oh, yes! We always let lodgings in summer."
Fixing his eyes on her face, he asked:
"Would you like me to stay?"
"Yes."
"I'm going to say a prayer for you to-night!"
She flushed crimson, frowned, and went out of the room. He sat, cursing
himself, till his tea was stewed. It was as if he had hacked with his
thick boots at a clump of bluebells. Why had he said such a silly thing?
Was he just a towny college ass like Robert Garton, as far from
understanding this girl?
Ashurst spent the next week confirming the restoration of his leg, by
exploration of the country within easy reach. Spring was a revelation to
him this year. In a kind of intoxication he would watch the pink-white
buds of some backward beech tree sprayed up in the sunlight against the
deep blue sky, or the trunks and limbs of the few Scotch firs, tawny in
violent light, or again, on the moor, the gale-bent larches which had
such a look of life when the wind streamed in their young green, above
the rusty black underboughs. Or he would lie on the banks, gazing at the
clusters of dog-violets, or up in the dead bracken, fingering the pink,
transparent buds of the dewberry, while the cuckoos called and yafes
laughed, or a lark, from very high, dripped its beads of song. It was
certainly different from any spring he had ever known, for spring was
within him, not without. In the daytime he hardly saw the family; and
when Megan brought in his meals she always seemed too busy in the house
or among the young things in the yard to stay talking long. But in the
evenings he installed himself in the window seat in the kitchen, smoking
and chatting with the lame man Jim, or Mrs. Narracombe, while the girl
sewed, or moved about, clearing the supper things away. And sometimes,
with the sensation a cat must feel when it purrs, he would become
conscious that Megan's eyes--those dew-grey eyes--were fixed on him with
a sort of lingering soft look which was strangely flattering.
It was on Sunday week in the evening, when he was lying in the orchard
listening to a blackbird and composing a love poem, that he heard the
gate swing to, and saw the girl come running among the trees, with the
red-cheeked, stolid Joe in swift pursuit. About twenty yards away the
chase ended, and the two stood fronting each other, not noticing the
stranger in the grass--the boy pressing on, the girl fending him off.
Ashurst could see her face, angry, disturbed; and the youth's--who would
have thought that red-faced yokel could look so distraught! And
painfully affected by that sight, he jumped up. They saw him then.
Megan dropped her hands, and shrank behind a tree trunk; the boy gave an
angry grunt, rushed at the bank, scrambled over and vanished. Ashurst
went slowly up to her. She was standing quite still, biting her lip-very
pretty, with her fine, dark hair blown loose about her face, and her eyes
cast down.
"I beg your pardon," he said.
She gave him one upward look, from eyes much dilated; then, catching her
breath, turned away. Ashurst followed.
"Megan!"
But she went on; and taking hold of her arm, he turned her gently round
to him.
"Stop and speak to me."
"Why do you beg my pardon? It is not to me you should do that."
"Well, then, to Joe."
"How dare he come after me?"
"In love with you, I suppose."
She stamped her foot.
Ashurst uttered a short laugh. "Would you like me to punch his head?"
She cried with sudden passion:
"You laugh at me-you laugh at us!"
He caught hold of her hands, but she shrank back, till her passionate
little face and loose dark hair were caught among the pink clusters of
the apple blossom. Ashurst raised one of her imprisoned hands and put
his lips to it. He felt how chivalrous he was, and superior to that clod
Joe--just brushing that small, rough hand with his mouth I Her shrinking
ceased suddenly; she seemed to tremble towards him. A sweet warmth
overtook Ashurst from top to toe. This slim maiden, so simple and fine
and pretty, was pleased, then, at the touch of his lips! And, yielding
to a swift impulse, he put his arms round her, pressed her to him, and
kissed her forehead. Then he was frightened--she went so pale, closing
her eyes, so that the long, dark lashes lay on her pale cheeks; her
hands, too, lay inert at her sides. The touch of her breast sent a
shiver through him. "Megan!" he sighed out, and let her go. In the
utter silence a blackbird shouted. Then the girl seized his hand, put it
to her cheek, her heart, her lips, kissed it passionately, and fled away
among the mossy trunks of the apple trees, till they hid her from him.
Ashurst sat down on a twisted old tree growing almost along the ground,
and, all throbbing and bewildered, gazed vacantly at the blossom which
had crowned her hair--those pink buds with one white open apple star.
What had he done? How had he let himself be thus stampeded by
beauty--pity--or--just the spring! He felt curiously happy, all the
same; happy and triumphant, with shivers running through his limbs, and a
vague alarm. This was the beginning of--what? The midges bit him, the
dancing gnats tried to fly into his mouth, and all the spring around him
seemed to grow more lovely and alive; the songs of the cuckoos and the
blackbirds, the laughter of the yaflies, the level-slanting sunlight, the
apple blossom which had crowned her head! He got up from the old trunk
and strode out of the orchard, wanting space, an open sky, to get on
terms with these new sensations. He made for the moor, and from an ash
tree in the hedge a magpie flew out to herald him.
Of man--at any age from five years on--who can say he has never been in
love? Ashurst had loved his partners at his dancing class; loved his
nursery governess; girls in school-holidays; perhaps never been quite out
of love, cherishing always some more or less remote admiration. But this
was different, not remote at all. Quite a new sensation; terribly
delightful, bringing a sense of completed manhood. To be holding in his
fingers such a wild flower, to be able to put it to his lips, and feel it
tremble with delight against them! What intoxication, and--embarrassment!
What to do with it--how meet her next time? His first caress had been
cool, pitiful; but the next could not be, now that, by her burning little
kiss on his hand, by her pressure of it to her heart, he knew that she
loved him. Some natures are coarsened by love bestowed on them; others,
like Ashurst's, are swayed and drawn, warmed and softened, almost
exalted, by what they feel to be a sort of miracle.
And up there among the tors he was racked between the passionate desire
to revel in this new sensation of spring fulfilled within him, and a
vague but very real uneasiness. At one moment he gave himself up
completely to his pride at having captured this pretty, trustful,
dewy-eyed thing! At the next he thought with factitious solemnity: 'Yes,
my boy! But look out what you're doing! You know what comes of it!'
Dusk dropped down without his noticing--dusk on the carved,
Assyrian-looking masses of the rocks. And the voice of Nature said:
"This is a new world for you!" As when a man gets up at four o'clock and
goes out into a summer morning, and beasts, birds, trees stare at him and
he feels as if all had been made new.
He stayed up there for hours, till it grew cold, then groped his way down
the stones and heather roots to the road, back into the lane, and came
again past the wild meadow to the orchard. There he struck a match and
looked at his watch. Nearly twelve! It was black and unstirring in
there now, very different from the lingering, bird-befriended brightness
of six hours ago! And suddenly he saw this idyll of his with the eyes of
the outer world--had mental vision of Mrs. Narracombe's snake-like neck
turned, her quick dark glance taking it all in, her shrewd face
hardening; saw the gipsy-like cousins coarsely mocking and distrustful;
Joe stolid and furious; only the lame man, Jim, with the suffering eyes,
seemed tolerable to his mind. And the village pub!--the gossiping
matrons he passed on his walks; and then--his own friends--Robert
Carton's smile when he went off that morning ten days ago; so ironical
and knowing! Disgusting! For a minute he literally hated this earthy,
cynical world to which one belonged, willy-nilly. The gate where he was
leaning grew grey, a sort of shimmer passed be fore him and spread into
the bluish darkness. The moon! He could just see it over the bank be
hind; red, nearly round-a strange moon! And turning away, he went up the
lane which smelled of the night and cowdung and young leaves. In the
straw-yard he could see the dark shapes of cattle, broken by the pale
sickles of their horns, like so many thin moons, fallen ends-up. He
unlatched the farm gate stealthily. All was dark in the house. Muffling
his footsteps, he gained the porch, and, blotted against one of the yew
trees, looked up at Megan's window. It was open. Was she sleeping, or
lying awake perhaps, disturbed--unhappy at his absence? An owl hooted
while he stood there peering up, and the sound seemed to fill the whole
night, so quiet was all else, save for the never-ending murmur of the
stream running below the orchard. The cuckoos by day, and now the
owls--how wonderfully they voiced this troubled ecstasy within him! And
suddenly he saw her at her window, looking out. He moved a little from
the yew tree, and whispered: "Megan!" She drew back, vanished,
reappeared, leaning far down. He stole forward on the grass patch, hit
his shin against the green-painted chair, and held his breath at the
sound. The pale blur of her stretched-down arm and face did not stir; he
moved the chair, and noiselessly mounted it. By stretching up his arm he
could just reach. Her hand held the huge key of the front door, and he
clasped that burning hand with the cold key in it. He could just see her
face, the glint of teeth between her lips, her tumbled hair. She was
still dressed--poor child, sitting up for him, no doubt! "Pretty Megan!"
Her hot, roughened fingers clung to his; her face had a strange, lost
look. To have been able to reach it--even with his hand! The owl
hooted, a scent of sweetbriar crept into his nostrils. Then one of the
farm dogs barked; her grasp relaxed, she shrank back.
"Good-night, Megan!"
"Good-night, sir!" She was gone! With a sigh he dropped back to earth,
and sitting on that chair, took off his boots. Nothing for it but to
creep in and go to bed; yet for a long while he sat unmoving, his feet
chilly in the dew, drunk on the memory of her lost, half-smiling face,
and the clinging grip of her burning fingers, pressing the cold key into
his hand.
5
He awoke feeling as if he had eaten heavily overnight, instead of having
eaten nothing. And far off, unreal, seemed yesterday's romance! Yet it
was a golden morning. Full spring had burst at last--in one night the
"goldie-cups," as the little boys called them, seemed to have made the
field their own, and from his window he could see apple blossoms covering
the orchard as with a rose and white quilt. He went down almost dreading
to see Megan; and yet, when not she but Mrs. Narracombe brought in his
breakfast, he felt vexed and disappointed. The woman's quick eye and
snaky neck seemed to have a new alacrity this morning. Had she noticed?
"So you an' the moon went walkin' last night, Mr. Ashurst! Did ye have
your supper anywheres?"
Ashurst shook his head.
"We kept it for you, but I suppose you was too busy in your brain to
think o' such a thing as that?"
Was she mocking him, in that voice of hers, which still kept some Welsh
crispness against the invading burr of the West Country? If she knew!
And at that moment he thought: 'No, no; I'll clear out. I won't put
myself in such a beastly false position.'
But, after breakfast, the longing to see Megan began and increased with
every minute, together with fear lest something should have been said to
her which had spoiled everything. Sinister that she had not appeared,
not given him even a glimpse of her! And the love poem, whose
manufacture had been so important and absorbing yesterday afternoon under
the apple trees, now seemed so paltry that he tore it up and rolled it
into pipe spills. What had he known of love, till she seized his hand
and kissed it! And now--what did he not know? But to write of it seemed
mere insipidity! He went up to his bedroom to get a book, and his heart
began to beat violently, for she was in there making the bed. He stood
in the doorway watching; and suddenly, with turbulent joy, he saw her
stoop and kiss his pillow, just at the hollow made by his head last
night.
How let her know he had seen that pretty act of devotion? And yet, if
she heard him stealing away, it would be even worse. She took the pillow
up, holding it as if reluctant to shake out the impress of his cheek,
dropped it, and turned round.
"Megan!"
She put her hands up to her cheeks, but her eyes seemed to look right
into him. He had never before realised the depth and purity and touching
faithfulness in those dew-bright eyes, and he stammered:
"It was sweet of you to wait up for me last night."
She still said nothing, and he stammered on:
"I was wandering about on the moor; it was such a jolly night. I--I've
just come up for a book."
Then, the kiss he had seen her give the pillow afflicted him with sudden
headiness, and he went up to her. Touching her eyes with his lips, he
thought with queer excitement: 'I've done it! Yesterday all was
sudden--anyhow; but now--I've done it!' The girl let her forehead rest
against his lips, which moved downwards till they reached hers. That
first real lover's kiss-strange, wonderful, still almost innocent--in
which heart did it make the most disturbance?
"Come to the big apple tree to-night, after they've gone to bed.
Megan-promise!"
She whispered back: "I promise."
Then, scared at her white face, scared at everything, he let her go, and
went downstairs again. Yes! He had done it now! Accepted her love,
declared his own! He went out to the green chair as devoid of a book as
ever; and there he sat staring vacantly before him, triumphant and
remorseful, while under his nose and behind his back the work of the farm
went on. How long he had been sitting in that curious state of vacancy
he had no notion when he saw Joe standing a little behind him to the
right. The youth had evidently come from hard work in the fields, and
stood shifting his feet, breathing loudly, his face coloured like a
setting sun, and his arms, below the rolled-up sleeves of his blue shirt,
showing the hue and furry sheen of ripe peaches. His red lips were open,
his blue eyes with their flaxen lashes stared fixedly at Ashurst, who
said ironically:
"Well, Joe, anything I can do for you?"
"Yeas."
"What, then?"
"Yu can goo away from yere. Us don' want yu."
Ashurst's face, never too humble, assumed its most lordly look.
"Very good of you, but, do you know, I prefer the others should speak for
themselves."
The youth moved a pace or two nearer, and the scent of his honest heat
afflicted Ashurst's nostrils.
"What d'yu stay yere for?"
"Because it pleases me."
"Twon't please yu when I've bashed yure head in!"
"Indeed! When would you like to begin that?"
Joe answered only with the loudness of his breathing, but his eyes looked
like those of a young and angry bull. Then a sort of spasm seemed to
convulse his face.
"Megan don' want yu."
A rush of jealousy, of contempt, and anger with this thick,
loud-breathing rustic got the better of Ashurst's self-possession; he
jumped up, and pushed back his chair.
"You can go to the devil!"
And as he said those simple words, he saw Megan in the doorway with a
tiny brown spaniel puppy in her arms. She came up to him quickly:
"Its eyes are blue!" she said.
Joe turned away; the back of his neck was literally crimson.
Ashurst put his finger to the mouth of the little brown bullfrog of a
creature in her arms. How cosy it looked against her!
"It's fond of you already. Ah I Megan, everything is fond of you."
"What was Joe saying to you, please?"
"Telling me to go away, because you didn't want me here."
She stamped her foot; then looked up at Ashurst. At that adoring look he
felt his nerves quiver, just as if he had seen a moth scorching its
wings.
"To-night!" he said. "Don't forget!"
"No." And smothering her face against the puppy's little fat, brown
body, she slipped back into the house.
Ashurst wandered down the lane. At the gate of the wild meadow he came
on the lame man and his cows.
"Beautiful day, Jim!"
"Ah! 'Tes brave weather for the grass. The ashes be later than th' oaks
this year. 'When th' oak before th' ash---'"
Ashurst said idly: "Where were you standing when you saw the gipsy bogie,
Jim?"
"It might be under that big apple tree, as you might say."
"And you really do think it was there?"
The lame man answered cautiously:
"I shouldn't like to say rightly that 't was there. 'Twas in my mind as
'twas there."
"What do you make of it?"
The lame man lowered his voice.
"They du zay old master, Mist' Narracombe come o' gipsy stock. But
that's tellin'. They'm a wonderful people, yu know, for claimin' their
own. Maybe they knu 'e was goin', and sent this feller along for
company. That's what I've a-thought about it."
"What was he like?"
"'E 'ad 'air all over 'is face, an' goin' like this, he was, zame as if
'e 'ad a viddle. They zay there's no such thing as bogies, but I've
a-zeen the 'air on this dog standin' up of a dark naight, when I couldn'
zee nothin', meself."
"Was there a moon?"
"Yeas, very near full, but 'twas on'y just risen, gold-like be'ind them
trees."
"And you think a ghost means trouble, do you?"
The lame man pushed his hat up; his aspiring eyes looked at Ashurst more
earnestly than ever.
"'Tes not for me to zay that but 'tes they bein' so unrestin'like.
There's things us don' understand, that's zartin, for zure. There's
people that zee things, tu, an' others that don't never zee nothin'. Now,
our Joe--yu might putt anything under'is eyes an e'd never zee it; and
them other boys, tu, they'm rattlin' fellers. But yu take an' putt our
Megan where there's suthin', she'll zee it, an' more tu, or I'm
mistaken."
"She's sensitive, that's why."
"What's that?"
"I mean, she feels everything."
"Ah! She'm very lovin'-'earted."
Ashurst, who felt colour coming into his cheeks, held out his tobacco
pouch.
"Have a fill, Jim?"
"Thank 'ee, sir. She'm one in an 'underd, I think."
"I expect so," said Ashurst shortly, and folding up his pouch, walked on.
"Lovin'-hearted!" Yes! And what was he doing? What were his
intentions--as they say towards this loving-hearted girl? The thought
dogged him, wandering through fields bright with buttercups, where the
little red calves were feeding, and the swallows flying high. Yes, the
oaks were before the ashes, brown-gold already; every tree in different
stage and hue. The cuckoos and a thousand birds were singing; the little
streams were very bright. The ancients believed in a golden age, in the
garden of the Hesperides!... A queen wasp settled on his sleeve. Each
queen wasp killed meant two thousand fewer wasps to thieve the apples
which would grow from that blossom in the orchard; but who, with love in
his heart, could kill anything on a day like this? He entered a field
where a young red bull was feeding. It seemed to Ashurst that he looked
like Joe. But the young bull took no notice of this visitor, a little
drunk himself, perhaps, on the singing and the glamour of the golden
pasture, under his short legs. Ashurst crossed out unchallenged to the
hillside above the stream. From that slope a for mounted to its crown of
rocks. The ground there was covered with a mist of bluebells, and nearly
a score of crab-apple trees were in full bloom. He threw himself down on
the grass. The change from the buttercup glory and oak-goldened glamour
of the fields to this ethereal beauty under the grey for filled him with
a sort of wonder; nothing the same, save the sound of running water and
the songs of the cuckoos. He lay there a long time, watching the
sunlight wheel till the crab-trees threw shadows over the bluebells, his
only companions a few wild bees. He was not quite sane, thinking of that
morning's kiss, and of to-night under the apple tree. In such a spot as
this, fauns and dryads surely lived; nymphs, white as the crab-apple
blossom, retired within those trees; fauns, brown as the dead bracken,
with pointed ears, lay in wait for them. The cuckoos were still calling
when he woke, there was the sound of running water; but the sun had
couched behind the tor, the hillside was cool, and some rabbits had come
out. 'Tonight!' he thought. Just as from the earth everything was
pushing up, unfolding under the soft insistent fingers of an unseen hand,
so were his heart and senses being pushed, unfolded. He got up and broke
off a spray from a crab-apple tree. The buds were like
Megan--shell-like, rose-pink, wild, and fresh; and so, too, the opening
flowers, white, and wild; and touching. He put the spray into his coat.
And all the rush of the spring within him escaped in a triumphant sigh.
But the rabbits scurried away.
6
It was nearly eleven that night when Ashurst put down the pocket
"Odyssey" which for half an hour he had held in his hands without
reading, and slipped through the yard down to the orchard. The moon had
just risen, very golden, over the hill, and like a bright, powerful,
watching spirit peered through the bars of an ash tree's half-naked
boughs. In among the apple trees it was still dark, and he stood making
sure of his direction, feeling the rough grass with his feet. A black
mass close behind him stirred with a heavy grunting sound, and three
large pigs settled down again close to each other, under the wall. He
listened. There was no wind, but the stream's burbling whispering
chuckle had gained twice its daytime strength. One bird, he could not
tell what, cried "Pippip," "Pip-pip," with perfect monotony; he could
hear a night-Jar spinning very far off; an owl hooting. Ashurst moved a
step or two, and again halted, aware of a dim living whiteness all round
his head. On the dark unstirring trees innumerable flowers and buds all
soft and blurred were being bewitched to life by the creeping moonlight.
He had the oddest feeling of actual companionship, as if a million white
moths or spirits had floated in and settled between dark sky and darker
ground, and were opening and shutting their wings on a level with his
eyes. In the bewildering, still, scentless beauty of that moment he
almost lost memory of why he had come to the orchard. The flying glamour
which had clothed the earth all day had not gone now that night had
fallen, but only changed into this new form. He moved on through the
thicket of stems and boughs covered with that live powdering whiteness,
till he reached the big apple tree. No mistaking that, even in the dark,
nearly twice the height and size of any other, and leaning out towards
the open meadows and the stream. Under the thick branches he stood still
again, to listen. The same sounds exactly, and a faint grunting from the
sleepy pigs. He put his hands on the dry, almost warm tree trunk, whose
rough mossy surface gave forth a peaty scent at his touch. Would she
come--would she? And among these quivering, haunted, moon-witched trees
he was seized with doubts of everything! All was unearthly here, fit for
no earthly lovers; fit only for god and goddess, faun and nymph not for
him and this little country girl. Would it not be almost a relief if she
did not come? But all the time he was listening. And still that unknown
bird went "Pip-pip," "Pip-pip," and there rose the busy chatter of the
little trout stream, whereon the moon was flinging glances through the
bars of her tree-prison. The blossom on a level with his eyes seemed to
grow more living every moment, seemed with its mysterious white beauty
more and more a part of his suspense. He plucked a fragment and held it
close--three blossoms. Sacrilege to pluck fruit-tree blossom--soft,
sacred, young blossom--and throw it away! Then suddenly he heard the
gate close, the pigs stirring again and grunting; and leaning against the
trunk, he pressed his hands to its mossy sides behind him, and held his
breath. She might have been a spirit threading the trees, for all the
noise she made! Then he saw her quite close--her dark form part of a
little tree, her white face part of its blossom; so still, and peering
towards him. He whispered: "Megan!" and held out his hands. She ran
forward, straight to his breast. When he felt her heart beating against
him, Ashurst knew to the full the sensations of chivalry and passion.
Because she was not of his world, because she was so simple and young and
headlong, adoring and defenceless, how could he be other than her
protector, in the dark! Because she was all simple Nature and beauty, as
much a part of this spring night as was the living blossom, how should he
not take all that she would give him how not fulfil the spring in her
heart and his! And torn between these two emotions he clasped her close,
and kissed her hair. How long they stood there without speaking he knew
not. The stream went on chattering, the owls hooting, the moon kept
stealing up and growing whiter; the blossom all round them and above
brightened in suspense of living beauty. Their lips had sought each
other's, and they did not speak. The moment speech began all would be
unreal! Spring has no speech, nothing but rustling and whispering.
Spring has so much more than speech in its unfolding flowers and leaves,
and the coursing of its streams, and in its sweet restless seeking! And
sometimes spring will come alive, and, like a mysterious Presence stand,
encircling lovers with its arms, laying on them the fingers of
enchantment, so that, standing lips to lips, they forget everything but
just a kiss. While her heart beat against him, and her lips quivered on
his, Ashurst felt nothing but simple rapture--Destiny meant her for his
arms, Love could not be flouted! But when their lips parted for breath,
division began again at once. Only, passion now was so much the
stronger, and he sighed:
"Oh! Megan! Why did you come?" She looked up, hurt, amazed.
"Sir, you asked me to."
"Don't call me 'sir,' my pretty sweet." "What should I be callin" you?"
"Frank."
"I could not. Oh, no!"
"But you love me--don't you?"
"I could not help lovin' you. I want to be with you--that's all."
"All!"
So faint that he hardly heard, she whispered: "I shall die if I can't be
with you."
Ashurst took a mighty breath.
"Come and be with me, then!"
"Oh!"
Intoxicated by the awe and rapture in that "Oh!" he went on, whispering:
"We'll go to London. I'll show you the world.
"And I will take care of you, I promise, Megan. I'll never be a brute to
you!"
"If I can be with you--that is all."
He stroked her hair, and whispered on:
"To-morrow I'll go to Torquay and get some money, and get you some
clothes that won't be noticed, and then we'll steal away. And when we
get to London, soon perhaps, if you love me well enough, we'll be
married."
He could feel her hair shiver with the shake of her head.
"Oh, no! I could not. I only want to be with you!"
Drunk on his own chivalry, Ashurst went on murmuring, "It's I who am not
good enough for you. Oh! Megan, when did you begin to love me?"
"When I saw you in the road, and you looked at me. The first night I
loved you; but I never thought you would want me."
She slipped down suddenly to her knees, trying to kiss his feet.
A shiver of horror went through Ashurst; he lifted her up bodily and held
her fast--too upset to speak.
She whispered: "Why won't you let me?"
"It's I who will kiss your feet!"
Her smile brought tears into his eyes. The whiteness of her moonlit face
so close to his, the faint pink of her opened lips, had the living
unearthly beauty of the apple blossom.
And then, suddenly, her eyes widened and stared past him painfully; she
writhed out of his arms, and whispered: "Look!"
Ashurst saw nothing but the brightened stream, the furze faintly gilded,
the beech trees glistening, and behind them all the wide loom of the
moonlit hill. Behind him came her frozen whisper: "The gipsy bogie!"
"Where?"
"There--by the stone--under the trees!"
Exasperated, he leaped the stream, and strode towards the beech clump.
Prank of the moonlight! Nothing! In and out of the boulders and thorn
trees, muttering and cursing, yet with a kind of terror, he rushed and
stumbled. Absurd! Silly! Then he went back to the apple tree. But she
was gone; he could hear a rustle, the grunting of the pigs, the sound of
a gate closing. Instead of her, only this old apple tree! He flung his
arms round the trunk. What a substitute for her soft body; the rough
moss against his face--what a substitute for her soft cheek; only the
scent, as of the woods, a little the same! And above him, and around,
the blossoms, more living, more moonlit than ever, seemed to glow and
breathe.
7
Descending from the train at Torquay station, Ashurst wandered
uncertainly along the front, for he did not know this particular queen of
English watering places. Having little sense of what he had on, he was
quite unconscious of being remarkable among its inhabitants, and strode
along in his rough Norfolk jacket, dusty boots, and battered hat, without
observing that people gazed at him rather blankly. He was seeking a
branch of his London bank, and having found one, found also the first
obstacle to his mood. Did he know anyone in Torquay? No. In that case,
if he would wire to his bank in London, they would be happy to oblige him
on receipt of the reply. That suspicious breath from the matter-of-fact
world somewhat tarnished the brightness of his visions. But he sent the
telegram.
Nearly opposite to the post office he saw a shop full of ladies'
garments, and examined the window with strange sensations. To have to
undertake the clothing of his rustic love was more than a little
disturbing. He went in. A young woman came forward; she had blue eyes
and a faintly puzzled forehead. Ashurst stared at her in silence.
"Yes, sir?"
"I want a dress for a young lady."
The young woman smiled. Ashurst frowned the peculiarity of his request
struck him with sudden force.
The young woman added hastily:
"What style would you like--something modish?"
"No. Simple."
"What figure would the young lady be?"
"I don't know; about two inches shorter than you, I should say."
"Could you give me her waist measurement?"
Megan's waist!
"Oh! anything usual!"
"Quite!"
While she was gone he stood disconsolately eyeing the models in the
window, and suddenly it seemed to him incredible that Megan--his Megan
could ever be dressed save in the rough tweed skirt, coarse blouse, and
tam-o'-shanter cap he was wont to see her in. The young woman had come
back with several dresses in her arms, and Ashurst eyed her laying them
against her own modish figure. There was one whose colour he liked, a
dove-grey, but to imagine Megan clothed in it was beyond him. The young
woman went away, and brought some more. But on Ashurst there had now come
a feeling of paralysis. How choose? She would want a hat too, and
shoes, and gloves; and, suppose, when he had got them all, they
commonised her, as Sunday clothes always commonised village folk! Why
should she not travel as she was? Ah! But conspicuousness would matter;
this was a serious elopement. And, staring at the young woman, he
thought: 'I wonder if she guesses, and thinks me a blackguard?'
"Do you mind putting aside that grey one for me?" he said desperately at
last. "I can't decide now; I'll come in again this afternoon."
The young woman sighed.
"Oh! certainly. It's a very tasteful costume. I don't think you'll get
anything that will suit your purpose better."
"I expect not," Ashurst murmured, and went out.
Freed again from the suspicious matter-of-factness of the world, he took
a long breath, and went back to visions. In fancy he saw the trustful,
pretty creature who was going to join her life to his; saw himself and
her stealing forth at night, walking over the moor under the moon, he
with his arm round her, and carrying her new garments, till, in some
far-off wood, when dawn was coming, she would slip off her old things and
put on these, and an early train at a distant station would bear them
away on their honeymoon journey, till London swallowed them up, and the
dreams of love came true.
"Frank Ashurst! Haven't seen you since Rugby, old chap!"
Ashurst's frown dissolved; the face, close to his own, was blue-eyed,
suffused with sun--one of those faces where sun from within and without
join in a sort of lustre. And he answered:
"Phil Halliday, by Jove!"
"What are you doing here?"
"Oh! nothing. Just looking round, and getting some money. I'm staying
on the moor."
"Are you lunching anywhere? Come and lunch with us; I'm here with my
young sisters. They've had measles."
Hooked in by that friendly arm Ashurst went along, up a hill, down a
hill, away out of the town, while the voice of Halliday, redolent of
optimism as his face was of sun, explained how "in this mouldy place the
only decent things were the bathing and boating," and so on, till
presently they came to a crescent of houses a little above and back from
the sea, and into the centre one an hotel--made their way.
"Come up to my room and have a wash. Lunch'll be ready in a jiffy."
Ashurst contemplated his visage in a looking-glass. After his farmhouse
bedroom, the comb and one spare shirt regime of the last fortnight, this
room littered with clothes and brushes was a sort of Capua; and he
thought: 'Queer--one doesn't realise But what--he did not quite know.
When he followed Halliday into the sitting room for lunch, three faces,
very fair and blue-eyed, were turned suddenly at the words: "This is
Frank Ashurst my young sisters."
Two were indeed young, about eleven and ten. The third was perhaps
seventeen, tall and fair-haired too, with pink-and-white cheeks just
touched by the sun, and eyebrows, rather darker than the hair, running a
little upwards from her nose to their outer points. The voices of all
three were like Halliday's, high and cheerful; they stood up straight,
shook hands with a quick movement, looked at Ashurst critically, away
again at once, and began to talk of what they were going to do in the
afternoon. A regular Diana and attendant nymphs! After the farm this
crisp, slangy, eager talk, this cool, clean, off-hand refinement, was
queer at first, and then so natural that what he had come from became
suddenly remote. The names of the two little ones seemed to be Sabina
and Freda; of the eldest, Stella.
Presently the one called Sabina turned to him and said:
"I say, will you come shrimping with us?--it's awful fun!"
Surprised by this unexpected friendliness, Ashurst murmured:
"I'm afraid I've got to get back this afternoon."
"Oh!"
"Can't you put it off?"
Ashurst turned to the new speaker, Stella, shook his head, and smiled.
She was very pretty! Sabina said regretfully: "You might!" Then the talk
switched off to caves and swimming.
"Can you swim far?"
"About two miles."
"Oh!"
"I say!"
"How jolly!"
The three pairs of blue eyes, fixed on him, made him conscious of his new
importance--The sensation was agreeable. Halliday said:
"I say, you simply must stop and have a bathe. You'd better stay the
night."
"Yes, do!"'
But again Ashurst smiled and shook his head. Then suddenly he found
himself being catechised about his physical achievements. He had
rowed--it seemed--in his college boat, played in his college football
team, won his college mile; and he rose from table a sort of hero. The
two little girls insisted that he must see "their" cave, and they set
forth chattering like magpies, Ashurst between them, Stella and her
brother a little behind. In the cave, damp and darkish like any other
cave, the great feature was a pool with possibility of creatures which
might be caught and put into bottles. Sabina and Freda, who wore no
stockings on their shapely brown legs, exhorted Ashurst to join them in
the middle of it, and help sieve the water. He too was soon bootless and
sockless. Time goes fast for one who has a sense of beauty, when there
are pretty children in a pool and a young Diana on the edge, to receive
with wonder anything you can catch! Ashurst never had much sense of
time. It was a shock when, pulling out his watch, he saw it was well
past three. No cashing his cheque to-day-the bank would be closed before
he could get there. Watching his expression, the little girls cried out
at once:
"Hurrah! Now you'll have to stay!"
Ashurst did not answer. He was seeing again Megan's face, when at
breakfast time he had whispered: "I'm going to Torquay, darling, to get
everything; I shall be back this evening. If it's fine we can go
to-night. Be ready." He was seeing again how she quivered and hung on
his words. What would she think? Then he pulled himself together,
conscious suddenly of the calm scrutiny of this other young girl, so tall
and fair and Diana-like, at the edge of the pool, of her wondering blue
eyes under those brows which slanted up a little. If they knew what was
in his mind--if they knew that this very night he had meant! Well, there
would be a little sound of disgust, and he would be alone in the cave.
And with a curious mixture of anger, chagrin, and shame, he put his watch
back into his pocket and said abruptly:
"Yes; I'm dished for to-day."
"Hurrah! Now you can bathe with us."
It was impossible not to succumb a little to the contentment of these
pretty children, to the smile on Stella's lips, to Halliday's "Ripping,
old chap! I can lend you things for the night!" But again a spasm of
longing and remorse throbbed through Ashurst, and he said moodily:
"I must send a wire!"
The attractions of the pool palling, they went back to the hotel. Ashurst
sent his wire, addressing it to Mrs. Narracombe: "Sorry, detained for the
night, back to-morrow." Surely Megan would understand that he had too
much to do; and his heart grew lighter. It was a lovely afternoon, warm,
the sea calm and blue, and swimming his great passion; the favour of
these pretty children flattered him, the pleasure of looking at them, at
Stella, at Halliday's sunny face; the slight unreality, yet extreme
naturalness of it all--as of a last peep at normality before he took this
plunge with Megan! He got his borrowed bathing dress, and they all set
forth. Halliday and he undressed behind one rock, the three girls behind
another. He was first into the sea, and at once swam out with the
bravado of justifying his self-given reputation. When he turned he could
see Halliday swimming along shore, and the girls flopping and dipping,
and riding the little waves, in the way he was accustomed to despise, but
now thought pretty and sensible, since it gave him the distinction of the
only deep-water fish. But drawing near, he wondered if they would like
him, a stranger, to come into their splashing group; he felt shy,
approaching that slim nymph. Then Sabina summoned him to teach her to
float, and between them the little girls kept him so busy that he had no
time even to notice whether Stella was accustomed to his presence, till
suddenly he heard a startled sound from her: She was standing submerged
to the waist, leaning a little forward, her slim white arms stretched out
and pointing, her wet face puckered by the sun and an expression of fear.
"Look at Phil! Is he all right? Oh, look!"
Ashurst saw at once that Phil was not all right. He was splashing and
struggling out of his depth, perhaps a hundred yards away; suddenly he
gave a cry, threw up his arms, and went down. Ashurst saw the girl
launch herself towards him, and crying out: "Go back, Stella! Go back!"
he dashed out. He had never swum so fast, and reached Halliday just as
he was coming up a second time. It was a case of cramp, but to get him
in was not difficult, for he did not struggle. The girl, who had stopped
where Ashurst told her to, helped as soon as he was in his depth, and
once on the beach they sat down one on each side of him to rub his limbs,
while the little ones stood by with scared faces. Halliday was soon
smiling. It was--he said--rotten of him, absolutely rotten! If Frank
would give him an arm, he could get to his clothes all right now.
Ashurst gave him the arm, and as he did so caught sight of Stella's face,
wet and flushed and tearful, all broken up out of its calm; and he
thought: 'I called her Stella! Wonder if she minded?'
While they were dressing, Halliday said quietly, "You saved my life, old
chap!"
"Rot!"
Clothed, but not quite in their right minds, they went up all together to
the hotel and sat down to tea, except Halliday, who was lying down in his
room. After some slices of bread and jam, Sabina said:
"I say, you know, you are a brick!" And Freda chimed in:
"Rather!"
Ashurst saw Stella looking down; he got up in confusion, and went to the
window. From there he heard Sabina mutter: "I say, let's swear blood
bond. Where's your knife, Freda?" and out of the corner of his eye
could see each of them solemnly prick herself, squeeze out a drop of
blood and dabble on a bit of paper. He turned and made for the door.
"Don't be a stoat! Come back!" His arms were seized; imprisoned between
the little girls he was brought back to the table. On it lay a piece of
paper with an effigy drawn in blood, and the three names Stella Halliday,
Sabina Halliday, Freda Halliday--also in blood, running towards it like
the rays of a star. Sabina said:
"That's you. We shall have to kiss you, you know."
And Freda echoed:
"Oh! Blow--Yes!"
Before Ashurst could escape, some wettish hair dangled against his face,
something like a bite descended on his nose, he felt his left arm
pinched, and other teeth softly searching his cheek. Then he was
released, and Freda said:
"Now, Stella."
Ashurst, red and rigid, looked across the table at a red and rigid
Stella. Sabina giggled; Freda cried:
"Buck up--it spoils everything!"
A queer, ashamed eagerness shot through Ashurst: then he said quietly:
"Shut up, you little demons!"
Again Sabina giggled.
"Well, then, she can kiss her hand, and you can put it against your nose.
It is on one side!"
To his amazement the girl did kiss her hand and stretch it out. Solemnly
he took that cool, slim hand and laid it to his cheek. The two little
girls broke into clapping, and Freda said:
"Now, then, we shall have to save your life at any time; that's settled.
Can I have another cup, Stella, not so beastly weak?" Tea was resumed,
and Ashurst, folding up the paper, put it in his pocket. The talk turned
on the advantages of measles, tangerine oranges, honey in a spoon, no
lessons, and so forth. Ashurst listened, silent, exchanging friendly
looks with Stella, whose face was again of its normal sun-touched pink
and white. It was soothing to be so taken to the heart of this jolly
family, fascinating to watch their faces. And after tea, while the two
little girls pressed seaweed, he talked to Stella in the window seat and
looked at her water-colour sketches. The whole thing was like a
pleasurable dream; time and incident hung up, importance and reality
suspended. Tomorrow he would go back to Megan, with nothing of all this
left save the paper with the blood of these children, in his pocket.
Children! Stella was not quite that--as old as Megan! Her talk--quick,
rather hard and shy, yet friendly--seemed to flourish on his silences,
and about her there was something cool and virginal--a maiden in a bower.
At dinner, to which Halliday, who had swallowed too much sea-water, did
not come, Sabina said:
"I'm going to call you Frank."
Freda echoed:
"Frank, Frank, Franky."
Ashurst grinned and bowed.
"Every time Stella calls you Mr. Ashurst, she's got to pay a forfeit.
It's ridiculous."
Ashurst looked at Stella, who grew slowly red. Sabina giggled; Freda
cried:
"She's 'smoking'--'smoking!'--Yah!"
Ashurst reached out to right and left, and grasped some fair hair in each
hand.
"Look here," he said, "you two! Leave Stella alone, or I'll tie you
together!"
Freda gurgled:
"Ouch! You are a beast!"
Sabina murmured cautiously:
"You call her Stella, you see!"
"Why shouldn't I? It's a jolly name!"
"All right; we give you leave to!"
Ashurst released the hair. Stella! What would she call him--after this?
But she called him nothing; till at bedtime he said, deliberately:
"Good-night, Stella!"
"Good-night, Mr.----Good-night, Frank! It was jolly of you, you know!"
"Oh-that! Bosh!"
Her quick, straight handshake tightened suddenly, and as suddenly became
slack.
Ashurst stood motionless in the empty sitting-room. Only last night,
under the apple tree and the living blossom, he had held Megan to him,
kissing her eyes and lips. And he gasped, swept by that rush of
remembrance. To-night it should have begun-his life with her who only
wanted to be with him! And now, twenty-four hours and more must pass,
because-of not looking at his watch! Why had he made friends with this
family of innocents just when he was saying good-bye to innocence, and
all the rest of it? 'But I mean to marry her,' he thought; 'I told her
so!'
He took a candle, lighted it, and went to his bedroom, which was next to
Halliday's. His friend's voice called, as he was passing:
"Is that you, old chap? I say, come in."
He was sitting up in bed, smoking a pipe and reading.
"Sit down a bit."
Ashurst sat down by the open window.
"I've been thinking about this afternoon, you know," said Halliday rather
suddenly. "They say you go through all your past. I didn't. I suppose I
wasn't far enough gone."
"What did you think of?"
Halliday was silent for a little, then said quietly
"Well, I did think of one thing--rather odd--of a girl at Cambridge that
I might have--you know; I was glad I hadn't got her on my mind. Anyhow,
old chap, I owe it to you that I'm here; I should have been in the big
dark by now. No more bed, or baccy; no more anything. I say, what d'you
suppose happens to us?"
Ashurst murmured:
"Go out like flames, I expect."
"Phew!"
"We may flicker, and cling about a bit, perhaps."
"H'm! I think that's rather gloomy. I say, I hope my young sisters have
been decent to you?"
"Awfully decent."
Halliday put his pipe down, crossed his hands behind his neck, and turned
his face towards the window.
"They're not bad kids!" he said.
Watching his friend, lying there, with that smile, and the candle-light
on his face, Ashurst shuddered. Quite true! He might have been lying
there with no smile, with all that sunny look gone out for ever! He
might not have been lying there at all, but "sanded" at the bottom of the
sea, waiting for resurrection on the ninth day, was it? And that smile of
Halliday's seemed to him suddenly something wonderful, as if in it were
all the difference between life and death--the little flame--the all! He
got up, and said softly:
"Well, you ought to sleep, I expect. Shall I blow out?"
Halliday caught his hand.
"I can't say it, you know; but it must be rotten to be dead. Good-night,
old boy!"
Stirred and moved, Ashurst squeezed the hand, and went downstairs. The
hall door was still open, and he passed out on to the lawn before the
Crescent. The stars were bright in a very dark blue sky, and by their
light some lilacs had that mysterious colour of flowers by night which no
one can describe. Ashurst pressed his face against a spray; and before
his closed eyes Megan started up, with the tiny brown spaniel pup against
her breast. "I thought of a girl that I might have you know. I was glad
I hadn't got her on my mind!" He jerked his head away from the lilac,
and began pacing up and down over the grass, a grey phantom coming to
substance for a moment in the light from the lamp at either end. He was
with her again under the living, breathing white ness of the blossom, the
stream chattering by, the moon glinting steel-blue on the bathing-pool;
back in the rapture of his kisses on her upturned face of innocence and
humble passion, back in the suspense and beauty of that pagan night. He
stood still once more in the shadow of the lilacs. Here the sea, not the
stream, was Night's voice; the sea with its sigh and rustle; no little
bird, no owl, no night-Jar called or spun; but a piano tinkled, and the
white houses cut the sky with solid curve, and the scent from the lilacs
filled the air. A window of the hotel, high up, was lighted; he saw a
shadow move across the blind. And most queer sensations stirred within
him, a sort of churning, and twining, and turning of a single emotion on
itself, as though spring and love, bewildered and confused, seeking the
way, were baffled. This girl, who had called him Frank, whose hand had
given his that sudden little clutch, this girl so cool and pure--what
would she think of such wild, unlawful loving? He sank down on the
grass, sitting there cross-legged, with his back to the house, motionless
as some carved Buddha. Was he really going to break through innocence,
and steal? Sniff the scent out of a wild flower, and--perhaps--throw it
away? "Of a girl at Cambridge that I might have--you know!" He put his
hands to the grass, one on each side, palms downwards, and pressed; it
was just warm still--the grass, barely moist, soft and firm and friendly.
'What am I going to do?' he thought. Perhaps Megan was at her window,
looking out at the blossom, thinking of him! Poor little Megan! 'Why
not?' he thought. 'I love her! But do I really love her? or do I only
want her because she is so pretty, and loves me? What am I going to do?'
The piano tinkled on, the stars winked; and Ashurst gazed out before him
at the dark sea, as if spell-bound. He got up at last, cramped and
rather chilly. There was no longer light in any window. And he went in
to bed.
Out of a deep and dreamless sleep he was awakened by the sound of
thumping on the door. A shrill voice called:
"Hi! Breakfast's ready."
He jumped up. Where was he--? Ah!
He found them already eating marmalade, and sat down in the empty place
between Stella and Sabina, who, after watching him a little, said:
"I say, do buck up; we're going to start at half-past nine."
"We're going to Berry Head, old chap; you must come!"
Ashurst thought: 'Come! Impossible. I shall be getting things and going
back.' He looked at Stella. She said quickly:
"Do come!"
Sabina chimed in:
"It'll be no fun without you."
Freda got up and stood behind his chair.
"You've got to come, or else I'll pull your hair!"
Ashurst thought: 'Well--one day more--to think it over! One day more!'
And he said:
"All right! You needn't tweak my mane!"
"Hurrah!"
At the station he wrote a second telegram to the farm, and then tore it
up; he could not have explained why. From Brixham they drove in a very
little wagonette. There, squeezed between Sabina and Freda, with his
knees touching Stella's, they played "Up, Jenkins "; and the gloom he was
feeling gave way to frolic. In this one day more to think it over, he
did not want to think! They ran races, wrestled, paddled--for to-day
nobody wanted to bathe--they sang catches, played games, and ate all they
had brought. The little girls fell asleep against him on the way back,
and his knees still touched Stella's in the narrow wagonette. It seemed
incredible that thirty hours ago he had never set eyes on any of those
three flaxen heads. In the train he talked to Stella of poetry,
discovering her favourites, and telling her his own with a pleasing sense
of superiority; till suddenly she said, rather low:
"Phil says you don't believe in a future life, Frank. I think that's
dreadful."
Disconcerted, Ashurst muttered:
"I don't either believe or not believe--I simply don't know."
She said quickly:
"I couldn't bear that. What would be the use of living?"
Watching the frown of those pretty oblique brows, Ashurst answered:
"I don't believe in believing things because a one wants to."
"But why should one wish to live again, if one isn't going to?"
And she looked full at him.
He did not want to hurt her, but an itch to dominate pushed him on to
say:
"While one's alive one naturally wants to go on living for ever; that's
part of being alive. But it probably isn't anything more."
"Don't you believe in the Bible at all, then?"
Ashurst thought: 'Now I shall really hurt her!'
"I believe in the Sermon on the Mount, because it's beautiful and good
for all time."
"But don't you believe Christ was divine?"
He shook his head.
She turned her face quickly to the window, and there sprang into his mind
Megan's prayer, repeated by little Nick: "God bless us all, and Mr.
Ashes!" Who else would ever say a prayer for him, like her who at this
moment must be waiting--waiting to see him come down the lane? And he
thought suddenly: 'What a scoundrel I am!'
All that evening this thought kept coming back; but, as is not unusual,
each time with less poignancy, till it seemed almost a matter of course
to be a scoundrel. And--strange!--he did not know whether he was a
scoundrel if he meant to go back to Megan, or if he did not mean to go
back to her.
They played cards till the children were sent off to bed; then Stella
went to the piano. From over on the window seat, where it was nearly
dark, Ashurst watched her between the candles--that fair head on the
long, white neck bending to the movement of her hands. She played
fluently, without much expression; but what a Picture she made, the faint
golden radiance, a sort of angelic atmosphere hovering about her! Who
could have passionate thoughts or wild desires in the presence of that
swaying, white-clothed girl with the seraphic head? She played a thing of
Schumann's called "Warum?" Then Halliday brought out a flute, and the
spell was broken. After this they made Ashurst sing, Stella playing him
accompaniments from a book of Schumann songs, till, in the middle of "Ich
grolle nicht," two small figures clad in blue dressing-gowns crept in and
tried to conceal themselves beneath the piano. The evening broke up in
confusion, and what Sabina called "a splendid rag."
That night Ashurst hardly slept at all. He was thinking, tossing and
turning. The intense domestic intimacy of these last two days, the
strength of this Halliday atmosphere, seemed to ring him round, and make
the farm and Megan--even Megan--seem unreal. Had he really made love to
her--really promised to take her away to live with him? He must have
been bewitched by the spring, the night, the apple blossom! This May
madness could but destroy them both! The notion that he was going to
make her his mistress--that simple child not yet eighteen--now filled him
with a sort of horror, even while it still stung and whipped his blood.
He muttered to himself: "It's awful, what I've done--awful!" And the
sound of Schumann's music throbbed and mingled with his fevered thoughts,
and he saw again Stella's cool, white, fair-haired figure and bending
neck, the queer, angelic radiance about her. 'I must have been--I must
be-mad!' he thought. 'What came into me? Poor little Megan!' "God
bless us all, and Mr. Ashes!" "I want to be with you--only to be with
you!" And burying his face in his pillow, he smothered down a fit of
sobbing. Not to go back was awful! To go back--more awful still!
Emotion, when you are young, and give real vent to it, loses its power of
torture. And he fell asleep, thinking: 'What was it--a few kisses--all
forgotten in a month!'
Next morning he got his cheque cashed, but avoided the shop of the
dove-grey dress like the plague; and, instead, bought himself some
necessaries. He spent the whole day in a queer mood, cherishing a kind
of sullenness against himself. Instead of the hankering of the last two
days, he felt nothing but a blank--all passionate longing gone, as if
quenched in that outburst of tears. After tea Stella put a book down
beside him, and said shyly:
"Have you read that, Frank?"
It was Farrar's "Life of Christ." Ashurst smiled. Her anxiety about his
beliefs seemed to him comic, but touching. Infectious too, perhaps, for
he began to have an itch to justify himself, if not to convert her. And
in the evening, when the children and Halliday were mending their
shrimping nets, he said:
"At the back of orthodox religion, so far as I can see, there's always
the idea of reward--what you can get for being good; a kind of begging
for favours. I think it all starts in fear."
She was sitting on the sofa making reefer knots with a bit of string. She
looked up quickly:
"I think it's much deeper than that."
Ashurst felt again that wish to dominate.
"You think so," he said; "but wanting the 'quid pro quo' is about the
deepest thing in all of us! It's jolly hard to get to the bottom of it!"
She wrinkled her brows in a puzzled frown.
"I don't think I understand."
He went on obstinately:
"Well, think, and see if the most religious people aren't those who feel
that this life doesn't give them all they want. I believe in being good
because to be good is good in itself."
"Then you do believe in being good?"
How pretty she looked now--it was easy to be good with her! And he
nodded and said:
"I say, show me how to make that knot!"
With her fingers touching his, in manoeuvring the bit of string, he felt
soothed and happy. And when he went to bed he wilfully kept his thoughts
on her, wrapping himself in her fair, cool sisterly radiance, as in some
garment of protection.
Next day he found they had arranged to go by train to Totnes, and picnic
at Berry Pomeroy Castle. Still in that resolute oblivion of the past, he
took his place with them in the landau beside Halliday, back to the
horses. And, then, along the sea front, nearly at the turning to the
railway station, his heart almost leaped into his mouth. Megan--Megan
herself!--was walking on the far pathway, in her old skirt and jacket and
her tam-o'-shanter, looking up into the faces of the passers-by.
Instinctively he threw his hand up for cover, then made a feint of
clearing dust out of his eyes; but between his fingers he could see her
still, moving, not with her free country step, but wavering,
lost-looking, pitiful-like some little dog which has missed its master
and does not know whether to run on, to run back--where to run. How had
she come like this?--what excuse had she found to get away?--what did she
hope for? But with every turn of the wheels bearing him away from her,
his heart revolted and cried to him to stop them, to get out, and go to
her! When the landau turned the corner to the station he could stand it
no more, and opening the carriage door, muttered: "I've forgotten
something! Go on--don't wait for me! I'll join you at the castle by the
next train!" He jumped, stumbled, spun round, recovered his balance, and
walked forward, while the carriage with the astonished Hallidays rolled
on.
From the corner he could only just see Megan, a long way ahead now. He
ran a few steps, checked himself, and dropped into a walk. With each
step nearer to her, further from the Hallidays, he walked more and more
slowly. How did it alter anything--this sight of her? How make the
going to her, and that which must come of it, less ugly? For there was no
hiding it--since he had met the Hallidays he had become gradually sure
that he would not marry Megan. It would only be a wild love-time, a
troubled, remorseful, difficult time--and then--well, then he would get
tired, just because she gave him everything, was so simple, and so
trustful, so dewy. And dew--wears off! The little spot of faded colour,
her tam-o'-shanter cap, wavered on far in front of him; she was looking
up into every face, and at the house windows. Had any man ever such a
cruel moment to go through? Whatever he did, he felt he would be a
beast. And he uttered a groan which made a nursemaid turn and stare. He
saw Megan stop and lean against the sea-wall, looking at the sea; and he
too stopped. Quite likely she had never seen the sea before, and even in
her distress could not resist that sight. 'Yes-she's seen nothing,' he
thought; 'everything's before her. And just for a few weeks' passion, I
shall be cutting her life to ribbons. I'd better go and hang myself
rather than do it!' And suddenly he seemed to see Stella's calm eyes
looking into his, the wave of fluffy hair on her forehead stirred by the
wind. Ah! it would be madness, would mean giving up all that he
respected, and his own self-respect. He turned and walked quickly back
towards the station. But memory of that poor, bewildered little figure,
those anxious eyes searching the passers-by, smote him too hard again,
and once more he turned towards the sea.
The cap was no longer visible; that little spot of colour had vanished in
the stream of the noon promenaders. And impelled by the passion of
longing, the dearth which comes on one when life seems to be whirling
something out of reach, he hurried forward. She was nowhere to be seen;
for half an hour he looked for her; then on the beach flung himself face
downward in the sand. To find her again he knew he had only to go to the
station and wait till she returned from her fruitless quest, to take her
train home; or to take train himself and go back to the farm, so that she
found him there when she returned. But he lay inert in the sand, among
the indifferent groups of children with their spades and buckets. Pity
at her little figure wandering, seeking, was well-nigh merged in the
spring-running of his blood; for it was all wild feeling now--the
chivalrous part, what there had been of it, was gone. He wanted her
again, wanted her kisses, her soft, little body, her abandonment, all her
quick, warm, pagan emotion; wanted the wonderful feeling of that night
under the moonlit apple boughs; wanted it all with a horrible intensity,
as the faun wants the nymph. The quick chatter of the little bright
trout-stream, the dazzle of the buttercups, the rocks of the old "wild
men"; the calling of the cuckoos and yaffles, the hooting of the owls;
and the red moon peeping out of the velvet dark at the living whiteness
of the blossom; and her face just out of reach at the window, lost in its
love-look; and her heart against his, her lips answering his, under the
apple tree--all this besieged him. Yet he lay inert. What was it which
struggled against pity and this feverish longing, and kept him there
paralysed in the warm sand? Three flaxen heads--a fair face with friendly
blue--grey eyes, a slim hand pressing his, a quick voice speaking his
name--"So you do believe in being good?" Yes, and a sort of atmosphere
as of some old walled-in English garden, with pinks, and cornflowers, and
roses, and scents of lavender and lilaccool and fair, untouched, almost
holy--all that he had been brought up to feel was clean and good. And
suddenly he thought: 'She might come along the front again and see me!'
and he got up and made his way to the rock at the far end of the beach.
There, with the spray biting into his face, he could think more coolly.
To go back to the farm and love Megan out in the woods, among the rocks,
with everything around wild and fitting--that, he knew, was impossible,
utterly. To transplant her to a great town, to keep, in some little flat
or rooms, one who belonged so wholly to Nature--the poet in him shrank
from it. His passion would be a mere sensuous revel, soon gone; in
London, her very simplicity, her lack of all intellectual quality, would
make her his secret plaything--nothing else. The longer he sat on the
rock, with his feet dangling over a greenish pool from which the sea was
ebbing, the more clearly he saw this; but it was as if her arms and all
of her were slipping slowly, slowly down from him, into the pool, to be
carried away out to sea; and her face looking up, her lost face with
beseeching eyes, and dark, wet hair-possessed, haunted, tortured him! He
got up at last, scaled the low rock-cliff, and made his way down into a
sheltered cove. Perhaps in the sea he could get back his control--lose
this fever! And stripping off his clothes, he swam out. He wanted to
tire himself so that nothing mattered and swam recklessly, fast and far;
then suddenly, for no reason, felt afraid. Suppose he could not reach
shore again--suppose the current set him out--or he got cramp, like
Halliday! He turned to swim in. The red cliffs looked a long way off.
If he were drowned they would find his clothes. The Hallidays would
know; but Megan perhaps never--they took no newspaper at the farm. And
Phil Halliday's words came back to him again: "A girl at Cambridge I
might have Glad I haven't got her on my mind!" And in that moment of
unreasoning fear he vowed he would not have her on his mind. Then his
fear left him; he swam in easily enough, dried himself in the sun, and
put on his clothes. His heart felt sore, but no longer ached; his body
cool and refreshed.
When one is as young as Ashurst, pity is not a violent emotion. And,
back in the Hallidays' sitting-room, eating a ravenous tea, he felt much
like a man recovered from fever. Everything seemed new and clear; the
tea, the buttered toast and jam tasted absurdly good; tobacco had never
smelt so nice. And walking up and down the empty room, he stopped here
and there to touch or look. He took up Stella's work-basket, fingered
the cotton reels and a gaily-coloured plait of sewing silks, smelt at the
little bag filled with woodroffe she kept among them. He sat down at the
piano, playing tunes with one finger, thinking: 'To-night she'll play; I
shall watch her while she's playing; it does me good to watch her.' He
took up the book, which still lay where she had placed it beside him, and
tried to read. But Megan's little, sad figure began to come back at
once, and he got up and leaned in the window, listening to the thrushes
in the Crescent gardens, gazing at the sea, dreamy and blue below the
trees. A servant came in and cleared the tea away, and he still stood,
inhaling the evening air, trying not to think. Then he saw the Hallidays
coming through the gate of the Crescent, Stella a little in front of Phil
and the children, with their baskets, and instinctively he drew back.
His heart, too sore and discomfited, shrank from this encounter, yet
wanted its friendly solace--bore a grudge against this influence, yet
craved its cool innocence, and the pleasure of watching Stella's face.
From against the wall behind the piano he saw her come in and stand
looking a little blank as though disappointed; then she saw him and
smiled, a swift, brilliant smile which warmed yet irritated Ashurst.
"You never came after us, Frank."
"No; I found I couldn't."
"Look! We picked such lovely late violets!" She held out a bunch.
Ashurst put his nose to them, and there stirred within him vague
longings, chilled instantly by a vision of Megan's anxious face lifted to
the faces of the passers-by.
He said shortly: "How jolly!" and turned away. He went up to his room,
and, avoiding the children, who were coming up the stairs, threw himself
on his bed, and lay there with his arms crossed over his face. Now that
he felt the die really cast, and Megan given up, he hated himself, and
almost hated the Hallidays and their atmosphere of healthy, happy English
homes.
Why should they have chanced here, to drive away first love--to show him
that he was going to be no better than a common seducer? What right had
Stella, with her fair, shy beauty, to make him know for certain that he
would never marry Megan; and, tarnishing it all, bring him such
bitterness of regretful longing and such pity? Megan would be back by
now, worn out by her miserable seeking--poor little thing!--expecting,
perhaps, to find him there when she reached home. Ashurst bit at his
sleeve, to stifle a groan of remorseful longing. He went to dinner glum
and silent, and his mood threw a dinge even over the children. It was a
melancholy, rather ill tempered evening, for they were all tired; several
times he caught Stella looking at him with a hurt, puzzled expression,
and this pleased his evil mood. He slept miserably; got up quite early,
and wandered out. He went down to the beach. Alone there with the
serene, the blue, the sunlit sea, his heart relaxed a little. Conceited
fool--to think that Megan would take it so hard! In a week or two she
would almost have forgotten! And he well, he would have the reward of
virtue! A good young man! If Stella knew, she would give him her
blessing for resisting that devil she believed in; and he uttered a hard
laugh. But slowly the peace and beauty of sea and sky, the flight of the
lonely seagulls, made him feel ashamed. He bathed, and turned homewards.
In the Crescent gardens Stella herself was sitting on a camp stool,
sketching. He stole up close behind. How fair and pretty she was, bent
diligently, holding up her brush, measuring, wrinkling her brows.
He said gently:
"Sorry I was such a beast last night, Stella."
She turned round, startled, flushed very pink, and said in her quick way:
"It's all right. I knew there was something. Between friends it doesn't
matter, does it?"
Ashurst answered:
"Between friends--and we are, aren't we?"
She looked up at him, nodded vehemently, and her upper teeth gleamed
again in that swift, brilliant smile.
Three days later he went back to London, travelling with the Hallidays.
He had not written to the farm. What was there he could say?
On the last day of April in the following year he and Stella were
married....
Such were Ashurst's memories, sitting against the wall among the gorse,
on his silver-wedding day. At this very spot, where he had laid out the
lunch, Megan must have stood outlined against the sky when he had first
caught sight of her. Of all queer coincidences! And there moved in him a
longing to go down and see again the farm and the orchard, and the meadow
of the gipsy bogle. It would not take long; Stella would be an hour yet,
perhaps.
How well he remembered it all--the little crowning group of pine trees,
the steep-up grass hill behind! He paused at the farm gate. The low
stone house, the yew-tree porch, the flowering currants--not changed a
bit; even the old green chair was out there on the grass under the
window, where he had reached up to her that night to take the key. Then
he turned down the lane, and stood leaning on the orchard gate-grey
skeleton of a gate, as then. A black pig even was wandering in there
among the trees. Was it true that twenty-six years had passed, or had he
dreamed and awakened to find Megan waiting for him by the big apple tree?
Unconsciously he put up his hand to his grizzled beard and brought
himself back to reality. Opening the gate, he made his way down through
the docks and nettles till he came to the edge, and the old apple tree
itself. Unchanged! A little more of the greygreen lichen, a dead branch
or two, and for the rest it might have been only last night that he had
embraced that mossy trunk after Megan's flight and inhaled its woody
savour, while above his head the moonlit blossom had seemed to breathe
and live. In that early spring a few buds were showing already; the
blackbirds shouting their songs, a cuckoo calling, the sunlight bright
and warm. Incredibly the same-the chattering trout-stream, the narrow
pool he had lain in every morning, splashing the water over his flanks
and chest; and out there in the wild meadow the beech clump and the stone
where the gipsy bogie was supposed to sit. And an ache for lost youth, a
hankering, a sense of wasted love and sweetness, gripped Ashurst by the
throat. Surely, on this earth of such wild beauty, one was meant to hold
rapture to one's heart, as this earth and sky held it! And yet, one
could not!
He went to the edge of the stream, and looking down at the little pool,
thought: 'Youth and spring! What has become of them all, I wonder?'
And then, in sudden fear of having this memory jarred by human encounter,
he went back to the lane, and pensively retraced his steps to the
crossroads.
Beside the car an old, grey-bearded labourer was leaning on a stick,
talking to the chauffeur. He broke off at once, as though guilty of
disrespect, and touching his hat, prepared to limp on down the lane.
Ashurst pointed to the narrow green mound. "Can you tell me what this
is?"
The old fellow stopped; on his face had come a look as though he were
thinking: 'You've come to the right shop, mister!'
"'Tes a grave," he said.
"But why out here?"
The old man smiled. "That's a tale, as yu may say. An' not the first
time as I've a-told et--there's plenty folks asks 'bout that bit o' turf.
'Maid's Grave' us calls et, 'ereabouts."
Ashurst held out his pouch. "Have a fill?"
The old man touched his hat again, and slowly filled an old clay pipe.
His eyes, looking upward out of a mass of wrinkles and hair, were still
quite bright.
"If yu don' mind, zurr, I'll zet down my leg's 'urtin' a bit today." And
he sat down on the mound of turf.
"There's always a flower on this grave. An' 'tain't so very lonesome,
neither; brave lot o' folks goes by now, in they new motor cars an'
things--not as 'twas in th' old days. She've a got company up 'ere.
'Twas a poor soul killed 'erself."
"I see!" said Ashurst. "Cross-roads burial. I didn't know that custom
was kept up."
"Ah! but 'twas a main long time ago. Us 'ad a parson as was very
God-fearin' then. Let me see, I've a 'ad my pension six year come
Michaelmas, an' I were just on fifty when t'appened. There's none livin'
knows more about et than what I du. She belonged close 'ere; same farm
as where I used to work along o' Mrs. Narracombe 'tes Nick Narracombe's
now; I dus a bit for 'im still, odd times."
Ashurst, who was leaning against the gate, lighting his pipe, left his
curved hands before his face for long after the flame of the match had
gone out.
"Yes?" he said, and to himself his voice sounded hoarse and queer.
"She was one in an 'underd, poor maid! I putts a flower 'ere every time
I passes. Pretty maid an' gude maid she was, though they wouldn't burry
'er up to th' church, nor where she wanted to be burried neither." The
old labourer paused, and put his hairy, twisted hand flat down on the
turf beside the bluebells.
"Yes?" said Ashurst.
"In a manner of speakin'," the old man went on, "I think as 'twas a
love-story--though there's no one never knu for zartin. Yu can't tell
what's in a maid's 'ead but that's wot I think about it." He drew his
hand along the turf. "I was fond o' that maid--don' know as there was
anyone as wasn' fond of 'er. But she was to lovin'-'earted--that's where
'twas, I think." He looked up. And Ashurst, whose lips were trembling
in the cover of his beard, murmured again: "Yes?"
"'Twas in the spring, 'bout now as 't might be, or a little
later--blossom time--an' we 'ad one o' they young college gentlemen
stayin' at the farm-nice feller tu, with 'is 'ead in the air. I liked 'e
very well, an' I never see nothin' between 'em, but to my thinkin' 'e
turned the maid's fancy." The old man took the pipe out of his mouth,
spat, and went on:
"Yu see, 'e went away sudden one day, an' never come back. They got 'is
knapsack and bits o' things down there still. That's what stuck in my
mind--'is never sendin' for 'em. 'Is name was Ashes, or somethen' like
that."
"Yes?" said Ashurst once more.
The old man licked his lips.
"'Er never said nothin', but from that day 'er went kind of dazed lukin';
didn'seem rightly therr at all. I never knu a'uman creature so changed
in me life--never. There was another young feller at the farm--Joe
Biddaford 'is name wer', that was praaperly sweet on 'er, tu; I guess 'e
used to plague 'er wi 'is attentions. She got to luke quite wild. I'd
zee her sometimes of an avenin' when I was bringin' up the calves; ther'
she'd stand in th' orchard, under the big apple tree, lukin' straight
before 'er. 'Well,' I used t'think, 'I dunno what 'tes that's the matter
wi' yu, but yu'm lukin' pittiful, that yu be!'"
The old man refit his pipe, and sucked at it reflectively.
"Yes?" said Ashurst.
"I remembers one day I said to 'er: 'What's the matter, Megan?'--'er name
was Megan David, she come from Wales same as 'er aunt, ol' Missis
Narracombe. 'Yu'm frettin' about somethin'. I says. 'No, Jim,' she
says, 'I'm not frettin'.' 'Yes, yu be!' I says. 'No,' she says, and to
tears cam' rollin' out. 'Yu'm cryin'--what's that, then?' I says. She
putts 'er 'and over 'er 'eart: 'It 'urts me,' she says; 'but 'twill sune
be better,' she says. 'But if anything shude 'appen to me, Jim, I wants
to be burried under this 'ere apple tree.' I laughed. 'What's goin' to
'appen to yu?' I says; 'don't 'ee be fulish.' 'No,' she says, 'I won't be
fulish.' Well, I know what maids are, an' I never thought no more about
et, till two days arter that, 'bout six in the avenin' I was comin' up
wi' the calves, when I see somethin' dark lyin' in the strame, close to
that big apple tree. I says to meself: 'Is that a pig-funny place for a
pig to get to!' an' I goes up to et, an' I see what 'twas."
The old man stopped; his eyes, turned upward, had a bright, suffering
look.
"'Twas the maid, in a little narrer pool ther' that's made by the
stoppin' of a rock--where I see the young gentleman bathin' once or
twice. 'Er was lyin' on 'er face in the watter. There was a plant o'
goldie-cups growin' out o' the stone just above 'er'ead. An' when I come
to luke at 'er face, 'twas luvly, butiful, so calm's a baby's--wonderful
butiful et was. When the doctor saw 'er, 'e said: 'Er culdn' never
a-done it in that little bit o' watter ef' er 'adn't a-been in an
extarsy.' Ah! an' judgin' from 'er face, that was just 'ow she was. Et
made me cry praaper-butiful et was! 'Twas June then, but she'd afound a
little bit of apple-blossom left over somewheres, and stuck et in 'er
'air. That's why I thinks 'er must abeen in an extarsy, to go to et gay,
like that. Why! there wasn't more than a fute and 'arf o' watter. But I
tell 'ee one thing--that meadder's 'arnted; I knu et, an' she knu et; an'
no one'll persuade me as 'tesn't. I told 'em what she said to me 'bout
bein' burried under th' apple tree. But I think that turned 'em--made et
luke to much 's ef she'd 'ad it in 'er mind deliberate; an' so they
burried 'er up 'ere. Parson we 'ad then was very particular, 'e was."
Again the old man drew his hand over the turf.
"'Tes wonderful, et seems," he added slowly, "what maids 'll du for love.
She 'ad a lovin-'eart; I guess 'twas broken. But us never knu nothin'!"
He looked up as if for approval of his story, but Ashurst had walked past
him as if he were not there.
Up on the top of the hill, beyond where he had spread the lunch, over,
out of sight, he lay down on his face. So had his virtue been rewarded,
and "the Cyprian," goddess of love, taken her revenge! And before his
eyes, dim with tears, came Megan's face with the sprig of apple blossom
in her dark, wet hair. 'What did I do that was wrong?' he thought.
'What did I do?' But he could not answer. Spring, with its rush of
passion, its flowers and song-the spring in his heart and Megan's! Was
it just Love seeking a victim! The Greek was right, then--the words of
the "Hippolytus" as true to-day!
"For mad is the heart of Love,
And gold the gleam of his wing;
And all to the spell thereof
Bend when he makes his spring.
All life that is wild and young
In mountain and wave and stream
All that of earth is sprung,
Or breathes in the red sunbeam;
Yea, and Mankind. O'er all a royal throne,
Cyprian, Cyprian, is thine alone!"
The Greek was right! Megan! Poor little Megan--coming over the hill!
Megan under the old apple tree waiting and looking! Megan dead, with
beauty printed on her!
A voice said:
"Oh, there you are! Look!"
Ashurst rose, took his wife's sketch, and stared at it in silence.
"Is the foreground right, Frank?"
"Yes."
"But there's something wanting, isn't there?"
Ashurst nodded. Wanting? The apple tree, the singing, and the gold!
And solemnly he put his lips to her forehead. It was his silver-wedding
day.
1916
THE JURYMAN
"Don't you see, brother, I was reading yesterday the Gospel
about Christ, the little Father; how He suffered, how He walked
on the earth. I suppose you have heard about it?"
"Indeed, I have," replied Stepanuitch; "but we are people in
darkness; we can't read."--TOLSTOI.
Mr. Henry Bosengate, of the London Stock Exchange, seated himself in his
car that morning during the great war with a sense of injury. Major in a
Volunteer Corps; member of all the local committees; lending this very
car to the neighbouring hospital, at times even driving it himself for
their benefit; subscribing to funds, so far as his diminished income
permitted--he was conscious of being an asset to the country, and one
whose time could not be wasted with impunity. To be summoned to sit on a
jury at the local assizes, and not even the grand jury at that! It was
in the nature of an outrage.
Strong and upright, with hazel eyes and dark eyebrows, pinkish-brown
cheeks, a forehead white, well-shaped, and getting high, with greyish
hair glossy and well-brushed, and a trim moustache, he might have been
taken for that colonel of Volunteers which indeed he was in a fair way of
becoming.
His wife had followed him out under the porch, and stood bracing her
supple body clothed in lilac linen. Red rambler roses formed a sort of
crown to her dark head; her ivory-coloured face had in it just a
suggestion of the Japanese.
Mr. Bosengate spoke through the whirr of the engine:
"I don't expect to be late, dear. This business is ridiculous. There
oughtn't to be any crime in these days."
His wife--her name was Kathleen--smiled. She looked very pretty and
cool, Mr. Bosengate thought. To him bound on this dull and stuffy
business everything he owned seemed pleasant--the geranium beds beside
the gravel drive, his long, red-brick house mellowing decorously in its
creepers and ivy, the little clock-tower over stables now converted to a
garage, the dovecote, masking at the other end the conservatory which
adjoined the billiard-room. Close to the red-brick lodge his two
children, Kate and Harry, ran out from under the acacia trees, and waved
to him, scrambling bare-legged on to the low, red, ivy-covered wall which
guarded his domain of eleven acres. Mr. Bosengate waved back, thinking:
'Jolly couple--by Jove, they are!' Above their heads, through the trees,
he could see right away to some Downs, faint in the July heat haze. And
he thought: 'Pretty a spot as one could have got, so close to Town!'
Despite the war he had enjoyed these last two years more than any of the
ten since he built "Charmleigh" and settled down to semi-rural
domesticity with his young wife. There had been a certain piquancy, a
savour added to existence, by the country's peril, and all the public
service and sacrifice it demanded. His chauffeur was gone, and one
gardener did the work of three. He enjoyed-positively enjoyed, his
committee work; even the serious decline of business and increase of
taxation had not much worried one continually conscious of the national
crisis and his own part therein. The country had wanted waking up,
wanted a lesson in effort and economy; and the feeling that he had not
spared himself in these strenuous times, had given a zest to those quiet
pleasures of bed and board which, at his age, even the most patriotic
could retain with a good conscience. He had denied himself many
things--new clothes, presents for Kathleen and the children, travel, and
that pine-apple house which he had been on the point of building when the
war broke out; new wine, too, and cigars, and membership of the two Clubs
which he had never used in the old days. The hours had seemed fuller and
longer, sleep better earned--wonderful, the things one could do without
when put to it! He turned the car into the high road, driving dreamily
for he was in plenty of time. The war was going pretty well now; he was
no fool optimist, but now that conscription was in force, one might
reasonably hope for its end within a year. Then there would be a boom,
and one might let oneself go a little. Visions of theatres and supper
with his wife at the Savoy afterwards, and cosy night drives back into
the sweet-smelling country behind your own chauffeur once more teased a
fancy which even now did not soar beyond the confines of domestic
pleasures. He pictured his wife in new dresses by Jay--she was fifteen
years younger than himself, and "paid for dressing" as they said. He had
always delighted--as men older than their wives will--in the admiration
she excited from others not privileged to enjoy her charms. Her rather
queer and ironical beauty, her cool irreproachable wifeliness, was a
constant balm to him. They would give dinner parties again, have their
friends down from town, and he would once more enjoy sitting at the foot
of the dinner table while Kathleen sat at the head, with the light soft
on her ivory shoulders, behind flowers she had arranged in that original
way of hers, and fruit which he had grown in his hot-houses; once more he
would take legitimate interest in the wine he offered to his guests--once
more stock that Chinese cabinet wherein he kept cigars. Yes--there was a
certain satisfaction in these days of privation, if only from the
anticipation they created.
The sprinkling of villas had become continuous on either side of the high
road; and women going out to shop, tradesmen's boys delivering victuals,
young men in khaki, began to abound. Now and then a limping or bandaged
form would pass--some bit of human wreckage; and Mr. Bosengate would
think mechanically: 'Another of those poor devils! Wonder if we've had
his case before us!'
Running his car into the best hotel garage of the little town, he made
his way leisurely over to the court. It stood back from the
market-place, and was already lapped by a sea of persons having, as in
the outer ring at race meetings, an air of business at which one must not
be caught out, together with a soaked or flushed appearance. Mr.
Bosengate could not resist putting his handkerchief to his nose. He had
carefully drenched it with lavender water, and to this fact owed,
perhaps, his immunity from the post of foreman on the jury--for, say what
you will about the English, they have a deep instinct for affairs.
He found himself second in the front row of the jury box, and through the
odour of "Sanitas" gazed at the judge's face expressionless up there, for
all the world like a bewigged bust. His fellows in the box had that
appearance of falling between two classes characteristic of jurymen. Mr.
Bosengate was not impressed. On one side of him the foreman sat, a
prominent upholsterer, known in the town as "Gentleman Fox." His dark
and beautifully brushed and oiled hair and moustache, his radiant linen,
gold watch and chain, the white piping to his waistcoat, and a habit of
never saying "Sir" had long marked him out from commoner men; he
undertook to bury people too, to save them trouble; and was altogether
superior. On the other side Mr. Bosengate had one of those men, who,
except when they sit on juries, are never seen without a little brown
bag, and the appearance of having been interrupted in a drink. Pale and
shiny, with large loose eyes shifting from side to side, he had an
underdone voice and uneasy flabby hands. Mr. Bosengate disliked sitting
next to him. Beyond this commercial traveller sat a dark pale young man
with spectacles; beyond him again, a short old man with grey moustache,
mutton chops, and innumerable wrinkles; and the front row was completed
by a chemist. The three immediately behind, Mr. Bosengate did not
thoroughly master; but the three at the end of the second row he learned
in their order of an oldish man in a grey suit, given to winking; an
inanimate person with the mouth of a moustachioed codfish, over whose
long bald crown three wisps of damp hair were carefully arranged; and a
dried, dapperish, clean-shorn man, whose mouth seemed terrified lest it
should be surprised without a smile. Their first and second verdicts were
recorded without the necessity for withdrawal, and Mr. Bosengate was
already sleepy when the third case was called. The sight of khaki
revived his drooping attention. But what a weedy-looking specimen! This
prisoner had a truly nerveless pitiable dejected air. If he had ever had
a military bearing it had shrunk into him during his confinement. His
ill-shaped brown tunic, whose little brass buttons seemed trying to keep
smiling, struck Mr. Bosengate as ridiculously short, used though he was
to such things. 'Absurd,' he thought--'Lumbago! Just where they ought
to be covered!' Then the officer and gentleman stirred in him, and he
added to himself: 'Still, there must be some distinction made!' The
little soldier's visage had once perhaps been tanned, but was now the
colour of dark dough; his large brown eyes with white showing below the
iris, as so often in the eyes of very nervous people--wandered from face
to face, of judge, counsel, jury, and public. There were hollows in his
cheeks, his dark hair looked damp; around his neck he wore a bandage.
The commercial traveller on Mr. Bosengate's left turned, and whispered:
"Felo de se! My hat! what a guy!" Mr. Bosengate pretended not to
hear--he could not bear that fellow!--and slowly wrote on a bit of paper:
"Owen Lewis." Welsh! Well, he looked it--not at all an English face.
Attempted suicide--not at all an English crime! Suicide implied
surrender, a putting-up of hands to Fate--to say nothing of the religious
aspect of the matter. And suicide in khaki seemed to Mr. Bosengate
particularly abhorrent; like turning tail in face of the enemy; almost
meriting the fate of a deserter. He looked at the prisoner, trying not
to give way to this prejudice. And the prisoner seemed to look at him,
though this, perhaps, was fancy.
The Counsel for the prosecution, a little, alert, grey, decided man,
above military age, began detailing the circumstances of the crime. Mr.
Bosengate, though not particularly sensitive to atmosphere, could
perceive a sort of current running through the Court. It was as if jury
and public were thinking rhythmically in obedience to the same
unexpressed prejudice of which he himself was conscious. Even the
Caesar-like pale face up there, presiding, seemed in its ironic serenity
responding to that current.
"Gentlemen of the jury, before I call my evidence, I direct your
attention to the bandage the accused is still wearing. He gave himself
this wound with his Army razor, adding, if I may say so, insult to the
injury he was inflicting on his country. He pleads not guilty; and
before the magistrates he said that absence from his wife was preying on
his mind"--the advocate's close lips widened--"Well, gentlemen, if such
an excuse is to weigh with us in these days, I'm sure I don't know what's
to happen to the Empire."
'No, by George!' thought Mr. Bosengate.
The evidence of the first witness, a room-mate who had caught the
prisoner's hand, and of the sergeant, who had at once been summoned, was
conclusive and he began to cherish a hope that they would get through
without withdrawing, and he would be home before five. But then a hitch
occurred. The regimental doctor failed to respond when his name was
called; and the judge having for the first time that day showed himself
capable of human emotion, intimated that he would adjourn until the
morrow.
Mr. Bosengate received the announcement with equanimity. He would be
home even earlier! And gathering up the sheets of paper he had scribbled
on, he put them in his pocket and got up. The would-be suicide was being
taken out of the court--a shambling drab figure with shoulders hunched.
What good were men like that in these days! What good! The prisoner
looked up. Mr. Bosengate encountered in full the gaze of those large
brown eyes, with the white showing underneath. What a suffering,
wretched, pitiful face! A man had no business to give you a look like
that! The prisoner passed on down the stairs, and vanished. Mr.
Bosengate went out and across the market place to the garage of the hotel
where he had left his car. The sun shone fiercely and he thought: 'I must
do some watering in the garden.' He brought the car out, and was about
to start the engine, when someone passing said: "Good evenin'.
Seedy-lookin' beggar that last prisoner, ain't he? We don't want men of
that stamp." It was his neighbour on the jury, the commercial traveller,
in a straw hat, with a little brown bag already in his hand and the froth
of an interrupted drink on his moustache. Answering curtly: "Good
evening!" and thinking: 'Nor of yours, my friend!' Mr. Bosengate started
the car with unnecessary clamour. But as if brought back to life by the
commercial traveller's remark, the prisoner's figure seemed to speed
along too, turning up at Mr. Bosengate his pitifully unhappy eyes. Want
of his wife!--queer excuse that for trying to put it out of his power
ever to see her again! Why! Half a loaf, even a slice, was better than
no bread. Not many of that neurotic type in the Army--thank Heaven! The
lugubrious figure vanished, and Mr. Bosengate pictured instead the form
of his own wife bending over her "Gloire de Dijon roses" in the rosery,
where she generally worked a little before tea now that they were short
of gardeners. He saw her, as often he had seen her, raise herself and
stand, head to one side, a gloved hand on her slender hip, gazing as it
were ironically from under drooped lids at buds which did not come out
fast enough. And the word 'Caline,' for he was something of a French
scholar, shot through his mind: 'Kathleen--Caline!' If he found her
there when he got in, he would steal up on the grass and--ah! but with
great care not to crease her dress or disturb her hair! 'If only she
weren't quite so self-contained,' he thought; 'It's like a cat you can't
get near, not really near!'
The car, returning faster than it had come down that morning, had already
passed the outskirt villas, and was breasting the hill to where, among
fields and the old trees, Charmleigh lay apart from commoner life.
Turning into his drive, Mr. Bosengate thought with a certain surprise: 'I
wonder what she does think of! I wonder!' He put his gloves and hat
down in the outer hall and went into the lavatory, to dip his face in
cool water and wash it with sweet-smelling soap--delicious revenge on the
unclean atmosphere in which he had been stewing so many hours. He came
out again into the hall dazed by soap and the mellowed light, and a voice
from half-way up the stairs said: "Daddy! Look!" His little daughter
was standing up there with one hand on the banisters. She scrambled on
to them and came sliding down, her frock up to her eyes, and her holland
knickers to her middle. Mr. Bosengate said mildly:
"Well, that's elegant!"
"Tea's in the summer-house. Mummy's waiting. Come on!"
With her hand in his, Mr. Bosengate went on, through the drawing-room,
long and cool, with sun-blinds down, through the billiard-room, high and
cool, through the conservatory, green and sweet-smelling, out on to the
terrace and the upper lawn. He had never felt such sheer exhilarated joy
in his home surroundings, so cool, glistening and green under the July
sun; and he said:
"Well, Kit, what have you all been doing?"
"I've fed my rabbits and Harry's; and we've been in the attic; Harry got
his leg through the skylight."
Mr. Bosengate drew in his breath with a hiss.
"It's all right, Daddy; we got it out again, it's only grazed the skin.
And we've been making swabs--I made seventeen, Mummy made thirty-three,
and then she went to the hospital. Did you put many men in prison?"
Mr. Bosengate cleared his throat. The question seemed to him untimely.
"Only two."
"What's it like in prison, Daddy?"
Mr. Bosengate, who had no more knowledge than his little daughter,
replied in an absent voice:
"Not very nice."
They were passing under a young oak tree, where the path wound round to
the rosery and summer-house. Something shot down and clawed Mr.
Bosengate's neck. His little daughter began to hop and suffocate with
laughter.
"Oh, Daddy! Aren't you caught! I led you on purpose!"
Looking up, Mr. Bosengate saw his small son lying along a low branch
above him--like the leopard he was declaring himself to be (for fear of
error), and thought blithely: 'What an active little chap it is!' "Let me
drop on your shoulders, Daddy--like they do on the deer."
"Oh, yes! Do be a deer, Daddy!"
Mr. Bosengate did not see being a deer; his hair had just been brushed.
But he entered the rosery buoyantly between his offspring. His wife was
standing precisely as he had imagined her, in a pale blue frock open at
the neck, with a narrow black band round the waist, and little accordion
pleats below. She looked her coolest. Her smile, when she turned her
head, hardly seemed to take Mr. Bosengate seriously enough. He placed
his lips below one of her half-drooped eyelids. She even smelled of
roses. His children began to dance round their mother, and Mr.
Bosengate,--firmly held between them, was also compelled to do this,
until she said:
"When you've quite done, let's have tea!"
It was not the greeting he had imagined coming along in the car. Earwigs
were plentiful in the summer-house--used perhaps twice a year, but
indispensable to every country residence--and Mr. Bosengate was not sorry
for the excuse to get out again. Though all was so pleasant, he felt
oddly restless, rather suffocated; and lighting his pipe, began to move
about among the roses, blowing tobacco at the greenfly; in war-time one
was never quite idle! And suddenly he said:
"We're trying a wretched Tommy at the assizes."
His wife looked up from a rose.
"What for?"
"Attempted suicide."
"Why did he?"
"Can't stand the separation from his wife."
She looked at him, gave a low laugh, and said:
"Oh dear!"
Mr. Bosengate was puzzled. Why did she laugh? He looked round, saw that
the children were gone, took his pipe from his mouth, and approached her.
"You look very pretty," he said. "Give me a kiss!"
His wife bent her body forward from the waist, and pushed her lips out
till they touched his moustache. Mr. Bosengate felt a sensation as if he
had arisen from breakfast, without having eaten marmalade. He mastered
it, and said:
"That jury are a rum lot."
His wife's eyelids flickered. "I wish women sat on juries."
"Why?"
"It would be an experience."
Not the first time she had used that curious expression! Yet her life
was far from dull, so far as he could see; with the new interests created
by the war, and the constant calls on her time made by the perfection of
their home life, she had a useful and busy existence. Again the random
thought passed through him: 'But she never tells me anything!' And
suddenly that lugubrious khaki-clad figure started up among the rose
bushes. "We've got a lot to be thankful for!" he said abruptly. "I must
go to work!" His wife, raising one eyebrow, smiled. "And I to weep!"
Mr. Bosengate laughed--she had a pretty wit! And stroking his comely
moustache where it had been kissed, he moved out into the sunshine. All
the evening, throughout his labours, not inconsiderable, for this jury
business had put him behind time, he was afflicted by that restless
pleasure in his surroundings; would break off in mowing the lower lawn to
look at the house through the trees; would leave his study and committee
papers, to cross into the drawing-room and sniff its dainty fragrance;
paid a special good-night visit to the children having supper in the
schoolroom; pottered in and out from his dressing room to admire his wife
while she was changing for dinner; dined with his mind perpetually on the
next course; talked volubly of the war; and in the billiard room
afterwards, smoking the pipe which had taken the place of his cigar,
could not keep still, but roamed about, now in conservatory, now in the
drawing-room, where his wife and the governess were still making swabs.
It seemed to him that he could not have enough of anything. About eleven
o'clock he strolled out beautiful night, only just dark enough--under the
new arrangement with Time--and went down to the little round fountain
below the terrace. His wife was playing the piano. Mr. Bosengate looked
at the water and the flat dark water lily leaves which floated there;
looked up at the house, where only narrow chinks of light showed, because
of the Lighting Order. The dreamy music drifted out; there was a scent
of heliotrope. He moved a few steps back, and sat in the children's
swing under an old lime tree. Jolly--blissful--in the warm, bloomy dark!
Of all hours of the day, this before going to bed was perhaps the
pleasantest. He saw the light go up in his wife's bed room, unscreened
for a full minute, and thought: 'Aha! If I did my duty as a special, I
should "strafe" her for that.' She came to the window, her figure
lighted, hands up to the back of her head, so that her bare arms gleamed.
Mr. Bosengate wafted her a kiss, knowing he could not be seen. 'Lucky
chap!' he mused; 'she's a great joy!' Up went her arm, down came the
blind the house was dark again. He drew a long breath. 'Another ten
minutes,' he thought, 'then I'll go in and shut up. By Jove! The limes
are beginning to smell already!' And, the better to take in that acme of
his well-being, he tilted the swing, lifted his feet from the ground, and
swung himself toward the scented blossoms. He wanted to whelm his senses
in their perfume, and closed his eyes. But instead of the domestic
vision he expected, the face of the little Welsh soldier, hare-eyed,
shadowy, pinched and dark and pitiful, started up with such disturbing
vividness that he opened his eyes again at once. Curse! The fellow
almost haunted one! Where would he be now poor little devil!--lying in
his cell, thinking--thinking of his wife! Feeling suddenly morbid, Mr.
Bosengate arrested the swing and stood up. Absurd!--all his well-being
and mood of warm anticipation had deserted him! 'A d---d world!' he
thought. 'Such a lot of misery! Why should I have to sit in judgment on
that poor beggar, and condemn him?' He moved up on to the terrace and
walked briskly, to rid himself of this disturbance before going in.
'That commercial traveller chap,' he thought, 'the rest of those
fellows--they see nothing!' And, abruptly turning up the three stone
steps, he entered the conservatory, locked it, passed into the billiard
room, and drank his barley water. One of the pictures was hanging
crooked; he went up to put it straight. Still life. Grapes and apples,
and--lobsters! They struck him as odd for the first time. Why lobsters?
The whole picture seemed dead and oily. He turned off the light, and
went upstairs, passed his wife's door, into his own room, and undressed.
Clothed in his pyjamas he opened the door between the rooms. By the
light coming from his own he could see her dark head on the pillow. Was
she asleep? No--not asleep, certainly. The moment of fruition had come;
the crowning of his pride and pleasure in his home. But he continued to
stand there. He had suddenly no pride, no pleasure, no desire; nothing
but a sort of dull resentment against everything. He turned back; shut
the door, and slipping between the heavy curtains and his open window,
stood looking out at the night. 'Full of misery!' he thought. 'Full of
d---d misery!'
II
Filing into the jury box next morning, Mr. Bosengate collided slightly
with a short juryman, whose square figure and square head of stiff
yellow-red hair he had only vaguely noticed the day before. The man
looked angry, and Mr. Bosengate thought: 'An ill-bred dog, that!'
He sat down quickly, and, to avoid further recognition of his fellows,
gazed in front of him. His appearance on Saturdays was always military,
by reason of the route march of his Volunteer Corps in the afternoon.
Gentleman Fox, who belonged to the corps too, was also looking square;
but that commercial traveller on his other side seemed more louche, and
as if surprised in immorality, than ever; only the proximity of Gentleman
Fox on the other side kept Mr. Bosengate from shrinking. Then he saw the
prisoner being brought in, shadowy and dark behind the brightness of his
buttons, and he experienced a sort of shock, this figure was so exactly
that which had several times started up in his mind. Somehow he had
expected a fresh sight of the fellow to dispel and disprove what had been
haunting him, had expected to find him just an outside phenomenon, not,
as it were, a part of his own life. And he gazed at the carven
immobility of the judge's face, trying to steady himself, as a drunken
man will, by looking at a light. The regimental doctor, unabashed by the
judge's comment on his absence the day before, gave his evidence like a
man who had better things to do, and the case for the prosecution was
forthwith rounded in by a little speech from counsel. The matter--he
said--was clear as daylight. Those who wore His Majesty's uniform,
charged with the responsibility and privilege of defending their country,
were no more entitled to desert their regiments by taking their own lives
than they were entitled to desert in any other way. He asked for a
conviction. Mr. Bosengate felt a sympathetic shuffle passing through all
feet; the judge was speaking:
"Prisoner, you can either go into the witness box and make your statement
on oath, in which case you may be cross-examined on it; or you can make
your statement there from the dock, in which case you will not be
cross-examined. Which do you elect to do?"
"From here, my lord."
Seeing him now full face, and, as it might be, come to life in the effort
to convey his feelings, Mr. Bosengate had suddenly a quite different
impression of the fellow. It was as if his khaki had fallen off, and he
had stepped out of his own shadow, a live and quivering creature. His
pinched clean-shaven face seemed to have an irregular, wilder, hairier
look, his large nervous brown eyes darkened and glowed; he jerked his
shoulders, his arms, his whole body, like a man suddenly freed from cramp
or a suit of armour.
He spoke, too, in a quick, crisp, rather high voice, pinching his
consonants a little, sharpening his vowels, like a true Welshman.
"My lord and misters the jury," he said: "I was a hairdresser when the
call came on me to join the army. I had a little home and a wife. I
never thought what it would be like to be away from them, I surely never
did; and I'm ashamed to be speaking it out like this--how it can squeeze
and squeeze a man, how it can prey on your mind, when you're nervous like
I am. 'Tis not everyone that cares for his home--there's lots o' them
never wants to see their wives again. But for me 'tis like being shut up
in a cage, it is!" Mr. Bosengate saw daylight between the skinny fingers
of the man's hand thrown out with a jerk. "I cannot bear it shut up away
from wife and home like what you are in the army. So when I took my
razor that morning I was wild--an' I wouldn't be here now but for that
man catching my hand. There was no reason in it, I'm willing to confess.
It was foolish; but wait till you get feeling like what I was, and see
how it draws you. Misters the jury, don't send me back to prison; it is
worse still there. If you have wives you will know what it is like for
lots of us; only some is more nervous than others. I swear to you, sirs,
I could not help it---?" Again the little man flung out his hand, his
whole thin body shook and Mr. Bosengate felt the same sensation as when
he drove his car over a dog--"Misters the jury, I hope you may never in
your lives feel as I've been feeling."
The little man ceased, his eyes shrank back into their sockets, his
figure back into its mask of shadowy brown and gleaming buttons, and Mr.
Bosengate was conscious that the judge was making a series of remarks;
and, very soon, of being seated at a mahogany table in the jury's
withdrawing room, hearing the, voice of the man with hair like an Irish
terrier's saying: "Didn't he talk through his hat, that little blighter!"
Conscious, too, of the commercial traveller, still on his left--always on
his left!--mopping his brow, and muttering: "Phew! It's hot in there
to-day!" while an effluvium, as of an inside accustomed to whisky came
from him. Then the man with the underlip and the three plastered wisps
of hair said:
"Don't know why we withdrew, Mr. Foreman!"
Mr. Bosengate looked round to where, at the head of the table, Gentleman
Fox sat, in defensive gentility and the little white piping to his
waistcoat saying blandly:
"I shall be happy to take the sense of the jury."
There was a short silence, then the chemist murmured:
"I should say he must have what they call claustrophobia."
"Clauster fiddlesticks! The feller's a shirker, that's all. Missed his
wife--pretty excuse! Indecent, I call it!"
The speaker was the little wire-haired man; and emotion, deep and angry,
stirred in Mr. Bosengate. That ill-bred little cur! He gripped the edge
of the table with both hands.
"I think it's d-----d natural!" he muttered. But almost before the
words had left his lips he felt dismay. What had he said--he, nearly a
colonel of volunteers--endorsing such a want of patriotism! And hearing
the commercial traveller murmuring: "'Ear, 'ear!" he reddened violently.
The wire-headed man said roughly:
"There's too many of these blighted shirkers, and too much pampering of
them."
The turmoil in Mr. Bosengate increased; he remarked in an icy voice:
"I agree to no verdict that'll send the man back to prison."
At this a real tremor seemed to go round the table, as if they all saw
themselves sitting there through lunch time. Then the large grey-haired
man given to winking, said:
"Oh! Come, sir--after what the judge said! Come, sir! What do you say,
Mr. Foreman?"
Gentleman Fox--as who should say 'This is excellent value, but I don't
wish to press it on you!'--answered:
"We are only concerned with the facts. Did he or did he not try to
shorten his life?"
"Of course he did--said so himself," Mr. Bosengate heard the wire-haired
man snap out, and from the following murmur of assent he alone abstained.
Guilty! Well--yes! There was no way out of admitting that, but his
feelings revolted against handing "that poor little beggar" over to the
tender mercy of his country's law. His whole soul rose in arms against
agreeing with that ill-bred little cur, and the rest of this job-lot. He
had an impulse to get up and walk out, saying: "Settle it your own way.
Good morning."
"It seems, sir," Gentleman Fox was saying, "that we're all agreed to
guilty, except yourself. If you will allow me, I don't see how you can
go behind what the prisoner himself admitted."
Thus brought up to the very guns, Mr. Bosengate, red in the face, thrust
his hands deep into the side pockets of his tunic, and, staring straight
before him, said:
"Very well; on condition we recommend him to mercy."
"What do you say, gentlemen; shall we recommend him to mercy?"
"'Ear, 'ear!" burst from the commercial traveller, and from the chemist
came the murmur:
"No harm in that."
"Well, I think there is. They shoot deserters at the front, and we let
this fellow off. I'd hang the cur."
Mr. Bosengate stared at that little wire-haired brute. "Haven't you any
feeling for others?" he wanted to say. "Can't you see that this poor
devil suffers tortures?" But the sheer impossibility of doing this
before ten other men brought a slight sweat out on his face and hands;
and in agitation he smote the table a blow with his fist. The effect was
instantaneous. Everybody looked at the wire-haired man, as if saying:
"Yes, you've gone a bit too far there!" The "little brute" stood it for
a moment, then muttered surlily:
"Well, commend 'im to mercy if you like; I don't care."
"That's right; they never pay any attention to it," said the grey-haired
man, winking heartily. And Mr. Bosengate filed back with the others into
court.
But when from the jury box his eyes fell once more on the hare-eyed
figure in the dock, he had his worst moment yet. Why should this poor
wretch suffer so--for no fault, no fault; while he, and these others, and
that snapping counsel, and the Caesar-like judge up there, went off to
their women and their homes, blithe as bees, and probably never thought
of him again? And suddenly he was conscious of the judge's voice:
"You will go back to your regiment, and endeavour to serve your country
with better spirit. You may thank the jury that you are not sent to
prison, and your good fortune that you were not at the front when you
tried to commit this cowardly act. You are lucky to be alive."
A policeman pulled the little soldier by the arm; his drab figure with
eyes fixed and lustreless, passed down and away. From his very soul Mr.
Bosengate wanted to lean out and say: "Cheer up, cheer up! I understand."
It was nearly ten o'clock that evening before he reached home, motoring
back from the route march. His physical tiredness was abated, for he had
partaken of a snack and a whisky and soda at the hotel; but mentally he
was in a curious mood. His body felt appeased, his spirit hungry.
Tonight he had a yearning, not for his wife's kisses, but for her
understanding. He wanted to go to her and say: "I've learnt a lot
to-day-found out things I never thought of. Life's a wonderful thing,
Kate, a thing one can't live all to oneself; a thing one shares with
everybody, so that when another suffers, one suffers too. It's come to
me that what one has doesn't matter a bit--it's what one does, and how
one sympathises with other people. It came to me in the most
extraordinary vivid way, when I was on that jury, watching that poor
little rat of a soldier in his trap; it's the first time I've ever
felt--the--the spirit of Christ, you know. It's a wonderful thing,
Kate--wonderful! We haven't been close--really close, you and I, so that
we each understand what the other is feeling. It's all in that, you
know; understanding--sympathy--it's priceless. When I saw that poor
little devil taken down and sent back to his regiment to begin his
sorrows all over again--wanting his wife, thinking and thinking of her
just as you know I would be thinking and wanting you, I felt what an
awful outside sort of life we lead, never telling each other what we
really think and feel, never being really close. I daresay that little
chap and his wife keep nothing from each other--live each other's lives.
That's what we ought to do. Let's get to feeling that what really
matters is--understanding and loving, and not only just saying it as we
all do, those fellows on the jury, and even that poor devil of a
judge--what an awful life judging one's fellow-creatures.
"When I left that poor little Tommy this morning, and ever since, I've
longed to get back here quietly to you and tell you about it, and make a
beginning. There's something wonderful in this, and I want you to feel
it as I do, because you mean such a lot to me."
This was what he wanted to say to his wife, not touching, or kissing her,
just looking into her eyes, watching them soften and glow as they surely
must, catching the infection of his new ardour. And he felt unsteady,
fearfully unsteady with the desire to say it all as it should be said:
swiftly, quietly, with the truth and fervour of his feeling.
The hall was not lit up, for daylight still lingered under the new
arrangement. He went towards the drawing-room, but from the very door
shied off to his study and stood irresolute under the picture of a "Man
catching a flea" (Dutch school), which had come down to him from his
father. The governess would be in there with his wife! He must wait.
Essential to go straight to Kathleen and pour it all out, or he would
never do it. He felt as nervous as an undergraduate going up for his
viva' voce. This thing was so big, so astoundingly and unexpectedly
important. He was suddenly afraid of his wife, afraid of her coolness
and her grace, and that something Japanese about her--of all those
attributes he had been accustomed to admire most; afraid, as it were, of
her attraction. He felt young to-night, almost boyish; would she see
that he was not really fifteen years older than herself, and she not
really a part of his collection, of all the admirable appointments of his
home; but a companion spirit to one who wanted a companion badly. In
this agitation of his soul he could keep still no more than he could last
night in the agitation of his senses; and he wandered into the
dining-room. A dainty supper was set out there, sandwiches, and cake,
whisky and the cigarettes--even an early peach. Mr. Bosengate looked at
this peach with sorrow rather than disgust. The perfection of it was of
a piece with all that had gone before this new and sudden feeling. Its
delicious bloom seemed to heighten his perception of the hedge around
him, that hedge of the things he so enjoyed, carefully planted and tended
these many years. He passed it by uneaten, and went to the window. Out
there all was darkening, the fountain, the lime tree, the flower-beds,
and the fields below, with the Jersey cows who would come to your call;
darkening slowly, losing form, blurring into soft blackness, vanishing,
but there none the less--all there--the hedge of his possessions. He
heard the door of the drawing-room open, the voices of his wife and the
governess in the hall, going up to bed. If only they didn't look in here!
If only! The voices ceased. He was safe now--had but to follow in a few
minutes, to make sure of Kathleen alone. He turned round and stared down
the length of the dark dining-room, over the rosewood table, to where in
the mirror above the sideboard at the far end, his figure bathed, a
stain, a mere blurred shadow; he made his way down to it along the table
edge, and stood before himself as close as he could get. His throat and
the roof of his mouth felt dry with nervousness; he put out his finger
and touched his face in the glass. 'You're an ass!' he thought. 'Pull
yourself together, and get it over. She will see; of course she will!'
He swallowed, smoothed his moustache, and walked out. Going up the
stairs, his heart beat painfully; but he was in for it now, and marched
straight into her room. Dressed only in a loose blue wrapper, she was
brushing her dark hair before the glass. Mr. Bosengate went up to her
and stood there silent, looking down. The words he had thought of were
like a swarm of bees buzzing in his head, yet not one would fly from
between his lips. His wife went on brushing her hair under the light
which shone on her polished elbows. She looked up at him from beneath
one lifted eyebrow.
"Well, dear--tired?"
With a sort of vehemence the single word "No" passed out. A faint, a
quizzical smile flitted over her face; she shrugged her shoulders ever so
gently. That gesture--he had seen it before! And in desperate desire to
make her understand, he put his hand on her lifted arm.
"Kathleen, stop--listen to me!" His fingers tightened in his agitation
and eagerness to make his great discovery known. But before he could get
out a word he became conscious of that cool round arm, conscious of her
eyes half-closed, sliding round at him, of her half-smiling lips, of her
neck under the wrapper. And he stammered:
"I want--I must--Kathleen, I---"
She lifted her shoulders again in that little shrug. "Yes--I know; all
right!"
A wave of heat and shame, and of God knows what came over Mr. Bosengate;
he fell on his knees and pressed his forehead to her arm; and he was
silent, more silent than the grave. Nothing--nothing came from him but
two long sighs. Suddenly he felt her hand stroke his
cheek--compassionately, it seemed to him. She made a little movement
towards him; her lips met his, and he remembered nothing but that....
In his own room Mr. Bosengate sat at his wide open window, smoking a
cigarette; there was no light. Moths went past, the moon was creeping
up. He sat very calm, puffing the smoke out in to the night air.
Curious thing-life! Curious world! Curious forces in it--making one do
the opposite of what one wished; always--always making one do the
opposite, it seemed! The furtive light from that creeping moon was
getting hold of things down there, stealing in among the boughs of the
trees. 'There's something ironical,' he thought, 'which walks about.
Things don't come off as you think they will. I meant, I tried but one
doesn't change like that all of a sudden, it seems. Fact is, life's too
big a thing for one! All the same, I'm not the man I was yesterday--not
quite!' He closed his eyes, and in one of those flashes of vision which
come when the senses are at rest, he saw himself as it were far down
below--down on the floor of a street narrow as a grave, high as a
mountain, a deep dark slit of a street walking down there, a black midget
of a fellow, among other black midgets--his wife, and the little soldier,
the judge, and those jury chaps--fantoches straight up on their tiny
feet, wandering down there in that dark, infinitely tall, and narrow
street. 'Too much for one!' he thought; 'Too high for one--no getting on
top of it. We've got to be kind, and help one another, and not expect too
much, and not think too much. That's--all!' And, squeezing out his
cigarette, he took six deep breaths of the night air, and got into bed.
INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE
"And Summer's lease hath all
too short a date."
--Shakespeare
I
In the last day of May in the early 'nineties, about six o'clock of the
evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the terrace of
his house at Robin Hill. He was waiting for the midges to bite him,
before abandoning the glory of the afternoon. His thin brown hand, where
blue veins stood out, held the end of a cigar in its tapering,
long-nailed fingers--a pointed polished nail had survived with him from
those earlier Victorian days when to touch nothing, even with the tips of
the fingers, had been so distinguished. His domed forehead, great white
moustache, lean cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering
sunshine by an old brown Panama hat. His legs were crossed; in all his
attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who every
morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief. At his feet lay a
woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a Pomeranian--the dog Balthasar
between whom and old Jolyon primal aversion had changed into attachment
with the years. Close to his chair was a swing, and on the swing was
seated one of Holly's dolls--called 'Duffer Alice'--with her body fallen
over her legs and her doleful nose buried in a black petticoat. She was
never out of disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat. Below
the oak tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and,
beyond that refinement, became fields, dropping to the pond, the coppice,
and the prospect--'Fine, remarkable'--at which Swithin Forsyte, from
under this very tree, had stared five years ago when he drove down with
Irene to look at the house. Old Jolyon had heard of his brother's
exploit--that drive which had become quite celebrated on Forsyte 'Change.
Swithin! And the fellow had gone and died, last November, at the age of
only seventy-nine, renewing the doubt whether Forsytes could live for
ever, which had first arisen when Aunt Ann passed away. Died! and left
only Jolyon and James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia, Hester,
Susan! And old Jolyon thought: 'Eighty-five! I don't feel it--except
when I get that pain.'
His memory went searching. He had not felt his age since he had bought
his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it here at Robin
Hill over three years ago. It was as if he had been getting younger
every spring, living in the country with his son and his
grandchildren--June, and the little ones of the second marriage, Jolly
and Holly; living down here out of the racket of London and the cackle of
Forsyte 'Change,' free of his boards, in a delicious atmosphere of no
work and all play, with plenty of occupation in the perfecting and
mellowing of the house and its twenty acres, and in ministering to the
whims of Holly and Jolly. All the knots and crankiness, which had
gathered in his heart during that long and tragic business of June,
Soames, Irene his wife, and poor young Bosinney, had been smoothed out.
Even June had thrown off her melancholy at last--witness this travel in
Spain she was taking now with her father and her stepmother. Curiously
perfect peace was left by their departure; blissful, yet blank, because
his son was not there. Jo was never anything but a comfort and a
pleasure to him nowadays--an amiable chap; but women, somehow--even the
best--got a little on one's nerves, unless of course one admired them.
Far-off a cuckoo called; a wood-pigeon was cooing from the first elm-tree
in the field, and how the daisies and buttercups had sprung up after the
last mowing! The wind had got into the sou' west, too--a delicious air,
sappy! He pushed his hat back and let the sun fall on his chin and cheek.
Somehow, to-day, he wanted company--wanted a pretty face to look at.
People treated the old as if they wanted nothing. And with the
un-Forsytean philosophy which ever intruded on his soul, he thought:
'One's never had enough. With a foot in the grave one'll want something,
I shouldn't be surprised!' Down here--away from the exigencies of
affairs--his grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of his little
domain, to say nothing of sun and moon and stars above them, said, 'Open,
sesame,' to him day and night. And sesame had opened--how much, perhaps,
he did not know. He had always been responsive to what they had begun to
call 'Nature,' genuinely, almost religiously responsive, though he had
never lost his habit of calling a sunset a sunset and a view a view,
however deeply they might move him. But nowadays Nature actually made him
ache, he appreciated it so. Every one of these calm, bright, lengthening
days, with Holly's hand in his, and the dog Balthasar in front looking
studiously for what he never found, he would stroll, watching the roses
open, fruit budding on the walls, sunlight brightening the oak leaves and
saplings in the coppice, watching the water-lily leaves unfold and
glisten, and the silvery young corn of the one wheat field; listening to
the starlings and skylarks, and the Alderney cows chewing the cud,
flicking slow their tufted tails; and every one of these fine days he
ached a little from sheer love of it all, feeling perhaps, deep down,
that he had not very much longer to enjoy it. The thought that some
day--perhaps not ten years hence, perhaps not five--all this world would
be taken away from him, before he had exhausted his powers of loving it,
seemed to him in the nature of an injustice brooding over his horizon. If
anything came after this life, it wouldn't be what he wanted; not Robin
Hill, and flowers and birds and pretty faces--too few, even now, of those
about him! With the years his dislike of humbug had increased; the
orthodoxy he had worn in the 'sixties, as he had worn side-whiskers out
of sheer exuberance, had long dropped off, leaving him reverent before
three things alone--beauty, upright conduct, and the sense of property;
and the greatest of these now was beauty. He had always had wide
interests, and, indeed could still read The Times, but he was liable at
any moment to put it down if he heard a blackbird sing. Upright conduct,
property--somehow, they were tiring; the blackbirds and the sunsets never
tired him, only gave him an uneasy feeling that he could not get enough
of them. Staring into the stilly radiance of the early evening and at
the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a thought came to him:
This weather was like the music of 'Orfeo,' which he had recently heard
at Covent Garden. A beautiful opera, not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite
Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps even more lovely; something classical
and of the Golden Age about it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli
'almost worthy of the old days'--highest praise he could bestow. The
yearning of Orpheus for the beauty he was losing, for his love going down
to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go--the yearning which sang and
throbbed through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering beauty
of the world that evening. And with the tip of his cork-soled,
elastic-sided boot he involuntarily stirred the ribs of the dog
Balthasar, causing the animal to wake and attack his fleas; for though he
was supposed to have none, nothing could persuade him of the fact. When
he had finished he rubbed the place he had been scratching against his
master's calf, and settled down again with his chin over the instep of
the disturbing boot. And into old Jolyon's mind came a sudden
recollection--a face he had seen at that opera three weeks ago--Irene,
the wife of his precious nephew Soames, that man of property! Though he
had not met her since the day of the 'At Home' in his old house at
Stanhope Gate, which celebrated his granddaughter June's ill-starred
engagement to young Bosinney, he had remembered her at once, for he had
always admired her--a very pretty creature. After the death of young
Bosinney, whose mistress she had so reprehensibly become, he had heard
that she had left Soames at once. Goodness only knew what she had been
doing since. That sight of her face--a side view--in the row in front,
had been literally the only reminder these three years that she was still
alive. No one ever spoke of her. And yet Jo had told him something
once--something which had upset him completely. The boy had got it from
George Forsyte, he believed, who had seen Bosinney in the fog the day he
was run over--something which explained the young fellow's distress--an
act of Soames towards his wife--a shocking act. Jo had seen her, too,
that afternoon, after the news was out, seen her for a moment, and his
description had always lingered in old Jolyon's mind--'wild and lost' he
had called her. And next day June had gone there--bottled up her
feelings and gone there, and the maid had cried and told her how her
mistress had slipped out in the night and vanished. A tragic business
altogether! One thing was certain--Soames had never been able to lay
hands on her again. And he was living at Brighton, and journeying up and
down--a fitting fate, the man of property! For when he once took a
dislike to anyone--as he had to his nephew--old Jolyon never got over it.
He remembered still the sense of relief with which he had heard the news
of Irene's disappearance. It had been shocking to think of her a
prisoner in that house to which she must have wandered back, when Jo saw
her, wandered back for a moment--like a wounded animal to its hole after
seeing that news, 'Tragic death of an Architect,' in the street. Her
face had struck him very much the other night--more beautiful than he had
remembered, but like a mask, with something going on beneath it. A young
woman still--twenty-eight perhaps. Ah, well! Very likely she had another
lover by now. But at this subversive thought--for married women should
never love: once, even, had been too much--his instep rose, and with it
the dog Balthasar's head. The sagacious animal stood up and looked into
old Jolyon's face. 'Walk?' he seemed to say; and old Jolyon answered:
"Come on, old chap!"
Slowly, as was their wont, they crossed among the constellations of
buttercups and daisies, and entered the fernery. This feature, where
very little grew as yet, had been judiciously dropped below the level of
the lawn so that it might come up again on the level of the other lawn
and give the impression of irregularity, so important in horticulture.
Its rocks and earth were beloved of the dog Balthasar, who sometimes
found a mole there. Old Jolyon made a point of passing through it
because, though it was not beautiful, he intended that it should be, some
day, and he would think: 'I must get Varr to come down and look at it;
he's better than Beech.' For plants, like houses and human complaints,
required the best expert consideration. It was inhabited by snails, and
if accompanied by his grandchildren, he would point to one and tell them
the story of the little boy who said: 'Have plummers got leggers, Mother?
'No, sonny.' 'Then darned if I haven't been and swallowed a snileybob.'
And when they skipped and clutched his hand, thinking of the snileybob
going down the little boy's 'red lane,' his eyes would twinkle. Emerging
from the fernery, he opened the wicket gate, which just there led into
the first field, a large and park-like area, out of which, within brick
walls, the vegetable garden had been carved. Old Jolyon avoided this,
which did not suit his mood, and made down the hill towards the pond.
Balthasar, who knew a water-rat or two, gambolled in front, at the gait
which marks an oldish dog who takes the same walk every day. Arrived at
the edge, old Jolyon stood, noting another water-lily opened since
yesterday; he would show it to Holly to-morrow, when 'his little sweet'
had got over the upset which had followed on her eating a tomato at
lunch--her little arrangements were very delicate. Now that Jolly had
gone to school--his first term--Holly was with him nearly all day long,
and he missed her badly. He felt that pain too, which often bothered him
now, a little dragging at his left side. He looked back up the hill.
Really, poor young Bosinney had made an uncommonly good job of the house;
he would have done very well for himself if he had lived! And where was
he now? Perhaps, still haunting this, the site of his last work, of his
tragic love affair. Or was Philip Bosinney's spirit diffused in the
general? Who could say? That dog was getting his legs muddy! And he
moved towards the coppice. There had been the most delightful lot of
bluebells, and he knew where some still lingered like little patches of
sky fallen in between the trees, away out of the sun. He passed the
cow-houses and the hen-houses there installed, and pursued a path into
the thick of the saplings, making for one of the bluebell plots.
Balthasar, preceding him once more, uttered a low growl. Old Jolyon
stirred him with his foot, but the dog remained motionless, just where
there was no room to pass, and the hair rose slowly along the centre of
his woolly back. Whether from the growl and the look of the dog's
stivered hair, or from the sensation which a man feels in a wood, old
Jolyon also felt something move along his spine. And then the path
turned, and there was an old mossy log, and on it a woman sitting. Her
face was turned away, and he had just time to think: 'She's
trespassing--I must have a board put up!' before she turned. Powers
above! The face he had seen at the opera--the very woman he had just
been thinking of! In that confused moment he saw things blurred, as if a
spirit--queer effect--the slant of sunlight perhaps on her violet-grey
frock! And then she rose and stood smiling, her head a little to one
side. Old Jolyon thought: 'How pretty she is!' She did not speak,
neither did he; and he realized why with a certain admiration. She was
here no doubt because of some memory, and did not mean to try and get out
of it by vulgar explanation.
"Don't let that dog touch your frock," he said; "he's got wet feet. Come
here, you!"
But the dog Balthasar went on towards the visitor, who put her hand down
and stroked his head. Old Jolyon said quickly:
"I saw you at the opera the other night; you didn't notice me."
"Oh, yes! I did."
He felt a subtle flattery in that, as though she had added: 'Do you think
one could miss seeing you?'
"They're all in Spain," he remarked abruptly. "I'm alone; I drove up for
the opera. The Ravogli's good. Have you seen the cow-houses?"
In a situation so charged with mystery and something very like emotion he
moved instinctively towards that bit of property, and she moved beside
him. Her figure swayed faintly, like the best kind of French figures;
her dress, too, was a sort of French grey. He noticed two or three silver
threads in her amber-coloured hair, strange hair with those dark eyes of
hers, and that creamy-pale face. A sudden sidelong look from the velvety
brown eyes disturbed him. It seemed to come from deep and far, from
another world almost, or at all events from some one not living very much
in this. And he said mechanically:
"Where are you living now?"
"I have a little flat in Chelsea."
He did not want to hear what she was doing, did not want to hear
anything; but the perverse word came out:
"Alone?"
She nodded. It was a relief to know that. And it came into his mind
that, but for a twist of fate, she would have been mistress of this
coppice, showing these cow-houses to him, a visitor.
"All Alderneys," he muttered; "they give the best milk. This one's a
pretty creature. Woa, Myrtle!"
The fawn-coloured cow, with eyes as soft and brown as Irene's own, was
standing absolutely still, not having long been milked. She looked round
at them out of the corner of those lustrous, mild, cynical eyes, and from
her grey lips a little dribble of saliva threaded its way towards the
straw. The scent of hay and vanilla and ammonia rose in the dim light of
the cool cow-house; and old Jolyon said:
"You must come up and have some dinner with me. I'll send you home in
the carriage."
He perceived a struggle going on within her; natural, no doubt, with her
memories. But he wanted her company; a pretty face, a charming figure,
beauty! He had been alone all the afternoon. Perhaps his eyes were
wistful, for she answered: "Thank you, Uncle Jolyon. I should like to."
He rubbed his hands, and said:
"Capital! Let's go up, then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar, they
ascended through the field. The sun was almost level in their faces now,
and he could see, not only those silver threads, but little lines, just
deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like fineness--the special
look of life unshared with others. "I'll take her in by the terrace," he
thought: "I won't make a common visitor of her."
"What do you do all day?" he said.
"Teach music; I have another interest, too."
"Work!" said old Jolyon, picking up the doll from off the swing, and
smoothing its black petticoat. "Nothing like it, is there? I don't do
any now. I'm getting on. What interest is that?"
"Trying to help women who've come to grief." Old Jolyon did not quite
understand. "To grief?" he repeated; then realised with a shock that she
meant exactly what he would have meant himself if he had used that
expression. Assisting the Magdalenes of London! What a weird and
terrifying interest! And, curiosity overcoming his natural shrinking, he
asked:
"Why? What do you do for them?"
"Not much. I've no money to spare. I can only give sympathy and food
sometimes."
Involuntarily old Jolyon's hand sought his purse. He said hastily: "How
d'you get hold of them?"
"I go to a hospital."
"A hospital! Phew!"
"What hurts me most is that once they nearly all had some sort of
beauty."
Old Jolyon straightened the doll. "Beauty!" he ejaculated: "Ha! Yes! A
sad business!" and he moved towards the house. Through a French window,
under sun-blinds not yet drawn up, he preceded her into the room where he
was wont to study The Times and the sheets of an agricultural magazine,
with huge illustrations of mangold wurzels, and the like, which provided
Holly with material for her paint brush.
"Dinner's in half an hour. You'd like to wash your hands! I'll take you
to June's room."
He saw her looking round eagerly; what changes since she had last visited
this house with her husband, or her lover, or both perhaps--he did not
know, could not say! All that was dark, and he wished to leave it so.
But what changes! And in the hall he said:
"My boy Jo's a painter, you know. He's got a lot of taste. It isn't
mine, of course, but I've let him have his way."
She was standing very still, her eyes roaming through the hall and music
room, as it now was--all thrown into one, under the great skylight. Old
Jolyon had an odd impression of her. Was she trying to conjure somebody
from the shades of that space where the colouring was all pearl-grey and
silver? He would have had gold himself; more lively and solid. But Jo
had French tastes, and it had come out shadowy like that, with an effect
as of the fume of cigarettes the chap was always smoking, broken here and
there by a little blaze of blue or crimson colour. It was not his dream!
Mentally he had hung this space with those gold-framed masterpieces of
still and stiller life which he had bought in days when quantity was
precious. And now where were they? Sold for a song! That something
which made him, alone among Forsytes, move with the times had warned him
against the struggle to retain them. But in his study he still had
'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.'
He began to mount the stairs with her, slowly, for he felt his side.
"These are the bathrooms," he said, "and other arrangements. I've had
them tiled. The nurseries are along there. And this is Jo's and his
wife's. They all communicate. But you remember, I expect."
Irene nodded. They passed on, up the gallery and entered a large room
with a small bed, and several windows.
"This is mine," he said. The walls were covered with the photographs of
children and watercolour sketches, and he added doubtfully:
"These are Jo's. The view's first-rate. You can see the Grand Stand at
Epsom in clear weather."
The sun was down now, behind the house, and over the 'prospect' a
luminous haze had settled, emanation of the long and prosperous day. Few
houses showed, but fields and trees faintly glistened, away to a loom of
downs.
"The country's changing," he said abruptly, "but there it'll be when
we're all gone. Look at those thrushes--the birds are sweet here in the
mornings. I'm glad to have washed my hands of London."
Her face was close to the window pane, and he was struck by its mournful
look. 'Wish I could make her look happy!' he thought. 'A pretty face,
but sad!' And taking up his can of hot water he went out into the
gallery.
"This is June's room," he said, opening the next door and putting the can
down; "I think you'll find everything." And closing the door behind her
he went back to his own room. Brushing his hair with his great ebony
brushes, and dabbing his forehead with eau de Cologne, he mused. She had
come so strangely--a sort of visitation; mysterious, even romantic, as if
his desire for company, for beauty, had been fulfilled by whatever it was
which fulfilled that sort of thing. And before the mirror he
straightened his still upright figure, passed the brushes over his great
white moustache, touched up his eyebrows with eau de Cologne, and rang
the bell.
"I forgot to let them know that I have a lady to dinner with me. Let cook
do something extra, and tell Beacon to have the landau and pair at
half-past ten to drive her back to Town to-night. Is Miss Holly asleep?"
The maid thought not. And old Jolyon, passing down the gallery, stole on
tiptoe towards the nursery, and opened the door whose hinges he kept
specially oiled that he might slip in and out in the evenings without
being heard.
But Holly was asleep, and lay like a miniature Madonna, of that type
which the old painters could not tell from Venus, when they had completed
her. Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on her face was perfect
peace--her little arrangements were evidently all right again. And old
Jolyon, in the twilight of the room, stood adoring her! It was so
charming, solemn, and loving--that little face. He had more than his
share of the blessed capacity of living again in the young. They were to
him his future life--all of a future life that his fundamental pagan
sanity perhaps admitted. There she was with everything before her, and
his blood--some of it--in her tiny veins. There she was, his little
companion, to be made as happy as ever he could make her, so that she
knew nothing but love. His heart swelled, and he went out, stilling the
sound of his patent-leather boots. In the corridor an eccentric notion
attacked him: To think that children should come to that which Irene had
told him she was helping! Women who were all, once, little things like
this one sleeping there! 'I must give her a cheque!' he mused; 'Can't
bear to think of them!' They had never borne reflecting on, those poor
outcasts; wounding too deeply the core of true refinement hidden under
layers of conformity to the sense of property--wounding too grievously
the deepest thing in him--a love of beauty which could give him, even
now, a flutter of the heart, thinking of his evening in the society of a
pretty woman. And he went downstairs, through the swinging doors, to the
back regions. There, in the wine-cellar, was a hock worth at least two
pounds a bottle, a Steinberg Cabinet, better than any Johannisberg that
ever went down throat; a wine of perfect bouquet, sweet as a
nectarine--nectar indeed! He got a bottle out, handling it like a baby,
and holding it level to the light, to look. Enshrined in its coat of
dust, that mellow coloured, slender-necked bottle gave him deep pleasure.
Three years to settle down again since the move from Town--ought to be in
prime condition! Thirty-five years ago he had bought it--thank God he had
kept his palate, and earned the right to drink it. She would appreciate
this; not a spice of acidity in a dozen. He wiped the bottle, drew the
cork with his own hands, put his nose down, inhaled its perfume, and went
back to the music room.
Irene was standing by the piano; she had taken off her hat and a lace
scarf she had been wearing, so that her gold-coloured hair was visible,
and the pallor of her neck. In her grey frock she made a pretty picture
for old Jolyon, against the rosewood of the piano.
He gave her his arm, and solemnly they went. The room, which had been
designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort, held now but a
little round table. In his present solitude the big dining-table
oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be removed till his son came
back. Here in the company of two really good copies of Raphael Madonnas
he was wont to dine alone. It was the only disconsolate hour of his day,
this summer weather. He had never been a large eater, like that great
chap Swithin, or Sylvanus Heythorp, or Anthony Thornworthy, those cronies
of past times; and to dine alone, overlooked by the Madonnas, was to him
but a sorrowful occupation, which he got through quickly, that he might
come to the more spiritual enjoyment of his coffee and cigar. But this
evening was a different matter! His eyes twinkled at her across the
little table and he spoke of Italy and Switzerland, telling her stories
of his travels there, and other experiences which he could no longer
recount to his son and grand-daughter because they knew them. This fresh
audience was precious to him; he had never become one of those old men
who ramble round and round the fields of reminiscence. Himself quickly
fatigued by the insensitive, he instinctively avoided fatiguing others,
and his natural flirtatiousness towards beauty guarded him specially in
his relations with a woman. He would have liked to draw her out, but
though she murmured and smiled and seemed to be enjoying what he told
her, he remained conscious of that mysterious remoteness which
constituted half her fascination. He could not bear women who threw
their shoulders and eyes at you, and chattered away; or hard-mouthed
women who laid down the law and knew more than you did. There was only
one quality in a woman that appealed to him--charm; and the quieter it
was, the more he liked it. And this one had charm, shadowy as afternoon
sunlight on those Italian hills and valleys he had loved. The feeling,
too, that she was, as it were, apart, cloistered, made her seem nearer to
himself, a strangely desirable companion. When a man is very old and
quite out of the running, he loves to feel secure from the rivalries of
youth, for he would still be first in the heart of beauty. And he drank
his hock, and watched her lips, and felt nearly young. But the dog
Balthasar lay watching her lips too, and despising in his heart the
interruptions of their talk, and the tilting of those greenish glasses
full of a golden fluid which was distasteful to him.
The light was just failing when they went back into the music-room. And,
cigar in mouth, old Jolyon said:
"Play me some Chopin."
By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the
texture of men's souls. Old Jolyon could not bear a strong cigar or
Wagner's music. He loved Beethoven and Mozart, Handel and Gluck, and
Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the operas of Meyerbeer; but of
late years he had been seduced by Chopin, just as in painting he had
succumbed to Botticelli. In yielding to these tastes he had been
conscious of divergence from the standard of the Golden Age. Their
poetry was not that of Milton and Byron and Tennyson; of Raphael and
Titian; Mozart and Beethoven. It was, as it were, behind a veil; their
poetry hit no one in the face, but slipped its fingers under the ribs and
turned and twisted, and melted up the heart. And, never certain that
this was healthy, he did not care a rap so long as he could see the
pictures of the one or hear the music of the other.
Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp festooned with
pearl-grey, and old Jolyon, in an armchair, whence he could see her,
crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar. She sat a few moments
with her hands on the keys, evidently searching her mind for what to give
him. Then she began and within old Jolyon there arose a sorrowful
pleasure, not quite like anything else in the world. He fell slowly into
a trance, interrupted only by the movements of taking the cigar out of
his mouth at long intervals, and replacing it. She was there, and the
hock within him, and the scent of tobacco; but there, too, was a world of
sunshine lingering into moonlight, and pools with storks upon them, and
bluish trees above, glowing with blurs of wine-red roses, and fields of
lavender where milk-white cows were grazing, and a woman all shadowy,
with dark eyes and a white neck, smiled, holding out her arms; and
through air which was like music a star dropped and was caught on a cow's
horn. He opened his eyes. Beautiful piece; she played well--the touch
of an angel! And he closed them again. He felt miraculously sad and
happy, as one does, standing under a lime-tree in full honey flower. Not
live one's own life again, but just stand there and bask in the smile of
a woman's eyes, and enjoy the bouquet! And he jerked his hand; the dog
Balthasar had reached up and licked it.
"Beautiful!" He said: "Go on--more Chopin!"
She began to play again. This time the resemblance between her and
'Chopin' struck him. The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in her
playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the soft darkness of her
eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a golden moon.
Seductive, yes; but nothing of Delilah in her or in that music. A long
blue spiral from his cigar ascended and dispersed. 'So we go out!' he
thought. 'No more beauty! Nothing?'
Again Irene stopped.
"Would you like some Gluck? He used to write his music in a sunlit
garden, with a bottle of Rhine wine beside him."
"Ah! yes. Let's have 'Orfeo.'" Round about him now were fields of gold
and silver flowers, white forms swaying in the sunlight, bright birds
flying to and fro. All was summer. Lingering waves of sweetness and
regret flooded his soul. Some cigar ash dropped, and taking out a silk
handkerchief to brush it off, he inhaled a mingled scent as of snuff and
eau de Cologne. 'Ah!' he thought, 'Indian summer--that's all!' and he
said: "You haven't played me 'Che faro.'"
She did not answer; did not move. He was conscious of something--some
strange upset. Suddenly he saw her rise and turn away, and a pang of
remorse shot through him. What a clumsy chap! Like Orpheus, she of
course--she too was looking for her lost one in the hall of memory! And
disturbed to the heart, he got up from his chair. She had gone to the
great window at the far end. Gingerly he followed. Her hands were
folded over her breast; he could just see her cheek, very white. And,
quite emotionalized, he said:
"There, there, my love!" The words had escaped him mechanically, for
they were those he used to Holly when she had a pain, but their effect
was instantaneously distressing. She raised her arms, covered her face
with them, and wept.
Old Jolyon stood gazing at her with eyes very deep from age. The
passionate shame she seemed feeling at her abandonment, so unlike the
control and quietude of her whole presence was as if she had never before
broken down in the presence of another being.
"There, there--there, there!" he murmured, and putting his hand out
reverently, touched her. She turned, and leaned the arms which covered
her face against him. Old Jolyon stood very still, keeping one thin hand
on her shoulder. Let her cry her heart out--it would do her good.
And the dog Balthasar, puzzled, sat down on his stern to examine them.
The window was still open, the curtains had not been drawn, the last of
daylight from without mingled with faint intrusion from the lamp within;
there was a scent of new-mown grass. With the wisdom of a long life old
Jolyon did not speak. Even grief sobbed itself out in time; only Time
was good for sorrow--Time who saw the passing of each mood, each emotion
in turn; Time the layer-to-rest. There came into his mind the words: 'As
panteth the hart after cooling streams'--but they were of no use to him.
Then, conscious of a scent of violets, he knew she was drying her eyes.
He put his chin forward, pressed his moustache against her forehead, and
felt her shake with a quivering of her whole body, as of a tree which
shakes itself free of raindrops. She put his hand to her lips, as if
saying: "All over now! Forgive me!"
The kiss filled him with a strange comfort; he led her back to where she
had been so upset. And the dog Balthasar, following, laid the bone of
one of the cutlets they had eaten at their feet.
Anxious to obliterate the memory of that emotion, he could think of
nothing better than china; and moving with her slowly from cabinet to
cabinet, he kept taking up bits of Dresden and Lowestoft and Chelsea,
turning them round and round with his thin, veined hands, whose skin,
faintly freckled, had such an aged look.
"I bought this at Jobson's," he would say; "cost me thirty pounds. It's
very old. That dog leaves his bones all over the place. This old
'ship-bowl' I picked up at the sale when that precious rip, the Marquis,
came to grief. But you don't remember. Here's a nice piece of Chelsea.
Now, what would you say this was?" And he was comforted, feeling that,
with her taste, she was taking a real interest in these things; for,
after all, nothing better composes the nerves than a doubtful piece of
china.
When the crunch of the carriage wheels was heard at last, he said:
"You must come again; you must come to lunch, then I can show you these
by daylight, and my little sweet--she's a dear little thing. This dog
seems to have taken a fancy to you."
For Balthasar, feeling that she was about to leave, was rubbing his side
against her leg. Going out under the porch with her, he said:
"He'll get you up in an hour and a quarter. Take this for your
protegees," and he slipped a cheque for fifty pounds into her hand. He
saw her brightened eyes, and heard her murmur: "Oh! Uncle Jolyon!" and a
real throb of pleasure went through him. That meant one or two poor
creatures helped a little, and it meant that she would come again. He
put his hand in at the window and grasped hers once more. The carriage
rolled away. He stood looking at the moon and the shadows of the trees,
and thought: 'A sweet night! She......!'
II
Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny. Old Jolyon walked
and talked with Holly. At first he felt taller and full of a new vigour;
then he felt restless. Almost every afternoon they would enter the
coppice, and walk as far as the log. 'Well, she's not there!' he would
think, 'of course not!' And he would feel a little shorter, and drag his
feet walking up the hill home, with his hand clapped to his left side.
Now and then the thought would move in him: 'Did she come--or did I dream
it?' and he would stare at space, while the dog Balthasar stared at him.
Of course she would not come again! He opened the letters from Spain
with less excitement. They were not returning till July; he felt, oddly,
that he could bear it. Every day at dinner he screwed up his eyes and
looked at where she had sat. She was not there, so he unscrewed his eyes
again.
On the seventh afternoon he thought: 'I must go up and get some boots.'
He ordered Beacon, and set out. Passing from Putney towards Hyde Park he
reflected: 'I might as well go to Chelsea and see her.' And he called
out: "Just drive me to where you took that lady the other night." The
coachman turned his broad red face, and his juicy lips answered: "The
lady in grey, sir?"
"Yes, the lady in grey." What other ladies were there! Stodgy chap!
The carriage stopped before a small three-storied block of flats,
standing a little back from the river. With a practised eye old Jolyon
saw that they were cheap. 'I should think about sixty pound a year,' he
mused; and entering, he looked at the name-board. The name 'Forsyte' was
not on it, but against 'First Floor, Flat C' were the words: 'Mrs. Irene
Heron.' Ah! She had taken her maiden name again! And somehow this
pleased him. He went upstairs slowly, feeling his side a little. He
stood a moment, before ringing, to lose the feeling of drag and
fluttering there. She would not be in! And then--Boots! The thought
was black. What did he want with boots at his age? He could not wear out
all those he had.
"Your mistress at home?"
"Yes, sir."
"Say Mr. Jolyon Forsyte."
"Yes, sir, will you come this way?"
Old Jolyon followed a very little maid--not more than sixteen one would
say--into a very small drawing-room where the sun-blinds were drawn. It
held a cottage piano and little else save a vague fragrance and good
taste. He stood in the middle, with his top hat in his hand, and
thought: 'I expect she's very badly off!' There was a mirror above the
fireplace, and he saw himself reflected. An old-looking chap! He heard
a rustle, and turned round. She was so close that his moustache almost
brushed her forehead, just under her hair.
"I was driving up," he said. "Thought I'd look in on you, and ask you
how you got up the other night."
And, seeing her smile, he felt suddenly relieved. She was really glad to
see him, perhaps.
"Would you like to put on your hat and come for a drive in the Park?"
But while she was gone to put her hat on, he frowned. The Park! James
and Emily! Mrs. Nicholas, or some other member of his precious family
would be there very likely, prancing up and down. And they would go and
wag their tongues about having seen him with her, afterwards. Better
not! He did not wish to revive the echoes of the past on Forsyte
'Change. He removed a white hair from the lapel of his
closely-buttoned-up frock coat, and passed his hand over his cheeks,
moustache, and square chin. It felt very hollow there under the
cheekbones. He had not been eating much lately--he had better get that
little whippersnapper who attended Holly to give him a tonic. But she
had come back and when they were in the carriage, he said:
"Suppose we go and sit in Kensington Gardens instead?" and added with a
twinkle: "No prancing up and down there," as if she had been in the
secret of his thoughts.
Leaving the carriage, they entered those select precincts, and strolled
towards the water.
"You've gone back to your maiden name, I see," he said: "I'm not sorry."
She slipped her hand under his arm: "Has June forgiven me, Uncle Jolyon?"
He answered gently: "Yes--yes; of course, why not?"
"And have you?"
"I? I forgave you as soon as I saw how the land really lay." And
perhaps he had; his instinct had always been to forgive the beautiful.
She drew a deep breath. "I never regretted--I couldn't. Did you ever
love very deeply, Uncle Jolyon?"
At that strange question old Jolyon stared before him. Had he? He did
not seem to remember that he ever had. But he did not like to say this
to the young woman whose hand was touching his arm, whose life was
suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love. And he thought: 'If I
had met you when I was young I--I might have made a fool of myself,
perhaps.' And a longing to escape in generalities beset him.
"Love's a queer thing," he said, "fatal thing often. It was the
Greeks--wasn't it?--made love into a goddess; they were right, I dare
say, but then they lived in the Golden Age."
"Phil adored them."
Phil! The word jarred him, for suddenly--with his power to see all round
a thing, he perceived why she was putting up with him like this. She
wanted to talk about her lover! Well! If it was any pleasure to her!
And he said: "Ah! There was a bit of the sculptor in him, I fancy."
"Yes. He loved balance and symmetry; he loved the whole-hearted way the
Greeks gave themselves to art."
Balance! The chap had no balance at all, if he remembered; as for
symmetry--clean-built enough he was, no doubt; but those queer eyes of
his, and high cheek-bones--Symmetry?
"You're of the Golden Age, too, Uncle Jolyon."
Old Jolyon looked round at her. Was she chaffing him? No, her eyes were
soft as velvet. Was she flattering him? But if so, why? There was
nothing to be had out of an old chap like him.
"Phil thought so. He used to say: 'But I can never tell him that I
admire him.'"
Ah! There it was again. Her dead lover; her desire to talk of him! And
he pressed her arm, half resentful of those memories, half grateful, as
if he recognised what a link they were between herself and him.
"He was a very talented young fellow," he murmured. "It's hot; I feel
the heat nowadays. Let's sit down."
They took two chairs beneath a chestnut tree whose broad leaves covered
them from the peaceful glory of the afternoon. A pleasure to sit there
and watch her, and feel that she liked to be with him. And the wish to
increase that liking, if he could, made him go on:
"I expect he showed you a side of him I never saw. He'd be at his best
with you. His ideas of art were a little new--to me "--he had stiffed
the word 'fangled.'
"Yes: but he used to say you had a real sense of beauty." Old Jolyon
thought: 'The devil he did!' but answered with a twinkle: "Well, I have,
or I shouldn't be sitting here with you." She was fascinating when she
smiled with her eyes, like that!
"He thought you had one of those hearts that never grow old. Phil had
real insight."
He was not taken in by this flattery spoken out of the past, out of a
longing to talk of her dead lover--not a bit; and yet it was precious to
hear, because she pleased his eyes and heart which--quite true!--had
never grown old. Was that because--unlike her and her dead lover, he had
never loved to desperation, had always kept his balance, his sense of
symmetry. Well! It had left him power, at eighty-four, to admire beauty.
And he thought, 'If I were a painter or a sculptor! But I'm an old chap.
Make hay while the sun shines.'
A couple with arms entwined crossed on the grass before them, at the edge
of the shadow from their tree. The sunlight fell cruelly on their pale,
squashed, unkempt young faces. "We're an ugly lot!" said old Jolyon
suddenly. "It amazes me to see how--love triumphs over that."
"Love triumphs over everything!"
"The young think so," he muttered.
"Love has no age, no limit, and no death."
With that glow in her pale face, her breast heaving, her eyes so large
and dark and soft, she looked like Venus come to life! But this
extravagance brought instant reaction, and, twinkling, he said: "Well, if
it had limits, we shouldn't be born; for by George! it's got a lot to put
up with."
Then, removing his top hat, he brushed it round with a cuff. The great
clumsy thing heated his forehead; in these days he often got a rush of
blood to the head--his circulation was not what it had been.
She still sat gazing straight before her, and suddenly she murmured:
"It's strange enough that I'm alive."
Those words of Jo's 'Wild and lost' came back to him.
"Ah!" he said: "my son saw you for a moment--that day."
"Was it your son? I heard a voice in the hall; I thought for a second it
was--Phil."
Old Jolyon saw her lips tremble. She put her hand over them, took it
away again, and went on calmly: "That night I went to the Embankment; a
woman caught me by the dress. She told me about herself. When one knows
that others suffer, one's ashamed."
"One of those?"
She nodded, and horror stirred within old Jolyon, the horror of one who
has never known a struggle with desperation. Almost against his will he
muttered: "Tell me, won't you?"
"I didn't care whether I lived or died. When you're like that, Fate
ceases to want to kill you. She took care of me three days--she never
left me. I had no money. That's why I do what I can for them, now."
But old Jolyon was thinking: 'No money!' What fate could compare with
that? Every other was involved in it.
"I wish you had come to me," he said. "Why didn't you?" But Irene did
not answer.
"Because my name was Forsyte, I suppose? Or was it June who kept you
away? How are you getting on now?" His eyes involuntarily swept her
body. Perhaps even now she was--! And yet she wasn't thin--not really!
"Oh! with my fifty pounds a year, I make just enough." The answer did
not reassure him; he had lost confidence. And that fellow Soames! But
his sense of justice stifled condemnation. No, she would certainly have
died rather than take another penny from him. Soft as she looked, there
must be strength in her somewhere--strength and fidelity. But what
business had young Bosinney to have got run over and left her stranded
like this!
"Well, you must come to me now," he said, "for anything you want, or I
shall be quite cut up." And putting on his hat, he rose. "Let's go and
get some tea. I told that lazy chap to put the horses up for an hour,
and come for me at your place. We'll take a cab presently; I can't walk
as I used to."
He enjoyed that stroll to the Kensington end of the gardens--the sound of
her voice, the glancing of her eyes, the subtle beauty of a charming form
moving beside him. He enjoyed their tea at Ruffel's in the High Street,
and came out thence with a great box of chocolates swung on his little
finger. He enjoyed the drive back to Chelsea in a hansom, smoking his
cigar. She had promised to come down next Sunday and play to him again,
and already in thought he was plucking carnations and early roses for her
to carry back to town. It was a pleasure to give her a little pleasure,
if it WERE pleasure from an old chap like him! The carriage was already
there when they arrived. Just like that fellow, who was always late when
he was wanted! Old Jolyon went in for a minute to say good-bye. The
little dark hall of the flat was impregnated with a disagreeable odour of
patchouli, and on a bench against the wall--its only furniture--he saw a
figure sitting. He heard Irene say softly: "Just one minute." In the
little drawing-room when the door was shut, he asked gravely: "One of
your protegees?"
"Yes. Now thanks to you, I can do something for her."
He stood, staring, and stroking that chin whose strength had frightened
so many in its time. The idea of her thus actually in contact with this
outcast grieved and frightened him. What could she do for them? Nothing.
Only soil and make trouble for herself, perhaps. And he said: "Take
care, my dear! The world puts the worst construction on everything."
"I know that."
He was abashed by her quiet smile. "Well then--Sunday," he murmured:
"Good-bye."
She put her cheek forward for him to kiss.
"Good-bye," he said again; "take care of yourself." And he went out, not
looking towards the figure on the bench. He drove home by way of
Hammersmith; that he might stop at a place he knew of and tell them to
send her in two dozen of their best Burgundy. She must want picking-up
sometimes! Only in Richmond Park did he remember that he had gone up to
order himself some boots, and was surprised that he could have had so
paltry an idea.
III
The little spirits of the past which throng an old man's days had never
pushed their faces up to his so seldom as in the seventy hours elapsing
before Sunday came. The spirit of the future, with the charm of the
unknown, put up her lips instead. Old Jolyon was not restless now, and
paid no visits to the log, because she was coming to lunch. There is
wonderful finality about a meal; it removes a world of doubts, for no one
misses meals except for reasons beyond control. He played many games
with Holly on the lawn, pitching them up to her who was batting so as to
be ready to bowl to Jolly in the holidays. For she was not a Forsyte,
but Jolly was--and Forsytes always bat, until they have resigned and
reached the age of eighty-five. The dog Balthasar, in attendance, lay on
the ball as often as he could, and the page-boy fielded, till his face
was like the harvest moon. And because the time was getting shorter,
each day was longer and more golden than the last. On Friday night he
took a liver pill, his side hurt him rather, and though it was not the
liver side, there is no remedy like that. Anyone telling him that he had
found a new excitement in life and that excitement was not good for him,
would have been met by one of those steady and rather defiant looks of
his deep-set iron-grey eyes, which seemed to say: 'I know my own business
best.' He always had and always would.
On Sunday morning, when Holly had gone with her governess to church, he
visited the strawberry beds. There, accompanied by the dog Balthasar, he
examined the plants narrowly and succeeded in finding at least two dozen
berries which were really ripe. Stooping was not good for him, and he
became very dizzy and red in the forehead. Having placed the
strawberries in a dish on the dining-table, he washed his hands and
bathed his forehead with eau de Cologne. There, before the mirror, it
occurred to him that he was thinner. What a 'threadpaper' he had been
when he was young! It was nice to be slim--he could not bear a fat chap;
and yet perhaps his cheeks were too thin! She was to arrive by train at
half-past twelve and walk up, entering from the road past Drage's farm at
the far end of the coppice. And, having looked into June's room to see
that there was hot water ready, he set forth to meet her, leisurely, for
his heart was beating. The air smelled sweet, larks sang, and the Grand
Stand at Epsom was visible. A perfect day! On just such a one, no
doubt, six years ago, Soames had brought young Bosinney down with him to
look at the site before they began to build. It was Bosinney who had
pitched on the exact spot for the house--as June had often told him. In
these days he was thinking much about that young fellow, as if his spirit
were really haunting the field of his last work, on the chance of
seeing--her. Bosinney--the one man who had possessed her heart, to whom
she had given her whole self with rapture! At his age one could not, of
course, imagine such things, but there stirred in him a queer vague
aching--as it were the ghost of an impersonal jealousy; and a feeling,
too, more generous, of pity for that love so early lost. All over in a
few poor months! Well, well! He looked at his watch before entering the
coppice--only a quarter past, twenty-five minutes to wait! And then,
turning the corner of the path, he saw her exactly where he had seen her
the first time, on the log; and realised that she must have come by the
earlier train to sit there alone for a couple of hours at least. Two
hours of her society missed! What memory could make that log so dear to
her? His face showed what he was thinking, for she said at once:
"Forgive me, Uncle Jolyon; it was here that I first knew."
"Yes, yes; there it is for you whenever you like. You're looking a
little Londony; you're giving too many lessons."
That she should have to give lessons worried him. Lessons to a parcel of
young girls thumping out scales with their thick fingers.
"Where do you go to give them?" he asked.
"They're mostly Jewish families, luckily."
Old Jolyon stared; to all Forsytes Jews seem strange and doubtful.
"They love music, and they're very kind."
"They had better be, by George!" He took her arm--his side always hurt
him a little going uphill--and said:
"Did you ever see anything like those buttercups? They came like that in
a night."
Her eyes seemed really to fly over the field, like bees after the flowers
and the honey. "I wanted you to see them--wouldn't let them turn the
cows in yet." Then, remembering that she had come to talk about
Bosinney, he pointed to the clock-tower over the stables:
"I expect he wouldn't have let me put that there--had no notion of time,
if I remember."
But, pressing his arm to her, she talked of flowers instead, and he knew
it was done that he might not feel she came because of her dead lover.
"The best flower I can show you," he said, with a sort of triumph, "is my
little sweet. She'll be back from Church directly. There's something
about her which reminds me a little of you," and it did not seem to him
peculiar that he had put it thus, instead of saying: "There's something
about you which reminds me a little of her." Ah! And here she was!
Holly, followed closely by her elderly French governess, whose digestion
had been ruined twenty-two years ago in the siege of Strasbourg, came
rushing towards them from under the oak tree. She stopped about a dozen
yards away, to pat Balthasar and pretend that this was all she had in her
mind. Old Jolyon, who knew better, said:
"Well, my darling, here's the lady in grey I promised you."
Holly raised herself and looked up. He watched the two of them with a
twinkle, Irene smiling, Holly beginning with grave inquiry, passing into
a shy smile too, and then to something deeper. She had a sense of
beauty, that child--knew what was what! He enjoyed the sight of the kiss
between them.
"Mrs. Heron, Mam'zelle Beauce. Well, Mam'zelle--good sermon?"
For, now that he had not much more time before him, the only part of the
service connected with this world absorbed what interest in church
remained to him. Mam'zelle Beauce stretched out a spidery hand clad in a
black kid glove--she had been in the best families--and the rather sad
eyes of her lean yellowish face seemed to ask: "Are you well-brrred?"
Whenever Holly or Jolly did anything unpleasing to her--a not uncommon
occurrence--she would say to them: "The little Tayleurs never did
that--they were such well-brrred little children." Jolly hated the
little Tayleurs; Holly wondered dreadfully how it was she fell so short
of them. 'A thin rum little soul,' old Jolyon thought her--Mam'zelle
Beauce.
Luncheon was a successful meal, the mushrooms which he himself had picked
in the mushroom house, his chosen strawberries, and another bottle of the
Steinberg cabinet filled him with a certain aromatic spirituality, and a
conviction that he would have a touch of eczema to-morrow.
After lunch they sat under the oak tree drinking Turkish coffee. It was
no matter of grief to him when Mademoiselle Beauce withdrew to write her
Sunday letter to her sister, whose future had been endangered in the past
by swallowing a pin--an event held up daily in warning to the children to
eat slowly and digest what they had eaten. At the foot of the bank, on a
carriage rug, Holly and the dog Balthasar teased and loved each other,
and in the shade old Jolyon with his legs crossed and his cigar
luxuriously savoured, gazed at Irene sitting in the swing. A light,
vaguely swaying, grey figure with a fleck of sunlight here and there upon
it, lips just opened, eyes dark and soft under lids a little drooped. She
looked content; surely it did her good to come and see him! The
selfishness of age had not set its proper grip on him, for he could still
feel pleasure in the pleasure of others, realising that what he wanted,
though much, was not quite all that mattered.
"It's quiet here," he said; "you mustn't come down if you find it dull.
But it's a pleasure to see you. My little sweet is the only face which
gives me any pleasure, except yours."
From her smile he knew that she was not beyond liking to be appreciated,
and this reassured him. "That's not humbug," he said. "I never told a
woman I admired her when I didn't. In fact I don't know when I've told a
woman I admired her, except my wife in the old days; and wives are
funny." He was silent, but resumed abruptly:
"She used to expect me to say it more often than I felt it, and there we
were." Her face looked mysteriously troubled, and, afraid that he had
said something painful, he hurried on: "When my little sweet marries, I
hope she'll find someone who knows what women feel. I shan't be here to
see it, but there's too much topsy-turvydom in marriage; I don't want her
to pitch up against that." And, aware that he had made bad worse, he
added: "That dog will scratch."
A silence followed. Of what was she thinking, this pretty creature whose
life was spoiled; who had done with love, and yet was made for love? Some
day when he was gone, perhaps, she would find another mate--not so
disorderly as that young fellow who had got himself run over. Ah! but
her husband?
"Does Soames never trouble you?" he asked.
She shook her head. Her face had closed up suddenly. For all her
softness there was something irreconcilable about her. And a glimpse of
light on the inexorable nature of sex antipathies strayed into a brain
which, belonging to early Victorian civilisation--so much older than this
of his old age--had never thought about such primitive things.
"That's a comfort," he said. "You can see the Grand Stand to-day. Shall
we take a turn round?"
Through the flower and fruit garden, against whose high outer walls peach
trees and nectarines were trained to the sun, through the stables, the
vinery, the mushroom house, the asparagus beds, the rosery, the
summer-house, he conducted her--even into the kitchen garden to see the
tiny green peas which Holly loved to scoop out of their pods with her
finger, and lick up from the palm of her little brown hand. Many
delightful things he showed her, while Holly and the dog Balthasar danced
ahead, or came to them at intervals for attention. It was one of the
happiest afternoons he had ever spent, but it tired him and he was glad
to sit down in the music room and let her give him tea. A special little
friend of Holly's had come in--a fair child with short hair like a boy's.
And the two sported in the distance, under the stairs, on the stairs, and
up in the gallery. Old Jolyon begged for Chopin. She played studies,
mazurkas, waltzes, till the two children, creeping near, stood at the
foot of the piano their dark and golden heads bent forward, listening.
Old Jolyon watched.
"Let's see you dance, you two!"
Shyly, with a false start, they began. Bobbing and circling, earnest,
not very adroit, they went past and past his chair to the strains of that
waltz. He watched them and the face of her who was playing turned
smiling towards those little dancers thinking:
'Sweetest picture I've seen for ages.'
A voice said:
"Hollee! Mais enfin--qu'est-ce que tu fais la--danser, le dimanche!
Viens, donc!"
But the children came close to old Jolyon, knowing that he would save
them, and gazed into a face which was decidedly 'caught out.'
"Better the day, better the deed, Mam'zelle. It's all my doing. Trot
along, chicks, and have your tea."
And, when they were gone, followed by the dog Balthasar, who took every
meal, he looked at Irene with a twinkle and said:
"Well, there we are! Aren't they sweet? Have you any little ones among
your pupils?"
"Yes, three--two of them darlings."
"Pretty?"
"Lovely!"
Old Jolyon sighed; he had an insatiable appetite for the very young. "My
little sweet," he said, "is devoted to music; she'll be a musician some
day. You wouldn't give me your opinion of her playing, I suppose?"
"Of course I will."
"You wouldn't like--" but he stifled the words "to give her lessons." The
idea that she gave lessons was unpleasant to him; yet it would mean that
he would see her regularly. She left the piano and came over to his
chair.
"I would like, very much; but there is--June. When are they coming
back?"
Old Jolyon frowned. "Not till the middle of next month. What does that
matter?"
"You said June had forgiven me; but she could never forget, Uncle
Jolyon."
Forget! She must forget, if he wanted her to.
But as if answering, Irene shook her head. "You know she couldn't; one
doesn't forget."
Always that wretched past! And he said with a sort of vexed finality:
"Well, we shall see."
He talked to her an hour or more, of the children, and a hundred little
things, till the carriage came round to take her home. And when she had
gone he went back to his chair, and sat there smoothing his face and
chin, dreaming over the day.
That evening after dinner he went to his study and took a sheet of paper.
He stayed for some minutes without writing, then rose and stood under the
masterpiece 'Dutch Fishing Boats at Sunset.' He was not thinking of that
picture, but of his life. He was going to leave her something in his
Will; nothing could so have stirred the stilly deeps of thought and
memory. He was going to leave her a portion of his wealth, of his
aspirations, deeds, qualities, work--all that had made that wealth; going
to leave her, too, a part of all he had missed in life, by his sane and
steady pursuit of wealth. All! What had he missed? 'Dutch Fishing
Boats' responded blankly; he crossed to the French window, and drawing
the curtain aside, opened it. A wind had got up, and one of last year's
oak leaves which had somehow survived the gardener's brooms, was dragging
itself with a tiny clicking rustle along the stone terrace in the
twilight. Except for that it was very quiet out there, and he could
smell the heliotrope watered not long since. A bat went by. A bird
uttered its last 'cheep.' And right above the oak tree the first star
shone. Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for some fresh years of
youth. Morbid notion! No such bargain was possible, that was real
tragedy! No making oneself new again for love or life or anything.
Nothing left to do but enjoy beauty from afar off while you could, and
leave it something in your Will. But how much? And, as if he could not
make that calculation looking out into the mild freedom of the country
night, he turned back and went up to the chimney-piece. There were his
pet bronzes--a Cleopatra with the asp at her breast; a Socrates; a
greyhound playing with her puppy; a strong man reining in some horses.
'They last!' he thought, and a pang went through his heart. They had a
thousand years of life before them!
'How much?' Well! enough at all events to save her getting old before her
time, to keep the lines out of her face as long as possible, and grey
from soiling that bright hair. He might live another five years. She
would be well over thirty by then. 'How much?' She had none of his
blood in her! In loyalty to the tenor of his life for forty years and
more, ever since he married and founded that mysterious thing, a family,
came this warning thought--None of his blood, no right to anything! It
was a luxury then, this notion. An extravagance, a petting of an old
man's whim, one of those things done in dotage. His real future was
vested in those who had his blood, in whom he would live on when he was
gone. He turned away from the bronzes and stood looking at the old
leather chair in which he had sat and smoked so many hundreds of cigars.
And suddenly he seemed to see her sitting there in her grey dress,
fragrant, soft, dark-eyed, graceful, looking up at him. Why! She cared
nothing for him, really; all she cared for was that lost lover of hers.
But she was there, whether she would or no, giving him pleasure with her
beauty and grace. One had no right to inflict an old man's company, no
right to ask her down to play to him and let him look at her--for no
reward! Pleasure must be paid for in this world. 'How much?' After
all, there was plenty; his son and his three grandchildren would never
miss that little lump. He had made it himself, nearly every penny; he
could leave it where he liked, allow himself this little pleasure. He
went back to the bureau. 'Well, I'm going to,' he thought, 'let them
think what they like. I'm going to!' And he sat down.
'How much?' Ten thousand, twenty thousand--how much? If only with his
money he could buy one year, one month of youth. And startled by that
thought, he wrote quickly:
'DEAR HERRING,--Draw me a codicil to this effect: "I leave to my niece
Irene Forsyte, born Irene Heron, by which name she now goes, fifteen
thousand pounds free of legacy duty." 'Yours faithfully, 'JOLYON
FORSYTE.'
When he had sealed and stamped the envelope, he went back to the window
and drew in a long breath. It was dark, but many stars shone now.
IV
He woke at half-past two, an hour which long experience had taught him
brings panic intensity to all awkward thoughts. Experience had also
taught him that a further waking at the proper hour of eight showed the
folly of such panic. On this particular morning the thought which
gathered rapid momentum was that if he became ill, at his age not
improbable, he would not see her. From this it was but a step to
realisation that he would be cut off, too, when his son and June returned
from Spain. How could he justify desire for the company of one who had
stolen--early morning does not mince words--June's lover? That lover was
dead; but June was a stubborn little thing; warm-hearted, but stubborn as
wood, and--quite true--not one who forgot! By the middle of next month
they would be back. He had barely five weeks left to enjoy the new
interest which had come into what remained of his life. Darkness showed
up to him absurdly clear the nature of his feeling. Admiration for
beauty--a craving to see that which delighted his eyes.
Preposterous, at his age! And yet--what other reason was there for asking
June to undergo such painful reminder, and how prevent his son and his
son's wife from thinking him very queer? He would be reduced to sneaking
up to London, which tired him; and the least indisposition would cut him
off even from that. He lay with eyes open, setting his jaw against the
prospect, and calling himself an old fool, while his heart beat loudly,
and then seemed to stop beating altogether. He had seen the dawn
lighting the window chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the
cocks crow, before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane. Five
weeks before he need bother, at his age an eternity! But that early
morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of one who
had always had his own way. He would see her as often as he wished! Why
not go up to town and make that codicil at his solicitor's instead of
writing about it; she might like to go to the opera! But, by train, for
he would not have that fat chap Beacon grinning behind his back. Servants
were such fools; and, as likely as not, they had known all the past
history of Irene and young Bosinney--servants knew everything, and
suspected the rest. He wrote to her that morning:
"MY DEAR IRENE,--I have to be up in town to-morrow. If you would like to
have a look in at the opera, come and dine with me quietly ...."
But where? It was decades since he had dined anywhere in London save at
his Club or at a private house. Ah! that new-fangled place close to
Covent Garden....
"Let me have a line to-morrow morning to the Piedmont Hotel whether to
expect you there at 7 o'clock." "Yours affectionately, "JOLYON FORSYTE."
She would understand that he just wanted to give her a little pleasure;
for the idea that she should guess he had this itch to see her was
instinctively unpleasant to him; it was not seemly that one so old should
go out of his way to see beauty, especially in a woman.
The journey next day, short though it was, and the visit to his lawyer's,
tired him. It was hot too, and after dressing for dinner he lay down on
the sofa in his bedroom to rest a little. He must have had a sort of
fainting fit, for he came to himself feeling very queer; and with some
difficulty rose and rang the bell. Why! it was past seven! And there he
was and she would be waiting. But suddenly the dizziness came on again,
and he was obliged to relapse on the sofa. He heard the maid's voice
say:
"Did you ring, sir?"
"Yes, come here"; he could not see her clearly, for the cloud in front of
his eyes. "I'm not well, I want some sal volatile."
"Yes, sir." Her voice sounded frightened.
Old Jolyon made an effort.
"Don't go. Take this message to my niece--a lady waiting in the hall--a
lady in grey. Say Mr. Forsyte is not well--the heat. He is very sorry;
if he is not down directly, she is not to wait dinner."
When she was gone, he thought feebly: 'Why did I say a lady in grey--she
may be in anything. Sal volatile!' He did not go off again, yet was not
conscious of how Irene came to be standing beside him, holding smelling
salts to his nose, and pushing a pillow up behind his head. He heard her
say anxiously: "Dear Uncle Jolyon, what is it?" was dimly conscious of
the soft pressure of her lips on his hand; then drew a long breath of
smelling salts, suddenly discovered strength in them, and sneezed.
"Ha!" he said, "it's nothing. How did you get here? Go down and
dine--the tickets are on the dressing-table. I shall be all right in a
minute."
He felt her cool hand on his forehead, smelled violets, and sat divided
between a sort of pleasure and a determination to be all right.
"Why! You are in grey!" he said. "Help me up." Once on his feet he gave
himself a shake.
"What business had I to go off like that!" And he moved very slowly to
the glass. What a cadaverous chap! Her voice, behind him, murmured:
"You mustn't come down, Uncle; you must rest."
"Fiddlesticks! A glass of champagne'll soon set me to rights. I can't
have you missing the opera."
But the journey down the corridor was troublesome. What carpets they had
in these newfangled places, so thick that you tripped up in them at every
step! In the lift he noticed how concerned she looked, and said with the
ghost of a twinkle:
"I'm a pretty host."
When the lift stopped he had to hold firmly to the seat to prevent its
slipping under him; but after soup and a glass of champagne he felt much
better, and began to enjoy an infirmity which had brought such solicitude
into her manner towards him.
"I should have liked you for a daughter," he said suddenly; and watching
the smile in her eyes, went on:
"You mustn't get wrapped up in the past at your time of life; plenty of
that when you get to my age. That's a nice dress--I like the style."
"I made it myself."
Ah! A woman who could make herself a pretty frock had not lost her
interest in life.
"Make hay while the sun shines," he said; "and drink that up. I want to
see some colour in your cheeks. We mustn't waste life; it doesn't do.
There's a new Marguerite to-night; let's hope she won't be fat. And
Mephisto--anything more dreadful than a fat chap playing the Devil I
can't imagine."
But they did not go to the opera after all, for in getting up from dinner
the dizziness came over him again, and she insisted on his staying quiet
and going to bed early. When he parted from her at the door of the
hotel, having paid the cabman to drive her to Chelsea, he sat down again
for a moment to enjoy the memory of her words: "You are such a darling to
me, Uncle Jolyon!" Why! Who wouldn't be! He would have liked to stay up
another day and take her to the Zoo, but two days running of him would
bore her to death. No, he must wait till next Sunday; she had promised
to come then. They would settle those lessons for Holly, if only for a
month. It would be something. That little Mam'zelle Beauce wouldn't
like it, but she would have to lump it. And crushing his old opera hat
against his chest he sought the lift.
He drove to Waterloo next morning, struggling with a desire to say:
'Drive me to Chelsea.' But his sense of proportion was too strong.
Besides, he still felt shaky, and did not want to risk another aberration
like that of last night, away from home. Holly, too, was expecting him,
and what he had in his bag for her. Not that there was any cupboard love
in his little sweet--she was a bundle of affection. Then, with the
rather bitter cynicism of the old, he wondered for a second whether it
was not cupboard love which made Irene put up with him. No, she was not
that sort either. She had, if anything, too little notion of how to
butter her bread, no sense of property, poor thing! Besides, he had not
breathed a word about that codicil, nor should he--sufficient unto the
day was the good thereof.
In the victoria which met him at the station Holly was restraining the
dog Balthasar, and their caresses made 'jubey' his drive home. All the
rest of that fine hot day and most of the next he was content and
peaceful, reposing in the shade, while the long lingering sunshine
showered gold on the lawns and the flowers. But on Thursday evening at
his lonely dinner he began to count the hours; sixty-five till he would
go down to meet her again in the little coppice, and walk up through the
fields at her side. He had intended to consult the doctor about his
fainting fit, but the fellow would be sure to insist on quiet, no
excitement and all that; and he did not mean to be tied by the leg, did
not want to be told of an infirmity--if there were one, could not afford
to hear of it at his time of life, now that this new interest had come.
And he carefully avoided making any mention of it in a letter to his son.
It would only bring them back with a run! How far this silence was due
to consideration for their pleasure, how far to regard for his own, he
did not pause to consider.
That night in his study he had just finished his cigar and was dozing
off, when he heard the rustle of a gown, and was conscious of a scent of
violets. Opening his eyes he saw her, dressed in grey, standing by the
fireplace, holding out her arms. The odd thing was that, though those
arms seemed to hold nothing, they were curved as if round someone's neck,
and her own neck was bent back, her lips open, her eyes closed. She
vanished at once, and there were the mantelpiece and his bronzes. But
those bronzes and the mantelpiece had not been there when she was, only
the fireplace and the wall! Shaken and troubled, he got up. 'I must
take medicine,' he thought; 'I can't be well.' His heart beat too fast,
he had an asthmatic feeling in the chest; and going to the window, he
opened it to get some air. A dog was barking far away, one of the dogs
at Gage's farm no doubt, beyond the coppice. A beautiful still night,
but dark. 'I dropped off,' he mused, 'that's it! And yet I'll swear my
eyes were open!' A sound like a sigh seemed to answer.
"What's that?" he said sharply, "who's there?"
Putting his hand to his side to still the beating of his heart, he
stepped out on the terrace. Something soft scurried by in the dark.
"Shoo!" It was that great grey cat. 'Young Bosinney was like a great
cat!' he thought. 'It was him in there, that she--that she was--He's got
her still!' He walked to the edge of the terrace, and looked down into
the darkness; he could just see the powdering of the daisies on the
unmown lawn. Here to-day and gone to-morrow! And there came the moon,
who saw all, young and old, alive and dead, and didn't care a dump! His
own turn soon. For a single day of youth he would give what was left!
And he turned again towards the house. He could see the windows of the
night nursery up there. His little sweet would be asleep. 'Hope that
dog won't wake her!' he thought. 'What is it makes us love, and makes us
die! I must go to bed.'
And across the terrace stones, growing grey in the moonlight, he passed
back within.
How should an old man live his days if not in dreaming of his well-spent
past? In that, at all events, there is no agitating warmth, only pale
winter sunshine. The shell can withstand the gentle beating of the
dynamos of memory. The present he should distrust; the future shun. From
beneath thick shade he should watch the sunlight creeping at his toes.
If there be sun of summer, let him not go out into it, mistaking it for
the Indian-summer sun! Thus peradventure he shall decline softly,
slowly, imperceptibly, until impatient Nature clutches his wind-pipe and
he gasps away to death some early morning before the world is aired, and
they put on his tombstone: 'In the fulness of years!' yea! If he
preserve his principles in perfect order, a Forsyte may live on long
after he is dead.
Old Jolyon was conscious of all this, and yet there was in him that which
transcended Forsyteism. For it is written that a Forsyte shall not love
beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than his own health. And
something beat within him in these days that with each throb fretted at
the thinning shell. His sagacity knew this, but it knew too that he
could not stop that beating, nor would if he could. And yet, if you had
told him he was living on his capital, he would have stared you down. No,
no; a man did not live on his capital; it was not done! The shibboleths
of the past are ever more real than the actualities of the present. And
he, to whom living on one's capital had always been anathema, could not
have borne to have applied so gross a phrase to his own case. Pleasure is
healthful; beauty good to see; to live again in the youth of the
young--and what else on earth was he doing!
Methodically, as had been the way of his whole life, he now arranged his
time. On Tuesdays he journeyed up to town by train; Irene came and dined
with him. And they went to the opera. On Thursdays he drove to town,
and, putting that fat chap and his horses up, met her in Kensington
Gardens, picking up the carriage after he had left her, and driving home
again in time for dinner. He threw out the casual formula that he had
business in London on those two days. On Wednesdays and Saturdays she
came down to give Holly music lessons. The greater the pleasure he took
in her society, the more scrupulously fastidious he became, just a
matter-of-fact and friendly uncle. Not even in feeling, really, was he
more--for, after all, there was his age. And yet, if she were late he
fidgeted himself to death. If she missed coming, which happened twice,
his eyes grew sad as an old dog's, and he failed to sleep.
And so a month went by--a month of summer in the fields, and in his
heart, with summer's heat and the fatigue thereof. Who could have
believed a few weeks back that he would have looked forward to his son's
and his grand-daughter's return with something like dread! There was such
a delicious freedom, such recovery of that independence a man enjoys
before he founds a family, about these weeks of lovely weather, and this
new companionship with one who demanded nothing, and remained always a
little unknown, retaining the fascination of mystery. It was like a
draught of wine to him who has been drinking water for so long that he
has almost forgotten the stir wine brings to his blood, the narcotic to
his brain. The flowers were coloured brighter, scents and music and the
sunlight had a living value--were no longer mere reminders of past
enjoyment. There was something now to live for which stirred him
continually to anticipation. He lived in that, not in retrospection; the
difference is considerable to any so old as he. The pleasures of the
table, never of much consequence to one naturally abstemious, had lost
all value. He ate little, without knowing what he ate; and every day
grew thinner and more worn to look at. He was again a 'threadpaper'; and
to this thinned form his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples,
gave more dignity than ever. He was very well aware that he ought to see
the doctor, but liberty was too sweet. He could not afford to pet his
frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his side at the expense of
liberty. Return to the vegetable existence he had led among the
agricultural journals with the life-size mangold wurzels, before this new
attraction came into his life--no! He exceeded his allowance of cigars.
Two a day had always been his rule. Now he smoked three and sometimes
four--a man will when he is filled with the creative spirit. But very
often he thought: 'I must give up smoking, and coffee; I must give up
rattling up to town.' But he did not; there was no one in any sort of
authority to notice him, and this was a priceless boon.
The servants perhaps wondered, but they were, naturally, dumb. Mam'zelle
Beauce was too concerned with her own digestion, and too 'wellbrrred' to
make personal allusions. Holly had not as yet an eye for the relative
appearance of him who was her plaything and her god. It was left for
Irene herself to beg him to eat more, to rest in the hot part of the day,
to take a tonic, and so forth. But she did not tell him that she was the
a cause of his thinness--for one cannot see the havoc oneself is working.
A man of eighty-five has no passions, but the Beauty which produces
passion works on in the old way, till death closes the eyes which crave
the sight of Her.
On the first day of the second week in July he received a letter from his
son in Paris to say that they would all be back on Friday. This had
always been more sure than Fate; but, with the pathetic improvidence
given to the old, that they may endure to the end, he had never quite
admitted it. Now he did, and something would have to be done. He had
ceased to be able to imagine life without this new interest, but that
which is not imagined sometimes exists, as Forsytes are perpetually
finding to their cost. He sat in his old leather chair, doubling up the
letter, and mumbling with his lips the end of an unlighted cigar. After
to-morrow his Tuesday expeditions to town would have to be abandoned. He
could still drive up, perhaps, once a week, on the pretext of seeing his
man of business. But even that would be dependent on his health, for now
they would begin to fuss about him. The lessons! The lessons must go
on! She must swallow down her scruples, and June must put her feelings
in her pocket. She had done so once, on the day after the news of
Bosinney's death; what she had done then, she could surely do again now.
Four years since that injury was inflicted on her--not Christian to keep
the memory of old sores alive. June's will was strong, but his was
stronger, for his sands were running out. Irene was soft, surely she
would do this for him, subdue her natural shrinking, sooner than give him
pain! The lessons must continue; for if they did, he was secure. And
lighting his cigar at last, he began trying to shape out how to put it to
them all, and explain this strange intimacy; how to veil and wrap it away
from the naked truth--that he could not bear to be deprived of the sight
of beauty. Ah! Holly! Holly was fond of her, Holly liked her lessons.
She would save him--his little sweet! And with that happy thought he
became serene, and wondered what he had been worrying about so fearfully.
He must not worry, it left him always curiously weak, and as if but half
present in his own body.
That evening after dinner he had a return of the dizziness, though he did
not faint. He would not ring the bell, because he knew it would mean a
fuss, and make his going up on the morrow more conspicuous. When one
grew old, the whole world was in conspiracy to limit freedom, and for
what reason?--just to keep the breath in him a little longer. He did not
want it at such cost. Only the dog Balthasar saw his lonely recovery
from that weakness; anxiously watched his master go to the sideboard and
drink some brandy, instead of giving him a biscuit. When at last old
Jolyon felt able to tackle the stairs he went up to bed. And, though
still shaky next morning, the thought of the evening sustained and
strengthened him. It was always such a pleasure to give her a good
dinner--he suspected her of undereating when she was alone; and, at the
opera to watch her eyes glow and brighten, the unconscious smiling of her
lips. She hadn't much pleasure, and this was the last time he would be
able to give her that treat. But when he was packing his bag he caught
himself wishing that he had not the fatigue of dressing for dinner before
him, and the exertion, too, of telling her about June's return.
The opera that evening was 'Carmen,' and he chose the last entr'acte to
break the news, instinctively putting it off till the latest moment.
She took it quietly, queerly; in fact, he did not know how she had taken
it before the wayward music lifted up again and silence became necessary.
The mask was down over her face, that mask behind which so much went on
that he could not see. She wanted time to think it over, no doubt! He
would not press her, for she would be coming to give her lesson to-morrow
afternoon, and he should see her then when she had got used to the idea.
In the cab he talked only of the Carmen; he had seen better in the old
days, but this one was not bad at all. When he took her hand to say
good-night, she bent quickly forward and kissed his forehead.
"Good-bye, dear Uncle Jolyon, you have been so sweet to me."
"To-morrow then," he said. "Good-night. Sleep well." She echoed
softly: "Sleep well" and from the cab window, already moving away, he saw
her face screwed round towards him, and her hand put out in a gesture
which seemed to linger.
He sought his room slowly. They never gave him the same, and he could
not get used to these 'spick-and-spandy' bedrooms with new furniture and
grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink roses. He was wakeful
and that wretched Habanera kept throbbing in his head.
His French had never been equal to its words, but its sense he knew, if
it had any sense, a gipsy thing--wild and unaccountable. Well, there was
in life something which upset all your care and plans--something which
made men and women dance to its pipes. And he lay staring from deep-sunk
eyes into the darkness where the unaccountable held sway. You thought
you had hold of life, but it slipped away behind you, took you by the
scruff of the neck, forced you here and forced you there, and then,
likely as not, squeezed life out of you! It took the very stars like
that, he shouldn't wonder, rubbed their noses together and flung them
apart; it had never done playing its pranks. Five million people in this
great blunderbuss of a town, and all of them at the mercy of that
Life-Force, like a lot of little dried peas hopping about on a board when
you struck your fist on it. Ah, well! Himself would not hop much
longer--a good long sleep would do him good!
How hot it was up here!--how noisy! His forehead burned; she had kissed
it just where he always worried; just there--as if she had known the very
place and wanted to kiss it all away for him. But, instead, her lips
left a patch of grievous uneasiness. She had never spoken in quite that
voice, had never before made that lingering gesture or looked back at him
as she drove away.
He got out of bed and pulled the curtains aside; his room faced down over
the river. There was little air, but the sight of that breadth of water
flowing by, calm, eternal, soothed him. 'The great thing,' he thought
'is not to make myself a nuisance. I'll think of my little sweet, and go
to sleep.' But it was long before the heat and throbbing of the London
night died out into the short slumber of the summer morning. And old
Jolyon had but forty winks.
When he reached home next day he went out to the flower garden, and with
the help of Holly, who was very delicate with flowers, gathered a great
bunch of carnations. They were, he told her, for 'the lady in grey'--a
name still bandied between them; and he put them in a bowl in his study
where he meant to tackle Irene the moment she came, on the subject of
June and future lessons. Their fragrance and colour would help. After
lunch he lay down, for he felt very tired, and the carriage would not
bring her from the station till four o'clock. But as the hour approached
he grew restless, and sought the schoolroom, which overlooked the drive.
The sun-blinds were down, and Holly was there with Mademoiselle Beauce,
sheltered from the heat of a stifling July day, attending to their
silkworms. Old Jolyon had a natural antipathy to these methodical
creatures, whose heads and colour reminded him of elephants; who nibbled
such quantities of holes in nice green leaves; and smelled, as he
thought, horrid. He sat down on a chintz-covered windowseat whence he
could see the drive, and get what air there was; and the dog Balthasar
who appreciated chintz on hot days, jumped up beside him. Over the
cottage piano a violet dust-sheet, faded almost to grey, was spread, and
on it the first lavender, whose scent filled the room. In spite of the
coolness here, perhaps because of that coolness the beat of life
vehemently impressed his ebbed-down senses. Each sunbeam which came
through the chinks had annoying brilliance; that dog smelled very strong;
the lavender perfume was overpowering; those silkworms heaving up their
grey-green backs seemed horribly alive; and Holly's dark head bent over
them had a wonderfully silky sheen. A marvellous cruelly strong thing
was life when you were old and weak; it seemed to mock you with its
multitude of forms and its beating vitality. He had never, till those
last few weeks, had this curious feeling of being with one half of him
eagerly borne along in the stream of life, and with the other half left
on the bank, watching that helpless progress. Only when Irene was with
him did he lose this double consciousness.
Holly turned her head, pointed with her little brown fist to the
piano--for to point with a finger was not 'well-brrred'--and said slyly:
"Look at the 'lady in grey,' Gran; isn't she pretty to-day?"
Old Jolyon's heart gave a flutter, and for a second the room was clouded;
then it cleared, and he said with a twinkle:
"Who's been dressing her up?"
"Mam'zelle."
"Hollee! Don't be foolish!"
That prim little Frenchwoman! She hadn't yet got over the music lessons
being taken away from her. That wouldn't help. His little sweet was the
only friend they had. Well, they were her lessons. And he shouldn't
budge shouldn't budge for anything. He stroked the warm wool on
Balthasar's head, and heard Holly say: "When mother's home, there won't
be any changes, will there? She doesn't like strangers, you know."
The child's words seemed to bring the chilly atmosphere of opposition
about old Jolyon, and disclose all the menace to his new-found freedom.
Ah! He would have to resign himself to being an old man at the mercy of
care and love, or fight to keep this new and prized companionship; and to
fight tired him to death. But his thin, worn face hardened into
resolution till it appeared all Jaw. This was his house, and his affair;
he should not budge! He looked at his watch, old and thin like himself;
he had owned it fifty years. Past four already! And kissing the top of
Holly's head in passing, he went down to the hall. He wanted to get hold
of her before she went up to give her lesson. At the first sound of
wheels he stepped out into the porch, and saw at once that the victoria
was empty.
"The train's in, sir; but the lady 'asn't come."
Old Jolyon gave him a sharp upward look, his eyes seemed to push away
that fat chap's curiosity, and defy him to see the bitter disappointment
he was feeling.
"Very well," he said, and turned back into the house. He went to his
study and sat down, quivering like a leaf. What did this mean? She might
have lost her train, but he knew well enough she hadn't. 'Good-bye, dear
Uncle Jolyon.' Why 'Good-bye' and not 'Good-night'? And that hand of
hers lingering in the air. And her kiss. What did it mean? Vehement
alarm and irritation took possession of him. He got up and began to pace
the Turkey carpet, between window and wall. She was going to give him
up! He felt it for certain--and he defenceless. An old man wanting to
look on beauty! It was ridiculous! Age closed his mouth, paralysed his
power to fight. He had no right to what was warm and living, no right to
anything but memories and sorrow. He could not plead with her; even an
old man has his dignity. Defenceless! For an hour, lost to bodily
fatigue, he paced up and down, past the bowl of carnations he had
plucked, which mocked him with its scent. Of all things hard to bear,
the prostration of will-power is hardest, for one who has always had his
way. Nature had got him in its net, and like an unhappy fish he turned
and swam at the meshes, here and there, found no hole, no breaking point.
They brought him tea at five o'clock, and a letter. For a moment hope
beat up in him. He cut the envelope with the butter knife, and read:
"DEAREST UNCLE JOLYON,--I can't bear to write anything that may
disappoint you, but I was too cowardly to tell you last night. I feel I
can't come down and give Holly any more lessons, now that June is coming
back. Some things go too deep to be forgotten. It has been such a joy
to see you and Holly. Perhaps I shall still see you sometimes when you
come up, though I'm sure it's not good for you; I can see you are tiring
yourself too much. I believe you ought to rest quite quietly all this
hot weather, and now you have your son and June coming back you will be
so happy. Thank you a million times for all your sweetness to me.
"Lovingly your IRENE."
So, there it was! Not good for him to have pleasure and what he chiefly
cared about; to try and put off feeling the inevitable end of all things,
the approach of death with its stealthy, rustling footsteps. Not good
for him! Not even she could see how she was his new lease of interest in
life, the incarnation of all the beauty he felt slipping from him.
His tea grew cold, his cigar remained unlit; and up and down he paced,
torn between his dignity and his hold on life. Intolerable to be
squeezed out slowly, without a say of your own, to live on when your will
was in the hands of others bent on weighing you to the ground with care
and love. Intolerable! He would see what telling her the truth would
do--the truth that he wanted the sight of her more than just a lingering
on. He sat down at his old bureau and took a pen. But he could not
write. There was something revolting in having to plead like this; plead
that she should warm his eyes with her beauty. It was tantamount to
confessing dotage. He simply could not. And instead, he wrote:
"I had hoped that the memory of old sores would not be allowed to stand
in the way of what is a pleasure and a profit to me and my little
grand-daughter. But old men learn to forego their whims; they are
obliged to, even the whim to live must be foregone sooner or later; and
perhaps the sooner the better. "My love to you, "JOLYON FORSYTE."
'Bitter,' he thought, 'but I can't help it. I'm tired.' He sealed and
dropped it into the box for the evening post, and hearing it fall to the
bottom, thought: 'There goes all I've looked forward to!'
That evening after dinner which he scarcely touched, after his cigar
which he left half-smoked for it made him feel faint, he went very slowly
upstairs and stole into the night-nursery. He sat down on the
window-seat. A night-light was burning, and he could just see Holly's
face, with one hand underneath the cheek. An early cockchafer buzzed in
the Japanese paper with which they had filled the grate, and one of the
horses in the stable stamped restlessly. To sleep like that child! He
pressed apart two rungs of the venetian blind and looked out. The moon
was rising, blood-red. He had never seen so red a moon. The woods and
fields out there were dropping to sleep too, in the last glimmer of the
summer light. And beauty, like a spirit, walked. 'I've had a long life,'
he thought, 'the best of nearly everything. I'm an ungrateful chap; I've
seen a lot of beauty in my time. Poor young Bosinney said I had a sense
of beauty. There's a man in the moon to-night!' A moth went by,
another, another. 'Ladies in grey!' He closed his eyes. A feeling that
he would never open them again beset him; he let it grow, let himself
sink; then, with a shiver, dragged the lids up. There was something
wrong with him, no doubt, deeply wrong; he would have to have the doctor
after all. It didn't much matter now! Into that coppice the moon-light
would have crept; there would be shadows, and those shadows would be the
only things awake. No birds, beasts, flowers, insects; Just the
shadows--moving; 'Ladies in grey!' Over that log they would climb; would
whisper together. She and Bosinney! Funny thought! And the frogs and
little things would whisper too! How the clock ticked, in here! It was
all eerie--out there in the light of that red moon; in here with the
little steady night-light and, the ticking clock and the nurse's
dressing-gown hanging from the edge of the screen, tall, like a woman's
figure. 'Lady in grey!' And a very odd thought beset him: Did she
exist? Had she ever come at all? Or was she but the emanation of all
the beauty he had loved and must leave so soon? The violet-grey spirit
with the dark eyes and the crown of amber hair, who walks the dawn and
the moonlight, and at blue-bell time? What was she, who was she, did she
exist? He rose and stood a moment clutching the window-sill, to give him
a sense of reality again; then began tiptoeing towards the door. He
stopped at the foot of the bed; and Holly, as if conscious of his eyes
fixed on her, stirred, sighed, and curled up closer in defence. He
tiptoed on and passed out into the dark passage; reached his room,
undressed at once, and stood before a mirror in his night-shirt. What a
scarecrow--with temples fallen in, and thin legs! His eyes resisted his
own image, and a look of pride came on his face. All was in league to
pull him down, even his reflection in the glass, but he was not
down--yet! He got into bed, and lay a long time without sleeping, trying
to reach resignation, only too well aware that fretting and
disappointment were very bad for him.
He woke in the morning so unrefreshed and strengthless that he sent for
the doctor. After sounding him, the fellow pulled a face as long as your
arm, and ordered him to stay in bed and give up smoking. That was no
hardship; there was nothing to get up for, and when he felt ill, tobacco
always lost its savour. He spent the morning languidly with the
sun-blinds down, turning and re-turning The Times, not reading much, the
dog Balthasar lying beside his bed. With his lunch they brought him a
telegram, running thus:
'Your letter received coming down this afternoon will be with you at
four-thirty. Irene.'
Coming down! After all! Then she did exist--and he was not deserted.
Coming down! A glow ran through his limbs; his cheeks and forehead felt
hot. He drank his soup, and pushed the tray-table away, lying very quiet
until they had removed lunch and left him alone; but every now and then
his eyes twinkled. Coming down! His heart beat fast, and then did not
seem to beat at all. At three o'clock he got up and dressed
deliberately, noiselessly. Holly and Mam'zelle would be in the
schoolroom, and the servants asleep after their dinner, he shouldn't
wonder. He opened his door cautiously, and went downstairs. In the hall
the dog Balthasar lay solitary, and, followed by him, old Jolyon passed
into his study and out into the burning afternoon. He meant to go down
and meet her in the coppice, but felt at once he could not manage that in
this heat. He sat down instead under the oak tree by the swing, and the
dog Balthasar, who also felt the heat, lay down beside him. He sat there
smiling. What a revel of bright minutes! What a hum of insects, and
cooing of pigeons! It was the quintessence of a summer day. Lovely! And
he was happy--happy as a sand-boy, whatever that might be. She was
coming; she had not given him up! He had everything in life he
wanted--except a little more breath, and less weight--just here! He
would see her when she emerged from the fernery, come swaying just a
little, a violet-grey figure passing over the daisies and dandelions and
'soldiers' on the lawn--the soldiers with their flowery crowns. He would
not move, but she would come up to him and say: 'Dear Uncle Jolyon, I am
sorry!' and sit in the swing and let him look at her and tell her that he
had not been very well but was all right now; and that dog would lick her
hand. That dog knew his master was fond of her; that dog was a good dog.
It was quite shady under the tree; the sun could not get at him, only
make the rest of the world bright so that he could see the Grand Stand at
Epsom away out there, very far, and the cows cropping the clover in the
field and swishing at the flies with their tails. He smelled the scent
of limes, and lavender. Ah! that was why there was such a racket of
bees. They were excited--busy, as his heart was busy and excited.
Drowsy, too, drowsy and drugged on honey and happiness; as his heart was
drugged and drowsy. Summer--summer--they seemed saying; great bees and
little bees, and the flies too!
The stable clock struck four; in half an hour she would be here. He would
have just one tiny nap, because he had had so little sleep of late; and
then he would be fresh for her, fresh for youth and beauty, coming
towards him across the sunlit lawn--lady in grey! And settling back in
his chair he closed his eyes. Some thistle-down came on what little air
there was, and pitched on his moustache more white than itself. He did
not know; but his breathing stirred it, caught there. A ray of sunlight
struck through and lodged on his boot. A bumble-bee alighted and
strolled on the crown of his Panama hat. And the delicious surge of
slumber reached the brain beneath that hat, and the head swayed forward
and rested on his breast. Summer--summer! So went the hum.
The stable clock struck the quarter past. The dog Balthasar stretched
and looked up at his master. The thistledown no longer moved. The dog
placed his chin over the sunlit foot. It did not stir. The dog withdrew
his chin quickly, rose, and leaped on old Jolyon's lap, looked in his
face, whined; then, leaping down, sat on his haunches, gazing up. And
suddenly he uttered a long, long howl.
But the thistledown was still as death, and the face of his old master.
Summer--summer--summer! The soundless footsteps on the grass!
1917
THE END.
STUDIES AND ESSAYS, Complete
By John Galsworthy
CONTENTS:
CONCERNING LIFE, Part 1.
INN OF TRANQUILITY
MAGPIE OVER THE HILL
SHEEP-SHEARING
EVOLUTION
RIDING IN THE MIST
THE PROCESSION
A CHRISTIAN
WIND IN THE ROCKS
MY DISTANT RELATIVE
THE BLACK GODMOTHER
CONCERNING LIFE, Part 2.
QUALITY
THE GRAND JURY
GONE
THRESHING
THAT OLD-TIME PLACE
ROMANCE--THREE GLEAMS
MEMORIES
FELICITY
CONCERNING LETTERS
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY
SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA
MEDITATION ON FINALITY
WANTED--SCHOOLING
ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
THE WINDLESTRAW
CENSORSHIP AND ART
ABOUT CENSORSHIP
VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART
"Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."
--ANATOLE FRANCE
CONCERNING LIFE
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INN OF TRANQUILITY
MAGPIE OVER THE HILL
SHEEP-SHEARING
EVOLUTION
RIDING IN THE MIST
THE PROCESSION
A CHRISTIAN
WIND IN THE ROCKS
MY DISTANT RELATIVE
THE BLACK GODMOTHER
THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY
Under a burning blue sky, among the pine-trees and junipers, the
cypresses and olives of that Odyssean coast, we came one afternoon on a
pink house bearing the legend: "Osteria di Tranquillita,"; and, partly
because of the name, and partly because we did not expect to find a house
at all in those goat-haunted groves above the waves, we tarried for
contemplation. To the familiar simplicity of that Italian building there
were not lacking signs of a certain spiritual change, for out of the
olive-grove which grew to its very doors a skittle-alley had been formed,
and two baby cypress-trees were cut into the effigies of a cock and hen.
The song of a gramophone, too, was breaking forth into the air, as it
were the presiding voice of a high and cosmopolitan mind. And, lost in
admiration, we became conscious of the odour of a full-flavoured cigar.
Yes--in the skittle-alley a gentleman was standing who wore a bowler hat,
a bright brown suit, pink tie, and very yellow boots. His head was
round, his cheeks fat and well-coloured, his lips red and full under a
black moustache, and he was regarding us through very thick and
half-closed eyelids.
Perceiving him to be the proprietor of the high and cosmopolitan mind, we
accosted him.
"Good-day!" he replied: "I spik English. Been in Amurrica yes."
"You have a lovely place here."
Sweeping a glance over the skittle-alley, he sent forth a long puff of
smoke; then, turning to my companion (of the politer sex) with the air of
one who has made himself perfect master of a foreign tongue, he smiled,
and spoke.
"Too-quiet!"
"Precisely; the name of your inn, perhaps, suggests----"
"I change all that--soon I call it Anglo-American hotel."
"Ah! yes; you are very up-to-date already."
He closed one eye and smiled.
Having passed a few more compliments, we saluted and walked on; and,
coming presently to the edge of the cliff, lay down on the thyme and the
crumbled leaf-dust. All the small singing birds had long been shot and
eaten; there came to us no sound but that of the waves swimming in on a
gentle south wind. The wanton creatures seemed stretching out white arms
to the land, flying desperately from a sea of such stupendous serenity;
and over their bare shoulders their hair floated back, pale in the
sunshine. If the air was void of sound, it was full of scent--that
delicious and enlivening perfume of mingled gum, and herbs, and sweet
wood being burned somewhere a long way off; and a silky, golden warmth
slanted on to us through the olives and umbrella pines. Large wine-red
violets were growing near. On such a cliff might Theocritus have lain,
spinning his songs; on that divine sea Odysseus should have passed. And
we felt that presently the goat-god must put his head forth from behind a
rock.
It seemed a little queer that our friend in the bowler hat should move
and breathe within one short flight of a cuckoo from this home of Pan.
One could not but at first feelingly remember the old Boer saying: "O
God, what things man sees when he goes out without a gun!" But soon the
infinite incongruity of this juxtaposition began to produce within one a
curious eagerness, a sort of half-philosophical delight. It began to seem
too good, almost too romantic, to be true. To think of the gramophone
wedded to the thin sweet singing of the olive leaves in the evening wind;
to remember the scent of his rank cigar marrying with this wild incense;
to read that enchanted name, "Inn of Tranquillity," and hear the bland
and affable remark of the gentleman who owned it--such were, indeed,
phenomena to stimulate souls to speculation. And all unconsciously one
began to justify them by thoughts of the other incongruities of
existence--the strange, the passionate incongruities of youth and age,
wealth and poverty, life and death; the wonderful odd bedfellows of this
world; all those lurid contrasts which haunt a man's spirit till
sometimes he is ready to cry out: "Rather than live where such things can
be, let me die!"
Like a wild bird tracking through the air, one's meditation wandered on,
following that trail of thought, till the chance encounter became
spiritually luminous. That Italian gentleman of the world, with his
bowler hat, his skittle-alley, his gramophone, who had planted himself
down in this temple of wild harmony, was he not Progress itself--the
blind figure with the stomach full of new meats and the brain of raw
notions? Was he not the very embodiment of the wonderful child,
Civilisation, so possessed by a new toy each day that she has no time to
master its use--naive creature lost amid her own discoveries! Was he not
the very symbol of that which was making economists thin, thinkers pale,
artists haggard, statesmen bald--the symbol of Indigestion Incarnate!
Did he not, delicious, gross, unconscious man, personify beneath his
Americo-Italian polish all those rank and primitive instincts, whose
satisfaction necessitated the million miseries of his fellows; all those
thick rapacities which stir the hatred of the humane and thin-skinned!
And yet, one's meditation could not stop there--it was not convenient to
the heart!
A little above us, among the olive-trees, two blue-clothed peasants, man
and woman, were gathering the fruit--from some such couple, no doubt, our
friend in the bowler hat had sprung; more "virile" and adventurous than
his brothers, he had not stayed in the home groves, but had gone forth to
drink the waters of hustle and commerce, and come back--what he was. And
he, in turn, would beget children, and having made his pile out of his
'Anglo-American hotel' would place those children beyond the coarser
influences of life, till they became, perhaps, even as our selves, the
salt of the earth, and despised him. And I thought: "I do not despise
those peasants--far from it. I do not despise myself--no more than
reason; why, then, despise my friend in the bowler hat, who is, after
all, but the necessary link between them and me?" I did not despise the
olive-trees, the warm sun, the pine scent, all those material things
which had made him so thick and strong; I did not despise the golden,
tenuous imaginings which the trees and rocks and sea were starting in my
own spirit. Why, then, despise the skittle-alley, the gramophone, those
expressions of the spirit of my friend in the billy-cock hat? To despise
them was ridiculous!
And suddenly I was visited by a sensation only to be described as a sort
of smiling certainty, emanating from, and, as it were, still tingling
within every nerve of myself, but yet vibrating harmoniously with the
world around. It was as if I had suddenly seen what was the truth of
things; not perhaps to anybody else, but at all events to me. And I felt
at once tranquil and elated, as when something is met with which rouses
and fascinates in a man all his faculties.
"For," I thought, "if it is ridiculous in me to despise my friend--that
perfect marvel of disharmony--it is ridiculous in me to despise anything.
If he is a little bit of continuity, as perfectly logical an expression
of a necessary phase or mood of existence as I myself am, then, surely,
there is nothing in all the world that is not a little bit of continuity,
the expression of a little necessary mood. Yes," I thought, "he and I,
and those olive-trees, and this spider on my hand, and everything in the
Universe which has an individual shape, are all fit expressions of the
separate moods of a great underlying Mood or Principle, which must be
perfectly adjusted, volving and revolving on itself. For if It did not
volve and revolve on Itself, It would peter out at one end or the other,
and the image of this petering out no man with his mental apparatus can
conceive. Therefore, one must conclude It to be perfectly adjusted and
everlasting. But if It is perfectly adjusted and everlasting, we are all
little bits of continuity, and if we are all little bits of continuity it
is ridiculous for one of us to despise another. So," I thought, "I have
now proved it from my friend in the billy-cock hat up to the Universe,
and from the Universe down, back again to my friend."
And I lay on my back and looked at the sky. It seemed friendly to my
thought with its smile, and few white clouds, saffron-tinged like the
plumes of a white duck in sunlight. "And yet," I wondered, "though my
friend and I may be equally necessary, I am certainly irritated by him,
and shall as certainly continue to be irritated, not only by him, but by
a thousand other men and so, with a light heart, you may go on being
irritated with your friend in the bowler hat, you may go on loving those
peasants and this sky and sea. But, since you have this theory of life,
you may not despise any one or any thing, not even a skittle-alley, for
they are all threaded to you, and to despise them would be to blaspheme
against continuity, and to blaspheme against continuity would be to deny
Eternity. Love you cannot help, and hate you cannot help; but contempt
is--for you--the sovereign idiocy, the irreligious fancy!"
There was a bee weighing down a blossom of thyme close by, and underneath
the stalk a very ugly little centipede. The wild bee, with his little
dark body and his busy bear's legs, was lovely to me, and the creepy
centipede gave me shudderings; but it was a pleasant thing to feel so
sure that he, no less than the bee, was a little mood expressing himself
out in harmony with Designs tiny thread on the miraculous quilt. And I
looked at him with a sudden zest and curiosity; it seemed to me that in
the mystery of his queer little creepings I was enjoying the Supreme
Mystery; and I thought: "If I knew all about that wriggling beast, then,
indeed, I might despise him; but, truly, if I knew all about him I should
know all about everything--Mystery would be gone, and I could not bear to
live!"
So I stirred him with my finger and he went away.
"But how"--I thought "about such as do not feel it ridiculous to despise;
how about those whose temperaments and religions show them all things so
plainly that they know they are right and others wrong? They must be in a
bad way!" And for some seconds I felt sorry for them, and was
discouraged. But then I thought: "Not at all--obviously not! For if
they do not find it ridiculous to feel contempt, they are perfectly right
to feel contempt, it being natural to them; and you have no business to
be sorry for them, for that is, after all, only your euphemism for
contempt. They are all right, being the expressions of contemptuous
moods, having religions and so forth, suitable to these moods; and the
religion of your mood would be Greek to them, and probably a matter for
contempt. But this only makes it the more interesting. For though to
you, for instance, it may seem impossible to worship Mystery with one
lobe of the brain, and with the other to explain it, the thought that
this may not seem impossible to others should not discourage you; it is
but another little piece of that Mystery which makes life so wonderful
and sweet."
The sun, fallen now almost to the level of the cliff, was slanting upward
on to the burnt-red pine boughs, which had taken to themselves a quaint
resemblance to the great brown limbs of the wild men Titian drew in his
pagan pictures, and down below us the sea-nymphs, still swimming to
shore, seemed eager to embrace them in the enchanted groves. All was
fused in that golden glow of the sun going down-sea and land gathered
into one transcendent mood of light and colour, as if Mystery desired to
bless us by showing how perfect was that worshipful adjustment, whose
secret we could never know. And I said to myself: "None of those
thoughts of yours are new, and in a vague way even you have thought them
before; but all the same, they have given you some little feeling of
tranquillity."
And at that word of fear I rose and invited my companion to return toward
the town. But as we stealthy crept by the "Osteria di Tranquillita," our
friend in the bowler hat came out with a gun over his shoulder and waved
his hand toward the Inn.
"You come again in two week--I change all that! And now," he added, "I
go to shoot little bird or two," and he disappeared into the golden haze
under the olive-trees.
A minute later we heard his gun go off, and returned homeward with a
prayer.
1910.
MAGPIE OVER THE HILL
I lay often that summer on a slope of sand and coarse grass, close to the
Cornish sea, trying to catch thoughts; and I was trying very hard when I
saw them coming hand in hand.
She was dressed in blue linen, and a little cloud of honey-coloured hair;
her small face had serious eyes the colour of the chicory flowers she was
holding up to sniff at--a clean sober little maid, with a very touching
upward look of trust. Her companion was a strong, active boy of perhaps
fourteen, and he, too, was serious--his deep-set, blacklashed eyes looked
down at her with a queer protective wonder; the while he explained in a
soft voice broken up between two ages, that exact process which bees
adopt to draw honey out of flowers. Once or twice this hoarse but
charming voice became quite fervent, when she had evidently failed to
follow; it was as if he would have been impatient, only he knew he must
not, because she was a lady and younger than himself, and he loved her.
They sat down just below my nook, and began to count the petals of a
chicory flower, and slowly she nestled in to him, and he put his arm
round her. Never did I see such sedate, sweet lovering, so trusting on
her part, so guardianlike on his. They were like, in miniature---though
more dewy,--those sober couples who have long lived together, yet whom
one still catches looking at each other with confidential tenderness, and
in whom, one feels, passion is atrophied from never having been in use.
Long I sat watching them in their cool communion, half-embraced, talking
a little, smiling a little, never once kissing. They did not seem shy of
that; it was rather as if they were too much each other's to think of
such a thing. And then her head slid lower and lower down his shoulder,
and sleep buttoned the lids over those chicory-blue eyes. How careful he
was, then, not to wake her, though I could see his arm was getting stiff!
He still sat, good as gold, holding her, till it began quite to hurt me
to see his shoulder thus in chancery. But presently I saw him draw his
arm away ever so carefully, lay her head down on the grass, and lean
forward to stare at something. Straight in front of them was a magpie,
balancing itself on a stripped twig of thorn-tree. The agitating bird,
painted of night and day, was making a queer noise and flirting one wing,
as if trying to attract attention. Rising from the twig, it circled,
vivid and stealthy, twice round the tree, and flew to another a dozen
paces off. The boy rose; he looked at his little mate, looked at the
bird, and began quietly to move toward it; but uttering again its queer
call, the bird glided on to a third thorn-tree. The boy hesitated
then--but once more the bird flew on, and suddenly dipped over the hill.
I saw the boy break into a run; and getting up quickly, I ran too.
When I reached the crest there was the black and white bird flying low
into a dell, and there the boy, with hair streaming back, was rushing
helter-skelter down the hill. He reached the bottom and vanished into
the dell. I, too, ran down the hill. For all that I was prying and must
not be seen by bird or boy, I crept warily in among the trees to the edge
of a pool that could know but little sunlight, so thickly arched was it
by willows, birch-trees, and wild hazel. There, in a swing of boughs
above the water, was perched no pied bird, but a young, dark-haired girl
with, dangling, bare, brown legs. And on the brink of the black water
goldened, with fallen leaves, the boy was crouching, gazing up at her
with all his soul. She swung just out of reach and looked down at him
across the pool. How old was she, with her brown limbs, and her gleaming,
slanting eyes? Or was she only the spirit of the dell, this elf-thing
swinging there, entwined with boughs and the dark water, and covered with
a shift of wet birch leaves. So strange a face she had, wild, almost
wicked, yet so tender; a face that I could not take my eyes from. Her
bare toes just touched the pool, and flicked up drops of water that fell
on the boy's face.
From him all the sober steadfastness was gone; already he looked as wild
as she, and his arms were stretched out trying to reach her feet. I
wanted to cry to him: "Go back, boy, go back!" but could not; her elf
eyes held me dumb-they looked so lost in their tender wildness.
And then my heart stood still, for he had slipped and was struggling in
deep water beneath her feet. What a gaze was that he was turning up to
her--not frightened, but so longing, so desperate; and hers how
triumphant, and how happy!
And then he clutched her foot, and clung, and climbed; and bending down,
she drew him up to her, all wet, and clasped him in the swing of boughs.
I took a long breath then. An orange gleam of sunlight had flamed in
among the shadows and fell round those two where they swung over the dark
water, with lips close together and spirits lost in one another's, and in
their eyes such drowning ecstasy! And then they kissed! All round me
pool, and leaves, and air seemed suddenly to swirl and melt--I could see
nothing plain! . . . What time passed--I do not know--before their
faces slowly again became visible! His face the sober boy's--was turned
away from her, and he was listening; for above the whispering of leaves a
sound of weeping came from over the hill. It was to that he listened.
And even as I looked he slid down from out of her arms; back into the
pool, and began struggling to gain the edge. What grief and longing in
her wild face then! But she did not wail. She did not try to pull him
back; that elfish heart of dignity could reach out to what was coming, it
could not drag at what was gone. Unmoving as the boughs and water, she
watched him abandon her.
Slowly the struggling boy gained land, and lay there, breathless. And
still that sound of lonely weeping came from over the hill.
Listening, but looking at those wild, mourning eyes that never moved from
him, he lay. Once he turned back toward the water, but fire had died
within him; his hands dropped, nerveless--his young face was all
bewilderment.
And the quiet darkness of the pool waited, and the trees, and those lost
eyes of hers, and my heart. And ever from over the hill came the little
fair maiden's lonely weeping.
Then, slowly dragging his feet, stumbling, half-blinded, turning and
turning to look back, the boy groped his way out through the trees toward
that sound; and, as he went, that dark spirit-elf, abandoned, clasping
her own lithe body with her arms, never moved her gaze from him.
I, too, crept away, and when I was safe outside in the pale evening
sunlight, peered back into the dell. There under the dark trees she was
no longer, but round and round that cage of passion, fluttering and
wailing through the leaves, over the black water, was the magpie,
flighting on its twilight wings.
I turned and ran and ran till I came over the hill and saw the boy and
the little fair, sober maiden sitting together once more on the open
slope, under the high blue heaven. She was nestling her tear-stained
face against his shoulder and speaking already of indifferent things.
And he--he was holding her with his arm and watching over her with eyes
that seemed to see something else.
And so I lay, hearing their sober talk and gazing at their sober little
figures, till I awoke and knew I had dreamed all that little allegory of
sacred and profane love, and from it had returned to reason, knowing no
more than ever which was which.
1912.
SHEEP-SHEARING
From early morning there had been bleating of sheep in the yard, so that
one knew the creatures were being sheared, and toward evening I went
along to see. Thirty or forty naked-looking ghosts of sheep were penned
against the barn, and perhaps a dozen still inhabiting their coats. Into
the wool of one of these bulky ewes the farmer's small, yellow-haired
daughter was twisting her fist, hustling it toward Fate; though pulled
almost off her feet by the frightened, stubborn creature, she never let
go, till, with a despairing cough, the ewe had passed over the threshold
and was fast in the hands of a shearer. At the far end of the barn,
close by the doors, I stood a minute or two before shifting up to watch
the shearing. Into that dim, beautiful home of age, with its great
rafters and mellow stone archways, the June sunlight shone through
loopholes and chinks, in thin glamour, powdering with its very
strangeness the dark cathedraled air, where, high up, clung a fog of old
grey cobwebs so thick as ever were the stalactites of a huge cave. At
this end the scent of sheep and wool and men had not yet routed that home
essence of the barn, like the savour of acorns and withering beech
leaves.
They were shearing by hand this year, nine of them, counting the postman,
who, though farm-bred, "did'n putt much to the shearin'," but had come to
round the sheep up and give general aid.
Sitting on the creatures, or with a leg firmly crooked over their heads,
each shearer, even the two boys, had an air of going at it in his own
way. In their white canvas shearing suits they worked very steadily,
almost in silence, as if drowsed by the "click-clip, click-clip" of the
shears. And the sheep, but for an occasional wriggle of legs or head,
lay quiet enough, having an inborn sense perhaps of the fitness of
things, even when, once in a way, they lost more than wool; glad too,
mayhap, to be rid of their matted vestments. From time to time the
little damsel offered each shearer a jug and glass, but no man drank till
he had finished his sheep; then he would get up, stretch his cramped
muscles, drink deep, and almost instantly sit down again on a fresh
beast. And always there was the buzz of flies swarming in the sunlight
of the open doorway, the dry rustle of the pollarded lime-trees in the
sharp wind outside, the bleating of some released ewe, upset at her own
nakedness, the scrape and shuffle of heels and sheep's limbs on the
floor, together with the "click-clip, click-clip" of the shears.
As each ewe, finished with, struggled up, helped by a friendly shove, and
bolted out dazedly into the pen, I could not help wondering what was
passing in her head--in the heads of all those unceremoniously treated
creatures; and, moving nearer to the postman, I said:
"They're really very good, on the whole."
He looked at me, I thought, queerly.
"Yaas," he answered; "Mr. Molton's the best of them."
I looked askance at Mr. Molton; but, with his knee crooked round a young
ewe, he was shearing calmly.
"Yes," I admitted, "he is certainly good."
"Yaas," replied the postman.
Edging back into the darkness, away from that uncomprehending youth, I
escaped into the air, and passing the remains of last year's stacks under
the tall, toppling elms, sat down in a field under the bank. It seemed to
me that I had food for thought. In that little misunderstanding between
me and the postman was all the essence of the difference between that
state of civilisation in which sheep could prompt a sentiment, and that
state in which sheep could not.
The heat from the dropping sun, not far now above the moorline, struck
full into the ferns and long grass of the bank where I was sitting, and
the midges rioted on me in this last warmth. The wind was barred out, so
that one had the full sweetness of the clover, fast becoming hay, over
which the swallows were wheeling and swooping after flies. And far up,
as it were the crown of Nature's beautiful devouring circle, a buzzard
hawk, almost stationary on the air, floated, intent on something pleasant
below him. A number of little hens crept through the gate one by one,
and came round me. It seemed to them that I was there to feed them; and
they held their neat red or yellow heads to one side and the other,
inquiring with their beady eyes, surprised at my stillness. They were
pretty with their speckled feathers, and as it seemed to me, plump and
young, so that I wondered how many of them would in time feed me.
Finding, however, that I gave them nothing to eat, they went away, and
there arose, in place of their clucking, the thin singing of air passing
through some long tube. I knew it for the whining of my dog, who had
nosed me out, but could not get through the padlocked gate. And as I
lifted him over, I was glad the postman could not see me--for I felt that
to lift a dog over a gate would be against the principles of one for whom
the connection of sheep with good behaviour had been too strange a
thought. And it suddenly rushed into my mind that the time would no doubt
come when the conduct of apples, being plucked from the mother tree,
would inspire us, and we should say: "They're really very good!" And I
wondered, were those future watchers of apple-gathering farther from me
than I, watching sheep-shearing, from the postman? I thought, too, of the
pretty dreams being dreamt about the land, and of the people who dreamed
them. And I looked at that land, covered with the sweet pinkish-green of
the clover, and considered how much of it, through the medium of sheep,
would find its way into me, to enable me to come out here and be eaten by
midges, and speculate about things, and conceive the sentiment of how
good the sheep were. And it all seemed queer. I thought, too, of a world
entirely composed of people who could see the sheen rippling on that
clover, and feel a sort of sweet elation at the scent of it, and I
wondered how much clover would be sown then? Many things I thought of,
sitting there, till the sun sank below the moor line, the wind died off
the clover, and the midges slept. Here and there in the iris-coloured
sky a star crept out; the soft-hooting owls awoke. But still I lingered,
watching how, one after another, shapes and colours died into twilight;
and I wondered what the postman thought of twilight, that inconvenient
state, when things were neither dark nor light; and I wondered what the
sheep were thinking this first night without their coats. Then, slinking
along the hedge, noiseless, unheard by my sleeping spaniel, I saw a tawny
dog stealing by. He passed without seeing us, licking his lean chops.
"Yes, friend," I thought, "you have been after something very unholy; you
have been digging up buried lamb, or some desirable person of that kind!"
Sneaking past, in this sweet night, which stirred in one such sentiment,
that ghoulish cur was like the omnivorousness of Nature. And it came to
me, how wonderful and queer was a world which embraced within it, not
only this red gloating dog, fresh from his feast on the decaying flesh of
lamb, but all those hundreds of beings in whom the sight of a fly with
one leg shortened produced a quiver of compassion. For in this savage,
slinking shadow, I knew that I had beheld a manifestation of divinity no
less than in the smile of the sky, each minute growing more starry. With
what Harmony--I thought--can these two be enwrapped in this round world
so fast that it cannot be moved! What secret, marvellous, all-pervading
Principle can harmonise these things! And the old words 'good' and
'evil' seemed to me more than ever quaint.
It was almost dark, and the dew falling fast; I roused my spaniel to go
in.
Over the high-walled yard, the barns, the moon-white porch, dusk had
brushed its velvet. Through an open window came a roaring sound. Mr.
Molton was singing "The Happy Warrior," to celebrate the finish of the
shearing. The big doors into the garden, passed through, cut off the
full sweetness of that song; for there the owls were already masters of
night with their music.
On the dew-whitened grass of the lawn, we came on a little dark beast.
My spaniel, liking its savour, stood with his nose at point; but, being
called off, I could feel him obedient, still quivering, under my hand.
In the field, a wan huddle in the blackness, the dismantled sheep lay
under a holly hedge. The wind had died; it was mist-warm.
1910
EVOLUTION
Coming out of the theatre, we found it utterly impossible to get a
taxicab; and, though it was raining slightly, walked through Leicester
Square in the hope of picking one up as it returned down Piccadilly.
Numbers of hansoms and four-wheelers passed, or stood by the curb,
hailing us feebly, or not even attempting to attract our attention, but
every taxi seemed to have its load. At Piccadilly Circus, losing
patience, we beckoned to a four-wheeler and resigned ourselves to a long,
slow journey. A sou'-westerly air blew through the open windows, and
there was in it the scent of change, that wet scent which visits even the
hearts of towns and inspires the watcher of their myriad activities with
thought of the restless Force that forever cries: "On, on!" But
gradually the steady patter of the horse's hoofs, the rattling of the
windows, the slow thudding of the wheels, pressed on us so drowsily that
when, at last, we reached home we were more than half asleep. The fare
was two shillings, and, standing in the lamplight to make sure the coin
was a half-crown before handing it to the driver, we happened to look up.
This cabman appeared to be a man of about sixty, with a long, thin face,
whose chin and drooping grey moustaches seemed in permanent repose on the
up-turned collar of his old blue overcoat. But the remarkable features
of his face were the two furrows down his cheeks, so deep and hollow that
it seemed as though that face were a collection of bones without coherent
flesh, among which the eyes were sunk back so far that they had lost
their lustre. He sat quite motionless, gazing at the tail of his horse.
And, almost unconsciously, one added the rest of one's silver to that
half-crown. He took the coins without speaking; but, as we were turning
into the garden gate, we heard him say:
"Thank you; you've saved my life."
Not knowing, either of us, what to reply to such a curious speech, we
closed the gate again and came back to the cab.
"Are things so very bad?"
"They are," replied the cabman. "It's done with--is this job. We're not
wanted now." And, taking up his whip, he prepared to drive away.
"How long have they been as bad as this?"
The cabman dropped his hand again, as though glad to rest it, and
answered incoherently:
"Thirty-five year I've been drivin' a cab."
And, sunk again in contemplation of his horse's tail, he could only be
roused by many questions to express himself, having, as it seemed, no
knowledge of the habit.
"I don't blame the taxis, I don't blame nobody. It's come on us, that's
what it has. I left the wife this morning with nothing in the house.
She was saying to me only yesterday: 'What have you brought home the last
four months?' 'Put it at six shillings a week,' I said. 'No,' she said,
'seven.' Well, that's right--she enters it all down in her book."
"You are really going short of food?"
The cabman smiled; and that smile between those two deep hollows was
surely as strange as ever shone on a human face.
"You may say that," he said. "Well, what does it amount to? Before I
picked you up, I had one eighteen-penny fare to-day; and yesterday I took
five shillings. And I've got seven bob a day to pay for the cab, and
that's low, too. There's many and many a proprietor that's broke and
gone--every bit as bad as us. They let us down as easy as ever they can;
you can't get blood from a stone, can you?" Once again he smiled. "I'm
sorry for them, too, and I'm sorry for the horses, though they come out
best of the three of us, I do believe."
One of us muttered something about the Public.
The cabman turned his face and stared down through the darkness.
"The Public?" he said, and his voice had in it a faint surprise. "Well,
they all want the taxis. It's natural. They get about faster in them,
and time's money. I was seven hours before I picked you up. And then you
was lookin' for a taxi. Them as take us because they can't get better,
they're not in a good temper, as a rule. And there's a few old ladies
that's frightened of the motors, but old ladies aren't never very free
with their money--can't afford to be, the most of them, I expect."
"Everybody's sorry for you; one would have thought that----"
He interrupted quietly: "Sorrow don't buy bread . . . . I never had
nobody ask me about things before." And, slowly moving his long face
from side to side, he added: "Besides, what could people do? They can't
be expected to support you; and if they started askin' you questions
they'd feel it very awkward. They know that, I suspect. Of course,
there's such a lot of us; the hansoms are pretty nigh as bad off as we
are. Well, we're gettin' fewer every day, that's one thing."
Not knowing whether or no to manifest sympathy with this extinction, we
approached the horse. It was a horse that "stood over" a good deal at
the knee, and in the darkness seemed to have innumerable ribs. And
suddenly one of us said: "Many people want to see nothing but taxis on
the streets, if only for the sake of the horses."
The cabman nodded.
"This old fellow," he said, "never carried a deal of flesh. His grub
don't put spirit into him nowadays; it's not up to much in quality, but
he gets enough of it."
"And you don't?"
The cabman again took up his whip.
"I don't suppose," he said without emotion, "any one could ever find
another job for me now. I've been at this too long. It'll be the
workhouse, if it's not the other thing."
And hearing us mutter that it seemed cruel, he smiled for the third time.
"Yes," he said slowly, "it's a bit 'ard on us, because we've done nothing
to deserve it. But things are like that, so far as I can see. One thing
comes pushin' out another, and so you go on. I've thought about it--you
get to thinkin' and worryin' about the rights o' things, sittin' up here
all day. No, I don't see anything for it. It'll soon be the end of us
now--can't last much longer. And I don't know that I'll be sorry to have
done with it. It's pretty well broke my spirit."
"There was a fund got up."
"Yes, it helped a few of us to learn the motor-drivin'; but what's the
good of that to me, at my time of life? Sixty, that's my age; I'm not
the only one--there's hundreds like me. We're not fit for it, that's the
fact; we haven't got the nerve now. It'd want a mint of money to help
us. And what you say's the truth--people want to see the end of us.
They want the taxis--our day's over. I'm not complaining; you asked me
about it yourself."
And for the third time he raised his whip.
"Tell me what you would have done if you had been given your fare and
just sixpence over?"
The cabman stared downward, as though puzzled by that question.
"Done? Why, nothing. What could I have done?"
"But you said that it had saved your life."
"Yes, I said that," he answered slowly; "I was feelin' a bit low. You
can't help it sometimes; it's the thing comin' on you, and no way out of
it--that's what gets over you. We try not to think about it, as a rule."
And this time, with a "Thank you, kindly!" he touched his horse's flank
with the whip. Like a thing aroused from sleep the forgotten creature
started and began to draw the cabman away from us. Very slowly they
travelled down the road among the shadows of the trees broken by
lamplight. Above us, white ships of cloud were sailing rapidly across
the dark river of sky on the wind which smelled of change. And, after
the cab was lost to sight, that wind still brought to us the dying sound
of the slow wheels.
1910.
RIDING IN MIST
Wet and hot, having her winter coat, the mare exactly matched the
drenched fox-coloured beech-leaf drifts. As was her wont on such misty
days, she danced along with head held high, her neck a little arched, her
ears pricked, pretending that things were not what they seemed, and now
and then vigorously trying to leave me planted on the air. Stones which
had rolled out of the lane banks were her especial goblins, for one such
had maltreated her nerves before she came into this ball-room world, and
she had not forgotten.
There was no wind that day. On the beech-trees were still just enough of
coppery leaves to look like fires lighted high-up to air the eeriness;
but most of the twigs, pearled with water, were patterned very naked
against universal grey. Berries were few, except the pink spindle one,
so far the most beautiful, of which there were more than Earth generally
vouchsafes. There was no sound in the deep lanes, none of that sweet,
overhead sighing of yesterday at the same hour, but there was a quality
of silence--a dumb mist murmuration. We passed a tree with a proud
pigeon sitting on its top spire, quite too heavy for the twig delicacy
below; undisturbed by the mare's hoofs or the creaking of saddle leather,
he let us pass, absorbed in his world of tranquil turtledoves. The mist
had thickened to a white, infinitesimal rain-dust, and in it the trees
began to look strange, as though they had lost one another. The world
seemed inhabited only by quick, soundless wraiths as one trotted past.
Close to a farm-house the mare stood still with that extreme suddenness
peculiar to her at times, and four black pigs scuttled by and at once
became white air. By now we were both hot and inclined to cling closely
together and take liberties with each other; I telling her about her
nature, name, and appearance, together with comments on her manners; and
she giving forth that sterterous, sweet snuffle, which begins under the
star on her forehead. On such days she did not sneeze, reserving those
expressions of her joy for sunny days and the crisp winds. At a forking
of the ways we came suddenly on one grey and three brown ponies, who
shied round and flung away in front of us, a vision of pretty heads and
haunches tangled in the thin lane, till, conscious that they were beyond
their beat, they faced the bank and, one by one, scrambled over to join
the other ghosts out on the dim common.
Dipping down now over the road, we passed hounds going home. Pied,
dumb-footed shapes, padding along in that soft-eyed, remote world of
theirs, with a tall riding splash of red in front, and a tall splash of
riding red behind. Then through a gate we came on to the moor, amongst
whitened furze. The mist thickened. A curlew was whistling on its
invisible way, far up; and that wistful, wild calling seemed the very
voice of the day. Keeping in view the glint of the road, we galloped;
rejoicing, both of us, to be free of the jog jog of the lanes.
And first the voice of the curlew died; then the glint of the road
vanished; and we were quite alone. Even the furze was gone; no shape of
anything left, only the black, peaty ground, and the thickening mist. We
might as well have been that lonely bird crossing up there in the blind
white nothingness, like a human spirit wandering on the undiscovered moor
of its own future.
The mare jumped a pile of stones, which appeared, as it were, after we
had passed over; and it came into my mind that, if we happened to strike
one of the old quarry pits, we should infallibly be killed. Somehow,
there was pleasure in this thought, that we might, or might not, strike
that old quarry pit. The blood in us being hot, we had pure joy in
charging its white, impalpable solidity, which made way, and at once
closed in behind us. There was great fun in this yard-by-yard discovery
that we were not yet dead, this flying, shelterless challenge to whatever
might lie out there, five yards in front. We felt supremely above the
wish to know that our necks were safe; we were happy, panting in the
vapour that beat against our faces from the sheer speed of our galloping.
Suddenly the ground grew lumpy and made up-hill. The mare slackened
pace; we stopped. Before us, behind, to right and left, white vapour.
No sky, no distance, barely the earth. No wind in our faces, no wind
anywhere. At first we just got our breath, thought nothing, talked a
little. Then came a chillness, a faint clutching over the heart. The
mare snuffled; we turned and made down-hill. And still the mist
thickened, and seemed to darken ever so little; we went slowly, suddenly
doubtful of all that was in front. There came into our minds visions, so
distant in that darkening vapour, of a warm stall and manger of oats; of
tea and a log fire. The mist seemed to have fingers now, long, dark
white, crawling fingers; it seemed, too, to have in its sheer silence a
sort of muttered menace, a shuddery lurkingness, as if from out of it
that spirit of the unknown, which in hot blood we had just now so
gleefully mocked, were creeping up at us, intent on its vengeance. Since
the ground no longer sloped, we could not go down-hill; there were no
means left of telling in what direction we were moving, and we stopped to
listen. There was no sound, not one tiny noise of water, wind in trees,
or man; not even of birds or the moor ponies. And the mist darkened. The
mare reached her head down and walked on, smelling at the heather; every
time she sniffed, one's heart quivered, hoping she had found the way.
She threw up her head, snorted, and stood still; and there passed just in
front of us a pony and her foal, shapes of scampering dusk, whisked like
blurred shadows across a sheet. Hoof-silent in the long heather--as ever
were visiting ghosts--they were gone in a flash. The mare plunged
forward, following. But, in the feel of her gallop, and the feel of my
heart, there was no more that ecstasy of facing the unknown; there was
only the cold, hasty dread of loneliness. Far asunder as the poles were
those two sensations, evoked by this same motion. The mare swerved
violently and stopped. There, passing within three yards, from the same
direction as before, the soundless shapes of the pony and her foal flew
by again, more intangible, less dusky now against the darker screen.
Were we, then, to be haunted by those bewildering uncanny ones, flitting
past ever from the same direction? This time the mare did not follow, but
stood still; knowing as well as I that direction was quite lost. Soon,
with a whimper, she picked her way on again, smelling at the heather.
And the mist darkened!
Then, out of the heart of that dusky whiteness, came a tiny sound; we
stood, not breathing, turning our heads. I could see the mare's eye
fixed and straining at the vapour. The tiny sound grew till it became
the muttering of wheels. The mare dashed forward. The muttering ceased
untimely; but she did not stop; turning abruptly to the left, she slid,
scrambled, and dropped into a trot. The mist seemed whiter below us; we
were on the road. And involuntarily there came from me a sound, not
quite a shout, not quite an oath. I saw the mare's eye turn back,
faintly derisive, as who should say: Alone I did it! Then slowly,
comfortably, a little ashamed, we jogged on, in the mood of men and
horses when danger is over. So pleasant it seemed now, in one short
half-hour, to have passed through the circle-swing of the emotions, from
the ecstasy of hot recklessness to the clutching of chill fear. But the
meeting-point of those two sensations we had left out there on the
mysterious moor! Why, at one moment, had we thought it finer than
anything on earth to risk the breaking of our necks; and the next,
shuddered at being lost in the darkening mist with winter night fast
coming on?
And very luxuriously we turned once more into the lanes, enjoying the
past, scenting the future. Close to home, the first little eddy of wind
stirred, and the song of dripping twigs began; an owl hooted, honey-soft,
in the fog. We came on two farm hands mending the lane at the turn of
the avenue, and, curled on the top of the bank, their cosy red collie
pup, waiting for them to finish work for the day. He raised his sharp
nose and looked at us dewily. We turned down, padding softly in the wet
fox-red drifts under the beechtrees, whereon the last leaves still
flickered out in the darkening whiteness, that now seemed so little
eerie. We passed the grey-green skeleton of the farm-yard gate. A hen
ran across us, clucking, into the dusk. The maze drew her long,
home-coming snuffle, and stood still.
1910.
THE PROCESSION
In one of those corners of our land canopied by the fumes of blind
industry, there was, on that day, a lull in darkness. A fresh wind had
split the customary heaven, or roof of hell; was sweeping long drifts of
creamy clouds across a blue still pallid with reek. The sun even
shone--a sun whose face seemed white and wondering. And under that rare
sun all the little town, among its slag heaps and few tall chimneys, had
an air of living faster. In those continuous courts and alleys, where
the women worked, smoke from each little forge rose and dispersed into
the wind with strange alacrity; amongst the women, too, there was that
same eagerness, for the sunshine had crept in and was making pale all
those dark-raftered, sooted ceilings which covered them in, together with
their immortal comrades, the small open furnaces. About their work they
had been busy since seven o'clock; their feet pressing the leather lungs
which fanned the conical heaps of glowing fuel, their hands poking into
the glow a thin iron rod till the end could be curved into a fiery hook;
snapping it with a mallet; threading it with tongs on to the chain;
hammering, closing the link; and; without a second's pause, thrusting the
iron rod again into the glow. And while they worked they chattered,
laughed sometimes, now and then sighed. They seemed of all ages and all
types; from her who looked like a peasant of Provence, broad, brown, and
strong, to the weariest white consumptive wisp; from old women of
seventy, with straggling grey hair, to fifteen-year-old girls. In the
cottage forges there would be but one worker, or two at most; in the shop
forges four, or even five, little glowing heaps; four or five of the
grimy, pale lung-bellows; and never a moment without a fiery hook about
to take its place on the growing chains, never a second when the thin
smoke of the forges, and of those lives consuming slowly in front of
them, did not escape from out of the dingy, whitewashed spaces past the
dark rafters, away to freedom.
But there had been in the air that morning something more than the white
sunlight. There had been anticipation. And at two o'clock began
fulfilment. The forges were stilled, and from court and alley forth came
the women. In their ragged working clothes, in their best clothes--so
little different; in bonnets, in hats, bareheaded; with babies born and
unborn, they swarmed into the high street and formed across it behind the
band. A strange, magpie, jay-like flock; black, white, patched with
brown and green and blue, shifting, chattering, laughing, seeming
unconscious of any purpose. A thousand and more of them, with faces
twisted and scored by those myriad deformings which a desperate
town-toiling and little food fasten on human visages; yet with hardly a
single evil or brutal face. Seemingly it was not easy to be evil or
brutal on a wage that scarcely bound soul and body. A thousand and more
of the poorest-paid and hardest-worked human beings in the world.
On the pavement alongside this strange, acquiescing assembly of revolt,
about to march in protest against the conditions of their lives, stood a
young woman without a hat and in poor clothes, but with a sort of beauty
in her rough-haired, high cheek-boned, dark-eyed face. She was not one
of them; yet, by a stroke of Nature's irony, there was graven on her face
alone of all those faces, the true look of rebellion; a haughty, almost
fierce, uneasy look--an untamed look. On all the other thousand faces
one could see no bitterness, no fierceness, not even enthusiasm; only a
half-stolid, half-vivacious patience and eagerness as of children going
to a party.
The band played; and they began to march.
Laughing, talking, waving flags, trying to keep step; with the same
expression slowly but surely coming over every face; the future was not;
only the present--this happy present of marching behind the discordance
of a brass band; this strange present of crowded movement and laughter in
open air.
We others--some dozen accidentals like myself, and the tall, grey-haired
lady interested in "the people," together with those few kind spirits in
charge of "the show"--marched too, a little self-conscious, desiring with
a vague military sensation to hold our heads up, but not too much, under
the eyes of the curious bystanders. These--nearly all men--were
well-wishers, it was said, though their faces, pale from their own work
in shop or furnace, expressed nothing but apathy. They wished well, very
dumbly, in the presence of this new thing, as if they found it queer that
women should be doing something for themselves; queer and rather
dangerous. A few, indeed, shuffled along between the column and the
little hopeless shops and grimy factory sheds, and one or two accompanied
their women, carrying the baby. Now and then there passed us some
better-to-do citizen-a housewife, or lawyer's clerk, or ironmonger, with
lips pressed rather tightly together and an air of taking no notice of
this disturbance of traffic, as though the whole thing were a rather poor
joke which they had already heard too often.
So, with laughter and a continual crack of voices our jay-like crew swung
on, swaying and thumping in the strange ecstasy of irreflection, happy to
be moving they knew not where, nor greatly why, under the visiting sun,
to the sound of murdered music. Whenever the band stopped playing,
discipline became as tatterdemalion as the very flags and garments; but
never once did they lose that look of essential order, as if indeed they
knew that, being the worst-served creatures in the Christian world, they
were the chief guardians of the inherent dignity of man.
Hatless, in the very front row, marched a tall slip of a girl,
arrow-straight, and so thin, with dirty fair hair, in a blouse and skirt
gaping behind, ever turning her pretty face on its pretty slim neck from
side to side, so that one could see her blue eyes sweeping here, there,
everywhere, with a sort of flower-like wildness, as if a secret embracing
of each moment forbade her to let them rest on anything and break this
pleasure of just marching. It seemed that in the never-still eyes of
that anaemic, happy girl the spirit of our march had elected to enshrine
itself and to make thence its little excursions to each ecstatic
follower. Just behind her marched a little old woman--a maker of chains,
they said, for forty years--whose black slits of eyes were sparkling,
who fluttered a bit of ribbon, and reeled with her sense of the exquisite
humour of the world. Every now and then she would make a rush at one of
her leaders to demonstrate how immoderately glorious was life. And each
time she spoke the woman next to her, laden with a heavy baby, went off
into squeals of laughter. Behind her, again, marched one who beat time
with her head and waved a little bit of stick, intoxicated by this noble
music.
For an hour the pageant wound through the dejected street, pursuing
neither method nor set route, till it came to a deserted slag-heap,
selected for the speech-making. Slowly the motley regiment swung into
that grim amphitheatre under the pale sunshine; and, as I watched, a
strange fancy visited my brain. I seemed to see over every ragged head
of those marching women a little yellow flame, a thin, flickering gleam,
spiring upward and blown back by the wind. A trick of the sunlight,
maybe? Or was it that the life in their hearts, the inextinguishable
breath of happiness, had for a moment escaped prison, and was fluttering
at the pleasure of the breeze?
Silent now, just enjoying the sound of the words thrown down to them,
they stood, unimaginably patient, with that happiness of they knew not
what gilding the air above them between the patchwork ribands of their
poor flags. If they could not tell very much why they had come, nor
believe very much that they would gain anything by coming; if their
demonstration did not mean to the world quite all that oratory would have
them think; if they themselves were but the poorest, humblest, least
learned women in the land--for all that, it seemed to me that in those
tattered, wistful figures, so still, so trustful, I was looking on such
beauty as I had never beheld. All the elaborated glory of things made,
the perfected dreams of aesthetes, the embroideries of romance, seemed as
nothing beside this sudden vision of the wild goodness native in humble
hearts.
1910.
A CHRISTIAN
One day that summer, I came away from a luncheon in company of an old
College chum. Always exciting to meet those one hasn't seen for years;
and as we walked across the Park together I kept looking at him askance.
He had altered a good deal. Lean he always was, but now very lean, and
so upright that his parson's coat was overhung by the back of his long
and narrow head, with its dark grizzled hair, which thought had not yet
loosened on his forehead. His clean-shorn face, so thin and oblong, was
remarkable only for the eyes: dark-browed and lashed, and coloured like
bright steel, they had a fixity in them, a sort of absence, on one
couldn't tell what business. They made me think of torture. And his
mouth always gently smiling, as if its pinched curly sweetness had been
commanded, was the mouth of a man crucified--yes, crucified!
Tramping silently over the parched grass, I felt that if we talked, we
must infallibly disagree; his straight-up, narrow forehead so suggested a
nature divided within itself into compartments of iron.
It was hot that day, and we rested presently beside the Serpentine. On
its bright waters were the usual young men, sculling themselves to and
fro with their usual sad energy, the usual promenaders loitering and
watching them, the usual dog that swam when it did not bark, and barked
when it did not swim; and my friend sat smiling, twisting between his
thin fingers the little gold cross on his silk vest.
Then all of a sudden we did begin to talk; and not of those matters of
which the well-bred naturally converse--the habits of the rarer kinds of
ducks, and the careers of our College friends, but of something never
mentioned in polite society.
At lunch our hostess had told me the sad story of an unhappy marriage,
and I had itched spiritually to find out what my friend, who seemed so
far away from me, felt about such things. And now I determined to find
out.
"Tell me," I asked him, "which do you consider most important--the letter
or the spirit of Christ's teachings?"
"My dear fellow," he answered gently, "what a question! How can you
separate them?"
"Well, is it not the essence of His doctrine that the spirit is all
important, and the forms of little value? Does not that run through all
the Sermon on the Mount?"
"Certainly."
"If, then," I said, "Christ's teaching is concerned with the spirit, do
you consider that Christians are justified in holding others bound by
formal rules of conduct, without reference to what is passing in their
spirits?"
"If it is for their good."
"What enables you to decide what is for their good?"
"Surely, we are told."
"Not to judge, that ye be not judged."
"Oh! but we do not, ourselves, judge; we are but impersonal ministers of
the rules of God."
"Ah! Do general rules of conduct take account of the variations of the
individual spirit?"
He looked at me hard, as if he began to scent heresy.
"You had better explain yourself more fully," he said. "I really don't
follow."
"Well, let us take a concrete instance. We know Christ's saying of the
married that they are one flesh! But we know also that there are wives
who continue to live the married life with dreadful feelings of spiritual
revolt wives who have found out that, in spite of all their efforts, they
have no spiritual affinity with their husbands. Is that in accordance
with the spirit of Christ's teaching, or is it not?"
"We are told----" he began.
"I have admitted the definite commandment: 'They twain shall be one
flesh.' There could not be, seemingly, any more rigid law laid down; how
do you reconcile it with the essence of Christ's teaching? Frankly, I
want to know: Is there or is there not a spiritual coherence in
Christianity, or is it only a gathering of laws and precepts, with no
inherent connected spiritual philosophy?"
"Of course," he said, in his long-suffering voice, "we don't look at
things like that--for us there is no questioning."
"But how do you reconcile such marriages as I speak of, with the spirit
of Christ's teaching? I think you ought to answer me."
"Oh! I can, perfectly," he answered; "the reconciliation is through
suffering. What a poor woman in such a case must suffer makes for the
salvation of her spirit. That is the spiritual fulfilment, and in such a
case the justification of the law."
"So then," I said, "sacrifice or suffering is the coherent thread of
Christian philosophy?"
"Suffering cheerfully borne," he answered.
"You do not think," I said, "that there is a touch of extravagance in
that? Would you say, for example, that an unhappy marriage is a more
Christian thing than a happy one, where there is no suffering, but only
love?"
A line came between his brows. "Well!" he said at last, "I would say, I
think, that a woman who crucifies her flesh with a cheerful spirit in
obedience to God's law, stands higher in the eyes of God than one who
undergoes no such sacrifice in her married life." And I had the feeling
that his stare was passing through me, on its way to an unseen goal.
"You would desire, then, I suppose, suffering as the greatest blessing
for yourself?"
"Humbly," he said, "I would try to."
"And naturally, for others?"
"God forbid!"
"But surely that is inconsistent."
He murmured: "You see, I have suffered."
We were silent. At last I said: "Yes, that makes much which was dark
quite clear to me."
"Oh?" he asked.
I answered slowly: "Not many men, you know, even in your profession, have
really suffered. That is why they do not feel the difficulty which you
feel in desiring suffering for others."
He threw up his head exactly as if I had hit him on the jaw: "It's
weakness in me, I know," he said.
"I should have rather called it weakness in them. But suppose you are
right, and that it's weakness not to be able to desire promiscuous
suffering for others, would you go further and say that it is Christian
for those, who have not experienced a certain kind of suffering, to force
that particular kind on others?"
He sat silent for a full minute, trying evidently to reach to the bottom
of my thought.
"Surely not," he said at last, "except as ministers of God's laws."
"You do not then think that it is Christian for the husband of such a
woman to keep her in that state of suffering--not being, of course, a
minister of God?"
He began stammering at that: "I--I----" he said. "No; that is, I think
not-not Christian. No, certainly."
"Then, such a marriage, if persisted in, makes of the wife indeed a
Christian, but of the husband--the reverse."
"The answer to that is clear," he said quietly: "The husband must
abstain."
"Yes, that is, perhaps, coherently Christian, on your theory: They would
then both suffer. But the marriage, of course, has become no marriage.
They are no longer one flesh."
He looked at me, almost impatiently as if to say: Do not compel me to
enforce silence on you!
"But, suppose," I went on, "and this, you know; is the more frequent
case, the man refuses to abstain. Would you then say it was more
Christian to allow him to become daily less Christian through his
unchristian conduct, than to relieve the woman of her suffering at the
expense of the spiritual benefit she thence derives? Why, in fact, do
you favour one case more than the other?"
"All question of relief," he replied, "is a matter for Caesar; it cannot
concern me."
There had come into his face a rigidity--as if I might hit it with my
questions till my tongue was tired, and it be no more moved than the
bench on which we were sitting.
"One more question," I said, "and I have done. Since the Christian
teaching is concerned with the spirit and not forms, and the thread in it
which binds all together and makes it coherent, is that of suffering----"
"Redemption by suffering," he put in.
"If you will--in one word, self-crucifixion--I must ask you, and don't
take it personally, because of what you told me of yourself: In life
generally, one does not accept from people any teaching that is not the
result of firsthand experience on their parts. Do you believe that this
Christian teaching of yours is valid from the mouths of those who have
not themselves suffered--who have not themselves, as it were, been
crucified?"
He did not answer for a minute; then he said, with painful slowness:
"Christ laid hands on his apostles and sent them forth; and they in turn,
and so on, to our day."
"Do you say, then, that this guarantees that they have themselves
suffered, so that in spirit they are identified with their teaching?"
He answered bravely: "No--I do not--I cannot say that in fact it is
always so."
"Is not then their teaching born of forms, and not of the spirit?"
He rose; and with a sort of deep sorrow at my stubbornness said: "We are
not permitted to know the way of this; it is so ordained; we must have
faith."
As he stood there, turned from me, with his hat off, and his neck
painfully flushed under the sharp outcurve of his dark head, a feeling of
pity surged up in me, as if I had taken an unfair advantage.
"Reason--coherence--philosophy," he said suddenly. "You don't
understand. All that is nothing to me--nothing--nothing!"
1911
WIND IN THE ROCKS
Though dew-dark when we set forth, there was stealing into the frozen air
an invisible white host of the wan-winged light--born beyond the
mountains, and already, like a drift of doves, harbouring grey-white high
up on the snowy skycaves of Monte Cristallo; and within us, tramping over
the valley meadows, was the incredible elation of those who set out
before the sun has risen; every minute of the precious day before us--we
had not lost one!
At the mouth of that enchanted chine, across which for a million years
the howdahed rock elephant has marched, but never yet passed from sight,
we crossed the stream, and among the trees began our ascent. Very far
away the first cowbells chimed; and, over the dark heights, we saw the
thin, sinking moon, looking like the white horns of some devotional beast
watching and waiting up there for the god of light. That god came
slowly, stalking across far over our heads from top to top; then, of a
sudden, his flame-white form was seen standing in a gap of the valley
walls; the trees flung themselves along the ground before him, and
censers of pine gum began swinging in the dark aisles, releasing their
perfumed steam. Throughout these happy ravines where no man lives, he
shows himself naked and unashamed, the colour of pale honey; on his
golden hair such shining as one has not elsewhere seen; his eyes like old
wine on fire. And already he had swept his hand across the invisible
strings, for there had arisen, the music of uncurling leaves and flitting
things.
A legend runs, that, driven from land to land by Christians, Apollo hid
himself in Lower Austria, but those who ever they saw him there in the
thirteenth century were wrong; it was to these enchanted chines,
frequented only by the mountain shepherds, that he certainly came.
And as we were lying on the grass, of the first alp, with the star
gentians--those fallen drops of the sky--and the burnt-brown dandelions,
and scattered shrubs of alpen-rose round us, we were visited by one of
these very shepherds, passing with his flock--the fiercest-looking man
who ever, spoke in a gentle voice; six feet high, with an orange cloak,
bare knees; burnt as the very dandelions, a beard blacker than black, and
eyes more glorious than if sun and night had dived and were lying
imprisoned in their depths. He spoke in an unknown tongue, and could
certainly not understand any word of ours; but he smelled of the good
earth, and only through interminable watches under sun and stars could so
great a gentleman have been perfected.
Presently, while we rested outside that Alpine hut which faces the three
sphinx-like mountains, there came back, from climbing the smallest and
most dangerous of those peaks, one, pale from heat, and trembling with
fatigue; a tall man, with long brown hands, and a long, thin, bearded
face. And, as he sipped cautiously of red wine and water, he looked at
his little conquered mountain. His kindly, screwed-up eyes, his kindly,
bearded lips, even his limbs seemed smiling; and not for the world would
we have jarred with words that rapt, smiling man, enjoying the sacred
hour of him who has just proved himself. In silence we watched, in
silence left him smiling, knowing somehow that we should remember him all
our days. For there was in his smile the glamour of adventure just for
the sake of danger; all that high instinct which takes a man out of his
chair to brave what he need not.
Between that hut and the three mountains lies a saddle--astride of all
beauty and all colour, master of a titanic chaos of deep clefts, tawny
heights, red domes, far snow, and the purple of long shadows; and,
standing there, we comprehended a little of what Earth had been through
in her time, to have made this playground for most glorious demons.
Mother Earth! What travail undergone, what long heroic throes, had
brought on her face such majesty!
Hereabout edelweiss was clinging to smoothed-out rubble; but a little
higher, even the everlasting plant was lost, there was no more life. And
presently we lay down on the mountain side, rather far apart. Up here
above trees and pasture the wind had a strange, bare voice, free from all
outer influence, sweeping along with a cold, whiffing sound. On the warm
stones, in full sunlight, uplifted over all the beauty of Italy, one felt
at first only delight in space and wild loveliness, in the unknown
valleys, and the strength of the sun. It was so good to be alive; so
ineffably good to be living in this most wonderful world, drinking air
nectar.
Behind us, from the three mountains, came the frequent thud and scuffle
of falling rocks, loosened by rains. The wind, mist, and winter snow had
ground the powdery stones on which we lay to a pleasant bed, but once on
a time they, too, had clung up there. And very slowly, one could not say
how or when, the sense of joy began changing to a sense of fear. The
awful impersonality of those great rock-creatures, the terrible
impartiality of that cold, clinging wind which swept by, never an inch
lifted above ground! Not one tiny soul, the size of a midge or rock
flower, lived here. Not one little "I" breathed here, and loved!
And we, too, some day would no longer love, having become part of this
monstrous, lovely earth, of that cold, whiffling air. To be no longer
able to love! It seemed incredible, too grim to bear; yet it was true!
To become powder, and the wind; no more to feel the sunlight; to be loved
no more! To become a whiffling noise, cold, without one's self! To
drift on the breath of that noise, homeless! Up here, there were not even
those little velvet, grey-white flower-comrades we had plucked. No life!
Nothing but the creeping wind, and those great rocky heights, whence came
the sound of falling-symbols of that cold, untimely state into which we,
too, must pass. Never more to love, nor to be loved! One could but turn
to the earth, and press one's face to it, away from the wild loveliness.
Of what use loveliness that must be lost; of what use loveliness when one
could not love? The earth was warm and firm beneath the palms of the
hands; but there still came the sound of the impartial wind, and the
careless roar of the stories falling.
Below, in those valleys amongst the living trees and grass, was the
comradeship of unnumbered life, so that to pass out into Peace, to step
beyond, to die, seemed but a brotherly act, amongst all those others; but
up here, where no creature breathed, we saw the heart of the desert that
stretches before each little human soul. Up here, it froze the spirit;
even Peace seemed mocking--hard as a stone. Yet, to try and hide, to
tuck one's head under one's own wing, was not possible in this air so
crystal clear, so far above incense and the narcotics of set creeds, and
the fevered breath of prayers and protestations. Even to know that
between organic and inorganic matter there is no gulf fixed, was of no
peculiar comfort. The jealous wind came creeping over the lifeless
limestone, removing even the poor solace of its warmth; one turned from
it, desperate, to look up at the sky, the blue, burning, wide, ineffable,
far sky.
Then slowly, without reason, that icy fear passed into a feeling, not of
joy, not of peace, but as if Life and Death were exalted into what was
neither life nor death, a strange and motionless vibration, in which one
had been merged, and rested, utterly content, equipoised, divested of
desire, endowed with life and death.
But since this moment had come before its time, we got up, and, close
together, marched on rather silently, in the hot sun.
1910.
MY DISTANT RELATIVE
Though I had not seen my distant relative for years--not, in fact, since
he was obliged to give Vancouver Island up as a bad job--I knew him at
once, when, with head a little on one side, and tea-cup held high, as if,
to confer a blessing, he said: "Hallo!" across the Club smoking-room.
Thin as a lath--not one ounce heavier--tall, and very upright, with his
pale forehead, and pale eyes, and pale beard, he had the air of a ghost
of a man. He had always had that air. And his voice--that
matter-of-fact and slightly nasal voice, with its thin, pragmatical
tone--was like a wraith of optimism, issuing between pale lips. I
noticed; too, that his town habiliments still had their unspeakable pale
neatness, as if, poor things, they were trying to stare the daylight out
of countenance.
He brought his tea across to my bay window, with that wistful sociability
of his, as of a man who cannot always find a listener.
"But what are you doing in town?" I said. "I thought you were in
Yorkshire with your aunt."
Over his round, light eyes, fixed on something in the street, the lids
fell quickly twice, as the film falls over the eyes of a parrot.
"I'm after a job," he answered. "Must be on the spot just now."
And it seemed to me that I had heard those words from him before.
"Ah, yes," I said, "and do you think you'll get it?"
But even as I spoke I felt sorry, remembering how many jobs he had been
after in his time, and how soon they ended when he had got them.
He answered:
"Oh, yes! They ought to give it me," then added rather suddenly: "You
never know, though. People are so funny!"
And crossing his thin legs, he went on to tell me, with quaint
impersonality, a number of instances of how people had been funny in
connection with jobs he had not been given.
"You see," he ended, "the country's in such a state--capital going out of
it every day. Enterprise being killed all over the place. There's
practically nothing to be had!"
"Ah!" I said, "you think it's worse, then, than it used to be?"
He smiled; in that smile there was a shade of patronage.
"We're going down-hill as fast as ever we can. National character's
losing all its backbone. No wonder, with all this molly-coddling going
on!"
"Oh!" I murmured, "molly-coddling? Isn't that excessive?"
"Well! Look at the way everything's being done for them! The working
classes are losing their, self-respect as fast as ever they can. Their
independence is gone already!"
"You think?"
"Sure of it! I'll give you an instance----" and he went on to describe
to me the degeneracy of certain working men employed by his aunt and his
eldest brother Claud and his youngest brother Alan.
"They don't do a stroke more than they're obliged," he ended; "they know
jolly well they've got their Unions, and their pensions, and this
Insurance, to fall back on."
It was evidently a subject on which he felt strongly.
"Yes," he muttered, "the nation is being rotted down."
And a faint thrill of surprise passed through me. For the affairs of the
nation moved him so much more strongly than his own. His voice already
had a different ring, his eyes a different look. He eagerly leaned
forward, and his long, straight backbone looked longer and straighter
than ever. He was less the ghost of a man. A faint flush even had come
into his pale cheeks, and he moved his well-kept hands emphatically.
"Oh, yes!" he said: "The country is going to the dogs, right enough; but
you can't get them to see it. They go on sapping and sapping the
independence of the people. If the working man's to be looked after,
whatever he does--what on earth's to become of his go, and foresight, and
perseverance?"
In his rising voice a certain piquancy was left to its accent of the
ruling class by that faint twang, which came, I remembered, from some
slight defect in his tonsils.
"Mark my words! So long as we're on these lines, we shall do nothing.
It's going against evolution. They say Darwin's getting old-fashioned;
all I know is, he's good enough for me. Competition is the only thing."
"But competition," I said, "is bitter cruel, and some people can't stand
against it!" And I looked at him rather hard: "Do you object to putting
any sort of floor under the feet of people like that?"
He let his voice drop a little, as if in deference to my scruples.
"Ah!" he said; "but if you once begin this sort of thing, there's no end
to it. It's so insidious. The more they have, the more they want; and
all the time they're losing fighting power. I've thought pretty deeply
about this. It's shortsighted; it really doesn't do!"
"But," I said, "surely you're not against saving people from being
knocked out of time by old age, and accidents like illness, and the
fluctuations of trade?"
"Oh!" he said, "I'm not a bit against charity. Aunt Emma's splendid
about that. And Claud's awfully good. I do what I can, myself." He
looked at me, so queerly deprecating, that I quite liked him at that
moment. At heart--I felt he was a good fellow. "All I think is," he
went on, "that to give them something that they can rely on as a matter
of course, apart from their own exertions, is the wrong principle
altogether," and suddenly his voice began to rise again, and his eyes to
stare. "I'm convinced that all this doing things for other people, and
bolstering up the weak, is rotten. It stands to reason that it must be."
He had risen to his feet, so preoccupied with the wrongness of that
principle that he seemed to have forgotten my presence. And as he stood
there in the window the light was too strong for him. All the thin
incapacity of that shadowy figure was pitilessly displayed; the desperate
narrowness in that long, pale face; the wambling look of those pale,
well-kept hands--all that made him such a ghost of a man. But his nasal,
dogmatic voice rose and rose.
"There's nothing for it but bracing up! We must cut away all this State
support; we must teach them to rely on themselves. It's all sheer
pauperisation."
And suddenly there shot through me the fear that he might burst one of
those little blue veins in his pale forehead, so vehement had he become;
and hastily I changed the subject.
"Do you like living up there with your aunt?" I asked: "Isn't it a bit
quiet?"
He turned, as if I had awakened him from a dream.
"Oh, well!" he said, "it's only till I get this job."
"Let me see--how long is it since you----?"
"Four years. She's very glad to have me, of course."
"And how's your brother Claud?"
"Oh! All right, thanks; a bit worried with the estate. The poor old
gov'nor left it in rather a mess, you know."
"Ah! Yes. Does he do other work?"
"Oh! Always busy in the parish."
"And your brother Richard?"
"He's all right. Came home this year. Got just enough to live on, with
his pension--hasn't saved a rap, of course."
"And Willie? Is he still delicate?"
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
"Easy job, his, you know. And even if his health does give out, his
college pals will always find him some sort of sinecure. So jolly
popular, old Willie!"
"And Alan? I haven't heard anything of him since his Peruvian thing came
to grief. He married, didn't he?"
"Rather! One of the Burleys. Nice girl--heiress; lot of property in
Hampshire. He looks after it for her now."
"Doesn't do anything else, I suppose?"
"Keeps up his antiquarianism."
I had exhausted the members of his family.
Then, as though by eliciting the good fortunes of his brothers I had cast
some slur upon himself, he said suddenly: "If the railway had come, as it
ought to have, while I was out there, I should have done quite well with
my fruit farm."
"Of course," I agreed; "it was bad luck. But after all, you're sure to
get a job soon, and--so long as you can live up there with your aunt--you
can afford to wait, and not bother."
"Yes," he murmured. And I got up.
"Well, it's been very jolly to hear about you all!"
He followed me out.
"Awfully glad, old man," he said, "to have seen you, and had this talk.
I was feeling rather low. Waiting to know whether I get that job--it's
not lively."
He came down the Club steps with me. By the door of my cab a loafer was
standing; a tall tatterdemalion with a pale, bearded face. My distant
relative fended him away, and leaning through the window, murmured:
"Awful lot of these chaps about now!"
For the life of me I could not help looking at him very straight. But no
flicker of apprehension crossed his face.
"Well, good-by again!" he said: "You've cheered me up a lot!"
I glanced back from my moving cab. Some monetary transaction was passing
between him and the loafer, but, short-sighted as I am, I found it
difficult to decide which of those tall, pale, bearded figures was giving
the other one a penny. And by some strange freak an awful vision shot up
before me--of myself, and my distant relative, and Claud, and Richard,
and Willie, and Alan, all suddenly relying on ourselves. I took out my
handkerchief to mop my brow; but a thought struck me, and I put it back.
Was it possible for me, and my distant relatives, and their distant
relatives, and so on to infinity of those who be longed to a class
provided by birth with a certain position, raised by Providence on to a
platform made up of money inherited, of interest, of education fitting us
for certain privileged pursuits, of friends similarly endowed, of
substantial homes, and substantial relatives of some sort or other, on
whom we could fall back--was it possible for any of us ever to be in the
position of having to rely absolutely on ourselves? For several minutes
I pondered that question; and slowly I came to the conclusion that, short
of crime, or that unlikely event, marooning, it was not possible. Never,
never--try as we might--could any single one of us be quite in the
position of one of those whose approaching pauperisation my distant
relative had so vehemently deplored. We were already pauperised. If we
served our country, we were pensioned.... If we inherited land, it could
not be taken from us. If we went into the Church, we were there for life,
whether we were suitable or no. If we attempted the more hazardous
occupations of the law, medicine, the arts, or business, there were
always those homes, those relations, those friends of ours to fall back
on, if we failed. No! We could never have to rely entirely on
ourselves; we could never be pauperised more than we were already! And a
light burst in on me. That explained why my distant relative felt so
keenly. It bit him, for he saw, of course, how dreadful it would be for
these poor people of the working classes when legislation had succeeded
in placing them in the humiliating position in which we already were--the
dreadful position of having something to depend on apart from our own
exertions, some sort of security in our lives. I saw it now. It was his
secret pride, gnawing at him all the time, that made him so rabid on the
point. He was longing, doubtless, day and night, not to have had a
father who had land, and had left a sister well enough off to keep him
while he was waiting for his job. He must be feeling how horribly
degrading was the position of Claud--inheriting that land; and of
Richard, who, just because he had served in the Indian Civil Service, had
got to live on a pension all the rest of his days; and of Willie, who was
in danger at any moment, if his health--always delicate--gave out, of
having a sinecure found for him by his college friends; and of Alan,
whose educated charm had enabled him to marry an heiress and live by
managing her estates. All, all sapped of go and foresight and
perseverance by a cruel Providence! That was what he was really feeling,
and concealing, be cause he was too well-bred to show his secret grief.
And I felt suddenly quite warm toward him, now that I saw how he was
suffering. I understood how bound he felt in honour to combat with all
his force this attempt to place others in his own distressing situation.
At the same time I was honest enough to confess to myself sitting there
in the cab--that I did not personally share that pride of his, or feel
that I was being rotted by my own position; I even felt some dim
gratitude that if my powers gave out at any time, and I had not saved
anything, I should still not be left destitute to face the prospect of a
bleak and impoverished old age; and I could not help a weak pleasure in
the thought that a certain relative security was being guaranteed to
those people of the working classes who had never had it before. At the
same moment I quite saw that to a prouder and stronger heart it must
indeed be bitter to have to sit still under your own security, and even
more bitter to have to watch that pauperising security coming closer and
closer to others--for the generous soul is always more concerned for
others than for himself. No doubt, I thought, if truth were known, my
distant relative is consumed with longing to change places with that
loafer who tried to open the door of my cab--for surely he must see, as I
do, that that is just what he himself--having failed to stand the
pressure of competition in his life--would be doing if it were not for
the accident of his birth, which has so lamentably insured him against
coming to that.
"Yes," I thought, "you have learnt something to-day; it does not do, you
see, hastily to despise those distant relatives of yours, who talk about
pauperising and molly-coddling the lower classes. No, no! One must look
deeper than that! One must have generosity!"
And with that I stopped the cab and got out for I wanted a breath of air.
1911
THE BLACK GODMOTHER
Sitting out on the lawn at tea with our friend and his retriever, we had
been discussing those massacres of the helpless which had of late
occurred, and wondering that they should have been committed by the
soldiery of so civilised a State, when, in a momentary pause of our
astonishment, our friend, who had been listening in silence, crumpling
the drooping soft ear of his dog, looked up and said, "The cause of
atrocities is generally the violence of Fear. Panic's at the back of
most crimes and follies."
Knowing that his philosophical statements were always the result of
concrete instance, and that he would not tell us what that instance was
if we asked him--such being his nature--we were careful not to agree.
He gave us a look out of those eyes of his, so like the eyes of a mild
eagle, and said abruptly: "What do you say to this, then?..... I was out
in the dog-days last year with this fellow of mine, looking for Osmunda,
and stayed some days in a village--never mind the name. Coming back one
evening from my tramp, I saw some boys stoning a mealy-coloured dog. I
went up and told the young devils to stop it. They only looked at me in
the injured way boys do, and one of them called out, 'It's mad, guv'nor!'
I told them to clear off, and they took to their heels. The dog followed
me. It was a young, leggy, mild looking mongrel, cross--I should
say--between a brown retriever and an Irish terrier. There was froth
about its lips, and its eyes were watery; it looked indeed as if it might
be in distemper. I was afraid of infection for this fellow of mine, and
whenever it came too close shooed it away, till at last it slunk off
altogether. Well, about nine o'clock, when I was settling down to write
by the open window of my sitting-room--still daylight, and very quiet and
warm--there began that most maddening sound, the barking of an unhappy
dog. I could do nothing with that continual 'Yap yap!' going on, and it
was too hot to shut the window; so I went out to see if I could stop it.
The men were all at the pub, and the women just finished with their
gossip; there was no sound at all but the continual barking of this dog,
somewhere away out in the fields. I travelled by ear across three
meadows, till I came on a hay-stack by a pool of water. There was the
dog sure enough--the same mealy-coloured mongrel, tied to a stake,
yapping, and making frantic little runs on a bit of rusty chain; whirling
round and round the stake, then standing quite still, and shivering. I
went up and spoke to it, but it backed into the hay-stack, and there it
stayed shrinking away from me, with its tongue hanging out. It had been
heavily struck by something on the head; the cheek was cut, one eye
half-closed, and an ear badly swollen. I tried to get hold of it, but
the poor thing was beside itself with fear. It snapped and flew round so
that I had to give it up, and sit down with this fellow here beside me,
to try and quiet it--a strange dog, you know, will generally form his
estimate of you from the way it sees you treat another dog. I had to sit
there quite half an hour before it would let me go up to it, pull the
stake out, and lead it away. The poor beast, though it was so feeble
from the blows it had received, was still half-frantic, and I didn't dare
to touch it; and all the time I took good care that this fellow here
didn't come too near. Then came the question what was to be done. There
was no vet, of course, and I'd no place to put it except my sitting-room,
which didn't belong to me. But, looking at its battered head, and its
half-mad eyes, I thought: 'No trusting you with these bumpkins; you'll
have to come in here for the night!' Well, I got it in, and heaped two or
three of those hairy little red rugs landladies are so fond of, up in a
corner; and got it on to them, and put down my bread and milk. But it
wouldn't eat--its sense of proportion was all gone, fairly destroyed by
terror. It lay there moaning, and every now and then it raised its head
with a 'yap' of sheer fright, dreadful to hear, and bit the air, as if
its enemies were on it again; and this fellow of mine lay in the opposite
corner, with his head on his paw, watching it. I sat up for a long time
with that poor beast, sick enough, and wondering how it had come to be
stoned and kicked and battered into this state; and next day I made it my
business to find out."
Our friend paused, scanned us a little angrily, and then went on: "It had
made its first appearance, it seems, following a bicyclist. There are
men, you know--save the mark--who, when their beasts get ill or too
expensive, jump on their bicycles and take them for a quick run, taking
care never to look behind them. When they get back home they say:
'Hallo! where's Fido?' Fido is nowhere, and there's an end! Well, this
poor puppy gave up just as it got to our village; and, roaming shout in
search of water, attached itself to a farm labourer. The man with
excellent intentions--as he told me himself--tried to take hold of it,
but too abruptly, so that it was startled, and snapped at him. Whereon
he kicked it for a dangerous cur, and it went drifting back toward the
village, and fell in with the boys coming home from school. It thought,
no doubt, that they were going to kick it too, and nipped one of them who
took it by the collar. Thereupon they hullabalooed and stoned it down the
road to where I found them. Then I put in my little bit of torture, and
drove it away, through fear of infection to my own dog. After that it
seems to have fallen in with a man who told me: 'Well, you see, he came
sneakin' round my house, with the children playin', and snapped at them
when they went to stroke him, so that they came running in to their
mother, an' she' called to me in a fine takin' about a mad dog. I ran out
with a shovel and gave 'im one, and drove him out. I'm sorry if he
wasn't mad, he looked it right enough; you can't be too careful with
strange dogs.' Its next acquaintance was an old stone-breaker, a very
decent sort. 'Well! you see,' the old man explained to me, 'the dog came
smellin' round my stones, an' it wouldn' come near, an' it wouldn' go
away; it was all froth and blood about the jaw, and its eyes glared green
at me. I thought to meself, bein' the dog-days--I don't like the look o'
you, you look funny! So I took a stone, an' got it here, just on the
ear; an' it fell over. And I thought to meself: Well, you've got to
finish it, or it'll go bitin' somebody, for sure! But when I come to it
with my hammer, the dog it got up--an' you know how it is when there's
somethin' you've 'alf killed, and you feel sorry, and yet you feel you
must finish it, an' you hit at it blind, you hit at it agen an' agen.
The poor thing, it wriggled and snapped, an' I was terrified it'd bite
me, an' some'ow it got away."' Again our friend paused, and this time we
dared not look at him.
"The next hospitality it was shown," he went on presently, "was by a
farmer, who, seeing it all bloody, drove it off, thinking it had been
digging up a lamb that he'd just buried. The poor homeless beast came
sneaking back, so he told his men to get rid of it. Well, they got hold
of it somehow--there was a hole in its neck that looked as if they'd used
a pitchfork--and, mortally afraid of its biting them, but not liking, as
they told me, to drown it, for fear the owner might come on them, they
got a stake and a chain, and fastened it up, and left it in the water by
the hay-stack where I found it. I had some conversation with that
farmer. 'That's right,' he said, 'but who was to know? I couldn't have
my sheep worried. The brute had blood on his muzzle. These curs do a
lot of harm when they've once been blooded. You can't run risks."' Our
friend cut viciously at a dandelion with his stick. "Run risks!" he
broke out suddenly: "That was it from beginning to end of that poor
beast's sufferings, fear! From that fellow on the bicycle, afraid of the
worry and expense, as soon as it showed signs of distemper, to myself and
the man with the pitch fork--not one of us, I daresay, would have gone
out of our way to do it--a harm. But we felt fear, and so by the law of
self-preservation, or what ever you like--it all began, till there the
poor thing was, with a battered head and a hole in its neck, ravenous
with hunger, and too distraught even to lap my bread and milk. Yes, and
there's something uncanny about a suffering animal--we sat watching it,
and again we were afraid, looking at its eyes and the way it bit the air.
Fear! It's the black godmother of all damnable things!"
Our friend bent down, crumpling and crumpling at his dog's ears. We,
too, gazed at the ground, thinking of, that poor lost puppy, and the
horrible inevitability of all that happens, seeing men are what they are;
thinking of all the foul doings in the world, whose black godmother is
Fear.
"And what became of the poor dog?" one of us asked at last.
"When," said our friend slowly, "I'd had my fill of watching, I covered
it with a rug, took this fellow away with me, and went to bed. There was
nothing else to do. At dawn I was awakened by three dreadful cries--not
like a dog's at all. I hurried down. There was the poor beast--wriggled
out from under the rug-stretched on its side, dead. This fellow of mine
had followed me in, and he went and sat down by the body. When I spoke
to him he just looked round, and wagged his tail along the ground, but
would not come away; and there he sat till it was buried, very
interested, but not sorry at all."
Our friend was silent, looking angrily at something in the distance.
And we, too, were silent, seeing in spirit that vigil of early morning:
The thin, lifeless, sandy-coloured body, stretched on those red mats; and
this black creature--now lying at our feet--propped on its haunches like
the dog in "The Death of Procris," patient, curious, ungrieved, staring
down at it with his bright, interested eyes.
1912.
STUDIES AND ESSAYS
By John Galsworthy
"Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."
--ANATOLE FRANCE
CONCERNING LIFE
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
QUALITY
THE GRAND JURY
GONE
THRESHING
THAT OLD-TIME PLACE
ROMANCE--THREE GLEAMS
MEMORIES
FELICITY
QUALITY
I knew him from the days of my extreme youth, because he made my father's
boots; inhabiting with his elder brother two little shops let into one,
in a small by-street-now no more, but then most fashionably placed in the
West End.
That tenement had a certain quiet distinction; there was no sign upon its
face that he made for any of the Royal Family--merely his own German name
of Gessler Brothers; and in the window a few pairs of boots. I remember
that it always troubled me to account for those unvarying boots in the
window, for he made only what was ordered, reaching nothing down, and it
seemed so inconceivable that what he made could ever have failed to fit.
Had he bought them to put there? That, too, seemed inconceivable. He
would never have tolerated in his house leather on which he had not
worked himself. Besides, they were too beautiful--the pair of pumps, so
inexpressibly slim, the patent leathers with cloth tops, making water
come into one's mouth, the tall brown riding boots with marvellous sooty
glow, as if, though new, they had been worn a hundred years. Those pairs
could only have been made by one who saw before him the Soul of Boot--so
truly were they prototypes incarnating the very spirit of all foot-gear.
These thoughts, of course, came to me later, though even when I was
promoted to him, at the age of perhaps fourteen, some inkling haunted me
of the dignity of himself and brother. For to make boots--such boots as
he made--seemed to me then, and still seems to me, mysterious and
wonderful.
I remember well my shy remark, one day, while stretching out to him my
youthful foot:
"Isn't it awfully hard to do, Mr. Gessler?"
And his answer, given with a sudden smile from out of the sardonic
redness of his beard: "Id is an Ardt!"
Himself, he was a little as if made from leather, with his yellow crinkly
face, and crinkly reddish hair and beard; and neat folds slanting down
his cheeks to the corners of his mouth, and his guttural and one-toned
voice; for leather is a sardonic substance, and stiff and slow of
purpose. And that was the character of his face, save that his eyes,
which were grey-blue, had in them the simple gravity of one secretly
possessed by the Ideal. His elder brother was so very like him--though
watery, paler in every way, with a great industry--that sometimes in
early days I was not quite sure of him until the interview was over.
Then I knew that it was he, if the words, "I will ask my brudder," had
not been spoken; and that, if they had, it was his elder brother.
When one grew old and wild and ran up bills, one somehow never ran them
up with Gessler Brothers. It would not have seemed becoming to go in
there and stretch out one's foot to that blue iron-spectacled glance,
owing him for more than--say--two pairs, just the comfortable reassurance
that one was still his client.
For it was not possible to go to him very often--his boots lasted
terribly, having something beyond the temporary--some, as it were,
essence of boot stitched into them.
One went in, not as into most shops, in the mood of: "Please serve me,
and let me go!" but restfully, as one enters a church; and, sitting on
the single wooden chair, waited--for there was never anybody there.
Soon, over the top edge of that sort of well--rather dark, and smelling
soothingly of leather--which formed the shop, there would be seen his
face, or that of his elder brother, peering down. A guttural sound, and
the tip-tap of bast slippers beating the narrow wooden stairs, and he
would stand before one without coat, a little bent, in leather apron,
with sleeves turned back, blinking--as if awakened from some dream of
boots, or like an owl surprised in daylight and annoyed at this
interruption.
And I would say: "How do you do, Mr. Gessler? Could you make me a pair
of Russia leather boots?"
Without a word he would leave me, retiring whence he came, or into the
other portion of the shop, and I would, continue to rest in the wooden
chair, inhaling the incense of his trade. Soon he would come back,
holding in his thin, veined hand a piece of gold-brown leather. With eyes
fixed on it, he would remark: "What a beaudiful biece!" When I, too, had
admired it, he would speak again. "When do you wand dem?" And I would
answer: "Oh! As soon as you conveniently can." And he would say:
"To-morrow fordnighd?" Or if he were his elder brother: "I will ask my
brudder!"
Then I would murmur: "Thank you! Good-morning, Mr. Gessler."
"Goot-morning!" he would reply, still looking at the leather in his hand.
And as I moved to the door, I would hear the tip-tap of his bast slippers
restoring him, up the stairs, to his dream of boots. But if it were some
new kind of foot-gear that he had not yet made me, then indeed he would
observe ceremony--divesting me of my boot and holding it long in his
hand, looking at it with eyes at once critical and loving, as if
recalling the glow with which he had created it, and rebuking the way in
which one had disorganized this masterpiece. Then, placing my foot on a
piece of paper, he would two or three times tickle the outer edges with a
pencil and pass his nervous fingers over my toes, feeling himself into
the heart of my requirements.
I cannot forget that day on which I had occasion to say to him; "Mr.
Gessler, that last pair of town walking-boots creaked, you know."
He looked at me for a time without replying, as if expecting me to
withdraw or qualify the statement, then said:
"Id shouldn'd 'ave greaked."
"It did, I'm afraid."
"You goddem wed before dey found demselves?"
"I don't think so."
At that he lowered his eyes, as if hunting for memory of those boots, and
I felt sorry I had mentioned this grave thing.
"Zend dem back!" he said; "I will look at dem."
A feeling of compassion for my creaking boots surged up in me, so well
could I imagine the sorrowful long curiosity of regard which he would
bend on them.
"Zome boods," he said slowly, "are bad from birdt. If I can do noding
wid dem, I dake dem off your bill."
Once (once only) I went absent-mindedly into his shop in a pair of boots
bought in an emergency at some large firm's. He took my order without
showing me any leather, and I could feel his eyes penetrating the
inferior integument of my foot. At last he said:
"Dose are nod my boods."
The tone was not one of anger, nor of sorrow, not even of contempt, but
there was in it something quiet that froze the blood. He put his hand
down and pressed a finger on the place where the left boot, endeavouring
to be fashionable, was not quite comfortable.
"Id 'urds you dere,", he said. "Dose big virms 'ave no self-respect.
Drash!" And then, as if something had given way within him, he spoke
long and bitterly. It was the only time I ever heard him discuss the
conditions and hardships of his trade.
"Dey get id all," he said, "dey get id by adverdisement, nod by work. Dey
dake it away from us, who lofe our boods. Id gomes to this--bresently I
haf no work. Every year id gets less you will see." And looking at his
lined face I saw things I had never noticed before, bitter things and
bitter struggle--and what a lot of grey hairs there seemed suddenly in
his red beard!
As best I could, I explained the circumstances of the purchase of those
ill-omened boots. But his face and voice made so deep impression that
during the next few minutes I ordered many pairs. Nemesis fell! They
lasted more terribly than ever. And I was not able conscientiously to go
to him for nearly two years.
When at last I went I was surprised to find that outside one of the two
little windows of his shop another name was painted, also that of a
bootmaker-making, of course, for the Royal Family. The old familiar
boots, no longer in dignified isolation, were huddled in the single
window. Inside, the now contracted well of the one little shop was more
scented and darker than ever. And it was longer than usual, too, before
a face peered down, and the tip-tap of the bast slippers began. At last
he stood before me, and, gazing through those rusty iron spectacles,
said:
"Mr.-----, isn'd it?"
"Ah! Mr. Gessler," I stammered, "but your boots are really too good,
you know! See, these are quite decent still!" And I stretched out to
him my foot. He looked at it.
"Yes," he said, "beople do nod wand good hoods, id seems."
To get away from his reproachful eyes and voice I hastily remarked: "What
have you done to your shop?"
He answered quietly: "Id was too exbensif. Do you wand some boods?"
I ordered three pairs, though I had only wanted two, and quickly left. I
had, I do not know quite what feeling of being part, in his mind, of a
conspiracy against him; or not perhaps so much against him as against his
idea of boot. One does not, I suppose, care to feel like that; for it
was again many months before my next visit to his shop, paid, I remember,
with the feeling: "Oh! well, I can't leave the old boy--so here goes!
Perhaps it'll be his elder brother!"
For his elder brother, I knew, had not character enough to reproach me,
even dumbly.
And, to my relief, in the shop there did appear to be his elder brother,
handling a piece of leather.
"Well, Mr. Gessler," I said, "how are you?"
He came close, and peered at me.
"I am breddy well," he said slowly "but my elder brudder is dead."
And I saw that it was indeed himself--but how aged and wan! And never
before had I heard him mention his brother. Much shocked; I murmured:
"Oh! I am sorry!"
"Yes," he answered, "he was a good man, he made a good bood; but he is
dead." And he touched the top of his head, where the hair had suddenly
gone as thin as it had been on that of his poor brother, to indicate, I
suppose, the cause of death. "He could nod ged over losing de oder shop.
Do you wand any hoods?" And he held up the leather in his hand: "Id's a
beaudiful biece."
I ordered several pairs. It was very long before they came--but they
were better than ever. One simply could not wear them out. And soon
after that I went abroad.
It was over a year before I was again in London. And the first shop I
went to was my old friend's. I had left a man of sixty, I came back to
one of seventy-five, pinched and worn and tremulous, who genuinely, this
time, did not at first know me.
"Oh! Mr. Gessler," I said, sick at heart; "how splendid your boots are!
See, I've been wearing this pair nearly all the time I've been abroad;
and they're not half worn out, are they?"
He looked long at my boots--a pair of Russia leather, and his face seemed
to regain steadiness. Putting his hand on my instep, he said:
"Do dey vid you here? I 'ad drouble wid dat bair, I remember."
I assured him that they had fitted beautifully.
"Do you wand any boods?" he said. "I can make dem quickly; id is a slack
dime."
I answered: "Please, please! I want boots all round--every kind!"
"I will make a vresh model. Your food must be bigger." And with utter
slowness, he traced round my foot, and felt my toes, only once looking up
to say:
"Did I dell you my brudder was dead?"
To watch him was painful, so feeble had he grown; I was glad to get away.
I had given those boots up, when one evening they came. Opening the
parcel, I set the four pairs out in a row. Then one by one I tried them
on. There was no doubt about it. In shape and fit, in finish and
quality of leather, they were the best he had ever made me. And in the
mouth of one of the Town walking-boots I found his bill.
The amount was the same as usual, but it gave me quite a shock. He had
never before sent it in till quarter day. I flew down-stairs, and wrote
a cheque, and posted it at once with my own hand.
A week later, passing the little street, I thought I would go in and tell
him how splendidly the new boots fitted. But when I came to where his
shop had been, his name was gone. Still there, in the window, were the
slim pumps, the patent leathers with cloth tops, the sooty riding boots.
I went in, very much disturbed. In the two little shops--again made into
one--was a young man with an English face.
"Mr. Gessler in?" I said.
He gave me a strange, ingratiating look.
"No, sir," he said, "no. But we can attend to anything with pleasure.
We've taken the shop over. You've seen our name, no doubt, next door.
We make for some very good people."
"Yes, Yes," I said; "but Mr. Gessler?"
"Oh!" he answered; "dead."
"Dead! But I only received these boots from him last Wednesday week."
"Ah!" he said; "a shockin' go. Poor old man starved 'imself."
"Good God!"
"Slow starvation, the doctor called it! You see he went to work in such
a way! Would keep the shop on; wouldn't have a soul touch his boots
except himself. When he got an order, it took him such a time. People
won't wait. He lost everybody. And there he'd sit, goin' on and on--I
will say that for him not a man in London made a better boot! But look
at the competition! He never advertised! Would 'ave the best leather,
too, and do it all 'imself. Well, there it is. What could you expect
with his ideas?"
"But starvation----!"
"That may be a bit flowery, as the sayin' is--but I know myself he was
sittin' over his boots day and night, to the very last. You see I used
to watch him. Never gave 'imself time to eat; never had a penny in the
house. All went in rent and leather. How he lived so long I don't know.
He regular let his fire go out. He was a character. But he made good
boots."
"Yes," I said, "he made good boots."
And I turned and went out quickly, for I did not want that youth to know
that I could hardly see.
1911
THE GRAND JURY--IN TWO PANELS AND A FRAME
Read that piece of paper, which summoned me to sit on the Grand Jury at
the approaching Sessions, lying in a scoop of the shore close to the
great rollers of the sea--that span of eternal freedom, deprived just
there of too great liberty by the word "Atlantic." And I remember
thinking, as I read, that in each breaking wave was some particle which
had visited every shore in all the world--that in each sparkle of hot
sunlight stealing that bright water up into the sky, was the microcosm of
all change, and of all unity.
PANEL I
In answer to that piece of paper, I presented myself at the proper place
in due course and with a certain trepidation. What was it that I was
about to do? For I had no experience of these things. And, being too
early, I walked a little to and fro, looking at all those my partners in
this matter of the purification of Society. Prosecutors, witnesses,
officials, policemen, detectives, undetected, pressmen, barristers,
loafers, clerks, cadgers, jurymen. And I remember having something of
the feeling that one has when one looks into a sink without holding one's
nose. There was such uneasy hurry, so strange a disenchanted look, a
sort of spiritual dirt, about all that place, and there were--faces! And
I thought: To them my face must seem as their faces seem to me!
Soon I was taken with my accomplices to have my name called, and to be
sworn. I do not remember much about that process, too occupied with
wondering what these companions of mine were like; but presently we all
came to a long room with a long table, where nineteen lists of
indictments and nineteen pieces of blotting paper were set alongside
nineteen pens. We did not, I recollect, speak much to one another, but
sat down, and studied those nineteen lists. We had eighty-seven cases on
which to pronounce whether the bill was true or no; and the clerk assured
us we should get through them in two days at most. Over the top of these
indictments I regarded my eighteen fellows. There was in me a hunger of
inquiry, as to what they thought about this business; and a sort of
sorrowful affection for them, as if we were all a ship's company bound on
some strange and awkward expedition. I wondered, till I thought my
wonder must be coming through my eyes, whether they had the same curious
sensation that I was feeling, of doing something illegitimate, which I
had not been born to do, together with a sense of self-importance, a sort
of unholy interest in thus dealing with the lives of my fellow men. And
slowly, watching them, I came to the conclusion that I need not wonder.
All with the exception perhaps of two, a painter and a Jew looked such
good citizens. I became gradually sure that they were not troubled with
the lap and wash of speculation; unclogged by any devastating sense of
unity; pure of doubt, and undefiled by an uneasy conscience.
But now they began to bring us in the evidence. They brought it quickly.
And at first we looked at it, whatever it was, with a sort of solemn
excitement. Were we not arbiters of men's fates, purifiers of Society,
more important by far than Judge or Common Jury? For if we did not bring
in a true bill there was an end; the accused would be discharged.
We set to work, slowly at first, then faster and still faster, bringing
in true bills; and after every one making a mark in our lists so that we
might know where we were. We brought in true bills for burglary, and
false pretences, larceny, and fraud; we brought them in for manslaughter,
rape, and arson. When we had ten or so, two of us would get up and bear
them away down to the Court below and lay them before the Judge. "Thank
you, gentlemen!" he would say, or words to that effect; and we would go
up again, and go on bringing in true bills. I noticed that at the
evidence of each fresh bill we looked with a little less excitement, and
a little less solemnity, making every time a shorter tick and a shorter
note in the margin of our lists. All the bills we had--fifty-seven--we
brought in true. And the morning and the afternoon made that day, till we
rested and went to our homes.
Next day we were all back in our places at the appointed hour, and, not
greeting each other much, at once began to bring in bills. We brought
them in, not quite so fast, as though some lurking megrim, some microbe
of dissatisfaction with ourselves was at work within us. It was as if we
wanted to throw one out, as if we felt our work too perfect. And
presently it came. A case of defrauding one Sophie Liebermann, or
Laubermann, or some such foreign name, by giving her one of those
five-pound Christmas-card banknotes just then in fashion, and receiving
from her, as she alleged, three real sovereigns change. There was a
certain piquancy about the matter, and I well remember noticing how we
sat a little forward and turned in our seats when they brought in the
prosecutrix to give evidence. Pale, self-possessed, dressed in black, and
rather comely, neither brazen nor furtive, speaking but poor English, her
broad, matter-of-fact face, with its wide-set grey eyes and thickish nose
and lips, made on me, I recollect, an impression of rather stupid
honesty. I do not think they had told us in so many words what her
calling was, nor do I remember whether she actually disclosed it, but by
our demeanour I could tell that we had all realized what was the nature
of the service rendered to the accused, in return for which he had given
her this worthless note. In her rather guttural but pleasant voice she
answered all our questions--not very far from tears, I think, but saved
by native stolidity, and perhaps a little by the fear that purifiers of
Society might not be the proper audience for emotion. When she had left
us we recalled the detective, and still, as it were, touching the
delicate matter with the tips of our tongues, so as not, being men of the
world, to seem biassed against anything, we definitely elicited from him
her profession and these words: "If she's speaking the truth, gentlemen;
but, as you know, these women, they don't always, specially the foreign
ones!" When he, too, had gone, we looked at each other in unwonted
silence. None of us quite liked, it seemed, to be first to speak. Then
our foreman said: "There's no doubt, I think, that he gave her the
note--mean trick, of course, but we can't have him on that alone--bit too
irregular--no consideration in law, I take it."
He smiled a little at our smiles, and then went on: "The question,
gentlemen, really seems to be, are we to take her word that she actually
gave him change?" Again, for quite half a minute; we were silent, and
then, the fattest one of us said, suddenly: "Very dangerous--goin' on the
word of these women."
And at once, as if he had released something in our souls, we all (save
two or three) broke out. It wouldn't do! It wasn't safe! Seeing what
these women were! It was exactly as if, without word said, we had each
been swearing the other to some secret compact to protect Society. As if
we had been whispering to each other something like this: "These
women--of course, we need them, but for all that we can't possibly
recognise them as within the Law; we can't do that without endangering
the safety of every one of us. In this matter we are trustees for all
men--indeed, even for ourselves, for who knows at what moment we might
not ourselves require their services, and it would be exceedingly awkward
if their word were considered the equal of our own!" Not one of us,
certainly said anything so crude as this; none the less did many of us
feel it. Then the foreman, looking slowly round the table, said: "Well,
gentlemen, I think we are all agreed to throw out this bill"; and all,
except the painter, the Jew, and one other, murmured: "Yes." And, as
though, in throwing out this bill we had cast some trouble off our minds,
we went on with the greater speed, bringing in true bills. About two
o'clock we finished, and trooped down to the Court to be released. On
the stairway the Jew came close, and, having examined me a little sharply
with his velvety slits of eyes, as if to see that he was not making a
mistake, said: "Ith fonny--we bring in eighty thix bills true, and one we
throw out, and the one we throw out we know it to be true, and the
dirtieth job of the whole lot. Ith fonny!" "Yes," I answered him, "our
sense of respectability does seem excessive." But just then we reached
the Court, where, in his red robe and grey wig, with his clear-cut,
handsome face, the judge seemed to shine and radiate, like sun through
gloom. "I thank you, gentlemen," he said, in a voice courteous and a
little mocking, as though he had somewhere seen us before: "I thank you
for the way in which you have performed your duties. I have not the
pleasure of assigning to you anything for your services except the
privilege of going over a prison, where you will be able to see what sort
of existence awaits many of those to whose cases you have devoted so much
of your valuable time. You are released, gentlemen."
Looking at each, other a little hurriedly, and not taking too much
farewell, for fear of having to meet again, we separated.
I was, then, free--free of the injunction of that piece of paper reposing
in my pocket. Yet its influence was still upon me. I did not hurry
away, but lingered in the courts, fascinated by the notion that the fate
of each prisoner had first passed through my hands. At last I made an
effort, and went out into the corridor. There I passed a woman whose
figure seemed familiar. She was sitting with her hands in her lap
looking straight before her, pale-faced and not uncomely, with thickish
mouth and nose--the woman whose bill we had thrown out. Why was she
sitting there? Had she not then realised that we had quashed her claim;
or was she, like myself, kept here by mere attraction of the Law?
Following I know not what impulse, I said: "Your case was dismissed,
wasn't it?" She looked up at me stolidly, and a tear, which had
evidently been long gathering, dropped at the movement. "I do nod know;
I waid to see," she said in her thick voice; "I tink there has been
mistake." My face, no doubt, betrayed something of my sentiments about
her case, for the thick tears began rolling fast down her pasty cheeks,
and her pent-up feeling suddenly flowed forth in words: "I work 'ard;
Gott! how I work hard! And there gomes dis liddle beastly man, and rob
me. And they say: 'Ah! yes; but you are a bad woman, we don' trust
you--you speak lie.' But I speak druth, I am nod a bad woman--I gome
from Hamburg." "Yes, yes," I murmured; "yes, yes." "I do not know this
country well, sir. I speak bad English. Is that why they do not drust
my word?" She was silent for a moment, searching my face, then broke out
again: "It is all 'ard work in my profession, I make very liddle, I
cannot afford to be rob. Without the men I cannod make my living, I must
drust them--and they rob me like this, it is too 'ard." And the slow
tears rolled faster and faster from her eyes on to her hands and her
black lap. Then quietly, and looking for a moment singularly like a big,
unhappy child, she asked: "Will you blease dell me, sir, why they will
not give me the law of that dirty little man?"
I knew--and too well; but I could not tell her.
"You see," I said, "it's just a case of your word against his." "Oh! no;
but," she said eagerly, "he give me the note--I would not have taken it
if I 'ad not thought it good, would I? That is sure, isn't it? But five
pounds it is not my price. It must that I give 'im change! Those
gentlemen that heard my case, they are men of business, they must know
that it is not my price. If I could tell the judge--I think he is a man
of business too he would know that too, for sure. I am not so young. I
am not so veree beautiful as all that; he must see, mustn't he, sir?"
At my wits' end how to answer that most strange question, I stammered
out: "But, you know, your profession is outside the law."
At that a slow anger dyed her face. She looked down; then, suddenly
lifting one of her dirty, ungloved hands, she laid it on her breast with
the gesture of one baring to me the truth in her heart. "I am not a bad
woman," she said: "Dat beastly little man, he do the same as me--I am
free-woman, I am not a slave bound to do the same to-morrow night, no
more than he. Such like him make me what I am; he have all the pleasure,
I have all the work. He give me noding--he rob my poor money, and he
make me seem to strangers a bad woman. Oh, dear! I am not happy!"
The impulse I had been having to press on her the money, died within me;
I felt suddenly it would be another insult. From the movement of her
fingers about her heart I could not but see that this grief of hers was
not about the money. It was the inarticulate outburst of a bitter sense
of deep injustice; of all the dumb wondering at her own fate that went
about with her behind that broad stolid face and bosom. This loss of the
money was but a symbol of the furtive, hopeless insecurity she lived with
day and night, now forced into the light, for herself and all the world
to see. She felt it suddenly a bitter, unfair thing. This beastly
little man did not share her insecurity. None of us shared it--none of
us, who had brought her down to this. And, quite unable to explain to
her how natural and proper it all was, I only murmured: "I am sorry,
awfully sorry," and fled away.
PANEL II
It was just a week later when, having for passport my Grand Jury summons,
I presented myself at that prison where we had the privilege of seeing
the existence to which we had assisted so many of the eighty-six.
"I'm afraid," I said to the guardian of the gate, "that I am rather late
in availing myself--the others, no doubt----?"
"Not at all, sir," he said, smiling. "You're the first, and if you'll
excuse me, I think you'll be the last. Will you wait in here while I
send for the chief warder to take you over?"
He showed me then to what he called the Warder's Library--an iron-barred
room, more bare and brown than any I had seen since I left school. While
I stood there waiting and staring out into the prison court-yard, there
came, rolling and rumbling in, a Black Maria. It drew up with a clatter,
and I saw through the barred door the single prisoner--a young girl of
perhaps eighteen--dressed in rusty black. She was resting her forehead
against a bar and looking out, her quick, narrow dark eyes taking in her
new surroundings with a sort of sharp, restless indifference; and her
pale, thin-upped, oval face quite expressionless. Behind those bars she
seemed to me for all the world like a little animal of the cat tribe
being brought in to her Zoo. Me she did not see, but if she had I felt
she would not shrink--only give me the same sharp, indifferent look she
was giving all else. The policeman on the step behind had disappeared at
once, and the driver now got down from his perch and, coming round, began
to gossip with her. I saw her slink her eyes and smile at him, and he
smiled back; a large man; not unkindly. Then he returned to his horses,
and she stayed as before, with her forehead against the bars, just
staring out. Watching her like that, unseen, I seemed to be able to see
right through that tight-lipped, lynx-eyed mask. I seemed to know that
little creature through and through, as one knows anything that one
surprises off its guard, sunk in its most private moods. I seemed to see
her little restless, furtive, utterly unmoral soul, so stripped of all
defence, as if she had taken it from her heart and handed it out to me.
I saw that she was one of those whose hands slip as indifferently into
others' pockets as into their own; incapable of fidelity, and incapable
of trusting; quick as cats, and as devoid of application; ready to
scratch, ready to purr, ready to scratch again; quick to change, and
secretly as unchangeable as a little pebble. And I thought: "Here we
are, taking her to the Zoo (by no means for the first time, if demeanour
be any guide), and we shall put her in a cage, and make her sew, and give
her good books which she will not read; and she will sew, and walk up and
down, until we let her out; then she will return to her old haunts, and
at once go prowling and do exactly the same again, what ever it was,
until we catch her and lock her up once more. And in this way we shall
go on purifying Society until she dies." And I thought: If indeed she had
been created cat in body as well as in soul, we should not have treated
her thus, but should have said: 'Go on, little cat, you scratch us
sometimes, you steal often, you are as sensual as the night. All this we
cannot help. It is your nature. So were you made--we know you cannot
change--you amuse us! Go on, little cat!' Would it not then be better,
and less savoury of humbug if we said the same to her whose cat-soul has
chanced into this human shape? For assuredly she will but pilfer, and
scratch a little, and be mildly vicious, in her little life, and do no
desperate harm, having but poor capacity for evil behind that petty,
thin-upped mask. What is the good of all this padlock business for such
as she; are we not making mountains out of her mole hills? Where is our
sense of proportion, and our sense of humour? Why try to alter the make
and shape of Nature with our petty chisels? Or, if we must take care of
her, to save ourselves, in the name of Heaven let us do it in a better
way than this! And suddenly I remembered that I was a Grand Juryman, a
purifier of Society, who had brought her bill in true; and, that I might
not think these thoughts unworthy of a good citizen, I turned my eyes
away from her and took up my list of indictments. Yes, there she was, at
least so I decided: Number 42, "Pilson, Jenny: Larceny, pocket-picking."
And I turned my memory back to the evidence about her case, but I could
not remember a single word. In the margin I had noted: "Incorrigible
from a child up; bad surroundings." And a mad impulse came over me to go
back to my window and call through the bars to her: "Jenny Pilson! Jenny
Pilson! It was I who bred you and surrounded you with evil! It was I
who caught you for being what I made you! I brought your bill in true!
I judged you, and I caged you! Jenny Pilson! Jenny Pilson!" But just as
I reached the window, the door of my waiting-room was fortunately opened,
and a voice said: "Now, sir; at your service!"...
I sat again in that scoop of the shore by the long rolling seas, burying
in the sand the piece of paper which had summoned me away to my Grand
Jury; and the same thoughts came to me with the breaking of the waves
that had come to me before: How, in every wave was a particle that had
known the shore of every land; and in each sparkle of the hot sunlight
stealing up that bright water into the sky, the microcosm of all change
and of all unity!
1912.
GONE
Not possible to conceive of rarer beauty than that which clung about the
summer day three years ago when first we had the news of the poor Herds.
Loveliness was a net of golden filaments in which the world was caught.
It was gravity itself, so tranquil; and it was a sort of intoxicating
laughter. From the top field that we crossed to go down to their
cottage, all the far sweep of those outstretched wings of beauty could be
seen. Very wonderful was the poise of the sacred bird, that moved
nowhere but in our hearts. The lime-tree scent was just stealing out
into air for some days already bereft of the scent of hay; and the sun
was falling to his evening home behind our pines and beeches. It was no
more than radiant warm. And, as we went, we wondered why we had not been
told before that Mrs. Herd was so very ill. It was foolish to
wonder--these people do not speak of suffering till it is late. To
speak, when it means what this meant loss of wife and mother--was to
flatter reality too much. To be healthy, or--die! That is their creed.
To go on till they drop--then very soon pass away! What room for states
between--on their poor wage, in their poor cottages?
We crossed the mill-stream in the hollow--to their white, thatched
dwelling; silent, already awed, almost resentful of this so-varying
Scheme of Things. At the gateway Herd himself was standing, just in from
his work. For work in the country does not wait on illness--even death
claims from its onlookers but a few hours, birth none at all, and it is
as well; for what must be must, and in work alone man rests from grief.
Sorrow and anxiety had made strange alteration already in Herd's face.
Through every crevice of the rough, stolid mask the spirit was peeping, a
sort of quivering suppliant, that seemed to ask all the time: "Is it
true?" A regular cottager's figure, this of Herd's--a labourer of these
parts--strong, slow, but active, with just a touch of the untamed
somewhere, about the swing and carriage of him, about the strong jaw, and
wide thick-lipped mouth; just that something independent, which, in great
variety, clings to the natives of these still remote, half-pagan valleys
by the moor.
We all moved silently to the lee of the outer wall, so that our voices
might not carry up to the sick woman lying there under the eaves, almost
within hand reach. "Yes, sir." "No, sir." "Yes, ma'am." This, and the
constant, unforgettable supplication of his eyes, was all that came from
him; yet he seemed loath to let us go, as though he thought we had some
mysterious power to help him--the magic, perhaps, of money, to those who
have none. Grateful at our promise of another doctor, a specialist, he
yet seemed with his eyes to say that he knew that such were only
embroideries of Fate. And when we had wrung his hand and gone, we heard
him coming after us: His wife had said she would like to see us, please.
Would we come up?
An old woman and Mrs. Herd's sister were in the sitting-room; they showed
us to the crazy, narrow stairway. Though we lived distant but four
hundred yards of a crow's flight, we had never seen Mrs. Herd before, for
that is the way of things in this land of minding one's own business--a
slight, dark, girlish-looking woman, almost quite refined away, and with
those eyes of the dying, where the spirit is coming through, as it only
does when it knows that all is over except just the passing. She lay in
a double bed, with clean white sheets. A white-washed room, so low that
the ceiling almost touched our heads, some flowers in a bowl, the small
lattice window open. Though it was hot in there, it was better far than
the rooms of most families in towns, living on a wage of twice as much;
for here was no sign of defeat in decency or cleanliness. In her face,
as in poor Herd's, was that same strange mingling of resigned despair and
almost eager appeal, so terrible to disappoint. Yet, trying not to
disappoint it, one felt guilty of treachery: What was the good, the
kindness, in making this poor bird flutter still with hope against the
bars, when fast prison had so surely closed in round her? But what else
could we do? We could not give her those glib assurances that naive
souls make so easily to others concerning their after state.
Secretly, I think, we knew that her philosophy of calm reality, that
queer and unbidden growing tranquillity which precedes death, was nearer
to our own belief, than would be any gilt-edged orthodoxy; but
nevertheless (such is the strength of what is expected), we felt it
dreadful that we could not console her with the ordinary presumptions.
"You mustn't give up hope," we kept on saying: "The new doctor will do a
lot for you; he's a specialist--a very clever man."
And she kept on answering: "Yes, sir." "Yes, ma'am." But still her eyes
went on asking, as if there were something else she wanted. And then to
one of us came an inspiration:
"You mustn't let your husband worry about expense. That will be all
right."
She smiled then, as if the chief cloud on her soul had been the thought
of the arrears her illness and death would leave weighing on him with
whom she had shared this bed ten years and more. And with that smile
warming the memory of those spirit-haunted eyes, we crept down-stairs
again, and out into the fields.
It was more beautiful than ever, just touched already with evening
mystery--it was better than ever to be alive. And the immortal wonder
that has haunted man since first he became man, and haunts, I think, even
the animals--the unanswerable question,--why joy and beauty must ever be
walking hand in hand with ugliness and pain haunted us across those
fields of life and loveliness. It was all right, no doubt, even
reasonable, since without dark there is no light. It was part of that
unending sum whose answer is not given; the merest little swing of the
great pendulum! And yet----! To accept this violent contrast without a
sigh of revolt, without a question! No sirs, it was not so jolly as all
that! That she should be dying there at thirty, of a creeping malady
which she might have checked, perhaps, if she had not had too many things
to do for the children and husband, to do anything for herself--if she
had not been forced to hold the creed: Be healthy, or die! This was no
doubt perfectly explicable and in accordance with the Supreme Equation;
yet we, enjoying life, and health, and ease of money, felt horror and
revolt on, this evening of such beauty. Nor at the moment did we derive
great comfort from the thought that life slips in and out of sheath, like
sun-sparks on water, and that of all the cloud of summer midges dancing
in the last gleam, not one would be alive to-morrow.
It was three evenings later that we heard uncertain footfalls on the
flagstones of the verandah, then a sort of brushing sound against the
wood of the long, open window. Drawing aside the curtain, one of us
looked out. Herd was standing there in the bright moonlight, bareheaded,
with roughened hair. He came in, and seeming not to know quite where he
went, took stand by the hearth, and putting up his dark hand, gripped the
mantelshelf. Then, as if recollecting himself, he said: "Gude evenin',
sir; beg pardon, M'm." No more for a full minute; but his hand, taking
some little china thing, turned it over and over without ceasing, and
down his broken face tears ran. Then, very suddenly, he said: "She's
gone." And his hand turned over and over that little china thing, and
the tears went on rolling down. Then, stumbling, and swaying like a man
in drink, he made his way out again into the moonlight. We watched him
across the lawn and path, and through the gate, till his footfalls died
out there in the field, and his figure was lost in the black shadow of
the holly hedge.
And the night was so beautiful, so utterly, glamourously beautiful, with
its star-flowers, and its silence, and its trees clothed in moonlight.
All was tranquil as a dream of sleep. But it was long before our hearts,
wandering with poor Herd, would let us remember that she had slipped away
into so beautiful a dream.
The dead do not suffer from their rest in beauty. But the living---!
1911.
THRESHING
When the drone of the thresher breaks through the autumn sighing of trees
and wind, or through that stillness of the first frost, I get restless
and more restless, till, throwing down my pen, I have gone out to see.
For there is nothing like the sight of threshing for making one feel
good--not in the sense of comfort, but at heart. There, under the pines
and the already leafless elms and beech-trees, close to the great stacks,
is the big, busy creature, with its small black puffing engine astern;
and there, all around it, is that conglomeration of unsentimental labour
which invests all the crises of farm work with such fascination. The
crew of the farm is only five all told, but to-day they are fifteen, and
none strangers, save the owners of the travelling thresher.
They are working without respite and with little speech, not at all as if
they had been brought together for the benefit of some one else's corn,
but as though they, one and all, had a private grudge against Time and a
personal pleasure in finishing this job, which, while it lasts, is
bringing them extra pay and most excellent free feeding. Just as after a
dilatory voyage a crew will brace themselves for the run in, recording
with sudden energy their consciousness of triumph over the elements, so
on a farm the harvests of hay and corn, sheep-shearing, and threshing
will bring out in all a common sentiment, a kind of sporting energy, a
defiant spurt, as it were, to score off Nature; for it is only a
philosopher here and there among them, I think, who sees that Nature is
eager to be scored off in this fashion, being anxious that some one
should eat her kindly fruits.
With ceremonial as grave as that which is at work within the thresher
itself, the tasks have been divided. At the root of all things,
pitchforking from the stack, stands--the farmer, moustached, and always
upright was he not in the Yeomanry?--dignified in a hard black hat, no
waistcoat, and his working coat so ragged that it would never cling to
him but for pure affection. Between him and the body of the machine are
five more pitch forks, directing the pale flood of raw material. There,
amongst them, is poor Herd, still so sad from his summer loss, plodding
doggedly away. To watch him even now makes one feel how terrible is that
dumb grief which has never learned to moan. And there is George Yeoford,
almost too sober; and Murdon plying his pitchfork with a supernatural
regularity that cannot quite dim his queer brigand's face of dark, soft
gloom shot with sudden humours, his soft, dark corduroys and battered
hat. Occasionally he stops, and taking off that hat, wipes his
corrugated brow under black hair, and seems to brood over his own
regularity.
Down here, too, where I stand, each separate function of the thresher has
its appointed slave. Here Cedric rakes the chaff pouring from the side
down into the chaff-shed. Carting the straw that streams from the
thresher bows, are Michelmore and Neck--the little man who cannot read,
but can milk and whistle the hearts out of his cows till they follow him
like dogs. At the thresher's stern is Morris, the driver, selected
because of that utter reliability which radiates from his broad, handsome
face. His part is to attend the sacking of the three kinds of grain for
ever sieving out. He murmurs: "Busy work, sir!" and opens a little door
to show me how "the machinery does it all," holding a sack between his
knees and some string in his white teeth. Then away goes the sack--four
bushels, one hundred and sixty pounds of "genuines, seconds, or
seed"--wheeled by Cedric on a little trolley thing, to where
George-the-Gaul or Jim-the-Early-Saxon is waiting to bear it on his back
up the stone steps into the corn-chamber.
It has been raining in the night; the ground is a churn of straw and mud,
and the trees still drip; but now there is sunlight, a sweet air, and
clear sky, wine-coloured through the red, naked, beechtwigs tipped with
white untimely buds. Nothing can be more lovely than this late autumn
day, so still, save for the droning of the thresher and the constant
tinny chuckle of the grey, thin-headed Guinea-fowl, driven by this
business away from their usual haunts.
And soon the, feeling that I knew would come begins creeping over me, the
sense of an extraordinary sanity in this never-ceasing harmonious labour
pursued in the autumn air faintly perfumed with wood-smoke, with the
scent of chaff, and whiffs from that black puffing-Billy; the sense that
there is nothing between this clean toil--not too hard but hard
enough--and the clean consumption of its clean results; the sense that
nobody except myself is in the least conscious of how sane it all is.
The brains of these sane ones are all too busy with the real affairs of
life, the disposition of their wages, anticipation of dinner, some girl,
some junketing, some wager, the last rifle match, and, more than all,
with that pleasant rhythmic nothingness, companion of the busy swing and
play of muscles, which of all states is secretly most akin to the deep
unconsciousness of life itself. Thus to work in the free air for the good
of all and the hurt of none, without worry or the breath of
acrimony--surely no phase of human life so nears the life of the truly
civilised community--the life of a hive of bees. Not one of these
working so sanely--unless it be Morris, who will spend his Sunday
afternoon on some high rock just watching sunlight and shadow drifting on
the moors--not one, I think, is distraught by perception of his own
sanity, by knowledge of how near he is to Harmony, not even by
appreciation of the still radiance of this day, or its innumerable fine
shades of colour. It is all work, and no moody consciousness--all work,
and will end in sleep.
I leave them soon, and make my way up the stone steps to the "corn
chamber," where tranquillity is crowned. In the whitewashed room the
corn lies in drifts and ridges, three to four feet deep, all silvery-dun,
like some remote sand desert, lifeless beneath the moon. Here it lies,
and into it, staggering under the sacks, George-the-Gaul and
Jim-the-Early Saxon tramp up to their knees, spill the sacks over their
heads, and out again; and above where their feet have plunged the patient
surface closes again, smooth. And as I stand there in the doorway,
looking at that silvery corn drift, I think of the whole process, from
seed sown to the last sieving into this tranquil resting-place. I think
of the slow, dogged ploughman, with the crows above him on the wind; of
the swing of the sower's arm, dark up against grey sky on the steep
field. I think of the seed snug-burrowing for safety, and its mysterious
ferment under the warm Spring rain, of the soft green shoots tapering up
so shyly toward the first sun, and hardening in air to thin wiry stalk.
I think of the unnumerable tiny beasts that have jangled in that pale
forest; of the winged blue jewels of butterfly risen from it to hover on
the wild-rustling blades; of that continual music played there by the
wind; of the chicory and poppy flowers that have been its lights-o' love,
as it grew tawny and full of life, before the appointed date when it
should return to its captivity. I think of that slow-travelling hum and
swish which laid it low, of the gathering to stack, and the long waiting
under the rustle and drip of the sheltering trees, until yesterday the
hoot of the thresher blew, and there began the falling into this dun
silvery peace. Here it will lie with the pale sun narrowly filtering in
on it, and by night the pale moon, till slowly, week by week, it is
stolen away, and its ridges and drifts sink and sink, and the beasts have
eaten it all....
When the dusk is falling, I go out to them again. They have nearly
finished now; the chaff in the chaff-shed is mounting hillock-high; only
the little barley stack remains unthreshed. Mrs. George-the-Gaul is
standing with a jug to give drink to the tired ones. Some stars are
already netted in the branches of the pines; the Guinea-fowl are silent.
But still the harmonious thresher hums and showers from three sides the
straw, the chaff, the corn; and the men fork, and rake, and cart, and
carry, sleep growing in their muscles, silence on their tongues, and the
tranquillity of the long day nearly ended in their souls. They will go
on till it is quite dark.
1911.
THAT OLD-TIME PLACE
"Yes, suh--here we are at that old-time place!" And our dark driver drew
up his little victoria gently.
Through the open doorway, into a dim, cavernous, ruined house of New
Orleans we passed. The mildew and dirt, the dark denuded dankness of
that old hostel, rotting down with damp and time!
And our guide, the tall, thin, grey-haired dame, who came forward with
such native ease and moved before us, touching this fungused wall, that
rusting stairway, and telling, as it were, no one in her soft, slow
speech, things that any one could see--what a strange and fitting figure!
Before the smell of the deserted, oozing rooms, before that old creature
leading us on and on, negligent of all our questions, and talking to the
air, as though we were not, we felt such discomfort that we soon made to
go out again into such freshness as there was on that day of dismal heat.
Then realising, it seemed, that she was losing us, our old guide turned;
for the first time looking in our faces, she smiled, and said in her
sweet, weak voice, like the sound from the strings of a spinet long
unplayed on: "Don' you wahnd to see the dome-room: an' all the other
rooms right here, of this old-time place?"
Again those words! We had not the hearts to disappoint her. And as we
followed on and on, along the mouldering corridors and rooms where the
black peeling papers hung like stalactites, the dominance of our senses
gradually dropped from us, and with our souls we saw its soul--the soul
of this old-time place; this mustering house of the old South, bereft of
all but ghosts and the grey pigeons niched in the rotting gallery round a
narrow courtyard open to the sky.
"This is the dome-room, suh and lady; right over the slave-market it is.
Here they did the business of the State--sure; old-time heroes up therein
the roof--Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Davis, Lee--there they are!
All gone--now! Yes, suh!"
A fine--yea, even a splendid room, of great height, and carved grandeur,
with hand-wrought bronze sconces and a band of metal bordering, all
blackened with oblivion. And the faces of those old heroes encircling
that domed ceiling were blackened too, and scarred with damp, beyond
recognition. Here, beneath their gaze, men had banqueted and danced and
ruled. The pride and might and vivid strength of things still fluttered
their uneasy flags of spirit, moved disherited wings! Those old-time
feasts and grave discussions--we seemed to see them printed on the thick
air, imprisoned in this great chamber built above their dark foundations.
The pride and the might and the vivid strength of things--gone, all gone!
We became conscious again of that soft, weak voice.
"Not hearing very well, suh, I have it all printed, lady--beautifully
told here--yes, indeed!"
She was putting cards into our hands; then, impassive, maintaining ever
her impersonal chant, the guardian of past glory led us on.
"Now we shall see the slave-market--downstairs, underneath! It's wet for
the lady the water comes in now yes, suh!"
On the crumbling black and white marble floorings the water indeed was
trickling into pools. And down in the halls there came to us
wandering--strangest thing that ever strayed through deserted grandeur--a
brown, broken horse, lean, with a sore flank and a head of tremendous
age. It stopped and gazed at us, as though we might be going to give it
things to eat, then passed on, stumbling over the ruined marbles. For a
moment we had thought him ghost--one of the many. But he was not, since
his hoofs sounded. The scrambling clatter of them had died out into
silence before we came to that dark, crypt-like chamber whose marble
columns were ringed in iron, veritable pillars of foundation. And then
we saw that our old guide's hands were full of newspapers. She struck a
match; they caught fire and blazed. Holding high that torch, she said:
"See! Up there's his name, above where he stood. The auctioneer. Oh
yes, indeed! Here's where they sold them!"
Below that name, decaying on the wall, we had the slow, uncanny feeling
of some one standing there in the gleam and flicker from that paper
torch. For a moment the whole shadowy room seemed full of forms and
faces. Then the torch lied out, and our old guide, pointing through an
archway with the blackened stump of it, said:
"'Twas here they kept them indeed, yes!"
We saw before us a sort of vault, stone-built, and low, and long. The
light there was too dim for us to make out anything but walls and heaps
of rusting scrap-iron cast away there and mouldering own. But trying to
pierce that darkness we became conscious, as it seemed, of innumerable
eyes gazing, not at us, but through the archway where we stood;
innumerable white eyeballs gleaming out of blackness. From behind us
came a little laugh. It floated past through the archway, toward those
eyes. Who was that? Who laughed in there? The old South itself--that
incredible, fine, lost soul! That "old-time" thing of old ideals,
blindfolded by its own history! That queer proud blend of simple
chivalry and tyranny, of piety and the abhorrent thing! Who was it
laughed there in the old slave-market--laughed at these white eyeballs
glaring from out of the blackness of their dark cattle-pen? What poor
departed soul in this House of Melancholy? But there was no ghost when
we turned to look--only our old guide with her sweet smile.
"Yes, suh. Here they all came--'twas the finest hotel--before the
war-time; old Southern families--buyin' an' sellin' their property. Yes,
ma'am, very interesting! This way! And here were the bells to all the
rooms. Broken, you see--all broken!"
And rather quickly we passed away, out of that "old-time place"; where
something had laughed, and the drip, drip, drip of water down the walls
was as the sound of a spirit grieving.
1912.
ROMANCE--THREE GLEAMS
On that New Year's morning when I drew up the blind it was still nearly
dark, but for the faintest pink flush glancing out there on the horizon
of black water. The far shore of the river's mouth was just soft dusk;
and the dim trees below me were in perfect stillness. There was no lap of
water. And then--I saw her, drifting in on the tide-the little ship,
passaging below me, a happy ghost. Like no thing of this world she came,
ending her flight, with sail-wings closing and her glowing lantern eyes.
There was I know not what of stealthy joy about her thus creeping in to
the unexpecting land. And I wished she would never pass, but go on
gliding by down there for ever with her dark ropes, and her bright
lanterns, and her mysterious felicity, so that I might have for ever in
my heart the blessed feeling she brought me, coming like this out of that
great mystery the sea. If only she need not change to solidity, but ever
be this visitor from the unknown, this sacred bird, telling with her
half-seen, trailing-down plume--sails the story of uncharted wonder. If
only I might go on trembling, as I was, with the rapture of all I did not
know and could not see, yet felt pressing against me and touching my face
with its lips! To think of her at anchor in cold light was like
flinging-to a door in the face of happiness. And just then she struck
her bell; the faint silvery far-down sound fled away before her, and to
every side, out into the utter hush, to discover echo. But nothing
answered, as if fearing to break the spell of her coming, to brush with
reality the dark sea dew from her sail-wings. But within me, in
response, there began the song of all unknown things; the song so
tenuous, so ecstatic, that seems to sweep and quiver across such thin
golden strings, and like an eager dream dies too soon. The song of the
secret-knowing wind that has peered through so great forests and over
such wild sea; blown on so many faces, and in the jungles of the grass
the song of all that the wind has seen and felt. The song of lives that
I should never live; of the loves that I should never love singlng to me
as though I should! And suddenly I felt that I could not bear my little
ship of dreams to grow hard and grey, her bright lanterns drowned in the
cold light, her dark ropes spidery and taut, her sea-wan sails all
furled, and she no more en chanted; and turning away I let fall the
curtain.
II
Then what happens to the moon? She, who, shy and veiled, slips out
before dusk to take the air of heaven, wandering timidly among the
columned clouds, and fugitive from the staring of the sun; she, who, when
dusk has come, rules the sentient night with such chaste and icy
spell--whither and how does she retreat?
I came on her one morning--I surprised her. She was stealing into a dark
wintry wood, and five little stars were chasing her. She was
orange-hooded, a light-o'-love dismissed--unashamed and unfatigued,
having taken--all. And she was looking back with her almond eyes, across
her dark-ivory shoulder, at Night where he still lay drowned in the sleep
she had brought him. What a strange, slow, mocking look! So might
Aphrodite herself have looked back at some weary lover, remembering the
fire of his first embrace. Insatiate, smiling creature, slipping down to
the rim of the world to her bath in the sweet waters of dawn, whence
emerging, pure as a water lily, she would float in the cool sky till
evening came again! And just then she saw me looking, and hid behind a
holm-oak tree; but I could still see the gleam of one shoulder and her
long narrow eyes pursuing me. I went up to the tree and parted its dark
boughs to take her; but she had slipped behind another. I called to her
to stand, if only for one moment. But she smiled and went slip ping on,
and I ran thrusting through the wet bushes, leaping the fallen trunks.
The scent of rotting leaves disturbed by my feet leaped out into the
darkness, and birds, surprised, fluttered away. And still I ran--she
slipping ever further into the grove, and ever looking back at me. And I
thought: But I will catch you yet, you nymph of perdition! The wood will
soon be passed, you will have no cover then! And from her eyes, and the
scanty gleam of her flying limbs, I never looked away, not even when I
stumbled or ran against tree trunks in my blind haste. And at every
clearing I flew more furiously, thinking to seize all of her with my gaze
before she could cross the glade; but ever she found some little low
tree, some bush of birch ungrown, or the far top branches of the next
grove to screen her flying body and preserve allurement. And all the
time she was dipping, dipping to the rim of the world. And then I
tripped; but, as I rose, I saw that she had lingered for me; her long
sliding eyes were full, it seemed to me, of pity, as if she would have
liked for me to have enjoyed the sight of her. I stood still,
breathless, thinking that at last she would consent; but flinging back,
up into the air, one dark-ivory arm, she sighed and vanished. And the
breath of her sigh stirred all the birch-tree twigs just coloured with
the dawn. Long I stood in that thicket gazing at the spot where she had
leapt from me over the edge of the world-my heart quivering.
III
We embarked on the estuary steamer that winter morning just as daylight
came full. The sun was on the wing scattering little white clouds, as an
eagle might scatter doves. They scurried up before him with their broken
feathers tipped and tinged with gold. In the air was a touch of frost,
and a smoky mist-drift clung here and there above the reeds, blurring the
shores of the lagoon so that we seemed to be steaming across boundless
water, till some clump of trees would fling its top out of the fog, then
fall back into whiteness.
And then, in that thick vapour, rounding I suppose some curve, we came
suddenly into we knew not what--all white and moving it was, as if the
mist were crazed; murmuring, too, with a sort of restless beating. We
seemed to be passing through a ghost--the ghost of all the life that had
sprung from this water and its, shores; we seemed to have left reality,
to be travelling through live wonder.
And the fantastic thought sprang into my mind: I have died. This is the
voyage of my soul in the wild. I am in the final wilderness of
spirits--lost in the ghost robe that wraps the earth. There seemed in
all this white murmuration to be millions of tiny hands stretching out to
me, millions of whispering voices, of wistful eyes. I had no fear, but a
curious baked eagerness, the strangest feeling of having lost myself and
become part of this around me; exactly as if my own hands and voice and
eyes had left me and were groping, and whispering, and gazing out there
in the eeriness. I was no longer a man on an estuary steamer, but part
of sentient ghostliness. Nor did I feel unhappy; it seemed as though I
had never been anything but this Bedouin spirit wandering.
We passed through again into the stillness of plain mist, and all those
eerie sensations went, leaving nothing but curiosity to know what this
was that we had traversed. Then suddenly the sun came flaring out, and
we saw behind us thousands and thousands of white gulls dipping,
wheeling, brushing the water with their wings, bewitched with sun and
mist. That was all. And yet that white-winged legion through whom we
had ploughed our way were not, could never be, to me just gulls--there
was more than mere sun-glamour gilding their misty plumes; there was the
wizardry of my past wonder, the enchantment of romance.
1912.
MEMORIES
We set out to meet him at Waterloo Station on a dull day of February--I,
who had owned his impetuous mother, knowing a little what to expect,
while to my companion he would be all original. We stood there waiting
(for the Salisbury train was late), and wondering with a warm,
half-fearful eagerness what sort of new thread Life was going to twine
into our skein. I think our chief dread was that he might have light
eyes--those yellow Chinese eyes of the common, parti-coloured spaniel.
And each new minute of the train's tardiness increased our anxious
compassion: His first journey; his first separation from his mother; this
black two-months' baby! Then the train ran in, and we hastened to look
for him. "Have you a dog for us?"
"A dog! Not in this van. Ask the rearguard."
"Have you a dog for us?"
"That's right. From Salisbury. Here's your wild beast, Sir!"
From behind a wooden crate we saw a long black muzzled nose poking round
at us, and heard a faint hoarse whimpering.
I remember my first thought:
"Isn't his nose too long?"
But to my companion's heart it went at once, because it was swollen from
crying and being pressed against things that he could not see through.
We took him out--soft, wobbly, tearful; set him down on his four, as yet
not quite simultaneous legs, and regarded him. Or, rather, my companion
did, having her head on one side, and a quavering smile; and I regarded
her, knowing that I should thereby get a truer impression of him.
He wandered a little round our legs, neither wagging his tail nor licking
at our hands; then he looked up, and my companion said: "He's an angel!"
I was not so certain. He seemed hammer-headed, with no eyes at all, and
little connection between his head, his body, and his legs. His ears
were very long, as long as his poor nose; and gleaming down in the
blackness of him I could see the same white star that disgraced his
mother's chest.
Picking him up, we carried him to a four-wheeled cab, and took his muzzle
off. His little dark-brown eyes were resolutely fixed on distance, and
by his refusal to even smell the biscuits we had brought to make him
happy, we knew that the human being had not yet come into a life that had
contained so far only a mother, a wood-shed, and four other soft, wobbly,
black, hammer-headed angels, smelling of themselves, and warmth, and wood
shavings. It was pleasant to feel that to us he would surrender an
untouched love, that is, if he would surrender anything. Suppose he did
not take to us!
And just then something must have stirred in him, for he turned up his
swollen nose and stared at my companion, and a little later rubbed the
dry pinkness of his tongue against my thumb. In that look, and that
unconscious restless lick; he was trying hard to leave unhappiness
behind, trying hard to feel that these new creatures with stroking paws
and queer scents, were his mother; yet all the time he knew, I am sure,
that they were something bigger, more permanently, desperately, his. The
first sense of being owned, perhaps (who knows) of owning, had stirred in
him. He would never again be quite the same unconscious creature.
A little way from the end of our journey we got out and dismissed the
cab. He could not too soon know the scents and pavements of this London
where the chief of his life must pass. I can see now his first bumble
down that wide, back-water of a street, how continually and suddenly he
sat down to make sure of his own legs, how continually he lost our heels.
He showed us then in full perfection what was afterwards to be an
inconvenient--if endearing--characteristic: At any call or whistle he
would look in precisely the opposite direction. How many times all
through his life have I not seen him, at my whistle, start violently and
turn his tail to me, then, with nose thrown searchingly from side to
side, begin to canter toward the horizon.
In that first walk, we met, fortunately, but one vehicle, a brewer's
dray; he chose that moment to attend to the more serious affairs of life,
sitting quietly before the horses' feet and requiring to be moved by
hand. From the beginning he had his dignity, and was extremely difficult
to lift, owing to the length of his middle distance.
What strange feelings must have stirred in his little white soul when he
first smelled carpet! But it was all so strange to him that day--I
doubt if he felt more than I did when I first travelled to my private
school, reading "Tales of a Grandfather," and plied with tracts and
sherry by my 'father's man of business.
That night, indeed, for several nights, he slept with me, keeping me too
warm down my back, and waking me now and then with quaint sleepy
whimperings. Indeed, all through his life he flew a good deal in his
sleep, fighting dogs and seeing ghosts, running after rabbits and thrown
sticks; and to the last one never quite knew whether or no to rouse him
when his four black feet began to jerk and quiver. His dreams were like
our dreams, both good and bad; happy sometimes, sometimes tragic to
weeping point.
He ceased to sleep with me the day we discovered that he was a perfect
little colony, whose settlers were of an active species which I have
never seen again. After that he had many beds, for circumstance ordained
that his life should be nomadic, and it is to this I trace that
philosophic indifference to place or property, which marked him out from
most of his own kind. He learned early that for a black dog with long
silky ears, a feathered tail, and head of great dignity, there was no
home whatsoever, away from those creatures with special scents, who took
liberties with his name, and alone of all created things were privileged
to smack him with a slipper. He would sleep anywhere, so long as it was
in their room, or so close outside it as to make no matter, for it was
with him a principle that what he did not smell did not exist. I would I
could hear again those long rubber-lipped snufflings of recognition
underneath the door, with which each morning he would regale and reassure
a spirit that grew with age more and more nervous and delicate about this
matter of propinquity! For he was a dog of fixed ideas, things stamped
on his mind were indelible; as, for example, his duty toward cats, for
whom he had really a perverse affection, which had led to that first
disastrous moment of his life, when he was brought up, poor bewildered
puppy, from a brief excursion to the kitchen, with one eye closed and his
cheek torn! He bore to his grave that jagged scratch across the eye. It
was in dread of a repetition of this tragedy that he was instructed at
the word "Cats" to rush forward with a special "tow-row-rowing," which he
never used toward any other form of creature. To the end he cherished a
hope that he would reach the cat; but never did; and if he had, we knew
he would only have stood and wagged his tail; but I well remember once,
when he returned, important, from some such sally, how dreadfully my
companion startled a cat-loving friend by murmuring in her most honeyed
voice: "Well, my darling, have you been killing pussies in the garden?"
His eye and nose were impeccable in their sense of form; indeed, he was
very English in that matter: People must be just so; things smell
properly; and affairs go on in the one right way. He could tolerate
neither creatures in ragged clothes, nor children on their hands and
knees, nor postmen, because, with their bags, they swelled-up on one
side, and carried lanterns on their stomachs. He would never let the
harmless creatures pass without religious barks. Naturally a believer in
authority and routine, and distrusting spiritual adventure, he yet had
curious fads that seemed to have nested in him, quite outside of all
principle. He would, for instance, follow neither carriages nor horses,
and if we tried to make him, at once left for home, where he would sit
with nose raised to Heaven, emitting through it a most lugubrious, shrill
noise. Then again, one must not place a stick, a slipper, a glove, or
anything with which he could play, upon one's head--since such an action
reduced him at once to frenzy. For so conservative a dog, his
environment was sadly anarchistic. He never complained in words of our
shifting habits, but curled his head round over his left paw and pressed
his chin very hard against the ground whenever he smelled packing. What
necessity, he seemed continually to be saying, what real necessity is
there for change of any kind whatever? Here we were all together, and
one day was like another, so that I knew where I was--and now you only
know what will happen next; and I--I can't tell you whether I shall be
with you when it happens! What strange, grieving minutes a dog passes at
such times in the underground of his subconsciousness, refusing
realisation, yet all the time only too well divining. Some careless
word, some unmuted compassion in voice, the stealthy wrapping of a pair
of boots, the unaccustomed shutting of a door that ought to be open, the
removal from a down-stair room of an object always there--one tiny thing,
and he knows for certain that he is not going too. He fights against the
knowledge just as we do against what we cannot bear; he gives up hope,
but not effort, protesting in the only way he knows of, and now and then
heaving a great sigh. Those sighs of a dog! They go to the heart so much
more deeply than the sighs of our own kind, because they are utterly
unintended, regardless of effect, emerging from one who, heaving them,
knows not that they have escaped him!
The words: "Yes--going too!" spoken in a certain tone, would call up in
his eyes a still-questioning half-happiness, and from his tail a quiet
flutter, but did not quite serve to put to rest either his doubt or his
feeling that it was all unnecessary--until the cab arrived. Then he
would pour himself out of door or window, and be found in the bottom of
the vehicle, looking severely away from an admiring cabman. Once settled
on our feet he travelled with philosophy, but no digestion.
I think no dog was ever more indifferent to an outside world of human
creatures; yet few dogs have made more conquests--especially among
strange women, through whom, however, he had a habit of looking--very
discouraging. He had, natheless, one or two particular friends, such as
him to whom this book is dedicated, and a few persons whom he knew he had
seen before, but, broadly speaking, there were in his world of men, only
his mistress, and--the almighty.
Each August, till he was six, he was sent for health, and the assuagement
of his hereditary instincts, up to a Scotch shooting, where he carried
many birds in a very tender manner. Once he was compelled by Fate to
remain there nearly a year; and we went up ourselves to fetch him home.
Down the long avenue toward the keeper's cottage we walked: It was high
autumn; there had been frost already, for the ground was fine with red
and yellow leaves; and presently we saw himself coming; professionally
questing among those leaves, and preceding his dear keeper with the
businesslike self-containment of a sportsman; not too fat, glossy as a
raven's wing, swinging his ears and sporran like a little Highlander. We
approached him silently. Suddenly his nose went up from its imagined
trail, and he came rushing at our legs. From him, as a garment drops
from a man, dropped all his strange soberness; he became in a single
instant one fluttering eagerness. He leaped from life to life in one
bound, without hesitation, without regret. Not one sigh, not one look
back, not the faintest token of gratitude or regret at leaving those good
people who had tended him for a whole year, buttered oat-cake for him,
allowed him to choose each night exactly where he would sleep. No, he
just marched out beside us, as close as ever he could get, drawing us on
in spirit, and not even attending to the scents, until the lodge gates
were passed.
It was strictly in accordance with the perversity of things, and
something in the nature of calamity that he had not been ours one year,
when there came over me a dreadful but overmastering aversion from
killing those birds and creatures of which he was so fond as soon as they
were dead. And so I never knew him as a sportsman; for during that first
year he was only an unbroken puppy, tied to my waist for fear of
accidents, and carefully pulling me off every shot. They tell me he
developed a lovely nose and perfect mouth, large enough to hold gingerly
the biggest hare. I well believe it, remembering the qualities of his
mother, whose character, however, in stability he far surpassed. But, as
he grew every year more devoted to dead grouse and birds and rabbits, I
liked them more and more alive; it was the only real breach between us,
and we kept it out of sight. Ah! well; it is consoling to reflect that I
should infallibly have ruined his sporting qualities, lacking that
peculiar habit of meaning what one says, so necessary to keep dogs
virtuous. But surely to have had him with me, quivering and alert, with
his solemn, eager face, would have given a new joy to those crisp
mornings when the hope of wings coming to the gun makes poignant in the
sports man as nothing else will, an almost sensual love of Nature, a
fierce delight in the soft glow of leaves, in the white birch stems and
tracery of sparse twigs against blue sky, in the scents of sap and grass
and gum and heather flowers; stivers the hair of him with keenness for
interpreting each sound, and fills the very fern or moss he kneels on,
the very trunk he leans against, with strange vibration.
Slowly Fate prepares for each of us the religion that lies coiled in our
most secret nerves; with such we cannot trifle, we do not even try! But
how shall a man grudge any one sensations he has so keenly felt? Let
such as have never known those curious delights, uphold the hand of
horror--for me there can be no such luxury. If I could, I would still
perhaps be knowing them; but when once the joy of life in those winged
and furry things has knocked at the very portals of one's spirit, the
thought that by pressing a little iron twig one will rive that joy out of
their vitals, is too hard to bear. Call it aestheticism, squeamishness,
namby-pamby sentimentalism, what you will it is stronger than oneself!
Yes, after one had once watched with an eye that did not merely see, the
thirsty gaping of a slowly dying bird, or a rabbit dragging a broken leg
to a hole where he would lie for hours thinking of the fern to which he
should never more come forth--after that, there was always the following
little matter of arithmetic: Given, that all those who had been shooting
were "good-fair" shots--which, Heaven knew, they never were--they yet
missed one at least in four, and did not miss it very much; so that if
seventy-five things were slain, there were also twenty-five that had been
fired at, and, of those twenty-five, twelve and a half had "gotten it"
somewhere in their bodies, and would "likely" die at their great leisure.
This was the sum that brought about the only cleavage in our lives; and
so, as he grew older, and trying to part from each other we no longer
could, he ceased going to Scotland. But after that I often felt, and
especially when we heard guns, how the best and most secret instincts of
him were being stifled. But what was to be done? In that which was left
of a clay pigeon he would take not the faintest interest--the scent of it
was paltry. Yet always, even in his most cosseted and idle days, he
managed to preserve the grave preoccupation of one professionally
concerned with retrieving things that smell; and consoled himself with
pastimes such as cricket, which he played in a manner highly specialised,
following the ball up the moment it left the bowler's hand, and sometimes
retrieving it before it reached the batsman. When remonstrated with, he
would consider a little, hanging out a pink tongue and looking rather too
eagerly at the ball, then canter slowly out to a sort of forward short
leg. Why he always chose that particular position it is difficult to
say; possibly he could lurk there better than anywhere else, the
batsman's eye not being on him, and the bowler's not too much. As a
fieldsman he was perfect, but for an occasional belief that he was not
merely short leg, but slip, point, midoff, and wicket-keep; and perhaps a
tendency to make the ball a little "jubey." But he worked tremendously,
watching every movement; for he knew the game thoroughly, and seldom
delayed it more than three minutes when he secured the ball. And if that
ball were really lost, then indeed he took over the proceedings with an
intensity and quiet vigour that destroyed many shrubs, and the solemn
satisfaction which comes from being in the very centre of the stage.
But his most passionate delight was swimming in anything except the sea,
for which, with its unpleasant noise and habit of tasting salt, he had
little affection. I see him now, cleaving the Serpentine, with his air
of "the world well lost," striving to reach my stick before it had
touched water. Being only a large spaniel, too small for mere heroism,
he saved no lives in the water but his own--and that, on one occasion,
before our very eyes, from a dark trout stream, which was trying to wash
him down into a black hole among the boulders.
The call of the wild-Spring running--whatever it is--that besets men and
dogs, seldom attained full mastery over him; but one could often see it
struggling against his devotion to the scent of us, and, watching that
dumb contest, I have time and again wondered how far this civilisation of
ours was justifiably imposed on him; how far the love for us that we had
so carefully implanted could ever replace in him the satisfaction of his
primitive wild yearnings: He was like a man, naturally polygamous,
married to one loved woman.
It was surely not for nothing that Rover is dog's most common name, and
would be ours, but for our too tenacious fear of losing something, to
admit, even to ourselves, that we are hankering. There was a man who
said: Strange that two such queerly opposite qualities as courage and
hypocrisy are the leading characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon! But is not
hypocrisy just a product of tenacity, which is again the lower part of
courage? Is not hypocrisy but an active sense of property in one's good
name, the clutching close of respectability at any price, the feeling
that one must not part, even at the cost of truth, with what he has
sweated so to gain? And so we Anglo-Saxons will not answer to the name
of Rover, and treat our dogs so that they, too, hardly know their
natures.
The history of his one wandering, for which no respectable reason can be
assigned, will never, of course, be known. It was in London, of an
October evening, when we were told he had slipped out and was not
anywhere. Then began those four distressful hours of searching for that
black needle n that blacker bundle of hay. Hours of real dismay and
suffering for it is suffering, indeed, to feel a loved thing swallowed up
in that hopeless haze of London streets. Stolen or run over? Which was
worst? The neighbouring police stations visited, the Dog's Home
notified, an order of five hundred "Lost Dog" bills placed in the
printer's hands, the streets patrolled! And then, in a lull snatched for
food, and still endeavouring to preserve some aspect of assurance, we
heard the bark which meant: "Here is a door I cannot open!" We hurried
forth, and there he was on the top doorstep--busy, unashamed, giving no
explanations, asking for his supper; and very shortly after him came his
five hundred "Lost Dog" bills. Long I sat looking at him that night
after my companion had gone up, thinking of the evening, some years
before, when there followed as that shadow of a spaniel who had been lost
for eleven days. And my heart turned over within me. But he! He was
asleep, for he knew not remorse.
Ah! and there was that other time, when it was reported to me, returning
home at night, that he had gone out to find me; and I went forth again,
disturbed, and whistling his special call to the empty fields. Suddenly
out of the darkness I heard a rushing, and he came furiously dashing
against my heels from he alone knew where he had been lurking and saying
to himself: I will not go in till he comes! I could not scold, there was
something too lyrical in the return of that live, lonely, rushing piece
of blackness through the blacker night. After all, the vagary was but a
variation in his practice when one was away at bed-time, of passionately
scratching up his bed in protest, till it resembled nothing; for, in
spite of his long and solemn face and the silkiness of his ears, there
was much in him yet of the cave bear--he dug graves on the smallest
provocations, in which he never buried anything. He was not a "clever"
dog; and guiltless of all tricks. Nor was he ever "shown." We did not
even dream of subjecting him to this indignity. Was our dog a clown, a
hobby, a fad, a fashion, a feather in our caps that we should subject him
to periodic pennings in stuffy halls, that we should harry his faithful
soul with such tomfoolery? He never even heard us talk about his
lineage, deplore the length of his nose, or call him "clever-looking."
We should have been ashamed to let him smell about us the tar-brush of a
sense of property, to let him think we looked on him as an asset to earn
us pelf or glory. We wished that there should be between us the spirit
that was between the sheep dog and that farmer, who, when asked his dog's
age, touched the old creature's head, and answered thus: "Teresa" (his
daughter) "was born in November, and this one in August." That sheep dog
had seen eighteen years when the great white day came for him, and his
spirit passed away up, to cling with the wood-smoke round the dark
rafters of the kitchen where he had lain so vast a time beside his
master's boots. No, no! If a man does not soon pass beyond the thought
"By what shall this dog profit me?" into the large state of simple
gladness to be with dog, he shall never know the very essence of that
companion ship which depends not on the points of dog, but on some
strange and subtle mingling of mute spirits. For it is by muteness that
a dog becomes for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is at peace,
where words play no torturing tricks. When he just sits, loving, and
knows that he is being loved, those are the moments that I think are
precious to a dog; when, with his adoring soul coming through his eyes,
he feels that you are really thinking of him. But he is touchingly
tolerant of one's other occupations. The subject of these memories
always knew when one was too absorbed in work to be so close to him as he
thought proper; yet he never tried to hinder or distract, or asked for
attention. It dinged his mood, of course, so that the red under his eyes
and the folds of his crumply cheeks--which seemed to speak of a touch of
bloodhound introduced a long way back into his breeding--drew deeper and
more manifest. If he could have spoken at such times, he would have
said: "I have been a long time alone, and I cannot always be asleep; but
you know best, and I must not criticise."
He did not at all mind one's being absorbed in other humans; he seemed to
enjoy the sounds of conversation lifting round him, and to know when they
were sensible. He could not, for instance, stand actors or actresses
giving readings of their parts, perceiving at once that the same had no
connection with the minds and real feelings of the speakers; and, having
wandered a little to show his disapproval, he would go to the door and
stare at it till it opened and let him out. Once or twice, it is true,
when an actor of large voice was declaiming an emotional passage, he so
far relented as to go up to him and pant in his face. Music, too, made
him restless, inclined to sigh, and to ask questions. Sometimes, at its
first sound, he would cross to the window and remain there looking for
Her. At others, he would simply go and lie on the loud pedal, and we
never could tell whether it was from sentiment, or because he thought
that in this way he heard less. At one special Nocturne of Chopin's he
always whimpered. He was, indeed, of rather Polish temperament--very gay
when he was gay, dark and brooding when he was not.
On the whole, perhaps his life was uneventful for so far-travelling a
dog, though it held its moments of eccentricity, as when he leaped
through the window of a four-wheeler into Kensington, or sat on a
Dartmoor adder. But that was fortunately of a Sunday afternoon--when
adder and all were torpid, so nothing happened, till a friend, who was
following, lifted him off the creature with his large boot.
If only one could have known more of his private life--more of his
relations with his own kind! I fancy he was always rather a dark dog to
them, having so many thoughts about us that he could not share with any
one, and being naturally fastidious, except with ladies, for whom he had
a chivalrous and catholic taste, so that they often turned and snapped at
him. He had, however, but one lasting love affair, for a liver-coloured
lass of our village, not quite of his own caste, but a wholesome if
somewhat elderly girl, with loving and sphinx-like eyes. Their children,
alas, were not for this world, and soon departed.
Nor was he a fighting dog; but once attacked, he lacked a sense of
values, being unable to distinguish between dogs that he could beat and
dogs with whom he had "no earthly." It was, in fact, as well to
interfere at once, especially in the matter of retrievers, for he never
forgot having in his youth been attacked by a retriever from behind. No,
he never forgot, and never forgave, an enemy. Only a month before that
day of which I cannot speak, being very old and ill, he engaged an Irish
terrier on whose impudence he had long had his eye, and routed him. And
how a battle cheered his spirit! He was certainly no Christian; but,
allowing for essential dog, he was very much a gentleman. And I do think
that most of us who live on this earth these days would rather leave it
with that label on us than the other. For to be a Christian, as Tolstoy
understood the word--and no one else in our time has had logic and love
of truth enough to give it coherent meaning--is (to be quite sincere) not
suited to men of Western blood. Whereas--to be a gentleman! It is a far
cry, but perhaps it can be done. In him, at all events, there was no
pettiness, no meanness, and no cruelty, and though he fell below his
ideal at times, this never altered the true look of his eyes, nor the
simple loyalty in his soul.
But what a crowd of memories come back, bringing with them the perfume of
fallen days! What delights and glamour, what long hours of effort,
discouragements, and secret fears did he not watch over--our black
familiar; and with the sight and scent and touch of him, deepen or
assuage! How many thousand walks did we not go together, so that we
still turn to see if he is following at his padding gait, attentive to
the invisible trails. Not the least hard thing to bear when they go from
us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years
of our own lives. Yet, if they find warmth therein, who would grudge
them those years that they have so guarded? Nothing else of us can they
take to lie upon with outstretched paws and chin pressed to the ground;
and, whatever they take, be sure they have deserved.
Do they know, as we do, that their time must come? Yes, they know, at
rare moments. No other way can I interpret those pauses of his latter
life, when, propped on his forefeet, he would sit for long minutes quite
motionless--his head drooped, utterly withdrawn; then turn those eyes of
his and look at me. That look said more plainly than all words could:
"Yes, I know that I must go!" If we have spirits that persist--they
have. If we know after our departure, who we were they do. No one, I
think, who really longs for truth, can ever glibly say which it will be
for dog and man persistence or extinction of our consciousness. There is
but one thing certain--the childishness of fretting over that eternal
question. Whichever it be, it must be right, the only possible thing.
He felt that too, I know; but then, like his master, he was what is
called a pessimist.
My companion tells me that, since he left us, he has once come back. It
was Old Year's Night, and she was sad, when he came to her in visible
shape of his black body, passing round the dining-table from the
window-end, to his proper place beneath the table, at her feet. She saw
him quite clearly; she heard the padding tap-tap of his paws and very
toe-nails; she felt his warmth brushing hard against the front of her
skirt. She thought then that he would settle down upon her feet, but
something disturbed him, and he stood pausing, pressed against her, then
moved out toward where I generally sit, but was not sitting that night.
She saw him stand there, as if considering; then at some sound or laugh,
she became self-conscious, and slowly, very slowly, he was no longer
there. Had he some message, some counsel to give, something he would
say, that last night of the last year of all those he had watched over
us? Will he come back again?
No stone stands over where he lies. It is on our hearts that his life is
engraved.
1912.
FELICITY
When God is so good to the fields, of what use are words--those poor
husks of sentiment! There is no painting Felicity on the wing! No way
of bringing on to the canvas the flying glory of things! A single
buttercup of the twenty million in one field is worth all these dry
symbols--that can never body forth the very spirit of that froth of May
breaking over the hedges, the choir of birds and bees, the
lost-travelling down of the wind flowers, the white-throated swallows in
their Odysseys. Just here there are no skylarks, but what joy of song
and leaf; of lanes lighted with bright trees, the few oaks still golden
brown, and the ashes still spiritual! Only the blackbirds and thrushes
can sing-up this day, and cuckoos over the hill. The year has flown so
fast that the apple-trees have dropped nearly all their bloom, and in
"long meadow" the "daggers" are out early, beside the narrow bright
streams. Orpheus sits there on a stone, when nobody is by, and pipes to
the ponies; and Pan can often be seen dancing with his nymphs in the
raised beech-grove where it is always twilight, if you lie still enough
against the far bank.
Who can believe in growing old, so long as we are wrapped in this cloak
of colour and wings and song; so long as this unimaginable vision is here
for us to gaze at--the soft-faced sheep about us, and the wool-bags
drying out along the fence, and great numbers of tiny ducks, so trustful
that the crows have taken several.
Blue is the colour of youth, and all the blue flowers have a "fey" look.
Everything seems young too young to work. There is but one thing busy, a
starling, fetching grubs for its little family, above my head--it must
take that flight at least two hundred times a day. The children should be
very fat.
When the sky is so happy, and the flowers so luminous, it does not seem
possible that the bright angels of this day shall pass into dark night,
that slowly these wings shall close, and the cuckoo praise himself to
sleep, mad midges dance-in the evening; the grass shiver with dew, wind
die, and no bird sing . . . .
Yet so it is. Day has gone--the song and glamour and swoop of wings.
Slowly, has passed the daily miracle. It is night. But Felicity has not
withdrawn; she has but changed her robe for silence, velvet, and the
pearl fan of the moon. Everything is sleeping, save only a single star,
and the pansies. Why they should be more wakeful than the other flowers,
I do not know. The expressions of their faces, if one bends down into
the dusk, are sweeter and more cunning than ever. They have some compact,
no doubt, in hand.
What a number of voices have given up the ghost to this night of but one
voice--the murmur of the stream out there in darkness!
With what religion all has been done! Not one buttercup open; the
yew-trees already with shadows flung down! No moths are abroad yet; it
is too early in the year for nightjars; and the owls are quiet. But who
shall say that in this silence, in this hovering wan light, in this air
bereft of wings, and of all scent save freshness, there is less of the
ineffable, less of that before which words are dumb?
It is strange how this tranquillity of night, that seems so final, is
inhabited, if one keeps still enough. A lamb is bleating out there on
the dim moor; a bird somewhere, a little one, about three fields away,
makes the sweetest kind of chirruping; some cows are still cropping.
There is a scent, too, underneath the freshness-sweet-brier, I think, and
our Dutch honeysuckle; nothing else could so delicately twine itself with
air. And even in this darkness the roses have colour, more beautiful
perhaps than ever. If colour be, as they say, but the effect of light on
various fibre, one may think of it as a tune, the song of thanksgiving
that each form puts forth, to sun and moon and stars and fire. These
moon-coloured roses are singing a most quiet song. I see all of a sudden
that there are many more stars beside that one so red and watchful. The
flown kite is there with its seven pale worlds; it has adventured very
high and far to-night-with a company of others remoter still. . . .
This serenity of night! What could seem less likely ever more to move,
and change again to day? Surely now the world has found its long sleep;
and the pearly glimmer from the moon will last, and the precious silence
never again yield to clamour; the grape-bloom of this mystery never more
pale out into gold . . . .
And yet it is not so. The nightly miracle has passed. It is dawn. Faint
light has come. I am waiting for the first sound. The sky as yet is
like nothing but grey paper, with the shadows of wild geese passing. The
trees are phantoms. And then it comes--that first call of a bird,
startled at discovering day! Just one call--and now, here, there, on all
the trees, the sudden answers swelling, of that most sweet and careless
choir. Was irresponsibility ever so divine as this, of birds waking?
Then--saffron into the sky, and once more silence! What is it birds do
after the first Chorale? Think of their sins and business? Or just
sleep again? The trees are fast dropping unreality, and the cuckoos
begin calling. Colour is burning up in the flowers already; the dew
smells of them.
The miracle is ended, for the starling has begun its job; and the sun is
fretting those dark, busy wings with gold. Full day has come again. But
the face of it is a little strange, it is not like yesterday. Queer-to
think, no day is like to a day that's past and no night like a night
that's coming! Why, then, fear death, which is but night? Why care, if
next day have different face and spirit? The sun has lighted
buttercup-field now, the wind touches the lime-tree. Something passes
over me away up there.
It is Felicity on her wings!
1912.
STUDIES AND ESSAYS
By John Galsworthy
"Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."
--ANATOLE FRANCE
CONCERNING LETTERS
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY
SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA
MEDITATION ON FINALITY
WANTED--SCHOOLING
ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
THE WINDLESTRAW
A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY
Once upon a time the Prince of Felicitas had occasion to set forth on a
journey. It was a late autumn evening with few pale stars and a moon no
larger than the paring of a finger-nail. And as he rode through the
purlieus of his city, the white mane of his amber-coloured steed was all
that he could clearly see in the dusk of the high streets. His way led
through a quarter but little known to him, and he was surprised to find
that his horse, instead of ambling forward with his customary gentle
vigour, stepped carefully from side to side, stopping now and then to
curve his neck and prick his ears--as though at some thing of fear
unseen in the darkness; while on either hand creatures could be heard
rustling and scuttling, and little cold draughts as of wings fanned the
rider's cheeks.
The Prince at last turned in his saddle, but so great was the darkness
that he could not even see his escort.
"What is the name of this street?" he said.
"Sire, it is called the Vita Publica."
"It is very dark." Even as he spoke his horse staggered, but, recovering
its foothold with an effort, stood trembling violently. Nor could all the
incitements of its master induce the beast again to move forward.
"Is there no one with a lanthorn in this street?" asked the Prince.
His attendants began forthwith to call out loudly for any one who had a
lanthorn. Now, it chanced that an old man sleeping in a hovel on a
pallet of straw was, awakened by these cries. When he heard that it was
the Prince of Felicitas himself, he came hastily, carrying his lanthorn,
and stood trembling beside the Prince's horse. It was so dark that the
Prince could not see him.
"Light your lanthorn, old man," he said.
The old man laboriously lit his lanthorn. Its pale rays fled out on
either hand; beautiful but grim was the vision they disclosed. Tall
houses, fair court-yards, and a palm grown garden; in front of the
Prince's horse a deep cesspool, on whose jagged edges the good beast's
hoofs were planted; and, as far as the glimmer of the lanthorn stretched,
both ways down the rutted street, paving stones displaced, and smooth
tesselated marble; pools of mud, the hanging fruit of an orange tree, and
dark, scurrying shapes of monstrous rats bolting across from house to
house. The old man held the lanthorn higher; and instantly bats flying
against it would have beaten out the light but for the thin protection of
its horn sides.
The Prince sat still upon his horse, looking first at the rutted space
that he had traversed and then at the rutted space before him.
"Without a light," he said, "this thoroughfare is dangerous. What is
your name, old man?"
"My name is Cethru," replied the aged churl.
"Cethru!" said the Prince. "Let it be your duty henceforth to walk with
your lanthorn up and down this street all night and every night,"--and he
looked at Cethru: "Do you understand, old man, what it is you have to
do?"
The old man answered in a voice that trembled like a rusty flute:
"Aye, aye!--to walk up and down and hold my lanthorn so that folk can see
where they be going."
The Prince gathered up his reins; but the old man, lurching forward,
touched his stirrup.
"How long be I to go on wi' thiccy job?"
"Until you die!"
Cethru held up his lanthorn, and they could see his long, thin face, like
a sandwich of dried leather, jerk and quiver, and his thin grey hairs
flutter in the draught of the bats' wings circling round the light.
"'Twill be main hard!" he groaned; "an' my lanthorn's nowt but a poor
thing."
With a high look, the Prince of Felicitas bent and touched the old man's
forehead.
"Until you die, old man," he repeated; and bidding his followers to light
torches from Cethru's lanthorn, he rode on down the twisting street. The
clatter of the horses' hoofs died out in the night, and the scuttling and
the rustling of the rats and the whispers of the bats' wings were heard
again.
Cethru, left alone in the dark thoroughfare, sighed heavily; then,
spitting on his hands, he tightened the old girdle round his loins, and
slinging the lanthorn on his staff, held it up to the level of his waist,
and began to make his way along the street. His progress was but slow,
for he had many times to stop and rekindle the flame within his lanthorn,
which the bats' wings, his own stumbles, and the jostlings of footpads or
of revellers returning home, were for ever extinguishing. In traversing
that long street he spent half the night, and half the night in
traversing it back again. The saffron swan of dawn, slow swimming up the
sky-river between the high roof-banks, bent her neck down through the
dark air-water to look at him staggering below her, with his still
smoking wick. No sooner did Cethru see that sunlit bird, than with a
great sigh of joy he sat him down, and at once fell asleep.
Now when the dwellers in the houses of the Vita Publica first gained
knowledge that this old man passed every night with his lanthorn up and
down their street, and when they marked those pallid gleams gliding over
the motley prospect of cesspools and garden gates, over the sightless
hovels and the rich-carved frontages of their palaces; or saw them stay
their journey and remain suspended like a handful of daffodils held up
against the black stuffs of secrecy--they said:
"It is good that the old man should pass like this--we shall see better
where we're going; and if the Watch have any job on hand, or want to put
the pavements in order, his lanthorn will serve their purpose well
enough." And they would call out of their doors and windows to him
passing:
"Hola! old man Cethru! All's well with our house, and with the street
before it?"
But, for answer, the old man only held his lanthorn up, so that in the
ring of its pale light they saw some sight or other in the street. And
his silence troubled them, one by one, for each had expected that he
would reply:
"Aye, aye! All's well with your house, Sirs, and with the street before
it!"
Thus they grew irritated with this old man who did not seem able to do
anything but just hold his lanthorn up. And gradually they began to
dislike his passing by their doors with his pale light, by which they
could not fail to see, not only the rich-carved frontages and scrolled
gates of courtyards and fair gardens, but things that were not pleasing
to the eye. And they murmured amongst themselves: "What is the good of
this old man and his silly lanthorn? We can see all we want to see
without him; in fact, we got on very well before he came."
So, as he passed, rich folk who were supping would pelt him with
orange-peel and empty the dregs of their wine over his head; and poor
folk, sleeping in their hutches, turned over, as the rays of the lanthorn
fell on them, and cursed him for that disturbance. Nor did revellers or
footpads treat the old man, civilly, but tied him to the wall, where he
was constrained to stay till a kind passerby released him. And ever the
bats darkened his lanthorn with their wings and tried to beat the flame
out. And the old man thought: "This be a terrible hard job; I don't seem
to please nobody." But because the Prince of Felicitas had so commanded
him, he continued nightly to pass with his lanthorn up and down the
street; and every morning as the saffron swan came swimming overhead, to
fall asleep. But his sleep did not last long, for he was compelled to
pass many hours each day in gathering rushes and melting down tallow for
his lanthorn; so that his lean face grew more than ever like a sandwich
of dried leather.
Now it came to pass that the Town Watch having had certain complaints
made to them that persons had been bitten in the Vita Publica by rats,
doubted of their duty to destroy these ferocious creatures; and they held
investigation, summoning the persons bitten and inquiring of them how it
was that in so dark a street they could tell that the animals which had
bitten them were indeed rats. Howbeit for some time no one could be
found who could say more than what he had been told, and since this was
not evidence, the Town Watch had good hopes that they would not after all
be forced to undertake this tedious enterprise. But presently there came
before them one who said that he had himself seen the rat which had
bitten him, by the light of an old man's lanthorn. When the Town Watch
heard this they were vexed, for they knew that if this were true they
would now be forced to prosecute the arduous undertaking, and they said:
"Bring in this old man!"
Cethru was brought before them trembling.
"What is this we hear, old man, about your lanthorn and the rat? And in
the first place, what were you doing in the Vita Publica at that time of
night?"
Cethru answered: "I were just passin' with my lanthorn!"
"Tell us--did you see the rat?"
Cethru shook his head: "My lanthorn seed the rat, maybe!" he muttered.
"Old owl!" said the Captain of the Watch: "Be careful what you say! If
you saw the rat, why did you then not aid this unhappy citizen who was
bitten by it--first, to avoid that rodent, and subsequently to slay it,
thereby relieving the public of a pestilential danger?"
Cethru looked at him, and for some seconds did not reply; then he said
slowly: "I were just passin' with my lanthorn."
"That you have already told us," said the Captain of the Watch; "it is no
answer."
Cethru's leathern cheeks became wine-coloured, so desirous was he to
speak, and so unable. And the Watch sneered and laughed, saying:
"This is a fine witness."
But of a sudden Cethru spoke:
"What would I be duin'--killin' rats; tidden my business to kill rats."
The Captain of the Watch caressed his beard, and looking at the old man
with contempt, said:
"It seems to me, brothers, that this is an idle old vagabond, who does no
good to any one. We should be well advised, I think, to prosecute him
for vagrancy. But that is not at this moment the matter in hand. Owing
to the accident--scarcely fortunate--of this old man's passing with his
lanthorn, it would certainly appear that citizens have been bitten by
rodents. It is then, I fear, our duty to institute proceedings against
those poisonous and violent animals."
And amidst the sighing of the Watch, it was so resolved.
Cethru was glad to shuffle away, unnoticed, from the Court, and sitting
down under a camel-date tree outside the City Wall, he thus reflected:
"They were rough with me! I done nothin', so far's I can see!"
And a long time he sat there with the bunches of the camel-dates above
him, golden as the sunlight. Then, as the scent of the lyric-flowers,
released by evening, warned him of the night dropping like a flight of
dark birds on the plain, he rose stiffly, and made his way as usual
toward the Vita Publica.
He had traversed but little of that black thoroughfare, holding his
lanthorn at the level of his breast, when the sound of a splash and cries
for help smote his long, thin ears. Remembering how the Captain of the
Watch had admonished him, he stopped and peered about, but owing to his
proximity to the light of his own lanthorn he saw nothing. Presently he
heard another splash and the sound of blowings and of puffings, but still
unable to see clearly whence they came, he was forced in bewilderment to
resume his march. But he had no sooner entered the next bend of that
obscure and winding avenue than the most lamentable, lusty cries assailed
him. Again he stood still, blinded by his own light. Somewhere at hand
a citizen was being beaten, for vague, quick-moving forms emerged into
the radiance of his lanthorn out of the deep violet of the night air.
The cries swelled, and died away, and swelled; and the mazed Cethru moved
forward on his way. But very near the end of his first traversage, the
sound of a long, deep sighing, as of a fat man in spiritual pain, once
more arrested him.
"Drat me!" he thought, "this time I will see what 'tis," and he spun
round and round, holding his lanthorn now high, now low, and to both
sides. "The devil an' all's in it to-night," he murmured to himself;
"there's some'at here fetchin' of its breath awful loud." But for his
life he could see nothing, only that the higher he held his lanthorn the
more painful grew the sound of the fat but spiritual sighing. And
desperately, he at last resumed his progress.
On the morrow, while he still slept stretched on his straw pallet, there
came to him a member of the Watch.
"Old man, you are wanted at the Court House; rouse up, and bring your
lanthorn."
Stiffly Cethru rose.
"What be they wantin' me fur now, mester?"
"Ah!" replied the Watchman, "they are about to see if they can't put an
end to your goings-on."
Cethru shivered, and was silent.
Now when they reached the Court House it was patent that a great affair
was forward; for the Judges were in their robes, and a crowd of
advocates, burgesses, and common folk thronged the careen, lofty hall of
justice.
When Cethru saw that all eyes were turned on him, he shivered still more
violently, fixing his fascinated gaze on the three Judges in their
emerald robes.
"This then is the prisoner," said the oldest of the Judges; "proceed with
the indictment!"
A little advocate in snuff-coloured clothes rose on little legs, and
commenced to read:
"Forasmuch as on the seventeenth night of August fifteen hundred years
since the Messiah's death, one Celestine, a maiden of this city, fell
into a cesspool in the Vita Publica, and while being quietly drowned, was
espied of the burgess Pardonix by the light of a lanthorn held by the old
man Cethru; and, forasmuch as, plunging in, the said Pardonix rescued
her, not without grave risk of life and the ruin, of his clothes, and
to-day lies ill of fever; and forasmuch as the old man Cethru was the
cause of these misfortunes to the burgess Pardonix, by reason of his
wandering lanthorn's showing the drowning maiden, the Watch do hereby
indict, accuse, and otherwise place charge upon this Cethru of
'Vagabondage without serious occupation.'
"And, forasmuch as on this same night the Watchman Filepo, made aware, by
the light of this said Cethru's lanthorn, of three sturdy footpads, went
to arrest them, and was set on by the rogues and well-nigh slain, the
Watch do hereby indict, accuse, and otherwise charge upon Cethru
complicity in this assault, by reasons, namely, first, that he discovered
the footpads to the Watchman and the Watchman to the footpads by the
light of his lanthorn; and, second, that, having thus discovered them, he
stood idly by and gave no assistance to the law.
"And, forasmuch as on this same night the wealthy burgess Pranzo, who,
having prepared a banquet, was standing in his doorway awaiting the
arrival of his guests, did see, by the light of the said Cethru's
lanthorn, a beggar woman and her children grovelling in the gutter for
garbage, whereby his appetite was lost completely; and, forasmuch as he,
Pranzo, has lodged a complaint against the Constitution for permitting
women and children to go starved, the Watch do hereby indict, accuse, and
otherwise make charge on Cethru of rebellion and of anarchy, in that
wilfully he doth disturb good citizens by showing to them without
provocation disagreeable sights, and doth moreover endanger the laws by
causing persons to desire to change them.
"These be the charges, reverend Judges, so please you!"
And having thus spoken, the little advocate resumed his seat.
Then said the oldest of the Judges:
"Cethru, you have heard; what answer do you make?"
But no word, only the chattering of teeth, came from Cethru.
"Have you no defence?" said the Judge: "these are grave accusations!"
Then Cethru spoke:
"So please your Highnesses," he said, "can I help what my lanthorn sees?"
And having spoken these words, to all further questions he remained more
silent than a headless man.
The Judges took counsel of each other, and the oldest of them thus
addressed himself to Cethru:
"If you have no defence, old man, and there is no one will say a word for
you, we can but proceed to judgment."
Then in the main aisle of the Court there rose a youthful advocate.
"Most reverend Judges," he said in a mellifluous voice, clearer than the
fluting of a bell-bird, "it is useless to look for words from this old
man, for it is manifest that he himself is nothing, and that his lanthorn
is alone concerned in this affair. But, reverend Judges, bethink you
well: Would you have a lanthorn ply a trade or be concerned with a
profession, or do aught indeed but pervade the streets at night, shedding
its light, which, if you will, is vagabondage? And, Sirs, upon the
second count of this indictment: Would you have a lanthorn dive into
cesspools to rescue maidens? Would you have a lanthorn to beat footpads?
Or, indeed, to be any sort of partisan either of the Law or of them that
break the Law? Sure, Sirs, I think not. And as to this third charge of
fostering anarchy let me but describe the trick of this lanthorn's flame.
It is distilled, most reverend Judges, of oil and wick, together with
that sweet secret heat of whose birth no words of mine can tell. And
when, Sirs, this pale flame has sprung into the air swaying to every
wind, it brings vision to the human eye. And, if it be charged on this
old man Cethru that he and his lanthorn by reason of their showing not
only the good but the evil bring no pleasure into the world, I ask, Sirs,
what in the world is so dear as this power to see whether it be the
beautiful or the foul that is disclosed? Need I, indeed, tell you of the
way this flame spreads its feelers, and delicately darts and hovers in
the darkness, conjuring things from nothing? This mechanical summoning,
Sirs, of visions out of blackness is benign, by no means of malevolent
intent; no more than if a man, passing two donkeys in the road, one lean
and the other fat, could justly be arraigned for malignancy because they
were not both fat. This, reverend Judges, is the essence of the matter
concerning the rich burgess, Pranzo, who, on account of the sight he saw
by Cethru's lanthorn, has lost the equilibrium of his stomach. For, Sirs,
the lanthorn did but show that which was there, both fair and foul, no
more, no less; and though it is indeed true that Pranzo is upset, it was
not because the lanthorn maliciously produced distorted images, but
merely caused to be seen, in due proportions, things which Pranzo had not
seen before. And surely, reverend Judges, being just men, you would not
have this lanthorn turn its light away from what is ragged and ugly
because there are also fair things on which its light may fall; how,
indeed, being a lanthorn, could it, if it would? And I would have you
note this, Sirs, that by this impartial discovery of the proportions of
one thing to another, this lanthorn must indeed perpetually seem to cloud
and sadden those things which are fair, because of the deep instincts of
harmony and justice planted in the human breast. However unfair and
cruel, then, this lanthorn may seem to those who, deficient in these
instincts, desire all their lives to see naught but what is pleasant,
lest they, like Pranzo, should lose their appetites--it is not consonant
with equity that this lanthorn should, even if it could, be prevented
from thus mechanically buffeting the holiday cheek of life. I would
think, Sirs, that you should rather blame the queazy state of Pranzo's
stomach. The old man has said that he cannot help what his lanthorn
sees. This is a just saying. But if, reverend Judges, you deem this
equipoised, indifferent lanthorn to be indeed blameworthy for having
shown in the same moment, side by side, the skull and the fair face, the
burdock and the tiger-lily, the butterfly and toad, then, most reverend
Judges, punish it, but do not punish this old man, for he himself is but
a flume of smoke, thistle down dispersed--nothing!"
So saying, the young advocate ceased.
Again the three Judges took counsel of each other, and after much talk
had passed between them, the oldest spoke:
"What this young advocate has said seems to us to be the truth. We
cannot punish a lanthorn. Let the old man go!"
And Cethru went out into the sunshine . . . .
Now it came to pass that the Prince of Felicitas, returning from his
journey, rode once more on his amber-coloured steed down the Vita
Publica.
The night was dark as a rook's wing, but far away down the street burned
a little light, like a red star truant from heaven. The Prince riding by
descried it for a lanthorn, with an old man sleeping beside it.
"How is this, Friend?" said the Prince. "You are not walking as I bade
you, carrying your lanthorn."
But Cethru neither moved nor answered:
"Lift him up!" said the Prince.
They lifted up his head and held the lanthorn to his closed eyes. So
lean was that brown face that the beams from the lanthorn would not rest
on it, but slipped past on either side into the night. His eyes did not
open. He was dead.
And the Prince touched him, saying: "Farewell, old man! The lanthorn is
still alight. Go, fetch me another one, and let him carry it!"
1909.
SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA
A drama must be shaped so as to have a spire of meaning. Every grouping
of life and character has its inherent moral; and the business of the
dramatist is so to pose the group as to bring that moral poignantly to
the light of day. Such is the moral that exhales from plays like 'Lear',
'Hamlet', and 'Macbeth'. But such is not the moral to be found in the
great bulk of contemporary Drama. The moral of the average play is now,
and probably has always been, the triumph at all costs of a supposed
immediate ethical good over a supposed immediate ethical evil.
The vice of drawing these distorted morals has permeated the Drama to its
spine; discoloured its art, humanity, and significance; infected its
creators, actors, audience, critics; too often turned it from a picture
into a caricature. A Drama which lives under the shadow of the distorted
moral forgets how to be free, fair, and fine--forgets so completely that
it often prides itself on having forgotten.
Now, in writing plays, there are, in this matter of the moral, three
courses open to the serious dramatist. The first is: To definitely set
before the public that which it wishes to have set before it, the views
and codes of life by which the public lives and in which it believes.
This way is the most common, successful, and popular. It makes the
dramatist's position sure, and not too obviously authoritative.
The second course is: To definitely set before the public those views and
codes of life by which the dramatist himself lives, those theories in
which he himself believes, the more effectively if they are the opposite
of what the public wishes to have placed before it, presenting them so
that the audience may swallow them like powder in a spoonful of jam.
There is a third course: To set before the public no cut-and-dried codes,
but the phenomena of life and character, selected and combined, but not
distorted, by the dramatist's outlook, set down without fear, favour, or
prejudice, leaving the public to draw such poor moral as nature may
afford. This third method requires a certain detachment; it requires a
sympathy with, a love of, and a curiosity as to, things for their own
sake; it requires a far view, together with patient industry, for no
immediately practical result.
It was once said of Shakespeare that he had never done any good to any
one, and never would. This, unfortunately, could not, in the sense in
which the word "good" was then meant, be said of most modern dramatists.
In truth, the good that Shakespeare did to humanity was of a remote, and,
shall we say, eternal nature; something of the good that men get from
having the sky and the sea to look at. And this partly because he was,
in his greater plays at all events, free from the habit of drawing a
distorted moral. Now, the playwright who supplies to the public the
facts of life distorted by the moral which it expects, does so that he
may do the public what he considers an immediate good, by fortifying its
prejudices; and the dramatist who supplies to the public facts distorted
by his own advanced morality, does so because he considers that he will
at once benefit the public by substituting for its worn-out ethics, his
own. In both cases the advantage the dramatist hopes to confer on the
public is immediate and practical.
But matters change, and morals change; men remain--and to set men, and
the facts about them, down faithfully, so that they draw for us the moral
of their natural actions, may also possibly be of benefit to the
community. It is, at all events, harder than to set men and facts down,
as they ought, or ought not to be. This, however, is not to say that a
dramatist should, or indeed can, keep himself and his temperamental
philosophy out of his work. As a man lives and thinks, so will he write.
But it is certain, that to the making of good drama, as to the practice
of every other art, there must be brought an almost passionate love of
discipline, a white-heat of self-respect, a desire to make the truest,
fairest, best thing in one's power; and that to these must be added an
eye that does not flinch. Such qualities alone will bring to a drama the
selfless character which soaks it with inevitability.
The word "pessimist" is frequently applied to the few dramatists who have
been content to work in this way. It has been applied, among others, to
Euripides, to Shakespeare, to Ibsen; it will be applied to many in the
future. Nothing, however, is more dubious than the way in which these
two words "pessimist" and "optimist" are used; for the optimist appears
to be he who cannot bear the world as it is, and is forced by his nature
to picture it as it ought to be, and the pessimist one who cannot only
bear the world as it is, but loves it well enough to draw it faithfully.
The true lover of the human race is surely he who can put up with it in
all its forms, in vice as well as in virtue, in defeat no less than in
victory; the true seer he who sees not only joy but sorrow, the true
painter of human life one who blinks nothing. It may be that he is also,
incidentally, its true benefactor.
In the whole range of the social fabric there are only two impartial
persons, the scientist and the artist, and under the latter heading such
dramatists as desire to write not only for to-day, but for to-morrow,
must strive to come.
But dramatists being as they are made--past remedy it is perhaps more
profitable to examine the various points at which their qualities and
defects are shown.
The plot! A good plot is that sure edifice which slowly rises out of the
interplay of circumstance on temperament, and temperament on
circumstance, within the enclosing atmosphere of an idea. A human being
is the best plot there is; it may be impossible to see why he is a good
plot, because the idea within which he was brought forth cannot be fully
grasped; but it is plain that he is a good plot. He is organic. And so
it must be with a good play. Reason alone produces no good plots; they
come by original sin, sure conception, and instinctive after-power of
selecting what benefits the germ. A bad plot, on the other hand, is
simply a row of stakes, with a character impaled on each--characters who
would have liked to live, but came to untimely grief; who started
bravely, but fell on these stakes, placed beforehand in a row, and were
transfixed one by one, while their ghosts stride on, squeaking and
gibbering, through the play. Whether these stakes are made of facts or
of ideas, according to the nature of the dramatist who planted them,
their effect on the unfortunate characters is the same; the creatures
were begotten to be staked, and staked they are! The demand for a good
plot, not unfrequently heard, commonly signifies: "Tickle my sensations
by stuffing the play with arbitrary adventures, so that I need not be
troubled to take the characters seriously. Set the persons of the play
to action, regardless of time, sequence, atmosphere, and probability!"
Now, true dramatic action is what characters do, at once contrary, as it
were, to expectation, and yet because they have already done other
things. No dramatist should let his audience know what is coming; but
neither should he suffer his characters to, act without making his
audience feel that those actions are in harmony with temperament, and
arise from previous known actions, together with the temperaments and
previous known actions of the other characters in the play. The
dramatist who hangs his characters to his plot, instead of hanging his
plot to his characters, is guilty of cardinal sin.
The dialogue! Good dialogue again is character, marshalled so as
continually to stimulate interest or excitement. The reason good
dialogue is seldom found in plays is merely that it is hard to write, for
it requires not only a knowledge of what interests or excites, but such a
feeling for character as brings misery to the dramatist's heart when his
creations speak as they should not speak--ashes to his mouth when they
say things for the sake of saying them--disgust when they are "smart."
The art of writing true dramatic dialogue is an austere art, denying
itself all license, grudging every sentence devoted to the mere machinery
of the play, suppressing all jokes and epigrams severed from character,
relying for fun and pathos on the fun and tears of life. From start to
finish good dialogue is hand-made, like good lace; clear, of fine
texture, furthering with each thread the harmony and strength of a design
to which all must be subordinated.
But good dialogue is also spiritual action. In so far as the dramatist
divorces his dialogue from spiritual action--that is to say, from
progress of events, or toward events which are significant of
character--he is stultifying the thing done; he may make pleasing
disquisitions, he is not making drama. And in so far as he twists
character to suit his moral or his plot, he is neglecting a first
principle, that truth to Nature which alone invests art with handmade
quality.
The dramatist's license, in fact, ends with his design. In conception
alone he is free. He may take what character or group of characters he
chooses, see them with what eyes, knit them with what idea, within the
limits of his temperament; but once taken, seen, and knitted, he is bound
to treat them like a gentleman, with the tenderest consideration of their
mainsprings. Take care of character; action and dialogue will take care
of themselves! The true dramatist gives full rein to his temperament in
the scope and nature of his subject; having once selected subject and
characters, he is just, gentle, restrained, neither gratifying his lust
for praise at the expense of his offspring, nor using them as puppets to
flout his audience. Being himself the nature that brought them forth, he
guides them in the course predestined at their conception. So only have
they a chance of defying Time, which is always lying in wait to destroy
the false, topical, or fashionable, all--in a word--that is not based on
the permanent elements of human nature. The perfect dramatist rounds up
his characters and facts within the ring-fence of a dominant idea which
fulfils the craving of his spirit; having got them there, he suffers them
to live their own lives.
Plot, action, character, dialogue! But there is yet another subject for
a platitude. Flavour! An impalpable quality, less easily captured than
the scent of a flower, the peculiar and most essential attribute of any
work of art! It is the thin, poignant spirit which hovers up out of a
play, and is as much its differentiating essence as is caffeine of
coffee. Flavour, in fine, is the spirit of the dramatist projected into
his work in a state of volatility, so that no one can exactly lay hands
on it, here, there, or anywhere. This distinctive essence of a play,
marking its brand, is the one thing at which the dramatist cannot work,
for it is outside his consciousness. A man may have many moods, he has
but one spirit; and this spirit he communicates in some subtle,
unconscious way to all his work. It waxes and wanes with the currents of
his vitality, but no more alters than a chestnut changes into an oak.
For, in truth, dramas are very like unto trees, springing from seedlings,
shaping themselves inevitably in accordance with the laws fast hidden
within themselves, drinking sustenance from the earth and air, and in
conflict with the natural forces round them. So they slowly come to full
growth, until warped, stunted, or risen to fair and gracious height, they
stand open to all the winds. And the trees that spring from each
dramatist are of different race; he is the spirit of his own sacred
grove, into which no stray tree can by any chance enter.
One more platitude. It is not unfashionable to pit one form of drama
against another--holding up the naturalistic to the disadvantage of the
epic; the epic to the belittlement of the fantastic; the fantastic to the
detriment of the naturalistic. Little purpose is thus served. The
essential meaning, truth, beauty, and irony of things may be revealed
under all these forms. Vision over life and human nature can be as keen
and just, the revelation as true, inspiring, delight-giving, and
thought-provoking, whatever fashion be employed--it is simply a question
of doing it well enough to uncover the kernel of the nut. Whether the
violet come from Russia, from Parma, or from England, matters little.
Close by the Greek temples at Paestum there are violets that seem redder,
and sweeter, than any ever seen--as though they have sprung up out of the
footprints of some old pagan goddess; but under the April sun, in a
Devonshire lane, the little blue scentless violets capture every bit as
much of the spring. And so it is with drama--no matter what its form it
need only be the "real thing," need only have caught some of the precious
fluids, revelation, or delight, and imprisoned them within a chalice to
which we may put our lips and continually drink.
And yet, starting from this last platitude, one may perhaps be suffered
to speculate as to the particular forms that our renascent drama is
likely to assume. For our drama is renascent, and nothing will stop its
growth. It is not renascent because this or that man is writing, but
because of a new spirit. A spirit that is no doubt in part the gradual
outcome of the impact on our home-grown art, of Russian, French, and
Scandinavian influences, but which in the main rises from an awakened
humanity in the conscience of our time.
What, then, are to be the main channels down which the renascent English
drama will float in the coming years? It is more than possible that
these main channels will come to be two in number and situate far apart.
The one will be the broad and clear-cut channel of naturalism, down which
will course a drama poignantly shaped, and inspired with high intention,
but faithful to the seething and multiple life around us, drama such as
some are inclined to term photographic, deceived by a seeming simplicity
into forgetfulness of the old proverb, "Ars est celare artem," and
oblivious of the fact that, to be vital, to grip, such drama is in every
respect as dependent on imagination, construction, selection, and
elimination--the main laws of artistry--as ever was the romantic or
rhapsodic play: The question of naturalistic technique will bear, indeed,
much more study than has yet been given to it. The aim of the dramatist
employing it is obviously to create such an illusion of actual life
passing on the stage as to compel the spectator to pass through an
experience of his own, to think, and talk, and move with the people he
sees thinking, talking, and moving in front of him. A false phrase, a
single word out of tune or time, will destroy that illusion and spoil the
surface as surely as a stone heaved into a still pool shatters the image
seen there. But this is only the beginning of the reason why the
naturalistic is the most exacting and difficult of all techniques. It is
easy enough to reproduce the exact conversation and movements of persons
in a room; it is desperately hard to produce the perfectly natural
conversation and movements of those persons, when each natural phrase
spoken and each natural movement made has not only to contribute toward
the growth and perfection of a drama's soul, but also to be a revelation,
phrase by phrase, movement by movement, of essential traits of character.
To put it another way, naturalistic art, when alive, indeed to be alive
at all, is simply the art of manipulating a procession of most delicate
symbols. Its service is the swaying and focussing of men's feelings and
thoughts in the various departments of human life. It will be like a
steady lamp, held up from time to time, in whose light things will be
seen for a space clearly and in due proportion, freed from the mists of
prejudice and partisanship. And the other of these two main channels
will, I think, be a twisting and delicious stream, which will bear on its
breast new barques of poetry, shaped, it may be, like prose, but a prose
incarnating through its fantasy and symbolism all the deeper aspirations,
yearning, doubts, and mysterious stirrings of the human spirit; a poetic
prose-drama, emotionalising us by its diversity and purity of form and
invention, and whose province will be to disclose the elemental soul of
man and the forces of Nature, not perhaps as the old tragedies disclosed
them, not necessarily in the epic mood, but always with beauty and in the
spirit of discovery.
Such will, I think, be the two vital forms of our drama in the coming
generation. And between these two forms there must be no crude unions;
they are too far apart, the cross is too violent. For, where there is a
seeming blend of lyricism and naturalism, it will on examination be
found, I think, to exist only in plays whose subjects or settings--as in
Synge's "Playboy of the Western World," or in Mr. Masefield's "Nan"--are
so removed from our ken that we cannot really tell, and therefore do not
care, whether an absolute illusion is maintained. The poetry which may
and should exist in naturalistic drama, can only be that of perfect
rightness of proportion, rhythm, shape--the poetry, in fact, that lies in
all vital things. It is the ill-mating of forms that has killed a
thousand plays. We want no more bastard drama; no more attempts to dress
out the simple dignity of everyday life in the peacock's feathers of
false lyricism; no more straw-stuffed heroes or heroines; no more rabbits
and goldfish from the conjurer's pockets, nor any limelight. Let us have
starlight, moonlight, sunlight, and the light of our own self-respects.
1909.
MEDITATION ON FINALITY
In the Grand Canyon of Arizona, that most exhilarating of all natural
phenomena, Nature has for once so focussed her effects, that the result
is a framed and final work of Art. For there, between two high lines of
plateau, level as the sea, are sunk the wrought thrones of the
innumerable gods, couchant, and for ever revering, in their million moods
of light and colour, the Master Mystery.
Having seen this culmination, I realize why many people either recoil
before it, and take the first train home, or speak of it as a "remarkable
formation." For, though mankind at large craves finality, it does not
crave the sort that bends the knee to Mystery. In Nature, in Religion, in
Art, in Life, the common cry is: "Tell me precisely where I am, what
doing, and where going! Let me be free of this fearful untidiness of not
knowing all about it!" The favoured religions are always those whose
message is most finite. The fashionable professions--they that end us in
assured positions. The most popular works of fiction, such as leave
nothing to our imagination. And to this craving after prose, who would
not be lenient, that has at all known life, with its usual predominance
of our lower and less courageous selves, our constant hankering after the
cosey closed door and line of least resistance? We are continually
begging to be allowed to know for certain; though, if our prayer were
granted, and Mystery no longer hovered, made blue the hills, and turned
day into night, we should, as surely, wail at once to be delivered of
that ghastliness of knowing things for certain!
Now, in Art, I would never quarrel with a certain living writer who
demands of it the kind of finality implied in what he calls a "moral
discovery"--using, no doubt, the words in their widest sense. I would
maintain, however, that such finality is not confined to positively
discovering the true conclusion of premises laid down; but that it may
also distil gradually, negatively from the whole work, in a moral
discovery, as it were, of Author. In other words, that, permeation by an
essential point of view, by emanation of author, may so unify and
vitalize a work, as to give it all the finality that need be required of
Art. For the finality that is requisite to Art, be it positive or
negative, is not the finality of dogma, nor the finality of fact, it is
ever the finality of feeling--of a spiritual light, subtly gleaned by the
spectator out of that queer luminous haze which one man's nature must
ever be to others. And herein, incidentally, it is that Art acquires
also that quality of mystery, more needful to it even than finality, for
the mystery that wraps a work of Art is the mystery of its maker, and the
mystery of its maker is the difference between that maker's soul and
every other soul.
But let me take an illustration of what I mean by these two kinds of
finality that Art may have, and show that in essence they are but two
halves of the same thing. The term "a work of Art" will not be denied, I
think, to that early novel of M. Anatole France, "Le Lys Rouge." Now,
that novel has positive finality, since the spiritual conclusion from its
premises strikes one as true. But neither will the term "a work of Art"
be denied to the same writer's four "Bergeret" volumes, whose negative
finality consists only in the temperamental atmosphere wherein they are
soaked. Now, if the theme of "Le Lys Rouge" had been treated by Tolstoy,
Meredith, or Turgenev, we should have had spiritual conclusions from the
same factual premises so different from M. France's as prunes from
prisms, and yet, being the work of equally great artists, they would,
doubtless, have struck us as equally true. Is not, then, the positive
finality of "Le Lys Rouge," though expressed in terms of a different
craftsmanship, the same, in essence, as the negative finality of the
"Bergeret" volumes? Are not both, in fact, merely flower of author true
to himself? So long as the scent, colour, form of that flower is strong
and fine enough to affect the senses of our spirit, then all the rest,
surely, is academic--I would say, immaterial.
But here, in regard to Art, is where mankind at large comes on the field.
"'Flower of author,'" it says, "'Senses of the spirit!' Phew! Give me
something I can understand! Let me know where I am getting to!" In a
word, it wants a finality different from that which Art can give. It
will ask the artist, with irritation, what his solution, or his lesson,
or his meaning, really is, having omitted to notice that the poor
creature has been giving all the meaning that he can, in every sentence.
It will demand to know why it was not told definitely what became of
Charles or Mary in whom it had grown so interested; and will be almost
frightened to learn that the artist knows no more than itself. And if by
any chance it be required to dip its mind into a philosophy that does not
promise it a defined position both in this world and the next, it will
assuredly recoil, and with a certain contempt say: "No, sir! This means
nothing to me; and if it means anything to you--which I very much
doubt--I am sorry for you!"
It must have facts, and again facts, not only in the present and the
past, but in the future. And it demands facts of that, which alone
cannot glibly give it facts. It goes on asking facts of Art, or, rather,
such facts as Art cannot give--for, after all, even "flower of author" is
fact in a sort of way.
Consider, for instance, Synge's masterpiece, "The Playboy of the Western
World!" There is flower of author! What is it for mankind at large? An
attack on the Irish character! A pretty piece of writing! An amusing
farce! Enigmatic cynicism leading nowhere! A puzzling fellow wrote it!
Mankind at large has little patience with puzzling fellows.
Few, in fact, want flower of author. Moreover, it is a quality that may
well be looked for where it does not exist. To say that the finality
which Art requires is merely an enwrapping mood, or flower of author, is
not by any means to say that any robust fellow, slamming his notions down
in ink, can give us these. Indeed, no! So long as we see the author's
proper person in his work, we do not see the flower of him. Let him
retreat himself, if he pretend to be an artist. There is no less of
subtle skill, no less impersonality, in the "Bergeret" volumes than in
"Le Lys Rouge." No less labour and mental torturing went to their
making, page by page, in order that they might exhale their perfume of
mysterious finality, their withdrawn but implicit judgment. Flower of
author is not quite so common as the buttercup, the Californian poppy, or
the gay Texan gaillardia, and for that very reason the finality it gives
off will never be robust enough for a mankind at large that would have
things cut and dried, and labelled in thick letters. For, consider--to
take one phase alone of this demand for factual finality--how continual
and insistent is the cry for characters that can be worshipped; how
intense and persistent the desire to be told that Charles was a real
hero; and how bitter the regret that Mary was no better than she should
be! Mankind at large wants heroes that are heroes, and heroines that are
heroines--and nothing so inappropriate to them as unhappy endings.
Travelling away, I remember, from that Grand Canyon of Arizona were a
young man and a young woman, evidently in love. He was sitting very
close to her, and reading aloud for her pleasure, from a paper-covered
novel, heroically oblivious of us all:
"'Sir Robert,' she murmured, lifting her beauteous eyes, 'I may not tempt
you, for you are too dear to me!' Sir Robert held her lovely face between
his two strong hands. 'Farewell!' he said, and went out into the night.
But something told them both that, when he had fulfilled his duty, Sir
Robert would return . . . ." He had not returned before we reached
the Junction, but there was finality about that baronet, and we well knew
that he ultimately would. And, long after the sound of that young man's
faithful reading had died out of our ears, we meditated on Sir Robert,
and compared him with the famous characters of fiction, slowly perceiving
that they were none of them so final in their heroism as he. No, none of
them reached that apex. For Hamlet was a most unfinished fellow, and
Lear extremely violent. Pickwick addicted to punch, and Sam Weller to
lying; Bazarof actually a Nihilist, and Irina----! Levin and Anna,
Pierre and Natasha, all of them stormy and unsatisfactory at times. "Un
Coeur Simple" nothing but a servant, and an old maid at that; "Saint
Julien l'Hospitalier" a sheer fanatic. Colonel Newcome too irritable and
too simple altogether. Don Quixote certified insane. Hilda Wangel, Nora,
Hedda--Sir Robert would never even have spoken to such baggages! Mon
sieur Bergeret--an amiable weak thing! D'Artagnan--a true swashbuckler!
Tom Jones, Faust, Don Juan--we might not even think of them: And those
poor Greeks: Prometheus--shocking rebel. OEdipus for a long time
banished by the Censor. Phaedra and Elektra, not even so virtuous as
Mary, who failed of being what she should be! And coming to more
familiar persons Joseph and Moses, David and Elijah, all of them lacked
his finality of true heroism--none could quite pass muster beside Sir
Robert . . . . Long we meditated, and, reflecting that an author must
ever be superior to the creatures of his brain, were refreshed to think
that there were so many living authors capable of giving birth to Sir
Robert; for indeed, Sir Robert and finality like his--no doubtful heroes,
no flower of author, and no mystery is what mankind at large has always
wanted from Letters, and will always want.
As truly as that oil and water do not mix, there are two kinds of men.
The main cleavage in the whole tale of life is this subtle, all pervading
division of mankind into the man of facts and the man of feeling. And
not by what they are or do can they be told one from the other, but just
by their attitude toward finality. Fortunately most of us are neither
quite the one nor quite the other. But between the pure-blooded of each
kind there is real antipathy, far deeper than the antipathies of race,
politics, or religion--an antipathy that not circumstance, love,
goodwill, or necessity will ever quite get rid of. Sooner shall the
panther agree with the bull than that other one with the man of facts.
There is no bridging the gorge that divides these worlds.
Nor is it so easy to tell, of each, to which world he belongs, as it was
to place the lady, who held out her finger over that gorge called Grand
Canyon, and said:
"It doesn't look thirteen miles; but they measured it just there! Excuse
my pointing!"
1912.
WANTED-SCHOOLING
"Et nous jongleurs inutiles, frivoles joueurs de luth!". . . Useless
jugglers, frivolous players on the lute! Must we so describe ourselves,
we, the producers, season by season, of so many hundreds of "remarkable"
works of fiction?--for though, when we take up the remarkable works of
our fellows, we "really cannot read them!" the Press and the
advertisements of our publishers tell us that they are "remarkable."
A story goes that once in the twilight undergrowth of a forest of
nut-bearing trees a number of little purblind creatures wandered, singing
for nuts. On some of these purblind creatures the nuts fell heavy and
full, extremely indigestible, and were quickly swallowed; on others they
fell light, and contained nothing, because the kernel had already been
eaten up above, and these light and kernel-less nuts were accompanied by
sibilations or laughter. On others again no nuts at all, empty or full,
came down. But nuts or no nuts, full nuts or empty nuts, the purblind
creatures below went on wandering and singing. A traveller one day
stopped one of these creatures whose voice was peculiarly disagreeable,
and asked "Why do you sing like this? Is it for pleasure that you do it,
or for pain? What do you get out of it? Is it for the sake of those up
there? Is it for your own sake--for the sake of your family--for whose
sake? Do you think your songs worth listening to? Answer!"
The creature scratched itself, and sang the louder.
"Ah! Cacoethes! I pity, but do not blame you," said the traveller.
He left the creature, and presently came to another which sang a squeaky
treble song. It wandered round in a ring under a grove of stunted trees,
and the traveller noticed that it never went out of that grove.
"Is it really necessary," he said, "for you to express yourself thus?"
And as he spoke showers of tiny hard nuts came down on the little
creature, who ate them greedily. The traveller opened one; it was
extremely small and tasted of dry rot.
"Why, at all events," he said, "need you stay under these trees? the nuts
are not good here."
But for answer the little creature ran round and round, and round and
round.
"I suppose," said the traveller, "small bad nuts are better than no
bread; if you went out of this grove you would starve?"
The purblind little creature shrieked. The traveller took the sound for
affirmation, and passed on. He came to a third little creature who,
under a tall tree, was singing very loudly indeed, while all around was a
great silence, broken only by sounds like the snuffling of small noses.
The creature stopped singing as the traveller came up, and at once a
storm of huge nuts came down; the traveller found them sweetish and very
oily.
"Why," he said to the creature, "did you sing so loud? You cannot eat
all these nuts. You really do sing louder than seems necessary; come,
answer me!"
But the purblind little creature began to sing again at the top of its
voice, and the noise of the snuffling of small noses became so great that
the traveller hastened away. He passed many other purblind little
creatures in the twilight of this forest, till at last he came to one
that looked even blinder than the rest, but whose song was sweet and low
and clear, breaking a perfect stillness; and the traveller sat down to
listen. For a long time he listened to that song without noticing that
not a nut was falling. But suddenly he heard a faint rustle and three
little oval nuts lay on the ground.
The traveller cracked one of them. It was of delicate flavour. He
looked at the little creature standing with its face raised, and said:
"Tell me, little blind creature, whose song is so charming, where did you
learn to sing?"
The little creature turned its head a trifle to one side as though
listening for the fall of nuts.
"Ah, indeed!" said the traveller: "You, whose voice is so clear, is this
all you get to eat?"
The little blind creature smiled . . . .
It is a twilight forest in which we writers of fiction wander, and once
in a way, though all this has been said before, we may as well remind
ourselves and others why the light is so dim; why there is so much bad
and false fiction; why the demand for it is so great. Living in a world
where demand creates supply, we writers of fiction furnish the exception
to this rule. For, consider how, as a class, we come into existence.
Unlike the followers of any other occupation, nothing whatever compels
any one of us to serve an apprenticeship. We go to no school, have to
pass no examination, attain no standard, receive no diploma. We need not
study that which should be studied; we are at liberty to flood our minds
with all that should not be studied. Like mushrooms, in a single sight
we spring up--a pen in our hands, very little in our brains, and
who-knows-what in our hearts!
Few of us sit down in cold blood to write our first stories; we have
something in us that we feel we must express. This is the beginning of
the vicious circle. Our first books often have some thing in them. We
are sincere in trying to express that something. It is true we cannot
express it, not having learnt how, but its ghost haunts the pages the
ghost of real experience and real life--just enough to attract the
untrained intelligence, just enough to make a generous Press remark:
"This shows promise." We have tasted blood, we pant for more. Those of
us who had a carking occupation hasten to throw it aside, those who had
no occupation have now found one; some few of us keep both the old
occupation and the new. Whichever of these courses we pursue, the hurry
with which we pursue it undoes us. For, often we have only that one book
in us, which we did not know how to write, and having expressed that
which we have felt, we are driven in our second, our third, our fourth,
to warm up variations, like those dressed remains of last night's dinner
which are served for lunch; or to spin from our usually commonplace
imaginations thin extravagances which those who do not try to think for
themselves are ever ready to accept as full of inspiration and vitality.
Anything for a book, we say--anything for a book!
From time immemorial we have acted in this immoral manner, till we have
accustomed the Press and Public to expect it. From time immemorial we
have allowed ourselves to be driven by those powerful drivers, Bread, and
Praise, and cared little for the quality of either. Sensibly, or
insensibly, we tune our songs to earn the nuts of our twilight forest.
We tune them, not to the key of: "Is it good?" but to the key of: "Will
it pay?" and at each tuning the nuts fall fast! It is all so natural.
How can we help it, seeing that we are undisciplined and standardless,
seeing that we started without the backbone that schooling gives? Here
and there among us is a genius, here and there a man of exceptional
stability who trains himself in spite of all the forces working for his
destruction. But those who do not publish until they can express, and do
not express until they have something worth expressing, are so rare that
they can be counted on the fingers of three or perhaps four hands;
mercifully, we all--or nearly all believe ourselves of that company.
It is the fashion to say that the public will have what it wants.
Certainly the Public will have what it wants if what it wants is given to
the Public. If what it now wants were suddenly withdrawn, the Public,
the big Public, would by an obvious natural law take the lowest of what
remained; if that again were withdrawn, it would take the next lowest,
until by degrees it took a relatively good article. The Public, the big
Public, is a mechanical and helpless consumer at the mercy of what is
supplied to it, and this must ever be so. The Public then is not to
blame for the supply of bad, false fiction. The Press is not to blame,
for the Press, like the Public, must take what is set before it; their
Critics, for the most part, like ourselves have been to no school, passed
no test of fitness, received no certificate; they cannot lead us, it is
we who lead them, for without the Critics we could live but without us
the Critics would die. We cannot, therefore, blame the Press. Nor is
the Publisher to blame; for the Publisher will publish what is set before
him. It is true that if he published no books on commission he would
deserve the praise of the State, but it is quite unreasonable for us to
expect him to deserve the praise of the State, since it is we who supply
him with these books and incite him to publish them. We cannot,
therefore, lay the blame on the Publisher.
We must lay the blame where it clearly should be laid, on ourselves. We
ourselves create the demand for bad and false fiction. Very many of us
have private means; for such there is no excuse. Very many of us have
none; for such, once started on this journey of fiction, there is much,
often tragic, excuse--the less reason then for not having trained
ourselves before setting out on our way. There is no getting out of it;
the fault is ours. If we will not put ourselves to school when we are
young; if we must rush into print before we can spell; if we will not
repress our natural desires and walk before we run; if we will not learn
at least what not to do--we shall go on wandering through the forest,
singing our foolish songs.
And since we cannot train ourselves except by writing, let us write, and
burn what we write; then shall we soon stop writing, or produce what we
need not burn!
For, as things are now, without compass, without map, we set out into the
twilight forest of fiction; without path, without track--and we never
emerge.
Yes, with the French writer, we must say:
"Et nous jongleurs inutiles, frivoles joueurs de luth!" . . .
1906.
REFLECTIONS ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
Yes! Why is this the chief characteristic of our art? What secret
instincts are responsible for this inveterate distaste? But, first, is
it true that we have it?
To stand still and look at a thing for the joy of looking, without
reference to any material advantage, and personal benefit, either to
ourselves or our neighbours, just simply to indulge our curiosity! Is
that a British habit? I think not.
If, on some November afternoon, we walk into Kensington Gardens, where
they join the Park on the Bayswater side, and, crossing in front of the
ornamental fountain, glance at the semicircular seat let into a dismal
little Temple of the Sun, we shall see a half-moon of apathetic figures.
There, enjoying a moment of lugubrious idleness, may be sitting an old
countrywoman with steady eyes in a lean, dusty-black dress and an old
poke-bonnet; by her side, some gin-faced creature of the town, all blousy
and draggled; a hollow-eyed foreigner, far gone in consumption; a bronzed
young navvy, asleep, with his muddy boots jutting straight out; a
bearded, dreary being, chin on chest; and more consumptives, and more
vagabonds, and more people dead-tired, speechless, and staring before
them from that crescent-shaped haven where there is no draught at their
backs, and the sun occasionally shines. And as we look at them,
according to the state of our temper, we think: Poor creatures, I wish I
could do something for them! or: Revolting! They oughtn't to allow it!
But do we feel any pleasure in just watching them; any of that intimate
sensation a cat entertains when its back is being rubbed; are we
curiously enjoying the sight of these people, simply as manifestations of
life, as objects fashioned by the ebb and flow of its tides? Again, I
think, not. And why? Either, because we have instantly felt that we
ought to do something; that here is a danger in our midst, which one day
might affect our own security; and at all events, a sight revolting to us
who came out to look at this remarkably fine fountain. Or, because we
are too humane! Though very possibly that frequent murmuring of ours:
Ah! It's too sad! is but another way of putting the words: Stand aside,
please, you're too depressing! Or, again, is it that we avoid the sight
of things as they are, avoid the unedifying, because of what may be
called "the uncreative instinct," that safeguard and concomitant of a
civilisation which demands of us complete efficiency, practical and
thorough employment of every second of our time and every inch of our
space? We know, of course, that out of nothing nothing can be made, that
to "create" anything a man must first receive impressions, and that to
receive impressions requires an apparatus of nerves and feelers, exposed
and quivering to every vibration round it, an apparatus so entirely
opposed to our national spirit and traditions that the bare thought of it
causes us to blush. A robust recognition of this, a steadfast resolve
not to be forced out of the current of strenuous civilisation into the
sleepy backwater of pure impression ism, makes us distrustful of attempts
to foster in ourselves that receptivity and subsequent creativeness, the
microbes of which exist in every man: To watch a thing simply because it
is a thing, entirely without considering how it can affect us, and
without even seeing at the moment how we are to get anything out of it,
jars our consciences, jars that inner feeling which keeps secure and
makes harmonious the whole concert of our lives, for we feel it to be a
waste of time, dangerous to the community, contributing neither to our
meat and drink, our clothes and comfort, nor to the stability and order
of our lives.
Of these three possible reasons for our dislike of things as they are,
the first two are perhaps contained within the third. But, to whatever
our dislike is due, we have it--Oh! we have it! With the possible
exception of Hogarth in his non-preaching pictures, and Constable in his
sketches of the sky,--I speak of dead men only,--have we produced any
painter of reality like Manet or Millet, any writer like Flaubert or
Maupassant, like Turgenev, or Tchekov. We are, I think, too deeply
civilised, so deeply civilised that we have come to look on Nature as
indecent. The acts and emotions of life undraped with ethics seem to us
anathema. It has long been, and still is, the fashion among the
intellectuals of the Continent to regard us as barbarians in most
aesthetic matters. Ah! If they only knew how infinitely barbarous they
seem to us in their naive contempt of our barbarism, and in what we
regard as their infantine concern with things as they are. How far have
we not gone past all that--we of the oldest settled Western country, who
have so veneered our lives that we no longer know of what wood they are
made! Whom generations have so soaked with the preserve "good form" that
we are impervious to the claims and clamour of that ill-bred
creature--life! Who think it either dreadful, or 'vieux jeu', that such
things as the crude emotions and the raw struggles of Fate should be even
mentioned, much less presented in terms of art! For whom an artist is
'suspect' if he is not, in his work, a sportsman and a gentleman? Who
shake a solemn head over writers who will treat of sex; and, with the
remark: "Worst of it is, there's so much truth in those fellows!" close
the book.
Ah! well! I suppose we have been too long familiar with the
unprofitableness of speculation, have surrendered too definitely to
action--to the material side of things, retaining for what relaxation our
spirits may require, a habit of sentimental aspiration, carefully
divorced from things as they are. We seem to have decided that things
are not, or, if they are, ought not to be--and what is the good of
thinking of things like that? In fact, our national ideal has become the
Will to Health, to Material Efficiency, and to it we have sacrificed the
Will to Sensibility. It is a point of view. And yet--to the philosophy
that craves Perfection, to the spirit that desires the golden mean, and
hankers for the serene and balanced seat in the centre of the see-saw, it
seems a little pitiful, and constricted; a confession of defeat, a
hedging and limitation of the soul. Need we put up with this, must we
for ever turn our eyes away from things as they are, stifle our
imaginations and our sensibilities, for fear that they should become our
masters, and destroy our sanity? This is the eternal question that
confronts the artist and the thinker. Because of the inevitable decline
after full flowering-point is reached, the inevitable fading of the fire
that follows the full flame and glow, are we to recoil from striving to
reach the perfect and harmonious climacteric? Better to have loved and
lost, I think, than never to have loved at all; better to reach out and
grasp the fullest expression of the individual and the national soul,
than to keep for ever under the shelter of the wall. I would even think
it possible to be sensitive without neurasthenia, to be sympathetic
without insanity, to be alive to all the winds that blow without getting
influenza. God forbid that our Letters and our Arts should decade into
Beardsleyism; but between that and their present "health" there lies full
flowering-point, not yet, by a long way, reached.
To flower like that, I suspect, we must see things just a little more--as
they are!
1905-1912.
THE WINDLESTRAW
A certain writer, returning one afternoon from rehearsal of his play, sat
down in the hall of the hotel where he was staying. "No," he reflected,
"this play of mine will not please the Public; it is gloomy, almost
terrible. This very day I read these words in my morning paper: 'No
artist can afford to despise his Public, for, whether he confesses it or
not, the artist exists to give the Public what it wants.' I have, then,
not only done what I cannot afford to do, but I have been false to the
reason of my existence."
The hall was full of people, for it was the hour of tea; and looking
round him, the writer thought "And this is the Public--the Public that my
play is destined not to please!" And for several minutes he looked at
them as if he had been hypnotised. Presently, between two tables he
noticed a waiter standing, lost in his thoughts. The mask of the man's
professional civility had come awry, and the expression of his face and
figure was curiously remote from the faces and forms of those from whom
he had been taking orders; he seemed like a bird discovered in its own
haunts, all unconscious as yet of human eyes. And the writer thought:
"But if those people at the tables are the Public, what is that waiter?
How if I was mistaken, and not they, but he were the real Public?" And
testing this thought, his mind began at once to range over all the people
he had lately seen. He thought of the Founder's Day dinner of a great
School, which he had attended the night before. "No," he mused, "I see
very little resemblance between the men at that dinner and the men in
this hall; still less between them and the waiter. How if they were the
real Public, and neither the waiter, nor these people here!" But no
sooner had he made this reflection, than he bethought him of a gathering
of workers whom he had watched two days ago. "Again," he mused, "I do
not recollect any resemblance at all between those workers and the men at
the dinner, and certainly they are not like any one here. What if those
workers are the real Public, not the men at the dinner, nor the waiter,
nor the people in this hall!" And thereupon his mind flew off again, and
this time rested on the figures of his own immediate circle of friends.
They seemed very different from the four real Publics whom he had as yet
discovered. "Yes," he considered, "when I come to think of it, my
associates painters, and writers, and critics, and all that kind of
person--do not seem to have anything to speak of in common with any of
these people. Perhaps my own associates, then, are the real Public, and
not these others!" Perceiving that this would be the fifth real Public,
he felt discouraged. But presently he began to think: "The past is the
past and cannot be undone, and with this play of mine I shall not please
the Public; but there is always the future! Now, I do not wish to do
what the artist cannot afford to do, I earnestly desire to be true to the
reason of my existence; and since the reason of that existence is to give
the Public what it wants, it is really vital to discover who and what the
Public is!" And he began to look very closely at the faces around him,
hoping to find out from types what he had failed to ascertain from
classes. Two men were sitting near, one on each side of a woman. The
first, who was all crumpled in his arm-chair, had curly lips and wrinkles
round the eyes, cheeks at once rather fat and rather shadowy, and a
dimple in his chin. It seemed certain that he was humourous, and kind,
sympathetic, rather diffident, speculative, moderately intelligent, with
the rudiments perhaps of an imagination. And he looked at the second
man, who was sitting very upright, as if he had a particularly fine
backbone, of which he was not a little proud. He was extremely big and
handsome, with pronounced and regular nose and chin, firm, well-cut lips
beneath a smooth moustache, direct and rather insolent eyes, a some what
receding forehead, and an air of mastery over all around. It was obvious
that he possessed a complete knowledge of his own mind, some brutality,
much practical intelligence, great resolution, no imagination, and plenty
of conceit. And he looked at the woman. She was pretty, but her face was
vapid, and seemed to have no character at all. And from one to the other
he looked, and the more he looked the less resemblance he saw between
them, till the objects of his scrutiny grew restive.... Then, ceasing to
examine them, an idea came to him. "No! The Public is not this or that
class, this or that type; the Public is an hypothetical average human
being, endowed with average human qualities--a distillation, in fact, of
all the people in this hall, the people in the street outside, the people
of this country everywhere." And for a moment he was pleased; but soon
he began again to feel uneasy. "Since," he reflected, "it is necessary
for me to supply this hypothetical average human being with what he
wants, I shall have to find out how to distil him from all the
ingredients around me. Now how am I to do that? It will certainly take
me more than all my life to collect and boil the souls of all of them,
which is necessary if I am to extract the genuine article, and I should
then apparently have no time left to supply the precipitated spirit, when
I had obtained it, with what it wanted! Yet this hypothetical average
human being must be found, or I must stay for ever haunted by the thought
that I am not supplying him with what he wants!" And the writer became
more and more discouraged, for to arrogate to himself knowledge of all
the heights and depths, and even of all the virtues and vices, tastes and
dislikes of all the people of the country, without having first obtained
it, seemed to him to savour of insolence. And still more did it appear
impertinent, having taken this mass of knowledge which he had not got, to
extract from it a golden mean man, in order to supply him with what he
wanted. And yet this was what every artist did who justified his
existence--or it would not have been so stated in a newspaper. And he
gaped up at the lofty ceiling, as if he might perchance see the Public
flying up there in the faint bluish mist of smoke. And suddenly he
thought: "Suppose, by some miracle, my golden-mean bird came flying to me
with its beak open for the food with which it is my duty to supply
it--would it after all be such a very strange-looking creature; would it
not be extremely like my normal self? Am I not, in fact, myself the
Public? For, without the strongest and most reprehensible conceit, can I
claim for my normal self a single attribute or quality not possessed by
an hypothetical average human being? Yes, I am myself the Public; or at
all events all that my consciousness can ever know of it for certain."
And he began to consider deeply. For sitting there in cold blood, with
his nerves at rest, and his brain and senses normal, the play he had
written did seem to him to put an unnecessary strain upon the faculties.
"Ah!" he thought, "in future I must take good care never to write
anything except in cold blood, with my nerves well clothed, and my brain
and senses quiet. I ought only to write when I feel as normal as I do
now." And for some minutes he remained motionless, looking at his boots.
Then there crept into his mind an uncomfortable thought. "But have I
ever written anything without feeling a little-abnormal, at the time?
Have I ever even felt inclined to write anything, until my emotions had
been unduly excited, my brain immoderately stirred, my senses unusually
quickened, or my spirit extravagantly roused? Never! Alas, never! I am
then a miserable renegade, false to the whole purpose of my being--nor do
I see the slightest hope of becoming a better man, a less unworthy
artist! For I literally cannot write without the stimulus of some
feeling exaggerated at the expense of other feelings. What has been in
the past will be in the future: I shall never be taking up my pen when I
feel my comfortable and normal self never be satisfying that self which
is the Public!" And he thought: "I am lost. For, to satisfy that normal
self, to give the Public what it wants, is, I am told, and therefore must
believe, what all artists exist for. AEschylus in his 'Choephorae' and
his 'Prometheus'; Sophocles in his 'OEdipus Tyrannus'; Euripides when he
wrote 'The Trojan Women,' 'Medea,'--and 'Hippolytus'; Shakespeare in his
'Leer'; Goethe in his 'Faust'; Ibsen in his 'Ghosts' and his 'Peer Gynt';
Tolstoy in 'The Powers of Darkness'; all--all in those great works, must
have satisfied their most comfortable and normal selves; all--all must
have given to the average human being, to the Public, what it wants; for
to do that, we know, was the reason of their existence, and who shall say
those noble artists were not true to it? That is surely unthinkable.
And yet--and yet--we are assured, and, indeed, it is true, that there is
no real Public in this country for just those plays! Therefore
AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Goethe, Ibsen, Tolstoy, in
their greatest works did not give the Public what it wants, did not
satisfy the average human being, their more comfortable and normal
selves, and as artists were not true to the reason of their existence.
Therefore they were not artists, which is unthinkable; therefore I have
not yet found the Public!"
And perceiving that in this impasse his last hope of discovery had
foundered, the writer let his head fall on his chest.
But even as he did so a gleam of light, like a faint moonbeam, stole out
into the garden of his despair. "Is it possible," he thought, "that, by
a writer, until his play has been performed (when, alas! it is too late),
'the Public' is inconceivable--in fact that for him there is no such
thing? But if there be no such thing, I cannot exist to give it what it
wants. What then is the reason of my existence? Am I but a
windlestraw?" And wearied out with his perplexity, he fell into a doze.
And while he dozed he dreamed that he saw the figure of a woman standing
in darkness, from whose face and form came a misty refulgence, such as
steals out into the dusk from white campion flowers along summer
hedgerows. She was holding her pale hands before her, wide apart, with
the palms turned down, quivering as might doves about to settle; and for
all it was so dark, her grey eyes were visible-full of light, with black
rims round the irises. To gaze at those eyes was almost painful; for
though they were beautiful, they seemed to see right through his soul, to
pass him by, as though on a far discovering voyage, and forbidden to
rest.
The dreamer spoke to her: "Who are you, standing there in the darkness
with those eyes that I can hardly bear to look at? Who are you?"
And the woman answered: "Friend, I am your Conscience; I am the Truth as
best it may be seen by you. I am she whom you exist to serve." With
those words she vanished, and the writer woke. A boy was standing before
him with the evening papers.
To cover his confusion at being caught asleep he purchased one and began
to read a leading article. It commenced with these words: "There are
certain playwrights taking themselves very seriously; might we suggest to
them that they are in danger of becoming ridiculous . . . ."
The writer let fall his hand, and the paper fluttered to the ground. "The
Public," he thought, "I am not able to take seriously, because I cannot
conceive what it may be; myself, my conscience, I am told I must not take
seriously, or I become ridiculous. Yes, I am indeed lost!"
And with a feeling of elation, as of a straw blown on every wind, he
arose.
1910.
STUDIES AND ESSAYS
By John Galsworthy
"Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."
--ANATOLE FRANCE
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
ABOUT CENSORSHIP
VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART
ABOUT CENSORSHIP
Since, time and again, it has been proved, in this country of free
institutions, that the great majority of our fellow-countrymen consider
the only Censorship that now obtains amongst us, namely the Censorship of
Plays, a bulwark for the preservation of their comfort and sensibility
against the spiritual researches and speculations of bolder and too
active spirits--it has become time to consider whether we should not
seriously extend a principle, so grateful to the majority, to all our
institutions.
For no one can deny that in practice the Censorship of Drama works with a
smooth swiftness--a lack of delay and friction unexampled in any public
office. No troublesome publicity and tedious postponement for the
purpose of appeal mar its efficiency. It is neither hampered by the Law
nor by the slow process of popular election. Welcomed by the
overwhelming majority of the public; objected to only by such persons as
suffer from it, and a negligible faction, who, wedded pedantically to
liberty of the subject, are resentful of summary powers vested in a
single person responsible only to his own 'conscience'--it is amazingly,
triumphantly, successful.
Why, then, in a democratic State, is so valuable a protector of the will,
the interests, and pleasure of the majority not bestowed on other
branches of the public being? Opponents of the Censorship of Plays have
been led by the absence of such other Censorships to conclude that this
Office is an archaic survival, persisting into times that have outgrown
it. They have been known to allege that the reason of its survival is
simply the fact that Dramatic Authors, whose reputation and means of
livelihood it threatens, have ever been few in number and poorly
organised--that the reason, in short, is the helplessness and weakness of
the interests concerned. We must all combat with force such an aspersion
on our Legislature. Can it even for a second be supposed that a State
which gives trial by Jury to the meanest, poorest, most helpless of its
citizens, and concedes to the greatest criminals the right of appeal,
could have debarred a body of reputable men from the ordinary rights of
citizenship for so cynical a reason as that their numbers were small,
their interests unjoined, their protests feeble? Such a supposition were
intolerable! We do not in this country deprive a class of citizens of
their ordinary rights, we do not place their produce under the
irresponsible control of one not amenable to Law, by any sort of
political accident! That would indeed be to laugh at Justice in this
Kingdom! That would indeed be cynical and unsound! We must never admit
that there is no basic Justice controlling the edifice of our Civic
Rights. We do, we must, conclude that a just and well-considered
principle underlies this despotic Institution; for surely, else, it would
not be suffered to survive for a single moment! Pom! Pom!
If, then, the Censorship of Plays be just, beneficent, and based on a
well-considered principle, we must rightly inquire what good and logical
reason there is for the absence of Censorship in other departments of the
national life. If Censorship of the Drama be in the real interests of
the people, or at all events in what the Censor for the time being
conceives to be their interest--then Censorships of Art, Literature,
Religion, Science, and Politics are in the interests of the people,
unless it can be proved that there exists essential difference between
the Drama and these other branches of the public being. Let us consider
whether there is any such essential difference.
It is fact, beyond dispute, that every year numbers of books appear which
strain the average reader's intelligence and sensibilities to an
unendurable extent; books whose speculations are totally unsuited to
normal thinking powers; books which contain views of morality divergent
from the customary, and discussions of themes unsuited to the young
person; books which, in fine, provide the greater Public with no pleasure
whatsoever, and, either by harrowing their feelings or offending their
good taste, cause them real pain.
It is true that, precisely as in the case of Plays, the Public are
protected by a vigilant and critical Press from works of this
description; that, further, they are protected by the commercial instinct
of the Libraries, who will not stock an article which may offend their
customers--just as, in the case of Plays, the Public are protected by the
common-sense of theatrical Managers; that, finally, they are protected by
the Police and the Common Law of the land. But despite all these
protections, it is no uncommon thing for an average citizen to purchase
one of these disturbing or dubious books. Has he, on discovering its
true nature, the right to call on the bookseller to refund its value? He
has not. And thus he runs a danger obviated in the case of the Drama
which has the protection of a prudential Censorship. For this reason
alone, how much better, then, that there should exist a paternal
authority (some, no doubt, will call it grand-maternal--but sneers must
not be confounded with argument) to suppress these books before
appearance, and safeguard us from the danger of buying and possibly
reading undesirable or painful literature!
A specious reason, however, is advanced for exempting Literature from the
Censorship accorded to Plays. He--it is said--who attends the
performance of a play, attends it in public, where his feelings may be
harrowed and his taste offended, cheek by jowl with boys, or women of all
ages; it may even chance that he has taken to this entertainment his
wife, or the young persons of his household. He--on the other hand--who
reads a book, reads it in privacy. True; but the wielder of this
argument has clasped his fingers round a two-edged blade. The very fact
that the book has no mixed audience removes from Literature an element
which is ever the greatest check on licentiousness in Drama. No manager
of a theatre,--a man of the world engaged in the acquisition of his
livelihood, unless guaranteed by the license of the Censor, dare risk the
presentment before a mixed audience of that which might cause an 'emeute'
among his clients. It has, indeed, always been observed that the
theatrical manager, almost without exception, thoughtfully recoils from
the responsibility that would be thrust on him by the abolition of the
Censorship. The fear of the mixed audience is ever suspended above his
head. No such fear threatens the publisher, who displays his wares to
one man at a time. And for this very reason of the mixed audience;
perpetually and perversely cited to the contrary by such as have no firm
grasp of this matter, there is a greater necessity for a Censorship on
Literature than for one on Plays.
Further, if there were but a Censorship of Literature, no matter how
dubious the books that were allowed to pass, the conscience of no reader
need ever be troubled. For, that the perfect rest of the public
conscience is the first result of Censorship, is proved to certainty by
the protected Drama, since many dubious plays are yearly put before the
play-going Public without tending in any way to disturb a complacency
engendered by the security from harm guaranteed by this beneficent, if
despotic, Institution. Pundits who, to the discomfort of the populace,
foster this exemption of Literature from discipline, cling to the
old-fashioned notion that ulcers should be encouraged to discharge
themselves upon the surface, instead of being quietly and decently driven
into the system and allowed to fester there.
The remaining plea for exempting Literature from Censorship, put forward
by unreflecting persons: That it would require too many Censors--besides
being unworthy, is, on the face of it, erroneous. Special tests have
never been thought necessary in appointing Examiners of Plays. They
would, indeed, not only be unnecessary, but positively dangerous, seeing
that the essential function of Censorship is protection of the ordinary
prejudices and forms of thought. There would, then, be no difficulty in
securing tomorrow as many Censors of Literature as might be necessary
(say twenty or thirty); since all that would be required of each one of
them would be that he should secretly exercise, in his uncontrolled
discretion, his individual taste. In a word, this Free Literature of
ours protects advancing thought and speculation; and those who believe in
civic freedom subject only to Common Law, and espouse the cause of free
literature, are championing a system which is essentially undemocratic,
essentially inimical to the will of the majority, who have certainly no
desire for any such things as advancing thought and speculation. Such
persons, indeed, merely hold the faith that the People, as a whole,
unprotected by the despotic judgments of single persons, have enough
strength and wisdom to know what is and what is not harmful to
themselves. They put their trust in a Public Press and a Common Law,
which deriving from the Conscience of the Country, is openly administered
and within the reach of all. How absurd, how inadequate this all is we
see from the existence of the Censorship on Drama.
Having observed that there is no reason whatever for the exemption of
Literature, let us now turn to the case of Art. Every picture hung in a
gallery, every statue placed on a pedestal, is exposed to the public
stare of a mixed company. Why, then, have we no Censorship to protect us
from the possibility of encountering works that bring blushes to the
cheek of the young person? The reason cannot be that the proprietors of
Galleries are more worthy of trust than the managers of Theatres; this
would be to make an odious distinction which those very Managers who
uphold the Censorship of Plays would be the first to resent. It is true
that Societies of artists and the proprietors of Galleries are subject to
the prosecution of the Law if they offend against the ordinary standards
of public decency; but precisely the same liability attaches to
theatrical managers and proprietors of Theatres, in whose case it has
been found necessary and beneficial to add the Censorship. And in this
connection let it once more be noted how much more easily the ordinary
standards of public decency can be assessed by a single person
responsible to no one, than by the clumsy (if more open) process of
public protest. What, then, in the light of the proved justice and
efficiency of the Censorship of Drama, is the reason for the absence of
the Censorship of Art? The more closely the matter is regarded, the more
plain it is, that there is none! At any moment we may have to look upon
some painting, or contemplate some statue, as tragic, heart-rending, and
dubiously delicate in theme as that censured play "The Cenci," by one
Shelley; as dangerous to prejudice, and suggestive of new thought as the
censured "Ghosts," by one Ibsen. Let us protest against this peril
suspended over our heads, and demand the immediate appointment of a
single person not selected for any pretentiously artistic feelings, but
endowed with summary powers of prohibiting the exhibition, in public
galleries or places, of such works as he shall deem, in his uncontrolled
discretion, unsuited to average intelligence or sensibility. Let us
demand it in the interest, not only of the young person, but of those
whole sections of the community which cannot be expected to take an
interest in Art, and to whom the purpose, speculations, and achievements
of great artists, working not only for to-day but for to-morrow, must
naturally be dark riddles. Let us even require that this official should
be empowered to order the destruction of the works which he has deemed
unsuited to average intelligence and sensibility, lest their creators
should, by private sale, make a profit out of them, such as, in the
nature of the case, Dramatic Authors are debarred from making out of
plays which, having been censured, cannot be played for money. Let us
ask this with confidence; for it is not compatible with common justice
that there should be any favouring of Painter over Playwright. They are
both artists--let them both be measured by the same last!
But let us now consider the case of Science. It will not, indeed cannot,
be contended that the investigations of scientific men, whether committed
to writing or to speech, are always suited to the taste and capacities of
our general public. There was, for example, the well-known doctrine of
Evolution, the teachings of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russet Wallace, who
gathered up certain facts, hitherto but vaguely known, into presentments,
irreverent and startling, which, at the time, profoundly disturbed every
normal mind. Not only did religion, as then accepted, suffer in this
cataclysm, but our taste and feeling were inexpressibly shocked by the
discovery, so emphasised by Thomas Henry Huxley, of Man's descent from
Apes. It was felt, and is felt by many to this day, that the advancement
of that theory grossly and dangerously violated every canon of decency.
What pain, then, might have been averted, what far-reaching consequences
and incalculable subversion of primitive faiths checked, if some
judicious Censor of scientific thought had existed in those days to
demand, in accordance with his private estimate of the will and temper of
the majority, the suppression of the doctrine of Evolution.
Innumerable investigations of scientists on subjects such as the date of
the world's creation, have from time to time been summarised and
inconsiderately sprung on a Public shocked and startled by the revelation
that facts which they were accustomed to revere were conspicuously at
fault. So, too, in the range of medicine, it would be difficult to cite
any radical discovery (such as the preventive power of vaccination),
whose unchecked publication has not violated the prejudices and disturbed
the immediate comfort of the common mind. Had these discoveries been
judiciously suppressed, or pared away to suit what a Censorship conceived
to be the popular palate of the time, all this disturbance and discomfort
might have been avoided.
It will doubtless be contended (for there are no such violent opponents
of Censorship as those who are threatened with the same) that to compare
a momentous disclosure, such as the doctrine of Evolution, to a mere
drama, were unprofitable. The answer to this ungenerous contention is
fortunately plain. Had a judicious Censorship existed over our
scientific matters, such as for two hundred years has existed over our
Drama, scientific discoveries would have been no more disturbing and
momentous than those which we are accustomed to see made on our nicely
pruned and tutored stage. For not only would the more dangerous and
penetrating scientific truths have been carefully destroyed at birth, but
scientists, aware that the results of investigations offensive to
accepted notions would be suppressed, would long have ceased to waste
their time in search of a knowledge repugnant to average intelligence,
and thus foredoomed, and have occupied themselves with services more
agreeable to the public taste, such as the rediscovery of truths already
known and published.
Indissolubly connected with the desirability of a Censorship of Science,
is the need for Religious Censorship. For in this, assuredly not the
least important department of the nation's life, we are witnessing week
by week and year by year, what in the light of the security guaranteed by
the Censorship of Drama, we are justified in terming an alarming
spectacle. Thousands of men are licensed to proclaim from their pulpits,
Sunday after Sunday, their individual beliefs, quite regardless of the
settled convictions of the masses of their congregations. It is true,
indeed, that the vast majority of sermons (like the vast majority of
plays) are, and will always be, harmonious with the feelings--of the
average citizen; for neither priest nor playwright have customarily any
such peculiar gift of spiritual daring as might render them unsafe
mentors of their fellows; and there is not wanting the deterrent of
common-sense to keep them in bounds. Yet it can hardly be denied that
there spring up at times men--like John Wesley or General Booth--of such
incurable temperament as to be capable of abusing their freedom by the
promulgation of doctrine or procedure, divergent from the current
traditions of religion. Nor must it be forgotten that sermons, like
plays, are addressed to a mixed audience of families, and that the
spiritual teachings of a lifetime may be destroyed by ten minutes of
uncensored pronouncement from a pulpit, the while parents are sitting,
not, as in a theatre vested with the right of protest, but dumb and
excoriated to the soul, watching their children, perhaps of tender age,
eagerly drinking in words at variance with that which they themselves
have been at such pains to instil.
If a set of Censors--for it would, as in the case of Literature,
indubitably require more than one (perhaps one hundred and eighty, but,
for reasons already given, there should be no difficulty whatever in
procuring them) endowed with the swift powers conferred by freedom from
the dull tedium of responsibility, and not remarkable for religious
temperament, were appointed, to whom all sermons and public addresses on
religious subjects must be submitted before delivery, and whose duty
after perusal should be to excise all portions not conformable to their
private ideas of what was at the moment suitable to the Public's ears, we
should be far on the road toward that proper preservation of the status
quo so desirable if the faiths and ethical standards of the less
exuberantly spiritual masses are to be maintained in their full bloom.
As things now stand, the nation has absolutely nothing to safeguard it
against religious progress.
We have seen, then, that Censorship is at least as necessary over
Literature, Art, Science, and Religion as it is over our Drama. We have
now to call attention to the crowning need--the want of a Censorship in
Politics.
If Censorship be based on justice, if it be proved to serve the Public
and to be successful in its lonely vigil over Drama, it should, and
logically must be, extended to all parallel cases; it cannot, it dare
not, stop short at--Politics. For, precisely in this supreme branch of
the public life are we most menaced by the rule and license of the
leading spirit. To appreciate this fact, we need only examine the
Constitution of the House of Commons. Six hundred and seventy persons
chosen from a population numbering four and forty millions, must
necessarily, whatever their individual defects, be citizens of more than
average enterprise, resource, and resolution. They are elected for a
period that may last five years. Many of them are ambitious; some
uncompromising; not a few enthusiastically eager to do something for
their country; filled with designs and aspirations for national or social
betterment, with which the masses, sunk in the immediate pursuits of
life, can in the nature of things have little sympathy. And yet we find
these men licensed to pour forth at pleasure, before mixed audiences,
checked only by Common Law and Common Sense political utterances which
may have the gravest, the most terrific consequences; utterances which
may at any moment let loose revolution, or plunge the country into war;
which often, as a fact, excite an utter detestation, terror, and
mistrust; or shock the most sacred domestic and proprietary convictions
in the breasts of vast majorities of their fellow-countrymen! And we
incur this appalling risk for the want of a single, or at the most, a
handful of Censors, invested with a simple but limitless discretion to
excise or to suppress entirely such political utterances as may seem to
their private judgments calculated to cause pain or moral disturbance in
the average man. The masses, it is true, have their protection and
remedy against injudicious or inflammatory politicians in the Law and the
so-called democratic process of election; but we have seen that theatre
audiences have also the protection of the Law, and the remedy of boycott,
and that in their case, this protection and this remedy are not deemed
enough. What, then, shall we say of the case of Politics, where the
dangers attending inflammatory or subversive utterance are greater a
million fold, and the remedy a thousand times less expeditious?
Our Legislators have laid down Censorship as the basic principle of
Justice underlying the civic rights of dramatists. Then, let "Censorship
for all" be their motto, and this country no longer be ridden and
destroyed by free Institutions! Let them not only establish forthwith
Censorships of Literature, Art, Science, and Religion, but also place
themselves beneath the regimen with which they have calmly fettered
Dramatic Authors. They cannot deem it becoming to their regard for
justice, to their honour; to their sense of humour, to recoil from a
restriction which, in a parallel case they have imposed on others. It is
an old and homely saying that good officers never place their men in
positions they would not themselves be willing to fill. And we are not
entitled to believe that our Legislators, having set Dramatic Authors
where they have been set, will--now that their duty is made plain--for a
moment hesitate to step down and stand alongside.
But if by any chance they should recoil, and thus make answer: "We are
ready at all times to submit to the Law and the People's will, and to bow
to their demands, but we cannot and must not be asked to place our
calling, our duty, and our honour beneath the irresponsible rule of an
arbitrary autocrat, however sympathetic with the generality he may chance
to be!" Then, we would ask: "Sirs, did you ever hear of that great
saying: 'Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you!'" For it is
but fair presumption that the Dramatists, whom our Legislators have
placed in bondage to a despot, are, no less than those Legislators, proud
of their calling, conscious of their duty, and jealous of their honour.
1909.
VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART
It was on a day of rare beauty that I went out into the fields to try and
gather these few thoughts. So golden and sweetly hot it was, that they
came lazily, and with a flight no more coherent or responsible than the
swoop of the very swallows; and, as in a play or poem, the result is
conditioned by the conceiving mood, so I knew would be the nature of my
diving, dipping, pale-throated, fork-tailed words. But, after all--I
thought, sitting there--I need not take my critical pronouncements
seriously. I have not the firm soul of the critic. It is not my
profession to know 'things for certain, and to make others feel that
certainty. On the contrary, I am often wrong--a luxury no critic can
afford. And so, invading as I was the realm of others, I advanced with a
light pen, feeling that none, and least of all myself, need expect me to
be right.
What then--I thought--is Art? For I perceived that to think about it I
must first define it; and I almost stopped thinking at all before the
fearsome nature of that task. Then slowly in my mind gathered this group
of words:
Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through
technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the
individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion.
And the greatest Art is that which excites the greatest impersonal
emotion in an hypothecated perfect human being.
Impersonal emotion! And what--I thought do I mean by that? Surely I
mean: That is not Art, which, while I, am contemplating it, inspires me
with any active or directive impulse; that is Art, when, for however
brief a moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by interest in
itself. For, let me suppose myself in the presence of a carved marble
bath. If my thoughts be "What could I buy that for?" Impulse of
acquisition; or: "From what quarry did it come?" Impulse of inquiry; or:
"Which would be the right end for my head?" Mixed impulse of inquiry and
acquisition--I am at that moment insensible to it as a work of Art. But,
if I stand before it vibrating at sight of its colour and forms, if ever
so little and for ever so short a time, unhaunted by any definite
practical thought or impulse--to that extent and for that moment it has
stolen me away out of myself and put itself there instead; has linked me
to the universal by making me forget the individual in me. And for that
moment, and only while that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art. The
word "impersonal," then, is but used in this my definition to signify
momentary forgetfulness of one's own personality and its active wants.
So Art--I thought--is that which, heard, read, or looked on, while
producing no directive impulse, warms one with unconscious vibration. Nor
can I imagine any means of defining what is the greatest Art, without
hypothecating a perfect human being. But since we shall never see, or
know if we do see, that desirable creature--dogmatism is banished,
"Academy" is dead to the discussion, deader than even Tolstoy left it
after his famous treatise "What is Art?" For, having destroyed all the
old Judges and Academies, Tolstoy, by saying that the greatest Art was
that which appealed to the greatest number of living human beings, raised
up the masses of mankind to be a definite new Judge or Academy, as
tyrannical and narrow as ever were those whom he had destroyed.
This, at all events--I thought is as far as I dare go in defining what
Art is. But let me try to make plain to myself what is the essential
quality that gives to Art the power of exciting this unconscious
vibration, this impersonal emotion. It has been called Beauty! An
awkward word--a perpetual begging of the question; too current in use,
too ambiguous altogether; now too narrow, now too wide--a word, in fact,
too glib to know at all what it means. And how dangerous a word--often
misleading us into slabbing with extraneous floridities what would
otherwise, on its own plane, be Art! To be decorative where decoration
is not suitable, to be lyrical where lyricism is out of place, is
assuredly to spoil Art, not to achieve it. But this essential quality of
Art has also, and more happily, been called Rhythm. And, what is Rhythm
if not that mysterious harmony between part and part, and part and whole,
which gives what is called life; that exact proportion, the mystery of
which is best grasped in observing how life leaves an animate creature
when the essential relation of part to whole has been sufficiently
disturbed. And I agree that this rhythmic relation of part to part, and
part to whole--in short, vitality--is the one quality inseparable from a
work of Art. For nothing which does not seem to a man possessed of this
rhythmic vitality, can ever steal him out of himself.
And having got thus far in my thoughts, I paused, watching the swallows;
for they seemed to me the symbol, in their swift, sure curvetting, all
daring and balance and surprise, of the delicate poise and motion of Art,
that visits no two men alike, in a world where no two things of all the
things there be, are quite the same.
Yes--I thought--and this Art is the one form of human energy in the whole
world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers between
man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement, however
fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human life; the
everlasting refreshment and renewal. For, what is grievous, dompting,
grim, about our lives is that we are shut up within ourselves, with an
itch to get outside ourselves. And to be stolen away from ourselves by
Art is a momentary relaxation from that itching, a minute's profound, and
as it were secret, enfranchisement. The active amusements and relaxations
of life can only rest certain of our faculties, by indulging others; the
whole self is never rested save through that unconsciousness of self,
which comes through rapt contemplation of Nature or of Art.
And suddenly I remembered that some believe that Art does not produce
unconsciousness of self, but rather very vivid self-realisation.
Ah! but--I though--that is not the first and instant effect of Art; the
new impetus is the after effect of that momentary replacement of oneself
by the self of the work before us; it is surely the result of that brief
span of enlargement, enfranchisement, and rest.
Yes, Art is the great and universal refreshment. For Art is never
dogmatic; holds no brief for itself you may take it or you may leave it.
It does not force itself rudely where it is not wanted. It is reverent
to all tempers, to all points of view. But it is wilful--the very wind
in the comings and goings of its influence, an uncapturable fugitive,
visiting our hearts at vagrant, sweet moments; since we often stand even
before the greatest works of Art without being able quite to lose
ourselves! That restful oblivion comes, we never quite know when--and it
is gone! But when it comes, it is a spirit hovering with cool wings,
blessing us from least to greatest, according to our powers; a spirit
deathless and varied as human life itself.
And in what sort of age--I thought--are artists living now? Are
conditions favourable? Life is very multiple; full of "movements,"
"facts," and "news"; with the limelight terribly turned on--and all this
is adverse to the artist. Yet, leisure is abundant; the facilities for
study great; Liberty is respected--more or less. But, there is one great
reason why, in this age of ours, Art, it seems, must flourish. For, just
as cross-breeding in Nature--if it be not too violent--often gives an
extra vitality to the offspring, so does cross-breeding of philosophies
make for vitality in Art. I cannot help thinking that historians,
looking back from the far future, will record this age as the Third
Renaissance. We who are lost in it, working or looking on, can neither
tell what we are doing, nor where standing; but we cannot help observing,
that, just as in the Greek Renaissance, worn-out Pagan orthodoxy was
penetrated by new philosophy; just as in the Italian Renaissance, Pagan
philosophy, reasserting itself, fertilised again an already too inbred
Christian creed; so now Orthodoxy fertilised by Science is producing a
fresh and fuller conception of life--a, love of Perfection, not for hope
of reward, not for fear of punishment, but for Perfection's sake. Slowly,
under our feet, beneath our consciousness, is forming that new
philosophy, and it is in times of new philosophies that Art, itself in
essence always a discovery, must flourish. Those whose sacred suns and
moons are ever in the past, tell us that our Art is going to the dogs;
and it is, indeed, true that we are in confusion! The waters are broken,
and every nerve and sinew of the artist is strained to discover his own
safety. It is an age of stir and change, a season of new wine and old
bottles. Yet, assuredly, in spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth
the drinking is all the time being made.
I ceased again to think, for the sun had dipped low, and the midges were
biting me; and the sounds of evening had begun, those innumerable
far-travelling sounds of man and bird and beast--so clear and
intimate--of remote countrysides at sunset. And for long I listened, too
vague to move my pen.
New philosophy--a vigorous Art! Are there not all the signs of it? In
music, sculpture, painting; in fiction--and drama; in dancing; in
criticism itself, if criticism be an Art. Yes, we are reaching out to a
new faith not yet crystallised, to a new Art not yet perfected; the forms
still to find-the flowers still to fashion!
And how has it come, this slowly growing faith in Perfection for
Perfection's sake? Surely like this: The Western world awoke one day to
find that it no longer believed corporately and for certain in future
life for the individual consciousness. It began to feel: I cannot say
more than that there may be--Death may be the end of man, or Death may be
nothing. And it began to ask itself in this uncertainty: Do I then
desire to go on living? Now, since it found that it desired to go on
living at least as earnestly as ever it did before, it began to inquire
why. And slowly it perceived that there was, inborn within it, a
passionate instinct of which it had hardly till then been conscious--a
sacred instinct to perfect itself, now, as well as in a possible
hereafter; to perfect itself because Perfection was desirable, a vision
to be adored, and striven for; a dream motive fastened within the
Universe; the very essential Cause of everything. And it began to see
that this Perfection, cosmically, was nothing but perfect Equanimity and
Harmony; and in human relations, nothing but perfect Love and Justice.
And Perfection began to glow before the eyes of the Western world like a
new star, whose light touched with glamour all things as they came forth
from Mystery, till to Mystery they were ready to return.
This--I thought is surely what the Western world has dimly been
rediscovering. There has crept into our minds once more the feeling that
the Universe is all of a piece, Equipoise supreme; and all things equally
wonderful, and mysterious, and valuable. We have begun, in fact, to have
a glimmering of the artist's creed, that nothing may we despise or
neglect--that everything is worth the doing well, the making fair--that
our God, Perfection, is implicit everywhere, and the revelation of Him
the business of our Art.
And as I jotted down these words I noticed that some real stars had crept
up into the sky, so gradually darkening above the pollard lime-trees;
cuckoos, who had been calling on the thorn-trees all the afternoon, were
silent; the swallows no longer flirted past, but a bat was already in
career over the holly hedge; and round me the buttercups were closing.
The whole form and feeling of the world had changed, so that I seemed to
have before me a new picture hanging.
Ah! I thought Art must indeed be priest of this new faith in Perfection,
whose motto is: "Harmony, Proportion, Balance." For by Art alone can
true harmony in human affairs be fostered, true Proportion revealed, and
true Equipoise preserved. Is not the training of an artist a training in
the due relation of one thing with another, and in the faculty of
expressing that relation clearly; and, even more, a training in the
faculty of disengaging from self the very essence of self--and passing
that essence into other selves by so delicate means that none shall see
how it is done, yet be insensibly unified? Is not the artist, of all
men, foe and nullifier of partisanship and parochialism, of distortions
and extravagance, the discoverer of that jack-o'-lantern--Truth; for, if
Truth be not Spiritual Proportion I know not what it is. Truth it seems
to me--is no absolute thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry
in the varying relationships of life; and the most perfect truth is but
the concrete expression of the most penetrating vision. Life seen
throughout as a countless show of the finest works of Art; Life shaped,
and purged of the irrelevant, the gross, and the extravagant; Life, as it
were, spiritually selected--that is Truth; a thing as multiple, and
changing, as subtle, and strange, as Life itself, and as little to be
bound by dogma. Truth admits but the one rule: No deficiency, and no
excess! Disobedient to that rule--nothing attains full vitality. And
secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the creation of
vital things.
That aesthete, to be sure, was right, when he said: "It is Style that
makes one believe in a thing; nothing but Style." For, what is Style in
its true and broadest sense save fidelity to idea and mood, and perfect
balance in the clothing of them? And I thought: Can one believe in the
decadence of Art in an age which, however unconsciously as yet, is
beginning to worship that which Art worships--Perfection-Style?
The faults of our Arts to-day are the faults of zeal and of adventure,
the faults and crudities of pioneers, the errors and mishaps of the
explorer. They must pass through many fevers, and many times lose their
way; but at all events they shall not go dying in their beds, and be
buried at Kensal Green. And, here and there, amid the disasters and
wreckage of their voyages of discovery, they will find something new,
some fresh way of embellishing life, or of revealing the heart of things.
That characteristic of to-day's Art--the striving of each branch of Art
to burst its own boundaries--which to many spells destruction, is surely
of happy omen. The novel straining to become the play, the play the
novel, both trying to paint; music striving to become story; poetry
gasping to be music; painting panting to be philosophy; forms, canons,
rules, all melting in the pot; stagnation broken up! In all this havoc
there is much to shock and jar even the most eager and adventurous. We
cannot stand these new-fangled fellows! They have no form! They rush in
where angels fear to tread. They have lost all the good of the old, and
given us nothing in its place! And yet--only out of stir and change is
born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our
backs on courage! It is well, indeed, that some should live in closed
studies with the paintings and the books of yesterday--such devoted
students serve Art in their own way. But the fresh-air world will ever
want new forms. We shall not get them without faith enough to risk the
old! The good will live, the bad will die; and tomorrow only can tell us
which is which!
Yes--I thought--we naturally take a too impatient view of the Art of our
own time, since we can neither see the ends toward which it is almost
blindly groping, nor the few perfected creations that will be left
standing amidst the rubble of abortive effort. An age must always decry
itself and extol its forbears. The unwritten history of every Art will
show us that. Consider the novel--that most recent form of Art! Did not
the age which followed Fielding lament the treachery of authors to the
Picaresque tradition, complaining that they were not as Fielding and
Smollett were? Be sure they did. Very slowly and in spite of opposition
did the novel attain in this country the fulness of that biographical
form achieved under Thackeray. Very slowly, and in face of condemnation,
it has been losing that form in favour of a greater vividness which
places before the reader's brain, not historical statements, as it were,
of motives and of facts, but word-paintings of things and persons, so
chosen and arranged that the reader may see, as if at first hand, the
spirit of Life at work before him. The new novel has as many bemoaners
as the old novel had when it was new. It is no question of better or
worse, but of differing forms--of change dictated by gradual suitability
to the changing conditions of our social life, and to the ever fresh
discoveries of craftsmen, in the intoxication of which, old and equally
worthy craftsmanship is--by the way--too often for the moment mislaid.
The vested interests of life favour the line of least
resistance--disliking and revolting against disturbance; but one must
always remember that a spurious glamour is inclined to gather around what
is new. And, because of these two deflecting factors, those who break
through old forms must well expect to be dead before the new forms they
have unconsciously created have found their true level, high or low, in
the world of Art. When a thing is new how shall it be judged? In the
fluster of meeting novelty, we have even seen coherence attempting to
bind together two personalities so fundamentally opposed as those of
Ibsen and Bernard Shaw dramatists with hardly a quality in common; no
identity of tradition, or belief; not the faintest resemblance in methods
of construction or technique. Yet contemporary; estimate talks of them
often in the same breath. They are new! It is enough. And others, as
utterly unlike them both. They too are new. They have as yet no label
of their own then put on some one else's!
And so--I thought it must always be; for Time is essential to the proper
placing and estimate of all Art. And is it not this feeling, that
contemporary judgments are apt to turn out a little ludicrous, which has
converted much criticism of late from judgment pronounced into impression
recorded--recreative statement--a kind, in fact, of expression of the
critic's self, elicited through contemplation of a book, a play, a
symphony, a picture? For this kind of criticism there has even recently
been claimed an actual identity with creation. Esthetic judgment and
creative power identical! That is a hard saying. For, however
sympathetic one may feel toward this new criticism, however one may
recognise that the recording of impression has a wider, more elastic, and
more lasting value than the delivery of arbitrary judgment based on rigid
laws of taste; however one may admit that it approaches the creative gift
in so far as it demands the qualities of receptivity and reproduction--is
there not still lacking to this "new" critic something of that thirsting
spirit of discovery, which precedes the creation--hitherto so-called--of
anything? Criticism, taste, aesthetic judgment, by the very nature of
their task, wait till life has been focussed by the artists before they
attempt to reproduce the image which that imprisoned fragment of life
makes on the mirror of their minds. But a thing created springs from a
germ unconsciously implanted by the direct impact of unfettered life on
the whole range, of the creator's temperament; and round the germ thus
engendered, the creative artist--ever penetrating, discovering,
selecting--goes on building cell on cell, gathered from a million little
fresh impacts and visions. And to say that this is also exactly what the
recreative critic does, is to say that the interpretative musician is
creator in the same sense as is the composer of the music that he
interprets. If, indeed, these processes be the same in kind, they are in
degree so far apart that one would think the word creative unfortunately
used of both....
But this speculation--I thought--is going beyond the bounds of vagueness.
Let there be some thread of coherence in your thoughts, as there is in
the progress of this evening, fast fading into night. Return to the
consideration of the nature and purposes of Art! And recognize that much
of what you have thought will seem on the face of it heresy to the school
whose doctrine was incarnated by Oscar Wilde in that admirable apotheosis
of half-truths: "The Decay of the Art of Lying." For therein he said:
"No great artist ever sees things as they really are." Yet, that
half-truth might also be put thus: The seeing of things as they really
are--the seeing of a proportion veiled from other eyes (together with the
power of expression), is what makes a man an artist. What makes him a
great artist is a high fervour of spirit, which produces a superlative,
instead of a comparative, clarity of vision.
Close to my house there is a group of pines with gnarled red limbs
flanked by beech-trees. And there is often a very deep blue sky behind.
Generally, that is all I see. But, once in a way, in those trees against
that sky I seem to see all the passionate life and glow that Titian
painted into his pagan pictures. I have a vision of mysterious meaning,
of a mysterious relation between that sky and those trees with their
gnarled red limbs and Life as I know it. And when I have had that vision
I always feel, this is reality, and all those other times, when I have no
such vision, simple unreality. If I were a painter, it is for such
fervent vision I should wait, before moving brush: This, so intimate,
inner vision of reality, indeed, seems in duller moments well-nigh
grotesque; and hence that other glib half-truth: "Art is greater than
Life itself." Art is, indeed, greater than Life in the sense that the
power of Art is the disengagement from Life of its real spirit and
significance. But in any other sense, to say that Art is greater than
Life from which it emerges, and into which it must remerge, can but
suspend the artist over Life, with his feet in the air and his head in
the clouds--Prig masquerading as Demi-god. "Nature is no great Mother
who has borne us. She is our creation. It is in our brain that she
quickens to life." Such is the highest hyperbole of the aesthetic creed.
But what is creative instinct, if not an incessant living sympathy with
Nature, a constant craving like that of Nature's own, to fashion
something new out of all that comes within the grasp of those faculties
with which Nature has endowed us? The qualities of vision, of fancy, and
of imaginative power, are no more divorced from Nature, than are the
qualities of common-sense and courage. They are rarer, that is all. But
in truth, no one holds such views. Not even those who utter them. They
are the rhetoric, the over-statement of half-truths, by such as wish to
condemn what they call "Realism," without being temperamentally capable
of understanding what "Realism" really is.
And what--I thought--is Realism? What is the meaning of that word so
wildly used? Is it descriptive of technique, or descriptive of the
spirit of the artist; or both, or neither? Was Turgenev a realist? No
greater poet ever wrote in prose, nor any one who more closely brought
the actual shapes of men and things before us. No more fervent idealists
than Ibsen and Tolstoy ever lived; and none more careful to make their
people real. Were they realists? No more deeply fantastic writer can I
conceive than Dostoievsky, nor any who has described actual situations
more vividly. Was he a realist? The late Stephen Crane was called a
realist. Than whom no more impressionistic writer ever painted with
words. What then is the heart of this term still often used as an
expression almost of abuse? To me, at all events--I thought--the words
realism, realistic, have no longer reference to technique, for which the
words naturalism, naturalistic, serve far better. Nor have they to do
with the question of imaginative power--as much demanded by realism as by
romanticism. For me, a realist is by no means tied to naturalistic
technique--he may be poetic, idealistic, fantastic, impressionistic,
anything but--romantic; that, in so far as he is a realist, he cannot be.
The word, in fact, characterises that artist whose temperamental
preoccupation is with revelation of the actual inter-relating spirit of
life, character, and thought, with a view to enlighten himself and
others; as distinguished from that artist whom I call romantic--whose
tempera mental purpose is invention of tale or design with a view to
delight himself and others. It is a question of temperamental antecedent
motive in the artist, and nothing more.
Realist--Romanticist! Enlightenment--Delight! That is the true
apposition. To make a revelation--to tell a fairy-tale! And either of
these artists may use what form he likes--naturalistic, fantastic,
poetic, impressionistic. For it is not by the form, but by the purpose
and mood of his art that he shall be known, as one or as the other.
Realists indeed--including the half of Shakespeare that was realist not
being primarily concerned to amuse their audience, are still
comparatively unpopular in a world made up for the greater part of men of
action, who instinctively reject all art that does not distract them
without causing them to think. For thought makes demands on an energy
already in full use; thought causes introspection; and introspection
causes discomfort, and disturbs the grooves of action. To say that the
object of the realist is to enlighten rather than to delight, is not to
say that in his art the realist is not amusing himself as much as ever is
the teller of a fairy-tale, though he does not deliberately start out to
do so; he is amusing, too, a large part of mankind. For, admitted that
the abject, and the test of Art, is always the awakening of vibration, of
impersonal emotion, it is still usually forgotten that men fall, roughly
speaking, into two flocks: Those whose intelligence is uninquiring in the
face of Art, and does not demand to be appeased before their emotions can
be stirred; and those who, having a speculative bent of mind, must first
be satisfied by an enlightening quality in a work of Art, before that
work of Art can awaken in them feeling. The audience of the realist is
drawn from this latter type of man; the much larger audience of the
romantic artist from the former; together with, in both cases, those
fastidious few for whom all Art is style and only style, and who welcome
either kind, so long as it is good enough.
To me, then--I thought--this division into Realism and Romance, so
understood, is the main cleavage in all the Arts; but it is hard to find
pure examples of either kind. For even the most determined realist has
more than a streak in him of the romanticist, and the most resolute
romanticist finds it impossible at times to be quite unreal. Guido Reni,
Watteau, Leighton were they not perhaps somewhat pure romanticists;
Rembrandt, Hogarth, Manet mainly realists; Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, a
blend. Dumas pere, and Scott, surely romantic; Flaubert and Tolstoy as
surely realists; Dickens and Cervantes, blended. Keats and Swinburne
romantic; Browning and Whitman--realistic; Shakespeare and Goethe, both.
The Greek dramatists--realists. The Arabian Nights and Malory romantic.
The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Old Testament, both realism and romance.
And if in the vagueness of my thoughts I were to seek for illustration
less general and vague to show the essence of this temperamental cleavage
in all Art, I would take the two novelists Turgenev and Stevenson. For
Turgenev expressed himself in stories that must be called romances, and
Stevenson employed almost always a naturalistic technique. Yet no one
would ever call Turgenev a romanticist, or Stevenson a realist. The
spirit of the first brooded over life, found in it a perpetual voyage of
spiritual adventure, was set on discovering and making clear to himself
and all, the varying traits and emotions of human character--the varying
moods of Nature; and though he couched all this discovery in caskets of
engaging story, it was always clear as day what mood it was that drove
him to dip pen in ink. The spirit of the second, I think, almost dreaded
to discover; he felt life, I believe, too keenly to want to probe into
it; he spun his gossamer to lure himself and all away from life. That was
his driving mood; but the craftsman in him, longing to be clear and
poignant, made him more natural, more actual than most realists.
So, how thin often is the hedge! And how poor a business the partisan
abuse of either kind of art in a world where each sort of mind has full
right to its own due expression, and grumbling lawful only when due
expression is not attained. One may not care for a Rembrandt portrait of
a plain old woman; a graceful Watteau decoration may leave another cold
but foolish will he be who denies that both are faithful to their
conceiving moods, and so proportioned part to part, and part to whole, as
to have, each in its own way, that inherent rhythm or vitality which is
the hall-mark of Art. He is but a poor philosopher who holds a view so
narrow as to exclude forms not to his personal taste. No realist can
love romantic Art so much as he loves his own, but when that Art fulfils
the laws of its peculiar being, if he would be no blind partisan, he must
admit it. The romanticist will never be amused by realism, but let him
not for that reason be so parochial as to think that realism, when it
achieves vitality, is not Art. For what is Art but the perfected
expression of self in contact with the world; and whether that self be of
enlightening, or of fairy-telling temperament, is of no moment
whatsoever. The tossing of abuse from realist to romanticist and back is
but the sword-play of two one-eyed men with their blind side turned
toward each other. Shall not each attempt be judged on its own merits?
If found not shoddy, faked, or forced, but true to itself, true to its
conceiving mood, and fair-proportioned part to whole; so that it
lives--then, realistic or romantic, in the name of Fairness let it pass!
Of all kinds of human energy, Art is surely the most free, the least
parochial; and demands of us an essential tolerance of all its forms.
Shall we waste breath and ink in condemnation of artists, because their
temperaments are not our own?
But the shapes and colours of the day were now all blurred; every tree
and stone entangled in the dusk. How different the world seemed from
that in which I had first sat down, with the swallows flirting past. And
my mood was different; for each of those worlds had brought to my heart
its proper feeling--painted on my eyes the just picture. And Night, that
was coming, would bring me yet another mood that would frame itself with
consciousness at its own fair moment, and hang before me. A quiet owl
stole by in the geld below, and vanished into the heart of a tree. And
suddenly above the moor-line I saw the large moon rising.
Cinnamon-coloured, it made all things swim, made me uncertain of my
thoughts, vague with mazy feeling. Shapes seemed but drifts of moon-dust,
and true reality nothing save a sort of still listening to the wind. And
for long I sat, just watching the moon creep up, and hearing the thin,
dry rustle of the leaves along the holly hedge. And there came to me
this thought: What is this Universe--that never had beginning and will
never have an end--but a myriad striving to perfect pictures never the
same, so blending and fading one into another, that all form one great
perfected picture? And what are we--ripples on the tides of a birthless,
deathless, equipoised Creative-Purpose--but little works of Art?
Trying to record that thought, I noticed that my note-book was damp with
dew. The cattle were lying down. It was too dark to see.
1911
THE END.
THE COMPLETE PLAYS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY
CONTENTS:
First Series:
The Silver Box
Joy
Strife
Second Series:
The Eldest Son
The Little Dream
Justice
Third Series:
The Fugitive
The Pigeon
The Mob
Fourth Series:
A Bit O' Love
The Foundations
The Skin Game
Six Short Plays:
The First and The Last
The Little Man
Hall-marked
Defeat
The Sun
Punch and Go
Fifth Series:
A Family Man
Loyalties
Windows
FIRST SERIES:
THE SILVER BOX
JOY
STRIFE
THE SILVER BOX
A COMEDY IN THREE ACTS
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
JOHN BARTHWICK, M.P., a wealthy Liberal
MRS. BARTHWICK, his wife
JACK BARTHWICK, their son
ROPER, their solicitor
MRS. JONES, their charwoman
MARLOW, their manservant
WHEELER, their maidservant
JONES, the stranger within their gates
MRS. SEDDON, a landlady
SNOW, a detective
A POLICE MAGISTRATE
AN UNKNOWN LADY, from beyond
TWO LITTLE GIRLS, homeless
LIVENS, their father
A RELIEVING OFFICER
A MAGISTRATE'S CLERK
AN USHER
POLICEMEN, CLERKS, AND OTHERS
TIME: The present. The action of the first two Acts takes place on
Easter Tuesday; the action of the third on Easter Wednesday week.
ACT I.
SCENE I. Rockingham Gate. John Barthwick's dining-room.
SCENE II. The same.
SCENE III. The same.
ACT II.
SCENE I. The Jones's lodgings, Merthyr Street.
SCENE II. John Barthwick's dining-room.
ACT III. A London police court.
ACT I
SCENE I
The curtain rises on the BARTHWICK'S dining-room, large,
modern, and well furnished; the window curtains drawn.
Electric light is burning. On the large round dining-table is
set out a tray with whisky, a syphon, and a silver
cigarette-box. It is past midnight.
A fumbling is heard outside the door. It is opened suddenly;
JACK BARTHWICK seems to fall into the room. He stands holding
by the door knob, staring before him, with a beatific smile.
He is in evening dress and opera hat, and carries in his hand a
sky-blue velvet lady's reticule. His boyish face is freshly
coloured and clean-shaven. An overcoat is hanging on his arm.
JACK. Hello! I've got home all ri----[Defiantly.] Who says I
sh'd never 've opened th' door without 'sistance. [He staggers in,
fumbling with the reticule. A lady's handkerchief and purse of
crimson silk fall out.] Serve her joll' well right--everything
droppin' out. Th' cat. I 've scored her off--I 've got her bag.
[He swings the reticule.] Serves her joly' well right. [He takes a
cigarette out of the silver box and puts it in his mouth.] Never
gave tha' fellow anything! [He hunts through all his pockets and
pulls a shilling out; it drops and rolls away. He looks for it.]
Beastly shilling! [He looks again.] Base ingratitude! Absolutely
nothing. [He laughs.] Mus' tell him I've got absolutely nothing.
[He lurches through the door and down a corridor, and presently
returns, followed by JONES, who is advanced in liquor. JONES,
about thirty years of age, has hollow cheeks, black circles
round his eyes, and rusty clothes: He looks as though he might
be unemployed, and enters in a hang-dog manner.]
JACK. Sh! sh! sh! Don't you make a noise, whatever you do. Shu'
the door, an' have a drink. [Very solemnly.] You helped me to open
the door--I 've got nothin, for you. This is my house. My father's
name's Barthwick; he's Member of Parliament--Liberal Member of
Parliament: I've told you that before. Have a drink! [He pours out
whisky and drinks it up.] I'm not drunk [Subsiding on a sofa.]
Tha's all right. Wha's your name? My name's Barthwick, so's my
father's; I'm a Liberal too--wha're you?
JONES. [In a thick, sardonic voice.] I'm a bloomin' Conservative.
My name's Jones! My wife works 'ere; she's the char; she works
'ere.
JACK. Jones? [He laughs.] There's 'nother Jones at College with
me. I'm not a Socialist myself; I'm a Liberal--there's ve--lill
difference, because of the principles of the Lib--Liberal Party.
We're all equal before the law--tha's rot, tha's silly. [Laughs.]
Wha' was I about to say? Give me some whisky.
[JONES gives him the whisky he desires, together with a squirt
of syphon.]
Wha' I was goin' tell you was--I 've had a row with her. [He waves
the reticule.] Have a drink, Jonessh 'd never have got in without
you--tha 's why I 'm giving you a drink. Don' care who knows I've
scored her off. Th' cat! [He throws his feet up on the sofa.]
Don' you make a noise, whatever you do. You pour out a drink--you
make yourself good long, long drink--you take cigarette--you take
anything you like. Sh'd never have got in without you. [Closing
his eyes.] You're a Tory--you're a Tory Socialist. I'm Liberal
myself--have a drink--I 'm an excel'nt chap.
[His head drops back. He, smiling, falls asleep, and JONES
stands looking at him; then, snatching up JACK's glass, he
drinks it off. He picks the reticule from off JACK'S
shirt-front, holds it to the light, and smells at it.]
JONES. Been on the tiles and brought 'ome some of yer cat's fur.
[He stuffs it into JACK's breast pocket.]
JACK. [Murmuring.] I 've scored you off! You cat!
[JONES looks around him furtively; he pours out whisky and
drinks it. From the silver box he takes a cigarette, puffs at
it, and drinks more whisky. There is no sobriety left in him.]
JONES. Fat lot o' things they've got 'ere! [He sees the crimson
purse lying on the floor.] More cat's fur. Puss, puss! [He
fingers it, drops it on the tray, and looks at JACK.] Calf! Fat
calf! [He sees his own presentment in a mirror. Lifting his hands,
with fingers spread, he stares at it; then looks again at JACK,
clenching his fist as if to batter in his sleeping, smiling face.
Suddenly he tilts the rest o f the whisky into the glass and drinks
it. With cunning glee he takes the silver box and purse and pockets
them.] I 'll score you off too, that 's wot I 'll do!
[He gives a little snarling laugh and lurches to the door. His
shoulder rubs against the switch; the light goes out. There is
a sound as of a closing outer door.]
The curtain falls.
The curtain rises again at once.
SCENE II
In the BARTHWICK'S dining-room. JACK is still asleep; the
morning light is coming through the curtains. The time is
half-past eight. WHEELER, brisk person enters with a dust-pan,
and MRS. JONES more slowly with a scuttle.
WHEELER. [Drawing the curtains.] That precious husband of yours
was round for you after you'd gone yesterday, Mrs. Jones. Wanted
your money for drink, I suppose. He hangs about the corner here
half the time. I saw him outside the "Goat and Bells" when I went
to the post last night. If I were you I would n't live with him. I
would n't live with a man that raised his hand to me. I wouldn't
put up with it. Why don't you take your children and leave him? If
you put up with 'im it'll only make him worse. I never can see why,
because a man's married you, he should knock you about.
MRS. JONES. [Slim, dark-eyed, and dark-haired; oval-faced, and with
a smooth, soft, even voice; her manner patient, her way of talking
quite impersonal; she wears a blue linen dress, and boots with
holes.] It was nearly two last night before he come home, and he
wasn't himself. He made me get up, and he knocked me about; he
didn't seem to know what he was saying or doing. Of course I would
leave him, but I'm really afraid of what he'd do to me. He 's such
a violent man when he's not himself.
WHEELER. Why don't you get him locked up? You'll never have any
peace until you get him locked up. If I were you I'd go to the
police court tomorrow. That's what I would do.
MRS. JONES. Of course I ought to go, because he does treat me so
badly when he's not himself. But you see, Bettina, he has a very
hard time--he 's been out of work two months, and it preys upon his
mind. When he's in work he behaves himself much better. It's when
he's out of work that he's so violent.
WHEELER. Well, if you won't take any steps you 'll never get rid of
him.
MRS. JONES. Of course it's very wearing to me; I don't get my sleep
at nights. And it 's not as if I were getting help from him,
because I have to do for the children and all of us. And he throws
such dreadful things up at me, talks of my having men to follow me
about. Such a thing never happens; no man ever speaks to me. And
of course, it's just the other way. It's what he does that's wrong
and makes me so unhappy. And then he 's always threatenin' to cut
my throat if I leave him. It's all the drink, and things preying on
his mind; he 's not a bad man really. Sometimes he'll speak quite
kind to me, but I've stood so much from him, I don't feel it in me
to speak kind back, but just keep myself to myself. And he's all
right with the children too, except when he's not himself.
WHEELER. You mean when he's drunk, the beauty.
MRS. JONES. Yes. [Without change of voice] There's the young
gentleman asleep on the sofa.
[They both look silently at Jack.]
MRS. JONES. [At last, in her soft voice.] He does n't look quite
himself.
WHEELER. He's a young limb, that's what he is. It 's my belief he
was tipsy last night, like your husband. It 's another kind of
bein' out of work that sets him to drink. I 'll go and tell Marlow.
This is his job.
[She goes.]
[Mrs. Jones, upon her knees, begins a gentle sweeping.]
JACK. [Waking.] Who's there? What is it?
MRS. JONES. It's me, sir, Mrs. Jones.
JACK. [Sitting up and looking round.] Where is it--what--what time
is it?
MRS. JONES. It's getting on for nine o'clock, sir.
JACK. For nine! Why--what! [Rising, and loosening his tongue;
putting hands to his head, and staring hard at Mrs. Jones.] Look
here, you, Mrs.----Mrs. Jones--don't you say you caught me asleep
here.
MRS. JONES. No, sir, of course I won't sir.
JACK. It's quite an accident; I don't know how it happened. I must
have forgotten to go to bed. It's a queer thing. I 've got a most
beastly headache. Mind you don't say anything, Mrs. Jones.
[Goes out and passes MARLOW in the doorway. MARLOW is young
and quiet; he is cleanshaven, and his hair is brushed high from
his forehead in a coxcomb. Incidentally a butler, he is first
a man. He looks at MRS. JONES, and smiles a private smile.]
MARLOW. Not the first time, and won't be the last. Looked a bit
dicky, eh, Mrs. Jones?
MRS. JONES. He did n't look quite himself. Of course I did n't
take notice.
MARLOW. You're used to them. How's your old man?
MRS. JONES. [Softly as throughout.] Well, he was very bad last
night; he did n't seem to know what he was about. He was very late,
and he was most abusive. But now, of course, he's asleep.
MARLOW. That's his way of finding a job, eh?
MRS. JONES. As a rule, Mr. Marlow, he goes out early every morning
looking for work, and sometimes he comes in fit to drop--and of
course I can't say he does n't try to get it, because he does.
Trade's very bad. [She stands quite still, her fan and brush before
her, at the beginning and the end of long vistas of experience,
traversing them with her impersonal eye.] But he's not a good
husband to me--last night he hit me, and he was so dreadfully
abusive.
MARLOW. Bank 'oliday, eh! He 's too fond of the "Goat and Bells,"
that's what's the matter with him. I see him at the corner late
every night. He hangs about.
MRS. JONES. He gets to feeling very low walking about all day after
work, and being refused so often, and then when he gets a drop in
him it goes to his head. But he shouldn't treat his wife as he
treats me. Sometimes I 've had to go and walk about at night, when
he wouldn't let me stay in the room; but he's sorry for it
afterwards. And he hangs about after me, he waits for me in the
street; and I don't think he ought to, because I 've always been a
good wife to him. And I tell him Mrs. Barthwick wouldn't like him
coming about the place. But that only makes him angry, and he says
dreadful things about the gentry. Of course it was through me that
he first lost his place, through his not treating me right; and
that's made him bitter against the gentry. He had a very good place
as groom in the country; but it made such a stir, because of course
he did n't treat me right.
MARLOW. Got the sack?
MRS. JONES. Yes; his employer said he couldn't keep him, because
there was a great deal of talk; and he said it was such a bad
example. But it's very important for me to keep my work here; I
have the three children, and I don't want him to come about after me
in the streets, and make a disturbance as he sometimes does.
MARLOW. [Holding up the empty decanter.] Not a drain! Next time
he hits you get a witness and go down to the court----
MRS. JONES. Yes, I think I 've made up my mind. I think I ought
to.
MARLOW. That's right. Where's the ciga----?
[He searches for the silver box; he looks at MRS. JONES, who is
sweeping on her hands and knees; he checks himself and stands
reflecting. From the tray he picks two half-smoked cigarettes,
and reads the name on them.]
Nestor--where the deuce----?
[With a meditative air he looks again at MRS. JONES, and,
taking up JACK'S overcoat, he searches in the pockets.
WHEELER, with a tray of breakfast things, comes in.]
MARLOW. [Aside to WHEELER.] Have you seen the cigarette-box?
WHEELER. No.
MARLOW. Well, it's gone. I put it on the tray last night. And
he's been smoking. [Showing her the ends of cigarettes.] It's not
in these pockets. He can't have taken it upstairs this morning!
Have a good look in his room when he comes down. Who's been in
here?
WHEELER. Only me and Mrs. Jones.
MRS. JONES. I 've finished here; shall I do the drawing-room now?
WHEELER. [Looking at her doubtfully.] Have you seen----Better do
the boudwower first.
[MRS. JONES goes out with pan and brush. MARLOW and WHEELER
look each other in the face.]
MARLOW. It'll turn up.
WHEELER. [Hesitating.] You don't think she----
[Nodding at the door.]
MARLOW. [Stoutly.] I don't----I never believes anything of
anybody.
WHEELER. But the master'll have to be told.
MARLOW. You wait a bit, and see if it don't turn up. Suspicion's
no business of ours. I set my mind against it.
The curtain falls.
The curtain rises again at once.
SCENE III
BARTHWICK and MRS. BARTHWICK are seated at the breakfast table.
He is a man between fifty and sixty; quietly important, with a
bald forehead, and pince-nez, and the "Times" in his hand. She
is a lady of nearly fifty, well dressed, with greyish hair,
good features, and a decided manner. They face each other.
BARTHWICK. [From behind his paper.] The Labour man has got in at
the by-election for Barnside, my dear.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Another Labour? I can't think what on earth the
country is about.
BARTHWICK. I predicted it. It's not a matter of vast importance.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Not? How can you take it so calmly, John? To me
it's simply outrageous. And there you sit, you Liberals, and
pretend to encourage these people!
BARTHWICK. [Frowning.] The representation of all parties is
necessary for any proper reform, for any proper social policy.
MRS. BARTHWICK. I've no patience with your talk of reform--all that
nonsense about social policy. We know perfectly well what it is
they want; they want things for themselves. Those Socialists and
Labour men are an absolutely selfish set of people. They have no
sense of patriotism, like the upper classes; they simply want what
we've got.
BARTHWICK. Want what we've got! [He stares into space.] My dear,
what are you talking about? [With a contortion.] I 'm no alarmist.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Cream? Quite uneducated men! Wait until they
begin to tax our investments. I 'm convinced that when they once
get a chance they will tax everything--they 've no feeling for the
country. You Liberals and Conservatives, you 're all alike; you
don't see an inch before your noses. You've no imagination, not a
scrap of imagination between you. You ought to join hands and nip
it in the bud.
BARTHWICK. You 're talking nonsense! How is it possible for
Liberals and Conservatives to join hands, as you call it? That
shows how absurd it is for women----Why, the very essence of a
Liberal is to trust in the people!
MRS. BARTHWICK. Now, John, eat your breakfast. As if there were
any real difference between you and the Conservatives. All the
upper classes have the same interests to protect, and the same
principles. [Calmly.] Oh! you're sitting upon a volcano, John.
BARTHWICK. What!
MRS. BARTHWICK. I read a letter in the paper yesterday. I forget
the man's name, but it made the whole thing perfectly clear. You
don't look things in the face.
BARTHWICK. Indeed! [Heavily.] I am a Liberal! Drop the subject,
please!
MRS. BARTHWICK. Toast? I quite agree with what this man says:
Education is simply ruining the lower classes. It unsettles them,
and that's the worst thing for us all. I see an enormous difference
in the manner of servants.
BARTHWICK, [With suspicious emphasis.] I welcome any change that
will lead to something better. [He opens a letter.] H'm! This is
that affair of Master Jack's again. "High Street, Oxford. Sir, We
have received Mr. John Barthwick, Senior's, draft for forty pounds!"
Oh! the letter's to him! "We now enclose the cheque you cashed with
us, which, as we stated in our previous letter, was not met on
presentation at your bank. We are, Sir, yours obediently, Moss and
Sons, Tailors." H 'm! [Staring at the cheque.] A pretty business
altogether! The boy might have been prosecuted.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Come, John, you know Jack did n't mean anything; he
only thought he was overdrawing. I still think his bank ought to
have cashed that cheque. They must know your position.
BARTHWICK. [Replacing in the envelope the letter and the cheque.]
Much good that would have done him in a court of law.
[He stops as JACK comes in, fastening his waistcoat and
staunching a razor cut upon his chin.]
JACK. [Sitting down between them, and speaking with an artificial
joviality.] Sorry I 'm late. [He looks lugubriously at the
dishes.] Tea, please, mother. Any letters for me? [BARTHWICK
hands the letter to him.] But look here, I say, this has been
opened! I do wish you would n't----
BARTHWICK. [Touching the envelope.] I suppose I 'm entitled to
this name.
JACK. [Sulkily.] Well, I can't help having your name, father! [He
reads the letter, and mutters.] Brutes!
BARTHWICK. [Eyeing him.] You don't deserve to be so well out of
that.
JACK. Haven't you ragged me enough, dad?
MRS. BARTHWICK. Yes, John, let Jack have his breakfast.
BARTHWICK. If you hadn't had me to come to, where would you have
been? It's the merest accident--suppose you had been the son of a
poor man or a clerk. Obtaining money with a cheque you knew your
bank could not meet. It might have ruined you for life. I can't
see what's to become of you if these are your principles. I never
did anything of the sort myself.
JACK. I expect you always had lots of money. If you've got plenty
of money, of course----
BARTHWICK. On the contrary, I had not your advantages. My father
kept me very short of money.
JACK. How much had you, dad?
BARTHWICK. It's not material. The question is, do you feel the
gravity of what you did?
JACK. I don't know about the gravity. Of course, I 'm very sorry
if you think it was wrong. Have n't I said so! I should never have
done it at all if I had n't been so jolly hard up.
BARTHWICK. How much of that forty pounds have you got left, Jack?
JACK. [Hesitating.] I don't know--not much.
BARTHWICK. How much?
JACK. [Desperately.] I have n't got any.
BARTHWICK. What?
JACK. I know I 've got the most beastly headache.
[He leans his head on his hand.]
MRS. BARTHWICK. Headache? My dear boy! Can't you eat any
breakfast?
JACK. [Drawing in his breath.] Too jolly bad!
MRS. BARTHWICK. I'm so sorry. Come with me; dear; I'll give you
something that will take it away at once.
[They leave the room; and BARTHWICK, tearing up the letter,
goes to the fireplace and puts the pieces in the fire. While
he is doing this MARLOW comes in, and looking round him, is
about quietly to withdraw.]
BARTHWICK. What's that? What d 'you want?
MARLOW. I was looking for Mr. John, sir.
BARTHWICK. What d' you want Mr. John for?
MARLOW. [With hesitation.] I thought I should find him here, sir.
BARTHWICK. [Suspiciously.] Yes, but what do you want him for?
MARLOW. [Offhandedly.] There's a lady called--asked to speak to
him for a minute, sir.
BARTHWICK. A lady, at this time in the morning. What sort of a
lady?
MARLOW. [Without expression in his voice.] I can't tell, sir; no
particular sort. She might be after charity. She might be a Sister
of Mercy, I should think, sir.
BARTHWICK. Is she dressed like one?
MARLOW. No, sir, she's in plain clothes, sir.
BARTHWICK. Did n't she say what she wanted?
MARLOW. No sir.
BARTHWICK. Where did you leave her?
MARLOW. In the hall, sir.
BARTHWICK. In the hall? How do you know she's not a thief--not got
designs on the house?
MARLOW. No, sir, I don't fancy so, sir.
BARTHWICK. Well, show her in here; I'll see her myself.
[MARLOW goes out with a private gesture of dismay. He soon
returns, ushering in a young pale lady with dark eyes and
pretty figure, in a modish, black, but rather shabby dress, a
black and white trimmed hat with a bunch of Parma violets
wrongly placed, and fuzzy-spotted veil. At the Sight of MR.
BARTHWICK she exhibits every sign of nervousness. MARLOW goes
out.]
UNKNOWN LADY. Oh! but--I beg pardon there's some mistake--I [She
turns to fly.]
BARTHWICK. Whom did you want to see, madam?
UNKNOWN. [Stopping and looking back.] It was Mr. John Barthwick I
wanted to see.
BARTHWICK. I am John Barthwick, madam. What can I have the
pleasure of doing for you?
UNKNOWN. Oh! I--I don't [She drops her eyes. BARTHWICK
scrutinises her, and purses his lips.]
BARTHWICK. It was my son, perhaps, you wished to see?
UNKNOWN. [Quickly.] Yes, of course, it's your son.
BARTHWICK. May I ask whom I have the pleasure of speaking to?
UNKNOWN. [Appeal and hardiness upon her face.] My name is----oh!
it does n't matter--I don't want to make any fuss. I just want to
see your son for a minute. [Boldly.] In fact, I must see him.
BARTHWICK. [Controlling his uneasiness.] My son is not very well.
If necessary, no doubt I could attend to the matter; be so kind as
to let me know----
UNKNOWN. Oh! but I must see him--I 've come on purpose--[She bursts
out nervously.] I don't want to make any fuss, but the fact is,
last--last night your son took away--he took away my [She stops.]
BARTHWICK. [Severely.] Yes, madam, what?
UNKNOWN. He took away my--my reticule.
BARTHWICK. Your reti----?
UNKNOWN. I don't care about the reticule; it's not that I want--I
'm sure I don't want to make any fuss--[her face is quivering]--but
--but--all my money was in it!
BARTHWICK. In what--in what?
UNKNOWN. In my purse, in the reticule. It was a crimson silk
purse. Really, I wouldn't have come--I don't want to make any fuss.
But I must get my money back--mustn't I?
BARTHWICK. Do you tell me that my son----?
UNKNOWN. Oh! well, you see, he was n't quite I mean he was
[She smiles mesmerically.]
BARTHWICK. I beg your pardon.
UNKNOWN. [Stamping her foot.] Oh! don't you see--tipsy! We had a
quarrel.
BARTHWICK. [Scandalised.] How? Where?
UNKNOWN. [Defiantly.] At my place. We'd had supper at the----and
your son----
BARTHWICK. [Pressing the bell.] May I ask how you knew this house?
Did he give you his name and address?
UNKNOWN. [Glancing sidelong.] I got it out of his overcoat.
BARTHWICK. [Sardonically.] Oh! you got it out of his overcoat.
And may I ask if my son will know you by daylight?
UNKNOWN. Know me? I should jolly--I mean, of course he will!
[MARLOW comes in.]
BARTHWICK. Ask Mr. John to come down.
[MARLOW goes out, and BARTHWICK walks uneasily about.]
And how long have you enjoyed his acquaintanceship?
UNKNOWN. Only since--only since Good Friday.
BARTHWICK. I am at a loss--I repeat I am at a----
[He glances at this unknown lady, who stands with eyes cast
down, twisting her hands And suddenly Jack appears. He stops
on seeing who is here, and the unknown lady hysterically
giggles. There is a silence.]
BARTHWICK. [Portentously.] This young--er--lady says that last
night--I think you said last night madam--you took away----
UNKNOWN. [Impulsively.] My reticule, and all my money was in a
crimson silk purse.
JACK. Reticule. [Looking round for any chance to get away.] I
don't know anything about it.
BARTHWICK. [Sharply.] Come, do you deny seeing this young lady
last night?
JACK. Deny? No, of course. [Whispering.] Why did you give me
away like this? What on earth did you come here for?
UNKNOWN. [Tearfully.] I'm sure I didn't want to--it's not likely,
is it? You snatched it out of my hand--you know you did--and the
purse had all my money in it. I did n't follow you last night
because I did n't want to make a fuss and it was so late, and you
were so----
BARTHWICK. Come, sir, don't turn your back on me--explain!
JACK. [Desperately.] I don't remember anything about it. [In a
low voice to his friend.] Why on earth could n't you have written?
UNKNOWN. [Sullenly.] I want it now; I must have, it--I 've got to
pay my rent to-day. [She looks at BARTHWICK.] They're only too glad
to jump on people who are not--not well off.
JACK. I don't remember anything about it, really. I don't remember
anything about last night at all. [He puts his hand up to his
head.] It's all--cloudy, and I 've got such a beastly headache.
UNKNOWN. But you took it; you know you did. You said you'd score
me off.
JACK. Well, then, it must be here. I remember now--I remember
something. Why did I take the beastly thing?
BARTHWICK. Yes, why did you take the beastly----[He turns abruptly
to the window.]
UNKNOWN. [With her mesmeric smile.] You were n't quite were you?
JACK. [Smiling pallidly.] I'm awfully sorry. If there's anything
I can do----
BARTHWICK. Do? You can restore this property, I suppose.
JACK. I'll go and have a look, but I really don't think I 've got
it.
[He goes out hurriedly. And BARTHWICK, placing a chair,
motions to the visitor to sit; then, with pursed lips, he
stands and eyes her fixedly. She sits, and steals a look at
him; then turns away, and, drawing up her veil, stealthily
wipes her eyes. And Jack comes back.]
JACK. [Ruefully holding out the empty reticule.] Is that the
thing? I 've looked all over--I can't find the purse anywhere. Are
you sure it was there?
UNKNOWN. [Tearfully.] Sure? Of course I'm sure. A crimson silk
purse. It was all the money I had.
JACK. I really am awfully sorry--my head's so jolly bad. I 've
asked the butler, but he has n't seen it.
UNKNOWN. I must have my money----
JACK. Oh! Of course--that'll be all right; I'll see that that's
all right. How much?
UNKNOWN. [Sullenly.] Seven pounds-twelve--it's all I 've got in
the world.
JACK. That'll be all right; I'll--send you a cheque.
UNKNOWN. [Eagerly.] No; now, please. Give me what was in my
purse; I've got to pay my rent this morning. They won't' give me
another day; I'm a fortnight behind already.
JACK. [Blankly.] I'm awfully sorry; I really have n't a penny in
my pocket.
[He glances stealthily at BARTHWICK.]
UNKNOWN. [Excitedly.] Come I say you must--it's my money, and you
took it. I 'm not going away without it. They 'll turn me out of
my place.
JACK. [Clasping his head.] But I can't give you what I have n't
got. Don't I tell you I have n't a beastly cent.
UNKNOWN. [Tearing at her handkerchief.] Oh! do give it me! [She
puts her hands together in appeal; then, with sudden fierceness.]
If you don't I'll summons you. It's stealing, that's what it is!
BARTHWICK. [Uneasily.] One moment, please. As a matter of---er
--principle, I shall settle this claim. [He produces money.] Here is
eight pounds; the extra will cover the value of the purse and your
cab fares. I need make no comment--no thanks are necessary.
[Touching the bell, he holds the door ajar in silence. The
unknown lady stores the money in her reticule, she looks from
JACK to BARTHWICK, and her face is quivering faintly with a
smile. She hides it with her hand, and steals away. Behind
her BARTHWICK shuts the door.]
BARTHWICK. [With solemnity.] H'm! This is nice thing to happen!
JACK. [Impersonally.] What awful luck!
BARTHWICK. So this is the way that forty pounds has gone! One
thing after another! Once more I should like to know where you 'd
have been if it had n't been for me! You don't seem to have any
principles. You--you're one of those who are a nuisance to society;
you--you're dangerous! What your mother would say I don't know.
Your conduct, as far as I can see, is absolutely unjustifiable.
It's--it's criminal. Why, a poor man who behaved as you've done
--d' you think he'd have any mercy shown him? What you want is a good
lesson. You and your sort are--[he speaks with feeling]--a nuisance
to the community. Don't ask me to help you next time. You're not
fit to be helped.
JACK. [Turning upon his sire, with unexpected fierceness.] All
right, I won't then, and see how you like it. You would n't have
helped me this time, I know, if you had n't been scared the thing
would get into the papers. Where are the cigarettes?
BARTHWICK. [Regarding him uneasily.] Well I 'll say no more about
it. [He rings the bell.] I 'll pass it over for this once, but----
[MARLOW Comes in.] You can clear away.
[He hides his face behind the "Times."]
JACK. [Brightening.] I say, Marlow, where are the cigarettes?
MARLOW. I put the box out with the whisky last night, sir, but this
morning I can't find it anywhere.
JACK. Did you look in my room?
MARLOW. Yes, sir; I've looked all over the house. I found two
Nestor ends in the tray this morning, so you must have been smokin'
last night, sir. [Hesitating.] I 'm really afraid some one's
purloined the box.
JACK. [Uneasily.] Stolen it!
BARTHWICK. What's that? The cigarette-box! Is anything else
missing?
MARLOW. No, sir; I 've been through the plate.
BARTHWICK. Was the house all right this morning? None of the
windows open?
MARLOW. No, sir. [Quietly to JACK.] You left your latch-key in
the door last night, sir.
[He hands it back, unseen by BARTHWICK]
JACK. Tst!
BARTHWICK. Who's been in the room this morning?
MARLOW. Me and Wheeler, and Mrs. Jones is all, sir, as far as I
know.
BARTHWICK. Have you asked Mrs. Barthwick?
[To JACK.] Go and ask your mother if she's had it; ask her to look
and see if she's missed anything else.
[JACK goes upon this mission.]
Nothing is more disquieting than losing things like this.
MARLOW. No, sir.
BARTHWICK. Have you any suspicions?
MARLOW, No, sir.
BARTHWICK. This Mrs. Jones--how long has she been working here?
MARLOW. Only this last month, sir.
BARTHWICK. What sort of person?
MARLOW. I don't know much about her, sir; seems a very quiet,
respectable woman.
BARTHWICK. Who did the room this morning?
MARLOW. Wheeler and Mrs. Jones, Sir.
BARTHWICK. [With his forefinger upraised.] Now, was this Mrs.
Jones in the room alone at any time?
MARLOW. [Expressionless.] Yes, Sir.
BARTHWICK. How do you know that?
MARLOW. [Reluctantly.] I found her here, sir.
BARTHWICK. And has Wheeler been in the room alone?
MARLOW. No, sir, she's not, sir. I should say, sir, that Mrs.
Jones seems a very honest----
BARTHWICK. [Holding up his hand.] I want to know this: Has this
Mrs. Jones been here the whole morning?
MARLOW. Yes, sir--no, sir--she stepped over to the greengrocer's
for cook.
BARTHWICK. H'm! Is she in the house now?
MARLOW. Yes, Sir.
BARTHWICK. Very good. I shall make a point of clearing this up.
On principle I shall make a point of fixing the responsibility; it
goes to the foundations of security. In all your interests----
MARLOW. Yes, Sir.
BARTHWICK. What sort of circumstances is this Mrs. Jones in? Is
her husband in work?
MARLOW. I believe not, sir.
BARTHWICK. Very well. Say nothing about it to any one. Tell
Wheeler not to speak of it, and ask Mrs. Jones to step up here.
MARLOW. Very good, sir.
[MARLOW goes out, his face concerned; and BARTHWICK stays, his
face judicial and a little pleased, as befits a man conducting
an inquiry. MRS. BARTHWICK and hey son come in.]
BARTHWICK. Well, my dear, you've not seen it, I suppose?
MRS. BARTHWICK. No. But what an extraordinary thing, John!
Marlow, of course, is out of the question. I 'm certain none of the
maids as for cook!
BARTHWICK. Oh, cook!
MRS. BARTHWICK. Of course! It's perfectly detestable to me to
suspect anybody.
BARTHWICK. It is not a question of one's feelings. It's a question
of justice. On principle----
MRS. BARTHWICK. I should n't be a bit surprised if the charwoman
knew something about it. It was Laura who recommended her.
BARTHWICK. [Judicially.] I am going to have Mrs. Jones up. Leave
it to me; and--er--remember that nobody is guilty until they're
proved so. I shall be careful. I have no intention of frightening
her; I shall give her every chance. I hear she's in poor
circumstances. If we are not able to do much for them we are bound
to have the greatest sympathy with the poor. [MRS. JONES comes in.]
[Pleasantly.] Oh! good morning, Mrs. Jones.
MRS. JONES. [Soft, and even, unemphatic.] Good morning, sir! Good
morning, ma'am!
BARTHWICK. About your husband--he's not in work, I hear?
MRS. JONES. No, sir; of course he's not in work just now.
BARTHWICK. Then I suppose he's earning nothing.
MRS. JONES. No, sir, he's not earning anything just now, sir.
BARTHWICK. And how many children have you?
MRS. JONES. Three children; but of course they don't eat very much
sir. [A little silence.]
BARTHWICK. And how old is the eldest?
MRS. JONES. Nine years old, sir.
BARTHWICK. Do they go to school?
MRS. JONES, Yes, sir, they all three go to school every day.
BARTHWICK. [Severely.] And what about their food when you're out
at work?
MRS. JONES. Well, Sir, I have to give them their dinner to take
with them. Of course I 'm not always able to give them anything;
sometimes I have to send them without; but my husband is very good
about the children when he's in work. But when he's not in work of
course he's a very difficult man.
BARTHWICK. He drinks, I suppose?
MRS. JONES. Yes, Sir. Of course I can't say he does n't drink,
because he does.
BARTHWICK. And I suppose he takes all your money?
MRS. JONES. No, sir, he's very good about my money, except when
he's not himself, and then, of course, he treats me very badly.
BARTHWICK. Now what is he--your husband?
MRS. JONES. By profession, sir, of course he's a groom.
BARTHWICK. A groom! How came he to lose his place?
MRS. JONES. He lost his place a long time ago, sir, and he's never
had a very long job since; and now, of course, the motor-cars are
against him.
BARTHWICK. When were you married to him, Mrs. Jones?
MRS. JONES. Eight years ago, sir that was in----
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Sharply.] Eight? You said the eldest child was
nine.
MRS. JONES. Yes, ma'am; of course that was why he lost his place.
He did n't treat me rightly, and of course his employer said he
couldn't keep him because of the example.
BARTHWICK. You mean he--ahem----
MRS. JONES. Yes, sir; and of course after he lost his place he
married me.
MRS. BARTHWICK. You actually mean to say you--you were----
BARTHWICK. My dear----
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Indignantly.] How disgraceful!
BARTHWICK. [Hurriedly.] And where are you living now, Mrs. Jones?
MRS. JONES. We've not got a home, sir. Of course we've been
obliged to put away most of our things.
BARTHWICK. Put your things away! You mean to--to--er--to pawn
them?
MRS. JONES. Yes, sir, to put them away. We're living in Merthyr
Street--that is close by here, sir--at No. 34. We just have the one
room.
BARTHWICK. And what do you pay a week?
MRS. JONES. We pay six shillings a week, sir, for a furnished room.
BARTHWICK. And I suppose you're behind in the rent?
MRS. JONES. Yes, sir, we're a little behind in the rent.
BARTHWICK. But you're in good work, aren't you?
MRS. JONES. Well, Sir, I have a day in Stamford Place Thursdays.
And Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays I come here. But to-day, of
course, is a half-day, because of yesterday's Bank Holiday.
BARTHWICK. I see; four days a week, and you get half a crown a day,
is that it?
MRS. JONES. Yes, sir, and my dinner; but sometimes it's only half
a day, and that's eighteen pence.
BARTHWICK. And when your husband earns anything he spends it in
drink, I suppose?
MRS. JONES. Sometimes he does, sir, and sometimes he gives it to me
for the children. Of course he would work if he could get it, sir,
but it seems there are a great many people out of work.
BARTHWICK. Ah! Yes. We--er--won't go into that.
[Sympathetically.] And how about your work here? Do you find it
hard?
MRS. JONES. Oh! no, sir, not very hard, sir; except of course,
when I don't get my sleep at night.
BARTHWICK. Ah! And you help do all the rooms? And sometimes, I
suppose, you go out for cook?
MRS. JONES. Yes, Sir.
BARTHWICK. And you 've been out this morning?
MRS. JONES. Yes, sir, of course I had to go to the greengrocer's.
BARTHWICK. Exactly. So your husband earns nothing? And he's a bad
character.
MRS. JONES. No, Sir, I don't say that, sir. I think there's a
great deal of good in him; though he does treat me very bad
sometimes. And of course I don't like to leave him, but I think I
ought to, because really I hardly know how to stay with him. He
often raises his hand to me. Not long ago he gave me a blow here
[touches her breast] and I can feel it now. So I think I ought to
leave him, don't you, sir?
BARTHWICK. Ah! I can't help you there. It's a very serious thing
to leave your husband. Very serious thing.
MRS. JONES. Yes, sir, of course I 'm afraid of what he might do to
me if I were to leave him; he can be so very violent.
BARTHWICK. H'm! Well, that I can't pretend to say anything about.
It's the bad principle I'm speaking of----
MRS. JONES. Yes, Sir; I know nobody can help me. I know I must
decide for myself, and of course I know that he has a very hard
life. And he's fond of the children, and its very hard for him to
see them going without food.
BARTHWICK. [Hastily.] Well--er--thank you, I just wanted to hear
about you. I don't think I need detain you any longer, Mrs. Jones.
MRS. JONES. No, sir, thank you, sir.
BARTHWICK. Good morning, then.
MRS. JONES. Good morning, sir; good morning, ma'am.
BARTHWICK. [Exchanging glances with his wife.] By the way, Mrs.
Jones--I think it is only fair to tell you, a silver cigarette-box
--er--is missing.
MRS. JONES. [Looking from one face to the other.] I am very sorry,
sir.
BARTHWICK. Yes; you have not seen it, I suppose?
MRS. JONES. [Realising that suspicion is upon her; with an uneasy
movement.] Where was it, sir; if you please, sir?
BARTHWICK. [Evasively.] Where did Marlow say? Er--in this room,
yes, in this room.
MRS. JONES. No, Sir, I have n't seen it--of course if I 'd seen it
I should have noticed it.
BARTHWICK. [Giving hey a rapid glance.] You--you are sure of that?
MRS. JONES. [Impassively.] Yes, Sir. [With a slow nodding of her
head.] I have not seen it, and of course I don't know where it is.
[She turns and goes quietly out.]
BARTHWICK. H'm!
[The three BARTHWICKS avoid each other's glances.]
The curtain falls.
ACT II
SCENE I
The JONES's lodgings, Merthyr Street, at half-past two o'clock.
The bare room, with tattered oilcloth and damp, distempered
walls, has an air of tidy wretchedness. On the bed lies JONES,
half-dressed; his coat is thrown across his feet, and muddy
boots are lying on the floor close by. He is asleep. The door
is opened and MRS. JONES comes in, dressed in a pinched black
jacket and old black sailor hat; she carries a parcel wrapped
up in the "Times." She puts her parcel down, unwraps an apron,
half a loaf, two onions, three potatoes, and a tiny piece of
bacon. Taking a teapot from the cupboard, she rinses it,
shakes into it some powdered tea out of a screw of paper, puts
it on the hearth, and sitting in a wooden chair quietly begins
to cry.
JONES. [Stirring and yawning.] That you? What's the time?
MRS. JONES. [Drying her eyes, and in her usual voice.] Half-past
two.
JONES. What you back so soon for?
MRS. JONES. I only had the half day to-day, Jem.
JONES. [On his back, and in a drowsy voice.] Got anything for
dinner?
MRS. JONES. Mrs. BARTHWICK's cook gave me a little bit of bacon.
I'm going to make a stew. [She prepares for cooking.] There's
fourteen shillings owing for rent, James, and of course I 've only
got two and fourpence. They'll be coming for it to-day.
JONES. [Turning towards her on his elbow.] Let 'em come and find
my surprise packet. I've had enough o' this tryin' for work. Why
should I go round and round after a job like a bloomin' squirrel in
a cage. "Give us a job, sir"--"Take a man on"--"Got a wife and
three children." Sick of it I am! I 'd sooner lie here and rot.
"Jones, you come and join the demonstration; come and 'old a flag,
and listen to the ruddy orators, and go 'ome as empty as you came."
There's some that seems to like that--the sheep! When I go seekin'
for a job now, and see the brutes lookin' me up an' down, it's like
a thousand serpents in me. I 'm not arskin' for any treat. A man
wants to sweat hisself silly and not allowed that's a rum start,
ain't it? A man wants to sweat his soul out to keep the breath in
him and ain't allowed--that's justice that's freedom and all the
rest of it! [He turns his face towards the wall.] You're so milky
mild; you don't know what goes on inside o' me. I'm done with the
silly game. If they want me, let 'em come for me!
[MRS. JONES stops cooking and stands unmoving at the table.]
I've tried and done with it, I tell you. I've never been afraid of
what 's before me. You mark my words--if you think they've broke my
spirit, you're mistook. I 'll lie and rot sooner than arsk 'em
again. What makes you stand like that--you long-sufferin',
Gawd-forsaken image--that's why I can't keep my hands off you. So
now you know. Work! You can work, but you have n't the spirit of a
louse!
MRS. JONES. [Quietly.] You talk more wild sometimes when you're
yourself, James, than when you 're not. If you don't get work, how
are we to go on? They won't let us stay here; they're looking to
their money to-day, I know.
JONES. I see this BARTHWICK o' yours every day goin' down to
Pawlyment snug and comfortable to talk his silly soul out; an' I see
that young calf, his son, swellin' it about, and goin' on the
razzle-dazzle. Wot 'ave they done that makes 'em any better than
wot I am? They never did a day's work in their lives. I see 'em
day after day.
MRS. JONES. And I wish you wouldn't come after me like that, and
hang about the house. You don't seem able to keep away at all, and
whatever you do it for I can't think, because of course they notice
it.
JONES. I suppose I may go where I like. Where may I go? The other
day I went to a place in the Edgware Road. "Gov'nor," I says to the
boss, "take me on," I says. "I 'aven't done a stroke o' work not
these two months; it takes the heart out of a man," I says; "I 'm
one to work; I 'm not afraid of anything you can give me!" "My good
man," 'e says, "I 've had thirty of you here this morning. I took
the first two," he says, "and that's all I want." "Thank you, then
rot the world!" I says. "Blasphemin'," he says, "is not the way to
get a job. Out you go, my lad!" [He laughs sardonically.] Don't
you raise your voice because you're starvin'; don't yer even think
of it; take it lyin' down! Take it like a sensible man, carn't you?
And a little way down the street a lady says to me: [Pinching his
voice] "D' you want to earn a few pence, my man?" and gives me her
dog to 'old outside a shop-fat as a butler 'e was--tons o' meat had
gone to the makin' of him. It did 'er good, it did, made 'er feel
'erself that charitable, but I see 'er lookin' at the copper
standin' alongside o' me, for fear I should make off with 'er
bloomin' fat dog. [He sits on the edge of the bed and puts a boot
on. Then looking up.] What's in that head o' yours? [Almost
pathetically.] Carn't you speak for once?
[There is a knock, and MRS. SEDDON, the landlady, appears, an
anxious, harassed, shabby woman in working clothes.]
MRS. SEDDON. I thought I 'eard you come in, Mrs. Jones. I 've
spoke to my 'usband, but he says he really can't afford to wait
another day.
JONES. [With scowling jocularity.] Never you mind what your
'usband says, you go your own way like a proper independent woman.
Here, jenny, chuck her that.
[Producing a sovereign from his trousers pocket, he throws it
to his wife, who catches it in her apron with a gasp. JONES
resumes the lacing of his boots.]
MRS. JONES. [Rubbing the sovereign stealthily.] I'm very sorry
we're so late with it, and of course it's fourteen shillings, so if
you've got six that will be right.
[MRS. SEDDON takes the sovereign and fumbles for the change.]
JONES. [With his eyes fixed on his boots.] Bit of a surprise for
yer, ain't it?
MRS. SEDDON. Thank you, and I'm sure I'm very much obliged. [She
does indeed appear surprised.] I 'll bring you the change.
JONES. [Mockingly.] Don't mention it.
MRS. SEDDON. Thank you, and I'm sure I'm very much obliged. [She
slides away.]
[MRS. JONES gazes at JONES who is still lacing up his boots.]
JONES. I 've had a bit of luck. [Pulling out the crimson purse and
some loose coins.] Picked up a purse--seven pound and more.
MRS. JONES. Oh, James!
JONES. Oh, James! What about Oh, James! I picked it up I tell
you. This is lost property, this is!
MRS. JONES. But is n't there a name in it, or something?
JONES. Name? No, there ain't no name. This don't belong to such
as 'ave visitin' cards. This belongs to a perfec' lidy. Tike an'
smell it. [He pitches her the purse, which she puts gently to her
nose.] Now, you tell me what I ought to have done. You tell me
that. You can always tell me what I ought to ha' done, can't yer?
MRS. JONES. [Laying down the purse.] I can't say what you ought to
have done, James. Of course the money was n't yours; you've taken
somebody else's money.
JONES. Finding's keeping. I 'll take it as wages for the time I
've gone about the streets asking for what's my rights. I'll take
it for what's overdue, d' ye hear? [With strange triumph.] I've
got money in my pocket, my girl.
[MRS. JONES goes on again with the preparation of the meal,
JONES looking at her furtively.]
Money in my pocket! And I 'm not goin' to waste it. With this 'ere
money I'm goin' to Canada. I'll let you have a pound.
[A silence.]
You've often talked of leavin' me. You 've often told me I treat
you badly--well I 'ope you 'll be glad when I 'm gone.
MRS. JONES. [Impassively.] You have, treated me very badly, James,
and of course I can't prevent your going; but I can't tell whether I
shall be glad when you're gone.
JONES. It'll change my luck. I 've 'ad nothing but bad luck since
I first took up with you. [More softly.] And you've 'ad no
bloomin' picnic.
MRS. JONES. Of course it would have been better for us if we had
never met. We were n't meant for each other. But you're set
against me, that's what you are, and you have been for a long time.
And you treat me so badly, James, going after that Rosie and all.
You don't ever seem to think of the children that I 've had to bring
into the world, and of all the trouble I 've had to keep them, and
what 'll become of them when you're gone.
JONES. [Crossing the room gloomily.] If you think I want to leave
the little beggars you're bloomin' well mistaken.
MRS. JONES. Of course I know you're fond of them.
JONES. [Fingering the purse, half angrily.] Well, then, you stow
it, old girl. The kids 'll get along better with you than when I 'm
here. If I 'd ha' known as much as I do now, I 'd never ha' had one
o' them. What's the use o' bringin' 'em into a state o' things like
this? It's a crime, that's what it is; but you find it out too late;
that's what's the matter with this 'ere world.
[He puts the purse back in his pocket.]
MRS. JONES. Of course it would have been better for them, poor
little things; but they're your own children, and I wonder at you
talkin' like that. I should miss them dreadfully if I was to lose
them.
JONES. [Sullenly.] An' you ain't the only one. If I make money
out there--[Looking up, he sees her shaking out his coat--in a
changed voice.] Leave that coat alone!
[The silver box drops from the pocket, scattering the
cigarettes upon the bed. Taking up the box she stares at it;
he rushes at her and snatches the box away.]
MRS. JONES. [Cowering back against the bed.] Oh, Jem! oh, Jem!
JONES. [Dropping the box onto the table.] You mind what you're
sayin'! When I go out I 'll take and chuck it in the water along
with that there purse. I 'ad it when I was in liquor, and for what
you do when you 're in liquor you're not responsible-and that's
Gawd's truth as you ought to know. I don't want the thing--I won't
have it. I took it out o' spite. I 'm no thief, I tell you; and
don't you call me one, or it'll be the worse for you.
MRS. JONES. [Twisting her apron strings.] It's Mr. Barthwick's!
You've taken away my reputation. Oh, Jem, whatever made you?
JONES. What d' you mean?
MRS. JONES. It's been missed; they think it's me. Oh! whatever
made you do it, Jem?
JONES. I tell you I was in liquor. I don't want it; what's the
good of it to me? If I were to pawn it they'd only nab me. I 'm no
thief. I 'm no worse than wot that young Barthwick is; he brought
'ome that purse that I picked up--a lady's purse--'ad it off 'er in
a row, kept sayin' 'e 'd scored 'er off. Well, I scored 'im off.
Tight as an owl 'e was! And d' you think anything'll happen to him?
MRS. JONES. [As though speaking to herself.] Oh, Jem! it's the
bread out of our mouths!
JONES. Is it then? I'll make it hot for 'em yet. What about that
purse? What about young BARTHWICK?
[MRS. JONES comes forward to the table and tries to take the box;
JONES prevents her.] What do you want with that? You drop it, I
say!
MRS. JONES. I 'll take it back and tell them all about it. [She
attempts to wrest the box from him.]
JONES. Ah, would yer?
[He drops the box, and rushes on her with a snarl. She slips
back past the bed. He follows; a chair is overturned. The
door is opened; Snow comes in, a detective in plain clothes and
bowler hat, with clipped moustaches. JONES drops his arms,
MRS. JONES stands by the window gasping; SNOW, advancing
swiftly to the table, puts his hand on the silver box.]
SNOW. Doin' a bit o' skylarkin'? Fancy this is what I 'm after.
J. B., the very same. [He gets back to the door, scrutinising the
crest and cypher on the box. To MRS. JONES.] I'm a police officer.
Are you Mrs. Jones?
MRS. JONES. Yes, Sir.
SNOW. My instructions are to take you on a charge of stealing this
box from J. BARTHWICK, Esquire, M.P., of 6, Rockingham Gate.
Anything you say may be used against you. Well, Missis?
MRS. JONES. [In her quiet voice, still out of breath, her hand
upon her breast.] Of course I did not take it, sir. I never have
taken anything that did n't belong to me; and of course I know
nothing about it.
SNOW. You were at the house this morning; you did the room in which
the box was left; you were alone in the room. I find the box 'ere.
You say you did n't take it?
MRS. JONES. Yes, sir, of course I say I did not take it, because I
did not.
SNOW. Then how does the box come to be here?
MRS. JONES. I would rather not say anything about it.
SNOW. Is this your husband?
MRS. JONES. Yes, sir, this is my husband, sir.
SNOW. Do you wish to say anything before I take her?
[JONES remains silent, with his head bend down.]
Well then, Missis. I 'll just trouble you to come along with me
quietly.
MRS. JONES. [Twisting her hands.] Of course I would n't say I had
n't taken it if I had--and I did n't take it, indeed I did n't. Of
course I know appearances are against me, and I can't tell you what
really happened: But my children are at school, and they'll be
coming home--and I don't know what they'll do without me.
SNOW. Your 'usband'll see to them, don't you worry. [He takes the
woman gently by the arm.]
JONES. You drop it--she's all right! [Sullenly.] I took the thing
myself.
SNOW. [Eyeing him] There, there, it does you credit. Come along,
Missis.
JONES. [Passionately.] Drop it, I say, you blooming teck. She's
my wife; she 's a respectable woman. Take her if you dare!
SNOW. Now, now. What's the good of this? Keep a civil tongue, and
it'll be the better for all of us.
[He puts his whistle in his mouth and draws the woman to the
door.]
JONES. [With a rush.] Drop her, and put up your 'ands, or I 'll
soon make yer. You leave her alone, will yer! Don't I tell yer, I
took the thing myself.
SNOW. [Blowing his whistle.] Drop your hands, or I 'll take you
too. Ah, would you?
[JONES, closing, deals him a blow. A Policeman in uniform
appears; there is a short struggle and JONES is overpowered.
MRS. JONES raises her hands avid drops her face on them.]
The curtain falls.
SCENE II
The BARTHWICKS' dining-room the same evening. The BARTHWICKS
are seated at dessert.
MRS. BARTHWICK. John! [A silence broken by the cracking of nuts.]
John!
BARTHWICK. I wish you'd speak about the nuts they're uneatable.
[He puts one in his mouth.]
MRS. BARTHWICK. It's not the season for them. I called on the
Holyroods.
[BARTHWICK fills his glass with port.]
JACK. Crackers, please, Dad.
[BARTHWICK passes the crackers. His demeanour is reflective.]
MRS. BARTHWICK. Lady Holyrood has got very stout. I 've noticed it
coming for a long time.
BARTHWICK. [Gloomily.] Stout? [He takes up the crackers--with
transparent airiness.] The Holyroods had some trouble with their
servants, had n't they?
JACK. Crackers, please, Dad.
BARTHWICK. [Passing the crackers.] It got into the papers. The
cook, was n't it?
MRS. BARTHWICK. No, the lady's maid. I was talking it over with
Lady Holyrood. The girl used to have her young man to see her.
BARTHWICK. [Uneasily.] I'm not sure they were wise----
MRS. BARTHWICK. My dear John, what are you talking about? How
could there be any alternative? Think of the effect on the other
servants!
BARTHWICK. Of course in principle--I wasn't thinking of that.
JACK. [Maliciously.] Crackers, please, Dad.
[BARTHWICK is compelled to pass the crackers.]
MRS. BARTHWICK. Lady Holyrood told me: "I had her up," she said; "I
said to her, 'You'll leave my house at once; I think your conduct
disgraceful. I can't tell, I don't know, and I don't wish to know,
what you were doing. I send you away on principle; you need not
come to me for a character.' And the girl said: 'If you don't give
me my notice, my lady, I want a month's wages. I'm perfectly
respectable. I've done nothing.'"'--Done nothing!
BARTHWICK. H'm!
MRS. BARTHWICK. Servants have too much license. They hang together
so terribly you never can tell what they're really thinking; it's as
if they were all in a conspiracy to keep you in the dark. Even with
Marlow, you feel that he never lets you know what's really in his
mind. I hate that secretiveness; it destroys all confidence. I
feel sometimes I should like to shake him.
JACK. Marlow's a most decent chap. It's simply beastly every one
knowing your affairs.
BARTHWICK. The less you say about that the better!
MRS. BARTHWICK. It goes all through the lower classes. You can not
tell when they are speaking the truth. To-day when I was shopping
after leaving the Holyroods, one of these unemployed came up and
spoke to me. I suppose I only had twenty yards or so to walk to the
carnage, but he seemed to spring up in the street.
BARTHWICK. Ah! You must be very careful whom you speak to in these
days.
MRS. BARTHWICK. I did n't answer him, of course. But I could see
at once that he wasn't telling the truth.
BARTHWICK. [Cracking a nut.] There's one very good rule--look at
their eyes.
JACK. Crackers, please, Dad.
BARTHWICK. [Passing the crackers.] If their eyes are
straight-forward I sometimes give them sixpence. It 's against my
principles, but it's most difficult to refuse. If you see that
they're desperate, and dull, and shifty-looking, as so many of them
are, it's certain to mean drink, or crime, or something
unsatisfactory.
MRS. BARTHWICK. This man had dreadful eyes. He looked as if he
could commit a murder. "I 've 'ad nothing to eat to-day," he said.
Just like that.
BARTHWICK. What was William about? He ought to have been waiting.
JACK. [Raising his wine-glass to his nose.] Is this the '63, Dad?
[BARTHWICK, holding his wine-glass to his eye, lowers it and
passes it before his nose.]
MRS. BARTHWICK. I hate people that can't speak the truth. [Father
and son exchange a look behind their port.] It 's just as easy to
speak the truth as not. I've always found it easy enough. It makes
it impossible to tell what is genuine; one feels as if one were
continually being taken in.
BARTHWICK. [Sententiously.] The lower classes are their own
enemies. If they would only trust us, they would get on so much
better.
MRS. BARTHWICK. But even then it's so often their own fault. Look
at that Mrs. Jones this morning.
BARTHWICK. I only want to do what's right in that matter. I had
occasion to see Roper this afternoon. I mentioned it to him. He's
coming in this evening. It all depends on what the detective says.
I've had my doubts. I've been thinking it over.
MRS. BARTHWICK. The woman impressed me most unfavourably. She
seemed to have no shame. That affair she was talking about--she and
the man when they were young, so immoral! And before you and Jack!
I could have put her out of the room!
BARTHWICK. Oh! I don't want to excuse them, but in looking at
these matters one must consider----
MRS. BARTHWICK. Perhaps you'll say the man's employer was wrong in
dismissing him?
BARTHWICK. Of course not. It's not there that I feel doubt. What
I ask myself is----
JACK. Port, please, Dad.
BARTHWICK. [Circulating the decanter in religious imitation of the
rising and setting of the sun.] I ask myself whether we are
sufficiently careful in making inquiries about people before we
engage them, especially as regards moral conduct.
JACK. Pass the-port, please, Mother!
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Passing it.] My dear boy, are n't you drinking
too much?
[JACK fills his glass.]
MARLOW. [Entering.] Detective Snow to see you, Sir.
BARTHWICK. [Uneasily.] Ah! say I'll be with him in a minute.
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Without turning.] Let him come in here, Marlow.
[SNOW enters in an overcoat, his bowler hat in hand.]
BARTHWICK. [Half-rising.] Oh! Good evening!
SNOW. Good evening, sir; good evening, ma'am. I 've called round to
report what I 've done, rather late, I 'm afraid--another case took
me away. [He takes the silver box out o f his pocket, causing a
sensation in the BARTHWICK family.] This is the identical article,
I believe.
BARTHWICK. Certainly, certainly.
SNOW. Havin' your crest and cypher, as you described to me, sir, I
'd no hesitation in the matter.
BARTHWICK. Excellent. Will you have a glass of [he glances at the
waning port]--er--sherry-[pours out sherry]. Jack, just give Mr.
Snow this.
[JACK rises and gives the glass to SNOW; then, lolling in his
chair, regards him indolently.]
SNOW. [Drinking off wine and putting down the glass.] After seeing
you I went round to this woman's lodgings, sir. It's a low
neighborhood, and I thought it as well to place a constable below
--and not without 'e was wanted, as things turned out.
BARTHWICK. Indeed!
SNOW. Yes, Sir, I 'ad some trouble. I asked her to account for the
presence of the article. She could give me no answer, except to
deny the theft; so I took her into custody; then her husband came
for me, so I was obliged to take him, too, for assault. He was very
violent on the way to the station--very violent--threatened you and
your son, and altogether he was a handful, I can till you.
MRS. BARTHWICK. What a ruffian he must be!
SNOW. Yes, ma'am, a rough customer.
JACK. [Sipping his mine, bemused.] Punch the beggar's head.
SNOW. Given to drink, as I understand, sir.
MRS. BARTHWICK. It's to be hoped he will get a severe punishment.
SNOW. The odd thing is, sir, that he persists in sayin' he took the
box himself.
BARTHWICK. Took the box himself! [He smiles.] What does he think
to gain by that?
SNOW. He says the young gentleman was intoxicated last night
[JACK stops the cracking of a nut, and looks at SNOW.]
[BARTHWICK, losing his smile, has put his wine-glass down;
there is a silence--SNOW, looking from face to face, remarks]
--took him into the house and gave him whisky; and under the
influence of an empty stomach the man says he took the box.
MRS. BARTHWICK. The impudent wretch!
BARTHWICK. D' you mean that he--er--intends to put this forward
to-morrow?
SNOW. That'll be his line, sir; but whether he's endeavouring to
shield his wife, or whether [he looks at JACK] there's something in
it, will be for the magistrate to say.
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Haughtily.] Something in what? I don't
understand you. As if my son would bring a man like that into the
house!
BARTHWICK. [From the fireplace, with an effort to be calm.] My son
can speak for himself, no doubt. Well, Jack, what do you say?
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Sharply.] What does he say? Why, of course, he
says the whole story's stuff!
JACK. [Embarrassed.] Well, of course, I--of course, I don't know
anything about it.
MRS. BARTHWICK. I should think not, indeed! [To Snow.] The man is
an audacious ruffian!
BARTHWICK. [Suppressing jumps.] But in view of my son's saying
there's nothing in this--this fable--will it be necessary to proceed
against the man under the circumstances?
SNOW. We shall have to charge him with the assault, sir. It would
be as well for your son to come down to the Court. There'll be a
remand, no doubt. The queer thing is there was quite a sum of money
found on him, and a crimson silk purse.
[BARTHWICK starts; JACK rises and sits dozen again.]
I suppose the lady has n't missed her purse?
BARTHWICK. [Hastily.] Oh, no! Oh! No!
JACK. No!
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Dreamily.] No! [To SNOW.] I 've been inquiring
of the servants. This man does hang about the house. I shall feel
much safer if he gets a good long sentence; I do think we ought to
be protected against such ruffians.
BARTHWICK. Yes, yes, of course, on principle but in this case we
have a number of things to think of. [To SNOW.] I suppose, as you
say, the man must be charged, eh?
SNOW. No question about that, sir.
BARTHWICK. [Staring gloomily at JACK.] This prosecution goes very
much against the grain with me. I have great sympathy with the
poor. In my position I 'm bound to recognise the distress there is
amongst them. The condition of the people leaves much to be
desired. D' you follow me? I wish I could see my way to drop it.
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Sharply.] John! it's simply not fair to other
people. It's putting property at the mercy of any one who likes to
take it.
BARTHWICK. [Trying to make signs to her aside.] I 'm not defending
him, not at all. I'm trying to look at the matter broadly.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Nonsense, John, there's a time for everything.
SNOW. [Rather sardonically.] I might point out, sir, that to
withdraw the charge of stealing would not make much difference,
because the facts must come out [he looks significantly at JACK] in
reference to the assault; and as I said that charge will have to go
forward.
BARTHWICK. [Hastily.] Yes, oh! exactly! It's entirely on the
woman's account--entirely a matter of my own private feelings.
SNOW. If I were you, sir, I should let things take their course.
It's not likely there'll be much difficulty. These things are very
quick settled.
BARTHWICK. [Doubtfully.] You think so--you think so?
JACK. [Rousing himself.] I say, what shall I have to swear to?
SNOW. That's best known to yourself, sir. [Retreating to the
door.] Better employ a solicitor, sir, in case anything should
arise. We shall have the butler to prove the loss of the article.
You'll excuse me going, I 'm rather pressed to-night. The case may
come on any time after eleven. Good evening, sir; good evening,
ma'am. I shall have to produce the box in court to-morrow, so if
you'll excuse me, sir, I may as well take it with me.
[He takes the silver box and leaves them with a little bow.]
[BARTHWICK makes a move to follow him, then dashing his hands
beneath his coat tails, speaks with desperation.]
BARTHWICK. I do wish you'd leave me to manage things myself. You
will put your nose into matters you know nothing of. A pretty mess
you've made of this!
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Coldly.] I don't in the least know what you're
talking about. If you can't stand up for your rights, I can. I 've
no patience with your principles, it's such nonsense.
BARTHWICK. Principles! Good Heavens! What have principles to do
with it for goodness sake? Don't you know that Jack was drunk last
night!
JACK. Dad!
MRS. BARTHWICK. [In horror rising.] Jack!
JACK. Look here, Mother--I had supper. Everybody does. I mean to
say--you know what I mean--it's absurd to call it being drunk. At
Oxford everybody gets a bit "on" sometimes----
MRS. BARTHWICK. Well, I think it's most dreadful! If that is
really what you do at Oxford?
JACK. [Angrily.] Well, why did you send me there? One must do as
other fellows do. It's such nonsense, I mean, to call it being
drunk. Of course I 'm awfully sorry. I 've had such a beastly
headache all day.
BARTHWICK. Tcha! If you'd only had the common decency to remember
what happened when you came in. Then we should know what truth
there was in what this fellow says--as it is, it's all the most
confounded darkness.
JACK. [Staring as though at half-formed visions.] I just get a--
and then--it 's gone----
MRS. BARTHWICK. Oh, Jack! do you mean to say you were so tipsy you
can't even remember----
JACK. Look here, Mother! Of course I remember I came--I must have
come----
BARTHWICK. [Unguardedly, and walking up and down.] Tcha!--and that
infernal purse! Good Heavens! It'll get into the papers. Who on
earth could have foreseen a thing like this? Better to have lost a
dozen cigarette-boxes, and said nothing about it. [To his wife.]
It's all your doing. I told you so from the first. I wish to
goodness Roper would come!
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Sharply.] I don't know what you're talking about,
John.
BARTHWICK. [Turning on her.] No, you--you--you don't know
anything! [Sharply.] Where the devil is Roper? If he can see a
way out of this he's a better man than I take him for. I defy any
one to see a way out of it. I can't.
JACK. Look here, don't excite Dad--I can simply say I was too
beastly tired, and don't remember anything except that I came in and
[in a dying voice] went to bed the same as usual.
BARTHWICK. Went to bed? Who knows where you went--I 've lost all
confidence. For all I know you slept on the floor.
JACK. [Indignantly.] I did n't, I slept on the----
BARTHWICK. [Sitting on the sofa.] Who cares where you slept; what
does it matter if he mentions the--the--a perfect disgrace?
MRS. BARTHWICK. What? [A silence.] I insist on knowing.
JACK. Oh! nothing.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Nothing? What do you mean by nothing, Jack?
There's your father in such a state about it!
JACK. It's only my purse.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Your purse! You know perfectly well you have n't
got one.
JACK. Well, it was somebody else's--it was all a joke--I did n't
want the beastly thing.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Do you mean that you had another person's purse,
and that this man took it too?
BARTHWICK. Tcha! Of course he took it too! A man like that Jones
will make the most of it. It'll get into the papers.
MRS. BARTHWICK. I don't understand. What on earth is all the fuss
about? [Bending over JACK, and softly.] Jack now, tell me dear!
Don't be afraid. What is it? Come!
JACK. Oh, don't Mother!
MRS. BARTHWICK. But don't what, dear?
JACK. It was pure sport. I don't know how I got the thing. Of
course I 'd had a bit of a row--I did n't know what I was doing--I
was--I Was--well, you know--I suppose I must have pulled the bag out
of her hand.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Out of her hand? Whose hand? What bag--whose bag?
JACK. Oh! I don't know--her bag--it belonged to--[in a desperate
and rising voice] a woman.
MRS. BARTHWICK. A woman? Oh! Jack! No!
JACK. [Jumping up.] You would have it. I did n't want to tell
you. It's not my fault.
[The door opens and MARLOW ushers in a man of middle age,
inclined to corpulence, in evening dress. He has a ruddy, thin
moustache, and dark, quick-moving little eyes. His eyebrows
aye Chinese.]
MARLOW. Mr. Roper, Sir. [He leaves the room.]
ROPER. [With a quick look round.] How do you do?
[But neither JACK nor MRS. BARTHWICK make a sign.]
BARTHWICK. [Hurrying.] Thank goodness you've come, Roper. You
remember what I told you this afternoon; we've just had the
detective here.
ROPER. Got the box?
BARTHWICK. Yes, yes, but look here--it was n't the charwoman at
all; her drunken loafer of a husband took the things--he says that
fellow there [he waves his hand at JACK, who with his shoulder
raised, seems trying to ward off a blow] let him into the house last
night. Can you imagine such a thing.
[Roper laughs. ]
BARTHWICK. [With excited emphasis.]. It's no laughing matter,
Roper. I told you about that business of Jack's too--don't you see
the brute took both the things--took that infernal purse. It'll get
into the papers.
ROPER. [Raising his eyebrows.] H'm! The purse! Depravity in high
life! What does your son say?
BARTHWICK. He remembers nothing. D--n! Did you ever see such a
mess? It 'll get into the papers.
MRS. BARTHWICK. [With her hand across hey eyes.] Oh! it's not
that----
[BARTHWICK and ROPER turn and look at her.]
BARTHWICK. It's the idea of that woman--she's just heard----
[ROPER nods. And MRS. BARTHWICK, setting her lips, gives a
slow look at JACK, and sits down at the table.]
What on earth's to be done, Roper? A ruffian like this Jones will
make all the capital he can out of that purse.
MRS. BARTHWICK. I don't believe that Jack took that purse.
BARTHWICK. What--when the woman came here for it this morning?
MRS. BARTHWICK. Here? She had the impudence? Why was n't I told?
[She looks round from face to face--no one answers hey, there
is a pause.]
BARTHWICK. [Suddenly.] What's to be done, Roper?
ROPER. [Quietly to JACK.] I suppose you did n't leave your
latch-key in the door?
JACK. [Sullenly.] Yes, I did.
BARTHWICK. Good heavens! What next?
MRS. BARTHWICK. I 'm certain you never let that man into the house,
Jack, it's a wild invention. I'm sure there's not a word of truth
in it, Mr. Roper.
ROPER. [Very suddenly.] Where did you sleep last night?
JACK. [Promptly.] On the sofa, there--[hesitating]--that is--I----
BARTHWICK. On the sofa? D' you mean to say you did n't go to bed?
JACK.[Sullenly.] No.
BARTHWICK. If you don't remember anything, how can you remember
that?
JACK. Because I woke up there in the morning.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Oh, Jack!
BARTHWICK. Good Gracious!
JACK. And Mrs. Jones saw me. I wish you would n't bait me so.
ROPER. Do you remember giving any one a drink?
JACK. By Jove, I do seem to remember a fellow with--a fellow with
[He looks at Roper.] I say, d' you want me----?
ROPER. [Quick as lightning.] With a dirty face?
JACK. [With illumination.] I do--I distinctly remember his----
[BARTHWICK moves abruptly; MRS. BARTHWICK looks at ROPER
angrily, and touches her son's arm.]
MRS. BARTHWICK. You don't remember, it's ridiculous! I don't
believe the man was ever here at all.
BARTHWICK. You must speak the truth, if it is the truth. But if
you do remember such a dirty business, I shall wash my hands of you
altogether.
JACK. [Glaring at them.] Well, what the devil----
MRS. BARTHWICK. Jack!
JACK. Well, Mother, I--I don't know what you do want.
MRS. BARTHWICK. We want you to speak the truth and say you never
let this low man into the house.
BARTHWICK. Of course if you think that you really gave this man
whisky in that disgraceful way, and let him see what you'd been
doing, and were in such a disgusting condition that you don't
remember a word of it----
ROPER. [Quick.] I've no memory myself--never had.
BARTHWICK. [Desperately.] I don't know what you're to say.
ROPER. [To JACK.] Say nothing at all! Don't put yourself in a
false position. The man stole the things or the woman stole the
things, you had nothing to do with it. You were asleep on the sofa.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Your leaving the latch-key in the door was quite
bad enough, there's no need to mention anything else. [Touching his
forehead softly.] My dear, how hot your head is!
JACK. But I want to know what I 'm to do. [Passionately.] I won't
be badgered like this.
[MRS. BARTHWICK recoils from him.]
ROPER. [Very quickly.] You forget all about it. You were asleep.
JACK. Must I go down to the Court to-morrow?
ROPER. [Shaking his head.] No.
BARTHWICK. [In a relieved voice.] Is that so?
ROPER. Yes.
BARTHWICK. But you'll go, Roper.
ROPER. Yes.
JACK. [With wan cheerfulness.] Thanks, awfully! So long as I
don't have to go. [Putting his hand up to his head.] I think if
you'll excuse me--I've had a most beastly day. [He looks from his
father to his mother.]
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Turning quickly.] Goodnight, my boy.
JACK. Good-night, Mother.
[He goes out. MRS. BARTHWICK heaves a sigh. There is a
silence.]
BARTHWICK. He gets off too easily. But for my money that woman
would have prosecuted him.
ROPER. You find money useful.
BARTHWICK. I've my doubts whether we ought to hide the truth----
ROPER. There'll be a remand.
BARTHWICK. What! D' you mean he'll have to appear on the remand.
ROPER. Yes.
BARTHWICK. H'm, I thought you'd be able to----Look here, Roper,
you must keep that purse out of the papers.
[ROPER fixes his little eyes on him and nods.]
MRS. BARTHWICK. Mr. Roper, don't you think the magistrate ought to
be told what sort of people these Jones's are; I mean about their
immorality before they were married. I don't know if John told you.
ROPER. Afraid it's not material.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Not material?
ROPER. Purely private life! May have happened to the magistrate.
BARTHWICK. [With a movement as if to shift a burden.] Then you'll
take the thing into your hands?
ROPER. If the gods are kind. [He holds his hand out.]
BARTHWICK. [Shaking it dubiously.] Kind eh? What? You going?
ROPER. Yes. I've another case, something like yours--most
unexpected.
[He bows to MRS. BARTHWICK, and goes out, followed by
BARTHWICK, talking to the last. MRS. BARTHWICK at the table
bursts into smothered sobs. BARTHWICK returns.]
BARTHWICK. [To himself.] There'll be a scandal!
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Disguising her grief at once.] I simply can't
imagine what Roper means by making a joke of a thing like that!
BARTHWICK. [Staring strangely.] You! You can't imagine anything!
You've no more imagination than a fly!
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Angrily.] You dare to tell me that I have no
imagination.
BARTHWICK. [Flustered.] I--I 'm upset. From beginning to end, the
whole thing has been utterly against my principles.
MRS. BARTHWICK. Rubbish! You have n't any! Your principles are
nothing in the world but sheer fright!
BARTHWICK. [Walking to the window.] I've never been frightened in
my life. You heard what Roper said. It's enough to upset one when
a thing like this happens. Everything one says and does seems to
turn in one's mouth--it's--it's uncanny. It's not the sort of thing
I've been accustomed to. [As though stifling, he throws the window
open. The faint sobbing of a child comes in.] What's that?
[They listen.]
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Sharply.] I can't stand that crying. I must send
Marlow to stop it. My nerves are all on edge. [She rings the
bell.]
BARTHWICK. I'll shut the window; you'll hear nothing. [He shuts
the window. There is silence.]
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Sharply.] That's no good! It's on my nerves.
Nothing upsets me like a child's crying.
[MARLOW comes in.]
What's that noise of crying, Marlow? It sounds like a child.
BARTHWICK. It is a child. I can see it against the railings.
MARLOW. [Opening the window, and looking out quietly.] It's Mrs.
Jones's little boy, ma'am; he came here after his mother.
MRS. BARTHWICK. [Moving quickly to the window.] Poor little chap!
John, we ought n't to go on with this!
BARTHWICK. [Sitting heavily in a chair.] Ah! but it's out of our
hands!
[MRS. BARTHWICK turns her back to the window. There is an
expression of distress on hey face. She stands motionless,
compressing her lips. The crying begins again. BARTHWICK
coveys his ears with his hands, and MARLOW shuts the window.
The crying ceases.]
The curtain falls.
ACT III
Eight days have passed, and the scene is a London Police Court
at one o'clock. A canopied seat of Justice is surmounted by
the lion and unicorn. Before the fire a worn-looking
MAGISTRATE is warming his coat-tails, and staring at two little
girls in faded blue and orange rags, who are placed before the
dock. Close to the witness-box is a RELIEVING OFFICER in an
overcoat, and a short brown beard. Beside the little girls
stands a bald POLICE CONSTABLE. On the front bench are sitting
BARTHWICK and ROPER, and behind them JACK. In the railed
enclosure are seedy-looking men and women. Some prosperous
constables sit or stand about.
MAGISTRATE. [In his paternal and ferocious voice, hissing his s's.]
Now let us dispose of these young ladies.
USHER. Theresa Livens, Maud Livens.
[The bald CONSTABLE indicates the little girls, who remain
silent, disillusioned, inattentive.]
Relieving Officer!
[The RELIEVING OFFICER Steps into the witness-box.]
USHER. The evidence you give to the Court shall be the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God! Kiss the
book!
[The book is kissed.]
RELIEVING OFFICER. [In a monotone, pausing slightly at each
sentence end, that his evidence may be inscribed.] About ten
o'clock this morning, your Worship, I found these two little girls
in Blue Street, Fulham, crying outside a public-house. Asked where
their home was, they said they had no home. Mother had gone away.
Asked about their father. Their father had no work. Asked where
they slept last night. At their aunt's. I 've made inquiries, your
Worship. The wife has broken up the home and gone on the streets.
The husband is out of work and living in common lodging-houses. The
husband's sister has eight children of her own, and says she can't
afford to keep these little girls any longer.
MAGISTRATE. [Returning to his seat beneath the canopy of justice.]
Now, let me see. You say the mother is on the streets; what
evidence have you of that?
RELIEVING OFFICER. I have the husband here, your Worship.
MAGISTRATE. Very well; then let us see him.
[There are cries of "LIVENS." The MAGISTRATE leans forward,
and stares with hard compassion at the little girls. LIVENS
comes in. He is quiet, with grizzled hair, and a muffler for a
collar. He stands beside the witness-box.]
And you, are their father? Now, why don't you keep your little
girls at home. How is it you leave them to wander about the streets
like this?
LIVENS. I've got no home, your Worship. I'm living from 'and to
mouth. I 've got no work; and nothin' to keep them on.
MAGISTRATE. How is that?
LIVENS. [Ashamedly.] My wife, she broke my 'ome up, and pawned the
things.
MAGISTRATE. But what made you let her?
LEVINS. Your Worship, I'd no chance to stop 'er, she did it when I
was out lookin' for work.
MAGISTRATE. Did you ill-treat her?
LIVENS. [Emphatically.] I never raised my 'and to her in my life,
your Worship.
MAGISTRATE. Then what was it--did she drink?
LIVENS. Yes, your Worship.
MAGISTRATE. Was she loose in her behaviour?
LIVENS. [In a low voice.] Yes, your Worship.
MAGISTRATE. And where is she now?
LIVENS. I don't know your Worship. She went off with a man, and
after that I----
MAGISTRATE. Yes, yes. Who knows anything of her? [To the bald
CONSTABLE.] Is she known here?
RELIEVING OFFICER. Not in this district, your Worship; but I have
ascertained that she is well known----
MAGISTRATE. Yes--yes; we'll stop at that. Now [To the Father] you
say that she has broken up your home, and left these little girls.
What provision can you make for them? You look a strong man.
LIVENS. So I am, your Worship. I'm willin' enough to work, but for
the life of me I can't get anything to do.
MAGISTRATE. But have you tried?
LIVENS. I've tried everything, your Worship--I 've tried my
'ardest.
MAGISTRATE. Well, well---- [There is a silence.]
RELIEVING OFFICER. If your Worship thinks it's a case, my people are
willing to take them.
MAGISTRATE. Yes, yes, I know; but I've no evidence that this man is
not the proper guardian for his children.
[He rises oval goes back to the fire.]
RELIEVING OFFICER. The mother, your Worship, is able to get access
to them.
MAGISTRATE. Yes, yes; the mother, of course, is an improper person
to have anything to do with them. [To the Father.] Well, now what
do you say?
LIVENS. Your Worship, I can only say that if I could get work I
should be only too willing to provide for them. But what can I do,
your Worship? Here I am obliged to live from 'and to mouth in these
'ere common lodging-houses. I 'm a strong man--I'm willing to work
--I'm half as alive again as some of 'em--but you see, your Worship,
my 'airs' turned a bit, owing to the fever--[Touches his hair]--and
that's against me; and I don't seem to get a chance anyhow.
MAGISTRATE. Yes-yes. [Slowly.] Well, I think it 's a case.
[Staring his hardest at the little girls.] Now, are you willing
that these little girls should be sent to a home.
LIVENS. Yes, your Worship, I should be very willing.
MAGISTRATE. Well, I'll remand them for a week. Bring them again
to-day week; if I see no reason against it then, I 'll make an
order.
RELIEVING OFFICER. To-day week, your Worship.
[The bald CONSTABLE takes the little girls out by the
shoulders. The father follows them. The MAGISTRATE, returning
to his seat, bends over and talks to his CLERK inaudibly.]
BARTHWICK. [Speaking behind his hand.] A painful case, Roper; very
distressing state of things.
ROPER. Hundreds like this in the Police Courts.
BARTHWICK. Most distressing! The more I see of it, the more
important this question of the condition of the people seems to
become. I shall certainly make a point of taking up the cudgels in
the House. I shall move----
[The MAGISTRATE ceases talking to his CLERK.]
CLERK. Remands!
[BARTHWICK stops abruptly. There is a stir and MRS. JONES
comes in by the public door; JONES, ushered by policemen, comes
from the prisoner's door. They file into the dock.]
CLERK. James Jones, Jane Jones.
USHER. Jane Jones!
BARTHWICK. [In a whisper.] The purse--the purse must be kept out
of it, Roper. Whatever happens you must keep that out of the
papers.
[ROPER nods.]
BALD CONSTABLE. Hush!
[MRS. JONES, dressed in hey thin, black, wispy dress, and black
straw hat, stands motionless with hands crossed on the front
rail of the dock. JONES leans against the back rail of the
dock, and keeps half turning, glancing defiantly about him. He
is haggard and unshaven.]
CLERK. [Consulting with his papers.] This is the case remanded
from last Wednesday, Sir. Theft of a silver cigarette-box and
assault on the police; the two charges were taken together. Jane
Jones! James Jones!
MAGISTRATE. [Staring.] Yes, yes; I remember.
CLERK. Jane Jones.
MRS. JONES. Yes, Sir.
CLERK. Do you admit stealing a silver cigarette-box valued at five
pounds, ten shillings, from the house of John BARTHWICK, M.P.,
between the hours of 11 p.m. on Easter Monday and 8.45 a.m. on
Easter Tuesday last? Yes, or no?
MRS. JONES. [In a logy voice.] No, Sir, I do not, sir.
CLERK. James Jones? Do you admit stealing a silver cigarette-box
valued at five pounds, ten shillings, from the house of John
BARTHWICK, M.P., between the hours of 11 p.m. on Easter Monday and
8.45 A.M. on Easter Tuesday last. And further making an assault on
the police when in the execution of their duty at 3 p.m. on Easter
Tuesday? Yes or no?
JONES. [Sullenly.] Yes, but I've got a lot to say about it.
MAGISTRATE. [To the CLERK.] Yes--yes. But how comes it that these
two people are charged with the same offence? Are they husband and
wife?
CLERK. Yes, Sir. You remember you ordered a remand for further
evidence as to the story of the male prisoner.
MAGISTRATE. Have they been in custody since?
CLERK. You released the woman on her own recognisances, sir.
MAGISTRATE. Yes, yes, this is the case of the silver box; I
remember now. Well?
CLERK. Thomas Marlow.
[The cry of "THOMAS MARLOW" is repeated MARLOW comes in, and
steps into the witness-box.]
USHER. The evidence you give to the court shall be the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. Kiss the
book.
[The book is kissed. The silver box is handed up, and placed
on the rail.]
CLERK. [Reading from his papers.] Your name is Thomas Marlow? Are
you, butler to John BARTHWICK, M.P., of 6, Rockingham Gate?
MARLOW. Yes, Sir.
CLERK. Is that the box?
MARLOW. Yes Sir.
CLERK. And did you miss the same at 8.45 on the following morning,
on going to remove the tray?
MARLOW. Yes, Sir.
CLERK. Is the female prisoner known to you?
[MARLOW nods.]
Is she the charwoman employed at 6, Rockingham Gate?
[Again MARLOW nods.]
Did you at the time of your missing the box find her in the room
alone?
MARLOW. Yes, Sir.
CLERK. Did you afterwards communicate the loss to your employer,
and did he send you to the police station?
MARLOW. Yes, Sir.
CLERK. [To MRS. JONES.] Have you anything to ask him?
MRS. JONES. No, sir, nothing, thank you, sir.
CLERK. [To JONES.] James Jones, have you anything to ask this
witness?
JONES. I don't know 'im.
MAGISTRATE. Are you sure you put the box in the place you say at
the time you say?
MARLOW. Yes, your Worship.
MAGISTRATE. Very well; then now let us have the officer.
[MARLOW leaves the box, and Snow goes into it.]
USHER. The evidence you give to the court shall be the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. [The book
is kissed.]
CLERK. [Reading from his papers.] Your name is Robert Allow? You
are a detective in the X. B. division of the Metropolitan police
force? According to instructions received did you on Easter Tuesday
last proceed to the prisoner's lodgings at 34, Merthyr Street, St.
Soames's? And did you on entering see the box produced, lying on
the table?
SNOW. Yes, Sir.
CLERK. Is that the box?
Snow. [Fingering the box.] Yes, Sir.
CLERK. And did you thereupon take possession of it, and charge the
female prisoner with theft of the box from 6, Rockingham Gate? And
did she deny the same?
SNOW. Yes, Sir.
CLERK. Did you take her into custody?
Snow. Yes, Sir.
MAGISTRATE. What was her behaviour?
SNOW. Perfectly quiet, your Worship. She persisted in the denial.
That's all.
MAGISTRATE. DO you know her?
SNOW. No, your Worship.
MAGISTRATE. Is she known here?
BALD CONSTABLE. No, your Worship, they're neither of them known,
we 've nothing against them at all.
CLERK. [To MRS. JONES.] Have you anything to ask the officer?
MRS. JONES. No, sir, thank you, I 've nothing to ask him.
MAGISTRATE. Very well then--go on.
CLERK. [Reading from his papers.] And while you were taking the
female prisoner did the male prisoner interpose, and endeavour to
hinder you in the execution of your duty, and did he strike you a
blow?
SNOW. Yes, Sir.
CLERK. And did he say, "You, let her go, I took the box myself"?
SNOW. He did.
CLERK. And did you blow your whistle and obtain the assistance of
another constable, and take him into custody?
SNOW. I did.
CLERK. Was he violent on the way to the station, and did he use bad
language, and did he several times repeat that he had taken the box
himself?
[Snow nods.]
Did you thereupon ask him in what manner he had stolen the box? And
did you understand him to say he had entered the house at the
invitation of young Mr. BARTHWICK
[BARTHWICK, turning in his seat, frowns at ROPER.]
after midnight on Easter Monday, and partaken of whisky, and that
under the influence of the whisky he had taken the box?
SNOW. I did, sir.
CLERK. And was his demeanour throughout very violent?
SNOW. It was very violent.
JONES. [Breaking in.] Violent---of course it was! You put your
'ands on my wife when I kept tellin' you I took the thing myself.
MAGISTRATE. [Hissing, with protruded neck.] Now--you will have
your chance of saying what you want to say presently. Have you
anything to ask the officer?
JONES. [Sullenly.] No.
MAGISTRATE. Very well then. Now let us hear what the female
prisoner has to say first.
MRS. JONES. Well, your Worship, of course I can only say what I 've
said all along, that I did n't take the box.
MAGISTRATE. Yes, but did you know that it was taken?
MRS. JONES. No, your Worship. And, of course, to what my husband
says, your Worship, I can't speak of my own knowledge. Of course, I
know that he came home very late on the Monday night. It was past
one o'clock when he came in, and he was not himself at all.
MAGISTRATE. Had he been drinking?
MRS. JONES. Yes, your Worship.
MAGISTRATE. And was he drunk?
MRS. JONES. Yes, your Worship, he was almost quite drunk.
MAGISTRATE. And did he say anything to you?
MRS. JONES. No, your Worship, only to call me names. And of course
in the morning when I got up and went to work he was asleep. And I
don't know anything more about it until I came home again. Except
that Mr. BARTHWICK--that 's my employer, your Worship--told me the
box was missing.
MAGISTRATE. Yes, yes.
MRS. JONES. But of course when I was shaking out my husband's coat
the cigarette-box fell out and all the cigarettes were scattered on
the bed.
MAGISTRATE. You say all the cigarettes were scattered on the bed?
[To SNOW.] Did you see the cigarettes scattered on the bed?
SNOW. No, your Worship, I did not.
MAGISTRATE. You see he says he did n't see them.
JONES. Well, they were there for all that.
SNOW. I can't say, your Worship, that I had the opportunity of
going round the room; I had all my work cut out with the male
prisoner.
MAGISTRATE. [To MRS. JONES.] Well, what more have you to say?
MRS. JONES. Of course when I saw the box, your Worship, I was
dreadfully upset, and I could n't think why he had done such a
thing; when the officer came we were having words about it, because
it is ruin to me, your Worship, in my profession, and I have three
little children dependent on me.
MAGISTRATE. [Protruding his neck]. Yes--yes--but what did he say
to you?
MRS. JONES. I asked him whatever came over him to do such a thing
--and he said it was the drink. He said he had had too much to drink,
and something came over him. And of course, your Worship, he had
had very little to eat all day, and the drink does go to the head
when you have not had enough to eat. Your Worship may not know, but
it is the truth. And I would like to say that all through his
married life, I have never known him to do such a thing before,
though we have passed through great hardships and [speaking with
soft emphasis] I am quite sure he would not have done it if he had
been himself at the time.
MAGISTRATE. Yes, yes. But don't you know that that is no excuse?
MRS. JONES. Yes, your Worship. I know that it is no excuse.
[The MAGISTRATE leans over and parleys with his CLERK.]
JACK. [Leaning over from his seat behind.] I say, Dad----
BARTHWICK. Tsst! [Sheltering his mouth he speaks to ROPER.]
Roper, you had better get up now and say that considering the
circumstances and the poverty of the prisoners, we have no wish to
proceed any further, and if the magistrate would deal with the case
as one of disorder only on the part of----
BALD CONSTABLE. HSSShh!
[ROPER shakes his head.]
MAGISTRATE. Now, supposing what you say and what your husband says
is true, what I have to consider is--how did he obtain access to
this house, and were you in any way a party to his obtaining access?
You are the charwoman employed at the house?
MRS. JONES. Yes, your Worship, and of course if I had let him into
the house it would have been very wrong of me; and I have never done
such a thing in any of the houses where I have been employed.
MAGISTRATE. Well--so you say. Now let us hear what story the male
prisoner makes of it.
JONES. [Who leans with his arms on the dock behind, speaks in a
slow, sullen voice.] Wot I say is wot my wife says. I 've never
been 'ad up in a police court before, an' I can prove I took it when
in liquor. I told her, and she can tell you the same, that I was
goin' to throw the thing into the water sooner then 'ave it on my
mind.
MAGISTRATE. But how did you get into the HOUSE?
JONES. I was passin'. I was goin' 'ome from the "Goat and Bells."
MAGISTRATE. The "Goat and Bells,"--what is that? A public-house?
JONES. Yes, at the corner. It was Bank 'oliday, an' I'd 'ad a drop
to drink. I see this young Mr. BARTHWICK tryin' to find the keyhole
on the wrong side of the door.
MAGISTRATE. Well?
JONES. [Slowly and with many pauses.] Well---I 'elped 'im to find
it--drunk as a lord 'e was. He goes on, an' comes back again, and
says, I 've got nothin' for you, 'e says, but come in an' 'ave a
drink. So I went in just as you might 'ave done yourself. We 'ad a
drink o' whisky just as you might have 'ad, 'nd young Mr. BARTHWICK
says to me, "Take a drink 'nd a smoke. Take anything you like, 'e
says." And then he went to sleep on the sofa. I 'ad some more
whisky--an' I 'ad a smoke--and I 'ad some more whisky--an' I carn't
tell yer what 'appened after that.
MAGISTRATE. Do you mean to say that you were so drunk that you can
remember nothing?
JACK. [Softly to his father.] I say, that's exactly what----
BARTHWICK. TSSh!
JONES. That's what I do mean.
MAGISTRATE. And yet you say you stole the box?
JONES. I never stole the box. I took it.
MAGISTRATE. [Hissing with protruded neck.] You did not steal it--
you took it. Did it belong to you--what is that but stealing?
JONES. I took it.
MAGISTRATE. You took it--you took it away from their house and you
took it to your house----
JONES. [Sullenly breaking in.] I ain't got a house.
MAGISTRATE. Very well, let us hear what this young man Mr.--Mr.
BARTHWICK has to say to your story.
[SNOW leaves the witness-box. The BALD CONSTABLE beckons JACK,
who, clutching his hat, goes into the witness-box. ROPER moves
to the table set apart for his profession.]
SWEARING CLERK. The evidence you give to the court shall be the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.
Kiss the book.
[The book is kissed.]
ROPER. [Examining.] What is your name?
JACK. [In a low voice.] John BARTHWICK, Junior.
[The CLERK writes it down.]
ROPER. Where do you live?
JACK. At 6, Rockingham Gate.
[All his answers are recorded by the Clerk.]
ROPER. You are the son of the owner?
JACK. [In a very low voice.] Yes.
ROPER. Speak up, please. Do you know the prisoners?
JACK. [Looking at the JONESES, in a low voice.] I 've seen Mrs.
Jones. I [in a loud voice] don't know the man.
JONES. Well, I know you!
BALD CONSTABLE. HSSh!
ROPER. Now, did you come in late on the night of Easter Monday?
JACK. Yes.
ROPER. And did you by mistake leave your latch key in the door?
JACK. Yes.
MAGISTRATE. Oh! You left your latch-key in the door?
ROPER. And is that all you can remember about your coming in?
JACK. [In a loud voice.] Yes, it is.
MAGISTRATE. Now, you have heard the male prisoner's story, what do
you say to that?
JACK. [Turning to the MAGISTRATE, speaks suddenly in a confident,
straight-forward voice.] The fact of the matter is, sir, that I 'd
been out to the theatre that night, and had supper afterwards, and I
came in late.
MAGISTRATE. Do you remember this man being outside when you came
in?
JACK. No, Sir. [He hesitates.] I don't think I do.
MAGISTRATE. [Somewhat puzzled.] Well, did he help you to open the
door, as he says? Did any one help you to open the door?
JACK. No, sir--I don't think so, sir--I don't know.
MAGISTRATE. You don't know? But you must know. It is n't a usual
thing for you to have the door opened for you, is it?
JACK. [With a shamefaced smile.] No.
MAGISTRATE. Very well, then----
JACK. [Desperately.] The fact of the matter is, sir, I'm afraid
I'd had too much champagne that night.
MAGISTRATE. [Smiling.] Oh! you'd had too much champagne?
JONES. May I ask the gentleman a question?
MAGISTRATE. Yes--yes--you may ask him what questions you like.
JONES. Don't you remember you said you was a Liberal, same as your
father, and you asked me wot I was?
JACK. [With his hand against his brow.] I seem to remember----
JONES. And I said to you, "I'm a bloomin' Conservative," I said;
an' you said to me, "You look more like one of these 'ere
Socialists. Take wotever you like," you said.
JACK. [With sudden resolution.] No, I don't. I don't remember
anything of the sort.
JONES. Well, I do, an' my word's as good as yours. I 've never
been had up in a police court before. Look 'ere, don't you remember
you had a sky-blue bag in your 'and [BARTHWICK jumps.]
ROPER. I submit to your worship that these questions are hardly to
the point, the prisoner having admitted that he himself does not
remember anything. [There is a smile on the face of Justice.] It
is a case of the blind leading the blind.
JONES. [Violently.] I've done no more than wot he 'as. I'm a poor
man; I've got no money an' no friends--he 's a toff--he can do wot I
can't.
MAGISTRATE: Now, now? All this won't help you--you must be quiet.
You say you took this box? Now, what made you take it? Were you
pressed for money?
JONES. I'm always pressed for money.
MAGISTRATE. Was that the reason you took it?
JONES. No.
MAGISTRATE. [To SNOW.] Was anything found on him?
SNOW. Yes, your worship. There was six pounds twelve shillin's
found on him, and this purse.
[The red silk purse is handed to the MAGISTRATE. BARTHWICK
rises his seat, but hastily sits down again.]
MAGISTRATE. [Staring at the purse.] Yes, yes--let me see [There is
a silence.] No, no, I 've nothing before me as to the purse. How
did you come by all that money?
JONES. [After a long pause, suddenly.] I declines to say.
MAGISTRATE. But if you had all that money, what made you take this
box?
JONES. I took it out of spite.
MAGISTRATE. [Hissing, with protruded neck.] You took it out of
spite? Well now, that's something! But do you imagine you can go
about the town taking things out of spite?
JONES. If you had my life, if you'd been out of work----
MAGISTRATE. Yes, yes; I know--because you're out of work you think
it's an excuse for everything.
JONES. [Pointing at JACK.] You ask 'im wot made 'im take the----
ROPER. [Quietly.] Does your Worship require this witness in the
box any longer?
MAGISTRATE. [Ironically.] I think not; he is hardly profitable.
[JACK leaves the witness-box, and hanging his head, resumes his
seat.]
JONES. You ask 'im wot made 'im take the lady's----
[But the BALD CONSTABLE catches him by the sleeve.]
BALD CONSTABLE. SSSh!
MAGISTRATE. [Emphatically.] Now listen to me.
I 've nothing to do with what he may or may not have taken. Why did
you resist the police in the execution of their duty?
JONES. It war n't their duty to take my wife, a respectable woman,
that 'ad n't done nothing.
MAGISTRATE. But I say it was. What made you strike the officer a
blow?
JONES. Any man would a struck 'im a blow. I'd strike 'im again, I
would.
MAGISTRATE. You are not making your case any better by violence.
How do you suppose we could get on if everybody behaved like you?
JONES. [Leaning forward, earnestly.] Well, wot, about 'er; who's
to make up to 'er for this? Who's to give 'er back 'er good name?
MRS. JONES. Your Worship, it's the children that's preying on his
mind, because of course I 've lost my work. And I've had to find
another room owing to the scandal.
MAGISTRATE. Yes, yes, I know--but if he had n't acted like this
nobody would have suffered.
JONES. [Glaring round at JACK.] I 've done no worse than wot 'e
'as. Wot I want to know is wot 's goin' to be done to 'im.
[The BALD CONSTABLE again says "HSSh"]
ROPER. Mr. BARTHWICK wishes it known, your Worship, that
considering the poverty of the prisoners, he does not press the
charge as to the box. Perhaps your Worship would deal with the case
as one of disorder.
JONES. I don't want it smothered up, I want it all dealt with fair
--I want my rights----
MAGISTRATE. [Rapping his desk.] Now you have said all you have to
say, and you will be quiet.
[There is a silence; the MAGISTRATE bends over and parleys with
his CLERK.]
Yes, I think I may discharge the woman. [In a kindly voice he
addresses MRS. JONES, who stands unmoving with her hands crossed on
the rail.] It is very unfortunate for you that this man has behaved
as he has. It is not the consequences to him but the consequences
to you. You have been brought here twice, you have lost your work--
[He glares at JONES]--and this is what always happens. Now you may
go away, and I am very sorry it was necessary to bring you here at
all.
MRS. JONES. [Softly.] Thank you very much, your Worship.
[She leaves the dock, and looking back at JONES, twists her
fingers and is still.]
MAGISTRATE. Yes, yes, but I can't pass it over. Go away, there's a
good woman.
[MRS. JONES stands back. The MAGISTRATE leans his head on his
hand; then raising it he speaks to JONES.]
Now, listen to me. Do you wish the case to be settled here, or do
you wish it to go before a jury?
JONES. [Muttering.] I don't want no jury.
MAGISTRATE. Very well then, I will deal with it here. [After a
pause.] You have pleaded guilty to stealing this box----
JONES. Not to stealin'----
BALD CONSTABLE. HSSShh!
MAGISTRATE. And to assaulting the police----
JONES. Any man as was a man----
MAGISTRATE. Your conduct here has been most improper. You give the
excuse that you were drunk when you stole the box. I tell you that
is no excuse. If you choose to get drunk and break the law
afterwards you must take the consequences. And let me tell you that
men like you, who get drunk and give way to your spite or whatever
it is that's in you, are--are--a nuisance to the community.
JACK. [Leaning from his seat.] Dad! that's what you said to me!
BARTHWICK. TSSt!
[There is a silence, while the MAGISTRATE consults his CLERK;
JONES leans forward waiting.]
MAGISTRATE. This is your first offence, and I am going to give you
a light sentence. [Speaking sharply, but without expression.] One
month with hard labour.
[He bends, and parleys with his CLERK. The BALD CONSTABLE and
another help JONES from the dock.]
JONES. [Stopping and twisting round.] Call this justice? What
about 'im? 'E got drunk! 'E took the purse--'e took the purse but
[in a muffled shout] it's 'is money got 'im off--JUSTICE!
[The prisoner's door is shut on JONES, and from the
seedy-looking men and women comes a hoarse and whispering groan.]
MAGISTRATE. We will now adjourn for lunch! [He rises from his
seat.]
[The Court is in a stir. ROPER gets up and speaks to the
reporter. JACK, throwing up his head, walks with a swagger to
the corridor; BARTHWICK follows.]
MRS. JONES. [Turning to him zenith a humble gesture.] Oh! sir!
[BARTHWICK hesitates, then yielding to his nerves, he makes a
shame-faced gesture of refusal, and hurries out of court. MRS.
JONES stands looking after him.]
The curtain falls.
JOY
A PLAY ON THE LETTER "I"
IN THREE ACTS
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
COLONEL HOPE, R.A., retired
MRS. HOPE, his wife
MISS BEECH, their old governess
LETTY, their daughter
ERNEST BLUNT, her husband
MRS. GWYN, their niece
JOY, her daughter
DICK MERTON, their young friend
HON. MAURICE LEVER, their guest
ROSE, their parlour-maid
TIME: The present. The action passes throughout midsummer day on the
lawn of Colonel Hope's house, near the Thames above Oxford.
ACT I
The time is morning, and the scene a level lawn, beyond which
the river is running amongst fields. A huge old beech tree
overshadows everything, in the darkness of whose hollow many
things are hidden. A rustic seat encircles it. A low wall
clothed in creepers, with two openings, divides this lawn from
the flowery approaches to the house. Close to the wall there is
a swing. The sky is clear and sunny. COLONEL HOPE is seated in
a garden-chair, reading a newspaper through pince-nez. He is
fifty-five and bald, with drooping grey moustaches and a
weather-darkened face. He wears a flannel suit and a hat from
Panama; a tennis racquet leans against his chair. MRS. HOPE
comes quickly through the opening of the wall, with roses in her
hands. She is going grey; she wears tan gauntlets, and no hat.
Her manner is decided, her voice emphatic, as though aware that
there is no nonsense in its owner's composition. Screened from
sight, MISS BEECH is seated behind the hollow tree; and JOY is
perched on a lower branch hidden by foliage.
MRS. HOPE. I told Molly in my letter that she'd have to walk up,
Tom.
COLONEL. Walk up in this heat? My dear, why didn't you order
Benson's fly?
MRS. HOPE. Expense for nothing! Bob can bring up her things in the
barrow. I've told Joy I won't have her going down to meet the train.
She's so excited about her mother's coming there's no doing anything
with her.
COLONEL. No wonder, after two months.
MRS. HOPE. Well, she's going home to-morrow; she must just keep
herself fresh for the dancing tonight. I'm not going to get people
in to dance, and have Joy worn out before they begin.
COLONEL. [Dropping his paper.] I don't like Molly's walking up.
MRS. HOPE. A great strong woman like Molly Gwyn! It isn't half a
mile.
COLONEL. I don't like it, Nell; it's not hospitable.
MRS. HOPE. Rubbish! If you want to throw away money, you must just
find some better investment than those wretched 3 per cents. of
yours. The greenflies are in my roses already! Did you ever see
anything so disgusting? [They bend over the roses they have grown,
and lose all sense of everything.] Where's the syringe? I saw you
mooning about with it last night, Tom.
COLONEL. [Uneasily.] Mooning!
[He retires behind his paper. MRS. HOPE enters the hollow of
the tree.]
There's an account of that West Australian swindle. Set of ruffians!
Listen to this, Nell! "It is understood that amongst the
share-holders are large numbers of women, clergymen, and Army officers."
How people can be such fools!
[Becoming aware that his absorption is unobserved, he drops his
glasses, and reverses his chair towards the tree.]
MRS. HOPE. [Reappearing with a garden syringe.] I simply won't have
Dick keep his fishing things in the tree; there's a whole potful of
disgusting worms. I can't touch them. You must go and take 'em out,
Tom.
[In his turn the COLONEL enters the hollow of the tree.]
MRS. HOPE. [Personally.] What on earth's the pleasure of it? I
can't see! He never catches anything worth eating.
[The COLONEL reappears with a paint pot full of worms; he holds
them out abstractedly.]
MRS. HOPE. [Jumping.] Don't put them near me!
MISS BEECH. [From behind the tree.] Don't hurt the poor creatures.
COLONEL. [Turning.] Hallo, Peachey? What are you doing round
there?
[He puts the worms down on the seat.]
MRS. HOPE. Tom, take the worms off that seat at once!
COLONEL. [Somewhat flurried.] Good gad! I don't know what to do
with the beastly worms!
MRS. HOPE. It's not my business to look after Dick's worms. Don't
put them on the ground. I won't have them anywhere where they can
crawl about. [She flicks some greenflies off her roses.]
COLONEL. [Looking into the pot as though the worms could tell him
where to put them.] Dash!
MISS BEECH. Give them to me.
MRS. HOPE. [Relieved.] Yes, give them to Peachey.
[There comes from round the tree Miss BEECH, old-fashioned,
barrel-shaped, balloony in the skirts. She takes the paint pot,
and sits beside it on the rustic seat.]
MISS BEECH. Poor creatures!
MRS. HOPE. Well, it's beyond me how you can make pets of worms-
wriggling, crawling, horrible things!
[ROSE, who is young and comely, in a pale print frock, comes
from the house and places letters before her on a silver
salver.]
[Taking the letters.]
What about Miss joy's frock, Rose?
ROSE. Please, 'm, I can't get on with the back without Miss Joy.
MRS. HOPE. Well, then you must just find her. I don't know where
she is.
ROSE. [In a slow, sidelong manner.] If you please, Mum, I think
Miss Joy's up in the----
[She stops, seeing Miss BEECH signing to her with both hands.]
MRS. HOPE. [Sharply.] What is it, Peachey?
MISS BEECH. [Selecting a finger.] Pricked meself!
MRS. HOPE. Let's look!
[She bends to look, but Miss BEECH places the finger in her
mouth.]
ROSE. [Glancing askance at the COLONEL.] If you please, Mum, it's
below the waist; I think I can manage with the dummy.
MRS. HOPE. Well, you can try. [Opening her letter as ROSE retires.]
Here's Molly about her train.
MISS BEECH. Is there a letter for me?
MRS. HOPE. No, Peachey.
MISS BEECH. There never is.
COLONEL. What's that? You got four by the first post.
MISS BEECH. Exceptions!
COLONEL. [Looking over his glasses.] Why! You know, you get 'em
every day!
MRS. HOPE. Molly says she'll be down by the eleven thirty. [In an
injured voice.] She'll be here in half an hour! [Reading with
disapproval from the letter.] "MAURICE LEVER is coming down by the
same train to see Mr. Henty about the Tocopala Gold Mine. Could you
give him a bed for the night?"
[Silence, slight but ominous.]
COLONEL. [Calling into his aid his sacred hospitality.] Of course
we must give him a bed!
MRS. HOPE. Just like a man! What room I should like to know!
COLONEL. Pink.
MRS. HOPE. As if Molly wouldn't have the pink!
COLONEL. [Ruefully.] I thought she'd have the blue!
MRS. HOPE. You know perfectly well it's full of earwigs, Tom. I
killed ten there yesterday morning.
MISS BEECH. Poor creatures!
MRS. HOPE. I don't know that I approve of this Mr. Lever's dancing
attendance. Molly's only thirty-six.
COLONEL. [In a high voice.] You can't refuse him a bed; I never
heard of such a thing.
MRS. HOPE. [Reading from the letter.] "This gold mine seems to be a
splendid chance. [She glances at the COLONEL.] I've put all my
spare cash into it. They're issuing some Preference shares now; if
Uncle Tom wants an investment"--[She pauses, then in a changed,
decided voice ]--Well, I suppose I shall have to screw him in
somehow.
COLONEL. What's that about gold mines? Gambling nonsense! Molly
ought to know my views.
MRS. HOPE. [Folding the letter away out of her consciousness.] Oh!
your views! This may be a specially good chance.
MISS BEECH. Ahem! Special case!
MRS. HOPE. [Paying no attention.] I 'm sick of these 3 per cent.
dividends. When you've only got so little money, to put it all into
that India Stock, when it might be earning 6 per cent. at least,
quite safely! There are ever so many things I want.
COLONEL. There you go!
MRS. HOPE. As to Molly, I think it's high time her husband came home
to look after her, instead of sticking out there in that hot place.
In fact
[Miss BEECH looks up at the tree and exhibits cerebral
excitement]
I don't know what Geoff's about; why doesn't he find something in
England, where they could live together.
COLONEL. Don't say anything against Molly, Nell!
MRS. HOPE. Well, I don't believe in husband and wife being
separated. That's not my idea of married life.
[The COLONEL whistles quizzically.]
Ah, yes, she's your niece, not mime! Molly's very----
MISS BEECH. Ouch! [She sucks her finger.]
MRS. HOPE. Well, if I couldn't sew at your age, Peachey, without
pricking my fingers! Tom, if I have Mr. Lever here, you'll just
attend to what I say and look into that mine!
COLONEL. Look into your grandmother! I have n't made a study of
geology for nothing. For every ounce you take out of a gold mine,
you put an ounce and a half in. Any fool knows that, eh, Peachey?
MISS BEECH. I hate your horrid mines, with all the poor creatures
underground.
MRS. HOPE. Nonsense, Peachey! As if they'd go there if they did n't
want to!
COLONEL. Why don't you read your paper, then you'd see what a lot of
wild-cat things there are about.
MRS. HOPE. [Abstractedly.] I can't put Ernest and Letty in the blue
room, there's only the single bed. Suppose I put Mr. Lever there,
and say nothing about the earwigs. I daresay he'll never notice.
COLONEL. Treat a guest like that!
MRS. HOPE. Then where am I to put him for goodness sake?
COLONEL. Put him in my dressing-room, I'll turn out.
MRS. HOPE. Rubbish, Tom, I won't have you turned out, that's flat.
He can have Joy's room, and she can sleep with the earwigs.
JOY. [From her hiding-place upon a lower branch of the hollow tree.]
I won't.
[MRS. HOPE and the COLONEL jump.]
COLONEL. God bless my soul!
MRS. HOPE. You wretched girl! I told you never to climb that tree
again. Did you know, Peachey? [Miss BEECH smiles.] She's always up
there, spoiling all her frocks. Come down now, Joy; there's a good
child!
JOY. I don't want to sleep with earwigs, Aunt Nell.
MISS BEECH. I'll sleep with the poor creatures.
MRS. HOPE, [After a pause.] Well, it would be a mercy if you would
for once, Peachey.
COLONEL. Nonsense, I won't have Peachey----
MRS. HOPE. Well, who is to sleep there then?
JOY. [Coaxingly.] Let me sleep with Mother, Aunt Nell, do!
MRS. HOPE. Litter her up with a great girl like you, as if we'd only
one spare room! Tom, see that she comes down--I can't stay here, I
must manage something. [She goes away towards the house.]
COLONEL. [Moving to the tree, and looking up.] You heard what your
aunt said?
JOY. [Softly.] Oh, Uncle Tom!
COLONEL. I shall have to come up after you.
JOY. Oh, do, and Peachey too!
COLONEL. [Trying to restrain a smile.] Peachey, you talk to her.
[Without waiting for MISS BEECH, however, he proceeds.] What'll your
aunt say to me if I don't get you down?
MISS BEECH. Poor creature!
JOY. I don't want to be worried about my frock.
COLONEL. [Scratching his bald head.] Well, I shall catch it.
JOY. Oh, Uncle Tom, your head is so beautiful from here! [Leaning
over, she fans it with a leafy twig.]
MISS BEECH. Disrespectful little toad!
COLONEL. [Quickly putting on his hat.] You'll fall out, and a
pretty mess that'll make on--[he looks uneasily at the ground]--my
lawn!
[A voice is heard calling "Colonel! Colonel!]"
JOY. There's Dick calling you, Uncle Tom.
[She disappears.]
DICK. [Appearing in the opening of the wall.] Ernie's waiting to
play you that single, Colonel!
[He disappears.]
JOY. Quick, Uncle Tom! Oh! do go, before he finds I 'm up here.
MISS. BEECH. Secret little creature!
[The COLONEL picks up his racquet, shakes his fist, and goes
away.]
JOY. [Calmly.] I'm coming down now, Peachey.
[Climbing down.]
Look out! I'm dropping on your head.
MISS BEECH. [Unmoved.] Don't hurt yourself!
[Joy drops on the rustic seat and rubs her shin. Told you so!]
[She hunts in a little bag for plaster.]
Let's see!
JOY. [Seeing the worms.] Ugh!
MISS BEECH. What's the matter with the poor creatures?
JOY. They're so wriggly!
[She backs away and sits down in the swing. She is just
seventeen, light and slim, brown-haired, fresh-coloured, and
grey-eyed; her white frock reaches to her ankles, she wears a
sunbonnet.] Peachey, how long were you Mother's governess.
MISS BEECH. Five years.
JOY. Was she as bad to teach as me?
MISS BEECH. Worse!
[Joy claps her hands.]
She was the worst girl I ever taught.
JOY. Then you weren't fond of her?
MISS BEECH. Oh! yes, I was.
JOY. Fonder than of me?
MISS BEECH. Don't you ask such a lot of questions.
JOY. Peachey, duckie, what was Mother's worst fault?
MISS BEECH. Doing what she knew she oughtn't.
JOY. Was she ever sorry?
MISS BEECH. Yes, but she always went on doin' it.
JOY. I think being sorry 's stupid!
MISS BEECH. Oh, do you?
JOY. It isn't any good. Was Mother revengeful, like me?
MISS BEECH. Ah! Wasn't she?
JOY. And jealous?
MISS BEECH. The most jealous girl I ever saw.
JOY. [Nodding.] I like to be like her.
MISS BEECH. [Regarding her intently.] Yes! you've got all your
troubles before you.
JOY. Mother was married at eighteen, wasn't she, Peachey? Was she--
was she much in love with Father then?
MISS BEECH. [With a sniff.] About as much as usual. [She takes the
paint pot, and walking round begins to release the worms.]
JOY. [Indifferently.] They don't get on now, you know.
MISS BEECH. What d'you mean by that, disrespectful little creature?
JOY. [In a hard voice.] They haven't ever since I've known them.
MISS BEECH. [Looks at her, and turns away again.] Don't talk about
such things.
JOY. I suppose you don't know Mr. Lever? [Bitterly.] He's such a
cool beast. He never loses his temper.
MISS BEECH. Is that why you don't like him?
JOY. [Frowning.] No--yes--I don't know.
MISS BEECH. Oh! perhaps you do like him?
JOY. I don't; I hate him.
MISS BEECH. [Standing still.] Fie! Naughty Temper!
JOY. Well, so would you! He takes up all Mother's time.
MISS BEECH. [In a peculiar voice.] Oh! does he?
JOY. When he comes I might just as well go to bed. [Passionately.]
And now he's chosen to-day to come down here, when I haven't seen her
for two months! Why couldn't he come when Mother and I'd gone home.
It's simply brutal!
MISS BEECH. But your mother likes him?
JOY. [Sullenly.] I don't want her to like him.
MISS BEECH. [With a long look at Joy.] I see!
JOY. What are you doing, Peachey?
MISS BEECH. [Releasing a worm.] Letting the poor creatures go.
JOY. If I tell Dick he'll never forgive you.
MISS BEECH. [Sidling behind the swing and plucking off Joy's
sunbonnet. With devilry.] Ah-h-h! You've done your hair up; so
that's why you wouldn't come down!
JOY. [Springing up, anal pouting.] I didn't want any one to see
before Mother. You are a pig, Peachey!
MISS BEECH. I thought there was something!
JOY. [Twisting round.] How does it look?
MISS BEECH. I've seen better.
JOY. You tell any one before Mother comes, and see what I do!
MISS BEECH. Well, don't you tell about my worms, then!
JOY. Give me my hat! [Backing hastily towards the tree, and putting
her finger to her lips.] Look out! Dick!
MISS BEECH. Oh! dear!
[She sits down on the swing, concealing the paint pot with her
feet and skirts.]
JOY. [On the rustic seat, and in a violent whisper.] I hope the
worms will crawl up your legs!
[DICK, in flannels and a hard straw hat comes in. He is a quiet
and cheerful boy of twenty. His eyes are always fixed on joy.]
DICK. [Grimacing.] The Colonel's getting licked. Hallo! Peachey,
in the swing?
JOY. [Chuckling.] Swing her, Dick!
MISS BEECH. [Quivering with emotion.] Little creature!
JOY. Swing her!
[DICK takes the ropes.]
MISS BEECH. [Quietly.] It makes me sick, young man.
DICK. [Patting her gently on the back.] All right, Peachey.
MISS BEECH. [Maliciously.] Could you get me my sewing from the
seat? Just behind Joy.
JOY. [Leaning her head against the tree.] If you do, I won't dance
with you to-night.
[DICK stands paralysed. Miss BEECH gets off the swing, picks up
the paint pot, and stands concealing it behind her.]
JOY. Look what she's got behind her, sly old thing!
MISS BEECH. Oh! dear!
JOY. Dance with her, Dick!
MISS BEECH. If he dare!
JOY. Dance with her, or I won't dance with you to-night.
[She whistles a waltz.]
DICK. [Desperately.] Come on then, Peachey. We must.
JOY. Dance, dance!
[DICK seizes Miss BEECH by the waist. She drops the paint pot.
They revolve.] [Convulsed.]
Oh, Peachey, Oh!
[Miss BEECH is dropped upon the rustic seat. DICK seizes joy's
hands and drags her up.]
No, no! I won't!
MISS BEECH. [Panting.] Dance, dance with the poor young man! [She
moves her hands.] La la-la-la la-la la la!
[DICK and JOY dance.]
DICK. By Jove, Joy! You've done your hair up. I say, how jolly!
You do look----
JOY. [Throwing her hands up to her hair.] I did n't mean you to
see!
DICK. [In a hurt voice.] Oh! didn't you? I'm awfully sorry!
JOY. [Flashing round.] Oh, you old Peachey!
[She looks at the ground, and then again at DICK.]
MISS BEECH. [Sidling round the tree.] Oh! dear!
JOY. [Whispering.] She's been letting out your worms.
[Miss BEECH disappears from view.]
Look!
DICK. [Quickly.] Hang the worms! Joy, promise me the second and
fourth and sixth and eighth and tenth and supper, to-night. Promise!
Do!
[Joy shakes her head.]
It's not much to ask.
JOY. I won't promise anything.
DICK. Why not?
JOY. Because Mother's coming. I won't make any arrangements.
DICK. [Tragically.] It's our last night.
JOY. [Scornfully.] You don't understand! [Dancing and clasping her
hands.] Mother's coming, Mother's coming!
DICK. [Violently.] I wish----Promise, Joy!
JOY. [Looking over her shoulder.] Sly old thing! If you'll pay
Peachey out, I'll promise you supper!
MISS BEECH. [From behind the tree.] I hear you.
JOY. [Whispering.] Pay her out, pay her out! She's let out all
your worms!
DICK. [Looking moodily at the paint pot.] I say, is it true that
Maurice Lever's coming with your mother? I've met him playing
cricket, he's rather a good sort.
JOY. [Flashing out.] I hate him.
DICK. [Troubled.] Do you? Why? I thought--I didn't know--if I'd
known of course, I'd have----
[He is going to say "hated him too!" But the voices of ERNEST
BLUNT and the COLONEL are heard approaching, in dispute.]
JOY. Oh! Dick, hide me, I don't want my hair seen till Mother
comes.
[She springs into the hollow tree. The COLONEL and ERNEST
appear in the opening of the wall.]
ERNEST. The ball was out, Colonel.
COLONEL. Nothing of the sort.
ERNEST. A good foot out.
COLONEL. It was not, sir. I saw the chalk fly.
[ERNEST is twenty-eight, with a little moustache, and the
positive cool voice of a young man who knows that he knows
everything. He is perfectly calm.]
ERNEST. I was nearer to it than you.
COLONEL. [In a high, hot voice.] I don't care where you were, I
hate a fellow who can't keep cool.
MISS BEECH. [From behind the hollow tree.] Fie! Fie!
ERNEST. We're two to one, Letty says the ball was out.
COLONEL. Letty's your wife, she'd say anything.
ERNEST. Well, look here, Colonel, I'll show you the very place it
pitched.
COLONEL. Gammon! You've lost your temper, you don't know what
you're talking about.
ERNEST. [coolly.] I suppose you'll admit the rule that one umpires
one's own court.
COLONEL. [Hotly.] Certainly not, in this case!
MISS BEECH. [From behind the hollow tree.] Special case!
ERNEST. [Moving chin in collar--very coolly.] Well, of course if
you won't play the game!
COLONEL. [In a towering passion.] If you lose your temper like
this, I 'll never play with you again.
[To LETTY, a pretty soul in a linen suit, approaching through
the wall.]
Do you mean to say that ball was out, Letty?
LETTY. Of course it was, Father.
COLONEL. You say that because he's your husband. [He sits on the
rustic seat.] If your mother'd been there she'd have backed me up!
LETTY. Mother wants Joy, Dick, about her frock.
DICK. I--I don't know where she is.
MISS BEECH. [From behind the hollow tree.] Ahem!
LETTY. What's the matter, Peachey?
MISS BEECH. Swallowed a fly. Poor creature!
ERNEST. [Returning to his point.] Why I know the ball was out,
Colonel, was because it pitched in a line with that arbutus tree.
COLONEL. [Rising.] Arbutus tree! [To his daughter.] Where's your
mother?
LETTY. In the blue room, Father.
ERNEST. The ball was a good foot out; at the height it was coming
when it passed me.
COLONEL. [Staring at him.] You're a--you're aa theorist! From
where you were you could n't see the ball at all. [To LETTY.]
Where's your mother?
LETTY. [Emphatically.] In the blue room, Father!
[The COLONEL glares confusedly, and goes away towards the blue
room.]
ERNEST. [In the swing, and with a smile.] Your old Dad'll never be
a sportsman!
LETTY. [Indignantly.] I wish you wouldn't call Father old, Ernie!
What time's Molly coming, Peachey?
[ROSE has come from the house, and stands waiting for a chance
to speak.]
ERNEST. [Breaking in.] Your old Dad's only got one fault: he can't
take an impersonal view of things.
MISS BEECH. Can you find me any one who can?
ERNEST. [With a smile.] Well, Peachey!
MISS BEECH. [Ironically.] Oh! of course, there's you!
ERNEST. I don't know about that! But----
ROSE. [To LETTY,] Please, Miss, the Missis says will you and Mr.
Ernest please to move your things into Miss Peachey's room.
ERNEST. [Vexed.] Deuce of a nuisance havin' to turn out for this
fellow Lever. What did Molly want to bring him for?
MISS BEECH. Course you've no personal feeling in the matter!
ROSE. [Speaking to Miss BEECH.] The Missis says you're to please
move your things into the blue room, please Miss.
LETTY. Aha, Peachey! That settles you! Come on, Ernie!
[She goes towards the house. ERNEST, rising from the swing,
turns to Miss BEECH, who follows.]
ERNEST. [Smiling, faintly superior.] Personal, not a bit! I only
think while Molly 's out at grass, she oughtn't to----
MISS BEECH. [Sharply.] Oh! do you?
[She hustles ERNEST out through the wall, but his voice is heard
faintly from the distance: "I think it's jolly thin."]
ROSE. [To DICK.] The Missis says you're to take all your worms and
things, Sir, and put them where they won't be seen.
DICK. [Shortly.] Have n't got any!
ROSE. The Missis says she'll be very angry if you don't put your
worms away; and would you come and help kill earwigs in the blue----?
DICK. Hang! [He goes, and ROSE is left alone.]
ROSE. [Looking straight before her.] Please, Miss Joy, the Missis
says will you go to her about your frock.
[There is a little pause, then from the hollow tree joy's voice
is heard.]
JOY. No-o!
ROSE. If you did n't come, I was to tell you she was going to put
you in the blue.
[Joy looks out of the tree.]
[Immovable, but smiling.]
Oh, Miss joy, you've done your hair up! [Joy retires into the tree.]
Please, Miss, what shall I tell the Missis?
JOY. [Joy's voice is heard.] Anything you like.
ROSE. [Over her shoulder.] I shall be drove to tell her a story,
Miss.
JOY. All right! Tell it.
[ROSE goes away, and JOY comes out. She sits on the rustic seat
and waits. DICK, coming softly from the house, approaches her.]
DICK. [Looking at her intently.] Joy! I wanted to say something
[Joy does not look at him, but twists her fingers.]
I shan't see you again you know after to-morrow till I come up for
the 'Varsity match.
JOY. [Smiling.] But that's next week.
DICK. Must you go home to-morrow?
[Joy nods three times.]
[Coming closer.]
I shall miss you so awfully. You don't know how I----
[Joy shakes her head.]
Do look at me! [JOY steals a look.] Oh! Joy!
[Again joy shakes her head.]
JOY. [Suddenly.] Don't!
DICK. [Seizing her hand.] Oh, Joy! Can't you----
JOY. [Drawing the hand away.] Oh! don't.
DICK. [Bending his head.] It's--it's--so----
JOY. [Quietly.] Don't, Dick!
DICK. But I can't help it! It's too much for me, Joy, I must tell
you----
[MRS. GWYN is seen approaching towards the house.]
JOY. [Spinning round.] It's Mother--oh, Mother!
[She rushes at her.]
[MRS. GWYN is a handsome creature of thirty-six, dressed in a
muslin frock. She twists her daughter round, and kisses her.]
MRS. GWYN. How sweet you look with your hair up, Joy! Who 's this?
[Glancing with a smile at DICK.]
JOY. Dick Merton--in my letters you know.
[She looks at DICK as though she wished him gone.]
MRS. GWYN. How do you do?
DICK. [Shaking hands.] How d 'you do? I think if you'll excuse me
--I'll go in.
[He goes uncertainly.]
MRS. GWYN. What's the matter with him?
JOY. Oh, nothing! [Hugging her.] Mother! You do look such a duck.
Why did you come by the towing-path, was n't it cooking?
MRS. GWYN. [Avoiding her eyes.] Mr. Lever wanted to go into Mr.
Henty's.
[Her manner is rather artificially composed.]
JOY. [Dully.] Oh! Is he-is he really coming here, Mother?
MRS. GWYN. [Whose voice has hardened just a little.] If Aunt Nell's
got a room for him--of course--why not?
JOY. [Digging her chin into her mother's shoulder.]
[Why couldn't he choose some day when we'd gone? I wanted you
all to myself.]
MRS. GWYN. You are a quaint child--when I was your age----
JOY. [Suddenly looking up.] Oh! Mother, you must have been a
chook!
MRS. GWYN. Well, I was about twice as old as you, I know that.
JOY. Had you any--any other offers before you were married, Mother?
MRS. GWYN. [Smilingly.] Heaps!
JOY. [Reflectively.] Oh!
MRS. GWYN. Why? Have you been having any?
JOY. [Glancing at MRS. GWYN, and then down.] N-o, of course not!
MRS. GWYN. Where are they all? Where's Peachey?
JOY. Fussing about somewhere; don't let's hurry! Oh! you duckie--
duckie! Aren't there any letters from Dad?
MRS. GWYN. [In a harder voice.] Yes, one or two.
JOY. [Hesitating.] Can't I see?
MRS. GWYN. I didn't bring them. [Changing the subject obviously.]
Help me to tidy--I'm so hot I don't know what to do.
[She takes out a powder-puff bag, with a tiny looking-glass.]
JOY. How lovely it'll be to-morrow-going home!
MRS. GWYN. [With an uneasy look.] London's dreadfully stuffy, Joy.
You 'll only get knocked up again.
JOY. [With consternation.] Oh! but Mother, I must come.
MRS. GWYN. (Forcing a smile.) Oh, well, if you must, you must!
[Joy makes a dash at her.]
Don't rumple me again. Here's Uncle Tom.
JOY. [Quickly.] Mother, we're going to dance tonight; promise to
dance with me--there are three more girls than men, at least--and
don't dance too much with--with--you know--because I'm--[dropping her
voice and very still]--jealous.
MRS. GWYN. [Forcing a laugh.] You are funny!
JOY. [Very quickly.] I haven't made any engagements because of you.
[The COLONEL approaches through the wall.]
MRS. GWYN. Well, Uncle Tom?
COLONEL. [Genially.] Why, Molly! [He kisses her.] What made you
come by the towing-path?
JOY. Because it's so much cooler, of course.
COLONEL. Hallo! What's the matter with you? Phew! you've got your
hair up! Go and tell your aunt your mother's on the lawn. Cut
along!
[Joy goes, blowing a kiss.]
Cracked about you, Molly! Simply cracked! We shall miss her when
you take her off to-morrow. [He places a chair for her.] Sit down,
sit down, you must be tired in this heat. I 've sent Bob for your
things with the wheelbarrow; what have you got?--only a bag, I
suppose.
MRS. GWYN. [Sitting, with a smile.] That's all, Uncle Tom, except--
my trunk and hat-box.
COLONEL. Phew! And what's-his-name brought a bag, I suppose?
MRS. GWYN. They're all together. I hope it's not too much, Uncle
Tom.
COLONEL. [Dubiously.] Oh! Bob'll manage! I suppose you see a good
deal of--of--Lever. That's his brother in the Guards, isn't it?
MRS. GWYN. Yes.
COLONEL. Now what does this chap do?
MRS. GWYN. What should he do, Uncle Tom? He's a Director.
COLONEL. Guinea-pig! [Dubiously.] Your bringing him down was a
good idea.
[MRS. GWYN, looking at him sidelong, bites her lips.]
I should like to have a look at him. But, I say, you know, Molly--
mines, mines! There are a lot of these chaps about, whose business
is to cook their own dinners. Your aunt thinks----
MRS. GWYN. Oh! Uncle Tom, don't tell me what Aunt Nell thinks!
COLONEL. Well-well! Look here, old girl! It's my experience never
to--what I mean is--never to trust too much to a man who has to do
with mining. I've always refused to have anything to do with mines.
If your husband were in England, of course, I'd say nothing.
MRS. GWYN. [Very still.] We'd better keep him out of the question,
had n't we?
COLONEL. Of course, if you wish it, my dear.
MRS. GWYN. Unfortunately, I do.
COLONEL. [Nervously.] Ah! yes, I know; but look here, Molly, your
aunt thinks you're in a very delicate position-in fact, she thinks
you see too much of young Lever.
MRS. GWYN. [Stretching herself like an angry cat.] Does she? And
what do you think?
COLONEL. I? I make a point of not thinking. I only know that here
he is, and I don't want you to go burning your fingers, eh?
[MRS. GWYN sits with a vindictive smile.]
A gold mine's a gold mine. I don't mean he deliberately--but they
take in women and parsons, and--and all sorts of fools. [Looking
down.] And then, you know, I can't tell your feelings, my dear, and
I don't want to; but a man about town 'll compromise a woman as soon
as he'll look at her, and [softly shaking his head] I don't like
that, Molly! It 's not the thing!
[MRS. GWYN sits unmoved, smiling the same smile, and the COLONEL
gives her a nervous look.]
If--if you were any other woman I should n't care--and if--if you
were a plain woman, damme, you might do what you liked! I know you
and Geoff don't get on; but here's this child of yours, devoted to
you, and--and don't you see, old girl? Eh?
MRS. GWYN. [With a little hard laugh.] Thanks! Perfectly! I
suppose as you don't think, Uncle Tom, it never occurred to you that
I have rather a lonely time of it.
COLONEL. [With compunction.] Oh! my dear, yes, of course I know it
must be beastly.
MRS. GWYN. [Stonily.] It is.
COLONEL. Yes, yes! [Speaking in a surprised voice.] I don't know
what I 'm talking like this for! It's your aunt! She goes on at me
till she gets on my nerves. What d' you think she wants me to do
now? Put money into this gold mine! Did you ever hear such folly?
MRS. GWYN. [Breaking into laughter.] Oh! Uncle Tom!
COLONEL. All very well for you to laugh, Molly!
MRS. GWYN. [Calmly.] And how much are you going to put in?
COLONEL. Not a farthing! Why, I've got nothing but my pension and
three thousand India stock!
MRS. GWYN. Only ninety pounds a year, besides your pension! D' you
mean to say that's all you've got, Uncle Tom? I never knew that
before. What a shame!
COLONEL. [Feelingly.] It is a, d--d shame! I don't suppose there's
another case in the army of a man being treated as I've been.
MRS. GWYN. But how on earth do you manage here on so little?
COLONEL. [Brooding.] Your aunt's very funny. She's a born manager.
She 'd manage the hind leg off a donkey; but if I want five shillings
for a charity or what not, I have to whistle for it. And then all of
a sudden, Molly, she'll take it into her head to spend goodness knows
what on some trumpery or other and come to me for the money. If I
have n't got it to give her, out she flies about 3 per cent., and
worries me to invest in some wild-cat or other, like your friend's
thing, the Jaco what is it? I don't pay the slightest attention to
her.
MRS. HOPE. [From the direction of the house.] Tom!
COLONEL. [Rising.] Yes, dear! [Then dropping his voice.] I say,
Molly, don't you mind what I said about young Lever. I don't want
you to imagine that I think harm of people--you know I don't--but so
many women come to grief, and--[hotly]--I can't stand men about town;
not that he of course----
MRS. HOPE, [Peremptorily.] Tom!
COLONEL. [In hasty confidence.] I find it best to let your aunt run
on. If she says anything----
MRS. HOPE. To-om!
COLONEL. Yes, dear!
[He goes hastily. MRS. GWYN sits drawing circles on the ground
with her charming parasol. Suddenly she springs to her feet,
and stands waiting like an animal at bay. The COLONEL and MRS.
HOPE approach her talking.]
MRS. HOPE. Well, how was I to know?
COLONEL. Did n't Joy come and tell you?
MRS. HOPE. I don't know what's the matter with that child? Well,
Molly, so here you are. You're before your time--that train's always
late.
MRS. GWYN. [With faint irony.] I'm sorry, Aunt Nell!
[They bob, seem to take fright, and kiss each other gingerly.]
MRS. HOPE. What have you done with Mr. Lever? I shall have to put
him in Peachey's room. Tom's got no champagne.
COLONEL. They've a very decent brand down at the George, Molly, I'll
send Bob over----
MRS. HOPE. Rubbish, Tom! He'll just have to put up with what he can
get!
MRS. GWYN. Of course! He's not a snob! For goodness sake, Aunt
Nell, don't put yourself out! I'm sorry I suggested his coming.
COLONEL. My dear, we ought to have champagne in the house--in case
of accident.
MRS. GWYN. [Shaking him gently by the coat.] No, please, Uncle
Tom!
MRS. HOPE. [Suddenly.] Now, I've told your uncle, Molly, that he's
not to go in for this gold mine without making certain it's a good
thing. Mind, I think you've been very rash. I'm going to give you a
good talking to; and that's not all--you ought n't to go about like
this with a young man; he's not at all bad looking. I remember him
perfectly well at the Fleming's dance.
[On MRS. GWYN's lips there comes a little mocking smile.]
COLONEL. [Pulling his wife's sleeve.] Nell!
MRS. HOPE. No, Tom, I'm going to talk to Molly; she's old enough to
know better.
MRS. GWYN. Yes?
MRS. HOPE. Yes, and you'll get yourself into a mess; I don't approve
of it, and when I see a thing I don't approve of----
COLONEL. [Walking about, and pulling his moustache.] Nell, I won't
have it, I simply won't have it.
MRS. HOPE. What rate of interest are these Preference shares to pay?
MRS. GWYN. [Still smiling.] Ten per cent.
MRS. HOPE. What did I tell you, Tom? And are they safe?
MRS. GWYN. You'd better ask Maurice.
MRS. HOPE. There, you see, you call him Maurice! Now supposing your
uncle went in for some of them----
COLONEL. [Taking off his hat-in a high, hot voice] I'm not going in
for anything of the sort.
MRS. HOPE. Don't swing your hat by the brim! Go and look if you can
see him coming!
[The COLONEL goes.]
[In a lower voice.] Your uncle's getting very bald. I 've only
shoulder of lamb for lunch, and a salad. It's lucky it's too hot to
eat.
[MISS BEECH has appeared while she is speaking.]
Here she is, Peachey!
MISS BEECH. I see her. [She kisses MRS. GWYN, and looks at her
intently.]
MRS. GWYN. [Shrugging her shoulders.] Well, Peachey! What d 'you
make of me?
COLONEL. [Returning from his search.] There's a white hat crossing
the second stile. Is that your friend, Molly?
[MRS. GWYN nods.]
MRS. HOPE. Oh! before I forget, Peachey--Letty and Ernest can move
their things back again. I'm going to put Mr. Lever in your room.
[Catching sight o f the paint pot on the ground.] There's that
disgusting paint pot! Take it up at once, Tom, and put it in the
tree.
[The COLONEL picks up the pot and bears it to the hollow tree
followed by MRS. HOPE; he enters.]
MRS. HOPE. [Speaking into the tree.] Not there!
COLONEL. [From within.] Well, where then?
MRS. HOPE. Why--up--oh! gracious!
[MRS. GWYN, standing alone, is smiling. LEVER approaches from
the towing-path. He is a man like a fencer's wrist, supple and
steely. A man whose age is difficult to tell, with a quick,
good-looking face, and a line between his brows; his darkish
hair is flecked with grey. He gives the feeling that he has
always had to spurt to keep pace with his own life.]
MRS. HOPE. [Also entering the hollow tree.] No-oh!
COLONEL. [From the depths, in a high voice.] Well, dash it then!
What do you want?
MRS. GWYN. Peachey, may I introduce Mr. Lever to you? Miss Beech,
my old governess.
[They shake each other by the hand.]
LEVER. How do you do? [His voice is pleasant, his manner easy.]
MISS BEECH. Pleased to meet you.
[Her manner is that of one who is not pleased. She watches.]
MRS. GWYN. [Pointing to the tree-maliciously.] This is my uncle and
my aunt. They're taking exercise, I think.
[The COLONEL and MRS. HOPE emerge convulsively. They are very
hot. LEVER and MRS. GWYN are very cool.]
MRS. HOPE. [Shaking hands with him.] So you 've got here! Are n't
you very hot?--Tom!
COLONEL. Brought a splendid day with you! Splendid!
[As he speaks, Joy comes running with a bunch of roses; seeing
LEVER, she stops and stands quite rigid.]
MISS BEECH. [Sitting in the swing.] Thunder!
COLONEL. Thunder? Nonsense, Peachey, you're always imagining
something. Look at the sky!
MISS BEECH. Thunder!
[MRS. GWYN's smile has faded. ]
MRS. HOPE. [Turning.] Joy, don't you see Mr. Lever?
[Joy, turning to her mother, gives her the roses. With a forced
smile, LEVER advances, holding out his hand.]
LEVER. How are you, Joy? Have n't seen you for an age!
JOY. [Without expression.] I am very well, thank you.
[She raises her hand, and just touches his. MRS. GWYN'S eyes
are fixed on her daughter. Miss BEECH is watching them
intently. MRS. HOPE is buttoning the COLONEL'S coat.]
The curtain falls.
ACT II
It is afternoon, and at a garden-table placed beneath the hollow
tree, the COLONEL is poring over plans. Astride of a
garden-chair, LEVER is smoking cigarettes. DICK is hanging
Chinese lanterns to the hollow tree.
LEVER. Of course, if this level [pointing with his cigarette]
peters out to the West we shall be in a tightish place; you know what
a mine is at this stage, Colonel Hope.
COLONEL. [Absently.] Yes, yes. [Tracing a line.] What is there to
prevent its running out here to the East?
LEVER. Well, nothing, except that as a matter of fact it doesn't.
COLONEL. [With some excitement.] I'm very glad you showed me these
papers, very glad! I say that it's a most astonishing thing if the
ore suddenly stops there. [A gleam of humour visits LEVER'S face.]
I'm not an expert, but you ought to prove that ground to the East
more thoroughly.
LEVER. [Quizzically.] Of course, sir, if you advise that----
COLONEL. If it were mine, I'd no more sit down under the belief that
the ore stopped there than I 'd---There's a harmony in these things.
NEVER. I can only tell you what our experts say.
COLONEL. Ah! Experts! No faith in them--never had! Miners,
lawyers, theologians, cowardly lot--pays them to be cowardly. When
they have n't their own axes to grind, they've got their theories; a
theory's a dangerous thing. [He loses himself in contemplation of
the papers.] Now my theory is, you 're in strata here of what we
call the Triassic Age.
LEVER. [Smiling faintly.] Ah!
COLONEL. You've struck a fault, that's what's happened. The ore may
be as much as thirty or forty yards out; but it 's there, depend on
it.
LEVER. Would you back that opinion, sir?
COLONEL. [With dignity.] I never give an opinion that I'm not
prepared to back. I want to get to the bottom of this. What's to
prevent the gold going down indefinitely?
LEVER. Nothing, so far as I know.
COLONEL. [With suspicion.] Eh!
LEVER. All I can tell you is: This is as far as we've got, and we
want more money before we can get any farther.
COLONEL. [Absently.] Yes, yes; that's very usual.
LEVER. If you ask my personal opinion I think it's very doubtful
that the gold does go down.
COLONEL. [Smiling.] Oh! a personal opinion a matter of this sort!
LEVER. [As though about to take the papers.] Perhaps we'd better
close the sitting, sir; sorry to have bored you.
COLONEL. Now, now! Don't be so touchy! If I'm to put money in, I'm
bound to look at it all round.
LEVER. [With lifted brows.] Please don't imagine that I want you to
put money in.
COLONEL. Confound it, sir! D 'you suppose I take you for a Company
promoter?
LEVER. Thank you!
COLONEL. [Looking at him doubtfully.] You've got Irish blood in
you--um? You're so hasty!
LEVER. If you 're really thinking of taking shares--my advice to you
is, don't!
COLONEL. [Regretfully.] If this were an ordinary gold mine, I
wouldn't dream of looking at it, I want you to understand that.
Nobody has a greater objection to gold mines than I.
LEVER. [Looks down at his host with half-closed eyes.] But it is a
gold mine, Colonel Hope.
COLONEL. I know, I know; but I 've been into it for myself; I've
formed my opinion personally. Now, what 's the reason you don't want
me to invest?
LEVER. Well, if it doesn't turn out as you expect, you'll say it's
my doing. I know what investors are.
COLONEL. [Dubiously.] If it were a Westralian or a Kaffir I would
n't touch it with a pair of tongs! It 's not as if I were going to
put much in! [He suddenly bends above the papers as though
magnetically attracted.] I like these Triassic formations!
[DICK, who has hung the last lantern, moodily departs.]
LEVER. [Looking after him.] That young man seems depressed.
COLONEL. [As though remembering his principles.] I don't like
mines, never have! [Suddenly absorbed again.] I tell you what,
Lever--this thing's got tremendous possibilities. You don't seem to
believe in it enough. No mine's any good without faith; until I see
for myself, however, I shan't commit myself beyond a thousand.
LEVER. Are you serious, sir?
COLONEL. Certainly! I've been thinking it over ever since you told
me Henty had fought shy. I 've a poor opinion of Henty. He's one of
those fellows that says one thing and does another. An opportunist!
LEVER. [Slowly.] I'm afraid we're all that, more or less. [He sits
beneath the hollow tree.]
COLONEL. A man never knows what he is himself. There 's my wife.
She thinks she 's----By the way, don't say anything to her about
this, please. And, Lever [nervously], I don't think, you know, this
is quite the sort of thing for my niece.
LEVER. [Quietly.] I agree. I mean to get her out of it.
COLONEL. [A little taken aback.] Ah! You know, she--she's in a
very delicate position, living by herself in London. [LEVER looks at
him ironically.] You [very nervously] see a good deal of her? If
it had n't been for Joy growing so fast, we shouldn't have had the
child down here. Her mother ought to have her with her. Eh! Don't
you think so?
LEVER. [Forcing a smile.] Mrs. Gwyn always seems to me to get on
all right.
COLONEL. [As though making a discovery.] You know, I've found that
when a woman's living alone and unprotected, the very least thing
will set a lot of hags and jackanapes talking. [Hotly.] The more
unprotected and helpless a woman is, the more they revel in it. If
there's anything I hate in this world, it's those wretched creatures
who babble about their neighbours' affairs.
LEVER. I agree with you.
COLONEL. One ought to be very careful not to give them--that is----
[checks himself confused; then hurrying on]--I suppose you and Joy
get on all right?
LEVER. [Coolly.] Pretty well, thanks. I'm not exactly in Joy's
line; have n't seen very much of her, in fact.
[Miss BEECH and JOY have been approaching from the house. But
seeing LEVER, JOY turns abruptly, hesitates a moment, and with
an angry gesture goes away.]
COLONEL [Unconscious.] Wonderfully affectionate little thing! Well,
she'll be going home to-morrow!
MISS BEECH. [Who has been gazing after JOY.] Talkin' business, poor
creatures?
LEVER. Oh, no! If you'll excuse me, I'll wash my hands before tea.
[He glances at the COLONEL poring over papers, and, shrugging
his shoulders, strolls away.]
MISS BEECH. [Sitting in the swing.] I see your horrid papers.
COLONEL. Be quiet, Peachey!
MISS BEECH. On a beautiful summer's day, too.
COLONEL. That'll do now.
MISS BEECH. [Unmoved.] For every ounce you take out of a gold mine
you put two in.
COLONEL. Who told you that rubbish?
MISS BEECH. [With devilry.] You did!
COLONEL. This is n't an ordinary gold mine.
MISS BEECH. Oh! quite a special thing.
[COLONEL stares at her, but subsiding at hey impassivity, he
pores again over the papers.]
[Rosy has approached with a tea cloth.]
ROSE. If you please, sir, the Missis told me to lay the tea.
COLONEL. Go away! Ten fives fifty. Ten 5 16ths, Peachey?
MISS BEECH. I hate your nasty sums!
[ROSE goes away. The COLONEL Writes. MRS. HOPE'S voice is
heard, "Now then, bring those chairs, you two. Not that one,
Ernest." ERNEST and LETTY appear through the openings of the
wall, each with a chair.]
COLONEL. [With dull exasperation.] What do you want?
LETTY. Tea, Father.
[She places her chair and goes away.]
ERNEST. That Johnny-bird Lever is too cocksure for me, Colonel.
Those South American things are no good at all. I know all about
them from young Scrotton. There's not one that's worth a red cent.
If you want a flutter----
COLONEL. [Explosively.] Flutter! I'm not a gambler, sir!
ERNEST. Well, Colonel [with a smile], I only don't want you to chuck
your money away on a stiff 'un. If you want anything good you should
go to Mexico.
COLONEL. [Jumping up and holding out the map.] Go to [He stops in
time.] What d'you call that, eh? M-E-X----
ERNEST. [Not to be embarrassed.] It all depend on what part.
COLONEL. You think you know everything--you think nothing's right
unless it's your own idea! Be good enough to keep your advice to
yourself.
ERNEST. [Moving with his chair, and stopping with a smile.] If you
ask me, I should say it wasn't playing the game to put Molly into a
thing like that.
COLONEL. What do you mean, sir?
ERNEST. Any Juggins can see that she's a bit gone on our friend.
COLONEL. [Freezingly.] Indeed!
ERNEST. He's not at all the sort of Johnny that appeals to me.
COLONEL. Really?
ERNEST. [Unmoved.] If I were you, Colonel, I should tip her the
wink. He was hanging about her at Ascot all the time. It 's a bit
thick!
[MRS. HOPE followed by ROSE appears from the house.]
COLONEL. [Stammering with passion.] Jackanapes!
MRS. HOPE. Don't stand there, Tom; clear those papers, and let Rose
lay the table. Now, Ernest, go and get another chair.
[The COLONEL looks wildly round and sits beneath the hollow
tree, with his head held in his hands. ROSE lays the cloth.]
MRS. BEECH. [Sitting beside the COLONEL.] Poor creature!
ERNEST. [Carrying his chair about with him.] Ask any Johnny in the
City, he 'll tell you Mexico's a very tricky country--the people are
awful rotters
MRS. HOPE. Put that chair down, Ernest.
[ERNEST looks at the chair, puts it down, opens his mouth, and
goes away. ROSE follows him.]
What's he been talking about? You oughtn't to get so excited, Tom;
is your head bad, old man? Here, take these papers! [She hands the
papers to the COLONEL.] Peachey, go in and tell them tea 'll be
ready in a minute, there 's a good soul? Oh! and on my dressing
table you'll find a bottle of Eau de Cologne.
MRS. BEECH. Don't let him get in a temper again. That 's three
times to-day!
[She goes towards the house. ]
COLONEL. Never met such a fellow in my life, the most opinionated,
narrow-minded--thinks he knows everything. Whatever Letty could see
in him I can't think. Pragmatical beggar!
MRS. HOPE. Now Tom! What have you been up to, to get into a state
like this?
COLONEL. [Avoiding her eyes.] I shall lose my temper with him one
of these days. He's got that confounded habit of thinking nobody can
be right but himself.
MRS. HOPE. That's enough! I want to talk to you seriously! Dick's
in love. I'm perfectly certain of it.
COLONEL. Love! Who's he in love with--Peachey?
MRS. HOPE. You can see it all over him. If I saw any signs of Joy's
breaking out, I'd send them both away. I simply won't have it.
COLONEL. Why, she's a child!
MRS. HOPE. [Pursuing her own thoughts.] But she isn't--not yet.
I've been watching her very carefully. She's more in love with her
Mother than any one, follows her about like a dog! She's been quite
rude to Mr. Lever.
COLONEL. [Pursuing his own thoughts.] I don't believe a word of it.
[He rises and walks about]
MRS. HOPE. Don't believe a word of what?
[The COLONEL is Silent.]
[Pursuing his thoughts with her own.]
If I thought there was anything between Molly and Mr. Lever, d 'you
suppose I'd have him in the house?
[The COLONEL stops, and gives a sort of grunt.]
He's a very nice fellow; and I want you to pump him well, Tom, and
see what there is in this mine.
COLONEL. [Uneasily.] Pump!
MRS. HOPE. [Looking at him curiously.] Yes, you 've been up to
something! Now what is it?
COLONEL. Pump my own guest! I never heard of such a thing!
MRS. HOPE. There you are on your high horse! I do wish you had a
little common-sense, Tom!
COLONEL. I'd as soon you asked me to sneak about eavesdropping!
Pump!
MRS. HOPE. Well, what were you looking at these papers for? It does
drive me so wild the way you throw away all the chances you have of
making a little money. I've got you this opportunity, and you do
nothing but rave up and down, and talk nonsense!
COLONEL. [In a high voice] Much you know about it! I 've taken a
thousand shares in this mine
[He stops dead. There is a silence. ]
MRS. HOPE. You 've--WHAT? Without consulting me? Well, then,
you 'll just go and take them out again!
COLONEL. You want me to----?
MRS. HOPE. The idea! As if you could trust your judgment in a thing
like that! You 'll just go at once and say there was a mistake; then
we 'll talk it over calmly.
COLONEL. [Drawing himself up.] Go back on what I 've said? Not if I
lose every penny! First you worry me to take the shares, and then
you worry me not--I won't have it, Nell, I won't have it!
MRS. HOPE. Well, if I'd thought you'd have forgotten what you said
this morning and turned about like this, d'you suppose I'd have
spoken to you at all? Now, do you?
COLONEL. Rubbish! If you can't see that this is a special
opportunity!
[He walks away followed by MRS. HOPE, who endeavors to make him
see her point of view. ERNEST and LETTY are now returning from
the house armed with a third chair.]
LETTY. What's the matter with everybody? Is it the heat?
ERNEST. [Preoccupied and sitting in the swing.] That sportsman,
Lever, you know, ought to be warned off.
LETTY. [Signing to ERNEST.] Where's Miss Joy, Rose?
ROSE. Don't know, Miss.
[Putting down the tray, she goes.]
[ROSE, has followed with the tea tray.]
LETTY. Ernie, be careful, you never know where Joy is.
ERNEST. [Preoccupied with his reflections.] Your old Dad 's as mad
as a hatter with me.
LETTY. Why?
ERNEST. Well, I merely said what I thought, that Molly ought to look
out what's she's doing, and he dropped on me like a cartload of
bricks.
LETTY. The Dad's very fond of Molly.
ERNEST. But look here, d'you mean to tell me that she and Lever
are n't----
LETTY. Don't! Suppose they are! If joy were to hear it'd be simply
awful. I like Molly. I 'm not going to believe anything against
her. I don't see the use of it. If it is, it is, and if it is n't,
it is n't.
ERNEST. Well, all I know is that when I told her the mine was
probably a frost she went for me like steam.
LETTY. Well, so should I. She was only sticking up for her friends.
ERNEST. Ask the old Peachey-bird. She knows a thing or two. Look
here, I don't mind a man's being a bit of a sportsman, but I think
Molly's bringin' him down here is too thick. Your old Dad's got one
of his notions that because this Josser's his guest, he must keep him
in a glass case, and take shares in his mine, and all the rest of it.
LETTY. I do think people are horrible, always thinking things. It's
not as if Molly were a stranger. She's my own cousin. I 'm not
going to believe anything about my own cousin. I simply won't.
ERNEST. [Reluctantly realising the difference that this makes.] I
suppose it does make a difference, her bein' your cousin.
LETTY. Of course it does! I only hope to goodness no one will make
Joy suspect----
[She stops and buts her finger to her lips, for JOY is coming
towards them, as the tea-bell sounds. She is followed by DICK
and MISS BEECH with the Eau de Cologne. The COLONEL and MRS.
HOPE are also coming back, discussing still each other's point
of view.]
JOY. Where 's Mother? Isn't she here?
MRS. HOPE. Now Joy, come and sit down; your mother's been told tea's
ready; if she lets it get cold it's her lookout.
DICK. [Producing a rug, and spreading it beneath the tree.] Plenty
of room, Joy.
JOY. I don't believe Mother knows, Aunt Nell.
[MRS. GWYN and LEVER appear in the opening of the wall.]
LETTY. [Touching ERNEST's arm.] Look, Ernie! Four couples and
Peachey----
ERNEST. [Preoccupied.] What couples?
JOY. Oh! Mums, here you are!
[Seizing her, she turns her back on LEVER. They sit in various
seats, and MRS. HOPE pours out the tea.]
MRS. HOPE. Hand the sandwiches to Mr. Lever, Peachey. It's our own
jam, Mr. Lever.
LEVER. Thanks. [He takes a bite.] It's splendid!
MRS. GWYN. [With forced gaiety.] It's the first time I've ever seen
you eat jam.
LEVER. [Smiling a forced smile.] Really! But I love it.
MRS. GWYN. [With a little bow.] You always refuse mine.
JOY. [Who has been staring at her enemy, suddenly.] I'm all burnt
up! Are n't you simply boiled, Mother?
[She touches her Mother's forehead.]
MRS. GWYN. Ugh! You're quite clammy, Joy.
JOY. It's enough to make any one clammy.
[Her eyes go back to LEVER'S face as though to stab him.]
ERNEST. [From the swing.] I say, you know, the glass is going down.
LEVER. [Suavely.] The glass in the hall's steady enough.
ERNEST. Oh, I never go by that; that's a rotten old glass.
COLONEL. Oh! is it?
ERNEST. [Paying no attention.] I've got a little ripper--never puts
you in the cart. Bet you what you like we have thunder before
tomorrow night.
MISS BEECH. [Removing her gaze from JOY to LEVER.] You don't think
we shall have it before to-night, do you?
LEVER. [Suavely.] I beg your pardon; did you speak to me?
MISS BEECH. I said, you don't think we shall have the thunder before
to-night, do you?
[She resumes her watch on joy.]
LEVER. [Blandly.] Really, I don't see any signs of it.
[Joy, crossing to the rug, flings herself down. And DICK sits
cross-legged, with his eyes fast fixed on her.]
MISS BEECH. [Eating.] People don't often see what they don't want
to, do they?
[LEVER only lifts his brows.]
MRS. GWYN. [Quickly breaking ivy.] What are you talking about? The
weather's perfect.
MISS BEECH. Isn't it?
MRS. HOPE. You'd better make a good tea, Peachey; nobody'll get
anything till eight, and then only cold shoulder. You must just put
up with no hot dinner, Mr. Lever.
LEVER. [Bowing.] Whatever is good enough for Miss Beech is good
enough for me.
MISS BEECH. [Sardonically-taking another sandwich.] So you think!
MRS. GWYN. [With forced gaiety.] Don't be so absurd, Peachey.
[MISS BEECH, grunts slightly.]
COLONEL. [Once more busy with his papers.] I see the name of your
engineer is Rodriguez--Italian, eh?
LEVER. Portuguese.
COLONEL. Don't like that!
LEVER. I believe he was born in England.
COLONEL. [Reassured.] Oh, was he? Ah!
ERNEST. Awful rotters, those Portuguese!
COLONEL. There you go!
LETTY. Well, Father, Ernie only said what you said.
MRS. HOPE. Now I want to ask you, Mr. Lever, is this gold mine safe?
If it isn't--I simply won't allow Tom to take these shares; he can't
afford it.
LEVER. It rather depends on what you call safe, Mrs. Hope.
MRS. HOPE. I don't want anything extravagant, of course; if they're
going to pay their 10 per cent, regularly, and Tom can have his money
out at any time--[There is a faint whistle from the swing.] I only
want to know that it's a thoroughly genuine thing.
MRS. GWYN. [Indignantly.] As if Maurice would be a Director if it
was n't?
MRS. HOPE. Now Molly, I'm simply asking----
MRS. GWYN. Yes, you are!
COLONEL. [Rising.] I'll take two thousand of those shares, Lever.
To have my wife talk like that--I 'm quite ashamed.
LEVER. Oh, come, sir, Mrs. Hope only meant----
[MRS. GWYN looks eagerly at LEVER.]
DICK. [Quietly.] Let's go on the river, Joy.
[JOY rises, and goes to her Mother's chair.]
MRS. HOPE. Of course! What rubbish, Tom! As if any one ever
invested money without making sure!
LEVER. [Ironically.] It seems a little difficult to make sure in
this case. There isn't the smallest necessity for Colonel Hope to
take any shares, and it looks to me as if he'd better not.
[He lights a cigarette.]
MRS. HOPE. Now, Mr. Lever, don't be offended! I'm very anxious for
Tom to take the shares if you say the thing's so good.
LEVER. I 'm afraid I must ask to be left out, please.
JOY. [Whispering.] Mother, if you've finished, do come, I want to
show you my room.
MRS. HOPE. I would n't say a word, only Tom's so easily taken in.
MRS. GWYN. [Fiercely.] Aunt Nell, how can't you? [Joy gives a
little savage laugh.]
LETTY. [Hastily.] Ernie, will you play Dick and me? Come on, Dick!
[All three go out towards the lawn.]
MRS. HOPE. You ought to know your Uncle by this time, Molly. He's
just like a child. He'd be a pauper to-morrow if I did n't see to
things.
COLONEL. Understand once for all that I shall take two thousand
shares in this mine. I 'm--I 'm humiliated. [He turns and goes
towards the house.]
MRS. HOPE. Well, what on earth have I said?
[She hurries after him. ]
MRS. GWYN. [In a low voice as she passes.] You need n't insult my
friends!
[LEVER, shrugging his shoulders, has strolled aside. JOY, with
a passionate movement seen only by Miss BEECH, goes off towards
the house. MISS BEECH and MRS. GWYN aye left alone beside the
remnants of the feast.]
MISS BEECH. Molly!
[MRS. GWYN looks up startled.]
Take care, Molly, take care! The child! Can't you see?
[Apostrophising LEVER.] Take care, Molly, take care!
LEVER. [Coming back.] Awfully hot, is n't it?
MISS BEECH. Ah! and it'll be hotter if we don't mind.
LEVER. [Suavely.] Do we control these things?
[MISS BEECH looking from face to face, nods her head repeatedly;
then gathering her skirts she walks towards the house. MRS.
GWYN sits motionless, staying before her.]
Extraordinary old lady! [He pitches away his cigarette.] What's the
matter with her, Molly?
MRS. GWYN, [With an effort.] Oh! Peachey's a character!
LEVER. [Frowning.] So I see! [There is a silence.]
MRS. GWYN. Maurice!
LEVER. Yes.
MRS. GWYN. Aunt Nell's hopeless, you mustn't mind her.
LEVER. [In a dubious and ironic voice.] My dear girl, I 've too
much to bother me to mind trifles like that.
MRS. GWYN. [Going to him suddenly.] Tell me, won't you?
[LEVER shrugs his shoulders.]
A month ago you'd have told me soon enough!
LEVER. Now, Molly!
MRS. GWYN. Ah! [With a bitter smile.] The Spring's soon over.
LEVER. It 's always Spring between us.
MRS. GWYN. Is it?
LEVER. You did n't tell me what you were thinking about just now
when you sat there like stone.
MRS. GWYN. It does n't do for a woman to say too much.
LEVER. Have I been so bad to you that you need feel like that,
Molly?
MRS. GWYN. [With a little warm squeeze of his arm.] Oh! my dear,
it's only that I'm so---
[She stops.]
LEVER. [Gently]. So what?
MRS. GWYN. [In a low voice.] It's hateful here.
LEVER. I didn't want to come. I don't understand why you suggested
it. [MRS. GWYN is silent.] It's been a mistake.
MRS. GWYN. [Her eyes fixed on the ground.] Joy comes home
to-morrow. I thought if I brought you here--I should know----
LEVER. [Vexedly.] Um!
MRS. GWYN. [Losing her control.] Can't you SEE? It haunts me? How
are we to go on? I must know--I must know!
LEVER. I don't see that my coming----
MRS. GWYN. I thought I should have more confidence; I thought I
should be able to face it better in London, if you came down here
openly--and now--I feel I must n't speak or look at you.
LEVER. You don't think your Aunt----
MRS. GWYN. [Scornfully.] She! It's only Joy I care about.
LEVER. [Frowning.] We must be more careful, that's all. We mustn't
give ourselves away again, as we were doing just now.
MRS. GWYN. When any one says anything horrid to you, I can't help
it.
[She puts her hand on the label of his coat.]
LEVER. My dear child, take care!
[MRS. GWYN drops her hand. She throws her head back, and her
throat is seen to work as though she were gulping down a bitter
draught. She moves away.]
[Following hastily.] Don't dear, don't! I only meant--Come, Molly,
let's be sensible. I want to tell you something about the mine.
MRS. GWYN. [With a quavering smile.] Yes-let 's talk sensibly, and
walk properly in this sensible, proper place.
[LEVER is seen trying to soothe her, and yet to walk properly.
As they disappear, they are viewed by JOY, who, like the shadow
parted from its figure, has come to join it again. She stands
now, foiled, a carnation in her hand; then flings herself on a
chair, and leans her elbows on the table.]
JOY. I hate him! Pig!
ROSE. [Who has come to clear the tea things.] Did you call, Miss?
JOY. Not you!
ROSE. [Motionless.] No, Miss!
JOY. [Leaning back and tearing the flower.] Oh! do hurry up, Rose!
ROSE. [Collects the tea things.] Mr. Dick's coming down the path!
Aren't I going to get you to do your frock, Miss Joy?
JOY. No.
ROSE. What will the Missis say?
JOY. Oh, don't be so stuck, Rose!
[ROSE goes, but DICK has come.]
DICK. Come on the river, Joy, just for half an hour, as far as the
kingfishers--do! [Joy shakes her head.] Why not? It 'll be so
jolly and cool. I'm most awfully sorry if I worried you this
morning. I didn't mean to. I won't again, I promise. [Joy slides a
look at him, and from that look he gains a little courage.] Do come!
It'll be the last time. I feel it awfully, Joy.
JOY. There's nothing to hurt you!
DICK. [Gloomily.] Isn't there--when you're like this?
JOY. [In a hard voice.] If you don't like me, why do you follow me
about?
DICK. What is the matter?
JOY. [Looking up, as if for want of air.] Oh! Don't!
DICK. Oh, Joy, what is the matter? Is it the heat?
JOY. [With a little laugh.] Yes.
DICK. Have some Eau de Cologne. I 'll make you a bandage. [He
takes the Eau de Cologne, and makes a bandage with his handkerchief.]
It's quite clean.
JOY. Oh, Dick, you are so funny!
DICK. [Bandaging her forehead.] I can't bear you to feel bad; it
puts me off completely. I mean I don't generally make a fuss about
people, but when it 's you----
JOY. [Suddenly.] I'm all right.
DICK. Is that comfy?
JOY. [With her chin up, and her eyes fast closed.] Quite.
DICK. I'm not going to stay and worry you. You ought to rest.
Only, Joy! Look here! If you want me to do anything for you, any
time----
JOY. [Half opening her eyes.] Only to go away.
[DICK bites his lips and walks away.]
Dick--[softly]--Dick!
[DICK stops.]
I didn't mean that; will you get me some water-irises for this
evening?
DICK. Won't I? [He goes to the hollow tree and from its darkness
takes a bucket and a boat-hook.] I know where there are some
rippers!
[JOY stays unmoving with her eyes half closed.]
Are you sure you 're all right. Joy? You 'll just rest here in the
shade, won't you, till I come back?--it 'll do you no end of good. I
shan't be twenty minutes.
[He goes, but cannot help returning softly, to make sure.]
You're quite sure you 're all right?
[JOY nods. He goes away towards the river. But there is no
rest for JOY. The voices of MRS. GWYN and LEVER are heard
returning.]
JOY. [With a gesture of anger.] Hateful! Hateful!
[She runs away.]
[MRS. GWYN and LEVER are seen approaching; they pass the tree,
in conversation.]
MRS. GWYN. But I don't see why, Maurice.
LEVER. We mean to sell the mine; we must do some more work on it,
and for that we must have money.
MRS. GWYN. If you only want a little, I should have thought you
could have got it in a minute in the City.
LEVER. [Shaking his head.] No, no; we must get it privately.
MRS. GWYN. [Doubtfully.] Oh! [She slowly adds.] Then it isn't
such a good thing!
[And she does not look at him.]
LEVER. Well, we mean to sell it.
MRS. GWYN. What about the people who buy?
LEVER. [Dubiously regarding her.] My dear girl, they've just as
much chance as we had. It 's not my business to think of them.
There's YOUR thousand pounds----
MRS. GWYN. [Softly.] Don't bother about my money, Maurice. I don't
want you to do anything not quite----
LEVER. [Evasively.] Oh! There's my brother's and my sister's too.
I 'm not going to let any of you run any risk. When we all went in
for it the thing looked splendid; it 's only the last month that we
've had doubts. What bothers me now is your Uncle. I don't want him
to take these shares. It looks as if I'd come here on purpose.
MRS. GWYN. Oh! he mustn't take them!
LEVER. That 's all very well; but it 's not so simple.
MRS. GWYN. [Shyly.] But, Maurice, have you told him about the
selling?
LEVER. [Gloomily, under the hollow tree.] It 's a Board secret.
I'd no business to tell even you.
MRS. GWYN. But he thinks he's taking shares in a good--a permanent
thing.
LEVER. You can't go into a mining venture without some risk.
MRS. GWYN. Oh yes, I know--but--but Uncle Tom is such a dear!
LEVER. [Stubbornly.] I can't help his being the sort of man he is.
I did n't want him to take these shares; I told him so in so many
words. Put yourself in my place, Molly: how can I go to him and say,
"This thing may turn out rotten," when he knows I got you to put your
money into it?
[But JOY, the lost shadow, has come back. She moves forward
resolutely. They are divided from her by the hollow tree; she
is unseen. She stops.]
MRS. GWYN. I think he ought to be told about the selling; it 's not
fair.
LEVER. What on earth made him rush at the thing like that? I don't
understand that kind of man.
MRS. GWYN. [Impulsively.] I must tell him, Maurice; I can't let him
take the shares without----
[She puts her hand on his arm.]
[Joy turns, as if to go back whence she came, but stops once
more.]
LEVER. [Slowly and very quietly.] I did n't think you'd give me
away, Molly.
MRS. GWYN. I don't think I quite understand.
LEVER. If you tell the Colonel about this sale the poor old chap
will think me a man that you ought to have nothing to do with. Do
you want that?
[MRS. GWYN, giving her lover a long look, touches his sleeve.
JOY, slipping behind the hollow tree, has gone.]
You can't act in a case like this as if you 'd only a principle to
consider. It 's the--the special circumstances.
MRS. GWYN. [With a faint smile.] But you'll be glad to get the
money won't you?
LEVER. By George! if you're going to take it like this, Molly
MRS. GWYN. Don't!
LEVER. We may not sell after all, dear, we may find it turn out
trumps.
MRS. GWYN. [With a shiver.] I don't want to hear any more. I know
women don't understand. [Impulsively.] It's only that I can't bear
any one should think that you----
LEVER. [Distressed.] For goodness sake don't look like that, Molly!
Of course, I'll speak to your Uncle. I'll stop him somehow, even if
I have to make a fool of myself. I 'll do anything you want----
MRS. GWYN. I feel as if I were being smothered here.
LEVER. It 's only for one day.
MRS. GWYN. [With sudden tenderness.] It's not your fault, dear. I
ought to have known how it would be. Well, let's go in!
[She sets her lips, and walks towards the house with LEVER
following. But no sooner has she disappeared than JOY comes
running after; she stops, as though throwing down a challenge.
Her cheeks and ears are burning.]
JOY. Mother!
[After a moment MRS. GWYN reappears in the opening of the wall.]
MRS. GWYN. Oh! here you are!
JOY. [Breathlessly.] Yes.
MRS. GWYN. [Uncertainly.] Where--have you been? You look
dreadfully hot; have you been running?
JOY. Yes----no.
MRS. GWYN. [Looking at her fixedly.] What's the matter--you 're
trembling! [Softly.] Are n't you well, dear?
JOY. Yes--I don't know.
MRS. GWYN. What is it, darling?
JOY. [Suddenly clinging to her.] Oh! Mother!
MRS. GWYN. I don't understand.
JOY. [Breathlessly.] Oh, Mother, let me go back home with you now
at once----
MRS. GWYN. [Her face hardening.] Why? What on earth----
JOY. I can't stay here.
MRS. GWYN. But why?
JOY. I want to be with you--Oh! Mother, don't you love me?
MRS. GWYN. [With a faint smile.] Of course I love you, Joy.
JOY. Ah! but you love him more.
MRS. GWYN. Love him--whom?
JOY. Oh! Mother, I did n't--[She tries to take her Mother's hand,
but fails.] Oh! don't.
MRS. GWYN. You'd better explain what you mean, I think.
JOY. I want to get you to--he--he 's--he 'snot----!
MRS. GWYN. [Frigidly.] Really, Joy!
JOY. [Passionately.] I'll fight against him, and I know there's
something wrong about----
[She stops.]
MRS. GWYN. About what?
JOY. Let's tell Uncle Tom, Mother, and go away.
MRS. GWYN. Tell Uncle--Tom--what?
JOY. [Looking down and almost whispering.] About--about--the mine.
MRS. GWYN. What about the mine? What do you mean? [Fiercely.]
Have you been spying on me?
JOY. [Shrinking.] No! oh, no!
MRS. GWYN. Where were you?
JOY. [Just above her breath.] I--I heard something.
MRS. GWYN. [Bitterly.] But you were not spying?
JOY. I was n't--I wasn't! I didn't want--to hear. I only heard a
little. I couldn't help listening, Mother.
MRS. GWYN. [With a little laugh.] Couldn't help listening?
JOY. [Through her teeth.] I hate him. I didn't mean to listen, but
I hate him.
MRS. GWYN. I see. Why do you hate him?
[There is a silence.]
JOY. He--he----[She stops.]
MRS. GWYN. Yes?
JOY. [With a sort of despair.] I don't know. Oh! I don't know!
But I feel----
MRS. GWYN. I can't reason with you. As to what you heard, it 's--
ridiculous.
JOY. It 's not that. It 's--it 's you!
MRS. GWYN. [Stonily.] I don't know what you mean.
JOY. [Passionately.] I wish Dad were here!
MRS. GWYN. Do you love your Father as much as me?
JOY. Oh! Mother, no-you know I don't.
MRS. GWYN. [Resentfully.] Then why do you want him?
JOY. [Almost under her breath.] Because of that man.
MRS. GWYN. Indeed!
JOY. I will never--never make friends with him.
MRS. GWYN. [Cuttingly.] I have not asked you to.
JOY. [With a blind movement of her hand.] Oh, Mother!
[MRS. GWYN half turns away.]
Mother--won't you? Let's tell Uncle Tom and go away from him?
MRS. GWYN. If you were not, a child, Joy, you wouldn't say such
things.
JOY. [Eagerly.] I'm not a child, I'm--I'm a woman. I am.
MRS. GWYN. No! You--are--not a woman, Joy.
[She sees joy throw up her arms as though warding off a blow,
and turning finds that LEVER is standing in the opening of the
wall.]
LEVER. [Looking from face to face.] What's the matter? [There is
no answer.] What is it, Joy?
JOY. [Passionately.] I heard you, I don't care who knows. I'd
listen again.
LEVER. [Impassively.] Ah! and what did I say that was so very
dreadful?
JOY. You're a--a--you 're a--coward!
MRS. GWYN. [With a sort of groan.] Joy!
LEVER. [Stepping up to JOY, and standing with his hands behind him--
in a low voice.] Now hit me in the face--hit me--hit me as hard as
you can. Go on, Joy, it'll do you good.
[Joy raises her clenched hand, but drops it, and hides her
face.]
Why don't you? I'm not pretending!
[Joy makes no sign.]
Come, joy; you'll make yourself ill, and that won't help, will it?
[But joy still makes no sign.]
[With determination.] What's the matter? now come--tell me!
JOY. [In a stifled, sullen voice.] Will you leave my mother alone?
MRS. GWYN. Oh! my dear Joy, don't be silly!
JOY. [Wincing; then with sudden passion.] I defy you--I defy you!
[She rushes from their sight.]
MRS. GWYN. [With a movement of distress.] Oh!
LEVER. [Turning to MRS. GWYN with a protecting gesture.] Never
mind, dear! It'll be--it'll be all right!
[But the expression of his face is not the expression of his
words.]
The curtain falls.
ACT III
It is evening; a full yellow moon is shining through the
branches of the hollow tree. The Chinese lanterns are alight.
There is dancing in the house; the music sounds now loud, now
soft. MISS BEECH is sitting on the rustic seat in a black
bunchy evening dress, whose inconspicuous opening is inlaid with
white. She slowly fans herself.
DICK comes from the house in evening dress. He does not see
Miss BEECH.
DICK. Curse! [A short silence.] Curse!
MISS BEECH. Poor young man!
DICK. [With a start.] Well, Peachey, I can't help it
[He fumbles off his gloves.]
MISS BEECH. Did you ever know any one that could?
DICK. [Earnestly.] It's such awfully hard lines on Joy. I can't get
her out of my head, lying there with that beastly headache while
everybody's jigging round.
MISS BEECH. Oh! you don't mind about yourself--noble young man!
DICK. I should be a brute if I did n't mind more for her.
MISS BEECH. So you think it's a headache, do you?
DICK. Did n't you hear what Mrs. Gwyn said at dinner about the sun?
[With inspiration.] I say, Peachey, could n't you--could n't you
just go up and give her a message from me, and find out if there 's
anything she wants, and say how brutal it is that she 's seedy; it
would be most awfully decent of you. And tell her the dancing's no
good without her. Do, Peachey, now do! Ah! and look here!
[He dives into the hollow of the tree, and brings from out of it
a pail of water in which are placed two bottles of champagne,
and some yellow irises--he takes the irises.]
You might give her these. I got them specially for her, and I have
n't had a chance.
MISS BEECH. [Lifting a bottle.] What 's this?
DICK. Fizz. The Colonel brought it from the George. It 's for
supper; he put it in here because of--[Smiling faintly]--Mrs. Hope,
I think. Peachey, do take her those irises.
MISS. BEECH. D' you think they'll do her any good?
DICK. [Crestfallen.] I thought she'd like--I don't want to worry
her--you might try.
[MISS BEECH shakes her head.]
Why not?
MISS BEECH. The poor little creature won't let me in.
DICK. You've been up then!
MISS BEECH. [Sharply.] Of course I've been up. I've not got a
stone for my heart, young man!
DICK. All right! I suppose I shall just have to get along somehow.
MISS BEECH. [With devilry.] That's what we've all got to do.
DICK. [Gloomily.] But this is too brutal for anything!
MISS BEECH. Worse than ever happened to any one!
DICK. I swear I'm not thinking of myself.
MISS BEECH. Did y' ever know anybody that swore they were?
DICK. Oh! shut up!
MISS BEECH. You'd better go in and get yourself a partner.
DICK. [With pale desperation.] Look here, Peachey, I simply loathe
all those girls.
MISS BEECH. Ah-h! [Ironically.] Poor lot, are n't they?
DICK. All right; chaff away, it's good fun, isn't it? It makes me
sick to dance when Joy's lying there. Her last night, too!
MISS BEECH. [Sidling to him.] You're a good young man, and you 've
got a good heart.
[She takes his hand, and puts it to her cheek.]
DICK. Peachey--I say, Peachey d' you think there 's--I mean d' you
think there'll ever be any chance for me?
MISS BEECH. I thought that was coming! I don't approve of your
making love at your time of life; don't you think I 'm going to
encourage you.
DICK. But I shall be of age in a year; my money's my own, it's not
as if I had to ask any one's leave; and I mean, I do know my own
mind.
MISS BEECH. Of course you do. Nobody else would at your age, but
you do.
DICK. I would n't ask her to promise, it would n't be fair when
she 's so young, but I do want her to know that I shall never change.
MISS BEECH. And suppose--only suppose--she's fond of you, and says
she'll never change.
DICK. Oh! Peachey! D' you think there's a chance of that--do you?
MISS BEECH. A-h-h!
DICK. I wouldn't let her bind herself, I swear I wouldn't.
[Solemnly.] I'm not such a selfish brute as you seem to think.
MISS BEECH. [Sidling close to him and in a violent whisper.] Well--
have a go!
DICK. Really? You are a brick, Peachey!
[He kisses her.]
MISS BEACH. [Yielding pleasurably; then remembering her principles.]
Don't you ever say I said so! You're too young, both of you.
DICK. But it is exceptional--I mean in my case, is n't it?
[The COLONEL and MRS. GWYN are coming down the lawn.]
MISS BEECH. Oh! very!
[She sits beneath the tree and fans herself.]
COLONEL. The girls are all sitting out, Dick! I've been obliged to
dance myself. Phew!
[He mops his brow.]
[DICK swinging round goes rushing off towards the house.]
[Looking after him.] Hallo! What's the matter with him? Cooling
your heels, Peachey? By George! it's hot. Fancy the poor devils in
London on a night like this, what? [He sees the moon.] It's a full
moon. You're lucky to be down here, Molly.
MRS. GWYN. [In a low voice.] Very!
MISS BEECH. Oh! so you think she's lucky, do you?
COLONEL. [Expanding his nostrils.] Delicious scent to-night! Hay
and roses--delicious.
[He seats himself between them.]
A shame that poor child has knocked up like this. Don't think it was
the sun myself--more likely neuralgic--she 's subject to neuralgia,
Molly.
MRS. GWYN. [Motionless.] I know.
COLONEL. Got too excited about your coming. I told Nell not to keep
worrying her about her frock, and this is the result. But your Aunt
--you know--she can't let a thing alone!
MISS BEECH. Ah! 't isn't neuralgia.
[MRS. GWYN looks at her quickly and averts her eyes.]
COLONEL. Excitable little thing. You don't understand her, Peachey.
MISS BEECH. Don't I?
COLONEL. She's all affection. Eh, Molly? I remember what I was
like at her age, a poor affectionate little rat, and now look at me!
MISS BEECH. [Fanning herself.] I see you.
COLONEL. [A little sadly.] We forget what we were like when we were
young. She's been looking forward to to-night ever since you wrote;
and now to have to go to bed and miss the, dancing. Too bad!
MRS. GWYN. Don't, Uncle Tom!
COLONEL. [Patting her hand.] There, there, old girl, don't think
about it. She'll be all right tomorrow.
MISS BEECH. If I were her mother I'd soon have her up.
COLONEL. Have her up with that headache! What are you talking
about, Peachey?
MISS BEECH. I know a remedy.
COLONEL. Well, out with it.
MISS BEECH. Oh! Molly knows it too!
MRS. GWYN. [Staring at the ground.] It's easy to advise.
COLONEL. [Fidgetting.] Well, if you're thinking of morphia for her,
don't have anything to do with it. I've always set my face against
morphia; the only time I took it was in Burmah. I'd raging neuralgia
for two days. I went to our old doctor, and I made him give me some.
"Look here, doctor," I said, "I hate the idea of morphia, I 've never
taken it, and I never want to."
MISS BEECH. [Looking at MRS. GWYN.] When a tooth hurts, you should
have it out. It 's only puttin' off the evil day.
COLONEL. You say that because it was n't your own.
MISS BEECH. Well, it was hollow, and you broke your principles!
COLONEL. Hollow yourself, Peachey; you're as bad as any one!
MISS BEECH [With devilry.] Well, I know that! [She turns to MRS.
GWYN.] He should have had it out! Shouldn't he, Molly?
MRS. GWYN. I--don't--judge for other people.
[She gets up suddenly, as though deprived of air.]
COLONEL. [Alarmed.] Hallo, Molly! Are n't you feeling the thing,
old girl?
MISS BEECH. Let her get some air, poor creature!
COLONEL. [Who follows anxiously.] Your Aunt's got some first-rate
sal volatile.
MRS. GWYN. It's all right, Uncle Tom. I felt giddy, it's nothing,
now.
COLONEL. That's the dancing. [He taps his forehead.] I know what
it is when you're not used to it.
MRS. GWYN. [With a sudden bitter outburst.] I suppose you think I
'm a very bad mother to be amusing myself while joy's suffering.
COLONEL. My dear girl, whatever put such a thought into your head?
We all know if there were anything you could do, you'd do it at once,
would n't she, Peachey?
[MISS BEECH turns a slow look on MRS. GWYN.]
MRS. GWYN. Ah! you see, Peachey knows me better.
COLONEL. [Following up his thoughts.] I always think women are
wonderful. There's your Aunt, she's very funny, but if there's
anything the matter with me, she'll sit up all night; but when she's
ill herself, and you try to do anything for her, out she raps at
once.
MRS. GWYN. [In a low voice.] There's always one that a woman will
do anything for.
COLONEL. Exactly what I say. With your Aunt it's me, and by George!
Molly, sometimes I wish it was n't.
MISS BEECH, [With meaning.] But is it ever for another woman!
COLONEL. You old cynic! D' you mean to say Joy wouldn't do anything
on earth for her Mother, or Molly for Joy? You don't know human
nature. What a wonderful night! Have n't seen such a moon for
years, she's like a great, great lamp!
[MRS. GWYN hiding from Miss BEECH's eyes, rises and slips her
arm through his; they stand together looking at the moon.]
Don't like these Chinese lanterns, with that moon-tawdry! eh! By
Jove, Molly, I sometimes think we humans are a rubbishy lot--each of
us talking and thinking of nothing but our own petty little affairs;
and when you see a great thing like that up there--[Sighs.] But
there's your Aunt, if I were to say a thing like that to her she 'd--
she'd think me a lunatic; and yet, you know, she 's a very good
woman.
MRS. GWYN. [Half clinging to him.] Do you think me very selfish,
Uncle Tom?
COLONEL. My dear--what a fancy! Think you selfish--of course I
don't; why should I?
MRS. GWYN. [Dully.] I don't know.
COLONEL. [Changing the subject nervously.] I like your friend,
Lever, Molly. He came to me before dinner quite distressed about
your Aunt, beggin' me not to take those shares. She 'll be the first
to worry me, but he made such a point of it, poor chap--in the end I
was obliged to say I wouldn't. I thought it showed very' nice
feeling. [Ruefully.] It's a pretty tight fit to make two ends meet
on my income--I've missed a good thing, all owing to your Aunt.
[Dropping his voice.] I don't mind telling you, Molly, I think
they've got a much finer mine there than they've any idea of.
[MRS. GWYN gives way to laughter that is very near to sobs.]
[With dignity.] I can't see what there is to laugh at.
MRS. GWYN. I don't know what's the matter with me this evening.
MISS BEECH. [In a low voice.] I do.
COLONEL. There, there! Give me a kiss, old girl! [He kisses her on
the brow.] Why, your forehead's as hot as fire. I know--I know-you
're fretting about Joy. Never mind--come! [He draws her hand
beneath his arm.] Let's go and have a look at the moon on the river.
We all get upset at times; eh! [Lifting his hand as if he had been
stung.] Why, you 're not crying, Molly! I say! Don't do that, old
girl, it makes me wretched. Look here, Peachey. [Holding out the
hand on which the tear has dropped.] This is dreadful!
MRS. GWYN. [With a violent effort.] It's all right, Uncle Tom!
[MISS BEECH wipes her own eyes stealthily. From the house is
heard the voice of MRS. HOPE, calling "Tom."]
MISS BEECH. Some one calling you.
COLONEL. There, there, my dear, you just stay here, and cool
yourself--I 'll come back--shan't be a minute. [He turns to go.]
[MRS. HOPE'S voice sounds nearer.]
[Turning back.] And Molly, old girl, don't you mind anything I said.
I don't remember what it was--it must have been something, I suppose.
[He hastily retreats.]
MRS. GWYN. [In a fierce low voice.] Why do you torture me?
MISS BEECH. [Sadly.] I don't want to torture you.
MRS. GWYN, But you do. D' you think I haven't seen this coming--all
these weeks. I knew she must find out some time! But even a day
counts----
MISS BEECH. I don't understand why you brought him down here.
MRS. GWYN. [After staring at her, bitterly.] When day after day and
night after night you've thought of nothing but how to keep them
both, you might a little want to prove that it was possible, mightn't
you? But you don't understand--how should you? You've never been a
mother! [And fiercely.] You've never had a lov----
[MISS BEECH raises her face-it is all puckered.]
[Impulsively.] Oh, I did n't mean that, Peachey!
MISS BEECH. All right, my dear.
MRS. GWYN. I'm so dragged in two! [She sinks into a chair.] I knew
it must come.
MISS BEECH. Does she know everything, Molly?
MRS. GWYN. She guesses.
MISS BEECH. [Mournfully.] It's either him or her then, my dear; one
or the other you 'll have to give up.
MRS. GWYN. [Motionless.] Life's very hard on women!
MISS BEECH. Life's only just beginning for that child, Molly.
MRS. GWYN. You don't care if it ends for me!
MISS BEECH. Is it as bad as that?
MRS. GWYN. Yes.
MISS BEECH. [Rocking hey body.] Poor things! Poor things!
MRS. GWYN. Are you still fond of me?
MISS BEECH. Yes, yes, my dear, of course I am.
MRS. GWYN. In spite of my-wickedness?
[She laughs.]
MISS BEECH. Who am I to tell what's wicked and what is n't? God
knows you're both like daughters to me!
MRS. GWYN. [Abruptly.] I can't.
MISS BEECH. Molly.
MRS. GWYN. You don't know what you're asking.
MISS BEECH. If I could save you suffering, my dear, I would. I hate
suffering, if it 's only a fly, I hate it.
MRS. GWYN. [Turning away from her.] Life is n't fair. Peachey, go
in and leave me alone.
[She leans back motionless.]
[Miss BEECH gets off her seat, and stroking MRS. GWYN's arm in
passing goes silently away. In the opening of the wall she
meets LEVER who is looking for his partner. They make way for
each other.]
LEVER. [Going up to MRS. GWYN--gravely.] The next is our dance,
Molly.
MRS. GWYN. [Unmoving.] Let's sit it out here, then.
[LEVER sits down.]
LEVER. I've made it all right with your Uncle.
MRS. GWYN. [Dully.] Oh?
LEVER. I spoke to him about the shares before dinner.
MRS. GWYN. Yes, he told me, thank you.
LEVER. There 's nothing to worry over, dear.
MRS. GWYN. [Passionately.] What does it matter about the wretched
shares now? I 'm stifling.
[She throws her scarf off.]
LEVER. I don't understand what you mean by "now."
MRS. GWYN. Don't you?
LEVER. We were n't--Joy can't know--why should she? I don't believe
for a minute----
MRS. GWYN. Because you don't want to.
LEVER. Do you mean she does?
MRS. GWYN. Her heart knows.
[LEVER makes a movement of discomfiture; suddenly MRS. GWYN
looks at him as though to read his soul.]
I seem to bring you nothing but worry, Maurice. Are you tired of me?
LEVER. [Meeting her eyes.] No, I am not.
MRS. GWYN. Ah, but would you tell me if you were?
LEVER. [Softly.] Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
[MRS. GWYN struggles to look at him, then covers her face with
her hands.]
MRS. GWYN. If I were to give you up, you'd forget me in a month.
LEVER. Why do you say such things?
MRS. GWYN. If only I could believe I was necessary to you!
LEVER. [Forcing the fervour of his voice.] But you are!
MRS. GWYN. Am I? [With the ghost of a smile.] Midsummer day!
[She gives a laugh that breaks into a sob.]
[The music o f a waltz sounds from the house.]
LEVER. For God's sake, don't, Molly--I don't believe in going to
meet trouble.
MRS. GWYN. It's staring me in the face.
LEVER. Let the future take care of itself!
[MRS. GWYN has turned away her face, covering it with her
hands.]
Don't, Molly! [Trying to pull her hands away.] Don't!
MRS. GWYN. Oh! what shall I do?
[There is a silence; the music of the waltz sounds louder from
the house.]
[Starting up.] Listen! One can't sit it out and dance it too.
Which is it to be, Maurice, dancing--or sitting out? It must be one
or the other, must n't it?
LEVER. Molly! Molly!
MRS. GWYN. Ah, my dear! [Standing away from him as though to show
herself.] How long shall I keep you? This is all that 's left of
me. It 's time I joined the wallflowers. [Smiling faintly.] It's
time I played the mother, is n't it? [In a whisper.] It'll be all
sitting out then.
LEVER. Don't! Let's go and dance, it'll do you good.
[He puts his hands on her arms, and in a gust of passion kisses
her lips and throat.]
MRS. GWYN. I can't give you up--I can't. Love me, oh! love me!
[For a moment they stand so; then, with sudden remembrance of
where they are, they move apart.]
LEVER. Are you all right now, darling?
MRS. GWYN. [Trying to smile.] Yes, dear--quite.
LEVER. Then let 's go, and dance. [They go.]
[For a few seconds the hollow tree stands alone; then from the house
ROSE comes and enters it. She takes out a bottle of champagne, wipes
it, and carries it away; but seeing MRS. GWYN's scarf lying across
the chair, she fingers it, and stops, listening to the waltz.
Suddenly draping it round her shoulders, she seizes the bottle of
champagne, and waltzes with abandon to the music, as though avenging
a long starvation of her instincts. Thus dancing, she is surprised
by DICK, who has come to smoke a cigarette and think, at the spot
where he was told to "have a go." ROSE, startled, stops and hugs the
bottle.]
DICK. It's not claret, Rose, I should n't warm it.
[ROSE, taking off the scarf, replaces it on the chair; then with
the half-warmed bottle, she retreats. DICK, in the swing, sits
thinking of his fate. Suddenly from behind the hollow tree he
sees Joy darting forward in her day dress with her hair about
her neck, and her skirt all torn. As he springs towards her,
she turns at bay.]
DICK. Joy!
JOY. I want Uncle Tom.
DICK. [In consternation.] But ought you to have got up--I thought
you were ill in bed; oughtn't you to be lying down?
JOY. If have n't been in bed. Where's Uncle Tom?
DICK. But where have you been?-your dress is all torn. Look! [He
touches the torn skirt.]
JOY. [Tearing it away.] In the fields. Where's Uncle Tom?
DICK. Are n't you really ill then?
[Joy shakes her head.]
DICK, [showing her the irises.] Look at these. They were the best I
could get.
JOY. Don't! I want Uncle Tom!
DICK. Won't you take them?
JOY. I 've got something else to do.
DICK. [With sudden resolution.] What do you want the Colonel for?
JOY. I want him.
DICK. Alone?
JOY. Yes.
DICK. Joy, what is the matter?
JOY. I 've got something to tell him.
DICK. What? [With sudden inspiration.] Is it about Lever?
JOY. [In a low voice.] The mine.
DICK. The mine?
JOY. It 's not--not a proper one.
DICK. How do you mean, Joy?
JOY. I overheard. I don't care, I listened. I would n't if it had
been anybody else, but I hate him.
DICK. [Gravely.] What did you hear?
JOY. He 's keeping back something Uncle Tom ought to know.
DICK. Are you sure?
[Joy makes a rush to pass him.]
[Barring the way.] No, wait a minute--you must! Was it something
that really matters?--I don't want to know what.
JOY. Yes, it was.
DICK. What a beastly thing--are you quite certain, Joy?
JOY. [Between her teeth.] Yes.
DICK. Then you must tell him, of course, even if you did overhear.
You can't stand by and see the Colonel swindled. Whom was he talking
to?
JOY. I won't tell you.
DICK. [Taking her wrist.] Was it was it your Mother?
[Joy bends her head.]
But if it was your Mother, why does n't she----
JOY. Let me go!
DICK. [Still holding her.] I mean I can't see what----
JOY. [Passionately.] Let me go!
DICK. [Releasing her.] I'm thinking of your Mother, Joy. She would
never----
JOY. [Covering her face.] That man!
DICK. But joy, just think! There must be some mistake. It 's so
queer--it 's quite impossible!
JOY. He won't let her.
DICK. Won't let her--won't let her? But [Stopping dead, and in a
very different voice.] Oh!
JOY. [Passionately.] Why d' you look at me like that? Why can't
you speak?
[She waits for him to speak, but he does not.]
I'm going to show what he is, so that Mother shan't speak to him
again. I can--can't I--if I tell Uncle Tom?--can't I----?
DICK. But Joy--if your Mother knows a thing like--that----
JOY. She wanted to tell--she begged him--and he would n't.
DICK. But, joy, dear, it means----
JOY. I hate him, I want to make her hate him, and I will.
DICK. But, Joy, dear, don't you see--if your Mother knows a thing
like that, and does n't speak of it, it means that she--it means that
you can't make her hate him--it means----If it were anybody else--
but, well, you can't give your own Mother away!
JOY. How dare you! How dare you! [Turning to the hollow tree.] It
is n't true--Oh! it is n't true!
DICK. [In deep distress.] Joy, dear, I never meant, I didn't
really!
[He tries to pull her hands down from her face.]
JOY. [Suddenly.] Oh! go away, go away!
[MRS. GWYN is seen coming back. JOY springs into the tree.
DICK quickly steals away. MRS. GWYN goes up to the chair and
takes the scarf that she has come for, and is going again when
JOY steals out to her.]
Mother!
[MRS. GWYN stands looking at her with her teeth set on her lower
lip.]
Oh! Mother, it is n't true?
MRS. GWYN. [Very still.] What is n't true?
JOY. That you and he are----
[Searching her Mother's face, which is deadly still. In a
whisper.]
Then it is true. Oh!
MRS. GWYN. That's enough, Joy! What I am is my affair--not yours--
do you understand?
JOY. [Low and fierce.] Yes, I do.
MRS. GWYN. You don't. You're only a child.
JOY. [Passionately.] I understand that you've hurt [She stops.]
MRS. GWYN. Do you mean your Father?
JOY. [Bowing her head.] Yes, and--and me. [She covers her face.]
I'm--I'm ashamed.
MRS. GWYN. I brought you into the world, and you say that to me?
Have I been a bad mother to you?
JOY. [In a smothered voice.] Oh! Mother!
MRS. GWYN. Ashamed? Am I to live all my life like a dead woman
because you're ashamed? Am I to live like the dead because you 're a
child that knows nothing of life? Listen, Joy, you 'd better
understand this once for all. Your Father has no right over me and
he knows it. We 've been hateful to each other for years. Can you
understand that? Don't cover your face like a child--look at me.
[Joy drops her hands, and lifts her face. MRS. GWYN looks back
at her, her lips are quivering; she goes on speaking with
stammering rapidity.]
D' you think--because I suffered when you were born and because I 've
suffered since with every ache you ever had, that that gives you the
right to dictate to me now? [In a dead voice.] I've been unhappy
enough and I shall be unhappy enough in the time to come. [Meeting
the hard wonder in Joy's face.] Oh! you untouched things, you're as
hard and cold as iron!
JOY. I would do anything for you, Mother.
MRS. GWYN. Except--let me live, Joy. That's the only thing you won't
do for me, I quite understand.
JOY. Oh! Mother, you don't understand--I want you so; and I seem to
be nothing to you now.
MRS. GWYN. Nothing to me? [She smiles.]
JOY. Mother, darling, if you're so unhappy let's forget it all,
let's go away and I 'll be everything to you, I promise.
MRS. GWYN. [With the ghost of a laugh.] Ah, Joy!
JOY. I would try so hard.
MRS. GWYN. [With the same quivering smile.] My darling, I know you
would, until you fell in love yourself.
JOY. Oh, Mother, I wouldn't, I never would, I swear it.
MRS. GWYN. There has never been a woman, joy, that did not fall in
love.
JOY. [In a despairing whisper.] But it 's wrong of you it's wicked!
MRS. GWYN. If it's wicked, I shall pay for it, not you!
JOY. But I want to save you, Mother!
MRS. GWYN. Save me? [Breaking into laughter.]
JOY. I can't bear it that you--if you 'll only--I'll never leave
you. You think I don't know what I 'm saying, but I do, because even
now I--I half love somebody. Oh, Mother! [Pressing her breast.]
I feel--I feel so awful--as if everybody knew.
MRS. GWYN. You think I'm a monster to hurt you. Ah! yes! You'll
understand better some day.
JOY. [In a sudden outburst of excited fear.] I won't believe it--
I--I--can't--you're deserting me, Mother.
MRS. GWYN. Oh, you untouched things! You----
[Joy' looks up suddenly, sees her face, and sinks down on her
knees.]
JOY. Mother--it 's for me!
GWYN. Ask for my life, JOY--don't be afraid.
[Joy turns her face away. MRS. GWYN bends suddenly and touches
her daughter's hair; JOY shrinks from that touch.]
[Recoiling as though she had been stung.] I forgot--I 'm deserting
you.
[And swiftly without looking back she goes away. Joy, left alone
under the hollow tree, crouches lower, and her shoulders shake.
Here DICK finds her, when he hears no longer any sound o f
voices. He falls on his knees beside her.]
DICK. Oh! Joy; dear, don't cry. It's so dreadful to see you! I 'd
do anything not to see you cry! Say something.
[Joy is still for a moment, then the shaking of the shoulders
begins again.]
Joy, darling! It's so awful, you 'll make yourself ill, and it is
n't worth it, really. I 'd do anything to save you pain--won't you
stop just for a minute?
[Joy is still again.]
Nothing in the world 's worth your crying, Joy. Give me just a
little look!
JOY. [Looking; in a smothered voice.] Don't!
DICK. You do look so sweet! Oh, Joy, I'll comfort you, I'll take it
all on myself. I know all about it.
[Joy gives a sobbing laugh]
I do. I 've had trouble too, I swear I have. It gets better, it
does really.
JOY. You don't know--it's--it's----
DICK. Don't think about it! No, no, no! I know exactly what it's
like. [He strokes her arm.]
JOY. [Shrinking, in a whisper.] You mustn't.
[The music of a waltz is heard again.]
DICK. Look here, joy! It's no good, we must talk it over calmly.
JOY. You don't see! It's the--it 's the disgrace----
DICK. Oh! as to disgrace--she's your Mother, whatever she does; I'd
like to see anybody say anything about her--[viciously]--I'd punch
his head.
JOY. [Gulping her tears.] That does n't help.
DICK. But if she doesn't love your Father----
JOY. But she's married to him!
DICK. [Hastily.] Yes, of course, I know, marriage is awfully
important; but a man understands these things.
[Joy looks at him. Seeing the impression he has made, he tries
again.]
I mean, he understands better than a woman. I've often argued about
moral questions with men up at Oxford.
JOY. [Catching at a straw.] But there's nothing to argue about.
DICK. [Hastily.] Of course, I believe in morals.
[They stare solemnly at each other.]
Some men don't. But I can't help seeing marriage is awfully
important.
JOY. [Solemnly.] It's sacred.
DICK. Yes, I know, but there must be exceptions, Joy.
Joy. [Losing herself a little in the stress of this discussion.]
How can there be exceptions if a thing 's sacred?
DICK. [Earnestly.] All rules have exceptions; that's true, you
know; it's a proverb.
JOY. It can't be true about marriage--how can it when----?
DICK. [With intense earnestness.] But look here, Joy, I know a
really clever man--an author. He says that if marriage is a failure
people ought to be perfectly free; it isn't everybody who believes
that marriage is everything. Of course, I believe it 's sacred, but
if it's a failure, I do think it seems awful--don't you?
JOY. I don't know--yes--if--[Suddenly] But it's my own Mother!
DICK. [Gravely.] I know, of course. I can't expect you to see it
in your own case like this. [With desperation.] But look here, Joy,
this'll show you! If a person loves a person, they have to decide,
have n't they? Well, then, you see, that 's what your Mother's done.
JOY. But that does n't show me anything!
DICK. But it does. The thing is to look at it as if it was n't
yourself. If it had been you and me in love, Joy, and it was wrong,
like them, of course [ruefully] I know you'd have decided right.
[Fiercely.] But I swear I should have decided wrong.
[Triumphantly.] That 's why I feel I understand your Mother.
JOY. [Brushing her sleeve across her eyes.] Oh, Dick, you are so
sweet--and--and--funny!
DICK. [Sliding his arm about her.] I love you, Joy, that 's why,
and I 'll love you till you don't feel it any more. I will. I'll
love you all day and every day; you shan't miss anything, I swear it.
It 's such a beautiful night--it 's on purpose. Look' [JOY looks; he
looks at her.] But it 's not so beautiful as you.
JOY. [Bending her head.] You mustn't. I don't know--what's coming?
DICK. [Sidling closer.] Are n't your knees tired, darling? I--I
can't get near you properly.
JOY. [With a sob.] Oh! Dick, you are a funny--comfort!
DICK. We'll stick together, Joy, always; nothing'll matter then.
[They struggle to their feet-the waltz sounds louder.]
You're missing it all! I can't bear you to miss the dancing. It
seems so queer! Couldn't we? Just a little turn?
JOY. No, no?
DICK. Oh! try!
[He takes her gently by the waist, she shrinks back.]
JOY. [Brokenly.] No-no! Oh! Dick-to-morrow 'll be so awful.
DICK. To-morrow shan't hurt you, Joy; nothing shall ever hurt you
again.
[She looks at him, and her face changes; suddenly she buries it
against his shoulder.]
[They stand so just a moment in the moon light; then turning to the
river move slowly out of sight. Again the hollow tree is left alone.
The music of the waltz has stopped. The voices of MISS BEECH and the
COLONEL are heard approaching from the house. They appear in the
opening of the wall. The COLONEL carries a pair of field glasses
with which to look at the Moon.]
COLONEL. Charming to see Molly dance with Lever, their steps go so
well together! I can always tell when a woman's enjoying herself,
Peachey.
MISS BEECH. [Sharply.] Can you? You're very clever.
COLONEL. Wonderful, that moon! I'm going to have a look at her!
Splendid glasses these, Peachy [he screws them out], not a better
pair in England. I remember in Burmah with these glasses I used to
be able to tell a man from a woman at two miles and a quarter. And
that's no joke, I can tell you. [But on his way to the moon, he has
taken a survey of the earth to the right along the river. In a low
but excited voice] I say, I say--is it one of the maids--the
baggage! Why! It's Dick! By George, she's got her hair down,
Peachey! It's Joy!
[MISS BEECH goes to look. He makes as though to hand the
glasses to her, but puts them to his own eyes instead--
excitedly.]
It is! What about her headache? By George, they're kissing. I say,
Peachey! I shall have to tell Nell!
MISS BEECH. Are you sure they're kissing? Well, that's some
comfort.
COLONEL. They're at the stile now. Oughtn't I to stop them, eh?
[He stands on tiptoe.] We must n't spy on them, dash it all. [He
drops the glasses.] They're out of sight now.
MISS BEECH. [To herself.] He said he wouldn't let her.
COLONEL. What! have you been encouraging them!
MISS BEECH. Don't be in such a hurry!
[She moves towards the hollow tree.]
COLONEL. [Abstractedly.] By George, Peachey, to think that Nell and
I were once--Poor Nell! I remember just such a night as this
[He stops, and stares before him, sighing.]
MISS BEECH, [Impressively.] It's a comfort she's got that good young
man. She's found out that her mother and this Mr. Lever are--you
know.
COLONEL. [Losing all traces of his fussiness, and drawing himself up
as though he were on parade.] You tell me that my niece?
MISS BEECH. Out of her own mouth!
COLONEL. [Bowing his head.] I never would have believed she'd have
forgotten herself.
MISS BEECH. [Very solemnly.] Ah, my dear! We're all the same;
we're all as hollow as that tree! When it's ourselves it's always a
special case!
[The COLONEL makes a movement of distress, and Miss BEECH goes
to him.]
Don't you take it so to heart, my dear!
[A silence.]
COLONEL. [Shaking his head.] I couldn't have believed Molly would
forget that child.
MISS BEECH. [Sadly.] They must go their own ways, poor things! She
can't put herself in the child's place, and the child can't put
herself in Molly's. A woman and a girl--there's the tree of life
between them!
COLONEL. [Staring into the tree to see indeed if that were the tree
alluded to.] It's a grief to me, Peachey, it's a grief! [He sinks
into a chair, stroking his long moustaches. Then to avenge his
hurt.] Shan't tell Nell--dashed if I do anything to make the trouble
worse!
MISS BEECH. [Nodding.] There's suffering enough, without adding to
it with our trumpery judgments! If only things would last between
them!
COLONEL. [Fiercely.] Last! By George, they'd better----
[He stops, and looking up with a queer sorry look.]
I say, Peachey Life's very funny!
MISS BEECH. Men and women are! [Touching his forehead tenderly.]
There, there--take care of your poor, dear head! Tsst! The blessed
innocents!
[She pulls the COLONEL'S sleeve. They slip away towards the
house, as JOY and DICK come back. They are still linked
together, and stop by the hollow tree.]
JOY. [In a whisper.] Dick, is love always like this?
DICK. [Putting his arms around her, with conviction.] It's never
been like this before. It's you and me!
[He kisses her on the lips.]
The curtain falls.
STRIFE
A DRAMA IN THREE ACTS
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
JOHN ANTHONY, Chairman of the Trenartha Tin Plate Works
EDGAR ANTHONY, his Son
FREDERIC H. WILDER, |
WILLIAM SCANTLEBURY,| Directors Of the same
OLIVER WANKLIN, |
HENRY TENCH, Secretary of the same
FRANCIS UNDERWOOD, C.E., Manager of the same
SIMON HARNESS, a Trades Union official
DAVID ROBERTS, |
JAMES GREEN, |
JOHN BULGIN, | the workmen's committee
HENRY THOMAS, |
GEORGE ROUS, |
HENRY ROUS, |
LEWIS, |
JAGO, |
EVANS, | workman at the Trenartha Tin Plate Works
A BLACKSMITH, |
DAVIES, |
A RED-HAIRED YOUTH. |
BROWN |
FROST, valet to John Anthony
ENID UNDERWOOD, Wife of Francis Underwood, daughter of John Anthony
ANNIE ROBERTS, wife of David Roberts
MADGE THOMAS, daughter of Henry Thomas
MRS. ROUS, mother of George and Henry Rous
MRS. BULGIN, wife of John Bulgin
MRS. YEO, wife of a workman
A PARLOURMAID to the Underwoods
JAN, Madge's brother, a boy of ten
A CROWD OF MEN ON STRIKE
ACT I. The dining-room of the Manager's house.
ACT II,
SCENE I. The kitchen of the Roberts's cottage near the works.
SCENE II. A space outside the works.
ACT III. The drawing-room of the Manager's house.
The action takes place on February 7th between the hours of noon and
six in the afternoon, close to the Trenartha Tin Plate Works, on the
borders of England and Wales, where a strike has been in progress
throughout the winter.
ACT I
It is noon. In the Underwoods' dining-room a bright fire is
burning. On one side of the fireplace are double-doors leading
to the drawing-room, on the other side a door leading to the
hall. In the centre of the room a long dining-table without a
cloth is set out as a Board table. At the head of it, in the
Chairman's seat, sits JOHN ANTHONY, an old man, big,
clean-shaven, and high-coloured, with thick white hair, and thick
dark eyebrows. His movements are rather slow and feeble, but his
eyes are very much alive. There is a glass of water by his side.
On his right sits his son EDGAR, an earnest-looking man of thirty,
reading a newspaper. Next him WANKLIN, a man with jutting
eyebrows, and silver-streaked light hair, is bending over transfer
papers. TENCH, the Secretary, a short and rather humble, nervous
man, with side whiskers, stands helping him. On WANKLIN'S right
sits UNDERWOOD, the Manager, a quiet man, with along, stiff jaw,
and steady eyes. Back to the fire is SCANTLEBURY, a very large,
pale, sleepy man, with grey hair, rather bald. Between him and
the Chairman are two empty chairs.
WILDER. [Who is lean, cadaverous, and complaining, with drooping
grey moustaches, stands before the fire.] I say, this fire's the
devil! Can I have a screen, Tench?
SCANTLEBURY. A screen, ah!
TENCH. Certainly, Mr. Wilder. [He looks at UNDERWOOD.] That is--
perhaps the Manager--perhaps Mr. Underwood----
SCANTLEBURY. These fireplaces of yours, Underwood----
UNDERWOOD. [Roused from studying some papers.] A screen? Rather!
I'm sorry. [He goes to the door with a little smile.] We're not
accustomed to complaints of too much fire down here just now.
[He speaks as though he holds a pipe between his teeth, slowly,
ironically.]
WILDER. [In an injured voice.] You mean the men. H'm!
[UNDERWOOD goes out.]
SCANTLEBURY. Poor devils!
WILDER. It's their own fault, Scantlebury.
EDGAR. [Holding out his paper.] There's great distress among them,
according to the Trenartha News.
WILDER. Oh, that rag! Give it to Wanklin. Suit his Radical views.
They call us monsters, I suppose. The editor of that rubbish ought
to be shot.
EDGAR. [Reading.] "If the Board of worthy gentlemen who control the
Trenartha Tin Plate Works from their arm-chairs in London would
condescend to come and see for themselves the conditions prevailing
amongst their work-people during this strike----"
WILDER. Well, we have come.
EDGAR. [Continuing.] "We cannot believe that even their leg-of-mutton
hearts would remain untouched."
[WANKLIN takes the paper from him.]
WILDER. Ruffian! I remember that fellow when he had n't a penny to
his name; little snivel of a chap that's made his way by black-guarding
everybody who takes a different view to himself.
[ANTHONY says something that is not heard.]
WILDER. What does your father say?
EDGAR. He says "The kettle and the pot."
WILDER. H'm!
[He sits down next to SCANTLEBURY.]
SCANTLEBURY. [Blowing out his cheeks.] I shall boil if I don't get
that screen.
[UNDERWOOD and ENID enter with a screen, which they place before
the fire. ENID is tall; she has a small, decided face, and is
twenty-eight years old.]
ENID. Put it closer, Frank. Will that do, Mr. Wilder? It's the
highest we've got.
WILDER. Thanks, capitally.
SCANTLEBURY. [Turning, with a sigh of pleasure.] Ah! Merci,
Madame!
ENID. Is there anything else you want, Father? [ANTHONY shakes his
head.] Edgar--anything?
EDGAR. You might give me a "J" nib, old girl.
ENID. There are some down there by Mr. Scantlebury.
SCANTLEBURY. [Handing a little box of nibs.] Ah! your brother uses
"J's." What does the manager use? [With expansive politeness.]
What does your husband use, Mrs. Underwood?
UNDERWOOD. A quill!
SCANTLEBURY. The homely product of the goose. [He holds out
quills.]
UNDERWOOD. [Drily.] Thanks, if you can spare me one. [He takes a
quill.] What about lunch, Enid?
ENID. [Stopping at the double-doors and looking back.] We're going
to have lunch here, in the drawing-room, so you need n't hurry with
your meeting.
[WANKLIN and WILDER bow, and she goes out.]
SCANTLEBURY. [Rousing himself, suddenly.] Ah! Lunch! That hotel--
Dreadful! Did you try the whitebait last night? Fried fat!
WILDER. Past twelve! Are n't you going to read the minutes, Tench?
TENCH. [Looking for the CHAIRMAN'S assent, reads in a rapid and
monotonous voice.] "At a Board Meeting held the 31st of January at
the Company's Offices, 512, Cannon Street, E.C. Present--Mr. Anthony
in the chair, Messrs. F. H. Wilder, William Scantlebury, Oliver
Wanklin, and Edgar Anthony. Read letters from the Manager dated
January 20th, 23d, 25th, 28th, relative to the strike at the
Company's Works. Read letters to the Manager of January 21st, 24th,
26th, 29th. Read letter from Mr. Simon Harness, of the Central
Union, asking for an interview with the Board. Read letter from the
Men's Committee, signed David Roberts, James Green, John Bulgin,
Henry Thomas, George Rous, desiring conference with the Board; and it
was resolved that a special Board Meeting be called for February 7th
at the house of the Manager, for the purpose of discussing the
situation with Mr. Simon Harness and the Men's Committee on the spot.
Passed twelve transfers, signed and sealed nine certificates and one
balance certificate."
[He pushes the book over to the CHAIRMAN.]
ANTHONY. [With a heavy sigh.] If it's your pleasure, sign the same.
[He signs, moving the pen with difficulty. ]
WANKLIN. What's the Union's game, Tench? They have n't made up
their split with the men. What does Harness want this interview for?
TENCH. Hoping we shall come to a compromise, I think, sir; he's
having a meeting with the men this afternoon.
WILDER. Harness! Ah! He's one of those cold-blooded, cool-headed
chaps. I distrust them. I don't know that we didn't make a mistake
to come down. What time'll the men be here?
UNDERWOOD. Any time now.
WILDER. Well, if we're not ready, they'll have to wait--won't do
them any harm to cool their heels a bit.
SCANTLEBURY. [Slowly.] Poor devils! It's snowing. What weather!
UNDERWOOD. [With meaning slowness.] This house'll be the warmest
place they've been in this winter.
WILDER. Well, I hope we're going to settle this business in time for
me to catch the 6.30. I've got to take my wife to Spain to-morrow.
[Chattily.] My old father had a strike at his works in '69; just
such a February as this. They wanted to shoot him.
WANKLIN. What! In the close season?
WILDER. By George, there was no close season for employers then! He
used to go down to his office with a pistol in his pocket.
SCANTLEBURY. [Faintly alarmed.] Not seriously?
WILDER. [With finality.] Ended in his shootin' one of 'em in the
legs.
SCANTLEBURY. [Unavoidably feeling his thigh.] No? Which?
ANTHONY. [Lifting the agenda paper.] To consider the policy of the
Board in relation to the strike. [There is a silence.]
WILDER. It's this infernal three-cornered duel--the Union, the men,
and ourselves.
WANKLIN. We need n't consider the Union.
WILDER. It's my experience that you've always got to, consider the
Union, confound them! If the Union were going to withdraw their
support from the men, as they've done, why did they ever allow them
to strike at all?
EDGAR. We've had that over a dozen times.
WILDER. Well, I've never understood it! It's beyond me. They talk
of the engineers' and furnace-men's demands being excessive--so they
are--but that's not enough to make the Union withdraw their support.
What's behind it?
UNDERWOOD. Fear of strikes at Harper's and Tinewell's.
WILDER. [With triumph.] Afraid of other strikes--now, that's a
reason! Why could n't we have been told that before?
UNDERWOOD. You were.
TENCH. You were absent from the Board that day, sir.
SCANTLEBURY. The men must have seen they had no chance when the
Union gave them up. It's madness.
UNDERWOOD. It's Roberts!
WILDER. Just our luck, the men finding a fanatical firebrand like
Roberts for leader. [A pause.]
WANKLIN. [Looking at ANTHONY.] Well?
WILDER. [Breaking in fussily.] It's a regular mess. I don't like
the position we're in; I don't like it; I've said so for a long time.
[Looking at WANKLIN.] When Wanklin and I came down here before
Christmas it looked as if the men must collapse. You thought so too,
Underwood.
UNDERWOOD. Yes.
WILDER. Well, they haven't! Here we are, going from bad to worse
losing our customers--shares going down!
SCANTLEBURY. [Shaking his head.] M'm! M'm!
WANKLIN. What loss have we made by this strike, Tench?
TENCH. Over fifty thousand, sir!
SCANTLEBURY, [Pained.] You don't say!
WILDER. We shall never got it back.
TENCH. No, sir.
WILDER. Who'd have supposed the men were going to stick out like
this--nobody suggested that. [Looking angrily at TENCH.]
SCANTLEBURY. [Shaking his head.] I've never liked a fight--never
shall.
ANTHONY. No surrender! [All look at him.]
WILDER. Who wants to surrender? [ANTHONY looks at him.] I--I want
to act reasonably. When the men sent Roberts up to the Board in
December--then was the time. We ought to have humoured him; instead
of that the Chairman--[Dropping his eyes before ANTHONY'S]--er--we
snapped his head off. We could have got them in then by a little
tact.
ANTHONY. No compromise!
WILDER. There we are! This strike's been going on now since
October, and as far as I can see it may last another six months.
Pretty mess we shall be in by then. The only comfort is, the men'll
be in a worse!
EDGAR. [To UNDERWOOD.] What sort of state are they really in,
Frank?
UNDERWOOD. [Without expression.] Damnable!
WILDER. Well, who on earth would have thought they'd have held on
like this without support!
UNDERWOOD. Those who know them.
WILDER. I defy any one to know them! And what about tin? Price
going up daily. When we do get started we shall have to work off our
contracts at the top of the market.
WANKLIN. What do you say to that, Chairman?
ANTHONY. Can't be helped!
WILDER. Shan't pay a dividend till goodness knows when!
SCANTLEBURY. [With emphasis.] We ought to think of the
shareholders. [Turning heavily.] Chairman, I say we ought to think
of the shareholders. [ANTHONY mutters.]
SCANTLEBURY. What's that?
TENCH. The Chairman says he is thinking of you, sir.
SCANTLEBURY. [Sinking back into torpor.] Cynic!
WILDER. It's past a joke. I don't want to go without a dividend for
years if the Chairman does. We can't go on playing ducks and drakes
with the Company's prosperity.
EDGAR. [Rather ashamedly.] I think we ought to consider the men.
[All but ANTHONY fidget in their seats.]
SCANTLEBURY. [With a sigh.] We must n't think of our private
feelings, young man. That'll never do.
EDGAR. [Ironically.] I'm not thinking of our feelings. I'm
thinking of the men's.
WILDER. As to that--we're men of business.
WANKLIN. That is the little trouble.
EDGAR. There's no necessity for pushing things so far in the face of
all this suffering--it's--it's cruel.
[No one speaks, as though EDGAR had uncovered something whose
existence no man prizing his self-respect could afford to
recognise.]
WANKLIN. [With an ironical smile.] I'm afraid we must n't base our
policy on luxuries like sentiment.
EDGAR. I detest this state of things.
ANTHONY. We did n't seek the quarrel.
EDGAR. I know that sir, but surely we've gone far enough.
ANTHONY. No. [All look at one another.]
WANKLIN. Luxuries apart, Chairman, we must look out what we're
doing.
ANTHONY. Give way to the men once and there'll be no end to it.
WANKLIN. I quite agree, but----
[ANTHONY Shakes his head]
You make it a question of bedrock principle?
[ANTHONY nods.]
Luxuries again, Chairman! The shares are below par.
WILDER. Yes, and they'll drop to a half when we pass the next
dividend.
SCANTLEBURY. [With alarm.] Come, come! Not so bad as that.
WILDER. [Grimly.] You'll see! [Craning forward to catch ANTHONY'S
speech.] I didn't catch----
TENCH. [Hesitating.] The Chairman says, sir, "Fais que--que--devra."
EDGAR. [Sharply.] My father says: "Do what we ought--and let things
rip."
WILDER. Tcha!
SCANTLEBURY. [Throwing up his hands.] The Chairman's a Stoic--I
always said the Chairman was a Stoic.
WILDER. Much good that'll do us.
WANKLIN. [Suavely.] Seriously, Chairman, are you going to let the
ship sink under you, for the sake of--a principle?
ANTHONY. She won't sink.
SCANTLEBURY. [With alarm.] Not while I'm on the Board I hope.
ANTHONY. [With a twinkle.] Better rat, Scantlebury.
SCANTLEBURY. What a man!
ANTHONY. I've always fought them; I've never been beaten yet.
WANKLIN. We're with you in theory, Chairman. But we're not all made
of cast-iron.
ANTHONY. We've only to hold on.
WILDER. [Rising and going to the fire.] And go to the devil as fast
as we can!
ANTHONY. Better go to the devil than give in!
WILDER. [Fretfully.] That may suit you, sir, but it does n't suit
me, or any one else I should think.
[ANTHONY looks him in the face-a silence.]
EDGAR. I don't see how we can get over it that to go on like this
means starvation to the men's wives and families.
[WILDER turns abruptly to the fire, and SCANTLEBURY puts out a
hand to push the idea away.]
WANKLIN. I'm afraid again that sounds a little sentimental.
EDGAR. Men of business are excused from decency, you think?
WILDER. Nobody's more sorry for the men than I am, but if they
[lashing himself] choose to be such a pig-headed lot, it's nothing
to do with us; we've quite enough on our hands to think of ourselves
and the shareholders.
EDGAR. [Irritably.] It won't kill the shareholders to miss a
dividend or two; I don't see that that's reason enough for knuckling
under.
SCANTLEBURY. [With grave discomfort.] You talk very lightly of your
dividends, young man; I don't know where we are.
WILDER. There's only one sound way of looking at it. We can't go on
ruining ourselves with this strike.
ANTHONY. No caving in!
SCANTLEBURY. [With a gesture of despair.] Look at him!
[ANTHONY'S leaning back in his chair. They do look at him.]
WILDER. [Returning to his seat.] Well, all I can say is, if that's
the Chairman's view, I don't know what we've come down here for.
ANTHONY. To tell the men that we've got nothing for them----
[Grimly.] They won't believe it till they hear it spoken in plain
English.
WILDER. H'm! Shouldn't be a bit surprised if that brute Roberts had
n't got us down here with the very same idea. I hate a man with a
grievance.
EDGAR. [Resentfully.] We didn't pay him enough for his discovery.
I always said that at the time.
WILDER. We paid him five hundred and a bonus of two hundred three
years later. If that's not enough! What does he want, for goodness'
sake?
TENCH. [Complainingly.] Company made a hundred thousand out of his
brains, and paid him seven hundred--that's the way he goes on, sir.
WILDER. The man's a rank agitator! Look here, I hate the Unions.
But now we've got Harness here let's get him to settle the whole
thing.
ANTHONY. No! [Again they look at him.]
UNDERWOOD. Roberts won't let the men assent to that.
SCANTLEBURY. Fanatic! Fanatic!
WILDER. [Looking at ANTHONY.] And not the only one! [FROST enters
from the hall.]
FROST. [To ANTHONY.] Mr. Harness from the Union, waiting, sir. The
men are here too, sir.
[ANTHONY nods. UNDERWOOD goes to the door, returning with
HARNESS, a pale, clean-shaven man with hollow cheeks, quick
eyes, and lantern jaw--FROST has retired.]
UNDERWOOD. [Pointing to TENCH'S chair.] Sit there next the
Chairman, Harness, won't you?
[At HARNESS'S appearance, the Board have drawn together, as it
were, and turned a little to him, like cattle at a dog.]
HARNESS. [With a sharp look round, and a bow.] Thanks! [He sits---
his accent is slightly nasal.] Well, gentlemen, we're going to do
business at last, I hope.
WILDER. Depends on what you call business, Harness. Why don't you
make the men come in?
HARNESS. [Sardonically.] The men are far more in the right than you
are. The question with us is whether we shan't begin to support them
again.
[He ignores them all, except ANTHONY, to whom he turns in
speaking.]
ANTHONY. Support them if you like; we'll put in free labour and have
done with it.
HARNESS. That won't do, Mr. Anthony. You can't get free labour, and
you know it.
ANTHONY. We shall see that.
HARNESS. I'm quite frank with you. We were forced to withhold our
support from your men because some of their demands are in excess of
current rates. I expect to make them withdraw those demands to-day:
if they do, take it straight from me, gentlemen, we shall back them
again at once. Now, I want to see something fixed upon before I go
back to-night. Can't we have done with this old-fashioned tug-of-war
business? What good's it doing you? Why don't you recognise once
for all that these people are men like yourselves, and want what's
good for them just as you want what's good for you [Bitterly.] Your
motor-cars, and champagne, and eight-course dinners.
ANTHONY. If the men will come in, we'll do something for them.
HARNESS. [Ironically.] Is that your opinion too, sir--and yours--
and yours? [The Directors do not answer.] Well, all I can say is:
It's a kind of high and mighty aristocratic tone I thought we'd grown
out of--seems I was mistaken.
ANTHONY. It's the tone the men use. Remains to be seen which can
hold out longest--they without us, or we without them.
HARNESS. As business men, I wonder you're not ashamed of this waste
of force, gentlemen. You know what it'll all end in.
ANTHONY. What?
HARNESS. Compromise--it always does.
SCANTLEBURY. Can't you persuade the men that their interests are the
same as ours?
HARNESS. [Turning, ironically.] I could persuade them of that, sir,
if they were.
WILDER. Come, Harness, you're a clever man, you don't believe all
the Socialistic claptrap that's talked nowadays. There 's no real
difference between their interests and ours.
HARNESS. There's just one very simple question I'd like to put to
you. Will you pay your men one penny more than they force you to pay
them?
[WILDER is silent.]
WANKLIN. [Chiming in.] I humbly thought that not to pay more than
was necessary was the A B C of commerce.
HARNESS. [With irony.] Yes, that seems to be the A B C of commerce,
sir; and the A B C of commerce is between your interests and the
men's.
SCANTLEBURY. [Whispering.] We ought to arrange something.
HARNESS. [Drily.] Am I to understand then, gentlemen, that your
Board is going to make no concessions?
[WANKLIN and WILDER bend forward as if to speak, but stop.]
ANTHONY. [Nodding.] None.
[WANKLIN and WILDER again bend forward, and SCANTLEBURY gives an
unexpected grunt.]
HARNESS. You were about to say something, I believe?
[But SCANTLEBURY says nothing.]
EDGAR. [Looking up suddenly.] We're sorry for the state of the men.
HARNESS. [Icily.] The men have no use for your pity, sir. What
they want is justice.
ANTHONY. Then let them be just.
HARNESS. For that word "just" read "humble," Mr. Anthony. Why
should they be humble? Barring the accident of money, are n't they
as good men as you?
ANTHONY. Cant!
HARNESS. Well, I've been five years in America. It colours a man's
notions.
SCANTLEBURY. [Suddenly, as though avenging his uncompleted grunt.]
Let's have the men in and hear what they've got to say!
[ANTHONY nods, and UNDERWOOD goes out by the single door.]
HARNESS. [Drily.] As I'm to have an interview with them this
afternoon, gentlemen, I 'll ask you to postpone your final decision
till that's over.
[Again ANTHONY nods, and taking up his glass drinks.]
[UNDERWOOD comes in again, followed by ROBERTS, GREEN, BULGIN,
THOMAS, ROUS. They file in, hat in hand, and stand silent in a
row. ROBERTS is lean, of middle height, with a slight stoop.
He has a little rat-gnawn, brown-grey beard, moustaches, high
cheek-bones, hollow cheeks, small fiery eyes. He wears an old
and grease-stained blue serge suit, and carries an old bowler
hat. He stands nearest the Chairman. GREEN, next to him, has a
clean, worn face, with a small grey goatee beard and drooping
moustaches, iron spectacles, and mild, straightforward eyes. He
wears an overcoat, green with age, and a linen collar. Next to
him is BULGIN, a tall, strong man, with a dark moustache, and
fighting jaw, wearing a red muffler, who keeps changing his cap
from one hand to the other. Next to him is THOMAS, an old man
with a grey moustache, full beard, and weatherbeaten, bony face,
whose overcoat discloses a lean, plucked-looking neck. On his
right, ROUS, the youngest of the five, looks like a soldier; he
has a glitter in his eyes.]
UNDERWOOD. [Pointing.] There are some chairs there against the
wall, Roberts; won't you draw them up and sit down?
ROBERTS. Thank you, Mr. Underwood--we'll stand in the presence of
the Board. [He speaks in a biting and staccato voice, rolling his
r's, pronouncing his a's like an Italian a, and his consonants short
and crisp.] How are you, Mr. Harness? Did n't expect t' have the
pleasure of seeing you till this afternoon.
HARNESS. [Steadily.] We shall meet again then, Roberts.
ROBERTS. Glad to hear that; we shall have some news for you to take
to your people.
ANTHONY. What do the men want?
ROBERTS. [Acidly.] Beg pardon, I don't quite catch the Chairman's
remark.
TENCH. [From behind the Chairman's chair.] The Chairman wishes to
know what the men have to say.
ROBERTS. It's what the Board has to say we've come to hear. It's
for the Board to speak first.
ANTHONY. The Board has nothing to say.
ROBERTS. [Looking along the line of men.] In that case we're
wasting the Directors' time. We'll be taking our feet off this
pretty carpet.
[He turns, the men move slowly, as though hypnotically
influenced.]
WANKLIN: [Suavely.] Come, Roberts, you did n't give us this long
cold journey for the pleasure of saying that.
THOMAS. [A pure Welshman.] No, sir, an' what I say iss----
ROBERTS.[Bitingly.] Go on, Henry Thomas, go on. You 're better able
to speak to the--Directors than me. [THOMAS is silent.]
TENCH. The Chairman means, Roberts, that it was the men who asked
for the conference, the Board wish to hear what they have to say.
ROBERTS. Gad! If I was to begin to tell ye all they have to say, I
wouldn't be finished to-day. And there'd be some that'd wish they'd
never left their London palaces.
HARNESS. What's your proposition, man? Be reasonable.
ROBERTS. You want reason Mr. Harness? Take a look round this
afternoon before the meeting. [He looks at the men; no sound escapes
them.] You'll see some very pretty scenery.
HARNESS. All right my friend; you won't put me off.
ROBERTS. [To the men.] We shan't put Mr. Harness off. Have some
champagne with your lunch, Mr. Harness; you'll want it, sir.
HARNESS. Come, get to business, man!
THOMAS. What we're asking, look you, is just simple justice.
ROBERTS. [Venomously.] Justice from London? What are you talking
about, Henry Thomas? Have you gone silly? [THOMAS is silent.] We
know very well what we are--discontented dogs--never satisfied. What
did the Chairman tell me up in London? That I did n't know what I
was talking about. I was a foolish, uneducated man, that knew
nothing of the wants of the men I spoke for,
EDGAR. Do please keep to the point.
ANTHONY. [Holding up his hand.] There can only be one master,
Roberts.
ROBERTS. Then, be Gad, it'll be us.
[There is a silence; ANTHONY and ROBERTS stare at one another.]
UNDERWOOD. If you've nothing to say to the Directors, Roberts,
perhaps you 'll let Green or Thomas speak for the men.
[GREEN and THOMAS look anxiously at ROBERTS, at each other, and
the other men.]
GREEN. [An Englishman.] If I'd been listened to, gentlemen----
THOMAS. What I'fe got to say iss what we'fe all got to say----
ROBERTS. Speak for yourself, Henry Thomas.
SCANTLEBURY. [With a gesture of deep spiritual discomfort.] Let the
poor men call their souls their own!
ROBERTS. Aye, they shall keep their souls, for it's not much body
that you've left them, Mr. [with biting emphasis, as though the word
were an offence] Scantlebury! [To the men.] Well, will you speak,
or shall I speak for you?
ROUS. [Suddenly.] Speak out, Roberts, or leave it to others.
ROBERTS. [Ironically.] Thank you, George Rous. [Addressing himself
to ANTHONY.] The Chairman and Board of Directors have honoured us by
leaving London and coming all this way to hear what we've got to say;
it would not be polite to keep them any longer waiting.
WILDER. Well, thank God for that!
ROBERTS. Ye will not dare to thank Him when I have done, Mr. Wilder,
for all your piety. May be your God up in London has no time to
listen to the working man. I'm told He is a wealthy God; but if he
listens to what I tell Him, He will know more than ever He learned in
Kensington.
HARNESS. Come, Roberts, you have your own God. Respect the God of
other men.
ROBERTS. That's right, sir. We have another God down here; I doubt
He is rather different to Mr. Wilder's. Ask Henry Thomas; he will
tell you whether his God and Mr. Wilder's are the same.
[THOMAS lifts his hand, and cranes his head as though to
prophesy.]
WANKLIN. For goodness' sake, let 's keep to the point, Roberts.
ROBERTS. I rather think it is the point, Mr. Wanklin. If you can
get the God of Capital to walk through the streets of Labour, and pay
attention to what he sees, you're a brighter man than I take you for,
for all that you're a Radical.
ANTHONY. Attend to me, Roberts! [Roberts is silent.] You are here
to speak for the men, as I am here to speak for the Board.
[He looks slowly round.]
[WILDER, WANKLIN, and SCANTLEBURY make movements of uneasiness,
and EDGAR gazes at the floor. A faint smile comes on HARNESS'S
face.]
Now then, what is it?
ROBERTS. Right, Sir!
[Throughout all that follows, he and ANTHONY look fixedly upon
each other. Men and Directors show in their various ways
suppressed uneasiness, as though listening to words that they
themselves would not have spoken.]
The men can't afford to travel up to London; and they don't trust you
to believe what they say in black and white. They know what the post
is [he darts a look at UNDERWOOD and TENCH], and what Directors'
meetings are: "Refer it to the manager--let the manager advise us on
the men's condition. Can we squeeze them a little more?"
UNDERWOOD. [In a low voice.] Don't hit below the belt, Roberts!
ROBERTS. Is it below the belt, Mr. Underwood? The men know. When I
came up to London, I told you the position straight. An' what came
of it? I was told I did n't know what I was talkin' about. I can't
afford to travel up to London to be told that again.
ANTHONY. What have you to say for the men?
ROBERTS. I have this to say--and first as to their condition. Ye
shall 'ave no need to go and ask your manager. Ye can't squeeze them
any more. Every man of us is well-nigh starving. [A surprised
murmur rises from the men. ROBERTS looks round.] Ye wonder why I
tell ye that? Every man of us is going short. We can't be no worse
off than we've been these weeks past. Ye need n't think that by
waiting yell drive us to come in. We'll die first, the whole lot of
us. The men have sent for ye to know, once and for all, whether ye
are going to grant them their demands. I see the sheet of paper in
the Secretary's hand. [TENCH moves nervously.] That's it, I think,
Mr. Tench. It's not very large.
TENCH. [Nodding.] Yes.
ROBERTS. There's not one sentence of writing on that paper that we
can do without.
[A movement amongst the men. ROBERTS turns on them sharply.]
Isn't that so?
[The men assent reluctantly. ANTHONY takes from TENCH the paper
and peruses it.]
Not one single sentence. All those demands are fair. We have not.
asked anything that we are not entitled to ask. What I said up in
London, I say again now: there is not anything on that piece of paper
that a just man should not ask, and a just man give.
[A pause.]
ANTHONY. There is not one single demand on this paper that we will
grant.
[In the stir that follows on these words, ROBERTS watches the
Directors and ANTHONY the men. WILDER gets up abruptly and goes
over to the fire.]
ROBERTS. D' ye mean that?
ANTHONY. I do.
[WILDER at the fire makes an emphatic movement of disgust.]
ROBERTS. [Noting it, with dry intensity.] Ye best know whether the
condition of the Company is any better than the condition of the men.
[Scanning the Directors' faces.] Ye best know whether ye can afford
your tyranny--but this I tell ye: If ye think the men will give way
the least part of an inch, ye're making the worst mistake ye ever
made. [He fixes his eyes on SCANTLEBURY.] Ye think because the
Union is not supporting us--more shame to it!--that we'll be coming
on our knees to you one fine morning. Ye think because the men have
got their wives an' families to think of--that it's just a question
of a week or two----
ANTHONY. It would be better if you did not speculate so much on what
we think.
ROBERTS. Aye! It's not much profit to us! I will say this for you,
Mr. Anthony--ye know your own mind! [Staying at ANTHONY.] I can
reckon on ye!
ANTHONY. [Ironically.] I am obliged to you!
ROBERTS. And I know mine. I tell ye this: The men will send their
wives and families where the country will have to keep them; an' they
will starve sooner than give way. I advise ye, Mr. Anthony, to
prepare yourself for the worst that can happen to your Company. We
are not so ignorant as you might suppose. We know the way the cat is
jumping. Your position is not all that it might be--not exactly!
ANTHONY. Be good enough to allow us to judge of our position for
ourselves. Go back, and reconsider your own.
ROBERTS. [Stepping forward.] Mr. Anthony, you are not a young man
now; from the time I remember anything ye have been an enemy to every
man that has come into your works. I don't say that ye're a mean
man, or a cruel man, but ye've grudged them the say of any word in
their own fate. Ye've fought them down four times. I've heard ye
say ye love a fight--mark my words--ye're fighting the last fight
ye'll ever fight!
[TENCH touches ROBERTS'S sleeve.]
UNDERWOOD. Roberts! Roberts!
ROBERTS. Roberts! Roberts! I must n't speak my mind to the
Chairman, but the Chairman may speak his mind to me!
WILDER. What are things coming to?
ANTHONY, [With a grim smile at WILDER.] Go on, Roberts; say what you
like!
ROBERTS. [After a pause.] I have no more to say.
ANTHONY. The meeting stands adjourned to five o'clock.
WANKLIN. [In a low voice to UNDERWOOD.] We shall never settle
anything like this.
ROBERTS. [Bitingly.] We thank the Chairman and Board of Directors
for their gracious hearing.
[He moves towards the door; the men cluster together stupefied;
then ROUS, throwing up his head, passes ROBERTS and goes out.
The others follow.]
ROBERTS. [With his hand on the door--maliciously.] Good day,
gentlemen! [He goes out.]
HARNESS. [Ironically.] I congratulate you on the conciliatory
spirit that's been displayed. With your permission, gentlemen, I'll
be with you again at half-past five. Good morning!
[He bows slightly, rests his eyes on ANTHONY, who returns his
stare unmoved, and, followed by UNDERWOOD, goes out. There is a
moment of uneasy silence. UNDERWOOD reappears in the doorway.]
WILDER. [With emphatic disgust.] Well!
[The double-doors are opened.]
ENID. [Standing in the doorway.] Lunch is ready.
[EDGAR, getting up abruptly, walks out past his sister.]
WILDER. Coming to lunch, Scantlebury?
SCANTLEBURY. [Rising heavily.] I suppose so, I suppose so. It's
the only thing we can do.
[They go out through the double-doors.]
WANKLIN. [In a low voice.] Do you really mean
to fight to a finish, Chairman?
[ANTHONY nods.]
WANKLIN. Take care! The essence of things is to know when to stop.
[ANTHONY does not answer.]
WANKLIN. [Very gravely.] This way disaster lies. The ancient
Trojans were fools to your father, Mrs. Underwood. [He goes out
through the double-doors.]
ENID. I want to speak to father, Frank.
[UNDERWOOD follows WANKLIN Out. TENCH, passing round the table,
is restoring order to the scattered pens and papers.]
ENID. Are n't you coming, Dad?
[ANTHONY Shakes his head. ENID looks meaningly at TENCH.]
ENID. Won't you go and have some lunch, Mr. Tench?
TENCH. [With papers in his hand.] Thank you, ma'am, thank you! [He
goes slowly, looking back.]
ENID. [Shutting the doors.] I do hope it's settled, Father!
ANTHONY. No!
ENID. [Very disappointed.] Oh! Have n't you done anything!
[ANTHONY shakes his head.]
ENID. Frank says they all want to come to a compromise, really,
except that man Roberts.
ANTHONY. I don't.
ENID. It's such a horrid position for us. If you were the wife of
the manager, and lived down here, and saw it all. You can't realise,
Dad!
ANTHONY. Indeed?
ENID. We see all the distress. You remember my maid Annie, who
married Roberts? [ANTHONY nods.] It's so wretched, her heart's
weak; since the strike began, she has n't even been getting proper
food. I know it for a fact, Father.
ANTHONY. Give her what she wants, poor woman!
ENID. Roberts won't let her take anything from us.
ANTHONY. [Staring before him.] I can't be answerable for the men's
obstinacy.
ENID. They're all suffering. Father! Do stop it, for my sake!
ANTHONY. [With a keen look at her.] You don't understand, my dear.
ENID. If I were on the Board, I'd do something.
ANTHONY. What would you do?
ENID. It's because you can't bear to give way. It's so----
ANTHONY. Well?
ENID. So unnecessary.
ANTHONY. What do you know about necessity? Read your novels, play
your music, talk your talk, but don't try and tell me what's at the
bottom of a struggle like this.
ENID. I live down here, and see it.
ANTHONY. What d' you imagine stands between you and your class and
these men that you're so sorry for?
ENID. [Coldly.] I don't know what you mean, Father.
ANTHONY. In a few years you and your children would be down in the
condition they're in, but for those who have the eyes to see things
as they are and the backbone to stand up for themselves.
ENID. You don't know the state the men are in.
ANTHONY. I know it well enough.
ENID. You don't, Father; if you did, you would n't
ANTHONY. It's you who don't know the simple facts of the position.
What sort of mercy do you suppose you'd get if no one stood between
you and the continual demands of labour? This sort of mercy--
[He puts his hand up to his throat and squeezes it.] First would go
your sentiments, my dear; then your culture, and your comforts would
be going all the time!
ENID. I don't believe in barriers between classes.
ANTHONY. You--don't--believe--in--barriers--between the classes?
ENID. [Coldly.] And I don't know what that has to do with this
question.
ANTHONY. It will take a generation or two for you to understand.
ENID. It's only you and Roberts, Father, and you know it!
[ANTHONY thrusts out his lower lip.]
It'll ruin the Company.
ANTHONY. Allow me to judge of that.
ENID. [Resentfully.] I won't stand by and let poor Annie Roberts
suffer like this! And think of the children, Father! I warn you.
ANTHONY. [With a grim smile.] What do you propose to do?
ENID. That's my affair.
[ANTHONY only looks at her.]
ENID. [In a changed voice, stroking his sleeve.] Father, you know
you oughtn't to have this strain on you--you know what Dr. Fisher
said!
ANTHONY. No old man can afford to listen to old women.
ENID. But you have done enough, even if it really is such a matter
of principle with you.
ANTHONY. You think so?
ENID. Don't Dad! [Her face works.] You--you might think of us!
ANTHONY. I am.
ENID. It'll break you down.
ANTHONY. [Slowly.] My dear, I am not going to funk; on that you may
rely.
[Re-enter TENCH with papers; he glances at them, then plucking
up courage.]
TENCH. Beg pardon, Madam, I think I'd rather see these papers were
disposed of before I get my lunch.
[ENID, after an impatient glance at him, looks at her father,
turns suddenly, and goes into the drawing-room.]
TENCH. [Holding the papers and a pen to ANTHONY, very nervously.]
Would you sign these for me, please sir?
[ANTHONY takes the pen and signs.]
TENCH. [Standing with a sheet of blotting-paper behind EDGAR'S
chair, begins speaking nervously.] I owe my position to you, sir.
ANTHONY. Well?
TENCH. I'm obliged to see everything that's going on, sir; I--I
depend upon the Company entirely. If anything were to happen to it,
it'd be disastrous for me. [ANTHONY nods.] And, of course, my
wife's just had another; and so it makes me doubly anxious just now.
And the rates are really terrible down our way.
ANTHONY. [With grim amusement.] Not more terrible than they are up
mine.
TENCH. No, Sir? [Very nervously.] I know the Company means a great
deal to you, sir.
ANTHONY. It does; I founded it.
TENCH. Yes, Sir. If the strike goes on it'll be very serious. I
think the Directors are beginning to realise that, sir.
ANTHONY. [Ironically.] Indeed?
TENCH. I know you hold very strong views, sir, and it's always your
habit to look things in the face; but I don't think the Directors--
like it, sir, now they--they see it.
ANTHONY. [Grimly.] Nor you, it seems.
TENCH. [With the ghost of a smile.] No, sir; of course I've got my
children, and my wife's delicate; in my position I have to think of
these things.
[ANTHONY nods.]
It was n't that I was going to say, sir, if you'll excuse me----
[hesitates]
ANTHONY. Out with it, then!
TENCH. I know--from my own father, sir, that when you get on in life
you do feel things dreadfully----
ANTHONY. [Almost paternally.] Come, out with it, Trench!
TENCH. I don't like to say it, sir.
ANTHONY. [Stonily.] You Must.
TENCH. [After a pause, desperately bolting it out.] I think the
Directors are going to throw you over, sir.
ANTHONY. [Sits in silence.] Ring the bell!
[TENCH nervously rings the bell and stands by the fire.]
TENCH. Excuse me for saying such a thing. I was only thinking of
you, sir.
[FROST enters from the hall, he comes to the foot of the table,
and looks at ANTHONY; TENCH coveys his nervousness by arranging
papers.]
ANTHONY. Bring me a whiskey and soda.
FROST. Anything to eat, sir?
[ANTHONY shakes his head. FROST goes to the sideboard, and
prepares the drink.]
TENCH. [In a low voice, almost supplicating.] If you could see your
way, sir, it would be a great relief to my mind, it would indeed.
[He looks up at ANTHONY, who has not moved.] It does make me so very
anxious. I haven't slept properly for weeks, sir, and that's a fact.
[ANTHONY looks in his face, then slowly shakes his head.]
[Disheartened.] No, Sir? [He goes on arranging papers.]
[FROST places the whiskey and salver and puts it down by
ANTHONY'S right hand. He stands away, looking gravely at
ANTHONY.]
FROST. Nothing I can get you, sir?
[ANTHONY shakes his head.]
You're aware, sir, of what the doctor said, sir?
ANTHONY. I am.
[A pause. FROST suddenly moves closer to him, and speaks in a
low voice.]
FROST. This strike, sir; puttin' all this strain on you. Excuse me,
sir, is it--is it worth it, sir?
[ANTHONY mutters some words that are inaudible.]
Very good, sir!
[He turns and goes out into the hall. TENCH makes two attempts
to speak; but meeting his Chairman's gaze he drops his eyes,
and, turning dismally, he too goes out. ANTHONY is left alone.
He grips the glass, tilts it, and drinks deeply; then sets it
down with a deep and rumbling sigh, and leans back in his
chair.]
The curtain falls.
ACT II
SCENE I
It is half-past three. In the kitchen of Roberts's cottage a
meagre little fire is burning. The room is clean and tidy, very
barely furnished, with a brick floor and white-washed walls,
much stained with smoke. There is a kettle on the fire. A door
opposite the fireplace opens inward from a snowy street. On the
wooden table are a cup and saucer, a teapot, knife, and plate of
bread and cheese. Close to the fireplace in an old arm-chair,
wrapped in a rug, sits MRS. ROBERTS, a thin and dark-haired
woman about thirty-five, with patient eyes. Her hair is not
done up, but tied back with a piece of ribbon. By the fire,
too, is MRS. YEO; a red-haired, broad-faced person. Sitting
near the table is MRS. ROUS, an old lady, ashen-white, with
silver hair; by the door, standing, as if about to go, is MRS.
BULGIN, a little pale, pinched-up woman. In a chair, with her
elbows resting on the table, avid her face resting in her hands,
sits MADGE THOMAS, a good-looking girl, of twenty-two, with high
cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and dark untidy hair. She is
listening to the talk, but she neither speaks nor moves.
MRS. YEO. So he give me a sixpence, and that's the first bit o'
money I seen this week. There an't much 'eat to this fire. Come and
warm yerself Mrs. Rous, you're lookin' as white as the snow, you are.
MRS. ROUS. [Shivering--placidly.] Ah! but the winter my old man
was took was the proper winter. Seventy-nine that was, when none of
you was hardly born--not Madge Thomas, nor Sue Bulgin. [Looking at
them in turn.] Annie Roberts, 'ow old were you, dear?
MRS ROBERTS. Seven, Mrs. Rous.
MRS. ROUS. Seven--well, there! A tiny little thing!
MRS. YEO. [Aggressively.] Well, I was ten myself, I remembers it.
MRS. Rous. [Placidly.] The Company hadn't been started three years.
Father was workin' on the acid, that's 'ow he got 'is pisoned-leg.
I kep' sayin' to 'im, "Father, you've got a pisoned leg." "Well," 'e
said, "Mother, pison or no pison, I can't afford to go a-layin' up."
An' two days after, he was on 'is back, and never got up again. It
was Providence! There was n't none o' these Compensation Acts then.
MRS. YEO. Ye had n't no strike that winter! [With grim humour.]
This winter's 'ard enough for me. Mrs. Roberts, you don't want no
'arder winter, do you? Wouldn't seem natural to 'ave a dinner, would
it, Mrs. Bulgin?
MRS. BULGIN. We've had bread and tea last four days.
MRS. YEO. You got that Friday's laundry job?
MRS. BULGIN. [Dispiritedly.] They said they'd give it me, but when
I went last Friday, they were full up. I got to go again next week.
MRS. YEO. Ah! There's too many after that. I send Yeo out on the
ice to put on the gentry's skates an' pick up what 'e can. Stops 'im
from broodin' about the 'ouse.
MRS. BULGIN. [In a desolate, matter-of-fact voice.] Leavin' out the
men--it's bad enough with the children. I keep 'em in bed, they
don't get so hungry when they're not running about; but they're that
restless in bed they worry your life out.
MRS. YEO. You're lucky they're all so small. It 's the goin' to
school that makes 'em 'ungry. Don't Bulgin give you anythin'?
MRS. BULGIN. [Shakes her head, then, as though by afterthought.]
Would if he could, I s'pose.
MRS. YEO. [Sardonically.] What! 'Ave n't 'e got no shares in the
Company?
MRS. ROUS. [Rising with tremulous cheerfulness.] Well, good-bye,
Annie Roberts, I'm going along home.
MRS. ROBERTS. Stay an' have a cup of tea, Mrs. Rous?
MRS. ROUS. [With the faintest smile.] Roberts 'll want 'is tea when
he comes in. I'll just go an' get to bed; it's warmer there than
anywhere.
[She moves very shakily towards the door.]
MRS. YEO. [Rising and giving her an arm.] Come on, Mother, take my
arm; we're all going' the same way.
MRS. ROUS. [Taking the arm.]Thank you, my dearies!
[THEY go out, followed by MRS. BULGIN.]
MADGE. [Moving for the first time.] There, Annie, you see that! I
told George Rous, "Don't think to have my company till you've made an
end of all this trouble. You ought to be ashamed," I said, "with
your own mother looking like a ghost, and not a stick to put on the
fire. So long as you're able to fill your pipes, you'll let us
starve." "I 'll take my oath, Madge," he said, "I 've not had smoke
nor drink these three weeks!" "Well, then, why do you go on with
it?" "I can't go back on Roberts!" . . . That's it! Roberts,
always Roberts! They'd all drop it but for him. When he talks it's
the devil that comes into them.
[A silence. MRS. ROBERTS makes a movement of pain.]
Ah! You don't want him beaten! He's your man. With everybody like
their own shadows! [She makes a gesture towards MRS. ROBERTS.] If
ROUS wants me he must give up Roberts. If he gave him up--they all
would. They're only waiting for a lead. Father's against him--
they're all against him in their hearts.
MRS. ROBERTS. You won't beat Roberts!
[They look silently at each other.]
MADGE. Won't I? The cowards--when their own mothers and their own
children don't know where to turn.
MRS. ROBERTS. Madge!
MADGE. [Looking searchingly at MRS. ROBERTS.] I wonder he can look
you in the face. [She squats before the fire, with her hands out to
the flame.] Harness is here again. They'll have to make up their
minds to-day.
MRS. ROBERTS. [In a soft, slow voice, with a slight West-country
burr.] Roberts will never give up the furnace-men and engineers.
'T wouldn't be right.
MADGE. You can't deceive me. It's just his pride.
[A tapping at the door is heard, the women turn as ENID enters.
She wears a round fur cap, and a jacket of squirrel's fur. She
closes the door behind her.]
ENID. Can I come in, Annie?
MRS. ROBERTS. [Flinching.] Miss Enid! Give Mrs. Underwood a chair,
Madge!
[MADGE gives ENID the chair she has been sitting on.]
ENID. Thank you!
ENID. Are you any better?
MRS. ROBERTS. Yes, M'm; thank you, M'm.
ENID. [Looking at the sullen MADGE as though requesting her
departure.] Why did you send back the jelly? I call that really
wicked of you!
MRS. ROBERTS. Thank you, M'm, I'd no need for it.
ENID. Of course! It was Roberts's doing, wasn't it? How can he let
all this suffering go on amongst you?
MADGE. [Suddenly.] What suffering?
ENID. [Surprised.] I beg your pardon!
MADGE. Who said there was suffering?
MRS. ROBERTS. Madge!
MADGE. [Throwing her shawl over her head.] Please to let us keep
ourselves to ourselves. We don't want you coming here and spying on
us.
ENID. [Confronting her, but without rising.] I did n't speak to
you.
MADGE. [In a low, fierce voice.] Keep your kind feelings to
yourself. You think you can come amongst us, but you're mistaken.
Go back and tell the Manager that.
ENID. [Stonily.] This is not your house.
MADGE. [Turning to the door.] No, it is not my house; keep clear of
my house, Mrs. Underwood.
[She goes out. ENID taps her fingers on the table.]
MRS. ROBERTS. Please to forgive Madge Thomas, M'm; she's a bit upset
to-day.
[A pause.]
ENID. [Looking at her.] Oh, I think they're so stupid, all of them.
MRS. ROBERTS. [With a faint smile]. Yes, M'm.
ENID. Is Roberts out?
MRS. ROBERTS. Yes, M'm.
ENID. It is his doing, that they don't come to an agreement. Now is
n't it, Annie?
MRS. ROBERTS. [Softly, with her eyes on ENID, and moving the fingers
of one hand continually on her breast.] They do say that your
father, M'm----
ENID. My father's getting an old man, and you know what old men are.
MRS. ROBERTS. I am sorry, M'm.
ENID. [More softly.] I don't expect you to feel sorry, Annie. I
know it's his fault as well as Roberts's.
MRS. ROBERTS. I'm sorry for any one that gets old, M'm; it 's
dreadful to get old, and Mr. Anthony was such a fine old man, I
always used to think.
ENID. [Impulsively.] He always liked you, don't you remember? Look
here, Annie, what can I do? I do so want to know. You don't get
what you ought to have. [Going to the fire, she takes the kettle
off, and looks for coals.] And you're so naughty sending back the
soup and things.
MRS. ROBERTS. [With a faint smile.] Yes, M'm?
ENID. [Resentfully.] Why, you have n't even got coals?
MRS. ROBERTS. If you please, M'm, to put the kettle on again;
Roberts won't have long for his tea when he comes in. He's got to
meet the men at four.
ENID. [Putting the kettle on.] That means he'll lash them into a
fury again. Can't you stop his going, Annie?
[MRS. ROBERTS smiles ironically.]
Have you tried?
[A silence.]
Does he know how ill you are?
MRS. ROBERTS. It's only my weak 'eard, M'm.
ENID. You used to be so well when you were with us.
MRS. ROBERTS. [Stiffening.] Roberts is always good to me.
ENID. But you ought to have everything you want, and you have
nothing!
MRS. ROBERTS. [Appealingly.] They tell me I don't look like a dyin'
woman?
ENID. Of course you don't; if you could only have proper--- Will you
see my doctor if I send him to you? I'm sure he'd do you good.
MRS. ROBERTS. [With faint questioning.] Yes, M'm.
ENID. Madge Thomas ought n't to come here; she only excites you. As
if I did n't know what suffering there is amongst the men! I do feel
for them dreadfully, but you know they have gone too far.
MRS. ROBERTS. [Continually moving her fingers.] They say there's no
other way to get better wages, M'm.
ENID. [Earnestly.] But, Annie, that's why the Union won't help
them. My husband's very sympathetic with the men, but he says they
are not underpaid.
MRS. ROBERTS. No, M'm?
ENID. They never think how the Company could go on if we paid the
wages they want.
MRS. ROBERTS. [With an effort.] But the dividends having been so
big, M'm.
ENID. [Takes aback.] You all seem to think the shareholders are
rich men, but they're not--most of them are really no better off than
working men.
[MRS. ROBERTS smiles.]
They have to keep up appearances.
MRS. ROBERTS. Yes, M'm?
ENID. You don't have to pay rates and taxes, and a hundred other
things that they do. If the men did n't spend such a lot in drink
and betting they'd be quite well off!
MRS. ROBERTS. They say, workin' so hard, they must have some
pleasure.
ENID. But surely not low pleasure like that.
MRS. ROBERTS. [A little resentfully.] Roberts never touches a drop;
and he's never had a bet in his life.
ENID. Oh! but he's not a com----I mean he's an engineer----
a superior man.
MRS. ROBERTS. Yes, M'm. Roberts says they've no chance of other
pleasures.
ENID. [Musing.] Of course, I know it's hard.
MRS. ROBERTS. [With a spice of malice.] And they say gentlefolk's
just as bad.
ENID. [With a smile.] I go as far as most people, Annie, but you
know, yourself, that's nonsense.
MRS. ROBERTS. [With painful effort.] A lot 'o the men never go near
the Public; but even they don't save but very little, and that goes
if there's illness.
ENID. But they've got their clubs, have n't they?
MRS. ROBERTS. The clubs only give up to eighteen shillin's a week,
M'm, and it's not much amongst a family. Roberts says workin' folk
have always lived from hand to mouth. Sixpence to-day is worth more
than a shillin' to-morrow, that's what they say.
ENID. But that's the spirit of gambling.
MRS. ROBERTS. [With a sort of excitement.] Roberts says a working
man's life is all a gamble, from the time 'e 's born to the time 'e
dies.
[ENID leans forward, interested. MRS. ROBERTS goes on with a
growing excitement that culminates in the personal feeling of
the last words.]
He says, M'm, that when a working man's baby is born, it's a toss-up
from breath to breath whether it ever draws another, and so on all
'is life; an' when he comes to be old, it's the workhouse or the
grave. He says that without a man is very near, and pinches and
stints 'imself and 'is children to save, there can't be neither
surplus nor security. That's why he wouldn't have no children [she
sinks back], not though I wanted them.
ENID. Yes, yes, I know!
MRS. ROBERTS. No you don't, M'm. You've got your children, and
you'll never need to trouble for them.
ENID. [Gently.] You oughtn't to be talking so much, Annie. [Then,
in spite of herself.] But Roberts was paid a lot of money, was n't
he, for discovering that process?
MRS. ROBERTS. [On the defensive.] All Roberts's savin's have gone.
He 's always looked forward to this strike. He says he's no right to
a farthing when the others are suffering. 'T is n't so with all o'
them! Some don't seem to care no more than that--so long as they get
their own.
ENID. I don't see how they can be expected to when they 're
suffering like this. [In a changed voice.] But Roberts ought to
think of you! It's all terrible----! The kettle's boiling. Shall I
make the tea? [She takes the teapot and, seeing tea there, pours
water into it.] Won't you have a cup?
MRS. ROBERTS. No, thank you, M'm. [She is listening, as though for
footsteps.] I'd--sooner you did n't see Roberts, M'm, he gets so
wild.
ENID. Oh! but I must, Annie; I'll be quite calm, I promise.
MRS. ROBERTS. It's life an' death to him, M'm.
ENID. [Very gently.] I'll get him to talk to me outside, we won't
excite you.
MRS. ROBERTS. [Faintly.] No, M'm.
[She gives a violent start. ROBERTS has come in, unseen.]
ROBERTS. [Removing his hat--with subtle mockery.] Beg pardon for
coming in; you're engaged with a lady, I see.
ENID. Can I speak to you, Mr. Roberts?
ROBERTS. Whom have I the pleasure of addressing, Ma'am?
ENID. But surely you know me! I 'm Mrs. Underwood.
ROBERTS. [With a bow of malice.] The daughter of our Chairman.
ENID. [Earnestly.] I've come on purpose to speak to you; will you
come outside a minute?
[She looks at MRS. ROBERTS.]
ROBERTS. [Hanging up his hat.] I have nothing to say, Ma'am.
ENID. But I must speak to you, please.
[She moves towards the door.]
ROBERTS. [With sudden venom.] I have not the time to listen!
MRS. ROBERTS. David!
ENID. Mr. Roberts, please!
ROBERTS. [Taking off his overcoat.] I am sorry to disoblige a lady
--Mr. Anthony's daughter.
ENID. [Wavering, then with sudden decision.] Mr. Roberts, I know
you've another meeting of the men.
[ROBERTS bows.]
I came to appeal to you. Please, please, try to come to some
compromise; give way a little, if it's only for your own sakes!
ROBERTS. [Speaking to himself.] The daughter of Mr. Anthony begs me
to give way a little, if it's only for our own sakes!
ENID. For everybody's sake; for your wife's sake.
ROBERTS. For my wife's sake, for everybody's sake--for the sake of
Mr. Anthony.
ENID. Why are you so bitter against my father? He has never done
anything to you.
ROBERTS. Has he not?
ENID. He can't help his views, any more than you can help yours.
ROBERTS. I really did n't know that I had a right to views!
ENID. He's an old man, and you----
[Seeing his eyes fixed on her, she stops.]
ROBERTS. [Without raising his voice.] If I saw Mr. Anthony going to
die, and I could save him by lifting my hand, I would not lift the
little finger of it.
ENID. You--you----[She stops again, biting her lips.]
ROBERTS. I would not, and that's flat!
ENID. [Coldly.] You don't mean what you say, and you know it!
ROBERTS. I mean every word of it.
ENID. But why?
ROBERTS. [With a flash.] Mr. Anthony stands for tyranny! That's
why!
ENID. Nonsense!
[MRS. ROBERTS makes a movement as if to rise, but sinks back in
her chair.]
ENID. [With an impetuous movement.] Annie!
ROBERTS. Please not to touch my wife!
ENID. [Recoiling with a sort of horror.] I believe--you are mad.
ROBERTS. The house of a madman then is not the fit place for a lady.
ENID. I 'm not afraid of you.
ROBERTS. [Bowing.] I would not expect the daughter of Mr. Anthony
to be afraid. Mr. Anthony is not a coward like the rest of them.
ENID. [Suddenly.] I suppose you think it brave, then, to go on with
the struggle.
ROBERTS. Does Mr. Anthony think it brave to fight against women and
children? Mr. Anthony is a rich man, I believe; does he think it
brave to fight against those who have n't a penny? Does he think it
brave to set children crying with hunger, an' women shivering with
cold?
ENID. [Putting up her hand, as though warding off a blow.] My
father is acting on his principles, and you know it!
ROBERTS. And so am I!
ENID. You hate us; and you can't bear to be beaten!
ROBERTS. Neither can Mr. Anthony, for all that he may say.
ENID. At any rate you might have pity on your wife.
[MRS. ROBERTS who has her hand pressed to her heart, takes it
away, and tries to calm her breathing.]
ROBERTS. Madam, I have no more to say.
[He takes up the loaf. There is a knock at the door, and
UNDERWOOD comes in. He stands looking at them, ENID turns to
him, then seems undecided.]
UNDERWOOD. Enid!
ROBERTS. [Ironically.] Ye were not needing to come for your wife,
Mr. Underwood. We are not rowdies.
UNDERWOOD. I know that, Roberts. I hope Mrs. Roberts is better.
[ROBERTS turns away without answering. Come, Enid!]
ENID. I make one more appeal to you, Mr. Roberts, for the sake of
your wife.
ROBERTS. [With polite malice.] If I might advise ye, Ma'am--make it
for the sake of your husband and your father.
[ENID, suppressing a retort, goes out. UNDERWOOD opens the door
for her and follows. ROBERTS, going to the fire, holds out his
hands to the dying glow.]
ROBERTS. How goes it, my girl? Feeling better, are you?
[MRS. ROBERTS smiles faintly. He brings his overcoat and wraps
it round her.]
[Looking at his watch.] Ten minutes to four! [As though inspired.]
I've seen their faces, there's no fight in them, except for that one
old robber.
MRS. ROBERTS. Won't you stop and eat, David? You've 'ad nothing all
day!
ROBERTS. [Putting his hand to his throat.] Can't swallow till those
old sharks are out o' the town: [He walks up and down.] I shall have
a bother with the men--there's no heart in them, the cowards. Blind
as bats, they are--can't see a day before their noses.
MRS. ROBERTS. It's the women, David.
ROBERTS. Ah! So they say! They can remember the women when their
own bellies speak! The women never stop them from the drink; but
from a little suffering to themselves in a sacred cause, the women
stop them fast enough.
MRS. ROBERTS. But think o' the children, David.
ROBERTS. Ah! If they will go breeding themselves for slaves,
without a thought o' the future o' them they breed----
MRS. ROBERTS. [Gasping.] That's enough, David; don't begin to talk
of that--I won't--I can't----
ROBERTS. [Staring at her.] Now, now, my girl!
MRS. ROBERTS. [Breathlessly.] No, no, David--I won't!
ROBERTS. There, there! Come, come! That's right! [Bitterly.] Not
one penny will they put by for a day like this. Not they! Hand to
mouth--Gad!--I know them! They've broke my heart. There was no
holdin' them at the start, but now the pinch 'as come.
MRS. ROBERTS. How can you expect it, David? They're not made of
iron.
ROBERTS. Expect it? Wouldn't I expect what I would do meself?
Wouldn't I starve an' rot rather than give in? What one man can do,
another can.
MRS. ROBERTS. And the women?
ROBERTS. This is not women's work.
MRS. ROBERTS. [With a flash of malice.] No, the women may die for
all you care. That's their work.
ROBERTS. [Averting his eyes.] Who talks of dying? No one will die
till we have beaten these----
[He meets her eyes again, and again turns his away. Excitedly.]
This is what I've been waiting for all these months. To get the old
robbers down, and send them home again without a farthin's worth o'
change. I 've seen their faces, I tell you, in the valley of the
shadow of defeat.
[He goes to the peg and takes down his hat.]
MRS. ROBERTS. [Following with her eyes-softly.] Take your overcoat,
David; it must be bitter cold.
ROBERTS. [Coming up to her-his eyes are furtive.] No, no! There,
there, stay quiet and warm. I won't be long, my girl.
MRS. ROBERTS. [With soft bitterness.] You'd better take it.
[She lifts the coat. But ROBERTS puts it back, and wraps it
round her. He tries to meet her eyes, but cannot. MRS.
ROBERTS stays huddled in the coat, her eyes, that follow him
about, are half malicious, half yearning. He looks at his watch
again, and turns to go. In the doorway he meets JAN THOMAS, a
boy of ten in clothes too big for him, carrying a penny
whistle.]
ROBERTS. Hallo, boy!
[He goes. JAN stops within a yard of MRS. ROBERTS, and stares
at her without a word.]
MRS. ROBERTS. Well, Jan!
JAN. Father 's coming; sister Madge is coming.
[He sits at the table, and fidgets with his whistle; he blows
three vague notes; then imitates a cuckoo.]
[There is a tap on the door. Old THOMAS comes in.]
THOMAS. A very coot tay to you, Ma'am. It is petter that you are.
MRS. ROBERTS. Thank you, Mr. Thomas.
THOMAS. [Nervously.] Roberts in?
MRS. ROBERTS. Just gone on to the meeting, Mr. Thomas.
THOMAS. [With relief, becoming talkative.] This is fery
unfortunate, look you! I came to tell him that we must make terms
with London. It is a fery great pity he is gone to the meeting. He
will be kicking against the pricks, I am thinking.
MRS. ROBERTS. [Half rising.] He'll never give in, Mr. Thomas.
THOMAS. You must not be fretting, that is very pat for you. Look
you, there iss hartly any mans for supporting him now, but the
engineers and George Rous. [Solemnly.] This strike is no longer
Going with Chapel, look you! I have listened carefully, an' I have
talked with her.
[JAN blows.]
Sst! I don't care what th' others say, I say that Chapel means us to
be stopping the trouple, that is what I make of her; and it is my
opinion that this is the fery best thing for all of us. If it was
n't my opinion, I ton't say but it is my opinion, look you.
MRS. ROBERTS. [Trying to suppress her excitement.] I don't know
what'll come to Roberts, if you give in.
THOMAS. It iss no disgrace whateffer! All that a mortal man coult
do he hass tone. It iss against Human Nature he hass gone; fery
natural any man may do that; but Chapel has spoken and he must not go
against her.
[JAN imitates the cuckoo.]
Ton't make that squeaking! [Going to the door.] Here iss my
daughter come to sit with you. A fery goot day, Ma'am--no fretting
--rememper!
[MADGE comes in and stands at the open door, watching the
street.]
MADGE. You'll be late, Father; they're beginning. [She catches him
by the sleeve.] For the love of God, stand up to him, Father--this
time!
THOMAS. [Detaching his sleeve with dignity.] Leave me to do what's
proper, girl!
[He goes out. MADGE, in the centre of the open doorway,
slowly moves in, as though before the approach of some one.]
ROUS. [Appearing in the doorway.] Madge!
[MADGE stands with her back to MRS. ROBERTS, staring at him with
her head up and her hands behind her.]
ROUS. [Who has a fierce distracted look.] Madge! I'm going to the
meeting.
[MADGE, without moving, smiles contemptuously.]
D' ye hear me?
[They speak in quick low voices.]
MADGE. I hear! Go, and kill your own mother, if you must.
[ROUS seizes her by both her arms. She stands rigid, with her head
bent back. He releases her, and he too stands motionless.]
ROUS. I swore to stand by Roberts. I swore that! Ye want me to go
back on what I've sworn.
MADGE. [With slow soft mockery.] You are a pretty lover!
ROUS. Madge!
MADGE. [Smiling.] I've heard that lovers do what their girls ask
them--
[JAN sounds the cuckoo's notes]
--but that's not true, it seems!
ROUS. You'd make a blackleg of me!
MADGE. [With her eyes half-closed.] Do it for me!
ROUS. [Dashing his hand across his brow.] Damn! I can't!
MADGE. [Swiftly.] Do it for me!
ROUS. [Through his teeth.] Don't play the wanton with me!
MADGE. [With a movement of her hand towards JAN--quick and low.]
I would be that for the children's sake!
ROUS. [In a fierce whisper.] Madge! Oh, Madge!
MADGE. [With soft mockery.] But you can't break your word for me!
ROUS. [With a choke.] Then, Begod, I can!
[He turns and rushes off.]
[MADGE Stands, with a faint smile on her face, looking after
him. She turns to MRS. ROBERTS.]
MADGE. I have done for Roberts!
MRS. ROBERTS. [Scornfully.] Done for my man, with that----!
[She sinks back.]
MADGE. [Running to her, and feeling her hands.] You're as cold as a
stone! You want a drop of brandy. Jan, run to the "Lion"; say, I
sent you for Mrs. Roberts.
MRS. ROBERTS. [With a feeble movement.] I'll just sit quiet, Madge.
Give Jan--his--tea.
MADGE. [Giving JAN a slice of bread.] There, ye little rascal.
Hold your piping. [Going to the fire, she kneels.] It's going out.
MRS. ROBERTS. [With a faint smile.] 'T is all the same!
[JAN begins to blow his whistle.]
MADGE. Tsht! Tsht!--you
[JAN Stops.]
MRS. ROBERTS. [Smiling.] Let 'im play, Madge.
MADGE. [On her knees at the fire, listening.] Waiting an' waiting.
I've no patience with it; waiting an' waiting--that's what a woman
has to do! Can you hear them at it--I can!
[JAN begins again to play his whistle; MADGE gets up; half
tenderly she ruffles his hair; then, sitting, leans her elbows
on the table, and her chin on her hands. Behind her, on MRS.
ROBERTS'S face the smile has changed to horrified surprise. She
makes a sudden movement, sitting forward, pressing her hands
against her breast. Then slowly she sinks' back; slowly her
face loses the look of pain, the smile returns. She fixes her
eyes again on JAN, and moves her lips and finger to the tune.]
The curtain falls.
SCENE II
It is past four. In a grey, failing light, an open muddy space
is crowded with workmen. Beyond, divided from it by a
barbed-wire fence, is the raised towing-path of a canal, on which
is moored a barge. In the distance are marshes and snow-covered
hills. The "Works" high wall runs from the canal across the open
space, and ivy the angle of this wall is a rude platform of
barrels and boards. On it, HARNESS is standing. ROBERTS, a
little apart from the crowd, leans his back against the wall. On
the raised towing-path two bargemen lounge and smoke
indifferently.
HARNESS. [Holding out his hand.] Well, I've spoken to you straight.
If I speak till to-morrow I can't say more.
JAGO. [A dark, sallow, Spanish-looking man with a short, thin
beard.] Mister, want to ask you! Can they get blacklegs?
BULGIN. [Menacing.] Let 'em try.
[There are savage murmurs from the crowd.]
BROWN. [A round-faced man.] Where could they get 'em then?
EVANS. [A small, restless, harassed man, with a fighting face.]
There's always blacklegs; it's the nature of 'em. There's always men
that'll save their own skins.
[Another savage murmur. There is a movement, and old THOMAS,
joining the crowd, takes his stand in front.]
HARNESS. [Holding up his hand.] They can't get them. But that
won't help you. Now men, be reasonable. Your demands would have
brought on us the burden of a dozen strikes at a time when we were
not prepared for them. The Unions live by justice, not to one, but
all. Any fair man will tell you--you were ill-advised! I don't say
you go too far for that which you're entitled to, but you're going
too far for the moment; you've dug a pit for yourselves. Are you to
stay there, or are you to climb out? Come!
LEWIS. [A clean-cut Welshman with a dark moustache.] You've hit it,
Mister! Which is it to be?
[Another movement in the crowd, and ROUS, coming quickly, takes
his stand next THOMAS.]
HARNESS. Cut your demands to the right pattern, and we 'll see you
through; refuse, and don't expect me to waste my time coming down
here again. I 'm not the sort that speaks at random, as you ought to
know by this time. If you're the sound men I take you for--no matter
who advises you against it--[he fixes his eyes on ROBERTS] you 'll
make up your minds to come in, and trust to us to get your terms.
Which is it to be? Hands together, and victory--or--the starvation
you've got now?
[A prolonged murmur from the crowd.]
JAGO. [Sullenly.] Talk about what you know.
HARNESS. [Lifting his voice above the murmur.] Know? [With cold
passion.] All that you've been through, my friend, I 've been
through--I was through it when I was no bigger than [pointing to a
youth] that shaver there; the Unions then were n't what they are
now. What's made them strong? It's hands together that 's made them
strong. I 've been through it all, I tell you, the brand's on my
soul yet. I know what you 've suffered--there's nothing you can tell
me that I don't know; but the whole is greater than the part, and you
are only the part. Stand by us, and we will stand by you.
[Quartering them with his eyes, he waits. The murmuring swells;
the men form little groups. GREEN, BULGIN, and LEWIS talk
together.]
LEWIS. Speaks very sensible, the Union chap.
GREEN. [Quietly.] Ah! if I 'd a been listened to, you'd 'ave 'eard
sense these two months past.
[The bargemen are seen laughing. ]
LEWIS. [Pointing.] Look at those two blanks over the fence there!
BULGIN. [With gloomy violence.] They'd best stop their cackle, or I
'll break their jaws.
JAGO. [Suddenly.] You say the furnace men's paid enough?
HARNESS. I did not say they were paid enough; I said they were paid
as much as the furnace men in similar works elsewhere.
EVANS. That's a lie! [Hubbub.] What about Harper's?
HARNESS. [With cold irony.] You may look at home for lies, my man.
Harper's shifts are longer, the pay works out the same.
HENRY ROUS. [A dark edition of his brother George.] Will ye support
us in double pay overtime Saturdays?
HARNESS. Yes, we will.
JAGO. What have ye done with our subscriptions?
HARNESS. [Coldly.] I have told you what we will do with them.
EVANS. Ah! will, it's always will! Ye'd have our mates desert us.
[Hubbub.]
BULGIN. [Shouting.] Hold your row!
[EVANS looks round angrily.]
HARNESS. [Lifting his voice.] Those who know their right hands from
their lefts know that the Unions are neither thieves nor traitors.
I 've said my say. Figure it out, my lads; when you want me you know
where I shall be.
[He jumps down, the crowd gives way, he passes through them, and
goes away. A BARGEMAN looks after him jerking his pipe with a
derisive gesture. The men close up in groups, and many looks
are cast at ROBERTS, who stands alone against the wall.]
EVANS. He wants ye to turn blacklegs, that's what he wants. He
wants ye to go back on us. Sooner than turn blackleg--I 'd starve, I
would.
BULGIN. Who's talkin' o' blacklegs--mind what you're saying, will
you?
BLACKSMITH. [A youth with yellow hair and huge arms.] What about
the women?
EVANS. They can stand what we can stand, I suppose, can't they?
BLACKSMITH. Ye've no wife?
EVANS. An' don't want one!
THOMAS. [Raising his voice.] Aye! Give us the power to come to
terms with London, lads.
DAVIES. [A dark, slow-fly, gloomy man.] Go up the platform, if you
got anything to say, go up an' say it.
[There are cries of "Thomas!" He is pushed towards the
platform; he ascends it with difficulty, and bares his head,
waiting for silence. A hush.]
RED-HAIRED YOUTH. [suddenly.] Coot old Thomas!
[A hoarse laugh; the bargemen exchange remarks; a hush again,
and THOMAS begins speaking.]
THOMAS. We are all in the tepth together, and it iss Nature that has
put us there.
HENRY ROUS. It's London put us there!
EVANS. It's the Union.
THOMAS. It iss not Lonton; nor it iss not the Union--it iss Nature.
It iss no disgrace whateffer to a potty to give in to Nature. For
this Nature iss a fery pig thing; it is pigger than what a man is.
There iss more years to my hett than to the hett of any one here.
It is fery pat, look you, this Going against Nature. It is pat to
make other potties suffer, when there is nothing to pe cot py it.
[A laugh. THOMAS angrily goes on.]
What are ye laughing at? It is pat, I say! We are fighting for a
principle; there is no potty that shall say I am not a peliever in
principle. Putt when Nature says "No further," then it is no coot
snapping your fingers in her face.
[A laugh from ROBERTS, and murmurs of approval.]
This Nature must pe humort. It is a man's pisiness to pe pure,
honest, just, and merciful. That's what Chapel tells you. [To
ROBERTS, angrily.] And, look you, David Roberts, Chapel tells you ye
can do that without Going against Nature.
JAGO. What about the Union?
THOMAS. I ton't trust the Union; they haf treated us like tirt.
"Do what we tell you," said they. I haf peen captain of the
furnace-men twenty years, and I say to the Union--[excitedly]--"Can you
tell me then, as well as I can tell you, what iss the right wages for
the work that these men do?" For fife and twenty years I haf paid my
moneys to the Union and--[with great excitement]--for nothings! What
iss that but roguery, for all that this Mr. Harness says!
EVANS. Hear, hear.
HENRY ROUS. Get on with you! Cut on with it then!
THOMAS. Look you, if a man toes not trust me, am I going to trust
him?
JAGO. That's right.
THOMAS. Let them alone for rogues, and act for ourselves.
[Murmurs.]
BLACKSMITH. That's what we been doin', haven't we?
THOMAS. [With increased excitement.] I wass brought up to do for
meself. I wass brought up to go without a thing, if I hat not moneys
to puy it. There iss too much, look you, of doing things with other
people's moneys. We haf fought fair, and if we haf peen beaten, it
iss no fault of ours. Gif us the power to make terms with London for
ourself; if we ton't succeed, I say it iss petter to take our peating
like men, than to tie like togs, or hang on to others' coat-tails to
make them do our pisiness for us!
EVANS. [Muttering.] Who wants to?
THOMAS. [Craning.] What's that? If I stand up to a potty, and he
knocks me town, I am not to go hollering to other potties to help me;
I am to stand up again; and if he knocks me town properly, I am to
stay there, is n't that right?
[Laughter.]
JAGO. No Union!
HENRY ROUS. Union!
[Murmurs.]
[Others take up the shout.]
EVANS. Blacklegs!
[BULGIN and the BLACKSMITH shake their fists at EVANS.]
THOMAS. [With a gesture.] I am an olt man, look you.
[A sudden silence, then murmurs again.]
LEWIS. Olt fool, with his "No Union!"
BULGIN. Them furnace chaps! For twopence I 'd smash the faces o'
the lot of them.
GREEN. If I'd a been listened to at the first!
THOMAS. [Wiping his brow.] I'm comin' now to what I was going to
say----
DAVIES. [Muttering.] An' time too!
THOMAS. [Solemnly.] Chapel says: Ton't carry on this strife! Put
an end to it!
JAGO. That's a lie! Chapel says go on!
THOMAS. [Scornfully.] Inteet! I haf ears to my head.
RED-HAIRED YOUTH. Ah! long ones!
[A laugh.]
JAGO. Your ears have misbeled you then.
THOMAS. [Excitedly.] Ye cannot be right if I am, ye cannot haf it
both ways.
RED-HAIRED YOUTH. Chapel can though!
["The Shaver" laughs; there are murmurs from the crowd.]
THOMAS. [Fixing his eyes on "The Shaver."] Ah! ye 're Going the
roat to tamnation. An' so I say to all of you. If ye co against
Chapel I will not pe with you, nor will any other Got-fearing man.
[He steps down from the platform. JAGO makes his way towards
it. There are cries of "Don't let 'im go up!"]
JAGO. Don't let him go up? That's free speech, that is. [He goes
up.] I ain't got much to say to you. Look at the matter plain; ye
've come the road this far, and now you want to chuck the journey.
We've all been in one boat; and now you want to pull in two. We
engineers have stood by you; ye 're ready now, are ye, to give us the
go-by? If we'd aknown that before, we'd not a-started out with you
so early one bright morning! That's all I 've got to say. Old man
Thomas a'n't got his Bible lesson right. If you give up to London,
or to Harness, now, it's givin' us the chuck--to save your skins--you
won't get over that, my boys; it's a dirty thing to do.
[He gets down; during his little speech, which is ironically
spoken, there is a restless discomfort in the crowd. ROUS,
stepping forward, jumps on the platform. He has an air of
fierce distraction. Sullen murmurs of disapproval from the
crowd.]
ROUS. [Speaking with great excitement.] I'm no blanky orator,
mates, but wot I say is drove from me. What I say is yuman nature.
Can a man set an' see 'is mother starve? Can 'e now?
ROBERTS. [Starting forward.] Rous!
ROUS. [Staring at him fiercely.] Sim 'Arness said fair! I've
changed my mind!
ROBERTS. Ah! Turned your coat you mean!
[The crowd manifests a great surprise.]
LEWIS. [Apostrophising Rous.] Hallo! What's turned him round?
ROUS. [Speaking with intense excitement.] 'E said fair. "Stand by
us," 'e said, "and we'll stand by you." That's where we've been
makin' our mistake this long time past; and who's to blame fort? [He
points at ROBERTS] That man there! "No," 'e said, "fight the
robbers," 'e said, "squeeze the breath out o' them!" But it's not the
breath out o' them that's being squeezed; it's the breath out of us
and ours, and that's the book of truth. I'm no orator, mates, it's
the flesh and blood in me that's speakin', it's the heart o' me.
[With a menacing, yet half-ashamed movement towards ROBERTS.] He'll
speak to you again, mark my words, but don't ye listen. [The crowd
groans.] It's hell fire that's on that man's tongue. [ROBERTS is
seen laughing.] Sim 'Arness is right. What are we without the
Union--handful o' parched leaves--a puff o' smoke. I'm no orator,
but I say: Chuck it up! Chuck it up! Sooner than go on starving the
women and the children.
[The murmurs of acquiescence almost drown the murmurs of
dissent.]
EVANS. What's turned you to blacklegging?
ROUS. [With a furious look.] Sim 'Arness knows what he's talking
about. Give us power to come to terms with London; I'm no orator,
but I say--have done wi' this black misery!
[He gives his muter a twist, jerks his head back, and jumps off
the platform. The crowd applauds and surges forward. Amid
cries of "That's enough!" "Up Union!" "Up Harness!" ROBERTS
quietly ascends the platform. There is a moment of silence.]
BLACKSMITH. We don't want to hear you. Shut it!
HENRY Rous. Get down!
[Amid such cries they surge towards the platform.]
EVANS. [Fiercely.] Let 'im speak! Roberts! Roberts!
BULGIN. [Muttering.] He'd better look out that I don't crack his
skull.
[ROBERTS faces the crowd, probing them with his eyes till they
gradually become silent. He begins speaking. One of the
bargemen rises and stands.]
ROBERTS. You don't want to hear me, then? You'll listen to Rous and
to that old man, but not to me. You'll listen to Sim Harness of the
Union that's treated you so fair; maybe you'll listen to those men
from London? Ah! You groan! What for? You love their feet on your
necks, don't you? [Then as BULGIN elbows his way towards the
platform, with calm bathos.] You'd like to break my jaw, John
Bulgin. Let me speak, then do your smashing, if it gives you
pleasure. [BULGIN Stands motionless and sullen.] Am I a liar, a
coward, a traitor? If only I were, ye'd listen to me, I'm sure.
[The murmurings cease, and there is now dead silence.] Is there a
man of you here that has less to gain by striking? Is there a man of
you that had more to lose? Is there a man of you that has given up
eight hundred pounds since this trouble here began? Come now, is
there? How much has Thomas given up--ten pounds or five, or what?
You listened to him, and what had he to say? "None can pretend," he
said, "that I'm not a believer in principle--[with biting irony]--but
when Nature says: 'No further, 't es going agenst Nature.'" I tell
you if a man cannot say to Nature: "Budge me from this if ye can!"--
[with a sort of exaltation]his principles are but his belly. "Oh,
but," Thomas says, "a man can be pure and honest, just and merciful,
and take off his hat to Nature!" I tell you Nature's neither pure
nor honest, just nor merciful. You chaps that live over the hill,
an' go home dead beat in the dark on a snowy night--don't ye fight
your way every inch of it? Do ye go lyin' down an' trustin' to the
tender mercies of this merciful Nature? Try it and you'll soon know
with what ye've got to deal. 'T es only by that--[he strikes a blow
with his clenched fist]--in Nature's face that a man can be a man.
"Give in," says Thomas, "go down on your knees; throw up your foolish
fight, an' perhaps," he said, "perhaps your enemy will chuck you down
a crust."
JAGO. Never!
EVANS. Curse them!
THOMAS. I nefer said that.
ROBERTS. [Bitingly.] If ye did not say it, man, ye meant it.
An' what did ye say about Chapel? "Chapel's against it," ye said.
"She 's against it!" Well, if Chapel and Nature go hand in hand,
it's the first I've ever heard of it. That young man there--
[pointing to ROUS]--said I 'ad 'ell fire on my tongue. If I had I
would use it all to scorch and wither this talking of surrender.
Surrendering 's the work of cowards and traitors.
HENRY ROUS. [As GEORGE ROUS moves forward.] Go for him, George--
don't stand his lip!
ROBERTS. [Flinging out his finger.] Stop there, George Rous, it's
no time this to settle personal matters. [ROUS stops.] But there
was one other spoke to you--Mr. Simon Harness. We have not much to
thank Mr. Harness and the Union for. They said to us "Desert your
mates, or we'll desert you." An' they did desert us.
EVANS. They did.
ROBERTS. Mr. Simon Harness is a clever man, but he has come too
late. [With intense conviction.] For all that Mr. Simon Harness
says, for all that Thomas, Rous, for all that any man present here
can say--We've won the fight!
[The crowd sags nearer, looking eagerly up.]
[With withering scorn.] You've felt the pinch o't in your bellies.
You've forgotten what that fight 'as been; many times I have told
you; I will tell you now this once again. The fight o' the country's
body and blood against a blood-sucker. The fight of those that spend
themselves with every blow they strike and every breath they draw,
against a thing that fattens on them, and grows and grows by the law
of merciful Nature. That thing is Capital! A thing that buys the
sweat o' men's brows, and the tortures o' their brains, at its own
price. Don't I know that? Wasn't the work o' my brains bought for
seven hundred pounds, and has n't one hundred thousand pounds been
gained them by that seven hundred without the stirring of a finger.
It is a thing that will take as much and give you as little as it
can. That's Capital! A thing that will say--"I'm very sorry for
you, poor fellows--you have a cruel time of it, I know," but will not
give one sixpence of its dividends to help you have a better time.
That's Capital! Tell me, for all their talk, is there one of them
that will consent to another penny on the Income Tax to help the
poor? That's Capital! A white-faced, stony-hearted monster! Ye
have got it on its knees; are ye to give up at the last minute to
save your miserable bodies pain? When I went this morning to those
old men from London, I looked into their very 'earts. One of them
was sitting there--Mr. Scantlebury, a mass of flesh nourished on us:
sittin' there for all the world like the shareholders in this
Company, that sit not moving tongue nor finger, takin' dividends a
great dumb ox that can only be roused when its food is threatened.
I looked into his eyes and I saw he was afraid--afraid for himself
and his dividends; afraid for his fees, afraid of the very
shareholders he stands for; and all but one of them's afraid--like
children that get into a wood at night, and start at every rustle of
the leaves. I ask you, men--[he pauses, holding out his hand till
there is utter silence]--give me a free hand to tell them: "Go you
back to London. The men have nothing for you!" [A murmuring.] Give
me that, an' I swear to you, within a week you shall have from London
all you want.
EVANS, JAGO, and OTHERS. A free hand! Give him a free hand! Bravo
--bravo!
ROBERTS. 'T is not for this little moment of time we're fighting
[the murmuring dies], not for ourselves, our own little bodies, and
their wants, 't is for all those that come after throughout all time.
[With intense sadness.] Oh! men--for the love o' them, don't roll
up another stone upon their heads, don't help to blacken the sky, an'
let the bitter sea in over them. They're welcome to the worst that
can happen to me, to the worst that can happen to us all, are n't
they--are n't they? If we can shake [passionately] that white-faced
monster with the bloody lips, that has sucked the life out of
ourselves, our wives, and children, since the world began. [Dropping
the note of passion but with the utmost weight and intensity.] If we
have not the hearts of men to stand against it breast to breast, and
eye to eye, and force it backward till it cry for mercy, it will go
on sucking life; and we shall stay forever what we are [in almost a
whisper], less than the very dogs.
[An utter stillness, and ROBERTS stands rocking his body
slightly, with his eyes burning the faces of the crowd.]
EVANS and JAGO. [Suddenly.] Roberts! [The shout is taken up.]
[There is a slight movement in the crowd, and MADGE passing
below the towing-path, stops by the platform, looking up at
ROBERTS. A sudden doubting silence.]
ROBERTS. "Nature," says that old man, "give in to Nature." I tell
you, strike your blow in Nature's face--an' let it do its worst!
[He catches sight of MADGE, his brows contract, he looks away.]
MADGE. [In a low voice-close to the platform.] Your wife's dying!
[ROBERTS glares at her as if torn from some pinnacle of
exaltation.]
ROBERTS. [Trying to stammer on.] I say to you--answer them--answer
them----
[He is drowned by the murmur in the crowd.]
THOMAS. [Stepping forward.] Ton't you hear her, then?
ROBERTS. What is it? [A dead silence.]
THOMAS. Your wife, man!
[ROBERTS hesitates, then with a gesture, he leaps down, and goes
away below the towing-path, the men making way for him. The
standing bargeman opens and prepares to light a lantern.
Daylight is fast failing.]
MADGE. He need n't have hurried! Annie Roberts is dead. [Then in
the silence, passionately.] You pack of blinded hounds! How many
more women are you going to let to die?
[The crowd shrinks back from her, and breaks up in groups, with
a confused, uneasy movement. MADGE goes quickly away below the
towing-path. There is a hush as they look after her.]
LEWIS. There's a spitfire, for ye!
BULGIN. [Growling.] I'll smash 'er jaw.
GREEN. If I'd a-been listened to, that poor woman----
THOMAS. It's a judgment on him for going against Chapel. I tolt him
how 't would be!
EVANS. All the more reason for sticking by 'im. [A cheer.] Are you
goin' to desert him now 'e 's down? Are you going to chuck him over,
now 'e 's lost 'is wife?
[The crowd is murmuring and cheering all at once.]
ROUS. [Stepping in front of platform.] Lost his wife! Aye! Can't
ye see? Look at home, look at your own wives! What's to save them?
Ye'll have the same in all your houses before long!
LEWIS. Aye, aye!
HENRY ROUS. Right! George, right!
[There are murmurs of assent.]
ROUS. It's not us that's blind, it's Roberts. How long will ye put
up with 'im!
HENRY, ROUS, BULGIN, DAVIES. Give 'im the chuck!
[The cry is taken up.]
EVANS. [Fiercely.] Kick a man that's down? Down?
HENRY ROUS. Stop his jaw there!
[EVANS throws up his arm at a threat from BULGIN. The bargeman,
who has lighted the lantern, holds it high above his head.]
ROUS. [Springing on to the platform.] What brought him down then,
but 'is own black obstinacy? Are ye goin' to follow a man that can't
see better than that where he's goin'?
EVANS. He's lost 'is wife.
ROUS. An' who's fault's that but his own. 'Ave done with 'im, I
say, before he's killed your own wives and mothers.
DAVIES. Down 'im!
HENRY ROUS. He's finished!
BROWN. We've had enough of 'im!
BLACKSMITH. Too much!
[The crowd takes up these cries, excepting only EVANS, JAGO, and
GREEN, who is seen to argue mildly with the BLACKSMITH.]
ROUS. [Above the hubbub.] We'll make terms with the Union, lads.
[Cheers.]
EVANS. [Fiercely.] Ye blacklegs!
BULGIN. [Savagely-squaring up to him.] Who are ye callin'
blacklegs, Rat?
[EVANS throws up his fists, parries the blow, and returns it.
They fight. The bargemen are seen holding up the lantern and
enjoying the sight. Old THOMAS steps forward and holds out his
hands.]
THOMAS. Shame on your strife!
[The BLACKSMITH, BROWN, LEWIS, and the RED-HAIRED YOUTH pull
EVANS and BULGIN apart. The stage is almost dark.]
The curtain falls.
ACT III
It is five o'clock. In the UNDERWOODS' drawing-room, which is
artistically furnished, ENID is sitting on the sofa working at a
baby's frock. EDGAR, by a little spindle-legged table in the
centre of the room, is fingering a china-box. His eyes are
fixed on the double-doors that lead into the dining-room.
EDGAR. [Putting down the china-box, and glancing at his watch.]
Just on five, they're all in there waiting, except Frank. Where's
he?
ENID. He's had to go down to Gasgoyne's about a contract. Will you
want him?
EDGAR. He can't help us. This is a director's job. [Motioning
towards a single door half hidden by a curtain.] Father in his room?
ENID. Yes.
EDGAR. I wish he'd stay there, Enid.
[ENID looks up at him. This is a beastly business, old girl?]
[He takes up the little box again and turns it over and over.]
ENID. I went to the Roberts's this afternoon, Ted.
EDGAR. That was n't very wise.
ENID. He's simply killing his wife.
EDGAR. We are you mean.
ENID. [Suddenly.] Roberts ought to give way!
EDGAR. There's a lot to be said on the men's side.
ENID. I don't feel half so sympathetic with them as I did before I
went. They just set up class feeling against you. Poor Annie was
looking dread fully bad--fire going out, and nothing fit for her to
eat.
[EDGAR walks to and fro.]
But she would stand up for Roberts. When you see all this
wretchedness going on and feel you can do nothing, you have to shut
your eyes to the whole thing.
EDGAR. If you can.
ENID. When I went I was all on their side, but as soon as I got
there I began to feel quite different at once. People talk about
sympathy with the working classes, they don't know what it means to
try and put it into practice. It seems hopeless.
EDGAR. Ah! well.
ENID. It's dreadful going on with the men in this state. I do hope
the Dad will make concessions.
EDGAR. He won't. [Gloomily.] It's a sort of religion with him.
Curse it! I know what's coming! He'll be voted down.
ENID. They would n't dare!
EDGAR. They will--they're in a funk.
ENID. [Indignantly.] He'd never stand it!
EDGAR. [With a shrug.] My dear girl, if you're beaten in a vote,
you've got to stand it.
ENID. Oh! [She gets up in alarm.] But would he resign?
EDGAR. Of course! It goes to the roots of his beliefs.
ENID. But he's so wrapped up in this company, Ted! There'd be
nothing left for him! It'd be dreadful!
[EDGAR shrugs his shoulders.]
Oh, Ted, he's so old now! You must n't let them!
EDGAR. [Hiding his feelings in an outburst.] My sympathies in this
strike are all on the side of the men.
ENID. He's been Chairman for more than thirty years! He made the
whole thing! And think of the bad times they've had; it's always
been he who pulled them through. Oh, Ted, you must!
EDGAR. What is it you want? You said just now you hoped he'd make
concessions. Now you want me to back him in not making them. This
is n't a game, Enid!
ENID. [Hotly.] It is n't a game to me that the Dad's in danger of
losing all he cares about in life. If he won't give way, and he's
beaten, it'll simply break him down!
EDGAR. Did n't you say it was dreadful going on with the men in this
state?
ENID. But can't you see, Ted, Father'll never get over it! You must
stop them somehow. The others are afraid of him. If you back him
up----
EDGAR. [Putting his hand to his head.] Against my convictions--
against yours! The moment it begins to pinch one personally----
ENID. It is n't personal, it's the Dad!
EDGAR. Your family or yourself, and over goes the show!
ENID. [Resentfully.] If you don't take it seriously, I do.
EDGAR. I am as fond of him as you are; that's nothing to do with it.
ENID. We can't tell about the men; it's all guess-work. But we know
the Dad might have a stroke any day. D' you mean to say that he
isn't more to you than----
EDGAR. Of course he is.
ENID. I don't understand you then.
EDGAR. H'm!
ENID. If it were for oneself it would be different, but for our own
Father! You don't seem to realise.
EDGAR. I realise perfectly.
ENID. It's your first duty to save him.
EDGAR. I wonder.
ENID. [Imploring.] Oh, Ted? It's the only interest he's got left;
it'll be like a death-blow to him!
EDGAR. [Restraining his emotion.] I know.
ENID. Promise!
EDGAR. I'll do what I can.
[He turns to the double-doors.]
[The curtained door is opened, and ANTHONY appears. EDGAR opens
the double-doors, and passes through.]
[SCANTLEBURY'S voice is faintly heard: "Past five; we shall
never get through--have to eat another dinner at that hotel!"
The doors are shut. ANTHONY walks forward.]
ANTHONY. You've been seeing Roberts, I hear.
ENID. Yes.
ANTHONY. Do you know what trying to bridge such a gulf as this is
like?
[ENID puts her work on the little table, and faces him.]
Filling a sieve with sand!
ENID. Don't!
ANTHONY. You think with your gloved hands you can cure the trouble
of the century.
[He passes on. ]
ENID. Father!
[ANTHONY Stops at the double doors.]
I'm only thinking of you!
ANTHONY. [More softly.] I can take care of myself, my dear.
ENID. Have you thought what'll happen if you're beaten--
[she points]--in there?
ANTHONY. I don't mean to be.
ENID. Oh! Father, don't give them a chance. You're not well; need
you go to the meeting at all?
ANTHONY. [With a grim smile.] Cut and run?
ENID. But they'll out-vote you!
ANTHONY. [Putting his hand on the doors.] We shall see!
ENID. I beg you, Dad! Won't you?
[ANTHONY looks at her softly.]
[ANTHONY shakes his head. He opens the doors. A buzz of voices
comes in.]
SCANTLEBURY. Can one get dinner on that 6.30 train up?
TENCH. No, Sir, I believe not, sir.
WILDER. Well, I shall speak out; I've had enough of this.
EDGAR. [Sharply.] What?
[It ceases instantly. ANTHONY passes through, closing the doors
behind him. ENID springs to them with a gesture of dismay. She
puts her hand on the knob, and begins turning it; then goes to
the fireplace, and taps her foot on the fender. Suddenly she
rings the bell. FROST comes in by the door that leads into the
hall.]
FROST. Yes, M'm?
ENID. When the men come, Frost, please show them in here; the
hall 's cold.
FROST. I could put them in the pantry, M'm.
ENID. No. I don't want to--to offend them; they're so touchy.
FROST. Yes, M'm. [Pause.] Excuse me, Mr. Anthony's 'ad nothing to
eat all day.
ENID. I know Frost.
FROST. Nothin' but two whiskies and sodas, M'm.
ENID. Oh! you oughtn't to have let him have those.
FROST. [Gravely.] Mr. Anthony is a little difficult, M'm. It's not
as if he were a younger man, an' knew what was good for 'im; he will
have his own way.
ENID. I suppose we all want that.
FROST. Yes, M'm. [Quietly.] Excuse me speakin' about the strike.
I'm sure if the other gentlemen were to give up to Mr. Anthony, and
quietly let the men 'ave what they want, afterwards, that'd be the
best way. I find that very useful with him at times, M'm.
[ENID shakes hey head.]
If he's crossed, it makes him violent. [with an air of discovery],
and I've noticed in my own case, when I'm violent I'm always sorry
for it afterwards.
ENID. [With a smile.] Are you ever violent, Frost?
FROST. Yes, M'm; oh! sometimes very violent.
ENID. I've never seen you.
FROST. [Impersonally.] No, M'm; that is so.
[ENID fidgets towards the back of the door.]
[With feeling.] Bein' with Mr. Anthony, as you know, M'm, ever since
I was fifteen, it worries me to see him crossed like this at his age.
I've taken the liberty to speak to Mr. Wanklin [dropping his voice]--
seems to be the most sensible of the gentlemen--but 'e said to me:
"That's all very well, Frost, but this strike's a very serious
thing," 'e said. "Serious for all parties, no doubt," I said, "but
yumour 'im, sir," I said, "yumour 'im. It's like this, if a man
comes to a stone wall, 'e does n't drive 'is 'ead against it, 'e gets
over it." "Yes," 'e said, "you'd better tell your master that."
[FROST looks at his nails.] That's where it is, M'm. I said to Mr.
Anthony this morning: "Is it worth it, sir?" "Damn it," he said to
me, "Frost! Mind your own business, or take a month's notice!" Beg
pardon, M'm, for using such a word.
ENID. [Moving to the double-doors, and listening.] Do you know that
man Roberts, Frost?
FROST. Yes, M'm; that's to say, not to speak to. But to look at 'im
you can tell what he's like.
ENID. [Stopping.] Yes?
FROST. He's not one of these 'ere ordinary 'armless Socialists.
'E's violent; got a fire inside 'im. What I call "personal." A man
may 'ave what opinions 'e likes, so long as 'e 's not personal; when
'e 's that 'e 's not safe.
ENID. I think that's what my father feels about Roberts.
FROST. No doubt, M'm, Mr. Anthony has a feeling against him.
[ENID glances at him sharply, but finding him in perfect
earnest, stands biting her lips, and looking at the
double-doors.]
It 's, a regular right down struggle between the two. I've no
patience with this Roberts, from what I 'ear he's just an ordinary
workin' man like the rest of 'em. If he did invent a thing he's no
worse off than 'undreds of others. My brother invented a new kind o'
dumb-waiter--nobody gave him anything for it, an' there it is, bein'
used all over the place.
[ENID moves closer to the double-doors.]
There's a kind o' man that never forgives the world, because 'e
wasn't born a gentleman. What I say is--no man that's a gentleman
looks down on another because 'e 'appens to be a class or two above
'im, no more than if 'e 'appens to be a class or two below.
ENID. [With slight impatience.] Yes, I know, Frost, of course.
Will you please go in and ask if they'll have some tea; say I sent
you.
FROST. Yes, M'm.
[He opens the doors gently and goes in. There is a momentary
sound of earnest, gather angry talk.]
WILDER. I don't agree with you.
WANKLIN. We've had this over a dozen times.
EDGAR. [Impatiently.] Well, what's the proposition?
SCANTLEBURY. Yes, what does your father say? Tea? Not for me, not
for me!
WANKLIN. What I understand the Chairman to say is this----
[FROST re-enters closing the door behind him.]
ENID. [Moving from the door.] Won't they have any tea, Frost?
[She goes to the little table, and remains motionless, looking
at the baby's frock.]
[A parlourmaid enters from the hall.]
PARLOURMAID. A Miss Thomas, M'm
ENID. [Raising her head.] Thomas? What Miss Thomas--d' you
mean a----?
PARLOURMAID. Yes, M'm.
ENID. [Blankly.] Oh! Where is she?
PARLOURMAID. In the porch.
ENID. I don't want----[She hesitates.]
FROST. Shall I dispose of her, M'm?
ENID. I 'll come out. No, show her in here, Ellen.
[The PARLOUR MAID and FROST go out. ENID pursing her lips, sits
at the little table, taking up the baby's frock. The
PARLOURMAID ushers in MADGE THOMAS and goes out; MADGE stands by
the door.]
ENID. Come in. What is it. What have you come for, please?
MADGE. Brought a message from Mrs. Roberts.
ENID. A message? Yes.
MADGE. She asks you to look after her mother.
ENID. I don't understand.
MADGE. [Sullenly.] That's the message.
ENID. But--what--why?
MADGE. Annie Roberts is dead.
[There is a silence.]
ENID. [Horrified.] But it's only a little more than an hour since I
saw her.
MADGE. Of cold and hunger.
ENID. [Rising.] Oh! that's not true! the poor thing's heart----
What makes you look at me like that? I tried to help her.
MADGE. [With suppressed savagery.] I thought you'd like to know.
ENID. [Passionately.] It's so unjust! Can't you see that I want to
help you all?
MADGE. I never harmed any one that had n't harmed me first.
ENID. [Coldly.] What harm have I done you? Why do you speak to me
like that?
MADGE. [With the bitterest intensity.] You come out of your comfort
to spy on us! A week of hunger, that's what you want!
ENID. [Standing her ground.] Don't talk nonsense!
MADGE. I saw her die; her hands were blue with the cold.
ENID. [With a movement of grief.] Oh! why wouldn't she let me help
her? It's such senseless pride!
MADGE. Pride's better than nothing to keep your body warm.
ENID. [Passionately.] I won't talk to you! How can you tell what I
feel? It's not my fault that I was born better off than you.
MADGE. We don't want your money.
ENID. You don't understand, and you don't want to; please to go
away!
MADGE. [Balefully.] You've killed her, for all your soft words, you
and your father!
ENID. [With rage and emotion.] That's wicked! My father is
suffering himself through this wretched strike.
MADGE. [With sombre triumph.] Then tell him Mrs. Roberts is dead!
That 'll make him better.
ENID. Go away!
MADGE. When a person hurts us we get it back on them.
[She makes a sudden and swift movement towards ENID, fixing her
eyes on the child's frock lying across the little table. ENID
snatches the frock up, as though it were the child itself. They
stand a yard apart, crossing glances.]
MADGE. [Pointing to the frock with a little smile.] Ah! You felt
that! Lucky it's her mother--not her children--you've to look after,
is n't it. She won't trouble you long!
ENID. Go away!
MADGE. I've given you the message.
[She turns and goes out into the hall. ENID, motionless till
she has gone, sinks down at the table, bending her head over the
frock, which she is still clutching to her. The double-doors
are opened, and ANTHONY comes slowly in; he passes his daughter,
and lowers himself into an arm-chair. He is very flushed.]
ENID. [Hiding her emotion-anxiously.] What is it, Dad?
[ANTHONY makes a gesture, but does not speak.]
Who was it?
[ANTHONY does not answer. ENID going to the double-doors meets
EDGAR Coming in. They speak together in low tones.]
What is it, Ted?
EDGAR. That fellow Wilder! Taken to personalities! He was
downright insulting.
ENID. What did he say?
EDGAR. Said, Father was too old and feeble to know what he was
doing! The Dad's worth six of him!
ENID. Of course he is.
[They look at ANTHONY.]
[The doors open wider, WANKLIN appears With SCANTLEBURY.]
SCANTLEBURY. [Sotto voce.] I don't like the look of this!
WANKLIN. [Going forward.] Come, Chairman! Wilder sends you his
apologies. A man can't do more.
[WILDER, followed by TENCH, comes in, and goes to ANTHONY.]
WILDER. [Glumly.] I withdraw my words, sir. I'm sorry.
[ANTHONY nods to him.]
ENID. You have n't come to a decision, Mr. Wanklin?
[WANKLIN shakes his head.]
WANKLIN. We're all here, Chairman; what do you say? Shall we get on
with the business, or shall we go back to the other room?
SCANTLEBURY. Yes, yes; let's get on. We must settle something.
[He turns from a small chair, and settles himself suddenly in
the largest chair with a sigh of comfort.]
[WILDER and WANKLIN also sit; and TENCH, drawing up a
straight-backed chair close to his Chairman, sits on the edge
of it with the minute-book and a stylographic pen.]
ENID. [Whispering.] I want to speak to you a minute, Ted.
[They go out through the double-doors.]
WANKLIN. Really, Chairman, it's no use soothing ourselves with a
sense of false security. If this strike's not brought to an end
before the General Meeting, the shareholders will certainly haul us
over the coals.
SCANTLEBURY. [Stirring.] What--what's that?
WANKLIN. I know it for a fact.
ANTHONY. Let them!
WILDER. And get turned out?
WANKLIN. [To ANTHONY.] I don't mind martyrdom for a policy in which
I believe, but I object to being burnt for some one else's
principles.
SCANTLEBURY. Very reasonable--you must see that, Chairman.
ANTHONY. We owe it to other employers to stand firm.
WANKLIN. There's a limit to that.
ANTHONY. You were all full of fight at the start.
SCANTLEBURY. [With a sort of groan.] We thought the men would give
in, but they-have n't!
ANTHONY. They will!
WILDER. [Rising and pacing up and down.] I can't have my reputation
as a man of business destroyed for the satisfaction of starving the
men out. [Almost in tears.] I can't have it! How can we meet the
shareholders with things in the state they are?
SCANTLEBURY. Hear, hear--hear, hear!
WILDER. [Lashing himself.] If any one expects me to say to them
I've lost you fifty thousand pounds and sooner than put my pride in
my pocket I'll lose you another. [Glancing at ANTHONY.] It's--it's
unnatural! I don't want to go against you, sir.
WANKLIN. [Persuasively.] Come Chairman, we 're not free agents.
We're part of a machine. Our only business is to see the Company
earns as much profit as it safely can. If you blame me for want of
principle: I say that we're Trustees. Reason tells us we shall never
get back in the saving of wages what we shall lose if we continue
this struggle--really, Chairman, we must bring it to an end, on the
best terms we can make.
ANTHONY. No.
[There is a pause of general dismay.]
WILDER. It's a deadlock then. [Letting his hands drop with a sort
of despair.] Now I shall never get off to Spain!
WANKLIN. [Retaining a trace of irony.] You hear the consequences of
your victory, Chairman?
WILDER. [With a burst of feeling.] My wife's ill!
SCANTLEBURY. Dear, dear! You don't say so.
WILDER. If I don't get her out of this cold, I won't answer for the
consequences.
[Through the double-doors EDGAR comes in looking very grave.]
EDGAR. [To his Father.] Have you heard this, sir? Mrs. Roberts is
dead!
[Every one stages at him, as if trying to gauge the importance
of this news.]
Enid saw her this afternoon, she had no coals, or food, or anything.
It's enough!
[There is a silence, every one avoiding the other's eyes, except
ANTHONY, who stares hard at his son.]
SCANTLEBURY. You don't suggest that we could have helped the poor
thing?
WILDER. [Flustered.] The woman was in bad health. Nobody can say
there's any responsibility on us. At least--not on me.
EDGAR. [Hotly.] I say that we are responsible.
ANTHONY. War is war!
EDGAR. Not on women!
WANKLIN. It not infrequently happens that women are the greatest
sufferers.
EDGAR. If we knew that, all the more responsibility rests on us.
ANTHONY. This is no matter for amateurs.
EDGAR. Call me what you like, sir. It's sickened me. We had no
right to carry things to such a length.
WILDER. I don't like this business a bit--that Radical rag will
twist it to their own ends; see if they don't! They'll get up some
cock and bull story about the poor woman's dying from starvation. I
wash my hands of it.
EDGAR. You can't. None of us can.
SCANTLEBURY. [Striking his fist on the arm of his chair.] But I
protest against this!
EDGAR. Protest as you like, Mr. Scantlebury, it won't alter facts.
ANTHONY. That's enough.
EDGAR. [Facing him angrily.] No, sir. I tell you exactly what I
think. If we pretend the men are not suffering, it's humbug; and if
they're suffering, we know enough of human nature to know the women
are suffering more, and as to the children--well--it's damnable!
[SCANTLEBURY rises from his chair.]
I don't say that we meant to be cruel, I don't say anything of the
sort; but I do say it's criminal to shut our eyes to the facts. We
employ these men, and we can't get out of it. I don't care so much
about the men, but I'd sooner resign my position on the Board than go
on starving women in this way.
[All except ANTHONY are now upon their feet, ANTHONY sits
grasping the arms of his chair and staring at his son.]
SCANTLEBURY. I don't--I don't like the way you're putting it, young
sir.
WANKLIN. You're rather overshooting the mark.
WILDER. I should think so indeed!
EDGAR. [Losing control.] It's no use blinking things! If you want
to have the death of women on your hands--I don't!
SCANTLEBURY. Now, now, young man!
WILDER. On our hands? Not on mine, I won't have it!
EDGAR. We are five members of this Board; if we were four against
it, why did we let it drift till it came to this? You know perfectly
well why--because we hoped we should starve the men out. Well, all
we've done is to starve one woman out!
SCANTLEBURY. [Almost hysterically.] I protest, I protest! I'm a
humane man--we're all humane men!
EDGAR. [Scornfully.] There's nothing wrong with our humanity. It's
our imaginations, Mr. Scantlebury.
WILDER. Nonsense! My imagination's as good as yours.
EDGAR. If so, it is n't good enough.
WILDER. I foresaw this!
EDGAR. Then why didn't you put your foot down!
WILDER. Much good that would have done.
[He looks at ANTHONY.]
EDGAR. If you, and I, and each one of us here who say that our
imaginations are so good--
SCANTLEBURY. [Flurried.] I never said so.
EDGAR. [Paying no attention.]--had put our feet down, the thing
would have been ended long ago, and this poor woman's life wouldn't
have been crushed out of her like this. For all we can tell there
may be a dozen other starving women.
SCANTLEBURY. For God's sake, sir, don't use that word at a--at a
Board meeting; it's--it's monstrous.
EDGAR. I will use it, Mr. Scantlebury.
SCANTLEBURY. Then I shall not listen to you. I shall not listen!
It's painful to me.
[He covers his ears.]
WANKLIN. None of us are opposed to a settlement, except your Father.
EDGAR. I'm certain that if the shareholders knew----
WANKLIN. I don't think you'll find their imaginations are any better
than ours. Because a woman happens to have a weak heart----
EDGAR. A struggle like this finds out the weak spots in everybody.
Any child knows that. If it hadn't been for this cut-throat policy,
she need n't have died like this; and there would n't be all this
misery that any one who is n't a fool can see is going on.
[Throughout the foregoing ANTHONY has eyed his son; he now moves
as though to rise, but stops as EDGAR speaks again.]
I don't defend the men, or myself, or anybody.
WANKLIN. You may have to! A coroner's jury of disinterested
sympathisers may say some very nasty things. We mustn't lose sight
of our position.
SCANTLEBURY. [Without uncovering his ears.] Coroner's jury! No,
no, it's not a case for that!
EDGAR. I 've had enough of cowardice.
WANKLIN. Cowardice is an unpleasant word, Mr. Edgar Anthony. It
will look very like cowardice if we suddenly concede the men's
demands when a thing like this happens; we must be careful!
WILDER. Of course we must. We've no knowledge of this matter,
except a rumour. The proper course is to put the whole thing into
the hands of Harness to settle for us; that's natural, that's what we
should have come to any way.
SCANTLEBURY. [With dignity.] Exactly! [Turning to EDGAR.] And as
to you, young sir, I can't sufficiently express my--my distaste for
the way you've treated the whole matter. You ought to withdraw!
Talking of starvation, talking of cowardice! Considering what our
views are! Except your own is--is one of goodwill--it's most
irregular, it's most improper, and all I can say is it's--it's given
me pain----
[He places his hand over his heart.]
EDGAR. [Stubbornly.] I withdraw nothing.
[He is about to say mote when SCANTLEBURY once more coveys up
his ears. TENCH suddenly makes a demonstration with the
minute-book. A sense of having been engaged in the unusual comes
over all of them, and one by one they resume their seats. EDGAR
alone remains on his feet.]
WILDER. [With an air of trying to wipe something out.] I pay no
attention to what young Mr. Anthony has said. Coroner's jury! The
idea's preposterous. I--I move this amendment to the Chairman's
Motion: That the dispute be placed at once in the hands of Mr. Simon
Harness for settlement, on the lines indicated by him this morning.
Any one second that?
[TENCH writes in his book.]
WANKLIN. I do.
WILDER. Very well, then; I ask the Chairman to put it to the Board.
ANTHONY. [With a great sigh-slowly.] We have been made the subject
of an attack. [Looking round at WILDER and SCANTLEBURY with ironical
contempt.] I take it on my shoulders. I am seventy-six years old. I
have been Chairman of this Company since its inception two-and-thirty
years ago. I have seen it pass through good and evil report. My
connection with it began in the year that this young man was born.
[EDGAR bows his head. ANTHONY, gripping his chair, goes on.]
I have had do to with "men" for fifty years; I've always stood up to
them; I have never been beaten yet. I have fought the men of this
Company four times, and four times I have beaten them. It has been
said that I am not the man I was. [He looks at Wilder.] However
that may be, I am man enough to stand to my guns.
[His voice grows stronger. The double-doors are opened. ENID
slips in, followed by UNDERWOOD, who restrains her.]
The men have been treated justly, they have had fair wages, we have
always been ready to listen to complaints. It has been said that
times have changed; if they have, I have not changed with them.
Neither will I. It has been said that masters and men are equal!
Cant! There can only be one master in a house! Where two men meet
the better man will rule. It has been said that Capital and Labour
have the same interests. Cant! Their interests are as wide asunder
as the poles. It has been said that the Board is only part of a
machine. Cant! We are the machine; its brains and sinews; it is for
us to lead and to determine what is to be done, and to do it without
fear or favour. Fear of the men! Fear of the shareholders! Fear of
our own shadows! Before I am like that, I hope to die.
[He pauses, and meeting his son's eyes, goes on.]
There is only one way of treating "men"--with the iron hand. This
half and half business, the half and half manners of this generation,
has brought all this upon us. Sentiment and softness, and what this
young man, no doubt, would call his social policy. You can't eat
cake and have it! This middle-class sentiment, or socialism, or
whatever it may be, is rotten. Masters are masters, men are men!
Yield one demand, and they will make it six. They are [he smiles
grimly] like Oliver Twist, asking for more. If I were in their
place I should be the same. But I am not in their place. Mark my
words: one fine morning, when you have given way here, and given way
there--you will find you have parted with the ground beneath your
feet, and are deep in the bog of bankruptcy; and with you,
floundering in that bog, will be the very men you have given way to.
I have been accused of being a domineering tyrant, thinking only of
my pride--I am thinking of the future of this country, threatened
with the black waters of confusion, threatened with mob government,
threatened with what I cannot see. If by any conduct of mine I help
to bring this on us, I shall be ashamed to look my fellows in the
face.
[ANTHONY stares before him, at what he cannot see, and there is
perfect stillness. FROST comes in from the hall, and all but
ANTHONY look round at him uneasily.]
FROST. [To his master.] The men are here, sir. [ANTHONY makes a
gesture of dismissal.] Shall I bring them in, sir?
ANTHONY. Wait!
[FROST goes out, ANTHONY turns to face his son.]
I come to the attack that has been made upon me.
[EDGAR, with a gesture of deprecation, remains motionless with
his head a little bowed.]
A woman has died. I am told that her blood is on my hands; I am told
that on my hands is the starvation and the suffering of other women
and of children.
EDGAR. I said "on our hands," sir.
ANTHONY. It is the same. [His voice grows stronger and stronger,
his feeling is more and more made manifest.] I am not aware that if
my adversary suffer in a fair fight not sought by me, it is my fault.
If I fall under his feet--as fall I may--I shall not complain. That
will be my look-out--and this is--his. I cannot separate, as I
would, these men from their women and children. A fair fight is a
fair fight! Let them learn to think before they pick a quarrel!
EDGAR. [In a low voice.] But is it a fair fight, Father? Look at
them, and look at us! They've only this one weapon!
ANTHONY. [Grimly.] And you're weak-kneed enough to teach them how
to use it! It seems the fashion nowadays for men to take their
enemy's side. I have not learnt that art. Is it my fault that they
quarrelled with their Union too?
EDGAR. There is such a thing as Mercy.
ANTHONY. And justice comes before it.
EDGAR. What seems just to one man, sir, is injustice to another.
ANTHONY. [With suppressed passion.] You accuse me of injustice--of
what amounts to inhumanity--of cruelty?
[EDGAR makes a gesture of horror--a general frightened
movement.]
WANKLIN. Come, come, Chairman.
ANTHONY. [In a grim voice.] These are the words of my own son.
They are the words of a generation that I don't understand; the words
of a soft breed.
[A general murmur. With a violent effort ANTHONY recovers his
control.]
EDGAR. [Quietly.] I said it of myself, too, Father.
[A long look is exchanged between them, and ANTHONY puts out his
hand with a gesture as if to sweep the personalities away; then
places it against his brow, swaying as though from giddiness.
There is a movement towards him. He moves them back.]
ANTHONY. Before I put this amendment to the Board, I have one more
word to say. [He looks from face to face.] If it is carried, it
means that we shall fail in what we set ourselves to do. It means
that we shall fail in the duty that we owe to all Capital. It means
that we shall fail in the duty that we owe ourselves. It means that
we shall be open to constant attack to which we as constantly shall
have to yield. Be under no misapprehension--run this time, and you
will never make a stand again! You will have to fly like curs before
the whips of your own men. If that is the lot you wish for, you will
vote for this amendment.
[He looks again, from face to face, finally resting his gaze on
EDGAR; all sit with their eyes on the ground. ANTHONY makes a
gesture, and TENCH hands him the book. He reads.]
"Moved by Mr. Wilder, and seconded by Mr. Wanklin: 'That the men's
demands be placed at once in the hands of Mr. Simon Harness for
settlement on the lines indicated by him this morning.'" [With
sudden vigour.] Those in favour: Signify the same in the usual way!
[For a minute no one moves; then hastily, just as ANTHONY is
about to speak, WILDER's hand and WANKLIN'S are held up, then
SCANTLEBURY'S, and last EDGAR'S who does not lift his head.]
[ANTHONY lifts his own hand.]
[In a clear voice.] The amendment is carried. I resign my position
on this Board.
[ENID gasps, and there is dead silence. ANTHONY sits
motionless, his head slowly drooping; suddenly he heaves as
though the whole of his life had risen up within him.]
Contrary?
Fifty years! You have disgraced me, gentlemen. Bring in the men!
[He sits motionless, staring before him. The Board draws
hurriedly together, and forms a group. TENCH in a frightened
manner speaks into the hall. UNDERWOOD almost forces ENID from
the room.]
WILDER. [Hurriedly.] What's to be said to them? Why isn't Harness
here? Ought we to see the men before he comes? I don't----
TENCH. Will you come in, please?
[Enter THOMAS, GREEN, BULGIN, and ROUS, who file up in a row
past the little table. TENCH sits down and writes. All eyes
are foxed on ANTHONY, who makes no sign.]
WANKLIN. [Stepping up to the little table, with nervous cordiality.]
Well, Thomas, how's it to be? What's the result of your meeting?
ROUS. Sim Harness has our answer. He'll tell you what it is. We're
waiting for him. He'll speak for us.
WANKLIN. Is that so, Thomas?
THOMAS. [Sullenly.] Yes. Roberts will not pe coming, his wife is
dead.
SCANTLEBURY. Yes, yes! Poor woman! Yes! Yes!
FROST. [Entering from the hall.] Mr. Harness, Sir!
[As HARNESS enters he retires.]
[HARNESS has a piece of paper in his hand, he bows to the
Directors, nods towards the men, and takes his stand behind the
little table in the very centre of the room.]
HARNESS. Good evening, gentlemen.
[TENCH, with the paper he has been writing, joins him, they
speak together in low tones.]
WILDER. We've been waiting for you, Harness. Hope we shall come to
some----
FROST. [Entering from the hall.] Roberts!
[He goes.]
[ROBERTS comes hastily in, and stands staring at ANTHONY. His
face is drawn and old.]
ROBERTS. Mr. Anthony, I am afraid I am a little late, I would have
been here in time but for something that--has happened. [To the
men.] Has anything been said?
THOMAS. No! But, man, what made ye come?
ROBERTS. Ye told us this morning, gentlemen, to go away and
reconsider our position. We have reconsidered it; we are here to
bring you the men's answer. [To ANTHONY.] Go ye back to London. We
have nothing for you. By no jot or tittle do we abate our demands,
nor will we until the whole of those demands are yielded.
[ANTHONY looks at him but does not speak. There is a movement
amongst the men as though they were bewildered.]
HARNESS. Roberts!
ROBERTS. [Glancing fiercely at him, and back to ANTHONY.] Is that
clear enough for ye? Is it short enough and to the point? Ye made a
mistake to think that we would come to heel. Ye may break the body,
but ye cannot break the spirit. Get back to London, the men have
nothing for ye?
[Pausing uneasily he takes a step towards the unmoving ANTHONY.]
EDGAR. We're all sorry for you, Roberts, but----
ROBERTS. Keep your sorrow, young man. Let your father speak!
HARNESS. [With the sheet of paper in his hand, speaking from behind
the little table.] Roberts!
ROBERT. [TO ANTHONY, with passionate intensity.] Why don't ye
answer?
HARNESS. Roberts!
ROBERTS. [Turning sharply.] What is it?
HARNESS. [Gravely.] You're talking without the book; things have
travelled past you.
[He makes a sign to TENCH, who beckons the Directors. They
quickly sign his copy of the terms.]
Look at this, man! [Holding up his sheet of paper.] "Demands
conceded, with the exception of those relating to the engineers and
furnace-men. Double wages for Saturday's overtime. Night-shifts as
they are." These terms have been agreed. The men go back to work
again to-morrow. The strike is at an end.
ROBERTS. [Reading the paper, and turning on the men. They shrink
back from him, all but ROUS, who stands his ground. With deadly
stillness.] Ye have gone back on me? I stood by ye to the death; ye
waited for that to throw me over!
[The men answer, all speaking together.]
ROUS. It's a lie!
THOMAS. Ye were past endurance, man.
GREEN. If ye'd listen to me!
BULGIN. (Under his breath.) Hold your jaw!
ROBERTS. Ye waited for that!
HARNESS. [Taking the Director's copy of the terms, and handing his
own to TENCH.] That's enough, men. You had better go.
[The men shuffle slowly, awkwardly away.]
WILDER. [In a low, nervous voice.] There's nothing to stay for now,
I suppose. [He follows to the door.] I shall have a try for that
train! Coming, Scantlebury?
SCANTLEBURY. [Following with WANKLIN.] Yes, yes; wait for me. [He
stops as ROBERTS speaks.]
ROBERTS. [To ANTHONY.] But ye have not signed them terms! They
can't make terms without their Chairman! Ye would never sign them
terms! [ANTHONY looks at him without speaking.] Don't tell me ye
have! for the love o' God! [With passionate appeal.] I reckoned on
ye!
HARNESS. [Holding out the Director's copy of the teems.] The Board
has signed!
[ROBERTS looks dully at the signatures--dashes the paper from
him, and covers up his eyes.]
SCANTLEBURY. [Behind his hand to TENCH.] Look after the Chairman!
He's not well; he's not well--he had no lunch. If there's any fund
started for the women and children, put me down for--for twenty
pounds.
[He goes out into the hall, in cumbrous haste; and WANKLIN, who
has been staring at ROBERTS and ANTHONY With twitchings of his
face, follows. EDGAR remains seated on the sofa, looking at the
ground; TENCH, returning to the bureau, writes in his minute--
book. HARNESS stands by the little table, gravely watching
ROBERTS.]
ROBERTS. Then you're no longer Chairman of this Company! [Breaking
into half-mad laughter.] Ah! ha-ah, ha, ha! They've thrown ye over
thrown over their Chairman: Ah-ha-ha! [With a sudden dreadful calm.]
So--they've done us both down, Mr. Anthony?
[ENID, hurrying through the double-doors, comes quickly to her
father.]
ANTHONY. Both broken men, my friend Roberts!
HARNESS. [Coming down and laying his hands on ROBERTS'S sleeve.]
For shame, Roberts! Go home quietly, man; go home!
ROBERTS. [Tearing his arm away.] Home? [Shrinking together--in a
whisper.] Home!
ENID. [Quietly to her father.] Come away, dear! Come to your room
[ANTHONY rises with an effort. He turns to ROBERTS who looks at
him. They stand several seconds, gazing at each other fixedly;
ANTHONY lifts his hand, as though to salute, but lets it fall.
The expression of ROBERTS'S face changes from hostility to
wonder. They bend their heads in token of respect. ANTHONY
turns, and slowly walks towards the curtained door. Suddenly
he sways as though about to fall, recovers himself, and is
assisted out by EDGAR and ENID; UNDERWOOD follows, but stops at
the door. ROBERTS remains motionless for several seconds,
staring intently after ANTHONY, then goes out into the hall.]
TENCH. [Approaching HARNESS.] It's a great weight off my mind, Mr.
Harness! But what a painful scene, sir! [He wipes his brow.]
[HARNESS, pale and resolute, regards with a grim half-smile the
quavering.]
TENCH. It's all been so violent! What did he mean by: "Done us both
down?" If he has lost his wife, poor fellow, he oughtn't to have
spoken to the Chairman like that!
HARNESS. A woman dead; and the two best men both broken!
TENCH. [Staring at him-suddenly excited.] D'you know, sir--these
terms, they're the very same we drew up together, you and I, and put
to both sides before the fight began? All this--all this--and--and
what for?
HARNESS. [In a slow grim voice.] That's where the fun comes in!
[UNDERWOOD without turning from the door makes a gesture of
assent.]
The curtain falls.
THE END
GALSWORTHY PLAYS--SECOND SERIES--NO. 1
Contents:
The Eldest Son
The Little Dream
Justice
THE ELDEST SON
BY JOHN GALSWORTHY
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
SIR WILLIAM CHESHIRE, a baronet
LADY CHESHIRE, his wife
BILL, their eldest son
HAROLD, their second son
RONALD KEITH(in the Lancers), their son-in-law
CHRISTINE (his wife), their eldest daughter
DOT, their second daughter
JOAN, their third daughter
MABEL LANFARNE, their guest
THE REVEREND JOHN LATTER, engaged to Joan
OLD STUDDENHAM, the head-keeper
FREDA STUDDENHAM, the lady's-maid
YOUNG DUNNING, the under-keeper
ROSE TAYLOR, a village girl
JACKSON, the butler
CHARLES, a footman
TIME: The present. The action passes on December 7 and 8 at the
Cheshires' country house, in one of the shires.
ACT I SCENE I. The hall; before dinner.
SCENE II. The hall; after dinner.
ACT II. Lady Cheshire's morning room; after breakfast.
ACT III. The smoking-room; tea-time.
A night elapses between Acts I. and II.
ACT I
SCENE I
The scene is a well-lighted, and large, oak-panelled hall, with
an air of being lived in, and a broad, oak staircase. The
dining-room, drawing-room, billiard-room, all open into it; and
under the staircase a door leads to the servants' quarters. In
a huge fireplace a log fire is burning. There are tiger-skins
on the floor, horns on the walls; and a writing-table against
the wall opposite the fireplace. FREDA STUDDENHAM, a pretty,
pale girl with dark eyes, in the black dress of a lady's-maid,
is standing at the foot of the staircase with a bunch of white
roses in one hand, and a bunch of yellow roses in the other. A
door closes above, and SIR WILLIAM CHESHIRE, in evening dress,
comes downstairs. He is perhaps fifty-eight, of strong build,
rather bull-necked, with grey eyes, and a well-coloured face,
whose choleric autocracy is veiled by a thin urbanity. He
speaks before he reaches the bottom.
SIR WILLIAM. Well, Freda! Nice roses. Who are they for?
FREDA. My lady told me to give the yellow to Mrs. Keith, Sir
William, and the white to Miss Lanfarne, for their first evening.
SIR WILLIAM. Capital. [Passing on towards the drawing-room] Your
father coming up to-night?
FREDA. Yes.
SIR WILLIAM. Be good enough to tell him I specially want to see him
here after dinner, will you?
FREDA. Yes, Sir William.
SIR WILLIAM. By the way, just ask him to bring the game-book in, if
he's got it.
He goes out into the drawing-room; and FREDA stands restlessly
tapping her foot against the bottom stair. With a flutter of
skirts CHRISTINE KEITH comes rapidly down. She is a
nice-looking, fresh-coloured young woman in a low-necked dress.
CHRISTINE. Hullo, Freda! How are YOU?
FREDA. Quite well, thank you, Miss Christine--Mrs. Keith, I mean.
My lady told me to give you these.
CHRISTINE. [Taking the roses] Oh! Thanks! How sweet of mother!
FREDA. [In a quick, toneless voice] The others are for Miss Lanfarne.
My lady thought white would suit her better.
CHRISTINE. They suit you in that black dress.
[FREDA lowers the roses quickly.]
What do you think of Joan's engagement?
FREDA. It's very nice for her.
CHRISTINE. I say, Freda, have they been going hard at rehearsals?
FREDA. Every day. Miss Dot gets very cross, stage-managing.
CHRISTINE. I do hate learning a part. Thanks awfully for unpacking.
Any news?
FREDA. [In the same quick, dull voice] The under-keeper, Dunning,
won't marry Rose Taylor, after all.
CHRISTINE. What a shame! But I say that's serious. I thought there
was--she was--I mean----
FREDA. He's taken up with another girl, they say.
CHRISTINE. Too bad! [Pinning the roses] D'you know if Mr. Bill's
come?
FREDA. [With a swift upward look] Yes, by the six-forty.
RONALD KEITH comes slowly down, a weathered firm-lipped man, in
evening dress, with eyelids half drawn over his keen eyes, and
the air of a horseman.
KEITH. Hallo! Roses in December. I say, Freda, your father missed
a wigging this morning when they drew blank at Warnham's spinney.
Where's that litter of little foxes?
FREDA. [Smiling faintly] I expect father knows, Captain Keith.
KEITH. You bet he does. Emigration? Or thin air? What?
CHRISTINE. Studdenham'd never shoot a fox, Ronny. He's been here
since the flood.
KEITH. There's more ways of killing a cat--eh, Freda?
CHRISTINE. [Moving with her husband towards the drawing-room] Young
Dunning won't marry that girl, Ronny.
KEITH. Phew! Wouldn't be in his shoes, then! Sir William'll never
keep a servant who's made a scandal in the village, old girl. Bill
come?
As they disappear from the hall, JOHN LATTER in a clergyman's
evening dress, comes sedately downstairs, a tall, rather pale
young man, with something in him, as it were, both of heaven,
and a drawing-room. He passes FREDA with a formal little nod.
HAROLD, a fresh-cheeked, cheery-looking youth, comes down, three
steps at a time.
HAROLD. Hallo, Freda! Patience on the monument. Let's have a
sniff! For Miss Lanfarne? Bill come down yet?
FREDA. No, Mr. Harold.
HAROLD crosses the hall, whistling, and follows LATTER into the
drawing-room. There is the sound of a scuffle above, and a
voice crying: "Shut up, Dot!" And JOAN comes down screwing her
head back. She is pretty and small, with large clinging eyes.
JOAN. Am I all right behind, Freda? That beast, Dot!
FREDA. Quite, Miss Joan.
DOT's face, like a full moon, appears over the upper banisters.
She too comes running down, a frank figure, with the face of a
rebel.
DOT. You little being!
JOAN. [Flying towards the drawing-roam, is overtaken at the door]
Oh! Dot! You're pinching!
As they disappear into the drawing-room, MABEL LANFARNE, a tall
girl with a rather charming Irish face, comes slowly down. And
at sight of her FREDA's whole figure becomes set and meaningfull.
FREDA. For you, Miss Lanfarne, from my lady.
MABEL. [In whose speech is a touch of wilful Irishry] How sweet!
[Fastening the roses] And how are you, Freda?
FREDA. Very well, thank you.
MABEL. And your father? Hope he's going to let me come out with the
guns again.
FREDA. [Stolidly] He'll be delighted, I'm sure.
MABEL. Ye-es! I haven't forgotten his face-last time.
FREDA. You stood with Mr. Bill. He's better to stand with than Mr.
Harold, or Captain Keith?
MABEL. He didn't touch a feather, that day.
FREDA. People don't when they're anxious to do their best.
A gong sounds. And MABEL LANFARNE, giving FREDA a rather
inquisitive stare, moves on to the drawing-room. Left alone
without the roses, FREDA still lingers. At the slamming of a
door above, and hasty footsteps, she shrinks back against the
stairs. BILL runs down, and comes on her suddenly. He is a
tall, good-looking edition of his father, with the same stubborn
look of veiled choler.
BILL. Freda! [And as she shrinks still further back] what's the
matter? [Then at some sound he looks round uneasily and draws away
from her] Aren't you glad to see me?
FREDA. I've something to say to you, Mr. Bill. After dinner.
BILL. Mister----?
She passes him, and rushes away upstairs. And BILL, who stands
frowning and looking after her, recovers himself sharply as the
drawing-room door is opened, and SIR WILLIAM and MISS LANFARNE
come forth, followed by KEITH, DOT, HAROLD, CHRISTINE, LATTER,
and JOAN, all leaning across each other, and talking. By
herself, behind them, comes LADY CHESHIRE, a refined-looking
woman of fifty, with silvery dark hair, and an expression at
once gentle, and ironic. They move across the hall towards the
dining-room.
SIR WILLIAM. Ah! Bill.
MABEL. How do you do?
KEITH. How are you, old chap?
DOT. [gloomily] Do you know your part?
HAROLD. Hallo, old man!
CHRISTINE gives her brother a flying kiss. JOAN and LATTER pause and
look at him shyly without speech.
BILL. [Putting his hand on JOAN's shoulder] Good luck, you two!
Well mother?
LADY CHESHIRE. Well, my dear boy! Nice to see you at last. What a
long time!
She draws his arm through hers, and they move towards the
dining-room.
The curtain falls.
The curtain rises again at once.
SCENE II
CHRISTINE, LADY CHESHIRE, DOT, MABEL LANFARNE,
and JOAN, are returning to the hall after dinner.
CHRISTINE. [in a low voice] Mother, is it true about young Dunning
and Rose Taylor?
LADY CHESHIRE. I'm afraid so, dear.
CHRISTINE. But can't they be----
DOT. Ah! ah-h! [CHRISTINE and her mother are silent.] My child, I'm
not the young person.
CHRISTINE. No, of course not--only--[nodding towards JOAN and
Mable].
DOT. Look here! This is just an instance of what I hate.
LADY CHESHIRE. My dear? Another one?
DOT. Yes, mother, and don't you pretend you don't understand,
because you know you do.
CHRISTINE. Instance? Of what?
JOAN and MABEL have ceased talking, and listen, still at the fire.
DOT. Humbug, of course. Why should you want them to marry, if he's
tired of her?
CHRISTINE. [Ironically] Well! If your imagination doesn't carry you
as far as that!
DOT. When people marry, do you believe they ought to be in love with
each other?
CHRISTINE. [With a shrug] That's not the point.
DOT. Oh? Were you in love with Ronny?
CHRISTINE. Don't be idiotic!
DOT. Would you have married him if you hadn't been?
CHRISTINE. Of course not!
JOAN. Dot! You are!----
DOT. Hallo! my little snipe!
LADY CHESHIRE. Dot, dear!
DOT. Don't shut me up, mother! [To JOAN.] Are you in love with
John? [JOAN turns hurriedly to the fire.] Would you be going to
marry him if you were not?
CHRISTINE. You are a brute, Dot.
DOT. Is Mabel in love with--whoever she is in love with?
MABEL. And I wonder who that is.
DOT. Well, would you marry him if you weren't?
MABEL. No, I would not.
DOT. Now, mother; did you love father?
CHRISTINE. Dot, you really are awful.
DOT. [Rueful and detached] Well, it is a bit too thick, perhaps.
JOAN. Dot!
DOT. Well, mother, did you--I mean quite calmly?
LADY CHESHIRE. Yes, dear, quite calmly.
DOT. Would you have married him if you hadn't? [LADY CHESHIRE shakes
her head] Then we're all agreed!
MABEL. Except yourself.
DOT. [Grimly] Even if I loved him, he might think himself lucky if I
married him.
MABEL. Indeed, and I'm not so sure.
DOT. [Making a face at her] What I was going to----
LADY CHESHIRE. But don't you think, dear, you'd better not?
DOT. Well, I won't say what I was going to say, but what I do say
is--Why the devil----
LADY CHESHIRE. Quite so, Dot!
DOT. [A little disconcerted.] If they're tired of each other, they
ought not to marry, and if father's going to make them----
CHRISTINE. You don't understand in the least. It's for the sake of
the----
DOT. Out with it, Old Sweetness! The approaching infant! God bless
it!
There is a sudden silence, for KEITH and LATTER are seen coming
from the dining-room.
LATTER. That must be so, Ronny.
KEITH. No, John; not a bit of it!
LATTER. You don't think!
KEITH. Good Gad, who wants to think after dinner!
DOT. Come on! Let's play pool. [She turns at the billiard-room
door.] Look here! Rehearsal to-morrow is directly after breakfast;
from "Eccles enters breathless" to the end.
MABEL. Whatever made you choose "Caste," DOT? You know it's awfully
difficult.
DOT. Because it's the only play that's not too advanced. [The girls
all go into the billiard-room.]
LADY CHESHIRE. Where's Bill, Ronny?
KEITH. [With a grimace] I rather think Sir William and he are in
Committee of Supply--Mem-Sahib.
LADY CHESHIRE. Oh!
She looks uneasily at the dining-room; then follows the girls
out.
LATTER. [In the tone of one resuming an argument] There can't be
two opinions about it, Ronny. Young Dunning's refusal is simply
indefensible.
KEITH. I don't agree a bit, John.
LATTER. Of course, if you won't listen.
KEITH. [Clipping a cigar] Draw it mild, my dear chap. We've had
the whole thing over twice at least.
LATTER. My point is this----
KEITH. [Regarding LATTER quizzically with his halfclosed eyes]
I know--I know--but the point is, how far your point is simply
professional.
LATTER. If a man wrongs a woman, he ought to right her again.
There's no answer to that.
KEITH. It all depends.
LATTER. That's rank opportunism.
KEITH. Rats! Look here--Oh! hang it, John, one can't argue this out
with a parson.
LATTER. [Frigidly] Why not?
HAROLD. [Who has entered from the dining-room] Pull devil, pull
baker!
KEITH. Shut up, Harold!
LATTER. "To play the game" is the religion even of the Army.
KEITH. Exactly, but what is the game?
LATTER. What else can it be in this case?
KEITH. You're too puritanical, young John. You can't help it--line
of country laid down for you. All drag-huntin'! What!
LATTER. [With concentration] Look here!
HAROLD. [Imitating the action of a man pulling at a horse's head]
'Come hup, I say, you hugly beast!'
KEITH. [To LATTER] You're not going to draw me, old chap. You
don't see where you'd land us all. [He smokes calmly]
LATTER. How do you imagine vice takes its rise? From precisely this
sort of thing of young Dunning's.
KEITH. From human nature, I should have thought, John. I admit that
I don't like a fellow's leavin' a girl in the lurch; but I don't see
the use in drawin' hard and fast rules. You only have to break 'em.
Sir William and you would just tie Dunning and the girl up together,
willy-nilly, to save appearances, and ten to one but there'll be the
deuce to pay in a year's time. You can take a horse to the water,
you can't make him drink.
LATTER. I entirely and absolutely disagree with you.
HAROLD. Good old John!
LATTER. At all events we know where your principles take you.
KEITH. [Rather dangerously] Where, please? [HAROLD turns up his
eyes, and points downwards] Dry up, Harold!
LATTER. Did you ever hear the story of Faust?
KEITH. Now look here, John; with all due respect to your cloth, and
all the politeness in the world, you may go to-blazes.
LATTER. Well, I must say, Ronny--of all the rude boors----[He turns
towards the billiard-room.]
KEITH. Sorry I smashed the glass, old chap.
LATTER passes out. There comes a mingled sound through the
opened door, of female voices, laughter, and the click of
billiard balls, dipped of by the sudden closing of the door.
KEITH. [Impersonally] Deuced odd, the way a parson puts one's back
up! Because you know I agree with him really; young Dunning ought to
play the game; and I hope Sir William'll make him.
The butler JACKSON has entered from the door under the stairs
followed by the keeper STUDDENHAM, a man between fifty and
sixty, in a full-skirted coat with big pockets, cord breeches,
and gaiters; he has a steady self respecting weathered face,
with blue eyes and a short grey beard, which has obviously once
been red.
KEITH. Hullo! Studdenham!
STUDDENHAM. [Touching his forehead] Evenin', Captain Keith.
JACKSON. Sir William still in the dining-room with Mr. Bill, sir?
HAROLD. [With a grimace] He is, Jackson.
JACKSON goes out to the dining-room.
KEITH. You've shot no pheasants yet, Studdenham?
STUDDENHAM. No, Sir. Only birds. We'll be doin' the spinneys and
the home covert while you're down.
KEITH. I say, talkin' of spinneys----
He breaks off sharply, and goes out with HAROLD into the
billiard-room. SIR WILLIAM enters from the dining-room,
applying a gold toothpick to his front teeth.
SIR WILLIAM. Ah! Studdenham. Bad business this, about young
Dunning!
STUDDENHAM. Yes, Sir William.
SIR WILLIAM. He definitely refuses to marry her?
STUDDENHAM. He does that.
SIR WILLIAM. That won't do, you know. What reason does he give?
STUDDENHAM. Won't say other than that he don't want no more to do
with her.
SIR WILLIAM. God bless me! That's not a reason. I can't have a
keeper of mine playing fast and loose in the village like this.
[Turning to LADY CHESHIRE, who has come in from the billiard-room]
That affair of young Dunning's, my dear.
LADY CHESHIRE. Oh! Yes! I'm so sorry, Studdenham. The poor girl!
STUDDENHAM. [Respectfully] Fancy he's got a feeling she's not his
equal, now, my lady.
LADY CHESHIRE. [To herself] Yes, I suppose he has made her his
superior.
SIR WILLIAM. What? Eh! Quite! Quite! I was just telling
Studdenham the fellow must set the matter straight. We can't have
open scandals in the village. If he wants to keep his place he must
marry her at once.
LADY CHESHIRE. [To her husband in a low voice] Is it right to force
them? Do you know what the girl wishes, Studdenham?
STUDDENHAM. Shows a spirit, my lady--says she'll have him--willin'
or not.
LADY CHESHIRE. A spirit? I see. If they marry like that they're
sure to be miserable.
SIR WILLIAM. What! Doesn't follow at all. Besides, my dear, you
ought to know by this time, there's an unwritten law in these
matters. They're perfectly well aware that when there are
consequences, they have to take them.
STUDDENHAM. Some o' these young people, my lady, they don't put two
and two together no more than an old cock pheasant.
SIR WILLIAM. I'll give him till to-morrow. If he remains obstinate,
he'll have to go; he'll get no character, Studdenham. Let him know
what I've said. I like the fellow, he's a good keeper. I don't want
to lose him. But this sort of thing I won't have. He must toe the
mark or take himself off. Is he up here to-night?
STUDDENHAM. Hangin' partridges, Sir William. Will you have him in?
SIR WILLIAM. [Hesitating] Yes--yes. I'll see him.
STUDDENHAM. Good-night to you, my lady.
LADY CHESHIRE. Freda's not looking well, Studdenham.
STUDDENHAM. She's a bit pernickitty with her food, that's where it
is.
LADY CHESHIRE. I must try and make her eat.
SIR WILLIAM. Oh! Studdenham. We'll shoot the home covert first.
What did we get last year?
STUDDENHAM. [Producing the game-book; but without reference to it]
Two hundred and fifty-three pheasants, eleven hares, fifty-two
rabbits, three woodcock, sundry.
SIR WILLIAM. Sundry? Didn't include a fox did it? [Gravely] I was
seriously upset this morning at Warnham's spinney----
SUDDENHAM. [Very gravely] You don't say, Sir William; that
four-year-old he du look a handful!
SIR WILLIAM. [With a sharp look] You know well enough what I mean.
STUDDENHAM. [Unmoved] Shall I send young Dunning, Sir William?
SIR WILLIAM gives a short, sharp nod, and STUDDENHAM retires by
the door under the stairs.
SIR WILLIAM. Old fox!
LADY CHESHIRE. Don't be too hard on Dunning. He's very young.
SIR WILLIAM. [Patting her arm] My dear, you don't understand young
fellows, how should you?
LADY CHESHIRE. [With her faint irony] A husband and two sons not
counting. [Then as the door under the stairs is opened] Bill, now
do----
SIR WILLIAM. I'll be gentle with him. [Sharply] Come in!
LADY CHESHIRE retires to the billiard-room. She gives a look
back and a half smile at young DUNNING, a fair young man dressed
in broom cords and leggings, and holding his cap in his hand;
then goes out.
SIR WILLIAM. Evenin', Dunning.
DUNNING. [Twisting his cap] Evenin', Sir William.
SIR WILLIAM. Studdenham's told you what I want to see you about?
DUNNING. Yes, Sir.
SIR WILLIAM. The thing's in your hands. Take it or leave it. I
don't put pressure on you. I simply won't have this sort of thing on
my estate.
DUNNING. I'd like to say, Sir William, that she [He stops].
SIR WILLIAM. Yes, I daresay-Six of one and half a dozen of the
other. Can't go into that.
DUNNING. No, Sir William.
SIR WILLIAM. I'm quite mild with you. This is your first place. If
you leave here you'll get no character.
DUNNING. I never meant any harm, sir.
SIR WILLIAM. My good fellow, you know the custom of the country.
DUNNING. Yes, Sir William, but----
SIR WILLIAM. You should have looked before you leaped. I'm not
forcing you. If you refuse you must go, that's all.
DUNNING. Yes. Sir William.
SIR WILLIAM. Well, now go along and take a day to think it over.
BILL, who has sauntered moody from the diningroom, stands by the
stairs listening. Catching sight of him, DUNNING raises his
hand to his forelock.
DUNNING. Very good, Sir William. [He turns, fumbles, and turns
again] My old mother's dependent on me----
SIR WILLIAM. Now, Dunning, I've no more to say.
[Dunning goes sadly away under the stairs.]
SIR WILLIAM. [Following] And look here! Just understand this
[He too goes out....]
BILL, lighting a cigarette, has approached the writing-table.
He looks very glum. The billiard-room door is flung open.
MABEL LANFARNE appears, and makes him a little curtsey.
MABEL. Against my will I am bidden to bring you in to pool.
BILL. Sorry! I've got letters.
MABEL. You seem to have become very conscientious.
BILL. Oh! I don't know.
MABEL. Do you remember the last day of the covert shooting?
BITS. I do.
MABEL. [Suddenly] What a pretty girl Freda Studdenham's grown!
BILL. Has she?
MABEL. "She walks in beauty."
BILL. Really? Hadn't noticed.
MABEL. Have you been taking lessons in conversation?
BILL. Don't think so.
MABEL. Oh! [There is a silence] Mr. Cheshire!
BILL. Miss Lanfarne!
MABEL. What's the matter with you? Aren't you rather queer,
considering that I don't bite, and was rather a pal!
BILL. [Stolidly] I'm sorry.
Then seeing that his mother has came in from the billiard-room,
he sits down at the writing-table.
LADY CHESHIRE. Mabel, dear, do take my cue. Won't you play too,
Bill, and try and stop Ronny, he's too terrible?
BILL. Thanks. I've got these letters.
MABEL taking the cue passes back into the billiard-room, whence comes
out the sound of talk and laughter.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Going over and standing behind her son's chair]
Anything wrong, darling?
BILL. Nothing, thanks. [Suddenly] I say, I wish you hadn't asked
that girl here.
LADY CHESHIRE. Mabel! Why? She's wanted for rehearsals. I thought
you got on so well with her last Christmas.
BILL. [With a sort of sullen exasperation.] A year ago.
LADY CHESHIRE. The girls like her, so does your father; personally I
must say I think she's rather nice and Irish.
BILL. She's all right, I daresay.
He looks round as if to show his mother that he wishes to be
left alone. But LADY CHESHIRE, having seen that he is about to
look at her, is not looking at him.
LADY CHESHIRE. I'm afraid your father's been talking to you, Bill.
BILL. He has.
LADY CHESHIRE. Debts? Do try and make allowances. [With a faint
smile] Of course he is a little----
BILL. He is.
LADY CHESHIRE. I wish I could----
BILL. Oh, Lord! Don't you get mixed up in it!
LADY CHESHIRE. It seems almost a pity that you told him.
BILL. He wrote and asked me point blank what I owed.
LADY CHESHIRE. Oh! [Forcing herself to speak in a casual voice]
I happen to have a little money, Bill--I think it would be simpler
if----
BILL. Now look here, mother, you've tried that before. I can't help
spending money, I never shall be able, unless I go to the Colonies,
or something of the kind.
LADY CHESHIRE. Don't talk like that, dear!
BILL. I would, for two straws!
LADY CHESHIRE. It's only because your father thinks such a lot of
the place, and the name, and your career. The Cheshires are all like
that. They've been here so long; they're all--root.
BILL. Deuced funny business my career will be, I expect!
LADY CHESHIRE. [Fluttering, but restraining herself lest he should
see] But, Bill, why must you spend more than your allowance?
BILL. Why--anything? I didn't make myself.
LADY CHESHIRE. I'm afraid we did that. It was inconsiderate,
perhaps.
BILL. Yes, you'd better have left me out.
LADY CHESHIRE. But why are you so--Only a little fuss about money!
BILL. Ye-es.
LADY CHESHIRE. You're not keeping anything from me, are you?
BILL. [Facing her] No. [He then turns very deliberately to the
writing things, and takes up a pen] I must write these letters,
please.
LADY CHESHIRE. Bill, if there's any real trouble, you will tell me,
won't you?
BILL. There's nothing whatever.
He suddenly gets up and walks about. LADY CHESHIRE, too, moves
over to the fireplace, and after an uneasy look at him, turns to
the fire. Then, as if trying to switch of his mood, she changes
the subject abruptly.
LADY CHESHIRE. Isn't it a pity about young Dunning? I'm so sorry
for Rose Taylor.
There is a silence. Stealthily under the staircase FREDA has
entered, and seeing only BILL, advances to speak to him.
BILL. [Suddenly] Oh! well,--you can't help these things in the
country.
As he speaks, FREDA stops dead, perceiving that he is not alone;
BILL, too, catching sight of her, starts.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Still speaking to the fire] It seems dreadful to
force him. I do so believe in people doing things of their own
accord. [Then seeing FREDA standing so uncertainly by the stairs] Do
you want me, Freda?
FREDA. Only your cloak, my lady. Shall I--begin it?
At this moment SIR WILLIAM enters from the drawing-room.
LADY CHESHIRE. Yes, yes.
SIR WILLIAM. [Genially] Can you give me another five minutes, Bill?
[Pointing to the billiard-room] We'll come directly, my dear.
FREDA, with a look at BILL, has gone back whence she came; and
LADY CHESHIRE goes reluctantly away into the billiard-room.
SIR WILLIAM. I shall give young Dunning short shrift. [He moves
over to the fireplace and divides hip coat-tails] Now, about you,
Bill! I don't want to bully you the moment you come down, but you
know, this can't go on. I've paid your debts twice. Shan't pay them
this time unless I see a disposition to change your mode of life.
[A pause] You get your extravagance from your mother. She's very
queer--[A pause]--All the Winterleighs are like that about money....
BILL. Mother's particularly generous, if that's what you mean.
SIR WILLIAM. [Drily] We will put it that way. [A pause] At the
present moment you owe, as I understand it, eleven hundred pounds.
BILL. About that.
SIR WILLIAM. Mere flea-bite. [A pause] I've a proposition to make.
BILL. Won't it do to-morrow, sir?
SIR WILLIAM. "To-morrow" appears to be your motto in life.
BILL. Thanks!
SIR WILLIAM. I'm anxious to change it to-day. [BILL looks at him in
silence] It's time you took your position seriously, instead of
hanging about town, racing, and playing polo, and what not.
BILL. Go ahead!
At something dangerous in his voice, SIR WILLIAM modifies his
attitude.
SIR, WILLIAM. The proposition's very simple. I can't suppose
anything so rational and to your advantage will appeal to you, but
[drily] I mention it. Marry a nice girl, settle down, and stand for
the division; you can have the Dower House and fifteen hundred a
year, and I'll pay your debts into the bargain. If you're elected
I'll make it two thousand. Plenty of time to work up the
constituency before we kick out these infernal Rads. Carpetbagger
against you; if you go hard at it in the summer, it'll be odd if you
don't manage to get in your three days a week, next season. You can
take Rocketer and that four-year-old--he's well up to your weight,
fully eight and a half inches of bone. You'll only want one other.
And if Miss--if your wife means to hunt----
BILL. You've chosen my wife, then?
SIR WILLIAM. [With a quick look] I imagine, you've some girl in
your mind.
BILL. Ah!
SIR WILLIAM: Used not to be unnatural at your age. I married your
mother at twenty-eight. Here you are, eldest son of a family that
stands for something. The more I see of the times the more I'm
convinced that everybody who is anybody has got to buckle to, and
save the landmarks left. Unless we're true to our caste, and
prepared to work for it, the landed classes are going to go under to
this infernal democratic spirit in the air. The outlook's very
serious. We're threatened in a hundred ways. If you mean business,
you'll want a wife. When I came into the property I should have been
lost without your mother.
BILL. I thought this was coming.
SIR WILLIAM. [With a certain geniality] My dear fellow, I don't
want to put a pistol to your head. You've had a slack rein so far.
I've never objected to your sowing a few wild oats-so long as you
--er--[Unseen by SIR WILLIAM, BILL makes a sudden movement] Short of
that--at all events, I've not inquired into your affairs. I can only
judge by the--er--pecuniary evidence you've been good enough to
afford me from time to time. I imagine you've lived like a good many
young men in your position--I'm not blaming you, but there's a time
for all things.
BILL. Why don't you say outright that you want me to marry Mabel
Lanfarne?
SITS WILLIAM. Well, I do. Girl's a nice one. Good family--got a
little money--rides well. Isn't she good-looking enough for you, or
what?
BILL. Quite, thanks.
SIR WILLIAM. I understood from your mother that you and she were on
good terms.
BILL. Please don't drag mother into it.
SIR WILLIAM. [With dangerous politeness] Perhaps you'll be good
enough to state your objections.
BILL. Must we go on with this?
SIR WILLIAM. I've never asked you to do anything for me before; I
expect you to pay attention now. I've no wish to dragoon you into
this particular marriage. If you don't care for Miss Lanfarne, marry
a girl you're fond of.
BILL. I refuse.
SIR WILLIAM. In that case you know what to look out for. [With a
sudden rush of choler] You young.... [He checks himself and stands
glaring at BILL, who glares back at him] This means, I suppose, that
you've got some entanglement or other.
BILL. Suppose what you like, sir.
SITS WILLIAM. I warn you, if you play the blackguard----
BILL. You can't force me like young Dunning.
Hearing the raised voices LADY CHESHIRE has come back from the
billiard-room.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Closing the door] What is it?
SIR WILLIAM. You deliberately refuse! Go away, Dorothy.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Resolutely] I haven't seen Bill for two months.
SIR WILLIAM. What! [Hesitating] Well--we must talk it over again.
LADY CHESHIRE. Come to the billiard-room, both of you! Bill, do
finish those letters!
With a deft movement she draws SIR WILLIAM toward the
billiard-room, and glances back at BILL before going out, but he
has turned to the writing-table. When the door is closed, BILL
looks into the drawing-room, them opens the door under the
stairs; and backing away towards the writing-table, sits down
there, and takes up a pen. FREDA who has evidently been
waiting, comes in and stands by the table.
BILL. I say, this is dangerous, you know.
FREDA. Yes--but I must.
BILL. Well, then--[With natural recklessness] Aren't you going to
kiss me?
Without moving she looks at him with a sort of miserable inquiry.
BILL. Do you know you haven't seen me for eight weeks?
FREDA. Quite--long enough--for you to have forgotten.
BILL. Forgotten! I don't forget people so soon.
FREDA. No?
BILL. What's the matter with you, Freda?
FREDA. [After a long look] It'll never be as it was.
BILL. [Jumping up] How d'you mean?
FREDA. I've got something for you. [She takes a diamond ring out of
her dress and holds it out to him] I've not worn it since Cromer.
BILL. Now, look here
FREDA. I've had my holiday; I shan't get another in a hurry.
BILL. Freda!
FREDA. You'll be glad to be free. That fortnight's all you really
loved me in.
BILL. [Putting his hands on her arms] I swear----
FREDA. [Between her teeth] Miss Lanfarne need never know about me.
BILL. So that's it! I've told you a dozen times--nothing's changed.
[FREDA looks at him and smiles.]
BILL. Oh! very well! If you will make yourself miserable.
FREDA. Everybody will be pleased.
BILL. At what?
FREDA. When you marry her.
BILL. This is too bad.
FREDA. It's what always happens--even when it's not a--gentleman.
BILL. That's enough.
FREDA. But I'm not like that girl down in the village. You needn't
be afraid I'll say anything when--it comes. That's what I had to
tell you.
BILL. What!
FREDA. I can keep a secret.
BILL. Do you mean this? [She bows her head.]
BILL. Good God!
FREDA. Father brought me up not to whine. Like the puppies when
they hold them up by their tails. [With a sudden break in her voice]
Oh! Bill!
BILL. [With his head down, seizing her hands] Freda! [He breaks
away from her towards the fire] Good God!
She stands looking at him, then quietly slips away
by the door under the staircase. BILL turns to
speak to her, and sees that she has gone. He
walks up to the fireplace, and grips the mantelpiece.
BILL. By Jove! This is----!
The curtain falls.
ACT II
The scene is LADY CHESHIRE's morning room, at ten o'clock on the
following day. It is a pretty room, with white panelled walls;
and chrysanthemums and carmine lilies in bowls. A large bow
window overlooks the park under a sou'-westerly sky. A piano
stands open; a fire is burning; and the morning's correspondence
is scattered on a writing-table. Doors opposite each other lead
to the maid's workroom, and to a corridor. LADY CHESHIRE is
standing in the middle of the room, looking at an opera cloak,
which FREDA is holding out.
LADY CHESHIRE. Well, Freda, suppose you just give it up!
FREDA. I don't like to be beaten.
LADY CHESHIRE. You're not to worry over your work. And by the way,
I promised your father to make you eat more. [FREDA smiles.]
LADY CHESHIRE. It's all very well to smile. You want bracing up.
Now don't be naughty. I shall give you a tonic. And I think you had
better put that cloak away.
FREDA. I'd rather have one more try, my lady.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Sitting doom at her writing-table] Very well.
FREDA goes out into her workroom, as JACKSON comes in from the
corridor.
JACKSON. Excuse me, my lady. There's a young woman from the
village, says you wanted to see her.
LADY CHESHIRE. Rose Taylor? Ask her to come in. Oh! and Jackson
the car for the meet please at half-past ten.
JACKSON having bowed and withdrawn, LADY CHESHIRE rises with
worked signs of nervousness, which she has only just suppressed,
when ROSE TAYLOR, a stolid country girl, comes in and stands
waiting by the door.
LADY CHESHIRE. Well, Rose. Do come in!
[ROSE advances perhaps a couple of steps.]
LADY CHESHIRE. I just wondered whether you'd like to ask my advice.
Your engagement with Dunning's broken off, isn't it?
ROSE. Yes--but I've told him he's got to marry me.
LADY CHESHIRE. I see! And you think that'll be the wisest thing?
ROSE. [Stolidly] I don't know, my lady. He's got to.
LADY CHESHIRE. I do hope you're a little fond of him still.
ROSE. I'm not. He don't deserve it.
LADY CHESHIRE: And--do you think he's quite lost his affection for
you?
ROSE. I suppose so, else he wouldn't treat me as he's done. He's
after that--that--He didn't ought to treat me as if I was dead.
LADY CHESHIRE. No, no--of course. But you will think it all well
over, won't you?
ROSE. I've a--got nothing to think over, except what I know of.
LADY CHESHIRE. But for you both t0 marry in that spirit! You know
it's for life, Rose. [Looking into her face] I'm always ready to
help you.
ROSE. [Dropping a very slight curtsey] Thank you, my lady, but I
think he ought to marry me. I've told him he ought.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Sighing] Well, that's all I wanted to say. It's a
question of your self-respect; I can't give you any real advice. But
just remember that if you want a friend----
ROSE. [With a gulp] I'm not so 'ard, really. I only want him to do
what's right by me.
LADY CHESHIRE. [With a little lift of her eyebrow--gently] Yes,
yes--I see.
ROSE. [Glancing back at the door] I don't like meeting the servants.
LADY CHESHIRE. Come along, I'll take you out another way. [As they
reach the door, DOT comes in.]
DOT. [With a glance at ROSE] Can we have this room for the mouldy
rehearsal, Mother?
LADY CHESHIRE. Yes, dear, you can air it here.
Holding the door open for ROSE she follows her out. And DOT,
with a book of "Caste" in her hand, arranges the room according
to a diagram.
DOT. Chair--chair--table--chair--Dash! Table--piano--fire--window!
[Producing a pocket comb] Comb for Eccles. Cradle?--Cradle--[She
viciously dumps a waste-paper basket down, and drops a footstool into
it] Brat! [Then reading from the book gloomily] "Enter Eccles
breathless. Esther and Polly rise-Esther puts on lid of bandbox."
Bandbox!
Searching for something to represent a bandbox, she opens the
workroom door.
DOT. Freda?
FREDA comes in.
DOT. I say, Freda. Anything the matter? You seem awfully down.
[FREDA does not answer.]
DOT. You haven't looked anything of a lollipop lately.
FREDA. I'm quite all right, thank you, Miss Dot.
DOT. Has Mother been givin' you a tonic?
FREDA. [Smiling a little] Not yet.
DOT. That doesn't account for it then. [With a sudden warm impulse]
What is it, Freda?
FREDA. Nothing.
DOT. [Switching of on a different line of thought] Are you very busy
this morning?
FREDA. Only this cloak for my lady.
DOT. Oh! that can wait. I may have to get you in to prompt, if I
can't keep 'em straight. [Gloomily] They stray so. Would you mind?
FREDA. [Stolidly] I shall be very glad, Miss Dot.
DOT. [Eyeing her dubiously] All right. Let's see--what did I want?
JOAN has come in.
JOAN. Look here, Dot; about the baby in this scene. I'm sure I
ought to make more of it.
DOT. Romantic little beast! [She plucks the footstool out by one
ear, and holds it forth] Let's see you try!
JOAN. [Recoiling] But, Dot, what are we really going to have for
the baby? I can't rehearse with that thing. Can't you suggest
something, Freda?
FREDA. Borrow a real one, Miss Joan. There are some that don't
count much.
JOAN. Freda, how horrible!
DOT. [Dropping the footstool back into the basket] You'll just put
up with what you're given.
Then as CHRISTINE and MABEL LANFARNE Come in, FREDA turns
abruptly and goes out.
DOT. Buck up! Where are Bill and Harold? [To JOAN] Go and find
them, mouse-cat.
But BILL and HAROLD, followed by LATTER, are already in the
doorway. They come in, and LATTER, stumbling over the
waste-paper basket, takes it up to improve its position.
DOT. Drop that cradle, John! [As he picks the footstool out of it]
Leave the baby in! Now then! Bill, you enter there! [She points to
the workroom door where BILL and MABEL range themselves close to the
piano; while HAROLD goes to the window] John! get off the stage!
Now then, "Eccles enters breathless, Esther and Polly rise." Wait a
minute. I know now. [She opens the workroom door] Freda, I wanted a
bandbox.
HAROLD. [Cheerfully] I hate beginning to rehearse, you know, you
feel such a fool.
DOT. [With her bandbox-gloomily] You'll feel more of a fool when you
have begun. [To BILL, who is staring into the workroom] Shut the
door. Now. [BILL shuts the door.]
LATTER. [Advancing] Look here! I want to clear up a point of
psychology before we start.
DOT. Good Lord!
LATTER. When I bring in the milk--ought I to bring it in seriously--
as if I were accustomed--I mean, I maintain that if I'm----
JOAN. Oh! John, but I don't think it's meant that you should----
DOT. Shut up! Go back, John! Blow the milk! Begin, begin, begin!
Bill!
LATTER. [Turning round and again advancing] But I think you
underrate the importance of my entrance altogether.
MABEL. Oh! no, Mr. Latter!
LATTER. I don't in the least want to destroy the balance of the
scene, but I do want to be clear about the spirit. What is the
spirit?
DOT. [With gloom] Rollicking!
LATTER. Well, I don't think so. We shall run a great risk, with
this play, if we rollick.
DOT. Shall we? Now look here----!
MABEL. [Softly to BILL] Mr. Cheshire!
BILL. [Desperately] Let's get on!
DOT. [Waving LATTER back] Begin, begin! At last!
[But JACKSON has came in.]
JACKSON. [To CHRISTINE] Studdenham says, Mm, if the young ladies
want to see the spaniel pups, he's brought 'em round.
JOAN. [Starting up] Oh! come 'on, John!
[She flies towards the door, followed by LATTER.]
DOT. [Gesticulating with her book] Stop! You----
[CHRISTINE and HAROLD also rush past.]
DOT. [Despairingly] First pick! [Tearing her hair] Pigs! Devils!
[She rushes after them. BILL and MABEL are left alone.]
MABEL. [Mockingly] And don't you want one of the spaniel pups?
BILL. [Painfully reserved and sullen, and conscious of the workroom
door] Can't keep a dog in town. You can have one, if you like. The
breeding's all right.
MABEL. Sixth Pick?
BILL. The girls'll give you one of theirs. They only fancy they
want 'em.
Mann. [Moving nearer to him, with her hands clasped behind her] You
know, you remind me awfully of your father. Except that you're not
nearly so polite. I don't understand you English-lords of the soil.
The way you have of disposing of your females. [With a sudden change
of voice] What was the matter with you last night? [Softly] Won't
you tell me?
BILL. Nothing to tell.
MABEL. Ah! no, Mr. Bill.
BILL. [Almost succumbing to her voice--then sullenly] Worried, I
suppose.
MABEL. [Returning to her mocking] Quite got over it?
BILL. Don't chaff me, please.
MABEL. You really are rather formidable.
BILL. Thanks.
MABEL, But, you know, I love to cross a field where there's a bull.
BILL. Really! Very interesting.
MABEL. The way of their only seeing one thing at a time. [She moves
back as he advances] And overturning people on the journey.
BILL. Hadn't you better be a little careful?
MABEL. And never to see the hedge until they're stuck in it. And
then straight from that hedge into the opposite one.
BILL. [Savagely] What makes you bait me this morning of all
mornings?
MABEL. The beautiful morning! [Suddenly] It must be dull for poor
Freda working in there with all this fun going on?
BILL. [Glancing at the door] Fun you call it?
MABEL, To go back to you,--now--Mr. Cheshire.
BILL. No.
MABEL, You always make me feel so Irish. Is it because you're so
English, d'you think? Ah! I can see him moving his ears. Now he's
pawing the ground--He's started!
BILL. Miss Lanfarne!
MABEL. [Still backing away from him, and drawing him on with her
eyes and smile] You can't help coming after me! [Then with a sudden
change to a sort of sierra gravity] Can you? You'll feel that when
I've gone.
They stand quite still, looking into each other's eyes and
FREDA, who has opened the door of the workroom stares at them.
MABEL. [Seeing her] Here's the stile. Adieu, Monsieur le taureau!
She puts her hand behind her, opens the door, and slips through,
leaving BILL to turn, following the direction of her eyes, and
see FREDA with the cloak still in her hand.
BILL. [Slowly walking towards her] I haven't slept all night.
FREDA. No?
BILL. Have you been thinking it over?
[FREDA gives a bitter little laugh.]
BILL. Don't! We must make a plan. I'll get you away. I won't let
you suffer. I swear I won't.
FREDA. That will be clever.
BILL. I wish to Heaven my affairs weren't in such a mess.
FREDA. I shall be--all--right, thank you.
BILL. You must think me a blackguard. [She shakes her head] Abuse
me--say something! Don't look like that!
FREDA. Were you ever really fond of me?
BILL. Of course I was, I am now. Give me your hands.
She looks at him, then drags her hands from his, and covers her
face.
BILL. [Clenching his fists] Look here! I'll prove it. [Then as
she suddenly flings her arms round his neck and clings to him]
There, there!
There is a click of a door handle. They start away from each
other, and see LADY CHESHIRE regarding them.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Without irony] I beg your pardon.
She makes as if to withdraw from an unwarranted intrusion, but
suddenly turning, stands, with lips pressed together, waiting.
LADY CHESHIRE. Yes?
FREDA has muffled her face. But BILL turns and confronts his
mother.
BILL. Don't say anything against her!
LADY CHESHIRE. [Tries to speak to him and fails--then to FREDA]
Please-go!
BILL. [Taking FREDA's arm] No.
LADY CHESHIRE, after a moment's hesitation, herself moves
towards the door.
BILL. Stop, mother!
LADY CHESHIRE. I think perhaps not.
BILL. [Looking at FREDA, who is cowering as though from a blow] It's
a d---d shame!
LADY CHESHIRE. It is.
BILL. [With sudden resolution] It's not as you think. I'm engaged
to be married to her.
[FREDA gives him a wild stare, and turns away.]
LADY CHESHIRE. [Looking from one to the other] I don't think
I--quite--understand.
BILL. [With the brutality of his mortification] What I said was
plain enough.
LADY CHESHIRE. Bill!
BILL. I tell you I am going to marry her.
LADY CHESHIRE. [To FREDA] Is that true?
[FREDA gulps and remains silent.]
BILL. If you want to say anything, say it to me, mother.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Gripping the edge of a little table] Give me a
chair, please. [BILL gives her a chair.]
LADY CHESHIRE. [To FREDA] Please sit down too.
FREDA sits on the piano stool, still turning her face away.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Fixing her eyes on FREDA] Now!
BILL. I fell in love with her. And she with me.
LADY CHESHIRE. When?
BILL. In the summer.
LADY CHESHIRE. Ah!
BILL. It wasn't her fault.
LADY CHESHIRE. No?
BILL. [With a sort of menace] Mother!
LADY CHESHIRE. Forgive me, I am not quite used to the idea. You say
that you--are engaged?
BILL. Yes.
LADY CHESHIRE. The reasons against such an engagement have occurred
to you, I suppose? [With a sudden change of tone] Bill! what does it
mean?
BILL. If you think she's trapped me into this----
LADY CHESHIRE. I do not. Neither do I think she has been trapped.
I think nothing. I understand nothing.
BILL. [Grimly] Good!
LADY CHESHIRE. How long has this-engagement lasted?
BILL. [After a silence] Two months.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Suddenly] This is-this is quite impossible.
BILL. You'll find it isn't.
LADY CHESHIRE. It's simple misery.
BILL. [Pointing to the workroom] Go and wait in there, Freda.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Quickly] And are you still in love with her?
FREDA, moving towards the workroom, smothers a sob.
BILL. Of course I am.
FREDA has gone, and as she goes, LADY CHESHIRE rises suddenly,
forced by the intense feeling she has been keeping in hand.
LADY CHESHIRE. Bill! Oh, Bill! What does it all mean? [BILL,
looking from side to aide, only shrugs his shoulders] You are not in
love with her now. It's no good telling me you are.
BILL. I am.
LADY CHESHIRE. That's not exactly how you would speak if you were.
BILL. She's in love with me.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Bitterly] I suppose so.
BILL. I mean to see that nobody runs her down.
LADY CHESHIRE. [With difficulty] Bill! Am I a hard, or mean woman?
BILL. Mother!
LADY CHESHIRE. It's all your life--and--your father's--and--all of
us. I want to understand--I must understand. Have you realised what
an awful thins this would be for us all? It's quite impossible that
it should go on.
BILL. I'm always in hot water with the Governor, as it is. She and
I'll take good care not to be in the way.
LADY CHESHIRE. Tell me everything!
BILL. I have.
LADY CHESHIRE. I'm your mother, Bill.
BILL. What's the good of these questions?
LADY CHESHIRE. You won't give her away--I see!
BILL. I've told you all there is to tell. We're engaged, we shall
be married quietly, and--and--go to Canada.
LADY CHESHIRE. If there weren't more than that to tell you'd be in
love with her now.
BILL. I've told you that I am.
LADY CHESHIRE. You are not. [Almost fiercely] I know--I know
there's more behind.
BILL. There--is--nothing.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Baffled, but unconvinced] Do you mean that your love
for her has been just what it might have been for a lady?
BILL. [Bitterly] Why not?
LADY CHESHIRE. [With painful irony] It is not so as a rule.
BILL. Up to now I've never heard you or the girls say a word against
Freda. This isn't the moment to begin, please.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Solemnly] All such marriages end in wretchedness.
You haven't a taste or tradition in common. You don't know what
marriage is. Day after day, year after year. It's no use being
sentimental--for people brought up as we are to have different
manners is worse than to have different souls. Besides, it's
poverty. Your father will never forgive you, and I've practically
nothing. What can you do? You have no profession. How are you
going to stand it; with a woman who--? It's the little things.
BILL. I know all that, thanks.
LADY CHESHIRE. Nobody does till they've been through it. Marriage
is hard enough when people are of the same class. [With a sudden
movement towards him] Oh! my dear-before it's too late!
BILL. [After a struggle] It's no good.
LADY CHESHIRE. It's not fair to her. It can only end in her misery.
BILL. Leave that to me, please.
LADY CHESHIRE. [With an almost angry vehemence] Only the very
finest can do such things. And you don't even know what trouble's
like.
BILL. Drop it, please, mother.
LADY CHESHIRE. Bill, on your word of honour, are you acting of your
own free will?
BILL. [Breaking away from her] I can't stand any more.
[He goes out into the workroom.]
LADY CHESHIRE. What in God's name shall I do?
In her distress she walks up and doom the room, then goes to the
workroom door, and opens it.
LADY CHESHIRE. Come in here, please, Freda.
After a seconds pause, FREDA, white and trembling, appears in
the doorway, followed by BILL.
LADY CHESHIRE. No, Bill. I want to speak to her alone.
BILL, does not move.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Icily] I must ask you to leave us.
BILL hesitates; then shrugging his shoulders, he touches FREDA's
arms, and goes back into the workroom, closing the door. There
is silence.
LADY CHESHIRE. How did it come about?
FREDA. I don't know, my lady.
LADY CHESHIRE. For heaven's sake, child, don't call me that again,
whatever happens. [She walks to the window, and speaks from there]
I know well enough how love comes. I don't blame you. Don't cry.
But, you see, it's my eldest son. [FREDA puts her hand to her
breast] Yes, I know. Women always get the worst of these things.
That's natural. But it's not only you is it? Does any one guess?
FREDA. No.
LADY CHESHIRE. Not even your father? [FREDA shakes her head] There's
nothing more dreadful than for a woman to hang like a stone round a
man's neck. How far has it gone? Tell me!
FREDA. I can't.
LADY CHESHIRE. Come!
FREDA. I--won't.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Smiling painfully]. Won't give him away? Both of
you the same. What's the use of that with me? Look at me! Wasn't
he with you when you went for your holiday this summer?
FREDA. He's--always--behaved--like--a--gentleman.
LADY CHESHIRE. Like a man you mean!
FREDA. It hasn't been his fault! I love him so.
LADY CHESHIRE turns abruptly, and begins to walk up and down the
room. Then stopping, she looks intently at FREDA.
LADY CHESHIRE. I don't know what to say to you. It's simple
madness! It can't, and shan't go on.
FREDA. [Sullenly] I know I'm not his equal, but I am--somebody.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Answering this first assertion of rights with a
sudden steeliness] Does he love you now?
FREDA. That's not fair--it's not fair.
LADY CHESHIRE. If men are like gunpowder, Freda, women are not. If
you've lost him it's been your own fault.
FREDA. But he does love me, he must. It's only four months.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Looking down, and speaking rapidly] Listen to me.
I love my son, but I know him--I know all his kind of man. I've
lived with one for thirty years. I know the way their senses work.
When they want a thing they must have it, and then--they're sorry.
FREDA. [Sullenly] He's not sorry.
LADY CHESHIRE. Is his love big enough to carry you both over
everything?.... You know it isn't.
FREDA. If I were a lady, you wouldn't talk like that.
LADY CHESHIRE. If you were a lady there'd be no trouble before
either of you. You'll make him hate you.
FREDA. I won't believe it. I could make him happy--out there.
LADY CHESHIRE. I don't want to be so odious as to say all the things
you must know. I only ask you to try and put yourself in our
position.
FREDA. Ah, yes!
LADY CHESHIRE. You ought to know me better than to think I'm purely
selfish.
FREDA. Would you like to put yourself in my position?
LADY CHESHIRE. What!
FREDA. Yes. Just like Rose.
LADY CHESHIRE. [In a low, horror-stricken voice] Oh!
There is a dead silence, then going swiftly up to her, she looks
straight into FREDA's eyes.
FREDA. [Meeting her gaze] Oh! Yes--it's the truth. [Then to Bill
who has come in from the workroom, she gasps out] I never meant to
tell.
BILL. Well, are you satisfied?
LADY CHESHIRE. [Below her breath] This is terrible!
BILL. The Governor had better know.
LADY CHESHIRE. Oh! no; not yet!
BILL. Waiting won't cure it!
The door from the corridor is thrown open; CHRISTINE and DOT run
in with their copies of the play in their hands; seeing that
something is wrong, they stand still. After a look at his
mother, BILL turns abruptly, and goes back into the workroom.
LADY CHESHIRE moves towards the window.
JOAN. [Following her sisters] The car's round. What's the matter?
DOT. Shut up!
SIR WILLIAM'S voice is heard from the corridor calling
"Dorothy!" As LADY CHESHIRE, passing her handkerchief over her
face, turns round, he enters. He is in full hunting dress:
well-weathered pink, buckskins, and mahogany tops.
SIR WILLIAM. Just off, my dear. [To his daughters, genially]
Rehearsin'? What! [He goes up to FREDA holding out his gloved right
hand] Button that for me, Freda, would you? It's a bit stiff!
FREDA buttons the glove: LADY CHESHIRE and the girls watching
in hypnotic silence.
SIR WILLIAM. Thank you! "Balmy as May"; scent ought to be
first-rate. [To LADY CHESHIRE] Good-bye, my dear! Sampson's Gorse
--best day of the whole year. [He pats JOAN on the shoulder] Wish
you were cumin' out, Joan.
He goes out, leaving the door open, and as his footsteps and the
chink of his spurs die away, FREDA turns and rushes into the
workroom.
CHRISTINE. Mother! What----?
But LADY CHESHIRE waves the question aside, passes her daughter,
and goes out into the corridor. The sound of a motor car is
heard.
JOAN. [Running to the window] They've started--! Chris! What is
it? Dot?
DOT. Bill, and her!
JOAN. But what?
DOT. [Gloomily] Heaven knows! Go away, you're not fit for this.
JOAN. [Aghast] I am fit.
DOT. I think not.
JOAN. Chris?
CHRISTINE. [In a hard voice] Mother ought to have told us.
JOAN. It can't be very awful. Freda's so good.
DOT. Call yourself in love, you milk-and-water-kitten!
CHRISTINE. It's horrible, not knowing anything! I wish Runny hadn't
gone.
JOAN. Shall I fetch John?
DOT. John!
CHRISTINE. Perhaps Harold knows.
JOAN. He went out with Studdenham.
DOT. It's always like this, women kept in blinkers. Rose-leaves and
humbug! That awful old man!
JOAN. Dot!
CHRISTINE. Don't talk of father like that!
DOT. Well, he is! And Bill will be just like him at fifty! Heaven
help Freda, whatever she's done! I'd sooner be a private in a German
regiment than a woman.
JOAN. Dot, you're awful.
DOT. You-mouse-hearted-linnet!
CHRISTINE. Don't talk that nonsense about women!
DOT. You're married and out of it; and Ronny's not one of these
terrific John Bulls. [To JOAN who has opened the door] Looking for
John? No good, my dear; lath and plaster.
JOAN. [From the door, in a frightened whisper] Here's Mabel!
DOT. Heavens, and the waters under the earth!
CHRISTINE. If we only knew!
MABEL comes in, the three girls are silent, with their eyes
fixed on their books.
MABEL. The silent company.
DOT. [Looking straight at her] We're chucking it for to-day.
MABEL. What's the matter?
CHRISTINE. Oh! nothing.
DOT. Something's happened.
MABEL. Really! I am sorry. [Hesitating] Is it bad enough for me to
go?
CHRISTINE. Oh! no, Mabel!
DOT. [Sardonically] I should think very likely.
While she is looking from face to face, BILL comes in from the
workroom. He starts to walk across the room, but stops, and
looks stolidly at the four girls.
BILL. Exactly! Fact of the matter is, Miss Lanfarne, I'm engaged to
my mother's maid.
No one moves or speaks. Suddenly MABEL LANFARNE goes towards
him, holding out her hand. BILL does not take her hand, but
bows. Then after a swift glance at the girls' faces MABEL goes
out into the corridor, and the three girls are left staring at
their brother.
BILL. [Coolly] Thought you might like to know.
[He, too, goes out into the corridor.]
CHRISTINE. Great heavens!
JOAN. How awful!
CHRISTINE. I never thought of anything as bad as that.
JOAN. Oh! Chris! Something must be done!
DOT. [Suddenly to herself] Ha! When Father went up to have his
glove buttoned!
There is a sound, JACKSON has came in from the corridor.
JACKSON. [To Dot] If you please, Miss, Studdenham's brought up the
other two pups. He's just outside. Will you kindly take a look at
them, he says?
There is silence.
DOT. [Suddenly] We can't.
CHRISTINE. Not just now, Jackson.
JACKSON. Is Studdenham and the pups to wait, Mm?
DOT shakes her head violently. But STUDDENHAM is seen already
standing in the doorway, with a spaniel puppy in either
side-pocket. He comes in, and JACKSON stands waiting behind
him.
STUDDENHAM. This fellow's the best, Miss DOT. [He protrudes the
right-hand pocket] I was keeping him for my girl--a, proper greedy
one--takes after his father.
The girls stare at him in silence.
DOT. [Hastily] Thanks, Studdenham, I see.
STUDDENHAM. I won't take 'em out in here. They're rather bold yet.
CHRISTINE. [Desperately] No, no, of course.
STUDDENHAM. Then you think you'd like him, Miss DOT? The other's got
a white chest; she's a lady.
[He protrudes the left-hand pocket.]
DOT. Oh, yes! Studdenham; thanks, thanks awfully.
STUDDENHAM. Wonderful faithful creatures; follow you like a woman.
You can't shake 'em off anyhow. [He protrudes the right-hand pocket]
My girl, she'd set her heart on him, but she'll just have to do
without.
DOT. [As though galvanised] Oh! no, I can't take it away from her.
STUDDENHAM. Bless you, she won't mind! That's settled, then. [He
turns to the door. To the PUPPY] Ah! would you! Tryin' to wriggle
out of it! Regular young limb! [He goes out, followed by JACKSON.]
CHRISTINE. How ghastly!
DOT. [Suddenly catching sight of the book in her hand] "Caste!"
[She gives vent to a short sharp laugh.]
The curtain falls.
ACT III
It is five o'clock of the same day. The scene is the
smoking-room, with walls of Leander red, covered by old
steeplechase and hunting prints. Armchairs encircle a high
ferulered hearth, in which a fire is burning. The curtains are
not yet drawn across mullioned windows, but electric light is
burning. There are two doors, leading, the one to the
billiard-room, the other to a corridor. BILL is pacing up and
doom; HAROLD, at the fireplace, stands looking at him with
commiseration.
BILL. What's the time?
HAROLD. Nearly five. They won't be in yet, if that's any
consolation. Always a tough meet--[softly] as the tiger said when he
ate the man.
BILL. By Jove! You're the only person I can stand within a mile of
me, Harold.
HAROLD. Old boy! Do you seriously think you're going to make it any
better by marrying her?
[Bill shrugs his shoulders, still pacing the room.]
BILL. Look here! I'm not the sort that finds it easy to say things.
HAROLD. No, old man.
BILL. But I've got a kind of self-respect though you wouldn't think
it!
HAROLD. My dear old chap!
BILL. This is about as low-down a thing as one could have done, I
suppose--one's own mother's maid; we've known her since she was so
high. I see it now that--I've got over the attack.
HAROLD. But, heavens! if you're no longer keen on her, Bill! Do
apply your reason, old boy.
There is silence; while BILL again paces up and dozen.
BILL. If you think I care two straws about the morality of the
thing.
HAROLD. Oh! my dear old man! Of course not!
BILL. It's simply that I shall feel such a d---d skunk, if I leave
her in the lurch, with everybody knowing. Try it yourself; you'd
soon see!
HAROLD. Poor old chap!
BILL. It's not as if she'd tried to force me into it. And she's a
soft little thing. Why I ever made such a sickening ass of myself, I
can't think. I never meant----
HAROLD. No, I know! But, don't do anything rash, Bill; keep your
head, old man!
BILL. I don't see what loss I should be, if I did clear out of the
country. [The sound of cannoning billiard balls is heard] Who's
that knocking the balls about?
HAROLD. John, I expect. [The sound ceases.]
BILL. He's coming in here. Can't stand that!
As LATTER appears from the billiard-room, he goes hurriedly out.
LATTER. Was that Bill?
HAROLD. Yes.
LATTER. Well?
HAROLD. [Pacing up and down in his turn] Rat in a cage is a fool to
him. This is the sort of thing you read of in books, John! What
price your argument with Runny now? Well, it's not too late for you
luckily.
LATTER. What do you mean?
HAROLD. You needn't connect yourself with this eccentric family!
LATTER. I'm not a bounder, Harold.
HAROLD. Good!
LATTER. It's terrible for your sisters.
HAROLD. Deuced lucky we haven't a lot of people staying here! Poor
mother! John, I feel awfully bad about this. If something isn't
done, pretty mess I shall be in.
LATTER. How?
HAROLD. There's no entail. If the Governor cuts Bill off, it'll all
come to me.
LATTER. Oh!
HAROLD. Poor old Bill! I say, the play! Nemesis! What? Moral!
Caste don't matter. Got us fairly on the hop.
LATTER. It's too bad of Bill. It really is. He's behaved
disgracefully.
HAROLD. [Warningly] Well! There are thousands of fellows who'd
never dream of sticking to the girl, considering what it means.
LATTER. Perfectly disgusting!
HAROLD. Hang you, John! Haven't you any human sympathy? Don't you
know how these things come about? It's like a spark in a straw-yard.
LATTER. One doesn't take lighted pipes into strawyards unless one's
an idiot, or worse.
HAROLD. H'm! [With a grin] You're not allowed tobacco. In the
good old days no one would hive thought anything of this. My
great-grandfather----
LATTER. Spare me your great-grandfather.
HAROLD. I could tell you of at least a dozen men I know who've been
through this same business, and got off scot-free; and now because
Bill's going to play the game, it'll smash him up.
LATTER. Why didn't he play the game at the beginning?
HAROLD. I can't stand your sort, John. When a thing like this
happens, all you can do is to cry out: Why didn't he--? Why didn't
she--? What's to be done--that's the point!
LATTER. Of course he'll have to----.
HAROLD. Ha!
LATTER. What do you mean by--that?
HAROLD. Look here, John! You feel in your bones that a marriage'll
be hopeless, just as I do, knowing Bill and the girl and everything!
Now don't you?
LATTER. The whole thing is--is most unfortunate.
HAROLD. By Jove! I should think it was!
As he speaks CHRISTINE and KEITH Come in from the billiard-room.
He is still in splashed hunting clothes, and looks exceptionally
weathered, thin-lipped, reticent. He lights a cigarette and
sinks into an armchair. Behind them DOT and JOAN have come
stealing in.
CHRISTINE. I've told Ronny.
JOAN. This waiting for father to be told is awful.
HAROLD. [To KEITH] Where did you leave the old man?
KEITH. Clackenham. He'll be home in ten minutes.
DOT. Mabel's going. [They all stir, as if at fresh consciousness of
discomfiture]. She walked into Gracely and sent herself a telegram.
HAROLD. Phew!
DOT. And we shall say good-bye, as if nothing had happened.
HAROLD. It's up to you, Ronny.
KEITH, looking at JOAN, slowly emits smoke; and LATTER passing
his arm through JOAN'S, draws her away with him into the
billiard-room.
KEITH. Dot?
DOT. I'm not a squeamy squirrel.
KEITH. Anybody seen the girl since?
DOT. Yes.
HAROLD. Well?
DOT. She's just sitting there.
CHRISTINE. [In a hard voice] As we're all doing.
DOT. She's so soft, that's what's so horrible. If one could only
feel----!
KEITH. She's got to face the music like the rest of us.
DOT. Music! Squeaks! Ugh! The whole thing's like a concertina,
and some one jigging it!
They all turn as the door opens, and a FOOTMAN enters with a
tray of whiskey, gin, lemons, and soda water. In dead silence
the FOOTMAN puts the tray down.
HAROLD. [Forcing his voice] Did you get a run, Ronny? [As KEITH
nods] What point?
KEITH. Eight mile.
FOOTMAN. Will you take tea, sir?
KEITH. No, thanks, Charles!
In dead silence again the FOOTMAN goes out, and they all look
after him.
HAROLD. [Below his breath] Good Gad! That's a squeeze of it!
KEITH. What's our line of country to be?
CHRISTINE. All depends on father.
KEITH. Sir William's between the devil and the deep sea, as it
strikes me.
CHRISTINE. He'll simply forbid it utterly, of course.
KEITH. H'm! Hard case! Man who reads family prayers, and lessons
on Sunday forbids son to----
CHRISTINE, Ronny!
KEITH. Great Scott! I'm not saying Bill ought to marry her. She's
got to stand the racket. But your Dad will have a tough job to take
up that position.
DOT. Awfully funny!
CHRISTINE. What on earth d'you mean, Dot?
DOT. Morality in one eye, and your title in the other!
CHRISTINE. Rubbish!
HAROLD. You're all reckoning without your Bill.
KEITH. Ye-es. Sir William can cut him off; no mortal power can help
the title going down, if Bill chooses to be such a----
[He draws in his breath with a sharp hiss.]
HAROLD. I won't take what Bill ought to have; nor would any of you
girls, I should think.
CHRISTINE and DOT. Of course not!
KEITH. [Patting his wife's arm] Hardly the point, is it?
DOT. If it wasn't for mother! Freda's just as much of a lady as
most girls. Why shouldn't he marry her, and go to Canada? It's what
he's really fit for.
HAROLD. Steady on, Dot!
DOT. Well, imagine him in Parliament! That's what he'll come to, if
he stays here--jolly for the country!
CHRISTINE. Don't be cynical! We must find a way of stopping Bill.
DOT. Me cynical!
CHRISTINE. Let's go and beg him, Ronny!
KEITH. No earthly! The only hope is in the girl.
DOT. She hasn't the stuff in her!
HAROLD. I say! What price young Dunning! Right about face! Poor
old Dad!
CHRISTINE. It's past joking, Harold!
DOT. [Gloomily] Old Studdenham's better than most relations by
marriage!
KEITH. Thanks!
CHRISTINE. It's ridiculous--monstrous! It's fantastic!
HAROLD. [Holding up his hand] There's his horse going round. He's
in!
They turn from listening to the sound, to see LADY CHESHIRE
coming from the billiard-room. She is very pale. They all rise
and DOT puts an arm round her; while KEITH pushes forward his
chair. JOAN and LATTER too have come stealing back.
LADY CHESHIRE. Thank you, Ronny!
[She sits down.]
DOT. Mother, you're shivering! Shall I get you a fur?
LADY CHESHIRE. No, thanks, dear!
DOT. [In a low voice] Play up, mother darling!
LADY CHESHIRE. [Straightening herself] What sort of a run, Ronny?
KEITH. Quite fair, M'm. Brazier's to Caffyn's Dyke, good straight
line.
LADY CHESHIRE. And the young horse?
KEITH. Carries his ears in your mouth a bit, that's all. [Putting
his hand on her shoulder] Cheer up, Mem-Sahib!
CHRISTINE. Mother, must anything be said to father? Ronny thinks it
all depends on her. Can't you use your influence? [LADY CHESHIRE
shakes her head.]
CHRISTINE. But, mother, it's desperate.
DOT. Shut up, Chris! Of course mother can't. We simply couldn't
beg her to let us off!
CHRISTINE. There must be some way. What do you think in your heart,
mother?
DOT. Leave mother alone!
CHRISTINE. It must be faced, now or never.
DOT. [In a low voice] Haven't you any self-respect?
CHRISTINE. We shall be the laughing-stock of the whole county. Oh!
mother do speak to her! You know it'll be misery for both of them.
[LADY CHESHIRE bows her head] Well, then? [LADY CHESHIRE shakes her
head.]
CHRISTINE. Not even for Bill's sake?
DOT. Chris!
CHRISTINE. Well, for heaven's sake, speak to Bill again, mother! We
ought all to go on our knees to him.
LADY CHESHIRE. He's with your father now.
HAROLD. Poor old Bill!
CHRISTINE. [Passionately] He didn't think of us! That wretched
girl!
LADY CHESHIRE. Chris!
CHRISTINE. There are limits!
LADY CHESHIRE. Not to self-control.
CHRISTINE. No, mother! I can't I never shall--Something must be
done! You know what Bill is. He rushes at things so, when he gets
his head down. Oh! do try! It's only fair to her, and all of us!
LADY CHESHIRE. [Painfully] There are things one can't do.
CHRISTINE. But it's Bill! I know you can make her give him up, if
you'll only say all you can. And, after all, what's coming won't
affect her as if she'd been a lady. Only you can do it, mother: Do
back me up, all of you! It's the only way!
Hypnotised by their private longing for what CHRISTINE has been
urging they have all fixed their eyes on LADY CHESHIRE, who
looks from, face to face, and moves her hands as if in physical
pain.
CHRISTINE. [Softly] Mother!
LADY CHESHIRE suddenly rises, looking towards the billiard-room
door, listening. They all follow her eyes. She sits down
again, passing her hand over her lips, as SIR WILLIAM enters.
His hunting clothes are splashed; his face very grim and set.
He walks to the fore without a glance at any one, and stands
looking down into it. Very quietly, every one but LADY CHESHIRE
steals away.
LADY CHESHIRE. What have you done?
SIR WILLIAM. You there!
LADY CHESHIRE. Don't keep me in suspense!
SIR WILLIAM. The fool! My God! Dorothy! I didn't think I had a
blackguard for a son, who was a fool into the bargain.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Rising] If he were a blackguard he would not be
what you call a fool.
SIR WILLIAM. [After staring angrily, makes her a slight bow] Very
well!
LADY CHESHIRE. [In a low voice] Bill, don't be harsh. It's all too
terrible.
SIR WILLIAM. Sit down, my dear.
[She resumes her seat, and he turns back to the fire.]
SIR WILLIAM. In all my life I've never been face to face with a
thing like this. [Gripping the mantelpiece so hard that his hands
and arms are seen shaking] You ask me to be calm. I am trying to be.
Be good enough in turn not to take his part against me.
LADY CHESHIRE. Bill!
SIR WILLIAM. I am trying to think. I understand that you've known
this--piece of news since this morning. I've known it ten minutes.
Give me a little time, please. [Then, after a silence] Where's the
girl?
LADY CHESHIRE. In the workroom.
SIR WILLIAM. [Raising his clenched fist] What in God's name is he
about?
LADY CHESHIRE. What have you said to him?
SIR WILLIAM. Nothing-by a miracle. [He breaks away from the fire
and walks up and down] My family goes back to the thirteenth
century. Nowadays they laugh at that! I don't! Nowadays they laugh
at everything--they even laugh at the word lady. I married you, and
I don't .... Married his mother's maid! By George! Dorothy! I
don't know what we've done to deserve this; it's a death blow! I'm
not prepared to sit down and wait for it. By Gad! I am not. [With
sudden fierceness] There are plenty in these days who'll be glad
enough for this to happen; plenty of these d---d Socialists and
Radicals, who'll laugh their souls out over what they haven't the
bowels to sees a--tragedy. I say it would be a tragedy; for you, and
me, and all of us. You and I were brought up, and we've brought the
children up, with certain beliefs, and wants, and habits. A man's
past--his traditions--he can't get rid of them. They're--they're
himself! [Suddenly] It shan't go on.
LADY CHESHIRE. What's to prevent it?
SIR WILLIAM. I utterly forbid this piece of madness. I'll stop it.
LADY CHESHIRE. But the thing we can't stop.
SIR WILLIAM. Provision must be made.
LADY CHESHIRE. The unwritten law!
SIR WILLIAM. What! [Suddenly perceiving what she is alluding to]
You're thinking of young--young----[Shortly] I don't see the
connection.
LADY CHESHIRE. What's so awful, is that the boy's trying to do
what's loyal--and we--his father and mother----!
SIR WILLIAM. I'm not going to see my eldest son ruin his life. I
must think this out.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Beneath her breath] I've tried that--it doesn't
help.
SIR WILLIAM. This girl, who was born on the estate, had the run of
the house--brought up with money earned from me--nothing but kindness
from all of us; she's broken the common rules of gratitude and
decency--she lured him on, I haven't a doubt!
LADY CHESHIRE. [To herself] In a way, I suppose.
SIR WILLIAM. What! It's ruin. We've always been here. Who the
deuce are we if we leave this place? D'you think we could stay? Go
out and meet everybody just as if nothing had happened? Good-bye to
any prestige, political, social, or anything! This is the sort of
business nothing can get over. I've seen it before. As to that
other matter--it's soon forgotten--constantly happening--Why, my own
grandfather----!
LADY CHESHIRE. Does he help?
SIR WILLIAM. [Stares before him in silence-suddenly] You must go to
the girl. She's soft. She'll never hold out against you.
LADY CHESHIRE. I did before I knew what was in front of her--I said
all I could. I can't go again now. I can't do it, Bill.
SIR WILLIAM. What are you going to do, then--fold your hands? [Then
as LADY CHESHIRE makes a move of distress.] If he marries her, I've
done with him. As far as I'm concerned he'll cease to exist. The
title--I can't help. My God! Does that meet your wishes?
LADY CHESHIRE. [With sudden fire] You've no right to put such an
alternative to me. I'd give ten years of my life to prevent this
marriage. I'll go to Bill. I'll beg him on my knees.
SIR WILLIAM. Then why can't you go to the girl? She deserves no
consideration. It's not a question of morality: Morality be d---d!
LADY CHESHIRE. But not self-respect....
SIR WILLIAM. What! You're his mother!
LADY CHESHIRE. I've tried; I [putting her hand to her throat] can't
get it out.
SIR WILLIAM. [Staring at her] You won't go to her? It's the only
chance. [LADY CHESHIRE turns away.]
SIR WILLIAM. In the whole course of our married life, Dorothy, I've
never known you set yourself up against me. I resent this, I warn
you--I resent it. Send the girl to me. I'll do it myself.
With a look back at him LADY CHESHIRE goes out into the
corridor.
SIR WILLIAM. This is a nice end to my day!
He takes a small china cup from of the mantel-piece; it breaks
with the pressure of his hand, and falls into the fireplace.
While he stands looking at it blankly, there is a knock.
SIR WILLIAM. Come in!
FREDA enters from the corridor.
SIR WILLIAM. I've asked you to be good enough to come, in order
that--[pointing to chair]--You may sit down.
But though she advances two or three steps, she does not sit
down.
SIR WILLIAM. This is a sad business.
FREDA. [Below her breath] Yes, Sir William.
SIR WILLIAM. [Becoming conscious of the depths of feeling before
him] I--er--are you attached to my son?
FREDA. [In a whisper] Yes.
SIR WILLIAM. It's very painful to me to have to do this. [He turns
away from her and speaks to the fire.] I sent for you--to--ask--
[quickly] How old are you?
FREDA. Twenty-two.
SIR WILLIAM. [More resolutely] Do you expect me to sanction such a
mad idea as a marriage?
FREDA. I don't expect anything.
SIR WILLIAM. You know--you haven't earned the right to be considered.
FREDA. Not yet!
SIR WILLIAM. What! That oughtn't to help you! On the contrary. Now
brace yourself up, and listen to me!
She stands waiting to hear her sentence. SIR WILLIAM looks at
her; and his glance gradually wavers.
SIR WILLIAM. I've not a word to say for my son. He's behaved like a
scamp.
FREDA. Oh! no!
SIR WILLIAM. [With a silencing gesture] At the same, time--What
made you forget yourself? You've no excuse, you know.
FREDA. No.
SIR WILLIAM. You'll deserve all you'll get. Confound it! To expect
me to--It's intolerable! Do you know where my son is?
FREDA. [Faintly] I think he's in the billiard-room with my lady.
SIR WILLIAM. [With renewed resolution] I wanted to--to put it to
you--as a--as a--what! [Seeing her stand so absolutely motionless,
looking at him, he turns abruptly, and opens the billiard-room door]
I'll speak to him first. Come in here, please! [To FREDA] Go in, and
wait!
LADY CHESHIRE and BILL Come in, and FREDA passing them, goes
into the billiard-room to wait.
SIR WILLIAM. [Speaking with a pause between each sentence] Your
mother and I have spoken of this--calamity. I imagine that even you
have some dim perception of the monstrous nature of it. I must tell
you this: If you do this mad thing, you fend for yourself. You'll
receive nothing from me now or hereafter. I consider that only due
to the position our family has always held here. Your brother will
take your place. We shall--get on as best we can without you. [There
is a dead silence till he adds sharply] Well!
BILL. I shall marry her.
LADY CHESHIRE. Oh! Bill! Without love-without anything!
BILL. All right, mother! [To SIR WILLIAM] you've mistaken your man,
sir. Because I'm a rotter in one way, I'm not necessarily a rotter
in all. You put the butt end of the pistol to Dunning's head
yesterday, you put the other end to mine to-day. Well! [He turns
round to go out] Let the d---d thing off!
LADY CHESHIRE. Bill!
BILL. [Turning to her] I'm not going to leave her in the lurch.
SIR WILLIAM. Do me the justice to admit that I have not attempted to
persuade you to.
BILL. No! you've chucked me out. I don't see what else you could
have done under the circumstances. It's quite all right. But if you
wanted me to throw her over, father, you went the wrong way to work,
that's all; neither you nor I are very good at seeing consequences.
SIR WILLIAM. Do you realise your position?
BILK. [Grimly] I've a fair notion of it.
SIR WILLIAM. [With a sudden outburst] You have none--not the
faintest, brought up as you've been.
BILL. I didn't bring myself up.
SIR WILLIAM. [With a movement of uncontrolled anger, to which his son
responds] You--ungrateful young dog!
LADY CHESHIRE. How can you--both?
[They drop their eyes, and stand silent.]
SIR WILLIAM. [With grimly suppressed emotion] I am speaking under the
stress of very great pain--some consideration is due to me. This is
a disaster which I never expected to have to face. It is a matter
which I naturally can never hope to forget. I shall carry this down
to my death. We shall all of us do that. I have had the misfortune
all my life to believe in our position here--to believe that we
counted for something--that the country wanted us. I have tried to
do my duty by that position. I find in one moment that it is gone--
smoke--gone. My philosophy is not equal to that. To countenance
this marriage would be unnatural.
BILL. I know. I'm sorry. I've got her into this--I don't see any
other way out. It's a bad business for me, father, as well as for
you----
He stops, seeing that JACKSON has route in, and is standing
there waiting.
JACKSON. Will you speak to Studdenham, Sir William? It's about
young Dunning.
After a moment of dead silence, SIR WILLIAM nods, and the butler
withdraws.
BILL. [Stolidly] He'd better be told.
SIR WILLIAM. He shall be.
STUDDENHAM enters, and touches his forehead to them all with a
comprehensive gesture.
STUDDENHAM. Good evenin', my lady! Evenin', Sir William!
STUDDENHAM. Glad to be able to tell you, the young man's to do the
proper thing. Asked me to let you know, Sir William. Banns'll be up
next Sunday. [Struck by the silence, he looks round at all three in
turn, and suddenly seeing that LADY CHESHIRE is shivering] Beg
pardon, my lady, you're shakin' like a leaf!
BILL. [Blurting it out] I've a painful piece of news for you,
Studdenham; I'm engaged to your daughter. We're to be married at
once.
STUDDENHAM. I--don't--understand you--sir.
BILL. The fact is, I've behaved badly; but I mean to put it
straight.
STUDDENHAM. I'm a little deaf. Did you say--my daughter?
SIR WILLIAM. There's no use mincing matters, Studdenham. It's a
thunderbolt--young Dunning's case over again.
STUDDENHAM. I don't rightly follow. She's--You've--! I must see my
daughter. Have the goodness to send for her, m'lady.
LADY CHESHIRE goes to the billiard-room, and calls: "FREDA, come
here, please."
STUDDENHAM. [TO SIR WILLIAM] YOU tell me that my daughter's in the
position of that girl owing to your son? Men ha' been shot for less.
BILL. If you like to have a pot at me, Studdenham you're welcome.
STUDDENHAM. [Averting his eyes from BILL at the sheer idiocy of this
sequel to his words] I've been in your service five and twenty years,
Sir William; but this is man to man--this is!
SIR WILLIAM. I don't deny that, Studdenham.
STUDDENHAM. [With eyes shifting in sheer anger] No--'twouldn't be
very easy. Did I understand him to say that he offers her marriage?
SIR WILLIAM. You did.
STUDDENHAM. [Into his beard] Well--that's something! [Moving his
hands as if wringing the neck of a bird] I'm tryin' to see the rights
o' this.
SIR WILLIAM. [Bitterly] You've all your work cut out for you,
Studdenham.
Again STUDDENHAM makes the unconscious wringing movement with
his hands.
LADY CHESHIRE. [Turning from it with a sort of horror] Don't,
Studdenham! Please!
STUDDENHAM. What's that, m'lady?
LADY CHESHIRE. [Under her breath] Your--your--hands.
While STUDDENHAM is still staring at her, FREDA is seen standing
in the doorway, like a black ghost.
STUDDENHAM. Come here! You! [FREDA moves a few steps towards her
father] When did you start this?
FREDA. [Almost inaudibly] In the summer, father.
LADY CHESHIRE. Don't be harsh to her!
STUDDENHAM. Harsh! [His eyes again move from side to side as if
pain and anger had bewildered them. Then looking sideways at FREDA,
but in a gentler voice] And when did you tell him about--what's come
to you?
FREDA. Last night.
STUDDENHAM. Oh! [With sudden menace] You young--! [He makes a
convulsive movement of one hand; then, in the silence, seems to lose
grip of his thoughts, and pits his hand up to his head] I want to
clear me mind a bit--I don't see it plain at all. [Without looking
at BILL] 'Tis said there's been an offer of marriage?
BILL. I've made it, I stick to it.
STUDDENHAM. Oh! [With slow, puzzled anger] I want time to get the
pith o' this. You don't say anything, Sir William?
SIR WILLIAM. The facts are all before you.
STUDDENHAM. [Scarcely moving his lips] M'lady?
LADY CHESHIRE is silent.
STUDDENHAM. [Stammering] My girl was--was good enough for any man.
It's not for him that's--that's to look down on her. [To FREDA] You
hear the handsome offer that's been made you? Well? [FREDA moistens
her lips and tries to speak, but cannot] If nobody's to speak a
word, we won't get much forrarder. I'd like for you to say what's in
your mind, Sir William.
SIR WILLIAM. I--If my son marries her he'll have to make his own
way.
STUDDENHAM. [Savagely] I'm not puttin' thought to that.
SIR WILLIAM. I didn't suppose you were, Studdenham. It appears to
rest with your daughter. [He suddenly takes out his handkerchief,
and puts it to his forehead] Infernal fires they make up here!
LADY CHESHIRE, who is again shivering desperately, as if with intense
cold, makes a violent attempt to control her shuddering.
STUDDENHAM. [Suddenly] There's luxuries that's got to be paid for.
[To FREDA] Speak up, now.
FREDA turns slowly and looks up at SIR WILLIAM; he involuntarily
raises his hand to his mouth. Her eyes travel on to LADY
CHESHIRE, who faces her, but so deadly pale that she looks as if
she were going to faint. The girl's gaze passes on to BILL,
standing rigid, with his jaw set.
FREDA. I want--[Then flinging her arm up over her eyes, she turns
from him] No!
SIR WILLIAM. Ah!
At that sound of profound relief, STUDDENHAM, whose eyes have
been following his daughter's, moves towards SIR WILLIAM, all
his emotion turned into sheer angry pride.
STUDDENHAM. Don't be afraid, Sir William! We want none of you!
She'll not force herself where she's not welcome. She may ha'
slipped her good name, but she'll keep her proper pride. I'll have
no charity marriage in my family.
SIR WILLIAM. Steady, Studdenham!
STUDDENHAM. If the young gentleman has tired of her in three months,
as a blind man can see by the looks of him--she's not for him!
BILL. [Stepping forward] I'm ready to make it up to her.
STUDDENHAM. Keep back, there? [He takes hold of FREDA, and looks
around him] Well! She's not the first this has happened to since
the world began, an' she won't be the last. Come away, now, come away!
Taking FREDA by the shoulders, he guides her towards the door.
SIR WILLIAM. D---n 'it, Studdenham! Give us credit for something!
STUDDENHAM. [Turning his face and eyes lighted up by a sort of
smiling snarl] Ah! I do that, Sir William. But there's things that
can't be undone!
He follows FREDA Out. As the door closes, SIR WILLIAM'S Calm
gives way. He staggers past his wife, and sinks heavily, as
though exhausted, into a chair by the fire. BILL, following
FREDA and STUDDENHAM, has stopped at the shut door. LADY
CHESHIRE moves swiftly close to him. The door of the
billiard-room is opened, and DOT appears. With a glance round,
she crosses quickly to her mother.
DOT. [In a low voice] Mabel's just going, mother! [Almost
whispering] Where's Freda? Is it--Has she really had the pluck?
LADY CHESHIRE bending her head for "Yes," goes out into the
billiard-room. DOT clasps her hands together, and standing
there in the middle of the room, looks from her brother to her
father, from her father to her brother. A quaint little pitying
smile comes on her lips. She gives a faint shrug of her shoulders.
The curtain falls.
THE LITTLE DREAM
An Allegory in six scenes
CHARACTERS
SEELCHEN, a mountain girl
LAMOND, a climber
FELSMAN, a glide
CHARACTERS IN THE DREAM
THE GREAT HORN |
THE COW HORN | mountains
THE WINE HORN |
THE EDELWEISS |
THE ALPENROSE | flowers
THE GENTIAN |
THE MOUNTAIN DANDELION |
VOICES AND FIGURES IN THE DREAM
COWBELLS
MOUNTAIN AIR
FAR VIEW OF ITALY
DISTANT FLUME OF STEAM
THINGS IN BOOKS
MOTH CHILDREN
THREE DANCING YOUTHS
THREE DANCING GIRLS
THE FORMS OF WORKERS
THE FORMS OF WHAT IS MADE BY WORK
DEATH BY SLUMBER
DEATH BY DROWNING
FLOWER CHILDREN
GOATHERD
GOAT BOYS
GOAT GOD
THE FORMS OF SLEEP
SCENE I
It is just after sunset of an August evening. The scene is a
room in a mountain hut, furnished only with a table, benches.
and a low broad window seat. Through this window three rocky
peaks are seen by the light of a moon which is slowly whitening
the last hues of sunset. An oil lamp is burning. SEELCHEN, a
mountain girl, eighteen years old, is humming a folk-song, and
putting away in a cupboard freshly washed soup-bowls and
glasses. She is dressed in a tight-fitting black velvet bodice.
square-cut at the neck and partly filled in with a gay
handkerchief, coloured rose-pink, blue, and golden, like the
alpen-rose, the gentian, and the mountain dandelion; alabaster
beads, pale as edelweiss, are round her throat; her stiffened.
white linen sleeves finish at the elbow; and her full well-worn
skirt is of gentian blue. The two thick plaits of her hair are
crossed, and turned round her head. As she puts away the last
bowl, there is a knock; and LAMOND opens the outer door. He is
young, tanned, and good-looking, dressed like a climber, and
carries a plaid, a ruck-sack, and an ice-axe.
LAMOND. Good evening!
SEELCHEN. Good evening, gentle Sir!
LAMOND. My name is Lamond. I'm very late I fear.
SEELCHEN. Do you wish to sleep here?
LAMOND. Please.
SEELCHEN. All the beds are full--it is a pity. I will call Mother.
LAMOND. I've come to go up the Great Horn at sunrise.
SEELCHEN. [Awed] The Great Horn! But he is impossible.
LAMOND. I am going to try that.
SEELCHEN. There is the Wine Horn, and the Cow Horn.
LAMOND. I have climbed them.
SEELCHEN. But he is so dangerous--it is perhaps--death.
LAMOND. Oh! that's all right! One must take one's chance.
SEELCHEN. And father has hurt his foot. For guide, there is only
Mans Felsman.
LAMOND. The celebrated Felsman?
SEELCHEN. [Nodding; then looking at him with admiration] Are you
that Herr Lamond who has climbed all our little mountains this year?
LAMOND. All but that big fellow.
SEELCHEN. We have heard of you. Will you not wait a day for father's
foot?
LAMOND. Ah! no. I must go back home to-morrow.
SEELCHEN. The gracious Sir is in a hurry.
LAMOND. [Looking at her intently] Alas!
SEELCHEN. Are you from London? Is it very big?
LAMOND. Six million souls.
SEELCHEN. Oh! [After a little pause] I have seen Cortina twice.
LAMOND. Do you live here all the year?
SEELCHEN. In winter in the valley.
LAMOND. And don't you want to see the world?
SEELCHEN. Sometimes. [Going to a door, she calls softly] Hans!
[Then pointing to another door] There are seven German gentlemen
asleep in there!
LAMOND. Oh God!
SEELCHEN. Please? They are here to see the sunrise. [She picks up
a little book that has dropped from LAMOND'S pocket] I have read
several books.
LAMOND. This is by the great English poet. Do you never make poetry
here, and dream dreams, among your mountains?
SEELCHEN. [Slowly shaking her head] See! It is the full moon.
While they stand at the window looking at the moon, there enters
a lean, well-built, taciturn young man dressed in Loden.
SEELCHEN. Hans!
FELSMAN. [In a deep voice] The gentleman wishes me?
SEELCHEN. [Awed] The Great Horn for to-morrow! [Whispering to him]
It is the celebrated London one.
FELSMAN. The Great Horn is not possible.
LAMOND. You say that? And you're the famous Felsman?
FELSMAN. [Grimly] We start at dawn.
SEELCHEN. It is the first time for years!
LAMOND. [Placing his plaid and rucksack on the window bench] Can I
sleep here?
SEELCHEN. I will see; perhaps--
[She runs out up some stairs]
FELSMAN. [Taking blankets from the cupboard and spreading them on
the window seat] So!
As he goes out into the air. SEELCHEN comes slipping in again
with a lighted candle.
SEELCHEN. There is still one bed. This is too hard for you.
LAMOND. Oh! thanks; but that's all right.
SEELCHEN. To please me!
LAMOND. May I ask your name?
SEELCHEN. Seelchen.
LAMOND. Little soul, that means--doesn't it? To please you I would
sleep with seven German gentlemen.
SEELCHEN. Oh! no; it is not necessary.
LAMOND. [With. a grave bow] At your service, then.
[He prepares to go]
SEELCHEN. Is it very nice in towns, in the World, where you come
from?
LAMOND. When I'm there I would be here; but when I'm here I would be
there.
SEELCHEN. [Clasping her hands] That is like me but I am always
here.
LAMOND. Ah! yes; there is no one like you in towns.
SEELCHEN. In two places one cannot be. [Suddenly] In the towns
there are theatres, and there is beautiful fine work, and--dancing,
and--churches--and trains--and all the things in books--and--
LAMOND. Misery.
SEELCHEN. But there is life.
LAMOND. And there is death.
SEELCHEN. To-morrow, when you have climbed--will you not come back?
LAMOND. No.
SEELCHEN. You have all the world; and I have nothing.
LAMOND. Except Felsman, and the mountains.
SEELCHEN. It is not good to eat only bread.
LAMOND. [Looking at her hard] I would like to eat you!
SEELCHEN. But I am not nice; I am full of big wants--like the cheese
with holes.
LAMOND. I shall come again.
SEELCHEN. There will be no more hard mountains left to climb. And
if it is not exciting, you do not care.
LAMOND. O wise little soul!
SEELCHEN. No. I am not wise. In here it is always aching.
LAMOND. For the moon?
SEELCHEN. Yes. [Then suddenly] From the big world you will
remember?
LAMOND. [Taking her hand] There is nothing in the big world so
sweet as this.
SEELCHEN. [Wisely] But there is the big world itself.
LAMOND. May I kiss you, for good-night?
She puts her face forward; and he kisses her cheek, and,
suddenly, her lips. Then as she draws away.
LAMOND. I am sorry, little soul.
SEELCHEN. That's all right!
LAMOND. [Taking the candle] Dream well! Goodnight!
SEELCHEN. [Softly] Good-night!
FELSMAN. [Coming in from the air, and eyeing them] It is cold--it
will be fine.
LAMOND still looking back goes up the stairs; and FELSMAN waits
for him to pass.
SEELCHEN. [From the window seat] It was hard for him here. I
thought.
He goes up to her, stays a moment looking down then bends and
kisses her hungrily.
SEELCHEN. Art thou angry?
He does not answer, but turning out the lamp, goes into an inner
room.
SEELCHEN sits gazing through the window at the peaks bathed in
full moonlight. Then, drawing the blankets about her, she
snuggles doom on the window seat.
SEELCHEN. [In a sleepy voice] They kissed me--both. [She sleeps]
The scene falls quite dark
SCENE II
The scene is slowly illumined as by dawn. SEELCHEN is still
lying on the window seat. She sits up, freeing her face and
hands from the blankets, changing the swathings of deep sleep
for the filmy coverings of a dream. The wall of the hut has
vanished; there is nothing between her and the three mountains
veiled in mist, save a through of darkness. There, as the peaks
of the mountains brighten, they are seen to have great faces.
SEELCHEN. Oh! They have faces!
The face of THE WINE HORN is the profile of a beardless youth.
The face of THE COW HORN is that of a mountain shepherd.
solemn, and broom, with fierce black eyes, and a black beard.
Between them THE GREAT HORN, whose hair is of snow, has a high.
beardless visage, as of carved bronze, like a male sphinx,
serene, without cruelty. Far down below the faces of the peaks.
above the trough of darkness, are peeping out the four little
heads of the flowers of EDELWEISS, and GENTIAN, MOUNTAIN
DANDELION, and ALPENROSE; on their heads are crowns made of
their several flowers, all powdered with dewdrops; and when THE
FLOWERS lift their child-faces little tinkling bells ring.
All around the peaks there is nothing but blue sky.
EDELWEISS. [In a tiny voice] Would you? Would you? Would you?
Ah! ha!
GENTIAN, M. DANDELION, ALPENROSE [With their bells ranging
enviously] Oo-oo-oo!
From behind the Cow HORN are heard the voices of COWBELLS
and MOUNTAIN AIR:
"Clinkel-clink! Clinkel-clink!"
"Mountain air! Mountain air!"
From behind THE WINE HORN rise the rival voices Of VIEW OF
ITALY, FLUME OF STEAM, and THINGS IN BOOKS:
"I am Italy! Italy!"
"See me--steam in the distance!"
"O remember the things in books!"
And all call out together, very softly, with THE FLOWERS
ringing their bells. Then far away like an echo comes a
sighing:
"Mountain air! Mountain air!"
And suddenly the Peak of THE COW HORN speaks in a voice as
of one unaccustomed.
THE COW HORN. Amongst kine and my black-brown sheep I Live; I am
silence, and monotony; I am the solemn hills. I am fierceness, and
the mountain wind; clean pasture, and wild rest. Look in my eyes.
love me alone!
SEELCHEN. [Breathless] The Cow Horn! He is speaking for Felsman
and the mountains. It is the half of my heart!
THE FLOWERS laugh happily.
THE COW HORN. I stalk the eternal hills--I drink the mountain snows.
My eyes are the colour of burned wine; in them lives melancholy. The
lowing of the kine, the wind, the sound of falling rocks, the running
of the torrents; no other talk know I. Thoughts simple, and blood
hot, strength huge--the cloak of gravity.
SEELCHEN. Yes. yes! I want him. He is strong!
The voices of COWBELLS and MOUNTAIN AIR cry out together:
"Clinkel-clink! Clinkel-clink!"
"Mountain air! Mountain air!"
THE COW HORN. Little soul! Hold to me! Love me! Live with me
under the stars!
SEELCHEN. [Below her breath] I am afraid.
And suddenly the Peak of THE WINE HORN speaks in a youth's
voice.
THE WINE HORN. I am the will o' the wisp that dances thro' the
streets; I am the cooing dove of Towns, from the plane trees and the
chestnuts' shade. From day to day all changes, where I burn my
incense to my thousand little gods. In white palaces I dwell, and
passionate dark alleys. The life of men in crowds is mine--of
lamplight in the streets at dawn. [Softly] I have a thousand loves.
and never one too long; for I am nimbler than your heifers playing in
the sunshine.
THE FLOWERS, ringing in alarm, cry:
"We know them!"
THE WINE HORN. I hear the rustlings of the birth and death of
pleasure; and the rattling of swift wheels. I hear the hungry oaths
of men; and love kisses in the airless night. Without me, little
soul, you starve and die,
SEELCHEN. He is speaking for the gentle Sir, and the big world of
the Town. It pulls my heart.
THE WINE HORN. My thoughts surpass in number the flowers in your
meadows; they fly more swiftly than your eagles on the wind. I drink
the wine of aspiration, and the drug of disillusion. Thus am I never
dull!
The voices of VIEW OF ITALY, FLUME OF STEAM, and THINGS IN
BOOKS are heard calling out together:
"I am Italy, Italy!"
"See me--steam in the distance!"
"O remember, remember!"
THE WINE HORN. Love me, little soul! I paint life fifty colours.
I make a thousand pretty things! I twine about your heart!
SEELCHEN. He is honey!
THE FLOWERS ring their bells jealously and cry:
"Bitter! Bitter!"
THE COW HORN. Stay with me, Seelchen! I wake thee with the crystal
air.
The voices of COWBELLS and MOUNTAIN AIR tiny out far away:
"Clinkel-clink! Clinkel-clink!"
"Mountain air! Mountain air!"
And THE FLOWERS laugh happily.
THE WINE HORN. Come with me, Seelchen! My fan, Variety, shall wake
you!
The voices of VIEW OF ITALY, FLUME OF STEAM and THINGS IN
BOOKS chant softly:
"I am Italy! Italy!"
"See me--steam in the distance!"
"O remember, remember!"
And THE FLOWERS moan.
SEELCHEN. [In grief] My heart! It is torn!
THE WINE HORN. With me, little soul, you shall race in the streets.
and peep at all secrets. We will hold hands, and fly like the
thistle-down.
M. DANDELION. My puff-balls fly faster!
THE WINE HORN. I will show you the sea.
GENTIAN. My blue is deeper!
THE WINE HORN. I will shower on you blushes.
ALPENROSE. I can blush redder!
THE WINE HORN. Little soul, listen! My Jewels! Silk! Velvet!
EDELWEISS. I am softer than velvet!
THE WINE HORN. [Proudly] My wonderful rags!
THE FLOWERS. [Moaning] Of those we have none.
SEELCHEN. He has all things.
THE COW HORN. Mine are the clouds with the dark silvered wings; mine
are the rocks on fire with the sun; and the dewdrops cooler than
pearls. Away from my breath of snow and sweet grass, thou wilt droop,
little soul.
THE WINE HORN. The dark Clove is my fragrance!
THE FLOWERS ring eagerly, and turning up their faces, cry:
"We too, smell sweet."
But the voices of VIEW OF ITALY, FLUME OF STEAM, and THINGS
IN BOOKS cry out:
"I am Italy! Italy!"
"See me--steam in the distance!"
"O remember! remember!"
SEELCHEN. [Distracted] Oh! it is hard!
THE COW HORN. I will never desert thee.
THE WINE HORN. A hundred times I will desert you, a hundred times
come back, and kiss you.
SEELCHEN. [Whispering] Peace for my heart!
THE COW HORN. With me thou shalt lie on the warm wild thyme.
THE FLOWERS laugh happily.
THE WINE HORN. With me you shall lie on a bed of dove's feathers.
THE FLOWERS moan.
THE WINE HORN. I will give you old wine.
THE COW HORN. I will give thee new milk.
THE WINE HORN. Hear my song!
From far away comes the sound as of mandolins.
SEELCHEN. [Clasping her breast] My heart--it is leaving me!
THE COW HORN. Hear my song!
From the distance floats the piping of a Shepherd's reed.
SEELCHEN. [Curving her hand at her ears] The piping! Ah!
THE COW HORN. Stay with me, Seelchen!
THE WINE HORN. Come with me, Seelchen!
THE COW HORN. I give thee certainty!
THE WINE HORN. I give you chance!
THE COW HORN. I give thee peace.
THE WINE HORN. I give you change.
THE COW HORN. I give thee stillness.
THE WINE HORN. I give you voice.
THE COW HORN. I give thee one love.
THE WINE HORN. I give you many.
SEELCHEN. [As if the words were torn from her heart] Both, both--I
will love!
And suddenly the Peak of THE GREAT HORN speaks.
THE GREAT HORN. And both thou shalt love, little soul! Thou shalt
lie on the hills with Silence; and dance in the cities with
Knowledge. Both shall possess thee! The sun and the moon on the
mountains shall burn thee; the lamps of the town singe thy wings.
small Moth! Each shall seem all the world to thee, each shall seem
as thy grave! Thy heart is a feather blown from one mouth to the
other. But be not afraid! For the life of a man is for all loves in
turn. 'Tis a little raft moored, then sailing out into the blue; a
tune caught in a hush, then whispering on; a new-born babe, half
courage and half sleep. There is a hidden rhythm. Change.
Quietude. Chance. Certainty. The One. The Many. Burn on--thou
pretty flame, trying to eat the world! Thou shaft come to me at
last, my little soul!
THE VOICES and THE FLOWER-BELLS peal out.
SEELCHEN, enraptured, stretches her arms to embrace the sight
and sound, but all fades slowly into dark sleep.
SCENE III
The dark scene again becomes glamorous. SEELCHEN is seen with her
hand stretched out towards the Piazza of a little town, with a plane
tree on one side, a wall on the other, and from the open doorway of
an Inn a pale path of light. Over the Inn hangs a full golden moon.
Against the wall, under the glimmer of a lamp, leans a youth with the
face of THE WINE HORN, in a crimson dock, thrumming a mandolin, and
singing:
"Little star soul
Through the frost fields of night
Roaming alone, disconsolate--
From out the cold
I call thee in
Striking my dark mandolin
Beneath this moon of gold."
From the Inn comes a burst of laughter, and the sound of
dancing.
SEELCHEN: [Whispering] It is the big world!
The Youth of THE WINE HORN sings On:
"Pretty grey moth,
Where the strange candles shine,
Seeking for warmth, so desperate--
Ah! fluttering dove
I bid thee win
Striking my dark mandolin
The crimson flame of love."
SEELCHEN. [Gazing enraptured at the Inn] They are dancing!
As SHE speaks, from either side come moth-children, meeting and
fluttering up the path of light to the Inn doorway; then
wheeling aside, they form again, and again flutter forward.
SEELCHEN. [Holding out her hands] They are real! Their wings are
windy.
The Youth of THE WINE HORN sings on;
"Lips of my song,
To the white maiden's heart
Go ye, and whisper, passionate.
These words that burn
'O listening one!
Love that flieth past is gone
Nor ever may return!'"
SEELCHEN runs towards him--but the light above him fades; he has
become shadow. She turns bewildered to the dancing moth-children
--but they vanish before her. At the door of the Inn stands
LAMOND in a dark cloak.
SEELCHEN. It is you!
LAMOND. Without my little soul I am cold. Come! [He holds out his
arms to her]
SEELCHEN. Shall I be safe?
LAMOND. What is safety? Are you safe in your mountains?
SEELCHEN. Where am I, here?
LAMOND. The Town.
Smiling, he points to the doorway. And silent as shadows there
come dancing out, two by two, two girls and two youths. The
first girl is dressed in white satin and jewels; and the first
youth in black velvet. The second girl is in rags, and a shawl;
and the second youth in shirt and corduroys. They dance
gravely, each couple as if in a world apart.
SEELCHEN. [Whispering] In the mountains all dance together. Do they
never change partners?
LAMOND. How could they, little one? Those are rich, these poor.
But see!
A CORYBANTIC COUPLE come dancing forth. The girl has bare limbs.
a flame-coloured shift, and hair bound with red flowers; the
youth wears a panther-skin. They pursue not only each other.
but the other girls and youths. For a moment all is a furious
medley. Then the Corybantic Couple vanish into the Inn, and the
first two couples are left, slowly, solemnly dancing, apart from
each other as before.
SEELCHEN. [Shuddering] Shall I one day dance like that?
The Youth of THE WINE HORN appears again beneath the lamp. He
strikes a loud chord; then as SEELCHEN moves towards that sound
the lamp goes out; there is again only blue shadow; but the
couples have disappeared into the Inn, and the doorway has grown
dark.
SEELCHEN. Ah! What I do not like, he will not let me see.
LAMOND. Will you not come, then, little soul?
SEELCHEN. Always to dance?
LAMOND: Not so!
THE SHUTTERS of the houses are suddenly thrown wide. In a
lighted room on one aide of the Inn are seen two pale men and a
woman, amongst many clicking machines. On the other side of the
Inn, in a forge, are visible two women and a man, but half
clothed, making chains.
SEELCHEN. [Recoiling from both sights, in turn] How sad they look
--all! What are they making?
In the dark doorway of the Inn a light shines out, and in it is
seen a figure, visible only from the waist up, clad in
gold-cloth studded with jewels, with a flushed complacent face,
holding in one hand a glass of golden wine.
SEELCHEN. It is beautiful. What is it?
LAMOND. Luxury.
SEELCHEN. What is it standing on? I cannot see.
Unseen, THE WINE HORN'S mandolin twangs out.
LAMOND. For that do not look, little soul.
SEELCHEN. Can it not walk? [He shakes his head] Is that all they
make here with their sadness?
But again the mandolin twangs out; the shutters fall over the
houses; the door of the Inn grows dark.
LAMOND. What is it, then, you would have? Is it learning? There
are books here, that, piled on each other, would reach to the stars!
[But SEELCHEN shakes her head] There is religion so deep that no man
knows what it means. [But SEELCHEN shakes her head] There is
religion so shallow, you may have it by turning a handle. We have
everything.
SEELCHEN. Is God here?
LAMOND. Who knows? Is God with your goats? [But SEELCHEN shakes
her head] What then do you want?
SEELCHEN. Life.
The mandolin twangs out.
LAMOND. [Pointing to his breast] There is but one road to life.
SEELCHEN. Ah! but I do not love.
LAMOND. When a feather dies, is it not loving the wind--the unknown?
When the day brings not new things, we are children of sorrow. If
darkness and light did not change, could we breathe? Child! To live
is to love, to love is to live-seeking for wonder. [And as she draws
nearer] See! To love is to peer over the edge, and, spying the
little grey flower, to climb down! It has wings; it has flown--again
you must climb; it shivers, 'tis but air in your hand--you must
crawl, you must cling, you must leap, and still it is there and not
there--for the grey flower flits like a moth, and the wind of its
wings is all you shall catch. But your eyes shall be shining, your
cheeks shall be burning, your breast shall be panting--Ah! little
heart! [The scene falls darker] And when the night comes--there it
is still, thistledown blown on the dark, and your white hands will
reach for it, and your honey breath waft it, and never, never, shall
you grasp that wanton thing--but life shall be lovely. [His voice
dies to a whisper. He stretches out his arms]
SEELCHEN. [Touching his breast] I will come.
LAMOND. [Drawing her to the dark doorway] Love me!
SEELCHEN. I love!
The mandolin twangs out, the doorway for a moment is all
glamorous; and they pass through. Illumined by the glimmer of
the lamp the Youth of THE WINE Hour is seen again. And slowly
to the chords of his mandolin he begins to sing:
"The windy hours through darkness fly
Canst hear them little heart?
New loves are born, and old loves die,
And kissing lips must part.
"The dusky bees of passing years
Canst see them, soul of mine--
From flower and flower supping tears,
And pale sweet honey wine?
[His voice grown strange and passionate]
"O flame that treads the marsh of time.
Flitting for ever low.
Where, through the black enchanted slime.
We, desperate, following go
Untimely fire, we bid thee stay!
Into dark air above.
The golden gipsy thins away--
So has it been with love!"
While he is singing, the moon grows pale, and dies. It falls
dark, save for the glimmer of the lamp beneath which he stands.
But as his song ends, the dawn breaks over the houses, the lamp
goes out--THE WINE HORN becomes shadow. Then from the doorway
of the Inn, in the shrill grey light SEELCHEN comes forth. She
is pale, as if wan with living; her eyes like pitch against the
powdery whiteness of her face.
SEELCHEN. My heart is old.
But as she speaks, from far away is heard a faint chiming of
COWBELLS; and while she stands listening, LAMOND appears in the
doorway of the Inn.
LAMOND. Little soul!
SEELCHEN. You! Always you!
LAMOND. I have new wonders.
SEELCHEN. [Mournfully] No.
LAMOND. I swear it! You have not tired of me, that am never the
same? It cannot be.
SEELCHEN. Listen!
The chime of THE COWBELLS is heard again.
LAMOND. [Jealously] The music' of dull sleep! Has life, then, with
me been sorrow?
SEELCHEN. I do not regret.
LAMOND. Come!
SEELCHEN. [Pointing-to her breast] The bird is tired with flying.
[Touching her lips] The flowers have no dew.
LAMOND. Would you leave me?
SEELCHEN. See!
There, in a streak of the dawn, against the plane tree is seen
the Shepherd of THE COW HORN, standing wrapped in his mountain
cloak.
LAMOND. What is it?
SEELCHEN. He!
LAMOND. There is nothing. [He holds her fast] I have shown you the
marvels of my town--the gay, the bitter wonders. We have known life.
If with you I may no longer live, then let us die! See! Here are
sweet Deaths by Slumber and by Drowning!
The mandolin twangs out, and from the dim doorway of the Inn come
forth the shadowy forms. DEATH BY SLUMBER, and DEATH BY DROWNING.
who to a ghostly twanging of mandolins dance slowly towards SEELCHEN.
stand smiling at her, and as slowly dance away.
SEELCHEN. [Following] Yes. They are good and sweet.
While she moves towards the Inn. LAMOND'S face becomes
transfigured with joy. But just as she reaches the doorway.
there is a distant chiming of bells and blowing of pipes, and
the Shepherd of THE COW HORN sings:
"To the wild grass come, and the dull far roar
Of the falling rock; to the flowery meads
Of thy mountain home, where the eagles soar,
And the grizzled flock in the sunshine feeds.
To the Alp, where I, in the pale light crowned
With the moon's thin horns, to my pasture roam;
To the silent sky, and the wistful sound
Of the rosy dawns---my daughter, come!"
While HE sings, the sun has risen; and SEELCHEN has turned.
with parted lips, and hands stretched out; and the forms of
death have vanished.
SEELCHEN. I come.
LAMOND. [Clasping her knees] Little soul! Must I then die, like a
gnat when the sun goes down? Without you I am nothing.
SEELCHEN. [Releasing herself] Poor heart--I am gone!
LAMOND. It is dark. [He covers his face with his cloak].
Then as SEELCHEN reaches the Shepherd of THE COW HORN, there is
blown a long note of a pipe; the scene falls back; and there
rises a far, continual, mingled sound of Cowbells, and Flower
Bells, and Pipes.
SCENE IV
The scene slowly brightens with the misty flush of dawn.
SEELCHEN stands on a green alp, with all around, nothing but
blue sky. A slip of a crescent moon is lying on her back. On a
low rock sits a brown faced GOATHERD blowing on a pipe, and the
four Flower-children are dancing in their shifts of grey white.
and blue, rose-pink, and burnt-gold. Their bells are ringing.
as they pelt each other with flowers of their own colours; and
each in turn, wheeling, flings one flower at SEELCHEN, who puts
them to her lips and eyes.
SEELCHEN. The dew! [She moves towards the rock] Goatherd!
But THE FLOWERS encircle him; and when they wheel away he has
vanished. She turns to THE FLOWERS, but they too vanish. The
veils of mist are rising.
SEELCHEN. Gone! [She rubs her eyes; then turning once more to the
rock, sees FELSMAN standing there, with his arms folded] Thou!
FELSMAN. So thou hast come--like a sick heifer to be healed. Was it
good in the Town--that kept thee so long?
SEELCHEN. I do not regret.
FELSMAN. Why then return?
SEELCHEN. I was tired.
FELSMAN. Never again shalt thou go from me!
SEELCHEN. [Mocking] With what wilt thou keep me?
FELSMAN. [Grasping her] Thus.
SEELCHEN. I have known Change--I am no timid maid.
FELSMAN. [Moodily] Aye, thou art different. Thine eyes are hollow
--thou art white-faced.
SEELCHEN. [Still mocking] Then what hast thou here that shall keep
me?
FELSMAN. The sun.
SEELCHEN. To burn me.
FELSMAN. The air.
There is a faint wailing of wind.
SEELCHEN. To freeze me.
FELSMAN. The silence.
The noise of the wind dies away.
SEELCHEN. Yes, it is lonely.
FELSMAN. Wait! And the flowers shall dance to thee.
And to a ringing of their bells. THE FLOWERS come dancing;
till, one by one, they cease, and sink down, nodding, falling
asleep.
SEELCHEN. See! Even they grow sleepy here!
FELSMAN. I will call the goats to wake them.
THE GOATHERD is seen again sitting upright on his rock and
piping. And there come four little brown, wild-eyed, naked
Boys, with Goat's legs and feet, who dance gravely in and out of
The Sleeping Flowers; and THE FLOWERS wake, spring up, and fly.
Till each Goat, catching his flower has vanished, and THE
GOATHERD has ceased to pipe, and lies motionless again on his
rock.
FELSMAN. Love me!
SEELCHEN. Thou art rude!
FELSMAN. Love me!
SEELCHEN. Thou art grim!
FELSMAN. Aye. I have no silver tongue. Listen! This is my voice.
[Sweeping his arm round all the still alp] It is quiet. From dawn
to the first star all is fast. [Laying his hand on her heart] And
the wings of the birds shall be still.
SEELCHEN. [Touching his eyes] Thine eyes are fierce. In them I see
the wild beasts crouching. In them I see the distance. Are they
always fierce?
FELSMAN. Never--to look on thee, my flower.
SEELCHEN. [Touching his hands] Thy hands are rough to pluck
flowers. [She breaks away from him to the rock where THE GOATHERD is
lying] See! Nothing moves! The very day stands still. Boy! [But
THE GOATHERD neither stirs nor answers] He is lost in the blue.
[Passionately] Boy! He will not answer me. No one will answer me
here.
FELSMAN. [With fierce longing] Am I then no one?
SEELCHEN. Thou?
[The scene darkens with evening]
See! Sleep has stolen the day! It is night already.
There come the female shadow forms of SLEEP, in grey cobweb
garments, waving their arms drowsily, wheeling round her.
SEELCHEN. Are you Sleep? Dear Sleep!
Smiling, she holds out her arms to FELSMAN. He takes her
swaying form. They vanish, encircled by the forms of SLEEP. It
is dark, save for the light of the thin horned moon suddenly
grown bright. Then on his rock, to a faint gaping THE GOATHERD
sings:
"My goat, my little speckled one.
My yellow-eyed, sweet-smelling.
Let moon and wind and golden sun
And stars beyond all telling
Make, every day, a sweeter grass.
And multiply thy leaping!
And may the mountain foxes pass
And never scent thee sleeping!
Oh! Let my pipe be clear and far.
And let me find sweet water!
No hawk nor udder-seeking jar
Come near thee, little daughter!
May fiery rocks defend, at noon,
Thy tender feet from slipping!
Oh! hear my prayer beneath the moon--
Great Master, Goat-God--skipping!"
There passes in the thin moonlight the Goat-Good Pan; and with a
long wail of the pipe THE GOATHERD BOY is silent. Then the moon
fades, and all is black; till, in the faint grisly light of the
false dawn creeping up, SEELCHEN is seen rising from the side of
the sleeping FELSMAN. THE GOATHERD BOY has gone; but by the
rock stands the Shepherd of THE COW HORN in his dock.
SEELCHEN. Years, years I have slept. My spirit is hungry. [Then as
she sees the Shepherd of THE COW HORN standing there] I know thee
now--Life of the earth--the smell of thee, the sight of thee, the
taste of thee, and all thy music. I have passed thee and gone by.
[She moves away]
FELSMAN. [Waking] Where wouldst thou go?
SEELCHEN. To the edge of the world.
FELSMAN. [Rising and trying to stay her] Thou shalt not leave me!
[But against her smiling gesture he struggles as though against
solidity]
SEELCHEN. Friend! The time is on me.
FELSMAN. Were my kisses, then, too rude? Was I too dull?
SEELCHEN. I do not regret.
The Youth of THE WINE HORN is seen suddenly standing opposite
the motionless Shepherd of THE COW HORN; and his mandolin twangs
out.
FELSMAN. The cursed music of the Town! Is it back to him thou wilt
go? [Groping for sight of the hated figure] I cannot see.
SEELCHEN. Fear not! I go ever onward.
FELSMAN. Do not leave me to the wind in the rocks! Without thee
love is dead, and I must die.
SEELCHEN. Poor heart! I am gone.
FELSMAN. [Crouching against the rock] It is cold.
At the blowing of the Shepherd's pipe, THE COW HORN stretches
forth his hand to her. The mandolin twangs out, and THE WINE
HORN holds out his hand. She stands unmoving.
SEELCHEN. Companions. I must go. In a moment it will be dawn.
In Silence THE COW HORN and THE WINE HORN, cover their faces.
The false dawn dies. It falls quite dark.
SCENE V
Then a faint glow stealing up, lights the snowy head of THE
GREAT HORN, and streams forth on SEELCHEN. To either aide of
that path of light, like shadows. THE COW HORN and THE WINE
HORN stand with cloaked heads.
SEELCHEN. Great One! I come!
The Peak of THE GREAT HORN speaks in a far-away voice, growing,
with the light, clearer and stronger.
Wandering flame, thou restless fever
Burning all things, regretting none;
The winds of fate are stilled for ever--
Thy little generous life is done.
And all its wistful wonderings cease!
Thou traveller to the tideless sea,
Where light and dark, and change and peace,
Are One--Come, little soul, to MYSTERY!
SEELCHEN falling on her knees, bows her head to the ground. The
glow slowly fades till the scene is black.
SCENE VI
Then as the blackness lifts, in the dim light of the false dawn
filtering through the window of the mountain hut. LAMOND and FELSMAN
are seen standing beside SEELCHEN looking down at her asleep on the
window seat.
FELSMAN. [Putting out his hand to wake her] In a moment it will be
dawn.
She stirs, and her lips move, murmuring.
LAMOND. Let her sleep. She's dreaming.
FELSMAN raises a lantern, till its light falls on her face.
Then the two men move stealthily towards the door, and, as she
speaks, pass out.
SEELCHEN. [Rising to her knees, and stretching out her hands with
ecstasy] Great One. I come! [Waking, she looks around, and
struggles to her feet] My little dream!
Through the open door, the first flush of dawn shows in the sky.
There is a sound of goat-bells passing.
The curtain falls.
JUSTICE
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
JAMES HOW, solicitor
WALTER HOW, solicitor
ROBERT COKESON, their managing clerk
WILLIAM FALDER, their junior clerk
SWEEDLE, their office-boy
WISTER, a detective
COWLEY, a cashier
MR. JUSTICE FLOYD, a judge
HAROLD CLEAVER, an old advocate
HECTOR FROME, a young advocate
CAPTAIN DANSON, V.C., a prison governor
THE REV. HUGH MILLER, a prison chaplain
EDWARD CLEMENT, a prison doctor
WOODER, a chief warder
MOANEY, convict
CLIFTON, convict
O'CLEARY, convict
RUTH HONEYWILL, a woman
A NUMBER OF BARRISTERS, SOLICITERS, SPECTATORS, USHERS, REPORTERS,
JURYMEN, WARDERS, AND PRISONERS
TIME: The Present.
ACT I. The office of James and Walter How. Morning. July.
ACT II. Assizes. Afternoon. October.
ACT III. A prison. December.
SCENE I. The Governor's office.
SCENE II. A corridor.
SCENE III. A cell.
ACT IV. The office of James and Walter How. Morning.
March, two years later.
CAST OF THE FIRST PRODUCTION
AT THE DUKE OF YORK'S THEATRE, FEBRUARY 21, 1910
James How MR. SYDNEY VALENTINE
Walter How MR. CHARLES MAUDE
Cokeson MR. EDMUND GWENN
Falder MR. DENNIS EADIE
The Office-boy MR. GEORGE HERSEE
The Detective MR. LESLIE CARTER
The Cashier MR. C. E. VERNON
The Judge MR. DION BOUCICAULT
The Old Advocate MR. OSCAR ADYE
The Young Advocate MR. CHARLES BRYANT
The Prison Governor MR. GRENDON BENTLEY
The Prison Chaplain MR. HUBERT HARBEN
The Prison Doctor MR. LEWIS CASSON
Wooder MR. FREDERICK LLOYD
Moaney MR. ROBERT PATEMAN
Clipton MR. O. P. HEGGIE
O'Cleary MR. WHITFORD KANE
Ruth Honeywill Miss EDYTH OLIVE
ACT I
The scene is the managing clerk's room, at the offices of James
and Walter How, on a July morning. The room is old fashioned,
furnished with well-worn mahogany and leather, and lined with
tin boxes and estate plans. It has three doors. Two of them
are close together in the centre of a wall. One of these two
doors leads to the outer office, which is only divided from the
managing clerk's room by a partition of wood and clear glass;
and when the door into this outer office is opened there can be
seen the wide outer door leading out on to the stone stairway of
the building. The other of these two centre doors leads to
the junior clerk's room. The third door is that leading to the
partners' room.
The managing clerk, COKESON, is sitting at his table adding up
figures in a pass-book, and murmuring their numbers to himself.
He is a man of sixty, wearing spectacles; rather short, with a
bald head, and an honest, pugdog face. He is dressed in a
well-worn black frock-coat and pepper-and-salt trousers.
COKESON. And five's twelve, and three--fifteen, nineteen,
twenty-three, thirty-two, forty-one-and carry four. [He ticks the
page, and goes on murmuring] Five, seven, twelve, seventeen,
twenty-four and nine, thirty-three, thirteen and carry one.
He again makes a tick. The outer office door is opened, and
SWEEDLE, the office-boy, appears, closing the door behind him.
He is a pale youth of sixteen, with spiky hair.
COKESON. [With grumpy expectation] And carry one.
SWEEDLE. There's a party wants to see Falder, Mr. Cokeson.
COKESON. Five, nine, sixteen, twenty-one, twenty-nine--and carry
two. Send him to Morris's. What name?
SWEEDLE. Honeywill.
COKESON. What's his business?
SWEEDLE. It's a woman.
COKESON. A lady?
SWEEDLE. No, a person.
COKESON. Ask her in. Take this pass-book to Mr. James. [He closes
the pass-book.]
SWEEDLE. [Reopening the door] Will you come in, please?
RUTH HONEYWILL comes in. She is a tall woman, twenty-six years
old, unpretentiously dressed, with black hair and eyes, and an
ivory-white, clear-cut face. She stands very still, having a
natural dignity of pose and gesture.
SWEEDLE goes out into the partners' room with the pass-book.
COKESON. [Looking round at RUTH] The young man's out.
[Suspiciously] State your business, please.
RUTH. [Who speaks in a matter-of-fact voice, and with a slight
West-Country accent] It's a personal matter, sir.
COKESON. We don't allow private callers here. Will you leave a
message?
RUTH. I'd rather see him, please.
She narrows her dark eyes and gives him a honeyed look.
COKESON. [Expanding] It's all against the rules. Suppose I had my
friends here to see me! It'd never do!
RUTH. No, sir.
COKESON. [A little taken aback] Exactly! And here you are wanting
to see a junior clerk!
RUTH. Yes, sir; I must see him.
COKESON. [Turning full round to her with a sort of outraged
interest] But this is a lawyer's office. Go to his private address.
RUTH. He's not there.
COKESON. [Uneasy] Are you related to the party?
RUTH. No, sir.
COKESON. [In real embarrassment] I don't know what to say. It's no
affair of the office.
RUTH. But what am I to do?
COKESON. Dear me! I can't tell you that.
SWEEDLE comes back. He crosses to the outer office and passes
through into it, with a quizzical look at Cokeson, carefully
leaving the door an inch or two open.
COKESON. [Fortified by this look] This won't do, you know, this
won't do at all. Suppose one of the partners came in!
An incoherent knocking and chuckling is heard from the outer
door of the outer office.
SWEEDLE. [Putting his head in] There's some children outside here.
RUTH. They're mine, please.
SWEEDLE. Shall I hold them in check?
RUTH. They're quite small, sir. [She takes a step towards COKESON]
COKESON. You mustn't take up his time in office hours; we're a clerk
short as it is.
RUTH. It's a matter of life and death.
COKESON. [Again outraged] Life and death!
SWEEDLE. Here is Falder.
FALDER has entered through the outer office. He is a pale,
good-looking young man, with quick, rather scared eyes. He
moves towards the door of the clerks' office, and stands there
irresolute.
COKESON. Well, I'll give you a minute. It's not regular.
Taking up a bundle of papers, he goes out into the partners'
room.
RUTH. [In a low, hurried voice] He's on the drink again, Will. He
tried to cut my throat last night. I came out with the children
before he was awake. I went round to you.
FALDER. I've changed my digs.
RUTH. Is it all ready for to-night?
FALDER. I've got the tickets. Meet me 11.45 at the booking office.
For God's sake don't forget we're man and wife! [Looking at her with
tragic intensity] Ruth!
RUTH. You're not afraid of going, are you?
FALDER. Have you got your things, and the children's?
RUTH. Had to leave them, for fear of waking Honeywill, all but one
bag. I can't go near home again.
FALDER. [Wincing] All that money gone for nothing.
How much must you have?
RUTH. Six pounds--I could do with that, I think.
FALDER. Don't give away where we're going. [As if to himself] When
I get out there I mean to forget it all.
RUTH. If you're sorry, say so. I'd sooner he killed me than take
you against your will.
FALDER. [With a queer smile] We've got to go. I don't care; I'll
have you.
RUTH. You've just to say; it's not too late.
FALDER. It is too late. Here's seven pounds. Booking office 11.45
to-night. If you weren't what you are to me, Ruth----!
RUTH. Kiss me!
They cling together passionately, there fly apart just as
COKESON re-enters the room. RUTH turns and goes out through the
outer office. COKESON advances deliberately to his chair and
seats himself.
COKESON. This isn't right, Falder.
FALDER. It shan't occur again, sir.
COKESON. It's an improper use of these premises.
FALDER. Yes, sir.
COKESON. You quite understand-the party was in some distress; and,
having children with her, I allowed my feelings----[He opens a
drawer and produces from it a tract] Just take this! "Purity in the
Home." It's a well-written thing.
FALDER. [Taking it, with a peculiar expression] Thank you, sir.
COKESON. And look here, Falder, before Mr. Walter comes, have you
finished up that cataloguing Davis had in hand before he left?
FALDER. I shall have done with it to-morrow, sir--for good.
COKESON. It's over a week since Davis went. Now it won't do,
Falder. You're neglecting your work for private life. I shan't
mention about the party having called, but----
FALDER. [Passing into his room] Thank you, sir.
COKESON stares at the door through which FALDER has gone out;
then shakes his head, and is just settling down to write, when
WALTER How comes in through the outer Office. He is a rather
refined-looking man of thirty-five, with a pleasant, almost
apologetic voice.
WALTER. Good-morning, Cokeson.
COKESON. Morning, Mr. Walter.
WALTER. My father here?
COKESON. [Always with a certain patronage as to a young man who
might be doing better] Mr. James has been here since eleven o'clock.
WALTER. I've been in to see the pictures, at the Guildhall.
COKESON. [Looking at him as though this were exactly what was to be
expected] Have you now--ye--es. This lease of Boulter's--am I to
send it to counsel?
WALTER. What does my father say?
COKESON. 'Aven't bothered him.
WALTER. Well, we can't be too careful.
COKESON. It's such a little thing--hardly worth the fees. I thought
you'd do it yourself.
WALTER. Send it, please. I don't want the responsibility.
COKESON. [With an indescribable air of compassion] Just as you
like. This "right-of-way" case--we've got 'em on the deeds.
WALTER. I know; but the intention was obviously to exclude that bit
of common ground.
COKESON. We needn't worry about that. We're the right side of the
law.
WALTER. I don't like it,
COKESON. [With an indulgent smile] We shan't want to set ourselves
up against the law. Your father wouldn't waste his time doing that.
As he speaks JAMES How comes in from the partners' room. He is
a shortish man, with white side-whiskers, plentiful grey hair,
shrewd eyes, and gold pince-nez.
JAMES. Morning, Walter.
WALTER. How are you, father?
COKESON. [Looking down his nose at the papers in his hand as though
deprecating their size] I'll just take Boulter's lease in to young
Falder to draft the instructions. [He goes out into FALDER'S room.]
WALTER. About that right-of-way case?
JAMES. Oh, well, we must go forward there. I thought you told me
yesterday the firm's balance was over four hundred.
WALTER. So it is.
JAMES. [Holding out the pass-book to his son] Three--five--one, no
recent cheques. Just get me out the cheque-book.
WALTER goes to a cupboard, unlocks a drawer and produces a
cheque-book.
JAMES. Tick the pounds in the counterfoils. Five, fifty-four,
seven, five, twenty-eight, twenty, ninety, eleven, fifty-two,
seventy-one. Tally?
WALTER. [Nodding] Can't understand. Made sure it was over four
hundred.
JAMES. Give me the cheque-book. [He takes the check-book and cons
the counterfoils] What's this ninety?
WALTER. Who drew it?
JAMES. You.
WALTER. [Taking the cheque-book] July 7th? That's the day I went
down to look over the Trenton Estate--last Friday week; I came back
on the Tuesday, you remember. But look here, father, it was nine I
drew a cheque for. Five guineas to Smithers and my expenses. It
just covered all but half a crown.
JAMES. [Gravely] Let's look at that ninety cheque. [He sorts the
cheque out from the bundle in the pocket of the pass-book] Seems all
right. There's no nine here. This is bad. Who cashed that
nine-pound cheque?
WALTER. [Puzzled and pained] Let's see! I was finishing Mrs.
Reddy's will--only just had time; yes--I gave it to Cokeson.
JAMES. Look at that 't' 'y': that yours?
WALTER. [After consideration] My y's curl back a little; this
doesn't.
JAMES. [As COKESON re-enters from FALDER'S room] We must ask him.
Just come here and carry your mind back a bit, Cokeson. D'you
remember cashing a cheque for Mr. Walter last Friday week--the day
he went to Trenton?
COKESON. Ye-es. Nine pounds.
JAMES. Look at this. [Handing him the cheque.]
COKESON. No! Nine pounds. My lunch was just coming in; and of
course I like it hot; I gave the cheque to Davis to run round to the
bank. He brought it back, all gold--you remember, Mr. Walter, you
wanted some silver to pay your cab. [With a certain contemptuous
compassion] Here, let me see. You've got the wrong cheque.
He takes cheque-book and pass-book from WALTER.
WALTER. Afraid not.
COKESON. [Having seen for himself] It's funny.
JAMES. You gave it to Davis, and Davis sailed for Australia on
Monday. Looks black, Cokeson.
COKESON. [Puzzled and upset] why this'd be a felony! No, no!
there's some mistake.
JAMES. I hope so.
COKESON. There's never been anything of that sort in the office the
twenty-nine years I've been here.
JAMES. [Looking at cheque and counterfoil] This is a very clever
bit of work; a warning to you not to leave space after your figures,
Walter.
WALTER. [Vexed] Yes, I know--I was in such a tearing hurry that
afternoon.
COKESON. [Suddenly] This has upset me.
JAMES. The counterfoil altered too--very deliberate piece of
swindling. What was Davis's ship?
WALTER. 'City of Rangoon'.
JAMES. We ought to wire and have him arrested at Naples; he can't be
there yet.
COKESON. His poor young wife. I liked the young man. Dear, oh
dear! In this office!
WALTER. Shall I go to the bank and ask the cashier?
JAMES. [Grimly] Bring him round here. And ring up Scotland Yard.
WALTER. Really?
He goes out through the outer office. JAMES paces the room. He
stops and looks at COKESON, who is disconsolately rubbing the
knees of his trousers.
JAMES. Well, Cokeson! There's something in character, isn't there?
COKESON. [Looking at him over his spectacles] I don't quite take
you, sir.
JAMES. Your story, would sound d----d thin to any one who didn't
know you.
COKESON. Ye-es! [He laughs. Then with a sudden gravity] I'm sorry
for that young man. I feel it as if it was my own son, Mr. James.
JAMES. A nasty business!
COKESON. It unsettles you. All goes on regular, and then a thing
like this happens. Shan't relish my lunch to-day.
JAMES. As bad as that, Cokeson?
COKESON. It makes you think. [Confidentially] He must have had
temptation.
JAMES. Not so fast. We haven't convicted him yet.
COKESON. I'd sooner have lost a month's salary than had this happen.
[He broods.]
JAMES. I hope that fellow will hurry up.
COKESON. [Keeping things pleasant for the cashier] It isn't fifty
yards, Mr. James. He won't be a minute.
JAMES. The idea of dishonesty about this office it hits me hard,
Cokeson.
He goes towards the door of the partners' room.
SWEEDLE. [Entering quietly, to COKESON in a low voice] She's popped
up again, sir-something she forgot to say to Falder.
COKESON. [Roused from his abstraction] Eh? Impossible. Send her
away!
JAMES. What's that?
COKESON. Nothing, Mr. James. A private matter. Here, I'll come
myself. [He goes into the outer office as JAMES passes into the
partners' room] Now, you really mustn't--we can't have anybody just
now.
RUTH. Not for a minute, sir?
COKESON. Reely! Reely! I can't have it. If you want him, wait
about; he'll be going out for his lunch directly.
RUTH. Yes, sir.
WALTER, entering with the cashier, passes RUTH as she leaves the
outer office.
COKESON. [To the cashier, who resembles a sedentary dragoon]
Good-morning. [To WALTER] Your father's in there.
WALTER crosses and goes into the partners' room.
COKESON. It's a nahsty, unpleasant little matter, Mr. Cowley. I'm
quite ashamed to have to trouble you.
COWLEY. I remember the cheque quite well. [As if it were a liver]
Seemed in perfect order.
COKESON. Sit down, won't you? I'm not a sensitive man, but a thing
like this about the place--it's not nice. I like people to be open
and jolly together.
COWLEY. Quite so.
COKESON. [Buttonholing him, and glancing toward the partners' room]
Of course he's a young man. I've told him about it before now--
leaving space after his figures, but he will do it.
COWLEY. I should remember the person's face--quite a youth.
COKESON. I don't think we shall be able to show him to you, as a
matter of fact.
JAMES and WALTER have come back from the partners' room.
JAMES. Good-morning, Mr. Cowley. You've seen my son and myself,
you've seen Mr. Cokeson, and you've seen Sweedle, my office-boy. It
was none of us, I take it.
The cashier shakes his head with a smile.
JAMES. Be so good as to sit there. Cokeson, engage Mr. Cowley in
conversation, will you?
He goes toward FALDER'S room.
COKESON. Just a word, Mr. James.
JAMES. Well?
COKESON. You don't want to upset the young man in there, do you?
He's a nervous young feller.
JAMES. This must be thoroughly cleared up, Cokeson, for the sake of
Falder's name, to say nothing of yours.
COKESON. [With Some dignity] That'll look after itself, sir. He's
been upset once this morning; I don't want him startled again.
JAMES. It's a matter of form; but I can't stand upon niceness over a
thing like this--too serious. Just talk to Mr. Cowley.
He opens the door of FALDER'S room.
JAMES. Bring in the papers in Boulter's lease, will you, Falder?
COKESON. [Bursting into voice] Do you keep dogs?
The cashier, with his eyes fixed on the door, does not answer.
COKESON. You haven't such a thing as a bulldog pup you could spare
me, I suppose?
At the look on the cashier's face his jaw drops, and he turns to
see FALDER standing in the doorway, with his eyes fixed on
COWLEY, like the eyes of a rabbit fastened on a snake.
FALDER. [Advancing with the papers] Here they are, sir!
JAMES. [Taking them] Thank you.
FALDER. Do you want me, sir?
JAMES. No, thanks!
FALDER turns and goes back into his own room. As he shuts the
door JAMES gives the cashier an interrogative look, and the
cashier nods.
JAMES. Sure? This isn't as we suspected.
COWLEY. Quite. He knew me. I suppose he can't slip out of that
room?
COKESON. [Gloomily] There's only the window--a whole floor and a
basement.
The door of FALDER'S room is quietly opened, and FALDER, with
his hat in his hand, moves towards the door of the outer office.
JAMES. [Quietly] Where are you going, Falder?
FALDER. To have my lunch, sir.
JAMES. Wait a few minutes, would you? I want to speak to you about
this lease.
FALDER. Yes, sir. [He goes back into his room.]
COWLEY. If I'm wanted, I can swear that's the young man who cashed
the cheque. It was the last cheque I handled that morning before my
lunch. These are the numbers of the notes he had. [He puts a slip
of paper on the table; then, brushing his hat round] Good-morning!
JAMES. Good-morning, Mr. Cowley!
COWLEY. [To COKESON] Good-morning.
COKESON. [With Stupefaction] Good-morning.
The cashier goes out through the outer office. COKESON sits down
in his chair, as though it were the only place left in the
morass of his feelings.
WALTER. What are you going to do?
JAMES. Have him in. Give me the cheque and the counterfoil.
COKESON. I don't understand. I thought young Davis----
JAMES. We shall see.
WALTER. One moment, father: have you thought it out?
JAMES. Call him in!
COKESON. [Rising with difficulty and opening FALDER'S door;
hoarsely] Step in here a minute.
FALDER. [Impassively] Yes, sir?
JAMES. [Turning to him suddenly with the cheque held out] You know
this cheque, Falder?
FALDER. No, sir.
JADES. Look at it. You cashed it last Friday week.
FALDER. Oh! yes, sir; that one--Davis gave it me.
JAMES. I know. And you gave Davis the cash?
FALDER. Yes, sir.
JAMES. When Davis gave you the cheque was it exactly like this?
FALDER. Yes, I think so, sir.
JAMES. You know that Mr. Walter drew that cheque for nine pounds?
FALDER. No, sir--ninety.
JAMES. Nine, Falder.
FALDER. [Faintly] I don't understand, sir.
JAMES. The suggestion, of course, is that the cheque was altered;
whether by you or Davis is the question.
FALDER. I--I
COKESON. Take your time, take your time.
FALDER. [Regaining his impassivity] Not by me, sir.
JAMES. The cheque was handed to--Cokeson by Mr. Walter at one
o'clock; we know that because Mr. Cokeson's lunch had just arrived.
COKESON. I couldn't leave it.
JAMES. Exactly; he therefore gave the cheque to Davis. It was
cashed by you at 1.15. We know that because the cashier recollects
it for the last cheque he handled before his lunch.
FALDER. Yes, sir, Davis gave it to me because some friends were
giving him a farewell luncheon.
JAMES. [Puzzled] You accuse Davis, then?
FALDER. I don't know, sir--it's very funny.
WALTER, who has come close to his father, says something to him
in a low voice.
JAMES. Davis was not here again after that Saturday, was he?
COKESON. [Anxious to be of assistance to the young man, and seeing
faint signs of their all being jolly once more] No, he sailed on the
Monday.
JAMES. Was he, Falder?
FALDER. [Very faintly] No, sir.
JAMES. Very well, then, how do you account for the fact that this
nought was added to the nine in the counterfoil on or after Tuesday?
COKESON. [Surprised] How's that?
FALDER gives a sort of lurch; he tries to pull himself together,
but he has gone all to pieces.
JAMES. [Very grimly] Out, I'm afraid, Cokeson. The cheque-book
remained in Mr. Walter's pocket till he came back from Trenton on
Tuesday morning. In the face of this, Falder, do you still deny that
you altered both cheque and counterfoil?
FALDER. No, sir--no, Mr. How. I did it, sir; I did it.
COKESON. [Succumbing to his feelings] Dear, dear! what a thing to
do!
FALDER. I wanted the money so badly, sir. I didn't know what I was
doing.
COKESON. However such a thing could have come into your head!
FALDER. [Grasping at the words] I can't think, sir, really! It was
just a minute of madness.
JAMES. A long minute, Falder. [Tapping the counterfoil] Four days
at least.
FALDER. Sir, I swear I didn't know what I'd done till afterwards,
and then I hadn't the pluck. Oh! Sir, look over it! I'll pay the
money back--I will, I promise.
JAMES. Go into your room.
FALDER, with a swift imploring look, goes back into his room.
There is silence.
JAMES. About as bad a case as there could be.
COKESON. To break the law like that-in here!
WALTER. What's to be done?
JAMES. Nothing for it. Prosecute.
WALTER. It's his first offence.
JAMES. [Shaking his head] I've grave doubts of that. Too neat a
piece of swindling altogether.
COKESON. I shouldn't be surprised if he was tempted.
JAMES. Life's one long temptation, Cokeson.
COKESON. Ye-es, but I'm speaking of the flesh and the devil, Mr.
James. There was a woman come to see him this morning.
WALTER. The woman we passed as we came in just now. Is it his wife?
COKESON. No, no relation. [Restraining what in jollier
circumstances would have been a wink] A married person, though.
WALTER. How do you know?
COKESON. Brought her children. [Scandalised] There they were
outside the office.
JAMES. A real bad egg.
WALTER. I should like to give him a chance.
JAMES. I can't forgive him for the sneaky way he went to work--
counting on our suspecting young Davis if the matter came to light.
It was the merest accident the cheque-book stayed in your pocket.
WALTER. It must have been the temptation of a moment. He hadn't
time.
JAMES. A man doesn't succumb like that in a moment, if he's a clean
mind and habits. He's rotten; got the eyes of a man who can't keep
his hands off when there's money about.
WALTER. [Dryly] We hadn't noticed that before.
JAMES. [Brushing the remark aside] I've seen lots of those fellows
in my time. No doing anything with them except to keep 'em out of
harm's way. They've got a blind spat.
WALTER. It's penal servitude.
COKESON. They're nahsty places-prisons.
JAMES. [Hesitating] I don't see how it's possible to spare him. Out
of the question to keep him in this office--honesty's the 'sine qua
non'.
COKESON. [Hypnotised] Of course it is.
JAMES. Equally out of the question to send him out amongst people
who've no knowledge of his character. One must think of society.
WALTER. But to brand him like this?
JAMES. If it had been a straightforward case I'd give him another
chance. It's far from that. He has dissolute habits.
COKESON. I didn't say that--extenuating circumstances.
JAMES. Same thing. He's gone to work in the most cold-blooded way
to defraud his employers, and cast the blame on an innocent man. If
that's not a case for the law to take its course, I don't know what
is.
WALTER. For the sake of his future, though.
JAMES. [Sarcastically] According to you, no one would ever
prosecute.
WALTER. [Nettled] I hate the idea of it.
COKESON. That's rather 'ex parte', Mr. Walter! We must have
protection.
JAMES. This is degenerating into talk.
He moves towards the partners' room.
WALTER. Put yourself in his place, father.
JAMES. You ask too much of me.
WALTER. We can't possibly tell the pressure there was on him.
JAMES. You may depend on it, my boy, if a man is going to do this
sort of thing he'll do it, pressure or no pressure; if he isn't
nothing'll make him.
WALTER. He'll never do it again.
COKESON. [Fatuously] S'pose I were to have a talk with him. We
don't want to be hard on the young man.
JAMES. That'll do, Cokeson. I've made up my mind. [He passes into
the partners' room.]
COKESON. [After a doubtful moment] We must excuse your father. I
don't want to go against your father; if he thinks it right.
WALTER. Confound it, Cokeson! why don't you back me up? You know
you feel----
COKESON. [On his dignity] I really can't say what I feel.
WALTER. We shall regret it.
COKESON. He must have known what he was doing.
WALTER. [Bitterly] "The quality of mercy is not strained."
COKESON. [Looking at him askance] Come, come, Mr. Walter. We must
try and see it sensible.
SWEEDLE. [Entering with a tray] Your lunch, sir.
COKESON. Put it down!
While SWEEDLE is putting it down on COKESON's table, the
detective, WISTER, enters the outer office, and, finding no one
there, comes to the inner doorway. He is a square, medium-sized
man, clean-shaved, in a serviceable blue serge suit and strong
boots.
COKESON. [Hoarsely] Here! Here! What are we doing?
WISTER. [To WALTER] From Scotland Yard, sir. Detective-Sergeant
Blister.
WALTER. [Askance] Very well! I'll speak to my father.
He goes into the partners' room. JAMES enters.
JAMES. Morning! [In answer to an appealing gesture from COKESON]
I'm sorry; I'd stop short of this if I felt I could. Open that door.
[SWEEDLE, wondering and scared, opens it] Come here, Mr. Falder.
As FALDER comes shrinkingly out, the detective in obedience to a
sign from JAMES, slips his hand out and grasps his arm.
FALDER. [Recoiling] Oh! no,--oh! no!
WALTER. Come, come, there's a good lad.
JAMES. I charge him with felony.
FALTER. Oh, sir! There's some one--I did it for her. Let me be
till to-morrow.
JAMES motions with his hand. At that sign of hardness, FALDER
becomes rigid. Then, turning, he goes out quietly in the
detective's grip. JAMES follows, stiff and erect. SWEEDLE,
rushing to the door with open mouth, pursues them through the
outer office into the corridor. When they have all disappeared
COKESON spins completely round and makes a rush for the outer
office.
COKESON: [Hoarsely] Here! What are we doing?
There is silence. He takes out his handkerchief and mops the
sweat from his face. Going back blindly to his table, sits
down, and stares blankly at his lunch.
The curtain falls.
ACT II
A Court of Justice, on a foggy October afternoon crowded with
barristers, solicitors, reporters, ushers, and jurymen. Sitting in
the large, solid dock is FALDER, with a warder on either side of him,
placed there for his safe custody, but seemingly indifferent to and
unconscious of his presence. FALDER is sitting exactly opposite to
the JUDGE, who, raised above the clamour of the court, also seems
unconscious of and indifferent to everything. HAROLD CLEAVER, the
counsel for the Crown, is a dried, yellowish man, of more than middle
age, in a wig worn almost to the colour of his face. HECTOR FROME,
the counsel for the defence, is a young, tall man, clean shaved, in a
very white wig. Among the spectators, having already given their
evidence, are JAMES and WALTER HOW, and COWLEY, the cashier. WISTER,
the detective, is just leaving the witness-box.
CLEAVER. That is the case for the Crown, me lud!
Gathering his robes together, he sits down.
FROME. [Rising and bowing to the JUDGE] If it please your lordship
and gentlemen of the jury. I am not going to dispute the fact that
the prisoner altered this cheque, but I am going to put before you
evidence as to the condition of his mind, and to submit that you
would not be justified in finding that he was responsible for his
actions at the time. I am going to show you, in fact, that he did
this in a moment of aberration, amounting to temporary insanity,
caused by the violent distress under which he was labouring.
Gentlemen, the prisoner is only twenty-three years old. I shall call
before you a woman from whom you will learn the events that led up to
this act. You will hear from her own lips the tragic circumstances
of her life, the still more tragic infatuation with which she has
inspired the prisoner. This woman, gentlemen, has been leading a
miserable existence with a husband who habitually ill-uses her, from
whom she actually goes in terror of her life. I am not, of course,
saying that it's either right or desirable for a young man to fall in
love with a married woman, or that it's his business to rescue her
from an ogre-like husband. I'm not saying anything of the sort. But
we all know the power of the passion of love; and I would ask you to
remember, gentlemen, in listening to her evidence, that, married to a
drunken and violent husband, she has no power to get rid of him; for,
as you know, another offence besides violence is necessary to enable
a woman to obtain a divorce; and of this offence it does not appear
that her husband is guilty.
JUDGE. Is this relevant, Mr. Frome?
FROME. My lord, I submit, extremely--I shall be able to show your
lordship that directly.
JUDGE. Very well.
FROME. In these circumstances, what alternatives were left to her?
She could either go on living with this drunkard, in terror of her
life; or she could apply to the Court for a separation order. Well,
gentlemen, my experience of such cases assures me that this would
have given her very insufficient protection from the violence of such
a man; and even if effectual would very likely have reduced her
either to the workhouse or the streets--for it's not easy, as she is
now finding, for an unskilled woman without means of livelihood to
support herself and her children without resorting either to the Poor
Law or--to speak quite plainly--to the sale of her body.
JUDGE. You are ranging rather far, Mr. Frome.
FROME. I shall fire point-blank in a minute, my lord.
JUDGE. Let us hope so.
FROME. Now, gentlemen, mark--and this is what I have been leading up
to--this woman will tell you, and the prisoner will confirm her,
that, confronted with such alternatives, she set her whole hopes on
himself, knowing the feeling with which she had inspired him. She
saw a way out of her misery by going with him to a new country, where
they would both be unknown, and might pass as husband and wife. This
was a desperate and, as my friend Mr. Cleaver will no doubt call it,
an immoral resolution; but, as a fact, the minds of both of them were
constantly turned towards it. One wrong is no excuse for another,
and those who are never likely to be faced by such a situation
possibly have the right to hold up their hands--as to that I prefer
to say nothing. But whatever view you take, gentlemen, of this part
of the prisoner's story--whatever opinion you form of the right of
these two young people under such circumstances to take the law into
their own hands--the fact remains that this young woman in her
distress, and this young man, little more than a boy, who was so
devotedly attached to her, did conceive this--if you like--
reprehensible design of going away together. Now, for that, of
course, they required money, and--they had none. As to the actual
events of the morning of July 7th, on which this cheque was altered,
the events on which I rely to prove the defendant's irresponsibility
--I shall allow those events to speak for themselves, through the
lips of my witness. Robert Cokeson. [He turns, looks round, takes
up a sheet of paper, and waits.]
COKESON is summoned into court, and goes into the witness-box,
holding his hat before him. The oath is administered to him.
FROME. What is your name?
COKESON. Robert Cokeson.
FROME. Are you managing clerk to the firm of solicitors who employ
the prisoner?
COKESON. Ye-es.
FROME. How long had the prisoner been in their employ?
COKESON. Two years. No, I'm wrong there--all but seventeen days.
FROME. Had you him under your eye all that time?
COKESON. Except Sundays and holidays.
FROME. Quite so. Let us hear, please, what you have to say about
his general character during those two years.
COKESON. [Confidentially to the jury, and as if a little surprised
at being asked] He was a nice, pleasant-spoken young man. I'd no
fault to find with him--quite the contrary. It was a great surprise
to me when he did a thing like that.
FROME. Did he ever give you reason to suspect his honesty?
COKESON. No! To have dishonesty in our office, that'd never do.
FROME. I'm sure the jury fully appreciate that, Mr. Cokeson.
COKESON. Every man of business knows that honesty's 'the sign qua
non'.
FROME. Do you give him a good character all round, or do you not?
COKESON. [Turning to the JUDGE] Certainly. We were all very jolly
and pleasant together, until this happened. Quite upset me.
FROME. Now, coming to the morning of the 7th of July, the morning on
which the cheque was altered. What have you to say about his
demeanour that morning?
COKESON. [To the jury] If you ask me, I don't think he was quite
compos when he did it.
THE JUDGE. [Sharply] Are you suggesting that he was insane?
COKESON. Not compos.
THE JUDGE. A little more precision, please.
FROME. [Smoothly] Just tell us, Mr. Cokeson.
COKESON. [Somewhat outraged] Well, in my opinion--[looking at the
JUDGE]--such as it is--he was jumpy at the time. The jury will
understand my meaning.
FROME. Will you tell us how you came to that conclusion?
COKESON. Ye-es, I will. I have my lunch in from the restaurant, a
chop and a potato--saves time. That day it happened to come just as
Mr. Walter How handed me the cheque. Well, I like it hot; so I went
into the clerks' office and I handed the cheque to Davis, the other
clerk, and told him to get change. I noticed young Falder walking up
and down. I said to him: "This is not the Zoological Gardens,
Falder."
FROME. Do you remember what he answered?
COKESON. Ye-es: "I wish to God it were!" Struck me as funny.
FROME. Did you notice anything else peculiar?
COKESON. I did.
FROME. What was that?
COKESON. His collar was unbuttoned. Now, I like a young man to be
neat. I said to him: "Your collar's unbuttoned."
FROME. And what did he answer?
COKESON. Stared at me. It wasn't nice.
THE JUDGE. Stared at you? Isn't that a very common practice?
COKESON. Ye-es, but it was the look in his eyes. I can't explain my
meaning--it was funny.
FROME. Had you ever seen such a look in his eyes before?
COKESON. No. If I had I should have spoken to the partners. We
can't have anything eccentric in our profession.
THE JUDGE. Did you speak to them on that occasion?
COKESON. [Confidentially] Well, I didn't like to trouble them about
prime facey evidence.
FROME. But it made a very distinct impression on your mind?
COKESON. Ye-es. The clerk Davis could have told you the same.
FROME. Quite so. It's very unfortunate that we've not got him here.
Now can you tell me of the morning on which the discovery of the
forgery was made? That would be the 18th. Did anything happen that
morning?
COKESON. [With his hand to his ear] I'm a little deaf.
FROME. Was there anything in the course of that morning--I mean
before the discovery--that caught your attention?
COKESON. Ye-es--a woman.
THE JUDGE. How is this relevant, Mr. Frome?
FROME. I am trying to establish the state of mind in which the
prisoner committed this act, my lord.
THE JUDGE. I quite appreciate that. But this was long after the
act.
FROME. Yes, my lord, but it contributes to my contention.
THE JUDGE. Well!
FROME. You say a woman. Do you mean that she came to the office?
COKESON. Ye-es.
FROME. What for?
COKESON. Asked to see young Falder; he was out at the moment.
FROME. Did you see her?
COKESON. I did.
FROME. Did she come alone?
COKESON. [Confidentially] Well, there you put me in a difficulty.
I mustn't tell you what the office-boy told me.
FROME. Quite so, Mr. Cokeson, quite so----
COKESON. [Breaking in with an air of "You are young--leave it to
me"] But I think we can get round it. In answer to a question put
to her by a third party the woman said to me: "They're mine, sir."
THE JUDGE. What are? What were?
COKESON. Her children. They were outside.
THE JUDGE. HOW do you know?
COKESON. Your lordship mustn't ask me that, or I shall have to tell
you what I was told--and that'd never do.
THE JUDGE. [Smiling] The office-boy made a statement.
COKESON. Egg-zactly.
FROME. What I want to ask you, Mr. Cokeson, is this. In the course
of her appeal to see Falder, did the woman say anything that you
specially remember?
COKESON. [Looking at him as if to encourage him to complete the
sentence] A leetle more, sir.
FROME. Or did she not?
COKESON. She did. I shouldn't like you to have led me to the
answer.
FROME. [With an irritated smile] Will you tell the jury what it
was?
COKESON. "It's a matter of life and death."
FOREMAN OF THE JURY. Do you mean the woman said that?
COKESON. [Nodding] It's not the sort of thing you like to have said
to you.
FROME. [A little impatiently] Did Falder come in while she was
there? [COKESON nods] And she saw him, and went away?
COKESON. Ah! there I can't follow you. I didn't see her go.
FROME. Well, is she there now?
COKESON. [With an indulgent smile] No!
FROME. Thank you, Mr. Cokeson. [He sits down.]
CLEAVER. [Rising] You say that on the morning of the forgery the
prisoner was jumpy. Well, now, sir, what precisely do you mean by
that word?
COKESON. [Indulgently] I want you to understand. Have you ever
seen a dog that's lost its master? He was kind of everywhere at once
with his eyes.
CLEAVER. Thank you; I was coming to his eyes. You called them
"funny." What are we to understand by that? Strange, or what?
COKESON. Ye-es, funny.
COKESON. [Sharply] Yes, sir, but what may be funny to you may not
be funny to me, or to the jury. Did they look frightened, or shy, or
fierce, or what?
COKESON. You make it very hard for me. I give you the word, and you
want me to give you another.
CLEAVER. [Rapping his desk] Does "funny" mean mad?
CLEAVER. Not mad, fun----
CLEAVER. Very well! Now you say he had his collar unbuttoned? Was
it a hot day?
COKESON. Ye-es; I think it was.
CLEAVER. And did he button it when you called his attention to it?
COKESON. Ye-es, I think he did.
CLEAVER. Would you say that that denoted insanity?
He sits downs. COKESON, who has opened his mouth to reply, is
left gaping.
FROME. [Rising hastily] Have you ever caught him in that dishevelled
state before?
COKESON. No! He was always clean and quiet.
FROME. That will do, thank you.
COKESON turns blandly to the JUDGE, as though to rebuke counsel
for not remembering that the JUDGE might wish to have a chance;
arriving at the conclusion that he is to be asked nothing
further, he turns and descends from the box, and sits down next
to JAMES and WALTER.
FROME. Ruth Honeywill.
RUTH comes into court, and takes her stand stoically in the
witness-box. She is sworn.
FROME. What is your name, please?
RUTH. Ruth Honeywill.
FROME. How old are you?
RUTH. Twenty-six.
FROME. You are a married woman, living with your husband? A little
louder.
RUTH. No, sir; not since July.
FROME. Have you any children?
RUTH. Yes, sir, two.
FROME. Are they living with you?
RUTH. Yes, sir.
FROME. You know the prisoner?
RUTH. [Looking at him] Yes.
FROME. What was the nature of your relations with him?
RUTH. We were friends.
THE JUDGE. Friends?
RUTH. [Simply] Lovers, sir.
THE JUDGE. [Sharply] In what sense do you use that word?
RUTH. We love each other.
THE JUDGE. Yes, but----
RUTH. [Shaking her head] No, your lordship--not yet.
THE JUDGE. 'Not yet! H'm! [He looks from RUTH to FALDER] Well!
FROME. What is your husband?
RUTH. Traveller.
FROME. And what was the nature of your married life?
RUTH. [Shaking her head] It don't bear talking about.
FROME. Did he ill-treat you, or what?
RUTH. Ever since my first was born.
FROME. In what way?
RUTH. I'd rather not say. All sorts of ways.
THE JUDGE. I am afraid I must stop this, you know.
RUTH. [Pointing to FALDER] He offered to take me out of it, sir.
We were going to South America.
FROME. [Hastily] Yes, quite--and what prevented you?
RUTH. I was outside his office when he was taken away. It nearly
broke my heart.
FROME. You knew, then, that he had been arrested?
RUTH. Yes, sir. I called at his office afterwards, and [pointing
to COKESON] that gentleman told me all about it.
FROME. Now, do you remember the morning of Friday, July 7th?
RUTH. Yes.
FROME. Why?
RUTH. My husband nearly strangled me that morning.
THE JUDGE. Nearly strangled you!
RUTH. [Bowing her head] Yes, my lord.
FROME. With his hands, or----?
RUTH. Yes, I just managed to get away from him. I went straight to
my friend. It was eight o'clock.
THE JUDGE. In the morning? Your husband was not under the influence
of liquor then?
RUTH. It wasn't always that.
FROME. In what condition were you?
RUTH. In very bad condition, sir. My dress was torn, and I was half
choking.
FROME. Did you tell your friend what had happened?
RUTH. Yes. I wish I never had.
FROME. It upset him?
RUTH. Dreadfully.
FROME. Did he ever speak to you about a cheque?
RUTH. Never.
FROZE. Did he ever give you any money?
RUTH. Yes.
FROME. When was that?
RUTH. On Saturday.
FROME. The 8th?
RUTH. To buy an outfit for me and the children, and get all ready to
start.
FROME. Did that surprise you, or not?
RUTH. What, sir?
FROME. That he had money to give you.
Ring. Yes, because on the morning when my husband nearly killed me
my friend cried because he hadn't the money to get me away. He told
me afterwards he'd come into a windfall.
FROME. And when did you last see him?
RUTH. The day he was taken away, sir. It was the day we were to
have started.
FROME. Oh, yes, the morning of the arrest. Well, did you see him at
all between the Friday and that morning? [RUTH nods] What was his
manner then?
RUTH. Dumb--like--sometimes he didn't seem able to say a word.
FROME. As if something unusual had happened to him?
RUTH. Yes.
FROME. Painful, or pleasant, or what?
RUTH. Like a fate hanging over him.
FROME. [Hesitating] Tell me, did you love the prisoner very much?
RUTH. [Bowing her head] Yes.
FROME. And had he a very great affection for you?
RUTH. [Looking at FALDER] Yes, sir.
FROME. Now, ma'am, do you or do you not think that your danger and
unhappiness would seriously affect his balance, his control over his
actions?
RUTH. Yes.
FROME. His reason, even?
RUTH. For a moment like, I think it would.
FROME. Was he very much upset that Friday morning, or was he fairly
calm?
RUTH. Dreadfully upset. I could hardly bear to let him go from me.
FROME. Do you still love him?
RUTH. [With her eyes on FALDER] He's ruined himself for me.
FROME. Thank you.
He sits down. RUTH remains stoically upright in the witness-box.
CLEAVER. [In a considerate voice] When you left him on the morning
of Friday the 7th you would not say that he was out of his mind, I
suppose?
RUTH. No, sir.
CLEAVER. Thank you; I've no further questions to ask you.
RUTH. [Bending a little forward to the jury] I would have done the
same for him; I would indeed.
THE JUDGE. Please, please! You say your married life is an unhappy
one? Faults on both sides?
RUTH. Only that I never bowed down to him. I don't see why I
should, sir, not to a man like that.
THE JUDGE. You refused to obey him?
RUTH. [Avoiding the question] I've always studied him to keep
things nice.
THE JUDGE. Until you met the prisoner--was that it?
RUTH. No; even after that.
THE JUDGE. I ask, you know, because you seem to me to glory in this
affection of yours for the prisoner.
RUTH. [Hesitating] I--I do. It's the only thing in my life now.
THE JUDGE. [Staring at her hard] Well, step down, please.
RUTH looks at FALDER, then passes quietly down and takes her
seat among the witnesses.
FROME. I call the prisoner, my lord.
FALDER leaves the dock; goes into the witness-box, and is duly
sworn.
FROME. What is your name?
FALDER. William Falder.
FROME. And age?
FALDER. Twenty-three.
FROME. You are not married?
FALDER shakes his head
FROME. How long have you known the last witness?
FALDER. Six months.
FROME. Is her account of the relationship between you a correct one?
FALDER. Yes.
FROME. You became devotedly attached to her, however?
FALDER. Yes.
THE JUDGE. Though you knew she was a married woman?
FALDER. I couldn't help it, your lordship.
THE JUDGE. Couldn't help it?
FALDER. I didn't seem able to.
The JUDGE slightly shrugs his shoulders.
FROME. How did you come to know her?
FALDER. Through my married sister.
FROME. Did you know whether she was happy with her husband?
FALDER. It was trouble all the time.
FROME. You knew her husband?
FALDER. Only through her--he's a brute.
THE JUDGE. I can't allow indiscriminate abuse of a person not
present.
FROME. [Bowing] If your lordship pleases. [To FALDER] You admit
altering this cheque?
FALDER bows his head.
FROME. Carry your mind, please, to the morning of Friday, July the
7th, and tell the jury what happened.
FALDER. [Turning to the jury] I was having my breakfast when she
came. Her dress was all torn, and she was gasping and couldn't seem
to get her breath at all; there were the marks of his fingers round
her throat; her arm was bruised, and the blood had got into her eyes
dreadfully. It frightened me, and then when she told me, I felt--I
felt--well--it was too much for me! [Hardening suddenly] If you'd
seen it, having the feelings for her that I had, you'd have felt the
same, I know.
FROME. Yes?
FALDER. When she left me--because I had to go to the office--I was
out of my senses for fear that he'd do it again, and thinking what I
could do. I couldn't work--all the morning I was like that--simply
couldn't fix my mind on anything. I couldn't think at all. I seemed
to have to keep moving. When Davis--the other clerk--gave me the
cheque--he said: "It'll do you good, Will, to have a run with this.
You seem half off your chump this morning." Then when I had it in my
hand--I don't know how it came, but it just flashed across me that if
I put the 'ty' and the nought there would be the money to get her
away. It just came and went--I never thought of it again. Then
Davis went out to his luncheon, and I don't really remember what I
did till I'd pushed the cheque through to the cashier under the rail.
I remember his saying "Gold or notes?" Then I suppose I knew what
I'd done. Anyway, when I got outside I wanted to chuck myself under
a bus; I wanted to throw the money away; but it seemed I was in for
it, so I thought at any rate I'd save her. Of course the tickets I
took for the passage and the little I gave her's been wasted, and
all, except what I was obliged to spend myself, I've restored. I
keep thinking over and over however it was I came to do it, and how I
can't have it all again to do differently!
FALDER is silent, twisting his hands before him.
FROME. How far is it from your office to the bank?
FALDER. Not more than fifty yards, sir.
FROME. From the time Davis went out to lunch to the time you cashed
the cheque, how long do you say it must have been?
FALDER. It couldn't have been four minutes, sir, because I ran all
the way.
FROME. During those four minutes you say you remember nothing?
FALDER. No, sir; only that I ran.
FROME. Not even adding the 'ty' and the nought?'
FALDER. No, sir. I don't really.
FROME sits down, and CLEAVER rises.
CLEAVER. But you remember running, do you?
FALDER. I was all out of breath when I got to the bank.
CLEAVER. And you don't remember altering the cheque?
FALDER. [Faintly] No, sir.
CLEAVER. Divested of the romantic glamour which my friend is casting
over the case, is this anything but an ordinary forgery? Come.
FALDER. I was half frantic all that morning, sir.
CLEAVER. Now, now! You don't deny that the 'ty' and the nought were
so like the rest of the handwriting as to thoroughly deceive the
cashier?
FALDER. It was an accident.
CLEAVER. [Cheerfully] Queer sort of accident, wasn't it? On which
day did you alter the counterfoil?
FALDER. [Hanging his head] On the Wednesday morning.
CLEAVER. Was that an accident too?
FALDER. [Faintly] No.
CLEAVER. To do that you had to watch your opportunity, I suppose?
FALDER. [Almost inaudibly] Yes.
CLEAVER. You don't suggest that you were suffering under great
excitement when you did that?
FALDER. I was haunted.
CLEAVER. With the fear of being found out?
FALDER. [Very low] Yes.
THE JUDGE. Didn't it occur to you that the only thing for you to do
was to confess to your employers, and restore the money?
FALDER. I was afraid. [There is silence]
CLEAVER. You desired, too, no doubt, to complete your design of
taking this woman away?
FALDER. When I found I'd done a thing like that, to do it for
nothing seemed so dreadful. I might just as well have chucked myself
into the river.
CLEAVER. You knew that the clerk Davis was about to leave England
--didn't it occur to you when you altered this cheque that suspicion
would fall on him?
FALDER. It was all done in a moment. I thought of it afterwards.
CLEAVER. And that didn't lead you to avow what you'd done?
FALDER. [Sullenly] I meant to write when I got out there--I would
have repaid the money.
THE JUDGE. But in the meantime your innocent fellow clerk might have
been prosecuted.
FALDER. I knew he was a long way off, your lordship. I thought
there'd be time. I didn't think they'd find it out so soon.
FROME. I might remind your lordship that as Mr. Walter How had the
cheque-book in his pocket till after Davis had sailed, if the
discovery had been made only one day later Falder himself would have
left, and suspicion would have attached to him, and not to Davis,
from the beginning.
THE JUDGE. The question is whether the prisoner knew that suspicion
would light on himself, and not on Davis. [To FALDER sharply] Did
you know that Mr. Walter How had the cheque-book till after Davis
had sailed?
FALDER. I--I--thought--he----
THE JUDGE. Now speak the truth-yes or no!
FALDER. [Very low] No, my lord. I had no means of knowing.
THE JUDGE. That disposes of your point, Mr. Frome.
[FROME bows to the JUDGE]
CLEAVER. Has any aberration of this nature ever attacked you before?
FALDER. [Faintly] No, sir.
CLEAVER. You had recovered sufficiently to go back to your work that
afternoon?
FALDER. Yes, I had to take the money back.
CLEAVER. You mean the nine pounds. Your wits were sufficiently keen
for you to remember that? And you still persist in saying you don't
remember altering this cheque. [He sits down]
FALDER. If I hadn't been mad I should never have had the courage.
FROME. [Rising] Did you have your lunch before going back?
FALDER. I never ate a thing all day; and at night I couldn't sleep.
FROME. Now, as to the four minutes that elapsed between Davis's
going out and your cashing the cheque: do you say that you recollect
nothing during those four minutes?
FALDER. [After a moment] I remember thinking of Mr. Cokeson's face.
FROME. Of Mr. Cokeson's face! Had that any connection with what you
were doing?
FALDER. No, Sir.
FROME. Was that in the office, before you ran out?
FALDER. Yes, and while I was running.
FROME. And that lasted till the cashier said: "Will you have gold or
notes?"
FALDER. Yes, and then I seemed to come to myself--and it was too
late.
FROME. Thank you. That closes the evidence for the defence, my
lord.
The JUDGE nods, and FALDER goes back to his seat in the dock.
FROME. [Gathering up notes] If it please your lordship--Gentlemen
of the Jury,--My friend in cross-examination has shown a disposition
to sneer at the defence which has been set up in this case, and I am
free to admit that nothing I can say will move you, if the evidence
has not already convinced you that the prisoner committed this act in
a moment when to all practical intents and purposes he was not
responsible for his actions; a moment of such mental and moral
vacuity, arising from the violent emotional agitation under which he
had been suffering, as to amount to temporary madness. My friend has
alluded to the "romantic glamour" with which I have sought to invest
this case. Gentlemen, I have done nothing of the kind. I have
merely shown you the background of "life"--that palpitating life
which, believe me--whatever my friend may say--always lies behind the
commission of a crime. Now gentlemen, we live in a highly, civilized
age, and the sight of brutal violence disturbs us in a very strange
way, even when we have no personal interest in the matter. But when
we see it inflicted on a woman whom we love--what then? Just think
of what your own feelings would have been, each of you, at the
prisoner's age; and then look at him. Well! he is hardly the
comfortable, shall we say bucolic, person likely to contemplate with
equanimity marks of gross violence on a woman to whom he was
devotedly attached. Yes, gentlemen, look at him! He has not a
strong face; but neither has he a vicious face. He is just the sort
of man who would easily become the prey of his emotions. You have
heard the description of his eyes. My friend may laugh at the word
"funny"--I think it better describes the peculiar uncanny look of
those who are strained to breaking-point than any other word which
could have been used. I don't pretend, mind you, that his mental
irresponsibility--was more than a flash of darkness, in which all
sense of proportion became lost; but to contend, that, just as a man
who destroys himself at such a moment may be, and often is, absolved
from the stigma attaching to the crime of self-murder, so he may, and
frequently does, commit other crimes while in this irresponsible
condition, and that he may as justly be acquitted of criminal intent
and treated as a patient. I admit that this is a plea which might
well be abused. It is a matter for discretion. But here you have a
case in which there is every reason to give the benefit of the doubt.
You heard me ask the prisoner what he thought of during those four
fatal minutes. What was his answer? "I thought of Mr. Cokeson's
face!" Gentlemen, no man could invent an answer like that; it is
absolutely stamped with truth. You have seen the great affection
[legitimate or not] existing between him and this woman, who came
here to give evidence for him at the risk of her life. It is
impossible for you to doubt his distress on the morning when he
committed this act. We well know what terrible havoc such distress
can make in weak and highly nervous people. It was all the work of a
moment. The rest has followed, as death follows a stab to the heart,
or water drops if you hold up a jug to empty it. Believe me,
gentlemen, there is nothing more tragic in life than the utter
impossibility of changing what you have done. Once this cheque was
altered and presented, the work of four minutes--four mad minutes
--the rest has been silence. But in those four minutes the boy
before you has slipped through a door, hardly opened, into that great
cage which never again quite lets a man go--the cage of the Law. His
further acts, his failure to confess, the alteration of the
counterfoil, his preparations for flight, are all evidence--not of
deliberate and guilty intention when he committed the prime act from
which these subsequent acts arose; no--they are merely evidence of
the weak character which is clearly enough his misfortune. But is a
man to be lost because he is bred and born with a weak character?
Gentlemen, men like the prisoner are destroyed daily under our law
for want of that human insight which sees them as they are, patients,
and not criminals. If the prisoner be found guilty, and treated as
though he were a criminal type, he will, as all experience shows, in
all probability become one. I beg you not to return a verdict that
may thrust him back into prison and brand him for ever. Gentlemen,
Justice is a machine that, when some one has once given it the
starting push, rolls on of itself. Is this young man to be ground to
pieces under this machine for an act which at the worst was one of
weakness? Is he to become a member of the luckless crews that man
those dark, ill-starred ships called prisons? Is that to be his
voyage-from which so few return? Or is he to have another chance, to
be still looked on as one who has gone a little astray, but who will
come back? I urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin this young man! For,
as a result of those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable,
stares him in the face. He can be saved now. Imprison him as a
criminal, and I affirm to you that he will be lost. He has neither
the face nor the manner of one who can survive that terrible ordeal.
Weigh in the scales his criminality and the suffering he has
undergone. The latter is ten times heavier already. He has lain in
prison under this charge for more than two months. Is he likely ever
to forget that? Imagine the anguish of his mind during that time.
He has had his punishment, gentlemen, you may depend. The rolling of
the chariot-wheels of Justice over this boy began when it was decided
to prosecute him. We are now already at the second stage. If you
permit it to go on to the third I would not give--that for him.
He holds up finger and thumb in the form of a circle, drops his
hand, and sits dozen.
The jury stir, and consult each other's faces; then they turn towards
the counsel for the Crown, who rises, and, fixing his eyes on a spot
that seems to give him satisfaction, slides them every now and then
towards the jury.
CLEAVER. May it please your lordship--[Rising on his toes] Gentlemen
of the Jury,--The facts in this case are not disputed, and the
defence, if my friend will allow me to say so, is so thin that I
don't propose to waste the time of the Court by taking you over the
evidence. The plea is one of temporary insanity. Well, gentlemen, I
daresay it is clearer to me than it is to you why this rather--what
shall we call it?--bizarre defence has been set up. The alternative
would have been to plead guilty. Now, gentlemen, if the prisoner had
pleaded guilty my friend would have had to rely on a simple appeal to
his lordship. Instead of that, he has gone into the byways and
hedges and found this--er--peculiar plea, which has enabled him to
show you the proverbial woman, to put her in the box--to give, in
fact, a romantic glow to this affair. I compliment my friend; I
think it highly ingenious of him. By these means, he has--to a
certain extent--got round the Law. He has brought the whole story of
motive and stress out in court, at first hand, in a way that he would
not otherwise have been able to do. But when you have once grasped
that fact, gentlemen, you have grasped everything. [With
good-humoured contempt] For look at this plea of insanity; we can't
put it lower than that. You have heard the woman. She has every
reason to favour the prisoner, but what did she say? She said that
the prisoner was not insane when she left him in the morning. If he
were going out of his mind through distress, that was obviously the
moment when insanity would have shown itself. You have heard the
managing clerk, another witness for the defence. With some
difficulty I elicited from him the admission that the prisoner,
though jumpy [a word that he seemed to think you would understand,
gentlemen, and I'm sure I hope you do], was not mad when the cheque
was handed to Davis. I agree with my friend that it's unfortunate
that we have not got Davis here, but the prisoner has told you the
words with which Davis in turn handed him the cheque; he obviously,
therefore, was not mad when he received it, or he would not have
remembered those words. The cashier has told you that he was
certainly in his senses when he cashed it. We have therefore the
plea that a man who is sane at ten minutes past one, and sane at
fifteen minutes past, may, for the purposes of avoiding the
consequences of a crime, call himself insane between those points of
time. Really, gentlemen, this is so peculiar a proposition that I am
not disposed to weary you with further argument. You will form your
own opinion of its value. My friend has adopted this way of saying a
great deal to you--and very eloquently--on the score of youth,
temptation, and the like. I might point out, however, that the
offence with which the prisoner is charged is one of the most serious
known to our law; and there are certain features in this case, such
as the suspicion which he allowed to rest on his innocent fellow-clerk,
and his relations with this married woman, which will render it
difficult for you to attach too much importance to such pleading. I
ask you, in short, gentlemen, for that verdict of guilty which, in the
circumstances, I regard you as, unfortunately, bound to record.
Letting his eyes travel from the JUDGE and the jury to FROME, he
sits down.
THE JUDGE. [Bending a little towards the jury, and speaking in a
business-like voice] Gentlemen, you have heard the evidence, and the
comments on it. My only business is to make clear to you the issues
you have to try. The facts are admitted, so far as the alteration of
this cheque and counterfoil by the prisoner. The defence set up is
that he was not in a responsible condition when he committed the
crime. Well, you have heard the prisoner's story, and the evidence
of the other witnesses--so far as it bears on the point of insanity.
If you think that what you have heard establishes the fact that the
prisoner was insane at the time of the forgery, you will find him
guilty, but insane. If, on the other hand, you conclude from what
you have seen and heard that the prisoner was sane--and nothing short
of insanity will count--you will find him guilty. In reviewing the
testimony as to his mental condition you must bear in mind very
carefully the evidence as to his demeanour and conduct both before
and after the act of forgery--the evidence of the prisoner himself,
of the woman, of the witness--er--COKESON, and--er--of the cashier.
And in regard to that I especially direct your attention to the
prisoner's admission that the idea of adding the 'ty' and the nought
did come into his mind at the moment when the cheque was handed to
him; and also to the alteration of the counterfoil, and to his
subsequent conduct generally. The bearing of all this on the
question of premeditation [and premeditation will imply sanity] is
very obvious. You must not allow any considerations of age or
temptation to weigh with you in the finding of your verdict. Before
you can come to a verdict of guilty but insane you must be well and
thoroughly convinced that the condition of his mind was such as would
have qualified him at the moment for a lunatic asylum. [He pauses,
then, seeing that the jury are doubtful whether to retire or no,
adds:] You may retire, gentlemen, if you wish to do so.
The jury retire by a door behind the JUDGE. The JUDGE bends
over his notes. FALDER, leaning from the dock, speaks excitedly
to his solicitor, pointing dawn at RUTH. The solicitor in turn
speaks to FROME.
FROME. [Rising] My lord. The prisoner is very anxious that I should
ask you if your lordship would kindly request the reporters not to
disclose the name of the woman witness in the Press reports of these
proceedings. Your lordship will understand that the consequences
might be extremely serious to her.
THE JUDGE. [Pointedly--with the suspicion of a smile] well, Mr.
Frome, you deliberately took this course which involved bringing her
here.
FROME. [With an ironic bow] If your lordship thinks I could have
brought out the full facts in any other way?
THE JUDGE. H'm! Well.
FROME. There is very real danger to her, your lordship.
THE JUDGE. You see, I have to take your word for all that.
FROME. If your lordship would be so kind. I can assure your
lordship that I am not exaggerating.
THE JUDGE. It goes very much against the grain with me that the name
of a witness should ever be suppressed. [With a glance at FALDER,
who is gripping and clasping his hands before him, and then at RUTH,
who is sitting perfectly rigid with her eyes fixed on FALDER] I'll
consider your application. It must depend. I have to remember that
she may have come here to commit perjury on the prisoner's behalf.
FROME. Your lordship, I really----
THE JUDGE. Yes, yes--I don't suggest anything of the sort, Mr.
Frome. Leave it at that for the moment.
As he finishes speaking, the jury return, and file back into the
box.
CLERK of ASSIZE. Gentlemen, are you agreed on your verdict?
FOREMAN. We are.
CLERK of ASSIZE. Is it Guilty, or Guilty but insane?
FOREMAN. Guilty.
The JUDGE nods; then, gathering up his notes, sits looking at
FALDER, who stands motionless.
FROME. [Rising] If your lordship would allow me to address you in
mitigation of sentence. I don't know if your lordship thinks I can
add anything to what I have said to the jury on the score of the
prisoner's youth, and the great stress under which he acted.
THE JUDGE. I don't think you can, Mr. Frome.
FROME. If your lordship says so--I do most earnestly beg your
lordship to give the utmost weight to my plea. [He sits down.]
THE JUDGE. [To the CLERK] Call upon him.
THE CLERK. Prisoner at the bar, you stand convicted of felony. Have
you anything to say for yourself, why the Court should not give you
judgment according to law? [FALDER shakes his head]
THE JUDGE. William Falder, you have been given fair trial and found
guilty, in my opinion rightly found guilty, of forgery. [He pauses;
then, consulting his notes, goes on] The defence was set up that you
were not responsible for your actions at the moment of committing
this crime. There is no, doubt, I think, that this was a device to
bring out at first hand the nature of the temptation to which you
succumbed. For throughout the trial your counsel was in reality
making an appeal for mercy. The setting up of this defence of course
enabled him to put in some evidence that might weigh in that
direction. Whether he was well advised to so is another matter. He
claimed that you should be treated rather as a patient than as a
criminal. And this plea of his, which in the end amounted to a
passionate appeal, he based in effect on an indictment of the march
of Justice, which he practically accused of confirming and completing
the process of criminality. Now, in considering how far I should
allow weight to his appeal; I have a number of factors to take into
account. I have to consider on the one hand the grave nature of your
offence, the deliberate way in which you subsequently altered the
counterfoil, the danger you caused to an innocent man--and that, to
my mind, is a very grave point--and finally I have to consider the
necessity of deterring others from following your example. On the
other hand, I have to bear in mind that you are young, that you have
hitherto borne a good character, that you were, if I am to believe
your evidence and that of your witnesses, in a state of some
emotional excitement when you committed this crime. I have every
wish, consistently with my duty--not only to you, but to the
community--to treat you with leniency. And this brings me to what
are the determining factors in my mind in my consideration of your
case. You are a clerk in a lawyer's office--that is a very serious
element in this case; there can be no possible excuse made for you on
the ground that you were not fully conversant with the nature of the
crime you were committing, and the penalties that attach to it. It
is said, however, that you were carried away by your emotions. The
story has been told here to-day of your relations with this--er--Mrs.
Honeywill; on that story both the defence and the plea for mercy were
in effect based. Now what is that story? It is that you, a young
man, and she, a young woman, unhappily married, had formed an
attachment, which you both say--with what truth I am unable to gauge
--had not yet resulted in immoral relations, but which you both admit
was about to result in such relationship. Your counsel has made an
attempt to palliate this, on the ground that the woman is in what he
describes, I think, as "a hopeless position." As to that I can
express no opinion. She is a married woman, and the fact is patent
that you committed this crime with the view of furthering an immoral
design. Now, however I might wish, I am not able to justify to my
conscience a plea for mercy which has a basis inimical to morality.
It is vitiated 'ab initio', and would, if successful, free you for
the completion of this immoral project. Your counsel has made an
attempt to trace your offence back to what he seems to suggest is a
defect in the marriage law; he has made an attempt also to show that
to punish you with further imprisonment would be unjust. I do not
follow him in these flights. The Law is what it is--a majestic
edifice, sheltering all of us, each stone of which rests on another.
I am concerned only with its administration. The crime you have
committed is a very serious one. I cannot feel it in accordance with
my duty to Society to exercise the powers I have in your favour. You
will go to penal servitude for three years.
FALDER, who throughout the JUDGE'S speech has looked at him
steadily, lets his head fall forward on his breast. RUTH starts
up from her seat as he is taken out by the warders. There is a
bustle in court.
THE JUDGE. [Speaking to the reporters] Gentlemen of the Press, I
think that the name of the female witness should not be reported.
The reporters bow their acquiescence. THE JUDGE. [To RUTH, who
is staring in the direction in which FALDER has disappeared] Do
you understand, your name will not be mentioned?
COKESON. [Pulling her sleeve] The judge is speaking to you.
RUTH turns, stares at the JUDGE, and turns away.
THE JUDGE. I shall sit rather late to-day. Call the next case.
CLERK of ASSIZE. [To a warder] Put up John Booley.
To cries of "Witnesses in the case of Booley":
The curtain falls.
ACT III
SCENE I
A prison. A plainly furnished room, with two large barred
windows, overlooking the prisoners' exercise yard, where men, in
yellow clothes marked with arrows, and yellow brimless caps, are
seen in single file at a distance of four yards from each other,
walking rapidly on serpentine white lines marked on the concrete
floor of the yard. Two warders in blue uniforms, with peaked
caps and swords, are stationed amongst them. The room has
distempered walls, a bookcase with numerous official-looking
books, a cupboard between the windows, a plan of the prison on
the wall, a writing-table covered with documents. It is
Christmas Eve.
The GOVERNOR, a neat, grave-looking man, with a trim, fair
moustache, the eyes of a theorist, and grizzled hair, receding
from the temples, is standing close to this writing-table
looking at a sort of rough saw made out of a piece of metal.
The hand in which he holds it is gloved, for two fingers
are missing. The chief warder, WOODER, a tall, thin,
military-looking man of sixty, with grey moustache and
melancholy, monkey-like eyes, stands very upright two paces
from him.
THE GOVERNOR. [With a faint, abstracted smile] Queer-looking
affair, Mr. Wooder! Where did you find it?
WOODER. In his mattress, sir. Haven't come across such a thing for
two years now.
THE GOVERNOR. [With curiosity] Had he any set plan?
WOODER. He'd sawed his window-bar about that much. [He holds up his
thumb and finger a quarter of an inch apart]
THE GOVERNOR. I'll see him this afternoon. What's his name?
Moaney! An old hand, I think?
WOODER. Yes, sir-fourth spell of penal. You'd think an old lag like
him would have had more sense by now. [With pitying contempt]
Occupied his mind, he said. Breaking in and breaking out--that's all
they think about.
THE GOVERNOR. Who's next him?
WOODER. O'Cleary, sir.
THE GOVERNOR. The Irishman.
WOODER. Next him again there's that young fellow, Falder--star
class--and next him old Clipton.
THE GOVERNOR. Ah, yes! "The philosopher." I want to see him about
his eyes.
WOODER. Curious thing, sir: they seem to know when there's one of
these tries at escape going on. It makes them restive--there's a
regular wave going through them just now.
THE GOVERNOR. [Meditatively] Odd things--those waves. [Turning to
look at the prisoners exercising] Seem quiet enough out here!
WOODER. That Irishman, O'Cleary, began banging on his door this
morning. Little thing like that's quite enough to upset the whole
lot. They're just like dumb animals at times.
THE GOVERNOR. I've seen it with horses before thunder--it'll run
right through cavalry lines.
The prison CHAPLAIN has entered. He is a dark-haired, ascetic
man, in clerical undress, with a peculiarly steady, tight-lipped
face and slow, cultured speech.
THE GOVERNOR. [Holding up the saw] Seen this, Miller?
THE CHAPLAIN. Useful-looking specimen.
THE GOVERNOR. Do for the Museum, eh! [He goes to the cupboard and
opens it, displaying to view a number of quaint ropes, hooks, and
metal tools with labels tied on them] That'll do, thanks, Mr.
Wooder.
WOODER. [Saluting] Thank you, sir. [He goes out]
THE GOVERNOR. Account for the state of the men last day or two,
Miller? Seems going through the whole place.
THE CHAPLAIN. No. I don't know of anything.
THE GOVERNOR. By the way, will you dine with us on Christmas Day?
THE CHAPLAIN. To-morrow. Thanks very much.
THE GOVERNOR. Worries me to feel the men discontented. [Gazing at
the saw] Have to punish this poor devil. Can't help liking a man
who tries to escape. [He places the saw in his pocket and locks the
cupboard again]
THE CHAPLAIN. Extraordinary perverted will-power--some of them.
Nothing to be done till it's broken.
THE GOVERNOR. And not much afterwards, I'm afraid. Ground too hard
for golf?
WOODER comes in again.
WOODER. Visitor who's been seeing Q 3007 asks to speak to you, sir.
I told him it wasn't usual.
THE GOVERNOR. What about?
WOODER. Shall I put him off, sir?
THE GOVERNOR. [Resignedly] No, no. Let's see him. Don't go,
Miller.
WOODER motions to some one without, and as the visitor comes in
withdraws.
The visitor is COKESON, who is attired in a thick overcoat to
the knees, woollen gloves, and carries a top hat.
COKESON. I'm sorry to trouble you. I've been talking to the young
man.
THE GOVERNOR. We have a good many here.
COKESON. Name of Falder, forgery. [Producing a card, and handing it
to the GOVERNOR] Firm of James and Walter How. Well known in the
law.
THE GOVERNOR. [Receiving the card-with a faint smile] What do you
want to see me about, sir?
COKESON. [Suddenly seeing the prisoners at exercise] Why! what a
sight!
THE GOVERNOR. Yes, we have that privilege from here; my office is
being done up. [Sitting down at his table] Now, please!
COKESON. [Dragging his eyes with difficulty from the window] I
wanted to say a word to you; I shan't keep you long.
[Confidentially] Fact is, I oughtn't to be here by rights. His
sister came to me--he's got no father and mother--and she was in some
distress. "My husband won't let me go and see him," she said; "says
he's disgraced the family. And his other sister," she said, "is an
invalid." And she asked me to come. Well, I take an interest in
him. He was our junior--I go to the same chapel--and I didn't like
to refuse. And what I wanted to tell you was, he seems lonely here.
THE GOVERNOR. Not unnaturally.
COKESON. I'm afraid it'll prey on my mind. I see a lot of them
about working together.
THE GOVERNOR. Those are local prisoners. The convicts serve their
three months here in separate confinement, sir.
COKESON. But we don't want to be unreasonable. He's quite
downhearted. I wanted to ask you to let him run about with the
others.
THE GOVERNOR. [With faint amusement] Ring the bell-would you,
Miller? [To COKESON] You'd like to hear what the doctor says about
him, perhaps.
THE CHAPLAIN. [Ringing the bell] You are not accustomed to prisons,
it would seem, sir.
COKESON. No. But it's a pitiful sight. He's quite a young fellow.
I said to him: "Before a month's up" I said, "you'll be out and about
with the others; it'll be a nice change for you." "A month!" he said
--like that! "Come!" I said, "we mustn't exaggerate. What's a
month? Why, it's nothing!" "A day," he said, "shut up in your cell
thinking and brooding as I do, it's longer than a year outside. I
can't help it," he said; "I try--but I'm built that way, Mr.
COKESON." And, he held his hand up to his face. I could see the
tears trickling through his fingers. It wasn't nice.
THE CHAPLAIN. He's a young man with large, rather peculiar eyes,
isn't he? Not Church of England, I think?
COKESON. No.
THE CHAPLAIN. I know.
THE GOVERNOR. [To WOODER, who has come in] Ask the doctor to be
good enough to come here for a minute. [WOODER salutes, and goes
out] Let's see, he's not married?
COKESON. No. [Confidentially] But there's a party he's very much
attached to, not altogether com-il-fa. It's a sad story.
THE CHAPLAIN. If it wasn't for drink and women, sir, this prison
might be closed.
COKESON. [Looking at the CHAPLAIN over his spectacles] Ye-es, but I
wanted to tell you about that, special. He had hopes they'd have let
her come and see him, but they haven't. Of course he asked me
questions. I did my best, but I couldn't tell the poor young fellow
a lie, with him in here--seemed like hitting him. But I'm afraid
it's made him worse.
THE GOVERNOR. What was this news then?
COKESON. Like this. The woman had a nahsty, spiteful feller for a
husband, and she'd left him. Fact is, she was going away with our
young friend. It's not nice--but I've looked over it. Well, when he
was put in here she said she'd earn her living apart, and wait for
him to come out. That was a great consolation to him. But after a
month she came to me--I don't know her personally--and she said:
"I can't earn the children's living, let alone my own--I've got no
friends. I'm obliged to keep out of everybody's way, else my
husband'd get to know where I was. I'm very much reduced," she said.
And she has lost flesh. "I'll have to go in the workhouse!" It's a
painful story. I said to her: "No," I said, "not that! I've got a
wife an' family, but sooner than you should do that I'll spare you a
little myself." "Really," she said--she's a nice creature--"I don't
like to take it from you. I think I'd better go back to my husband."
Well, I know he's a nahsty, spiteful feller--drinks--but I didn't
like to persuade her not to.
THE CHAPLAIN. Surely, no.
COKESON. Ye-es, but I'm sorry now; it's upset the poor young fellow
dreadfully. And what I wanted to say was: He's got his three years
to serve. I want things to be pleasant for him.
THE CHAPLAIN. [With a touch of impatience] The Law hardly shares
your view, I'm afraid.
COKESON. But I can't help thinking that to shut him up there by
himself'll turn him silly. And nobody wants that, I s'pose. I don't
like to see a man cry.
THE CHAPLAIN. It's a very rare thing for them to give way like that.
COKESON. [Looking at him-in a tone of sudden dogged hostility]
I keep dogs.
THE CHAPLAIN. Indeed?
COKESON. Ye-es. And I say this: I wouldn't shut one of them up all
by himself, month after month, not if he'd bit me all over.
THE CHAPLAIN. Unfortunately, the criminal is not a dog; he has a
sense of right and wrong.
COKESON. But that's not the way to make him feel it.
THE CHAPLAIN. Ah! there I'm afraid we must differ.
COKESON. It's the same with dogs. If you treat 'em with kindness
they'll do anything for you; but to shut 'em up alone, it only makes
'em savage.
THE CHAPLAIN. Surely you should allow those who have had a little
more experience than yourself to know what is best for prisoners.
COKESON. [Doggedly] I know this young feller, I've watched him for
years. He's eurotic--got no stamina. His father died of
consumption. I'm thinking of his future. If he's to be kept there
shut up by himself, without a cat to keep him company, it'll do him
harm. I said to him: "Where do you feel it?" "I can't tell you, Mr.
COKESON," he said, "but sometimes I could beat my head against the
wall." It's not nice.
During this speech the DOCTOR has entered. He is a
medium-Sized, rather good-looking man, with a quick eye.
He stands leaning against the window.
THE GOVERNOR. This gentleman thinks the separate is telling on
Q 3007--Falder, young thin fellow, star class. What do you say,
Doctor Clements?
THE DOCTOR. He doesn't like it, but it's not doing him any harm.
COKESON. But he's told me.
THE DOCTOR. Of course he'd say so, but we can always tell. He's
lost no weight since he's been here.
COKESON. It's his state of mind I'm speaking of.
THE DOCTOR. His mind's all right so far. He's nervous, rather
melancholy. I don't see signs of anything more. I'm watching him
carefully.
COKESON. [Nonplussed] I'm glad to hear you say that.
THE CHAPLAIN. [More suavely] It's just at this period that we are
able to make some impression on them, sir. I am speaking from my
special standpoint.
COKESON. [Turning bewildered to the GOVERNOR] I don't want to be
unpleasant, but having given him this news, I do feel it's awkward.
THE GOVERNOR. I'll make a point of seeing him to-day.
COKESON. I'm much obliged to you. I thought perhaps seeing him
every day you wouldn't notice it.
THE GOVERNOR. [Rather sharply] If any sign of injury to his health
shows itself his case will be reported at once. That's fully
provided for. [He rises]
COKESON. [Following his own thoughts] Of course, what you don't see
doesn't trouble you; but having seen him, I don't want to have him on
my mind.
THE GOVERNOR. I think you may safely leave it to us, sir.
COKESON. [Mollified and apologetic] I thought you'd understand me.
I'm a plain man--never set myself up against authority. [Expanding
to the CHAPLAIN] Nothing personal meant. Good-morning.
As he goes out the three officials do not look at each other,
but their faces wear peculiar expressions.
THE CHAPLAIN. Our friend seems to think that prison is a hospital.
COKESON. [Returning suddenly with an apologetic air] There's just
one little thing. This woman--I suppose I mustn't ask you to let him
see her. It'd be a rare treat for them both. He's thinking about
her all the time. Of course she's not his wife. But he's quite safe
in here. They're a pitiful couple. You couldn't make an exception?
THE GOVERNOR. [Wearily] As you say, my dear sir, I couldn't make an
exception; he won't be allowed another visit of any sort till he goes
to a convict prison.
COKESON. I see. [Rather coldly] Sorry to have troubled you.
[He again goes out]
THE CHAPLAIN. [Shrugging his shoulders] The plain man indeed, poor
fellow. Come and have some lunch, Clements?
He and the DOCTOR go out talking.
The GOVERNOR, with a sigh, sits down at his table and takes up a
pen.
The curtain falls.
SCENE II
Part of the ground corridor of the prison. The walls are
coloured with greenish distemper up to a stripe of deeper green
about the height of a man's shoulder, and above this line are
whitewashed. The floor is of blackened stones. Daylight is
filtering through a heavily barred window at the end. The doors
of four cells are visible. Each cell door has a little round
peep-hole at the level of a man's eye, covered by a little round
disc, which, raised upwards, affords a view o f the cell. On
the wall, close to each cell door, hangs a little square board
with the prisoner's name, number, and record.
Overhead can be seen the iron structures of the first-floor and
second-floor corridors.
The WARDER INSTRUCTOR, a bearded man in blue uniform, with an
apron, and some dangling keys, is just emerging from one of the
cells.
INSTRUCTOR. [Speaking from the door into the cell] I'll have
another bit for you when that's finished.
O'CLEARY. [Unseen--in an Irish voice] Little doubt o' that, sirr.
INSTRUCTOR. [Gossiping] Well, you'd rather have it than nothing, I
s'pose.
O'CLEARY. An' that's the blessed truth.
Sounds are heard of a cell door being closed and locked, and of
approaching footsteps.
INSTRUCTOR. [In a sharp, changed voice] Look alive over it!
He shuts the cell door, and stands at attention.
The GOVERNOR comes walking down the corridor, followed by
WOODER.
THE GOVERNOR. Anything to report?
INSTRUCTOR. [Saluting] Q 3007 [he points to a cell] is behind
with his work, sir. He'll lose marks to-day.
The GOVERNOR nods and passes on to the end cell. The INSTRUCTOR
goes away.
THE GOVERNOR. This is our maker of saws, isn't it?
He takes the saw from his pocket as WOODER throws open the door
of the cell. The convict MOANEY is seen lying on his bed,
athwart the cell, with his cap on. He springs up and stands in
the middle of the cell. He is a raw-boned fellow, about
fifty-six years old, with outstanding bat's ears and fierce,
staring, steel-coloured eyes.
WOODER. Cap off! [MOANEY removes his cap] Out here! [MOANEY Comes
to the door]
THE GOVERNOR. [Beckoning him out into the corridor, and holding up
the saw--with the manner of an officer speaking to a private]
Anything to say about this, my man? [MOANEY is silent] Come!
MOANEY. It passed the time.
THE GOVERNOR. [Pointing into the cell] Not enough to do, eh?
MOANEY. It don't occupy your mind.
THE GOVERNOR. [Tapping the saw] You might find a better way than
this.
MOANEY. [Sullenly] Well! What way? I must keep my hand in against
the time I get out. What's the good of anything else to me at my
time of life? [With a gradual change to civility, as his tongue
warms] Ye know that, sir. I'll be in again within a year or two,
after I've done this lot. I don't want to disgrace meself when I'm
out. You've got your pride keeping the prison smart; well, I've got
mine. [Seeing that the GOVERNOR is listening with interest, he goes
on, pointing to the saw] I must be doin' a little o' this. It's no
harm to any one. I was five weeks makin' that saw--a, bit of all
right it is, too; now I'll get cells, I suppose, or seven days' bread
and water. You can't help it, sir, I know that--I quite put meself
in your place.
THE GOVERNOR. Now, look here, Moaney, if I pass it over will you
give me your word not to try it on again? Think! [He goes into the
cell, walks to the end of it, mounts the stool, and tries the
window-bars]
THE GOVERNOR. [Returning] Well?
MOANEY. [Who has been reflecting] I've got another six weeks to do
in here, alone. I can't do it and think o' nothing. I must have
something to interest me. You've made me a sporting offer, sir, but
I can't pass my word about it. I shouldn't like to deceive a
gentleman. [Pointing into the cell] Another four hours' steady work
would have done it.
THE GOVERNOR. Yes, and what then? Caught, brought back, punishment.
Five weeks' hard work to make this, and cells at the end of it, while
they put anew bar to your window. Is it worth it, Moaney?
MOANEY. [With a sort of fierceness] Yes, it is.
THE GOVERNOR. [Putting his hand to his brow] Oh, well! Two days'
cells-bread and water.
MOANEY. Thank 'e, sir.
He turns quickly like an animal and slips into his cell.
The GOVERNOR looks after him and shakes his head as WOODER
closes and locks the cell door.
THE GOVERNOR. Open Clipton's cell.
WOODER opens the door of CLIPTON'S cell. CLIPTON is sitting on
a stool just inside the door, at work on a pair of trousers. He
is a small, thick, oldish man, with an almost shaven head, and
smouldering little dark eyes behind smoked spectacles. He gets
up and stands motionless in the doorway, peering at his
visitors.
THE GOVERNOR. [Beckoning] Come out here a minute, Clipton.
CLIPTON, with a sort of dreadful quietness, comes into the
corridor, the needle and thread in his hand. The GOVERNOR signs
to WOODER, who goes into the cell and inspects it carefully.
THE GOVERNOR. How are your eyes?
CLIFTON. I don't complain of them. I don't see the sun here. [He
makes a stealthy movement, protruding his neck a little] There's
just one thing, Mr. Governor, as you're speaking to me. I wish you'd
ask the cove next door here to keep a bit quieter.
THE GOVERNOR. What's the matter? I don't want any tales, Clipton.
CLIPTON. He keeps me awake. I don't know who he is. [With
contempt] One of this star class, I expect. Oughtn't to be here
with us.
THE GOVERNOR. [Quietly] Quite right, Clipton. He'll be moved when
there's a cell vacant.
CLIPTON. He knocks about like a wild beast in the early morning.
I'm not used to it--stops me getting my sleep out. In the evening
too. It's not fair, Mr. Governor, as you're speaking to me.
Sleep's the comfort I've got here; I'm entitled to take it out full.
WOODER comes out of the cell, and instantly, as though
extinguished, CLIPTON moves with stealthy suddenness back into
his cell.
WOODER. All right, sir.
THE GOVERNOR nods. The door is closed and locked.
THE GOVERNOR. Which is the man who banged on his door this morning?
WOODER. [Going towards O'CLEARY'S cell] This one, sir; O'Cleary.
He lifts the disc and glances through the peephole.
THE GOVERNOR. Open.
WOODER throws open the door. O'CLEARY, who is seated at a
little table by the door as if listening, springs up and stands
at attention jest inside the doorway. He is a broad-faced,
middle-aged man, with a wide, thin, flexible mouth, and little
holes under his high cheek-bones.
THE GOVERNOR. Where's the joke, O'Cleary?
O'CLEARY. The joke, your honour? I've not seen one for a long time.
THE GOVERNOR. Banging on your door?
O'CLEARY. Oh! that!
THE GOVERNOR. It's womanish.
O'CLEARY. An' it's that I'm becoming this two months past.
THE GOVERNOR. Anything to complain of?
O'CLEARY. NO, Sirr.
THE GOVERNOR. You're an old hand; you ought to know better.
O'CLEARY. Yes, I've been through it all.
THE GOVERNOR. You've got a youngster next door; you'll upset him.
O'CLEARY. It cam' over me, your honour. I can't always be the same
steady man.
THE GOVERNOR. Work all right?
O'CLEARY. [Taking up a rush mat he is making] Oh! I can do it on me
head. It's the miserablest stuff--don't take the brains of a mouse.
[Working his mouth] It's here I feel it--the want of a little noise
--a terrible little wud ease me.
THE GOVERNOR. You know as well as I do that if you were out in the
shops you wouldn't be allowed to talk.
O'CLEARY. [With a look of profound meaning] Not with my mouth.
THE GOVERNOR. Well, then?
O'CLEARY. But it's the great conversation I'd have.
THE GOVERNOR. [With a smile] Well, no more conversation on your
door.
O'CLEARY. No, sirr, I wud not have the little wit to repeat meself.
THE GOVERNOR. [Turning] Good-night.
O'CLEARY. Good-night, your honour.
He turns into his cell. The GOVERNOR shuts the door.
THE GOVERNOR. [Looking at the record card] Can't help liking the
poor blackguard.
WOODER. He's an amiable man, sir.
THE GOVERNOR. [Pointing down the corridor] Ask the doctor to come
here, Mr. Wooder.
WOODER salutes and goes away down the corridor.
The GOVERNOR goes to the door of FALDER'S cell. He raises his
uninjured hand to uncover the peep-hole; but, without uncovering
it, shakes his head and drops his hand; then, after scrutinising
the record board, he opens the cell door. FALDER, who is
standing against it, lurches forward.
THE GOVERNOR. [Beckoning him out] Now tell me: can't you settle
down, Falder?
FALDER. [In a breathless voice] Yes, sir.
THE GOVERNOR. You know what I mean? It's no good running your head
against a stone wall, is it?
FALDER. No, sir.
THE GOVERNOR. Well, come.
FALDER. I try, sir.
THE GOVERNOR. Can't you sleep?
FALDER. Very little. Between two o'clock and getting up's the worst
time.
THE GOVERNOR. How's that?
FALDER. [His lips twitch with a sort of smile] I don't know, sir. I
was always nervous. [Suddenly voluble] Everything seems to get such
a size then. I feel I'll never get out as long as I live.
THE GOVERNOR. That's morbid, my lad. Pull yourself together.
FALDER. [With an equally sudden dogged resentment] Yes--I've got to.
THE GOVERNOR. Think of all these other fellows?
FALDER. They're used to it.
THE GOVERNOR. They all had to go through it once for the first time,
just as you're doing now.
FALDER. Yes, sir, I shall get to be like them in time, I suppose.
THE GOVERNOR. [Rather taken aback] H'm! Well! That rests with
you. Now come. Set your mind to it, like a good fellow. You're
still quite young. A man can make himself what he likes.
FALDER. [Wistfully] Yes, sir.
THE GOVERNOR. Take a good hold of yourself. Do you read?
FALDER. I don't take the words in. [Hanging his head] I know it's
no good; but I can't help thinking of what's going on outside. In my
cell I can't see out at all. It's thick glass, sir.
THE GOVERNOR. You've had a visitor. Bad news?
FALDER. Yes.
THE GOVERNOR. You mustn't think about it.
FALDER. [Looking back at his cell] How can I help it, sir?
He suddenly becomes motionless as WOODER and the DOCTOR
approach. The GOVERNOR motions to him to go back into his cell.
FALDER. [Quick and low] I'm quite right in my head, sir. [He goes
back into his cell.]
THE GOVERNOR. [To the DOCTOR] Just go in and see him, Clements.
The DOCTOR goes into the cell. The GOVERNOR pushes the door to,
nearly closing it, and walks towards the window.
WOODER. [Following] Sorry you should be troubled like this, sir.
Very contented lot of men, on the whole.
THE GOVERNOR. [Shortly] You think so?
WOODER. Yes, sir. It's Christmas doing it, in my opinion.
THE GOVERNOR. [To himself] Queer, that!
WOODER. Beg pardon, sir?
THE GOVERNOR. Christmas!
He turns towards the window, leaving WOODER looking at him with
a sort of pained anxiety.
WOODER. [Suddenly] Do you think we make show enough, sir? If you'd
like us to have more holly?
THE GOVERNOR. Not at all, Mr. Wooder.
WOODER. Very good, sir.
The DOCTOR has come out of FALDER's Cell, and the GOVERNOR
beckons to him.
THE GOVERNOR. Well?
THE DOCTOR. I can't make anything much of him. He's nervous, of
course.
THE GOVERNOR. Is there any sort of case to report? Quite frankly,
Doctor.
THE DOCTOR. Well, I don't think the separates doing him any good;
but then I could say the same of a lot of them--they'd get on better
in the shops, there's no doubt.
THE GOVERNOR. You mean you'd have to recommend others?
THE DOCTOR. A dozen at least. It's on his nerves. There's nothing
tangible. That fellow there [pointing to O'CLEARY'S cell], for
instance--feels it just as much, in his way. If I once get away from
physical facts--I shan't know where I am. Conscientiously, sir, I
don't know how to differentiate him. He hasn't lost weight. Nothing
wrong with his eyes. His pulse is good. Talks all right.
THE GOVERNOR. It doesn't amount to melancholia?
THE DOCTOR. [Shaking his head] I can report on him if you like; but
if I do I ought to report on others.
THE GOVERNOR. I see. [Looking towards FALDER'S cell] The poor
devil must just stick it then.
As he says thin he looks absently at WOODER.
WOODER. Beg pardon, sir?
For answer the GOVERNOR stares at him, turns on his heel, and
walks away. There is a sound as of beating on metal.
THE GOVERNOR. [Stopping] Mr. Wooder?
WOODER. Banging on his door, sir. I thought we should have more of
that.
He hurries forward, passing the GOVERNOR, who follows closely.
The curtain falls.
SCENE III
FALDER's cell, a whitewashed space thirteen feet broad by seven
deep, and nine feet high, with a rounded ceiling. The floor is
of shiny blackened bricks. The barred window of opaque glass,
with a ventilator, is high up in the middle of the end wall. In
the middle of the opposite end wall is the narrow door. In a
corner are the mattress and bedding rolled up [two blankets, two
sheets, and a coverlet]. Above them is a quarter-circular
wooden shelf, on which is a Bible and several little devotional
books, piled in a symmetrical pyramid; there are also a black
hair brush, tooth-brush, and a bit of soap. In another corner
is the wooden frame of a bed, standing on end. There is a dark
ventilator under the window, and another over the door.
FALDER'S work [a shirt to which he is putting buttonholes] is
hung to a nail on the wall over a small wooden table, on which
the novel "Lorna Doone" lies open. Low down in the corner by
the door is a thick glass screen, about a foot square, covering
the gas-jet let into the wall. There is also a wooden stool, and
a pair of shoes beneath it. Three bright round tins are set
under the window.
In fast-failing daylight, FALDER, in his stockings, is seen
standing motionless, with his head inclined towards the door,
listening. He moves a little closer to the door, his stockinged
feet making no noise. He stops at the door. He is trying
harder and harder to hear something, any little thing that is
going on outside. He springs suddenly upright--as if at a
sound-and remains perfectly motionless. Then, with a heavy
sigh, he moves to his work, and stands looking at it, with his
head doom; he does a stitch or two, having the air of a man so
lost in sadness that each stitch is, as it were, a coming to
life. Then turning abruptly, he begins pacing the cell, moving
his head, like an animal pacing its cage. He stops again at the
door, listens, and, placing the palms of hip hands against it
with his fingers spread out, leans his forehead against the
iron. Turning from it, presently, he moves slowly back towards
the window, tracing his way with his finger along the top line
of the distemper that runs round the wall. He stops under the
window, and, picking up the lid of one of the tins, peers into
it. It has grown very nearly dark. Suddenly the lid falls out
of his hand with a clatter--the only sound that has broken the
silence--and he stands staring intently at the wall where the
stuff of the shirt is hanging rather white in the darkness--he
seems to be seeing somebody or something there. There is a
sharp tap and click; the cell light behind the glass screen has
been turned up. The cell is brightly lighted. FALDER is seen
gasping for breath.
A sound from far away, as of distant, dull beating on thick
metal, is suddenly audible. FALDER shrinks back, not able to
bear this sudden clamour. But the sound grows, as though some
great tumbril were rolling towards the cell. And gradually it
seems to hypnotise him. He begins creeping inch by inch
nearer to the door. The banging sound, travelling from cell to
cell, draws closer and closer; FALDER'S hands are seen moving as
if his spirit had already joined in this beating, and the sound
swells till it seems to have entered the very cell. He suddenly
raises his clenched fists. Panting violently, he flings himself
at his door, and beats on it.
The curtain falls.
ACT IV
The scene is again COKESON'S room, at a few minutes to ten of a
March morning, two years later. The doors are all open.
SWEEDLE, now blessed with a sprouting moustache, is getting the
offices ready. He arranges papers on COKESON'S table; then goes
to a covered washstand, raises the lid, and looks at himself in
the mirror. While he is gazing his full RUTH HONEYWILL comes in
through the outer office and stands in the doorway. There seems
a kind of exultation and excitement behind her habitual
impassivity.
SWEEDLE. [Suddenly seeing her, and dropping the lid of the washstand
with a bang] Hello! It's you!
RUTH. Yes.
SWEEDLE. There's only me here! They don't waste their time hurrying
down in the morning. Why, it must be two years since we had the
pleasure of seeing you. [Nervously] What have you been doing with
yourself?
RUTH. [Sardonically] Living.
SWEEDLE. [Impressed] If you want to see him [he points to COKESON'S
chair], he'll be here directly--never misses--not much. [Delicately]
I hope our friend's back from the country. His time's been up these
three months, if I remember. [RUTH nods] I was awful sorry about
that. The governor made a mistake--if you ask me.
RUTH. He did.
SWEEDLE. He ought to have given him a chanst. And, I say, the judge
ought to ha' let him go after that. They've forgot what human
nature's like. Whereas we know. [RUTH gives him a honeyed smile]
SWEEDLE. They come down on you like a cartload of bricks, flatten
you out, and when you don't swell up again they complain of it. I
know 'em--seen a lot of that sort of thing in my time. [He shakes
his head in the plenitude of wisdom] Why, only the other day the
governor----
But COKESON has come in through the outer office; brisk with
east wind, and decidedly greyer.
COKESON. [Drawing off his coat and gloves] Why! it's you! [Then
motioning SWEEDLE out, and closing the door] Quite a stranger! Must
be two years. D'you want to see me? I can give you a minute. Sit
down! Family well?
RUTH. Yes. I'm not living where I was.
COKESON. [Eyeing her askance] I hope things are more comfortable at
home.
RUTH. I couldn't stay with Honeywill, after all.
COKESON. You haven't done anything rash, I hope. I should be sorry
if you'd done anything rash.
RUTH. I've kept the children with me.
COKESON. [Beginning to feel that things are not so jolly as ha had
hoped] Well, I'm glad to have seen you. You've not heard from the
young man, I suppose, since he came out?
RUTH. Yes, I ran across him yesterday.
COKESON. I hope he's well.
RUTH. [With sudden fierceness] He can't get anything to do. It's
dreadful to see him. He's just skin and bone.
COKESON. [With genuine concern] Dear me! I'm sorry to hear that.
[On his guard again] Didn't they find him a place when his time was
up?
RUTH. He was only there three weeks. It got out.
COKESON. I'm sure I don't know what I can do for you. I don't like
to be snubby.
RUTH. I can't bear his being like that.
COKESON. [Scanning her not unprosperous figure] I know his relations
aren't very forthy about him. Perhaps you can do something for him,
till he finds his feet.
RUTH. Not now. I could have--but not now.
COKESON. I don't understand.
RUTH. [Proudly] I've seen him again--that's all over.
COKESON. [Staring at her--disturbed] I'm a family man--I don't want
to hear anything unpleasant. Excuse me--I'm very busy.
RUTH. I'd have gone home to my people in the country long ago, but
they've never got over me marrying Honeywill. I never was waywise,
Mr. Cokeson, but I'm proud. I was only a girl, you see, when I
married him. I thought the world of him, of course . . . he used
to come travelling to our farm.
COKESON. [Regretfully] I did hope you'd have got on better, after
you saw me.
RUTH. He used me worse than ever. He couldn't break my nerve, but I
lost my health; and then he began knocking the children about. I
couldn't stand that. I wouldn't go back now, if he were dying.
COKESON. [Who has risen and is shifting about as though dodging a
stream of lava] We mustn't be violent, must we?
RUTH. [Smouldering] A man that can't behave better than that--
[There is silence]
COKESON. [Fascinated in spite of himself] Then there you were! And
what did you do then?
RUTH. [With a shrug] Tried the same as when I left him before...,
making skirts... cheap things. It was the best I could get, but I
never made more than ten shillings a week, buying my own cotton and
working all day; I hardly ever got to bed till past twelve. I kept
at it for nine months. [Fiercely] Well, I'm not fit for that; I
wasn't made for it. I'd rather die.
COKESON. My dear woman! We mustn't talk like that.
RUTH. It was starvation for the children too--after what they'd
always had. I soon got not to care. I used to be too tired. [She is
silent]
COKESON. [With fearful curiosity] Why, what happened then?
RUTH. [With a laugh] My employer happened then--he's happened ever
since.
COKESON. Dear! Oh dear! I never came across a thing like this.
RUTH. [Dully] He's treated me all right. But I've done with that.
[Suddenly her lips begin to quiver, and she hides them with the back
of her hand] I never thought I'd see him again, you see. It was just
a chance I met him by Hyde Park. We went in there and sat down, and
he told me all about himself. Oh! Mr. Cokeson, give him another
chance.
COKESON. [Greatly disturbed] Then you've both lost your livings!
What a horrible position!
RUTH. If he could only get here--where there's nothing to find out
about him!
COKESON. We can't have anything derogative to the firm.
RUTH. I've no one else to go to.
COKESON. I'll speak to the partners, but I don't think they'll take
him, under the circumstances. I don't really.
RUTH. He came with me; he's down there in the street. [She points to
the window.]
COKESON. [On his dignity] He shouldn't have done that until he's
sent for. [Then softening at the look on her face] We've got a
vacancy, as it happens, but I can't promise anything.
RUTH. It would be the saving of him.
COKESON. Well, I'll do what I can, but I'm not sanguine. Now tell
him that I don't want him till I see how things are. Leave your
address? [Repeating her] 83 Mullingar Street? [He notes it on
blotting-paper] Good-morning.
RUTH. Thank you.
She moves towards the door, turns as if to speak, but does not,
and goes away.
COKESON. [Wiping his head and forehead with a large white cotton
handkerchief] What a business! [Then looking amongst his papers, he
sounds his bell. SWEEDLE answers it]
COKESON. Was that young Richards coming here to-day after the
clerk's place?
SWEEDLE. Yes.
COKESON. Well, keep him in the air; I don't want to see him yet.
SWEEDLE. What shall I tell him, sir?
COKESON. [With asperity] invent something. Use your brains. Don't
stump him off altogether.
SWEEDLE. Shall I tell him that we've got illness, sir?
COKESON. No! Nothing untrue. Say I'm not here to-day.
SWEEDLE. Yes, sir. Keep him hankering?
COKESON. Exactly. And look here. You remember Falder? I may be
having him round to see me. Now, treat him like you'd have him treat
you in a similar position.
SWEEDLE. I naturally should do.
COKESON. That's right. When a man's down never hit 'im. 'Tisn't
necessary. Give him a hand up. That's a metaphor I recommend to you
in life. It's sound policy.
SWEEDLE. Do you think the governors will take him on again, sir?
COKESON. Can't say anything about that. [At the sound of some one
having entered the outer office] Who's there?
SWEEDLE. [Going to the door and looking] It's Falder, sir.
COKESON. [Vexed] Dear me! That's very naughty of her. Tell him to
call again. I don't want----
He breaks off as FALDER comes in. FALDER is thin, pale, older,
his eyes have grown more restless. His clothes are very worn
and loose.
SWEEDLE, nodding cheerfully, withdraws.
COKESON. Glad to see you. You're rather previous. [Trying to keep
things pleasant] Shake hands! She's striking while the iron's hot.
[He wipes his forehead] I don't blame her. She's anxious.
FALDER timidly takes COKESON's hand and glances towards the
partners' door.
COKESON. No--not yet! Sit down! [FALDER sits in the chair at the
aide of COKESON's table, on which he places his cap] Now you are
here I'd like you to give me a little account of yourself. [Looking
at him over his spectacles] How's your health?
FALDER. I'm alive, Mr. Cokeson.
COKESON. [Preoccupied] I'm glad to hear that. About this matter.
I don't like doing anything out of the ordinary; it's not my habit.
I'm a plain man, and I want everything smooth and straight. But I
promised your friend to speak to the partners, and I always keep my
word.
FALDER. I just want a chance, Mr. Cokeson. I've paid for that job a
thousand times and more. I have, sir. No one knows. They say I
weighed more when I came out than when I went in. They couldn't
weigh me here [he touches his head] or here [he touches--his heart,
and gives a sort of laugh]. Till last night I'd have thought there
was nothing in here at all.
COKESON. [Concerned] You've not got heart disease?
FALDER. Oh! they passed me sound enough.
COKESON. But they got you a place, didn't they?
FALSER. Yes; very good people, knew all about it--very kind to me.
I thought I was going to get on first rate. But one day, all of a
sudden, the other clerks got wind of it.... I couldn't stick it, Mr.
COKESON, I couldn't, sir.
COKESON. Easy, my dear fellow, easy!
FALDER. I had one small job after that, but it didn't last.
COKESON. How was that?
FALDER. It's no good deceiving you, Mr. Cokeson. The fact is, I
seem to be struggling against a thing that's all round me. I can't
explain it: it's as if I was in a net; as fast as I cut it here, it
grows up there. I didn't act as I ought to have, about references;
but what are you to do? You must have them. And that made me
afraid, and I left. In fact, I'm--I'm afraid all the time now.
He bows his head and leans dejectedly silent over the table.
COKESON. I feel for you--I do really. Aren't your sisters going to
do anything for you?
FALDER. One's in consumption. And the other----
COKESON. Ye...es. She told me her husband wasn't quite pleased with
you.
FALDER. When I went there--they were at supper--my sister wanted to
give me a kiss--I know. But he just looked at her, and said: "What
have you come for?" Well, I pocketed my pride and I said: "Aren't
you going to give me your hand, Jim? Cis is, I know," I said. "Look
here!" he said, "that's all very well, but we'd better come to an
understanding. I've been expecting you, and I've made up my mind.
I'll give you fifteen pounds to go to Canada with." "I see," I
said--"good riddance! No, thanks; keep your fifteen pounds."
Friendship's a queer thing when you've been where I have.
COKESON. I understand. Will you take the fifteen pound from me?
[Flustered, as FALDER regards him with a queer smile] Quite without
prejudice; I meant it kindly.
FALDER. I'm not allowed to leave the country.
COKESON. Oh! ye...es--ticket-of-leave? You aren't looking the
thing.
FALDER. I've slept in the Park three nights this week. The dawns
aren't all poetry there. But meeting her--I feel a different man
this morning. I've often thought the being fond of hers the best
thing about me; it's sacred, somehow--and yet it did for me. That's
queer, isn't it?
COKESON. I'm sure we're all very sorry for you.
FALDER. That's what I've found, Mr. Cokeson. Awfully sorry for me.
[With quiet bitterness] But it doesn't do to associate with
criminals!
COKESON. Come, come, it's no use calling yourself names. That never
did a man any good. Put a face on it.
FALDER. It's easy enough to put a face on it, sir, when you're
independent. Try it when you're down like me. They talk about
giving you your deserts. Well, I think I've had just a bit over.
COKESON. [Eyeing him askance over his spectacles] I hope they haven't
made a Socialist of you.
FALDER is suddenly still, as if brooding over his past self; he
utters a peculiar laugh.
COKESON. You must give them credit for the best intentions. Really
you must. Nobody wishes you harm, I'm sure.
FALDER. I believe that, Mr. Cokeson. Nobody wishes you harm, but
they down you all the same. This feeling--[He stares round him, as
though at something closing in] It's crushing me. [With sudden
impersonality] I know it is.
COKESON. [Horribly disturbed] There's nothing there! We must try
and take it quiet. I'm sure I've often had you in my prayers. Now
leave it to me. I'll use my gumption and take 'em when they're
jolly. [As he speaks the two partners come in]
COKESON [Rather disconcerted, but trying to put them all at ease]
I didn't expect you quite so soon. I've just been having a talk with
this young man. I think you'll remember him.
JAMES. [With a grave, keen look] Quite well. How are you, Falder?
WALTER. [Holding out his hand almost timidly] Very glad to see you
again, Falder.
FALDER. [Who has recovered his self-control, takes the hand] Thank
you, sir.
COKESON. Just a word, Mr. James. [To FALDER, pointing to the
clerks' office] You might go in there a minute. You know your way.
Our junior won't be coming this morning. His wife's just had a
little family.
FALDER, goes uncertainly out into the clerks' office.
COKESON. [Confidentially] I'm bound to tell you all about it. He's
quite penitent. But there's a prejudice against him. And you're not
seeing him to advantage this morning; he's under-nourished. It's
very trying to go without your dinner.
JAMES. Is that so, COKESON?
COKESON. I wanted to ask you. He's had his lesson. Now we know all
about him, and we want a clerk. There is a young fellow applying,
but I'm keeping him in the air.
JAMES. A gaol-bird in the office, COKESON? I don't see it.
WALTER. "The rolling of the chariot-wheels of Justice!" I've never
got that out of my head.
JAMES. I've nothing to reproach myself with in this affair. What's
he been doing since he came out?
COKESON. He's had one or two places, but he hasn't kept them. He's
sensitive--quite natural. Seems to fancy everybody's down on him.
JAMES. Bad sign. Don't like the fellow--never did from the first.
"Weak character"'s written all over him.
WALTER. I think we owe him a leg up.
JAMES. He brought it all on himself.
WALTER. The doctrine of full responsibility doesn't quite hold in
these days.
JAMES. [Rather grimly] You'll find it safer to hold it for all
that, my boy.
WALTER. For oneself, yes--not for other people, thanks.
JAMES. Well! I don't want to be hard.
COKESON. I'm glad to hear you say that. He seems to see something
[spreading his arms] round him. 'Tisn't healthy.
JAMES. What about that woman he was mixed up with? I saw some one
uncommonly like her outside as we came in.
COKESON. That! Well, I can't keep anything from you. He has met
her.
JAMES. Is she with her husband?
COKESON. No.
JAMES. Falder living with her, I suppose?
COKESON. [Desperately trying to retain the new-found jollity] I
don't know that of my own knowledge. 'Tisn't my business.
JAMES. It's our business, if we're going to engage him, COKESON.
COKESON. [Reluctantly] I ought to tell you, perhaps. I've had the
party here this morning.
JAMES. I thought so. [To WALTER] No, my dear boy, it won't do. Too
shady altogether!
COKESON. The two things together make it very awkward for you--I see
that.
WALTER. [Tentatively] I don't quite know what we have to do with
his private life.
JAMES. No, no! He must make a clean sheet of it, or he can't come
here.
WALTER. Poor devil!
COKESON. Will you--have him in? [And as JAMES nods] I think I can
get him to see reason.
JAMES. [Grimly] You can leave that to me, COKESON.
WALTER. [To JAMES, in a low voice, while COKESON is summoning
FALDER] His whole future may depend on what we do, dad.
FALDER comes in. He has pulled himself together, and presents a
steady front.
JAMES. Now look here, Falder. My son and I want to give you another
chance; but there are two things I must say to you. In the first
place: It's no good coming here as a victim. If you've any notion
that you've been unjustly treated--get rid of it. You can't play
fast and loose with morality and hope to go scot-free. If Society
didn't take care of itself, nobody would--the sooner you realise that
the better.
FALDER. Yes, sir; but--may I say something?
JAMES. Well?
FALDER. I had a lot of time to think it over in prison. [He stops]
COKESON. [Encouraging him] I'm sure you did.
FALDER. There were all sorts there. And what I mean, sir, is, that
if we'd been treated differently the first time, and put under
somebody that could look after us a bit, and not put in prison, not a
quarter of us would ever have got there.
JAMES. [Shaking his head] I'm afraid I've very grave doubts of that,
Falder.
FALDER. [With a gleam of malice] Yes, sir, so I found.
JAMES. My good fellow, don't forget that you began it.
FALDER. I never wanted to do wrong.
JAMES. Perhaps not. But you did.
FALDER. [With all the bitterness of his past suffering] It's knocked
me out of time. [Pulling himself up] That is, I mean, I'm not what
I was.
JAMES. This isn't encouraging for us, Falder.
COKESON. He's putting it awkwardly, Mr. James.
FALDER. [Throwing over his caution from the intensity of his
feeling] I mean it, Mr. Cokeson.
JAMES. Now, lay aside all those thoughts, Falder, and look to the
future.
FALDER. [Almost eagerly] Yes, sir, but you don't understand what
prison is. It's here it gets you.
He grips his chest.
COKESON. [In a whisper to James] I told you he wanted nourishment.
WALTER. Yes, but, my dear fellow, that'll pass away. Time's
merciful.
FALDER. [With his face twitching] I hope so, sir.
JAMES. [Much more gently] Now, my boy, what you've got to do is to
put all the past behind you and build yourself up a steady
reputation. And that brings me to the second thing. This woman you
were mixed up with you must give us your word, you know, to have done
with that. There's no chance of your keeping straight if you're
going to begin your future with such a relationship.
FALDER. [Looking from one to the other with a hunted expression] But
sir . . . but sir . . . it's the one thing I looked forward to
all that time. And she too . . . I couldn't find her before last
night.
During this and what follows COKESON becomes more and more
uneasy.
JAMES. This is painful, Falder. But you must see for yourself that
it's impossible for a firm like this to close its eyes to everything.
Give us this proof of your resolve to keep straight, and you can come
back--not otherwise.
FALDER. [After staring at JAMES, suddenly stiffens himself] I
couldn't give her up. I couldn't! Oh, sir!
I'm all she's got to look to. And I'm sure she's all I've got.
JAMES. I'm very sorry, Falder, but I must be firm. It's for the
benefit of you both in the long run. No good can come of this
connection. It was the cause of all your disaster.
FALDER. But sir, it means-having gone through all that-getting
broken up--my nerves are in an awful state--for nothing. I did it
for her.
JAMES. Come! If she's anything of a woman she'll see it for
herself. She won't want to drag you down further. If there were a
prospect of your being able to marry her--it might be another thing.
FALDER. It's not my fault, sir, that she couldn't get rid of him
--she would have if she could. That's been the whole trouble from
the beginning. [Looking suddenly at WALTER] . . . If anybody
would help her! It's only money wants now, I'm sure.
COKESON. [Breaking in, as WALTER hesitates, and is about to speak] I
don't think we need consider that--it's rather far-fetched.
FALDER. [To WALTER, appealing] He must have given her full cause
since; she could prove that he drove her to leave him.
WALTER. I'm inclined to do what you say, Falder, if it can be
managed.
FALDER. Oh, sir!
He goes to the window and looks down into the street.
COKESON. [Hurriedly] You don't take me, Mr. Walter. I have my
reasons.
FALDER. [From the window] She's down there, sir. Will you see her?
I can beckon to her from here.
WALTER hesitates, and looks from COKESON to JAMES.
JAMES. [With a sharp nod] Yes, let her come.
FALDER beckons from the window.
COKESON. [In a low fluster to JAMES and WALTER] No, Mr. James.
She's not been quite what she ought to ha' been, while this young
man's been away. She's lost her chance. We can't consult how to
swindle the Law.
FALDER has come from the window. The three men look at him in a
sort of awed silence.
FALDER. [With instinctive apprehension of some change--looking from
one to the other] There's been nothing between us, sir, to prevent
it . . . . What I said at the trial was true. And last night we
only just sat in the Park.
SWEEDLE comes in from the outer office.
COKESON. What is it?
SWEEDLE. Mrs. Honeywill. [There is silence]
JAMES. Show her in.
RUTH comes slowly in, and stands stoically with FALDER on one
side and the three men on the other. No one speaks. COKESON
turns to his table, bending over his papers as though the burden
of the situation were forcing him back into his accustomed
groove.
JAMES. [Sharply] Shut the door there. [SWEEDLE shuts the door]
We've asked you to come up because there are certain facts to be
faced in this matter. I understand you have only just met Falder
again.
RUTH. Yes--only yesterday.
JAMES. He's told us about himself, and we're very sorry for him.
I've promised to take him back here if he'll make a fresh start.
[Looking steadily at RUTH] This is a matter that requires courage,
ma'am.
RUTH, who is looking at FALDER, begins to twist her hands in front of
her as though prescient of disaster.
FALDER. Mr. Walter How is good enough to say that he'll help us to
get you a divorce.
RUTH flashes a startled glance at JAMES and WALTER.
JAMES. I don't think that's practicable, Falder.
FALDER. But, Sir----!
JAMES. [Steadily] Now, Mrs. Honeywill. You're fond of him.
RUTH. Yes, Sir; I love him.
She looks miserably at FALDER.
JAMES. Then you don't want to stand in his way, do you?
RUTH. [In a faint voice] I could take care of him.
JAMES. The best way you can take care of him will be to give him up.
FALDER. Nothing shall make me give you up. You can get a divorce.
There's been nothing between us, has there?
RUTH. [Mournfully shaking her head-without looking at him] No.
FALDER. We'll keep apart till it's over, sir; if you'll only help
us--we promise.
JAMES. [To RUTH] You see the thing plainly, don't you? You see
what I mean?
RUTH. [Just above a whisper] Yes.
COKESON. [To himself] There's a dear woman.
JAMES. The situation is impossible.
RUTH. Must I, Sir?
JAMES. [Forcing himself to look at her] I put it to you, ma'am. His
future is in your hands.
RUTH. [Miserably] I want to do the best for him.
JAMES. [A little huskily] That's right, that's right!
FALDER. I don't understand. You're not going to give me up--after
all this? There's something--[Starting forward to JAMES] Sir, I
swear solemnly there's been nothing between us.
JAMES. I believe you, Falder. Come, my lad, be as plucky as she is.
FALDER. Just now you were going to help us. [He starts at RUTH, who
is standing absolutely still; his face and hands twitch and quiver as
the truth dawns on him] What is it? You've not been--
WALTER. Father!
JAMES. [Hurriedly] There, there! That'll do, that'll do! I'll
give you your chance, Falder. Don't let me know what you do with
yourselves, that's all.
FALDER. [As if he has not heard] Ruth?
RUTH looks at him; and FALDER covers his face with his hands.
There is silence.
COKESON. [Suddenly] There's some one out there. [To RUTH] Go in
here. You'll feel better by yourself for a minute.
He points to the clerks' room and moves towards the outer
office. FALDER does not move. RUTH puts out her hand timidly.
He shrinks back from the touch. She turns and goes miserably
into the clerks' room. With a brusque movement he follows,
seizing her by the shoulder just inside the doorway. COKESON
shuts the door.
JAMES. [Pointing to the outer office] Get rid of that, whoever it
is.
SWEEDLE. [Opening the office door, in a scared voice]
Detective-Sergeant blister.
The detective enters, and closes the door behind him.
WISTER. Sorry to disturb you, sir. A clerk you had here, two years
and a half ago: I arrested him in, this room.
JAMES. What about him?
WISTER. I thought perhaps I might get his whereabouts from you.
[There is an awkward silence]
COKESON. [Pleasantly, coming to the rescue] We're not responsible
for his movements; you know that.
JAMES. What do you want with him?
WISTER. He's failed to report himself this last four weeks.
WALTER. How d'you mean?
WISTER. Ticket-of-leave won't be up for another six months, sir.
WALTER. Has he to keep in touch with the police till then?
WISTER. We're bound to know where he sleeps every night. I dare say
we shouldn't interfere, sir, even though he hasn't reported himself.
But we've just heard there's a serious matter of obtaining employment
with a forged reference. What with the two things together--we must
have him.
Again there is silence. WALTER and COKESON steal glances at
JAMES, who stands staring steadily at the detective.
COKESON. [Expansively] We're very busy at the moment. If you could
make it convenient to call again we might be able to tell you then.
JAMES. [Decisively] I'm a servant of the Law, but I dislike
peaching. In fact, I can't do such a thing. If you want him you
must find him without us.
As he speaks his eye falls on FALDER'S cap, still lying on the
table, and his face contracts.
WISTER. [Noting the gesture--quietly] Very good, sir. I ought to
warn you that, having broken the terms of his licence, he's still a
convict, and sheltering a convict.
JAMES. I shelter no one. But you mustn't come here and ask
questions which it's not my business to answer.
WISTER. [Dryly] I won't trouble you further then, gentlemen.
COKESON. I'm sorry we couldn't give you the information. You quite
understand, don't you? Good-morning!
WISTER turns to go, but instead of going to the door of the
outer office he goes to the door of the clerks' room.
COKESON. The other door.... the other door!
WISTER opens the clerks' door. RUTHS's voice is heard: "Oh,
do!" and FALDER'S: "I can't!" There is a little pause; then,
with sharp fright, RUTH says: "Who's that?"
WISTER has gone in.
The three men look aghast at the door.
WISTER [From within] Keep back, please!
He comes swiftly out with his arm twisted in FALDER'S. The
latter gives a white, staring look at the three men.
WALTER. Let him go this time, for God's sake!
WISTER. I couldn't take the responsibility, sir.
FALDER. [With a queer, desperate laugh] Good!
Flinging a look back at RUTH, he throws up his head, and goes
out through the outer office, half dragging WISTER after him.
WALTER. [With despair] That finishes him. It'll go on for ever
now.
SWEEDLE can be seen staring through the outer door. There are
sounds of footsteps descending the stone stairs; suddenly a dull
thud, a faint "My God!" in WISTER's voice.
JAMES. What's that?
SWEEDLE dashes forward. The door swings to behind him. There
is dead silence.
WALTER. [Starting forward to the inner room] The woman-she's
fainting!
He and COKESON support the fainting RUTH from the doorway of the
clerks' room.
COKESON. [Distracted] Here, my dear! There, there!
WALTER. Have you any brandy?
COKESON. I've got sherry.
WALTER. Get it, then. Quick!
He places RUTH in a chair--which JAMES has dragged forward.
COKESON. [With sherry] Here! It's good strong sherry. [They try to
force the sherry between her lips.]
There is the sound of feet, and they stop to listen.
The outer door is reopened--WISTER and SWEEDLE are seen carrying
some burden.
JAMES. [Hurrying forward] What is it?
They lay the burden doom in the outer office, out of sight, and
all but RUTH cluster round it, speaking in hushed voices.
WISTER. He jumped--neck's broken.
WALTER. Good God!
WISTER. He must have been mad to think he could give me the slip
like that. And what was it--just a few months!
WALTER. [Bitterly] Was that all?
JAMES. What a desperate thing! [Then, in a voice unlike his own]
Run for a doctor--you! [SWEEDLE rushes from the outer office] An
ambulance!
WISTER goes out. On RUTH's face an expression of fear and
horror has been seen growing, as if she dared not turn towards
the voices. She now rises and steals towards them.
WALTER. [Turning suddenly] Look!
The three men shrink back out of her way, one by one, into
COKESON'S room. RUTH drops on her knees by the body.
RUTH. [In a whisper] What is it? He's not breathing. [She
crouches over him] My dear! My pretty!
In the outer office doorway the figures of men am seen standing.
RUTH. [Leaping to her feet] No, no! No, no! He's dead!
[The figures of the men shrink back]
COKESON. [Stealing forward. In a hoarse voice] There, there, poor
dear woman!
At the sound behind her RUTH faces round at him.
COKESON. No one'll touch him now! Never again! He's safe with
gentle Jesus!
RUTH stands as though turned to stone in the doorway staring at
COKESON, who, bending humbly before her, holds out his hand as
one would to a lost dog.
The curtain falls.
GALSWORTHY PLAYS--SERIES 3
Contents:
The Fugitive
The Pigeon
The Mob
THE FUGITIVE
A Play in Four Acts
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
GEORGE DEDMOND, a civilian
CLARE, his wife
GENERAL SIR CHARLES DEDMOND, K.C.B., his father.
LADY DEDMOND, his mother
REGINALD HUNTINGDON, Clare's brother
EDWARD FULLARTON, her friend
DOROTHY FULLARTON, her friend
PAYNTER, a manservant
BURNEY, a maid
TWISDEN, a solicitor
HAYWOOD, a tobacconist
MALISE, a writer
MRS. MILER, his caretaker
THE PORTER at his lodgings
A BOY messenger
ARNAUD, a waiter at "The Gascony"
MR. VARLEY, manager of "The Gascony"
TWO LADIES WITH LARGE HATS, A LADY AND GENTLEMAN, A LANGUID LORD,
HIS COMPANION, A YOUNG MAN, A BLOND GENTLEMAN, A DARK GENTLEMAN.
ACT I. George Dedmond's Flat. Evening.
ACT II. The rooms of Malise. Morning.
ACT III. SCENE I. The rooms of Malice. Late afternoon.
SCENE II. The rooms of Malise. Early Afternoon.
ACT IV. A small supper room at "The Gascony."
Between Acts I and II three nights elapse.
Between Acts II and Act III, Scene I, three months.
Between Act III, Scene I, and Act III, Scene II, three months.
Between Act III, Scene II, and Act IV, six months.
"With a hey-ho chivy
Hark forrard, hark forrard, tantivy!"
ACT I
The SCENE is the pretty drawing-room of a flat. There are two
doors, one open into the hall, the other shut and curtained.
Through a large bay window, the curtains of which are not yet
drawn, the towers of Westminster can be seen darkening in a
summer sunset; a grand piano stands across one corner. The
man-servant PAYNTER, clean-shaven and discreet, is arranging two
tables for Bridge.
BURNEY, the maid, a girl with one of those flowery Botticellian
faces only met with in England, comes in through the curtained
door, which she leaves open, disclosing the glimpse of a white
wall. PAYNTER looks up at her; she shakes her head, with an
expression of concern.
PAYNTER. Where's she gone?
BURNEY. Just walks about, I fancy.
PAYNTER. She and the Governor don't hit it! One of these days
she'll flit--you'll see. I like her--she's a lady; but these
thoroughbred 'uns--it's their skin and their mouths. They'll go till
they drop if they like the job, and if they don't, it's nothing but
jib--jib--jib. How was it down there before she married him?
BURNEY. Oh! Quiet, of course.
PAYNTER. Country homes--I know 'em. What's her father, the old
Rector, like?
BURNEY. Oh! very steady old man. The mother dead long before I took
the place.
PAYNTER. Not a penny, I suppose?
BURNEY. [Shaking her head] No; and seven of them.
PAYNTER. [At sound of the hall door] The Governor!
BURNEY withdraws through the curtained door.
GEORGE DEDMOND enters from the hall. He is in evening dress,
opera hat, and overcoat; his face is broad, comely, glossily
shaved, but with neat moustaches. His eyes, clear, small, and
blue-grey, have little speculation. His hair is well brushed.
GEORGE. [Handing PAYNTER his coat and hat] Look here, Paynter!
When I send up from the Club for my dress things, always put in a
black waistcoat as well.
PAYNTER. I asked the mistress, sir.
GEORGE. In future--see?
PAYNTER. Yes, sir. [Signing towards the window] Shall I leave the
sunset, sir?
But GEORGE has crossed to the curtained door; he opens it and
says: "Clare!" Receiving no answer, he goes in. PAYNTER
switches up the electric light. His face, turned towards the
curtained door, is apprehensive.
GEORGE. [Re-entering] Where's Mrs. Dedmond?
PAYNTER. I hardly know, sir.
GEORGE. Dined in?
PAYNTER. She had a mere nothing at seven, sir.
GEORGE. Has she gone out, since?
PAYNTER. Yes, sir--that is, yes. The--er--mistress was not dressed
at all. A little matter of fresh air, I think; sir.
GEORGE. What time did my mother say they'd be here for Bridge?
PAYNTER. Sir Charles and Lady Dedmond were coming at half-past nine;
and Captain Huntingdon, too--Mr. and Mrs. Fullarton might be a bit
late, sir.
GEORGE. It's that now. Your mistress said nothing?
PAYNTER. Not to me, sir.
GEORGE. Send Burney.
PAYNTER. Very good, sir. [He withdraws.]
GEORGE stares gloomily at the card tables. BURNEY comes in
front the hall.
GEORGE. Did your mistress say anything before she went out?
BURNEY. Yes, sir.
GEORGE. Well?
BURNEY. I don't think she meant it, sir.
GEORGE. I don't want to know what you don't think, I want the fact.
BURNEY. Yes, sir. The mistress said: "I hope it'll be a pleasant
evening, Burney!"
GEORGE. Oh!--Thanks.
BURNEY. I've put out the mistress's things, sir.
GEORGE. Ah!
BURNEY. Thank you, sir. [She withdraws.]
GEORGE. Damn!
He again goes to the curtained door, and passes through.
PAYNTER, coming in from the hall, announces: "General Sir
Charles and Lady Dedmond." SIR CHARLES is an upright,
well-groomed, grey-moustached, red-faced man of sixty-seven, with
a keen eye for molehills, and none at all for mountains. LADY
DEDMOND has a firm, thin face, full of capability and decision,
not without kindliness; and faintly weathered, as if she had
faced many situations in many parts of the world. She is fifty
five.
PAYNTER withdraws.
SIR CHARLES. Hullo! Where are they? H'm!
As he speaks, GEORGE re-enters.
LADY DEDMOND. [Kissing her son] Well, George. Where's Clare?
GEORGE. Afraid she's late.
LADY DEDMOND. Are we early?
GEORGE. As a matter of fact, she's not in.
LADY DEDMOND. Oh?
SIR CHARLES. H'm! Not--not had a rumpus?
GEORGE. Not particularly. [With the first real sign of feeling]
What I can't stand is being made a fool of before other people.
Ordinary friction one can put up with. But that----
SIR CHARLES. Gone out on purpose? What!
LADY DEDMOND. What was the trouble?
GEORGE. I told her this morning you were coming in to Bridge.
Appears she'd asked that fellow Malise, for music.
LADY DEDMOND. Without letting you know?
GEORGE. I believe she did tell me.
LADY DEDMOND. But surely----
GEORGE. I don't want to discuss it. There's never anything in
particular. We're all anyhow, as you know.
LADY DEDMOND. I see. [She looks shrewdly at her son] My dear,
I should be rather careful about him, I think.
SIR CHARLES. Who's that?
LADY DEDMOND. That Mr. Malise.
SIR CHARLES. Oh! That chap!
GEORGE. Clare isn't that sort.
LADY DEDMOND. I know. But she catches up notions very easily. I
think it's a great pity you ever came across him.
SIR CHARLES. Where did you pick him up?
GEORGE. Italy--this Spring--some place or other where they couldn't
speak English.
SIR CHARLES. Um! That's the worst of travellin'.
LADY DEDMOND. I think you ought to have dropped him. These literary
people---[Quietly] From exchanging ideas to something else, isn't
very far, George.
SIR CHARLES. We'll make him play Bridge. Do him good, if he's that
sort of fellow.
LADY DEDMOND. Is anyone else coming?
GEORGE. Reggie Huntingdon, and the Fullartons.
LADY DEDMOND. [Softly] You know, my dear boy, I've been meaning to
speak to you for a long time. It is such a pity you and Clare--What
is it?
GEORGE. God knows! I try, and I believe she does.
SIR CHARLES. It's distressin'--for us, you know, my dear fellow--
distressin'.
LADY DEDMOND. I know it's been going on for a long time.
GEORGE. Oh! leave it alone, mother.
LADY DEDMOND. But, George, I'm afraid this man has brought it to a
point--put ideas into her head.
GEORGE. You can't dislike him more than I do. But there's nothing
one can object to.
LADY DEDMOND. Could Reggie Huntingdon do anything, now he's home?
Brothers sometimes----
GEORGE. I can't bear my affairs being messed about----
LADY DEDMOND. Well! it would be better for you and Clare to be
supposed to be out together, than for her to be out alone. Go
quietly into the dining-room and wait for her.
SIR CHARLES. Good! Leave your mother to make up something. She'll
do it!
LADY DEDMOND. That may be he. Quick!
[A bell sounds.]
GEORGE goes out into the hall, leaving the door open in his
haste. LADY DEDMOND, following, calls "Paynter!" PAYNTER
enters.
LADY DEDMOND. Don't say anything about your master and mistress
being out. I'll explain.
PAYNTER. The master, my lady?
LADY DEDMOND. Yes, I know. But you needn't say so. Do you
understand?
PAYNTER. [In polite dudgeon] Just so, my lady.
[He goes out.]
SIR CHARLES. By Jove! That fellow smells a rat!
LADY DEDMOND. Be careful, Charles!
SIR CHARLES. I should think so.
LADY DEDMOND. I shall simply say they're dining out, and that we're
not to wait Bridge for them.
SIR CHARLES. [Listening] He's having a palaver with that man of
George's.
PAYNTER, reappearing, announces: "Captain Huntingdon." SIR
CHARLES and LADY DEDMOND turn to him with relief.
LADY DEDMOND. Ah! It's you, Reginald!
HUNTINGDON. [A tall, fair soldier, of thirty] How d'you do? How are
you, sir? What's the matter with their man?
SHE CHARLES. What!
HUNTINGDON. I was going into the dining-room to get rid of my cigar;
and he said: "Not in there, sir. The master's there, but my
instructions are to the effect that he's not."
SHE CHARLES. I knew that fellow----
LADY DEDMOND. The fact is, Reginald, Clare's out, and George is
waiting for her. It's so important people shouldn't----
HUNTINGDON. Rather!
They draw together, as people do, discussing the misfortunes of
members of their families.
LADY DEDMOND. It's getting serious, Reginald. I don't know what's
to become of them. You don't think the Rector--you don't think your
father would speak to Clare?
HUNTINGDON. Afraid the Governor's hardly well enough. He takes
anything of that sort to heart so--especially Clare.
SIR CHARLES. Can't you put in a word yourself?
HUNTINGDON. Don't know where the mischief lies.
SIR CHARLES. I'm sure George doesn't gallop her on the road. Very
steady-goin' fellow, old George.
HUNTINGDON. Oh, yes; George is all right, sir.
LADY DEDMOND. They ought to have had children.
HUNTINGDON. Expect they're pretty glad now they haven't. I really
don't know what to say, ma'am.
SIR CHARLES. Saving your presence, you know, Reginald, I've often
noticed parsons' daughters grow up queer. Get too much morality and
rice puddin'.
LADY DEDMOND. [With a clear look] Charles!
SIR CHARLES. What was she like when you were kids?
HUNTINGDON. Oh, all right. Could be rather a little devil, of
course, when her monkey was up.
SIR CHARLES. I'm fond of her. Nothing she wants that she hasn't
got, is there?
HUNTINGDON. Never heard her say so.
SIR CHARLES. [Dimly] I don't know whether old George is a bit too
matter of fact for her. H'm?
[A short silence.]
LADY DEDMOND. There's a Mr. Malise coming here to-night. I forget
if you know him.
HUNTINGDON. Yes. Rather a thorough-bred mongrel.
LADY DEDMOND. He's literary. [With hesitation] You--you don't
think he--puts--er--ideas into her head?
HUNTINGDON. I asked Greyman, the novelist, about him; seems he's a
bit of an Ishmaelite, even among those fellows. Can't see Clare----
LADY DEDMOND. No. Only, the great thing is that she shouldn't be
encouraged. Listen!--It is her-coming in. I can hear their voices.
Gone to her room. What a blessing that man isn't here yet! [The
door bell rings] Tt! There he is, I expect.
SIR CHARLES. What are we goin' to say?
HUNTINGDON. Say they're dining out, and we're not to wait Bridge for
them.
SIR CHARLES. Good!
The door is opened, and PAYNTER announces "Mr. Kenneth Malise."
MALISE enters. He is a tall man, about thirty-five, with a
strongly marked, dark, irregular, ironic face, and eyes which
seem to have needles in their pupils. His thick hair is rather
untidy, and his dress clothes not too new.
LADY DEDMOND. How do you do? My son and daughter-in-law are so very
sorry. They'll be here directly.
[MALISE bows with a queer, curly smile.]
SIR CHARLES. [Shaking hands] How d'you do, sir?
HUNTINGDON. We've met, I think.
He gives MALISE that peculiar smiling stare, which seems to warn
the person bowed to of the sort of person he is. MALISE'S eyes
sparkle.
LADY DEDMOND. Clare will be so grieved. One of those invitations
MALISE. On the spur of the moment.
SIR CHARLES. You play Bridge, sir?
MALISE. Afraid not!
SIR CHARLES. Don't mean that? Then we shall have to wait for 'em.
LADY DEDMOND. I forget, Mr. Malise--you write, don't you?
MALISE. Such is my weakness.
LADY DEDMOND. Delightful profession.
SIR CHARLES. Doesn't tie you! What!
MALISE. Only by the head.
SIR CHARLES. I'm always thinkin' of writin' my experiences.
MALISE. Indeed!
[There is the sound of a door banged.]
SIR CHARLES. [Hastily] You smoke, Mr. MALISE?
MALISE. Too much.
SIR CHARLES. Ah! Must smoke when you think a lot.
MALISE. Or think when you smoke a lot.
SIR CHARLES. [Genially] Don't know that I find that.
LADY DEDMOND. [With her clear look at him] Charles!
The door is opened. CLARE DEDMOND in a cream-coloured evening
frock comes in from the hall, followed by GEORGE. She is rather
pale, of middle height, with a beautiful figure, wavy brown
hair, full, smiling lips, and large grey mesmeric eyes, one of
those women all vibration, iced over with a trained stoicism of
voice and manner.
LADY DEDMOND. Well, my dear!
SIR CHARLES. Ah! George. Good dinner?
GEORGE. [Giving his hand to MALISE] How are you? Clare! Mr.
MALISE!
CLARE. [Smiling-in a clear voice with the faintest possible lisp]
Yes, we met on the door-mat. [Pause.]
SIR CHARLES. Deuce you did! [An awkward pause.]
LADY DEDMOND. [Acidly] Mr. Malise doesn't play Bridge, it appears.
Afraid we shall be rather in the way of music.
SIR CHARLES. What! Aren't we goin' to get a game? [PAYNTER has
entered with a tray.]
GEORGE. Paynter! Take that table into the dining room.
PAYNTER. [Putting down the tray on a table behind the door] Yes,
sir.
MALISE. Let me give you a hand.
PAYNTER and MALISE carry one of the Bridge tables out, GEORGE
making a half-hearted attempt to relieve MALISE.
SIR CHARLES. Very fine sunset!
Quite softly CLARE begins to laugh. All look at her first with
surprise, then with offence, then almost with horror. GEORGE is
about to go up to her, but HUNTINGDON heads him off.
HUNTINGDON. Bring the tray along, old man.
GEORGE takes up the tray, stops to look at CLARE, then allows
HUNTINGDON to shepherd him out.
LADY DEDMOND. [Without looking at CLARE] Well, if we're going to
play, Charles? [She jerks his sleeve.]
SIR CHARLES. What? [He marches out.]
LADY DEDMOND. [Meeting MALISE in the doorway] Now you will be able
to have your music.
[She follows the GENERAL out]
[CLARE stands perfectly still, with her eyes closed.]
MALISE. Delicious!
CLARE. [In her level, clipped voice] Perfectly beastly of me! I'm
so sorry. I simply can't help running amok to-night.
MALISE. Never apologize for being fey. It's much too rare.
CLARE. On the door-mat! And they'd whitewashed me so beautifully!
Poor dears! I wonder if I ought----[She looks towards the door.]
MALISE. Don't spoil it!
CLARE. I'd been walking up and down the Embankment for about three
hours. One does get desperate sometimes.
MALISE. Thank God for that!
CLARE. Only makes it worse afterwards. It seems so frightful to
them, too.
MALISE. [Softly and suddenly, but with a difficulty in finding the
right words] Blessed be the respectable! May they dream of--me!
And blessed be all men of the world! May they perish of a surfeit
of--good form!
CLARE. I like that. Oh, won't there be a row! [With a faint
movement of her shoulders] And the usual reconciliation.
MALISE. Mrs. Dedmond, there's a whole world outside yours. Why
don't you spread your wings?
CLARE. My dear father's a saint, and he's getting old and frail; and
I've got a sister engaged; and three little sisters to whom I'm
supposed to set a good example. Then, I've no money, and I can't do
anything for a living, except serve in a shop. I shouldn't be free,
either; so what's the good? Besides, I oughtn't to have married if I
wasn't going to be happy. You see, I'm not a bit misunderstood or
ill-treated. It's only----
MALISE. Prison. Break out!
CLARE. [Turning to the window] Did you see the sunset? That white
cloud trying to fly up?
[She holds up her bare arms, with a motion of flight.]
MALISE. [Admiring her] Ah-h-h! [Then, as she drops her arms
suddenly] Play me something.
CLARE. [Going to the piano] I'm awfully grateful to you. You don't
make me feel just an attractive female. I wanted somebody like that.
[Letting her hands rest on the notes] All the same, I'm glad not to
be ugly.
MALISE. Thank God for beauty!
PAYNTER. [Opening the door] Mr. and Mrs. Fullarton.
MALISE. Who are they?
CLARE. [Rising] She's my chief pal. He was in the Navy.
She goes forward. MRS. FULLERTON is a rather tall woman, with
dark hair and a quick eye. He, one of those clean-shaven naval
men of good presence who have retired from the sea, but not from
their susceptibility.
MRS. FULLARTON. [Kissing CLARE, and taking in both MALISE and her
husband's look at CLARE] We've only come for a minute.
CLARE. They're playing Bridge in the dining-room. Mr. Malise
doesn't play. Mr. Malise--Mrs. Fullarton, Mr. Fullarton.
[They greet.]
FULLARTON. Most awfully jolly dress, Mrs. Dedmond.
MRS. FULLARTON. Yes, lovely, Clare. [FULLARTON abases eyes which
mechanically readjust themselves] We can't stay for Bridge, my dear;
I just wanted to see you a minute, that's all. [Seeing HUNTINGDON
coming in she speaks in a low voice to her husband] Edward, I want
to speak to Clare. How d'you do, Captain Huntingdon?
MALISE. I'll say good-night.
He shakes hands with CLARE, bows to MRS. FULLARTON, and makes
his way out. HUNTINGDON and FULLERTON foregather in the
doorway.
MRS. FULLARTON. How are things, Clare? [CLARE just moves her
shoulders] Have you done what I suggested? Your room?
CLARE. No.
MRS. FULLARTON. Why not?
CLARE. I don't want to torture him. If I strike--I'll go clean. I
expect I shall strike.
MRS. FULLARTON. My dear! You'll have the whole world against you.
CLARE. Even you won't back me, Dolly?
MRS. FULLARTON. Of course I'll back you, all that's possible, but I
can't invent things.
CLARE. You wouldn't let me come to you for a bit, till I could find
my feet?
MRS. FULLARTON, taken aback, cannot refrain from her glance at
FULLARTON automatically gazing at CLARE while he talks with
HUNTINGDON.
MRS. FULLARTON. Of course--the only thing is that----
CLARE. [With a faint smile] It's all right, Dolly. I'm not coming.
MRS. FULLARTON. Oh! don't do anything desperate, Clare--you are so
desperate sometimes. You ought to make terms--not tracks.
CLARE. Haggle? [She shakes her head] What have I got to make terms
with? What he still wants is just what I hate giving.
MRS. FULLARTON. But, Clare----
CLARE. No, Dolly; even you don't understand. All day and every day
--just as far apart as we can be--and still--Jolly, isn't it? If
you've got a soul at all.
MRS. FULLARTON. It's awful, really.
CLARE. I suppose there are lots of women who feel as I do, and go on
with it; only, you see, I happen to have something in me that--comes
to an end. Can't endure beyond a certain time, ever.
She has taken a flower from her dress, and suddenly tears it to
bits. It is the only sign of emotion she has given.
MRS. FULLARTON. [Watching] Look here, my child; this won't do. You
must get a rest. Can't Reggie take you with him to India for a bit?
CLARE. [Shaking her head] Reggie lives on his pay.
MRS. FULLARTON. [With one of her quick looks] That was Mr. Malise,
then?
FULLARTON. [Coming towards them] I say, Mrs. Dedmond, you wouldn't
sing me that little song you sang the other night, [He hums] "If I
might be the falling bee and kiss thee all the day"? Remember?
MRS. FULLARTON. "The falling dew," Edward. We simply must go,
Clare. Good-night. [She kisses her.]
FULLARTON. [Taking half-cover between his wife and CLARE] It suits
you down to the ground-that dress.
CLARE. Good-night.
HUNTINGDON sees them out. Left alone CLARE clenches her hands,
moves swiftly across to the window, and stands looking out.
HUNTINGDON. [Returning] Look here, Clare!
CLARE. Well, Reggie?
HUNTINGDON. This is working up for a mess, old girl. You can't do
this kind of thing with impunity. No man'll put up with it. If
you've got anything against George, better tell me. [CLARE shakes
her head] You ought to know I should stick by you. What is it?
Come?
CLARE. Get married, and find out after a year that she's the wrong
person; so wrong that you can't exchange a single real thought; that
your blood runs cold when she kisses you--then you'll know.
HUNTINGDON. My dear old girl, I don't want to be a brute; but it's a
bit difficult to believe in that, except in novels.
CLARE. Yes, incredible, when you haven't tried.
HUNTINGDON. I mean, you--you chose him yourself. No one forced you
to marry him.
CLARE. It does seem monstrous, doesn't it?
HUNTINGDON. My dear child, do give us a reason.
CLARE. Look! [She points out at the night and the darkening towers]
If George saw that for the first time he'd just say, "Ah,
Westminster! Clock Tower! Can you see the time by it?" As if one
cared where or what it was--beautiful like that! Apply that to every
--every--everything.
HUNTINGDON. [Staring] George may be a bit prosaic. But, my dear old
girl, if that's all----
CLARE. It's not all--it's nothing. I can't explain, Reggie--it's
not reason, at all; it's--it's like being underground in a damp cell;
it's like knowing you'll never get out. Nothing coming--never
anything coming again-never anything.
HUNTINGDON. [Moved and puzzled] My dear old thing; you mustn't get
into fantods like this. If it's like that, don't think about it.
CLARE. When every day and every night!--Oh! I know it's my fault
for having married him, but that doesn't help.
HUNTINGDON. Look here! It's not as if George wasn't quite a decent
chap. And it's no use blinking things; you are absolutely dependent
on him. At home they've got every bit as much as they can do to keep
going.
CLARE. I know.
HUNTINGDON. And you've got to think of the girls. Any trouble would
be very beastly for them. And the poor old Governor would feel it
awfully.
CLARE. If I didn't know all that, Reggie, I should have gone home
long ago.
HUNTINGDON. Well, what's to be done? If my pay would run to it--but
it simply won't.
CLARE. Thanks, old boy, of course not.
HUNTINGDON. Can't you try to see George's side of it a bit?
CLARE. I do. Oh! don't let's talk about it.
HUNTINGDON. Well, my child, there's just one thing you won't go
sailing near the wind, will you? I mean, there are fellows always on
the lookout.
CLARE. "That chap, Malise, you'd better avoid him!" Why?
HUNTINGDON. Well! I don't know him. He may be all right, but he's
not our sort. And you're too pretty to go on the tack of the New
Woman and that kind of thing--haven't been brought up to it.
CLARE. British home-made summer goods, light and attractive--don't
wear long. [At the sound of voices in the hall] They seem 'to be
going, Reggie.
[HUNTINGDON looks at her, vexed, unhappy.]
HUNTINGDON. Don't head for trouble, old girl. Take a pull. Bless
you! Good-night.
CLARE kisses him, and when he has gone turns away from the door,
holding herself in, refusing to give rein to some outburst of
emotion. Suddenly she sits down at the untouched Bridge table,
leaning her bare elbows on it and her chin on her hands, quite
calm. GEORGE is coming in. PAYNTER follows him.
CLARE. Nothing more wanted, thank you, Paynter. You can go home,
and the maids can go to bed.
PAYNTER. We are much obliged, ma'am.
CLARE. I ran over a dog, and had to get it seen to.
PAYNTER. Naturally, ma'am!
CLARE. Good-night.
PAYNTER. I couldn't get you a little anything, ma'am?
CLARE. No, thank you.
PAYNTER. No, ma'am. Good-night, ma'am.
[He withdraws.]
GEORGE. You needn't have gone out of your way to tell a lie that
wouldn't deceive a guinea-pig. [Going up to her] Pleased with
yourself to-night? [CLARE shakes her head] Before that fellow
MALISE; as if our own people weren't enough!
CLARE. Is it worth while to rag me? I know I've behaved badly, but
I couldn't help it, really!
GEORGE. Couldn't help behaving like a shop-girl? My God! You were
brought up as well as I was.
CLARE. Alas!
GEORGE. To let everybody see that we don't get on--there's only one
word for it--Disgusting!
CLARE. I know.
GEORGE. Then why do you do it? I've always kept my end up. Why in
heaven's name do you behave in this crazy way?
CLARE. I'm sorry.
GEORGE. [With intense feeling] You like making a fool of me!
CLARE. No--Really! Only--I must break out sometimes.
GEORGE. There are things one does not do.
CLARE. I came in because I was sorry.
GEORGE. And at once began to do it again! It seems to me you
delight in rows.
CLARE. You'd miss your--reconciliations.
GEORGE. For God's sake, Clare, drop cynicism!
CLARE. And truth?
GEORGE. You are my wife, I suppose.
CLARE. And they twain shall be one--spirit.
GEORGE. Don't talk wild nonsense!
[There is silence.]
CLARE. [Softly] I don't give satisfaction. Please give me notice!
GEORGE. Pish!
CLARE. Five years, and four of them like this! I'm sure we've
served our time. Don't you really think we might get on better
together--if I went away?
GEORGE. I've told you I won't stand a separation for no real reason,
and have your name bandied about all over London. I have some
primitive sense of honour.
CLARE. You mean your name, don't you?
GEORGE. Look here. Did that fellow Malise put all this into your
head?
CLARE. No; my own evil nature.
GEORGE. I wish the deuce we'd never met him. Comes of picking up
people you know nothing of. I distrust him--and his looks--and his
infernal satiric way. He can't even 'dress decently. He's not--good
form.
CLARE. [With a touch of rapture] Ah-h!
GEORGE. Why do you let him come? What d'you find interesting in
him?
CLARE. A mind.
GEORGE. Deuced funny one! To have a mind--as you call it--it's not
necessary to talk about Art and Literature.
CLARE. We don't.
GEORGE. Then what do you talk about--your minds? [CLARE looks at
him] Will you answer a straight question? Is he falling in love
with you?
CLARE. You had better ask him.
GEORGE. I tell you plainly, as a man of the world, I don't believe
in the guide, philosopher and friend business.
CLARE. Thank you.
A silence. CLARE suddenly clasps her hands behind her head.
CLARE. Let me go! You'd be much happier with any other woman.
GEORGE. Clare!
CLARE. I believe--I'm sure I could earn my living. Quite serious.
GEORGE. Are you mad?
CLARE. It has been done.
GEORGE. It will never be done by you--understand that!
CLARE. It really is time we parted. I'd go clean out of your life.
I don't want your support unless I'm giving you something for your
money.
GEORGE. Once for all, I don't mean to allow you to make fools of us
both.
CLARE. But if we are already! Look at us. We go on, and on. We're
a spectacle!
GEORGE. That's not my opinion; nor the opinion of anyone, so long as
you behave yourself.
CLARE. That is--behave as you think right.
GEORGE. Clare, you're pretty riling.
CLARE. I don't want to be horrid. But I am in earnest this time.
GEORGE. So am I.
[CLARE turns to the curtained door.]
GEORGE. Look here! I'm sorry. God knows I don't want to be a
brute. I know you're not happy.
CLARE. And you--are you happy?
GEORGE. I don't say I am. But why can't we be?
CLARE. I see no reason, except that you are you, and I am I.
GEORGE. We can try.
CLARE. I HAVE--haven't you?
GEORGE. We used----
CLARE. I wonder!
GEORGE. You know we did.
CLARE. Too long ago--if ever.
GEORGE [Coming closer] I--still----
CLARE. [Making a barrier of her hand] You know that's only cupboard
love.
GEORGE. We've got to face the facts.
CLARE. I thought I was.
GEORGE. The facts are that we're married--for better or worse, and
certain things are expected of us. It's suicide for you, and folly
for me, in my position, to ignore that. You have all you can
reasonably want; and I don't--don't wish for any change. If you
could bring anything against me--if I drank, or knocked about town,
or expected too much of you. I'm not unreasonable in any way, that I
can see.
CLARE. Well, I think we've talked enough.
[She again moves towards the curtained door.]
GEORGE. Look here, Clare; you don't mean you're expecting me to put
up with the position of a man who's neither married nor unmarried?
That's simple purgatory. You ought to know.
CLARE. Yes. I haven't yet, have I?
GEORGE. Don't go like that! Do you suppose we're the only couple
who've found things aren't what they thought, and have to put up with
each other and make the best of it.
CLARE. Not by thousands.
GEORGE. Well, why do you imagine they do it?
CLARE. I don't know.
GEORGE. From a common sense of decency.
CLARE. Very!
GEORGE. By Jove! You can be the most maddening thing in all the
world! [Taking up a pack of cards, he lets them fall with a long
slithering flutter] After behaving as you have this evening, you
might try to make some amends, I should think.
CLARE moves her head from side to side, as if in sight of
something she could not avoid. He puts his hand on her arm.
CLARE. No, no--no!
GEORGE. [Dropping his hand] Can't you make it up?
CLARE. I don't feel very Christian.
She opens the door, passes through, and closes it behind her.
GEORGE steps quickly towards it, stops, and turns back into the
room. He goes to the window and stands looking out; shuts it
with a bang, and again contemplates the door. Moving forward,
he rests his hand on the deserted card table, clutching its
edge, and muttering. Then he crosses to the door into the hall
and switches off the light. He opens the door to go out, then
stands again irresolute in the darkness and heaves a heavy sigh.
Suddenly he mutters: "No!" Crosses resolutely back to the
curtained door, and opens it. In the gleam of light CLARE is
standing, unhooking a necklet.
He goes in, shutting the door behind him with a thud.
CURTAIN.
ACT II
The scene is a large, whitewashed, disordered room, whose outer
door opens on to a corridor and stairway. Doors on either side
lead to other rooms. On the walls are unframed reproductions of
fine pictures, secured with tintacks. An old wine-coloured
armchair of low and comfortable appearance, near the centre of
the room, is surrounded by a litter of manuscripts, books, ink,
pens and newspapers, as though some one had already been up to
his neck in labour, though by a grandfather's clock it is only
eleven. On a smallish table close by, are sheets of paper,
cigarette ends, and two claret bottles. There are many books on
shelves, and on the floor, an overflowing pile, whereon rests a
soft hat, and a black knobby stick. MALISE sits in his
armchair, garbed in trousers, dressing-gown, and slippers,
unshaved and uncollared, writing. He pauses, smiles, lights a
cigarette, and tries the rhythm of the last sentence, holding up
a sheet of quarto MS.
MALISE. "Not a word, not a whisper of Liberty from all those
excellent frock-coated gentlemen--not a sign, not a grimace. Only
the monumental silence of their profound deference before triumphant
Tyranny."
While he speaks, a substantial woman, a little over middle-age,
in old dark clothes and a black straw hat, enters from the
corridor. She goes to a cupboard, brings out from it an apron
and a Bissell broom. Her movements are slow and imperturbable,
as if she had much time before her. Her face is broad and dark,
with Chinese eyebrows.
MALISE. Wait, Mrs. Miller!
MRS. MILER. I'm gettin' be'ind'and, sir.
She comes and stands before him. MALISE writes.
MRS. MILER. There's a man 'angin' about below.
MALISE looks up; seeing that she has roused his attention, she
stops. But as soon as he is about to write again, goes on.
MRS. MILER. I see him first yesterday afternoon. I'd just been out
to get meself a pennyworth o' soda, an' as I come in I passed 'im on
the second floor, lookin' at me with an air of suspicion. I thought
to meself at the time, I thought: You're a'andy sort of 'ang-dog man.
MALISE. Well?
MRS. MILER. Well-peekin' down through the balusters, I see 'im
lookin' at a photograft. That's a funny place, I thinks, to look at
pictures--it's so dark there, ye 'ave to use yer eyesight. So I giv'
a scrape with me 'eel [She illustrates] an' he pops it in his pocket,
and puts up 'is 'and to knock at number three. I goes down an' I
says: "You know there's no one lives there, don't yer?" "Ah!" 'e
says with an air of innercence, "I wants the name of Smithers."
"Oh!" I says, "try round the corner, number ten." "Ah!" 'e says
tactful, "much obliged." "Yes," I says, "you'll find 'im in at this
time o' day. Good evenin'!" And I thinks to meself [She closes one
eye] Rats! There's a good many corners hereabouts.
MALISE. [With detached appreciation] Very good, Mrs. Miler.
MRS. MILER. So this mornin', there e' was again on the first floor
with 'is 'and raised, pretendin' to knock at number two. "Oh!
you're still lookin' for 'im?" I says, lettin' him see I was 'is
grandmother. "Ah!" 'e says, affable, "you misdirected me; it's here
I've got my business." "That's lucky," I says, "cos nobody lives
there neither. Good mornin'!" And I come straight up. If you want
to see 'im at work you've only to go downstairs, 'e'll be on the
ground floor by now, pretendin' to knock at number one. Wonderful
resource!
MALISE. What's he like, this gentleman?
MRS. MILER. Just like the men you see on the front page o' the daily
papers. Nasty, smooth-lookin' feller, with one o' them billycock
hats you can't abide.
MALISE. Isn't he a dun?
MRS. MILER. They don't be'ave like that; you ought to know, sir.
He's after no good. [Then, after a little pause] Ain't he to be put
a stop to? If I took me time I could get 'im, innercent-like, with a
jug o' water.
[MALISE, smiling, shakes his head.]
MALISE. You can get on now; I'm going to shave.
He looks at the clock, and passes out into the inner room. MRS.
MILER, gazes round her, pins up her skirt, sits down in the
armchair, takes off her hat and puts it on the table, and slowly
rolls up her sleeves; then with her hands on her knees she
rests. There is a soft knock on the door. She gets up
leisurely and moves flat-footed towards it. The door being
opened CLARE is revealed.
CLARE. Is Mr. Malise in?
MRS. MILER. Yes. But 'e's dressin'.
CLARE. Oh.
MRS. MILER. Won't take 'im long. What name?
CLARE. Would you say--a lady.
MRS. MILER. It's against the rules. But if you'll sit down a moment
I'll see what I can do. [She brings forward a chair and rubs it with
her apron. Then goes to the door of the inner room and speaks
through it] A lady to see you. [Returning she removes some
cigarette ends] This is my hour. I shan't make much dust. [Noting
CLARE's eyebrows raised at the debris round the armchair] I'm
particular about not disturbin' things.
CLARE. I'm sure you are.
MRS. MILER. He likes 'is 'abits regular.
Making a perfunctory pass with the Bissell broom, she runs it to
the cupboard, comes back to the table, takes up a bottle and
holds it to the light; finding it empty, she turns it upside
down and drops it into the wastepaper basket; then, holding up
the other bottle, and finding it not empty, she corks it and
drops it into the fold of her skirt.
MRS. MILER. He takes his claret fresh-opened--not like these 'ere
bawgwars.
CLARE. [Rising] I think I'll come back later.
MRS. MILER. Mr. Malise is not in my confidence. We keep each other
to ourselves. Perhaps you'd like to read the paper; he has it fresh
every mornin'--the Westminister.
She plucks that journal from out of the armchair and hands it to
CLARE, who sits doom again unhappily to brood. MRS. MILER makes
a pass or two with a very dirty duster, then stands still. No
longer hearing sounds, CLARE looks up.
MRS. MILER. I wouldn't interrupt yer with my workin,' but 'e likes
things clean. [At a sound from the inner room] That's 'im; 'e's cut
'isself! I'll just take 'im the tobaccer!
She lifts a green paper screw of tobacco from the debris round
the armchair and taps on the door. It opens. CLARE moves
restlessly across the room.
MRS. MILER. [Speaking into the room] The tobaccer. The lady's
waitin'.
CLARE has stopped before a reproduction of Titian's picture
"Sacred and Profane Love." MRS. MILER stands regarding her with
a Chinese smile. MALISE enters, a thread of tobacco still
hanging to his cheek.
MALISE. [Taking MRS. MILER's hat off the table and handing it to
her] Do the other room.
[Enigmatically she goes.]
MALISE. Jolly of you to come. Can I do anything?
CLARE. I want advice-badly.
MALISE. What! Spreading your wings?
CLARE. Yes.
MALISE. Ah! Proud to have given you that advice. When?
CLARE. The morning after you gave it me . . .
MALISE. Well?
CLARE. I went down to my people. I knew it would hurt my Dad
frightfully, but somehow I thought I could make him see. No good.
He was awfully sweet, only--he couldn't.
MALISE. [Softly] We English love liberty in those who don't belong
to us. Yes.
CLARE. It was horrible. There were the children--and my old nurse.
I could never live at home now. They'd think I was----. Impossible
--utterly! I'd made up my mind to go back to my owner--And then--
he came down himself. I couldn't d it. To be hauled back and begin
all over again; I simply couldn't. I watched for a chance; and ran
to the station, and came up to an hotel.
MALISE. Bravo!
CLARE. I don't know--no pluck this morning! You see, I've got to
earn my living--no money; only a few things I can sell. All
yesterday I was walking about, looking at the women. How does anyone
ever get a chance?
MALISE. Sooner than you should hurt his dignity by working, your
husband would pension you off.
CLARE. If I don't go back to him I couldn't take it.
MALISE. Good!
CLARE. I've thought of nursing, but it's a long training, and I do
so hate watching pain. The fact is, I'm pretty hopeless; can't even
do art work. I came to ask you about the stage.
MALISE. Have you ever acted? [CLARE shakes her head] You mightn't
think so, but I've heard there's a prejudice in favour of training.
There's Chorus--I don't recommend it. How about your brother?
CLARE. My brother's got nothing to spare, and he wants to get
married; and he's going back to India in September. The only friend
I should care to bother is Mrs. Fullarton, and she's--got a husband.
MALISE. I remember the gentleman.
CLARE. Besides, I should be besieged day and night to go back. I
must lie doggo somehow.
MALISE. It makes my blood boil to think of women like you. God help
all ladies without money.
CLARE. I expect I shall have to go back.
MALISE. No, no! We shall find something. Keep your soul alive at
all costs. What! let him hang on to you till you're nothing but--
emptiness and ache, till you lose even the power to ache. Sit in his
drawing-room, pay calls, play Bridge, go out with him to dinners,
return to--duty; and feel less and less, and be less and less, and so
grow old and--die!
[The bell rings.]
MALISE. [Looking at the door in doubt] By the wayhe'd no means of
tracing you?
[She shakes her head.]
[The bell rings again.]
MALISE. Was there a man on the stairs as you came up?
CLARE. Yes. Why?
MALISE. He's begun to haunt them, I'm told.
CLARE. Oh! But that would mean they thought I--oh! no!
MALISE. Confidence in me is not excessive.
CLARE. Spying!
MALISE. Will you go in there for a minute? Or shall we let them
ring--or--what? It may not be anything, of course.
CLARE. I'm not going to hide.
[The bell rings a third time.]
MALISE. [Opening the door of the inner room] Mrs. Miler, just see
who it is; and then go, for the present.
MRS. MILER comes out with her hat on, passes enigmatically to
the door, and opens it. A man's voice says: "Mr. Malise? Would
you give him these cards?"
MRS. MILER. [Re-entering] The cards.
MALISE. Mr. Robert Twisden. Sir Charles and Lady Dedmond. [He
looks at CLARE.]
CLARE. [Her face scornful and unmoved] Let them come.
MALISE. [TO MRS. MILER] Show them in!
TWISDEN enters-a clean-shaved, shrewd-looking man, with a
fighting underlip, followed by SIR CHARLES and LADY DEDMOND.
MRS. MILER goes. There are no greetings.
TWISDEN. Mr. Malise? How do you do, Mrs. Dedmond? Had the
pleasure of meeting you at your wedding. [CLARE inclines her head]
I am Mr. George Dedmond's solicitor, sir. I wonder if you would be
so very kind as to let us have a few words with Mrs. Dedmond alone?
At a nod from CLARE, MALISE passes into the inner room, and
shuts the door. A silence.
SIR CHARLES. [Suddenly] What!
LADY DEDMOND. Mr. Twisden, will you----?
TWISDEN. [Uneasy] Mrs. Dedmond I must apologize, but you--you
hardly gave us an alternative, did you? [He pauses for an answer,
and, not getting one, goes on] Your disappearance has given your
husband great anxiety. Really, my dear madam, you must forgive us
for this--attempt to get into communication.
CLARE. Why did you spy, HERE?
SIR CHARLES. No, no! Nobody's spied on you. What!
TWISDEN. I'm afraid the answer is that we appear to have been
justified. [At the expression on CLARE'S face he goes on hastily]
Now, Mrs. Dedmond, I'm a lawyer and I know that appearances are
misleading. Don't think I'm unfriendly; I wish you well. [CLARE
raises her eyes. Moved by that look, which is exactly as if she had
said: "I have no friends," he hurries on] What we want to say to you
is this: Don't let this split go on! Don't commit yourself to what
you'll bitterly regret. Just tell us what's the matter. I'm sure it
can be put straight.
CLARE. I have nothing against my husband--it was quite unreasonable
to leave him.
TWISDEN. Come, that's good.
CLARE. Unfortunately, there's something stronger than reason.
TWISDEN. I don't know it, Mrs. Dedmond.
CLARE. No?
TWISDEN. [Disconcerted] Are you--you oughtn't to take a step without
advice, in your position.
CLARE. Nor with it?
TWISDEN. [Approaching her] Come, now; isn't there anything you feel
you'd like to say--that might help to put matters straight?
CLARE. I don't think so, thank you.
LADY DEDMOND. You must see, Clare, that----
TWISDEN. In your position, Mrs. Dedmond--a beautiful young woman
without money. I'm quite blunt. This is a hard world. Should be
awfully sorry if anything goes wrong.
CLARE. And if I go back?
TWISDEN. Of two evils, if it be so--choose the least!
CLARE. I am twenty-six; he is thirty-two. We can't reasonably
expect to die for fifty years.
LADY DESMOND. That's morbid, Clare.
TWISDEN. What's open to you if you don't go back? Come, what's your
position? Neither fish, flesh, nor fowl; fair game for everybody.
Believe me, Mrs. Dedmond, for a pretty woman to strike, as it appears
you're doing, simply because the spirit of her marriage has taken
flight, is madness. You must know that no one pays attention to
anything but facts. If now--excuse me--you--you had a lover, [His
eyes travel round the room and again rest on her] you would, at all
events, have some ground under your feet, some sort of protection,
but [He pauses] as you have not--you've none.
CLARE. Except what I make myself.
SIR CHARLES. Good God!
TWISDEN. Yes! Mrs. Dedmond! There's the bedrock difficulty. As
you haven't money, you should never have been pretty. You're up
against the world, and you'll get no mercy from it. We lawyers see
too much of that. I'm putting it brutally, as a man of the world.
CLARE. Thank you. Do you think you quite grasp the alternative?
TWISDEN. [Taken aback] But, my dear young lady, there are two sides
to every contract. After all, your husband's fulfilled his.
CLARE. So have I up till now. I shan't ask anything from him--
nothing--do you understand?
LADY DEDMOND. But, my dear, you must live.
TWISDEN. Have you ever done any sort of work?
CLARE. Not yet.
TWISDEN. Any conception of the competition nowadays?
CLARE. I can try.
[TWISDEN, looking at her, shrugs his shoulders]
CLARE. [Her composure a little broken by that look] It's real to
me--this--you see!
SIR CHARLES. But, my dear girl, what the devil's to become of
George?
CLARE. He can do what he likes--it's nothing to me.
TWISDEN. Mrs. Dedmond, I say without hesitation you've no notion of
what you're faced with, brought up to a sheltered life as you've
been. Do realize that you stand at the parting of the ways, and one
leads into the wilderness.
CLARE. Which?
TWISDEN. [Glancing at the door through which MALISE has gone] Of
course, if you want to play at wild asses there are plenty who will
help you.
SIR CHARLES. By Gad! Yes!
CLARE. I only want to breathe.
TWISDEN. Mrs. Dedmond, go back! You can now. It will be too late
soon. There are lots of wolves about. [Again he looks at the door]
CLARE. But not where you think. You say I need advice. I came here
for it.
TWISDEN. [With a curiously expressive shrug] In that case I don't
know that I can usefully stay.
[He goes to the outer door.]
CLARE. Please don't have me followed when I leave here. Please!
LADY DEDMOND. George is outside, Clare.
CLARE. I don't wish to see him. By what right have you come here?
[She goes to the door through which MALISE has passed, opens it, and
says] Please come in, Mr. Malise.
[MALISE enters.]
TWISDEN. I am sorry. [Glancing at MALISE, he inclines his head] I
am sorry. Good morning. [He goes]
LADY DEDMOND. Mr. Malise, I'm sure, will see----
CLARE. Mr. Malise will stay here, please, in his own room.
[MALISE bows]
SIR CHARLES. My dear girl, 'pon my soul, you know, I can't grasp
your line of thought at all!
CLARE. No?
LADY DEDMOND. George is most willing to take up things just as they
were before you left.
CLARE. Ah!
LADY DEDMOND. Quite frankly--what is it you want?
CLARE. To be left alone. Quite frankly, he made a mistake to have
me spied on.
LADY DEDMOND. But, my good girl, if you'd let us know where you
were, like a reasonable being. You can't possibly be left to
yourself without money or position of any kind. Heaven knows what
you'd be driven to!
MALISE. [Softly] Delicious!
SIR CHARLES. You will be good enough to repeat that out loud, sir.
LADY DEDMOND. Charles! Clare, you must know this is all a fit of
spleen; your duty and your interest--marriage is sacred, Clare.
CLARE. Marriage! My marriage has become the--the reconciliation--of
two animals--one of them unwilling. That's all the sanctity there is
about it.
SIR CHARLES. What!
[She looks at MALISE]
LADY DEDMOND. You ought to be horribly ashamed. CLARE. Of the
fact-I am.
LADY DEDMOND. [Darting a glance at MALISE] If we are to talk this
out, it must be in private.
MALISE. [To CLARE] Do you wish me to go?
CLARE. No.
LADY DEDMOND. [At MALISE] I should have thought ordinary decent
feeling--Good heavens, girl! Can't you see that you're being played
with?
CLARE. If you insinuate anything against Mr. Malise, you lie.
LADY DEDMOND. If you will do these things--come to a man's rooms----
CLARE. I came to Mr. Malise because he's the only person I know
with imagination enough to see what my position is; I came to him a
quarter of an hour ago, for the first time, for definite advice, and
you instantly suspect him. That is disgusting.
LADY DEDMOND. [Frigidly] Is this the natural place for me to find
my son's wife?
CLARE. His woman.
LADY DEDMOND. Will you listen to Reginald?
CLARE. I have.
LADY DEDMOND. Haven't you any religious sense at all, Clare?
CLARE. None, if it's religion to live as we do.
LADY DEDMOND. It's terrible--this state of mind! It's really
terrible!
CLARE breaks into the soft laugh of the other evening. As if
galvanized by the sound, SIR CHARLES comes to life out of the
transfixed bewilderment with which he has been listening.
SIR CHARLES. For God's sake don't laugh like that!
[CLARE Stops]
LADY DEDMOND. [With real feeling] For the sake of the simple right,
Clare!
CLARE. Right? Whatever else is right--our life is not. [She puts
her hand on her heart] I swear before God that I've tried and tried.
I swear before God, that if I believed we could ever again love each
other only a little tiny bit, I'd go back. I swear before God that I
don't want to hurt anybody.
LADY DEDMOND. But you are hurting everybody. Do--do be reasonable!
CLARE. [Losing control] Can't you see that I'm fighting for all my
life to come--not to be buried alive--not to be slowly smothered.
Look at me! I'm not wax--I'm flesh and blood. And you want to
prison me for ever--body and soul.
[They stare at her]
SIR CHARLES. [Suddenly] By Jove! I don't know, I don't know!
What!
LADY DEDMOND. [To MALISE] If you have any decency left, sir, you
will allow my son, at all events, to speak to his wife alone.
[Beckoning to her husband] We'll wait below.
SIR CHARLES. I--I want to speak. [To CLARE] My dear, if you feel
like this, I can only say--as a--as a gentleman----
LADY DEDMOND. Charles!
SIR CHARLES. Let me alone! I can only say that--damme, I don't know
that I can say anything!
He looks at her very grieved, then turns and marches out,
followed by LADY DEDMOND, whose voice is heard without, answered
by his: "What!" In the doorway, as they pass, GEORGE is
standing; he comes in.
GEORGE. [Going up to CLARE, who has recovered all her self-control]
Will you come outside and speak to me?
CLARE. No.
GEORGE glances at MALISE, who is leaning against the wall with
folded arms.
GEORGE. [In a low voice] Clare!
CLARE. Well!
GEORGE. You try me pretty high, don't you, forcing me to come here,
and speak before this fellow? Most men would think the worst,
finding you like this.
CLARE. You need not have come--or thought at all.
GEORGE. Did you imagine I was going to let you vanish without an
effort----
CLARE. To save me?
GEORGE. For God's sake be just! I've come here to say certain
things. If you force me to say them before him--on your head be it!
Will you appoint somewhere else?
CLARE. No.
GEORGE. Why not?
CLARE. I know all those "certain things." "You must come back. It
is your duty. You have no money. Your friends won't help you. You
can't earn your living. You are making a scandal." You might even
say for the moment: "Your room shall be respected."
GEORGE. Well, it's true and you've no answer.
CLARE. Oh! [Suddenly] Our life's a lie. It's stupid; it's
disgusting. I'm tired of it! Please leave me alone!
GEORGE. You rather miss the point, I'm afraid. I didn't come here
to tell you what you know perfectly well when you're sane. I came
here to say this: Anyone in her senses could see the game your friend
here is playing. It wouldn't take a baby in. If you think that a
gentleman like that [His stare travels round the dishevelled room
till it rests on MALISE] champions a pretty woman for nothing, you
make a fairly bad mistake.
CLARE. Take care.
But MALISE, after one convulsive movement of his hands, has
again become rigid.
GEORGE. I don't pretend to be subtle or that kind of thing; but I
have ordinary common sense. I don't attempt to be superior to plain
facts----
CLARE. [Under her breath] Facts!
GEORGE. Oh! for goodness' sake drop that hifalutin' tone. It
doesn't suit you. Look here! If you like to go abroad with one of
your young sisters until the autumn, I'll let the flat and go to the
Club.
CLARE. Put the fire out with a penny hose. [Slowly] I am not
coming back to you, George. The farce is over.
GEORGE. [Taken aback for a moment by the finality of her tone,
suddenly fronts MALISE] Then there is something between you and this
fellow.
MALISE. [Dangerously, but without moving] I beg your pardon!
CLARE. There--is--nothing.
GEORGE. [Looking from one to the other] At all events, I won't--I
won't see a woman who once--[CLARE makes a sudden effacing movement
with her hands] I won't see her go to certain ruin without lifting a
finger.
CLARE. That is noble.
GEORGE. [With intensity] I don't know that you deserve anything of
me. But on my honour, as a gentleman, I came here this morning for
your sake, to warn you of what you're doing. [He turns suddenly on
MALISE] And I tell this precious friend of yours plainly what I
think of him, and that I'm not going to play into his hands.
[MALISE, without stirring from the wall, looks at CLARE, and his
lips move.]
CLARE. [Shakes her head at him--then to GEORGE] Will you go,
please?
GEORGE. I will go when you do.
MALISE. A man of the world should know better than that.
GEORGE. Are you coming?
MALISE. That is inconceivable.
GEORGE. I'm not speaking to you, sir.
MALISE. You are right. Your words and mine will never kiss each
other.
GEORGE. Will you come? [CLARE shakes her head]
GEORGE. [With fury] D'you mean to stay in this pigsty with that
rhapsodical swine?
MALISE. [Transformed] By God, if you don't go, I'll kill you.
GEORGE. [As suddenly calm] That remains to be seen.
MALISE. [With most deadly quietness] Yes, I will kill you.
He goes stealthily along the wall, takes up from where it lies
on the pile of books the great black knobby stick, and
stealthily approaches GEORGE, his face quite fiendish.
CLARE. [With a swift movement, grasping the stick] Please.
MALISE resigns the stick, and the two men, perfectly still,
glare at each other. CLARE, letting the stick fall, puts her
foot on it. Then slowly she takes off her hat and lays it on
the table.
CLARE. Now will you go! [There is silence]
GEORGE. [Staring at her hat] You mad little fool! Understand this;
if you've not returned home by three o'clock I'll divorce you, and
you may roll in the gutter with this high-souled friend of yours.
And mind this, you sir--I won't spare you--by God! Your pocket shall
suffer. That's the only thing that touches fellows like you.
Turning, he goes out, and slams the door. CLARE and MALISE
remain face to face. Her lips have begun to quiver.
CLARE. Horrible!
She turns away, shuddering, and sits down on the edge of the
armchair, covering her eyes with the backs of her hands. MALISE
picks up the stick, and fingers it lovingly. Then putting it
down, he moves so that he can see her face. She is sitting
quite still, staring straight before her.
MALISE. Nothing could be better.
CLARE. I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do!
MALISE. Thank the stars for your good fortune.
CLARE. He means to have revenge on you! And it's all my fault.
MALISE. Let him. Let him go for his divorce. Get rid of him. Have
done with him--somehow.
She gets up and stands with face averted. Then swiftly turning
to him.
CLARE. If I must bring you harm--let me pay you back! I can't bear
it otherwise! Make some use of me, if you don't mind!
MALISE. My God!
[She puts up her face to be kissed, shutting her eyes.]
MALISE. You poor----
He clasps and kisses her, then, drawing back, looks in her face.
She has not moved, her eyes are still closed; but she is
shivering; her lips are tightly pressed together; her hands
twitching.
MALISE. [Very quietly] No, no! This is not the house of a
"gentleman."
CLARE. [Letting her head fall, and almost in a whisper] I'm sorry.
MALISE. I understand.
CLARE. I don't feel. And without--I can't, can't.
MALISE. [Bitterly] Quite right. You've had enough of that.
There is a long silence. Without looking at him she takes up
her hat, and puts it on.
MALISE. Not going?
[CLARE nods]
MALISE. You don't trust me?
CLARE. I do! But I can't take when I'm not giving.
MALISE. I beg--I beg you! What does it matter? Use me! Get free
somehow.
CLARE. Mr. Malise, I know what I ought to be to you, if I let you in
for all this. I know what you want--or will want. Of course--why
not?
MALISE. I give you my solemn word----
CLARE. No! if I can't be that to you--it's not real. And I can't.
It isn't to be manufactured, is it?
MALISE. It is not.
CLARE. To make use of you in such a way! No.
[She moves towards the door]
MALISE. Where are you going?
CLARE does not answer. She is breathing rapidly. There is a
change in her, a sort of excitement beneath her calmness.
MALISE. Not back to him? [CLARE shakes her head] Thank God! But
where? To your people again?
CLARE. No.
MALISE. Nothing--desperate?
CLARE. Oh! no.
MALISE. Then what--tell me--come!
CLARE. I don't know. Women manage somehow.
MALISE. But you--poor dainty thing!
CLARE. It's all right! Don't be unhappy! Please!
MALISE. [Seizing her arm] D'you imagine they'll let you off, out
there--you with your face? Come, trust me trust me! You must!
CLARE. [Holding out her hand] Good-bye!
MALISE. [Not taking that hand] This great damned world, and--you!
Listen! [The sound of the traffic far down below is audible in the
stillness] Into that! alone--helpless--without money. The men who
work with you; the men you make friends of--d'you think they'll let
you be? The men in the streets, staring at you, stopping you--pudgy,
bull-necked brutes; devils with hard eyes; senile swine; and the
"chivalrous" men, like me, who don't mean you harm, but can't help
seeing you're made for love! Or suppose you don't take covert but
struggle on in the open. Society! The respectable! The pious!
Even those who love you! Will they let you be? Hue and cry! The
hunt was joined the moment you broke away! It will never let up!
Covert to covert--till they've run you down, and you're back in the
cart, and God pity you!
CLARE. Well, I'll die running!
MALISE. No, no! Let me shelter you! Let me!
CLARE. [Shaking her head and smiling] I'm going to seek my fortune.
Wish me luck!
MALISE. I can't let you go.
CLARE. You must.
He looks into her face; then, realizing that she means it,
suddenly bends down to her fingers, and puts his lips to them.
MALISE. Good luck, then! Good luck!
He releases her hand. Just touching his bent head with her
other hand, CLARE turns and goes. MALISE remains with bowed
head, listening to the sound of her receding footsteps. They
die away. He raises himself, and strikes out into the air with
his clenched fist.
CURTAIN.
ACT III
MALISE'S sitting-room. An afternoon, three months later.
On the table are an open bottle of claret, his hat, and some
tea-things. Down in the hearth is a kettle on a lighted
spirit-stand. Near the door stands HAYWOOD, a short, round-faced
man, with a tobacco-coloured moustache; MALISE, by the table, is
contemplating a piece of blue paper.
HAYWOOD. Sorry to press an old customer, sir, but a year and an 'alf
without any return on your money----
MALISE. Your tobacco is too good, Mr. Haywood. I wish I could see
my way to smoking another.
HAYWOOD. Well, sir--that's a funny remedy.
With a knock on the half-opened door, a Boy appears.
MALISE. Yes. What is it?
BOY. Your copy for "The Watchfire," please, sir.
MALISE. [Motioning him out] Yes. Wait!
The Boy withdraws. MALISE goes up to the pile of books, turns
them over, and takes up some volumes.
MALISE. This is a very fine unexpurgated translation of Boccaccio's
"Decameron," Mr. Haywood illustrated. I should say you would get
more than the amount of your bill for them.
HAYWOOD. [Shaking his head] Them books worth three pound seven!
MALISE. It's scarce, and highly improper. Will you take them in
discharge?
HAYWOOD. [Torn between emotions] Well, I 'ardly know what to say--
No, Sir, I don't think I'd like to 'ave to do with that.
MALISE. You could read them first, you know?
HAYWOOD. [Dubiously] I've got my wife at 'ome.
MALISE. You could both read them.
HAYWOOD. [Brought to his bearings] No, Sir, I couldn't.
MALISE. Very well; I'll sell them myself, and you shall have the
result.
HAYWOOD. Well, thank you, sir. I'm sure I didn't want to trouble
you.
MALISE. Not at all, Mr. Haywood. It's for me to apologize.
HAYWOOD. So long as I give satisfaction.
MALISE. [Holding the door for him] Certainly. Good evening.
HAYWOOD. Good evenin', sir; no offence, I hope.
MALISE. On the contrary.
Doubtfully HAYWOOD goes. And MALISE stands scratching his head;
then slipping the bill into one of the volumes to remind him, he
replaces them at the top of the pile. The Boy again advances
into the doorway.
MALISE. Yes, now for you.
He goes to the table and takes some sheets of MS. from an old
portfolio. But the door is again timidly pushed open, and
HAYWOOD reappears.
MALISE. Yes, Mr. Haywood?
HAYWOOD. About that little matter, sir. If--if it's any convenience
to you--I've--thought of a place where I could----
MALISE. Read them? You'll enjoy them thoroughly.
HAYWOOD. No, sir, no! Where I can dispose of them.
MALISE. [Holding out the volumes] It might be as well. [HAYWOOD
takes the books gingerly] I congratulate you, Mr. Haywood; it's a
classic.
HAYWOOD. Oh, indeed--yes, sir. In the event of there being any----
MALISE. Anything over? Carry it to my credit. Your bill--[He
hands over the blue paper] Send me the receipt. Good evening!
HAYWOOD, nonplussed, and trying to hide the books in an evening
paper, fumbles out. "Good evenin', sir!" and departs. MALISE
again takes up the sheets of MS. and cons a sentence over to
himself, gazing blankly at the stolid BOY.
MALISE. "Man of the world--good form your god! Poor buttoned-up
philosopher" [the Boy shifts his feet] "inbred to the point of
cretinism, and founded to the bone on fear of ridicule [the Boy
breathes heavily]--you are the slave of facts!"
[There is a knock on the door]
MALISE. Who is it?
The door is pushed open, and REGINALD HUNTINGDON stands there.
HUNTINGDON. I apologize, sir; can I come in a minute?
[MALISE bows with ironical hostility]
HUNTINGDON. I don't know if you remember me--Clare Dedmond's
brother.
MALISE. I remember you.
[He motions to the stolid Boy to go outside again]
HUNTINGDON. I've come to you, sir, as a gentleman----
MALISE. Some mistake. There is one, I believe, on the first floor.
HUNTINGDON. It's about my sister.
MALISE. D--n you! Don't you know that I've been shadowed these last
three months? Ask your detectives for any information you want.
HUNTINGDON. We know that you haven't seen her, or even known where
she is.
MALISE. Indeed! You've found that out? Brilliant!
HUNTINGDON. We know it from my sister.
MALISE. Oh! So you've tracked her down?
HUNTINGDON. Mrs. Fullarton came across her yesterday in one of those
big shops--selling gloves.
MALISE. Mrs. Fullarton the lady with the husband. Well! you've got
her. Clap her back into prison.
HUNTINGDON. We have not got her. She left at once, and we don't
know where she's gone.
MALISE. Bravo!
HUNTINGDON. [Taking hold of his bit] Look here, Mr. Malise, in a
way I share your feeling, but I'm fond of my sister, and it's
damnable to have to go back to India knowing she must be all adrift,
without protection, going through God knows what! Mrs. Fullarton
says she's looking awfully pale and down.
MALISE. [Struggling between resentment and sympathy] Why do you
come to me?
HUNTINGDON. We thought----
MALISE. Who?
HUNTINGDON. My--my father and myself.
MALISE. Go on.
HUNTINGDON. We thought there was just a chance that, having lost
that job, she might come to you again for advice. If she does, it
would be really generous of you if you'd put my father in touch with
her. He's getting old, and he feels this very much. [He hands
MALISE a card] This is his address.
MALISE. [Twisting the card] Let there be no mistake, sir; I do
nothing that will help give her back to her husband. She's out to
save her soul alive, and I don't join the hue and cry that's after
her. On the contrary--if I had the power. If your father wants to
shelter her, that's another matter. But she'd her own ideas about
that.
HUNTINGDON. Perhaps you don't realize how unfit my sister is for
rough and tumble. She's not one of this new sort of woman. She's
always been looked after, and had things done for her. Pluck she's
got, but that's all, and she's bound to come to grief.
MALISE. Very likely--the first birds do. But if she drops half-way
it's better than if she'd never flown. Your sister, sir, is trying
the wings of her spirit, out of the old slave market. For women as
for men, there's more than one kind of dishonour, Captain Huntingdon,
and worse things than being dead, as you may know in your profession.
HUNTINGDON. Admitted--but----
MALISE. We each have our own views as to what they are. But they
all come to--death of our spirits, for the sake of our carcases.
Anything more?
HUNTINGDON. My leave's up. I sail to-morrow. If you do see my
sister I trust you to give her my love and say I begged she would see
my father.
MALISE. If I have the chance--yes.
He makes a gesture of salute, to which HUNTINGDON responds.
Then the latter turns and goes out.
MALISE. Poor fugitive! Where are you running now?
He stands at the window, through which the evening sunlight is
powdering the room with smoky gold. The stolid Boy has again
come in. MALISE stares at him, then goes back to the table,
takes up the MS., and booms it at him; he receives the charge,
breathing hard.
MALISE. "Man of the world--product of a material age; incapable of
perceiving reality in motions of the spirit; having 'no use,' as you
would say, for 'sentimental nonsense'; accustomed to believe yourself
the national spine--your position is unassailable. You will remain
the idol of the country--arbiter of law, parson in mufti, darling of
the playwright and the novelist--God bless you!--while waters lap
these shores."
He places the sheets of MS. in an envelope, and hands them to
the Boy.
MALISE. You're going straight back to "The Watchfire"?
BOY. [Stolidly] Yes, sir.
MALISE. [Staring at him] You're a masterpiece. D'you know that?
BOY. No, sir.
MALISE. Get out, then.
He lifts the portfolio from the table, and takes it into the
inner room. The Boy, putting his thumb stolidly to his nose,
turns to go. In the doorway he shies violently at the figure of
CLARE, standing there in a dark-coloured dress, skids past her
and goes. CLARE comes into the gleam of sunlight, her white
face alive with emotion or excitement. She looks round her,
smiles, sighs; goes swiftly to the door, closes it, and comes
back to the table. There she stands, fingering the papers on
the table, smoothing MALISE's hat wistfully, eagerly, waiting.
MALISE. [Returning] You!
CLARE. [With a faint smile] Not very glorious, is it?
He goes towards her, and checks himself, then slews the armchair
round.
MALISE. Come! Sit down, sit down! [CLARE, heaving a long sigh,
sinks down into the chair] Tea's nearly ready.
He places a cushion for her, and prepares tea; she looks up at
him softly, but as he finishes and turns to her, she drops that
glance.
CLARE. Do you think me an awful coward for coming? [She has taken a
little plain cigarette case from her dress] Would you mind if I
smoked?
MALISE shakes his head, then draws back from her again, as if
afraid to be too close. And again, unseen, she looks at him.
MALISE. So you've lost your job?
CLARE. How did you----?
MALISE. Your brother. You only just missed him. [CLARE starts up]
They had an idea you'd come. He's sailing to-morrow--he wants you to
see your father.
CLARE. Is father ill?
MALI$E. Anxious about you.
CLARE. I've written to him every week. [Excited] They're still
hunting me!
MALISE. [Touching her shoulder gently] It's all right--all right.
She sinks again into the chair, and again he withdraws. And
once more she gives him that soft eager look, and once more
averts it as he turns to her.
CLARE. My nerves have gone funny lately. It's being always on one's
guard, and stuffy air, and feeling people look and talk about you,
and dislike your being there.
MALISE. Yes; that wants pluck.
CLARE. [Shaking her head] I curl up all the time. The only thing I
know for certain is, that I shall never go back to him. The more
I've hated what I've been doing, the more sure I've been. I might
come to anything--but not that.
MALISE. Had a very bad time?
CLARE. [Nodding] I'm spoilt. It's a curse to be a lady when you
have to earn your living. It's not really been so hard, I suppose;
I've been selling things, and living about twice as well as most shop
girls.
MALISE. Were they decent to you?
CLARE. Lots of the girls are really nice. But somehow they don't
want me, can't help thinking I've got airs or something; and in here
[She touches her breast] I don't want them!
MALISE. I know.
CLARE. Mrs. Fullarton and I used to belong to a society for helping
reduced gentlewomen to get work. I know now what they want: enough
money not to work--that's all! [Suddenly looking up at him] Don't
think me worse than I am-please! It's working under people; it's
having to do it, being driven. I have tried, I've not been
altogether a coward, really! But every morning getting there the
same time; every day the same stale "dinner," as they call it; every
evening the same "Good evening, Miss Clare," "Good evening, Miss
Simpson," "Good evening, Miss Hart," "Good evening, Miss Clare."
And the same walk home, or the same 'bus; and the same men that you
mustn't look at, for fear they'll follow you. [She rises] Oh! and
the feeling-always, always--that there's no sun, or life, or hope, or
anything. It was just like being ill, the way I've wanted to ride
and dance and get out into the country. [Her excitement dies away
into the old clipped composure, and she sits down again] Don't think
too badly of me--it really is pretty ghastly!
MALISE. [Gruffly] H'm! Why a shop?
CLARE. References. I didn't want to tell more lies than I could
help; a married woman on strike can't tell the truth, you know. And
I can't typewrite or do shorthand yet. And chorus--I thought--you
wouldn't like.
MALISE. I? What have I----? [He checks himself ] Have men been
brutes?
CLARE. [Stealing a look at him] One followed me a lot. He caught
hold of my arm one evening. I just took this out [She draws out her
hatpin and holds it like a dagger, her lip drawn back as the lips of
a dog going to bite] and said: "Will you leave me alone, please?"
And he did. It was rather nice. And there was one quite decent
little man in the shop--I was sorry for him--such a humble little
man!
MALISE. Poor devil--it's hard not to wish for the moon.
At the tone of his voice CLARE looks up at him; his face is
turned away.
CLARE. [Softly] How have you been? Working very hard?
MALISE. As hard as God will let me.
CLARE. [Stealing another look] Have you any typewriting I could do?
I could learn, and I've still got a brooch I could sell. Which is
the best kind?
MALISE. I had a catalogue of them somewhere.
He goes into the inner room. The moment he is gone, CLARE
stands up, her hands pressed to her cheeks as if she felt them
flaming. Then, with hands clasped, she stands waiting. He
comes back with the old portfolio.
MALISE. Can you typewrite where you are?
CLARE. I have to find a new room anyway. I'm changing--to be safe.
[She takes a luggage ticket from her glove] I took my things to
Charing Cross--only a bag and one trunk. [Then, with that queer
expression on her face which prefaces her desperations] You don't
want me now, I suppose.
MALISE. What?
CLARE. [Hardly above a whisper] Because--if you still wanted me--
I do--now.
[Etext editors note: In the 1924 revision, 11 years after this
1913 edition: "I do--now" is changed to "I could--now"--
a significant change in meaning. D.W.]
MALISE. [Staring hard into her face that is quivering and smiling]
You mean it? You do? You care----?
CLARE. I've thought of you--so much! But only--if you're sure.
He clasps her and kisses her closed eyes; and so they stand for
a moment, till the sound of a latchkey in the door sends them
apart.
MALISE. It's the housekeeper. Give me that ticket; I'll send for
your things.
Obediently she gives him the ticket, smiles, and goes quietly
into the inner room. MRS. MILER has entered; her face, more
Chinese than ever, shows no sign of having seen.
MALISE. That lady will stay here, Mrs. Miler. Kindly go with this
ticket to the cloak-room at Charing Cross station, and bring back her
luggage in a cab. Have you money?
MRS. MILER. 'Arf a crown. [She takes the ticket--then impassively]
In case you don't know--there's two o' them men about the stairs now.
The moment she is gone MALISE makes a gesture of maniacal fury.
He steals on tiptoe to the outer door, and listens. Then,
placing his hand on the knob, he turns it without noise, and
wrenches back the door. Transfigured in the last sunlight
streaming down the corridor are two men, close together,
listening and consulting secretly. They start back.
MALISE. [With strange, almost noiseless ferocity] You've run her to
earth; your job's done. Kennel up, hounds! [And in their faces he
slams the door]
CURTAIN.
SCENE II
SCENE II--The same, early on a winter afternoon, three months later.
The room has now a certain daintiness. There are curtains over the
doors, a couch, under the window, all the books are arranged on
shelves. In small vases, over the fireplace, are a few violets and
chrysanthemums. MALISE sits huddled in his armchair drawn close to
the fore, paper on knee, pen in hand. He looks rather grey and
drawn, and round his chair is the usual litter. At the table, now
nearer to the window, CLARE sits working a typewriter. She finishes
a line, puts sheets of paper together, makes a note on a card--adds
some figures, and marks the total.
CLARE. Kenneth, when this is paid, I shall have made two pound
seventeen in the three months, and saved you about three pounds. One
hundred and seventeen shillings at tenpence a thousand is one hundred
and forty thousand words at fourteen hundred words an hour. It's
only just over an hour a day. Can't you get me more?
MALISE lifts the hand that holds his pen and lets it fall again.
CLARE puts the cover on the typewriter, and straps it.
CLARE. I'm quite packed. Shall I pack for you? [He nods] Can't we
have more than three days at the sea? [He shakes his head. Going up
to him] You did sleep last night.
MALISE. Yes, I slept.
CLARE. Bad head? [MALISE nods] By this time the day after to-morrow
the case will be heard and done with. You're not worrying for me?
Except for my poor old Dad, I don't care a bit.
MALISE heaves himself out of the chair, and begins pacing up and
down.
CLARE. Kenneth, do you understand why he doesn't claim damages,
after what he said that day-here? [Looking suddenly at him] It is
true that he doesn't?
MALISE. It is not.
CLARE. But you told me yourself
MALISE. I lied.
CLARE. Why?
MALISE. [Shrugging] No use lying any longer--you'd know it
tomorrow.
CLARE. How much am I valued at?
MALISE. Two thousand. [Grimly] He'll settle it on you. [He laughs]
Masterly! By one stroke, destroys his enemy, avenges his "honour,"
and gilds his name with generosity!
CLARE. Will you have to pay?
MALISE. Stones yield no blood.
CLARE. Can't you borrow?
MALISE. I couldn't even get the costs.
CLARE. Will they make you bankrupt, then? [MALISE nods] But that
doesn't mean that you won't have your income, does it? [MALISE
laughs] What is your income, Kenneth? [He is silent] A hundred and
fifty from "The Watchfire," I know. What else?
MALISE. Out of five books I have made the sum of forty pounds.
CLARE. What else? Tell me.
MALISE. Fifty to a hundred pounds a year. Leave me to gnaw my way
out, child.
CLARE stands looking at him in distress, then goes quickly into
the room behind her. MALISE takes up his paper and pen. The
paper is quite blank.
MALISE. [Feeling his head] Full of smoke.
He drops paper and pen, and crossing to the room on the left
goes in. CLARE re-enters with a small leather box. She puts it
down on her typing table as MALISE returns followed by MRS.
MILER, wearing her hat, and carrying His overcoat.
MRS. MILER. Put your coat on. It's a bitter wind.
[He puts on the coat]
CLARE. Where are you going?
MALISE. To "The Watchfire."
The door closes behind him, and MRS. MILER goes up to CLARE
holding out a little blue bottle with a red label, nearly full.
MRS. MILER. You know he's takin' this [She makes a little motion
towards her mouth] to make 'im sleep?
CLARE. [Reading the label] Where was it?
MRS. MILER. In the bathroom chest o' drawers, where 'e keeps 'is
odds and ends. I was lookin' for 'is garters.
CLARE. Give it to me!
MRS. MILER. He took it once before. He must get his sleep.
CLARE. Give it to me!
MRS. MILER resigns it, CLARE takes the cork out, smells, then
tastes it from her finger. MRS. MILER, twisting her apron in
her hands, speaks.
MILS. MILER. I've 'ad it on my mind a long time to speak to yer.
Your comin' 'ere's not done 'im a bit o' good.
CLARE. Don't!
MRS. MILER. I don't want to, but what with the worry o' this 'ere
divorce suit, an' you bein' a lady an' 'im havin' to be so careful of
yer, and tryin' to save, not smokin' all day like 'e used, an' not
gettin' 'is two bottles of claret regular; an' losin' his sleep, an'
takin' that stuff for it; and now this 'ere last business. I've seen
'im sometimes holdin' 'is 'ead as if it was comin' off. [Seeing
CLARE wince, she goes on with a sort of compassion in her Chinese
face] I can see yer fond of him; an' I've nothin' against yer you
don't trouble me a bit; but I've been with 'im eight years--we're
used to each other, and I can't bear to see 'im not 'imself, really I
can't.
She gives a sadden sniff. Then her emotion passes, leaving her
as Chinese as ever.
CLARE. This last business--what do you mean by that?
MRS. MILER. If 'e a'n't told yer, I don't know that I've any call
to.
CLARE. Please.
MRS. MILER. [Her hands twisting very fast] Well, it's to do with
this 'ere "Watchfire." One of the men that sees to the writin' of
it 'e's an old friend of Mr. Malise, 'e come 'ere this mornin' when
you was out. I was doin' my work in there [She points to the room
on the right] an' the door open, so I 'earl 'em. Now you've 'ung
them curtains, you can't 'elp it.
CLARE. Yes?
MRS. MILER. It's about your divorce case. This 'ere "Watchfire,"
ye see, belongs to some fellers that won't 'ave their men gettin'
into the papers. So this 'ere friend of Mr. Malise--very nice 'e
spoke about it: "If it comes into Court," 'e says, "you'll 'ave to
go," 'e says. "These beggars, these dogs, these dogs," 'e says,
"they'll 'oof you out," 'e says. An' I could tell by the sound of
his voice, 'e meant it--proper upset 'e was. So that's that!
CLARE. It's inhuman!
MRS. MILER. That's what I thinks; but it don't 'elp, do it?
"'Tain't the circulation," 'e says, "it's the principle," 'e says;
and then 'e starts in swearin' horrible. 'E's a very nice man. And
Mr. Malise, 'e says: "Well, that about does for me!" 'e says.
CLARE. Thank you, Mrs. Miler--I'm glad to know.
MRS. MILER. Yes; I don't know as I ought to 'ave told you.
[Desperately uncomfortable] You see, I don't take notice of Mr.
MALISE, but I know 'im very well. 'E's a good 'arted gentleman, very
funny, that'll do things to help others, and what's more, keep on
doin' 'em, when they hurt 'im; very obstinate 'e is. Now, when you
first come 'ere, three months ago, I says to meself: "He'll enjoy
this 'ere for a bit, but she's too much of a lady for 'im." What 'e
wants about 'im permanent is a woman that thinks an' talks about all
them things he talks about. And sometimes I fancy 'e don't want
nothin' permanent about 'im at all.
CLARE. Don't!
MRS. MILER. [With another sudden sniff] Gawd knows I don't want to
upset ye. You're situated very hard; an' women's got no business to
'urt one another--that's what I thinks.
CLARE. Will you go out and do something for me? [MRS. MILER nods]
[CLARE takes up the sheaf of papers and from the leather box a
note and an emerald pendant]
Take this with the note to that address--it's quite close. He'll
give you thirty pounds for it. Please pay these bills and bring me
back the receipts, and what's over.
MRS. MILER. [Taking the pendant and note] It's a pretty thing.
CLARE. Yes. It was my mother's.
MRS. MILER. It's a pity to part with it; ain't you got another?
CLARE. Nothing more, Mrs. Miler, not even a wedding ring.
MRS. MILER. [Without expression] You make my 'eart ache sometimes.
[She wraps pendant and note into her handkerchief and goes out to
the door.]
MRS. MILER. [From the door] There's a lady and gentleman out here.
Mrs. Fuller--wants you, not Mr. Malise.
CLARE. Mrs. Fullarton? [MRS. MILER nods] Ask them to come in.
MRS. MILER opens the door wide, says "Come in," and goes. MRS.
FULLARTON is accompanied not by FULLARTON, but by the lawyer,
TWISDON. They come in.
MRS. FULLARTON. Clare! My dear! How are you after all this time?
CLARE. [Her eyes fixed on TWISDEN] Yes?
MRS. FULLARTON. [Disconcerted by the strange greeting] I brought
Mr. Twisden to tell you something. May I stay?
CLARE. Yes. [She points to the chair at the same table: MRS.
FULLARTON sits down] Now!
[TWISDEN comes forward]
TWISDEN. As you're not defending this case, Mrs. Dedmond, there is
nobody but yourself for me to apply to.
CLARE. Please tell me quickly, what you've come for.
TWISDEN. [Bowing slightly] I am instructed by Mr. Dedmond to say
that if you will leave your present companion and undertake not to
see him again, he will withdraw the suit and settle three hundred a
year on you. [At CLARE's movement of abhorrence] Don't
misunderstand me, please--it is not--it could hardly be, a request
that you should go back. Mr. Dedmond is not prepared to receive you
again. The proposal--forgive my saying so--remarkably Quixotic--is
made to save the scandal to his family and your own. It binds you to
nothing but the abandonment of your present companion, with certain
conditions of the same nature as to the future. In other words, it
assures you a position--so long as you live quietly by yourself.
CLARE. I see. Will you please thank Mr. Dedmond, and say that I
refuse?
MRS. FULLARTON. Clare, Clare! For God's sake don't be desperate.
[CLARE, deathly still, just looks at her]
TWISDEN. Mrs. Dedmond, I am bound to put the position to you in its
naked brutality. You know there's a claim for damages?
CLARE. I have just learnt it.
TWISDEN. You realize what the result of this suit must be: You will
be left dependent on an undischarged bankrupt. To put it another
way, you'll be a stone round the neck of a drowning man.
CLARE. You are cowards.
MRS. FULLARTON. Clare, Clare! [To TWISDEN] She doesn't mean it;
please be patient.
CLARE. I do mean it. You ruin him because of me. You get him down,
and kick him to intimidate me.
MRS. FULLARTON. My dear girl! Mr. Twisden is not personally
concerned. How can you?
CLARE. If I were dying, and it would save me, I wouldn't take a
penny from my husband.
TWISDEN. Nothing could be more bitter than those words. Do you
really wish me to take them back to him?
CLARE. Yes. [She turns from them to the fire]
MRS. FULLARTON. [In a low voice to TWISDEN] Please leave me alone
with her, don't say anything to Mr. Dedmond yet.
TWISDEN. Mrs. Dedmond, I told you once that I wished you well.
Though you have called me a coward, I still do that. For God's sake,
think--before it's too late.
CLARE. [Putting out her hand blindly] I'm sorry I called you a
coward. It's the whole thing, I meant.
TWISDEN. Never mind that. Think!
With the curious little movement of one who sees something he
does not like to see, he goes. CLARE is leaning her forehead
against the mantel-shelf, seemingly unconscious that she is not
alone. MRS. FULLARTON approaches quietly till she can see
CLARE'S face.
MRS. FULLARTON. My dear sweet thing, don't be cross with met [CLARE
turns from her. It is all the time as if she were trying to get away
from words and people to something going on within herself] How can
I help wanting to see you saved from all this ghastliness?
CLARE. Please don't, Dolly! Let me be!
MRS. FULLARTON. I must speak, Clare! I do think you're hard on
George. It's generous of him to offer to withdraw the suit--
considering. You do owe it to us to try and spare your father and
your sisters and--and all of us who care for you.
CLARE. [Facing her] You say George is generous! If he wanted to be
that he'd never have claimed these damages. It's revenge he wants--I
heard him here. You think I've done him an injury. So I did--when I
married him. I don't know what I shall come to, Dolly, but I shan't
fall so low as to take money from him. That's as certain as that I
shall die.
MRS. FULLARTON. Do you know, Clare, I think it's awful about you!
You're too fine, and not fine enough, to put up with things; you're
too sensitive to take help, and you're not strong enough to do
without it. It's simply tragic. At any rate, you might go home to
your people.
CLARE. After this!
MRS. FULLARTON. To us, then?
CLARE. "If I could be the falling bee, and kiss thee all the day!"
No, Dolly!
MRS. FULLARTON turns from her ashamed and baffled, but her quick
eyes take in the room, trying to seize on some new point of
attack.
MRS. FULLARTON. You can't be--you aren't-happy, here?
CLARE. Aren't I?
MRS. FULLARTON. Oh! Clare! Save yourself--and all of us!
CLARE. [Very still] You see, I love him.
MRS. FULLARTON. You used to say you'd never love; did not want it--
would never want it.
CLARE. Did I? How funny!
MRS. FULLARTON. Oh! my dear! Don't look like that, or you'll make
me cry.
CLARE. One doesn't always know the future, does one? [Desperately]
I love him! I love him!
MRS. FULLARTON. [Suddenly] If you love him, what will it be like for
you, knowing you've ruined him?
CLARE. Go away! Go away!
MRS. FULLARTON. Love!--you said!
CLARE. [Quivering at that stab-suddenly] I must--I will keep him.
He's all I've got.
MRS. FULLARTON. Can you--can you keep him?
CLARE. Go!
MRS. FULLARTON. I'm going. But, men are hard to keep, even when
you've not been the ruin of them. You know whether the love this man
gives you is really love. If not--God help you! [She turns at the
door, and says mournfully] Good-bye, my child! If you can----
Then goes. CLARE, almost in a whisper, repeats the words:
"Love! you said!" At the sound of a latchkey she runs as if to
escape into the bedroom, but changes her mind and stands blotted
against the curtain of the door. MALISE enters. For a moment
he does not see her standing there against the curtain that is
much the same colour as her dress. His face is that of a man in
the grip of a rage that he feels to be impotent. Then, seeing
her, he pulls himself together, walks to his armchair, and sits
down there in his hat and coat.
CLARE. Well? "The Watchfire?" You may as well tell me.
MALISE. Nothing to tell you, child.
At that touch of tenderness she goes up to his chair and kneels
down beside it. Mechanically MALISE takes off his hat.
CLARE. Then you are to lose that, too? [MALISE stares at her] I
know about it--never mind how.
MALISE. Sanctimonious dogs!
CLARE. [Very low] There are other things to be got, aren't there?
MALISE. Thick as blackberries. I just go out and cry, "MALISE,
unsuccessful author, too honest journalist, freethinker,
co-respondent, bankrupt," and they tumble!
CLARE. [Quietly] Kenneth, do you care for me? [MALISE stares at
her] Am I anything to you but just prettiness?
MALISE. Now, now! This isn't the time to brood! Rouse up and
fight.
CLARE. Yes.
MALISE. We're not going to let them down us, are we? [She rubs her
cheek against his hand, that still rests on her shoulder] Life on
sufferance, breath at the pleasure of the enemy! And some day in the
fullness of his mercy to be made a present of the right to eat and
drink and breathe again. [His gesture sums up the rage within him]
Fine! [He puts his hat on and rises] That's the last groan they get
from me.
CLASS. Are you going out again? [He nods] Where?
MALISE. Blackberrying! Our train's not till six.
He goes into the bedroom. CLARE gets up and stands by the fire,
looking round in a dazed way. She puts her hand up and
mechanically gathers together the violets in the little vase.
Suddenly she twists them to a buttonhole, and sinks down into
the armchair, which he must pass. There she sits, the violets
in her hand. MALISE comes out and crosses towards the outer
door. She puts the violets up to him. He stares at them,
shrugs his shoulders, and passes on. For just a moment CLARE
sits motionless.
CLARE. [Quietly] Give me a kiss!
He turns and kisses her. But his lips, after that kiss, have
the furtive bitterness one sees on the lips of those who have
done what does not suit their mood. He goes out. She is left
motionless by the armchair, her throat working. Then,
feverishly, she goes to the little table, seizes a sheet of
paper, and writes. Looking up suddenly she sees that MRS. MILER
has let herself in with her latchkey.
MRS. MILER. I've settled the baker, the milk, the washin' an' the
groceries--this 'ere's what's left.
She counts down a five-pound note, four sovereigns, and two
shillings on to the little table. CLARE folds the letter into
an envelope, then takes up the five-pound note and puts it into
her dress.
CLARE. [Pointing to the money on the table] Take your wages; and
give him this when he comes in. I'm going away.
MRS. MILER. Without him? When'll you be comin' back?
CLARE. [Rising] I shan't be coming back. [Gazing at MRS. MILER'S
hands, which are plaiting at her dress] I'm leaving Mr. Malise, and
shan't see him again. And the suit against us will be withdrawn--the
divorce suit--you understand?
MRS. MILER. [Her face all broken up] I never meant to say anything
to yer.
CLARE. It's not you. I can see for myself. Don't make it harder;
help me. Get a cab.
MRS. MILER. [Disturbed to the heart] The porter's outside, cleanin'
the landin' winder.
CLARE. Tell him to come for my trunk. It is packed. [She goes into
the bedroom]
MRS. MILER. [Opening the door-desolately] Come 'ere!
[The PORTER appears in shirt-sleeves at the door]
MRS. MILER. The lady wants a cab. Wait and carry 'er trunk down.
CLARE comes from the bedroom in her hat and coat.
MRS. MILER. [TO the PORTER] Now.
They go into the bedroom to get the trunk. CLARE picks up from
the floor the bunch of violets, her fingers play with it as if
they did not quite know what it was; and she stands by the
armchair very still, while MRS. MILER and the PORTER pass her
with trunk and bag. And even after the PORTER has shouldered
the trunk outside, and marched away, and MRS. MILER has come
back into the room, CLARE still stands there.
MRS. MILER. [Pointing to the typewriter] D'you want this 'ere, too?
CLARE. Yes.
MRS. MILER carries it out. Then, from the doorway, gazing at
CLARE taking her last look, she sobs, suddenly. At sound of
that sob CLARE throws up her head.
CLARE. Don't! It's all right. Good-bye!
She walks out and away, not looking back. MRS. MILER chokes her
sobbing into the black stuff of her thick old jacket.
CURTAIN
ACT IV
Supper-time in a small room at "The Gascony" on Derby Day.
Through the windows of a broad corridor, out of which the door
opens, is seen the dark blue of a summer night. The walls are
of apricot-gold; the carpets, curtains, lamp-shades, and gilded
chairs, of red; the wood-work and screens white; the palms in
gilded tubs. A doorway that has no door leads to another small
room. One little table behind a screen, and one little table in
the open, are set for two persons each. On a service-table,
above which hangs a speaking-tube, are some dishes of hors
d'ouvres, a basket of peaches, two bottles of champagne in
ice-pails, and a small barrel of oysters in a gilded tub. ARNAUD,
the waiter, slim, dark, quick, his face seamed with a quiet,
soft irony, is opening oysters and listening to the robust joy
of a distant supper-party, where a man is playing the last bars
of: "Do ye ken John Peel" on a horn. As the sound dies away, he
murmurs: "Tres Joli!" and opens another oyster. Two Ladies with
bare shoulders and large hats pass down the corridor. Their
talk is faintly wafted in: "Well, I never like Derby night! The
boys do get so bobbish!" "That horn--vulgar, I call it!"
ARNAUD'S eyebrows rise, the corners of his mouth droop. A Lady
with bare shoulders, and crimson roses in her hair, comes along
the corridor, and stops for a second at the window, for a man to
join her. They come through into the room. ARNAUD has sprung
to attention, but with: "Let's go in here, shall we?" they pass
through into the further room. The MANAGER, a gentleman with
neat moustaches, and buttoned into a frock-coat, has appeared,
brisk, noiseless, his eyes everywhere; he inspects the peaches.
MANAGER. Four shillin' apiece to-night, see?
ARNAUD. Yes, Sare.
From the inner room a young man and his partner have come in.
She is dark, almost Spanish-looking; he fair, languid, pale,
clean-shaved, slackly smiling, with half-closed eyes-one of
those who are bred and dissipated to the point of having lost
all save the capacity for hiding their emotions. He speaks in
a----
LANGUID VOICE. Awful row they're kickin' up in there, Mr. Varley.
A fellow with a horn.
MANAGER. [Blandly] Gaddesdon Hunt, my lord--always have their
supper with us, Derby night. Quiet corner here, my lord. Arnaud!
ARNAUD is already at the table, between screen and palm. And,
there ensconced, the couple take their seats. Seeing them
safely landed, the MANAGER, brisk and noiseless, moves away. In
the corridor a lady in black, with a cloak falling open, seems
uncertain whether to come in. She advances into the doorway.
It is CLARE.
ARNAUD. [Pointing to the other table as he flies with dishes] Nice
table, Madame.
CLARE moves to the corner of it. An artist in observation of
his clients, ARNAUD takes in her face--very pale under her wavy,
simply-dressed hair; shadowy beneath the eyes; not powdered; her
lips not reddened; without a single ornament; takes in her black
dress, finely cut, her arms and neck beautifully white, and at
her breast three gardenias. And as he nears her, she lifts her
eyes. It is very much the look of something lost, appealing for
guidance.
ARNAUD. Madame is waiting for some one? [She shakes her head] Then
Madame will be veree well here--veree well. I take Madame's cloak?
He takes the cloak gently and lays it on the back of the chair
fronting the room, that she may put it round her when she
wishes. She sits down.
LANGUID VOICE. [From the corner] Waiter!
ARNAUD. Milord!
LANGUID VOICE. The Roederer.
ARNAUD. At once, Milord.
CLARE sits tracing a pattern with her finger on the cloth, her
eyes lowered. Once she raises them, and follows ARNAUD's dark
rapid figure.
ARNAUD. [Returning] Madame feels the 'eat? [He scans her with
increased curiosity] You wish something, Madame?
CLARE. [Again giving him that look] Must I order?
ARNAUD. Non, Madame, it is not necessary. A glass of water. [He
pours it out] I have not the pleasure of knowing Madame's face.
CLARE. [Faintly smiling] No.
ARNAUD. Madame will find it veree good 'ere, veree quiet.
LANGUID VOICE. Waiter!
ARNAUD. Pardon! [He goes]
The bare-necked ladies with large hats again pass down the
corridor outside, and again their voices are wafted in: "Tottie!
Not she! Oh! my goodness, she has got a pride on her!"
"Bobbie'll never stick it!" "Look here, dear----" Galvanized
by those sounds, CLARE has caught her cloak and half-risen; they
die away and she subsides.
ARNAUD. [Back at her table, with a quaint shrug towards the
corridor] It is not rowdy here, Madame, as a rule--not as in some
places. To-night a little noise. Madame is fond of flowers? [He
whisks out, and returns almost at once with a bowl of carnations from
some table in the next room] These smell good!
CLARE. You are very kind.
ARNAUD. [With courtesy] Not at all, Madame; a pleasure. [He bows]
A young man, tall, thin, hard, straight, with close-cropped,
sandyish hair and moustache, a face tanned very red, and one of
those small, long, lean heads that only grow in Britain; clad in
a thin dark overcoat thrown open, an opera hat pushed back, a
white waistcoat round his lean middle, he comes in from the
corridor. He looks round, glances at CLARE, passes her table
towards the further room, stops in the doorway, and looks back
at her. Her eyes have just been lifted, and are at once cast
down again. The young man wavers, catches ARNAUD's eye, jerks
his head to summon him, and passes into the further room.
ARNAUD takes up the vase that has been superseded, and follows
him out. And CLARE sits alone in silence, broken by the murmurs
of the languid lord and his partner, behind the screen. She is
breathing as if she had been running hard. She lifts her eyes.
The tall young man, divested of hat and coat, is standing by her
table, holding out his hand with a sort of bashful hardiness.
YOUNG MAN. How d'you do? Didn't recognize you at first. So sorry
--awfully rude of me.
CLARE'S eyes seem to fly from him, to appeal to him, to resign
herself all at once. Something in the YOUNG MAN responds. He
drops his hand.
CLARE. [Faintly] How d'you do?
YOUNG MAN. [Stammering] You--you been down there to-day?
CLARE. Where?
YOUNG MAN. [With a smile] The Derby. What? Don't you generally go
down? [He touches the other chair] May I?
CLARE. [Almost in a whisper] Yes.
As he sits down, ARNAUD returns and stands before them.
ARNAUD. The plovers' eggs veree good to-night, Sare. Veree good,
Madame. A peach or two, after. Veree good peaches. The Roederer,
Sare--not bad at all. Madame likes it frappe, but not too cold--yes?
[He is away again to his service-table.]
YOUNG MAN. [Burying his face in the carnations] I say--these are
jolly, aren't they? They do you pretty well here.
CLARE. Do they?
YOUNG MAN. You've never been here? [CLARE shakes her head] By Jove!
I thought I didn't know your face. [CLARE looks full at him. Again
something moves in the YOUNG MAN, and he stammers] I mean--not----
CLARE. It doesn't matter.
YOUNG MAN. [Respectfully] Of course, if I--if you were waiting for
anybody, or anything--I----
[He half rises]
CLARE. It's all right, thank you.
The YOUNG MAN sits down again, uncomfortable, nonplussed. There
is silence, broken by the inaudible words of the languid lord,
and the distant merriment of the supper-party. ARNAUD brings
the plovers' eggs.
YOUNG MAN. The wine, quick.
ARNAUD. At once, Sare.
YOUNG MAN. [Abruptly] Don't you ever go racing, then?
CLARE. No.
[ARNAUD pours out champagne]
YOUNG MAN. I remember awfully well my first day. It was pretty
thick--lost every blessed bob, and my watch and chain, playin' three
cards on the way home.
CLARE. Everything has a beginning, hasn't it?
[She drinks. The YOUNG MAN stares at her]
YOUNG MAN. [Floundering in these waters deeper than he had bargained
for] I say--about things having beginnings--did you mean anything?
[CLARE nods]
YOUNG MAN. What! D'you mean it's really the first----?
CLARE nods. The champagne has flicked her courage.
YOUNG MAN. By George! [He leans back] I've often wondered.
ARNAUD. [Again filling the glasses] Monsieur finds----
YOUNG MAN. [Abruptly] It's all right.
He drains his glass, then sits bolt upright. Chivalry and the
camaraderie of class have begun to stir in him.
YOUNG MAN. Of course I can see that you're not--I mean, that you're
a--a lady. [CLARE smiles] And I say, you know--if you have to--
because you're in a hole--I should feel a cad. Let me lend you----?
CLARE. [Holding up her glass] 'Le vin est tire, il faut le boire'!
She drinks. The French words, which he does not too well
understand, completing his conviction that she is a lady, he
remains quite silent, frowning. As CLARE held up her glass, two
gentlemen have entered. The first is blond, of good height and
a comely insolence. His crisp, fair hair, and fair brushed-up
moustache are just going grey; an eyeglass is fixed in one of
two eyes that lord it over every woman they see; his face is
broad, and coloured with air and wine. His companion is a tall,
thin, dark bird of the night, with sly, roving eyes, and hollow
cheeks. They stand looking round, then pass into the further
room; but in passing, they have stared unreservedly at CLARE.
YOUNG MAN. [Seeing her wince] Look here! I'm afraid you must feel
me rather a brute, you know.
CLARE. No, I don't; really.
YOUNG MAN. Are you absolute stoney? [CLARE nods] But [Looking at
her frock and cloak] you're so awfully well----
CLARE. I had the sense to keep them.
YOUNG MAN. [More and more disturbed] I say, you know--I wish you'd
let me lend you something. I had quite a good day down there.
CLARE. [Again tracing her pattern on the cloth--then looking up at
him full] I can't take, for nothing.
YOUNG MAN. By Jove! I don't know-really, I don't--this makes me
feel pretty rotten. I mean, it's your being a lady.
CLARE. [Smiling] That's not your fault, is it? You see, I've been
beaten all along the line. And I really don't care what happens to
me. [She has that peculiar fey look on her face now] I really
don't; except that I don't take charity. It's lucky for me it's you,
and not some----
The supper-party is getting still more boisterous, and there comes a
long view holloa, and a blast of the horn.
YOUNG MAN. But I say, what about your people? You must have people
of some sort.
He is fast becoming fascinated, for her cheeks have begun to
flush and her eyes to shine.
CLARE. Oh, yes; I've had people, and a husband, and--everything----
And here I am! Queer, isn't it? [She touches her glass] This is
going to my head! Do you mind? I sha'n't sing songs and get up and
dance, and I won't cry, I promise you!
YOUNG MAN. [Between fascination and chivalry] By George! One
simply can't believe in this happening to a lady.
CLARE. Have you got sisters? [Breaking into her soft laughter] My
brother's in India. I sha'n't meet him, anyway.
YOUNG MAN. No, but--I say-are you really quite cut off from
everybody? [CLARE nods] Something rather awful must have happened?
She smiles. The two gentlemen have returned. The blond one is
again staring fixedly at CLARE. This time she looks back at
him, flaming; and, with a little laugh, he passes with his
friend into the corridor.
CLARE. Who are those two?
YOUNG MAN. Don't know--not been much about town yet. I'm just back
from India myself. You said your brother was there; what's his
regiment?
CLARE. [Shaking her head] You're not going to find out my name. I
haven't got one--nothing.
She leans her bare elbows on the table, and her face on her
hands.
CLARE. First of June! This day last year I broke covert--I've been
running ever since.
YOUNG MAN. I don't understand a bit. You--must have had a--a--some
one----
But there is such a change in her face, such rigidity of her
whole body, that he stops and averts his eyes. When he looks
again she is drinking. She puts the glass down, and gives a
little laugh.
YOUNG MAN. [With a sort of awe] Anyway it must have been like
riding at a pretty stiff fence, for you to come here to-night.
CLARE. Yes. What's the other side?
The YOUNG MAN puts out his hand and touches her arm. It is
meant for sympathy, but she takes it for attraction.
CLARE. [Shaking her head] Not yet please! I'm enjoying this. May
I have a cigarette?
[He takes out his case, and gives her one]
CLARE. [Letting the smoke slowly forth] Yes, I'm enjoying it. Had
a pretty poor time lately; not enough to eat, sometimes.
YOUNG MAN. Not really! How damnable! I say--do have something more
substantial.
CLARE gives a sudden gasp, as if going off into hysterical
laughter, but she stifles it, and shakes her head.
YOUNG MAN. A peach?
[ARNAUD brings peaches to the table]
CLARE. [Smiling] Thank you.
[He fills their glasses and retreats]
CLARE. [Raising her glass] Eat and drink, for tomorrow we--Listen!
From the supper-party comes the sound of an abortive chorus:
"With a hey ho, chivy, hark forrard, hark forrard, tantivy!"
Jarring out into a discordant whoop, it sinks.
CLARE. "This day a stag must die." Jolly old song!
YOUNG MAN. Rowdy lot! [Suddenly] I say--I admire your pluck.
CLARE. [Shaking her head] Haven't kept my end up. Lots of women do!
You see: I'm too fine, and not fine enough! My best friend said
that. Too fine, and not fine enough. [She laughs] I couldn't be a
saint and martyr, and I wouldn't be a soulless doll. Neither one
thing nor the other--that's the tragedy.
YOUNG MAN. You must have had awful luck!
CLARE. I did try. [Fiercely] But what's the good--when there's
nothing before you?--Do I look ill?
YOUNG MAN. No; simply awfully pretty.
CLARE. [With a laugh] A man once said to me: "As you haven't money,
you should never have been pretty!" But, you see, it is some good.
If I hadn't been, I couldn't have risked coming here, could I? Don't
you think it was rather sporting of me to buy these [She touches the
gardenias] with the last shilling over from my cab fare?
YOUNG MAN. Did you really? D---d sporting!
CLARE. It's no use doing things by halves, is it? I'm--in for it--
wish me luck! [She drinks, and puts her glass down with a smile] In
for it--deep! [She flings up her hands above her smiling face] Down,
down, till they're just above water, and then--down, down, down, and
--all over! Are you sorry now you came and spoke to me?
YOUNG MAN. By Jove, no! It may be caddish, but I'm not.
CLARE. Thank God for beauty! I hope I shall die pretty! Do you
think I shall do well?
YOUNG MAN. I say--don't talk like that!
CLARE. I want to know. Do you?
YOUNG MAN. Well, then--yes, I do.
CLARE. That's splendid. Those poor women in the streets would give
their eyes, wouldn't they?--that have to go up and down, up and down!
Do you think I--shall----
The YOUNG MAN, half-rising, puts his hand on her arm.
YOUNG MAN. I think you're getting much too excited. You look all--
Won't you eat your peach? [She shakes her head] Do! Have something
else, then--some grapes, or something?
CLARE. No, thanks.
[She has become quite calm again]
YOUNG MAN. Well, then, what d'you think? It's awfully hot in here,
isn't it? Wouldn't it be jollier drivin'? Shall we--shall we make a
move?
CLARE. Yes.
The YOUNG MAN turns to look for the waiter, but ARNAUD is not in
the room. He gets up.
YOUNG MAN. [Feverishly] D---n that waiter! Wait half a minute, if
you don't mind, while I pay the bill.
As he goes out into the corridor, the two gentlemen re-appear.
CLARE is sitting motionless, looking straight before her.
DARK ONE. A fiver you don't get her to!
BLOND ONE. Done!
He advances to her table with his inimitable insolence, and
taking the cigar from his mouth, bends his stare on her, and
says: "Charmed to see you lookin' so well! Will you have supper
with me here to-morrow night?" Startled out of her reverie,
CLARE looks up. She sees those eyes, she sees beyond him the
eyes of his companion-sly, malevolent, amused-watching; and she
just sits gazing, without a word. At that regard, so clear, the
BLOND ONE does not wince. But rather suddenly he says: "That's
arranged then. Half-past eleven. So good of you. Good-night!"
He replaces his cigar and strolls back to his companion, and in
a low voice says: "Pay up!" Then at a languid "Hullo, Charles!"
they turn to greet the two in their nook behind the screen.
CLARE has not moved, nor changed the direction of her gaze.
Suddenly she thrusts her hand into the, pocket of the cloak that
hangs behind her, and brings out the little blue bottle which,
six months ago, she took from MALISE. She pulls out the cork
and pours the whole contents into her champagne. She lifts the
glass, holds it before her--smiling, as if to call a toast, then
puts it to her lips and drinks. Still smiling, she sets the
empty glass down, and lays the gardenia flowers against her
face. Slowly she droops back in her chair, the drowsy smile
still on her lips; the gardenias drop into her lap; her arms
relax, her head falls forward on her breast. And the voices
behind the screen talk on, and the sounds of joy from the
supper-party wax and wane.
The waiter, ARNAUD, returning from the corridor, passes to his
service-table with a tall, beribboned basket of fruit. Putting
it down, he goes towards the table behind the screen, and sees.
He runs up to CLARE.
ARNAUD. Madame! Madame! [He listens for her breathing; then
suddenly catching sight of the little bottle, smells at it] Bon Dieu!
[At that queer sound they come from behind the screen--all four,
and look. The dark night bird says: "Hallo; fainted!" ARNAUD
holds out the bottle.]
LANGUID LORD. [Taking it, and smelling] Good God! [The woman bends
over CLARE, and lifts her hands; ARNAUD rushes to his service-table,
and speaks into his tube]
ARNAUD. The boss. Quick! [Looking up he sees the YOUNG MAN,
returning] 'Monsieur, elle a fui! Elle est morte'!
LANGUID LORD. [To the YOUNG MAN standing there aghast] What's this?
Friend of yours?
YOUNG MAN. My God! She was a lady. That's all I know about her.
LANGUID LORD. A lady!
[The blond and dark gentlemen have slipped from the room; and out
of the supper-party's distant laughter comes suddenly a long,
shrill: "Gone away!" And the sound of the horn playing the seven
last notes of the old song: "This day a stag must die!" From the
last note of all the sound flies up to an octave higher, sweet
and thin, like a spirit passing, till it is drowned once more in
laughter. The YOUNG MAN has covered his eyes with his hands;
ARNAUD is crossing himself fervently; the LANGUID LORD stands
gazing, with one of the dropped gardenias twisted in his
fingers; and the woman, bending over CLARE, kisses her forehead.]
CURTAIN.
THE PIGEON
A Fantasy in Three Acts
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
CHRISTOPHER WELLWYN, an artist
ANN, his daughter
GUINEVERE MEGAN, a flower-seller
RORY MEGAN, her husband
FERRAND, an alien
TIMSON, once a cabman
EDWARD BERTLEY, a Canon
ALFRED CALWAY, a Professor
SIR THOMAS HOXTON, a Justice of the Peace
Also a police constable, three humble-men, and some curious persons
The action passes in Wellwyn's Studio, and the street outside.
ACT I. Christmas Eve.
ACT II. New Year's Day.
ACT III. The First of April.
ACT I
It is the night of Christmas Eve, the SCENE is a Studio, flush
with the street, having a skylight darkened by a fall of snow.
There is no one in the room, the walls of which are whitewashed,
above a floor of bare dark boards. A fire is cheerfully
burning. On a model's platform stands an easel and canvas.
There are busts and pictures; a screen, a little stool, two arm.
chairs, and a long old-fashioned settle under the window. A
door in one wall leads to the house, a door in the opposite wall
to the model's dressing-room, and the street door is in the
centre of the wall between. On a low table a Russian samovar is
hissing, and beside it on a tray stands a teapot, with glasses,
lemon, sugar, and a decanter of rum. Through a huge uncurtained
window close to the street door the snowy lamplit street can be
seen, and beyond it the river and a night of stars.
The sound of a latchkey turned in the lock of the street door,
and ANN WELLWYN enters, a girl of seventeen, with hair tied in a
ribbon and covered by a scarf. Leaving the door open, she turns
up the electric light and goes to the fire. She throws of her
scarf and long red cloak. She is dressed in a high evening
frock of some soft white material. Her movements are quick and
substantial. Her face, full of no nonsense, is decided and
sincere, with deep-set eyes, and a capable, well-shaped
forehead. Shredding of her gloves she warms her hands.
In the doorway appear the figures of two men. The first is
rather short and slight, with a soft short beard, bright soft
eyes, and a crumply face. Under his squash hat his hair is
rather plentiful and rather grey. He wears an old brown ulster
and woollen gloves, and is puffing at a hand-made cigarette. He
is ANN'S father, WELLWYN, the artist. His companion is a
well-wrapped clergyman of medium height and stoutish build, with
a pleasant, rosy face, rather shining eyes, and rather chubby
clean-shaped lips; in appearance, indeed, a grown-up boy. He is
the Vicar of the parish--CANON BERTLEY.
BERTLEY. My dear Wellwyn, the whole question of reform is full of
difficulty. When you have two men like Professor Calway and Sir
Thomas Hoxton taking diametrically opposite points of view, as we've
seen to-night, I confess, I----
WELLWYN. Come in, Vicar, and have some grog.
BERTLEY. Not to-night, thanks! Christmas tomorrow! Great
temptation, though, this room! Goodnight, Wellwyn; good-night, Ann!
ANN. [Coming from the fire towards the tea-table.] Good-night,
Canon Bertley.
[He goes out, and WELLWYN, shutting the door after him,
approaches the fire.]
ANN. [Sitting on the little stool, with her back to the fire, and
making tea.] Daddy!
WELLWYN. My dear?
ANN. You say you liked Professor Calway's lecture. Is it going to
do you any good, that's the question?
WELLWYN. I--I hope so, Ann.
ANN. I took you on purpose. Your charity's getting simply awful.
Those two this morning cleared out all my housekeeping money.
WELLWYN. Um! Um! I quite understand your feeling.
ANN. They both had your card, so I couldn't refuse--didn't know what
you'd said to them. Why don't you make it a rule never to give your
card to anyone except really decent people, and--picture dealers, of
course.
WELLWYN. My dear, I have--often.
ANN. Then why don't you keep it? It's a frightful habit. You are
naughty, Daddy. One of these days you'll get yourself into most
fearful complications.
WELLWYN. My dear, when they--when they look at you?
ANN. You know the house wants all sorts of things. Why do you speak
to them at all?
WELLWYN. I don't--they speak to me.
[He takes of his ulster and hangs it over the back of an
arm-chair.]
ANN. They see you coming. Anybody can see you coming, Daddy.
That's why you ought to be so careful. I shall make you wear a hard
hat. Those squashy hats of yours are hopelessly inefficient.
WELLWYN. [Gazing at his hat.] Calway wears one.
ANN. As if anyone would beg of Professor Calway.
WELLWYN. Well-perhaps not. You know, Ann, I admire that fellow.
Wonderful power of-of-theory! How a man can be so absolutely tidy in
his mind! It's most exciting.
ANN. Has any one begged of you to-day?
WELLWYN. [Doubtfully.] No--no.
ANN. [After a long, severe look.] Will you have rum in your tea?
WELLWYN. [Crestfallen.] Yes, my dear--a good deal.
ANN. [Pouring out the rum, and handing him the glass.] Well, who
was it?
WELLWYN. He didn't beg of me. [Losing himself in recollection.]
Interesting old creature, Ann--real type. Old cabman.
ANN. Where?
WELLWYN. Just on the Embankment.
ANN. Of course! Daddy, you know the Embankment ones are always
rotters.
WELLWYN. Yes, my dear; but this wasn't.
ANN. Did you give him your card?
WELLWYN. I--I--don't
ANN. Did you, Daddy?
WELLWYN. I'm rather afraid I may have!
ANN. May have! It's simply immoral.
WELLWYN. Well, the old fellow was so awfully human, Ann. Besides, I
didn't give him any money--hadn't got any.
ANN. Look here, Daddy! Did you ever ask anybody for anything? You
know you never did, you'd starve first. So would anybody decent.
Then, why won't you see that people who beg are rotters?
WELLWYN. But, my dear, we're not all the same. They wouldn't do it
if it wasn't natural to them. One likes to be friendly. What's the
use of being alive if one isn't?
ANN. Daddy, you're hopeless.
WELLWYN. But, look here, Ann, the whole thing's so jolly
complicated. According to Calway, we're to give the State all we can
spare, to make the undeserving deserving. He's a Professor; he ought
to know. But old Hoxton's always dinning it into me that we ought to
support private organisations for helping the deserving, and damn the
undeserving. Well, that's just the opposite. And he's a J.P.
Tremendous experience. And the Vicar seems to be for a little bit of
both. Well, what the devil----? My trouble is, whichever I'm with,
he always converts me. [Ruefully.] And there's no fun in any of
them.
ANN. [Rising.] Oh! Daddy, you are so--don't you know that you're
the despair of all social reformers? [She envelops him.] There's a
tear in the left knee of your trousers. You're not to wear them
again.
WELLWYN. Am I likely to?
ANN. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if it isn't your only pair.
D'you know what I live in terror of?
[WELLWYN gives her a queer and apprehensive look.]
ANN. That you'll take them off some day, and give them away in the
street. Have you got any money? [She feels in his coat, and he his
trousers--they find nothing.] Do you know that your pockets are one
enormous hole?
WELLWYN. No!
ANN. Spiritually.
WELLWYN. Oh! Ah! H'm!
ANN. [Severely.] Now, look here, Daddy! [She takes him by his
lapels.] Don't imagine that it isn't the most disgusting luxury on
your part to go on giving away things as you do! You know what you
really are, I suppose--a sickly sentimentalist!
WELLWYN. [Breaking away from her, disturbed.] It isn't sentiment.
It's simply that they seem to me so--so--jolly. If I'm to give up
feeling sort of--nice in here [he touches his chest] about people--it
doesn't matter who they are--then I don't know what I'm to do.
I shall have to sit with my head in a bag.
ANN. I think you ought to.
WELLWYN. I suppose they see I like them--then they tell me things.
After that, of course you can't help doing what you can.
ANN. Well, if you will love them up!
WELLWYN. My dear, I don't want to. It isn't them especially--why, I
feel it even with old Calway sometimes. It's only Providence that he
doesn't want anything of me--except to make me like himself--confound
him!
ANN. [Moving towards the door into the house--impressively.] What
you don't see is that other people aren't a bit like you.
WELLWYN. Well, thank God!
ANN. It's so old-fashioned too! I'm going to bed--I just leave you
to your conscience.
WELLWYN. Oh!
ANN. [Opening the door-severely.] Good-night--[with a certain
weakening] you old--Daddy!
[She jumps at him, gives him a hug, and goes out.]
[WELLWYN stands perfectly still. He first gazes up at the
skylight, then down at the floor. Slowly he begins to shake his
head, and mutter, as he moves towards the fire.]
WELLWYN. Bad lot. . . . Low type--no backbone, no stability!
[There comes a fluttering knock on the outer door. As the sound
slowly enters his consciousness, he begins to wince, as though
he knew, but would not admit its significance. Then he sits
down, covering his ears. The knocking does not cease. WELLWYN
drops first one, then both hands, rises, and begins to sidle
towards the door. The knocking becomes louder.]
WELLWYN. Ah dear! Tt! Tt! Tt!
[After a look in the direction of ANN's disappearance, he opens
the street door a very little way. By the light of the lamp
there can be seen a young girl in dark clothes, huddled in a
shawl to which the snow is clinging. She has on her arm a
basket covered with a bit of sacking.]
WELLWYN. I can't, you know; it's impossible.
[The girl says nothing, but looks at him with dark eyes.]
WELLWYN. [Wincing.] Let's see--I don't know you--do I?
[The girl, speaking in a soft, hoarse voice, with a faint accent
of reproach: "Mrs. Megan--you give me this---" She holds out a
dirty visiting card.]
WELLWYN. [Recoiling from the card.] Oh! Did I? Ah! When?
MRS. MEGAN. You 'ad some vi'lets off of me larst spring. You give
me 'arf a crown.
[A smile tries to visit her face.]
WELLWYN. [Looking stealthily round.] Ah! Well, come in--just for a
minute--it's very cold--and tell us what it is.
[She comes in stolidly, a Sphinx-like figure, with her pretty
tragic little face.]
WELLWYN. I don't remember you. [Looking closer.] Yes, I do. Only--
you weren't the same-were you?
MRS. MEGAN. [Dully.] I seen trouble since.
WELLWYN. Trouble! Have some tea?
[He looks anxiously at the door into the house, then goes
quickly to the table, and pours out a glass of tea, putting rum
into it.]
WELLWYN. [Handing her the tea.] Keeps the cold out! Drink it off!
[MRS. MEGAN drinks it of, chokes a little, and almost
immediately seems to get a size larger. WELLWYN watches her
with his head held on one side, and a smile broadening on his
face.]
WELLWYN. Cure for all evils, um?
MRS. MEGAN. It warms you. [She smiles.]
WELLWYN. [Smiling back, and catching himself out.] Well! You know,
I oughtn't.
MRS. MEGAN. [Conscious of the disruption of his personality, and
withdrawing into her tragic abyss.] I wouldn't 'a come, but you told
me if I wanted an 'and----
WELLWYN. [Gradually losing himself in his own nature.] Let me
see--corner of Flight Street, wasn't it?
MRS. MEGAN. [With faint eagerness.] Yes, sir, an' I told you about
me vi'lets--it was a luvly spring-day.
WELLWYN. Beautiful! Beautiful! Birds singing, and the trees, &c.!
We had quite a talk. You had a baby with you.
MRS. MEGAN. Yes. I got married since then.
WELLWYN. Oh! Ah! Yes! [Cheerfully.] And how's the baby?
MRS. MEGAN. [Turning to stone.] I lost her.
WELLWYN. Oh! poor--- Um!
MRS. MEGAN. [Impassive.] You said something abaht makin' a picture
of me. [With faint eagerness.] So I thought I might come, in case
you'd forgotten.
WELLWYN. [Looking at, her intently.] Things going badly?
MRS. MEGAN. [Stripping the sacking off her basket.] I keep 'em
covered up, but the cold gets to 'em. Thruppence--that's all I've
took.
WELLWYN. Ho! Tt! Tt! [He looks into the basket.] Christmas, too!
MRS. MEGAN. They're dead.
WELLWYN. [Drawing in his breath.] Got a good husband?
MRS. MEGAN. He plays cards.
WELLWYN. Oh, Lord! And what are you doing out--with a cold like
that? [He taps his chest.]
MRS. MEGAN. We was sold up this morning--he's gone off with 'is
mates. Haven't took enough yet for a night's lodgin'.
WELLWYN. [Correcting a spasmodic dive into his pockets.] But who
buys flowers at this time of night?
[MRS. MEGAN looks at him, and faintly smiles.]
WELLWYN. [Rumpling his hair.] Saints above us! Here! Come to the
fire!
[She follows him to the fire. He shuts the street door.]
WELLWYN. Are your feet wet? [She nods.] Well, sit down here, and
take them off. That's right.
[She sits on the stool. And after a slow look up at him, which
has in it a deeper knowledge than belongs of right to her years,
begins taking off her shoes and stockings. WELLWYN goes to the
door into the house, opens it, and listens with a sort of
stealthy casualness. He returns whistling, but not out loud.
The girl has finished taking off her stockings, and turned her
bare toes to the flames. She shuffles them back under her
skirt.]
WELLWYN. How old are you, my child?
MRS. MEGAN. Nineteen, come Candlemas.
WELLWYN. And what's your name?
MRS. MEGAN. Guinevere.
WELLWYN. What? Welsh?
MRS. MEGAN. Yes--from Battersea.
WELLWYN. And your husband?
MRS. MEGAN. No. Irish, 'e is. Notting Dale, 'e comes from.
WELLWYN. Roman Catholic?
MRS. MEGAN. Yes. My 'usband's an atheist as well.
WELLWYN. I see. [Abstractedly.] How jolly! And how old is he--this
young man of yours?
MRS. MEGAN. 'E'll be twenty soon.
WELLWYN. Babes in the wood! Does he treat you badly?
MRS. MEGAN. No.
WELLWYN. Nor drink?
MRS. MEGAN. No. He's not a bad one. Only he gets playin'
cards then 'e'll fly the kite.
WELLWYN. I see. And when he's not flying it, what does he do?
MRS. MEGAN. [Touching her basket.] Same as me. Other jobs tires 'im.
WELLWYN. That's very nice! [He checks himself.] Well, what am I to
do with you?
MRS. MEGAN. Of course, I could get me night's lodging if I like to
do--the same as some of them.
WELLWYN. No! no! Never, my child! Never!
MRS. MEGAN. It's easy that way.
WELLWYN. Heavens! But your husband! Um?
MRS. MEGAN. [With stoical vindictiveness.] He's after one I know of.
WELLWYN. Tt! What a pickle!
MRS. MEGAN. I'll 'ave to walk about the streets.
WELLWYN. [To himself.] Now how can I?
[MRS. MEGAN looks up and smiles at him, as if she had already
discovered that he is peculiar.]
WELLWYN. You see, the fact is, I mustn't give you anything--because
--well, for one thing I haven't got it. There are other reasons, but
that's the--real one. But, now, there's a little room where my
models dress. I wonder if you could sleep there. Come, and see.
[The Girl gets up lingeringly, loth to leave the warmth. She
takes up her wet stockings.]
MRS. MEGAN. Shall I put them on again?
WELLWYN. No, no; there's a nice warm pair of slippers. [Seeing the
steam rising from her.] Why, you're wet all over. Here, wait a
little!
[He crosses to the door into the house, and after stealthy
listening, steps through. The Girl, like a cat, steals back to
the warmth of the fire. WELLWYN returns with a candle, a
canary-coloured bath gown, and two blankets.]
WELLWYN. Now then! [He precedes her towards the door of the model's
room.] Hsssh! [He opens the door and holds up the candle to show
her the room.] Will it do? There's a couch. You'll find some
washing things. Make yourself quite at home. See!
[The Girl, perfectly dumb, passes through with her basket--and
her shoes and stockings. WELLWYN hands her the candle,
blankets, and bath gown.]
WELLWYN. Have a good sleep, child! Forget that you're alive!
[He closes the door, mournfully.] Done it again! [He goes to the
table, cuts a large slice of cake, knocks on the door, and hands it
in.] Chow-chow! [Then, as he walks away, he sights the opposite
door.] Well--damn it, what could I have done? Not a farthing on me!
[He goes to the street door to shut it, but first opens it wide to
confirm himself in his hospitality.] Night like this!
[A sputter of snow is blown in his face. A voice says:
"Monsieur, pardon!" WELLWYN recoils spasmodically. A figure
moves from the lamp-post to the doorway. He is seen to be young
and to have ragged clothes. He speaks again: "You do not
remember me, Monsieur? My name is Ferrand--it was in Paris, in
the Champs-Elysees--by the fountain . . . . When you came to
the door, Monsieur--I am not made of iron . . . . Tenez,
here is your card I have never lost it." He holds out to WELLWYN
an old and dirty wing card. As inch by inch he has advanced
into the doorway, the light from within falls on him, a tall
gaunt young pagan with fair hair and reddish golden stubble of
beard, a long ironical nose a little to one side, and large,
grey, rather prominent eyes. There is a certain grace in his
figure and movements; his clothes are nearly dropping off him.]
WELLWYN. [Yielding to a pleasant memory.] Ah! yes. By the
fountain. I was sitting there, and you came and ate a roll, and
drank the water.
FERRAND. [With faint eagerness.] My breakfast. I was in poverty--
veree bad off. You gave me ten francs. I thought I had a little the
right [WELLWYN makes a movement of disconcertion] seeing you said
that if I came to England----
WELLWYN. Um! And so you've come?
FERRAND. It was time that I consolidated my fortunes, Monsieur.
WELLWYN. And you--have----
[He stops embarrassed.]
FERRAND. [Shrugging his ragged shoulders.] One is not yet Rothschild.
WELLWYN. [Sympathetically.] No. [Yielding to memory.] We talked
philosophy.
FERRAND. I have not yet changed my opinion. We other vagabonds, we
are exploited by the bourgeois. This is always my idea, Monsieur.
WELLWYN. Yes--not quite the general view, perhaps! Well----
[Heartily.] Come in! Very glad to see you again.
FERRAND. [Brushing his arms over his eyes.] Pardon, Monsieur--your
goodness--I am a little weak. [He opens his coat, and shows a belt
drawn very tight over his ragged shirt.] I tighten him one hole for
each meal, during two days now. That gives you courage.
WELLWYN. [With cooing sounds, pouring out tea, and adding rum.] Have
some of this. It'll buck you up. [He watches the young man drink.]
FERRAND. [Becoming a size larger.] Sometimes I think that I will
never succeed to dominate my life, Monsieur--though I have no vices,
except that I guard always the aspiration to achieve success. But I
will not roll myself under the machine of existence to gain a nothing
every day. I must find with what to fly a little.
WELLWYN. [Delicately.] Yes; yes--I remember, you found it difficult
to stay long in any particular--yes.
FERRAND. [Proudly.] In one little corner? No--Monsieur--never!
That is not in my character. I must see life.
WELLWYN. Quite, quite! Have some cake?
[He cuts cake.]
FERRAND. In your country they say you cannot eat the cake and have
it. But one must always try, Monsieur; one must never be content.
[Refusing the cake.] 'Grand merci', but for the moment I have no
stomach--I have lost my stomach now for two days. If I could smoke,
Monsieur! [He makes the gesture of smoking.]
WELLWYN. Rather! [Handing his tobacco pouch.] Roll yourself one.
FERRAND. [Rapidly rolling a cigarette.] If I had not found you,
Monsieur--I would have been a little hole in the river to-night--
I was so discouraged. [He inhales and puffs a long luxurious whif of
smoke. Very bitterly.] Life! [He disperses the puff of smoke with
his finger, and stares before him.] And to think that in a few
minutes HE will be born! Monsieur! [He gazes intently at WELLWYN.]
The world would reproach you for your goodness to me.
WELLWYN. [Looking uneasily at the door into the house.] You think
so? Ah!
FERRAND. Monsieur, if HE himself were on earth now, there would be a
little heap of gentlemen writing to the journals every day to call
Him sloppee sentimentalist! And what is veree funny, these gentlemen
they would all be most strong Christians. [He regards WELLWYN
deeply.] But that will not trouble you, Monsieur; I saw well from
the first that you are no Christian. You have so kind a face.
WELLWYN. Oh! Indeed!
FERRAND. You have not enough the Pharisee in your character. You do
not judge, and you are judged.
[He stretches his limbs as if in pain.]
WELLWYN. Are you in pain?
FERRAND. I 'ave a little the rheumatism.
WELLWYN. Wet through, of course! [Glancing towards the house.] Wait
a bit! I wonder if you'd like these trousers; they've--er--they're
not quite----
[He passes through the door into the house. FERRAND stands at
the fire, with his limbs spread as it were to embrace it,
smoking with abandonment. WELLWYN returns stealthily, dressed
in a Jaeger dressing-gown, and bearing a pair of drawers, his
trousers, a pair of slippers, and a sweater.]
WELLWYN. [Speaking in a low voice, for the door is still open.] Can
you make these do for the moment?
FERRAND. 'Je vous remercie', Monsieur. [Pointing to the screen.]
May I retire?
WELLWYN. Yes, yes.
[FERRAND goes behind the screen. WELLWYN closes the door into
the house, then goes to the window to draw the curtains. He
suddenly recoils and stands petrified with doubt.]
WELLWYN. Good Lord!
[There is the sound of tapping on glass. Against the
window-pane is pressed the face of a man. WELLWYN motions to him
to go away. He does not go, but continues tapping. WELLWYN
opens the door. There enters a square old man, with a red,
pendulous jawed, shaking face under a snow besprinkled bowler
hat. He is holding out a visiting card with tremulous hand.]
WELLWYN. Who's that? Who are you?
TIMSON. [In a thick, hoarse, shaking voice.] 'Appy to see you, sir;
we 'ad a talk this morning. Timson--I give you me name. You invited
of me, if ye remember.
WELLWYN. It's a little late, really.
TIMSON. Well, ye see, I never expected to 'ave to call on yer. I
was 'itched up all right when I spoke to yer this mornin', but bein'
Christmas, things 'ave took a turn with me to-day. [He speaks with
increasing thickness.] I'm reg'lar disgusted--not got the price of a
bed abaht me. Thought you wouldn't like me to be delicate--not at my
age.
WELLWYN. [With a mechanical and distracted dive of his hands into
his pockets.] The fact is, it so happens I haven't a copper on me.
TIMSON. [Evidently taking this for professional refusal.] Wouldn't
arsk you if I could 'elp it. 'Ad to do with 'orses all me life.
It's this 'ere cold I'm frightened of. I'm afraid I'll go to sleep.
WELLWYN. Well, really, I----
TIMSON. To be froze to death--I mean--it's awkward.
WELLWYN. [Puzzled and unhappy.] Well--come in a moment, and let's--
think it out. Have some tea!
[He pours out the remains of the tea, and finding there is not
very much, adds rum rather liberally. TIMSON, who walks a
little wide at the knees, steadying his gait, has followed.]
TIMSON. [Receiving the drink.] Yer 'ealth. 'Ere's--soberiety!
[He applies the drink to his lips with shaking hand. Agreeably
surprised.] Blimey! Thish yer tea's foreign, ain't it?
FERRAND. [Reappearing from behind the screen in his new clothes of
which the trousers stop too soon.] With a needle, Monsieur, I would
soon have with what to make face against the world.
WELLWYN. Too short! Ah!
[He goes to the dais on which stands ANN's workbasket, and takes
from it a needle and cotton.]
[While he is so engaged FERRAND is sizing up old TIMSON, as one
dog will another. The old man, glass in hand, seems to have
lapsed into coma.]
FERRAND. [Indicating TIMSON] Monsieur!
[He makes the gesture of one drinking, and shakes his head.]
WELLWYN. [Handing him the needle and cotton.] Um! Afraid so!
[They approach TIMSON, who takes no notice.]
FERRAND. [Gently.] It is an old cabby, is it not, Monsieur? 'Ceux
sont tous des buveurs'.
WELLWYN. [Concerned at the old man's stupefaction.] Now, my old
friend, sit down a moment. [They manoeuvre TIMSON to the settle.]
Will you smoke?
TIMSON. [In a drowsy voice.] Thank 'ee-smoke pipe of 'baccer. Old
'orse--standin' abaht in th' cold.
[He relapses into coma.]
FERRAND. [With a click of his tongue.] 'Il est parti'.
WELLWYN. [Doubtfully.] He hasn't really left a horse outside, do
you think?
FERRAND. Non, non, Monsieur--no 'orse. He is dreaming. I know very
well that state of him--that catches you sometimes. It is the warmth
sudden on the stomach. He will speak no more sense to-night. At the
most, drink, and fly a little in his past.
WELLWYN. Poor old buffer!
FERRAND. Touching, is it not, Monsieur? There are many brave gents
among the old cabbies--they have philosophy--that comes from 'orses,
and from sitting still.
WELLWYN. [Touching TIMSON's shoulder.] Drenched!
FERRAND. That will do 'im no 'arm, Monsieur-no 'arm at all. He is
well wet inside, remember--it is Christmas to-morrow. Put him a rug,
if you will, he will soon steam.
[WELLWYN takes up ANN's long red cloak, and wraps it round the
old man.]
TIMSON. [Faintly roused.] Tha's right. Put--the rug on th' old
'orse.
[He makes a strange noise, and works his head and tongue.]
WELLWYN. [Alarmed.] What's the matter with him?
FERRAND. It is nothing, Monsieur; for the moment he thinks 'imself a
'orse. 'Il joue "cache-cache,"' 'ide and seek, with what you call--
'is bitt.
WELLWYN. But what's to be done with him? One can't turn him out in
this state.
FERRAND. If you wish to leave him 'ere, Monsieur, have no fear. I
charge myself with him.
WELLWYN. Oh! [Dubiously.] You--er--I really don't know, I--hadn't
contemplated--You think you could manage if I--if I went to bed?
FERRAND. But certainly, Monsieur.
WELLWYN. [Still dubiously.] You--you're sure you've everything you
want?
FERRAND. [Bowing.] 'Mais oui, Monsieur'.
WELLWYN. I don't know what I can do by staying.
FERRAND. There is nothing you can do, Monsieur. Have confidence in
me.
WELLWYN. Well-keep the fire up quietly--very quietly. You'd better
take this coat of mine, too. You'll find it precious cold, I expect,
about three o'clock. [He hands FERRAND his Ulster.]
FERRAND. [Taking it.] I shall sleep in praying for you, Monsieur.
WELLWYN. Ah! Yes! Thanks! Well-good-night! By the way, I shall
be down rather early. Have to think of my household a bit, you know.
FERRAND. 'Tres bien, Monsieur'. I comprehend. One must well be
regular in this life.
WELLWYN. [With a start.] Lord! [He looks at the door of the
model's room.] I'd forgotten----
FERRAND. Can I undertake anything, Monsieur?
WELLWYN. No, no! [He goes to the electric light switch by the outer
door.] You won't want this, will you?
FERRAND. 'Merci, Monsieur'.
[WELLWYN switches off the light.]
FERRAND. 'Bon soir, Monsieur'!
WELLWYN. The devil! Er--good-night!
[He hesitates, rumples his hair, and passes rather suddenly
away.]
FERRAND. [To himself.] Poor pigeon! [Looking long at old TIMSON]
'Espece de type anglais!'
[He sits down in the firelight, curls up a foot on his knee, and
taking out a knife, rips the stitching of a turned-up end of
trouser, pinches the cloth double, and puts in the preliminary
stitch of a new hem--all with the swiftness of one well-accustomed.
Then, as if hearing a sound behind him, he gets up quickly and
slips behind the screen. MRS. MEGAN, attracted by the cessation
of voices, has opened the door, and is creeping from the model's
room towards the fire. She has almost reached it before she
takes in the torpid crimson figure of old TIMSON. She halts and
puts her hand to her chest--a queer figure in the firelight,
garbed in the canary-coloured bath gown and rabbit's-wool
slippers, her black matted hair straggling down on her neck.
Having quite digested the fact that the old man is in a sort of
stupor, MRS. MEGAN goes close to the fire, and sits on the little
stool, smiling sideways at old TIMSON. FERRAND, coming quietly
up behind, examines her from above, drooping his long nose as if
enquiring with it as to her condition in life; then he steps back
a yard or two.]
FERRAND. [Gently.] 'Pardon, Ma'moiselle'.
MRS. MEGAN. [Springing to her feet.] Oh!
FERRAND. All right, all right! We are brave gents!
TIMSON. [Faintly roused.] 'Old up, there!
FERRAND. Trust in me, Ma'moiselle!
[MRS. MEGAN responds by drawing away.]
FERRAND. [Gently.] We must be good comrades. This asylum--it is
better than a doss-'ouse.
[He pushes the stool over towards her, and seats himself.
Somewhat reassured, MRS. MEGAN again sits down.]
MRS. MEGAN. You frightened me.
TIMSON. [Unexpectedly-in a drowsy tone.] Purple foreigners!
FERRAND. Pay no attention, Ma'moiselle. He is a philosopher.
MRS. MEGAN. Oh! I thought 'e was boozed.
[They both look at TIMSON]
FERRAND. It is the same-veree 'armless.
MRS. MEGAN. What's that he's got on 'im?
FERRAND. It is a coronation robe. Have no fear, Ma'moiselle. Veree
docile potentate.
MRS. MEGAN. I wouldn't be afraid of him. [Challenging FERRAND.] I'm
afraid o' you.
FERRAND. It is because you do not know me, Ma'moiselle. You are
wrong, it is always the unknown you should love.
MRS. MEGAN. I don't like the way you-speaks to me.
FERRAND. Ah! You are a Princess in disguise?
MRS. MEGAN. No fear!
FERRAND. No? What is it then you do to make face against the
necessities of life? A living?
MRS. MEGAN. Sells flowers.
FERRAND. [Rolling his eyes.] It is not a career.
MRS. MEGAN. [With a touch of devilry.] You don't know what I do.
FERRAND. Ma'moiselle, whatever you do is charming.
[MRS. MEGAN looks at him, and slowly smiles.]
MRS. MEGAN. You're a foreigner.
FERRAND. It is true.
MRS. MEGAN. What do you do for a livin'?
FERRAND. I am an interpreter.
MRS. MEGAN. You ain't very busy, are you?
FERRAND. [With dignity.] At present I am resting.
MRS. MEGAN. [Looking at him and smiling.] How did you and 'im come
here?
FERRAND. Ma'moiselle, we would ask you the same question.
MRS. MEGAN. The gentleman let me. 'E's funny.
FERRAND. 'C'est un ange' [At MRS. MEGAN's blank stare he
interprets.] An angel!
MRS. MEGAN. Me luck's out-that's why I come.
FERRAND. [Rising.] Ah! Ma'moiselle! Luck! There is the little
God who dominates us all. Look at this old! [He points to TIMSON.]
He is finished. In his day that old would be doing good business.
He could afford himself--[He maker a sign of drinking.]--Then come
the motor cars. All goes--he has nothing left, only 'is 'abits of a
'cocher'! Luck!
TIMSON. [With a vague gesture--drowsily.] Kick the foreign beggars
out.
FERRAND. A real Englishman . . . . And look at me! My father
was merchant of ostrich feathers in Brussels. If I had been content
to go in his business, I would 'ave been rich. But I was born to
roll--"rolling stone"to voyage is stronger than myself. Luck! . .
And you, Ma'moiselle, shall I tell your fortune? [He looks in her
face.] You were born for 'la joie de vivre'--to drink the wines of
life. 'Et vous voila'! Luck!
[Though she does not in the least understand what he has said,
her expression changes to a sort of glee.]
FERRAND. Yes. You were born loving pleasure. Is it not? You see,
you cannot say, No. All of us, we have our fates. Give me your
hand. [He kneels down and takes her hand.] In each of us there is
that against which we cannot struggle. Yes, yes!
[He holds her hand, and turns it over between his own.
MRS. MEGAN remains stolid, half fascinated, half-reluctant.]
TIMSON. [Flickering into consciousness.] Be'ave yourselves! Yer
crimson canary birds!
[MRS. MEGAN would withdraw her hand, but cannot.]
FERRAND. Pay no attention, Ma'moiselle. He is a Puritan.
[TIMSON relapses into comatosity, upsetting his glass, which
falls with a crash.]
MRS. MEGAN. Let go my hand, please!
FERRAND. [Relinquishing it, and staring into the fore gravely.]
There is one thing I have never done--'urt a woman--that is hardly in
my character. [Then, drawing a little closer, he looks into her
face.] Tell me, Ma'moiselle, what is it you think of all day long?
MRS. MEGAN. I dunno--lots, I thinks of.
FERRAND. Shall I tell you? [Her eyes remain fixed on his, the
strangeness of him preventing her from telling him to "get along."
He goes on in his ironic voice.] It is of the streets--the lights--
the faces--it is of all which moves, and is warm--it is of colour--it
is [he brings his face quite close to hers] of Love. That is for you
what the road is for me. That is for you what the rum is for that
old--[He jerks his thumb back at TIMSON. Then bending swiftly
forward to the girl.] See! I kiss you--Ah!
[He draws her forward off the stool. There is a little
struggle, then she resigns her lips. The little stool,
overturned, falls with a clatter. They spring up, and move
apart. The door opens and ANN enters from the house in a blue
dressing-gown, with her hair loose, and a candle held high above
her head. Taking in the strange half-circle round the stove,
she recoils. Then, standing her ground, calls in a voice
sharpened by fright: "Daddy--Daddy!"]
TIMSON. [Stirring uneasily, and struggling to his feet.] All right!
I'm comin'!
FERRAND. Have no fear, Madame!
[In the silence that follows, a clock begins loudly striking
twelve. ANN remains, as if carved in atone, her eyes fastened
on the strangers. There is the sound of someone falling
downstairs, and WELLWYN appears, also holding a candle above his
head.]
ANN. Look!
WELLWYN. Yes, yes, my dear! It--it happened.
ANN. [With a sort of groan.] Oh! Daddy!
[In the renewed silence, the church clock ceases to chime.]
FERRAND. [Softly, in his ironic voice.] HE is come, Monsieur! 'Appy
Christmas! Bon Noel!
[There is a sudden chime of bells. The Stage is blotted dark.]
Curtain.
ACT II
It is four o'clock in the afternoon of New Year's Day. On the raised
dais MRS. MEGAN is standing, in her rags; with bare feet and ankles,
her dark hair as if blown about, her lips parted, holding out a
dishevelled bunch of violets. Before his easel, WELLWYN is painting
her. Behind him, at a table between the cupboard and the door to the
model's room, TIMSON is washing brushes, with the movements of one
employed upon relief works. The samovar is hissing on the table by
the stove, the tea things are set out.
WELLWYN. Open your mouth.
[MRS. MEGAN opens her mouth.]
ANN. [In hat and coat, entering from the house.] Daddy!
[WELLWYN goes to her; and, released from restraint, MRS. MEGAN
looks round at TIMSON and grimaces.]
WELLWYN. Well, my dear?
[They speak in low voices.]
ANN. [Holding out a note.] This note from Canon Bentley. He's going
to bring her husband here this afternoon. [She looks at MRS. MEGAN.]
WELLWYN. Oh! [He also looks at MRS. MEGAN.]
ANN. And I met Sir Thomas Hoxton at church this morning, and spoke
to him about Timson.
WELLWYN. Um!
[They look at TIMSON. Then ANN goes back to the door, and
WELLWYN follows her.]
ANN. [Turning.] I'm going round now, Daddy, to ask Professor Calway
what we're to do with that Ferrand.
WELLWYN. Oh! One each! I wonder if they'll like it.
ANN. They'll have to lump it.
[She goes out into the house.]
WELLWYN. [Back at his easel.] You can shut your mouth now.
[MRS. MEGAN shuts her mouth, but opens it immediately to smile.]
WELLWYN. [Spasmodically.] Ah! Now that's what I want. [He dabs
furiously at the canvas. Then standing back, runs his hands through
his hair and turns a painter's glance towards the skylight.] Dash!
Light's gone! Off you get, child--don't tempt me!
[MRS. MEGAN descends. Passing towards the door of the model's
room she stops, and stealthily looks at the picture.]
TIMSON. Ah! Would yer!
WELLWYN. [Wheeling round.] Want to have a look? Well--come on!
[He takes her by the arm, and they stand before the canvas.
After a stolid moment, she giggles.]
WELLWYN. Oh! You think so?
MRS. MEGAN. [Who has lost her hoarseness.] It's not like my picture
that I had on the pier.
WELLWYN. No-it wouldn't be.
MRS. MEGAN. [Timidly.] If I had an 'at on, I'd look better.
WELLWYN. With feathers?
MRS. MEGAN. Yes.
WELLWYN. Well, you can't! I don't like hats, and I don't like
feathers.
[MRS. MEGAN timidly tugs his sleeve. TIMSON, screened as he
thinks by the picture, has drawn from his bulky pocket a bottle
and is taking a stealthy swig.]
WELLWYN. [To MRS. MEGAN, affecting not to notice.] How much do I owe
you?
MRS. MEGAN. [A little surprised.] You paid me for to-day-all 'cept
a penny.
WELLWYN. Well! Here it is. [He gives her a coin.] Go and get your
feet on!
MRS. MEGAN. You've give me 'arf a crown.
WELLWYN. Cut away now!
[MRS. MEGAN, smiling at the coin, goes towards the model's room.
She looks back at WELLWYN, as if to draw his eyes to her, but he
is gazing at the picture; then, catching old TIMSON'S sour
glance, she grimaces at him, kicking up her feet with a little
squeal. But when WELLWYN turns to the sound, she is demurely
passing through the doorway.]
TIMSON. [In his voice of dubious sobriety.] I've finished these yer
brushes, sir. It's not a man's work. I've been thinkin' if you'd
keep an 'orse, I could give yer satisfaction.
WELLWYN. Would the horse, Timson?
TIMSON. [Looking him up and down.] I knows of one that would just
suit yer. Reel 'orse, you'd like 'im.
WELLWYN. [Shaking his head.] Afraid not, Timson! Awfully sorry,
though, to have nothing better for you than this, at present.
TIMSON. [Faintly waving the brushes.] Of course, if you can't
afford it, I don't press you--it's only that I feel I'm not doing
meself justice. [Confidentially.] There's just one thing, sir; I
can't bear to see a gen'leman imposed on. That foreigner--'e's not
the sort to 'ave about the place. Talk? Oh! ah! But 'e'll never
do any good with 'imself. He's a alien.
WELLWYN. Terrible misfortune to a fellow, Timson.
TIMSON. Don't you believe it, sir; it's his fault I says to the
young lady yesterday: Miss Ann, your father's a gen'leman [with a
sudden accent of hoarse sincerity], and so you are--I don't mind
sayin' it--but, I said, he's too easy-goin'.
WELLWYN. Indeed!
TIMSON. Well, see that girl now! [He shakes his head.] I never did
believe in goin' behind a person's back--I'm an Englishman--but
[lowering his voice] she's a bad hat, sir. Why, look at the street
she comes from!
WELLWYN. Oh! you know it.
TIMSON. Lived there meself larst three years. See the difference a
few days' corn's made in her. She's that saucy you can't touch 'er
head.
WELLWYN. Is there any necessity, Timson?
TIMSON. Artful too. Full o' vice, I call'er. Where's 'er 'usband?
WELLWYN. [Gravely.] Come, Timson! You wouldn't like her to----
TIMSON. [With dignity, so that the bottle in his pocket is plainly
visible.] I'm a man as always beared inspection.
WELLWYN. [With a well-directed smile.] So I see.
TIMSON. [Curving himself round the bottle.] It's not for me to say
nothing--but I can tell a gen'leman as quick as ever I can tell an
'orse.
WELLWYN. [Painting.] I find it safest to assume that every man is a
gentleman, and every woman a lady. Saves no end of self-contempt.
Give me the little brush.
TIMSON. [Handing him the brush--after a considerable introspective
pause.] Would yer like me to stay and wash it for yer again? [With
great resolution.] I will--I'll do it for you--never grudged workin'
for a gen'leman.
WELLWYN. [With sincerity.] Thank you, Timson--very good of you, I'm
sure. [He hands him back the brush.] Just lend us a hand with this.
[Assisted by TIMSON he pushes back the dais.] Let's see! What do I
owe you?
TIMSON. [Reluctantly.] It so 'appens, you advanced me to-day's
yesterday.
WELLWYN. Then I suppose you want to-morrow's?
TIMSON. Well, I 'ad to spend it, lookin' for a permanent job. When
you've got to do with 'orses, you can't neglect the publics, or you
might as well be dead.
WELLWYN. Quite so!
TIMSON. It mounts up in the course o' the year.
WELLWYN. It would. [Passing him a coin.] This is for an exceptional
purpose--Timson--see. Not----
TIMSON. [Touching his forehead.] Certainly, sir. I quite
understand. I'm not that sort, as I think I've proved to yer, comin'
here regular day after day, all the week. There's one thing, I ought
to warn you perhaps--I might 'ave to give this job up any day.
[He makes a faint demonstration with the little brush, then puts
it, absent-mindedly, into his pocket.]
WELLWYN. [Gravely.] I'd never stand in the way of your bettering
yourself, Timson. And, by the way, my daughter spoke to a friend
about you to-day. I think something may come of it.
TIMSON. Oh! Oh! She did! Well, it might do me a bit o' good. [He
makes for the outer door, but stops.] That foreigner! 'E sticks in
my gizzard. It's not as if there wasn't plenty o' pigeons for 'im to
pluck in 'is own Gawd-forsaken country. Reg-lar jay, that's what I
calls 'im. I could tell yer something----
[He has opened the door, and suddenly sees that FERRAND himself
is standing there. Sticking out his lower lip, TIMSON gives a
roll of his jaw and lurches forth into the street. Owing to a
slight miscalculation, his face and raised arms are plainly
visible through the window, as he fortifies himself from his
battle against the cold. FERRAND, having closed the door,
stands with his thumb acting as pointer towards this spectacle.
He is now remarkably dressed in an artist's squashy green hat, a
frock coat too small for him, a bright blue tie of knitted silk,
the grey trousers that were torn, well-worn brown boots, and a
tan waistcoat.]
WELLWYN. What luck to-day?
FERRAND. [With a shrug.] Again I have beaten all London, Monsieur
--not one bite. [Contemplating himself.] I think perhaps, that, for
the bourgeoisie, there is a little too much colour in my costume.
WELLWYN. [Contemplating him.] Let's see--I believe I've an old top
hat somewhere.
FERRAND. Ah! Monsieur, 'merci', but that I could not. It is
scarcely in my character.
WELLWYN. True!
FERRAND. I have been to merchants of wine, of tabac, to hotels, to
Leicester Square. I have been to a Society for spreading Christian
knowledge--I thought there I would have a chance perhaps as
interpreter. 'Toujours meme chose', we regret, we have no situation
for you--same thing everywhere. It seems there is nothing doing in
this town.
WELLWYN. I've noticed, there never is.
FERRAND. I was thinking, Monsieur, that in aviation there might be a
career for me--but it seems one must be trained.
WELLWYN. Afraid so, Ferrand.
FERRAND. [Approaching the picture.] Ah! You are always working at
this. You will have something of very good there, Monsieur. You
wish to fix the type of wild savage existing ever amongst our high
civilisation. 'C'est tres chic ca'! [WELLWYN manifests the quiet
delight of an English artist actually understood.] In the figures
of these good citizens, to whom she offers her flower, you would
give the idea of all the cage doors open to catch and make tame the
wild bird, that will surely die within. 'Tres gentil'! Believe me,
Monsieur, you have there the greatest comedy of life! How anxious
are the tame birds to do the wild birds good. [His voice changes.]
For the wild birds it is not funny. There is in some human souls,
Monsieur, what cannot be made tame.
WELLWYN. I believe you, Ferrand.
[The face of a young man appears at the window, unseen.
Suddenly ANN opens the door leading to the house.]
ANN. Daddy--I want you.
WELLWYN. [To FERRAND.] Excuse me a minute!
[He goes to his daughter, and they pass out. FERRAND remains
at the picture. MRS. MEGAN dressed in some of ANN's discarded
garments, has come out of the model's room. She steals up
behind FERRAND like a cat, reaches an arm up, and curls it
round his mouth. He turns, and tries to seize her; she
disingenuously slips away. He follows. The chase circles the
tea table. He catches her, lifts her up, swings round with
her, so that her feet fly out; kisses her bent-back face, and
sets her down. She stands there smiling. The face at the
window darkens.]
FERRAND. La Valse!
[He takes her with both hands by the waist, she puts her hands
against his shoulders to push him of--and suddenly they are
whirling. As they whirl, they bob together once or twice, and
kiss. Then, with a warning motion towards the door, she
wrenches herself free, and stops beside the picture, trying
desperately to appear demure. WELLWYN and ANN have entered.
The face has vanished.]
FERRAND. [Pointing to the picture.] One does not comprehend all
this, Monsieur, without well studying. I was in train to interpret
for Ma'moiselle the chiaroscuro.
WELLWYN. [With a queer look.] Don't take it too seriously,
Ferrand.
FERRAND. It is a masterpiece.
WELLWYN. My daughter's just spoken to a friend, Professor Calway.
He'd like to meet you. Could you come back a little later?
FERRAND. Certainly, Ma'moiselle. That will be an opening for me, I
trust. [He goes to the street door.]
ANN. [Paying no attention to him.] Mrs. Megan, will you too come
back in half an hour?
FERRAND. 'Tres bien, Ma'moiselle'! I will see that she does. We
will take a little promenade together. That will do us good.
[He motions towards the door; MRS. MEGAN, all eyes, follows him
out.]
ANN. Oh! Daddy, they are rotters. Couldn't you see they were
having the most high jinks?
WELLWYN. [At his picture.] I seemed to have noticed something.
ANN. [Preparing for tea.] They were kissing.
WELLWYN. Tt! Tt!
ANN. They're hopeless, all three--especially her. Wish I hadn't
given her my clothes now.
WELLWYN. [Absorbed.] Something of wild-savage.
ANN. Thank goodness it's the Vicar's business to see that married
people live together in his parish.
WELLWYN. Oh! [Dubiously.] The Megans are Roman Catholic-Atheists,
Ann.
ANN. [With heat.] Then they're all the more bound. [WELLWYN gives
a sudden and alarmed whistle.]
ANN. What's the matter?
WELLWYN. Didn't you say you spoke to Sir Thomas, too. Suppose he
comes in while the Professor's here. They're cat and dog.
ANN. [Blankly.] Oh! [As WELLWYN strikes a match.] The samovar is
lighted. [Taking up the nearly empty decanter of rum and going to
the cupboard.] It's all right. He won't.
WELLWYN. We'll hope not.
[He turns back to his picture.]
ANN. [At the cupboard.] Daddy!
WELLWYN. Hi!
ANN. There were three bottles.
WELLWYN. Oh!
ANN. Well! Now there aren't any.
WELLWYN. [Abstracted.] That'll be Timson.
ANN. [With real horror.] But it's awful!
WELLWYN. It is, my dear.
ANN. In seven days. To say nothing of the stealing.
WELLWYN. [Vexed.] I blame myself-very much. Ought to have kept it
locked up.
ANN. You ought to keep him locked up!
[There is heard a mild but authoritative knock.]
WELLWYN. Here's the Vicar!
ANN. What are you going to do about the rum?
WELLWYN. [Opening the door to CANON BERTLEY.] Come in, Vicar!
Happy New Year!
BERTLEY. Same to you! Ah! Ann! I've got into touch with her
young husband--he's coming round.
ANN. [Still a little out of her plate.] Thank Go---Moses!
BERTLEY. [Faintly surprised.] From what I hear he's not really a
bad youth. Afraid he bets on horses. The great thing, WELLWYN,
with those poor fellows is to put your finger on the weak spot.
ANN. [To herself-gloomily.] That's not difficult. What would you
do, Canon Bertley, with a man who's been drinking father's rum?
BERTLEY. Remove the temptation, of course.
WELLWYN. He's done that.
BERTLEY. Ah! Then--[WELLWYN and ANN hang on his words] then I
should--er--
ANN. [Abruptly.] Remove him.
BERTLEY. Before I say that, Ann, I must certainly see the
individual.
WELLWYN. [Pointing to the window.] There he is!
[In the failing light TIMSON'S face is indeed to be seen
pressed against the window pane.]
ANN. Daddy, I do wish you'd have thick glass put in. It's so
disgusting to be spied at! [WELLWYN going quickly to the door, has
opened it.] What do you want? [TIMSON enters with dignity. He is
fuddled.]
TIMSON. [Slowly.] Arskin' yer pardon-thought it me duty to come
back-found thish yer little brishel on me. [He produces the little
paint brush.]
ANN. [In a deadly voice.] Nothing else?
[TIMSON accords her a glassy stare.]
WELLWYN. [Taking the brush hastily.] That'll do, Timson, thanks!
TIMSON. As I am 'ere, can I do anything for yer?
ANN. Yes, you can sweep out that little room. [She points to the
model's room.] There's a broom in there.
TIMSON. [Disagreeably surprised.] Certainly; never make bones
about a little extra--never 'ave in all me life. Do it at onsh, I
will. [He moves across to the model's room at that peculiar broad
gait so perfectly adjusted to his habits.] You quite understand me
--couldn't bear to 'ave anything on me that wasn't mine.
[He passes out.]
ANN. Old fraud!
WELLWYN. "In" and "on." Mark my words, he'll restore the--bottles.
BERTLEY. But, my dear WELLWYN, that is stealing.
WELLWYN. We all have our discrepancies, Vicar.
ANN. Daddy! Discrepancies!
WELLWYN. Well, Ann, my theory is that as regards solids Timson's an
Individualist, but as regards liquids he's a Socialist . . . or
'vice versa', according to taste.
BERTLEY. No, no, we mustn't joke about it. [Gravely.] I do think
he should be spoken to.
WELLWYN. Yes, but not by me.
BERTLEY. Surely you're the proper person.
WELLWYN. [Shaking his head.] It was my rum, Vicar. Look so
personal.
[There sound a number of little tat-tat knocks.]
WELLWYN. Isn't that the Professor's knock?
[While Ann sits down to make tea, he goes to the door and opens
it. There, dressed in an ulster, stands a thin, clean-shaved
man, with a little hollow sucked into either cheek, who, taking
off a grey squash hat, discloses a majestically bald forehead,
which completely dominates all that comes below it.]
WELLWYN. Come in, Professor! So awfully good of you! You know
Canon Bentley, I think?
CALWAY. Ah! How d'you do?
WELLWYN. Your opinion will be invaluable, Professor.
ANN. Tea, Professor Calway?
[They have assembled round the tea table.]
CALWAY. Thank you; no tea; milk.
WELLWYN. Rum?
[He pours rum into CALWAY's milk.]
CALWAY. A little-thanks! [Turning to ANN.] You were going to show
me some one you're trying to rescue, or something, I think.
ANN. Oh! Yes. He'll be here directly--simply perfect rotter.
CALWAY. [Smiling.] Really! Ah! I think you said he was a
congenital?
WELLWYN. [With great interest.] What!
ANN. [Low.] Daddy! [To CALWAY.] Yes; I--I think that's what you
call him.
CALWAY. Not old?
ANN. No; and quite healthy--a vagabond.
CALWAY. [Sipping.] I see! Yes. Is it, do you think chronic
unemployment with a vagrant tendency? Or would it be nearer the
mark to say: Vagrancy----
WELLWYN. Pure! Oh! pure! Professor. Awfully human.
CALWAY. [With a smile of knowledge.] Quite! And--er----
ANN. [Breaking in.] Before he comes, there's another----
BERTLEY. [Blandly.] Yes, when you came in, we were discussing what
should be done with a man who drinks rum--[CALWAY pauses in the act
of drinking]--that doesn't belong to him.
CALWAY. Really! Dipsomaniac?
BERTLEY. Well--perhaps you could tell us--drink certainly changing
thine to mine. The Professor could see him, WELLWYN?
ANN. [Rising.] Yes, do come and look at him, Professor CALWAY.
He's in there.
[She points towards the model's room. CALWAY smiles
deprecatingly.]
ANN. No, really; we needn't open the door. You can see him through
the glass. He's more than half----
CALWAY. Well, I hardly----
ANN. Oh! Do! Come on, Professor CALWAY! We must know what to do
with him. [CALWAY rises.] You can stand on a chair. It's all
science.
[She draws CALWAY to the model's room, which is lighted by a
glass panel in the top of the high door. CANON BERTLEY also
rises and stands watching. WELLWYN hovers, torn between
respect for science and dislike of espionage.]
ANN. [Drawing up a chair.] Come on!
CALWAY. Do you seriously wish me to?
ANN. Rather! It's quite safe; he can't see you.
CALWAY. But he might come out.
[ANN puts her back against the door. CALWAY mounts the chair
dubiously, and raises his head cautiously, bending it more and
more downwards.]
ANN. Well?
CALWAY. He appears to be---sitting on the floor.
WELLWYN. Yes, that's all right!
[BERTLEY covers his lips.]
CALWAY. [To ANN--descending.] By the look of his face, as far as
one can see it, I should say there was a leaning towards mania. I
know the treatment.
[There come three loud knocks on the door. WELLWYN and ANN
exchange a glance of consternation.]
ANN. Who's that?
WELLWYN. It sounds like Sir Thomas.
CALWAY. Sir Thomas Hoxton?
WELLWYN. [Nodding.] Awfully sorry, Professor. You see, we----
CALWAY. Not at all. Only, I must decline to be involved in
argument with him, please.
BERTLEY. He has experience. We might get his opinion, don't you
think?
CALWAY. On a point of reform? A J.P.!
BERTLEY. [Deprecating.] My dear Sir--we needn't take it.
[The three knocks resound with extraordinary fury.]
ANN. You'd better open the door, Daddy.
[WELLWYN opens the door. SIR, THOMAS HOXTON is disclosed in a
fur overcoat and top hat. His square, well-coloured face is
remarkable for a massive jaw, dominating all that comes above
it. His Voice is resolute.]
HOXTON. Afraid I didn't make myself heard.
WELLWYN. So good of you to come, Sir Thomas. Canon Bertley! [They
greet.] Professor CALWAY you know, I think.
HOXTON. [Ominously.] I do.
[They almost greet. An awkward pause.]
ANN. [Blurting it out.] That old cabman I told you of's been
drinking father's rum.
BERTLEY. We were just discussing what's to be done with him, Sir
Thomas. One wants to do the very best, of course. The question of
reform is always delicate.
CALWAY. I beg your pardon. There is no question here.
HOXTON. [Abruptly.] Oh! Is he in the house?
ANN. In there.
HOXTON. Works for you, eh?
WELLWYN. Er--yes.
HOXTON. Let's have a look at him!
[An embarrassed pause.]
BERTLEY. Well--the fact is, Sir Thomas----
CALWAY. When last under observation----
ANN. He was sitting on the floor.
WELLWYN. I don't want the old fellow to feel he's being made a show
of. Disgusting to be spied at, Ann.
ANN. You can't, Daddy! He's drunk.
HOXTON. Never mind, Miss WELLWYN. Hundreds of these fellows before
me in my time. [At CALWAY.] The only thing is a sharp lesson!
CALWAY. I disagree. I've seen the man; what he requires is steady
control, and the bobbins treatment.
[WELLWYN approaches them with fearful interest.]
HOXTON. Not a bit of it! He wants one for his knob! Brace 'em up!
It's the only thing.
BERTLEY. Personally, I think that if he were spoken to seriously
CALWAY. I cannot walk arm in arm with a crab!
HOXTON. [Approaching CALWAY.] I beg your pardon?
CALWAY. [Moving back a little.] You're moving backwards, Sir
Thomas. I've told you before, convinced reactionaryism, in these
days----
[There comes a single knock on the street door.]
BERTLEY. [Looking at his watch.] D'you know, I'm rather afraid
this may be our young husband, WELLWYN. I told him half-past four.
WELLWYN. Oh! Ah! Yes. [Going towards the two reformers.] Shall
we go into the house, Professor, and settle the question quietly
while the Vicar sees a young man?
CALWAY. [Pale with uncompleted statement, and gravitating
insensibly in the direction indicated.] The merest sense of
continuity--a simple instinct for order----
HOXTON. [Following.] The only way to get order, sir, is to bring
the disorderly up with a round turn. [CALWAY turns to him in the
doorway.] You people without practical experience----
CALWAY. If you'll listen to me a minute.
HOXTON. I can show you in a mo----
[They vanish through the door.]
WELLWYN. I was afraid of it.
BERTLEY. The two points of view. Pleasant to see such keenness.
I may want you, WELLWYN. And Ann perhaps had better not be present.
WELLWYN. [Relieved.] Quite so! My dear!
[ANN goes reluctantly. WELLWYN opens the street door. The
lamp outside has just been lighted, and, by its gleam, is seen
the figure of RORY MEGAN, thin, pale, youthful. ANN turning at
the door into the house gives him a long, inquisitive look,
then goes.]
WELLWYN. Is that Megan?
MEGAN. Yus.
WELLWYN. Come in.
[MEGAN comes in. There follows an awkward silence, during
which WELLWYN turns up the light, then goes to the tea table
and pours out a glass of tea and rum.]
BERTLEY. [Kindly.] Now, my boy, how is it that you and your wife
are living apart like this?
MEGAN. I dunno.
BERTLEY. Well, if you don't, none of us are very likely to, are we?
MEGAN. That's what I thought, as I was comin' along.
WELLWYN. [Twinkling.] Have some tea, Megan? [Handing him the
glass.] What d'you think of her picture? 'Tisn't quite finished.
MEGAN. [After scrutiny.] I seen her look like it--once.
WELLWYN. Good! When was that?
MEGAN. [Stoically.] When she 'ad the measles.
[He drinks.]
WELLWYN. [Ruminating.] I see--yes. I quite see feverish!
BERTLEY. My dear WELLWYN, let me--[To, MEGAN.] Now, I hope you're
willing to come together again, and to maintain her?
MEGAN. If she'll maintain me.
BERTLEY. Oh! but--I see, you mean you're in the same line of
business?
MEGAN. Yus.
BERTLEY. And lean on each other. Quite so!
MEGAN. I leans on 'er mostly--with 'er looks.
BERTLEY. Indeed! Very interesting--that!
MEGAN. Yus. Sometimes she'll take 'arf a crown off of a toff. [He
looks at WELLWYN.]
WELLWYN. [Twinkling.] I apologise to you, Megan.
MEGAN. [With a faint smile.] I could do with a bit more of it.
BERTLEY. [Dubiously.] Yes! Yes! Now, my boy, I've heard you bet
on horses.
MEGAN. No, I don't.
BERTLEY. Play cards, then? Come! Don't be afraid to acknowledge
it.
MEGAN. When I'm 'ard up--yus.
BERTLEY. But don't you know that's ruination?
MEGAN. Depends. Sometimes I wins a lot.
BERTLEY. You know that's not at all what I mean. Come, promise me
to give it up.
MEGAN. I dunno abaht that.
BERTLEY. Now, there's a good fellow. Make a big effort and throw
the habit off!
MEGAN. Comes over me--same as it might over you.
BERTLEY. Over me! How do you mean, my boy?
MEGAN. [With a look up.] To tork!
[WELLWYN, turning to the picture, makes a funny little noise.]
BERTLEY. [Maintaining his good humour.] A hit! But you forget,
you know, to talk's my business. It's not yours to gamble.
MEGAN. You try sellin' flowers. If that ain't a--gamble
BERTLEY. I'm afraid we're wandering a little from the point.
Husband and wife should be together. You were brought up to that.
Your father and mother----
MEGAN. Never was.
WELLWYN. [Turning from the picture.] The question is, Megan: Will
you take your wife home? She's a good little soul.
MEGAN. She never let me know it.
[There is a feeble knock on the door.]
WELLWYN. Well, now come. Here she is!
[He points to the door, and stands regarding MEGAN with his
friendly smile.]
MEGAN. [With a gleam of responsiveness.] I might, perhaps, to
please you, sir.
BERTLEY. [Appropriating the gesture.] Capital, I thought we should
get on in time.
MEGAN. Yus.
[WELLWYN opens the door. MRS. MEGAN and FERRAND are revealed.
They are about to enter, but catching sight of MEGAN,
hesitate.]
BERTLEY. Come in! Come in!
[MRS. MEGAN enters stolidly. FERRAND, following, stands apart
with an air of extreme detachment. MEGAN, after a quick glance
at them both, remains unmoved. No one has noticed that the
door of the model's room has been opened, and that the unsteady
figure of old TIMSON is standing there.]
BERTLEY. [A little awkward in the presence of FERRAND--to the
MEGANS.] This begins a new chapter. We won't improve the occasion.
No need.
[MEGAN, turning towards his wife, makes her a gesture as if to
say: "Here! let's get out of this!"]
BENTLEY. Yes, yes, you'll like to get home at once--I know. [He
holds up his hand mechanically.]
TIMSON. I forbids the banns.
BERTLEY, [Startled.] Gracious!
TIMSON. [Extremely unsteady.] Just cause and impejiment. There 'e
stands. [He points to FERRAND.] The crimson foreigner! The mockin'
jay!
WELLWYN. Timson!
TIMSON. You're a gen'leman--I'm aweer o' that but I must speak the
truth--[he waves his hand] an' shame the devil!
BERTLEY. Is this the rum--?
TIMSON. [Struck by the word.] I'm a teetotaler.
WELLWYN. Timson, Timson!
TIMSON. Seein' as there's ladies present, I won't be conspicuous.
[Moving away, and making for the door, he strikes against the dais,
and mounts upon it.] But what I do say, is: He's no better than 'er
and she's worse.
BERTLEY. This is distressing.
FERRAND. [Calmly.] On my honour, Monsieur!
[TIMSON growls.]
WELLWYN. Now, now, Timson!
TIMSON. That's all right. You're a gen'leman, an' I'm a gen'leman,
but he ain't an' she ain't.
WELLWYN. We shall not believe you.
BERTLEY. No, no; we shall not believe you.
TIMSON. [Heavily.] Very well, you doubts my word. Will it make
any difference, Guv'nor, if I speaks the truth?
BERTLEY. No, certainly not--that is--of course, it will.
TIMSON. Well, then, I see 'em plainer than I see [pointing at
BERTLEY] the two of you.
WELLWYN. Be quiet, Timson!
BERTLEY. Not even her husband believes you.
MEGAN. [Suddenly.] Don't I!
WELLWYN. Come, Megan, you can see the old fellow's in Paradise.
BERTLEY. Do you credit such a--such an object?
[He points at TIMSON, who seems falling asleep.]
MEGAN. Naow!
[Unseen by anybody, ANN has returned.]
BERTLEY. Well, then, my boy?
MEGAN. I seen 'em meself.
BERTLEY. Gracious! But just now you were will----
MEGAN. [Sardonically.] There wasn't nothing against me honour,
then. Now you've took it away between you, cumin' aht with it like
this. I don't want no more of 'er, and I'll want a good deal more
of 'im; as 'e'll soon find.
[He jerks his chin at FERRAND, turns slowly on his heel, and
goes out into the street.]
[There follows a profound silence.]
ANN. What did I say, Daddy? Utter! All three.
[Suddenly alive to her presence, they all turn.]
TIMSON. [Waking up and looking round him.] Well, p'raps I'd better
go.
[Assisted by WELLWYN he lurches gingerly off the dais towards
the door, which WELLWYN holds open for him.]
TIMSON. [Mechanically.] Where to, sir?
[Receiving no answer he passes out, touching his hat; and the
door is closed.]
WELLWYN. Ann!
[ANN goes back whence she came.]
[BERTLEY, steadily regarding MRS. MEGAN, who has put her arm up
in front of her face, beckons to FERRAND, and the young man
comes gravely forward.]
BERTLEY. Young people, this is very dreadful. [MRS. MEGAN lowers
her arm a little, and looks at him over it.] Very sad!
MRS. MEGAN. [Dropping her arm.] Megan's no better than what I am.
BERTLEY. Come, come! Here's your home broken up! [MRS. MEGAN
Smiles. Shaking his head gravely.] Surely-surely-you mustn't
smile. [MRS. MEGAN becomes tragic.] That's better. Now, what is
to be done?
FERRAND. Believe me, Monsieur, I greatly regret.
BERTLEY. I'm glad to hear it.
FERRAND. If I had foreseen this disaster.
BERTLEY. Is that your only reason for regret?
FERRAND. [With a little bow.] Any reason that you wish, Monsieur.
I will do my possible.
MRS. MEGAN. I could get an unfurnished room if [she slides her eyes
round at WELLWYN] I 'ad the money to furnish it.
BERTLEY. But suppose I can induce your husband to forgive you, and
take you back?
MRS. MEGAN. [Shaking her head.] 'E'd 'it me.
BERTLEY. I said to forgive.
MRS. MEGAN. That wouldn't make no difference. [With a flash at
BERTLEY.] An' I ain't forgiven him!
BERTLEY. That is sinful.
MRS. MEGAN. I'm a Catholic.
BERTLEY. My good child, what difference does that make?
FERRAND. Monsieur, if I might interpret for her.
[BERTLEY silences him with a gesture.]
MRS. MEGAN. [Sliding her eyes towards WELLWYN.] If I 'ad the money
to buy some fresh stock.
BERTLEY. Yes; yes; never mind the money. What I want to find in
you both, is repentance.
MRS. MEGAN. [With a flash up at him.] I can't get me livin' off of
repentin'.
BERTLEY. Now, now! Never say what you know to be wrong.
FERRAND. Monsieur, her soul is very simple.
BERTLEY. [Severely.] I do not know, sir, that we shall get any
great assistance from your views. In fact, one thing is clear to
me, she must discontinue your acquaintanceship at once.
FERRAND. Certainly, Monsieur. We have no serious intentions.
BERTLEY. All the more shame to you, then!
FERRAND. Monsieur, I see perfectly your point of view. It is very
natural. [He bows and is silent.]
MRS. MEGAN. I don't want'im hurt'cos o' me. Megan'll get his mates
to belt him--bein' foreign like he is.
BERTLEY. Yes, never mind that. It's you I'm thinking of.
MRS. MEGAN. I'd sooner they'd hit me.
WELLWYN. [Suddenly.] Well said, my child!
MRS. MEGAN. 'Twasn't his fault.
FERRAND. [Without irony--to WELLWYN.] I cannot accept that
Monsieur. The blame--it is all mine.
ANN. [Entering suddenly from the house.] Daddy, they're having an
awful----!
[The voices of PROFESSOR CALWAY and SIR THOMAS HOXTON are
distinctly heard.]
CALWAY. The question is a much wider one, Sir Thomas.
HOXTON. As wide as you like, you'll never----
[WELLWYN pushes ANN back into the house and closes the door
behind her. The voices are still faintly heard arguing on the
threshold.]
BERTLEY. Let me go in here a minute, Wellyn. I must finish
speaking to her. [He motions MRS. MEGAN towards the model's room.]
We can't leave the matter thus.
FERRAND. [Suavely.] Do you desire my company, Monsieur?
[BERTLEY, with a prohibitive gesture of his hand, shepherds the
reluctant MRS. MEGAN into the model's room.]
WELLWYN. [Sorrowfully.] You shouldn't have done this, Ferrand. It
wasn't the square thing.
FERRAND. [With dignity.] Monsieur, I feel that I am in the wrong.
It was stronger than me.
[As he speaks, SIR THOMAS HOXTON and PROFESSOR CALWAY enter
from the house. In the dim light, and the full cry of
argument, they do not notice the figures at the fire. SIR
THOMAS HOXTON leads towards the street door.]
HOXTON. No, Sir, I repeat, if the country once commits itself to
your views of reform, it's as good as doomed.
CALWAY. I seem to have heard that before, Sir Thomas. And let me
say at once that your hitty-missy cart-load of bricks regime----
HOXTON. Is a deuced sight better, sir, than your grand-motherly
methods. What the old fellow wants is a shock! With all this
socialistic molly-coddling, you're losing sight of the individual.
CALWAY. [Swiftly.] You, sir, with your "devil take the hindmost,"
have never even seen him.
[SIR THOMAS HOXTON, throwing back a gesture of disgust, steps
out into the night, and falls heavily PROFESSOR CALWAY,
hastening to his rescue, falls more heavily still.]
[TIMSON, momentarily roused from slumber on the doorstep, sits
up.]
HOXTON. [Struggling to his knees.] Damnation!
CALWAY. [Sitting.] How simultaneous!
[WELLWYN and FERRAND approach hastily.]
FERRAND. [Pointing to TIMSON.] Monsieur, it was true, it seems.
They had lost sight of the individual.
[A Policeman has appeared under the street lamp. He picks up
HOXTON'S hat.]
CONSTABLE. Anything wrong, sir?
HOXTON. [Recovering his feet.] Wrong? Great Scott! Constable!
Why do you let things lie about in the street like this? Look here,
Wellyn!
[They all scrutinize TIMSON.]
WELLWYN. It's only the old fellow whose reform you were discussing.
HOXTON. How did he come here?
CONSTABLE. Drunk, sir. [Ascertaining TIMSON to be in the street.]
Just off the premises, by good luck. Come along, father.
TIMSON. [Assisted to his feet-drowsily.] Cert'nly, by no means;
take my arm.
[They move from the doorway. HOXTON and CALWAY re-enter, and
go towards the fire.]
ANN. [Entering from the house.] What's happened?
CALWAY. Might we have a brush?
HOXTON. [Testily.] Let it dry!
[He moves to the fire and stands before it. PROFESSOR CALWAY
following stands a little behind him. ANN returning begins to
brush the PROFESSOR's sleeve.]
WELLWYN. [Turning from the door, where he has stood looking after
the receding TIMSON.] Poor old Timson!
FERRAND. [Softly.] Must be philosopher, Monsieur! They will but
run him in a little.
[From the model's room MRS. MEGAN has come out, shepherded by
CANON BERTLEY.]
BERTLEY. Let's see, your Christian name is----.
MRS. MEGAN. Guinevere.
BERTLEY. Oh! Ah! Ah! Ann, take Gui--take our little friend into
the study a minute: I am going to put her into service. We shall
make a new woman of her, yet.
ANN. [Handing CANON BERTLEY the brush, and turning to MRS. MEGAN.]
Come on!
[She leads into the house, and MRS. MEGAN follows Stolidly.]
BERTLEY. [Brushing CALWAY'S back.] Have you fallen?
CALWAY. Yes.
BERTLEY. Dear me! How was that?
HOXTON. That old ruffian drunk on the doorstep. Hope they'll give
him a sharp dose! These rag-tags!
[He looks round, and his angry eyes light by chance on FERRAND.]
FERRAND. [With his eyes on HOXTON--softly.] Monsieur, something
tells me it is time I took the road again.
WELLWYN. [Fumbling out a sovereign.] Take this, then!
FERRAND. [Refusing the coin.] Non, Monsieur. To abuse 'ospitality
is not in my character.
BERTLEY. We must not despair of anyone.
HOXTON. Who talked of despairing? Treat him, as I say, and you'll
see!
CALWAY. The interest of the State----
HOXTON. The interest of the individual citizen sir----
BERTLEY. Come! A little of both, a little of both!
[They resume their brushing.]
FERRAND. You are now debarrassed of us three, Monsieur. I leave
you instead--these sirs. [He points.] 'Au revoir, Monsieur'!
[Motioning towards the fire.] 'Appy New Year!
[He slips quietly out. WELLWYN, turning, contemplates the
three reformers. They are all now brushing away, scratching
each other's backs, and gravely hissing. As he approaches
them, they speak with a certain unanimity.]
HOXTON. My theory----!
CALWAY. My theory----!
BERTLEY. My theory----!
[They stop surprised. WELLWYN makes a gesture of discomfort,
as they speak again with still more unanimity.]
HOXTON. My----! CALWAY. My----! BERTLEY. My----!
[They stop in greater surprise. The stage is blotted dark.]
Curtain.
ACT III
It is the first of April--a white spring day of gleams and driving
showers. The street door of WELLWYN's studio stands wide open, and,
past it, in the street, the wind is whirling bits of straw and paper
bags. Through the door can be seen the butt end of a stationary
furniture van with its flap let down. To this van three humble-men
in shirt sleeves and aprons, are carrying out the contents of the
studio. The hissing samovar, the tea-pot, the sugar, and the nearly
empty decanter of rum stand on the low round table in the
fast-being-gutted room. WELLWYN in his ulster and soft hat, is
squatting on the little stool in front of the blazing fire, staring
into it, and smoking a hand-made cigarette. He has a moulting air.
Behind him the humble-men pass, embracing busts and other articles
of vertu.
CHIEF H'MAN. [Stopping, and standing in the attitude of
expectation.] We've about pinched this little lot, sir. Shall we
take the--reservoir?
[He indicates the samovar.]
WELLWYN. Ah! [Abstractedly feeling in his pockets, and finding
coins.] Thanks--thanks--heavy work, I'm afraid.
H'MAN. [Receiving the coins--a little surprised and a good deal
pleased.] Thank'ee, sir. Much obliged, I'm sure. We'll 'ave to
come back for this. [He gives the dais a vigorous push with his
foot.] Not a fixture, as I understand. Perhaps you'd like us to
leave these 'ere for a bit. [He indicates the tea things.]
WELLWYN. Ah! do.
[The humble-men go out. There is the sound of horses being
started, and the butt end of the van disappears. WELLWYN stays
on his stool, smoking and brooding over the fare. The open
doorway is darkened by a figure. CANON BERTLEY is standing
there.]
BERTLEY. WELLWYN! [WELLWYN turns and rises.] It's ages since I
saw you. No idea you were moving. This is very dreadful.
WELLWYN. Yes, Ann found this--too exposed. That tall house in
Flight Street--we're going there. Seventh floor.
BERTLEY. Lift?
[WELLWYN shakes his head.]
BERTLEY. Dear me! No lift? Fine view, no doubt. [WELLWYN nods.]
You'll be greatly missed.
WELLWYN. So Ann thinks. Vicar, what's become of that little
flower-seller I was painting at Christmas? You took her into
service.
BERTLEY. Not we--exactly! Some dear friends of ours. Painful
subject!
WELLWYN. Oh!
BERTLEY. Yes. She got the footman into trouble.
WELLWYN. Did she, now?
BERTLEY. Disappointing. I consulted with CALWAY, and he advised me
to try a certain institution. We got her safely in--excellent
place; but, d'you know, she broke out three weeks ago. And since--
I've heard [he holds his hands up] hopeless, I'm afraid--quite!
WELLWYN. I thought I saw her last night. You can't tell me her
address, I suppose?
BERTLEY. [Shaking his head.] The husband too has quite passed out
of my ken. He betted on horses, you remember. I'm sometimes
tempted to believe there's nothing for some of these poor folk but
to pray for death.
[ANN has entered from the house. Her hair hangs from under a
knitted cap. She wears a white wool jersey, and a loose silk
scarf.]
BERTLEY. Ah! Ann. I was telling your father of that poor little
Mrs. Megan.
ANN. Is she dead?
BERTLEY. Worse I fear. By the way--what became of her accomplice?
ANN. We haven't seen him since. [She looks searchingly at
WELLWYN.] At least--have you--Daddy?
WELLWYN. [Rather hurt.] No, my dear; I have not.
BERTLEY. And the--old gentleman who drank the rum?
ANN. He got fourteen days. It was the fifth time.
BERTLEY. Dear me!
ANN. When he came out he got more drunk than ever. Rather a score
for Professor Calway, wasn't it?
BERTLEY. I remember. He and Sir Thomas took a kindly interest in
the old fellow.
ANN. Yes, they fell over him. The Professor got him into an
Institution.
BERTLEY. Indeed!
ANN. He was perfectly sober all the time he was there.
WELLWYN. My dear, they only allow them milk.
ANN. Well, anyway, he was reformed.
WELLWYN. Ye-yes!
ANN. [Terribly.] Daddy! You've been seeing him!
WELLWYN. [With dignity.] My dear, I have not.
ANN. How do you know, then?
WELLWYN. Came across Sir Thomas on the Embankment yesterday; told
me old Timso--had been had up again for sitting down in front of a
brewer's dray.
ANN. Why?
WELLWYN. Well, you see, as soon as he came out of the what d'you
call 'em, he got drunk for a week, and it left him in low spirits.
BERTLEY. Do you mean he deliberately sat down, with the
intention--of--er?
WELLWYN. Said he was tired of life, but they didn't believe him.
ANN. Rather a score for Sir Thomas! I suppose he'd told the
Professor? What did he say?
WELLWYN. Well, the Professor said [with a quick glance at BERTLEY]
he felt there was nothing for some of these poor devils but a lethal
chamber.
BERTLEY. [Shocked.] Did he really!
[He has not yet caught WELLWYN' s glance.]
WELLWYN. And Sir Thomas agreed. Historic occasion. And you, Vicar
H'm!
[BERTLEY winces.]
ANN. [To herself.] Well, there isn't.
BERTLEY. And yet! Some good in the old fellow, no doubt, if one
could put one's finger on it. [Preparing to go.] You'll let us
know, then, when you're settled. What was the address? [WELLWYN
takes out and hands him a card.] Ah! yes. Good-bye, Ann.
Good-bye, Wellyn. [The wind blows his hat along the street.] What
a wind! [He goes, pursuing.]
ANN. [Who has eyed the card askance.] Daddy, have you told those
other two where we're going?
WELLWYN. Which other two, my dear?
ANN. The Professor and Sir Thomas.
WELLWYN. Well, Ann, naturally I----
ANN. [Jumping on to the dais with disgust.] Oh, dear! When I'm
trying to get you away from all this atmosphere. I don't so much
mind the Vicar knowing, because he's got a weak heart----
[She jumps off again. ]
WELLWYN. [To himself.] Seventh floor! I felt there was something.
ANN. [Preparing to go.] I'm going round now. But you must stay
here till the van comes back. And don't forget you tipped the men
after the first load.
WELLWYN. Oh! Yes, yes. [Uneasily.] Good sorts they look, those
fellows!
ANN. [Scrutinising him.] What have you done?
WELLWYN. Nothing, my dear, really----!
ANN. What?
WELLWYN. I--I rather think I may have tipped them twice.
ANN. [Drily.] Daddy! If it is the first of April, it's not
necessary to make a fool of oneself. That's the last time you ever
do these ridiculous things. [WELLWYN eyes her askance.] I'm going
to see that you spend your money on yourself. You needn't look at
me like that! I mean to. As soon as I've got you away from here,
and all--these----
WELLWYN. Don't rub it in, Ann!
ANN. [Giving him a sudden hug--then going to the door--with a sort
of triumph.] Deeds, not words, Daddy!
[She goes out, and the wind catching her scarf blows it out
beneath her firm young chin. WELLWYN returning to the fire,
stands brooding, and gazing at his extinct cigarette.]
WELLWYN. [To himself.] Bad lot--low type! No method! No theory!
[In the open doorway appear FERRAND and MRS. MEGAN. They
stand, unseen, looking at him. FERRAND is more ragged, if
possible, than on Christmas Eve. His chin and cheeks are
clothed in a reddish golden beard. MRS. MEGAN's dress is not
so woe-begone, but her face is white, her eyes dark-circled.
They whisper. She slips back into the shadow of the doorway.
WELLWYN turns at the sound, and stares at FERRAND in
amazement.]
FERRAND. [Advancing.] Enchanted to see you, Monsieur. [He looks
round the empty room.] You are leaving?
WELLWYN. [Nodding--then taking the young man's hand.] How goes it?
FERRAND. [Displaying himself, simply.] As you see, Monsieur. I
have done of my best. It still flies from me.
WELLWYN. [Sadly--as if against his will.] Ferrand, it will always
fly.
[The young foreigner shivers suddenly from head to foot; then
controls himself with a great effort.]
FERRAND. Don't say that, Monsieur! It is too much the echo of my
heart.
WELLWYN. Forgive me! I didn't mean to pain you.
FERRAND. [Drawing nearer the fire.] That old cabby, Monsieur, you
remember--they tell me, he nearly succeeded to gain happiness the
other day.
[WELLWYN nods.]
FERRAND. And those Sirs, so interested in him, with their theories?
He has worn them out? [WELLWYN nods.] That goes without saying.
And now they wish for him the lethal chamber.
WELLWYN. [Startled.] How did you know that?
[There is silence.]
FERRAND. [Staring into the fire.] Monsieur, while I was on the
road this time I fell ill of a fever. It seemed to me in my illness
that I saw the truth--how I was wasting in this world--I would never
be good for any one--nor any one for me--all would go by, and I
never of it--fame, and fortune, and peace, even the necessities of
life, ever mocking me.
[He draws closer to the fire, spreading his fingers to the
flame. And while he is speaking, through the doorway MRS.
MEGAN creeps in to listen.]
FERRAND. [Speaking on into the fire.] And I saw, Monsieur, so
plain, that I should be vagabond all my days, and my days short, I
dying in the end the death of a dog. I saw it all in my fever--
clear as that flame--there was nothing for us others, but the herb
of death. [WELLWYN takes his arm and presses it.] And so,
Monsieur, I wished to die. I told no one of my fever. I lay out on
the ground--it was verree cold. But they would not let me die on
the roads of their parishes--they took me to an Institution,
Monsieur, I looked in their eyes while I lay there, and I saw more
clear than the blue heaven that they thought it best that I should
die, although they would not let me. Then Monsieur, naturally my
spirit rose, and I said: "So much the worse for you. I will live a
little more." One is made like that! Life is sweet, Monsieur.
WELLWYN. Yes, Ferrand; Life is sweet.
FERRAND. That little girl you had here, Monsieur [WELLWYN nods.]
in her too there is something of wild-savage. She must have joy of
life. I have seen her since I came back. She has embraced the life
of joy. It is not quite the same thing. [He lowers his voice.]
She is lost, Monsieur, as a stone that sinks in water. I can see,
if she cannot. [As WELLWYN makes a movement of distress.] Oh! I
am not to blame for that, Monsieur. It had well begun before I knew
her.
WELLWYN. Yes, yes--I was afraid of it, at the time.
[MRS. MEGAN turns silently, and slips away.]
FEERRAND. I do my best for her, Monsieur, but look at me! Besides,
I am not good for her--it is not good for simple souls to be with
those who see things clear. For the great part of mankind, to see
anything--is fatal.
WELLWYN. Even for you, it seems.
FERRAND. No, Monsieur. To be so near to death has done me good; I
shall not lack courage any more till the wind blows on my grave.
Since I saw you, Monsieur, I have been in three Institutions. They
are palaces. One may eat upon the floor--though it is true--for
Kings--they eat too much of skilly there. One little thing they
lack--those palaces. It is understanding of the 'uman heart. In
them tame birds pluck wild birds naked.
WELLWYN. They mean well.
FERRAND. Ah! Monsieur, I am loafer, waster--what you like--for all
that [bitterly] poverty is my only crime. If I were rich, should
I not be simply veree original, 'ighly respected, with soul above
commerce, travelling to see the world? And that young girl, would
she not be "that charming ladee," "veree chic, you know!" And the
old Tims--good old-fashioned gentleman--drinking his liquor well.
Eh! bien--what are we now? Dark beasts, despised by all. That is
life, Monsieur. [He stares into the fire.]
WELLWYN. We're our own enemies, Ferrand. I can afford it--you
can't. Quite true!
FERRAND. [Earnestly.] Monsieur, do you know this? You are the
sole being that can do us good--we hopeless ones.
WELLWYN. [Shaking his head.] Not a bit of it; I'm hopeless too.
FERRAND. [Eagerly.] Monsieur, it is just that. You understand.
When we are with you we feel something--here--[he touches his
heart.] If I had one prayer to make, it would be, Good God, give me
to understand! Those sirs, with their theories, they can clean our
skins and chain our 'abits--that soothes for them the aesthetic
sense; it gives them too their good little importance. But our
spirits they cannot touch, for they nevare understand. Without
that, Monsieur, all is dry as a parched skin of orange.
WELLWYN. Don't be so bitter. Think of all the work they do!
FERRAND. Monsieur, of their industry I say nothing. They do a good
work while they attend with their theories to the sick and the tame
old, and the good unfortunate deserving. Above all to the little
children. But, Monsieur, when all is done, there are always us
hopeless ones. What can they do with me, Monsieur, with that girl,
or with that old man? Ah! Monsieur, we, too, 'ave our qualities,
we others--it wants you courage to undertake a career like mine, or
like that young girl's. We wild ones--we know a thousand times more
of life than ever will those sirs. They waste their time trying to
make rooks white. Be kind to us if you will, or let us alone like
Mees Ann, but do not try to change our skins. Leave us to live, or
leave us to die when we like in the free air. If you do not wish of
us, you have but to shut your pockets and--your doors--we shall die
the faster.
WELLWYN. [With agitation.] But that, you know--we can't do--now
can we?
FERRAND. If you cannot, how is it our fault? The harm we do to
others--is it so much? If I am criminal, dangerous--shut me up!
I would not pity myself--nevare. But we in whom something moves--
like that flame, Monsieur, that cannot keep still--we others--we are
not many--that must have motion in our lives, do not let them make
us prisoners, with their theories, because we are not like them--it
is life itself they would enclose! [He draws up his tattered
figure, then bending over the fire again.] I ask your pardon; I am
talking. If I could smoke, Monsieur!
[WELLWYN hands him a tobacco pouch; and he rolls a cigarette
with his yellow-Stained fingers.]
FERRAND. The good God made me so that I would rather walk a whole
month of nights, hungry, with the stars, than sit one single day
making round business on an office stool! It is not to my
advantage. I cannot help it that I am a vagabond. What would you
have? It is stronger than me. [He looks suddenly at WELLWYN.]
Monsieur, I say to you things I have never said.
WELLWYN. [Quietly.] Go on, go on. [There is silence.]
FERRAND. [Suddenly.] Monsieur! Are you really English? The
English are so civilised.
WELLWYN. And am I not?
FERRAND. You treat me like a brother.
[WELLWYN has turned towards the street door at a sound of feet,
and the clamour of voices.]
TIMSON. [From the street.] Take her in 'ere. I knows 'im.
[Through the open doorway come a POLICE CONSTABLE and a LOAFER,
bearing between them the limp white faced form of MRS. MEGAN,
hatless and with drowned hair, enveloped in the policeman's
waterproof. Some curious persons bring up the rear, jostling
in the doorway, among whom is TIMSON carrying in his hands the
policeman's dripping waterproof leg pieces.]
FERRAND. [Starting forward.] Monsieur, it is that little girl!
WELLWYN. What's happened? Constable! What's happened!
[The CONSTABLE and LOAFER have laid the body down on the dais;
with WELLWYN and FERRAND they stand bending over her.]
CONSTABLE. 'Tempted sooicide, sir; but she hadn't been in the water
'arf a minute when I got hold of her. [He bends lower.] Can't
understand her collapsin' like this.
WELLWYN. [Feeling her heart.] I don't feel anything.
FERRAND. [In a voice sharpened by emotion.] Let me try, Monsieur.
CONSTABLE. [Touching his arm.] You keep off, my lad.
WELLWYN. No, constable--let him. He's her friend.
CONSTABLE. [Releasing FERRAND--to the LOAFER.] Here you! Cut off
for a doctor-sharp now! [He pushes back the curious persons.] Now
then, stand away there, please--we can't have you round the body.
Keep back--Clear out, now!
[He slowly moves them back, and at last shepherds them through
the door and shuts it on them, TIMSON being last.]
FERRAND. The rum!
[WELLWYN fetches the decanter. With the little there is left
FERRAND chafes the girl's hands and forehead, and pours some
between her lips. But there is no response from the inert
body.]
FERRAND. Her soul is still away, Monsieur!
[WELLWYN, seizing the decanter, pours into it tea and boiling
water.]
CONSTABLE. It's never drownin', sir--her head was hardly under; I
was on to her like knife.
FERRAND. [Rubbing her feet.] She has not yet her philosophy,
Monsieur; at the beginning they often try. If she is dead! [In a
voice of awed rapture.] What fortune!
CONSTABLE. [With puzzled sadness.] True enough, sir--that! We'd
just begun to know 'er. If she 'as been taken--her best friends
couldn't wish 'er better.
WELLWYN. [Applying the decanter to her dips.] Poor little thing!
I'll try this hot tea.
FERRAND. [Whispering.] 'La mort--le grand ami!'
WELLWYN. Look! Look at her! She's coming round!
[A faint tremor passes over MRS. MEGAN's body. He again
applies the hot drink to her mouth. She stirs and gulps.]
CONSTABLE. [With intense relief.] That's brave! Good lass!
She'll pick up now, sir.
[Then, seeing that TIMSON and the curious persons have again
opened the door, he drives them out, and stands with his back
against it. MRS. MEGAN comes to herself.]
WELLWYN. [Sitting on the dais and supporting her--as if to a
child.] There you are, my dear. There, there--better now! That's
right. Drink a little more of this tea.
[MRS. MEGAN drinks from the decanter.]
FERRAND. [Rising.] Bring her to the fire, Monsieur.
[They take her to the fire and seat her on the little stool.
From the moment of her restored animation FERRAND has resumed
his air of cynical detachment, and now stands apart with arms
folded, watching.]
WELLWYN. Feeling better, my child?
MRS. MEGAN. Yes.
WELLWYN. That's good. That's good. Now, how was it? Um?
MRS. MEGAN. I dunno. [She shivers.] I was standin' here just now
when you was talkin', and when I heard 'im, it cam' over me to do
it--like.
WELLWYN. Ah, yes I know.
MRS. MEGAN. I didn't seem no good to meself nor any one. But when
I got in the water, I didn't want to any more. It was cold in
there.
WELLWYN. Have you been having such a bad time of it?
MRS. MEGAN. Yes. And listenin' to him upset me. [She signs with
her head at FERRAND.] I feel better now I've been in the water.
[She smiles and shivers.]
WELLWYN. There, there! Shivery? Like to walk up and down a
little?
[They begin walking together up and down.]
WELLWYN. Beastly when your head goes under?
MRS. MEGAN. Yes. It frightened me. I thought I wouldn't come up
again.
WELLWYN. I know--sort of world without end, wasn't it? What did
you think of, um?
MRS. MEGAN. I wished I 'adn't jumped--an' I thought of my baby--
that died--and--[in a rather surprised voice] and I thought of
d-dancin'.
[Her mouth quivers, her face puckers, she gives a choke and a
little sob.]
WELLWYN. [Stopping and stroking her.] There, there--there!
[For a moment her face is buried in his sleeve, then she
recovers herself.]
MRS. MEGAN. Then 'e got hold o' me, an' pulled me out.
WELLWYN. Ah! what a comfort--um?
MRS. MEGAN. Yes. The water got into me mouth.
[They walk again.] I wouldn't have gone to do it but for him.
[She looks towards FERRAND.] His talk made me feel all funny,
as if people wanted me to.
WELLWYN. My dear child! Don't think such things! As if anyone
would----!
MRS. MEGAN. [Stolidly.] I thought they did. They used to look at
me so sometimes, where I was before I ran away--I couldn't stop
there, you know.
WELLWYN. Too cooped-up?
MRS. MEGAN. Yes. No life at all, it wasn't--not after sellin'
flowers, I'd rather be doin' what I am.
WELLWYN. Ah! Well-it's all over, now! How d'you feel--eh?
Better?
MRS. MEGAN. Yes. I feels all right now.
[She sits up again on the little stool before the fire.]
WELLWYN. No shivers, and no aches; quite comfy?
MRS. MEGAN. Yes.
WELLWYN. That's a blessing. All well, now, Constable--thank you!
CONSTABLE. [Who has remained discreetly apart at the
door-cordially.] First rate, sir! That's capital! [He approaches
and scrutinises MRS. MEGAN.] Right as rain, eh, my girl?
MRS. MEGAN. [Shrinking a little.] Yes.
CONSTABLE. That's fine. Then I think perhaps, for 'er sake, sir,
the sooner we move on and get her a change o' clothin', the better.
WELLWYN. Oh! don't bother about that--I'll send round for my
daughter--we'll manage for her here.
CONSTABLE. Very kind of you, I'm sure, sir. But [with
embarrassment] she seems all right. She'll get every attention at
the station.
WELLWYN. But I assure you, we don't mind at all; we'll take the
greatest care of her.
CONSTABLE. [Still more embarrassed.] Well, sir, of course, I'm
thinkin' of--I'm afraid I can't depart from the usual course.
WELLWYN. [Sharply.] What! But-oh! No! No! That'll be all right,
Constable! That'll be all right! I assure you.
CONSTABLE. [With more decision.] I'll have to charge her, sir.
WELLWYN. Good God! You don't mean to say the poor little thing has
got to be----
CONSTABLE. [Consulting with him.] Well, sir, we can't get over the
facts, can we? There it is! You know what sooicide amounts to--
it's an awkward job.
WELLWYN. [Calming himself with an effort.] But look here,
Constable, as a reasonable man--This poor wretched little girl--you
know what that life means better than anyone! Why! It's to her
credit to try and jump out of it!
[The CONSTABLE shakes his head.]
WELLWYN. You said yourself her best friends couldn't wish her
better! [Dropping his voice still more.] Everybody feels it! The
Vicar was here a few minutes ago saying the very same thing--the
Vicar, Constable! [The CONSTABLE shakes his head.] Ah! now, look
here, I know something of her. Nothing can be done with her. We
all admit it. Don't you see? Well, then hang it--you needn't go
and make fools of us all by----
FERRAND. Monsieur, it is the first of April.
CONSTABLE. [With a sharp glance at him.] Can't neglect me duty,
sir; that's impossible.
WELLWYN. Look here! She--slipped. She's been telling me. Come,
Constable, there's a good fellow. May be the making of her, this.
CONSTABLE. I quite appreciate your good 'eart, sir, an' you make it
very 'ard for me--but, come now! I put it to you as a gentleman,
would you go back on yer duty if you was me?
[WELLWYN raises his hat, and plunges his fingers through and
through his hair.]
WELLWYN. Well! God in heaven! Of all the d---d topsy--turvy--!
Not a soul in the world wants her alive--and now she's to be
prosecuted for trying to be where everyone wishes her.
CONSTABLE. Come, sir, come! Be a man!
[Throughout all this MRS. MEGAN has sat stolidly before the
fire, but as FERRAND suddenly steps forward she looks up at
him.]
FERRAND. Do not grieve, Monsieur! This will give her courage.
There is nothing that gives more courage than to see the irony of
things. [He touches MRS. MEGAN'S shoulder.] Go, my child; it will
do you good.
[MRS. MEGAN rises, and looks at him dazedly.]
CONSTABLE. [Coming forward, and taking her by the hand.] That's my
good lass. Come along! We won't hurt you.
MRS. MEGAN. I don't want to go. They'll stare at me.
CONSTABLE. [Comforting.] Not they! I'll see to that.
WELLWYN. [Very upset.] Take her in a cab, Constable, if you must
--for God's sake! [He pulls out a shilling.] Here!
CONSTABLE. [Taking the shilling.] I will, sir, certainly. Don't
think I want to----
WELLWYN. No, no, I know. You're a good sort.
CONSTABLE. [Comfortable.] Don't you take on, sir. It's her first
try; they won't be hard on 'er. Like as not only bind 'er over in
her own recogs. not to do it again. Come, my dear.
MRS. MEGAN. [Trying to free herself from the policeman's cloak.] I
want to take this off. It looks so funny.
[As she speaks the door is opened by ANN; behind whom is dimly
seen the form of old TIMSON, still heading the curious
persons.]
ANN. [Looking from one to the other in amazement.] What is it?
What's happened? Daddy!
FERRAND. [Out of the silence.] It is nothing, Ma'moiselle! She
has failed to drown herself. They run her in a little.
WELLWYN. Lend her your jacket, my dear; she'll catch her death.
[ANN, feeling MRS. MEGAN's arm, strips of her jacket, and helps
her into it without a word.]
CONSTABLE. [Donning his cloak.] Thank you. Miss--very good of
you, I'm sure.
MRS. MEGAN. [Mazed.] It's warm!
[She gives them all a last half-smiling look, and Passes with
the CONSTABLE through the doorway.]
FERRAND. That makes the third of us, Monsieur. We are not in luck.
To wish us dead, it seems, is easier than to let us die.
[He looks at ANN, who is standing with her eyes fixed on her
father. WELLWYN has taken from his pocket a visiting card.]
WELLWYN. [To FERRAND.] Here quick; take this, run after her! When
they've done with her tell her to come to us.
FERRAND. [Taking the card, and reading the address.] "No. 7, Haven
House, Flight Street!" Rely on me, Monsieur--I will bring her
myself to call on you. 'Au revoir, mon bon Monsieur'!
[He bends over WELLWYN's hand; then, with a bow to ANN goes
out; his tattered figure can be seen through the window,
passing in the wind. WELLWYN turns back to the fire. The
figure of TIMSON advances into the doorway, no longer holding
in either hand a waterproof leg-piece.]
TIMSON. [In a croaky voice.] Sir!
WELLWYN. What--you, Timson?
TIMSON. On me larst legs, sir. 'Ere! You can see 'em for yerself!
Shawn't trouble yer long....
WELLWYN. [After a long and desperate stare.] Not now--TIMSON not
now! Take this! [He takes out another card, and hands it to
TIMSON] Some other time.
TIMSON. [Taking the card.] Yer new address! You are a gen'leman.
[He lurches slowly away.]
[ANN shuts the street door and sets her back against it. The
rumble of the approaching van is heard outside. It ceases.]
ANN. [In a fateful voice.] Daddy! [They stare at each other.] Do
you know what you've done? Given your card to those six rotters.
WELLWYN. [With a blank stare.] Six?
ANN. [Staring round the naked room.] What was the good of this?
WELLWYN. [Following her eyes---very gravely.] Ann! It is stronger
than me.
[Without a word ANN opens the door, and walks straight out.
With a heavy sigh, WELLWYN sinks down on the little stool
before the fire. The three humble-men come in.]
CHIEF HUMBLE-MAN. [In an attitude of expectation.] This is the
larst of it, sir.
WELLWYN. Oh! Ah! yes!
[He gives them money; then something seems to strike him, and
he exhibits certain signs of vexation. Suddenly he recovers,
looks from one to the other, and then at the tea things. A
faint smile comes on his face.]
WELLWYN. You can finish the decanter.
[He goes out in haste.]
CHIEF HUMBLE-MAN. [Clinking the coins.] Third time of arskin'!
April fool! Not 'arf! Good old pigeon!
SECOND HUMBLE-MAN. 'Uman being, I call 'im.
CHIEF HUMBLE-MAN. [Taking the three glasses from the last
packing-case, and pouring very equally into them.] That's right.
Tell you wot, I'd never 'a touched this unless 'e'd told me to, I
wouldn't--not with 'im.
SECOND HUMBLE-MAN. Ditto to that! This is a bit of orl right!
[Raising his glass.] Good luck!
THIRD HUMBLE-MAN. Same 'ere!
[Simultaneously they place their lips smartly against the liquor,
and at once let fall their faces and their glasses.]
CHIEF HUMBLE-MAN. [With great solemnity.] Crikey! Bill! Tea!
.....'E's got us!
[The stage is blotted dark.]
Curtain.
THE END
THE MOB
A Play in Four Acts
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
STEPHEN MORE, Member of Parliament
KATHERINE, his wife
OLIVE, their little daughter
THE DEAN OF STOUR, Katherine's uncle
GENERAL SIR JOHN JULIAN, her father
CAPTAIN HUBERT JULIAN, her brother
HELEN, his wife
EDWARD MENDIP, editor of "The Parthenon"
ALAN STEEL, More's secretary
JAMES HOME, architect |
CHARLES SHELDER, Solicitor |A deputation of More's
MARK WACE, bookseller |constituents
WILLIAM BANNING, manufacturer |
NURSE WREFORD
WREFORD (her son), Hubert's orderly
HIS SWEETHEART
THE FOOTMAN HENRY
A DOORKEEPER
SOME BLACK-COATED GENTLEMEN
A STUDENT
A GIRL
A MOB
ACT I. The dining-room of More's town house, evening.
ACT II. The same, morning.
ACT III. SCENE I. An alley at the back of a suburban theatre.
SCENE II. Katherine's bedroom.
ACT IV. The dining-room of More's house, late afternoon.
AFTERMATH. The corner of a square, at dawn.
Between ACTS I and II some days elapse.
Between ACTS II and III three months.
Between ACT III SCENE I and ACT III SCENE II no time.
Between ACTS III and IV a few hours.
Between ACTS IV and AFTERMATH an indefinite period.
ACT I
It is half-past nine of a July evening. In a dining-room
lighted by sconces, and apparelled in wall-paper, carpet, and
curtains of deep vivid blue, the large French windows between
two columns are open on to a wide terrace, beyond which are seen
trees in darkness, and distant shapes of lighted houses. On one
side is a bay window, over which curtains are partly drawn.
Opposite to this window is a door leading into the hall. At an
oval rosewood table, set with silver, flowers, fruit, and wine,
six people are seated after dinner. Back to the bay window is
STEPHEN MORE, the host, a man of forty, with a fine-cut face, a
rather charming smile, and the eyes of an idealist; to his
right, SIR, JOHN JULIAN, an old soldier, with thin brown
features, and grey moustaches; to SIR JOHN's right, his brother,
the DEAN OF STOUR, a tall, dark, ascetic-looking Churchman: to
his right KATHERINE is leaning forward, her elbows on the table,
and her chin on her hands, staring across at her husband; to her
right sits EDWARD MENDIP, a pale man of forty-five, very bald,
with a fine forehead, and on his clear-cut lips a smile that
shows his teeth; between him and MORE is HELEN JULIAN, a pretty
dark-haired young woman, absorbed in thoughts of her own. The
voices are tuned to the pitch of heated discussion, as the
curtain rises.
THE DEAN. I disagree with you, Stephen; absolutely, entirely
disagree.
MORE. I can't help it.
MENDIP. Remember a certain war, Stephen! Were your chivalrous
notions any good, then? And, what was winked at in an obscure young
Member is anathema for an Under Secretary of State. You can't
afford----
MORE. To follow my conscience? That's new, Mendip.
MENDIP. Idealism can be out of place, my friend.
THE DEAN. The Government is dealing here with a wild lawless race,
on whom I must say I think sentiment is rather wasted.
MORE. God made them, Dean.
MENDIP. I have my doubts.
THE DEAN. They have proved themselves faithless. We have the right
to chastise.
MORE. If I hit a little man in the eye, and he hits me back, have I
the right to chastise him?
SIR JOHN. We didn't begin this business.
MORE. What! With our missionaries and our trading?
THE DEAN. It is news indeed that the work of civilization may be
justifiably met by murder. Have you forgotten Glaive and Morlinson?
SIR JOHN. Yes. And that poor fellow Groome and his wife?
MORE. They went into a wild country, against the feeling of the
tribes, on their own business. What has the nation to do with the
mishaps of gamblers?
SIR JOHN. We can't stand by and see our own flesh and blood
ill-treated!
THE DEAN. Does our rule bring blessing--or does it not, Stephen?
MORE. Sometimes; but with all my soul I deny the fantastic
superstition that our rule can benefit a people like this, a nation
of one race, as different from ourselves as dark from light--in
colour, religion, every mortal thing. We can only pervert their
natural instincts.
THE DEAN. That to me is an unintelligible point of view.
MENDIP. Go into that philosophy of yours a little deeper, Stephen--
it spells stagnation. There are no fixed stars on this earth.
Nations can't let each other alone.
MORE. Big ones could let little ones alone.
MENDIP. If they could there'd be no big ones. My dear fellow, we
know little nations are your hobby, but surely office should have
toned you down.
SIR JOHN. I've served my country fifty years, and I say she is not
in the wrong.
MORE. I hope to serve her fifty, Sir John, and I say she is.
MENDIP. There are moments when such things can't be said, More.
MORE. They'll be said by me to-night, Mendip.
MENDIP. In the House?
[MORE nods.]
KATHERINE. Stephen!
MENDIP. Mrs. More, you mustn't let him. It's madness.
MORE. [Rising] You can tell people that to-morrow, Mendip. Give it
a leader in 'The Parthenon'.
MENDIP. Political lunacy! No man in your position has a right to
fly out like this at the eleventh hour.
MORE. I've made no secret of my feelings all along. I'm against
this war, and against the annexation we all know it will lead to.
MENDIP. My dear fellow! Don't be so Quixotic! We shall have war
within the next twenty-four hours, and nothing you can do will stop
it.
HELEN. Oh! No!
MENDIP. I'm afraid so, Mrs. Hubert.
SIR JOHN. Not a doubt of it, Helen.
MENDIP. [TO MORE] And you mean to charge the windmill?
[MORE nods.]
MENDIP. 'C'est magnifique'!
MORE. I'm not out for advertisement.
MENDIP. You will get it!
MORE. Must speak the truth sometimes, even at that risk.
SIR JOHN. It is not the truth.
MENDIP. The greater the truth the greater the libel, and the greater
the resentment of the person libelled.
THE DEAN. [Trying to bring matters to a blander level] My dear
Stephen, even if you were right--which I deny--about the initial
merits, there surely comes a point where the individual conscience
must resign it self to the country's feeling. This has become a
question of national honour.
SIR JOHN. Well said, James!
MORE. Nations are bad judges of their honour, Dean.
THE DEAN. I shall not follow you there.
MORE. No. It's an awkward word.
KATHERINE. [Stopping THE DEAN] Uncle James! Please!
[MORE looks at her intently.]
SIR JOHN. So you're going to put yourself at the head of the cranks,
ruin your career, and make me ashamed that you're my son-in-law?
MORE. Is a man only to hold beliefs when they're popular? You've
stood up to be shot at often enough, Sir John.
SIR JOHN. Never by my country! Your speech will be in all the
foreign press-trust 'em for seizing on anything against us. A
show-up before other countries----!
MORE. You admit the show-up?
SIR JOHN. I do not, sir.
THE DEAN. The position has become impossible. The state of things
out there must be put an end to once for all! Come, Katherine, back
us up!
MORE. My country, right or wrong! Guilty--still my country!
MENDIP. That begs the question.
[KATHERINE rises. THE DEAN, too, stands up.]
THE DEAN. [In a low voice] 'Quem Deus volt perdere'----!
SIR JOHN. Unpatriotic!
MORE. I'll have no truck with tyranny.
KATHERINE. Father doesn't admit tyranny. Nor do any of us, Stephen.
HUBERT JULIAN, a tall Soldier-like man, has come in.
HELEN. Hubert!
[She gets up and goes to him, and they talk together near the
door.]
SIR JOHN. What in God's name is your idea? We've forborne long
enough, in all conscience.
MORE. Sir John, we great Powers have got to change our ways in
dealing with weaker nations. The very dogs can give us lessons--
watch a big dog with a little one.
MENDIP. No, no, these things are not so simple as all that.
MORE. There's no reason in the world, Mendip, why the rules of
chivalry should not apply to nations at least as well as to---dogs.
MENDIP. My dear friend, are you to become that hapless kind of
outcast, a champion of lost causes?
MORE. This cause is not lost.
MENDIP. Right or wrong, as lost as ever was cause in all this world.
There was never a time when the word "patriotism" stirred mob
sentiment as it does now. 'Ware "Mob," Stephen---'ware "Mob"!
MORE. Because general sentiment's against me, I--a public man--am to
deny my faith? The point is not whether I'm right or wrong, Mendip,
but whether I'm to sneak out of my conviction because it's unpopular.
THE DEAN. I'm afraid I must go. [To KATHERINE] Good-night, my
dear! Ah! Hubert! [He greets HUBERT] Mr. Mendip, I go your way.
Can I drop you?
MENDIP. Thank you. Good-night, Mrs. More. Stop him! It's
perdition.
[He and THE DEAN go out. KATHERINE puts her arm in HELEN'S, and
takes her out of the room. HUBERT remains standing by the door]
SIR JOHN. I knew your views were extreme in many ways, Stephen, but
I never thought the husband of my daughter would be a Peace-at-any-
price man!
MORE. I am not! But I prefer to fight some one my own size.
SIR JOHN. Well! I can only hope to God you'll come to your senses
before you commit the folly of this speech. I must get back to the
War Office. Good-night, Hubert.
HUBERT. Good-night, Father.
[SIR JOHN goes out. HUBERT stands motionless, dejected.]
HUBERT. We've got our orders.
MORE. What? When d'you sail?
HUBERT. At once.
MORE. Poor Helen!
HUBERT. Not married a year; pretty bad luck! [MORE touches his arm
in sympathy] Well! We've got to put feelings in our pockets. Look
here, Stephen--don't make that speech! Think of Katherine--with the
Dad at the War Office, and me going out, and Ralph and old George out
there already! You can't trust your tongue when you're hot about a
thing.
MORE. I must speak, Hubert.
HUBERT. No, no! Bottle yourself up for to-night. The next few
hours 'll see it begin. [MORE turns from him] If you don't care
whether you mess up your own career--don't tear Katherine in two!
MORE. You're not shirking your duty because of your wife.
HUBERT. Well! You're riding for a fall, and a godless mucker it'll
be. This'll be no picnic. We shall get some nasty knocks out there.
Wait and see the feeling here when we've had a force or two cut up in
those mountains. It's awful country. Those fellows have got modern
arms, and are jolly good fighters. Do drop it, Stephen!
MORE. Must risk something, sometimes, Hubert--even in my profession!
[As he speaks, KATHERINE comes in.]
HUBERT. But it's hopeless, my dear chap--absolutely.
[MORE turns to the window, HUBERT to his sister--then with a
gesture towards MORE, as though to leave the matter to her, he
goes out.]
KATHERINE. Stephen! Are you really going to speak? [He nods] I ask
you not.
MORE. You know my feeling.
KATHERINE. But it's our own country. We can't stand apart from it.
You won't stop anything--only make people hate you. I can't bear
that.
MORE. I tell you, Kit, some one must raise a voice. Two or three
reverses--certain to come--and the whole country will go wild. And
one more little nation will cease to live.
KATHERINE. If you believe in your country, you must believe that the
more land and power she has, the better for the world.
MORE. Is that your faith?
KATHERINE. Yes.
MORE. I respect it; I even understand it; but--I can't hold it.
KATHERINE. But, Stephen, your speech will be a rallying cry to all
the cranks, and every one who has a spite against the country.
They'll make you their figurehead. [MORE smiles] They will. Your
chance of the Cabinet will go--you may even have to resign your seat.
MORE. Dogs will bark. These things soon blow over.
KATHERINE. No, no! If you once begin a thing, you always go on; and
what earthly good?
MORE. History won't say: "And this they did without a single protest
from their public men!"
KATHERINE. There are plenty who----
MORE. Poets?
KATHERINE. Do you remember that day on our honeymoon, going up Ben
Lawers? You were lying on your face in the heather; you said it was
like kissing a loved woman. There was a lark singing--you said that
was the voice of one's worship. The hills were very blue; that's why
we had blue here, because it was the best dress of our country. You
do love her.
MORE. Love her!
KATHERINE. You'd have done this for me--then.
MORE. Would you have asked me--then, Kit?
KATHERINE. Yes. The country's our country! Oh! Stephen, think
what it'll be like for me--with Hubert and the other boys out there.
And poor Helen, and Father! I beg you not to make this speech.
MORE. Kit! This isn't fair. Do you want me to feel myself a cur?
KATHERINE. [Breathless] I--I--almost feel you'll be a cur to do it
[She looks at him, frightened by her own words. Then, as the footman
HENRY has come in to clear the table--very low] I ask you not!
[He does not answer, and she goes out.]
MORE [To the servant] Later, please, Henry, later!
The servant retires. MORE still stands looking down at the
dining-table; then putting his hand to his throat, as if to free
it from the grip of his collar, he pours out a glass of water,
and drinks it of. In the street, outside the bay window, two
street musicians, a harp and a violin, have taken up their
stand, and after some twangs and scrapes, break into music.
MORE goes towards the sound, and draws aside one curtain. After
a moment, he returns to the table, and takes up the notes of the
speech. He is in an agony of indecision.
MORE. A cur!
He seems about to tear his notes across. Then, changing his
mind, turns them over and over, muttering. His voice gradually
grows louder, till he is declaiming to the empty room the
peroration of his speech.
MORE. . . . We have arrogated to our land the title Champion of
Freedom, Foe of Oppression. Is that indeed a bygone glory? Is it
not worth some sacrifice of our pettier dignity, to avoid laying
another stone upon its grave; to avoid placing before the searchlight
eyes of History the spectacle of yet one more piece of national
cynicism? We are about to force our will and our dominion on a race
that has always been free, that loves its country, and its
independence, as much as ever we love ours. I cannot sit silent
to-night and see this begin. As we are tender of our own land, so we
should be of the lands of others. I love my country. It is because
I love my country that I raise my voice. Warlike in spirit these
people may be--but they have no chance against ourselves. And war on
such, however agreeable to the blind moment, is odious to the future.
The great heart of mankind ever beats in sense and sympathy with the
weaker. It is against this great heart of mankind that we are going.
In the name of Justice and Civilization we pursue this policy; but by
Justice we shall hereafter be judged, and by Civilization--condemned.
While he is speaking, a little figure has flown along the
terrace outside, in the direction of the music, but has stopped
at the sound of his voice, and stands in the open window,
listening--a dark-haired, dark-eyed child, in a blue
dressing-gown caught up in her hand. The street musicians,
having reached the end of a tune, are silent.
In the intensity of MORES feeling, a wine-glass, gripped too
strongly, breaks and falls in pieces onto a finger-bowl. The
child starts forward into the room.
MORE. Olive!
OLIVE. Who were you speaking to, Daddy?
MORE. [Staring at her] The wind, sweetheart!
OLIVE. There isn't any!
MORE. What blew you down, then?
OLIVE. [Mysteriously] The music. Did the wind break the
wine-glass, or did it come in two in your hand?
MORE. Now my sprite! Upstairs again, before Nurse catches you.
Fly! Fly!
OLIVE. Oh! no, Daddy! [With confidential fervour] It feels like
things to-night!
MORE. You're right there!
OLIVE. [Pulling him down to her, and whispering] I must get back
again in secret. H'sh!
She suddenly runs and wraps herself into one of the curtains of
the bay window. A young man enters, with a note in his hand.
MORE. Hello, Steel!
[The street musicians have again begun to play.]
STEEL. From Sir John--by special messenger from the War Office.
MORE. [Reading the note] "The ball is opened."
He stands brooding over the note, and STEEL looks at him
anxiously. He is a dark, sallow, thin-faced young man, with the
eyes of one who can attach himself to people, and suffer with
them.
STEEL. I'm glad it's begun, sir. It would have been an awful pity
to have made that speech.
MORE. You too, Steel!
STEEL. I mean, if it's actually started----
MORE. [Tearing tie note across] Yes. Keep that to yourself.
STEEL. Do you want me any more?
MORE takes from his breast pocket some papers, and pitches them
down on the bureau.
MORE. Answer these.
STEEL. [Going to the bureau] Fetherby was simply sickening. [He
begins to write. Struggle has begun again in MORE] Not the faintest
recognition that there are two sides to it.
MORE gives him a quick look, goes quietly to the dining-table
and picks up his sheaf of notes. Hiding them with his sleeve,
he goes back to the window, where he again stands hesitating.
STEEL. Chief gem: [Imitating] "We must show Impudence at last that
Dignity is not asleep!"
MORE. [Moving out on to the terrace] Nice quiet night!
STEEL. This to the Cottage Hospital--shall I say you will preside?
MORE. No.
STEEL writes; then looking up and seeing that MORE is no longer
there, he goes to the window, looks to right and left, returns
to the bureau, and is about to sit down again when a thought
seems to strike him with consternation. He goes again to the
window. Then snatching up his hat, he passes hurriedly out
along the terrace. As he vanishes, KATHERINE comes in from the
hall. After looking out on to the terrace she goes to the bay
window; stands there listening; then comes restlessly back into
the room. OLIVE, creeping quietly from behind the curtain,
clasps her round the waist.
KATHERINE. O my darling! How you startled me! What are you doing
down here, you wicked little sinner!
OLIVE. I explained all that to Daddy. We needn't go into it again,
need we?
KATHERINE. Where is Daddy?
OLIVE. Gone.
KATHERINE. When?
OLIVE. Oh! only just, and Mr. Steel went after him like a rabbit.
[The music stops] They haven't been paid, you know.
KATHERINE. Now, go up at once. I can't think how you got down here.
OLIVE. I can. [Wheedling] If you pay them, Mummy, they're sure to
play another.
KATHERINE. Well, give them that! One more only.
She gives OLIVE a coin, who runs with it to the bay window,
opens the aide casement, and calls to the musicians.
OLIVE. Catch, please! And would you play just one more?
She returns from the window, and seeing her mother lost in
thought, rubs herself against her.
OLIVE. Have you got an ache?
KATHARINE. Right through me, darling!
OLIVE. Oh!
[The musicians strike up a dance.]
OLIVE. Oh! Mummy! I must just dance!
She kicks off her lisle blue shoes, and begins dancing. While
she is capering HUBERT comes in from the hall. He stands
watching his little niece for a minute, and KATHERINE looks at
him.
HUBERT. Stephen gone!
KATHERINE. Yes--stop, Olive!
OLIVE. Are you good at my sort of dancing, Uncle?
HUBERT. Yes, chick--awfully!
KATHERINE. Now, Olive!
The musicians have suddenly broken off in the middle of a bar.
From the street comes the noise of distant shouting.
OLIVE. Listen, Uncle! Isn't it a particular noise?
HUBERT and KATHERINE listen with all their might, and OLIVE
stares at their faces. HUBERT goes to the window. The sound
comes nearer. The shouted words are faintly heard: "Pyper----
war----our force crosses frontier--sharp fightin'----pyper."
KATHERINE. [Breathless] Yes! It is.
The street cry is heard again in two distant voices coming from
different directions: "War--pyper--sharp fightin' on the
frontier--pyper."
KATHERINE. Shut out those ghouls!
As HUBERT closes the window, NURSE WREFORD comes in from the
hall. She is an elderly woman endowed with a motherly grimness.
She fixes OLIVE with her eye, then suddenly becomes conscious of
the street cry.
NURSE. Oh! don't say it's begun.
[HUBERT comes from the window.]
NURSE. Is the regiment to go, Mr. Hubert?
HUBERT. Yes, Nanny.
NURSE. Oh, dear! My boy!
KATHERINE. [Signing to where OLIVE stands with wide eyes] Nurse!
HUBERT. I'll look after him, Nurse.
NURSE. And him keepin' company. And you not married a year. Ah!
Mr. Hubert, now do 'ee take care; you and him's both so rash.
HUBERT. Not I, Nurse!
NURSE looks long into his face, then lifts her finger, and
beckons OLIVE.
OLIVE. [Perceiving new sensations before her, goes quietly]
Good-night, Uncle! Nanny, d'you know why I was obliged to come down?
[In a fervent whisper] It's a secret!
[As she passes with NURSE out into the hall, her voice is heard
saying, "Do tell me all about the war."]
HUBERT. [Smothering emotion under a blunt manner] We sail on
Friday, Kit. Be good to Helen, old girl.
KATHERINE. Oh! I wish----! Why--can't--women--fight?
HUBERT. Yes, it's bad for you, with Stephen taking it like this.
But he'll come round now it's once begun.
KATHERINE shakes her head, then goes suddenly up to him, and
throws her arms round his neck. It is as if all the feeling
pent up in her were finding vent in this hug.
The door from the hall is opened, and SIR JOHN'S voice is heard
outside: "All right, I'll find her."
KATHERINE. Father!
[SIR JOHN comes in.]
SIR JOHN. Stephen get my note? I sent it over the moment I got to
the War Office.
KATHERINE. I expect so. [Seeing the torn note on the table] Yes.
SIR JOHN. They're shouting the news now. Thank God, I stopped that
crazy speech of his in time.
KATHERINE. Have you stopped it?
SIR JOHN. What! He wouldn't be such a sublime donkey?
KATHERINE. I think that is just what he might be. [Going to the
window] We shall know soon.
[SIR JOHN, after staring at her, goes up to HUBERT.]
SIR JOHN. Keep a good heart, my boy. The country's first. [They
exchange a hand-squeeze.]
KATHERINE backs away from the window. STEEL has appeared there
from the terrace, breathless from running.
STEEL. Mr. More back?
KATHERINE. No. Has he spoken?
STEEL. Yes.
KATHERINE. Against?
STEEL. Yes.
SIR JOHN. What? After!
SIR, JOHN stands rigid, then turns and marches straight out into
the hall. At a sign from KATHERINE, HUBERT follows him.
KATHERINE. Yes, Mr. Steel?
STEEL. [Still breathless and agitated] We were here--he slipped
away from me somehow. He must have gone straight down to the House.
I ran over, but when I got in under the Gallery he was speaking
already. They expected something--I never heard it so still there.
He gripped them from the first word--deadly--every syllable. It got
some of those fellows. But all the time, under the silence you could
feel a--sort of--of--current going round. And then Sherratt--I think
it was--began it, and you saw the anger rising in them; but he kept
them down--his quietness! The feeling! I've never seen anything
like it there.
Then there was a whisper all over the House that fighting had begun.
And the whole thing broke out--regular riot--as if they could have
killed him. Some one tried to drag him down by the coat-tails, but
he shook him off, and went on. Then he stopped dead and walked out,
and the noise dropped like a stone. The whole thing didn't last five
minutes. It was fine, Mrs. More; like--like lava; he was the only
cool person there. I wouldn't have missed it for anything--it was
grand!
MORE has appeared on the terrace, behind STEEL.
KATHERINE. Good-night, Mr. Steel.
STEEL. [Startled] Oh!--Good-night!
He goes out into the hall. KATHERINE picks up OLIVE'S shoes,
and stands clasping them to her breast. MORE comes in.
KATHERINE. You've cleared your conscience, then! I didn't think
you'd hurt me so.
MORE does not answer, still living in the scene he has gone
through, and KATHERINE goes a little nearer to him.
KATHERINE. I'm with the country, heart and soul, Stephen. I warn
you.
While they stand in silence, facing each other, the footman,
HENRY, enters from the hall.
FOOTMAN. These notes, sir, from the House of Commons.
KATHERINE. [Taking them] You can have the room directly.
[The FOOTMAN goes out.]
MORE. Open them!
KATHERINE opens one after the other, and lets them fall on the
table.
MORE. Well?
KATHERINE. What you might expect. Three of your best friends. It's
begun.
MORE. 'Ware Mob! [He gives a laugh] I must write to the Chief.
KATHERINE makes an impulsive movement towards him; then quietly
goes to the bureau, sits down and takes up a pen.
KATHERINE. Let me make the rough draft. [She waits] Yes?
MORE. [Dictating]
"July 15th.
"DEAR SIR CHARLES, After my speech to-night, embodying my most
unalterable convictions [KATHERINE turns and looks up at him, but he
is staring straight before him, and with a little movement of despair
she goes on writing] I have no alternative but to place the
resignation of my Under-Secretaryship in your hands. My view, my
faith in this matter may be wrong--but I am surely right to keep the
flag of my faith flying. I imagine I need not enlarge on the
reasons----"
THE CURTAIN FALLS.
ACT. II
Before noon a few days later. The open windows of the
dining-room let in the sunlight. On the table a number of
newspapers are littered. HELEN is sitting there, staring
straight before her. A newspaper boy runs by outside calling out
his wares. At the sound she gets up anti goes out on to the
terrace. HUBERT enters from the hall. He goes at once to the
terrace, and draws HELEN into the room.
HELEN. Is it true--what they're shouting?
HUBERT. Yes. Worse than we thought. They got our men all crumpled
up in the Pass--guns helpless. Ghastly beginning.
HELEN. Oh, Hubert!
HUBERT. My dearest girl!
HELEN puts her face up to his. He kisses her. Then she turns
quickly into the bay window. The door from the hall has been
opened, and the footman, HENRY, comes in, preceding WREFORD and
his sweetheart.
HENRY. Just wait here, will you, while I let Mrs. More know.
[Catching sight of HUBERT] Beg pardon, sir!
HUBERT. All right, Henry. [Off-hand] Ah! Wreford! [The FOOTMAN
withdraws] So you've brought her round. That's good! My sister'll
look after her--don't you worry! Got everything packed? Three
o'clock sharp.
WREFORD. [A broad faced soldier, dressed in khaki with a certain
look of dry humour, now dimmed-speaking with a West Country burr]
That's right, zurr; all's ready.
HELEN has come out of the window, and is quietly looking at
WREFORD and the girl standing there so awkwardly.
HELEN. [Quietly] Take care of him, Wreford.
HUBERT. We'll take care of each other, won't we, Wreford?
HELEN. How long have you been engaged?
THE GIRL. [A pretty, indeterminate young woman] Six months. [She
sobs suddenly.]
HELEN. Ah! He'll soon be safe back.
WREFORD. I'll owe 'em for this. [In a lacy voice to her] Don't 'ee
now! Don't 'ee!
HELEN. No! Don't cry, please!
She stands struggling with her own lips, then goes out on to the
terrace, HUBERT following. WREFORD and his girl remain where
they were, strange and awkward, she muffling her sobs.
WREFORD. Don't 'ee go on like that, Nance; I'll 'ave to take you
'ome. That's silly, now we've a-come. I might be dead and buried by
the fuss you're makin'. You've a-drove the lady away. See!
She regains control of herself as the door is opened and
KATHERINE appears, accompanied by OLIVE, who regards WREFORD
with awe and curiosity, and by NURSE, whose eyes are red, but
whose manner is composed.
KATHERINE. My brother told me; so glad you've brought her.
WREFORD. Ye--as, M'. She feels me goin', a bit.
KATHERINE. Yes, yes! Still, it's for the country, isn't it?
THE GIRL. That's what Wreford keeps tellin' me. He've got to go--so
it's no use upsettin' 'im. And of course I keep tellin' him I shall
be all right.
NURSE. [Whose eyes never leave her son's face] And so you will.
THE GIRL. Wreford thought it'd comfort him to know you were
interested in me. 'E's so 'ot-headed I'm sure somethin'll come to
'im.
KATHERINE. We've all got some one going. Are you coming to the
docks? We must send them off in good spirits, you know.
OLIVE. Perhaps he'll get a medal.
KATHERINE. Olive!
NURSE. You wouldn't like for him to be hanging back, one of them
anti-patriot, stop-the-war ones.
KATHERINE. [Quickly] Let me see--I have your address. [Holding out
her hand to WREFORD] We'll look after her.
OLIVE. [In a loud whisper] Shall I lend him my toffee?
KATHERINE. If you like, dear. [To WREFORD] Now take care of my
brother and yourself, and we'll take care of her.
WREFORD. Ye--as, M'.
He then looks rather wretchedly at his girl, as if the interview
had not done so much for him as he had hoped. She drops a
little curtsey. WREFORD salutes.
OLIVE. [Who has taken from the bureau a packet, places it in his
hand] It's very nourishing!
WREFORD. Thank you, miss.
Then, nudging each other, and entangled in their feelings and
the conventions, they pass out, shepherded by NURSE.
KATHERINE. Poor things!
OLIVE. What is an anti-patriot, stop-the-war one, Mummy?
KATHERINE. [Taking up a newspaper] Just a stupid name, dear--don't
chatter!
OLIVE. But tell me just one weeny thing!
KATHERINE. Well?
OLIVE. Is Daddy one?
KATHERINE. Olive! How much do you know about this war?
OLIVE. They won't obey us properly. So we have to beat them, and
take away their country. We shall, shan't we?
KATHERINE. Yes. But Daddy doesn't want us to; he doesn't think it
fair, and he's been saying so. People are very angry with him.
OLIVE. Why isn't it fair? I suppose we're littler than them.
KATHERINE. No.
OLIVE. Oh! in history we always are. And we always win. That's why
I like history. Which are you for, Mummy--us or them?
KATHERINE. Us.
OLIVE. Then I shall have to be. It's a pity we're not on the same
side as Daddy. [KATHERINE shudders] Will they hurt him for not
taking our side?
KATHERINE. I expect they will, Olive.
OLIVE. Then we shall have to be extra nice to him.
KATHERINE. If we can.
OLIVE. I can; I feel like it.
HELEN and HUBERT have returned along the terrace. Seeing
KATHERINE and the child, HELEN passes on, but HUBERT comes in at
the French window.
OLIVE. [Catching sight of him-softly] Is Uncle Hubert going to the
front to-day? [KATHERINE nods] But not grandfather?
KATHERINE. No, dear.
OLIVE. That's lucky for them, isn't it?
HUBERT comes in. The presence of the child give him self-control.
HUBERT. Well, old girl, it's good-bye. [To OLIVE] What shall I
bring you back, chick?
OLIVE. Are there shops at the front? I thought it was dangerous.
HUBERT. Not a bit.
OLIVE. [Disillusioned] Oh!
KATHERINE. Now, darling, give Uncle a good hug.
[Under cover of OLIVE's hug, KATHERINE repairs her courage.]
KATHERINE. The Dad and I'll be with you all in spirit. Good-bye,
old boy!
They do not dare to kiss, and HUBERT goes out very stiff and
straight, in the doorway passing STEEL, of whom he takes no
notice. STEEL hesitates, and would go away.
KATHERINE. Come in, Mr. Steel.
STEEL. The deputation from Toulmin ought to be here, Mrs. More.
It's twelve.
OLIVE. [Having made a little ball of newspaper-slyly] Mr. Steel,
catch!
[She throws, and STEEL catches it in silence.]
KATHERINE. Go upstairs, won't you, darling?
OLIVE. Mayn't I read in the window, Mummy? Then I shall see if any
soldiers pass.
KATHERINE. No. You can go out on the terrace a little, and then you
must go up.
[OLIVE goes reluctantly out on to the terrace.]
STEEL. Awful news this morning of that Pass! And have you seen
these? [Reading from the newspaper] "We will have no truck with the
jargon of the degenerate who vilifies his country at such a moment.
The Member for Toulmin has earned for himself the contempt of all
virile patriots." [He takes up a second journal] "There is a
certain type of public man who, even at his own expense, cannot
resist the itch to advertise himself. We would, at moments of
national crisis, muzzle such persons, as we muzzle dogs that we
suspect of incipient rabies . . . ." They're in full cry after
him!
KATHERINE. I mind much more all the creatures who are always
flinging mud at the country making him their hero suddenly! You know
what's in his mind?
STEEL. Oh! We must get him to give up that idea of lecturing
everywhere against the war, Mrs. More; we simply must.
KATHERINE. [Listening] The deputation's come. Go and fetch him,
Mr. Steel. He'll be in his room, at the House.
[STEEL goes out, and KATHERINE Stands at bay. In a moment he
opens the door again, to usher in the deputation; then retires.
The four gentlemen have entered as if conscious of grave issues.
The first and most picturesque is JAMES HOME, a thin, tall,
grey-bearded man, with plentiful hair, contradictious eyebrows,
and the half-shy, half-bold manners, alternately rude and over
polite, of one not accustomed to Society, yet secretly much
taken with himself. He is dressed in rough tweeds, with a red
silk tie slung through a ring, and is closely followed by MARK
WACE, a waxy, round-faced man of middle-age, with sleek dark
hair, traces of whisker, and a smooth way of continually rubbing
his hands together, as if selling something to an esteemed
customer. He is rather stout, wears dark clothes, with a large
gold chain. Following him comes CHARLES SHELDER, a lawyer of
fifty, with a bald egg-shaped head, and gold pince-nez. He has
little side whiskers, a leathery, yellowish skin, a rather kind
but watchful and dubious face, and when he speaks seems to have
a plum in his mouth, which arises from the preponderance of his
shaven upper lip. Last of the deputation comes WILLIAM BANNING,
an energetic-looking, square-shouldered, self-made country-man,
between fifty and sixty, with grey moustaches, ruddy face, and
lively brown eyes.]
KATHERINE. How do you do, Mr. Home?
HOME. [Bowing rather extravagantly over her hand, as if to show his
independence of women's influence] Mrs. More! We hardly expected--
This is an honour.
WACE. How do you do, Ma'am?
KATHERINE. And you, Mr. Wace?
WACE. Thank you, Ma'am, well indeed!
SHELDER. How d'you do, Mrs. More?
KATHERINE. Very well, thank you, Mr. Shelder.
BANNING. [Speaking with a rather broad country accent] This is but
a poor occasion, Ma'am.
KATHERINE. Yes, Mr. Banning. Do sit down, gentlemen.
Seeing that they will not settle down while she is standing, she
sits at the table. They gradually take their seats. Each
member of the deputation in his own way is severely hanging back
from any mention of the subject in hand; and KATHERINE as intent
on drawing them to it.
KATHERINE. My husband will be here in two minutes. He's only over
at the House.
SHELDER. [Who is of higher standing and education than the others]
Charming position--this, Mrs. More! So near the--er--Centre of--
Gravity um?
KATHERINE. I read the account of your second meeting at Toulmin.
BANNING. It's bad, Mrs. More--bad. There's no disguising it. That
speech was moon-summer madness--Ah! it was! Take a lot of explaining
away. Why did you let him, now? Why did you? Not your views, I'm
sure!
[He looks at her, but for answer she only compresses her lips.]
BANNING. I tell you what hit me--what's hit the whole constituency--
and that's his knowing we were over the frontier, fighting already,
when he made it.
KATHERINE. What difference does it make if he did know?
HOME. Hitting below the belt--I should have thought--you'll pardon
me!
BANNING. Till war's begun, Mrs. More, you're entitled to say what
you like, no doubt--but after! That's going against your country.
Ah! his speech was strong, you know--his speech was strong.
KATHERINE. He had made up his mind to speak. It was just an
accident the news coming then.
[A silence.]
BANNING. Well, that's true, I suppose. What we really want is to
make sure he won't break out again.
HOME. Very high-minded, his views of course--but, some consideration
for the common herd. You'll pardon me!
SHELDER. We've come with the friendliest feelings, Mrs. More--but,
you know, it won't do, this sort of thing!
WACE. We shall be able to smooth him down. Oh! surely.
BANNING. We'd be best perhaps not to mention about his knowing that
fighting had begun.
[As he speaks, MORE enters through the French windows. They all
rise.]
MORE. Good-morning, gentlemen.
[He comes down to the table, but does not offer to shake hands.]
BANNING. Well, Mr. More? You've made a woeful mistake, sir; I tell
you to your face.
MORE. As everybody else does, Banning. Sit down again, please.
[They gradually resume their seats, and MORE sits in KATHERINE's
chair. She alone remains standing leaning against the corner of
the bay window, watching their faces.]
BANNING. You've seen the morning's telegrams? I tell you, Mr.
More--another reverse like that, and the flood will sweep you clean
away. And I'll not blame it. It's only flesh and blood.
MORE, Allow for the flesh and blood in me, too, please. When I spoke
the other night it was not without a certain feeling here. [He
touches his heart.]
BANNING. But your attitude's so sudden--you'd not been going that
length when you were down with us in May.
MORE. Do me the justice to remember that even then I was against our
policy. It cost me three weeks' hard struggle to make up my mind to
that speech. One comes slowly to these things, Banning.
SHELDER. Case of conscience?
MORE. Such things have happened, Shelder, even in politics.
SHELDER. You see, our ideals are naturally low--how different from
yours!
[MORE smiles.]
KATHERINE, who has drawn near her husband, moves back again, as
if relieved at this gleam of geniality. WACE rubs his hands.
BANNING. There's one thing you forget, sir. We send you to
Parliament, representing us; but you couldn't find six men in the
whole constituency that would have bidden you to make that speech.
MORE. I'm sorry; but I can't help my convictions, Banning.
SHELDER. What was it the prophet was without in his own country?
BANNING. Ah! but we're not funning, Mr. More. I've never known
feeling run so high. The sentiment of both meetings was dead against
you. We've had showers of letters to headquarters. Some from very
good men--very warm friends of yours.
SHELDER. Come now! It's not too late. Let's go back and tell them
you won't do it again.
MORE. Muzzling order?
BANNING. [Bluntly] That's about it.
MORE. Give up my principles to save my Parliamentary skin. Then,
indeed, they might call me a degenerate! [He touches the newspapers
on the table.]
KATHERINE makes an abrupt and painful movement, then remains as
still as before, leaning against the corner of the window-seat.
BANNING. Well, Well! I know. But we don't ask you to take your
words back--we only want discretion in the future.
MORE. Conspiracy of silence! And have it said that a mob of
newspapers have hounded me to it.
BANNING. They won't say that of you.
SHELDER. My dear More, aren't you rather dropping to our level?
With your principles you ought not to care two straws what people
say.
MORE. But I do. I can't betray the dignity and courage of public
men. If popular opinion is to control the utterances of her
politicians, then good-bye indeed to this country!
BANNING. Come now! I won't say that your views weren't sound enough
before the fighting began. I've never liked our policy out there.
But our blood's being spilled; and that makes all the difference.
I don't suppose they'd want me exactly, but I'd be ready to go
myself. We'd all of us be ready. And we can't have the man that
represents us talking wild, until we've licked these fellows. That's
it in a nutshell.
MORE. I understand your feeling, Banning. I tender you my
resignation. I can't and won't hold on where I'm not wanted.
BANNING. No, no, no! Don't do that! [His accent broader and
broader] You've 'ad your say, and there it is. Coom now! You've
been our Member nine years, in rain and shine.
SHELDER. We want to keep you, More. Come! Give us your promise
--that's a good man!
MORE. I don't make cheap promises. You ask too much.
[There is silence, and they all look at MORE.]
SHELDER. There are very excellent reasons for the Government's
policy.
MORE. There are always excellent reasons for having your way with
the weak.
SHELDER. My dear More, how can you get up any enthusiasm for those
cattle-lifting ruffians?
MORE. Better lift cattle than lift freedom.
SHELDER. Well, all we'll ask is that you shouldn't go about the
country, saying so.
MORE. But that is just what I must do.
[Again they all look at MORE in consternation.]
HOME. Not down our way, you'll pardon me.
WACE. Really--really, sir----
SHELDER. The time of crusades is past, More.
MORE. Is it?
BANNING. Ah! no, but we don't want to part with you, Mr. More.
It's a bitter thing, this, after three elections. Look at the 'uman
side of it! To speak ill of your country when there's been a
disaster like this terrible business in the Pass. There's your own
wife. I see her brother's regiment's to start this very afternoon.
Come now--how must she feel?
MORE breaks away to the bay window. The DEPUTATION exchange
glances.
MORE. [Turning] To try to muzzle me like this--is going too far.
BANNING. We just want to put you out of temptation.
MORE. I've held my seat with you in all weathers for nine years.
You've all been bricks to me. My heart's in my work, Banning; I'm
not eager to undergo political eclipse at forty.
SHELDER. Just so--we don't want to see you in that quandary.
BANNING. It'd be no friendliness to give you a wrong impression of
the state of feeling. Silence--till the bitterness is overpast;
there's naught else for it, Mr. More, while you feel as you do. That
tongue of yours! Come! You owe us something. You're a big man;
it's the big view you ought to take.
MORE. I am trying to.
HOME. And what precisely is your view--you'll pardon my asking?
MORE. [Turning on him] Mr. Home a great country such as ours--is
trustee for the highest sentiments of mankind. Do these few outrages
justify us in stealing the freedom of this little people?
BANNING. Steal--their freedom! That's rather running before the
hounds.
MORE. Ah, Banning! now we come to it. In your hearts you're none of
you for that--neither by force nor fraud. And yet you all know that
we've gone in there to stay, as we've gone into other lands--as all
we big Powers go into other lands, when they're little and weak. The
Prime Minister's words the other night were these: "If we are forced
to spend this blood and money now, we must never again be forced."
What does that mean but swallowing this country?
SHELDER. Well, and quite frankly, it'd be no bad thing.
HOME. We don't want their wretched country--we're forced.
MORE. We are not forced.
SHELDER. My dear More, what is civilization but the logical,
inevitable swallowing up of the lower by the higher types of man?
And what else will it be here?
MORE. We shall not agree there, Shelder; and we might argue it all
day. But the point is, not whether you or I are right--the point is:
What is a man who holds a faith with all his heart to do? Please
tell me.
[There is a silence.]
BANNING. [Simply] I was just thinkin' of those poor fellows in the
Pass.
MORE. I can see them, as well as you, Banning. But, imagine! Up in
our own country--the Black Valley--twelve hundred foreign devils dead
and dying--the crows busy over them--in our own country, our own
valley--ours--ours--violated. Would you care about "the poor
fellows" in that Pass?--Invading, stealing dogs! Kill them--kill
them! You would, and I would, too!
The passion of those words touches and grips as no arguments
could; and they are silent.
MORE. Well! What's the difference out there? I'm not so inhuman as
not to want to see this disaster in the Pass wiped out. But once
that's done, in spite of my affection for you; my ambitions, and
they're not few; [Very low] in spite of my own wife's feeling, I
must be free to raise my voice against this war.
BANNING. [Speaking slowly, consulting the others, as it were, with
his eyes] Mr. More, there's no man I respect more than yourself. I
can't tell what they'll say down there when we go back; but I, for
one, don't feel it in me to take a hand in pressing you farther
against your faith.
SHELDER. We don't deny that--that you have a case of sorts.
WACE. No--surely.
SHELDER. A--man should be free, I suppose, to hold his own opinions.
MORE. Thank you, Shelder.
BANNING. Well! well! We must take you as you are; but it's a rare
pity; there'll be a lot of trouble----
His eyes light on Honk who is leaning forward with hand raised
to his ear, listening. Very faint, from far in the distance,
there is heard a skirling sound. All become conscious of it,
all listen.
HOME. [Suddenly] Bagpipes!
The figure of OLIVE flies past the window, out on the terrace.
KATHERINE turns, as if to follow her.
SHELDER. Highlanders!
[He rises. KATHERINE goes quickly out on to the terrace. One
by one they all follow to the window. One by one go out on to
the terrace, till MORE is left alone. He turns to the bay
window. The music is swelling, coming nearer. MORE leaves the
window--his face distorted by the strafe of his emotions. He
paces the room, taking, in some sort, the rhythm of the march.]
[Slowly the music dies away in the distance to a drum-tap and the
tramp of a company. MORE stops at the table, covering his eyes
with his hands.]
[The DEPUTATION troop back across the terrace, and come in at the
French windows. Their faces and manners have quite changed.
KATHERINE follows them as far as the window.]
HOME. [In a strange, almost threatening voice] It won't do, Mr.
More. Give us your word, to hold your peace!
SHELDER. Come! More.
WACE. Yes, indeed--indeed!
BANNING. We must have it.
MORE. [Without lifting his head] I--I----
The drum-tap of a regiment marching is heard.
BANNING. Can you hear that go by, man--when your country's just been
struck?
Now comes the scale and mutter of a following crowd.
MORE. I give you----
Then, sharp and clear above all other sounds, the words: "Give
the beggars hell, boys!" "Wipe your feet on their dirty
country!" "Don't leave 'em a gory acre!" And a burst of hoarse
cheering.
MORE. [Flinging up his head] That's reality! By Heaven! No!
KATHERINE. Oh!
SHELDER. In that case, we'll go.
BANNING. You mean it? You lose us, then!
[MORE bows.]
HOME. Good riddance! [Venomously--his eyes darting between MORE and
KATHERINE] Go and stump the country! Find out what they think of
you! You'll pardon me!
One by one, without a word, only BANNING looking back, they pass
out into the hall. MORE sits down at the table before the pile
of newspapers. KATHERINE, in the window, never moves. OLIVE
comes along the terrace to her mother.
OLIVE. They were nice ones! Such a lot of dirty people following,
and some quite clean, Mummy. [Conscious from her mother's face that
something is very wrong, she looks at her father, and then steals up
to his side] Uncle Hubert's gone, Daddy; and Auntie Helen's crying.
And--look at Mummy!
[MORE raises his head and looks.]
OLIVE. Do be on our side! Do!
She rubs her cheek against his. Feeling that he does not rub
his cheek against hers, OLIVE stands away, and looks from him to
her mother in wonder.
THE CURTAIN FALLS
ACT III
SCENE I
A cobble-stoned alley, without pavement, behind a suburban
theatre. The tall, blind, dingy-yellowish wall of the building
is plastered with the tattered remnants of old entertainment
bills, and the words: "To Let," and with several torn, and one
still virgin placard, containing this announcement: "Stop-the-
War Meeting, October 1st. Addresses by STEPHEN MORE, Esq., and
others." The alley is plentifully strewn with refuse and scraps
of paper. Three stone steps, inset, lead to the stage door. It
is a dark night, and a street lamp close to the wall throws all
the light there is. A faint, confused murmur, as of distant
hooting is heard. Suddenly a boy comes running, then two rough
girls hurry past in the direction of the sound; and the alley is
again deserted. The stage door opens, and a doorkeeper, poking
his head out, looks up and down. He withdraws, but in a second
reappears, preceding three black-coated gentlemen.
DOORKEEPER. It's all clear. You can get away down here, gentlemen.
Keep to the left, then sharp to the right, round the corner.
THE THREE. [Dusting themselves, and settling their ties] Thanks,
very much! Thanks!
FIRST BLACK-COATED GENTLEMAN. Where's More? Isn't he coming?
They are joined by a fourth black-coated GENTLEMAN.
FOURTH BLACK-COATED GENTLEMAN. Just behind. [TO the DOORKEEPER]
Thanks.
They hurry away. The DOORKEEPER retires. Another boy runs
past. Then the door opens again. STEEL and MORE come out.
MORE stands hesitating on the steps; then turns as if to go
back.
STEEL. Come along, sir, come!
MORE. It sticks in my gizzard, Steel.
STEEL. [Running his arm through MORE'S, and almost dragging him down
the steps] You owe it to the theatre people. [MORE still hesitates]
We might be penned in there another hour; you told Mrs. More
half-past ten; it'll only make her anxious. And she hasn't seen
you for six weeks.
MORE. All right; don't dislocate my arm.
They move down the steps, and away to the left, as a boy comes
running down the alley. Sighting MORE, he stops dead, spins
round, and crying shrilly: "'Ere 'e is! That's 'im! 'Ere 'e
is!" he bolts back in the direction whence he came.
STEEL. Quick, Sir, quick!
MORE. That is the end of the limit, as the foreign ambassador
remarked.
STEEL. [Pulling him back towards the door] Well! come inside again,
anyway!
A number of men and boys, and a few young girls, are trooping
quickly from the left. A motley crew, out for excitement;
loafers, artisans, navvies; girls, rough or dubious. All in
the mood of hunters, and having tasted blood. They gather round
the steps displaying the momentary irresolution and curiosity
that follows on a new development of any chase. MORE, on the
bottom step, turns and eyes them.
A GIRL. [At the edge] Which is 'im! The old 'un or the young?
[MORE turns, and mounts the remaining steps.]
TALL YOUTH. [With lank black hair under a bowler hat] You blasted
traitor!
MORE faces round at the volley of jeering that follows; the
chorus of booing swells, then gradually dies, as if they
realized that they were spoiling their own sport.
A ROUGH GIRL. Don't frighten the poor feller!
[A girl beside her utters a shrill laugh.]
STEEL. [Tugging at MORE's arm] Come along, sir.
MORE. [Shaking his arm free--to the crowd] Well, what do you want?
A VOICE. Speech.
MORE. Indeed! That's new.
ROUGH VOICE. [At the back of the crowd] Look at his white liver.
You can see it in his face.
A BIG NAVY. [In front] Shut it! Give 'im a chanst!
TALL YOUTH. Silence for the blasted traitor?
A youth plays the concertina; there is laughter, then an abrupt
silence.
MORE. You shall have it in a nutshell!
A SHOPBOY. [Flinging a walnut-shell which strikes MORE on the
shoulder] Here y'are!
MORE. Go home, and think! If foreigners invaded us, wouldn't you be
fighting tooth and nail like those tribesmen, out there?
TALL YOUTH. Treacherous dogs! Why don't they come out in the open?
MORE. They fight the best way they can.
[A burst of hooting is led by a soldier in khaki on the
outskirt.]
MORE. My friend there in khaki led that hooting. I've never said a
word against our soldiers. It's the Government I condemn for putting
them to this, and the Press for hounding on the Government, and all
of you for being led by the nose to do what none of you would do,
left to yourselves.
The TALL YOUTH leads a somewhat unspontaneous burst of
execration.
MORE. I say not one of you would go for a weaker man.
VOICES IN THE CROWD.
ROUGH VOICE. Tork sense!
GIRL'S VOICE. He's gittin' at you!
TALL YOUTH'S VOICE. Shiny skunk!
A NAVVY. [Suddenly shouldering forward] Look 'ere, Mister! Don't
you come gaflin' to those who've got mates out there, or it'll be the
worse for you-you go 'ome!
COCKNEY VOICE. And git your wife to put cottonwool in yer ears.
[A spurt of laughter.]
A FRIENDLY VOICE. [From the outskirts] Shame! there! Bravo, More!
Keep it up!
[A scuffle drowns this cry.]
MORE. [With vehemence] Stop that! Stop that! You---!
TALL YOUTH. Traitor!
AN ARTISAN. Who black-legged?
MIDDLE-AGED MAN. Ought to be shot-backin' his country's enemies!
MORE. Those tribesmen are defending their homes.
TWO VOICES. Hear! hear!
[They are hustled into silence.]
TALL YOUTH. Wind-bag!
MORE. [With sudden passion] Defending their homes! Not mobbing
unarmed men!
[STEEL again pulls at his arm.]
ROUGH. Shut it, or we'll do you in!
MORE. [Recovering his coolness] Ah! Do me in by all means! You'd
deal such a blow at cowardly mobs as wouldn't be forgotten in your
time.
STEEL. For God's sake, sir!
MORE. [Shaking off his touch] Well!
There is an ugly rush, checked by the fall of the foremost
figures, thrown too suddenly against the bottom step. The crowd
recoils.
There is a momentary lull, and MORE stares steadily down at
them.
COCKNEY VOICE. Don't 'e speak well! What eloquence!
Two or three nutshells and a piece of orange-peel strike MORE
across the face. He takes no notice.
ROUGH VOICE. That's it! Give 'im some encouragement.
The jeering laughter is changed to anger by the contemptuous
smile on MORE'S face.
A TALL YOUTH. Traitor!
A VOICE. Don't stand there like a stuck pig.
A ROUGH. Let's 'ave 'im dahn off that!
Under cover of the applause that greets this, he strikes MORE
across the legs with a belt. STEEL starts forward. MORE,
flinging out his arm, turns him back, and resumes his tranquil
staring at the crowd, in whom the sense of being foiled by this
silence is fast turning to rage.
THE CROWD. Speak up, or get down! Get off! Get away, there--or
we'll make you! Go on!
[MORE remains immovable.]
A YOUTH. [In a lull of disconcertion] I'll make 'im speak! See!
He darts forward and spits, defiling MORES hand. MORE jerks it
up as if it had been stung, then stands as still as ever. A
spurt of laughter dies into a shiver of repugnance at the
action. The shame is fanned again to fury by the sight of MORES
scornful face.
TALL YOUTH. [Out of murmuring] Shift! or you'll get it!
A VOICE. Enough of your ugly mug!
A ROUGH. Give 'im one!
Two flung stones strike MORE. He staggers and nearly falls,
then rights himself.
A GIRL'S VOICE. Shame!
FRIENDLY VOICE. Bravo, More! Stick to it!
A ROUGH. Give 'im another!
A VOICE. No!
A GIRL'S VOICE. Let 'im alone! Come on, Billy, this ain't no fun!
Still looking up at MORE, the whole crowd falls into an uneasy
silence, broken only by the shuffling of feet. Then the BIG
NAVVY in the front rank turns and elbows his way out to the edge
of the crowd.
THE NAVVY. Let 'im be!
With half-sullen and half-shamefaced acquiescence the crowd
breaks up and drifts back whence it came, till the alley is
nearly empty.
MORE. [As if coming to, out of a trance-wiping his hand and dusting
his coat] Well, Steel!
And followed by STEEL, he descends the steps and moves away.
Two policemen pass glancing up at the broken glass. One of them
stops and makes a note.
THE CURTAIN FALLS.
SCENE II
The window-end of KATHERINE'S bedroom, panelled in cream-coloured
wood. The light from four candles is falling on KATHERINE, who is
sitting before the silver mirror of an old oak dressing-table,
brushing her hair. A door, on the left, stands ajar. An oak chair
against the wall close to a recessed window is all the other
furniture. Through this window the blue night is seen, where a mist
is rolled out flat amongst trees, so that only dark clumps of boughs
show here and there, beneath a moonlit sky. As the curtain rises,
KATHERINE, with brush arrested, is listening. She begins again
brushing her hair, then stops, and taking a packet of letters from a
drawer of her dressing-table, reads. Through the just open door
behind her comes the voice of OLIVE.
OLIVE. Mummy! I'm awake!
But KATHERINE goes on reading; and OLIVE steals into the room in
her nightgown.
OLIVE. [At KATHERINE'S elbow--examining her watch on its stand] It's
fourteen minutes to eleven.
KATHERINE. Olive, Olive!
OLIVE. I just wanted to see the time. I never can go to sleep if I
try--it's quite helpless, you know. Is there a victory yet?
[KATHERINE, shakes her head] Oh! I prayed extra special for one in
the evening papers. [Straying round her mother] Hasn't Daddy come?
KATHERINE. Not yet.
OLIVE. Are you waiting for him? [Burying her face in her mother's
hair] Your hair is nice, Mummy. It's particular to-night.
KATHERINE lets fall her brush, and looks at her almost in alarm.
OLIVE. How long has Daddy been away?
KATHERINE. Six weeks.
OLIVE. It seems about a hundred years, doesn't it? Has he been
making speeches all the time?
KATHERINE. Yes.
OLIVE. To-night, too?
KATHERINE. Yes.
OLIVE. The night that man was here whose head's too bald for
anything--oh! Mummy, you know--the one who cleans his teeth so
termendously--I heard Daddy making a speech to the wind. It broke a
wine-glass. His speeches must be good ones, mustn't they!
KATHERINE. Very.
OLIVE. It felt funny; you couldn't see any wind, you know.
KATHERINE. Talking to the wind is an expression, Olive.
OLIVE. Does Daddy often?
KATHERINE. Yes, nowadays.
OLIVE. What does it mean?
KATHERINE. Speaking to people who won't listen.
OLIVE. What do they do, then?
KATHERINE. Just a few people go to hear him, and then a great crowd
comes and breaks in; or they wait for him outside, and throw things,
and hoot.
OLIVE. Poor Daddy! Is it people on our side who throw things?
KATHERINE. Yes, but only rough people.
OLIVE. Why does he go on doing it? I shouldn't.
KATHERINE. He thinks it is his duty.
OLIVE. To your neighbour, or only to God?
KATHERINE. To both.
OLIVE. Oh! Are those his letters?
KATHERINE. Yes.
OLIVE. [Reading from the letter] "My dear Heart." Does he always
call you his dear heart, Mummy? It's rather jolly, isn't it?
"I shall be home about half-past ten to-morrow night. For a few
hours the fires of p-u-r-g-a-t-or-y will cease to burn--" What are
the fires of p-u-r-g-a-t-o-r-y?
KATHERINE. [Putting away the letters] Come, Olive!
OLIVE. But what are they?
KATHERINE. Daddy means that he's been very unhappy.
OLIVE. Have you, too?
KATHERINE. Yes.
OLIVE. [Cheerfully] So have I. May I open the window?
KATHERINE. No; you'll let the mist in.
OLIVE. Isn't it a funny mist-all flat!
KATHERINE. Now, come along, frog!
OLIVE. [Making time] Mummy, when is Uncle Hubert coming back?
KATHERINE. We don't know, dear.
OLIVE. I suppose Auntie Helen'll stay with us till he does.
KATHERINE. Yes.
OLIVE. That's something, isn't it?
KATHERINE. [Picking her up] Now then!
OLIVE. [Deliciously limp] Had I better put in the duty to your
neighbour if there isn't a victory soon? [As they pass through the
door] You're tickling under my knee! [Little gurgles of pleasure
follow. Then silence. Then a drowsy voice] I must keep awake for
Daddy.
KATHERINE comes back. She is about to leave the door a little
open, when she hears a knock on the other door. It is opened a
few inches, and NURSE'S voice says: "Can I come in, Ma'am?" The
NURSE comes in.
KATHERINE. [Shutting OLIVE's door, and going up to her] What is it,
Nurse?
NURSE. [Speaking in a low voice] I've been meaning to--I'll never do
it in the daytime. I'm giving you notice.
KATHERINE. Nurse! You too!
She looks towards OLIVE'S room with dismay. The NURSE smudges a
slow tear away from her cheek.
NURSE. I want to go right away at once.
KATHERINE. Leave Olive! That is the sins of the fathers with a
vengeance.
NURSE. I've had another letter from my son. No, Miss Katherine,
while the master goes on upholdin' these murderin' outlandish
creatures, I can't live in this house, not now he's coming back.
KATHERINE. But, Nurse----!
NURSE. It's not like them [With an ineffable gesture] downstairs,
because I'm frightened of the mob, or of the window's bein' broke
again, or mind what the boys in the street say. I should think not--
no! It's my heart. I'm sore night and day thinkin' of my son, and
him lying out there at night without a rag of dry clothing, and water
that the bullocks won't drink, and maggots in the meat; and every day
one of his friends laid out stark and cold, and one day--'imself
perhaps. If anything were to 'appen to him. I'd never forgive
meself--here. Ah! Miss Katherine, I wonder how you bear it--bad
news comin' every day--And Sir John's face so sad--And all the time
the master speaking against us, as it might be Jonah 'imself.
KATHERINE. But, Nurse, how can you leave us, you?
NURSE. [Smudging at her cheeks] There's that tells me it's
encouragin' something to happen, if I stay here; and Mr. More coming
back to-night. You can't serve God and Mammon, the Bible says.
KATHERINE. Don't you know what it's costing him?
NURSE. Ah! Cost him his seat, and his reputation; and more than
that it'll cost him, to go against the country.
KATHERINE. He's following his conscience.
NURSE. And others must follow theirs, too. No, Miss Katherine, for
you to let him--you, with your three brothers out there, and your
father fair wasting away with grief. Sufferin' too as you've been
these three months past. What'll you feel if anything happens to my
three young gentlemen out there, to my dear Mr. Hubert that I nursed
myself, when your precious mother couldn't? What would she have said
--with you in the camp of his enemies?
KATHERINE. Nurse, Nurse!
NURSE. In my paper they say he's encouraging these heathens and
makin' the foreigners talk about us; and every day longer the war
lasts, there's our blood on this house.
KATHERINE. [Turning away] Nurse, I can't--I won't listen.
NURSE. [Looking at her intently] Ah! You'll move him to leave off!
I see your heart, my dear. But if you don't, then go I must!
She nods her head gravely, goes to the door of OLIVE'S room,
opens it gently, stands looking for a-moment, then with the
words "My Lamb!" she goes in noiselessly and closes the door.
KATHERINE turns back to her glass, puts back her hair, and
smooths her lips and eyes. The door from the corridor is
opened, and HELEN's voice says: "Kit! You're not in bed?"
KATHERINE. No.
HELEN too is in a wrapper, with a piece of lace thrown over her
head. Her face is scared and miserable, and she runs into
KATHERINE's arms.
KATHERINE. My dear, what is it?
HELEN. I've seen--a vision!
KATHERINE. Hssh! You'll wake Olive!
HELEN. [Staring before her] I'd just fallen asleep, and I saw a
plain that seemed to run into the sky--like--that fog. And on it
there were--dark things. One grew into a body without a head, and a
gun by its side. And one was a man sitting huddled up, nursing a
wounded leg. He had the face of Hubert's servant, Wreford. And then
I saw--Hubert. His face was all dark and thin; and he had--a wound,
an awful wound here [She touches her breast]. The blood was running
from it, and he kept trying to stop it--oh! Kit--by kissing it [She
pauses, stifled by emotion]. Then I heard Wreford laugh, and say
vultures didn't touch live bodies. And there came a voice, from
somewhere, calling out: "Oh! God! I'm dying!" And Wreford began to
swear at it, and I heard Hubert say: "Don't, Wreford; let the poor
fellow be!" But the voice went on and on, moaning and crying out:
"I'll lie here all night dying--and then I'll die!" And Wreford
dragged himself along the ground; his face all devilish, like a man
who's going to kill.
KATHERINE. My dear! HOW ghastly!
HELEN. Still that voice went on, and I saw Wreford take up the dead
man's gun. Then Hubert got upon his feet, and went tottering along,
so feebly, so dreadfully--but before he could reach and stop him,
Wreford fired at the man who was crying. And Hubert called out: "You
brute!" and fell right down. And when Wreford saw him lying there,
he began to moan and sob, but Hubert never stirred. Then it all got
black again--and I could see a dark woman--thing creeping, first to
the man without a head; then to Wreford; then to Hubert, and it
touched him, and sprang away. And it cried out: "A-ai-ah!" [Pointing
out at the mist] Look! Out there! The dark things!
KATHERINE. [Putting her arms round her] Yes, dear, yes! You must
have been looking at the mist.
HELEN. [Strangely calm] He's dead!
KATHERINE. It was only a dream.
HELEN. You didn't hear that cry. [She listens] That's Stephen.
Forgive me, Kit; I oughtn't to have upset you, but I couldn't help
coming.
She goes out, KATHERINE, into whom her emotion seems to have
passed, turns feverishly to the window, throws it open and leans
out. MORE comes in.
MORE. Kit!
Catching sight of her figure in the window, he goes quickly to
her.
KATHERINE. Ah! [She has mastered her emotion.]
MORE. Let me look at you!
He draws her from the window to the candle-light, and looks long
at her.
MORE. What have you done to your hair?
KATHERINE. Nothing.
MORE. It's wonderful to-night.
[He takes it greedily and buries his face in it.]
KATHERINE. [Drawing her hair away] Well?
MORE. At last!
KATHERINE. [Pointing to OLIVE's room] Hssh!
MORE. How is she?
KATHERINE. All right.
MORE. And you?
[KATHERINE shrugs her shoulders.]
MORE. Six weeks!
KATHERINE. Why have you come?
MORE. Why!
KATHERINE. You begin again the day after tomorrow. Was it worth
while?
MORE. Kit!
KATHERINE. It makes it harder for me, that's all.
MORE. [Staring at her] What's come to you?
KATHERINE. Six weeks is a long time to sit and read about your
meetings.
MORE. Put that away to-night. [He touches her] This is what
travellers feel when they come out of the desert to-water.
KATHERINE. [Suddenly noticing the cut on his forehead] Your
forehead! It's cut.
MORE. It's nothing.
KATHERINE. Oh! Let me bathe it!
MORE. No, dear! It's all right.
KATHERINE. [Turning away] Helen has just been telling me a dream
she's had of Hubert's death.
MORE. Poor child!
KATHERINE. Dream bad dreams, and wait, and hide oneself--there's
been nothing else to do. Nothing, Stephen--nothing!
MORE. Hide? Because of me?
[KATHERINE nods.]
MORE. [With a movement of distress] I see. I thought from your
letters you were coming to feel----. Kit! You look so lovely!
[Suddenly he sees that she is crying, and goes quickly to her.]
MORE. My dear, don't cry! God knows I don't want to make things
worse for you. I'll go away.
She draws away from him a little, and after looking long at her,
he sits down at the dressing-table and begins turning over the
brushes and articles of toilet, trying to find words.
MORE. Never look forward. After the time I've had--I thought--
tonight--it would be summer--I thought it would be you--and
everything!
While he is speaking KATHERINE has stolen closer. She suddenly
drops on her knees by his side and wraps his hand in her hair.
He turns and clasps her.
MORE. Kit!
KATHERINE. Ah! yes! But-to-morrow it begins again. Oh! Stephen!
How long--how long am I to be torn in two? [Drawing back in his
arms] I can't--can't bear it.
MORE. My darling!
KATHERINE. Give it up! For my sake! Give it up! [Pressing closer
to him] It shall be me--and everything----
MORE. God!
KATHERINE. It shall be--if--if----
MORE. [Aghast] You're not making terms? Bargaining? For God's
sake, Kit!
KATHERINE. For God's sake, Stephen!
MORE. You!--of all people--you!
KATHERINE. Stephen!
[For a moment MORE yields utterly, then shrinks back.]
MORE. A bargain! It's selling my soul!
He struggles out of her arms, gets up, and stands without
speaking, staring at her, and wiping the sweat from his
forehead. KATHERINE remains some seconds on her knees, gazing
up at him, not realizing. Then her head droops; she too gets up
and stands apart, with her wrapper drawn close round her. It is
as if a cold and deadly shame had come to them both. Quite
suddenly MORE turns, and, without looking back, feebly makes his
way out of the room. When he is gone KATHERINE drops on her
knees and remains there motionless, huddled in her hair.
THE CURTAIN FALLS
ACT IV
It is between lights, the following day, in the dining-room of
MORE's house. The windows are closed, but curtains are not
drawn. STEEL is seated at the bureau, writing a letter from
MORE's dictation.
STEEL. [Reading over the letter] "No doubt we shall have trouble.
But, if the town authorities at the last minute forbid the use of the
hall, we'll hold the meeting in the open. Let bills be got out, and
an audience will collect in any case."
MORE. They will.
STEEL. "Yours truly"; I've signed for you.
[MORE nods.]
STEEL. [Blotting and enveloping the letter] You know the servants
have all given notice--except Henry.
MORE. Poor Henry!
STEEL. It's partly nerves, of course--the windows have been broken
twice--but it's partly----
MORE. Patriotism. Quite! they'll do the next smashing themselves.
That reminds me--to-morrow you begin holiday, Steel.
STEEL. Oh, no!
MORE. My dear fellow--yes. Last night ended your sulphur cure.
Truly sorry ever to have let you in for it.
STEEL. Some one must do the work. You're half dead as it is.
MORE. There's lots of kick in me.
STEEL. Give it up, sir. The odds are too great. It isn't worth it.
MORE. To fight to a finish; knowing you must be beaten--is anything
better worth it?
STEEL. Well, then, I'm not going.
MORE. This is my private hell, Steel; you don't roast in it any
longer. Believe me, it's a great comfort to hurt no one but
yourself.
STEEL. I can't leave you, sir.
MORE. My dear boy, you're a brick--but we've got off by a miracle so
far, and I can't have the responsibility of you any longer. Hand me
over that correspondence about to-morrow's meeting.
STEEL takes some papers from his pocket, but does not hand them.
MORE. Come! [He stretches out his hand for the papers. As STEEL
still draws back, he says more sharply] Give them to me, Steel!
[STEEL hands them over] Now, that ends it, d'you see?
They stand looking at each other; then STEEL, very much upset,
turns and goes out of the room. MORE, who has watched him with
a sorry smile, puts the papers into a dispatch-case. As he is
closing the bureau, the footman HENRY enters, announcing: "Mr.
Mendip, sir." MENDIP comes in, and the FOOTMAN withdraws. MORE
turns to his visitor, but does not hold out his hand.
MENDIP. [Taking MORE'S hand] Give me credit for a little philosophy,
my friend. Mrs. More told me you'd be back to-day. Have you heard?
MORE. What?
MENDIP. There's been a victory.
MORE. Thank God!
MENDIP. Ah! So you actually are flesh and blood.
MORE. Yes!
MENDIP. Take off the martyr's shirt, Stephen. You're only flouting
human nature.
MORE. So--even you defend the mob!
MENDIP. My dear fellow, you're up against the strongest common
instinct in the world. What do you expect? That the man in the
street should be a Quixote? That his love of country should express
itself in philosophic altruism? What on earth do you expect? Men
are very simple creatures; and Mob is just conglomerate essence of
simple men.
MORE. Conglomerate excrescence. Mud of street and market-place
gathered in a torrent--This blind howling "patriotism"--what each man
feels in here? [He touches his breast] No!
MENDIP. You think men go beyond instinct--they don't. All they know
is that something's hurting that image of themselves that they call
country. They just feel something big and religious, and go it
blind.
MORE. This used to be the country of free speech. It used to be the
country where a man was expected to hold to his faith.
MENDIP. There are limits to human nature, Stephen.
MORE. Let no man stand to his guns in face of popular attack. Still
your advice, is it?
MENDIP. My advice is: Get out of town at once. The torrent you
speak of will be let loose the moment this news is out. Come, my
dear fellow, don't stay here!
MORE. Thanks! I'll see that Katherine and Olive go.
MENDIP. Go with them! If your cause is lost, that's no reason why
you should be.
MORE. There's the comfort of not running away. And--I want comfort.
MENDIP. This is bad, Stephen; bad, foolish--foolish. Well! I'm
going to the House. This way?
MORE. Down the steps, and through the gate. Good-bye?
KATHERINE has come in followed by NURSE, hatted and cloaked,
with a small bag in her hand. KATHERINE takes from the bureau a
cheque which she hands to the NURSE. MORE comes in from the
terrace.
MORE. You're wise to go, Nurse.
NURSE. You've treated my poor dear badly, sir. Where's your heart?
MORE. In full use.
NURSE. On those heathens. Don't your own hearth and home come
first? Your wife, that was born in time of war, with her own father
fighting, and her grandfather killed for his country. A bitter
thing, to have the windows of her house broken, and be pointed at by
the boys in the street.
[MORE stands silent under this attack, looking at his wife.]
KATHERINE. Nurse!
NURSE. It's unnatural, sir--what you're doing! To think more of
those savages than of your own wife! Look at her! Did you ever see
her look like that? Take care, sir, before it's too late!
MORE. Enough, please!
NURSE stands for a moment doubtful; looks long at KATHERINE;
then goes.
MORE. [Quietly] There has been a victory.
[He goes out. KATHERINE is breathing fast, listening to the
distant hum and stir rising in the street. She runs to the
window as the footman, HENRY, entering, says: "Sir John Julian,
Ma'am!" SIR JOHN comes in, a newspaper in his hand.]
KATHERINE. At last! A victory!
SIR JOHN. Thank God! [He hands her the paper.]
KATHERINE. Oh, Dad!
[She tears the paper open, and feverishly reads.]
KATHERINE. At last!
The distant hum in the street is rising steadily. But SIR JOHN,
after the one exultant moment when he handed her the paper,
stares dumbly at the floor.
KATHERINE. [Suddenly conscious of his gravity] Father!
SIR JOHN. There is other news.
KATHERINE. One of the boys? Hubert?
[SIR JOHN bows his head.]
KATHERINE. Killed?
[SIR JOHN again bows his head.]
KATHERINE. The dream! [She covers her face] Poor Helen!
They stand for a few seconds silent, then SIR JOHN raises his
head, and putting up a hand, touches her wet cheek.
SIR JOHN. [Huskily] Whom the gods love----
KATHERINE. Hubert!
SIR JOHN. And hulks like me go on living!
KATHERINE. Dear Dad!
SIR JOHN. But we shall drive the ruffians now! We shall break them.
Stephen back?
KATHERINE. Last night.
SIR JOHN. Has he finished his blasphemous speech-making at last?
[KATHERINE shakes her head] Not?
[Then, seeing that KATHERINE is quivering with emotion, he
strokes her hand.]
SIR JOHN. My dear! Death is in many houses!
KATHERINE. I must go to Helen. Tell Stephen, Father. I can't.
SIR JOHN. If you wish, child.
[She goes out, leaving SIR JOHN to his grave, puzzled grief, and
in a few seconds MORE comes in.]
MORE. Yes, Sir John. You wanted me?
SIR JOHN. Hubert is killed.
MORE. Hubert!
SIR JOHN. By these--whom you uphold. Katherine asked me to let you
know. She's gone to Helen. I understand you only came back last
night from your----No word I can use would give what I feel about
that. I don't know how things stand now between you and Katherine;
but I tell you this, Stephen: you've tried her these last two months
beyond what any woman ought to bear!
[MORE makes a gesture of pain.]
SIR JOHN. When you chose your course----
MORE. Chose!
SIR JOHN. You placed yourself in opposition to every feeling in her.
You knew this might come. It may come again with another of my sons.
MORE. I would willingly change places with any one of them.
SIR JOHN. Yes--I can believe in your unhappiness. I cannot conceive
of greater misery than to be arrayed against your country. If I
could have Hubert back, I would not have him at such a price--no, nor
all my sons. 'Pro patri mori'--My boy, at all events, is happy!
MORE. Yes!
SIR JOHN. Yet you can go on doing what you are! What devil of pride
has got into you, Stephen?
MORE. Do you imagine I think myself better than the humblest private
fighting out there? Not for a minute.
SIR JOHN. I don't understand you. I always thought you devoted to
Katherine.
MORE. Sir John, you believe that country comes before wife and
child?
SIR JOHN. I do.
MORE. So do I.
SIR JOHN. [Bewildered] Whatever my country does or leaves undone, I
no more presume to judge her than I presume to judge my God. [With
all the exaltation of the suffering he has undergone for her] My
country!
MORE. I would give all I have--for that creed.
SIR JOHN. [Puzzled] Stephen, I've never looked on you as a crank;
I always believed you sane and honest. But this is--visionary mania.
MORE. Vision of what might be.
SIR JOHN. Why can't you be content with what the grandest nation--
the grandest men on earth--have found good enough for them? I've
known them, I've seen what they could suffer, for our country.
MORE. Sir John, imagine what the last two months have been to me!
To see people turn away in the street--old friends pass me as if I
were a wall! To dread the post! To go to bed every night with the
sound of hooting in my ears! To know that my name is never referred
to without contempt----
SIR JOHN. You have your new friends. Plenty of them, I understand.
MORE. Does that make up for being spat at as I was last night? Your
battles are fool's play to it.
The stir and rustle of the crowd in the street grows louder.
SIR JOHN turns his head towards it.
SIR JOHN. You've heard there's been a victory. Do you carry your
unnatural feeling so far as to be sorry for that? [MORE shakes his
head] That's something! For God's sake, Stephen, stop before it's
gone past mending. Don't ruin your life with Katherine. Hubert was
her favourite brother; you are backing those who killed him. Think
what that means to her! Drop this--mad Quixotism--idealism--whatever
you call it. Take Katherine away. Leave the country till the
thing's over--this country of yours that you're opposing, and--and--
traducing. Take her away! Come! What good are you doing? What
earthly good? Come, my boy! Before you're utterly undone.
MORE. Sir John! Our men are dying out there for, the faith that's
in them! I believe my faith the higher, the better for mankind--Am
I to slink away? Since I began this campaign I've found hundreds
who've thanked me for taking this stand. They look on me now as
their leader. Am I to desert them? When you led your forlorn hope--
did you ask yourself what good you were doing, or, whether you'd come
through alive? It's my forlorn hope not to betray those who are
following me; and not to help let die a fire--a fire that's sacred--
not only now in this country, but in all countries, for all time.
SIR JOHN. [After a long stare] I give you credit for believing what
you say. But let me tell you whatever that fire you talk of--I'm too
old-fashioned to grasp--one fire you are letting die--your wife's
love. By God! This crew of your new friends, this crew of cranks
and jays, if they can make up to you for the loss of her love--of
your career, of all those who used to like and respect you--so much
the better for you. But if you find yourself bankrupt of affection--
alone as the last man on earth; if this business ends in your utter
ruin and destruction--as it must--I shall not pity--I cannot pity
you. Good-night!
He marches to the door, opens it, and goes out. MORE is left
standing perfectly still. The stir and murmur of the street is
growing all the time, and slowly forces itself on his
consciousness. He goes to the bay window and looks out; then
rings the bell. It is not answered, and, after turning up the
lights, he rings again. KATHERINE comes in. She is wearing a
black hat, and black outdoor coat. She speaks coldly without
looking up.
KATHERINE. You rang!
MORE. For them to shut this room up.
KATHERINE. The servants have gone out. They're afraid of the house
being set on fire.
MORE. I see.
KATHERINE. They have not your ideals to sustain them. [MORE winces]
I am going with Helen and Olive to Father's.
MORE. [Trying to take in the exact sense of her words] Good! You
prefer that to an hotel? [KATHERINE nods. Gently] Will you let me
say, Kit, how terribly I feel for you--Hubert's----
KATHERINE. Don't. I ought to have made what I meant plainer. I am
not coming back.
MORE. Not? Not while the house----
KATHERINE. Not--at all.
MORE. Kit!
KATHERINE. I warned you from the first. You've gone too far!
MORE. [Terribly moved] Do you understand what this means? After
ten years--and all--our love!
KATHERINE. Was it love? How could you ever have loved one so
unheroic as myself!
MORE. This is madness, Kit--Kit!
KATHERINE. Last night I was ready. You couldn't. If you couldn't
then, you never can. You are very exalted, Stephen. I don't like
living--I won't live, with one whose equal I am not. This has been
coming ever since you made that speech. I told you that night what
the end would be.
MORE. [Trying to put his arms round her] Don't be so terribly
cruel!
KATHERINE. No! Let's have the truth! People so wide apart don't
love! Let me go!
MORE. In God's name, how can I help the difference in our faiths?
KATHERINE. Last night you used the word--bargain. Quite right. I
meant to buy you. I meant to kill your faith. You showed me what I
was doing. I don't like to be shown up as a driver of bargains,
Stephen.
MORE. God knows--I never meant----
KATHERINE. If I'm not yours in spirit--I don't choose to be your--
mistress.
MORE, as if lashed by a whip, has thrown up his hands in an
attitude of defence.
KATHERINE. Yes, that's cruel! It shows the heights you live on. I
won't drag you down.
MORE. For God's sake, put your pride away, and see! I'm fighting
for the faith that's in me. What else can a man do? What else? Ah!
Kit! Do see!
KATHERINE. I'm strangled here! Doing nothing--sitting silent--when
my brothers are fighting, and being killed. I shall try to go out
nursing. Helen will come with me. I have my faith, too; my poor
common love of country. I can't stay here with you. I spent last
night on the floor--thinking--and I know!
MORE. And Olive?
KATHERINE. I shall leave her at Father's, with Nurse; unless you
forbid me to take her. You can.
MORE. [Icily] That I shall not do--you know very well. You are
free to go, and to take her.
KATHERINE. [Very low] Thank you! [Suddenly she turns to him, and
draws his eyes on her. Without a sound, she puts her whole strength
into that look] Stephen! Give it up! Come down to me!
The festive sounds from the street grow louder. There can be
heard the blowing of whistles, and bladders, and all the sounds
of joy.
MORE. And drown in--that?
KATHERINE turns swiftly to the door. There she stands and again
looks at him. Her face is mysterious, from the conflicting currents
of her emotions.
MORE. So--you're going?
KATHERINE. [In a whisper] Yes.
She bends her head, opens the door, and goes. MORE starts
forward as if to follow her, but OLIVE has appeared in the
doorway. She has on a straight little white coat and a round
white cap.
OLIVE. Aren't you coming with us, Daddy?
[MORE shakes his head.]
OLIVE. Why not?
MORE. Never mind, my dicky bird.
OLIVE. The motor'll have to go very slow. There are such a lot of
people in the street. Are you staying to stop them setting the house
on fire? [MORE nods] May I stay a little, too? [MORE shakes his
head] Why?
MORE. [Putting his hand on her head] Go along, my pretty!
OLIVE. Oh! love me up, Daddy!
[MORE takes and loves her up]
OLIVE. Oo-o!
MORE. Trot, my soul!
[She goes, looks back at him, turns suddenly, and vanishes.]
MORE follows her to the door, but stops there. Then, as full
realization begins to dawn on him, he runs to the bay window,
craning his head to catch sight of the front door. There is the
sound of a vehicle starting, and the continual hooting of its
horn as it makes its way among the crowd. He turns from the
window.
MORE. Alone as the last man on earth!
[Suddenly a voice rises clear out of the hurly-burly in the
street.]
VOICE. There 'e is! That's 'im! More! Traitor! More!
A shower of nutshells, orange-peel, and harmless missiles begins
to rattle against the glass of the window. Many voices take up
the groaning: "More! Traitor! Black-leg! More!" And through
the window can be seen waving flags and lighted Chinese
lanterns, swinging high on long bamboos. The din of execration
swells. MORE stands unheeding, still gazing after the cab.
Then, with a sharp crack, a flung stone crashes through one of
the panes. It is followed by a hoarse shout of laughter, and a
hearty groan. A second stone crashes through the glass. MORE
turns for a moment, with a contemptuous look, towards the
street, and the flare of the Chinese lanterns lights up his
face. Then, as if forgetting all about the din outside, he
moves back into the room, looks round him, and lets his head
droop. The din rises louder and louder; a third stone crashes
through. MORE raises his head again, and, clasping his hands,
looks straight before him. The footman, HENRY, entering,
hastens to the French windows.
MORE. Ah! Henry, I thought you'd gone.
FOOTMAN. I came back, sir.
MORE. Good fellow!
FOOTMAN. They're trying to force the terrace gate, sir. They've no
business coming on to private property--no matter what!
In the surging entrance of the mob the footman, HENRY, who shows
fight, is overwhelmed, hustled out into the crowd on the
terrace, and no more seen. The MOB is a mixed crowd of
revellers of both sexes, medical students, clerks, shop men and
girls, and a Boy Scout or two. Many have exchanged hats--Some
wear masks, or false noses, some carry feathers or tin whistles.
Some, with bamboos and Chinese lanterns, swing them up outside
on the terrace. The medley of noises is very great. Such
ringleaders as exist in the confusion are a GROUP OF STUDENTS,
the chief of whom, conspicuous because unadorned, is an
athletic, hatless young man with a projecting underjaw, and
heavy coal-black moustache, who seems with the swing of his huge
arms and shoulders to sway the currents of motion. When the
first surge of noise and movement subsides, he calls out: "To
him, boys! Chair the hero!" THE STUDENTS rush at the impassive
MORE, swing him roughly on to their shoulders and bear him round
the room. When they have twice circled the table to the music
of their confused singing, groans and whistling, THE CHIEF OF
THE STUDENTS calls out: "Put him down!" Obediently they set him
down on the table which has been forced into the bay window, and
stand gaping up at him.
CHIEF STUDENT. Speech! Speech!
[The noise ebbs, and MORE looks round him.]
CHIEF STUDENT. Now then, you, sir.
MORE. [In a quiet voice] Very well. You are here by the law that
governs the action of all mobs--the law of Force. By that law, you
can do what you like to this body of mine.
A VOICE. And we will, too.
MORE. I don't doubt it. But before that, I've a word to say.
A VOICE. You've always that.
[ANOTHER VOICE raises a donkey's braying.]
MORE. You--Mob--are the most contemptible thing under the sun. When
you walk the street--God goes in.
CHIEF STUDENT. Be careful, you--sir.
VOICES. Down him! Down with the beggar!
MORE. [Above the murmurs] My fine friends, I'm not afraid of you.
You've forced your way into my house, and you've asked me to speak.
Put up with the truth for once! [His words rush out] You are the
thing that pelts the weak; kicks women; howls down free speech. This
to-day, and that to-morrow. Brain--you have none. Spirit--not the
ghost of it! If you're not meanness, there's no such thing. If
you're not cowardice, there is no cowardice [Above the growing
fierceness of the hubbub] Patriotism--there are two kinds--that of
our soldiers, and this of mine. You have neither!
CHIEF STUDENT. [Checking a dangerous rush] Hold on! Hold on! [To
MORE] Swear to utter no more blasphemy against your country: Swear
it!
CROWD. Ah! Ay! Ah!
MORE. My country is not yours. Mine is that great country which
shall never take toll from the weakness of others. [Above the
groaning] Ah! you can break my head and my windows; but don't think
that you can break my faith. You could never break or shake it, if
you were a million to one.
A girl with dark eyes and hair all wild, leaps out from the
crowd and shakes her fist at him.
GIRL. You're friends with them that killed my lad! [MORE smiles
down at her, and she swiftly plucks the knife from the belt of a Boy
Scout beside her] Smile, you--cur!
A violent rush and heave from behind flings MORE forward on to
the steel. He reels, staggers back, and falls down amongst the
crowd. A scream, a sway, a rush, a hubbub of cries. The CHIEF
STUDENT shouts above the riot: "Steady!" Another: "My God!
He's got it!"
CHIEF STUDENT. Give him air!
The crowd falls back, and two STUDENTS, bending over MORE, lift
his arms and head, but they fall like lead. Desperately they
test him for life.
CHIEF STUDENT. By the Lord, it's over!
Then begins a scared swaying out towards the window. Some one
turns out the lights, and in the darkness the crowd fast melts
away. The body of MORE lies in the gleam from a single Chinese
lantern. Muttering the words: "Poor devil! He kept his end up
anyway!" the CHIEF STUDENT picks from the floor a little
abandoned Union Jack and lays it on MORE's breast. Then he,
too, turns, and rushes out.
And the body of MORE lies in the streak of light; and flee
noises in the street continue to rise.
THE CURTAIN FALLS, BUT RISES AGAIN ALMOST AT ONCE.
AFTERMATH
A late Spring dawn is just breaking. Against trees in leaf and
blossom, with the houses of a London Square beyond, suffused by
the spreading glow, is seen a dark life-size statue on a granite
pedestal. In front is the broad, dust-dim pavement. The light
grows till the central words around the pedestal can be clearly
read:
ERECTED
To the Memory
of
STEPHEN MORE
"Faithful to his ideal"
High above, the face of MORE looks straight before him with a faint
smile. On one shoulder and on his bare head two sparrows have
perched, and from the gardens, behind, comes the twittering and
singing of birds.
THE CURTAIN FALLS.
The End
PLAYS in the FOURTH SERIES
Contents:
A BIT O' LOVE
THE FOUNDATIONS
THE SKIN GAME
A BIT O' LOVE
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
MICHAEL STRANGWAY
BEATRICE STRANGWAY
MRS. BRADMERE
JIM BERE
JACK CREMER
MRS. BURLACOMBE
BURLACOMBE
TRUSTAFORD
JARLAND
CLYST
FREMAN
GODLEIGH
SOL POTTER
MORSE, AND OTHERS
IVY BURLACOMBE
CONNIE TRUSTAFORD
GLADYS FREMAN
MERCY JARLAND
TIBBY JARLAND
BOBBIE JARLAND
SCENE: A VILLAGE OF THE WEST
The Action passes on Ascension Day.
ACT I. STRANGWAY'S rooms at BURLACOMBE'S. Morning.
ACT II. Evening
SCENE I. The Village Inn.
SCENE II. The same.
SCENE III. Outside the church.
ACT III. Evening
SCENE I. STRANGWAY'S rooms.
SCENE II. BURLACOMBE'S barn.
A BIT O' LOVE
ACT I
It is Ascension Day in a village of the West. In the low
panelled hall-sittingroom of the BURLACOMBE'S farmhouse on the
village green, MICHAEL STRANGWAY, a clerical collar round his
throat and a dark Norfolk jacket on his back, is playing the
flute before a very large framed photograph of a woman, which is
the only picture on the walls. His age is about thirty-five his
figure thin and very upright and his clean-shorn face thin,
upright, narrow, with long and rather pointed ears; his dark
hair is brushed in a coxcomb off his forehead. A faint smile
hovers about his lips that Nature has made rather full and he
has made thin, as though keeping a hard secret; but his bright
grey eyes, dark round the rim, look out and upwards almost as if
he were being crucified. There is something about the whole of
him that makes him seen not quite present. A gentle creature,
burnt within.
A low broad window above a window-seat forms the background to
his figure; and through its lattice panes are seen the outer
gate and yew-trees of a churchyard and the porch of a church,
bathed in May sunlight. The front door at right angles to the
window-seat, leads to the village green, and a door on the left
into the house.
It is the third movement of Veracini's violin sonata that
STRANGWAY plays. His back is turned to the door into the house,
and he does not hear when it is opened, and IVY BURLACOMBE, the
farmer's daughter, a girl of fourteen, small and quiet as a
mouse, comes in, a prayer-book in one hand, and in the other a
gloss of water, with wild orchis and a bit of deep pink
hawthorn. She sits down on the window-seat, and having opened
her book, sniffs at the flowers. Coming to the end of the
movement STRANGWAY stops, and looking up at the face on the
wall, heaves a long sigh.
IVY. [From the seat] I picked these for yu, Mr. Strangway.
STRANGWAY. [Turning with a start] Ah! Ivy. Thank you. [He puts
his flute down on a chair against the far wall] Where are the
others?
As he speaks, GLADYS FREMAN, a dark gipsyish girl, and CONNIE
TRUSTAFORD, a fair, stolid, blue-eyed Saxon, both about sixteen,
come in through the front door, behind which they have evidently
been listening. They too have prayer-books in their hands.
They sidle past Ivy, and also sit down under the window.
GLADYS. Mercy's comin', Mr. Strangway.
STRANGWAY. Good morning, Gladys; good morning, Connie.
He turns to a book-case on a table against the far wall, and
taking out a book, finds his place in it. While he stands thus
with his back to the girls, MERCY JARLAND comes in from the
green. She also is about sixteen, with fair hair and china-blue
eyes. She glides in quickly, hiding something behind her, and
sits down on the seat next the door. And at once there is a
whispering.
STRANGWAY. [Turning to them] Good morning, Mercy.
MERCY. Good morning, Mr. Strangway.
STRANGWAY. Now, yesterday I was telling you what our Lord's coming
meant to the world. I want you to understand that before He came
there wasn't really love, as we know it. I don't mean to say that
there weren't many good people; but there wasn't love for the sake of
loving. D'you think you understand what I mean?
MERCY fidgets. GLADYS'S eyes are following a fly.
IVY. Yes, Mr. Strangway.
STRANGWAY. It isn't enough to love people because they're good to
you, or because in some way or other you're going to get something by
it. We have to love because we love loving. That's the great thing
--without that we're nothing but Pagans.
GLADYS. Please, what is Pagans?
STRANGWAY. That's what the first Christians called the people who
lived in the villages and were not yet Christians, Gladys.
MERCY. We live in a village, but we're Christians.
STRANGWAY. [With a smile] Yes, Mercy; and what is a Christian?
MERCY kicks afoot, sideways against her neighbour, frowns over
her china-blare eyes, is silent; then, as his question passes
on, makes a quick little face, wriggles, and looks behind her.
STRANGWAY. Ivy?
IVY. 'Tis a man--whu--whu----
STRANGWAY. Yes?--Connie?
CONNIE. [Who speaks rather thickly, as if she had a permanent slight
cold] Please, Mr. Strangway, 'tis a man what goes to church.
GLADYS. He 'as to be baptised--and confirmed; and--and--buried.
IVY. 'Tis a man whu--whu's gude and----
GLADYS. He don't drink, an' he don't beat his horses, an' he don't
hit back.
MERCY. [Whispering] 'Tisn't your turn. [To STRANGWAY] 'Tis a man
like us.
IVY. I know what Mrs. Strangway said it was, 'cause I asked her
once, before she went away.
STRANGWAY. [Startled] Yes?
IVY. She said it was a man whu forgave everything.
STRANGWAY. Ah!
The note of a cuckoo comes travelling. The girls are gazing at
STRANGWAY, who seems to have gone of into a dream. They begin
to fidget and whisper.
CONNIE. Please, Mr. Strangway, father says if yu hit a man and he
don't hit yu back, he's no gude at all.
MERCY. When Tommy Morse wouldn't fight, us pinched him--he did
squeal! [She giggles] Made me laugh!
STRANGWAY. Did I ever tell you about St. Francis of Assisi?
IVY. [Clasping her hands] No.
STRANGWAY. Well, he was the best Christian, I think, that ever
lived--simply full of love and joy.
IVY. I expect he's dead.
STRANGWAY. About seven hundred years, Ivy.
IVY. [Softly] Oh!
STRANGWAY. Everything to him was brother or sister--the sun and the
moon, and all that was poor and weak and sad, and animals and birds,
so that they even used to follow him about.
MERCY. I know! He had crumbs in his pocket.
STRANGWAY. No; he had love in his eyes.
IVY. 'Tis like about Orpheus, that yu told us.
STRANGWAY. Ah! But St. Francis was a Christian, and Orpheus was a
Pagan.
IVY. Oh!
STRANGWAY. Orpheus drew everything after him with music; St.
Francis by love.
IVY. Perhaps it was the same, really.
STRANGWAY. [looking at his flute] Perhaps it was, Ivy.
GLADYS. Did 'e 'ave a flute like yu?
IVY. The flowers smell sweeter when they 'ear music; they du.
[She holds up the glass of flowers.]
STRANGWAY. [Touching one of the orchis] What's the name of this
one?
[The girls cluster; save MERCY, who is taking a stealthy
interest in what she has behind her.]
CONNIE. We call it a cuckoo, Mr. Strangway.
GLADYS. 'Tis awful common down by the streams. We've got one medder
where 'tis so thick almost as the goldie cups.
STRANGWAY. Odd! I've never noticed it.
IVY. Please, Mr. Strangway, yu don't notice when yu're walkin'; yu
go along like this.
[She holds up her face as one looking at the sky.]
STRANGWAY. Bad as that, Ivy?
IVY. Mrs. Strangway often used to pick it last spring.
STRANGWAY. Did she? Did she?
[He has gone off again into a kind of dream.]
MERCY. I like being confirmed.
STRANGWAY. Ah! Yes. Now----What's that behind you, Mercy?
MERCY. [Engagingly producing a cage a little bigger than a
mouse-trap, containing a skylark] My skylark.
STRANGWAY. What!
MERCY. It can fly; but we're goin' to clip its wings. Bobbie caught
it.
STRANGWAY. How long ago?
MERCY. [Conscious of impending disaster] Yesterday.
STRANGWAY. [White hot] Give me the cage!
MERCY. [Puckering] I want my skylark. [As he steps up to her and
takes the cage--thoroughly alarmed] I gave Bobbie thrippence for it!
STRANGWAY. [Producing a sixpence] There!
MERCY. [Throwing it down-passionately] I want my skylark!
STRANGWAY. God made this poor bird for the sky and the grass. And
you put it in that! Never cage any wild thing! Never!
MERCY. [Faint and sullen] I want my skylark.
STRANGWAY. [Taking the cage to the door] No! [He holds up the cage
and opens it] Off you go, poor thing!
[The bird flies out and away. The girls watch with round eyes
the fling up of his arm, and the freed bird flying away.]
IVY. I'm glad!
[MERCY kicks her viciously and sobs. STRANGWAY comes from the
door, looks at MERCY sobbing, and suddenly clasps his head. The
girls watch him with a queer mixture of wonder, alarm, and
disapproval.]
GLADYS. [Whispering] Don't cry, Mercy. Bobbie'll soon catch yu
another.
[STRANGWAY has dropped his hands, and is looking again at MERCY.
IVY sits with hands clasped, gazing at STRANGWAY. MERCY
continues her artificial sobbing.]
STRANGWAY. [Quietly] The class is over for to-day.
[He goes up to MERCY, and holds out his hand. She does not take
it, and runs out knuckling her eyes. STRANGWAY turns on his
heel and goes into the house.]
CONNIE. 'Twasn't his bird.
IVY. Skylarks belong to the sky. Mr. Strangway said so.
GLADYS. Not when they'm caught, they don't.
IVY. They du.
CONNIE. 'Twas her bird.
IVY. He gave her sixpence for it.
GLADYS. She didn't take it.
CONNIE. There it is on the ground.
IVY. She might have.
GLADYS. He'll p'raps take my squirrel, tu.
IVY. The bird sang--I 'eard it! Right up in the sky. It wouldn't
have sanged if it weren't glad.
GLADYS. Well, Mercy cried.
IVY. I don't care.
GLADYS. 'Tis a shame! And I know something. Mrs. Strangway's at
Durford.
CONNIE. She's--never!
GLADYS. I saw her yesterday. An' if she's there she ought to be
here. I told mother, an' she said: "Yu mind yer business." An' when
she goes in to market to-morrow she'm goin' to see. An' if she's
really there, mother says, 'tis a fine tu-du an' a praaper scandal.
So I know a lot more'n yu du.
[Ivy stares at her.]
CONNIE. Mrs. Strangway told mother she was goin' to France for the
winter because her mother was ill.
GLADYS. 'Tisn't, winter now--Ascension Day. I saw her cumin' out o'
Dr. Desert's house. I know 'twas her because she had on a blue dress
an' a proud luke. Mother says the doctor come over here tu often
before Mrs. Strangway went away, just afore Christmas. They was old
sweethearts before she married Mr. Strangway. [To Ivy] 'Twas yure
mother told mother that.
[Ivy gazes at them more and more wide-eyed.]
CONNIE. Father says if Mrs. Bradmere an' the old Rector knew about
the doctor, they wouldn't 'ave Mr. Strangway 'ere for curate any
longer; because mother says it takes more'n a year for a gude wife to
leave her 'usband, an' 'e so fond of her. But 'tisn't no business of
ours, father says.
GLADYS. Mother says so tu. She's praaper set against gossip.
She'll know all about it to-morrow after market.
IVY. [Stamping her foot] I don't want to 'ear nothin' at all; I
don't, an' I won't.
[A rather shame faced silence falls on the girls.]
GLADYS. [In a quick whisper] 'Ere's Mrs. Burlacombe.
[There enters fawn the house a stout motherly woman with a round
grey eye and very red cheeks.]
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Ivy, take Mr. Strangway his ink, or we'll never
'eve no sermon to-night. He'm in his thinkin' box, but 'tis not a
bit o' yuse 'im thinkin' without 'is ink. [She hands her daughter an
inkpot and blotting-pad. Ivy Takes them and goes out] What ever's
this? [She picks up the little bird-cage.]
GLADYS. 'Tis Mercy Jarland's. Mr. Strangway let her skylark go.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Aw! Did 'e now? Serve 'er right, bringin' an
'eathen bird to confirmation class.
CONNIE. I'll take it to her.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. No. Yu leave it there, an' let Mr. Strangway du
what 'e likes with it. Bringin' a bird like that! Well 'I never!
[The girls, perceiving that they have lighted on stony soil,
look at each other and slide towards the door.]
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Yes, yu just be off, an' think on what yu've been
told in class, an' be'ave like Christians, that's gude maids. An'
don't yu come no more in the 'avenin's dancin' them 'eathen dances in
my barn, naighther, till after yu'm confirmed--'tisn't right. I've
told Ivy I won't 'ave it.
CONNIE. Mr. Strangway don't mind--he likes us to; 'twas Mrs.
Strangway began teachin' us. He's goin' to give a prize.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Yu just du what I tell yu an' never mind Mr.
Strangway--he'm tu kind to everyone. D'yu think I don't know how
gells oughter be'ave before confirmation? Yu be'ave like I did!
Now, goo ahn! Shoo!
[She hustles them out, rather as she might hustle her chickens,
and begins tidying the room. There comes a wandering figure to
the open window. It is that of a man of about thirty-five, of
feeble gait, leaning the weight of all one side of him on a
stick. His dark face, with black hair, one lock of which has
gone white, was evidently once that of an ardent man. Now it is
slack, weakly smiling, and the brown eyes are lost, and seem
always to be asking something to which there is no answer.]
MRS. BURLACOMBE. [With that forced cheerfulness always assumed in
the face of too great misfortune] Well, Jim! better? [At the faint
brightening of the smile] That's right! Yu'm gettin' on bravely.
Want Parson?
JIM. [Nodding and smiling, and speaking slowly] I want to tell 'un
about my cat.
[His face loses its smile.]
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Why! what's she been duin' then? Mr. Strangway's
busy. Won't I du?
JIM. [Shaking his head] No. I want to tell him.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Whatever she been duin'? Havin' kittens?
JIM. No. She'm lost.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Dearie me! Aw! she'm not lost. Cats be like
maids; they must get out a bit.
JIM. She'm lost. Maybe he'll know where she'll be.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Well, well. I'll go an' find 'im.
JIM. He's a gude man. He's very gude.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. That's certain zure.
STRANGWAY. [Entering from the house] Mrs. Burlacombe, I can't think
where I've put my book on St. Francis--the large, squarish pale-blue
one?
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Aw! there now! I knu there was somethin' on me
mind. Miss Willis she came in yesterday afternune when yu was out,
to borrow it. Oh! yes--I said--I'm zure Mr. Strangway'll lend it
'ee. Now think o' that!
STRANGWAY. Of course, Mrs. Burlacombe; very glad she's got it.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Aw! but that's not all. When I tuk it up there
come out a whole flutter o' little bits o' paper wi' little rhymes on
'em, same as I see yu writin'. Aw! my gudeness! I says to meself,
Mr. Strangway widn' want no one seein' them.
STRANGWAY. Dear me! No; certainly not!
MRS. BURLACOMBE. An' so I putt 'em in your secretary.
STRANGWAY. My-ah! Yes. Thank you; yes.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. But I'll goo over an' get the buke for yu.
'T won't take me 'alf a minit.
[She goes out on to the green. JIM BERE has come in.]
STRANGWAY. [Gently] Well, Jim?
JIM. My cat's lost.
STRANGWAY. Lost?
JIM. Day before yesterday. She'm not come back. They've shot 'er,
I think; or she'm caught in one o' they rabbit-traps.
STRANGWAY. Oh! no; my dear fellow, she'll come back. I'll speak to
Sir Herbert's keepers.
JIM. Yes, zurr. I feel lonesome without 'er.
STRANGWAY. [With a faint smile--more to himself than to Jim]
Lonesome! Yes! That's bad, Jim! That's bad!
JIM. I miss 'er when I sits than in the avenin'.
STRANGWAY. The evenings----They're the worst----and when the
blackbirds sing in the morning.
JIM. She used to lie on my bed, ye know, zurr.
[STRANGWAY turns his face away, contracted with pain]
She'm like a Christian.
STRANGWAY. The beasts are.
JIM. There's plenty folk ain't 'alf as Christian as 'er be.
STRANGWAY. Well, dear Jim, I'll do my very best. And any time
you're lonely, come up, and I'll play the flute to you.
JIM. [Wriggling slightly] No, zurr. Thank 'ee, zurr.
STRANGWAY. What--don't you like music?
JIM. Ye-es, zurr. [A figure passes the window. Seeing it he says
with his slow smile] "'Ere's Mrs. Bradmere, comin' from the Rectory."
[With queer malice] She don't like cats. But she'm a cat 'erself, I
think.
STRANGWAY. [With his smile] Jim!
JIM. She'm always tellin' me I'm lukin' better. I'm not better,
zurr.
STRANGWAY. That's her kindness.
JIM. I don't think it is. 'Tis laziness, an' 'avin' 'er own way.
She'm very fond of 'er own way.
[A knock on the door cuts off his speech. Following closely on
the knock, as though no doors were licensed to be closed against
her, a grey-haired lady enters; a capable, broad-faced woman of
seventy, whose every tone and movement exhales authority. With
a nod and a "good morning" to STRANGWAY she turns at face to JIM
BERE.]
MRS. BRADMERE Ah! Jim; you're looking better.
[JIM BERE shakes his head. MRS. BRADMERE. Oh! yes, you are.
Getting on splendidly. And now, I just want to speak to Mr.
Strangway.]
[JIM BERE touches his forelock, and slowly, leaning on his
stick, goes out.]
MRS. BRADMERE. [Waiting for the door to close] You know how that
came on him? Caught the girl he was engaged to, one night, with
another man, the rage broke something here. [She touches her
forehead] Four years ago.
STRANGWAY. Poor fellow!
MRS. BRADMERE. [Looking at him sharply] Is your wife back?
STRANGWAY. [Starting] No.
MRS. BRADMERE. By the way, poor Mrs. Cremer--is she any better?
STRANGWAY. No; going fast: Wonderful--so patient.
MRS. BRADMERE. [With gruff sympathy] Um! Yes. They know how to
die! [Wide another sharp look at him] D'you expect your wife soon?
STRANGWAY. I I--hope so.
MRS. BRADMERE: So do I. The sooner the better.
STRANGWAY. [Shrinking] I trust the Rector's not suffering so much
this morning?
MRS. BRADMERE. Thank you! His foot's very bad.
[As she speaks Mrs. BURLACOMBE returns with a large pale-blue
book in her bared.]
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Good day, M'm! [Taking the book across to
STRANGWAY] Miss Willie, she says she'm very sorry, zurr.
STRANGWAY. She was very welcome, Mrs. Burlacombe. [To MRS.
BURLACOMBE] Forgive me--my sermon.
[He goes into the house. The two women graze after him. Then,
at once, as it were, draw into themselves, as if preparing for
an encounter, and yet seem to expand as if losing the need for
restraint.]
MRS. BRADMERE. [Abruptly] He misses his wife very much, I'm afraid.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Ah! Don't he? Poor dear man; he keeps a terrible
tight 'and over 'imself, but 'tis suthin' cruel the way he walks
about at night. He'm just like a cow when its calf's weaned. 'T'as
gone to me 'eart truly to see 'im these months past. T'other day
when I went up to du his rume, I yeard a noise like this [she
sniffs]; an' ther' 'e was at the wardrobe, snuffin' at 'er things. I
did never think a man cud care for a woman so much as that.
MRS. BRADMERE. H'm!
MRS. BURLACOMBE. 'Tis funny rest an' 'e comin' 'ere for quiet after
that tearin' great London parish! 'E'm terrible absent-minded tu
--don't take no interest in 'is fude. Yesterday, goin' on for one
o'clock, 'e says to me, "I expect 'tis nearly breakfast-time, Mrs.
Burlacombe!" 'E'd 'ad it twice already!
MRS. BRADMERE. Twice! Nonsense!
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Zurely! I give 'im a nummit afore 'e gets up; an'
'e 'as 'is brekjus reg'lar at nine. Must feed un up. He'm on 'is
feet all day, gain' to zee folk that widden want to zee an angel,
they're that busy; an' when 'e comes in 'e'll play 'is flute there.
Hem wastin' away for want of 'is wife. That's what 'tis. An' 'im so
sweet-spoken, tu, 'tes a pleasure to year 'im--Never says a word!
MRS. BRADMERE. Yes, that's the kind of man who gets treated badly.
I'm afraid she's not worthy of him, Mrs. Burlacombe.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. [Plaiting her apron] 'Tesn't for me to zay that.
She'm a very pleasant lady.
MRS. BRADMERE Too pleasant. What's this story about her being seen
in Durford?
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Aw! I du never year no gossip, m'm.
MRS. BRADMERE. [Drily] Of course not! But you see the Rector
wishes to know.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. [Flustered] Well--folk will talk! But, as I says
to Burlacombe--"'Tes paltry," I says; and they only married eighteen
months, and Mr. Strangway so devoted-like. 'Tes nothing but love,
with 'im.
MRS. BRADMERE. Come!
MRS. BURLACOMBE. There's puzzivantin' folk as'll set an' gossip the
feathers off an angel. But I du never listen.
MRS. BRADMERE Now then, Mrs. Burlacombe?
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Well, they du say as how Dr. Desart over to Durford
and Mrs. Strangway was sweethearts afore she wer' married.
MRS. BRADMERE. I knew that. Who was it saw her coming out of Dr.
Desart's house yesterday?
MRS. BURLACOMBE. In a manner of spakin' 'tes Mrs. Freman that says
'er Gladys seen her.
MRS. BRADMERE. That child's got an eye like a hawk.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. 'Tes wonderful how things du spread. 'Tesn't as if
us gossiped. Du seem to grow-like in the naight.
MRS. BRADMERE [To herself] I never lied her. That Riviera excuse,
Mrs. Burlacombe--Very convenient things, sick mothers. Mr.
Strangway doesn't know?
MRS. BURLACOMBE. The Lord forbid! 'Twid send un crazy, I think.
For all he'm so moony an' gentlelike, I think he'm a terrible
passionate man inside. He've a-got a saint in 'im, for zure; but
'tes only 'alf-baked, in a manner of spakin'.
MRS. BRADMERE. I shall go and see Mrs. Freman. There's been too
much of this gossip all the winter.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. 'Tes unfortunate-like 'tes the Fremans. Freman
he'm a gipsy sort of a feller; and he've never forgiven Mr. Strangway
for spakin' to 'im about the way he trates 'is 'orses.
MRS. BRADMERE. Ah! I'm afraid Mr. Strangway's not too discreet when
his feelings are touched.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. 'E've a-got an 'eart so big as the full mune. But
'tes no yuse espectin' tu much o' this world. 'Tes a funny place,
after that.
MRS. BRADMERE. Yes, Mrs. Burlacombe; and I shall give some of these
good people a rare rap over the knuckles for their want of charity.
For all they look as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, they're
an un-Christian lot. [Looking very directly at Mrs. BURLACOMBE]
It's lucky we've some hold over the village. I'm not going to have
scandal. I shall speak to Sir Herbert, and he and the Rector will
take steps.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. [With covert malice] Aw! I du hope 'twon't upset
the Rector, an' 'is fute so poptious!
MRS. BRADMERE. [Grimly] His foot'll be sound enough to come down
sharp. By the way, will you send me a duck up to the Rectory?
MRS. BURLACOMBE. [Glad to get away] Zurely, m'm; at once. I've
some luv'ly fat birds.
[She goes into the house.]
MRS. BRADMERE. Old puss-cat!
[She turns to go, and in the doorway encounters a very little,
red-cheeked girl in a peacock-blue cap, and pink frock, who
curtsies stolidly.]
MRS. BRADMERE. Well, Tibby Jarland, what do you want here? Always
sucking something, aren't you?
[Getting no reply from Tibby JARLAND, she passes out. Tibby
comes in, looks round, takes a large sweet out of her mouth,
contemplates it, and puts it back again. Then, in a perfunctory
and very stolid fashion, she looks about the floor, as if she
had been told to find something. While she is finding nothing
and sucking her sweet, her sister MERCY comes in furtively,
still frowning and vindictive.]
MERCY. What! Haven't you found it, Tibby? Get along with 'ee,
then!
[She accelerates the stolid Tissy's departure with a smack,
searches under the seat, finds and picks up the deserted
sixpence. Then very quickly she goes to the door: But it is
opened before she reaches it, and, finding herself caught, she
slips behind the chintz window-curtain. A woman has entered,
who is clearly the original of the large photograph. She is not
strictly pretty, but there is charm in her pale, resolute face,
with its mocking lips, flexible brows, and greenish eyes, whose
lids, square above them, have short, dark lashes. She is
dressed in blue, and her fair hair is coiled up under a cap and
motor-veil. She comes in swiftly, and closes the door behind
her; becomes irresolute; then, suddenly deciding, moves towards
the door into the house. MERCY slips from behind her curtain to
make off, but at that moment the door into the house is opened,
and she has at once to slip back again into covert. It is Ivy
who has appeared.]
IVY. [Amazed] Oh! Mrs. Strangway!
[Evidently disconcerted by this appearance, BEATRICE STRANGWAY
pulls herself together and confronts the child with a smile.]
BEATRICE. Well, Ivy--you've grown! You didn't expect me, did you?
IVY. No, Mrs. Strangway; but I hoped yu'd be comin' soon.
BEATRICE. Ah! Yes. Is Mr. Strangway in?
IVY. [Hypnotized by those faintly smiling lips] Yes--oh, yes! He's
writin' his sermon in the little room. He will be glad!
BEATRICE. [Going a little closer, and never taking her eyes off the
child] Yes. Now, Ivy; will you do something for me?
IVY. [Fluttering] Oh, yes, Mrs. Strangway.
BEATRICE. Quite sure?
IVY. Oh, yes!
BEATRICE. Are you old enough to keep a secret?
IVY. [Nodding] I'm fourteen now.
BEATRICE. Well, then--, I don't want anybody but Mr. Strangway to
know I've been here; nobody, not even your mother. D'you understand?
IVY. [Troubled] No. Only, I can keep a secret.
BEATRICE. Mind, if anybody hears, it will hurt Mr. Strangway.
IVY. Oh! I wouldn't--hurt--him. Must yu go away again? [Trembling
towards her] I wish yu wer goin' to stay. And perhaps some one has
seen yu--They----
BEATRICE. [Hastily] No, no one. I came motoring; like this. [She
moves her veil to show how it can conceal her face] And I came
straight down the little lane, and through the barn, across the yard.
IVY. [Timidly] People du see a lot.
BEATRICE. [Still with that hovering smile] I know, but----Now go
and tell him quickly and quietly.
IVY. [Stopping at the door] Mother's pluckin' a duck. Only,
please, Mrs. Strangway, if she comes in even after yu've gone, she'll
know, because--because yu always have that particular nice scent.
BEATRICE. Thank you, my child. I'll see to that.
[Ivy looks at her as if she would speak again, then turns
suddenly, and goes out. BEATRICE'S face darkens; she shivers.
Taking out a little cigarette case, she lights a cigarette, and
watches the puff's of smoke wreathe shout her and die away. The
frightened MERCY peers out, spying for a chance, to escape.
Then from the house STRANGWAY comes in. All his dreaminess is
gone.]
STRANGWAY. Thank God! [He stops at the look on her face] I don't
understand, though. I thought you were still out there.
BEATRICE. [Letting her cigarette fall, and putting her foot on it]
No.
STRANGWAY: You're staying? Oh! Beatrice; come! We'll get away from
here at once--as far, as far--anywhere you like. Oh! my darling
--only come! If you knew----
BEATRICE. It's no good, Michael; I've tried and tried.
STRANGWAY. Not! Then, why--? Beatrice! You said, when you were
right away--I've waited----
BEATRICE. I know. It's cruel--it's horrible. But I told you not to
hope, Michael. I've done my best. All these months at Mentone, I've
been wondering why I ever let you marry me--when that feeling wasn't
dead!
STRANGWAY. You can't have come back just to leave me again?
BEATRICE. When you let me go out there with mother I thought--I did
think I would be able; and I had begun--and then--spring came!
STRANGWAY. Spring came here too! Never so--aching! Beatrice, can't
you?
BEATRICE. I've something to say.
STRANGWAY. No! No! No!
BEATRICE. You see--I've--fallen.
STRANGWAY. Ah! [In a twice sharpened by pain] Why, in the name of
mercy, come here to tell me that? Was he out there, then?
BEATRICE. I came straight back to him.
STRANGWAY. To Durford?
BEATRICE. To the Crossway Hotel, miles out--in my own name. They
don't know me there. I told you not to hope, Michael. I've done my
best; I swear it.
STRANGWAY. My God!
BEATRICE. It was your God that brought us to live near him!
STRANGWAY. Why have you come to me like this?
BEATRICE. To know what you're going to do. Are you going to divorce
me? We're in your power. Don't divorce me--Doctor and patient--you
must know--it ruins him. He'll lose everything. He'd be
disqualified, and he hasn't a penny without his work.
STRANGWAY. Why should I spare him?
BEATRICE. Michael; I came to beg. It's hard.
STRANGWAY. No; don't beg! I can't stand it.
[She shakes her head.]
BEATRICE. [Recovering her pride] What are you going to do, then?
Keep us apart by the threat of a divorce? Starve us and prison us?
Cage me up here with you? I'm not brute enough to ruin him.
STRANGWAY. Heaven!
BEATRICE. I never really stopped loving him. I never--loved you,
Michael.
STRANGWAY. [Stunned] Is that true? [BEATRICE bends her head]
Never loved me? Not--that night--on the river--not----?
BEATRICE. [Under her breath] No.
STRANGWAY. Were you lying to me, then? Kissing me, and--hating me?
BEATRICE. One doesn't hate men like you; but it wasn't love.
STRANGWAY. Why did you tell me it was?
BEATRICE. Yes. That was the worst thing I've ever done.
STRANGWAY. Do you think I would have married you? I would have
burned first! I never dreamed you didn't. I swear it!
BEATRICE. [Very low] Forget it!
STRANGWAY. Did he try to get you away from me? [BEATRICE gives him
a swift look] Tell me the truth!
BEATRICE. No. It was--I--alone. But--he loves me.
STRANGWAY. One does not easily know love, it seems.
[But her smile, faint, mysterious, pitying, is enough, and he
turns away from her.]
BEATRICE. It was cruel to come, I know. For me, too. But I
couldn't write. I had to know.
STRANGWAY. Never loved me? Never loved me? That night at Tregaron?
[At the look on her face] You might have told me before you went
away! Why keep me all these----
BEATRICE. I meant to forget him again. I did mean to. I thought I
could get back to what I was, when I married you; but, you see, what
a girl can do, a woman that's been married--can't.
STRANGWAY. Then it was I--my kisses that----! [He laughs] How did
you stand them? [His eyes dart at her face] Imagination helped you,
perhaps!
BEATRICE. Michael, don't, don't! And--oh! don't make a public thing
of it! You needn't be afraid I shall have too good a time!
[He stays quite still and silent, and that which is writhing in
him makes his face so strange that BEATRICE stands aghast. At
last she goes stumbling on in speech]
If ever you want to marry some one else--then, of course--that's only
fair, ruin or not. But till then--till then----He's leaving
Durford, going to Brighton. No one need know. And you--this isn't
the only parish in the world.
STRANGWAY. [Quietly] You ask me to help you live in secret with
another man?
BEATRICE. I ask for mercy.
STRANGWAY. [As to himself] What am I to do?
BEATRICE. What you feel in the bottom of your heart.
STRANGWAY. You ask me to help you live in sin?
BEATRICE. To let me go out of your life. You've only to do--
nothing. [He goes, slowly, close to her.]
STRANGWAY. I want you. Come back to me! Beatrice, come back!
BEATRICE. It would be torture, now.
STRANGWAY. [Writhing] Oh!
BEATRICE. Whatever's in your heart--do!
STRANGWAY. You'd come back to me sooner than ruin him? Would you?
BEATRICE. I can't bring him harm.
STRANGWAY. [Turning away] God!--if there be one help me! [He
stands leaning his forehead against the window. Suddenly his glance
falls on the little bird cage, still lying on the window-seat] Never
cage any wild thing! [He gives a laugh that is half a sob; then,
turning to the door, says in a low voice] Go! Go please, quickly!
Do what you will. I won't hurt you--can't----But--go! [He opens
the door.]
BEATRICE. [Greatly moved] Thank you!
[She passes him with her head down, and goes out quickly.
STRANGWAY stands unconsciously tearing at the little bird-cage.
And while he tears at it he utters a moaning sound. The
terrified MERCY, peering from behind the curtain, and watching
her chance, slips to the still open door; but in her haste and
fright she knocks against it, and STRANGWAY sees her. Before he
can stop her she has fled out on to the green and away.]
[While he stands there, paralysed, the door from the house is
opened, and MRS. BURLACOMBE approaches him in a queer, hushed
way.]
MRS. BURLACOMBE. [Her eyes mechanically fixed on the twisted
bird-cage in his hands] 'Tis poor Sue Cremer, zurr, I didn't 'ardly
think she'd last thru the mornin'. An' zure enough she'm passed
away! [Seeing that he has not taken in her words] Mr. Strangway--
yu'm feelin' giddy?
STRANGWAY. No, no! What was it? You said----
MRS. BURLACOMBE. 'Tes Jack Cremer. His wife's gone. 'E'm in a
terrible way. 'Tes only yu, 'e ses, can du 'im any gude. He'm in
the kitchen.
STRANGWAY. Cremer? Yes! Of course. Let him----
MRS. BURLACOMBE. [Still staring at the twisted cage] Yu ain't
wantin' that--'tes all twizzled. [She takes it from him] Sure yu'm
not feelin' yer 'ead?
STRANGWAY. [With a resolute effort] No!
MRS. BURLACOMBE. [Doubtfully] I'll send 'im in, then. [She goes.
When she is gone, Strangway passes his handkerchief across his
forehead, and his lips move fast. He is standing motionless when
CREMER, a big man in labourer's clothes, with a thick, broad face,
and tragic, faithful eyes, comes in, and stands a little in from the
closed door, quite dumb.]
STRANGWAY. [After a moment's silence--going up to him and laying a
hand on his shoulder] Jack! Don't give way. If we give way--we're
done.
CREMER. Yes, zurr. [A quiver passes over his face.]
STRANGWAY. She didn't. Your wife was a brave woman. A dear woman.
CREMER. I never thought to luse 'er. She never told me 'ow bad she
was, afore she tuk to 'er bed. 'Tis a dreadful thing to luse a wife,
zurr.
STRANGWAY. [Tightening his lips, that tremble] Yes. But don't give
way! Bear up, Jack!
CREMER. Seems funny 'er goin' blue-bell time, an' the sun shinin' so
warm. I picked up an 'orse-shu yesterday. I can't never 'ave 'er
back, zurr.
[His face quivers again.]
STRANGWAY. Some day you'll join her. Think! Some lose their wives
for ever.
CREMER. I don't believe as there's a future life, zurr. I think we
goo to sleep like the beasts.
STRANGWAY. We're told otherwise. But come here! [Drawing him to
the window] Look! Listen! To sleep in that! Even if we do, it
won't be so bad, Jack, will it?
CREMER. She wer' a gude wife to me--no man didn't 'ave no better
wife.
STRANGWAY. [Putting his hand out] Take hold--hard--harder! I want
yours as much as you want mine. Pray for me, Jack, and I'll pray for
you. And we won't give way, will we?
CREMER. [To whom the strangeness of these words has given some
relief] No, zurr; thank 'ee, zurr. 'Tes no gude, I expect. Only,
I'll miss 'er. Thank 'ee, zurr; kindly.
[He lifts his hand to his head, turns, and uncertainly goes out
to the kitchen. And STRANGWAY stays where he is, not knowing
what to do. They blindly he takes up his flute, and hatless,
hurries out into the air.]
ACT II
SCENE I
About seven o'clock in the taproom of the village inn. The bar,
with the appurtenances thereof, stretches across one end, and
opposite is the porch door on to the green. The wall between is
nearly all window, with leaded panes, one wide-open casement
whereof lets in the last of the sunlight. A narrow bench runs
under this broad window. And this is all the furniture, save
three spittoons:
GODLEIGH, the innkeeper, a smallish man with thick ruffled hair,
a loquacious nose, and apple-red cheeks above a reddish-brown
moustache; is reading the paper. To him enters TIBBY JARLAND
with a shilling in her mouth.
GODLEIGH. Well, TIBBY JARLAND, what've yu come for, then? Glass o'
beer?
[TIBBY takes the shilling from her mouth and smiles stolidly.]
GODLEIGH. [Twinkling] I shid zay glass o' 'arf an' 'arf's about
yure form. [TIBBY smiles more broadly] Yu'm a praaper masterpiece.
Well! 'Ave sister Mercy borrowed yure tongue? [TIBBY shakes her
head] Aw, she 'aven't. Well, maid?
TIBBY. Father wants six clay pipes, please.
GODLEIGH. 'E du, du 'ee? Yu tell yure father 'e can't 'ave more'n
one, not this avenin'. And 'ere 'tis. Hand up yure shillin'.
[TIBBY reaches up her hand, parts with the shilling, and
receives a long clay pipe and eleven pennies. In order to
secure the coins in her pinafore she places the clay pipe in her
mouth. While she is still thus engaged, MRS. BRADMERE enters
the porch and comes in. TIBBY curtsies stolidly.]
MRS. BRADMERE. Gracious, child! What are you doing here? And what
have you got in your mouth? Who is it? Tibby Jarland? [TIBBY
curtsies again] Take that thing out. And tell your father from me
that if I ever see you at the inn again I shall tread on his toes
hard. Godleigh, you know the law about children?
GODLEIGH. [Cocking his eye, and not at all abashed] Surely, m'm.
But she will come. Go away, my dear.
[TIBBY, never taking her eyes off MRS. BRADMERE, or the pipe
from her mouth, has backed stolidly to the door, and vanished.]
MRS. BRADMERE. [Eyeing GODLEIGH] Now, Godleigh, I've come to talk
to you. Half the scandal that goes about the village begins here.
[She holds up her finger to check expostulation] No, no--its no
good. You know the value of scandal to your business far too well.
GODLEIGH. Wi' all respect, m'm, I knows the vally of it to yourn,
tu.
MRS. BRADMERE. What do you mean by that?
GODLEIGH. If there weren't no Rector's lady there widden' be no
notice taken o' scandal; an' if there weren't no notice taken,
twidden be scandal, to my thinkin'.
MRS. BRADMERE. [Winking out a grim little smile] Very well! You've
given me your views. Now for mine. There's a piece of scandal going
about that's got to be stopped, Godleigh. You turn the tap of it off
here, or we'll turn your tap off. You know me. See?
GODLEIGH. I shouldn' never presume, m'm, to know a lady.
MRS. BRADMERE. The Rector's quite determined, so is Sir Herbert.
Ordinary scandal's bad enough, but this touches the Church. While
Mr. Strangway remains curate here, there must be no talk about him
and his affairs.
GODLEIGH. [Cocking his eye] I was just thinkin' how to du it, m'm.
'Twid be a brave notion to putt the men in chokey, and slit the
women's tongues-like, same as they du in outlandish places, as I'm
told.
MRS. BRADMERE. Don't talk nonsense, Godleigh; and mind what I say,
because I mean it.
GODLEIGH. Make yure mind aisy, m'm there'll be no scandal-monkeyin'
here wi' my permission.
[MRS. BRADMERE gives him a keen stare, but seeing him perfectly
grave, nods her head with approval.]
MRS. BRADMERE. Good! You know what's being said, of course?
GODLEIGH. [With respectful gravity] Yu'll pardon me, m'm, but ef
an' in case yu was goin' to tell me, there's a rule in this 'ouse:
"No scandal 'ere!"
MRS. BRADMERE. [Twinkling grimly] You're too smart by half, my man.
GODLEIGH. Aw fegs, no, m'm--child in yure 'ands.
MRS. BRADMERE. I wouldn't trust you a yard. Once more, Godleigh!
This is a Christian village, and we mean it to remain so. You look
out for yourself.
[The door opens to admit the farmers TRUSTAFORD and BURLACOMBE.
They doff their hats to MRS. BRADMERE, who, after one more sharp
look at GODLEIGH, moves towards the door.]
MRS. BRADMERE. Evening, Mr. Trustaford. [To BURLACOMBE]
Burlacombe, tell your wife that duck she sent up was in hard
training.
[With one of her grim winks, and a nod, she goes.]
TRUSTAFORD. [Replacing a hat which is black, hard, and not very new,
on his long head, above a long face, clean-shaved but for little
whiskers] What's the old grey mare want, then? [With a horse-laugh]
'Er's lukin' awful wise!
GODLEIGH. [Enigmatically] Ah!
TRUSTAFORD. [Sitting on the bench dose to the bar] Drop o' whisky,
an' potash.
BURLACOMBE. [A taciturn, alien, yellowish man, in a worn soft hat]
What's wise, Godleigh? Drop o' cider.
GODLEIGH. Nuse? There's never no nuse in this 'ouse. Aw, no! Not
wi' my permission. [In imitation] This is a Christian village.
TRUSTAFORD. Thought the old grey mare seemed mighty busy. [To
BURLACOMBE] 'Tes rather quare about the curate's wife a-cumin'
motorin' this mornin'. Passed me wi' her face all smothered up in a
veil, goggles an' all. Haw, haw!
BURLACOMBE. Aye!
TRUSTAFORD. Off again she was in 'alf an hour. 'Er didn't give poor
old curate much of a chance, after six months.
GODLEIGH. Havin' an engagement elsewhere--No scandal, please,
gentlemen.
BURLACOMBE. [Acidly] Never asked to see my missis. Passed me in
the yard like a stone.
TRUSTAFORD. 'Tes a little bit rumoursome lately about 'er doctor.
GODLEIGH. Ah! he's the favourite. But 'tes a dead secret; Mr.
Trustaford. Don't yu never repate it--there's not a cat don't know
it already!
BURLACOMBE frowns, and TRUSTAFORD utters his laugh. The door is
opened and FREMAN, a dark gipsyish man in the dress of a farmer,
comes in.
GODLEIGH. Don't yu never tell Will Freman what 'e told me!
FREMAN. Avenin'!
TRUSTAFORD. Avenin', Will; what's yure glass o' trouble?
FREMAN. Drop o' eider, clove, an' dash o' gin. There's blood in the
sky to-night.
BURLACOMBE. Ah! We'll 'ave fine weather now, with the full o' the
mune.
FREMAN. Dust o' wind an' a drop or tu, virst, I reckon. 'Earl t'
nuse about curate an' 'is wife?
GODLEIGH. No, indeed; an' don't yu tell us. We'm Christians 'ere in
this village.
FREMAN. 'Tain't no very Christian nuse, neither. He's sent 'er off
to th' doctor. "Go an' live with un," 'e says; "my blessin' on ye."
If 'er'd a-been mine, I'd 'a tuk the whip to 'er. Tam Jarland's
maid, she yeard it all. Christian, indeed! That's brave
Christianity! "Goo an' live with un!" 'e told 'er.
BURLACOMBE. No, no; that's, not sense--a man to say that. I'll not
'ear that against a man that bides in my 'ouse.
FREMAN. 'Tes sure, I tell 'ee. The maid was hid-up, scared-like,
behind the curtain. At it they went, and parson 'e says: "Go," 'e
says, "I won't kape 'ee from 'im," 'e says, "an' I won't divorce 'ee,
as yu don't wish it!" They was 'is words, same as Jarland's maid
told my maid, an' my maid told my missis. If that's parson's talk,
'tes funny work goin' to church.
TRUSTAFORD. [Brooding] 'Tes wonderful quare, zurely.
FREMAN. Tam Jarland's fair mad wi' curate for makin' free wi' his
maid's skylark. Parson or no parson, 'e've no call to meddle wi'
other people's praperty. He cam' pokin' 'is nose into my affairs. I
told un I knew a sight more 'bout 'orses than 'e ever would!
TRUSTAFORD. He'm a bit crazy 'bout bastes an' birds.
[They have been so absorbed that they bane not noticed the
entrance of CLYST, a youth with tousled hair, and a bright,
quick, Celtic eye, who stands listening, with a bit of paper in
his hand.]
CLYST. Ah! he'm that zurely, Mr. Trustaford.
[He chuckles.]
GODLEIGH. Now, Tim Clyst, if an' in case yu've a-got some scandal on
yer tongue, don't yu never unship it here. Yu go up to Rectory where
'twill be more relished-like.
CLYST. [Waving the paper] Will y' give me a drink for this, Mr.
Godleigh? 'Tes rale funny. Aw! 'tes somethin' swats. Butiful
readin'. Poetry. Rale spice. Yu've a luv'ly voice for readin', Mr.
Godleigh.
GODLEIGH. [All ears and twinkle] Aw, what is it then?
CLYST. Ah! Yu want t'know tu much.
[Putting the paper in his pocket.]
[While he is speaking, JIM BERE has entered quietly, with his
feeble step and smile, and sits down.]
CLYST. [Kindly] Hello, Jim! Cat come 'ome?
JIM BERE. No.
[All nod, and speak to him kindly. And JIM BERE smiles at them,
and his eyes ask of them the question, to which there is no
answer. And after that he sits motionless and silent, and they
talk as if he were not there.]
GODLEIGH. What's all this, now--no scandal in my 'ouse!
CLYST. 'Tes awful peculiar--like a drame. Mr. Burlacombe 'e don't
like to hear tell about drames. A guess a won't tell 'ee, arter
that.
FREMAN. Out wi' it, Tim.
CLYST. 'Tes powerful thirsty to-day, Mr. Godleigh.
GODLEIGH. [Drawing him some cider] Yu're all wild cat's talk, Tim;
yu've a-got no tale at all.
CLYST. [Moving for the cider] Aw, indade!
GODLEIGH. No tale, no cider!
CLYST. Did ye ever year tell of Orphus?
TRUSTAFORD. What? The old vet. up to Drayleigh?
CLYST. Fegs, no; Orphus that lived in th' old time, an' drawed the
bastes after un wi' his music, same as curate was tellin' the maids.
FREMAN. I've 'eard as a gipsy over to Vellacott could du that wi'
'is viddle.
CLYST. 'Twas no gipsy I see'd this arternune; 'twee Orphus, down to
Mr. Burlacombe's long medder; settin' there all dark on a stone among
the dimsy-white flowers an' the cowflops, wi' a bird upon 'is 'ead,
playin' his whistle to the ponies.
FREMAN. [Excitedly] Yu did never zee a man wi' a bird on 'is 'ead.
CLYST. Didn' I?
FREMAN. What sort o' bird, then? Yu tell me that.
TRUSTAFORD. Praaper old barndoor cock. Haw, haw!
GODLEIGH. [Soothingly] 'Tes a vairy-tale; us mustn't be tu
partic'lar.
BURLACOMBE: In my long medder? Where were yu, then, Tim Clyst?
CLYST. Passin' down the lane on my bike. Wonderful sorrowful-fine
music 'e played. The ponies they did come round 'e--yu cud zee the
tears rennin' down their chakes; 'twas powerful sad. 'E 'adn't no
'at on.
FREMAN. [Jeering] No; 'e 'ad a bird on 'is 'ead.
CLYST. [With a silencing grin] He went on playin' an' playin'. The
ponies they never muved. An' all the dimsy-white flowers they waved
and waved, an' the wind it went over 'em. Gav' me a funny feelin'.
GODLEIGH. Clyst, yu take the cherry bun!
CLYST. Where's that cider, Mr. Godleigh?
GODLEIGH. [Bending over the cider] Yu've a-- 'ad tu much already,
Tim.
[The door is opened, and TAM JARLAND appears. He walks rather
unsteadily; a man with a hearty jowl, and sullen, strange;
epileptic-looking eyes.]
CLYST. [Pointing to JARLAND] 'Tis Tam Jarland there 'as the cargo
aboard.
JARLAND. Avenin', all! [To GODLEIGH] Pinto' beer. [To JIM BERE]
Avenin', Jim.
[JIM BERE looks at him and smiles.]
GODLEIGH. [Serving him after a moment's hesitation] 'Ere y'are,
Tam. [To CLYST, who has taken out his paper again] Where'd yu get
thiccy paper?
CLYST. [Putting down his cider-mug empty] Yure tongue du watter,
don't it, Mr. Godleigh? [Holding out his mug] No zider, no poetry.
'Tis amazin' sorrowful; Shakespeare over again. "The boy stude on
the burnin' deck."
FREMAN. Yu and yer yap!
CLYST. Ah! Yu wait a bit. When I come back down t'lane again,
Orphus 'e was vanished away; there was naught in the field but the
ponies, an' a praaper old magpie, a-top o' the hedge. I zee
somethin' white in the beak o' the fowl, so I giv' a "Whisht," an'
'e drops it smart, an' off 'e go. I gets over bank an' picks un up,
and here't be.
[He holds out his mug.]
BURLACOMBE. [Tartly] Here, give 'im 'is cider. Rade it yureself,
ye young teasewings.
[CLYST, having secured his cider, drinks it o$. Holding up the
paper to the light, he makes as if to begin, then slides his
eye round, tantalizing.]
CLYST. 'Tes a pity I bain't dressed in a white gown, an' flowers in
me 'air.
FREMAN. Read it, or we'll 'aye yu out o' this.
CLYST. Aw, don't 'ee shake my nerve, now!
[He begins reading with mock heroism, in his soft, high, burring
voice. Thus, in his rustic accent, go the lines]
God lighted the zun in 'eaven far.
Lighted the virefly an' the star.
My 'eart 'E lighted not!
God lighted the vields fur lambs to play,
Lighted the bright strames, 'an the may.
My 'eart 'E lighted not!
God lighted the mune, the Arab's way,
He lights to-morrer, an' to-day.
My 'eart 'E 'ath vorgot!
[When he has finished, there is silence. Then TRUSTAFORD,
scratching his head, speaks:]
TAUSTAFORD. 'Tes amazin' funny stuff.
FREMAN. [Looking over CLYST'S shoulder] Be danged! 'Tes the
curate's 'andwritin'. 'Twas curate wi' the ponies, after that.
CLYST. Fancy, now! Aw, Will Freman, an't yu bright!
FREMAN. But 'e 'adn't no bird on 'is 'ead.
CLYST. Ya-as, 'e 'ad.
JARLAND. [In a dull, threatening voice] 'E 'ad my maid's bird, this
arternune. 'Ead or no, and parson or no, I'll gie 'im one for that.
FREMAN. Ah! And 'e meddled wi' my 'orses.
TRUSTAFORD. I'm thinkin' 'twas an old cuckoo bird 'e 'ad on 'is
'ead. Haw, haw!
GODLEIGH. "His 'eart She 'ath Vorgot!"
FREMAN. 'E's a fine one to be tachin' our maids convirmation.
GODLEIGH. Would ye 'ave it the old Rector then? Wi' 'is gouty shoe?
Rackon the maids wid rather 'twas curate; eh, Mr. Burlacombe?
BURLACOMBE. [Abruptly] Curate's a gude man.
JARLAND. [With the comatose ferocity of drink] I'll be even wi' un.
FREMAN. [Excitedly] Tell 'ee one thing--'tes not a proper man o'
God to 'ave about, wi' 'is luse goin's on. Out vrom 'ere he oughter
go.
BURLACOMBE. You med go further an' fare worse.
FREMAN. What's 'e duin', then, lettin' 'is wife runoff?
TRUSTAFORD. [Scratching his head] If an' in case 'e can't kape 'er,
'tes a funny way o' duin' things not to divorce 'er, after that. If
a parson's not to du the Christian thing, whu is, then?
BURLACOMBE. 'Tes a bit immoral-like to pass over a thing like that.
Tes funny if women's gain's on's to be encouraged.
FREMAN. Act of a coward, I zay.
BURLACOMBE. The curate ain't no coward.
FREMAN. He bides in yure house; 'tes natural for yu to stand up for
un; I'll wager Mrs. Burlacombe don't, though. My missis was fair
shocked. "Will," she says, "if yu ever make vur to let me go like
that, I widden never stay wi' yu," she says.
TRUSTAFORD. 'Tes settin' a bad example, for zure.
BURLACOMBE. 'Tes all very airy talkin'; what shude 'e du, then?
FREMAN. [Excitedly] Go over to Durford and say to that doctor: "Yu
come about my missis, an' zee what I'll du to 'ee." An' take 'er
'ome an' zee she don't misbe'ave again.
CLYST. 'E can't take 'er ef 'er don' want t' come--I've 'eard
lawyer, that lodged wi' us, say that.
FREMAN. All right then, 'e ought to 'ave the law of 'er and 'er
doctor; an' zee 'er goin's on don't prosper; 'e'd get damages, tu.
But this way 'tes a nice example he'm settin' folks. Parson indade!
My missis an' the maids they won't goo near the church to-night, an'
I wager no one else won't, neither.
JARLAND. [Lurching with his pewter up to GODLEIGH] The beggar! I'll
be even wi' un.
GODLEIGH. [Looking at him in doubt] 'Tes the last, then, Tam.
[Having received his beer, JARLAND stands, leaning against the
bar, drinking.]
BURLACOMBE. [Suddenly] I don' goo with what curate's duin--'tes
tiff soft 'earted; he'm a muney kind o' man altogether, wi' 'is flute
an' 'is poetry; but he've a-lodged in my 'ouse this year an' mare,
and always 'ad an 'elpin' 'and for every one. I've got a likin' for
him an' there's an end of it.
JARLAND. The coward!
TRUSTAFORD. I don' trouble nothin' about that, Tam Jarland.
[Turning to BURLACOMBE] What gits me is 'e don't seem to 'ave no
zense o' what's his own praperty.
JARLAND. Take other folk's property fast enough!
[He saws the air with his empty. The others have all turned to
him, drawn by the fascination that a man in liquor has for his
fellow-men. The bell for church has begun to rang, the sun is
down, and it is getting dusk.]
He wants one on his crop, an' one in 'is belly; 'e wants a man to
take an' gie un a gude hidin zame as he oughter give 'is fly-be-night
of a wife.
[STRANGWAY in his dark clothes has entered, and stands by the
door, his lips compressed to a colourless line, his thin,
darkish face grey-white]
Zame as a man wid ha' gi'en the doctor, for takin' what isn't his'n.
All but JARLAND have seen STRANGWAY. He steps forward, JARLAND
sees him now; his jaw drops a little, and he is silent.
STRANGWAY. I came for a little brandy, Mr. Godleigh--feeling rather
faint. Afraid I mightn't get through the service.
GODLEIGH. [With professional composure] Marteil's Three Star, zurr,
or 'Ennessy's?
STRANGWAY. [Looking at JARLAND] Thank you; I believe I can do
without, now. [He turns to go.]
[In the deadly silence, GODLEIGH touches the arm of JARLAND,
who, leaning against the bar with the pewter in his hand, is
staring with his strange lowering eyes straight at STRANGWAY.]
JARLAND. [Galvanized by the touch into drunken rage] Lave me be
--I'll talk to un-parson or no. I'll tache un to meddle wi' my maid's
bird. I'll tache un to kape 'is thievin' 'ands to 'imself.
[STRANGWAY turns again.]
CLYST. Be quiet, Tam.
JARLAND. [Never loosing STRANGWAY with his eyes--like a bull-dog
who sees red] That's for one chake; zee un turn t'other, the
white-livered buty! Whu lets another man 'ave 'is wife, an' never
the sperit to go vor un!
BURLACOMBE. Shame, Jarland; quiet, man!
[They are all looking at STRANGWAY, who, under JARLAND'S drunken
insults is standing rigid, with his eyes closed, and his hands
hard clenched. The church bell has stopped slow ringing, and
begun its five minutes' hurrying note.]
TRUSTAFORD. [Rising, and trying to hook his arm into JARLAND'S]
Come away, Tam; yu've a-'ad to much, man.
JARLAND. [Shaking him off] Zee, 'e darsen't touch me; I might 'it
un in the vase an' 'e darsen't; 'e's afraid--like 'e was o' the
doctor.
[He raises the pewter as though to fling it, but it is seized by
GODLEIGH from behind, and falls clattering to the floor.
STRANGWAY has not moved.]
JARLAND. [Shaking his fist almost in his face] Luke at un, Luke at
un! A man wi' a slut for a wife----
[As he utters the word "wife" STRANGWAY seizes the outstretched
fist, and with a jujitsu movement, draws him into his clutch,
helpless. And as they sway and struggle in the open window,
with the false strength of fury he forces JARLAND through.
There is a crash of broken glass from outside. At the sound
STRANGWAY comes to himself. A look of agony passes over his
face. His eyes light on JIM BERE, who has suddenly risen, and
stands feebly clapping his hands. STRANGWAY rushes out.]
[Excitedly gathering at the window, they all speak at once.]
CLYST. Tam's hatchin' of yure cucumbers, Mr. Godleigh.
TRUSTAFORD. 'E did crash; haw, haw!
FREMAN. 'Twas a brave throw, zurely. Whu wid a' thought it?
CLYST. Tam's crawlin' out. [Leaning through window] Hello, Tam--
'ow's t' base, old man?
FREMAN. [Excitedly] They'm all comin' up from churchyard to zee.
TRUSTAFORD. Tam du luke wonderful aztonished; haw, haw! Poor old
Tam!
CLYST. Can yu zee curate? Reckon 'e'm gone into church. Aw, yes;
gettin' a bit dimsy-service time. [A moment's hush.]
TRUSTAFORD. Well, I'm jiggered. In 'alf an hour he'm got to prache.
GODLEIGH. 'Tes a Christian village, boys.
[Feebly, quietly, JIM BERE laughs. There is silence; but the
bell is heard still ranging.]
CURTAIN.
SCENE II
The same-in daylight dying fast. A lamp is burning on the bar.
A chair has been placed in the centre of the room, facing the
bench under the window, on which are seated from right to left,
GODLEIGH, SOL POTTER the village shopman, TRUSTAFORD,
BURLACOMBE, FREMAN, JIM BERE, and MORSE the blacksmith. CLYST
is squatting on a stool by the bar, and at the other end
JARLAND, sobered and lowering, leans against the lintel of the
porch leading to the door, round which are gathered five or six
sturdy fellows, dumb as fishes. No one sits in the chair. In
the unnatural silence that reigns, the distant sound of the
wheezy church organ and voices singing can be heard.
TAUSTAFORD. [After a prolonged clearing of his throat] What I mean
to zay is that 'tes no yuse, not a bit o' yuse in the world, not
duin' of things properly. If an' in case we'm to carry a resolution
disapprovin' o' curate, it must all be done so as no one can't, zay
nothin'.
SOL POTTER. That's what I zay, Mr. Trustaford; ef so be as 'tis to
be a village meetin', then it must be all done proper.
FREMAN. That's right, Sot Potter. I purpose Mr. Sot Potter into the
chair. Whu seconds that?
[A silence. Voices from among the dumb-as-fishes: "I du."]
CLYST. [Excitedly] Yu can't putt that to the meetin'. Only a
chairman can putt it to the meetin'. I purpose that Mr. Burlacombe--
bein as how he's chairman o' the Parish Council--take the chair.
FREMAN. Ef so be as I can't putt it, yu can't putt that neither.
TRUSTAFORD. 'Tes not a bit o' yuse; us can't 'ave no meetin' without
a chairman.
GODLEIGH. Us can't 'ave no chairman without a meetin' to elect un,
that's zure. [A silence.]
MORSE. [Heavily] To my way o' thinkin', Mr. Godleigh speaks zense;
us must 'ave a meetin' before us can 'ave a chairman.
CLYST. Then what we got to du's to elect a meetin'.
BURLACOMBE. [Sourly] Yu'll not find no procedure far that.
[Voices from among the dumb-as fishes: "Mr. Burlacombe 'e
oughter know."]
SOL POTTER. [Scratching his head--with heavy solemnity] 'Tes my
belief there's no other way to du, but to elect a chairman to call a
meetin'; an' then for that meetin' to elect a chairman.
CLYST. I purpose Mr. Burlacombe as chairman to call a meetin'.
FREMAN. I purpose Sol Potter.
GODLEIGH. Can't 'ave tu propositions together before a meetin';
that's apple-pie zure vur zurtain.
[Voice from among the dumb-as fishes: "There ain't no meetin'
yet, Sol Potter zays."]
TRUSTAFORD. Us must get the rights of it zettled some'ow. 'Tes like
the darned old chicken an' the egg--meetin' or chairman--which come
virst?
SOL POTTER. [Conciliating] To my thinkin' there shid be another way
o' duin' it, to get round it like with a circumbendibus. 'T'all
comes from takin' different vuse, in a manner o' spakin'.
FREMAN. Vu goo an' zet in that chair.
SOL POTTER. [With a glance at BURLACOMBE modestly] I shid'n never
like fur to du that, with Mr. Burlacombe zettin' there.
BURLACOMBE. [Rising] 'Tes all darned fulishness.
[Amidst an uneasy shufflement of feet he moves to the door, and
goes out into the darkness.]
CLYST. [Seeing his candidate thus depart] Rackon curate's pretty
well thru by now, I'm goin' to zee. [As he passes JARLAND] 'Ow's to
base, old man?
[He goes out. One of the dumb-as-fishes moves from the door and
fills the apace left on the bench by BURLACOMBE'S departure.]
JARLAND. Darn all this puzzivantin'! [To SOL POTTER] Got an' zet
in that chair.
SOL POTTER. [Rising and going to the chair; there he stands,
changing from one to the other of his short broad feet and sweating
from modesty and worth] 'Tes my duty now, gentlemen, to call a
meetin' of the parishioners of this parish. I beg therefore to
declare that this is a meetin' in accordance with my duty as chairman
of this meetin' which elected me chairman to call this meetin'. And
I purceed to vacate the chair so that this meetin' may now purceed to
elect a chairman.
[He gets up from the chair, and wiping the sweat from his brow,
goes back to his seat.]
FREMAN. Mr. Chairman, I rise on a point of order.
GODLEIGH. There ain't no chairman.
FREMAN. I don't give a darn for that. I rise on a point of order.
GODLEIGH. 'Tes a chairman that decides points of order. 'Tes
certain yu can't rise on no points whatever till there's a chairman.
TRUSTAFORD. 'Tes no yuse yure risin', not the least bit in the
world, till there's some one to set yu down again. Haw, haw!
[Voice from the dumb-as-Etches: "Mr. Trustaford 'e's right."]
FREMAN. What I zay is the chairman ought never to 'ave vacated the
chair till I'd risen on my point of order. I purpose that he goo and
zet down again.
GODLEIGH. Yu can't purpose that to this meetin'; yu can only purpose
that to the old meetin' that's not zettin' any longer.
FREMAN. [Excitedly] I didn' care what old meetin' 'tis that's
zettin'. I purpose that Sol Potter goo an' zet in that chair again,
while I rise on my point of order.
TRUSTAFORD. [Scratching his head] 'Tesn't regular but I guess yu've
got to goo, Sol, or us shan't 'ave no peace.
[SOL POTTER, still wiping his brow, goes back to the chair.]
MORSE. [Stolidly-to FREMAN] Zet down, Will Freman. [He pulls at
him with a blacksmith's arm.]
FREMAN. [Remaining erect with an effort] I'm not a-goin' to zet
down till I've arisen.
JARLAND. Now then, there 'e is in the chair. What's yore point of
order?
FREMAN. [Darting his eyes here and there, and flinging his hand up
to his gipsy-like head] 'Twas--'twas--Darned ef y' 'aven't putt it
clean out o' my 'ead.
JARLAND. We can't wait for yore points of order. Come out o' that
chair. Sol Potter.
[SOL POTTER rises and is about to vacate the chair.]
FREMAN. I know! There ought to 'a been minutes taken. Yu can't
'ave no meetin' without minutes. When us comes to electin' a
chairman o' the next meetin', 'e won't 'ave no minutes to read.
SOL POTTER. 'Twas only to putt down that I was elected chairman to
elect a meetin' to elect a chairman to preside over a meetin' to pass
a resolution dalin' wi' the curate. That's aisy set down, that is.
FREMAN. [Mollified] We'll 'ave that zet down, then, while we're
electin' the chairman o' the next meetin'.
[A silence. ]
TRUSTAFORD. Well then, seein' this is the praaper old meetin' for
carryin' the resolution about the curate, I purpose Mr. Sol Potter
take the chair.
FREMAN. I purpose Mr. Trustaford. I 'aven't a-got nothin' against
Sol Potter, but seein' that he elected the meetin' that's to elect
'im, it might be said that 'e was electin' of himzelf in a manner of
spakin'. Us don't want that said.
MORSE. [Amid meditative grunts from the dumb-as-fishes] There's
some-at in that. One o' they tu purposals must be putt to the
meetin'.
FREMAN. Second must be putt virst, fur zure.
TRUSTAFORD. I dunno as I wants to zet in that chair. To hiss the
curate, 'tis a ticklish sort of a job after that. Vurst comes afore
second, Will Freeman.
FREMAN. Second is amendment to virst. 'Tes the amendments is putt
virst.
TRUSTAFORD. 'Ow's that, Mr. Godleigh? I'm not particular eggzac'ly
to a dilly zort of a point like that.
SOL POTTER. [Scratching his, head] 'Tes a very nice point, for
zure.
GODLEIGH. 'Tes undoubtedly for the chairman to decide.
[Voice from the dumb-as fishes: "But there ain't no chairman
yet."]
JARLAND. Sol Potter's chairman.
FREMAN. No, 'e ain't.
MORSE. Yes, 'e is--'e's chairman till this second old meetin' gets
on the go.
FREMAN. I deny that. What du yu say, Mr. Trustaford?
TRUSTAFORD. I can't 'ardly tell. It du zeem a darned long-sufferin'
sort of a business altogether.
[A silence.]
MORSE. [Slowly] Tell 'ee what 'tis, us shan't du no gude like this.
GODLEIGH. 'Tes for Mr. Freman or Mr. Trustaford, one or t'other to
withdraw their motions.
TRUSTAFORD. [After a pause, with cautious generosity] I've no
objections to withdrawin' mine, if Will Freman'll withdraw his'n.
FREMAN. I won't never be be'indhand. If Mr. Trustaford withdraws, I
withdraws mine.
MORSE. [With relief] That's zensible. Putt the motion to the
meetin'.
SOL POTTER. There ain't no motion left to putt.
[Silence of consternation.]
[In the confusion Jim BERE is seen to stand up.]
GODLEIGH. Jim Bere to spike. Silence for Jim!
VOICES. Aye! Silence for Jim!
SOL POTTER. Well, Jim?
JIM. [Smiling and slow] Nothin' duin'.
TRUSTAFORD. Bravo, Jim! Yu'm right. Best zense yet!
[Applause from the dumb-as-fishes.]
[With his smile brightening, JIM resumes his seat.]
SOL POTTER. [Wiping his brow] Du seem to me, gentlemen, seem' as
we'm got into a bit of a tangle in a manner of spakin', 'twid be the
most zimplest and vairest way to begin all over vrom the beginnin',
so's t'ave it all vair an' square for every one.
[In the uproar Of "Aye" and "No," it is noticed that TIBBY
JARLAND is standing in front of her father with her finger, for
want of something better, in her mouth.]
TIBBY. [In her stolid voice] Please, sister Mercy says, curate 'ave
got to "Lastly." [JARLAND picks her up, and there is silence.] An'
please to come quick.
JARLAND. Come on, mates; quietly now!
[He goes out, and all begin to follow him.]
MORSE. [Slowest, save for SOL POTTER] 'Tes rare lucky us was all
agreed to hiss the curate afore us began the botherin' old meetin',
or us widn' 'ardly 'ave 'ad time to settle what to du.
SOL POTTER. [Scratching his head] Aye, 'tes rare lucky; but I dunno
if 'tes altogether reg'lar.
CURTAIN.
SCENE III
The village green before the churchyard and the yew-trees at the
gate. Into the pitch dark under the yews, light comes out
through the half-open church door. Figures are lurking, or
moving stealthily--people waiting and listening to the sound of
a voice speaking in the church words that are inaudible.
Excited whispering and faint giggles come from the deepest
yew-tree shade, made ghostly by the white faces and the frocks of
young girls continually flitting up and back in the blackness. A
girl's figure comes flying out from the porch, down the path of
light, and joins the stealthy group.
WHISPERING VOICE of MERCY. Where's 'e got to now, Gladys?
WHISPERING VOICE OF GLADYS. 'E've just finished.
VOICE OF CONNIE. Whu pushed t'door open?
VOICE OF GLADYS. Tim Clyst I giv' it a little push, meself.
VOICE OF CONNIE. Oh!
VOICE of GLADYS. Tim Clyst's gone in!
ANOTHER VOICE. O-o-o-h!
VOICE of MERCY. Whu else is there, tu?
VOICE OF GLADYS. Ivy's there, an' Old Mrs. Potter, an' tu o' the
maids from th'Hall; that's all as ever.
VOICE of CONNIE. Not the old grey mare?
VOICE of GLADYS. No. She ain't ther'. 'Twill just be th'ymn now,
an' the Blessin'. Tibby gone for 'em?
VOICE OF MERCY. Yes.
VOICE of CONNIE. Mr. Burlacombe's gone in home, I saw 'im pass by
just now--'e don' like it. Father don't like it neither.
VOICE of MERCY. Mr. Strangway shoudn' 'ave taken my skylark, an'
thrown father out o' winder. 'Tis goin' to be awful fun! Oh!
[She jumps up and dawn in the darkness. And a voice from far in
the shadow says: "Hsssh! Quiet, yu maids!" The voice has
ceased speaking in the church. There is a moment's dead
silence. The voice speaks again; then from the wheezy little
organ come the first faint chords of a hymn.]
GLADYS. "Nearer, my God, to Thee!"
VOICE of MERCY. 'Twill be funny, with no one 'ardly singin'.
[The sound of the old hymn sung by just six voices comes out to
them rather sweet and clear.]
GLADYS. [Softly] 'Tis pretty, tu. Why! They're only singin' one
verse!
[A moment's silence, and the voice speaks, uplifted, pronouncing
the Blessing: "The peace of God----" As the last words die away,
dark figures from the inn approach over the grass, till quite a
crowd seems standing there without a word spoken. Then from out
of the church porch come the congregation. TIM CLYST first,
hastily lost among the waiting figures in the dark; old Mrs.
Potter, a half blind old lady groping her way and perceiving
nothing out of the ordinary; the two maids from the Hall,
self-conscious and scared, scuttling along. Last, IVY BURLACOMBE
quickly, and starting back at the dim, half-hidden crowd.]
VOICE of GLADYS. [Whispering] Ivy! Here, quick!
[Ivy sways, darts off towards the voice, and is lost in the
shadow.]
VOICE OF FREMAN. [Low] Wait, boys, till I give signal.
[Two or three squirks and giggles; Tim CLYST'S voice: "Ya-as!
Don't 'ee tread on my toe!" A soft, frightened "O-o-h!" from a
girl. Some quick, excited whisperings: "Luke!" "Zee there!"
"He's comin'!" And then a perfectly dead silence. The figure
of STRANGWAY is seen in his dark clothes, passing from the
vestry to the church porch. He stands plainly visible in the
lighted porch, locking the door, then steps forward. Just as he
reaches the edge of the porch, a low hiss breaks the silence.
It swells very gradually into a long, hissing groan. STRANGWAY
stands motionless, his hand over his eyes, staring into the
darkness. A girl's figure can be seen to break out of the
darkness and rush away. When at last the groaning has died into
sheer expectancy, STRANGWAY drops his hand.]
STRANGWAY. [In a loco voice] Yes! I'm glad. Is Jarland there?
FREMAN. He's 'ere-no thanks to yu! Hsss!
[The hiss breaks out again, then dies away.]
JARLAND'S VOICE. [Threatening] Try if yu can du it again.
STRANGWAY. No, Jarland, no! I ask you to forgive me. Humbly!
[A hesitating silence, broken by muttering.]
CLYST'S VOICE. Bravo!
A VOICE. That's vair.
A VOICE. 'E's afraid o' the sack--that's what 'tis.
A VOICE. [Groaning] 'E's a praaper coward.
A VOICE. Whu funked the doctor?
CLYST'S VOICE. Shame on 'ee, therr!
STRANGWAY. You're right--all of you! I'm not fit! An uneasy and
excited mustering and whispering dies away into renewed silence.
STRANGWAY. What I did to Tam Jarland is not the real cause of what
you're doing, is it? I understand. But don't be troubled. It's all
over. I'm going--you'll get some one better. Forgive me, Jarland.
I can't see your face--it's very dark.
FREMAN'S Voice. [Mocking] Wait for the full mune.
GODLEIGH. [Very low] "My 'eart 'E lighted not!"
STRANGWAY. [starting at the sound of his own words thus mysteriously
given him out of the darkness] Whoever found that, please tear it
up! [After a moment's silence] Many of you have been very kind to
me. You won't see me again--Good-bye, all!
[He stands for a second motionless, then moves resolutely down
into the darkness so peopled with shadows.]
UNCERTAIN VOICES AS HE PASSES. Good-bye, zurr!
Good luck, zurr! [He has gone.]
CLYST'S VOICE. Three cheers for Mr. Strangway!
[And a queer, strangled cheer, with groans still threading it,
arises.]
CURTAIN.
ACT III
SCENE I
In the BURLACOMBES' hall-sitting-room the curtains are drawn, a
lamp burns, and the door stands open. BURLACOMBE and his wife
are hovering there, listening to the sound of mingled cheers and
groaning.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Aw! my gudeness--what a thing t'appen! I'd saner
'a lost all me ducks. [She makes towards the inner door] I can't
never face 'im.
BURLACOMBE. 'E can't expect nothin' else, if 'e act like that.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. 'Tes only duin' as 'e'd be done by.
BURLACOMBE. Aw! Yu can't go on forgivin' 'ere, an' forgivin' there.
'Tesn't nat'ral.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. 'Tes the mischief 'e'm a parson. 'Tes 'im bein' a
lamb o' God--or 'twidden be so quare for 'im to be forgivin'.
BURLACOMBE. Yu goo an' make un a gude 'ot drink.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Poor soul! What'll 'e du now, I wonder? [Under
her breath] 'E's cumin'!
[She goes hurriedly. BURLACOMBE, with a startled look back,
wavers and makes to follow her, but stops undecided in the inner
doorway. STRANGWAY comes in from the darkness. He turns to the
window and drops overcoat and hat and the church key on the
windowseat, looking about him as men do when too hard driven,
and never fixing his eyes long enough on anything to see it.
BURLACOMBE, closing the door into the house, advances a step.
At the sound STRANGWAY faces round.]
BURLACOMBE. I wanted for yu to know, zurr, that me an' mine 'adn't
nothin' to du wi' that darned fulishness, just now.
STRANGWAY. [With a ghost of a smile] Thank you, Burlacombe. It
doesn't matter. It doesn't matter a bit.
BURLACOMBE. I 'ope yu won't take no notice of it. Like a lot o'
silly bees they get. [After an uneasy pause] Yu'll excuse me
spakin' of this mornin', an' what 'appened. 'Tes a brave pity it
cam' on yu so sudden-like before yu 'ad time to think. 'Tes a sort
o' thing a man shude zet an' chew upon. Certainly 'tes not a bit o'
yuse goin' against human nature. Ef yu don't stand up for yureself
there's no one else not goin' to. 'Tes yure not 'avin' done that 'as
made 'em so rampageous. [Stealing another look at STRANGWAY] Yu'll
excuse me, zurr, spakin' of it, but 'tes amazin' sad to zee a man let
go his own, without a word o' darin'. 'Tea as ef 'e 'ad no passions
like.
STRANGWAY. Look at me, Burlacombe.
[BURLACOMBE looks up, trying hard to keep his eyes on
STRANGWAY'S, that seem to burn in his thin face.]
STRANGWAY. Do I look like that? Please, please! [He touches his
breast] I've too much here. Please!
BURLACOMBE. [With a sort of startled respect] Well, zurr, 'tes not
for me to zay nothin', certainly.
[He turns and after a slow look back at STRANGWAY goes out.]
STRANGWAY. [To himself] Passions! No passions! Ha!
[The outer door is opened and IVY BURLACOMBE appears, and,
seeing him, stops. Then, coming softly towards him, she speaks
timidly.]
IVY. Oh! Mr. Strangway, Mrs. Bradmere's cumin' from the Rectory. I
ran an' told 'em. Oh! 'twas awful.
[STRANGWAY starts, stares at her, and turning on his heel, goes
into the house. Ivy's face is all puckered, as if she were on
the point of tears. There is a gentle scratching at the door,
which has not been quite closed.]
VOICE OF GLADYS. [Whispering] Ivy! Come on Ivy. I won't.
VOICE OF MERCY. Yu must. Us can't du without Yu.
Ivy. [Going to the door] I don't want to.
VOICE of GLADYS. "Naughty maid, she won't come out," Ah! du 'ee!
VOICE OF CREMER. Tim Clyst an' Bobbie's cumin'; us'll only be six
anyway. Us can't dance "figure of eight" without yu.
Ivy. [Stamping her foot] I don't want to dance at all! I don't.
MERCY. Aw! She's temper. Yu can bang on tambourine, then!
GLADYS. [Running in] Quick, Ivy! Here's the old grey mare cumin'
down the green. Quick.
[With whispering and scuffling; gurgling and squeaking, the
reluctant Ivy's hand is caught and she is jerked away. In their
haste they have left the door open behind them.]
VOICE of MRS. BRADMERE. [Outside] Who's that?
[She knocks loudly, and rings a bell; then, without waiting,
comes in through the open door.]
[Noting the overcoat and hat on the window-sill she moves across
to ring the bell. But as she does so, MRS. BURLACOMBE, followed
by BURLACOMBE, comes in from the house.]
MRS. BRADMERE This disgraceful business! Where's Mr. Strangway? I
see he's in.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. Yes, m'm, he'm in--but--but Burlacombe du zay he'm
terrible upset.
MRS. BRADMERE. I should think so. I must see him--at once.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. I doubt bed's the best place for 'un, an' gude 'ot
drink. Burlacombe zays he'm like a man standin' on the edge of a
cliff; and the lasts tipsy o' wind might throw un over.
MRS. BRADMERE. [To BURLACOMBE] You've seen him, then?
BURLACOMBE. Yeas; an' I don't like the luke of un--not a little bit,
I don't.
MRS. BURLACOMBE. [Almost to herself] Poor soul; 'e've a-'ad to
much to try un this yer long time past. I've a-seen 'tis sperrit
cumin' thru 'is body, as yu might zay. He's torn to bits, that's
what 'tis.
BURLACOMBE. 'Twas a praaper cowardly thing to hiss a man when he's
down. But 'twas natural tu, in a manner of spakin'. But 'tesn't
that troublin' 'im. 'Tes in here [touching his forehead], along of
his wife, to my thinkin'. They zay 'e've a-known about 'er a-fore
she went away. Think of what 'e've 'ad to kape in all this time.
'Tes enough to drive a man silly after that. I've a-locked my gun
up. I see a man like--like that once before--an' sure enough 'e was
dead in the mornin'!
MRS. BRADMERE. Nonsense, Burlacombe! [To MRS. BURLACOMBE] Go and
tell him I want to see him--must see him. [MRS. BURLACOMBE goes
into the house] And look here, Burlacombe; if we catch any one, man
or woman, talking of this outside the village, it'll be the end of
their tenancy, whoever they may be. Let them all know that. I'm
glad he threw that drunken fellow out of the window, though it was a
little----
BURLACOMBE. Aye! The nuspapers would be praaper glad of that, for a
tiddy bit o' nuse.
MRS. BRADMERE. My goodness! Yes! The men are all up at the inn.
Go and tell them what I said--it's not to get about. Go at once,
Burlacombe.
BURLACOMBE. Must be a turrable job for 'im, every one's knowin'
about 'is wife like this. He'm a proud man tu, I think. 'Tes a
funny business altogether!
MRS. BRADMERE. Horrible! Poor fellow! Now, come! Do your best,
Burlacombe!
[BURLACOMBE touches his forelock and goes. MRS. BRADMERE stands
quite still, thinking. Then going to the photograph, she stares
up at it.]
MRS. BRADMERE. You baggage!
[STRANGWAY has come in noiselessly, and is standing just behind
her. She turns, and sees him. There is something so still, so
startlingly still in his figure and white face, that she cannot
for the moment fond her voice.]
MRS. BRADMERE. [At last] This is most distressing. I'm deeply
sorry. [Then, as he does not answer, she goes a step closer] I'm an
old woman; and old women must take liberties, you know, or they
couldn't get on at all. Come now! Let's try and talk it over calmly
and see if we can't put things right.
STRANGWAY. You were very good to come; but I would rather not.
MRS. BRADMERE. I know you're in as grievous trouble as a man can be.
STRANGWAY. Yes.
MRS. BRADMERE. [With a little sound of sympathy] What are you--
thirty-five? I'm sixty-eight if I'm a day--old enough to be your
mother. I can feel what you must have been through all these months,
I can indeed. But you know you've gone the wrong way to work. We
aren't angels down here below! And a son of the Church can't act as
if for himself alone. The eyes of every one are on him.
STRANGWAY. [Taking the church key from the window.] Take this,
please.
MRS. BRADMERE. No, no, no! Jarland deserved all he got. You had
great provocation.
STRANGWAY. It's not Jarland. [Holding out the key] Please take it
to the Rector. I beg his forgiveness. [Touching his breast]
There's too much I can't speak of--can't make plain. Take it to him,
please.
MRS. BRADMERE. Mr. Strangway--I don't accept this. I am sure my
husband--the Church--will never accept----
STRANGWAY. Take it!
MRS. BRADMERE. [Almost unconsciously taking it] Mind! We don't
accept it. You must come and talk to the Rector to-morrow. You're
overwrought. You'll see it all in another light, then.
STRANGWAY. [With a strange smile] Perhaps. [Lifting the blind]
Beautiful night! Couldn't be more beautiful!
MRS. BRADMERE. [Startled-softly] Don't turn sway from these who
want to help you! I'm a grumpy old woman, but I can feel for you.
Don't try and keep it all back, like this! A woman would cry, and it
would all seem clearer at once. Now won't you let me----?
STRANGWAY. No one can help, thank you.
MRS. BRADMERE. Come! Things haven't gone beyond mending, really, if
you'll face them. [Pointing to the photograph] You know what I
mean. We dare not foster immorality.
STRANGWAY. [Quivering as at a jabbed nerve] Don't speak of that!
MRS. BRADMERE. But think what you've done, Mr. Strangway! If you
can't take your wife back, surely you must divorce her. You can
never help her to go on like this in secret sin.
STRANGWAY. Torture her--one way or the other?
MRS. BRADMERE. No, no; I want you to do as the Church--as all
Christian society would wish. Come! You can't let this go on. My
dear man, do your duty at all costs!
STRANGWAY. Break her heart?
MRS. BRADMERE. Then you love that woman--more than God!
STRANGWAY. [His face quivering] Love!
MRS. BRADMERE. They told me----Yes, and I can see you're is a bad
way. Come, pull yourself together! You can't defend what you're
doing.
STRANGWAY. I do not try.
MRS. BRADMERE. I must get you to see! My father was a clergyman;
I'm married to one; I've two sons in the Church. I know what I'm
talking about. It's a priest's business to guide the people's lives.
STRANGWAY. [Very low] But not mine! No more!
MRS. BRADMERE. [Looking at him shrewdly] There's something very
queer about you to-night. You ought to see doctor.
STRANGWAY. [A smile awning and going on his lips] If I am not better
soon----
MRS. BRADMERE. I know it must be terrible to feel that everybody----
[A convulsive shiver passes over STRANGWAY, and he shrinks
against the door]
But come! Live it down!
[With anger growing at his silence]
Live it down, man! You can't desert your post--and let these
villagers do what they like with us? Do you realize that you're
letting a woman, who has treated you abominably;--yes, abominably
--go scot-free, to live comfortably with another man? What an
example!
STRANGWAY. Will you, please, not speak of that!
MRS. BRADMERE. I must! This great Church of ours is based on the
rightful condemnation of wrongdoing. There are times when
forgiveness is a sin, Michael Strangway. You must keep the whip
hand. You must fight!
STRANGWAY. Fight! [Touching his heart] My fight is here. Have you
ever been in hell? For months and months--burned and longed; hoped
against hope; killed a man in thought day by day? Never rested, for
love and hate? I--condemn! I--judge! No! It's rest I have to
find--somewhere--somehow-rest! And how--how can I find rest?
MRS. BRADMERE. [Who has listened to his outburst in a soft of coma]
You are a strange man! One of these days you'll go off your head if
you don't take care.
STRANGWAY. [Smiling] One of these days the flowers will grow out of
me; and I shall sleep.
[MRS. BRADMERE stares at his smiling face a long moment in
silence, then with a little sound, half sniff, half snort, she
goes to the door. There she halts.]
MRS. BRADMERE. And you mean to let all this go on----Your wife----
STRANGWAY. Go! Please go!
MRS. BRADMERE. Men like you have been buried at cross-roads before
now! Take care! God punishes!
STRANGWAY. Is there a God?
MRS. BRADMERE. Ah! [With finality] You must see a doctor.
[Seeing that the look on his face does not change, she opens the
door, and hurries away into the moonlight.]
[STRANGWAY crosses the room to where his wife's picture hangs,
and stands before it, his hands grasping the frame. Then he
takes it from the wall, and lays it face upwards on the window
seat.]
STRANGWAY. [To himself] Gone! What is there, now?
[The sound of an owl's hooting is floating in, and of voices
from the green outside the inn.]
STRANGWAY. [To himself] Gone! Taken faith--hope--life!
[JIM BERE comes wandering into the open doorway.]
JIM BERE. Gude avenin', zurr.
[At his slow gait, with his feeble smile, he comes in, and
standing by the window-seat beside the long dark coat that still
lies there, he looks down at STRANGWAY with his lost eyes.]
JIM. Yu threw un out of winder. I cud 'ave, once, I cud.
[STRANGWAY neither moves nor speaks; and JIM BERE goes on with
his unimaginably slow speech]
They'm laughin' at yu, zurr. An' so I come to tell 'ee how to du.
'Twas full mune--when I caught 'em, him an' my girl. I caught 'em.
[With a strange and awful flash of fire] I did; an' I tuk un [He
taken up STRANGWAY'S coat and grips it with his trembling hands, as a
man grips another's neck] like that--I tuk un. As the coat falls,
like a body out of which the breath has been squeezed, STRANGWAY,
rising, catches it.
STRANGWAY. [Gripping the coat] And he fell!
[He lets the coat fall on the floor, and puts his foot on it.
Then, staggering back, he leans against the window.]
JIM. Yu see, I loved 'er--I did. [The lost look comes back to his
eyes] Then somethin'--I dunno--and--and----[He lifts his hand and
passes it up and down his side] Twas like this for ever.
[They gaze at each other in silence.]
JIM. [At last] I come to tell yu. They'm all laughin' at yu. But
yu'm strong--yu go over to Durford to that doctor man, an' take un
like I did. [He tries again to make the sign of squeezing a man's
neck] They can't laugh at yu no more, then. Tha's what I come to
tell yu. Tha's the way for a Christian man to du. Gude naight,
zurr. I come to tell yee.
[STRANGWAY motions to him in silence. And, very slowly, JIM
BERE passes out.]
[The voices of men coming down the green are heard.]
VOICES. Gude night, Tam. Glide naight, old Jim!
VOICES. Gude might, Mr. Trustaford. 'Tes a wonderful fine mune.
VOICE OF TRUSTAFORD. Ah! 'Tes a brave mune for th' poor old curate!
VOICE. "My 'eart 'E lighted not!"
[TRUSTAFORD'S laugh, and the rattling, fainter and fainter, of
wheels. A spasm seizes on STRANGWAY'S face, as he stands there
by the open door, his hand grips his throat; he looks from side
to side, as if seeking a way of escape.]
CURTAIN.
SCENE II
The BURLACOMBES' high and nearly empty barn. A lantern is hung
by a rope that lifts the bales of straw, to a long ladder
leaning against a rafter. This gives all the light there is,
save for a slender track of moonlight, slanting in from the end,
where the two great doors are not quite closed. On a rude bench
in front of a few remaining, stacked, square-cut bundles of last
year's hay, sits TIBBY JARLAND, a bit of apple in her mouth,
sleepily beating on a tambourine. With stockinged feet GLADYS,
IVY, CONNIE, and MERCY, TIM CLYST, and BOBBIE JARLAND, a boy of
fifteen, are dancing a truncated "Figure of Eight"; and their
shadow are dancing alongside on the walls. Shoes and some
apples have been thrown down close to the side door through
which they have come in. Now and then IVY, the smallest and
best of the dancers, ejaculates words of direction, and one of
the youths grunts or breathes loudly out of the confusion of his
mind. Save for this and the dumb beat and jingle of the sleepy
tambourine, there is no sound. The dance comes to its end, but
the drowsy TIBBY goes on beating.
MERCY. That'll du, Tibby; we're finished. Ate yore apple. [The
stolid TIBBY eats her apple.]
CLYST. [In his teasing, excitable voice] Yu maids don't dance
'elf's well as us du. Bobbie 'e's a great dancer. 'E dance vine.
I'm a gude dancer, meself.
GLADYS. A'n't yu conceited just?
CLYST. Aw! Ah! Yu'll give me kiss for that. [He chases, but cannot
catch that slippery white figure] Can't she glimmer!
MERCY. Gladys! Up ladder!
CLYST. Yu go up ladder; I'll catch 'ee then. Naw, yu maids, don't
yu give her succour. That's not vair [Catching hold of MERCY, who
gives a little squeal.]
CONNIE. Mercy, don't! Mrs. Burlacombe'll hear. Ivy, go an' peek.
[Ivy goes to flee side door and peers through.]
CLYST. [Abandoning the chase and picking up an apple--they all have
the joyous irresponsibility that attends forbidden doings] Ya-as,
this is a gude apple. Luke at Tibby!
[TIBBY, overcome by drowsiness, has fallen back into the hay,
asleep. GLADYS, leaning against the hay breaks into humming:]
"There cam' three dukes a-ridin', a-ridin', a-ridin',
There cam' three dukes a ridin'
With a ransy-tansy tay!"
CLYST. Us 'as got on vine; us'll get prize for our dancin'.
CONNIE. There won't be no prize if Mr. Strangway goes away. 'Tes
funny 'twas Mrs. Strangway start us.
IVY. [From the door] 'Twas wicked to hiss him.
[A moment's hush.]
CLYST. Twasn't I.
BOBBIE. I never did.
GLADYS. Oh! Bobbie, yu did! Yu blew in my ear.
CLYST. 'Twas the praaper old wind in the trees. Did make a brave
noise, zurely.
MERCY. 'E shuld'n' 'a let my skylark go.
CLYST. [Out of sheer contradictoriness] Ya-as, 'e shude, then.
What du yu want with th' birds of the air? They'm no gude to yu.
IVY. [Mournfully] And now he's goin' away.
CLYST. Ya-as; 'tes a pity. He's the best man I ever seen since I
was comin' from my mother. He's a gude man. He'em got a zad face,
sure enough, though.
IVY. Gude folk always 'ave zad faces.
CLYST. I knu a gude man--'e sold pigs--very gude man: 'e 'ad a
budiful bright vase like the mane. [Touching his stomach] I was sad,
meself, once. 'Twas a funny scrabblin'--like feelin'.
GLADYS. If 'e go away, whu's goin' to finish us for confirmation?
CONNIE. The Rector and the old grey mare.
MERCY. I don' want no more finishin'; I'm confirmed enough.
CLYST. Ya-as; yu'm a buty.
GLADYS. Suppose we all went an' asked 'im not to go?
IVY. 'Twouldn't be no gude.
CONNIE. Where's 'e goin'?
MERCY. He'll go to London, of course.
IVY. He's so gentle; I think 'e'll go to an island, where there's
nothin' but birds and beasts and flowers.
CLYST. Aye! He'm awful fond o' the dumb things.
IVY. They're kind and peaceful; that's why.
CLYST. Aw! Yu see tu praaper old tom cats; they'm not to peaceful,
after that, nor kind naighther.
BOBBIE. [Surprisingly] If 'e's sad, per'aps 'e'll go to 'Eaven.
IVY. Oh! not yet, Bobbie. He's tu young.
CLYST. [Following his own thoughts] Ya-as. 'Tes a funny place, tu,
nowadays, judgin' from the papers.
GLADYS. Wonder if there's dancin' in 'Eaven?
IVY. There's beasts, and flowers, and waters, and 'e told us.
CLYST. Naw! There's no dumb things in 'Eaven. Jim Bere 'e says
there is! 'E thinks 'is old cat's there.
IVY. Yes. [Dreamily] There's stars, an' owls, an' a man playin' on
the flute. Where 'tes gude, there must be music.
CLYST. Old brass band, shuldn' wonder, like th' Salvation Army.
IVY. [Putting up her hands to an imaginary pipe] No; 'tis a boy
that goes so; an' all the dumb things an' all the people goo after
'im--like this.
[She marches slowly, playing her imaginary pipe, and one by one
they all fall in behind her, padding round the barn in their
stockinged feet. Passing the big doors, IVY throws them open.]
An' 'tes all like that in 'Eaven.
[She stands there gazing out, still playing on her imaginary
pipe. And they all stand a moment silent, staring into the
moonlight.]
CLYST. 'Tes a glory-be full mune to-night!
IVY. A goldie-cup--a big one. An' millions o' little goldie-cups on
the floor of 'Eaven.
MERCY. Oh! Bother 'Eaven! Let's dance "Clapperclaws"! Wake up,
Tibby!
GLADYS. Clapperelaws, clapperclaws! Come on, Bobbie--make circle!
CLYST. Clapperclaws! I dance that one fine.
IVY. [Taking the tambourine] See, Tibby; like this. She hums and
beats gently, then restores the tambourine to the sleepy TIBBY, who,
waking, has placed a piece of apple in her mouth.
CONNIE. 'Tes awful difficult, this one.
IVY. [Illustrating] No; yu just jump, an' clap yore 'ands. Lovely,
lovely!
CLYST. Like ringin' bells! Come ahn!
[TIBBY begins her drowsy beating, IVY hums the tune; they dance,
and their shadows dance again upon the walls. When she has
beaten but a few moments on the tambourine, TIBBY is overcome
once more by sleep and falls back again into her nest of hay,
with her little shoed feet just visible over the edge of the
bench. Ivy catches up the tambourine, and to her beating and
humming the dancers dance on.]
[Suddenly GLADYS stops like a wild animal surprised, and cranes
her neck towards the aide door.]
CONNIE. [Whispering] What is it?
GLADYS. [Whispering] I hear--some one comin' across the yard.
[She leads a noiseless scamper towards the shoes. BOBBIE
JARLAND shins up the ladder and seizes the lantern. Ivy drops
the tambourine. They all fly to the big doors, and vanish into
the moonlight, pulling the door nearly to again after them.]
[There is the sound of scrabbling at the hitch of the side door,
and STRANGWAY comes into the nearly dark barn. Out in the night
the owl is still hooting. He closes the door, and that sound is
lost. Like a man walking in his sleep, he goes up to the
ladder, takes the rope in his hand, and makes a noose. He can
be heard breathing, and in the darkness the motions of his hands
are dimly seen, freeing his throat and putting the noose round
his neck. He stands swaying to and fro at the foot of the
ladder; then, with a sigh, sets his foot on it to mount. One of
the big doors creaks and opens in the wind, letting in a broad
path of moonlight.]
[STRANGWAY stops; freeing his neck from the noose, he walks
quickly up the track of moonlight, whitened from head to foot,
to close the doors.]
[The sound of his boots on the bare floor has awakened TIBBY
JARLAND. Struggling out of her hay nest she stands staring at
his whitened figure, and bursts suddenly into a wail.]
TIBBY. O-oh! Mercy! Where are yu? I'm frightened! I'm
frightened! O-oooo!
STRANGWAY. [Turning--startled] Who's that? Who is it?
TIBBY. O-oh! A ghosty! Oo-ooo!
STRANGWAY. [Going to her quickly] It's me, Tibby--Tib only me!
TIBBY. I seed a ghosty.
STRANGWAY. [Taking her up] No, no, my bird, you didn't! It was
me.
TIBBY. [Burying her face against him] I'm frighted. It was a big
one. [She gives tongue again] O-o-oh!
STRANGWAY. There, there! It's nothing but me. Look!
TIBBY. No. [She peeps out all the same.]
STRANGWAY. See! It's the moonlight made me all white. See! You're
a brave girl now?
TIBBY. [Cautiously] I want my apple.
[She points towards her nest. STRANGWAY carries her there,
picks up an apple, and gives it her. TIBBY takes a bite.]
TIBBY. I want any tambourine.
STRANGWAY. [Giving her the tambourine, and carrying her back into
the' track of moonlight] Now we're both ghosties! Isn't it funny?
TABBY. [Doubtfully] Yes.
STRANGWAY. See! The moon's laughing at us! See? Laugh then!
[TABBY, tambourine in one hand and apple in the other, smiles
stolidly. He sets her down on the ladder, and stands, holding
her level With him.]
TABBY. [Solemnly] I'se still frightened.
STRANGWAY. No! Full moon, Tibby! Shall we wish for it?
TABBY. Full mune.
STRANGWAY. Moon! We're wishing for you. Moon, moon!
TIBBY. Mune, we're wishin' for yu!
STRANGWAY. What do, you wish it to be?
TIBBY. Bright new shillin'!
STRANGWAY. A face.
TIBBY. Shillin', a shillin'!
STRANGWAY. [Taking out a shilling and spinning it so that it falls
into her pinafore] See! Your wish comes true.
TIBBY. Oh! [Putting the shilling in her mouth] Mune's still there!
STRANGWAY. Wish for me, Tibby!
TIBBY. Mune. I'm wishin' for yu!
STRANGWAY. Not yet!
TIBBY. Shall I shake my tambouline?
STRANGWAY. Yes, shake your tambouline.
TIBBY. [Shaking her tambourine] Mune, I'm shaken' at yu.
[STRANGWAY lays his hand suddenly on the rope, and swings it up
on to the beam.]
TIBBY. What d'yu du that for?
STRANGWAY. To put it out of reach. It's better----
TIBBY. Why is it better? [She stares up at him.]
STRANGWAY. Come along, Tibby! [He carries her to the big doors, and
sets her down] See! All asleep! The birds, and the fields, and the
moon!
TIBBY. Mune, mune, we're wishing for yu!
STRANGWAY. Send her your love, and say good-night.
TIBBY. [Blowing a kiss] Good-night, mune!
[From the barn roof a little white dove's feather comes floating
down in the wind. TIBBY follows it with her hand, catches it,
and holds it up to him.]
TIBBY. [Chuckling] Luke. The mune's sent a bit o' love!
STRANGWAY. [Taking the feather] Thank you, Tibby! I want that bit
o' love. [Very faint, comes the sound of music] Listen!
TIBBY. It's Miss Willis, playin' on the pianny!
STRANGWAY. No; it's Love; walking and talking in the world.
TIBBY. [Dubiously] Is it?
STRANGWAY. [Pointing] See! Everything coming out to listen! See
them, Tibby! All the little things with pointed ears, children, and
birds, and flowers, and bunnies; and the bright rocks, and--men!
Hear their hearts beating! And the wind listening!
TIBBY. I can't hear--nor I can't see!
STRANGWAY. Beyond----[To himself] They are--they must be; I swear
they are! [Then, catching sight of TIBBY'S amazed eyes] And now say
good-bye to me.
TIBBY. Where yu goin'?
STRANGWAY. I don't know, Tibby.
VOICE OF MERCY. [Distant and cautious] Tibby! Tibby! Where are
yu?
STRANGWAY. Mercy calling; run to her!
[TIBBY starts off, turns back and lifts her face. He bends to
kiss her, and flinging her arms round his neck, she gives him a
good hug. Then, knuckling the sleep out of her eyes, she runs.]
[STRANGWAY stands, uncertain. There is a sound of heavy
footsteps; a man clears his throat, close by.]
STRANGWAY. Who's that?
CREMER. Jack Cremer. [The big man's figure appears out of the
shadow of the barn] That yu, zurr?
STRANGWAY. Yes, Jack. How goes it?
CREMER. 'Tes empty, zurr. But I'll get on some'ow.
STRANGWAY. You put me to shame.
CREMER. No, zurr. I'd be killin' meself, if I didn' feel I must
stick it, like yu zaid.
[They stand gazing at each other in the moonlight.]
STRANGWAY. [Very low] I honour you.
CREMER. What's that? [Then, as STRANGWAY does not answer] I'll
just be walkin'--I won' be gain' 'ome to-night. 'Tes the full mune--
lucky.
STRANGWAY. [Suddenly] Wait for me at the crossroads, Jack. I'll
come with you. Will you have me, brother?
CREMER. Sure!
STRANGWAY. Wait, then.
CREMER. Aye, zurr.
[With his heavy tread CREMER passes on. And STRANGWAY leans
against the lintel of the door, looking at the moon, that, quite
full and golden, hangs not far above the straight horizon, where
the trees stand small, in a row.]
STRANGWAY. [Lifting his hand in the gesture of prayer] God, of the
moon and the sun; of joy and beauty, of loneliness and sorrow--give
me strength to go on, till I love every living thing!
[He moves away, following JACK CREMER. The full moon shines;
the owl hoots; and some one is shaking TIBBY'S tambourine.]
THE FOUNDATIONS
(AN EXTRAVAGANT PLAY)
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
LORD WILLIAM DROMONDY, M.P.
LADY WILLIAM DROMONDY
LITTLE ANNE
MISS STOKES
MR. POULDER
JAMES
HENRY
THOMAS
CHARLES
THE PRESS
LEMMY
OLD MRS. LEMMY
LITTLE AIDA
THE DUKE OF EXETER
Some ANTI-SWEATERS; Some SWEATED WORKERS; and a CROWD
SCENES
SCENE I. The cellar at LORD WILLIAM DROMONDY'S in Park Lane.
SCENE II. The room of old MRS. LEMMY in Bethnal Green.
SCENE III. Ante-room of the hall at LORD WILLIAM DROMONDY'S
The Action passes continuously between 8 and 10.30 of a
summer evening, some years after the Great War.
ACT I
LORD WILLIAM DROMONDY'S mansion in Park Lane. Eight o'clock of the
evening. LITTLE ANNE DROMONDY and the large footman, JAMES, gaunt
and grin, discovered in the wine cellar, by light of gas. JAMES, in
plush breeches, is selecting wine.
L. ANNE: James, are you really James?
JAMES. No, my proper name's John.
L. ANNE. Oh! [A pause] And is Charles's an improper name too?
JAMES. His proper name's Mark.
L. ANNE. Then is Thomas Matthew?
JAMES. Miss Anne, stand clear o' that bin. You'll put your foot
through one o' those 'ock bottles.
L. ANNE. No, but James--Henry might be Luke, really?
JAMES. Now shut it, Miss Anne!
L. ANNE. Who gave you those names? Not your godfathers and
godmothers?
JAMES. Poulder. Butlers think they're the Almighty. [Gloomily]
But his name's Bartholomew.
L. ANNE. Bartholomew Poulder? It's rather jolly.
JAMES. It's hidjeous.
L. ANNE. Which do you like to be called--John or James?
JAMES. I don't give a darn.
L. ANNE. What is a darn?
JAMES. 'Tain't in the dictionary.
L. ANNE. Do you like my name? Anne Dromondy? It's old, you know.
But it's funny, isn't it?
JAMES. [Indifferently] It'll pass.
L. ANNE. How many bottles have you got to pick out?
JAMES. Thirty-four.
L. ANNE. Are they all for the dinner, or for the people who come in
to the Anti-Sweating Meeting afterwards?
JAMES. All for the dinner. They give the Sweated--tea.
L. ANNE. All for the dinner? They'll drink too much, won't they?
JAMES. We've got to be on the safe side.
L. ANNE. Will it be safer if they drink too much?
[JAMES pauses in the act of dusting a bottle to look at her, as
if suspecting irony.]
[Sniffing] Isn't the smell delicious here-like the taste of cherries
when they've gone bad--[She sniffs again] and mushrooms; and boot
blacking.
JAMES. That's the escape of gas.
L. ANNE. Has the plumber's man been?
JAMES. Yes.
L. ANNE. Which one?
JAMES. Little blighter I've never seen before.
L. ANNE. What is a little blighter? Can I see?
JAMES. He's just gone.
L. ANNE. [Straying] Oh! . . . James, are these really the
foundations?
JAMES. You might 'arf say so. There's a lot under a woppin' big
house like this; you can't hardly get to the bottom of it.
L. ANNE. Everything's built on something, isn't it? And what's THAT
built on?
JAMES. Ask another.
L. ANNE. If you wanted to blow it up, though, you'd have to begin
from here, wouldn't you?
JAMES. Who'd want to blow it up?
L. ANNE. It would make a mess in Park Lane.
JAMES. I've seen a lot bigger messes than this'd make, out in the
war.
L. ANNE. Oh! but that's years ago! Was it like this in the
trenches, James?
JAMES. [Grimly] Ah! 'Cept that you couldn't lay your 'and on a
bottle o' port when you wanted one.
L. ANNE. Do you, when you want it, here?
JAMES. [On guard] I only suggest it's possible.
L. ANNE. Perhaps Poulder does.
JAMES. [Icily] I say nothin' about that.
L. ANNE. Oh! Do say something!
JAMES. I'm ashamed of you, Miss Anne, pumpin' me!
L. ANNE. [Reproachfully] I'm not pumpin'! I only want to make
Poulder jump when I ask him.
JAMES. [Grinning] Try it on your own responsibility, then; don't
bring me in!
L. ANNE. [Switching off] James, do you think there's going to be a
bloody revolution?
JAMES. [Shocked] I shouldn't use that word, at your age.
L. ANNE. Why not? Daddy used it this morning to Mother.
[Imitating] "The country's in an awful state, darling; there's going
to be a bloody revolution, and we shall all be blown sky-high." Do
you like Daddy?
JAMES. [Taken aback] Like Lord William? What do you think? We
chaps would ha' done anything for him out there in the war.
L. ANNE. He never says that he always says he'd have done anything
for you!
JAMES. Well--that's the same thing.
L. ANNE. It isn't--it's the opposite. What is class hatred, James?
JAMES. [Wisely] Ah! A lot o' people thought when the war was over
there'd be no more o' that. [He sniggers] Used to amuse me to read
in the papers about the wonderful unity that was comin'. I could ha'
told 'em different.
L. ANNE. Why should people hate? I like everybody.
JAMES. You know such a lot o' people, don't you?
L. ANNE. Well, Daddy likes everybody, and Mother likes everybody,
except the people who don't like Daddy. I bar Miss Stokes, of
course; but then, who wouldn't?
JAMES. [With a touch of philosophy] That's right--we all bars them
that tries to get something out of us.
L. ANNE. Who do you bar, James?
JAMES. Well--[Enjoying the luxury of thought]--Speaking generally, I
bar everybody that looks down their noses at me. Out there in the
trenches, there'd come a shell, and orf'd go some orficer's head, an'
I'd think: That might ha' been me--we're all equal in the sight o'
the stars. But when I got home again among the torfs, I says to
meself: Out there, ye know, you filled a hole as well as me; but here
you've put it on again, with mufti.
L. ANNE. James, are your breeches made of mufti?
JAMES. [Contemplating his legs with a certain contempt] Ah!
Footmen were to ha' been off; but Lord William was scared we wouldn't
get jobs in the rush. We're on his conscience, and it's on my
conscience that I've been on his long enough--so, now I've saved a
bit, I'm goin' to take meself orf it.
L. ANNE. Oh! Are you going? Where?
JAMES. [Assembling the last bottles] Out o' Blighty!
L. ANNE. Is a little blighter a little Englishman?
JAMES. [Embarrassed] Well-'e can be.
L. ANNE [Mining] James--we're quite safe down here, aren't we, in a
revolution? Only, we wouldn't have fun. Which would you rather--be
safe, or have fun?
JAMES. [Grimly] Well, I had my bit o' fun in the war.
L. ANNE. I like fun that happens when you're not looking.
JAMES. Do you? You'd ha' been just suited.
L. ANNE. James, is there a future life? Miss Stokes says so.
JAMES. It's a belief, in the middle classes.
L. ANNE. What are the middle classes?
JAMES. Anything from two 'undred a year to supertax.
L. ANNE. Mother says they're terrible. Is Miss Stokes middle class?
JAMES. Yes.
L. ANNE. Then I expect they are terrible. She's awfully virtuous,
though, isn't she?
JAMES. 'Tisn't so much the bein' virtuous, as the lookin' it, that's
awful.
L. ANNE. Are all the middle classes virtuous? Is Poulder?
JAMES. [Dubiously] Well. Ask him!
L. ANNE. Yes, I will. Look!
[From an empty bin on the ground level she picks up a lighted
taper,--burnt almost to the end.]
JAMES. [Contemplating it] Careless!
L. Ate. Oh! And look! [She paints to a rounded metal object lying
in the bin, close to where the taper was] It's a bomb!
She is about to pick it up when JAMES takes her by the waist and puts
her aside.
JAMES. [Sternly] You stand back, there! I don't like the look o'
that!
L. ANNE. [With intense interest] Is it really a bomb? What fun!
JAMES. Go and fetch Poulder while I keep an eye on it.
L. ANNE. [On tiptoe of excitement] If only I can make him jump!
Oh, James! we needn't put the light out, need we?
JAMES. No. Clear off and get him, and don't you come back.
L. ANNE. Oh! but I must! I found it!
JAMES. Cut along.
L. ANNE. Shall we bring a bucket?
JAMES. Yes. [ANNE flies off.]
[Gazing at the object] Near go! Thought I'd seen enough o'them
to last my time. That little gas blighter! He looked a rum 'un,
too--one o' these 'ere Bolshies.
[In the presence of this grim object the habits of the past are
too much for him. He sits on the ground, leaning against one of
the bottle baskets, keeping his eyes on the bomb, his large,
lean, gorgeous body spread, one elbow on his plush knee. Taking
out an empty pipe, he places it mechanically, bowl down, between
his dips. There enter, behind him, as from a communication
trench, POULDER, in swallow-tails, with LITTLE ANNE behind him.]
L. ANNE. [Peering round him--ecstatic] Hurrah! Not gone off yet!
It can't--can it--while James is sitting on it?
POULDER. [Very broad and stout, with square shoulders,--a large
ruddy face, and a small mouth] No noise, Miss.--James.
JAMES. Hallo!
POULDER. What's all this?
JAMES. Bomb!
POULDER. Miss Anne, off you go, and don't you----
L. ANNE. Come back again! I know! [She flies.]
JAMES. [Extending his hand with the pipe in it] See!
POULDER. [Severely] You've been at it again! Look here, you're not
in the trenches now. Get up! What are your breeches goin' to be
like? You might break a bottle any moment!
JAMES. [Rising with a jerk to a sort of "Attention!"] Look here,
you starched antiquity, you and I and that bomb are here in the sight
of the stars. If you don't look out I'll stamp on it and blow us all
to glory! Drop your civilian swank!
POULDER. [Seeing red] Ho! Because you had the privilege of
fightin' for your country you still think you can put it on, do you?
Take up your wine! 'Pon my word, you fellers have got no nerve left!
[JAMES makes a sudden swoop, lifts the bomb and poises it in
both hands. POULDER recoils against a bin and gazes, at the
object.]
JAMES. Put up your hands!
POULDER. I defy you to make me ridiculous.
JAMES. [Fiercely] Up with 'em!
[POULDER'S hands go up in an uncontrollable spasm, which he
subdues almost instantly, pulling them down again.]
JAMES. Very good. [He lowers the bomb.]
POULDER. [Surprised] I never lifted 'em.
JAMES. You'd have made a first-class Boche, Poulder. Take the bomb
yourself; you're in charge of this section.
POULDER. [Pouting] It's no part of my duty to carry menial objects;
if you're afraid of it I'll send 'Enry.
JAMES. Afraid! You 'Op o' me thumb!
[From the "communication trench" appears LITTLE ANNE, followed
by a thin, sharp, sallow-faced man of thirty-five or so, and
another FOOTMAN, carrying a wine-cooler.]
L. ANNE. I've brought the bucket, and the Press.
PRESS. [In front of POULDER'S round eyes and mouth] Ah, major domo,
I was just taking the names of the Anti-Sweating dinner. [He catches
sight of the bomb in JAMES'S hand] By George! What A.1. irony! [He
brings out a note-book and writes] "Highest class dining to relieve
distress of lowest class-bombed by same!" Tipping! [He rubs his
hands].
POULDER. [Drawing himself up] Sir? This is present! [He indicates
ANNE with the flat of his hand.]
L. ANNE. I found the bomb.
PRESS. [Absorbed] By Jove! This is a piece of luck! [He writes.]
POULDER. [Observing him] This won't do--it won't do at all!
PRESS. [Writing-absorbed] "Beginning of the British Revolution!"
POULDER. [To JAMES] Put it in the cooler. 'Enry, 'old up the
cooler. Gently! Miss Anne, get be'ind the Press.
JAMES. [Grimly--holding the bomb above the cooler] It won't be the
Press that'll stop Miss Anne's goin' to 'Eaven if one o' this sort
goes off. Look out! I'm goin' to drop it.
[ALL recoil. HENRY puts the cooler down and backs away.]
L. ANNE. [Dancing forward] Oh! Let me see! I missed all the war,
you know!
[JAMES lowers the bomb into the cooler.]
POULDER. [Regaining courage--to THE PRESS, who is scribbling in his
note-book] If you mention this before the police lay their hands on
it, it'll be contempt o' Court.
PRESS. [Struck] I say, major domo, don't call in the police!
That's the last resort. Let me do the Sherlocking for you. Who's
been down here?
L. ANNE. The plumber's man about the gas---a little blighter we'd
never seen before.
JAMES. Lives close by, in Royal Court Mews--No. 3. I had a word
with him before he came down. Lemmy his name is.
PRESS. "Lemmy!" [Noting the address] Right-o!
L. ANNE. Oh! Do let me come with you!
POULDER. [Barring the way] I've got to lay it all before Lord
William.
PRESS. Ah! What's he like?
POULDER. [With dignity] A gentleman, sir.
PRESS. Then he won't want the police in.
POULDER. Nor the Press, if I may go so far, as to say so.
PRESS. One to you! But I defy you to keep this from the Press,
major domo: This is the most significant thing that has happened in
our time. Guy Fawkes is nothing to it. The foundations of Society
reeling! By George, it's a second Bethlehem!
[He writes.]
POULDER. [To JAMES] Take up your wine and follow me. 'Enry, bring
the cooler. Miss Anne, precede us. [To THE PRESS] You defy me?
Very well; I'm goin' to lock you up here.
PRESS. [Uneasy] I say this is medieval.
[He attempts to pass.]
POULDER. [Barring the way] Not so! James, put him up in that empty
'ock bin. We can't have dinner disturbed in any way.
JAMES. [Putting his hands on THE PRESS'S shoulders] Look here--go
quiet! I've had a grudge against you yellow newspaper boys ever
since the war--frothin' up your daily hate, an' makin' the Huns
desperate. You nearly took my life five hundred times out there. If
you squeal, I'm gain' to take yours once--and that'll be enough.
PRESS. That's awfully unjust. Im not yellow!
JAMES. Well, you look it. Hup.
PRESS. Little Lady-Anne, haven't you any authority with these
fellows?
L. ANNE. [Resisting Poulard's pressure] I won't go! I simply must
see James put him up!
PRESS. Now, I warn you all plainly--there'll be a leader on this.
[He tries to bolt but is seized by JAMES.]
JAMES. [Ironically] Ho!
PRESS. My paper has the biggest influence
JAMES. That's the one! Git up in that 'ock bin, and mind your feet
among the claret.
PRESS. This is an outrage on the Press.
JAMES. Then it'll wipe out one by the Press on the Public--an' leave
just a million over! Hup!
POULDER. 'Enry, give 'im an 'and.
[THE PRESS mounts, assisted by JAMES and HENRY.]
L. ANNE. [Ecstatic] It's lovely!
POULDER. [Nervously] Mind the '87! Mind!
JAMES. Mind your feet in Mr. Poulder's favourite wine!
[A WOMAN'S voice is heard, as from the depths of a cave, calling
"Anne! Anne!"]
L. ANNE. [Aghast] Miss Stokes--I must hide!
[She gets behind POULDER. The three Servants achieve dignified
positions in front of the bins. The voice comes nearer. THE
PRESS sits dangling his feet, grinning. MISS STOKES appears.
She is woman of forty-five and terribly good manners. Her
greyish hair is rolled back off her forehead. She is in a high
evening dress, and in the dim light radiates a startled
composure.]
MISS STOKES. Poulder, where is Miss Anne?
[ANNE lays hold of the backs of his legs.]
POULDER. [Wincing] I am not in a position to inform you, Miss.
MISS S. They told me she was down here. And what is all this about
a bomb?
POULDER. [Lifting his hand in a calming manner] The crisis is past;
we have it in ice, Miss. 'Enry, show Miss Stokes! [HENRY indicates
the cooler.]
MISS S. Good gracious! Does Lord William know?
POULDER. Not at present, Miss.
MISS S. But he ought to, at once.
POULDER. We 'ave 'ad complications.
MISS S. [Catching sight of the legs of THE PRESS] Dear me! What
are those?
JAMES. [Gloomily] The complications.
[MISS STOKES pins up her glasses and stares at them.]
PRESS. [Cheerfully] Miss Stokes, would you kindly tell Lord William
I'm here from the Press, and would like to speak to him?
MISS S. But--er--why are you up there?
JAMES. 'E got up out o' remorse, Miss.
MISS S. What do you mean, James?
PRESS. [Warmly] Miss Stokes, I appeal to you. Is it fair to
attribute responsibility to an unsigned journalist--for what he has
to say?
JAMES. [Sepulchrally] Yes, when you've got 'im in a nice dark
place.
MISS. S. James, be more respectful! We owe the Press a very great
debt.
JAMES. I'm goin' to pay it, Miss.
MISS S. [At a loss] Poulder, this is really most----
POULDER. I'm bound to keep the Press out of temptation, miss, till
I've laid it all before Lord William. 'Enry, take up the cooler.
James, watch 'im till we get clear, then bring on the rest of the
wine and lock up. Now, Miss.
MISS S. But where is Anne?
PRESS. Miss Stokes, as a lady----!
MISS S. I shall go and fetch Lord William!
POULDER. We will all go, Miss.
L. ANNE. [Rushing out from behind his legs] No--me!
[She eludes MISS STOKES and vanishes, followed by that
distracted but still well-mannered lady.]
POULDER. [Looking at his watch] 'Enry, leave the cooler, and take
up the wine; tell Thomas to lay it out; get the champagne into ice,
and 'ave Charles 'andy in the 'all in case some literary bounder
comes punctual.
[HENRY takes up the wine and goes.]
PRESS. [Above his head] I say, let me down. This is a bit
undignified, you know. My paper's a great organ.
POULDER. [After a moment's hesitation] Well--take 'im down, James;
he'll do some mischief among the bottles.
JAMES. 'Op off your base, and trust to me.
[THE, PRESS slides off the bin's edge, is received by JAMES, and
not landed gently.]
POULDER. [Contemplating him] The incident's closed; no ill-feeling,
I hope?
PRESS. No-o.
POULDER. That's right. [Clearing his throat] While we're waitin'
for Lord William--if you're interested in wine--[Philosophically]
you can read the history of the times in this cellar. Take 'ock: [He
points to a bin] Not a bottle gone. German product, of course.
Now, that 'ock is 'sa 'avin' the time of its life--maturin' grandly;
got a wonderful chance. About the time we're bringin' ourselves to
drink it, we shall be havin' the next great war. With luck that 'ock
may lie there another quarter of a century, and a sweet pretty wine
it'll be. I only hope I may be here to drink it. Ah! [He shakes his
head]--but look at claret! Times are hard on claret. We're givin'
it an awful doin'. Now, there's a Ponty Canny [He points to a bin]-
if we weren't so 'opelessly allied with France, that wine would have
a reasonable future. As it is--none! We drink it up and up; not
more than sixty dozen left. And where's its equal to come from for a
dinner wine--ah! I ask you? On the other hand, port is steady; made
in a little country, all but the cobwebs and the old boot flavour;
guaranteed by the British Nary; we may 'ope for the best with port.
Do you drink it?
PRESS. When I get the chance.
POULDER. Ah! [Clears his throat] I've often wanted to ask: What do
they pay you--if it's not indelicate?
[THE PRESS shrugs his shoulders.]
Can you do it at the money?
[THE PRESS shakes his head.] Still--it's an easy life! I've
regretted sometimes that I didn't have a shot at it myself;
influencin' other people without disclosin' your identity--something
very attractive about that. [Lowering his voice] Between man and
man, now-what do you think of the situation of the country--these
processions of the unemployed--the Red Flag an' the Marsillaisy in
the streets--all this talk about an upheaval?
PRESS. Well, speaking as a Socialist----
POULDER. [Astounded] Why; I thought your paper was Tory!
PRESS. So it is. That's nothing!
POULDER. [Open-mouthed] Dear me! [Pointing to the bomb] Do you
really think there's something in this?
JAMES. [Sepulchrally] 'Igh explosive.
PRESS. [Taking out his note-book] Too much, anyway, to let it drop.
[A pleasant voice calls "Poulder! Hallo!".]
POULDER. [Forming a trumpet with his hand] Me Lord!
[As LORD WILLIAM appears, JAMES, overcome by reminiscences;
salutes, and is mechanically answered. LORD WILLIAM has
"charm." His hair and moustache are crisp and just beginning to
grizzle. His bearing is free, easy, and only faintly armoured.
He will go far to meet you any day. He is in full evening
dress.]
LORD W. [Cheerfully] I say, Poulder, what have you and James been
doing to the Press? Liberty of the Press--it isn't what it was, but
there is a limit. Where is he?
[He turns to Jams between whom and himself there is still the
freemasonry of the trenches.]
JAMES. [Pointing to POULDER] Be'ind the parapet, me Lord.
[THE PRESS mopes out from where he has involuntarily been.
screened by POULDER, who looks at JAMES severely. LORD WILLIAM
hides a smile.]
PRESS. Very glad to meet you, Lord William. My presence down here
is quite involuntary.
LORD W. [With a charming smile] I know. The Press has to put its--
er--to go to the bottom of everything. Where's this bomb, Poulder?
Ah!
[He looks into the wine cooler.]
PRESS. [Taking out his note-book] Could I have a word with you on
the crisis, before dinner, Lord William?
LORD W. It's time you and James were up, Poulder. [Indicating the
cooler] Look after this; tell Lady William I'll be there in a
minute.
POULDER. Very good, me Lord.
[He goes, followed by JAMES carrying the cooler.]
[As THE PRESS turns to look after them, LORD WILLIAM catches
sight of his back.]
LORD W. I must apologise, sir. Can I brush you?
PRESS. [Dusting himself] Thanks; it's only behind. [He opens his
note-book] Now, Lord William, if you'd kindly outline your views on
the national situation; after such a narrow escape from death, I feel
they might have a moral effect. My paper, as you know, is concerned
with--the deeper aspect of things. By the way, what do you value
your house and collection at?
LORD W. [Twisting his little mustache] Really: I can't! Really!
PRESS. Might I say a quarter of a million-lifted in two seconds and
a half-hundred thousand to the second. It brings it home, you know.
LORD W. No, no; dash it! No!
PRESS. [Disappointed] I see--not draw attention to your property in
the present excited state of public feeling? Well, suppose we
approach it from the viewpoint of the Anti-Sweating dinner. I have
the list of guests--very weighty!
LORD W. Taken some lifting-wouldn't they?
PRESS. [Seriously] May I say that you designed the dinner to soften
the tension, at this crisis? You saw that case, I suppose, this
morning, of the woman dying of starvation in Bethnal Green?
LORD W. [Desperately] Yes-yes! I've been horribly affected. I
always knew this slump would come after the war, sooner or later.
PRESS. [Writing] ". . . had predicted slump."
LORD W. You see, I've been an Anti-Sweating man for years, and I
thought if only we could come together now . . . .
PRESS. [Nodding] I see--I see! Get Society interested in the
Sweated, through the dinner. I have the menu here. [He produces it.]
LORD W. Good God, man--more than that! I want to show the people
that we stand side by side with them, as we did in the trenches. The
whole thing's too jolly awful. I lie awake over it.
[He walks up and down.]
PRESS. [Scribbling] One moment, please. I'll just get that down--
"Too jolly awful--lies awake over it. Was wearing a white waistcoat
with pearl buttons." [At a sign of resentment from his victim.]
I want the human touch, Lord William--it's everything in my paper.
What do you say about this attempt to bomb you?
LORD W. Well, in a way I think it's d---d natural
PRESS. [Scribbling] "Lord William thought it d---d natural."
LORD W. [Overhearing] No, no; don't put that down. What I mean is,
I should like to get hold of those fellows that are singing the
Marseillaise about the streets--fellows that have been in the war--
real sports they are, you know--thorough good chaps at bottom--and
say to them: "Have a feeling heart, boys; put yourself in my
position." I don't believe a bit they'd want to bomb me then.
[He walks up and down.]
PRESS. [Scribbling and muttering] "The idea, of brotherhood--" D'you
mind my saying that? Word brotherhood--always effective--always----
[He writes.]
LORD E. [Bewildered] "Brotherhood!" Well, it's pure accident that
I'm here and they're there. All the same, I can't pretend to be
starving. Can't go out into Hyde Park and stand on a tub, can I?
But if I could only show them what I feel--they're such good chaps--
poor devils.
PRESS. I quite appreciate! [He writes] "Camel and needle's eye."
You were at Eton and Oxford? Your constituency I know. Clubs? But
I can get all that. Is it your view that Christianity is on the
up-grade, Lord William?
LORD W. [Dubious] What d'you mean by Christianity--loving--kindness
and that? Of course I think that dogma's got the knock.
[He walks.]
PRESS. [Writing] "Lord William thought dogma had got the knock."
I should like you just to develop your definition of Christianity.
"Loving--kindness" strikes rather a new note.
LORD W. New? What about the Sermon on the Mount?
PRESS. [Writing] "Refers to Sermon on Mount." I take it you don't
belong to any Church, Lord William?
LORD W. [Exasperated] Well, really--I've been baptised and that
sort of thing. But look here----
PRESS. Oh! you can trust me--I shan't say anything that you'll
regret. Now, do you consider that a religious revival would help to
quiet the country?
LORD W. Well, I think it would be a deuced, good thing if everybody
were a bit more kind.
PRESS. Ah! [Musing] I feel that your views are strikingly
original, Lord William. If you could just open out on them a little
more? How far would you apply kindness in practice?
LORD W. Can you apply it in theory?
PRESS. I believe it is done. But would you allow yourself to be
blown up with impunity?
LORD W. Well, that's a bit extreme. But I quite sympathise with
this chap. Imagine yourself in his shoes. He sees a huge house, all
these bottles; us swilling them down; perhaps he's got a starving
wife, or consumptive kids.
PRESS. [Writing and murmuring] Um-m! "Kids."
LORD W. He thinks: "But for the grace of God, there swill I. Why
should that blighter have everything and I nothing?" and all that.
PRESS. [Writing] "And all that." [Eagerly] Yes?
LORD W. And gradually--you see--this contrast--becomes an obsession
with him. "There's got to be an example made," he thinks; and--er--
he makes it, don't you know?
PRESS. [Writing] Ye-es? And--when you're the example?
LORD W. Well, you feel a bit blue, of course. But my point is that
you quite see it.
PRESS. From the other world. Do you believe in a future life, Lord
William? The public took a lot of interest in the question, if you
remember, at the time of the war. It might revive at any moment, if
there's to be a revolution.
LORD W. The wish is always father to the thought, isn't it?
PRESS. Yes! But--er--doesn't the question of a future life rather
bear on your point about kindness? If there isn't one--why be kind?
LORD W. Well, I should say one oughtn't to be kind for any motive--
that's self-interest; but just because one feels it, don't you know.
PRESS. [Writing vigorously] That's very new--very new!
LORD W. [Simply] You chaps are wonderful.
PRESS. [Doubtfully] You mean we're--we're----
LORD W. No, really. You have such a d---d hard time. It must be
perfectly beastly to interview fellows like me.
PRESS. Oh! Not at all, Lord William. Not at all. I assure you
compared with a literary man, it's--it's almost heavenly.
LORD W. You must have a wonderful knowledge of things.
PRESS. [Bridling a little] Well--I shouldn't say that.
LORD W. I don't see how you can avoid it. You turn your hands to
everything.
PRESS. [Modestly] Well--yes, Yes.
LORD W. I say: Is there really going to be a revolution, or are you
making it up, you Press?
PRESS. We don't know. We never know whether we come before the
event, or it comes before us.
LORD W. That's--very deep--very dip. D'you mind lending me your
note-book a moment. I'd like to stick that down. All right, I'll
use the other end. [THE PRESS hands it hypnotically.]
LORD W. [Jotting] Thanks awfully. Now what's your real opinion of
the situation?
PRESS. As a man or a Press man?
LORD W. Is there any difference?
PRESS. Is there any connection?
LORD W. Well, as a man.
PRESS. As a man, I think it's rotten.
LORD W. [Jotting] "Rotten." And as a pressman?
PRESS. [Smiling] Prime.
LORD W. What! Like a Stilton cheese. Ha, ha!
[He is about to write.]
PRESS. My stunt, Lord William. You said that.
[He jots it on his cuff.]
LORD W. But look here! Would you say that a strong press movement
would help to quiet the country?
PRESS. Well, as you ask me, Lord William, I'll tell you. No
newspapers for a month would do the trick.
LORD W. [Jotting] By Jove! That's brilliant.
PRESS. Yes, but I should starve. [He suddenly looks up, and his
eyes, like gimlets, bore their way into LORD WILLIAM'S pleasant,
troubled face] Lord William, you could do me a real kindness.
Authorise me to go and interview the fellow who left the bomb here;
I've got his address. I promise you to do it most discreetly. Fact
is--well--I'm in low water. Since the war we simply can't get
sensation enough for the new taste. Now, if I could have an article
headed: "Bombed and Bomber"--sort of double interview, you know, it'd
very likely set me on my legs again. [Very earnestly] Look!
[He holds out his frayed wristbands.]
LORD W. [Grasping his hand] My dear chap, certainly. Go and
interview this blighter, and then bring him round here. You can do
that for one. I'd very much like to see him, as a matter of fact.
PRESS. Thanks awfully; I shall never forget it. Oh! might I have
my note-book?
[LORD WILLIAM hands it back.]
LORD W. And look here, if there's anything--when a fellow's
fortunate and another's not----
[He puts his hand into his breast pocket.]
PRESS. Oh, thank you! But you see, I shall have to write you up a
bit, Lord William. The old aristocracy--you know what the public
still expects; if you were to lend me money, you might feel----
LORD W. By Jove! Never should have dreamt----
PRESS. No! But it wouldn't do. Have you a photograph of yourself.
LORD W. Not on me.
PRESS. Pity! By the way, has it occurred to you that there may be
another bomb on the premises?
LORD W. Phew! I'll have a look.
[He looks at his watch, and begins hurriedly searching the bins,
bending down and going on his knees. THE PRESS reverses the
notebook again and sketches him.]
PRESS. [To himself] Ah! That'll do. "Lord William examines the
foundations of his house."
[A voice calls "Bill!" THE PRESS snaps the note-book to, and
looks up. There, where the "communication trench" runs in,
stands a tall and elegant woman in the extreme of evening
dress.]
[With presence of mind] Lady William? You'll find Lord William
--Oh! Have you a photograph of him?
LADY W. Not on me.
PRESS. [Eyeing her] Er--no--I suppose not--no. Excuse me! [He
sidles past her and is gone.]
LADY W. [With lifted eyebrows] Bill!
LORD W. [Emerging, dusting his knees] Hallo, Nell! I was just
making sure there wasn't another bomb.
LADY W. Yes; that's why I came dawn: Who was that person?
LORD W. Press.
LADY W. He looked awfully yellow. I hope you haven't been giving
yourself away.
LORD W. [Dubiously] Well, I don't know. They're like corkscrews.
LADY W. What did he ask you?
LORD W. What didn't he?
LADY W. Well, what did you tell him?
LORD W. That I'd been baptised--but he promised not to put it down.
LADY W. Bill, you are absurd.
[She gives a light tittle laugh.]
LORD W. I don't remember anything else, except that it was quite
natural we should be bombed, don't you know.
LADY W. Why, what harm have we done?
LORD W. Been born, my dear. [Suddenly serious] I say, Nell, how am
I to tell what this fellow felt when he left that bomb here?
LADY W. Why do you want to?
LORD W. Out there one used to know what one's men felt.
LADY W. [Staring] My dear boy, I really don't think you ought to
see the Press; it always upsets you.
LORD W. Well! Why should you and I be going to eat ourselves silly
to improve the condition of the sweated, when----
LADY W. [Calmly] When they're going to "improve" ours, if we don't
look out. We've got to get in first, Bill.
LORD W. [Gloomily] I know. It's all fear. That's it! Here we
are, and here we shall stay--as if there'd never been a war.
LADY W. Well, thank heaven there's no "front" to a revolution. You
and I can go to glory together this time. Compact! Anything that's
on, I'm to abate in.
LORD W. Well, in reason.
LADY W. No, in rhyme, too.
LORD W. I say, your dress!
LADY W. Yes, Poulder tried to stop me, but I wasn't going to have
you blown up without me.
LORD W. You duck. You do look stunning. Give us a kiss!
LADY W. [Starting back] Oh, Bill! Don't touch me--your hands!
LORD W. Never mind, my mouth's clean.
They stand about a yard apart, and banding their faces towards each
other, kiss on the lips.
L. ANNE. [Appearing suddenly from the "communication trench," and
tip-toeing silently between them] Oh, Mum! You and Daddy ARE
wasting time! Dinner's ready, you know!
CURTAIN
ACT II
The single room of old MRS. LEMMY, in a small grey house in
Bethnal Green, the room of one cumbered by little save age, and
the crockery debris of the past. A bed, a cupboard, a coloured
portrait of Queen Victoria, and--of all things--a fiddle,
hanging on the wall. By the side of old MRS. LEMMY in her chair
is a pile of corduroy trousers, her day's sweated sewing, and a
small table. She sits with her back to the window, through
which, in the last of the light, the opposite side of the little
grey street is visible under the evening sky, where hangs one
white cloud shaped like a horned beast. She is still sewing,
and her lips move. Being old, and lonely, she has that habit of
talking to herself, distressing to those who cannot overhear.
From the smack of her tongue she was once a West Country cottage
woman; from the look of her creased, parchmenty face, she was
once a pretty girl with black eyes, in which there is still much
vitality. The door is opened with difficulty and a little girl
enters, carrying a pile of unfinished corduroy trousers nearly
as large as herself. She puts them down against the wall, and
advances. She is eleven or twelve years old; large-eyed, dark
haired, and sallow. Half a woman of this and half of another
world, except when as now, she is as irresponsible a bit of life
as a little flowering weed growing out of a wall. She stands
looking at MRS. LEMMY with dancing eyes.
L. AIDA. I've brought yer to-morrer's trahsers. Y'nt yer finished
wiv to-dy's? I want to tyke 'em.
MRS. L. No, me dear. Drat this last one--me old fengers!
L. AIDA. I learnt some poytry to-dy--I did.
MRS. L. Well, I never!
L. AIDA. [Reciting with unction]
"Little lamb who myde thee?
Dost thou know who myde thee,
Gyve thee life and byde thee feed
By the stream and oer the mead;
Gyve the clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gyve thee such a tender voice,
Myking all the vyles rejoice.
Little lamb who myde thee?
Dost thou know who myde thee?"
MRS. L. 'Tes wonderful what things they tache ya nowadays.
L. AIDA. When I grow up I'm goin' to 'ave a revolver an' shoot the
people that steals my jools.
MRS. L. Deary-me, wherever du yu get yore notions?
L. AIDA. An' I'm goin' to ride on as 'orse be'ind a man; an' I'm
goin' to ryce trynes in my motor car.
MRS. L. [Dryly] Ah!--Yu'um gwine to be very busy, that's sartin.
Can you sew?
L. AIDA. [With a Smile] Nao.
MRS. L. Don' they tache Yu that, there?
L. AIDA. [Blending contempt and a lingering curiosity] Nao.
MRS. L. 'Tes wonderful genteel.
L. AIDA. I can sing, though.
MRS. L. Let's 'ear yu, then.
L. AIDA. [Shaking her head] I can ply the pianner. I can ply a
tune.
MRS. L. Whose pianner?
L. AIDA. Mrs. Brahn's when she's gone aht.
MRS. L. Well, yu are gettin' edjucation! Du they tache yu to love
yore neighbours?
L. AIDA. [Ineffably] Nao. [Straying to the window] Mrs. Lemmy,
what's the moon?
MRS. L. The mune? Us used to zay 'twas made o' crame cheese.
L. AIDA. I can see it.
MRS. L. Ah! Don' yu never go wishin' for it, me dear.
L. AIDA. I daon't.
MRS. L. Folks as wish for the mune never du no gude.
L. AIDA. [Craning out, brilliant] I'm goin' dahn in the street.
I'll come back for yer trahsers.
MRS. L. Well; go yu, then, and get a breath o' fresh air in yore
chakes. I'll sune 'a feneshed.
L. AIDA. [Solemnly] I'm goin' to be a dancer, I am.
She rushes suddenly to the door, pulls it open, and is gone.
MRS. L. [Looking after her, and talking to herself.] Ah! 'Er've
a-got all 'er troubles before 'er! "Little lamb, a made'ee?"
[Cackling] 'Tes a funny world, tu! [She sings to herself.]
"There is a green 'ill far away
Without a city wall,
Where our dear-Lord was crucified,
'U died to save us all."
The door is opened, and LEMMY comes in; a little man with a
stubble of dark moustache and spiky dark hair; large, peculiar
eyes he has, and a look of laying his ears back, a look of
doubting, of perversity with laughter up the sleeve, that grows
on those who have to do with gas and water. He shuts the door.
MRS. L. Well, Bob, I 'aven't a-seen yu this tu weeks.
LEMMY comes up to his mother, and sits down on a stool, sets a
tool-bag between his knees, and speaks in a cockney voice.
LEMMY. Well, old lydy o' leisure! Wot would y' 'ave for supper, if
yer could choose--salmon wivaht the tin, an' tipsy cyke?
MRS. L. [Shaking her head and smiling blandly] That's showy. Toad
in the 'ole I'd 'ave--and a glass o' port wine.
LEMMY. Providential. [He opens a tool-bag] Wot dyer think I've got
yer?
MRS. L. I 'ope yu've a-got yureself a job, my son!
LEMMY. [With his peculiar smile] Yus, or I couldn't 'ave afforded
yer this. [He takes out a bottle] Not 'arf! This'll put the blood
into yer. Pork wine--once in the cellars of the gryte. We'll drink
the ryyal family in this.
[He apostrophises the portrait of Queen Victoria.]
MRS. L. Ah! She was a praaper gude queen. I see 'er once, when 'er
was bein' burried.
LEMMY. Ryalties--I got nothin' to sy agynst 'em in this country.
But the STYTE 'as got to 'ave its pipes seen to. The 'ole show's
goin' up pop. Yer'll wyke up one o' these dyes, old lydy, and find
yerself on the roof, wiv nuffin' between yer an' the grahnd.
MRS. L. I can't tell what yu'm talkin' about.
LEMMY. We're goin' to 'ave a triumpherat in this country Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity; an' if yer arsk me, they won't be in power six
months before they've cut each other's throats. But I don't care--I
want to see the blood flow! (Dispassionately) I don' care 'oose
blood it is. I want to see it flow!
MRS. L. [Indulgently] Yu'm a funny boy, that's sartin.
LEMMY. [Carving at the cork with a knife] This 'ere cork is like
Sasiety--rotten; it's old--old an' moulderin'. [He holds up a bit of
cork on the point of the knife] Crumblin' under the wax, it is. In
goes the screw an' out comes the cork. [With unction]--an' the blood
flows. [Tipping the bottle, he lets a drop fall into the middle of
his hand, and licks it up. Gazing with queer and doubting
commiseration at has mother] Well, old dear, wot shall we 'ave it
aht of--the gold loving-cup, or--what? 'Ave yer supper fust, though,
or it'll go to yer 'ead! [He goes to the cupboard and taken out a
disk in which a little bread is sopped in a little' milk] Cold pap!
'Ow can yer? 'Yn't yer got a kipper in the 'ouse?
MRS. L. [Admiring the bottle] Port wine! 'Tis a brave treat! I'll
'ave it out of the "Present from Margitt," Bob. I tuk 'ee therr by
excursion when yu was six months. Yu 'ad a shrimp an' it choked yu
praaperly. Yu was always a squeamy little feller. I can't never
think 'ow yu managed in the war-time, makin' they shells.
LEMMY, who has brought to the table two mugs and blown the duet
out of; them, fills them with port, and hands one to his mother,
who is eating her bread and milk.
LEMMY. Ah! Nothin' worried me, 'cept the want o' soap.
MRS. L. [Cackling gently] So it du still, then! Luke at yore face.
Yu never was a clean boy, like Jim.
[She puts out a thin finger and touches his cheek, whereon is a
black smudge.]
LEMMY. [Scrubbing his cheek with his sleeve.] All right! Y'see, I
come stryte 'ere, to get rid o' this.
[He drinks.]
MRS. L. [Eating her bread and milk] Tes a pity yu'm not got a wife
to see't yu wash yureself.
LEMMY. [Goggling] Wife! Not me--I daon't want ter myke no food for
pahder. Wot oh!--they said, time o' the war--ye're fightin' for yer
children's 'eritage. Well; wot's the 'eritage like, now we've got
it? Empty as a shell before yer put the 'igh explosive in. Wot's it
like? [Warming to his theme] Like a prophecy in the pypers--not a
bit more substantial.
MRS. L. [Slightly hypnotised] How 'e du talk! The gas goes to yore
'ead, I think!
LEMMY. I did the gas to-dy in the cellars of an 'ouse where the wine
was mountains 'igh. A regiment couldn't 'a drunk it. Marble pillars
in the 'all, butler broad as an observytion balloon, an' four
conscientious khaki footmen. When the guns was roarin' the talk was
all for no more o' them glorious weeds-style an' luxury was orf. See
wot it is naow. You've got a bare crust in the cupboard 'ere, I
works from 'and to mouth in a glutted market--an' there they stand
abaht agyne in their britches in the 'oases o' the gryte. I was
reg'lar overcome by it. I left a thing in that cellar--I left a
thing . . . . It'll be a bit ork'ard for me to-mower. [Drinks
from his mug.]
MRS. L. [Placidly, feeling the warmth of the little she has drunk]
What thing?
LEMMY. Wot thing? Old lydy, ye're like a winkle afore yer opens
'er--I never see anything so peaceful. 'Ow dyer manage it?
MRS. L. Settin' 'ere and thenkin'.
LEA. Wot abaht?
MRS. L. We-el--Money, an' the works o' God.
LEMMY. Ah! So yer give me a thought sometimes.
MRS. L. [Lofting her mug] Yu ought never to ha' spent yore money on
this, Bob!
LEMMY. I thought that meself.
MRS. L. Last time I 'ad a glass o' port wine was the day yore
brother Jim went to Ameriky. [Smacking her lips] For a teetotal
drink, it du warm 'ee!
LEMMY. [Raising his mug] Well, 'ere's to the British revolution!
'Ere's to the conflygrytion in the sky!
MRS. L. [Comfortably] So as to kape up therr, 'twon't du no 'arm.
LEMMY goes to the window and unhooks his fiddle; he stands with
it halfway to his shoulder. Suddenly he opens the window and
leans out. A confused murmur of voices is heard; and a snatch
of the Marseillaise, sung by a girl. Then the shuffling tramp
of feet, and figures are passing in the street.
LEMMY. [Turning--excited] Wot'd I tell yer, old lydy? There it is
--there it is!
MRS. L. [Placidly] What is?
LEMMY. The revolution. [He cranes out] They've got it on a barrer.
Cheerio!
VOICE. [Answering] Cheerio!
LEMMY. [Leaning out] I sy--you 'yn't tykin' the body, are yer?
VOICE. Nao.
LEMMY. Did she die o' starvytion O.K.?
VOICE. She bloomin' well did; I know 'er brother.
LEMMY. Ah! That'll do us a bit o' good!
VOICE. Cheerio!
LEMMY. So long!
VOICE. So long!
[The girl's voice is heard again in the distance singing the
Marseillaise. The door is flung open and LITTLE AIDA comes
running in again.]
LEMMY. 'Allo, little Aida!
L. AIDA. 'Allo, I been follerin' the corfin. It's better than an
'orse dahn!
MRS. L. What coffin?
L. AIDA. Why, 'er's wot died o' starvytion up the street. They're
goin' to tyke it to 'Yde Pawk, and 'oller.
MRS. L. Well, never yu mind wot they'm goin' to du: Yu wait an' take
my trousers like a gude gell.
[She puts her mug aside and takes up her unfinished pair of
trousers. But the wine has entered her fingers, and strength to
push the needle through is lacking.]
LEMMY. [Tuning his fiddle] Wot'll yer 'ave, little Aida? "Dead March
in Saul" or "When the fields was white wiv dysies"?
L. AIDA. [With a hop and a brilliant smile] Aoh yus! "When the
fields"----
MRS. L. [With a gesture of despair] Deary me! I 'aven't a-got the
strength!
LEMMY. Leave 'em alone, old dear! No one'll be goin' aht wivaht
trahsers to-night 'cos yer leaves that one undone. Little Aida, fold
'em up!
[LITTLE AIDA methodically folds the five finished pairs of
trousers into a pile. LEMMY begins playing. A smile comes on
the face of MRS. L, who is rubbing her fingers. LITTLE AIDA,
trousers over arm, goes and stares at LEMMY playing.]
LEMMY. [Stopping] Little Aida, one o' vese dyes yer'll myke an
actress. I can see it in yer fyce!
[LITTLE AIDA looks at him wide-eyed.]
MRS. L. Don't 'ee putt things into 'er 'ead, Bob!
LEMMY. 'Tyn't 'er 'ead, old lydy--it's lower. She wants feedin'--
feed 'er an' she'll rise. [He strikes into the "Machichi"] Look at
'er naow. I tell yer there's a fortune in 'er.
[LITTLE AIDA has put out her tongue.]
MRS. L. I'd saner there was a gude 'eart in 'er than any fortune.
L. AIDA. [Hugging her pile of trousers] It's thirteen pence three
farthin's I've got to bring yer, an' a penny aht for me, mykes twelve
three farthin's: [With the same little hop and sudden smile] I'm
goin' to ride back on a bus, I am.
LEMMY. Well, you myke the most of it up there; it's the nearest
you'll ever git to 'eaven.
MRS. L. Don' yu discourage 'er, Bob; she'm a gude little thing, an't
yu, dear?
L. AIDA. [Simply] Yus.
LEMMY. Not 'arf. Wot c'her do wiv yesterdy's penny?
L. AIDA. Movies.
LEMMY. An' the dy before?
L. AIDA. Movies.
LEMMY. Wot'd I tell yer, old lydy--she's got vicious tystes, she'll
finish in the theayter yep Tyke my tip, little Aida; you put every
penny into yer foundytions, yer'll get on the boards quicker that wy.
MRS. L. Don' yu pay no 'eed to his talk.
L. AIDA. I daon't.
Ice. Would yer like a sip aht o' my mug?
L. AIDA. [Brilliant] Yus.
MRS. L. Not at yore age, me dear, though it is teetotal.
[LITTLE AIDA puts her head on one side, like a dog trying to
understand.]
LEMMY. Well, 'ave one o' my gum-drops.
[Holds out a paper.]
[LITTLE AIDA brilliant, takes a flat, dark substance from it,
and puts it in her mouth.]
Give me a kiss, an' I'll give yer a penny.
[LITTLE AIDA shakes her head, and leans out of window.]
Movver, she daon't know the valyer of money.
MRS. L. Never mind 'im, me dear.
L. AIDA. [Sucking the gum-drop--with difficulty] There's a taxi-cab
at the corner.
[LITTLE AIDA runs to the door. A figure stands in the doorway;
she skids round him and out. THE PRESS comes in.]
LEMMY. [Dubiously] Wat-oh!
PRESS. Mr. Lemmy?
LEMMY. The syme.
PRESS. I'm from the Press.
LEMMY. Blimy.
PRESS. They told me at your place you wens very likely here.
LEMMY. Yus I left Downin' Street a bit early to-dy! [He twangs the
feddle-strings pompously.]
PRESS. [Taking out his note-book and writing] "Fiddles while Rome
is burning!" Mr. Lemmy, it's my business at this very critical time
to find out what the nation's thinking. Now, as a representative
working man--
LEMMY. That's me.
PRESS. You can help me. What are your views?
LEMMY. [Putting down fiddle] Voos? Sit dahn!
[THE PRESS sits on the stool which LEMMY has vacated.]
The Press--my Muvver. Seventy-seven. She's a wonder; 'yn't yer, old
dear?
PRESS. Very happy to make your acquaintance, Ma'am. [He writes]
"Mrs. Lemmy, one of the veterans of industry----" By the way, I've
jest passed a lot of people following a coffin.
LEMMY. Centre o' the cyclone--cyse o' starvytion; you 'ad 'er in the
pyper this mornin'.
PRESS. Ah! yes! Tragic occurrence. [Looking at the trousers.] Hub
of the Sweated Industries just here. I especially want to get at the
heart----
MRS. L. 'Twasn't the 'eart, 'twas the stomach.
PRESS. [Writing] "Mrs. Lemmy goes straight to the point."
LEMMY. Mister, is it my voos or Muvver's yer want?
PRESS. Both.
LEMMY. 'Cos if yer get Muvver's, yer won't 'ave time for mine. I
tell yer stryte [Confidentially] she's get a glawss a' port wine in
'er. Naow, mind yer, I'm not anxious to be intervooed. On the other
'and, anyfink I might 'eve to sy of valyer----There is a clawss o'
politician that 'as nuffn to sy--Aoh! an' daon't 'e sy it just! I
dunno wot pyper yer represent.
PRESS. [Smiling] Well, Mr. Lemmy, it has the biggest influ----
LEMMY. They all 'as that; dylies, weeklies, evenin's, Sundyes; but
it's of no consequence--my voos are open and aboveboard. Naow, wot
shall we begin abaht?
PRESS. Yourself, if you please. And I'd like you to know at once
that my paper wants the human note, the real heart-beat of things.
LEMMY. I see; sensytion! Well; 'ere am I--a fustclawss plumber's.
assistant--in a job to-dy an' out tomorrer. There's a 'eart-beat in
that, I tell yer. 'Oo knows wot the mower 'as for me!
PRESS. [Writing]. "The great human issue--Mr. Lemmy touches it at
once."
LEMMY. I sy keep my nyme aht o' this; I don' go in fer
self-advertisement.
PRESS. [Writing] "True working-man--modest as usual."
LEMMY. I daon't want to embarrass the Gover'ment. They're so
ticklish ever since they got the 'abit, war-time, o' mindin' wot
people said.
PRESS. Right-o!
LEMMY. For instance, suppose there's goin' to be a revolution----
[THE PRESS writes with energy.] 'Ow does it touch me? Like this: I
my go up--I cawn't come dahn; no more can Muvver.
MRS. L. [Surprisingly] Us all goes down into the grave.
PRESS. "Mrs. Lemmy interjects the deeper note."
LEMMY. Naow, the gryte--they can come dahn, but they cawn't go up!
See! Put two an' two together, an' that's 'ow it touches me. [He
utters a throaty laugh] 'Ave yer got that?
PRESS. [Quizzical] Not go up? What about bombs, Mr. Lemmy?
LEMMY. [Dubious] Wot abaht 'em? I s'pose ye're on the comic
pypers? 'Ave yer noticed wot a weakness they 'ave for the 'orrible?
PRESS. [Writing] "A grim humour peeped out here and there through
the earnestness of his talk."
[He sketches LEMMY'S profile.]
LEMMY. We 'ad an explosion in my factory time o' the war, that would
just ha' done for you comics. [He meditates] Lord! They was after
it too,--they an' the Sundyes; but the Censor did 'em. Strike me, I
could tell yer things!
PRESS. That's what I want, Mr. Lemmy; tell me things!
LEMMY. [Musing] It's a funny world, 'yn't it? 'Ow we did blow each
other up! [Getting up to admire] I sy, I shall be syfe there. That
won't betry me anonymiety. Why! I looks like the Prime Minister!
PRESS. [Rather hurt] You were going to tell me things.
LEMMY. Yus, an' they'll be the troof, too.
PRESS. I hope so; we don't----
LEMMY. Wot oh!
PRESS. [A little confused.] We always try to verify----
LEMMY. Yer leave it at tryin', daon't yer? Never, mind, ye're a
gryte institootion. Blimy, yer do have jokes, wiv it, spinnin' rahnd
on yer own tyles, denyin' to-dy wot ye're goin' to print to-morrer.
Ah, well! Ye're like all of us below the line o' comfort--live
dyngerously--ever' dy yer last. That's wy I'm interested in the
future.
PRESS. Well now--the future. [Writing] "He prophesies."
LEMMY. It's syfer, 'yn't it? [He winks] No one never looks back on
prophecies. I remembers an editor spring o' 1916 stykin' his
reputytion the war'd be over in the follerin' October. Increased 'is
circulytion abaht 'arf a million by it. 1917 an' war still on--'ad
'is readers gone back on 'im? Nao! They was increasin' like
rabbits. Prophesy wot people want to believe, an' ye're syfe. Naow,
I'll styke my reputation on somethin', you tyke it dahn word for
word. This country's goin' to the dawgs--Naow, 'ere's the
sensytion--unless we gets a new religion.
PRESS. Ah! Now for it--yes?
LEMMY. In one word: "Kindness." Daon't mistyke me, nao sickly
sentiment and nao patronizin'. Me as kind to the millionaire as 'im
to me. [Fills his mug and drinks.]
PRESS. [Struck] That's queer! Kindness! [Writing] "Extremes
meet. Bombed and bomber breathing the same music."
LEMMY. But 'ere's the interestin' pynt. Can it be done wivaht
blood?
PRESS. [Writing] "He doubts."
LEMMY. No dabt wotever. It cawn't! Blood-and-kindness! Spill the
blood o' them that aren't kind--an' there ye are!
PRESS. But pardon me, how are you to tell?
LEMMY. Blimy, they leaps to the heye!
PRESS. [Laying down-his note-book] I say, let me talk to you as man
to man for a moment.
LEMMY. Orl right. Give it a rest!
PRESS. Your sentiments are familiar to me. I've got a friend on the
Press who's very keen on Christ and kindness; and wants to strangle
the last king with the--hamstrings of the last priest.
LEMMY. [Greatly intrigued] Not 'arf! Does 'e?
PRESS. Yes. But have you thought it out? Because he hasn't.
LEMMY. The difficulty is--where to stop.
PRESS. Where to begin.
LEMMY. Lawd! I could begin almost anywhere. Why, every month
abaht, there's a cove turns me aht of a job 'cos I daon't do just wot
'e likes. They'd 'ave to go. I tell yer stryte--the Temple wants
cleanin' up.
PRESS. Ye-es. If I wrote what I thought, I should get the sack as
quick as you. D'you say that justifies me in shedding the blood of
my boss?
LEMMY. The yaller Press 'as got no blood--'as it? You shed their
ile an' vinegar--that's wot you've got to do. Stryte--do yer believe
in the noble mission o' the Press?
PRESS. [Enigmatically] Mr. Lemmy, I'm a Pressman.
LEMMY. [Goggling] I see. Not much! [Gently jogging his mother's
elbow] Wyke up, old lydy!
[For Mrs. LEMMY who has been sipping placidly at her port, is
nodding. The evening has drawn in. LEMMY strikes a match on
his trousers and lights a candle.]
Blood an' kindness-that's what's wanted--'specially blood! The
'istory o' me an' my family'll show yer that. Tyke my bruver Fred
--crushed by burycrats. Tyke Muvver 'erself. Talk o' the wrongs o'
the people! I tell yer the foundytions is rotten. [He empties the
bottle into his mother's mug] Daon't mind the mud at the bottom, old
lydy--it's all strengthenin'! You tell the Press, Muvver. She can
talk abaht the pawst.
PRESS. [Taking up his note-book, and becoming, again his
professional self] Yes, Mrs. Lemmy? "Age and Youth--Past and
Present--"
MRS. L. Were yu talkin' about Fred? [The port has warmed her veins,
the colour in her eyes and cheeks has deepened] My son Fred was
always a gude boy--never did nothin' before 'e married. I can see
Fred [She bends forward a little in her chair, looking straight
before her] acomin' in wi' a pheasant 'e'd found--terrible 'e was at
findin' pheasants. When father died, an' yu was cumin', Bob, Fred 'e
said to me: "Don't yu never cry, Mother, I'll look after 'ee." An'
so 'e did, till 'e married that day six months an' take to the drink
in sower. 'E wasn't never 'the same boy again--not Fred. An' now
'e's in That. I can see poor Fred----
[She slowly wipes a tear out of the corner of an eye with the
back of her finger.]
PRESS. [Puzzled] In--That?
LEMMY. [Sotto voce] Come orf it! Prison! 'S wot she calls it.
MRS. L. [Cheerful] They say life's a vale o' sorrows. Well, so
'tes, but don' du to let yureself thenk so.
PRESS. And so you came to London, Mrs. Lemmy?
MRS. L. Same year as father died. With the four o' them--that's my
son Fred, an' my son Jim, an' my son Tom, an' Alice. Bob there, 'e
was born in London--an' a praaper time I 'ad of et.
PRESS. [Writing] "Her heroic struggles with poverty----"
MRS. L. Worked in a laundry, I ded, at fifteen shellin's a week, an'
brought 'em all up on et till Alice 'ad the gallopin' consumption. I
can see poor Alice wi' the little red spots is 'er cheeks---an' I not
knowin' wot to du wi' 'her--but I always kept up their buryin' money.
Funerals is very dear; Mr. Lemmy was six pound, ten.
PRESS. "High price of Mr. Lemmy."
MRS. L. I've a-got the money for when my time come; never touch et,
no matter 'ow things are. Better a little goin' short here below,
an' enter the kingdom of 'eaven independent:
PRESS. [Writing] "Death before dishonour--heroine of the slums.
Dickens--Betty Higden."
MRS. L. No, sir. Mary Lemmy. I've seen a-many die, I 'ave; an' not
one grievin'. I often says to meself: [With a little laugh] "Me
dear, when yu go, yu go 'appy. Don' yu never fret about that," I
says. An' so I will; I'll go 'appy.
[She stays quite still a moment, and behind her LEMMY draws one
finger across his face.]
[Smiling] "Yore old fengers'll 'ave a rest. Think o' that!" I says.
"'Twill be a brave change." I can see myself lyin' there an' duin'
nothin'.
[Again a pause, while MRS. LEMMY sees herself doing nothing.]
LEMMY. Tell abaht Jim; old lydy.
MRS. L. My son Jim 'ad a family o' seven in six years. "I don' know
'ow 'tes, Mother," 'e used to say to me; "they just sim to come!"
That was Jim--never knu from day to day what was cumin'. "Therr's
another of 'em dead," 'e used to say, "'tes funny, tu" "Well," I
used to say to 'im; "no wonder, poor little things, livin' in they
model dwellin's. Therr's no air for 'em," I used to say. "Well," 'e
used to say, "what can I du, Mother? Can't afford to live in Park
Lane:" An' 'e take an' went to Ameriky. [Her voice for the first
time is truly doleful] An' never came back. Fine feller. So that's
my four sons--One's dead, an' one's in--That, an' one's in Ameriky,
an' Bob 'ere, poor boy, 'e always was a talker.
[LEMMY, who has re-seated himself in the window and taken up his
fiddle, twangs the strings.]
PRESS. And now a few words about your work, Mrs. Lemmy?
MRS. L. Well, I sews.
PRESS. [Writing] "Sews." Yes?
MRS. L. [Holding up her unfinished pair of trousers] I putt in the
button'oles, I stretches the flies, I lines the crutch, I putt on
this bindin', [She holds up the calico that binds the top] I sews on
the buttons, I press the seams--Tuppence three farthin's the pair.
PRESS. Twopence three farthings a pair! Worse than a penny a line!
MRS. L. In a gude day I gets thru four pairs, but they'm gettin'
plaguey 'ard for my old fengers.
PRESS. [Writing] "A monumental figure, on whose labour is built the
mighty edifice of our industrialism."
LEMMY. I sy--that's good. Yer'll keep that, won't yet?
MRS. L. I finds me own cotton, tuppence three farthin's, and other
expension is a penny three farthin's.
PRESS. And are you an exception, Mrs. Lemmy?
MRS. L. What's that?
LEMMY. Wot price the uvvers, old lydy? Is there a lot of yer sewin'
yer fingers orf at tuppence 'ypenny the pair?
MRS. L. I can't tell yu that. I never sees nothin' in 'ere. I pays
a penny to that little gell to bring me a dozen pair an' fetch 'em
back. Poor little thing, she'm 'ardly strong enough to carry 'em.
Feel! They'm very 'eavy!
PRESS. On the conscience of Society!
LEMMY. I sy put that dahn, won't yer?
PRESS. Have things changed much since the war, Mrs. Lemmy?
MRS. L. Cotton's a lot dearer.
PRESS. All round, I mean.
MRS. L. Aw! Yu don' never get no change, not in my profession.
[She oscillates the trousers] I've a-been in trousers fifteen year;
ever since I got to old for laundry.
PRESS. [Writing] "For fifteen years sewn trousers." What would a
good week be, Mrs. Lemmy?
MRS. L. 'Tes a very gude week, five shellin's.
LEMMY. [From the window] Bloomin' millionairess, Muvver. She's
lookin' forward to 'eaven, where vey don't wear no trahsers.
MRS. L. [With spirit] 'Tidn for me to zay whether they du. An'
'tes on'y when I'm a bit low-sperrity-like as I wants to go therr.
What I am a-lukin' forward to, though, 'tes a day in the country.
I've not a-had one since before the war. A kind lady brought me in
that bit of 'eather; 'tes wonderful sweet stuff when the 'oney's in
et. When I was a little gell I used to zet in the 'eather gatherin'
the whorts, an' me little mouth all black wi' eatin' them. 'Twas in
the 'eather I used to zet, Sundays, courtin'. All flesh is grass--
an' 'tesn't no bad thing--grass.
PRESS. [Writing] "The old paganism of the country." What is your
view of life, Mrs. Lemmy?
LEMMY. [Suddenly] Wot is 'er voo of life? Shall I tell yer mine?
Life's a disease--a blinkin' oak-apple! Daon't myke no mistyke. An'
'umen life's a yumourous disease; that's all the difference. Why--
wot else can it be? See the bloomin' promise an' the blighted
performance--different as a 'eadline to the noos inside. But yer
couldn't myke Muvver see vat--not if yer talked to 'er for a wok.
Muvver still believes in fings. She's a country gell; at a 'undred
and fifty she'll be a country gell, won't yer, old lydy?
MRS. L. Well, 'tesn't never been 'ome to me in London. I lived in
the country forty year--I did my lovin' there; I burried father
therr. Therr bain't nothin' in life, yu know, but a bit o' lovin'--
all said an' done; bit o' lovin', with the wind, an' the stars out.
LEMMY. [In a loud apologetic whisper] She 'yn't often like this. I
told yer she'd got a glawss o' port in 'er.
MRS. L. 'Tes a brave pleasure, is lovin'. I likes to zee et in
young folk. I likes to zee 'em kissin'; shows the 'eart in 'em.
'Tes the 'eart makes the world go round; 'tesn't nothin' else, in my
opinion.
PRESS. [Writing] "--sings the swan song of the heart."----
MRS. L. [Overhearing] No, I never yeard a swan sing--never! But I
tell 'ee what I 'eve 'eard; the Bells singin' in th' orchard 'angin'
up the clothes to dry, an' the cuckoos callin' back to 'em.
[Smiling] There's a-many songs in the country-the 'eart is freelike
in th' country!
LEMMY. [Soto voce] Gi' me the Strand at ar' past nine.
PRESS. [Writing] "Town and country----"
MRS. L. 'Tidn't like that in London; one day's jest like another.
Not but what therr's a 'eap o' kind'eartedness 'ere.
LEMMY. [Gloomily] Kind-'eartedness! I daon't fink "Boys an' Gells
come out to play."
[He plays the old tune on his fiddle.]
MRS. L. [Singing] "Boys an' Gells come out to play. The mune is
shinin' bright as day." [She laughs] I used to sing like a lark
when I was a gell.
[LITTLE AIDA enters.]
L. AIDA. There's 'undreds follerin' the corfin. 'Yn't you goin',
Mr. Lemmy--it's dahn your wy!
LEMMY. [Dubiously] Well yus--I s'pose they'll miss me.
L. AIDA. Aoh! Tyke me!
PRESS. What's this?
LEMMY. The revolution in 'Yde Pawk.
PRESS. [Struck] In Hyde Park? The very thing. I'll take you down.
My taxi's waiting.
L. AIDA. Yus; it's breathin' 'ard, at the corner.
PRESS. [Looking at his watch] Ah! and Mrs. Lemmy. There's an
Anti-Sweating Meeting going on at a house in Park Lane. We can get
there in twenty minutes if we shove along. I want you to tell them
about the trouser-making. You'll be a sensation!
LEMMY. [To himself] Sensytion! 'E cawn't keep orf it!
MRS. L. Anti-Sweat. Poor fellers! I 'ad one come to see we before
the war, an' they'm still goin' on? Wonderful, an't it?
PRESS. Come, Mrs. Lemmy; drive in a taxi, beautiful moonlit night;
and they'll give you a splendid cup of tea.
MRS. L. [Unmoved] Ah! I cudn't never du without my tea. There's
not an avenin' but I thinks to meself: Now, me dear, yu've a-got one
more to fennish, an' then yu'll 'eve yore cup o' tea. Thank you for
callin', all the same.
LEMMY. Better siccumb to the temptytion, old lydy; joyride wiv the
Press; marble floors, pillars o' gold; conscientious footmen; lovely
lydies; scuppers runnin' tea! An' the revolution goin' on across the
wy. 'Eaven's nuffink to Pawk Lyne.
PRESS. Come along, Mrs. Lemmy!
MRS. L. [Seraphically] Thank yu,--I'm a-feelin' very comfortable.
'Tes wonderful what a drop o' wine'll du for the stomach.
PRESS. A taxi-ride!
MRS. L. [Placidly] Ah! I know'em. They'm very busy things.
LEMMY. Muvver shuns notority. [Sotto voce to THE PRESS] But you
watch me! I'll rouse 'er.
[He takes up his fiddle and sits on the window seat. Above the
little houses on the opposite side of the street, the moon has
risen in the dark blue sky, so that the cloud shaped like a
beast seems leaping over it. LEMMY plays the first notes of the
Marseillaise. A black cat on the window-sill outside looks in,
hunching its back. LITTLE AIDA barks at her. MRS. LEMMY
struggles to her feet, sweeping the empty dish and spoon to the
floor in the effort.]
The dish ran awy wiv the spoon! That's right, old lydy! [He stops
playing.]
MRS. L. [Smiling, and moving her hands] I like a bit o' music. It
du that move 'ee.
PRESS. Bravo, Mrs. Lemmy. Come on!
LEMMY. Come on, old dear! We'll be in time for the revolution yet.
MRS. L. 'Tes 'earin' the Old 'Undred again!
LEMMY. [To THE PRESS] She 'yn't been aht these two years. [To his
mother, who has put up her hands to her head] Nao, never mind yer
'at. [To THE PRESS] She 'yn't got none! [Aloud] No West-End lydy
wears anyfink at all in the evenin'!
MRS. L. 'Ow'm I lukin', Bob?
LEMMY. First-clawss; yer've got a colour fit to toast by. We'll
show 'em yer've got a kick in yer. [He takes her arm] Little Aida,
ketch 'old o' the sensytions.
[He indicates the trousers THE PRESS takes MRS. LEMMY'S other
arm.]
MRS. L. [With an excited little laugh] Quite like a gell!
And, smiling between her son and THE PRESS, she passes out; LITTLE
AIDA, with a fling of her heels and a wave of the trousers, follows.
CURTAIN
ACT III
An octagon ante-room of the hall at LORD WILLIAM DROMONDY'S.
A shining room lighted by gold candelabra, with gold-curtained
pillars, through which the shining hall and a little of the
grand stairway are visible. A small table with a gold-coloured
cloth occupies the very centre of the room, which has a polished
parquet floor and high white walls. Gold-coloured doors on the
left. Opposite these doors a window with gold-coloured curtains
looks out on Park Lane. LADY WILLIAM standing restlessly
between the double doors and the arch which leads to the hall.
JAMES is stationary by the double doors, from behind which come
sounds of speech and applause.
POULDER. [Entering from the hall] His Grace the Duke of Exeter, my
lady.
[His GRACE enters. He is old, and youthful, with a high colour
and a short rough white beard. LADY WILLIAM advances to meet
him. POULDER stands by.]
LADY W. Oh! Father, you ARE late.
HIS G. Awful crowd in the streets, Nell. They've got a coffin--
couldn't get by.
LADY W. Coin? Whose?
HIS G. The Government's I should think-no flowers, by request. I
say, have I got to speak?
LADY W. Oh! no, dear.
HIS G. H'm! That's unlucky. I've got it here. [He looks down his
cuff] Found something I said in 1914--just have done.
LADY W. Oh! If you've got it--James, ask Lord William to come to me
for a moment. [JAMES vanishes through the door. To THE DUKE] Go in,
Grand-dad; they'll be so awfully pleased to see you. I'll tell Bill.
HIS G. Where's Anne?
LADY W. In bed, of course.
HIS G. I got her this--rather nice?
[He has taken from his breast-pocket one of those street toy-men
that jump head over heels on your hand; he puts it through its
paces.]
LADY W. [Much interested] Oh! no, but how sweet! She'll simply
love it.
POULDER. If I might suggest to Your Grace to take it in and operate
it. It's sweated, Your Grace. They-er-make them in those places.
HIS G. By Jove! D'you know the price, Poulder?
POULDER. [Interrogatively] A penny, is it? Something paltry, Your
Grace!
HIS G. Where's that woman who knows everything; Miss Munday?
LADY W. Oh! She'll be in there, somewhere.
[His GRACE moves on, and passes through the doors. The sound of
applause is heard.]
POULDER. [Discreetly] would you care to see the bomb, my lady?
LADY W. Of course--first quiet moment.
POULDER. I'll bring it up, and have a watch put on it here, my lady.
[LORD WILLIAM comes through the double doom followed by JAMES.
POULDER retires.]
LORD W. Can't you come, Nell?
LADY W. Oh! Bill, your Dad wants to speak.
LORD W. The deuce he does--that's bad.
LADY W. Yes, of course, but you must let him; he's found something
he said in 1914.
LORD W. I knew it. That's what they'll say. Standing stock still,
while hell's on the jump around us.
LADY W. Never mind that; it'll please him; and he's got a lovely
little sweated toy that turns head over heels at one penny.
LORD W. H'm! Well, come on.
LADY W. No, I must wait for stragglers. There's sure to be an
editor in a hurry.
POULDER. [Announcing] Mis-ter Gold-rum!
LADY W. [Sotto voce] And there he is! [She advances to meet a thin,
straggling man in eyeglasses, who is smiling absently] How good of
you!
MR. G. Thanks awfully. I just er--and then I'm afraid I must--er--
Things look very----Thanks----Thanks so much.
[He straggles through the doors, and is enclosed by JAMES.]
POULDER. Miss Mun-day.
LORD W. There! I thought she was in--She really is the most
unexpected woman! How do you do? How awfully sweet of you!
MISS M. [An elderly female schoolboy] How do you do? There's a
spiffing crowd. I believe things are really going Bolshy. How do
you do, Lord William? Have you got any of our people to show? I
told one or two, in case--they do so simply love an outing.
JAMES. There are three old chips in the lobby, my Lord.
LORD W. What? Oh! I say! Bring them in at once. Why--they're the
hub of the whole thing.
JAMES. [Going] Very good, my Lord.
LADY W. I am sorry. I'd no notion; and they're such dears always.
MISS M. I must tell you what one of them said to me. I'd told him
not to use such bad language to his wife. "Don't you worry, Ma!" he
said, "I expert you can do a bit of that yourself!"
LADY W. How awfully nice! It's SO like them.
MISS M. Yes. They're wonderful.
LORD W. I say, why do we always call them they?
LADY W. [Puzzled] Well, why not?
LORD W. THEY!
MISS M. [Struck] Quite right, Lord William! Quite right! Another
species. They! I must remember that. THEY! [She passes on.]
LADY W. [About to follow] Well, I don't see; aren't they?
LORD W. Never mind, old girl; follow on. They'll come in with me.
[MISS MUNDAY and LADY WILLIAM pass through the double doors.]
POULDER. [Announcing] Some sweated workers, my Lord.
[There enter a tall, thin, oldish woman; a short, thin, very
lame man, her husband; and a stoutish middle-aged woman with a
rolling eye and gait, all very poorly dressed, with lined and
heated faces.]
LORD W. [Shaking hands] How d'you do! Delighted to see you all.
It's awfully good of you to have come.
LAME M. Mr. and Mrs. Tomson. We 'ad some trouble to find it. You
see, I've never been in these parts. We 'ad to come in the oven; and
the bus-bloke put us dahn wrong. Are you the proprietor?
LORD W. [Modestly] Yes, I--er--
LAME M. You've got a nice plyce. I says to the missis, I says:
"'E's got a nice plyce 'ere," I says; "there's room to turn rahnd."
LORD W. Yes--shall we--?
LAME M. An' Mrs. Annaway she says: "Shouldn't mind livin 'ere
meself," she says; "but it must cost'im a tidy penny," she says.
LORD W. It does--it does; much too tidy. Shall we--?
MRS. ANN. [Rolling her eye] I'm very pleased to 'ave come. I've
often said to 'em: "Any time you want me," I've said, "I'd be pleased
to come."
LORD W. Not so pleased as we are to see you.
MRS. ANN. I'm sure you're very kind.
JAMES. [From the double doors, through which he has received a
message] Wanted for your speech, my Lord.
LORD W. Oh! God! Poulder, bring these ladies and gentleman in, and
put them where everybody can--where they can see everybody, don't you
know.
[He goes out hurriedly through the double doors.]
LAME M. Is 'e a lord?
POULDER. He is. Follow me.
[He moves towards the doors, the three workers follow.]
MRS. ANN. [Stopping before JAMES] You 'yn't one, I suppose?
[JAMES stirs no muscle.]
POULDER. Now please. [He opens the doors. The Voice of LORD
WILLIAM speaking is heard] Pass in.
[THE THREE WORKERS pass in, POULDER and JAMES follow them. The
doors are not closed, and through this aperture comes the voice
of LORD WILLIAM, punctuated and supported by decorous applause.]
[LITTLE ANNE runs in, and listens at the window to the confused
and distant murmurs of a crowd.]
VOICE OF LORD W. We propose to move for a further advance in the
chain-making and--er--er--match-box industries. [Applause.]
[LITTLE ANNE runs across to the door, to listen.]
[On rising voice] I would conclude with some general remarks.
Ladies and gentlemen, the great natural, but--er--artificial
expansion which trade experienced the first years after the war has--
er--collapsed. These are hard times. We who are fortunate feel more
than ever--er--responsible--[He stammers, loses the thread of his
thoughts.]--[Applause]--er--responsible--[The thread still eludes
him]--er----
L. ANNE. [Poignantly] Oh, Daddy!
LORD W. [Desperately] In fact--er--you know how--er--responsible we
feel.
L. ANNE. Hooray! [Applause.]
[There float in through the windows the hoarse and distant
sounds of the Marseillaise, as sung by London voices.]
LORD W. There is a feeling in the air--that I for one should say
deliberately was--er--a feeling in the air--er--a feeling in the
air----
L. ANNE. [Agonised] Oh, Daddy! Stop!
[Jane enters, and closes the door behind him. JAMES. Look
here! 'Ave I got to report you to Miss Stokes?]
L. ANNE. No-o-o!
JAMES. Well, I'm goin' to.
L. ANNE. Oh, James, be a friend to me! I've seen nothing yet.
JAMES. No; but you've eaten a good bit, on the stairs. What price
that Peach Melba?
L. ANNE. I can't go to bed till I've digested it can I? There's
such a lovely crowd in the street!
JAMES. Lovely? Ho!
L. ANNE. [Wheedling] James, you couldn't tell Miss Stokes! It
isn't in you, is it?
JAMES. [Grinning] That's right.
L. ANNE. So-I'll just get under here. [She gets under the table]
Do I show?
JAMES. [Stooping] Not 'arf!
[POULDER enters from the hall.]
POULDER. What are you doin' there?
JAMES. [Between him and the table--raising himself] Thinkin'.
[POULDER purses his mouth to repress his feedings.]
POULDER. My orders are to fetch the bomb up here for Lady William to
inspect. Take care no more writers stray in.
JAMES. How shall I know 'em?
POULDER. Well--either very bald or very hairy.
JAMES. Right-o! [He goes.]
[POULDER, with his back to the table, busies himself with the
set of his collar.]
POULDER. [Addressing an imaginary audience--in a low but important
voice] The--ah--situation is seerious. It is up to us of the--ah--
leisured classes----
[The face of LITTLE ANNE is poked out close to his legs, and
tilts upwards in wonder towards the bow of his waistcoat.]
to--ah--keep the people down. The olla polloi are clamourin'----
[Miss STOKES appears from the hall, between the pillars.]
Miss S. Poulder!
POULDER. [Making a volte face towards the table] Miss?
MISS S. Where is Anne?
POULDER. [Vexed at the disturbance of his speech] Excuse me, Miss--
to keep track of Miss Anne is fortunately no part of my dooties.
[Miss S. She really is naughty.]
POULDER. She is. If she was mine, I'd spank her.
[The smiling face of LITTLE ANNE becomes visible again close to
his legs.]
MISS S. Not a nice word.
POULDER. No; but a pleasant haction. Miss Anne's the limit. In
fact, Lord and Lady William are much too kind 'earted all round.
Take these sweated workers; that class o' people are quite 'opeless.
Treatin' them as your equals, shakin 'ands with 'em, givin 'em tea--
it only puffs 'em out. Leave it to the Church, I say.
MISS S. The Church is too busy, Poulder.
POULDER. Ah! That "Purity an' Future o' the Race Campaign." I'll
tell you what I thinks the danger o' that, Miss. So much purity that
there won't be a future race. [Expanding] Purity of 'eart's an
excellent thing, no doubt, but there's a want of nature about it.
Same with this Anti-Sweating. Unless you're anxious to come down,
you must not put the lower classes up.
MISS S. I don't agree with you at all, Poulder.
POULDER. Ah! You want it both ways, Miss. I should imagine you're
a Liberal.
MISS S. [Horrified] Oh, no! I certainly am not.
POULDER. Well, I judged from your takin' cocoa. Funny thing that,
about cocoa-how it still runs through the Liberal Party! It's
virtuous, I suppose. Wine, beer, tea, coffee-all of 'em vices. But
cocoa you might drink a gallon a day and annoy no one but yourself!
There's a lot o' deep things in life, Miss!
Miss S. Quite so. But I must find Anne.
[She recedes. ]
POULDER. [Suavely] Well, I wish you every success; and I hope
you'll spank her. This modern education--there's no fruitiness in
it.
L. ANNE. [From under the table] Poulder, are you virtuous?
POULDER. [Jumping] Good Ged!
L. ANNE. D'you mind my asking? I promised James I would.
POULDER. Miss Anne, come out!
[The four footmen appear in the hall, HENRY carrying the wine
cooler.]
JAMES. Form fours-by your right-quick march!
[They enter, marching down right of table.]
Right incline--Mark time! Left turn! 'Alt! 'Enry, set the bomb!
Stand easy!
[HENRY places the wine cooler on the table and covers it with a
blue embroidered Chinese mat, which has occupied the centre of
the tablecloth.]
POULDER. Ah! You will 'ave your game! Thomas, take the door there!
James, the 'all! Admit titles an' bishops. No literary or Labour
people. Charles and 'Enry, 'op it and 'ang about!
[CHARLES and HENRY go out, the other too move to their
stations.]
[POULDER, stands by the table looking at the covered bomb. The
hoarse and distant sounds of the Marseillaise float in again
from Park Lane.]
[Moved by some deep feeling] And this house an 'orspital in the war!
I ask you--what was the good of all our sacrifices for the country?
No town 'ouse for four seasons--rustygettin' in the shires, not a
soul but two boys under me. Lord William at the front, Lady William
at the back. And all for this! [He points sadly at the cooler] It
comes of meddlin' on the Continent. I had my prognostications at the
time. [To JAMES] You remember my sayin' to you just before you
joined up: "Mark my words--we shall see eight per cent. for our money
before this is over!"
JAMES. [Sepulchrally] I see the eight per cent., but not the money.
POULDER. Hark at that!
[The sounds of the Marseillaise grow louder. He shakes his
head.]
I'd read the Riot Act. They'll be lootin' this house next!
JAMES. We'll put up a fight over your body: "Bartholomew Poulder,
faithful unto death!" Have you insured your life?
POULDER. Against a revolution?
JAMES. Act o' God! Why not?
POULDER. It's not an act o' God.
JAMES. It is; and I sympathise with it.
POULDER. You--what?
JAMES. I do--only--hands off the gov'nor.
POULDER. Oh! Really! Well, that's something. I'm glad to see you
stand behind him, at all events.
JAMES. I stand in front of 'im when the scrap begins!
POULDER. Do you insinuate that my heart's not in the right place?
JAMES. Well, look at it! It's been creepin' down ever since I knew
you. Talk of your sacrifices in the war--they put you on your
honour, and you got stout on it. Rations--not 'arf.
POULDER. [Staring at him] For independence, I've never seen your
equal, James. You might be an Australian.
JAMES. [Suavely] Keep a civil tongue, or I'll throw you to the
crowd! [He comes forward to the table] Shall I tell you why I
favour the gov'nor? Because, with all his pomp, he's a gentleman, as
much as I am. Never asks you to do what he wouldn't do himself.
What's more, he never comes it over you. If you get drunk, or--well,
you understand me, Poulder--he'll just say: "Yes, yes; I know,
James!" till he makes you feel he's done it himself. [Sinking his
voice mysteriously] I've had experience with him, in the war and out.
Why he didn't even hate the Huns, not as he ought. I tell you he's
no Christian.
POULDER. Well, for irreverence----!
JAMES. [Obstinately] And he'll never be. He's got too soft a
heart.
L. ANNE. [Beneath the table-shrilly] Hurrah!
POULDER. [Jumping] Come out, Miss Anne!
JAMES. Let 'er alone!
POULDER. In there, under the bomb?
JAMES. [Contemptuously] Silly ass! You should take 'em lying down!
POULDER. Look here, James! I can't go on in this revolutionary
spirit; either you or I resign.
JAMES. Crisis in the Cabinet!
POULDER. I give you your marchin' orders.
JAMES. [Ineffably] What's that you give me?
POULDER. Thomas, remove James!
[THOMAS grins.]
L. ANNE. [Who, with open mouth, has crept out to see the fun] Oh!
Do remove James, Thomas!
POULDER. Go on, Thomas.
[THOMAS takes one step towards JAMES, who lays a hand on the
Chinese mat covering the bomb.]
JAMES. [Grimly] If I lose control of meself.
L. ANNE. [Clapping her hands] Oh! James! Do lose control! Then I
shall see it go off!
JAMES. [To POULDER] Well, I'll merely empty the pail over you!
POULDER. This is not becomin'!
[He walks out into the hall.]
JAMES. Another strategic victory! What a Boche he'd have made. As
you were, Tommy!
[THOMAS returns to the door. The sound of prolonged applause
cornea from within.]
That's a bishop.
L. ANNE. Why?
JAMES. By the way he's drawin'. It's the fine fightin' spirit in
'em. They were the backbone o' the war. I see there's a bit o' the
old stuff left in you, Tommy.
L. ANNE. [Scrutinizing the widely--grinning THOM] Where? Is it in
his mouth?
JAMES. You've still got a sense of your superiors. Didn't you
notice how you moved to Poulder's orders, me boy; an' when he was
gone, to mine?
L. ANNE. [To THOMAS] March!
[The grinning THOMAS remains immovable.]
He doesn't, James!
JAMES. Look here, Miss Anne--your lights ought to be out before ten.
Close in, Tommy!
[He and THOMAS move towards her.]
L. ANNE. [Dodging] Oh, no! Oh, no! Look!
[The footmen stop and turn. There between the pillars, stands
LITTLE AIDA with the trousers, her face brilliant With
surprise.]
JAMES. Good Lord! What's this?
[Seeing L. ANNE, LITTLE AIDA approaches, fascinated, and the two
children sniff at each other as it were like two little dogs
walking round and round.]
L. ANNE. [Suddenly] My name's Anne; what's yours?
L. AIDA. Aida.
L. ANNE. Are you lost?
L. AIDA. Nao.
L. ANNE. Are those trousers?
L. AIDA. Yus.
L. Arms. Whose?
L. AIDA. Mrs. Lemmy's.
L. ANNE. Does she wear them?
[LITTLE AIDA smiles brilliantly.]
L. AIDA. Nao. She sews 'em.
L. ANNE. [Touching the trousers] They are hard. James's are much
softer; aren't they, James? [JAMES deigns no reply] What shall we
do? Would you like to see my bedroom?
L. AIDA. [With a hop] Aoh, yus!
JAMES. No.
L. ANNE. Why not?
JAMES. Have some sense of what's fittin'.
L. ANNE. Why isn't it fittin'? [To LITTLE AIDA] Do you like me?
L. AIDA. Yus-s.
L. ANNE. So do I. Come on!
[She takes LITTLE AIDA'S hand.]
JAMES. [Between the pillars] Tommy, ketch 'em!
[THOMAS retains them by the skirts.]
L. ANNE. [Feigning indifference] All right, then! [To LITTLE AIDA]
Have you ever seen a bomb?
L. AIDA. Nao.
L. ANNE. [Going to the table and lifting a corner of the cover]
Look!
L. AIDA. [Looking] What's it for?
L. ANNE. To blow up this house.
L. AIDA. I daon't fink!
L. ANNE. Why not?
L. AIDA. It's a beautiful big 'Ouse.
L. ANNE. That's why. Isn't it, James?
L. AIDA. You give the fing to me; I'll blow up our 'ouse--it's an
ugly little 'ouse.
L. ANNE [Struck] Let's all blow up our own; then we can start fair.
Daddy would like that.
L. AIDA. Yus. [Suddenly brilliant] I've 'ad a ride in a taxi, an'
we're goin' 'ome in it agyne!
L. ANNE. Were you sick?
LITTLE AIDA. [Brilliant] Nao.
L. ANNE I was; when I first went in one, but I was quite young then.
James, could you get her a Peche Melba? There was one.
JAMES. No.
L. ANNE. Have you seen the revolution?
L. AIDA. Wot's that?
L. ANNE. It's made of people.
L. AIDA. I've seen the corfin, it's myde o' wood.
L. ANNE. Do you hate the rich?
L. AIDA. [Ineffably] Nao. I hates the poor.
L. ANNE. Why?
L. AIDA. 'Cos they 'yn't got nuffin'.
L. ANNE. I love the poor. They're such dears.
L. AIDA. [Shaking her head with a broad smile] Nao.
L. ANNE. Why not?
L. AIDA. I'd tyke and lose the lot, I would.
L. ANNE. Where?
L. AIDA. In the water.
L. ANNE. Like puppies?
L. AIDA. Yus.
L. ANNE. Why?
L. AIDA. Then I'd be shut of 'em.
L. ANNE. [Puzzled] Oh!
[The voice of THE PRESS is heard in the hall. "Where's the
little girl?"]
JAMES. That's you. Come 'ere!
[He puts a hand behind LITTLE AIDA'S back and propels her
towards the hall. THE PRESS enters with old MRS. LEMMY.]
PRESS. Oh! Here she is, major domo. I'm going to take this old
lady to the meeting; they want her on the platform. Look after our
friend, Mr. Lemmy here; Lord William wants to see him presently.
L. ANNE. [In an awed whisper] James, it's the little blighter!
[She dives again under the table. LEMMY enters.]
LEMMY. 'Ere! 'Arf a mo'! Yer said yer'd drop me at my plyce.
Well, I tell yer candid--this 'yn't my plyce.
PRESS. That's all right, Mr. Lemmy. [He grins] They'll make you
wonderfully comfortable, won't you, major domo?
[He passes on through the room, to the door, ushering old MRS.
LEMMY and LITTLE AIDA.]
[POULDER blocks LEMMY'S way, with CHARLES and HENRY behind him.]
POULDER. James, watch it; I'll report.
[He moves away, following THE PRESS through the door. JAMES
between table and window. THOMAS has gone to the door. HENRY
and CHARLES remain at the entrances to the hall. LEMMY looks
dubiously around, his cockney assurrance gradually returns.]
LEMMY. I think I knows the gas 'ere. This is where I came to-dy,
'yn't it? Excuse my hesitytion--these little 'ouses IS so much the
syme.
JAMES. [Gloomily] They are!
LEMMY. [Looking at the four immovable footmen, till he concentrates
on JAMES] Ah! I 'ad a word wiv you, 'adn't I? You're the four
conscientious ones wot's wyin' on your gov'nor's chest. 'Twas you I
spoke to, wasn't it? [His eyes travel over them again] Ye're so
monotonous. Well, ye're busy now, I see. I won't wyste yer time.
[He turns towards the hall, but CHARLES and HENRY bar the way in
silence.]
[Skidding a little, and regarding the four immovables once more]
I never see such pytient men? Compared wiv yer, mountains is
restless.
[He goes to the table. JAMES watches him. ANNE barks from
underneath.]
[Skidding again] Why! There's a dawg under there. [Noting the grin
on THOMAS'S face] Glad it amooses yer. Yer want it, daon't yer, wiv
a fyce like that? Is this a ply wivaht words? 'Ave I got into the
movies by mistyke? Turn aht, an' let's 'ave six penn'orth o'
darkness.
L. ANNE. [From beneath the cable] No, no! Not dark!
LEMMY. [Musingly] The dawg talks anywy. Come aht, Fido!
[LITTLE ANNE emerges, and regards him with burning curiosity.]
I sy: Is this the lytest fashion o' receivin' guests?
L. ANNE. Mother always wants people to feel at home. What shall we
do? Would you like to hear the speeches? Thomas, open the door a
little, do!
JAMES. 'Umour 'er a couple o' inches, Tommy!
[THOMAS draws the door back stealthily an inch or so.]
L. ANNE. [After applying her eye-in a loud whisper] There's the old
lady. Daddy's looking at her trousers. Listen!
[For MRS. LEMMY'S voice is floating faintly through: "I putt in
the buttonholes, I stretches the flies; I 'ems the bottoms; I
lines the crutch; I putt on this bindin'; I sews on the buttons;
I presses the seams--Tuppence three farthin's the pair."]
LEMMY. [In a hoarse whisper] That's it, old lydy: give it 'em!
L. ANNE. Listen!
VOICE OF LORD W. We are indebted to our friends the Press for giving
us the pleasure--er--pleasure of hearing from her own lips--the
pleasure----
L. ANNE. Oh! Daddy!
[THOMAS abruptly closes the doors.]
LEMMY. [To ANNE] Now yer've done it. See wot comes o' bein'
impytient. We was just gettin' to the marrer.
L. ANNE. What can we do for you now?
LEMMY. [Pointing to ANNE, and addressing JAMES] Wot is this one,
anywy?
JAMES. [Sepulchrally] Daughter o' the house.
LEMMY. Is she insured agynst 'er own curiosity?
L. ANNE. Why?
LEMMY. As I daon't believe in a life beyond the gryve, I might be
tempted to send yer there.
L. ANNE. What is the gryve?
LEMMY. Where little gells goes to.
L. ANNE. Oh, when?
LEMMY. [Pretending to look at a match, which is not there] Well, I
dunno if I've got time to finish yer this minute. Sy to-mower at.
'arf past.
L. ANNE. Half past what?
LEMMY. [Despairingly] 'Arf past wot!
[The sound of applause is heard.]
JAMES. That's 'is Grace. 'E's gettin' wickets, too.
[POULDER entering from the door.]
POULDER. Lord William is slippin' in.
[He makes a cabalistic sign with his head. Jeers crosses to the
door. LEMMY looks dubiously at POULDER.]
LEMMY. [Suddenly--as to himself] Wot oh! I am the portly one!
POULDER. [Severely] Any such allusion aggeravates your offence.
LEMMY. Oh, ah! Look 'ere, it was a corked bottle. Now, tyke care,
tyke care, 'aughty! Daon't curl yer lip! I shall myke a clean
breast o' my betryal when the time comes!
[There is a alight movement of the door. ANNE makes a dive
towards the table but is arrested by POULDER grasping her
waistband. LORD WILLIAM slips in, followed by THE PRESS, on
whom JAMES and THOMAS close the door too soon.]
HALF OF THE PRESS. [Indignantly] Look out!
JAMES. Do you want him in or out, me Lord?
LEMMY. I sy, you've divided the Press; 'e was unanimous.
[The FOOTMEN let THE PRESS through.]
LORD W. [To THE PRESS] I'm so sorry.
LEMMY. Would yer like me to see to 'is gas?
LORD W. So you're my friend of the cellars?
LEMMY. [Uneasy] I daon't deny it.
[POULDER begins removing LITTLE ANNE.]
L. ANNE. Let me stay, Daddy; I haven't seen anything yet! If I go,
I shall only have to come down again when they loot the house.
Listen!
[The hoarse strains of the Marseillaise are again heard from the
distance.]
LORD W. [Blandly] Take her up, Poulder!
L. ANNE. Well, I'm coming down again--and next time I shan't have
any clothes on, you know.
[They vanish between the pillars. LORD WILLIAM makes a sign of
dismissal. The FOOTMAN file out.]
LEMMY. [Admiringly] Luv'ly pyces!
LORD W. [Pleasantly] Now then; let's have our talk, Mr.----
LEMMY. Lemmy.
PRESS. [Who has slipped his note-book out] "Bombed and Bomber face
to face----"
LEMMY. [Uneasy] I didn't come 'ere agyne on me own, yer know. The
Press betryed me.
LORD W. Is that old lady your mother?
LEMMY. The syme. I tell yer stryte, it was for 'er I took that old
bottle o' port. It was orful old.
LORD W. Ah! Port? Probably the '83. Hope you both enjoyed it.
LEMMY. So far-yus. Muvver'll suffer a bit tomower, I expect.
LORD W. I should like to do something for your mother, if you'll
allow me.
LEMMY. Oh! I'll allow yer. But I dunno wot she'll sy.
LORD W. I can see she's a fine independent old lady! But suppose
you were to pay her ten bob a week, and keep my name out of it?
LEMMY. Well, that's one wy o' YOU doin' somefink, 'yn't it?
LORD W. I giving you the money, of course.
PRESS. [Writing] "Lord William, with kingly generosity----"
LEMMY. [Drawing attention to THE PRESS with his thumb] I sy--
I daon't mind, meself--if you daon't----
LORD W. He won't write anything to annoy me.
PRESS. This is the big thing, Lord William; it'll get the public
bang in the throat.
LEMMY. [Confidentially] Bit dyngerous, 'yn't it? trustin' the
Press? Their right 'ands never knows wot their left 'ands is
writin'. [To THE PRESS] 'Yn't that true, speakin' as a man?
PRESS. Mr. Lemmy, even the Press is capable of gratitude.
LEMMY. Is it? I should ha' thought it was too important for a
little thing like that. [To LORD WILLIAM] But ye're quite right; we
couldn't do wivaht the Press--there wouldn't be no distress, no
coffin, no revolution--'cos nobody'd know nuffin' abaht it. Why!
There wouldn't be no life at all on Earf in these dyes, wivaht the
Press! It's them wot says: "Let there be Light--an' there is Light."
LORD W. Umm! That's rather a new thought to me. [Writes on his
cuff.]
LEMMY. But abaht Muvver, I'll tell yer 'ow we can arrynge. You send
'er the ten bob a week wivaht syin' anyfink, an' she'll fink it comes
from Gawd or the Gover'ment yer cawn't tell one from t'other in
Befnal Green.
LORD W. All right; we'll' do that.
LEMMY. Will yer reely? I'd like to shyke yer 'and.
[LORD WILLIAM puts out his hand, which LEMMY grasps.]
PRESS. [Writing] "The heartbeat of humanity was in that grasp
between the son of toil and the son of leisure."
LEMMY. [Already ashamed of his emotion] 'Ere, 'arf a mo'! Which is
which? Daon't forget I'm aht o' wori; Lord William, if that's 'is
nyme, is workin 'ard at 'is Anti-Sweats! Wish I could get a job like
vat--jist suit me!
LORD W. That hits hard, Mr. Lemmy.
LEMMY. Daon't worry! Yer cawn't 'elp bein' born in the purple!
LORD W. Ah! Tell me, what would you do in my place?
LEMMY. Why--as the nobleman said in 'is well-known wy: "Sit in me
Club winder an' watch it ryne on the dam people!" That's if I was a
average nobleman! If I was a bit more noble, I might be tempted to
come the kind'earted on twenty thou' a year. Some prefers yachts, or
ryce 'orses. But philanthropy on the 'ole is syfer, in these dyes.
LORD W. So you think one takes to it as a sort of insurance, Mr.
Lemmy? Is that quite fair?
LEMMY. Well, we've all got a weakness towards bein' kind, somewhere
abaht us. But the moment wealf comes in, we 'yn't wot I call
single-'earted. If yer went into the foundytions of your wealf--would
yer feel like 'avin' any? It all comes from uvver people's 'ard,
unpleasant lybour--it's all built on Muvver as yer might sy. An' if
yer daon't get rid o' some of it in bein' kind--yer daon't feel syfe
nor comfy.
LORD W. [Twisting his moustache] Your philosophy is very pessimistic.
LEMMY. Well, I calls meself an optimist; I sees the worst of
everyfink. Never disappynted, can afford to 'ave me smile under the
blackest sky. When deaf is squeezin' of me windpipe, I shall 'ave a
laugh in it! Fact is, if yer've 'ad to do wiv gas an' water pipes,
yer can fyce anyfing. [The distant Marseillaise blares up] 'Ark at
the revolution!
LORD W. [Rather desperately] I know--hunger and all the rest of it!
And here am I, a rich man, and don't know what the deuce to do.
LEMMY. Well, I'll tell yer. Throw yer cellars open, an' while the
populyce is gettin' drunk, sell all yer 'ave an' go an' live in
Ireland; they've got the millennium chronic over there.
[LORD WILLIAM utters a short, vexed laugh, and begins to walk
about.]
That's speakin' as a practical man. Speakin' as a synt "Bruvvers,
all I 'ave is yours. To-morrer I'm goin' dahn to the Lybour Exchynge
to git put on the wytin' list, syme as you!"
LORD W. But, d---it, man, there we should be, all together! Would
that help?
LEMMY. Nao; but it'd syve a lot o' blood.
[LORD WILLIAM stops abruptly, and looks first at LEMMY, then at
the cooler, still cohered with the Chinese mat.]
Yer thought the Englishman could be taught to shed blood wiv syfety.
Not 'im! Once yer git 'im into an 'abit, yer cawn't git 'im out of
it agyne. 'E'll go on sheddin' blood mechanical--Conservative by
nyture. An' 'e won't myke nuffin' o' yours. Not even the Press wiv
'is 'oneyed words'll sty 'is 'and.
LORD W. And what do you suggest we could have done, to avoid
trouble?
LEMMY. [Warming to his theme] I'll tell yer. If all you wealfy
nobs wiv kepitel 'ad come it kind from the start after the war yer'd
never 'a been 'earin' the Marseillaisy naow. Lord! 'Ow you did talk
abaht Unity and a noo spirit in the Country. Noo spirit! Why, soon
as ever there was no dynger from outside, yer stawted to myke it
inside, wiv an iron'and. Naow, you've been in the war an' it's given
yer a feelin' 'eart; but most of the nobs wiv kepitel was too old or
too important to fight. They weren't born agyne. So naow that bad
times is come, we're 'owlin' for their blood.
LORD W. I quite agree; I quite agree. I've often said much the same
thing.
LEMMY. Voice cryin' in the wilderness--I daon't sy we was yngels--
there was faults on bofe sides. [He looks at THE PRESS] The Press
could ha' helped yer a lot. Shall I tell yer wot the Press did?
"It's vital," said the Press, "that the country should be united, or
it will never recover." Nao strikes, nao 'omen nature, nao nuffink.
Kepitel an' Lybour like the Siamese twins. And, fust dispute that
come along, the Press orfs wiv its coat an' goes at it bald'eaded.
An' wot abaht since? Sich a riot o' nymes called, in Press--and
Pawlyement. Unpatriotic an' outrygeous demands o' lybour.
Blood-suckin' tyranny o' Kepitel; thieves an' dawgs an 'owlin
Jackybines--gents throwin' books at each other; all the resources of
edjucytion exhausted! If I'd bin Prime Minister I'd 'ave 'ad the
Press's gas cut 'orf at the meter. Puffect liberty, of course, nao
Censorship; just sy wot yer like--an' never be 'eard of no more.
[Turning suddenly to THE PRESS, who has been scribbling in pace
with this harangue, and now has developed a touch of writer's
cramp.]
Why! 'Is 'end's out o' breath! Fink o' vet!
LORD W. Great tribute to your eloquence, Mr. Lemmy!
[A sudden stir of applause and scraping of chairs is heard; the
meeting is evidently breaking up. LADY WILLIAM comes in,
followed by MRS. LEMMY with her trousers, and LITTLE AIDA.
LEMMY stares fixedly at this sudden, radiant apparition. His
gaze becomes as that of a rabbit regarding a snake. And
suddenly he puts up his hand and wipes his brow.]
[LADY WILLIAM, going to the table, lifts one end of the Chinese
mat, and looks at LEMMY. Then she turns to LORD WILLIAM.]
LADY W. Bill!
LEMMY. [To his mother--in a hoarse whisper] She calls 'im Bill.
'Ow! 'Yn't she IT?
LADY W. [Apart] Have you--spoken to him?
[LORD WILLIAM shakes his head.]
Not? What have you been saying, then?
LORD W. Nothing, he's talked all the time.
LADY W. [Very low] What a little caution!
LORD W. Steady, old girl! He's got his eye on you!
[LADY WILLIAM looks at LEMMY, whose eyes are still fixed on
her.]
LADY W. [With resolution] Well, I'm going to tackle him.
[She moves towards LEMMY, who again wipes his brow, and wrings
out his hand.]
MRS. LEMMY. Don't 'ee du that, Bob. Yu must forgive'im, Ma'am; it's
'is admiration. 'E was always one for the ladies, and he'm not used
to seein' so much of 'em.
LADY W. Don't you think you owe us an explanation?
MRS. LEMMY. Speak up, Bob.
[But LEMMY only shifts his feet.]
My gudeness! 'E've a-lost 'is tongue. I never knu that 'appen to 'e
before.
LORD W. [Trying to break the embarrassment] No ill-feeling, you
know, Lemmy.
[But LEMMY still only rolls his eyes.]
LADY W. Don't you think it was rather--inconsiderate of you?
LEMMY. Muvver, tyke me aht, I'm feelin' fynte!
[Spurts of the Marseillaise and the mutter of the crowd have
been coming nearer; and suddenly a knocking is heard. POULDER
and JAMES appear between the pillars.]
POULDER. The populace, me Lord!
LADY W. What!
LORD W. Where've you put 'em, Poulder?
POULDER. They've put theirselves in the portico, me Lord.
LORD W. [Suddenly wiping his brow] Phew! I say, this is awful,
Nell! Two speeches in one evening. Nothing else for it, I suppose.
Open the window, Poulder!
POULDER. [Crossing to the window] We are prepared for any
sacrifice, me Lord.
[He opens the window.]
PRESS. [Writing furiously] "Lady William stood like a statue at
bay."
LORD W. Got one of those lozenges on you, Nell?
[But LADY WILLIAM has almost nothing on her.]
LEMMY. [Producing a paper from his pocket] 'Ave one o' my gum
drops?
[He passes it to LORD WILLIAM.]
LORD W. [Unable to refuse, takes a large, flat gum drop from the
paper, and looks at it in embarrassment.] Ah! thanks! Thanks
awfully!
[LEMMY turns to LITTLE AIDA, and puts a gum drop in her mouth.
A burst of murmurs from the crowd.]
JAMES. [Towering above the wine cooler] If they get saucy, me Lord,
I can always give 'em their own back.
LORD W. Steady, James; steady!
[He puts the gum drop absently in his mouth, and turns up to the
open window.]
VOICE. [Outside] 'Ere they are--the bally plutocrats.
[Voices in chorus: "Bread! Bread!"]
LORD W. Poulder, go and tell the chef to send out anything there is
in the house--nicely, as if it came from nowhere in particular.
POULDER. Very good, me Lord. [Sotto voce] Any wine? If I might
suggest--German--'ock?
LORD W. What you like.
POULDER. Very good, me Lord. [He goes.]
LORD W. I say, dash it, Nell, my teeth are stuck! [He works his
finger in his mouth.]
LADY W. Take it out, darling.
LORD W. [Taking out the gum drop and looking at it] What the deuce
did I put it in for?
PRESS. ['Writing] "With inimitable coolness Lord William prepared
to address the crowd."
[Voices in chorea: "Bread! Bread!"]
LORD W. Stand by to prompt, old girl. Now for it. This ghastly gum
drop!
[LORD WILLIAM takes it from his agitated hand, and flips it
through the window.]
VOICE. Dahn with the aristo----[Chokes.]
LADY W. Oh! Bill----oh! It's gone into a mouth!
LORD W. Good God!
VOICE. Wet's this? Throwin' things? Mind aht, or we'll smash yer
winders!
[As the voices in chorus chant: "Bread! Bread!" LITTLE ANNE,
night-gowned, darts in from the hall. She is followed by MISS
STOKES. They stand listening.]
LORD W. [To the Crowd] My friends, you've come to the wrong shop.
There's nobody in London more sympathetic with you. [The crowd
laughs hoarsely.] [Whispering] Look out, old girl; they can see your
shoulders. [LORD WILLIAM moves back a step.] If I were a speaker, I
could make you feel----
VOICE. Look at his white weskit! Blood-suckers--fattened on the
people!
[JAMES dives his hand at the wine cooler.]
LORD W. I've always said the Government ought to take immediate
steps----
VOICE. To shoot us dahn.
LORD W. Not a bit. To relieve the--er----
LADY W. [Prompting] Distress.
LADY W. Distress, and ensure--er--ensure
LADY W. [Prompting] Quiet.
LORD W. [To her] No, no. To ensure--ensure----
L. ANNE. [Agonized] Oh, Daddy!
VOICE. 'E wants to syve 'is dirty great 'ouse.
LORD W. [Roused] D----if I do!
[Rude and hoarse laughter from the crowd.]
JAMES. [With fury] Me Lord, let me blow 'em to glory!
[He raises the cooler and advances towards the window.]
LORD W. [Turning sharply on him] Drop it, James; drop it!
PRESS. [Jumping] No, no; don't drop it!
[JAMES retires crestfallen to the table, where he replaces the
cooler.]
LORD W. [Catching hold of his bit] Look here, I must have fought
alongside some of you fellows in the war. Weren't we jolly well like
brothers?
A VOICE. Not so much bloomin' "Kamerad"; hand over yer 'Ouse.
LORD W. I was born with this beastly great house, and money, and
goodness knows what other entanglements--a wife and family----
VOICE. Born with a wife and family!
[Jeers and laughter.]
LORD W. I feel we're all in the same boat, and I want to pull my
weight. If you can show me the way, I'll take it fast enough.
A DEEP VOICE. Step dahn then, an' we'll step up.
ANOTHER VOICE. 'Ear, 'Ear!
[A fierce little cheer.]
LORD W. [To LADY WILLIAM--in despair] By George! I can't get in
anywhere!
LADY W. [Calmly] Then shut the window, Bill.
LEMMY. [Who has been moving towards them slowly] Lemme sy a word to
'em.
[All stare at him. LEMMY approaches the window, followed by
LITTLE AIDA. POULDER re-enters with the three other footmen.]
[At the window] Cheerio! Cockies!
[The silence of surprise falls on the crowd.]
I'm one of yer. Gas an' water I am. Got more grievances an' out of
employment than any of yer. I want to see their blood flow, syme as
you.
PRESS. [writing] "Born orator--ready cockney wit--saves situation."
LEMMY. Wot I sy is: Dahn wiv the country, dahn wiv everyfing. Begin
agyne from the foundytions. [Nodding his head back at the room] But
we've got to keep one or two o' these 'ere under glawss, to show our
future generytions. An' this one is 'armless. His pipes is sahnd,
'is 'eart is good; 'is 'ead is not strong. Is 'ouse will myke a
charmin' palace o' varieties where our children can come an' see 'ow
they did it in the good old dyes. Yer never see rich waxworks as 'is
butler and 'is four conscientious khaki footmen. Why--wot dyer think
'e 'as 'em for--fear they might be out o'-works like you an' me.
Nao! Keep this one; 'e's a Flower. 'Arf a mo'! I'll show yer my
Muvver. Come 'ere, old lydy; and bring yer trahsers. [MRS. LEMMY
comes forward to the window] Tell abaht yer speech to the meetin'.
MRS. LEMMY. [Bridling] Oh dear! Well, I cam' in with me trousers,
an' they putt me up on the pedestory at once, so I tole 'em.
[Holding up the trousers] "I putt in the button'oles, I stretches
the flies; I lines the crutch; I putt on this bindin', I presses the
seams--Tuppence three farthin's a pair."
[A groan from tote crowd, ]
LEMMY. [Showing her off] Seventy-seven! Wot's 'er income? Twelve
bob a week; seven from the Gover'ment an' five from the sweat of 'er
brow. Look at 'er! 'Yn't she a tight old dear to keep it goin'! No
workus for 'er, nao fear! The gryve rather!
[Murmurs from the crowd, at Whom MRS. LEMMY is blandly smiling.]
You cawn't git below 'er--impossible! She's the foundytions of the
country--an' rocky 'yn't the word for 'em. Worked 'ard all 'er life,
brought up a family and buried 'em on it. Twelve bob a week, an'
given when 'er fingers goes, which is very near. Well, naow, this
torf 'ere comes to me an' says: "I'd like to do somefin' for yer
muvver. 'Ow's ten bob a week?" 'e says. Naobody arst 'im--quite on
'is own. That's the sort 'e is. [Sinking his voice confidentially]
Sorft. You bring yer muvvers 'ere, 'e'll do the syme for them. I
giv yer the 'int.
VOICE. [From the crowd] What's 'is nyme?
LEMMY. They calls 'im Bill.
VOICE. Bill What?
L. ANNE. Dromondy.
LADY W. Anne!
LEMMY. Dromedary 'is nyme is.
VOICE. [From the crowd] Three cheers for Bill Dromedary.
LEMMY. I sy, there's veal an' 'am, an' pork wine at the back for
them as wants it; I 'eard the word passed. An' look 'ere, if yer
want a flag for the revolution, tyke muvver's trahsers an' tie 'em to
the corfin. Yer cawn't 'ave no more inspirin' banner. Ketch! [He
throws the trousers out] Give Bill a double-barrel fast, to show
there's no ill-feelin'. Ip, 'ip!
[The crowd cheers, then slowly passes away, singing at a hoarse
version of the Marseillaise, till all that is heard is a faint
murmuring and a distant barrel-organ playing the same tune.]
PRESS. [Writing] "And far up in the clear summer air the larks were
singing."
LORD W. [Passing his heard over his hair, and blinking his eyes]
James! Ready?
JAMES. Me Lord!
L. ANNE. Daddy!
LADY W. [Taking his arm] Bill! It's all right, old man--all right!
LORD W. [Blinking] Those infernal larks! Thought we were on the
Somme again! Ah! Mr. Lemmy, [Still rather dreamy] no end obliged
to you; you're so decent. Now, why did you want to blow us up before
dinner?
LEMMY. Blow yer up? [Passing his hand over his hair in travesty]
"Is it a dream? Then wykin' would be pyne."
MRS. LEMMY. Bo-ob! Not so saucy, my boy!
LEMMY. Blow yet up? Wot abaht it?
LADY W. [Indicating the bomb] This, Mr. Lemmy!
[LEMMY looks at it, and his eyes roll and goggle.]
LORD W. Come, all's forgiven! But why did you?
LEMMY. Orl right! I'm goin' to tyke it awy; it'd a-been a bit
ork'ard for me. I'll want it to-mower.
LORD W. What! To leave somewhere else?
LEMMY. 'Yus, of course!
LORD W. No, no; dash it! Tell us what's it filled with?
LEMMY. Filled wiv? Nuffin'. Wot did yet expect? Toof-pahder?
It's got a bit o' my lead soldered on to it. That's why it's 'eavy!
LORD W. But what is it?
LEMMY. Wot is it? [His eyes are fearfully fixed on LADY WILLIAM] I
fought everybody knew 'em.
LADY W. Mr. Lemmy, you must clear this up, please.
LEMMY. [TO LORD WILLIAM, With his eyes still held On LADY WILLIAM--
mysteriously] Wiv lydies present? 'Adn't I better tell the Press?
LORD W. All right; tell someone--anyone!
[LEMMY goes down to THE PRESS, who is reading over his last
note. Everyone watches and listens with the utmost discretion,
while he whispers into the ear of THE PRESS; who shakes his head
violently.]
PRESS. No, no; it's too horrible. It destroys my whole----
LEMMY. Well, I tell yer it is.
[Whispers again violently.]
PRESS. No, no; I can't have it. All my article! All my article!
It can't be--no----
LEMMY. I never see sick an obstinate thick-head! Yer 'yn't worvy of
yet tryde.
[He whispers still more violently and makes cabalistic signs.]
[LADY WILLIAM lifts the bomb from the cooler into the sight of
all. LORD WILLIAM, seeing it for the first time in full light,
bends double in silent laughter, and whispers to his wife. LADY
WILLIAM drops the bomb and gives way too. Hearing the sound,
LEMMY turns, and his goggling eyes pan them all in review. LORD
and LADY WILLIAM in fits of laughter, LITTLE ANNE stamping her
feet, for MISS STOKES, red, but composed, has her hands placed
firmly over her pupil's eyes and ears; LITTLE AIDA smiling
brilliantly, MRS. LEMMY blandly in sympathy, neither knowing
why; the FOUR FOOTMAN in a row, smothering little explosions.
POULDER, extremely grave and red, THE PRESS perfectly haggard,
gnawing at his nails.]
LEMMY. [Turning to THE PRESS] Blimy! It amooses 'em, all but the
genteel ones. Cheer oh! Press! Yer can always myke somefin' out o'
nufun'? It's not the fust thing as 'as existed in yer imaginytion
only.
PRESS. No, d---it; I'll keep it a bomb!
LEMMY. [Soothingly] Ah! Keep the sensytion. Wot's the troof
compared wiv that? Come on, Muvver! Come on, Little Aida! Time we
was goin' dahn to 'Earf.
[He goes up to the table, and still skidding a little at LADY
WILLIAM, takes the late bomb from the cooler, placing it under
his arm.]
MRS. LEMMY. Gude naight, sir; gude naight, ma'am; thank yu for my
cup o' tea, an' all yore kindness.
[She shakes hands with LORD and LADY WILLIAM, drops the curtsey
of her youth before Mr. POULDER, and goes out followed by LITTLE
AIDA, who is looking back at LITTLE ANNE.]
LEMMY. [Turning suddenly] Aoh! An' jist one frog! Next time yer
build an 'ouse, daon't forget--it's the foundytions as bears the
wyte.
[With a wink that gives way, to a last fascinated look at LADY
WILLIAM, he passes out. All gaze after them, except THE PRESS,
who is tragically consulting his spiflicated notes.]
L. ANNE. [Breaking away from Miss STOKES and rushing forward] Oh!
Mum! what was it?
CURTAIN
THE SKIN GAME
(A TRAGI-COMEDY)
"Who touches pitch shall be defiled"
CHARACTERS
HILLCRIST ...............A Country Gentleman
AMY .....................His Wife
JILL ....................His Daughter
DAWKER ..................His Agent
HORNBLOWER ..............A Man Newly-Rich
CHARLES .................His Elder Son
CHLOE ...................Wife to Charles
ROLF ....................His Younger Son
FELLOWS .................Hillcrist's Butler
ANNA ....................Chloe's Maid
THE JACKMANS ............Man and Wife
AN AUCTIONEER
A SOLICITOR
TWO STRANGERS
ACT I. HILLCRIST'S Study
ACT II.
SCENE I. A month later. An Auction Room.
SCENE II. The same evening. CHLOE'S Boudoir.
ACT III
SCENE I. The following day. HILLCRIST'S Study. Morning.
SCENE II. The Same. Evening.
ACT I
HILLCRIST'S study. A pleasant room, with books in calf
bindings, and signs that the HILLCRIST'S have travelled, such
as a large photograph of the Taj Mahal, of Table Mountain, and
the Pyramids of Egypt. A large bureau [stage Right], devoted
to the business of a country estate. Two foxes' masks.
Flowers in bowls. Deep armchairs. A large French window open
[at Back], with a lovely view of a slight rise of fields and
trees in August sunlight. A fine stone fireplace [stage Left].
A door [Left]. A door opposite [Right]. General colour
effect--stone, and cigar-leaf brown, with spots of bright
colour.
[HILLCRIST sits in a swivel chair at the bureau, busy with
papers. He has gout, and his left foot is encased accord: He
is a thin, dried-up man of about fifty-five, with a rather
refined, rather kindly, and rather cranky countenance. Close
to him stands his very upstanding nineteen-year-old daughter
JILL, with clubbed hair round a pretty, manly face.]
JILL. You know, Dodo, it's all pretty good rot in these days.
HILLCRIST. Cads are cads, Jill, even in these days.
JILL. What is a cad?
HILLCRIST. A self-assertive fellow, without a sense of other
people.
JILL. Well, Old Hornblower I'll give you.
HILLCRIST. I wouldn't take him.
JILL. Well, you've got him. Now, Charlie--Chearlie--I say--the
importance of not being Charlie----
HILLCRIST. Good heavens! do you know their Christian names?
JILL. My dear father, they've been here seven years.
HILLCRIST. In old days we only knew their Christian names from
their tombstones.
JILL. Charlie Hornblower isn't really half a bad sport.
HILLCRIST. About a quarter of a bad sport I've always thought out
hunting.
JILL. [Pulling his hair] Now, his wife--Chloe---
HILLCRIST. [Whimsical] Gad! your mother'd have a fit if she knew
you called her Chloe.
JILL. It's a ripping name.
HILLCRIST. Chloe! H'm! I had a spaniel once----
JILL. Dodo, you're narrow. Buck up, old darling, it won't do.
Chloe has seen life, I'm pretty sure; THAT'S attractive, anyway.
No, mother's not in the room; don't turn your uneasy eyes.
HILLCRIST. Really, my dear, you are getting----
JILL. The limit. Now, Rolf----
HILLCRIST. What's Rolf? Another dog?
JILL. Rolf Hornblower's a topper; he really is a nice boy.
HILLCRIST. [With a sharp look] Oh! He's a nice boy?
JILL. Yes, darling. You know what a nice boy is, don't you?
HILLCRIST. Not in these days.
JILL. Well, I'll tell you. In the first place, he's not amorous.
HILLCRIST. What! Well, that's some comfort.
JILL. Just a jolly good companion.
HILLCRIST. To whom?
JILL. Well, to anyone--me.
HILLCRIST. Where?
JILL. Anywhere. You don't suppose I confine myself to the home
paddocks, do you? I'm naturally rangey, Father.
HILLCRIST. [Ironically] You don't say so!
JILL. In the second place, he doesn't like discipline.
HILLCRIST. Jupiter! He does seem attractive.
JILL. In the third place, he bars his father.
HILLCRIST. Is that essential to nice girls too?
JILL. [With a twirl of his hair] Fish not! Fourthly, he's got
ideas.
HILLCRIST. I knew it!
JILL. For instance, he thinks--as I do----
HILLCRIST. Ah! Good ideas.
JILL. [Pulling gently] Careful! He thinks old people run the show
too much. He says they oughtn't to, because they're so damtouchy.
Are you damtouchy, darling?
HILLCRIST. Well, I'm----! I don't know about touchy.
JILL. He says there'll be no world fit to live in till we get rid
of the old. We must make them climb a tall tree, and shake them off
it.
HILLCRIST. [Drily] Oh! he says that!
JILL. Otherwise, with the way they stand on each other's rights,
they'll spoil the garden for the young.
HILLCRIST. Does his father agree?
JILL. Oh! Rolf doesn't talk to him, his mouth's too large. Have
you ever seen it, Dodo?
HILLCRIST. Of course.
JILL. It's considerable, isn't it? Now yours is--reticent,
darling. [Rumpling his hair.]
HILLCRIST. It won't be in a minute. Do you realise that I've got
gout?
JILL. Poor ducky! How long have we been here, Dodo?
HILLCRIST. Since Elizabeth, anyway.
JILL. [Looking at his foot] It has its drawbacks. D'you think
Hornblower had a father? I believe he was spontaneous. But, Dodo,
why all this--this attitude to the Hornblowers?
[She purses her lips and makes a gesture as of pushing persons
away.]
HILLCRIST. Because they're pushing.
JILL. That's only because we are, as mother would say, and they're
not--yet. But why not let them be?
HILLCRIST. You can't.
JILL. Why?
HILLCRIST. It takes generations to learn to live and let live,
Jill. People like that take an ell when you give them an inch.
JILL. But if you gave them the ell, they wouldn't want the inch.
Why should it all be such a skin game?
HILLCRIST. Skin game? Where do you get your lingo?
JILL. Keep to the point, Dodo.
HILLCRIST. Well, Jill, all life's a struggle between people at
different stages of development, in different positions, with
different amounts of social influence and property. And the only
thing is to have rules of the game and keep them. New people like
the Hornblowers haven't learnt those rules; their only rule is to
get all they can.
JILL. Darling, don't prose. They're not half as bad as you think.
HILLCRIST. Well, when I sold Hornblower Longmeadow and the
cottages, I certainly found him all right. All the same, he's got
the cloven hoof. [Warming up] His influence in Deepwater is
thoroughly bad; those potteries of his are demoralising--the whole
atmosphere of the place is changing. It was a thousand pities he
ever came here and discovered that clay. He's brought in the modern
cutthroat spirit.
JILL. Cut our throat spirit, you mean. What's your definition of a
gentleman, Dodo?
HILLCRIST. [Uneasily] Can't describe--only feel it.
JILL. Oh! Try!
HILLCRIST. Well--er--I suppose you might say--a man who keeps his
form and doesn't let life scupper him out of his standards.
JILL. But suppose his standards are low?
HILLCRIST. [With some earnestness] I assume, of course, that he's
honest and tolerant, gentle to the weak, and not self-seeking.
JILL. Ah! self-seeking? But aren't we all, Dodo? I am.
HILLCRIST. [With a smile] You!
JILL. [Scornfully] Oh! yes--too young to know.
HILLCRIST. Nobody knows till they're under pretty heavy fire, Jill.
JILL. Except, of course, mother.
HILLCRIST. How do you mean--mother?
JILL. Mother reminds me of England according to herself--always
right whatever she does.
HILLCRIST. Ye-es. Your mother it perhaps--the perfect woman.
JILL. That's what I was saying. Now, no one could call you
perfect, Dodo. Besides, you've got gout.
HILLCRIST. Yes; and I want Fellows. Ring that bell.
JILL. [Crossing to the bell] Shall I tell you my definition of a
gentleman? A man who gives the Hornblower his due. [She rings the
bell] And I think mother ought to call on them. Rolf says old
Hornblower resents it fearfully that she's never made a sign to
Chloe the three years she's been here.
HILLCRIST. I don't interfere with your mother in such matters. She
may go and call on the devil himself if she likes.
JILL. I know you're ever so much better than she is.
HILLCRIST. That's respectful.
JILL. You do keep your prejudices out of your phiz. But mother
literally looks down her nose. And she never forgives an "h."
They'd get the "hell" from her if they took the "hinch."
HILLCRIST. Jill-your language!
JILL. Don't slime out of it, Dodo. I say, mother ought to call on
the Hornblowers. [No answer.] Well?
HILLCRIST. My dear, I always let people have the last word. It
makes them--feel funny. Ugh! My foot![Enter FELLOWS, Left.]
Fellows, send into the village and get another bottle of this stuff.
JILL. I'll go, darling.
[She blow him a kiss, and goes out at the window.]
HILLCRIST. And tell cook I've got to go on slops. This foot's
worse.
FELLOWS. [Sympathetic] Indeed, sir.
HILLCRIST. My third go this year, Fellows.
FELLOWS. Very annoying, sir.
HILLCRIST. Ye-es. Ever had it?
FELLOWS. I fancy I have had a twinge, sir.
HILLCRIST. [Brightening] Have you? Where?
FELLOWS. In my cork wrist, sir.
HILLCRIST. Your what?
FELLOWS. The wrist I draw corks with.
HILLCRIST. [With a cackle] You'd have had more than a twinge if
you'd lived with my father. H'm!
FELLOWS. Excuse me, sir--Vichy water corks, in my experience, are
worse than any wine.
HILLCRIST. [Ironically] Ah! The country's not what it was, is it,
Fellows?
FELLOWS. Getting very new, sir.
HILLCRIST. [Feelingly] You're right. Has Dawker come?
FELLOWS. Not yet, sir. The Jackmans would like to see you, sir.
HILLCRIST. What about?
FELLOWS. I don't know, sir.
HILLCRIST. Well, show them in.
FELLOWS. [Going] Yes, sir.
[HILLCRIST turns his swivel chair round. The JACKMANS come in.
He, a big fellow about fifty, in a labourer's dress, with eyes
which have more in then than his tongue can express; she, a
little woman with a worn face, a bright, quick glance, and a
tongue to match.]
HILLCRIST. Good morning, Mrs. Jackman! Morning, Jackman! Haven't
seen you for a long time. What can I do?
[He draws in foot, and breath, with a sharp hiss.]
HILLCRIST. [In a down-hearted voice] We've had notice to quit,
sir.
HILLCRIST. [With emphasis] What!
JACKMAN. Got to be out this week.
MRS. J. Yes, sir, indeed.
HILLCRIST. Well, but when I sold Longmeadow and the cottages, it
was on the express understanding that there was to be no disturbance
of tenancies:
MRS. J. Yes, sir; but we've all got to go. Mrs. 'Arvey, and the
Drews, an' us, and there isn't another cottage to be had anywhere in
Deepwater.
HILLCRIST. I know; I want one for my cowman. This won't do at all.
Where do you get it from?
JACKMAN. Mr. 'Ornblower, 'imself, air. Just an hour ago. He come
round and said: "I'm sorry; I want the cottages, and you've got to
clear."
MRS. J. [Bitterly] He's no gentleman, sir; he put it so brisk. We
been there thirty years, and now we don't know what to do. So I
hope you'll excuse us coming round, sir.
HILLCRIST. I should think so, indeed! H'm! [He rises and limps
across to the fireplace on his stick. To himself] The cloven hoof.
By George! this is a breach of faith. I'll write to him, Jackman.
Confound it! I'd certainly never have sold if I'd known he was
going to do this.
MRS. J. No, sir, I'm sure, sir. They do say it's to do with the
potteries. He wants the cottages for his workmen.
HILLCRIST. [Sharply] That's all very well, but he shouldn't have
led me to suppose that he would make no change.
JACKMAN. [Heavily] They talk about his havin' bought the Centry to
gut up more chimneys there, and that's why he wants the cottages.
HINT. The Centry! Impossible!
[Mrs. J. Yes, air; it's such a pretty spot-looks beautiful
from here. [She looks out through the window] Loveliest spot
in all Deepwater, I always say. And your father owned it, and
his father before 'im. It's a pity they ever sold it, sir,
beggin' your pardon.]
HILLCRIST. The Centry! [He rings the bell.]
Mrs. J. [Who has brightened up] I'm glad you're goin' to stop it,
sir. It does put us about. We don't know where to go. I said to
Mr. Hornblower, I said, "I'm sure Mr. Hillcrist would never 'eve
turned us out." An' 'e said: "Mr. Hillcrist be----" beggin' your
pardon, sir. "Make no mistake," 'e said, "you must go, missis." He
don't even know our name; an' to come it like this over us! He's a
dreadful new man, I think, with his overridin notions. And sich a
heavyfooted man, to look at. [With a sort of indulgent contempt]
But he's from the North, they say.
[FELLOWS has entered, Left.]
HILLCRIST. Ask Mrs. Hillcrist if she'll come.
FELLOWS. Very good, sir.
HILLCRIST. Is Dawker here?
FELLOWS. Not yet, sir.
HILLCRIST. I want to see him at once.
[FELLOWS retires.]
JACKMAN. Mr. Hornblower said he was comin' on to see you, sir. So
we thought we'd step along first.
HILLCRIST. Quite right, Jackman.
MRS. J. I said to Jackman: "Mr. Hillcrist'll stand up for us, I
know. He's a gentleman," I said. "This man," I said, "don't care
for the neighbourhood, or the people; he don't care for anything so
long as he makes his money, and has his importance. You can't
expect it, I suppose," I said; [Bitterly] "havin' got rich so
sudden." The gentry don't do things like that.
HILLCRIST. [Abstracted] Quite, Mrs. Jackman, quite!
[To himself] The Centry! No!
[MRS. HILLCRIST enters. A well-dressed woman, with a firm,
clear-cut face.]
Oh! Amy! Mr. and Mrs. Jackman turned out of their cottage, and
Mrs. Harvey, and the Drews. When I sold to Hornblower, I stipulated
that they shouldn't be.
MRS. J. Our week's up on Saturday, ma'am, and I'm sure I don't know
where we shall turn, because of course Jackman must be near his
work, and I shall lose me washin' if we have to go far.
HILLCRIST. [With decision] You leave it to me, Mrs. Jackman. Good
morning! Morning, Jackman! Sorry I can't move with this gout.
MRS. J. [For them both] I'm sure we're very sorry, sir. Good
morning, sir. Good morning, ma'am; and thank you kindly. [They go
out.]
HILLCRIST. Turning people out that have been there thirty years. I
won't have it. It's a breach of faith.
MRS. H. Do you suppose this Hornblower will care two straws about
that Jack?
HILLCRIST. He must, when it's put to him, if he's got any decent
feeling.
MRS. H. He hasn't.
HILLCRIST. [Suddenly] The Jackmans talk of his having bought the
Centry to put up more chimneys.
MRS. H. Never! [At the window, looking out] Impossible! It would
ruin the place utterly; besides cutting us off from the Duke's. Oh,
no! Miss Mullins would never sell behind our backs.
HILLCRIST. Anyway I must stop his turning these people out.
Mrs. H. [With a little smile, almost contemptuous] You might have
known he'd do something of the sort. You will imagine people are
like yourself, Jack. You always ought to make Dawker have things in
black and white.
HILLCRIST. I said quite distinctly: "Of course you won't want to
disturb the tenancies; there's a great shortage of cottages."
Hornblower told me as distinctly that he wouldn't. What more do you
want?
Mrs. H. A man like that thinks of nothing but the short cut to his
own way. [Looking out of the window towards the rise] If he buys
the Centry and puts up chimneys, we simply couldn't stop here.
HILLCRIST. My father would turn in his grave.
MRS. H. It would have been more useful if he'd not dipped the
estate, and sold the Centry. This Hornblower hates us; he thinks we
turn up our noses at him.
HILLCRIST. As we do, Amy.
MRS. H. Who wouldn't? A man without traditions, who believes in
nothing but money and push.
HILLCRIST. Suppose he won't budge, can we do anything for the
Jackmans?
MRS. H. There are the two rooms Beaver used to have, over the
stables.
FELLOWS. Mr. Dawker, sir.
[DAWKERS is a short, square, rather red-faced terrier of a man,
in riding clothes and gaiters.]
HILLCRIST. Ah! Dawker, I've got gout again.
DAWKER. Very sorry, sir. How de do, ma'am?
HILLCRIST. Did you meet the Jackmans?
DAWKERS. Yeh.
[He hardly ever quite finishes a word, seeming to snap of their
tails.]
HILLCRIST. Then you heard?
DAWKER. [Nodding] Smart man, Hornblower; never lets grass grow.
HILLCRIST. Smart?
DAWKER. [Grinning] Don't do to underrate your neighbours.
MRS. H. A cad--I call him.
DAWKER. That's it, ma'am-got all the advantage.
HILLCRIST. Heard anything about the Centry, Dawker?
DAWKER. Hornblower wants to buy.
HILLCRIST. Miss Mullins would never sell, would she?
DAWKER. She wants to.
HILLCRIST. The deuce she does!
DAWKER. He won't stick at the price either.
MRS. H. What's it worth, Dawker?
DAWKER. Depends on what you want it for.
MRS. H. He wants it for spite; we want it for sentiment.
DAWKER. [Grinning] Worth what you like to give, then; but he's a
rich man.
MRS. H. Intolerable!
DAWKER. [To HILLCRIST] Give me your figure, sir. I'll try the old
lady before he gets at her.
HILLCRIST. [Pondering] I don't want to buy, unless there's nothing
else for it. I should have to raise the money on the estate; it
won't stand much more. I can't believe the fellow would be such a
barbarian. Chimneys within three hundred yards, right in front of
this house! It's a nightmare.
MRS. H. You'd much better let Dawker make sure, Jack.
HILLCRIST. [Uncomfortable] Jackman says Hornblower's coming round
to see me. I shall put it to him.
DAWKER. Make him keener than ever. Better get in first.
HILLCRIST. Ape his methods!--Ugh! Confound this gout! [He gets
back to his chair with difficulty] Look here, Dawker, I wanted to
see you about gates----
FELLOWS. [Entering] Mr. Hornblower.
[HORNBLOWER enters-a man of medium, height, thoroughly
broadened, blown out, as it were, by success. He has thick,
coarse, dark hair, just grizzled, wry bushy eyebrow, a wide
mouth. He wears quite ordinary clothes, as if that department
were in charge of someone who knew about such, things. He has
a small rose in his buttonhole, and carries a Homburg hat,
which one suspects will look too small on his head.]
HORNBLOWER. Good morning! good morning! How are ye, Dawker? Fine
morning! Lovely weather!
[His voice has a curious blend in its tone of brass and oil,
and an accent not quite Scotch nor quite North country.]
Haven't seen ye for a long time, Hillcrist.
HILLCRIST. [Who has risen] Not since I sold you Longmeadow and
those cottages, I believe.
HORNBLOWER. Dear me, now! that's what I came about.
HILLCRIST. [Subsiding again into his chair] Forgive me! Won't you
sit down?
HORNBLOWER. [Not sitting] Have ye got gout? That's unfortunate.
I never get it. I've no disposition that way. Had no ancestors,
you see. Just me own drinkin' to answer for.
HILLCRIST. You're lucky.
HORNBLOWER. I wonder if Mrs. Hillcrist thinks that! Am I lucky to
have no past, ma'am? Just the future?
MRS. H. You're sure you have the future, Mr. Hornblower?
HORNBLOWER. [With a laugh] That's your aristocratic rapier thrust.
You aristocrats are very hard people underneath your manners. Ye
love to lay a body out. But I've got the future all right.
HILLCRIST. [Meaningly] I've had the Dackmans here, Mr. Hornblower.
HORNBLOWER. Who are they--man with the little spitfire wife?
HILLCRIST. They're very excellent, good people, and they've been in
that cottage quietly thirty years.
HORNBLOWER. [Throwing out his forefinger--a favourite gesture] Ah!
ye've wanted me to stir ye up a bit. Deepwater needs a bit o' go
put into it. There's generally some go where I am. I daresay you
wish there'd been no "come." [He laughs].
MRS. H. We certainly like people to keep their word, Mr.
Hornblower.
HILLCRIST. Amy!
HORNBLOWER. Never mind, Hillcrist; takes more than that to upset
me.
[MRS. HILLCRIST exchanges a look with DAWKER who slips out
unobserved.]
HILLCRIST. You promised me, you know, not to change the tenancies.
HORNBLOWER. Well, I've come to tell ye that I have. I wasn't
expecting to have the need when I bought. Thought the Duke would
sell me a bit down there; but devil a bit he will; and now I must
have those cottages for my workmen. I've got important works, ye
know.
HILLCRIST. [Getting heated] The Jackmans have their importance
too, sir. Their heart's in that cottage.
HORNBLOWER. Have a sense of proportion, man. My works supply
thousands of people, and my, heart's in them. What's more, they
make my fortune. I've got ambitions--I'm a serious man. Suppose I
were to consider this and that, and every little potty objection--
where should I get to?--nowhere!
HILLCRIST. All the same, this sort of thing isn't done, you know.
HORNBLOWER. Not by you because ye've got no need to do it. Here ye
are, quite content on what your fathers made for ye. Ye've no
ambitions; and ye want other people to have none. How d'ye think
your fathers got your land?
HILLCRIST. [Who has risen] Not by breaking their word.
HORNBLOWER. [Throwing out his, finger] Don't ye believe it. They
got it by breaking their word and turnin' out Jackmans, if that's
their name, all over the place.
MRS. H. That's an insult, Mr. Hornblower.
HORNBLOWER. No; it's a repartee. If ye think so much of these
Jackmans, build them a cottage yourselves; ye've got the space.
HILLCRIST. That's beside the point. You promised me, and I sold on
that understanding.
HORNBLOWER. And I bought on the understandin' that I'd get some
more land from the Duke.
HILLCRIST. That's nothing to do with me.
HORNBLOWER. Ye'll find it has; because I'm going to have those
cottages.
HILLCRIST. Well, I call it simply----
[He checks himself.]
HORNBLOWER. Look here, Hillcrist, ye've not had occasion to
understand men like me. I've got the guts, and I've got the money;
and I don't sit still on it. I'm going ahead because I believe in
meself. I've no use for sentiment and that sort of thing. Forty of
your Jackmans aren't worth me little finger.
HILLCRIST. [Angry] Of all the blatant things I ever heard said!
HORNBLOWER. Well, as we're speaking plainly, I've been thinkin'.
Ye want the village run your oldfashioned way, and I want it run
mine. I fancy there's not room for the two of us here.
MRS. H. When are you going?
HORNBLOWER. Never fear, I'm not going.
HILLCRIST. Look here, Mr. Hornblower--this infernal gout makes me
irritable--puts me at a disadvantage. But I should be glad if you'd
kindly explain yourself.
HORNBLOWER. [With a great smile] Ca' canny; I'm fra' the North.
HILLCRIST. I'm told you wish to buy the Centry and put more of your
chimneys up there, regardless of the fact [He Points through the
window] that it would utterly ruin the house we've had for
generations, and all our pleasure here.
HORNBLOWER. How the man talks! Why! Ye'd think he owned the sky,
because his fathers built him a house with a pretty view, where he's
nothing to do but live. It's sheer want of something to do that
gives ye your fine sentiments, Hillcrist.
HILLCRIST. Have the goodness not to charge me with idleness.
Dawker--where is he?----[He shows the bureau] When you do the
drudgery of your works as thoroughly as I do that of my estate----
Is it true about the Centry?
HORNBLOWER. Gospel true. If ye want to know, my son Chearlie is
buyin' it this very minute.
MRS. H. [Turning with a start] What do you say?
HORNBLOWER. Ay, he's with the old lady she wants to sell, an'
she'll get her price, whatever it is.
HILLCRIST. [With deep anger] If that isn't a skin game, Mr.
Hornblower, I don't know what is.
HORNBLOWER. Ah! Ye've got a very nice expression there. "Skin
game!" Well, bad words break no bones, an' they're wonderful for
hardenin' the heart. If it wasn't for a lady's presence, I could
give ye a specimen or two.
MRS. H. Oh! Mr. Hornblower, that need not stop you, I'm sure.
HORNBLOWER. Well, and I don't know that it need. Ye're an
obstruction--the like of you--ye're in my path. And anyone in my
path doesn't stay there long; or, if he does, he stays there on my
terms. And my terms are chimneys in the Centry where I need 'em.
It'll do ye a power of good, too, to know that ye're not almighty.
HILLCRIST. And that's being neighbourly!
HORNBLOWER. And how have ye tried bein' neighbourly to me? If I
haven't a wife, I've got a daughter-in-law. Have Ye celled on her,
ma'am? I'm new, and ye're an old family. Ye don't like me, ye
think I'm a pushin' man. I go to chapel, an' ye don't like that.
I make things and I sell them, and ye don't like that. I buy land,
and ye don't like that. It threatens the view from your windies.
Well, I don't lie you, and I'm not goin' to put up with your
attitude. Ye've had things your own way too long, and now ye're not
going to have them any longer.
HILLCRIST. Will you hold to your word over those cottages?
HORNBLOWER. I'm goin' to have the cottages. I need them, and more
besides, now I'm to put up me new works.
HILLCRIST. That's a declaration of war.
HORNBLOWER. Ye never said a truer word. It's one or the other of
us, and I rather think it's goin' to be me. I'm the risin' and
you're the settin' sun, as the poet says.
HILLCRIST. [Touching the bell] We shall see if you can ride
rough-shod like this. We used to have decent ways of going about
things here. You want to change all that. Well, we shall do our
damnedest to stop you. [To FELLOWS at the door] Are the Jackmans
still in the house? Ask them to be good enough to come in.
HORNBLOWER. [With the first sign of uneasiness] I've seen these
people. I've nothing more to say to them. I told 'em I'd give 'em
five pounds to cover their moving.
HILLCRIST. It doesn't occur to you that people, however humble,
like to have some say in their own fate?
HORNBLOWER. I never had any say in mine till I had the brass, and
nobody ever will. It's all hypocrisy. You county folk are fair
awful hypocrites. Ye talk about good form and all that sort o'
thing. It's just the comfortable doctrine of the man in the saddle;
sentimental varnish. Ye're every bit as hard as I am, underneath.
MRS. H. [Who had been standing very still all this time] You
flatter us.
HORNBLOWER. Not at all. God helps those who 'elp themselves--
that's at the bottom of all religion. I'm goin' to help meself, and
God's going to help me.
MRS. H. I admire your knowledge.
HILLCRIST. We are in the right, and God helps----
HORNBLOWER. Don't ye believe it; ye 'aven't got the energy.
MRS. H. Nor perhaps the conceit.
HORNBLOWER. [Throwing out his forefinger] No, no; 'tisn't conceit
to believe in yourself when ye've got reason to. [The JACKMAN'S
have entered.]
HILLCRIST. I'm very sorry, Mrs. Jackman, but I just wanted you to
realise that I've done my best with this gentleman.
MRS. J. [Doubtfully] Yes, sir. I thought if you spoke for us,
he'd feel different-like.
HORNBLOWER. One cottage is the same as another, missis. I made ye
a fair offer of five pounds for the moving.
JACKMAN. [Slowly] We wouldn't take fifty to go out of that 'ouse.
We brought up three children there, an' buried two from it.
MRS. J. [To MRS. HILLCRIST] We're attached to it like, ma'am.
HILLCRIST. [To HORNBLOWER.] How would you like being turned out of
a place you were fond of?
HORNBLOWER. Not a bit. But little considerations have to give way
to big ones. Now, missis, I'll make it ten pounds, and I'll send a
wagon to shift your things. If that isn't fair--! Ye'd better
accept, I shan't keep it open.
[The JACKMANS look at each other; their faces show deep anger--
and the question they ask each other is which will speak.]
MRS. J. We won't take it; eh, George?
JACKMAN. Not a farden. We come there when we was married.
HORNBLOWER. [Throwing out his finger] Ye're very improvident folk.
HILLCRIST. Don't lecture them, Mr. Hornblower; they come out of
this miles above you.
HORNBLOWER. [Angry] Well, I was going to give ye another week, but
ye'll go out next Saturday; and take care ye're not late, or your
things'll be put out in the rain.
MRS. H. [To MRS. JACKMAN] We'll send down for your things, and you
can come to us for the time being.
[MRS. JACKMAN drops a curtsey; her eyes stab HORNBLOWERS.]
JACKMAN. [Heavily, clenching his fists] You're no gentleman!
Don't put temptation in my way, that's all,
HILLCRIST. [In a low voice] Jackman!
HORNBLOWER. [Triumphantly] Ye hear that? That's your protegee!
Keep out o' my way, me man, or I'll put the police on to ye for
utterin' threats.
HILLCRIST. You'd better go now, Jackman.
[The JACKMANS move to the door.]
MRS. J. [Turning] Maybe you'll repent it some day, sir.
[They go out, MRS. HILLCRIST following.]
HORNBLOWER. We-ell, I'm sorry they're such unreasonable folk. I
never met people with less notion of which side their bread was
buttered.
HILLCRIST. And I never met anyone so pachydermatous.
HORNBLOWER. What's that, in Heaven's name? Ye needn' wrap it up in
long words now your good lady's gone.
HILLCRIST. [With dignity] I'm not going in for a slanging match.
I resent your conduct much too deeply.
HORNBLOWER. Look here, Hillcrist, I don't object to you personally;
ye seem to me a poor creature that's bound to get left with your
gout and your dignity; but of course ye can make yourself very
disagreeable before ye're done. Now I want to be the movin' spirit
here. I'm full of plans. I'm goin' to stand for Parliament; I'm
goin' to make this a prosperous place. I'm a good-matured man if
you'll treat me as such. Now, you take me on as a neighbour and all
that, and I'll manage without chimneys on the Centry. Is it a
bargain? [He holds out his hand.]
HILLCRIST. [Ignoring it] I thought you said you didn't keep your
word when it suited you to break it?
HORNBLOWER. Now, don't get on the high horse. You and me could be
very good friends; but I can be a very nasty enemy. The chimneys
will not look nice from that windie, ye know.
HILLCRIST. [Deeply angry] Mr. Hornblower, if you think I'll take
your hand after this Jackman business, you're greatly mistaken. You
are proposing that I shall stand in with you while you tyrannise
over the neighbourhood. Please realise that unless you leave those
tenancies undisturbed as you said you would, we don't know each
other.
HORNBLOWER. Well, that won't trouble me much. Now, ye'd better
think it over; ye've got gout and that makes ye hasty. I tell ye
again: I'm not the man to make an enemy of. Unless ye're friendly,
sure as I stand here I'll ruin the look of your place.
[The toot of a car is heard.]
There's my car. I sent Chearlie and his wife in it to buy the
Centry. And make no mistake--he's got it in his packet. It's your
last chance, Hillcrist. I'm not averse to you as a man; I think
ye're the best of the fossils round here; at least, I think ye can
do me the most harm socially. Come now!
[He holds out his hand again.]
HILLCRIST. Not if you'd bought the Centry ten times over. Your
ways are not mine, and I'll have nothing to do with you.
HORNBLOWER. [Very angry] Really! Is that so? Very well. Now
ye're goin' to learn something, an' it's time ye did. D'ye realise
that I'm 'very nearly round ye? [He draws a circle slowly in the
air] I'm at Uphill, the works are here, here's Longmeadow, here's
the Centry that I've just bought, there's only the Common left to
give ye touch with the world. Now between you and the Common
there's the high road.
I come out on the high road here to your north, and I shall come out
on it there to your west. When I've got me new works up on the
Centry, I shall be makin' a trolley track between the works up to
the road at both ends, so any goods will be running right round ye.
How'll ye like that for a country place?
[For answer HILLCRIST, who is angry beyond the power of speech,
walks, forgetting to use his stick, up to the French window.
While he stands there, with his back to HORNBLOWER, the door L.
is flung open, and Jim enters, preceding CHARLES, his wife
CHLOE, and ROLF. CHARLES is a goodish-looking, moustached
young man of about twenty-eight, with a white rim to the collar
of his waistcoat, and spats. He has his hand behind CHLOE'S
back, as if to prevent her turning tail. She is rather a
handsome young woman, with dark eyes, full red lips, and a
suspicion of powder, a little under-dressed for the country.
ROLF, mho brings up the rear, is about twenty, with an open
face and stiffish butter-coloured hair. JILL runs over to her
father at the window. She has a bottle.]
JILL. [Sotto voce] Look, Dodo, I've brought the lot! Isn't it a
treat, dear Papa? And here's the stuff. Hallo!
[The exclamation is induced by the apprehension that there has
been a row. HILLCRIST gives a stiff little bow, remaining
where he is in the window. JILL, stays close to him, staring
from one to the other, then blocks him off and engages him in
conversation. CHARLES has gone up to his father, who has
remained maliciously still, where he delivered his last speech.
CHLOE and ROLF stand awkwardly waiting between the fireplace
and the door.]
HORNBLOWER. Well, Chearlie?
CHARLES. Not got it.
HORNBLOWER. Not!
CHARLES. I'd practically got her to say she'd sell at three
thousand five hundred, when that fellow Dawker turned up.
HORNBLOWER. That bull-terrier of a chap! Why, he was here a while
ago. Oh--ho! So that's it!
CHARLES. I heard him gallop up. He came straight for the old lady,
and got her away. What he said I don't know; but she came back
looking wiser than an owl; said she'd think it over, thought she had
other views.
HORNBLOWER. Did ye tell her she might have her price?
CHARLES. Practically I did.
HORNBLOWER. Well?
CHARLES. She thought it would be fairer to put it up to auction.
There were other enquiries. Oh! She's a leery old bird--reminds me
of one of those pictures of Fate, don't you know.
HORNBLOWER. Auction! Well, if it's not gone we'll get it yet.
That damned little Dawker! I've had a row with Hillcrist.
CHARLES. I thought so.
[They are turning cautiously to look at HILLCRIST, when JILL
steps forward.]
JILL. [Flushed and determined] That's not a bit sporting of you,
Mr. Hornblower.
[At her words ROLE comes forward too.]
HORNBLOWER. Ye should hear both sides before ye say that, missy.
JILL. There isn't another side to turning out the Jackmans after
you'd promised.
HORNBLOWER. Oh! dear me, yes. They don't matter a row of
gingerbread to the schemes I've got for betterin' this
neighbourhood.
JILL. I had been standing up for you; now I won't.
HOUNBLOWER. Dear, dear! What'll become of me?
JILL. I won't say anything about the other thing because I think
it's beneath, dignity to notice it. But to turn poor people out of
their cottages is a shame.
HORNBLOWER. Hoity me!
ROLF. [Suddenly] You haven't been doing that, father?
CHARLES. Shut up, Rolf!
HORNBLOWER. [Turning on ROLF] Ha! Here's a league o' Youth! My
young whipper-snapper, keep your mouth shut and leave it to your
elders to know what's right.
[Under the weight of this rejoinder ROLF stands biting his
lips. Then he throws his head up.]
ROLF. I hate it!
HORNBLOWER. [With real venom] Oh! Ye hate it? Ye can get out of
my house, then.
JILL. Free speech, Mr. Hornblower; don't be violent.
HORNBLOWER. Ye're right, young lady. Ye can stay in my house,
Rolf, and learn manners. Come, Chearlie!
JILL. [Quite softly] Mr. Hornblower!
HILLCRIST. [From the window] Jill!
JILL. [Impatiently] Well, what's the good of it? Life's too short
for rows, and too jolly!
ROLF. Bravo!
HORNBLOWER. [Who has shown a sign of weakening] Now, look here!
I will not have revolt in my family. Ye'll just have to learn that
a man who's worked as I have, who's risen as I have, and who knows
the world, is the proper judge of what's right and wrong. I'll
answer to God for me actions, and not to you young people.
JILL. Poor God!
HORNBLOWER. [Genuinely shocked] Ye blasphemous young thing! [To
ROLF] And ye're just as bad, ye young freethinker. I won't have
it.
HILLCRIST. [Who has come down, Right] Jill, I wish you would
kindly not talk.
JILL. I can't help it.
CHARLES. [Putting his arm through HORNBLOWER'S] Come along,
father! Deeds, not words.
HORNBLOWER. Ay! Deeds!
[MRS. HILLCRIST and DAWKERS have entered by the French window.]
MRS. H. Quite right!
[They all turn and look at her.]
HORNBLOWER. Ah! So ye put your dog on to it. [He throws out his
finger at DAWKERS] Very smart, that--I give ye credit.
MRS. H. [Pointing to CHLOE, who has stood by herself, forgotten and
uncomfortable throughout the scene]
May I ask who this lady is?
[CHLOE turns round startled, and her vanity bag slips down her
dress to the floor.]
HORNBLOWER. No, ma'am, ye may not, for ye know perfectly well.
JILL. I brought her in, mother [She moves to CHLOE's side.]
MRS. H. Will you take her out again, then.
HILLCRIST. Amy, have the goodness to remember----
MRS. H. That this is my house so far as ladies are concerned.
JILL. Mother!
[She looks astonished at CHLOE, who, about to speak, does not,
passing her eyes, with a queer, half-scarred expression, from
MRS. HILLCRIST to DAWKER.]
[To CHLOE] I'm awfully sorry. Come on!
[They go out, Left. ROLF hurries after them.]
CHARLES. You've insulted my wife. Why? What do you mean by it?
[MRS. HILLCRIST simply smiles.]
HILLCRIST. I apologise. I regret extremely. There is no reason
why the ladies of your family or of mine should be involved in our
quarrel. For Heaven's sake, let's fight like gentlemen.
HORNBLOWER. Catchwords--sneers! No; we'll play what ye call a skin
game, Hillcrist, without gloves on; we won't spare each other. Ye
look out for yourselves, for, begod, after this morning I mean
business. And as for you, Dawker, ye sly dog, ye think yourself
very clever; but I'll have the Centry yet. Come, Chearlie!
[They go out, passing JILL, who is coming in again, in the
doorway.]
HILLCRIST. Well, Dawker?
DAWKER. [Grinning] Safe for the moment. The old lady'll put it up
to auction. Couldn't get her to budge from that. Says she don't
want to be unneighbourly to either. But, if you ask me, it's money
she smells!
JILL. [Advancing] Now, mother
MRS. H. Well?
JILL. Why did you insult her?
MRS. H. I think I only asked you to take her out.
JILL. Why? Even if she is Old Combustion's daughter-in-law?
MRS. H. My dear Jill, allow me to judge the sort of acquaintances I
wish to make. [She looks at DAWKER.]
JILL. She's all right. Lots of women powder and touch up their
lips nowadays. I think she's rather a good sort; she was awfully
upset.
MRS. H. Too upset.
JILL. Oh! don't be so mysterious, mother. If you know something,
do spit it out!
MRS. H. Do you wish me to--er--"spit it out," Jack?
HILLCRIST. Dawker, if you don't mind----
[DAWKER, with a nod, passes away out of the French window.]
Jill, be respectful, and don't talk like a bargee.
JILL. It's no good, Dodo. It made me ashamed. It's just as--as
caddish to insult people who haven't said a word, in your own house,
as it is to be--old Hornblower.
MRS. H. You don't know what you're talking about.
HILLCRIST. What's the matter with young Mrs. Hornblower?
MRS. H. Excuse me, I shall keep my thoughts to myself at present.
[She looks coldly at JILL, and goes out through the French
window.]
HILLCRIST. You've thoroughly upset your mother, Jill.
JILL. It's something Dawker's told her; I saw them. I don't like
Dawker, father, he's so common.
HILLCRIST. My dear, we can't all be uncommon. He's got lots of go,
You must apologise to your mother.
JILL. [Shaking-her clubbed hair] They'll make you do things you
don't approve of, Dodo, if you don't look out. Mother's fearfully
bitter when she gets her knife in. If old Hornblower's disgusting,
it's no reason we should be.
HILLCRIST. So you think I'm capable--that's nice, Jill!
JILL. No, no, darling! I only want to warn you solemnly that
mother'll tell you you're fighting fair, no matter what she and
Dawker do.
HILLCRIST. [Smiling] Jill, I don't think I ever saw you so
serious.
JILL. No. Because--[She swallows a lump in her throat] Well--I
was just beginning to enjoy, myself; and now--everything's going to
be bitter and beastly, with mother in that mood. That horrible old
man! Oh, Dodo! Don't let them make you horrid! You're such a
darling. How's your gout, ducky?
HILLCRIST. Better; lot better.
JILL. There, you see! That shows! It's going to be half-interesting
for you, but not for--us.
HILLCRIST. Look here, Jill--is there anything between you and young
what's-his-name--Rolf?
JILL. [Biting her lip] No. But--now it's all spoiled.
HILLCRIST. You can't expect me to regret that.
JILL. I don't mean any tosh about love's young dream; but I do like
being friends. I want to enjoy things, Dodo, and you can't do that
when everybody's on the hate. You're going to wallow in it, and so
shall I--oh! I know I shall!--we shall all wallow, and think of
nothing but "one for his nob."
HILLCRIST. Aren't you fond of your home?
JILL. Of course. I love it.
HILLCRIST. Well, you won't be able to live in it unless we stop
that ruffian. Chimneys and smoke, the trees cut down, piles of
pots. Every kind of abomination. There! [He points] Imagine!
[He points through the French window, as if he could see those
chimneys rising and marring the beauty of the fields] I was born
here, and my father, and his, and his, and his. They loved those
fields, and those old trees. And this barbarian, with his
"improvement" schemes, forsooth! I learned to ride in the Centry
meadows--prettiest spring meadows in the world; I've climbed every
tree there. Why my father ever sold----! But who could have
imagined this? And come at a bad moment, when money's scarce.
JILL. [Cuddling his arm] Dodo!
HILLCRIST. Yes. But you don't love the place as I do, Jill. You
youngsters don't love anything, I sometimes think.
JILL. I do, Dodo, I do!
HILLCRIST. You've got it all before you. But you may live your
life and never find anything so good and so beautiful as this old
home. I'm not going to have it spoiled without a fight.
[Conscious of batting betrayed Sentiment, he walks out at the
French window, passing away to the right. JILL following to
the window, looks. Then throwing back her head, she clasps her
hands behind it.]
JILL. Oh--oh-oh!
[A voice behind her says, "JILL!" She turns and starts back,
leaning against the right lintel of the window. ROLF appears
outside the window from Left.]
Who goes there?
ROLE. [Buttressed against the Left lintel] Enemy--after Chloe's
bag.
JILL. Pass, enemy! And all's ill!
[ROLF passes through the window, and retrieves the vanity bag
from the floor where CHLOE dropped it, then again takes his
stand against the Left lintel of the French window.]
ROLF. It's not going to make any difference, is it?
JILL. You know it is.
ROLF. Sins of the fathers.
JILL. Unto the third and fourth generations. What sin has my
father committed?
ROLF. None, in a way; only, I've often told you I don't see why you
should treat us as outsiders. We don't like it.
JILL. Well, you shouldn't be, then; I mean, he shouldn't be.
ROLF. Father's just as human as your father; he's wrapped up in us,
and all his "getting on" is for us. Would you like to be treated as
your mother treated Chloe? Your mother's set the stroke for the
other big-wigs about here; nobody calls on Chloe. And why not? Why
not? I think it's contemptible to bar people just because they're
new, as you call it, and have to make their position instead of
having it left them.
JILL. It's not because they're new, it's because--if your father
behaved like a gentleman, he'd be treated like one.
ROLF. Would he? I don't believe it. My father's a very able man;
he thinks he's entitled to have influence here. Well, everybody
tries to keep him down. Oh! yes, they do. That makes him mad and
more determined than ever to get his way. You ought to be just,
Jill.
JILL. I am just.
ROLF. No, you're not. Besides, what's it got to do with Charlie
and Chloe? Chloe's particularly harmless. It's pretty sickening
for her. Father didn't expect people to call until Charlie married,
but since----
JILL. I think it's all very petty.
ROLF. It is--a dog-in-the-manger business; I did think you were
above it.
JILL. How would you like to have your home spoiled?
ROLE. I'm not going to argue. Only things don't stand still.
Homes aren't any more proof against change than anything else.
JILL. All right! You come and try and take ours.
ROLF. We don't want to take your home.
JILL. Like the Jackmans'?
ROLF. All right. I see you're hopelessly prejudiced.
[He turns to go.]
JILL. [Just as he is vanishing--softly] Enemy?
ROLF. [Turning] Yes, enemy.
JILL. Before the battle--let's shake hands.
[They move from the lintels and grasp each other's hands in the
centre of the French window.]
CURTAIN
ACT II
SCENE I
A billiard room in a provincial hotel, where things are bought
and sold. The scene is set well forward, and is not very
broad; it represents the auctioneer's end of the room, having,
rather to stage Left, a narrow table with two chairs facing the
audience, where the auctioneer will sit and stand. The table,
which is set forward to the footlights, is littered with
green-covered particulars of sale. The audience are in effect
public and bidders. There is a door on the Left, level with the
table. Along the back wall, behind the table, are two raised
benches with two steps up to them, such as billiard rooms often
have, divided by a door in the middle of a wall, which is
panelled in oak. Late September sunlight is coming from a
skylight (not visible) on to these seats. The stage is empty
when the curtain goes up, but DAWKERS, and MRS. HILLCRIST are
just entering through the door at the back.
DAWKER. Be out of their way here, ma'am. See old Hornblower with
Chearlie?
[He points down to the audience.]
MRS. H. It begins at three, doesn't it?
DAWKER. They won't be over-punctual; there's only the Centry
selling. There's young Mrs. Hornblower with the other boy--
[Pointing] over at the entrance. I've got that chap I told you of
down from town.
MRS. H. Ah! make sure quite of her, Dawker. Any mistake would be
fatal.
DAWKER. [Nodding] That's right, ma'am. Lot of peopled--always
spare time to watch an auction--ever remark that? The Duke's
agent's here; shouldn't be surprised if he chipped in.
MRS. H. Where did you leave my husband?
DAWKER. With Miss Jill, in the courtyard. He's coming to you. In
case I miss him; tell him when I reach his limit to blow his nose if
he wants me to go on; when he blows it a second time, I'll stop for
good. Hope we shan't get to that. Old Hornblower doesn't throw his
money away.
MRS. H. What limit did you settle?
DAWKER. Six thousand!
MRS. H. That's a fearful price. Well, good luck to you, Dawker!
DAWKER. Good luck, ma'am. I'll go and see to that little matter of
Mrs. Chloe. Never fear, we'll do them is somehow.
[He winks, lays his finger on the side of his nose, and goes
out at the door.]
[MRS. HILLCRIST mounts the two steps, sits down Right of the
door, and puts up a pair of long-handled glasses. Through the
door behind her come CHLOE and ROLF. She makes a sign for him
to go, and shuts the door.]
CHLOE. [At the foot of the steps in the gangway--with a slightly
common accent] Mrs. Hillcrist!
MRS. H. [Not quite starting] I beg your pardon?
CHLOE. [Again] Mrs. Hillcrist----
MRS. H. Well?
CHLOE. I never did you any harm.
MRS. H. Did I ever say you did?
CHLOE. No; but you act as if I had.
MRS. H. I'm not aware that I've acted at all--as yet. You are
nothing to me, except as one of your family.
CHLOE. 'Tisn't I that wants to spoil your home.
MRS. H. Stop them then. I see your husband down there with his
father.
CHLOE. I--I have tried.
MRS. H. [Looking at her] Oh! I suppose such men don't pay
attention to what women ask them.
CHLOE. [With a flash of spirit] I'm fond of my husband. I----
MRS. H. [Looking at her steadily] I don't quite know why you spoke
to me.
CHLOE. [With a sort of pathetic sullenness] I only thought perhaps
you'd like to treat me as a human being.
MRS. H. Really, if you don't mind, I should like to be left alone
just now.
CHLOE. [Unhappily acquiescent] Certainly! I'll go to the other
end.
[She moves to the Left, mounts the steps and sits down.]
[ROLF, looking in through the door, and seeing where she is,
joins her. MRS. HILLCRIST resettles herself a little further
in on the Right.]
ROLF. [Bending over to CHLOE, after a glance at MRS. HILLCRIST.]
Are you all right?
CHLOE. It's awfully hot.
[She fans herself wide the particulars of sale.]
ROLF. There's Dawker. I hate that chap!
CHLOE. Where?
ROLF. Down there; see?
[He points down to stage Right of the room.]
CHLOE. [Drawing back in her seat with a little gasp] Oh!
ROLF. [Not noticing] Who's that next him, looking up here?
CHLOE. I don't know.
[She has raised her auction programme suddenly, and sits
fanning herself, carefully screening her face.]
ROLE. [Looking at her] Don't you feel well? Shall I get you some
water? [He gets up at her nod.]
[As he reaches the door, HILLCRIST and JILL come in. HILLCRIST
passes him abstractedly with a nod, and sits down beside his
wife.]
JILL. [To ROLF] Come to see us turned out?
ROLF. [Emphatically] No. I'm looking after Chloe; she's not well.
JILL. [Glancing at her] Sorry. She needn't have come, I suppose?
[RALF deigns no answer, and goes out.]
[JILL glances at CHLOE, then at her parents talking in low
voices, and sits down next her father, who makes room for her.]
MRS. H. Can Dawker see you there, Jack?
[HILLCRIST nods.]
What's the time?
HILLCRIST. Three minutes to three.
JILL. Don't you feel beastly all down the backs of your legs.
Dodo?
HILLCRIST. Yes.
JILL. Do you, mother?
MRS. H. No.
JILL. A wagon of old Hornblower's pots passed while we were in the
yard. It's an omen.
MRS. H. Don't be foolish, Jill.
JILL. Look at the old brute! Dodo, hold my hand.
MRS. H. Make sure you've got a handkerchief, Jack.
HILLCRIST. I can't go beyond the six thousand; I shall have to
raise every penny on mortgage as it is. The estate simply won't
stand more, Amy.
[He feels in his breast pocket, and pulls up the edge of his
handkerchief.]
JILL. Oh! Look! There's Miss Mullins, at the back; just come in.
Isn't she a spidery old chip?
MRS. H. Come to gloat. Really, I think her not accepting your
offer is disgusting. Her impartiality is all humbug.
HILLCRIST. Can't blame her for getting what she can--it's human
nature. Phew! I used to feel like this before a 'viva voce'.
Who's that next to Dawker?
JILL. What a fish!
MRS. H. [To herself] Ah! yes.
[Her eyes slide round at CHLOE, silting motionless and rather
sunk in her seat, slowly fanning herself with they particulars
of the sale. Jack, go and offer her my smelling salts.]
HILLCRIST. [Taking the salts] Thank God for a human touch!
MRS. H. [Taken aback] Oh!
JILL. [With a quick look at her mother, snatching the salts] I
will. [She goes over to CHLOE with the salts] Have a sniff; you
look awfully white.
CHLOE. [Looking up, startled] Oh! no thanks. I'm all right.
JILL. No, do! You must. [CHLOE takes them.]
JILL. D'you mind letting me see that a minute?
[She takes the particulars of the sale and studies it, but
CHLOE has buried the lower part of her face in her hand and the
smelling salts bottle.]
Beastly hot, isn't it? You'd better keep that.
CHLOE. [Her dark eyes wandering and uneasy] Rolf's getting me some
water.
JILL. Why do you stay? You didn't want to come, did you?
[CHLOE shakes her head.]
All right! Here's your water.
[She hands back the particulars and slides over to her seat,
passing ROLF in the gangway, with her chin well up.]
[MRS. HILLCRIST, who has watched CHLOE and JILL and DAWKER, and
his friend, makes an enquiring movement with her hand, but gets
a disappointing answer.]
JILL. What's the time, Dodo?
HILLCRIST. [Looking at his watch] Three minutes past.
JILL. [Sighing] Oh, hell!
HILLCRIST. Jill!
JILL. Sorry, Dodo. I was only thinking. Look! Here he is!
Phew!--isn't he----?
MRS. H. 'Sh!
The AUCTIONEER comes in Left and goes to the table. He is a
square, short, brown-faced, common looking man, with clipped
grey hair fitting him like a cap, and a clipped grey moustache.
His lids come down over his quick eyes, till he can see you
very sharply, and you can hardly see that he can see you. He
can break into a smile at any moment, which has no connection
with him, as it were. By a certain hurt look, however, when
bidding is slow, he discloses that he is not merely an
auctioneer, but has in him elements of the human being. He can
wink with anyone, and is dressed in a snug-brown suit, with a
perfectly unbuttoned waistcoat, a low, turned down collar, and
small black and white sailor knot tie. While he is settling
his papers, the HILLCRISTS settle themselves tensely. CHLOE
has drunk her water and leaned back again, with the smelling
salts to her nose. ROLF leans forward in the seat beside her,
looking sideways at JILL. A SOLICITOR, with a grey beard, has
joined the AUCTIONEER, at his table.
AUCTIONEER. [Tapping the table] Sorry to disappoint you,
gentlemen, but I've only one property to offer you to-day, No. 1,
The Centry, Deepwater. The second on the particulars has been
withdrawn. The third that's Bidcot, desirable freehold mansion and
farmlands in the Parish of Kenway--we shall have to deal with next
week. I shall be happy to sell it you then with out reservation.
[He looks again through the particulars in his hand, giving the
audience time to readjust themselves to his statements] Now,
gen'lemen, as I say, I've only the one property to sell. Freehold
No. 1--all that very desirable corn and stock-rearing and parklike
residential land known as the Centry, Deepwater, unique property an
A.1. chance to an A.1. audience. [With his smile] Ought to make
the price of the three we thought we had. Now you won't mind
listening to the conditions of sale; Mr. Blinkard'll read 'em, and
they won't wirry you, they're very short.
[He sits down and gives two little tape on the table.]
[The SOLICITOR rises and reads the conditions of sale in a
voice which no one practically can hear. Just as he begins to
read these conditions of sale, CHARLES HORNBLOWER enters at
back. He stands a moment, glancing round at the HILLCRIST and
twirling his moustache, then moves along to his wife and
touches her.]
CHARLES. Chloe, aren't you well?
[In the start which she gives, her face is fully revealed to
the audience.]
CHARLES. Come along, out of the way of these people.
[He jerks his head towards the HILLCRISTS. CHLOE gives a swift
look down to the stage Right of the audience.]
CHLOE. No; I'm all right; it's hotter there.
CHARLES. [To ROLF] Well, look after her--I must go back.
[ROLF node. CHARLES, slides bank to the door, with a glance at
the HILLCRISTS, of whom MRS. HILLCRIST has been watching like a
lynx. He goes out, just as the SOLICITOR, finishing, sits
down.]
AUCTIONEER. [Rising and tapping] Now, gen'lemen, it's not often a
piece of land like this comes into the market. What's that? [To a
friend in front of him] No better land in Deepwater--that's right,
Mr. Spicer. I know the village well, and a charming place it is;
perfect locality, to be sure. Now I don't want to wirry you by
singing the praises of this property; there it is--well-watered,
nicely timbered--no reservation of the timber, gen'lemen--no tenancy
to hold you up; free to do what you like with it to-morrow. You've
got a jewel of a site there, too; perfect position for a house. It
lies between the Duke's and Squire Hillcrist's--an emerald isle.
[With his smile] No allusion to Ireland, gen'lemen--perfect peace
in the Centry. Nothing like it in the county--a gen'leman's site,
and you don't get that offered you every day. [He looks down
towards HORNBLOWER, stage Left] Carries the mineral rights, and as
you know, perhaps, there's the very valuable Deepwater clay there.
What am I to start it at? Can I say three thousand? Well, anything
you like to give me. I'm sot particular. Come now, you've got more
time than me, I expect. Two hundred acres of first-rate grazin' and
cornland, with a site for a residence unequalled in the county; and
all the possibilities! Well, what shall I say?
[Bid from SPICER.]
Two thousand? [With his smile] That won't hurt you, Mr. Spicer.
Why, it's worth that to overlook the Duke. For two thousand?
[Bid from HORNBLOWER, stage Left.]
And five. Thank you, sir. Two thousand five hundred bid.
[To a friend just below him.]
Come, Mr. Sandy, don't scratch your head over it.
[Bid from DAWKER, Stage Right.]
And five. Three thousand bid for this desirable property. Why,
you'd think it wasn't desirable. Come along, gen'lemen. A little
spirit.
[A alight pause.]
JILL. Why can't I see the bids, Dodo?
HILLCRIST. The last was Dawker's.
AUCTIONEER. For three thousand. [HORNBLOWER] Three thousand five
hundred? May I say--four? [A bid from the centre] No, I'm not
particular; I'll take hundreds. Three thousand six hundred bid.
[HORNBLOWER] And seven. Three thousand seven hundred, and----
[He pauses, quartering the audience.]
JILL. Who was that, Dodo?
HILLCRIST. Hornblower. It's the Duke in the centre.
AUCTIONEER. Come, gen'lemen, don't keep me all day. Four thousand
may I say? [DAWKER] Thank you. We're beginning. And one? [A bid
from the centre] Four thousand one hundred. [HORNBLOWER] Four
thousand two hundred. May I have yours, sir? [To DAWKER] And
three. Four thousand three hundred bid. No such site in the
county, gen'lemen. I'm going to sell this land for what it's worth.
You can't bid too much for me. [He smiles] [HORNBLOWER] Four
thousand five hundred bid. [Bid from the centre] And six. [DAWKER]
And seven. [HORNBLOWER] And eight. Nine, may I say? [But the
centre has dried up] [DAWKER] And nine. [HORNBLOWER] Five
thousand. Five thousand bid. That's better; there's some spirit in
it. For five thousand.
[He pauses while he speak& to the SOLICITOR]
HILLCRIST. It's a duel now.
AUCTIONEER. Now, gen'lemen, I'm not going to give this property
away. Five thousand bid. [DAWKER] And one. [HORNBLOWER] And two.
[DAWKER] And three. Five thousand three hundred bid. And five,
did you say, sir? [HORNBLOWER] Five thousand five hundred bid.
[He looks at hip particulars.]
JILL. [Rather agonised] Enemy, Dodo.
AUCTIONEER. This chance may never come again.
"How you'll regret it
If you don't get it,"
as the poet says. May I say five thousand six hundred, sir?
[DAWKER] Five thousand six hundred bid. [HORNBLOWER] And seven.
[DAWKER] And eight. For five thousand eight hundred pounds. We're
gettin' on, but we haven't got the value yet.
[A slight pause, while he wipes his brow at the success of his own
efforts.]
JILL. Us, Dodo?
[HILLCRIST nods. JILL looks over at ROLF, whose face is
grimly set. CHLOE has never moved. MRS. HILLCRIST whispers to
her husband.]
AUCTIONEER. Five thousand eight hundred bid. For five thousand
eight hundred. Come along, gen'lemen, come along. We're not
beaten. Thank you, sir. [HORNBLOWER] Five thousand nine hundred.
And--? [DAWKER] Six thousand. Six thousand bid. Six thousand
bid. For six thousand! The Centry--most desirable spot in the
county--going for the low price of six thousand.
HILLCRIST. [Muttering] Low! Heavens!
AUCTIONEER. Any advance on six thousand? Come, gen'lemen, we
haven't dried up? A little spirit. Six thousand? For six
thousand? For six thousand pounds? Very well, I'm selling. For
six thousand once--[He taps] For six thousand twice--[He taps].
JILL. [Low] Oh! we've got it!
AUCTIONEER. And one, sir? [HORNBLOWER] Six thousand one hundred
bid.
[The SOLICITOR touches his arm and says something, to which the
AUCTIONEER responds with a nod.]
MRS. H. Blow your nose, Jack.
[HILLCRIST blows his nose.]
AUCTIONEER. For six thousand one hundred. [DAWKER] And two.
Thank you. [HORNBLOWER] And three. For six thousand three
hundred. [DAWKER] And four. For six thousand four hundred pounds.
This coveted property. For six thousand four hundred pounds. Why,
it's giving it away, gen'lemen. [A pause.]
MRS. H. Giving!
AUCTIONEER. Six thousand four hundred bid. [HORNBLOWER] And five.
[DAWKER] And six. [HORNBLOWER] And seven. [DAWKER] And eight.
[A pause, during which, through the door Left, someone beckons
to the SOLICITOR, who rises and confers.]
HILLCRIST. [Muttering] I've done if that doesn't get it.
AUCTIONEER. For six thousand eight hundred. For six thousand eight
hundred-once--[He taps] twice--[He tape] For the last time. This
dominating site. [HORNBLOWER] And nine. Thank you. For six
thousand nine hundred.
[HILLCRIST has taken out his handkerchief.]
JILL. Oh! Dodo!
MRS. H. [Quivering] Don't give in!
AUCTIONEER. Seven thousand may I say? [DAWKER] Seven thousand.
MRS. H. [Whispers] Keep it down; don't show him.
AUCTIONEER. For seven-thousand--going for seven thousand--once--
[Taps] twice [Taps] [HORNBLOWER] And one. Thank you, sir.
[HILLCRIST blows his nose. JILL, with a choke, leans back in
her seat and folds her arms tightly on her chest. MRS.
HILLCRIST passes her handkerchief over her lips, sitting
perfectly still. HILLCRIST, too, is motionless.]
[The AUCTIONEER, has paused, and is talking to the SOLICITOR,
who has returned to his seat.]
MRS. H. Oh! Jack.
JILL. Stick it, Dodo; stick it!
AUCTIONEER. Now, gen'lemen, I have a bid of seven thousand one
hundred for the Centry. And I'm instructed to sell if I can't get
more. It's a fair price, but not a big price. [To his friend MR.
SPICER] A thumpin' price? [With his smile] Well, you're a judge
of thumpin', I admit. Now, who'll give me seven thousand two
hundred? What, no one? Well, I can't make you, gen'lemen. For
seven thousand one hundred. Once--[Taps] Twice--[Taps].
[JILL utters a little groan.]
HILLCRIST. [Suddenly, in a queer voice] Two.
AUCTIONEER. [Turning with surprise and looking up to receive
HILLCRIST'S nod] Thank you, sir. And two. Seven thousand two
hundred. [He screws himself round so as to command both HILLCRIST
and HORNBLOWER] May I have yours, sir? [HORNBLOWER] And three.
[HILLCRIST] And four. Seven thousand four hundred. For seven
thousand four hundred. [HORNBLOWER] Five. [HILLCRIST] Six. For
seven thousand six hundred. [A pause] Well, gen'lemen, this is.
better, but a record property shid fetch a record price. The
possibilities are enormous. [HORNBLOWER] Eight thousand did you
say, sir? Eight thousand. Going for eight thousand pounds.
[HILLCRIST] And one. [HORNBLOWER] And two. [HILLCRIST] And
three. [HORNBLOWER] And four. [HILLCRIST] And five. For eight
thousand five hundred. A wonderful property for eight thousand five
hundred.
[He wipes his brow.]
JILL. [Whispering] Oh, Dodo!
MRS. H. That's enough, Jack, we must stop some time.
AUCTIONEER. For eight thousand five hundred. Once--[Taps]--twice--
[Taps] [HORNBLOWER] Six hundred. [HILLCRIST] Seven. May I have
yours, sir? [HORNBLOWER] Eight.
HILLCRIST. Nine thousand.
[MRS. HILLCRIST looks at him, biting her lips, but he is quite
absorbed.]
AUCTIONEER. Nine thousand for this astounding property. Why, the
Duke would pay that if he realised he'd be overlooked. Now, Sir?
[To HORNBLOWER. No response]. Just a little raise on that. [No
response.] For nine thousand. The Centry, Deepwater, for nine
thousand. Once--[Taps] Twice----[Taps].
JILL. [Under her breath] Ours!
A VOICE. [From far back in the centre] And five hundred.
AUCTIONEER. [Surprised and throwing out his arms towards the voice]
And five hundred. For nine thousand five hundred. May I have
yours, sir? [He looks at HORNBLOWER. No response.]
[The SOLICITOR speaks to him. MRS. H. [Whispering] It must
be the Duke again.]
HILLCRIST. [Passing his hand over his brow] That's stopped him,
anyway.
AUCTIONEER. [Looking at HILLCRIST] For nine thousand five hundred?
[HILLCRIST shakes his head.] Once more. The Centry, Deepwater, for
nine thousand five hundred. Once--[Taps] Twice--[Taps] [He pauses
and looks again at HORNBLOWER and HILLCRIST] For the last time--at
nine thousand five hundred. [Taps] [With a look towards the
bidder] Mr. Smalley. Well! [With great satisfaction] That's
that! No more to-day, gen'lemen.
[The AUCTIONEER and SOLICITOR busy themselves. The room begins
to empty.]
MRS. H. Smalley? Smalley? Is that the Duke's agent? Jack!
HILLCRIST. [Coming out of a sort of coma, after the excitement he
has been going through] What! What!
JILL. Oh, Dodo! How splendidly you stuck it!
HILLCRIST. Phew! What a squeak! I was clean out of my depth. A
mercy the Duke chipped in again.
MRS. H. [Looking at ROLF and CHLOE, who are standing up as if about
to go] Take care; they can hear you. Find DAWKER, Jack.
[Below, the AUCTIONEER and SOLICITOR take up their papers, and
move out Left.]
[HILLCRIST stretches himself, standing up, as if to throw off
the strain. The door behind is opened, and HORNBLOWER
appears.]
HORNBLOWER. Ye ran me up a pretty price. Ye bid very pluckily,
Hillcrist. But ye didn't quite get my measure.
HILLCRIST. Oh! It was my nine thousand the Duke capped. Thank
God, the Centry's gone to a gentleman!
HORNBLOWER. The Duke? [He laughs] No, the Gentry's not gone to a
gentleman, nor to a fool. It's gone to me.
HILLCRIST. What!
HOUNBLOWER. I'm sorry for ye; ye're not fit to manage these things.
Well, it's a monstrous price, and I've had to pay it because of your
obstinacy. I shan't forget that when I come to build.
HILLCRIST. D'you mean to say that bid was for you?
HORNBLOWER. Of course I do. I told ye I was a bad man to be up
against. Perhaps ye'll believe me now.
HILLCRIST. A dastardly trick!
HORNBLOWER. [With venom] What did ye call it--a skin game?
Remember we're playin' a skin game, Hillcrist.
HILLCRIST. [Clenching his fists] If we were younger men----
HORNBLOWER. Ay! 'Twouldn't Look pretty for us to be at fisticuffs.
We'll leave the fightin' to the young ones. [He glances at ROLF and
JILL; suddenly throwing out his finger at ROLF] No makin' up to
that young woman! I've watched ye. And as for you, missy, you
leave my boy alone.
JILL. [With suppressed passion] Dodo, may I spit in his eye or
something?
HILLCRIST. Sit down.
[JILL sits down. He stands between her and HORNBLOWER.]
[Yu've won this round, sir, by a foul blow. We shall see
whether you can take any advantage of it. I believe the law
can stop you ruining my property.]
HORNBLOWER. Make your mind easy; it can't. I've got ye in a noose,
and I'm goin' to hang ye.
MRS. H. [Suddenly] Mr. Hornblower, as you fight foul--so shall we.
HILLCRIST. Amy!
MRS. H. [Paying no attention] And it will not be foul play towards
you and yours. You are outside the pale.
HORNBLOWER. That's just where I am, outside your pale all round ye.
Ye're not long for Deepwater, ma'am. Make your dispositions to go;
ye'll be out in six months, I prophesy. And good riddance to the
neighbourhood. [They are all down on the level now.]
CHLOE. [Suddenly coming closer to MRS. HILLCRIST] Here are your
salts, thank you. Father, can't you----?
HORNBLOWER. [Surprised] Can't I what?
CHLOE. Can't you come to an arrangement?
MRS. H. Just so, Mr. Hornblower. Can't you?
HORNBLOWER. [Looking from one to the other] As we're speakin' out,
ma'am, it's your behaviour to my daughter-in-law--who's as good as
you--and better, to my thinking--that's more than half the reason
why I've bought this property. Ye've fair got my dander up. Now
it's no use to bandy words. It's very forgivin' of ye, Chloe, but
come along!
MRS. H. Quite seriously, Mr. Hornblower, you had better come to an
arrangement.
HORNBLOWER. Mrs. Hillcrist, ladies should keep to their own
business.
MRS. H. I will.
HILLCRIST. Amy, do leave it to us men. You young man [He speaks to
ROLF] do you support your father's trick this afternoon?
[JILL looks round at ROLF, who tries to speak, when HORNBLOWER
breaks in.]
HORNBLOWER. My trick? And what dye call it, to try and put me own
son against me?
JILL. [To ROLF] Well?
ROLF. I don't, but----
HORNBLOWER. Trick? Ye young cub, be quiet. Mr. Hillcrist had an
agent bid for him--I had an agent bid for me. Only his agent bid at
the beginnin', an' mine bid at the end. What's the trick in that?
[He laughs.]
HILLCRIST. Hopeless; we're in different worlds.
HORNBLOWER. I wish to God we were! Come you, Chloe. And you,
Rolf, you follow. In six months I'll have those chimneys up, and me
lorries runnin' round ye.
MRS. H. Mr. Hornblower, if you build----
HORNBLOWER. [Looking at MRS. HILLCRIST] Ye know--it's laughable.
Ye make me pay nine thousand five hundred for a bit o' land not
worth four, and ye think I'm not to get back on ye. I'm goin' on
with as little consideration as if ye were a family of blackbeetles.
Good afternoon!
ROLF. Father!
JILL. Oh, Dodo! He's obscene.
HILLCRIST. Mr. Hornblower, my compliments.
[HORNBLOWER with a stare at HILLCRIST'S half-smiling face,
takes CHLOE'S arm, and half drags her towards the door on the
Left. But there, in the opened doorway, are standing DAWKER
and a STRANGER. They move just out of the way of the exit,
looking at CHLOE, who sways and very nearly falls.]
HORNBLOWER. Why! Chloe! What's the matter?
CHLOE. I don't know; I'm not well to-day.
[She pulls herself together with a great, effort.]
MRS. H. [Who has exchanged a nod with DAWKER and the STRANGER] Mr.
Hornblower, you build at your peril. I warn you.
HORNBLOWER. [Turning round to speak] Ye think yourself very cool
and very smart. But I doubt this is the first time ye've been up
against realities. Now, I've been up against them all my life.
Don't talk to me, ma'am, about peril and that sort of nonsense; it
makes no impression. Your husband called me pachydermatous. I
don't know Greek, and Latin, and all that, but I've looked it out in
the dictionary, and I find it means thick-skinned. And I'm none
the worse for that when I have to deal with folk like you. Good
afternoon.
[He draws CHLOE forward, and they pass through the door,
followed quickly by ROLF.]
MRS. H. Thank you; Dawker.
[She moves up to DAWKER and the STRANGER, Left, and they
talk.]
JILL. Dodo! It's awful!
HILLCRIST. Well, there's nothing for it now but to smile and pay
up. Poor old home! It shall be his wash-pot. Over the Centry will
he cast his shoe. By Gad, Jill, I could cry!
JILL. [Pointing] Look! Chloe's sitting down. She nearly fainted
just now. It's something to do with Dawker, Dodo, and that man with
him. Look at mother! Ask them!
HILLCRIST. Dawker!
[DAWKER comes to him, followed by MRS. HILLCRIST.]
What's the mystery about young Mrs. Hornblower?
DAWKER. No mystery.
HILLCRIST. Well, what is it?
MRS. H. You'd better not ask.
HILLCRIST. I wish to know.
MRS. H. Jill, go out and wait for us.
JILL. Nonsense, mother!
MRS. H. It's not for a girl to hear.
JILL. Bosh! I read the papers every day.
DAWKER. It's nothin' worse than you get there, anyway.
MRS. H. Do you wish your daughter----
JILL. It's ridiculous, Dodo; you'd think I was mother at my age.
MRS. H. I was not so proud of my knowledge.
JILL. No, but you had it, dear.
HILLCRIST. What is it----what is it? Come over here, Dawker.
[DAWKER goes to him, Right, and speaks in a low voice.]
What! [Again DAWKER speaks in, a low voice.]
Good God!
MRS. H. Exactly!
JILL. Poor thing--whatever it is!
MRS. H. Poor thing?
JILL. What went before, mother?
MRS. H. It's what's coming after that matters; luckily.
HILLCRIST. How do you know this?
DAWKER. My friend here [He points to the STRANGER] was one of the
agents.
HILLCRIST. It's shocking. I'm sorry I heard it.
MRS. H. I told you not to.
HILLCRIST. Ask your friend to come here.
[DAWKER beckons, and the STRANGER joins the group.]
Are you sure of what you've said, sir?
STRANGER. Perfectly. I remember her quite well; her name then
was----
HILLCRIST. I don't want to know, thank you. I'm truly sorry. I
wouldn't wish the knowledge of that about his womenfolk to my worst
enemy. This mustn't be spoken of. [JILL hugs his arm.]
MRS. H. It will not be if Mr. Hornblower is wise. If he is not
wise, it must be spoken of.
HILLCRIST. I say no, Amy. I won't have it. It's a dirty weapon.
Who touches pitch shall be defiled.
MRS. H. Well, what weapons does he use against us? Don't be
quixotic. For all we can tell, they know it quite well already, and
if they don't they ought to. Anyway, to know this is our salvation,
and we must use it.
JILL: [Sotto voce] Pitch! Dodo! Pitch!
DAWKER. The threat's enough! J.P.--Chapel--Future member for the
constituency----.
HILLCRIST. [A little more doubtfully] To use a piece of knowledge
about a woman--it's repugnant. I--I won't do it.
[Mrs. H. If you had a son tricked into marrying such a woman,
would you wish to remain ignorant of it?]
HILLCRIST. [Struck] I don't know--I don't know.
MRS. H. At least, you'd like to be in a position to help him, if
you thought it necessary?
HILLCRIST. Well--that perhaps.
MRS. H. Then you agree that Mr. Hornblower at least should be told.
What he does with the knowledge is not our affair.
HILLCRIST. [Half to the STRANGER and half to DAWKER] Do you realise
that an imputation of that kind may be ground for a criminal libel
action?
STRANGER. Quite. But there's no shadow of doubt; not the faintest.
You saw her just now?
HILLCRIST. I did. [Revolting again] No; I don't like it.
[DAWKER has drawn the STRANGER a step or two away, and they
talk together.]
MRS. H. [In a low voice] And the ruin of our home? You're
betraying your fathers, Jack.
HILLCRIST. I can't bear bringing a woman into it.
MRS. H. We don't. If anyone brings her in; it will be Hornblower
himself.
HILLCRIST. We use her secret as a lever.
MRS. H. I tell you quite plainly: I will only consent to holding my
tongue about her, if you agree to Hornblower being told. It's a
scandal to have a woman like that in the neighbourhood.
JILL. Mother means that, father.
HILLCRIST. Jill, keep quiet. This is a very bitter position. I
can't tell what to do.
MRS. H. You must use this knowledge. You owe it to me--to us all.
You'll see that when you've thought it over.
JILL. [Softly] Pitch, Dodo, pitch!
MRS. H. [Furiously] Jill, be quiet!
HILLCRIST. I was brought up never to hurt a woman. I can't do it,
Amy--I can't do it. I should never feel like a gentleman again.
MRS. H. [Coldly] Oh! Very well.
HILLCRIST. What d'you mean by that?
MRS. H. I shall use the knowledge in my own way.
HILLCRIST. [Staring at her] You would--against my wishes?
MRS. H. I consider it my duty.
HILLCRIST. If I agree to Hornblower being told----
MRS. H. That's all I want.
HILLCRIST. It's the utmost I'll consent to, Amy; and don't let's
have any humbug about its being, morally necessary. We do it to
save our skins.
MRS. H. I don't know what you mean by humbug?
JILL. He means humbug; mother.
HILLCRIST. It must stop at old Hornblower. Do you quite
understand?
MRS. H. Quite.
JILL. Will it stop?
MRS. H. Jill, if you can't keep your impertinence to yourself----
HILLCRIST. Jill, come with me.
[He turns towards door, Back.]
JILL. I'm sorry, mother. Only it is a skin game, isn't it?
MRS. H. You pride yourself on plain speech, Jill. I pride myself
on plain thought. You will thank me afterwards that I can see
realities. I know we are better people than these Hornblowers.
Here we are going to stay, and they--are not.
JILL. [Looking at her with a sort of unwilling admiration] Mother,
you're wonderful!
HILLCRIST. Jill!
JILL. Coming, Dodo.
[She turns and runs to the door. They go out.]
[MRS. HILLCRIST, with a long sigh, draws herself up, fine and
proud.]
MRS. H. Dawker! [He comes to her.]
[I shall send him a note to-night, and word it so that
he will be bound to come and see us to-marrow morning. Will
you be in the study just before eleven o'clock, with this
gentleman?]
DAWKER. [Nodding] We're going to wire for his partner. I'll bring
him too. Can't make too sure.
[She goes firmly up the steps and out.]
DAWKER. [To the STRANGER, with a wink] The Squire's squeamish--too
much of a gentleman. But he don't count. The grey mare's all
right. You wire to Henry. I'm off to our solicitors. We'll make
that old rhinoceros sell us back the Centry at a decent price.
These Hornblowers--[Laying his finger on his nose] We've got 'em!
CURTAIN
SCENE II
CHLOE's boudoir at half-past seven the same evening. A pretty
room. No pictures on the walls, but two mirrors. A screen and
a luxurious couch an the fireplace side, stage Left. A door
rather Right of Centre Back; opening inwards. A French window,
Right forward: A writing table, Right Back. Electric light
burning.
CHLOE, in a tea-gown, is standing by the forward end of the
sofa, very still, and very pale. Her lips are parted, and her
large eyes stare straight before them as if seeing ghosts: The
door is opened noiselessly and a WOMAN'S face is seen. It
peers at CHLOE, vanishes, and the door is closed. CHLOE raises
her hands, covers her eyes with them, drops them with a quick
gesture, and looks round her. A knock. With a swift movement
she slides on to the sofa, and lies prostrate, with eyes
closed.
CHLOE. [Feebly] Come in!
[Her Maid enters; a trim, contained figure of uncertain years,
in a black dress, with the face which was peering in.]
Yes, Anna?
ANNA. Aren't you going in to dinner, ma'am?
CHLOE. [With closed eyes] No.
ANNA. Will you take anything here, ma'am?
CHLOE. I'd like a biscuit and a glass of champagne.
[The MAID, who is standing between sofa and door, smiles.
CHLOE, with a swift look, catches the smile.]
Why do you smile?
ANNA. Was I, ma'am?
CHLOE. You know you were. [Fiercely] Are you paid to smile at me?
ANNA. [Immovable] No, ma'am, Would you like some eau de Cologne on
your forehead?
CHLOE. Yes.--No.--What's the good? [Clasping her forehead] My
headache won't go.
ANNA. To keep lying down's the best thing for it.
CHLOE. I have been--hours.
ANNA. [With the smile] Yes, ma'am.
CHLOE. [Gathering herself up on the sofa] Anna! Why do you do it?
ANNA. Do what, ma'am?
CHLOE. Spy on me.
ANNA. I--never! I----!
CHLOE. To spy! You're a fool, too. What is there to spy on?
ANNA. Nothing, ma'am. Of course, if you're not satisfied with me,
I must give notice. Only--if I were spying, I should expect to have
notice given me. I've been accustomed to ladies who wouldn't stand
such a thing for a minute.
CHLOE: [Intently] Well, you'll take a month's wages and go
tomorrow. And that's all, now.
[ANNA inclines her head and goes out.]
[CHLOE, with a sort of moan, turns over and buries her face in
the cushion.]
CHLOE. [Sitting up] If I could see that man--if only--or Dawker---
[She springs up and goes to the door, but hesitates, and comes
back to the head of the sofa, as ROLF comes in. During this
scene the door is again opened stealthily, an inch or too.]
ROLF. How's the head?
CHLOE. Beastly, thanks. I'm not going into dinner.
ROLF. Is there anything I can do for you?
CHLOE. No, dear boy. [Suddenly looking at him] You don't want
this quarrel with the Hillcrists to go on, do you, Rolf?
ROLF. No; I hate it.
CHLOE. Well, I think I might be able to stop it. Will you slip
round to Dawker's--it's not five minutes--and ask him to come and
see me.
ROLF. Father and Charlie wouldn't----
CHLOE. I know. But if he comes to the window here while you're at
dinner, I'll let him in, and out, and nobody'd know.
ROLF. [Astonished] Yes, but what I mean how----
CHLOE. Don't ask me. It's worth the shot that's all. [Looking at
her wrist-watch] To this window at eight o'clock exactly. First
long window on the terrace, tell him.
ROLF. It's nothing Charlie would mind?
CHLOE. No; only I can't tell him--he and father are so mad about it
all.
ROLF. If there's a real chance----
CHLOE. [Going to the window and opening it] This way, Rolf. If
you don't come back I shall know he's coming. Put your watch by
mine. [Looking at his watch] It's a minute fast, see!
ROLF. Look here, Chloe
CHLOE. Don't wait; go on.
[She almost pushes him out through the window, closes it after
him, draws the curtains again, stands a minute, thinking hard;
goes to the bell and rings it; then, crossing to the writing
table, Right Back, she takes out a chemist's prescription.]
[ANNA comes in.]
CHLOE. I don't want that champagne. Take this to the chemist and
get him to make up some of these cachets quick, and bring them back
yourself.
ANNA. Yes, ma'am; but you have some.
CHLOE. They're too old; I've taken two--the strength's out of them.
Quick, please; I can't stand this head.
ANNA. [Taking the prescription--with her smile] Yes, ma'am. It'll
take some time--you don't want me?
CHLOE. No; I want the cachets.
[ANNA goes out.]
[CHLOE looks at her wrist-watch, goes to the writing-table,
which is old-fashioned, with a secret drawer, looks round her,
dives at the secret drawer, takes out a roll of notes and a
tissue paper parcel. She counts the notes: "Three hundred."
Slips them into her breast and unwraps the little parcel. It
contains pears. She slips them, too, into her dress, looks
round startled, replaces the drawer, and regains her place on
the sofa, lying prostrate as the door opens, and HORNBLOWER
comes in. She does not open her ages, and he stands looking at
her a moment before speaking.]
HORNBLOWER. [Almost softly] How are ye feelin'. Chloe?
CHLOE. Awful head!
HORNBLOWER: Can ye attend a moment? I've had a note from that
woman.
[CHLOE sits up.]
HORNBLOWER. [Reading] "I have something of the utmost importance
to tell you in regard to your daughter-in-law. I shall be waiting
to see you at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning. The matter is so
utterly vital to the happiness of all your family, that I cannot
imagine you will fail to come." Now, what's the meaning of it? Is
it sheer impudence, or lunacy, or what?
CHLOE. I don't know.
HORNBLOWER. [Not unkindly] Chloe, if there's anything--ye'd better
tell me. Forewarned's forearmed.
CHLOE. There's nothing; unless it's--[With a quick took at him,]--
Unless it's that my father was a--a bankrupt.
HORNBLOWER. Hech! Many a man's been that. Ye've never told us
much about your family.
CHLOE. I wasn't very proud of him.
HORNBLOWER. Well, ye're not responsible for your father. If that's
all, it's a relief. The bitter snobs! I'll remember it in the
account I've got with them.
CHLOE. Father, don't say anything to Charlie; it'll only worry him
for nothing.
HORNBLOWER. No, no, I'll not. If I went bankrupt, it'd upset
Chearlie, I've not a doubt. [He laugh. Looking at her shrewdly]
There's nothing else, before I answer her?
[CHLOE shakes her head.]
Ye're sure?
CHLOE. [With an efort] She may invent things, of course.
HORNBLOWER. [Lost in his feud feeling] Ah! but there's such a
thing as the laws o' slander. If they play pranks, I'll have them
up for it.
CHLOE. [Timidly] Couldn't you stop this quarrel; father? You said
it was on my account. But I don't want to know them. And they do
love their old home. I like the girl. You don't really need to
build just there, do you? Couldn't you stop it? Do!
HORNBLOWER. Stop it? Now I've bought? Na, no! The snobs defied
me, and I'm going to show them. I hate the lot of them, and I hate
that little Dawker worst of all.
CHLOE. He's only their agent.
HORNBLOWER. He's a part of the whole dog-in-the-manger system that
stands in my way. Ye're a woman, and ye don't understand these
things. Ye wouldn't believe the struggle I've had to make my money
and get my position. These county folk talk soft sawder, but to get
anything from them's like gettin' butter out of a dog's mouth. If
they could drive me out of here by fair means or foul, would they
hesitate a moment? Not they! See what they've made me pay; and
look at this letter. Selfish, mean lot o' hypocrites!
CHLOE. But they didn't begin the quarrel.
HORNBLOWER. Not openly; but underneath they did--that's their way.
They began it by thwartin' me here and there and everywhere, just
because I've come into me own a bit later than they did. I gave 'em
their chance, and they wouldn't take it. Well, I'll show 'em what a
man like me can do when he sets his mind to it. I'll not leave much
skin on them.
[In the intensity of his feeling he has lost sight of her face,
alive with a sort of agony of doubt, whether to plead with him
further, or what to do. Then, with a swift glance at her
wristwatch, she falls back on the sofa and closes her eyes.]
It'll give me a power of enjoyment seein' me chimneys go up in front
of their windies. That was a bonnie thought--that last bid o' mine.
He'd got that roused up, I believe, he, never would a' stopped.
[Looking at her] I forgot your head. Well, well, ye'll be best
tryin' quiet. [The gong sounds.] Shall we send ye something in
from dinner?
CHLOE. No; I'll try to sleep. Please tell them I don't want to be
disturbed.
HORNBLOWER. All right. I'll just answer this note.
[He sits down at her writing-table.]
[CHLOE starts up from the sofa feverishly, looking at her
watch, at the window, at her watch; then softly crosses to the
window and opens it.]
HORNBLOWER. [Finishing] Listen! [He turns round towards the sofa]
Hallo! Where are ye?
CHLOE. [At the window] It's so hot.
HORNBLOWER. Here's what I've said:
"MADAM,--You can tell me nothing of my daughter-in-law which
can affect the happiness of my family. I regard your note as
an impertinence, and I shall not be with you at eleven o'clock
to-morrow morning.
"Yours truly----"
CHLOE. [With a suffering movement of her head] Oh!--Well!--[The
gong is touched a second time.]
HORNBLOWER. [Crossing to the door] Lie ye down, and get a sleep.
I'll tell them not to disturb ye; and I hope ye'll be all right
to-morrow. Good-night, Chloe.
CHLOE. Good-night. [He goes out.]
[After a feverish turn or two, CHLOE returns to the open window
and waits there, half screened by the curtains. The door is
opened inch by inch, and ANNA'S head peers round. Seeing where
CHLOE is, she slips in and passes behind the screen, Left.
Suddenly CHLOE backs in from the window.]
CHLOE. [In a low voice] Come in.
[She darts to the door and locks it.]
[DAWKER has come in through the window and stands regarding her
with a half smile.]
DAWKER. Well, young woman, what do you want of me?
[In the presence of this man of her own class, there comes a
distinct change in CHLOE'S voice and manner; a sort of frank
commonness, adapted to the man she is dealing with, but she
keeps her voice low.]
CHLOE. You're making a mistake, you know.
DAWKER. [With a broad grin] No. I've got a memory for faces.
CHLOE. I say you are.
DAWKER. [Turning to go] If that's all, you needn't have troubled
me to come.
CHLOE. No. Don't go! [With a faint smile] You are playing a game
with me. Aren't you ashamed? What harm have I done you? Do you
call this cricket?
DAWKER. No, my girl--business.
CHLOE. [Bitterly] What have I to do with this quarrel? I couldn't
help their falling out.
DAWKER. That's your misfortune.
CHLOE. [Clasping her hands] You're a cruel fellow if you can spoil
a woman's life who never did you an ounce of harm.
DAWKER. So they don't know about you. That's all right. Now, look
here, I serve my employer. But I'm flesh and blood, too, and I
always give as good as I get. I hate this family of yours. There's
no name too bad for 'em to call me this last month, and no looks too
black to give me. I tell you frankly, I hate.
CHLOE. There's good in them same as in you.
DAWKER. [With a grin] There's no good Hornblower but a dead
Hornblower.
CHLOE. But--but Im not one.
DAWKER. You'll be the mother of some, I shouldn't wonder.
CHLOE. [Stretching out her hand-pathetically] Oh! leave me alone,
do! I'm happy here. Be a sport! Be a sport!
DAWKER. [Disconcerted for a second] You can't get at me, so don't
try it on.
CHLOE. I had such a bad time in old days.
[DAWKER shakes his head; his grin has disappeared and his face
is like wood.]
CHLOE. [Panting] Ah! do! You might! You've been fond of some
woman, I suppose. Think of her!
DAWKER. [Decisively] It won't do, Mrs. Chloe. You're a pawn in
the game, and I'm going to use you.
CHLOE. [Despairingly] What is it to you? [With a sudden touch of
the tigress] Look here! Don't you make an enemy, of me. I haven't
dragged through hell for nothing. Women like me can bite, I tell
you.
DAWKER. That's better. I'd rather have a woman threaten than
whine, any day. Threaten away! You'll let 'em know that you met me
in the Promenade one night. Of course you'll let 'em know that,
won't you?--or that----
CHLOE. Be quiet! Oh! Be quiet! [Taking from her bosom the notes
and the pearls] Look! There's my savings--there's all I've got!
The pearls'll fetch nearly a thousand. [Holding it out to him]
Take it, and drop me out--won't you? Won't you?
DAWKER. [Passing his tongue over his lips with a hard little laugh]
You mistake your man, missis. I'm a plain dog, if you like, but I'm
faithful, and I hold fast. Don't try those games on me.
CHLOE. [Losing control] You're a beast!--a beast! a cruel,
cowardly beast! And how dare you bribe that woman here to spy on
me? Oh! yes, you do; you know you do. If you drove me mad, you
wouldn't care. You beast!
DAWKER. Now, don't carry on! That won't help you.
CHLOE. What d'you call it--to dog a woman down like this, just
because you happen to have a quarrel with a man?
DAWKER. Who made the quarrel? Not me, missis. You ought to know
that in a row it's the weak and helpless--we won't say the innocent
--that get it in the neck. That can't be helped.
CHLOE. [Regarding him intently] I hope your mother or your sister,
if you've got any, may go through what I'm going through ever since
you got on my track. I hope they'll know what fear means. I hope
they'll love and find out that it's hanging on a thread, and--and--
Oh! you coward, you persecuting coward! Call yourself a man!
DAWKER. [With his grin] Ah! You look quite pretty like that. By
George! you're a handsome woman when you're roused.
[CHLOE'S passion fades out as quickly as it blazed up. She
sinks down on the sofa, shudders, looks here and there, and
then for a moment up at him.]
CHLOE. Is there anything you'll take, not to spoil my life?
[Clasping her hands on her breast; under her breath] Me?
DAWKER. [Wiping his brow] By God! That's an offer. [He recoils
towards the window] You--you touched me there. Look here! I've
got to use you and I'm going to use you, but I'll do my best to let
you down as easy as I can. No, I don't want anything you can give
me--that is--[He wipes his brow again] I'd like it--but I won't
take it.
[CHLOE buries her face in her hands.]
There! Keep your pecker up; don't cry. Good-night! [He goes
through the window.]
CHLOE. [Springing up] Ugh! Rat in a trap! Rat----!
[She stands listening; flies to the door, unlocks it, and,
going back to the sofa, lies down and doses her eyes. CHARLES
comes in very quietly and stands over her, looking to see if
she is asleep. She opens her eyes.]
CHARLES. Well, Clo! Had a sleep, old girl?
CHLOE. Ye-es.
CHARLES. [Sitting on the arm of the sofa and caressing her] Feel
better, dear?
CHLOE. Yes, better, Charlie.
CHARLES. That's right. Would you like some soup?
CHLOE. [With a shudder] No.
CHARLES. I say-what gives you these heads? You've been very on and
off all this last month.
CHLOE. I don't know. Except that--except that I am going to have a
child, Charlie.
CHARLES. After all! By Jove! Sure?
CHLOE. [Nodding] Are you glad?
CHARLES. Well--I suppose I am. The guv'nor will be mighty pleased,
anyway.
CHLOE. Don't tell him--yet.
CHARLES. All right! [Bending over and drawing her to him] My poor
girl, I'm so sorry you're seedy. Give us a kiss.
[CHLOE puts up her face and kisses him passionately.]
I say, you're like fire. You're not feverish?
CHLOE. [With a laugh] It's a wonder if I'm not. Charlie, are you
happy with me?
CHARLES. What do you think?
CHLOE. [Leaning against him] You wouldn't easily believe things
against me, would you?
CHARLES. What! Thinking of those Hillcrists? What the hell that
woman means by her attitude towards you--When I saw her there
to-day, I had all my work cut out not to go up and give her a bit
of my mind.
CHLOE. [Watching him stealthily] It's not good for me, now I'm
like this. It's upsetting me, Charlie.
CHARLES. Yes; and we won't forget. We'll make 'em pay for it.
CHLOE. It's wretched in a little place like this. I say, must you
go on spoiling their home?
CHARLES. The woman cuts you and insults you. That's enough for me.
CHLOE. [Timidly] Let her. I don't care; I can't bear feeling
enemies about, Charlie, I--get nervous--I----
CHARLES. My dear girl! What is it?
[He looks at her intently.]
CHLOE. I suppose it's--being like this. [Suddenly] But, Charlie,
do stop it for my sake. Do, do!
CHARLES. [Patting her arm] Come, come; I say, Chloe! You're
making mountains. See things in proportion. Father's paid nine
thousand five hundred to get the better of those people, and you
want him to chuck it away to save a woman who's insulted you.
That's not sense, and it's not business. Have some pride.
CHLOE. [Breathless] I've got no pride, Charlie. I want to be
quiet--that's all.
CHARLES. Well, if the row gets on your nerves, I can take you to
the sea. But you ought to enjoy a fight with people like that.
CHLOE. [With calculated bitterness] No, it's nothing, of course--
what I want.
CHARLES. Hello! Hello! You are on the jump!
CHLOE. If you want me to be a good wife to you, make father stop
it.
CHARLES. [Standing up] Now, look here, Chloe, what's behind this?
CHLOE. [Faintly] Behind?
CHARLES. You're carrying on as if--as if you were really scared!
We've got these people: We'll have them out of Deepwater in six
months. It's absolute ruination to their beastly old house; we'll
put the chimneys on the very edge, not three hundred yards off, and
our smoke'll be drifting over them half the time. You won't have
this confounded stuck-up woman here much longer. And then we can
really go ahead and take our proper place. So long as she's here,
we shall never do that. We've only to drive on now as fast as we
can.
CHLOE. [With a gesture] I see.
CHARLES. [Again looking at her] If you go on like this, you know,
I shall begin to think there's something you----
CHLOE [softly] Charlie! [He comes to her.] Love me!
CHARLES. [Embracing her] There, old girl! I know women are funny
at these times. You want a good night, that's all.
CHLOE. You haven't finished dinner, have you? Go back, and I'll go
to bed quite soon. Charlie, don't stop loving me.
CHARLES. Stop? Not much.
[While he is again embracing her, ANNA steals from behind the
screen to the door, opens it noiselessly, and passes through,
but it clicks as she shuts it.]
CHLOE. [Starting violently] Oh-h!
[He comes to her.]
CHARLES. What is it? What is it? You are nervy, my dear.
CHLOE. [Looking round with a little laugh] I don't know. Go on,
Charlie. I'll be all right when this head's gone.
CHARLES. [Stroking her forehead and, looking at her doubtfully]
You go to bed; I won't be late coming up.
[He turn, and goes, blowing a kiss from the doorway. When he
is gone, CHLOE gets up and stands in precisely the attitude in
which she stood at the beginning of the Act, thinking, and
thinking. And the door is opened, and the face of the MAID
peers round at her.]
CURTAIN
ACT III
SCENE I
HILLCRIST'S study next morning.
JILL coming from Left, looks in at the open French window.
JILL. [Speaking to ROLF, invisible] Come in here. There's no one.
[She goes in. ROLF joins her, coming from the garden.]
ROLF. Jill, I just wanted to say--Need we?
[JILL. nodes.]
Seeing you yesterday--it did seem rotten.
JILL. We didn't begin it.
ROLF. No; but you don't understand. If you'd made yourself, as
father has----
JILL. I hope I should be sorry.
ROLF. [Reproachfully] That isn't like you. Really he can't help
thinking he's a public benefactor.
JILL. And we can't help thinking he's a pig. Sorry!
ROLF. If the survival of the fittest is right----
JILL. He may be fitter, but he's not going to survive.
ROLF. [Distracted] It looks like it, though.
JILL. Is that all you came to say?
ROLF. Suppose we joined, couldn't we stop it?
JILL. I don't feel like joining.
ROLF. We did shake hands.
JILL. One can't fight and not grow bitter.
ROLF. I don't feel bitter.
JILL. Wait; you'll feel it soon enough.
ROLF. Why? [Attentively] About Chloe? I do think your mother's
manner to her is----
JILL. Well?
ROLF. Snobbish. [JILL laughs.]
She may not be your class; and that's just why it's
snobbish.
JILL. I think you'd better shut up.
ROLF. What my father said was true; your mother's rudeness to her
that day she came here, has made both him and Charlie ever so much
more bitter.
[JILL whistles the Habanera from "Carmen."]
[Staring at her, rather angrily]
Is it a whistling matter?
JILL. No.
ROLF. I suppose you want me to go?
JILL. Yes.
ROLF. All right. Aren't we ever going to be friends again?
JILL. [Looking steadily at him] I don't expect so.
ROLF. That's very-horrible.
JILL. Lots of horrible things in the world.
ROLF. It's our business to make them fewer, Jill.
JILL. [Fiercely] Don't be moral.
ROLF. [Hurt] That's the last thing I want to be.--I only want to
be friendly.
JILL. Better be real first.
ROLF. From the big point of view----
JILL. There isn't any. We're all out, for our own. And why not?
ROLF. By jove, you have got----
JILL. Cynical? Your father's motto--"Every man for himself."
That's the winner--hands down. Goodbye!
ROLF. Jill! Jill!
JILL. [Putting her hands behind her back, hums]--
"If auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne"----
ROLF. Don't!
[With a pained gesture he goes out towards Left, through the
French window.]
[JILL, who has broken off the song, stands with her hands
clenched and her lips quivering.]
[FELLOWS enters Left.]
FELLOWS. Mr. Dawker, Miss, and two gentlemen.
JILL. Let the three gentlemen in, and me out.
[She passes him and goes out Left. And immediately. DAWKER
and the two STRANGERS come in.]
FELLOWS. I'll inform Mrs. Hillcrist, sir. The Squire is on his
rounds. [He goes out Left.]
[The THREE MEN gather in a discreet knot at the big bureau,
having glanced at the two doors and the open French window.]
DAWKER. Now this may come into Court, you know. If there's a screw
loose anywhere, better mention it. [To SECOND STRANGE] You knew
her personally?
SECOND S. What do you think? I don't, take girls on trust for that
sort of job. She came to us highly recommended, too; and did her
work very well. It was a double stunt--to make sure--wasn't it,
George?
FIRST S. Yes; we paid her for the two visits.
SECOND S. I should know her in a minute; striking looking girl; had
something in her face. Daresay she'd seen hard times.
FIRST S. We don't want publicity.
DAWKER. Not Likely. The threat'll do it; but the stakes are heavy
--and the man's a slugger; we must be able to push it home. If you
can both swear to her, it'll do the trick.
SECOND S. And about--I mean, we're losing time, you know, coming
down here.
DAWKER. [With a nod at FIRST STRANGER] George here knows me.
That'll be all right. I'll guarantee it well worth your while.
SECOND S. I don't want to do the girl harm, if she's married.
DAWKER. No, no; nobody wants to hurt her. We just want a cinch on
this fellow till he squeals.
[They separate a little as MRS. HILLCRIST enters from Right.]
DAWKER. Good morning, ma'am. My friend's partner. Hornblower
coming?
MRS. H. At eleven. I had to send up a second note, Dawker.
DAWKER. Squire not in?
MRS. H. I haven't told him.
DAWKER. [Nodding] Our friends might go in here [Pointing Right]
and we can use 'em as the want 'em.
MRS. H. [To the STRANGERS] Will you make yourselves comfortable?
[She holds the door open, and they pass her into the room,
Right.]
DAWKER. [Showing document] I've had this drawn and engrossed.
Pretty sharp work. Conveys the Centry, and Longmeadow; to the
Squire at four thousand five hundred: Now, ma'am, suppose Hornblower
puts his hand to that, hell have been done in the eye, and six
thousand all told out o' pocket.--You'll have a very nasty neighbour
here.
MRS. H. But we shall still have the power to disclose that secret
at any time.
DAWKER. Yeh! But things might happen here you could never bring
home to him. You can't trust a man like that. He isn't goin' to
forgive me, I know.
MRS. H. [Regarding him keenly] But if he signs, we couldn't
honourably----
DAWKER. No, ma'am, you couldn't; and I'm sure I don't want to do
that girl a hurt. I just mention it because, of course, you can't
guarantee that it doesn't get out.
MRS. H. Not absolutely, I suppose.
[A look passes between them, which neither of them has quite
sanctioned.]
[There's his car. It always seems to make more noise than any
other.]
DAWKER. He'll kick and flounder--but you leave him to ask what you
want, ma'am; don't mention this [He puts the deed back into his
pocket]. The Centry's no mortal good to him if he's not going to
put up works; I should say he'd be glad to save what he can.
[MRS. HILLCRIST inclines her head. FELLOWS enters Left.]
FELLOWS. [Apologetically] Mr. Hornblower, ma'am; by appointment,
he says.
MRS. H. Quite right, Fellows.
[HORNBLOWER comes in, and FELLOWS goes out.]
HORNBLOWER. [Without salutation] I've come to ask ye point bleak
what ye mean by writing me these letters. [He takes out two
letters.] And we'll discus it in the presence of nobody, if ye,
please.
MRS. H. Mr. Dawker knows all that I know, and more.
HORNBLOWER. Does he? Very well! Your second note says that my
daughter-in-law has lied to me. Well, I've brought her, and what
ye've got to say--if it's not just a trick to see me again--ye'll
say to her face. [He takes a step towards the window.]
MRS. H. Mr. Hornblower, you had better, decide that after hearing
what it is--we shall be quite ready to repeat it in her presence;
but we want to do as little harm as possible.
HORNBLOWER. [Stopping] Oh! ye do! Well, what lies have ye been
hearin'? Or what have ye made up? You and Mr. Dawker? Of course
ye know there's a law of libel and slander. I'm, not the man to
stop at that.
MRS. H. [Calmly] Are you familiar with the law of divorce, Mr.
Hornblower?
HORNBLOWER. [Taken aback] No, I'm not. That is-----.
MRS. H. Well, you know that misconduct is required. And I suppose
you've heard that cases are arranged.
HORNBLOWER. I know it's all very shocking--what about it?
MRS. H. When cases are arranged, Mr. Hornblower, the man who is to
be divorced often visits an hotel with a strange woman. I am
extremely sorry to say that your daughter-in-law, before her
marriage, was in the habit of being employed as such a woman.
HORNBLOWER. Ye dreadful creature!
DAWKER. [Quickly] All proved, up to the hilt!
HORNBLOWER. I don't believe a word of it. Ye're lyin' to save your
skins. How dare ye tell me such monstrosities? Dawker, I'll have
ye in a criminal court.
DAWKER. Rats! You saw a gent with me yesterday? Well, he's
employed her.
HORNBLOWER. A put-up job! Conspiracy!
MRS. H. Go and get your daughter-in-law.
HORNBLOWER. [With the first sensation of being in a net] It's a
foul shame--a lying slander!
MRS. H. If so, it's easily disproved. Go and fetch her.
HORNBLOWER. [Seeing them unmoved] I will. I don't believe a word
of it.
MRS. H. I hope you are right.
[HORNBLOWER goes out by the French window, DAWKER slips to the
door Right, opens it, and speaks to those within. MRS.
HILLCRIST stands moistening her lips, and passim her
handkerchief over them. HORNBLOWER returns, preceding CHLOE,
strung up to hardness and defiance.]
HORNBLOWER. Now then, let's have this impudent story torn to rags.
CHLOE. What story?
HORNBLOWER. That you, my dear, were a woman--it's too shockin--I
don't know how to tell ye----
CHLOE. Go on!
HORNBLOWER. Were a woman that went with men, to get them their
divorce.
CHLOE. Who says that?
HORNBLOWER. That lady [Sneering] there, and her bull-terrier here.
CHLOE. [Facing MRS. HILLCRIST] That's a charitable thing to say,
isn't it?
MRS. H. Is it true?
CHLOE. No.
HORNBLOWER. [Furiously] There! I'll have ye both on your knees to
her!
DAWKER. [Opening the door, Right] Come in.
[The FIRST STRANGER comes in. CHLOE, with a visible effort,
turns to face him.]
FIRST S. How do you do, Mrs. Vane?
CHLOE. I don't know you.
FIRST S. Your memory is bad, ma'am: You knew me yesterday well
enough. One day is not a long time, nor are three years.
CHLOE. Who are you?
FIRST S. Come, ma'am, come! The Caster case.
CHLOE. I don't know you, I say. [To MRS. HILLCRIST] How can you
be so vile?
FIRST S. Let me refresh your memory, ma'am. [Producing a notebook]
Just on three years ago; "Oct.3. To fee and expenses Mrs. Vane with
Mr. C----, Hotel Beaulieu, Twenty pounds. Oct. 10, Do., Twenty
pounds." [To HORNBLOWER] Would you like to glance at this book,
sir? You'll see they're genuine entries.
[HORNBLOWER makes a motion to do so, but checks himself and
looks at CHLOE.]
CHLOE. [Hysterically] It's all lies--lies!
FIRST S. Come, ma'am, we wish you no harm.
CHLOE. Take me away. I won't be treated like this.
MRS. H. [In a low voice] Confess.
CHLOE. Lies!
HORNBLOWER. Were ye ever called Vane?
CHLOE. No, never.
[She makes a movement towards the window, but DAWKER is in the
way, and she halts. FIRST S. [Opening the door, Right]
Henry.]
[The SECOND STRANGER comes in quickly. At sight of him CHLOE
throws up her hands, gasps, breaks down, stage Left, and stands
covering her face with her hands. It is so complete a
confession that HORNBLOWER stands staggered; and, taking out a
coloured handkerchief, wipes his brow.]
DAWKER. Are you convinced?
HORNBLOWER. Take those men away.
DAWKER. If you're not satisfied, we can get other evidence; plenty.
HORNBLOWER. [Looking at CHLOE] That's enough. Take them out.
Leave me alone with her.
[DAWKER takes them out Right. MRS. HILLCRIST passes HORNBLOWER
and goes out at the window. HORNBLOWER moves down a step or
two towards CHLOE.]
HORNBLOWER. My God!
CHLOE. [With an outburst] Don't tell Charlie! Don't tell Charlie!
HORNBLOWER. Chearlie! So, that was your manner of life.
[CHLOE utters a moaning sound.]
So that's what ye got out of by marryin' into my family! Shame on
ye, ye Godless thing!
CHLOE. Don't tell Charlie!
HORNBLOWER. And that's all ye can say for the wreck ye've wrought.
My family, my works, my future! How dared ye!
CHLOE. If you'd been me!----
HORNBLOWER. An' these Hillcrists. The skin game of it!
CHLOE. [Breathless] Father!
HORNBLOWER. Don't call me that, woman!
CHLOE. [Desperate] I'm going to have a child.
HORNBLOWER. God! Ye are!
CHLOE. Your grandchild. For the sake of it, do what these people
want; and don't tell anyone--DON'T TELL CHARLIE!
HORNBLOWER. [Again wiping his forehead] A secret between us. I
don't know that I can keep it. It's horrible. Poor Chearlie!
CHLOE. [Suddenly fierce] You must keep it, you shall! I won't
have him told. Don't make me desperate! I can be--I didn't live
that life for nothing.
HORNBLOWER. [Staring at her resealed in a new light] Ay; ye look a
strange, wild woman, as I see ye. And we thought the world of ye!
CHLOE. I love Charlie; I'm faithful to him. I can't live without
him. You'll never forgive me, I know; but Charlie----! [Stretching
out her hands.]
[HORNBLOWER makes a bewildered gesture with his large hands.]
HORNBLOWER. I'm all at sea here. Go out to the car and wait for
me.
[CHLOE passes him and goes out, Left.]
[Muttering to himself] So I'm down! Me enemies put their heels upon
me head! Ah! but we'll see yet!
[He goes up to the window and beckons towards the Right.]
[MRS. HILLCRIST comes in.]
What d'ye want for this secret?
MRS. H. Nothing.
HORNBLOWER. Indeed! Wonderful!--the trouble ye've taken for--
nothing.
MRS. H. If you harm us we shall harm you. Any use whatever of the
Centry.
HORNBLOWER. For which ye made me pay nine thousand five hundred
pounds.
MRS. H. We will buy it from you.
HORNBLOWER. At what price?
MRS. H. The Centry at the price Miss Muffins would have taken at
first, and Longmeadow at the price you--gave us--four thousand five
hundred altogether.
HORNBLOWER. A fine price, and me six thousand out of pocket. Na,
no! I'll keep it and hold it over ye. Ye daren't tell this secret
so long as I've got it.
MRS. H. No, Mr. Hornblower. On second thoughts, you must sell.
You broke your word over the Jackmans. We can't trust you. We
would rather have our place here ruined at once, than leave you the
power to ruin it as and when you like. You will sell us the Centry
and Longmeadow now, or you know what will happen.
HORNBLOWER. [Writhing] I'll not. It's blackmail.
MRS. H. Very well then! Go your own way and we'll go ours. There
is no witness to this conversation.
HORNBLOWER. [Venomously] By heaven, ye're a clever woman. Will ye
swear by Almighty God that you and your family, and that agent of
yours, won't breathe a word of this shockin' thing to mortal soul.
MRS. H. Yes, if you sell.
HORNBLOWER. Where's Dawker?
MRS. H. [Going to the door, Right] Mr. Dawker
[DAWKER comes in.]
HORNBLOWER. I suppose ye've got your iniquity ready.
[DAWKER grins and produces the document.]
It's mighty near conspiracy, this. Have ye got a Testament?
MRS. H. My word will be enough, Mr. Hornblower.
HORNBLOWER. Ye'll pardon me--I can't make it solemn enough for you.
MRS. H. Very well; here is a Bible.
[She takes a small Bible from the bookshelf.]
DAWKER. [Spreading document on bureau] This is a short conveyance
of the Centry and Longmeadow--recites sale to you by Miss Mulling,
of the first, John Hillcrist of the second, and whereas you have
agreed for the sale to said John Hillcrist, for the sum of four
thousand five hundred pounds, in consideration of the said sum,
receipt whereof, you hereby acknowledge you do convey all that, etc.
Sign here. I'll witness.
HORNBLOWER [To MRS. HILLCRIST] Take that Book in your hand, and
swear first. I swear by Almighty God never to breathe a word of
what I know concerning Chloe Hornblower to any living soul.
MRS. H. No, Mr. Hornblower; you will please sign first. We are not
in the habit of breaking our word.
[HORNBLOWER after a furious look at them, seizes a pen, runs
his eye again over the deed, and signs, DAWKER witnessing.]
To that oath, Mr. Hornblower, we shall add the words, "So long as
the Hornblower family do us no harm."
HORNBLOWER. [With a snarl] Take it in your hands, both of ye, and
together swear.
MRS. H. [Taking the Book] I swear that I will breathe no word of
what I know concerning Chloe Hornblower to any living soul, so long
as the Hornblower family do us no harm.
DAWKER. I swear that too.
MRS. H. I engage for my husband.
HORNBLOWER. Where are those two fellows?
DAWKER. Gone. It's no business of theirs.
HORNBLOWER. It's no business of any of ye what has happened to a
woman in the past. Ye know that. Good-day!
[He gives them a deadly look, and goes out, left, followed by
DAWKER.]
MRS. H. [With her hand on the Deed] Safe!
[HILLCRIST enters at the French window, followed by JILL.]
[Holding up the Deed] Look! He's just gone! I told you it was
only necessary to use the threat. He caved in and signed this; we
are sworn to say nothing. We've beaten him.
[HILLCRIST studies the Deed.]
JILL. [Awed] We saw Chloe in the car. How did she take it,
mother?
MRS. H. Denied, then broke down when she saw our witnesses. I'm
glad you were not here, Jack.
JILL. [Suddenly] I shall go and see her.
MRS. H. Jill, you will not; you don't know what she's done.
JILL. I shall. She must be in an awful state.
HILLCRIST. My dear, you can do her no good.
JILL. I think I can, Dodo.
MRS. H. You don't understand human nature. We're enemies for life
with those people. You're a little donkey if you think anything
else.
JILL. I'm going, all the same.
MRS. H. Jack, forbid her.
HILLCRIST. [Lifting an eyebrow] Jill, be reasonable.
JILL. Suppose I'd taken a knock like that, Dodo, I'd be glad of
friendliness from someone.
MRS. H. You never could take a knock like that.
JILL. You don't know what you can do till you try, mother.
HILLCRIST. Let her go, Amy. Im sorry for that young woman.
MRS. H. You'd be sorry for a man who picked your pocket, I believe.
HILLCRIST. I certainly should! Deuced little he'd get out of it,
when I've paid for the Centry.
MRS. H. [Bitterly] Much gratitude I get for saving you both our
home!
JILL. [Disarmed] Oh! Mother, we are grateful. Dodo, show your
gratitude.
HILLCRIST. Well, my dear, it's an intense relief. I'm not good at
showing my feelings, as you know. What d'you want me to do? Stand
on one leg and crow?
JILL. Yes, Dodo, yes! Mother, hold him while I [Suddenly she
stops, and all the fun goes out of her] No! I can't--I can't help
thinking of her.
CURTAIN falls for a minute.
SCENE II
When it rises again, the room is empty and dark, same for
moonlight coming in through the French window, which is open.
The figure of CHLOE, in a black cloak, appears outside in the
moonlight; she peers in, moves past, comes bank, hesitatingly
enters. The cloak, fallen back, reveals a white evening dress;
and that magpie figure stands poised watchfully in the dim
light, then flaps unhappily Left and Right, as if she could not
keep still. Suddenly she stands listening.
ROLF'S VOICE. [Outside] Chloe! Chloe!
[He appears]
CHLOE. [Going to the window] What are you doing here?
ROLF. What are you? I only followed you.
CHLOE. Go away.
ROLF. What's the matter? Tell me!
CHLOE. Go away, and don't say anything. Oh! The roses! [She has
put her nose into some roses in a bowl on a big stand close to the
window] Don't they smell lovely?
ROLF. What did Jill want this afternoon?
CHLOE. I'll tell you nothing. Go away!
ROLF. I don't like leaving you here in this state.
CHLOE. What state? I'm all right. Wait for me down in the drive,
if you want to.
[ROLF starts to go, stops, looks at her, and does go. CHLOE,
with a little moaning sound, flutters again, magpie-like, up
and down, then stands by the window listening. Voices are
heard, Left. She darts out of the window and away to the
Right, as HILLCRIST and JILL come in. They have turned up the
electric light, and come down in frond of the fireplace, where
HILLCRIST sits in an armchair, and JILL on the arm of it. They
are in undress evening attire.]
HILLCRIST. Now, tell me.
JILL. There isn't much, Dodo. I was in an awful funk for fear I
should meet any of the others, and of course I did meet Rolf, but I
told him some lie, and he took me to her room-boudoir, they call it
--isn't boudoir a "dug-out" word?
HILLCRIST. [Meditatively] The sulking room. Well?
JILL. She was sitting like this. [She buries her chin in her
hands, wide her elbows on her knees] And she said in a sort of
fierce way: "What do you want?" And I said: "I'm awfully sorry, but
I thought you might like it."
HILLCRIST. Well?
JILL. She looked at me hard, and said: "I suppose you know all
about it." And I Said: "Only vaguely," because of course I don't.
And she said: "Well, it was decent of you to come." Dodo, she looks
like a lost soul. What has she done?
HILLCRIST. She committed her real crime when she married young
Hornblower without telling him. She came out of a certain world to
do it.
JILL. Oh! [Staring in front of her] Is it very awful in that
world, Dodo?
HILLCRIST. [Uneasy] I don't know, Jill. Some can stand it, I
suppose; some can't. I don't know which sort she is.
JILL. One thing I'm sure of: she's awfully fond of Chearlie.
HILLCRIST. That's bad; that's very bad.
JILL. And she's frightened, horribly. I think she's desperate.
HILLCRIST. Women like that are pretty tough, Jill; don't judge her
too much by your own feelings.
JILL. No; only----Oh! it was beastly; and of course I dried up.
HILLCRIST. [Feelingly] H'm! One always does. But perhaps it was
as well; you'd have been blundering in a dark passage.
JILL. I just said: "Father and I feel awfully sorry; if there's
anything we can do----"
HILLCRIST. That was risky, Jill.
JILL. (Disconsolately) I had to say something. I'm glad I went,
anyway. I feel more human.
HILLCRIST. We had to fight for our home. I should have felt like a
traitor if I hadn't.
JILL. I'm not enjoying home tonight, Dodo.
HILLCRIST. I never could hate proper; it's a confounded nuisance.
JILL. Mother's fearfully' bucked, and Dawker's simply oozing
triumph. I don't trust him. Dodo; he's too--not pugilistic--the
other one with a pug-naceous.
HILLCRIST. He is rather.
JILL. I'm sure he wouldn't care tuppence if Chloe committed
suicide.
HILLCRIST. [Rising uneasily] Nonsense! Nonsense!
JILL. I wonder if mother would.
HILLCRIST. [Turning his face towards the window] What's that? I
thought I heard--[Louder]--Is these anybody out there?
[No answer. JILL, springs up and runs to the window.]
JILL. You!
[She dives through to the Right, and returns, holding CHLOE'S
hand and drawing her forward]
Come in! It's only us! [To HILLCRIST] Dodo!
HILLCRIST. [Flustered, but making a show of courtesy] Good
evening! Won't you sit down?
JILL. Sit down; you're all shaky.
[She makes CHLOE sit down in the armchair, out of which they
have risen, then locks the door, and closing the windows, draws
the curtains hastily over them.]
HILLCRIST. [Awkward and expectant] Can I do anything for you?
CHLOE. I couldn't bear it he's coming to ask you----
HILLCRIST. Who?
CHLOE. My husband. [She draws in her breath with a long shudder,
then seem to seize her courage in her hands] I've got to be quick.
He keeps on asking--he knows there's something.
HILLCRIST. Make your mind easy. We shan't tell him.
CHLOE. [Appealing] Oh! that's not enough. Can't you tell him
something to put him back to thinking it's all right? I've done him
such a wrong. I didn't realise till after--I thought meeting him
was just a piece of wonderful good luck, after what I'd been
through. I'm not such a bad lot--not really.
[She stops from the over-quivering of her lips. JILL, standing
beside the chair, strokes her shoulder. HILLCRIST stands very
still, painfully biting at a finger.]
You see, my father went bankrupt, and I was in a shop----
HILLCRIST. [Soothingly, and to prevent disclosures] Yes, yes; Yes,
yes!
CHLOE. I never gave a man away or did anything I was ashamed of--at
least--I mean, I had to make my living in all sorts of ways, and
then I met Charlie.
[Again she stopped from the quivering of her lips.]
JILL. It's all right.
CHLOE. He thought I was respectable, and that was such a relief,
you can't think, so--so I let him.
JILL. Dodo! It's awful
HILLCRIST. It is!
CHLOE. And after I married him, you see, I fell in love. If I had
before, perhaps I wouldn't have dared only, I don't know--you never
know, do you? When there's a straw going, you catch at it.
JILL. Of course you do.
CHLOE. And now, you see, I'm going to have a child.
JILL. [Aghast] Oh! Are you?
HILLCRIST. Good God!
CHLOE. [Dully] I've been on hot bricks all this month, ever since
that day here. I knew it was in the wind. What gets in the wind
never gets out. [She rises and throws out her arms] Never! It
just blows here and there [Desolately] and then--blows home. [Her
voice changes to resentment] But I've paid for being a fool--
'tisn't fun, that sort of life, I can tell you. I'm not ashamed and
repentant, and all that. If it wasn't for him! I'm afraid he'll
never forgive me; it's such a disgrace for him--and then, to have
his child! Being fond of him, I feel it much worse than anything I
ever felt, and that's saying a good bit. It is.
JILL. [Energetically] Look here! He simply mustn't find out.
CHLOE. That's it; but it's started, and he's bound to keep on
because he knows there's something. A man isn't going to be
satisfied when there's something he suspects about his wife, Charlie
wouldn't never. He's clever, and he's jealous; and he's coming
here.
[She stops, and looks round wildly, listening.]
JILL. Dodo, what can we say to put him clean off the scent?
HILLCRIST. Anything--in reason.
CHLOE. [Catching at this straw] You will! You see, I don't know
what I'll do. I've got soft, being looked after--he does love me.
And if he throws me off, I'll go under--that's all.
HILLCRIST. Have you any suggestion?
CHLOE. [Eagerly] The only thing is to tell him something positive,
something he'll believe, that's not too bad--like my having been a
lady clerk with those people who came here, and having been
dismissed on suspicion of taking money. I could get him to believe
that wasn't true.
JILL. Yes; and it isn't--that's splendid! You'd be able to put
such conviction into it. Don't you think so, Dodo?
HILLCRIST. Anything I can. I'm deeply sorry.
CHLOE. Thank you. And don't say I've been here, will you? He's
very suspicious. You see, he knows that his father has re-sold that
land to you; that's what he can't make out--that, and my coming here
this morning; he knows something's being kept from him; and he
noticed that man with Dawker yesterday. And my maid's been spying
on me. It's in the air. He puts two and two together. But I've
told him there's nothing he need worry about; nothing that's true.
HILLCRIST. What a coil!
CHLOE. I'm very honest and careful about money. So he won't
believe that about me, and the old man wants to keep it from
Charlie, I know.
HILLCRIST. That does seem the best way out.
CHLOE. [With a touch of defiance] I'm a true wife to him.
CHLOE. Of course we know that.
HILLCRIST. It's all unspeakably sad. Deception's horribly against
the grain--but----
CHLOE. [Eagerly] When I deceived him, I'd have deceived God
Himself--I was so desperate. You've never been right down in the
mud. You can't understand what I've been through.
HILLCRIST. Yes, Yes. I daresay I'd have done the same. I should
be the last to judge.
[CHLOE covers her eyes with her hands.]
There, there! Cheer up! [He puts his hand on her arm.]
CHLOE. [To herself] Darling Dodo!
CHLOE. [Starting] There's somebody at the door. I must go; I must
go.
[She runs to the window and slips through the curtains.]
[The handle of the door is again turned.]
JILL. [Dismayed] Oh! It's locked--I forgot.
[She spring to the door, unlocks and opens it, while HILLCRIST
goes to the bureau and sits down.]
It's all right, Fellows; I was only saying something rather
important.
FELLOWS. [Coming in a step or two and closing the door behind him]
Certainly, Miss. Mr. Charles 'Ornblower is in the hall. Wants to
see you, sir, or Mrs. Hillcrist.
JILL. What a bore! Can you see him, Dodo?
HILLCRIST. Er--yes. I suppose so. Show him in here, Fellows.
[As FELLOWS goes out, JILL runs to the window, but has no time
to do more than adjust the curtains and spring over to stand by
her father, before CHARLES comes in. Though in evening
clothes, he is white and disheveled for so spruce a young
mean.]
CHARLES. Is my wife here?
HILLCRIST. No, sir.
CHARLES. Has she been?
HILLCRIST. This morning, I believe, Jill?
JILL. Yes, she came this morning.
CHARLES. [staring at her] I know that--now, I mean?
JILL. No.
[HILLCRIST shakes has head.]
CHARLES. Tell me what was said this morning.
HILLCRIST. I was not here this morning.
CHARLES. Don't try to put me off. I know too much. [To JILL]
You.
JILL. Shall I, Dodo?
HILLCRIST. No; I will. Won't you sit down?
CHARLES. No. Go on.
HILLCRIST. [Moistening his lips] It appears, Mr. Hornblower, that
my agent, Mr. Dawker--
[CHARLES, who is breathing hard, utters a sound of anger.]
--that my agent happens to know a firm, who in old days employed
your wife. I should greatly prefer not to say any more, especially
as we don't believe the story.
JILL. No; we don't.
CHARLES. Go on!
HILLCRIST. [Getting up] Come! If I were you, I should refuse to
listen to anything against my wife.
CHARLES. Go on, I tell you.
HILLCRIST. You insist? Well, they say there was some question
about the accounts, and your wife left them under a cloud. As I
told you, we don't believe it.
CHARLES. [Passionately] Liars!
[He makes a rush for the door.]
HILLCRIST. [Starting] What did you say?
JILL. [Catching his arm] Dodo! [Sotto voce] We are, you know.
CHARLES. [Turning back to them] Why do you tell me that lie? When
I've just had the truth out of that little scoundrel! My wife's
been here; she put you up to it.
[The face of CHLOE is seen transfixed between the curtains,
parted by her hands.]
She--she put you up to it. Liar that she is--a living lie. For
three years a living lie!
[HILLCRIST whose face alone is turned towards the curtains,
sees that listening face. His hand goes up from uncontrollable
emotion.]
And hasn't now the pluck to tell me. I've done with her. I won't
own a child by such a woman.
[With a little sighing sound CHLOE drops the curtain and
vanishes.]
HILLCRIST. For God's sake, man, think of what you're saying. She's
in great distress.
CHARLES. And what am I?
JILL. She loves you, you know.
CHARLES. Pretty love! That scoundrel Dawker told me--told me--
Horrible! Horrible!
HILLCRIST. I deeply regret that our quarrel should have brought
this about.
CHARLES. [With intense bitterness] Yes, you've smashed my life.
[Unseen by them, MRS. HILLCRIST has entered and stands by the
door, Left.]
MRS. H. Would you have wished to live on in ignorance? [They all
turn to look at her.]
CHARLES. [With a writhing movement] I don't know. But--you--you
did it.
MRS. H. You shouldn't have attacked us.
CHARLES. What did we do to you--compared with this?
MRS. H. All you could.
HILLCRIST. Enough, enough! What can we do to help you?
CHARLES. Tell me where my wife is.
[JILL draws the curtains apart--the window is open--JILL looks
out. They wait in silence.]
JILL. We don't know.
CHARLES. Then she was here?
HILLCRIST. Yes, sir; and she heard you.
CHARLES. All the better if she did. She knows how I feel.
HILLCRIST. Brace up; be gentle with her.
CHARLES. Gentle? A woman who--who----
HILLCRIST. A most unhappy creature. Come!
CHARLES. Damn your sympathy!
[He goes out into the moonlight, passing away.]
JILL. Dodo, we ought to look for her; I'm awfully afraid.
HILLCRIST. I saw her there--listening. With child! Who knows
where things end when they and begin? To the gravel pit, Jill; I'll
go to the pond. No, we'll go together. [They go out.]
[MRS. HILLCRIST comes down to the fireplace, rings the bell
and stands there, thinking. FELLOWS enters.]
MRS. H. I want someone to go down to Mr. Dawker's.
FELLOWS. Mr. Dawker is here, ma'am, waitin' to see you.
MRS. H. Ask him to come in. Oh! and Fellows, you can tell the
Jackmans that they can go back to their cottage.
FELLOWS. Very good, ma'am. [He goes out.]
[MRS. HILLCRIST searches at the bureau, finds and takes out the
deed. DAWKERS comes in; he has the appearance of a man whose
temper has been badly ruffled.]
MRS. H. Charles Hornblower--how did it happen?
DAWKER. He came to me. I said I knew nothing. He wouldn't take
it; went for me, abused me up hill and down dale; said he knew
everything, and then he began to threaten me. Well, I lost my
temper, and I told him.
MRS. H. That's very serious, Dawker, after our promise. My husband
is most upset.
DAWKER. [Sullenly] It's not my fault, ma'am; he shouldn't have
threatened and goaded me on. Besides, it's got out that there's a
scandal; common talk in the village--not the facts, but quite enough
to cook their goose here. They'll have to go. Better have done
with it, anyway, than have enemies at your door.
MRS. H. Perhaps; but--Oh! Dawker, take charge of this. [She hands
him the deed] These people are desperate--and--I'm sot sure of my
husband when his feelings are worked on.
[The sound of a car stopping.]
DAWKER. [At the window, looking to the Left] Hornblower's, I
think. Yes, he's getting out.
MRS. H. [Bracing herself] You'd better wait, then.
DAWKER. He mustn't give me any of his sauce; I've had enough.
[The door is opened and HORNBLOWER enters, pressing so on the
heels of FELLOWS that the announcement of his name is lost.]
HORNBLOWER. Give me that deed! Ye got it out of me by false
pretences and treachery. Ye swore that nothing should be heard of
this. Why! me own servants know.
MRS. H. That has nothing to do with us. Your son came and wrenched
the knowledge out of Mr. DAWKER by abuse and threats; that is all.
You will kindly behave yourself here, or I shall ask that you be
shown out.
HORNBLOWER. Give me that deed, I say! [He suddenly turns on
DAWKER] Ye little ruffian, I see it in your pocket.
[The end indeed is projecting from DAWKER'S breast pocket.]
DAWKER. [Seeing red] Now, look 'ere, 'Ornblower, I stood a deal
from your son, and I'll stand no more.
HORNBLOWER. [To MRS. HILLCRIST] I'll ruin your place yet! [To
DAWKER] Ye give me that deed, or I'll throttle ye.
[He closes on DAWKER, and makes a snatch at the deed. DAWKER,
springs at him, and the two stand swaying, trying for a grip at
each other's throats. MRS. HILLCRIST tries to cross and reach
the bell, but is shut off by their swaying struggle.]
[Suddenly ROLF appears in the window, looks wildly at the
struggle, and seizes DAWKER'S hands, which have reached
HORNBLOWER'S throat. JILL, who is following, rushes up to him
and clutches his arm.]
JILL. Rolf! All of you! Stop! Look!
[DAWKER'S hand relaxes, and he is swung round. HORNBLOWER
staggers and recovers himself, gasping for breath. All turn to
the window, outside which in the moonlight HILLCRIST and
CHARLES HORNBLOWER have CHLOE'S motionless body in their arms.]
In the gravel pit. She's just breathing; that's all.
MRS. H. Bring her in. The brandy, Jill!
HORNBLOWER. No. Take her to the car. Stand back, young woman! I
want no help from any of ye. Rolf--Chearlie--take her up.
[They lift and bear her away, Left. JILL follows.]
Hillcrist, ye've got me beaten and disgraced hereabouts, ye've
destroyed my son's married life, and ye've killed my grandchild.
I'm not staying in this cursed spot, but if ever I can do you or
yours a hurt, I will.
DAWKER. [Muttering] That's right. Squeal and threaten. You began
it.
HILLCRIST. Dawker, have the goodness! Hornblower, in the presence
of what may be death, with all my heart I'm sorry.
HORNBLOWER. Ye hypocrite!
[He passes them with a certain dignity, and goes out at the
window, following to his car.]
[HILLCRIST who has stood for a moment stock-still, goes slowly
forward and sits in his swivel chair.]
MRS. H. Dawker, please tell Fellows to telephone to Dr. Robinson to
go round to the Hornblowers at once.
[DAWKER, fingering the deed, and with a noise that sounds like
"The cur!" goes out, Left.]
[At the fireplace]
Jack! Do you blame me?
HILLCRIST. [Motionless] No.
MRS. H. Or Dawker? He's done his best.
HILLCRIST. No.
MRS. H. [Approaching] What is it?
HILLCRIST. Hypocrite!
[JILL comes running in at the window.]
JILL. Dodo, she's moved; she's spoken. It may not be so bad.
HILLCRIST. Thank God for that!
[FELLOWS enters, Left.]
FELLOWS. The Jackmans, ma'am.
HILLCRIST. Who? What's this?
[The JACKMANS have entered, standing close to the door.]
MRS. J. We're so glad we can go back, sir--ma'am, we just wanted to
thank you.
[There is a silence. They see that they are not welcome.]
Thank you kindly, sir. Good night, ma'am.
[They shuffle out. ]
HILLCRIST. I'd forgotten their existence. [He gets up] What is it
that gets loose when you begin a fight, and makes you what you think
you're not? What blinding evil! Begin as you may, it ends in this
--skin game! Skin game!
JILL. [Rushing to him] It's not you, Dodo; it's not you, beloved
Dodo.
HILLCRIST. It is me. For I am, or should be, master in this house!
MRS. H. I don't understand.
HILLCRIST. When we began this fight, we had clean hands--are they
clean' now? What's gentility worth if it can't stand fire?
CURTAIN
FROM THE SERIES OF SIX SHORT PLAYS
Contents:
The First and The Last
The Little Man
Hall-marked
Defeat
The Sun
Punch and Go
THE FIRST AND THE LAST
A DRAMA IN THREE SCENES
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
KEITH DARRANT, K.C.
LARRY DARRANT, His Brother.
WANDA.
SCENE I. KEITH'S Study.
SCENE II. WANDA's Room.
SCENE III. The Same.
Between SCENE I. and SCENE II.--Thirty hours.
Between SCENE II. and SCENE III.--Two months.
SCENE I
It is six o'clock of a November evening, in KEITH DARRANT'S
study. A large, dark-curtained room where the light from a single
reading-lamp falling on Turkey carpet, on books beside a large
armchair, on the deep blue-and-gold coffee service, makes a sort of
oasis before a log fire. In red Turkish slippers and an old brown
velvet coat, KEITH DARRANT sits asleep. He has a dark, clean-cut,
clean-shaven face, dark grizzling hair, dark twisting eyebrows.
[The curtained door away out in the dim part of the room behind
him is opened so softly that he does not wake. LARRY DARRANT
enters and stands half lost in the curtain over the door. A
thin figure, with a worn, high cheek-boned face, deep-sunk blue
eyes and wavy hair all ruffled--a face which still has a certain
beauty. He moves inwards along the wall, stands still again and
utters a gasping sigh. KEITH stirs in his chair.]
KEITH. Who's there?
LARRY. [In a stifled voice] Only I--Larry.
KEITH. [Half-waked] Come in! I was asleep. [He does not turn his
head, staring sleepily at the fire.]
The sound of LARRY's breathing can be heard.
[Turning his head a little] Well, Larry, what is it?
LARRY comes skirting along the wall, as if craving its support,
outside the radius of the light.
[Staring] Are you ill?
LARRY stands still again and heaves a deep sigh.
KEITH. [Rising, with his back to the fire, and staring at his
brother] What is it, man? [Then with a brutality born of nerves
suddenly ruffled] Have you committed a murder that you stand there
like a fish?
LARRY. [In a whisper] Yes, Keith.
KEITH. [With vigorous disgust] By Jove! Drunk again! [In a
voice changed by sudden apprehension] What do you mean by coming
here in this state? I told you---- If you weren't my brother----!
Come here, where I can we you! What's the matter with you, Larry?
[With a lurch LARRY leaves the shelter of the wall and sinks into
a chair in the circle of light.]
LARRY. It's true.
[KEITH steps quickly forward and stares down into his brother's
eyes, where is a horrified wonder, as if they would never again
get on terms with his face.]
KEITH. [Angry, bewildered-in a low voice] What in God's name is
this nonsense?
[He goes quickly over to the door and draws the curtain aside, to
see that it is shut, then comes back to LARRY, who is huddling
over the fire.]
Come, Larry! Pull yourself together and drop exaggeration! What on
earth do you mean?
LARRY. [In a shrill outburst] It's true, I tell you; I've killed a
man.
KEITH. [Bracing himself; coldly] Be quiet!
LARRY lifts his hands and wrings them.
[Utterly taken aback] Why come here and tell me this?
LARRY. Whom should I tell, Keith? I came to ask what I'm to do--
give myself up, or what?
KEITH. When--when--what----?
LARRY. Last night.
KEITH. Good God! How? Where? You'd better tell me quietly from
the beginning. Here, drink this coffee; it'll clear your head.
He pours out and hands him a cup of coffee. LARRY drinks it
off.
LARRY. My head! Yes! It's like this, Keith--there's a girl----
KEITH. Women! Always women, with you! Well?
LARRY. A Polish girl. She--her father died over here when she was
sixteen, and left her all alone. There was a mongrel living in the
same house who married her--or pretended to. She's very pretty,
Keith. He left her with a baby coming. She lost it, and nearly
starved. Then another fellow took her on, and she lived with him two
years, till that brute turned up again and made her go back to him.
He used to beat her black and blue. He'd left her again when--I met
her. She was taking anybody then. [He stops, passes his hand over
his lips, looks up at KEITH, and goes on defiantly] I never met a
sweeter woman, or a truer, that I swear. Woman! She's only twenty
now! When I went to her last night, that devil had found her out
again. He came for me--a bullying, great, hulking brute. Look!
[He touches a dark mark on his forehead] I took his ugly throat, and
when I let go--[He stops and his hands drop.]
KEITH. Yes?
LARRY. [In a smothered voice] Dead, Keith. I never knew till
afterwards that she was hanging on to him--to h-help me. [Again he
wrings his hands.]
KEITH. [In a hard, dry voice] What did you do then?
LARRY. We--we sat by it a long time.
KEITH. Well?
LARRY. Then I carried it on my back down the street, round a corner,
to an archway.
KEITH. How far?
LARRY. About fifty yards.
KEITH. Was--did anyone see?
LARRY. No.
KEITH. What time?
LARRY. Three in the morning.
KEITH. And then?
LARRY. Went back to her.
KEITH. Why--in heaven's name?
LARRY. She way lonely and afraid. So was I, Keith.
KEITH. Where is this place?
LARRY. Forty-two Borrow Square, Soho.
KEITH. And the archway?
LARRY. Corner of Glove Lane.
KEITH. Good God! Why, I saw it in the paper this morning. They
were talking of it in the Courts! [He snatches the evening paper
from his armchair, and runs it over anal reads] Here it is again.
"Body of a man was found this morning under an archway in Glove Lane.
From marks about the throat grave suspicion of foul play are
entertained. The body had apparently been robbed." My God!
[Suddenly he turns] You saw this in the paper and dreamed it.
D'you understand, Larry?--you dreamed it.
LARRY. [Wistfully] If only I had, Keith!
[KEITH makes a movement of his hands almost like his brother's.]
KEITH. Did you take anything from the-body?
LARRY. [Drawing au envelope from his pocket] This dropped out while
we were struggling.
KEITH. [Snatching it and reading] "Patrick Walenn"--Was that his
name? "Simon's Hotel, Farrier Street, London." [Stooping, he puts it
in the fire] No!--that makes me----[He bends to pluck it out, stays
his hand, and stamps it suddenly further in with his foot] What in
God's name made you come here and tell me? Don't you know I'm--I'm
within an ace of a Judgeship?
LARRY. [Simply] Yes. You must know what I ought to do. I didn't,
mean to kill him, Keith. I love the girl--I love her. What shall I
do?
KEITH. Love!
LARRY. [In a flash] Love!--That swinish brute! A million creatures
die every day, and not one of them deserves death as he did. But but
I feel it here. [Touching his heart] Such an awful clutch, Keith.
Help me if you can, old man. I may be no good, but I've never hurt a
fly if I could help it. [He buries his face in his hands.]
KEITH. Steady, Larry! Let's think it out. You weren't seen, you
say?
LARRY. It's a dark place, and dead night.
KEITH. When did you leave the girl again?
LARRY. About seven.
KEITH. Where did you go?
LARRY. To my rooms.
KEITH. To Fitzroy Street?
LARRY. Yes.
KEITH. What have you done since?
LARRY. Sat there--thinking.
KEITH. Not been out?
LARRY. No.
KEITH. Not seen the girl?
[LARRY shakes his head.]
Will she give you away?
LARRY. Never.
KEITH. Or herself hysteria?
LARRY. No.
KEITH. Who knows of your relations with her?
LARRY. No one.
KEITH. No one?
LARRY. I don't know who should, Keith.
KEITH. Did anyone see you go in last night, when you first went to
her?
LARRY. No. She lives on the ground floor. I've got keys.
KEITH. Give them to me.
LARRY takes two keys from his pocket and hands them to his
brother.
LARRY. [Rising] I can't be cut off from her!
KEITH. What! A girl like that?
LARRY. [With a flash] Yes, a girl like that.
KEITH. [Moving his hand to put down old emotion] What else have you
that connects you with her?
LARRY. Nothing.
KEITH. In your rooms?
[LARRY shakes his head.]
Photographs? Letters?
LARRY. No.
KEITH. Sure?
LARRY. Nothing.
KEITH. No one saw you going back to her?
[LARRY shakes his head. ]
Nor leave in the morning? You can't be certain.
LARRY. I am.
KEITH. You were fortunate. Sit down again, man. I must think.
He turns to the fire and leans his elbows on the mantelpiece and
his head on his hands. LARRY Sits down again obediently.
KEITH. It's all too unlikely. It's monstrous!
LARRY. [Sighing it out] Yes.
KEITH. This Walenn--was it his first reappearance after an absence?
LARRY. Yes.
KEITH. How did he find out where she was?
LARRY. I don't know.
KEITH. [Brutally] How drunk were you?
LARRY. I was not drunk.
KEITH. How much had you drunk, then?
LARRY. A little claret--nothing!
KEITH. You say you didn't mean to kill him.
LARRY. God knows.
KEITH. That's something.
LARRY. He hit me. [He holds up his hands] I didn't know I was so
strong.
KEITH. She was hanging on to him, you say?--That's ugly.
LARRY. She was scared for me.
KEITH. D'you mean she--loves you?
LARRY. [Simply] Yes, Keith.
KEITH. [Brutally] Can a woman like that love?
LARRY. [Flashing out] By God, you are a stony devil! Why not?
KEITH. [Dryly] I'm trying to get at truth. If you want me to help,
I must know everything. What makes you think she's fond of you?
LARRY. [With a crazy laugh] Oh, you lawyer! Were you never in a
woman's arms?
KEITH. I'm talking of love.
LARRY. [Fiercely] So am I. I tell you she's devoted. Did you ever
pick up a lost dog? Well, she has the lost dog's love for me. And I
for her; we picked each other up. I've never felt for another woman
what I feel for her--she's been the saving of me!
KEITH. [With a shrug] What made you choose that archway?
LARRY. It was the first dark place.
KEITH. Did his face look as if he'd been strangled?
LARRY. Don't!
KEITH. Did it?
[LARRY bows his head.]
Very disfigured?
LARRY. Yes.
KEITH. Did you look to see if his clothes were marked?
LARRY. No.
KEITH. Why not?
LARRY. [In an outburst] I'm not made of iron, like you. Why not?
If you had done it----!
KEITH. [Holding up his hand] You say he was disfigured. Would he
be recognisable?
LARRY. [Wearily] I don't know.
KEITH. When she lived with him last--where was that?
LARRY. In Pimlico, I think.
KEITH. Not Soho?
[LARRY shakes his head.]
How long has she been at this Soho place?
LARRY. Nearly a year.
KEITH. Living this life?
LARRY. Till she met me.
KEITH. Till, she met you? And you believe----?
LARRY. [Starting up] Keith!
KEITH. [Again raising his hand] Always in the same rooms?
LARRY. [Subsiding] Yes.
KEITH. What was he? A professional bully?
[LARRY nods.]
Spending most of his time abroad, I suppose.
LARRY. I think so.
KEITH. Can you say if he was known to the police?
LARRY. I've never heard.
KEITH turns away and walks up and down; then, stopping at
LARRY's chair, he speaks.
KEITH. Now listen, Larry. When you leave here, go straight home,
and stay there till I give you leave to go out again. Promise.
LARRY. I promise.
KEITH. Is your promise worth anything?
LARRY. [With one of his flashes] "Unstable as water, he shall not
excel!"
KEITH. Exactly. But if I'm to help you, you must do as I say.
I must have time to think this out. Have you got money?
LARRY. Very little.
KEITH. [Grimly] Half-quarter day--yes, your quarter's always spent
by then. If you're to get away--never mind, I can manage the money.
LARRY. [Humbly] You're very good, Keith; you've always been very
good to me--I don't know why.
KEITH. [Sardonically] Privilege of A brother. As it happens, I'm
thinking of myself and our family. You can't indulge yourself in
killing without bringing ruin. My God! I suppose you realise that
you've made me an accessory after the fact--me, King's counsel--sworn
to the service of the Law, who, in a year or two, will have the
trying of cases like yours! By heaven, Larry, you've surpassed
yourself!
LARRY. [Bringing out a little box] I'd better have done with it.
KErra. You fool! Give that to me.
LARRY. [With a strange smite] No. [He holds up a tabloid between
finger and thumb] White magic, Keith! Just one--and they may do
what they like to you, and you won't know it. Snap your fingers at
all the tortures. It's a great comfort! Have one to keep by you?
KEITH. Come, Larry! Hand it over.
LARRY. [Replacing the box] Not quite! You've never killed a man,
you see. [He gives that crazy laugh.] D'you remember that hammer
when we were boys and you riled me, up in the long room? I had luck
then. I had luck in Naples once. I nearly killed a driver for
beating his poor brute of a horse. But now--! My God! [He covers
his face.]
KEITH touched, goes up and lays a hand on his shoulder.
KEITH. Come, Larry! Courage!
LARRY looks up at him.
LARRY. All right, Keith; I'll try.
KEITH. Don't go out. Don't drink. Don't talk. Pull yourself
together!
LARRY. [Moving towards the door] Don't keep me longer than you can
help, Keith.
KEITH. No, no. Courage!
LARRY reaches the door, turns as if to say something-finds no
words, and goes.
[To the fire] Courage! My God! I shall need it!
CURTAIN
SCENE II
At out eleven o'clock the following night an WANDA'S room on the
ground floor in Soho. In the light from one close-shaded
electric bulb the room is but dimly visible. A dying fire burns
on the left. A curtained window in the centre of the back wall.
A door on the right. The furniture is plush-covered and
commonplace, with a kind of shabby smartness. A couch, without
back or arms, stands aslant, between window and fire.
[On this WANDA is sitting, her knees drawn up under her, staring
at the embers. She has on only her nightgown and a wrapper over
it; her bare feet are thrust into slippers. Her hands are
crossed and pressed over her breast. She starts and looks up,
listening. Her eyes are candid and startled, her face alabaster
pale, and its pale brown hair, short and square-cut, curls
towards her bare neck. The startled dark eyes and the faint
rose of her lips are like colour-staining on a white mask.]
[Footsteps as of a policeman, very measured, pass on the
pavement outside, and die away. She gets up and steals to the
window, draws one curtain aside so that a chink of the night is
seen. She opens the curtain wider, till the shape of a bare,
witch-like tree becomes visible in the open space of the little
Square on the far side of the road. The footsteps are heard
once more coming nearer. WANDA closes the curtains and cranes
back. They pass and die again. She moves away and looking down
at the floor between door and couch, as though seeing something
there; shudders; covers her eyes; goes back to the couch and
down again just as before, to stare at the embers. Again she is
startled by noise of the outer door being opened. She springs
up, runs and turns the light by a switch close to the door. By
the glimmer of the fire she can just be seen standing by the
dark window-curtains, listening. There comes the sound of
subdued knocking on her door. She stands in breathless terror.
The knocking is repeated. The sound of a latchkey in the door
is heard. Her terror leaves her. The door opens; a man enters
in a dark, fur overcoat.]
WANDA. [In a voice of breathless relief, with a rather foreign
accent] Oh! it's you, Larry! Why did you knock? I was so
frightened. Come in! [She crosses quickly, and flings her arms
round his neck] [Recoiling--in a terror-stricken whisper] Oh! Who
is it?
KEITH. [In a smothered voice] A friend of Larry's. Don't be
frightened.
She has recoiled again to the window; and when he finds the
switch and turns the light up, she is seen standing there
holding her dark wrapper up to her throat, so that her face has
an uncanny look of being detached from the body.
[Gently] You needn't be afraid. I haven't come to do you harm--
quite the contrary. [Holding up the keys] Larry wouldn't have given
me these, would he, if he hadn't trusted me?
WANDA does not move, staring like a spirit startled out of the
flesh.
[After looking round him] I'm sorry to have startled you.
WANDA. [In a whisper] Who are you, please?
KEITH. Larry's brother.
WANDA, with a sigh of utter relief, steals forward to the couch
and sinks down. KEITH goes up to her.
He'd told me.
WANDA. [Clasping her hands round her knees.] Yes?
KEITH. An awful business!
WANDA. Yes; oh, yes! Awful--it is awful!
KEITH. [Staring round him again.] In this room?
WANDA. Just where you are standing. I see him now, always falling.
KEITH. [Moved by the gentle despair in her voice] You--look very
young. What's your name?
WANDA. Wanda.
KEITH. Are you fond of Larry?
WANDA. I would die for him!
[A moment's silence.]
KEITH. I--I've come to see what you can do to save him.
WANDA, [Wistfully] You would not deceive me. You are really his
brother?
KEITH. I swear it.
WANDA. [Clasping her hands] If I can save him! Won't you sit down?
KEITH. [Drawing up a chair and sitting] This, man, your--your
husband, before he came here the night before last--how long since
you saw him?
WANDA. Eighteen month.
KEITH. Does anyone about here know you are his wife?
WANDA. No. I came here to live a bad life. Nobody know me. I am
quite alone.
KEITH. They've discovered who he was--you know that?
WANDA. No; I have not dared to go out.
KEITH: Well, they have; and they'll look for anyone connected with
him, of course.
WANDA. He never let people think I was married to him. I don't know
if I was--really. We went to an office and signed our names; but he
was a wicked man. He treated many, I think, like me.
KEITH. Did my brother ever see him before?
WANDA. Never! And that man first went for him.
KEITH. Yes. I saw the mark. Have you a servant?
WANDA. No. A woman come at nine in the morning for an hour.
KEITH. Does she know Larry?
WANDA. No. He is always gone.
KEITH. Friends--acquaintances?
WANDA. No; I am verree quiet. Since I know your brother, I see no
one, sare.
KEITH. [Sharply] Do you mean that?
WANDA. Oh, yes! I love him. Nobody come here but him for a long
time now.
KEITH. How long?
WANDA. Five month.
KEITH. So you have not been out since----?
[WANDA shakes her head.]
What have you been doing?
WANDA. [Simply] Crying. [Pressing her hands to her breast] He is
in danger because of me. I am so afraid for him.
KEITH. [Checking her emotion] Look at me.
[She looks at him.]
If the worst comes, and this man is traced to you, can you trust
yourself not to give Larry away?
WANDA. [Rising and pointing to the fire] Look! I have burned all
the things he have given me--even his picture. Now I have nothing
from him.
KEITH. [Who has risen too] Good! One more question. Do the police
know you--because--of your life?
[She looks at him intently, and shakes her, head.]
You know where Larry lives?
WANDA. Yes.
KEITH. You mustn't go there, and he mustn't come to you.
[She bows her head; then, suddenly comes close to him.]
WANDA. Please do not take him from me altogether. I will be so
careful. I will not do anything to hurt him. But if I cannot see
him sometimes, I shall die. Please do not take him from me.
[She catches his hand and presses it desperately between her
own.]
KEITH. Leave that to me. I'm going to do all I can.
WANDA. [Looking up into his face] But you will be kind?
Suddenly she bends and kisses his hand. KEITH draws his hand
away, and she recoils a little humbly, looking up at him again.
Suddenly she stands rigid, listening.
[In a whisper] Listen! Someone--out there!
She darts past him and turns out the light. There is a knock on
the door. They are now close together between door and window.
[Whispering] Oh! Who is it?
KEITH. [Under his breath] You said no one comes but Larry.
WANDA. Yes, and you have his keys. Oh! if it is Larry! I must open!
KEITH shrinks back against the wall. WANDA goes to the door.
[Opening the door an inch] Yes? Please? Who?
A thin streak of light from a bull's-eye lantern outside plays
over the wall. A Policeman's voice says: "All right, Miss.
Your outer door's open. You ought to keep it shut after dark,
you know."
WANDA. Thank you, air.
[The sound of retreating footsteps, of the outer door closing.
WANDA shuts the door.]
A policeman!
KEITH. [Moving from the wall] Curse! I must have left that door.
[Suddenly-turning up the light] You told me they didn't know you.
WANDA. [Sighing] I did not think they did, sir. It is so long I
was not out in the town; not since I had Larry.
KEITH gives her an intent look, then crosses to the fire. He
stands there a moment, looking down, then turns to the girl, who
has crept back to the couch.
KEITH. [Half to himself] After your life, who can believe---? Look
here! You drifted together and you'll drift apart, you know. Better
for him to get away and make a clean cut of it.
WANDA. [Uttering a little moaning sound] Oh, sir! May I not love,
because I have been bad? I was only sixteen when that man spoiled
me. If you knew----
KEITH. I'm thinking of Larry. With you, his danger is much greater.
There's a good chance as things are going. You may wreck it. And
for what? Just a few months more of--well--you know.
WANDA. [Standing at the head of the couch and touching her eyes with
her hands] Oh, sir! Look! It is true. He is my life. Don't take
him away from me.
KEITH. [Moved and restless] You must know what Larry is. He'll
never stick to you.
WANDA. [Simply] He will, sir.
KEITH. [Energetically] The last man on earth to stick to anything!
But for the sake of a whim he'll risk his life and the honour of all
his family. I know him.
WANDA. No, no, you do not. It is I who know him.
KEITH. Now, now! At any moment they may find out your connection
with that man. So long as Larry goes on with you, he's tied to this
murder, don't you see?
WANDA. [Coming close to him] But he love me. Oh, sir! he love me!
KEITH. Larry has loved dozens of women.
WANDA. Yes, but----[Her face quivers].
KEITH. [Brusquely] Don't cry! If I give you money, will you
disappear, for his sake?
WANDA. [With a moan] It will be in the water, then. There will be
no cruel men there.
KEITH. Ah! First Larry, then you! Come now. It's better for you
both. A few months, and you'll forget you ever met.
WANDA. [Looking wildly up] I will go if Larry say I must. But not
to live. No! [Simply] I could not, sir.
[KEITH, moved, is silent.]
I could not live without Larry. What is left for a girl like me--
when she once love? It is finish.
KEITH. I don't want you to go back to that life.
WANDA. No; you do not care what I do. Why should you? I tell you I
will go if Larry say I must.
KEITH. That's not enough. You know that. You must take it out of
his hands. He will never give up his present for the sake of his
future. If you're as fond of him as you say, you'll help to save
him.
WANDA. [Below her breath] Yes! Oh, yes! But do not keep him long
from me--I beg! [She sinks to the floor and clasps his knees.]
KEITH. Well, well! Get up.
[There is a tap on the window-pane]
Listen!
[A faint, peculiar whistle. ]
WANDA. [Springing up] Larry! Oh, thank God!
[She runs to the door, opens it, and goes out to bring him in.
KEITH stands waiting, facing the open doorway.]
[LARRY entering with WANDA just behind him.]
LARRY. Keith!
KEITH. [Grimly] So much for your promise not to go out!
LARRY. I've been waiting in for you all day. I couldn't stand it
any longer.
KEITH. Exactly!
LARRY. Well, what's the sentence, brother? Transportation for life
and then to be fined forty pounds'?
KEITH. So you can joke, can you?
LARRY. Must.
KEITH. A boat leaves for the Argentine the day after to-morrow; you
must go by it.
LARRY. [Putting his arms round WANDA, who is standing motionless
with her eyes fixed on him] Together, Keith?
KEITH. You can't go together. I'll send her by the next boat.
LARRY. Swear?
KEITH. Yes. You're lucky they're on a false scent.
LARRY. What?
KEITH. You haven't seen it?
LARRY. I've seen nothing, not even a paper.
KEITH. They've taken up a vagabond who robbed the body. He pawned a
snake-shaped ring, and they identified this Walenn by it. I've been
down and seen him charged myself.
LARRY. With murder?
WANDA. [Faintly] Larry!
KEITH. He's in no danger. They always get the wrong man first.
It'll do him no harm to be locked up a bit--hyena like that. Better
in prison, anyway, than sleeping out under archways in this weather.
LARRY. What was he like, Keith?
KEITH. A little yellow, ragged, lame, unshaven scarecrow of a chap.
They were fools to think he could have had the strength.
LARRY. What! [In an awed voice] Why, I saw him--after I left you
last night.
KEITH. You? Where?
LARRY. By the archway.
KEITH. You went back there?
LARRY. It draws you, Keith.
KErra. You're mad, I think.
LARRY. I talked to him, and he said, "Thank you for this little
chat. It's worth more than money when you're down." Little grey man
like a shaggy animal. And a newspaper boy came up and said: "That's
right, guv'nors! 'Ere's where they found the body--very spot. They
'yn't got 'im yet."
[He laughs; and the terrified girl presses herself against him.]
An innocent man!
KEITH. He's in no danger, I tell you. He could never have
strangled----Why, he hadn't the strength of a kitten. Now, Larry!
I'll take your berth to-morrow. Here's money [He brings out a pile
of notes and puts them on the couch] You can make a new life of it
out there together presently, in the sun.
LARRY. [In a whisper] In the sun! "A cup of wine and thou."
[Suddenly] How can I, Keith? I must see how it goes with that poor
devil.
KEITH. Bosh! Dismiss it from your mind; there's not nearly enough
evidence.
LARRY. Not?
KEITH. No. You've got your chance. Take it like a man.
LARRY. [With a strange smile--to the girl] Shall we, Wanda?
WANDA. Oh, Larry!
LARRY. [Picking the notes up from the couch] Take them back, Keith.
KEITH. What! I tell you no jury would convict; and if they did, no
judge would hang. A ghoul who can rob a dead body, ought to be in
prison. He did worse than you.
LARRY. It won't do, Keith. I must see it out.
KEITH. Don't be a fool!
LARRY. I've still got some kind of honour. If I clear out before I
know, I shall have none--nor peace. Take them, Keith, or I'll put
them in the fire.
KEITH. [Taking back the notes; bitterly] I suppose I may ask you
not to be entirely oblivious of our name. Or is that unworthy of
your honour?
LARRY. [Hanging his head] I'm awfully sorry, Keith; awfully sorry,
old man.
KEITH. [sternly] You owe it to me--to our name--to our dead mother
--to do nothing anyway till we see what happens.
LARRY. I know. I'll do nothing without you, Keith.
KEITH. [Taking up his hat] Can I trust you? [He stares hard at his
brother.]
LARRY. You can trust me.
KEITH. Swear?
LARRY. I swear.
KEITH. Remember, nothing! Good night!
LARRY. Good night!
KEITH goes. LARRY Sits down on the couch sand stares at the
fire. The girl steals up and slips her arms about him.
LARRY. An innocent man!
WANDA. Oh, Larry! But so are you. What did we want--to kill that
man? Never! Oh! kiss me!
[LARRY turns his face. She kisses his lips.]
I have suffered so--not seein' you. Don't leave me again--don't!
Stay here. Isn't it good to be together?--Oh! Poor Larry! How
tired you look!--Stay with me. I am so frightened all alone. So
frightened they will take you from me.
LARRY. Poor child!
WANDA. No, no! Don't look like that!
LARRY. You're shivering.
WANDA. I will make up the fire. Love me, Larry! I want to forget.
LARRY. The poorest little wretch on God's earth--locked up--for me!
A little wild animal, locked up. There he goes, up and down, up and
down--in his cage--don't you see him?--looking for a place to gnaw
his way through--little grey rat. [He gets up and roams about.]
WANDA. No, no! I can't bear it! Don't frighten me more!
[He comes back and takes her in his arms.]
LARRY. There, there! [He kisses her closed eyes.]
WANDA. [Without moving] If we could sleep a little--wouldn't it be
nice?
LARRY. Sleep?
WANDA. [Raising herself] Promise to stay with me--to stay here for
good, Larry. I will cook for you; I will make you so comfortable.
They will find him innocent. And then--Oh, Larry! in the sun-right
away--far from this horrible country. How lovely! [Trying to get
him to look at her] Larry!
LARRY. [With a movement to free 'himself] To the edge of the
world-and---over!
WANDA. No, no! No, no! You don't want me to die, Larry, do you? I
shall if you leave me. Let us be happy! Love me!
LARRY. [With a laugh] Ah! Let's be happy and shut out the sight of
him. Who cares? Millions suffer for no mortal reason. Let's be
strong, like Keith. No! I won't leave you, Wanda. Let's forget
everything except ourselves. [Suddenly] There he goes-up and down!
WANDA. [Moaning] No, no! See! I will pray to the Virgin. She will
pity us!
She falls on her knees and clasps her hands, praying. Her lips
move. LARRY stands motionless, with arms crossed, and on his
face are yearning and mockery, love and despair.
LARRY. [Whispering] Pray for us! Bravo! Pray away!
[Suddenly the girl stretches out her arms and lifts her face
with a look of ecstasy.]
What?
WANDA. She is smiling! We shall be happy soon.
LARRY. [Bending down over her] Poor child! When we die, Wanda,
let's go together. We should keep each other warm out in the dark.
WANDA. [Raising her hands to his face] Yes! oh, yes! If you die I
could not--I could not go on living!
CURTAIN
SCENE III.
TWO MONTHS LATER
WANDA'S room. Daylight is just beginning to fail of a January
afternoon. The table is laid for supper, with decanters of
wine.
WANDA is standing at the window looking out at the wintry trees
of the Square beyond the pavement. A newspaper Boy's voice is
heard coming nearer.
VOICE. Pyper! Glove Lyne murder! Trial and verdict! [Receding]
Verdict! Pyper!
WANDA throws up the window as if to call to him, checks herself,
closes it and runs to the door. She opens it, but recoils into
the room. KEITH is standing there. He comes in.
KEITH. Where's Larry?
WANDA. He went to the trial. I could not keep him from it. The
trial--Oh! what has happened, sir?
KEITH. [Savagely] Guilty! Sentence of death! Fools!--idiots!
WANDA. Of death! [For a moment she seems about to swoon.]
KEITH. Girl! girl! It may all depend on you. Larry's still living
here?
WANDA. Yes.
KEITH. I must wait for him.
WANDA. Will you sit down, please?
KEITH. [Shaking his head] Are you ready to go away at any time?
WANDA. Yes, yes; always I am ready.
KEITH. And he?
WANDA. Yes--but now! What will he do? That poor man!
KEITH. A graveyard thief--a ghoul!
WANDA. Perhaps he was hungry. I have been hungry: you do things
then that you would not. Larry has thought of him in prison so much
all these weeks. Oh! what shall we do now?
KEITH. Listen! Help me. Don't let Larry out of your sight. I must
see how things go. They'll never hang this wretch. [He grips her
arms] Now, we must stop Larry from giving himself up. He's fool
enough. D'you understand?
WANDA. Yes. But why has he not come in? Oh! If he have, already!
KEITH. [Letting go her arms] My God! If the police come--find me
here--[He moves to the door] No, he wouldn't without seeing you
first. He's sure to come. Watch him like a lynx. Don't let him go
without you.
WANDA. [Clasping her hands on her breast] I will try, sir.
KEITH. Listen!
[A key is heard in the lock.]
It's he!
LARRY enters. He is holding a great bunch of pink lilies and
white narcissus. His face tells nothing. KEITH looks from him
to the girl, who stands motionless.
LARRY. Keith! So you've seen?
KEITH. The thing can't stand. I'll stop it somehow. But you must
give me time, Larry.
LARRY. [Calmly] Still looking after your honour, KEITH!
KEITH. [Grimly] Think my reasons what you like.
WANDA. [Softly] Larry!
[LARRY puts his arm round her.]
LARRY. Sorry, old man.
KEITH. This man can and shall get off. I want your solemn promise
that you won't give yourself up, nor even go out till I've seen you
again.
LARRY. I give it.
KEITH. [Looking from one to the other] By the memory of our mother,
swear that.
LARRY. [With a smile] I swear.
KEITH. I have your oath--both of you--both of you. I'm going at
once to see what can be done.
LARRY. [Softly] Good luck, brother.
KEITH goes out.
WANDA. [Putting her hands on LARRY's breast] What does it mean?
LARRY. Supper, child--I've had nothing all day. Put these lilies in
water.
[She takes the lilies and obediently puts them into a vase.
LARRY pours wine into a deep-coloured glass and drinks it off.]
We've had a good time, Wanda. Best time I ever had, these last two
months; and nothing but the bill to pay.
WANDA. [Clasping him desperately] Oh, Larry! Larry!
LARRY. [Holding her away to look at her.] Take off those things and
put on a bridal garment.
WANDA. Promise me--wherever you go, I go too. Promise! Larry, you
think I haven't seen, all these weeks. But I have seen everything;
all in your heart, always. You cannot hide from me. I knew--I knew!
Oh, if we might go away into the sun! Oh! Larry--couldn't we? [She
searches his eyes with hers--then shuddering] Well! If it must be
dark--I don't care, if I may go in your arms. In prison we could not
be together. I am ready. Only love me first. Don't let me cry
before I go. Oh! Larry, will there be much pain?
LARRY. [In a choked voice] No pain, my pretty.
WANDA. [With a little sigh] It is a pity.
LARRY. If you had seen him, as I have, all day, being tortured.
Wanda,--we shall be out of it. [The wine mounting to his head] We
shall be free in the dark; free of their cursed inhumanities. I hate
this world--I loathe it! I hate its God-forsaken savagery; its pride
and smugness! Keith's world--all righteous will-power and success.
We're no good here, you and I--we were cast out at birth--soft,
will-less--better dead. No fear, Keith! I'm staying indoors. [He
pours wine into two glasses] Drink it up!
[Obediently WANDA drinks, and he also.]
Now go and make yourself beautiful.
WANDA. [Seizing him in her arms] Oh, Larry!
LARRY. [Touching her face and hair] Hanged by the neck until he's
dead--for what I did.
[WANDA takes a long look at his face, slips her arms from him,
and goes out through the curtains below the fireplace.]
[LARRY feels in his pocket, brings out the little box, opens it,
fingers the white tabloids.]
LARRY. Two each--after food. [He laughs and puts back the box] Oh!
my girl!
[The sound of a piano playing a faint festive tune is heard afar
off. He mutters, staring at the fire.]
[Flames-flame, and flicker-ashes.]
"No more, no more, the moon is dead, And all the people in it."
[He sits on the couch with a piece of paper on his knees, adding
a few words with a stylo pen to what is already written.]
[The GIRL, in a silk wrapper, coming back through the curtains,
watches him.]
LARRY. [Looking up] It's all here--I've confessed. [Reading]
"Please bury us together."
"LAURENCE DARRANT.
"January 28th, about six p.m."
They'll find us in the morning. Come and have supper, my dear love.
[The girl creeps forward. He rises, puts his arm round her, and
with her arm twined round him, smiling into each other's faces,
they go to the table and sit down.]
The curtain falls for a few seconds to indicate the passage of
three hours. When it rises again, the lovers are lying on the
couch, in each other's arms, the lilies stream about them. The
girl's bare arm is round LARRY'S neck. Her eyes are closed; his
are open and sightless. There is no light but fire-light.
A knocking on the door and the sound of a key turned in the
lock. KEITH enters. He stands a moment bewildered by the
half-light, then calls sharply: "Larry!" and turns up the light.
Seeing the forms on the couch, he recoils a moment. Then,
glancing at the table and empty decanters, goes up to the couch.
KEITH. [Muttering] Asleep! Drunk! Ugh!
[Suddenly he bends, touches LARRY, and springs back.]
What! [He bends again, shakes him and calls] Larry! Larry!
[Then, motionless, he stares down at his brother's open,
sightless eyes. Suddenly he wets his finger and holds it to the
girl's lips, then to LARRY'S.]
[He bends and listens at their hearts; catches sight of the
little box lying between them and takes it up.]
My God!
[Then, raising himself, he closes his brother's eyes, and as he
does so, catches sight of a paper pinned to the couch; detaches
it and reads:]
"I, Lawrence Darrant, about to die by my own hand confess that I----"
[He reads on silently, in horror; finishes, letting the paper
drop, and recoils from the couch on to a chair at the
dishevelled supper table. Aghast, he sits there. Suddenly he
mutters:]
If I leave that there--my name--my whole future!
[He springs up, takes up the paper again, and again reads.]
My God! It's ruin!
[He makes as if to tear it across, stops, and looks down at
those two; covers his eyes with his hand; drops the paper and
rushes to the door. But he stops there and comes back,
magnetised, as it were, by that paper. He takes it up once more
and thrusts it into his pocket.]
[The footsteps of a Policeman pass, slow and regular, outside.
His face crisps and quivers; he stands listening till they die
away. Then he snatches the paper from his pocket, and goes past
the foot of the couch to the fore.]
All my----No! Let him hang!
[He thrusts the paper into the fire, stamps it down with his
foot, watches it writhe and blacken. Then suddenly clutching
his head, he turns to the bodies on the couch. Panting and like
a man demented, he recoils past the head of the couch, and
rushing to the window, draws the curtains and throws the window
up for air. Out in the darkness rises the witch-like skeleton
tree, where a dark shape seems hanging. KEITH starts back.]
What's that? What----!
[He shuts the window and draws the dark curtains across it
again.]
Fool! Nothing!
[Clenching his fists, he draws himself up, steadying himself
with all his might. Then slowly he moves to the door, stands a
second like a carved figure, his face hard as stone.]
[Deliberately he turns out the light, opens the door, and goes.]
[The still bodies lie there before the fire which is licking at
the last blackened wafer.]
CURTAIN
THE LITTLE MAN
A FARCICAL MORALITY IN THREE SCENES
CHARACTERS
THE LITTLE MAN.
THE AMERICAN.
THE ENGLISHMAN.
THE ENGLISHWOMAN.
THE GERMAN.
THE DUTCH BOY.
THE MOTHER.
THE BABY.
THE WAITER.
THE STATION OFFICIAL.
THE POLICEMAN.
THE PORTER.
SCENE I
Afternoon, on the departure platform of an Austrian railway
station. At several little tables outside the buffet persons
are taking refreshment, served by a pale young waiter. On a
seat against the wall of the buffet a woman of lowly station is
sitting beside two large bundles, on one of which she has placed
her baby, swathed in a black shawl.
WAITER. [Approaching a table whereat sit an English traveller and
his wife] Two coffee?
ENGLISHMAN. [Paying] Thanks. [To his wife, in an Oxford voice]
Sugar?
ENGLISHWOMAN. [In a Cambridge voice] One.
AMERICAN TRAVELLER. [With field-glasses and a pocket camera from
another table] Waiter, I'd like to have you get my eggs. I've been
sitting here quite a while.
WAITER. Yes, sare.
GERMAN TRAVELLER. 'Kellner, bezahlen'! [His voice is, like his
moustache, stiff and brushed up at the ends. His figure also is
stiff and his hair a little grey; clearly once, if not now, a
colonel.]
WAITER. 'Komm' gleich'!
[The baby on the bundle wails. The mother takes it up to soothe
it. A young, red-cheeked Dutchman at the fourth table stops
eating and laughs.]
AMERICAN. My eggs! Get a wiggle on you!
WAITER. Yes, sare. [He rapidly recedes.]
[A LITTLE MAN in a soft hat is seen to the right of tables. He
stands a moment looking after the hurrying waiter, then seats
himself at the fifth table.]
ENGLISHMAN. [Looking at his watch] Ten minutes more.
ENGLISHWOMAN. Bother!
AMERICAN. [Addressing them] 'Pears as if they'd a prejudice against
eggs here, anyway.
[The ENGLISH look at him, but do not speak. ]
GERMAN. [In creditable English] In these places man can get
nothing.
[The WAITER comes flying back with a compote for the DUTCH
YOUTH, who pays.]
GERMAN. 'Kellner, bezahlen'!
WAITER. 'Eine Krone sechzig'.
[The GERMAN pays.]
AMERICAN. [Rising, and taking out his watch--blandly] See here. If
I don't get my eggs before this watch ticks twenty, there'll be
another waiter in heaven.
WAITER. [Flying] 'Komm' gleich'!
AMERICAN. [Seeking sympathy] I'm gettin' kind of mad!
[The ENGLISHMAN halves his newspaper and hands the advertisement
half to his wife. The BABY wails. The MOTHER rocks it.]
[The DUTCH YOUTH stops eating and laughs. The GERMAN lights a
cigarette. The LITTLE MAN sits motionless, nursing his hat.
The WAITER comes flying back with the eggs and places them
before the AMERICAN.]
AMERICAN. [Putting away his watch] Good! I don't like trouble.
How much?
[He pays and eats. The WAITER stands a moment at the edge of
the platform and passes his hand across his brow. The LITTLE
MAN eyes him and speaks gently.]
LITTLE MAN. Herr Ober!
[The WAITER turns.]
Might I have a glass of beer?
WAITER. Yes, sare.
LITTLE MAN. Thank you very much.
[The WAITER goes.]
AMERICAN. [Pausing in the deglutition of his eggs--affably] Pardon
me, sir; I'd like to have you tell me why you called that little bit
of a feller "Herr Ober." Reckon you would know what that means?
Mr. Head Waiter.
LITTLE MAN. Yes, yes.
AMERICAN. I smile.
LITTLE MAN. Oughtn't I to call him that?
GERMAN. [Abruptly] 'Nein--Kellner'.
AMERICAN. Why, yes! Just "waiter."
[The ENGLISHWOMAN looks round her paper for a second. The DUTCH
YOUTH stops eating and laughs. The LITTLE MAN gazes from face
to face and nurses his hat.]
LITTLE MAN. I didn't want to hurt his feelings.
GERMAN. Gott!
AMERICAN. In my country we're very democratic--but that's quite a
proposition.
ENGLISHMAN. [Handling coffee-pot, to his wife] More?
ENGLISHWOMAN. No, thanks.
GERMAN. [Abruptly] These fellows--if you treat them in this manner,
at once they take liberties. You see, you will not get your beer.
[As he speaks the WAITER returns, bringing the LITTLE MAN'S
beer, then retires.]
AMERICAN. That 'pears to be one up to democracy. [To the LITTLE
MAN] I judge you go in for brotherhood?
LITTLE MAN. [Startled] Oh, no!
AMERICAN. I take considerable stock in Leo Tolstoi myself. Grand
man--grand-souled apparatus. But I guess you've got to pinch those
waiters some to make 'em skip. [To the ENGLISH, who have carelessly
looked his way for a moment] You'll appreciate that, the way he
acted about my eggs.
[The ENGLISH make faint motions with their chins and avert their
eyes.]
[To the WAITER, who is standing at the door of the buffet]
Waiter! Flash of beer--jump, now!
WAITER. 'Komm' gleich'!
GERMAN. 'Cigarren'!
WAITER. 'Schon'!
[He disappears.]
AMERICAN. [Affably--to the LITTLE MAN] Now, if I don't get that
flash of beer quicker'n you got yours, I shall admire.
GERMAN. [Abruptly] Tolstoi is nothing 'nichts'! No good! Ha?
AMERICAN. [Relishing the approach of argument] Well, that is a
matter of temperament. Now, I'm all for equality. See that poor
woman there--very humble woman--there she sits among us with her
baby. Perhaps you'd like to locate her somewhere else?
GERMAN. [Shrugging]. Tolstoi is 'sentimentalisch'. Nietzsche is
the true philosopher, the only one.
AMERICAN. Well, that's quite in the prospectus--very stimulating
party--old Nietch--virgin mind. But give me Leo! [He turns to the
red-cheeked YOUTH] What do you opine, sir? I guess by your labels
you'll be Dutch. Do they read Tolstoi in your country?
[The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.]
AMERICAN. That is a very luminous answer.
GERMAN. Tolstoi is nothing. Man should himself express. He must
push--he must be strong.
AMERICAN. That is so. In America we believe in virility; we like a
man to expand. But we believe in brotherhood too. We draw the line
at niggers; but we aspire. Social barriers and distinctions we've
not much use for.
ENGLISHMAN. Do you feel a draught?
ENGLISHWOMAN. [With a shiver of her shoulder toward the AMERICAN] I
do--rather.
GERMAN. Wait! You are a young people.
AMERICAN. That is so; there are no flies on us. [To the LITTLE MAN,
who has been gazing eagerly from face to face] Say! I'd like to
have you give us your sentiments in relation to the duty of man.
[The LITTLE MAN, fidgets, and is about to opens his mouth.]
AMERICAN. For example--is it your opinion that we should kill off
the weak and diseased, and all that can't jump around?
GERMAN. [Nodding] 'Ja, ja'! That is coming.
LITTLE MAN. [Looking from face to face] They might be me.
[The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.]
AMERICAN. [Reproving him with a look] That's true humility.
'Tisn't grammar. Now, here's a proposition that brings it nearer the
bone: Would you step out of your way to help them when it was liable
to bring you trouble?
GERMAN. 'Nein, nein'! That is stupid.
LITTLE MAN. [Eager but wistful] I'm afraid not. Of course one
wants to--There was St Francis d'Assisi and St Julien L'Hospitalier,
and----
AMERICAN. Very lofty dispositions. Guess they died of them. [He
rises] Shake hands, sir--my name is--[He hands a card] I am an
ice-machine maker. [He shakes the LITTLE MAN's hand] I like your
sentiments--I feel kind of brotherly. [Catching sight of the WAITER
appearing in the doorway] Waiter; where to h-ll is that glass of
beer?
GERMAN. Cigarren!
WAITER. 'Komm' gleich'!
ENGLISHMAN. [Consulting watch] Train's late.
ENGLISHWOMAN. Really! Nuisance!
[A station POLICEMAN, very square and uniformed, passes and
repasses.]
AMERICAN. [Resuming his seat--to the GERMAN] Now, we don't have so
much of that in America. Guess we feel more to trust in human
nature.
GERMAN. Ah! ha! you will bresently find there is nothing in him
but self.
LITTLE MAN. [Wistfully] Don't you believe in human nature?
AMERICAN. Very stimulating question.
[He looks round for opinions. The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.]
ENGLISHMAN. [Holding out his half of the paper to his wife] Swap!
[His wife swaps.]
GERMAN. In human nature I believe so far as I can see him--no more.
AMERICAN. Now that 'pears to me kind o' blasphemy. I believe in
heroism. I opine there's not one of us settin' around here that's
not a hero--give him the occasion.
LITTLE MAN. Oh! Do you believe that?
AMERICAN. Well! I judge a hero is just a person that'll help
another at the expense of himself. Take that poor woman there.
Well, now, she's a heroine, I guess. She would die for her baby any
old time.
GERMAN. Animals will die for their babies. That is nothing.
AMERICAN. I carry it further. I postulate we would all die for that
baby if a locomotive was to trundle up right here and try to handle
it. [To the GERMAN] I guess you don't know how good you are. [As
the GERMAN is twisting up the ends of his moustache--to the
ENGLISHWOMAN] I should like to have you express an opinion, ma'am.
ENGLISHWOMAN. I beg your pardon.
AMERICAN. The English are very humanitarian; they have a very high
sense of duty. So have the Germans, so have the Americans. [To the
DUTCH YOUTH] I judge even in your little country they have that.
This is an epoch of equality and high-toned ideals. [To the LITTLE
MAN] What is your nationality, sir?
LITTLE MAN. I'm afraid I'm nothing particular. My father was
half-English and half-American, and my mother half-German and
half-Dutch.
AMERICAN. My! That's a bit streaky, any old way. [The POLICEMAN
passes again] Now, I don't believe we've much use any more for those
gentlemen in buttons. We've grown kind of mild--we don't think of
self as we used to do.
[The WAITER has appeared in the doorway.]
GERMAN. [In a voice of thunder] 'Cigarren! Donnerwetter'!
AMERICAN. [Shaking his fist at the vanishing WAITER] That flash of
beer!
WAITER. 'Komm' gleich'!
AMERICAN. A little more, and he will join George Washington! I was
about to remark when he intruded: In this year of grace 1913 the
kingdom of Christ is quite a going concern. We are mighty near
universal brotherhood. The colonel here [He indicates the GERMAN] is
a man of blood and iron, but give him an opportunity to be
magnanimous, and he'll be right there. Oh, sir! yep!
[The GERMAN, with a profound mixture of pleasure and cynicism,
brushes up the ends of his moustache.]
LITTLE MAN. I wonder. One wants to, but somehow--[He shakes his
head.]
AMERICAN. You seem kind of skeery about that. You've had experience,
maybe. I'm an optimist--I think we're bound to make the devil hum in
the near future. I opine we shall occasion a good deal of trouble to
that old party. There's about to be a holocaust of selfish
interests. The colonel there with old-man Nietch he won't know
himself. There's going to be a very sacred opportunity.
[As he speaks, the voice of a RAILWAY OFFICIAL is heard an the
distance calling out in German. It approaches, and the words
become audible.]
GERMAN. [Startled] 'Der Teufel'! [He gets up, and seizes the bag
beside him.]
[The STATION OFFICIAL has appeared; he stands for a moment
casting his commands at the seated group. The DUTCH YOUTH also
rises, and takes his coat and hat. The OFFICIAL turns on his
heel and retires still issuing directions.]
ENGLISHMAN. What does he say?
GERMAN. Our drain has come in, de oder platform; only one minute we
haf.
[All, have risen in a fluster.]
AMERICAN. Now, that's very provoking. I won't get that flash of
beer.
[There is a general scurry to gather coats and hats and wraps,
during which the lowly WOMAN is seen making desperate attempts
to deal with her baby and the two large bundles. Quite
defeated, she suddenly puts all down, wrings her hands, and
cries out: "Herr Jesu! Hilfe!" The flying procession turn
their heads at that strange cry.]
AMERICAN. What's that? Help?
[He continues to run. The LITTLE MAN spins round, rushes back,
picks up baby and bundle on which it was seated.]
LITTLE MAN. Come along, good woman, come along!
[The WOMAN picks up the other bundle and they run.]
[The WAITER, appearing in the doorway with the bottle of beer,
watches with his tired smile.]
CURTAIN
SCENE II
A second-class compartment of a corridor carriage, in motion.
In it are seated the ENGLISHMAN and his WIFE, opposite each
other at the corridor end, she with her face to the engine, he
with his back. Both are somewhat protected from the rest of the
travellers by newspapers. Next to her sits the GERMAN, and
opposite him sits the AMERICAN; next the AMERICAN in one window
corner is seated the DUTCH YOUTH; the other window corner is
taken by the GERMAN'S bag. The silence is only broken by the
slight rushing noise of the train's progression and the
crackling of the English newspapers.
AMERICAN. [Turning to the DUTCH YOUTH] Guess I'd like that window
raised; it's kind of chilly after that old run they gave us.
[The DUTCH YOUTH laughs, and goes through the motions of raising
the window. The ENGLISH regard the operation with uneasy
irritation. The GERMAN opens his bag, which reposes on the
corner seat next him, and takes out a book.]
AMERICAN. The Germans are great readers. Very stimulating practice.
I read most anything myself!
[The GERMAN holds up the book so that the title may be read.]
"Don Quixote"--fine book. We Americans take considerable stock in
old man Quixote. Bit of a wild-cat--but we don't laugh at him.
GERMAN. He is dead. Dead as a sheep. A good thing, too.
AMERICAN. In America we have still quite an amount of chivalry.
GERMAN. Chivalry is nothing 'sentimentalisch'. In modern days--no
good. A man must push, he must pull.
AMERICAN. So you say. But I judge your form of chivalry is
sacrifice to the state. We allow more freedom to the individual
soul. Where there's something little and weak, we feel it kind of
noble to give up to it. That way we feel elevated.
[As he speaks there is seen in the corridor doorway the LITTLE
MAN, with the WOMAN'S BABY still on his arm and the bundle held
in the other hand. He peers in anxiously. The ENGLISH, acutely
conscious, try to dissociate themselves from his presence with
their papers. The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.]
GERMAN. 'Ach'! So!
AMERICAN. Dear me!
LITTLE MAN. Is there room? I can't find a seat.
AMERICAN. Why, yes! There's a seat for one.
LITTLE MAN. [Depositing bundle outside, and heaving BABY] May I?
AMERICAN. Come right in!
[The GERMAN sulkily moves his bag. The LITTLE MAN comes in and
seats himself gingerly.]
AMERICAN. Where's the mother?
LITTLE MAN. [Ruefully] Afraid she got left behind.
[The DUTCH YOUTH laughs. The ENGLISH unconsciously emerge from
their newspapers.]
AMERICAN. My! That would appear to be quite a domestic incident.
[The ENGLISHMAN suddenly utters a profound "Ha, Ha!" and
disappears behind his paper. And that paper and the one
opposite are seen to shake, and little sguirls and squeaks
emerge.]
GERMAN. And you haf got her bundle, and her baby. Ha! [He cackles
drily.]
AMERICAN. [Gravely] I smile. I guess Providence has played it
pretty low down on you. It's sure acted real mean.
[The BABY wails, and the LITTLE MAN jigs it with a sort of
gentle desperation, looking apologetically from face to face.
His wistful glance renews the fore of merriment wherever it
alights. The AMERICAN alone preserves a gravity which seems
incapable of being broken.]
AMERICAN. Maybe you'd better get off right smart and restore that
baby. There's nothing can act madder than a mother.
LITTLE MAN. Poor thing, yes! What she must be suffering!
[A gale of laughter shakes the carriage. The ENGLISH for a
moment drop their papers, the better to indulge. The LITTLE MAN
smiles a wintry smile.]
AMERICAN. [In a lull] How did it eventuate?
LITTLE MAN. We got there just as the train was going to start; and I
jumped, thinking I could help her up. But it moved too quickly,
and--and left her.
[The gale of laughter blows up again.]
AMERICAN. Guess I'd have thrown the baby out to her.
LITTLE MAN. I was afraid the poor little thing might break.
[The Baby wails; the LITTLE MAN heaves it; the gale of laughter
blows.]
AMERICAN. [Gravely] It's highly entertaining--not for the baby.
What kind of an old baby is it, anyway? [He sniff's] I judge it's a
bit--niffy.
LITTLE MAN. Afraid I've hardly looked at it yet.
AMERICAN. Which end up is it?
LITTLE MAM. Oh! I think the right end. Yes, yes, it is.
AMERICAN. Well, that's something. Maybe you should hold it out of
window a bit. Very excitable things, babies!
ENGLISHWOMAN. [Galvanized] No, no!
ENGLISHMAN. [Touching her knee] My dear!
AMERICAN. You are right, ma'am. I opine there's a draught out
there. This baby is precious. We've all of us got stock in this
baby in a manner of speaking. This is a little bit of universal
brotherhood. Is it a woman baby?
LITTLE MAN. I--I can only see the top of its head.
AMERICAN. You can't always tell from that. It looks kind of
over-wrapped up. Maybe it had better be unbound.
GERMAN. 'Nein, nein, nein'!
AMERICAN. I think you are very likely right, colonel. It might be a
pity to unbind that baby. I guess the lady should be consulted in
this matter.
ENGLISHWOMAN. Yes, yes, of course----!
ENGLISHMAN. [Touching her] Let it be! Little beggar seems all
right.
AMERICAN. That would seem only known to Providence at this moment.
I judge it might be due to humanity to look at its face.
LITTLE MAN. [Gladly] It's sucking my' finger. There, there--nice
little thing--there!
AMERICAN. I would surmise in your leisure moments you have created
babies, sir?
LITTLE MAN. Oh! no--indeed, no.
AMERICAN. Dear me!--That is a loss. [Addressing himself to the
carriage at large] I think we may esteem ourselves fortunate to have
this little stranger right here with us. Demonstrates what a hold
the little and weak have upon us nowadays. The colonel here--a man
of blood and iron--there he sits quite calm next door to it. [He
sniffs] Now, this baby is rather chastening--that is a sign of
grace, in the colonel--that is true heroism.
LITTLE MAN. [Faintly] I--I can see its face a little now.
[All bend forward.]
AMERICAN. What sort of a physiognomy has it, anyway?
LITTLE MAN. [Still faintly] I don't see anything but--but spots.
GERMAN. Oh! Ha! Pfui!
[The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.]
AMERICAN. I am told that is not uncommon amongst babies. Perhaps we
could have you inform us, ma'am.
ENGLISHWOMAN. Yes, of course--only what sort of----
LITTLE MAN. They seem all over its----[At the slight recoil of
everyone] I feel sure it's--it's quite a good baby underneath.
AMERICAN. That will be rather difficult to come at. I'm just a bit
sensitive. I've very little use for affections of the epidermis.
GERMAN. Pfui! [He has edged away as far as he can get, and is
lighting a big cigar]
[The DUTCH YOUTH draws his legs back.]
AMERICAN. [Also taking out a cigar] I guess it would be well to
fumigate this carriage. Does it suffer, do you think?
LITTLE MAN. [Peering] Really, I don't--I'm not sure--I know so
little about babies. I think it would have a nice expression--if--if
it showed.
AMERICAN. Is it kind of boiled looking?
LITTLE MAN. Yes--yes, it is.
AMERICAN. [Looking gravely round] I judge this baby has the
measles.
[The GERMAN screws himself spasmodically against the arm of the
ENGLISHWOMAN'S seat.]
ENGLISHWOMAN. Poor little thing! Shall I----?
[She half rises.]
ENGLISHMAN. [Touching her] No, no----Dash it!
AMERICAN. I honour your emotion, ma'am. It does credit to us all.
But I sympathize with your husband too. The measles is a very
important pestilence in connection with a grown woman.
LITTLE MAN. It likes my finger awfully. Really, it's rather a sweet
baby.
AMERICAN. [Sniffing] Well, that would appear to be quite a
question. About them spots, now? Are they rosy?
LITTLE MAN. No-o; they're dark, almost black.
GERMAN. Gott! Typhus! [He bounds up on to the arm of the
ENGLISHWOMAN'S Seat.]
AMERICAN. Typhus! That's quite an indisposition!
[The DUTCH YOUTH rises suddenly, and bolts out into the
corridor. He is followed by the GERMAN, puffing clouds of
smoke. The ENGLISH and AMERICAN sit a moment longer without
speaking. The ENGLISHWOMAN'S face is turned with a curious
expression--half pity, half fear--towards the LITTLE MAN. Then
the ENGLISHMAN gets up.]
ENGLISHMAN. Bit stuffy for you here, dear, isn't it?
[He puts his arm through hers, raises her, and almost pushes her
through the doorway. She goes, still looking back.]
AMERICAN. [Gravely] There's nothing I admire more'n courage. Guess
I'll go and smoke in the corridor.
[As he goes out the LITTLE MAN looks very wistfully after him.
Screwing up his mouth and nose, he holds the BABY away from him
and wavers; then rising, he puts it on the seat opposite and
goes through the motions of letting down the window. Having
done so he looks at the BABY, who has begun to wail. Suddenly
he raises his hands and clasps them, like a child praying.
Since, however, the BABY does not stop wailing, he hovers over
it in indecision; then, picking it up, sits down again to dandle
it, with his face turned toward the open window. Finding that
it still wails, he begins to sing to it in a cracked little
voice. It is charmed at once. While he is singing, the
AMERICAN appears in the corridor. Letting down the passage
window, he stands there in the doorway with the draught blowing
his hair and the smoke of his cigar all about him. The LITTLE
MAN stops singing and shifts the shawl higher to protect the
BABY'S head from the draught.]
AMERICAN. [Gravely] This is the most sublime spectacle I have ever
envisaged. There ought to be a record of this.
[The LITTLE MAN looks at him, wondering. You are typical, sir,
of the sentiments of modern Christianity. You illustrate the
deepest feelings in the heart of every man.]
[The LITTLE MAN rises with the BABY and a movement of approach.]
Guess I'm wanted in the dining-car.
[He vanishes. The LITTLE MAN sits down again, but back to the
engine, away from the draught, and looks out of the window,
patiently jogging the BABY On his knee.]
CURTAIN
SCENE III
An arrival platform. The LITTLE MAN, with the BABY and the
bundle, is standing disconsolate, while travellers pass and
luggage is being carried by. A STATION OFFICIAL, accompanied by
a POLICEMAN, appears from a doorway, behind him.
OFFICIAL. [Consulting telegram in his hand] 'Das ist der Herr'.
[They advance to the LITTLE MAN.]
OFFICIAL. 'Sie haben einen Buben gestohlen'?
LITTLE MAN. I only speak English and American.
OFFICIAL. 'Dies ist nicht Ihr Bube'?
[He touches the Baby.]
LITTLE MAN. [Shaking his head] Take care--it's ill.
[The man does not understand.]
Ill--the baby----
OFFICIAL. [Shaking his head] 'Verstehe nicht'. Dis is nod your baby?
No?
LITTLE MAN. [Shaking his head violently] No, it is not. No.
OFFICIAL. [Tapping the telegram] Gut! You are 'rested. [He signs
to the POLICEMAN, who takes the LITTLE MAN's arm.]
LITTLE MAN. Why? I don't want the poor baby.
OFFICIAL. [Lifting the bundle] 'Dies ist nicht Ihr Gepack'--pag?
LITTLE Mary. No.
OFFICIAL. Gut! You are 'rested.
LITTLE MAN. I only took it for the poor woman. I'm not a thief--
I'm--I'm----
OFFICIAL. [Shaking head] Verstehe nicht.
[The LITTLE MAN tries to tear his hair. The disturbed BABY
wails.]
LITTLE MAN. [Dandling it as best he can] There, there--poor, poor!
OFFICIAL. Halt still! You are 'rested. It is all right.
LITTLE MAN. Where is the mother?
OFFICIAL. She comet by next drain. Das telegram say: 'Halt einen
Herren mit schwarzem Buben and schwarzem Gepack'. 'Rest gentleman
mit black baby and black--pag.
[The LITTLE MAN turns up his eyes to heaven.]
OFFICIAL. 'Komm mit us'.
[They take the LITTLE MAN toward the door from which they have
come. A voice stops them.]
AMERICAN. [Speaking from as far away as may be] Just a moment!
[The OFFICIAL stops; the LITTLE MAN also stops and sits down on
a bench against the wall. The POLICEMAN stands stolidly beside
him. The AMERICAN approaches a step or two, beckoning; the
OFFICIAL goes up to him.]
AMERICAN. Guess you've got an angel from heaven there! What's the
gentleman in buttons for?
OFFICIAL. 'Was ist das'?
AMERICAN. Is there anybody here that can understand American?
OFFICIAL. 'Verstehe nicht'.
AMERICAN. Well, just watch my gestures. I was saying [He points to
the LITTLE MAN, then makes gestures of flying] you have an angel
from heaven there. You have there a man in whom Gawd [He points
upward] takes quite an amount of stock. You have no call to arrest
him. [He makes the gesture of arrest] No, Sir. Providence has
acted pretty mean, loading off that baby on him. [He makes the
motion of dandling] The little man has a heart of gold. [He points
to his heart, and takes out a gold coin.]
OFFICIAL. [Thinking he is about to be bribed] 'Aber, das ist zu
viel'!
AMERICAN. Now, don't rattle me! [Pointing to the LITTLE MAN] Man
[Pointing to his heart] 'Herz' [Pointing to the coin] 'von' Gold.
This is a flower of the field--he don't want no gentleman in buttons
to pluck him up.
[A little crowd is gathering, including the Two ENGLISH, the
GERMAN, and the DUTCH YOUTH.]
OFFICIAL. 'Verstehe absolut nichts'. [He taps the telegram] 'Ich muss
mein' duty do.
AMERICAN. But I'm telling you. This is a white man. This is
probably the whitest man on Gawd's earth.
OFFICIAL. 'Das macht nichts'--gut or no gut, I muss mein duty do.
[He turns to go toward the LITTLE MAN.]
AMERICAN. Oh! Very well, arrest him; do your duty. This baby has
typhus.
[At the word "typhus" the OFFICIAL stops.]
AMERICAN. [Making gestures] First-class typhus, black typhus,
schwarzen typhus. Now you have it. I'm kind o' sorry for you and
the gentleman in buttons. Do your duty!
OFFICIAL. Typhus? Der Bub--die baby hat typhus?
AMERICAN. I'm telling you.
OFFICIAL. Gott im Himmel!
AMERICAN. [Spotting the GERMAN in the little throng] here's a
gentleman will corroborate me.
OFFICIAL. [Much disturbed, and signing to the POLICEMAN to stand
clear] Typhus! 'Aber das ist grasslich'!
AMERICAN. I kind o' thought you'd feel like that.
OFFICIAL. 'Die Sanitatsmachine! Gleich'!
[A PORTER goes to get it. From either side the broken half-moon
of persons stand gazing at the LITTLE MAN, who sits unhappily
dandling the BABY in the centre.]
OFFICIAL. [Raising his hands] 'Was zu thun'?
AMERICAN. Guess you'd better isolate the baby.
[A silence, during which the LITTLE MAN is heard faintly
whistling and clucking to the BABY.]
OFFICIAL. [Referring once more to his telegram]
"'Rest gentleman mit black baby." [Shaking his head] Wir must de
gentleman hold. [To the GERMAN] 'Bitte, mein Herr, sagen Sie ihm,
den Buben zu niedersetzen'. [He makes the gesture of deposit.]
GERMAN. [To the LITTLE MAN] He say: Put down the baby.
[The LITTLE MAN shakes his head, and continues to dandle the
BABY.]
OFFICIAL. You must.
[The LITTLE MAN glowers, in silence.]
ENGLISHMAN. [In background--muttering] Good man!
GERMAN. His spirit ever denies.
OFFICIAL. [Again making his gesture] 'Aber er muss'!
[The LITTLE MAN makes a face at him.]
'Sag' Ihm': Instantly put down baby, and komm' mit us.
[The BABY wails.]
LITTLE MAN. Leave the poor ill baby here alone? Be--be--be d---d to
you!
AMERICAN. [Jumping on to a trunk--with enthusiasm] Bully!
[The ENGLISH clap their hands; the DUTCH YOUTH laughs. The
OFFICIAL is muttering, greatly incensed.]
AMERICAN. What does that body-snatcher say?
GERMAN. He say this man use the baby to save himself from arrest.
Very smart he say.
AMERICAN. I judge you do him an injustice. [Showing off the LITTLE
MAN with a sweep of his arm.] This is a white man. He's got a black
baby, and he won' leave it in the lurch. Guess we would all act
noble that way, give us the chance.
[The LITTLE MAN rises, holding out the BABY, and advances a step
or two. The half-moon at once gives, increasing its size; the
AMERICAN climbs on to a higher trunk. The LITTLE MAN retires
and again sits down.]
AMERICAN. [Addressing the OFFICIAL] Guess you'd better go out of
business and wait for the mother.
OFFICIAL. [Stamping his foot] Die Mutter sall 'rested be for taking
out baby mit typhus. Ha! [To the LITTLE MAN] Put ze baby down!
[The LITTLE MAN smiles.]
Do you 'ear?
AMERICAN. [Addressing the OFFICIAL] Now, see here. 'Pears to me
you don't suspicion just how beautiful this is. Here we have a man
giving his life for that old baby that's got no claim on him. This
is not a baby of his own making. No, sir, this is a very Christ-like
proposition in the gentleman.
OFFICIAL. Put ze baby down, or ich will goummand someone it to do.
AMERICAN. That will be very interesting to watch.
OFFICIAL. [To POLICEMAN] Dake it vrom him.
[The POLICEMAN mutters, but does not.]
AMERICAN. [To the German] Guess I lost that.
GERMAN. He say he is not his officier.
AMERICAN. That just tickles me to death.
OFFICIAL. [Looking round] Vill nobody dake ze Bub'?
ENGLISHWOMAN. [Moving a step faintly] Yes--I----
ENGLISHMAN. [Grasping her arm]. By Jove! Will you!
OFFICIAL. [Gathering himself for a great effort to take the BABY,
and advancing two steps] Zen I goummand you--[He stops and his voice
dies away] Zit dere!
AMERICAN. My! That's wonderful. What a man this is! What a
sublime sense of duty!
[The DUTCH YOUTH laughs. The OFFICIAL turns on him, but as he
does so the MOTHER of the Busy is seen hurrying.]
MOTHER. 'Ach! Ach! Mei' Bubi'!
[Her face is illumined; she is about to rush to the LITTLE MAN.]
OFFICIAL. [To the POLICEMAN] 'Nimm die Frau'!
[The POLICEMAN catches hold of the WOMAN.]
OFFICIAL. [To the frightened WOMAN] 'Warum haben Sie einen Buben mit
Typhus mit ausgebracht'?
AMERICAN. [Eagerly, from his perch] What was that? I don't want to
miss any.
GERMAN. He say: Why did you a baby with typhus with you bring out?
AMERICAN. Well, that's quite a question.
[He takes out the field-glasses slung around him and adjusts
them on the BABY.]
MOTHER. [Bewildered] Mei' Bubi--Typhus--aber Typhus? [She shakes
her head violently] 'Nein, nein, nein! Typhus'!
OFFICIAL. Er hat Typhus.
MOTHER. [Shaking her head] 'Nein, nein, nein'!
AMERICAN. [Looking through his glasses] Guess she's kind of right!
I judge the typhus is where the baby' slobbered on the shawl, and
it's come off on him.
[The DUTCH YOUTH laughs.]
OFFICIAL. [Turning on him furiously] Er hat Typhus.
AMERICAN. Now, that's where you slop over. Come right here.
[The OFFICIAL mounts, and looks through the glasses.]
AMERICAN. [To the LITTLE MAN] Skin out the baby's leg. If we don't
locate spots on that, it'll be good enough for me.
[The LITTLE MAN fumbles Out the BABY'S little white foot.]
MOTHER. Mei' Bubi! [She tries to break away.]
AMERICAN. White as a banana. [To the OFFICIAL--affably] Guess
you've made kind of a fool of us with your old typhus.
OFFICIAL. Lass die Frau!
[The POLICEMAN lets her go, and she rushes to her BABY.]
MOTHER. Mei' Bubi!
[The BABY, exchanging the warmth of the LITTLE MAN for the
momentary chill of its MOTHER, wails.]
OFFICIAL. [Descending and beckoning to the POLICEMAN] 'Sie wollen
den Herrn accusiren'?
[The POLICEMAN takes the LITTLE MAN's arm.]
AMERICAN. What's that? They goin' to pitch him after all?
[The MOTHER, still hugging her BABY, who has stopped crying,
gazes at the LITTLE MAN, who sits dazedly looking up. Suddenly
she drops on her knees, and with her free hand lifts his booted
foot and kisses it.]
AMERICAN. [Waving his hat] Ra! Ra! [He descends swiftly, goes up
to the LITTLE MAN, whose arm the POLICEMAN has dropped, and takes his
hand] Brother; I am proud to know you. This is one of the greatest
moments I have ever experienced. [Displaying the LITTLE MAN to the
assembled company] I think I sense the situation when I say that we
all esteem it an honour to breathe the rather inferior atmosphere of
this station here Along with our little friend. I guess we shall all
go home and treasure the memory of his face as the whitest thing in
our museum of recollections. And perhaps this good woman will also
go home and wash the face of our little brother here. I am inspired
with a new faith in mankind. Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to present
to you a sure-enough saint--only wants a halo, to be transfigured.
[To the LITTLE MAN] Stand right up.
[The LITTLE MAN stands up bewildered. They come about him. The
OFFICIAL bows to him, the POLICEMAN salutes him. The DUTCH
YOUTH shakes his head and laughs. The GERMAN draws himself up
very straight, and bows quickly twice. The ENGLISHMAN and his
WIFE approach at least two steps, then, thinking better of it,
turn to each other and recede. The MOTHER kisses his hand. The
PORTER returning with the Sanitatsmachine, turns it on from
behind, and its pinkish shower, goldened by a ray of sunlight,
falls around the LITTLE MAN's head, transfiguring it as he
stands with eyes upraised to see whence the portent comes.]
AMERICAN. [Rushing forward and dropping on his knees] Hold on just
a minute! Guess I'll take a snapshot of the miracle. [He adjusts
his pocket camera] This ought to look bully!
CURTAIN
FROM THE SERIES OF SIX SHORT PLAYS
Four of the SIX SHORT PLAYS
CONTENTS:
HALL-MARKED
DEFEAT
THE SUN
PUNCH AND GO
HALL-MARKED
A SATIRIC TRIFLE
CHARACTERS
HERSELF.
LADY ELLA.
THE SQUIRE.
THE MAID.
MAUD.
THE RECTOR.
THE DOCTOR.
THE CABMAN.
HANNIBAL and EDWARD
HALL-MARKED
The scene is the sitting-room and verandah of HER bungalow.
The room is pleasant, and along the back, where the verandah
runs, it seems all window, both French and casement. There is a
door right and a door left. The day is bright; the time
morning.
[HERSELF, dripping wet, comes running along the verandah,
through the French window, with a wet Scotch terrier in her
arms. She vanishes through the door left. A little pause, and
LADY ELLA comes running, dry, thin, refined, and agitated. She
halts where the tracks of water cease at the door left. A
little pause, and MAUD comes running, fairly dry, stolid,
breathless, and dragging a bull-dog, wet, breathless, and stout,
by the crutch end of her 'en-tout-cas'].
LADY ELLA. Don't bring Hannibal in till I know where she's put
Edward!
MAUD. [Brutally, to HANNIBAL] Bad dog! Bad dog!
[HANNIBAL snuffles.]
LADY ELLA. Maud, do take him out! Tie him up. Here! [She takes
out a lace handkerchief ] No--something stronger! Poor darling
Edward! [To HANNIBAL] You are a bad dog!
[HANNIBAL snuffles.]
MAUD. Edward began it, Ella. [To HANNIBAL] Bad dog! Bad dog!
[HANNIBAL snuffles.]
LADY ELLA. Tie him up outside. Here, take my scarf. Where is my
poor treasure? [She removes her scarf] Catch! His ear's torn; I
saw it.
MAUD. [Taking the scarf, to HANNIBAL] Now!
[HANNIBAL snuffles.]
[She ties the scarf to his collar]
He smells horrible. Bad dog--getting into ponds to fight!
LADY ELLA. Tie him up, Maud. I must try in here.
[Their husbands, THE SQUIRE and THE RECTOR, come hastening along
the verandah.]
MAUD. [To THE RECTOR] Smell him, Bertie! [To THE SQUIRE] You
might have that pond drained, Squire!
[She takes HANNIBAL out, and ties him to the verandah. THE
SQUIRE and RECTOR Come in. LADY ELLA is knocking on the door
left.]
HER VOICE. All right! I've bound him up!
LADY ELLA. May I come in?
HER VOICE. Just a second! I've got nothing on.
[LADY ELLA recoils. THE SQUIRE and RECTOR make an involuntary
movement of approach.]
LADY ELLA. Oh! There you are!
THE RECTOR. [Doubtfully] I was just going to wade in----
LADY ELLA. Hannibal would have killed him, if she hadn't rushed in!
THE SQUIRE. Done him good, little beast!
LADY ELLA. Why didn't you go in, Tommy?
THE SQUIRE. Well, I would--only she----
LADY ELLA. I can't think how she got Edward out of Hannibal's awful
mouth!
MAUD. [Without--to HANNIBAL, who is snuffling on the verandah and
straining at the scarf] Bad dog!
LADY ELLA. We must simply thank her tremendously! I shall never
forget the way she ran in, with her skirts up to her waist!
THE SQUIRE. By Jove! No. It was topping.
LADY ELLA. Her clothes must be ruined. That pond--ugh! [She
wrinkles her nose] Tommy, do have it drained.
THE RECTOR. [Dreamily] I don't remember her face in church.
THE SQUIRE. Ah! Yes. Who is she? Pretty woman!
LADY ELLA. I must get the Vet. to Edward. [To THE SQUIRE] Tommy,
do exert yourself!
[MAUD re-enters.]
THE SQUIRE. All right! [Exerting himself] Here's a bell!
HER VOICE. [Through the door] The bleeding's stopped. Shall I send
him in to you?
LADY ELLA. Oh, please! Poor darling!
[They listen.]
[LADY ELLA, prepares to receive EDWARD. THE SQUIRE and RECTOR
stand transfixed. The door opens, and a bare arm gently pushes
EDWARD forth. He is bandaged with a smooth towel. There is a
snuffle--HANNIBAL has broken the scarf, outside.]
LADY ELLA. [Aghast] Look! Hannibal's loose! Maud--Tommy. [To THE
RECTOR] You!
[The THREE rush to prevent HANNIBAL from re-entering.]
LADY ELLA. [To EDWARD] Yes, I know--you'd like to! You SHALL bite
him when it's safe. Oh! my darling, you DO----[She sniffs].
[MAUD and THE SQUIRE re-enter.]
Have you tied him properly this time?
MAUD. With Bertie's braces.
LADY ELLA. Oh! but----
MAUD. It's all right; they're almost leather.
[THE RECTOR re-enters, with a slight look of insecurity.]
LADY ELLA. Rector, are you sure it's safe?
THE RECTOR. [Hitching at his trousers] No, indeed, LADY Ella--I----
LADY ELLA. Tommy, do lend a hand!
THE SQUIRE. All right, Ella; all right! He doesn't mean what you
mean!
LADY ELLA. [Transferring EDWARD to THE SQUIRE] Hold him, Tommy.
He's sure to smell out Hannibal!
THE SQUIRE. [Taking EDWARD by the collar, and holding his own nose]
Jove! Clever if he can smell anything but himself. Phew! She ought
to have the Victoria Cross for goin' in that pond.
[The door opens, and HERSELF appears; a fine, frank, handsome
woman, in a man's orange-coloured motor-coat, hastily thrown on
over the substrata of costume.]
SHE. So very sorry--had to have a bath, and change, of course!
LADY ELLA. We're so awfully grateful to you. It was splendid.
MAUD. Quite.
THE RECTOR. [Rather holding himself together] Heroic! I was just
myself about to----
THE SQUIRE. [Restraining EDWARD] Little beast will fight--must
apologise--you were too quick for me----
[He looks up at her. She is smiling, and regarding the wounded
dog, her head benevolently on one side.]
SHE. Poor dears! They thought they were so safe in that nice pond!
LADY ELLA. Is he very badly torn?
SHE. Rather nasty. There ought to be a stitch or two put in his
ear.
LADY ELLA. I thought so. Tommy, do----
THE SQUIRE. All right. Am I to let him go?
LADY ELLA. No.
MAUD. The fly's outside. Bertie, run and tell Jarvis to drive in
for the Vet.
THE RECTOR. [Gentle and embarrassed] Run? Well, Maud--I----
SHE. The doctor would sew it up. My maid can go round.
[HANNIBAL. appears at the open casement with the broken braces
dangling from his collar.]
LADY ELLA. Look! Catch him! Rector!
MAUD. Bertie! Catch him!
[THE RECTOR seizes HANNIBAL, but is seen to be in difficulties
with his garments. HERSELF, who has gone out left, returns,
with a leather strop in one hand and a pair of braces in the
other.]
SHE. Take this strop--he can't break that. And would these be any
good to you?
[SHE hands the braces to MAUD and goes out on to the verandah
and hastily away. MAUD, transferring the braces to the RECTOR,
goes out, draws HANNIBAL from the casement window, and secures
him with the strap. THE RECTOR sits suddenly with the braces in
his hands. There is a moment's peace.]
LADY ELLA. Splendid, isn't she? I do admire her.
THE SQUIRE. She's all there.
THE RECTOR. [Feelingly] Most kind.
[He looks ruefully at the braces and at LADY ELLA. A silence.
MAUD reappears at the door and stands gazing at the braces.]
THE SQUIRE. [Suddenly] Eh?
MAUD. Yes.
THE SQUIRE. [Looking at his wife] Ah!
LADY ELLA. [Absorbed in EDWARD] Poor darling!
THE SQUIRE. [Bluntly] Ella, the Rector wants to get up!
THE RECTOR. [Gently] Perhaps--just for a moment----
LADY ELLA. Oh! [She turns to the wall.]
[THE RECTOR, screened by his WIFE, retires on to the verandah to
adjust his garments.]
THE SQUIRE. [Meditating] So she's married!
LADY ELLA. [Absorbed in EDWARD] Why?
THE SQUIRE. Braces.
LADY ELLA. Oh! Yes. We ought to ask them to dinner, Tommy.
THE SQUIRE. Ah! Yes. Wonder who they are?
[THE RECTOR and MAUD reappear.]
THE RECTOR. Really very good of her to lend her husband's--I was--
er--quite----
MAUD. That'll do, Bertie.
[THEY see HER returning along the verandah, followed by a sandy,
red-faced gentleman in leather leggings, with a needle and
cotton in his hand.]
HERSELF. Caught the doctor just starting, So lucky!
LADY ELLA. Oh! Thank goodness!
DOCTOR. How do, Lady Ella? How do, Squire?--how do, Rector? [To
MAUD] How de do? This the beastie? I see. Quite! Who'll hold him
for me?
LADY ELLA. Oh! I!
HERSELF. D'you know, I think I'd better. It's so dreadful when it's
your own, isn't it? Shall we go in here, doctor? Come along, pretty
boy!
[She takes EDWARD, and they pass into the room, left.]
LADY ELLA. I dreaded it. She is splendid!
THE SQUIRE. Dogs take to her. That's a sure sign.
THE RECTOR. Little things--one can always tell.
THE SQUIRE. Something very attractive about her--what! Fine build
of woman.
MAUD. I shall get hold of her for parish work.
THE RECTOR. Ah! Excellent--excellent! Do!
THE SQUIRE. Wonder if her husband shoots? She seems
quite-er--quite----
LADY ELLA. [Watching the door] Quite! Altogether charming; one of
the nicest faces I ever saw.
[THE DOCTOR comes out alone.]
Oh! Doctor--have you? is it----?
DOCTOR. Right as rain! She held him like an angel--he just licked
her, and never made a sound.
LADY ELLA. Poor darling! Can I----
[She signs toward the door.]
DOCTOR. Better leave 'em a minute. She's moppin' 'im off. [He
wrinkles his nose] Wonderful clever hands!
THE SQUIRE. I say--who is she?
DOCTOR. [Looking from face to face with a dubious and rather
quizzical expression] Who? Well--there you have me! All I know is
she's a first-rate nurse--been helpin' me with a case in Ditch Lane.
Nice woman, too--thorough good sort! Quite an acquisition here.
H'm! [Again that quizzical glance] Excuse me hurryin' off--very
late. Good-bye, Rector. Good-bye, Lady Ella. Good-bye!
[He goes. A silence.]
THE SQUIRE. H'm! I suppose we ought to be a bit careful.
[JARVIS, flyman of the old school, has appeared on the
verandah.]
JARVIS. [To THE RECTOR] Beg pardon, sir. Is the little dog all
right?
MAUD. Yes.
JARVIS. [Touching his hat] Seein' you've missed your train, m'm,
shall I wait, and take you 'ome again?
MAUD. No.
JARVIS. Cert'nly, m'm. [He touches his hat with a circular gesture,
and is about to withdraw.]
LADY ELLA. Oh, Jarvis--what's the name of the people here?
JARVIS. Challenger's the name I've driven 'em in, my lady.
THE SQUIRE. Challenger? Sounds like a hound. What's he like?
JARVIS. [Scratching his head] Wears a soft 'at, sir.
THE SQUIRE. H'm! Ah!
JARVIS. Very nice gentleman, very nice lady. 'Elped me with my old
mare when she 'ad the 'ighsteria last week--couldn't 'a' been kinder
if they'd 'a' been angels from 'eaven. Wonderful fond o' dumb
animals, the two of 'em. I don't pay no attention to gossip, meself.
MAUD. Gossip? What gossip?
JARVIS. [Backing] Did I make use of the word, m'm? You'll excuse
me, I'm sure. There's always talk where there's newcomers. I takes
people as I finds 'em.
THE RECTOR. Yes, yes, Jarvis--quite--quite right!
JARVIS. Yes, sir. I've--I've got a 'abit that way at my time o'
life.
MAUD. [Sharply] How long have they been here, Jarvis?
JARVIS. Well---er--a matter of three weeks, m'm.
[A slight involuntary stir.]
[Apologetic] Of course, in my profession I can't afford to take
notice of whether there's the trifle of a ring between 'em, as the
sayin' is. 'Tisn't 'ardly my business like.
[A silence.]
LADY ELLA. [Suddenly] Er--thank you, Jarvis; you needn't wait.
JARVIS. No, m'lady. Your service, sir--service, m'm.
[He goes. A silence.]
THE SQUIRE. [Drawing a little closer] Three weeks? I say--er--
wasn't there a book?
THE RECTOR. [Abstracted] Three weeks----I certainly haven't seen
them in church.
MAUD. A trifle of a ring!
LADY ELLA. [Impulsively] Oh, bother! I'm sure she's all right.
And if she isn't, I don't care. She's been much too splendid.
THE SQUIRE. Must think of the village. Didn't quite like the
doctor's way of puttin' us off.
LADY ELLA. The poor darling owes his life to her.
THE SQUIRE. H'm! Dash it! Yes! Can't forget the way she ran into
that stinkin' pond.
MAUD. Had she a wedding-ring on?
[They look at each other, but no one knows.]
LADY ELLA. Well, I'm not going to be ungrateful.
THE SQUIRE. It'd be dashed awkward--mustn't take a false step, Ella.
THE RECTOR. And I've got his braces! [He puts his hand to his
waist.]
MAUD. [Warningly] Bertie!
THE SQUIRE. That's all right, Rector--we're goin' to be perfectly
polite, and--and--thank her, and all that.
LADY ELLA. We can see she's a good sort. What does it matter?
MAUD. My dear Ella! "What does it matter!" We've got to know.
THE RECTOR. We do want light.
THE SQUIRE. I'll ring the bell. [He rings.]
[They look at each other aghast.]
LADY ELLA. What did you ring for, Tommy?
THE SQUIRE. [Flabbergasted] God knows!
MAUD. Somebody'll come.
THE SQUIRE. Rector--you--you've got to----
MAUD. Yes, Bertie.
THE RECTOR. Dear me! But--er--what--er----How?
THE SQUIRE. [Deeply-to himself] The whole thing's damn delicate.
[The door right is opened and a MAID appears. She is a
determined-looking female. They face her in silence.]
THE RECTOR. Er--er----your master is not in?
THE MAID. No. 'E's gone up to London.
THE RECTOR. Er----Mr Challenger, I think?
THE MAID. Yes.
THE RECTOR. Yes! Er----quite so
THE MAID. [Eyeing them] D'you want--Mrs Challenger?
THE RECTOR. Ah! Not precisely----
THE SQUIRE. [To him in a low, determined voice] Go on.
THE RECTOR. [Desperately] I asked because there was a--a--Mr.
Challenger I used to know in the 'nineties, and I thought--you
wouldn't happen to know how long they've been married? My friend
marr----
THE MAID. Three weeks.
THE RECTOR. Quite so--quite so! I shall hope it will turn out to
be----Er--thank you--Ha!
LADY ELLA. Our dog has been fighting with the Rector's, and Mrs
Challenger rescued him; she's bathing his ear. We're waiting to
thank her. You needn't----
THE MAID. [Eyeing them] No.
[She turns and goes out.]
THE SQUIRE. Phew! What a gorgon! I say, Rector, did you really
know a Challenger in the 'nineties?
THE RECTOR. [Wiping his brow] No.
THE SQUIRE. Ha! Jolly good!
LADY ELLA. Well, you see!--it's all right.
THE RECTOR. Yes, indeed. A great relief!
LADY ELLA. [Moving to the door] I must go in now.
THE SQUIRE. Hold on! You goin' to ask 'em to--to--anything?
LADY ELLA. Yes.
MAUD. I shouldn't.
LADY ELLA. Why not? We all like the look of her.
THE RECTOR. I think we should punish ourselves for entertaining that
uncharitable thought.
LADY ELLA. Yes. It's horrible not having the courage to take people
as they are.
THE SQUIRE. As they are? H'm! How can you till you know?
LADY ELLA. Trust our instincts, of course.
THE SQUIRE. And supposing she'd turned out not married--eh!
LADY ELLA! She'd still be herself, wouldn't she?
MAUD. Ella!
THE SQUIRE. H'm! Don't know about that.
LADY ELLA. Of course she would, Tommy.
THE RECTOR. [His hand stealing to his waist] Well! It's a great
weight off my----!
LADY ELLA. There's the poor darling snuffling. I must go in.
[She knocks on the door. It is opened, and EDWARD comes out
briskly, with a neat little white pointed ear-cap on one ear.]
LADY ELLA. Precious!
[SHE HERSELF Comes out, now properly dressed in flax-blue
linen.]
LADY ELLA. How perfectly sweet of you to make him that!
SHE. He's such a dear. And the other poor dog?
MAUD. Quite safe, thanks to your strop.
[HANNIBAL appears at the window, with the broken strop dangling.
Following her gaze, they turn and see him.]
MAUD. Oh! There, he's broken it. Bertie!
SHE. Let me! [She seizes HANNIBAL.]
THE SQUIRE. We're really most tremendously obliged to you. Afraid
we've been an awful nuisance.
SHE. Not a bit. I love dogs.
THE SQUIRE. Hope to make the acquaintance of Mr----of your husband.
LADY ELLA. [To EDWARD, who is straining]
[Gently, darling! Tommy, take him.]
[THE SQUIRE does so.]
MAUD. [Approaching HANNIBAL.] Is he behaving?
[She stops short, and her face suddenly shoots forward at HER
hands that are holding HANNIBAL'S neck.]
SHE. Oh! yes--he's a love.
MAUD. [Regaining her upright position, and pursing her lips; in a
peculiar voice] Bertie, take Hannibal.
THE RECTOR takes him.
LADY ELLA. [Producing a card] I can't be too grateful for all
you've done for my poor darling. This is where we live. Do come--
and see----
[MAUD, whose eyes have never left those hands, tweaks LADY
ELLA's dress.]
LADY ELLA. That is--I'm--I----
[HERSELF looks at LADY ELLA in surprise.]
THE SQUIRE. I don't know if your husband shoots, but if----
[MAUD, catching his eye, taps the third finger of her left
hand.]
--er--he--does--er--er----
[HERSELF looks at THE SQUIRE surprised.]
MAUD. [Turning to her husband, repeats the gesture with the low and
simple word] Look!
THE RECTOR. [With round eyes, severely] Hannibal! [He lifts him
bodily and carries him away.]
MAUD. Don't squeeze him, Bertie!
[She follows through the French window.]
THE SQUIRE. [Abruptly--of the unoffending EDWARD] That dog'll be
forgettin' himself in a minute.
[He picks up EDWARD and takes him out.]
[LADY ELLA is left staring.]
LADY ELLA. [At last] You mustn't think, I----You mustn't think, we
----Oh! I must just see they--don't let Edward get at Hannibal.
[She skims away.]
[HERSELF is left staring after LADY ELLA, in surprise.]
SHE. What is the matter with them?
[The door is opened.]
THE MAID. [Entering and holding out a wedding-ring--severely] You
left this, m'm, in the bathroom.
SHE. [Looking, startled, at her finger] Oh! [Taking it] I hadn't
missed it. Thank you, Martha.
[THE MAID goes.]
[A hand, slipping in at the casement window, softly lays a pair
of braces on the windowsill. SHE looks at the braces, then at
the ring. HER lip curls.]
Sue. [Murmuring deeply] Ah!
CURTAIN
DEFEAT
A TINY DRAMA
CHARACTERS
THE OFFICER.
THE GIRL.
DEFEAT
During the Great War. Evening.
An empty room. The curtains drawn and gas turned low. The
furniture and walls give a colour-impression as of greens and
beetroot. There is a prevalence of plush. A fireplace on the
Left, a sofa, a small table; the curtained window is at the
back. On the table, in a common pot, stands a little plant of
maidenhair fern, fresh and green.
Enter from the door on the Right, a GIRL and a YOUNG OFFICER in
khaki. The GIRL wears a discreet dark dress, hat, and veil, and
stained yellow gloves. The YOUNG OFFICER is tall, with a fresh
open face, and kindly eager blue eyes; he is a little lame. The
GIRL, who is evidently at home, moves towards the gas jet to
turn it up, then changes her mind, and going to the curtains,
draws them apart and throws up the window. Bright moonlight
comes flooding in. Outside are seen the trees of a little
Square. She stands gazing out, suddenly turns inward with a
shiver.
YOUNG OFF. I say; what's the matter? You were crying when I spoke
to you.
GIRL. [With a movement of recovery] Oh! nothing. The beautiful
evening-that's all.
YOUNG OFF. [Looking at her] Cheer up!
GIRL. [Taking of hat and veil; her hair is yellowish and crinkly]
Cheer up! You are not lonelee, like me.
YOUNG OFF. [Limping to the window--doubtfully] I say, how did you
how did you get into this? Isn't it an awfully hopeless sort of
life?
GIRL. Yees, it ees. You haf been wounded?
YOUNG OFF. Just out of hospital to-day.
GIRL. The horrible war--all the misery is because of the war. When
will it end?
YOUNG OFF. [Leaning against the window-sill, looking at her
attentively] I say, what nationality are you?
GIRL. [With a quick look and away] Rooshian.
YOUNG OFF. Really! I never met a Russian girl. [The GIRL gives him
another quick look] I say, is it as bad as they make out?
GIRL. [Slipping her hand through his arm] Not when I haf anyone as
ni-ice as you; I never haf had, though. [She smiles, and her smile,
like her speech, is slow and confining] You stopped because I was
sad, others stop because I am gay. I am not fond of men at all.
When you know--you are not fond of them.
YOUNG OFF. Well, you hardly know them at their best, do you? You
should see them in the trenches. By George! They're simply
splendid--officers and men, every blessed soul. There's never been
anything like it--just one long bit of jolly fine self-sacrifice;
it's perfectly amazing.
GIRL. [Turning her blue-grey eyes on him] I expect you are not the
last at that. You see in them what you haf in yourself, I think.
YOUNG OFF. Oh, not a bit; you're quite out! I assure you when we
made the attack where I got wounded there wasn't a single man in my
regiment who wasn't an absolute hero. The way they went in--never
thinking of themselves--it was simply ripping.
GIRL. [In a queer voice] It is the same too, perhaps, with--the
enemy.
YOUNG OFF. Oh, yes! I know that.
GIRL. Ah! You are not a mean man. How I hate mean men!
YOUNG OFF. Oh! they're not mean really--they simply don't
understand.
GIRL. Oh! You are a babee--a good babee aren't you?
[The YOUNG OFFICER doesn't like this, and frowns. The GIRL
looks a little scared.]
GIRL. [Clingingly] But I li-ke you for it. It is so good to find a
ni-ice man.
YOUNG OFF. [Abruptly] About being lonely? Haven't you any Russian
friends?
GIRL. [Blankly] Rooshian? No. [Quickly] The town is so beeg.
Were you at the concert before you spoke to me?
YOUNG OFF. Yes.
GIRL. I too. I lofe music.
YOUNG OFF. I suppose all Russians do.
GIRL. [With another quick look tat him] I go there always when I
haf the money.
YOUNG OFF. What! Are you as badly on the rocks as that?
GIRL. Well, I haf just one shilling now!
[She laughs bitterly. The laugh upsets him; he sits on the
window-sill, and leans forward towards her.]
YOUNG OFF. I say, what's your name?
GIRL. May. Well, I call myself that. It is no good asking yours.
YOUNG OFF. [With a laugh] You're a distrustful little soul; aren't
you?
GIRL. I haf reason to be, don't you think?
YOUNG OFF. Yes. I suppose you're bound to think us all brutes.
GIRL. [Sitting on a chair close to the window where the moonlight
falls on one powdered cheek] Well, I haf a lot of reasons to be
afraid all my time. I am dreadfully nervous now; I am not trusding
anybody. I suppose you haf been killing lots of Germans?
YOUNG OFF. We never know, unless it happens to be hand to hand; I
haven't come in for that yet.
GIRL. But you would be very glad if you had killed some.
YOUNG OFF. Oh, glad? I don't think so. We're all in the same boat,
so far as that's concerned. We're not glad to kill each other--not
most of us. We do our job--that's all.
GIRL. Oh! It is frightful. I expect I haf my brothers killed.
YOUNG OFF. Don't you get any news ever?
GIRL. News? No indeed, no news of anybody in my country. I might
not haf a country; all that I ever knew is gone; fader, moder,
sisters, broders, all; never any more I shall see them, I suppose,
now. The war it breaks and breaks, it breaks hearts. [She gives a
little snarl] Do you know what I was thinking when you came up to
me? I was thinking of my native town, and the river in the
moonlight. If I could see it again I would be glad. Were you ever
homeseeck?
YOUNG OFF. Yes, I have been--in the trenches. But one's ashamed
with all the others.
GIRL. Ah! Yees! Yees! You are all comrades there. What is it
like for me here, do you think, where everybody hates and despises
me, and would catch me and put me in prison, perhaps. [Her breast
heaves.]
YOUNG OFF. [Leaning forward and patting her knee] Sorry--sorry.
GIRL. [In a smothered voice] You are the first who has been kind to
me for so long! I will tell you the truth--I am not Rooshian at all
--I am German.
YOUNG OFF. [Staring] My dear girl, who cares. We aren't fighting
against women.
GIRL. [Peering at him] Another man said that to me. But he was
thinkin' of his fun. You are a veree ni-ice boy; I am so glad I met
you. You see the good in people, don't you? That is the first thing
in the world--because--there is really not much good in people, you
know.
YOUNG OFF. [Smiling] You are a dreadful little cynic! But of
course you are!
GIRL. Cyneec? How long do you think I would live if I was not a
cyneec? I should drown myself to-morrow. Perhaps there are good
people, but, you see, I don't know them.
YOUNG OFF. I know lots.
GIRL. [Leaning towards him] Well now--see, ni-ice boy--you haf
never been in a hole, haf you?
YOUNG OFF. I suppose not a real hole.
GIRL. No, I should think not, with your face. Well, suppose I am
still a good girl, as I was once, you know; and you took me to your
mother and your sisters and you said: "Here is a little German girl
that has no work, and no money, and no friends." They will say: "Oh!
how sad! A German girl!" And they will go and wash their hands.
[The OFFICER, is silent, staring at her.]
GIRL. You see.
YOUNG OFF. [Muttering] I'm sure there are people.
GIRL. No. They would not take a German, even if she was good.
Besides, I don't want to be good any more--I am not a humbug; I have
learned to be bad. Aren't you going to kees me, ni-ice boy?
She puts her face close to his. Her eyes trouble him; he draws back.
YOUNG OFF. Don't. I'd rather not, if you don't mind. [She looks at
him fixedly, with a curious inquiring stare] It's stupid. I don't
know--but you see, out there, and in hospital, life's different.
It's--it's--it isn't mean, you know. Don't come too close.
GIRL. Oh! You are fun----[She stops] Eesn't it light. No Zeps
to-night. When they burn--what a 'orrble death! And all the people
cheer. It is natural. Do you hate us veree much?
YOUNG OFF. [Turning sharply] Hate? I don't know.
GIRL. I don't hate even the English--I despise them. I despise my
people too; even more, because they began this war. Oh! I know that.
I despise all the peoples. Why haf they made the world so miserable
--why haf they killed all our lives--hundreds and thousands and
millions of lives--all for noting? They haf made a bad world--
everybody hating, and looking for the worst everywhere. They haf
made me bad, I know. I believe no more in anything. What is there
to believe in? Is there a God? No! Once I was teaching little
English children their prayers--isn't that funnee? I was reading to
them about Christ and love. I believed all those things. Now I
believe noting at all--no one who is not a fool or a liar can
believe. I would like to work in a 'ospital; I would like to go and
'elp poor boys like you. Because I am a German they would throw me
out a 'undred times, even if I was good. It is the same in Germany,
in France, in Russia, everywhere. But do you think I will believe in
Love and Christ and God and all that--Not I! I think we are animals
--that's all! Oh, yes! you fancy it is because my life has spoiled
me. It is not that at all--that is not the worst thing in life. The
men I take are not ni-ice, like you, but it's their nature; and--they
help me to live, which is something for me, anyway. No, it is the
men who think themselves great and good and make the war with their
talk and their hate, killing us all--killing all the boys like you,
and keeping poor People in prison, and telling us to go on hating;
and all these dreadful cold-blood creatures who write in the papers
--the same in my country--just the same; it is because of all of them
that I think we are only animals.
[The YOUNG OFFICER gets up, acutely miserable.]
[She follows him with her eyes.]
GIRL. Don't mind me talkin', ni-ice boy. I don't know anyone to
talk to. If you don't like it, I can be quiet as a mouse.
YOUNG OFF. Oh, go on! Talk away; I'm not obliged to believe you,
and I don't.
[She, too, is on her feet now, leaning against the wall; her
dark dress and white face just touched by the slanting
moonlight. Her voice comes again, slow and soft and bitter.]
GIRL. Well, look here, ni-ice boy, what sort of world is it, where
millions are being tortured, for no fault of theirs, at all? A
beautiful world, isn't it? 'Umbog! Silly rot, as you boys call it.
You say it is all "Comrades" and braveness out there at the front,
and people don't think of themselves. Well, I don't think of myself
veree much. What does it matter? I am lost now, anyway. But I
think of my people at 'ome; how they suffer and grieve. I think of
all the poor people there, and here, how lose those they love, and
all the poor prisoners. Am I not to think of them? And if I do, how
am I to believe it a beautiful world, ni-ice boy?
[He stands very still, staring at her.]
GIRL. Look here! We haf one life each, and soon it is over. Well,
I think that is lucky.
YOUNG OFF. No! There's more than that.
GIRL. [Softly] Ah! You think the war is fought for the future; you
are giving your lives for a better world, aren't you?
YOUNG OFF. We must fight till we win.
GIRL. Till you win. My people think that too. All the peoples
think that if they win the world will be better. But it will not,
you know; it will be much worse, anyway.
[He turns away from her, and catches up his cap. Her voice
follows him.]
GIRL. I don't care which win. I don't care if my country is beaten.
I despise them all--animals--animals. Ah! Don't go, ni-ice boy; I
will be quiet now.
[He has taken some notes from his tunic pocket; he puts then on
the table and goes up to her.]
YOUNG OFF. Good-night.
GIRL. [Plaintively] Are you really going? Don't you like me
enough?
YOUNG OFF. Yes, I like you.
GIRL. It is because I am German, then?
YOUNG OFF. No.
GIRL. Then why won't you stay?
YOUNG OFF. [With a shrug] If you must know--because you upset me.
GIRL. Won't you kees me once?
[He bends, puts his lips to her forehead. But as he takes them
away she throws her head back, presses her mouth to his, and
clings to him.]
YOUNG OFF. [Sitting down suddenly] Don't! I don't want to feel a
brute.
GIRL. [Laughing] You are a funny boy; but you are veree good. Talk
to me a little, then. No one talks to me. Tell me, haf you seen
many German prisoners?
YOUNG OFF. [Sighing] A good many.
GIRL. Any from the Rhine?
YOUNG OFF. Yes, I think so.
GIRL. Were they veree sad?
YOUNG OFF. Some were; some were quite glad to be taken.
GIRL. Did you ever see the Rhine? It will be wonderful to-night.
The moonlight will be the same there, and in Rooshia too, and France,
everywhere; and the trees will look the same as here, and people will
meet under them and make love just as here. Oh! isn't it stupid, the
war? As if it were not good to be alive!
YOUNG OFF. You can't tell how good it is to be alive till you're
facing death. You don't live till then. And when a whole lot of you
feel like that--and are ready to give their lives for each other,
it's worth all the rest of life put together.
[He stops, ashamed of such, sentiment before this girl, who
believes in nothing.]
GIRL. [Softly] How were you wounded, ni-ice boy?
YOUNG OFF. Attacking across open ground: four machine bullets got me
at one go off.
GIRL. Weren't you veree frightened when they ordered you to attack?
[He shakes his head and laughs.]
YOUNG OFF. It was great. We did laugh that morning. They got me
much too soon, though--a swindle.
GIRL. [Staring at him] You laughed?
YOUNG OFF. Yes. And what do you think was the first thing I was
conscious of next morning? My old Colonel bending over me and giving
me a squeeze of lemon. If you knew my Colonel you'd still believe in
things. There is something, you know, behind all this evil. After
all, you can only die once, and, if it's for your country--all the
better!
[Her face, in the moonlight, with, intent eyes touched up with
black, has a most strange, other-world look.]
GIRL. No; I believe in nothing, not even in my country. My heart is
dead.
YOUNG OFF. Yes; you think so, but it isn't, you know, or you
wouldn't have 'been crying when I met you.
GIRL. If it were not dead, do you think I could live my life-walking
the streets every night, pretending to like strange men; never
hearing a kind word; never talking, for fear I will be known for a
German? Soon I shall take to drinking; then I shall be "Kaput" veree
quick. You see, I am practical; I see things clear. To-night I am a
little emotional; the moon is funny, you know. But I live for myself
only, now. I don't care for anything or anybody.
YOUNG OFF. All the same; just now you were pitying your folk at
home, and prisoners and that.
GIRL. Yees; because they suffer. Those who suffer are like me--I
pity myself, that's all; I am different from your English women. I
see what I am doing; I do not let my mind become a turnip just
because I am no longer moral.
YOUNG OFF. Nor your heart either, for all you say.
GIRL. Ni-ice boy, you are veree obstinate. But all that about love
is 'umbog. We love ourselves, noting more.
At that intense soft bitterness in her voice, he gets up,
feeling stifled, and stands at the window. A newspaper boy some
way off is calling his wares. The GIRL's fingers slip between
his own, and stay unmoving. He looks round into her face. In
spite of make-up it has a queer, unholy, touching beauty.
YOUNG OFF. [With an outburst] No; we don't only love ourselves;
there is more. I can't explain, but there's something great; there's
kindness--and--and-----
[The shouting of newspaper boys grows louder and their cries,
passionately vehement, clash into each other and obscure each
word. His head goes up to listen; her hand tightens within his
arm--she too is listening. The cries come nearer, hoarser, more
shrill and clamorous; the empty moonlight outside seems suddenly
crowded with figures, footsteps, voices, and a fierce distant
cheering. "Great victory--great victory! Official! British!
'Eavy defeat of the 'Uns! Many thousand prisoners! 'Eavy
defeat!" It speeds by, intoxicating, filling him with a fearful
joy; he leans far out, waving his cap and cheering like a
madman; the night seems to flutter and vibrate and answer. He
turns to rush down into the street, strikes against something
soft, and recoils. The GIRL stands with hands clenched, and
face convulsed, panting. All confused with the desire to do
something, he stoops to kiss her hand. She snatches away her
fingers, sweeps up the notes he has put down, and holds them out
to him.]
GIRL. Take them--I will not haf your English money--take them.
Suddenly she tears them across, twice, thrice, lets the bits.
flutter to the floor, and turns her back on him. He stands
looking at her leaning against the plush-covered table, her head
down, a dark figure in a dark room, with the moonlight
sharpening her outline. Hardly a moment he stays, then makes
for the door. When he is gone, she still stands there, her chin
on her breast, with the sound in her ears of cheering, of
hurrying feet, and voices crying: "'Eavy Defeat!" stands, in the
centre of a pattern made by the fragments of the torn-up notes,
staring out unto the moonlight, seeing not this hated room and
the hated Square outside, but a German orchard, and herself, a
little girl, plucking apples, a big dog beside her; and a
hundred other pictures, such as the drowning see. Then she
sinks down on the floor, lays her forehead on the dusty carpet,
and presses her body to it. Mechanically, she sweeps together
the scattered fragments of notes, assembling them with the dust
into a little pile, as of fallen leaves, and dabbling in it with
her fingers, while the tears run down her cheeks.
GIRL. Defeat! Der Vaterland! Defeat!. . . . One shillin'!
[Then suddenly, in the moonlight, she sits up, and begins to
sing with all her might "Die Wacht am Rhein." And outside men
pass, singing: "Rule, Britannia!"]
CURTAIN
THE SUN
A SCENE
CHARACTERS
THE GIRL.
THE MAN.
THE SOLDIER.
THE SUN
A Girl, sits crouched over her knees on a stile close to a
river. A MAN with a silver badge stands beside her, clutching
the worn top plank. THE GIRL'S level brows are drawn together;
her eyes see her memories. THE MAN's eyes see THE GIRL; he has
a dark, twisted face. The bright sun shines; the quiet river
flows; the Cuckoo is calling; the mayflower is in bloom along
the hedge that ends in the stile on the towing-path.
THE GIRL. God knows what 'e'll say, Jim.
THE MAN. Let 'im. 'E's come too late, that's all.
THE GIRL. He couldn't come before. I'm frightened. 'E was fond o'
me.
THE MAN. And aren't I fond of you?
THE GIRL. I ought to 'a waited, Jim; with 'im in the fightin'.
THE MAN. [Passionately] And what about me? Aren't I been in the
fightin'--earned all I could get?
THE GIRL. [Touching him] Ah!
THE MAN. Did you--? [He cannot speak the words.]
THE GIRL. Not like you, Jim--not like you.
THE MAN. Have a spirit, then.
THE GIRL. I promised him.
THE MAN. One man's luck's another's poison.
THE GIRL. I ought to 'a waited. I never thought he'd come back from
the fightin'.
THE MAN. [Grimly] Maybe 'e'd better not 'ave.
THE GIRL. [Looking back along the tow-path] What'll he be like, I
wonder?
THE MAN. [Gripping her shoulder] Daisy, don't you never go back on
me, or I should kill you, and 'im too.
[THE GIRL looks at him, shivers, and puts her lips to his.]
THE GIRL. I never could.
THE MAN. Will you run for it? 'E'd never find us!
[THE GIRL shakes her head.]
THE MAN [Dully] What's the good o' stayin'? The world's wide.
THE GIRL. I'd rather have it off me mind, with him home.
THE MAN. [Clenching his hands] It's temptin' Providence.
THE GIRL. What's the time, Jim?
THE MAN. [Glancing at the sun] 'Alf past four.
THE GIRL. [Looking along the towing-path] He said four o'clock.
Jim, you better go.
THE MAN. Not I. I've not got the wind up. I've seen as much of
hell as he has, any day. What like is he?
THE GIRL. [Dully] I dunno, just. I've not seen him these three
years. I dunno no more, since I've known you.
THE MAN. Big or little chap?
THE GIRL. 'Bout your size. Oh! Jim, go along!
THE MAN. No fear! What's a blighter like that to old Fritz's
shells? We didn't shift when they was comin'. If you'll go, I'll
go; not else.
[Again she shakes her head.]
THE GIRL. Jim, do you love me true?
[For answer THE MAN takes her avidly in his arms.]
I ain't ashamed--I ain't ashamed. If 'e could see me 'eart.
THE MAN. Daisy! If I'd known you out there, I never could 'a stuck
it. They'd 'a got me for a deserter. That's how I love you!
THE GIRL. Jim, don't lift your hand to 'im! Promise!
THE MAN. That's according.
THE GIRL. Promise!
THE MAN. If 'e keeps quiet, I won't. But I'm not accountable--not
always, I tell you straight--not since I've been through that.
THE GIRL. [With a shiver] Nor p'raps he isn't.
THE MAN. Like as not. It takes the lynch pins out, I tell you.
THE GIRL. God 'elp us!
THE MAN. [Grimly] Ah! We said that a bit too often. What we want
we take, now; there's no one else to give it us, and there's no
fear'll stop us; we seen the bottom of things.
THE GIRL. P'raps he'll say that too.
THE MAN. Then it'll be 'im or me.
THE GIRL. I'm frightened:
THE MAN. [Tenderly] No, Daisy, no! The river's handy. One more or
less. 'E shan't 'arm you; nor me neither. [He takes out a knife.]
THE GIRL. [Seizing his hand] Oh, no! Give it to me, Jim!
THE MAN. [Smiling] No fear! [He puts it away] Shan't 'ave no need
for it like as not. All right, little Daisy; you can't be expected
to see things like what we do. What's life, anyway? I've seen a
thousand lives taken in five minutes. I've seen dead men on the
wires like flies on a flypaper. I've been as good as dead meself a
hundred times. I've killed a dozen men. It's nothin'. He's safe,
if 'e don't get my blood up. If he does, nobody's safe; not 'im, nor
anybody else; not even you. I'm speakin' sober.
THE GIRL. [Softly] Jim, you won't go fightin' in the sun, with the
birds all callin'?
THE MAN. That depends on 'im. I'm not lookin' for it. Daisy, I
love you. I love your hair. I love your eyes. I love you.
THE GIRL. And I love you, Jim. I don't want nothin' more than you
in all the world.
THE MAN. Amen to that, my dear. Kiss me close!
The sound of a voice singing breaks in on their embrace. THE
GIRL starts from his arms, and looks behind her along the
towing-path. THE MAN draws back against, the hedge, fingering
his side, where the knife is hidden. The song comes nearer.
"I'll be right there to-night,
Where the fields are snowy white;
Banjos ringing, darkies singing,
All the world seems bright."
THE GIRL. It's him!
THE MAN. Don't get the wind up, Daisy. I'm here!
[The singing stops. A man's voice says "Christ! It's Daisy;
it's little Daisy 'erself!" THE GIRL stands rigid. The figure
of a soldier appears on the other side of the stile. His cap is
tucked into his belt, his hair is bright in the sunshine; he is
lean, wasted, brown, and laughing.]
SOLDIER. Daisy! Daisy! Hallo, old pretty girl!
[THE GIRL does not move, barring the way, as it were.]
THE GIRL. Hallo, Jack! [Softly] I got things to tell you!
SOLDIER. What sort o' things, this lovely day? Why, I got things
that'd take me years to tell. Have you missed me, Daisy?
THE GIRL. You been so long.
SOLDIER. So I 'ave. My Gawd! It's a way they 'ave in the Army. I
said when I got out of it I'd laugh. Like as the sun itself I used
to think of you, Daisy, when the trumps was comin' over, and the wind
was up. D'you remember that last night in the wood? "Come back and
marry me quick, Jack." Well, here I am--got me pass to heaven. No
more fightin', no more drillin', no more sleepin' rough. We can get
married now, Daisy. We can live soft an' 'appy. Give us a kiss, my
dear.
THE GIRL. [Drawing back] No.
SOLDIER. [Blankly] Why not?
[THE MAN, with a swift movement steps along the hedge to THE
GIRL'S side.]
THE MAN. That's why, soldier.
SOLDIER. [Leaping over the stile] 'Oo are you, Pompey? The sun
don't shine in your inside, do it? 'Oo is he, Daisy?
THE GIRL. My man.
SOLDIER. Your-man! Lummy! "Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a
thief!" Well, mate! So you've been through it, too. I'm laughin'
this mornin' as luck will 'ave it. Ah! I can see your knife.
THE MAN. [Who has half drawn his knife] Don't laugh at me, I tell
you.
SOLDIER. Not at you, not at you. [He looks from one to the other]
I'm laughin' at things in general. Where did you get it, mate?
THE MAN. [Watchfully] Through the lung.
SOLDIER. Think o' that! An' I never was touched. Four years an'
never was touched. An' so you've come an' took my girl! Nothin'
doin'! Ha! [Again he looks from one to the other-then away] Well!
The world's before me! [He laughs] I'll give you Daisy for a lung
protector.
THE MAN. [Fiercely] You won't. I've took her.
SOLDIER. That's all right, then. You keep 'er. I've got a laugh in
me you can't put out, black as you look! Good-bye, little Daisy!
[THE GIRL makes a movement towards him.]
THE MAN. Don't touch 'im!
[THE GIRL stands hesitating, and suddenly bursts into tears.]
SOLDIER. Look 'ere, mate; shake 'ands! I don't want to see a girl
cry, this day of all, with the sun shinin'. I seen too much of
sorrer. You and me've been at the back of it. We've 'ad our whack.
Shake!
THE MAN. Who are you kiddin'? You never loved 'er!
SOLDIER. [After a long moment's pause] Oh! I thought I did.
THE MAN. I'll fight you for her.
[He drops his knife. ]
SOLDIER. [Slowly] Mate, you done your bit, an' I done mine. It's
took us two ways, seemin'ly.
THE GIRL. [Pleading] Jim!
THE MAN. [With clenched fists] I don't want 'is charity. I only
want what I can take.
SOLDIER. Daisy, which of us will you 'ave?
THE GIRL. [Covering her face] Oh! Him!
SOLDIER. You see, mate! Put your 'ands down. There's nothin' for
it but a laugh. You an' me know that. Laugh, mate!
THE MAN. You blarsted----!
[THE GIRL springs to him and stops his mouth.]
SOLDIER. It's no use, mate. I can't do it. I said I'd laugh
to-day, and laugh I will. I've come through that, an' all the stink
of it; I've come through sorrer. Never again! Cheerio, mate! The
sun's a-shinin'! He turns away.
THE GIRL. Jack, don't think too 'ard of me!
SOLDIER. [Looking back] No fear, my dear! Enjoy your fancy! So
long! Gawd bless you both!
He sings, and goes along the path, and the song fades away.
"I'll be right there to-night
Where the fields are snowy white;
Banjos ringing, darkies singing
All the world seems bright!"
THE MAN. 'E's mad!
THE GIRL. [Looking down the path with her hands clasped] The sun has
touched 'im, Jim!
CURTAIN
PUNCH AND GO
A LITTLE COMEDY
"Orpheus with his lute made trees
And the mountain tope that freeze....."
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
JAMES G. FRUST ..............The Boss
E. BLEWITT VANE .............The Producer
MR. FORESON .................The Stage Manager
"ELECTRICS"..................The Electrician
"PROPS" .....................The Property Man
HERBERT .....................The Call Boy
OF THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY
GUY TOONE ...................The Professor
VANESSA HELLGROVE ...........The Wife
GEORGE FLEETWAY .............Orpheus
MAUDE HOPKINS ...............The Faun
SCENE: The Stage of a Theatre.
Action continuous, though the curtain is momentarily lowered
according to that action.
PUNCH AND GO
The Scene is the stage of the theatre set for the dress
rehearsal of the little play: "Orpheus with his Lute." The
curtain is up and the audience, though present, is not supposed
to be. The set scene represents the end section of a room, with
wide French windows, Back Centre, fully opened on to an apple
orchard in bloom. The Back Wall with these French windows, is
set only about ten feet from the footlights, and the rest of the
stage is orchard. What is visible of the room would indicate
the study of a writing man of culture. ( Note.--If found
advantageous for scenic purposes, this section of room can be
changed to a broad verandah or porch with pillars supporting its
roof.) In the wall, Stage Left, is a curtained opening, across
which the curtain is half drawn. Stage Right of the French
windows is a large armchair turned rather towards the window,
with a book rest attached, on which is a volume of the
Encyclopedia Britannica, while on a stool alongside are writing
materials such as a man requires when he writes with a pad on
his knees. On a little table close by is a reading-lamp with a
dark green shade. A crude light from the floats makes the stage
stare; the only person on it is MR FORESON, the stage manager,
who is standing in the centre looking upwards as if waiting for
someone to speak. He is a short, broad man, rather blank, and
fatal. From the back of the auditorium, or from an empty box,
whichever is most convenient, the producer, MR BLEWITT VANE, a
man of about thirty four, with his hair brushed back, speaks.
VANE. Mr Foreson?
FORESON. Sir?
VANE. We'll do that lighting again.
[FORESON walks straight of the Stage into the wings Right.]
[A pause.]
Mr Foreson! [Crescendo] Mr Foreson.
[FORESON walks on again from Right and shades his eyes.]
VANE. For goodness sake, stand by! We'll do that lighting again.
Check your floats.
FORESON. [Speaking up into the prompt wings] Electrics!
VOICE OF ELECTRICS. Hallo!
FORESON. Give it us again. Check your floats.
[The floats go down, and there is a sudden blinding glare of
blue lights, in which FORESON looks particularly ghastly.]
VANE. Great Scott! What the blazes! Mr Foreson!
[FORESON walks straight out into the wings Left. Crescendo.]
Mr Foreson!
FORESON. [Re-appearing] Sir?
VANE. Tell Miller to come down.
FORESON. Electrics! Mr Blewitt Vane wants to speak to you. Come
down!
VANE. Tell Herbert to sit in that chair.
[FORESON walks straight out into the Right wings.]
Mr Foreson!
FORESON. [Re-appearing] Sir?
VANE. Don't go off the stage. [FORESON mutters.]
[ELECTRICS appears from the wings, Stage Left. He is a dark,
thin-faced man with rather spikey hair.]
ELECTRICS. Yes, Mr Vane?
VANE. Look!
ELECTRICS. That's what I'd got marked, Mr Vane.
VANE. Once for all, what I want is the orchard in full moonlight,
and the room dark except for the reading lamp. Cut off your front
battens.
[ELECTRICS withdraws Left. FORESON walks off the Stage into the
Right wings.]
Mr Foreson!
FORESON. [Re-appearing] Sir?
VANE. See this marked right. Now, come on with it! I want to get
some beauty into this!
[While he is speaking, HERBERT, the call boy, appears from the
wings Right, a mercurial youth of about sixteen with a wide
mouth.]
FORESON. [Maliciously] Here you are, then, Mr Vane. Herbert, sit
in that chair.
[HERBERT sits an the armchair, with an air of perfect peace.]
VANE. Now! [All the lights go out. In a wail] Great Scott!
[A throaty chuckle from FORESON in the darkness. The light
dances up, flickers, shifts, grows steady, falling on the
orchard outside. The reading lamp darts alight and a piercing
little glare from it strikes into the auditorium away from
HERBERT.]
[In a terrible voice] Mr Foreson.
FORESON. Sir?
VANE. Look--at--that--shade!
[FORESON mutters, walks up to it and turns it round so that the
light shines on HERBERT'S legs.]
On his face, on his face!
[FORESON turns the light accordingly.]
FORESON. Is that what you want, Mr Vane?
VANE. Yes. Now, mark that!
FORESON. [Up into wings Right] Electrics!
ELECTRICS. Hallo!
FORESON. Mark that!
VANE. My God!
[The blue suddenly becomes amber.]
[The blue returns. All is steady. HERBERT is seen diverting
himself with an imaginary cigar.]
Mr Foreson.
FORESON. Sir?
VANE. Ask him if he's got that?
FORESON. Have you got that?
ELECTRICS. Yes.
VANE. Now pass to the change. Take your floats off altogether.
FORESON. [Calling up] Floats out. [They go out.]
VANE. Cut off that lamp. [The lamp goes out] Put a little amber in
your back batten. Mark that! Now pass to the end. Mr Foreson!
FORESON. Sir?
VANE. Black out
FORESON. [Calling up] Black out!
[The lights go out.]
VANE. Give us your first lighting-lamp on. And then the two
changes. Quick as you can. Put some pep into it. Mr Foreson!
FORESON. Sir?
VANE. Stand for me where Miss Hellgrove comes in. FORESON crosses
to the window. No, no!--by the curtain.
[FORESON takes his stand by the curtain; and suddenly the three
lighting effects are rendered quickly and with miraculous
exactness.]
Good! Leave it at that. We'll begin. Mr Foreson, send up to Mr
Frust.
[He moves from the auditorium and ascends on to the Stage, by
some steps Stage Right.]
FORESON. Herb! Call the boss, and tell beginners to stand by.
Sharp, now!
[HERBERT gets out of the chair, and goes off Right.]
[FORESON is going off Left as VANE mounts the Stage.]
VANE. Mr Foreson.
FORESON. [Re-appearing] Sir?
VANE. I want "Props."
FORESON. [In a stentorian voice] "Props!"
[Another moth-eaten man appears through the French windows.]
VANE. Is that boulder firm?
PROPS. [Going to where, in front of the back-cloth, and apparently
among its apple trees, lies the counterfeitment of a mossy boulder;
he puts his foot on it] If, you don't put too much weight on it,
sir.
VANE. It won't creak?
PROPS. Nao. [He mounts on it, and a dolorous creaking arises.]
VANE. Make that right. Let me see that lute.
[PROPS produces a property lute. While they scrutinize it, a
broad man with broad leathery clean-shaven face and small mouth,
occupied by the butt end of a cigar, has come on to the stage
from Stage Left, and stands waiting to be noticed.]
PROPS. [Attracted by the scent of the cigar] The Boss, Sir.
VANE. [Turning to "PROPS"] That'll do, then.
["PROPS" goes out through the French windows.]
VANE. [To FRUST] Now, sir, we're all ready for rehearsal of
"Orpheus with his Lute."
FRUST. [In a cosmopolitan voice] "Orphoos with his loot!" That his
loot, Mr Vane? Why didn't he pinch something more precious? Has
this high-brow curtain-raiser of yours got any "pep" in it?
VANE. It has charm.
FRUST. I'd thought of "Pop goes the Weasel" with little Miggs. We
kind of want a cock-tail before "Louisa loses," Mr Vane.
VANE. Well, sir, you'll see.
FRUST. This your lighting? It's a bit on the spiritool side. I've
left my glass. Guess I'll sit in the front row. Ha'f a minute. Who
plays this Orphoos?
VANE. George Fleetway.
FRUST. Has he got punch?
VANE. It's a very small part.
FRUST. Who are the others?
VANE. Guy Toone plays the Professor; Vanessa Hellgrove his wife;
Maude Hopkins the faun.
FRUST. H'm! Names don't draw.
VANE. They're not expensive, any of them. Miss Hellgrove's a find,
I think.
FRUST. Pretty?
VANE. Quite.
FRUST. Arty?
VANE. [Doubtfully] No. [With resolution] Look here, Mr FRUST,
it's no use your expecting another "Pop goes the Weasel."
FRUST. We-ell, if it's got punch and go, that'll be enough for me.
Let's get to it!
[He extinguishes his cigar and descends the steps and sits in
the centre of the front row of the stalls.]
VANE. Mr Foreson?
FORESON. [Appearing through curtain, Right] Sir?
VANE. Beginners. Take your curtain down.
[He descends the steps and seats himself next to FRUST. The
curtain goes down.]
[A woman's voice is heard singing very beautifully Sullivan's
song: "Orpheus with his lute, with his lute made trees and the
mountain tops that freeze'." etc.]
FRUST. Some voice!
The curtain rises. In the armchair the PROFESSOR is yawning,
tall, thin, abstracted, and slightly grizzled in the hair. He
has a pad of paper over his knee, ink on the stool to his right
and the Encyclopedia volume on the stand to his left-barricaded
in fact by the article he is writing. He is reading a page over
to himself, but the words are drowned in the sound of the song
his WIFE is singing in the next room, partly screened off by the
curtain. She finishes, and stops. His voice can then be heard
conning the words of his article.
PROF. "Orpheus symbolized the voice of Beauty, the call of life,
luring us mortals with his song back from the graves we dig for
ourselves. Probably the ancients realized this neither more nor less
than we moderns. Mankind has not changed. The civilized being still
hides the faun and the dryad within its broadcloth and its silk. And
yet"--[He stops, with a dried-up air-rather impatiently] Go on, my
dear! It helps the atmosphere.
[The voice of his WIFE begins again, gets as far as "made them
sing" and stops dead, just as the PROFESSOR's pen is beginning
to scratch. And suddenly, drawing the curtain further aside]
[SHE appears. Much younger than the PROFESSOR, pale, very
pretty, of a Botticellian type in face, figure, and in her
clinging cream-coloured frock. She gazes at her abstracted
husband; then swiftly moves to the lintel of the open window,
and stands looking out.]
THE WIFE. God! What beauty!
PROF. [Looking Up] Umm?
THE WIFE. I said: God! What beauty!
PROF. Aha!
THE WIFE. [Looking at him] Do you know that I have to repeat
everything to you nowadays?
PROF. What?
THE WIFE. That I have to repeat----
PROF. Yes; I heard. I'm sorry. I get absorbed.
THE WIFE. In all but me.
PROF. [Startled] My dear, your song was helping me like anything to
get the mood. This paper is the very deuce--to balance between the
historical and the natural.
THE WIFE. Who wants the natural?
PROF. [Grumbling] Umm! Wish I thought that! Modern taste!
History may go hang; they're all for tuppence-coloured sentiment
nowadays.
THE WIFE. [As if to herself] Is the Spring sentiment?
PROF. I beg your pardon, my dear; I didn't catch.
WIFE. [As if against her will--urged by some pent-up force] Beauty,
beauty!
PROF. That's what I'm, trying to say here. The Orpheus legend
symbolizes to this day the call of Beauty! [He takes up his pen,
while she continues to stare out at the moonlight. Yawning] Dash
it! I get so sleepy; I wish you'd tell them to make the after-dinner
coffee twice as strong.
WIFE. I will.
PROF. How does this strike you? [Conning] "Many Renaissance
pictures, especially those of Botticelli, Francesca and Piero di
Cosimo were inspired by such legends as that of Orpheus, and we owe a
tiny gem--like Raphael 'Apollo and Marsyas' to the same Pagan
inspiration."
WIFE. We owe it more than that--rebellion against the dry-as-dust.
PROF. Quite. I might develop that: "We owe it our revolt against
the academic; or our disgust at 'big business,' and all the grossness
of commercial success. We owe----". [His voice peters out.]
WIFE. It--love.
PROF. [Abstracted] Eh!
WIFE. I said: We owe it love.
PROF. [Rather startled] Possibly. But--er [With a dry smile]
I mustn't say that here--hardly!
WIFE. [To herself and the moonlight] Orpheus with his lute!
PROF. Most people think a lute is a sort of flute. [Yawning
heavily] My dear, if you're not going to sing again, d'you mind
sitting down? I want to concentrate.
WIFE. I'm going out.
PROF. Mind the dew!
WIFE. The Christian virtues and the dew.
PROF. [With a little dry laugh] Not bad! Not bad! The Christian
virtues and the dew. [His hand takes up his pen, his face droops
over his paper, while his wife looks at him with a very strange face]
"How far we can trace the modern resurgence against the Christian
virtues to the symbolic figures of Orpheus, Pan, Apollo, and Bacchus
might be difficult to estimate, but----"
[During those words his WIFE has passed through the window into
the moonlight, and her voice rises, singing as she goes:
"Orpheus with his lute, with his lute made trees . . ."]
PROF. [Suddenly aware of something] She'll get her throat bad.
[He is silent as the voice swells in the distance] Sounds queer at
night-H'm! [He is silent--Yawning. The voice dies away. Suddenly
his head nods; he fights his drowsiness; writes a word or two, nods
again, and in twenty seconds is asleep.]
[The Stage is darkened by a black-out. FRUST's voice is heard
speaking.]
FRUST. What's that girl's name?
VANE. Vanessa Hellgrove.
FRUST. Aha!
[The Stage is lighted up again. Moonlight bright on the
orchard; the room in darkness where the PROFESSOR'S figure is
just visible sleeping in the chair, and screwed a little more
round towards the window. From behind the mossy boulder a
faun-like figure uncurls itself and peeps over with ears
standing up and elbows leaning on the stone, playing a rustic
pipe; and there are seen two rabbits and a fox sitting up and
listening. A shiver of wind passes, blowing petals from the
apple-trees.]
[The FAUN darts his head towards where, from Right, comes slowly
the figure of a Greek youth, holding a lute or lyre which his
fingers strike, lifting out little wandering strains as of wind
whinnying in funnels and odd corners. The FAUN darts down
behind the stone, and the youth stands by the boulder playing
his lute. Slowly while he plays the whitened trunk of an
apple-tree is seen, to dissolve into the body of a girl with
bare arms and feet, her dark hair unbound, and the face of the
PROFESSOR'S WIFE. Hypnotized, she slowly sways towards him,
their eyes fixed on each other, till she is quite close. Her
arms go out to him, cling round his neck and, their lips meet.
But as they meet there comes a gasp and the PROFESSOR with
rumpled hair is seen starting from his chair, his hands thrown
up; and at his horrified "Oh!" the Stage is darkened with a
black-out.]
[The voice of FRUST is heard speaking.]
FRUST. Gee!
The Stage is lighted up again, as in the opening scene. The
PROFESSOR is seen in his chair, with spilt sheets of paper round
him, waking from a dream. He shakes himself, pinches his leg,
stares heavily round into the moonlight, rises.
PROF. Phew! Beastly dream! Boof! H'm! [He moves to the window
and calls.] Blanche! Blanche! [To himself] Made trees-made trees!
[Calling] Blanche!
WIFE's VOICE. Yes.
PROF. Where are you?
WIFE. [Appearing by the stone with her hair down] Here!
PROF. I say--I---I've been asleep--had a dream. Come in. I'll tell
you.
[She comes, and they stand in the window.]
PROF. I dreamed I saw a-faun on that boulder blowing on a pipe. [He
looks nervously at the stone] With two damned little rabbits and a
fox sitting up and listening. And then from out there came our
friend Orpheus playing on his confounded lute, till he actually
turned that tree there into you. And gradually he-he drew you like a
snake till you--er--put your arms round his neck and--er--kissed him.
Boof! I woke up. Most unpleasant. Why! Your hair's down!
WIFE. Yes.
PROF. Why?
WIFE. It was no dream. He was bringing me to life.
PROF. What on earth?
WIFE. Do you suppose I am alive? I'm as dead as Euridice.
PROF. Good heavens, Blanche, what's the matter with you to-night?
WIFE. [Pointing to the litter of papers] Why don't we live, instead
of writing of it? [She points out unto the moonlight] What do we
get out of life? Money, fame, fashion, talk, learning? Yes. And
what good are they? I want to live!
PROF. [Helplessly] My dear, I really don't know what you mean.
WIFE. [Pointing out into the moonlight] Look! Orpheus with his
lute, and nobody can see him. Beauty, beauty, beauty--we let it go.
[With sudden passion] Beauty, love, the spring. They should be in
us, and they're all outside.
PROF. My dear, this is--this is--awful. [He tries to embrace her.]
WIFE. [Avoiding him--an a stilly voice] Oh! Go on with your
writing!
PROF. I'm--I'm upset. I've never known you so--so----
WIFE. Hysterical? Well! It's over. I'll go and sing.
PROF. [Soothingly] There, there! I'm sorry, darling; I really am.
You're kipped--you're kipped. [He gives and she accepts a kiss]
Better?
[He gravitates towards his papers.]
All right, now?
WIFE. [Standing still and looking at him] Quite!
PROF. Well, I'll try and finish this to-night; then, to-morrow we
might have a jaunt. How about a theatre? There's a thing--they say
--called "Chinese Chops," that's been running years.
WIFE. [Softly to herself as he settles down into his chair] Oh!
God!
[While he takes up a sheet of paper and adjusts himself, she
stands at the window staring with all her might at the boulder,
till from behind it the faun's head and shoulders emerge once
more.]
PROF. Very queer the power suggestion has over the mind. Very
queer! There's nothing really in animism, you know, except the
curious shapes rocks, trees and things take in certain lights--effect
they have on our imagination. [He looks up] What's the matter now?
WIFE. [Startled] Nothing! Nothing!
[Her eyes waver to him again, and the FAUN vanishes. She turns
again to look at the boulder; there is nothing there; a little
shiver of wind blows some petals off the trees. She catches one
of them, and turning quickly, goes out through the curtain.]
PROF. [Coming to himself and writing] "The Orpheus legend is the--
er--apotheosis of animism. Can we accept----" [His voice is lost in
the sound of his WIFE'S voice beginning again: "Orpheus with his
lute--with his lute made trees----" It dies in a sob. The PROFESSOR
looks up startled, as the curtain falls].
FRUST. Fine! Fine!
VANE. Take up the curtain. Mr Foreson?
[The curtain goes up.]
FORESON. Sir?
VANE. Everybody on.
[He and FRUST leave their seats and ascend on to the Stage, on
which are collecting the four Players.]
VANE. Give us some light.
FORESON. Electrics! Turn up your floats!
[The footlights go up, and the blue goes out; the light is crude
as at the beginning.]
FRUST. I'd like to meet Miss Hellgrove. [She comes forward eagerly
and timidly. He grasps her hand] Miss Hellgrove, I want to say I
thought that fine--fine. [Her evident emotion and pleasure warm him
so that he increases his grasp and commendation] Fine. It quite got
my soft spots. Emotional. Fine!
MISS H. Oh! Mr Frust; it means so much to me. Thank you!
FRUST. [A little balder in the eye, and losing warmth] Er--fine!
[His eye wanders] Where's Mr Flatway?
VANE. Fleetway.
[FLEETWAY comes up.]
FRUST. Mr Fleetway, I want to say I thought your Orphoos very
remarkable. Fine.
FLEETWAY. Thank you, sir, indeed--so glad you liked it.
FRUST. [A little balder in the eye] There wasn't much to it, but
what there was was fine. Mr Toone.
[FLEETWAY melts out and TOONE is precipitated.]
Mr Toone, I was very pleased with your Professor--quite a
character-study. [TOONE bows and murmurs] Yes, sir! I thought it
fine. [His eye grows bald] Who plays the goat?
MISS HOPK. [Appearing suddenly between the windows] I play the
faun, Mr Frost.
FORESON. [Introducing] Miss Maude 'Opkins.
FRUST. Miss Hopkins, I guess your fawn was fine.
MISS HOPK. Oh! Thank you, Mr Frost. How nice of you to say so. I
do so enjoy playing him.
FRUST. [His eye growing bald] Mr Foreson, I thought the way you
fixed that tree was very cunning; I certainly did. Got a match?
[He takes a match from FORESON, and lighting a very long cigar,
walks up Stage through the French windows followed by FORESON,
and examines the apple-tree.]
[The two Actors depart, but Miss HELLGROVE runs from where she
has been lingering, by the curtain, to VANE, Stage Right.]
MISS H. Oh! Mr Vane--do you think? He seemed quite--Oh! Mr Vane
[ecstatically] If only----
VANE. [Pleased and happy] Yes, yes. All right--you were splendid.
He liked it. He quite----
MISS H. [Clasping her hand] How wonderful Oh, Mr Vane, thank you!
[She clasps his hands; but suddenly, seeing that FRUST is coming
back, fits across into the curtain and vanishes.]
[The Stage, in the crude light, as empty now save for FRUST,
who, in the French windows, Centre, is mumbling his cigar; and
VANE, Stage Right, who is looking up into the wings, Stage
Left.]
VANE. [Calling up] That lighting's just right now, Miller. Got it
marked carefully?
ELECTRICS. Yes, Mr Vane.
VANE. Good. [To FRUST who as coming down] Well, sir? So glad----
FRUST. Mr Vane, we got little Miggs on contract?
VANE. Yes.
FRUST. Well, I liked that little pocket piece fine. But I'm blamed
if I know what it's all about.
VANE. [A little staggered] Why! Of course it's a little allegory.
The tragedy of civilization--all real feeling for Beauty and Nature
kept out, or pent up even in the cultured.
FRUST. Ye-ep. [Meditatively] Little Miggs'd be fine in "Pop goes
the Weasel."
VANE. Yes, he'd be all right, but----
FRUST. Get him on the 'phone, and put it into rehearsal right now.
VANE. What! But this piece--I--I----!
FRUST. Guess we can't take liberties with our public, Mr Vane. They
want pep.
VANE. [Distressed] But it'll break that girl's heart. I--really--I
can't----
FRUST. Give her the part of the 'tweeny in "Pop goes".
VANE. Mr Frust, I--I beg. I've taken a lot of trouble with this
little play. It's good. It's that girl's chance--and I----
FRUST. We-ell! I certainly thought she was fine. Now, you 'phone
up Miggs, and get right along with it. I've only one rule, sir!
Give the Public what it wants; and what the Public wants is punch and
go. They've got no use for Beauty, Allegory, all that high-brow
racket. I know 'em as I know my hand.
[During this speech MISS HELLGROVE is seen listening by the
French window, in distress, unnoticed by either of them.]
VANE. Mr Frost, the Public would take this, I'm sure they would; I'm
convinced of it. You underrate them.
FRUST. Now, see here, Mr Blewitt Vane, is this my theatre? I tell
you, I can't afford luxuries.
VANE. But it--it moved you, sir; I saw it. I was watching.
FRUST. [With unmoved finality] Mr Vane, I judge I'm not the average
man. Before "Louisa Loses" the Public'll want a stimulant. "Pop
goes the Weasel" will suit us fine. So--get right along with it.
I'll go get some lunch.
[As he vanishes into the wings, Left, MISS HELLGROVE covers her
face with her hands. A little sob escaping her attracts VANE'S
attention. He takes a step towards her, but she flies.]
VANE. [Dashing his hands through his hair till it stands up]
Damnation!
[FORESON walks on from the wings, Right.]
FORESON. Sir?
VANE. "Punch and go!" That superstition!
[FORESON walks straight out into the wings, Left.]
VANE. Mr Foreson!
FORESON. [Re-appearing] Sir?
VANE. This is scrapped. [With savagery] Tell 'em to set the first
act of "Louisa Loses," and put some pep into it.
[He goes out through the French windows with the wind still in
his hair.]
FORESON. [In the centre of the Stage] Electrics!
ELECTRICS. Hallo!
FORESON. Where's Charlie?
ELECTRICS. Gone to his dinner.
FORESON. Anybody on the curtain?
A VOICE. Yes, Mr Foreson.
FORESON. Put your curtain down.
[He stands in the centre of the Stage with eyes uplifted as the
curtain descends.]
THE END
FIFTH SERIES
CONTENTS:
A Family Man
Loyalties
Windows
A FAMILY MAN
From the 5th Series Plays
By John Galsworthy
CHARACTERS
JOHN BUILDER................ of the firm of Builder & Builder
JULIA....................... His Wife
ATHENE...................... His elder Daughter
MAUD........................ His younger Daughter
RALPH BUILDER............... His Brother, and Partner
GUY HERRINGHAME............. A Flying Man
ANNIE....................... A Young Person in Blue
CAMILLE..................... Mrs Builder's French Maid
TOPPING..................... Builder's Manservant
THE MAYOR................... Of Breconridge
HARRIS...................... His Secretary
FRANCIS CHANTREY............ J.P.
MOON........................ A Constable
MARTIN...................... A Police Sergeant
A JOURNALIST................ From The Comet
THE FIGURE OF A POACHER
THE VOICES AND FACES OF SMALL BOYS
The action passes in the town of Breconridge, the Midlands.
ACT I.
SCENE I. BUILDER'S Study. After breakfast.
SCENE II. A Studio.
ACT II. BUILDER'S Study. Lunchtime.
ACT III.
SCENE I. THE MAYOR'S Study. 10am the following day.
SCENE II. BUILDER'S Study. The same. Noon.
SCENE III. BUILDER'S Study. The same. Evening.
ACT I
SCENE I
The study of JOHN BUILDER in the provincial town of Breconridge.
A panelled room wherein nothing is ever studied, except perhaps
BUILDER'S face in the mirror over the fireplace. It is, however,
comfortable, and has large leather chairs and a writing table in the
centre, on which is a typewriter, and many papers. At the back is a
large window with French outside shutters, overlooking the street,
for the house is an old one, built in an age when the homes of
doctors, lawyers and so forth were part of a provincial town, and
not yet suburban. There are two or three fine old prints on the
walls, Right and Left; and a fine, old fireplace, Left, with a
fender on which one can sit. A door, Left back, leads into the
dining-room, and a door, Right forward, into the hall.
JOHN BUILDER is sitting in his after-breakfast chair before the fire
with The Times in his hands. He has breakfasted well, and is in
that condition of first-pipe serenity in which the affairs of the.
nation seem almost bearable. He is a tallish, square, personable
man of forty-seven, with a well-coloured, jowly, fullish face,
marked under the eyes, which have very small pupils and a good deal
of light in them. His bearing has force and importance, as of a man
accustomed to rising and ownerships, sure in his opinions, and not
lacking in geniality when things go his way. Essentially a
Midlander. His wife, a woman of forty-one, of ivory tint, with a
thin, trim figure and a face so strangely composed as to be almost
like a mask (essentially from Jersey) is putting a nib into a
pen-holder, and filling an inkpot at the writing-table.
As the curtain rises CAMILLE enters with a rather broken-down
cardboard box containing flowers. She is a young woman with a good
figure, a pale face, the warm brown eyes and complete poise of a
Frenchwoman. She takes the box to MRS BUILDER.
MRS BUILDER. The blue vase, please, Camille.
CAMILLE fetches a vase. MRS BUILDER puts the flowers into the vase.
CAMILLE gathers up the debris; and with a glance at BUILDER goes
out.
BUILDER. Glorious October! I ought to have a damned good day's shooting
with Chantrey tomorrow.
MRS BUILDER. [Arranging the flowers] Aren't you going to the office
this morning?
BUILDER. Well, no, I was going to take a couple of days off. If you
feel at the top of your form, take a rest--then you go on feeling at the
top. [He looks at her, as if calculating] What do you say to looking up
Athene?
MRS BUILDER. [Palpably astonished] Athene? But you said you'd done
with her?
BUILDER. [Smiling] Six weeks ago; but, dash it, one can't have done with
one's own daughter. That's the weakness of an Englishman; he can't keep
up his resentments. In a town like this it doesn't do to have her living
by herself. One of these days it'll get out we've had a row. That
wouldn't do me any good.
MRS BUILDER. I see.
BUILDER. Besides, I miss her. Maud's so self-absorbed. It makes a big
hole in the family, Julia. You've got her address, haven't you?
MRS BUILDER. Yes. [Very still] But do you think it's dignified, John?
BUILDER. [Genially] Oh, hang dignity! I rather pride myself on knowing
when to stand on my dignity and when to sit on it. If she's still crazy
about Art, she can live at home, and go out to study.
MRS BUILDER. Her craze was for liberty.
BUILDER. A few weeks' discomfort soon cures that. She can't live on her
pittance. She'll have found that out by now. Get your things on and
come with me at twelve o'clock.
MRS BUILDER. I think you'll regret it. She'll refuse.
BUILDER. Not if I'm nice to her. A child could play with me to-day.
Shall I tell you a secret, Julia?
MRS BUILDER. It would be pleasant for a change.
BUILDER. The Mayor's coming round at eleven, and I know perfectly well
what he's coming for.
MRS BUILDER. Well?
BUILDER. I'm to be nominated for Mayor next month. Harris tipped me the
wink at the last Council meeting. Not so bad at forty-seven--h'm? I can
make a thundering good Mayor. I can do things for this town that nobody
else can.
MRS BUILDER. Now I understand about Athene.
BUILDER. [Good-humouredly] Well, it's partly that. But [more
seriously] it's more the feeling I get that I'm not doing my duty by her.
Goodness knows whom she may be picking up with! Artists are a loose lot.
And young people in these days are the limit. I quite believe in moving
with the times, but one's either born a Conservative, or one isn't.
So you be ready at twelve, see. By the way, that French maid of yours,
Julia--
MRS BUILDER. What about her?
BUILDER. Is she--er--is she all right? We don't want any trouble with
Topping.
MRS BUILDER. There will be none with--Topping.
[She opens the door Left.]
BUILDER. I don't know; she strikes me as--very French.
MRS BUILDER smiles and passes out.
BUILDER fills his second pipe. He is just taking up the paper again
when the door from the hall is opened, and the manservant TOPPING,
dried, dark, sub-humorous, in a black cut-away, announces:
TOPPING. The Mayor, Sir, and Mr Harris!
THE MAYOR of Breconridge enters, He is clean-shaven, red-faced,
light-eyed, about sixty, shrewd, poll-parroty, naturally jovial,
dressed with the indefinable wrongness of a burgher; he is followed
by his Secretary HARRIS, a man all eyes and cleverness. TOPPING
retires.
BUILDER. [Rising] Hallo, Mayor! What brings you so early? Glad to see
you. Morning, Harris!
MAYOR. Morning, Builder, morning.
HARRIS. Good-morning, Sir.
BUILDER. Sit down-sit down! Have a cigar!
The MAYOR takes a cigar HARRIS a cigarette from his own case.
BUILDER. Well, Mayor, what's gone wrong with the works?
He and HARRIS exchange a look.
MAYOR. [With his first puff] After you left the Council the other day,
Builder, we came to a decision.
BUILDER. Deuce you did! Shall I agree with it?
MAYOR. We shall see. We want to nominate you for Mayor. You willin' to
stand?
BUILDER. [Stolid] That requires consideration.
MAYOR. The only alternative is Chantrey; but he's a light weight, and
rather too much County. What's your objection?
BUILDER. It's a bit unexpected, Mayor. [Looks at HARRIS] Am I the
right man? Following you, you know. I'm shooting with Chantrey
to-morrow. What does he feel about it?
MAYOR. What do you say, 'Arris?
HARRIS. Mr Chantrey's a public school and University man, Sir; he's not
what I call ambitious.
BUILDER. Nor am I, Harris.
HARRIS. No, sir; of course you've a high sense of duty. Mr Chantrey's
rather dilettante.
MAYOR. We want a solid man.
BUILDER. I'm very busy, you know, Mayor.
MAYOR. But you've got all the qualifications--big business, family man,
live in the town, church-goer, experience on the Council and the Bench.
Better say "yes," Builder.
BUILDER. It's a lot of extra work. I don't take things up lightly.
MAYOR. Dangerous times, these. Authority questioned all over the place.
We want a man that feels his responsibilities, and we think we've got him
in you.
BUILDER. Very good of you, Mayor. I don't know, I'm sure. I must think
of the good of the town.
HARRIS. I shouldn't worry about that, sir.
MAYOR. The name John Builder carries weight. You're looked up to as a
man who can manage his own affairs. Madam and the young ladies well?
BUILDER. First-rate.
MAYOR. [Rises] That's right. Well, if you'd like to talk it over with
Chantrey to-morrow. With all this extremism, we want a man of principle
and common sense.
HARRIS. We want a man that'll grasp the nettle, sir--and that's you.
BUILDER. Hm! I've got a temper, you know.
MAYOR. [Chuckling] We do--we do! You'll say "yes," I see. No false
modesty! Come along, 'Arris, we must go.
BUILDER. Well, Mayor, I'll think it over, and let you have an answer.
You know my faults, and you know my qualities, such as they are. I'm
just a plain Englishman.
MAYOR. We don't want anything better than that. I always say the great
point about an Englishman is that he's got bottom; you may knock him off
his pins, but you find him on 'em again before you can say "Jack
Robinson." He may have his moments of aberration, but he's a sticker.
Morning, Builder, morning! Hope you'll say "yes."
He shakes hands and goes out, followed by HARRIS.
When the door is dosed BUILDER stands a moment quite still with a
gratified smile on his face; then turns and scrutinises himself in
the glass over the hearth. While he is doing so the door from the
dining-room is opened quietly and CAMILLE comes in. BUILDER,
suddenly seeing her reflected in the mirror, turns.
BUILDER. What is it, Camille?
CAMILLE. Madame send me for a letter she say you have, Monsieur, from
the dyer and cleaner, with a bill.
BUILDER. [Feeling in his pockets] Yes--no. It's on the table.
CAMILLE goes to the writing-table and looks. That blue thing.
CAMILLE. [Taking it up] Non, Monsieur, this is from the gas.
BUILDER. Oh! Ah!
[He moves up to the table and turns over papers. CAMILLE stands
motionless close by with her eyes fixed on him.]
Here it is!
[He looks up, sees her looking at him, drops his own gaze, and hands
her the letter. Their hands touch. Putting his hands in his
pockets]
What made you come to England?
CAMILLE. [Demure] It is better pay, Monsieur, and [With a smile] the
English are so amiable.
BUILDER. Deuce they are! They haven't got that reputation.
CAMILLE. Oh! I admire Englishmen. They are so strong and kind.
BUILDER. [Bluffly flattered] H'm! We've no manners.
CAMILLE. The Frenchman is more polite, but not in the 'eart.
BUILDER. Yes. I suppose we're pretty sound at heart.
CAMILLE. And the Englishman have his life in the family--the Frenchman
have his life outside.
BUILDER. [With discomfort] H'm!
CAMILLE. [With a look] Too mooch in the family--like a rabbit in a
'utch.
BUILDER. Oh! So that's your view of us! [His eyes rest on her,
attracted but resentful].
CAMILLE. Pardon, Monsieur, my tongue run away with me.
BUILDER. [Half conscious of being led on] Are you from Paris?
CAMILLE. [Clasping her hands] Yes. What a town for pleasure--Paris!
BUILDER. I suppose so. Loose place, Paris.
CAMILLE. Loose? What is that, Monsieur?
BUILDER. The opposite of strict.
CAMILLE. Strict! Oh! certainly we like life, we other French. It is
not like England. I take this to Madame, Monsieur. [She turns as if to
go] Excuse me.
BUILDER. I thought you Frenchwomen all married young.
CAMILLE. I 'ave been married; my 'usband did die--en Afrique.
BUILDER. You wear no ring.
CAMILLE. [Smiling] I prefare to be mademoiselle, Monsieur.
BUILDER. [Dubiously] Well, it's all the same to us. [He takes a letter
up from the table] You might take this to Mrs Builder too. [Again their
fingers touch, and there is a suspicion of encounter between their eyes.]
CAMILLE goes out.
BUILDER. [Turning to his chair] Don't know about that woman--she's a
tantalizer.
He compresses his lips, and is settling back into his chair, when
the door from the hall is opened and his daughter MAUD comes in; a
pretty girl, rather pale, with fine eyes. Though her face has a
determined cast her manner at this moment is by no means decisive.
She has a letter in her hand, and advances rather as if she were
stalking her father, who, after a "Hallo, Maud!" has begun to read
his paper.
MAUD. [Getting as far as the table] Father.
BUILDER. [Not lowering the paper] Well? I know that tone. What do you
want--money?
MAUD. I always want money, of course; but--but--
BUILDER. [Pulling out a note-abstractedly] Here's five pounds for you.
MAUD, advancing, takes it, then seems to find what she has come for
more on her chest than ever.
BUILDER. [Unconscious] Will you take a letter for me?
MAUD sits down Left of table and prepares to take down the letter.
[Dictating] "Dear Mr Mayor,--Referring to your call this morning, I have
--er--given the matter very careful consideration, and though somewhat
reluctant--"
MAUD. Are you really reluctant, father?
BUILDER. Go on--"To assume greater responsibilities, I feel it my duty
to come forward in accordance with your wish. The--er--honour is one of
which I hardly feel myself worthy, but you may rest assured--"
MAUD. Worthy. But you do, you know.
BUILDER. Look here! Are you trying to get a rise out of me?--because
you won't succeed this morning.
MAUD. I thought you were trying to get one out of me.
BUILDER. Well, how would you express it?
MAUD. "I know I'm the best man for the place, and so do you--"
BUILDER. The disrespect of you young people is something extraordinary.
And that reminds me where do you go every evening now after tea?
MAUD. I--I don't know.
BUILDER. Come now, that won't do--you're never in the house from six to
seven.
MAUD. Well! It has to do with my education.
BUILDER. Why, you finished that two years ago!
MAUD. Well, call it a hobby, if you like, then, father.
She takes up the letter she brought in and seems on the point of
broaching it.
BUILDER. Hobby? Well, what is it?
MAUD. I don't want to irritate you, father.
BUILDER. You can't irritate me more than by having secrets. See what
that led to in your sister's case. And, by the way, I'm going to put an
end to that this morning. You'll be glad to have her back, won't you?
MAUD. [Startled] What!
BUILDER. Your mother and I are going round to Athene at twelve o'clock.
I shall make it up with her. She must come back here.
MAUD. [Aghast, but hiding it] Oh! It's--it's no good, father. She
won't.
BUILDER. We shall see that. I've quite got over my tantrum, and I
expect she has.
MAUD. [Earnestly] Father! I do really assure you she won't; it's only
wasting your time, and making you eat humble pie.
BUILDER. Well, I can eat a good deal this morning. It's all nonsense!
A family's a family.
MAUD. [More and more disturbed, but hiding it] Father, if I were you,
I wouldn't-really! It's not-dignified.
BUILDER. You can leave me to judge of that. It's not dignified for the
Mayor of this town to have an unmarried daughter as young as Athene
living by herself away from home. This idea that she's on a visit won't
wash any longer. Now finish that letter--"worthy, but you may rest
assured that I shall do my best to sustain the--er--dignity of the
office." [MAUD types desperately.] Got that? "And--er--preserve the
tradition so worthily--" No-- "so staunchly"--er--er--
MAUD. Upheld.
BUILDER. Ah! "--upheld by yourself.--Faithfully yours."
MAUD. [Finishing] Father, you thought Athene went off in a huff. It
wasn't that a bit. She always meant to go. She just got you into a rage
to make it easier. She hated living at home.
BUILDER. Nonsense! Why on earth should she?
MAUD. Well, she did! And so do-- [Checking herself] And so you see
it'll only make you ridiculous to go.
BUILDER. [Rises] Now what's behind this, Maud?
MAUD. Behind--Oh! nothing!
BUILDER. The fact is, you girls have been spoiled, and you enjoy
twisting my tail; but you can't make me roar this morning. I'm too
pleased with things. You'll see, it'll be all right with Athene.
MAUD. [Very suddenly] Father!
BUILDER. [Grimly humorous] Well! Get it off your chest. What's that
letter about?
MAUD. [Failing again and crumpling the letter behind her back]
Oh! nothing.
BUILDER. Everything's nothing this morning. Do you know what sort of
people Athene associates with now--I suppose you see her?
MAUD. Sometimes.
BUILDER. Well?
MAUD. Nobody much. There isn't anybody here to associate with. It's
all hopelessly behind the times.
BUILDER. Oh! you think so! That's the inflammatory fiction you pick up.
I tell you what, young woman--the sooner you and your sister get rid of
your silly notions about not living at home, and making your own way, the
sooner you'll both get married and make it. Men don't like the new
spirit in women--they may say they do, but they don't.
MAUD. You don't, father, I know.
BUILDER. Well, I'm very ordinary. If you keep your eyes open, you'll
soon see that.
MAUD. Men don't like freedom for anybody but themselves.
BUILDER. That's not the way to put it. [Tapping out his pipe] Women in
your class have never had to face realities.
MAUD. No, but we want to.
BUILDER. [Good-humouredly] Well, I'll bet you what you like, Athene's
dose of reality will have cured her.
MAUD. And I'll bet you--No, I won't!
BUILDER. You'd better not. Athene will come home, and only too glad to
do it. Ring for Topping and order the car at twelve.
As he opens the door to pass out, MAUD starts forward, but checks
herself.
MAUD. [Looking at her watch] Half-past eleven! Good heavens!
She goes to the bell and rings. Then goes back to the table, and
writes an address on a bit of paper.
TOPPING enters Right.
TOPPING. Did you ring, Miss?
MAUD. [With the paper] Yes. Look here, Topping! Can you manage--
on your bicycle--now at once? I want to send a message to Miss Athene
--awfully important. It's just this: "Look out! Father is coming."
[Holding out the paper] Here's her address. You must get there and away
again by twelve. Father and mother want the car then to go there. Order
it before you go. It won't take you twenty minutes on your bicycle.
It's down by the river near the ferry. But you mustn't be seen by them
either going or coming.
TOPPING. If I should fall into their hands, Miss, shall I eat the
despatch?
MAUD. Rather! You're a brick, Topping. Hurry up!
TOPPING. Nothing more precise, Miss?
MAUD. M--m--No.
TOPPING. Very good, Miss Maud. [Conning the address] "Briary Studio,
River Road. Look out! Father is coming!" I'll go out the back way.
Any answer?
MAUD. No.
TOPPING nods his head and goes out.
MAUD. [To herself] Well, it's all I can do.
She stands, considering, as the CURTAIN falls.
SCENE II
The Studio, to which are attached living rooms, might be rented at
eighty pounds a year--some painting and gear indeed, but an air of
life rather than of work. Things strewn about. Bare walls, a
sloping skylight, no windows; no fireplace visible; a bedroom door,
stage Right; a kitchen door, stage Left. A door, Centre back, into
the street. The door knocker is going.
From the kitchen door, Left, comes the very young person, ANNIE, in
blotting-paper blue linen, with a white Dutch cap. She is pretty, her
cheeks rosy, and her forehead puckered. She opens the street door.
Standing outside is TOPPING. He steps in a pace or two.
TOPPING. Miss Builder live here?
ANNIE. Oh! no, sir; Mrs Herringhame.
TOPPING. Mrs Herringhame? Oh! young lady with dark hair and large
expressive eyes?
ANNIE. Oh! yes, sir.
TOPPING. With an "A. B." on her linen? [Moves to table].
ANNIE. Yes, sir.
TOPPING. And "Athene Builder" on her drawings?
ANNIE. [Looking at one] Yes, sir.
TOPPING. Let's see. [He examines the drawing] Mrs Herringhame, you
said?
ANNIE. Oh! yes, Sir.
TOPPING. Wot oh!
ANNIE. Did you want anything, sir?
TOPPING. Drop the "sir," my dear; I'm the Builders' man.
Mr Herringhame in?
ANNIE. Oh! no, Sir.
TOPPING. Take a message. I can't wait. From Miss Maud Builder. "Look
out! Father is coming." Now, whichever of 'em comes in first--that's
the message, and don't you forget it.
ANNIE. Oh! no, Sir.
TOPPING. So they're married?
ANNIE. Oh! I don't know, sir.
TOPPING. I see. Well, it ain't known to Builder, J.P., either. That's
why there's a message. See?
ANNIE. Oh! yes, Sir.
TOPPING. Keep your head. I must hop it. From Miss Maud Builder.
"Look out! Father is coming."
He nods, turns and goes, pulling the door to behind him. ANNIE
stands "baff" for a moment.
ANNIE. Ah!
She goes across to the bedroom on the Right, and soon returns with a
suit of pyjamas, a toothbrush, a pair of slippers and a case of
razors, which she puts on the table, and disappears into the
kitchen. She reappears with a bread pan, which she deposits in the
centre of the room; then crosses again to the bedroom, and once more
reappears with a clothes brush, two hair brushes, and a Norfolk
jacket. As she stuffs all these into the bread pan and bears it
back into the kitchen, there is the sound of a car driving up and
stopping. ANNIE reappears at the kitchen door just as the knocker
sounds.
ANNIE. Vexin' and provokin'! [Knocker again. She opens the door] Oh!
MR and MRS BUILDER enter.
BUILDER. Mr and Mrs Builder. My daughter in?
ANNIE. [Confounded] Oh! Sir, no, sir.
BUILDER. My good girl, not "Oh! Sir, no, sir." Simply: No, Sir. See?
ANNIE. Oh! Sir, yes, Sir.
BUILDER. Where is she?
ANNIE. Oh! Sir, I don't know, Sir.
BUILDER. [Fixing her as though he suspected her of banter] Will she be
back soon?
ANNIE. No, Sir.
BUILDER. How do you know?
ANNIE. I d--don't, sir.
BUILDER. They why do you say so? [About to mutter "She's an idiot!" he
looks at her blushing face and panting figure, pats her on the shoulder
and says] Never mind; don't be nervous.
ANNIE. Oh! yes, sir. Is that all, please, sir?
MRS BUILDER. [With a side look at her husband and a faint smile] Yes;
you can go.
ANNIE. Thank you, ma'am.
She turns and hurries out into the kitchen, Left. BUILDER gazes
after her, and MRS BUILDER gazes at BUILDER with her faint smile.
BUILDER. [After the girl is gone] Quaint and Dutch--pretty little
figure! [Staring round] H'm! Extraordinary girls are! Fancy Athene
preferring this to home. What?
MRS BUILDER. I didn't say anything.
BUILDER. [Placing a chair for his wife, and sitting down himself] Well,
we must wait, I suppose. Confound that Nixon legacy! If Athene hadn't
had that potty little legacy left her, she couldn't have done this.
Well, I daresay it's all spent by now. I made a mistake to lose my
temper with her.
MRS BUILDER. Isn't it always a mistake to lose one's temper?
BUILDER. That's very nice and placid; sort of thing you women who live
sheltered lives can say. I often wonder if you women realise the strain
on a business man.
MRS BUILDER. [In her softly ironical voice] It seems a shame to add the
strain of family life.
BUILDER. You've always been so passive. When I want a thing, I've got
to have it.
MRS BUILDER. I've noticed that.
BUILDER. [With a short laugh] Odd if you hadn't, in twenty-three years.
[Touching a canvas standing against the chair with his toe] Art! Just a
pretext. We shall be having Maud wanting to cut loose next. She's very
restive. Still, I oughtn't to have had that scene with Athene. I ought
to have put quiet pressure.
MRS BUILDER Smiles.
BUILDER. What are you smiling at?
MRS BUILDER shrugs her shoulders.
Look at this--Cigarettes! [He examines the brand on the box] Strong,
very--and not good! [He opens the door] Kitchen! [He shuts it,
crosses, and opens the door, Right] Bedroom!
MRS BUILDER. [To his disappearing form] Do you think you ought, John?
He has disappeared, and she ends with an expressive movement of her
hands, a long sigh, and a closing of her eyes. BUILDER'S peremptory
voice is heard: "Julia!"
What now?
She follows into the bedroom. The maid ANNIE puts her head out of
the kitchen door; she comes out a step as if to fly; then, at
BUILDER'S voice, shrinks back into the kitchen.
BUILDER, reappearing with a razor strop in one hand and a shaving-brush
in the other, is followed by MRS BUILDER.
BUILDER. Explain these! My God! Where's that girl?
MRS BUILDER. John! Don't! [Getting between him and the kitchen door]
It's not dignified.
BUILDER. I don't care a damn.
MRS BUILDER. John, you mustn't. Athene has the tiny beginning of a
moustache, you know.
BUILDER. What! I shall stay and clear this up if I have to wait a week.
Men who let their daughters--! This age is the limit. [He makes a
vicious movement with the strop, as though laying it across someone's
back.]
MRS BUILDER. She would never stand that. Even wives object, nowadays.
BUILDER. [Grimly] The war's upset everything. Women are utterly out
of hand. Why the deuce doesn't she come?
MRS BUILDER. Suppose you leave me here to see her.
BUILDER. [Ominously] This is my job.
MRS BUILDER. I think it's more mine.
BUILDER. Don't stand there opposing everything I say! I'll go and have
another look--[He is going towards the bedroom when the sound of a
latchkey in the outer door arrests him. He puts the strop and brush
behind his back, and adds in a low voice] Here she is!
MRS BUILDER has approached him, and they have both turned towards
the opening door. GUY HERRINGHAME comes in. They are a little out
of his line of sight, and he has shut the door before he sees them.
When he does, his mouth falls open, and his hand on to the knob of
the door. He is a comely young man in Harris tweeds. Moreover, he
is smoking. He would speak if he could, but his surprise is too
excessive. BUILDER. Well, sir?
GUY. [Recovering a little] I was about to say the same to you, sir.
BUILDER. [Very red from repression] These rooms are not yours, are
they?
GUY. Nor yours, sir?
BUILDER. May I ask if you know whose they are?
GUY. My sister's.
BUILDER. Your--you--!
MRS BUILDER. John!
BUILDER. Will you kindly tell me why your sister signs her drawings by
the name of my daughter, Athene Builder--and has a photograph of my wife
hanging there?
The YOUNG MAN looks at MRS BUILDER and winces, but recovers himself.
GUY. [Boldly] As a matter of fact this is my sister's studio; she's in
France--and has a friend staying here.
BUILDER. Oh! And you have a key?
GUY. My sister's.
BUILDER. Does your sister shave?
GUY. I--I don't think so.
BUILDER. No. Then perhaps you'll tell me what these mean? [He takes
out the strop and shaving stick].
GUY. Oh! Ah! Those things?
BUILDER. Yes. Now then?
GUY. [Addressing MRS BUILDER] Need we go into this in your presence,
ma'am? It seems rather delicate.
BUILDER. What explanation have you got?
GUY. Well, you see--
BUILDER. No lies; out with it!
GUY. [With decision] I prefer to say nothing.
BUILDER. What's your name?
GUY. Guy Herringhame.
BUILDER. Do you live here?
Guy makes no sign.
MRS BUILDER. [To Guy] I think you had better go.
BUILDER. Julia, will you leave me to manage this?
MRS BUILDER. [To Guy] When do you expect my daughter in?
GUY. Now--directly.
MRS BUILDER. [Quietly] Are you married to her?
GUY. Yes. That is--no--o; not altogether, I mean.
BUILDER. What's that? Say that again!
GUY. [Folding his arms] I'm not going to say another word.
BUILDER. I am.
MRS BUILDER. John--please!
BUILDER. Don't put your oar in! I've had wonderful patience so far.
[He puts his boot through a drawing] Art! This is what comes of it! Are
you an artist?
GUY. No; a flying man. The truth is--
BUILDER. I don't want to hear you speak the truth. I'll wait for my
daughter.
GUY. If you do, I hope you'll be so very good as to be gentle. If you
get angry I might too, and that would be awfully ugly.
BUILDER. Well, I'm damned!
GUY. I quite understand that, sir. But, as a man of the world, I hope
you'll take a pull before she comes, if you mean to stay.
BUILDER. If we mean to stay! That's good!
GUY. Will you have a cigarette?
BUILDER. I--I can't express--
GUY. [Soothingly] Don't try, sir. [He jerks up his chin, listening] I
think that's her. [Goes to the door] Yes. Now, please! [He opens the
door] Your father and mother, Athene.
ATHENE enters. She is flushed and graceful. Twenty-two, with a short
upper lip, a straight nose, dark hair, and glowing eyes. She wears
bright colours, and has a slow, musical voice, with a slight lisp.
ATHENE. Oh! How are you, mother dear? This is rather a surprise.
Father always keeps his word, so I certainly didn't expect him. [She
looks steadfastly at BUILDER, but does not approach].
BUILDER. [Controlling himself with an effort] Now, Athene, what's this?
ATHENE. What's what?
BUILDER. [The strop held out] Are you married to this--this--?
ATHENE. [Quietly] To all intents and purposes.
BUILDER. In law?
ATHENE. No.
BUILDER. My God! You--you--!
ATHENE. Father, don't call names, please.
BUILDER. Why aren't you married to him?
ATHENE. Do you want a lot of reasons, or the real one?
BUILDER. This is maddening! [Goes up stage].
ATHENE. Mother dear, will you go into the other room with Guy? [She
points to the door Right].
BUILDER. Why?
ATHENE. Because I would rather she didn't hear the reason.
GUY. [To ATHENE, sotto voce] He's not safe.
ATHENE. Oh! yes; go on.
Guy follows MRS BUILDER, and after hesitation at the door they go
out into the bedroom.
BUILDER. Now then!
ATHENE. Well, father, if you want to know the real reason, it's--you.
BUILDER. What on earth do you mean?
ATHENE. Guy wants to marry me. In fact, we--But I had such a stunner of
marriage from watching you at home, that I--
BUILDER. Don't be impudent! My patience is at breaking-point, I warn
you.
ATHENE. I'm perfectly serious, Father. I tell you, we meant to marry,
but so far I haven't been able to bring myself to it. You never noticed
how we children have watched you.
BUILDER. Me?
ATHENE. Yes. You and mother, and other things; all sorts of things--
BUILDER. [Taking out a handkerchief and wiping his brow] I really think
you're mad.
ATHENE. I'm sure you must, dear.
BUILDER. Don't "dear" me! What have you noticed? D'you mean I'm not a
good husband and father?
ATHENE. Look at mother. I suppose you can't, now; you're too used to
her.
BUILDER. Of course I'm used to her. What else is marrying for?
ATHENE. That; and the production of such as me. And it isn't good
enough, father. You shouldn't have set us such a perfect example.
BUILDER. You're talking the most arrant nonsense I ever heard. [He
lifts his hands] I've a good mind to shake it out of you.
ATHENE. Shall I call Guy?
He drops his hands.
Confess that being a good husband and father has tried you terribly. It
has us, you know.
BUILDER. [Taking refuge in sarcasm] When you've quite done being funny,
perhaps you'll tell me why you've behaved like a common street flapper.
ATHENE. [Simply] I couldn't bear to think of Guy as a family man.
That's all--absolutely. It's not his fault; he's been awfully anxious to
be one.
BUILDER. You've disgraced us, then; that's what it comes to.
ATHENE. I don't want to be unkind, but you've brought it on yourself.
BUILDER. [Genuinely distracted] I can't even get a glimmer of what you
mean. I've never been anything but firm. Impatient, perhaps. I'm not
an angel; no ordinary healthy man is. I've never grudged you girls any
comfort, or pleasure.
ATHENE. Except wills of our own.
BUILDER. What do you want with wills of your own till you're married?
ATHENE. You forget mother!
BUILDER. What about her?
ATHENE. She's very married. Has she a will of her own?
BUILDER. [Sullenly] She's learnt to know when I'm in the right.
ATHENE. I don't ever mean to learn to know when Guy's in the right.
Mother's forty-one, and twenty-three years of that she's been your wife.
It's a long time, father. Don't you ever look at her face?
BUILDER. [Troubled in a remote way] Rubbish!
ATHENE. I didn't want my face to get like that.
BUILDER. With such views about marriage, what business had you to go
near a man? Come, now!
ATHENE. Because I fell in love.
BUILDER. Love leads to marriage--and to nothing else, but the streets.
What an example to your sister!
ATHENE. You don't know Maud any more than you knew me. She's got a will
of her own too, I can tell you.
BUILDER. Now, look here, Athene. It's always been my way to face
accomplished facts. What's done can't be undone; but it can be remedied.
You must marry this young----at once, before it gets out. He's behaved
like a ruffian: but, by your own confession, you've behaved worse.
You've been bitten by this modern disease, this--this, utter lack of
common decency. There's an eternal order in certain things, and marriage
is one of them; in fact, it's the chief. Come, now. Give me a promise,
and I'll try my utmost to forget the whole thing.
ATHENE. When we quarrelled, father, you said you didn't care what became
of me.
BUILDER. I was angry.
ATHENE. So you are now.
BUILDER. Come, Athene, don't be childish! Promise me!
ATHENE. [With a little shudder] No! We were on the edge of it. But now
I've seen you again--Poor mother!
BUILDER. [Very angry] This is simply blasphemous. What do you mean by
harping on your mother? If you think that--that--she doesn't--that she
isn't--
ATHENE. Now, father!
BUILDER. I'm damned if I'll sit down under this injustice. Your mother
is--is pretty irritating, I can tell you. She--she--Everything
suppressed. And--and no--blood in her!
ATHENE. I knew it!
BUILDER. [Aware that he has confirmed some thought in her that he had no
intention of confirming] What's that?
ATHENE. Don't you ever look at your own face, father? When you shave,
for instance.
BUILDER. Of course I do.
ATHENE. It isn't satisfied, is it?
BUILDER. I don't know what on earth you mean.
ATHENE. You can't help it, but you'd be ever so much happier if you were
a Mohammedan, and two or three, instead of one, had--had learned to know
when you were in the right.
BUILDER. 'Pon my soul! This is outrageous!
ATHENE. Truth often is.
BUILDER. Will you be quiet?
ATHENE. I don't ever want to feel sorry for Guy in that way.
BUILDER. I think you're the most immodest--I'm ashamed that you're my
daughter. If your another had ever carried on as you are now--
ATHENE. Would you have been firm with her?
BUILDER. [Really sick at heart at this unwonted mockery which meets him
at every turn] Be quiet, you----!
ATHENE. Has mother never turned?
BUILDER. You're an unnatural girl! Go your own way to hell!
ATHENE. I am not coming back home, father.
BUILDER. [Wrenching open the door, Right] Julia! Come! We can't stay
here.
MRS BUILDER comes forth, followed by GUY.
As for you, sir, if you start by allowing a woman to impose her crazy
ideas about marriage on you, all I can say is--I despise you. [He
crosses to the outer door, followed by his wife. To ATHENE] I've done
with you!
He goes out.
MRS BUILDER, who has so far seemed to accompany him, shuts the door
quickly and remains in the studio. She stands there with that faint
smile on her face, looking at the two young people.
ATHENE. Awfully sorry, mother; but don't you see what a stunner father's
given me?
MRS BUILDER. My dear, all men are not alike.
GUY. I've always told her that, ma'am.
ATHENE. [Softly] Oh! mother, I'm so sorry for you.
The handle of the door is rattled, a fist is beaten on it.
[She stamps, and covers her ears] Disgusting!
GUY. Shall I--?
MRS BUILDER. [Shaking her head] I'm going in a moment. [To ATHENE] You
owe it to me, Athene.
ATHENE. Oh! if somebody would give him a lesson!
BUILDER's voice: "Julia!"
Have you ever tried, mother?
MRS BUILDER looks at the YOUNG MAN, who turns away out of hearing.
MRS BUILDER. Athene, you're mistaken. I've always stood up to him in my
own way.
ATHENE. Oh! but, mother--listen!
The beating and rattling have recommenced, and the voice: "Are you
coming?"
[Passionately] And that's family life! Father was all right before he
married, I expect. And now it's like this. How you survive--!
MRS BUILDER. He's only in a passion, my dear.
ATHENE. It's wicked.
MRS BUILDER. It doesn't work otherwise, Athene.
A single loud bang on the door.
ATHENE. If he beats on that door again, I shall scream.
MRS BUILDER smiles, shakes her head, and turns to the door.
MRS BUILDER. Now, my dear, you're going to be sensible, to please me.
It's really best. If I say so, it must be. It's all comedy, Athene.
ATHENE. Tragedy!
GUY. [Turning to them] Look here! Shall I shift him?
MRS BUILDER shakes her head and opens the door. BUILDER stands
there, a furious figure.
BUILDER. Will you come, and leave that baggage and her cad?
MRS BUILDER steps quickly out and the door is closed. Guy makes an angry
movement towards it.
ATHENE. Guy!
GUY. [Turning to her] That puts the top hat on. So persuasive! [He
takes out of his pocket a wedding ring, and a marriage licence] Well!
What's to be done with these pretty things, now?
ATHENE. Burn them!
GUY. [Slowly] Not quite. You can't imagine I should ever be like that,
Athene?
ATHENE. Marriage does wonders.
GUY. Thanks.
ATHENE. Oh! Guy, don't be horrid. I feel awfully bad.
GUY. Well, what do you think I feel? "Cad!"
They turn to see ANNIE in hat and coat, with a suit-case in her
hand, coming from the door Left.
ANNIE. Oh! ma'am, please, Miss, I want to go home.
GUY. [Exasperated!] She wants to go home--she wants to go home!
ATHENE. Guy! All right, Annie.
ANNIE. Oh! thank you, Miss. [She moves across in front of them].
ATHENE. [Suddenly] Annie!
ANNIE stops and turns to her.
What are you afraid of?
ANNIE. [With comparative boldness] I--I might catch it, Miss.
ATHENE. From your people?
ANNIE. Oh! no, Miss; from you. You see, I've got a young man that wants
to marry me. And if I don't let him, I might get into trouble meself.
ATHENE. What sort of father and mother have you got, Annie?
ANNIE. I never thought, Miss. And of course I don't want to begin.
ATHENE. D'you mean you've never noticed how they treat each other?
ANNIE. I don't think they do, Miss.
ATHENE. Exactly.
ANNIE. They haven't time. Father's an engine driver.
GUY. And what's your young man, Annie?
ANNIE. [Embarrassed] Somethin' like you, sir. But very respectable.
ATHENE. And suppose you marry him, and he treats you like a piece of
furniture?
ANNIE. I--I could treat him the same, Miss.
ATHENE. Don't you believe that, Annie!
ANNIE. He's very mild.
ATHENE. That's because he wants you. You wait till he doesn't.
ANNIE looks at GUY.
GUY. Don't you believe her, Annie; if he's decent--
ANNIE. Oh! yes, sir.
ATHENE. [Suppressing a smile] Of course--but the point is, Annie, that
marriage makes all the difference.
ANNIE. Yes, Miss; that's what I thought.
ATHENE. You don't see. What I mean is that when once he's sure of you,
he may change completely.
ANNIE. [Slowly, looking at her thumb] Oh! I don't--think--he'll hammer
me, Miss. Of course, I know you can't tell till you've found out.
ATHENE. Well, I've no right to influence you.
ANNIE. Oh! no, Miss; that's what I've been thinking.
-GUY. You're quite right, Annie=-this is no place for you.
ANNIE. You see, we can't be married; sir, till he gets his rise. So
it'll be a continual temptation to me.
ATHENE. Well, all right, Annie. I hope you'll never regret it.
ANNIE. Oh! no, Miss.
GUY. I say, Annie, don't go away thinking evil of us; we didn't realise
you knew we weren't married.
ATHENE. We certainly did not.
ANNIE. Oh! I didn't think it right to take notice.
GUY. We beg your pardon.
ANNIE. Oh! no, sir. Only, seein' Mr and Mrs Builder so upset, brought
it 'ome like. And father can be 'andy with a strap.
ATHENE. There you are! Force majeure!
ANNIE. Oh! yes, Miss.
ATHENE. Well, good-bye, Annie. What are you going to say to your
people?
ANNIE. Oh! I shan't say I've been livin' in a family that wasn't a
family, Miss. It wouldn't do no good.
ATHENE. Well, here are your wages.
ANNIE. Oh! I'm puttin' you out, Miss. [She takes the money].
ATHENE. Nonsense, Annie. And here's your fare home.
ANNIE. Oh! thank you, Miss. I'm very sorry. Of course if you was to
change your mind--[She stops, embarrassed].
ATHENE. I don't think--
GUY. [Abruptly] Good-bye, Annie. Here's five bob for the movies.
ANNIE. Oh! good-bye, sir, and thank you. I was goin' there now with my
young man. He's just round the corner.
GUY. Be very careful of him.
ANNIE. Oh! yes, sir, I will. Good-bye, sir. Goodbye, Miss.
She goes.
GUY. So her father has a firm hand too. But it takes her back to the
nest. How's that, Athene?
ATHENE. [Playing with a leathern button on his coat] If you'd watched
it ever since you could watch anything, seen it kill out all--It's having
power that does it. I know Father's got awfully good points.
GUY. Well, they don't stick out.
ATHENE. He works fearfully hard; he's upright, and plucky. He's not
stingy. But he's smothered his animal nature-and that's done it. I
don't want to see you smother anything, Guy.
GUY. [Gloomily] I suppose one never knows what one's got under the lid.
If he hadn't come here to-day--[He spins the wedding ring] He certainly
gives one pause. Used he to whack you?
ATHENE. Yes.
GUY. Brute!
ATHENE. With the best intentions. You see, he's a Town Councillor, and
a magistrate. I suppose they have to be "firm." Maud and I sneaked in
once to listen to him. There was a woman who came for protection from
her husband. If he'd known we were there, he'd have had a fit.
GUY. Did he give her the protection?
ATHENE. Yes; he gave her back to the husband. Wasn't it--English?
GUY. [With a grunt] Hang it! We're not all like that.
ATHENE. [Twisting his button] I think it's really a sense of property
so deep that they don't know they've got it. Father can talk about
freedom like a--politician.
GUY. [Fitting the wedding ring on her finger] Well! Let's see how it
looks, anyway.
ATHENE. Don't play with fire, Guy.
GUY. There's something in atavism, darling; there really is. I like it
--I do.
A knock on the door.
ATHENE. That sounds like Annie again. Just see.
GUY. [Opening the door] It is. Come in, Annie. What's wrong now?
ANNIE. [Entering in confusion] Oh! sir, please, sir--I've told my
young man.
ATHENE. Well, what does he say?
ANNIE. 'E was 'orrified, Miss.
GUY. The deuce he was! At our conduct?
ANNIE. Oh! no, sir--at mine.
ATHENE. But you did your best; you left us.
ANNIE. Oh! yes, Miss; that's why 'e's horrified.
GUY. Good for your young man.
ANNIE. [Flattered] Yes, sir. 'E said I 'ad no strength of mind.
ATHENE. So you want to come back?
ANNIE. Oh! yes, Miss.
ATHENE. All right.
GUY. But what about catching it?
ANNIE. Oh, sir, 'e said there was nothing like Epsom salts.
GUY. He's a wag, your young man.
ANNIE. He was in the Army, sir.
GUY. You said he was respectable.
ANNIE. Oh! yes, sir; but not so respectable as that.
ATHENE. Well, Annie, get your things off, and lay lunch.
ANNIE. Oh! yes, Miss.
She makes a little curtsey and passes through into the kitchen.
GUY. Strength of mind! Have a little, Athene won't you? [He holds out
the marriage licence before her].
ATHENE. I don't know--I don't know! If--it turned out--
GUY. It won't. Come on. Must take chances in this life.
ATHENE. [Looking up into his face] Guy, promise me--solemnly that you'll
never let me stand in your way, or stand in mine!
GUY. Right! That's a bargain. [They embrace.]
ATHENE quivers towards him. They embrace fervently as ANNIE enters
with the bread pan. They spring apart.
ANNIE. Oh!
GUY. It's all right, Annie. There's only one more day's infection
before you. We're to be married to-morrow morning.
ANNIE. Oh! yes, sir. Won't Mr Builder be pleased?
GUY. H'm! That's not exactly our reason.
ANNIE. [Right] Oh! no, sir. Of course you can't be a family without,
can you?
GUY. What have you got in that thing?
ANNIE is moving across with the bread pan. She halts at the bedroom
door.
ANNIE. Oh! please, ma'am, I was to give you a message--very important--
from Miss Maud Builder "Lookout! Father is coming!"
She goes out.
The CURTAIN falls.
ACT II
BUILDER'S study. At the table, MAUD has just put a sheet of paper
into a typewriter. She sits facing the audience, with her hands
stretched over the keys.
MAUD. [To herself] I must get that expression.
Her face assumes a furtive, listening look. Then she gets up,
whisks to the mirror over the fireplace, scrutinises the expression
in it, and going back to the table, sits down again with hands
outstretched above the keys, and an accentuation of the expression.
The door up Left is opened, and TOPPING appears. He looks at MAUD,
who just turns her eyes.
TOPPING. Lunch has been ready some time, Miss Maud.
MAUD. I don't want any lunch. Did you give it?
TOPPING. Miss Athene was out. I gave the message to a young party. She
looked a bit green, Miss. I hope nothing'll go wrong with the works.
Shall I keep lunch back?
MAUD. If something's gone wrong, they won't have any appetite, Topping.
TOPPING. If you think I might risk it, Miss, I'd like to slip round to
my dentist. [He lays a finger on his cheek].
MAUD. [Smiling] Oh! What race is being run this afternoon, then,
Topping?
TOPPING. [Twinkling, and shifting his finger to the side of his nose]
Well, I don't suppose you've 'eard of it, Miss; but as a matter of fact
it's the Cesarwitch.
MAUD. Got anything on?
TOPPING. Only my shirt, Miss.
MAUD. Is it a good thing, then?
TOPPING. I've seen worse roll up. [With a touch of enthusiasm] Dark
horse, Miss Maud, at twenty to one.
MAUD. Put me ten bob on, Topping. I want all the money I can get, just
now.
TOPPING. You're not the first, Miss.
MAUD. I say, Topping, do you know anything about the film?
TOPPING. [Nodding] Rather a specialty of mine, Miss.
MAUD. Well, just stand there, and give me your opinion of this.
TOPPING moves down Left. She crouches over the typewriter, lets her
hands play on the keys; stops; assumes that listening, furtive look;
listens again, and lets her head go slowly round, preceded by her
eyes; breaks it off, and says:
What should you say I was?
TOPPING. Guilty, Miss.
MAUD. [With triumph] There! Then you think I've got it?
TOPPING. Well, of course, I couldn't say just what sort of a crime you'd
committed, but I should think pretty 'ot stuff.
MAUD. Yes; I've got them here. [She pats her chest].
TOPPING. Really, Miss.
MAUD. Yes. There's just one point, Topping; it's psychological.
TOPPING. Indeed, Miss?
MAUD. Should I naturally put my hand on them; or would there be a
reaction quick enough to stop me? You see, I'm alone--and the point is
whether the fear of being seen would stop me although I knew I couldn't
be seen. It's rather subtle.
TOPPING. I think there's be a rehaction, Miss.
MAUD. So do I. To touch them [She clasps her chest] is a bit obvious,
isn't it?
TOPPING. If the haudience knows you've got 'em there.
MAUD. Oh! yes, it's seen me put them. Look here, I'll show you that
too.
She opens an imaginary drawer, takes out some bits of sealing-wax,
and with every circumstance of stealth in face and hands, conceals
them in her bosom.
All right?
TOPPING. [Nodding] Fine, Miss. You have got a film face. What are
they, if I may ask?
MAUD. [Reproducing the sealing-wax] The Fanshawe diamonds. There's
just one thing here too, Topping.
In real life, which should I naturally do--put them in here [She touches
her chest] or in my bag?
TOPPING. [Touching his waistcoat--earnestly] Well! To put 'em in here,
Miss, I should say is more--more pishchological.
MAUD. [Subduing her lips] Yes; but--
TOPPING. You see, then you've got 'em on you.
MAUD. But that's just the point. Shouldn't I naturally think: Safer in
my bag; then I can pretend somebody put them there. You see, nobody
could put them on me.
TOPPING. Well, I should say that depends on your character. Of course I
don't know what your character is.
MAUD. No; that's the beastly part of it--the author doesn't, either.
It's all left to me.
TOPPING. In that case, I should please myself, Miss. To put 'em in
'ere's warmer.
MAUD. Yes, I think you're right. It's more human.
TOPPING. I didn't know you 'ad a taste this way, Miss Maud.
MAUD. More than a taste, Topping--a talent.
TOPPING. Well, in my belief, we all have a vice about us somewhere. But
if I were you, Miss, I wouldn't touch bettin', not with this other on
you. You might get to feel a bit crowded.
MAUD. Well, then, only put the ten bob on if you're sure he's going to
win. You can post the money on after me. I'll send you an address,
Topping, because I shan't be here.
TOPPING. [Disturbed] What! You're not going, too, Miss Maud?
MAUD. To seek my fortune.
TOPPING. Oh! Hang it all, Miss, think of what you'll leave behind.
Miss Athene's leavin' home has made it pretty steep, but this'll touch
bottom--this will.
MAUD. Yes; I expect you'll find it rather difficult for a bit when I'm
gone. Miss Baldini, you know. I've been studying with her. She's got
me this chance with the movie people. I'm going on trial as the guilty
typist in "The Heartache of Miranda."
TOPPING. [Surprised out of politeness] Well, I never! That does sound
like 'em! Are you goin' to tell the guv'nor, Miss?
MAUD nods. In that case, I think I'll be gettin' off to my dentist
before the band plays.
MAUD. All right, Topping; hope you won't lose a tooth.
TOPPING. [With a grin] It's on the knees of the gods, Miss, as they say
in the headlines.
He goes. MAUD stretches herself and listens.
MAUD. I believe that's them. Shivery funky.
She runs off up Left.
BUILDER. [Entering from the hall and crossing to the fireplace]
Monstrous! Really monstrous!
CAMILLE enters from the hall. She has a little collecting book in
her hand.
BUILDER. Well, Camille?
CAMILLE. A sistare from the Sacred 'Eart, Monsieur--her little book for
the orphan children.
BUILDER. I can't be bothered--What is it?
CAMILLE. Orphan, Monsieur.
BUILDER. H'm! Well! [Feeling in his breast pocket] Give her that.
He hands her a five-pound note.
CAMILLE. I am sure she will be veree grateful for the poor little
beggars. Madame says she will not be coming to lunch, Monsieur.
BUILDER. I don't want any, either. Tell Topping I'll have some coffee.
CAMILLE. Topping has gone to the dentist, Monsieur; 'e 'as the
toothache.
BUILDER. Toothache--poor devil! H'm! I'm expecting my brother, but I
don't know that I can see him.
CAMILLE. No, Monsieur?
BUILDER. Ask your mistress to come here.
He looks up, and catching her eye, looks away.
CAMILLE. Yes, Monsieur.
As she turns he looks swiftly at her, sweeping her up and down. She
turns her head and catches his glance, which is swiftly dropped.
Will Monsieur not 'ave anything to eat?
BUILDER. [Shaking his head-abruptly] No. Bring the coffee!
CAMILLE. Is Monsieur not well?
BUILDER. Yes--quite well.
CAMILLE. [Sweetening her eyes] A cutlet soubise? No?
BUILDER. [With a faint response in his eyes, instantly subdued] Nothing!
nothing!
CAMILLE. And Madame nothing too--Tt! Tt! With her hand on the door she
looks back, again catches his eyes in an engagement instantly broken off,
and goes out.
BUILDER. [Stock-still, and staring at the door] That girl's a continual
irritation to me! She's dangerous! What a life! I believe that girl--
The door Left is opened and MRS BUILDER comes in.
BUILDER. There's some coffee coming; do your head good. Look here,
Julia. I'm sorry I beat on that door. I apologize. I was in a towering
passion. I wish I didn't get into these rages. But--dash it all--! I
couldn't walk away and leave you there.
MRS BUILDER. Why not?
BUILDER. You keep everything to yourself, so; I never have any notion
what you're thinking. What did you say to her?
MRS BUILDER. Told her it would never work.
BUILDER. Well, that's something. She's crazy. D'you suppose she was
telling the truth about that young blackguard wanting to marry her?
MRS BUILDER. I'm sure of it.
BUILDER. When you think of how she's been brought up. You would have
thought that religion alone--
MRS BUILDER. The girls haven't wanted to go to church for years.
They've always said they didn't see why they should go to keep up your
position. I don't know if you remember that you once caned them for
running off on a Sunday morning.
BUILDER. Well?
MRS BUILDER. They've never had any religion since.
BUILDER. H'm! [He takes a short turn up the room] What's to be done
about Athene?
MRS BUILDER. You said you had done with her.
BUILDER. You know I didn't mean that. I might just as well have said
I'd done with you! Apply your wits, Julia! At any moment this thing may
come out. In a little town like this you can keep nothing dark. How can
I take this nomination for Mayor?
MRS BUILDER. Perhaps Ralph could help.
BUILDER. What? His daughters have never done anything disgraceful, and
his wife's a pattern.
MRS BUILDER. Yes; Ralph isn't at all a family man.
BUILDER. [Staring at her] I do wish you wouldn't turn things upside
down in that ironical way. It isn't--English.
MRS BUILDER. I can't help having been born in Jersey.
BUILDER. No; I suppose it's in your blood. The French-- [He stops
short].
MRS BUILDER. Yes?
BUILDER. Very irritating sometimes to a plain Englishman--that's all.
MRS BUILDER. Shall I get rid of Camille?
BUILDER. [Staring at her, then dropping his glance] Camille? What's
she got to do with it?
MRS BUILDER. I thought perhaps you found her irritating.
BUILDER. Why should I?
CAMILLE comes in from the dining-room with the coffee.
Put it there. I want some brandy, please.
CAMILLE. I bring it, Monsieur.
She goes back demurely into the dining-room.
BUILDER. Topping's got toothache, poor chap! [Pouring out the coffee]
Can't you suggest any way of making Athene see reason? Think of the
example! Maud will be kicking over next. I shan't be able to hold my
head up here.
MRS BUILDER. I'm afraid I can't do that for you.
BUILDER. [Exasperated] Look here, Julia! That wretched girl said
something to me about our life together. What--what's the matter with
that?
MRS BUILDER. It is irritating.
BUILDER. Be explicit.
MRS BUILDER. We have lived together twenty-three years, John. No talk
will change such things.
BUILDER. Is it a question of money? You can always have more. You know
that. [MRS BUILDER smiles] Oh! don't smile like that; it makes me feel
quite sick!
CAMILLE enters with a decanter and little glasses, from the
dining-room.
CAMILLE. The brandy, sir. Monsieur Ralph Builder has just come.
MRS BUILDER. Ask him in, Camille.
CAMILLE. Yes, Madame.
She goes through the doorway into the hall. MRS BUILDER, following
towards the door, meets RALPH BUILDER, a man rather older than
BUILDER and of opposite build and manner. He has a pleasant,
whimsical face and grizzled hair.
MRS BUILDER. John wants to consult you, Ralph.
RALPH. That's very gratifying.
She passes him and goes out, leaving the two brothers eyeing one
another.
About the Welsh contract?
BUILDER. No. Fact is, Ralph, something very horrible's happened.
RALPH. Athene gone and got married?
BUILDER. No. It's--it's that she's gone and--and not got married.
RALPH utters a sympathetic whistle.
Jolly, isn't it?
RALPH. To whom?
BUILDER. A young flying bounder.
RALPH. And why?
BUILDER. Some crazy rubbish about family life, of all things.
RALPH. Athene's a most interesting girl. All these young people are so
queer and delightful.
BUILDER. By George, Ralph, you may thank your stars you haven't got a
delightful daughter. Yours are good, decent girls.
RALPH. Athene's tremendously good and decent, John. I'd bet any money
she's doing this on the highest principles.
BUILDER. Behaving like a--
RALPH. Don't say what you'll regret, old man! Athene always took things
seriously--bless her!
BUILDER. Julia thinks you might help. You never seem to have any
domestic troubles.
RALPH. No--o. I don't think we do.
BUILDER. How d'you account for it?
RALPH. I must ask at home.
BUILDER. Dash it! You must know!
RALPH. We're all fond of each other.
BUILDER. Well, I'm fond of my girls too; I suppose I'm not amiable
enough. H'm?
RALPH. Well, old man, you do get blood to the head. But what's Athene's
point, exactly?
BUILDER. Family life isn't idyllic, so she thinks she and the young man
oughtn't to have one.
RALPH. I see. Home experience?
BUILDER. Hang it all, a family's a family! There must be a head.
RALPH. But no tail, old chap.
BUILDER. You don't let your women folk do just as they like?
RALPH. Always.
BUILDER. What happens if one of your girls wants to do an improper
thing? [RALPH shrugs his shoulders]. You don't stop her?
RALPH. Do you?
BUILDER. I try to.
RALPH. Exactly. And she does it. I don't and she doesn't.
BUILDER. [With a short laugh] Good Lord! I suppose you'd have me eat
humble pie and tell Athene she can go on living in sin and offending
society, and have my blessing to round it off.
RALPH. I think if you did she'd probably marry him.
BUILDER. You've never tested your theory, I'll bet.
RALPH. Not yet.
BUILDER. There you are.
RALPH. The 'suaviter in modo' pays, John. The times are not what they
were.
BUILDER. Look here! I want to get to the bottom of this. Do you tell
me I'm any stricter than nine out of ten men?
RALPH. Only in practice.
BUILDER. [Puzzled] How do you mean?
RALPH. Well, you profess the principles of liberty, but you practise the
principles of government.
BUILDER. H'm! [Taking up the decanter] Have some?
RALPH. No, thank you.
BUILDER fills and raises his glass.
CAMILLE. [Entering] Madame left her coffee.
She comes forward, holds out a cup for BUILDER to pour into, takes
it and goes out. BUILDER'S glass remains suspended. He drinks the
brandy off as she shuts the door.
BUILDER. Life isn't all roses, Ralph.
RALPH. Sorry, old man.
BUILDER. I sometimes think I try myself too high. Well, about that
Welsh contract?
RALPH. Let's take it.
BUILDER. If you'll attend to it. Frankly, I'm too upset.
As they go towards the door into the hall, MAUD comes in from the
dining-room, in hat and coat.
RALPH. [Catching sight of her] Hallo! All well in your cosmogony, Maud?
MAUD. What is a cosmogony, Uncle?
RALPH. My dear, I--I don't know.
He goes out, followed by BUILDER. MAUD goes quickly to the table,
sits down and rests her elbows on it, her chin on her hands, looking
at the door.
BUILDER. [Re-entering] Well, Maud! You'd have won your bet!
MAUD. Oh! father, I--I've got some news for you.
BUILDER. [Staring at her] News--what?
MAUD. I'm awfully sorry, but I-I've got a job.
BUILDER. Now, don't go saying you're going in for Art, too, because I
won't have it.
MAUD. Art? Oh! no! It's the--[With a jerk]--the Movies.
BUILDER. who has taken up a pipe to fill, puts it down.
BUILDER. [Impressively] I'm not in a joking mood.
MAUD. I'm not joking, father.
BUILDER. Then what are you talking about?
MAUD. You see, I--I've got a film face, and--
BUILDER. You've what? [Going up to his daughter, he takes hold of her
chin] Don't talk nonsense! Your sister has just tried me to the limit.
MAUD. [Removing his hand from her chin] Don't oppose it, father, please!
I've always wanted to earn my own living.
BUILDER. Living! Living!
MAUD. [Gathering determination] You can't stop me, father, because I
shan't need support. I've got quite good terms.
BUILDER. [Almost choking, but mastering himself] Do you mean to say
you've gone as far as that?
MAUD. Yes. It's all settled.
BUILDER. Who put you up to this?
MAUD. No one. I've been meaning to, ever so long. I'm twenty-one, you
know.
BUILDER. A film face! Good God! Now, look here! I will not have a
daughter of mine mixed up with the stage. I've spent goodness knows what
on your education--both of you.
MAUD. I don't want to be ungrateful; but I--I can't go on living at
home.
BUILDER. You can't--! Why? You've every indulgence.
MAUD. [Clearly and coldly] I can remember occasions when your
indulgence hurt, father. [She wriggles her shoulders and back] We never
forgot or forgave that.
BUILDER. [Uneasily] That! You were just kids.
MAUD. Perhaps you'd like to begin again?
BUILDER. Don't twist my tail, Maud. I had the most painful scene with
Athene this morning. Now come! Give up this silly notion! It's really
too childish!
MAUD. [Looking at him curiously] I've heard you say ever so many times
that no man was any good who couldn't make his own way, father. Well,
women are the same as men, now. It's the law of the country. I only
want to make my own way.
BUILDER. [Trying to subdue his anger] Now, Maud, don't be foolish.
Consider my position here--a Town Councillor, a Magistrate, and Mayor
next year. With one daughter living with a man she isn't married to--
MAUD. [With lively interest] Oh! So you did catch them out?
BUILDER. D'you mean to say you knew?
MAUD. Of course.
BUILDER. My God! I thought we were a Christian family.
MAUD. Oh! father.
BUILDER. Don't sneer at Christianity!
MAUD. There's only one thing wrong with Christians--they aren't!
BUILDER Seizes her by the shoulders and shakes her vigorously. When he
drops her shoulders, she gets up, gives him a vicious look, and suddenly
stamps her foot on his toe with all her might.
BUILDER. [With a yowl of pain] You little devil!
MAUD. [Who has put the table between them] I won't stand being shaken.
BUILDER. [Staring at her across the table] You've got my temper up and
you'll take the consequences. I'll make you toe the line.
MAUD. If you knew what a Prussian expression you've got!
BUILDER passes his hand across his face uneasily, as if to wipe
something off.
No! It's too deep!
BUILDER. Are you my daughter or are you not?
MAUD. I certainly never wanted to be. I've always disliked you, father,
ever since I was so high. I've seen through you. Do you remember when
you used to come into the nursery because Jenny was pretty? You think we
didn't notice that, but we did. And in the schoolroom--Miss Tipton. And
d'you remember knocking our heads together? No, you don't; but we do.
And--
BUILDER. You disrespectful monkey! Will you be quiet?
MAUD. No; you've got to hear things. You don't really love anybody but
yourself, father. What's good for you has to be good for everybody.
I've often heard you talk about independence, but it's a limited company
and you've got all the shares.
BUILDER. Rot; only people who can support themselves have a right to
independence.
MAUD. That's why you don't want me to support myself.
BUILDER. You can't! Film, indeed! You'd be in the gutter in a year.
Athene's got her pittance, but you--you've got nothing.
MAUD. Except my face.
BUILDER. It's the face that brings women to ruin, my girl.
MAUD. Well, when I'm there I won't come to you to rescue me.
BUILDER. Now, mind--if you leave my house, I've done with you.
MAUD. I'd rather scrub floors now, than stay.
BUILDER. [Almost pathetically] Well, I'm damned! Look here, Maud--
all this has been temper. You got my monkey up. I'm sorry I shook you;
you've had your revenge on my toes. Now, come! Don't make things worse
for me than they are. You've all the liberty you can reasonably want
till you marry.
MAUD. He can't see it--he absolutely can't!
BUILDER. See what?
MAUD. That I want to live a life of my own.
He edges nearer to her, and she edges to keep her distance.
BUILDER. I don't know what's bitten you.
MAUD. The microbe of freedom; it's in the air.
BUILDER. Yes, and there it'll stay--that's the first sensible word
you've uttered. Now, come! Take your hat off, and let's be friends!
MAUD looks at him and slowly takes off her hat.
BUILDER. [Relaxing his attitude, with a sigh of relief] That's right!
[Crosses to fireplace].
MAUD. [Springing to the door leading to the hall] Good-bye, father!
BUILDER. [Following her] Monkey!
At the sound of a bolt shot, BUILDER goes up to the window. There
is a fumbling at the door, and CAMILLE appears.
BUILDER. What's the matter with that door? CAMILLE. It was bolted,
Monsieur.
BUILDER. Who bolted it?
CAMILLE. [Shrugging her shoulders] I can't tell, Monsieur.
She collects the cups, and halts close to him. [Softly] Monsieur
is not 'appy.
BUILDER. [Surprised] What? No! Who'd be happy in a household like
mine?
CAMILLE. But so strong a man--I wish I was a strong man, not a weak
woman.
BUILDER. [Regarding her with reluctant admiration] Why, what's the
matter with you?
CAMILLE. Will Monsieur have another glass of brandy before I take it?
BUILDER. No! Yes--I will.
She pours it out, and he drinks it, hands her the glass and sits
down suddenly in an armchair. CAMILLE puts the glass on a tray, and
looks for a box of matches from the mantelshelf.
CAMILLE. A light, Monsieur?
BUILDER. Please.
CAMILLE. [She trips over his feet and sinks on to his knee] Oh!
Monsieur!
BUILDER flames up and catches her in his arms
Oh! Monsieur--
BUILDER. You little devil!
She suddenly kisses him, and he returns the kiss. While they are
engaged in this entrancing occupation, MRS BUILDER opens the door
from the hall, watches unseen for a few seconds, and quietly goes
out again.
BUILDER. [Pushing her back from him, whether at the sound of the door or
of a still small voice] What am I doing?
CAMILLE. Kissing.
BUILDER. I--I forgot myself.
They rise.
CAMILLE. It was na-ice.
BUILDER. I didn't mean to. You go away--go away!
CAMILLE. Oh! Monsieur, that spoil it.
BUILDER. [Regarding her fixedly] It's my opinion you're a temptation of
the devil. You know you sat down on purpose.
CAMILLE. Well, perhaps.
BUILDER. What business had you to? I'm a family man.
CAMILLE. Yes. What a pity! But does it matter?
BUILDER. [Much beset] Look here, you know! This won't do! It won't
do! I--I've got my reputation to think of!
CAMILLE. So 'ave I! But there is lots of time to think of it in
between.
BUILDER. I knew you were dangerous. I always knew it.
CAMILLE. What a thing to say of a little woman!
BUILDER. We're not in Paris.
CAMILLE. [Clasping her hands] Oh! 'Ow I wish we was!
BUILDER. Look here--I can't stand this; you've got to go. Out with you!
I've always kept a firm hand on myself, and I'm not going to--
CAMILLE. But I admire you so!
BUILDER. Suppose my wife had come in?
CAMILLE. Oh! Don't suppose any such a disagreeable thing! If you were
not so strict, you would feel much 'appier.
BUILDER. [Staring at her] You're a temptress!
CAMILLE. I lofe pleasure, and I don't get any. And you 'ave such a
duty, you don't get any sport. Well, I am 'ere!
She stretches herself, and BUILDER utters a deep sound.
BUILDER. [On the edge of succumbing] It's all against my--I won't do
it! It's--it's wrong!
CAMILLE. Oh! La, la!
BUILDER. [Suddenly revolting] No! If you thought it a sin--I--might.
But you don't; you're nothing but a--a little heathen.
CAMILLE. Why should it be better if I thought it a sin?
BUILDER. Then--then I should know where I was. As it is--
CAMILLE. The English 'ave no idea of pleasure. They make it all so
coarse and virtuous.
BUILDER. Now, out you go before I--! Go on!
He goes over to the door and opens it. His wife is outside in a hat
and coat. She comes in.
[Stammering] Oh! Here you are--I wanted you.
CAMILLE, taking up the tray, goes out Left, swinging her hips a very
little.
BUILDER. Going out?
MRS BUILDER. Obviously.
BUILDER. Where?
MRS BUILDER. I don't know at present.
BUILDER. I wanted to talk to you about Maud.
MRS BUILDER. It must wait.
BUILDER. She's-she's actually gone and--
MRS BUILDER. I must tell you that I happened to look in a minute ago.
BUILDER. [In absolute dismay] You! You what?
MRS BUILDER. Yes. I will put no obstacle in the way of your pleasures.
BUILDER. [Aghast] Put no obstacle? What do you mean? Julia, how can
you say a thing like that? Why, I've only just--
MRS BUILDER. Don't! I saw.
BUILDER. The girl fell on my knees. Julia, she did. She's--she's a
little devil. I--I resisted her. I give you my word there's been
nothing beyond a kiss, under great provocation. I--I apologise.
MRS BUILDER. [Bows her head] Thank you! I quite understand. But you
must forgive my feeling it impossible to remain a wet blanket any longer.
BUILDER. What! Because of a little thing like that--all over in two
minutes, and I doing my utmost.
MRS BUILDER. My dear John, the fact that you had to do your utmost is
quite enough. I feel continually humiliated in your house, and I want to
leave it--quite quietly, without fuss of any kind.
BUILDER. But--my God! Julia, this is awful--it's absurd! How can you?
I'm your husband. Really--your saying you don't mind what I do--it's not
right; it's immoral!
MRS BUILDER. I'm afraid you don't see what goes on in those who live
with you. So, I'll just go. Don't bother!
BUILDER. Now, look here, Julia, you can't mean this seriously. You
can't! Think of my position! You've never set yourself up against me
before.
MRS BUILDER. But I do now.
BUILDER. [After staring at her] I've given you no real reason. I'll
send the girl away. You ought to thank me for resisting a temptation
that most men would have yielded to. After twenty-three years of married
life, to kick up like this--you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
MRS BUILDER. I'm sure you must think so.
BUILDER. Oh! for heaven's sake don't be sarcastic! You're my wife, and
there's an end of it; you've no legal excuse. Don't be absurd!
MRS BUILDER. Good-bye!
BUILDER. D'you realise that you're encouraging me to go wrong? That's a
pretty thing for a wife to do. You ought to keep your husband straight.
MRS BUILDER. How beautifully put!
BUILDER. [Almost pathetically] Don't rile me Julia! I've had an awful
day. First Athene--then Maud--then that girl--and now you! All at once
like this! Like a swarm of bees about one's head. [Pleading] Come,
now, Julia, don't be so--so im practicable! You'll make us the
laughing-stock of the whole town. A man in my position, and can't
keep his own family; it's preposterous!
MRS BUILDER. Your own family have lives and thoughts and feelings of
their own.
BUILDER. Oh! This damned Woman's business! I knew how it would be when
we gave you the vote. You and I are married, and our daughters are our
daughters. Come, Julia. Where's your commonsense? After twenty-three
years! You know I can't do without you!
MRS BUILDER. You could--quite easily. You can tell people what you
like.
BUILDER. My God! I never heard anything so immoral in all my life from
the mother of two grownup girls. No wonder they've turned out as they
have! What is it you want, for goodness sake?
MRS BUILDER. We just want to be away from you, that's all. I assure you
it's best. When you've shown some consideration for our feelings and
some real sign that we exist apart from you--we could be friends again--
perhaps--I don't know.
BUILDER. Friends! Good heavens! With one's own wife and daughters!
[With great earnestness] Now, look here, Julia, you haven't lived with
me all this time without knowing that I'm a man of strong passions; I've
been a faithful husband to you--yes, I have. And that means resisting
all sorts of temptations you know nothing of. If you withdraw from my
society I won't answer for the consequences. In fact, I can't have you
withdrawing. I'm not going to see myself going to the devil and losing
the good opinion of everybody round me. A bargain's a bargain. And
until I've broken my side of it, and I tell you I haven't--you've no
business to break yours. That's flat. So now, put all that out of your
head.
MRS BUILDER. No.
BUILDER. [Intently] D'you realise that I've supported you in luxury and
comfort?
MRS BUILDER. I think I've earned it.
BUILDER. And how do you propose to live? I shan't give you a penny.
Come, Julia, don't be such an idiot! Fancy letting a kiss which no man
could have helped, upset you like this!
MRS BUILDER. The Camille, and the last straw!
BUILDER. [Sharply] I won't have it. So now you know.
But MRS BUILDER has very swiftly gone.
Julia, I tell you-- [The outer door is heard being closed] Damnation!
I will not have it! They're all mad! Here--where's my hat?
He looks distractedly round him, wrenches open the door, and a
moment later the street door is heard to shut with a bang.
CURTAIN.
ACT III
SCENE I
Ten o'clock the following morning, in the study of the Mayor of
Breconridge, a panelled room with no window visible, a door Left
back and a door Right forward. The entire back wall is furnished
with books from floor to ceiling; the other walls are panelled and
bare. Before the fireplace, Left, are two armchairs, and other
chairs are against the walls. On the Right is a writing-bureau at
right angles to the footlights, with a chair behind it. At its back
corner stands HARRIS, telephoning.
HARRIS. What--[Pause] Well, it's infernally awkward, Sergeant. . . .
The Mayor's in a regular stew. . . . [Listens] New constable?
I should think so! Young fool! Look here, Martin, the only thing to do
is to hear the charge here at once. I've sent for Mr Chantrey; he's on
his way. Bring Mr Builder and the witnesses round sharp. See? And, I
say, for God's sake keep it dark. Don't let the Press get on to it. Why
you didn't let him go home--! Black eye? The constable? Well, serve
him right. Blundering young ass! I mean, it's undermining all
authority. . . . Well, you oughtn't--at least, I . . . Damn it
all!--it's a nine days' wonder if it gets out--! All right! As soon as
you can. [He hangs up the receiver, puts a second chair behind the
bureau, and other chairs facing it.] [To himself] Here's a mess! Johnny
Builder, of all men! What price Mayors!
The telephone rings.
Hallo? . . . Poaching charge? Well, bring him too; only, I say, keep
him back till the other's over. By the way, Mr Chantrey's going
shooting. He'll want to get off by eleven. What? . . Righto !
As he hangs up the receiver the MAYOR enters. He looks worried, and
is still dressed with the indefinable wrongness of a burgher.
MAYOR. Well, 'Arris?
HARRIS. They'll be over in five minutes, Mr Mayor.
MAYOR. Mr Chantrey?
HARRIS. On his way, sir.
MAYOR. I've had some awkward things to deal with in my time, 'Arris, but
this is just about the [Sniffs] limit.
HARRIS. Most uncomfortable, Sir; most uncomfortable!
MAYOR. Put a book on the chair, 'Arris; I like to sit 'igh.
HARRIS puts a volume of Eneyclopaedia on the Mayor's chair behind
the bureau.
[Deeply] Our fellow-magistrate! A family man! In my shoes next year.
I suppose he won't be, now. You can't keep these things dark.
HARRIS. I've warned Martin, sir, to use the utmost discretion. Here's
Mr Chantrey.
By the door Left, a pleasant and comely gentleman has entered,
dressed with indefinable rightness in shooting clothes.
MAYOR. Ah, Chantrey!
CHANTREY. How de do, Mr Mayor? [Nodding to HARRIS] This is
extraordinarily unpleasant.
The MAYOR nods.
What on earth's he been doing?
HARRIS. Assaulting one of his own daughters with a stick; and resisting
the police.
CHANTREY. [With a low whistle] Daughter! Charity begins at home.
HARRIS. There's a black eye.
MAYOR. Whose?
HARRIS. The constable's.
CHANTREY. How did the police come into it?
HARRIS. I don't know, sir. The worst of it is he's been at the police
station since four o'clock yesterday. The Superintendent's away, and
Martin never will take responsibility.
CHANTREY. By George! he will be mad. John Builder's a choleric fellow.
MAYOR. [Nodding] He is. 'Ot temper, and an 'igh sense of duty.
HARRIS. There's one other charge, Mr Mayor--poaching. I told them to
keep that back till after.
CHANTREY. Oh, well, we'll make short work of that. I want to get off by
eleven, Harris. I shall be late for the first drive anyway. John
Builder! I say, Mayor--but for the grace of God, there go we!
MAYOR. Harris, go out and bring them in yourself; don't let the
servants--
HARRIS goes out Left. The MAYOR takes the upper chair behind the
bureau, sitting rather higher because of the book than CHANTREY, who
takes the lower. Now that they are in the seats of justice, a sort
of reticence falls on them, as if they were afraid of giving away
their attitudes of mind to some unseen presence.
MAYOR. [Suddenly] H'm!
CHANTREY. Touch of frost. Birds ought to come well to the guns--no
wind. I like these October days.
MAYOR. I think I 'ear them. H'm.
CHANTREY drops his eyeglass and puts on a pair of "grandfather"
spectacles. The MAYOR clears his throat and takes up a pen. They
neither of them look up as the door is opened and a little
procession files in. First HARRIS; then RALPH BUILDER, ATHENE,
HERRINGHAME, MAUD, MRS BUILDER, SERGEANT MARTIN, carrying a heavy
Malacca cane with a silver knob; JOHN BUILDER and the CONSTABLE
MOON, a young man with one black eye. No funeral was ever attended
by mutes so solemn and dejected. They stand in a sort of row.
MAYOR. [Without looking up] Sit down, ladies; sit down.
HARRIS and HERRINGHAME succeed in placing the three women in chairs.
RALPH BUILDER also sits. HERRINGHAME stands behind. JOHN BUILDER
remains standing between the two POLICEMEN. His face is unshaved
and menacing, but he stands erect staring straight at the MAYOR.
HARRIS goes to the side of the bureau, Back, to take down the
evidence.
MAYOR. Charges!
SERGEANT. John Builder, of The Cornerways, Breconridge, Contractor and
Justice of the Peace, charged with assaulting his daughter Maud Builder
by striking her with a stick in the presence of Constable Moon and two
other persons; also with resisting Constable Moon in the execution of his
duty, and injuring his eye. Constable Moon!
MOON. [Stepping forward-one, two--like an automaton, and saluting] In
River Road yesterday afternoon, Your Worship, about three-thirty p.m., I
was attracted by a young woman callin' "Constable" outside a courtyard.
On hearing the words "Follow me, quick," I followed her to a painter's
studio inside the courtyard, where I found three persons in the act of
disagreement. No sooner 'ad I appeared than the defendant, who was
engaged in draggin' a woman towards the door, turns to the young woman
who accompanied me, with violence. "You dare, father," she says;
whereupon he hit her twice with the stick the same which is produced, in
the presence of myself and the two other persons, which I'm given to
understand is his wife and other daughter.
MAYOR. Yes; never mind what you're given to understand.
MOON. No, sir. The party struck turns to me and says, "Come in. I give
this man in charge for assault." I moves accordingly with the words:
"I saw you. Come along with me." The defendant turns to me sharp and
says: "You stupid lout--I'm a magistrate." "Come off it," I says to the
best of my recollection. "You struck this woman in my presence," I says,
"and you come along!" We were then at close quarters. The defendant
gave me a push with the words: "Get out, you idiot!" "Not at all," I
replies, and took 'old of his arm. A struggle ensues, in the course of
which I receives the black eye which I herewith produce. [He touches his
eye with awful solemnity.]
The MAYOR clears his throat; CHANTREY'S eyes goggle; HARRIS bends
over and writes rapidly.
During the struggle, Your Worship, a young man has appeared on the scene,
and at the instigation of the young woman, the same who was assaulted,
assists me in securing the prisoner, whose language and resistance was
violent in the extreme. We placed him in a cab which we found outside,
and I conveyed him to the station.
CHANTREY. What was his--er--conduct in the--er--cab?
MOON. He sat quiet.
CHANTREY. That seems--
MOON. Seein' I had his further arm twisted behind him.
MAYOR [Looking at BUILDER] Any questions to ask him?
BUILDER makes not the faintest sign, and the MAYOR drops his glance.
MAYOR. Sergeant?
MOON steps back two paces, and the SERGEANT steps two paces forward.
SERGEANT. At ten minutes to four, Your Worship, yesterday afternoon,
Constable Moon brought the defendant to the station in a four-wheeled
cab. On his recounting the circumstances of the assault, they were
taken down and read over to the defendant with the usual warning. The
defendant said nothing. In view of the double assault and the condition
of the constable's eye, and in the absence of the Superintendent,
I thought it my duty to retain the defendant for the night.
MAYOR. The defendant said nothing?
SERGEANT. He 'as not opened his lips to my knowledge, Your Worship, from
that hour to this.
MAYOR. Any questions to ask the Sergeant?
BUILDER continues to stare at the MAYOR without a word.
MAYOR. Very well!
The MAYOR and CHANTREY now consult each other inaudibly, and the
Mayor nods.
MAYOR. Miss Maud Builder, will you tell us what you know of this--er--
occurrence?
MAUD. [Rising; with eyes turning here and there] Must I?
MAYOR. I'm afraid you must.
MAUD. [After a look at her father, who never turns his eyes from the
MAYOR's face] I--I wish to withdraw the charge of striking me, please.
I--I never meant to make it. I was in a temper--I saw red.
MAYOR. I see. A--a domestic disagreement. Very well, that charge is
withdrawn. You do not appear to have been hurt, and that seems to me
quite proper. Now, tell me what you know of the assault on the
constable. Is his account correct?
MAUD. [Timidly] Ye-yes. Only--
MAYOR. Yes? Tell us the truth.
MAUD. [Resolutely] Only, I don't think my father hit the constable.
I think the stick did that.
MAYOR. Oh, the stick? But--er--the stick was in 'is 'and, wasn't it?
MAUD. Yes; but I mean, my father saw red, and the constable saw red, and
the stick flew up between them and hit him in the eye.
CHANTREY. And then he saw black?
MAYOR. [With corrective severity] But did 'e 'it 'im with the stick?
MAUD. No--no. I don't think he did.
MAYOR. Then who supplied the--er--momentum?
MAUD. I think there was a struggle for the cane, and it flew up.
MAYOR. Hand up the cane.
The SERGEANT hands up the cane. The MAYOR and CHANTREY examine it.
MAYOR. Which end--do you suggest--inflicted this injury?
MAUD. Oh! the knob end, sir.
MAYOR. What do you say to that, constable?
MOON. [Stepping the mechanical two paces] I don't deny there was a
struggle, Your Worship, but it's my impression I was 'it.
CHANTREY. Of course you were bit; we can see that. But with the cane or
with the fist?
MOON. [A little flurried] I--I--with the fist, sir.
MAYOR. Be careful. Will you swear to that?
MOON. [With that sudden uncertainty which comes over the most honest in
such circumstances] Not--not so to speak in black and white, Your
Worship; but that was my idea at the time.
MAYOR. You won't swear to it?
MOON. I'll swear he called me an idiot and a lout; the words made a deep
impression on me.
CHANTREY. [To himself] Mort aux vaches!
MAYOR. Eh? That'll do, constable; stand back. Now, who else saw the
struggle? Mrs Builder. You're not obliged to say anything unless you
like. That's your privilege as his wife.
While he is speaking the door has been opened, and HARRIS has gone
swiftly to it, spoken to someone and returned. He leans forward to
the MAYOR.
Eh? Wait a minute. Mrs Builder, do you wish to give evidence?
MRS BUILDER. [Rising] No, Mr Mayor.
MRS BUILDER Sits.
MAYOR. Very good. [To HARRIS] Now then, what is it?
HARRIS says something in a low and concerned voice. The MAYOR'S face
lengthens. He leans to his right and consults CHANTREY, who gives a
faint and deprecating shrug. A moment's silence.
MAYOR. This is an open Court. The Press have the right to attend if
they wish.
HARRIS goes to the door and admits a young man in glasses, of a
pleasant appearance, and indicates to him a chair at the back. At
this untimely happening BUILDER's eyes have moved from side to side,
but now he regains his intent and bull-like stare at his
fellow-justices.
MAYOR. [To Maud] You can sit down, Miss Builder.
MAUD resumes her seat.
Miss Athene Builder, you were present, I think?
ATHENE. [Rising] Yes, Sir.
MAYOR. What do you say to this matter?
ATHENE. I didn't see anything very clearly, but I think my sister's
account is correct, sir.
MAYOR. Is it your impression that the cane inflicted the injury?
ATHENE. [In a low voice] Yes.
MAYOR. With or without deliberate intent?
ATHENE. Oh! without.
BUILDER looks at her.
MAYOR. But you were not in a position to see very well?
ATHENE. No, Sir.
MAYOR. Your sister having withdrawn her charge, we needn't go into that.
Very good!
He motions her to sit down. ATHENE, turning her eyes on her
Father's impassive figure, sits.
MAYOR. Now, there was a young man. [Pointing to HERRINGHAME] Is this
the young man?
MOON. Yes, Your Worship.
MAYOR. What's your name?
GUY. Guy Herringhame.
MAYOR. Address?
GUY. Er--the Aerodrome, Sir. MAYOR. Private, I mean?
The moment is one of considerable tension.
GUY. [With an effort] At the moment, sir, I haven't one. I've just
left my diggings, and haven't yet got any others.
MAYOR. H'm! The Aerodrome. How did you come to be present?
GUY. I--er
BUILDER's eyes go round and rest on him for a moment.
It's in my sister's studio that Miss Athene Builder is at present
working, sir. I just happened to--to turn up.
MAYOR. Did you appear on the scene, as the constable says, during the
struggle?
GUY. Yes, sir.
MAYOR. Did he summon you to his aid?
GUY. Yes--No, sir. Miss Maud Builder did that.
MAYOR. What do you say to this blow?
GUY. [Jerking his chin up a little] Oh! I saw that clearly.
MAYOR. Well, let us hear.
GUY. The constable's arm struck the cane violently and it flew up and
landed him in the eye.
MAYOR. [With a little grunt] You are sure of that?
GUY. Quite sure, sir.
MAYOR. Did you hear any language?
GUY. Nothing out of the ordinary, sir. One or two damns and blasts.
MAYOR. You call that ordinary?
GUY. Well, he's a--magistrate, sir.
The MAYOR utters a profound grunt. CHANTREY smiles. There is a
silence. Then the MAYOR leans over to CHANTREY for a short
colloquy.
CHANTREY. Did you witness any particular violence other than a
resistance to arrest?
GUY. No, sir.
MAYOR. [With a gesture of dismissal] Very well, That seems to be the
evidence. Defendant John Builder--what do you say to all this?
BUILDER. [In a voice different from any we have heard from him] Say!
What business had he to touch me, a magistrate? I gave my daughter two
taps with a cane in a private house, for interfering with me for taking
my wife home--
MAYOR. That charge is not pressed, and we can't go into the
circumstances. What do you wish to say about your conduct towards
the constable?
BUILDER. [In his throat] Not a damned thing!
MAYOR. [Embarrassed] I--I didn't catch.
CHANTREY. Nothing--nothing, he said, Mr Mayor.
MAYOR. [Clearing his throat] I understand, then, that you do not wish to
offer any explanation?
BUILDER. I consider myself abominably treated, and I refuse to say
another word.
MAYOR. [Drily] Very good. Miss Maud Builder.
MAUD stands up.
MAYOR. When you spoke of the defendant seeing red, what exactly did you
mean?
MAUD. I mean that my father was so angry that he didn't know what he was
doing.
CHANTREY. Would you say as angry as he--er--is now?
MAUD. [With a faint smile] Oh! much more angry.
RALPH BUILDER stands up.
RALPH. Would you allow me to say a word, Mr Mayor?
MAYOR. Speaking of your own knowledge, Mr Builder?
RALPH. In regard to the state of my brother's mind--yes, Mr Mayor. He
was undoubtedly under great strain yesterday; certain circumstances,
domestic and otherwise--
MAYOR. You mean that he might have been, as one might say, beside
himself?
RALPH. Exactly, Sir.
MAYOR. Had you seen your brother?
RALPH. I had seen him shortly before this unhappy business.
The MAYOR nods and makes a gesture, so that MAUD and RALPH sit down;
then, leaning over, he confers in a low voice with CHANTREY. The
rest all sit or stand exactly as if each was the only person in the
room, except the JOURNALIST, who is writing busily and rather
obviously making a sketch of BUILDER.
MAYOR. Miss Athene Builder.
ATHENE stands up.
This young man, Mr Herringhame, I take it, is a friend of the family's?
A moment of some tension.
ATHENE. N--no, Mr Mayor, not of my father or mother.
CHANTREY. An acquaintance of yours?
ATHENE. Yes.
MAYOR. Very good. [He clears his throat] As the defendant, wrongly, we
think, refuses to offer his explanation of this matter, the Bench has to
decide on the evidence as given. There seems to be some discrepancy as
to the blow which the constable undoubtedly received. In view of this,
we incline to take the testimony of Mr--
HARRIS prompts him.
Mr 'Erringhame--as the party least implicated personally in the affair,
and most likely to 'ave a cool and impartial view. That evidence is to
the effect that the blow was accidental. There is no doubt, however,
that the defendant used reprehensible language, and offered some
resistance to the constable in the execution of his duty. Evidence 'as
been offered that he was in an excited state of mind; and it is possible
--I don't say that this is any palliation--but it is possible that he may
have thought his position as magistrate made him--er--
CHANTREY. [Prompting] Caesar's wife.
MAYOR. Eh? We think, considering all the circumstances, and the fact
that he has spent a night in a cell, that justice will be met by--er--
discharging him with a caution.
BUILDER. [With a deeply muttered] The devil you do!
Walks out of the room. The JOURNALIST, grabbing his pad, starts up
and follows. The BUILDERS rise and huddle, and, with HERRINGHAME,
are ushered out by HARRIS.
MAYOR. [Pulling out a large handkerchief and wiping his forehead]
My Aunt!
CHANTREY. These new constables, Mayor! I say, Builder'll have to go!
Damn the Press, how they nose everything out! The Great Unpaid!--
We shall get it again! [He suddenly goes off into a fit of laughter]
"Come off it," I says, "to the best of my recollection." Oh! Oh!
I shan't hit a bird all day! That poor devil Builder! It's no joke for
him. You did it well, Mayor; you did it well. British justice is safe
in your hands. He blacked the fellow's eye all right. "Which I herewith
produce." Oh! my golly! It beats the band!
His uncontrollable laughter and the MAYOR'S rueful appreciation are
exchanged with lightning rapidity for a preternatural solemnity, as
the door opens, admitting SERGEANT MARTIN and the lugubrious object
of their next attentions.
MAYOR. Charges.
SERGEANT steps forward to read the charge as
The CURTAIN falls.
SCENE II
Noon the same day.
BUILDER'S study. TOPPING is standing by the open window, looking up
and down the street. A newspaper boy's voice is heard calling the
first edition of his wares. It approaches from the Right.
TOPPING. Here!
BOY'S VOICE. Right, guv'nor! Johnny Builder up before the beaks!
[A paper is pushed up].
TOPPING. [Extending a penny] What's that you're sayin'? You take care!
BOY'S VOICE. It's all 'ere. Johnny Builder--beatin' his wife!
Dischawged.
TOPPING. Stop it, you young limb!
BOY'S VOICE. 'Allo! What's the matter wiv you? Why, it's Johnny
Builder's house! [Gives a cat-call] 'Ere, buy anuvver! 'E'll want to
read about 'isself. [Appealing] Buy anuvver, guv'nor!
TOPPING. Move on!
He retreats from the window, opening the paper.
BOY'S VOICE. [Receding] Payper! First edition! J.P. chawged! Payper!
TOPPING. [To himself as he reads] Crimes! Phew! That accounts for them
bein' away all night.
While he is reading, CAMILLE enters from the hall. Here! Have you
seen this, Camel--in the Stop Press?
CAMILLE. No.
They read eagerly side by side.
TOPPING. [Finishing aloud] "Tried to prevent her father from forcing her
mother to return home with him, and he struck her for so doing. She did
not press the charge. The arrested gentleman, who said he acted under
great provocation, was discharged with a caution." Well, I'm blowed!
He has gone and done it!
CAMILLE. A black eye!
TOPPING. [Gazing at her] Have you had any hand in this? I've seen you
making your lovely black eyes at him. You foreigners--you're a loose
lot!
CAMILLE. You are drunk!
TOPPING. Not yet, my dear. [Reverting to the paper; philosophically]
Well, this little lot's bust up! The favourites will fall down. Johnny
Builder! Who'd have thought it?
CAMILLE. He is an obstinate man.
TOPPING. Ah! He's right up against it now. Comes of not knowin' when
to stop bein' firm. If you meet a wall with your 'ead, it's any odds on
the wall, Camel. Though, if you listened to some, you wouldn't think it.
What'll he do now, I wonder? Any news of the mistress?
CAMILLE. [Shaking her head] I have pack her tr-runks.
TOPPING. Why?
CAMILLE. Because she take her jewels yesterday.
TOPPING. Deuce she did! They generally leave 'em. Take back yer gifts!
She throws the baubles at 'is 'ead. [Again staring at her] You're a
deep one, you know!
There is the sound of a cab stopping.
Wonder if that's him! [He goes towards the hall. CAMILLE watchfully
shifts towards the diningroom door. MAUD enters.]
MAUD. Is my father back, Topping?
TOPPING. Not yet, Miss.
MAUD. I've come for mother's things.
CAMILLE. They are r-ready.
MAUD. [Eyeing her] Topping, get them down, please.
TOPPING, after a look at them both, goes out into the hall.
Very clever of you to have got them ready.
CAMILLE. I am clevare.
MAUD. [Almost to herself] Yes--father may, and he may not.
CAMILLE. Look! If you think I am a designing woman, you are mistook.
I know when things are too 'ot. I am not sorry to go.
MAUD. Oh! you are going?
CAMILLE. Yes, I am going. How can I stay when there is no lady in the
'ouse?
MAUD. Not even if you're asked to?
CAMILLE. Who will ask me?
MAUD. That we shall see.
CAMILLE. Well, you will see I have an opinion of my own.
MAUD. Oh! yes, you're clear-headed enough.
CAMILLE. I am not arguing. Good-morning!
Exits up Left.
MAUD regards her stolidly as she goes out into the dining-room, then
takes up the paper and reads.
MAUD. Horrible!
TOPPING re-enters from the hall.
TOPPING. I've got 'em on the cab, Miss. I didn't put your ten bob on
yesterday, because the animal finished last. You cant depend on horses.
MAUD. [Touching the newspaper] This is a frightful business, Topping.
TOPPING. Ah! However did it happen, Miss Maud?
MAUD. [Tapping the newspaper] It's all true. He came after my mother
to Miss Athene's, and I--I couldn't stand it. I did what it says here;
and now I'm sorry. Mother's dreadfully upset. You know father as well
as anyone, Topping; what do you think he'll do now?
TOPPING. [Sucking in his cheeks] Well, you see, Miss, it's like this:
Up to now Mr Builder's always had the respect of everybody--
MAUD moves her head impatiently.
outside his own house, of course. Well, now he hasn't got it.
Pishchologically that's bound to touch him.
MAUD. Of course; but which way? Will he throw up the sponge, or try and
stick it out here?
TOPPING. He won't throw up the sponge, Miss; more likely to squeeze it
down the back of their necks.
MAUD. He'll be asked to resign, of course.
The NEWSPAPER BOY'S VOICE is heard again approaching: "First
edition! Great sensation! Local magistrate before the Bench!
Pay-per!"
Oh, dear! I wish I hadn't! But I couldn't see mother being--
TOPPING. Don't you fret, Miss; he'll come through. His jaw's above his
brow, as you might say.
MAUD. What?
TOPPING. [Nodding] Phreenology, Miss. I rather follow that. When the
jaw's big and the brow is small, it's a sign of character. I always
think the master might have been a Scotchman, except for his fishionomy.
MAUD. A Scotsman?
TOPPING. So down on anything soft, Miss. Haven't you noticed whenever
one of these 'Umanitarians writes to the papers, there's always a
Scotchman after him next morning. Seems to be a fact of 'uman nature,
like introducin' rabbits into a new country and then weasels to get rid
of 'em. And then something to keep down the weasels. But I never can
see what could keep down a Scotchman! You seem to reach the hapex there!
MAUD. Miss Athene was married this morning, Topping. We've just come
from the Registrar's.
TOPPING. [Immovably] Indeed, Miss. I thought perhaps she was about to
be.
MAUD. Oh!
TOPPING. Comin' events. I saw the shadder yesterday.
MAUD. Well, it's all right. She's coming on here with my uncle.
A cab is heard driving up.
That's them, I expect. We all feel awful about father.
TOPPING. Ah! I shouldn't be surprised if he feels awful about you,
Miss.
MAUD. [At the window] It is them.
TOPPING goes out into the hall; ATHENE and RALPH enter Right.
MAUD. Where's father, Uncle Ralph?
RALPH. With his solicitor.
ATHENE. We left Guy with mother at the studio. She still thinks she
ought to come. She keeps on saying she must, now father's in a hole.
MAUD. I've got her things on the cab; she ought to be perfectly free to
choose.
RALPH. You've got freedom on the brain, Maud.
MAUD. So would you, Uncle Ralph, if you had father about.
RALPH. I'm his partner, my dear.
MAUD. Yes; how do you manage him?
RALPH. I've never yet given him in charge.
ATHENE. What do you do, Uncle Ralph?
RALPH. Undermine him when I can.
MAUD. And when you can't?
RALPH. Undermine the other fellow. You can't go to those movie people
now, Maud. They'd star you as the celebrated Maud Builder who gave her
father into custody. Come to us instead, and have perfect freedom, till
all this blows over.
MAUD. Oh! what will father be like now?
ATHENE. It's so queer you and he being brothers, Uncle Ralph.
RALPH. There are two sides to every coin, my dear. John's the head-and
I'm the tail. He has the sterling qualities. Now, you girls have got to
smooth him down, and make up to him. You've tried him pretty high.
MAUD. [Stubbornly] I never wanted him for a father, Uncle.
RALPH. They do wonderful things nowadays with inherited trouble. Come,
are you going to be nice to him, both of you?
ATHENE. We're going to try.
RALPH. Good! I don't even now understand how it happened.
MAUD. When you went out with Guy, it wasn't three minutes before he
came. Mother had just told us about--well, about something beastly.
Father wanted us to go, and we agreed to go out for five minutes while he
talked to mother. We went, and when we came back he told me to get a cab
to take mother home. Poor mother stood there looking like a ghost, and
he began hunting and hauling her towards the door. I saw red, and
instead of a cab I fetched that policeman. Of course father did black
his eye. Guy was splendid.
ATHENE. You gave him the lead.
MAUD. I couldn't help it, seeing father standing there all dumb.
ATHENE. It was awful! Uncle, why didn't you come back with Guy?
MAUD. Oh, yes! why didn't you, Uncle?
ATHENE. When Maud had gone for the cab, I warned him not to use force.
I told him it was against the law, but he only said: "The law be damned!"
RALPH. Well, it all sounds pretty undignified.
MAUD. Yes; everybody saw red.
They have not seen the door opened from the hall, and BUILDER
standing there. He is still unshaven, a little sunken in the face,
with a glum, glowering expression. He has a document in his hand.
He advances a step or two and they see him.
ATHENE and MAUD. [Aghast] Father!
BUILDER. Ralph, oblige me! See them off the premises!
RALPH. Steady, John!
BUILDER. Go!
MAUD. [Proudly] All right! We thought you might like to know that
Athene's married, and that I've given up the movies. Now we'll go.
BUILDER turns his back on them, and, sitting down at his
writing-table, writes.
After a moment's whispered conversation with their Uncle, the two
girls go out.
RALPH BUILDER stands gazing with whimsical commiseration at his
brother's back. As BUILDER finishes writing, he goes up and puts
his hand on his brother's shoulder.
RALPH. This is an awful jar, old man!
BUILDER. Here's what I've said to that fellow: "MR MAYOR,--You had the
effrontery to-day to discharge me with a caution--forsooth!--your fellow
--magistrate. I've consulted my solicitor as to whether an action will
lie for false imprisonment. I'm informed that it won't. I take this
opportunity of saying that justice in this town is a travesty. I have no
wish to be associated further with you or your fellows; but you are
vastly mistaken if you imagine that I shall resign my position on the
Bench or the Town Council.--Yours,
"JOHN BUILDER."
RALPH. I say--keep your sense of humour, old boy.
BUILDER. [Grimly] Humour? I've spent a night in a cell. See this!
[He holds out the document] It disinherits my family.
RALPH. John!
BUILDER. I've done with those two ladies. As to my wife--if she doesn't
come back--! When I suffer, I make others suffer.
RALPH. Julia's very upset, my dear fellow; we all are. The girls came
here to try and--
BUILDER. [Rising] They may go to hell! If that lousy Mayor thinks I'm
done with--he's mistaken! [He rings the bell] I don't want any soft
sawder. I'm a fighter.
RALPH. [In a low voice] The enemy stands within the gate, old chap.
BUILDER. What's that?
RALPH. Let's boss our own natures before we boss those of other people.
Have a sleep on it, John, before you do anything.
BUILDER. Sleep? I hadn't a wink last night. If you'd passed the night
I had--
RALPH. I hadn't many myself.
TOPPING enters.
BUILDER. Take this note to the Mayor with my compliments, and don't
bring back an answer. TOPPING. Very good, sir. There's a gentleman
from the "Comet" in the hall, sir. Would you see him for a minute, he
says.
BUILDER. Tell him to go to--
A voice says, "Mr Builder!" BUILDER turns to see the figure of the
JOURNALIST in the hall doorway. TOPPING goes out.
JOURNALIST. [Advancing with his card] Mr Builder, it's very good of you
to see me. I had the pleasure this morning--I mean--I tried to reach you
when you left the Mayor's. I thought you would probably have your own
side of this unfortunate matter. We shall be glad to give it every
prominence.
TOPPING has withdrawn, and RALPH BUILDER, at the window, stands
listening.
BUILDER. [Drily, regarding the JOURNALIST, who has spoken in a pleasant
and polite voice] Very good of you!
JOURNALIST. Not at all, sir. We felt that you would almost certainly
have good reasons of your own which would put the matter in quite a
different light.
BUILDER. Good reasons? I should think so! I tell you--a very little
more of this liberty--licence I call it--and there isn't a man who'll be
able to call himself head of a family.
JOURNALIST. [Encouragingly] Quite!
BUILDER. If the law thinks it can back up revolt, it's damned well
mistaken. I struck my daughter--I was in a passion, as you would have
been.
JOURNALIST. [Encouraging] I'm sure--
BUILDER. [Glaring at him] Well, I don't know that you would; you look a
soft sort; but any man with any blood in him.
JOURNALIST. Can one ask what she was doing, sir? We couldn't get that
point quite clear.
BUILDER. Doing? I just had my arm round my wife, trying to induce her
to come home with me after a little family tiff, and this girl came at
me. I lost my temper, and tapped her with my cane. And--that policeman
brought by my own daughter--a policeman! If the law is going to enter
private houses and abrogate domestic authority, where the hell shall we
be?
JOURNALIST. [Encouraging] No, I'm sure--I'm sure!
BUILDER. The maudlin sentimentality in these days is absolutely rotting
this country. A man can't be master in his own house, can't require his
wife to fulfil her duties, can't attempt to control the conduct of his
daughters, without coming up against it and incurring odium. A man can't
control his employees; he can't put his foot down on rebellion anywhere,
without a lot of humanitarians and licence-lovers howling at him.
JOURNALIST. Excellent, Sir; excellent!
BUILDER. Excellent? It's damnable. Here am I--a man who's always tried
to do his duty in private life and public--brought up before the Bench--
my God! because I was doing that duty; with a little too much zeal,
perhaps--I'm not an angel!
JOURNALIST. No! No! of course.
BUILDER. A proper Englishman never is. But there are no proper
Englishmen nowadays.
He crosses the room in his fervour.
RALPH. [Suddenly] As I look at faces--
BUILDER. [Absorbed] What! I told this young man I wasn't an angel.
JOURNALIST. [Drawing him on] Yes, Sir; I quite understand.
BUILDER. If the law thinks it can force me to be one of your weak-kneed
sentimentalists who let everybody do what they like--
RALPH. There are a good many who stand on their rights left, John.
BUILDER. [Absorbed] What! How can men stand on their rights left?
JOURNALIST. I'm afraid you had a painful experience, sir.
BUILDER. Every kind of humiliation. I spent the night in a stinking
cell. I haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday. Did they think I was
going to eat the muck they shoved in? And all because in a moment of
anger--which I regret, I regret!--I happened to strike my daughter, who
was interfering between me and my wife. The thing would be funny if it
weren't so disgusting. A man's house used to be sanctuary. What is it
now? With all the world poking their noses in?
He stands before the fire with his head bent, excluding as it were his
interviewer and all the world.
JOURNALIST. [Preparing to go] Thank you very much, Mr Builder. I'm
sure I can do you justice. Would you like to see a proof?
BUILDER. [Half conscious of him] What?
JOURNALIST. Or will you trust me?
BUILDER. I wouldn't trust you a yard.
JOURNALIST. [At the door] Very well, sir; you shall have a proof, I
promise. Good afternoon, and thank you.
BUILDER. Here!
But he is gone, and BUILDER is left staring at his brother, on whose
face is still that look of whimsical commiseration.
RALPH. Take a pull, old man! Have a hot bath and go to bed.
BUILDER. They've chosen to drive me to extremes, now let them take the
consequences. I don't care a kick what anybody thinks.
RALPH. [Sadly] Well, I won't worry you anymore, now.
BUILDER. [With a nasty laugh] No; come again to-morrow!
RALPH. When you've had a sleep. For the sake of the family name, John,
don't be hasty.
BUILDER. Shut the stable door? No, my boy, the horse has gone.
RALPH. Well, Well!
With a lingering look at his brother, who has sat down sullenly at
the writing table, he goes out into the hall.
BUILDER remains staring in front of him. The dining-room door
opens, and CAMILLE's head is thrust in. Seeing him, she draws back,
but he catches sight of her.
BUILDER. Here!
CAMILLE comes doubtfully up to the writing table. Her forehead is
puckered as if she were thinking hard.
BUILDER. [Looking at her, unsmiling] So you want to be my mistress,
do you?
CAMILLE makes a nervous gesture.
Well, you shall. Come here.
CAMILLE. [Not moving] You f--frighten me.
BUILDER. I've paid a pretty price for you. But you'll make up for it;
you and others.
CAMILLE. [Starting back] No; I don't like you to-day! No!
BUILDER. Come along! [She is just within reach and he seizes her arm]
All my married life I've put a curb on myself for the sake of
respectability. I've been a man of principle, my girl, as you saw
yesterday. Well, they don't want that! [He draws her close] You can sit
on my knee now.
CAMILLE. [Shrinking] No; I don't want to, to-day.
BUILDER. But you shall. They've asked for it!
CAMILLE. [With a supple movement slipping away from him] They? What is
all that? I don't want any trouble. No, no; I am not taking any.
She moves back towards the door. BUILDER utters a sardonic laugh.
Oh! you are a dangerous man! No, no! Not for me! Good-bye, sare!
She turns swiftly and goes out. BUILDER again utters his glum
laugh. And then, as he sits alone staring before him, perfect
silence reigns in the room. Over the window-sill behind him a BOY'S
face is seen to rise; it hangs there a moment with a grin spreading
on it.
BOY'S VOICE. [Sotto] Johnny Builder!
As BUILDER turns sharply, it vanishes.
'Oo beat 'is wife?
BUILDER rushes to the window.
BOY'S VOICE. [More distant and a little tentative] Johnny Builder!
BUILDER. You little devil! If I catch you, I'll wring your blasted
little neck!
BOY'S VOICE. [A little distant] 'Oo blacked the copper's eye?
BUILDER, in an ungovernable passion, seizes a small flower-pot from
the sill and dings it with all his force. The sound of a crash.
BOY'S VOICE. [Very distant] Ya-a-ah! Missed!
BUILDER stands leaning out, face injected with blood, shaking his
fist.
The CURTAIN falls for a few seconds.
SCENE III
Evening the same day.
BUILDER's study is dim and neglected-looking; the window is still
open, though it has become night. A street lamp outside shines in,
and the end of its rays fall on BUILDER asleep. He is sitting in a
high chair at the fireside end of the writing-table, with his elbows
on it, and his cheek resting on his hand. He is still unshaven, and
his clothes unchanged. A Boy's head appears above the level of the
window-sill, as if beheaded and fastened there.
BOY'S VOICE. [In a forceful whisper] Johnny Builder!
BUILDER stirs uneasily. The Boy's head vanishes. BUILDER, raising
his other hand, makes a sweep before his face, as if to brush away a
mosquito. He wakes. Takes in remembrance, and sits a moment
staring gloomily before him. The door from the hall is opened and
TOPPING comes in with a long envelope in his hand.
TOPPING. [Approaching] From the "Comet," sir. Proof of your interview,
sir; will you please revise, the messenger says; he wants to take it back
at once.
BUILDER. [Taking it] All right. I'll ring.
TOPPING. Shall I close in, sir?
BUILDER. Not now.
TOPPING withdraws. BUILDER turns up a standard lamp on the table,
opens the envelope, and begins reading the galley slip. The signs
of uneasiness and discomfort grow on him.
BUILDER. Did I say that? Muck! Muck! [He drops the proof, sits a
moment moving his head and rubbing one hand uneasily on the surface of
the table, then reaches out for the telephone receiver] Town, 245.
[Pause] The "Comet"? John Builder. Give me the Editor. [Pause] That
you, Mr Editor? John Builder speaking. That interview. I've got the
proof. It won't do. Scrap the whole thing, please. I don't want to say
anything. [Pause] Yes. I know I said it all; I can't help that.
[Pause] No; I've changed my mind. Scrap it, please. [Pause] No,
I will not say anything. [Pause] You can say what you dam' well please.
[Pause] I mean it; if you put a word into my mouth, I'll sue you for
defamation of character. It's undignified muck. I'm tearing it up.
Good-night. [He replaces the receiver, and touches a bell; then, taking
up the galley slip, he tears it viciously across into many pieces, and
rams them into the envelope.]
TOPPING enters.
Here, give this to the messenger-sharp, and tell him to run with it.
TOPPING. [Whose hand can feel the condition of the contents, with a
certain surprise] Yes, sir.
He goes, with a look back from the door.
The Mayor is here, sir. I don't know whether you would wish
BUILDER, rising, takes a turn up and down the room.
BUILDER. Nor do I. Yes! I'll see him.
TOPPING goes out, and BUILDER stands over by the fender, with his
head a little down.
TOPPING. [Re-entering] The Mayor, sir.
He retires up Left. The MAYOR is overcoated, and carries, of all
things, a top hat. He reaches the centre of the room before he
speaks.
MAYOR. [Embarrassed] Well, Builder?
BUILDER. Well?
MAYOR. Come! That caution of mine was quite parliamentary. I 'ad to
save face, you know.
BUILDER. And what about my face?
MAYOR. Well, you--you made it difficult for me. 'Ang it all! Put
yourself into my place!
BUILDER. [Grimly] I'd rather put you into mine, as it was last night.
MAYOR. Yes, yes! I know; but the Bench has got a name to keep up--must
stand well in the people's eyes. As it is, I sailed very near the wind.
Suppose we had an ordinary person up before us for striking a woman?
BUILDER. I didn't strike a woman--I struck my daughter.
MAYOR. Well, but she's not a child, you know. And you did resist the
police, if no worse. Come! You'd have been the first to maintain
British justice. Shake 'ands!
BUILDER. Is that what you came for?
MAYOR. [Taken aback] Why--yes; nobody can be more sorry than I--
BUILDER. Eye-wash! You came to beg me to resign.
MAYOR. Well, it's precious awkward, Builder. We all feel--
BUILDER. Save your powder, Mayor. I've slept on it since I wrote you
that note. Take my resignations.
MAYOR. [In relieved embarrassment] That's right. We must face your
position.
BUILDER. [With a touch of grim humour] I never yet met a man who
couldn't face another man's position.
MAYOR. After all, what is it?
BUILDER. Splendid isolation. No wife, no daughters, no Councillorship,
no Magistracy, no future--[With a laugh] not even a French maid. And
why? Because I tried to exercise a little wholesome family authority.
That's the position you're facing, Mayor.
MAYOR. Dear, dear! You're devilish bitter, Builder. It's unfortunate,
this publicity. But it'll all blow over; and you'll be back where you
were. You've a good sound practical sense underneath your temper. [A
pause] Come, now! [A pause] Well, I'll say good-night, then.
BUILDER. You shall have them in writing tomorrow.
MAYOR. [With sincerity] Come! Shake 'ands.
BUILDER, after a long look, holds out his hand. The two men exchange a
grip.
The MAYOR, turning abruptly, goes out.
BUILDER remains motionless for a minute, then resumes his seat at
the side of the writing table, leaning his head on his hands.
The Boy's head is again seen rising above the level of the
window-sill, and another and another follows, till the three,
as if decapitated, heads are seen in a row.
BOYS' VOICES. [One after another in a whispered crescendo] Johnny
Builder! Johnny Builder! Johnny Builder!
BUILDER rises, turns and stares at them. The THREE HEADS disappear,
and a Boy's voice cries shrilly: "Johnny Builder!" BUILDER moves
towards the window; voices are now crying in various pitches and
keys: "Johnny Builder!" "Beatey Builder!" "Beat 'is wife-er!"
"Beatey Builder!"
BUILDER stands quite motionless, staring, with the street lamp
lighting up a queer, rather pitiful defiance on his face. The
voices swell. There comes a sudden swish and splash of water, and
broken yells of dismay.
TOPPING'S VOICE. Scat! you young devils!
The sound of scuffling feet and a long-drawnout and distant
"Miaou!"
BUILDER stirs, shuts the window, draws the curtains, goes to the
armchair before the fireplace and sits down in it.
TOPPING enters with a little tray on which is a steaming jug of
fluid, some biscuits and a glass. He comes stealthily up level with
the chair. BUILDER stirs and looks up at him.
TOPPING. Excuse me, sir, you must 'ave digested yesterday morning's
breakfast by now--must live to eat, sir.
BUILDER. All right. Put it down.
TOPPING. [Putting the tray down on the table and taking up BUILDER'S
pipe] I fair copped those young devils.
BUILDER. You're a good fellow.
TOPPING. [Filling the pipe] You'll excuse me, sir; the Missis--has come
back, sir--
BUILDER stares at him and TOPPING stops. He hands BUILDER the
filled pipe and a box of matches.
BUILDER. [With a shiver] Light the fire, Topping. I'm chilly.
While TOPPING lights the fire BUILDER puts the pipe in his mouth and
applies a match to it. TOPPING, having lighted the fire, turns to
go, gets as far as half way, then comes back level with the table
and regards the silent brooding figure in the chair.
BUILDER. [Suddenly] Give me that paper on the table. No; the other
one--the Will.
TOPPING takes up the Will and gives it to him.
TOPPING. [With much hesitation] Excuse me, sir. It's pluck that get's
'em 'ome, sir--begging your pardon.
BUILDER has resumed his attitude and does not answer.
[In a voice just touched with feeling] Good-night, sir.
BUILDER. [Without turning his head] Good-night.
TOPPING has gone. BUILDER sits drawing at his pipe between the
firelight and the light from the standard lamp. He takes the pipe
out of his mouth and a quiver passes over his face. With a half
angry gesture he rubs the back of his hand across his eyes.
BUILDER. [To himself] Pluck! Pluck! [His lips quiver again. He
presses them hard together, puts his pipe back into his mouth, and,
taking the Will, thrusts it into the newly-lighted fire and holds it
there with a poker.]
While he is doing this the door from the hall is opened quietly, and
MRS BUILDER enters without his hearing her. She has a work bag in
her hand. She moves slowly to the table, and stands looking at him.
Then going up to the curtains she mechanically adjusts them, and
still keeping her eyes on BUILDER, comes down to the table and pours
out his usual glass of whisky toddy. BUILDER, who has become
conscious of her presence, turns in his chair as she hands it to
him. He sits a moment motionless, then takes it from her, and
squeezes her hand. MRS BUILDER goes silently to her usual chair
below the fire, and taking out some knitting begins to knit.
BUILDER makes an effort to speak, does not succeed, and sits drawing
at his pipe.
The CURTAIN falls.
LOYALTIES
From the 5th Series Plays
By John Galsworthy
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
In the Order of Appearance
CHARLES WINSOR.................. Owner of Meldon Court, near Newmarket
LADY ADELA...................... His Wife
FERDINAND DE LEVIS.............. Young, rich, and new
TREISURE........................ Winsor's Butler
GENERAL CANYNGE................. A Racing Oracle
MARGARET ORME................... A Society Girl
CAPTAIN RONALD DANDY, D.S.O..... Retired
MABEL........................... His Wife
INSPECTOR DEDE.................. Of the County Constabulary
ROBERT.......................... Winsor's Footman
A CONSTABLE..................... Attendant on Dede
AUGUSTUS BOBBING................ A Clubman
LORD ST ERTH.................... A Peer of the Realm
A FOOTMAN....................... Of the Club
MAJOR COLFORD................... A Brother Officer of Dancy's
EDWARD GRAVITER................. A Solicitor
A YOUNG CLERK................... Of Twisden & Graviter's
GILMAN.......................... A Large Grocer
JACOB TWISDEN................... Senior Partner of Twisden & Graviter
RICARDOS........................ An Italian, in Wine
ACT I.
SCENE I. CHARLES WINSOR's dressing-room at Meldon Court, near
Newmarket, of a night in early October.
SCENE II. DE LEVIS'S Bedroom at Meldon Court, a few minutes later.
ACT II.
SCENE I. The Card Room of a London Club between four and five in
the afternoon, three weeks later.
SCENE II. The Sitting-room of the DANCYS' Flat, the following
morning.
ACT III.
SCENE I. OLD MR JACOB TWISDEN'S Room at TWISDEN & GRAVITER'S in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, at four in the afternoon, three
months later.
SCENE II. The same, next morning at half-past ten.
SCENE III. The Sitting-room of the DANCYS' Flat, an hour later.
ACT I
SCENE I
The dressing-room of CHARLES WINSOR, owner of Meldon Court, near
Newmarket; about eleven-thirty at night. The room has pale grey
walls, unadorned; the curtains are drawn over a window Back Left
Centre. A bed lies along the wall, Left. An open door, Right Back,
leads into LADY ADELA's bedroom; a door, Right Forward, into a long
corridor, on to which abut rooms in a row, the whole length of the
house's left wing. WINSOR's dressing-table, with a light over it,
is Stage Right of the curtained window. Pyjamas are laid out on the
bed, which is turned back. Slippers are handy, and all the usual
gear of a well-appointed bed-dressing-room. CHARLES WINSOR, a tall,
fair, good-looking man about thirty-eight, is taking off a smoking
jacket.
WINSOR. Hallo! Adela!
V. OF LADY A. [From her bedroom] Hallo!
WINSOR. In bed?
V. OF LADY A. No.
She appears in the doorway in under-garment and a wrapper. She,
too, is fair, about thirty-five, rather delicious, and suggestive
of porcelain.
WINSOR. Win at Bridge?
LADY A. No fear.
WINSOR. Who did?
LADY A. Lord St Erth and Ferdy De Levis.
WINSOR. That young man has too much luck--the young bounder won two
races to-day; and he's as rich as Croesus.
LADY A. Oh! Charlie, he did look so exactly as if he'd sold me a carpet
when I was paying him.
WINSOR. [Changing into slippers] His father did sell carpets,
wholesale, in the City.
LADY A. Really? And you say I haven't intuition! [With a finger on her
lips] Morison's in there.
WINSOR. [Motioning towards the door, which she shuts] Ronny Dancy took
a tenner off him, anyway, before dinner.
LADY A. No! How?
WINSOR. Standing jump on to a bookcase four feet high. De Levis had to
pay up, and sneered at him for making money by parlour tricks. That
young Jew gets himself disliked.
LADY A. Aren't you rather prejudiced?
WINSOR. Not a bit. I like Jews. That's not against him--rather the
contrary these days. But he pushes himself. The General tells me he's
deathly keen to get into the Jockey Club. [Taking off his tie] It's
amusing to see him trying to get round old St Erth.
LADY A. If Lord St Erth and General Canynge backed him he'd get in if he
did sell carpets!
WINSOR. He's got some pretty good horses. [Taking off his waistcoat]
Ronny Dancy's on his bones again, I'm afraid. He had a bad day. When a
chap takes to doing parlour stunts for a bet--it's a sure sign. What
made him chuck the Army?
LADY A. He says it's too dull, now there's no fighting.
WINSOR. Well, he can't exist on backing losers.
LADY A. Isn't it just like him to get married now? He really is the
most reckless person.
WINSOR. Yes. He's a queer chap. I've always liked him, but I've never
quite made him out. What do you think of his wife?
LADY A. Nice child; awfully gone on him.
WINSOR. Is he?
LADY A. Quite indecently--both of them. [Nodding towards the wall,
Left] They're next door.
WINSOR. Who's beyond them?
LADY A. De Levis; and Margaret Orme at the end. Charlie, do you realise
that the bathroom out there has to wash those four?
WINSOR. I know.
LADY A. Your grandfather was crazy when he built this wing; six rooms in
a row with balconies like an hotel, and only one bath--if we hadn't put
ours in.
WINSOR. [Looking at his watch] Half-past eleven. [Yawns] Newmarket
always makes me sleepy. You're keeping Morison up.
LADY ADELA goes to the door, blowing a kiss. CHARLES goes up to his
dressing-table and begins to brush his hair, sprinkling on essence.
There is a knock on the corridor door.
Come in.
DE LEVIS enters, clad in pyjamas and flowered dressing-gown. He is
a dark, good-looking, rather Eastern young man. His face is long
and disturbed.
Hallo! De Levis! Anything I can do for you?
DE LEVIS. [In a voice whose faint exoticism is broken by a vexed
excitement] I say, I'm awfully sorry, Winsor, but I thought I'd better
tell you at once. I've just had--er--rather a lot of money stolen.
WINSOR. What! [There is something of outrage in his tone and glance, as
who should say: "In my house?"] How do you mean stolen?
DE LEVIS. I put it under my pillow and went to have a bath; when I came
back it was gone.
WINSOR. Good Lord! How much?
DE LEVIS. Nearly a thousand-nine hundred and seventy, I think.
WINSOR. Phew! [Again the faint tone of outrage, that a man should have
so much money about him].
DE LEVIS. I sold my Rosemary filly to-day on the course to Bentman the
bookie, and he paid me in notes.
WINSOR. What? That weed Dancy gave you in the Spring?
DE LEVIS. Yes. But I tried her pretty high the other day; and she's in
the Cambridgeshire. I was only out of my room a quarter of an hour, and
I locked my door.
WINSOR. [Again outraged] You locked--
DE LEVIS. [Not seeing the fine shade] Yes, and had the key here. [He
taps his pocket] Look here! [He holds out a pocket-book] It's been
stuffed with my shaving papers.
WINSOR. [Between feeling that such things don't happen, and a sense that
he will have to clear it up] This is damned awkward, De Levis.
DE LEVIS. [With steel in his voice] Yes. I should like it back.
WINSOR. Have you got the numbers of the notes?
DE LEVIS. No.
WINSOR. What were they?
DE LEVIS. One hundred, three fifties, and the rest tens and fives.
WINSOR. What d'you want me to do?
DE LEVIS. Unless there's anybody you think--
WINSOR. [Eyeing him] Is it likely?
DE Levis. Then I think the police ought to see my room. It's a lot of
money.
WINSOR. Good Lord! We're not in Town; there'll be nobody nearer than
Newmarket at this time of night--four miles.
The door from the bedroom is suddenly opened and LADY ADELA appears.
She has on a lace cap over her finished hair, and the wrapper.
LADY A. [Closing the door] What is it? Are you ill, Mr De Levis?
WINSOR. Worse; he's had a lot of money stolen. Nearly a thousand
pounds.
LADY A. Gracious! Where?
DE LEVIS. From under my pillow, Lady Adela--my door was locked--I was in
the bath-room.
LADY A. But how fearfully thrilling!
WINSOR. Thrilling! What's to be done? He wants it back.
LADY A. Of course! [With sudden realisation] Oh! But Oh! it's quite
too unpleasant!
WINSOR. Yes! What am I to do? Fetch the servants out of their rooms?
Search the grounds? It'll make the devil of a scandal.
DE LEVIS. Who's next to me?
LADY A. [Coldly] Oh! Mr De Levis!
WINSOR. Next to you? The Dancys on this side, and Miss Orme on the
other. What's that to do with it?
DE LEVIS. They may have heard something.
WINSOR. Let's get them. But Dancy was down stairs when I came up. Get
Morison, Adela! No. Look here! When was this exactly? Let's have as
many alibis as we can.
DE LEVIS. Within the last twenty minutes, certainly.
WINSOR. How long has Morison been up with you?
LADY A. I came up at eleven, and rang for her at once.
WINSOR. [Looking at his watch] Half an hour. Then she's all right.
Send her for Margaret and the Dancys--there's nobody else in this wing.
No; send her to bed. We don't want gossip. D'you mind going yourself,
Adela?
LADY A. Consult General Canynge, Charlie.
WINSOR. Right. Could you get him too? D'you really want the police,
De Levis?
DE LEVIS. [Stung by the faint contempt in his tone of voice] Yes, I do.
WINSOR. Then, look here, dear! Slip into my study and telephone to the
police at Newmarket. There'll be somebody there; they're sure to have
drunks. I'll have Treisure up, and speak to him. [He rings the bell].
LADY ADELA goes out into her room and closes the door.
WINSOR. Look here, De Levis! This isn't an hotel. It's the sort of
thing that doesn't happen in a decent house. Are you sure you're not
mistaken, and didn't have them stolen on the course?
DE LEVIS. Absolutely. I counted them just before putting them under my
pillow; then I locked the door and had the key here. There's only one
door, you know.
WINSOR. How was your window?
DE LEVIS. Open.
WINSOR. [Drawing back the curtains of his own window] You've got a
balcony like this. Any sign of a ladder or anything?
DE LEVIS. No.
WINSOR. It must have been done from the window, unless someone had a
skeleton key. Who knew you'd got that money? Where did Kentman pay you?
DE LEVIS. Just round the corner in the further paddock.
WINSOR. Anybody about?
DE LEVIS. Oh, yes!
WINSOR. Suspicious?
DE LEVIS. I didn't notice anything.
WINSOR. You must have been marked down and followed here.
DE LEVIS. How would they know my room?
WINSOR. Might have got it somehow. [A knock from the corridor] Come in.
TREISURE, the Butler, appears, a silent, grave man of almost
supernatural conformity. DE LEVIS gives him a quick, hard look,
noted and resented by WINSOR.
TREISURE. [To WINSOR] Yes, sir?
WINSOR. Who valets Mr De Levis?
TREISURE. Robert, Sir.
WINSOR. When was he up last?
TREISURE. In the ordinary course of things, about ten o'clock, sir.
WINSOR. When did he go to bed?
TREISURE. I dismissed at eleven.
WINSOR. But did he go?
TREISURE. To the best of my knowledge. Is there anything I can do, sir?
WINSOR. [Disregarding a sign from DE LEVIS] Look here, Treisure,
Mr De Levis has had a large sum of money taken from his bedroom within
the last half hour.
TREISURE. Indeed, Sir!
WINSOR. Robert's quite all right, isn't he?
TREISURE. He is, sir.
DE LEVIS. How do you know?
TREISURE's eyes rest on DE LEVIS.
TREISURE. I am a pretty good judge of character, sir, if you'll excuse
me.
WINSOR. Look here, De Levis, eighty or ninety notes must have been
pretty bulky. You didn't have them on you at dinner?
DE LEVIS. No.
WINSOR. Where did you put them?
DE LEVIS. In a boot, and the boot in my suitcase, and locked it.
TREISURE smiles faintly.
WINSOR. [Again slightly outraged by such precautions in his house] And
you found it locked--and took them from there to put under your pillow?
DE LEVIS. Yes.
WINSOR. Run your mind over things, Treisure--has any stranger been
about?
TREISURE. No, Sir.
WINSOR. This seems to have happened between 11.15 and 11.30. Is that
right? [DE LEVIS nods] Any noise-anything outside-anything suspicious
anywhere?
TREISURE. [Running his mind--very still] No, sir.
WINSOR. What time did you shut up?
TREISURE. I should say about eleven-fifteen, sir. As soon as Major
Colford and Captain Dancy had finished billiards. What was Mr De Levis
doing out of his room, if I may ask, sir?
WINSOR. Having a bath; with his room locked and the key in his pocket.
TREISURE. Thank you, sir.
DE LEVIS. [Conscious of indefinable suspicion] Damn it! What do you
mean? I WAS!
TREISURE. I beg your pardon, sir.
WINSOR. [Concealing a smile] Look here, Treisure, it's infernally
awkward for everybody.
TREISURE. It is, sir.
WINSOR. What do you suggest?
TREISURE. The proper thing, sir, I suppose, would be a cordon and a
complete search--in our interests.
WINSOR. I entirely refuse to suspect anybody.
TREISURE. But if Mr De Levis feels otherwise, sir?
DE LEVIS. [Stammering] I? All I know is--the money was there, and it's
gone.
WINSOR. [Compunctious] Quite! It's pretty sickening for you. But so
it is for anybody else. However, we must do our best to get it back for
you.
A knock on the door.
WINSOR. Hallo!
TREISURE opens the door, and GENERAL. CANYNGE enters.
Oh! It's you, General. Come in. Adela's told you?
GENERAL CANYNGE nods. He is a slim man of about sixty, very well
preserved, intensely neat and self-contained, and still in evening
dress. His eyelids droop slightly, but his eyes are keen and his
expression astute.
WINSOR. Well, General, what's the first move?
CANYNGE. [Lifting his eyebrows] Mr De Levis presses the matter?
DE Levis. [Flicked again] Unless you think it's too plebeian of me,
General Canynge--a thousand pounds.
CANYNGE. [Drily] Just so! Then we must wait for the police, WINSOR.
Lady Adela has got through to them. What height are these rooms from the
ground, Treisure?
TREISURE. Twenty-three feet from the terrace, sir.
CANYNGE. Any ladders near?
TREISURE. One in the stables, Sir, very heavy. No others within three
hundred yards.
CANYNGE. Just slip down, and see whether that's been moved.
TREISURE. Very good, General. [He goes out.]
DE LEVIS. [Uneasily] Of course, he--I suppose you--
WINSOR. We do.
CANYNGE. You had better leave this in our hands, De Levis.
DE LEVIS. Certainly; only, the way he--
WINSOR. [Curtly] Treisure has been here since he was a boy. I should as
soon suspect myself.
DE LEVIS. [Looking from one to the other--with sudden anger] You seem
to think--! What was I to do? Take it lying down and let whoever it is
get clear off? I suppose it's natural to want my money back?
CANYNGE looks at his nails; WINSOR out of the window.
WINSOR. [Turning] Of course, De Levis!
DE LEVIS. [Sullenly] Well, I'll go to my room. When the police come,
perhaps you'll let me know. He goes out.
WINSOR. Phew! Did you ever see such a dressing-gown?
The door is opened. LADY ADELA and MARGARET ORME come in. The
latter is a vivid young lady of about twenty-five in a vivid
wrapper; she is smoking a cigarette.
LADY A. I've told the Dancys--she was in bed. And I got through to
Newmarket, Charles, and Inspector Dede is coming like the wind on a motor
cycle.
MARGARET. Did he say "like the wind," Adela? He must have imagination.
Isn't this gorgeous? Poor little Ferdy!
WINSOR. [Vexed] You might take it seriously, Margaret; it's pretty
beastly for us all. What time did you come up?
MARGARET. I came up with Adela. Am I suspected, Charles? How
thrilling!
WINSOR. Did you hear anything?
MARGARET. Only little Ferdy splashing.
WINSOR. And saw nothing?
MARGARET. Not even that, alas!
LADY A. [With a finger held up] Leste! Un peu leste! Oh! Here are the
Dancys. Come in, you two!
MABEL and RONALD DANCY enter. She is a pretty young woman with
bobbed hair, fortunately, for she has just got out of bed, and is in
her nightgown and a wrapper. DANCY is in his smoking jacket. He
has a pale, determined face with high cheekbones, small, deep-set
dark eyes, reddish crisp hair, and looks like a horseman.
WINSOR. Awfully sorry to disturb you, Mrs Dancy; but I suppose you and
Ronny haven't heard anything. De Levis's room is just beyond Ronny's
dressing-room, you know.
MABEL. I've been asleep nearly half an hour, and Ronny's only just come
up.
CANYNGE. Did you happen to look out of your window, Mrs Dancy?
MABEL. Yes. I stood there quite five minutes.
CANYNGE. When?
MABEL. Just about eleven, I should think. It was raining hard then.
CANYNGE. Yes, it's just stopped. You saw nothing?
MABEL. No.
DANCY. What time does he say the money was taken?
WINSOR. Between the quarter and half past. He'd locked his door and had
the key with him.
MARGARET. How quaint! Just like an hotel. Does he put his boots out?
LADY A. Don't be so naughty, Meg.
CANYNGE. When exactly did you come up, Dance?
DANCY. About ten minutes ago. I'd only just got into my dressing-room
before Lady Adela came. I've been writing letters in the hall since
Colford and I finished billiards.
CANYNGE. You weren't up for anything in between?
DANCY. No.
MARGARET. The mystery of the grey room.
DANCY. Oughtn't the grounds to be searched for footmarks?
CANYNGE. That's for the police.
DANCY. The deuce! Are they coming?
CANYNGE. Directly. [A knock] Yes?
TREISURE enters.
Well?
TREISURE. The ladder has not been moved, General. There isn't a sign.
WINSOR. All right. Get Robert up, but don't say anything to him. By
the way, we're expecting the police.
TREISURE. I trust they will not find a mare's nest, sir, if I may say
so.
He goes.
WINSOR. De Levis has got wrong with Treisure. [Suddenly] But, I say,
what would any of us have done if we'd been in his shoes?
MARGARET. A thousand pounds? I can't even conceive having it.
DANCY. We probably shouldn't have found it out.
LADY A. No--but if we had.
DANCY. Come to you--as he did.
WINSOR. Yes; but there's a way of doing things.
CANYNGE. We shouldn't have wanted the police.
MARGARET. No. That's it. The hotel touch.
LADY A. Poor young man; I think we're rather hard on him.
WINSOR. He sold that weed you gave him, Dancy, to Kentman, the bookie,
and these were the proceeds.
DANCY. Oh!
WINSOR. He'd tried her high, he said.
DANCY. [Grimly] He would.
MABEL. Oh! Ronny, what bad luck!
WINSOR. He must have been followed here. [At the window] After rain
like that, there ought to be footmarks.
The splutter of a motor cycle is heard.
MARGARET. Here's the wind!
WINSOR. What's the move now, General?
CANYNGE. You and I had better see the Inspector in De Levis's room,
WINSOR. [To the others] If you'll all be handy, in case he wants to put
questions for himself.
MARGARET. I hope he'll want me; it's just too thrilling.
DANCY. I hope he won't want me; I'm dog-tired. Come on, Mabel. [He
puts his arm in his wife's].
CANYNGE. Just a minute, Charles.
He draws dose to WINSOR as the others are departing to their rooms.
WINSOR. Yes, General?
CANYNGE. We must be careful with this Inspector fellow. If he pitches
hastily on somebody in the house it'll be very disagreeable.
WINSOR. By Jove! It will.
CANYNGE. We don't want to rouse any ridiculous suspicion.
WINSOR. Quite. [A knock] Come in!
TREISURE enters.
TREISURE. Inspector Dede, Sir.
WINSOR. Show him in.
TREISURE. Robert is in readiness, sir; but I could swear he knows
nothing about it.
WINSOR. All right.
TREISURE re-opens the door, and says "Come in, please." The
INSPECTOR enters, blue, formal, moustachioed, with a peaked cap in
his hand.
WINSOR. Good evening, Inspector. Sorry to have brought you out at this
time of night.
INSPECTOR. Good evenin', sir. Mr WINSOR? You're the owner here, I
think?
WINSOR. Yes. General Canynge.
INSPECTOR. Good evenin', General. I understand, a large sum of money?
WINSOR. Yes. Shall we go straight to the room it was taken from? One
of my guests, Mr De Levis. It's the third room on the left.
CANYNGE. We've not been in there yet, Inspector; in fact, we've done
nothing, except to find out that the stable ladder has not been moved.
We haven't even searched the grounds.
INSPECTOR. Right, sir; I've brought a man with me.
They go out.
CURTAIN. And interval of a Minute.
SCENE II
[The same set is used for this Scene, with the different arrangement
of furniture, as specified.]
The bedroom of DE LEVIS is the same in shape as WINSOR'S
dressing-room, except that there is only one door--to the
corridor. The furniture, however, is differently arranged; a
small four-poster bedstead stands against the wall, Right Back,
jutting into the room. A chair, on which DE LEVIS's clothes are
thrown, stands at its foot. There is a dressing-table against the
wall to the left of the open windows, where the curtains are
drawn back and a stone balcony is seen. Against the wall to the
right of the window is a chest of drawers, and a washstand is
against the wall, Left. On a small table to the right of the bed
an electric reading lamp is turned up, and there is a light over
the dressing-table. The INSPECTOR is standing plumb centre
looking at the bed, and DE LEVIS by the back of the chair at the
foot of the bed. WINSOR and CANYNGE are close to the door, Right
Forward.
INSPECTOR. [Finishing a note] Now, sir, if this is the room as you left
it for your bath, just show us exactly what you did after takin' the
pocket-book from the suit case. Where was that, by the way?
DE LEVIS. [Pointing] Where it is now--under the dressing-table.
He comes forward to the front of the chair, opens the pocket-book,
goes through the pretence of counting his shaving papers, closes the
pocket-book, takes it to the head of the bed and slips it under the
pillow. Makes the motion of taking up his pyjamas, crosses below
the INSPECTOR to the washstand, takes up a bath sponge, crosses to
the door, takes out the key, opens the door.
INSPECTOR. [Writing]. We now have the room as it was when the theft was
committed. Reconstruct accordin' to 'uman nature, gentlemen--assumin'
the thief to be in the room, what would he try first?--the clothes, the
dressin'-table, the suit case, the chest of drawers, and last the bed.
He moves accordingly, examining the glass on the dressing-table, the
surface of the suit cases, and the handles of the drawers, with a
spy-glass, for finger-marks.
CANYNGE. [Sotto voce to WINSOR] The order would have been just the
other way.
The INSPECTOR goes on hands and knees and examines the carpet
between the window and the bed.
DE LEVIS. Can I come in again?
INSPECTOR. [Standing up] Did you open the window, sir, or was it open
when you first came in?
DE LEVIS. I opened it.
INSPECTOR. Drawin' the curtains back first?
DE LEVIS. Yes.
INSPECTOR. [Sharply] Are you sure there was nobody in the room already?
DE LEVIS. [Taken aback] I don't know. I never thought. I didn't look
under the bed, if you mean that.
INSPECTOR. [Jotting] Did not look under bed. Did you look under it
after the theft?
DE LEVIS. No. I didn't.
INSPECTOR. Ah! Now, what did you do after you came back from your bath?
Just give us that precisely.
DE LEVIS. Locked the door and left the key in. Put back my sponge, and
took off my dressing-gown and put it there. [He points to the footrails
of the bed] Then I drew the curtains, again.
INSPECTOR. Shutting the window?
DE LEVIS. No. I got into bed, felt for my watch to see the time. My
hand struck the pocket-book, and somehow it felt thinner. I took it out,
looked into it, and found the notes gone, and these shaving papers
instead.
INSPECTOR. Let me have a look at those, sir. [He applies the
spy-glasses] And then?
DE LEVIS. I think I just sat on the bed.
INSPECTOR. Thinkin' and cursin' a bit, I suppose. Ye-es?
DE LEVIS. Then I put on my dressing-gown and went straight to Mr WINSOR.
INSPECTOR. Not lockin' the door?
DE LEVIS. No.
INSPECTOR. Exactly. [With a certain finality] Now, sir, what time did
you come up?
DE LEVIS. About eleven.
INSPECTOR. Precise, if you can give it me.
DE LEVIS. Well, I know it was eleven-fifteen when I put my watch under
my pillow, before I went to the bath, and I suppose I'd been about a
quarter of an hour undressing. I should say after eleven, if anything.
INSPECTOR. Just undressin'? Didn't look over your bettin' book?
DE LEVIS. No.
INSPECTOR. No prayers or anything?
DE LEVIS. No.
INSPECTOR. Pretty slippy with your undressin' as a rule?
DE LEVIS. Yes. Say five past eleven.
INSPECTOR. Mr WINSOR, what time did the gentleman come to you?
WINSOR. Half-past eleven.
INSPECTOR. How do you fix that, sir?
WINSOR. I'd just looked at the time, and told my wife to send her maid
off.
INSPECTOR. Then we've got it fixed between 11.15 and 11.30. [Jots] Now,
sir, before we go further I'd like to see your butler and the footman
that valets this gentleman.
WINSOR. [With distaste] Very well, Inspector; only--my butler has been
with us from a boy.
INSPECTOR. Quite so. This is just clearing the ground, sir.
WINSOR. General, d'you mind touching that bell?
CANYNGE rings a bell by the bed.
INSPECTOR. Well, gentlemen, there are four possibilities. Either the
thief was here all the time, waiting under the bed, and slipped out after
this gentleman had gone to Mr WINSOR. Or he came in with a key that fits
the lock; and I'll want to see all the keys in the house. Or he came in
with a skeleton key and out by the window, probably droppin' from the
balcony. Or he came in by the window with a rope or ladder and out the
same way. [Pointing] There's a footmark here from a big boot which has
been out of doors since it rained.
CANYNGE. Inspector--you er--walked up to the window when you first came
into the room.
INSPECTOR. [Stiffly] I had not overlooked that, General.
CANYNGE. Of course.
A knock on the door relieves a certain tension,
WINSOR. Come in.
The footman ROBERT, a fresh-faced young man, enters, followed by
TREISURE.
INSPECTOR. You valet Mr--Mr De Levis, I think?
ROBERT. Yes, sir.
INSPECTOR. At what time did you take his clothes and boots?
ROBERT. Ten o'clock, sir.
INSPECTOR. [With a pounce] Did you happen to look under his bed?
ROBERT. No, sir.
INSPECTOR. Did you come up again, to bring the clothes back?
ROBERT. No, sir; they're still downstairs.
INSPECTOR. Did you come up again for anything?
ROBERT. No, Sir.
INSPECTOR. What time did you go to bed?
ROBERT. Just after eleven, Sir.
INSPECTOR. [Scrutinising him] Now, be careful. Did you go to bed at
all?
ROBERT. No, Sir.
INSPECTOR. Then why did you say you did? There's been a theft here, and
anything you say may be used against you.
ROBERT. Yes, Sir. I meant, I went to my room.
INSPECTOR. Where is your room?
ROBERT. On the ground floor, at the other end of the right wing, sir.
WINSOR. It's the extreme end of the house from this, Inspector. He's
with the other two footmen.
INSPECTOR. Were you there alone?
ROBERT. No, Sir. Thomas and Frederick was there too.
TREISURE. That's right; I've seen them.
INSPECTOR. [Holding up his hand for silence] Were you out of the room
again after you went in?
ROBERT. No, Sir.
INSPECTOR. What were you doing, if you didn't go to bed?
ROBERT. [To WINSOR] Beggin' your pardon, Sir, we were playin' Bridge.
INSPECTOR. Very good. You can go. I'll see them later on.
ROBERT. Yes, Sir. They'll say the same as me. He goes out, leaving a
smile on the face of all except the INSPECTOR and DE LEVIS.
INSPECTOR. [Sharply] Call him back.
TREISURE calls "Robert," and the FOOTMAN re-enters.
ROBERT. Yes, Sir?
INSPECTOR. Did you notice anything particular about Mr De Levis's
clothes?
ROBERT. Only that they were very good, Sir.
INSPECTOR. I mean--anything peculiar?
ROBERT. [After reflection] Yes, Sir.
INSPECTOR. Well?
ROBERT. A pair of his boots this evenin' was reduced to one, sir.
INSPECTOR. What did you make of that?
ROBERT. I thought he might have thrown the other at a cat or something.
INSPECTOR. Did you look for it?
ROBERT. No, Sir; I meant to draw his attention to it in the morning.
INSPECTOR. Very good.
ROBERT. Yes, Sir. [He goes again.]
INSPECTOR. [Looking at DE LEVIS] Well, sir, there's your story
corroborated.
DE LEVIS. [Stifly] I don't know why it should need corroboration,
Inspector.
INSPECTOR. In my experience, you can never have too much of that. [To
WINSOR] I understand there's a lady in the room on this side [pointing
Left] and a gentleman on this [pointing Right] Were they in their rooms?
WINSOR. Miss Orme was; Captain Dancy not.
INSPECTOR. Do they know of the affair?
WINSOR. Yes.
INSPECTOR. Well, I'd just like the keys of their doors for a minute. My
man will get them.
He goes to the door, opens it, and speaks to a constable in the
corridor.
[To TREISURE] You can go with him.
TREISURE goes Out.
In the meantime I'll just examine the balcony.
He goes out on the balcony, followed by DE LEVIS.
WINSOR. [To CANYNGE] Damn De Levis and his money! It's deuced
invidious, all this, General.
CANYNGE. The Inspector's no earthly.
There is a simultaneous re-entry of the INSPECTOR from the balcony
and of TREISURE and the CONSTABLE from the corridor.
CONSTABLE. [Handing key] Room on the left, Sir. [Handing key] Room on
the right, sir.
The INSPECTOR tries the keys in the door, watched with tension by
the others. The keys fail.
INSPECTOR. Put them back.
Hands keys to CONSTABLE, who goes out, followed by TREISURE.
I'll have to try every key in the house, sir.
WINSOR. Inspector, do you really think it necessary to disturb the whole
house and knock up all my guests? It's most disagreeable, all this, you
know. The loss of the money is not such a great matter. Mr De Levis has
a very large income.
CANYNGE. You could get the numbers of the notes from Kentman the
bookmaker, Inspector; he'll probably have the big ones, anyway.
INSPECTOR. [Shaking his head] A bookie. I don't suppose he will, sir.
It's come and go with them, all the time.
WINSOR. We don't want a Meldon Court scandal, Inspector.
INSPECTOR. Well, Mr WINSOR, I've formed my theory.
As he speaks, DE LEVIS comes in from the balcony.
And I don't say to try the keys is necessary to it; but strictly, I ought
to exhaust the possibilities.
WINSOR. What do you say, De Levis? D'you want everybody in the house
knocked up so that their keys can be tried?
DE LEVIS. [Whose face, since his return, expresses a curious excitement]
No, I don't.
INSPECTOR. Very well, gentlemen. In my opinion the thief walked in
before the door was locked, probably during dinner; and was under the
bed. He escaped by dropping from the balcony--the creeper at that corner
[he points stage Left] has been violently wrenched. I'll go down now,
and examine the grounds, and I'll see you again Sir. [He makes another
entry in his note-book] Goodnight, then, gentlemen!
CANYNGE. Good-night!
WINSOR. [With relief] I'll come with you, Inspector.
He escorts him to the door, and they go out.
DE LEVIS. [Suddenly] General, I know who took them.
CANYNGE. The deuce you do! Are you following the Inspector's theory?
DE LEVIS. [Contemptuously] That ass! [Pulling the shaving papers out
of the case] No! The man who put those there was clever and cool enough
to wrench that creeper off the balcony, as a blind. Come and look here,
General. [He goes to the window; the GENERAL follows. DE LEVIS points
stage Right] See the rail of my balcony, and the rail of the next? [He
holds up the cord of his dressing-gown, stretching his arms out] I've
measured it with this. Just over seven feet, that's all! If a man can
take a standing jump on to a narrow bookcase four feet high and balance
there, he'd make nothing of that. And, look here! [He goes out on the
balcony and returns with a bit of broken creeper in his hand, and holds
it out into the light] Someone's stood on that--the stalk's crushed--the
inner corner too, where he'd naturally stand when he took his jump back.
CANYNGE. [After examining it--stiffly] That other balcony is young
Dancy's, Mr De Levis; a soldier and a gentleman. This is an
extraordinary insinuation.
DE LEVIS. Accusation.
CANYNGE. What!
DE LEVIS. I have intuitions, General; it's in my blood. I see the whole
thing. Dancy came up, watched me into the bathroom, tried my door,
slipped back into his dressing-room, saw my window was open, took that
jump, sneaked the notes, filled the case up with these, wrenched the
creeper there [He points stage Left] for a blind, jumped back, and
slipped downstairs again. It didn't take him four minutes altogether.
CANYNGE. [Very gravely] This is outrageous, De Levis. Dancy says he
was downstairs all the time. You must either withdraw unreservedly,
or I must confront you with him.
DE LEVIS. If he'll return the notes and apologise, I'll do nothing--
except cut him in future. He gave me that filly, you know, as a hopeless
weed, and he's been pretty sick ever since, that he was such a flat as
not to see how good she was. Besides, he's hard up, I know.
CANYNGE. [After a vexed turn up and down the room] It's mad, sir, to
jump to conclusions like this.
DE LEVIS. Not so mad as the conclusion Dancy jumped to when he lighted
on my balcony.
CANYNGE. Nobody could have taken this money who did not know you had it.
DE LEVIS. How do you know that he didn't?
CANYNGE. Do you know that he did?
DE LEVIS. I haven't the least doubt of it.
CANYNGE. Without any proof. This is very ugly, De Levis. I must tell
WINSOR.
DE LEVIS. [Angrily] Tell the whole blooming lot. You think I've no
feelers, but I've felt the atmosphere here, I can tell you, General. If
I were in Dancy's shoes and he in mine, your tone to me would be very
different.
CANYNGE. [Suavely frigid] I'm not aware of using any tone, as you call
it. But this is a private house, Mr De Levis, and something is due to
our host and to the esprit de corps that exists among gentlemen.
DE LEVIS. Since when is a thief a gentleman? Thick as thieves--a good
motto, isn't it?
CANYNGE. That's enough! [He goes to the door, but stops before opening
it] Now, look here! I have some knowledge of the world. Once an
accusation like this passes beyond these walls no one can foresee the
consequences. Captain Dancy is a gallant fellow, with a fine record as a
soldier; and only just married. If he's as innocent as--Christ--mud will
stick to him, unless the real thief is found. In the old days of swords,
either you or he would not have gone out of this room alive. It you
persist in this absurd accusation, you will both of you go out of this
room dead in the eyes of Society: you for bringing it, he for being the
object of it.
DE LEVIS. Society! Do you think I don't know that I'm only tolerated
for my money? Society can't add injury to insult and have my money as
well, that's all. If the notes are restored I'll keep my mouth shut; if
they're not, I shan't. I'm certain I'm right. I ask nothing better than
to be confronted with Dancy; but, if you prefer it, deal with him in your
own way--for the sake of your esprit de corps.
CANYNGE. 'Pon my soul, Mr De Levis, you go too far.
DE LEVIS. Not so far as I shall go, General Canynge, if those notes
aren't given back.
WINSOR comes in.
WINSOR. Well, De Levis, I'm afraid that's all we can do for the present.
So very sorry this should have happened in my house.
CANYNGE. [Alter a silence] There's a development, WINSOR. Mr De Levis
accuses one of your guests.
WINSOR. What?
CANYNGE. Of jumping from his balcony to this, taking the notes, and
jumping back. I've done my best to dissuade him from indulging the
fancy--without success. Dancy must be told.
DE LEVIS. You can deal with Dancy in your own way. All I want is the
money back.
CANYNGE. [Drily] Mr De Levis feels that he is only valued for his
money, so that it is essential for him to have it back.
WINSOR. Damn it! This is monstrous, De Levis. I've known Ronald Dancy
since he was a boy.
CANYNGE. You talk about adding injury to insult, De Levis. What do you
call such treatment of a man who gave you the mare out of which you made
this thousand pounds?
DE LEVIS. I didn't want the mare; I took her as a favour.
CANYNGE. With an eye to possibilities, I venture to think--the principle
guides a good many transactions.
DE LEVIS. [As if flicked on a raw spot] In my race, do you mean?
CANYNGE. [Coldly] I said nothing of the sort.
DE LEVIS. No; you don't say these things, any of you.
CANYNGE. Nor did I think it.
DE LEVIS. Dancy does.
WINSOR. Really, De Levis, if this is the way you repay hospitality--
DE LEVIS. Hospitality that skins my feelings and costs me a thousand
pounds!
CANYNGE. Go and get Dancy, WINSOR; but don't say anything to him.
WINSOR goes out.
CANYNGE. Perhaps you will kindly control yourself, and leave this to me.
DE LEVIS turns to the window and lights a cigarette. WINSOR comes
back, followed by DANCY.
CANYNGE. For WINSOR's sake, Dancy, we don't want any scandal or fuss
about this affair. We've tried to make the police understand that. To
my mind the whole thing turns on our finding who knew that De Levis had
this money. It's about that we want to consult you.
WINSOR. Kentman paid De Levis round the corner in the further paddock,
he says.
DE LEVIS turns round from the window, so that he and DANCY are
staring at each other.
CANYNGE. Did you hear anything that throws light, Dancy? As it was your
filly originally, we thought perhaps you might.
DANCY. I? No.
CANYNGE. Didn't hear of the sale on the course at all?
DANCY. No.
CANYNGE. Then you can't suggest any one who could have known? Nothing
else was taken, you see.
DANCY. De Levis is known to be rolling, as I am known to be stony.
CANYNGE. There are a good many people still rolling, besides Mr De
Levis, but not many people with so large a sum in their pocket-books.
DANCY. He won two races.
DE LEVIS. Do you suggest that I bet in ready money?
DANCY. I don't know how you bet, and I don't care.
CANYNGE. You can't help us, then?
DANCY. No. I can't. Anything else? [He looks fixedly at DE LEVIS].
CANYNGE. [Putting his hand on DANCY's arm] Nothing else, thank you,
Dancy.
DANCY goes. CANYNGE puts his hand up to his face. A moment's
silence.
WINSOR. You see, De Levis? He didn't even know you'd got the money.
DE LEVIS. Very conclusive.
WINSOR. Well! You are--!
There is a knock on the door, and the INSPECTOR enters.
INSPECTOR. I'm just going, gentlemen. The grounds, I'm sorry to say,
have yielded nothing. It's a bit of a puzzle.
CANYNGE. You've searched thoroughly?
INSPECTOR. We have, General. I can pick up nothing near the terrace.
WINSOR. [After a look at DE LEVIS, whose face expresses too much] H'm!
You'll take it up from the other end, then, Inspector?
INSPECTOR. Well, we'll see what we can do with the bookmakers about the
numbers, sir. Before I go, gentlemen--you've had time to think it over--
there's no one you suspect in the house, I suppose?
DE LEVIS's face is alive and uncertain. CANYNGE is staring at him
very fixedly.
WINSOR. [Emphatically] No.
DE LEVIS turns and goes out on to the balcony.
INSPECTOR. If you're coming in to the racing to-morrow, sir, you might
give us a call. I'll have seen Kentman by then.
WINSOR. Right you are, Inspector. Good night, and many thanks.
INSPECTOR. You're welcome, sir. [He goes out.]
WINSOR. Gosh! I thought that chap [With a nod towards the balcony]
was going to--! Look here, General, we must stop his tongue. Imagine it
going the rounds. They may never find the real thief, you know. It's
the very devil for Dancy.
CANYNGE. WINSOR! Dancy's sleeve was damp.
WINSOR. How d'you mean?
CANYNGE. Quite damp. It's been raining.
The two look at each other.
WINSOR. I--I don't follow-- [His voice is hesitative and lower, showing
that he does].
CANYNGE. It was coming down hard; a minute out in it would have been
enough--[He motions with his chin towards the balcony].
WINSOR. [Hastily] He must have been out on his balcony since.
CANYNGE. It stopped before I came up, half an hour ago.
WINSOR. He's been leaning on the wet stone, then.
CANYNGE. With the outside of the upper part of the arm?
WINSOR. Against the wall, perhaps. There may be a dozen explanations.
[Very low and with great concentration] I entirely and absolutely refuse
to believe anything of the sort against Ronald Dancy in my house. Dash
it, General, we must do as we'd be done by. It hits us all--it hits us
all. The thing's intolerable.
CANYNGE. I agree. Intolerable. [Raising his voice] Mr De Levis!
DE LEVIS returns into view, in the centre of the open window.
CANYNGE. [With cold decision] Young Dancy was an officer and is a
gentleman; this insinuation is pure supposition, and you must not make
it. Do you understand me?
DE LEVIS. My tongue is still mine, General, if my money isn't!
CANYNGE. [Unmoved] Must not. You're a member of three Clubs, you want
to be member of a fourth. No one who makes such an insinuation against a
fellow-guest in a country house, except on absolute proof, can do so
without complete ostracism. Have we your word to say nothing?
DE LEVIS. Social blackmail? H'm!
CANYNGE. Not at all--simple warning. If you consider it necessary in
your interests to start this scandal-no matter how, we shall consider it
necessary in ours to dissociate ourselves completely from one who so
recklessly disregards the unwritten code.
DE LEVIS. Do you think your code applies to me? Do you, General?
CANYNGE. To anyone who aspires to be a gentleman, Sir.
DE LEVIS. Ah! But you haven't known me since I was a boy.
CANYNGE. Make up your mind.
A pause.
DE LEVIS. I'm not a fool, General. I know perfectly well that you can
get me outed.
CANYNGE. [Icily] Well?
DE LEVIS. [Sullenly] I'll say nothing about it, unless I get more
proof.
CANYNGE. Good! We have implicit faith in Dancy.
There is a moment's encounter of eyes; the GENERAL'S steady, shrewd,
impassive; WINSOR'S angry and defiant; DE LEVIS's mocking, a little
triumphant, malicious. Then CANYNGE and WINSOR go to the door, and
pass out.
DE LEVIS. [To himself] Rats!
CURTAIN
ACT II
SCENE I
Afternoon, three weeks later, in the card room of a London Club. A
fire is burning, Left. A door, Right, leads to the billiard-room.
Rather Left of Centre, at a card table, LORD ST ERTH, an old John
Bull, sits facing the audience; to his right is GENERAL CANYNGE, to
his left AUGUSTUS BORRING, an essential Clubman, about thirty-five
years old, with a very slight and rather becoming stammer or click
in his speech. The fourth Bridge player, CHARLES WINSOR, stands
with his back to the fire.
BORRING. And the r-rub.
WINSOR. By George! You do hold cards, Borring.
ST ERTH. [Who has lost] Not a patch on the old whist--this game. Don't
know why I play it--never did.
CANYNGE. St Erth, shall we raise the flag for whist again?
WINSOR. No go, General. You can't go back on pace. No getting a man to
walk when he knows he can fly. The young men won't look at it.
BORRING. Better develop it so that t-two can sit out, General.
ST ERTH. We ought to have stuck to the old game. Wish I'd gone to
Newmarket, Canynge, in spite of the weather.
CANYNGE. [Looking at his watch] Let's hear what's won the
Cambridgeshire. Ring, won't you, WINSOR? [WINSOR rings.]
ST ERTH. By the way, Canynge, young De Levis was blackballed.
CANYNGE. What!
ST ERTH. I looked in on my way down.
CANYNGE sits very still, and WINSOR utters a disturbed sound.
BORRING. But of c-course he was, General. What did you expect?
A FOOTMAN enters.
FOOTMAN. Yes, my lord?
ST ERTH. What won the Cambridgeshire?
FOOTMAN. Rosemary, my lord. Sherbet second; Barbizon third. Nine to
one the winner.
WINSOR. Thank you. That's all.
FOOTMAN goes.
BORRING. Rosemary! And De Levis sold her! But he got a good p-price, I
suppose.
The other three look at him.
ST ERTH. Many a slip between price and pocket, young man.
CANYNGE. Cut! [They cut].
BORRING. I say, is that the yarn that's going round about his having had
a lot of m-money stolen in a country house? By Jove! He'll be pretty
s-sick.
WINSOR. You and I, Borring.
He sits down in CANYNGE'S chair, and the GENERAL takes his place by
the fire.
BORRING. Phew! Won't Dancy be mad! He gave that filly away to save her
keep. He was rather pleased to find somebody who'd take her. Bentman
must have won a p-pot. She was at thirty-threes a fortnight ago.
ST ERTH. All the money goes to fellows who don't know a horse from a
haystack.
CANYNGE. [Profoundly] And care less. Yes! We want men racing to whom
a horse means something.
BORRING. I thought the horse m-meant the same to everyone, General--
chance to get the b-better of one's neighbour.
CANYNGE. [With feeling] The horse is a noble animal, sir, as you'd know
if you'd owed your life to them as often as I have.
BORRING. They always try to take mine, General. I shall never belong to
the noble f-fellowship of the horse.
ST ERTH. [Drily] Evidently. Deal!
As BORRING begins to deal the door is opened and MAJOR COLFORD
appears--a lean and moustached cavalryman.
BORRING. Hallo, C-Colford.
COLFORD. General!
Something in the tone of his voice brings them all to a standstill.
COLFORD. I want your advice. Young De Levis in there [He points to the
billiard-room from which he has just come] has started a blasphemous
story--
CANYNGE. One moment. Mr Borring, d'you mind--
COLFORD. It makes no odds, General. Four of us in there heard him.
He's saying it was Ronald Dancy robbed him down at WINSOR's. The
fellow's mad over losing the price of that filly now she's won the
Cambridgeshire.
BORRING. [All ears] Dancy! Great S-Scott!
COLFORD. Dancy's in the Club. If he hadn't been I'd have taken it on
myself to wring the bounder's neck.
WINSOR and BORRING have risen. ST ERTH alone remains seated.
CANYNGE. [After consulting ST ERTH with a look] Ask De Levis to be good
enough to come in here. Borring, you might see that Dancy doesn't leave
the Club. We shall want him. Don't say anything to him, and use your
tact to keep people off.
BORRING goes out, followed by COLFORD. WINSOR. Result of hearing
he was black-balled--pretty slippy.
CANYNGE. St Erth, I told you there was good reason when I asked you to
back young De Levis. WINSOR and I knew of this insinuation; I wanted to
keep his tongue quiet. It's just wild assertion; to have it bandied
about was unfair to Dancy. The duel used to keep people's tongues in
order.
ST ERTH. H'm! It never settled anything, except who could shoot
straightest.
COLFORD. [Re-appearing] De Levis says he's nothing to add to what he
said to you before, on the subject.
CANYNGE. Kindly tell him that if he wishes to remain a member of this
Club he must account to the Committee for such a charge against a
fellow-member. Four of us are here, and form a quorum.
COLFORD goes out again.
ST ERTH. Did Kentman ever give the police the numbers of those notes,
WINSOR?
WINSOR. He only had the numbers of two--the hundred, and one of the
fifties.
ST ERTH. And they haven't traced 'em?
WINSOR. Not yet.
As he speaks, DE LEVIS comes in. He is in a highly-coloured, not to
say excited state. COLFORD follows him.
DE LEVIS. Well, General Canynge! It's a little too strong all this--
a little too strong. [Under emotion his voice is slightly more exotic].
CANYNGE. [Calmly] It is obvious, Mr De Levis, that you and Captain
Dancy can't both remain members of this Club. We ask you for an
explanation before requesting one resignation or the other.
DE LEVIS. You've let me down.
CANYNGE. What!
DE LEVIS. Well, I shall tell people that you and Lord St Erth backed me
up for one Club, and asked me to resign from another.
CANYNGE. It's a matter of indifference to me, sir, what you tell people.
ST ERTH. [Drily] You seem a venomous young man.
DE LEVIS. I'll tell you what seems to me venomous, my lord--chasing a
man like a pack of hounds because he isn't your breed.
CANYNGE. You appear to have your breed on the brain, sir. Nobody else
does, so far as I know.
DE LEVIS. Suppose I had robbed Dancy, would you chase him out for
complaining of it?
COLFORD. My God! If you repeat that--
CANYNGE. Steady, Colford!
WINSOR. You make this accusation that Dancy stole your money in my house
on no proof--no proof; and you expect Dancy's friends to treat you as if
you were a gentleman! That's too strong, if you like!
DE LEVIS. No proof? Bentman told me at Newmarket yesterday that Dancy
did know of the sale. He told Goole, and Goole says that he himself
spoke of it to Dancy.
WINSOR. Well--if he did?
DE LEVIS. Dancy told you he didn't know of it in General Canynge's
presence, and mine. [To CANYNGE] You can't deny that, if you want to.
CANYNGE. Choose your expressions more nicely, please!
DE LEVIS. Proof! Did they find any footmarks in the grounds below that
torn creeper? Not a sign! You saw how he can jump; he won ten pounds
from me that same evening betting on what he knew was a certainty.
That's your Dancy--a common sharper!
CANYNGE. [Nodding towards the billiard-room] Are those fellows still in
there, Colford?
COLFORD. Yes.
CANYNGE. Then bring Dancy up, will you? But don't say anything to him.
COLFORD. [To DE LEVIS] You may think yourself damned lucky if he doesn't
break your neck.
He goes out. The three who are left with DE LEVIS avert their eyes
from him.
DE LEVIS. [Smouldering] I have a memory, and a sting too. Yes, my
lord--since you are good enough to call me venomous. [To CANYNGE] I
quite understand--I'm marked for Coventry now, whatever happens. Well,
I'll take Dancy with me.
ST ERTH. [To himself] This Club has always had a decent, quiet name.
WINSOR. Are you going to retract, and apologise in front of Dancy and
the members who heard you?
DE LEVIS. No fear!
ST ERTH. You must be a very rich man, sir. A jury is likely to take the
view that money can hardly compensate for an accusation of that sort.
DE LEVIS stands silent. CANYNGE. Courts of law require proof.
ST ERTH. He can make it a criminal action.
WINSOR. Unless you stop this at once, you may find yourself in prison.
If you can stop it, that is.
ST ERTH. If I were young Dancy, nothing should induce me.
DE LEVIS. But you didn't steal my money, Lord St Erth.
ST ERTH. You're deuced positive, sir. So far as I could understand it,
there were a dozen ways you could have been robbed. It seems to me you
value other men's reputations very lightly.
DE LEVIS. Confront me with Dancy and give me fair play.
WINSOR. [Aside to CANYNGE] Is it fair to Dancy not to let him know?
CANYNGE. Our duty is to the Club now, WINSOR. We must have this cleared
up.
COLFORD comes in, followed by BORRING and DANCY.
ST ERTH. Captain Dancy, a serious accusation has been made against you
by this gentleman in the presence of several members of the Club.
DANCY. What is it?
ST ERTH. That you robbed him of that money at WINSOR's.
DANCY. [Hard and tense] Indeed! On what grounds is he good enough to
say that?
DE LEVIS. [Tense too] You gave me that filly to save yourself her keep,
and you've been mad about it ever since; you knew from Goole that I had
sold her to Kentman and been paid in cash, yet I heard you myself deny
that you knew it. You had the next room to me, and you can jump like a
cat, as we saw that evening; I found some creepers crushed by a weight on
my balcony on that side. When I went to the bath your door was open, and
when I came back it was shut.
CANYNGE. That's the first we have heard about the door.
DE LEVIS. I remembered it afterwards.
ST ERTH. Well, Dancy?
DANCY. [With intense deliberation] I'll settle this matter with any
weapons, when and where he likes.
ST ERTH. [Drily] It can't be settled that way--you know very well.
You must take it to the Courts, unless he retracts.
DANCY. Will you retract?
DE LEVIS. Why did you tell General Canynge you didn't know Kentman had
paid me in cash?
DANCY. Because I didn't.
DE LEVIS. Then Kentman and Goole lied--for no reason?
DANCY. That's nothing to do with me.
DE LEVIS. If you were downstairs all the time, as you say, why was your
door first open and then shut?
DANCY. Being downstairs, how should I know? The wind, probably.
DE LEVIS. I should like to hear what your wife says about it.
DANCY. Leave my wife alone, you damned Jew!
ST ERTH. Captain Dancy!
DE LEVIS. [White with rage] Thief!
DANCY. Will you fight?
DE LEVIS. You're very smart-dead men tell no tales. No! Bring your
action, and we shall see.
DANCY takes a step towards him, but CANYNGE and WINSOR interpose.
ST ERTH. That'll do, Mr De Levis; we won't keep you. [He looks round]
Kindly consider your membership suspended till this matter has been
threshed out.
DE LEVIS. [Tremulous with anger] Don't trouble yourselves about my
membership. I resign it. [To DANCY] You called me a damned Jew. My
race was old when you were all savages. I am proud to be a Jew. Au
revoir, in the Courts.
He goes out, and silence follows his departure.
ST ERTH. Well, Captain Dancy?
DANCY. If the brute won't fight, what am I to do, sir?
ST ERTH. We've told you--take action, to clear your name.
DANCY. Colford, you saw me in the hall writing letters after our game.
COLFORD. Certainly I did; you were there when I went to the
smoking-room.
CANYNGE. How long after you left the billiard-room?
COLFORD. About five minutes.
DANCY. It's impossible for me to prove that I was there all the time.
CANYNGE. It's for De Levis to prove what he asserts. You heard what he
said about Goole?
DANCY. If he told me, I didn't take it in.
ST ERTH. This concerns the honour of the Club. Are you going to take
action?
DANCY. [Slowly] That is a very expensive business, Lord St Erth, and
I'm hard up. I must think it over. [He looks round from face to face]
Am I to take it that there is a doubt in your minds, gentlemen?
COLFORD. [Emphatically] No.
CANYNGE. That's not the question, Dancy. This accusation was overheard
by various members, and we represent the Club. If you don't take action,
judgment will naturally go by default.
DANCY. I might prefer to look on the whole thing as beneath contempt.
He turns and goes out. When he is gone there is an even longer
silence than after DE LEVIS's departure.
ST ERTH. [Abruptly] I don't like it.
WINSOR. I've known him all his life.
COLFORD. You may have my head if he did it, Lord St Erth. He and I have
been in too many holes together. By Gad! My toe itches for that
fellow's butt end.
BORRING. I'm sorry; but has he t-taken it in quite the right way? I
should have thought--hearing it s-suddenly--
COLFORD. Bosh!
WINSOR. It's perfectly damnable for him.
ST ERTH. More damnable if he did it, WINSOR.
BORRING. The Courts are b-beastly distrustful, don't you know.
COLFORD. His word's good enough for me.
CANYNGE. We're as anxious to believe Dancy as you, Colford, for the
honour of the Army and the Club.
WINSOR. Of course, he'll bring a case, when he's thought it over.
ST ERTH. What are we to do in the meantime?
COLFORD. If Dancy's asked to resign, you may take my resignation too.
BORRING. I thought his wanting to f-fight him a bit screeny.
COLFORD. Wouldn't you have wanted a shot at the brute? A law court?
Pah!
WINSOR. Yes. What'll be his position even if he wins?
BORRING. Damages, and a stain on his c-character.
WINSOR. Quite so, unless they find the real thief. People always
believe the worst.
COLFORD. [Glaring at BORRING] They do.
CANYNGE. There is no decent way out of a thing of this sort.
ST ERTH. No. [Rising] It leaves a bad taste. I'm sorry for young Mrs
Dancy--poor woman!
BORRING. Are you going to play any more?
ST ERTH. [Abruptly] No, sir. Good night to you. Canynge, can I give
you a lift?
He goes out, followed by CANYNGE. BORRING.
[After a slight pause] Well, I shall go and take the t-temperature of
the Club.
He goes out.
COLFORD. Damn that effeminate stammering chap! What can we do for
Dancy, WINSOR?
WINSOR. Colford! [A slight pause] The General felt his coat sleeve
that night, and it was wet.
COLFORD. Well! What proof's that? No, by George! An old
school-fellow, a brother officer, and a pal.
WINSOR. If he did do it--
COLFORD. He didn't. But if he did, I'd stick to him, and see him
through it, if I could.
WINSOR walks over to the fire, stares into it, turns round and
stares at COLFORD, who is standing motionless.
COLFORD. Yes, by God!
CURTAIN.
SCENE II
[NOTE.--This should be a small set capable of being set quickly
within that of the previous scene.]
Morning of the following day. The DANCYS' flat. In the
sitting-room of this small abode MABEL DANCY and MARGARET ORME
are sitting full face to the audience, on a couch in the centre
of the room, in front of the imaginary window. There is a
fireplace, Left, with fire burning; a door below it, Left; and a
door on the Right, facing the audience, leads to a corridor and
the outer door of the flat, which is visible. Their voices are
heard in rapid exchange; then as the curtain rises, so does
MABEL.
MABEL. But it's monstrous!
MARGARET. Of course! [She lights a cigarette and hands the case to
MABEL, who, however, sees nothing but her own thoughts] De Levis might
just as well have pitched on me, except that I can't jump more than six
inches in these skirts.
MABEL. It's wicked! Yesterday afternoon at the Club, did you say?
Ronny hasn't said a word to me. Why?
MARGARET. [With a long puff of smoke] Doesn't want you bothered.
MABEL. But----Good heavens!----Me!
MARGARET. Haven't you found out, Mabel, that he isn't exactly
communicative? No desperate character is.
MABEL. Ronny?
MARGARET. Gracious! Wives are at a disadvantage, especially early on.
You've never hunted with him, my dear. I have. He takes more sudden
decisions than any man I ever knew. He's taking one now, I'll bet.
MABEL. That beast, De Levis! I was in our room next door all the time.
MARGARET. Was the door into Ronny's dressing-room open?
MABEL. I don't know; I--I think it was.
MARGARET. Well, you can say so in Court any way. Not that it matters.
Wives are liars by law.
MABEL. [Staring down at her] What do you mean--Court?
MARGARET. My dear, he'll have to bring an action for defamation of
character, or whatever they call it.
MABEL. Were they talking of this last night at the WINSOR's?
MARGARET. Well, you know a dinner-table, Mabel--Scandal is heaven-sent
at this time of year.
MABEL. It's terrible, such a thing--terrible!
MARGARET. [Gloomily] If only Ronny weren't known to be so broke.
MABEL. [With her hands to her forehead] I can't realise--I simply can't.
If there's a case would it be all right afterwards?
MARGARET. Do you remember St Offert--cards? No, you wouldn't--you were
in high frocks. Well, St Offert got damages, but he also got the hoof,
underneath. He lives in Ireland. There isn't the slightest connection,
so far as I can see, Mabel, between innocence and reputation. Look at
me!
MABEL. We'll fight it tooth and nail!
MARGARET. Mabel, you're pure wool, right through; everybody's sorry for
you.
MABEL. It's for him they ought--
MARGARET. [Again handing the cigarette case] Do smoke, old thing.
MABEL takes a cigarette this time, but does not light it.
It isn't altogether simple. General Canynge was there last night. You
don't mind my being beastly frank, do you?
MABEL. No. I want it.
MARGARET. Well, he's all for esprit de corps and that. But he was
awfully silent.
MABEL. I hate half-hearted friends. Loyalty comes before everything.
MARGARET. Ye-es; but loyalties cut up against each other sometimes, you
know.
MABEL. I must see Ronny. D'you mind if I go and try to get him on the
telephone?
MARGARET. Rather not.
MABEL goes out by the door Left.
Poor kid!
She curls herself into a corner of the sofa, as if trying to get
away from life. The bell rings. MARGARET stirs, gets up, and goes
out into the corridor, where she opens the door to LADY ADELA
WINSOR, whom she precedes into the sitting-room.
Enter the second murderer! D'you know that child knew nothing?
LADY A. Where is she?
MARGARET. Telephoning. Adela, if there's going to be an action, we
shall be witnesses. I shall wear black georgette with an ecru hat. Have
you ever given evidence?
LADY A. Never.
MARGARET. It must be too frightfully thrilling.
LADY A. Oh! Why did I ever ask that wretch De Levis? I used to think
him pathetic. Meg did you know----Ronald Dancy's coat was wet? The
General happened to feel it.
MARGARET. So that's why he was so silent.
LADY A. Yes; and after the scene in the Club yesterday he went to see
those bookmakers, and Goole--what a name!--is sure he told Dancy about
the sale.
MARGARET. [Suddenly] I don't care. He's my third cousin. Don't you
feel you couldn't, Adela?
LADY A. Couldn't--what?
MARGARET. Stand for De Levis against one of ourselves?
LADY A. That's very narrow, Meg.
MARGARET. Oh! I know lots of splendid Jews, and I rather liked little
Ferdy; but when it comes to the point--! They all stick together; why
shouldn't we? It's in the blood. Open your jugular, and see if you
haven't got it.
LADY A. My dear, my great grandmother was a Jewess. I'm very proud of
her.
MARGARET. Inoculated. [Stretching herself] Prejudices, Adela--or are
they loyalties--I don't know--cris-cross--we all cut each other's throats
from the best of motives.
LADY A. Oh! I shall remember that. Delightful! [Holding up a finger]
You got it from Bergson, Meg. Isn't he wonderful?
MARGARET. Yes; have you ever read him?
LADY A. Well--No. [Looking at the bedroom door] That poor child! I
quite agree. I shall tell every body it's ridiculous. You don't really
think Ronald Dancy--?
MARGARET. I don't know, Adela. There are people who simply can't live
without danger. I'm rather like that myself. They're all right when
they're getting the D.S.O. or shooting man-eaters; but if there's no
excitement going, they'll make it--out of sheer craving. I've seen Ronny
Dancy do the maddest things for no mortal reason except the risk. He's
had a past, you know.
LADY A. Oh! Do tell!
MARGARET. He did splendidly in the war, of course, because it suited
him; but--just before--don't you remember--a very queer bit of riding?
LADY A. No.
MARGARET. Most dare-devil thing--but not quite. You must remember--
it was awfully talked about. And then, of course, right up to his
marriage--[She lights a cigarette.]
LADY A. Meg, you're very tantalising!
MARGARET. A foreign-looking girl--most plummy. Oh! Ronny's got charm
--this Mabel child doesn't know in the least what she's got hold of!
LADY A. But they're so fond of each other!
MARGARET. That's the mistake. The General isn't mentioning the coat, is
he?
LADY A. Oh, no! It was only to Charles.
MABEL returns.
MARGARET. Did you get him?
MABEL. No; he's not at Tattersall's, nor at the Club.
LADY ADELA rises and greets her with an air which suggests
bereavement.
LADY A. Nobody's going to believe this, my dear.
MABEL. [Looking straight at her] Nobody who does need come here, or
trouble to speak to us again.
LADY A. That's what I was afraid of; you're going to be defiant. Now
don't! Just be perfectly natural.
MABEL. So easy, isn't it? I could kill anybody who believes such a
thing.
MARGARET. You'll want a solicitor, Mabel, Go to old Mr Jacob Twisden.
LADY A. Yes; he's so comforting.
MARGARET. He got my pearls back once--without loss of life. A
frightfully good fireside manner. Do get him here, Mabel, and have a
heart-to-heart talk, all three of you!
MABEL. [Suddenly] Listen! There's Ronny!
DANCY comes in.
DANCY. [With a smile] Very good of you to have come.
MARGARET. Yes. We're just going. Oh! Ronny, this is quite too--
[But his face dries her up; and sidling past, she goes].
LADY A. Charles sent his-love--[Her voice dwindles on the word, and she,
too, goes].
DANCY. [Crossing to his wife] What have they been saying?
MABEL. Ronny! Why didn't you tell me?
DANCY. I wanted to see De Levis again first.
MABEL. That wretch! How dare he? Darling! [She suddenly clasps and
kisses him. He does not return the kiss, but remains rigid in her arms,
so that she draws away and looks at him] It's hurt you awfully, I know.
DANCY. Look here, Mabel! Apart from that muck--this is a ghastly
tame-cat sort of life. Let's cut it and get out to Nairobi. I can scare
up the money for that.
MABEL. [Aghast] But how can we? Everybody would say--
RONNY. Let them! We shan't be here.
MABEL. I couldn't bear people to think--
DANCY. I don't care a damn what people think monkeys and cats. I never
could stand their rotten menagerie. Besides, what does it matter how I
act; if I bring an action and get damages--if I pound him to a jelly--
it's all no good! I can't prove it. There'll be plenty of people
unconvinced.
MABEL. But they'll find the real thief.
DANCY. [With a queer little smile] Will staying here help them to do
that?
MABEL. [In a sort of agony] Oh! I couldn't--it looks like running
away. We must stay and fight it!
DANCY. Suppose I didn't get a verdict--you never can tell.
MABEL. But you must--I was there all the time, with the door open.
DANCY. Was it?
MABEL. I'm almost sure.
DANCY. Yes. But you're my wife.
MABEL. [Bewildered] Ronny, I don't understand--suppose I'd been accused
of stealing pearls!
DANCY. [Wincing] I can't.
MABEL. But I might--just as easily. What would you think of me if I ran
away from it?
DANCY. I see. [A pause] All right! You shall have a run for your
money. I'll go and see old Twisden.
MABEL. Let me come! [DANCY shakes his head] Why not? I can't be happy
a moment unless I'm fighting this.
DANCY puts out his hand suddenly and grips hers.
DANCY. You are a little brick!
MABEL. [Pressing his hand to her breast and looking into his face]
Do you know what Margaret called you?
RONNY. No.
MABEL. A desperate character.
DANCY. Ha! I'm not a tame cat, any more than she.
The bell rings. MABEL goes out to the door and her voice is heard
saying coldly.
MABEL. Will you wait a minute, please? Returning. It's De Levis--to
see you. [In a low voice] Let me see him alone first. Just for a
minute! Do!
DANCY. [After a moment's silence] Go ahead! He goes out into the
bedroom.
MABEL. [Going to the door, Right] Come in.
DE LEVIS comes in, and stands embarrassed.
Yes?
DE LEVIS. [With a slight bow] Your husband, Mrs Dancy?
MABEL. He is in. Why do you want to see him?
DE LEVIS. He came round to my rooms just now, when I was out. He
threatened me yesterday. I don't choose him to suppose I'm afraid of
him.
MABEL. [With a great and manifest effort at self-control] Mr De Levis,
you are robbing my husband of his good name.
DE LEVIS. [Sincerely] I admire your trustfulness, Mrs Dancy.
MABEL. [Staring at him] How can you do it? What do you want? What's
your motive? You can't possibly believe that my husband is a thief!
DE LEVIS. Unfortunately.
MABEL. How dare you? How dare you? Don't you know that I was in our
bedroom all the time with the door open? Do you accuse me too?
DE LEVIS. No, Mrs Dancy.
MABEL. But you do. I must have seen, I must have heard.
DE LEVIS. A wife's memory is not very good when her husband is in
danger.
MABEL. In other words, I'm lying.
DE LEVIS. No. Your wish is mother to your thought, that's all.
MABEL. [After staring again with a sort of horror, turns to get control
of herself. Then turning back to him] Mr De Levis, I appeal to you as a
gentleman to behave to us as you would we should behave to you. Withdraw
this wicked charge, and write an apology that Ronald can show.
DE LEVIS. Mrs Dancy, I am not a gentleman, I am only a--damned Jew.
Yesterday I might possibly have withdrawn to spare you. But when my race
is insulted I have nothing to say to your husband, but as he wishes to
see me, I've come. Please let him know.
MABEL. [Regarding him again with that look of horror--slowly] I think
what you are doing is too horrible for words.
DE LEVIS gives her a slight bow, and as he does so DANCY comes
quickly in, Left. The two men stand with the length of the sofa
between them. MABEL, behind the sofa, turns her eyes on her
husband, who has a paper in his right hand.
DE LEVIS. You came to see me.
DANCY. Yes. I want you to sign this.
DE LEVIS. I will sign nothing.
DANCY. Let me read it: "I apologise to Captain Dancy for the reckless
and monstrous charge I made against him, and I retract every word of it."
DE LEVIS. Not much!
DANCY. You will sign.
DE LEVIS. I tell you this is useless. I will sign nothing. The charge
is true; you wouldn't be playing this game if it weren't. I'm going.
You'll hardly try violence in the presence of your wife; and if you try
it anywhere else--look out for yourself.
DANCY. Mabel, I want to speak to him alone.
MABEL. No, no!
DE LEVIS. Quite right, Mrs Dancy. Black and tan swashbuckling will only
make things worse for him.
DANCY. So you shelter behind a woman, do you, you skulking cur!
DE LEVIS takes a step, with fists clenched and eyes blazing. DANCY,
too, stands ready to spring--the moment is cut short by MABEL going
quickly to her husband.
MABEL. Don't, Ronny. It's undignified! He isn't worth it.
DANCY suddenly tears the paper in two, and flings it into the fire.
DANCY. Get out of here, you swine!
DE LEVIS stands a moment irresolute, then, turning to the door, he
opens it, stands again for a moment with a smile on his face, then
goes. MABEL crosses swiftly to the door, and shuts it as the outer
door closes. Then she stands quite still, looking at her husband
--her face expressing a sort of startled suspense.
DANCY. [Turning and looking at her] Well! Do you agree with him?
MABEL. What do you mean?
DANCY. That I wouldn't be playing this game unless--
MABEL. Don't! You hurt me!
DANCY. Yes. You don't know much of me, Mabel.
MABEL. Ronny!
DANCY. What did you say to that swine?
MABEL. [Her face averted] That he was robbing us. [Turning to him
suddenly] Ronny--you--didn't? I'd rather know.
DANCY. Ha! I thought that was coming.
MABEL. [Covering her face] Oh! How horrible of me--how horrible!
DANCY. Not at all. The thing looks bad.
MABEL. [Dropping her hands] If I can't believe in you, who can?
[Going to him, throwing her arms round him, and looking up into his face]
Ronny! If all the world--I'd believe in you. You know I would.
DANCY. That's all right, Mabs! That's all right! [His face, above her
head, is contorted for a moment, then hardens into a mask] Well, what
shall we do? Let's go to that lawyer--let's go--
MABEL. Oh! at once!
DANCY. All right. Get your hat on.
MABEL passes him, and goes into the bedroom, Left. DANCY, left
alone, stands quite still, staring before him. With a sudden shrug
of his shoulders he moves quickly to his hat and takes it up just as
MABEL returns, ready to go out. He opens the door; and crossing
him, she stops in the doorway, looking up with a clear and trustful
gaze as
The CURTAIN falls.
ACT III
SCENE I
Three months later. Old MR JACOB TWISDEN's Room, at the offices of
Twisden & Graviter, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, is spacious, with two
large windows at back, a fine old fireplace, Right, a door below it,
and two doors, Left. Between the windows is a large table sideways
to the window wall, with a chair in the middle on the right-hand
side, a chair against the wall, and a client's chair on the
left-hand side.
GRAVITER, TWISDEN'S much younger partner, is standing in front of
the right-hand window looking out on to the Fields, where the lamps
are being lighted, and a taxi's engine is running down below. He
turns his sanguine, shrewd face from the window towards a
grandfather dock, between the doors, Left, which is striking "four."
The door, Left Forward, is opened.
YOUNG CLERK. [Entering] A Mr Gilman, sir, to see Mr Twisden.
GRAVITER. By appointment?
YOUNG CLERK. No, sir. But important, he says.
GRAVITER. I'll see him.
The CLERK goes. GRAVITER sits right of table. The CLERK returns,
ushering in an oldish MAN, who looks what he is, the proprietor of a
large modern grocery store. He wears a dark overcoat and carries a
pot hat. His gingery-grey moustache and mutton-chop whiskers give
him the expression of a cat.
GRAVITER. [Sizing up his social standing] Mr Gilman? Yes.
GILMAN. [Doubtfully] Mr Jacob Twisden?
GRAVITER. [Smiling] His partner. Graviter my name is.
GILMAN. Mr Twisden's not in, then?
GRAVITER. No. He's at the Courts. They're just up; he should be in
directly. But he'll be busy.
GILMAN. Old Mr Jacob Twisden--I've heard of him.
GRAVITER. Most people have.
GILMAN. It's this Dancy-De Levis case that's keepin' him at the Courts,
I suppose?
GRAVITER nods.
Won't be finished for a day or two?
GRAVITER shakes his head. No.
Astonishin' the interest taken in it.
GRAVITER. As you say.
GILMAN. The Smart Set, eh? This Captain Dancy got the D.S.O., didn't
he?
GRAVITER nods.
Sad to have a thing like that said about you. I thought he gave his
evidence well; and his wife too. Looks as if this De Levis had got some
private spite. Searchy la femme, I said to Mrs Gilman only this morning,
before I--
GRAVITER. By the way, sir, what is your business?
GILMAN. Well, my business here--No, if you'll excuse me, I'd rather
wait and see old Mr Jacob Twisden. It's delicate, and I'd like his
experience.
GRAVITER. [With a shrug] Very well; then, perhaps, you'll go in there.
[He moves towards the door, Left Back].
GILMAN. Thank you. [Following] You see, I've never been mixed up with
the law--
GRAVITER. [Opening the door] No?
GILMAN. And I don't want to begin. When you do, you don't know where
you'll stop, do you? You see, I've only come from a sense of duty; and
--other reasons.
GRAVITER. Not uncommon.
GILMAN. [Producing card] This is my card. Gilman's--several branches,
but this is the 'ead.
GRAVITER. [Scrutinising card] Exactly.
GILMAN. Grocery--I daresay you know me; or your wife does. They say old
Mr Jacob Twisden refused a knighthood. If it's not a rude question, why
was that?
GRAVITER. Ask him, sir; ask him.
GILMAN. I said to my wife at the time, "He's holdin' out for a
baronetcy."
GRAVITER Closes the door with an exasperated smile.
YOUNG CLERK. [Opening the door, Left Forward] Mr WINSOR, sir, and Miss
Orme.
They enter, and the CLERK withdraws.
GRAVITER. How d'you do, Miss Orme? How do you do, WINSOR?
WINSOR. Twisden not back, Graviter?
GRAVITER. Not yet.
WINSOR. Well, they've got through De Levis's witnesses. Sir Frederick
was at the very top of his form. It's looking quite well. But I hear
they've just subpoenaed Canynge after all. His evidence is to be taken
to-morrow.
GRAVITER. Oho!
WINSOR. I said Dancy ought to have called him.
GRAVITER. We considered it. Sir Frederic decided that he could use him
better in cross-examination.
WINSOR. Well! I don't know that. Can I go and see him before he gives
evidence to-morrow?
GRAVITER. I should like to hear Mr Jacob on that, WINSOR. He'll be in
directly.
WINSOR. They had Kentman, and Goole, the Inspector, the other bobby, my
footman, Dancy's banker, and his tailor.
GRAVITER. Did we shake Kentman or Goole?
WINSOR. Very little. Oh! by the way, the numbers of those two notes
were given, and I see they're published in the evening papers. I suppose
the police wanted that. I tell you what I find, Graviter--a general
feeling that there's something behind it all that doesn't come out.
GRAVITER. The public wants it's money's worth--always does in these
Society cases; they brew so long beforehand, you see.
WINSOR. They're looking for something lurid.
MARGARET. When I was in the bog, I thought they were looking for me.
[Taking out her cigarette case] I suppose I mustn't smoke, Mr Graviter?
GRAVITER. Do!
MARGARET. Won't Mr Jacob have a fit?
GRAVITER. Yes, but not till you've gone.
MARGARET. Just a whiff. [She lights a cigarette].
WINSOR. [Suddenly] It's becoming a sort of Dreyfus case--people taking
sides quite outside the evidence.
MARGARET. There are more of the chosen in Court every day. Mr Graviter,
have you noticed the two on the jury?
GRAVITER. [With a smile] No; I can't say--
MARGARET. Oh! but quite distinctly. Don't you think they ought to have
been challenged?
GRAVITER. De Levis might have challenged the other ten, Miss Orme.
MARGARET. Dear me, now! I never thought of that.
As she speaks, the door Left Forward is opened and old MR JACOB
TWISDEN comes in. He is tallish and narrow, sixty-eight years old,
grey, with narrow little whiskers curling round his narrow ears, and
a narrow bow-ribbon curling round his collar. He wears a long,
narrow-tailed coat, and strapped trousers on his narrow legs. His
nose and face are narrow, shrewd, and kindly. He has a way of
narrowing his shrewd and kindly eyes. His nose is seen to twitch
and snig.
TWISDEN. Ah! How are you, Charles? How do you do, my dear?
MARGARET. Dear Mr Jacob, I'm smoking. Isn't it disgusting? But they
don't allow it in Court, you know. Such a pity! The Judge might have a
hookah. Oh! wouldn't he look sweet--the darling!
TWISDEN. [With a little, old-fashioned bow] It does not become everybody
as it becomes you, Margaret.
MARGARET. Mr Jacob, how charming! [With a slight grimace she puts out
her cigarette].
GRAVITER. Man called Gilman waiting in there to see you specially.
TWISDEN. Directly. Turn up the light, would you, Graviter?
GRAVITER. [Turning up the light] Excuse me.
He goes.
WINSOR. Look here, Mr Twisden--
TWISDEN. Sit down; sit down, my dear.
And he himself sits behind the table, as a cup of tea is brought in
to him by the YOUNG CLERK, with two Marie biscuits in the saucer.
Will you have some, Margaret?
MARGARET. No, dear Mr Jacob.
TWISDEN. Charles?
WINSOR. No, thanks. The door is closed.
TWISDEN. [Dipping a biscuit in the tea] Now, then?
WINSOR. The General knows something which on the face of it looks rather
queer. Now that he's going to be called, oughtn't Dancy to be told of
it, so that he may be ready with his explanation, in case it comes out?
TWISDEN. [Pouring some tea into the saucer] Without knowing, I can't
tell you.
WINSOR and MARGARET exchange looks, and TWISDEN drinks from the
saucer. MARGARET. Tell him, Charles.
WINSOR. Well! It rained that evening at Meldon. The General happened
to put his hand on Dancy's shoulder, and it was damp.
TWISDEN puts the saucer down and replaces the cup in it. They both
look intently at him.
TWISDEN. I take it that General Canynge won't say anything he's not
compelled to say.
MARGARET. No, of course; but, Mr Jacob, they might ask; they know it
rained. And he is such a George Washington.
TWISDEN. [Toying with a pair of tortoise-shell glasses] They didn't ask
either of you. Still-no harm in your telling Dancy.
WINSOR. I'd rather you did it, Margaret.
MARGARET. I daresay. [She mechanically takes out her cigarette-case,
catches the lift of TWISDEN'S eyebrows, and puts it back].
WINSOR. Well, we'll go together. I don't want Mrs Dancy to hear.
MARGARET. Do tell me, Mr Jacob; is he going to win?
TWISDEN. I think so, Margaret; I think so.
MARGARET. It'll be too--frightful if he doesn't get a verdict, after all
this. But I don't know what we shall do when it's over. I've been
sitting in that Court all these three days, watching, and it's made me
feel there's nothing we like better than seeing people skinned. Well,
bye-bye, bless you!
TWISDEN rises and pats her hand.
WINSOR. Half a second, Margaret. Wait for me. She nods and goes out.
Mr Twisden, what do you really think?
TWISDEN. I am Dancy's lawyer, my dear Charles, as well as yours.
WINSOR. Well, can I go and see Canynge?
TWISDEN. Better not.
WINSOR. If they get that out of him, and recall me, am I to say he told
me of it at the time?
TWISDEN. You didn't feel the coat yourself? And Dancy wasn't present?
Then what Canynge told you is not evidence--he'll stop your being asked.
WINSOR. Thank goodness. Good-bye!
WINSOR goes out.
TWISDEN, behind his table, motionless, taps his teeth with the
eyeglasses in his narrow, well-kept hand. After a long shake of his
head and a shrug of his rather high shoulders he snips, goes to the
window and opens it. Then crossing to the door, Left Back, he
throws it open and says
TWISDEN. At your service, sir.
GILMAN comes forth, nursing his pot hat.
Be seated.
TWISDEN closes the window behind him, and takes his seat.
GILMAN. [Taking the client's chair, to the left of the table] Mr
Twisden, I believe? My name's Gilman, head of Gilman's Department
Stores. You have my card.
TWISDEN. [Looking at the card] Yes. What can we do for you?
GILMAN. Well, I've come to you from a sense of duty, sir, and also a
feelin' of embarrassment. [He takes from his breast pocket an evening
paper] You see, I've been followin' this Dancy case--it's a good deal
talked of in Putney--and I read this at half-past two this afternoon. To
be precise, at 2.25. [He rises and hands the paper to TWISDEN, and with
a thick gloved forefinger indicates a passage] When I read these numbers,
I 'appened to remember givin' change for a fifty-pound note--don't often
'ave one in, you know--so I went to the cash-box out of curiosity, to see
that I 'adn't got it. Well, I 'ad; and here it is. [He draws out from
his breast pocket and lays before TWISDEN a fifty-pound banknote] It was
brought in to change by a customer of mine three days ago, and he got
value for it. Now, that's a stolen note, it seems, and you'd like to
know what I did. Mind you, that customer of mine I've known 'im--well--
eight or nine years; an Italian he is--wine salesman, and so far's I
know, a respectable man-foreign-lookin', but nothin' more. Now, this was
at 'alf-past two, and I was at my head branch at Putney, where I live.
I want you to mark the time, so as you'll see I 'aven't wasted a minute.
I took a cab and I drove straight to my customer's private residence in
Putney, where he lives with his daughter--Ricardos his name is, Paolio
Ricardos. They tell me there that he's at his business shop in the City.
So off I go in the cab again, and there I find him. Well, sir, I showed
this paper to him and I produced the note. "Here," I said, "you brought
this to me and you got value for it." Well, that man was taken aback.
If I'm a judge, Mr Twisden, he was taken aback, not to speak in a guilty
way, but he was, as you might say, flummoxed. "Now," I said to him,
"where did you get it--that's the point?" He took his time to answer,
and then he said: "Well, Mr Gilman," he said, "you know me; I am an
honourable man. I can't tell you offhand, but I am above the board."
He's foreign, you know, in his expressions. "Yes," I said, "that's all
very well," I said, "but here I've got a stolen note and you've got the
value for it. Now I tell you," I said, "what I'm going to do; I'm going
straight with this note to Mr Jacob Twisden, who's got this Dancy-De
Levis case in 'and. He's a well-known Society lawyer," I said, "of great
experience." "Oh!" he said, "that is what you do?"--funny the way he
speaks! "Then I come with you!"--And I've got him in the cab below.
I want to tell you everything before he comes up. On the way I tried to
get something out of him, but I couldn't--I could not. "This is very
awkward," I said at last. "It is, Mr Gilman," was his reply; and he
began to talk about his Sicilian claret--a very good wine, mind you; but
under the circumstances it seemed to me uncalled for. Have I made it
clear to you?
TWISDEN. [Who has listened with extreme attention] Perfectly, Mr Gilman.
I'll send down for him. [He touches a hand-bell].
The YOUNG CLERK appears at the door, Left Forward.
A gentleman in a taxi-waiting. Ask him to be so good as to step up. Oh!
and send Mr Graviter here again.
The YOUNG CLERK goes out.
GILMAN. As I told you, sir, I've been followin' this case. It's what
you might call piquant. And I should be very glad if it came about that
this helped Captain Dancy. I take an interest, because, to tell you the
truth, [Confidentially] I don't like--well, not to put too fine a point
upon it 'Ebrews. They work harder; they're more sober; they're honest;
and they're everywhere. I've nothing against them, but the fact is--they
get on so.
TWISDEN. [Cocking an eye] A thorn in the flesh, Mr Gilman.
GILMAN. Well, I prefer my own countrymen, and that's the truth of it.
As he speaks, GRAVITER comes in by the door Left Forward.
TWISDEN. [Pointing to the newspaper and the note] Mr Gilman has brought
this, of which he is holder for value. His customer, who changed it
three days ago, is coming up.
GRAVITER. The fifty-pounder. I see. [His face is long and reflective].
YOUNG CLERK. [Entering] Mr Ricardos, sir.
He goes out. RICARDOS is a personable, Italian-looking man in a
frock coat, with a dark moustachioed face and dark hair a little
grizzled. He looks anxious, and bows.
TWISDEN. Mr Ricardos? My name is Jacob Twisden. My partner. [Holding
up a finger, as RICARDOS would speak] Mr Gilman has told us about this
note. You took it to him, he says, three days ago; that is, on Monday,
and received cash for it?
RICARDOS. Yes, sare.
TWISDEN. You were not aware that it was stolen?
RICARDOS. [With his hand to his breast] Oh! no, sare.
TWISDEN. You received it from--?
RICARDOS. A minute, sare; I would weesh to explain--[With an expressive
shrug] in private.
TWISDEN. [Nodding] Mr Gilman, your conduct has been most prompt. You
may safely leave the matter in our hands, now. Kindly let us retain
this note; and ask for my cashier as you go out and give him [He writes]
this. He will reimburse you. We will take any necessary steps
ourselves.
GILMAN. [In slight surprise, with modest pride] Well, sir, I'm in your
'ands. I must be guided by you, with your experience. I'm glad you
think I acted rightly.
TWISDEN. Very rightly, Mr Gilman--very rightly. [Rising]
Good afternoon!
GILMAN. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, gentlemen! [To TWISDEN]
I'm sure I'm very 'appy to have made your acquaintance, sir. It's a
well-known name.
TWISDEN. Thank you.
GILMAN retreats, glances at RICARDOS, and turns again.
GILMAN. I suppose there's nothing else I ought to do, in the interests
of the law? I'm a careful man.
TWISDEN. If there is, Mr Gilman, we will let you know. We have your
address. You may make your mind easy; but don't speak of this. It might
interfere with Justice.
GILMAN. Oh! I shouldn't dream of it. I've no wish to be mixed up in
anything conspicuous. That's not my principle at all. Good-day,
gentlemen.
He goes.
TWISDEN. [Seating himself] Now, sir, will you sit down.
But RICARDOS does not sit; he stands looking uneasily across the
table at GRAVITER.
You may speak out.
RICARDOS. Well, Mr Tweesden and sare, this matter is very serious for
me, and very delicate--it concairns my honour. I am in a great
difficulty.
TWISDEN. When in difficulty--complete frankness, sir.
RICARDOS. It is a family matter, sare, I--
TWISDEN. Let me be frank with you. [Telling his points off on his
fingers] We have your admission that you changed this stopped note for
value. It will be our duty to inform the Bank of England that it has
been traced to you. You will have to account to them for your possession
of it. I suggest to you that it will be far better to account frankly to
us.
RICARDOS. [Taking out a handkerchief and quite openly wiping his hands
and forehead] I received this note, sare, with others, from a gentleman,
sare, in settlement of a debt of honour, and I know nothing of where he
got them.
TWISDEN. H'm! that is very vague. If that is all you can tell us, I'm
afraid--
RICARDOS. Gentlemen, this is very painful for me. It is my daughter's
good name--[He again wipes his brow].
TWISDEN. Come, sir, speak out!
RICARDOS. [Desperately] The notes were a settlement to her from this
gentleman, of whom she was a great friend.
TWISDEN. [Suddenly] I am afraid we must press you for the name of the
gentleman.
RICARDOS. Sare, if I give it to you, and it does 'im 'arm, what will my
daughter say? This is a bad matter for me. He behaved well to her; and
she is attached to him still; sometimes she is crying yet because she
lost him. And now we betray him, perhaps, who knows? This is very
unpleasant for me. [Taking up the paper] Here it gives the number of
another note--a 'undred-pound note. I 'ave that too. [He takes a note
from his breast pocket].
GRAVITER. How much did he give you in all?
RICARDOS. For my daughter's settlement one thousand pounds. I
understand he did not wish to give a cheque because of his marriage.
So I did not think anything about it being in notes, you see.
TWISDEN. When did he give you this money?
RICARDOS. The middle of Octobare last.
TWISDEN. [Suddenly looking up] Mr Ricardos, was it Captain Dancy?
RICARDOS. [Again wiping his forehead] Gentlemen, I am so fond of my
daughter. I have only the one, and no wife.
TWISDEN. [With an effort] Yes, yes; but I must know.
RICARDOS. Sare, if I tell you, will you give me your good word that my
daughter shall not hear of it?
TWISDEN. So far as we are able to prevent it--certainly.
RICARDOS. Sare, I trust you.--It was Captain Dancy.
A long pause.
GRAVITER [Suddenly] Were you blackmailing him?
TWISDEN. [Holding up his hand] My partner means, did you press him for
this settlement?
RICARDOS. I did think it my duty to my daughter to ask that he make
compensation to her.
TWISDEN. With threats that you would tell his wife?
RICARDOS. [With a shrug] Captain Dancy was a man of honour. He said:
"Of course I will do this." I trusted him. And a month later I did
remind him, and he gave me this money for her. I do not know where he
got it--I do not know. Gentlemen, I have invested it all on her--every
penny-except this note, for which I had the purpose to buy her a
necklace. That is the sweared truth.
TWISDEN. I must keep this note. [He touches the hundred-pound note]
You will not speak of this to anyone. I may recognise that you were a
holder for value received--others might take a different view. Good-day,
sir. Graviter, see Mr Ricardos out, and take his address.
RICARDOS. [Pressing his hands over the breast of his frock coat--with a
sigh] Gentlemen, I beg you--remember what I said. [With a roll of his
eyes] My daughter--I am not happee. Good-day.
He turns and goes out slowly, Left Forward, followed by GRAVITER.
TWISDEN. [To himself] Young Dancy! [He pins the two notes together and
places them in an envelope, then stands motionless except for his eyes
and hands, which restlessly express the disturbance within him.]
GRAVITER returns, carefully shuts the door, and going up to him,
hands him RICARDOS' card.
[Looking at the card] Villa Benvenuto. This will have to be verified,
but I'm afraid it's true. That man was not acting.
GRAVITER. What's to be done about Dancy?
TWISDEN. Can you understand a gentleman--?
GRAVITER. I don't know, sir. The war loosened "form" all over the
place. I saw plenty of that myself. And some men have no moral sense.
From the first I've had doubts.
TWISDEN. We can't go on with the case.
GRAVITER. Phew! . . . [A moment's silence] Gosh! It's an awful
thing for his wife.
TWISDEN. Yes.
GRAVITER [Touching the envelope] Chance brought this here, sir. That
man won't talk--he's too scared.
TWISDEN. Gilman.
GRAVITER. Too respectable. If De Levis got those notes back, and the
rest of the money, anonymously?
TWISDEN. But the case, Graviter; the case.
GRAVITER. I don't believe this alters what I've been thinking.
TWISDEN. Thought is one thing--knowledge another. There's duty to our
profession. Ours is a fine calling. On the good faith of solicitors a
very great deal hangs. [He crosses to the hearth as if warmth would help
him].
GRAVITER. It'll let him in for a prosecution. He came to us in
confidence.
TWISDEN. Not as against the law.
GRAVITER. No. I suppose not. [A pause] By Jove, I don't like losing
this case. I don't like the admission we backed such a wrong 'un.
TWISDEN. Impossible to go on. Apart from ourselves, there's Sir
Frederic. We must disclose to him--can't let him go on in the dark.
Complete confidence between solicitor and counsel is the essence of
professional honour.
GRAVITER. What are you going to do then, sir?
TWISDEN. See Dancy at once. Get him on the phone.
GRAVITER. [Taking up the telephone] Get me Captain Dancy's flat. . . .
What? . . .[To TWISDEN] Mrs Dancy is here. That's a propos with a
vengeance. Are you going to see her, sir?
TWISDEN. [After a moment's painful hesitation] I must.
GRAVITER. [Telephoning] Bring Mrs Dancy up. [He turns to the window].
MABEL DANDY is shown in, looking very pale. TWISDEN advances from
the fire, and takes her hand.
MABEL. Major Colford's taken Ronny off in his car for the night. I
thought it would do him good. I said I'd come round in case there was
anything you wanted to say before to-morrow.
TWISDEN. [Taken aback] Where have they gone?
MABEL. I don't know, but he'll be home before ten o'clock to-morrow. Is
there anything?
TWISDEN. Well, I'd like to see him before the Court sits. Send him on
here as soon as he comes.
MABEL. [With her hand to her forehead] Oh! Mr Twisden, when will it be
over? My head's getting awful sitting in that Court.
TWISDEN. My dear Mrs Dancy, there's no need at all for you to come down
to-morrow; take a rest and nurse your head.
MABEL. Really and truly?
TWISDEN. Yes; it's the very best thing you can do.
GRAVITER turns his head, and looks at them unobserved.
MABEL. How do you think it's going?
TWISDEN. It went very well to-day; very well indeed.
MABEL. You must be awfully fed up with us.
TWISDEN. My dear young lady, that's our business. [He takes her hand].
MABEL's face suddenly quivers. She draws her hand away, and covers
her lips with it.
There, there! You want a day off badly.
MABEL. I'm so tired of--! Thank you so much for all you're doing.
Good night! Good night, Mr Graviter!
GRAVITER. Good night, Mrs Dancy.
MABEL goes.
GRAVITER. D'you know, I believe she knows.
TWISDEN. No, no! She believes in him implicitly. A staunch little
woman. Poor thing!
GRAVITER. Hasn't that shaken you, sir? It has me.
TWISDEN. No, no! I--I can't go on with the case. It's breaking faith.
Get Sir Frederic's chambers.
GRAVITER. [Telephoning, and getting a reply, looks round at TWISDEN]
Yes?
TWISDEN. Ask if I can come round and see him.
GRAVITER. [Telephoning] Can Sir Frederic spare Mr Twisden a few minutes
now if he comes round? [Receiving reply] He's gone down to Brighton for
the night.
TWISDEN. H'm! What hotel?
GRAVITER. [Telephoning] What's his address? What . . . ? [To
TWISDEN] The Bedford.
TWISDEN. I'll go down.
GRAVITER. [Telephoning] Thank you. All right. [He rings off].
TWISDEN. Just look out the trains down and up early to-morrow.
GRAVITER takes up an A B C, and TWISDEN takes up the Ricardos card.
TWISDEN. Send to this address in Putney, verify the fact that Ricardos
has a daughter, and give me a trunk call to Brighton. Better go
yourself, Graviter. If you see her, don't say anything, of course--
invent some excuse. [GRAVITER nods] I'll be up in time to see Dancy.
GRAVITER. By George! I feel bad about this.
TWISDEN. Yes. But professional honour comes first. What time is that
train? [He bends over the ABC].
CURTAIN.
SCENE II
The same room on the following morning at ten-twenty-five, by the
Grandfather clock.
The YOUNG CLERK is ushering in DANCY, whose face is perceptibly
harder than it was three months ago, like that of a man who has
lived under great restraint.
DANCY. He wanted to see me before the Court sat.
YOUNG CLERK. Yes, sir. Mr Twisden will see you in one minute. He had
to go out of town last night. [He prepares to open the waiting-room
door].
DANCY. Were you in the war?
YOUNG CLERK. Yes.
DANCY. How can you stick this?
YOUNG CLERK. [With a smile] My trouble was to stick that, sir.
DANCY. But you get no excitement from year's end to year's end. It'd
drive me mad.
YOUNG CLERK. [Shyly] A case like this is pretty exciting. I'd give a
lot to see us win it.
DANCY. [Staring at him] Why? What is it to you?
YOUNG CLERK. I don't know, sir. It's--it's like football--you want your
side to win. [He opens the waiting-room door. Expanding] You see some
rum starts, too, in a lawyer's office in a quiet way.
DANCY enters the waiting-room, and the YOUNG CLERK, shutting the
door, meets TWISDEN as he comes in, Left Forward, and takes from him
overcoat, top hat, and a small bag.
YOUNG CLERK. Captain Dancy's waiting, sir. [He indicates the
waiting-room].
TWISDEN. [Narrowing his lips] Very well. Mr Graviter gone to the
Courts?
YOUNG CLERK. Yes, sir.
TWISDEN. Did he leave anything for me?
YOUNG CLERK. On the table, sir.
TWISDEN. [Taking up an envelope] Thank you.
The CLERK goes.
TWISDEN. [Opening the envelope and reading] "All corroborates." H'm!
[He puts it in his pocket and takes out of an envelope the two notes,
lays them on the table, and covers them with a sheet of blotting-paper;
stands a moment preparing himself, then goes to the door of the
waiting-room, opens it, and says:] Now, Captain Dancy. Sorry to have
kept you waiting.
DANCY. [Entering] WINSOR came to me yesterday about General Canynge's
evidence. Is that what you wanted to speak to me about?
TWISDEN. No. It isn't that.
DANCY. [Looking at his wrist watch] By me it's just on the half-hour,
sir.
TWISDEN. Yes. I don't want you to go to the Court.
DANCY. Not?
TWISDEN. I have very serious news for you.
DANCY. [Wincing and collecting himself] Oh!
TWISDEN. These two notes. [He uncovers the notes] After the Court rose
yesterday we had a man called Ricardos here. [A pause] Is there any need
for me to say more?
DANCY. [Unflinching] No. What now?
TWISDEN. Our duty was plain; we could not go on with the case. I have
consulted Sir Frederic. He felt--he felt that he must throw up his
brief, and he will do that the moment the Court sits. Now I want to talk
to you about what you're going to do.
DANCY. That's very good of you, considering.
TWISDEN. I don't pretend to understand, but I imagine you may have done
this in a moment of reckless bravado, feeling, perhaps, that as you gave
the mare to De Levis, the money was by rights as much yours as his.
Stopping DANCY, who is about to speak, with a gesture.
To satisfy a debt of honour to this--lady; and, no doubt, to save your
wife from hearing of it from the man Ricardos. Is that so?
DANCY. To the life.
TWISDEN. It was mad, Captain Dancy, mad! But the question now is: What
do you owe to your wife? She doesn't dream--I suppose?
DANCY. [With a twitching face] No.
TWISDEN. We can't tell what the result of this collapse will be. The
police have the theft in hand. They may issue a warrant. The money
could be refunded, and the costs paid--somehow that can all be managed.
But it may not help. In any case, what end is served by your staying in
the country? You can't save your honour--that's gone. You can't save
your wife's peace of mind. If she sticks to you--do you think she will?
DANCY. Not if she's wise.
TWISDEN. Better go! There's a war in Morocco.
DANCY. [With a bitter smile] Good old Morocco!
TWISDEN. Will you go, then, at once, and leave me to break it to your
wife?
DANCY. I don't know yet.
TWISDEN. You must decide quickly, to catch a boat train. Many a man has
made good. You're a fine soldier.
DANCY. There are alternatives.
TWISDEN. Now, go straight from this office. You've a passport, I
suppose; you won't need a visa for France, and from there you can find
means to slip over. Have you got money on you? [Dancy nods]. We will
see what we can do to stop or delay proceedings.
DANCY. It's all damned kind of you. [With difficulty] But I must think
of my wife. Give me a few minutes.
TWISDEN. Yes, yes; go in there and think it out.
He goes to the door, Right, and opens it. DANCY passes him and goes
out. TWISDEN rings a bell and stands waiting.
CLERK. [Entering] Yes, sir?
TWISDEN. Tell them to call a taxi.
CLERK. [Who has a startled look] Yes, sir. Mr Graviter has come in,
air, with General Canynge. Are you disengaged?
TWISDEN. Yes.
The CLERK goes out, and almost immediately GRAVITER and CANYNGE
enter. Good-morning, General. [To GRAVITER]
Well?
GRAVITER. Sir Frederic got up at once and said that since the
publication of the numbers of those notes, information had reached him
which forced him to withdraw from the case. Great sensation, of course.
I left Bromley in charge. There'll be a formal verdict for the
defendant, with costs. Have you told Dancy?
TWISDEN. Yes. He's in there deciding what he'll do.
CANYNGE. [Grave and vexed] This is a dreadful thing, Twisden. I've
been afraid of it all along. A soldier! A gallant fellow, too. What on
earth got into him?
TWISDEN. There's no end to human nature, General.
GRAVITER. You can see queerer things in the papers, any day.
CANYNGE. That poor young wife of his! WINSOR gave me a message for you,
Twisden. If money's wanted quickly to save proceedings, draw on him.
Is there anything I can do?
TWISDEN. I've advised him to go straight off to Morocco.
CANYNGE. I don't know that an asylum isn't the place for him. He must
be off his head at moments. That jump-crazy! He'd have got a verdict on
that alone--if they'd seen those balconies. I was looking at them when I
was down there last Sunday. Daring thing, Twisden. Very few men, on a
dark night--He risked his life twice. That's a shrewd fellow--young De
Levis. He spotted Dancy's nature.
The YOUNG CLERK enters.
CLERK. The taxi's here, sir. Will you see Major Colford and Miss Orme?
TWISDEN. Graviter--No; show them in.
The YOUNG CLERK goes.
CANYNGE. Colford's badly cut up.
MARGARET ORME and COLFORD enter.
COLFORD. [Striding forward] There must be some mistake about this, Mr
Twisden.
TWISDEN. Hssh! Dancy's in there. He's admitted it.
Voices are subdued at once.
COLFORD. What? [With emotion] If it were my own brother, I couldn't
feel it more. But--damn it! What right had that fellow to chuck up the
case--without letting him know, too. I came down with Dancy this
morning, and he knew nothing about it.
TWISDEN. [Coldly] That was unfortunately unavoidable.
COLFORD. Guilty or not, you ought to have stuck to him--it's not playing
the game, Mr Twisden.
TWISDEN. You must allow me to judge where my duty lay, in a very hard
case.
COLFORD. I thought a man was safe with his solicitor.
CANYNGE. Colford, you don't understand professional etiquette.
COLFORD. No, thank God!
TWISDEN. When you have been as long in your profession as I have been in
mine, Major Colford, you will know that duty to your calling outweighs
duty to friend or client.
COLFORD. But I serve the Country.
TWISDEN. And I serve the Law, sir.
CANYNGE. Graviter, give me a sheet of paper. I'll write a letter for
him.
MARGARET. [Going up to TWISDEN] Dear Mr Jacob--pay De Levis. You know
my pearls--put them up the spout again. Don't let Ronny be--
TWISDEN. Money isn't the point, Margaret.
MARGARET. It's ghastly! It really is.
COLFORD. I'm going in to shake hands with him. [He starts to cross the
room].
TWISDEN. Wait! We want him to go straight off to Morocco. Don't upset
him. [To COLFORD and MARGARET] I think you had better go. If, a little
later, Margaret, you could go round to Mrs Dancy--
COLFORD. Poor little Mabel Dancy! It's perfect hell for her.
They have not seen that DANCY has opened the door behind them.
DANCY. It is!
They all turn round in consternation.
COLFORD. [With a convulsive movement] Old boy!
DANCY. No good, Colford. [Gazing round at them] Oh! clear out--I can't
stand commiseration; and let me have some air.
TWISDEN motions to COLFORD and MARGARET to go; and as he turns to
DANCY, they go out. GRAVITER also moves towards the door. The
GENERAL sits motionless. GRAVITER goes Out.
TWISDEN. Well?
DANCY. I'm going home, to clear up things with my wife. General
Canynge, I don't quite know why I did the damned thing. But I did,
and there's an end of it.
CANYNGE. Dancy, for the honour of the Army, avoid further scandal if
you can. I've written a letter to a friend of mine in the Spanish War
Office. It will get you a job in their war. [CANYNGE closes the
envelope].
DANCY. Very good of you. I don't know if I can make use of it.
CANYNGE stretches out the letter, which TWISDEN hands to DANCY, who
takes it. GRAVITER re-opens the door.
TWISDEN. What is it?
GRAVITER. De Levis is here.
TWISDEN. De Levis? Can't see him.
DANCY. Let him in!
After a moment's hesitation TWISDEN nods, and GRAVITER goes out.
The three wait in silence with their eyes fixed on the door, the
GENERAL sitting at the table, TWISDEN by his chair, DANCY between
him and the door Right. DE LEVIS comes in and shuts the door. He
is advancing towards TWISDEN when his eyes fall on DANCY, and he
stops.
TWISDEN. You wanted to see me?
DE LEVIS. [Moistening his lips] Yes. I came to say that--that I
overheard--I am afraid a warrant is to be issued. I wanted you to
realise--it's not my doing. I'll give it no support. I'm content. I
don't want my money. I don't even want costs. Dancy, do you understand?
DANCY does not answer, but looks at him with nothing alive in his
face but his eyes.
TWISDEN. We are obliged to you, Sir. It was good of you to come.
DE LEVIS. [With a sort of darting pride] Don't mistake me. I didn't
come because I feel Christian; I am a Jew. I will take no money--not
even that which was stolen. Give it to a charity. I'm proved right.
And now I'm done with the damned thing. Good-morning!
He makes a little bow to CANYNGE and TWISDEN, and turns to face
DANCY, who has never moved. The two stand motionless, looking at
each other, then DE LEVIS shrugs his shoulders and walks out. When
he is gone there is a silence.
CANYNGE. [Suddenly] You heard what he said, Dancy. You have no time to
lose.
But DANCY does not stir.
TWISDEN. Captain Dancy?
Slowly, without turning his head, rather like a man in a dream,
DANCY walks across the room, and goes out.
CURTAIN.
SCENE III
The DANCYS' sitting-room, a few minutes later. MABEL DANCY is
sitting alone on the sofa with a newspaper on her lap; she is only
just up, and has a bottle of smelling-salts in her hand. Two or
three other newspapers are dumped on the arm of the sofa. She
topples the one off her lap and takes up another as if she couldn't
keep away from them; drops it in turn, and sits staring before her,
sniffing at the salts. The door, Right, is opened and DANCY comes
in.
MABEL. [Utterly surprised] Ronny! Do they want me in Court?
DANCY. No.
MABEL. What is it, then? Why are you back?
DANCY. Spun.
MABEL. [Blank] Spun? What do you mean? What's spun?
DANCY. The case. They've found out through those notes.
MABEL. Oh! [Staring at his face] Who?
DANCY. Me!
MABEL. [After a moment of horrified stillness] Don't, Ronny! Oh! No!
Don't! [She buries her face in the pillows of the sofa].
DANCY stands looking down at her.
DANCY. Pity you wouldn't come to Africa three months ago.
MABEL. Why didn't you tell me then? I would have gone.
DANCY. You wanted this case. Well, it's fallen down.
MABEL. Oh! Why didn't I face it? But I couldn't--I had to believe.
DANCY. And now you can't. It's the end, Mabel.
MABEL. [Looking up at him] No.
DANCY goes suddenly on his knees and seizes her hand.
DANCY. Forgive me!
MABEL. [Putting her hand on his head] Yes; oh, yes! I think I've known a
long time, really. Only--why? What made you?
DANCY. [Getting up and speaking in jerks] It was a crazy thing to do;
but, damn it, I was only looting a looter. The money was as much mine as
his. A decent chap would have offered me half. You didn't see the brute
look at me that night at dinner as much as to say: "You blasted fool!"
It made me mad. That wasn't a bad jump-twice over. Nothing in the war
took quite such nerve. [Grimly] I rather enjoyed that evening.
MABEL. But--money! To keep it!
DANCY. [Sullenly] Yes, but I had a debt to pay.
MABEL. To a woman?
DANCY. A debt of honour--it wouldn't wait.
MABEL. It was--it was to a woman. Ronny, don't lie any more.
DANCY. [Grimly] Well! I wanted to save your knowing. I'd promised a
thousand. I had a letter from her father that morning, threatening to
tell you. All the same, if that tyke hadn't jeered at me for parlour
tricks!--But what's the good of all this now? [Sullenly] Well--it may
cure you of loving me. Get over that, Mab; I never was worth it--and I'm
done for!
MABEL. The woman--have you--since--?
DANCY. [Energetically] No! You supplanted her. But if you'd known I
was leaving a woman for you, you'd never have married me. [He walks over
to the hearth].
MABEL too gets up. She presses her hands to her forehead, then
walks blindly round to behind the sofa and stands looking straight
in front of her.
MABEL. [Coldly] What has happened, exactly?
DANCY. Sir Frederic chucked up the case. I've seen Twisden; they want
me to run for it to Morocco.
MABEL. To the war there?
DANCY. Yes. There's to be a warrant out.
MABEL. A prosecution? Prison? Oh, go! Don't wait a minute! Go!
DANCY. Blast them!
MABEL. Oh, Ronny! Please! Please! Think what you'll want. I'll pack.
Quick! No! Don't wait to take things. Have you got money?
DANCY. [Nodding] This'll be good-bye, then!
MABEL. [After a moment's struggle] Oh! No! No, no! I'll follow--I'll
come out to you there.
DANCY. D'you mean you'll stick to me?
MABEL. Of course I'll stick to you.
DANCY seizes her hand and puts it to his lips. The bell rings.
MABEL. [In terror] Who's that?
The bell rings again. DANCY moves towards the door.
No! Let me!
She passes him and steals out to the outer door of the flat, where
she stands listening. The bell rings again. She looks through the
slit of the letter-box. While she is gone DANCY stands quite still,
till she comes back.
MABEL. Through the letter-bog--I can see----It's--it's police. Oh!
God! . . . Ronny! I can't bear it.
DANCY. Heads up, Mab! Don't show the brutes!
MABEL. Whatever happens, I'll go on loving you. If it's prison--I'll
wait. Do you understand? I don't care what you did--I don't care! I'm
just the same. I will be just the same when you come back to me.
DANCY. [Slowly] That's not in human nature.
MABEL. It is. It's in Me.
DANCY. I've crocked up your life.
MABEL. No, no! Kiss me!
A long kiss, till the bell again startles them apart, and there is a
loud knock.
DANCY. They'll break the door in. It's no good--we must open. Hold
them in check a little. I want a minute or two.
MABEL. [Clasping him] Ronny! Oh, Ronny! It won't be for long--I'll be
waiting! I'll be waiting--I swear it.
DANCY. Steady, Mab! [Putting her back from him] Now!
He opens the bedroom door, Left, and stands waiting for her to go.
Summoning up her courage, she goes to open the outer door. A sudden
change comes over DANCY'S face; from being stony it grows almost
maniacal.
DANCY. [Under his breath] No! No! By God! No! He goes out into the
bedroom, closing the door behind him.
MABEL has now opened the outer door, and disclosed INSPECTOR DEDE
and the YOUNG CONSTABLE who were summoned to Meldon Court on the
night of the theft, and have been witnesses in the case. Their
voices are heard.
MABEL. Yes?
INSPECTOR. Captain Dancy in, madam?
MABEL. I am not quite sure--I don't think so.
INSPECTOR. I wish to speak to him a minute. Stay here, Grover. Now,
madam!
MABEL. Will you come in while I see?
She comes in, followed by the INSPECTOR.
INSPECTOR. I should think you must be sure, madam. This is not a big
place.
MABEL. He was changing his clothes to go out. I think he has gone.
INSPECTOR. What's that door?
MABEL. To our bedroom.
INSPECTOR. [Moving towards it] He'll be in there, then.
MABEL. What do you want, Inspector?
INSPECTOR. [Melting] Well, madam, it's no use disguising it. I'm
exceedingly sorry, but I've a warrant for his arrest.
MABEL. Inspector!
INSPECTOR. I'm sure I've every sympathy for you, madam; but I must carry
out my instructions.
MABEL. And break my heart?
INSPECTOR. Well, madam, we're--we're not allowed to take that into
consideration. The Law's the Law.
MABEL. Are you married?
INSPECTOR. I am.
MABEL. If you--your wife--
The INSPECTOR raises his hand, deprecating.
[Speaking low] Just half an hour! Couldn't you? It's two lives--two
whole lives! We've only been married four months. Come back in half an
hour. It's such a little thing--nobody will know. Nobody. Won't you?
INSPECTOR. Now, madam--you must know my duty.
MABEL. Inspector, I beseech you--just half an hour.
INSPECTOR. No, no--don't you try to undermine me--I'm sorry for you;
but don't you try it! [He tries the handle, then knocks at the door].
DANCY'S VOICE. One minute!
INSPECTOR. It's locked. [Sharply] Is there another door to that room?
Come, now--
The bell rings.
[Moving towards the door, Left; to the CONSTABLE] Who's that out there?
CONSTABLE. A lady and gentleman, sir.
INSPECTOR. What lady and-- Stand by, Grover!
DANCY'S VOICE. All right! You can come in now.
There is the noise of a lock being turned. And almost immediately
the sound of a pistol shot in the bedroom. MABEL rushes to the
door, tears it open, and disappears within, followed by the
INSPECTOR, just as MARGARET ORME and COLFORD come in from the
passage, pursued by the CONSTABLE. They, too, all hurry to the
bedroom door and disappear for a moment; then COLFORD and MARGARET
reappear, supporting MABEL, who faints as they lay her on the sofa.
COLFORD takes from her hand an envelope, and tears it open.
COLFORD. It's addressed to me. [He reads it aloud to MARGARET in a low
voice].
"DEAR COLFORD,--This is the only decent thing I can do. It's too damned
unfair to her. It's only another jump. A pistol keeps faith. Look
after her, Colford--my love to her, and you."
MARGARET gives a sort of choking sob, then, seeing the smelling bottle,
she snatches it up, and turns to revive MABEL.
COLFORD. Leave her! The longer she's unconscious, the better.
INSPECTOR. [Re-entering] This is a very serious business, sir.
COLFORD. [Sternly] Yes, Inspector; you've done for my best friend.
INSPECTOR. I, sir? He shot himself.
COLFORD. Hara-kiri.
INSPECTOR. Beg pardon?
COLFORD. [He points with the letter to MABEL] For her sake, and his own.
INSPECTOR. [Putting out his hand] I'll want that, sir.
COLFORD. [Grimly] You shall have it read at the inquest. Till then--
it's addressed to me, and I stick to it.
INSPECTOR. Very well, sir. Do you want to have a look at him?
COLFORD passes quickly into the bedroom, followed by the INSPECTOR.
MARGARET remains kneeling beside MABEL.
COLFORD comes quickly back. MARGARET looks up at him. He stands
very still.
COLFORD. Neatly--through the heart.
MARGARET [wildly] Keeps faith! We've all done that. It's not enough.
COLFORD. [Looking down at MABEL] All right, old boy!
The CURTAIN falls.
WINDOWS
From the 5th Series of Plays
By John Galsworthy
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
GEOFFREY MARCH....... Freelance in Literature
JOAN MARCH........... His Wife
MARY MARCH........... Their Daughter
JOHNNY MARCH......... Their Son
COOK................. Their Cook
MR BLY............... Their Window Cleaner
FAITH BLY............ His Daughter
BLUNTER.............. A Strange Young Man
MR BARNADAS.......... In Plain Clothes
The action passes in Geofrey March's House, Highgate-Spring-time.
ACT I. Thursday morning. The dining-room-after breakfast.
ACT II. Thursday, a fortnight later. The dining-room after lunch.
ACT III. The same day. The dining-room-after dinner.
ACT I
The MARCH'S dining-room opens through French windows on one of those
gardens which seem infinite, till they are seen to be coterminous
with the side walls of the house, and finite at the far end, because
only the thick screen of acacias and sumachs prevents another house
from being seen. The French and other windows form practically all
the outer wall of that dining-room, and between them and the screen
of trees lies the difference between the characters of Mr and Mrs
March, with dots and dashes of Mary and Johnny thrown in. For
instance, it has been formalised by MRS MARCH but the grass has not
been cut by MR MARCH, and daffodils have sprung up there, which MRS
MARCH desires for the dining-room, but of which MR MARCH says: "For
God's sake, Joan, let them grow." About half therefore are now in a
bowl on the breakfast table, and the other half still in the grass,
in the compromise essential to lasting domesticity. A hammock under
the acacias shows that MARY lies there sometimes with her eyes on
the gleam of sunlight that comes through: and a trail in the longish
grass, bordered with cigarette ends, proves that JOHNNY tramps there
with his eyes on the ground or the stars, according. But all this
is by the way, because except for a yard or two of gravel terrace
outside the windows, it is all painted on the backcloth. The
MARCHES have been at breakfast, and the round table, covered with
blue linen, is thick with remains, seven baskets full. The room is
gifted with old oak furniture: there is a door, stage Left, Forward;
a hearth, where a fire is burning, and a high fender on which one
can sit, stage Right, Middle; and in the wall below the fireplace,
a service hatch covered with a sliding shutter, for the passage of
dishes into the adjoining pantry. Against the wall, stage Left, is
an old oak dresser, and a small writing table across the Left Back
corner. MRS MARCH still sits behind the coffee pot, making up her
daily list on tablets with a little gold pencil fastened to her
wrist. She is personable, forty-eight, trim, well-dressed, and more
matter-of-fact than seems plausible. MR MARCH is sitting in an
armchair, sideways to the windows, smoking his pipe and reading his
newspaper, with little explosions to which no one pays any
attention, because it is his daily habit. He is a fine-looking man
of fifty odd, with red-grey moustaches and hair, both of which
stiver partly by nature and partly because his hands often push them
up. MARY and JOHNNY are close to the fireplace, stage Right.
JOHNNY sits on the fender, smoking a cigarette and warming his back.
He is a commonplace looking young man, with a decided jaw, tall,
neat, soulful, who has been in the war and writes poetry. MARY is
less ordinary; you cannot tell exactly what is the matter with her.
She too is tall, a little absent, fair, and well-looking. She has a
small china dog in her hand, taken from the mantelpiece, and faces
the audience. As the curtain rises she is saying in her soft and
pleasant voice: "Well, what is the matter with us all, Johnny?"
JOHNNY. Stuck, as we were in the trenches--like china dogs. [He points
to the ornament in her hand.]
MR MARCH. [Into his newspaper] Damn these people!
MARY. If there isn't an ideal left, Johnny, it's no good pretending one.
JOHNNY. That's what I'm saying: Bankrupt!
MARY. What do you want?
MRS MARCH. [To herself] Mutton cutlets. Johnny, will you be in to
lunch? [JOHNNY shakes his head] Mary? [MARY nods] Geof?
MR MARCH. [Into his paper] Swine!
MRS MARCH. That'll be three. [To herself] Spinach.
JOHNNY. If you'd just missed being killed for three blooming years for
no spiritual result whatever, you'd want something to bite on, Mary.
MRS MARCH. [Jotting] Soap.
JOHNNY. What price the little and weak, now? Freedom and
self-determination, and all that?
MARY. Forty to one--no takers.
JOHNNY. It doesn't seem to worry you.
MARY. Well, what's the good?
JOHNNY. Oh, you're a looker on, Mary.
MR MARCH. [To his newspaper] Of all Godforsaken time-servers!
MARY is moved so lar as to turn and look over his shoulder a minute.
JOHNNY. Who?
MARY. Only the Old-Un.
MR MARCH. This is absolutely Prussian!
MRS MARCH. Soup, lobster, chicken salad. Go to Mrs Hunt's.
MR MARCH. And this fellow hasn't the nous to see that if ever there were
a moment when it would pay us to take risks, and be generous--My hat!
He ought to be--knighted! [Resumes his paper.]
JOHNNY. [Muttering] You see, even Dad can't suggest chivalry without
talking of payment for it. That shows how we've sunk.
MARY. [Contemptuously] Chivalry! Pouf! Chivalry was "off" even before
the war, Johnny. Who wants chivalry?
JOHNNY. Of all shallow-pated humbug--that sneering at chivalry's the
worst. Civilisation--such as we've got--is built on it.
MARY. [Airily] Then it's built on sand. [She sits beside him on the
fender.]
JOHNNY. Sneering and smartness! Pah!
MARY. [Roused] I'll tell you what, Johnny, it's mucking about with
chivalry that makes your poetry rotten. [JOHNNY seizes her arm and
twists it] Shut up--that hurts. [JOHNNY twists it more] You brute!
[JOHNNY lets her arm go.]
JOHNNY. Ha! So you don't mind taking advantage of the fact that you can
cheek me with impunity, because you're weaker. You've given the whole
show away, Mary. Abolish chivalry and I'll make you sit up.
MRS MARCH. What are you two quarrelling about? Will you bring home
cigarettes, Johnny--not Bogdogunov's Mamelukes--something more
Anglo-American.
JOHNNY. All right! D'you want any more illustrations, Mary?
MARY. Pig! [She has risen and stands rubbing her arm and recovering her
placidity, which is considerable.]
MRS MARCH. Geof, can you eat preserved peaches?
MR MARCH. Hell! What a policy! Um?
MRS MARCH. Can you eat preserved peaches?
MR MARCH. Yes. [To his paper] Making the country stink in the eyes of
the world!
MARY. Nostrils, Dad, nostrils.
MR MARCH wriggles, half hearing.
JOHNNY. [Muttering] Shallow idiots! Thinking we can do without
chivalry!
MRS MARCH. I'm doing my best to get a parlourmaid, to-day, Mary, but
these breakfast things won't clear themselves.
MARY. I'll clear them, Mother.
MRS MARCH. Good! [She gets up. At the door] Knitting silk.
She goes out.
JOHNNY. Mother hasn't an ounce of idealism. You might make her see
stars, but never in the singular.
MR MARCH. [To his paper] If God doesn't open the earth soon--
MARY. Is there anything special, Dad?
MR MARCH. This sulphurous government. [He drops the paper] Give me a
match, Mary.
As soon as the paper is out of his hands he becomes a different--an
affable man.
MARY. [Giving him a match] D'you mind writing in here this morning,
Dad? Your study hasn't been done. There's nobody but Cook.
MR MARCH. [Lighting his pipe] Anywhere.
He slews the armchair towards the fire.
MARY. I'll get your things, then.
She goes out.
JOHNNY. [Still on the fender] What do you say, Dad? Is civilisation
built on chivalry or on self-interest?
MR MARCH. The question is considerable, Johnny. I should say it was
built on contract, and jerry-built at that.
JOHNNY. Yes; but why do we keep contracts when we can break them with
advantage and impunity?
MR MARCH. But do we keep them?
JOHNNY. Well--say we do; otherwise you'll admit there isn't such a thing
as civilisation at all. But why do we keep them? For instance, why
don't we make Mary and Mother work for us like Kafir women? We could
lick them into it. Why did we give women the vote? Why free slaves;
why anything decent for the little and weak?
MR MARCH. Well, you might say it was convenient for people living in
communities.
JOHNNY. I don't think it's convenient at all. I should like to make
Mary sweat. Why not jungle law, if there's nothing in chivalry.
MR MARCH. Chivalry is altruism, Johnny. Of course it's quite a question
whether altruism isn't enlightened self-interest!
JOHNNY. Oh! Damn!
The lank and shirt-sleeved figure of MR BLY, with a pail of water
and cloths, has entered, and stands near the window, Left.
BLY. Beg pardon, Mr March; d'you mind me cleanin' the winders here?
MR MARCH. Not a bit.
JOHNNY. Bankrupt of ideals. That's it!
MR BLY stares at him, and puts his pail down by the window.
MARY has entered with her father's writing materials which she puts
on a stool beside him.
MARY. Here you are, Dad! I've filled up the ink pot. Do be careful!
Come on, Johnny!
She looks curiously at MR BLY, who has begun operations at the
bottom of the left-hand window, and goes, followed by JOHNNY.
MR MARCH. [Relighting his pipe and preparing his materials] What do you
think of things, Mr Bly?
BLY. Not much, sir.
MR MARCH. Ah! [He looks up at MR BLY, struck by his large philosophical
eyes and moth-eaten moustache] Nor I.
BLY. I rather thought that, sir, from your writin's.
MR MARCH. Oh! Do you read?
BLY. I was at sea, once--formed the 'abit.
MR MARCH. Read any of my novels?
BLY. Not to say all through--I've read some of your articles in the
Sunday papers, though. Make you think!
MR MARCH. I'm at sea now--don't see dry land anywhere, Mr Bly.
BLY. [With a smile] That's right.
MR MARCH. D'you find that the general impression?
BLY. No. People don't think. You 'ave to 'ave some cause for thought.
MR MARCH. Cause enough in the papers.
BLY. It's nearer 'ome with me. I've often thought I'd like a talk with
you, sir. But I'm keepin' you. [He prepares to swab the pane.]
MR MARCH. Not at all. I enjoy it. Anything to put off work.
BLY. [Looking at MR MARCH, then giving a wipe at the window] What's
drink to one is drought to another. I've seen two men take a drink out
of the same can--one die of it and the other get off with a pain in his
stomach.
MR MARCH. You've seen a lot, I expect.
BLY. Ah! I've been on the beach in my day. [He sponges at the window]
It's given me a way o' lookin' at things that I don't find in other
people. Look at the 'Ome Office. They got no philosophy.
MR MARCH. [Pricking his ears] What? Have you had dealings with them?
BLY. Over the reprieve that was got up for my daughter. But I'm keepin'
you.
He swabs at the window, but always at the same pane, so that he does
not advance at all.
MR MARCH. Reprieve?
BLY. Ah! She was famous at eighteen. The Sunday Mercury was full of
her, when she was in prison.
MR MARCH. [Delicately] Dear me! I'd no idea.
BLY. She's out now; been out a fortnight. I always say that fame's
ephemereal. But she'll never settle to that weavin'. Her head got
turned a bit.
MR MARCH. I'm afraid I'm in the dark, Mr Bly.
BLY. [Pausing--dipping his sponge in the pail and then standing with it
in his hand] Why! Don't you remember the Bly case? They sentenced 'er
to be 'anged by the neck until she was dead, for smotherin' her baby.
She was only eighteen at the time of speakin'.
MR MARCH. Oh! yes! An inhuman business!
BLY. All! The jury recommended 'er to mercy. So they reduced it to
Life.
MR MARCH. Life! Sweet Heaven!
BLY. That's what I said; so they give her two years. I don't hold with
the Sunday Mercury, but it put that over. It's a misfortune to a girl to
be good-lookin'.
MR MARCH. [Rumpling his hair] No, no! Dash it all! Beauty's the only
thing left worth living for.
BLY. Well, I like to see green grass and a blue sky; but it's a mistake
in a 'uman bein'. Look at any young chap that's good-lookin'--'e's
doomed to the screen, or hair-dressin'. Same with the girls. My girl
went into an 'airdresser's at seventeen and in six months she was in
trouble. When I saw 'er with a rope round her neck, as you might say,
I said to meself: "Bly," I said, "you're responsible for this. If she
'adn't been good-lookin'--it'd never 'eve 'appened."
During this speech MARY has come in with a tray, to clear the
breakfast, and stands unnoticed at the dining-table, arrested by
the curious words of MR BLY.
MR MARCH. Your wife might not have thought that you were wholly the
cause, Mr Bly.
BLY. Ah! My wife. She's passed on. But Faith--that's my girl's
name--she never was like 'er mother; there's no 'eredity in 'er on that
side.
MR MARCH. What sort of girl is she?
BLY. One for colour--likes a bit o' music--likes a dance, and a flower.
MARY. [Interrupting softly] Dad, I was going to clear, but I'll come
back later.
MR MARCH. Come here and listen to this! Here's a story to get your
blood up! How old was the baby, Mr Bly?
BLY. Two days--'ardly worth mentionin'. They say she 'ad the
'ighstrikes after--an' when she comes to she says: "I've saved my baby's
life." An' that's true enough when you come to think what that sort o'
baby goes through as a rule; dragged up by somebody else's hand, or took
away by the Law. What can a workin' girl do with a baby born under the
rose, as they call it? Wonderful the difference money makes when it
comes to bein' outside the Law.
MR MARCH. Right you are, Mr Bly. God's on the side of the big
battalions.
BLY. Ah! Religion! [His eyes roll philosophically] Did you ever read
'Aigel?
MR MARCH. Hegel, or Haekel?
BLY. Yes; with an aitch. There's a balance abart 'im that I like.
There's no doubt the Christian religion went too far. Turn the other
cheek! What oh! An' this Anti-Christ, Neesha, what came in with the
war--he went too far in the other direction. Neither of 'em practical
men. You've got to strike a balance, and foller it.
MR MARCH. Balance! Not much balance about us. We just run about and
jump Jim Crow.
BLY. [With a perfunctory wipe] That's right; we 'aven't got a faith
these days. But what's the use of tellin' the Englishman to act like an
angel. He ain't either an angel or a blond beast. He's between the two,
an 'ermumphradite. Take my daughter----If I was a blond beast, I'd turn
'er out to starve; if I was an angel, I'd starve meself to learn her the
piano. I don't do either. Why? Becos my instincts tells me not.
MR MARCH. Yes, but my doubt is whether our instincts at this moment of
the world's history are leading us up or down.
BLY. What is up and what is down? Can you answer me that? Is it up or
down to get so soft that you can't take care of yourself?
MR MARCH. Down.
BLY. Well, is it up or down to get so 'ard that you can't take care of
others?
MR MARCH. Down.
BLY. Well, there you are!
MARCH. Then our instincts are taking us down?
BLY. Nao. They're strikin' a balance, unbeknownst, all the time.
MR MARCH. You're a philosopher, Mr Bly.
BLY. [Modestly] Well, I do a bit in that line, too. In my opinion
Nature made the individual believe he's goin' to live after'e's dead just
to keep 'im livin' while 'es alive--otherwise he'd 'a died out.
MR MARCH. Quite a thought--quite a thought!
BLY. But I go one better than Nature. Follow your instincts is my
motto.
MR MARCH. Excuse me, Mr Bly, I think Nature got hold of that before you.
BLY. [Slightly chilled] Well, I'm keepin' you.
MR MARCH. Not at all. You're a believer in conscience, or the little
voice within. When my son was very small, his mother asked him once if
he didn't hear a little voice within, telling him what was right. [MR
MARCH touches his diaphragm] And he said "I often hear little voices in
here, but they never say anything." [MR BLY cannot laugh, but he smiles]
Mary, Johnny must have been awfully like the Government.
BLY. As a matter of fact, I've got my daughter here--in obeyance.
MR MARCH. Where? I didn't catch.
BLY. In the kitchen. Your Cook told me you couldn't get hold of an
'ouse parlour-maid. So I thought it was just a chance--you bein'
broadminded.
MR MARCH. Oh! I see. What would your mother say, Mary?
MARY. Mother would say: "Has she had experience?"
BLY. I've told you about her experience.
MR MARCH. Yes, but--as a parlour-maid.
BLY. Well! She can do hair. [Observing the smile exchanged between MR
MARCH and MARY] And she's quite handy with a plate.
MR MARCH. [Tentatively] I'm a little afraid my wife would feel--
BLY. You see, in this weavin' shop--all the girls 'ave 'ad to be in
trouble, otherwise they wouldn't take 'em. [Apologetically towards MARY]
It's a kind of a disorderly 'ouse without the disorders. Excusin' the
young lady's presence.
MARY. Oh! You needn't mind me, Mr Bly.
MR MARCH. And so you want her to come here? H'm!
BLY. Well I remember when she was a little bit of a thing--no higher
than my knee--[He holds out his hand.]
MR MARCH. [Suddenly moved] My God! yes. They've all been that. [To
MARY] Where's your mother?
MARY. Gone to Mrs Hunt's. Suppose she's engaged one, Dad?
MR MARCH. Well, it's only a month's wages.
MARY. [Softly] She won't like it.
MR MARCH. Well, let's see her, Mr Bly; let's see her, if you don't mind.
BLY. Oh, I don't mind, sir, and she won't neither; she's used to bein'
inspected by now. Why! she 'ad her bumps gone over just before she came
out!
MR MARCH. [Touched on the raw again] H'm! Too bad! Mary, go and fetch
her.
MARY, with a doubting smile, goes out. [Rising] You might give me
the details of that trial, Mr Bly. I'll see if I can't write
something that'll make people sit up. That's the way to send Youth
to hell! How can a child who's had a rope round her neck--!
BLY. [Who has been fumbling in his pocket, produces some yellow
paper-cuttings clipped together] Here's her references--the whole
literature of the case. And here's a letter from the chaplain in one of
the prisons sayin' she took a lot of interest in him; a nice young man,
I believe. [He suddenly brushes a tear out of his eye with the back of
his hand] I never thought I could 'a felt like I did over her bein' in
prison. Seemed a crool senseless thing--that pretty girl o' mine. All
over a baby that hadn't got used to bein' alive. Tain't as if she'd
been follerin' her instincts; why, she missed that baby something crool.
MR MARCH. Of course, human life--even an infant's----
BLY. I know you've got to 'ave a close time for it. But when you come
to think how they take 'uman life in Injia and Ireland, and all those
other places, it seems 'ard to come down like a cartload o' bricks on a
bit of a girl that's been carried away by a moment's abiration.
MR MARCH. [Who is reading the cuttings] H'm! What hypocrites we are!
BLY. Ah! And 'oo can tell 'oo's the father? She never give us his
name. I think the better of 'er for that.
MR MARCH. Shake hands, Mr Bly. So do I. [BLY wipes his hand, and MR
MARCH shakes it] Loyalty's loyalty--especially when we men benefit by
it.
BLY. That's right, sir.
MARY has returned with FAITH BLY, who stands demure and pretty on
the far side of the table, her face an embodiment of the pathetic
watchful prison faculty of adapting itself to whatever may be best
for its owner at the moment. At this moment it is obviously best
for her to look at the ground, and yet to take in the faces of MR
MARCH and MARY without their taking her face in. A moment, for all,
of considerable embarrassment.
MR MARCH. [Suddenly] We'll, here we are!
The remark attracts FAITH; she raises her eyes to his softly with a
little smile, and drops them again.
So you want to be our parlour-maid?
FAITH. Yes, please.
MR MARCH. Well, Faith can remove mountains; but--er--I don't know if she
can clear tables.
BLY. I've been tellin' Mr March and the young lady what you're capable
of. Show 'em what you can do with a plate.
FAITH takes the tray from the sideboard and begins to clear the
table, mainly by the light of nature. After a glance, MR MARCH
looks out of the window and drums his fingers on the uncleaned pane.
MR BLY goes on with his cleaning. MARY, after watching from the
hearth, goes up and touches her father's arm.
MARY. [Between him and MR BLY who is bending over his bucket, softly]
You're not watching, Dad.
MR MARCH. It's too pointed.
MARY. We've got to satisfy mother.
MR MARCH. I can satisfy her better if I don't look.
MARY. You're right.
FAITH has paused a moment and is watching them. As MARY turns, she
resumes her operations. MARY joins, and helps her finish clearing,
while the two men converse.
BLY. Fine weather, sir, for the time of year.
MR MARCH. It is. The trees are growing.
BLY. All! I wouldn't be surprised to see a change of Government before
long. I've seen 'uge trees in Brazil without any roots--seen 'em come
down with a crash.
MR MARCH. Good image, Mr Bly. Hope you're right!
BLY. Well, Governments! They're all the same--Butter when they're out
of power, and blood when they're in. And Lord! 'ow they do abuse other
Governments for doin' the things they do themselves. Excuse me, I'll
want her dosseer back, sir, when you've done with it.
MR MARCH. Yes, yes. [He turns, rubbing his hands at the cleared table]
Well, that seems all right! And you can do hair?
FAITH. Oh! Yes, I can do hair. [Again that little soft look, and smile
so carefully adjusted.]
MR MARCH. That's important, don't you think, Mary? [MARY, accustomed to
candour, smiles dubiously.] [Brightly] Ah! And cleaning plate? What
about that?
FAITH. Of course, if I had the opportunity--
MARY. You haven't--so far?
FAITH. Only tin things.
MR MARCH. [Feeling a certain awkwardness] Well, I daresay we can find
some for you. Can you--er--be firm on the telephone?
FAITH. Tell them you're engaged when you're not? Oh! yes.
MR MARCH. Excellent! Let's see, Mary, what else is there?
MARY. Waiting, and house work.
MR MARCH. Exactly.
FAITH. I'm very quick. I--I'd like to come. [She looks down] I don't
care for what I'm doing now. It makes you feel your position.
MARY. Aren't they nice to you?
FAITH. Oh! yes--kind; but-- [She looks up] it's against my instincts.
MR MARCH. Oh! [Quizzically] You've got a disciple, Mr Bly.
BLY. [Rolling his eyes at his daughter] Ah! but you mustn't 'ave
instincts here, you know. You've got a chance, and you must come to
stay, and do yourself credit.
FAITH. [Adapting her face] Yes, I know, I'm very lucky.
MR MARCH. [Deprecating thanks and moral precept] That's all right!
Only, Mr Bly, I can't absolutely answer for Mrs March. She may think--
MARY. There is Mother; I heard the door.
BLY. [Taking up his pail] I quite understand, sir; I've been a married
man myself. It's very queer the way women look at things. I'll take her
away now, and come back presently and do these other winders. You can
talk it over by yourselves. But if you do see your way, sir, I shan't
forget it in an 'urry. To 'ave the responsibility of her--really, it's
dreadful.
FAITH's face has grown sullen during this speech, but it clears up
in another little soft look at MR MARCH, as she and MR BLY go out.
MR MARCH. Well, Mary, have I done it?
MARY. You have, Dad.
MR MARCH. [Running his hands through his hair] Pathetic little figure!
Such infernal inhumanity!
MARY. How are you going to put it to mother?
MR MARCH. Tell her the story, and pitch it strong.
MARY. Mother's not impulsive.
MR MARCH. We must tell her, or she'll think me mad.
MARY. She'll do that, anyway, dear.
MR MARCH. Here she is! Stand by!
He runs his arm through MARY's, and they sit on the fender, at bay.
MRS MARCH enters, Left.
MR MARCH. Well, what luck?
MRS MARCH. None.
MR MARCH. [Unguardedly] Good!
MRS MARCH. What?
MRS MARCH. [Cheerfully] Well, the fact is, Mary and I have caught one
for 'you; Mr Bly's daughter--
MRS MARCH. Are you out of your senses? Don't you know that she's the
girl who--
MR MARCH. That's it. She wants a lift.
MRS MARCH. Geof!
MR MARCH. Well, don't we want a maid?
MRS MARCH. [Ineffably] Ridiculous!
MR MARCH. We tested her, didn't we, Mary?
MRS MARCH. [Crossing to the bell, and ringing] You'll just send for Mr
Bly and get rid of her again.
MR MARCH. Joan, if we comfortable people can't put ourselves a little
out of the way to give a helping hand--
MRS MARCH. To girls who smother their babies?
MR MARCH. Joan, I revolt. I won't be a hypocrite and a Pharisee.
MRS MARCH. Well, for goodness sake let me be one.
MARY. [As the door opens]. Here's Cook!
COOK stands--sixty, stout, and comfortable with a crumpled smile.
COOK. Did you ring, ma'am?
MR MARCH. We're in a moral difficulty, Cook, so naturally we come to
you.
COOK beams.
MRS MARCH. [Impatiently] Nothing of the sort, Cook; it's a question of
common sense.
COOK. Yes, ma'am.
MRS MARCH. That girl, Faith Bly, wants to come here as parlour-maid.
Absurd!
MARCH. You know her story, Cook? I want to give the poor girl a chance.
Mrs March thinks it's taking chances. What do you say?
COCK. Of course, it is a risk, sir; but there! you've got to take 'em
to get maids nowadays. If it isn't in the past, it's in the future. I
daresay I could learn 'er.
MRS MARCH. It's not her work, Cook, it's her instincts. A girl who
smothered a baby that she oughtn't to have had--
MR MARCH. [Remonstrant] If she hadn't had it how could she have
smothered it?
COOK. [Soothingly] Perhaps she's repented, ma'am.
MRS MARCH. Of course she's repented. But did you ever know repentance
change anybody, Cook?
COOK. [Smiling] Well, generally it's a way of gettin' ready for the
next.
MRS MARCH. Exactly.
MR MARCH. If we never get another chance because we repent--
COOK. I always think of Master Johnny, ma'am, and my jam; he used to
repent so beautiful, dear little feller--such a conscience! I never
could bear to lock it away.
MRS MARCH. Cook, you're wandering. I'm surprised at your encouraging
the idea; I really am.
Cook plaits her hands.
MR MARCH. Cook's been in the family longer than I have--haven't you,
Cook? [COOK beams] She knows much more about a girl like that than we
do.
COOK. We had a girl like her, I remember, in your dear mother's time,
Mr Geoffrey.
MR MARCH. How did she turn out?
COOK. Oh! She didn't.
MRS MARCH. There!
MR MARCH. Well, I can't bear behaving like everybody else. Don't you
think we might give her a chance, Cook?
COOK. My 'eart says yes, ma'am.
MR MARCH. Ha!
COOK. And my 'ead says no, sir.
MRS MARCH. Yes!
MR MARCH. Strike your balance, Cook.
COOK involuntarily draws her joined hands sharply in upon her
amplitude.
Well? . . . I didn't catch the little voice within.
COOK. Ask Master Johnny, sir; he's been in the war.
MR MARCH. [To MARY] Get Johnny.
MARY goes out.
MRS MARCH. What on earth has the war to do with it?
COOK. The things he tells me, ma'am, is too wonderful for words. He's
'ad to do with prisoners and generals, every sort of 'orror.
MR MARCH. Cook's quite right. The war destroyed all our ideals and
probably created the baby.
MRS MARCH. It didn't smother it; or condemn the girl.
MR MARCH. [Running his hands through his hair] The more I think of
that--! [He turns away.]
MRS MARCH. [Indicating her husband] You see, Cook, that's the mood in
which I have to engage a parlour-maid. What am I to do with your master?
COOK. It's an 'ealthy rage, ma'am.
MRS MARCH. I'm tired of being the only sober person in this house.
COOK. [Reproachfully] Oh! ma'am, I never touch a drop.
MRS MARCH. I didn't mean anything of that sort. But they do break out
so.
COOK. Not Master Johnny.
MRS MARCH. Johnny! He's the worst of all. His poetry is nothing but
one long explosion.
MR MARCH. [Coming from the window] I say We ought to have faith and
jump.
MRS MARCH. If we do have Faith, we shall jump.
COOK. [Blankly] Of course, in the Bible they 'ad faith, and just look
what it did to them!
MR MARCH. I mean faith in human instincts, human nature, Cook.
COOK. [Scandalised] Oh! no, sir, not human nature; I never let that get
the upper hand.
MR MARCH. You talk to Mr Bly. He's a remarkable man.
COOK. I do, sir, every fortnight when he does the kitchen windows.
MR MARCH. Well, doesn't he impress you?
COOK. Ah! When he's got a drop o' stout in 'im--Oh! dear! [She smiles
placidly.]
JOHNNY has come in.
MR MARCH. Well, Johnny, has Mary told you?
MRS MARCH. [Looking at his face] Now, my dear boy, don't be hasty and
foolish!
JOHNNY. Of course you ought to take her, Mother.
MRS MARCH. [Fixing him] Have you seen her, Johnny?
JOHNNY. She's in the hall, poor little devil, waiting for her sentence.
MRS MARCH. There are plenty of other chances, Johnny. Why on earth
should we--?
JOHNNY. Mother, it's just an instance. When something comes along that
takes a bit of doing--Give it to the other chap!
MR MARCH. Bravo, Johnny!
MRS MARCH. [Drily] Let me see, which of us will have to put up with her
shortcomings--Johnny or I?
MARY. She looks quick, Mother.
MRS MARCH. Girls pick up all sorts of things in prison. We can hardly
expect her to be honest. You don't mind that, I suppose?
JOHNNY. It's a chance to make something decent out of her.
MRS MARCH. I can't understand this passion for vicarious heroism,
Johnny.
JOHNNY. Vicarious!
MRS MARCH. Well, where do you come in? You'll make poems about the
injustice of the Law. Your father will use her in a novel. She'll wear
Mary's blouses, and everybody will be happy--except Cook and me.
MR MARCH. Hang it all, Joan, you might be the Great Public itself!
MRS MARCH. I am--get all the kicks and none of the ha'pence.
JOHNNY. We'll all help you.
MRS MARCH. For Heaven's sake--no, Johnny!
MR MARCH. Well, make up your mind!
MRS MARCH. It was made up long ago.
JOHNNY. [Gloomily] The more I see of things the more disgusting they
seem. I don't see what we're living for. All right. Chuck the girl
out, and let's go rooting along with our noses in the dirt.
MR MARCH. Steady, Johnny!
JOHNNY. Well, Dad, there was one thing anyway we learned out there--
When a chap was in a hole--to pull him out, even at a risk.
MRS MARCH. There are people who--the moment you pull them out--jump in
again.
MARY. We can't tell till we've tried, Mother.
COOK. It's wonderful the difference good food'll make, ma'am.
MRS MARCH. Well, you're all against me. Have it your own way, and when
you regret it--remember me!
MR MARCH. We will--we will! That's settled, then. Bring her in and
tell her. We'll go on to the terrace.
He goes out through the window, followed by JOHNNY.
MARY. [Opening the door] Come in, please.
FAITH enters and stands beside COOK, close to the door. MARY goes
out.
MRS MARCH. [Matter of fact in defeat as in victory] You want to come to
us, I hear.
FAITH. Yes.
MRS MARCH. And you don't know much?
FAITH. No.
COOK. [Softly] Say ma'am, dearie.
MRS MARCH. Cook is going to do her best for you. Are you going to do
yours for us?
FAITH. [With a quick look up] Yes--ma'am.
MRS MARCH. Can you begin at once?
FAITH. Yes.
MRS MARCH. Well, then, Cook will show you where things are kept, and how
to lay the table and that. Your wages will be thirty until we see where
we are. Every other Sunday, and Thursday afternoon. What about dresses?
FAITH. [Looking at her dress] I've only got this--I had it before, of
course, it hasn't been worn.
MRS MARCH. Very neat. But I meant for the house. You've no money, I
suppose?
FAITH. Only one pound thirteen, ma'am.
MRS MARCH. We shall have to find you some dresses, then. Cook will take
you to-morrow to Needham's. You needn't wear a cap unless you like.
Well, I hope you'll get on. I'll leave you with Cook now.
After one look at the girl, who is standing motionless, she goes
out.
FAITH. [With a jerk, as if coming out of plaster of Paris] She's never
been in prison!
COOK. [Comfortably] Well, my dear, we can't all of us go everywhere,
'owever 'ard we try!
She is standing back to the dresser, and turns to it, opening the
right-hand drawer.
COOK. Now, 'ere's the wine. The master likes 'is glass. And 'ere's the
spirits in the tantaliser 'tisn't ever kept locked, in case Master Johnny
should bring a friend in. Have you noticed Master Johnny? [FAITH nods]
Ah! He's a dear boy; and wonderful high-principled since he's been in
the war. He'll come to me sometimes and say: "Cook, we're all going to
the devil!" They think 'ighly of 'im as a poet. He spoke up for you
beautiful.
FAITH. Oh! He spoke up for me?
COOK. Well, of course they had to talk you over.
FAITH. I wonder if they think I've got feelings.
COOK. [Regarding her moody, pretty face] Why! We all have feelin's!
FAITH. Not below three hundred a year.
COOK. [Scandalised] Dear, dear! Where were you educated?
FAITH. I wasn't.
COOK. Tt! Well--it's wonderful what a change there is in girls since my
young days [Pulling out a drawer] Here's the napkins. You change the
master's every day at least because of his moustache and the others every
two days, but always clean ones Sundays. Did you keep Sundays in there?
FAITH. [Smiling] Yes. Longer chapel.
COOK. It'll be a nice change for you, here. They don't go to Church;
they're agnosticals. [Patting her shoulder] How old are you?
FAITH. Twenty.
COOK. Think of that--and such a life! Now, dearie, I'm your friend.
Let the present bury the past--as the sayin' is. Forget all about
yourself, and you'll be a different girl in no time.
FAITH. Do you want to be a different woman?
COOK is taken flat aback by so sudden a revelation of the pharisaism
of which she has not been conscious.
COOK. Well! You are sharp! [Opening another dresser drawer] Here's
the vinegar! And here's the sweets, and [rather anxiously] you mustn't
eat them.
FAITH. I wasn't in for theft.
COOK. [Shocked at such rudimentary exposure of her natural misgivings]
No, no! But girls have appetites.
FAITH. They didn't get much chance where I've been.
COOK. Ah! You must tell me all about it. Did you have adventures?
FAITH. There isn't such a thing in a prison.
COOK. You don't say! Why, in the books they're escapin' all the time.
But books is books; I've always said so. How were the men?
FAITH. Never saw a man--only a chaplain.
COOK. Dear, dear! They must be quite fresh to you, then! How long was
it?
FAITH. Two years.
COOK. And never a day out? What did you do all the time? Did they
learn you anything?
FAITH. Weaving. That's why I hate it.
COOK. Tell me about your poor little baby. I'm sure you meant it for
the best.
FAITH. [Sardonically] Yes; I was afraid they'd make it a ward in
Chancery.
COOK. Oh! dear--what things do come into your head! Why! No one can
take a baby from its mother.
FAITH. Except the Law.
COOK. Tt! Tt! Well! Here's the pickled onions. Miss Mary loves 'em!
Now then, let me see you lay the cloth.
She takes a tablecloth out, hands it to FAITH, and while the girl
begins to unfold the cloth she crosses to the service shutter.
And here's where we pass the dishes through into the pantry.
The door is opened, and MRS MARCH'S voice says: "Cook--a minute!"
[Preparing to go] Salt cellars one at each corner--four, and the peppers.
[From the door] Now the decanters. Oh! you'll soon get on. [MRS MARCH
"Cook!"] Yes, ma'am.
She goes. FAITH, left alone, stands motionless, biting her pretty
lip, her eyes mutinous. Hearing footsteps, she looks up. MR BLY,
with his pail and cloths, appears outside.
BLY. [Preparing to work, while FAITH prepares to set the salt cellars]
So you've got it! You never know your luck. Up to-day and down
to-morrow. I'll 'ave a glass over this to-night. What d'you get?
FAITH. Thirty.
BLY. It's not the market price, still, you're not the market article.
Now, put a good heart into it and get to know your job; you'll find Cook
full o' philosophy if you treat her right--she can make a dumplin' with
anybody. But look 'ere; you confine yourself to the ladies!
FAITH. I don't want your advice, father.
BLY. I know parents are out of date; still, I've put up with a lot on
your account, so gimme a bit of me own back.
FAITH. I don't know whether I shall like this. I've been shut up so
long. I want to see some life.
BLY. Well, that's natural. But I want you to do well. I suppose you'll
be comin' 'ome to fetch your things to-night?
FAITH. Yes.
BLY. I'll have a flower for you. What'd you like--daffydils?
FAITH. No; one with a scent to it.
BLY. I'll ask at Mrs Bean's round the corner.
She'll pick 'em out from what's over. Never 'ad much nose for a
flower meself. I often thought you'd like a flower when you was
in prison.
FAITH. [A little touched] Did you? Did you really?
BLY. Ah! I suppose I've drunk more glasses over your bein' in there
than over anything that ever 'appened to me. Why! I couldn't relish the
war for it! And I suppose you 'ad none to relish. Well, it's over. So,
put an 'eart into it.
FAITH. I'll try.
BLY. "There's compensation for everything," 'Aigel says. At least, if
it wasn't 'Aigel it was one o' the others. I'll move on to the study
now. Ah! He's got some winders there lookin' right over the country.
And a wonderful lot o' books, if you feel inclined for a read one of
these days.
COOK'S Voice. Faith!
FAITH sets down the salt cellar in her hand, puts her tongue out a
very little, and goes out into the hall. MR BLY is gathering up his
pail and cloths when MR MARCH enters at the window.
MR MARCH. So it's fixed up, Mr Bly.
BLY. [Raising himself] I'd like to shake your 'and, sir. [They shake
hands] It's a great weight off my mind.
MR MARCH. It's rather a weight on my wife's, I'm afraid. But we must
hope for the best. The country wants rain, but--I doubt if we shall get
it with this Government.
BLY. Ah! We want the good old times-when you could depend on the
seasons. The further you look back the more dependable the times get;
'ave you noticed that, sir?
MR MARCH. [Suddenly] Suppose they'd hanged your daughter, Mr Bly. What
would you have done?
BLY. Well, to be quite frank, I should 'ave got drunk on it.
MR MARCH. Public opinion's always in advance of the Law. I think your
daughter's a most pathetic little figure.
BLY. Her looks are against her. I never found a man that didn't.
MR MARCH. [A little disconcerted] Well, we'll try and give her a good
show here.
BLY. [Taking up his pail] I'm greatly obliged; she'll appreciate
anything you can do for her. [He moves to the door and pauses there to
say] Fact is--her winders wants cleanin', she 'ad a dusty time in there.
MR MARCH. I'm sure she had.
MR BLY passes out, and MR MARCH busies himself in gathering up his
writing things preparatory to seeking his study. While he is so
engaged FAITH comes in. Glancing at him, she resumes her placing of
the decanters, as JOHNNY enters by the window, and comes down to his
father by the hearth.
JOHNNY. [Privately] If you haven't begun your morning, Dad, you might
just tell me what you think of these verses.
He puts a sheet of notepaper before his father, who takes it and
begins to con over the verses thereon, while JOHNNY looks carefully
at his nails.
MR MARCH. Er--I--I like the last line awfully, Johnny.
JOHNNY. [Gloomily] What about the other eleven?
MR MARCH. [Tentatively] Well--old man, I--er--think perhaps it'd be
stronger if they were out.
JOHNNY. Good God!
He takes back the sheet of paper, clutches his brow, and crosses to
the door. As he passes FAITH, she looks up at him with eyes full of
expression. JOHNNY catches the look, jibs ever so little, and goes
out.
COOK'S VOICE. [Through the door, which is still ajar] Faith!
FAITH puts the decanters on the table, and goes quickly out.
MR MARCH. [Who has seen this little by-play--to himself--in a voice of
dismay] Oh! oh! I wonder!
CURTAIN.
ACT II
A fortnight later in the MARCH'S dining-room; a day of violent
April showers. Lunch is over and the table littered with, remains--
twelve baskets full.
MR MARCH and MARY have lingered. MR MARCH is standing by the hearth
where a fire is burning, filling a fountain pen. MARY sits at the
table opposite, pecking at a walnut.
MR MARCH. [Examining his fingers] What it is to have an inky present!
Suffer with me, Mary!
MARY. "Weep ye no more, sad Fountains!
Why need ye flow so fast?"
MR MARCH. [Pocketing his pen] Coming with me to the British Museum?
I want to have a look at the Assyrian reliefs.
MARY. Dad, have you noticed Johnny?
MR MARCH. I have.
MARY. Then only Mother hasn't.
MR MARCH. I've always found your mother extremely good at seeming not to
notice things, Mary.
MARY. Faith! She's got on very fast this fortnight.
MR MARCH. The glad eye, Mary. I got it that first morning.
MARY. You, Dad?
MR MARCH. No, no! Johnny got it, and I got him getting it.
MARY. What are you going to do about it?
MR MARCH. What does one do with a glad eye that belongs to some one
else?
MARY. [Laughing] No. But, seriously, Dad, Johnny's not like you and
me. Why not speak to Mr Bly?
MR MARCH. Mr Bly's eyes are not glad.
MARY. Dad! Do be serious! Johnny's capable of anything except a sense
of humour.
MR MARCH. The girl's past makes it impossible to say anything to her.
MARY. Well, I warn you. Johnny's very queer just now; he's in the "lose
the world to save your soul" mood. It really is too bad of that girl.
After all, we did what most people wouldn't.
MR MARCH. Come! Get your hat on, Mary, or we shan't make the Tube
before the next shower.
MARY. [Going to the door] Something must be done.
MR MARCH. As you say, something--Ah! Mr Bly!
MR BLY, in precisely the same case as a fortnight ago, with his pail
and cloths, is coming in.
BLY. Afternoon, sir! Shall I be disturbing you if I do the winders
here?
MR MARCH. Not at all.
MR BLY crosses to the windows.
MARY. [Pointing to MR BLY's back] Try!
BLY. Showery, sir.
MR MARCH. Ah!
BLY. Very tryin' for winders. [Resting] My daughter givin'
satisfaction, I hope?
MR MARCH. [With difficulty] Er--in her work, I believe, coming on well.
But the question is, Mr Bly, do--er--any of us ever really give
satisfaction except to ourselves?
BLY. [Taking it as an invitation to his philosophical vein] Ah! that's
one as goes to the roots of 'uman nature. There's a lot of disposition
in all of us. And what I always say is: One man's disposition is another
man's indisposition.
MR MARCH. By George! Just hits the mark.
BLY. [Filling his sponge] Question is: How far are you to give rein to
your disposition? When I was in Durban, Natal, I knew a man who had the
biggest disposition I ever come across. 'E struck 'is wife, 'e smoked
opium, 'e was a liar, 'e gave all the rein 'e could, and yet withal one
of the pleasantest men I ever met.
MR MARCH. Perhaps in giving rein he didn't strike you.
BLY. [With a big wipe, following his thought] He said to me once:
"Joe," he said, "if I was to hold meself in, I should be a devil."
There's where you get it. Policemen, priests, prisoners. Cab'net
Ministers, any one who leads an unnatural life, see how it twists 'em.
You can't suppress a thing without it swellin' you up in another place.
MR MARCH. And the moral of that is--?
BLY. Follow your instincts. You see--if I'm not keepin' you--now that
we ain't got no faith, as we were sayin' the other day, no Ten
Commandments in black an' white--we've just got to be 'uman bein's--
raisin' Cain, and havin' feelin' hearts. What's the use of all these
lofty ideas that you can't live up to? Liberty, Fraternity, Equality,
Democracy--see what comes o' fightin' for 'em! 'Ere we are-wipin' out
the lot. We thought they was fixed stars; they was only comets--hot air.
No; trust 'uman nature, I say, and follow your instincts.
MR MARCH. We were talking of your daughter--I--I--
BLY. There's a case in point. Her instincts was starved goin' on for
three years, because, mind you, they kept her hangin' about in prison
months before they tried her. I read your article, and I thought to
meself after I'd finished: Which would I feel smallest--if I was--the
Judge, the Jury, or the 'Ome Secretary? It was a treat, that article!
They ought to abolish that in'uman "To be hanged by the neck until she is
dead." It's my belief they only keep it because it's poetry; that and
the wigs--they're hard up for a bit of beauty in the Courts of Law.
Excuse my 'and, sir; I do thank you for that article.
He extends his wiped hand, which MR MARCH shakes with the feeling
that he is always shaking Mr. BLY's hand.
MR MARCH. But, apropos of your daughter, Mr Bly. I suppose none of us
ever change our natures.
BLY. [Again responding to the appeal that he senses to his philosophical
vein] Ah! but 'oo can see what our natures are? Why, I've known people
that could see nothin' but theirselves and their own families, unless
they was drunk. At my daughter's trial, I see right into the lawyers,
judge and all. There she was, hub of the whole thing, and all they could
see of her was 'ow far she affected 'em personally--one tryin' to get 'er
guilty, the other tryin' to get 'er off, and the judge summin' 'er up
cold-blooded.
MR MARCH. But that's what they're paid for, Mr Bly.
BLY. Ah! But which of 'em was thinkin' "'Ere's a little bit o' warm
life on its own. 'Ere's a little dancin' creature. What's she feelin',
wot's 'er complaint?"--impersonal-like. I like to see a man do a bit of
speculatin', with his mind off of 'imself, for once.
MR MARCH. "The man that hath not speculation in his soul."
BLY. That's right, sir. When I see a mangy cat or a dog that's lost, or
a fellow-creature down on his luck, I always try to put meself in his
place. It's a weakness I've got.
MR MARCH. [Warmly] A deuced good one. Shake--
He checks himself, but MR BLY has wiped his hand and extended it.
While the shake is in progress MARY returns, and, having seen it to
a safe conclusion, speaks.
MARY. Coming, Dad?
MR MARCH. Excuse me, Mr Bly, I must away.
He goes towards the door, and BLY dips his sponge.
MARY. [In a low voice] Well?
MR MARCH. Mr Bly is like all the greater men I know--he can't listen.
MARY. But you were shaking--
MR MARCH. Yes; it's a weakness we have--every three minutes.
MARY. [Bubbling] Dad--Silly!
MR MARCH. Very!
As they go out MR BLY pauses in his labours to catch, as it were,
a philosophical reflection. He resumes the wiping of a pane, while
quietly, behind him, FAITH comes in with a tray. She is dressed now
in lilac-coloured linen, without a cap, and looks prettier than
ever. She puts the tray down on the sideboard with a clap that
attracts her father's attention, and stands contemplating the debris
on the table.
BLY. Winders! There they are! Clean, dirty! All sorts--All round yer!
Winders!
FAITH. [With disgust] Food!
BLY. Ah! Food and winders! That's life!
FAITH. Eight times a day four times for them and four times for us.
I hate food!
She puts a chocolate into her mouth.
BLY. 'Ave some philosophy. I might just as well hate me winders.
FAITH. Well!
She begins to clear.
BLY. [Regarding her] Look 'ere, my girl! Don't you forget that there
ain't many winders in London out o' which they look as philosophical as
these here. Beggars can't be choosers.
FAITH. [Sullenly] Oh! Don't go on at me!
BLY. They spoiled your disposition in that place, I'm afraid.
FAITH. Try it, and see what they do with yours.
BLY. Well, I may come to it yet.
FAITH. You'll get no windows to look out of there; a little bit of a
thing with bars to it, and lucky if it's not thick glass. [Standing
still and gazing past MR BLY] No sun, no trees, no faces--people don't
pass in the sky, not even angels.
BLY. Ah! But you shouldn't brood over it. I knew a man in Valpiraso
that 'ad spent 'arf 'is life in prison-a jolly feller; I forget what
'e'd done, somethin' bloody. I want to see you like him. Aren't you
happy here?
FAITH. It's right enough, so long as I get out.
BLY. This Mr March--he's like all these novel-writers--thinks 'e knows
'uman nature, but of course 'e don't. Still, I can talk to 'im--got an
open mind, and hates the Gover'ment. That's the two great things. Mrs
March, so far as I see, 'as got her head screwed on much tighter.
FAITH. She has.
BLY. What's the young man like? He's a long feller.
FAITH. Johnny? [With a shrug and a little smile] Johnny.
BLY. Well, that gives a very good idea of him. They say 'es a poet;
does 'e leave 'em about?
FAITH. I've seen one or two.
BLY. What's their tone?
FAITH. All about the condition of the world; and the moon.
BLY. Ah! Depressin'. And the young lady?
FAITH shrugs her shoulders.
Um--'ts what I thought. She 'asn't moved much with the times. She
thinks she 'as, but she 'asn't. Well, they seem a pleasant family.
Leave you to yourself. 'Ow's Cook?
FAITH. Not much company.
BLY. More body than mind? Still, you get out, don't you?
FAITH. [With a slow smile] Yes. [She gives a sudden little twirl, and
puts her hands up to her hair before the mirror] My afternoon to-day.
It's fine in the streets, after-being in there.
BLY. Well! Don't follow your instincts too much, that's all! I must
get on to the drawin' room now. There's a shower comin'.
[Philosophically] It's 'ardly worth while to do these winders. You
clean 'em, and they're dirty again in no time. It's like life. And
people talk o' progress. What a sooperstition! Of course there ain't
progress; it's a world-without-end affair. You've got to make up your
mind to it, and not be discouraged. All this depression comes from
'avin' 'igh 'opes. 'Ave low 'opes, and you'll be all right.
He takes up his pail and cloths and moves out through the windows.
FAITH puts another chocolate into her mouth, and taking up a flower,
twirls round with it held to her nose, and looks at herself in the
glass over the hearth. She is still looking at herself when she
sees in the mirror a reflection of JOHNNY, who has come in. Her
face grows just a little scared, as if she had caught the eye of a
warder peering through the peep-hole of her cell door, then brazens,
and slowly sweetens as she turns round to him.
JOHNNY. Sorry! [He has a pipe in his hand and wears a Norfolk jacket]
Fond of flowers?
FAITH. Yes. [She puts back the flower] Ever so!
JOHNNY. Stick to it. Put it in your hair; it'll look jolly. How do you
like it here?
FAITH. It's quiet.
JOHNNY. Ha! I wonder if you've got the feeling I have. We've both had
hell, you know; I had three years of it, out there, and you've had three
years of it here. The feeling that you can't catch up; can't live fast
enough to get even.
FAITH nods.
Nothing's big enough; nothing's worth while enough--is it?
FAITH. I don't know. I know I'd like to bite. She draws her lips back.
JOHNNY. Ah! Tell me all about your beastly time; it'll do you good.
You and I are different from anybody else in this house. We've lived
they've just vegetated. Come on; tell me!
FAITH, who up to now has looked on him as a young male, stares at
him for the first time without sex in her eyes.
FAITH. I can't. We didn't talk in there, you know.
JOHNNY. Were you fond of the chap who--?
FAITH. No. Yes. I suppose I was--once.
JOHNNY. He must have been rather a swine.
FAITH. He's dead.
JOHNNY. Sorry! Oh, sorry!
FAITH. I've forgotten all that.
JOHNNY. Beastly things, babies; and absolutely unnecessary in the
present state of the world.
FAITH. [With a faint smile] My baby wasn't beastly; but I--I got upset.
JOHNNY. Well, I should think so!
FAITH. My friend in the manicure came and told me about hers when I was
lying in the hospital. She couldn't have it with her, so it got
neglected and died.
JOHNNY. Um! I believe that's quite common.
FAITH. And she told me about another girl--the Law took her baby from
her. And after she was gone, I--got all worked up-- [She hesitates, then
goes swiftly on] And I looked at mine; it was asleep just here, quite
close. I just put out my arm like that, over its face--quite soft--
I didn't hurt it. I didn't really. [She suddenly swallows, and her lips
quiver] I didn't feel anything under my arm. And--and a beast of a nurse
came on me, and said "You've smothered your baby, you wretched girl!"
I didn't want to kill it--I only wanted to save it from living. And when
I looked at it, I went off screaming.
JOHNNY. I nearly screamed when I saved my first German from living. I
never felt the same again. They say the human race has got to go on, but
I say they've first got to prove that the human race wants to. Would you
rather be alive or dead?
FAITH. Alive.
JOHNNY. But would you have in prison?
FAITH. I don't know. You can't tell anything in there. [With sudden
vehemence] I wish I had my baby back, though. It was mine; and I--I
don't like thinking about it.
JOHNNY. I know. I hate to think about anything I've killed, really.
At least, I should--but it's better not to think.
FAITH. I could have killed that judge.
JOHNNY. Did he come the heavy father? That's what I can't stand. When
they jaw a chap and hang him afterwards. Or was he one of the joking
ones?
FAITH. I've sat in my cell and cried all night--night after night,
I have. [With a little laugh] I cried all the softness out of me.
JOHNNY. You never believed they were going to hang you, did you?
FAITH. I didn't care if they did--not then.
JOHNNY. [With a reflective grunt] You had a much worse time than I. You
were lonely--
FAITH. Have you been in a prison, ever?
JOHNNY. No, thank God!
FAITH. It's awfully clean.
JOHNNY. You bet.
FAITH. And it's stone cold. It turns your heart.
JOHNNY. Ah! Did you ever see a stalactite?
FAITH. What's that?
JOHNNY. In caves. The water drops like tears, and each drop has some
sort of salt, and leaves it behind till there's just a long salt
petrified drip hanging from the roof.
FAITH. Ah! [Staring at him] I used to stand behind my door. I'd stand
there sometimes I don't know how long. I'd listen and listen--the noises
are all hollow in a prison. You'd think you'd get used to being shut up,
but I never did.
JOHNNY utters a deep grunt.
It's awful the feeling you get here-so tight and chokey. People who are
free don't know what it's like to be shut up. If I'd had a proper window
even--When you can see things living, it makes you feel alive.
JOHNNY. [Catching her arm] We'll make you feel alive again.
FAITH stares at him; sex comes back to her eyes. She looks down.
I bet you used to enjoy life, before.
FAITH. [Clasping her hands] Oh! yes, I did. And I love getting out
now. I've got a fr-- [She checks herself] The streets are beautiful,
aren't they? Do you know Orleens Street?
JOHNNY. [Doubtful] No-o. . . . Where?
FAITH. At the corner out of the Regent. That's where we had our shop.
I liked the hair-dressing. We had fun. Perhaps I've seen you before.
Did you ever come in there?
JOHNNY. No.
FAITH. I'd go back there; only they wouldn't take me--I'm too
conspicuous now.
JOHNNY. I expect you're well out of that.
FAITH. [With a sigh] But I did like it. I felt free. We had an hour
off in the middle of the day; you could go where you liked; and then,
after hours--I love the streets at night--all lighted. Olga--that's one
of the other girls--and I used to walk about for hours. That's life!
Fancy! I never saw a street for more than two years. Didn't you miss
them in the war?
JOHNNY. I missed grass and trees more--the trees! All burnt, and
splintered. Gah!
FAITH. Yes, I like trees too; anything beautiful, you know. I think the
parks are lovely--but they might let you pick the flowers. But the
lights are best, really--they make you feel happy. And music--I love an
organ. There was one used to come and play outside the prison--before I
was tried. It sounded so far away and lovely. If I could 'ave met the
man that played that organ, I'd have kissed him. D'you think he did it
on purpose?
JOHNNY. He would have, if he'd been me.
He says it unconsciously, but FAITH is instantly conscious of the
implication.
FAITH. He'd rather have had pennies, though. It's all earning; working
and earning. I wish I were like the flowers. [She twirls the dower in
her hand] Flowers don't work, and they don't get put in prison.
JOHNNY. [Putting his arm round her] Never mind! Cheer up! You're only
a kid. You'll have a good time yet.
FAITH leans against him, as it were indifferently, clearly expecting
him to kiss her, but he doesn't.
FAITH. When I was a little girl I had a cake covered with sugar. I ate
the sugar all off and then I didn't want the cake--not much.
JOHNNY. [Suddenly, removing his arm] Gosh! If I could write a poem that
would show everybody what was in the heart of everybody else--!
FAITH. It'd be too long for the papers, wouldn't it?
JOHNNY. It'd be too strong.
FAITH. Besides, you don't know.
Her eyelids go up.
JOHNNY. [Staring at her] I could tell what's in you now.
FAITH. What?
JOHNNY. You feel like a flower that's been picked.
FAITH's smile is enigmatic.
FAITH. [Suddenly] Why do you go on about me so?
JOHNNY. Because you're weak--little and weak. [Breaking out again] Damn
it! We went into the war to save the little and weak; at least we said
so; and look at us now! The bottom's out of all that. [Bitterly] There
isn't a faith or an illusion left. Look here! I want to help you.
FAITH. [Surprisingly] My baby was little and weak.
JOHNNY. You never meant--You didn't do it for your own advantage.
FAITH. It didn't know it was alive. [Suddenly] D'you think I'm pretty?
JOHNNY. As pie.
FAITH. Then you'd better keep away, hadn't you?
JOHNNY. Why?
FAITH. You might want a bite.
JOHNNY. Oh! I can trust myself.
FAITH. [Turning to the window, through which can be seen the darkening
of a shower] It's raining. Father says windows never stay clean.
They stand dose together, unaware that COOK has thrown up the
service shutter, to see why the clearing takes so long. Her
astounded head and shoulders pass into view just as FAITH suddenly
puts up her face. JOHNNY'S lips hesitate, then move towards her
forehead. But her face shifts, and they find themselves upon her
lips. Once there, the emphasis cannot help but be considerable.
COOK'S mouth falls open.
COOK. Oh!
She closes the shutter, vanishing.
FAITH. What was that?
JOHNNY. Nothing. [Breaking away] Look here! I didn't mean--I oughtn't
to have--Please forget it!
FAITH. [With a little smile] Didn't you like it?
JOHNNY. Yes--that's just it. I didn't mean to It won't do.
FAITH. Why not?
JOHNNY. No, no! It's just the opposite of what--No, no!
He goes to the door, wrenches it open and goes out.
FAITH, still with that little half-mocking, half-contented smile,
resumes the clearing of the table. She is interrupted by the
entrance through the French windows of MR MARCH and MARY, struggling
with one small wet umbrella.
MARY. [Feeling his sleeve] Go and change, Dad.
MR MARCH. Women's shoes! We could have made the Tube but for your
shoes.
MARY. It was your cold feet, not mine, dear. [Looking at FAITH and
nudging him] Now!
She goes towards the door, turns to look at FAITH still clearing the
table, and goes out.
MR MARCH. [In front of the hearth] Nasty spring weather, Faith.
FAITH. [Still in the mood of the kiss] Yes, Sir.
MR MARCH. [Sotto voce] "In the spring a young man's fancy." I--I wanted
to say something to you in a friendly way.
FAITH regards him as he struggles on. Because I feel very friendly
towards you.
FAITH. Yes.
MR MARCH. So you won't take what I say in bad part?
FAITH. No.
MR MARCH. After what you've been through, any man with a sense of
chivalry--
FAITH gives a little shrug.
Yes, I know--but we don't all support the Government.
FAITH. I don't know anything about the Government.
MR MARCH. [Side-tracked on to his hobby] Ah I forgot. You saw no
newspapers. But you ought to pick up the threads now. What paper does
Cook take?
FAITH. "COSY."
MR MARCH. "Cosy"? I don't seem-- What are its politics?
FAITH. It hasn't any--only funny bits, and fashions. It's full of
corsets.
MR MARCH. What does Cook want with corsets?
FAITH. She likes to think she looks like that.
MR MARCH. By George! Cook an idealist! Let's see!--er--I was speaking
of chivalry. My son, you know--er--my son has got it.
FAITH. Badly?
MR MARCH. [Suddenly alive to the fact that she is playing with him] I
started by being sorry for you.
FAITH. Aren't you, any more?
MR MARCH. Look here, my child!
FAITH looks up at him. [Protectingly] We want to do our best for you.
Now, don't spoil it by-- Well, you know!
FAITH. [Suddenly] Suppose you'd been stuffed away in a hole for years!
MR MARCH. [Side-tracked again] Just what your father said. The more I
see of Mr Bly, the more wise I think him.
FAITH. About other people.
MR MARCH. What sort of bringing up did he give you?
FAITH smiles wryly and shrugs her shoulders.
MR MARCH. H'm! Here comes the sun again!
FAITH. [Taking up the flower which is lying on the table] May I have
this flower?
MR MARCH. Of Course. You can always take what flowers you like--that
is--if--er--
FAITH. If Mrs March isn't about?
MR MARCH. I meant, if it doesn't spoil the look of the table. We must
all be artists in our professions, mustn't we?
FAITH. My profession was cutting hair. I would like to cut yours.
MR MARCH'S hands instinctively go up to it.
MR MARCH. You mightn't think it, but I'm talking to you seriously.
FAITH. I was, too.
MR MARCH. [Out of his depth] Well! I got wet; I must go and change.
FAITH follows him with her eyes as he goes out, and resumes the
clearing of the table. She has paused and is again smelling at the
flower when she hears the door, and quickly resumes her work. It is
MRS MARCH, who comes in and goes to the writing table, Left Back,
without looking at FAITH. She sits there writing a cheque, while
FAITH goes on clearing.
MRS MARCH. [Suddenly, in an unruffled voice] I have made your cheque out
for four pounds. It's rather more than the fortnight, and a month's
notice. There'll be a cab for you in an hour's time. Can you be ready
by then?
FAITH. [Astonished] What for--ma'am?
MRS MARCH. You don't suit.
FAITH. Why?
MRS MARCH. Do you wish for the reason?
FAITH. [Breathless] Yes.
MRS MARCH. Cook saw you just now.
FAITH. [Blankly] Oh! I didn't mean her to.
MRS MARCH. Obviously.
FAITH. I--I--
MRS MARCH. Now go and pack up your things.
FAITH. He asked me to be a friend to him. He said he was lonely here.
MRS MARCH. Don't be ridiculous. Cook saw you kissing him with p--p--
FAITH. [Quickly] Not with pep.
MRS MARCH. I was going to say "passion." Now, go quietly.
FAITH. Where am I to go?
MRS MARCH. You will have four pounds, and you can get another place.
FAITH. How?
MRS MARCH. That's hardly my affair.
FAITH. [Tossing her head] All right!
MRS MARCH. I'll speak to your father, if he isn't gone.
FAITH. Why do you send me away--just for a kiss! What's a kiss?
MRS MARCH. That will do.
FAITH. [Desperately] He wanted to--to save me.
MRS MARCH. You know perfectly well people can only save themselves.
FAITH. I don't care for your son; I've got a young--[She checks herself]
I--I'll leave your son alone, if he leaves me.
MRS MARCH rings the bell on the table.
[Desolately] Well? [She moves towards the door. Suddenly holding out
the flower] Mr March gave me that flower; would you like it back?
MRS MARCH. Don't be absurd! If you want more money till you get a
place, let me know.
FAITH. I won't trouble you.
She goes out.
MRS MARCH goes to the window and drums her fingers on the pane.
COOK enters.
MRS MARCH. Cook, if Mr Bly's still here, I want to see him. Oh! And
it's three now. Have a cab at four o'clock.
COOK. [Almost tearful] Oh, ma'am--anybody but Master Johnny, and I'd
'ave been a deaf an' dummy. Poor girl! She's not responsive, I daresay.
Suppose I was to speak to Master Johnny?
MRS MARCH. No, no, Cook! Where's Mr Bly?
COOK. He's done his windows; he's just waiting for his money.
MRS MARCH. Then get him; and take that tray.
COOK. I remember the master kissin' me, when he was a boy. But then he
never meant anything; so different from Master Johnny. Master Johnny
takes things to 'eart.
MRS MARCH. Just so, Cook.
COOK. There's not an ounce of vice in 'im. It's all his goodness, dear
little feller.
MRS MARCH. That's the danger, with a girl like that.
COOK. It's eatin' hearty all of a sudden that's made her poptious. But
there, ma'am, try her again. Master Johnny'll be so cut up!
MRS MARCH. No playing with fire, Cook. We were foolish to let her come.
COOK. Oh! dear, he will be angry with me. If you hadn't been in the
kitchen and heard me, ma'am, I'd ha' let it pass.
MRS MARCH. That would have been very wrong of you.
COOK. Ah! But I'd do a lot of wrong things for Master Johnny. There's
always some one you'll go wrong for!
MRS MARCH. Well, get Mr Bly; and take that tray, there's a good soul.
COOK goes out with the tray; and while waiting, MRS MARCH finishes
clearing the table. She has not quite finished when MR BLY enters.
BLY. Your service, ma'am!
MRS MARCH. [With embarrassment] I'm very sorry, Mr Bly, but
circumstances over which I have no control--
BLY. [With deprecation] Ah! we all has them. The winders ought to be
done once a week now the Spring's on 'em.
MRS MARCH. No, no; it's your daughter--
BLY. [Deeply] Not been given' way to'er instincts, I do trust.
MRS MARCH. Yes. I've just had to say good-bye to her.
BLY. [Very blank] Nothing to do with property, I hope?
MRS MARCH. No, no! Giddiness with my son. It's impossible; she really
must learn.
BLY. Oh! but 'oo's to learn 'er? Couldn't you learn your son instead?
MRS MARCH. No. My son is very high-minded.
BLY. [Dubiously] I see. How am I goin' to get over this? Shall I tell
you what I think, ma'am?
MRS MARCH. I'm afraid it'll be no good.
BLY. That's it. Character's born, not made. You can clean yer winders
and clean 'em, but that don't change the colour of the glass. My father
would have given her a good hidin', but I shan't. Why not? Because my
glass ain't as thick as his. I see through it; I see my girl's
temptations, I see what she is--likes a bit o' life, likes a flower, an'
a dance. She's a natural morganatic.
MRS MARCH. A what?
BLY. Nothin'll ever make her regular. Mr March'll understand how I
feel. Poor girl! In the mud again. Well, we must keep smilin'. [His
face is as long as his arm] The poor 'ave their troubles, there's no
doubt. [He turns to go] There's nothin' can save her but money, so as
she can do as she likes. Then she wouldn't want to do it.
MRS MARCH. I'm very sorry, but there it is.
BLY. And I thought she was goin' to be a success here. Fact is, you
can't see anything till it 'appens. There's winders all round, but you
can't see. Follow your instincts--it's the only way.
MRS MARCH. It hasn't helped your daughter.
BLY. I was speakin' philosophic! Well, I'll go 'ome now, and prepare
meself for the worst.
MRS MARCH. Has Cook given you your money?
BLY. She 'as.
He goes out gloomily and is nearly overthrown in the doorway by the
violent entry of JOHNNY.
JOHNNY. What's this, Mother? I won't have it--it's pre-war.
MRS MARCH. [Indicating MR BLY] Johnny!
JOHNNY waves BLY out of the room and doses the door.
JOHNNY. I won't have her go. She's a pathetic little creature.
MRS MARCH. [Unruffled] She's a minx.
JOHNNY. Mother!
MRS MARCH. Now, Johnny, be sensible. She's a very pretty girl, and this
is my house.
JOHNNY. Of course you think the worst. Trust anyone who wasn't in the
war for that!
MRS MARCH. I don't think either the better or the worse. Kisses are
kisses!
JOHNNY. Mother, you're like the papers--you put in all the vice and
leave out all the virtue, and call that human nature. The kiss was an
accident that I bitterly regret.
MRS MARCH. Johnny, how can you?
JOHNNY. Dash it! You know what I mean. I regret it with my--my
conscience. It shan't occur again.
MRS MARCH. Till next time.
JOHNNY. Mother, you make me despair. You're so matter-of-fact, you
never give one credit for a pure ideal.
MRS MARCH. I know where ideals lead.
JOHNNY. Where?
MRS MARCH. Into the soup. And the purer they are, the hotter the soup.
JOHNNY. And you married father!
MRS MARCH. I did.
JOHNNY. Well, that girl is not to be chucked out; won't have her on my
chest.
MRS MARCH. That's why she's going, Johnny.
JOHNNY. She is not. Look at me!
MRS MARCH looks at him from across the dining-table, for he has
marched up to it, till they are staring at each other across the now
cleared rosewood.
MRS MARCH. How are you going to stop her?
JOHNNY. Oh, I'll stop her right enough. If I stuck it out in Hell, I
can stick it out in Highgate.
MRS MARCH. Johnny, listen. I've watched this girl; and I don't watch
what I want to see--like your father--I watch what is. She's not a hard
case--yet; but she will be.
JOHNNY. And why? Because all you matter-of-fact people make up your
minds to it. What earthly chance has she had?
MRS MARCH. She's a baggage. There are such things, you know, Johnny.
JOHNNY. She's a little creature who went down in the scrum and has been
kicked about ever since.
MRS MARCH. I'll give her money, if you'll keep her at arm's length.
JOHNNY. I call that revolting. What she wants is the human touch.
MRS MARCH. I've not a doubt of it.
JOHNNY rises in disgust.
Johnny, what is the use of wrapping the thing up in catchwords? Human
touch! A young man like you never saved a girl like her. It's as
fantastic as--as Tolstoi's "Resurrection."
JOHNNY. Tolstoi was the most truthful writer that ever lived.
MRS MARCH. Tolstoi was a Russian--always proving that what isn't, is.
JOHNNY. Russians are charitable, anyway, and see into other people's
souls.
MRS MARCH. That's why they're hopeless.
JOHNNY. Well--for cynicism--
MRS MARCH. It's at least as important, Johnny, to see into ourselves as
into other people. I've been trying to make your father understand that
ever since we married. He'd be such a good writer if he did--he wouldn't
write at all.
JOHNNY. Father has imagination.
MRS MARCH. And no business to meddle with practical affairs. You and he
always ride in front of the hounds. Do you remember when the war broke
out, how angry you were with me because I said we were fighting from a
sense of self-preservation? Well, weren't we?
JOHNNY. That's what I'm doing now, anyway.
MRS MARCH. Saving this girl, to save yourself?
JOHNNY. I must have something decent to do sometimes. There isn't an
ideal left.
MRS MARCH. If you knew how tired I am of the word, Johnny!
JOHNNY. There are thousands who feel like me--that the bottom's out of
everything. It sickens me that anything in the least generous should get
sat on by all you people who haven't risked your lives.
MRS MARCH. [With a smile] I risked mine when you were born, Johnny.
You were always very difficult.
JOHNNY. That girl's been telling me--I can see the whole thing.
MRS MARCH. The fact that she suffered doesn't alter her nature; or the
danger to you and us.
JOHNNY. There is no danger--I told her I didn't mean it.
MRS MARCH. And she smiled? Didn't she?
JOHNNY. I--I don't know.
MRS MARCH. If you were ordinary, Johnny, it would be the girl's
look-out. But you're not, and I'm not going to have you in the trap
she'll set for you.
JOHNNY. You think she's a designing minx. I tell you she's got no more
design in her than a rabbit. She's just at the mercy of anything.
MRS MARCH. That's the trap. She'll play on your feelings, and you'll be
caught.
JOHNNY. I'm not a baby.
MRS MARCH. You are--and she'll smother you.
JOHNNY. How beastly women are to each other!
MRS MARCH. We know ourselves, you see. The girl's father realises
perfectly what she is.
JOHNNY. Mr Bly is a dodderer. And she's got no mother. I'll bet you've
never realised the life girls who get outed lead. I've seen them--I saw
them in France. It gives one the horrors.
MRS MARCH. I can imagine it. But no girl gets "outed," as you call it,
unless she's predisposed that way.
JOHNNY. That's all you know of the pressure of life.
MRS MARCH. Excuse me, Johnny. I worked three years among factory girls,
and I know how they manage to resist things when they've got stuff in
them.
JOHNNY. Yes, I know what you mean by stuff--good hard self-preservative
instinct. Why should the wretched girl who hasn't got that be turned
down? She wants protection all the more.
MRS MARCH. I've offered to help with money till she gets a place.
JOHNNY. And you know she won't take it. She's got that much stuff in
her. This place is her only chance. I appeal to you, Mother--please
tell her not to go.
MRS MARCH. I shall not, Johnny.
JOHNNY. [Turning abruptly] Then we know where we are.
MRS MARCH. I know where you'll be before a week's over.
JOHNNY. Where?
MRS MARCH. In her arms.
JOHNNY. [From the door, grimly] If I am, I'll have the right to be!
MRS MARCH. Johnny! [But he is gone.]
MRS MARCH follows to call him back, but is met by MARY.
MARY. So you've tumbled, Mother?
MRS MARCH. I should think I have! Johnny is making an idiot of himself
about that girl.
MARY. He's got the best intentions.
MRS MARCH. It's all your father. What can one expect when your father
carries on like a lunatic over his paper every morning?
MARY. Father must have opinions of his own.
MRS MARCH. He has only one: Whatever is, is wrong.
MARY. He can't help being intellectual, Mother.
MRS MARCH. If he would only learn that the value of a sentiment is the
amount of sacrifice you are prepared to make for it!
MARY. Yes: I read that in "The Times" yesterday. Father's much safer
than Johnny. Johnny isn't safe at all; he might make a sacrifice any
day. What were they doing?
MRS MARCH. Cook caught them kissing.
MARY. How truly horrible!
As she speaks MR MARCH comes in.
MR MARCH. I met Johnny using the most poetic language. What's happened?
MRS MARCH. He and that girl. Johnny's talking nonsense about wanting to
save her. I've told her to pack up.
MR MARCH. Isn't that rather coercive, Joan?
MRS MARCH. Do you approve of Johnny getting entangled with this girl?
MR MARCH. No. I was only saying to Mary--
MRS MARCH. Oh! You were!
MR MARCH. But I can quite see why Johnny--
MRS MARCH. The Government, I suppose!
MR MARCH. Certainly.
MRS MARCH. Well, perhaps you'll get us out of the mess you've got us
into.
MR MARCH. Where's the girl?
MRS MARCH. In her room-packing.
MR MARCH. We must devise means--
MRS MARCH smiles.
The first thing is to see into them--and find out exactly--
MRS MARCH. Heavens! Are you going to have them X-rayed? They haven't
got chest trouble, Geof.
MR MARCH. They may have heart trouble. It's no good being hasty, Joan.
MRS MARCH. Oh! For a man that can't see an inch into human nature, give
me a--psychological novelist!
MR MARCH. [With dignity] Mary, go and see where Johnny is.
MARY. Do you want him here?
MR MARCH. Yes.
MARY. [Dubiously] Well--if I can.
She goes out. A silence, during which the MARCHES look at each
other by those turns which characterise exasperated domesticity.
MRS MARCH. If she doesn't go, Johnny must. Are you going to turn him
out?
MR MARCH. Of course not. We must reason with him.
MRS MARCH. Reason with young people whose lips were glued together half
an hour ago! Why ever did you force me to take this girl?
MR MARCH. [Ruefully] One can't always resist a kindly impulse, Joan.
What does Mr Bly say to it?
MRS MARCH. Mr Bly? "Follow your instincts "and then complains of his
daughter for following them.
MR MARCH. The man's a philosopher.
MRS MARCH. Before we know where we are, we shall be having Johnny
married to that girl.
MR MARCH. Nonsense!
MRS MARCH. Oh, Geof! Whenever you're faced with reality, you say
"Nonsense!" You know Johnny's got chivalry on the brain.
MARY comes in.
MARY. He's at the top of the servants' staircase; outside her room.
He's sitting in an armchair, with its back to her door.
MR MARCH. Good Lord! Direct action!
MARY. He's got his pipe, a pound of chocolate, three volumes of "Monte
Cristo," and his old concertina. He says it's better than the trenches.
MR MARCH. My hat! Johnny's made a joke. This is serious.
MARY. Nobody can get up, and she can't get down. He says he'll stay
there till all's blue, and it's no use either of you coming unless mother
caves in.
MR MARCH. I wonder if Cook could do anything with him?
MARY. She's tried. He told her to go to hell.
MR MARCH. I Say! And what did Cook--?
MARY. She's gone.
MR MARCH. Tt! tt! This is very awkward.
COOK enters through the door which MARY has left open.
MR MARCH. Ah, Cook! You're back, then? What's to be done?
MRS MARCH. [With a laugh] We must devise means!
COOK. Oh, ma'am, it does remind me so of the tantrums he used to get
into, dear little feller! Smiles with recollection.
MRS MARCH. [Sharply] You're not to take him up anything to eat, Cook!
COOK. Oh! But Master Johnny does get so hungry. It'll drive him wild,
ma'am. Just a Snack now and then!
MRS MARCH. No, Cook. Mind--that's flat!
COOK. Aren't I to feed Faith, ma'am?
MR MARCH. Gad! It wants it!
MRS MARCH. Johnny must come down to earth.
COOK. Ah! I remember how he used to fall down when he was little--he
would go about with his head in the air. But he always picked himself up
like a little man.
MARY. Listen!
They all listen. The distant sounds of a concertina being played
with fury drift in through the open door.
COOK. Don't it sound 'eavenly!
The concertina utters a long wail.
CURTAIN.
ACT III
The MARCH'S dining-room on the same evening at the end of a perfunctory
dinner. MRS MARCH sits at the dining-table with her back to the windows,
MARY opposite the hearth, and MR MARCH with his back to it. JOHNNY is
not present. Silence and gloom.
MR MARCH. We always seem to be eating.
MRS MARCH. You've eaten nothing.
MR MARCH. [Pouring himself out a liqueur glass of brandy but not
drinking it] It's humiliating to think we can't exist without.
[Relapses into gloom.]
MRS MARCH. Mary, pass him the walnuts.
MARY. I was thinking of taking them up to Johnny.
MR MARCH. [Looking at his watch] He's been there six hours; even he
can't live on faith.
MRS MARCH. If Johnny wants to make a martyr of himself, I can't help it.
MARY. How many days are you going to let him sit up there, Mother?
MR MARCH. [Glancing at MRS MARCH] I never in my life knew anything so
ridiculous.
MRS MARCH. Give me a little glass of brandy, Geof.
MR MARCH. Good! That's the first step towards seeing reason.
He pours brandy into a liqueur glass from the decanter which stands
between them. MRS MARCH puts the brandy to her lips and makes a
little face, then swallows it down manfully. MARY gets up with the
walnuts and goes. Silence. Gloom.
MRS MARCH. Horrid stuff!
MR MARCH. Haven't you begun to see that your policy's hopeless, Joan?
Come! Tell the girl she can stay. If we make Johnny feel victorious--we
can deal with him. It's just personal pride--the curse of this world.
Both you and Johnny are as stubborn as mules.
MRS MARCH. Human nature is stubborn, Geof. That's what you easy--going
people never see.
MR MARCH gets up, vexed, and goes to the fireplace.
MR MARCH. [Turning] Well! This goes further than you think. It
involves Johnny's affection and respect for you.
MRS MARCH nervously refills the little brandy glass, and again
empties it, with a grimacing shudder.
MR MARCH. [Noticing] That's better! You'll begin to see things
presently.
MARY re-enters.
MARY. He's been digging himself in. He's put a screen across the head
of the stairs, and got Cook's blankets. He's going to sleep there.
MRS MARCH. Did he take the walnuts?
MARY. No; he passed them in to her. He says he's on hunger strike. But
he's eaten all the chocolate and smoked himself sick. He's having the
time of his life, mother.
MR MARCH. There you are!
MRS MARCH. Wait till this time to-morrow.
MARY. Cook's been up again. He wouldn't let her pass. She'll have to
sleep in the spare room.
MR MARCH. I say!
MARY. And he's got the books out of her room.
MRS MARCH. D'you know what they are? "The Scarlet Pimpernel,"
"The Wide Wide World," and the Bible.
MARY. Johnny likes romance.
She crosses to the fire.
MR MARCH. [In a low voice] Are you going to leave him up there with the
girl and that inflammatory literature, all night? Where's your common
sense, Joan?
MRS MARCH starts up, presses her hand over her brow, and sits down
again. She is stumped.
[With consideration for her defeat] Have another tot! [He pours it out]
Let Mary go up with a flag of truce, and ask them both to come down for a
thorough discussion of the whole thing, on condition that they can go up
again if we don't come to terms.
MRS MARCH. Very well! I'm quite willing to meet him. I hate
quarrelling with Johnny.
MR MARCH. Good! I'll go myself. [He goes out.]
MARY. Mother, this isn't a coal strike; don't discuss it for three hours
and then at the end ask Johnny and the girl to do precisely what you're
asking them to do now.
MRS MARCH. Why should I?
MARY. Because it's so usual. Do fix on half-way at once.
MRS MARCH. There is no half-way.
MARY. Well, for goodness sake think of a plan which will make you both
look victorious. That's always done in the end. Why not let her stay,
and make Johnny promise only to see her in the presence of a third party?
MRS MARCH. Because she'd see him every day while he was looking for the
third party. She'd help him look for it.
MARY. [With a gurgle] Mother, I'd no idea you were so--French.
MRS MARCH. It seems to me you none of you have any idea what I am.
MARY. Well, do remember that there'll be no publicity to make either of
you look small. You can have Peace with Honour, whatever you decide.
[Listening] There they are! Now, Mother, don't be logical! It's so
feminine.
As the door opens, MRS MARCH nervously fortifies herself with the
third little glass of brandy. She remains seated. MARY is on her
right.
MR MARCH leads into the room and stands next his daughter, then
FAITH in hat and coat to the left of the table, and JOHNNY, pale but
determined, last. Assembled thus, in a half fan, of which MRS MARCH
is the apex, so to speak, they are all extremely embarrassed, and no
wonder.
Suddenly MARY gives a little gurgle.
JOHNNY. You'd think it funnier if you'd just come out of prison and were
going to be chucked out of your job, on to the world again.
FAITH. I didn't want to come down here. If I'm to go I want to go at
once. And if I'm not, it's my evening out, please.
She moves towards the door. JOHNNY takes her by the shoulders.
JOHNNY. Stand still, and leave it to me. [FAITH looks up at him,
hypnotized by his determination] Now, mother, I've come down at your
request to discuss this; are you ready to keep her? Otherwise up we go
again.
MR MARCH. That's not the way to go to work, Johnny. You mustn't ask
people to eat their words raw--like that.
JOHNNY. Well, I've had no dinner, but I'm not going to eat my words, I
tell you plainly.
MRS MARCH. Very well then; go up again.
MARY. [Muttering] Mother--logic.
MR MARCH. Great Scott! You two haven't the faintest idea of how to
conduct a parley. We have--to--er--explore every path to--find a way to
peace.
MRS MARCH. [To FAITH] Have you thought of anything to do, if you leave
here?
FAITH. Yes.
JOHNNY. What?
FAITH. I shan't say.
JOHNNY. Of course, she'll just chuck herself away.
FAITH. No, I won't. I'll go to a place I know of, where they don't want
references.
JOHNNY. Exactly!
MRS MARCH. [To FAITH] I want to ask you a question. Since you came
out, is this the first young man who's kissed you?
FAITH has hardly had time to start and manifest what may or may not
be indignation when MR MARCH dashes his hands through his hair.
MR MARCH. Joan, really!
JOHNNY. [Grimly] Don't condescend to answer!
MRS MARCH. I thought we'd met to get at the truth.
MARY. But do they ever?
FAITH. I will go out!
JOHNNY. No! [And, as his back is against the door, she can't] I'll see
that you're not insulted any more.
MR MARCH. Johnny, I know you have the best intentions, but really the
proper people to help the young are the old--like--
FAITH suddenly turns her eyes on him, and he goes on rather
hurriedly
--your mother. I'm sure that she and I will be ready to stand by Faith.
FAITH. I don't want charity.
MR MARCH. No, no! But I hope--
MRS MARCH. To devise means.
MR MARCH. [Roused] Of course, if nobody will modify their attitude
--Johnny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, and [To MRS MARCH] so
ought you, Joan.
JOHNNY. [Suddenly] I'll modify mine. [To FAITH] Come here--close! [In
a low voice to FAITH] Will you give me your word to stay here, if I make
them keep you?
FAITH. Why?
JOHNNY. To stay here quietly for the next two years?
FAITH. I don't know.
JOHNNY. I can make them, if you'll promise.
FAITH. You're just in a temper.
JOHNNY. Promise!
During this colloquy the MARCHES have been so profoundly uneasy that
MRS MARCH has poured out another glass of brandy.
MR MARCH. Johnny, the terms of the Armistice didn't include this sort of
thing. It was to be all open and above-board.
JOHNNY. Well, if you don't keep her, I shall clear out.
At this bombshell MRS MARCH rises.
MARY. Don't joke, Johnny! You'll do yourself an injury.
JOHNNY. And if I go, I go for good.
MR MARCH. Nonsense, Johnny! Don't carry a good thing too far!
JOHNNY. I mean it.
MRS MARCH. What will you live on?
JOHNNY. Not poetry.
MRS MARCH. What, then?
JOHNNY. Emigrate or go into the Police.
MR MARCH. Good Lord! [Going up to his wife--in a low voice] Let her
stay till Johnny's in his right mind.
FAITH. I don't want to stay.
JOHNNY. You shall!
MARY. Johnny, don't be a lunatic!
COOK enters, flustered.
COOK. Mr Bly, ma'am, come after his daughter.
MR MARCH. He can have her--he can have her!
COOK. Yes, sir. But, you see, he's--Well, there! He's cheerful.
MR MARCH. Let him come and take his daughter away.
But MR BLY has entered behind him. He has a fixed expression, and
speaks with a too perfect accuracy.
BLY. Did your two Cooks tell you I'm here?
MR MARCH. If you want your daughter, you can take her.
JOHNNY. Mr Bly, get out!
BLY. [Ignoring him] I don't want any fuss with your two cooks.
[Catching sight of MRS MARCH] I've prepared myself for this.
MRS MARCH. So we see.
BLY. I 'ad a bit o' trouble, but I kep' on till I see 'Aigel walkin' at
me in the loo-lookin' glass. Then I knew I'd got me balance.
They all regard MR BLY in a fascinated manner.
FAITH. Father! You've been drinking.
BLY. [Smiling] What do you think.
MR MARCH. We have a certain sympathy with you, Mr Bly.
BLY. [Gazing at his daughter] I don't want that one. I'll take the
other.
MARY. Don't repeat yourself, Mr Bly.
BLY. [With a flash of muddled insight] Well! There's two of everybody;
two of my daughter; an' two of the 'Ome Secretary; and two-two of Cook
--an' I don't want either. [He waves COOK aside, and grasps at a void
alongside FAITH] Come along!
MR MARCH. [Going up to him] Very well, Mr Bly! See her home, carefully.
Good-night!
BLY. Shake hands!
He extends his other hand; MR MARCH grasps it and turns him round
towards the door.
MR MARCH. Now, take her away! Cook, go and open the front door for Mr
Bly and his daughter.
BLY. Too many Cooks!
MR MARCH. Now then, Mr Bly, take her along!
BLY. [Making no attempt to acquire the real FAITH--to an apparition
which he leads with his right hand] You're the one that died when my girl
was 'ung. Will you go--first or shall--I?
The apparition does not answer.
MARY. Don't! It's horrible!
FAITH. I did die.
BLY. Prepare yourself. Then you'll see what you never saw before.
He goes out with his apparition, shepherded by MR MARCH.
MRS MARCH drinks off her fourth glass of brandy. A peculiar whistle
is heard through the open door, and FAITH starts forward.
JOHNNY. Stand still!
FAITH. I--I must go.
MARY. Johnny--let her!
FAITH. There's a friend waiting for me.
JOHNNY. Let her wait! You're not fit to go out to-night.
MARY. Johnny! Really! You're not the girl's Friendly Society!
JOHNNY. You none of you care a pin's head what becomes of her. Can't
you see she's on the edge? The whistle is heard again, but fainter.
FAITH. I'm not in prison now.
JOHNNY. [Taking her by the arm] All right! I'll come with you.
FAITH. [Recoiling] No.
Voices are heard in the hall.
MARY. Who's that with father? Johnny, for goodness' sake don't make us
all ridiculous.
MR MARCH'S voice is heard saying: "Your friend in here." He enters,
followed by a reluctant young man in a dark suit, with dark hair and
a pale square face, enlivened by strange, very living, dark, bull's
eyes.
MR MARCH. [To FAITH, who stands shrinking a little] I came on this--er
--friend of yours outside; he's been waiting for you some time, he says.
MRS MARCH. [To FAITH] You can go now.
JOHNNY. [Suddenly, to the YOUNG MAN] Who are you?
YOUNG M. Ask another! [To FAITH] Are you ready?
JOHNNY. [Seeing red] No, she's not; and you'll just clear out.
MR MARCH. Johnny!
YOUNG M. What have you got to do with her?
JOHNNY. Quit.
YOUNG M. I'll quit with her, and not before. She's my girl.
JOHNNY. Are you his girl?
FAITH. Yes.
MRS MARCH sits down again, and reaching out her left hand, mechanically
draws to her the glass of brandy which her husband had poured out for
himself and left undrunk.
JOHNNY. Then why did you--[He is going to say: "Kiss me," but checks
himself]--let me think you hadn't any friends? Who is this fellow?
YOUNG M. A little more civility, please.
JOHNNY. You look a blackguard, and I believe you are.
MR MARCH. [With perfunctory authority] I really can't have this sort of
thing in my house. Johnny, go upstairs; and you two, please go away.
YOUNG M. [To JOHNNY] We know the sort of chap you are--takin' advantage
of workin' girls.
JOHNNY. That's a foul lie. Come into the garden and I'll prove it on
your carcase.
YOUNG M. All right!
FAITH. No; he'll hurt you. He's been in the war.
JOHNNY. [To the YOUNG MAN] You haven't, I'll bet.
YOUNG M. I didn't come here to be slanged.
JOHNNY. This poor girl is going to have a fair deal, and you're not
going to give it her. I can see that with half an eye.
YOUNG M. You'll see it with no eyes when I've done with you.
JOHNNY. Come on, then.
He goes up to the windows.
MR MARCH. For God's sake, Johnny, stop this vulgar brawl!
FAITH. [Suddenly] I'm not a "poor girl" and I won't be called one.
I don't want any soft words. Why can't you let me be? [Pointing to
JOHNNY] He talks wild. [JOHNNY clutches the edge of the writing-table]
Thinks he can "rescue" me. I don't want to be rescued. I--[All the
feeling of years rises to the surface now that the barrier has broken]
--I want to be let alone. I've paid for everything I've done--a pound
for every shilling's worth.
And all because of one minute when I was half crazy. [Flashing round at
MARY] Wait till you've had a baby you oughtn't to have had, and not a
penny in your pocket! It's money--money--all money!
YOUNG M. Sst! That'll do!
FAITH. I'll have what I like now, not what you think's good for me.
MR MARCH. God knows we don't want to--
FAITH. You mean very well, Mr March, but you're no good.
MR MARCH. I knew it.
FAITH. You were very kind to me. But you don't see; nobody sees.
YOUNG M. There! That's enough! You're gettin' excited. You come away
with me.
FAITH's look at him is like the look of a dog at her master.
JOHNNY. [From the background] I know you're a blackguard--I've seen your
sort.
FAITH. [Firing up] Don't call him names! I won't have it. I'll go
with whom I choose! [Her eyes suddenly fix themselves on the YOUNG MAN'S
face] And I'm going with him!
COOK enters.
MR MARCH. What now, Cook?
COOK. A Mr Barnabas in the hall, sir. From the police.
Everybody starts. MRS MARCH drinks off her fifth little glass of
brandy, then sits again.
MR MARCH. From the police?
He goes out, followed by COOK. A moment's suspense.
YOUNG M. Well, I can't wait any longer. I suppose we can go out the
back way?
He draws FAITH towards the windows. But JOHNNY stands there,
barring the way. JOHNNY. No, you don't.
FAITH. [Scared] Oh! Let me go--let him go!
JOHNNY. You may go. [He takes her arm to pull her to the window] He
can't.
FAITH. [Freeing herself] No--no! Not if he doesn't.
JOHNNY has an evident moment of hesitation, and before it is over MR
MARCH comes in again, followed by a man in a neat suit of plain
clothes.
MR MARCH. I should like you to say that in front of her.
P. C. MAN. Your service, ma'am. Afraid I'm intruding here. Fact is,
I've been waiting for a chance to speak to this young woman quietly.
It's rather public here, sir; but if you wish, of course, I'll mention
it. [He waits for some word from some one; no one speaks, so he goes on
almost apologetically] Well, now, you're in a good place here, and you
ought to keep it. You don't want fresh trouble, I'm sure.
FAITH. [Scared] What do you want with me?
P. C. MAN. I don't want to frighten you; but we've had word passed that
you're associating with the young man there. I observed him to-night
again, waiting outside here and whistling.
YOUNG M. What's the matter with whistling?
P. C. MAN. [Eyeing him] I should keep quiet if I was you. As you know,
sir [To MR MARCH] there's a law nowadays against soo-tenors.
MR MARCH. Soo--?
JOHNNY. I knew it.
P. C. MAN. [Deprecating] I don't want to use any plain English--with
ladies present--
YOUNG M. I don't know you. What are you after? Do you dare--?
P. C. MAN. We cut the darin', 'tisn't necessary. We know all about you.
FAITH. It's a lie!
P. C. MAN. There, miss, don't let your feelings--
FAITH. [To the YOUNG MAN] It's a lie, isn't it?
YOUNG M. A blankety lie.
MR MARCH. [To BARNABAs] Have you actual proof?
YOUNG M. Proof? It's his job to get chaps into a mess.
P. C. MAN. [Sharply] None of your lip, now!
At the new tone in his voice FAITH turns and visibly quails, like a
dog that has been shown a whip.
MR MARCH. Inexpressibly painful!
YOUNG M. Ah! How would you like to be insulted in front of your girl?
If you're a gentleman you'll tell him to leave the house. If he's got a
warrant, let him produce it; if he hasn't, let him get out.
P. C. MAN. [To MR MARCH] You'll understand, sir, that my object in
speakin' to you to-night was for the good of the girl. Strictly, I've
gone a bit out of my way. If my job was to get men into trouble, as he
says, I'd only to wait till he's got hold of her. These fellows, you
know, are as cunning as lynxes and as impudent as the devil.
YOUNG M. Now, look here, if I get any more of this from you--I--I'll
consult a lawyer.
JOHNNY. Fellows like you--
MR MARCH. Johnny!
P. C. MAN. Your son, sir?
YOUNG M. Yes; and wants to be where I am. But my girl knows better;
don't you?
He gives FAITH a look which has a certain magnetism.
P. C. MAN. If we could have the Court cleared of ladies, sir, we might
speak a little plainer.
MR MARCH. Joan!
But MRS MARCH does not vary her smiling immobility; FAITH draws a
little nearer to the YOUNG MAN. MARY turns to the fire.
P. C. MAN. [With half a smile] I keep on forgettin' that women are men
nowadays. Well!
YOUNG M. When you've quite done joking, we'll go for our walk.
MR MARCH. [To BARNABAS] I think you'd better tell her anything you know.
P. C. MAN. [Eyeing FAITH and the YOUNG MAN] I'd rather not be more
precise, sir, at this stage.
YOUNG M. I should think not! Police spite! [To FAITH] You know what
the Law is, once they get a down on you.
P. C. MAN. [To MR MARCH] It's our business to keep an eye on all this
sort of thing, sir, with girls who've just come out.
JOHNNY. [Deeply] You've only to look at his face!
YOUNG M. My face is as good as yours.
FAITH lifts her eyes to his.
P. C. MAN. [Taking in that look] Well, there it is! Sorry I wasted my
time and yours, Sir!
MR MARCH. [Distracted] My goodness! Now, Faith, consider! This is the
turning-point. I've told you we'll stand by you.
FAITH. [Flashing round] Leave me alone! I stick to my friends. Leave
me alone, and leave him alone! What is it to you?
P. C. MAN. [With sudden resolution] Now, look here! This man George
Blunter was had up three years ago--for livin' on the earnings of a woman
called Johnson. He was dismissed with a caution. We got him again last
year over a woman called Lee--that time he did--
YOUNG M. Stop it! That's enough of your lip. I won't put up with this
--not for any woman in the world. Not I!
FAITH. [With a sway towards him] It's not--!
YOUNG M. I'm off! Bong Swore la Companee! He tarns on his heel and
walks out unhindered.
P. C. MAN. [Deeply] A bad hat, that; if ever there was one. We'll be
having him again before long.
He looks at FAITH. They all look at FAITH. But her face is so
strange, so tremulous, that they all turn their eyes away.
FAITH. He--he said--he--!
On the verge of an emotional outbreak, she saves herself by an
effort. A painful silence.
P. C. MAN. Well, sir--that's all. Good evening! He turns to the door,
touching his forehead to MR MARCH, and goes.
As the door closes, FAITH sinks into a chair, and burying her face
in her hands, sobs silently. MRS MARCH sits motionless with a faint
smile. JOHNNY stands at the window biting his nails. MARY crosses
to FAITH.
MARY. [Softly] Don't. You weren't really fond of him?
FAITH bends her head.
MARY. But how could you? He--
FAITH. I--I couldn't see inside him.
MARY. Yes; but he looked--couldn't you see he looked--?
FAITH. [Suddenly flinging up her head] If you'd been two years without
a word, you'd believe anyone that said he liked you.
MARY. Perhaps I should.
FAITH. But I don't want him--he's a liar. I don't like liars.
MARY. I'm awfully sorry.
FAITH. [Looking at her] Yes--you keep off feeling--then you'll be happy!
[Rising] Good-bye!
MARY. Where are you going?
FAITH. To my father.
MARY. With him in that state?
FAITH. He won't hurt me.
MARY. You'd better stay. Mother, she can stay, can't she?
MRS MARCH nods.
FAITH. No!
MARY. Why not? We're all sorry. Do! You'd better.
FAITH. Father'll come over for my things tomorrow.
MARY. What are you going to do?
FAITH. [Proudly] I'll get on.
JOHNNY. [From the window] Stop!
All turn and look at him. He comes down. Will you come to me?
FAITH stares at him. MRS MARCH continues to smile faintly.
MARY. [With a horrified gesture] Johnny!
JOHNNY. Will you? I'll play cricket if you do.
MR MARCH. [Under his breath] Good God!
He stares in suspense at FAITH, whose face is a curious blend of
fascination and live feeling.
JOHNNY. Well?
FAITH. [Softly] Don't be silly! I've got no call on you. You don't
care for me, and I don't for you. No! You go and put your head in ice.
[She turns to the door] Good-bye, Mr March! I'm sorry I've been so much
trouble.
MR MARCH. Not at all, not at all!
FAITH. Oh! Yes, I have. There's nothing to be done with a girl like
me. She goes out.
JOHNNY. [Taking up the decanter to pour himself out a glass of brandy]
Empty!
COOK. [Who has entered with a tray] Yes, my dearie, I'm sure you are.
JOHNNY. [Staring at his father] A vision, Dad! Windows of Clubs--men
sitting there; and that girl going by with rouge on her cheeks--
COOK. Oh! Master Johnny!
JOHNNY. A blue night--the moon over the Park. And she stops and looks
at it.--What has she wanted--the beautiful--something better than she's
got--something that she'll never get!
COOK. Oh! Master Johnny!
She goes up to JOHNNY and touches his forehead. He comes to himself
and hurries to the door, but suddenly MRS MARCH utters a little
feathery laugh. She stands up, swaying slightly. There is
something unusual and charming in her appearance, as if formality
had dropped from her.
MRS MARCH. [With a sort of delicate slow lack of perfect sobriety] I
see--it--all. You--can't--help--unless--you--love!
JOHNNY stops and looks round at her.
MR MARCH. [Moving a little towards her] Joan!
MRS MARCH. She--wants--to--be--loved. It's the way of the world.
MARY. [Turning] Mother!
MRS MARCH. You thought she wanted--to be saved. Silly! She--just--
wants--to--be--loved. Quite natural!
MR MARCH. Joan, what's happened to you?
MRS MARCH. [Smiling and nodding] See--people--as--they--are! Then you
won't be--disappointed. Don't--have--ideals! Have--vision--just simple
--vision!
MR MARCH. Your mother's not well.
MRS MARCH. [Passing her hand over her forehead] It's hot in here!
MR MARCH. Mary!
MARY throws open the French windows.
MRS MARCH. [Delightfully] The room's full of GAS. Open the windows!
Open! And let's walk--out--into the air!
She turns and walks delicately out through the opened windows;
JOHNNY and MARY follow her. The moonlight and the air flood in.
COOK. [Coming to the table and taking up the empty decanter] My Holy Ma!
MR MARCH. Is this the Millennium, Cook?
COOK. Oh! Master Geoffrey--there isn't a millehennium. There's too much
human nature. We must look things in the face.
MR MARCH. Ah! Neither up--nor down--but straight in the face! Quite a
thought, Cook! Quite a thought!
CURTAIN.
THE END.
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